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

[Athelas]

There is a worrying lack of half-broken pillars in that screenshot. Looks suspicious.

MMO style "Move out of this telegraphed attack's range or bad things will happen to you," and "Get out of the fire," type-stuff.

How is this MMO style? Sounds like standards RTS stuff to me. Or am I reading it wrong?

 

[Shevek]

PoE's difficulty is weird to gauge at times though. Once you find a winning formula, the game is not that difficult, except for occasional surprises. That being said, if you do not have a tank-like character or a way to chain stun/interrupt, the game can feel rough.

Recently, Ive used neither of those strategies and do just fine.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Little is known about the long-lost Engwithan empire or its culture. Called the "Builders" by the tribes of Eir Glanfath, the Engwithans are believed to have created strange, elaborate structures over decades using shaped pillars of living adra to support the stone. Their language is barely understood by even the most well-read scholars, leaving many details of their society lost to the ages and hopelessly mired in rumor, folklore, and blatant lies.‪

Little known about the Engwithans... just their adra pillars and barely understood language. Think Josh had fun with this one, like he's trolling some of the critics of those early snippets of lore.

 

[Maculo]

Recently, Ive used neither of those strategies and do just fine.

What strategies do you use?

 

[Sensuki]

Interrupts are pretty terrible in this build IMO, I've built a few different characters going for speed/interrupt - all horrible choices compared to just going for damage. Interrupt is still largely reliant on accuracy to be any good.

 

[Shevek]

I mucked about with all kinds of parties yesterday. My fave had a fighter in plate using 1 handed style (and later guardian stance), a paladin with zealous focus (pollaxe) and chanter (pike for reach) as my front line (all hearth orlans). In the back, I had a druid, wizard and priest. I worked out fairly well just sending in my front line as a squad. I am not sure if guardian stance is worth the accuracy hit. I need to play with it more.

 

[Maculo]

How do you build your party now Sensuki? I have not kept up with your posts or videos on the BB forum recently.

I usually start with a cast of slicken or hold and then whittle down an enemy group from there. Also, I find the seals and divine marks more useful on priests than the buffs.

I mucked about with all kinds of parties yesterday. My fave had a fighter in plate using 1 handed style (and later guardian stance), a paladin with zealous focus (pollaxe) and chanter (pike for reach) as my front line (all hearth orlans). In the back, I had a druid, wizard and priest. I worked out fairly well just sending in my front line as a squad. I am not sure if guardian stance is worth the accuracy hit. I need to play with it more.

Interesting, I have not played around with the hired companions much.

 

[Sensuki]

I never use the same party, I mainly look for bugs. So it varies. Most of the time I run around with a random PC and the stock BB party just because that's the fastest way to test.

I agree about the CC and damage spells being more useful than the buffs, but that's a trend that goes across the entire game - not just Priests.

 

[Grunker]

Well, there is collision for the player characters, it's just the 3d model instead of the selection circle.?

Wait, this is still the case?

Seems your prediction was wrong when you told me it would a temporary detraction in the beta, Infinitron.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, there is collision for the player characters, it's just the 3d model instead of the selection circle.?

Wait, this is still the case?

Seems your prediction was wrong when you told me it would a temporary detraction in the beta, Infinitron.

Hmm, I don't remember saying that.

 

[Athelas]

Well, there is collision for the player characters, it's just the 3d model instead of the selection circle.?

Wait, this is still the case?

Seems your prediction was wrong when you told me it would a temporary detraction in the beta, Infinitron.

What do you mean? If it's overlapping selection circles, that has been gone for a while now...until this build, where it seems to have been done to avoid pathing issues. It only happens for out-of-combat movement though (I think).

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Seriously though, old games like Star Craft managed pathfinding just fine without cheesing by turning off unit collision. Wtf.

 

[Grunker]

Hmm, I don't remember saying that.

Sure? I recall us discussing this after I first complained about combat messiness and you said that it was probably temporary

 

[Maculo]

Seriously though, old games like Star Craft managed pathfinding just fine without cheesing by turning off unit collision. Wtf.

I am now having flashbacks of the Dragoons and Goliaths trying to walk up steps.

 

[Grunker]

What do you mean? If it's overlapping selection circles, that has been gone for a while now...until this build, where it seems to have been done to avoid pathing issues. It only happens for out-of-combat movement though (I think).

I mean that combat situations are a lot more decipherable when you can quickly look at circles than if you have to make out details on each distinct model.

 

[polo]

Seriously though, old games like Star Craft managed pathfinding just fine without cheesing by turning off unit collision. Wtf.

Im with you in this, i can't believe proffesional VG programmers can't do decent pathfinding with collision in 2015. I suposed it has something to do with the 3rd chars with 2d backgrounds... Dunno.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Any words about a possible demo?

Yeah. The actual game will be released a year from now on xbone and pc as enhanced edition.

 

[Athelas]

What do you mean? If it's overlapping selection circles, that has been gone for a while now...until this build, where it seems to have been done to avoid pathing issues. It only happens for out-of-combat movement though (I think).

I mean that combat situations are a lot more decipherable when you can quickly look at circles than if you have to make out details on each distinct model.

Sure, but what does that have to do with what I said? The selection circles don't overlap in combat, so nothing has changed in that regard.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

- Idk about Sensuki, but for me anything that draws PoE further away from BG2 is bad.
- Whenever I killed a tough party in BG2, I'd always rush to loot the dead leader, to study his loot. Then go study the mage's loot. Etc.... The whole concept is now gone.
- The area looting mechanism stinks of modern video games and is therefore immersion breaking.
- It takes away choice, however small it may be. I don't want to deal with the loot of everyone I killed, I'm only interested in that goblin shaman's loot, for instance.

As per usual the scandal is much smaller and more useful than the tabloid headline. Another post suggested the radius of the auto-loot is 3 meters, not very far in screen space in an IE game. Now, I might be the only one to remember this, I couldn't find any other posts expressing this, but, one of the bugs of the original IE games was when you kill a large number of monsters while standing in the same spot. All the bodies would pile up on top of each other and, in some cases, make the lowest body unlootable, even if it was the boss. Even if they were all lootable, there would often be hair-lines of pixel-hunting between all the bodies, something that was no good to anyone, even an uber IE purist. This, to me, looks more like a bug-fix than a philosophy.

 

[Infinitron]

if I pre-ordered this shit on steam how do I get access to the public beta men?

You don't. They didn't do a Steam Early Access, it's for Kickstarter backers and site pre-orders only.

 

[Grunker]

Sure, but what does that have to do with what I said? The selection circles don't overlap in combat, so nothing has changed in that regard.

But then there's no functional difference? I'm not sure what you're saying. If selection circles can't overlap and 3D models don't define spacing, well I'm good

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

Sure, but what does that have to do with what I said? The selection circles don't overlap in combat, so nothing has changed in that regard.

But then there's no functional difference? I'm not sure what you're saying. If selection circles can't overlap and 3D models don't define spacing, well I'm good

The selection circles overlap out of combat but don't in combat. In Sensuki's vid, he turned off auto-attack, overlapped his party's circles, and then provoked the fight.

 

[Havoc]

if I pre-ordered this shit on steam how do I get access to the public beta men?

You don't. They didn't do a Steam Early Access, it's for Kickstarter backers and site pre-orders only.

Which Backers, do you remember? I have the 65$ physical copy (+15 for shipping).

EDIT: Found it... 110$...

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

- Idk about Sensuki, but for me anything that draws PoE further away from BG2 is bad.
- Whenever I killed a tough party in BG2, I'd always rush to loot the dead leader, to study his loot. Then go study the mage's loot. Etc.... The whole concept is now gone.
- The area looting mechanism stinks of modern video games and is therefore immersion breaking.
- It takes away choice, however small it may be. I don't want to deal with the loot of everyone I killed, I'm only interested in that goblin shaman's loot, for instance.

As per usual the scandal is much smaller and more useful than the tabloid headline. Another post suggested the radius of the auto-loot is 3 meters, not very far in screen space in an IE game. Now, I might be the only one to remember this, I couldn't find any other posts expressing this, but, one of the bugs of the original IE games was when you kill a large number of monsters while standing in the same spot. All the bodies would pile up on top of each other and, in some cases, make the lowest body unlootable, even if it was the boss. Even if they were all lootable, there would often be hair-lines of pixel-hunting between all the bodies, something that was no good to anyone, even an uber IE purist. This, to me, looks more like a bug-fix than a philosophy.

The problems here are that:
- there are no separate icons for different types of loot, it's just one generic icon for a loot bag, so you'll always want to look into that lootbag, so why not look into all of them at once, right?... and the lootbags are way too big... and because they're too big, they're going to overlap a lot
- 3 meters is way too much. I'd understand if they overlapped by more than 50%, then I'd be ok to open them both at the same time, but what they offer is something entirely different... it's area looting, the omen of decline.

Basically Josh Sawyer always gets everything IE-related wrong.

 

[Jaedar]

if I pre-ordered this shit on steam how do I get access to the public beta men?

Gaben has abandoned you. Tremble and despair.