Leaderboard

Ok, I’ll make this a straightforward feedback and opinion post... Played now for 40+ hours between the demo and this pre-release. I’m a veteran of larger survival games, so my views are based on that experience. This game has so much potential, but it seems even in it’s early state, there are core design decisions that lend itself to a entry level (easy) survival game and that’s all. - There isn’t much here. The story literally takes you 15 minutes to complete if you follow the queues. Then you do dailies to waste your time on building components that shouldn’t require this much effort to get. You don’t get grass floors by default? Cmon... Even as early access, I would have expected at least a full quest line that takes you through the Initial story, at least 10 hours of content for the $30 price tag. You don’t need community feedback from early access to tell the story YOU want to tell. - Where is the threat? Playing on Whoa difficulty, the only pressing thing is the annoying eat/drink cycle. You can outrun or dodge most insects, and spiders path the same routes if you watch them from high up, easily avoided if farming resources. Tunnels and caves? What do I need there to enhance my base or self after one visit? And even if I make my own dangers...I can just Load a prior Save and be fine again....what? (Covered more below) - Bases have zero risk if you place them anywhere above the ground. It doesn’t even need to be high up, a root of the oak tree or on the soda cans is good enough to avoid all danger. What’s the point of the game past the story if your bases have no threat? Why build re-enforced walls? The game has no longevity if it’s not about protecting your base and your possessions. - Retrieving your dead body backpack is far too easy. If you even die In the hardest difficulty, I would expect your backpack to be guarded or even looted by territorial insects. Why did they care to confront or kill you in the first place if they didn’t find you a threat to their territory? And wouldn’t they be interested in your stuff? Food, drink, components for their own nests/homes...all in your backpack. - A survival game with a manual save system? Again...where is the danger or consequences of your survival decisions if you can just load up a past save? The Save option in the menu should be removed and Auto- Save should trigger internally off system events, including death. That way you can’t go back to avoid a bad result or decision. Save and Load = no threat or consequences for your actions. - The enemies. How is it that with all the great AI you have for these insects, all I have to do to avoid their attack is jump on a rock and watch them leave or spear them to death at the right angles? And how is it that I can kill a Spider by spearing them through my partially completed grass wall and yet the spider doesn’t damage the wall at all? Simply build a small hut, 2x2 and leave some of the walls partially done. Then spear through the translucent blue parts...dead spider. Again, I thought these insects were supposed to pose a threat to your base? If there is no threat in a survival game, there is no longevity and it turns into a creative base building lego game. - Dev, please play with a controller and tell me what the purpose of the hotbar is at the bottom of the screen? You can’t quick swap or interact with any of the slots on the fly. The action bar should be removed imo. Also, control flow in the menus and crafting is just off. I spent a lot of time remapping most my controller buttons through the options to try and get to something close to other survival crafting game interfaces that do it correctly. Managing inventory by moving single items(No stack move or pull), no split stacks, armor that stays in your backpack even when its equipped, tools mixed in with weapons in crafting, crafting station that has no storage of it’s own or that can pull from a chest connected to it, etc etc. - Great looking game, nice visuals...until you look into the distance...well, i guess it’s distant. Why is the house and any structure over 20yds away fuzzy and blurry on console? Are we saying we can’t render these assets on Xbox One X? Find that hard to believe given there are plenty of larger survival games on the Unreal Engine render far more. - The HUD needs options to turn off elements. Too much clutter with constant ‘hand popups’ on every environment item. But I already posted A full detail on that In a separate thread. Harsh post somewhat, sure. But all too often game preview or ‘early access’ often becomes an excuse to deliver subpar, inferior games and still charge a significant price for a game that isn’t worth in it’s current state. Early access seems to somehow give a ‘pass’ for developers to deliver no story, broken systems, and bad design....all with the excuse of ‘it’s still early access’. I wouldn’t say Grounded falls in most these categories, but first impressions mean alot. We play early access games, and most the time we play the game through the early access development cycle, become bored or frustrated and never come back to the actual release of the game because of the bad taste the game left us during early access. Just hope a MS 1st party, AAA dev like Obsidian doesn’t end up with the same result.

I don't think manual saves should be removed, you can just avoid saving, this way the game is more accessible for everyone. Regarding the threats in the game i think you had a rather peculiar experience, i'm also playing on Woah difficulty and more often than not the only chance you have is to run. Thank god we can do that. It's also a matter of "realism", since we are self-conscious and more self-aware than animals it makes sense for us to be able to outsmart them. It's in early access so is still a work in progress.

This one is quick an easy. If armor is equipped on your body, it should not also take up backpack space. Unless it is interdimensional it should not exist in two places at the same time.

When adding and removing items between inventory and storage, can we implement a fast transfer of entire stack to storage?

Feargus has been saying for years that his dream game is "Skyrim in Eora". I loved Pillars 1. I really liked Pillars 2. Neither sold anywhere close to enough units for there to be a name to "cash in" on.

Using the pillars name would be opposite of "cash grab" since deadfire unfortunately didn't sell. Dropping the name completely might even be a financial decision, so that the new AAA project is not associated with a relatively obscure series which didn't really cater to the casual masses. And old fans who have played the Pillars games already know what "eora" is

Obsidian *should* cater to the things that their brand is built on so that people who follow that brand continue to believe in it. Trying to be "all things to all people" gives us games that no one really likes from studios that no one really respects

Hopefully it *will* involve both things, but from a new perspective.

I reckon it'd be its own thing. It's be odd for Pillars III to be branded and marketed as something so completely aside from what the franchise has been so far, and I reckon that having direct narrative ties with the Pillars franchise would only hurt Avowed's accessibility with Eora newcomers as well as leave Pillars fans disappointed, being a pivot not many would likely be wanting to see.

When we were trying to kill some stink bugs, every time they wandered off a few meters (of their own accord, we weren't running away) their health bar recovered. This made it almost impossible to kill them at our level as every time it got to a certain amount of health lost they would just walk away a bit then come back recovered. I think that if you run away, and you are out of range of them THEN they should recover health. But if they recover health every time they take a small stroll it's really unfair.

I have played quite a bit of Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark now. The game made a very good first impression on me, so I bought the DLC which expands it greatly. I recommend it to people who enjoy this kind of tactics game. It doesn't seem to have the kind of secrets that require multiple playthroughs, you'd get in a Japanese game of the style (Tactics Ogre comes to mind), and so far I have not encountered a single choice in the story. Though I am not sure how far in I am. The game gives a strong Kickstarter vibe, so it may be shorter story-wise than it would be with a big studio behind it.

We are currently looking into thew reach of these ants. This behavior is not typical and they should not be able to steal through walls or even from a great distance. I appreciate the reports, and hopefully we will have a fix in soon for this! Also, larva spawn rates and insects being able to go through building structures are also being looked at.

I was looking at the trailer again and I noticed that for a few frames the moons of Eora can be seen. In Pillars of Eternity there is a book called The Moons of Eora that says:

Engage hover mode:

Thank you for playing Grounded! Grounded is currently in Game Preview/Early Access, and as such, unfortunately has a few… bugs, pardon the pun. The team is working hard to update the game often and below are some workarounds that may be helpful. To help make sure we share the most up-to-date information with you regarding current known issues in Grounded, we will utilize our Grounded Issue Tracker. Feel free to bookmark this page as it provides us with more opportunities to share the current status on known issues and when specific fixes have been applied. We appreciate all of these reports, and we will keep you up to date on the progress. Also, at any time please feel free to reach out to us directly at support@obsidian.net.

Too early for dlcs but hey, it's a suggestion for the future. Let's get inside that house, fight some roaches, ants, flys, rats and run away from cats and or dogs. Get inside little cracks to create a base or even cabinets. You could use grappling hooks/climbing picks to get up high places but there is still danger up above with the insects and rats. Maybe even ziplines. Pick up little crackers or chips for food. Pretty much left over food that dropped to survive.

I'm playing on PC. I have built 2 bases so far. 1st base: lots of ants around, they are constantly getting stuck in the walls. every time i leave and come back, the base is full of 20+ ants even though there is no way for them to get in or out. 2nd base: constantly going into combat because theres a mite that spawns somewhere under the ground. enemies will aggro on me from inside the base with no line of sight. enemies will attack me from outside the base and kill me even though the walls are not damaged. all the utilies in the base are constantly being destroyed even though nothing ever gets in. Every other day theres a spider that will beeline for my base, kill me through the wall and then corpse camp me. Surrounded the base with spike traps, spider takes 0 damage. Blocking the spiders attack still kills me 1 hit even with a full suit of armor - but the UI still decides to constantly spam with to tell me that i can block. I don't see what the point of the bases is if it doesn't protect you or your stuff in any way from the enemies.

I personally thought Fenstermaker/Sawyer made a good combo. All PoE1 needed was more polish, revision, iteration, and it could have been one of the greats.

I think if they put one person in charge of the narrative and then get the entire team behind that vision, there's a good chance to re-engage the audience.

I think all of them would be interested, they're just also apprehensive about pouring millions into a project that isn't going to interest an audience most likely. But I also don't think you cannot feel some connection or passion for the saga after having lived with it this long and leaving a clear hook for a third installment on top.

This is how I see it as well. Avowed will become the "flagship" franchise within the Eora setting because it is in a genre of RPGs where sales expectations can be minimum 10 million (DA:I sales), and perhaps a whole lot more (42 million for Skyrim sales). But then, if Obsidian can use the popularity of Avowed to get at least 10% of Avowed fans to give a PoE game a try, that's all they'll need (alongside the core PoE fans) to make a PoE game financially viable.

I actually think it would be good to develop Pillars as the more niche side-venture to the Avowed flagship, actually. I think in this day and age isometric games will be largely a niche interest and if anything it takes pressure off the franchise to overperform whilst also potentially having a better gateway into the series for newcomers. My one issue about that would be if Pillars suffers as a consequence in the way of either feeling the need for Avowed tie-ins or seeing resources syphoned away, causing a drastic impact in scale, ambition and whatnot, or even leading to the cancellation of Pillars as a franchise in favour of more Avowed games - but if Avowed also renews interest for Pillars and the Eora setting, and we can see a Pillars 3 off of it, that'd be an absolute win.

Drinking a Dark and Stormy, I'm quite enjoying it, though the ice is melting quite fast, the dilution on the end made it quite alot less tasty. I really enjoy the spicy kick that ginger beer brings!

+3.5 years and people still aren't paying attention. the list o' things trump can't do that he has done or tried to do grows almost daily. started with the muslim ban and most recent we got him trying to alter how census is counted. if senate refuses to stop trump, he may do just 'bout anything. if trump wants a delay o' election, he can get what he wants by refusing to let fed apparatus take and count votes. sure, there Court will overturn, but there will be a delay as Court does what it does in its own glacial manner, and even then, trump may simple ignore the Court and at such a juncture the only remedy is senate conviction after a house impeachment, and we have been down that road. lack o' presidential authority is meaningless if senate won't stop him. HA! Good Fun! ps trump is current refusing to enforce the recent daca decision. why on earth is this not front page news? the Constitutional crisis stuff people were wailing 'bout during impeachment is happening as we speak. is just another story on page 8.

I agree with points 1,3,4,7,8 and 9. Speaking of the hot bar, I think it would be great to have one slot that you could instantly go to by pressing the hotbar button (instead of holding it to change.) That way you can put a weapon into that slot and be able to quickly change to it. Right now, when an enemy approaches, i sometimes fumble around with the controls in order to find the weapon i want.

I just wanted to take a moment to definitely agree with the controls/hotbar mentioned. The hotbar is pretty useless currently. How is there no way to scroll through the pouch items? You can assign a button to each slot individually but no way to hop back and forth besides hitting an inventory button? On XBox, even with an Elite controller, we only have so many buttons. Would definitely like to see this option added. If you can't do that or don't want to, then at least change the current system to a single button press for inventory selection. By years and years of gaming, I hold in the inventory button, select what I want and release the button. That doesn't work here. I have to press the button again.... What? Why? Anyways, just my two cents on my only complaint thus far. Game has massive potential!! Thanks Obsidian!!

Take my advice with a grain of salt - I have been a fan of Witcher IP since I read books in high school, so I enjoyed all three games on that basis alone. I think all 3 games a worth giving a go. Without a doubt W3 is the best out of three. Still, CDPR subversive quest designs is there from the beginning, although in Witcher1 There are couple ones that stand out from the crowd, rather then being a standard. Combat is the biggest offender - it’s not action RPG just yet - rather it’s roll based RPG with a rhythm game to continue performing attacks. It’s not interesting in any way, but I also found it fairly inoffensive. It doesn’t take much brain power and doesn’t waste much time. plot is all over the place, Geralt’s amnesia gets old very quickly, however, it has some great moments. To say more would be a spoiler. Eurojank and it’s finest and jankies. W2 is closer to witcher3. Its more polished game, but also my least favourite in the series. Mostly as game’s narrative doesn’t play to Geralt strengths as a character IMO. Also you need to play it twice to see all of it. There are two different 2nd chapters (really) depending on a choice at the end of chapter 1. My favourite example of overambitious reactivity. Rather then focusing on characters, this game is very focused on politics of the witcher world - something that gets completely overwritten in W3 anyway. Still, like with w1 there are some really good bits. Both games are a much shorter time investment then w3.

You've got it backwards. It's Pillars 3 in name only. It's being advertised as a first person shooter. Pillars 1 and 2 were isometric "spiritual successors to Baldur's Gate". In my opinion, this is a money grab that is just trying to cash in on the Pillars name.

I think a lot of good points are made—weather like early morning fog, rain and it’s consequences should be added. If a character dies at the very least ants would totally dig around and take some things if it took too long to recover the backpack. While I personally like the fuzzy house and surroundings in the distance(my character’s eye strength is proportionate to their size) I understand how that could mess with other people’s eyes and there should be a feature to unblur them. Armor shouldn’t remain in backpack when equipped. But I don’t think we should assume this is supposed to be a hardcore or even a heavy survival game like Ark or Subnautica. It feels like an interesting survival game through the filter of a story rpg-lite game. A game that falls between Genres in a niche that hasn’t really been explored yet by developers. I could be wrong but that’s the vibe given off to me and my friends. Also the OP must be a lot better than me cus I still haven’t managed to kill enemies from high ground with a spear, gnats being the lone exception

Here it is.

great game, really enjoying my time here so far. not found any real bugs yet but i do have a big suggestion. is it possible to make a way to rename the game svae files? i have a single player game im playing and also a multiplayer game. when i go to load game it shows over 10 different save files ( because i have auto save turned on) and it is difficult to see which game file i need to select if i want to go to my last single player save or my last multi player save.

Yes. Hopefully it's story won't involve watchers and metaphysics

He was really dedicated to his story/fans. In the beginning he was against anyone else finishing his series, but as he realized that the chances were good that he would be unable to finish it he made other arrangements.

A couple of things I would like to add to the above post; Regarding armor, +1 for the fact it definitely should be removed from your inventory when you equip it. Also, can you please develop shields crafted from insect parts too? The shields can be held in your other hand similar to the torch for more efficient blocking. Regarding weather, I think Rain should definitely be introduced, with it's own terrifying results of flooding areas for a short period of time, potentially bringing in new underwater threats to areas that didn't have them before. Lastly, the below comment; "- The enemies. How is it that with all the great AI you have for these insects, all I have to do to avoid their attack is jump on a rock and watch them leave or spear them to death at the right angles? And how is it that I can kill a Spider by spearing them through my partially completed grass wall and yet the spider doesn’t damage the wall at all? Simply build a small hut, 2x2 and leave some of the walls partially done. Then spear through the translucent blue parts...dead spider. Again, I thought these insects were supposed to pose a threat to your base? If there is no threat in a survival game, there is no longevity and it turns into a creative base building lego game." - This didn't happen to me when I played on the Xbox, a Wolf Spider terrorized me for around 20 minutes and broke through everything I built to rip my face off. Maybe there's a knack to it that you found that I couldn't, in my panicked state

1. The ability to upgrade existing structures (for example a grass wall to a stem wall) instead of having to deconstruct the structure. 2. More animals and bugs. 3. The ability to tame things. For example you could tame ants and tell them to collect pebbles or wax. 4. The ability to ride animals such as ants and bees etc. 5. Something to change the terrain. For example if you want to build your base in your own deep custom cave or something. 6. Different material tools, (like wood stone and diamond etc in Minecraft) although there might be I'm not too far into the game. 7. Maybe add RC vehicles or buildable sailboats etc. 8. Everytime I build my base a Wolf Spider eventually comes along and doesn't go away, and keeps hitting my base until it's gone. Please fix this. 8. More areas, we want to see the inside of the house, we want the neighbour's garden we want alot. Maybe a sandpit biome or something. 9. Bigger backpacks. That you craft. 10. Maybe this is pushing it but a skill tree. I think this would really make the game boom. For example a skill to see which direction the nearest spider is in for example. 11. A compass at the top of the screen. 12. Saddles and stuff to ride bugs and spiders. Cant think of anything else, this game has been absolutely brilliant and these are my ideas for it. I'm gonna be playing this for a really long time yet.

nice post, I read title wanted to add, need HELL MODE. something with weather conditions, harsh penalties and up the bug AI a little so they go around water or jump onto rocks your standing on. as posted the potential for this game is huge and I assume there is a lot to come. Hoping for bees, wasps, water creatures, slugs and snails. Thanks original poster there is a lot of very good feedback there.

Hello, I tried to do a topic about this and sorry if this is duplicate but... Spiders keep attacking me through walls and they come through small doors and gaps, for example INSIDE the mystery device and in the lab under the tree (see example: https://clips.twitch.tv/TiredGracefulKangarooCorgiDerp)

I have never read something more accurate and telling. This person thoroughly understands the genre you've entered into as a developer and has hit every nail on the head. I sincerely hope this post is taken seriously because it has advice in it that could make this game infinitely more successful.

Agreed! I hate having to manually move the stack. Using LB to store a stack and RB to withdraw a stack or something would be nice.

That would work for me. I played both Skyrim and Fallout in 3rd person.

Iter: World's largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly.

A few things have changed since the demo, and the floor recipe is no longer found by analyzing or picking up grass planks. Have you discovered BURG.L yet? He may be able to help you out.

Sure they can. It's called being able to scroll back to over the shoulder view.

Some games, including Skyrim, which Avowed is being compared to, have the option of using either 1st or 3rd person. Grounded, Obsidian's most recent game, has that option as well. Obsidian may or may not include this feature in Avowed. However, it is a possible direction they could decide to go in.

Sawyer is working on his own directed small-size project. He recently said during an interview that they made a prototype, the team is very small (around 5 people, though we don't know if they plan to grow from that after pre-production) and during at least one talk he mentioned his current project was "non-violent". He's still the design director at the studio, though.