Saito Hikari

Right now, I'm playing a single class Ascendant. At levels 1-5 at 18 Intellect, I can Ascend for 2 turns. When I bumped up Intellect to 20, Ascension was increased to 3 turns. It's possible that upon hitting level 10, the Ascension duration might be increased to 4 turns, but I'm probably about a day away from finding that out. Anyway, the point is, the idea behind Ascendant is fundamentally flawed in Turn-Based. Ascendant has a higher Focus pool in general, but it's highly likely that the total Focus cost of the spells you use while Ascended in TB mode is actually going to be far less than the total amount of Focus you have in the first place, which seems very logically backwards. It might have been the same case in RTwP as well, but single class Ascendant in RTwP could get a ton of mileage out of it with Time Parasite. With the way rounds currently work in TB, that's not an option here.

Then we can ask Obsidian to answer for it when it actually happens, aye? Getting all worked up over it now only serves to make people on the RTwP side of the argument look like they're gatekeeping, and appear particularly hostile to the new players who prefer TB and discourage them from participating in the community. Especially since the entire crux of the argument is a crackpot 'what if' scenario. I mean, we literally had someone a few pages back make an account named 'SAYnoTOturnBASED'.

From what I've observed, everyone with this issue likely has cinematic kill camera turned on, which was causing the sequence of events to bug out. I had mines turned off since it was bugging me more than anything else, and I never had the issue. I haven't noted anyone else with that turned off running into the same issue either.

There is a tiny 'Delay Turn' button immediately to the left of the combat speed bar (which in itself is right below the 'End Turn' button). I didn't know it was there until I decided I wanted to check the entire UI when other people started talking about delaying turns.

I'm getting some pretty major yikes reading these posts as someone who barely discovered cRPGs in general a little more than a year ago. The way some you guys talk about Larian and D:OS2 sounds like they personally hurt your family or something. Obsidian isn't dumb. A TB mode being released isn't going to magically lead to RTwP being excluded from all sequels, if there even are any at all. I mean, Obsidian's current project is literally a first-person shooter RPG that has likely already gotten way more attention than both PoE games combined, and yet somehow nobody here feels threatened by that. Nor should anyone, which is the point. I mean, going all crackpot theory about a company going from adding in an entirely free turn-based update and constantly updating a game that apparently undersold to suddenly outright gutting the original combat style in a sequel is a pretty big leap of logic to make.

I want to say that something feels wonky about accuracy in turn-based. Even in normal mode, I've barely seen any critical hits from a main character that has 20 perception, and a lot of attacks whiff at a degree that I don't recall seeing in veteran RTwP. I'm not sure if accuracy calculation was adjusted for TB or if enemies were given higher defenses, but it's making the unoptimized companions feel even worse to use. Then again this might be some kind of confirmation bias happening and I never paid enough attention in RTwP.

Yeah, fast weapons are pretty awful now, I can't find any justification for using them. I'm guessing they should either have some multi-attack functionality (which has a very high chance of breaking something down the road, or throwing everything back into 'stack multiple attacks/action speed' meta that RTwP emphasizes), or they should be given higher accuracy/penetration in turn-based mode. But I'm not sure if it's really possible to program different stats for equipment between both modes (even if there are different values for abilities, that's another thing entirely in terms of programming I'd think). Also, I find the comparison to D:OS2 in all those pre-release articles rather poor. This feels far more like a Temple of Elemental Evil-type system, which was actually pretty good too.

A few more observations. - Cipher Ectopsychic Echo says it only lasts one turn, but it actually inflicts damage twice: once during activation, and again at the start of the Cipher's next turn. It's a bit harder to use in comparison to its RTwP counterpart (where it can inflict damage as either of the two characters move and enemies enter its area of effect), but inflicts more damage faster. Total of anywhere between 90-180 damage on average on hits, assuming both attacks hit, from what I've observed. - Currently, there appears to be rather absurd breakpoints where buffs and afflictions are reduced or increased in duration. For 2 turn buffs, presumably dropping your Intellect to 1 reduces the duration to 1 round, while you need to boost your Intellect to 20 to increase the duration to 3 rounds. This may need some major rebalancing.

As said in the title. I am pretty sure that's not intentional behavior. I'm now mildly concerned if other encounters between different enemy types may result in enemies aggroing to each other instead of fighting together against the party. I did notice that enemies that spawned from Essence Interrupter would target both allies and enemies (which is something that happened prior to this patch as well), but enemies appeared to prioritize attacking the summoned monster instead of the party whenever possible.

Is re-targeting possible in Turn Based? The picture in the Update thread says otherwise (see last line on the right): I'll have to get back on and test this, but the retarget interface still exists for me in turn-based mode. EDIT: Retargeting still works in turn-based mode. But now I'm unsure if it's intentional now that you pointed that out.

I can answer the last point, it appears to exist so that you have time to have your casters retarget spells if necessary if only enemies are moving before the spell goes off. This should make it so that you don't waste a spell if an enemy dies or moves before the spell goes off, like in RTwP mode. However, you're out of luck if said spell was a melee/conal spell and there's no enemies in range from where the caster ended their turn.

This actually appears to be exactly how it works, at least going off of personal experience. I've had turns where I had Xoti casting something, and sometimes the cast resolves mid-round, or resolves at the very beginning of the next round instead (also sometimes resulting in her being able to act again immediately afterwards). I am unsure of the tactical applications between the differences, but I imagine you may want to have the cast resolve mid-round in most situations because you may have buffs falling off when the next round begins. I've also had situations where I had spells resolving at the end of a round rather than at the start of the next round, so I really don't know what causes the game to determine which of the two happens. --- There is one fundamental tactical difference I've noted between TB and RTwP that I haven't seen mentioned thus far, and it's that enemies don't cluster up immediately during a fight due to the nature of how TB works. This by default has shifted my playing style from immediately setting up a wall in RTwP to singling out and picking off some enemies before they are able to get a turn. This whole thing is proving to be such an interesting experiment from a design standpoint. Two entirely different design philosophies in the same game, resulting in tactics that would be considered strong on one combat style being greatly diminished in the other...

Super, super important thing to note. If you're casting a spell on an enemy in turn-based mode and the enemy dies right before the spell goes off, even for single target spells, the spell will still go off and it is essentially wasted. (I'm unsure if this was a thing during RTwP mode as well.) (I'm not sure if this might have been due to Essence Interrupter spawning a new enemy right on top of the original, however. But it makes sense for this to be an intended interaction even if it didn't.) It does appear that you can still retarget spells, however - probably why you can still pause during turn-based combat, since I believe this will give you time to retarget if only enemies get a turn before the spell goes off. However, if you are trying to retarget melee-range spells and there are no enemies in range from where you ended that caster's turn... You're **** out of luck.

it would affect initiative, no? I'm assuming initiative works more like turn order in something like FFT or HoMM (where it affects how often your turn comes up) rather than D&D where everyone is guaranteed a turn per round. Quick observation on this point, I haven't seen a single character get two turns per round yet, even with Eder rolling 1 initiative during one of my fights thus far. Which theoretically makes armor initiative penalty and proficiency toggles that increase/decrease initiative matter far less in turn-based mode than in RTwP. Other observations: - I am not even sure if the Hunting Bow modal (-15 accuracy and -50% initiative) is even working properly. I haven't really noticed it affecting initiative at all, but the -15 accuracy is a huge penalty for turn-based mode.) (EDIT: It does affect initiative, but it only kicks in on the turn after you activate it/deactivate it, which makes sense. However, the accuracy effect kicks in immediately from the looks of it. Even then, the modal is pretty useless on a character that already has low initiative to begin with, as it doesn't appear to affect how many times you attack per round. Maybe it can be abused by attacking, then activating the modal to benefit from reduced initiative next turn if your archer needs to move up in the turn order, then deactivating it next turn to regain your accuracy.)

A few observations on turn-based balance thus far: - Knock Down seems to be purely an interrupt thing, I haven't noticed it affecting enemy movement during their turns. - Rolling an Ascendant Cipher might not be a good idea for turn-based. I observed that on a character with 18 Intellect, Ascended status currently only lasts 2-3 turns - far, FAR less duration in comparison to RTwP mode. - When I look at the Cipher ability list, some Cipher spells appear to be instant cast. (As in, labeled as a 'standard' action instead of a 'cast' action. Notable ones include Borrowed Instinct and Driving Echoes.)

do you work for larian or what's up my dude people whine about rtwp because its suddenly fashionable to do so devs of rtwp game develop and release free turn based mode with late patch support some dude with no avatar sneers about it gamers turning into all the worst things about hipsters haha great to see Yeah, a lot of unnecessary asses showing up over all of this. What's hilarious is that someone in this thread or in a different one over sales talked about how the RTwP community was supposedly a mature community tolerant about turn-based mode, while supposedly the turn-based community was seen as unreasonably hostile towards RTwP. The reaction to this news from a few people here and all over the mainstream gaming sites the past day has proven otherwise. This gatekeeping over a genre that was already niche to begin with is stupid and ya'll should know better. --- My number 1 question is figuring out how attacks of opportunity and engagement work in turn-based mode. Cohh's preview stream didn't tell me much and was honestly worrying with the final fight he did during the stream (enemies basically rushing past melee to target the archer in the back at the digsite, though to be fair he didn't pick up Xoti beforehand), but otherwise the conversion looks solid. I read the article announcing turn-based mode, where Sawyer outlines his reasoning about how turn-based mode was rebalanced around concepts that don't see as much use in RTwP gameplay, such as knockback skills to re-position enemies for spells (as those are currently super finicky in normal gameplay). I'm hoping that disengagement attacks launched by player characters is among them (and that it'd be a key mechanic from stopping enemies from just going straight to your back line). Currently, enemies typically don't disengage from your melee for whatever reason, unless they have a skill that lets them move without taking an disengagement attack (and thus it makes gear/passives revolving around disengagement attacks rather useless/underwhelming). It'd be interesting to see the difference in builds and tactics that arise from this. (On a side note, I'm beginning to think that turn-based mode might be the ultimate argument for trying to raise the party limit back to 6, because it looks like the balance, at first glance, may otherwise stress having a Chanter in the party.)

I would imagine the vast majority of people that join you on your quest that are clearly capable of fighting would be too invested in what's happening to merely sit around at base camp. And of the companions/sidekicks that I see possibly returning from PoE2... - Eder and Rekke: Eder is probably returning, since he's a series staple at this point. But I see Rekke potentially taking his position as well, since he doesn't have anywhere to go besides following the Watcher. Of course, you could simply have both joining you on your quest. - Aloth and Fassina: Another series staple at this point, although his arc might have already ended. I potentially see Fassina taking his position since the Archmagi would have a vested interest in finding a solution to the Wheel being broken, or both joining the quest. - Xoti: Her arc hasn't ended at all. Now she's going to have to come to terms with the consequences of what her god decided to do. - Ydwin: Massive demand for her to become a proper companion, not to mention her existence holding some major relevance to the situation at hand (she removed herself from the cycle before crap hit the wheel).

Oh yeah, Tower of Time's story turned into a really wild ride towards the end. Much more good than bad in that sense. I remember thinking the combat got repetitive really fast towards the latter half of the game, though. I don't recall the game introducing any new combat conditions after the second floor, just stronger enemies. I recall thinking the game was a strange twist of lots of tower defense combat towards the end. The overall game might have dragged on a bit too long too, probably because of my thoughts towards the combat. I feel some of the floors could have benefited from being condensed and merged as well. It also didn't help that I don't think the later characters are worth using over the first four that you find. (Although the final party member you get can be built into someone that floods the field in summons, she shares gear with the archer, who is straight up broken.) Don't get me wrong, it's still worth playing just to see how insane the story gets, but I wouldn't recommend it for the combat. --- I am bouncing between three games at the moment (not counting FFXIV). Final Fantasy III, Shadows: Awakening, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. FFIII so far is a rather charming game, but I hit a wall with the final dungeon. The game doesn't let you save unless you're on the world map, and the final dungeon sequence appears to expect you to go through a boss gauntlet that may be balanced around gaining roughly 10 levels between the first boss you encounter and the last boss of the game without any opportunity to save in between. It's a sort of reminder of how games were designed decades ago. Shadows: Awakening is rather interesting in that you clearly have a main character that's this edgy demon in terms of appearance, but you can have all the other characters he possesses pick 'good guy' choices. The game keeps track of what choices you make based on a 'greed/benevolent/etc.' metric, and while I'm not too sure yet, it might actually affect how the main character demon speaks and addresses other demons later on. I did notice him getting some runic angel wings as the game progressed. (I also feel that the game is designed for playthroughs with the main archer or mage characters, because the game throws a few warriors at you that you are required to keep in your party for certain sections of the game, but I haven't run into a single plot mandatory archer or mage yet, aside from your choice of secondary lead character.) Dragon Age: Inquisition is actually a lot smoother in design when you're not playing it on a toaster of a computer. I'm not sure how I ever got past that first playthrough with such bad framerate. Or maybe it's just a lot more tolerable if you're playing as an archer because melee feels terrible in that game.

Currently trying out Shadows: Awakening. It's a fairly interesting game so far, having you swap between up to four party members in diablo-style combat and phasing between two different planes of reality, which essentially means you have to explore each area twice. I wouldn't go into it expecting a compelling cRPG-type plot, though. I actually quite like it so far (about to finish chapter 1 I think), but I had one major complaint during my first major boss battle. The camera was angled in such a way that movement was difficult and the UI along with the boss/enemies were blocking a good portion of the screen (and movement is done entirely through clicking as far as I can tell). This made movement far more difficult than it should be, resulting in my characters getting trapped and repeatedly smacked for massive chunks of their health a few times, forcing a couple reloads. It's a rather big design flaw, and if future boss battles are designed in a similar way... Ouch.

One also has to consider that Deadfire was released a whole four and a half months earlier than Pathfinder, during the quietest month of the year while Pathfinder was released in the busiest month of the year. I also bought Pathfinder on GOG, and I noticed GOG promoted Pathfinder for like 3 months before finally removing it from their front store. One can argue how much GOG actually matters, though. Deadfire definitely got a bump over the winter, with people waiting for sales/all DLC to be released. Though it rather saddens me to know that PoE's status as a series is basically 'don't buy day 1, wait until the game is finished/wait for a sale', which is something that doesn't look good to developers/publishers. It seems cRPGs as a whole are sliding into that category, now that I think about it.

That is true. I now recall that during D:OS2's pre-release period, everyone especially emphasized that playing D:OS1 was NOT a requirement at all to understand D:OS2, taking place a whole two thousand years apart. Indeed, when I played D:OS1 after finishing D:OS2, they were completely right. Even within the D:OS series, there was a lot done differently between both games. D:OS1's combat system didn't have elevation or the armor system, and relied more on RNG. It also had a far greater emphasis on puzzles and exploration, while OS2 by comparison is almost completely focused on combat. The tone of the writing between both games is also incredibly different. OS1, despite being a much more lighthearted game, was actually far closer to a proper cRPG than OS2 was, with a crafting system that isn't an afterthought and with a greater emphasis on roleplaying your two main characters in specific ways (even to the point of having your two main characters argue with each other and trying to pass persuasion checks against each other if you wanted to go that far).

I actually somewhat agree, except for the whole D:OS2 sucks spiel. D:OS2 didn't succeed because it had turn-based. I argue it succeeded because it -revolutionized- turn-based tactical combat, a very specific sub-genre that has been dead/dying for a while and largely limited to the likes of X-COM and Fire Emblem for the entire past decade, both of which still play completely differently from D:OS2 (not even mentioning that both have no exploration to speak of). And it has multiplayer on top of that. Literally the closest thing that existed before D:OS2 is Temple of Elemental Evil, released a whole 15 or so years before and is also far closer to DnD mechanics than the D:OS series is. Point being, you can't really compare the D:OS series to anything. That's how unique it is, and it's the real factor to its success. It was never trying to become a spiritual successor to anything that came before, and completely succeeded in what it set out to do, a rarity in today's gaming market. One could argue that the D:OS series are barely cRPGs, but it's the closest classification that exists for a game merging tactical combat with cRPG-type exploration. I can easily see D:OS2 leading the charge for a revival of turn-based tactical combat in the near future. Or at the very least, inspiring a lot of turn-based combat systems in taking field conditions into account. RTwP has not had a game with a similar effect for decades. Probably because literally all of them seem to be designed with BG2 in mind, which is what, two decades old at this point? If PoE2 is to have a turn-based system, I'd imagine it should be modeled closer to Temple of Elemental Evil's combat (of which the footage I've seen of the 'beta' turn-based combat seems like it is already closely modeled after that game). PoE2 isn't designed to take concepts such as elevation into account anyway, which is a big part of D:OS2.

Pathfinder is actually considered wildly successful for an indie first release, I'd think. I believe it actually sold much more than PoE2 did at launch, but the bugginess killed its momentum. But that game's word of mouth in regards to what it does extremely well will probably result in it outselling PoE2 long-term once all the issues are fixed. There's the Dragon Age series, although that's very simplified. --- In regards to the actual topic at hand, there is one advantage for turn-based that probably won't be seen in a RTwP playthrough, though this assumes that certain mechanics will behave completely differently for both game modes. Consider that in RTwP mode, the main mechanic keeping the swarms of enemies away from your back-line casters and archers/gunners is engagement from your melee. Engagement likely won't exist in turn-based mode, so something has to replace it in order to stop the enemy frontline from just running past your tanks. The turn-based answer to that is likely going to be attacks of opportunities against any enemy that attempts to do so. Currently, I feel that the attack of opportunity is a very underutilized mechanic in terms of player usage, because enemies rarely if ever disengage from your melee for any reason. Not only that, but you also don't really have any common ways to force them on enemies, even if they're suffering from debilitations or casting right in your face, unlike other RTwP games. This has resulted in equipment and passives that strengthen such attacks seeing virtually no use at all. But assuming turn-based mode uses attacks of opportunities as the replacement for engagement, such equipment may suddenly see wide use. Other thoughts related to the above: - An increase in engagement limit may translate to additional amounts of attacks of opportunities possible in a single round. - Two-handed reach weapons may suddenly become very desirable, to nail enemies thinking about trying to sneak around your melee.

Yeah, the companions in Pathfinder are amazingly well-written, despite coming off as generic and tropey when you first meet them. Then you tackle the companion quests one step at a time when the game progresses in its timeline, and you start to realize that they all have actual depth to them. The companions' development throughout the entire game is one of the things this game did extremely well. It also reminded me how disappointed I was in PoE2's companion quests.

Yeah, it's really ambiguous if you got the good ending with Jaethal. The relationship between Jaethal and Tristian as it pertains to endgame is really, really obtuse. One of the frustrating things about Pathfinder is that you don't know if the consequences are a result of your decisions or it's because something bugged out along the way. I still tried to get as much of a completionist run as I could, but I failed to get the secret ending and I failed with Jaethal, and the latter had no obvious reason why. Coincidentally, the latest beta patch also changes the chapter 4 split decision. To explain the history of this decision and why it was hugely problematic (beyond being 'I hope you knew about this beforehand or else your party might get -really- screwed over at endgame' levels of bad design), it's basically gone into three phases.