Pillars of Eternity

Well, patience is a virtue. In any case it's best if they take their time. Too many (otherwise excellent) Obsidian games have been rushed and received a bad reputation because of that.

True, Cara, and I think that is why they are being so careful now. I think they rushed announcing a new beta though but people where asking about it hoping to have it before Christmas. They have been explaining the hold ups. Seems they are having problems rebalancing the combat. One of those notorious cases of one problem is fixed only to cause another problem.

N

Some of the best games I've played have been made by Obsidian and the thing they have in common is that they had some pretty nasty issues because they were rushed... Some of these games were patched, others ended up getting some mods that made them better but in the end it's pretty sad to think about what could have been.

Even a freaking masterpiece like FNV was rushed and Obsidian missed out on a one million dollar bonus because of that. Obsidian didn't get royalties on FNV and Bethesda agreed to pay them a bonus if FNV got an 85 score on metacritic. FNV scored only 84 and Obsidian didn't get the bonus because of that. Considering how stupid the metacritic rating is I find that rather disheartening.

Bethesda did ruin any chance for a Fallout MMO ever happening (I'm not saying it would necessarily have been a good thing but still) and they did take over the original Fallouts so buying any of the original games means giving money to the company that made Fallout 3 (well the money wasn't going to the original devs before anyway but that's something to bear in mind).

At least with Pillars of Eternity Obsidian are working on their own project. Paradox as a publisher shouldn't be too bad either. They have screwed up in the past but at least they admitted that and tried to fix some of their blunders (Sword of the Stars 2 being the most glaring example). They tend to appear a bit greedy considering the amount of DLC they release for their games but at least they support them and offer some patches (which is more than can be said about some companies like EA and Bioware judging by the fact Dragon Age Origins was never fully patched).

Since it does not look as if the update for the Backer Beta will be released until after Christmas I have been taking a look at the PoE Wiki which reports know information.

PoE takes place on a world called Eora, it has two moons which affects tides and occasionally creates other phenomenon. PoE actually takes place in a region in the southern hemisphere which is roughly the size of Spain. There are I think six different regions.

Since I upped my initial pledge in order to get the Stronghold I was interested in that. I sounds fantastic. You get it early in the game. It is in ruins and you have to upgrade it which takes money. I have a feeling this game is going to need money so adventuring we will go. The player house is located in the boundaries of the Stronghold but has its own bonuses and I imagine problems. Companions that you recruit but don't need in your party will stay at the Stronghold but according to the Wiki they will have their own adventurers with rewards of some kind. Visitors will come to the Stronghold, bandits will attack. You own the surrounding lands and will collect taxes from the people who live there.

If OE followed through on the reports the Stronghold should be really great and make any player home or stronghold I have see garbage. I am really excited about it as I didn't expect much more than a house for the player to store stuff although I did hope companions could stay there.

Sounds a lot more than what we were used to with BG2! The idea of upgrading a lair is definitively cool.

I rather like the way strongholds are handled in the Assassin's Creed games, you get a hub for missions, trading and crafting and also a place were you can talk to NPC, train or look at your collectibles and trophies. It's something that is getting more common in games.

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Companions that you recruit but don't need in your party will stay at the Stronghold but according to the Wiki they will have their own adventurers with rewards of some kind. Visitors will come to the Stronghold, bandits will attack. You own the surrounding lands and will collect taxes from the people who live there.

All this sounds really nice. It almost adds a sandbox dimension to the game.

I am trying not to get too excited about the game for fear I will be disapointed but the stronghold does sound very cool. A mini game with in the main game.

Now if they fix the combat and the magic bugs I do think we will have a really good game.

It's a wise decision. Going into a game without any expectations is a great way to be able to enjoy what's there instead of thinking about what should have been in the game.

That's why I like picking up some games that are relatively unknown during sales and give them a try. There are some pretty good surprises.

They did get a new BB update out in time for Christmas. I think they pushed it. Some things are fixed and there are some new bugs. Some good changes have been made to the character creation screens. Combat difficulty has been changed. So far I have only played on easy and I think people, most people, will have no big problem with the easy setting. People are still complaining about hard. ??? Isn't hard supposed to be hard? Well its the devs problem not mine. You can switch between easy, normal or hard if you need to just as you can in other games. If you play Path of the Damned (Insane) you can't change it in-game.

There is still a save/load issue and I suspect it has something to do with autosave.

OE is on break until the 5 th so we won't see responses until after that.

My new PC is a cipher one of the new classes. Interesting Perception is the highly recommended attribute.Ciphers need a lot of focus to do their mind manipulation. Interesting build and it will take me time to get the right starting spells and correct combinations. I haven't tried the chanter yet. The monk looks like a real badass character. Never played monks in the old games for some reason but this one looks good in a bad sort of way.

At least OE dropped that D&D alignment system. Oh, they dropped the start level to level 4.

I hope your Christmaas has been a good one. Good gaming.

N

Sounds like some pretty nice characters.

And yes, the alignment system wasn't really the most accurate or easy thing to implement. The idea of ranking a character's morality is not a bad one but it tends to lead to many issues.

Good gaming Nakia, have fun!

The Backer Beta has a lot of new bugs I am hoping the reason is because they pushed it out to us not fully tested by the because we did want it for Christmas.   I understand OE has used the Kickstarter and the second Backer campaign  funds.  I have no idea how well the pre-order sales have been.   If they want to release this in March or even April it looks as if they have a lot of work to do.

I was ignoring a lot of posts asking for this feature or that feature but have started posting on them jjust so the devs know that not everyone might want that particular feature.  I think we are pretty much past the point where new features should be added and the work should go into fixing what they have.    Trap disarming has been totally broken and it worked before the update.  Issues with save load.  Making sure all the spells work and balancing the combat.  Party management is flawed and you an only add one custom NPC instead of making a full custom party.  For some reason if you add a party member and dismiss one of the BB CNPCs the game just hangs when you do a transition.

Obsidian does need to show that they can produce a reasonably bug free game if left alone.

Edited to fix error of calling OE by the wrong name.

You mean Obsidian.

I do agree with what you're saying. People have completely unrealistic expectations. I don't know the first thing about writing code but I know people who make a living doing just that and it would seem that any piece of software is always a work in progress.

What a game needs is to stand on its feet before it can run to pick up a metaphor.

I remember a patch that completely broke stealing in Dragon Age Origins until a modder fixed it. That's the sort of unforeseen problems one can expect when patches have to be rushed through the door.

Hopefully they won't listen to the crowd and try to please everybody. It's better to have a solid game that does its job well rather than a game that has everything but the kitchen sink and runs like crap. We tend to expect a certain degree of quality from an official product so the shoddy fixes and shady shortcuts should be limited to mods (not that all mods are shoddy far from it but they certainly don't have to meet the same requirements).

That being said I think they can do it. Don't forget Obsidian was responsible for Dungeon Siege 3. It got a lot of criticism for all the wrong reasons but as far as I know it was a very competently made game which tends to prove that the Obsidian "curse" is not unavoidable. Sadly it's probably the less ambitious title ever made by Obsidian and the hype surrounding Diablo 3 probably didn't help.

Stupid mistake, don't know why I made that. Will go back and edit. I am getting the feeling they are trying to please everyone and that will be a major mistake. Hope I am wrong. I hope the Leads get together and say "enough, we go with this " and then concentrate on fixing the bugs. The BB takes place away from the main story and the writing is good. So it looks as if OE is doing best what it is known to do best. Now is their chance to prove they can beat the bug reputation which I think is only partially deserved.

I don't know coding either partly because I don't like doing it. I do know some programmers and they say the same things those you know say. One said a good day is one when her program works the way she wanted it to work. Plus with a game like this one you have to take all those individual programs and make them work together.

The cipher class is interesting, different from the magic casters and I hope they have more quests where their particular talents can be productively used. Don't know if it will be popular with the masses as there are no fancy spell effects. Others are playing it too but no one has commented.

I think I will try out the monk class next to see what they did there. The quests are beginning to get boring though. Hmm.. I could just kill the unted rogue and see how that goes. I still have the ranger and druid to try also.

There is one area I have only touched on. Doesn't seem to have a quest linked to it and the couple of times I tried exploring the enemies, lions, bears, wild druids just slaughtered my party.

Re Voice Overs the jury is still out. Not enough to judge.

The OE devs should be getting back to work this morning West Coast time. The Backer Beta forums have heated up some. I came late to the BB but there was/is this guy who thinks he knows more than anyone else including the devs, most particular the devs. When I first checked out the BB forum he did seem to rule but now dissenters have entered which I applaud. Since most of the combat argument seems to be from those playing on hard at least he started a thread just for that which I just ignore. I play on easy or normal. Oh, he is already modding the game, he and another guy.

This may sound like heresy but if I see another post about how great the IE mechanics were I think I will scream, no I don't scream, I swear and yell.

We did get into a discussion about the ranger class which is a bit weak but some guy posted that he built a sword and board ranger and it worked very well so I tried it and I agree with him. Someone else has tried and agrees that build is better. Would be nice if the devs did tweak it a bit. Too bad something broke the ability to build your own party but hopefully that will be fixed.

I am eager to see what the devs have to say about what has been posted on the BB forums.

Take it easy Nakia, there is no need to get all riled up because of a loser who thinks he is the most important sentient being this side of the universe.

Who starts modding a game that is still in beta? Now seriously, that's something that I find rather puzzling.

It looks like that guy has way too much time on his hands and it is a truth universally acknowledged that nobody can compete with a full time asshat.

I know, Cara, I am trying to stay away from threads that I know will annoy me but some times someone does make an interesting post about something I hadn't thought of like the guy who suggest using the ranger as an off-warrior.

By the way do you know that it appears that only five games where actually made with the Infinity Engine. BG I, BG II, IWD I, IWD II and Planescape/torment. Expansions where made for the games and the games were adapted to different platforms. Oh and now the EE versions.

These games were not perfect though some people may want to gloss over some major flaws.

Do you remember the game getting stuck in a loop so the same number would be rolled over and over again until you moved the character? It was particularly annoying with critical misses.

BG was miles ahead of the competition (Diablo) when it came to giving the player the illusion of choice but in the end the only real difference (from a gameplay perspective) was whether you got the good or evil extra abilities.

That's not much of an RPG if you ask me... I'm not saying modern games are much better in that respect though (not even the much praised Witcher series which despite offering some consequences for your choices forces you to play a predetermined character). At most what we get is an epilogue slide letting us know of the consequences our actions may have had on the world after the game has ended (like in Dragon Age Origins and pretty much what Fallout has been doing all these years).

I've always found it pretty funny that some people would resort to cheesy tactics and exploits (abusing line of sight or spells like cloud kill or improved invisibility for instance) and then complain about the game being too easy so they would have to get mods like Tactics and the like which would lead them to use even cheesier tactics to get through absolutely nonsensical fights.

There was a time when we used to have a certain build in mind for a character or we would screw up and have to start over. Then came the idea of reallocating points in order to rebuild a character half way through and now builds don't matter much anymore...

I love Fallout New Vegas but sadly builds in this game don't make much of a difference (I blame Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls in which your character is destined to master every skill in the game since that was never how Fallout games were meant to be played).

You also have games in which you can switch around at any time (like in Diablo 3) so there are no consequences nor choices to be made (can't think of a more casual way to go about that).

Then there are some games that claim to be old school and are going out of their way to make things complicated (Wasteland 2) until you realize that some things that look good on paper are completely useless in the game (like charisma in Divinity Original Sin).

In any case, the only thing worse than the absence of builds (Dragon Age Inquisition feels so limited I don't know why they even bothered with different skill trees which is a pity since Dragon Age Origins allowed some pretty strange but oddly efficient builds) is the realization that there is only one build that can be viable in the game (to a certain extent Wasteland 2 comes to mind).

I'm not saying a game like the first Fallout was perfect on that point. You needed intelligence for skill points (especially since you didn't get too many of these in the game) and you had to invest in agility to get action points (and since it was the only way to get these it was a pretty good idea to max this out). So using a different build instead of high agility, high intelligence would mean crippling your character (you could go for less intelligence with a strength focused character but still, less effective). In the end Fallout still stands out because despite some flaws (charisma was already a dump stat with very little worth unless you wanted to have many followers in Fallout 2) it offered different ways of handling different situations so you could get the most of your character build (for once the blurb on the box didn't lie, playing with a thief or a diplomat was as effective as a more direct approach).

Reading what I've just written it seems to me that I should love Wasteland 2 instead of ruing the fact that they didn't improve on the recipe (and sometimes it looks as if they didn't even try especially when considering balance in this game).

I do hope the devs will get things right with PoE. Severing any tie with the outdated D&D ruleset is something that had to be done and hopefully they won't try to replicate some of the things that made the old IE games such a hassle to get into (especially for people who never played pen and paper RPGs) without dumbing things down to the point that you just have to point and click repeatedly to cruise through the game (pretty much why I'm so disappointed with Dragon Age Inquisition).

I remember with BG 2 sitting for about twenty or thirty minutes rolling stas for my character. I usually played a half-elf fighter/thief. For some reason the fights in IWD II don't stand out maybe because I used my rogue, Naki, to lure enemies to where the other party members were. That was fun and she was so cute. Being small she could sneak into places too, back stab or pick pocket although I didn't put much points into pick pocket.

As for PoE it is in my opinion to tell how good the mechanics will be. Looks as if we can build some interesting characters. I am hoping that the devs are settled in to finishing this game by March or April and so now need to focus on bug fixing and some tweaks.

For character build your attributes start with 10 points and you have an additional 15 to allocate. You can lower the stats say have low intelligence for a character with high might/strength. Dexterity may be one stat you can lower except for your rogue. Not positive myself but there has been discussion about that. I am not impressed with what I have read because it seems to me those people are building basically the same character with some differences. Might for warriors, Intellect for spell caster. If you want to disarm traps or make traps, lockpick and craft you need someone with the mechanics skill. Oh, you max out your attributes at 18 but can increase an attribute by background and location, where your character comes from.

I think the game will be a lot of fun but I don't expect to be 100% happy. Perfection just does not exist and in fact cannot exist. At least we won't be stuck with the D&D combat system for better or worse. Number of spells possible are a combo of number per encounter and number per day. So far it has worked pretty well for me and my BB wizard does a lot of damage so I don't understand the complaints.

Think I am getting better at character builds too. My latest Barbarian is working the way I think he should. Main reason I finally started the BB was to relearn playing a tactical game. Too much TES playing and I have forgotten a lot.

I think the quests will be very interesting and have some interesting quirks to them.

Nothing is perfect that is very true but hopefully they will get what matters the most right.

When it comes to building the same character that's a common drawback since more often than not the game is geared towards a certain way of playing the game and it takes a lot of experimentation to get out the box so to speak.

For instance we had two different ways of building rogues in Dragon Age Origins, dexterity based and cunning based. Considering the requirements and the fact that cunning increased damage it made sense to focus on cunning in the original campaign but later on Awakening introduced new high level abilities that required some major investment in dexterity making the dexterity based build the better choice in the long run. I did try a strength based rogue once for fun and that build performed surprisingly well. In fact it did so well that I found that particular character to outlast the previous builds I had used.

Finding out things like that is so rewarding because you think you had everything figured out and it simply turns everything around and I love that. It's a pity Dragon Age Inquisition has that silly restriction on weapon types (like Dragon Age 2) as it would have made the game much more interesting in the long run.

In any case I hope PoE will provide players with the opportunity of devising interesting builds. That would be a major incentive to play the game IMO.

In any case I hope PoE will provide players with the opportunity of devising interesting builds. That would be a major incentive to play the game IMO. wrote:

I think it will. The monk I built was really good. I got a little confused because I thought the monk was not supposed to use weapons or wear army but they did allow it. I ended up giving him some armour, left the first weapon slot empty and put a sword in the second slot. Throughout the playthrough he never used the sword only his fists and he was great. The BB wizard works well but is a bit boring probably because I didn't build him. Tried making a second fighter but didn't do well with the build. Will try again. I like the cipher class. Not a melee fighter, needs good focus, haven't tried the chanter yet. If the devs leave the builds alone except maybe the ranger I believe we will be able to make some interesting builds.

One thing I can live with but find a bit off is that any class can use any weapon or wear any arnour. The armour doesn't really bother me. I made an Orlan cipher, Mtg 9 and she was automatically given a great sword. I switched it to a bow. She shouldn't even be able to pick up the weapon IMO. The Orlanss are short and have a -1 to Mts or Str.

I am also not very happy with the portrait selections. We can put our own portraits in but there is no way I can make portraits and I don't know where to get free ones. I could try touching up some portraits I guess.

One class I haven't played is the chanter. People are posting good things about it so maybe I will try that next.

What are the requirements for in game portraits? It shouldn(t be too hard to find decent portraits on the internet and then convert them so they fit the proper aspect ratio for the game.

Here is a link to a thread that tells how to make and install portraits.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66894-how-to-make-custom-portraits/

I assume that how to make portraits will be the same for the actual gaame. Not so sure about installing them.

I couldn't get the example he gave to show.

If you used the examples he gave "Bob_lg" and "Bob_sm" then all you should have to do is get the right format PNG and the right ratio 210 x 330 and 76 x 96.

It sounds rather straightforward. Are you sure you didn't overlook something? Sometimes it is very easy to miss something and I've done my share of mistakes when trying to get pictures to show up in game.

Or maybe the current version doesn't support custom portraits (although this sounds rather unlikely).

You could perhaps try and send a PM to the guy who posted the thread. If he is a nice guy there is no reason why he wouldn't reply and help you out.

Thanks, Cara, but I think I will wait until the game is released to worry about it. The Beta is not the actual game and who knows what individuals have mucked about with it. In fact I am begining to have a bit of a suspicion that the Beta I am playing may not be exactly the same as the one some of those guys are playing.

If I sound cynical it is because I am.

I don't really like the idea of playing beta versions of games because there is a world of difference between the early stages of the game and the final product. Besides when it comes to CRPGs the first run is always special because there is the pleasure of discovering the world, the quests, the characters and all that so playing a beta may be a sure way to spoil much of the fun down the road.

The good thing is watching a game bloom as it gets near completion. I have a few Early Access games in my steam library and one of them is a pretty cool strategy game and when I fire it up from time to time I'm always amazed at the improvements that have been made.