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

[Ellef]

I wouldn't want non-interactable npcs. They should at least have generic commoner reply when you click on them. The lack of liveliness is in the audio anyway.

 

[Athelas]

It was fairly obvious the audio was bugged and wasn't playing the ambient sounds. As for the performance issues...

UNITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Gremius]

Maybe there are new music tracks composed by someone else than Bell but Unity didn't play them correctly? ;_;

 

[Abu Antar]

It's a nice idea, but it does come with its own set of issues. (Can those people be killed if you throw an area effect spell? How do they react to violence near them? Etc)

That's a good question. I'd say have some NPC that react to what the player does, but have some "dolls" mixed in. Maybe? I don't know. I just want to see a bit more people on the screen. Have a worker carry a barrel to somewhere, have some drunkard sleeping somewhere, etc, etc. They wouldn't give a crap about the player, but still be there. In a group of citizens, have 75% of them respond to you and 25% just be filler.

 

[Sensuki]

They haven't optimized the game yet. I have yet to play a well-optimized Obsidian game, but inXile were able to do a pretty good job with WL2. My FPS went from 20-30 to 90-120. Fingers crossed for something similar in Pillars of Eternity. I get over 100 FPS in the Dracogen Inn Level 2, but most other areas are running quite badly now.

 

[Sensuki]

Couple more

melnorme asked: Baldur's Gate 1 had a lot of NPC crowds in its cities, but they used a lower detail, sometimes even completely static (when they were sitting) "commoner" model instead of a full-blown "adventurer" model (capable of equipping weapons and armor, fighting, etc) like the player characters and most important NPCs. Could something like this be an option for PoE for reducing memory costs?

It may be, though it will require more research and experimentation. Most humanoid characters are set up for full gear switching/customization and we have very few humanoids that are set up as “stand alone” characters with no expected modification.

enverxis asked: I understand that performance optimizations are usually done right at the end of a project. While the PE programmers have done some work on memory overhead, when are passes on CPU and GPU optimization going to be made? Currently PE runs a little bit better than the Wasteland 2 beta for me, but not by much. When they did their optimization pass I got a huge FPS jump (50+ in all maps).

I don’t know when that optimization will happen, but memory is the biggest concern for us right now.

 

[tuluse]

WL2 has issues with memory, people on 32bit machines can get random crashes as it hits the upper limit for application memory (2gb).

 

[ushas]

So the highest probability for the devs to answer questions on gameplay is to ask Josh on his Tumblr profile?

Would be anybody with a tumblr account interested and willing to post a question about wizards as scientists, like the one below? Or was it already answered somewhere?

Compare to other classes wizards are scientists/researchers of the PoE settings. Description in the BB speaks about forming academies and guilds and hints their scientific focus towards the arcane topics.

Are you able to provide more info how is this scientific community/thinking concept integrated within the wizard class from the role- and gameplay perspective? For example, will be a wizard (PC or NPC) able to identify himself with or join research guilds (similarly to clerics and paladins)? Can he specialize in the chosen scientific field of study (maybe tied to the guild)? Can he do or participate in an ongoing experimental work? (eg. in a new spell creation etc.)?

It's basically just a question whether the lore/setting/story has more significant impact on gameplay (or is planned in future to has), or if I'm reading too much from the class description. It's tricky with no spoilers politics. On the other hand, we already know some basic info about organizations and deities for paladins and priests.

Playing BBv392 I can see myself to prepare several grimoires to acclimatize different encounters - feels as an adaptive spellcaster (of course there are attributes and a spell selection limit), known mechanics have been heavily discussed by others. Just not knowing much about finding, learning or inventing magic, I'm yet to get the scientific vibes as hinted in the BB description/wiki and in the update 74.

 

[Sensuki]

I like that they've kept the mouse-over text if you disable the Combat HUD, however they haven't really supported playing without the combat HUD other than that. There's a bunch of ways that could have been handled better - combat idle changed to the 'recovery time' stance, instead; recovery bar under the portrait on the main HUD - stuff like that.

Supporting all of this does require actual work from people, usually people on the team who are extremely overloaded with other tasks. I don't mind at all if someone wants recovery bars on the portraits, on a second monitor, docks the combat log vertically to the left side of the screen, puts individual character portraits at opposite corners, outputs damage values in Roman numerals, and prefers individual idles for each race by specific weapon -- but someone has to actually do all of that. For a long time, we didn't have stealth animations. For even longer, we didn't have attack variations. We're getting more of that over time, but we cannot support every individual's preference for UI and feedback style through fiat and willpower alone.

~snap

 

[Hormalakh]

Frankly, I'm just as tired as Josh is of hearing about everyone's wishes for this fucking game. There were a lot of extra shit put in (features) that didn't exist in the IE games. That's great and all but this caused them to miss out on putting some of the features that WERE in IE games.

Everybody wanted their little ray of sunshine to be optional and that stuff takes time and coding, regardless of how miniscule it is. That stuff takes away from actual important stuff.

People are still making suggestions for features on the Obsidian forums. Sheesh

 

[Sensuki]

While that was probably a general statement, I think he was also having a go at me for doing that, however my particular post that he quoted in the thread was talking about the original design, and not a 'can you please add an option for this', and I replied as such.

Edit 2: I don't think it was people's suggestions that caused them to miss out on things that were in the IE games - I'd say that was their own choice to leave them out or even worse, not even recognize them.

 

[Sensuki]

Would be anybody with a tumblr account interested and willing to post a question about wizards as scientists

There's some info about stuff like that in maybe the old SA thread. If you go to this thread and search for the word scientist you might find a quote. There was some talk about animancy/science/etc in 2013 sometime.

 

[Lord Andre]

I am torn in half between wanting the game to be good and wanting it to be shit. On one hand I paid for the damn thing and I do love rpgs, but maybe...Maybe if this game crash and burns I won't have to read about Sawyer's shitty opinions ever again.

 

[Starwars]

I am torn in half between wanting the game to be good and wanting it to be shit

 

[Haba]

He is TORN about it.

 

[veevoir]

He is TORN about it.

His inspiration has run dry, that's what's going on - nothing's right he's torn.
You're already late, he's already torn.
And considering KS site vs what we can see in Beta - at least considering combat - Illusion never changed into something real.

 

[Sensuki]

Dunno about you, but I'm wide awake

 

[Haba]

Am I really being forced to explain my jokes here?

Newfags, I am dissapoint.

Spoiler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Isle's_Torn

 

[Sensuki]

We knew that. I couldn't think of a Black Isle joke though, so I went along with the Natalie Imbruglia song.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Am I really being forced to explain my jokes here?

Newfags, I am dissapoint.

Spoiler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Isle's_Torn

BTW, we have got a new Torn game,

Spoiler

MM Text based browser game, kinda business tycoon.

 

[Lord Andre]

I guess this shows how much of a dipshit I find Sawyer to be, I'm actively hoping my 90 bucks go down the drain just for the satisfaction of seeing the piss taken out of this douchebag.

I find the petty victories of life bring more joy to the heart than actual acomplishements.

 

[Ellef]

He gambled, and failed on a crowd pleasing DAE hate Sawyer?? attempt

 

[Rake]

I guess this shows how much of a dipshit I find Sawyer to be, I'm actively hoping my 90 bucks go down the drain just for the satisfaction of seeing the piss taken out of this douchebag.

I find the petty victories of life bring more joy to the heart than actual acomplishements.

If the game is a failure, Obsidian will propably stick to AAA garbage and russian shovelware, so no, i want this game to be a huge success

Spoiler

but i would be exctatic if the game is praised to high heavens for it's narrative while everyone complains about the combat being bland compaired to BG2, and magic system be a complete joke. Plus if people on You Tube that Sawyer loves watching play the game on easy and just enjoy the narrative. And Bester/Sensuki mod gets half a million downloads and become the must be mod to play PoE

 

[Sensuki]

I figured out a better way to 'remove' engagement as well.

 

[covr]

Uninstall.exe?