Valorian

Sure, but regardless, AI will have problems reaching ranged targets because of: a) melee engagement b) unrestricted movement for people outside of melee engagement [addressed in part 3] Also, PrJu, simply "rebalancing" ranged weapons won't solve the issue of certain attributes being less useful for characters who focus on ranged attacks.

Do we know the exact effects of fatigue, particularly, does fatigue affect movement speed in combat? I am persuading myself to accept might, in scripted interactions at least, as a binary system: strength (for warrior types) or TELEKINESIS (for spellcasters). Still, the whole 'soul propelled bullets' thing is a bit weird. Ranged and melee accuracy are already separated for all classes. This is not a source of "complicating things further". The purpose is to further fine-tune classes, with their strengths and weaknesses in mind. The same is true for adjusting the impact of specific attributes on ranged and melee actions. Tweaking AI to simply go for the squishy one is not as easy as it sounds; the AI has to deal with the engagement mechanic. The point was to link morale (the name could be changed if it confuses people) to an attribute, resolve, that is more or less a dump stat for ranged characters and make it more useful for them. Morale breaking and fear effects in general are hard disables. These things are hard to balance, especially if they're the core element of an attribute. Also, as has been mentioned, it's not fun to constantly chase people around in large open areas. I believe it often boils down to people perceiving stuff that they don't understand as useless or unnecessary. As an example, if someone admits they don't understand a particular mechanic (What exactly do I interrupt? The enemy's attack? Only spellcasting? Something else?) and then proceeds to declare it's useless while simultaneously offering balance suggestions, we should take that person's balance feedback with a grain of salt.

Interrupt/concentration is a nifty mechanic that deviates from standard +damage/to hit/duration attribute effects. A breath of fresh air.

There are several advantages of focusing on ranged attacks (with weapons, abilities and spells). The cardinal advantage is less reliance on defensive capabilities, which favors a full offense approach: a) DT is not needed as much -> shorter recovery time between actions b) Some attributes are less important for them -> free to completely focus on damage, accuracy and duration c) Defensive talents are less of a must than for combatants in the front line -> even more space to focus on offense d) Less likely to have their actions interrupted Positioning: -moving freely (no engagement) -focusing the preferred target is easier Ranged weapons with devastating damage, that annihilate DT even on grazes, constitute another advantage. What can be done? I'll divide it into 3 parts. PART 1) Reduce the impact of might and dexterity on all ranged attacks. Instead of, say, 20 might converting into +40% damage for ranged attacks, it would be +30% (3/4) or even +20% (1/2). This will make other attribute options relatively more appealing for characters who focus on ranged combat. PART 2) Resolve gets another component (on top of concentration), useful for everyone: Morale. Effects of Morale: If you miss or graze twice in a row, there is a chance that your subsequent attacks will be executed with a penalty to accuracy and damage until you hit or crit. The base chance of that happening is 100%, reduced by [Resolve x 4]%. Said penalty would be greater for ranged attacks (e.g., -12 acc., -12% dam.) than for melee (-5, -5%). Since precision is of utmost importance for ranged characters, it isn't odd to think that "shaky hands" would have a greater impact on their combat prowess. (Concentration, on the other hand, is more valuable to melee combatants). PART 3) Constitution. I suggest adding a mechanic called Exhaustion (or Stamina, if stamina gets renamed to endurance). Effects of exhaustion: Characters and creatures would be able to run for a specific amount of time (substantially modified by Constitution) during combat before becoming exhausted. Exhausted = 50% movement speed. The timer for exhaustion would activate only when clicking on open ground to move, during combat, and not when you click on opponents to attack them; thus affects only people and creatures who run away from combat. (AI wouldn't be debilitated by this unless it's programmed to run away.) Health and stamina are obviously more important to people who actually stand toe-to-toe with foes and take hits. If a party member is not suited for melee combat and gets targeted by monsters, what do you do? No, there's no need to panic, you just click on the character and keep moving him away from the monster(s). The character will keep running in circles during the process of dismantling monsters with ranged attacks. A melee character who's already engaged will have to deal with disengagement attacks first. It also eliminates a popular exploit.

Specializing in a combat style from the get-go is something I enjoy, so being able to select a talent at character creation would be nice! Passive talents that improve a character's prowess with a specific fighting style (two-handed weapon, two weapons etc.) is my first choice. There could be a few talents within each category, where it makes sense; for accuracy and damage, another for an increased interrupt capability and one for a bonus to deflection. One more, this one is active: It's for warriors who rely on dodging rather than a shield to avoid getting their faces bashed in. If the character is not equipped with a shield, he gets a [1.5 x dexterity] bonus to deflection for __ seconds. If a shield is equipped the bonus is [0.5 x dexterity]. One/encounter.

If these two were reversed we'd be constantly strolling around with bloody portraits.

Sounds like a bug.

I agree. The necessity to switch weapons (damage type) should be reduced. I'm fine with very varied DT bonuses/penalties against elemental damage and such, as that doesn't lead to weapon swapping.

I agree. But I'm more worried about the intentional design stuff that has turned out to be remarkably disappointing. Someone here mentioned the "inefficient weapon" thing. That's a good example of mis-implementation of an intentional design. Josh specifically told us about the different weapon types vs. different armor types and told us that some weapons will be more useful against, say, chainmail than leather, and vice vera. But HE DID NOT say that this was going to be some crap Rock-paper-scissors mechanic where some weapons will do NOTHING against certain armor types, while some will do what seems to be double damage against other armor types As it stands, my friggin Mage was doing massive damage with his Rifle against lions, while my Barbarian was slaving away on the front lines scoring decimal point grazes. LOL

(*fulfills his civic duty of voting* ) Having no level scaling doesn't mean that creatures don't have levels. There could be a level 2 wolf and a level 5 wolf, or bandit. It simply means these levels are not tied to the player's level in any way. Naturally, varied names and diverse visual cues for different enemies of the same species is always a huge bonus. Perhaps one of the reasons why some people feel this way is because attack animations are repetitive (one per weapon type). It affects our perception of combat on a subconscious level.

Some classes are not supposed to be high maintenance and rely more on passive abilities. That's a good thing.

The difference between 8 DT and 12 DT against an attack that on average does, say, 15 - 25 damage on a Hit is substantial. The 12 DT would easily shrug off grazes, the 8 DT armor would not. Sliding recovery time via attribute not only affects mechanics (and we all know how valuable attack/action speed is), but also the visual presentation of combat and many feel that actions in combat are already too fast. No it would just affect the recovery timer. The difference between 8 and 12 DT is not mattering much at the current situation with the Stamina:Health damage conversion rate, equip all your characters in 12 DT plate, how many encounters can you survive? Probably exactly the same amount as wearing whatever other armors. That's besides the point though because as I said, characters would have the opportunity to invest in the attribute, and characters with the same score but different armors would have exactly the same difference as they do now. To me, if creating six ~equally compelling attribute choices is a primary design goal - recovery time, deflection and hostile effect duration reduction are the three best things I can think of to choose from. You do realize that reducing recovery time means you attack/do actions more often... therefore, combat becomes faster. I've just explained that there's a huge difference between 8 and 12 DT. A graze is 50% damage and occurs very often. 25/2 = 12.5 damage, 24/2 = 12 damage etc. Calculate how much goes through. A single attribute affecting hostile effect duration would be redundant. Fort/will/ref (affected by all attributes) already do that.

It might just be me but personally I feel like movement speed and such is too high (too hard to engage in a sane way since as soon as you're noticed everyone is on top of you), but action speed is about right. Sure, but movement speed has nothing to do with recovery time. If they end up reducing movement speed, then of course they should reduce it for everyone (I don't want a DA2 or DA:I situation where enemies move and attack at a snail's pace, but the PC & party are imbued with the speed of light).

The difference between 8 DT and 12 DT against an attack that on average does, say, 15 - 25 damage on a Hit is substantial. The 12 DT would easily shrug off grazes, the 8 DT armor would not. Sliding recovery time via attribute not only affects mechanics (and we all know how valuable attack/action speed is), but also the visual presentation of combat and many feel that actions in combat are already too fast.

One thing to keep in mind is that enemies' movement speed should stand a chance against kiting, unless they want to make it the default "tactic". (There are ways to impede infinite kiting even against slower opponents.) It's also important to preserve combat symmetry, i.e. same governing rules and physics for everyone. That doesn't mean that some creatures aren't naturally faster, of course; wolves for instance. Also, there's no reason to shorten recovery time, and tying it to an attribute is a bad idea. The only drawback of high DT, which is incredibly valuable, is a longer recovery time for everything.

I do hope they'll have time to include more variation.

I think the stacking is an oversight. Also, hopefully drinking (powerful) healing potions has a substantial recovery time.

Perhaps, but I definitely agree that reducing recovery time (i.e. accelerating combat) isn't needed at all.

I see that many people have observed the same; action speed and combat overall are too fast. I also think it's important to keep it on the slower side.

What's the percentage of damage that gets absorbed and converted into wounds? I can imagine how this, combined with DT, can enable them to outtank a fighter.

I feel very confident that this type of mod could be done. - Scale down all quest xp by some value that feels right.. - Give a bonus in xp to any quest resolutions that don't use combat (to keep quest rewards semi balanced).. - There you go.. - Me and stun get xp for killing wood beetles - People who wanted PoE to be isometric alpha protocol will still get rewards stealthing past the whole game and one shotting the boss. EDIT: I know your post wasn't directed to me.. but I don't see anything wrong with this.. everyone's happy.. These are all good suggestions. Oh, but of course, everyone should feel free to comment. The question wasn't aimed exclusively at those who are physically repulsed by combat experience.

Would a semiofficial XP-for-kill mod, by an Obsidian developer, anger proponents of the 'killXP-is-the-devil' line of thought?

Marvelous. You should redirect your effort to the taming of the randomly assigned thing in your head.

Thank you for completely missing the point. The fact is they weren't equipped by hand. Why? Too much effort. Good things regularly require effort. You have discovered reality, congratulations Caerdon! Placing items by hand requires effort. Randomness shouldn't design enemies, especially not in a game like PoE.

Which is bad how? As I have said, I don't want this to be some loot hoarding, loot fatigue, leveling-through-items game. That's aRPGs, not IE games. Killing ten similar enemies to find out they all carry exactly the same stuff is wasted potential. I'm not asking for powerful, valuable loot. I just want some color. Ten similar enemies can be equipped, by hand, with ten different weapons and suits of armor and then placed where they fit. I love that.