prodigydancer

I think that keeping the engagement system is not a sane option. And when people say "well it's just an AoO after all, what's so wrong about it?" it's basically not looking at the whole picture. You can't detach melee engagement from the rest of combat system and defend it on the ground that there's nothing wrong with the concept itself. Eating an AoO is a really big deal in PoE not because AoO is a bad concept but because of how health/endurance and resting supplies systems make health a very limited and precious resource.

I disagree about Dragon Age combat. Just because it's rotation-based instead of resource-based doesn't make it bad. It felt different from IE games but I still enjoyed it greatly.

There are only so many winning strategies for every given party composition. We can come back to this discussion closer to launch day. As it stands right now, we don't need any specific UI all that much. All we need is to enter stealth mode to get the jump and, in your own words, "use strong openers" to get rid of certain enemies very quickly. Once the dangerous ones are down the rest doesn't matter. You do a lot of pausing in your combat tutorial video but since the important phase of the fight there only lasts 2 rounds it's not a big deal. And from your vs. Medreth series I got the impression that it's a typical scenario. If Obsidian opts for a serious combat system revamp and longer fights, revisiting every character in every round may become quite tedious.

@Kjaamor Circles aren't any more helpful than overhead bars because they don't help us assess the situation as a whole. I already suggested (in this thread or in another one) using something akin to Cooldown Count addon from WoW. Since we're able to queue actions in PoE it could be modified to show not just recovery cooldowns but also action queues for all characters. If Obsidian is serious about fixing combat (time will tell) and fights won't typically be resolved in 1-2 rounds queues will be useful and we should be able to see them all at once.

It's nice for you to admit you're in denial. Would be even nice if you snapped out of it. OK, now a serious question: have you ever seen WoW or NWN? Even a screenshot? Because you're embarrassing yourself saying such things.

I wonder if you played MMOs before WoW. EQ1 had completely different UI. L2 and NWN were close but not quite there. And yes addons helped a lot but vanilla WoW UI was a solid base to build upon.

Thanks Sensuki! As always, any effort to make things better is appreciated but there's one thing that is deeply worrying me. The issues with combat we've been observing since BB initial release in August have all the telltale signs of developers not using their own product. (And before anyone cries "impossible" - sorry, guys, it's a very common situation in software development.) They are probably good enough at programming and they know how to make things nominally work but they're obviously not gamers and they don't actually play the game much. Chances are (if, for example, they use the test-driven development model) they almost never touch it at all. What this means for us is that feedback can make certain isolated issues here and there go away but no amount of feedback will help with complex structural problems like combat pacing, inconvenient UI, broken attribute system and useless abilities. At this point I'm quite pessimistic about what can be done.

LoL. You may not like the fact but that doesn't make it untrue. Before 2005 MMORPGs had very different (and IMO much less convenient) UIs.

Seriously, have you ever play DA2 on Nightmare? Trying to barge through templar assassins was a sure way to get your ass kicked in no time. DA:O on Nightmare was much, much easier than DA2.

It's still RTwP, isn't it? So why mash buttons?

It's still on my to do list but everyone says it's great so it probably is.

It's not how I remember the original. Need to try IWD EE - maybe it's more challenging.

I was a huge D2 fan and I played WoW till they ruined it with vehicle system. After D3 Blizzard is dead to me. They're still afloat only because they have a horde of fanboys who totally fail to understand how anyone can dislike and criticize Blizzard games and policies. When I posted on battle.net that I wouldn't buy RoS their response was basically "now you say this but on launch day you won't be able to resist". Yeah, right.

IWD/IWD2 were good hack'n'slash games so they were not about having a soul. NWN and SRR were more about helping people create their own content rather than proving great official campaigns. (But I liked Dead Man's Switch nevertheless.) And my opinion is that WL2 has more "soul" than NWN2. In fact I'd rate it very high on the "soul" list - probably right behind PS:T and BG series.

You're clearly in minority with this opinion.

I think that rest icon should be right above the clock. Overall it's great. Even if Obsidian doesn't want to consider BG-like HUD option, I see how it could be a popular mod.

There's certainly a strange ambivalence in their approach. They want to market PoE as a spiritual successor to IE games but at the same time in many cases they want to distance it from IE legacy as much as possible.

I think it's excellent. Much better than the default PoE HUD.

So they got halflings. Why haven't I seen any?

If #GamerGate has taught us anything it's that "reputable" video game sites are no better.

Heh. I remember playing IE games like that. I was a total RPG noob, I didn't know anything about D&D and had to google what that "d" letter in weapon descriptions stood for. In DA:O I was also pausing a lot (on Nightmare) until maybe level 10. DA2 on Nightmare was one huge pausefest.

Of course. Actually right from the start BioWare announced they were going to build upon DA2 foundations fixing problems and adding some missing elements but not going back to Origins. DA2 was an ARPG and DA:I will be an ARPG too. Still, comparing it to Assassin's Creed looks like going to far because AC was a stealth/parkour game and it had no RPG elements. --- Also sounds just plain wrong. Or does DA:I actually use D&D ruleset? That would be a big surprise to me... /confused

I think Nonek asked a good question and the implications merit some analysis. Depending on how powerful gear is relative to character's stats and abilities perceived balance or imbalance of BB combat may be totally misleading. This reminds me of how weak my party felt when they were making their way through Irenicus Dungeon and fighting trivial monsters. And how quickly their power grew when they geared up after that.

Wasn't the whole point of grazes to make damage less bursty?

Um. You need to be very careful with animations and how they affect combat. Remember how (mathematically proven) best DPS for melee rogue in DA:O was auto-attack? That's right, "active" abilities had bonus damage on paper but time wasted on animations made them inferior.