Infinitron

How early? Remember when they talked about how the Adventurer's Hall would not be able to bump your party up to six characters in the beginning? Heck, the game might even give you all your companions but not let you use five of them at once at first, as illogical as that might sound.

So, we know that in Pillars of Eternity, all classes will be combat proficient. There are no non-combat or mostly non-combat characters who hide in the back while the combat characters do their work. In the Infinity Engine games, while no class was truly utterly useless in a fight, it was often the wisest choice to allow your mages and sometimes even thieves to hold back while your beefier fighters did the dirty work. What that meant, is that your effective party size during many of these games' battles could be as low as 3 party members! Furthermore, it makes sense to assume that the battles in those games were balanced for such effective party sizes, in terms of the numbers and the power levels of the foes that you faced. What I'm trying to say is, if the typical case in Pillars of Eternity is that all six party members are going to be in the fray, kicking butt at all times, then the typical enemy group size and strength from the Infinity Engine games might very well be woefully inadequate. So, are we going to be seeing noticeably stronger or more numerous enemies in every encounter in Pillars of Eternity to compensate for this? Actually, I remember reading that the plan is for you to start you out with a smaller party and gradually expand it over the course of the game, so maybe that won't be quite so necessary.

I'm not sure why you're asking for all of this from PoE, given that other than the stronghold quests from BG2, the IE games had none of this. I imagine you'll see something more like MotB where most out-of combat interactions will be influenced by abilities and the special power our own character will invariably get. I wouldn't say "none" - the Icewind Dale games had a smattering of class checks in their dialogue, for instance. It wasn't a focus though, yeah.

Pretty sure they've said they won't do this.

...at which point they stopped being purely mages. An optional multi/dual-classing mechanic that the majority of players probably ignored is a pretty poor substitute for making the classes themselves fundamentally more flexible. But that's just one example. What about the fact that there are no dump stats and fighters can benefit from high Intellect? What about the fact that everybody can be stealthy and pick locks if they invest in the appropriate skills? What about the fact that every class gets the same amount of skill points and additional max health per level? These are things that you and other people in this thread have probably complained about, things that make the classes LESS rigid and distinct, not more. You can't have it both ways.

This is a good idea, that has been criminally underutilized in RPGs. Designers, pay attention.

They're not even "only ranged". They just have some abilities that grant bonuses with ranged combat. It is absolutely absurd that people are comparing that unfavorably with a system that would have prevented Rangers from using melee weapons entirely if it had that sort of class. I think that what they really want is essentially a four class system - Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, and Mage - where each class is distinct, but contains numerous subclasses (Ranger, Paladin) that aren't really that different from each other, hence "less rigid". "Josh, why are you making my Ranger not like a Fighter? I want to play my Ranger like a Fighter!" "Uh, then just pick the Fighter class?" "..."

I cannot BELIEVE that there are so many people in this thread who actually think that a series of games where mages couldn't hold swords had "less rigid classes" than Pillars of Eternity. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yeah, I don't think you really understand what I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about useless spells, or about spells at all. I think players can accept that a mage will often have a wide repertoire of spells, some of which he doesn't really need. That's okay (or at least, not as bad) because he doesn't need to memorize them all. Abilities are a different story, because they're always there, always accessible, on your hotbar. If you don't really need to use them, then they're just clutter masquerading as "choice".

There wasn't exactly much difference between the classes outside of combat in the Infinity Engine games either. The stronghold in BG2 being the big exception.

It's obvious that, compared to the Infinity Engine games, characters of all classes in Pillars of Eternity will receive many active abilities to use. The question is, will they truly need to use them? There's one thing I really dislike about certain modern games; in particular, "powers-based shooters" in the vein of Bioshock, Dishonored, etc. They give you a ton of cool abilities to use, and the reviews laud them for "offering the player so many choices!". But...those abilities tend to be very optional. The player has a "choice" of using them if he wants to mess around, or play some wacky character concept, but they're not a "choice" in the sense that the player needs to choose one of them to overcome challenges. Basically, these games tend to be easy enough that the most straightforward way of progressing through them is to use the most standard options you're given. So, in Dishonored, that means lots of blinking and choking. In Bioshock, you can ignore the plasmids entirely and just stick to guns. Etc. I think it's bad design when a game overwhelms you with "choice!!" like that without making that choice meaningful in terms of the challenges that the player faces. I'm a bit concerned that Pillars, with all of its talents and active abilities, might be going in that direction too. I don't want to have a hotbar full of abilities that I never use because "eh, you don't really need to use these, just auto-attack for another round, I don't even know what these things are". I know that J.E. Sawyer sees the essence of RPGs in "allowing players to roleplay characters as they see fit", but I hope he realizes that some players need a bit of "push" from the game itself when choosing how to roleplay their characters. Some of us don't have a distinct character concept in mind prepared ahead of time - as in, "I will play the guy who shoots fireballs at everything!" Instead we choose how to develop and play our characters according to the types of challenges we're facing in the game as we play it, and if we see that the game never really requires us to throw a fireball, we simply won't do that, ever. And that's a shame.

We already had Kickstarter updates about Paladins and Monks, actually. 56 and 52.

Oh indeed. Rogues as heavy hitters, Stamina damage; per-encounter talents; No multi-classing; no dual-classing. Rangers with vital animal companions, etc. Sure sounds like the IE games to me! If I had to pick one element in this game that was un-IE-like, it would be the sheer existence of so many active abilities and talents. There was nothing like that in the IE games, except for spellcasters of course. Compared with that, all that other stuff you mentioned is just surface detail. Thing is, you won't find many people willing to agree that, all other things being equal, depriving classes of abilities to use is a good thing, so you probably won't go far complaining about it.

Repeating something I posted in another forum: The classes are all specialized in different things - if they weren't, why even have classes? But altogether, Pillars of Eternity's classes are more flexible than D&D's, not less. You don't have armored muscle wizards in D&D.

Josh, you've described how the Engwithan ruins were built with a magical mortar-like substance called adra, allowing them to retain physically impossible features like broken arches. But that raises a question - if adra is so effective, how did they become "ruins" in the first place? Why are the arches all broken at the top? And why at the top specifically, why not someplace else?

I hope you're not under the illusion that Obsidian won't put their beta on Steam Early Access within days of its release to backers, regardless of what people think. They're going to need every bit of that money.

Yeah.

It's funny that people say that. The reason why AD&D Thieves (remember when they were called Thieves?) were renamed to Rogues in 3rd Edition is BECAUSE they were becoming a bit "Fightery" with their non-stealth Sneak Attack. But all that did was train people to think that Rogues and Thieves were the same thing. Anyway, that's not relevant here, because all classes can stealth in this game, not just Rogues.

So you can't backstab people and you can't steal from them except in scripted sequences? Great. Well, you can backstab, but you won't be stealthed while you do it. I suppose they could implement some sort of short detection delay so you can try to run in for the stab before you turn visible.

You don't. (except scripted sequences. anything is possible in scripted sequences)

Yeah, maybe. His mention of a "low level area" filled with "unperceptive dopes" is unusual, since AFAIK even a low level character can have a high Perception score if he chooses it in character generation. There may be some sort of actual level-scaling factor involved here as well.

mstark, as I said, I think the problem is that unlike Perception, your Stealth skill keeps on increasing as you level up (if you choose to increase it). That means that eventually, at high levels, the Stealth circles will shrink into nothingness and cease to exist as a game mechanic. Stealth will become a game based on avoiding enemy Perception circles only. It's like how in high level AD&D your THAC0 eventually becomes so low that hitting enemies becomes pretty much guaranteed. Of course, some people might not see that as a problem, but rather as something inherent to the high level experience. That said, since Perception scores also have an upper limit (barring magical enhancement), even that's not a permanent solution, so I dunno.

nm

This game is going to have memorization-based spellcasting.