New Infinity Engine style game in the works...

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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

PE certainly looks like it'll be more transparent to people who don't play tabletop, I count that as a positive thing.

The system of melee types engaging opponents to protect fragile party members seems like it could be a mechanical improvement that feels less dumb than taunting to build aggro.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Hi, Sykid. It's a balancing act, because we don't want to do lore and mechanics dumps on the world this far ahead of the game being finished, but here are some things to help with both items and characters:

Items:
* Please, if it's at all possible, consider making something that is not a sword. I think we say this in the survey, but I'd like to repeat it here. There are no junk weapon types in Pillars of Eternity. Even daggers and clubs are good weapons. The same applies to armor and shields. Every type has trade-offs, so if you want to make a suit of awesome padded armor, someone will wear it.

* Many D&Dish effects can go on weapons, armor, and shields. That said, there are also many abilities that are unique to PoE and we will suggest them if the idea of your item seems to fit. At a basic level, all weapons and armor can have a quality modifier of Fine, Exceptional, and Superior that roughly correlate to +1, +2, and +3 (not quite, but close enough). This game is equivalent to a low- to mid-level D&D campaign, so Sun Blades and +5s are too macho.

* Materials like drake/dragon bone can be used in items, but whatever material you specify, try to make it fit with the idea of the weapon. A dragon bone club, spear, or stiletto is more fitting than a dragon bone battle axe or mace. Mithril and adamantine are not materials in PoE. Steel is overwhelmingly used for most metal weapons and armor, with five grades of interest: Wyflan (good steel), March (great steel, more damage, protects better), Ymyran (great steel that is "blackened", faster/lighter), Durgan (super steel from the lost forges of Durgan's Battery) and Skein (like Durgan steel, but very new technology, made with really horrible soul magic).

* Copper and living adra (an abalone shell-like material) are often used to bind souls and magical energy into items.

* The timeline of the civilized world is not "Realmsian". The Dyrwood and the Vailian Republics have only been colonized for a few centuries. The Glanfathans have lived in Eir Glanfath for two millennia. Before them, it was occupied by a relatively unknown civilization known as the Engwithans (who built most of the monuments and holy sites that the Glanfathans now guard). The Aedyr Empire is about 600 years old (well, Aedyr as a nation is that old). Old Valia as an empire was about 1500 years old but has collapsed by the current day. The main point is that more than 4,000 years ago, civilization was extremely modest, not advanced.

Characters:
* Any NPCs you make could be from the following local/directly involved places...
- The Dyrwood - Focus of the game, colonial area full of once-Aedyran humans and elves. Hardworking, surly pioneers in the country, animancers in the city. More-or-less blew up a god in the Saint's War which (in the new timeline) happened about 10-15 years ago. Dyrwoodan virtues: independence, perseverance, sacrifice, communal hospitality, and vigilantism/feuding. Dyrwoodan vices: servility, shirking (responsibilities), selfishness, lingering (near Engwithan ruins), "facepainting" (pejorative term for sympathizing with/acting like a Glanfathan).

- Eir Glanfath - Deeper forest to the east of the Dyrwood. Once in conflict with the Dyrwood, now (mostly) at peace. Less tech advanced, more communal. Protect the Engwithan ruins. Orlans, elves, some dwarves. Glanfathan virtues: cleverness, subterfuge, frugality, communality, mathematic aptitude. Glanfathan vices: selfishness, cowardice, vanity, social intoxication, token gestures (as opposed to meaningful action).

- Vailian Republics - The most successful offshoot of Old Valia, these colonies sit to the southeast of the Dyrwood and south of Eir Glanfath, past a mountain range. They are a group of allied city states who mostly wield economic power. Mostly humans and dwarves. Vailian virtues: success, shrewdness, restraint, wit, polymathism. Vailian vices: failure, bad style (i.e. doing something not in the "Vailian way"), bluntness, dullness, mercilessness.

- Aedyr Empire - The source of the colonists who settled the Dyrwood and Readceras. Lost both to revolutions, though the Dyrwoodan revolution was far bloodier than the Readceran one that followed. Much younger than Old Valia, but still in existence, which is worth something. Overwhelmingly human and elven. Aedyran virtues: duty, efficiency, loyalty, modesty (not of dress, but of character), purity. Aedyran vices: inconstancy, sloth, sloppiness, impunctuality, mixing work/leisure.

- Penitential Regency of Readceras - Quasi-theocratic state ruled by priests for their patron, St. Waidwen, and their god, Eothas, both of whom seem to have disappeared at the end of the Saint's War (which they started and the Dyrwood ended). The prevailing attitude is that they failed Eothas and Waidwen and must do penance to regain their favor. Readceran virtues: optimism, faith, propriety (proper behavior for your age, sex, and social class), vigilance, discipline. Readceran vices: pessimism, doubt, deviance, rebelliousness, aimlessness.

... or these remote regions, which are relatively far away:

- Deadfire Archipelago - Quite a ways south of the Dyrwood, a wide archipelago of small volcanic island nations. Naasitaq, home of many boreal dwarves and aumaua, is the biggest and most stable nation around. Various nations and empires fight over the islands, to the east of which are sea monsters that invariably annihilate any ships that attempt to go exploring (many of them dwarven).

- Ixamitl Plains - Northeast of Eir Glanfath, the Ixamitl Plains are large expanses of fertile savannas. Mostly occupied by humans and orlans, though the orlans have a bad history with the humans. The Ixamitl culture is one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world, going back a little earlier than Old Vailia. However, they are the least imperalistic large nation around, having only expanded their borders slightly in centuries. Among other things, they are known for their contributions to philosophy.

- The Living Lands - A frontier island area in the far north, a land of wild weather, strange beasts, and hundreds of difficult to reach valleys containing oddities never before seen (according to the people who find them) by mortals. It's a lawless land where communities band together, fall apart, and fight petty wars with each other constantly. Has a reputation for breeding oddballs and madmen. The racial mix in the area is extremely diverse but not necessarily harmonious. Dwarves, propelled by their desire to explore, are very common here, even among the mix.

- Old Vailia - Once the crown jewel of the southern seas, the crumbling island nations of Old Vailia sit thousands of miles to the southwest of their offshoot, the Vailian Republics. Humans and dwarves are common. They are renowned for their great culture and history of accomplishments, though the rest of the world considers them to be far past their prime. The nations that once made up the empire are engaged in a continuous war for dominance that has been going on (and off, and on again) for over two hundred years.

- Rauatai Gulf - Dominated by the aumaua of Rauatai, the gulf to the north of Ixamitl Plains is the trade center for several nations of aumaua, orlans, and dwarves. The land is rich with resources, but hotly contested. And in all matters, Rauatai and its powerful navy almost always gain the upper hand. The whole region is also relentlessly pummeled by storms for half the year.

- The White that Wends - A huge southern expanse of polar ice occupied only by pale elves, some boreal dwarves, and a few really brave individuals from other lands. It is considered mythic -- or at least inhospitable -- by most people from "civilized" areas. Virtually no plant life grows in the White, but somehow its residents manage to survive from year to year.

Class combat foci:

Barbarians have great group-fighting abilities (both melee offense and personal defense).

Chanters have cycling lists of low power, high AoE passive buffs and debuffs and they can periodically use invocations, which are pretty powerful spells.

Ciphers are offensively-oriented psionicists/soulknives (more or less) who build Focus (their resource) through conventional weapon attacks.

Druids are crowd control kings and their beast modes give them nice single-target strikes + various special powers.

Fighters can withstand a freight train, hold a line against charging enemies (are "sticky"), knock down enemies, passively regenerate Stamina in combat, and have reliable attacks + weapon specialization.

Monks convert temporary damage-over-time stacks (Wounds, their resource) into magical abilities. They are melee-focused but have a pretty wide variety of single-target and group attacks. They can use their bare hands (which get more powerful as they level) but can use most of their powers with standard melee weapons.

Paladins have modal auras, powerful single-target support abilities, high defenses, and a Smite analogue in Flames of Devotion.

Priests have better support abilities, worse defenses, and some crowd control abilities that paladins completely lack. Also a few single-target strike spells.

Rangers and rogues both lack crowd control capabilities, but rangers have the edge defensively due to range and the interference their animal companions can run. Animal companions share Stamina and Health with the ranger, but they are very durable, DT-wise.

Rogues have the highest single-hit damage potential and they have a lot of ways to qualify for Sneak Attacks. There are no creature type restrictions on Sneak Attack and it's automatically triggered by a lot of different conditions on the target. Additionally, rogues gain more and more ways to cause those conditions!

Wizards can learn a huge array of spells with a variety of effects, mostly focused on group offense, single-target strikes, and personal defense. They cast directly from grimoires that hold a limited number of their total spells.

Let me know if you have any more questions.
Also, Pillars of Eternity has a website now.
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Post by codeGlaze »

The man certainly says all the right things.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

http://www.vg247.com/2014/03/27/pillars ... ing-dudes/
I said, for every quest, I don’t have to complete it by murdering, but I want the ability to complete it by murdering. Always give me the option to murder something.
“We’re fairly tutorial-lite. We tried to keep the mechanics so that you can learn up as you go along, where all the complexity just emerges from the scenarios you get put in,” Sawyer elaborated. “We don’t want to dumb it down, but we also don’t want things to be hard to learn or intentionally obtuse. You do have to do a little bit of system learning, but once you’ve learned it, it’s a very consistent system.”

I know there are going to be some folks – I’m talking about you, old-school CRPG diehards – reading those assurances and getting a little worried that it won’t be complicated enough for your tastes, but Sawyer did also promise that it’s not “fucking dumb baby crap.” So there’s that.
“We really tried to focus on three things – they don’t necessarily have to be equally balanced, but we want it to feel like a balanced experience – which are exploration, talking and story shit, and murdering dudes,” Sawyer said, before emphasizing that those elements will of course intertwine with each other, with, for example, long dungeons featuring scripted portions and key conversations to keep those crawls from turning into “slogs” that turn off the anti-grind crowd.

“We don’t want players to feel like we’re settling into this endless depth of murder.”

That’s not to de-emphasize the murdering aspect of Pillars of Eternity at all, though, as according to Sawyer’s own design philosophy, murdering is paramount.

“I said, for every quest, I don’t have to complete it by murdering, but I want the ability to complete it by murdering. Always give me the option to murder something as part of completing this quest.”
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Have you ever noticed that the system that determines your characters powers in an rpg are called "classes", makes you think.
does it really matter though when the fruits of labor (quantifiable as 'XP') are shared equally between the classes regardless of its source of generation?
Actually I just realized sometimes weaker classes (who are often mixes of the roles of two or more classes, "hybrid" or "mixed" classes if you will) get more XP per unit action distributed to them by the system, meaning that contrary to appearances, I, a pure class wizard, am disadvantaged by the system due to reverse discrimination.

I'm gonna start a blog about this.
Obsidian has gone overboard with its over-regulation of party xp, surely if a member feels they arent getting their dues they can just go find another party to join.
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Post by Voss »

Has a lot of ups and downs in terms of ideas and quality, but the end bit is really disturbing.

This game is really being made for a couple dozen people who stuck around from the black isle forums and kept in touch with Sawyer. I remember those guys from my own time there. They are not people I'd allow input on breakfast, let alone a multi-million dollar project.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

You can tell a preview isn't scripted when the devs get repeatedly owned by beetles on easy mode for twenty minutes.
[Josh Sawyer], if waylaid by common wildlife on your daily trip to work do you think you would be able to successfully defend yourself? This is important.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Traditionally, gishes don't work by directly taking/healing damage, but by not taking damage or retaliating damage via spells like Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Fire Shield, Blink, Tenser's Transformation, etc. That's why we have similar versions of all of those spells (Ironskin, Mirrored Images, Flame Shield, Llengrath's Displaced Image, Citzal's Martial Power, etc.).

But I'd like to step back and say something that really needs to be said as we're working on expanding the flexibility of certain classes: class-based games will always have problems with meeting two criteria: 1) all classes feel like they are good at doing certain things 2) all classes are good at the things that all players want them to be good at. Logically implicit in 1) is that if classes are good at certain things, other classes are not as good at those things. There's really no way around this short of deconstructing the entire system into completely interchangable components, at which point you've made a classless system with only the cosmetic labels of classes over the framework. Those sorts of systems tend to be short on unique character mechanics as they often do not fit well into a modular framework (e.g. a 3.5 warlock's casting system).

Within our class-based system, we want players to feel like they can build and play characters of any given class with a good amount of flexibility and customization. That's why we're looking at the fighter and rogue specifically right now. They are two classes that have been on an odd collision course through most editions of A/D&D for a few reasons:

Lore-wise, fighters and rogues/thieves (along with barbarians) have usually been the least innately magical of all classes. Not many people blink at paladins healing people and casting spells, rangers making vines pop out of the ground, or monks Dimension Door-ing across a battlefield. So right out of the gate, you have two classes that are framed as not using magic unless it's coming from items. What do people do (mechanically) if they're not using magic? In combat, they use weapons. Outside of combat, they use skills.

Thus, fighters and rogues were framed as (especially in 3.X) The Dudes Who Were Good with Weapons and Bad With Skills and The Dudes Who Were Good with Skills and Bad With Weapons. A 3.X fighter gets 2 skill points a level, is generally (not always) discouraged from putting points in Int, and if they wear armor (which they probably will), the armor gives moderate to massive penalties to using almost all of their class skills. 3.X rogues are insanely good with skills (when they're not being made irrelevant by casters, but that's another discussion), and although they have Sneak Attack, 3.X invalidates Sneak Attack in myriad circumstances. Undead, constructs, elementals, oozes, plants, incorporeal creatures, etc. all immediately shut the rogue's Sneak Attack down unless the player has splat books that allow them to optionally purchase their way around it, one feat at a time. So while you can claw your way out of each class' respective pits through a bunch of careful character engineering, the default design tends to make fighters check out when skills are involved and regularly stymies the rogues' ability to actually have a consistently strong role in combat. This is a way to distinguish characters, but it's a way that often (effectively) excludes them from contributing meaningfully to large sections of the game.

If you consider it to be a worthwhile goal for characters to be able to contribute meaningfully to all aspects of the game, these two non-magical, weapon-based character concepts are probably going to come into conflict. There are only so many things that classes can be good at if they're conceptually not supposed to use magic while they are swinging swords and shooting bows. And again, when you start carving out a space for a class to be good at something, you're logically doing so in contrast to other classes not being as good at it. If one class or set of classes are markedly good at doing spike damage, yes, logically the other classes aren't going to be as good at it. If two classes are markedly good at causing AoE damage, other classes either aren't doing AoE damage or they're just not as good at it. This also applies to the ability to deflect/negate/suck up damage.

When I told our QA testers that people have problems with fighters, their eyes grew wide. Fighters are, mechanically, very well-suited to holding a line, resisting physical attacks, and taking the hit when their defenses are overcome. Still, they understand, as I do, that people want fighters to be able to do more than just take hits. That space and their options within it are what we're talking about defining now. But please, come on, let them (and barbarians, paladins, and monks) be fundamentally better at taking hits. It's an important but modest calling, and we're not going to balance the game so that if you don't have one of these classes, it's insanely hard. Wizards do not need to be The Dudes Who Can AoE Nuke You and Gish and Take as Many Hits as a Fighter and Make all Skills Irrelevant Because Magic. Ultimately, it's just 11 numbers that are used as ratios. If the gap feels too punitive, tuning only requires us to change a single number.
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Post by Kaelik »

When I told our QA testers that people have problems with fighters, their eyes grew wide.
First his testers didn't believe that people had a problem with fighters.

His solution was to make them more durable.

Sounds like another game where playing a fighter is boring as shit waste of time.
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Post by Blicero »

Kaelik wrote: First his testers didn't believe that people had a problem with fighters.

His solution was to make them more durable.

Sounds like another game where playing a fighter is boring as shit waste of time.
Still, they understand, as I do, that people want fighters to be able to do more than just take hits.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Reading that long quote I thought his conclusion was going to be "we combined fighters and rogues and barbarians into a single class that sneaks outside of armor and tanks in armor and get an adrenaline surge because we don't need 'doesnt use magic' to be three classes"

I disappointed
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Post by Kaelik »

Very Last sentence Bilcero.
Ultimately, it's just 11 numbers that are used as ratios. If the gap feels too punitive, tuning only requires us to change a single number.
He is clearly saying, "If people don't like the fighters enough, he just need to make them even more better at taking hits."
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Post by OgreBattle »

So how does the out of combat game look?
Is there meaningful use of skills like stealth, diplomacy, trapworks, athletics, etc.?
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Skill
Stealth allows characters of any class to attempt to avoid being seen or heard. It is used automatically whenever the character is in Scouting mode. The higher the character's skill, the closer they can get to enemies before being detected.
Adventuring is tiring work. Traveling, fighting, and scrambling up fallen statues can take its toll. The Athletics skill counters the effects of accrued Fatigue, allowing characters to go farther and fight longer before they suffer penalties. In conversations and scripted interactions, Athletics is used for physical feats like climbing, swimming, and jumping.
Lore represents a character's accumulated miscellaneous knowledge and trivia, often of occult or esoteric topics. In combat, it helps characters learn about enemy defenses and capabilities. Each time a character attacks an enemy, their Lore skill helps contribute to revealing their defenses and, for common enemies, filling in their Bestiary entries.
Traps and locks can be a problem for even the toughest adventurers, draining their resources and maiming or killing those who are unfortunate enough to trigger an unseen floor plate. The Mechanics skill makes it easier to open locks and find and disable traps. Additionally, any character can use the Mechanics skill to place traps of their own. The higher the Mechanics skill, the more accurate the trap. In conversations and scripted interactions, Mechanics can be used to activate or disable a variety of machines.
Survival allows characters to make better use of the food and potion items they find. The higher the character's Survival skill, the longer the duration of such items. Survival can also be used in conversations and scripted interactions that involve wilderness challenges or specialization information.
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Post by Blicero »

Kaelik wrote:Very Last sentence Bilcero.
Ultimately, it's just 11 numbers that are used as ratios. If the gap feels too punitive, tuning only requires us to change a single number.
He is clearly saying, "If people don't like the fighters enough, he just need to make them even more better at taking hits."
I genuinely don't see that at all. He seems to be saying, "We all want fighters to do more than be able to take hits. We're trying to figure out how to implement that now. That being said, fighters should still be the best at taking hits. Testing how good they are at that involves changing a single number."

They could totally fail at the former. (Offhandedly, I can't think of any fantasy party-based CRPGs where the fighter was useful for things other than tanking and killing. Maybe Dragon Age: Origins?) But Obsidian seems to at least recognize the problem.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Pillars of Eternity - Pre-Order Gameplay Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2LrE3Ssnsg
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