Duraframe300
Arcane
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- Dec 21, 2010
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- 6,395
I suppose this is "Dengler".
Yeah, looks like him.
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Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]
- Thread starter Duraframe300
- Start date
Yeah, looks like him.
Sensuki
Arcane
Yeah that was my first thought when I saw that picture as well. I was like, yep that's Steven Dengler.
Martius
Liturgist
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2013
- Messages
- 1,058
I think it was same with Divinity (just price of beta tier maybe wasnt as high). People at Larian thought they could miss a lot of potential testers. There was also refund option thanks to that but I have no idea how many people used it.It's not a question of 'bro-ness': the higher the beta tier, the more you risk a significant backlash from backers who paid a lot for beta access.
Of course, the whole idea of people paying to bug-test a game is problematic to begin with. Though I see Volourn caved in despite his earlier protestations.
Last edited:
Duraframe300
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2010
- Messages
- 6,395
Yes, backed highest tier. Dude's loaded thanks to his currency website.
Also good friends with the folks at Obsidian. Sent them two Obsidian rocks as well.
Sensuki
Arcane
He also backed Satellite Reign for like $5K or something too.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,621
He also contributed to Wasteland 2, but I don't think he shows up there as a portrait.
In Torment, they should spin him as some sort of multi-universe plane-travelling entity.
In Torment, they should spin him as some sort of multi-universe plane-travelling entity.
When I become rich, I'll be like Dengler
Duraframe300
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2010
- Messages
- 6,395
He also stars in a webcomic MegaCynics drawn by his half-sister (MCA keeps promoting it on Twitter).
The comic is not very good, though. At least, I did not like it.
And this:
Wikipedia said:
Basically, he is the guy every nerd wants to be.
Last edited:
Sensuki
Arcane
Yeah done 10 or so videos so far, up to around 100 posts in the Beta section for the day. Got a page of notes for later. Much much more to come.
He also contributed to Wasteland 2, but I don't think he shows up there as a portrait.
In Torment, they should spin him as some sort of multi-universe plane-travelling entity.
CMcC, ksaun
In before Sensuki dies of exhaustion.
Or gets hired by Obsidian.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
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- 99,621
Hey, it turns out Dengler's actually a character in the original Numenera lore. He backed Monte Cook's original Numenera campaign too.
He's known as Dracogen, an all-powerful giant cosmic reptilian creature.
Plane-travelling is probably within his power.
He's known as Dracogen, an all-powerful giant cosmic reptilian creature.
Plane-travelling is probably within his power.
LarsWestergren
Educated
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2007
- Messages
- 40
He also financed Double Fine's port of Psychonauts to Mac and some of their old games to PC, and development of Defence Grid 2. There is also Denglrs Bay in Banner Saga, and I think I've seen his name in Sunless Sea and a few other Kickstarted games. Awesome guy.
http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2014/01/2014-01-09_00029-100225409-orig.jpg
http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2014/01/2014-01-09_00029-100225409-orig.jpg
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2002
- Messages
- 17,068
First batch of notes. Probably full of typos.
Bugs
Moving away from container being looted doesn't seem to close the container.
Game is slow at opening windows (e.g. character window) when they haven't been opened in a while.
Weapons are floating miles away from character in inventory “paperdoll”.
Dungeon under the statue lags like crazy.
My BB Fighter got stuck in the ground after an encounter victory while being knocked down.
Using companion to talk shows up as PC talking in dialogue.
Sometimes you must click a character's portrait twice for single selection, when the entire party is already selected.
Character Creation
Portrait selections is clumsy. The portraits are very inconsistent in quality, so the player will just have to click a lot. Might as well use a matrix selection.
Less whiteness in eyes of character models would go a long way to make them look less cheap during character creation.
Sound & Music
Bird-chirping during character creation gets annoying after a while.
Music could do with some mixing.
'Continue' dialogue click is too sticky and loud. Sounds like someone doing a tongue-click near your ear when wearing headphones. A subtle stone-like scraping thud sound would be better.
Camera
Don't like zooming one bit. Feel like I have to play max zoomed out but the game looks like shit when zoomed out that far - everything is too sharp. At closest zoom, when the game looks good and smooth, it feels too cramped and obscured.
Kombat
Hitting an enemy should have more of an impact, with the enemy reacting to the hit.
Remove constant recovery tick info from combat log.
This is a hot topic, but I really do feel a lot more satisfied defeating an encounter if characters are given xp points from monster kills (not cilivians etc), even if it's minimal. BG had it and it feels empty without it. I just want to run past encounters as it is, because the encounters in the BB aren't all that fun or rewarding, loot-wise.
Get rid of the constant need of healing and ticking heals and small, fast incremental damage. Make damage and healing more impactful and slower like in BG. This feels like league of legends or something.
Graphics
Dead bodies despawn way too fast.
Loot bags look flat on the ground, and are too big.
Characters while in the level up screen have a very unattractive glow effect.
Interface
Font-scaling fucks shit up all over the place. Descriptions in particular.
Cipher focus isn't very well-supported by the UI. Looks very ad-hoc.
Dialogue doesn't show previous lines of text in dialogue window, as it did in BG. It only shows the current line from NPC and PC options. This is pretty bad.
Pop-ups like “addendum added”, quest objectives, etc. should be clickable to bring up the entry in question. That, or be off by default as they serve no purpose.
Mouse-over a party character should also highlight their portrait.
In-combat mouse-over should just display health state, not resistances and all that shit.
Non-combat interactions such as skill checks should be in the normal chat, not combat.
I don't see why the UI should be hidden when bringing up the character sheet.
I also don't see why the character sheet can't be full-screen since it's so cramped.
I accidentally moved around characters in the portrait bar a few times. Maybe have an option to lock this or something.
The stash and inventory system feels clumsy. Stash window pop-up is too small.
These ”looking to the side” female portraits (”BB Priest”), like I've mentioned the first time I saw them, are not good at all. They don't give a good representation of character and they're too different from the other ones. The drawback of using multiple artist to draw portraits without set guidelines I suppose.
Controlling & Moving & Mouse stuff
Selection circles (the green non-colorblind ones) are too bright. I would add a quarter transparency to them.
I would prefer the "being able to inspect an object" indicator to be the mouse cursor rather than have a static magnifying glass over the object I want to inspect.
”Tabbing” should only highlight containers and doors. Too much clutter when tabbing.
Cursor is too small in general, but I suppose it's place-holder.
General Gameplay & Systems Feedback
Really missing a proper weapon specialization system and clear indication of preferable weapons on character screen. I want to divide loot based on specializations.
Clicking small area transition icons feel weird. Click-zones are much better.
Health should be removed.
Stamina should be renamed to health and should also fill from the bottom of the portraits.
Inventories are too small. Way too small.
Not a single interesting villager in Dyrwhatever. No-one fishing, no-one repairing a fence, no-one doing anything. I'm not talking about how they're animated here. NPCs are either named quest-givers/objectives or shop owners, or super-boring generic townsfolk who are only walking, standing, and chatting. Again, I'm not talking about animation, or the need for animating anything.
BGs and IWDs had fishermen, kids playing, and such. They were just standing around as well, but at least they were something.
Different exits from a map should reveal different new paths to take. If I go north, an area to the north should appear as a travel option on the map. In the BB, both areas are reveal regardless of which exit you take.
Attributes, skills, talents, character systems
The skill stealth should be called scouting, or the action scouting should be called stealth.
Mechanics should be called something else. Lockpicking via mechanics feels and sound weird.
Talents have boring (as in, not very much background/lore-ish info) and not always clear descriptions.
Weapon Focuses feel too broad. I much prefer the IE game way of specializing, in combination with racial and class limitations.
Remove skill points and make class, race and background define them. Background and race feels completely meaningless (largely because attributes feel meaningless).
Percentage bonuses from attributes are SUPER boring. Attributes should be super-defining of a character, and higher values should give specialized bonuses. There should be a bigger leap between 18 and 19, than between 11 and 12. Really, D&D does this much better.
Itemization
Enchanting would be better put as an NPC service, or better yet removed from the game. I thought crafting and such wouldn't be in the game. Enchanting is essentially crafting. Very boring and tiresome to have to do it.
”Fine” prefixes and item enhancements are boring. Items should be normal or special, and special should be unique-special not a generalist enchantment. “2D6 crushing damage, +5 vs giants” was so much better (interesting/fun) than “on attack + 0.1 to critical damage multiplier” and such. No small incremental meaningless bonuses on items, please. It's a single-player game not an MMORPG with 100 levels.
Bugs
Moving away from container being looted doesn't seem to close the container.
Game is slow at opening windows (e.g. character window) when they haven't been opened in a while.
Weapons are floating miles away from character in inventory “paperdoll”.
Dungeon under the statue lags like crazy.
My BB Fighter got stuck in the ground after an encounter victory while being knocked down.
Using companion to talk shows up as PC talking in dialogue.
Sometimes you must click a character's portrait twice for single selection, when the entire party is already selected.
Character Creation
Portrait selections is clumsy. The portraits are very inconsistent in quality, so the player will just have to click a lot. Might as well use a matrix selection.
Less whiteness in eyes of character models would go a long way to make them look less cheap during character creation.
Sound & Music
Bird-chirping during character creation gets annoying after a while.
Music could do with some mixing.
'Continue' dialogue click is too sticky and loud. Sounds like someone doing a tongue-click near your ear when wearing headphones. A subtle stone-like scraping thud sound would be better.
Camera
Don't like zooming one bit. Feel like I have to play max zoomed out but the game looks like shit when zoomed out that far - everything is too sharp. At closest zoom, when the game looks good and smooth, it feels too cramped and obscured.
Kombat
Hitting an enemy should have more of an impact, with the enemy reacting to the hit.
Remove constant recovery tick info from combat log.
This is a hot topic, but I really do feel a lot more satisfied defeating an encounter if characters are given xp points from monster kills (not cilivians etc), even if it's minimal. BG had it and it feels empty without it. I just want to run past encounters as it is, because the encounters in the BB aren't all that fun or rewarding, loot-wise.
Get rid of the constant need of healing and ticking heals and small, fast incremental damage. Make damage and healing more impactful and slower like in BG. This feels like league of legends or something.
Graphics
Dead bodies despawn way too fast.
Loot bags look flat on the ground, and are too big.
Characters while in the level up screen have a very unattractive glow effect.
Interface
Font-scaling fucks shit up all over the place. Descriptions in particular.
Cipher focus isn't very well-supported by the UI. Looks very ad-hoc.
Dialogue doesn't show previous lines of text in dialogue window, as it did in BG. It only shows the current line from NPC and PC options. This is pretty bad.
Pop-ups like “addendum added”, quest objectives, etc. should be clickable to bring up the entry in question. That, or be off by default as they serve no purpose.
Mouse-over a party character should also highlight their portrait.
In-combat mouse-over should just display health state, not resistances and all that shit.
Non-combat interactions such as skill checks should be in the normal chat, not combat.
I don't see why the UI should be hidden when bringing up the character sheet.
I also don't see why the character sheet can't be full-screen since it's so cramped.
I accidentally moved around characters in the portrait bar a few times. Maybe have an option to lock this or something.
The stash and inventory system feels clumsy. Stash window pop-up is too small.
These ”looking to the side” female portraits (”BB Priest”), like I've mentioned the first time I saw them, are not good at all. They don't give a good representation of character and they're too different from the other ones. The drawback of using multiple artist to draw portraits without set guidelines I suppose.
Controlling & Moving & Mouse stuff
Selection circles (the green non-colorblind ones) are too bright. I would add a quarter transparency to them.
I would prefer the "being able to inspect an object" indicator to be the mouse cursor rather than have a static magnifying glass over the object I want to inspect.
”Tabbing” should only highlight containers and doors. Too much clutter when tabbing.
Cursor is too small in general, but I suppose it's place-holder.
General Gameplay & Systems Feedback
Really missing a proper weapon specialization system and clear indication of preferable weapons on character screen. I want to divide loot based on specializations.
Clicking small area transition icons feel weird. Click-zones are much better.
Health should be removed.
Stamina should be renamed to health and should also fill from the bottom of the portraits.
Inventories are too small. Way too small.
Not a single interesting villager in Dyrwhatever. No-one fishing, no-one repairing a fence, no-one doing anything. I'm not talking about how they're animated here. NPCs are either named quest-givers/objectives or shop owners, or super-boring generic townsfolk who are only walking, standing, and chatting. Again, I'm not talking about animation, or the need for animating anything.
BGs and IWDs had fishermen, kids playing, and such. They were just standing around as well, but at least they were something.
Different exits from a map should reveal different new paths to take. If I go north, an area to the north should appear as a travel option on the map. In the BB, both areas are reveal regardless of which exit you take.
Attributes, skills, talents, character systems
The skill stealth should be called scouting, or the action scouting should be called stealth.
Mechanics should be called something else. Lockpicking via mechanics feels and sound weird.
Talents have boring (as in, not very much background/lore-ish info) and not always clear descriptions.
Weapon Focuses feel too broad. I much prefer the IE game way of specializing, in combination with racial and class limitations.
Remove skill points and make class, race and background define them. Background and race feels completely meaningless (largely because attributes feel meaningless).
Percentage bonuses from attributes are SUPER boring. Attributes should be super-defining of a character, and higher values should give specialized bonuses. There should be a bigger leap between 18 and 19, than between 11 and 12. Really, D&D does this much better.
Itemization
Enchanting would be better put as an NPC service, or better yet removed from the game. I thought crafting and such wouldn't be in the game. Enchanting is essentially crafting. Very boring and tiresome to have to do it.
”Fine” prefixes and item enhancements are boring. Items should be normal or special, and special should be unique-special not a generalist enchantment. “2D6 crushing damage, +5 vs giants” was so much better (interesting/fun) than “on attack + 0.1 to critical damage multiplier” and such. No small incremental meaningless bonuses on items, please. It's a single-player game not an MMORPG with 100 levels.
WhiteGuts
Arcane
- Joined
- May 3, 2013
- Messages
- 2,382
Athelas
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2013
- Messages
- 4,502
Is it just me, or does this whole area seem really inconsistent with how the rest of the game looks? They were likely still experimenting since I think it was said this was of the first area's they made as part of the vertical slice/prototype.
Zorba the Hutt
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2012
- Messages
- 1,865,735
Harold
Arcane
Is dumb dialogue implemented yet? Can one of you betafags be so kind as to roll a low Int dude and post some screens?
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,621
Zed said:
Ooh boy.
Last edited:
Duraframe300
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2010
- Messages
- 6,395
Currently waiting for first update with Auto Attack fix before playing again.
Someone gave me their extra copy of their BETA! Wooo now I can give constructive criticism like sensuki and get hired by Obsidian.
Brofisting Zed for effort, even if I do not agree with some of his points.
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