Silvaren

What if Eder will return as... priest of Eothas? It would be cool story-wise. During one of the streams Josh said few things about possible "true" multiclass system implementation so in theory...

My thanks to entire Obsidian team once again. You turned my "blue monday" into a very special day. I received my prize today - great timing. Lots of cool stuff. Incredible value for collectors and fans, such as myself. I hope we will see Pillars of Eternity 2 campaign on FIG real soon.

But it would be sequels to their games. Besides that, in my opinion every sequel they made to BioWare's games was much better than original. I would buy real world cRPG once more time. If not Alpha Protocol 2, then maybe Obsidian could do something like Jagged Alliance but with rich story, nonlinear construction, well paced narration and turn based, complex combat. Or something more historical like old polish cRPG - Another War, set during WW II.

There are 16 games currently in development, all based on H. P. Lovecraft's novels. One of them is 2D turn based cRPG - Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones. Obsidian should focus on Pillars of Eternity 2 and expansion/sequel for Tyranny. They lost few awesome IPs throught the years since Interplay - Fallout,Arcanum, Alpha Protocol. They published or developed Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/Planescape Torment/Neverwinter Nights 2 and now it's hard to obtain license from. Hasbro/WotC - not sure if Atari have something to say about license anymore. I would say all D&D titles would be great in Obsidians hands, Wizards of the Coast woudn't allow to make new game with old ruleset for sure - that's why Daggerdale, Neverwinter Online and Sword Coast Legends used 4th and D&D Next. There is one except from this ruleset resteiction. Enhanced Edition made by Beamdog, and Trent's team is working on new Infinity Engine game right now so I guess they have good license agreements with WotC allowing them for using old AD&D. If players want more Forgotten Realms atmosphere and D&D ruleset, then Pathfinder as cRPG would be the best choice. Obsidian allready did cart game based on Pathfinder. It's pure hereic fantasy setting, would be great for anyone who felt that Eora is too grim and heavy. When I look at isometric cRPG, the only one type of setting we didn't get is pure sci-fi as space opera. It would be cool to explore space, participate in firefights turn-based like in Wasteland/X-Com/Fallout Tactics, with deep narration and story from Obsidian's writers and all of this in atmosphere similar to Mass Effect, Star Trek etc.

I would like to see Dark Sun campaign setting once again. Setting of Tyranny is similar in some aspects but think about that - in Dark Sun iron is rare. Most weapons are made of... OBSIDIAN!

Is there a chance that something will be signed by Chris Avellone too? He was part of the team for a very long time. Thank you Obsidian. And congrats to AndreaColombo and Dr <3.

I encountered an issue today. Probably it's not a bug but something with enemy AI: Bounty: The Gleaming Society After a fight and after I looted corpses I noticed that one member of the Gleaming Society didn't join the fight when others spotted me. He stood behind field of view in fog of war and attacked me after the big fight when I came close enough - I didn't even know that he was there, I thought that entire group was wiped out. He was one of the Gleaming Society Paladins.

I can listen to music from all Obsidian's games over and over again. The one in Pillars is great, both uniqe and familiar, very nostalgic. Few themes sound similar to Michael Hoenig's music from Baldur's Gate 1&2, other reminds me of Jeremy Soule's Neverwinter Nights and a lot of tracks have original style. I can find a lot of peaceful moments in ambients while exploring a wilderness or such quite mysterious themes during interactive textbased cutscenes. My favourite track is probably "Ondra's Gift" - it's peaceful but it has some grim vibe and tension is slowly rising near the end. It's excellent theme for conversations with Lady Webb. Also I would like to know who is the singer from Gref's Rest. This song did great job in trailer of the expansion and ofcourse in the game. The second part of White March was momentary very romantic.

I would guess - Atlantic Ocean :D

After so many questions about Pillars of Eternity and possibility of a Pathfinder isometric cRPG or other games with interesting, rare type of settings... Future may be beautiful.

Yes it could work like that and one additional attack with offhand if dual wielding. System in Pillars developed as stricte cRPG ruleset - high numbers and different ranges of damage which can't be easily implemented as dice rolls, for example Fan of Flames 30-42. Many features can't be converted to p&p. D&D has its attacks of oportunity while in Pillars are interrputs, but they work on any action in combat and actions didn't provoke attacks of oportunity. How interrupts could work in turn based combat? Pillars of Eternity is turn based from specific point of view. The game is only quasi real-time because each character acts in turns but these turns are resolve simultanously. In Infinity Engine games each round took 6 seconds, in Pillars system is more fluid because it depends on recovery action between rounds. And there is still a speed factor (like weapon's speed factor in Baldur's Gate or casting time of spells).

Hahaha I'm sorry I wrote this few minutes after I woke up :D

@Arch-Mage Hit rolls aren't too complex, even when calculating all bonuses and suppressed values. You have to do it in D&D anyway so it's nothing new. Main difference is that in PoE all calculation are using higher numbers than in d20 systems. Like I wrote in my first post - it can be converted from d100 to d20 but original d100 ranges for miss/graze/hit/crit are more precise than ranges divided by 5 for d20 core. Some ruleset like Star Wars Saga allow you to make three actions in one round (swift, move, standard) but only one of them (standard) grant you time for attack and you can do only one attack per round and character's class doesn't matter. So if Pillars of Eternity uses one mechanism for all classess I think that all of them should have the same number of attacks. Benefits from Dextirity shouldn't grant different number of attacks. How would it look when with 10 Dex player would have 1 attack per round while with 11 Dex 2 attacks? Attributes don't have empty value in PoE so each point above and below 10 should make a difference and how many attacks could be done by character with 18 Dex? 9 attacks? And how many attacks could be done by character with Dex 8? No attacks? I think better options will be add some kind of cooldowns and make Dextirity to speed up cooldowns like I did it for my Mass Effect conversion. Flat value are only option. You can't count percentages during RPG session. And if combat is turn based it doesn't matter how fast is your weapon, so fast weapons woudn't benefit from this anyway.

I have an idea but it could break the meaning of whole 1/rest system. What if some abilities like Cat Flurry Attack would stay as 1/rest but with circumstantial factor which could trigger these abiliies to refresh? What if add small percentage chance to refresh Cat Flurry Attack on Critical Hit? It could work theoretically as intended but players would use this more frequently and they wouldn't hesitate to do so. Balance would be natural thing - you use Cat Flurry Attack to shred some trash mobs - deflection of trash mobs isn't very high unless you are playing on PotD, so on different difficulty level than PotD you have good chances to score even several critical hits during the fight and each with small percentage chance of refresh Cat Flurry Attack. So players woudn't hesitate to use Cat Flurry Attack because of harder combat that may never come - thanks to chance of refresh ability. In oposite - in boss fights or encoutners with higher level enemies or more powerful monsters with high deflection your chance to score critical hits is automatically lower, so it would be hardly possible to refresh Cat Flurry Attack during the same fight - and after boss fights or harder combat most people would rest anyway. I'm not sure if this type of changes is even possible at current state of game's code and it would require a lot of testing. I guess percentage chance of refresh very cool 1/rest abilities by critical hits would make people to use items which convert hits to critical hits. By refresh I mean that ability would be ready for another use. But there are spells like Divine Mark which lowers target's deflection by 25 granting opening for critical hits...

Another one thing about fight with the Kraken. I managed to kill this boss without drawing agro from eyless simply by staying in the left bottom corner of the area. I killed all of the tentacles and after that the rest of the kraken. If the eyless from the right side of the area showed up earlier this fight could be more challenging. And like someone said, it would be better to add some resitances for eyless and the Kraken. I stunned eyless and I stunned the Kraken during my first playthrough and I used these scrennshots in my review of second part o the expansion with some funny coments about stun from beating monsters in a place where they had vaccine injected (in my country it's popular joke from childhood - I'm not sure if it's funny for you all :D). I had Pallegina with St. Ydwen Redeemer (and it wasn't even the last stage of soulband upgrades) and I didn't use Abydon's Hammer so I coud say that fights with eyless on Hard difficulty wasn't hard at all.

I know it's old topic but here is a link to a poll on this forum about system for P&P Pillars of Eternity. I wrote the example how game mechanics from Pillars could be used in RPG. I did some work adapting ruleset of PoE for sci-fi setting that you could hear about, it's called Mass Effect. It needs some balance and stil a lot work to finish, but it's doable. So if I can succesfully combine rules from Pillars with few p&p RPGs, I think that game designers from Obsidian could do this even better. I know more people who design role playing games than playing them right know - it's like new trend. We all started with small, personal projects or this kind of adaptations I mentioned above. It's good exercise and a lot of fun. One of my friends share few games with the public, but it's small community in small country so maybe few hundred people played it. It's hard to make something innovative and plenty of RPGs are similiar to each other so why making new over and over again? I think that it's better to release new setting based on well known ruleset than make another one, but Pillars could be exception.

Thanks but my post wasn't stricte about beta 3.04 but I'm testing it now on Steam so maybe I'll have more thoughts soon. I play mostly for fun so I'm not sure if I'll test everything. Icewind Dale... Yxunomei, Jeremy Soule's music during characters creation and classic AD&D adventure. Brian Fargo said in one interview that first Icewind Dale was his favourite game of the golden era of cRPGs back in Interplay. I like to play Icewind Dale in December with open window to make "cool" atmosphere :D

First of all system used in Pillars of Eternity should have a name. Back in 90's all RPG systems had names. The same was in case of cRPG, like Fallout and its funny history of name ("ACELIPS") becoming S. P. E. C. I. A. L. RPG mechanics used in Pillars are well designed so I would vote to use them, only slightly changed. The biggest problems are percentages damage bonuses and percentages benefits from attributes. It's hard to count this type of numbers during RPG session. Percentages should be replace to constant values. But it will require balanced values and it'll be extremly hard. I'm working on something similar, so hear me out. I was adapting Star Wars Saga Edition (d20) for Mass Effect setting since 2010. A while ago I changed RPG mechanics for system used in Pillars of Eternity and it's even better for this purpose. Miss, graze, hit and critical hit all have compartments and they are brilliant for Mass Effect when comparing them to lore of the setting. For example, upgrades like "biotic damage" from ME2 are describe as software increasing accuracy of biotic powers. So increasing accuracy increase damage and this is exactly how attacks work in Pillars of Eternity. The better accuracy you have, the more chance to actualy succesfully hit, diminishing chance for graze and increasing chance for critical hits - in all cases you will do more damage. So why d100 instead of d20? It's more precise. I could divide all numbers by 5, then it would looks like 1 - miss; 2-10 graze, 11-20 hit, 21+ critical hit but it woudn't be as precise as d100 and its 1-15 miss, 16-50 graze, 51-100 hit, 100+ critical hit. Attributes work well with impact on four types of defense stats (deflection, physical force, dodge, will). Equivalent of Dextirity get cooldown bonus instead of reduced time of recovery action (which woudn't work in turn based combat). I redefine other attributes - like Strength reducing weapon's recoil, Constitution bring limits for using biotic powers before character moves down on exhausted scale (it's concept from Star Wars Saga, 5 grade of penalties from debuffs or bad condition) or until character rests. Other benefits from attributes are the same as they are in Pillars, but adding constant value instead of percentage. I see that character development can be a challenge because I like the idea from Star Wars Saga - 3 or 4 groups of talents for each class. It's Mass Effect so there will be combat, tech and biotic powers and I want to use feats. So it's hard to plan how or rather when a character will learn all three types of special abilities while leveling. It was simple in Star Wars Saga - bonus feat on each uneven level, bonus talent on each even level. But in my design there are 3 types of abilities to pick - class talents, powers, feats. Another matter is skills system. Pillars of Eternity has specific system which require certain skill to pass difficulty check, while there is no random number generator. Skill level has to be equal or higher than DC. It's logic but I'm not sure if this will produce a fun factor in real RPG session - knowing that you can pass the check without risk. And skills from Star Wars Saga gave my great ideas how manage hacking, explosives, stealth, piloting etc. but I'm not sure if it will works good enough based on d100 mechanic. Good design require consistent system for all tests. My system adapts damage reduction (because of shields and the way I designed health) from armor, shields as equivalent of endurence from Pillars of Eternity but health will have a very low value to allow kill in one or two attacks. Armor will be destructable and repairable and when your shield go off your armor will be the only thing between you and death. So some powers and ammo type will have option to destroy armor (striping character from damage reduction) and there will be weapons with better armor piercing stat. And ofcourse - there will be cross class combos. CCC are now so popular that we will have fun with them even in Tyranny ^^ So yeah, Mass Effect. It's not offtopic. I mean, if I can convert system from Pillars of Eternity for need of sci-fi tabletop RPG, I think it's doable to adapt game mechanics to pen & paper version of this one specific, beautiful designed game which Pillars of Eternity is.

Hi It's my first post on this forum. I should share some thoughts with you earlier. English isn't my native language but I would try doing my best with this feedback. 1. How have we been at communicating with you guys? I read most of dev diary and other stuff about Pillars of Eternity and now Tyranny, I frequently read this forum. I watched many interviews on youtube (those with Matt Barton was very insightfull and funny) and read other things across internet. I watched panels - like the one where Josh explained design behind the attributes system. So I guess communication is one of your best qualities. I like to know how the game was made and why some features were designed in the way they are. Thanks to you I know a lot about production of your games. You are probably the best studio out there if consider communication aspect. It's like Feargus said, what changed after starting Obsidian - transparation. He means mostly internal transparation during work on a projects but now everything is transparent for players. Probably thanks to Kickstarter. 2. What did you like about us? I don't know where to start. I spend thousands of hours playing all your games - those based on Infinity Engine and both Fallouts when you were still working in Interplay/Black Isle, publishing or developing the most memorable cRPGs. Later, when Tim founded Troika Games I spent huge amount of time with the best adaptation of D&D 3.5 - The Temple of Elemental Evil. I played through Arcanum a lot. Then when Feargus gathered people under Obsidian banner I fall in love with KotOR 2 and later when Neverwinter Nights 2 came out - first spiritual succesor to Baldur's Gate (and Mask of Betrayer as spiritual succesor to Planescape Torment). Both sequels are imho better in every way than original games from BioWare, which were great so your works is even better. You even managed to bring back true Fallout atmosphere and actual quests and interesting NPCs in New Vegas. I played Alpha Protocol few times - great nonlinear story, characters and awesome spy feeling - too bad you don't have rights to the franchise, sequel would be great. Even Dungeon Siege III was fun to play and now I'm watching entire South Park tv show to prepare before playing Stick of Truth. I play all of your games to this day. And I finished my favourite at least 20 times - what can I say? "I like songs that I know". (I'm not sure if this saying is the same in english). 3. What you like about Pillars of Eternity? Pillars of Eternity announecement was like dreams come true. I regret that I coudn't afford to give you my support before, when you started Kickstarter campaign. Pillars of Eternity is everything what I like about your games. Your style of writing an incredible, and what most important, personal story with strong themes, interesting, multidimensional characters, rich background and exposition of setting. I love how you break stereotypes in Planescape Torment and KotOR II. I admire how you use strong themes in different way, for example - I like how you pictured war in KotOR II - not as a conflict with gunning and blowing in galactic scale, but as something quiet, something what touched Exile and his companion, changed all of them. I found similar style in PoE - something bad happened and it changed the nature of the world, a part of the world for sure. I like how you succesfully push players in pursuit for answers. Nothing is plain and simple. There is room for conjectures and interpretation. It's unique feeling - while I was playing KotOR II I felt like I was playing another Planescape Torment, then I felt it again in Mask of Betrayer and now in Pillars of Eternity. It's the feel of understanding things that affected my character in past and shaped me for the future. I like how you constructed dialogs and quests. Players not only make a choice, but they know why they pick specific solution to situation, players can find personal motivation behind each choice. The best type of choice and consequence, like in Fallout. Reactive world as simulation, logic sequence of cause and effect. It's great in Pillars of Eternity thanks to reputation system, factions, personal motivations, background and skills that open players a new way to resolve quest or simply choose the right path for themself. I like how characters seems to be real people - for example Eder, his beliefs and background, his doubts, even sense of humor which reminds me of Atton. The way how insightfull they are - like Durance, or mysterious and shocking like Greving Mother. They act like real person. There are subtle things that give them more personality, even small things like battle cries - Pallegina's "For the Republics!" (she's like jedi knight sometimes). I like your attention to details - from ranger weapons reloading animation to things like footsteps in snow (which is incredible seeing this in 2D environment) or warm breath out of mouth in cold air of the White March. The same details in building real, reactive world - like giving knife to the boy and after a while hearing about that he accidentaly cut off fingers. I like how you crafted Eora as unique, grim, renaissance setting, drawing inspiration from history of mankind. I missed this type of setting since Lionheart. Like Josh, I have a degree in History. Eora is fresh and yet familiar. Game mechanics are well done. I have excellent understanding of system you created for this game. I like how you designed physical warriors in the way D&D 4th edition does - they have exploits comparable to great magical powers - special attacks etc. And what I like the most, Pillars of Eternity is transparent manifesto against metagaming: no exp for each slain enemy, no buffing before combat, restriction in resting system and other things which make Pillars of Eternity similar to real RPG sessions. 4. What kind of things would you like to see us improve on? - First of all bring back MCA or at least cooperate with him. Chris is one of the coolest writer and designer in game development. - Stronger use of main character's background (but you allready did this in Tyranny I heard). If you played any of awesome Shadowrun games from Harebrained Schemes, there are certain etiquettes which bring more role playing approach and new solutions during dialogs. It could be similar with character's background. - If you will add romance options in new games, please try to bind them with the story, like in Mask of the Betrayer or Alpha Protocol. - Speed up save and load process. - Give greater role to factions, like in New Vegas. More unique, exclusive content for each other. - Quicker path to available companions, so players could use them and hear them throught most part of the game. I gather all companions in 2-3 hours last time, but until I'll have chance to recruit Zahua, Maneha or the most difficult - Devil of Carock at least 1/3 or even 1/2 of the game will be "done". - Expand the setting for new places, exploring cultures we heard playing first Pillars of Eternity. - More sketch of items, not only for soulband items but like it was in old Infinity Engine games. This build great vibe and seams more real and immersive. - Living soul trapped in sword made of adra, with personality on the same level as character's companions. Talking sword like Lilarcor. I thought it would be great for this type of setting, bound the soul in adra and learn something from "it" mistakes when he or she was alive. - More items for caster classes (more robes, hood, different cosmetic changes). - Strong aspect of both Baldur's Gate II and Pillars of Eternity are huge sidequest stand alone adventures with consistent story, memorable NPCs. Like Roedrick Castle, Skaen Temple (or Umar Hills, Cult of the Eyless etc. in BG II). This is the best option for side content. - It would be cool to visit puzzle dungeons and locations, like Ice Temple of Auril or Fell Wood in Icewind Dale II or Watcher's Keep in Throne of Bhaal. - More cutscenes on game engine, like those in Baldur's Gate II or KotOR II, between the chapters, foreshadowing characters or important parts of the plot. - I like long description in dialogs, like those used in vanilla Pillars of Eternity or in Shadowrun from Harebrained Scehemes. It adds a huge vibe, build up atmoshpere. I felt like White March was missing some of this type of texts. But long narration between character's lines breaks voice acting. It is possible, to make longer pauses between another spoken lines played in dialogs if they are separate by additional narrative description? 5. Pillars of Eternity missing features. - I would like that each book, note, poem or anything else which contain a lore about Eora would be added to separate section in the journal. Like codex entries in Dragon Age/Mass Effect series. This way players could read the lore in any time they want and have easy access to it without filling inventory with many books to read in the future. I'm lore freak. - I would like that clicking right mouse button on any avatar could plays its sounds. Like rightclicking on sprites in Infinity Engine games played NPCs voices or monster's sounds. Some of them were unique and coudn't be heard otherwise (for example Firkraag's lines in Baldur's Gate II). - I'm playing expert mode for the most of time, my first playthrough was hard difficulty with expert. It's great way to play PoE but with all new mechanics and new spells, abilities there was something missing - area of effect markers. It's strange that expert mode doesn't allow that, while for example in D&D playing on the grid players could precisely target AoE spells. - Can you please allow players to wear cloak and neckles at the same time? Only for cosmetic purpose. I like my wizard or priest or paladin wearing a cloak, but sometimes neckles have better benefits. 6. Combat: The hardest fights: Concelhaut, Adra Dragon, Alpine Dragon, Llengrath, fampyr Roderick, Nalrend the Wise. I think that those fight are the most difficult because all bosses have minions. Fighting dragons, liches, archmages in Infinity Engine games or later in Neverwinter Nights was always combat designed as party vs single oponent. Nalrend the Wise was hard because those ogre druids cast a ton of healing spells and insect plague. Some fights with fampyrs or spores are hard because of charm effect, but I will test that soon. I didn't have problems last time I fought Radiant Spore. The easiest fights: Thaos, Kraken. I'm playing now on normal difficulty and I think that entire game is too easy on this level. Design of high difficulty is very good, path of the damned is challenging but I'm not into artifical stat increasing in cRPG. 7. Balance issue. - Divine Mark, I guess it was designed as spell against boss type oponents. It has bonus +15 to accuracy vs Will (which is probably one of the lowest defence) and this spell does a huge amount of damage and lower deflection making a target easier to hit by conventional weapons. As vs boss spell it has issue close range - because of the minions it's quite dangerous to use, while in early game this low level spell seams too powerfull against normal enemies. - Dextirity, I think this one attribute gives the least benefits for any character. I never min-max, I always make my character balanced, like natural living person without dump stat. And 3% to speed up recovery action seams negligible when you spent only few points over 10 in that attribute. Attack speed, casting speed generally affects frequency of making actions. So if attack animation's speed is constant until recovery action reach 0 seconds, is it possible to make greater benefit from Dextirity and still don't reduce the time of recovery action to the point, when attack's speed animations will speed up, making attack not more frequent but faster? - Maybe will you reconsider adding some range to casting spells, like from one of attributes or talents or class specific abilities, or even items? 8. Bugs. People are saying "Obsidian makes buggy games". I'm very upset by this statement so I made this meme. I spend thousand of hours in your games, and I encounter only 1 gamebreaking bug in the final of Alpha Protocol (missing helicopter). What I experienced during Pillars of Eternity: - Aloth's line when he introduces himself. The one short sentence with his name and last name - the sound is tearing. - In my first playthrough of the White March part II, just before the great final, there is conversation with all party member about things to come (like in BG II before final fight with Irenicus at the tree). Eder (he was sent on adventure from Caed Nua, he wasn't even im my party at the time) spoked his line as same as my five active party members. This glitched timer of adventure and it never finished. I had to call Eder off from adventure. I'm not sure but it was Lanveder and Lye or Liminal Spaces aventure. - Each time I fight Will O'Wisp when I clear out cortyard of Caed Nua before I go down to find Maerwold, fps drop to almost zero during this one mosnter animation. Sometimes game even freez and crash because this one Will O'Wisp there. - While holding left mouse button to drag up and down text displayed in narrow window (from certain notes, letters and poems) it glitches scrolling by mousescroll - text just instantly jump to start if mousescroll was used after leftbutton draging I mentioned. Clicking on navigation up/down arrows at the right side of those narrow windows of text resolve this issue and mousescroll can be use again. This bug occures only in narrow windows (like letters in Ruined Temple of Eothas) while other books and journals displayed in wide windows works normal even after "draging" text by holding left mouse button. 9. Not Bugs but making me freaking mad: - Right mouse button closes open window of books, notes and other windows with description of items, spells. Sometimes I accidentaly click right button that interrupts reading and this makes me angry. There is "x" to close window, there is escape button on keyboard. Why add this feature to right click? Maybe I'm too impulsive :D 10. Wishful thinking: - Please design at least one sci-fi setting for isometric cRPG or real world cRPG (real world could be in any form, not preciesly isometric, like you did with Alpha Protocol). Something new, rare and unique like Tyranny (it has a strong Dark Sun vibe). - Is there any chance for releasing some artbook or guidebook? I bought Pillars of Eternity Guidebook vol. 1 but I want more this type of collectable cool stuff. - Any chance for polish translation of Chris Avellone's novela? Even as some kind of e-book format. EDIT. Some thoughts I missed before: - I will add something about interactive text-based cutscences - more of these. We had chace to use some spells in scenes like that in White March. Like casting ice spell on floe so it won't break under feet. I think this could serve as additional options in conversations or even to solve some mini quests. Beamdog used this type of creative thinking in Siege of Dragonspear. Mage could turn water into a wine (or rather cheap wine into high-end liquor)via dialog option instantly finishing this quest instead of asking dukes of Baldur's Gate for some wine from their storage or stealing from them. - Failure should be consider as consequence equal with other outcomes of decisions - there is good example from New Vegas while working for Mr House, he want courier to save president of NCR but with negative reputation with NCR, outcome of this quest is instant failure.