happyelf

The bottom left is clearly a pile of coins imo.

I haven't read the entire thread but in case this isn't mentioned, you can narrow the formations, they're actually on a 3 by 3 grid.

They've said pretty clearly that they want fighters to be a simpler class. I would prefer a more complex fighter, but I don't think we're going to get one. That's a pretty minor change, and the thing is, it's not every class that needs this.

Good to know, but i'd still prefer a more direct option. (edit)It sounds like it allows some editing of characters, as well.

I'm not saying the Poe fighter should be like the 4e fighter, perish the thought! Honestly i'm kind of tired of hearing about how group combat means we have to put the fighter back in its box. I get it, in fact IIRC I made the point about multiple pcs to manage on another forum way back, before the devs even mentioned it, but sooner or later we need to talk about a class as a whole class, not a muggle/grog used simply as a meat shield. As for the weaponmaster, that sort of design is what is, if anything, missing from the POE fighter- if people are saying it's dull, and it can't be more of a striker (as it arguably was in IE), then, by definition, it has to be a more dynamic defender. I don't think 4e separated the Knight and the Weaponmaster for reasons of balance per se. They did it because the Weaponmaster is the very popular early 4e version of the fighter, while the Knight along with the Slayer, is the less popular throwback fighter from the later 'essentials' line. The Knight isn't a bad build, but it's very simple. It's a good point of reference in these discussions because it mainly relies on positioning. But the other side of the coin is the Weaponmaster, and fighter design should look at those two extremes. As written in 4e it is hard to combine them, but that doesn't have to apply to POE fighter builds. The same goes for the 4e Warden, I don't see the problem with looking to it. It's kind of a more doughy mid-range defender, which I can see elements of in the POE Fighter. Again, it's a useful point of comparison, especially since Sawyer has played one. And of course, all this awaits more patching of the BB. Right now it's really hard to have fighters do much but park up front and burn their prones. It's not really fair to judge them based on that.

surely that depends on the talents? If the talents are merely '+2% to hit rolls' then yeah. At the other extreme they could combine 'uncanny dodge, counter-atttack and regeneration+10' into one talent and be a choice between that and 'combat expertise, whirlwind attack and war-cry' or something that's more OP. It depends on how many talents there are to choose between and how powerful/specalised those talents are. Even 3-4 talents can make a huge difference if the talents each make a real difference. Perhaps talents could be used to spec your fighter to be more 'fire-and-forget' vs 'high maintenance' e.g. 'Self reliant' - fighter hits and dodges last-targeted / nearest enemy until they drop (passive mode). vs. 'targetted shot' - tell the fighter to aim for vitals for the next blow with corresponding increase in damage v. chance to hit decrease (active ability). ^admittedly not the best examples but you get the idea Leaving aside the issue of Talent power level between classes, there's still only so much you can do with four options. And that's across multiple levels. Assuming you forgo a boost to weapon accuracy, which is a hard sell. As for your second point, one of the main stated goals of talents is to move classes up and down in complexity as an option. My concern is that POE Fighters are headed for a situation where the difference between their simple and complex talent builds are a few uses of knockdown more or less.

If POE fighters were like dnd4e fighters, nobody would be calling them boring. Contrary to many of the arguments in this thread, if the POE fighter ends up being boring*, for most people it won't be because it doesn't share enough with the IE fighter- it will be because it doesn't share enough with the 4e fighter(whether they realize it or not). Fighters in 4e have a lot more than 2 choices under the blanket of the Weaponmaster, because weaponmasters get powers selections and as a result, genuine options. Josh Sawyer has claimed that talents will give fighters more options, but with so few talents to choose, that's not looking likely. How much difference can 4 talents really make? An extra prone attempt or two? OTOH, the current fighter build is also not simple enough- it still has encounter resources, so you still have to do more than position and target. A genuinely low-maintenance fighter should not have targeted abilities at all, or i'd argue, even modes. A fire and forget class. POE's fighter should offer a choice between a Knight type 'simple defender', and a light take on a 4e weaponmaster. The ideal would be a basic 'modal' fighter with talents that offer the choice to either boost it's modes/passives, or give some nice punchy encounter powers. Also as an aside WRT 4e's other defenders, JES has played a Warden and already cited warden powers when discussing some POE fighter powers. *We don't actually know this yet because we need the updated AI and better data on engagement in the backer beta to see how the current POE fighter truly operates.

It would be really useful to have free level 5 hirelings, and a kill option in the tavern. Maybe you could order a round of poison? Put simply, the beta has hugely more potential if people can play around with a lot of builds. To make this convenient, allowing them to purchase new pcs easily is a must, but so is killing off the companions you presently have, preferably on the same map. The alternative is grinding for cash and running off to find a beetle to merc your BB pals. Just think of how many class combos people can play around with, if they can get a new party set up in town quickly with every new game?

Obviously, but then you can say the same thing about Deflection, which makes Josh's suggestion to swap that effect from RES to INT unnecessary as well. There is clearly a limit to how much you can balance for a character who is never at risk. Right now I have bb Wizard running around in his underwear, and it's not just to teach snooty wizard dudes not to act so high and mighty. In theory you can have a naked wizard with con 3 tearing **** up but in practice AI and encounter design have to play a role in balance. That doesn't mean that the system shouldn't balance the back row as much as it can, but when it comes to damage I think back line squishies are gonna miss con if they skimp on it too much.

Having read everything I am still leery of so much complexity hiding under the hood, but it's not that big a deal. It looks like the issue is being solved either way. For me, the real issue that remains isn't anything the player can read- it's what they can see, hear and feel in combat. Players can read the descriptions, even the combat log, but unless they can clearly mark it out on screen, it's not going to be real for a lot of players, and will leave people detached and frustrated. Grazes, hits, and crits are only really defined by their results. It feels good to crit and have the screen shake (yeah!) but what does that communicate? The info the player actually needs is: Damage Effect/Duration Interrupt Graze/Hit/Crit is an intermediate value that relates to the outcomes listed above. It could be argued that they form a rough summary. It essentially says: "You just Crit! Woot! You've probably done more damage, more interrupts and higher duration! If you want more info, check the combat log." But this strikes me as a missed opportunity, and particularly when it comes to the main subject here. Interrupts really need to be clear on screen, probably moreso than say, damage, which are already tracked by the stamina bars either way. Feelz. Your idea makes perfect mechanical/balance sense, but it makes the spells feel wrong. Spells like fireballs are "supposed" to be blind invocations of elemental energy. It doesn't make sense for them to be able to discriminate between friends and foes, at the edges or otherwise. Priests calling down divine punishment on their foes are different of course -- they're "supposed" to discriminate. I've no doubt I'd get used to it, but it would feel jarring. I know this doesn't really speak to feel, but If it helps, keep in mind that POE is set in an era of exploration and discovery, so it makes sense for smarty pants wizards to start altering classic spells and bringing them under greater control at this stage of history. As for clerics, well the Dozen proved that even the Gods can't control everything, and the war they fought in looks like one huge case of collateral damage to me.

That would work mechanically, but not intuitively: why would a whiff be as likely to interrupt what you're doing as a crit? I think it'd also make the combat murkier. There's already a lack of feedback, which would be pretty easy to address with different sound effects for graze, hit, and crit, a blood spatter for hit and crit, and e.g. a shaking screen for a crit. If you'd have to add separate FX on top of that for interrupts, it'd turn into mush, and if you didn't have FX for interrupts, you wouldn't be able to get a feel for when they happen and how they affect things. I.e. I don't think that's a great idea. Intuition is in the eye of the beholder. You're making an attack either way, it can fail or succeed in different ways. And you could add in the deflection values either way. As for murk, I don't think a combination of factors plotted on a graph is more clear than a simple comparison. Especially if attack speed is also going to vary more greatly. I agree with you about the signal for interrupts, but you aren't proposing one. They most certainly do need to add extra feedback for interrupts, that's one of the key issues with feedback as it stands. Unless something else has changed radically in the last few pages, a graze or a crit is not an interrupt, even if they tend to result from the same attack outcome and/or build. Anyway, i'm only up to page 4 so i'll bbl.

I disagree. Why is stabbing a dude needed to also trip them up?

I'm still reading through the pdf and thread, but has anyone considered having interrupts separate from attacks? Do they need to be related to hits and defenses? Why not have resolve and perception in their own silo? Whenever you make an attack, hit or miss, you have an interrupt chance, opposed by your foe's resolve. People would need to pay heed to resolve instead of just making do with better defenses, but how else is resolve going to be a clear option?

It's a beta, but it's hard to offer feedback when bugs get in the way. I'm waiting until some fixes are in to ramp up the feedback; right now there are too many known issues in the way of knowing how certain things really work.

If the circles and the cursor were set up right, they could solve a lot of the incoherence in the combat. For instance, as noted, circles could flash/pulse when they or their character are mouseovered or targeted via template, with a cursor change to match. Cursor and circle could pulse in sync, to make it very clear what's going on. It's also useful to consider if the circles might need to overlay the models in some cases- that could mess things up, but what's the alternative if they're covered in models? With no rotation in the camera angles, there's little to offer clarity in a melee. I don't think there is anything to gain from holding back clarity and innovation in this area. People aren't going to enjoy the look of the game if it comes at the expense of understanding what's going on.

this is not correct. My mistake. My information relates to the d20 system licence, which bans interactive games, not the base OGL.

It was a long shot but worth a try. TY for your efforts regardless.

Did you try square brackets on b for bold? I heard they were using ngui for the gui and that's the basic formatting for ngui labels. OBV it might be old info or not work at all, but it's worth a try.

IIRC Pathfinder can't use its rules, because they're a copy of 3.x's rules which are reliant on the old d20 OGL. The OGL specifically rules out electronic products.

If NPCs use the class powers, they are indeed going to run ragged over PC fighters from the looks of it. Rogues and Barbs are exactly the type of character you want a fighter to keep away from the rear line. If a pc fighter can't do that reliably, then what good are they, really? A fighter needs to be legit sticky if they're going to be stuck with this old school role as a simple tank class. (edit) The addition of some pull powers as the devs mentioned go a long way to helping fix this issue.

Yes. We have previously given details about our skill system, including how Stealth works. As a recap, all characters can invest in the Stealth skill, though certain classes (like rogues) have a head start in that department. You can have characters sneak individually or as a group and the gameplay consists of navigating the Stealth-based radii of your party members around the detection radii of potential enemies. Enemies have two stages to discovering a sneaking character. The first causes them to investigate. Once they get close enough (IF they get close enough), they will fully realize the threat and typically start combat (sometimes dialogue). In both of our class pair updates (rogues + rangers, wizards + druids), we've called out what non-combat skills each class emphasizes, but yes, the skills are largely class-neutral. Dialogue options are also largely class-neutral. Most threshold-based options are opened up based on the character's attributes -- using Perception to notice something, Resolve to threaten someone with scary intensity, Strength to intimidate someone with brute force (or just to smack them around a little), Dexterity to swipe something, etc. Picking these options is not always a path to success, but the attributes are what open them up. The same applies to class-, race-, sex-, or background-based options that pop up. We decided to avoid dialogue skills since it pushes characters to invest in "the dialogue game" or miss out on a ton of enjoyable content. By using as many basic elements of the character as we can to shape dialogue, we keep dialogue open to all sorts of characters, from meat-head fighters to sassy wizards and everything in-between. Attribute-based checks worked well in Planescape: Torment and we think it will work well in PoE as well. What about dialogue options based on the skills that are present? Like a Lore, or Survival check?

I hope POE doesn't end up fixated on spellcasters, and ignoring warriors and their ilk. Homage to the infinity engine it may be, but I would like to think that all classes are getting the same amount of attention and content.

That would clash with the lore of the class, and make them more like the fighter. I guess they could whip their allies, but that would be weird. The basic logic is 'cipher builds focus by hitting' is easy to learn, and quite versatile already.

I'd be interested in hearing what's involved in those layers of animated terrain and so fourth. It sounds like there will be a lot of skill invovled in making everything mesh into a single image. That's a very early version of a level. They'll do a lot of passes over it, both in 3d, and then 2d, before it's in the game.

For the fifth time, he's talking about using different angles for different scenes and maps, a concept already mentioned by the devs. It's not about live zooming or panning, it's about how a particular scene is 'framed' in perspective.