Gameplay video: Detailed Response

[salo]

I'm with the last two gentlepersons here, I just thought they looked fine while I watched the video.

[archangel979]

I noticed something in the Videos that I have not seen people mention. On multiple occasion party NPCs got stuck. Calisca kind of got stuck on front line of enemy when Barbarian used wild sprint to attack the archer behind them. 

 

Then the rogue would not start fighting the G leader until he was ordered to do so. 

 

And later there was a fight of 3 of them vs some creature where the middle party member would not start attacking as he could not get close enough to enemy due to his/her two allies and was just kind of "dancing" and not doing anything until manually ordered to move around and then start attacking.

 

I really, really, really hope all these things are going to be fixed for final version, IE games biggest problems was pathfinding and constantly getting stuck on allies and anything around outside and during combat. I really, really don't want to see that kind of problem in a game in 2014. I don't care about graphics or whatever kids complain today, but pathfinding as a basic mechanic that will let us enjoy the game instead fight against it needs to be as perfect as possible.

[Stun]

At the start of Icewind Dale, you face a band of like 8 Goblins, followed by two Wolves and then a dungeon with like 30 Orcs/Orc Archers/Shamans and an Ogre.

At the start of Icewind Dale, you have a party of 6. And aside from the 2 Orc Shamen, none of those prologue creatures can do anything but hit you for straight damage...if they're lucky. In PoE, we saw enemies inflict your characters with knockdowns, prone states, acidic vapors, and AoE stun howls, in addition to straight damage.

 

Besides, I don't think we saw the whole dungeon in those PoE demos.

 

The combat was also a lot more lethal.

Nonsense. You can complete IWD's entire prologue without getting hit a single time. I doubt that will be possible in PoE's prologue

 

 

I also noticed that none of the Glanfathans or anything drop any loot ...

Not sure how you came to that conclusion, since Josh did not click on their bodies in the demo. Edited July 27, 2014 by Stun

[Karkarov]

 

It would be an enormous amount of work to up-res all of the character models for a marginal gain in image quality on two screens in the game.  At the beginning of the project, I did say that we were going to be keeping the view of the characters relatively limited on these screens because it would be prohibitively expensive to model and texture them all at a high level of detail.  We have six races and two sexes that can equip dozens of different suits of armor/clothing with dozens of different weapons and shields.  The only way we could author all of these models with our budget was to limit the mesh density and texture size.  Sorry.

 

am I the only one that liked the models? Maybe I'm weird but I love the low-res look.

 

Nope you aren't.  I thought they looked fine.  Plenty good enough considering you only see them on character creation and the equipment screen.  They are considerably better than the pretty darn terrible Wastleland 2 character models that's for sure.

[Stun]

I thought they looked fine too. And it's more than we got during character creation in any of the IE games.

[lychee26]

 

am I the only one that liked the models? Maybe I'm weird but I love the low-res look.

 

Nope you aren't.  I thought they looked fine.  Plenty good enough considering you only see them on character creation and the equipment screen.  They are considerably better than the pretty darn terrible Wastleland 2 character models that's for sure.

 

 

Agreed. And even if they are low-res, the actual armour design still looks pretty good (aside from the barbarian armour, and that's mainly because of the plasticy skin in the overly bright lighting).

[Sensuki]

I noticed something in the Videos that I have not seen people mention. On multiple occasion party NPCs got stuck. Calisca kind of got stuck on front line of enemy when Barbarian used wild sprint to attack the archer behind them. 

 

I mentioned it.

[Sensuki]

In PoE, we saw enemies inflict your characters with knockdowns, prone states, acidic vapors, and AoE stun howls, in addition to straight damage.

 

Besides, I don't think we saw the whole dungeon in those PoE demos.

So? You have a crap tonne of starting Health, technically four lives and the combat looked easy on that difficulty. Brandon did some sub-optimal play such as taking a disengagement attack and thus finished that part of the game with less health than he should have.

 

On hard/PoD - I hope it's harder.

 

Nonsense.You can complete IWD's entire prologue without getting hit a single time. I doubt that will be possible in PoE's prologue

Maybe on very easy difficulty. I usually play Core Rules, and I build every character with 18 Dexterity in IWD because there's no reason not to. Even with all martial characters wearing the best possible armor (Splint, but there's a limited quantity at Pomab's Emporium and Chain Mail) your chars will still get hit a few times each during the Prologue. Sure there's like 0.0000000000000000000001% chance to never be hit because of the random rolls, but even with optimal stats and gear, on some play throughs one of my characters has been critically hit by the Ogre in the cave on the first hit and instantly killed, and that's with the best AC and HP possible.

I played Icewind Dale literally last week and I probably had the best luck regarding the opening of the game and didn't have to rest at all until somewhat into the Vale of Shadows, but I did use nearly every health potion I found.

 

 

Not sure how you came to that conclusion, since Josh did not click on their bodies in the demo.

If you go back and look at what happens when the bodies fall, they stay there for a few seconds and then DISAPPEAR and there's no loot icon/loot left behind.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Sensuki

[bronzepoem]

A litte complain，josh said there are 140-150 maps,fewer than BG2.But I never feel BG2 was a big game.I play BG weidu

[Wombat]

As for the 3D model in the character creation, I suspected there must be some psychological aspects involved in this "issue" and I checked out some of the character creation video clips of BG/IWD series.

,

,

,

,

The players are seeing mainly the portraits during the character creation processes although there are, indeed, customization screens for paper dolls. Maybe, could it be more desirable for the devs to go for this route rather than fighting against the eyes of the players which may be accustomed to the today's standard built by more graphic-heavy games with much higher budgets?

[Bos_hybrid]

Got to say PE is looking like everything I wanted it to be.

 

+

Graphics are great.

UI is functional(I prefer functionality to eye candy)

Varied choice in conversations

Loving the story vignettes

C&C apparent at the earliest stages

Size of the game, wasn't expecting 140+ maps. Was thinking more towards 100.

Polearms

 

-

Attack animation don't seem to be weighty, perhaps it's due to watching it, but the blows didn't seem hard hitting.

AI pathfinding, really don't want to see an NPC stuck half the map away continually walking into a wall. (Unless they have low intelligence, or have blinded status effect)

Seemed easy, but perhaps that's because it was on easy and the devs knew what they were doing.

 

Great job so far Obs, looking great.

[Stun]

If you go back and look at what happens when the bodies fall, they stay there for a few seconds and then DISAPPEAR and there's no loot icon/loot left behind.

Yes, lets look at the video again.

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07/24/pillars-of-eternity-seems-to-push-all-the-right-rpg-buttons

 

At 12:25 is the first Glenfathan kill Josh scores.... and.... he drops a pile of loot. And in the second Glenfathan encounter, the party enters the ruins before any bodies disappear.

 

At 22:20, the party fights an ooze. IT drops a pile of loot after it's killed. (in fact, all 3 do)  

 

So? You have a crap tonne of starting Health,

And in Icewind Dale's tutorial, you can rest after every battle. And the enemies do a whole lot less damage. And Wolves don't punish you for disengaging them. And you've got party members that can cast cure light wounds. And there's a temple in town that will heal everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

Nonsense.You can complete IWD's entire prologue without getting hit a single time. I doubt that will be possible in PoE's prologue

Maybe on very easy difficulty.

 

No. On Normal, too (or 'core', as you call it). A Goblin's THAC0 is something like 19. An Orc's and a Wolf's is just a little bit better. Which means you won't be getting hit by them unless they get lucky, or unless you do something stupid, like send an unarmored character with an AC of 6 into melee. The Ogre is a different story. He's the prologue boss. But for that matter, we haven't seen the end of PoE's prologue. It could have a nasty, death dealing boss too.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Stun

[Shadenuat]

Would be nice if developers added at least a few parry and block animations, because otherwise, pumped by vitality shield and glances, combat looks repetetive as hell - hit enemy with sword 20 times before he dies.

Guess it costs extra dorra.

[MasterPrudent]

Would be nice if developers added at least a few parry and block animations, because otherwise, pumped by vitality shield and glances, combat looks repetetive as hell - hit enemy with sword 20 times before he dies.

Guess it costs extra dorra.

I think it's reasonable to expect combat to get fancier in later levels and with larger parties as the number of abilities your characters have increases and you add classes with lots of varied spells. Low level combat with "mundane" classes (fighters, rogues, usw) in RPGs often looks pretty boring even in modern, flashy rpgs like DA:O.

[Shadenuat]

Characters look like they have BG2 level of hitpoints but everyone forgot to pump their STR to 18/XX, including enemies.

I think that pace is deliberate, devs wanted more time for abilities and decisions, but still it just doesn't look very thrilling, because it's not dangerous.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Shadenuat

[Sensuki]

At 12:25 is the first Glenfathan kill Josh scores.... and.... he drops a pile of loot. And in the second Glenfathan encounter, the party enters the ruins before any bodies disappear.

 

At 22:20, the party fights an ooze. IT drops a pile of loot after it's killed. (in fact, all 3 do)

There's no loot at the 13:xx minute encounter with three Glanfathans, they all drop nothing. 

 

And in Icewind Dale's tutorial, you can rest after every battle. And the enemies do a whole lot less damage. And Wolves don't punish you for disengaging them. And you've got party members that can cast cure light wounds. And there's a temple in town that will heal everyone.

In Pillars of Eternity on normal difficulty you will have a capacity of six sets of camping supplies. I think you find one or two in the starting dungeon. Who gives a **** if you can rest spam in the IE games, I don't rest spam - that's technically an exploit.

 

No. On Normal, too (or 'core', as you call it). A Goblin's THAC0 is something like 19. An Orc's and a Wolf's is just a little bit better. Which means you won't be getting hit by them unless they get lucky, or unless you do something stupid, like send an unarmored character with an AC of 6 into melee. The Ogre is a different story. He's the prologue boss. But for that matter, we haven't seen the end of PoE's prologue. It could have a nasty, death dealing boss too.

Orc Archers have a higher THACO than the melee ones, they're usually the ones that do the damage, they also have more attacks per round, too. The Orc Shamans cast Curse on you to lower your AC and they also cast magic missile or chromatic orb - both spells that automatically hit. Sometimes you can interrupt the Shaman's spells so that they don't get them off. I don't reload the game if I don't manage to do it though, it's not a huge deal.

 

Your own characters also don't have a massive THAC0 at the beginning either. The best you can get is THAC0 14 with a Fighter with 18/00 Strength. Characters that are not straight Fighters, Rangers or Paladins will have 18, 19 or 20 usually.

 

Sure, I agree that it's an easy dungeon. You take more overall damage in the BG2 Irenicus dungeon. I just don't believe that you've gotten through it without ever taking a single point of damage, I think you're slightly exaggerating.

 

My original point in the post I made about the difficulty is I expect more/better enemies on higher difficulties. The current amount is fine for an easy/normal playthrough. I don't think that's a ridiculous statement.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

Would be nice if developers added at least a few parry and block animations, because otherwise, pumped by vitality shield and glances, combat looks repetetive as hell - hit enemy with sword 20 times before he dies.

Guess it costs extra dorra.

I think a more active combat idle would be the solution - characters currently hold their weapons at waist level which is kind of unrealistic. In the Baldur's Gate games, characters held their shields in front of their body and their weapons up. In Icewind Dale they looked a lot more passive.

 

Josh said on his tumblr that characters have combat fidgets, but they don't occur very often at the moment and the frequency will be raised.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Sensuki

[Stun]

My original point in the post I made about the difficulty is I expect more/better enemies on higher difficulties.

....to achieve an IE-like experience. (your words)

 

So my question remains.

 

How tough were Carbos, Shank, and the werehouse Rats on BG1's higher difficulties? Oh, that's right. They weren't.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Stun

[Sensuki]

Sure, I'll pay that. The Baldur's Gate 1 opening was really easy.

Josh has said that Normal difficulty will be similar to Baldur's Gate 1 and Icewind Dale 1 difficulty (not that challenging) and Hard will be more BG2/IWD2 level difficulty. That's what I was referring to specifically.

By the way, there's no reason to have a snarky tone in your posts. Pretty sure you know what I meant.

We know that difficulty settings changes the nature of the encounters. So I'd expect on Path of the Damned to face a few more Glanfathan Warriors in those groups. A few more spiders, and maybe two or three Black Oozes at once. If you do it solo (without Calisca or Heodan) you'll probs have to use the camping supplies.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

Sure, I'll pay that. The Baldur's Gate 1 opening was really easy.

 

Josh has said that Normal difficulty will be similar to Baldur's Gate 1 and Icewind Dale 1 difficulty (not that challenging) and Hard will be more BG2/IWD2 level difficulty. That's what I was referring to specifically.

 

By the way, there's no reason to have a snarky tone in your posts. Pretty sure you know what I meant.

 

We know that difficulty settings changes the nature of the encounters. So I'd expect on Path of the Damned to face a few more Glanfathan Warriors in those groups. A few more spiders, and maybe two or three Black Oozes at once. If you do it solo (without Calisca or Heodan) you'll probs have to use the camping supplies.

Well two things Sensuki.

 

1: I think the reason people are up in arms about your comments is because you are trying to make broad pretty far reaching statements about the games challenge based off what is literally the tutorial.  Not only that but it is an extremely hand held tutorial being run by Brandon Adler where the "media" doesn't even get to touch it. 

 

Also maybe it's just me, but I have never played a hard tutorial, not in IWD2, not anywhere.  You are talking about the Ogre one shotting someone?  Josh has said in posts before long long ago that one shot kills can happen in Eternity (and he didn't say based on challenge setting) and we haven't seen the "boss" of the tutorial yet.

 

2: Stun and I normally don't really.... agree.  The forums are littered with back and forths between us.  So when I am reading posts, looking at Stun's points, and finding myself nodding...  Well let's just say when two people who normally can't agree on anything do agree it is a good sign that is the right side of the debate.

 

All I am saying is let's wait for the beta and the actual feedback from that before we make sweeping statements about how the game is too easy on anything but path of the damned.  Okay?

Edited July 27, 2014 by Karkarov

[Sensuki]

Maybe you're just reading a bit too much into my words rather than my request for a few more enemies in those encounters on harder difficulties, which I'm sure there will be.

 

The Wolf encounter could be one singular harder wolf. 3-4 Glanfathans in the second encounter, 4 or so in the 3rd. Three Skuldr's in the Ruins with one in between the two that will aggro if the first one is attacked (or something like that). Couple more spiders. One or two more Black Oozes.

 

This is a very large assumption based on what I've seen, but that should be manageable by the three party members. You could also do it with less by resting.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Sensuki

[bronzepoem]

A very very small advise. When equip a two hand weapon into one slot,shadow the other slot.

[Stun]

and we haven't seen the "boss" of the tutorial yet.

^this is a really good point too. Doesn't the video end at this giant purple machine thing... and isn't there some robed figure walking around in front of it?

[Sensuki]

There's four or five of them, I think.

[Karkarov]

 

and we haven't seen the "boss" of the tutorial yet.

^this is a really good point too. Doesn't the video end at this giant purple machine thing... and isn't there some robed figure walking around in front of it?

 

Yeah, he seems to have some buddies with him as well and some sort of humanoid sacrifice to boot.  Glanfathans all up to no good, started makin trouble in the neighborhood!