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

[Tytus]

I want mah muscle wizard.

So deliciously ironic.

But wasn't he an elf or something that got magically turned into a human? So this body isn't what he devloped himself but was forced upon him?

 

[Sensuki]

I've played beta for a few hours and it seems underwhelming so far. Maybe this is because I expected too much from PoE. I don't like the graphics - it looks cheap and uninspiring

Yeah I have to say, 2D backgrounds are great but I think that the Environment Artists for Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale did better maps.

April Giron's styling of the Backer Inn is ... weird, it really jumps out at you. Like, it's good quality but it's got a noticeably more modern art styling. Like, if you were doing an interior for Diablo 3, but then rendered it as a 2D image and then had it painted over - this is what it would look like, or something.

Yeah those portraits are really ugly. What the hell were they smoking? But I guess they are in just for the beta.

Believe it or not those are final. This is one area of the game where they didn't police the art style enough.

Kaz set a pretty good example for the early portraits with his renditions of Eder and Pallegina, those have since been "butchered" and we have conflicting art styles.

 

[Frusciante]

If I counted correctly the beta has 13 maps (3 wilderness, 2 dungeons, 1 cave and 7 interior maps). So about 1/12th of the total maps in the final game.

Since the beta takes about 3-5 hours to complete with the main story quests removed. Would 50-60 hours for the total game be a plausible estimation?

Ofcourse its very hard to compare maps etc but it should be in the range of 50+ hours.

 

[Sensuki]

In the game files it says 14 Maps I think, did you miss one?

 

[Shadenuat]

Since we're on the subject, what do PER's Interrupt and RES's Concentration actually do??

Every time you get hit during a special action like reloading a gun or casting spell there's a chance your action gets cancelled if you don't pass Concentration. Perception increases that.
I rolled a barb with 2 fast weapons and 18 Perception and moderate Int, he does that on rare occasion, but nothing special. There is an issue with timing attacks and frames in animation, some spells are cast instantly too, so...

I also noticed that getting hit can reset your cooldown after actions (that is modified by armor you're wearing).

 

[Frusciante]

In the game files it says 14 Maps I think, did you miss one?

YEs probably another interior map. One of the three wilderness areas should be the village area by the way.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

That along with some better audio and visual hit feedback and proper spacing and better character fidelity/crispness on screen should help a bunch. One other thing I am not sure is possible or not to address but which may be causing part of the problem is the angle of the overhead camera, it seems to be a more shallow angle than in previous IE games.

They used the lower camera for the geometry, probably not realizing it would have this effect on combat.

yeah.

I have no idea if it is at all possible but maybe being able to rotate the camera might help, but like I said I am not sure if that is realistic or not.

One thing that plagues many modern games is messing with the camera all the time, I would prefer a solution that did not require or allow for things like camera rotation and change in viewing angle over solutions that allow/require more camera tinkering. But if more camera tinkering is the best that could be done, then I would prefer that over nothing.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

D&D Bless is +1 to hit. That's a 5% increase chance to hit.

Only in the most abstract sense. +1 to hit could theoretically double your hit chances.

(what roshan said)

I am not 100% sure but bless may also give a +1 to saving throws

 

[J_C]

All you fuckers whining about cheap and boring graphics should shut up. We wanted IE style graphics, we got IE style graphics. Don't tell me that the IE style was not like this. It was like PoE, just more primitive. The game looks grorious.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

"Might" really means "Soul Power" in this setting, they're just too scared to actually write that on the attribute screen.

Nah, it means "Ego".

 

[Crooked Bee]

By the way, since (as Sawyer reminds us over at SA) this game doesn't have rounds, what is your attack speed actually influenced by? I can't seem to recall any of the attributes having any impact on that (too lazy to start the game to check). Is it solely weapon-dependent?

 

[Abu Antar]

By the way, since (as Sawyer reminds us over at SA) this game doesn't have rounds, what is your attack speed actually influenced by? I can't seem to recall any of the attributes having any impact on that (too lazy to start the game to check). Is it solely weapon-dependent?

I think so, and armor slowing you down.

 

[tuluse]

By the way, since (as Sawyer reminds us over at SA) this game doesn't have rounds, what is your attack speed actually influenced by? I can't seem to recall any of the attributes having any impact on that (too lazy to start the game to check). Is it solely weapon-dependent?

Weapon and armor.

Josh doesn't want attributes affecting how many things you can do because doing more things is always the most useful thing to have.

 

[Athelas]

The game is a technical mess, but I am enjoying myself. Nothing like being pounced on by a dozen feral lions and dying in the ensuing clusterfuck.

Dialogue is great. Perception sometimes alters descriptive text of NPC's you talk to, since you 'perceive' things about them.

The shorter durations of spells like Web (for BALANCE!!!111) actually make it very interesting for me. You have to act fast to take advantage of status ailments.

 

[Shadenuat]

Lol my barb with 2 stilettos rapes stuff. 3 encounters, 1500 damage in party, second place is rogue with arbalest for 1000, then cleric with gun for about the same.
Barb wears light leather armor. Highest crit 38 dmg, highest crit in party - 94 (cleric with a rifle, obviously).

I guess that ignoring 5 DR on stilettos works very well.

 

[Jedi Exile]

All you fuckers whining about cheap and boring graphics should shut up. We wanted IE style graphics, we got IE style graphics. Don't tell me that the IE style was not like this. It was like PoE, just more primitive. The game looks grorious.

Go to hell. First, I didn't want that - I wanted an isometric game inspired by IE games, not an exact copy. Second, Icewind Dale actually looked better than PoE, it had some really beautiful maps (and Planescape: Torment had an amazing art direction). This game lacks it so far. I won't say PoE is ugly, but it is certainly not up to Icewind Dale quality.

 

[Black]

The worst thing for me now are kinesthetics and combat feedback. I have no idea why I win or lose and what is happening in combat. I don't even know who is who on the screen when it comes to human enemies. Is the guy in robe a wiz and gonna cast something on me? Nope he gets a mace and tries to smack my rogue for some reason... is a dude with 2 daggers a fighter or a rogue? Oh it's a guy in leather armor and antlers-helmet who just paralyzed my whole party for 1 minute straight and I am dying. What paralyzed me though? Oh these little green sparkles and 5x15 pixels little green label on a portrait... wait I thought it was my Druid's stamina regeneration AoE??

#joysofpartyvspartyrtwpcombat

 

[Athelas]

All you fuckers whining about cheap and boring graphics should shut up. We wanted IE style graphics, we got IE style graphics. Don't tell me that the IE style was not like this. It was like PoE, just more primitive. The game looks grorious.

Go to hell. First, I didn't want that - I wanted an isometric game inspired by IE games, not an exact copy. Second, Icewind Dale actually looked better than PoE, it had some really beautiful maps (and Planescape: Torment had an amazing art direction). This game lacks it so far. I won't say PoE is ugly, but it is certainly not up to Icewind Dale quality.

This game has more pressing issues to deal with than graphics.

Although I think the beta area's are the first thing they made, so they might not be representative of the whole game (I don't get the complaints, but oh well).

 

[Maculo]

Shadenuat what difficulty did you play on? I recently tried path of the damned with my barbarian and it did go smoothly. I was about to write the barbarian off, but your post about the stilettos caught my interest

 

[Infinitron]

INT is useful for buffs and heals so it's Cleric's favorite stat. But if you only want to spam magic missiles, it's useless. And it's actually easier sometimes to land a smaller fireball than a badass big whole screen one.

I don't know if lower difficulties remove friendly fire, but that's definitely another good reason not to pump Int on a damage-focussed spellcaster.

Perhaps you forgot this, but a few months ago Josh was talking about letting you reduce the AoE of every spell if you want (up to a certain minimum, of course).

 

[Sensuki]

Here's an explanation by Josh on the recovery times for weapons, seems a bit wackT at first glance

The base recovery time of any action is currently the same as the animation time used to execute it. Shields, one-handed weapons wielded with nothing in the off-hand, and two-handed weapons break this rule (adding an additional 50% recovery). Some weapons are "fast" (e.g. stilettos, daggers, rapiers, clubs) and have a 20 frame animation, so they recover more quickly. The fastest recovery time you'll see is with a combo like rapier + stiletto and no armor. Single-handed weapons with nothing in the off-hand recover more slowly than dual-wielded weapons but have +15 Accuracy.

Also a post on Fighter abilities and one of the benefits of the new pathfinding system

Fighters get some higher level abilities but I can't remember what they're currently getting at 6th/7th/8th level in the BB. Crippling Guard is a good one because if the fighter's DA hits the target is immediately Hobbled. Fighters also have an ability like the 4E warden's Thorn Strike that pulls a somewhat distant enemy back toward them and immediately Engages.

The new pathing system makes Engagement much more strict and "snappy", so hopefully that will solve many of the problems.

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

I've played beta for a few hours and it seems underwhelming so far. Maybe this is because I expected too much from PoE. I don't like the graphics - it looks cheap and uninspiring (though there are some nice effects like falling leaves and butterflies). Combat is usual IE clusterfuck. Would be better if it was turn-based, really. It is difficult to judge other things like writing, quest design, exploration etc. because this is still beta and it is also horribly bugged. Time will tell.

Yeah those portraits are really ugly. What the hell were they smoking? But I guess they are in just for the beta.

PoE, as it stands, has several issues that I think can be legitimately complained about. The graphics isn't one of them. The game is absolutely gorgeous. I don't see what is cheap about the graphics and uninspiring about it. I actually can't imagine the graphics of a game billed as a "spiritual successor to the IE games" looking better than PoE does, even in its current bugged-out state.

But yeah, some of those portraits are fugly though.

 

[J_C]

All you fuckers whining about cheap and boring graphics should shut up. We wanted IE style graphics, we got IE style graphics. Don't tell me that the IE style was not like this. It was like PoE, just more primitive. The game looks grorious.

Go to hell. First, I didn't want that - I wanted an isometric game inspired by IE games, not an exact copy. Second, Icewind Dale actually looked better than PoE, it had some really beautiful maps (and Planescape: Torment had an amazing art direction). This game lacks it so far. I won't say PoE is ugly, but it is certainly not up to Icewind Dale quality.

Yet you use a PoE character as your avatar. And the ugliest one to begin with.

 

[Shadenuat]

Shadenuat what difficulty did you play on? I recently tried path of the damned with my barbarian and it did go smoothly. I was about to write the barbarian off, but your post about the stilettos caught my interest

I play on Hard, Expert mode /off.

 

[Crispy]

Is stealth something that is always infallible? Seeing those circles that are apparently completely unaffected by lack of LOS is p. OP. No element of surprise at all.