Development Info Pillars of Eternity Retrospective Panel at PAX Prime 2015

[Excidium II]

Many Obsidian devs ITT.

 

[Fry]

Many Obsidian devs ITT.

And 38 million other people.

 

[Excidium II]

And how many defending obsidian's publisher relations on the codex?

 

[Delterius]

And 38 million other people.

Nice try Adam.

 

[Excidium II]

 

[Fry]

Damn. I knew I should have cranked up my irrelevant shitpost rate a bit more.

 

[Shammy]

Location: California

Dunno how this has any relevance to anything I said.

 

[lurker3000]

Dunno how this has any relevance to anything I said.

Because you are obviously a Obsidian minion defending the company incognito.

Try to keep up here.

 

[Tigranes]

Many Obsidian devs ITT.

FFS Excidium I read the whole thread trying to find any cocks I missed but u wer lyin

 

[tdphys]

Josh Sawyer, Adam Brennecke and Brandon Adler were at PAX Prime yesterday, where they spoke about the development of Pillars of Eternity in a one hour panel .

• Brandon thinks releasing the game for Linux was not worthwhile, and in retrospect would have chosen not to support it. Only 1.5% of the player base uses Linux. Later on, it's explained that the problems with Linux support were more logistical than technical in nature. It's unclear if Obsidian will keep Linux compatibility for future projects now that they've already done the hard work, but you probably shouldn't bet on it

That's it... I'm off the fanwagon.

Seriously though, Hopefully they'll like the steam-controllers / steam-os combo enough to push on.

 

[commie]

I liked the panel, but as expected, they didn't really acknowledge any major flaws in the game

That's because there are no major flaws in the game. 10-20 Codexers having something against Sawyer and or hating the game just because it doesn't conform to what they imagined it should be ≠ major flaws.

 

[MicoSelva]

I doubt he'll ever address MCA's cut content specifically and why they decided to cut it.

Why? That is easy to figure out. Not only implementing all MCA's stuff would have taken more time, but Durance and Grieving Mother would stick out even more among the mediocrity of other companions, making them all look bad in comparison.

 

[Prime Junta]

None of the other companions had dedicated maps. MCA's GM Mind Dungeon would have required one. Cutting that is a fairly logical thing to do.

Cutting the GM/Durance backstory, which could've been told through dialogs, is a different matter though. No technical reason for that. Maybe they just felt that it got too convoluted and wordy or something.

 

[Sensuki]

• That's it... I'm off the fanwagon.

Seriously though, Hopefully they'll like the steam-controllers / steam-os combo enough to push on.

Fucking producers, 'ey.

I didn't watch the panel, just read Infinitron's notes, and not that it affects me, but I'm disappointed that they didn't mention fixing the way they make characters (whether it's how they're set up in Unity [probably?] or something) so that they don't eat up as much of the CPU time to render.

 

[CyberWhale]

Fucking producers, 'ey.

I didn't watch the panel, just read Infinitron's notes, and not that it affects me, but I'm disappointed that they didn't mention fixing the way they make characters (whether it's how they're set up in Unity [probably?] or something) so that they don't eat up as much of the CPU time to render.

Even more disappointed that they are hell-bent on using Unity instead of ditching it for a non-shitty engine like UnrealEngine.

 

[Sensuki]

Unity is fine. The prefab system is apparently pretty cumbersome though, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with the poor FPS performance.

 

[Namutree]

Status effects giving immunies. Bat shit boring encounters making up 75% of the game, boring cities with not half the sounds and population that Bg1 and BG2 had. Wizards being crappy and most spell effects being crappy and only being minor number changers. Bad pathfinding, crappy railroading (as showed at end of act 2). Bad itemization, small outdoor maps filled only with crappy boring copy pasta combat encounters.
There are more.

Wizards are NOT crappy in PoE. The game has many flaws, but this isn't one of them.

 

[Shadenuat]

Spellcasters rule in PoE, it's just that their is a boring rule.

 

[Roguey]

Even more disappointed that they are hell-bent on using Unity instead of ditching it for a non-shitty engine like UnrealEngine.

Switching engines would mean no BG2-esque content-heavy sequel.

 

[Tigranes]

None of the other companions had dedicated maps. MCA's GM Mind Dungeon would have required one. Cutting that is a fairly logical thing to do.

Cutting the GM/Durance backstory, which could've been told through dialogs, is a different matter though. No technical reason for that. Maybe they just felt that it got too convoluted and wordy or something.

We knew for months why GM/Durance were cut down. And it was an obvious, pedestrian reason.

The real problem is, GM/Durance needed extensive editing to adapt to the cutdown, but it seems there was no time to give them one. As a result they read like .dlg file textdumps of extremely interesting characters.

 

[Delbaeth]

That's it... I'm off the fanwagon.

If Obsidian drops Linux support in further games, I will drop day-one or crowdfunding support. I know that I represent nothing, but I'll do my 'job'.
I don't know if this statement is related to Larian dropping Linux promising for D:OS 2.

Maybe we will assist to another trend regarding Kickstarter.
Asking money for games which 'couldn't be released with the current video game biz'
In the beginning, every video game crowdfunding campaigns promised DRM free copies.
Then almost everyone dropped, to Steam keys exclusively, a platform where anyone can release anything.
And now devs would drop Linux support?

Not that I am interested in backing crowdfunding games for a while anyway.

 

[ArchAngel]

Wizards are NOT crappy in PoE. The game has many flaws, but this isn't one of them.

They are crappy when compared to options and effects of IE spells. YOu got a reading disability? You managed to miss twice where I said we don't need 30 different ways to apply -20 penalty to some stat?!

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Load times will be improved in the next patch, but according to Adam, it will take major refactoring to get them down to as low as he'd like, which can probably only happen in a sequel.

Is there any information about the ETA of the next patch?

 

[Bubbles]

I hope they're going to fix hot keys disappearing whenever you right click on them as well. This stuff is bush league.

 

[Namutree]

They are crappy when compared to options and effects of IE spells. YOu got a reading disability? You managed to miss twice where I said we don't need 30 different ways to apply -20 penalty to some stat?!

Not trying to be rude, but...

"Wizards being crappy and most spell effects being crappy and only being minor number changers."
You clearly stated that wizards are crappy. Not compared to IE wizards; just crappy. If you had written, "Wizards being crappy compared to IE wizards" then that would have been different. Just because you had compared PoE wizards to IE wizards previously does not mean you were comparing them in this sentence or post. I took this sentence for what is says, "Wizards being crappy AND most spell effects being crappy AND only being minor number changers". I can't read your mind and know that were comparing PoE wizards to IE wizards in this sentence or post as you did not indicate it. I'm not magic. Improve your communication skills if you want to be understood better.

BTW: I didn't miss when you mentioned the disproportional amount of spells that have stat modifying effects. It just wasn't relevant to my post or your statement that "Wizards are crappy".