Game News Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #12: Reddit Q&A with Tim Cain

[Roguey]

FYI, cooldowns have been consistently voted down in polls on the Obsidian forums, so they'd be going against their base if they added cooldowns.

Josh Sawyer isn't going to pander to people who don't even know what they don't know
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/368523127581334461
They've also consistently voted down level scaling, but that's still been confirmed.

We don't know how the sould system will work. It's unlikely that everyone will be a mage in some degree thanks to the souls.

I don't feel like digging for sources, but Sawyer's mentioned that different classes control their souls in different ways and it can go from the "mundanely heroic" to the fantastic. They're an in-game excuse for giving non-caster classes super-powers.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh Sawyer isn't going to pander who people who don't even know what they don't know
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/368523127581334461

Perhaps not, but the additional fact that the original IE games ("the source games") didn't have cooldowns just might tip the scale in favor of not having them.

 

[J_C]

We don't know how the sould system will work. It's unlikely that everyone will be a mage in some degree thanks to the souls.

I don't feel like digging for sources, but Sawyer's mentioned that different classes control their souls in different ways and it can go from the "mundanely heroic" to the fantastic. They're an in-game excuse for giving non-caster classes super-powers.

Yes I remember that. But the way I understand it it just the reason why you have different abilites (weapon, shield, magic) and other NPCs in the world not.

 

[mindx2]

They've also consistently voted down level scaling, but that's still been confirmed.
.

Where was this confirmed?!!!! If it was that is a real downer!!!

 

[Infinitron]

They've also consistently voted down level scaling, but that's still been confirmed.
.

Where was this confirmed?!!!! If it was that is a real downer!!!

They've talked about having DA:O-style level ranged zones. Not Oblivion-style bandits-in-glass-armor scaling.

In any case, I wouldn't say that anything like that has been "confirmed" at this early stage.

 

[LibertyRansom]

Pausing after each person in your six-person party auto-attacks? Sounds tedious..

So would that be more tedious than turn-based combat?

 

[Livonya]

The real question about pausing after each action is will the pause be before or after the effect of that action takes place.

I have seen RTwP games where the auto-pause occurs BEFORE the effect of the action has taken place.

For instance you cast fire ball, the game pauses since you have completed your taks, but the fire ball hasn't hit the target yet, so what good is the pause in this case?

Game designers are stupid sometimes.

 

[Infinitron]

The real question about pausing after each action is will the pause be before or after the effect of that action takes place.

I have seen RTwP games where the auto-pause occurs BEFORE the effect of the action has taken place.

For instance you cast fire ball, the game pauses since you have completed your taks, but the fire ball hasn't hit the target yet, so what good is the pause in this case?

Game designers are stupid sometimes.

The purpose of the pause is to let you know when your mage is ready for new orders. Once the fireball is in the air, he's good to go.

 

[commie]

All well and good but will it be as good or as hard as Dead Souls?

FYI, cooldowns have been consistently voted down in polls on the Obsidian forums, so they'd be going against their base if they added cooldowns.

Yeah but listening to the 'base' rarely has beneficial effects so take that as you will. Besides, most Obsidian games to date have had cooldowns.

 

[tuluse]

All well and good but will it be as good or as hard as Dead Souls?

FYI, cooldowns have been consistently voted down in polls on the Obsidian forums, so they'd be going against their base if they added cooldowns.

Yeah but listening to the 'base' rarely has beneficial effects so take that as you will. Besides, most Obsidian games to date have had cooldowns.

Most?

Depends if you consider NWN2 expansions as separate games or not. Either way, it's pretty close to even between cooldown and no cooldowns.

 

[Jarpie]

• Joined:Jul 11, 2012
• Posts: 4

'nuff said.

 

[Infinitron]

it runs on infinity engine.

 

[Roguey]

Pausing after each person in your six-person party auto-attacks? Sounds tedious..

So would that be more tedious than turn-based combat?

If something like Dragon Age 1 or 2 paused after every attack it'd be really annoying, I guess it depends on the auto-attack speed.

 

[Shannow]

They're an in-game excuse for giving non-caster classes super-powers.

Well, so far I'd say they're an excuse to make characters powerful and "heroiC". Personally I'd prefer "my fighter got tougher and stronger (after a while super-humanly so) because his soul got stronger" than "mmy fighter got tougher and stronger (after a while super-humanly so) just because...".
In D&D, eg, high-level fighters end up being stronger than ogres, tougher than dragons, etc. I wouldn't mind a rationalization behind such developments (though they're certainly not needed).
Of course a rationalization for "my fighter can make his sword burn for 5 seconds because of his soul-magic" is also a possibility (meh).

 

[Johannes]

Pausing after each person in your six-person party auto-attacks? Sounds tedious..

So would that be more tedious than turn-based combat?

If something like Dragon Age 1 or 2 paused after every attack it'd be really annoying, I guess it depends on the auto-attack speed.

A more sensible way with an auto-attacking warrior would be to pause upon the death of the current enemy, when the task you've assigned (kill this dude) has been finished.

 

[Johannes]

Josh Sawyer isn't going to pander who people who don't even know what they don't know
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/368523127581334461

Perhaps not, but the additional fact that the original IE games ("the source games") didn't have cooldowns just might tip the scale in favor of not having them.

IE system of handling rounds was messy and plain bad, even if it didn't stop the combat overall from being interesting.

If it'd had, say, a simple 6-second cooldown to use of spells/abilities, it'd been mostly identical but much easier to convey to the player. And instead of attacks/round, just state the reload-time (cooldown) you have between each attack.

 

[Cynic]

They're an in-game excuse for giving non-caster classes super-powers.

Well, so far I'd say they're an excuse to make characters powerful and "heroiC". Personally I'd prefer "my fighter got tougher and stronger (after a while super-humanly so) because his soul got stronger" than "mmy fighter got tougher and stronger (after a while super-humanly so) just because...".
In D&D, eg, high-level fighters end up being stronger than ogres, tougher than dragons, etc. I wouldn't mind a rationalization behind such developments (though they're certainly not needed).
Of course a rationalization for "my fighter can make his sword burn for 5 seconds because of his soul-magic" is also a possibility (meh).

After a certain level in D&D isn't this primarily loot based for fighters? I mean if you get to higher levels, you have been killing things that have better treasure and since you don't gain a huge amount of benefits from gaining levels other than an increase in Hit Die, you basically power up by getting better magical stuff.

That being said, I don't know how a single fighter would take on say, a red dragon unless he had some kind of godly equipment.

 

[SCO]

This autopause stuff is only 'good' if there is a hotkey or interface option that toggles it for those boring filler combats (which are guaranteed in any game, much less a RT one)


That's my suggestion, i advise you follow obsidian.

 

[Johannes]

You don't really even need autopause if you can properly queue actions.

 

[Shannow]

That being said, I don't know how a single fighter would take on say, a red dragon unless he had some kind of godly equipment.

In NWN you take on two blue (I think) dragons at the same time. That's the "problem". In NWN 2 you have a party, but you still take on several dragons at onc. Sure, equipment matters a lot for non-caster types, but somewhere between lvl 10 and 15 a fighter will have more hp than a normal dragon and will probably be able to best one or two by himself if he's got level appropiate equipment.
I wouldn't mind if there were some ingame rationality that explained how/why your characters became heroically powerful. To me "soul power" is better than "just because". I'd still prefer to see a JA2 or M&B style system of non-superhuman characters. *shrug*

 

[Papa Môlé]

Only acceptable RTwP to me would be something that would not require pausing often but instead allow something similar to the FFXII gambit system where you yourself can set up a sort of pseudo AI for your character to execute in combat. I don't want to be pausing after every attack for a fighter and neither do I want to have to rely on the AI to choose when to trip, bash, power attack, etc.

 

[Cynic]

Only acceptable RTwP to me would be something that would not require pausing often but instead allow something similar to the FFXII gambit system where you yourself can set up a sort of pseudo AI for your character to execute in combat. I don't want to be pausing after every attack for a fighter and neither do I want to have to rely on the AI to choose when to trip, bash, power attack, etc.

FFXII had the best RTwP combat due to the game basically giving players access to a scripting language to control the fights. It was brilliant. But oh boy can you imagine Obsidian programming something like that? My prediction "script to attack the monster with the lowest HP (actually deletes your save file)"

 

[Jasede]

There's a new update or something.

.
It's pretty boring.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/319868

Off topic: Is it just me or does every single Sawyer quote make the game look less appealing? Stop thinking about cooldowns, Sawyer.