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

[Infinitron]

It's a nerf for low procs (<25%) and a boost for high ones (>25%).

Please explain to me how it means that we don't get BOTH? I mean, this is a specific example with a elemental resistence. It was kinda obvious to me that the Proc would BOTH have a fixed percentage of proc and of DT.

Before the change, a sword that did +N% fire damage would face N% of the target armor's DT.

Now it faces a fixed 25%. That means that if, for example, N=75, that fire damage is going to absolutely rape the enemy.

 

[S2ensuki]

I wouldn't expect a proc to go above 25% very much.

15% would be an average value I assume

Actually yes I would, because of how it works.

But then again, you could add various procs to a weapon through crafting

 

[S2ensuki]

You can call it Ectopsychic Echo and write lots of fluff about soul/mind control or what have you but if it functions like chain lighting then all you have at the end of the day is just some boring nuker.
JE Sawyer can you honestly say that these classes aren't going to be made boring to play for the sake of balance? (in a single player game no less)

It doesn't function like chain lightning.
Yeah, I can honestly say that the classes aren't going to be made boring to play for the sake of balance.
Their Focus mechanic wasn't ARPG-inspired at all. It was inspired by the common A/D&D power point resource that a lot of psionics-oriented classes have and the melee flavor of the soulknife class.

too much melee flavor
Cant we have a version of Cipher which is more 'Psion/Wilder' oriented ? is it possible ?

No. We have three "full" caster classes that can avoid melee entirely if you choose to do so (wizard, priest, druid). I'm sorry that you don't like the style of the cipher, but I designed the class to be distinctly different from the other casters in terms of managing their power resource. And again: ciphers do not have to enter melee to use Soul Whip.

Okay, I'll try to keep the faith. I suppose nothing will be clear until gameplay footage is released.

Well, to be honest, the first footage we show is likely to be more whiz-bang than subtle, Fireballs and so on rather than Minor Grimoire Imprint or Arcane Reflection.
But yeah, we are implementing more oddball spells. The oddball spells take longer to implement and have about a 50% viability rate. Some of them just wind up being bad spells (not effective or confusing/impractical to use) and have to be revised or thrown out.

Another quick question: as I understand, Soul Whip's supposed to be a modal ability, not an always-on, passive sort of thing. Is there an upside to turning it off?

The main upside to turning off Soul Whip is that you do full (normal) damage. When Soul Whip is active, your weapon-based damage is reduced.

 

[Infinitron]

Hell yeah, bring on the whining.

 

[S2ensuki]

That seems like a bit of streamlining there: Won't really matter if you dual wield, 1H or 2H .

 

[tuluse]

Curious that he chose to make Druids and Clerics melee optional, when most people probably think of them as being more combat/melee oriented than other caster classes, while he makes Ciphers more melee oriented. That seems the opposite of what most people would expect.

 

[S2ensuki]

I think people's main concern maybe is that in D&D the druid and cleric are sort of in between a fighter and mage. Both are competent in melee and not overly potent as spell casters.

I disagree. Druids and clerics are both really powerful spellcasters in 3.X. That they have melee capability on top of that is icing on the cake.

I would say that our (PE) priests have shifted away from the original concept of them being melee/caster hybrids. They are closer-range casters than wizards, but they aren't particularly strong in melee (paladins take on the role of close-combat support). Their spells are designed to be on par with wizards' in overall power, but they have a different flavor and trend differently. E.g., wizards have some nice personal buffs but virtually no area buffs. Priests have a few personal buffs, but have a lot of huge AoE buffs.

When druids are in their spirit forms, they can be powerful melee opponents, but that is a limited-use ability. They're still primarily casters.

I think in previous games it has been an item-centric problem. 2E/BG clerics etc are Melee focused only because of their weapon limitations. You have Maces, Morningstars, Flails or Clubs ... or the Sling.

Slings are shit (though there's a couple good ones). TBH you'd be better off stacking Dex and using a Longbow IMO; Druids included.

In 3E you generally roll with your Deity's favored weapon.

 

[Infinitron]

Curious that he chose to make Druids and Clerics melee optional, when most people probably think of them as being more combat/melee oriented than other caster classes, while he makes Ciphers more melee oriented. That seems the opposite of what most people would expect.

Yeah, most people remember them from 2E CRPGs where their magic wasn't as OP.

 

[S2ensuki]

is there a particular reason Melee damage is decreased when Soul Whip is active?

Because the cipher is focusing more on damaging/draining the target's mind/soul than actually causing physical harm.

 

[Lhynn]

Curious that he chose to make Druids and Clerics melee optional, when most people probably think of them as being more combat/melee oriented than other caster classes, while he makes Ciphers more melee oriented. That seems the opposite of what most people would expect.

Yeah, most people remember them from 2E CRPGs where their magic wasn't as OP.

In 3E they could still own any fighter in a melee without too much problem (even without their magic). That system was retarded and i understand why he wants to move away from it so badly.

 

[Dreaad]

There's a non aggressive insect race in a couple of 4x strategy games, Galactic Civilizations 2 for one.

 

[Roguey]

Yay floating numbers.

wizards have some nice personal buffs but virtually no area buffs. Priests have a few personal buffs, but have a lot of huge AoE buffs.

He should discuss how he's addressing the pre-buffing problem.

 

[S2ensuki]

Spears are one-handed. Pikes are two-handed. You can use a spear with a shield, but not a pike with a shield. You can use a battle axe with a shield, but not a pollaxe with a shield.

 

[S2ensuki]

Yay floating numbers.

Thank fuck they can be disabled. I like floating criticals in Titan Quest, but nooo fucking way not in an IE game.

 

[Duraframe300]

Technically, we don't have rifles, only smoothbore arquebuses, blunderbusses, and pistols. They are all relatively inaccurate, but the blunderbuss has more opportunities to miss hit. The advantage of the pistol is that it has a much faster reload than the arquebus or blunderbuss. Bows reload pretty darn quickly followed by crossbows, then arbalests, then pistols. The arquebus and blunderbuss both take the same amount of time to reload. They're slow, but not "realistically" slow. Much like F:NV's single-action reloads, the firearm reloads follow all of the required steps but are performed with extraordinary confidence and dexterity.

All two-handed weapon types do more damage than one-handed weapon types. Individual types each have their own specific advantage. Estocs negate a fixed amount of DT, pikes have increased reach, etc.

Currently, it's displayed in the tooltip. An enemy's tooltip starts out with defense and DT numbers filled in with grey ???. As you attack the target's defenses, they get filled in with the real values. Additionally, we're planning to allow the bestiary entries to temp-fill those values. So if you've defeated a certain number of ogres, you basically know what the Platonic form of ogre has for defenses. When you encounter an ogre, those grey ???s will be replaced with grey "Platonic form" values. An individual ogre's defenses may vary from that base, but that's what you'll start with until you attack those defenses.

If any of your characters are currently selected and have attacks prepped, their relative Accuracy stats with those attacks will be displayed next to the target's corresponding defenses. If an Accuracy is lower than a comparable defense, it is displayed in red. If higher, it's displayed in blue. If multiple attackers are attacking the same defense, their Accuracy is displayed as an average and notated accordingly.

Finally, most/all of these display options can be disabled or are automatically disabled in Expert mode.

E: If you hover on any entry in the combat log, you get a "verbose" dump of all of the elements that contribute to the formula.

 

[S2ensuki]

SA people going wild over the tooltips lol. BG1 style all the way please.

 

[abnaxus]

Why is Sawyer posting on SA and not here?

 

[Cosmo]

Why is Sawyer posting on SA and not here?

Because he doesn't care for drama and shitstorms ?

 

[Roguey]

Yay floating numbers.

Thank fuck they can be disabled. I like floating criticals in Titan Quest, but nooo fucking way not in an IE game.

Floating numbers should be an option in all games with HP. Transparency ftw.

SA people going wild over the tooltips lol. BG1 style all the way please.

And with good reason too, see above.

I'm glad Josh listened to me.

 

[coffeetable]

Why is Sawyer posting on SA and not here?

he's posting on sa cause the dude's had an account there for 12 years.

he's not posting here either because he refuses to stoop so low, or because no obsidian dev has posted on the codex since bethesda blacklisted it.

 

[Xeon]

His loss

 

[Duraframe300]

His loss

He does lurk though.

 

[S2ensuki]

Floating numbers should be an option in all games with HP. Transparency ftw.

Actually no they shouldn't. In a single-player only game where you are taking retards into consideration - sure, by all means, as long as they can be turned off.

In other genres though, particularly the ones that include multiplayer, a player's understanding of the game mechanics is part of the skill gap between players.

For example: The more seasoned/better Warcraft 3 player would know the math behind whether their Knight with Level 2 Armor and Level 1 Weapons will beat a Tauren with Level 2 weapons and Level 0 armor. The details are obfuscated from the screen but by remembering the average amount that is taken off each units HP per hit the player will know.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't understand. I don't see anything about an enemy's exact total and current HP being visible. Josh mentioned defenses, not HP.

 

[Lhynn]

Not sure floating numbers would fit on a RTwP rpg where you have a party and it can quickly turn into a clusterfuck, but on real time its good. Tooltips sound awesome.

coffeetable can i get a link to where beth blacklisted us?