Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Infinitron]

It was more functional than PoE because individual stealth worked, but the underlying rules were stupid. And that cooldown between stealthing and unstealthing, gah. With the expansion PoE's stealth will become better

 

[Duraframe300]

Don't type something like this without extroplating. What engine was the Infinity Engine based off? I don't care what it was made for. It's a HUGE undertaking to use an untested engine that is in it's infancy compared to a fully fledged engine that is in it's 4th or 5th iteration.

After Shattered Steel (And the short-time break-up) they created an engine and made a demo for it called "Battleground: Infinity" (Hence: Infinity Engine), an RTS. They shopped that around to publishers and Interplay said they should rework the concept of the game and implement D&D rules.

 

[Excidium II]

I can't help but wonder what's the incredible challenge in implementing individual stealth. How's it that different from, say, LoS

 

[Immortal]

It was more functional than PoE because individual stealth worked, but the underlying rules were stupid. And that cooldown between stealthing and unstealthing, gah. With the expansion PoE's stealth will become better

So again - Hindsight is a bitch. BG had it's own issues, nitpicking them doesn't make PoE better. PoE was supposed to the be the game that learned from the past and was an improvement.

Don't use bad things about BG to prop PoE up. This isn't just moving goal posts, This is driving onto the field and putting the goal posts into your trunk and driving home.

Don't type something like this without extroplating. What engine was the Infinity Engine based off? I don't care what it was made for. It's a HUGE undertaking to use an untested engine that is in it's infancy compared to a fully fledged engine that is in it's 4th or 5th iteration.

After Shattered Steel (And the short-time break-up) they created an engine and made a demo for it called "Battleground: Infinity" (Hence: Infinity Engine), an RTS. They shopped that around to publishers and Interplay said they should rework the concept of the game and implement D&D rules.

So they had a bare bones engine for a RTS mock demo (again they created this engine from scratch) then were told to roll over to an RPG and had to refactor the engine (from scratch) to accommodate the 2E system. Sorry your just continuing to prove my point.

 

[Infinitron]

It was more functional than PoE because individual stealth worked, but the underlying rules were stupid. And that cooldown between stealthing and unstealthing, gah. With the expansion PoE's stealth will become better

So again - Hindsight is a bitch. BG had it's own issues, nitpicking them doesn't make PoE better. PoE was supposed to the be the game that learned from the past and was an improvement.

Don't use bad things about BG to prop PoE up. This isn't just moving goal posts, This is driving onto the field and putting the goal posts into your trunk and driving home.

I'm making an argument that BG's stealth was quicker to implement because it was a hackjob, so the comparison is unfair even if you don't allow for a longer dev time

 

[Immortal]

It was more functional than PoE because individual stealth worked, but the underlying rules were stupid. And that cooldown between stealthing and unstealthing, gah. With the expansion PoE's stealth will become better

So again - Hindsight is a bitch. BG had it's own issues, nitpicking them doesn't make PoE better. PoE was supposed to the be the game that learned from the past and was an improvement.

Don't use bad things about BG to prop PoE up. This isn't just moving goal posts, This is driving onto the field and putting the goal posts into your trunk and driving home.

I'm making an argument that BG's stealth was quicker to implement because it was a hackjob, so the comparison is unfair even if you don't allow for a longer dev time

As a consumer I don't care how long it takes to develop. hack job or not - it was superior in how it worked. I would consider a lot of features in PoE as hack jobs.

EDIT:
I'm curious why the stealth system in BG is considered a Hack Job - I haven't really read this thread.

 

[Duraframe300]

So they had a bare bones engine for a RTS mock demo (again they created this engine from scratch) then were told to roll over to an RPG and had to refactor the engine to accommodate the 2E system. Sorry your just continuing to prove my point.

Not from scratch during the development itself. That's the only thing I'm saying here.

No point at all except playing developer stalker.

 

[Excidium II]

It was more functional than PoE because individual stealth worked, but the underlying rules were stupid. And that cooldown between stealthing and unstealthing, gah. With the expansion PoE's stealth will become better

So again - Hindsight is a bitch. BG had it's own issues, nitpicking them doesn't make PoE better. PoE was supposed to the be the game that learned from the past and was an improvement.

Don't use bad things about BG to prop PoE up. This isn't just moving goal posts, This is driving onto the field and putting the goal posts into your trunk and driving home.

I'm making an argument that BG's stealth was quicker to implement because it was a hackjob, so the comparison is unfair even if you don't allow for a longer dev time

PoE stealth even fully realized isn't that much better

In any case BG devs did right by their design the first time

PoE devs decided to go for the simplest implementation, and only then realized the obvious drawbacks but it was too expensive to rework a somewhat low priority feature during development

They could have, you know, done right the first time

 

[Infinitron]

I don't think they really decided to go for that implementation (group stealth) out of some principled design stance. It seems to me more like they knew ahead of time that doing individual stealth was going to be difficult so they decided to postpone it.

(As for why it was difficult, it might have something to do with PoE having a more rigid "in combat"/"out of combat" state as compared to the IE games, with different stuff working or not working depending on what state you're in, but that's just guessing.)

 

[Excidium II]

I don't think they decided to go that implementation (group stealth) out of some principled design stance.

Well I didn't imply that was the case either. They just picked what was simpler to program as Josh himself says in that post

As for why it was difficult, it might have something to do with PoE have a more rigid "in combat"/"out of combat" state as compared to the IE games, with different stuff working or not working depending on what state you're in, but that's just guessing.

Maybe. That would have been poorly thought out too.

 

[Excidium II]

We can then conclude BG devs were superior based on various assumptions which cannot be verified

 

[roshan]

BG did have the advantage of being able to copy-paste stuff from AD&D and kind of half-ass it because "PnP rules!", with less time spent iterating on stuff on the drawing board.

Let's face it, the IE stealth implementation is nothing in particular to be proud of, with its two skills that do exactly the same thing.

Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Torment had only one stealth skill.

 

[Infinitron]

BG did have the advantage of being able to copy-paste stuff from AD&D and kind of half-ass it because "PnP rules!", with less time spent iterating on stuff on the drawing board.

Let's face it, the IE stealth implementation is nothing in particular to be proud of, with its two skills that do exactly the same thing.

Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Torment had only one stealth skill.

http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/27641/i-still-dont-understand-move-silently-hide-in-shadows

 

[roshan]

BG did have the advantage of being able to copy-paste stuff from AD&D and kind of half-ass it because "PnP rules!", with less time spent iterating on stuff on the drawing board.

Let's face it, the IE stealth implementation is nothing in particular to be proud of, with its two skills that do exactly the same thing.

Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Torment had only one stealth skill.

http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/27641/i-still-dont-understand-move-silently-hide-in-shadows

Doesn't invalidate what I said - the early games had only one stealth skill. BG2, IWD2 and the enhanced editions have two stealth skills (one for entering stealth mode, and the other for remaining stealthed). As far as I know BG2 split the skill merely as a points sink for high level thieves. IWD2 had them split because of 3rd edition rules.

 

[Infinitron]

No, it always had them, starting from BG1. It's taken directly from AD&D I think.

Derp

 

[roshan]

Uh no, it always had them, starting from BG1.

It's interesting how POE fans turn out to know absolutely nothing about the IE games.
http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Thieving_Abilities
http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/ability.shtml
http://www.neoseeker.com/icewinddale/faqs/101653-icewind-dale-char.html

Like I said, only one "stealth" skill up until BG2 split them as a points sink.

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah BG1 just had Stealth, BG2 split them.

 

[Excidium II]

P. much everyone plays the BG2 ports since they became available though so it's an easy thing to get wrong

 

[Infinitron]

>_> OK, pulled out my BG1 box and manual and whoops.

I had such vivid memories of it too. I probably mentally confused it with the two stealth skills from 3E, actually.

 

[Irenaeus II]

I knew this from the start but refrained from entering the discussion for the lulz.

 

[ArchAngel]

It was more functional than PoE because individual stealth worked, but the underlying rules were stupid. And that cooldown between stealthing and unstealthing, gah. With the expansion PoE's stealth will become better

No it will not. By all accounts once combat starts you cannot go back into Stealth in PoE expansion (I hope I am wrong) when you could in IE games. It even had a cool line of sight system connected with it and it had penalties on stealth skills based on amount of light where you tried to go into Stealth.

 

[hell bovine]

We can then conclude BG devs were superior based on various assumptions which cannot be verified

Actually, I would say that in that aspect BG modders were superior to Obsidian developers, because hack jobs or not, combat in SCS and Tactics was way more fun than in Pillars. At this point, the only way I'd buy this expansion was if someone made a mod that reworked the combat (not likely), or if there was little combat in it (even less likely).

 

[Excidium II]

I have no idea how hackable PoE is but I remember there being an effort about it, not sure if it died down along with general interest in the game

 

[Bubbles]

1.07 was renamed to 2.0. It will be available for everyone - expansion or not.

So the next patch will be the expansion patch.

 

[Sensuki]

At this point, the only way I'd buy this expansion was if someone made a mod that reworked the combat (not likely), or if there was little combat in it (even less likely).

The game isn't good enough to have such a community. Simple as that really.