Sensuki

That's not how real-time combat works though. You can pre-position, sure - but realtime combat is supposed to be reactive. if you move a unit up to another unit, that unit can hit you back. If you run away from that unit, he can chase you. I think it's smart gameplay if you micro a unit back when the enemy is in between sword swings / actions, as that's what you would do in a real fight I guess, if you wanted to move away you'd do it when they don't have a chance of swinging back at you ... but of course they can follow you too. This is also why moving should not pause recovery, because at the moment when you chase, you have to wait to attack - which is dumb. If you want to stop a unit from moving away - that's what crowd control abilities are for. In real time games, disables, slows and higher movement speed/movement speed buffs is what you use to hit units when they are running away. Also tactical positioning - you can block enemies in the IE games, you can force them to attack you. Enemies can block you as well.

Oh right, sorry I missed that. I checked the file for you - no option to knock her out is there. Seems like a good point you have though.

@archangel979 have you had a look at the other options available in the dialogue files?

No, if you only follow the critical path I think they said you'd reach level 7-9 or thereabouts. You have to do side content to reach the max level (12).

A contextual wheel is fine in a turn-based environment, particularly when there is a limited subset of actions to choose from. The Banner Saga's UI for that stuff is pretty good, nice and sensible, pretty easy to use and understand and context-sensitive. However ToEE and NWN1's were out of control.

I'm not exactly sure how long it takes to create a separate animation for recovery time, but my guess is "a long time" because it would have to be done for most creatures to be anything like the Baldur's Gate games. That is actual animation content creation, that probably should have been done during production - it's not a 'polish feature'. I think it's important because disabling HUD features is pretty pointless now, and it's supposed to be a supported option. It's not like Josh's work also entails User Interface stuff, they have different team members for different things - and these things can all be worked on concurrently. It's not like they all take a break to work on the experience curve or attributes - that's something that's up to Josh + Internal Testing. Meanwhile Obsidian also has a Character Artist, UI Artist, A few programmers - Adam does the engine stuff, Steve Weatherly is working on Pathfinding, Dave is working on AI, Roby and Brian are doing User Interface, Tim does Josh's class & ability stuff, Dan Spitzley is doing engine optimization atm. All of these areas can be worked on at the same time, that's why I think it's important to mention various different types of critiques, rather than just take the mindset that "that stuff is just polish, it can be left until the last minute". I do agree that many of the core issues with Pillars of Eternity do actually lie in the design of the game itself. Josh has already laid out what he's working on at the moment - mostly character advancement stuff. I agree that Attribute design did take a wrong turn, I think particularly due to the "10 is 0" system, and it needs another pass or two before release. edit: other than the Main HUD, what UI things do we disagree on Karkarov ?

I think we will make it, it's going at about ~1K a day atm but there will likely be a spike towards the end.

The current action on the portrait is superfluous. I'm not against the addition of such a feature, but I would disable it at all times. PE already has current action on the Combat HUD as well.

I think PE should try to aspire to feel like an Infinity Engine game, not try to 'compete' on grounds of over-the-top tactical UI feedback, which in many cases can be implemented in smarter and less obtuse ways than a UI overlay. Also more importantly. PE has to cater to the hardcore crowd, as that was a kickstarter backed feature - expert mode and being able to disable UI help features. The game also has to give feedback in ways not related to the UI to make it clear what's going on without these features.

On Hard, the encounters add/remove enemies. I think only Hard difficulty has Adra Beetles in the Dyrford Crossing, I'm not sure. In PotD it adds all enemies from every difficulty and gives them a 50% boost in accuracy and defenses.

Man I wish this forum remembered what you were typing. I had like 600 words typed out and then somehow I pressed the close tab key shortcut by mistake :< Will try my best to reconstruct what I was saying. Here are my theories for why these things are the way they are. Lower Angle: If you go back to the very first screenshot of the game with units we had. It was those really tiny units in high isometric view from a combat testing interior. I think most of the combat testing was done in such test levels and interiors rather than in lower angle exteriors. It may be that some time during development the devs noticed that the lower angle was making combat a bit muddled, or it may not. Combat must have been pretty hard to test up until recovery time was added in (which I think was late 2013/early 2014). Remember how previously selection circles were overlapping completely - was that a bug that was always there? Who did the specific combat testing in exteriors with tall enemies and the lower angle? What games had they been playing over the past few years, had they even been playing any Infinity Engine games? etc etc Who knows, but regardless - it also may have been something they picked up on but deemed less important than having 'cooler looking' structures. Area Size: Josh himself has stated in a quote (too lazy to find atm) that he personally prefers smaller areas, and "Black Isle" style areas and said that at one stage in development they had an 8x8 area and the size felt excessive and he would rather split areas like that into more focused single areas. It is interesting though because in pretty much all RTS games, maps are square. Some maps in Warcraft 2, Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are rectangular (either in height or width) but the majority of, particularly multiplayer maps are square. Coming from primarily square Infinity Engine maps, the Pillars of Eternity map size is quite jarring, because the travel time from the top to bottom of the map is not very much at all, and in the IE games you did spend a fair amount of time travelling from top to bottom, usually in a snake like pattern from one to the other - that is how area designers made good use of the space. PE feels like you're travelling either in a straight line from left to right, or in a snake like pattern from top to bottom or bottom to top, except with less 'bumps'. Thus the travel time between locations on the map is a lot smaller and areas have more of a cluttered feel. Once again, it's probably just something nobody noticed. I think most of the Area Designers are primarily experienced in designing for non-isometric 3D projects, such as Fallout New Vegas, Dungeon Siege 3 and 2D Flat sidescrollers like South Park: The Stick of Truth. Jeff Husges (one of the Area Designers) worked on Icewind Dale 1 and 2 as QA/Multiplayer Lead, but not as an Area Designer. In a way I think designing levels in isometric has been a learning experience for Obsidian, and I would like to point out that in future, I think it would be better to design more square areas, either using the 16:9 format and doing stuff like 5x7 size areas instead of 5x5 areas, so that there is more vertical depth for exploration. Either that or use a different "source resolution" for screen size, such as 1920x1280 or something. Combat Feedback: In this area I think the lack of combat feedback in the backer beta is partially because of limited resources. Brian Macintosh is Obsidian's primary UI developer on PE and he was an intern for most of the development I think due to being at University. He's been full time since sometime since end of last year/start of this year or whatever. Obsidian added Roby Atadero once South Park wrapped up. Thus, a lot of the features have probably been on backlog. It is kind of surprising that obvious things such as targeting reticles were not already implemented, but then again, what other game uses them? Not many. So I can easily see how something like this was overlooked. It's the same with the lack of proper recovery time feedback. Josh worked on Icewind Dale 1 and 2. The BG1 animation was removed from IWD1 because Black Isle did not like the fake attacks. They then made their own animation for Icewind Dale 2 without the pulses, perhaps they didn't like them. Obsidian then added a recovery time bar due to internal feedback because it probably wasn't clear when characters went into or came out of recovery time. I don't think anyone considered having a separate animation for recovery because they seem to be taking more cues from the Icewind Dale games as that's what some of the developers worked on, and they probably overlooked the fact that the pulsing animation used in the Baldur's Gate games was to indicate that the character was 'doing something'. In the IE games when characters are idle in combat, their idle animation is used. When they're in between two actions, the pulsing animation is used - smart thinking BioWare. New systems: I am all for trying out new systems, however I think that the ramifications of changing a system in conjunction with others that are the same have not been fully accounted for. A lot of this is probably fixable. The DT system promotes the use of unfamiliar number ranges - The DT system is the sole reason for the hugely inflated damage and health numbers required for the game. Once upon a time, a Longsword might have done 5-8 damage instead of 1-8, but because of DT, that number has to be raised. The attack resolution system combined with balancing accuracy and defense numbers for ~at level content ends up being primarily hits, crits and grazes. However in the IE games, it was more absolute. More damage is being dealt more often in PE, with weapon attacks specifically, and thus, the game feels rushed because if you do not micro your characters, they will be dead very quickly. In Icewind Dale I can stand my fully geared Fighter next to a bunch of Yuan-Ti and they will miss 80% of the time due to how the AC system works. When they do hit they deal maybe ~5-8% of his total health per hit. A Verbeeg might take 6-7 hits to bring a character down. In the PE beta, an Adra beetle can kill a unit wearing medium armor in two hits. It's a combination of many factors, and yep sure - one of those is because it's a bunch of new systems thrown together and they haven't accounted for the differences yet, but *hopefully* this is something that can be brought more in line with the *feel* of IE game combat speed and lethality.

I think Cubiq got mixed up there. Hard just has more/better enemies. Path of the Damned increases enemy defenses. However it still does not change the fact that if you move away from melee combat with multiple enemies in PE, that character will likely get KO'd on the spot.

I think it's there in turn based to allow the enemy to 'react' to your movements on your turn - kind of the same as an overwatch feature (which is in Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Jagged Alliance 2 and Expeditions: Conquistador) albeit at the expense of your current turn. In realtime it's not necessary because enemies can react to your realtime movements, if you move next to them, they can attack you back. In turn based they cannot, so withour AoOs etc, you can move next to them, attack, and move back with no penalty.

Regarding combat feedback, the most important feature I think Pillars of Eternity is lacking behind targeting reticles (which are in for the next patch) is a different animation/stance for recovery time. Players need to know exactly when characters are in recovery and when they are not. Currently this is being displayed by the Combat HUD, however Combat HUDs are transparent, can overlap with eachother and they can be disabled. I think that if recovery time used a similar animation and stance to the Baldur's Gate pulsing style animation as demonstrated here then it would be much, much easier to tell exactly when characters exited recovery time, particularly if you had not issued them a new command. This would also make it possible to disable the Combat HUDs completely, without being left in the dark feedback wise. In-game feedback > UI feedback, most of the time. It also might be better to implement a slider that controls when Combat HUDs are displayed. All at once creates too much clutter on the screen, so perhaps on mouseover/selection and completely off would be two relevant options.

I absolutely understand that point of view, I just think it's too late in the development cycle to consider many of those changes. These are things that should have been brought up last year / when the KS Update topics were potent. That said I have a feeling that many of those suggestions might have fallen on deaf ears.

That's fine but I think that this is too much of a radical change. I haven't really spoken too much about my preferences on XP systems yet and I usually avoid those threads because I find them to be counterproductive. However I might make a video about the XP system at some stage - after this patch maybe. I think my general stance is that Obsidian should stick with the XP system that they designed the game for originally. Quest/Objective-based XP. I do enjoy XP for combat in other games, and this is an "IE style" game, so I can see why people would want XP for combat, but I also understand the reasons for not doing it. Having personally DM'd P&P myself, I always gave XP for dealing with situations non-violently as well. I don't think it's quite the same. I don't think the Pillars of Eternity beta has been rushed, but I think that there are definitely systems that could have got some more attention and/or things just did not work out how they thought it was going to. In some areas regarding the Pillars of Eternity systems, Josh is delving into 'new territory' for him as a designer. He also has a lot of systems work to do, as well as manage the project, write a companion and provide some lyrics/singing for the soundtrack. The issue is partially time contraints/budget constraints as well as unforeseen circumstances/lack of foresight. Wasteland 2 I think ended up having a larger budget than Pillars of Eternity did, closer to 6M, more along the lines of Divinity Original Sin. inXile made a lot of mistakes with Wasteland 2, although I think a lot of those will be fixed for Torment as it was technically their company's first *big* RPG. Bard's Tale might count, but that was what? 10 years ago? and probably not many of the same staff. DA:I is also a lot further along in development, it's being released soon isn't it? Whereas Pillars still has 5-6 months to go. I wouldn't be surprised if BioWare end up beating Obsidian at mechanical transparency, they do have a larger company and a larger team. It is probably easier for them to iterate. In contrast, Obsidian has one 2D Artist (Kaz) who is doing *everything* and two UI Programmers - Brian Macintosh and Roby Atadero. The rate that they can produce new UI features will probably be a bit slower than BioWare's. All in all I think *most* of the core UI problems have been identified, although not necessarily all of the solutions (Engagement, for example ... which is a feature I think should be cut).

I haven't (nor do I intend to) watch any DA:I videos, because I am boycotting all BioWare games after Mass Effect 3 and I did not even enjoy DA:O, but I've noticed you have a tendancy to request that Pillars of Eternity features things from other games You compare PE to DA:2, request for the TToN XP system, request stuff like Wasteland 2 skill check style ... etc Not having a dig, but I think that the combat feedback in Pillars of Eternity needs to focus on reaching the Infinity Engine games level of feedback in all areas, which currently it is better than some, and worse than others - and then figuring out what else is needed through in-game testing. Shift-queue, not an action queue a la the KotOR games, but (hopefully) an RTS-style shift queue is coming in the next patch. Some of the features you listed would be superfluous in Pillars of Eternity, other things are things that the Infinity Engine games also did, but they are lacking in Pillars of Eternity. For instance, stuck characters just appear like they are standing still, whereas in the IE games their avatar was completely frozen, and a subtle shader with a yellow hue was applied as well.

I made our Attribute system into a mod (if you haven't seen it) and tested it out. Unfortunately since the attribute system now follows a 10 is 0, and the bonuses are miniscule, it's really difficult to say "yeah attributes are better now" because aside from making sure that nothing important is nerfed below 10 and that your tanks have CON (or +Deflection, if Fighter/Paladin) then there's not much difference between the numbers. I also tried it with the v278 positive only system, however that threw off a bit of the game balance, enemies such as spiders, menpwgra and rain blights dealt *ridiculous* damage.

I think it's important that the developers remain neutral, like they are doing, regarding stuff like this. It is important that the discussion remains open. Favoritism may discourage people from contributing.

I think a slightly different color name tooltip would be okay. Although at the moment, backer NPCs just seem to be flavor NPCs. They don't have any dialogue or anything yet and aren't integrated into the game's story/quests which seems very disappointing. I imagine some backers (not necessarily everyone) will be disappointed by that. I think the Item backers got better 'value for money' in this instance.

Nope. I'm just some random guy from the internet, just like most other people. And the reason I called it a targeting reticle is because I couldn't think of anything better to call it. I learned the phrase from the Ghost Recon tutorial

Since they are doing a Karma Police review now, why don't you ask them about it ? (IE, send a dev a PM, or ask Josh on tumblr).

I certainly wasn't referring to you, Sensuki. I think your Beta testing has been important constructive criticism. I realize that, I thought it might have been Immortalis or something.

You can still buy a beta key. I bought one for some Swiss guy a few weeks ago. He paypalled me the money.

*waves*