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

[Jedi Exile]

Just saw a pig murder an entire party in project eternity. brutal stuff, people

I played ToEE the other day and a hen in Hommlet murdered my entire party. True story.

 

[Duraframe300]

I'm going to tune the higher levels of difficulty to be like the hardest IWD2/BG2 fights all the time. Standard difficulty will be less difficult, but still challenging.

It was actually a demo for some team members who were less familiar with IE games and needed some pointers on how to play.

An animator had set up the pig with the melee weapons from a much more powerful creature and... welp.

 

[Sensuki]

Changing the level of difficulty generally means changing what creatures (and how many) are present in encounters. Outside of Path of the Damned, we don't have any plans to scale health, level, accuracy, defenses, etc.

is level scaling ok in PotD???

 

[Duraframe300]

Changing the level of difficulty generally means changing what creatures (and how many) are present in encounters. Outside of Path of the Damned, we don't have any plans to scale health, level, accuracy, defenses, etc.

Edit: Ninja'd

By 2-3 minutes.

 

[Duraframe300]

AI won't change based on level of difficulty.

 

[Excidium]

Understandable.

 

[Roguey]

I hope Josh is aware that tuning the entire game to play like chapter one of Icewind Dale 2 might make it not-fun. Think Loudness Wars.

is level scaling ok in PotD???

It's a spiritual successor to Heart of Fury, so yes.

I'm never gonna touch it so I don't care.

Editzzzzzzzzzzzz: YCS-Josh tyme (this is how he spells it).

rope kid I will record the phrase "I'll do it... for a price" and you can play it whenever the player chooses that dialogue

i may have banned all versions of that phrase from our dialogue.

soz.

No Bioware-style "selfish anti-hero" options here.

if you turn down rewards you'll earn a reputation for being benevolent and some ppl will like it and other ppl try to take advantage of it

Sounds delightful.

Here's something from way back in July that I didn't feel like posting but might as well

pushing back release dates is good. also, kickstarter doesn't allow projects to adjust the listed release date during the campaign, so if a project winds up getting a ton of additional money for stretch goals, they can't adjust the listed date even if they thought it was a good idea (it isn't).

Considering https://twitter.com/Obsidian/status/376099799386161152 it should be pretty clear they don't plan to make this full-scale RPG within 18 months.

 

[PlanHex]

rope kid I will record the phrase "I'll do it... for a price" and you can play it whenever the player chooses that dialogue

i may have banned all versions of that phrase from our dialogue.

soz.

Just another sign that Josh didn't really like the old IE games!!!
I WISH I HAD NEVER BACKED!!!

 

[Jaesun]

Project Eternity: DEATH BY PIGS <3

 

[Rake]

The final boss of the mega dungeon was leaked...

Spoiler

 

[Sensuki]

Brofist farm #236363

Right, that's what I'm interested in. Does difficulty affect THA LEWTS or not?

It depends on the creatures. On average, you will probably get a small increase in loot, but it's possible to get less in certain circumstances. Level of difficulty both activates and deactivates creatures, effectively replacing weaker enemies with more powerful ones. Sometimes the total number of creatures remains the same (rarely, goes down) while the challenge goes up. E.g. if there's a fight that involves wurms (baby dragons) on the sidelines, the fight could go from having 3 wurms to 5 wurms to replacing all of those wurms with a single drake (adolescent dragon).

edit:

Wonder if this is related to P:E stuff; ie. my reposting of his twitter on SA to ask a question.

 

[Infinitron]

Emily Reigel Wilson is Lowtax's (SA administrator) ex-fiancee. I believe she dumped his ass.

 

[Ninjerk]

Is RPGCodex the tabloid of video game fan sites?

 

[Surf Solar]

Is RPGCodex the tabloid of video game fan sites?

Only Roguey and Infinitron make it look so.

 

[Infinitron]

Is RPGCodex the tabloid of video game fan sites?

Well, the event I referred to happened around a decade ago so it's hardly gossip.

 

[Sensuki]

Emily Reigel Wilson is Lowtax's (SA administrator) ex-fiancee. I believe she dumped his ass.

That's booked.

Oh and I get it now, Sawyer can see the message but I can't. I thought he was replying to the protected status

 

[deuxhero]

People have bandwidth limits in 2013?

In ex-british colonies. Canadians IIRC have 50GB, and some USA ISPs caps at 250GB.

I've never heard of caps for home internet where I am, though that's likely because I don't live in the middle of nowhere.

 

[janjetina]

Emily Reigel Wilson is Lowtax's (SA administrator) ex-fiancee. I believe she dumped his ass.

More game related information and less SA faggotry, please.

 

[Roguey]

Josh has thoughts about Diablo's writing.

lol who cares re: diablo story

either no one, in which case they shouldn't put any resources into it, or a lot of people, which means it's important enough to do well

anyway it seems like the majority of people playing these games don't care that almost every storyline is about corruption -- specifically, corruption that just overwhelms and transforms by force, not through any subtle process or progressive sequence of personal moral compromises

It seemed like corruption re: Lazarus and Leoric and such, wasn't the same as WoW corruption, it was more like getting drunk, yeah it turns them into an asshole but that asshole was always there waiting to come out anyway so its not like you have to forgive or sympathize with them.

true, but that's also essentially an (original) diablo storyline, isn't it?

arthas also has a more traditional descent into corruption, but it seems like a lot of blizz storylines in recent memory just involve corruption through force.

Time for Boyarsky to go back to the bottle in shame.

 

[Duraframe300]

Time for Boyarsky to go back to the bottle in shame.

Considering how many talented/semi-talented writers and designers work at Blizzard aside from Boyarsky I'm still sure this is the work of the destructive force known as Chris Metzen.

Blizzard (and Activision in general) is a black hole for creativity.

 

[Zed]

big head mode
https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/379781306244018176

ever since i saw @pardontomfrench play tony hawk in big head mode, it has been my dream to see it in a game i worked on. that day has come.

@bonzibuddy64 @pardontomfrench maybe you'll need to assemble of pile of big heads to unlock it

huhuhu big heads so funny %D

 

[Ninjerk]

Goldeneye

 

[Rivmusique]

DK Mode

 

[Sensuki]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64386-features-concerns-so-far/page-4

Maybe my mind will be blown but most of the mechanics as described so far sound like a soup sandwich to me.
1) No healing. C'mon man.
2) No resurrection. I guess this is a non factor since we cant die unless there is a TPW, which means reload anyway.
3) No fast travel.
4) Walking everywhere to go heal / rest / regain abilities. See above for good times.
5) No kill xp.
6) All classes can be all things.

1. Not correct. There are a variety of ways to heal Stamina. Recovering Health requires rest.
2. Correct, but characters can certainly die if you enable character death or Expert Mode (which flips it on automatically). If character death isn't enabled, characters who hit 0 Health are maimed (massive penalties to accuracy and defenses, drop if they take any Health damage at all) until they rest, which is a pretty bad condition to be in.
3. Given how our world map works and how we're designing our maps, lack of fast travel doesn't seem to be an issue.
6. Not correct at all.

Well, if you're five levels deep and we haven't provided you with a new rest location, we're terrible level designers -- in which case resting is probably a minor concern in the grand scheme of things.

That said, the same issue exists in A/D&D and most A/D&D-based CRPGS. While I'm sure there's some exception that exists somewhere, in every edition of A/D&D, your ability to replenish HP is always bound by consumable (daily/per-rest) character abilities and consumable items. Prior to 3E, the character ability resources were extremely limited. Only clerics and druids had any worthwhile healing and they had to prepare slots specifically for that purpose. 3E/3.5/Pathfinder made it much less onerous for clerics and 4E made it easier for everyone, but outside of combat, 4E parties still have to rely on consumable Surges to maintain combat viability. Even healing potions in 4E still use Surges and it doesn't seem to be an issue, IME.

So yes, Health is a strategic tether like other per-rest resources but it really is like other per-rest resources. IMO, spacing/pacing is the biggest concern and I think games like Knights of the Chalice have shown that it can be done well.

It's not particularly hard to make a wide range of class concepts viable if you don't include build options that will make a terrible character. I've posted a lot about how the classes work (or don't work) and can be built (or can't be built). Rather than hunt around and guess at what leads people to believe that "all classes can be all things", I'd like to hear what the basis for that claim is.

The trend for PE seems to be to take an existing mechanic and add a disincentive to use it, because degenerative blah blah. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the end result of camping to include: a) not heal you all the way to 100%, b) only allow you to rest on some predetermined interval or c) constantly bombarding you with random encounters every time you try to rest.

None of the above.

 

[Sensuki]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64329-potraits/page-5#entry1371325

We want to support custom portraits and make it very easy for players to drop in whatever they want. We're still playing around with portrait sizes but right now they're around 660x850 on the character/inventory screen and get downsampled for use on other parts of the GUI.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64377-thoughts-on-roles-classes-and-diversity/page-2#entry1371258

Tactical party-based combat is one of the three stated pillars of PE which is one of the reasons we're using them.

I think classes can be easier for players to "get" than a sea of potential skills/abilities/etc. With a lot of classless systems (especially really rules-intensive ones like GURPS), you may have to hunt around to figure out if you can build a certain character concept. Classes present you with rough character archetypes up front so it's easier to just drop in for newer players (IMO).

When I play, I prefer to use classless systems. However, in my experience with classless systems, I've still found that if tactical combat is "a thing" of the game, it needs to receive a lot of design attention so players can make use of it. GURPS pays a lot of attention to combat mechanics and leans more heavily on simulationism (albeit, sometimes in odd ways) so building a combat monster is not too difficult. However, a lot of the tactics for those combat monsters wind up looking pretty similar, so it doesn't necessarily encourage particularly diverse gameplay (again, IME, and GURPS is very large). In a game like Vampire, tactical combat really isn't "a thing" so having light rules doesn't matter that often IME.

The three pillars are environment exploration, interactive story/dialogue, and tactical combat.

No, I don't mean that you cannot make a good tactical combat game with a skill-based system. As I wrote, if you have a classless system and you want a tactical focus, you really have to give a lot of attention to the combat mechanics/skills. JA2 clearly had a heavy focus on it and it worked very well. Of course, JA2's combat also had a pretty narrow focus. That's not a bad thing, but it's something to consider when things like magic, melee, and ranged combat are present.