Sensuki

I can't remember when Twin Elms was first confirmed to be Big City #2 but it was later last year sometime. It's mentioned here in Update 68 and Update 70 anyway. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64667-update-68-art/ http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64964-update-70-new-year-project-update/ Twin Elms will be four maps large. Defiance Bay is 5 maps large.

What a "Watcher" is was described in Update 65: Animancers studied folk legends about figures called Watchers who reportedly were able to see lost souls and perceive an individual's ancestral lives, but claimants to that title were typically charlatans at best or mentally unstable and violent at worst. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64452-update-65-ciphers/ The PC is probably one of these.

Good for you. I tried twice and was unlucky both times. That's the way she goes.

My point was though that we do not know if that information is now relevant. They may have changed the 720p and 1440p assets to a single 1080p asset size. Theoretically doing two asset sizes means double the paint over work and also perhaps some disk size issues for the 1440p version. Josh also mentions the render size of 13440x7560 in his GDC as a standard exterior area size, which is a 7x7 of 1920x1080 I'd love to have 1440p assets myself, but I think they're doing 1080p now.

Yes I did, albeit indirectly. You should be able to figure it out on your own. And you don't need scaling to accomplish it, the crit path encounters just need to be hard for a speed runner and hard(ish) for a completionist. Character Power does not scale exponentially in PE like it does in D&D, so it should be possible to make a pre-determined setting that both can beat without needing to scale at all. If the power curve was larger however, scaling would be needed.

Wrong. In the base game, it may be possible to get to level 8 or something by just doing the crit path content. Let's say you can hit the level cap (12) by doing most of the side content. With the assumption that crit path encounters are not going to be tuned based on completion of side content, the crit path encounters might be at level, or level+1. Side content in the game however will have a static level, so you can attempt that stuff with a huge level discrepancy. A player playing on hard for challenge is going to find the crit path encounters easy compared to the side encounters. If the crit path encounters were all tuned up a bit to something like Level+2 or Level+3, then they would be up there with the side content, rather than being disappointing overall. Like the side content they will be beatable, but will require better management of resources, efficiency, and tactics. Enemies with a higher level than the party will be more accurate and have better defenses (and probably more health, depending on the creature type). This gap can be made up with items, spells, potions and smart play.

Hard should be Hard. Normal should already be difficult enough for those that aren't good at games. That would be sweet if I wanted to do a "speed run" on hard and crit path encounters were actually challenging. They usually never are.

Not if it uses the same encounter scaling system for both, which is what Infinitron is referring to. I would say it's more of an issue for players playing on Hard than anything else. People who play on easy just want to relax and aren't really concerned with challenge. People who play on normal just want the standard game difficulty and People who play on Hard want a challenge. Crit path encounters not taking into account side content should be a feature of normal difficulty and Hard should at least assume that a fair amount of side content has been done IMO.

Actually the scaling pretty much comes down to: +3 per level to defenses "+3 per level" to Accuracy (which is actually Level-1 x3) but essentially 3 per level. The differences being starting bonuses, level and gear between your party and encounters. Abilities and Spells do not scale at all.

Not all of them, I think some were present at the some of the design meetings that Chris Avellone attended. I remember reading that Ken St Andre bailed early and Liz Danforth's contribution was very minor. Don't remember about Pavlish. Stackpole's novella had to be completed by Nathan Long. Details on that were sketchy.

Me too. I believe there will be a bit of Act Gating regarding optional content. But then again I also believe that access to different parts of the world are going to be act gated, such as entrance to Defiance Bay and Twin Elms. The game will have acts instead of chapters, which looks like there'll be less of them overall. The game will likely be more of a controlled experience than the Baldur's Gates.

Statements released by the devs is that while they are thinking of doing some Crit Path encounter scaling (or "level scaling") that they have not looked into it yet. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2071423/deep-dive-with-pillars-of-eternity-project-lead-josh-sawyer-the-full-interview.html?page=3 The game is also quoted to be "bigger than Icewind Dale, but not quite as big as Baldur's Gate 2, but close enough" or something along those lines. So the game is apparently going to be pretty big. This could create some problems for completionists (like myself) who will be over-leveled going into crit-path quests. If the encounters aren't scaled then they might be just too easy, and ultimately not very rewarding combat challenge wise. This shouldn't be too much of an issue for those who don't really care for difficulty or encounter challenge, but for the upper tiers of players who are playing for that reason, among others, it probably will be. Personally I have had this problem with other games as well. Even Baldur's Gate 2. I personally don't think it's needed as long as crit-path encounters on HARD are designed assuming you've done a fair bit of side content (and as a result are on par with optional side content). For other difficulties I don't really care as I'll likely never play them, so my opinion on those is not valid. There've been topics on this before, but as the team is now going into the tuning phase, do you want encounter scaling? To answer that question you really need to ask yourself what you want out of those encounters relative to the difficulty setting you're going to be playing on.

They actually all bailed on the project very early on, like before development even started. They were involved in some very preliminary stuff.

I believe they did. Contact support and they should be able to sort you out. If you had an NPC you might not get in until the Expansion, although if it's an item you might be lucky as I believe they're still doing those (making them).

We haven't heard mention of two sets of assets for a LONG time, I'm pretty sure they're just using one - 1080p per screen assets. That's what I gathered from reading Update 67. Whatever is closest to the IE games suits me (which was instant/responsive) but like rjshae said, something like a turn-rate would be good for controlling longer units such as dragons - which is what it's used for in RTS style games, for Tanks, Huntresses in WC3 etc

Opponents will likely use them anyway. Not using (buff) consumables will probably mean you rest more often.

Consumables in PE won't be that simple I don't think. Stamina potions only heal stamina, they can keep your character(s) up in an encounter longer at a cost to Health, which means you need to rest earlier. You'll still need to manage your resources correctly and make good choices in combat I guess. Definitey Hard for me.

I *think* there's 4 difficulty settings - Easy, Normal, Hard and then there's Path of the Damned mode. Easy, Normal and Hard use an encounter system where the creature composition and positioning is changed per encounter based on difficulty. The Lead Designer said that Normal will be tuned to not require consumables. Normal difficulty should be on par with IWD1 / BG2. Hard should be in the IWD2+ area The hardest encounters will be optional, those could be quite difficult.

There's no official information but the Production spreadsheet in Update 67 showed two alpha stages and a beta stage. We know that Production ended sometime between mid-April and early May and with the slated release of Winter (December) 2014 that leaves a total of ~6-7 months post-production. If there's 3 stages of finalization during that time then beta will probably start in October. First it will go to Internal Beta - including the testers at Paradox and Obsidian's own team. Then the beta will go public after that. So the time frame looks to be somewhere in late October/Early-Mid November (ish).

IBM Model M all the way. I will not be purchasing a different keyboard.

Beats me.

Due to the changes of how Windows 8.1 deals with High DPI displays, Microsoft have changed the way the mouse works in Windows 8.1 (also to reduce power usage and battery life on tablets and laptops). This affects users with high DPI mice and mice with polling rates > 125Hz (which is now, almost everyone). Microsoft have released a partial fix to this issue (that fixes cursor movement in mainstream games such as the Call of Duty series), but most games and even the windows desktop (explorer.exe) require a manual fix including a registry tweak for each executable file, execution of a command in CMD Prompt, followed by a restart. However this issue can be fixed by making the cursor in Pillars of Eternity by using DirectInput or Raw Mouse Input (preferred, since Mac and Linux don't use DirectX): Here is some microsoft information on how to use this in your game: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms645590(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee418864(v=vs.85).aspx You can also go a step further and give Pillars of Eternity a hardware cursor option (if that isn't already the default case) Hardware cursors are frame rate independent and make games much more playable on lower end machines during frame rate lag (as the mouse doesn't lag) and reduce cursor latency overall I posted about this earlier but I thought I'd elaborate a bit more on it this time.

Those shouldn't be a problem. The warning was more for content creators (Memorial Stones, NPCs, Items, Inns etc).

It was my understanding they were going for 2560x1440 native resolution for background art (as opposed to 4K)? I think that's actually been dropped. They seem to be mentioning a "screen" as 1080p. Looks like there's no longer two art assets of 720 and 1440p.

Could be fixed by giving characters a 'turn-rate'. They use it in quite a few RTS games to control the speed that a unit can change directions.