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

[tuluse]

Weapon durability is pure annoyance. You cannot as a player, play "better" and have your weapons degrade slower or not at all. The only games it works in are ones where equipment is scarce and having that pistol with 3 bullets where you aren't sure it will even fire all of them is a core part of the game.

 

[Copper]

Yeah, fucked up playing SS2 as a kid and ended up trying to defeat the Many boss thing with a bunch of out-of-ammo guns and a broken laser.

 

[Infinitron]

Solid UI - early WIP: http://instagram.com/p/x7u7Tdpx-t/

kaz contemplates the solid GUI for #pillarsofeternity

 

[Roguey]

I could tell from the way he presented it that Josh didn't particularly care for the durability system and let it out as a trial balloon to spare Tim's feelings.

By the by here's a bunch of Imp Zoners (SA's not-quite-YCS replacement) talkin' 'bout Sensuki

game looks good. 44 thread's barely readable because it's all one dude pretending to be an unpaid dev but i preordered a while back + am stoked

This ^. I backed it on kickstarter, but cannot stand going into the thread in games because of this one fucking guy who insists on writing lengthy sperg-fest posts about technical minutiae. Jesus guy, make your own damn RPG.

yeah lol you can tell he's sitting in his chair thinking "if this was MY game this wouldn't behappening" in every post, it's kind of funny

beta comes out around page 5 or 6 and he kicks into supersperg mode. rope kid implemented a couple of his suggestions and now i think he's on the world's smallest power trip

He has 17 pages worth of posts

over a hundred posts more than rope kid and almost two hundred more than the next guy

apparently he also posts a lot about this game on another forum, possibly two other forums. or more

i hope he ends up liking it

I am eagerly awaiting his inevitable review where he claims "This would have been GOTY IF ONLY THEY LISTENED TO ME". There is almost 0% chance he will enjoy it after obsessing over a beta release of a video game for nearly a year. I feel bad for Ropekid, who must have to deal with hundreds of these guys on a daily basis.

While I feel like criticism is good and that it has helped PoE become better because god damn did early beta suck donkey dick, this guy has made it into his job despite getting paid literally nothing for it. In fact, he has paid them for the privilege of it all. So I dunno what gives but he should give it a break for a while.

It's a beta you dumb cunt. You're supposed to complain about shit.

yeah dumb as this faggot is he's 100% definitely made the game better so w/e

Laughed through that whole page.

 

[Merlkir]

They....like Sensuki? At least they wished he'll like the game, that's something. :D

 

[Bleed the Man]

It's a beta you dumb cunt. You're supposed to complain about shit.

At least one of them has a brain.


I can't understand how anyone can be butthurt about Sensuki's feedback of the Beta. He's super dedicated to the game, and every single complaint that he has is deeply thought out and offers alternatives that he thinks would work better taking into account the design objectives from Josh.

They don't have to agree with his suggestions, but not seeing the massive value of his imput is just plain retarded.

 

[Abu Antar]

Fuck Sensuki and damn him to hell for pointing out stuff that could possibly improve the game and prevent bugs.

 

[Zed]

I hope they add some cool designs/carvings/whatevs on the solid UI.

 

[Abu Antar]

BAdler responds to a question

Watching the live stream, Josh is clicking on stash then take all a lot when looting monsters. Almost every time in fact.

Might be worth making a 1-click option for that.

Most likely won't happen before release, but we can review that option for patches and the expansion.

 

[Roguey]

Yah, there's no way in hell they're adding new features at this point. All about fixing and polish.

I saw someone post and explain some of Absurdian's completely and totally inept code at badgame and laughed so much. They have a lot of work cut out for themselves (not Josh's fault).

 

[Infinitron]

Yah, there's no way in hell they're adding new features at this point. All about fixing and polish.

I saw someone post and explain some of Absurdian's completely and totally inept code at badgame and laughed so much. They have a lot of work cut out for themselves (not Josh's fault).

Hi, coffeetable.

It's been posted here already.

 

[Abu Antar]

Roguey Why are you calling them Absurdian all of a sudden? Or am I missing something?

 

[Roguey]

Roguey Why are you calling them Absurdian all of a sudden? Or am I missing something?

I first called them Absuridan on July 9, 2011 and have done so at least 19 other times since then. I have very little respect for most of the people who work there. Subpar at art, Subpar at coding, full of bad players, bad at management, list goes on.

Recent Josh-posting highlighting Obsidian absurdity:

i do my best to require designers to design around a solid foundation of core gameplay. anything that isn't core or requires new scripting/programming has to be listed as a b-priority. if the a-priority content doesn't stand on its own, it needs to be redesigned. i've had too many experiences where a designer attempts to make something that features zero core gameplay. even if what they are doing is an interesting idea, it usually a) feels strange in the context of the game and b) is fragile/under-tested/non-robust because it's built upon auxiliary features.

in these cases i also often find that the designers don't fully understand how to use the core tools available, which is why it's important to force them to use them.

 

[Abu Antar]

the designers don't fully understand how to use the core tools available

Yet they manage to get a job over there? That sounds strange.

 

[Infinitron]

More from badgame - Sawyer on QA: http://badgame.net/index.php?topic=19797.msg7651388#msg7651388

it varies from project to project. there are cases where QA actually does have an abysmally bad find/regression rate or where publisher-controlled QA is specifically not given bugs that relate to gameplay at the end of development, just TCR/TRC requirements because they only care about passing certification. if QA testers have a sub-10 find rate per day and the dev play test hour yields an average of 15, that's a problem. we really do depend on QA to find bugs and do proper write-ups and regressions on them.

programmers are like any other branch of development. they have responsibility for both the specific things they are implementing and for how they integrate with the work of their co-workers. specifications change a lot on games because play testing and iteration are such important parts of how games are developed. solid engineering prevents problems from arising as specifications change, but not all programmers are good engineers. a lot of "fast" developers (not just programmers) are fast because they are sloppy. the frustrating thing is that both QA and other developers often wind up catching the ball down the road because the underlying problems aren't fully realized until long after initial implementation.

i worked on a project where a designer's choices over the course of development had created a large number of interesting scenarios built on extremely fragile scripting. the scenarios were fine on basic testing but the designer had not thought through all of the ways the scenarios could be broken. in the end, two other designers who had already cleared their bug queues had to spend weeks fixing the initial designer's content. i've also worked on projects where a programmer, given a spec, repeatedly doesn't implement the spec as written but the deviance from the specification isn't realized by QA and other devs until months or even a year after the initial implementation. assuming that someone isn't jerking QA around on the publishing side, ultimately it's QA + the devs' collective responsibility to design, engineer, implement, test, fix/revise, and regress in a non-idiotic way.

 

[agris]

What does it mean to have a bad "regression rate"? Not finding bugs that were once fixed, but appear again later?

 

[tuluse]

What does it mean to have a bad "regression rate"? Not finding bugs that were once fixed, but appear again later?

When fixing one bug creates other bugs.

 

[agris]

A lot of what he's complaining about sounds like the off-shoot of having a medium to large team (>10 people) and having a poor management infrastructure. The hand isn't talking to the foot, etc.

 

[Zed]

in that badgame thread there's a code snippet (actually an entire class I think) and I'm not a hotshot programmer but even I see that it's very messy. I can see how fixing one bug leads to another in this case.

and PoE has 3(!) producers. I don't know what the norm is but I think they're all pretty green too, so maybe it's a mess who know tho

 

[Ellef]

in that badgame thread there's a code snippet (actually an entire class I think) and I'm not a hotshot programmer but even I see that it's very messy. I can see how fixing one bug leads to another in this case.

and PoE has 3(!) producers. I don't know what the norm is but I think they're all pretty green too, so maybe it's a mess who know tho

You mean there's a chance an obsidian game might launch with a shit tonne of bugs and poor combat?

 

[Roguey]

That post had nothing to do with combat.

It keeps happening:

smh, there's complaining about shit and making 40 minute long youtube videos of narcissistic grognarding. I'll bet your'e one of those that thinks the loss of THACO was a crime.

Yeah one if them is actually useful to professional developers.

i looked at the official poe forums once and saw like 5 topics entitled "Sensuki's ideas for x game mechanic" and "Sensuki's ideas for y game mechanic" or whatever. like really, you're referring to yourself in the third person in order to give your many, many threads a name brand

 

[Rostere]

Weapon durability is pure annoyance. You cannot as a player, play "better" and have your weapons degrade slower or not at all. The only games it works in are ones where equipment is scarce and having that pistol with 3 bullets where you aren't sure it will even fire all of them is a core part of the game.

The key is to tie repair to a crafting skill. It might be boring when you can only repair your stuff to "function normally", but it will be more fun if using what you have at hand and putting skill points into weapon proficiency or learning of how to craft and maintain weapons are two distinct builds. You can opt for balancing the two, but also to build a master craftsman who is able to maintain the best gear or a spoiled knight/uncivilized barbarian who knows well how to fight but uses only what is at hand until it breaks.

It's typically always more fun when there is also severe punishment for having awful stats, not only bonuses for having good stats. Examples are: Low-int dialogue, people attacking you on sight because your are so fucking ugly, Critical misses, weapons/armor breaking, constitution being a limit for exploration (see Fallout and Age of Decadence), strength limiting what armor/weapons you can use, and so on.

If your character not only has distinct strengths you use in the game, but also critical weaknesses you must always confront, you will probably get a much more interesting game.

 

[Merlkir]

What kind of brand is "Sensuki's"? Fastfood chain? Clothing? Dragon dildos?

 

[Infinitron]

What kind of brand is "Sensuki's"? Fastfood chain? Clothing? Dragon dildos?

Sensuki is one of those people whose username sounds nothing like who they actually are. Abu Antar is another (sounds like an Andhaira alt, not some super-mellow Swedish guy from NeoGAF)

 

[Shevek]

Rostere

Im happy they got rid of durability. Their approach to it was PURELY as a money sink. They didnt want players to amass large amounts of gold. Screw that. I want to be oozing cash by the end game. For all my dungeon hacking efforts, I should be loaded. Also, I perfer positive incentives to use gold rather than negative reinforcement for not using it. The current implementations of crafting and the stronghold are fine examples of that. I might even be willing to blow through my gold on the stronghold just to play house and make my place look nice. Thats a fine optional and non punitive motivator to get me to blow through my cash.