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

[Roguey]

- extra work is sometimes good for you.

This is up there with "automapping" and "journals with automatic notes" when it comes to convenience. Remove the routine.

 

[Surf Solar]

Yes, make it like Diablo 3 where the only thing you need to compare other items is the damage per second stat. So much more convenient!

 

[SCO]

Fallout has broken your mind surf solar

 

[Roguey]

Yes, make it like Diablo 3 where the only thing you need to compare other items is the damage per second stat. So much more convenient!

How hyperbolic.

Back to Windows Explorer: you don't need to enter separate windows only viewable one at a time to compare the properties of two files.

 

[hiver]

It is convenient. And i wouldnt mind such a function especially. But i wonder is it really needed. And is that particular road - the road of EASY, the best direction to take generally. In all things.

also, remove one "routine" and... what, replace it with another, even bigger one?

hasnt Wall-e taught you anything?

 

[SCO]

Well, i can tell you a place where the scheme is a bit clumsy. If you have a item that can be equipped in more than one slot - like rings traditionally - you 'have' to show the differences on the equipped items on all slots it can be equipped (if not empty anyway). That also complicates 'click equipping' needing some sort of cycling pattern to be usable.

 

[hiver]

Fine. Fine. I guess it can be more or less needed thing to have, depending on other specifics of inventory design.
Im not really arguing against it anyway.

can we get back to bashing the fucking lists now?


-edit-

 

[tuluse]

He is probably better off being on edge because he'll be less disappointed upon release.

I think we have a good chance of reaching 900 pages before Something Awful reaches 500 - they're on 498.

So what do we win?

 

[Ninjerk]

4 pages of arguments about grids vs. lists in one day.

Also, Diablo PSX port had grid.

 

[Sensuki]

He is probably better off being on edge because he'll be less disappointed upon release.

I think we have a good chance of reaching 900 pages before Something Awful reaches 500 - they're on 498.

So what do we win?

Custom idiot titles

 

[Lancehead]

And that's because SkyUI does well in terms of presentation but is still not a good example because it's built on a fundamentally flawed core that wasn't designed to be used with a mouse.

That's true, but I manage most of the UI with keyboard and SkyUI is pretty painless and a breeze that way. (In fact, my extensive use of keyboard does tilt significantly my opinions on lists.)

For example, selecting item categories at the top of the inventory can be tedious with mouse, though that's more to do with mouse rendering, but I use A and D, and W and S for navigating columns.

The problem with lists is that they make the items BE a bunch of statistics. While that's what they are arguably, using a grid inventory with unique art for each item and unique art for the item in-game means that there is some much bigger investment for the play regarding that item.

List showing all the stats is 'neat', but after a while it makes getting new weapons/armor just painfully boring. The syndrome of "I get +1 attack and they get +1 defense, and nothing ever changes".

Spoiler

You don't even need to click on the item, either hover over with mouse or navigate to using W and S. I don't know if seeing the in-game model of the item makes play more involving to me, but that's your argument, so for you to decide. What I will say is that in-game art is not exclusively the domain of grids.

What parts of SkyUI would be removed in your perfect system? Because the reason SkyUI sucks is small text, poor aesthetics and no way to easily distinguish things at a glance (i.e. no icons).

I couldn't disagree more with the highlighted. I've never had a single problem with readability and that is down to a few things working together:

Sufficient blank space between rows and columns.
Text and background colours.
Easily distinguishable icons.
Multitude of ways to sort.
It'd also help in certain cases to have a mod rename item names, such as Requiem does with potion names.

As for the aesthetics, well, I'll just say that I haven't yet been bored by looking at SkyUI.

 

[SCO]

Actually the 'non-popup' subscreen viewer for stats has the advantage that it fixed in place, so you more or less don't have to move your eyes while checking stats. However, that gives it a few restraints to the number of stats it can display without scrollbars (and that in turn, may lead to 'limitations on purpose' to the number of unique/innovative abilities/stats for items).

 

[Lancehead]

Actually the 'non-popup' subscreen viewer for stats has the advantage that it fixed in place, so you more or less don't have to move your eyes while checking stats. However, that gives it a few restraints to the number of stats it can display without scrollbars (and that in turn, may lead to 'limitations on purpose' to the number of unique/innovative abilities/stats for items).

I think that's more down to the sub-optimal use of screen space, which would've been a flaw with SkyUI in a party-based game.

As an aside, one of the more useful sorting functions I find in SkyUI is when you click on 'Name', it cycles through criteria 'Name', 'Equipped', 'Enchanted' and 'Stolen'. (You can use the little circle to the left to reverse the sorting) This was useful to me when selling stolen items to a fence.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Sensuki]

We already knew that.

Probably baby duck syndrome. He probably played LoL first or that's what his friends play. I've noticed that people who play LoL first instead of DotA prefer it because it's easier and a less hostile environment, it also has a more zynga-based design to hook people in.

That still doesn't excuse it though, scum of the earth.

 

[Night Goat]

That still doesn't excuse it though, scum of the earth.

Yeah, God forbid someone play one stupid fucking MOBA over another stupid fucking MOBA.

 

[AMG]

Yeah, God forbid someone play one stupid fucking MOBA over another stupid fucking MOBA.

 

[Grunker]

I've noticed that people who play LoL first instead of DotA prefer it because it's easier and a less hostile environment

Hah, you wish. People play it because it has an extremely strong focus on aggression in the laning face unlike other, more boring, MOBAs.

(or, you know, people play the MOBA that their friends play because that's pretty much the only important aspect of one)

 

[Grunker]

Grunker, if good itemization means lots of non-linear differences in the form of special bonuses/penalties, then I'd think lists would be even more of an advantage. Imagine 10 different weapons in your inventory like Celestial Fury, which "Stuns opponents unless it make a save vs. spells. 5% chance 20 electrical damage is inflicted. Blindness and Lightning Strike may be used once per day." That's three special bonuses; try memorizing that 10 times over. I'd prefer "special effect 1", "special effect 2", etc. columns over clicking each weapon seperately and forgetting the properties half way through.

right clicking so painful

 

[Sensuki]

(or, you know, people play the MOBA that their friends play because that's pretty much the only important aspect of one)

I believe I said that.

We already knew that.

Probably baby duck syndrome. He probably played LoL first or that's what his friends play.

unlike other, more boring, MOBAs.

 

[uaciaut]

I dislike that dota2 has a slower early pace and towers to shit for damage, otherwise it's better than LoL in many aspects. Still play LoL because i picked it up first (since dota2 was and still is in beta), even though i played the original dota before.

Also relevant (though riot also uses the blizzard method so they're probably the worst at it - and i can't stress enough how SHIT Riot is at balancing)

 

[Duraframe300]

What's the status now?

"We've tried to always stick to what we talked about in our Kickstarter pitch," Project Director Josh Sawyer told WIRED via phone. "We're making a game that's essentially about exploring a big beautiful world with a lot of tactical combat and a cool story with cool companions in it. Every so often we have some crazy idea for something neat that we could add, but we know that there's so much to do already that we don't really need to throw more difficulty on it for us."

Much like Double Fine Adventure, Obsidian's initial expectation was to make a modestly-sized Infinity Engine-style game with a very small cast of characters, classes and not a whole lot of extra features.

"But with the Kickstarter," Sawyer said, "the fans basically said 'please give us these extra doodads, we want them.' So we're making a game that is much larger in scope both in terms of size and also the variety of characters you can make and interact with."

The team, which shifts around in size but currently consists of around 20 people, is now deep into production developing the core game. But while everything is going relatively smoothly, Sawyer is reluctant to discuss a release schedule.

"We're really trying to really focus on making this game the size that our fans expect it to be, as deep of an RPG system as they really expect it to be, and as polished as they really need it to be," Sawyer said. "We've had games come out that have not been very polished, and we don't like that reputation. We've been improving it over time, so with something where the release is entirely under our control, we're going to make sure that is absolutely as good as it can be."

 

[Infinitron]

Duraframe300 Post sources dammit

 

[Cyberarmy]

This thread is nuts as usual. Tablets, lists and now MOBAs just in a week.
What is next? Cooldowns again?

We really need a juicy,long update from you Obsidy! (that sounded wrong...)

 

[Duraframe300]

Duraframe300 Post sources dammit

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/10/gaming-kickstarters/#slideid-81481