IndiraLightfoot

PJ: Very good points, and fair enough! But I'd sure like to rename this beta "alpha".

Gromnir: 1) Are you dense as a brick? 2) Or are you just deliberately misunderstanding everything you read just to annoy people? I know for a fact that 1) is wrong, since we can discuss things reasonably via PM, so then it's 2). I just told you, as clearly as possible, that I've played BG with companions dozens of times. Also, I've never made a secret that I enjoy playing the same game with parties all made up myself. I have posts about that years ago, where Stun and I had to defend ourselves against angry mobs with pitchforks for arguing that the Adventurer's Hall in PoE is a necessity. Please, please, Gromnir, cease and desist with this endless display of derogatory talk and accusatory lies, disguised in some goblin dialect (apropos the need of ignoring what someone says vis-à-vis what they do). I have read hundreds of your posts, and that's the essence of most of them, which is truly sad. Drop the act and grow up! It would be fun and sincerely appreciated seeing more of the real Gromnir (the ones in your PMs), instead of that awful goblin, or else, I'll feel like a ranger with nagging humanoids as a favoured enemy times five!

Brutal accounts, mutonizer, but OE needs to hear about stuff like this, which isn't wrapped up in shill-talk, now, rather than later. Thank you for taking the time to debunk the stealth system and secret reveals, etc.

This is but a bare minimum! For this beta to be constructive for them, and fair for those of us (we're fans of OE, and really want this IP to succeed), we need a pretty detailed account of those core issues, and the leeway for change for each of them. I'm missing that Swen Vincke of Larian Games-approach a bit, or closer to the devs beta, where feedback got updated quicker, and whole systems could go out the window, even with ideals if needs be, only to make the game better and more attractive for the backers. Swen even dropped a few KS promises, just to make sure that stuff that got in were pampered correctly.

This would explain a lot, since I just realized that the most glaring bugs concern combat, systems, invo UI and exploration/encounter density/map design, which they no doubt would have swooped down on immediately.

IDG.SE, March 19, Wester: "Vi är bra på spel som riktar sig till en nördpublik, men har saknat just rollspel." "Dessutom har Obsidian massa fans bland våra anställda. Jag har räknat till minst åtta på Paradox som var med och kickstartade Pillars of Eternity långt innan vi som bolag började snacka med dem. Och själv var jag en aning starstruck när jag snackade med Obsidians legendariska speldesigner Chris Avellone under förhandlingarna." Translation into English: "We're good at nerdy games, but we haven't had any RPG." "We have lots of fans of Obsidian among our employees. At least eight people at Paradox helped kickstart PoE. I was star-struck when I met the game dev Chris Avellone during the negotiations." This is good news, at least some of their staff ought to know CRPGs, after all.

Alright. I had no idea that they didn't test this vertical slice, which they still have demonstrated at game shows and all. So, just localization and other areas? You'd think they would have tested the very part that people got to test in those shows, but now I stand corrected. However, I could have sworn I saw Adler mentioning that most known issues were picked up by the Paradox QA (and their own, of course.)

March 19, Eurogamer: Fredrik Wester, Paradox: "Two or three years ago we had to publish games we couldn't really stand behind and that damaged our reputation, because we needed the cashflow," Wester added. "Now we're in a totally different position. "If we don't think Pillars of Eternity is up to standard, we're going to tell these guys. And we're opinionated people, we're going to come back with tons of opinions. We have a QA team of eighteen people who're going to play the game for weeks and weeks and give their feedback." This is a bit worrisome. Did Paradox test this beta build, this vertical slice for weeks and weeks with 18 professional game testers, and it's now in the state it's in? After all their honest feedback and tough love, it plays like this? One thing, they didn't test very well, as we can see in most of the backer beta forum posts, and that's combat. Obviously, Paradox has nothing to do with the IE games, the NWN2 games, or even any spiritually related games. I have played a few of their games, Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings 2, for instance, and they are pretty great in all respects but two: combat and esoteric systems. In fact, they excel in creating black boxes, with millions of interlocked gear inside, which spit out cool results, generating very varied and fun results. And what do you know? This is exactly how the combat and the system for PoE feel right now. In all honesty, this thread is done tongue in cheek, but I'm still concerned that these 18 testers really seem to have so little grasp of the CRPG genre, and especially how to make combat clear, correctly paced, varied and party-based-oriented/friendly. 18 select testers out of these forums would have done a better job, of that I am certain. Discuss!

Your great list there (which is, like you said, incomplete) whetted my appetite for your big combat thread. We need to discuss possible solutions on how to make it into a really good experience, and the sooner, the better.

Silent Winter: I'm playing BG:EE right now, with a sneaky swashbuckler as my main, and I let her into buildings or at least upper floors, and also into camps alone, sneaking, and she's but level 1. Still, without her our party would have less money, less items, she's even netted one magical item, and also less xp (she may be doing it alone, but it says "the party got 10 xp" when she opens a lock.

am not sure what proof you is offering. example: in another thread, you mentioned how much you loved the bg companions and how even though you played mp with a created party, you left open-slots to add bg companions. hell, bgee even has three new companions with full bg2 style quests and you still didn't leave open slots. am not sure what proof we can get from your anecdotal play o' bgee. heck, three possible companions have been available to you thus far and you has spurned them all. 'course now that we made this point we suspect somewhere along the way you will adopt a companion... that will show Gromnir, eh? *shrug* also, is kinda funny, but weapon degradation actual were planned as an initial feature. is not same as bg breaking (which as noted already were a bg plot point and complete irrelevant once you got magic weapons early in the game) nevertheless, josh thought it were a good credit sink. *shrug* fans didn't like the feature, and more important, it appears that the other PoE team members didn't like it neither. removing weapon degradation were, it seems, a very easy change as it were only affected by a single skill. HA! Good Fun! Heh! You missed the context by a mile. That playthrough of mine is all about them six characters I rolled up myself (I have played the game dozens of times, I don't need to hear from those companions yet again. It's my prerogative to play BG the way I want to. However, some quest-xp-only people seem hell-bent on policing how it should be played. Also, for this crowd, companions > carefully roleplayed party of six you rolled up yourself. Why is this? I don't know. they are slaves under the laudatory quotes on the box.) My proof is that I keep on playing even if my party nearly got wiped out or if a weapon broke. I didn't re-roll, instead I roll with the punches. That's my way to RP combat in that playthrough. Obviously, if they all die I need to reload. So far, it hasn't happened.

Ink Blot: No magical weapons will break during my watch! Only non-magical weapons, and it would fit PoE fine, since those weapons seem to be very important throughout, or at least up until lvl 5-8.

Yeah, L1-2 mean too fragile party members - very entertaining, but the game should've started at level 3 instead, like in NWN2 (nicely solved, OE!).

Ink blot: I actually loathe weapon repairing systems in CRPGs, but for some reason, I find weapons breaking in the midst of combat priceless and challenging (when you didn't ask for it, like a leftfield curveball, mixing metaphors, I think).

The dice part, the designers of PoE could save it all by at least simplify it a lot, and ditch all the fractions and decimals and percentages. I want low and clean numbers, and also the "will I hit or not"-excitement, should be in, IMHO.

PJ: Here's the weird bit, though. I almost never reloaded in those cases, I took it as a pretty great part of my RPG combat experience. I even did that recently, not a plug or anything, but here's proof: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68266-bgee-indira-lightfoot-and-her-bad-band/ As for the RNG god of the IE games, that entity's almost sacred to me. I repeat the words of Sensuki: Balance==Banalce.

LOL: How on earth did I miss that? I tend to read most of the stuff here, bless me, but that one just escaped me. Well, there you go.

PH: Heh, you need to break off some of the ribs, many of them aren't necessary or outright bad, but my "bones", the backbone of the IE games, were the three ones I just listed in a post like an hour or ago. And to me, two of them are still missing. Those were my personal favourites, mind you, and I'm not imposing them on anybody else. Still, I see from plenty of posters that they really like those three as well.

That's true, PJ. However, there is this line from the KS, I don't have it here, where they specify it all, something like: "We'll take the best of the IE games, the story quality from PST, the combat from IWD2, and the exploring and freedom from the BG..." or something like it.

Infinitron: Feargus told us about how BG appeared a few months before they began production for real, a version they were showing some sales executive, and it was nothing like the BG we know. Nothing, except for the isometric perspective with a bit of digital arts and craft in it. So, indeed, Rome wasn't built in one day.

Why just crits and happy successes of high damage rolls? I for one miss the annoying, but sometimes very entertaining fact that non-magical weapons could break in BG. It would enhance the RPG aspect of PoE if this was reintroduced in this "IE spiritual successor". I'd love to see this concept of failure broadened a bit as well. I wish to see critical misses in combat, obviously just as rare as weapons that break, but with weird consequences, interesting "fumbles". Spells that turn into wild magic, even damaging the party or the caster in a pretty bad way. I'm aware of lots of people hating this, but for an old PnP-er, this would make my day.

Nice wording, Sensuki, trying to "invoke the IE feel in spirit". I'd love to see an urgent shift at OE, where they instead "try to embody the IE spirit, down to the bone".

Hiro: There are some major issues with some of the core designs, where much more drastic decisions would need to be made. Still, I refuse to throw my hands and ascertain that those won't get changed. I need to keep the hopes up of this game still getting great in the end. I realize that major changes are unlikely, since we haven't seen devs here discussing those core designs in a while, but, hey, it's their game and reputation on the line. They may very well listen and change things up pretty radically, even delay the release to accommodate for such changes. This is me being positive, right there ---->

PJ: A great list of suggestions! 1-4 are all very good. If all those are done, and then halving the recovery like KaineParker suggested, or even cutting it up in just a few simple categories, we would have come along way already, methinks, and hey, you guys were on topic as well! As for 3. In the IE games, this was always the case - the enemies went for the squishy ones first, same thing in NWN2 for the most part. I see no reason not to continue that tradition.

I personally love this idea. Just a minor tweak to an excellent idea is that I don't think explorer xp need be doled out for each map. Folks whose only desire is kill XP want immediate gratification of XP reward desires. I know I'll get some guff from some kill XP proponents on that, but I believe it's the driving force. I've even said it's a good argument of sorts because it makes combat more visceral for folks if they're getting immediate rewards, it's just not a good enough argument to win the day. However, folks who explore would, in my opinion, be more amenable to story and loot rewards. Not even big loot rewards. Explorer people are like goody two shoes types who go way out of their way to be the good guy in the game. Yeah, they like to see some gameplay reward lovin' thrown their way from time to time, but story rewards and a pat on the back (or a condescending pat on the head) will have more impact. I speak as one of these pathetic goody two shoes player types. Also, I think explorer rewards for side quests make a lot of sense for these groups. Some quests might not be readily apparent, but finding out that the super tough battle you just fought wasn't some random monster you found running around but you chanced upon the super Lionspider of dooooom and overcame it without foreknowledge! That needs a log entry because, where I agree with Gromnir is that just getting XP in your log doesn't make any sense at all. Even if you didn't know it was a 'quest' before-hand (which it clearly was) anything significant enough to yield XP should be significant enough to yield questesque lovin' in your journal. I don't want to mislead folks. I hate kill XP. I don't mind XP awarded for killing, but I am completely against the mechanic that yields XP for wandering around killing things. I think XP rewards should be significant and noteworthy events in the characters' lives. I think Seari has a point about the balance issue, especially since it's one of the big reasons the designers cite for quest XP. ...But they also care about the story and their artistic vision and anything *anything* that rewards some act will encourage the mass of players to engage in it. From my perspective, they want you to be able to kill your way through the game as a choice, and it's less of a choice if it's one of your primary rewards. That is to say, if you can sneak, talk, or fight your way past encounters, and you get a better reward for fighting past it, whatever your inclination, the reward will always be poking around somewhere in your considerations. If you get the exact same reward for any of the three (or four or five or however many ways of getting past the encounter) then you chose fighting because, damn it, that's. how. you. roll! External rewards for one thing or another cheapen player choice. M&M X had stuff like this in it, and it's pretty fun for us pixelhunters. Keep the good ideas flowing, folks!