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

[Roguey]

Torment had one of the simplest chargens ever, you distribute points into six attributes and off you go. Not even a choice of gender or class.

 

[Sensuki]

Who's assuming that the character creation will be simple ?

Gender: Male / Female - largely cosmetic difference, because of (rofl, lmao haha <insert mockery here>) pretentious pro-feminism
Race: 6 choices ... or well, Godlike may actually be quite interesting if godlike can be any base race and then have a godlike type (nature, fire, water etc etc)
Ethnicity: 2-3 choices per race
Culture: not sure how many options but there'll be a few
Class: 11 choices
Abilities: at least 5, but probably 6+ different abilities
Skills: so far we know of Stealth, Mechanics and Survival, not sure how many overall, probably at least 8
Talents: pick 1 at level 1 I assume, fair few choices but probs not as many as the IWD2 feats
Abilities/Spells: Spellcasters will get to choose starting spells, some classes may even get an ability choice as well.
Cosmetics: more options than the IE games
Name: self-explanatory
Starting Items: None of the IE games allowed you to choose your starting items, but that largely didn't matter.

Overall I think that's pretty good chargen tbh

 

[Zed]

I thought there would be Backgrounds á la Arcanum..?

 

[Sensuki]

I've only heard of ethnicity and culture.

Ethnicity is like sub-race, culture is more like uhh backgrounds in NWN2 I guess. Not actually sure what mechanical differences they will have but they will be referenced in dialogue.

 

[Infinitron]

I've only heard of ethnicity and culture.

Ethnicity is like sub-race, culture is more like uhh backgrounds in NWN2 I guess. Not actually sure what mechanical differences they will have but they will be referenced in dialogue.

What's the source for a "culture" variable? I've only heard of race and ethnicity, with ethnicity having no effect on your stats (ie, it's not like sub-race).

 

[Sensuki]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63672-update-50-so-project-eternity/page-5#entry1324476

Ethnicity and culture are separate characteristics in the game. Individual meadow folk can be from the Vailian Republics just as coastal aumaua can be from Aedyr. The common-name descriptions of ethnicities don't restrict where they can be from. Literally every ethnicity in our race document has a bit-by-bit description of what physical characteristics they have, including facial features, skin tones, hair colors (and textures), eye colors (and shapes), etc. E.g., only savannah folk, pale elves, and boreal dwarves have epicanthic folds. Of those, only boreal dwarves have them consistently.

And from Update 50:

At the start of the game, the player can create and customize his or her character, choosing from six races and several ethnicities, eleven classes, and a number of cultural backgrounds.

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63672-update-50-so-project-eternity/page-5#entry1324476

Ethnicity and culture are separate characteristics in the game. Individual meadow folk can be from the Vailian Republics just as coastal aumaua can be from Aedyr. The common-name descriptions of ethnicities don't restrict where they can be from. Literally every ethnicity in our race document has a bit-by-bit description of what physical characteristics they have, including facial features, skin tones, hair colors (and textures), eye colors (and shapes), etc. E.g., only savannah folk, pale elves, and boreal dwarves have epicanthic folds. Of those, only boreal dwarves have them consistently.

Okay, but:

Meadow Folk (humans) are white (Aedyr/Dyrwood) people originally from the north, Ocean Folk are black (Vailians) seafaring equatorial people, and Savannah Folk are (essentially) mestizo. They also have native names for themselves (Meadow = Thyrtan, Vailians = Calbandra, Savannah = Natlan) like the other races/ethnicities (Wood Elves = Sceltrfolc, Pale Elves = Glamfellen), but the common names are what you see on your character sheet.

Race affects attributes, but ethnicity does not.

I'm not sure if culture will be a selectable thing for player characters.

 

[Sensuki]

edited my post with another quote from the FAQ Update 50. Zed wasn't wrong in that is is a background, but it's a cultural background and you can't be Dyrwoodan or Glanfathan.

 

[Sensuki]

Environment Art Intern thread in the Announcements Obsidian PE subforum has been deleted and so has the job listing on the jobs page. Now they just need to fill that full time spot!

 

[Infinitron]

Duraframe300 Roguey It's Josh Sawyer's birthday today. You both FAIL. Now, who's going to volunteer to make an embarrassing dedicated thread for it?

 

[AN4RCHID]

I use my mind more in a single game-day of Pikmin than I did in most ToEE battles. Pikmin isn't a particularly good looking game. In fact, it's very simple and cartoonish. Despite this, it was often very tricky and hard to figure out.

Man, I find Josh's obsession with Pikmin deeply troubling. I played the first two games; there's no trickiness to be found.

 

[imweasel]

I use my mind more in a single game-day of Pikmin than I did in most ToEE battles. Pikmin isn't a particularly good looking game. In fact, it's very simple and cartoonish. Despite this, it was often very tricky and hard to figure out.

Man, I find Josh's obsession with Pikmin deeply troubling. I played the first two games; there's no trickiness to be found.

The game can actually be tricky if you try to save the max. amount of Pikmin per level.

If he generally had problems with the game though, then yeah, that would actually be troubling.

 

[Duraframe300]

Duraframe300 Roguey It's Josh Sawyer's birthday today. You both FAIL. Now, who's going to volunteer to make an embarrassing dedicated thread for it?

Not obsessed with Sawyer. Sorry.



(Made 3 in various forums)

 

[Ninjerk]

I use my mind more in a single game-day of Pikmin than I did in most ToEE battles. Pikmin isn't a particularly good looking game. In fact, it's very simple and cartoonish. Despite this, it was often very tricky and hard to figure out.

Man, I find Josh's obsession with Pikmin deeply troubling. I played the first two games; there's no trickiness to be found.

Pikmin was probably one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I use my mind more in a single game-day of Pikmin than I did in most ToEE battles. Pikmin isn't a particularly good looking game. In fact, it's very simple and cartoonish. Despite this, it was often very tricky and hard to figure out.

Man, I find Josh's obsession with Pikmin deeply troubling. I played the first two games; there's no trickiness to be found.

Pikmin was probably one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had.

Yeah well, no offense but I would not donate to your Kickstarter.

 

[Ninjerk]

What the fuck are you even talking about?

 

[SophosTheWise]

Adam came to a thread in the official forums and answered some questions:

Ahoi Adam!

1.) Regarding clothing, armour and weapons: are you folks sometimes checking the Armour Plea thread? There are some great suggestions there in terms of historically inspired armour. Related to this: How renaissanc-y are the Vailian Republics going to be? What I've seen looks very 17th century-ish, especially some of the jackets and hats looked really musqueteery. Any chance for Landsknecht gear? You know, sliced clothing and all?

2.) As a backer with the Beta tier: Is the Beta you're going to release part of the original game or is it a Beta setting to just try out the different mechanics? I would prefer the latter to not get spoiled as far as story goes... (and I hate playing the starting section multiple times

)
3.) How are things going generally? Are you still optimistic (besides the "everything's going well stuff)? Or did you run in some unexpected problems?

Hail Sophos,

1.) We do check the armor thread. We don't have plans for Landsknecht sliced armor, but you can get the same effect with the colorful gear and plumed hats coming from the Valian Republics. Wield a greatsword and you should be good to go.
2.) The backer beta will not contain story spoilers. We are still discussing exactly what we want to do for it.
3.) Things are going really well. The game is playable, mostly feature complete, runs well, and the team is able to work productively. All of those items are key for being able to make a good game.

-Adam

___

How did your Fog of War implementation turn out ?

How is the UI coming along ?

the longer the Contract VFX Artist position is open, does that mean you will have to wait until someone is hired to get VFX for spells etc or will you pull staff from the project / other projects to fill in ?

What format are the game audio files going to be? Will you be using a form of compression or going for a higher-res format (such as uncompressed wav).

Did you end up doing dynamic hair as well as dynamic cloth ?

Hail Sensuki,


The Fog of War is alright. I'm still not happy with it, so more work is to be done on it. The UI is coming along - the inventory screen is almost to alpha. Josh, and Kaz have spent a long time debating on how the inventory should work, and I think we have something that is functional and easy to use. We still haven't hired a VFX person for the project, and we have been using other people to create VFX in the meantime. The audio will be compressed b/c of file sizes - I'm not sure of the compression. We have done tests for dynamic hair but it's not in the game yet. We will revisit it down the road if time permits.


-Adam

 

[Infinitron]

The backer beta will not contain story spoilers. We are still discussing exactly what we want to do for it.

Well that's interesting. An AoD style combat demo?

 

[tuluse]

Why would anyone use uncompressed wav when flac exists?

 

[Roguey]

mostly feature complete

Of course not even close to content complete.

 

[SophosTheWise]

The backer beta will not contain story spoilers. We are still discussing exactly what we want to do for it.

Well that's interesting. An AoD style combat demo?

Maybe also the first village from the vertical slice/prototype? (not sure anymore what village it exactly was). Maybe the classic necromancer-enslaves-town-quest where we could look into most mechanics and also get a flavour of everything.

 

[Roguey]

I hope they wouldn't be so stupid as to create beta-only content unless they're also going to release that as a demo for free when or just before the full game is out.

All this beta access is proving to be pretty worthless regardless. And Torment and D:OS offered alpha access too, that is going to be a laugh riot.

 

[Infinitron]

All this beta access is proving to be pretty worthless regardless.

Uh, what's your basis for this statement. No major Kickstarter has had its beta start yet, while Early Access/beta has already proven valuable for Age of Decadence, Might & Magic X and Blackguards.

 

[Roguey]

Those are games made by amateurs who desperately need course correction and not the king of RPG design.

 

[Infinitron]

Those are games made by amateurs who desperately need course correction and not the king of RPG design.

Your "king of RPG design" has already changed his decisions several times due to community feedback.


I think you're just continuing your argument from yesterday about how betas are bad because paying to do beta testing is a ripoff. But hey, I've known for a while now that women hate betas.