Sensuki

Yeah in PE I use 3 melee max, as the BB Rogue is more effective against humans with melee weapons, but better against beetles with the Arbalest (because of their high DT). One tank is not enough for Hard, two is usually good.

Yeah I made a video of that too in the bug forum.

I heard there are *ahem*, other ways of getting it.

Bit like developer commentary. I wonder if some backers requested their NPC be hostile to the party or something, or of a specific faction etc.

Only seems to be happening for shields so far, will do some more testing later.

It's a Backer NPC icon. When you click on the icon it displays something that the backer's wrote for their NPC. Personally I think it's intrusive and think it should be able to be disabled in the options menu. Several other people have expressed their dislike of it. Mutonizer showed me how to mod it out of the game, so I have the code saved in case they don't do that. To be honest I'm a bit disappointed for the backers that backed NPCs that they are just blank state NPCs that stand around doing nothing. They don't seem to have any connection to quests, or any of their own dialogue.

Haha

Nope. IE games didn't have a prone state either.

Characters can now freeze eachother in place due to pathfinding errors. You can unfreeze them by re-issuing a new move command. Related to characters now being frozen when walking near characters with the "busy" state: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69147-333-walking-next-to-a-unit-in-the-busy-state-freezes-your-character/ Output Log File: http://www.upload.ee/files/4328842/output_log.rar.html

Pathfinding is improving with every patch!

Knock Down is basically a trip ?

Oh yeah and the Melee Engagement system trivializes fast movement in the first place. I am ignoring all Abilities, Spells and Talents that increase my characters Movement Speed because in combat you just stand still anyway.

That's bs man - so you're accusing every RTS player of NOT being tactical when moving units back when injured ????????? :/ It's a part of the gameplay of all RTS style games. Infinity Engine games, RTS games, MOBAs. The general RTS rules in this instance is: It's hard to retreat from fast enemies, they can proc hits on you when you're running away The enemy should disable you if they don't want you to run away It is unnecessary to use a derpy system that grants units free attacks against units that move away from combat. There are way more RTS-y ways of handling stuff like that. Omniknight in DotA2 has an AoE slow passive aura that makes units within a 200 units of range AoE have up to -28% move speed, making it easy for him to chase people down. PE Fighters have a Knock Down ability Rogues have their Crippling Strike ability that causes the Hobbled effect which slows people down. Priests, Wizards, Druids and Ciphers all have some form of AoE crowd control/slow/disable to stop characters from moving etc etc If you want to make a class sticky, make the class sticky - give the Paladin an MS decrease aura, give the Fighter a Talent that rolls for the Hobbled effect when he causes an Interrupt ... stuff like that You don't need Melee Engagement that gives a FREE ATTACK INDEPENDENT OF RECOVERY TIME TO ALL ENEMIES ENGAGING YOU

Blast is a Wizard passive ability that they get at level 1 which gives a small foe-only AoE attack when they auto-attack with Implements. It can be hard to notice because the AoE attack has no FX to correspond with it. If the game did not have floating damage numbers, I doubt anyone would notice if they didn't check the combat log. Implements are the worst ranged weapons in the game at the moment, so the damage that Blast AoE does is pitiful. The most I've ever seen is 1 damage and that's with the Penetrating Blast talent.

There used to be one called Penetrating Blast which gave Blasts some DT bypassing, although it only increases their damage by about 0.1-0.2 so it's not really worth investing in. Wizards are pretty bad at the moment. I think Josh thought Mages in the IE games were too strong and focused on nerfing them to crap. Everything that he thought was too strong in the IE games has been turned into a mediocre or uninviting choice. However Druids ... they're like Wizards except way,way,way,way better.

In PE you recover the traps though, that's the reward for disarming them. I think Exploration XP should be dealt differently. XP rewarded for just entering a map is plain dumb. The XP should be rewarded for uncovering the map's secrets - the hidden stashes, solving puzzles, scripted interaction stuff, finding a certain hidden encounter on the map etc

I think the two HP pools could be changed from the Darklands style which is more unintuitive (sorry Josh) to just Endurance and Health would become a 'Healing resource'. I've suggested this before, but instead of damage being dealt to both pools, damage would only affect Endurance and all Healing would come from the Health pool. It's still mechanically the same in 99% of cases, except that the UI display is more like 4E Healing Surges. Here's a bad mspaint mockup I did a while ago (it would not have to look like this) Say the character enters combat and takes some damage. After combat the damage is healed by their Health Pool Something like that anyway. Personally I don't care - but I think that display would be more intuitive. When you run out of Health Pool, you only have your remaining Endurance to run with. I think grazes are fine, I just think the Attack Resolution system could probably be normalized a bit more, reigning in the extreme misses and crits when ACC-DEF = -XX or +XX. Right now it's very swingy/random.

XP rewards still aren't perfect - Lock and Trap XP needs to go and Exploration XP needs a re-think as well IMO.

Not always, in my second episode of Sensuki vs Medreth I moved my Priest near a character but did not issue her to attack. She was not engaged by the nearby enemy but she started auto attacking him for some reason, I am not sure why.

The problem you are speaking about is also a non-issue IMO, and it is separate from the current problem. You can run right past any unit in the game now if they have no free Engagement slots (most enemies) and they will do nothing. There's nothing wrong with that, because they're focus firing another character. I don't think there should be a penalty for running past units, there are no facing mechanics in the game (although there is flanking). Often combat is fought in tight spaces where you have to move past other units anyway, and currently the pathfinding causes units to ring-around-the-rosey other units when moving towards a target, which is nothing like the pathfinding of the IE games or any RTS games I have played. I believe this would promote cheap tactical retreating into chokepoints more often than now. I would completely abuse this mechanic by sending a quick character to get AI targeting and then run them past my other melee characters for a free AoO - just like in NWN2. Pausing and moving away from units while they are in recovery is good play, however that unit can also chase you and in the current patch, their recovery time will tick down while moving (YAY) so that when they reach you they will be able to attack again. In these types of games the benefit of higher movement speed (Monks etc) is that they can land attacks while chasing .. although some of the area design (corridors etc) might make that a bit difficult. Beetles can hit you when you're running away from them because they have a faster movement speed than you. Even with my mod turned off, an Adra beetle still KO'd one of my chars with an 80 damage hit and that character was running away. However we have spent the past few pages speaking about Melee Engagement ... likely due to it being a topic upon which there is disagreement. Even though I am fairly firmly advocating it's removal it is far from the largest issue with combat at the moment. Far from it. IMO the biggest problems are: Party Member AI that cancels your actions Lack of animation feedback - need a different stance for combat idle and "in recovery" Pathfinding sucks Movement speed is too fast, enemies are faster than party Per-hit damage - this causes combat to be too lethal, and too short, possibly partially related to Attack Resolution system Spell FX obscuring the Battlefield - Spell FX guy needs to chill out and reduce the persistence of effects, tone down the lighting, stop making big AoE effects for buffs and debuffs and just do per-unit shaders/FX etc etc The lack of voice sets is also probably attributing to it as well. I think that the lower camera angle outside, the character sorting with the environment (blending into grass etc) also creates visibility issues, but I don't think those are things that can be rectified. I think they slightly improved the contrast of characters from the background in this build, I haven't compared screenshots though.

http://thelobbi.com/articles/2014-10-18-indie-speak-3-with-stasis-chris-bischoff

Doppelschwert, AI in every game is exploitable by the player. There are some games where the AI is impossible to beat (some Chess AI, Naughts and Crosses AI, etc) but most computer game AI is exploitable and beatable. I do not think it is good design to create mechanics that handicap the player because the enemy AI is not smart. This is not fun. It is one of the reasons why the Pillars of Eternity Melee Engagement system was created, but perhaps not the main reason. The main reason seems to be more aimed at giving players control over the enemy AI which I am 100% positive is possible without Engagement at all. It is all about the enemy AI targeting clauses. Designers should focus on creating fun and challenging encounters, not systems that put the player at a loss. If AI was created where enemy units would disengage when certain AI conditions are fulfilled, the player could exploit those conditions to get free engagement attacks. This kind of happened in the NWN games, and I think that is why the developers have 'sticky' AI targeting at the moment. I have to ask you, do you ever micro units back in RTS games? Forcing enemies (player or AI) to focus fire certain units and then micromanaging those units to the back is the bread and butter of RTS micromanagement, it is how you keep your units alive (thus causing no resource losses to yourself) while reaping maximum effectiveness from your unit composition. In the Infinity Engine games I minimize damage to my party by using my character with the highest AC to tank the majority of melee characters in combat. I send that character in first to snag all of the auto-attack clauses from the enemy AI and then send my other melee characters in at a delay so they are not targeted by the AI - because I know that the AI will keep targeting the first character I sent in. If I sent them all in together, the AI might try and target my characters with a worse armor class, or lower hit points. Playing like this also reduced the amount of healing that I have to spend across the party, because the character with the highest AC takes less hits and thus less damage. Sometimes I cast heals on the character, sometimes I use potions, but there are some cases when this character is reduced to very low health when surrounded by multiple enemies. In that situation I have to micro my character back, because they will die if they are hit again. ENEMIES CAN STILL ATTACK ME WHEN I MOVE AWAY WITH THEIR REGULAR ATTACKS (YOU KNOW, BECAUSE IT'S A REAL TIME GAME AND ENEMIES CAN ACT AT THE SAME TIME AS MY CHARACTER). IF AN ENEMY IS CURRENTLY SWINGING AT ME AND I ISSUE A MOVE COMMAND, THAT ATTACK WILL HIT AND PROBABLY KILL MY CHARACTER. THE REASON WHY DISENGAGEMENT ATTACKS ARE DUMB IS BECAUSE IT GIVE ALL ENEMIES WITHIN RANGE A FREE ATTACK INDEPENDENT OF RECOVERY TIME ON MY CHARACTER. It's not a non-trivial decision, it's playing smart. Disengagement attacks serve to penalize players who play intelligently. Your characters would still be able to do this anyway in PE except that your characters currently auto-attack enemies when they are Engaged, which is a load of horse dung, and makes it like an aggro mechanic. I _DO_NOT_ want any mechanics other than spells such as Disables, Fear, Charm etc to cancel or override the current action of any of my party members. It's not illogical, in real-time - any time the enemy can move, you can move, you can keep moving your character and blocking them in the IE games so that they cannot get past. This is not an example from the IE games, but you can do this to block units: It is not narrow minded. I think the reason why most people like the idea of Melee Engagement is more for the AI targeting clauses that cause enemies to attack their frontline characters and not the fact that their characters will suffer disengagement attacks if they try and move away from combat. Players want to be able to control the battlefield. You can already do that in the IE games, I think some people either just did not understand the enemy AI and/or have not played the game in such a long time that they forget what it played like. I also think that some people just do not like unit micromanagement in general. Melee Engagement is a form of automation that makes the game require less inputs from them.

I'm not sure it would be completely necessary because you are already at a disadvantage in those situations, and Wizards and Ranged users tend to have low Endurance anyway. I've found that if you get a melee character up to a caster or a ranged character in the first place, that unit is dead. Ranged units also have a penalty to recovery time when moving now as well. If you just previously used a ranged attack and you move, your recovery time is longer. Not sure if the recovery time is only longer when moving or whether it's longer for the duration of the recovery - haven't checked the logic.

Yeah the structure.

Ambient FX already loops in the game world. There's a music update for you to read too if interested: http://eternity.obsidian.net/news/update-76-music-in-pillars-of-eternity-