
Chrononaut
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Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
All those games have a dominant bottom-bar, taking exception because they see a few floaty bits at the sides/top is semantics.- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
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Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
Considering the prolification of wide screen 16:9 or 16:10 monitors, if the screen is not mainly side bars, I am concerned that you won't be able to utilize the setting as well as you could.But side-bar UI's scale fine to 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions, as the high-resolution mods for the Infinity Engines clearly show. You just need to make the UI bigger and more detailed than those that were designed for 640x480. Also from a purely thematic POV, side-bar with portraits is much more reminiscent of the IE feel. The IWD2 style single bottom-bar is not unique and thematic because it's the same style that almost all the modern RPG's (well mostly action-RPG's) that followed it used. Again, which? There's tons of modern rpg's that use a floating UI placement, but a single bottom bar? Dragon Age is the most prominent example of a 'modern' RPG and it doesn't utilize one. Single-character Action-RPG's, Diablo clones, MMO's, MOBA's.- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
- (and 5 more)
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Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
Considering the prolification of wide screen 16:9 or 16:10 monitors, if the screen is not mainly side bars, I am concerned that you won't be able to utilize the setting as well as you could. But side-bar UI's scale fine to 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions, as the high-resolution mods for the Infinity Engines clearly show. You just need to make the UI bigger and more detailed than those that were designed for 640x480. Also from a purely thematic POV, side-bar with portraits is much more reminiscent of the IE feel. The IWD2 style single bottom-bar is not unique and thematic because it's the same style that almost all the modern RPG's (well mostly action-RPG's) that followed it used.- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
- (and 5 more)
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Update #55: Vertical Slice Update
Chrononaut replied to Darren Monahan's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
So when do we get to see the vertical slice?- 140 replies
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- project eternity
- vertical slice
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(and 1 more)
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Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
IWD2 had "horrible" UI? Because that is the model they will follow. Yeah I hated it, it was too close together and didn't look thematic enough like the other IE ones. I would prefer BG/IWD1 style with side-bar portraits.- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
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Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
Too bad those good graphics will be ruined by a horrible "streamlined" UI with no side-bar- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
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The problem with Dragon Age is that the companions didn't end up looking like they did in the concept/promotional art. Leliana was supposed to be this red-haired sex bomb in the promotional material, but in the 3d game she ended up looking hideous. EDIT: Thankfully PE is going to represent characters by 2D portraits though not by 3D rendered faces.
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Druid Class
Chrononaut replied to AndreyPlatonov's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
That sounds good - at least for some spells/abilities. Do you envisage these herbs/whatever as ingredients (i.e. needing to collect new ones to make a new 'vine of stinging constriction') or as 'mutagenics' that unlock abilities once and then can be used? (Or a combination of the 2?) The latter, would probably be too annoying to have to collect herbs everytime your druid wanted to cast a "spell" or whatever they do. I just think it would be cool to add a bit of flavor to the classes so they seem more unique, Druids are close to nature so herbs I guess. They could spruce up all the classes this way too, Chanters sound like the most social class so perhaps going to a tavern and drinking with some dwarves and they teach you their great dwarven Chants, and bam it adds a new phrase or whatever to your Chanter. And perhaps for Mages a few high-level spells might be rare so you have to find the spell (as a scroll or whatever), locked away in some old man's study, or in a dungeon or something. Of course I mean if PE Mages are like D&D Mages in that their magical ability comes not from in themselves but from reading spells from a book. -
To be honest I'm not a fan of long main quests, I prefer a game that just drops the player in the world head-first without much explanation and without direction (think Ultima, Darklands or early Might & Magics), and without hassling the player with an odious introduction or cutscene, and the player is set to stumble across a series of sparse side-quests with memorable writing and dialogues, more like modular mini-scenarios. As for the main-quest, it would be cool if Obsidian just had a short MacGuffin like "Find the Water Chip" (minus the time-limit) in the background as the narrative, but never let it intrude upon the player unless they decide to follow that up. I just dislike it if an RPG feel like the game is pushing you onto the critical path or onto quests, as opposed to things only happening when the player makes choices.
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I'm really struggling to understand why you keep posting in this vein. The developers have created their system. You wish they had made another IE game. They are instead making a game that takes inspiration from the IE games while innovating in a number of key respects. None of this is changing. So what, exactly, is the purpose of repeatedly declaring that it will be a bad game? Because I want to min-max and PE won't let me? I don't believe I was replying to you.
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No, it was reload time. Now do you really want to sell me unavoidable reloads as a feature? Unavoidable even through clever play? What's the challenge in that? Why do I need to explain why it was fun? Because powerful instant-kill creatures were cool, because they reinforced the setting and the power and fantasy of it.
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For example, why do you feel comfortable making sweeping statements like these? Do you have absolutely any evidence upon which to base any of these assumptions? At all? I'm speculating bro, you should try it sometime. It wouldn't surprise me though, it fits in with the general picture being built of PE's design philosophy by the updates. Why else would they remove unviable character builds? 1) How can you remove something before it exists? 2) On that note, how is creating a system that minimizes broken character building a bad thing? 3) How does #2 lend itself to any insights regarding what kind of spells will be in the game, or how hard mages will be to hit? You aren't speculating. You are "speculating." It's not about "broken character building", it's like creating a BG Mage with low intelligence or a Fighter with low strength without even reading any of the tooltips and then expecting to not fail at the game. Of course it should be possible to create a bad character in an RPG, doesn't mean players should.
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For example, why do you feel comfortable making sweeping statements like these? Do you have absolutely any evidence upon which to base any of these assumptions? At all? I'm speculating bro, you should try it sometime. It wouldn't surprise me though, it fits in with the general picture being built of PE's design philosophy by the updates. Why else would they remove unviable character builds?
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Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
I suppose though Unity is capable of putting filters like anti-aliasing on the character models without touching the backgrounds?- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
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As I've said before, a character's disadvantages are to a great extent defined by the enemies opposing him. If a character needs to have certain "advantages" to win a particular fight with ease and he doesn't have those advantages, then that's an implicit disadvantage. "With ease". I doubt though that the game will "hard" block the player in combat, it will just be "do you want to win or do you want to win optimally". I doubt OE will put anything like Stoneskin or various immunities in the game, because they will be afraid that new players will not be able to figure out how to bypass it and ragequit. I'm only speculating, but it'll still probably be an easy game that any casual gamer will be able to bumble their way through, using tactics or optimal use of abilities will make it just that easier (at least on standard difficulty). My overall point though is that it seems OE is guided by a design philosophy of making a CRPG that is accessible to more casual gamers, but removing most of the more "ragequit inducing" aspects of the IE games (making a bad character cause you didn't read the manual/tooltips), extremely powerful monsters, hard immunities and counters which function like puzzles. The question remains though, will they pull the heart and soul out of the IE experience in order to try and make your average Steam gamers into a CRPG fan. I doubt you'll see anything like the Basilisk, Genie, Tanarri or anything too outrageously powerful which would be seen as "inbalanced". In fact, blatantly "unfair" enemies, mind-bending puzzles and the like are a hallmark of oldschool CRPG's, it was only back in the 90's and 80's that they could away with putting stuff into the game which would infuriate the player so much. Of course in the perfectly mathematical robot designer mind these things were nothing but fluff that should be removed, even if they removed the soul of the game.
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This post should be turned into a banner image and be permanently emblazoned at the top of the Game Mechanics forum. Except that Sawyer's wording of "classes excel and suffer" is very curious. Mechanics updates seem to indicate that PE classes will not suffer at anything, they will have advantages, but not disadvantages. Their will not be armor or weapon restrictions based on class for example. Seems to me that PE classes will just be blank-slate defaults and their "class" will just be a bonus so they do something a little better than other characters. But getting that bonus isn't offset by a restriction or penalty, it's just a bonus. I think classes should be defined by their weaknesses as much as their strength. PE character system seems to be designed by some kind of Bethesdaerian idea of your characters being able to "do anything" (even that update from Cain mentioned "Your characters" when justifying not having class restrictions). For a guy that designed Icewind Dale II, it's rather disappointing to see him display such contempt and hatred for big and long character generation at the start of game. I'm still going to hold my final judgement until I see PE's character generation screen, if it's small as **** then this game is doomed. The only games that do this nowadays are like Skyrim, start game you choose your race and name, and that's it, the "character system" in the game is just masturbatory power-upping and your character's stats and skills do not define how you interact with the world. I personally think chargen should be the most important part of any serious RPG, it should allow the player to plan their character right from level 1 to the cap.
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Mechanic Revision - Pickpocketing
Chrononaut replied to HunterOG's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
There's an RPG currently in development called Underrail which uses a 'suspicion meter' for pickpocketing, every time you pickpocket an NPC his suspicion goes up, if it goes to a certain point combat begins. This kinda idea could easily be extended to a an entire vicinity like a town, so if stuff gets stolen in a small town all the local townsfolk all get more suspicious, so there's a result of the whole town turning on you (the thief). -
Update #61: In-game Art
Chrononaut replied to BAdler's topic in Pillars of Eternity: Announcements & News
Is their a minimum supported resolution for this game? It would be disappointing if they still supported resolutions like 800x600 and everyone else had to just deal with zoomed out bigger map size- 204 replies
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- Rob Nesler
- Concept Art
- (and 5 more)
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Low-level D&D is fun for me, I thought it was fun how weak you were at first, how easy it was to be one-shotted because you failed a saving throw, I also thought combat rounds gave a nice rhythm to the combat which pure real-time lacks. I don't need anyone telling me that I didn't have fun with BG and IWD because BLARG BLARG IT'S NOT MATHEMATICALLY BALANCED AND IT'S ACTUALLY POSSIBLE TO MAKE A **** CHARACTER, BTW READ MY 2000 WORD ESSAY ON WHY D&D SUCKS.... So yeah shoot me for enjoying those games and then spending money in the hopes of another one like it, only to get the "Oh bro you didn't get the memo, you didn't actually have fun with those games, those games actually sucked, but the graphics were cool so we'll keep those, thanks for the dosh though man!"
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I'm just assuming, Keenan said in the gameplay video "the ruleset is Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes with some tweaks" Yeah, I think that's a bit of an understatement. Don't think the original Wasteland was a particularly close adaptation either. Here's some information about that: http://trollbridge.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=msperules&action=display&thread=1829 I'm just repeating what he said? I think the "no miss" thing is a way bigger deal than any of that, as is the lack of combat rounds. And you say "system mastery" like it's a dirty word, because you know having to read tooltips (or in the old days manuals) in order to understand how the game's rules work is such a terrible thing. Na people should be able to just skim through chargen with no planning of their character and expect to do well in the game. And no one should have to restart the game with a different character because they made a character that isn't working out for them, it's not like RPG's are designed around re-playability or anything amirite Sup Bro, I hear you like absolute black/white scenarios.