[Companion Portrait Consistency]

Always used my own portraits catalog so while I do enjoy good new portraits and appreciate that a lot of people will use the base ones, what really strikes me from what I've seen is the portrait selection screen as it is now.

 

I can only guess (hope!) that there WILL be a way to actually browse through your files, with a good preview system, and pick the one you want from your hard drive directly (ie: improved IE portrait selection system) because a "next/previous" button when I got a library of hundreds portraits is not gonna cut it

[Josh Sawyer visually explains Attack & Recovery]

This way it's a unified system with transparency, more room for variation and only ONE exception - that TWF is quicker

 

 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept that TWF is actually overall slower than everything else while I've been conditioned for the past 30 years to it meaning more attacks per a given time-frame.

 

I'm getting too old for this ****

[Josh Sawyer visually explains Attack & Recovery]

This is very helpful for my next suggestion thread.

 

Already links with your very good UI/tooltip suggestions though: All this **** needs to be 100% crystal clear in game 100% of the time no matter what you do. I mean, if we are to make any relevant decision in the game with items and character builds and whatnot, it all need to be 100% transparent, with a good UI to back it up.

Hopefully they get that sorted REALLY fast as I think it would help a lot you guys to give proper feedback for the balancing stage.

[Josh Sawyer visually explains Attack & Recovery]

Good points Gromnir, but usually video games offset this by making enchantments on 2hd, be scaled up version of their equivalent on 1hd (as in, +5ACC buff on a 1hd, becomes +10ACC for example).

 

Edit:

No idea if this is the case in PoE though! Don't think I ever saw any videos of anyone doing actual enchaments, only briefly showing the menu or something but can't find it now.

[Josh Sawyer visually explains Attack & Recovery]

So I guess what I'm saying is.. this is a great visual infographic, but I highly doubt that 2H weapons doing more damage would be a surprise to OE if it is true. All these values are subject to change. What we need now is the next patch so we can test the combat out and see for ourselves.

 

True of course and all in all, verdicts will be at release and everyone hopes it'll be something fun for them, but we can still laugh at the complete silliness of the whole thing as it stands now, that's also part of the fun of alphas/betas. Just so completely reverse my own mental image of an "adventuring party" it becomes comedy.

 

 

It makes it a superfluous tiny inconvenience, nothing more. Especially if the penalty for switching is 2 pitiful seconds and you have plenty of slots to start with.

 

I do love me some buttons that need to be pushed because....buttons!

[Josh Sawyer visually explains Attack & Recovery]

Well you do have 4 weapon set quick slot right? I think I saw that somewhere in a video. Means your 2hder dudes can easily switch between any damage type and remain at their ultimate damage potential, on the fly, during combat. 

 

Hmm, thinking about it, doesn't having weapon slots make the entire point of having damage type void? I mean, EVERYONE will have weapons slots filled with weapons of each types, since they are more slots than types?

 

 

As an aside, I just cannot put away the picture of what that would give in D&D...

Little halfling who's weaker than a mouse but super agile, in full plate armor with a huge tower shield, wielding a stiletto. Followed by 5 completely stupid (makes it easier to AE in the melee!) naked half-orcs wizards with pointy hats, all wielding massive 2hd great axes. Someone with artistic skills need to make a picture of that

[Josh Sawyer visually explains Attack & Recovery]

Cool!

 

The heroic figures of our new age:

- little stilleto wielding guy in heavy armor and huge shield with 3 might

- 5 naked mages wielding 2hd ultra heavy weapons with 18 might

 

\o/

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

1) Even Mr. Sawyer and everyone else in all demos/shows/trailers/PR videos/etc displayed this exact same basic, normal, casual, logical and expected tactic: tank in big armor and huge defenses up front taking the brunt of the assaults, while others move to side and clean up.
2) The entire Fighter class is designed around this and only this role. The way it's framed, if you have any fighter in your party, every second during a fight where the fighter is NOT standing still and taking as much of the attacks as possible and locking down as much enemies as possible on himself is basically a fail. That's by design (I mean, with the current classes design we've seen. It could of course change).
3) The entire engagement system is set up to allow melee tanky classes (especially fighters) to lock down as many enemies in melee as possible.

You can of course, just like in IE games and others, go for more "exotic" routes and party composition, but they are meant to be "exotic" and unlike IE games (and D&D system as a whole), if you have a fighter, he cannot do **** but this single thing: lock down enemies and tank. Anything else he'll try to do will be subpar compared to any other class and basically a wasted space.

I mean, nobody's advocating for ONE way to do things: Tank'n spank. Instead, it seems that Tank'n spank may not be the most logical, normal way to do things and instead will actually punish you because of how the Health system is framed.


Edit:
As a note, and to get away a bit from the purely "battle" issue about Health, you cannot tell me there is not a problem with this.

The guy loses 90% of his Health (and stamina, but that's ok) on something that could be a simple miss-click, or failed perception check or something and there is nothing you can do but Rest, even if you actually JUST rested. Now of course, this could change (and I'm guessing they'll just make all trap not do any Health damage whatsoever because of....reasons) but this can only lead to frustration I'm sorry.

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

You gotta keep in mind though, while I agree on the principle, that this whole part is completely out of whack balance wise. I mean, I agree because it shows the end result and flaws of the system but from all videos I've seen, that poison is completely crazy

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

You get no XP or any reward but trash loot anyway so might as well just try your damnest to totally avoid most fight and just do the quest/encounter ones. Wonder if they disallowed combat mode zoning because one of their tester started just completely ignoring trash mobs and just train/sprint toward the zone out areas or something

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

mutonizer:

Whether or not YOU play a game to win is totally immaterial. It remains a game and must be both judged and designed as such.

Ok then

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

mutonizer:

By your rational, one should just give players infinite stats at level one and let them use what they wanted. Why not let players start at any level they like or with as much gold as they like?

Not at all, this is off the point. Rather, the issue is the equivalent of a design team trying to prevent players from exploiting the system by having extreme dump/max stats (18/18/18/3/3/3) instead of reasonable distribution, and go out of their way to artificially limit the range of stats you can get (for example in IE games, forcing a limit to stats at character creation between 8 and 16 or something).

Or another example, this is like putting "spare boots" as a new resource to limit the amount of time you can travel between areas, because some people abuse the random encounter system and farm loot/xp

 

Essentially, if the player were to fail to exploit a mechanic, then he wouldnt be doing his utmost to win and, therefore, the game will have lost intrinsic value and the player would be supplanting that with extrinsic challenge.

This is 100% a matter of personal opinion and should therefore be left as an open choice to players, especially in a cRPG.

This is not how I play games nor do I play them to win, but because of the journey and experience they offer (which can involve over-coming challenges as I go). Also, I quite often choose options in story or even items that are not "optimal" because of look, feel, character story development, etc. For example, you could put ALL the insane crazy boost and bonus and insta-kill functions you want on an ugly hat, I'd NEVER have any character use it (well, unless it can be hidden!)

[Would team based turn based work well here?]

Would this game work where it was turn based for each side instead of turn based for each character in the battle seperately? So battle begins and the game auto pauses wherein you then click on each of your characters and instruct them what their next round actions are.You then press unpause and your team executes these orders at which point the enemies then all get to take their turns.It would look more fluid IMO and maybe fix some issues of not knowing what is going on in a battle.So basically you tell your  team what to do and they execute and then the enemy team executes their moves and game pauses again.

No, but I wouldn't worry that much really.

 

From all the streams and videos I've seen:

1) You can set fixed "time passed" for auto pause, so you could have the game automatically pause every second, or two seconds, etc.

2) You can set "after cast" auto pause. This means that you can easily keep track of when something is done and when you can use another ability or spell, etc.

3) There are slow, normal and fast speed commands. These are pretty great and from what I've seen, slow speed really allows you to manage your characters even in bigger battles.

4) Lots of the readability issues will most likely be solved/tweaked, which should help. As it is now, buffs/debuffs on characters are very confusing, sometimes missing or not working, with some information displayed, other not, tool-tips are incomplete or obscure, etc. Once that's solved, things should be much easier to follow, understand and manage.

5) The combat log, while apparently problematic for now, is there and has the potential to be really useful. Once again, it needs tweaking mainly.

 

All in all, I "think" once the rough edges start to be smoothed up, the issues you mentioned will mostly disappear.

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

I find it rather stupid that having my wizard or ranged rogue being beat on is actually beneficial to me rather than a detriment.  I mean why hold the line at all?

Because holding the line is playing "badly" now. To play "clever", you indeed would want your wizard and rogue getting beat on, while the fighter on low Health (and full stamina, with priest waiting with all his healing spells available) runs around the map with mobs on his tail to keep them occupied

 

Joking aside, I think the Fighter class will be pretty much immune to critical hits (due to very high DEF) and will end up getting mostly graze hits, unless seriously debuffed or something.

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

The PoE system is good because it avoids the 15 minute work day issue that plagues even pen and paper games (when run by an inexperienced gm). In a crpg, rest exploits trivialize pretty much all strategic (as opposed to tactical) concerns.

Just like many exploits trivialize tactical concerns (AI exploit, pathfinding exploits, pre-igniting fireball, etc).

 

It doesn't mean you have to use them however, it's 100% personal.

In 20+ years of P&P RPGing, "15 minutes work day" has never been even thought about, let alone an actual thing, simply because I never played (or GMed) with anyone who wanted to play that way. I don't mind people playing that way, nobody's forcing them and it doesn't affect me either. What affects me is a rule limitation that, because it tries to solve THAT problem (which isn't even a problem in the first place), then starts to affect me (the "only one long rest per 24 hours rule" for example and other stuff like that).

Well, when I say it affects me...I just house-rule it out (or mod it out) really

 

I mean, look, have you seen how many people just max out all stats to 18 in BG1 & 2 let's plays and the like? Or to exploit AI and do range kitting, or farm random encounters (think it was Sensuki who could quote the actual loot of good random encounters to farm in BG!), or just dump stat CHA because they KNOW they can get that cloak early on? Nobody's forcing them to do it, the game certainly doesn't force them to do it, and it never forced me to do it either. So why would anyone even try to "fix it"? It's NOT a problem.

 

If DT was % rather than a flat number, it would be cool though, but I don't think that's gonna happen.

Yea, doubt it but would indeed be pretty cool and make much more sense I think

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

You're describing a false dichotomy between knowingly devious "exploiters" and righteous "non-exploiters". In reality, there are many players who just want to play by the rules of the game and don't really think of themselves "exploiters" for clicking that rest button. Those players deserve to be treated more honestly.

Devious? Righteous? It's a single player game...who cares how anyone play it?

As for normal players, that's my entire point, they are the ones being punished by such artificial limitation. People who did spam-rest constantly won't give a damn, just abuse another system.

 

But forget it really, the discussion is turning into a "convince me/convince you" battle. Let's agree to disagree.

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

So they should had design such exploit in their new game which they make in every way from scratch?

Hmm?

No, just design a system where it's either a non-issue or (and I'd prefer that), where it's an issue that matters (ie: time passed matters a lot so resting is an important choice) and not just a tacked on arbitrary game limitation.

Instead they designed, from scratch, a system were this might be an issue, THEN added something to limit it. I mean, you remove one element, a single element that is the completely artificial notion of "restricted camping supplies" and you're EXACTLY where IE games stood.

 

And I can assure you, that one of the FIRST thing a lot of people will immediately remove if possible via mods/hacking/save editing, is just that.

 

But really, it's done, it's the way it is, it's their game. It's interesting to discuss the logic of it, but won't have any effect on anything.

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

So when when developers begin their process to produce game should they aim one that don't have bugs (in code, area design, system design) that allow exploitation in it or should they design such exploitation in game in first place? Or what is the point?

That spam-rest is a non-issue that didn't affect anyone but the ones who wanted to abuse it, therefore didn't need any fixing whatsoever. That's my point

 

And the current fix doesn't solve anything, it doesn't solve the "stuck bug with the rock". It just makes the distance between mobs and the rock bigger, hoping that dragging mobs all the way back (or going to the inn to rest) is so boring and frustrating that nobody will do it.

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

If there is players that abuse that rock then there is people that care of it existence 

 

EDIT: More serious note, so developer should not care bugs in their game if they don't block players ability to complete said game?

err..no? unless maybe there's a coder on coffee break and bored or something. But don't take that for what it doesn't mean. If something is there for a reason, it must fulfill that reason without issue (be it cosmetic, etc). That means if there's a typo in a lore text, it must be fixed. If the rock is pink because the texture is screwed up, it must be fixed. If the rock is there to present tactical challenge and whatnot, it must be fixed as well.

 

I mean, sure, if EVERYTHING else is working perfectly, the game is 1000% playable from A to Z without any other issue, then, why not! But otherwise...who cares? 99.9% of your players won't ever notice it and even those who do, probably won't abuse it.

 

As a note, my point was: no reason to try fix everything, fix what's important..just putting it out there that this is my point, not the rock itself

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

As for exploits, it makes sense to try to find and correct them from a design point of view, but don't think you're going to eradicate them entirely.

In a single player game, trying to fix path-finding about a single rock somewhere that makes any mob going close to it get stuck is pointless, simply because there's no mob anywhere close to that rock anyway, so who gives a damn as long as the player cannot get stuck. Sure, some players can pull monsters all the way back to THAT particular rock and abuse it, but really, who cares right?

 

Now, of course, soon as you put multi-player in there (or any competitive or time-sink system really), that's a huge issue. But otherwise....any resource spent to fix that is wasted in my opinion (and that's not to say any resource spent on fixing path-finding in general is wasted, on the contrary, just not THAT particular rock is all.)

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

That's not the argument though.

 

The argument is that unlimited resting trivializes per-rest abilities, in DnD based games, spells. DnD was never intended to have per-encounter spells, but that's effectively what it gets in a cRPG with unlimited resting. One consequence is the way casters eclipse non-casters at high levels.

 

You can always make a game more difficult to make up for that of course. Making things tougher is easy: just raise everything, hit points, attack rolls, saving throws, numbers of enemies, and so on.

Or...you could make time passing actually matter and affects events around you? Cult finishes the ritual, Ogre keeps eating more sheep, bandits cut trade even more, etc.

Anyone tried resting for month at the inn, see if that changes anything with the quests?

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

Depends on what you want, if you want to go move only one character around to scout your surroundings you can do that, but if you want that only one member of the party goes in scouting mode then that isn't possible.

Thanks. And interesting. And very odd at the same time!

No invisibility ability/spell either for now right? Can't remember seeing any.

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

Designers (at least some/one) of those games cared, which is one reason why they wanted change things in PoE.

 

Rest spamming wasn't only reason why they decided to use health/stamina(or endurance) system, but they also wanted to create world where there aren't healing magic that could heal long time injuries and they liked how Darklands' similar system works.

 

And if you read what they have said subject, you would find out that they don't blame people abusing their systems, as they have designed those ways to abuse them, but they take it as challenge to try to create system which players can't abuse because of their design decisions.

Hmm, interesting. Very odd but interesting.

 

As for the Darklands reference, wow, had no idea whatsoever from seeing videos/streams of PoE so far. I mean, Darklands is ultra hardcore (talk about no bad builds, geesh!). Really like the reference though (loved that game), hope there will be more hints of it as the beta progresses toward release, but not sure how "no healing magic is powerful enough to heal long term injuries" combines with "you're 100% good after 8 hours rest using a camping supply" and a Darkland reference

[The non-combat vs. combat divide]

I think the Scripted Interactions and Dialogue are mostly supposed to cover the 'things to do' outside of combat. Same with walking around in Scouting Mode I guess.

 

Personally I'd still like to be able to find hidden caches the BG2 way (detects when standing still).

Bit out of topic (sorry!) but any word on being able to scout/sneak with just one party member? From the videos I've seen, people were only able to sneak with the entire group.

[About stamina/health and an idea how to fix it]

I think that removing need to rest maybe isn't way to go to prevent rest spamming PoE even though it probably would be quite effective way to stop people doing so.

I just don't understand why you'd design your entire core system (Health being the end all game over mechanic in place) to do that. I mean, I never spam-rest in any IE games because part of my fun is to manage resources properly, what do I care if some people did! And with PoE I won't be able to do that, because Health is out of the resource system so now instead I'll be forced to try and exploit the game using cheesy mechanics or risk be royally screwed over due to artificial supply limitation and ultra punishing Health mechanics.

 

Some people will always abuse the system: who cares in a single player cRPG.

 

Edit:

Plus you can't wait, so now if I want to start exploring an area during the day, I can't, or risk wasting one of my supplies, so I'll be forced to do so at whatever time the game tells me I have to do it. Does that mean night/day doesn't actually mean anything? I mean, limited supplies, no waiting option...you can't really design time specific encounters/events with that in place right?