Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

Lacrymas · Sep 1, 2017

I can't always be on top of my name game :p It means "I sacrifice" (obviously) in Latin. I thought it was appropriate for essentially a sacrificial dagger wielding priest :p

Quillon · Sep 1, 2017

It was the year-8 years ago, I named my first character in Age of Conan, Batman. I was The Dark Knight for a fortnight, some cunt reported it, they made me rename the character :cry:

Modron · Sep 1, 2017

Quillon said:
It was the year-8 years ago, I named my first character in Age of Conan, Batman. I was The Dark Knight for a fortnight, some cunt reported it, they made me rename the character

And you didn't rename your character to Bruce Wayne?

Quillon · Sep 1, 2017

Twas taken or forbidden, I was surprised Batman wasn't taken/forbidden on a 2 year old server. I named it into Bourne after that, some cunt reported this also but not for a long while. Again I renamed it but I'm too embarrassed to disclose that name even today.

---for which I had asked someone to report it so I could change the name for free. That character had 4 names for all of its existence. Twas a good assassin.

--it was an RP server->thus all this name reporting.

Lacrymas · Sep 2, 2017

Just completed Cragholdt and one-shot every encounter, including Concelhaut. Concelhaut's Crushing Doom surprised me and, since I had no idea what it did, I just Withdrew everyone he cast it on. What is there more to say? You know what every mob does by this point and it was pretty easy to anticipate how the fight will go, so I just preemptively buffed my team with the appropriate spells when the combat started. Only my Ranger got knocked out. I thought Concelhaut will do more damage. Every other encounter was pretty boring and uneventful. The reveal of what his phylactery actually is was inventive and cool. The fight was also cool and it wasn't over in 15 seconds. The game really needs a better interface, at least one which shows the debuffs you have on more clearly.

Lacrymas · Sep 3, 2017

Lol @ Defensive Mindweb. I thought Cipher couldn't get any more broken. Everyone becomes as much an immovable fortress as my paladin.

Haplo · Sep 3, 2017

Yep, some skills get pretty insane. And they complain about PoE being too balanced, bland and uninteresting...

Lacrymas · Sep 3, 2017

I'd say it's too imbalanced from a certain point onward. Being such doesn't make it more interesting, quite the contrary. The mobs' AI simply can't keep up and it becomes grindy unless you plan out your entire run to tackle content at appropriate levels and even then I don't see what can challenge you after around 11th lvl.

Iznaliu · Sep 4, 2017

Lacrymas said:
I'd say it's too imbalanced from a certain point onward. Being such doesn't make it more interesting, quite the contrary. The mobs' AI simply can't keep up and it becomes grindy unless you plan out your entire run to tackle content at appropriate levels and even then I don't see what can challenge you after around 11th lvl.

You could say the same about the unmodded IE games.

Lacrymas · Sep 4, 2017

And that somehow makes it better even if it was true?

Lacrymas · Sep 4, 2017

Ok, the Vithrack city was very cool and so well paced and unexpected.

Iznaliu · Sep 4, 2017

Lacrymas said:
Ok, the Vithrack city was very cool and so well paced and unexpected.

I found the pacing a bit off there.

Lacrymas · Sep 5, 2017

It's like I'm playing a completely different, much better game. Even just by the creativity of the visuals alone (Vithrack city, the skeletal hand that is holding the earth, the big lake). The quests finally aren't stupid, fetch-y and manual labor-y, the "find my missing child!" quest was kinda pointless, though, if their intent was to show that wichts don't attack children it's pretty much irrelevant since we stop the Hollowborn either way and that probably won't come up ever again. The encounter design is immeasurably better. Yeah, I don't think there's anything that can provide a challenge anymore, the party is basically unkillable since Defensive Mindweb entered the scene, but I don't actually mind it due to everything else making such a huge leap in quality. There's actual thought and design put into it. There may yet be hope for PoE2.

Roguey · Sep 5, 2017

Roguey said:
The real Dark Souls starts with The White March part two.

proven right once more.

TheSentinel perhaps you should read the post above mine.

Sizzle · Sep 5, 2017

Lacrymas said:
the "find my missing child!" quest was kinda pointless

Did you have Sagani in your party when doing that quest? :D

Lacrymas · Sep 5, 2017

Sagani is literally a pile of giblets and blood and has been for a while. I had a cookie in my inventory and I could lie I'd give it to the kid if she gets back to her mother.

LESS T_T · Sep 5, 2017

Kotaku editor Jason Schreier's new book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels has a chapter about PoE's development. Fortunately it's the first chapter so the publisher's free sample gives you a good look of that.

I skimmed over it but it seems pretty detailed. It also has little details about Stormlands (the canceled Xbox One exclusive action RPG), apparently it was too ambitious with all the expectations as a console launch RPG (Kinect! Cloud computing! Shared experience! Oh my. Also reminds me of the cancellation of Scalebound and multiple delays of Crackdown 3.)

[sample ends here]

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Sweat-Pixels-Triumphant-Turbulent/dp/0062651234

Quillon · Sep 5, 2017

Knowing the story; having listened to it, having watched the documentary, having read parts of or summary of it on the interwebz articles, having had numerous discussions about it... still a good read

Lacrymas · Sep 5, 2017

The first paragraph is terrible. Finding funds for art has only been a problem from the 19th century onwards, when the mass practice of the aristocracy/Church paying for it started dwindling down and finally almost disappearing entirely, forcing artists to find funds by themselves. Unless by "centuries" they mean 2, more like one and 2/3rds.

Iznaliu · Sep 6, 2017

Lacrymas said:
Finding funds for art has only been a problem from the 19th century onwards, when the mass practice of the aristocracy/Church paying for it started dwindling down and finally almost disappearing entirely

Artists still had to pitch their work to the church or the nobility; if they didn't like you, then too bad.

Fairfax · Sep 6, 2017

Information from Jason Schreier's book:

As spring turned into summer, Obsidian offered its services to almost every big publisher in gaming. The studio’s leadership talked to Ubisoft and Activision about doing big series like Might & Magic and Skylanders. They spent some time pitching (and briefly working on) their own version of Bethesda’s ill-fated Prey 2.* They even took a few of their ideas for Stormlands and transformed them into a new pitch called Fallen that was spearheaded by one of Obsidian’s co-owners, Chris Avellone.*

* Fallen would later morph into an RPG called Tyranny, which Obsidian released in November 2016.

By June 2012, many at Obsidian were sick of failing. Some had already left the studio, while others were considering calling it quits. Those who weren’t making South Park felt like they were stuck in development purgatory, moving from pitch to pitch with no real work in sight. “Nothing was going anywhere,” said Brennecke. “Even the pitches we were doing, I don’t think anyone was really into.” Feargus Urquhart started having breakfast meetings with the company’s lawyer to talk about what it might look like if they had to pull the plug, in case they couldn’t find another project by the time they’d finished South Park.

Then Josh Sawyer and Adam Brennecke came to Urquhart with an ultimatum: they wanted to launch a Kickstarter. They preferred to do it with Obsidian, but if Urquhart continued to stonewall, they’d quit, start their own company, and do it themselves. To sweeten the pot, Sawyer added that he’d be happy to keep working on pitches for publishers, as long as someone at the company started planning a Kickstarter.

Josh Sawyer, who read the Kickstarter backer forums nearly every day, would constantly read and absorb fan feedback, to the point where he scrapped an entire system they’d planned after seeing a backer’s compelling explanation for why it shouldn’t be in the game. (That system, item durability, would’ve been tedious and boring, Sawyer said.)

(IIRC that was an issue raised by Sensuki, but I don't know if the "compelling explanation" came from him)

Adam Brennecke and Josh Sawyer asked Feargus Urquhart for a meeting. Over lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, one of Urquhart’s favorite haunts, Brennecke and Sawyer explained that trying to release the game in November would be a disaster. The team needed more time. Yes, they were out of Kickstarter money and would now have to dip into Obsidian’s own funds, but for a game like Pillars of Eternity—Obsidian’s most important game to date—the extra investment felt necessary. Urquhart argued against it, but Brennecke and Sawyer were persistent. In their minds, the choice was already made.
“Feargus sat Josh and me down,” Brennecke said. “He said, ‘If this game does not come out in March, you guys are both gone after this project.’”
Recalling the pressure, Brennecke could only laugh. “OK, we’ll get it done.”

Also:

The 2nd major city stretch goal came from Feargus.
PoE's biggest problem was the story, and in mid-2013 it was way behind what everyone expected. This was mostly due to Eric Fenstermaker also being lead narrative designer on South Park and that game being a priority at the time.
Obsidian's art department switched from Softimage to Maya in 2012, and it took the artists a while to learn it. The switch to Maya and artists having no experience with isometric games meant prototypes took a long time to look right.
Adam Brennecke had an initial plan for 120 maps in PoE, but Sawyer wanted 150 and refused to give in. This was one of the reasons why the game was behind schedule in 2014 and had to be delayed.
The KS budget minus shipping and physical reward costs was around $4.5 million, and the delay cost $1.5 million of the studio's money.