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

[Sensuki]

In the next patch they have added an option to disable the movement stop/auto-attack clause on Engagement for the party (at least I think that's what it does). All we have to do then is simply remove disengagement attacks and maybe some of the UI stuff. The AI will behave the same and the player will be given freedom of movement.

I will still have to modify a fair few items/abilities/spells etc but it should work a lot better than it currently does.

 

[Bleed the Man]

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

For that to happen most players should be people like us (us as a forum, I mean), that have deep undersanding of how mechanics work and why they do it that way.

A great number of players don't know how the IE really work. Hell, you can see a lot of people not knowing the diferences between Icewind Dale and the Baldur's Gate, and I know a certain amount of people that has BG2 as their absolute favorite game and to this day they don't understand the mechanics more than to a basic level.

A lot of the Baldur's Gate fanbase are somewhat Biodrones with a little tendency to enjoy the kind of stuff the Codex likes (a lot of people that I know that loves BG2 enjoy deeply KOTOR's combat, and think is very similar, for example).
Hell, the majority of the audience that PoE will have probably isn't capable on seeing the fundamental changes, both mechanic and design wise, from Fallout 3 to New Vegas. I would be surprised to not see in general gaming forums a lot of people saying that this is exactly like Baldur's Gate, or even people complaining that it's too similar (although that I expect it more from some reviewers).

 

[Grunker]

I know intricately how IE works and I am nowhere near the solid conclusion you guys seem to be at. Point being that mechanical understanding of the IE games doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that PoE gameplay sucks. Even if it is vastly different from the IE-games as well, it might still be very good.

We'll see come release.

 

[mastroego]

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.

I haven't backed the project (being inherently a distrustful sort has its perks), but I second the sentiment.
Feelings trump monetary considerations

 

[Bleed the Man]

I know intricately how IE works and I am nowhere near the solid conclusion you guys seem to be at. Point being that mechanical understanding of the IE games doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that PoE gameplay sucks. Even if it is vastly different from the IE-games as well, it might still be very good.

Just to clarify, I don't think PoE gameplay sucks. I'm quite happy with it, without having played the beta more than 8 hours.

Just trying to say that a lot of people won't reach the same conclussions that the people here in terms of similarity to the IE games.

 

[Rake]

I know intricately how IE works and I am nowhere near the solid conclusion you guys seem to be at. Point being that mechanical understanding of the IE games doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that PoE gameplay sucks. Even if it is vastly different from the IE-games as well, it might still be very good.

We'll see come release.

While i find PoE combat boring, i wouldn't say it's a complete betrayal of IE if someone accepts that it will not be D&D. It is the fact that i dislike the design direction on very basic level.
To me it feels like IWD2's combat, stripted of D&D, and i dislike that.
If it was BG2 combat stripted of D&D i wouldn't have a problem. But since i only truly liked the combat in one IE game from the five (BG2), take my opinion with a grain of salt

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

While i find PoE combat boring, i wouldn't say it's a complete betrayal of IE if someone accepts that it will not be D&D. It is the fact that i dislike the design direction on very basic level.
To me it feels like IWD2's combat, stripted of D&D, and i dislike that.
If it was BG2 combat stripted of D&D i wouldn't have a problem. But since i only truly liked the combat in one IE game from the five (BG2), take my opinion with a grain of salt

Do you mean the encounter design, or what? 'Cause mechanically they were all pretty damn similar weren't they (other than the 2nd to 3rd edition thing in IWD2)?

 

[ushas]

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.

Thanks! I will try to dig it there then.

 

[Infinitron]

Pillars of Eternity will be at PAX South:

Obsidian @Obsidian
The #PillarsOfEternity panel will stream LIVE on the @Official_PAX @Twitch channel at 2:30 PM Saturday the 24th! http://tinyurl.com/pawebbv

 

[ushas]

In the next patch they have added an option to disable the movement stop/auto-attack clause on Engagement for the party (at least I think that's what it does).

Will it extend to nullifying enemy attacks against the moving party member due to engagement mechanics (being engaged and disengage)?
(I assume by auto-attack you mean the reaction of a party member AI to engagement after stop)

 

[Rake]

Jim the Dinosaur BG and IWD played differently, due to the differences in magic system and creature design. IWDs had way less hard counters and no puzzle like approach to combat encounters.
Compair battles against mages in BG2 and IWD2. Then do the same with illithids, liches,dragons.
IWD2 combat felt way closer to PoE, it was just mitigated by the D&D rules.

And because the reason i loved BG2 combat was the hard counterish spell and counterspell and the puzzlelike approach to encounters (plus i dislike the uniformity of PoE's ruleset), PoE's combat felt boring to me. Mind you, i stopped playing the beta after the first built, so i'm not exactly up to date, but even if they manage to implement everything perfectly, exactly how Sawyer dreams it, i still have the suspicion that i will find his perfect,balanced,tactical gameplay boring and bland.
And i prefered the way power armor and plasma weapons worked in Fallout 1+2 than FNV, even if it invalidated player consepts making them subpar. I don't give a fuck.
Same with itemization in General were i loved BG's, was meh about IWD's

 

[Sensuki]

Will it extend to nullifying enemy attacks against the moving party member due to engagement mechanics (being engaged and disengage)?
(I assume by auto-attack you mean the reaction of a party member AI to engagement after stop)

Nah just the bit in brackets - party member AI.

 

[Sensuki]

Based on release history and the fact that this seems somewhat unorganized, would not be surprised in the least if the next patch doesn't come until next week. We'll see.

On the money so far.

edit 2: as predicted

Hey, folks. Not going to put out the update this week. Too much stuff trying to finalize the PAX demo we are going to be streaming with our panel. Sorry about getting your hopes up.

That said, make sure you check out the panel on Saturday at 12:30. We are going to show off a few areas that you haven't seen before and then do a question and answer session. I think the stream is being shown on the front page of the PAX South site and on the front page of Twitch.

 

[Sensuki]

Next patch will likely be the last

This will probably be the last backer beta that we do. Not sure how long we will keep everything open, though. We still need to talk about the particulars.

Very different approach to inXile and Larian, who both provided updates closer to the end. Personally I'm a bit disappointed that I won't get to play an optimized build.

Gonna need to go hard out in early Feb to get that final feedback in - need to do some auto-attack stuff, animation stuff etc

 

[Ellef]

What advantage is there to stopping updates to the BB 2 months from release? The day zero game is going to be a mess.

 

[dukeofwhales]

Compiling, testing and deploying new user-ready beta builds takes time they probably would rather spend fixing bugs.

 

[Ellef]

But what better way to test optimization bugs than to get that patch out to thousands of different PC builds?

 

[Sensuki]

I concur, it's strange not to make use of the large pool of backers for performance testing :/

 

[hiver]

In the next patch they have added an option to disable the movement stop/auto-attack clause on Engagement for the party (at least I think that's what it does). All we have to do then is simply remove disengagement attacks and maybe some of the UI stuff. The AI will behave the same and the player will be given freedom of movement.

I will still have to modify a fair few items/abilities/spells etc but it should work a lot better than it currently does.

If Ai behaves the same then whats the point?

Secondly: Could you mod in my Engagement idea?

 

[Jezal_k23]

edit 2: as predicted

Hey, folks. Not going to put out the update this week. Too much stuff trying to finalize the PAX demo we are going to be streaming with our panel. Sorry about getting your hopes up.

That said, make sure you check out the panel on Saturday at 12:30. We are going to show off a few areas that you haven't seen before and then do a question and answer session. I think the stream is being shown on the front page of the PAX South site and on the front page of Twitch.

Do you happen to know the time zone BAdler used to point out when the stream is going to be? I need to know it in order to determine when the stream will start.

 

[Semper]

according to this schedule it's in central standard time.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Thanks man.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

So apparently archers didn't use to carry quivers on their back, but rather on their belt, and for a very good reason. In PoE they draw from their back.

Isn't Sawyer supposed to be a history expert?

 

[J_C]

So apparently archers didn't use to carry quivers on their back, but rather on their belt, and for a very good reason. In PoE they draw from their back.

Isn't Sawyer supposed to be a history expert?

So just as warriors never wore their swords on the back (because you can't draw it from there duuuh), it seems archery also became the victim of the rule of cool.

To be fair, back quiever's were a valid approach in archery, and were used.

 

[Athelas]

They're not actually drawing anything since bows work without arrows in the game.