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

[Sensuki]

Uploading them now, will edit post when done.

http://www.upload.ee/files/4382734/VO.rar.html

 

[Seari]

Oh man, the spell casting voices are horrible. Maybe it'll sound better in-game?

 

[Infinitron]

An advantage of Obsidian's decision to split the beta off into a separate SKU is that we can see when and how many people people at Obsidian are playing the full game: https://steamdb.info/app/291650/graphs/

Looks like they had a big testing spree 18 days ago.

 

[Athelas]

Oh man, the spell casting voices are horrible. Maybe it'll sound better in-game?

I think they're gonna edit them to have a reverb/echo effect like in the IE games.

 

[Bester]

Memorability of voice - none.

Another aspect of the game ruined...

The spells sound like she was told "just make something up".

"Sinister" voiceset is okay.

 

[Hormalakh]

It is now my belief that engagement mechanics are the primary reason for what is making combat feel so terrible. It needs to die in a fire now. If there is a problem with the old ie combat, there is more than one solution. I hate this sort of rigid thinking that it's either AoOs or nothing. Enough time and energy has been wasted on a terrible mechanic.

 

[Shevek]

Lol, you demand they remove a system you disgree with (no other fixes possible!) AND you claim to have a disdain for rigid thinking. Nice.

 

[Hormalakh]

AoO is a bad solution to the problem that was discussed. Shevek, you don't even know why it was implemented in the first place. It's quite obvious you are out of your league here. Go play with your barbies and let the real gamers discuss. Shoo. Shoo.

Sensuki, it would be nice to make a few videos about how to easily break the engagement mechanic and cheese through it. Get enough people playing like that and josh will see the futility in his poorly implemented design. I'll try to put up a few more screenshots as well.

 

[Shevek]

Thats some strong reasoning right there.

 

[Infinitron]

Without even saying whether engagement is good or bad, I will say that I am pretty sure its critics will find other reasons why the combat is NOTHING LIKE Infinity Engine combat after it's gone. Narcissism of small differences, etc

 

[Sensuki]

Just ignore Shevek and Infinitron Hormalakh.

I was truly disheartened to see that Obsidian have not only completely missed the issues with Engagement in their internal playtest but that they think UI IS THE PROBLEM? LOL. But discussing Tactics about how to tackle this problem are better discussed via PM rather than on the public boards.

 

[J_C]

Oh man, the spell casting voices are horrible. Maybe it'll sound better in-game?

Obviously it is still missing the sound distortion and the reverbs, just like in the IE games.

Man this sucks, the female voice sets are shit, you can noticeably tell they're all done by the same chick (I think it's the twitter girl) and her normal voice bleeds into all of the sets depending on the bark, and whoever recorded it didn't fix her sibilant S's. Eugh.

Uploading them now, will edit post when done.

http://www.upload.ee/files/4382734/VO.rar.html

Isn't the reason to why it is recorded by one chick is that it is one NPC's sound, just in different moods?

 

[Sensuki]

Not sure man, but judging by the amount of companion dialogue, I wouldn't be too surprised if those are the only player voice sets. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Seari]

Thats some strong reasoning right there.

Well your reason for being for engagement is that you seem to think it has something to do with AI targeting. You don't get the fact that it doesn't, even when countless people already explained it to you. You're like a broken record.

 

[J_C]

Not sure man, but judging by the amount of companion dialogue, I wouldn't be too surprised if those are the only player voice sets. We'll see how it goes.

It is so similar, I can't imagine Obsidian messing this up this much.

 

[Abu Antar]

Engagement isn't the only problem with combat. damage is very unbalanced still. You can kill or be killed way too fast as it is now, especially on hard.

 

[Starwars]

Broken records, in the PoE beta?! Where?!

 

[Sensuki]

Engagement isn't the only problem with combat. damage is very unbalanced still. You can kill or be killed way too fast as it is now, especially on hard.

Yeah that is the issue with combat speed, it's definitely not global recovery time multiplier. The change to global recovery actually did nothing to the combat feel for me, in some instances attacking seems to be very fast - particularly dual wielding fast weapons like Stilettos, which is even faster than the last patch.

Monsters in the IE games didn't really do heaps of per-hit damage with normal attacks, and it had a much better pace. If those issues aren't fixed by release they can fairly easily be corrected by modding.

 

[Arkeus]

Thats some strong reasoning right there.

Well your reason for being for engagement is that you seem to think it has something to do with AI targeting. You don't get the fact that it doesn't, even when countless people already explained it to you. You're like a broken record.

Actually, his reasons seems to be that he /likes/ what Sensuki criticizes about the engagement system (that you can't move your units as you want, etc). That is, beside the obvious bugs about the systems that Sensuki showed.

Shevek and Sensuki seems to like utterly different parts of the IE combat, so yeah, neither can understand the other.

 

[tuluse]

Monsters in the IE games didn't really do heaps of per-hit damage with normal attacks, and it had a much better pace. If those issues aren't fixed by release they can fairly easily be corrected by modding.

This also missed a lot more but Josh thinks that makes it too random ^_^

 

[Infinitron]

If you want monsters to do less damage, you'll also have to ask Josh to bring back down the Health:Endurance ratio to compensate, because otherwise that big heap of health will make things too easy on the strategic level.

Regret asking for that now?

 

[Sensuki]

Having fun trolling Infinitron?

What's the difference between getting KO'd in one hit or getting KO'd in one hit ?

 

[Infinitron]

Who's trolling? It's a valid point.

I'm not nipsen, I'm not saying it's your fault that Josh increased the ratio. The decision was his. But you did ask for it back then, instead of just asking for enemy attacks to do less damage.

Game design, it's hard!

 

[Ninjerk]

Monsters in the IE games didn't really do heaps of per-hit damage with normal attacks, and it had a much better pace. If those issues aren't fixed by release they can fairly easily be corrected by modding.

This also missed a lot more but Josh thinks that makes it too random ^_^

Thanks Roguey

 

[Sensuki]

Who's trolling? It's a valid point.

I'm not nipsen, I'm not saying it's your fault that Josh increased the ratio. The decision was his. But you did ask for it back then, instead of just asking for enemy attacks to do less damage.

Game design, it's hard!

Increased Health and Stamina ratios have nothing to do with monster damage. Monster damage has not been increased to compensate for it (Josh has said he hasn't really done any creature tuning), these are just the values they've always been using, that have swung around a bit due to changes to attributes.

I don't think a bear is supposed to one shot any character that isn't a Fighter with a high CON, but Josh has made balancing difficult for himself with his system design choices.

Bears in the IE games did hit like a truck, but hitting you was sporadic due to the attack resolution system. Proper balancing would be to tune the damage down to accomodate for the more regular output so it still 'feels good', but I think this is something that's going to be completely overlooked.