Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Kem0sabe]

The resting mechanics look like they were inspired by darkest dungeon.

 

[Neanderthal]

These kinds of suggestions popped up in beta often. There were many calls to expand the wound system.

On a related note, I saw a post by them possibly making conditions tiered in a sequel (Daze -> Stun, etc). This is something that I and others suggested during beta. So, instead of a graze leading to a half duration stun, it would be a Daze instead, etc.

It's good that they are so self reflective and open to feedback. The game is already good and it keeps getting better. I can't wait till WM2 is released. It should be a blast.

Aye nice to hear they're listening, can't ask for more than that.

 

[ArchAngel]

Oh man, it is such a good feeling looking and listening to this game. Although it was a bit underwhelming when I first played it, it still had such a good atmosphere. I can't wait to play it again after the last expansion comes out, with all the improvements made in the last year.

I have spent 250 hours on Pillars and reading here a lot made me more disappointed then I should. Sure it could have been better in story and combat but as it is I'm happy the way it turned out and can't wait for part 2 and a sequel. Until Torment kicks in this is the best choice as a party based CRPG. I still think higher of Underrail but that's another story.

Trimis de pe al meu Galaxy Nexus folosind Tapatalk

I am having more fun playing BG1EE again with IWD and SCS mods.

 

[J_C]

I am having more fun playing BG1EE

BG1EE

 

[Roguey]

A preview of Josh's GDC attribute talk

If every attribute is useful to every class, then why bother with them?

Because in many cases, how you choose to play a class determines how they will interact with their attributes. You don't have to maximize Might on a wizard. If you want to focus on crowd control/affliction spells, Might isn't anywhere near as important as Int and Per. If you want to focus on direct damage spells, Might becomes much more important. If you want your wizard to go into melee range, Constitution is very important. If you want to stick to long-range spells, its importance drops. A barbarian with a high Int has a huge Carnage AoE and long Frenzy/shout durations, but a high Int doesn't make them more accurate or increase their per-hit damage.

The idea is that you decide what you want to emphasize on a character (mechanically or RP-wise) and play toward that. In most editions of D&D, if you made a barbarian with an average Strength and high Intellect, regardless of your role-playing concept, you've made a mechanically shitty barbarian. If you made a high Strength, average Intellect wizard, you've made more than a bad wizard -- you've practically made an unplayable wizard. If, practically-speaking, every fighter should have an 18+ Strength and every wizard needs a 16+ Int, is technically having the "option" to set those stats lower really a meaningful choice outside of self-limiting gimmick runs?

PoE's attributes aren't perfectly balanced, of course, but our goal was to allow people to conceive of character concepts they liked and for those concepts to be viable in practice. That said, if you want to make "traditional" characters, it shouldn't ever be bad. A weak wizard with a high Int doesn't do great damage, but they have huge AoEs and extremely long durations. A dumb barbarian with a high Strength has a small Carnage AoE and shorter effect durations, but they will still hit hard and smack the shit out of anything standing next to their target.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.paradoxplaza.com/news/Pillars-Features-Update/

New Features Coming to Pillars of Eternity for All Players
New Enhancements to Pillars of Eternity Arriving with The White March – Part 2 for every owner of Pillars of Eternity

Published: February 4, 2016 3:05:39 PM CET

IRVINE, Calif. and STOCKHOLM — Feb. 4, 2016 — Obsidian Entertainment and Paradox Interactive today revealed several forthcoming updates to Pillars of Eternity, the award-winning title backed by dedicated fans of classic role-playing games (RPGs). Later this month, alongside the release of the game’s second expansion, The White March – Part 2, Obsidian will make new updates to the gameplay and features of Pillars of Eternity available for all players. These updates will include a streamlined combat UI, updates to the in-game Stronghold and portions of the game world, a new “Story Time” game mode, and improvements to a broad variety of in-game features such as knockout injuries that change the difficulty during combat. Version “3.0” of the game will arrive as a free update to all players ofPillars of Eternity on February 16, 2016, the same day as the release of The White March – Part 2.

Full details on all upcoming changes are available in a new developer video, available here:

With the forthcoming release of the update and expansion, Obsidian and Paradox bring the exciting first chapter ofPillars of Eternity to a close. "We're committed to expanding and supporting the Pillars of Eternity experience. We have many stories to tell in this world and this has only been the first one," said Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart. Gamers who have been waiting for the complete Pillars of Eternity story can now experience the incredible narrative from start to finish, up to and including the exciting conclusion to the story of The White March.

Pillars of Eternity, created by veterans also known for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Fallout: New Vegas, and South Park: The Stick of Truth, is an RPG inspired by classic titles such as Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale,and Planescape: Torment. Created thanks to over 75,000 crowdfunding backers, Pillars of Eternity has sold over 700,000 units, was released to critical acclaim in March 2015, and is among Metacritic’s 15 Best PC Games of 2015.

For more information on Pillars of Eternity and The White March – Part 2, visit http://pillarsofeternity.com/.

PoE GOTY Edition now available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.de/Pillars-Eternity-Game-Year-PC/dp/B019I9TMSO/

 

[Sizzle]

"We're committed to expanding and supporting the Pillars of Eternity experience. We have many stories to tell in this world and this has only been the first one," said Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart.

Sooooooooo - PoE 2 (practically) confirmed.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A dumb barbarian with a high Strength has a small Carnage AoE and shorter effect durations, but they will still hit hard and smack the shit out of anything standing next to their target.

Actually, the main factors which make the Barbarian a weak class have nothing to do with his Might and Intelligence. It's the fact that the Barbarian has the second worst base Deflection (15) and second-tier base accuracy. The large health pool doesn't compensate for the fact that he will be drained, and interrupted all the time during combat.

Anyone correct me or update my data - have they made any changes to the Barbarian since October-November?

 

[badler]

Weren't they changing the casters per-encounter-spells system as well? Or did that happen in 2.3?

They are, Adam just neglected to mention it. badler, you dun goofed

Has any other character ability received similar care as Athletics and Survival?

If by "ability" you mean skill then no.

We didn't mention it on purpose since it would require a bit more explanation than we wanted to give in the video.

 

[dragonul09]

"We're committed to expanding and supporting the Pillars of Eternity experience. We have many stories to tell in this world and this has only been the first one," said Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart.

Sooooooooo - PoE 2 (practically) confirmed.

What a shame wasting time on such a bland and uninteresting universe.

 

[Jedi Exile]

What a shame wasting time on such a bland and uninteresting universe.

PoE was a safe bet so it was just generic fantasy. Now, when franchise is established, they can try something more risky like adding turn-based combat.

 

[Sizzle]

"We're committed to expanding and supporting the Pillars of Eternity experience. We have many stories to tell in this world and this has only been the first one," said Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart.

Sooooooooo - PoE 2 (practically) confirmed.

What a shame wasting time on such a bland and uninteresting universe.

There's a lot they can do with it, the setting shows promise for good storytelling. When it comes down to it, good stories can be told in any setting, it all depends on the writers and designers.

The problem with PoE was that they played it too safe - xaurips instead of kobolds, fampyres and guls, etc. - and that the part of Eora where the game was set, Dyrwood, itself clearly inspired in great part by young post-colonial countries such as the United States, was so damn dull, even though they could have easily done so much more with that premise (it rarely comes into play in the game, which is a shame).

Now, if they set it somewhere more interesting for the sequel, as they most likely will (they want to flesh out and expand this universe as much as they can), and tie in the quests more with the local politics and customs, and the PCs status as a Watcher, well, that would eliminate a lot of the drearier elements (at least as far as story goes) that PoE 1 had.

 

[Bonerbill]

What a shame wasting time on such a bland and uninteresting universe.

The universe and lore is actually pretty awesome. It's just that the execution of it was kind of bland in PoE.

 

[Roguey]

That goty box art's an eye sore, but I'm sure it'll move copies.

 

[Drudkh]

I think that the PoE "universe" and its lore are stellar, it's just there wasn't enough of it. Even though the Dragon Age universe is beyond trite, it had fun and silly npc characters like Sandal, plus the world was more alive and populated.

I'm clearly (what's called around here) a "story fag". An rpg being combat centric is fine, but that combat better be damn good.

A preview of Josh's GDC attribute talk...

I've never thought there was anything bad with his philosophy, and build tinkering in PoE has been the main attraction of the game by far to me.

 

[dragonul09]

I think that the PoE "universe" and its lore are stellar, it's just there wasn't enough of it. Even though the Dragon Age universe is beyond trite, it had fun and silly npc characters like Sandal, plus the world was more alive and populated.

I'm clearly (what's called around here) a "story fag". An rpg being combat centric is fine, but that combat better be damn good.

It wasn't enough of it? They wrote a fucking encyclopedia on lore and it felt like a bloated corpse filled with nothing but rotten and meaningless information.

I don't remember playing a game that gives you so much useless information ,with almost every conversation it seems that another country,city is created,ridiculous..

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

"meaningless information"

 

[Drudkh]

It wasn't enough of it? They wrote a fucking encyclopedia on lore and it felt like a bloated corpse filled with nothing but rotten and meaningless information

I suppose "universe" is too vague; what i meant was not so much the creation of a fictional environment that was lacking, but interesting personalities to fill that environment that are novel and surprising. Environment is just a construct for substantial storytelling to take place in, so... Not sure if you've played the beta for the new Torment, but that game has some super creative and surprising writing going on. Even the most inconsequential npc walking around the games main town usually has something interesting to say, and the world seems much more bustling and alive even though both games are using the same engine.

 

[Roguey]

More attribute preview

PoE's attributes are designed to give some of the general feeling of ability scores in 2nd/3rd edition A/D&D, as those were the editions used by the IE games. In those games, ability scores had a significant impact on combat and, from game to game, had variable impact on role-playing options. My approach was to somewhat reduce the impact of attributes on combat, make them more broadly applicable to different classes in different ways (more viable builds), and allow them to be used with greater consistency in dialogues. Yes, removing or radically altering ability scores could have solved some of the inherent conflicts between the combat and RP applications of the attributes. In the process, it would have failed the design goal of giving the general feeling of 2nd/3rd edition AD&D ability score.

One of the fundamental elements of design is dealing with constraints. You can choose to ignore individual constraints, but doing so causes other constraints to appear as a consequence. Audiences have tolerance thresholds. You can make something "objectively" better that is received incredibly negatively for a variety of reasons.

I've been playing A/D&D for 31 years and designing CRPGs with those systems for the better part of 17 years. I get how ability scores work and don't work in different contexts. The difficult part is making a system that adequately satisfies a variety of competing constraints.

 

[Shevek]

It wasn't enough of it? They wrote a fucking encyclopedia on lore and it felt like a bloated corpse filled with nothing but rotten and meaningless information

I suppose "universe" is too vague; what i meant was not so much the creation of a fictional environment that was lacking, but interesting personalities to fill that environment that are novel and surprising. Environment is just a construct for substantial storytelling to take place in, so... Not sure if you've played the beta for the new Torment, but that game has some super creative and surprising writing going on. Even the most inconsequential npc walking around the games main town usually has something interesting to say, and the world seems much more bustling and alive even though both games are using the same engine.

Ya, they really should have removed crap like the backer NPCs and put more effort into making a bit more of a living/breathing world. I love the game but I do think that's a substantial flaw.

I dont find it all that much of an issue in the game's settled areas. Those seem ok to me. The amount of non interactable npcs could stand to be slightly increased (to make it a bit more bustling) but the city areas still feel good to me.

The wilderness areas are a bit off though. BG1 (even BG2) had more going on in the wilderness. The random NPCs you could stumble on added quite a bit to your journey and did not grow stale over multiple play throughs. The wilderness areas in PoE are both a bit too small and a bit too empty by comparison.

One way to remedy this is to remove the "bounty" system and fold those encounters more naturally into the world in the sequel.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The lore felt disconnected from the game and its story, and I think Josh admitted to this as something he sees as a shortcoming. The underdeveloped Defiance Bay added to this feeling for me.

 

[Infinitron]

He admitted no such thing. He did say the companions feel disconnected from the story.

I don't see how you can say Defiance Bay is underdeveloped, any more than the rest of the game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I may be wrong, but I think he said it somewhere. I don't go around collecting quotes from developers with timestamps in files, so I don't know. As for Defiance Bay, I've written at length about how it's underdeveloped.

It's difficult to compare its level of underdevelopment to that of the whole game, because if I can compare Defiance bay to cities in the IE games, comparing the whole games is much more complex. I'm comparing Defiance Bay to IE games' cities, and also to what common sense would expect from a city in a setting which strives to be low-key and realistic in its portrayal of its own historical process.

This was written in April 2015, when after all the big talk from Josh, I was met with the actual Defiance Bay. I was rather disappointed, had much higher expectations from a historian promising a setting with an inner logic to its own history:

From the Guidebook:

This sprawling capital is the locus of trade, industry, and exploration for the entire country of Dyrwood. Nestled on the penin- sula between the Isce Úar River and the sea, Defiance Bay is perfectly positioned to receive raw materials from Loghome and export crafts around the world. While the city excels at producing ships, textiles, arms, and armor, its unique source of lucre is the trade of Glanfathan artifacts. Commerce of this sort is frowned upon and largely consigned to black-market dealings, but is also inextricable from the Dyrwoodan sense of ambition and entitlement.

It's simple. Where there is international trade, there are invariably money-changers. Where there are large-scale trade enterprises, there are invariably companies. Wherever large sums of money are needed for such an enterprise, there are always banks. That's how banks actually came to be! This was supposed to be a Renaissance-influenced setting, remember?

If Defiance Bay is a center of trade as the Guidebook claims, they are very good at concealing it. There is literally no sign of the listed industries and crafts existing anywhere within the city.

Normally there would have been a whole market district and the seats of various artisan guilds would have to be spread around the city. Not only there is no market district, but you actually have to unlock merchants by completing quests. The merchants themselves are spread out and hidden.

Obsidian have been cutting corners with Defiance Bay in a very overt manner which is very annoying to players who like city hubs in RPGs. I would have expected a criminal network prospering around the smuggling of Engwithan shit. Instead of that I've got a "noble family" which has apparently been hastily "converted" to be the sole center of illegal activity in Defiance Bay. With their manor proudly rising in the middle of the rich people's district and with everyone in the city apparently aware of the Doemenels' "shady" nature, one wonders how come they haven't been imprisoned by the "Duc" for breaking the laws and endangering the peace with the Glanfathan tribes by trading in Engwithan artifacts. Just how much of fools are Obsidian taking us for here?

Remember Cyseal as a counter-example. That was an actual big port city.

With a historian (who from time to time likes to point out that he is such) as a creative lead, and with the "more mature style" promises, I was expecting the setting to be more developed in the parts which make the societies and politics seem believable. What do I get instead -- mostly tales of 'hollowborn', communist cults, mad (as in insane) provincial nobles.

Even the obligatory "treacherous Italian city-state plotting" angle was a welcome sight when faced with Sawyer's vision of a "Renaissance-inspired setting". Duh.

I myself like the music, wish there were district-specific tracks like in BGII, but there is no equivalent to all the ambient sounds I could hear in the Athkatla docks for example, or in the slums, I can still remember some of this stuff.

The other problem I see with Defiance Bay is with the area design of the districts themselves. I think the areas are smaller than in the IE games, I guess they had technical limitations of some sort. This forces them to put all the quest-relevant places next to each other with next to no clutter and exploration areas within the districts, no off-the-path areas you can enter for no reason, everything tells you how the team was pressed for time. The market was particularly pathetic - I was actually in denial for a few seconds, thinking this must be some minor market with the real market district someplace else.

I also have a specific complaint about First Fires - all the tall and wide buildings which take up a large portion of the map should have been placed towards the upper part, to clear up space for the characters to walk around towards the bottom of the map. Right now we mostly see facades of buildings and the player (at least in my case) feels cramped and forced to walk in narrow corridors. Ondra's gift is an example of a city area design done right, and the tide in the night is a cool idea, but the area is still on the small side. I can never experience the illusion that a lot of people live in Defiance bay, like I can with Baldur's Gate and Athkatla.

I'm finally mad enough about this to post about it: The fact that friendly characters can't move past one another in anything approaching tight spaces, and that their personal space is their entire selection circle and a smidge more besides, has been driving me up the fucking wall for the entire game. These people have vanquished thousands of enemies, mastered ancient and holy magics, and they can't fucking figure out how to sidle past each other in combat?

Fuck's sake. Of course, this also affects enemies, so sometimes it can be to your advantage... not in a positive way, though.

It's especially fun when the models wig out and start vibrating rapidly from side to side as they attempt to pathfind someplace.

Yeah, the dumbest part is that they can perfectly fine bump into each other when out of combat, but when it's actually important that they don't try to take the long way, they suddenly go retard. BGII was able to do this right, and Unity can't?

[...]

Not to mention the merchants all standing around in a lifeless clump on a flat slab of marble which in no way gave the impression of a bustling marketplace.

With all the game mechanics problems, criticism of the environments/lore/setting really comes as a luxury, but I've been putting it off for too long. This game contradicts its lore on regular basis. Just one example:

From the Guidebook:

This sprawling capital is the locus of trade, industry, and exploration for the entire country of Dyrwood. Nestled on the penin- sula between the Isce Úar River and the sea, Defiance Bay is perfectly positioned to receive raw materials from Loghome and export crafts around the world. While the city excels at producing ships, textiles, arms, and armor, its unique source of lucre is the trade of Glanfathan artifacts. Commerce of this sort is frowned upon and largely consigned to black-market dealings, but is also inextricable from the Dyrwoodan sense of ambition and entitlement.

Locus of trade, my ass! The docks area instead of giving the impression of bustling with trade as described in this paragraph was doubling as a "slums" district.

[...]
It would have conveyed the impression that there is some sort of economic activity in the city, as opposed to people just standing around, waiting to dispense quests or "comment on your reputation". I also find it very weird how everyone in the gift lives in such striking poverty as you are made aware when you enter their houses. Again, this isn't a fisher village, that's supposed to be the port area of a great city. It wouldn't be the best district, but people wouldn't be scraping for survival in run-down houses.

Instead of the docks area, the poorest part of town would have to be where the people from the inner areas of the country, who make their living from supplying the city, come to spend a night before turning back towards their villages, after they've sold their supplies at the market.

Historically, and this is regardless of whether we're talking about real history or fantasy (unless the fantasy is really childish stuff, which PoE isn't supposed to be), cities always mean a surplus of food is available in order to feed people who are not occupied with farming/producing food, but instead make a living off their artisan skills. Unless there are some crafts/industry, there would be nothing to hold the people in the city - if they can't feed themselves and their families through their labor, they would just revert to farming, because everyone has to eat. The city forms around a stronghold which is also the seat of political power, and in this case - also around the harbor - so a good position for engaging in commerce. The demand for industrial produce is there - the city needs masons, architects, workers, servants, woodworkers, smiths, cloth makers, tailors, weavers, jewelers, brewers, bakers, etc., the surplus of goods would have been sold to foreign buyers, everything looks fine, except the craftsmen themselves are nowhere to be seen and neither is a market of a sufficient size.

Also, I can't begin to imagine the quest opportunities which the various guilds would have presented in their struggles for preferential treatment by the central authority...

Obsidian have done communities right in FNV for example, like this guy explains (9:19): https://youtu.be/wvwlt4FqmS0?list=PLF4UOVu5UKgiDCxJrZE7hydqaKNwd37bh&t=559 My guess is they were badly out of time, or badly mismanaged.

 

[Infinitron]

AwesomeButton Just saw your text wall. >_> Uh, what can I say? I think your expectations were set too high. And I'm also pretty sure you could pick apart FO:NV in the same way (I have). Have you played it? Neither game has Tolkien-calibre academic worldbuilding, and even Tolkien shied away from going into detail about cities, probably for good reason.

Re: "maturity", what Josh said in the Kickstarter video (at 4:12 or so) is "mature themes", and I think the quests in Defiance Bay largely fulfill that.

 

[felipepepe]

The idea is that you decide what you want to emphasize on a character (mechanically or RP-wise) and play toward that. In most editions of D&D, if you made a barbarian with an average Strength and high Intellect, regardless of your role-playing concept, you've made a mechanically shitty barbarian. If you made a high Strength, average Intellect wizard, you've made more than a bad wizard -- you've practically made an unplayable wizard. If, practically-speaking, every fighter should have an 18+ Strength and every wizard needs a 16+ Int, is technically having the "option" to set those stats lower really a meaningful choice outside of self-limiting gimmick runs?

I suppose a n00b hearing this will think "genius!", but truth is, he failed at the execution. And D&D does it better. Just compare Baldur's Gate II or NWN2 with PoE and see who has more customization options.

Let's take the wizard, for example. In PoE you can tune it to deal more damage (Might), have longer effects (int), have more health (Con), go faster (Dex), interrupt others (Per) or more defense (Res). Tune this all you want, the difference will be like +20% more X" at most.

Now, indeed a person should focus on Int when making a Wizard in D&D.

But think is, that's the most basic D&D possible. If you wanna min-max or customize your characters into crazy shit, multi-classing has always been an option. Play a Wizard/Rogue; Wizard/Cleric; Wizard/Fighter; Wizard/Fighter/Rogue, etc... then there are prestige classes, which promote even more exotic play - you DON'T need +16 Int when playing an Eldrich Knight or Arcane Trickster. Not to mention (again), the multiple schools of magic. Or the metamagic spells, like Empower Spell. Or the countless magic items that affect your attributes or have attribute requirements.

Seriously, this guy worked on NWN2, which has all this implemented, and want to say how his shitty system is so much superior at allowing customization? I mean, FFS, Arcanum's background alone offered a more diverse customization than this stupid % bonus distribution mini-game that Sawyer created:

Escaped Lunatic
Race and Gender: Human Only

You have escaped from an insane asylum and stowed away aboard the IFS Zephyr. You are extremely resistant to damage (+25% to normal, fire, electrical, and poison resistance) but you have no money, you have stolen some cheap clothing, and most people are frightened or repulsed by you (-25 reaction).

This is role-playing bro. Next time let Tim Cain design this shit. Peace.