Sensuki

DR / Percentile armor can also be handled by formulas rather than by flat DR (this would make it more interesting, Infinitron) This is just an example (and some people may recognize it) That way stacking armor has diminishing returns and spells/abilities/etc that reduce armor are cool, and reducing armor below zero is awesome.

DT would be fine if bonuses to damage were in integers, then there wouldn't really be a problem I don't think. That's how it was in the Fallouts right? They're basically using the Fallout Armor system with percentile increase to damage. The Fallout system worked with integers, but it doesn't appear to be working with percentile damage. Fallout 1/2/Tactics didn't really have to deal with percentile increases to real-time attack speed either. I'm not not sure they're willing to recognize that/compromise the use of percentages. I personally do not care which solution is used, as long as the issue is resolved. I have no preference.

Portraits down the side would be good, but the devs have flat out said that they aren't going to do it.

I agree that movement speed should be slower. Been saying that since v257. I just don't think it's the only problem with the game. A run animation was a silly idea IMO, but I think they made a few of those pre-production choices without considering the impact they would have on combat (such as lower camera angle, characters sorting into grass etc). Opening line was

I would prefer they be dropped for integers too, as that would be more intuitive, but Josh and the MMO players here may not. Rather suggest something neutral than something people flat out won't consider

Well the middle UI section probably needs to be totally redone, because most of those buttons you'll almost never use and they just take up too much space to warrant them being there. Most people press the space bar or slow hotkey to pause. Some might press the clock, but it certainly doesn't need to be that big.

No reason why there couldn't be something like that. The current tabs they have are actually ... a waste of space

In the IE games it's hotkeyed. It was a quick cut and paste. It's also missing space for Ranger Animal Companions and Chanter/Cipher/Monk resources. Don't put too much stock on the missing stuff. The point was more to demonstrate that there's a crap load of wasted space in the current Main HUD.

Yeah, and if you do any damage to the Monk but don't focus fire him down shortly after, he'll start 1-shotting the whole party from +120 burning damage from Turning Wheel.

Yeah but remember how I recommended to nerf Accuracy so that it doesn't increase crit chance? There's an interrupt talent that makes you interrupt more often although that would be superfluous if it was to be put back into the attribute system. I don't think they're going to add it back, but I can always mod it back in myself. Like I said, haven't done the maths. Have to wait a while for Matt to become free again, so I thought I'd just put this out there to see if it was worth looking into.

They're not ? Why would they not be collapsible ? That's pretty much what happened yep. The very first UI version had the menu in the middle, which is inconvenient. Unfortunately they kept it there. I just couldn't be bothered thinking of a symmetrical design that put the menu at the side.

You have only played the game for 3 hours, and for 0.1 hours in the current patch. The problems are more obvious than that IMO, particularly the per-hit damage. 90% of people who don't care about combat - that might have been a better phrase

This is just a muck around mockup. I think it would be better on the left because it would then be easier to read, as you read the text from the left to the right and then move your eyes back to the middle of the screen, which is only a short shift rather than from all the way from the bottom right back to the center. Combined with smaller combat log text, less superfluous lines and some editing of the formats it would actually make it readable on the fly. My stance on that will probably not change, as the right side of the screen is the worst position for it.

As many of you know, combat currently doesn't feel right. While many of these issues are related to movement speed and could also possibly be related to action speed, I think many of the issues are being created by some of the other combat systems - most notably the attack resolution and armor systems. I have also included some sections about Attributes and Interrupts, as while the v301 changes to the Attribute system made the system a little bit better ... the changes to the system made attributes have less impact on character builds when we were asking for more impact, it still has quite a lot of holes, there are still dump stats and it still feels like a non-choice on many/most classes about what attributes to choose. So here are my thoughts on these systems. They are just budding thoughts and I have not had the opportunity to thoroughly investigate any of these issues through modding or mathematics (as Matt516 is currently very busy with University), so I thought I'd just put this out there to the public and see what people think. Attack Resolution I like the attack resolution system and I think grazes are a good idea. After having played with situations when party unit accuracy is 10+ points higher than enemy defenses and/or party unit defenses are 10+ points higher than enemy accuracy in v301 and in v333 where enemy defenses can be 10+ points higher than party accuracy and/or enemy accuracy is 10+ points higher than party defenses, I think that the range of accuracy that begins to convert misses into critical hits becomes problematic and throws out the 'fun' in the game. It either makes it too easy (v301) or kinda hard (some enemies in v333) and I can see issues where attempting higher level content will not be possible. I think the solution to this problem is to change the way the attack resolution system works, slightly. Instead of ACC-DEF +1 or higher increasing the critical hit chance, I think it would be better if critical hits were normalized to the "natural roll of the dice", or rather only occured on the Unity.Random.Range rolls of 96-100. This would make it so that when enemies or party units have ACC-DEF +1 or higher, the damage values do not get too ridiculous, they will just score hits more often, and less misses and grazes. I've spoken with Matt516 about this and he agrees, and sometime in the future he's going to produce a new chart to plot the bonus DPS from Accuracy and Might with this change. This would mean that the abilities/talents/buffs in the game that increase the crit range would now need to affect natural rolls only. Armor System The armor system has gone through quite a few revisions over the course of development, and unsurprisingly, the current system is pretty much the Fallout armor system, with the minimum damage rule from Fallout: New Vegas. Not surprising considering the people doing the system design are Tim Cain (Fallout) and Josh Sawyer (Fallout: New Vegas) ... funny how that works. The Integer DT system makes low damage/high speed weapons/spells/abilities really terrible and DT bypassing stuff like Stilettos, Maces and Estocs are without a doubt the best weapons of their type. It also makes increased attack speed worse than flat increased damage percentage. I think the DT system is the sole cause for all of the balancing issues. It is very hard to balance percentile increases to damage against integer DT. I think that if the designers keep the current armor system, balancing the damage of weapons and abilities is going to be a nightmare for them for a long time due to the fact that all increases to damage are in percentages, rather than integers. There are two solutions to this problem. The first solution is to change all damage increments from percentile values to integers. I broached this in a very unpopular suggestion in the first week of the beta, and I also think that the designers would be against it. Therefore, I think the solution here would be to remove DT from the armor system and have DR / Percentile armor only. Obsidian can easily balance the base percentage of DR against the Recovery Time penalty because they are the inverse of eachother. DR 50% = 50% less damage taken, Action Speed -50% = 50% less DPS (both of these assume no other inputs). They can also still do the per damage type DR resistances, such as Plate Armor 50% DR, 25% DR vs Shock or something. This would fix the issue with Fast and Normal Speed weapons being inferior choices, because they would no longer have to deal with DT, they would all be useful against armor. This would also make Action Speed 2% equal to +2% DPS, and would help balance it better against the +2% Damage bonus from Might. Might also grants Healing, Action Speed increases the speed of non-damaging actions as well. Currently Dexterity is a dump stat, this would make it very good. This could also possibly mean that health and damage values could be brought back into more sensible (and familiar) ranges to balance, rather than thousands of Endurance/Health points and damage rolls in the 100-200 ranges and it would also be easier to tweak the speed of the game because formulas just become mostly a simple damage * speed calculation. Shields I would not however suggest that DT be completely removed from the game. I think that it is more intuitive that Shields block damage rather than increase your Deflection. Currently I do not use shields in the beta. I find that the increase in Deflection that they grant is not a good tradeoff for the reduced DPS. There was one Shield in the beta that I found was worth using, and that was an Exceptional Heater Shield or something because it gave more Deflection than it reduced Accuracy and Action Speed and it felt like it actually made a difference to the BB Fighter's survivability. I think putting DT on Shields would be cool, it would make shields really really good rather than almost never worth using. Flails would then need to reduce a portion of the damage block. Attributes I think changing the Attributes to a 10 and 0 system has really limited the impact of Attributes on all characters. Currently you can choose Armored Grace as a Fighter and it is the same as getting a free 18 Dexterity. Weapon Focus gives the same bonus as 20 Perception. What I would suggest to do is change the zero point of Attributes from 10 to 8. In AD&D 2E, 8 was the zero point for Attributes, so it would still be somewhat familiar to IE players. This would give more headroom for attribute selection and would create arrays that look similar to 3E point buy. I would also suggest that Attributes have a greater impact, and thus, the bonuses (and negatives) that attributes grant should be increased per point. I think combined with a "Natural 20" style critical hit in the Attack Resolution system, Attributes could be balanced around Perception granting +3 to Accuracy. +3 Accuracy is the same amount that characters get each new level so that would feel more like the BAB/THAC0 bonus that Fighters get in 2E and 3E - and thus would feel impactful. In light of these changes, the formula to Fort, Ref, and Will may need to be changed to something like [Attribute A + Attribute B x 2] instead of x1.5+0.5 Matt516 could create some new charts to plot ACC vs MIG again with these changes. For the record I still don't really like the swapping of Deflection and Durations, I think I understand why they did it as in Ars Magica Resolve is more of a mental stat and Deflection on Resolve probably feels funny to Josh, being an Ars Magica player ... and there was some D&D splat book that made an Intellect Fighter possible (Int AC bonus or something). I think while the new Intellect may be the best Attribute for Paladins and Chanters, it's horrible on everyone else. Most casters don't need extra Deflection because they are in the backline, and AoEs only rarely give extra DPS/Durations because bonus AoE size won't allow you to hit extra units with your spells all the time, only some of the time. Players can also make up for the lack of extra AoE by smart play - such as luring enemies into clumps or positioning the spell in the 100% best position when paused. I don't pick Intellect on any characters except Paladins and Chanters, because for all buff and debuff based casters, Accuracy and Durations are far more important. For damage based casters, Accuracy and Damage (Might) is more important. I don't think what they have done creates a hard choice between Intellect and Resolve, it's an easy choice - don't pick Intellect. I think the system Matt and I created offered greater build flexibility, while Obsidian's changes just create more non-choices. Players pick what style of character they want to play and then pick the attributes that accomodate that style. If you want to play a Defensive caster? Under our system, pick Resolve - makes you harder to hit and increases your Concentration so your spells don't get disrupted. Want more potent spells? Pick Intellect - AoE and Durations are improved. Their original version of Intellect was a perfect attribute. A bit of a side track, but the changes to the advancement system also make it possible to dump Resolve just like in v278 now, because if you opt for a more passive character, you don't need the attribute as the extra duration percentage is not as valuable as increased DPS or Health. I recently created a more Passive fighter with 4 Resolve and it was great. Interrupts I still think that the attribute system we proposed in our paper has some advantages over the current one. I think that the problem with Interrupt can be solved through the User Interface. Interrupts are now shown in the combat log, and if the character's Interrupt score was shown in the inventory screen / character record screen then players would be able to get a pretty good to very good estimation of how effective their Interrupt is, provided that Concentration is also shown in the inventory along with it. I do not think that increased Range adds anything to the game, as units being far away from the party is a bad thing as they miss out on party auras and buffs. Priests need to be close to the battle to use their AoE heal ability. Rogues/Rangers etc need to be pretty close to benefit from auras and AoE buffs. Wizards can drop AoE spells from the back but any other type of spell requires them to be closer. If your party is standing directly in front of you, you can't case a Lightning Bolt through the party, you need to position them on an angle so that they aren't hitting the party and that requires them to get closer 99% of the time. So yeah I still think that Accuracy and Interrupt would be good together. I also think Interrupts as a build would be more viable if there were talents that augmented them, such as "Staggering Interrupts" that procs a secondary attack against Fortitude for the Dazed status effect for base 2-3 seconds on a successful Interrupt roll. ------------------------------------------------ Let me know if you guys think those are good ideas / if any of that stuff sounds sensible.

I was bored so I made this, had this mock up portrait bar sitting around for about two months but hadn't used it in anything yet. I was going to be more creative, but moral of the story - don't waste space on the user interface - thanks. Yeah there's no room for animal companions or Monk/Chanter/Cipher resources, although maybe I'll redo the design to incorporate them into it, but yeah anyway - large portraits N stuff!

Tried killing Medreth first this time, fight went a bit quicker I think

The IE games were real time. The only difference is that amount of actions units could perform were determined by a different method. If your second statement is aimed at me then you obviously didn't read my first post in this thread, go check page one.

All games that used a D&D system used a 'per-unit' round. Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 both used them. You will be clicking and clicking just like you were in the IE games to drink a potion, except it might even possibly take a very long time to drink a potion if you're wearing heavy armor. The length of time between actions will in many cases be even longer in Pillars of Eternity, the only difference is that actions are not determined by an apr/6 second time division, instead they are measured in direct seconds. It baffles me how people don't seem to understand this.

Well floating damage numbers wouldn't be necessary either if it wasn't for ****ty combat log design

I think we'll find that the maps we haven't tested will all have issues with NavMesh. The Dyrford Crossing still has quite a few NavMesh issues that haven't been corrected yet.

I don't think it's possible to "add more skills" because what Josh has done is compressed all of the D&D 4E skills into those 5 skills, and rolled a couple of the others into Attribute checks. However you are correct, that one of the main reasons why people are maxing skills is that there are only five skills. I touch on skills in my video here: I believe the second reason is because the skill check design promotes maxing skills, and there is no incentive not to do it. There would be incentive if there were skill checks for multiple skills though.

Yes, it's run by Furism of the SomethingAwful forums.

It's different in PE though, companions don't speak except in interjections.

Serpent in the Staglands.

I imagine the implementation of filters would be created by exactly the same method they use to create the other options in the options menu. Essentially it would be a bit of a cut and paste job with code alterations where necessary. Feel free to decompile the dll yourself, it's not that difficult.