PrimeJunta

That's true, and Josh has said somewhere that he explicitly dislikes it. "Combat as puzzle" I think was the term he used. I.e. a hard encounter that becomes trivial once you know the solution. I don't have that strong a dislike for it personally, but I kind of sympathize; IMO "the solution" should ideally be at least a little tricky to apply. Many of BG2's major set pieces really aren't, so the game kind of goes from punishingly hard to easy at any difficulty level. What redeems it though is that the process of going from punishingly hard to easy is really rewarding, and after that point there are scads of ways of gimping yourself to keep things interesting -- and for the encounters that do become rote (Kangaxx for example) there are always more that retain their challenge, or where the challenge changes because your party doesn't have the capabilities it did last time. Playing with Keldorn in the party (=effectively at-will, powerful Dispel Magics) is quite different than playing without him in the party. IMO it's this incredible variety and richness what makes BG2 so awesome, and makes up for the numerous holes and exploits in it.

Yeah it's surprising how Edér is as good as immune to status effects as well so much of the time. It ought to be trivial to add challenge to tanking simply by making enemies target the tank's weaker defenses with some nasty status effects. Stun, Paralyze, Petrify, and so on. Would immediately neutralize tank-and-spank in the encounters where it's used.

@Malekith Agree about Arcane Veil. It's currently a waste. Short-duration near-immunity to damage would be much better. Moreso if they restored the original idea of having firearms (and only firearms) penetrate it, as you also point out. But... again, you could do all this just by adjusting the numbers. Whether Josh wants to is a different matter, and I don't see much point speculating about that.

As an aside, in a real-time game I think it ought to be pretty trivial to devise an AI that beats a human every time in a roughly fair fight. Simply because a computer can react and compute so much faster than a human, and would possess all the data about an encounter. So it'd always be able to hit you first with a debilitating CC attack, always be able to move out of the AoE of the spell you're casting, always perfectly position its AoE's, and so on and so forth. That would not be fun at all. In that kind of situation, you'd have to have all the fights unfairly stacked to your advantage. That would not be much fun. (The stealth system in P:E is this kind of unfair IMO. Other than scripted setpieces, you will always get the drop on the enemy. That's not fun.)

I think the deal with "no hard counters" wasn't really that. The impression I get is that Josh really dislikes win-or-die RNG effects. So it's more like the other way around. Umber Hulks are horrid until you discover Chaotic Commands; Kangaxx is incredibly scary until you find out about after which he becomes trivial, that sort of thing. Having enemies with high (=near-hard) defenses is different. But that's really neither here nor there: whatever Josh thinks, the P:E mechanics have scope to be much more interesting, varied, and more difficult simply by adjusting the numbers. I would like more depth in the magic system though, to allow for stuff like dropping a Hold Person on a Dire Charmed party member. Or countering it with a Charm Person of your own. That sort of thing. Mechanically/systemically, magic is where P:E falls furthest short of its IE counterparts IMO. Making and debugging a complex and rich magic system that isn't laughably broken though isn't easy; even P:E's relatively simple system has had problems like the way OP Slicken.

I quite enjoyed picking flowers in DA:I for a while. Pretty flowers! Then I forgot what all the fuss was about and abandoned it. Haven't felt like going back to it.

It's very rare that you'd have room for more than 4 enemies to attack a single target, unless you count ranged enemies which I think would get problematic for a number of reasons.

And you aren't throwing insults and sneering at others? How about take your own advice and contribute to the discussion. Thank you. I will try.

Better Call Saul ? Is that a TV show? I don't watch TV, so sorry, nothing to say about that.

Better encounter design, +1. No hard counter policy: I think simply cranking up the resistances significantly would be sufficient. Since CC abilities don't have to last long to be highly effective, grazing with a status effect often is functionally equal to hitting or critting with a status effect. This makes CC way more powerful than DD all around. Getting rid of status effect grazes would already make things a lot more interesting as you couldn't just Slicken high-resistance enemies. I.e. I see that as a numbers issue rather than a fundamental design problem. Re itemization, IMO it's not as bad as that -- better than BG1, although not as good as BG2. However I find the enchantment system rather dull: it's too easy to slap enchantments on things, which makes found items much less interesting. If you had to at least trek to a workbench to enchant, it would already be a good deal more interesting. The biggest flaw with itemization IMO is that the truly unique items are disappointing; they should be powerful enough that you'd want to build a character just to use them (cf Crom Faeyr or Carsomyr). Again, these aren't systemic design issues IMO, but balancing/numbers issues.

Okay, so then what are you interested in discussing? Asking because if your intent is just to vent, sneer, trash the game, and wave your massive e-peen around, I'd like to know so I can just ignore you for the time being.

You must feel embarrassed a lot of the time.

Bingo. So how about we discuss the various ways the encounters could be made more difficult and varied, preferably within the general parameters of the P:E design? Seems to me that would be a more productive use of everybody's time than the bickering and sneering this thread has devolved into.

Rest spamming is exploiting. It doesn't count, as it completely bypasses the strategical resource management aspect of the game ... kind of like a gold cheat in an RTS. I agree. It is exploiting. Which is why the rest system should've been built in a way not to allow it in the first place.

And sneer at others when they do the same (e.g. rest-spam). Classy.

@HH and others: my only real beef with the beholders and illithids is that there were too damn many of them. One illithid + umber hulk encounter would have been an exciting climactic mini-bossfight. One after another after another after another was just a chore. Same for the beholders.

You've discovered a weakness in the implementation of a feature that lets you predictably and systematically exploit it. That's the very definition of an exploit. It's exactly like rest/save-spamming, only more sophisticated. It's a difference in degree, not in kind.

I do think it is something of an exploit. You're bypassing a great deal of the complexity by manipulating a single facet of the systems. It just happens to be challenging enough to execute that you find it enjoyable. What it is not is a core feature of the IE games, and you're doing both them and P:E a disservice by treating it as such. You do not need to understand or manipulate AI targeting (or use any other degenerate strategy) to have a blast playing the IE games.

Nonsense. Everybody does. The trick is (1) attempting to be aware of making those assumptions and (2) being able to set them aside when they're pointed out to you. Human cognition is based on categorization and generalization. It's just the way we tick. It's how we deal with the resulting biases that count.

See, this is why it's kinda pointless to talk with you about this stuff anymore. So vent away, Sensuki. I hope you'll eventually be able to discover some enjoyment in the game. You would have earned it.

I don't think a mod would help. The problem with rest-spamming (and the other easy exploits) in the IE games is that it nudges people into playing them wrong, i.e. with tedious, rote, and unenjoyable tactics. If you're aware that rest-spamming is a problem then it's a pretty short step from that to self-limiting; a mod on top of that would be icing on the cake. Simply put: not rest-spamming in the IE games is a self-imposed limitation, no different than any other way to gimp yourself to up the challenge. The fact that you can invites you to use it. The fact that the game designers did not intend the game to be rest-spammed, and that rest-spamming results in an experience that's a great deal less fun, reflects a design flaw of the rest mechanics. Going "LOL casual" at people who do the obvious thing is stupid. I also contend that the designers of the IE games did not intend the game to be played "Warcraft style" by exploiting AI targeting. If they had, they would have made the AI much more consistent across the games, and introduced mechanics specifically oriented around that style of gameplay. Instead, they made extremely rich systems with special attacks, immunities, counters, combined effects, and so on and so forth. I.e., you're also playing it wrong, if "wrong" means "not like the designers intended." You've certainly earned the right to vent and be as snide as you like, with the work you put in the BB, but if you are, expect to be called out on it. "Tactical" does not equal only "high-actions-per-second tactic to exploit AI targeting," nor does "reactivity" equal only "doing something when the AI switches targeting." You're hyper-specialized and consequently your understanding of these concepts is hyper-narrow. There's way more to tactics and reactivity than that. And if anyone who plays BG2 differently than you is "doing it wrong" then so are you. Now, how productive do you think it is to sling these kinds of "lol n00b/lol southkoreanstarcraftnerd" at each other? From where I'm at, not very. If all you're doing is venting your disappointment, by all means carry on, but I'm bowing out of it. If you want to have an actual discussion which may even contribute to a better P:E through rebalance patches, mods, expansions, or sequels, then that's a conversation I'm interested to have. And finally, I do not have a great deal of respect for someone beating a game by breaking the AI. It's game AI for crying out loud. A few lines of code. It doesn't take all that much intelligence or effort to reverse-engineer or break it. It's just another kind of exploit, albeit one that takes a bit more skill and effort to discover and apply than, say, rest-spamming or web+cloudkill from BVR. If you do that and then discover that the game isn't much fun because the resulting exploit is too easy, Imma break out my tiny violin for you. And if your measure of excellence in a game is how many actions per second you need to be able to execute to break the AI, then I'm glad they didn't make this game for you.

Amazing how many people feel compelled to say their piece on whether this is "needed" or not. If you're not interested in using it, why do you even care?

+1 on this suggestion. A "safe zone" within which movement is allowed would be nice. It might be tricky to implement though, as it adds a whole new layer of complication to the engagement. For example suppose you're trying to pull an enemy by moving slowly backwards. What if he doesn't follow you? Should the AI be forced to follow you? If so, should the AI also be able to move back, and if that's the case, should you be forced to follow? I believe one of the reasons engagement is in the game is that it's an easy state for the AI to track. Complicating it could have unintentended consequences elsewhere. I still like the idea though.

I've been a vocal critic of the rest system in the BG's. They contributed greatly to my ruining the game for myself. There was nothing in the game or the manuals saying that you shouldn't rest-spam. Quicksave and quickload are a keystroke away. Both the manual and loading screens emphasize that you should "save frequently and in different slots." If you're playing the game without the benefit of spoilers or BBS's -- as I was at the time -- I think it's unfair and unreasonable to go :shrug: not my fault if you ruined it yourself. (Technically of course it's not your fault, but it is the game designers' fault.) You've found a way to play the IE games that you find extremely enjoyable, by not exploiting the easy-to-exploit systems that you don't enjoy exploiting, and exploiting a feature that you do enjoy exploiting (AI targeting). Bully for you. That, however, doesn't mean squat for any other game except for a very, very specific type of gameplay -- "DotA style" as it's been characterized here. It's an incredibly narrow view, and not at all relevant to anyone who wants to play any of these games in some other way. I, for example, derive most of my enjoyment in BG2 from exploring the interactions between the systems: using tools they give me to get past the defenses of hard-to-kill enemies, or defending against extremely lethal attacks by extremely lethal enemies. The whole movement-and-targeting dance is borderline irrelevant to me; I'd enjoy BG2 at least as much if not more with P:E's engagement mechanics. And IMO P:E could use a lot of improvement in these areas. Specifically by stronger immunities and better ways to get past them. I get that you shrug that off as "pss, strategic, uninteresting." What I don't get is how you seem so completely uninterested in these 'strategic' decisions. It sounds to me that you just don't like what's the actual major distinguishing characteristic of the IE games -- those extremely rich systems and the ways they interact with each other. That you've just been playing them like a glorified Warcraft. I remember you even saying this when I was asking for tips against some tough enemy or other, ":shrug: I just man-fight them." It's only now that I'm realizing that your idea of "man-fighting" is abusing the targeting AI so they're never able to hit you, strategy be damned. Which is cool and all -- it says something that the games permit such different playstyles -- but it makes you a fairly unusual IE superfan, even among IE superfans. You're very different even from Stun, Hiro, and a bunch of the others here in this respect. It's almost like you've been playing a whole different game. It also makes your butthurt in re P:E somewhat unreasonable, and your (recent) scathing criticism of it off the mark. It's not DotA. It's not meant to be DotA. Most IE game fans, even the extreme hardcore Stun-level fans, don't want it to be DotA. I.e., if "we" are "ruining the IE games for ourselves" then you're doing the same thing for P:E. And sniping each other about it is unlikely to do anyone much good.

My guess based on past patterns: they wanted to release it on Friday but the build didn't pass QA. Then weekend happened. I would expect it Real Soon Now, with 1.05 not too far behind.