Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

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

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Interestingly, we already have 3-4 different uses for the AI system. Seems that it's not completely useless after all :)

You can hypothesize all kinds of things regarding the AI customization, but whether they will be useful or possible to be used in such a way is a different matter. They using potions will be extremely clunky and unreliable for a variety of reasons - are they going to stop doing the previous action to drink a potion? I don't need to explain how that can go haywire and fuck with your tactics. Are they going to finish their action and drink the potion then? They can be dead by then. It's because of how recovery (and casting time) works in 2, you can't have a recovery time of less than a nanosecond like you can in 1, so that will always be a problem with the AI settings.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Is this new info?

Brandon Adler is Game Director on Deadfire DLC since January 2018!
So they changed game director while they're in development?

Sawyer said multiple times that he wouldn't be the lead on DF's DLCs.

He's still Obsidian's Design Director, so he'll have some say on those DLCs, but he won't be the lead designer.
yeah but PoE2 hasn't even released and the beta is still going.

Sure, but there's lots of stuff in pre-production they could already be starting on: music, design, writing, concept art, animations, etc.

Most of that is already done for PoE2's base game (it's coming out in less than two months). Right now the development of DF mostly consists of Q&A, fine-tuning, balancing and programming.

The interesting part is Badler is the GD for DLCs, wasn't he the only producer on PoE1? Is he a designer too? And he wasn't even involved with Deadfire(base game) AFAIK...

Moar previews:

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2018/02/14/pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire-pillaging-the-high-crpgs
http://worthplaying.com/article/2018/2/14/previews/107237/
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.mcvuk.com/development/h...dfunded-pillars-of-eternity-ii-safely-to-port

How Obsidian sailed crowdfunded Pillars of Eternity II safely to port
Obsidian’s much-awaited sequel to 2015’s Pillars of Eternity is launching on April 3rd. We sit down with producer Josh Sawyer to discuss Deadfire’s crowdfunding, community feedback, the new ship features and the potential to iterate on the IP

23 hours. That’s all it took for Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire to be crowdfunded on Fig.

Back in 2012, Pillars of Eternity broke records, becoming the highest funded video game at the time with over 77k backers raising more than $4m on Kickstarter.

For the sequel, not only did Obsidian manage to reach the $1.1m goal in less than 23h, but the campaign ended at $4.4m – 400 per cent of the goal – and accounted for the majority of all funds raised on Fig in 2017 (the platform raised $5.6m last year).

“We’ve done this twice and both times we’ve been very nervous,” producer Josh Sawyer tells MCV. “For Deadfire, I think there was a lot of concern and doubt about switching to Fig. We already had this fanbase on Kickstarter but there was potential for more money on Fig through investment. It’s a platform that we don’t know that much about and that doesn’t have that many titles on it, so we were nervous and wondered ‘Can it hit the target? Is it going to exceed the target? If it does, by how much?’ Thankfully it worked out really well.”

It’s fair to assume that with Obsidian’s CEO Feargus Urquhart sitting on Fig’s advisory board and having been instrumental in launching the crowdfunding platform back in 2015, the decision to move to Fig was very much an educated choice.

Considering the success of Pillars, Sawyer adds that Deadfire “could have [been] done without crowdfunding,” but the need for additional income to make the game extra polished was what motivated the decision: “All the rendering in the game has been overhauled, we completely rewrote the AI system. We did all this from scratch.”

He continues: “The whole point of us trying to crowdfund this was to say: ‘Let’s make something that we can really build’. And that is ours. This year is the 15th anniversary of Obsidian and this is the first time we have the ability to make a sequel to a game that we’ve made. That really shows you how important it is to us to have the ability to iterate on this.”

Being able to retain full control of Obsidian’s only IP was a key factor when choosing to crowdfund both titles, Sawyer explains.

“That’s one of the nice things about crowdfunding – no offense to publishers. Don’t get me wrong: there are some publishers that are very hands off about what we do but it is nice to really focus on the fanbase. It’s nice to look at their feedback, see how they’re playing the game and respond to them. The fact that it’s crowdfunded makes that even more important and it means that we’re not beholden to a publisher who’s saying: ‘No, you have to make it this way’.”

Obsidian does have a publishing partner though, The Banner Saga publisher Versus Evil (see our interview with general manager Steve Escalante), to manage marketing and distribution.

Sawyer explains this choice: “We considered self publishing for a while but publishing is not easy. If it was easy, everyone would self publish. As time went by and we got deeper into development it became obvious that we needed a partner. Versus Evil seemed like a good fit. The Banner Saga is a very cool series, and it seems to be comparable [to Pillars]: it’s niche but has a very enthusiastic fanbase.”

Versus Evil has chosen THQ Nordic to handle the distribution of the boxed version of Deadfire, including its collector’s edition that includes many extras – something essential for Sawyer.

“I started at Black Isle Studios in the late 90s and one of the things we found is that players really do like – if not necessarily the physical box – manuals, maps, tokens… I remember all the way back to when my grandma bought Ultima V for me in the late 80s and it came with the book of lore, a silver medallion and a cloth map. I still have those.”

At this point in the interview, we get a bit off track discussing Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale manuals that we still own – absolute bibles for old-school RPG fans. And it turns out things haven’t changed that much, as there has been a lot of demand from Pillars fans. Obsidian even has a producer devoted to handling the production of physical goods.

“I think that a lot of our physical sales go for the collector’s editions and that’s a common trend: when there are physical sales, people tend to go for the really big deluxe edition that has all the goodies,” Sawyer adds.

COMMUNITY DRIVEN

What the Pillars fanbase wants, the Pillars fanbase gets: Obsidian has been very attentive to backers’ feedback during Deadfire’s development, and has made changes accordingly. During our chat, Sawyer is noticeably respectful, committed and attentive to the Pillars community. The fans are, after all, what allowed the studio to create the IP in the first place. Which is why Obsidian opted for a backers-only beta.

“Since the beta started we’ve changed combat pacing quite a great deal, we’ve changed the speed of a lot of basic attacks, we’ve also changed movement speed so that characters move more slowly. A lot of people found it very difficult to control what was going on in the battlefield,” Sawyer explains. And these examples are only a tiny portion of all the feedback being re-injected into the game when relevant.

The beta was also the perfect way to get backers’ feedback on the big novelty of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire: the new ship management features.

“We had a stronghold in Pillars and it wasn’t that good and a lot of people didn’t enjoy it. They felt the mechanics were a little shallow,” Sawyer explains. “More importantly the stronghold didn’t feel like it was really integrated into the story. So for a while we were talking about doing strongholds in Deadfire and the more we thought about it the more difficult it was to justify incorporating it into the story because you’re travelling all over the archipelago. Finally we decided we should just have the ship be a stronghold. So we said: ‘What do we want to get out of the ship?’ and really we want you to feel like you are the captain of the ship and you have your crew, distinct from your companions. Your companions are traveling with you and the crew members are relying on you and also helping you navigate the world.”

Exploration, tactical naval combat, upgrading and customising ships and levelling up your sailors are among the many things that can be done in Deadfire, though most of it is “optional,” Sawyer says, and players don’t have to engage in deep naval combat if they don’t want to. And even without the ship management features, Deadfire is bigger than the first entry.

He continues: “With Pillars we were really happy about how it came out but we also looked at it and said: ‘There’s a lot of stuff we could have done better’. So I think that the overall level of polishing and refinement in [Deadfire] is the greatest accomplishment of it.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Deadfire is certainly not the end of the road for the Pillars of Eternity franchise. Obsidian has about a bazillion ideas for the future of the IP.

“We always have to think about the future even if we are not necessarily working on it,” Sawyer says. “If Deadfire is successful, we are probably going to make a third game, but I also think that there are other possibilities for this IP. I’m working on a tabletop RPG set in the Pillars world. We are also looking at options for things like an exploration first-person style of game set in the Pillars universe. We’re also interested in a turn-based tactics game that is less focussed on exploration and more on tactical combat. A lot of fans have offered opinions on that and I think a game like that could have a broader reach. So really we view the Pillars IP not as something that is just strictly for this style of game, there’s lot more potential for it.”

And that logic applies to other projects: Obsidian doesn’t want to be a one IP, one genre studio.

“Being able to develop and own their own IP is the sort of dream that companies have. And it took us quite a long time to get to the point where we could actually do that, now that we have it we really want to make the most use of it,” Sawyer continues. “Hopefully once we have a solid enough footing we can have additional IPs that we also retain control over. We like doing fantasy games but there’s more to role-playing games than just fantasy. And a lot of us like the idea of more radical RPGs, things like Alpha Protocol… I think people liked working on it because it was a role-playing game that was modern day espionage, which is not often explored.”

Whether or not these projects will see the light of day thanks to crowdfunding remains to be seen however, as Sawyer highlights the uncertainty of the platform… and the pressure of the process on developers.

“Crowdfunding is still such a new thing, even after all these years. It’s unclear how long all of this will be viable. So it’ll be interesting to see where things go in the future.

“I do think that the initial rush is over now. In my mind I’m hoping it settles into something that is a little more predictable, because even though it’s great when you succeed, it’s very nerve-racking and anxiety-inducing to be involved in these campaigns.”

First new mention of Skyrim-Pillars and Turn-Based Tactics-Pillars in a while.
 

Flou

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
869
Location
Hellsinki
The interesting part is Badler is the GD for DLCs, wasn't he the only producer on PoE1? Is he a designer too? And he wasn't even involved with Deadfire(base game) AFAIK...

Pillars of Eternity 2 - Systems Designer
Pillars of Eternity - Lead Producer

According to his LinkedIn
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The interesting part is Badler is the GD for DLCs, wasn't he the only producer on PoE1? Is he a designer too? And he wasn't even involved with Deadfire(base game) AFAIK...

Pillars of Eternity 2 - Systems Designer
Pillars of Eternity - Lead Producer

According to his LinkedIn

I think badler has moonlighted in all sorts of projects over the past few years.

So Brandon, tell us more about these DLCs...and what Josh is going to do instead of working on them.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
Is this new info?

Brandon Adler is Game Director on Deadfire DLC since January 2018!
So they changed game director while they're in development?

Sawyer said multiple times that he wouldn't be the lead on DF's DLCs.

He's still Obsidian's Design Director, so he'll have some say on those DLCs, but he won't be the lead designer.
yeah but PoE2 hasn't even released and the beta is still going.

Sure, but there's lots of stuff in pre-production they could already be starting on: music, design, writing, concept art, animations, etc.

Most of that is already done for PoE2's base game (it's coming out in less than two months). Right now the development of DF mostly consists of Q&A, fine-tuning, balancing and programming.
Yeah, sure. What type of RPG guy is Adam? Does he like class-based systems, dare I say it, does he even like D&D, at least? Bobby Null probably would have been a better pick maybe from what I've read of him.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
Lacrymas

though most of it is “optional,” Sawyer says, and players don’t have to engage in deep naval combat if they don’t want to.

Told ya! :cool:

Well that's a cope if anything. Sure make it optional as it's not people are coming for but if it's barely functioning then that's not good enough, ideally it should be engaging and optional, not just optional.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
What type of RPG guy is Adam? Does he like class-based systems, dare I say it, does he even like D&D, at least?

He seems to like or love D&D & Pillars and he always plays a fighter do-gooder but what's Adam got to do with this? :D
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Of course you don't :lol:

At the end of the day, I don't play RPGs for the ship combat, especially ones as tertiary as that in P2. If I wanted that I'd play Anno or Pirates! or something (and I have), where that's the focus (combat is not in Anno's case, but you get the idea) and is done well. I just hope they don't gate powerful items or story talents behind that ship combat, I don't think anyone wants that kind of devilish manipulation, but hope is a cruel mistress. I was kind of ambivalent toward the fact that you got items from the adventures in the stronghold in P1 because you didn't have to do anything but press a button, no grinding necessary.
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

CptMace

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
1,278
Location
Die große Nation
Well the best way to make the naval combat blend well with the rest of the game is to flesh it out as much as possible. If they pull out an interesting game within the game, and tie its consequences with the rest not only in terms of narrative outcomes but although in terms of items and talents, I'd consider they would have done a good job.
I don't really get your point lacrymas there, do you want it to be as relevant as the stronghold ? Everybody agreed that it was pretty much terrible specifically because it felt so disconnected from the actual game. They tried to fix it a bit with adventures and unique rewards, but it still didn't feel right.
I don't get why deep naval combat (and ship management as well) would not be desirable for anybody.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
My point is that I very much doubt that it's going to be deep or engaging. The "combat" will become repetitive very fast and the ship management will become tedious and unnecessary after the second time you buy supplies for the ship. If you add grinding the "combat" part on top of that to get cool items, then I have a problem.
 
Self-Ejected

CptMace

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
1,278
Location
Die große Nation
Again, I'd understand your position if they made it a critical aspect of the game. All they say here is that they learnt from their mistakes with the stronghold, as in they didn't want to flesh it out specifically to avoid penalising people who don't give two fucks about it, and ended up turning it into a completely bland and pointless feature.
They have ship management and naval combat as features in the sequel. It's still optional stuff, as in : the core experience and point of the game is still rtwp party-based hack n' slash. I can't understand how fleshing out the optional stuff would be detrimental to the rest of the game. Especially since we already have a concrete example with the first game of how half-cooking your side stuff negatively impacts the idendity of the whole thing.
If their naval content turns out as irrelevant as the stronghold, bland would stick to the series as a definitive adjective.

In other words : I don't understand what you expect from the naval content besides a stronghold 2.0 situation there. What sort of importance would you give to this optional stuff otherwise ?
 
Last edited:

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
I don't expect anything from it, I think I made that perfectly clear. What I want from it is to not gate powerful equipment or cool talents behind it and it to be optional. Having it any other way will not be simply bland and unnecessary like Caed Nua, but exploitative, boring and a Skinner's Box of the lowliest kind. Unless they somehow do manage to make it passable as a mini-game that won't make me want to slit my wrists on the second fight, but I doubt that, given the condition it is in now. Buying supplies for it from vendors has no chance of being anything other than a tedious chore you have to do every time you dock.
 

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
I doubt some powerful equipment won't be tied to naval combat (otherwise - what would be the incentive to play it at all?).

It'll probably be similar to the bounties from PoE1.
 
Self-Ejected

CptMace

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
1,278
Location
Die große Nation
Yeah so that's basically what I assumed. The game being a party-based hack n slash, if you don't give any sort of unique items, talents, new locations etc as rewards, it's pointless. If the only thing you'd get from plundering an enemy's caravel is gold, food, booze or stuff you can get in town anyway, you just kill your optional mini-game. The core experience already lies in the classic rtwp party-based subgenre, people would have no incentive to even give a fuck about ship management, and you find yourself with a stronghold 2.0.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
I doubt some powerful equipment won't be tied to naval combat (otherwise - what would be the incentive to play it at all?).

It'll probably be similar to the bounties from PoE1.

They can give you only more powerful items for the ship itself or maybe cosmetic items and pets, not anything that will affect the party-based combat in any way.
 
Self-Ejected

CptMace

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
1,278
Location
Die große Nation
Well I guess that would be an ok middle-ground actually. If they flesh out the naval stuff enough, rewarding the player with ship-related items, crewmembers and gear can prove relevant enough to make it worth it.
I still believe that making it blend more with the core experience would be the most desirable option for the game though. Imagine plundering the mythical ship ghost of captain hook and looting a legendary blunderbuss that summons wraiths on hit :cool:
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
You still have to board the other ship to win eventually, so I propose being able to skip the text-based thing and go entirely toe to toe with the enemy ship's crew and captain. They can be like bounties - unique and challenging fights. If you do well on the text-based thing you can get cosmetics and more powerful stuff for the ship. This present a new question, though, why have the text-based thing in the first place? Why couldn't it have been scripted and unique encounters with other captains? You still have your ship boarding and captain duels, but without the unnecessary baggage that comes before that. That's a much smarter decision that also ties in with the usual gameplay, as opposed to a tertiary at best system that is divorced from everything else.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
What type of RPG guy is Adam? Does he like class-based systems, dare I say it, does he even like D&D, at least?

He seems to like or love D&D & Pillars and he always plays a fighter do-gooder but what's Adam got to do with this? :D
Isn't he the new director?

Nope, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsX3RLUAU6Y <the one next to Sawyer is Badler, GD for the DLCs apparently. Adam's the one between Tim and MCA, he's the lead programmer.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Messages
6,633
Location
Ommadawn
What type of RPG guy is Adam? Does he like class-based systems, dare I say it, does he even like D&D, at least?

He seems to like or love D&D & Pillars and he always plays a fighter do-gooder but what's Adam got to do with this? :D
Isn't he the new director?

Nope, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsX3RLUAU6Y <the one next to Sawyer is Badler, GD for the DLCs apparently. Adam's the one between Tim and MCA, he's the lead programmer.
Yeah I get them confused. I know the beannie guy is Brennecke, the other one is Badler. For some reason I always think they're both Adam though. Sorry for the confusion.
Wasn't badler on Tim Cain's project though? I swear I read something like that here.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
Grown men wearing a beanie indoors should be put in the oven along with their entire extended family.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom