Backer Beta Updates

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The first update to the beta demo was released a short time ago, bringing the backer beta to build 278. It looks like a pretty impressive list of changes. It's a 1.7GB download.

The change log, which isn't exhaustive is listed here:

 

I've spent a few hours with the latest release of the backer beta. Overall it's light years better than the initial version. It still requires a lot of work. I have made a handful of new bug reports, and I likely won't be playing too much more until the next update.

I did want to drop a quick screenshot here. I figured we needed at least ONE in this forum!



For what it's worth, this screenshot is not doing the game justice at all. It's around 100x more crisp and beautiful in the game. Looks much better at actual size.

 

One more for posterity:

As a side note, the reason you can't see my Paladin is because she got temporarily "encased" inside the large Aumaua druid. Nothing game breaking. All I had to do was order the party to move, and she went back to her own spot. Lots of bugs yet....

 

@dmc, maybe it goes without saying, but make sure that you start a fresh game after downloading the patch. Things will go much better for you that way.

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A few observations about the backer beta demo. A lot of things remind me of IE, but a lot of things have been changed. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I'm not overly happy so far with many of the changes. Others I don't mind. I'm waiting for more bugs to be squashed and more polish to be added to hopefully see these changes working better. Maybe I'll be more amenable to some of the more "controversial" changes at that point. Regardless, Josh Sawyer and team have definitely reinvented a number of wheels here.


General Comments/Observations

• Overall yes, PoE has that Infinity Engine "feel", which is great.
• The 2D painted backgrounds are amazing. Much like the IE games, but far more beautiful and inspiring. Very high res. stuff.
• The writing so far is top notch. I'm expecting great things here in the full release.
• None of the game's promised 8 companions are included, so I can't say anything about them yet. You start with 4 pre-made characters named BB_Fighter, BB_Priest, etc, in addition to the main character you create. You can also "hire" a 6th companion at the local inn (pay money to create whatever character you like).
• Inventory consists of a few quick slot items for each character, around 8 inventory slots per character and an "unlimited party stash". You can put items in the stash at any time, but you must be at a "rest area" to get anything out. It seems to be bugged at the moment, as I have never been able to retrieve anything from the stash. I can only sell items in the stash to vendors.
• Items have no weight.
• Any class can use any weapon or any armor. So "armored muscle wizards" are a thing in PoE.
• The heavier the armor, the slower a character will attack and cast spells.
• Armor reduces the amount of damage taken. It does not reduce the chance of getting hit.
• Ranged weapons require no ammunition, so you can fire them to your heart's content.
• When a character gets attacked they lose both health and stamina. In general, 1 health is lost for every 4 stamina. If a character runs out of stamina they are unconscious until the end of the fight. If they run out of health they are dead.
• Priests, Paladins and druids can "heal" stamina like a D&D cleric can heal hitpoints, but the only way to recover health is rest.
• Camping in the wild requires camping supplies that must either be found or purchased. Without these you cannot rest unless you find an establish rest area (none are in the beta) or pay to rest at an inn.
• If you pay for a nicer room at an inn, you can get some persistent benefits for your party members. Those will remain until you rest again.
• Very controversially, there is no experience awarded for combat or skill use. The only experience awarded in the game is for completing quests.

Quick comments on Character Attributes

The attributes are Might, Dexterity, Constitution, Perception, Intelligence and Resolve. You start with a 3 in each attribute, and have 57 points to distribute as you see fit. Most attributes can be raised to 18, or perhaps a bit higher depending on racial bonuses. There is no additional cost required to reach higher level attributes, as there is in the D&D point buy system.

Basically nothing works the way it did in D&D. Might, for example, affects how much damage a wizard does with their spells, not just how much damage is done with melee weapons. Intelligence affects the area of effect of any ability, so a wizard's fireball or a barbarian's area attack with an axe. A wizard with 3 INT seems to work just fine, incidentally. "No bad builds" was design goal, albeit one that is the subject of great controversy at this point.

There is supposed to be no throwaway abilities, but its perfectly viable to max strength (damage), dexterity (hit chance) and constitution (health/stamina and healing effectiveness) and tank the other 3, with any class.

This topic alone could be its own post. At the end of the day, I'm not in love with this system. I'm not sure that I hate it either. It just feels very foreign to me at this point. I'm not sure why OE went so far afield here. More time required to formulate my opinions.


Quick comments on combat

There is no such thing as a combat round. Characters simply take actions that take a certain amount of time. Again, wearing heavier armors will make characters attack and cast spells more slowly. Every action takes a certain amount of time, has a recovery period before another action can be taken, and then some additional recovery if wearing armor. It's hard to form a great opinion of this combat model, because it just feels very "in progress". At the moment it is rather awkward, but I'm hopeful to see it tightened up in coming patches. It's already much better in this patch than the previous.

Characters have "modal" abilities that can be activated outside of combat and are persistent. The fighter, for example has an ability the increases its defense that is always on. If you have multiple modal abilities you generally have to choose one only. Note: the fighter has an ability the increases its stamina regeneration which is modal, but they can choose a second modal ability to use in conjunction.

There are also per encounter abilities that can be used a number of times during each combat. And there are per rest abilities that can be used a number of times between resting. Spells are currently per rest abilities, but I understand that at higher levels lower level spells can become per encounter abilities. This isn't in the beta, perhaps because the levels aren't high enough.

Pillars of Eternity was advertised as real time with pause, but I've coined the term "pause with real time" to describe it. Due to the way combat plays out, particularly with all of those per encounter abilities you are going to want to use to get an edge in combat, I'm spending waaaay more time paused than not. This isn't necessarily a critique of the game, but a very real observation. In truth, turn based combat probably would have worked better with PoE's mechanics.

Oh, and combat is pretty hard. Especially if you play on harder difficulties where there are more enemies to fight. No cake walking here.


Quick comments on classes

I'm liking the class variety overall. There are 11 total classes, and everyone should be able to find a similar class to whatever their D&D favorite was. Incidentally, there were also 11 base classes in D&D, but in PoE wizard and sorcerer are effectively melded into a single class. And the sorcerer is "replaced" by the cipher, a caster that gains "focus" to cast spells as a result of making physical attacks.

• The fighter is a great tank, but rather boring as a class. Great at holding the line, but lacking in flavor.
• A rogue is no longer an "essential" class for getting past traps and locks. While they get a boost to their mechanics skill (handles all roguish skills), any class can train in this skill. So a rogue mostly is just a damage dealer, and probably not the best at this. As someone who has always loved rogues, I'm a bit disappointed to see them, in my view, marginalized.
• Wizards rely on a grimoire to cast most of their spells. If they lose their grimoire they basically can't cast anymore. They do have an innate defensive spell that they can cast 2 times per rest. At higher levels they can choose to learn lower level spells as innate spells (i.e. they won't require a grimoire to cast). This requires foregoing adding a new higher level spell. Casting currently works like a D&D sorcerer. So many spells can be cast per rest, but any spell in the equipped grimoire can be cast with memorization.
• Priests are hands down the best healers and buffers. They cast their spells just like a wizard, and have a couple of innate spells that they can cast. A nice debuff called interdiction can be cast once per "encounter" (i.e. you can cast it once during each battle). They are also a bit boring, like the fighter, but you will probably always want one in your part, also like the fighter.
• The chanter is the bard replacement, and it has some rather overpowered summons. Expecting those to be balanced. Very interesting class, but I haven't experimented with it very much yet.
• Rangers have persistent animal companions but druids do not. They are mostly geared to archery, and they share health with their pets. If one gets injured, they both do.
• Druids can shape change into other animals and summon animals for short durations. They also have a lot of crowd control and damage related spells. More of a melee oriented caster (they can cast while shapechanged). I chose the lion form for my druid, and shapechanged into a humanoid lion that was pretty bad ass. What I would expect a werelion to look like. In the beta, druids have a single heal spell, at level 2 I believe, not every level like the priest. So they are much more limited as healers.
• Paladins are effective frontliners and tanks, but less effective than the fighter. They make up for this with some nice persistent auras that benefit all party members in range(only 1 in effect at a time). They also have some cool special attacks and a lay on hands ability.
• Monks I haven't really tried yet. They are most effective when they are getting attacked, as they develop wounds to deliver special attacks. So if your monk doesn't hold agro they are fairly unremarkable from what I understand.
• Barbarians have a lot of AoE attacks. They may not attack any foe as skillfully as a fighter, but when they attack they are likely going to damage all enemies in range. Seems like a fun adaptation of the barb overall. I haven't used this class much yet.

There's plenty more to talk about, like skills. But I've already spent more time on this post than I expected.

 

Added a lot of new screenshots: http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/album.php?albumid=310

 

Steam uses F12 for screenshots, which I actually just learned a few days ago. I'm not sure if there are additional formatting options as I haven't looked into it. I wouldn't be surprised if there were.

 

Agree about turn based. From my mini-review above:

I spend A LOT of time paused in combat. Basically I play as if the game is turned based. Combat is fairly difficult, so if you just send your party in to fight as you might in Baldur's Gate you're probably not going to do well. You're going to want to have your fighter look for those strategic knockdown opportunities, and when to initiate defensive abilities. You're going to want your rogue to use her various sneak attack abilities, and finishing blow becomes more powerful the more injured your target is, so you need to wait until the right time to use it.

And pretty much every class has its similar micromanagement. You want to take advantage of positioning for flanking opportunities. And the engagement mechanic is very different than what were used to in the Infinity Engine.

Add to that that the combat system overall is still extremely raw, unpolished, and subject to plenty of bugs. It's a good deal improved in v278 from what it was in the original release. So here's to hoping that future patches will see improvements to the system itself.

But as for the overall design, Obsidian seems hell bent on releasing in "Winter 2014", so with only a few months left until release, I wouldn't expect any sweeping changes.

 

That's a big topic of discussion on the Obsidian forums right now. I'm in the camp that believes a delay on the release is in the best interest of the game. I know funding is an issue to keep development going, but I would rather see them open up a Steam Early Access offering in the next few months, and use the proceeds to continue polishing the game.

This is what inXile did with Wasteland 2, and by all appearances we are going to have are far better game than we otherwise would have.

 

That's fair. As a beta, the game is fairly rough (though it doesn't quite feel like an alpha anymore to me, as it did upon the initial release).

As for the micromanagement during combat, at this point I'm expecting that this is simply how the game is going to be. With only 3 months and change for the game to be released, and a huge number of bugs yet to be squashed, OE hasn't given much of an opportunity for any significant change to their systems. If you can't deal with that, this may end up being a game that you don't enjoy -- and I'm sure that there will be many others in the same boat.

I'm rather growing used to the combat, personally. Enjoying it even. As I mentioned, I'm playing *as if* it's a turn based game -- except I'm controlling the turns. Pause-with-real-time, as I call it. That wouldn't have been my first choice for the game, but it's growing on me, I will confess.

 

First thing that popped into my head, the second shot especially.

At Marceror or dmc: How are the animations? The talk about the game systems has me feeling better about not plunking down cash for PoE yet, and a little worried as the game systems were what was holding me back in the first place.

Thanks for the screenshots .

 

They're serviceable. Certainly better than they were in the IE games in many respects, which really isn't saying much by today's standards.

They are still a work in progress, and I expect that they will continue to improve until release.

 

I don't expect too much out of a beta as long as it improves. Are the environment animations about the same as the character/creature animations?