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mutonizer

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Posts posted by mutonizer

  1. Think he meant that both were used, but DT has more of an impact against low damage, while DR was more effective against high damage.

     

    For example, 10DT and 10%DR.

    • You take 20 damage. -10 from DT, -2 from DR
    • You take 200 damage. -10 from DT, -20 from DR

    That's why we had very small variations in damage taken during last builds I think, that was the % reduction from low damage. Concept is a bit odd and tooltips don't make it any easier currently to sort things out since I'm not sure what information is actually displayed.

     

    As a note, I'm 100% against the "min damage" values. If damage < DT, no damage whatsoever should be dealt ever, period.

    • Like 1
  2.  


    The Backer NPC UI and system was functionally put together a while back and our design team just got around to hooking up the backer NPC data to the characters. So at this point, this is the first time these things have hooked up so the whole team can get a look at it all. Currently, we're more interested that everything is in and working properly. Small things like background colors and icons can be tweaked or removed once our leads and artists have gotten time to do a major review of the overall look. The UI art team has been working a lot on icons on portraits lately as there have been quite a bit to get done.

    Just remember guys, each patch you guys get has only been about 3 weeks apart. Some of the things you see may have been added earlier that week and haven't gone through a full official review pass by the leads and the rest of the team. Rest assured that we will do various passes on things added and you may just be looking at the first go.

     

    Yea, that's why, while it's still bothering me a bit (as I said, that "feel" thing), I try focus more on core mechanics/gameplay than the little things like that which are peanuts to solve either by you guys directly or via modding.

  3. Really? People are that up in arms over the highlighting?

    Sure, could be done a bit more subtile but overall I have to agree with mutonizer,... it helps.

     

    There is a "feel" to some games (all games?) without which you just cannot get into the mood of the game itself. It varies from person to person of course but usually it's UI, pacing and visuals, plus that "little something". When I say it's not a big deal, I mean right now, because of the purpose of the change.

    That said, it cannot be left as it is that's for sure and needs to be a toggle, no doubt about it.

     

    For example, the new NPC backers. Upon loading a new character on the new build, I went around the church and noticed them. For some reason, the icon, the color and disparity from others NPCs totally broke it for me, that "feel" I mean, it simply pulled the plug on my fresh PC and broke any sense of immersion there usually is after I create a character and go "let's adventure!".  

    And even though there are no such NPCs later on, nowhere but in town really, it stayed with me. Why? Go figure man, but first thing I did was to mod their icons out..and now it's fine, and I don't get that disconnect anymore when I create new PCs to test the build. Well that and changed the highlighting hue to 25% alpha... :)

     

    So all in all, it's not a big deal..for now...but it's not nothing :)

    • Like 2
  4. Guys tried cleaning up the folder in %USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pillars of Eternity\CurrentGame?

    Might be some left over from previous scene even though new one is loaded.

     

     

    Sensuki:

    Zoning won't clear anything, I tried it by modding out the combat lockout restrictions in previous build so I could zone anytime. Basically seems like scenes are hard saved in the exact state you leave them at, and when you zone back in, it just loads that exact state, carbon copy. Means everything will be EXACTLY where you left them.

    Might be why they disabled combat zoning but might be related to Unity itself and how it handles scenes.

  5. Chill man, something like that is just a broad stroke to test the water and is very easy to change/tune and whatnot (imagine, took us 2 seconds to mod it out, change alpha, change colors of it, so on their side, it's peanuts). That's not core mechanic or anything.

     

    The idea here is: does it help you figure out combat better, or not?

    Personally I think it does, and yes I HATE the color and crazy highlighting, but it does the job.

     

    Now, fine, from here, needs 2 things:

    1) Toggle on/off for people who want to keep their visuals pure

    2) Find a way to make it as useful, but less like it's an 80s party.

    edit:

    Alpha value helps a bit. Tested with 50% alpha and 25% alpha on the hue, it's less intense, but still easily noticeable so does the job still. Colorblind blue is also less...psycho, at least for me, but that might just be down to personal preference.

    • Like 3
  6. Hmm, am I the only one that thinks that weapon spec/new talents should be separate from class abilities?

    With only 1 to choose from, and quite rarely, don't see much reason to pick any of them, and instead always go for the class one. If acquisition process was separate between core class abilities and others, might actually be able to spec properly, but as it is, I don't see the point :/

    • Like 1
  7.  

    As such abilities triggering on a graze seems like a perfectly valid mechanic to me, after all a graze could be anything from the weapon just brushing skin or armour to a superficial scratch they draws a little bit of blood (paper cut like) they're all more than close enough to do some damage.

     

     

    Nope.

     

    DEF means how hard you are to get hit.

    DT means how much of the damage actually penetrates IF you get hit.

    However, as it is currently, it's mostly down to luck if you get hit/grazed (because of the calculation, the d100 matters way more than your stats).

    And DT doesn't absorb all damage. Someone grazing you for very little damage against a DT of 15, will still damage you a little, and the effect will trigger.

     

    An easy solution would be to remove minimum damage on graze/hit and allow full DT to absorb damage. That way, only IF you get grazed/hit AND the damage still manages to penetrate the armor, would you get the triggering effect.

     

     

     

    Accuracy as a spell mechanic seems fine depending on what the spell is for things like magic missiles it makes sense, while for AOE spells with out a single vector for damage (ie cloud/gas spells) it makes less sense.

    For some touch/range spells sure, why not, bit like D&D system but there's barely any.

    For the rest, I strongly disagree. Spells are limited resources which are meant to be used when you need them. Having them use the same system as auto attacks means that most of the time when you actually need them, you'll probably just miss, because if you don't miss, they you probably didn't need them in the first place, your auto attack dudes being enough.

     

    For example, Pillar of Faith is something a Priest would use when you really need a KD because tactically the situation calls for it. If it can fail all the bloody time and is not in the least reliable, then it's not a resource you'll want to use. All in all, that means classes with non ACC based resources will be way better overall, since more reliable, which is what you'd expect from a limited resources.

    • Like 1
  8. [Description]

    Dead companions remain in the party, dead, which prevents zoning and replacement.

    [Reproduction]

    Kill a party member.


    [Expected Behavior]

    Dead companions should disappear from the party


    [Notes]
    Guessing this has to do with the new "leave body to loot after death" mechanics. Sadly this really screws you over since you can no longer zone out (since you cannot gather your party).

     

    Quick fix for those interested:

    • open up the console (see your binding options for that)
    • press enter and type in: manageparty, then enter again
    • in the new UI, remove party members ONE by ONE, always starting by the last entry AND validating after each. The companion management UI is REALLY ****ed up (just unfinished really) and most of the time, it'll screw you over, but heh, it's either that, or never zone out anymore...

     

     

    On another note:

    • Where the hell is "dismiss" companion button? Are we supposed to keep them with us no matter what unless we actively kill them? That's...bloody :)
    • Like 1
  9. Alright, went through the entire BB content with the new patch, as a Fighter.

    I'll go through again couple times with different characters but for now, here are the main gut feelings from the experience, on normal difficulty:

    • Still a massive memory leak. At the end of my run, PoE was taking close to 4gb RAM. I'm on a 64bits windows so I could keep going, but that needs sorting. Reloading after quitting filled up 2.5gb instantly, though it helped on FPS for a bit.
    • Massive frame issues. Even idling right at the start in Dyrford, FPS was constantly fluctuating something fierce between 30 and 60, with or without vsync on. By the end, it was fluctuating between 15 and 25fps and you could feel micro-stutters constantly when moving, checking UI panels, etc. Really unpleasant.
    • Despite all the changes, pacing still "feels" wrong. Not sure what it is, out of combat movement, combat movement with everyone sliding around oddly, very unclear and confusing mechanics, the whole animation speed based system...Really not sure, hopefully I can pinpoint it later on, but it "feels" wrong.
    • Combat on normal speed is a catastrophe unless you enjoy pausing every frame or something. Between the weird engagement ranges, stupid AI, party AI, weird auto-pauses issues (weapon ineffective, casting pause not actually pausing once the spell is cast, etc), , movement taking animation frames or something and overall characters not responding to what you're telling them to do, or with delays and whatnot....in short, terrible experience, only slightly smoothed by using slow speed mode.
    • There NEEDS to be a way to completely turn off party AI. This is so aggravating! Between ranged characters switching targets while you don't want them too, melee dudes engaging something you don't want them to, or disengaging to go around where you don't want them to, or also switching target, or members just deciding on their own to start auto attacking when you don't want them to. ALL actions not directly resulting from an input from the player NEED be put on a enable/disable party AI toggle...and I mean ALL, including characters auto stopping because they reached some engagement range or something. As it is now, I'm spending more time each battle fighting against my own party AI, than against the enemy!
    • Path-finding still moronic. NPCs in Dyrford routinely bump into each others during their wandering around and won't even go into details for the rest. In short, bad.
    • Cannot really comment on AI in details since I breezed through everything with little to no trouble, apart form the odd crystal spider bull**** here and there. That said, AI just walks into everything laying around like it's nothing, AE their own allies, etc.
    • Effects are way, way over the top. Between chanter songs, auras and everything going on, it's like a psychedelic nut-show out there and that makes my eyes bleed every time. Can't you make things more subtle, or at least allow us to disable that completely or something?
    • New engagement UI display is interesting (and fine for me personally, does what it's meant to do) but now that we can see what's going on, we can see that it's all crazy as well with PCs and NPCs engaging automatically just because anything happens to walk nearby, engagement range going way further than weapon range, and everyone just "slide strafing" around engagees, making the whole thing goofy at best.
    • Character highlighting is, for me, a good thing. Finding the proper hue/alpha/color is obviously something that will take some time, but the idea is good in my opinion. However, like Sensuki mentioned, it should be an option as it really breaks the visual style and immersion.
    • Corpse looting is nice, but some are really hard to click (ie wolves and the spider head dude, which took me like 5 minutes to click properly!). One thing though, required quest items dropping on corpses should NOT disappear when you zone out! I killed the Ogre but didn't loot the head and blood, then zoned out and went at the inn to rest, came back and corpse was gone, with quest now being 100% impossible to complete. Either automatically give the required items, or make these corpses permanent!
    • New Health/Endurance system is nice because,at least to me, it clearly shows bright as day that Health is completely useless as a mechanic and that only Endurance should exist. That way, fatigue, resources and endurance governs your adventuring day. Now that Health became a complete non factor, I could enjoy proper adventuring days and always felt that I rested, when it was time to rest, not because of some bull**** artificial Health.
    • Not being able to stash/loot camping supplies from chest/loot because you're at cap is so ****ing annoying. Get rid of that camping supplies mechanic, it's worth than pointless, it's frustrating due to it's absurdity!
    • I didn't have time to properly test the new Stealth mechanics, but something ****ed somewhere. Speed of my party members got all weird, some zooming at crazy speed while in stealth, others stuff in some kind of walk/slide mode. Think it generates aggro too or something, and just stealthing in the Dyrford ruins at some point (with nothing in sight) instantly aggroed something somewhere, forcing me to do nearly the ENTIRE dungeon locked in combat mode.
    • I could not stop my Cypher from chanting in battle. Just couldn't, unless I blanked out all his songs. When something says modal, you'd assume it's modal.
    • Fighter stances don't stack? Wtf? What's the point of multiple defense modal abilities if they don't stack? I picked Defender, Cautious Attack and Guardian Stance, and basically anything but Defenders useless. If I spec my fighter to be a turtle tank that swings once per minute, that's my problem.
    • DT system's too extreme in it's numbers variance. Variance should be something like 15-25% from base DT at best/worst, not crazy difference like it is now. Replaced base plate on my fighter with Exceptional Scale armor for one fight, since the gain seemed quite nice and the variance against piercing was so crazy he got completely destroyed by some random bow dude. I appreciate the concept, but tune down. Armor/weapon should give small edge/penalty, makes you feel like a fight is slightly easier, or slighty harder, not insta-gib!
    • Accuracy based spell mechanic is just bull****. There, I said it. Base accuracy for spells should be 100 if caster/target are equal level, then maybe like +/-10 per level difference and you compare that number against the target's resistance, then you roll.
    • Crystal spider freezing pillar is also bull****. No resistance whatsoever? How come? Everything should be against something.
    • Effects triggering on graze is also bull****. Effects should ONLY trigger on hit and critical hits, not grazes.
    • Economy's crazy but I'm guessing that'll be tune near release or something.

     

    Overall, just went through the motion. Couple things are nice and the save/load as well as stats seem more stable, but the new bugs and other issues give the same overall feeling as before: "something's wrong here". Fights were not interesting...not sure why, they just weren't.

     

    Anyway, enough wall of text, that was just first impression of new build.

     

     

    edit:

    Oh, almost forgot!

    • What the hell are these new NPCs from "backers" about? I don't mind the concept but I don't give a **** who paid for some dude in game and really don't want to see some weirdo icon everywhere! Make it an option to just see them as normal NPCs, as in, just the name of the NPC, nothing else, no icon, no back name and whatnot. At least you can kill them (though it's a bit annoying) but can't even loot their nice costumes.
    • Like 7
  10. Visions and visionaries are always first questioned, then hated, then suddenly dismissed as "it was always the way to do it, we don't understand the big deal."

     

    True, for a very, very small percentage of them.

    However that's forgetting the other thousands upon thousands if not millions of "visionaries" who are first questioned, then hated, then simply dismissed as "LOL".

     

    edit: That said, not sure why that topic came up, so, sorry for being off-topic Sensuki!

  11. Much more interested in having tons of portraits for odd races like the Aumaua, Godlikes and Orlans, than varied portraits for the other races. I mean, there are already thousands of portraits available out there for humans, elves and dwarves,enough to fit all art styles and personal preferences.

  12.  

    When do you feel it wouldn't make sense to pick a lock[..]

     

     

    When you have a barbarian with 22 Might wielding a 2hd weapon?

     

     

    [..] Or disarm a trap

     

    When you have enemies walking right there and not triggering them?

    I mean that would mean that traps have souls and are sentient so that they recognize some kind of "faction" and, should the victim be of an hostile "faction", then they trigger, otherwise they don't?

     

    Oh wait...that wouldn't be how you handle traps would it? :)

  13. I keep getting slightly miffed at people still confusing Might with just physical STR. Is not the same thing, stop arguing like it is. High Might =/= muscles it is more than that.

     

    I needed to get that nitpick off my chest.

     

    Agreed. Hopefully PoE designers will hear you and finally stop making random non sentient mobs with no soul have high Might just so they can do high damage!

     

     :)

  14. Sorry didn't mean to seem aggressive, I just really do not understand the logic behind it so I'm looking for some kind of rationale. 

     

    Missed opportunity I'm not sure, that's psychological. min/maxing I understand, but isn't that usually an active process, as in, you decide from the get go to min/max? So wouldn't it frustrate you not to even be allowed to min/max? Or would you not just try to min/max anyway, just in other ways?

     

     


    If you don't explore the whole map, you might miss some containers/stashes.

    Good point, same thing really. 

     

     

    To me sounds  a bit like people bashing all barrels in a game to find loot, then complaining about barrels being there in the first place. Why do you bash the barrels then?

    • Like 1
  15. You do realize you don't have to do it right? It's you yourself forcing you to go there. Most of the time the games are balanced difficulty wise around the narrowest path so none of the extras are required.

    I mean, it's the same logic with "rest spamming" or "save scumming". If you do it, take responsibility upon yourself, don't blame it on the game. The game is not forcing you to do it, it's allowing you to do it. What you do with that is upon you alone, nobody else.

    • Like 2
  16.  

    Personally, I like having XP awarded in lump sums for completing objectives because I don't feel like I'm playing the game wrong for trying to find other ways of progressing other than combat.

     

     

    That's cool, options are great.

    That said, And you'll be progressing mostly in one thing: combat. So..what's the point again? :)

  17. My goal isn't to discourage killing/combat overall, but to avoid the emphasis of combat solutions as the de facto best way to resolve quests (unless the quest is fundamentally about killing someone/thing, of course) and to avoid the player feeling compelled to kill everything they come across.  I think it will be good for the game if a player can ask themselves, "Am I losing out by not completing this area with combat?" and sometimes answer, "Nah."  Quest only XP accomplishes this, but obviously a lot of people want to gain XP from fighting.  Short of having a separate mode where you get combat XP from everything and all of the quest XP is rebalanced around that, bestiary unlocking XP is the best solution I've come up with to accomplish both goals.

     

     

     

    Compelled by what, themselves, the game, making his PC better? Why would you as a designer care if they feel compelled? Shouldn't someone who spend the time and effort to hunt down dangerous beasts be better at it than someone who doesn't and prefers solving things via diplomacy?

    I say better here because 99% of the entire game mechanics are about combat. There is almost NOTHING but combat mechanics in the entire game. Everything is new powers related to combat, new talents, better stats, better items...There's not even any utility out of combat spells like augury, invisibility, zone of truth and the like, that could make things interesting for diplomatic characters. And the only real thing that might come into play for non combat options are attributes, the one thing that are NOT impacted during leveling up! Where are all the diplomatic skills? Contacts networks? Hired agents that might make it interesting and rewarding for non combat interested players?

    In the end, players who choose to go the diplomatic route get rewarded with XP, to level up in combat related stuff? And players who choose to go the combat route get jack? This is bonkers.

     

    I understand the idea behind it and agree to some extend, but you're missing 50% of the game mechanics for that to actually make sense here so you end up with the entire thing feeling...forced, arbitrary, limiting and in the end frustrating and not at all interesting.

     

    Also, doesn't the bestiary system work based on Lore? What's gonna happen if someone has no lore in the party? Do you NEED lore as a combat specialist to just get some xp? how does THAT make any sense whatsoever?

    • Like 2
  18. Anyway I chose to interpret them as being relative to the character - which they are mechanically. They can mean different things to different classes and races. A giant and a human can both have 5 might, yet the giant will still squish the human.

    And you're be wrong in that assumption.

    Without MIGHT attribute to modify the damage, the giant in your example would be for example wielding a massive club (or anything else really) that would be the factor for it's damage. By doing that, it means anyone wielding that given club, would hit just as hard as a giant, harder if his might is higher.

    There are no other factor for damage so it's either Might, or Weapon damage. You are of course free to interpret however you want, but you're just wrong is all :)

     

    Anyway the d&d stats are not any better, they have all the ambiguity issues that PE ones do, the only difference is that people dropped the questions and just ran with it. Besides I think the descriptions and the displayed bonuses should (I agree they need improvements atm) give you enough of an idea of what a stat does. And I guess there will be a manual. If someone doesn't want to read, this game is not for them anyway, right?

    D&D stats are not perfect, nothing is, but they have the advantage of serving the purpose they are designed for, allowing the entire game system to work perfectly within that context. Strength being an abstract of raw muscular strength, it's therefore logical within that context for stronger things to be stronger than weaker things, lift heavier objects, have better chance of penetrating AC, etc... (Ogres are expected to have have more STR than gnomes for example, and unless heavy magic comes into play, they actually do).

    In PoE, a gnome could potentially have much higher Might than an Ogre (or a Dragon, or anything really), which means that, by derivation of how the mechanic works, if both were to wield equivalent weapons, the gnome would hit for more damage than the Ogre every-time and the Ogre wouldn't be able to do jack.

     

    And again, please note that PoE designers themselves seem to adhere more strongly to the D&D context than their own PoE context and stronger muscular beings, have higher might (even if they have no soul whatsoever, see my plant lurker example). This is, to me, because while interesting on a theoretical level, it's actually totally impractical in use, since one factor is missing: actual raw strength.

     

    To be complete, the system would need to add Strength as an Attribute (and act as defined by the definition of the word), while Might would just be Soul Power (a layer separated from all physicality, above them, as the lore intended it to be). This would allow them to fully embrace the lore and make it all work perfectly fine within their own context. Creatures would each have their average Strength depending on their race, but individual entities within each race could have wide ranges of Soul Power.

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