Friday, August 22, 2014

Character generation: v257

Last Updated: 8/23/2014 3:47 AM EST

So having played with chargen for the past 5 hours, I've come up with a few thoughts and suggestions. This is v257.

The one thing that I will consistently be saying is this:

"The first rule of software design is documentation, documentation, documentation!" 
If the devs don't document concisely and clearly the choices that players make it's really their fault when we make a choice that we didn't understand the repercussions to.

As such, I've already noticed that there have been quite a few places where the descriptions are not clear nor useful. I'll try to mention them as I get to them.
  1. Picking male or female is easy enough. The correct symbol doesn't show, however, at the top. It always shows male.

  2. Races, subraces, and cultures should be grouped together. Along the same vein, when picking the culture and background, the game should inform the player as to whether the selected race/culture/background combination is considered "common" or "uncommon" in the Dyrwood. Like in D&D, finding Drow (outside of the IE games) was considered rare and sort of not expected in many communities. This idea is true for all god-like, but finding pale elves should also be a rarity (or pale elf slaves), and so players should be informed of this. We don't have a good understanding of the lore when starting the game, so the game should notify us (in big red letters) that this is not a common combination. I utilized the information found on each of the descriptions for each of the categories, but if I wanted to role-play this and know whether it is a common or uncommon combination, I'd have to flip back and forth between the four categories until I figured out whether the combination was rare or common.

    Or alternatively: This should already be found in a design document somewhere or in some excel file, so it shouldn't be too hard to implement. There are 1050 combinations (15 subraces total, with 7 cultures, and 10 backgrounds; 15x7x10=1050), so it seems like a lot, except all 4 godlike subraces are considered uncommon (with a few exceptions, like the Fire godlike in the deadfire archipelago) as are most of the Aumaua.

    I spent about an hour coming up with this Excel sheet as to the rarity of the categories based on race, subrace, culture, and background. It would be great if the devs could look at this and adjust as necessary. Some combinations of this can be easily implemented in-game with a few lines of code; others are a little more complicated.

    https://www.opendrive.com/folders?NF8xNTE3NjYzM19URnd1Qw

    A few examples:

    If[race=Godlike, subrace != fire], then flag uncommon, else [race=godlike, subrace = fire, culture=deadfire archipelago], then flag common;

    If[race=Human, subrace = savannah, culture=ixamitl] then flag common, else flag uncommon;

    If[race=Human, culture = Rautai], then flag uncommon;

    Once you get the big categories like this, you'll be left with the few edge cases which can be hard-coded in. Another way to encode this would be to use the excel sheet as a database, and do a lookup function based on the categories and then use that lookup as the input

    Why is this important? Well, one for someone who wants to follow the rules of your game, it is important to know what the role-playing lore is. Secondly, flagging characters as rare, uncommon, or common, more easily allows the conversation nodes with "weird person" flags to take place. Godlikes aren't the only weird combinations in the world of Eora, and so other combinations should also be taken into account. Players should however, be notified of this ahead of time.

  3. I noticed each subrace in Pillars has their own special passive ability, except of course, the humans. All human subraces have "fighting spirit" as their special passive ability. This should likely be noted in the main description of the human race, so that players are aware. Again, more information allows players to understand the pros and cons of the choices they are making. Not really a big deal though. 

  4. Many people have rightly complained about the lack of choice when it comes to deciding class options. In many of the classes, certain passive abilities and active abilities are set at the beginning of chargen. I can understand the developers wanting to help players make informed choices, but I think allowing further choices would be nice. As an example, the barbarian is given Frenzy (3 per rest), Carnage, and Wild Sprint (3 per rest) as starting abilities. It would be much more interesting for players (even if it only has to be under expert mode) to choose the number of wild sprints and frenzies they wish to take. Similarly, being able to choose or not choose carnage should be a choice for the player (if this doesn't mess with the game mechanics too much). Instead, perhaps the player wishes to forgo carnage for another additional wild sprint instead. The increases in one ability are balanced by decreases in another ability (for example, a point-buy system, you have 7 points (3 wild sprint, 1 carnage, 3 frenzies), you can buy as many of the abilities available as you wish, passives cost 1 point and get locked out after purchase, actives can be purchased in multiples, restrictions may or may not apply). that way you can have Carnage, 5 wild sprints, and 1 frenzy or any other weird combination you want. This allows further customization in the most important aspect of character creation: choosing the class and its abilities.  Follow the same procedure with other classes. Certain abilities (priest/druid spells) might not be choosable, but Obsidian should allow as much choice as possible. If players don't know what to buy, devs can simply implement a "help me" or "choose for me" option that would pick for them.

  5. Others, such as Sensuki, have mentioned the poor descriptions used in describing abilities. I want to re-emphasize: The first rule of software design is documentation, documentation, documentation! Abilities should be clear as to what they do. Again, as an example, Frenzy is described on the barbarian description page as
    "The barbarian's attack speed, Might, and Resolve increase in exchange for a penalty to Deflection. 3/Rest."
    However, mousing over the frenzy icon under the class at the top of the screen is much more detailed (as it should be).
    "Frenzy: x1.33 attack speed, -10 deflection, Health and Stamina concealed, +4 Resolve, +4 Might (10.0 sec). Sends the Barbarian into a frenzied state, increasing melee damage and granting a temporary massive Stamina bonus but causing a Deflection penalty against incoming attacks."
    That second description is so much nicer! Why not just use that description twice? Or something along the lines of:
    "Frenzy: Sends the Barbarian into a frenzied state (x1.33 attack speed), increasing melee damage (+4 Might) and granting a temporary massive Stamina bonus (+4 Resolve) but causing a Deflection penalty (-10 deflection) against incoming attacks while also concealing Health and Stamina. Lasts 10.0 seconds."

    UPDATE: Of course, some state that too much detail can be off-putting for new players. I think it's a valid point, as long as players do have the ability to find the information they're looking for when required. I didn't initially realize that the tiny icons at the top had this additional detail, but with that additional detail, it's workable. Of course, when leveling up, it becomes very important. (I'll be doing another post on level-ups and my gripes with that system.)

    Bug!Speaking of which, shouldn't this be +4 constitution, not resolve, as that increases stamina?
     
  6. When clicking ahead in chargen, the options should be randomized, not set to the same default. So attributes should be randomly allocated, the class should be randomly selected (currently it default selects the fighter), and appearance choices should be randomized as well. Portrait choices can also be random, though I can understand the difficulty of picking a portrait that correlates with the randomized appearance: that's something the player can go back and fix.

  7.  Going back to cultures for a second, it seems like the cultures and their "mechanics" were really half-hearted. There really isn't much thought as to which cultures get which bonuses.

    Aedyr: +1 Resolve
    Deadfire Archipelago: +1 Dexterity
    Ixamitl Plains: +1 Resolve
    Old Vailia: +1 Intellect
    Rauatai: +1 Intellect
    The Living Lands: +1 Might
    The White that Wends: +1 Dexterity
     
    What? Where is the culture that affects constitution or perception? I also think that these bonuses are way too arbitrary and really show how much of a little impact the attributes have on the characters. (I'll talk about attributes more fully in another post).

    My suggestion is to mix this up AND instead of giving more bonus attributes (so many points all over the place!), just allow characters from those cultures a higher maximum (because as we already mentioned attribute point-buying will come after determining race/subrace/culture/background) without actually giving them the extra attribute.

    So for example, a Meadow Folk Human (+2 MIGHT) from Old Vailia (+1 MAX INTELLECT) would start with an extra 2 points in MIGHT, but their maximum MIGHT is still set at 18 while their intellect can be maxed to 19. If the Meadow Folk (+2 MIGHT) comes from The Living Lands (+1 MAX MIGHT), they can up their maximum MIGHT to 19, but they'd still have to buy up to 19. Another alternative is to make the race of a character increase the maximum an attribute can reach, while the culture gives the extra point (A Meadow folk human (+2 MAX MIGHT) could go up to 20 in might, but only gets an additional point in might if he's from The Living Lands (+1 MIGHT).

    It's important to adjust the cultures to make sure each culture can give an additional attribute point.

    Here are my suggestions:
    Aedyr: Can choose any attribute to increase max by 1 as they are the "main characters."
    Deadfire Archipelago: +1 DEXTERITY because of the pirate-lore
    Ixamitl Plains: +1 RESOLVE because hard-working farmers have resolve.
    Old Vailia: +1 INTELLECT because they is smart
    Rauatai: +1 PERCEPTION because massive storms means you've adjusted to seeing better
    The Living Lands: +1 MIGHT because they've been living off the lands
    The White that Wends: +1 CONSTITUTION because it's a harsh place to live
  8. Backgrounds are fine: no mechanics involved, nothing to see here.
OK whew, that was a lot. But that's it for my suggestions for CharGen. Let me know what you think.

Thoughts on the UI and weapon sets: v257

I've got a lot to say about the UI and the way abilities are placed and hotkey use, but I will suffice it for now with this singular suggestion: put the weapon sets completely away from the abilities. Put them to the right of each portrait and keep the abilities separate from them. I've done a mock-up of what I'm describing and attached it here.

Aumaua facial models: ugly and unsettling. v257

v257.

I really find the Aumaua facial models to be in that "uncanny valley" space what with their hypertelorism (eyes far apart). I understand that they are some sort of "shark-people," but the models for the Aumaua should be changed to get rid of the hypertelorism. I've attached a copy of before and afters of the facial models without hypertelorism and I think they look a lot better.


Beta begins: v257

A fellow forumite from the Obsidian forums, Lycana (thanks!), was kind enough to give me a beta key and so I'll try to give some feedback to the devs so that hopefully the game will be more intuitive and fun.

So this is the place where I'll be recording my thoughts and suggestions on the Pillars of Eternity beta. The forums which I usually read (Obsidian and RPGcodex) are filled with so much bitching and useless criticism that I've stopped reading them except for a few select people who are known to have good comments (most people know who they are). As such, I want to also give my feedback without it being swallowed beneath the shitpile of uninformed or not-so-constructive criticism.

A few rules:

  1. I'll mention the beta version in the title of each post so that readers know which version I'm talking about.
  2. I don't like having to reattach my computer specs each time, so I've attached a text file from the DirectX diagnostic tool with my specs and copied that info at the bottom of this post.
  3. Suggestions would be written out to the best of my abilities. Please let me know if you don't understand what I'm trying to say.
  4. Bugs will get this little image:  so devs can find them faster.

This first post is with regards to the beta v257.

The first comment I'll make is that the game crashes an unbelievable amount of times. After scouring the forums, one member, fluffle mentioned that she was having the same trouble and that it had to do with memory leaks and Windows 7 32-bit, which apparently doesn't handle high memory usage as well as 64-bit. Anyway, she referred me to http://windows7themes.net/en-us/32-bit-use-bcdedit-set-increaseuserva-to-increase-ram-used-by-single-application/ which solved the problem. At least, now the game is chugging along.


Crashes occured:
1- character creation - picking classes, races, and subraces
2- between map transitions
3- inventory screen while unequipping armor
4-  saving/loading games.
5- whenever loading screens occured.
6- at the beginning of the game after the introduction of the title screen, right before character generation.