Sensuki

The combat in Pillars of Eternity is currently a bit off-putting to players unfamiliar with the Infinity Engine games, who may not be used to isometric combat that requires more active input from the player. There is also the fact that the content in the beta is from the middle of the game, and you are expected to know how to play five characters at once and all of their abilities which can be a bit overwhelming at first. While I don't think that combat in Pillars of Eternity is necessarily difficult, there's a few roadbumps before it becomes smooth sailing, and this can lead to full party wipes early on and the illusion of difficulty. The character creation screens, level up screens and user interface does not do a very good job at engaging new players with the mechanics and the speed that combat begins and ends in Pillars of Eternity is very fast. The key mistake I see new players making is not pausing or slowing the game down and actively controlling all of their characters. So I have decided to make a new series of videos aimed at helping new and casual players avoid the gotchas of character creation and leveling up, explain how the mechanics work so that they can make informed decisions on character building choices and help them through the roadbumps of combat. My first video in this series focuses on leveling up a Barbarian and combat against a group of beetles with the standard BB party and gear. I go into details about Attribute selection, Ability selection, Talent selection, Optimizing party gear, the importance of pausing (or using slow), the combat opening, strategical decisions, tactical decisions and the importance of regularly assigning characters new actions. One of the things I forgot to go into in the video is the Engagement system, which I think will catch new players unawares due to the nature of the invisible disengagement attacks - anyone who hasn't played D&D or a Neverwinter Nights game is going to be unfamiliar with the concept. I believe the engagement system makes combat in Pillars of Eternity less tactical due to the restriction of movement in melee and isn't very fun. I'll make sure I include that in the next video. It is up to the developers to improve combat and make it enjoyable, as well as improve the intuitiveness of the user interface screens before release. Edit: Barbaric Blow is also a really good talent for Barbarians as well, but it's not grouped with the other ones in the Talent list so I forgot to mention it.

By the way, Paladins are broken in the current patch, their passive auras do not work properly - so they are a seriously gimped character at the moment.

Character actions are currently shown in the Combat HUD. I don't have anything against moving the Combat HUD action and recovery timer to the portrait area for player characters (preferably in the unused space below them), as long as it can be disabled and it is not covering the portraits.

Yeah it's going to be extremely difficult if not impossible. If you were able to do it, you would have to exploit the crap out of the game worse than you did in the IE games to complete it, and there won't be any cloak of algernon to help you etc At the moment I think the most likely class to do it would be the Cipher.

The game doesn't really require much tactical input, other than what you decide to do at the start of combat - certainly not tactical movement anyway. But yeah I think a lot of people are simply just missing some of the basics. I still think the combat is too quick, too disjointed and not that great, but it's not difficult once you know what to open combat with and you know what abilities to follow up with. The IE game combat was much more reactionary (and thus tactical). Most of the time I didn't bother about a good opening, because it wasn't required. Pillars of Eternity's combat relies about 80% on your opening/first actions of combat. It doesn't go for long enough to bother with half the actions available, I've found casting buffs in combat fairly pointless in v301 and v333. In v278 the poison counterspells were needed, now they're not.

There's also a slow mode, you press S to turn it on. Most of the people I see who are dying are not pausing enough. And yeah it requires too much pausing. Bunch of issues together are causing it. I'm going to do all I can to highlight these issues and hope that they are fixed. My first vs the beetles video is terrible by the way, that was one of the first times I seriously attempted that encounter. You will see me pausing very often there, and then less often in the later videos, because I got better over time.

You can name names you know. None of the stuff I posted is from there, it's from interviews and Kickstarter Updates. If you didn't already know that and didn't want to know then sorry. We know that Gilded Vale is Act 1 from the E3 previews, the others are from Josh Sawyer interviews. @LordWafflebum - if you want to know how to beat beetles https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIRfCmyR7ijJVaS8mrbpvsCXPCl61FSaW (not incredibly relevant in the latest patch though)

I suppose it depends on how much of the side content you complete, I usually do every wilderness area before I even go to the Bandit Camp, so I'm usually way overleveled for the content for most of the rest of the game.

The fact that it's so small (like 11 x 8 inches) is not encouraging. I upped my pledge to get the Collector's Book Hardcover specifically, and if it isn't some nice big art book like what other games usually have I am going to be son I am dissapoint.

I never found anything in Cloakwood difficult, YMMV.

The beta content is from Act 2. Act 2 is set in Defiance Bay. It is apparently side content, so you don't have to visit the area at all. Game goes like this Act 1 - Gilded Vale, end of act 1 is at the Endless Paths of Od Nua (as stated in the Stronghold update) Act 2 - Defiance Bay Act 3 - Twin Elms

I don't find combat difficult Shevek, however it certainly isn't fun. Some of the things that these guys are describing as 'difficulty' isn't really difficulty. The OP probably doesn't pause very much, and as a result he doesn't have time to issue all of his units commands without missing actions. That's not an element of difficulty, because you can pause the game. However it requires too much pausing, and that isn't fun.

Melee Engagement is not some magical system that will protect your weaker units, all it is is some AI targeting clauses combined with a conditional-based attack of opportunity. All you should need to 'protect' your units is to position your character correctly initially and re-position them if there is a problem.

Might builds are worse actually. It doesn't have anything to do with what the attributes give, the change is spawned by the 10 is 0 system, and changes to creature deflection scores. The math remains the same.

The Backer Beta forum is not very active at the moment. Lots of people have been visiting less due to the news that the game has been delayed, and lots of people have announced that they 'need a break' from the game and will give it another go when it's closer to ready. There also hasn't been as much developer activity on the forums recently either, which is what a lot of the people read the forums for. It's also a busy time of the year. So yeah that's not too surprising.

There's a minimum damage value, which is being raised to 20%. If an enemy has a high DT vs a damage type just attack them with another one. I don't really use slashing weapons in the beta because they're not great vs many of the creatures/characters in armor. They're fine vs wolves, spiders and lions though I think.

Depends on the rolls themselves though, the damage ranges can vary quite a bit, you could score a crit on the lowest damage roll and do less damage than a normal hit on the highest etc (stuff like that).

Yeah I get this as well.

I'm talking about pure DPS bonuses from attribute actually. Non-damaging CC has nothing to do with DPS. I am not denying that if you want to dish out CC that Perception is the most important attribute most of the time. What are you talking about? At the ACC-DEF +6 range or higher, you can't miss, and you have a 44% chance to graze, 45% chance to hit and 11% chance to crit. Over time in that situation a permanent +20% damage gives more DPS over a 10% increase of a better attack resolution. The extra accuracy only does anything if the attack resolution falls into the range where it actually pushes your roll from one attack resolution to another. These rules are uniform, doesn't matter if it's a per day or a per encounter. The situation you talk about only relates to a specific encounter. Over time, you'll get a better attack resolution with +10 ACC 10% of the time (statistically anyway), whereas you will get the might bonus every time it is cast. In the cases where the roll would not have changed regardless of that +10 Accuracy, the accuracy bonus does nothing, whereas the Might does.

Not currently because 2H does more damage, but when they tweak the values - 1H style will be king unless versing enemies with heavy armor.

Okay so by default, at ACC-DEF = 0, characters have a 45% chance to graze (roll of 6-50) and 45% chance to hit (roll of 51-95). 20% Graze-to-Hit would change it to 25% chance to graze (6-30) and 65% chance to hit (31-95).

The reason I was motivated to investigate how the game played without it is that it prevents tactical retreating, which is something I want to do, and something I want hard set encounters to be designed around.

Sorry I meant level 5, not level 4

You're still not paying attention to the graph. The chance of your accuracy boost actually affecting the outcome of the roll is low, 1% per point to be exact. When ACC-DEF = +6 or higher, the Might bonus to damage @ 2% per point gives more flat DPS per point. In that range, +10 Accuracy will yield you a 10% chance of +50% increase in damage, and a Might damage bonus of 20% will give 20% on every attack. DT and DT Effectiveness (Effective DT depending on attacks/sec) are taken into account on the graph. I don't see how it's that hard to grasp for so many people. In the game currently enemy defenses are around equal to or higher than the party accuracy (they were boosted in the current patch), so you will find that Perception (and points in Accuracy) are more valuable because in that range, Accuracy gives more DPS per point over time, which the graph shows. I am not disputing that currently, Perception is king. In v257 and v278, the Attribute system gave +21 Accuracy with a maxed Dex (21, Orlan with White that Wends I think), classes had +10 higher accuracy than they do now and attributes gave no Deflection bonus. So back then Might was better because your Accuracy normally outclassed enemy Deflection.

Won't be like that when the damage ranges are balanced. I would just prefer something offensive, as offensive talents that boost DPS are lacking for 2Hers once you already pick Weapon Focus/Weapon Specialization.