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

[Bubbles]

I'm not sure I agree with felipepepe's points about why percentages look worse in terms of presentation, but I certainly agree that they do.

There's also the fact that % usually comes together with shitty itemization and smaller upgrades. You can't make an item that gives 0,25 THAC0, but you can make one that gives 1,5% bonuses to something.

yup, I associate % with horrible randomized items. The best itemization is like what existed in IWD and BG where you get unique hand placed and items with names and a back-story. That is cool. Even if the dagger is only +2, but has a cool name and back story it is much more interesting than some random sword of +2.5% physical damage, 3.8% poison damage and +1.5% defense bonus. Its hard to get excited when you then upgrade to a sword with 3.1% physical damage, 4.2% fire damage, 1.2% ice damage and +1% defense bonus. Oooooohh! I added up all the bonuses they were 1.4% more!!! What a magical, mysterious world of percentages to explore!

I associate it with Mass Effect 1, which is even worse.

 

[Infinitron]

Rule of thumb on backer polls on Kickstarter games: unless it's 80+% against what the developer wants, they won't change a feature. A slim majority won't do.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I'm not trying to rationalize anything. I didn't make the design goals, I don't decide what types of systems the game will or will not have. I have however read pretty much everything Josh has posted about the game, and once upon a time I did throw up my arms at some of the stuff, but that's long past me, and I believe it is possible to still have a good game within Josh's constraints, so rather than just being negative about it I'm just going to focus my effort on trying to make it better. SACRIFICIAL LAMB.

Dude I have to give you major credit in this regard. Its very intelligent of you to view the problem like this and I think you are making a better game for all of us because of it. Many people (possibly me included) have a hard time being this pragmatic and its easier to bash design choices (as I have done) instead of realizing what can be realistically fixed and what can't. I don't think I have it in me to do what you are doing, but I truly appreciate that you are.

Meanwhile I will go back to making sarcastic remark about JS design choices.

Spoiler

as I read more and more comments I am becoming depressed about this game



Namely, that character creation and level up seems boring and meaningless. Picking race, culture and social status being just flavor is lame. Linear progression of stats is lame (IE,weighted 3d6 is much better system IMO), lack of specialization in general is lame and boring. More specialization=more meaningful choices and differences=more tactical variability and fun. Don't like that it seems you could almost pick things at random because having higher XXX attribute will just balance out in the end. Means all choices are just flavor. This is the end result that comes from the 'balance' fetish which seems to be some sort of aspie, OCD trait. Balance is not inherently better, in fact is is often times worse, or might as well play checkers.

Definitely valid concerns.

I will say that is hard to tell the difference that race, culture, and social status makes right now, because we are limited to just one town. Based on some of the quest text, however, it does seem that backgrounds such as aristocrat and slave may come into play with certain character's reactions. I do not want to spoil too much though.

Moreover, it appears that faction reputation and personality reputation take time to build up. For instance, there are reputation dialog lines that cannot be used, because the beta does not give enough instances to build it up at all. (looking at you benevolence check)

out of all my concerns I think giving more importance and weight to race, culture and social status probably has the greatest chance of being implemented because I believe I have even heard JS say they have heard complaints about it and are thinking about changing it...so I actually do think this will be addressed which should make Chargen much better overall.

Also, what's 21st century about PoE, besides the graphics?

Well, for one thing, 3rd Edition D&D is 21st century. FFS we have people here yearning for the days of mages who can't hold swords, and complaining at the same time about this game's lack of choice and customization. Holy crap.[/QUOTE]

No meaningful and interesting choices. Making all classes able to use armour and any weapon is like making a WW II game where all the artillery is armored, tracked self propelled and has a few machine guns because just lobbing shells from afar but being weak in close combat is boring and causes the artillery to sit out to often. In reality what makes WW II games fun an interesting is the use of combined arms tactics where soldiers, tanks, artillery, anti-tank, and planes are unbalanced pieces with specialized jobs that when intelligently used in thoughtfully tactical manner are a more powerful whole than they would otherwise be alone.

Making each character/unit able top do all jobs might seem like you are creating more choice since each piece can do more things, but you are instead homogenizing play and limiting tactical choices.

 

[Infinitron]

You lost this battle 14 years ago. Give up

 

[imweasel]

Codex and Obsidian forums are taking it just fine. The "real world" BG series fans propably like DA:O as well, and they won't care about such a detail

This is not what a unified fanbase looks like:

And that is where the abolute sycophants hang out.

The poll is kind of shitty. Multiple choice doesn't make too much sense with the options given.

Anyway, you can can still clearly tell that 88% of the voters don't really like the current XP system (which is the first option).

 

[Zep Zepo]

Blaine

Throw me in the draw.

Zep--

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I didn't back it, wanted to check the thread to see how it's going and the AoE issue is disturbing honestly. There was no reason for making it that way. First of all, nobody will actually use 3 int on a spellcaster so it's pointless to make it viable. Moreover the reason for using Kickstarter was to make a hardcore game for old-school players, there is no reason to keep retards form harming themselves since the game is not marketed to them, it's like making sure that a late night anieme for sweaty nerds contains nothing that would offend puritans. If Sawyer wants bad players to have fun he should just make a stat-weight toggle. Make the AoE of characters with 3 int be 90% smaller the AoE of characters with 18 int in "hardcore" or "oldschool" mode and keep it the way it is in normal mode.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Finally received a bunch of beta keys from Obsidian for our top PoE fundraiser donors.

If you contributed $110+ to our fundraiser, do check your PMs - there should be a message from me there - and do PM me back on whether you want/don't want a beta key.

 

[felipepepe]

I wonder how butthurt Sawyer will be when people start to debate builds and consider Intellect a dump stat... even for mages.

 

[tuluse]

The poll is kind of shitty. Multiple choice doesn't make too much sense with the options given.

Anyway, you can can still clearly tell that 88% of the voters don't really like the current XP system (which is the first option).

But PoE isn't confirmed to be quest only

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I didn't back it, wanted to check the thread to see how it's going and the AoE issue is disturbing honestly. There was no reason for making it that way. First of all, nobody will actually use 3 int on a spellcaster so it's pointless to make it viable. Moreover the reason for using Kickstarter was to make a hardcore game for old-school players, there is no reason to keep retards form harming themselves since the game is not marketed to them, it's like making sure that a late night anieme for sweaty nerds contains nothing that would offend puritans. If Sawyer wants bad players to have fun he should just make a stat-weight toggle. Make the AoE of characters with 3 int be 90% smaller the AoE of characters with 18 int in "hardcore" or "oldschool" mode and keep it the way it is in normal mode.

 

[set]

I didn't back it, wanted to check the thread to see how it's going and the AoE issue is disturbing honestly. There was no reason for making it that way. First of all, nobody will actually use 3 int on a spellcaster so it's pointless to make it viable. Moreover the reason for using Kickstarter was to make a hardcore game for old-school players, there is no reason to keep retards form harming themselves since the game is not marketed to them, it's like making sure that a late night anieme for sweaty nerds contains nothing that would offend puritans. If Sawyer wants bad players to have fun he should just make a stat-weight toggle. Make the AoE of characters with 3 int be 90% smaller the AoE of characters with 18 int in "hardcore" or "oldschool" mode and keep it the way it is in normal mode.

I disagree - I think in theory it is a good approach to say, "All attributes should have some pull." Dragon Age 2 was shit because you literally had 2 attributes that were significant to your character and thanks to gear constraints you literally just put the same points in both stats on level up - it totally made leveling up pointless.

Roleplaying occurs at several levels. Part of it is a mechanics thing - you want players to specialize into playing a role; you need to make attributes impact how they play their role.

If intelligence effects spell damage, of course all spellcasters will want intelligence - but if wisdom increases the number of spells cast or reduces their cooldowns - then spellcasters also want wisdom. And if strength allows them to use ridiculously heavy and unique staves/items to supplement their spell casting (like magical armor or something that's super heavy and immune to "enchant as light as a feather" or whatever), then strength too suddenly has a pull. It might be the case that all spellcasters get a minimum of 10 intelligence - but then with the remaining 20 points they might have to decide between 12 strength and 12 wisdom and 12 dexterity, because these thresholds of stats unlock the ability to use certain items or enhance spells in certain ways (high agility wizards could maybe cast two spells in a single round, high charisma casters might be able to boost the duration of their buffs by 1 turn) -- it's this pull for the supplementing of attributes that makes things interesting.

The problem with Pillars so far, is attributes don't drastically effect the things they effect, so your choices aren't that exciting.

Path of Exile, another PoE game, has passive keystones and "legendary" items - these mechanics let you drastically change your character's playstyle. They accomplish this by making you choose - you can reduce your health for bonus spell damage, convert you rmana into health, use your health for casting spells, or reserve your mana for aura bonuses - at the end of the day you have 6 or 10 or 12 different ways to manipulate the way your stats work. This kind of design is hugely beneficial to making the game exciting, because there are many ways to design your character -- effectively, their role in combat. Some builds are like, "Well, I'll just use all my mana as a health resvoir and have a lowish health pool - with all the mana regen I get from my high mana, I can also blah blah blah" and other builds are like, "I have 0 maximum mana, so I don't need to get any items that give mana, I can just totally focus on life and life regen for casting spells" - it's a choice that effects your playstyle and these choices are pretty drastic and interesting at times... Pillars don't got it yet. And if passive skills are going to be weak sauce then getting one every three levels is going to be pretty zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Better combat animations would help, and slightly more meaty impact sounds

Cresent Hawk is right, the joining date doesnt matter. Oh how i hate these "look when they joined" arguments!

At the moment combat looks and sounds better in the IE games.

I dont mind him, seniority gets pulled on you all your life. And I agree its a very small concern, combat animations I mean. I am just glad these type games are being made again, I really am.I hope they succeed and from them improvements comes along.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

The problem with Pillars so far, is attributes don't drastically effect the things they effect, so your choices aren't that exciting.

I think that you misunderstood my post, I wasn't complaining about int affecting only AoE but about it affecting it in such a small degree most players wont feel the difference in most of their builds.

 

[Rake]

Better combat animations would help, and slightly more meaty impact sounds

Cresent Hawk is right, the joining date doesnt matter. Oh how i hate these "look when they joined" arguments!

At the moment combat looks and sounds better in the IE games.

I dont mind him, seniority gets pulled on you all your life. And I agree its a very small concern, combat animations I mean. I am just glad these type games are being made again, I really am.I hope they succeed and from them improvements comes along.

Don't mind Jeasun, it's not a small concern. Better combat animations and better "kinaesthetics" as Grunker would say it, is my number one concern about combat. I want something that plays like an IE/RTS and not something like the abomination that NWN2 was. If they don't manage that, i won't like the combat no matter what system Sawyer makes.

 

[imweasel]

The poll is kind of shitty. Multiple choice doesn't make too much sense with the options given.

Anyway, you can can still clearly tell that 88% of the voters don't really like the current XP system (which is the first option).

But PoE isn't confirmed to be quest only

Go to villager and get a quest, find cave and get XP, do task in cave and get XP, turn in quest and get XP.

You only get XP in PoE by doing quests. If a villager didn't give you a quest then you don't get anything other than items.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Well what about that time when Josh said that the mega dungeon's difficulty would increase faster than you could level up while going through it? It certainly suggests simply going through it will level you up to some extent.

 

[felipepepe]

Quest completed: Cleared the first floor.

 

[Bubbles]

I'd be okay with that if it gave incremental rewards for every room.

 

[Volourn]

"I disagree - I think in theory it is a good approach to say, "All attributes should have some pull." Dragon Age 2 was shit because you literally had 2 attributes that were significant to your character and thanks to gear constraints you literally just put the same points in both stats on level up - it totally made leveling up pointless."

False.


"But PoE isn't confirmed to be quest only"

False.

 

[Snerf]

I've also got a bonus beta key up for grabs if you aren't getting one from Blaine or Crooked Bee and still would like one, just let me know.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I don't mind not getting XP for random wilderness monsters but when fighting a big deal monster such as a dungeon boss perhaps the player should feel rewarded for it in some way. If you get XP when you're done with a floor, alright, fine, that's a reward. But for example when you kill the spider queen in the ogre cave, how is the player rewarded for it? Honest question. It's not an objective to kill it and I don't recall what it dropped since loot mostly disappears when you pick it up. Was it worth it? I don't recall.

 

[sser]

I've also got a bonus beta key up for grabs if you aren't getting one from Blaine or Crooked Bee and still would like one, just let me know.

I'll take it if no one else wants it. I did not contribute to the Kickstarter or the fundraiser though. If someone else did and didn't get a key they should probably take it.

 

[Bubbles]

I don't mind not getting XP for random wilderness monsters but when fighting a big deal monster such as a dungeon boss perhaps the player should feel rewarded for it in some way. If you get XP when you're done with a floor, alright, fine, that's a reward. But for example when you kill the spider queen in the ogre cave, how is the player rewarded for it? Honest question. It's not an objective to kill it and I don't recall what it dropped since loot mostly disappears when you pick it up. Was it worth it? I don't recall.

If there's no quest for the spider queen, it means that she is not part of the game's rich tapestry of story telling and is therefore simple clutter designed to make the world feel less empty. Remember, real heroes only kill things they have a quest for.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

.[/QUOTE]
Don't mind Jeasun, it's not a small concern. Better combat animations and better "kinaesthetics" as Grunker would say it, is my number one concern about combat. I want something that plays like an IE/RTS and not something like the abomination that NWN2 was. If they don't manage that, i won't like the combat no matter what system Sawyer makes.[/QUOTE]


I agree, NWN2 is the only Obsidian game I really cant get into, its atrocious. The combat is not that bad, and its difficult t keep the flow in a rtwp system. Just some fancy finishers, like half swording grip someone to death on a critical or some gory stuff like in fallout. I dont think its asking much.