New Engine?

[teknoman2]

you may have to put your entire party in stealth mode, but you dont need to move the entire party at the same time. you can leave the rest out of sight and move closer with the guy who has more stealth skill.

in IE games, i went closer with my thief to see where the enemies were, then i shot fireballs or other aoe spells with my wizards while keeping them out of view range.

[Luckmann]

 

And still, we see oddly console-ish changes like party stealth. I wonder if there's such a thing as symptomatic consolization. People have become so into the aspect of dumbing things down for consoles that it comes naturally to restrict function rather than expand on it.

 

 

Press Y to enter Party Scout Mode

 

What consolization? From what I have seen, this game's stealth system is far more complex than that of the IE games. They could have simply had a dice roll determine whether you were invisible like in the old games, but instead they made a stealth system that takes into account how close you are to the enemy, how much you move and how many people are sneaking.

 

And that breaks for the entire party as soon as you enter combat, no ifs, buts or whys. Aside from scouting (which I've praised PoE for actually making relevant for the first time since forever) stealth is tactically useless, and to even make use of it, you practically have to fight the system to do things that should be completely reasonable.

 

Unfortunately, "fight the system to enjoy the game" isn't that uncommon in PoE so far (Issues with Engagement, "Combat Only" abilities, Party No-Combat Stealth, etc).

 

 

you may have to put your entire party in stealth mode, but you dont need to move the entire party at the same time. you can leave the rest out of sight and move closer with the guy who has more stealth skill.

in IE games, i went closer with my thief to see where the enemies were, then i shot fireballs or other aoe spells with my wizards while keeping them out of view range.

Yeah, you can't do that in PoE, either. So it's not really tactical deployment of stealther characters and so on, but also teamwork between scouter/ranged.

 

In BG2 at this very moment (Spellhold in the background, hoooo!) I quite often sneak up with my Assassin, mage initiate with abilities, the enemies scramble, my assassin runs to the side to avoid the attacking enemies, and as the free-for-all melee starts, he creeps up behind the opponents and start giving out Colombian neck ties.

 

 

dat sextuple damage multiplier

 

 

off topic... sorry! The party stealth stuff has nothing to do with anything you think it has to do with. We want to change it and our current plan is to get around to it for the patch/expansion. Any changes requires time to refactoring the system from the original design. We felt like it wasn't worth the time investment (time away from bug fixing) because it doesn't make how you play the stealth game that much different, and refactoring at this time would introduce many new bugs into the system. Does that make sense? Even if it takes a only a few days to do, that could mean 20-30+ bugs don't get fixed.

 

-Adam

 

I was with you up until you said "refactoring"... but either way, that's actually honey for my ears. It won't save the initial impression of the game (during which I'll be playing a stealther, no less) but it's still nice to hear.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Luckmann

[MReed]

Refactoring is developer speak for "Take working code that is organized one way (that made sense at the time!) into a completely different structure, and hoping that the code is still called in the right sequence aftewords".  A trivial example -- you have two blocks of code (called functions) as follows:

 

StartHide() { ... }

EndHide() { ... }

IsHidden() { ... }

 

You want to change this to:

 

StartHIde(Player currPC) {.... }

EndHide(Player currPC) { ... }

IsHidden(Player currPC) { ... }

 

Of course, now you have to update the UI code associated with the hide button to pass in the active player.  And you need to modify the combat code to check to see if a particular player has done something that voids hiding, and (if so) pass in the player that should be unhidden.  And you have to modify the rendering engine to pass in a player object each time it goes to render a player to see if that player should be hidden.  And you need to modify the AI to check to see if all players in LOS are hidden (if not, it should attack the non-hidden characters).  And...

 

You get the picture.

 

While I'm doing analogies, upgrading the graphics engine to a new major version is about as difficult as replacing the transmission on a car -- replacing one engine with another (Unity -> Frostbite) would be about the same as putting a 350 hp high performance engine in an econobox car:  difficult enough that you have to wonder if you'd be better off starting from scratch.

Edited February 6, 2015 by MReed

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

 

And still, we see oddly console-ish changes like party stealth. I wonder if there's such a thing as symptomatic consolization. People have become so into the aspect of dumbing things down for consoles that it comes naturally to restrict function rather than expand on it.

 

 

Press Y to enter Party Scout Mode

 

What consolization? From what I have seen, this game's stealth system is far more complex than that of the IE games. They could have simply had a dice roll determine whether you were invisible like in the old games, but instead they made a stealth system that takes into account how close you are to the enemy, how much you move and how many people are sneaking.

 

And that breaks for the entire party as soon as you enter combat, no ifs, buts or whys. Aside from scouting (which I've praised PoE for actually making relevant for the first time since forever) stealth is tactically useless, and to even make use of it, you practically have to fight the system to do things that should be completely reasonable.

This particular issue has been recognized by the devs in this very thread. You claimed the stealth system in this game was a case of dumbing down when the system itself is a vast improvement over stealth in the IE games in terms of complexity. It's fine to criticize aspects of the game, it's another thing entirely to completely misrepresent those aspects.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Quetzalcoatl

[Luckmann]

 

 

 

And still, we see oddly console-ish changes like party stealth. I wonder if there's such a thing as symptomatic consolization. People have become so into the aspect of dumbing things down for consoles that it comes naturally to restrict function rather than expand on it.

 

 

Press Y to enter Party Scout Mode

 

What consolization? From what I have seen, this game's stealth system is far more complex than that of the IE games. They could have simply had a dice roll determine whether you were invisible like in the old games, but instead they made a stealth system that takes into account how close you are to the enemy, how much you move and how many people are sneaking.

 

And that breaks for the entire party as soon as you enter combat, no ifs, buts or whys. Aside from scouting (which I've praised PoE for actually making relevant for the first time since forever) stealth is tactically useless, and to even make use of it, you practically have to fight the system to do things that should be completely reasonable.

 

This particular issue has been recognized by the devs in this very thread. You claimed the stealth system in this game was a case of dumbing down when the system itself is a vast improvement over stealth in the IE games in terms of complexity. It's fine to criticize aspects of the game, it's another thing entirely to completely misrepresent those aspects.

 

 

I'm not misrepresenting the aspects; how it functions right now, and how it will function in the actual game, is what's relevant. And they function exactly like I said they do. That's not misrepresentation, it's fact. The fact that the developers are aware that it's an issue is great, and that they'll look into looking it over later is amazing, but it doesn't actually change anything; it shouldn't have been like this to begin with.

 

The system isn't in any way a "vast improvement" over the IE games as it works right now. The way detection works is neat at best, but functionally, the IE stealth system was vastly superior in terms of tactical utility and combat application.

 

PoE has introduced one aspect that I've praised previously, that was never really a big deal before, for which it should get a huge gold star, though - Scouting matters. You could scout in the IE games, but it never really mattered much. In PoE, it really matters and makes a big difference, for the first time in any RPG I can even remember. But I don't consider that an actual part of the stealth system, more as a joyous side-effect of how combat and encounters work in general.

 

The stealth system is definitely dumbed down compared to the IE system, but I don't think that this was at all on purpose. Yet here we are, with a "Press Y to Stealth" mechanic that pulls the entire party in or out of Stealth, ending it the second combat starts.

[Quetzalcoatl]

The stealth system is definitely dumbed down compared to the IE system, but I don't think that this was at all on purpose. Yet here we are, with a "Press Y to Stealth" mechanic

No, this is how stealth in the IE games worked - you press y to stealth and a dice roll determined whether you were invisible or not, it didn't matter how close you were to the enemy or how much you moved or how many people were hidden - it either played itself or took control away from the player with its random dice rolls. Stealth in Pillars of Eternity requires judging enemy placement and carefully moving around the enemy and takes into account your party size.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Quetzalcoatl

[Bryy]

 

. These people are professionals, they are not going to have some jaded "PC Master Race/Consoles kill games" mentality of an average forum-user.

Right! Instead, they'll be a little more diplomatic when they tell it like it is:

Avellone is "tired of designing content and interactions that caters to consoles and console controllers."

 

"Those limitations affect RPG mechanics and content more than players may realize (especially for players who've never played a PC RPG and realize what's been lost over the years), and often doesn't add to the RPG experience,"

you have a long wait, Bryy, before you ever see an Eternity game on Xbox.

 

That quote only reinforces my statement. PoE was developed for PC. That doesn't mean consoles are out of the question. If it makes good business sense, I'm sure they'll do it. But for right now, developing a straight PC game without having to worry about a parallel console version is their gameplan. Nowhere in that statement will you find any hint of "console peasents", which I think you are implying there is.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Bryy

[Luckmann]

 

The stealth system is definitely dumbed down compared to the IE system, but I don't think that this was at all on purpose. Yet here we are, with a "Press Y to Stealth" mechanic

 

No, this is how stealth in the IE games worked - you press y to stealth and a dice roll determined whether you were invisible or not, it didn't matter how close you were to the enemy or how much you moved or how many people were hidden - it either played itself or took control away from the player with its random dice rolls. Stealth in Pillars of Eternity requires judging enemy placement and carefully moving around the enemy and takes into account your party size.

 

 

You're attributing waaaay too much to the PoE stealth system. First of all, entering Stealth requires absolutely nothing; the only thing that is later taken into account is proximity, and while yes, that is more "advanced" than in the IE games, the actual functional parts of the system in PoE mean extremely little. Stealth is incredibly simplistic in PoE, whereas in IE, entering Stealth was both easier (if no enemies were present) and harder (if enemies were present; but still at least possible if you ran out of their FoV), you were offered a laundry list of potential tactical utility relating to Stealth.

 

Aside from the possibility of getting in a single attack before combat starts, with a single rogue (not that you'll have more, with only 8 Companions and none of them being a Rogue; but let's assume that you're using the Adventurer's Hall for some reason) stealthing in PoE has practically zero tactical application(s), save arguably the strategic value of scouting ahead.

 

Unless you're mentally challenged, stealth requires virtually zero "judging enemy placement" or "carefully moving around the enemy" or "taking into account your party size" (what made you even think that last one, unless you're talking about trying to stealth with the entire party, at which point each character's individual stealth skill is far more important than the size of your party).

[Quetzalcoatl]

 

 

The stealth system is definitely dumbed down compared to the IE system, but I don't think that this was at all on purpose. Yet here we are, with a "Press Y to Stealth" mechanic

 

No, this is how stealth in the IE games worked - you press y to stealth and a dice roll determined whether you were invisible or not, it didn't matter how close you were to the enemy or how much you moved or how many people were hidden - it either played itself or took control away from the player with its random dice rolls. Stealth in Pillars of Eternity requires judging enemy placement and carefully moving around the enemy and takes into account your party size.

 

 

You're attributing waaaay too much to the PoE stealth system. First of all, entering Stealth requires absolutely nothing; the only thing that is later taken into account is proximity, and while yes, that is more "advanced" than in the IE games, the actual functional parts of the system in PoE mean extremely little. Stealth is incredibly simplistic in PoE, whereas in IE, entering Stealth was both easier (if no enemies were present) and harder (if enemies were present; but still at least possible if you ran out of their FoV), you were offered a laundry list of potential tactical utility relating to Stealth.

I don't think you understand how stealth worked in the IE games. It does a dice roll independent of whether monsters are present - you can fail to hide in shadows even when there are no hostile enemies around, which is obvious bad design. When you're in stealth, you can walk up right to an enemy and stand next to it and it has no effect. Stealth in Pillars of Eternity takes the enemies distance to you in account - the closer you are to the enemy, the faster you will get detected.

 

 

 

Aside from the possibility of getting in a single attack before combat starts, with a single rogue (not that you'll have more, with only 8 Companions and none of them being a Rogue; but let's assume that you're using the Adventurer's Hall for some reason) stealthing in PoE has practically zero tactical application(s), save arguably the strategic value of scouting ahead.

Don't enemies spot you if they appear from the fog of war? If you're in stealth, you can prevent this and you can open combat on your own terms. This sounds like an advantage.

 

 

Unless you're mentally challenged, stealth requires virtually zero "judging enemy placement" or "carefully moving around the enemy" or "taking into account your party size" (what made you even think that last one, unless you're talking about trying to stealth with the entire party, at which point each character's individual stealth skill is far more important than the size of your party).

According to the wiki, if characters are moving close to each other, it takes their average stealth skill into account. So a character weak at stealth will weaken the party's effort to stealth. And if there are narrow passages and corridors in this game with monsters near them, it will take some effort to get through without being detected.

Edited February 6, 2015 by Quetzalcoatl

[Luckmann]

I don't think you understand how stealth worked in the IE games. It does a dice roll independent of whether monsters are present - you can fail to hide in shadows even when there are no hostile enemies around, which is obvious bad design. When you're in stealth, you can walk up right to an enemy and stand next to it and it has no effect. Stealth in Pillars of Eternity takes the enemies distance to you in account - the closer you are to the enemy, the faster you will get detected.

Wrong. The dice roll is not independent of whether monsters are present. The IE games did not have any Hide in Plain Sight-abilities before the "Enhanced" Edition(s).

 

The IE games did allow you, however, to re-enter Stealth (or attempt to re-enter Stealth, anyway) if you were outside of the opponenet's FoV. This was largely irrelevant outside of combat, however, since you could just keep trying until you entered Stealth. But in combat, it was very much tactically significant, since it allowed you to duck in and out of Stealth during an encounter, which of course came with the risk of failing (if you sucked) and wasting time, and forced you to consider whether it was worth attempting to run away and stealth and come back, or stay in the battle swashbuckler style.

 

None of that is relevant in PoE. You freely enter Stealth before combat, and it lasts until combat starts or you are detected (at which point combat starts and everyone, no matter where they are on the map, is forced out of stealth).

 

Don't enemies spot you if they appear from the fog of war? If you're in stealth, you can prevent this and you can open combat on your own terms. This sounds like an advantage.

I spent like a full paragraph just lauding the fact that PoE supports scouting like nothing I've ever seen in a game before, yet you pose this as a question. Yes, you can scout, which gives you a strategic advantage, and scouting is something PoE has actually managed to do quite well; it is continuously relevant and down right necessary on higher difficulties, because a lot in PoE hinges on a successful initiation of combat.

 

This is not being questioned. It is, however, tactically irrelevant and does not relate to stealthing directly. It is a by-product of the combat system and game mechanics (especially Engagement, as much as I dislike it's current implementation), and stealthing only plays a role in so far as being necessary to carry out the actual scouting.

 

According to the wiki, if characters are moving close to each other, it takes their average stealth skill into account. And if there are narrow passages and corridors in this game with monsters near them, it will take some effort to get through without being detected.

I've never noticed it, because the amount of times you'll actually care about this is pretty much never, unless you're building an all-stealther party on purpose (which you'll pretty much have to if you want to use Stealth in any tactical capacity, due to the aforementioned all-or-nothing Combat Mode vs. Group Stealth).

 

That being said, like I said earlier, while the detection mechanic is more advanced in PoE compared to IE, the actual functional parts of the Stealth system in PoE is extremely shallow. Yeah, it's probably more "engaging" than IE Stealth, but it doesn't actually matter nearly as much.

 

The only nice thing is really that the entire party CAN Stealth at all, whereas in IE, it was limited to Thieves. Obviously this alone necessitates a dynamic detection mechanic, since it would've been absolutely broken up the wazoo in IE if the entire.. oh, wait, Mass Imp. Invisibility. Nevermind.

[Quetzalcoatl]

The only nice thing is really that the entire party CAN Stealth at all, whereas in IE, it was limited to Thieves. Obviously this alone necessitates a dynamic detection mechanic, since it would've been absolutely broken up the wazoo in IE if the entire.. oh, wait, Mass Imp. Invisibility. Nevermind.

Nevermind what? What is your point exactly? Are you advocating for removing the dynamic detection? You realize an invisibility spell is not the same as a stealth system?

 

And you still don't seem to understand how stealth worked in the IE games. Of course you can enter stealth when no enemies are visible, I never said otherwise. But if you go into combat while in stealth, the stealth system doesn't take into account those enemies, or how close you are to them. Your success at stealth depends on a random dice roll. Think about that: it's a stealth system where remaining in stealth doesn't depend on the presence of enemies.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Quetzalcoatl

[Lephys]

I think it was explained previously (by Josh?) that implementing it would be time consuming and was not a priority for release, which was perfectly understandable.

 

I know I'd prefer 20-30 bugs fixed by release and have individual stealth in a patch or expansion

 

For many of us this is a learning experience regarding what is/isn't possible at different stages of a project.

Yeah. It seems like a lot of this type of thing will be a lot easier to tweak/re-design once they have the foundation of all these custom assets for the first game in-place. I can imagine starting out in a new engine adds a pretty big penalty to design tweak rolls/checks.

[Stun]

That quote only reinforces my statement. PoE was developed for PC. That doesn't mean consoles are out of the question. If it makes good business sense, I'm sure they'll do it.

Reading comprehension trouble, is it? Bryy, One of the founders of Obsidian is flat out acknowledging that consoles limit both RPG mechanics and RPG-based content. This means that if they did develop a Pillars of Eternity for consoles it would be a more limited RPG by definition. It must.

 

And Avellone is just stating the obvious. Of course, if your response to this is "well, hehehe, who cares if the game has watered down RPG mechanics! All that matters to a business is how much Money it makes!", then one wonders why you're even a gold backer. The entire nature of PoE goes counter to "good business sense". PoE is neither a shooter nor an MMO. It doesn't have a multiplayer element, or flashy Hollywood style cinematics and special effects. It's neither taking advantage of the massive Console markets, nor has it budgeted $25 million+ in the advertising it would need to compete, financially, with today's mainstream titles.

 

In fact, the ONLY sense PoE is making is in Being a true, classic style RPG. And the reason why it will succeed in being one is because the development studio is putting 100% of their time and money on none of the above.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Stun

[Lephys]

^ That's not entirely true. Console and handcrafted are not mutually exclusive terms. Statistics do not = inherent attributes. Yes, 99% of console games that aren't ridiculously simple are big-studio games that are pretty much publisher-guided for maximum mainstream sales, etc. Doesn't mean a true, classic RPG for a console is uncraftable.

[Stun]

^Avellone neither stated nor argued that "hand crafted" and "statistics" are mutually exclusive to consoles.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Stun

[Lephys]

I don't really understand the statistics part, as I didn't say anything about statistics being exclusive to anything. Nor did I comment on what Avellone did or did not say, come to think of it. Nor did I say anything about "hand crafted" and "statistics" being mutually exclusive in any way. That... that doesn't even make any sense. If anything ever happens in any number of cases, then statistics exist. Regardless of whether or not something was hand-crafted, or on a console, or spoken of by one named Avellone.

 

See, this is why we can't have nice dialogues, you and I.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Lephys

[Stun]

Lets try this again.

^ That's not entirely true. Console and handcrafted are not mutually exclusive terms.

I never said they were. Avellone never said they were. No one did. So...

 

Statistics do not = inherent attributes

No one is arguing otherwise. Edited February 7, 2015 by Stun

[rf5111918]

Sometimes some people forget that this game was crowdfunded and though the budget might seem (and is) high (4 million $) it cannot be compared with the money a huge ass company can pour (Dungeon Siege 3 was funded by Square Enix if I'm not mistaken).

When I saw the first models I too was quite dissapointed to be honest, but I could live with that, having in mind how massive the content of the game is (if I had to sacrifice some graphics quality over more content, so be it).

Thankfully the team worked more on graphics so the newer models are just fine

 

I personally think Obsidian has done a great job prioritizing how they want to build the game. 

For me at least, the story, the gameplay, and the "fun factor" is a lot more important than graphics. 

I can think of, <cough>, of another game that was Kickstarted earlier than POE, that had a similar budget, that had "nice graphics" that still hasn't released it's 2nd installment. 

 

I think the developers have also mentioned this repeatedly in the past, that with the way the game is designed perspective-wise, there just isn't that amount of detail needed for the characters. 

[Failion]

real talk. What does it take to get this level of dialogue, graphics and animation in pillars?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_11r1yE3FI#t=226

[Luckmann]

Nevermind what? What is your point exactly? Are you advocating for removing the dynamic detection? You realize an invisibility spell is not the same as a stealth system?

This is getting really tiresome, since I've stated my point quite plainly several times. My point is that the PoE Stealth system is shallow and tactically uninteresting, with virtually no meaningful application, particularly in combat. It is impossible to do many of the things that were possible in the IE games or make tactical judgement calls that were possible in the IE games.

 

Why on Earth would I want to remove the dynamic detection? What have I said that could possibly be misinterpreted as something so idiotic? Or are you just fighting windmills here? Dynamic detection is neat. That's it. That's what I said. It's neat. And it is. But that's also all it is. I wouldn't want the game without it, I think it's good, but it doesn't actually add anything meaningful. It doesn't let you make tactical judgement calls, it doesn't give you options in combat, it doesn't really do anything.

 

And you still don't seem to understand how stealth worked in the IE games. Of course you can enter stealth when no enemies are visible, I never said otherwise. But if you go into combat while in stealth, the stealth system doesn't take into account those enemies, or how close you are to them. Your success at stealth depends on a random dice roll. Think about that: it's a stealth system where remaining in stealth doesn't depend on the presence of enemies.

By this point you're perfectly aware that I know exactly how Stealth worked in the IE games (well, BG2 at least; I'm not sure if anything was changed for IWD2). And no, it didn't care about the monsters once you were in Stealth, unless they had True Sight/Stealth Detection/Search (and a whole range of **** that would slap you silly and maul your poor thief).

 

Like I said repeatedly, the dynamic detection in PoE is neat, and it is certainly more advanced than what was in the IE games. But the overall Stealth system is certainly more simplistic and dumbed down by comparison, albeit maybe not on purpose.

[Elerond]

Stealth in IE games worked so that character with Hide in Shadow and Move Silently skills can try to become invisible if they aren't in line of sight of enemy. Success of becoming invisible is mainly determined by character's skills (average of Hide in Shadows and Move Silently), which is influenced by character's items, time of day and is character in shadowed area, for example if character tries to go invisible during day in no shadowed area they will get quite hefty penalty in their skill roll. Usually enemies line of sight is about same what player characters can see, but it can be reduced by using spells like blindness, which can make it possible that character can become invisible even when they are near enemy characters in fight. It should be noted that Enchanted Edition of Baldur's Gate has Shadowdancer class that is able to try become invisible roll once per turn even if they are seen by enemy characters. Invisibility by stealth skills can last indefinitely if character in stealth don't attack or interact with anything, although every round character has to roll check if they stay in stealth, this roll seem to be based only move silently skill (items, time of day and being shadowed area influence this roll also).

 

Characters' with backstab modifier get their modifier for damage for first attack they do when they are invisible if they attack with close combat weapons. It don't matter if character has become invisible by their skill, spell or item. 

 

Character's that are invisible by spell or skill can be detected by spells or by Detect Illusion skill, successful roll dispels all illusions (which includes characters that are in stealth) in 30ft area, roll is not influenced by any factors (except that items may give bonuses in it) .

[mychal26]

I think the graphics are perfectly reasonable in PoE, and quite a bit better than W2. The team should use all existing resources for any expansion/sequel so they can focus on refining what they have.

[Hassat Hunter]

In the end, the backgrounds are handdrawn... there's nothing an engine change can change about that, and if it's easier to add 3D elements to a painted background in Unity all the more power to them I say...

[Sensuki]

@Adam Brennecke

 

Do you guys think you'll move to using the Unity 4.6 UI engine for the expansion or sequel? I've heard it's a lot better than NGUI and much faster to create UI with.

[Sanquiz]

POE IS NOT ABOUT GRAPHICS!!!

 

And by the way i see nothing wrong with the actual graphics, they look awesome to me.

 

If they want the game run in old systems they can't put super high textures on the characters or put high animations that usually run on high end computers.

 

This game was suppose to bring back the IE games, and so far from what i see is doing a good job.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Arturo Sanquiz