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

[Sensuki]

Well they could have called it Defiance Bay, although the game is not about Defiance Bay. The Pillars of Adra thingy reminds me of Mass Effect a bit too much - you know in the first game where you have to go around looking for Prothean Obelisks or whatever and you get Prothean Memories from them.

 

[Infinitron]

I call it classy because it brings to mind the Pillars of Hercules: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Hercules

Classy as in "classical antiquity".

I suspect you're just grasping at straws when your real problem is that three-syllable names just sound better(tm).

 

[Grunker]

The names of the place themselves are creative.

"Icewind Dale" is creative? Naming a dale with icy winds Icewind Dale is creative?

Man I love me some Forgotten Realms, but that's... stretching it.

Baldur's Gate is way better, and sounds like what someone might actually name a town. Even has a rich history aligned to both parts of the name. But fuck it. Only wrong thing about Pillars of Eternity is that it makes no obvious sense. Planescape: Torment was seen in much the same way until people played it (it also had a godawful trailer that played on the nonsense name). Here's hoping we'll feel similarly about PoE's name as we did with Torment's once we're done.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The problem Infinitron is that ''Eternity'' has nothing classy. It's boring modern borderline epikk shit. Pillars of Durance, Pillars of Edair, Pillars of any in-game name would have sounded better than this.

Pillars of Hercules would even be a better title.

 

[Athelas]

Pillars of Pallegina.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

The names of the place themselves are creative.

"Icewind Dale" is creative? Naming a dale with icy winds Icewind Dale is creative?

Dense.

 

[Grunker]

Pillars of Pallegina.

Grunker acknowledges this agenda.

 

[Shannow]

Named by association:
Project Eternity --> Project Eternia --> He-Man RPG

That's what stuck with me. That's what I'll keep calling it (at least in my mind).
*shrug*

That said, all names mentioned here suck.
Planescape: Torment? Should have just been "Torment". Or "Undying Torment", or some such.
Baldur's Gate? Just the largest city in the game and not otherwise significant. (And makes absolutely no sense in BG2) Could just as well have been: "Gorion's Ward", "Lord of Murder", "Sarevok's Rise" or "Adventures on the Sword Coast".
Icewind Dale? Yeah, I'd probably keep that. Still shitty though.

And now please all go back to telling us what a beautifully balanced game He-Man RPG is going to be.

 

[Grunker]

Torment has perhaps the shittiest name out of the IE games yet still manages to have the most descriptive title as well.

 

[Sensuki]

Rocking the boat on the Obsidian forums.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69...he-big-offender-in-the-bb/page-8#entry1529692

So lets discuss both your ideas and you as a person. (I chose this post because it encapsulates both your passion and your extraordinary arrogance in one clean package).

As an individual that firmly believes more in observation rather than the necessity for obsessive rehashing of ideas on hte internet I was spurred into action by your repeated attempts in this thread to drive a particularly complex issue towards a direction you view as 'the only correct solution'.

To understand why your point of view is selfish you first need to acknowledge that the 'ideas' you have are only encapsulating -your- vision for the game. You have repeatedly used the mantra 'this is closer to how IE did it' as the punctuation dialogue for your posts; it's obvious that from an argument standpoint this is the shield you're standing behind in order to justify the aggresiveness with which you're pushing this particular design adjustment.

It's important if you want to be pushing an idea in good faith to separate yourself from ideology and evaluate the idea strictly based on the qualties that make up that idea. When you utilize an ideological statement to justify your idea you are in effect depriving others of a reasonable way to counteract your discussion; you are arguing in bad faith.

So let us evaluate the -actual- reasons that you want the game to necessitate heavy micromanagement of unit control with frequent shifts in character positioning in order to maintain AI engagement. It's obvious from your repeated comparisons to RTS style unit management that you enjoy and have some level of mastery over the heavy micro of character switch with hotkey + click to new position gameplay that is necessitated by these games. It may come as a surprise to you but many MANY people do not play games like that particularly well and can find that high mechanical skillcap of this style of gameplay to be daunting and frustrating.

By pushing the game to a point where mechanical skillcap becomes more important you are in effect decreasing the 'role-playing' aspects of the game. How you might ask? Because the purpose of an RPG is to create what we call an -abstraction- of a combat scenario. This abstraction layer can be complex or simple depending on the type of action that is attempted to be simplified into a numerical format. The reason we want there to be an abstraction rather than a mechanical skill component is that it is the characters -within- the game that are supposed to be the possesors of the abilities.

Lets tackle the issue at hand: the frontline fighter. Melee engagement is an abstraction of the idea that when a frontline warrior approaches a target if he doesn't want him to get by he will mirror that opponents actions and prevent him from moving by him. Similarly AOO's have traditionally represented the idea that if someone DOES move past a combatant that does not -want- you moving past them they are opening themselves up to an attack. It is necessary to make these mechanics less focused on player skill because it is the -warrior- that is doing the mirroring/quick reflexes/pure muscle of holding back the threat from approaching his more vulnerable comrades.

In removing a binary system of engagement and reverting to the IE style you repeatedly cite the -value- of this RTS style 'blocking' mechanism to force engagements. This however is an introduction of personal player skill and does not reflect anything the character does themselves.

Now certainly there are issues within the combat related to the fluidity of the melee engagement system and the way it forces the AI to react. There are concerns with the speed of combat resolution overall that can likely diminish some of these issues as the engagement becomes more meaningful. It also isn't the -only- way to force an abstraction layer to this type of frontline action (But it is an interesting idea...particularly with the ability to later have feats/talents for characters to 'engage' multiple enemies at some point). I certainly find it to be a more representative system than either mmo-style aggro mechanics OR the kiting behavior you are pushing for.

Now lets discuss the -way- you're pushing your agenda in here. While it's plain as day you care very deeply about this specific issue (You even made a mod to remove the mechanic!) you have shown a very aggressive and single minded point of view repeatedly throughout the thread. Your inflexibility and single minded intent to mold the game into -your- vision worries me as a backer; I did not pay money for the kid with the most time on his hands to repeatedly push for his one goal to end up in the game.

So I must say from my point of view and contribution to the game I hope your ideas are not utilized. If nothing else it would be a shame to indulge someone simply because they're the most zealous proponent of a particular idea and shouting other ideas down with zealotry and singleminded fervor.

I'd appreciate that you remember other points of view and dial down your ideology. Just because -your- real inspiration is the IE games does not imply that this game system was meant to be a 1 for 1 reimagining of those games. Quite frankly the combat in the IE games was the least memorable part and highly exploitable using many of the tactics you're trying to shoehorn in.

 

[Sensuki]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68889-301-miss-graze-hit-and-crit-thresholds-possibly-wrong/

I was correct about Miss and Crit Thresholds being wrong in the source code. That bug would have probably been there forever if I didn't check it.

 

[SCO]

Could melee engagement be saved if it happened more infrequently (somehow)?

 

[Grunker]

That bug would have probably been there forever if I didn't check it.

 

[Sensuki]

Roll your eyes all you like, but I think it would have been a hard one to pick up on. It's a simple mistake to make because when you think 5% miss and 5% crit, you think 5, 50, 95 - when it's actually supposed to be 6, 51, 96 for the starting point. I only noticed it because I'm a PE ruleswhore. Sure I'm p. arrogant saying that, but that's what I think anyway.

SCO It depends what you want out of Melee Engagement. My problem is that you can't retreat from it when you have low health.

 

[Visperas]

I'm not a beta player but I've been reading this and have a couple questions:
Is the Disengagement Hit an automatic full hit? No chance of grazing or missing?
Can't you heal party members from a distance?
Sensuki, which kind of healing do you refer to in "you can't retreat from it when you have low health"?

 

[Sensuki]

It's a chance to hit, but it's usually a good chance. Yes you can heal party members from a distance, although the instances of which I am talking about, such as a when a char hits low and is about to die, in the IE games you can move that unit back and you have a chance to save them, get your Cleric to cast heal while the unit runs behind another one or something. Sometimes they still die because enemies get other melee/ranged attacks off.
Attacks in PE do pretty big damage too.

It's not the 100% most important problem with combat, but I think it is a problem that makes it feel a bit meh. YMMV ofc.

 

[Nihiliste]

So I stopped following the beta news a while back to avoid some of the negativity about the game. What the general verdict now, has combat been improved since the original release? Fixable with modding?

Well, if you're not used to it by now then I don't know what to say. It sounds fine and cool to me. Pillars of Eternity sounds both classy and appropriately geeky, while just "Pillars" has a nice ring to it when you're talking about it more casually. "Hey Sensuki, let's talk about Pillars for a sec". You can't really do that with Baldur's Gate. "Let's talk about Baldurs". Yeah, no.

IDK man it sounds very generic fantasy novel. They probably could have done better. Worse from here, what's the naming convention going to be for future games? Pillars of Eternity 2: Blah blah? Something of Eternity? Neither system results in catchy names. If they wanted to stick with "Eternity" after the kickstarter, they should have just called the game that, which still wouldn't be exciting but would perhaps sound less like a terry goodkind book. Better yet, they could have chosen some other, more creative name.

 

[Sensuki]

So I stopped following the beta news a while back to avoid some of the negativity about the game. What the general verdict now, has combat been improved since the original release? Fixable with modding?

Some other stuff has got better, but combat and pathfinding are two things that have not. Combat UI is a bit better, that's about it. Obs haven't been focusing on it. Try again next year

 

[Darth Roxor]

That bug would have probably been there forever if I didn't check it.

gee you're practically the lead designer!

 

[Duraframe300]

That bug would have probably been there forever if I didn't check it.

Yeah, thats…...

Sorry Sensuki, no. May be a hard one to pick up on, but sooner or later someone would have noticed. *I'm the only one* is the worst direction of a discussion you can take. Much worse than using a few cursewords or not being super polite.

 

[Sensuki]

'I'm the only one' is not what I said. In the first one I said probably, and in the second one I said this

but I think it would have been a hard one to pick up on

Sure, that was an arrogant statement and anyone who reads that probably is gonna think I'm a dikhed, but anyway. Too late! I said it and Grunker quoted it, preserved for all time on the internet.

What can you do.

 

[J_C]

That bug would have probably been there forever if I didn't check it.

gee you're practically the lead designer!

He does a better job in it anyway.

 

[Grunker]

'I'm the only one' is not what I said.

That bug would have probably been there forever if I didn't check it.

is there something about the definition of forever that i am not getting here

I'm a dikhed

It's OK, I like you anyway. The 'sperging where all that delicious energy to better my game experience come from. I guess the dick-delusions are a necessary evil?

 

[Sensuki]

is there something about the definition of forever that i am not getting here

No, I said probably and meant that it's quite possible that they may have totally missed it, because only the crit and graze values were wrong. The values in the code were 4, 50, 94. This would have meant that you critted 1% more often than you should, and missed 1% less than you should. Unless someone was specifically looking at those declared variables (and there are over 100 declared variables in the CharacterStats class and the class is over 4000 lines long) and then questioned them because they know the Attack Resolution formula off by heart like I do (Josh would know, but he wouldn't be looking at the source code I don't think - not his job).

I think it may have been a simple mistake because the person who implemented the code assumed 5% miss and 5% crit would be set by threshold values of 5 and 95, rather than 6 and 96, as in the code the threshold is one below the actual number.

It's not a big deal but I was just proud of myself that I identified a bug in the source code based on my 'spergy knowledge about the game rules

 

[Duraframe300]

'I'm the only one' is not what I said. In the first one I said probably, and in the second one I said this

but I think it would have been a hard one to pick up on

Sure, that was an arrogant statement and anyone who reads that probably is gonna think I'm a dikhed, but anyway. Too late! I said it and Grunker quoted it, preserved for all time on the internet.

What can you do.

Misunderstood then. I would still advise to leave wording like this out of direct conversations with devs. Talking about how big your own dick is (Even if its just giving said impression) leads to nothing productive. Rational thought flies out the window.

Doesn't matter here, of course. Nobody in the conversation is directly involved and you explained what you mean so who the fuck cares?

Regarding the PoE Linux thing: I don't know if waiting for Unity will be the best idea. That can potentially take a while and if the Linux users only get the PE beta like one month before release somebody's going to be pissed.