PrimeJunta

Oh, and, re party composition problems: I don't think P:E is going to be anywhere near as unforgiving as IWD. The game's going to be balanced/designed around the companions you'll meet on the way, and there's the Adventurers' Hall, and you can switch party composition on the fly. With IWD, you can't, not unless you want to start with a level 1 character in your party again (which is of course somewhat manageable due to the exponential XP in AD&D but still). And re character-building, I think it's a little too forgiving right now. BB Rogue is highly effective with a war bow, without having any of the talents geared for it, for example. IMO the difference between a dedicated war bow archer build and any ol' rogue with a war bow should be more significant.

(BTW NetHack may be another reason I'm not so good at IE games. Daring, go-for-the-jugular tactics are a sure ticket to the graveyard in NetHack. The trick with it is to stay alive until you win, and you do that by doing everything you can to make sure the next move won't kill you. Highly defensive, cautious tactics are clearly not the way to go in the IE games.)

I think if some demon told me I'll only get to play one game, ever, it'd be NetHack. And that's the mother of all die-to-learn games. I'm fairly good at it by now actually. I haven't played Dark Souls, but if I've understood correctly, they've worked death into the mechanics there. I.e., dying doesn't mean reloading. If so, then that's definitely cool.

Yeah, I did actually enjoy the Yxunomei fight. It was fun trying to figure it out, and extremely rewarding when I eventually did -- and the tactic was a crude version of yours. That Cloudkill is nasty though; how do you deal with that if you just ignore her? -- But, contrary to what Stun at least has said, I did think it was very much a trial-and-error affair. I wonder if anyone has ever beat it on the first try? As in, the first try they ever attempt the encounter, without having had it spoiled before, on core rules or harder? If so, they must be damn good. Re the Talonits and trolls, that one I didn't enjoy so much. I found it more frustrating than fun. I attempted more or less what you say -- take the Talonites out fast -- but didn't get far with that; I did manage to get them killed but then I always lost some party members to the trolls. They got surrounded and couldn't get out before I could break through to them. Also, only one archer which was also clearly a mistake -- would've been much easier if I had had two which I could use to suppress the Talonites. I.e., at least party this is a party composition problem. Which is another of my beefs with DnD -- there's not a lot of margin for error in character and party-building, and it's VERY hard to correct those errors when you discover them. Again, I'm fairly certain I understand DnD better than the average gamer, better than the average RPgamer even, but I still make dumb mistakes. Both AD&D and DnD3-based cRPG's have scads of gotchas and trap choices which you'll only discover well into the game.

After getting some pointers from Sensuki, I fired up IWD (EE) again, after running through the P:E BB over a dozen times to cover all the classes. I thought I'd list some of my likes and dislikes about it. I just finished Dragon's Eye. It's been long enough since the last time I played it that I don't remember what's in each set piece, except vaguely, so I'm approaching them with a relatively fresh mind. First, where I'm coming from and my biases. I am nowhere near as hardcore as Sensuki, Stun, Hiro Protagonist II and some others here. I play on core rules (IWD) and Normal (BB 392). So, observations. Some of these are responses to claims made by various people here, including myself, either confirmed or debunked from experience. I have been avoiding known cheesy tactics, but have abused resting on a couple of occasions (reload until I don't get annoying wandering monsters on rest, instead of trekking back to the last safe area and then back). (1) Reloading and metagame knowledge All of the set pieces so far have killed me the first time around. I have only gotten through them after reloading and trying again with different tactics, usually multiple times. One of them (in Kresselack's tomb) might have been survivable if death had been more forgiving: I could have trekked back to Kuldahar and had two fallen party members raised, but it was too much of a drag so I reloaded. On one of them, I went back to rest and memorize a different spell set. On the others I've been trying to make do with what I had beforehand, based on what I expected to find. These has not always been optimal, e.g. memorizing Hold Person spells when it turned out I'm not actually facing persons at all. I.e., while I'm much less frustrated and more successful with those set-pieces, thanks to Sensuki's advice, I still feel they're very much designed for die-and-reload, and metagame knowledge -- which foes you're going to face -- is a pretty crucial part of it. Sorry, Stun, but there it is. (2) Character building and meta knowledge I have a cleric/thief in the party. I knew that to make use of backstab, I would only be able to use a club or a quarterstaff, so I took a proficiency in... quarterstaff and two-handed style. Bad idea. No cleric/thief usable magical quarterstaves in the game (so far). I was hoping to find one eventually, so when he got his third proficiency point, I put it in war hammer since I had a magical one areand. Another bad idea: no warhammers better than +1 so far, whereas there have been any number of flails and some maces, plus, of course, a club. This feels unfair and is the main reason I'm going to restart with another party, without a character with such restricted weapons options. Now he's fairly useless at melee; lower THAC0, poorer weapon, no secondary style to support its use. Meta knowledge is required to get an optimal character, no two ways around it. (3) Pre-buffs Stun and others have said that stacking prebuffs is not actually needed. So, fine, I'm not prebuffing. This is actually true, for the most part, but not completely. So far I've only prebuffed in one fight (Ixonomicon). It is harder going though; I feel like I'm gimping myself, so I'm going to go back to at least limited pre-buffing. I.e., it's possible not to prebuff, but I do get the feeling the encounters have been balanced with prebuffs in mind, at least the set-pieces. (4) Tactics and movement Yep, I had been playing these wrong. It is all about movement, getting to the most dangerous targets fast, then getting back out before the less dangerous ones screw you over. There is a special kind of frantic fun about it which is absent from P:E. Played this way, I'm actually getting somewhere with the harder encounters, even if it still requires way more trial and error than I would, hand on my heart, like. And, as stated elsewhere, it's not my kind of special frantic fun. It may be growing on me, and I've certainly got enough of a taste that I can see why you guys are so frustrated with P:E and engagement. But yeah, given a choice between an ability that lets me easily block enemy movement, and one that lets me easily move, I'll take the former every time. -- Also, pathfinding: I find that I have to micro-move every unit a lot, with the game paused, because the patfhinding is so bad that if I point several of them at a target or something they'll just trip over each other's feet. I am also abjectly failing at manipulating the AI. I try to interpose a unit between the one running away and the one chasing, like Sensuki said, but ... it just doesn't work. Can't do it. Too hard for my 43-year-old brain. So, no, still not a fan of IE movement. (5) Permadeath Is a drag. Some of the fights where I reloaded would have been winnable without permadeath. One of the set pieces possibly even the first time. Which would have been fun. I reloaded and tried again just because I couldn't face the prospect of trekking back to Kuldahar for Raise Dead. I have a very strong preference for P:E's knocked-down + maimed system TYVM. If someone wants my man card, they can have it. (6) Swinginess/Randomness Yes it bloody well is. Consider the fight in Dragon's Eye at bottom left of, I think, level 2. You get swarmed by four or five Talonite priests and an army of trolls. (This is the one where I went back to rest and change my spell selection BTW. Loaded up on Hold Persons.) You have multiple casters throwing debilitating spells at you. If you fail to suppress them fast, the fight is as good as over. I won this, eventually, by pulling back to the corridor leading to the dais where one of them is ranting, pulling the group there with my barb, suppressing the priests with an archery + Hold Person combo as they wandered in, and clobbering the trolls to death. So many trolls! I think this may actually be bugged because the nice cleric later on said that the trolls are guarding the villagers but they were all dead by then. Melee damage output, too, is extremely swingy against tougher enemies unless you get your THAC0 way down by whatever means. My barb was severely gimped for a long while because there were no magical axes to be found and I had to use something he wasn't proficient with (until I could afford the one at Conlan's WMD emporium). My cleric/thief is still severely gimped because there aren't any magical quarterstaves. Half the character building is about minimizing swinginess. Just like in P:E for that matter. (7) In summary, likes and dislikes I like: the massive variety in party composition and spell selection. The massive variety of ways in which you can deal with threats. The way the toons respond to commands: instantly. The massive variety of threats the game throws at you, and the challenge of figuring out how to deal with them with what you have. I dislike: trapfinding, pathfinding, not being able to hold a line or intercept a moving enemy using mechanics rather than AI abuse (which I still can't manage either, sorry Sensuki), win-or-lose spells (Rigid Thinking on Lizard King, Hold Person or Cloudkill on party by enemies), permadeath, the weapon proficiency system. I have changed my opinion on: prebuffing; it's far less necessary than I thought; set-piece encounters which are far more consistently winnable than I thought (although still require, for me, lots of reloading and trying different tactics); grognards, who aren't just annoying gits who enjoy self-abuse and sneering at people who don't but have actually discovered a way of enjoying this damn thing. How P:E is doing as a spiritual successor: pretty well from where I'm at. Most of my dislikes have been addressed. I can see why the grognard battalion feels let down. I can also see that I am not a member of the grognard battalion. Maybe that makes me a filthy casual, which means I should probably try Movie Studio Boss: The Sequel next. (Footnote) On set piece: Ixonotentaclesandtittiessnakedemonthing My party has three fighter/clerics, one cleric/thief, one fighter/mage, and one barbarian. (I know, could be better; I think I'm going to start over with a different one.) I scouted forward with my stealthed thief, took out the traps. First thing I tried was getting Ixonomachin out of the game with Rigid Thinking. I had three of those memorized, so I cast all those at once. They did not bite, and a cloudkill took out my party. Clearly Ixolotl had too high saves and magic resistance. Reload, try something else. Interrupt with fighter/mage rocking a longbow, charge at Ixogaahshesscary with barb and then others, chop chop chop. She died all right, but by the time Ixochunks had gone down, her minions had Held two or three of my party members, including unfortunately both who had Remove Paralyzation memorized. The encounter went downhill fast from there. Reload. Okay, pre-buff with Prayer. Then, open with AoE's: Clerics cast Holy Strike, mage casts Fireball. This actually does take out a few of the minions and weakens the rest a lot, but... Cloudkill, several party members go down again. Consider rest-abusing to get Zone of Sweet Air memorized, reject idea as cheese unworthy of my exalted consideration. Reload. Prebuff again. Now, put fighter/mage on archer duty against Ixomommyicantstandthisanymore, have priests open with Holy Strike, then go after the minions, especially the Yuan-Ti Clerics. Guess what? It worked! The Holy Strike combo weakened them pretty severely, and my godly band was able to eliminate them quickly, while the barrage of +2 arrows from Ms. Mage stopped Ixohahawhoslaughingnow from casting and surprisingly quickly killed her dead. I did get someone Held but was able to Remove Paralysis on them pretty quickly, then mowed through the rest. In mopping up, one of the Yuan-ti mages got a Confusion on the mage and then an Acid Arrow on barbarian; I used up my Dispel Magic on the former and had to keep barbarian alive by spamming heals on him while someone went to deal with the mages. And there you are, victory. After ... several more tries than I listed above. Now, I don't believe that you guys are lying when you say you beat that the first time, every time. I'm recounting this more to describe how these set pieces feel like to us mere mortals. I am probably more familiar than the average guy with DnD, and I have played through these games before, and I'm still dying a lot.

Accuracy is so crucial to everybody that I would remove it from the attribute system altogether. Action speed and interrupt are much better candidates for inclusion.

I'm glad you liked it, but... Medreth isn't much of a challenge, and I'm pretty sure you would've been able to gank him even more effectively with a fighter, monk, or rogue built for damage.

As an aside, a report from just starting IWD: I now have a level 4 mage. Currently she has memorized two Identifys, Web, and Melf's Acid Arrow. That's pretty boring even compared to what BB Wizard can do. I.e. I get the feeling that low-level P:E wizards are actually more fun than low-level AD&D mages. The "dullness" starts to bite around the time the AD&D wizard would start to shine, which would be towards the middle/end of the BB. And there, there really is a problem methinks.

Another of the original requests for feedback was the attribute system. Since that storm has largely quieted, it's time to start another one. I like the attribute system as it currently stands much better than it was originally. However, without doing the numbers and going with pure intuition, I'm finding that I am more or less always pumping some stats and dumping others. Specifically: MIG - So-so. I rarely dump it, and then only for dedicated "disabler" builds. Good thing is many classes let you make one, so there is some choice involved. CON - Pump for tanks, dump for glass cannons. Good thing is many classes let you build both. I made a ranged fighter and rogue with dinky CON and they were both viable and fun. DEX - Ehh... I usually leave this at 10. Might pump it for a dedicated interrupter build (gotta try that one of these days). Might dump it for a truly dedicated tank that just stands there and soaks damage, occasionally going for a knockdown. Dunno how much fun that would be. PER - The must-have stat. Absolutely everything relies on Accuracy, so it's the most important stat by far. I might only consider dumping this for the dedicated meat shield, and mmmmaybe the priest, but that's it. INT - It's OK I guess. Both higher Deflection and bigger AoE are nice to have, and the former is good for melee types, the latter for casters. RES - This is a bit tough actually. High RES is IMO most useful because of the Concentration bonus it gives for melee types. If they fix the barbarian so you can actually play it like they recommend (Wild Sprint behind enemy lines to a high-value target, Frenzy, murder him and everyone around him, keel over), this would be more useful for that. The duration bonus OTOH doesn't feel particularly important. I would consider beefing up the effect on duration, so that, say, you really wanted it on a dedicated disabler build.

@Sensuki: I've played a lot of Total War series. Back in the day I put a lot of hours in Microsoft Close Combat series also, plus some Warcraft even before that. In all of these, I thought of the battlefield as a space where my job is to block enemy movement, hold my lines, and break theirs. This is not how the IE games work, and this is how P:E works. I'm not getting on this tangent though. I stand by my point: I prefer a game where I think of the battlefield in terms of blocking enemy movement, holding my lines, and breaking theirs, rather than manipulating targeting clauses and rushing madly around to gank high-value targets. Even if I learned to play IWD like God himself, I'm pretty certain I would still prefer P:E. What you and others have done is open my eyes to the fact that there is a particular kind of gameplay there, and that I can understand why somebody would like it. I've listened to enough Dimmu Borgir to understand why somebody would really dig it, and also to know that I still prefer Rammstein.

It does not assume. They will automatically reload their weapons if not ordered to do something else. If you're rockin' firearms, it's very important to pause after the battle to reload them so they're ready to fire at the opening of the next one, because the reload time is so slow that they're only really useful for an opening volley (but damn are they useful for that!)

In your opinion, Sensuki. I like the way it works in P:E. Honestly I do. It's much better, clearer, and more intuitive than AOO's in DnD3-based games, I enjoy dealing with the mechanic, and I enjoy the way it stabilizes the battlefield. As I said in the other thread, I also recognize that this is not how movement in the IE engine games feels, that enjoying that style of tactical movement is entirely understandable, and that you're legimately upset that P:E is so different in this respect. I do object to blanket statements like "engagement is unsuitable to real-time combat." That's an opinion, not a fact.

Thing is, I like engagement. I like to see how one of my frontliners locks a unit, or more, in place. I like to use the rogue's Escape ability to get her out of trouble, or the fighter's Knockdown to break engagement on a unit who's putting a buddy in danger, or the monk's badass kick thing to kick out someone who got behind my lines. It's not just the movement: it's dealing with the entire mechanic. I totally realize that this is not how the IE games did it, and therefore being unhappy about it in an IE games successor is reasonable. But I still like it. Been playing IWD today; almost through Kresselach's tomb. With Sensuki's hints I'm playing it better, but it's still not as much to my taste as P:E. I can run away when I get into trouble, but the unit I run away from chases me and I can't use other units to make it stop. I can run behind enemy lines, gank that skeleton mage, and then get to a better position. But I just don't like that style of gameplay as much as being able to fix the battlefield with unit positioning. So regarding that aspect of IE gameplay -- movement -- the accusation you guys often level at us, that we never liked IE combat much, is actually true. Hate to admit it, but there it is. I would add, though, that there's a great deal about IE combat that I did and do enjoy, in particular the "crispness" of selecting units and issuing orders, and the enormously wide variety of ways with which you can deal with various situations. But IE movement, no, 'tis true, not so much. Guilty as charged. I'm pretty sure by now that we're dealing with a subjective preference: tactical movement as opposed to tactical positioning. I prefer tactical positioning with movement -- after the initial rush to get into place -- more deliberate and costly. The grognard gang (and I am using that term affectionately) prefers tactical movement, with tactical positioning part of a constantly changing picture.

@Luckmann Oh, I agree: a complete redesign of the ranger would be better, and your ideas about it sound like they would be a good deal of fun... although ATM the rogue can do all of that extremely competently (minus the pet), which is a bit of a problem for it. I was thinking about what could be done late in the development process without too much effort. And for that, I think lowering the bar from "genuinely fun and distinct" to "good for something and not actively unpleasant" is the best we can hope for. That could be done by getting rid of the shared health and beefing up the archery, so at least it'd kick ass at that.

We had an interesting discussion about this with Sensuki elsewhere, and I think I finally get where you guys are coming from. What you're saying is not true though. Engagement does bring something else to the table: it makes it possible to control the battlefield by unit positioning rather than by use of crowd control spells, and then execute stuff like flanking with your wizard to blast with a spell. I.e. it makes it play more like a conventional RTS. I just fired up IWD and am playing it like Sensuki explains he was playing it. It is a lot more fun that way than the way I've been playing it, and I now entirely understand that once you've mastered that style, it becomes quite central to the IE experience. I'll stick with it for a while to see if it grows on me, but at this point anyway I still prefer the more deliberate and more "controlled" pace and shape engagement gives to encounters in P:E. But... you guys have convinced me that something of value was lost as well, and I now understand what you mean when you say that P:E combat does not have the "feel" of IE combat.

That would not work. It's not a matter of balance; it's that it makes a lot of the spells and abilities useless or un-fun. It would still be playable, but certainly not much fun. I believe Sensuki's and Bester's grand plan of making a grognard mod for the game is better: remove engagement and revise all abilities related to it, replacing some with entirely new ones. This is a quite a lot of work however.

I'd settle for losing the shared health pool and adjusting the numbers on the class and the talents to make sure it beats out the rogue and fighter in ranged damage. At least it wouldn't be utter rubbish.

@Sensuki Re moddability, I think it would actually be interesting to do a "grognard" mod for P:E. It should be totes feasible, but it's clearly about a lot more than removing engagement. You'd also have to revise all the spells and specials that are partly or even completely designed to deal with it. Not a small job, but I'd certainly try it. Once I learn to play IWD properly anyway.

Thanks. At least now we understand each other. In your shoes, I'd probably give up on the BB at this point, and then enjoy the game for what it is when it comes out. That's probably what I'd do if it did tilt towards your preferences in these areas rather than mine. That said, the next time I fire up IWD, I'll try playing it like you suggest. Perhaps I too will see the light.

On Hard... yes. You have to move fast and take out the Adra Beetles quickly or you're dead, and taking out the Adra Beetles quickly is to a significant degree a matter of luck. Alternatively, you have to use cheesy tactics like the ever-overpowered Slicken. Their damage output is way OTT and not fun. On Normal, no it's not particularly swingy. I've run through 392 about a dozen times testing the different classes, and combat outcomes have been very similar unless I screw up somehow. The stone beetles are just that much more forgiving than the adra ones.

I was thinking more of being at the receiving end of whiff-whiff-whiff-crit. -- Also, yes, swinginess can be greatly mitigated by optimal character- and party-building as well as tactics. Just like in P:E for that matter. (Perception is a bit too much of a required stat ATM IMO.) -- By the way, I've been going over what you and Stun have been saying about IE vs P:E combat, trying to understand why we experience it so differently, and I think I may have figured something out. First off: it's not true that I don't enjoy IE combat. I would not have played all of them otherwise, several of them more than once, and certainly not IWD which is pretty much all combat, and which I played through twice (and intend to return to again). I do enjoy it. However, I think we play some of the encounters in them differently, and I, arguably, play them wrong -- or can't enjoy them for what they are, anyway, whereas you particularly relish them. Consider your "standard" IWD encounter. You're pushing into a dungeon, and find a group of foes, mixing melee and ranged with a couple of casters. I think all of us would play this encounter in more or less the same way: hold the choke point with melee units, use ranged attacks and spells to take down or suppress the enemy casters and attempt to counter their spells if possible, then CC to debuff, and damage in various ways to destroy. However, then there are those other kinds of encounters: the ones which happen on an open map, where the enemies materialize from thin air, or which start after a cutscene, or you're locked in a room with them. There is no choke point, and you're kind of mixed in with them. I hated those ones because there was no way to control and stabilize the space: my side here, their side there. Instead it just felt like mad chaos, something I would eventually only win through trial and error and a certain amount of luck. (Thinking especially about one or two mage encounters towards the end of IWD here, for example.) You, on the other hand, I believe, especially relished that challenge. You had to rush to gank the highest-value enemies quickly, rush to help a fellow in trouble, react quickly when something happened, maybe use AoE's that are likely to hurt the enemy more than FF hurts you, and so on. Fast-paced, frantic, and, no doubt, extremely thrilling if you're good enough at it. The upshot is that I like features like engagement, because it lets me stabilize the space in an open area more or less like if there was a choke point, whereas you dislike it because it stops you from making those quick moves to gank the enemy caster or help a buddy out; having to do something special to disengage gets in the way, costs resources, and changes the pacing of the game. Conversely, you strongly dislike features like uncertain attack outcomes, because it means you can't rely on the heroic move you're doing working even if you did pull it off, whereas I'm much less bothered by it because in the stabler battlefield I like an individual attack matters less. You're clearly not getting the IE experience you want. Those open battles decided by daring moves through enemy lines won't happen, or at least there's much less room for them. I, on the other hand, will enjoy those types of maps and encounters more because I'm able to control the space better. Ultimately this is a matter of preference: what I see as weaknesses and the least enjoyable aspects of the IE games, you see as strengths and their most enjoyable aspects, and therefore central to the experience. There's no way P:E can make both of us entirely happy. That's unfortunate, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to be on the winning side here -- even if you, personally, through the effort you've put into the BB, would very much have earned that privilege.

IME damage outcomes were extremely swingy also in the IE games at low to early mid levels. Damage on a successful hit was relatively constant, but you had to roll pretty high to get a successful hit in. This also means that a high percentage of hits are actually crits. Moreover, a hit represents a large percentage of a creature's hit points. I.e., whiff whiff whiff whiff crit dead. If that's not swingy, I don't know what is. P:E does not feel more swingy to me than IE at a comparable character level, and certainly not "extremely more swingy." It also gets significantly less so over the course of the BB as I level up and get better gear.

The unfairness comes from the fact that "successful attack resolution" is different in DnD and P:E. Miss/hit/crit is not the same as miss/graze/hit/crit. If the hit/crit range is roughly similar in both (is it?) then it's not fair to include the grazes in the damage range, since they would have counted as misses in the other system.

One of the relatively common ways I use AoE spells in the BB is to stabilize the mob with my front line, then circle my wizard to the side and blast with the cone or line-shaped ones. So it is not true that the only way to use them effectively as by locking them into place first. There's nothing unclear about your thoughts either, Lephys. I understand you perfectly well. I simply disagree with you. I also think you're mischaracterizing the way AoE spells actually work in the BB.

In DnD most of the grazes would've been misses (or saves, or magic resistance, depending). I.e. zeros, not 1's. So that's not a fair comparison IMO. It would be like saying that a level 6 fireball's damage range is 0-36. Technically true, but misleading.