Pillars of Eternity - New Beta Patch Released

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Couchpotato

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Brian Adler of Obsidian posted information about a new Backer Beta patch.
Hey, everyone. The latest Backer Beta update is now live. We hope you enjoy. I have included some patch notes.

Thanks for all of the help in testing the game and providing useful feedback.

Talents and Core Abilities

Over a hundred Talents have been added to allow more options for class customization during the level up process. We've adjusted how the core class abilities are granted to allow for more flexibility within each class.

Revised Skill Progression

You can no longer spend points to upgrade skills during level up. All skill advancement is now done through Talents, and thematically grouped Talents will award additional skill points if chosen during level up. Your background choice during character creation will also reward additional skill points.

Fog Of War

The Fog of War has been upgraded to obey the sight visibility for the party members. No more cheating by looking over walls and closed doors in dungeons!

Experience Points

We decided to add a few more ways to gain experience points to increase the regularity that XP is rewarded throughout the game. We've added minor bestiary, exploration, lock, and trap XP rewards. Bestiary XP is rewarded when new entries are unlocked in the Bestiary page in the Journal, and will stop being rewarded if the entry is complete. Exploration XP is given out when new areas and landmarks are discovered in the world.

Glossary

An in game glossary has been added with explanation and definitions of game and combat rules. These entries are hyperlinked so you can easily find information on what you are looking for. You can click directly on keywords in the combat log, or open up the Journal's Glossary page.

Hotkeys

Hotkeys can be assigned to any ability on the hot bar and additionally be access through a quick hotkey menu. We still intend to revise how this system works, but please provide feedback if you like or dislike our direction.

EDIT: I forgot to add that the Mac build is now available for download from Steam! The Linux build still has a problem with loading and unloading asset bundles. Unity knows about the issue and we will release the Linux build once they post a fix. Thanks for the patience.
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Visit the link above for the full change list as it's to long to fit in the news-bit.

More information.
 
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these are all bug fixes )

how about something new?
 
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Obsidian is still tinkering with the core class/talent/XP system. On the one hand this is a good thing, because the early alphas showed several system flaws, on the other hand it's dangerous to change core mechanisms so late in a project.
I hope they get it done somehow.
 
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In this game design, skills have been atrophied down until they've become a set of secondary attributes. Why even call them skills? I'm not sure I'd want to play this as a PnP game. Still, you never know. This may turn out to be be entertaining, even though it seems more like DS2 now than D&D.
 
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forgottenlor said:
People said the same thing during the Might and Magic X and Wasteland 2 betas, and those games turned out quite well, so I'll save my judgement for the finished game.
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Yes they did and look at how both turned out to be some of the more successful games this year. I sometimes think some gamers just like to be negative about everything.

I'm looking froward to playing the final version sometime next year.:)
 
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Ovenall said:
Any other early opinions on this? I'm kind of put off by some of the wacky races they came up with, but haven't touched the game itself.
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It's really a YMMV thing. For example, I think the races are cool. I really love the Godlikes and Orlans. I also preferred to play the buggy beta over Wasteland 2 a few weeks ago when I was in vacation (and there is barely 3 hours of content in the beta).

As for the game itself, the base concept is solid from my point of view. The main problems are annoying issues related to combat: AI has a few bugs, pathfinding is horrible (they are rewriting it), balance is all over the place, etc. Nothing they can't fix before release though.

The change to the skill acquisition system was a bit out of the blue though. I know why Josh decided to do it, but I don't think it does what he was expecting. I don't think it's going to stay like that personally.
 
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From what I read from beta players, combat still sucks. Game is too fast and everyone deals too much damage too fast. Your lvl 5 tank can go down in 6 seconds and your Rogue characters one shot enemies if they score a crit which can be a big chance with the system the game has.
 
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Archangel said:
your Rogue characters one shot enemies if they score a crit which can be a big chance with the system the game has.
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This isn't true in the latest build.
 
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Archangel said:
Someone said they do 160 with criticals.
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That's normal with the Rogue's bonus damage, other classes will reach 100-110 with the same weapon when doing a crit. The problem was they happened too often and sometimes reached impossible values (256-300 range).
 
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mbpopolano24 said:
This game sucks. Plain and simple.
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Well, gee that was a useful comment. I think I will also wait to play it myself, your review was lacking.
 
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Combat could work itself out I hope.

I'm more concerned about the size of the areas. They seem way too small and don't lend themselves to a feeling of exploring anything. Also too late to really change that I imagine, so feeling more than a little bothered by it.

It's all in the little touches for me, and Obsidian seem to have overlooked so much of what worked for the infinity engine games, it's disheartening. They pretty much re-invented the wheel for mechanics that didn't really need more than tweaking and streamlining a bit. No-one asked them to do this. Oh well, I'll live.
 
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Silver said:
Combat could work itself out I hope.

I'm more concerned about the size of the areas. They seem way too small and don't lend themselves to a feeling of exploring anything. Also too late to really change that I imagine, so feeling more than a little bothered by it.

It's all in the little touches for me, and Obsidian seem to have overlooked so much of what worked for the infinity engine games, it's disheartening. They pretty much re-invented the wheel for mechanics that didn't really need more than tweaking and streamlining a bit. No-one asked them to do this. Oh well, I'll live.
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J.E.Sawyer is a big fan on D&D4e and does not like any of the other editions so he took it upon himself to "fix" all the problems. But then he also did some thing worse than 4e lol, like melee engagement thing.
 
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I'm a sucker for party creation and reactivity. PoE probably won't disappoint there. Now they only need to get customization options right and I'll be happy.
 
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