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

[Starwars]

I find the various battles in the ruins of Stormwall Gorge to be pretty tough also.

 

[Sensuki]

Anything with multiple Crystal Eater Spiders is tough Petrify and casting that Freezing Pillar over and over again. If you don't hit it with several firearm shots, you'll lose the fight.

 

[Arkeus]

What battles do you want me to record?

As said, my understanding is that there are better battles in the temple and stormwall gorge. I don't know though as i don't have the Beta myself.

 

[Sensuki]

The Stormwall Gorge exterior has a bunch of Lions, and a pack of Feral Druids. Neither of those are that hard, although the Elder Lions pack a punch atm, about 50-70 damage per hit against 12 DT which is a bit of a joke. I have deliberately not gone here because I've been doing focused testing in the Dyrford Crossing and the Dyrford Village, however I went there for the first time the other day for the purposes of my codexian preview.

I'll do some of the Lle A Rhemen fights when they fix some more bugs.

 

[Metal Hurlant]

I'll do some of the Lle A Rhemen fights when they fix some more bugs.

I haven't found Lle A Rhemen buggy at all. There are 6 spectres to the room right of your starting location. I'd like to see you face up against the Spectres.

 

[Sensuki]

I asked Josh about numbers of enemies for other areas of the game

rope kid, are there gonna be encounters in this game where there's a lot more enemies than the party? Some of the BB encounters (on Hard) have like groups of 7 spiders of different types, and the Menpwgra/Forest Lurker encounter in the Dyrford Crossing got beefed up to have some Pwgras as well. Although the Icewind Dale games in particular had some nice encounters with 10+ enemies, some of those were really fun, such as the Drow encounter in the Dorn's Deep Tombs.

Yes, especially on Hard you should see a good number of enemies > party members. We already have those types of encounters in certain areas and I've been encouraging the designers to do that more often. I don't want the game to feel like it relies on endless hordes, but there's a different tactical challenge from dealing with 8-10 guys than 3-4.

btw about a year ago you mentioned there was an encounter in the vertical slice that could only be beaten by some of the members of the team. Is that encounter in the BB? I know that we don't have access to at least two of the VS areas though (such as the Valley of Hector).

The encounter with Korgrak used to be much more difficult, but honestly the game also used to be much more difficult to play overall.

Gonna assume that was because there was no recovery time and stuff and he could just whallop you over and over.

And just a lore bit

I think this came up at some point in the past, but hanging and decapitation (via sword or axe) are common when it's being handled by "the state". In rural parts of Dyrwood it's usually hanging or being beaten to death by a mob.

 

[Hormalakh]

All these lore bits sort of irritate me: why can't they be as meticulous when it comes to designing game mechanics?

After playing the game a bit and then watching players like Shevek who could care less that their party members get KO'd in a battle, it seems to me that the disincentives for having your party members stay alive is minimal. This is especially true if you were to have a party member with high hitpoints who would likely survive long enough to get back to camp for healing and resupply.

I would suggest having some sort of additional damage added to health if a party member gets knocked out. For example, as health is 4-6x the normal endurance currently, with each knockout, there would be a 5-10% additional damage done to total hitpoints/health. Something that makes KOs scary but not game-breaking. This way, a player who barely scrapes out of a battle is still in a better position than one who gets KO'd. It incentivizes repositioning during battle.

 

[vivec]

Or you know, go back to the roots of the IE games and remove this silly KO mechanic?

 

[Athelas]

Suffering a KO will mean the party members that are still standing will take more damage and possiibly get KO'ed. If that party member wasn't KO'ed, he would have contributed to the battle and it would've ended sooner, preventing damage and potential KO's.

Although healing stamina in battle (and having stamina regeneration like the Fighter) paradoxically makes it easier to perma-die, since having more stamina reserves means taking more corresponding health damage.

 

[Infinitron]

All these lore bits sort of irritate me: why can't they be as meticulous when it comes to designing game mechanics?

After playing the game a bit and then watching players like Shevek who could care less that their party members get KO'd in a battle, it seems to me that the disincentives for having your party members stay alive is minimal. This is especially true if you were to have a party member with high hitpoints who would likely survive long enough to get back to camp for healing and resupply.

I would suggest having some sort of additional damage added to health if a party member gets knocked out. For example, as health is 4-6x the normal endurance currently, with each knockout, there would be a 5-10% additional damage done to total hitpoints/health. Something that makes KOs scary but not game-breaking. This way, a player who barely scrapes out of a battle is still in a better position than one who gets KO'd. It incentivizes repositioning during battle.

Yeah, we talked about this before: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68...ntives-for-healing-and-scouting/#entry1504150
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68...-for-healing-and-scouting/page-8#entry1505810

 

[Shannow]

If that is so, it seems to me like the game encourages using micro in every fight, even if it might not be required.

I don't there's any real time combat game that doesn't do this.

In the context from which you pulled that quote: IE games don't.
I even explain how and why. But you just read what you want to and ignore the rest. You are also either incapable or unwilling not to think in absolutes.
Here's a small tip what somebody with moderate reading comprehension and common sense might have been able to take from my whole comment:
If that is so, it seems to me like PE encourages using heavy micro in and throughout every fight, even if it might not be required.

 

[Hormalakh]

Yeah, we talked about this before: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68...ntives-for-healing-and-scouting/#entry1504150
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68...-for-healing-and-scouting/page-8#entry1505810

Hmm didn't realize this was hashed out before.
Once again, the not-so-Gfted1 disagrees with this idea because it "limits" his ability to play the game the way he wants. What's new?

 

[Abu Antar]

Josh quotes incoming:

Hi gnoemli.

I just added the descriptions for the spiritshift forms this morning. You should see them in the next Backer Beta update.

We talked about doing Spell Sequencer type spells but it would have been too time-consuming for the initial release. I wouldn't rule it out for the expansion, though. We did set our personal buffs to be "Zero Recovery" and most of them to Instant cast, so you should be able to fire off several very quickly.

Although I do not believe it is currently in the Backer Beta, last week I increased global recovery times by 20% and added a recovery delay to all creature armor so they operate more at the pace of party members. Many creatures were also significantly reduced in overall speed. Most notably, spiders, beetles, and various spirits (shadows, shades, etc.) but other creatures as well.

I don't think there are many players in this thread who are new to this style of game, but there are many such players on our team. We did our play week last week and the new players picked up the mechanics pretty quickly. We definitely can do a better job of communicating what's happening through visual and audio language (and tutorializing mechanics overall), but the slower combat pace and Glossary helped a lot.

Casting times have been adjusted downward for all standard casts (from 3 seconds to 2 seconds). You should see this in the next Backer Beta update (I don't think it's in the version you have). I do think that the traditional caster classes (wizard, priest, druid) do need more casts per rest. I also certainly agree that we need to find a better balance between the number of per rest uses and the power of individual spells. Most spells take longer to cast and recover from than weapon-based attacks, and they're linked to a per rest resources, so they should have some kick to them.

A big issue we found in our play week is that wizards do not find enough grimoires with additional spells. This is supposed to be a big part of playing a wizard, so we're trying to address it now.

I do not think we need to move to a point based system for wizards and I don't think that wizards need to be able to do everything. What they do does need to be expansive IMO, with many potential good spells to choose from, and those spells should feel appropriately powerful for the limited per rest use the wizards get out of them (and the time they take to cast).

Hi, kloperius. We did early experiments with trees and grass and they were... okay. We believe it does really help areas feel more alive, we weren't happy with how they looked given the amount of time we put into them. It's something we would like to revisit for future projects, but we didn't have time to keep experimenting once we entered full area production.

There's a lot of stuff to go through in your post, but I did want to make a few comments:

* One of the problems with higher difficulty = more XP (and inversely, lower difficulty = less XP) is that the altered progression winds up shifting the actual difficulty. If harder difficulty gives more XP, you'll level faster, making things easier (even relative to the increased difficulty). If lower difficulty gives less XP, you'll level more slowly, making things more difficult. In a game like Diablo III, there's a large amount of relative scaling going on as you progress. We try to avoid doing any sort of dynamic scaling in PoE for a variety of reasons.

* We do currently give you a small amount of bonus XP for having parties under 6 characters. It's not enormous, but if you play solo or with a small party, you will level a bit faster (not as fast as in BG/IWD).

* As of the last Backer Beta update (I think?), the party gets small amounts of XP for entering a new area, for finding marked locations in an area, for disarming traps/picking locks, and for unlocking bestiary information (effectively a capped pool of combat XP for groups of monsters).

In the later IE games, the majority of XP the party received was through quests. We're still adjusting the relative values of quest vs. "everything else" XP, but we do still want it to feel like quests make up the majority of the XP, with smaller rewards for everything else.

 

[Sensuki]

New build most likely at the end of the day

QA ran through the build this morning. It was pretty good, but there was an odd problem with quitting out to the main screen. I asked programming to fix it and we just finished rebuilding. QA is going to do another few runs. If everything checks out I will toss up a new build before I head out for the night.

As for Linux and Mac... unfortunately no update. We have diverted almost all of our programming resources back to cleaning up the base game that is used on all platforms. The Linux problem is a bug with Unity that likely won't be fixed for a while, so we are going to have to rework how resources are handled on Linux. It is not a trivial task and will take a good amount of programming time to complete. For Mac, we are still investigating the problems we are seeing, but like I mentioned before the base game is a higher priority right now. I will let everyone know when that changes.

 

[Abu Antar]

There are more Josh qutoes but they can easily be found via the dev tracker. About the next beta update:

QA ran through the build this morning. It was pretty good, but there was an odd problem with quitting out to the main screen. I asked programming to fix it and we just finished rebuilding. QA is going to do another few runs. If everything checks out I will toss up a new build before I head out for the night.

As for Linux and Mac... unfortunately no update. We have diverted almost all of our programming resources back to cleaning up the base game that is used on all platforms. The Linux problem is a bug with Unity that likely won't be fixed for a while, so we are going to have to rework how resources are handled on Linux. It is not a trivial task and will take a good amount of programming time to complete. For Mac, we are still investigating the problems we are seeing, but like I mentioned before the base game is a higher priority right now. I will let everyone know when that changes.

BAdler spake thusly.

EDIT: Shut up Sensuki my internet was down.

 

[Sensuki]

Looks like tomorrow now, their fix for whatever problem they were trying to fix didn't work.

 

[Lord Andre]

No spell sequencers ? More like no anything that made BG2 combat fun to play.

If I can't move my invisible fire resistant wizard into the middle of a crowded room then instantly deploy 3 fireballs on myself while everything around dies in scorching agony then what's the point ?

What am I supposed to do ? move my totally generic dwarf warrior next to an enemy and hurr durr per encounter knock down attack him. Booooring. Buuu Sawyer, Buuuu, you're like a black hole from where no fun can escape.Buuuu!

Spoiler

 

[Sensuki]

No spell sequencers ? More like no anything that made BG2 combat fun to play.

Pretty much. If you're a big fan of BG2 combat you'll probs be a bit let down by PE combat.

 

[tuluse]

Josh has been pretty clear that PoE was going to be more like BG1 and IWD1 than 2.

 

[Sensuki]

I don't think it's like either of them really. It's more like NWN2.

 

[Infinitron]

FFS Sensuki, give it a rest.

Josh has been pretty clear that PoE was going to be more like BG1 and IWD1 than 2.

In the end, I suspect the most accurate description of PoE will probably be "BG1 meets IWD2". Well, and with Tormenty companions I guess.

 

[Sensuki]

Nope.

In the end, I suspect the most accurate description of PoE will probably be "BG1 meets IWD2". Well, and with Tormenty companions I guess.

Only if you're not talking about the combat.

 

[Frusciante]

Nope.

In the end, I suspect the most accurate description of PoE will probably be "BG1 meets IWD2". Well, and with Tormenty companions I guess.

Only if you're not talking about the combat.

You're becoming more obsessed with PoE and Sawyer then Roguey. Pretty scary.

 

[Sensuki]

Because I disagree with you (and others) on a few points?

I'm not doing anything I haven't already been doing.

 

[agris]

Because I disagree with you (and others) on a few points?

I'm not doing anything I haven't already been doing.

You're consistent and i appreciate what you're trying to accomplish with combat / ui feedback. To me, the best parts of the bg series and iwd1 was the combat and mage duels. Full scs2 + tactics and assorted difficulty and ai improving mods. I fully expected that since PoE was pitched as a spiritual succesor to those old IE games, that the combat and spell system would at minimum equal the unmodded complexity and depth of the stated inspiration.

So thanks for fighting to get them to reach our baseline minimum expectations.