To the Development Team

[rf5111918]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in the mix about POE.

I love where the game is going. I am a big supporter of the game. I love the direction that Josh and Adam is taking the game. 

The game is going to be great. 

 

I really, really hope the developers don't think that the posts on the Obsidian Forums are representative of the majority of the Kickstarter backers of the game. There's a small vocal minority that seems to post on the forums. I think the majority of the backers are supportive of the game, have busy lives, and they are just waiting to play it when it comes out. 

 

I backed the game a while ago, and I am relatively busy working. I know the game is going to come out months from now. It's going to take time for everything to come together.

Therefore, it's not productive, for me personally, to post every day on the forums, because I am busy daily and I don't have anything to complain about. I don't have any negative feedback to give. 

I really enjoy RPGs but I am not obsessed with them to the point where I am going to hack the game to look at game assets or start stalking which developers/voice actors/artists/programmers joined or left the project or make daily Youtube videos on gameplay.

 

I trust Josh and Adam. I know they are going to make an awesome game based on the updates. 

 

All the complaining on the forums, in my opinion, is such rubbish. I honestly just don't care about the minutiae of damage calculations and realtime vs turn-based combat which seems to just go on and on in the forums. It's the equivalent of beating a dead horse. 

 

The game is in great hands. Josh strikes me as an extremely, extremely passionate and smart developer. Obsidian has a great track record of turning out amazing RPGs. The team will take care of the details and the bugs. 

I don't think it's right for me to try to micromanage or tell Josh and the development team what to do. They know WAY more about making games than I do. I trust them to make the right decisions. Granted, when the Beta came out, things were a little rough around the edges, but that has all been fixed or is in the process of being fixed. 

 

Long story short, the game is going to be awesome. Supporters probably don't post more because they see the game is heading in the right direction and that there isn't really anything to complain about. 

 

One last thing. I really, really hope the development team doesn't get sidetracked trying to please everyone about the game. 

Some of the posters are, in my opinion, perhaps looking for their marbles???

Nothing is going to satisfy them.

Josh has a specific vision for how the game should turn out and I would hate to see it compromised by people armchair quarterbacking in the forums. The development of POE should not turn into something out of the "Pentagon Wars".

 

I am confident that POE will be an awesome game!

 

[Nakia]

Thank you for expressing what I have been thinking.  People do have their own lives to lead and the demography of players has changed over the last fifteen plus years.  The average age of game players is now in the thirties, over forty percent of game players are women, roughly 25 percent of players are over fifty.

 

I am sure those who have tested the BB since it was released in August 2014 have been a big help to the developers in checking for bugs and giving feedback.

 

The lead developers are all experienced game developers.  However it is simply impossible to please 100% o the players 100% of the time.  People who do not like something are more apt to post than people who like what has been done.

 

When I set up my options for the BB I was pleased to see that some attempt was made to assists those who have vision problems.  Text can be scaled to suit individual tastes and needs.  Even though I am not color blind I was impressed by an option for those who are.  Kudos to OE for this.

 

I find myself playing and enjoying classes that previously did not interest me and I love the new classes.  Pathfinding is imensley improved over the older games and in fact is better than some of the newer games.  I find the spell system much improved over that in the D&D games.

 

I not only agree that PoE will be an awesome game but it will be a refreshing one.  

[Sensuki]

I really enjoy RPGs but I am not obsessed with them to the point where I am going to hack the game to look at game assets or start stalking which developers/voice actors/artists/programmers joined or left the project or make daily Youtube videos on gameplay.

Hmm, I wonder who he's referring to here.

[Rumsteak]

Hmm, I wonder who he's referring to here.

 

I can think of 1 or 2 candidates tops. :-P

[Sensuki]

It's fine to not care about game mechanics, but the purpose of the beta is to get feedback on game mechanics (among other things). Various people have made this post many times before whether it be in a new thread, or in another one but the fact remains that if people didn't complain about things, or take the time to investigate the inner workings of the game / how it played a little bit out of the box - then it's pretty likely that these exploits/bugs/issues would make it into the base game.

 

There's a lot more to the 'complaining' that meets the eye. Just because you don't like the tone of some posts, doesn't mean that they aren't helpful. I 'complain' about absolutely everything I can, and many of the things I have whinged about have been fixed/changed/re-balanced/identified etc.

 

As for complaining about damage, if you're just going to chuck the game on easy and go to town - then you aren't probably going to care about damage. But there's more people out there than you that play on harder difficulties, and want the game to still be fun and/or feel/play more like the pace of the Infinity Engine games.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

One last thing. I really, really hope the development team doesn't get sidetracked trying to please everyone about the game.

I just want to call out this sentence here.  I have given my fair share of feedback on the forums.  Some of it seems like it got heard and made it in the game.  Just as likely the devs were going in that direction anyway and my feedback (and others who had the same or similar to say) had nothing to do with it at all.  I may not always agree with everything in Eternity or every direction Obsidian has taken it.... however...

 

A game will never be more than "okay" if the design team does not have a clear vision and does not make sure that vision is never compromised.  Design by committee makes a great "okay" game than no one really dislikes.  It does not make a "great" game that some dislike but those who it is made for love.

 

Obsidian needs to stick to their design goals even if it means some things I don't like (and other backers too ) don't get changed.

[Sensuki]

Do you have a specific concern about something being changed?

[Miquel93]

I trust Josh and Adam. I know they are going to make an awesome game based on the updates. 

 

All the complaining on the forums, in my opinion, is such rubbish. I honestly just don't care about the minutiae of damage calculations and realtime vs turn-based combat which seems to just go on and on in the forums. It's the equivalent of beating a dead horse. 

 

 

And that's why you would be useless at giving feedback at this time in development.

 

I'm also happy with the game and it's direction, at least without testing it in depth. But your way of viewing things, is good for the devs when the game is released. "Hey, you've managed to create an engaging expirience and people don't mind the details you didn't manage to get quite right", That is perfect feedback to get from costumers once the game is released. Right now? Everything, absolutely everything, should be criticized. Numbers and calculations are really important design wise, even if they aren't that relevant to the experience itself (which is a very questionable statment by itself), and now it's the time to solve this problems.

 

Sensuki (and lots of others), who I don't agree with a lot of the time, gives really valuable feedback, because he looks at it from a design perspective, taking account all the numbers and balance issues, which is what Josh and the rest of designers do. That's a hell of a lot more useful feedback than "don't listen to the guys with perfectly resonable and thought out complaints, I trust that the game will be awesome"

Edited January 8, 2015 by Miquel93

[Rumsteak]

~ snip ~

 

Obsidian probably knows all of this but if you felt it was worth reminding, OK.

 

Armchair programming and/or game design can get a bit annoying. Makes me think of this non-programmer coworker who often came at us for a feature request and said: "It's easy to implement: if this do that. See, it's just a condition!". If things were so simple, everyone and his dog would be a professional programmer  . These sorts of comments are bound to happen in a beta forum though, so I don't pay much attention to them.

 

I don't think it's completely fair to attack the posters you are talking about. If beta feedback did more harm than good then why would Obsidian have announced a beta on Kickstarter? They probably knew what they were getting into. Beta posters just do what they were allowed to do in the first place.

 

If it weren't for the posters, I would not know as much about the game as I do now. I feel more prepared to enjoy every detail of the release. Also, some posters may be students, unemployed or just very dedicated. I don't see why they should be blamed for this.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Rumsteak

[TheisEjsing]

I totally agree with the OP's faith in obsidian, but I have no issue with people trying to better the game. For one thing, the devs asked the backers to do so, and NCarver is probably the best example of a dev who is showing a lot of appreciation for the support. My faith in the devs are the second reason. I'm certain that they can make excellent development calls, without being swayed by individual opinions. 

[Nakia]

Feedback and varying opinions are important.  Thumbs up to those who have the time and knowledge to help out the developers.  However in just the couple of months that I have been playing the BB I have noticed a tendency not only from some backers but also non[backers to do what I call nitpicking.  The IE D&D games were not perfect.  I played those games when they first came out.  The rules changed with each new edition plus things not always working the way I expected.  This is not directed at any one individual because I have seen it the general discussions.

 

The mechanics of the game are important but cloning ten to fifteen plus year old games which had their own flaws is not the answer.  I do have concerns that if the only point of view that the developers see is "This doesn't feel like the IE games, the wizard sucks etc."  they will start changing things that do not need changing. 

 

Even the ranger class, has been shown to be playable as a powerful class. Unfortunately the ability to build a custom party other than killing everyone in the BB party can't be done.  I think it will be possible to build a very powerful custom party including the poor wizard which I have found pretty powerful although I ignore probably half his spells.  (I ignored most of the spells in the IE D&D games too)   

 

Disagreement is healthy and productive as long as courteous.  I think most of us want this game to be successful but seeing nothing but negative comments, comets saying the game is broke will cause many game players to hesitate to buy the game.  

 

Please let us not start taking things personally and concentrate on what can be reasonably improved.   I really would like to play this game before next Christmas.  

[Sensuki]

The mechanics of the game are important but cloning ten to fifteen plus year old games which had their own flaws is not the answer.

A lot of the time the fact that something isn't like the Infinity Engine games isn't the main problem or the only problem with an aspect of the game. When I complain about something not being like the Infinity Engine games it's usually because something about it is worse or there is a downside to it.

 

One example is controls. I have been playing the Infinity Engine games since Baldur's Gate came out and I replay them every year. I have over 10 years worth of muscle memory built up from doing this, and when a control is changed it often negatively impacts my experience because I can't use the natural muscle memory I have from playing the Infinity Engine games. Some of the changes are better - being able to shift-queue actions is good, I dont really use it but it doesn't negatively impact my experience, but not being able to use TAB to remove tooltip delay in the inventory, pressing it anyway because of muscle memory and having it switch selected characters is a bit annoying.

 

Another recent thing I've been going on about is monster per-hit damage, which I think is too high (and Josh has responded to that complaint and has been tuning the values down for the next patch), I have mentioned that combat encounters do not feel like playing the Infinity Engine games (my experience is relative to Hard difficulty, which is supposed to feel the most like "Core Rules difficulty" in BG2/IWD2, as stated by the developers). The main reason why the damage being too high is bad is because it makes certain playstyles/strategies very inefficient and not viable and creates a combat pace that is not enjoyable. My natural reaction is to recommend to make it feel more like the Infinity Engine games because the lower per-hit damage of enemies felt much better there - I have that experience to relate to where I think something worked better.

 

Obsidian have improved on the formula on the role-playing side/dialogue side in many ways and also in some ways on the character building side. But for the most part I still think the general gameplay has a ways to go before it'll start making me think "this is starting to feel right". This will differ for some people because they may have only played the IE games once or a handful of times, and maybe not for many years. That experience also tends to differ depending on the manner of which you deal with encounters and whether you use mods or not.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[Nakia]

@JSensuki, my post was not directed at you.   You do not need to explain to me what you do.  I also played those games when they first came out and was a member of one of the first fan sites for IE games, if not the first.  

[Sensuki]

That was just a general statement, but I get pretty defensive when people post things like that. To your second line - I don't think you need to be concerned about Wizards. Even if the devs wanted to do something in that regard, it's simply too late in the dev cycle to do anything about it.

 

Would you mind speaking a bit more about that concern about a potential change to Wizards though ?

[Sarex]

Wow op, that's some passive-aggressive **** you got going on there.

 

All that I'm going to say on this topic is, how do you know that the majority of the people who lead busy lives and have no time (or will) to post here like the direction the game is going? There is no basis for you to state this opinion.

 

In fact if we look and compare what was promised in the KS to what we have now, I'm pretty certain that in fact most of the people would be miffed about the said direction of the game.

[Yellow Rabbit]

I'm not sure I have right to say this not even being a backer, but anyways.

 

Firstly, these guys making games for... what, 12 years now as Obsidian Entertainment and great deal of time before that in other companies. I think they're capable by now of taking to heart constructive part of any feedback and ignoring everything else. Moreover, I think they also fumbled by now where goes the line between objective and subjective feedback and when it's time to make their own design decisions as they see right. That said, what's going on on this forum hardly could offend them, although they should appreciate OP's care.

 

Secondly, great thanks goes from me to Sensuki, PrimeJunta, Serfort and whole lot other guys and girls who chose to sacrifice their time and effort attempting to give really useful feedback on PoE. And their frustration is completely understandable when they clearly saw an issue, reported about it and it didn't change several builds later. Taking Backer Beta for what it is... well, game in this state hardly supposed to be shown to anyone outside of the house in normal circumstances, but open development concept obliges to deliver, so we have what we have.

 

Work still in progress anyway. It's early to make conclusions.

[Sensuki]

Even if it does take a few patches, many things do eventually get fixed. Here is one silent fix I noticed a few builds ago.

A while back I made a suggestion about Animations and Model Collision, pointing out that weapon swings clip through character models and that it looks bad.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68147-sensukis-suggestions-015-animations-model-collision/

Some time between then and I think v333 or v364, the issue was addressed

 

 
 

[Nakia]

That was just a general statement, but I get pretty defensive when people post things like that. To your second line - I don't think you need to be concerned about Wizards. Even if the devs wanted to do something in that regard, it's simply too late in the dev cycle to do anything about it.

 

Would you mind speaking a bit more about that concern about a potential change to Wizards though ?

Regarding wizards I stopped reading the thread "Saving the wizard" simply because it overall annoyed me.  Sometimes retreat is the best combat move.  Live to post another day.  To address the issue I have to post a little personal info.  In IWD II I created or thought I was creating a halfling female fighter/thief.  She was supposed to be strictly a back up character mainly for lock picking and traps.   I used the script for her to hide in shadows and use ranged weapons.    We made it to the bottom of Dragon Eye and a horde of those serpent things came down the mountain.   The scene is burned in my mind.  Everyone in the party was literally huddled at the edge of the map except my little Nakia.  She dashed over to those monsters with her shield and short swords attacking them.   After a reload and a proper battle she became my favorite character.   From then on my main character  was a rogue.  Replaying the BG games I used a half elf instead of a halfling.  So I was never much at using wizards as my main character.   The point of this is that I feel magic casters can become too powerful, too focused on, too important.   Which may be one of the reasons I like the new class of cipher.  I happen to believe in the power of the mind and am looking forward to developing the cipher in the game.

 

Not sure that answers you but wizards are support in my opinion.  If made too powerful they should be shot on sight is what I think.  Afraid I will have to wait for the actual game before I can make up my mind about the PoE wizard.

[Sensuki]

Right, well I enjoy the playstyle of a Mage and facing enemy Mages in the IE games. I think the aim is to make it so that Wizard's spells are like "woah" but they're a limited resource, so they can only do that stuff sporadically. They haven't quite got the balance right yet in Pillars of Eternity - and having a fairly suboptimal BB Wizard with a poor spell selection probably skews many people's view of the Wizard class in the game.

I also don't really read the Saving the Wizard class thread. Yes, Wizards aren't as good as in BG2. Yes, it sucks. Ain't gonna change for PE vanilla though, but they have promised to look into some more advanced spells for the expansion.

 

One of the problems is actually to do with the general design of the game and the fact that they've basically removed 'counterspelling' from the game, which is something I really enjoyed in the Infinity Engine games, but a bunch of people from Something Awful and badgame.net did not. Their dislike of it is also probably a shallow at a glance type thing. In contrast after some forum discussion, some pointers and tips, PrimeJunta is enjoying counterspelling after seeing the cool things you can do with it, where he previously did not. 

 

I completely understand people's disappointment with PE Wizards, especially coming from BG2. Fact is that we're either going to have to mod the game to replicate some of that play, or campaign for it for PE:X1 / PE:2

 

[Nakia]

Wow op, that's some passive-aggressive **** you got going on there.

 

All that I'm going to say on this topic is, how do you know that the majority of the people who lead busy lives and have no time (or will) to post here like the direction the game is going? There is no basis for you to state this opinion.

 

In fact if we look and compare what was promised in the KS to what we have now, I'm pretty certain that in fact most of the people would be miffed about the said direction of the game.

Have to disagree with this post.  I am one of those who backed the game from day one, participated in the forums during the Kickstarter then moved on to other things including life in general.  Would check some of the updates but didn't worry about the game as I knew it was in good hands.  I am not miffed about the direction the game has taken and overall I am happy with it.  The devs are doing exactly what they said they would doing ...creating a spiritual successor to those early games including Arcanum and others that were not d&D games.  Fallout New Vegas is one of my favorite games.

 

The OP has expressed his opinion which is his right.  You have the right to disagree with him and I have the right to agree with him.  

[Nakia]

Right, well I enjoy the playstyle of a Mage and facing enemy Mages in the IE games. I think the aim is to make it so that Wizard's spells are like "woah" but they're a limited resource, so they can only do that stuff sporadically. They haven't quite got the balance right yet in Pillars of Eternity - and having a fairly suboptimal BB Wizard with a poor spell selection probably skews many people's view of the Wizard class in the game.

 

I also don't really read the Saving the Wizard class thread. Yes, Wizards aren't as good as in BG2. Yes, it sucks. Ain't gonna change for PE vanilla though, but they have promised to look into some more advanced spells for the expansion.

 

One of the problems is actually to do with the general design of the game and the fact that they've basically removed 'counterspelling' from the game, which is something I really enjoyed in the Infinity Engine games, but a bunch of people from Something Awful and badgame.net did not. Their dislike of it is also probably a shallow at a glance type thing. In contrast after some forum discussion, some pointers and tips, PrimeJunta is enjoying counterspelling after seeing the cool things you can do with it, where he previously did not. 

 

I completely understand people's disappointment with PE Wizards, especially coming from BG2. Fact is that we're either going to have to mod the game to replicate some of that play, or campaign for it for PE:X1 / PE:2

 

 

Sorry you posted while I was posting.  First I am a staunch supporter of moding as it is the only way to come close to having the perfect game an individual wants.   I used mods when playing the IE games after playing the vanilla game through.  Mods add life to games and I look forward to what you come up with.  Wish I had the talent and resources to do that myself.

 

Sensuki, I am glad you are focusing on combat in general or maybe I should say the mechanics of combat.   That I consider much more important than whether a wizard can cast a certain spell.  Right now I just want to get him to were he can cast a spell.

 

Tempted to kill off the BB wizard. and create my own.  Does that tactic really work in this update?

[Sensuki]

Sometimes yeah, because you can't dismiss any of the BB party members as it crashes the game during transitions.

 

If you create a PC wizard, you can pick some better spells. Which spells are better changes with each version. There's also a Grimoire on the ground in the Dyrford Crossing, just across the river above the wolves. So you get access to a few more.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

There's complaining and there's complaining. "This game is going to be doggy-doo and Josh Sawyer is a poopy-head and my life is ruined and I want a refund" or "if the vegetation doesn't move and the toons don't fidget this is garbage and it's not 1990 anymore whaa" is not very productive. And yes, there is ... a certain amount, even a quite a lot of that here too. 

 

But: pointing out specific problems, in the design or the implementation is extremely helpful. Explaining what you want to do or how you want to do it and why you're not able to is also extremely helpful. It's not always fun for the developer/designer to find out that the user thinks his design isn't working, but it is helpful. 

 

You know what else is helpful? I mean, really, REALLY helpful? Letting the devs/designers know when and where they're doing well. Devs/designers very rarely get positive feedback because users tend to ignore everything that's working and throw hissy fits about everything that's not (or doesn't fit their expectations, or whatever). Getting positive feedback is enormously important for morale. If a dev gets heartfelt thanks from a user once, it'll keep him cheerfully splatting bugs and fixing design mistakes for a week.

 

(And yes, I am speaking from experience here. The mood in the team really changes if there's positive feedback. I've seen this happen time and again over many years and different teams.)

 

So, my suggestion, for whatever good it will do: let's keep the feedback coming, general and specific, mechanics and esthetics, writing and visuals, bugs and design decisions. But let's also remember every once in a while to let them know if there's something we thought was really cool and we really liked. Both things help, and both things contribute equally to the end result: the criticism helps make things better, and the praise helps keep up morale.

[prodigydancer]

I really, really hope the developers don't think that the posts on the Obsidian Forums are representative of the majority of the Kickstarter backers of the game.

And who does represent the majority then? You?

[prodigydancer]

Regarding wizards I stopped reading the thread "Saving the wizard" simply because it overall annoyed me.

In other words you were out of arguments. Which doesn't surprise me because the thread is full of direct and factual comparisons that are hard to dismiss. PoE Wizard sucks. What's worse is that the developers' stance is basically: "We agree that the class sucks but we won't do anything about it. Maybe in expansion..." Edited January 8, 2015 by prodigydancer