nipsen

.."beta" is taken to be a lot of different things nowadays, though. Once upon a time, alpha meant "required features complete, but unstable, UI still makeshift", etc. Beta would mean something like "Functional for users through UI, but unstable". With PoE, my impression was - until someone started talking about tossing out the attribute system, at least - that the beta was on an engine that was functionally complete, main feature locked, but with various bugs to be sorted out, placeholder resources, graphical glitches. Josh also hinted that he wanted to hear suggestions for new feats people wanted to see. So if you take that together with what I said about how the engine is put together above, you could maybe infer that one of the (or maybe the only) non feature locked area of the game is character animation and abilities/moves. They also did make quite a few improvements with the update that went live.. yesterday, or something like that. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested that it's likely the animation and so on is going to be improved. Suggestions for feats and bug reports seem to be few, and random complaining about nothing relevant seems to be frequent, is all I'm saying.

Mm. It must be a real boost for Josh and Feargus to be able to prove that a two-year development of a project like this (with a small team) is actually possible as well. Another impressive thing is that they've demonstrated the process openly. We hear regularly - even from Bioware and so on - that modern development cycles dislike complex story-driven games. That writing story-driven games with branching content is out of date, that it can't be done. And you might say something like "but look at Alpha Protocol?". And they'll say "but that sucked and was full of bugs because it was rushed and they ran out of time", etc. And then PoE turns up. With the framework done and the levels sketched out early, the story written on top of it. The ruleset developed on paper independently (as far as I can tell). The real-time with pause system implementing the ruleset. All developed concurrently. And then the visuals and polish on top of that. So that must be fantastic. A planning success like that. To be able to simply say "PoE" and have that count as an argument every time someone claims it's impossible and/or untenable and certainly not profitable regardless, etc.. Great for us as well, of course. Just hope it actually sells a bit as well - that'd be the final nail in the coffin for the entire "everyone wants shallow ****" wave lately. "Sword flairs in solitude".

It should be, to avoid the stark contrast of decrepitude it will create when compared to every other game made in the last 10 years. And that comparison is done automatically by our brains accustomed to modern standards. The thing is, you're not appreciating some of the things the 2d/3d system allows. For example how the spell-casting is scripted in three stages to fit with the timing of the three cast stages, the type of cast (fireball is different from necrotic lance, etc., and the spell animation actually comes from the magician's hands at the time of the cast), and the direction (rolling fire isn't going to originate from a ball of magic in front of the caster, and then home in on the target from there - instead the magician is going to turn and cast). In Fallout, there's a single shot animation determined to go off. And a response animation that varies depending on the impact. It's played back the same way every time, it doesn't care if the targets are far off or close together, etc. It's just that one animation. You would see it instantly if you put PoE next to Fallout2. And there are a few other in-game spline-corrected animation like the magician casts that are already in the game. But the system allows things like that. Because the characters are 3d and collapsed to look like 2d, they're not actually sprites. And by the looks of it, this is clearly being worked on. So.. Still -- this isn't the most important part of the game. It'd be nice to have (although apparently the high fidelity folks don't seem to notice the changes already in the game compared to for example IWD2) - but it's not critical, is it. Compared to game-stoppers like disappearing inventory, encounter balancing, writing, etc. I do hope they'll be working on it, though..

Oh so PoE was supposed to be retro game? I didn't know this. I was under the impression it will be a modern game that's a tribute to IE games. That changes some things. I don't really want to stop anyone when they're so well on their way with their rants. But in the last update, with v-sync on, etc., things do look considerably less horrible than they did in the last version. But I hope they're going to introduce random shifts to the animation rotation for each punch animation. And that there is going to be hit-dependent and better timed hurt-animation, some flair and different slashes and punches. This isn't exactly the core of the game, though.

The Stone Beetles have had their defense lowered in the new beta version. So the non-linear approach to defense converts normal hits to critical hits more often. Just as the Monk converts normal hits to grazes because of the class' high defense.

Yes! Scram, pipsqueak!

Well, what he actually said was that he couldn't believe someone who made a game with as lively physics and animation as DS3 were putting out a game like what PoE looks like right now. And I think that's a good point. The animation and the feel of it is very raw. And to add to the above post - I'm sure you understand why the devs were apprehensive about releasing the beta now. That even if most of these things can be sorted out (animation in particular - this isn't set in stone by any means), it's going to cause this incredible disappointment in the knee-jerk section (read: all sections) of the forums and elsewhere.

Really? It's just a freakin' beta. I'm not sure how you're seeing so much doom and gloom for the game based on the beta at present. There are actually a lot of positive things in it. Sure, there are plenty of things that need addressing, but very few (if any) that I'd put into a major overhaul category. Fanboy or not, I just don't see the 'shot in the knee' here. I have to say I have never heard somebody say 'sure it gets great reviews now but it SUCKED in beta. Don't buy it' Well.. I've heard plenty of people condemn a beta as a failed product that never should have been made, and shouldn't be shown to the public. The product then is released, and the detractors continue to insist that the game is ****e. It gets 9/10 on IGN. But the detractors still insist that the game is broken beyond a playable state. It sells over a million discs over the first few months, and detractors insist the game is broken. Etc., etc. In those cases, the people who "criticize" the game have decided that they will not like the game. And they make it their mission to make sure they make an as big splash as possible with their "legitimate feedback". In the three examples of big tests I was part of that ended up like this, a very small group created a feedback loop online that ended up in a preview at IGN at one point, somehow legitimizing that this "view" was representative of all the players, etc. And it also ended up swaying the community managers at the publisher of those titles. They read this feedback, from this weirdly tireless bunch of folks, and they convinced themselves that the only thing they could do was to insist to the devs that they would spend the 6 months of contractual post-release support on patching the games apart. Meanwhile, the rest of us just played the game until it became unplayable, and we left. In the case of this beta, the lack of constructive criticism has - ...and I warned you of that ahead of the beta - ensured that we have lost the opportunity to communicate with the devs in a reasonably normal way. And it looks like a couple of suggestions from people who have convinced themselves that a particular system is broken, etc., is going to be pushed through (see #2 about the inevitable report of a broken system). Or at the very least it has drowned out more broad feedback. But when it comes to that - I've also been part of betas where everyone were 100% convinced the game was incredible, everyone were positive, and they all loved it. And the game bombed. That's much worse, or at least as bad as the "selective VIP group will now save the beta, the developer, and the genre the game represents with their superior games-development expertise". ------ Anyway. Yeah, I really hope they work on the animations and how they're used in the game/incorporated with game logic, as well. They really have a long way to go before the game is going to come off as polished, there's no doubt about that. I also definitely wish that they could have used some of the animation tech used in DS3 to create location dependent deflection animation, better control over how the spells are cast, and how the movement correspond with the actual magic that's cast (this is already fairly well done, but needs to be tweaked). And also that melee stances and combat animation would have loops with small variations on each cycle, and things of that sort (this is possible because the animations are from 3d models, not 2d sprites - and it is a disappointment that this is apparently not a focus). That's definitely a good point - it doesn't look as good as it could, and at the moment, there are so many small things with the beta that it does seem difficult for even a fairly large team to be able to sort this out before December. I do, however, think that some of you are being much too willing to stretch the rubber-band incredibly far when it comes to finding substantial things about the beta to criticize. And I think it's because you are convinced that if only a substantial/meaningful part of the game is changed according to "community feedback", then this will somehow wipe all criticism of the game away. That's never going to happen. And it's especially never going to happen with a game that Obsidian makes. You know this on beforehand. Really, how long did it take before someone turned up and complained about how the default character selection was female? Three minutes after the update? What about the guys who blow a fuse if their moral sensibilities are even slightly tested? You've all seen these people on the forum, and you know that this kind of bs discussion has dominated the test. And you know why it does that? It's because no one dares to criticize dumb people's feedback and demand that they will explain what they actually mean. So we can understand the context of their opinions, and figure out if there is indeed something there that can be translated into actual feedback. Instead, we refuse to do so, and simply assume that their subjective feeling of negativity is immaculate, and yet utterly meaningful - so that it's the developers' mission to somehow find a way to appease people like that. To make their faith in the game grow and rise. On the pain of releasing a broken product that "no one likes", and so on. I mean.. Look. I've seen that exact same thing in several betas. Not one or two - more than 10. It's the same every time. People who otherwise would have interesting feedback shuts up about it. And the vast bulk of the feedback becomes: "I feel the colours are too bland. Also, the colours are too bright. And too dark. And too fuzzy". The developers can't use any of this. And more importantly, there's no way a developer would want to engage with someone who so obviously is just fishing for attention, or a group that validates people in this way. If the ones around here who aren't idiots - or shamelessly lazy - respected that, this beta could have been a treasure trove for the devs. But it's probably not going to be that now. Instead it seems we're gearing up towards another one of those weird popularity contests where an epic battle is fought over the colours of the underside of a beetle's shell, or something like that. While someone who has the developers' ears manage to ruin something amazingly creative before anyone else got to try it or give real feedback on it. While the problems and annoyances that could be sorted out - that only random people not used to working around the problems see - are lost (imagine that all the devs have played through the entire campaign of the game 100s of times by now - while others are repeatedly focused on specific scenarios, clicking through the same dialogue over and over again, etc. They're going to miss obvious things, but take care of prepared and listed reports). So actual reports don't get any attention. Which tends to lead developers to think that no one noticed, or that it wasn't very important. And it could very well be that when the game finally is released, that you are proven right. That the game isn't all that great. I do however insist that if this happens, it will be because Josh didn't have enough faith in the original design, and ended up changing it. And because small visual problems (height maps and occlusion) and animation problems (stances) weren't sorted out. While the nasty problems with references for objects and short-cut scripts that eventually cause issues with items and resources - that won't turn up on a "quickest path", standard equipment playthrough - are not really sorted out. It sure as hell won't be because the game isn't remade with "proper turns" and a more NWN-style "turnbased combat". Or that the game doesn't have ragdoll physics. Or that the freaking attribute system isn't remade from scratch so it resembles, say, Planescape Torment without tattoos. Or Kotor 2, where the max-min difference is basically a 2 points bonus. Or, for example, that the game isn't made with a "proper protagonist", rather than that it focuses on roleplaying something you make up yourself.

..frankly, no one should genuinely hope that any game is made with an identical control setup as the one in DS1&2.

Looks a lot like a Ford Falcon, at least.

Well, what about Peon Forest Adventure? Siege Engine Operator? Ramparts&Stonewall Artisans? Fletcher Supply Survival? Orc Scribe and Saga Chronicler?

*bows* That, Nordicus, was a very good piece of writing.

Mm. A film, like Apocalypse Now. Or maybe a book! Like Heart of Darkness! I think you may be on to something here! Of course, both of those are more like political statements than either books or films, so that obviously would draw things down a bit for you. You have only yourself to blame, really. And your lack of cultural sense. --- Currently playing Warframe for some reason. I think what makes it fun to go back to is that the slot and upgrade system is so convoluted that you don't seem to run into people who have exactly the same setup as you. Also, you can beat guns with swords if you're clever. Which is awesome.

..uhuh. That's basically how I feel every time I see a trailer or a hype-trap for an fps. "Most popular and unique game, ever, in all of history, for all time, it's not redundant at all, and you got to play it now! Also, your mother! -IGN". "Shoot **** and get experience points! -RPS". "It's f****** awesome! -Jaz Rignall". lol Yeah, the way it'd shift from realtime to turnbased would make it a lot like Septerra Core. Funny thing. Hopefully, it'll be a bit more polished than that

Why is that girl only wearing a string bikini? Why is Snake not? Because Snake is an honorable, married woman, and/or whose marital status is none of our business. Btw,

"Ink black bolt".

..that's what they say, yes. The point I made, and explained, in enough detail, and which you all ignored in order - was that people dump perception and resolve because they think it's useless. And then complain when they get petrified for an hour, and when a monster takes out the entire party with some charging super-ability they can't seem to stop. The problem is this: the proposed changes come from the idea that everyone will dump "useless stats" to maximize their builds. And when that is punished severely in certain situations, the demand turns up that the game should change. And those suggested changes are geared into narrowing a deeper system into a very specific type of play that I guarantee you that not "everyone" will appreciate. I didn't get through the entire thing, no. But what it seems to me is that - like I explained - that you're stating on beforehand that there's really only one real build in the game, the min-maxed might build. And then you're spending a lot of time suggesting changes to the system to make that build less vulnerable. If I was being rude, I would make a huge treatise on it, and declare that Josh will have to read it and take it into account if he doesn't want to ship the game with a broken system. But since I'm not a rude bastard I won't do that. 1. I don't see why any attribute /should/ have to be maxed in a "balanced" system. But in the current system you can max stats and have extreme tilts for very specialized builds. That is what the design set out to do. And you don't approve of that. Which is fine. But you don't have a monopoly on opinions about that. 2. Again, I explained in detail what I meant. I'm saying that if you dump certain stats, perception and resolve - which you already seem to do always - then you still get baseline bonuses where you would have none before. The proposed system also adds abilities that can't be tied to maximize other "skills", so to speak. I.e., that you can't pump interruption chance and balance it against might. Or go for lower might and gamble on critical range and graze conversion. And if you pump those dump-stats, you get very few useful bonuses in the new system and also lose the maximized bonuses from the other stats. Even worse, when you balance the build, there's very little useful you get out of it, since the actual mechanics in the game doesn't double up dex-defense and dodge in practice: In other words, the proposed system encourages min-maxing, and it encourages a very specific type of gameplay that you only get in the current build if you min-max might and slavishly play that way with all the characters. My opinion is that what you're proposing is to essentially force all of us to play the game exactly like you are when you are building max-min characters. And I dislike that, and just wanted to say so. That's all there is to it. If you have high Int and low Res you'll still have the same Will defense as someone with balanced Int and Res If you have high Dex and low Per you'll still have the same Reflex defense as someone with balanced Per and Dex. "Interrupt extremely poorly" - this bit is a dead giveaway that you took a quick glance, saw the attribute array and then didn't read further. That's very out of the ordinary for someone who's usually a pretty good poster. I've actually been harping on this several times, and I do wonder why some of you keep on ignoring parts of the game mechanics. What I mean is that you recover from effects that affect your speed and intellect faster with a higher bonus. Freeze and daze lasts shorter (and are recovered against sometimes completely), to the point where the effects are almost negated every time. And interrupts in the game apparently works in the way that you have a chance to attempt an interrupt on practically everything. And that chance to interrupt increases with better perception. So what I had with my perception/int based fighter was that I had a solid chance at occupying mobs, and still interrupting all of their effects as they were trying to squish me. That was interesting. I could boost the number of people I can engage simultaneously with.. whatever stat that was governed by, and the abilities. And actually have a decent chance at resisting and really punishing the casters around me (depending on how I placed the fighter, and how the enemy responded). I made an example of it in another thread where a character like that would treat a might-based mage as some sort of minor annoyance - even while fighting another nearby enemy. Because I have so high interrupt chance I can trust it to go off practically every time. And that effect is apparently relative to the lower chance of the target to resist an interrupt, rather than being a linear function. Meanwhile the might-based mage would skewer the guy on a distance if he isn't interrupted. But in this case the system makes sense, right? The characters have weaknesses and strengths. With the proposed changes, the might-based mage would just have extra bonuses and have a better chance at getting off their spells. Which.. they already do if they use their abilities and spells wisely. So I don't think you've thought this through. 20 pages not embarrassing detail enough ? Not when it boils down to fifty repetitions of "I have now explained why this makes complete sense, for reasons that are already obvious", no. I mean no offense with this - but I've "consulted" on enough papers at the university and for "political" organisations of different kinds to recognize a foregone conclusion when I see one.

This bit here, I'm right there with you. That's true. Sort of. We haven't really changed the impact of attributes, just shifted the bonussen around such that all the attributes are worth roughly the same per-point. And you do it by pulling out extra "ability" points that otherwise would have never existed in the same build. It's effectively the same as adding more ability points to make everything more powerful. Except you're doing it in a way that encourages maxing out at least two attributes. A less min-maxed distribution will invariably lessen the bonus. I don't know HOW you think this is possible in the current beta, given how bad Perception and Resolve are - you can make a min/max build pumping MIG, DEX, INT and maybe CON and just laugh through. So I really don't know what you're complaining about there. Our math focuses on supporting a balanced array. Not the case. If you pump might, dex and int, you lose will-saves, reflex saves, and you interrupt extremely poorly. If you outfit a fighter this way, you can use them effectively as a tank of course. But if you get knocked down, and even the AI in the beta can do this once in a while, you see just how vulnerable that build is. With a wizard, the drawbacks are even greater. Sure, you do loads of damage - but in return you can be interrupted by someone farting in your direction, and you're going to fail the saves against the simplest spell in any spell-book. And what you're suggesting is basically to make that might/dex/con or might/dex/int build less vulnerable, by making a minimized stat give you better protection. So you have zero dt, but you have dodge anyway. So you have no dodge, but you get deflection base. This is protection that the other classes and other builds don't rely on. And it's protection which they will really lose, along with the max-out bonuses, if the point distribution is less extreme. Meanwhile, perception and resolve will never be maxed at the cost of the other stats in your makeup. If you did that, you just wouldn't get a viable character build. In other words - before: make a max-min build, and have exaggerated strengths and debilitating weaknesses. After: make a max-min build, or lose significant bonuses. *shrug* On a sidenote - I guess I really should stop getting annoyed by stuff like this, but I've been very unpleasant to random peeps on the forum for playing designers and making suggestions without explaining their own approach to embarrassing detail. So now it's your turn. ---- Btw, did I ever tell you about Killzone 2? Guerrilla Games had this brilliant control setup that they had balanced and tested the game with for at least four years before any of us tested it in the beta. The feedback then was generally positive. As in, it's unusual, but it makes sense, I can see myself preferring this over twitch very quickly, and it makes sense in terms of the gunplay and movement in the multiplayer, which is very slow but still intense -- this is interesting. Come release, and a small forum-majority managed to come up with the idea that the entire system was broken. There were pages upon pages with insistence that there was some scientific reason for this (although the explanations were bull****). But that in any event, the forumites argued, that regardless of the bs explanations -- the fact that "everyone agreed".. everyone being ten people on a forum... that everyone agreed that it was broken, meant that "something had to be done". So the designers took the feedback seriously, tweaked the game apart, and released the solution in the way people wanted - and had specifically asked for. And the game was broken. It didn't work, it wasn't balanced, it didn't make any sense. IGN didn't revise their review from 96 to 100 points, or whatever. The player base dropped from 100k to 5k in two months. But the forum-majorities were happy now, and that was all that mattered. And if you ask these people now, they still believe that their solution was perfect. They wanted twitch, they got twitch. They demanded a specific and very narrow way to play the game. They got what they wanted. They were happy, they were the greatest fans of GG in the entire world. And it removed 95k players from the game in three weeks. I'm not saying all changes are bad. But try to be aware of that even if you intuitively min-max -- practically requiring every player to do it in order to get anywhere in the game (I fully expect balance tweaks to come in later), is something that /may very well/ cause certain problems later. Never mind that it makes the class and attribute system infinitely less interesting. But what it seems to me you're doing is that you're really setting up a specialized variant of your typical build as the baseline for a new system. That in turn effectively has all attributes raised, to compensate for the extreme weaknesses. And you then let players make minor variations for that specific build. You're right that doing so would make it fall in line with the "other IE games". The other IE games being mostly BG and BG2. But it would also gut a really, really interesting design that has actually proven to be very workable for a vast amount of very interesting character builds. And not only that, it at the moment also makes fights very dynamic, and gives multiple solutions to get out of a very difficult fight, for example. How many IE games had that? So if Josh implements something like this, I'll be disappointed, to put it mildly.

Or in other words - you're not punished as much as before for choosing a min-max build with extremely low and extremely high stats. Meaning that if you do not build after a min-max pattern, you're really "gimping your character for role-playing purposes". So if you want to get a good build, you need to max-min. Exactly the opposite of what was intended, and what was actually achieved with the ruleset as it is. ...I'm done with this. I really am. If Josh doesn't see through it, have fun playing the game for both of us, I guess.

I suppose the problem we're running into is that you don't actually "balance" the game against it's own design context. Then you just changed the design and did something else instead. And I'm worried that suggestions like this turn up and look like they make sense within the existing design, and are argued to be necessary to make sense of it. But the reason it's really wished for is to make a better max-min build. And you somehow fail to explain that along the way. Some don't think is a problem, because they always make an effort to gear their builds into the specific rules. While those of us who create characters that seem to make sense, with weaknesses and strengths, etc. - what the PoE system does incredibly well - are punished for not making specialists who have an edge on basic stats. Since the game now expects a higher middle level character strength, as it should do. I really thought we had escaped this crap this beta. But no. Of course not.

There should be a "Gfted1" mode that has no need of resting supplies. I like how you think KP. As long as the rest of us don't have to play with these mod-ideas implemented on launch-day -- why not?

I always play a caster class.. and the Cipher and Chanter are well made. But I actually like the fighter the best so far. Unlike every other rpg ever, the fighter is actually not a buffed caster class, except with better armor options and one really weak spell a day. Or, it's not a boring class compared to everything else, that you have to have in the party because that's the way the game is set up. Instead, the fighter is extremely interesting. And that actually impressed me a bit.

"Super-awesome-double-heroic-kneeldrop at the beginning of every mission-Stance!"

Dude no, this is one of the best looking games I played on XBone so far. The fidelity of the textures and lighting is epic. And you can really admire the detail of the creatures you shoot at. It does look a lot muddier on last gen consoles though Those screenies don't do it justice, then. ..actually they do. Bungie have been very clever with the technical restrictions they're working with. Not in the sense of drawing more out of the hardware, but when it comes to spending resources on the layers in the picture that matter. To that type of game, with this design. For example: So here's probably a ps4 shot. The very close edges and objects, including the weapon model, and so on, has a sharpening pass of some sort. Texture detail is very high in that area around the player. Very likely the animation frequency for targets is much higher in this layer, etc. At the ground between that sphere and the far layer, there's basically nothing. The craters and the snow is more or less a complete blur, and there's nothing that moves here in the scenery. You can see this in the normal gameplay and any screenshot, that there's a fairly close distance where everything looks like you should be wearing glasses. On close range, however, things look perfectly fine. And the long range mobs as well have a switched out model I think, so that looks good and isn't scaled too badly. Beyond that it's a flat layer with background. So when the game moves during any action - not in the least because the AI will scramble to get out of the mid-range blur - you obviously notice the close layer and the very detailed flat layer behind that. And this does give off a very solid impression if you don't.. look too closely, or don't use semi-auto weapons all that much, etc.. The dropship in the pic here is another good example. The closest part of the ship and the cannon effects, etc., are very detailed. Everything further back, any particle effects that don't eventually approach you, and so on, are a blurry mess. The entire ship does exist, but it's been created to sit in a particular part of the sky with a particular type of lighting on beforehand. And because Bungie have been so good at putting it all together, and because they're so used to how this works -- they've kind of used the limitations to their advantage. With animation, with effects, and with the textures on flat surfaces - and not to mention by avoiding indirect effects that might affect framerate in an unpredictable way - that look very good most of the time. So, you know, objectively speaking, this is an improvement over, for example, Call of Duty's "super density top layer and scaled down blur for everything else outside the cutscenes" approach. But it's funny that Team ICO managed to draw a more impressive variant of this type of "visual science" out of the ps2 in 2006. But there you go. It's a pretty game with lots of well made visuals.

It's actually really fun. But it's a bit.. how to put it.. they manage to do a lot with very little? Everyone playing it will have some sense of familiarity, without immediately thinking it's derivative? You got to appreciate that they manage to pull it off so well. But then again - the warlock has one single spell, and relies on the gun (and the properties of the gun). So do the other classes. *shrug* Meanwhile, still waiting for PSO2 to be localized. And Warframe is, you know, free..