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

[tuluse]

If all your characters lose their stamina, you lose the game (on harder difficulties), so they are.

 

[Lhynn]

Amazing, i agree with everything hiver just said, even down to the way he said it.

PS: i got nothing against a good romance tho, just because bioware turned them to shit does not mean that its a bad part of an RPG, its just a bad part of most.

 

[uaciaut]

Or you might prefer playing competitive starcraft instead, I hear they measure skill by clicks per minute.

Actions per minute actually, it's a rough measure of how well they can multitask while having to adapt their play to the enemy's. But it's well beyond your reach of understanding if you think an rpg with a pause feature needs to have more shit to auto-resolve situations for you.

edit: why's my avatar gone? D:

 

[Sensuki]

Dunno how you can ban that. Shame on Brother None

 

[hiver]

I just dont think that inane complaints deserve anything else but sarcastic half crazy answers - at best.

First of all, if you managed to overcome the enemy group in such a way that finishing the rest is easy - then that is your immediate reward for being good in combat. You go and mop up with glee.
then you loot everything.

Secondly - where in the hell does it say that remaining enemies are going to just stand there and what... cry while inflecting "oh woe is me, ACH!". wtf?

Or where does it say that those remaining are completely powerless?

Can they not retreat? Regroup? Run to other group of enemies and bolster their numbers? Or kind of warn them youre coming so they can make an ambush or whatever.
Doesnt environment play a part? Can they not still take out someone in your party, inflict damage?

Oh no, they are just going to stand there .

I mean this is a stupidity of taking only one single section of combat as "interesting" and then wailing like a spoiled brat that every single moment isnt like the one you prefer.
Thats just stupid spoiled behavior. - edit - that is based on intentionally seeing all possible combat encounter designs in single BAD ever repeating form. (like y`know... ones made by biobore and bethpizda)

 

[imweasel]

Hiver, mighty inebriated hero of the codex, has spoken.





BTW, the thread now has over one million hits.
I suppose this calls for a celebration, right Roguey?

 

[Sensuki]

 

[MMXI]

Interesting how controversial the whole "impossible to create a bad character" thing is. I mean, if you're smart, you're not going to ever create a bad character anyway, right? So what do you care if it's not in fact possible to create one? Even if it was possible, you'd never do it.

It's funny - I recently spoke to the sadly absent MMXI, one of the most hardcore posters on the Codex, a guy who's been playing CRPGs since the early 80s, about Sawyer's RPG design philosophy. I told him "Sawyer doesn't believe correct character building should be a challenge in a class-based RPG. He thinks there shouldn't be any dump stats. He also doesn't believe save-or-die spells belong in a game with saving and loading. Etc.". I expected him to react with rage.

His response? "Uh, all of those things are improvements. LOL D&D players."

I know this was posted ages ago, but I thought I'd respond in more detail.

The issue with dump stats is that if only a handful of stats are meaningful for a given character then there is far less choice when character building than there could be. It's like in AD&D where pumping strength, dexterity and constitution for fighters is the "necessary" thing to do. All fighters become basically the same, with little actual choice. You run into the situation where real choice is only a small subset of perceived choice. This is generally bad in all games.

Furthermore, I think the challenge in an RPG should be in playing a character as closely to what their statistics dictate. If you try to play sneaky with a large brutish moron then you should fail miserably. If you succeed then the game presents no challenge, as you can effectively play any character in any way you want. It should be about your skill in playing characters according to their strengths and weaknesses. This should be the "game" in "role playing game". If you can't work out how to effectively use spells while playing a spell caster, you should be sucking.

And "correct" character building should be very important, with "correct" meaning to match up with the way you'll end up playing your character. "Wrong" character building is creating a character in a way that you don't intend to play him.

 

[Infinitron]

And "correct" character building should be very important, with "correct" meaning to match up with the way you'll end up playing your character. "Wrong" character building is creating a character in a way that you don't intend to play him.

Sure enough, but if there are no dump stats, then you can always make up for your character building mistake by changing your gameplay style. So in a larger sense, there are no incorrect builds - just dumb/stubborn players.

And welcome back, again.

 

[hiver]

But changing the gameplay style does not mean you would automatically "win" with that build.

After all the challenge in the game should come from encounter design, from smartly designed quests, not from game having dump, useless or just plain bad stats.
And yes, Sawyer was right from the start. The only real question is will the execution of these ideals be good enough.

 

[MMXI]

And "correct" character building should be very important, with "correct" meaning to match up with the way you'll end up playing your character. "Wrong" character building is creating a character in a way that you don't intend to play him.

Sure enough, but if there are no dump stats, then you can always make up for your character building mistake by changing your gameplay style. So in a larger sense, there are no incorrect builds - just dumb/stubborn players.

And welcome back, again.

Well, you're looking at it in a different way to me. I usually decide how I want each character to play before I create them. I then create them as best I can to suit how I intend to play them. In that sense, having to change my play style just because I've fucked up my statistics means I've made my characters wrong. It's like how if you find out that one of your characters is a little too fragile late on in a game, you might have to compensate by forcing them to run around in the middle of each battle to avoid getting hit. You may not have intended this for that character, which would mean you've made a character building mistake by neglecting something like constitution or dexterity.

However, it's worth noting that it probably shouldn't be as easy to play with all possible characters. A high intelligence, low strength fighter may be weirdly viable through some fancy game mechanics, but discovering and consistently using the "right" method to play may be far more of a challenge than playing a standard high strength fighter. You'll probably have to know the mechanics inside out to play highly unorthodox characters, and you may need prior knowledge of the game and its encounters to make the right decisions. The upper bounds on character ability should be pretty similar though, so that playing "perfectly" with all possible characters should be a rather even experience.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, you're looking at it in a different way to me. I usually decide how I want each character to play before I create them. I then create them as best I can to suit how I intend to play them. In that sense, having to change my play style just because I've fucked up my statistics means I've made my characters wrong. It's like how if you find out that one of your characters is a little too fragile late on in a game, you might have to compensate by forcing them to run around in the middle of each battle to avoid getting hit. You may not have intended this for that character, which would mean you've made a character building mistake by neglecting something like constitution or dexterity.

Sure, you can look at it that way. But it's also nice if rather than having to either do "run around in the middle of the battle" kiting bullshit or restart the game, you can instead figure out an alternate playstyle appropriate for your build that's actually satisfying/fun to play.

 

[MMXI]

Well, you're looking at it in a different way to me. I usually decide how I want each character to play before I create them. I then create them as best I can to suit how I intend to play them. In that sense, having to change my play style just because I've fucked up my statistics means I've made my characters wrong. It's like how if you find out that one of your characters is a little too fragile late on in a game, you might have to compensate by forcing them to run around in the middle of each battle to avoid getting hit. You may not have intended this for that character, which would mean you've made a character building mistake by neglecting something like constitution or dexterity.

Sure, you can look at it that way. But it's also nice if rather than having to either do "run around in the middle of the battle" kiting bullshit or restart the game, you can instead figure out an alternate playstyle appropriate for your build that's actually satisfying/fun to play.

Oh of course. That's definitely an option. In that case it's up to you whether you think you've "failed", and even then there's a challenge in having to adapt your play style.

 

[Duraframe300]

So, what are your predictions for todays update?

Fulfillment?

 

[Ninjerk]

Something boring.

 

[Sensuki]

Production 02

 

[Blaine]

Something boring.

 

[SophosTheWise]

So, what are your predictions for todays update?

Fulfillment?

I hope so, but I doubt it. Updates were not really meaty, except from the cipher. Fulfillment will still take a while.
My best guess: another portrait of some programmer.

 

[Zed]

lol you guys are such pessimists.

we will get a full gameplay video demo of the dragon egg scenario, dragon egg: origins, narrated by Sawyer, Cain and Avellone.
it features a small town, 4-5 medium-big encounters, a choose-your-own-adventure screen, a few critical dialogues, a couple of non-critical dialogues, a shopkeeper, and... dragons!

 

[Duraframe300]

So, what are your predictions for todays update?

Fulfillment?

I hope so, but I doubt it. Updates were not really meaty, except from the cipher. Fulfillment will still take a while.
My best guess: another portrait of some programmer.

Production 01 was meatier than cipher IIRC. There also have been meatier updates in the past. Do you just mean recently?

 

[SophosTheWise]

So, what are your predictions for todays update?

Fulfillment?

I hope so, but I doubt it. Updates were not really meaty, except from the cipher. Fulfillment will still take a while.
My best guess: another portrait of some programmer.

Production 01 was meatier than cipher IIRC. There also have been meatier updates in the past. Do you just mean recently?

You are correct. Production 1 was meaty, also some of the art updates.
Also, yes, I meant recently.

 

[Grunker]

lol you guys are such pessimists.

*Sceptics

 

[Duraframe300]

Btw. A new section on the obsidian site went up (support) and the link for the wiki was corrected on the eternity page.

Main reason why I think it's possible Fullfilment today. Might be nothing though.

 

[SophosTheWise]

Okay, that was unexpected. Would actually save my day after writing a bad linguistics exam at Uni while having a fever.

For some reason I believe the fulfillmemt site to be the next big milestone in development. Stuff's becoming real.

 

[Sensuki]

Well it's more than just a fulfillment site it's a project eternity site, so it would have like race and class info and probably location history too.