Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[fantadomat]

Sawyer Dindu Nuffin.. !!

Sawyer wanted 150 maps and refused to give in. This was one of the reasons why the game was behind schedule in 2014 and had to be delayed.

Good thing we had those 30 extra maps. What would the game of been without Forest 2A filled with bears and goblins.

More is better in an decent rpg. The game would have been total shit if it was short on top of it.

 

[Lacrymas]

It isn't about being short. Those 30 maps included both damaged and repaired states of Caed Nua. I don't think you would find anybody who won't say that was a waste of maps. It also includes those little hovels you go into in Defiance Bay and Twin Elms. All of the maps in the entire base game are claustrophobic, small and samey, I don't know what took the artists so long to make them. But we've been over this.

 

[Iznaliu]

I don't know what took the artists so long to make them

I think that's partly since the isometric map-making pipeline and the techniques used by the artists had to be developed from scratch.

 

[fantadomat]

Yup,drawing and artsy things are not that easy.

 

[Sentinel]

I don't know what took the artists so long to make them.

IIRC Brennecke said it took up to 40 hours to render a single map. If you needed to change anything afterwards, you had to render it all over again. That's 40 more hours in the bin.

 

[Iznaliu]

IIRC Brennecke said it took up to 40 hours to render a single map. If you needed to change anything afterwards, you had to render it all over again. That's 40 more hours in the bin.

I wonder whether that's still the case for PoE2; if it is, we can expect the release date to be pushed back a few times, as it's almost inevitable that some changes will happen to the world design.

 

[Quillon]

IIRC Brennecke said it took up to 40 hours to render a single map. If you needed to change anything afterwards, you had to render it all over again. That's 40 more hours in the bin.

I wonder whether that's still the case for PoE2; if it is, we can expect the release date to be pushed back a few times, as it's almost inevitable that some changes will happen to the world design.

That was the case initially, then they realized some reflection stuff was interfering etc eventually they were able to render the maps in the same day.

So, yes Lacrymas, Obs' artists are incompetent too, lazy fucks can't even whip out mere 150 maps in time. I mean just draw quickly and be done with it amirite? Its not that there is a complex process of making the maps in pillows or these kinda maps hadn't been made for a decade or anything.

Also I know the talk is 150 maps with that kotaku dude giving the numbers and all but I probably remember incorrectly that people counted 170 or so after the game came out. Or weren't they targeting between BG1 and 2? Which was 150 and 220 or so?

 

[Haplo]

It isn't about being short. Those 30 maps included both damaged and repaired states of Caed Nua. I don't think you would find anybody who won't say that was a waste of maps. It also includes those little hovels you go into in Defiance Bay and Twin Elms. All of the maps in the entire base game are claustrophobic, small and samey, I don't know what took the artists so long to make them. But we've been over this.

You're generalizing and exaggerating. Many maps are small, not ALL. Some are decently sized. If you compare it with the likes of NWN 2 SoZ, you could even say they are huge. Personally I've never had a problem with the size of the maps. Kinda hated BG1 for the large empty spaces you had to traverse. Much prefer PoE map density (even if sometimes mob placement IS over the top).

 

[aweigh]

i don't think the issue is whether or not the maps were small versus large or whether or not Obsidian are hacks for taking too long to render them...

the issue is that most of them are not good areas, such as all the Caed Nua shit.

I think the argument being made here is that they should've concentrated on quality over quantity, although I agree they should not have made the game short like Tyranny. Anyone who's played PoE would gladly trade half the locations in the cities (or rather, city, since Twin Elms is a waste of space), or excised completely the entirety of Caed Nua (and it's pathetically boring Endless Paths) in exchange for another Temple of Eothas or Raedric's Keep.

 

[Quillon]

The main issues were second city & endless paths stretch goals; most other issues derive from these. And Obs acknowledged both issues, hence there'll be only Neketaka and no endless something in Deadfire.

 

[Lacrymas]

Fulvano's voyage is the endless something. I wasn't hinting that the artists are incompetent, more along the lines of "maybe they think they are great artists who paint extraordinary canvases on which every little detail matters", which is laughable. The maps are samey and small, so a practiced artist can churn them out like a factory if he didn't think he was doing something earth-shattering. This romanticising of art is prevalent in a lot of people and that wastes a lot of time. Anyway, if they had technical issues then I can't understand that, but that's the fault of someone else, why would a map take 40 hours to render? Something's definitely wrong somewhere.

 

[Quillon]

Fulvano's voyage is rather finite and allows more creative freedom than endless paths. And map creation isn't just artists painting the map; there were lots of updates, a gdc talk, some articles and road to eternity documentary gave insight about how maps were created. By now they may have improved their pipeline but they are still adding more features like hand placed reflection sources or whatever to the point they question 2D's worthiness of all this trouble

 

[CptMace]

Considering what we know of world travel in the sequel, I doubt Fulvano's voyage will feel anything like the endless paths. Main reason being that they handled the incentives with better insight this time. The endless paths were a mega-dungeon, located somewhere with fixed entrance(s). The thing became so absurdly big that I remember they quickly released a note on their site to say "Well the megadungeon will be some kind of area that the player can complete in several visits" which didn't sound sexy and, as we know now, doesn't play very well indeed.
Fulvano's voyage is a bunch of islands, and their only common denominator is the fact that some explorer, whose lore is still pretty much open at this point, visited them all or passed by them all, conveniently leaving a page of his journal which will serve as breadcrumbs for the player. It's a very open concept, which conveniently allows the designers to recycle any idea they were already developping during the crowdfunding and insert them in the context of this uncharted archipelago.
As for the maps, I'm not sure how having the artists spend more time enhancing the existing ones rather than creating the unnecessary ones would have fixed the game's issue with them : their actual content, which has more to do with game design rather than art, or I got that wrong ?

 

[2house2fly]

Fulvano's voyage is the endless something. I wasn't hinting that the artists are incompetent, more along the lines of "maybe they think they are great artists who paint extraordinary canvases on which every little detail matters", which is laughable. The maps are samey and small, so a practiced artist can churn them out like a factory if he didn't think he was doing something earth-shattering. This romanticising of art is prevalent in a lot of people and that wastes a lot of time. Anyway, if they had technical issues then I can't understand that, but that's the fault of someone else, why would a map take 40 hours to render? Something's definitely wrong somewhere.

How long should it take to render? In your experience.

 

[Quillon]

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95227-patch-308-on-the-beta-branch/

Hey you bunch of faithful gamers,

We decided to slip one more patch in! The patch will be available on the Beta Branch of Steam for a few days. Please jump in and let us know what you think. The patch will go live soon after that.

Patch contains;

- Fixed an issue with the Company Captain's Cap confusing party members when they cast a buff/heal spell.

- Realized we went a little overboard on the Deadfire Uniforms. We knocked the defenses they granted from +20 to +9.

- Added optional analytics. This is just simple data collection (where parties wipe, which classes players choose, etc....). A pop up will trigger as soon as you launch the game after patching, asking 'would you like to enable analytics.' We'd love it if everyone did, but feel free to just click 'no' and forget it ever happened.

 

[Mexi]

So I restarted another playthrough. Anyone know what happened to the area of effect for spells? I'm playing on PotD difficulty. I'm assuming it's due to the difficulty, but I remember playing on it during later 3.0 patches. It's more annoying than difficult not being able to see what the AoE on a spell is. Nevermind. I figured it out. Turns out expert mode removes all those options. Who the hell is autistic enough to memorize all the damn AoE for each spell?

 

[Roguey]

Who the hell is autistic enough to memorize all the damn AoE for each spell?

This is how everyone had to play during the Infinity Engine years.

 

[Cross]

Who the hell is autistic enough to memorize all the damn AoE for each spell?

This is how everyone had to play during the Infinity Engine years.

Unlike PoE, spells in the Infinity Engine games that fall in the same category typically have the same range and radius, so you quickly get a feel of what area they affect. It's a good thing D&D wasn't designed by someone as autistic as Sawyer.

 

[Roguey]

It's a good thing D&D wasn't designed by someone as autistic as Sawyer.

D&D was designed to be played on a grid so there was never any question how big your area of effect was going to be.

 

[Mexi]

Who the hell is autistic enough to memorize all the damn AoE for each spell?

This is how everyone had to play during the Infinity Engine years.

No, not at all. The fuck are you on? AoE wasn't all over the place like it is here due to player stats.

 

[Roguey]

No, not at all. The fuck are you on? AoE wasn't all over the place like it is here due to player stats.

The radius ranged from 10-30 feet. You don't know what that is until you try the spell for yourself, then you have it.

 

[Cross]

No, not at all. The fuck are you on? AoE wasn't all over the place like it is here due to player stats.

The radius ranged from 10-30 feet. You don't know what that is until you try the spell for yourself, then you have it.

You're missing the point. Look at this spell list: http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Spells_(Baldur's_Gate)
All spells that are similar to each other generally have the same parameters. So for example, circular AoE's such as Fireball, Bless, Entangle, Grease, etc. all have a 30 feet radius.

Now compare that to the spells in PoE, like the one for the priest: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Priest_spell
The radius sizes for circular AoE's are all over the place: 1.5m, 2.5m, 5m, 1.25m, 1.75m, etc. And this is before even taking into account the variable effects of INT.

Because the Infinity Engine spells were consistent in the size of ranges and radiuses, you could quickly and intuitively decide what spell was the best choice for a given situation without referencing their description. In PoE the AoE and range indicators are an absolute necessity because each spell has been autistically tweaked to have its own distinct range and radius. This is probably another reason why so much of PoE's combat is spent paused, because you keep having to check what the exact parameters of each spell are.

 

[CptMace]

I'm probably taking this thing wrong, because it seems to me that the autistic behaviour would rather be to systematically check the spell parameters when there's fuck all difference between 1.5m and 1.75m radius.
Although, yeah, there's no good reason for this design considering how encounters play out, and grouping every spells in 2 or 3 classes of range and radius would make this all feel more natural indeed.
Now I'd bet that if this was the case, we would be discussing why this autistic designer decided to carefully sort spells by range I mean it's really no big deal.

 

[Quillon]

PoE sucks, it needs me to use my eyes to cast spells so unintuitive, why can't they streamline this shit?

 

[Roguey]

PoE sucks, it needs me to use my eyes to cast spells so unintuitive, why can't they streamline this shit?

The autistic developer: "This isn't pen and paper, we have a computer to do all the calculations behind the scenes, so we can get really complex."
The autistic gamer: "I like doing all the calculations myself in order to powergame, and this system makes that more time-consuming in a way that doesn't add any benefit as far as I'm concerned, so it's terrible."