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

[Athelas]

Zealous Charge works even while in stealth mode. I don't think that was intended, since it lets you sneak by before enemies can become suspicious.

Paladins seem like one of the better designed classes, actually. You have quite a bit of choice in how to build one: as a healer, buffer or offense.

They also fixed it so that stealth doesn't trigger NPC dialogue/cutscenes, apparently. I just stole the dragon egg without being noticed by the group guarding it.

The reactivity is amazing. I only tried two dialogues, but they had reactivity to my background (drifter) and my paladin order. One NPC commented on how my dialogue choice was in accordance with the beliefs of my paladin order.

 

[Infinitron]

Increased Health and Stamina ratios have nothing to do with monster damage.

Of course they do. A few builds back, you were very adamant about how the "adventuring days" were too short. What shortens your adventuring day? Lots of health loss. What causes health loss? Monster damage.

This isn't rocket science. Increasing the ratios was treating the symptom, not the cause.

 

[Athelas]

They could adjust the attack resolution system to make the miss ranger bigger. I think it's 0-5 now. It could be bumped up to 0-10 or 0-15 or maybe even 0-20.

 

[Seari]

Paladins seem like one of the better designed classes, actually. You have quite a bit of choice in how to build one: as a healer, buffer or offense.

I agree. Paladins are the one class reinvision that I really like.

They could adjust the attack resolution system to make the miss ranger bigger. I think it's 0-5 now. It could be bumped up to 0-10 or 0-15 or maybe even 0-20.

I was for this from the start, but apparently Sawyer doesn't like RNG or something.

 

[Sensuki]

Increased Health and Stamina ratios have nothing to do with monster damage.

Of course they do. A few builds back, you were very adamant about how the "adventuring days" were too short. What shortens your adventuring day? Lots of health loss. What causes health loss? Monster damage.

This isn't rocket science. Increasing the ratios was treating the symptom, not the cause.

You just ignored what I said. Monster damage has not been changed and the relative health pool for a KO is Endurance, not health.

I was for this from the start, but apparently Sawyer doesn't like RNG or something.

If he doesn't like RNG, then it's funny that the combat gameplay is more swingy than the IE games.

Attack Resolution is more swingy, damage values are more swingy and Interrupting is now RNG instead of absolute.

If I get a row of grazes on my opening attacks in an important encounter, I just reload the game.

 

[Infinitron]

You just ignored what I said. Monster damage has not been changed and the relative health pool for a KO is Endurance, not health.

How is that relevant?

All I'm saying is, you could have killed both birds with the same stone by asking for less monster damage from the beginning. That would reduce both KOs (=Endurance loss) and shorter adventurering days (=Health loss), both of which are caused by, wait for it, MONSTER DAMAGE. Instead, a possibly unnecessary alteration to the system was introduced - the increasing of the ratio.

You shouldn't even be offended by this, you didn't do a worse job than the game's own designer.

 

[Sensuki]

They are two separate problems man, you're acting as if my or our advocating for change produces unintended side-effects.

Back when we were asking for a longer adventuring day (early v278), it was because Health was down to basically nothing after a few fights - that was a noticeable problem, more noticeable than Monster damage. Combat was a mess and it was kinda hard to tell what was going on. There were lots of problems with animation bugs, speed, movement speed, buggy abilities, DoTs etc - you name it.

You will notice this passage from the Attribute paper we did which was produced during late v278 ...

We are aware that not all of the backers share this opinion, but we believe that most of the backers that
are claiming that combat is too fast are doing so because of the lethality of combat in Pillars of Eternity
compared to the Infinity Engine games, combined with a number of other factors. Below are some of
the factors we think are contributing to the feeling of combat being too fast other than the speed of unit
actions:
 High per-hit damage of enemies combined with normalized attack resolutions
 Underpowered Backer Beta characters (due to lack of gear)
 The movement speed of all units in combat is too fast
 Lack of visual, audio and UI feedback in combat
 Player unfamiliarity with the game’s systems
 Higher level of micromanagement required due to more active and modal abilities for all classes
We believe these factors are working in concert to cause many of the backers (myself included – Matt)
to feel stressed and not in control when in combat, causing a feeling that the game speed is too fast.
While this may be partially true, we do not think it is purely related to the speed of unit actions, as we
have observed some of the backers saying that the speed is too fast while also stating that the recovery times are too long

See, I did notice it back then. Josh however did not respond to the claims at all until my PM to him recently

 

[Starwars]

Zealous Charge works even while in stealth mode. I don't think that was intended, since it lets you sneak by before enemies can become suspicious.

Paladins seem like one of the better designed classes, actually. You have quite a bit of choice in how to build one: as a healer, buffer or offense.

They also fixed it so that stealth doesn't trigger NPC dialogue/cutscenes, apparently. I just stole the dragon egg without being noticed by the group guarding it.

The reactivity is amazing. I only tried two dialogues, but they had reactivity to my background (drifter) and my paladin order. One NPC commented on how my dialogue choice was in accordance with the beliefs of my paladin order.

I wonder if some of this was added in the patch, or if I just missed it before. I got some (minor, but still) reactivity to my Merchant background as well. Nice about the Paladin order check though.

 

[Sensuki]

It's possible that some of it is new, as they were doing a Karma Police thing recently.

Paladins are well designed in Pillars of Eternity. It's fairly obvious that some classes have had more time and thought spent on them than others - Paladins are definitely one of them, and this is made even more obvious by the special talents Josh made for them.

 

[Athelas]

Sensuki, I thought you were gonna start a big anti-engagement campaign on the Obsidian forums. Is it still coming?

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah I am going to give it a shot. I was considering not bothering but after they've announced they're going to waste development resources on trying to improve it via UI, I cannot stay silent.

 

[Athelas]

You should also touch on the fact that the engagement system currently works against the A.I., since enemies suffer a disengagement attack for switching their targets.

 

[Sensuki]

I will, yep. They added target some reacquisition in this patch.

 

[Maculo]

While I could live with engagement, I do not think it is a good solution. I thought the point of engagement was to prevent kiting, but can't one still technically kite in PoE? Engagement seems to stop casual/new players, who were not the problem, but does not stop players with knowledge of the system.

 

[Sensuki]

I am currently abusing the shit out of it to get free attacks against enemies. Thanks Josh.

 

[Hormalakh]

my biggest gripe is that it is bug-laden, works against the problem posed, and is just wasting dev time.

think of more elegant results obsidian!

 

[tuluse]

While I could live with engagement, I do not think it is a good solution. I thought the point of engagement was to prevent kiting, but can't one still technically kite in PoE? Engagement seems to stop casual/new players, who were not the problem, but does not stop players with knowledge of the system.

It was also to solve the problem of melee dudes being unable to do anything about people running right by them on the way to squishy mages.

 

[Athelas]

While I could live with engagement, I do not think it is a good solution. I thought the point of engagement was to prevent kiting, but can't one still technically kite in PoE? Engagement seems to stop casual/new players, who were not the problem, but does not stop players with knowledge of the system.

It was also to solve the problem of melee dudes being unable to do anything about people running right by them on the way to squishy mages.

They can use Knockdown.

 

[Sensuki]

You can always stop enemies reaching your backline in the IE games, there are multiple ways of doing it. Regardless, for the QQers in PE, a targeting clause for first melee enemy attacked by would 'snag' people running past.

 

[Maculo]

While I could live with engagement, I do not think it is a good solution. I thought the point of engagement was to prevent kiting, but can't one still technically kite in PoE? Engagement seems to stop casual/new players, who were not the problem, but does not stop players with knowledge of the system.

It was also to solve the problem of melee dudes being unable to do anything about people running right by them on the way to squishy mages.

Does the current engagement have the runners switch targets? If so, I would think with slow enemies you could have two melee characters just trade off on certain targets. I realize that it would not work in every fight, but the engagement system still is not above abuse. If not, then it still does not stop runners from getting through.

I do not think engagement would ruin my experience, but it hard to get excited about this mechanic.

 

[Sensuki]

Does the current engagement have the runners switch targets? If so, I would think with slow enemies you could have two melee characters just trade off on certain targets..

Already a step ahead of you

 

[Maculo]

I cannot believe that I forgot about that video. If you make the anti-engagement post, I would definitely (re)post it.

 

[Sensuki]

Oh I'll be making better ones where I gib multiple characters from it.

 

[Arkeus]

Oh I'll be making better ones where I gib multiple characters from it.

Wait, this isn't a bug? This is what's "intended" for engagement?

 

[Sensuki]

I wouldn't say intended, but it's not a bug. It's an exploit. It follows the rules of engagement - moving after being engaged.