Update #87: Internal Play Testing, VO, Performance Optimization, Mac Build, and More

[Gairnulf]

Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director

 

Hello, all. The Pillars of Eternity team has been putting a lot of time into playing and fixing the game. In addition to the feedback that beta testers have given on our boards, we also conducted an internal play week so the developers could get a good feeling for how the game felt from start to finish (or at least as far as they could get).

 

We learned a lot from the play week. Most notably:

 

• Pillars of Eternity is a big game. Only two of our developers managed to finish. One was a designer who developed a lot of the crit path and sprinted straight for the end. The other found an early ending and decided to wrap his story up there. About half of the developers had not yet made it to Defiance Bay (the first big city).
• Most of the devs had a lot of fun playing the game. The players ranged from hardened IE veterans to fresh newcomers. There was enough challenge for the old guard but none of the new players were so overwhelmed that they couldn't learn as they went along.
• Even so, tutorial tips and the Glossary can go a long way. While some of the players picked things up quickly, most found the learning curve to be difficult. We're addressing the major points with tutorial messages, clearer and more descriptive Glossary entries, and refinements to the UI.
• Despite our bug fixes to animation and Recovery times, combat was still too fast. We increased the Recovery of most creatures and tuned the global Recovery factor to slow down combat overall. Movement speed was also tuned down for a large number of creatures (specifically, spiders, beetles, many spirits, and other creatures).
• Melee Engagement needs to be communicated more clearly. The arrows we currently use are really a secondary piece of information, who is Engaging whom. We will be modifying the selection circle itself when someone is Engaged to make the state very obvious at a glance. Additionally, we still need a visual effect to indicate when a Disengagement Attack is occurring.
• We also found that the standard casting and Recovery times were too long. People felt that they could not respond to threats quickly enough. The standard casting time was adjusted down to make casting feel less sluggish.
• Hiring adventurers, buying items, crafting, and enchanting were all much too expensive. These have all been made more affordable, especially crafting and enchanting.
• All classes need a per encounter ability to use at 1st level. Early in the game, it's easy to run completely out of per rest abilities and you may have few or no companions. Per encounter abilities ensure that every class has something to do other than auto-attack at low levels.

 

In addition to all of this testing and bugfixing, we've also been recording and integrating all of our voice overs for dialogue and character voice sets. The recording process is complete and we're now hooking them all up into the game. The audio folks have also been hard at work creating more varied combat sounds to better communicate what's going on in battle. Here's a sample of some of our companion VO:

 

• Companion voice over sample.

 

Performance optimizations are ongoing, but we've already made great progress in the past few weeks. Adam and Roby were able to reduce memory overhead and loads times by a huge margin. Many of these optimizations were achieved by how data is packaged in our builds and loaded in when the game loads. Today, backers who are in the Backer Beta will notice that we have a Mac build available for download and testing. We are continuing work on the Linux build, but are still trying to resolve some resource management issues.

 

There are a lot of items in Pillars of Eternity and the artists have been working their way through the list. Here is a sampling of the new icons that have been going in for various treasure and quest items:

 

We also have some new portraits for Ocean Folk and Pale Elf characters. More are still coming!

 

That's all for this week. Let us know your thoughts on our forums. As always, thank you for your continued support.

 

If it took you one week to speedrun through the main quest, this makes it bigger than Baldur's Gate and probably around the size of Baldur's Gate II, but this also depends on what part of the whole content consists of the main quest, so it's not that much of a good estimation to compare it to those games, I know.

 

I'm curious to see if the game will ship with an interesting to play engagement mechanic and how you'll achieve that.

 

 

• Hiring adventurers, buying items, crafting, and enchanting were all much too expensive. These have all been made more affordable, especially crafting and enchanting.

 

Talking about the "moneys", would you consider doing a serious denomination across the board, for all currencies? Doing maths on the scale of hundreds and thousands doesn't go well with the "based on early 16th century" setting.

 

You have my greatest respect for showing the good taste of adding numerous currencies, although it would have been nice to also have moneychangers in big port cities, but I guess that was too much overhead for a secondary feature.

 

Let me note something positive for a change - I loved the voiceover quality and voice acting. No cheesyness, nothing over the top. Just how I've always wanted it. The portraits are also spot-on, so much so that I wish more of the quest npcs had portraits. A DLC hopefully.

[Jajo]

If it took you one week to speedrun through the main quest, this makes it bigger than Baldur's Gate and probably around the size of Baldur's Gate II, but this also depends on what part of the whole content consists of the main quest, so it's not that much of a good estimation to compare it to those games, I know.

 

Half of developers not even making it to the first big city kind of implies that considerable portion of content is not main quest related.

[Ineth]

Glad to see they seem to have found a consistent style for portraits now.

The stylistic inconsistency of the first batch had me worried a little.

 

(early alternate ending? That's awsome!)

 

But how will I know whether I've experienced the full story line?
 

[Thundercat710]

Thanks for all your hard work, Obsidian.  You guys rock.

[Endrosz]

But how will I know whether I've experienced the full story line?

 

Quote: "The other found an early ending and decided to wrap his story up there." (emphasis from me)

 

I think at that time you'll have all the information about what is the "true path" solution. In most games, when you're around two-thirds into the game, you already have an idea about what needs to be done in the end, you just need to jump through half a dozen hoops to finally get there.

[Sedrefilos]

Glad to see they seem to have found a consistent style for portraits now.

The stylistic inconsistency of the first batch had me worried a little.

 

(early alternate ending? That's awsome!)

 

But how will I know whether I've experienced the full story line?

 

It won't be that crypric I guess. Sawyer said the dev "decided" to end the game early on, so I guess you'll know you can continue to the standard finale. And, of course, if you're curious, you can save, finish it there to see what happens, then load and move on.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Sedrefilos

[Suen]

Pillars of Eternity is a big game. Only two of our developers managed to finish. One was a designer who developed a lot of the crit path and sprinted straight for the end. The other found an early ending and decided to wrap his story up there. About half of the developers had not yet made it to Defiance Bay (the first big city).

 

[...]

 

 

Words escape me. Can't wait for this.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Suen

[Forlorn Hope]

Nice update, thank you. Portraits looking good.

[rjshae]

Thanks for the update.

 

All classes need a per encounter ability to use at 1st level.

 

Does this mean that every class is now going to receive four starting abilities? Or will some of the existing abilities be modified to be per encounter? (I'm not a beta tester so all I know about the game comes from the updates.)

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I suspect part of the reason progress to the first big city was due to lack of narrative direction, and also combat/learning curves. Most speed runs avoid as much combat as possible, so it would be interesting to know how much the designer talked his way through things.

[Gairnulf]

 

If it took you one week to speedrun through the main quest, this makes it bigger than Baldur's Gate and probably around the size of Baldur's Gate II, but this also depends on what part of the whole content consists of the main quest, so it's not that much of a good estimation to compare it to those games, I know.

 

 

Half of developers not even making it to the first big city kind of implies that considerable portion of content is not main quest related.

We don't know enouh to say, but it does sou d pretty big.

[ManifestedISO]

170+ maps is enough to say. 

 

Can't wait. Haven't been this excited for a new release since Crystal Pepsi. 

[extliquani]

Very Nice artwork in the portraits, and I like the voice sample.  Good work

[Azmodiuz]

 

Over a month no updates, and this is all you can give us ? Why did we even bother funding this crap? I seriously have a feeling this game is going to suck, and not be a spiritual successor to any black Isle game or-like game ever. I mean, come on, this is Obsidian, any time they they very little work in an extended period of time, its usually really shoddy and becomes nothing worth mentioning in the long run. 

 

The lack of revealed direction or content thus far, is very off-putting.

 

Lack of revealed content?  You do realize we have been testing a playable demo for months now right?

 

 The playable demo has very little content in it. But I would say its more of a pre-beta.

[Silent Winter]

 

 (early alternate ending? That's awsome!)

most interesting part of the update actually

this has gotten my hopes up

 

- In the first village, you can decide that you don't want to bother with all this adventuring malarky and just settle down as a farmer.

...then some other hero saves the realm and you live happily ever after

[Valmy]

 

 The playable demo has very little content in it. But I would say its more of a pre-beta.

 

 

 

 

What are you talking about?  It is the entirety of the game mechanics.  What sort of content are you looking for?  The entire script and plot?  Every single class, ability, and mechanic in the game is not sufficient for some reason?  It seems incredibly irrational to expect more than that.

 

I don't know what pre-beta means.  Yes it is not the entire finished game.  But it certainly reveals tons of content in the game, which is what you were complaining about.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Valmy

[ProjectBG2Respawn]

Hi !

 

Juste here to say the art is really really beautiful. Can't wait !

 

 

And i have a question (maybe already answered) : will there be add-on ? Like shivering island in Oblivion or ToB in BG2 ?

 

 

 

And sorry for my English, i'm not sure of the : "will there be" but i guess you understood me

Edited November 28, 2014 by ProjectBG2Respawn

[Suen]

And i have a question (maybe already answered) : will there be add-on ? Like shivering island in Oblivion or ToB in BG2 ?

 

Yes! At least 1, as the Kickstarter backers can preorder it.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Suen

[ProjectBG2Respawn]

Suen, on 28 Nov 2014 - 4:52 PM, said:

 

ProjectBG2Respawn, on 28 Nov 2014 - 3:31 PM, said:

And i have a question (maybe already answered) : will there be add-on ? Like shivering island in Oblivion or ToB in BG2 ?

 

Yes! At least 1, as the Kickstarter backers can preorder it.

 

 

That's cool !

 

Thanks for the answer have a nice day

[Sedrefilos]

 

 

 (early alternate ending? That's awsome!)

most interesting part of the update actually

this has gotten my hopes up

 

- In the first village, you can decide that you don't want to bother with all this adventuring malarky and just settle down as a farmer.

...then some other hero saves the realm and you live happily ever after

 

That adventure ends by that hero messing up with your farming life somehow, forcing you to become an adventurer again (maybe you need to kill him/her!); This is how the expansion starts, if you import your farmer hero

Edited November 28, 2014 by Sedrefilos

[Lephys]

 

Yep, we've known about this for months. Good to see the dev's have finally figured this out.

Well the global recovery change doesn't even fix the problem, and they haven't correctly identified the issues with Melee Engagement so ...

 

If they fixed everything in a single iteration, methinks having a beta would be a bit pointless.

 

Just because we have all day to sit around playing the beta and commenting about it, doesn't mean that the dev team is just sitting around, not doing anything but reading our comments and/or playing through the beta themselves.

 

Personally, without any knowledge as to what exactly all their days have entailed, I'm not about to act like they should've confirmed the same exact problems we have by now, and/or should've fixed them by now.

 

The day they say "No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and we're leaving it as-is for the launch" will be the day I get upset. Not a moment before.

[Lephys]

 

 

(early alternate ending? That's awsome!)

most interesting part of the update actually

this has gotten my hopes up

 

- In the first village, you can decide that you don't want to bother with all this adventuring malarky and just settle down as a farmer.

...then some other hero saves the realm and you live happily ever after

 

"(Optional) Deliver the One Ring to Sauron."

 

6_u

 

Seriously, though, how great would that be if, a lot of places you went, some other "hero" was always trying his best to save the world, and thought you were in his way, all while he's making everything worse and getting in your way?

Edited November 29, 2014 by Lephys

[rdmcnz]

It keeps coming to mind how great it is to have a company so keen on creating the best game that they can.

So great that they task all their hardcore fanatics who are creating the game to play it for a week straight to see what they spot as being not up to scratch.

Who better to spot the irksome than those who know where to look - and what can be changed?

It sounds like some/most of the things stated have already been raised by the beta testers (no surprise - many thanks to them for their hard work).
Having those things noted by the creation team itself seems to have enforced that those changes need to be made.

The corrective voice looks to change from "extreme fan - possible minority", to "it just needs to be fixed". (too tired to rethink this sentence-sorry)

The improvements planned sound good. I'm glad they are before release.

 

That week for the creation team must have had such a wonderful sense of ownership.

 

I have such respect for Obsidian, their ethos and their calibre of work.
Thanks again!

[Cluas]

"We have faith in thee...." 

 

*Insert applause here*

[Klavicus]

Hi,

 

Not sure if someone has mentioned this already but thought I should voice my opinion. Love everything in the update except for the voice overs. The american accents really make them seem bland and unappealing. To me they just seem too uniform and its as if they are trying to force an emotion through them that then isn't being realized.

 

IMO, would be much better with foreign accents. Perhaps each race could have its own accent type.

 

Cheers