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

[Seari]

That thread gave me cancer. Thanks a lot.

 

[Athelas]

Now read the 1000+ pages PoE mega-thread.

 

[Sensuki]

I would like to push an update tomorrow if everything goes looks ok in QA today.

Obsidian actually doing a 2 week update.

 

[Athelas]

Going by past history, it'll probably be delayed to next week.

 

[Sensuki]

I wonder if it will change skills back to point buy. Either way it should include the Dexterity, action cancel and engagement fixes, as well as tooltip updates for class defenses.

 

[Hormalakh]

hopefully some UI fixes too - I want to see the new inventory UI and solid ui. When are we going to get a chance to see those? combat log ui fixes, etc etc.

item drop should be fixed too so WYSIWYG loot, hopefully.

 

[Sensuki]

Well, the weapon set bug will be fixed, dunno about hand placed loot yet though.

 

[Sensuki]

Gairnulf on the OE forums posted this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69663-poe-guidebook-available-for-preorder/

Guidebook download March 26th apparently.

 

[Hormalakh]

Yeah, it's not going to happen this week folks. We keep running into a recurring save/load issue, which means the current build won't be productive for Backer testing. I apologize for getting your hopes up - I'll be working on getting it resolved, and hopefully early next week we can look at putting a new build up.

they've been having recurring save/load issues from the beginning of the beta. I wonder what it is exactly that keeps happening - maybe having to clear all the variables or store them one by one and missing them.

I don't know the code, so I can't say.

 

[Athelas]

Going by past history, it'll probably be delayed to next week.

Naturally, I was right. It happens every single time that they announce that a new build will be released the next day and then some unexpected bug creeps in and they have to delay it for a week - almost to the point of hilarity.

 

[J_C]

Yeah, it's not going to happen this week folks. We keep running into a recurring save/load issue, which means the current build won't be productive for Backer testing. I apologize for getting your hopes up - I'll be working on getting it resolved, and hopefully early next week we can look at putting a new build up.

they've been having recurring save/load issues from the beginning of the beta. I wonder what it is exactly that keeps happening - maybe having to clear all the variables or store them one by one and missing them.

I don't know the code, so I can't say.

But how is this possible? Games like the IE games saved EVERY piece of item and character throughout the maps, and they functioned perfectly. And it was almost 2 decades ago. It's like the art of programming complex RPGs was lost after the great cataclysm of decline.

 

[Infinitron]

But how is this possible? Games like the IE games saved EVERY piece of item and character throughout the maps, and they functioned perfectly. And it was almost 2 decades ago. It's like the art of programming complex RPGs was lost after the great cataclysm of decline.

Psst, you played those games only AFTER they were released.

I promise you that Bioware had their share of save load issues during BG1's 3 years plus development.

 

[J_C]

I don't believe you.

 

[Infinitron]

melnorme asked: How often during the development of Pillars of Eternity have you been surprised to discover that your backers played the Infinity Engine games in a way that you weren't familiar with and hadn't anticipated, and thus hadn't designed PoE to support very well? For example, players who do stuff like NOT hoarding potions and NOT resting after every battle, etc, which in PoE means they expect more health and longer times between rests than other players.

Not very often. I’ve seen a lot of people play the IE games, both the ones I’ve worked on and the ones I didn’t work on. Player tendencies run a wide gamut from conservative play to loose and reckless.

I think there is a tendency for people to dismiss the way other people play as being severe aberrations among a tiny minority of players. I personally use consumables frequently and rest infrequently in these games. My design decisions were not oriented around how I play, nor were they even oriented around how other people say they play, but what I watched people doing — not all players, not all the time, but a good chunk of players a lot of the time, both then and now.

Anyway, the rest rate for PoE was primarily limited early on by total Health values on front-line characters. In the BB, it’s usually been BB Fighter. Those values were easy to tune. During our play week, people did not have a problem with the frequency of resting.

enverxis asked: In your last post on here you said "I think all classes should start with one ability that has per-encounter uses". I think some classes are fine with two passives and the choice between two actives at the start - for instance I would move Carnage on the Barb to a default ability and rather be forced to choose between Frenzy and Barbaric Yell - because I'd prefer to use yell over Frenzy, but not over Carnage.

I think I discussed this with you on one of the forums, but that’s the way it works now. Carnage is the default barbarian ability and you pick between Frenzy and Barbaric Yell at 1st, with both being 1/Encounter use. All classes have a 1/Encounter of some sort.

Barbarian: Barbaric Yell or Frenzy
Chanter: Phrases/Invocations (can be used in every encounter)
Cipher: Powers (Focus resets and can be built in any encounter)
Druid: Spiritshift (now 1/Encounter)
Fighter: Knockdown or Vigorous Defense
Monk: Swift Strikes or Torment’s Reach (both are Wound-based)
Paladin: Flames of Devotion or Lay on Hands (now both 1/Encounter)
Priest: Holy Radiance
Ranger: Wounding Shot or Marked Prey
Rogue: Crippling Strike or Blinding Strike (Crippling Strike is 2/Encounter)
Wizard: Arcane Assault (new ability)

Even if you build the rest of the character entirely with passives, modals, or per rest actives, you’ll always have something active per encounter to use.

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah that was an old question before they released the new patch.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Yeah, it's not going to happen this week folks. We keep running into a recurring save/load issue, which means the current build won't be productive for Backer testing. I apologize for getting your hopes up - I'll be working on getting it resolved, and hopefully early next week we can look at putting a new build up.

they've been having recurring save/load issues from the beginning of the beta. I wonder what it is exactly that keeps happening - maybe having to clear all the variables or store them one by one and missing them.

I don't know the code, so I can't say.

But how is this possible? Games like the IE games saved EVERY piece of item and character throughout the maps, and they functioned perfectly. And it was almost 2 decades ago. It's like the art of programming complex RPGs was lost after the great cataclysm of decline.

One person changes what things are saved.

A completely different person is responsible for the save/load mechanism, but those two guys don't talk.

Then a week later the QA is given a build and they find out something doesn't work right. And then they start looking for the source of the bug, which may be difficult, considering that a week has passed by now.

I don't know what is the proper way to work on big projects, but at Obsidian one guy codes something and never checks himself even for a few minutes how his changes affect the rest of the game, at least that's the impression I get.

I guess it's effective, cause QA guys are paid less, so it's logical that it should be up to them to test things, but maybe the testing should occur as soon as the changes are committed, so they can deal immediately with any bugs. Or not? They probably know better than some random dudes from the internet how to set up an effective pipeline, after all.

 

[Duraframe300]

Seems like Jonathan Burke is now on bug squishing duty on Eternity as well Infinitron Sensuki

Cool dude.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Holding out on us, eh, root?

 

[Infinitron]

Holding out on us, eh, root?

My mistake, it just means he pre-ordered it

 

[Vault Dweller]

Wait, you mean he didn't support it on KS?

 

[Hormalakh]

But how is this possible? Games like the IE games saved EVERY piece of item and character throughout the maps, and they functioned perfectly. And it was almost 2 decades ago. It's like the art of programming complex RPGs was lost after the great cataclysm of decline.

One person changes what things are saved.

A completely different person is responsible for the save/load mechanism, but those two guys don't talk.

Then a week later the QA is given a build and they find out something doesn't work right. And then they start looking for the source of the bug, which may be difficult, considering that a week has passed by now.

I don't know what is the proper way to work on big projects, but at Obsidian one guy codes something and never checks himself even for a few minutes how his changes affect the rest of the game, at least that's the impression I get.

I guess it's effective, cause QA guys are paid less, so it's logical that it should be up to them to test things, but maybe the testing should occur as soon as the changes are committed, so they can deal immediately with any bugs. Or not? They probably know better than some random dudes from the internet how to set up an effective pipeline, after all.

Yeah I mentioned something like that on the Obsidian forums to Adam Brennecke - "systemic problem needing a systemic solution."

Not really knowing the inner-workings of Obsidian, I'd have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Their team isn't super small, nor is it super-big and they have only a handful of programmers. So it's prime conditions for shit to go wrong and people not to be able to talk to each other without a systemic approach to programming - maybe?

With all the bugs they have to fix as well as the changes they are asked to make with each beta version (new features, etc), it might be a bit too much for them to do quickly enough. So things might be just done quickly and QA is probably following some sort of routine things to check with each new version.

I've seen Brennecke on Obsidian forums mention a few times that he's stayed late at work undoubtedly either writing code or waiting for it to finish compiling so that QA can have something to do the next day. So it isn't due to laziness or anything.

 

[aeonsim]

This is there first game using the Unity engine correct? And they've made some significant modifications to it to support this type of gam,e which is rather different from the usual ones I've seen unity used for. It's also one of their first 3 platform games Win/OSX/Lin (rather than consoles) each of which has different filesystem designs and security systems that the game interacts with. It's quite possibly a case of there custom code for handling the saving and loading of a large number of items, triggers/scripts, world data and dialog is interacting badly with something either deep in the guts of Unity and or with there various target platforms (Linux/OSX especially). They'll solve it eventually but will probably end up learning a hell of a lot about the inner workings of Unity and how it interacts with different software and operating systems while they do so.

 

[Sensuki]

QA (and likely Programmers too) working late again.

 

[covr]

Thank you for sharing that precious information with us, Sensuki

 

[Roguey]

Looks like Josh is pleasing the Target Audience. From YCS:

it's funny but after playing shit like wasteland 2 and dead state recently, playing the backer beta for this was very pleasant. i know i mentioned that the realtime combat was a little too fast for me before, but i'm just really tired of fuckin turn based games in which the combats are all random trash bullshit and not unique, well-thought-out encounters

I was going to be all but then he had to keep talking

game designers just suck shit at game design. good example of a turn-based game in which the combat isn't tedious because the combat encounters are meaningful and challenging and usually interesting, and the underlying combat mechanics have some interesting options: Temple of Elemental Evil

Nooooooooooo