Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Kruyurk]

Obsidian should think about more open ended areas for Pillars 3. Is it possible to create semi open world with 2d isometric maps without loading screens?

Factorio does this with huge maps and countless items on screen.
As I understand it, the maps in PoE are 2D "screenshots" of 3D scenes, and the characters are 3D models "sitting" on the big 2D images.
In Factorio each item on screen (player, buildings, trees, etc) is a separate 2D sprite created from a 3D model. This allows for a better game imho because having each "thing" on screen being a separate sprite allows for interacting with the environment. This would allow PoE 3 gameplay to revolve around moving barrels and creating surfaces, like a proper RPG game.

 

[ds]

The only other realistic option is Unreal which doesn't seem all that great on the loading screen front either.

A modern 2D isometric engine doesn't have to be significantly more complex than IE. There is no reason a custom engine for that can't be realistically created today when it was already done in the nineties with significantly more primitive tooling and libraries than what is available now.

 

[Roguey]

The only other realistic option is Unreal which doesn't seem all that great on the loading screen front either.

A modern 2D isometric engine doesn't have to be significantly more complex than IE. There is no reason a custom engine for that can't be realistically created today when it was already done in the nineties with significantly more primitive tooling and libraries than what is available now.

Tim did a video recently about why making your own engine is a lost cause in most cases https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/cain-on-games-tim-cains-new-youtube-channel.147060/post-8596909

 

[Atlet]

BG 3 success will enable Pillars of Eternity 3 and/or Pillars of Eternity Tactics!!!!

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I wouldn't say any of these are IE-like, mostly because they don't feature 2D maps. Not every top-down RPG is IE-like.

How can you kill something that was never a thing? For it to be a genre you'd have to find examples of games that are similar to those, and outside of the core IE games there's next to none.

 

[Lacrymas]

The first step is to drop Unity.

I would assume Unity did get better since.

Theoretically, it can be made to do whatever you want, but you need a) time, b) talent, c) motivation. All of which are severely lacking in Obsidian lately.

 

[ds]

Tim did a video recently about why making your own engine is a lost cause in most cases https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/cain-on-games-tim-cains-new-youtube-channel.147060/post-8596909

He also mentions plenty of reasons for making your own engine. His conclusion is pretty much the same excuse used to justify putting chromium into every desktop app - it's slightly cheaper and/or more convenient for the developers. But that's only true because customers accept mediocre software. Long loading times are not going to impact sales much. So yeah, every profit-maximizing business will make the software as shitty as they can get away with if it costs slightly less. But that doesn't mean that a decent custom purpose-built engine would be prohibitively more expensive. Pre-made engines optimize for getting something running yes, but that comes at the expense for making it run well - which of course doesn't matter if you can ship your half-optimized game.

And the calculation very much depends on the type of game. If you want to make a run of the mill 3D action game then, sure, you need to reinvent the wheel and do all the things Unity and UE do. The same is not true if you can limit your scope. If your graphics demands aren't pushing the edge you can get 99% of the performance with much simpler algorithms. If you can build your engine around 2D isometric areas you don't need complex systems to make a huge 3D world performant. Pasting a handful of 3D characters on top of that is almost trivial to make perform well if you are not working around a million abstractions that were designed for tons of features you don't need. Today's CPUs and GPUs are ridiculously fast. If you don't need multiplayer you don't need to know how your OS does networking at all. Going hur dur lets use Unity and Unreal for everything is simply retarded.

Again, we know that custom engines are possible because we have decades of custom engines being made - and used in games with much shorter development times than today's monstrosities.

 

[Roguey]

Again, we know that custom engines are possible because we have decades of custom engines being made - and used in games with much shorter development times than today's monstrosities.

Prominent pseudo-iso RPGs made in the past decade that use their own engine:
Larian games (good engine, but according to glass door, it's an utter pain to work with)
Underrail (XNA)

Prominent pseudo-iso RPGs made in the last decade that use Unity:
Shadowrun Returns, Blackguards, Wastelands, Pillars of Eternities, Pathfinders, Atom, Disco Elysium, Solasta, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, Black Geyser, Caves of Lore

Virtually everyone in the world except one Belgian and one Serbian have decided "Yeah, we're using Unity."

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

PoE is not terrible or anything, but it has 2 major problems, imo:

1. Everything is overwritten. The plot itself is good (mostly), the lore is good, the base dialogue is good, but whenever 2 sentences would do, they write 5-6. So you end up with a lot of overwritten filter to read through that adds nothing but annoyance. If they pared every dialogue down to essential parts, it would significantly improve.

2. The combat, in a dumb nod to powergamers/munchkins, is horrible. It has many of the same problems as Kingmaker, they basically look at BG games, which had excellent combat, and think oh it's too easy for powergamers, let's make it a lot more challenging. And almost every way in which they make it challenging destroys fun. Old school RPGs had a nice organization to them, tanks in front, healers and mages behind, everything was smooth and fun.The new gen iso games (with some exceptions) have tons of mobs that ignore the frontline and have ways of getting to the backline. And all mobs in PoE can cc, many don't even need to take a dedicated action to CC, they just fucking CC out of their ass by being near you. So the end result is a fucking messy blob of shit in every fight, with enemies all over your backline, tanks next to useless, and the entire game coming down to CC or be CC'ed. This is not fun at all.

 

[warralek]

The combat, in a dumb nod to powergamers/munchkins, is horrible. It has many of the same problems as Kingmaker, they basically look at BG games, which had excellent combat, and think oh it's too easy for powergamers, let's make it a lot more challenging. And almost every way in which they make it challenging destroys fun. Old school RPGs had a nice organization to them, tanks in front, healers and mages behind, everything was smooth and fun.The new gen iso games (with some exceptions) have tons of mobs that ignore the frontline and have ways of getting to the backline. And all mobs in PoE can cc, many don't even need to take a dedicated action to CC, they just fucking CC out of their ass by being near you. So the end result is a fucking messy blob of shit in every fight, with enemies all over your backline, tanks next to useless, and the entire game coming down to CC or be CC'ed. This is not fun at all.

I personally also like "holy trinity" approach but from what I could read on Obsidian forums and some Discord PoE servers a lot of folks liked the move from holy trinity. If anyone ask for "taunt" skill you get told to go play mmo. I managed to finish PoE1 on PoTD + Expert mod with "holy trinity" set up back in the day but it was a lot of work, positioning plus had to put most of the companions in at least heavy armor so mobs don't just charge directly for them.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, I am doing that now, PotD with Expert, same shit, got priests/mages in heavy armor, positioning like a bitch, and it's still not fun a lot of times. Some fights feel like retard mode (Adra Dragon, Ondrite monks in WM2).

The issue is not taunt, I never used taunts in BG games (don't think there were any), but older DnD RPGs had some differentiation, organization, logic to them. Tank had a role (to soak up damage up front), healer had a role, DPS had a role. In these new games, since tanks are halfway useless, everything just becomes DPS, so you lose nuance, and fights turn from organized affairs into clusterfuck balls of shit.

I would also argue this is not realistic at all. People pushing this shit approach claim, well in real life, why would enemies focus your tanks instead of your backline? But the thing is, why would they not focus tanks which are close to them, and stick their neck out to wade into combat deep in enemy group? In real combat, it was quite common for both sides to focus on enemy frontlines, hence why they were called frontlines.

 

[Namutree]

PoE is not terrible or anything, but it has 2 major problems, imo:

1. Everything is overwritten. The plot itself is good (mostly), the lore is good, the base dialogue is good, but whenever 2 sentences would do, they write 5-6. So you end up with a lot of overwritten filter to read through that adds nothing but annoyance. If they pared every dialogue down to essential parts, it would significantly improve.

2. The combat, in a dumb nod to powergamers/munchkins, is horrible. It has many of the same problems as Kingmaker, they basically look at BG games, which had excellent combat, and think oh it's too easy for powergamers, let's make it a lot more challenging. And almost every way in which they make it challenging destroys fun. Old school RPGs had a nice organization to them, tanks in front, healers and mages behind, everything was smooth and fun.The new gen iso games (with some exceptions) have tons of mobs that ignore the frontline and have ways of getting to the backline. And all mobs in PoE can cc, many don't even need to take a dedicated action to CC, they just fucking CC out of their ass by being near you. So the end result is a fucking messy blob of shit in every fight, with enemies all over your backline, tanks next to useless, and the entire game coming down to CC or be CC'ed. This is not fun at all.

I've played a good amount of Pillars and tanks are very useful and it's never hard to keep your glass canons safe. Most enemies that have a gimmick to reach them are weak and even if they're not, they can usually only use that trick once in a fight, so if your glass canons have even a single escape skill, it's incredibly easy to get them to safety for the rest of the fight.

 

[Lacrymas]

The holy trinity is an MMO-only phenomenon, it doesn't make sense to talk about it in any other context.

 

[Alienman]

I played with warriors in front way before playing any MMOs. It just comes naturally. Never had a mage tank etc. When low level he dies from a mosquito.

 

[Lacrymas]

Considering there are solo mage runs of the BGs, I'd say that's just newbie ignorance of the game's mechanics. On top of that, the concept of tanking isn't particularly esoteric, a dedicated in-combat healer is.

 

[Orud]

Obsidian should think about more open ended areas for Pillars 3. Is it possible to create semi open world with 2d isometric maps without loading screens?

There is no technical limitation to do this. Modern Unity does not prevent you from doing this.

The only other realistic option is Unreal which doesn't seem all that great on the loading screen front either.

Small annotation, but it's Unreal 5.x specifically that you need for seamless open worlds. My experiences with Unreal 4.x and <Unreal 4 show significant hurdles to make it work (but it is possible). It was even one of the prominent displayed features for Unreal 5.x.

Again, we know that custom engines are possible because we have decades of custom engines being made - and used in games with much shorter development times than today's monstrosities.

I've said this before in other threads where people were complaining about more and more developers switching to Unreal. The only real custom engines left are ones with decades of custom tooling behind them, from studio's that are basically spitting out small reskins of their games.

I've went through the list, almost every new project of any studio is using either Unreal or Unity. Why reinvent the wheel, with the pains that come from reinventing it, and re-train people that come from college/hobbies on your custom tooling?

 

[Nikanuur]

PoE is not terrible or anything, but it has 2 major problems, imo:

1. Everything is overwritten. The plot itself is good (mostly), the lore is good, the base dialogue is good, but whenever 2 sentences would do, they write 5-6. So you end up with a lot of overwritten filter to read through that adds nothing but annoyance. If they pared every dialogue down to essential parts, it would significantly improve.

2. The combat, in a dumb nod to powergamers/munchkins, is horrible. It has many of the same problems as Kingmaker, they basically look at BG games, which had excellent combat, and think oh it's too easy for powergamers, let's make it a lot more challenging. And almost every way in which they make it challenging destroys fun. Old school RPGs had a nice organization to them, tanks in front, healers and mages behind, everything was smooth and fun.The new gen iso games (with some exceptions) have tons of mobs that ignore the frontline and have ways of getting to the backline. And all mobs in PoE can cc, many don't even need to take a dedicated action to CC, they just fucking CC out of their ass by being near you. So the end result is a fucking messy blob of shit in every fight, with enemies all over your backline, tanks next to useless, and the entire game coming down to CC or be CC'ed. This is not fun at all.

In all honesty, I must agree with the item n. 1 even though I find that (sometimes) a good thing in RPGs myself.
The item n. 2 seems rather incorrect.
a. It's not a *bad* combat AI where an enemy tries to target your backline all the while the PCs have much more similar means to stop such attempts. It's actually what RPGs strive for in general.
b. The beginning of the game tends to be rather inconsistent in PC-to-Enemy stats ratio. I give you that. But that lasts only for like 2 hours or so. So, yeah every other mob has got some de-buffing attack. However, if the PC is on the same or higher level, it's rarely a concern because a mob rarely even properly hits, much less conveys added effects with such grazes--if the PC's gear is at least at an okay level or better. Also, PCs have way more skills in that regard. And if the mob is higher at levels, well, what do you expect? Lvl 3 PC "I kinda know how to swing in three directions and I've learned how to throw a javelin the other day." beating fighters from a renown goblin tribe who have fought in plethora of skirmishes, using guerilla and team tactics, gobbling up potions for dinner for many years?
c. Tanks are not useless. Paying the price of engagement-break works, interrupts, action speed, assessing enemy assasins and glass-cannons and targeting them as soon as possible works, PC's CC work, PC's debuffs work, Mages casting Iron Skins, Priests casting Inspirations, Barbarians shouting -5 debuffs, etc., all that works. You are entitled to not like what PoE combat looks like, but the above seen accussations of the combat mechanics seem ignorant at best.

 

[Nikanuur]

...and used in games with much shorter development times than today's monstrosities.

This, together with the race towards graphical near-realism, is the crux of gameplay leaving the town ever so often.
More heart isn't achievable by adding content galore! But that's nothing new in the world in general for the last several millennia...

 

[almondblight]

Obsidian should think about more open ended areas for Pillars 3. Is it possible to create semi open world with 2d isometric maps without loading screens?

Separate maps are good for giving a sense of scale. Open worlds are often bad because either everything seems like it's next door to everything else, or you have these huge empty areas with nothing in them in between actual locations.

An Exile or Fallout style travel screen also works well if you want to have more openness and exploration.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Considering Pillars killed IE-like RPGs (with the exception of Black Geyser I guess), it's no surprise some people are still butthurt about it.

You lived inside your cello long enough to miss pathfinder huh?

 

[Grunker]

Obsidian should think about more open ended areas for Pillars 3. Is it possible to create semi open world with 2d isometric maps without loading screens?

Separate maps are good for giving a sense of scale. Open worlds are often bad because either everything seems like it's next door to everything else, or you have these huge empty areas with nothing in them in between actual locations.

An Exile or Fallout style travel screen also works well if you want to have more openness and exploration.

This. Open worlds always somehow feel smaller.

 

[Orud]

Separate maps are good for giving a sense of scale. Open worlds are often bad because either everything seems like it's next door to everything else, or you have these huge empty areas with nothing in them in between actual locations.

An Exile or Fallout style travel screen also works well if you want to have more openness and exploration.

This. Open worlds always somehow feel smaller.

I would've agreed until I played Daggerfall. My answer would now be that most open-worlds simply aren't designed to feel large. Large means a lot of empty space you need to fill, and most studio's simply don't want to tackle that problem (or regard it as unresolvable).

 

[duskvile]

Separate maps are good for giving a sense of scale. Open worlds are often bad because either everything seems like it's next door to everything else, or you have these huge empty areas with nothing in them in between actual locations.

No, I'm not saying ditching separated maps, but make them more open ended. One thing in Pillars which is quite restrictive is: even small shack house must require loading screen. Areas would be much more reactive if you could have interior environment connected with exterior one. Player doesn't want to spend time in loading screens. He wants to be in the game world and play it.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's Unity for you. Afaik, it's very difficult to have interior areas connected to exterior ones. To the point that it's not worth even trying to do it.

 

[duskvile]

That's Unity for you. Afaik, it's very difficult to have interior areas connected to exterior ones. To the point that it's not worth even trying to do it.

I'm certain that Pillars 3 with have the technical framework dealing with this issue.