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

[Infinitron]

Reading all this stuff, I recall this:

That's genuinely cool, but we didn't Kickstart a game called Fuck You: Suck My Dick: Josh Sawyer's Personal Dream RPG Experience where I do whatever I personally think is sound and neat and good. For better or worse, this was pitched as an IE-like game.

I wonder what's his personal dream RPG experience, and how different from PoE it would be... he doesn't seem to be holding back that much on controversial changes to the IE formula.

We know that it would be turn-based and classless.

I'm sure there more dignifying jobs for him than dragging a bunch of fans of a real-time-with-elves Bioware game kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

 

[Frusciante]

About your discussions on choice, leveling up etc: is it just not the case that many feats have not been implemented yet? Maybe the goal is to have a lot more choice in character generation at release?

Also very good ofcourse of you guys to discuss this bbut I feel some people are kind of lost in the details. All in all this looks like a very promising, enjoyable game with some unfortunate flaws. In other words, it will not be perfect but it will still be Majestic incline.

 

[felipepepe]

Darklands 2. He's said this many times.

Yeah, but think about it... he already revamped the character and XP system to what he thinks works best, and added the Darklands-like text adventure bits...

 

[Duraframe300]

Where IS Sawyer btw.

Hasn't actually shown up since launch.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

We know that it would be turn-based and classless.

I'm sure there more dignifying jobs for him than dragging a bunch of fans of a real-time-with-elves Bioware game kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Such as designing popamole casual crap? Russian MMORPG? Tablet card game?

P.S. That real-time-with-elves Bioware game puts most of your precious 21st century games to shame in far too many regards.

 

[felipepepe]

Also, what's 21st century about PoE, besides the graphics?

 

[Grotesque]

Where IS Sawyer btw.

Hasn't actually shown up since launch.

He faps in a gothic cathedral somewhere, bemused by all the butthurt and all the up in arms about his design choices.

 

[Duraframe300]

We know that it would be turn-based and classless.

I'm sure there more dignifying jobs for him than dragging a bunch of fans of a real-time-with-elves Bioware game kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Such as designing popamole casual crap? Russian MMORPG? Tablet card game?

P.S. That real-time-with-elves Bioware game puts most of your precious 21st century games to shame in far too many regards.

Sawyer is involved in exactly 0 of those.

Also what?

 

[Infinitron]

We know that it would be turn-based and classless.

I'm sure there more dignifying jobs for him than dragging a bunch of fans of a real-time-with-elves Bioware game kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Such as designing popamole casual crap? Russian MMORPG? Tablet card game?

P.S. That real-time-with-elves Bioware game puts most of your precious 21st century games to shame in far too many regards.

Well, I didn't say they were jobs he would ever actually get to do.

Although after Obsidian has gained its financial independence, who knows?

Also, what's 21st century about PoE, besides the graphics?

Well, for one thing, 3rd Edition D&D is 21st century. FFS we have people here yearning for the days of mages who can't hold swords, and complaining at the same time about this game's lack of choice and customization. Holy crap.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

Also, what's 21st century about PoE, besides the graphics?

MOBAs are 21st century.

Spoiler

 

[bonescraper]

Fuck, i was about to say that

 

[felipepepe]

Also, what's 21st century about PoE, besides the graphics?

Well, for one thing, 3rd Edition D&D is 21st century.

So? PoE isn't 3rd Edition D&D.

FFS we have people here yearning for the days of mages who can't hold swords, and complaining at the same time about this game's lack of choice and customization. Holy crap.

You know those aren't excludent, right? BG2 mages and clerics cannot use swords, but you have tons of customization options, thanks to tons of spells, game changing items and to multi-classing.

 

[Infinitron]

So? PoE isn't 3rd Edition D&D.

Well, it is in many ways a hybrid of 3rd Edition and 4th Edition. You could say that it's probably similar to the sort of D&D CRPG we would have gotten a few years back if WOTC hadn't gone full retard with lcensing.

But we're going off topic here.

You know those aren't excludent, right? BG2 mages and clerics cannot use swords, but you have tons of customization options, thanks to tons of spells, game changing items and to multi-classing.

Sure, but some consistency would be nice. It's interesting to me that you have the "I want archetypes!" crowd here on the one hand, and the "I want customization!" crowd on the other hand, but they don't seem to realize that they're actually arguing against each other.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Btw, I watched a couple of videos and Cipher level-up doesn't seem straighforward to me because you have to choose among different powers. So there is some customization even in beta, at least for some classes.

 

[Duraframe300]

Cipher is a fun class imo.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Cipher is a fun class imo.

Yeah, Cipher and Chanter are the most interesting classes at the moment IMO.

 

[Frusciante]

Where IS Sawyer btw.

Hasn't actually shown up since launch.

If I were Sawyer I would observe from a distance and wait while the dust settles before commenting/replying. Lots of people still deciding on what exactly they like/dont like about the beta.

RPS hands on: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/08/20/228491/

 

[Duraframe300]

Roby speaks

The day the beta went out, everyone on the team still had a sizable list of issues and improvements to work on, half of which you guys have already pointed out. The leads and QA will go through suggestions and bugs and write up anything new that you guys have found that we want to address. QA specifically will attempt to reproduce new bugs mentioned and write up a more detailed issue for the proper team member to work on.

Once we have a noticeable amount of improvements in and we have ensured that the build is in a releasable condition, an update will be pushed. There are no hard dates planned for that but, more than likely you can expect an update every few weeks or so, at least early on.

 

[felipepepe]

Sure, but some consistency would be nice. It's interesting to me that you have the "I want archetypes!" crowd here on the one hand, and the "I want customization!" crowd on the other hand, but they don't seem to realize that they're actually arguing against each other.

Not really, you can have customizable archetypes, with sub-specializations.

Sawyer keeps talking about his "strong mage" and "intelligent warrior", but we have had battlemages and spellswords for decades. And it was a meaningful choice, not "mage that deals +20% melee damage" or "warrior with 15% longer spell duration".

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyer keeps talking about his strong mage and the intelligent warrior, but we have had spellswords and battlemages for decades. And it was a meaningful choice, not "mage that deals +20% melee damage" or "warrior with 15% longer spell duration".

Those were kits, right? The "patches" he mentioned in the video I posted in the last page. Not an organic part of a holistic ruleset.

Not really, you can have customizable archetypes, with sub-specializations.

Well, there are people who hate even that. They want archetypes and archetypes only.

 

[Gozma]

Reading all this stuff, I recall this:

That's genuinely cool, but we didn't Kickstart a game called Fuck You: Suck My Dick: Josh Sawyer's Personal Dream RPG Experience where I do whatever I personally think is sound and neat and good. For better or worse, this was pitched as an IE-like game.

I wonder what's his personal dream RPG experience, and how different from PoE it would be... he doesn't seem to be holding back that much on controversial changes to the IE formula.

Jesus the dude is distancing himself from this being judged as a Josh Sawyer joint

They should retitle it "Josh Sawyer's (smaller font) Pillars of Eternity" and have him dressed up in medieval armor with elf ears on the box cover menacing the camera with a bec-de-corbin

 

[felipepepe]

Those were kits, right? The "patches" he mentioned in the video I posted in the last page. Not an organic part of a holistic ruleset.

What this even mean? Do you or Sawyer really believe that people design RPGs without thinking about ramifications and specializations, simply because it isn't in the core book? Not to mention than various other games had those classes and sub-specializations. Even Daggerfall had them, with a nice degree of consequence for playing it (can't use plate armor nor tower shield).

Hell, D&D Next has the Eldritch Knigh, a spellsword, built in the Player's Handbook from the start, as a specialization of the Warrior. There, they learned from the past and incorporated "patches" into the core rules. Much better approach then simply saying "it's a patch" and ignoring it. What's the point of making a RPG "in the 21st century" if you'll ignore the previous decades of experience?

 

[Semper]

Once we have a noticeable amount of improvements in and we have ensured that the build is in a releasable condition, an update will be pushed. There are no hard dates planned for that but, more than likely you can expect an update every few weeks or so, at least early on.

compared to other devs (like bohemia) this sounds a bit disappointing. as soon as a few bugs got squashed or a missing feature was implemented a new build was compiled and published - often on a weekly, and sometimes on an almost daily basis. they have a closed environment, tons of testers, steam... what exactly stops them from using all this advantages? releasable condition in a beta?! are we talking about early access now?

 

[Infinitron]

Those were kits, right? The "patches" he mentioned in the video I posted in the last page. Not an organic part of a holistic ruleset.

What this even mean? Do you or Sawyer really believe that people design RPGs without thinking about ramifications and specializations, simply because it isn't in the core book?

Basically yes. He thinks if a system needs weird expansions to support it then it's not a good system.

Anyway, earlier ITT I said that Pillars' stats don't have a deep impact, but I'd like to tentatively retract that statement now. It's something I'd need to see for myself before deciding if it was really true.

It may be one of those things where it looks like they don't have an impact, but they actually do. How many of you people have actually playtested this game with a wide variety of characters with a wide variety of attribute selections, and seen how they hold up?

Once we have a noticeable amount of improvements in and we have ensured that the build is in a releasable condition, an update will be pushed. There are no hard dates planned for that but, more than likely you can expect an update every few weeks or so, at least early on.

compared to other devs (like bohemia) this sounds a bit disappointing. as soon as a few bugs got squashed or a missing feature was implement a new build was compiled and published - often in a weekly, and sometimes on an almost daily basis. they have a closed environment, tons of testers, steam... what exactly stops them from using all this advantages? releasable condition in a beta?! are we talking about early access now?

It may be disappointing compared to Bohemia, but it's par for the course for most Kickstarter/Early Access devs.

 

[Zed]

yeah there are no harry potter bony-ass cracka-wizards in PoE. if you want to pack a punch with fireballs you better eat red meat, bitch.