Sensuki

I actually did not know that. But that exact response proves my point.

We'd have to actually see the system in play based on your situation, or have Josh confirm it. It depends on the movement speed of the characters and whether or not once an attack animation begins, and the target moves out of range, whether the attack animation still plays, or is cancelled by the target moving out of range. We're not really sure how Melee Engagement works regarding chasing down foes, we know how it works on an intercept basis. Chasing down engagement is one of the areas where the system has the potential to be a bit strange, but yeah I assume if you get close enough to start an attack animation, that probably does stop the enemy unit from moving and it would be logical for an enemy AI to turn and face their attacker.

I could say the same to you, honestly.

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Might I'd just like to point out that Attributes went under a revision recently and I'm not 100% sure if Might increases the size of your pack anymore, as it was not listed on the New Years Update character sheet. Josh could you confirm/deny that?

That's correct. You have to be stationary to be eligible for disengagement attacks.

There are likely very few people on the Codex that think it is right, but it, like a lot of things that are not right, can be a subject of humor. Most instances of hearing about rape IRL are somebody telling someone that something happened, too, btw. However some find things harder to relate when presented in an isometric perspective

t r o l l t i n d

Just FYI there's a lot of rape content in the Icewind Dales.

As far as I know there is no additional encounter-based respawning implemented. If you run away from a mob, exit an area, rest and go back there will probably just be the remaining enemies that you left alive, rather than an encounter replenishment system. Expected behaviour based on past IE titles is that when a fight is going sour, people just reload their quick save and try again. There will definitely not be any per-encounter difficulty toggling either. The area designers may have implemented some special encounters, such as the ones found at back entrance to the Goblin Fortress in Icewind Dale 2, which had constantly spawning enemies based on shamans beating war drums. It would be interesting to hear about other tricks they've come up with for encounter design, but my guess is that most things will just be static monster placement on a per-difficulty setting basis. I also forgot to mention that one of the reasons the combat state is probably hard to break is ranged combat kiting. That's probably more important than stamina regeneration. Enter combat, fire off a volley, run away, exit combat -> rinse, repeat. Enemy stamina regeneration kind of mitigates both of these things, but I think having enemies follow you is more realistic if anything.

Here's some more non-here news that I posted on the Codex last week: Roby Atadero joined the PE team in March as a Gameplay/UI programmer. He must have been impressed by the game when he was given a few demonstrations by Josh last year (which we discovered on their twitter feeds).

Troll well fed I would say.

I'd also like to point out that the level cap has been 12 since the Kickstarter campaign. It was first referenced in a Feargus interview, and then probably 10+ times since.

The attack speed mechanics seem very robust. The new system they have created solves the problem of accidentally cancelling a character's attack or spell that happened fairly often in the IE games (cancelling a spell by accidentally issuing a move command was annoying) while maintaining responsiveness and the ability to cancel if you wish. In the new system if you cancel your attack before the hit frame you do not have to wait for your next "turn" to attack, like you did in the IE games. I think that cancelling a spell before the cast point also does not waste the spell. It seems like the Unity 4.2? feature of being able to trigger events on animation frames helped make this possible. The inputs to the attack speed system come from a limited number of cases - armor and weapon choice, abilities/spells and items - which is about the same number of inputs as the IE games had (weapon, proficiency, item bonuses, abilities and spells). Hopefully there are some items in Pillars that have a naturally increased rate of attack (Gloves of Recovery - reduce recovery by 10% etc). I first asked about attacks and attack cancels way back in 2012: http://au.cybergamer.com/article/3083/Interview-with-Josh-Sawyer-of-Obsidian-Entertainment/ Josh also posted on the Obsidian forums, in one of the update threads in response to one of my questions that they were probably not going to include attack cancels. Good to see they did though, because not being able to cancel an animation would give the combat a clunky non-IE feeling. The system sounds like it should "feel" similar to the IE games in regards to attack animation speed. The game animations run at 30FPS which is the same speed that the IE games ran at, so that should also help the game "feel" IE as well (although I personally played at 40 FPS, as it was smoother).

On the profits front: Obsidian licensed the Pillars of Eternity tools (not sure how many tools, but it included the Environment Art Pipeline stuff - also possibly an updated version of their Dialogue/Quest tool) to inXile for Torment: Tides of Numenera. This deal likely added a fair amount of dough into the PE development fund.

Just FYI, there's an ignore function. Works like a charm.

Just lurk the codex thread.

Twitter needs to die a slow death, opt out!

Lol Dura. As another fellow information gatherer, since I consider the Codex my home site now I post there first, then here. There's STACKS of info that Obsidian do not post in updates, their updates are development updates - not a twitter feed about everything that happens at the company. I'm not really a fan of the whole community manager thing, as that simply puts another wall of PR between the player and the developer.

The Witcher has quests that span multiple chapters. But it's a linear game with no real backwards progression. The farthest distance between locations is probably Uptown Vizima and the Swamp Forest.

There's a little quote from the Newegg GameCrate visit to the Obsidian office in February that piques my interest. http://gamecrate.newegg.com/obsidian-pillars-of-eternity-preview/ This little quote indicates that the chapter progression through the game will be 'regional'. So far we are aware of a few different regions in the game Dyrford - essentially the Vertical Slice village. We know that there are a bunch of wilderness areas associated with the quests of this hub and (at least one) large dungeon. We also know that the Player Stronghold is near the Dyrford from a mockup of a world map pulled from Josh Sawyer's GDC Presentation, and that the player will gain access to the Stronghold at the end of the first chapter, giving the impression that the Dyrford region will be the first chapter in the game. I would guess that regions on the world map will be chapter-gated. The player must complete crit-path content in a region to progress to the next chapter of the game (as per the newegg quote). Whether this be a linear progression of quests, non-linear completion of a number of quests or non-linear fractional completion of available crit path quests (eg. 3/5)is unknown. The next region completed in development was Defiance Bay, so it is possible that this is "Region #2" and you go here after you complete the Dyrford. The other known regions are Twin Elms (also a Production Milestone) and Gilded Vale (as seen on the Update #70 New Year Update Character Sheet mock up). There may also be major locations that we do not know about yet. What I am wondering is, now that production is over, was there content created that is cross-regional? For instance Quests that you might get in say Defiance Bay or Twin Elms where you are required to travel back to the Dyrford - or between Defiance Bay and Twin Elms, or Gilded Vale and Defiance Bay? There were a couple of quests like this in Baldur's Gate 2, but not many. The main one was the Skinner murders from the Bridge District, which was technically two quests [which is fine]. The skinner escapes, and later on you can find him in Trademeet. Apart from this and a few other select examples, Baldur's Gate 2's quest hubs were basically self-contained stories and areas. There was basically no back and forth between the hubs - except in Athkatla.