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

[vivec]

I think you do not see where I am getting at.

DR was removed because apparently the current system was too obfuscating. And then in a twist DT was renamed to DR. Now anyone on the block who ever played an RPG knows what DR is. To rename a mechanic that does not perform as DR to DR is nothing short of a middle finger to people who opposed DT in the first place.

 

[Sensuki]

Splitting should work the same as the Infinity Engine games and fuck any of you faggots who say otherwise.

 

[Zed]

they should call it "armor" if they want to make it intuitive. skip as many abbreviations as possible.
the UI doesn't support full-length words tho...

 

[Athelas]

Splitting should work the same as the Infinity Engine games and fuck any of you faggots who say otherwise.

I think that boat sailed when the selection circles didn't turn out to be the exact same shade of puke green that they had in the IE games.

 

[Sensuki]

With colorblind mode off, they are.

 

[Shevek]

I dunno why they didnt just have a tooltip that explained what dr or dt was when you moused over it. I liked the armor system as it was and it made plenty of sense. I cant think of anyone on the beta boards that was opposed to it either. Even the occaisional newbs who asked questions on the beta boards didnt seem confused by the armor system.

 

[Sensuki]

To be honest I haven't seen too many people complain about the armor system, so I'm not sure where they are getting that feedback from. Maybe they subscribe to YunikoYokai5 on youtube or something.

 

[Starwars]

Yeah, was pretty surprised about that. Maybe from their internal playthroughs (assuming there were people who didn't work on the game who played)? It's weird.

EDIT: Post from SA on some upcoming changes

There should be a new BB build rolling out soon with a lot of improvements and bugfixes. The character sheet and enemy stat displays have been cleaned up a lot. Many new icons and voice sets. Non-caster classes have more front-loaded options for abilities at levels 3 and 5 (e.g. at 3rd level, all Zealous paladin auras become available). "Old" DR has been removed and DT has been renamed -- check this out -- DR. Base weapon damage values and many spell damage values have been reduced. AoEs don't spam the combat log but present a brief message (e.g. Aloth (Fireball) 2 Crits, 1 Hit, 1 Miss) that can be expanded. Wizard self-buffs are now all (really) 20 frame casts with no recovery. Unarmed attacks are covered under the Peasant group so monks can gain Weapon Focus in it. Complete unarmed fighting is now recognized as dual-wielding. All "fast" weapons, including unarmed attacks, now have Weak Interrupt ratings. Interrupt values are displayed on all relevant attack stat blocks now. There have also been a few additions/modifications to existing Abilities and Talents. E.g. fighters have access to Weapon Mastery to augment Specialization by 10%. The ranger's Defensive Shooting was replaced with Arrow Sense, a passive bonus to Deflection vs. ranged attacks.

E: Oh, and monks have more unarmed attack variations.

 

[Sensuki]

E: Oh, and monks have more unarmed attack variations.

Bit skeptical about the log changes. Hopefully they removed all the constant recovery healing and shit as well.

 

[Abu Antar]

Yeah, was pretty surprised about that. Maybe from their internal playthroughs (assuming there were people who didn't work on the game who played)? It's weird.

EDIT: Post from SA on some upcoming changes

There should be a new BB build rolling out soon with a lot of improvements and bugfixes. The character sheet and enemy stat displays have been cleaned up a lot. Many new icons and voice sets. Non-caster classes have more front-loaded options for abilities at levels 3 and 5 (e.g. at 3rd level, all Zealous paladin auras become available). "Old" DR has been removed and DT has been renamed -- check this out -- DR. Base weapon damage values and many spell damage values have been reduced. AoEs don't spam the combat log but present a brief message (e.g. Aloth (Fireball) 2 Crits, 1 Hit, 1 Miss) that can be expanded. Wizard self-buffs are now all (really) 20 frame casts with no recovery. Unarmed attacks are covered under the Peasant group so monks can gain Weapon Focus in it. Complete unarmed fighting is now recognized as dual-wielding. All "fast" weapons, including unarmed attacks, now have Weak Interrupt ratings. Interrupt values are displayed on all relevant attack stat blocks now. There have also been a few additions/modifications to existing Abilities and Talents. E.g. fighters have access to Weapon Mastery to augment Specialization by 10%. The ranger's Defensive Shooting was replaced with Arrow Sense, a passive bonus to Deflection vs. ranged attacks.

E: Oh, and monks have more unarmed attack variations.

I like the sound of the monk changes as I will be playing one.

 

[Duraframe300]

enverxis asked: Re: movement speed. Because PE has small maps, often limited pathing space and movement in combat is penalized, the run animation + fast movement speed facilitates a big melee clash at the start of combat, which has a completely different feel to most Infinity Engine encounters and adds to the general confusion that people are experiencing in combat at present. Run animations also tend to blend worse with other animations than walk. Too late to change, but thats my view after comparing PE to IE.

Just so we’re on the same page, anyone with both IWD:EE and the PoE BB can compare movement speeds between characters within a similar space/size. Good spaces to do this are Easthaven and Dyrford. The view angle in PoE is lower, but you can account for that and adjust both of them to account for a similar perspective at your resolution of choice. Setting aside the animations they’re playing, a standard PoE character is marginally faster than a standard IWD:EE character and marginally slower than a 1st level IWD:EE monk. That’s the range we’re really talking about.

And if you continue to play IWD:EE or BG:EE, outside of wilderness environments, the pathing space is often incredibly cramped. Kresselack’s Tomb, Firewine Bridge, and the Cloakwood Mines are notably confined.

There are still problems with legibility in melee, but I do not believe party movement speeds (which are now only marginally faster than base BG/IWD) or comparatively cramped environments are the reasons for it. We’ve reduced the speed of both humanoid characters and monsters (especially) in the BB and I see people talking about it as though we haven’t adjusted them at all.

 

[throwaway]

Anyone care to list the larger design elements they went back on?
Apart from a (n absolute?) refutal of Roguey's initial contrast of the state of Beta design if compared to D:OS and W2 I'm not sure just how much of the overall JESness has been tweaked or largely defeated. Things like CombatXP, class defining mechanisms, etc.

 

[Infinitron]

Anyone care to list the larger design elements they went back on?
Apart from a (n absolute?) refutal of Roguey's initial contrast of the state of Beta design if compared to D:OS and W2 I'm not sure just how much of the overall JESness has been tweaked or largely defeated. Things like CombatXP, class defining mechanisms, etc.

Sawyerism has remained more-or-less entirely intact. People have moved onto to complaining about things that don't really have anything to do with Josh's RPG design philosophy. Such as animation speeds, as you can see above.

They did throw in some limited combat XP to shut the whiners up, though (you get combat XP only for the first N kills of a monster type, until you've unlocked its bestiary entry)

 

[Copper]

Anyone care to list the larger design elements they went back on?
Apart from a (n absolute?) refutal of Roguey's initial contrast of the state of Beta design if compared to D:OS and W2 I'm not sure just how much of the overall JESness has been tweaked or largely defeated. Things like CombatXP, class defining mechanisms, etc.

Sawyerism has remained more-or-less entirely intact. People have moved onto to complaining about things that don't really have anything to do with Josh's RPG design philosophy. Such as animation speeds, as you can see above.

They did throw in some limited combat XP to shut the whiners up, though (you get combat XP only for the first N kills of a monster type, until you've unlocked its bestiary entry)

Is it actually that banal? Surely setting it to reveal more info while you're earning xp from it in increments would be better - even more so if they could actually put in some flavour text based on their stat tracking (location first encountered / critical hits done in combat / first character to attack its weakness etc. That would be a nice little package.

 

[Infinitron]

Anyone care to list the larger design elements they went back on?
Apart from a (n absolute?) refutal of Roguey's initial contrast of the state of Beta design if compared to D:OS and W2 I'm not sure just how much of the overall JESness has been tweaked or largely defeated. Things like CombatXP, class defining mechanisms, etc.

Sawyerism has remained more-or-less entirely intact. People have moved onto to complaining about things that don't really have anything to do with Josh's RPG design philosophy. Such as animation speeds, as you can see above.

They did throw in some limited combat XP to shut the whiners up, though (you get combat XP only for the first N kills of a monster type, until you've unlocked its bestiary entry)

Is it actually that banal? Surely setting it to reveal more info while you're earning xp from it in increments would be better - even more so if they could actually put in some flavour text based on their stat tracking (location first encountered / critical hits done in combat / first character to attack its weakness etc. That would be a nice little package.

Bestiary unlocking is incremental

We were talking about when the XP comes in so that wasn't relevant

 

[Copper]

So long as it's not taking design inspiration from Bioware's 'press x in hotspot for 25xp' Codex derp. At its best, you wish the game was about whatever they're describing instead of Flash Gordon.

I don't care for kill xp, but I still think they should have XP be based on resolving encounters, which they've moved towards anyway, but I'd prefer (not gonna happen) a bigger commitment. XP as a reward for return to sender is pretty tedious design - sure, you can force players to return in the hope of getting LOOT / sexual favours / listen to an entertaining NPC rambling, but I'm far more in favour of letting players take initiative and go questing themselves than the rote 'Hoover up town quests, check them off, move on.' Why can't a player just take on an obvious 'antagonist party' like Medreth's and be rewarded for wiping them out for the way they looked at their dog? Muh story? Isn't the RP potential of being a stone cold murdering bastard worth letting people skip side-quest plot points?

This is play, for fuck's sake - putting a chastity belt on XP is just another way of saying 'You're playing it wrong' and only encourages degenerate behaviour. Read the quest? Nope mate, just doing this for the XPs, wateva.

For examples of 'resolving encounters', you can either remove mobs once the player hits a certain point - trigger the next scripted interaction, and the spiders outside are no longer relevant, dead or alive, so they're removed and you get xp for hitting the next stage. Same for going down a floor in a dungeon where you can't backtrack, although that's pretty crude - you can even allow backtracking though, on the assumption that anything not looted by the players vanishes with the inhabitants / loot rooms stay guarded, and the guards are a decent challenge to overcome (may or may not yield xp, loot should be enough here).

A slightly more advanced option would be - either try to clear the map of creature type X, possibly scripting in reinforcements/mini-bosses hunting you down for hitting a certain percentage cleared to make the whole thing more exciting, culminating in a long fight against the 'alpha' for the combat-fags, or using a mix of stealth, skill-checks and limited violence, destroy the source of the monsters/turn them against each other/etc.
Of course, asking Obsidian to do more scripting is playing with fire...

Infinitron - since you enjoyed 'trash' combat in BG, would you have liked it more if you were actually progressing more towards something more than tidying the map (Not a progress bar / 5/30 gibberlings killed but a bunch of Elite Mutant Gibberlings spawning at the edge of the map and beelining for you, revealing the gibberling nest once defeated) or would it wreck the relaxation?

 

[Infinitron]

Copper My way of thinking about this is thus:

I play through RPGs. I kill their monsters, do their quests and enjoy their stories. As I play them, my characters tend to level up once in a while. I don't particularly care about the details.

 

[bloodlover]

Wtf are DT and DR?

 

[Anthony Davis]

Wtf are DT and DR?

Damage Threshold and Damage Reduction, respectively.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

damage threshold takes off a flat amount from damage done (e.g. DT of 5 versus a damage roll of 6 makes for 6-5 = 1 damage)
damage resistance takes off a relative amount from damage done (e.g. DR of 50%versus a damage roll of 6 makes for 6-3 = 3 damage)

 

[Infinitron]

I like to think of DR as "Damage Ratio", because it corresponds semantically with "Damage Threshold" - the second word describes the exact factor which reduces the damage. "Resistance" or "Reduction" isn't specific enough - DT also provides damage "resistance" and "reduction".

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

But now that DT has been renamed to DR I guess it does actually stand for Damage Reduction. Which is actually a better name for it than Damage Threshold because damage doesn't just get stopped until a certain threshold is reached but gets reduced. :sperg:

 

[Bleed the Man]

That's why I love the codex. In no other forum would you find a discussion that sapwns through 3 pages about the renaming of a gameplay element.

And I'm not saying this sarcastically. The amount of detail put into discussing anything mechanics related is astonishing, and I learned -and keep learning- a lot from them.

 

[Ninjerk]

I don't particularly care about the details.

Aren't you endlessly arguing with Sensuki re: mechanics?

 

[Johannes]

That's why I love the codex. In no other forum would you find a discussion that sapwns through 3 pages about the renaming of a gameplay element.

And I'm not saying this sarcastically. The amount of detail put into discussing anything mechanics related is astonishing, and I learned -and keep learning- a lot from them.

As an aside, I urge you to change your avatar. Every time I see a post by you I'm thinking, sgc_meltdown just started posting again! Then I realize it's just some 2013 spaniard and get disappointed.