war:head

Which means you only did 30% of your job. Everyone liked and noticed BG's music. Tend to agree, though. If 66% of the people don't like or don't care about your music, you're doing something wrong.

This is actually one of the first things I personally felt as actually missing from PoE. I'm all for going old-school but please let us compare stats via tooltips. Whippersnappers like you should be happy that they dont have to draw the map themself on checkered paper Sure, and next thing we know the game is asking us to roll a d100 for attack and enter the result in the textbox below.

This is actually one of the first things I personally felt as actually missing from PoE. I'm all for going old-school but please let us compare stats via tooltips.

I feel like increased saturation would be over the top to be honest as I'm not a fan of these (usually American) candy store-style visuals (Supreme Commander 2 still gives me nightmares). I just tried to increase the contrast somewhat but there's just so much you can do with a screenshot, so the examples above are pretty much all that can be done outside of the actual engine and in-game graphics in terms of 'heftiness'. I tend to agree and this is likely due to the backdrop for the characters. The flat surface effect is less prominent on the example where I disabled said backdrop.

Let's just say I played my last session with iTunes running in the background. The music in-game isn't bad but it isn't anything spectacular either. Just generic fantasy tunes that are a long way from gems like the BG2 soundtrack.

I decided to do the full set after all to make it easier to gauge the overall impact on the scene. Again, all these changes are possible with minimal effort in the engine. All it needs is a simple post processing that's probably aready running and just needs to be somewhat extended. Original scene: Improved scene: And once again the gif: Nice work. Darker floor shadowing would help ground the models more, though the ambient occlusion effect following the character around may be a bit distracting. Might indeed be the case, hard to tell from a still image, though. I uploaded an example without the backdrop as well to see how it works (last image post about this, I promise )

I agree on what is generally said about the visual problems with PoE, so I decided to take this image and adjust one character to meet the requirements for visibility as well as substance. I only used methods that could be easily implemented in the engine and won't need a lot of work. This is the original character: Rather flat and hardly visible. Add to that some contrast and brightness increase: Already providing more substance. Now add a backdrop, which is basically just a blurred silhouette of the character: Coming along nicely. And for good measure, add a base shadow to the floor, separating the character a bit more from the floor: And for better comparison, a gif switching between the original and the improved visuals: And finally, to add context, the entire image with the updated character: Maybe I'll find the time to do this for all chars in the image to see how it'll look. Let me know what you think. P.S.: This was just a quick shot at it so the floor shadow is a bit dark. Forgot to dial it back...

I'm quite fond of the idea behind interrupts but I do agree that the apparent absence of interrupt defense on armor doesn't make a lot of sense. If the type and impact of a weapon determines base interrupt, the type and sturdiness of armor should determine a base interrupt threshold. I think this would even be required for boss fights if Interrupts are to play any significant role in PoE unless every single boss has a very high concentration or some generic "immune to interrupts" nonsense. Both of which wouldn't really fit the game.

I'm with the interaction crowd here. Race and culture should influence how the world reacts to and interacts with the character, not the stats. At least not to a significant extend.

As many as it takes to get combat XP into the game.

There's a lot going on about the attributes in the forums at the moment. The opinions range from minor tweaks to complete revamps of the system and a more D&D-style approach. Personally, I feel the current system is in essence pretty good but the attribute <-> trait mapping is a bit off. Best example is dexterity which feels pretty obligatory for every class, same for might (with some exceptions). With the current system I don't feel I'll ever play a character that hasn't max Dex. I thought a bit about how to rebalance the attributes to make character building more diverse and implement the attributes in a way that every one of them is viable for a certain build or another. All this with as few changes to the core gameplay as possible of course, so no new attributes or new traits. Just repurposing what we have. The attributes we have are Might, Constitution, Perception, Resolve, Intellect and Dexterity while the traits that these attributes influence are Health, Stamina, Concentration. Interrupts, Accuracy, Damage and Defense. Additionally there's what I'd call Spell Efficiency, which describes the lengths and area of effects. Additionally to the current system there's also Attack Speed. Not influenced by any attributes at the moment. I think that two things need to happen. 1) The attribute <-> trait mapping needs to be changed to allow more diversity. 2) Interrupts need to play a bigger role in-game so a build around denying enemies should be viable while a slow-hitting player character should get into serious trouble with low concentration, being easy prey to fast hitting high-interrupt enemies. 3) This is actually a sub-part of one since it's about separating damage dealt by weapon from damage dealt by magic abilities. Doesn't make any sense to me why mental and physical damage should be related to the same attribute. The second part is probably just a change in probability so not much to talk about, the first part, however, is what I'd like to quickly outline individually by attribute. Constitution Well, this one is pretty straight forward. It determines how endurable a character is and as such should influence Health and Fortitude Defense. A character with high Constitution is hard to kill and good at resisting poison, disease etc. Stamina, however, should not be a trait of Constitution. Stamina is more of a mental virtue and thus part of the second attribute. Resolve Resolve is about how determined a character is. How fierce are they engaging the enemy and how much punishment can they take before giving way. The traits influenced by Resolve are weapon-based Damage and Stamina. I think there's actually a lot of merit in a build going for high-stamina and low health. I assume for this to work, though, the health <-> stamina damage ratio would need tweaking. Perception The attribute determining how well a character is aware of their surrounding, the enemy movements and weaknesses. The traits influenced are Accuracy and Deflection Defense. The latter one being obvious - if a character has a good awareness of what the enemy is doing, incoming blows can be deflected more easily. The former, however, sounds a bit off which is mostly due to it being wrongly named in my opinion. Accuracy in PoE isn't about hitting accurately, it's about circumventing the enemy's defenses. You can be as accurate as you want, if you don't know where to strike you won't be doing damage. Therefore it is a trait of perception. Intellect Again, rather straight-forward. Influenced by Intellect are non-weapon-based Damage, Concentration and Will Defense. All three of them are closely connected to how mentally capable a character is while still being viable in a lot of different builds. Heavy hitters need the concentration, soul-powers might need the damage if they're offensive. Dexterity Once more a pretty obvious attribute for a character and influencing two things, Attack Speed and Reflex Defense. Might And last but not least, Might, the power of a character's soul and as such influencing spell efficiency. The secondary influence is Interrupt, which I am admittedly not that happy with as it doesn't really fit. Technically it should belong to Perception but that would make it way to potent an attribute. tl;dr Matrix Constitution - Health, Fortitude Defense Resolve - weapon-based Damage, Stamina Perception - Accuracy, Deflection Defense Intellect - non-weapon-based Damage, Concentration, Will Defense Dexterity - Attack Speed, Reflex Defense Might - Spell Efficiency, Interrupt I went through several different builds with this attribute setup and it generally felt reasonably well balanced and varied. Admittedly, I'm not that proficient with all this so it might just be utter non-sense - let me know what you think. 0.02$

The Dutch colonized South Africa, and they ended up as white Africans speaking a new language, Afrikaans, in no time. The British colonized Rhodesia and they ended up with a very divergent dialect in no time. Regardless, the NATIVES of Eir Glanfath are the ones who speak Cornish/Irish. The colonists are just picking up the lingo as they come into contact with them. I doubt the Dyrwoodan city dwellers are much more informed of the natives' language than you are. The Vailians down south speak Vailian(Occitan/French/Italian), just like Colombians speak Spanish. A branch off the Old Vailian tree. It all fits pretty naturally, given what information we have available so far. Can't wait for that almanac. You do have a point here. It'll all probably make more sense once we're able to actually start the game at the beginning and get more of a feel for the 'new world'.

I tend to agree and the problem I have with it is the following. Obsidian is trying to create an entirely new world and part of a world are, of course, the languages. However, also part of the world is the character we play, who is supposed to feel at home there. But we as players do not if can't pronounce half of the stuff that is said to us. How am I supposed to role-play a character without completely breaking immersion every few minutes when I encounter a ton of names I can't even pronounce but the character is actually supposed to be familiar with? Another problem are NPCs - it's way easier to remember NPCs and put them into context if we can associate a name with them. And names are remembered via sound, not spelling. If I can't pronounce a name, chances are I won't remember it for long, either. And let's be honest - there's a ton of really good fantasy worlds out there that managed to create great immersion without inventing words most people can't even pronounce properly. So yeah, I certainly could do with less made-up fantasy names I can't pronounce... Uh, your character DOESN'T come from this area. Eir Glanfath is not a national background you can choose, and in the demos they've run, you're introduced as a new arrival to the area. You're on an entirely new continent. People here don't speak the same language as they did back home. They don't even all speak the same languages. What a shock. I haven't read that much about the setting and basic story (I'm waiting for the actual game to do that) but from what I remember, the Eastern Reach (continent in the game) is basically land colonized by the people we can chose as the origin for the character. One would assume that former colonies still roughly speak about the same language the colonizing regions do(native folk not included of course) and as such are familiar to a character coming from, say, Aedyr. But maybe all this will make more sense once I dive into the lore.

I tend to agree and the problem I have with it is the following. Obsidian is trying to create an entirely new world and part of a world are, of course, the languages. However, also part of the world is the character we play, who is supposed to feel at home there. But we as players do not if can't pronounce half of the stuff that is said to us. How am I supposed to role-play a character without completely breaking immersion every few minutes when I encounter a ton of names I can't even pronounce but the character is actually supposed to be familiar with? Another problem are NPCs - it's way easier to remember NPCs and put them into context if we can associate a name with them. And names are remembered via sound, not spelling. If I can't pronounce a name, chances are I won't remember it for long, either. And let's be honest - there's a ton of really good fantasy worlds out there that managed to create great immersion without inventing words most people can't even pronounce properly. So yeah, I certainly could do with less made-up fantasy names I can't pronounce... Kinda reminds me of a chart that's been floating around for ages: Simple, yet incredibly accurate.

The character creation (options) and especially the Godlike race are amazing. Also a lot of the environment is done pretty well. And I haven't even seen any of the lighting effects as I've been overground in the sun all the time. Also, I tend to like the stats and abilities system. The actual application in combat is still a bit wonky but once proper feedback and input is provided I think it'll be a lot of fun.

Well, there's four different Godlikes and I assume every one of those has three heads available which makes it 12 different appearances for this race. Now, I'm not saying I'm opposed to having even more options but I would be fine with the way it currently is.

Optically and in-game, yes, but disappearing text in the main menu? At this point I'd expect the boiler plate code providing the basic menu functionality to be working properly and not contain bugs like this. But this is just a minor concern of mine and might be entirely unfounded as Obsidian may be developing software in an entirely different way.

While you are correct about a lot of the gameplay related bugs, there are indeed some disconcerting issues with this beta that do not fit the regular development cycle. I already stated as much in the first impressions thread but the amount of interface and auxiliary issues has me a bit worried as well, because they fall into the fix&forget category that are usually fixed on a very early stage to ensure a more convenient in-house testing environment. Take the zoom issue for example - zoom is a core interaction mechanic and usually implemented before even thinking about actual game mechanics and such. Seeing issues with something that should be working perfectly for about a year now isn't all that assuring.

And that's really all that needs to be said about this. You get better at something by doing it, so doing something should provide XP. Doesn't matter if it's combat, picking a lock, sneaking, crafting, whatever.

So killing someone to get loot is ok while killing someone for XP should be disincentivized? Yeah, right. I agree with the pro-XP faction here and we don't even need to use 'reward' as the major argument because, especially in an RPG, there's a way more direct one - immersion and consistency of the world. It's really that simple - why does "get me that pretty stone over there" provide experience for a character while defeating a truly challenging opponent does not? Doesn't make any sense.

Well, first impressions after an hour or so. Graphics are nice, though it feels like there's some AA missing. Enviroment looks decent most of the time. The large water body in the western area looks, how do I put it nicely, atrocious. Music is ok as background but it's lacking anything memorable, needs quite a bit of work. The setting is dull as hell - some dude's daughter is missing...why should I care again? Oh, and there's a beast causing trouble in the neighborhood - unheard of! But I guess it is to be expected in a beta specifically designed to occlude any relevant stuff. Still feel like it could have been a tad less generic. Character creation is awesome - can't remember any game where I could create a character that comes close to the flavor of my Death Godlike female monk. Combat so far is confusing to say the least. I understand all the basics but the reality doesn't really resemble my expectations. My monk kills a regular lion in two hits on lvl 5. But my entire party gets wiped by a lion and an elder lion and it's not clear why that happens. I feel like I'm missing proper feedback but that might be just me not being used to cRPGs all that much. Dialogue was decent so far. Could do with fewer descriptions in the middle of the spoken text, though. Kinda distracting reading about the innkeep cleaning something every couple of seconds. What has me wondering, though, is the incredible amount of obvious bugs in the basics of the game. Like wrong cursors, load issues, zoom issues, input issues, menu issues - this kind of stuff. Maybe the guys at Obsidian work differently than I do but as a developer these would be the first things to be working properly since they're required for testing (in-house, not the beta). Feels a bit like Obsidian is struggling to keep up with the schedule to be honest. Anyway, back to testing and trying to figure out how the combat actually works...

Issue: The cursor does not reset itself properly when leaving a game session. Steps to reproduce: 1. Hit [Esc] at any given time in-game 2. Click "Quit" and get back to the main menu 3. The cursor now shows an in-game icon depending on what was below the [Quit] button when quitting. (eg. if you manage to have the [Quit] button appear above (layer-wise) an NPC, you'll get the 'Talk' icon in the main menu. No files attached as it is pretty straight-forward.

Did some more testing and after restarting the game the issue can no longer be reproduced. Tried creating a new char with the same attributes and alt+tab'ing around. Zoom works fine now. Maybe it's a first-start issue. Also, my resolution is 1920x1200, forgot to mention that.

No crash for me so you might want to add some system details or previous steps to further narrow it down.

Issue: When I roll around with the mouse wheel in-game, the scene remains exactly the same except for two things - the fog of war gets narrower (as if zoomed out) and another sub-part of the scene gets displaced. Steps to reproduce: Seems to be just playing the game, happened as soon as I was done with character creation and the first environment came up. To be better illustrate what happens I've attached two screenshots. First one is the default scene as seen without doing anything after leavin CC, second one is with mouse wheel scrolled back (towards me). System: Windows 8.1 64-bit, i7, GTX 660 Ti