Madscientist

D:OS was the best game that came out last year (at least the best I have played). But there is a bigger problem than if you get more exp from talking or fighting. In many cases you get most exp by first talking your way out of things and then attacing them anyway. I like that PoE does not have combat exp. Deus Ex ( the original one ) was one of the best games ever ( I have not played this vampire game). You get a reward for reaching a significant goal or finding something hidden and not for killing everything that crosses your path. If you really want to maximize combat exp some people kill all townsfolk after finishing the quests (not in all games, but in some it can be done) When I play PoE I want to explore all parts of all areas anyway. Exploration should be a reward in itself, not just a tool to get kill exp. This means I will fight lots of monsters anyway, but I don´t need to grind areas I have already wisited 100times just for a few more exp.

very interesting discussion some comments: - What is the difference between strategy and tactics? Is one thing character creation and party composition and the other thing is positioning and ability use in combat? - What is the main target group of PoE? IE veterans or new players? You cannot please everyone. I have played so many RPG that I know most basics ( but I am not a very good player, I don´t think I could solo an IE game.) - about party interaction: I don´t mind if there is no romance in PoE. But I liked the way PST did it. Your companions will comment on what you do, up to extreme results like Vhailor attacs you if you commit a crime or you rufuse to kill a criminal. But you have to talk to them to learn more about them. Like your discussion with Dakkon about the ring of zerthimon. It was nice (and realistic, if this word has any meaning in a fantasy game) that you could learn something from your companions and they could learn something from you.

@PrimeJunta: - BG2 does have a tutorial and you can skip it if you like. - Why do you call PST a game that pretends to be a dungeon crawn? You get forward in the main story and in most quests mostly by talking to other people. Your conversation options are often determined by your stats (int and wis mostly). Combat is the only bad part in this great game. The thing I disliked most was your very limited choice of equipment. You could have tons of crazy items in such a strange world.

I think the problem with IWD and BG was that they were too much rock, paper scissors (or counterspelling as you call it). Only mages have high level protection spells and only mage spells can remove this (like stoneskin vs breach). Only clerics have many spells that buff the whole group. (bless, preyer) Only druids have high level nature spells (insect swarm) You must have optimized chars and an optimized party setup and the right spell selection to proceed. But first time players cannot know what an optimized group or char is. (note: I know that there are many poeple who beat those games with a poor party or who soloed the game, but it makes things much more difficult.) I like at PoE that it seems more forgiving in this regard. There seems to be no must have class or must have spell. If you do not have a class in your party, other chars can compensate this more or less. ( I have not played PoE yet, but this is what I saw in the videos.) If you define role playing game only as "stat based combat", than BG and IWD are very good. But I think role playing means also that you can play your char in a way that he plays a role you like. I want to be a paladin who fanatically fights everything he considers evil, a priest who wants to help the weak or a rogue who robs and insults everyone he can. BG and IWD were very good game, but that should not stop you from trying to make something better. I like story focused games (PT, Mask of the Betrayer) very much and combat focused games are rather boring for me. I like that PoE tries to combine the best from both worlds (PT story with IWD combat). BTW: If you have beaten IWD, then BG2 will be a piece of cake in regards of combat.

About the magic system: In most cases I like the way how the IE games do it. But fights between high level mages are frustrating, I think. They trigger protection from everything at the beginning and whoever can remove the protection of the other first (and is able to hit him) wins because every hit interrupts the spell. Most annoying are the ones that start with protection from everything plus time stop. You cannot beat this without meta gaming. Like: When I enter the next room I will face a mage who is protected from magic and magic weapons and starts with a death and a fear spell. There is one magic system I like very much: The elemental system of Divinity Originil Sin. You can put poison slime on the ground and then let it explode with a fire spell. Or you can make them wet and then freeze or stunn a whole group with ice or lightning. You have lots of spells for status effects, but most of them hit only one target and each spell has a cool down. This makes combat very tactical and I like it. But I admit that this system is better for turn based combat (like D:OS) than for real time with pause.

I have not played PoE yet, but I watched some videos and I like it much more than IWD. - IWD is all about combat. There is not much story and when you talk to someone it will end with a fight or someone tells you what or where to kill next. When you have the option not to fight, not fighting is usually just a loss of exp. In the videos of PoE I have seen that it makes a difference what dialogue option you choose and that there are some quests were you can talk your way out of it and still get something from it. After some time IWD gets so boring that I have never finished it until now. - In the IE games a good way to beat hard enemies was to have one char to walk around in circles and the enemy follows him and all others shoot arrows. I think the engagement system is a good choice. - In IWD and BG it was always good to give everyone a ranged weapon and shoot everything before it reaches you (best combined with the kiting from above). The fact that hits slowed down the enemy movement made things even better. Question: Do hits with ranged weapons slow down enemy movement in PoE? I think PoE tried to combine the good things from PT, BG and IWD and leave away the bad things and they did a good job. I can´t wait to see the final result. About IWD. I played IWD recently and I can tell you you forgot a druid. Entangle+long lasting AOE damage (spike groth or something like that, I don´t remember the exact name) are enough to make enemy casters helpless. I think it is harder to beat the game without web or entangle than to beat it without pre buffing. (Though pre buffing is very useful very often when I think about haste and mass protection from evil for example). And don´t forget summons to distract enemies.

I like to thank you all. I really like what I know about PoE and some of the things I mentioned are already implemented in a good way. about items: Maybe you are right and the problem that some items are completely overpowered is a BG2 specific problem. All I want is to avoid a scenario where all guides say: "If you play class X then you must do it like this because you find the completely overpowered item Y at point Z. I re played BG2 some time ago and I build my char with the knowledge what items I will find at what point. about the class and combat system: I really like what I see. The way how you select abilities and talents seem good to me. I like that the stats are linear (one point more gives the same bonus as the point before, not like DnD2 where only very low or high values did something.) I see only one thing that may be a problem.: All attacs are determined with ((accurency - defense) + d100 ). If accurency and defense are the same, you have 5% miss, 45% graze, 45% hit and 5% crit. This means if your accurency is 5 points lower then the defense you will never crit and if it is 5 points higher you will never miss. The base values of the classes differ by 20 points. I fear that enemies will miss tanks most of the time and crit all others most of the time (In another thread somebody showed that a fighter who focuses on defense can have a deflection that is over 100 points higher than somebody who does not have talents that boost defense. I hope the devs get the balance right. Maybe I am used to the DnD system too much, where you always had a 5% miss and 5% crit chance. ( Those 5% were minimum values, both could be higher, but never lower.)

I watched his videos and it was very interesting. He can explain things very good. some comments: - The indicator that shows the area of AOE effects has two circles. The difference between the inner and the outer ring seem always the same (he uses different spells with different area shapes and sizes). What does this mean? - Your character portraits are shown on the botton of the screen. In the IE games they were on the side. Can you change the position of UI elements? - The boxes that show a chars buffs, debuffs or active modes seem very tiny to me. In NWN1+2 they were bigger. It is good that they do not cover your portrait like in the IE games.

You mean there is a video that explains most game mechanics without giving spoilers? The only video I watched was somebody going through all options of character creation for over 30 minutes. I did not watch any lets play videos because I don´t want spoilers. I read the wiki but not the parts that are about story, the world or people in the world (such as quest givers or companions). I like to analyze mechanics, but regarding the story I want to let myself surprise of what the game throws at me when I have it in my own hands (or better on my own harddisc, maybe I get an empty box of this game to hold it in my hands).

I got some more questions: - There are many debuffs. Can defenseses and accurancy go down to negative values? - Does a char die at once when one of his primary attributes is reduced to 0? According to the wiki one status effect (I think it was petryfy) reduces dexterity by 100. - Do you get a penalty when you use a ranged weapon in close combat? In DnD this causes a defense penalty and you can become victim of attacs of opportunety. A bow is very useless when somebody stabs you with a sword. - According to the wiki, being prone reduces deflection. In DnD prone chars are easier to hit with melee weapons but harder to hit with ranged weapons. The DnD effect makes more sense to me. The more I read about this game the more I want to play it. I really like what I see and I will pre order it as a cristmas gift to myself. Of course on gog because I hate DRM. Nobody should need an internet connection for a single player game. There were several times when I could not use a program because somebody elses server had a problem.

The bigger problem is not the friendly fire as much it is creating tactical situations where friendly fire can be avoided. The way the game works right now, we have a problem of not creating scenarios where the enemy can be huddled up in a group. The only time this happens is RIGHT at the start of the combat. Which sucks. If I understand you correctly then you do not like it when all enemies form one group. In most RPGs I want the enemies to gather around my tank, the melee chars stab their back and the casters cast from the distance. Often my biggest problem was to bring the enemies together. The standart tactic was to let the tank walk around a corner and when the enemy sees him he walks back and when enemies come around the corner the party starts to open fire. I admit that this tactic is bad for classes that do AOE damage with friendly fire.

For what it's worth, all spells don't target Deflection, whereas that's mainly what physical attacks target. So, in that they can all hit or miss, etc., yes, all spells are like ranged touch attacks. But I wouldn't say there's no difference between a sword or a bow or a spell. What I wanted to say with my example is also, that you use one attac role for all effects of your attac. Because Mr. Magniloquent said: "It is all one roll though. Just think of a miss as a -100% modifier, rather than a separate ranged touch attack type component." For the example with the poison sword means that: If you hit an enemy with a poison sword he will always be poisoned on hit unless his fortidude is higher than his deflection. (In my example you roll 70 against defection for the hit and 70 against fortitude for the poison) my conclusion: Casters should have a high ranged accurency so their spells crit often. This should make them good archers (or gunners) too.

1.)This means all magic is a ranged touch attac. Like the eldrich blast of the warlock in NWN2. Example with arbitary numbers: You have a weapon that can poison on hit and you have a damage spell that can poison. Your ranged and melee accurancy is 10, the sword and the spell have no bonus accurancy and you roll a 60 on your d100. Your enemy has a deflection of 10 so you hit. If his fortitude defense is also 10, he will get poisoned, if it is 30 he will get poisened half of the time and if it is 60 he will not be poisened. There is no difference if you use a sword, a bow or the spell. 2.) Assuming you have char A, Char B and a monster and each of them can engage exactly one enemy. All use a melee weapon. Char A attacs the monster. The monster attacs Char A. Char B attacs the monster from behind. Now the monster wants to move. Does it get a disengagement attac from both chars? 3.) Back to aggro question: The monster attacs the mage. Your fighter uses a successful knockdown on the monster. The mage walks away from the monster without being hit. If the monster stands up and wants to chase the mage it gets a disengagement attac from the fighter.

I am a scientist and I like to analyze things to death. I read the menual of every game I buy and I find it satisfying to know why something just happened in the game. (Maybe thats why I am not the best player in the world ). I read the wiki and I know how attacs with weapons work, but some things are still unknown to me: 1.) What determines the "hit chance" of spells? The enemy has a defense value. What is your attac value you roll against the enemy defense. For weapon attacs you have your melee or ranged accurency. In NWN your char had a DC that was dependant on his main casting stat. I did not see any hint in the wiki for this. Does that mean each spell hits automatically and has a fixed attac value? Like your confusion spell has an attac value of 40 and every enemy with a will defense of 39 or lower will be affected and all other enemies not? If your spell was dependant on your accurency with weapons you would miss very often because casters use to have a rather low hit chance (They want to cast, why should they train with a weapon?). By "spell" I mean every ability that targets one or more hostile creatures and that cannot be described as attac with a weapon. Spells on friendly targets (buffs) always hit of course. 2.) Is there some kind of aggro system? If a monster wants to bash your mage, does your fighter have any chance to attract his attention? Dragon age origins showed that a single player RPG with aggro system is possible. 3.) If I understand the engagement system correctly it means: As soon as a party member and an enemy come close to each other they cannot move at all unless: -one of them dies -one of them uses an ability that causes disengagement -one of them is willing to take an disengagement attac (which has higher hit chance and damage than a normal attac)

Thanks I think chanters or ciphers would be the best class for me. Ciphers: Interesting concept, but a mage that needs to hit nearby enemies with a weapon in order to cast spells seems strange to me. Usually I want fragile casters to be as far away as possible from enemies. Chanters: Maybe it helps me to overcome my dislike of bards I have learned in BG1. I never touched this class again.

After reading this I thought about something. In all of my DnD games I used a fighter (or something similar) as my first char. They were good early and you could hire a mage and cleric later. In PoE I wanted to do it different and start with a caster. In NWN1+2 a cleric with all of his buffs is a better fighter than most fighter classes. So I thought about playing a priest in PoE. Is a priest usable in melee or is it the healing version of a glass cannon? Just because I want to cast spells does not mean I want to forget how to grap a weapon. Take the blunt end in your hand and put the sharp end into somebody else, not the other way round

I have played many RPGs and other computer games and I think that the best I can do to have better games in the future is to tell you what I think. I know PoE is already far in developement, but maybe this helps for other games in the future. I hope this is useful for developers and players alike. Sorry that my first post is such a wall of text. This is about game mechanics, so no story spoilers please. Those are my suggestions: 1.) Do not make it to complicated. I am in the gog forums and for the Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) games (Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, . . .) there are tons of questions like "I am new to this game. How do I create a good char?" I am a scientist and it took me lots of reading of character creation guides and several tries to make a character that finished NWN2. Please do not make things such as ECL classes or EXP penalty. You should not get punished for taking the class you like or a race that looks cool. Tons of classes, races, skills and feats with tons of requirements for each doesn´t make things better. Sometimes a smaller amount of choices is better if you show that there are significant differences between those choices. Bad example NWN2: You are so overwhelmed with options and a new player has no chance to tell which of them are good or bad. Good example KOTOR 1+2: The DnD3 system has been simplified so it is easier to understand. It had a great story and it didn´t feel too simple, even though you have only 3 classes in the beginning and 3 classes later. Good example Divinity Original Sin (D:OS): You have no classes at all and you can learn any skill you like without getting a penalty in things you already know. 2.) I think that PnP rules are not the best bases for a computer game. There are many good DnD games, but the rules are often very complicated and many PnP things cannot be implemented in a computer game correctly because in PnP you are only limited by your imagination but in a computer game you are limited by the game engine. Bad example DnD 2nd edition: Please try to explain to a new player, why your hit chance, armor class and saving throw should be as low as possible while everything else should be as high as possible. Bad example Realms of Arcadia series: You have all the skills and spells of the PnP game but most of these things can never be used in the game. But you can waste your points into them. Examples: You have the swim skill but you can never cross deep water in the game. You have a spell to purify bad food but there is no bad food in the game. Good example KOTOR: You have a small set of skills and spells but each of them is useful at many points in the game. Good example D:OS: The whole system was designed for this game so there is no skill that cannot be used in the game. 3.) Please explain things in an understandeble language and units. Things like This: "The spell will last x seconds or minutes per level." instead of "The spell will last 1d6+3 rounds per caster level." "The weapon does 5-20 damage" instead of "The weapon does 3d6+2 damage." 4.) Please seperate hit chance and damage. In the DSA system armor absorbs damage but it hinders the char (reducing his hit and parry chance). The result is, when 2 fully armored knights fight, they rarely hit each other and when they hit most damage is absorbed by the armor. Battles can last forever this way. DnD tried to solve this and so armor reduces your chance to get hit. But now a naked char takes the same damage as a char in full armor. Good example World of Warcraft: A char has a dodge, parry and block value to avoid hits and an armor value to avoid damage when you get hit. Most classes have abilities that improve one of these abilities for some time. 5.) I think that random equipment is good. When I played D:OS and saw the items my first thought was: "A good RPG but when you look at the items you can see that it is derived from a Diablo clone." (Note: I don´t like Diable or hack&slash games in general.). But I realized that this avoids a bigger problem. Bad example Baldurs Gate 2: There are some extremely powerful items in the game and it is known where to find them. This leads to the effect, that people who know the game spend their points in regard of what items they expect to get. A paladin must use Greatswords (holy avenger), a fighter should be a dwarf with hammers (chrom fayr and the throwing hammer). You are new to the game and you think that your paladin should use a sword and a shield: The red dragon proves you wrong. A new player who does not want to read spoilers cannot make the char he likes but he must guess what super powerful weapons the game will give him. And it can be very disappointing when you guess wrong. I admit that random items give another problem: You save and reload before every chest or boss until they drop things you like. If you do not like random items than do not create items that are much more powerful than everything else. Here is the BG2 (inclompete) list of things you should never give to a single item in the game (or not use them at all): dispell on every hit, raise a stat to the maximum possible value, add many different kinds of elemental damage at once, become invisible when equipped, kill enemies on hit (this includes devastating critical in NWN1, it allowed me to kill a boss with a weapon that was unable to damage this creature.) 6.) Be careful when crafting items. If you can easily craft items that are better than anything you can find, finding items becomes useless unless they are crafting material. Bad example NWN2 Mask of the betrayer: The game is great, but you can create as much as you want of weapons+8 with 3 different elemental damage and armor that improves all of your stats. Finding equipment is only good if you find something with an ability you cannot craft and than improve this via crafting. Suggestion: You can only craft items that are similar to what you can buy (Do you want to pay 1000 gold for a new sword or do you want to search some caves for an hour to get some ore to make a similar sword?) Or you could improve each equipment exactly once and you must must choose between several different bonusses (You found a new sword. Do you want +2damage, +2%crit or +1 fire damage? It has a price, you can do it only once and you cannot undo it.) 7.) Use the EXP and level system (unless you find something better). The alternative that is used most often is learning by doing. Bad example Final Fantasy 2: You get more HP/MP when you lose HP/MP in battle. Your strengh goes up when you do physical attacs and you intelligence goes up when you use magic. This means the best way to get stronger is to start a fight against an easy enemy and the group members attack and heal each other until they run out of MP. Then you kill the enemy, look how your stats go up, rest and repeat. Attacking oneself to get stronger is not good gameplay. Bad example The Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim): You can increase your skills by repeating useless actions. You heal yourself, step into a fire and heal yourself again (and so on) to increase your heal skill. You walk against a wall behind a shopkeeper (they don´t move) forever to boost your stealth skill. You let yourself hit for hours by a weak enemy to improve your defense skill. There are infinite other examples. Good example Drakensang: You get EXP. You can spend your EXP to increase whatever stat or skill you like. Different skills require different amounts of points and each rank in a skill needs more points than the one before. There is a level, but all it does is to determine the maximum allowed skill rank for each skill. 8.) Do not use level scaling. Bad example Oblivion: I have beaten lots of demons without problems but than I had an epic battle with a rat and I was unable to defeat 2 goblins at once. Good example Gothic 1+2: The enemies stay as they are but you get stronger. You can explore the entire map from the beginning on if you survive. In the beginning a lone wolf is a deadly threat but you get stronger step by step and in the end you will be able to beat an army of orcs. 9.) I want group members and not henchman. My group members should have a personality and they should react to the things you do. They should say if they like or dislike your actions and they should make suggestions what to do next. You should be able to control your party members like your own char. The party members should interact with each other. My example: You see a burning house. You have the option to get some water from a nearby lake or to run into the house and rescue the people inside or do nothing and watch. The mad rogue in your group says that looks great and you should burn the other buildings too (and you have the option to do so). The knight in your group says that you should rebuild the town with houses made of stone because his castle never burned down. The sage will answer that this is too expensive and there is no mine for making big stone blocks nearby. The priest says he can summon a cloud and the rain will stop the fire (You have the option to let him do this and it works). The mage says he can summon wind to blow out the fire. (You have the option to let him do this but then the wind takes the fire to other buildings and the whole town burns down). The mage will feel very bad because of this but the mad rogue congratulates him. Bad example NWN1: Somebody follows you all the time and does whatever he wants. Usually his actions are much less efficient than yours and you get the feeling that all he does is to steal your EXP. Good example BG2 and NWN2: It is not perfect but a good beginning. 10.) You should be able to use the skills of your party members. It makes no sense that all merchants in the universe deal with exactly one person in the world (thats you). Good example: NWN2 Storm of Zehir: All party members can use theirs skills any time and you can choose who of them acts how. Bad example: D:OS: All the people in the world will refuse to talk to your party members because they are not the ones who are destenied to save the world. Do the people who live in a town ever talk to each other? 11.) Create significant choices. Do not make it in a simple good vs evil way. Good example The Witcher: You have to make several choices and all options are plausible and they are not clearly good or evil. When you face the consequences of your choices later you are reminded that you could have acted in a different way. This increases the replay value as well. bad example: All the games where you have the option to accept a quest and get a reward or refuse the quest and get nothing or kill this person and lose reputation. 12.) Use a point buy system to create chars. Higher values should need more points. There should be a minimum value for each stat. Good Example: NWN1+2, Kotor1+2 Bad example BG1+2 and IWD1: re roll until you have max values for all the stats you want. Bad example IWD2: You can reduce dumb stats to 3 or 1 in order to push all other stats to max. 13.) Please try to make a good story. The world is full of "An ancient evil threatens the world and YOU are the only one who can save it". An interesting setting is also good. Good examples: Planescape Tornment, Mask of the Betrayer 14.) Please try to make a good AI for party members (I know that this is very difficult because the game does not know what the player wants to do next). I will present some examples I have encountered. I have seen so many nonsense that my motto is: "expect nothing and you will get it" Bad example 1: A weak enemy is nearby and a boss is at the other end of the room and has not seen you yet. Your mage friend will use a fireball against the near enemy, almost killing himself and you in doing so. Then he will run to the other end of the room and attac the boss with a knive. Bad example 2: You are on a big map. You tell your party to attac a nearby group of enemies. Once the enemy group is down each party member will run after the the next enemy, each one running in a different direction. Your party is scattered all over the place and each party member fights several enemies alone. All attempts to gather your party fail. Sometimes I think no AI is the best. Unless they are under attac they should do nothing at all once they finished the task you told them. I had much less problems with my party in the BG games than in the NWN games. At least you should have the option to turn off AI. NWN2 had the option to put them in puppet mode and sometimes that was the best way to save the day (or at least your nerves). 15.) Do not use achievments. If really want to use them give the option to turn them off. Doing something in the game should give a reward in the game. You beat the black dragon because it is important for the story or because it is an epic battle but not to see a text pop up like: "ACHIEVMENT: Beat the black dragon. You have gained 20 achievment points. Now you have 285 points and you are rank 28752 of all players." Most useless achievments are those you gain anyway such as getting to a point of the main story or killing 50 enemies. Things like "beat the black dragon while standing on your head and juggling with 5 grenades without being hit." do not make any sense too. Those things kill immersion and distract the player from the game. This is most true in a single player game. 16.) Please make a "timeless graphic" I played NWN1 lately and I found it very ugly. There it was tried to make a realistic 3D graphic but the developement is very fast. "Beyond Good and Evil" on the other side is also more than 10 years old but it looks much better today because it uses a cartoon graphic. Today Baldurs Gate 2 and even some super Nintendo games (e.g. crono trigger) look much better than some old (and even some new) 3D games. I want to note that impressive graphic effects are sometimes more distracting than helpful, especially when there is strategic combat. Final words: -These are my thoughts and I want people to think about it. If you find something better than do it and tell the people why do you think it is better. -I have a terrible reaction speed so I am pathetic in action games. I like adventures and RPG with a turn based system or at least combat you can pause any time. This is something that surely influences my suggestions above. - my favourite character: Kreia from KOTOR2. She is interesting and mysterious. Even if she was betrayed by everyone and is betraying everyone herself: What she says and does makes some sense. - my favourite combat system: Divinety Original Sin - My favourite setting: Planescape Tornment, Arcanum (Industrial revolution in a fantasy world was a great idea) -My favourite story: Planescape Tornment, Mask of the betrayer (Don´t save the world, save yourself)