Azmodiuz

The thing is, you will care a lot less about what you loot when you do not see it, or know what was from where. It will just go to a pile in your stash and you will just sell it all or something later... it becomes a lot less meaningful. It is a bad example to make for the genre's future. Sometimes people do not know what they want. What seems like a great idea great gift, actually can remove what you find fun an interesting. The point is, looting is something very very important to these kinds of games. Changing it up too much is not making it a spiritual successor so much as changing it, completely. New mechanics are just that - new mechanics. Its bad enough we will not have Thieving mechanics in the game.

I feel very strongly against the idea of area-wide looting. I think it will ruin immersion incredibly. Especially for future generations of such a genre if it catches on. It really frightens me. It would spell mediocrity for the RPG genre. Some are already gravitating towards such mechanics too. It makes each encounter that less noteworthy, and much more generic, and all about the numbers rather then the RP. Remember how we used to steal off that merchant in Amn, to get that ring of regen... This comes from a time we cared about gear, to the point even a small thing was noteworthy. We REALLY spent time enjoying looting through every bit of loot we got from everyone, and more so - we were excited when it was from a boss or something noteworthy. Throwing it all together in a lootall -area wide is just plain stupid and detracts from everything the game is supposed to stand for. Its an insult to the genre, and the old-school isometric games we all love. I do not support the mechanic at all, unless it is optional. In which case, that is revolutionary then. OH, and about infinite gold on merchants... I don't agree with it. I think they should all be different, it would encourage crafting, and moving around, and it would increase golds value too. Too bad it was removed.

There are many reasons why area-wide looting is a bad choice. It makes newer players lazy and unable to experience the kind of mechanics we all faced growing up when playing the older games. It also makes little sense, it just saves time, and it encourages a "you can not fail" attitude. It only helps make future games more mediocre. I am sure others think the same, and will once they try it. I personally believe, this will make the game more boring, less adventurous, and more mediocre, it encourages running through an area quicker with less regard to what you will find, and just kill things and get it over with, loot, and move on. The latter is a good option, but not if you can not choose it. For the later parts of the game, going through an area again and again, sure, seems decent enough to use, but not for a first pass. Just a horrible idea. Hopefully we can do something to make it optional sooner then later. the fans who all pledged for this game, would not have voted or agreed to make such a mechanic forced on you.

I thought there was no more physical goods available! Anyways, I agree we need something to explain the game mechanics abit, like a tutorial. Hoepfully there is one in the game at release.

https://www.change.org/p/pillars-of-eternity-make-looting-functions-optional-not-forced-area-wide heres a petition for change! Hopefully they will come to their senses and make it optional. Early game , this kind of mechanic will ruin future RPGers immersion, and possibly hurt the genre, since it is going in the direction of blizzard like mechanics. Very bad for lovers of old BG games, but good for those people who love making millions selling games that you can not fail at, no matter what age, and sophistication.

https://www.change.org/p/pillars-of-eternity-make-looting-functions-optional-not-forced-area-wide This is to reverse making looting, area wide by a single click by default, with no option to change it. We want a modern style, but also option to do as we have always done for 25 years when looting. We do not want Diablo 3 run into loot, or One click all -stash all. The area wide looting function will ruin immersion greatly, and it detracts from a play mechanic that is staple of the RPG genre. Might as well take away levelling up, or customisation next. (Sarcasm, please do not do this. I shouldn't have to say this)

Do I sense a Change.Org coming to change this ? If we don't do something, soon they will just make it so you get XP/Gold automatically, without any interaction afterwards. Then might as well make the game side scrolling so we don't get lost and progression can become linear, and then remove choices that are less popular, and just script dialogues for us. Might actually just turn PoE into a movie, why even bother playing it, to get to the end. HBO's Game of Thrones is fun enough to watch, maybe they can scrap PoE altogether and just do that, or whatever else they want. Clearly they did NOT care about what the backers think, and just created something that is pissing us off, just thinking about. Maybe its because they technically work for Obsidian, which, can really just publish its own games, and didn't need our money. They already admitted they struck it big again, and have PoE as another milkable IP

too large of a post..nevermind

Towards the end of the project. It was a fun level to design and was truly a team effort. I'll give you a briefish rundown of how the process worked. It kinda went like this... 1. One day I walked into Josh's office and was like... "Hey Josh, I want to design a big-ass gothic castle level. What do you think?". Josh responds with a silent emphatic head nod. 2. I then go to Jorge Salgado, one of our level designers, and say something along the lines of "Yo, Jorge. I'm gonna come in this weekend and design a big ass gothic castle level. You in?" I'm paraphrasing here, but he replied something like "F%^$ yeah!". 3. So we came in on a Saturday and I explained how I wanted the level flow to work (being vague so I don't spoil it). We then started tossing out story ideas for the quest. After an hour or two, we were both happy with the idea and Jorge drew some layout ideas for the exterior on the whiteboard in our office. 4. We bantered a few times, refined a few things here and there and called it a day. I then assigned block out duties to Jorge. 5. Later, he blocked out the exterior and interior areas. The early blockouts were sick, but needed some refinement. I had Jorge make some level flow adjustments and various tweaks to the blockout. Early on it was a little easy to get lost in this place. 6. Once I approved the blockout revisions, the levels went off to level art. Sean Dunny worked the exterior, while Hector Espinoza and April Giron worked the interiors. 7. Once the first pass art was in, Jorge implemented the first pass of the level content, including quest and dialogue. 8. Once we had a playable level, I played through the level multiple times and wrote notes. 9. Next, Rob Neslor (Art Director) and I got together and reviewed the first pass art. We made dozens of notes (which included new props needed) for a second art pass. 10. At this point, Jorge needed to move on to work on Twin Elms. I assigned Olivia Veras, one of our newer area designers, to take the level home. She and I worked closely to refine the quest content, level flow, dialogue, combat pacing, loot, balance, etc. She did a fantastic job finishing the level and making it shine. She worked closely with Eric Fenstermaker and Carrie Patel, the narrative designers on the project, to make sure the narrative of the area blended well with the critical path elements of Gilded Vale. 11.Then, the finishing touches (like the lit stain glass and scripted interaction art) we're put in and polished. John Lewis handled the various visual effects in the area, while Kaz supplied the SI art. 12. Finally, Justin Bell and the audio guys worked their magic on the music and sound fx of the area. This is obviously an abbreviated rundown of how we make levels, but hopefully it gives you guys a little understanding of how a level can come together. Sometimes there is a ton of planning, writing documents, and waiting months before the work even begins. Raedric's came together quickly. It certainly helps when it is closer to the end of the production cycle and we can more accurately project how long things will take. This is because the developers are used to the workflow and tools their using, we have a library of assets to draw upon and the team is more or less working like a well-oiled machine. But, its broken ! There are visual bugs that we can see already, that are slightly putting people off, like windows that are ..well..what's the term, asymmetrical, and some shadows and lighting seems to just not feel right, like as if the whole viewing angle is from a different perspective. You have light in peoples faces but the light sources are all behind them, or guys who are all dark but standing infront of a light source. My concern is this, if people can easily spot this, with the low resolution of our browsers, never mind the 4k viewers once we get ingame and are really zoomed in...and playing, what other bugs and glitches and visual mistakes are we going to come accross? Some of the most refined area's (from our perspective, the Beta we have access to, too ages to fix some of the smallest noticeable bugs, and when playing through the area at first) - there was tons of things broken. If this area was rushed through, relatively quick, it makes me worried we might not get a great experience from it.

I've driven friends of mine crazy talking about how much I anticipate this game. My wife is threatening me with divorce if I talk about it anymore.

Your right, some of the stuff seems leaning out of its place or is not straight, but things like this people do not always notice, for me its a pet peeve, but I notice things like this a bit more often then my friends. I care sometimes more about visual then anything when I play a game. Constancy is very important.I wonder if you were to move around on that map, the way they had it, if it would have all those glitches that we had in the beta in dryford, where things would move around with you, especially when sneaking. maybe the walls come at you and grab you... Still looks incredible though, I can not wait to play still. (HAD TO SAY THIS BEFORE BEING FLAMED..)

would be cool to know. Also, would be cool if ever theres a game, and beta player can race to see who gets official recognition for finding and posting the most bugs, this would probably launch many players into beta-test mode and help out alot. Maybe even offer a credits thanks to the top contenders or something.

Could you not just offer BOTH options? Some people wish to sell the boxed versions at their comic book store or something, I'm sure...it would be worth more with the game inside of it. Then again, backers obviously wish o play the game before others..

I hate it when combat start and they all drop what they were doing and attack. So, no update on this from anyone else aye.

What does the Missing GUI 1881 do, thats in the menu/options?

Anyways- if this is a spiritual successor then it should have some thieving mechanics. They were HUGE parts of IE games in my opinion. But, maybe make them meaningful. But stealth should matter. If your seen while in stealth - people would be VERY suspecting, but if your not seen and you stealthed around, it should be considerably easier to steal. Lighting and people directionally facing you always made a difference... but things like explosions and earthquakes wouldn't , which bothered me. Distractions should matter, and thats where I think, PoE can make scripted thieving encounters , possibly.

Pickpocketing is ridiculously useful in the IE games (Or rather, at least in BG2). It is a gateway to such profits that it's borderline broken, once you pump it up to ~240-250 (with potions). Primarily for five-finger discounts at stores, but there are also a lot of loot to be hand from pickpocketing the right targets. Not just specific targets (like Ribald, for his Ring of Regeneration) or for quests (which sadly often ends up with the quest becoming disjointed), but also more "randomized" targets (such as the Amnish Guards, who has a chance of carrying high-level spell scrolls, up to lvl . Pickpocketing is awesome. And if you piss someone off, just fleeing often works, but really, just try to not piss people off. Not very, although not all the goodies are pre-placed, but anyway, the point I was going to make is that the IE games isn't the end-all be-all measuring stick of well-implemented mechanics. Pickpocketing definitely has the potential to be better implemented than in the IE games, and I think that relegating it to "scripted only"-interactions is a sad cop-out. Its not his ring of regen you want so much as the mage in the sphere to be pickpoketted before you kill him.. and encounters like that, where you can get inaccesible gear too. Course the +1 regen a round is nice, but the +2 regen is better ! Also, you don't just pick poket everything, otherwise the game becomes 3x as long .... you just pickpocket those you are SURE must have something, by the way they talk, like payback... you don't like a someone who bad mouthed you, then, rob him blind that evenning

actually quite unpolite and somewhat insulting towards the developers and I fail to understand why you have that impression. You do not seem to have much trust in the game that's beeing developed and their creators. Well, they repeated "Pillars of Eternity will be a combat-focused game" many times, so it's either gonna be chock-full of meaningless dungeons, or chock-full of meaningless wilderness fights. Probably a mix of both. But, lets face it, we like IWD, and IE games like BG series and Torment and PoE because its not ONLY a combat game. You have the freedom to explore meaningful reactions from other NPC's. Adding a richer narrative experience to some companions would be good to have, even if not everyone bothers to explore it. Its having that choice that becomes awesome. I play Skyrim, I have amassed like 2400 hours, yet I haven't beaten the game yet or explored much of the main story, because I have fun just wandering around and doing what interests me the most. I had friends who refused to play Skyrim because they will not play any first person like game etc.. anyways, after 2 years of watching me play they decided to give this game a try, and they are fanatically obsessed with it, because of the freedom to do what you wish, just going off exploring. (or thats what he calls me up late at night to tell me, so excited about..) Anyways, I had fallen in love with Torment more so then all other games I played, because it had a narrative worthy of exploring. And when I'm bored - hulk go smash !

More than anything, we appreciate the update - on the update.

They are hoping to push a beta update next week if possible. WELL... guess not last week, keep fingers crossed for this week ? We should at least have another Beta before it goes live....

Pocketing is major in IE games IMO. how could you play without it ? you'd be missing so much good gear, unless you kill everything.

This will not happen for the released game, but we will talk about it for patches. It isn't a simple thing for us to implement, so we have to be careful with it. No offense, but sounds like a design flaw. All that creativity, and yet something so common and taken for granted -absolutely missing in PoE. This is disgraceful, imo. not having any sliders for sounds is bad. Period. You should always be able to control ambience and character sounds, like movement, combat and then speach altogether on its own. This is something thats been a pet peave of sooo many gamers for sooo many years. So many gamers were so proud of games that had full EAX and sound control over the years, its surprising that games have reverted back to having NO quality of audio, or control of audio. Just pisses me the frick off really. I loved it, and was so proud to have a game where in the game itself we could manipulate the sound, to get it just the way we wanted. surround sound? stereo? only hear voices, or adjust different volumes yourself. Sound and Visual are HUGE parts of the overall gaming experience. We have more then one control for graphics/visual right?? i mean, we can do more then select resolutions and gamma and contrast, we have effects and AA , AS and whole lots of others, plus, in game we can make our characters look however we want, change their style and such.. we can only choose a very few voices though..and have little to no control over sounds and volume... WTF, seriously.. Imagine the reverse. no visual. It would technically be like playing PnP. Not even a computer game. the experience is missing something right. Well that's kind of how your castrating the sound right now. If the game doesn't balance volumes for different things properly and we can not either, then we can not reliably play the game in a quiet environment at night either. Any minute an explosion or a cricket might wake up neighbors - unless we physically lower sound until we hear nothing anyways. SOUND IS VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT. STOP SCREWING IT UP. So much good audio technology out there, and yet, you will pay one voice actor more then a sound technicians salary would be all year to work on things indefinitely, towards a real goal. p.S. sound IS something easy to impliment, beacuse you have known since the moment you put the idea of a game on paper, you needed it. there is little to no excuse for poor planning, and implimentation of something so fundamentally important and elimentary in its design and function. This is not like sound is a new invention, it is of all the things n a game, probably the most mastered, most perfected technology present. It is also one of the most overlooked basics, and sought after experiences in games too. Audiophiles are everywhere. We spends thousands on good sound quality. about half as much as our entire computer experience in some cases. WHY ON EARTH, WOULD IT BE HARD TO IMPLEMENT GOOD SOUND OPTIONS?!?!?!?!?

but you could use normal thieving skills once you were a thief in Torment, normally.

Will the chance to pickpocket possibly depend on if you are in stealth, or be a mechanics skill, like technique or would it be manual dexterity based, these are genuine concerns.

scripted interaction ? Really? Like if you have high enough mechanics and stealth the dialogue option is there, otherwise its not ? can you elaborate or provide link to where this is discussed. I can not comment on whats present if anything is present, in the beta yet.