PrimeJunta

More second impressions. I managed to play almost to the end with a druid until I got bored and quit. (I don't save games because of the... risks involved.) The druid is one of the cool and interesting classes to play, although the Wild Shape thing doesn't work ATM. As in, when I apply it, I turn into a completely useless pile of meat. I don't attack anything, instead I just twitch, and eventually get beat down. I look forward to that working like it should. But the spells are cool. There are lots of possible synergies with the wizard; use one spell to depress a defense and another to attack it. The DoT's are pretty lethal too. The spell selection also feels more imaginative and varied than the wizard's basic repertoire of (damage type) in (point/cone/line/circle). The effects are pretty neat too. So yay for the druid, up there in the "want to plays" with the cipher, chanter, barbarian, and paladin. I've gone on enough about the lack of combat feedback that I'll complain about something else. By now I'm fairly confident that I'm not playing the game completely wrong although I'm sure I can get a lot better. I'm thinking about which defense to attack, using debuffs where applicable to lower that defense, and attacking. I'm also winning most fights fairly easily. This at Normal difficulty. And... those fights do drag on. Some of the enemy DoT effects seem overpowered (Deep Wounds, stacking spider poison), but other than that I get the feeling that hit points could be slashed in half all around (or, if you prefer, damage doubled), and the game would get a good deal more enjoyable. Or speed up the rhythm so we attack and cast about a quarter faster, and only nerf hit points by a quarter. The combat lacks dynamism simply because it takes so long to bring down a target, even if you're doing it mostly right. For the bigger fights, that makes crowd control and area effects king; at least they can whittle down several targets at once. The overall rhythm also feels wrong because of the movement speed. Combat is a combination of frantic and tedious, as the characters scoot all over the place, then proceed to stab each other to death with what appear to be toothpicks for all the damage they do. So, as this second impression: nerf the hit points, attack faster, and move slower. And make sure those DoT effects are in line with the regular attacks. I believe this, plus better combat feedback, in particular engagement indicators, will go a long way to making the combat not feel like a chore.

I got this too. I tried with boar, bear, wolf, and stag forms as well, and all of them behave identically: they just stand there and twitch until beat down.

Observed: after fighting the forest shamblers in Dyrford Crossing, combat did not deactivate when it should have, but only after wandering off some of the way. Thereafter it periodically re-activated in a variety of areas, including Dyrford, the Dracogen Inn, and Trygil's workshop, despite no enemies being on the map. I attacked Trygil with A. After defeating him + assistant, combat still did not deactivate. I noticed Piglet's action bar recycling. When I entered the tower, combat mode deactivated, allowing me to pick up Piglet and put her in the inventory. After that, combat stopped randomly reactivating, leading me to suspect that the problem is related to Piglet.

They were, but I do not think a successor ought to replicate their flaws. "Liked them as they were" to me implies something like "don't change anything." I vehemently disagree with that.

I didn't.

If it doesn't impose a movement speed penalty, under what circumstances would you ever want to switch it off? None. And so what? Then why not just make it passive (=always-on) like, say, the barbarian's Raw Strength? The IE games did impose a movement penalty when you had search mode on though. That's why it was a mode. If it had no penalties, it'd just be a passive ability. I would just make it a passive ability, with, say, one check per second tied to your Perception. Searching in scouting mode would still be more effective because you're moving more slowly and therefore get more checks per area.

Oh, forgot one thing: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Status_Effects @BlueLion ... the bestiary, eventually? What's annoying me about that specific thing is that it is not transparent at all. The way it works is logical enough, but it's plumb near impossible to see the numbers: Each weapon deals one or more damage type Each armor (including, presumably, natural armor like beetle shell) has a damage threshold (DT) A part of your base damage always goes through the DT Different armors have DT bonuses or penalties against different damage types, e.g. Chain has a penalty against Crushing and--I think--a bonus against Slashing So to figure out which can opener to use against which can, you would need to know what the DT of the can is against each damage type. That information is not easily available. There absolutely has to be real-time combat feedback that includes this information, e.g. in the floaty numbers: raw damage and applied damage. So if you see something like 23/8 you know that most of your damage is getting soaked and you ought to try something else, but if you see 23/18 you know you're doing pretty well.

The druid, by the way, is kewl. Finally got around to playing one. I would not recommend it as baby's first class because a lot of the spells rely on status effects or attacking specific defenses, which makes them either extremely effective or not effective at all, and if you don't know which is which it'll just feel wrong. But if you play it right, it packs some serious punch, and also synergises really nicely with some other classes, especially the wizard. There are some really neat one-two punches there, like using the druid for an AoE hobble, then the wizard for an AoE attack against Reflex, or the wizard for an AoE Weaken, then the druid for a multi-target attack against Fortitude. I didn't care for the concept at first, but after experimenting a bit it's clearly one of the most interesting classes in the game, and among the thematically most coherent too.

Combat.

Seriously? You'd be happy with wonky broken un-fun combat, if you get more portraits? Don't know about "people," but that would certainly not make me happy.

Nope. That's when things get interesting. If their ranged units target your back row, then you should try to take them out of the fight first. If their melee units target your back row, you should interpose your melee units so they don't reach them. Tactics, y'know.

The trick to playing P:E is knowing which defense(s) to attack. Hammering away at a critter with high Deflection isn't going to get you anywhere. Spell and special ability descriptions helpfully state which defense each of them attacks. The real clincher however are status effects. The most important effect of most of these is that they debuff specific defenses. So, for example, your standard Fireball becomes a great deal more effective if cast on Hobbled enemies, because Fireball attacks Reflex and Hobbled applies a -20 penalty to it. Here's the problem: I didn't find information on what the various status effects actually mean anywhere in the beta. I had to look them up from the wiki and write them down on a piece of paper. Ever since I did that and started using combinations of spells and specials somewhat intelligently, the fights got way easier. I believe something ought to be done about this. Because these combos are so central to the gameplay, the game should communicate explicitly what the status effects mean.

My advice would be somewhat different from the OP's. If you want to enjoy the beta, take it as what it is: a possibility to get in early to see the systems shape up, and to have a small say in how that happens. If you're looking for an enjoyable game experience, then don't participate in the beta. That's not what it is.

It shouldn't be hard to add this. Just have an arrowhead pointing out from each selection circle at each enemy the combatant is engaging. If two combatants are engaging each other, have the arrowheads change shape, into a diamond or a link or whatever looks clearest.

Uh... some of the city fights in BG2 were plenty tough. The beholders. The vampires. Kangaxx for cryin' out loud.

Wel-l.ll... I don't entirely agree with that, Indira. There are some decision they've made that do feel "different for the sake of different," but for the most part... I don't think making a straight clone of DnD would've really helped. For one thing, it would've been an enormous job to get the implementation to the level of richness and refinement you had in BG2 or, say, SoZ, and the closer it is to DnD the more it invites precisely these kinds of comparisons. It would've felt like a cut-rate knock-off, with all of the flaws but missing the main benefit (=the richness and variety in classes, kits, spells, etc.). Whereas building a materially different system still invites comparison, but at least it's not a one-to-one direct comparison. I have a feeling it was actually safer to go this way, and it's likely the rage would have been even fiercer had they steered closer to DnD, simply because the omissions and deviations would have stood out even more.

There's no reason 25% health has to be the functional equivalent of 25% healing spells. It can't be, plainly, because healing spells can be applied where needed whereas health is what it is, even allowing for tactical adjustments like rotating your badly beat-up tank to the back while a less beat-up character equips heavy armor and goes on temporary tanking duty. To work, however, the mechanic has to provide 'adventuring days' of comparable length. I.e. that, on average, you'd get about as far with the health/stamina system as you would with one cleric on medic duty. This is currently not the case and it is plainly a problem. But that is a numbers issue, not an issue with the fundamental mechanic.

If it doesn't impose a movement speed penalty, under what circumstances would you ever want to switch it off?

No, damnit. Rogues and fighters are boring. Both are one-trick ponies. Rogue is a sneak-attacker, with talents supporting that trick. Fighter is a sticky melee defender, with talents supporting that trick. The fact that AD&D thieves and fighters at comparable level are equally or even more boring does not excuse it. At the very least equalize the melee/ranged base accuracy for the rogue, so ranged rogue builds won't feel gimped.

Yeah, just like we always do here on the forums.

Sorry, Hiro -- I hadn't noticed you mentioning the idea. Despite the appearances, I only read some parts of some threads here and do miss a lot of good stuff. I do try to give credit if I'm boosting other people's ideas, if I can remember who came up with them.

Brute Force targets Fortitude only if it's lower than Deflection. I.e. barbs always hit the lower of the two. It's very much a net advantage.

I don't think the AI algorithm itself ought to be particularly hard. I think the tricky bit would come from its interactions with the other systems. Pathfinding for example. Ranged attacks are simple to target, but a melee unit would have to determine if it's able to reach the unit it's targeting, and revise its decisions as the situation changes. If this doesn't work well you'd get some really weird behavior. And of course you don't have unlimited CPU to play with.

No, but there bloody well ought to be. (It does show up in the combat log, but that's generally useless ATM so it doesn't help much.)

Good thing in P:E there's no reason you'd want to do that, unless you thought they carried really good loot of course.