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

[Rake]

Looks like Josh is pleasing the Target Audience.

And here i thought that the target audience were IE fans instead of YCS and SA inhabitants

 

[Zed]

Looks like Josh is pleasing the Target Audience.

And here i thought that the target audience were IE fans instead of YCS and SA inhabitants

josh's talk about grognards and how IE games suck should have told you otherwise

 

[Bleed the Man]

Does Roguey has a personal vendetta against Sawyer?

I mean, he/she/it is responsible of probably half the hate for Sawyer in this forum, and if not responsible for the hate itself, certanly inflates the effect.

Being such an overexagerated fanboy/girl/thing and celebrating the things he says that goes against the codex hivemind (grognards, hard counters and such) has to be one of the best ways to spread hate for the person you apparently have a fixation for.

 

[Volrath]

Roguey just likes trolling the Codex. The easiest way for him to accomplish that is to make us rage at all the complete bullshit Sawyer spouts on a regular basis.

 

[Rake]

Does Roguey has a personal vendetta against Sawyer?

I mean, he/she/it is responsible of probably half the hate for Sawyer in this forum, and if not responsible for the hate itself, certanly inflates the effect.

It's intentional. Roguey isn't a bad poster as long as you keep in mind that it has genuinely terrible taste in games and makes it's points in the most provoking/inflamatory way possible on purpose.
If you accept this as part of the pacage and ignore it's personal opinions and trolling attempts, Roguey is a useful source of information, and most of the time gets the facts right. Plus it's amusing

 

[Athelas]

Does Roguey has a personal vendetta against Sawyer?

I mean, he/she/it is responsible of probably half the hate for Sawyer in this forum, and if not responsible for the hate itself, certanly inflates the effect.

Being such an overexagerated fanboy/girl/thing and celebrating the things he says that goes against the codex hivemind (grognards, hard counters and such) has to be one of the best ways to spread hate for the person you apparently have a fixation for.

Theirs is a forbidden love.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Roguey enjoys the possibility of a good game. It has never enjoyed one, so it cannot understand anything except a theoretical perfect system to provide enjoyment due to its design, rather than whether the game is "fun".

 

[Hormalakh]

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

Roguey just likes trolling the Codex. The easiest way for him to accomplish that is to make us rage at all the complete bullshit Sawyer spouts on a regular basis.

Not only that, Roguey also does this thing where if you don't read it correctly, it will make it seem like Josh Sawyer is actually saying those things as opposed to some douche who's pleased with Josh Sawyer's stuff and is shitting on all other game designers.

Those aren't Josh's words. It's the "Target Audience." Roguey strikes again.

 

[Roguey]

And here i thought that the target audience were IE fans instead of YCS and SA inhabitants

These people also played the Infinity Engine games. They enjoyed them, but thought they had many problems, which J-Saw has helpfully corrected.

 

[Seari]

4/10 you can do better.

 

[kazgar]

I thought roguey wasn't posting in this thread.

 

[Sensuki]

It's looking pretty good for Thursday - Tomorrow Josh wants to do a balance pass over the backer beta before we release it. We have made adjustments to how DR and DT work, and combat is feeling too fast right now. He can talk about it when he gets a chance to pop on here. The save/load issue was fixed too. I'll keep this thread updated if things change.

Interested to hear about these. The armor system did need adjusting, it will be interesting to hear what they did, and also how they plan to address combat. I have an idea myself, but I'll wait and see what they say first.

Adam replied to me

It's way too fast, even faster than 364, because of the armor changes. Josh can speak to it more, imo characters are doing too much damage too quickly. I haven't played around with it enough to make a detailed analysis yet.

 

[Abu Antar]

It's looking pretty good for Thursday - Tomorrow Josh wants to do a balance pass over the backer beta before we release it. We have made adjustments to how DR and DT work, and combat is feeling too fast right now. He can talk about it when he gets a chance to pop on here. The save/load issue was fixed too. I'll keep this thread updated if things change.

Interested to hear about these. The armor system did need adjusting, it will be interesting to hear what they did, and also how they plan to address combat. I have an idea myself, but I'll wait and see what they say first.

Adam replied to me

It's way too fast, even faster than 364, because of the armor changes. Josh can speak to it more, imo characters are doing too much damage too quickly. I haven't played around with it enough to make a detailed analysis yet.

good that someone over there feels this way.

 

[Roguey]

I thought roguey wasn't posting in this thread.

I come and go. I'm mostly not-reading it.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I thought roguey wasn't posting in this thread.

I come and go. I'm mostly not-reading it.

And I guess there has been a safe amount of time since the schadenfreude-fest around PoE having its release date pushed back and suffering similar problems to other ks games you attacked...

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron gets the answers: http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/105443128241/is-it-possible-that-youve-overcompensated-for#notes

melnorme asked: Is it possible that you've overcompensated for problems in the Infinity Engine games? That is, you identify some problem in the IE games, and make a change in PoE that addresses it, but then you make yet another change that is no longer necessary after the previous one? For example, pre-buffs are no longer as tedious or "no-brainer" with PoE's rest system as they were in the IE games, since you can't rest after every battle and cast them before every one, but you removed them anyway.

Sure, but it’s important to remember that pre-buffing isn’t something that’s limited to the per rest spells used by the traditional caster classes. Pre-buffing can also be done with consumables (in PoE, potions can’t be consumed outside of combat, only food and drugs, which have relatively minor effects — bugged super milk notwithstanding) and per encounter abilities like a barbarian’s Frenzy or fighter’s Vigorous Defense. And when traditional caster classes in PoE get to a high enough level, their per rest spells start converting over to per encounter.

I can say that both internally and from what I’ve seen people do on streams, a good chunk of players will always try to find a way to pre-buff by any means necessary Why wouldn’t they? If they can do it, it clearly gives them an advantage with no risk, just a resource cost. I certainly don’t fault players for trying to pre-buff, but it’s still my responsibility to balance the advantage of buffs with an associated cost. In PoE, it’s an activation time in the context of combat, making it an opportunity cost.

The problem then shifts to finding the right activation time to make it a worthwhile trade. I still need to tune a lot of the priest and druid spells, but I believe the wizard self-buffs feel solid in our local build. All wizard self-buffs are set to “instant” (actually about 20 frames) with no recovery. I did some tests with Aloth where I had him provoke fights and immediately go through a variety of self-buff sequences, usually:

* Arcane Veil
* Ironskin
* Flame Shield
* Mirrored Image
* Citzal’s Spirit Lance
* Citzal’s Martial Power

In about 4 seconds, he had six buffs on him and was ready to wade in and go nuts. What else could Aloth have done in 4 seconds? Among other options, he could have thrown at least one strong offensive spell and started another one, which seems like a reasonable trade-off. If I wanted to go crazier with him, I could have kept going: Llengrath’s Safeguard, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Eldritch Aim, etc. — but that would be another 2 seconds of self-buffing while enemies and allies are moving and resolving their own actions.

So while there is still more tuning to do on buffs, both in terms of power and activation time, I think this is the right direction to go with them.

Well, so much for what I said about consumables.

 

[vivec]

If they can do it, it clearly gives them an advantage with no risk, just a resource cost.

Just? Really? So why play the game? Just tell us the story in a cinematic cutscene.

 

[Infinitron]

If they can do it, it clearly gives them an advantage with no risk, just a resource cost.

Just? Really? So why play the game? Just tell us the story in a cinematic cutscene.

Clearly, he believes the resource cost isn't significant enough.

I did forget about this part in my responses to you in the other thread:

when traditional caster classes in PoE get to a high enough level, their per rest spells start converting over to per encounter.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I see what he's saying but including this in the explanation:

And when traditional caster classes in PoE get to a high enough level, their per rest spells start converting over to per encounter.

isn't great imo as it's a change I don't like from the IE games. So much for using resources strategically across multiple battles which was how I liked to play BG2.

 

[vivec]

I mentioned earlier that per-encounter mechanics is not good. It makes casting repetative.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not sure if what he's saying here is that per-encounter spells can be cast before the encounter actually begins? That's a bit funny if true.

But if they are, that's plenty of pre-buffing.

 

[Infinitron]

Another one: http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/105446829191/why-do-characters-in-pillars-of-eternity-run-in

melnorme asked: Why do characters in Pillars of Eternity run in combat instead of walk? Now it seems like you can't slow them down sufficiently without making the animation look a bit ridiculous.

Combat is the time when it makes the most sense for every character to move as fast as they possibly can. It’s also relatively easy to slow them down because the animation system uses a normalized movement rate on characters to determine what their base run and walk speeds are. Whether we set their movement lower on their prefab or they have their movement altered through game effects, it will attempt to speed up the cycle or slow it down until it passes a threshold where it switches over to a walk cycle.

Yeah, there are situations where it will look weird. Without making a bunch of different movement animations for each rig, that’s one of the trade-offs for allowing characters’ movement rates to be adjusted through game effects.

 

[Athelas]

Combat is the time when it makes the most sense for every character to move as fast as they possibly can.

Sounding an awful lot like a simulationist there, Josh.

It’s also relatively easy to slow them down

Then do it!

 

[Johannes]

Infinitron gets the answers: http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/105443128241/is-it-possible-that-youve-overcompensated-for#notes

The problem then shifts to finding the right activation time to make it a worthwhile trade. I still need to tune a lot of the priest and druid spells, but I believe the wizard self-buffs feel solid in our local build. All wizard self-buffs are set to “instant” (actually about 20 frames) with no recovery. I did some tests with Aloth where I had him provoke fights and immediately go through a variety of self-buff sequences, usually:

* Arcane Veil
* Ironskin
* Flame Shield
* Mirrored Image
* Citzal’s Spirit Lance
* Citzal’s Martial Power

In about 4 seconds, he had six buffs on him and was ready to wade in and go nuts. What else could Aloth have done in 4 seconds? Among other options, he could have thrown at least one strong offensive spell and started another one, which seems like a reasonable trade-off. If I wanted to go crazier with him, I could have kept going: Llengrath’s Safeguard, Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Eldritch Aim, etc. — but that would be another 2 seconds of self-buffing while enemies and allies are moving and resolving their own actions.

So while there is still more tuning to do on buffs, both in terms of power and activation time, I think this is the right direction to go with them.

Is it just me or this is very tacky? Instead of having single, strong buffs you gotta cast several watered-down ones to get a proper effect. That's tedious, mindless clicking - and as far as I'm concerned the problem with IE buffing was exactly the tedium involved.

 

[Lord Andre]

So pre-buffing is bad even with resource cost, but casting 6 buffs in 4 seconds the instant combat begins is a perfect solution. Am I understanding something wrong or did the genius shift the pre-buffing ritual 4 seconds into the future. I suppose the downside is no group buffs ?