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Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment (Kickstarter) [Up: Teaser]

L

Labadal

Member
Some older and newer responses from the forum:

On bonuses you get from resting.
I can't quite recall but did Mr Sawyer state that these bonuses persist until one rests again? If so this would be quite a nice method of incentivising a player to not rest spam, very nice design in my own humble opinion.
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Yes, they last until the next time you rest.
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It'd be nice if the inns give certain bonuses that the stronghold can't.
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They will.
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This quote has to do with Josh's GDC presentation.
Why emphasize the reading part then?
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The continuing trend in games has been an assumption by publishers and developers that players do not want to read. As a rule, lines have become short to the point of being terse and often lack flavor and nuance because of it.

The slide that goes hand-in-hand with "Eternity is written for readers." is "Our choices are your choices... so who benefits?" We assume that our players want to read, but we don't assume they want to read anything we put in front of them, so we need to think about the players' enjoyment of any given node or branch of dialogue. Interactive stories aren't inherently fun. Just putting a dialogue option in a conversation doesn't make the conversation inherently better. When we give the player choices, we need to evaluate it through their eyes and ask, "How will players find enjoyment/satisfaction by selecting this option?"
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I'm not sure what he means by that comment. The only thing "casual"-oriented about dialogue stuff is that the default display options show things like what stats are being checked, what reputations are being affected, etc. You can turn all of those off and they're all off in Expert mode.
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On journal descriptions. You'll be able to choose.
That's sort of correct. The difference is actually between getting an explicit quest objective+journal text or just getting the journal text without the explicit objective. E.g.

Kill Sammy the Idiot - 7:41, Nov. 11th 2013
Frank was really mad about one of his guys, Sammy the Idiot. Sounds like a real pain, this guy. Frank wants him "taken care of", and quickly.

vs.

7:41, Nov. 11th 2013
Frank was really mad about one of his guys, Sammy the Idiot. Sounds like a real pain, this guy. Frank wants him "taken care of", and quickly.
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Read this thread if you're interested in weapons and combat.
Won't quote everything. One quote will be enough.

Hit point- (or in our case, Stamina-) oriented slugfests are endurance races. On a long enough timeline, even a D&D character with a 15% chance to hit will do enough damage to take down some big bruiser. In practice, that character is probably going to have his or her face pounded in long before that time arrives. When armor is involved (and most creatures do have some amount of DT), the practical effects of a Graze vs. a Hit are more than just .5 vs. 1. In the previous example I gave, 6 points of DT meant that the Graze did, in the final tally, 66% less Stamina/Health damage than a Hit with the same base damage. On a Crit, that 18 turns to 27, which means it does 21 Stamina damage vs. the normal hit's 12.

In practical testing, attempting to Graze your way to victory is often a dangerous road to follow. I had a situation a few weeks ago where the party was pounding on a fighter in scale armor with high Deflection. My fighter was occupied when he came up, so the enemy wound up Melee Engaging my wizard. I dogpiled the fighter but most of my attacks were either Deflection-based or were Reflex-based AoEs (and now I had multiple characters stuck to this dude).

I was regularly Grazing him, but his Stamina was going down very slowly (especially since he had Constant Recovery). Eventually I tried to have my wizard make a run for it. He turned on Arcane Veil, took a step, got hit with a hard Disengagement Attack, and dropped capital-D Dead. We eventually beat him down, but it took a while.

On another playthrough, I kept him at a respectable distance from my wizard, dropped my paladin and fighter on him, and then had the priest periodically cast Divine Mark, attacking his Psyche defense for targeted damage and lowering his Deflection for long enough to land some really solid hits.

Grazes are a nice consolation prize and they help normalize damage output, but Hits are typically WAY better. We may still increase the effect of Crits, but currently I don't see Graze builds as being a viable strategy. If I wind up attacking into a defense that outclasses my attacks by 25 points or more, I usually wind up regretting it. In those circumstances, while it's true that 45% of your attacks are still Grazes, 30% of them are full Misses and 30% are Hits.
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That bolded part has me really excited because it means they have a playable build.

Hoping the big update will reveal the name and gameplay.

Oh, and voice-recordings for the game have already begun.
 
hemtae

hemtae

Member
New Update: What's in a Game

pe-hh-house-inengine-render-1891x1068.jpg

pe-hh-house-blockout-1904x1115.jpg

pe-hw-material-concept-1006x1049.jpg
 
M

mclem

Member
That's sort of correct. The difference is actually between getting an explicit quest objective+journal text or just getting the journal text without the explicit objective. E.g.

Kill Sammy the Idiot - 7:41, Nov. 11th 2013
Frank was really mad about one of his guys, Sammy the Idiot. Sounds like a real pain, this guy. Frank wants him "taken care of", and quickly.

vs.

7:41, Nov. 11th 2013
Frank was really mad about one of his guys, Sammy the Idiot. Sounds like a real pain, this guy. Frank wants him "taken care of", and quickly.
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While there's certainly an argument that the latter is more immersive, I do have to note that when I'm leaving reminders to myself in real-life, they're generally more like of the first form :)

That said, in situations where the objective is *actually* vague on the long description, I'd hope that vagueness is kept intact in the briefer one.
 
L

Labadal

Member
mclem said:
While there's certainly an argument that the latter is more immersive, I do have to note that when I'm leaving reminders to myself in real-life, they're generally more like of the first form :)

That said, in situations where the objective is *actually* vague on the long description, I'd hope that vagueness is kept intact in the briefer one.
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The good thing is that you'll be able to choose. I'll play with former on a first run and the latter on other runs.
 
L

Labadal

Member
Watching the presentation I linked to and Chris basically confirmed that the big update will include a gameplay trailer. Next generation is truly here (soon).
 
M

Mister_Bubbles

Member
Labadal said:
Watching the presentation I linked to and Chris basically confirmed that the big update will include a gameplay trailer. Next generation is truly here (soon).
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Sweet. Liking those screens and pics too, although I'm starting to wonder if I should go media-blackout after this trailer. So much of what was awesome about the BG games was discovering the world and characters, not knowing what you were going to find.
 
K

Kimaka

Member
L

Labadal

Member
A little bit about the reputation system.

To be clear, by default any choice that will impact your reputations (personality or otherwise) will be highlighted as such. You're not going to "whoopsy-daisy" pick a cruel option and not know you're getting Cruel rep by doing so unless you opt to turn those indications off. Naturally, these indications are always off if you're in Expert mode.

E: And to be even clearer, it's not a morality system. You don't pick personalities for your character to "have". You do things in the game that are tagged with certain personality aspects and they contribute to your reputation for being that kind of a person. The choices you have made previously do not limit your ability to make choices in the future. You can be Benevolent for hours and hours and decide that at this particular point in time, Cruelty is required. If you're Cruel or Benevolent or Clever every once in a while, it's unlikely that anyone outside of the people immediately involved in those circumstances will ever respond; you simply don't have a high enough rep in that personality for it to be a big part of your reputation. The system is meant to pay attention to your consistent patterns of behavior and have characters react to it just as they would react to faction reputations.
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It should be noted that "global" in this sense is not literally globe-spanning, but within the areas where the game takes place.
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A little more on the labels used for each personality type: we need to use a label because it's a helpful abstraction for how the behavior can be characterized, but different characters will interpret that reputation in different ways. "Clever" can be interpreted as sarcastic, witty, foppish, or irreverent. "Benevolent" can be interpreted as charitable, kind, soft, or weak. "Aggressive" can be interpreted as hot-headed, bold, or impatient. Each of these interpretations has a value judgment associated with it but they are all reactions to similar types of behavior. One character will look at your "Aggressive" behavior and (negatively) think that you fly off the handle at everything, provoke fights, and cause trouble. Another character will look at the same "Aggressive" behavior and admire you for taking charge, being decisive, not letting people push you around, etc.
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So the non-expert responses will be flagged (Clever, Benevolent, Aggressive, etc...) but how do we know how the NPC is interpreting it (sarcastic, charitable, hot-headed, etc...)?
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You don't know anything about how they will respond ahead of time (outside of your general understanding of the character).
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Hey Josh, were you inspired by the Tides or is it just a coincidence?
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No. This system is very similar to what we were doing on The Black Hound in 2003.
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Regarding labels, detailed info, and the ability to turn them on and off, will there be much granularity in terms of what specifically you can turn on or off? For instance, given the choice, I would probably choose to turn off most, if not all, dialogue-based assistance, but would like to keep some, but not all, combat-based assistance. Will I be able to do so?
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Yes. Those are separate options.
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The system is pretty straightforward. Characters react to individual choices you make in the same way that they would in pretty much any other Obsidian game. Whether you see a [Clever] tag in front of your reply before you select it or not, your expectation of how the character is going to respond is going to be based on your understanding of the character. However they respond (positively, negatively, or something else), you just put a penny in the "Clever" jar. If you keep selecting witty/sassy/sarcastic responses or ways of dealing with people, their responses are all going to be based on the context and who they are as individual characters.

Where the actual rep comes into play is not in the replies available to you, but in how people talk to you or treat you as person, often outside of the context of you making those individual choices. An NPC might meet you and invite you to a party based on your reputation for wit (even if you're not being particularly witty at the moment). Another person might balk at involving you in a discussion of faith because they assume, based on your reputation, that you're a clown who can't take anything seriously.
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Other actions can as well, but it's rare because emotional intent/motive is much more difficult to determine. Browbeating someone and being pointedly malicious to them for no gain may earn you Cruel rep. If you just walk up to the dude and murder him, it's more likely to increase your negative rep for whatever region/faction he's connected to.
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Here's the difference between playing with the rep tags on and off.

[Benevolent] "You seem to have learned your lesson. There's no need to involve the guards. Just don't do it again."

vs.

"You seem to have learned your lesson. There's no need to involve the guards. Just don't do it again."

As in the IE games, what you pick is exactly what your character says/does.
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Z

zkylon

zkylewd
the concept art at the link looks great too, love the buildings and the urns and everything

obsidian man, they're gonna make me cry
 
I

injurai

Banned
Ehh, those screenshots are shitty. However I have seen other amazing shots to know it should look much better than this. I'll save my panty wetting for something truly worthy of praise.
 
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