Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[XenomorphII]

So how long before this hits steam early access?

 

[Hormalakh]

urghhhh. i can't find any willpower to play the beta that i currently own. the combat is just so utterly boring. what do i do with this ennui?

 

[Nikaido]

Mechanics and systems aside, the game is just far too much pause and not enough real-time. It feels like a turn based game would run laps around this in terms of pacing and action.

It feels like? Even JRPG like Fire Emblem can be made to run super fast. In fact as a turn based game it feels faster than a lot of real time / rtwp stuff with the right configuration options.

Oh, yeah, config options. Something that even the incline D:OS forgot about. It's sad when JRPG offer you more control over things like combat animations / disabling them altogether, speed of movement of the AI during turns etc.

 

[serch]

Is anyone else getting an around 200 Deflection from the cowled dwarf near the bridge? Fucking terminator won't take a graze even after all his companions are dead.

 

[Invictus]

The whole MOBA inspired combat with cooldown abilities seems will be my biggest issue here with the combat; unless they get some really good AI for the party members (which can handle their abilities smartly without much handholding pausing) or some rather well developed AI packages like the gambit system of Final Fantasy 12 or even Dragón Age.
Otherwise we are not only looking at clusterfuck combat but endless pause and order gameplay which would be ultra boring and without xp from combat that would incentives just avoiding combat althogher...and maybe the game itself for good measure

 

[garren]

Has there been any complaints about the spell list UI? There was only a few things NWN2 did right and one of them was that you could view all your spells from one icon-based list, and not click every spell level separately to see what spells were contained within.

 

[mutonizer]

Senzuki already went through some UI issues before, but yea, man, spells/abilities "feel" completely out of place to me and very unpractical to use and that's forcing a LOT of pausing because I need to really pay attention to where I click to find that spell I want and not mis-click or something.
Keeps taking my eyes from the action onto that little corner of my screen I never use, very weird really.

 

[tuluse]

Is anyone else getting an around 200 Deflection from the cowled dwarf near the bridge? Fucking terminator won't take a graze even after all his companions are dead.

I had a bug like that yeah. I cast some spell and it seemed to reset it.

 

[tuluse]

The whole MOBA inspired combat with cooldown abilities seems will be my biggest issue here with the combat; unless they get some really good AI for the party members (which can handle their abilities smartly without much handholding pausing) or some rather well developed AI packages like the gambit system of Final Fantasy 12 or even Dragón Age.
Otherwise we are not only looking at clusterfuck combat but endless pause and order gameplay which would be ultra boring and without xp from combat that would incentives just avoiding combat althogher...and maybe the game itself for good measure

??????

There are no cooldowns.

 

[Volourn]

Yes, there is. Every ability has cooldowns. Don't be fooled on the fact they aren't called cooldowns.

 

[Sensuki]

We have nothing to go on to judge any meaningful story elements. No follower interactions, no villains, no central plot characters. That stuff could be bland á la IWD2 for all we know. It was a very big part of what made BG2 good, and could play an equally big part here.
BG2 had (relatively) fun and rewarding combat tho. As it stands, combat will just be in the way of making Pillars an enjoyable game.

Well I've read shit in the game files, so ...

tuluse - yes there are. There's cooldowns between actions - the recovery timer.

 

[tuluse]

Well I've read shit in the game files, so ...

tuluse - yes there are. There's cooldowns between actions - the recovery timer.

I've made my views on this clear before.

A ability does not have cooldowns where you can use other abilities while waiting for it to recharge.

It does not have "mmo" style cooldowns.

 

[Lhynn]

Well I've read shit in the game files, so ...

tuluse - yes there are. There's cooldowns between actions - the recovery timer.

I've made my views on this clear before.

A ability does not have cooldowns where you can use other abilities while waiting for it to recharge.

It does not have "mmo" style cooldowns.

Thats retarded tul, a cooldown is exactly that, there are things like shared cooldowns and universal cooldowns, but a cooldown is still a cooldown.

 

[tuluse]

Thats retarded tul, a cooldown is exactly that, there are things like shared cooldowns and universal cooldowns, but a cooldown is still a cooldown.

No.

A cooldown is bad when you're only not using an ability because you're waiting for it's cooldown. This is the opposite of an interesting choice. It's the best choice but you can't use it because it's cooling down. Instead you use lesser choices.

When an attack takes time, and you can't use any abilities, that's not bad.

 

[Zetor]

Do you mean a global cooldown [GCD]? IE games had that too, it was just fixed at 6 seconds (if you weren't using improved alacrity, that is).

 

[Mangoose]

Change title to "Fun Eternally Ended" please. Thanks!

 

[Sensuki]

No.

This argument again. A cooldown is a cooldown, doesn't matter whether it's good or not. The cooldowns used in PE are similar to how the IE games attacks worked, however.

 

[dukeofwhales]

I don't see how it's a cooldown at all. You can't do anything else in that time because taking that action takes time - swinging a sword takes X seconds or casting a spell takes Y seconds and you can't do anything until those seconds are over. There's no cooldown involved.

Are you considering it to be a "cooldown" because the animation has finished and you can't immediately move onto the next action? Because that's just aesthetics, not mechanics.

But yes, we did this all before (several times) in the old thread.

 

[Sensuki]

There is a cooldown because it is a cooldown on all non-movement actions. A cooldown by nature is something that makes you wait to use it again.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, the time spent executing an ability during which you can't use other abilities (or the same ability) isn't "a cooldown," and I'm not sure why anyone would consider such a delay to be a cooldown. It's an issue of logical or fundamental timing.

Sensuki: Are you saying you should be able to cast the same spell as quickly as you can click a button, or what? That's completely stupid, in my opinion.

You know what would help to put these sorts of issues to rest?

That's right, turn-based combat.

 

[Sensuki]

It is a coolodwn, you're ignoring the fundamentals of what a cooldown is and instead only taking into account their application in some styles of games.

The difference seems to be that it's not a cooldown that you think is bad (and I don't either).

 

[Lhynn]

No.

This argument again. A cooldown is a cooldown, doesn't matter whether it's good or not. The cooldowns used in PE are similar to how the IE games attacks worked, however.

not even close. There is a difference between each player having his turn to act and a cooldown that says "thou shall not use this ability till i say so". I dont give a fuck if people think the word is negative or problematic. We are not going to change things names because it happens to hurt someones sensibilities. "MMO cooldowns" is not a thing, because mmos in general feaute them in many different ways. Call them global cooldowns if it affects everything. Shared cooldowns if it affects only some related abilities, or simply cooldowns if the skill enters a recovery period. BG worked with rounds, which is a completely different concept which may share some superficial similarities but makes combat handle in a different way, much more structured, clear and manageable than this mess. (posting this from an 8 year old cellphone so give me a break)

 

[Sensuki]

This is not turn-based, jesus christ people.

I am only talking about the definition of what a cooldown is - you just admitted they can be global or per-action. Yes, they can.

 

[Blaine]

If any game action that takes time to complete during which you can't perform other actions (or the same action again) is now a "cooldown," then the term has been diluted into uselessness, far too broad to be meaningful.

The proper definition of cooldown as I understand it is when your character completes an action and then there's a countdown timer of some length before you can use that action (or linked actions; cooldowns may affect entire groups, or resource pools) again.

If it now means any situation in which you're unable to turbospam twenty actions per second as though you're playing an alpha build of a shmup, then it's just a useless buzzword.

 

[Bubbles]

Change title to "Fun Eternally Ended" please. Thanks!

How about "Pillows of Eternity - Zzzzz Release Thread"?