tdphys

Great Video.... and great Marketing My google news search today for pillars was screaming " Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter Saved Obsidian " all over the internets. What a great way to get some mind-share 2 weeks before release

If you limit "robes" to mean tough body length outer-garment, like these guys: then I could see it being a step up from clothes. If you're talking about a flimsy night-garment "robe", then, yeah sure call it clothes.

I'd personally like to see balance being an emergent part of damage calculations, but I suppose you could balance things through added talents.

Yep, you're right in the sense that every multiplier gets affected by base damage, so I can't just balance light weapons by buffing one modifier out of a slew of them. The only thing I can think of to rebalance light weapons then is to go back to make the crit modifier multiplicative, leave everything else additive, and really nerf the accuracy of heavy weapons and buff light ones as stated above, or just give light weapons higher multiplicative crit bonuses. Otherwise the math doesn't lie, base damage rules all and heavy weapons are the way to go. In other words, if you could do: Base damage of heavy weapon > light weapon Crit Damage of light weapon > Base damage of heavy weapon. and seriously reduce critical chance of heavy weapons, I think you could rebalance things, leaving most additive modifiers how they are now, and not completely redoing the system. Maybe you could call it "base critical" , an unchanging critical blow modifier that is multiplicative and tied to weapon type, no talents, no feats etc. So BD = base damage BC = base critical damage = (BD)*(BC)*( 1+ mod1 + mod2 + mod3 ) and base critical only applies on a critical hit

Well, if your accuracy is high enough that more of those hits are criticals that give cumulatively higher or equivalent to damage compared to an Estoc, you might be okay. I guess what I'm saying, is given percentile base damage amplification, the only route I see mathematically to make light weapons comparable is to cause heavy weapons to crit way less and light ones to crit way more ( and maybe bump their crit modifier relative to heavy weapons). If you are dependent on making crits the way to maximizing damage, then more hits = more crits = dex being your main stat to amplify damage as a light weapon wielder. If you nerf heavy weapons accuracy a bit, then might becomes the preferred way to maximize that damage, since crits are going to happen less anyways, might as well get the guaranteed damage from buffing might.

Since we have additive damage calculations now: (I'm assuming might bonus is additive) you can look at damage calcs like this: damage = base*( 1 + might + crit*critchance) Higher base damage means each increase in might gives more damage for heavy (high base) weapons, which makes them the most effective damage dealers. You could balance this by giving significantly higher accuracy bonuses to light weapons (that's what is happening already, I think) , but those are static, you can't pump light weapon damage by picking stats... unless dexterity works, then you could increase crit rate by increasing the number of attacks per second. So maxing dex over might would be better for light weapons. Maxing might would be better for heavy weapons. Heavy weapons would still be able to increase damage by higher dex, but not as relatively much as the higher critting light weapons. This leaves light weapons specialists extra stat points to target things like maximizing interrupt. So don't write off light weapons until the dex attack speed actually gets implemented.

I still think all percentiles should happen after DT and passthrough. I assume might % increase still happens before any damage reduction ...

I just took a tengu air elementalist to level 27... I usually tire out on my character... got four runes but didn't go for zot. I have to save scumm... Other then that, my love/hate dota relationship keeps on going... I think I've installed/deleted/reinstalled it 5 times in the last 5 months.

I don't know, every time I try and fix my car, I spend half the time looking for that last, lost nut.... mechanics must be really good at this...

It would be cool if there were combo skill checks... like some kind of magical device that needs mechanics and lore to unlock. Also, if there was an assist option, so you could combine two characters checks for a stronger check, which would allow more across the board skill picking.

I can see issues with working out how in-combat Stealth would work (or wouldn't, as it were). Mostly it deals with detection and how someone would enter/exit stealth during combat, and how to get the AI to properly target things if they maybe only saw one of your party members from the beginning. Things like that. The way I understand it (or rather, had it explained to me) Stealth (or rather, "Scouting") is a specific Game State that essentially switches over to another state when combat starts, forcing everyone out of Stealth. I was expecting stealth to stay modal, and only as a "start" of combat, with the whole party coming out of stealth together. Pretty much the same as it is now ( I think ) just enabling all abilities during stealth, and allowing them to be clicked without breaking stealth. ( what do you call the time spent from a ability activation, till it actually procs? It's not "cooldown", maybe "warmup"?) Of course, when any ability outside of modals or insta-buffs finally procs, that should bring everyone out of stealth immediately.

I assume that if you're not stealthing, combat starts when you come within a certain range of mobs. Why not just do the same, even if you're under stealth, and call that the start of "Combat" rather then when you come out of stealth? Give starting abilities a penalty to stealth, but don't require them to instantly break stealth. You might be able to get that AOE off, if your wizard is stealthy enough. And modals could be triggered without penalty. How do you know you're in combat mode if you're not stealthing? Is there an icon that pops up and says "combat mode" or is it just the combination of music and the fact a bunch of mobs are swarming you?

This simply isn't good enough. The problem with the combat state is it trivializes stealth and it makes you "game the system" for both stealth attacks and attacking NPCs. If you have a party has a Paladin with Zealous Focus, you're always best letting the enemy see you first in all encounters, so you qualify for the +6 Accuracy on your first attack. If you have a Rogue with Reckless Assault, Dirty Fighting or Deep Wounds, or a Fighter with Disciplined Barrage and Knock Down combo, you want to open combat with a character that is not one of these, so that immediately after the hit frame of their opening attack, combat will begin and the Rogue passives will activate, and the Fighter will now be able to use Disciplined Barrage to buff his Accuracy for his Knock Down attack. The combat state is extremely gamey and it has a lot of problems/inconsistencies and forces you to make some retarded plays just to get the bonuses that you should IMO always be getting. It is also hugely inconsistent. Some abilities that are very similar might have one that's Combat only, another that isn't, and stuff like that. This confuses me a bit. I understood that combat starts either 1. As soon as the party exits stealth ( enemy mob ) 2. As soon as the party starts an allowed out of combat mode combat action ( neutral ai ) So If I understand correctly: 1. the paladin should be seen, you're referring to letting stealth run out so the AI sees the party 2. initiating from stealth, or on neutral ai ; you should wait for combat to start to get all the modal/knockdown abilities for the fighter and rogue, etc... so you don't use some allowed combat initiation powers which would benefit from these I really like the above idea of having combat start when you come within range(sight) of the AI, I'd suggest that even if you're not stealthing, you should automatically try to, with a penalty. Then you could choose to back off, or use all combat abilities to initiate from stealth. I'm not sure about the neutral NPC's, I don't mind a bit of nerfing to starting combat against them. So the question is, (hopefully a Dev answer? ) how hard would it be to move stealth into the combat state?

So the problem is that "stealth mode" isn't combat mode? Maybe enemy spotted puts the party immediately into stealth mode, giving stealthy parties the opportunity to leave? I like having your fireball alert the mobs to your presence, just cause it makes things more challenging, and gives reaction time (dex? ) meaning in combat. Maybe a feat/talant like " readied casting/ advanced readied casting " could halve/ quarter the cast time for your first spell, letting some people invest in the nuke initiation like in the IE games.

A common complaint has been said about the fact that one cannot start combat with a large aoe, also the fact that the party can't *stealth* during combat. I'm not sure exactly what these mean, so this thread is to hopefully clarify the technical aspect of both of these issues, offer brainstorming Ideas for ways that can *fix* this, possibly in the short term, maybe in the long term, and also a philosophical discussion on how to handle combat initiation and stealth. This isn't a thread about pre-buffing. Combat Initiation: From what I understand: POE has a modal state, one for combat, the other for non-combat. Stealth is a condition where the party moves silently together, until noticed and combat is initiated. For enemy mobs, this is the way to get into battle formation. For neutral mobs that don't attack on sight, you can just walk up to them, in this case, combat mode initiation happens when dialogue triggers it, or the party attacks (and this is where I'm unsure on what happens) . Question 1: What happens when you try and initiate with an AOE like fireball from non-combat mode? is the problem the combat starts immediately when starting the action, giving a bunch of reaction time to the enemy? Or can you just not initiate combat because it starts on an attack hitting, and you can't actually select some modals/ spells etc to initiate combat? Question 2: Stealth - in all of the previous IE engines ( I'm not sure about PT ) the rogue could invis and enter combat to wander around in combat till he stabs someone. This obviously doesn't happen in POE. Some people see this as yet another way that POE doesn't deliver the IE experience. I'm not sure I mind this aspect, I'd suggest it is supported by D&D 5th edition rules, which has different, looser stealth rules then previous editions: From the 5e players hand-book: " In Combat, most creatures stay alert for signs of danger all around, so if you come out of hiding and approach a creature, it usually sees you " In 5e, rogues get sneak attack from flanking (like POE, I think) and from attacking while hidden. Anyhow, the walking around while not seen gameplay was still fun, and given that it is probably to hard to put the non-combat stealth effect into the combat mode, I'm wondering if this type of gameplay can be added in by having some kind of invisibility magic available ( Does this exist already? )

I work as a programmer, and I have a Master's in Computer Science. As for why you don't change the word. on the fly wouldn't work: a) There can be overlap with 'innocent' words: http://bit.ly/1vvwjV7 (it is bitly'ed because the language filter on this site would mess it up, appropriately enough). And no, I don't think regexes are the solution. b) The naive approach does not change the tone of the conversation, which could still be so suggestive that the word can be puzzled out. c) It would still have to be tested and debugged. d) If any words slipped through there would be an uproar. But again, it does not matter because it is a M rated game. I'm not sure that there would be that much of a problem for a straight up text-replace, I bet I could do english in an hour, just by flagging false positives as the search went along. But I think you're right about the localization problems, I could maybe do french:) ... it's probably best to let the community provide suitably censored versions of the game, seeing that Obsidian is only delivering as promised. Given what Sensuki has said about the strings for the game being easily available, I'll probably do the english swears. If the audio is also easily available, that could also be dubbed over, though the trick will be finding the audio. I wonder if they have some correlation between audio files and strings, finding the audio swears might need to be crowdsourced . I actually care less about that, because I can't stand waiting for a voice-over to finish saying the text that I finished reading 10-20 seconds ago and usually disable voice audio, but I'd be happy to put in some community service if there's demand. We'll call it "prudemod", or "thinkofthechildrenmod". Accessing strings and audio files is easy and there is no problems in changing them, but I am not sure that you could check false positives in hour as there is quite lot of those files that you would need to go through (at least several hundred, as beta has over fifty conversation files plus other text files, there is file for every character). Linux script-fu solves all problems. The number of files isn't the problem because it can be automated, only the number of occurences. The trick with the audio is finding which audio files correspond to which text files, because you could use the searchable text occurences to locate the audio ones. I probably don't have the motivation to sit through 100% of POE audio, dubbing as I go, but if I could get the audio location from the text locations, it probably would be doable. Granted, I'm assuming about 20 - 40 swears in the whole game. I'll do the text replace no matter what. The audio, if it's over 50 ... I'll probably just turn off voice.

I work as a programmer, and I have a Master's in Computer Science. As for why you don't change the word. on the fly wouldn't work: a) There can be overlap with 'innocent' words: http://bit.ly/1vvwjV7 (it is bitly'ed because the language filter on this site would mess it up, appropriately enough). And no, I don't think regexes are the solution. b) The naive approach does not change the tone of the conversation, which could still be so suggestive that the word can be puzzled out. c) It would still have to be tested and debugged. d) If any words slipped through there would be an uproar. But again, it does not matter because it is a M rated game. I'm not sure that there would be that much of a problem for a straight up text-replace, I bet I could do english in an hour, just by flagging false positives as the search went along. But I think you're right about the localization problems, I could maybe do french:) ... it's probably best to let the community provide suitably censored versions of the game, seeing that Obsidian is only delivering as promised. Given what Sensuki has said about the strings for the game being easily available, I'll probably do the english swears. If the audio is also easily available, that could also be dubbed over, though the trick will be finding the audio. I wonder if they have some correlation between audio files and strings, finding the audio swears might need to be crowdsourced . I actually care less about that, because I can't stand waiting for a voice-over to finish saying the text that I finished reading 10-20 seconds ago and usually disable voice audio, but I'd be happy to put in some community service if there's demand. We'll call it "prudemod", or "thinkofthechildrenmod".

Actually, minus the swearing, the description sounds pretty close to Teen. The sexual and violence content seems in line with BG2 which has a teen rating. I don't remember STIs, or rumors thereof, being a part of quests or dialog in BG2... (“But if he spreads a rumor that her lover has just visited a brothel and acquired a pox on his loins, she'll end it on her own.") There's also a side quest in the beta involves rape and couldn't be made suitable for young folks with a language filter. But yeah, I was exaggerating for effect. Well, as long as it's not glorified, I think discussions about rape and sti's are suitable, even necessary, for at least teenagers. If POE can treat things like that in a "mature" way, without resorting to gratuitous violence, porn and f-bombs, then that's commendable... If you ask me, too often "adult" or "mature" refers to treating sensitive subjects in the most "juvenile" or "immature" way possible. When POE stated they were going to cover "mature" themes, I was pretty sure they meant it in the context of gritty realism, not "high school lockerism". That seems to me that's the case, even more-so from the ESRB rating.

Also, that those rules, logic and lore are complex, satisfying and consistent.

Actually, minus the swearing, the description sounds pretty close to Teen. The sexual and violence content seems in line with BG2 which has a teen rating.

We're not asking for government censorship. We're asking to be allowed the ability to modify or play a game how we'd like to. We're not asking that swearing be completely removed from the game, just that it can be turned off if the user chooses. We're all on the side of choice, dude, really we are... I don't even care about an in game-toggle just as long as I can have access to the text files, it's a simple text search and replace. We can already turn the audio off. We're all good, we're not coming for your blood, guts, and porn, I promise.

thanks for the tip, but that's kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack. On their end it's a simple as about 3-10 lines of code. you did give me an idea though. I would like to experiment with the text files if I have access to the dialog with sound filters and a speech program for grins. I'll happily auto replace (grep/sed/awk etc.. ) and send you new dialogue (I'll probably do it here too)... though I can't guarantee that I won't give in to the temptation to put in my own easter eggs

It's a little more nuanced then that. I'd suggest, (from experience) that it's easier to get your kids to resist pulverizing monsters in dungeons then dropping f and s-bombs at school. If I'd ask a little bit more, it'd be the ability to disable the ridiculous blood spurts on every hit. How can people find that immersive ? That kind of blood loss would be death in a hit or two. I get that people like that kind of over-the-top, but hopefully we can get a checkbox on it. Granted, the hanging bodies are graphic (I haven't seen too much dismemberment, but I haven't been poring over screen shots), though I've already had discussions with my kids about human sacrifice, just from them reading history books on aztecs and incas, or even tintin had a bit of that in it. I'll probably let them play POE when they're more late teens.

I'll second this, though I'm not holding my breath.

I don't have a problem with Obsidian researching using modern pipelines to recreate and enhance the style of IE games. I'd hope that it pays off by creating a beautiful, efficient medium that spawns more games of the type. ( This is already happening in part, I assume, with the licensing to numenera? ) I'd expect grognards, for whom the flashy graphics are just getting in the way of their gameplay, should still champion this kind of research for the impact it could have on the genre as a whole