Sensuki

That's not true actually, there are way more role players and storyfag gamers on the RPGCodex - that is why Planescape: Torment keeps winning the best RPG every time.

Not after the initial melee

So are currently selected abilities (such as modals etc), which are also visible when the inventory is open etc

Yeah I will when I do my Engagement thread.

No, it would be first attacked by. Currently it's first engaged by. If an enemy is engaged by multiple characters, they attack the first one. In the case of first attacked by, if they were attacked by multiple enemies it would be first melee enemy they were attacked by. I'll make a video this week and show you how it looks without Engagement (I have modded it out).

The enemies were chasing the Wizard, if you position your guys close together and run enemies past, they will run inside the edge of Engagement range of your other characters. Because they are now being Engaged by multiple characters they have to move to attack one of them, moving provokes a Disengagement attack. A Disengagement attack plays an interrupt animation which stops movement, once they are interrupted they have to move again because they are not in range yet, and they suffer Disengagement attacks, and are interrupted again ... and so on and so forth. Because Engagement range is a circle, it only works properly if the enemy is running directly at you into the circle, you can force them to cross the circle.

Perhaps it's simply beyond your comprehension ?

It is indeed a cop out to have that opinion IMO.

Nope, you made a non-sensible request. As I said, melee AI has no need to disengage from the player. Smart, deterministic AI would be to have intelligent AI targeting clauses, with good scripted ability use and good target reacquisition. Melee Engagement removes most of the need to have robust targeting. Why bother when most of the time the player will override it with engagement?

Not really. Single target abilities and spells that can break engagement only have a chance to hit and they don't work against multiple engagements. AoE abilities that break engagement suffer from the same problem and they're quite rare. All the player has to do to circumvent these is to learn when they occur and circumvent them. What's more, the amount of programming required to get AI to work as a team like that would be far beyond the scope of the project - stuff like that is even a problem for Valve with the DotA 2 bots. You're thinking about it from the wrong angle, as always. edit: Forgot to add, it doesn't really make sense for the AI to disengage from the player in either situation. The AI does not care whether they live or die, the purpose of enemies that don't have cutscene scripted escapes or whatever are to inflict as much hurt on the player as possible. Once they are in melee combat with an enemy, they should stay there unless that enemy dies, or they lose their target (via whatever means).

Sure. Melee Engagement consists of two components - an AI targeting clause, and a Disengagement attack. When a unit (player or AI) engages another unit of the opposing faction (AI or player), the unit that is engaged stops, turns and attacks their engager. This is done through an AI targeting clause. If that AI targeting clause didn't exist, then the engaged unit wouldn't stop to attack. This is the key part of the Melee Engagement system for 99.99% of people that enjoy it, including Shevek and Kjaamor. People like that it gives them easy control over the enemy AI. The thing that I find annoying about this is that it overrides the actions of my units, and I am not a fan of anything that overrides my unit actions. The Melee Engagement system does not have to exist for this behavior to occur. The Enemy AI can be programmed to stop and attack the first melee unit that they are attacked by. I want the AI to be smart too, however it cannot be with the Melee Engagement system or with people who want to easily be able to manipulate what the enemy AI are doing. I agree with you, I want to put in effort to control the battlefield, with unit positioning and movement - like in IWD:HoW or even better, which had the best targeting of any of the IE games. That is not what we will get though. Obsidian has decided to cater to the people who find it a chore to control units in combat, and created a system so that they can easily manipulate the AI with some basic initial movements, at the cost of tactical movement and positioning in combat after the opening. Melee Engagement overrides all other targeting clauses, and it makes no sense for enemies to randomly disengage because they suffer disengagement attacks, so once enemies are engaged by you first, they will attack you until they or you die.

Storyfag =/= casual player, if that was the term that sparked your reply. There are many hardcore storyfag RPGers on the RPGCodex.

Old bug http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69083-333-random-unselectable-board-companion-in-dyrford-crossing/?hl=boar It's Medreth's Boar following the party from scene to scene because of a bug with animal companions.

This isn't a turn-based game. That is the entire problem with the mechanic. It's a product of turn-based design in the first place. I don't know why this is so hard to understand, but as a player, using CC to control enemies will not be necessary if the AI targeting clauses were adjusted so that melee enemies turned to attack your units when you attack them in melee or something like that. If your problem is that you struggle to manipulate enemy targeting, a combination of positioning and understanding AI targeting will solve this problem completely. There are no absolute immunities in PE, you will be able to Hobble a dragon.

Blue circles are the colorblind option. I think they designed the game world for blue selection circles because that's what Josh Sawyer and Tim Cain prefer. I and others repeatedly asked for green ones though and we got them, but yeah they don't interact very well with the forest environments.

Not in the above post, yes-man. Argument is spelled like this btw.

They can be held accountable for producing bad combat gameplay, although that is a tradition with Obsidian titles. No, but you did.

His statement wasn't related at all to GrinningReaper659's post above, it's just a punchline he's started using. Acting as if the current combat was 'intended' in the Kickstarter pitch. Just a reminder you're talking to a person that preferred the Neverwinter Nights 2 combat, combat which Josh Sawyer himself has stated that required little to no tactical thought on behalf of the player. So there's an obvious discrepancy here.

That may even be putting it mildly The forums are a more hostile place recently, and most of the hostility revolves around the disagreement over the Engagement topic. My position on the topic (removal) and attempts to explain why it is bad and arguments against other points of view have garnered more personal attacks against me than ever on this forum, and I have become a bit fed up with it, so I've responded to some people in a similar fashion and I respond to people directly, since I dislike passive aggressiveness. You'll get less of it from me when people start going for the ball, and not the man. As for Shevek though, his opinions and preferences for combat gameplay are very dangerous in my opinion, and as long as he keeps posting that 'things are fine', you'll find me posting in opposition unless improvements are made.

Are you trying to tell me you don't have an agenda? Your vocal statements of "it's fine how it is" suggest otherwise. And you have absolutely no idea about any of the QA guys, what games they like, whether they played the IE games or not and what their agendas are. Everyone has an agenda - everyone. In my experience it's more common for people to not enjoy the games they work on than it is otherwise.

You're referring to something like a "melee shuffle". In and of itself it's not a bad concept, but it would definitely not constitute an Infinity Engine feel, and thus I will not support it.

Everyone has their own agenda. I want fun combat that feels closer to the Infinity Engine combat experience, while not being the rules of D&D. I too think that Shevek's claims there are a bit rich, for he certainly has his own too.

Both Pathing and AI is a little bit better now, far from optimal but this is the first patch where pathing is not noticeably worse than the previous version.

No that's a bug list thread, and it hasn't been updated for over a month.

It's not a core system, it's a side system. It's presence is not integral to the game like the class system, or the attack resolution system. It can be removed by deleting one method in the code, and the sky does not fall. It's clearer, actually. You guys are the ones being obtuse and obstructionist, just a loud noise trying to prevent actual progress.