Michael_Galt
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Posts posted by Michael_Galt
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That is a very valid point. I really don't understand why it became mandatory for EVERYONE to be scouting. Why? I wish there was an individual "stealth mode" and a "scouting mode". It really doesn't make sense why I can't set up a trap with everyone else hiding while say, someone else lures the group of baddies back into the ambush site... It gets annoying that I HAVE to use my "rogue" in the scouting lead, so I can do my sneak attack, otherwise I can't (without using her ability/talent, whatever it is, to go invisible 2 times a day).
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Couple more hours, then it is on like Donkey Kong! Those reviews all have me really excited. I thought I already knew what character I was going to play, but might have to rethink things....
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This makes me want to play a fire godlike Bleak Walker... Tell me that wouldn't be perfect. I suppose that the death godlikes could work as well, but war and fire seems more appropriate to me.
And, Arcanum made race and gender matter- just saying
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This was the first thing I backed on Kickstarter, I believe. Since this, I have backed many other things as well, so they should all give their thanks to Obsidian for being my can of Pringles...
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Well, I very sincerely hope that this works out very well for Obsidian. They are the only ones that actually make RPGs the way that I enjoy them, and if they are successful with this, at least I won't have to worry about similar types of compelling, old-school RPGs being made into the future. In fact, I would only be able to expect even bigger and better ones, if they can do it without the big name companies and have complete control of their artistic license.
My dream is that Pillars is awesome, and then they do Pillars 2, which is set 300 years into the future, and is all steam/cyberpunk. I love those genres, and would love to see Obsidian do something like that. The only good option out there was Deus Ex, but that is more of a first-person action game in a sci-fi setting. I want to have something like Baldur's Gate: Age of the Androids. You could have humans, androids, robots, and even magical beings/users. God, would that be sweet.
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Ah, ok- thanks, Lephys. Nice to see you around, being useful, as usual
(and, that wasn't meant to be some sneaky insult, but an actual compliment) I'm pretty excited for this game! What I really want to see is the party interactions! That is what I missed the most from BG, besides the tactical battles, so if that is back like I'm hoping, I'll be pretty happy. -
Ok, all that looks amazing! That dragon looks scary as hell.
But, here is my question. I am a "Digital Collector's Edition" backer, and plan on pre-loading on Steam. Right now, all I see is the BB. Will I automatically see the full game when it becomes available to pre-load, or do I need to do something with my Pillars account first?
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Great games, all of those. I had a neighbor that loved computer games and built computers in his spare time. He preferred Warcraft and Starcraft, Age of Empires, and Diablo. I played all those and they were fun. One day he had BG 2. He tried it and didn't really like it. I decided to give it a try, and was immediately hooked. Growing up, I had read lots of Forgotten Realms books, and so, immediately recognized all sorts of things in the game. The learning curve was steep- it took me a while to wrap my head around the D&D ruleset and to actually figure out how to play it right, but, after spending nights reading through the manual, and experimenting with different things, I got it. I loved the party interactions, the different strengths of the different classes, the difficulty of the battles, where you really had to think carefully about what you were going to do to be successful.
I loved the art and the music. The story was great. I loved that party members could betray and leave you. I loved that it really felt epic. I didn't go from being weak to powerful in a couple of hours. Every time I leveled up, I felt like I had really accomplished something and looked forward to using those new skills. As it went further into the game, that became slower and more difficult, which was fine, because it allowed me to master the use of the skills I currently had. And Jon Irenicus. What an awesome adversary. Intelligent, interesting voice, always evasive, but not from fear. I loved it.
I still haven't played another RPG that I have enjoyed equally. I love Arcanum, Kotor and Fallout: New Vegas. But, they just aren't as epic as BG 2. The party isn't as interesting in Arcanum, though I loved the sheer number of options for gameplay and how you built your character had so many repercussions in quests and even basic interactions- I felt it was the most permitting of real role-playing (even if the combat wasn't that great and the party interaction basically didn't exist). Fallout NV only lets you have 1 follower, though I love it's versatility of game play options as well. Kotor had great party interactions, the story was great, and I liked the influence system (even though it wasn't perfect), but it was a little too linear. There just weren't that many NPCs to interact with. It was a little too short, and you became a little too powerful too quickly. I didn't feel the same degree of accomplishment with it.
I miss BG 2. I've played through it so many times, that it just isn't that enjoyable anymore, because I really know where just about everything is, and how to do everything. Arcanum's story just isn't compelling enough to keep playing through. There really are only so many options for KOTOR, which is essentially, good, bad, or neutral.
We'll see if I ultimately put Pillars of Eternity above those other games, but I still sincerely doubt it will supplant BG. It doesn't have the backdrop of Faerun. It doesn't have decades of the ruleset being tested and improved. It doesn't have the sheer variety of spells and creatures and skills that are in D&D.... It will be a difficult task to accomplish.
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There were tons of useful things to steal, mostly from merchants. Personally, I think that the Fallout New Vegas system did it best. There were physical items displayed in the shop you could steal, and there were items you could steal from the merchants themselves. There are tons of ways that you could implement pick-pocketing that would make it make sense and work well. Without even consulting those old threads, and off the cuff:
- Let anyone "evaluate a target". That means, they give the individual a look-over. So, they see how large their coin purse is, if they have any rings, how expensive their clothes are. Anyone can do this- you don't need to be a professional pick pocket to know that someone wearing Armani and a Rollex has got some money. If you have put points into pick-pocketing, then you can get more specific information, depending on the number of points. For instance, you could have a good approximate estimate of the value of their externally visible items (coin purse, rings, clothes, etc).
- Give a "search target" option. Anyone could hypothetically do this, but, realistically, unless you have trained in pick-pocket, you will likely fail. This requires contact. You "bump into", or "talk with", or "stand next to in a crowd" the target. You then determine exactly what they have on their person (how many coins in their purse, if they have any items hidden in other areas, etc) AND how hard of a target they are (do they always keep their hands near their valuables, are they paying close attention to everyone and everything around them). That essentially functions as 2 skill checks. The first one is your ability to gather the information (based on your pick-pocket skills) and the other is your ability to evaluate their "defenses" against pickpocketing (based on their level, their dexterity, perception, etc). Meaning, are they easy, normal, moderate, or high risk. Note, there is still no stealing actually involved here. If you don't have enough pick-pocket skill, you don't succeed in further determining what they have on them (meaning, you are left with the external evaluation). If you don't have enough skill, you don't know if they are hard to steal from or not. If your skill really isn't sufficient, you raise their level of alertness for a short time, making it more difficult to steal from them.
- Finally, give a "pick-pocket" option. You now know what they have. If you can only do the external search, you can only target those items that would be visible to the eye. If you are really skilled, you maybe know exactly what type of amulet they have on underneath their shirt. You know, or don't know, the difficulty of the target. Based on the item size and type, that could make it easier or harder to steal from them. If it is an amulet under their shirt, and they are a hard target, maybe that makes it extremely difficult to steal. Maybe that same amulet with and easy target is just of normal to moderate difficulty to steal. So, you try to steal whatever it is that you are interested in. If your skill exceeds their cumulative defenses, you succeed (no rolls- simple skill check). If it doesn't you fail. On that note...
- Failure. If you are only within a small margin of error in your failure, the target doesn't become alerted. If you try this more than 1 time, and are within that margin of error, they do (maybe make the 1st time free, the 2nd time an escalation of difficulty, and the 3rd time, alerted to your activity). So, if you fail the 1st time, you should know to stop immediately, wait until you have improved your skill, and maybe try after that. If you don't do that, you will make it much harder to steal from them, or you will be caught. If the margin of error was large, then you immediately alert them.
- Repercussions. Commoners, small merchants. Won't work with you any further (providing information, trade, etc). Will be hostile (though not attack). Wealthy traders, individuals, lower level adventurers/mercenaries. Will call guards, cause those in the immediate vicinity to become hostile (more difficult to steal from, unwilling to talk to you, not attacking). Nobles, moderate to high level NPCs and adventurers. Immediately hostile, will attack or have guards attack. If from a high enough tier, will cause entire sector of city or city to become hostile (if you try to steal from the high priest, all the churches, the mayor, the city- things like that).
- Atonement. There would be an option of paying a fine to counteract that damage to your "reputation", that would vary depending on the targets offended. If it was commoners or small merchants, it wouldn't be that large. If it was wealthy traders and their like, it would be much more significant. If it was from the top-tier, it would be quite expensive- maybe even a "quest of atonement". This would basically reset some those negative effects (meaning, they would no longer be hostile, but would still be wary against pick-pocketing, leaving it more difficult to steal from them).
That's 10 minutes of thinking. There are tons of other ways to do that would also work. It doesn't matter- it won't be in the game. It just irritates me that it won't be.
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Yeah, I'm pretty unhappy with this. These threads covered it as well:
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64224-mechanic-revision-pickpocketing/
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66037-merchants/
To claim it wasn't something that could be important in the IE games is just silly, because it wasn't something you did. If you had high enough skill, dexterity, and were smart enough to use your potions of master thievery well, you could equip your team well very early on, which had immense game-play benefits. I needed to sometimes justify to myself why my paladin would be willing to allow the rogue in the group to do so, and I always had a way to rationalize it, "I'm in a foreign land, facing a significant evil that I don't have the resources to resist properly, so I need to do this to ultimately do what is for the best." Maybe a paladin wouldn't really do that, but maybe he would.
To me, it just doesn't make sense why it isn't implemented. There have always been thieves. If there are stores or people with wealth, why would there not be the opportunity to steal it? Pickpockets are in every major and most not so major cities in the world. Make a world there there are magical items and of course there would be people that would specialize and practice stealing it. It makes me very sad that I won't be able to make a thief character that can largely ignore the "critical path" and just concentrate on amassing a fortune through cunning and guile, and not actually fighting anyone. Not everyone wants to work really hard, or risk constant death, or study endlessly to be successful in life. It removes a role-playing option, from a game that calls itself "a role-playing game that is a spiritual successor to the IE games". It fails to provide something that was in all of the IE games, and it also fails to provide a role-playing option common to almost every single quality role-playing game ever: Arcanum, IE games, Fallouts, Bethesda. The CRPG I have played that didn't feature that was KOTOR, as far as I am aware. It truly baffles me.
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On a totally separate note, that video looked pretty sweet. I have the beta, but just decided to wait until the release to start playing, as I don't have the patience to work through all the bugs and learning curve, only to potentially have to do that all over, depending on the changes made to the final release. It looked really interesting, but yes, a little complicated. Hopefully it won't take too long to figure out...
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No, I get it- I'll try to help out with that if I can. The reality is, I'm pretty busy for the next month. Hell, I might be even busier for the rest of the year. So, realistically, I don't know how much time I will have available to devote to it. I started last night, but got too busy trying to read through all of the spell and special ability effects, and trying to figure out how all the ability scores actually impact things, so never played very much.
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I second this.
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Well, it certainly look pretty, besides the inventory and creation screens. Waiting until I have time to play it properly, and reading through some the feedback, to figure out what to expect so I don't end up super frustrated
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So... I guess this will get updated when it is available?
ProductsNo products available... yet!
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So, how will I get my access code? I paid for the $110 digital only tier, and the beta code is supposed to come with that. I just checked my Pillars of Eternity account, and see nada. Do I have to go to Steam? Will I get it in an email?
You selected
Pledge $110 or more792 backers
COLLECTORS DIGITAL ONLY TIER - All rewards from the previous digital tiers + SPECIAL THANKS IN GAME CREDITS + THANK YOU POSTCARD FROM THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM (sent physically) + VIP FORUM BADGE + EARLY ACCESS BETA KEY + all the other digital rewards of the $140 tier available now and added during the Kickstarter campaign. If you are looking for all the rewards of the Collector's Edition, but you don't need the physical goods, then this is a great reward tier for you.
Estimated delivery: Apr 2014 -
Heh- right. And, of course, the day that I asked this is the day they do another update... :l
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On a totally different, but related note, are we not long overdue for another update? Or was that stuff released to the magazines considered an update?
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3D models are being used (for inventory and CC particularly) because it's cheaper. This project does not have enough money or 2D artists to be able to do paperdolls.
This has also been known info since 2012.
I don't think it has been known since 2012 that it would look so bad in practice. Hence the discussion now...
I'll have to wait until I get home to search, but I've known that 2D paperdolls were not going to be used for like 1.5 years at least, but I read all of the newsbits.
This, I did not know. Damnation. If it is a dollars and cents argument, there isn't much to be said. What can be said is they could drastically reduce the size of those models. They just don't look good, as large as they are. If they were much smaller, they probably wouldn't look as bad (since you wouldn't be able to see as many details on them).
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BTW, I am replaying BG right now (as in, Tales of the Sword Coast). This is at least the 4th playthrough, and then I plan to import my character into BG2 and then onward to Throne of Bhaal. Just saying that those 2000ish graphics are still fine with me. What did I play before this? Skyrim.
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So just to beat a dead horse (
) I want to be specific about something. I think Eternity looks fine. I think it looks better than BG2, a helluva lot better than Planescape Torment which I always thought looked like crap, and Icewind Dale 2. My point is the people who think Eternity looks bad, or the character models suck, are also the same people who would say that Dragon Age Inquisition is ugly and looks worse than modded BG2.I don't dislike any of these people. I think Malekith is a fine dude and I have agreed with plenty of his posts. He just happens to be dead wrong this time.
Umm, no. I only play RPGs, period. I wouldn't say that those games have "better" graphics, just that it is a different style of game. I love the graphics in ME or FO: NV, or even Skyrim. But, do you manage a 6 person party in any of those games? No. So, for that, the top-down look is better. And, as someone else pointed out, there is a big difference between a game with multiple millions of dollars in budget, and literally dozens of people working on it, to a game that probably has tops, 30 people working on it. So, it is definitely comparing apples to oranges, even if they WERE going for "the best graphics".
And, not speaking for everyone not happy with the some aspects of the graphics, I just don't like the character creation screen or the inventory screen. I "love" the rest. I borderline "hate" those 2 things. That should say something. Happy with all the graphics except for 2 exceptions? Yes. Very unsatisfied with those 2 exceptions? Also yes.
Also, to make a pretty simple point: this is supposed to be like the IE games. There is nothing in that character creation screen or the 3D model in the inventory screen, which has anything to do with the IE games. It looks like they were trying to make those screens for a 3D game, and it isn't that. So, it just doesn't make sense. I understand that the models are technically 3D, but they are made to blend with a 2D environment. Those screens are just straight 3D. Why? Why not just keep it like the other games, with little sprites/dolls? Especially if those models look so atrocious, which they do. Outside of those screens, we will never seen any of the characters like that, and, quite frankly, I don't want to. Why don't we see them more like we do in the game, which is zoomed out and small, without a huge amount of detail? It feels like they are trying to make them look like NWN2, not BG or IWD or PST.
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I think a lot of people would like 2D Paperdolls, but they would require a massive amount of 2D art time, this project only has 2 x 2D artists that I am aware of.
It's crazy the amount of stuff that Kaz has to do, which means we may not get heaps of his portraits
:(I do not know why it would be a big problem. Here are a few examples that demonstrate how easy it can be achieved.
- smaller 3d character (Icewind dale 2) (pic 01)
- use just portrait illustration as the preview image during the character selection (bg 1, bg 2, iwd 1,2....) (pic 02)
- or use something like this (pic_03_03b) just more "infinity engine" look
Pic 04 is showing how is now.
Compare. Feel.
Pic 04 is childish for me, and reminds me too much on the game type wow.
I like all of those other options better than the current example we have. To me, the one they have shown is just butt-ugly, and I'm not talking about about a nice-butt, butt-ugly, but a Rosie O'Donnell butt. I'm sure some modders can change it, if need be, so won't be too worried about it.
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After watching some of the gameplay videos, I have mixed feelings about the graphical presentation.
First: The UI looks awesome! And it catches that Infinity engine vibe just fine. I also love how big the letters on the dialogue box are. The handful of tweaks (like the character select buttons in the looting window) that had been done over the IWD UI are well thought-out. Trade window is a little aged in terms of user comfort, but it catches the classic feel just fine.
However, I have a lot of concerns about the general game graphics, especially the textures. The backgrounds vary from being extremely detailed (I love some of the floor tiles on the temple), to totally blurry (the earth parts in the first area). I guess the paintover job is already done on the starting area? I feel that the IWD 2 backgrounds looked a lot more crisp and sharp compared to the first videos of PoE... I hope it's just the movie resolution fooling me.
And then, there's the character models. They look great in the isometric perspective, but in the inventory and character creation, they just don't match the graphical quality of the UI. I don't think the 3D models should be shown in both menues. Why not just show a sketch-like drawing of an adventurer in the background with icons of the equipments in the specific positions?
In the character creation screen, I guess such a preview is unavoidable if we want to select colors, but at least a little downscaling couldn't hurt... you could possibly make the windows a bit larger (like the description window) and reduce the space for the preview picture. It's not the perfect solution, but having the character that big in the character creation menu really reveals the low texture resolution of characters in PoE.
I second all of that. I really like how it looks, in game, for the most part. But, I really disliked how the character creation screen looked. Honestly, to me, it just looked ugly. I really didn't like it. And if that is what I have to see in the inventory screen as well... Damn.
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Well, I guess it is a good thing I asked- at least I know what to expect now. Thanks for the clarification, Nightstalker.
(and, that wasn't meant to be some sneaky insult, but an actual compliment) I'm pretty excited for this game! What I really want to see is the party interactions! That is what I missed the most from BG, besides the tactical battles, so if that is back like I'm hoping, I'll be pretty happy.
) I want to be specific about something. I think Eternity looks fine. I think it looks better than BG2, a helluva lot better than Planescape Torment which I always thought looked like crap, and Icewind Dale 2. My point is the people who think Eternity looks bad, or the character models suck, are also the same people who would say that Dragon Age Inquisition is ugly and looks worse than modded BG2.
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Am I the only person who have positive things to say?
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by Michael_Galt
I love it. I was pretty unsure about the new attribute system and not having "pure" classes, but have since become sold on the system they came up with. Every class DOES play way differently. A chanter needs to be able to survive a while in combat to be useful, paladins are always useful, just not supremely powerful, having a priest can really make things go more easily in terms of recuperation, etc, etc. I still dislike that I can't really steal, but, oh well. The dialogue is good- I really like the ACTUAL conversations that happen. It definitely has more of a Torment feel for that, and is more philosophical/"historical" than BG.
I have to say, I'm kinda underwhelmed by the NPCs. I was really hoping for some "incredible NPC interaction", like in BG2. I don't feel it has really delivered on that. I mean, there is a little, but it is more that they interject while you are talking to someone else. That can be interesting and add value to those conversations, but I feel like they are probably going to essentially say the same thing, no matter what character you are playing. In BG 2, I really felt like they had "relationships"- whether it was an untrusting one, or a friendship. Here, it seems a little less pronounced.
I wasn't sure about whether there would be enough monster types, since they weren't inheriting the Forgotten Realms bestiary, but I feel they did a really good job of mixing things up and keeping it interesting, with a variety of enemies, that typically fight and feel different.
Oh, and like usual, don't know what bugs people are talking about. I had maybe 2 instances that my computer restarted. But, that might have been because it just overwhelmed from hours of non-stop gameplay
I feel like lots of people just don't update their drivers or have good hardware, and then encounter problems because of that- user error, not a fault of the game.