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It's a shame they didn't show Karkarov's HUD in the article though :/ That's by far the best feature. Couldn't imagine playing without it.

Yeah personally I'd rather wait for some full patching before I have another go. The combat still probably won't be very tactical though, but maybe down the line encounters will at least require different strategies or something.

I don't give them a pass for "balanced game design". I know what the exploits are and I don't use them. I don't deliberately abuse Engagement in Pillars of Eternity, enemies do die to buggy disengagement attacks fairly regularly though, nothing I can do about that.

I don't believe it is, because there's not much that enemies could do to make you do anything other than spam damage and disables. It's a system design issue. TBH even in doing this, I think it would be 99% revolving around strategy than tactics in Pillars of Eternity, which is my main problem with the game.

In Pillars of Eternity when you face spellcasters such as Wizards you just attack them, and they die . No tactics or strategy required. I know which system I prefer.

Weak willed. Personally I don't like the P:E camping supply system because after a certain point in the game you almost never even have to use camping supplies and when you do there's always another one available in the current area or the area next to it. A campsite system would have been better IMO (but the rest spammers would have hated it).

Nope. You're creating that narrative and selectively ignoring post content. Ever heard of beta testing? That exploit is now much less apparent/much less effective because I pointed it out in the beta. My problem is more that fights aren't very tactical. You do crap all based on what enemies actually do, you send tanks forward and spam damage/disables like no tomorrow every single time.

Nope. You probably just rest spam. It's very difficult to even get lots of party members down to their last health multiplier or run out of per-rest resources before you encounter Major Fatigue, at which point there's not much point trying to fight anything as you won't be able to hit anyone. You'd have to deliberately play badly just to do that. Yeah it does man, it works in every single game. I haven't played the EEs so I don't know what they've done if they've done anything to the game in that regard. ToB AI isn't that sticky? I've got a ToB save on my PC. No problem keeping Modded Harder Yaga-Shura on my highest AC character, etc etc. What does that have to do with targeting AI. There is one problem with the pathfinding in the IE games in combat and that's that units *can* get stuck on the edge of another unit's selection circle. It's easy to correct though. Pillars of Eternity's is majorly screwed up to the point where you can have an entire line of enemies standing there doing nothing when there is *clearly* enough space for them to move. That example doesn't have anything to do with the targeting AI, you just leave the rest of your party in the other room because Illithids can dominate, so if your Kensai gets dominated it becomes a liability to the rest of the party. You just send in one guy and use the narrow corridors to your advantage. You can't play like that in Pillars of Eternity, but stat drain isn't a life or death situation in Pillars of Eternity, let alone even a big deal. What engine? I don't use the EEs because they're inferior in many ways, and if I did, I bet I'd be able to control enemy targeting easily. That's one of the cool things about BG2 is there are many very different ways to tackle encounters. The way I listed hasn't got crap all to do with targeting AI, you just have to be clever with how many characters you take at once, have to manage their intelligence drain and stuff like that. There's probably a few other ways to beat them, Stun would probably be the best person here to answer that question. I don't believe you're supposed to fight Mind Flayers the traditional way, that's one of the cool things about them IMO. They require "something completely different".

There's more positional strategy. The IE games have more tactics involved as encounters are far more fluid. In your case with the Illithids you beat those encounters in the most boring/cheesy way possible. Why did you resort to summons? Because you couldn't beat them normally? In my last playthrough I killed most of the Illithids with my Kensai and Minsc who only had 10 Intelligence and 6 Intelligence respectively, which is a problem, because Mind Flayers drain Intelligence and 0 Intelligence = Death. I had to use potions of Mind Focusing and Potions of Genius to raise my Intelligence so I could tank them properly without dying, and swap between my Kensai and Minsc tanking alternatively (otherwise they'd die). There's a spell (Chaotic Commands) that makes you immune to the intelligence drain I think, but I didn't have it memorized/didn't care to use it. It was fun doing it the hard way.

Oddly enough the Stealth system was created specifically to allow you to set up on encounters like this, by the lead designer's very own words. Are you trying to justify rest spamming? Regardless, it doesn't make heaps of a difference because you use the same positioning and strategy versus most encounters anyway. Pillars of Eternity has way less strategical resource management than the Infinity Engine games because of the health system (you're usually *always* at full endurance for every encounter unless you're down to your last health multiplier) and per-encounter abilities. Also the Crafting system (can craft scrolls and potions on the spot ... not that you need either). Getting knocked out is also pretty meaningless (so much so that I reload if a character gets KO'd). The same encounter I described before in Pillars of Eternity would be like this: All of my characters are either at full endurance or close to full endurance. I have all of these per-encounter abilities to use. There is no immunity to weapons and I don't have to remove poison. I can just auto-attack those Mustard Jelly equivalents to death without any tactics whatsoever, ho hum. Neither game has rest abuse if you don't use it. I have no idea why you're trying to justify the use of it because it takes away the strategical concern of every single encounter, thus requiring less tactical considerations because you don't have to work with limited resources. That's not fun at all.

@Hiro Yeah I'm currently playing Baldur's Gate 1. Even in trash encounters, I'm quaffing potions and making tactical movements that I never make in Pillars of Eternity simply because I have to (react to enemy actions). I'm using an archer instead of a Sword/Shield for the first time in years, and my character is way more effective at some encounters, but less effective in others. I actually had trouble with Narcillicus and his Mustard Jellies this time, because of this. I could take down Narcillicus just fine (Mage) but it was more difficult for me to kill the Mustard Jellies because I didn't have my PC with 18/xx STR and the Longsword +2 from Greywolf, I had a Composite Long Bow and a Bastard Sword +1 instead, and Shar-Teel was not as effective as the PC I usually create and the Mustard Jellies kept killing Shar-Teel in two hits, forcing me to reload (didn't have any Remove Poison spells, Branwen hadn't rested to memorize them). I only had level 3 characters, only a few magic weapons and I was hurt from clearing the rest of the area (this was the last encounter). I wanted to win it before resting, and it took a few tries with different strategies and tactics (Mustard Jellies are immune to normal weapons and all missile weapons). Pillars of Eternity doesn't really have these kind of resource management problems with Health because of the way the Health system works. It doesn't have immunities. It doesn't force you to drastically change your approach to hardly anything, only to optimize it. The design pretty much fully prevents you from having fun this way. And this is Baldur's Gate 1, the first Infinity Engine game. So, you're a rest spam abuser are you?

ROI

You can't use Entangle and Web every encounter in the Infinity Engine games, they're per-rest spells. You can if you rest spam, but you're not supposed to rest spam. One of the things the Infinity Engine games have that Pillars of Eternity lacks is strategical management of resources (if you're not cheesing the game by rest spamming with the Rest Anywhere mod etc, which I don't do). I talked about that in my thread here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/quickfire-systemic-criticism-that-contributes-to-banality-of-gameplay.98429/ The Infinity Engine games have better combat pathfinding than Pillars of Eternity with path search nodes 40,000. I prefer limited inventories (but I don't give a **** about item weight). There are great mods for the IE games that make consumables/arrows highly stackable and I enjoy different types of ammunition. Even when I forgot to memorize new spells I never found it a problem. I never made mistakes when making characters, although I agree that Pillars of Eternity has a better character system. I prefer the 2E AD&D games to IWD2 (3E). Pillars of Eternity's attribute system has it's own issues. Yeah you can't stuff yourself up like you can in D&D, but attributes in turn have little impact on characters as a whole and builds are very polarized anyway. My post on the Codex explains most of my issues with the combat in detail, so there's no point repeating them here.

DotA 2. You could try Aarklash Legacy. It's a party-based MOBA/MMO style RPG. It's main problem is because heroes only have four abilities and it's an MMO HP slog/regen fight and it becomes repetitive just trying to deal DPS/disable as fast as possible but it's a really slick game. Great UI, awesome performance, really well programmed and feels right at home.

This is actually what happens, kinda. The problem is Engagement range is a circle. When units are engaged they target their engager with an attack. If they're melee they need to move in range. Sometimes units still need to move to attack, even if only a few pixels and this procs a disengagement attack. Even enemies running straight at me die from disengagement attacks all the time because their selection circle clips the edge of the engagement circle of my character and they have to move closer to attack. This happens more often for units with larger selection circles. The No Engagement mod doesn't remove the Engagement AI, just the disengagement attacks - so you can create your frontline but not suffer the bullsh1t attacks just because you step to the side.

That's funny because I find the combat pathfinding in all of the Infinity Engine games WAY better than Pillars of Eternity. Make sure to set your path search nodes to 40,000 in the IE games. Yeah and this is dumb AI that is easy to get around too. Some target low DR so you can just wear heavier armor to switch targeting. Some target low Deflection, so what you do is run the character they are targeting around while everyone else attacks them ... lul so ez. The engagement system is so broken that if the AI did try to break it, this would happen.

I didn't say that in this thread, I said people who didn't enjoy Infinity Engine combat, which you didn't, until after a bit of coaching. While that joke I use is not a total truth I'm seeing plenty of "I didn't like combat in the Infinity Engine games but I like combat in Pillars of Eternity", mostly from people who prefer turn-based combat to real-time with pause. Here's a shorter post about why I don't like it, because it's not reactive: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/quickfire-systemic-criticism-that-contributes-to-banality-of-gameplay.98429/page-6#post-3857129 Your suggestion about altering enemy defenses doesn't force the player to react to something the enemy does, it's just another strategical consideration, and not a tactical or reactive consideration - which is the BIGGEST problem with the combat. It's not a bad idea though, but it wouldn't make much of a difference for me.

There were no AoOs in AD&D, or the Infinity Engine games. Who's more on point here, me or you?

There's some end game slides which I've already seen because I looked at them during the beta.

Juse use the No Engagement part of the IE mod, it keeps the Engagement AI but removes disengagement attacks. Problem solved. http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1/?

I doubt it. I can see how people could be forgiving of it, particularly if one enjoys dry writing and lore dumps. http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/act-2-ending-spoilers-obviously.98124/ http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-writing-in-this-game-is-average.98103/unread There's plenty of interesting ideas, but I don't think they gel together very well to form a cohesive whole.

Yeah. I think they really stuffed up with the motivation for the player. The game did not make me care about the Dyrwood at all. Their method was basically - here's a whole bunch of Lore ... cool, well that was a bit of a long winded tell don't show, and I still don't care. Being a Watcher and being Awakened isn't even a bad thing, and there are examples of people who are Watchers and/or Awakened in the game that live with it without issue. Seeing souls is cool and useful, I can do quests that I wouldn't have been otherwise able to do ... why do I care about chasing Thaos to make it stop? They did a really bad job at making the player feel as if they were going crazy. TBH it sounds like the MotB Spirit Eater mechanic without the Spirit Eater mechanic, there's absolutely no agency to it whatsoever.

Josh and Tim can't see the difference between green and blue or something (or can't see the difference between green and the grass), that's pretty much the reason why they made them one color or the other. The only reason we got green circles at all is because I and others continuously complained about the blue circles.

http://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1/

I know what happens after the point that I got up to, and to be honest that kind of stuff just doesn't interest me, NOR does it really have much of a connection to what you did in the first two chapters of the game, feels like an entirely different game when you hit Act 3.