Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Infinitron]

new interview with balance master:

http://uk.ign.com/videos/2015/08/06/pillars-of-eternity-the-white-march-gameplay-demo-ign-live-gamescom-2015?utm_source=IGN hub page&utm_medium=PC&utm_content=1&utm_campaign=Blogroll

looks like they will be doing actual unique weapons this time

 

[Athelas]

Console port all but confirmed.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

well that got my attention. Really want it ! :D

 

[Infinitron]

Josh Sawyer at the Paradox Gamescom conference: http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/v/9931376

Starts at around 43:00

 

[Gord]

Anyone in the patch 2.0 beta?

Spoiler

Hey, everyone. The changelist for this beta is very large and we are still going through it all. We will be listing many of our fixes and changes, but some may fall through the cracks.

NOTE: Backups of 1.06 saves are created in your Saved Games folder. 2.0+ saves may not be used in 1.06 and earlier builds.

Major Known Issues

• After long period of playing audio can start to cut out erratically. It is being investigated and should be fixed before the next beta patch.
• Some recipes were not intended to be released and will not show in the UI correctly. They will be removed in the next Update beta release.
• New voice set titles are missing strings. Fixed for future update.
• Ranger's pet AI is not working. Currently being investigated.
• Retraining a Wood Elf causes a duplication of their starting ability. We are investigating other races.
• Retraining is not setting attributes properly and is not costing money.

Major New Features

• Companion AI - You may now set your companions to use AI. For those of you that do not want to micromanage your party, you may now choose to have the AI perform basic commands for you. You can activate and deactivate the AI control at any time, so you can still have ultimate party control when you need it. Each class has specialized AI packages and we will be adding more in the future.
• Improved Creature AI - Creatures and NPCs will now act more intelligently and make better use of their abilities and spells.
• Character Retraining - You may now retrain your character and modify their stats for a small fee.
• Individual Stealth - You may now place individual party members into scouting mode. If some of your party enters combat you will no longer have your entire party leave stealth.
• Range Indicators - There are now range indicators to let you know the casting range of spells and abilities. Now you will know if your wizard is going to move before he casts that Fireball. =)
• Accuracy Indicators - You are now shown the chance to hit on all attacks, abilities, and spells by mousing-over a potential target.

Fixed Issues
Areas

• Fixed issue where Calisca was not being teleported after resting in the Ruin Interior.

Attributes, Abilities, Spells, and Skills

• Changed Perception bonus from Deflection to Accuracy.
• Fixed crash that could happen if a Wizard had the Blast ability and targeting many targets.
• Increased Constitution bonus to Endurance and Health from 3% to 5%.
• Changed lockpicking so that it now uses three lockpicks if the lock is above your level, one lockpick if the lock is equal to your level, and no lockpicks if the lock is below your level.

Audio

• Polished many sound effects around the game.
• Fixed weapon ineffective voice over that was playing at incorrect times.
• Fixed a problem where pausing the game could cause VO and/or barkstrings to finish early.

Gameplay

• Fixed a problem where friendly auras could grow in size after a save and load.
• Fixed an issue where chant effects were considered item effects for stacking purposes. This was causing incorrect bonus calculation.
• Suppressed "Target Destroyed" autopausing if target was the last target in the combat. This will prevent automatic pauses at the end of combat.
• Figurines now have summon durations.
• Chanter invocations now have durations.
• Speed item mod now works correctly.
• Improved resting bonuses from the Stronghold.
• Noble's Rest Intelligence bonus lowered to +2.
• Scroll of Missile Barrage to be combat only.
• Fixed a problem where stealing part of a stack wasn't registered as stealing.
• Stealing now only loses reputation once per container.
• We now have immunities in the game. Some creatures have been updated to make use of them. I'm looking at you blights and dragons...
• Changed amount of Health that are healed with Wound Binding and Field Triage.
• Looting equipment off of enemies unequips it from their dead body.
• Autosave system now uses 3 rolling autosaves instead of one.
• Improved quality of font text when the game is at a higher resolution than 1920x1200.

Korean

• The Korean font was changed to something more legible.

OSX

• Fixed issue where switching resolutions in windowed mode on the Mac was not working properly.
• Attempted fix for Mac where game crashes on saves at times.

UI

• Fixed issue where spells with summons could display incorrect info at times.
• Fixed issue where sorting depth of some UI elements were being changed over time. This was causing some UI screens (like tooltips) to render under active UI screens.
• Changed formatting of item mods to remove the item mod title and only list the effect. This was to clean up the UI.
• Added range indicators for Wizard's Blast.
• Added range indicators for Paladin auras.
• Added range indicators for Barbarian's Carnage.
• Fixed a problem where the spell casting cursor didn't refesh its image at times.
• Fixed issue where inspecting ingredients when crafting could show improper descriptions and icons.
• Fixed issue where Party Formation UI could overlap with Looting UI.
• Level up screen background has been updated.
• Resting bonuses from inns now display the length of time they are active.
• Moved Skills before Active Effects in character sheet.
• Stopped scroll position from reseting when changing characters in the character sheet.
• Made options in the language dropdown always use their native font instead of the font for the current language.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to mess up spell selection in Character Creation by moving between stages.
• Fixed issue where secondary AoE effects were not properly displaying qualifiers. For example, Holy Radiance's Burn AoE only affects vessels, but the description made it appear as if it damaged all enemies.
• Fixed UI issue where all chants were being labeled "A" after a save and load.
• Fixed issue where chants could get moved out of order after loading a saved game.
• Examinable descriptions will no longer disappear while the game is paused
• Fixed checkbox and numeric widgets on message boxes sometimes showing for a frame
• Fixed problems where sometimes UI wouldn't differentiate between auras and hazards in descriptions.
• Fixed a problem where some long titles were being cut off in the UI.
• Fixed stuttering issues with scrolling text.
• Fixed an issue where status effects applied by enemy equipment wasn't being shown in the UI

Perception now giving an accuracy bonus? I guess that makes PER the single most important attribute that everyone should have.

 

[Roguey]

I wouldn't dump it, but you don't necessarily need to max it. You can get at most 20-21 perception at character creation and that's the equivalent of a D&D +2. Not like 2e where 18/00 gives you +3 (and stuck with +1 for non-fighterst) or 3e where you can get +4-5.

Josh needs to shave his entire head again. I hate undercuts.

Here's a random Joshpost where he talks about schooling a tabletop hack:

As much as it's fun to hate on Sean K Reynolds, it turns out Paizo basically made him into a PR mouthpiece covering up the insane lack of balance in PF, even though he's nominally an author. So basically when he would make posts in the Q&A forum about how feat taxes = system mastery and how not being a CoDzilla = water balloon specialist he was repeating exactly what he was told to say. So I feel kinda bad for him.

don't, he's an asshole according to ~inside sources~ who've known him for years

i was his boss for a while at Black Isle and he was never an asshole IME. he had strong opinions on RPGs and when we disagreed i would tell him his opinion was bad and wrong and he took it as well as anyone would, i think.

 

[Gord]

How big is the bonus, in absolute numbers?
I'm on the GOG version, so I can't join the beta.

 

[ArchAngel]

I wouldn't dump it, but you don't necessarily need to max it. You can get at most 20-21 perception at character creation and that's the equivalent of a D&D +2. Not like 2e where 18/00 gives you +3 (and stuck with +1 for non-fighterst) or 3e where you can get +4-5.

Josh needs to shave his entire head again. I hate undercuts.

Here's a random Joshpost where he talks about schooling a tabletop hack:

That explains why we have not heard anything about Pathfinder RPG yet :D
There is bad blood between Josh and influential people at Paizo :D
Seems Josh pushes all the wrong buttons in a lot of places and with a lot of people.

 

[Infinitron]

Sean K. Reynolds is doing a dungeon for BT4

 

[Gord]

Btw. whoever moved my earlier post - I didn't put it into the expansion thread on purpose, as the 2.0 patch will be released for the base game as well.

 

[LESS T_T]

Gamescom screenshots, are these new?:

Spoiler

And the key art in high resolution (beware, it's 4.4MB):
https://www.paradoxplaza.com/media/...b8d27136e95/p/x/px1_keyart_final_2.2.flat.jpg

 

[Excidium II]

And the key art in high resolution (beware, it's 4.4MB):
https://www.paradoxplaza.com/media/...b8d27136e95/p/x/px1_keyart_final_2.2.flat.jpg

Did the watcher take the picture or was away taking a dump?

 

[Infinitron]

I believe this is The White March SteamDB page: https://steamdb.info/app/373340/subs/

You can also see its depots here ("PX1"): https://steamdb.info/app/291650/depots/

There's also a PX2.

 

[Infinitron]

Another screenshot from Paradox that I hadn't seen before:

 

[Pope Amole II]

Perception now giving an accuracy bonus? I guess that makes PER the single most important attribute that everyone should have.

Nah, not really. Because of the graze system, each accuracy point is something like +2% damage dealt. Which is decent (especially considering that it multiplies with other bonuses), but not really a no-brainer.

And it's too bad that the beta changelog is so incomplete - I've messed with the game a bit, trying to find a small changes here and there (for example - they've nerfed cautious attack and now it's only +8 deflection), but in the end it got too tedious to do this stuff manually, especially since analyzing the current system is pretty pointless until we see what does the White March bring in.

 

[Infinitron]

The White March live on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/v/10008524

Starts at around 1:54:30

 

[Wulfstand]

The White March live on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/twitch



http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/v/10008524

Why is it that in every Gamescon recording I see, out of the entire 20 minutes from the video, you only get 2 minutes of actual gameplay, the rest of the time you spend staring at the presenters. 'Show, don't tell' must be some sort of banned household rule.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh mentions new "high level combat areas" meant to challenge high level parties. The footage shows one of them, an area called Craghold Bluffs.

 

[Jaedar]

Why is it that in every Gamescon recording I see, out of the entire 20 minutes from the video, you only get 2 minutes of actual gameplay, the rest of the time you spend staring at the presenters. 'Show, don't tell' must be some sort of banned household rule.

To be fair, being able to talk to the developer and not just watch the video is the only reason to have a convention instead of just posting a video on youtube.

But I agree somewhat. I wish they'd show more, and not just talk.

 

[Morblot]

That explains why we have not heard anything about Pathfinder RPG yet :D
There is bad blood between Josh and influential people at Paizo :D
Seems Josh pushes all the wrong buttons in a lot of places and with a lot of people.

Sean K. Reynolds left Paizo well over a year ago and is again working for WotC.

 

[Roguey]

This is like Icewind Dale 2 when it comes to background art. Not enough time for polish, looks kinda ugly.

 

[Wulfstand]

To be fair, being able to talk to the developer and not just watch the video is the only reason to have a convention instead of just posting a video on youtube.

But I agree somewhat. I wish they'd show more, and not just talk.

They could do both, let the viewer both see the gameplay and hear the developer+occasioanlly show his mug on screen as well.

 

[ArchAngel]

Sean K. Reynolds left Paizo well over a year ago and is again working for WotC.

Ah. That also explains a lot :D
Explains why they went with Paizo partnership and not wizards one :D

 

[Lhynn]

Nah, not really. Because of the graze system, each accuracy point is something like +2% damage dealt. Which is decent (especially considering that it multiplies with other bonuses), but not really a no-brainer.

Thatd be true if it also didnt mean a +1% crit rate. and the fact that the strength of most effects is tied to the bloody thing actually landing, and you need accuracy for that.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh hey, here's the Comic Con panel from last month, where they "designed" an area: http://www.vrideo.com/watch/EqAVviu

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/115...he-white-march-comic-con-panel-recording.html

It took almost a month for the official recording of Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity San Diego Comic-con panel to surface online, but it's now finally available for anyone who wasn't able to attend the popular convention. The panelists were concept artist Kaz Aruga, senior level designer Jorge Salgado, lead writer Eric Fenstermaker, lead level designer Bobby Null, game director J.E. Sawyer and executive producer Adam Brennecke. They provided a look into the area design process at Obsidian by working on an area for The White March Part II expansion to Pillars of Eternity live. The panel also included some limited audience interaction, in the form of a vote between various options provided by Obsidian.

The presentation feels very staged, and the recording is seemingly incomplete (the presentation was meant to run for 45 minutes, but the video is only 20 minutes long), but it's still worth watching if you're interested in the nitty-gritty of game development (although it's not nearly as good as many of the essays available on Gamasutra and similar places), or if you're a fan of Pillars of Eternity to the point that you absolutely need a sneak peek of the kind of the second part of The White March expansion.