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

[tuluse]

Creating a priest in the new patch, I get "recommended stats." How accurate are these? And why are they there? Why recommend attributes in a game where everything is supposed to be useful?

Without having opened it, my guess would be to make archetypal characters.

Okay, I'm not joking when I say that the overlay icons are ugly and SO unnecessary. I'm talking about the icons appearing over doors and transition zones etc. I've been complaining since the beginning about this. Am I the only sane person playing this?

I'm with you 100%. I'm really hoping they're place holders because the highlights aren't done yet.

 

[Sensuki]

They did actually make it in time for the weekend. I'll get right into it then.

 

[tuluse]

I played a bit.

Is it just me or do the close ups look even worse now?

Level up screen sucks, a hundred feats talents to look through and they in a list and my scroll wheel doesn't work.

Haven't done anything else.

 

[Sensuki]

Wtf at the changes to the skill system, why?

 

[Sensuki]

Icewind Dale style loading screens

 

[Sensuki]

LOL HAHAH - have to record this bug

 

[Sensuki]

The Grieving Mother

 

[Bester]

Encountered 4 bugs in the first two minutes. It's like they're not even checking what their code produces.
1- death screen button "quit" doesn't actually allow quitting
2- character circles are jerking when you're trying to target someone with a small area spell and hover over a few characters
3- priest's animation gets stuck in stealth mode (can't remember the exact sequence that caused it)
4- "fan of flames" causes giant red squares flying from the mage's hand instead of flame particles

I don't know, maybe I need to check integrity or something, but it's most likely they're just plain bugs.

 

[Sensuki]

Bugs Bugs Bugs, lots of new bugs.

e: yeah Bester, I've been playing for like 5 minutes, got about 10-12 new bugs. Some of them are very bad. Recording them all now.

 

[Sensuki]

They added in Health healing via talents talk about bending to the will of the unwashed masses

 

[Sensuki]

Jesus Christ, give me v278 again please, this is even more unplayable than the last build - at least they fixed the easy difficulty though.

Beetle placement in the Dyrford Crossing is much better now too.

 

[Athelas]

Known Issues
(...)
The Water Wheel in Dyrford Village seems to be rotating in the wrong direction - Thread Link

 

[Sensuki]

Do you guys like moving webs?

 

[Jaedar]

Downloaded new beta, created character, levelled it up. Tried to transition to a new level -> crash.

Guess I'll be back after next patch.

 

[Infinitron]

Skills tied to talents, eh? That's an interesting choice. Some people will cry dumbing down, but in a game with only five skills and a party with six members, that's one way of adding tradeoffs into the system. Now when you choose to improve a skill, you need to weigh that against all the other talents you could have chosen, not just against other skills (which was somewhat of a false tradeoff because your other party members could just take the other skills).

 

[Athelas]

Skills tied to talents, eh? That's an interesting choice. Some people will cry dumbing down, but in a game with only five skills and a party with six members, that's one way of adding tradeoffs into the system. Now when you choose to improve a skill, you need to weigh that against all the other talents you could have chosen, not just against other skills (which was a false tradeoff because your other party members could just take the other skills).

The skills are supposed to be useful for all characters. They were getting there (Lore still needed work), so I don't see what the benefit is of this new system.

Do you guys like moving webs?

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

 

[Infinitron]

Skills tied to talents, eh? That's an interesting choice. Some people will cry dumbing down, but in a game with only five skills and a party with six members, that's one way of adding tradeoffs into the system. Now when you choose to improve a skill, you need to weigh that against all the other talents you could have chosen, not just against other skills (which was a false tradeoff because your other party members could just take the other skills).

The skills are supposed to be useful for all characters. They were getting there (Lore still needed work), so I don't see what the benefit is of this new system.

Their systemic benefits, you mean? Dunno, maybe Obsidian decided they were too weaksauce all around to be worth having a spread of skills one on character rather than each character in the party specializing in a different skill, so they decided to go in a different direction.

Can someobody make a list of the Talents that increase skills? Maybe the Talents can be useful for all characters too.

 

[Sensuki]

All of them increase skills.

It's bad in that it's pretty popamole and decreases choice. It's good in a way because the triangular leveling up of skills was pretty retarded.

I'll give it a test, but I'm not sure it will be a popular experiment.

It's like with attributes and skills (and Health) they're suddenly admitting their failures or something :/

 

[Infinitron]

All of them increase skills.

Ah, that's interesting. So rather than being a framework of choices with systemic benefits, the skills themselves have become the benefit of the talents.

Are there Talents that ONLY increase skills, or is it always a side effect?

It's like with attributes and skills (and Health) they're suddenly admitting their failures or something :/

NIPSEN WAS RIGHT! NIPSEN WAS RIGHT!

 

[Sensuki]

Recovery time no longer paused while moving

VICTORY

 

[Sensuki]

Are there Talents that ONLY increase skills, or is it always a side effect?

No there are talents that only increase skills, they give +4 to the skill.

 

[Athelas]

Their systemic benefits, you mean? Dunno, maybe Obsidian decided they were too weaksauce all around to be worth having a spread of skills one on character rather than each character in the party specializing in a different skill, so they decided to go in a different direction.

Some skills logically 'only' have a systematic benefit to begin with (stealth). Some scripted interactions check the skills of the entire party (crossing some canyon or something). So while somewhat banal, I think it worked fine with the traditional progression system.

Interestingly enough, all these new changes seem very much at odds with Sawyer Design 101. Mixing skills in with combat talents, degenerate xp sources, etc. Someone at Obsidian must be coming down on him hard.

 

[Sensuki]

I think they're bad tbh. Lock and Trap XP is bullshit. Don't really care about Bestiary XP or whatever tbh, but it was fine without it.

Healing health is another thing. I think if they go back on many of their original design decisions it will only hurt the game, not make it better - because they've already designed the whole game around these decisions, and changing them could/will compromise the design.

 

[Infinitron]

Their systemic benefits, you mean? Dunno, maybe Obsidian decided they were too weaksauce all around to be worth having a spread of skills one on character rather than each character in the party specializing in a different skill, so they decided to go in a different direction.

Some skills logically 'only' have a systematic benefit to begin with (stealth). Some scripted interactions check the skills of the entire party (crossing some canyon or something). So while somewhat banal, I think the older system was much better.

Well, if anything, this extra layer of indirection over the skills might shut up the people who wouldn't stop whining "OMG GIVE THE ENTIRE PARTY MAX STEALTH AND SKIP ALL COMBAT WTF IS THIS". Now to do that, you have to consciously choose Talents that might conflict with your characters' archetypes, at the expense of Talents that fit better.

So, for example, before this, people like felipepepe complained about being able to give Barbarians stealth and lockpicking, with a sense that those were choices that were completely disconnected from their character's archetype. Now to do that they'll have to choose Talents with names like "Skillful Artificer" or "Cunning Sneak", instead of Talents with names like "Primal Rage" or "Mighty Blow". There's less of a sense of "OMG WHAT IS THIS THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE", even though you still have the choice (though somewhat diminished).

 

[Sensuki]

How is that a good thing though? That's like a bandaid over a bullethole.

Now what happens is you design your character around their combat build (and pick Talents associated with that and just ignore skills) and just accept whatever skills you end up with. You *could* design your character around skills, but it would force you to pick certain things - you'll be picking backgrounds based on +skills, picking talents based on +skills. Given the choice I think people who play on harder difficulties will build around combat, and sacrifice skills. People who play on easier difficulties might be able to RP around skills.

This is kinda how Wasteland 2 is with Supreme Jerk difficulty, you design around combat and sacrifice skill choice - okay whatever for Wasteland 2, but that's not how I want Pillars of Eternity to be.