How big is the world?

[Mazisky]

What we should expect?

 

We saw a 5-districts big city, the Dryford village e some wild areas plus that awesome heavy protected fortress on the last pax.

 

How big will be the world? how many areas we'll get to play in?

Edited February 5, 2015 by Mazisky

[Sedrefilos]

We also have seen a town in an older playthrough and we know there is one more big city (though smaller than Defiance Bay).

From what they've said (though it's been said quite a long ago), it'll be bigger than BG1 but smaller than BG2 - pretty big

Now, judging from their other games, we can assume it'll be BIG

Edited February 5, 2015 by Sedrefilos

[DEY123]

Not being familiar with BG1/BG2 (sorry) How do those compare to Divinity:OS (Game I am playing now so easy to make a frame of reference).  

 

 

Also is there some kind of fast travel / portal system to move quickly to areas you have already visited?

 

I have one of the enhanced edition BG games (I think BG2) and I got side tracked during my first play through.  I might go back at some point or might just go straight for Pillars when I am ready

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Josh had said in some video the total map count was around 110 vs icewind dale was about 80 i think he said. Also in their internal play through in a week only about half of the dev's made it to the first big city defiance bay, so it sounds like there's a lot of stuff to do!  

 

 

EDIT: as far as traversal goes, as you transition from one zone map to another that is sort of like most games  allow you to move from one to another, but each map could take anywhere from 10 min to an hour to get through because initially they use fog of war and you can't see more than a few feet in front of you. Once you see the explored area you can use a fast travel mode which makes you run much faster.

Edited February 5, 2015 by Falkon Swiftblade

[Mazisky]

It would be interesting to know how many hours are needed for a full playthrough, excluding the 2 extremes such as rushing the main quest  or exploring every single angle.

[Bobby Null]

Bigger than any game on a small budget should be  .

 

In all seriousness, their is a quite a bit of content. The 110 map count quoted earlier in the thread is a little low. I'm pretty sure it is closer to 150. It is certainly bigger than either of the Icewind Dale games, but not as big as BG2, but let's be honest, what game is?

 

Another tidbit from our playthrough testing that lasted a full week (five 8 hour days), only 1 developer actually finished the game. That developer was Jeff Husges and he skipped most of the content in Defiance Bay (which he worked on), and I don't think he did much with stronghold or Od Nua, our mega-dungeon. 

[Luckmann]

Just to be clear here, when you say 110 or 150 maps, are we talking individual maps, or locations?

Because BG2 re-used a lot of maps (mostly houses and such) for a large number of locations, and I'm not sure if PoE does or not, but the distinction is important, I think.

 

150 maps or so sounds huge to me. Just for reference, does anyone know the individual map count for BG2? Preferably not counting ToB, because that's just cheating.

 

Really, we should probably compare with BG1, actually, because if sequels to PoE are mechanically and artistically consistent, I could see a lot of maps re-used. I always thought it was odd that the IE games were happy to re-use maps (both straight copy-paste and as blueprints) inside of a game, but never really pulled on assets between games.

But... uh.. I'm rambling.

What I wanted to say was good job!   :3

Edited February 6, 2015 by Luckmann

[Falkon Swiftblade]

that 150 was interior and exterior maps based upon joshes input. He also mentioned the total for BG2 but I can't recall, I wanna say he said 180 to 220 range.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

Off Topic, but Bobby, no one has mentioned anything about the crafting or mechanic's of the stronghold. Are you guys actively working on it? I feel like because it is completely optional, it may not have been tested as much as the rest of the game. Can you tell us if the items we craft are the same things that drop in the world, or why we would want to use crafted items vs loot drops?

[Mazisky]

I think that same extension as Baldur's Gate 1 would be enough for me 

Edited February 6, 2015 by Mazisky

[Sedrefilos]

Lol OK the dev ensured us it's going to be big, what is this with the map counts? :D

After all the number of maps is not something by itself. The content in them is the meaning.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sedrefilos

[Sensuki]

Bigger than any game on a small budget should be  .

 

In all seriousness, their is a quite a bit of content. The 110 map count quoted earlier in the thread is a little low. I'm pretty sure it is closer to 150. It is certainly bigger than either of the Icewind Dale games, but not as big as BG2, but let's be honest, what game is?

 

The list of maps in the game code says 170 maps in total.

 

There are 13 Wilderness Areas

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sensuki

[Mazisky]

Need to know how many maps had the first Baldur's Gate for a better comparison

[Sensuki]

Vanilla Baldur's Gate?

I count 106 in my installation folder (not counting the expansion maps).

 

I have a feeling that maybe some of those files contain multiple houses, or something - since you don't have to load the game to enter a house in the IE games, it's part of the larger area.

In Pillars of Eternity that isn't the case. So chances are there are lots of little houses that are not counted in that 106 areas.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sensuki

[Luckmann]

 

Bigger than any game on a small budget should be  .

 

In all seriousness, their is a quite a bit of content. The 110 map count quoted earlier in the thread is a little low. I'm pretty sure it is closer to 150. It is certainly bigger than either of the Icewind Dale games, but not as big as BG2, but let's be honest, what game is?

 

The list of maps in the game code says 170 maps in total.

 

There are 13 Wilderness Areas

 

 

That's actually way more than I expected. By that do you mean 13 overland Wilderness Areas or is it just areas tagged as "Wilderness" in some capacity, including caves?

[Gorbag]

Well, keeping in mind what Sensuki mentioned about the interior maps of houses and the fact that (from what I've seen) PoE has less houses, thus more "adventure-type" maps, plus the fact that most BG maps were huge as hell, bigger than what I've seen in PoE, I'd speculate that PoE covers roughly the same territory as BG.

[Sensuki]

13 Actual overland Wilderness Area maps. Some of them are in between major locations and you're required to travel through them. Others are completely optional.

 

PE does have less houses in Villages and Cities.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Sensuki

[Luckmann]

13 Actual overland Wilderness Area maps. Some of them are in between major locations and you're required to travel through them. Others are completely optional.

 

PE does have less houses in Villages and Cities.

 

Awwww.

 

 

 

On a more serious note, that's a bummer. I know BG1/2 gets a rep for having some useless filler houses that doesn't really serve a purpose except as (minor) loot for the party, but the fact is that the vast majority of all houses and such served a purpose in some capacity, and the "filler" houses mostly are there to make it seem like those places that are for quests doesn't feel out of place or placed there specifically for a quest you may not have encountered yet.

 

BG2 then ruined this by putting out map notes for stuff you couldn't possibly know beforehand ("Cernd's House", anyone?) but that's beside the point.

 

Still, 13 actual overland wilderness areas are still pretty much almost 10 more than I expected, tbqh.

 

Edited February 6, 2015 by Luckmann

[Sensuki]

I hope they look into changing how scene transitions work in either the expansion or PE:2 so you can split your party between houses and the exterior map

[Lephys]

Another tidbit from our playthrough testing that lasted a full week (five 8 hour days), only 1 developer actually finished the game. That developer was Jeff Husges and he skipped most of the content in Defiance Bay (which he worked on), and I don't think he did much with stronghold or Od Nua, our mega-dungeon.

That's what I'm talking about.

 

Betting I can push the playthrough time to about 100 hours, easily. For I am a slowpoke.

[Bobby Null]

Off Topic, but Bobby, no one has mentioned anything about the crafting or mechanic's of the stronghold. Are you guys actively working on it? I feel like because it is completely optional, it may not have been tested as much as the rest of the game. Can you tell us if the items we craft are the same things that drop in the world, or why we would want to use crafted items vs loot drops?

 

Crafting and upgrading the Stronghold are optional. Just because these elements are optional doesn't mean our QA department doesn't have to test them, have no fear. We have crafting and enchanting. Crafting generally deals with consumable items, many of which don't drop in the world. The ingredients for the recipes however drop and some of them can be a challenge to find. Enchanting lets you enchant basic items to your liking, provided you have the money and proper components, or is allows you to upgrade existing items (weapons, armor, etc.) you've found throughout your time in the game. 

[Bobby Null]

I hope they look into changing how scene transitions work in either the expansion or PE:2 so you can split your party between houses and the exterior map

 

This is something I wanted for this title but time and budget restrictions would not allow for it. If we do a sequel, it will be one of my priorities to push for. I'd rather get streaming working for a sequel as opposed to loading multiple scenes/maps simultaneously as was done in the IE games and both Neverwinter titles. This generally led to pretty long load times. We tend to forget how long those loads were on our old machines. Playing those older games on newer, faster machines alleviates the load times quite a bit.

[Sensuki]

@Falkon Swiftblade - I've been testing Crafting and Enchanting today and writing up some bug reports / suggestions about it

 

They fixed an issue with Enchanting Accurate weapons that I reported from the last patch. Currently I believe there could be better audio feedback when using the Crafting and Enchanting menus.

 

The UI for Enchanting could also display the weapon stats underneath the enchantment info too, or something.

 

Josh Sawyer also said that they removed a lot of enchantments from the game based on player feedback that we wanted more items in the game world to have unique properties.

 

This is something I wanted for this title but time and budget restrictions would not allow for it. If we do a sequel, it will be one of my priorities to push for. I'd rather get streaming working for a sequel as opposed to loading multiple scenes/maps simultaneously as was done in the IE games and both Neverwinter titles. This generally led to pretty long load times. We tend to forget how long those loads were on our old machines. Playing those older games on newer, faster machines alleviates the load times quite a bit.

 

Yeah, sounds good man.

 

With optimized art pipelines, do you think there'll be more of a chance to include more village/city interiors in future installments too? (such as minor houses etc)

 

The BGs for instance re-used the same base maps for interiors to really good effect.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Sensuki

[Bobby Null]

@Falkon Swiftblade - I've been testing Crafting and Enchanting today and writing up some bug reports / suggestions about it

 

They fixed an issue with Enchanting Accurate weapons that I reported from the last patch. Currently I believe there could be better audio feedback when using the Crafting and Enchanting menus.

 

The UI for Enchanting could also display the weapon stats underneath the enchantment info too, or something.

 

Josh Sawyer also said that they removed a lot of enchantments from the game based on player feedback that we wanted more items in the game world to have unique properties.

 

 

 

This is something I wanted for this title but time and budget restrictions would not allow for it. If we do a sequel, it will be one of my priorities to push for. I'd rather get streaming working for a sequel as opposed to loading multiple scenes/maps simultaneously as was done in the IE games and both Neverwinter titles. This generally led to pretty long load times. We tend to forget how long those loads were on our old machines. Playing those older games on newer, faster machines alleviates the load times quite a bit.

 

Yeah, sounds good man.

 

With optimized art pipelines, do you think there'll be more of a chance to include more village/city interiors in the future too? (such as minor houses etc)

 

The BGs for instance re-used the same base maps for interiors to really good effect.

 

 

We have some minor houses in both of the cities and in a few other areas as well. With the "load each scene" restriction we had on this title, I didn't want to go overboard with too many generic houses with sparse content in them, but they do exist. Since we have a much larger scene/map pool to draw from now, it will be easier on subsequent titles to get mileage from existing assets. Move a few props, rotate and light and you have a whole new interior. We did get a decent amount of reuse on this project, but most of our scenes are unique in some way.