Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Sensuki]

It doesn't make sense from what we know about PE that the Rogue's standard auto attack does the "highest single-target single-hit damage".

Special abilities are a different story, of course.

When Sawyer talks about spiking damage, he is referring to burst damage ie. in the post above (which I think is an old quote from around about the narrative update).

edit: btw just realized we are actually talking about the same thing. I missed one of your posts.

highest single-target, single-hit damage I believe comes from their 'flanking' bonus, which just means that another character has to be engaging the target. The Rogue can use this bonus via a melee weapon or a range weapon within a certain range (I think they use in game metres?).

 

[Duraframe300]

It doesn't make sense from what we know about PE that the Rogue's standard auto attack does the "highest single-target single-hit damage".

Special abilities are a different story, of course.

When Sawyer talks about spiking damage, he is referring to burst damage ie. in the post above (which I think is an old quote from around about the narrative update).

It's actually a new post on SA. (if you mean my post)

 

[Sensuki]

Ah so it is. It's mostly just a repeat of previously stated information bunched all together (examples of diff rogue weapon builds, druids flaming sword, fighters and shields, companion writing later on).

 

[Roguey]

Some of the classic auto-pause settings got new sub-options. E.g. "Enemy Spotted" now has a sub-option to halt the party when the pause is triggered.

Yesssssssssss.

The area where you get [the All-American in New Vegas] was some of the least fun I've ever had with a videogame in my life.

[YCS equivalent of ]

c/d that it was chris avellone's fav part of new vegas?

idk if it was his favorite but i liked it because it was one of the few areas that created a persistent sense of dread and disorientation

also because it had a sierra army depot-esque pile of weaponry at the bottom of it

What a scrub. It can be a toothless area if you have high sneak, dozens of rad-x and radaway, and EMP grenades to handle the boss's turrets. As always it's great to see that Josh doesn't care about making some people miserable.

 

[Sensuki]

Never used auto-pause myself. Pointless lol. Manual all the way.

Still, I can see why people like it, requires less attention.

 

[Infinitron]

Never used auto-pause myself. Pointless lol. Manual all the way.

Still, I can see why people like it, requires less attention.

Autopause made more sense in the IE games where you you might "miss a round" and have to wait for six more crucial seconds if you didn't react quickly enough to events.

 

[Grunker]

Never used auto-pause myself. Pointless lol. Manual all the way.

Still, I can see why people like it, requires less attention.

Autopause made more sense in the IE games where you you might "miss a round" and have to wait for six more crucial seconds if you didn't react quickly enough to events.

That's not how IE rounds work, is it? IE seems to counts "rounds" for each individual character. If I attack a second later than my opponent, it doesn't delay my actual attacks by 5 seconds, it just means I'm acting behind my opponent.

 

[Lhynn]

That is actually what he means. I think Infinitron is wrong. The Rogue is simply an MMO-style/4th Edition style Rogue - they do the highest single-target, single-hit damage

It doesn't make sense from what we know about PE that the Rogue's standard auto attack does the "highest single-target single-hit damage".

Special abilities are a different story, of course.

I think from what youve been telling me that this is what they have in mind


light weapon/light armor class with lots of "distract" and "dont hit me" kind of skills, very high damage output that falls appart the moment the enemy is facing them, skill based and fun to play, probably at a slower pace on the game, but the basic idea.

 

[Infinitron]

That's not how IE rounds work, is it? IE seems to counts "rounds" for each individual character.

That's what I'm saying. If you fail to provide new input before the end of your character's round, you'll have to wait for the end of the next round before he processes your new orders. The only exception is movement.

 

[Sensuki]

I never found that an issue *shrug*. Then again I played on 40 FPS.

 

[Grunker]

That's not how IE rounds work, is it? IE seems to counts "rounds" for each individual character.

That's what I'm saying. If you fail to provide new input before the end of your character's round, you'll have to wait for the end of the next round before he processes your new orders. The only exception is movement.

That's not how it works. A spellcaster will begin the casting of a spell exactly when you tell her to, except if she is still affected by spell delay. A fighter will attack the second you ask him to as well, as long as he isn't in a round where he just did it. It doesn't start some sort of "round counter" when you attack and then you don't get to attack if you don't input commands before the next round starts. At least, that's the behaviour I recall. I could be wrong.

 

[Lhynn]

That's not how IE rounds work, is it? IE seems to counts "rounds" for each individual character.

That's what I'm saying. If you fail to provide new input before the end of your character's round, you'll have to wait for the end of the next round before he processes your new orders. The only exception is movement.

That's not how it works. A spellcaster will begin the casting of a spell exactly when you tell her to, except if she is still affected by spell delay. A fighter will attack the second you ask him to as well, as long as he isn't in a round where he just did it. It doesn't start some sort of "round counter" when you attack and then you don't get to attack if you don't input commands before the next round starts. At least, that's the behaviour I recall. I could be wrong.

Nope, you are right. initiative does count tho, it dictates when your first round starts as soon as you enter in battle mode.

 

[Infinitron]

A fighter will attack the second you ask him to as well, as long as he isn't in a round where he just did it.

Well, there you go. What if something new has happened and you want to switch targets?

 

[Grunker]

A fighter will attack the second you ask him to as well, as long as he isn't in a round where he just did it.

Well, there you go. What if something new has happened and you want to switch targets?

Firstly, I'm not arguing for or against pseudo-rounds (I don't see much difference, honestly), I just wanted to point out an error. Secondly, I'm pretty sure switching targets works. Say a warrior has two attacks in a round. You tell him to attack someone. Before he starts the second attack you switch targets. I believe he will attempt the second attack against the new target. Again, I'm not sure though.

 

[Infinitron]

Firstly, I'm not arguing for or against pseudo-rounds

Neither am I.

Say a warrior has two attacks in a round. You tell him to attack someone. Before he starts the second attack you switch targets. I believe he will attempt the second attack against the new target. Again, I'm not sure though.

Even if that's true, those two attacks happen relatively quickly one after the other so it's hard to get in a new command in between them.

Here's a good related post on GameFAQS: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/258273-baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn/48285779?page=1

As far as I can work out, when you order a character to attack, this happens:

1. Pause for speed factor
2. Attack as many times per round as possible, with a relatively short pause in between attacks
3. Pause until six seconds after part 1 started.
4. Repeat, starting from part 1.

BGII is not actually turn-based. Notice how the pause in step 3 creates a sort of virtual round? As far as I can tell, these 'rounds' are not synced for different characters, and they do not have to do with the global 'pause at the beginning of each round' option (except that both are 6 seconds round). I'm not sure how moving and casting spells work with this, but I think that doing either makes you start again from 1, but doesn't allow you to get more attacks per round by skipping 3. (Incidentally, it's a good idea to desync your characters manually when attacking mages if they all happen to be synced, but this rarely occurs in practice.)

This isn't very noticeable for most characters because the engine animates them as if they were attacking at a constant rate, ignoring step 3. However, archers' attacks are actually animated correctly, which is why they appear to fire several arrows in relatively fast succession, then pause, then fire more, etc. This makes archers seems somewhat clunky and slow, but they actually attack faster than meleers (short bows get an extra 1 attack per round), it's just that the engine lies about the delay in melee attacks.

So, who needs a high speed factor? If you want to be able to interrupt mages, it's handy. Essentially all a good speed factor does is transfer the delay from step 1 to step 3. This decreases the average and minimum delay when you see a mage trying to cast and click on him, but if you start attacking right during part 3, you'll get the same delay no matter what your speed factor because the game will see that you've already attacked the maximum number of times and force you to wait until the next round. You can see this very well with archers: try switching targets right after step 2 and they'll delay quite a bit, but do so after step 3 and you'll see little delay at all.

All I'm saying is, autopause can be helpful if you want to definitely avoid that long delay when something new happens.

 

[Delterius]

Personally I only used auto-pause at the start of combat.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Never used auto-pause myself. Pointless lol. Manual all the way.

Still, I can see why people like it, requires less attention.

Only used it on traps, them fools like to move over them a lot... (and I still couldn't memorizes trap locations :D)

 

[Grunker]

Personally I only used auto-pause at the start of combat.

Start of Combat
Trap Sighted
Weapon Unusable

Stuff like that, for me. I used it more to become aware of something (like a trap) than to trade for my own space-presses.

 

[Delterius]

Trap Sighted

Oh God, I forgot how much I hated traps in the IE engine.

 

[tuluse]

I had like every auto-pause option on. Just wait for the game to pause -> do something awesome.

 

[Hormalakh]

I've asked Sawyer about the damage spike/burst confusion on formspring. let's see if he answers.

 

[Sensuki]

It's not confusing, but okay.

Sawyer very active today.

Our flails are one-handed handle + ball and chain weapons. Our morning stars are two-handed long-shafted weapons with a fixed, spiked head.

Here are some topics for discussion, Codex - benefit for using 1H weapons?

Would there be any reason to use a single one-handed weapon without a shield?

We're probably going to give you increased Accuracy if you fight with a single one-handed weapon sans shield.

I would also like to know if the ability to wield 1H weapons like a Longsword two handed will be in. Probably not but we'll see.

Couldn't you just give the classes other than monk an optional talent that gives them the monk's scaling fist damage, so you could still make a punchy wizard gimmick build or whatever, but you wouldn't have to deal with a new weapon class

That shield talk got me wondering; have you given any consideration to the historical development of shield sizes decreasing as body armor technology improves, i.e. some kind of mechanical limit in "defence stacking"? I remember in IWD2, i.e. 3rd edition D&D, better armor reduced the max AC bonus you could get from high Dex, but I've no idea if this also applied to shields and body armor in some form.

More generally do you try to stay within a certain historical period when it comes to weapon and armor design of the world, or is it more of the classical D&D mix and match fantasy?

Heavier armors do come with their own drawbacks (currently, attack/action speed). We're not being simulationist about armor/weapon statistics. Also, armor absorbs damage and that function is separate from the four defenses (Deflection, Fortitude, Reflexes, Psyche) which are the targets to hit.

The technology of the Dyrwood (and nearby Vailian Republics) is 16th century, with a few exceptions. Glanfathans are at Early Middle Ages tech but have no problem using the more advanced technology of their neighbors. Though really, our own history is really "mix and match". People continued using outclassed/old-fashioned weapons and armor long after new tech had been invented (though often, they got their asses kicked).

So if you're chasing someone who has Escape or similar... won't that lead to weird situations where you have to avoid attacking them? If you attack as soon as you're in range then they'll get away, so you have to use move command first to get as close as possible before clicking attack. In short, increased micromanagement.

Then again, is that level of micro a bad thing? I do remember doing a lot of fun path blocking to keep those snakemen off my casters in BG2.

Escape is an active-use ability, not something that's reflexively triggered by someone attacking. It also can only be used once per-encounter, so that limits how easily a rogue can shake a persistent attacker. The ideal use of Escape is against a fighter as long as the rogue has somewhere to go. A barbarian could (if he or she hasn't already used it) Wild Sprint to catch back up to the rogue, but that is a dangerous game to play for a barbarian. They have a lot of Stamina, but their Deflection is low and rogues crit easily. Barbarians also don't excel at single-target damage, so once the barbarian is on the rogue, math is often not in the barbarian's favor. Trying to Escape from a monk may be the most futile effort. Monks are inherently faster, their Deflection is average, they turn damage into Wounds to power active-use abilities, and many of those active-use abilities inflict status effects that target Fortitude or Psyche (rogues' worst defenses).

 

[Lhynn]

It's not confusing, but okay.

Its not that its confusing, its that we dont know if he knows that we think he got it wrong, ergo hes going to ask if he knows what he knows so that we confirm wether he knows or doesnt know.
you know?

 

[LundB]

Since Anthony Davis is now going back to Obsidian, should he retroactively be given the advertising plant tag for this thread?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Heavier armors do come with their own drawbacks (currently, attack/action speed). We're not being simulationist about armor/weapon statistics.

I love how upset Sawyer makes himself over making what I'm pretty sure is the most simulationist approach to armor in any major crpg to date. But as long as he can repeat to himself over and over again "DT and movement limitations have nothing to do with making sense, just fun, just fun, just fun" he'll be fine.