IndiraLightfoot

I strongly second this. And I third this with great emphasis! It would make for interesting strategic choices and make the various wiz spells more distinct and cool to use (obviously, the cleric spells etc could use the same casting time diversity.

I'm not reading this thread because of spoilers. I just pop in now to tell you this: I've spent the whole day playing DA:I on Nightmare, and DA:I is a very, very good CRPG, and this in part includes the combat - if you dial it up to Nightmare, at least. Despite it being the hardest level, I don't need to pause very often - but rather mostly for giving starting orders at the beginning, and at certain events during the encounters - obviously boss fights and tougher fights need much more pausing. Overall, it's giving me a weird mix of DA:O, NWN2 and action games like Ass: Creed and Dishonored (games that I adore, the IE games still being true gems, of course), and I actually love what I've seen so far. Sure, there are fetch quests (but let's be honest here: Having played BG1 and IWD1 recently, and also NWN2 - there are plenty of those in these games too. The story and the characters so far have been very interesting and well-written. Personally, I really like all the strong women in the game - so many books, movies and CRPGs have been lacking such characters/NPCs. I rolled a female Dwarven Rogue for my main, specializing in Twin Dagger fighting, and so far I've been having a blast (10 hours). It's much better than I anticipated, and it has the potential of becoming an all-time classic.

I've spent the whole day playing DA:I on Nightmare, and I'd just like to underline everything Karkarov says. It's a very, very good CRPG, and this in part includes the combat - if you dial it up to Nightmare, at least. Despite it being the hardest level, I don't need to pause very often - but rather mostly for giving starting orders at the beginning, and at certain events during the encounters - obviously boss fights and tougher fights need much more pausing. Overall, it's giving me a weird mix of DA:O, NWN2 and action games like Ass: Creed and Dishonored (games that I adore, the IE games still being true gems, of course), and I actually love what I've seen so far. Sure, there are fetch quests (but let's be honest here: Having played BG1 and IWD1 recently, and also NWN2 - there are plenty of those in these games too. The story and the characters so far have been very interesting and well-written. TL;DR Combat (at Nightmare level) is much better in DA:I than PoE atm.

More or less as I expected, then. Although, when in battle, everything feels very fast, of course. Especially when I cast spells - many of them seem to go off right off the bat.

More importantly, the IE games revolved around and stayed true to the round system per se, so spells and attacks were measured in rounds, regardless of rounds revolving for each unit in an obviously asynchronous way, further enhanced by the speed factor in 2nd ed. I wonder how big a difference there is between a stiletto stab and a big AoE spell and a 2H-sword hew. For PoE, I have this weird feeling that the spell is cast instantly (despite the grimoire and the reading?), whereas a stiletto is super fast and the sword is slower. Or are they all instant, but the recovery times for them varies? Also, can they be interrupted?

Great idea! Wrong subforum.

axan22: Nah. My faith in Obsidian is blind. I'll support them in almost everything with my heart and hard-earned cash.

For us in the EU-region, preloading is finally available. I've already started.

C'mon already, Obsidian! We know that you are about to make a huge Pathfinder CRPG, but more 3D style, with one main player character and great companions to pick from (please no more than three). We also know that it has a combat system that would fit a decently open world perfectly, not to mention all the character building goodies that would come from it. Finally, we know that it will include a brilliant toolset (free to use, not that 30 days Unity nonsense). Just reveal the Kickstarter now, and let me drop a big sack of cash on your doorstep.

That is well known, but you misunderstand. I'm talking about what happens for the player during combat, the combat feedback for the player - how tangible and usable it is - and not about what happens under the hood. Without such a "system of rounds", I can assure that the IE games and the NWN games would be almost unrecognizable. By this I mean everything, spell descriptions, durations, actions taken, bla, bla, bla.

I agree with Karkarov that debating combat skills in IE games or CRPGs in general is unnecessary and utterly futile. Also, it's not a matter of playstyle. I like Shevek's relaxed playstyle, and I also like Sensuki's more dedicated playstyle (I only based that opinion on the vids shown, of course) We must be able to discuss what's wrong with the combat in the PoE BB in a more relaxed and factual manner. Here's my list of things that I actually think many players having tried the BB in earnest will agree on, more or less. At least I would be surprised if these points don't hold water: -Combat speed in general is too fast. -Baddies move ridiculously fast (almost immersion-breaking) -There is a distinct lack of animation combat feedback, especially for idle animations, recovery and disengagement attacks -Animations are repetitive, and the same things goes for the attack sound FX palette -Baddies tend to crowd the party, with little AI finesse and party-member selection processes -Spell effects are often too bright -People preferring to pause rarely will have a hard time, not only because of the speed, but also because of lacking animation feedback and the impossibility of performing varied combat action options Furthermore, I have two quotes below that I reckon captures two of the worst culprits in making PoE combat un-fun and essentially rather lacklustre and messy: If this lack of pseudo-rounds and also lousy recovery feedback persist, combat will never be as decent as in the IE games or in the NWN/NWN2-games for that matter. It's like a heart beat. PoE BB suffers from severe cardiac arrhythmia, whereas the IE games and the NWN have a cool, steady beat to it all the way. PoE hasn't found its groove yet. This may seem like a minor point, but it isn't. Magic in PoE combat, and the way spells work and what kind of spells we have, all of this is actually making each combat encounter rather boring and non-varied.

Rumsteak: Love it! Thx for making it.

Indeed. It was later, at higher levels, that many of BG2 combos really shone, whereas in NWN2, I can show you builds at level 7-11, where very exciting stuff happens already. In that respect, 3.5>2nd ed, easy. All I want is a huge variety, it needn't be balanced to any absurd degrees, though, some basic balance is always nice. It's like Lego. I want those good old huge Lego boxes with heaps of various pieces, without any build-instruction manual. I don't want some concept Lego box with weird pieces that can only be built into some insect robot that chops up and down with a trident.

Sorry. All of those new skills, as they are called high and low now in PoE. All of the sudden, we have lots more to pick from when we level up etc. Before that, levelling up wasn't very exciting at all, and the classes felt very one-dimensional. They still pretty much are, though, compared to D&D 3.5 NWN2 goodness.

Captain Shrek: I certainly agree with that. In fact, with a few tweaks, we would have a combat system that's playable and decently enjoyable. I also agree with your point that Josh somehow dropped the goal of very flexible builds. And personally, battle fainting is weird and very gamey, but still, I truly loved the NWN2 series anyways, including parts of its combat. For me, the character building was the part that was most fun in that series, aside from the obvious, the great story and companions in MotB. I just don't want to settle on builds and classes and spell selections that are too barebone and simplistic. If we have a chance to voice the opinion that we want more ofit, we may get it. Look at what happened with all of the specialisations we got from Josh. That was thanks to the community!

Super effective there, Sensuki! What you clearly demonstrated is, once again, like I also commented upon, after Shevek's vid: -Hard is not very hard at all -You don't need optimized char gear -With characters you built yourself, it will be much easier, etc -And most importantly, combat working in this way is boring and simpleton Oddly enough, Shevek actually loves this kind of combat: Oh, I think its plenty fun. I was just fighting trash and I had a crap day at work so was a bit crabby. I will say that I find fighting trash in this game about 1000x more interesting than executing entire generations of gibberlings and gnolls in the IE games. Also, ultimately, I really feel like I am playing an IE game for the most part. In fact, I feel like I am playing an IE game with pretty darned good encounter design. One thousand times more interesting than killing gnolls? I still recall my first encounter with that gnoll camp. It was really hairy and difficult and exciting. Having said that, though, Shevek's vid simply showed us that little pausing is needed and that combat doesn't take much skill at all versus trash mobs. The difference seems to be: -Shevek says combat is great and not challenging -Sensuki says that it's boring and not challenging To be fair, there are plenty of trash mobs in BG1 (also low level) that are easy, like Gibberlings (well perhaps except at lvl 1), but I think that's OK. Were they fun, as in better and more varied and more open to various solutions than PoE BB curenntly? Yes. And here I suspect Shevek would have said a resounding "no".

Even if I find DA:I's solution sleeker and cooler, I agree on that, Kark. My gut feeling, though, has always been what Captain Shrek's getting at: It's unnecessary in order to achieve the goal they're aiming for. Perhaps OE needs to tweak it a bit. Also, I find it confusing with the yellow bar to the left of the portraits - I keep forgetting it represents not the endurance but the total health.

Cheer up, Gladius! It's four months left, almost an eternity for game devs to fix these combat problems. Josh's last posts on the subject certainly shows he's aware of some of the problems, although he seems to tend to downplay most of them. I'm hoping for the best. I mean, this game needs to have combat that can take endless replays with different characters, builds and party set-ups, so some pretty significant changes are needed. We'll see which these may be as the weeks go by now.

Well, GMG sent me the DA:I code two hours ago, and it worked like a charm. Now, it says preload Nov 17 18:00 CET, and then play Nov 20 00:00 CET. Apparently, I got a code for those lovely flaming weapons too, while not buying any Deluxe version. Nice. I am so amped for this!

That is true for invisible combat rounds, but since each character has out of sync and entirely arrhythmic "personal recovery rounds", it is more a note of theoretical interest. For a game to be enjoyable in practice, you need to have it all synching, else we get a sad, sad mess, with no real options to react on it, even if use slomo mode or pause every millisecond or even every other second. It just won't work, and some balance issues for classes, enemies, skills, spells, etc - they all go awry. In short, the engagement limit you refer to wouldn't have made any difference at all. It's like Shevek says - it is of very little concern here for the problems combat is laden with at the moment. EDIT: I'll give you one thing, nipsen. Due to the attribute changes, all of the sudden we have Dex with action speed. Is perhaps OE trying to send us a message this way? Those players that move the fastest, should be the victors? Slowpokes can go home?

2. I want to like this SUPER BIG!!! 3. Yeah, this NPC as a biography poster child dummy needs to go. 4.1. If we don't, or at least get significant customization options, I would be a sad panda. 5. Indeed. That alone really makes me want to play the game, broken combat or not.

Shevek: For some reason, I really liked your cool attitude/approach towards/on some party members going down - it being an integral part of PoE. I suspect you are right on that. In fact, it's quite like NWN2, which I love. However, it always felt weird that they actually "died" there and then woke up automagically, as it were, but here they are just out of action for the encounter.

Karkarov is absolutely right on this, but why not ask Obsidian themselves? Here's from their second latest update: "Through your help and feedback, the Pillars of Eternity team has spent the past two years creating a fun, fulfilling experience. An open development has enabled us to interact with our fans and backers in a way we weren't able to in the past, and this has really helped shape Eternity into a game that we all hoped it would become. Plus, with the Backer Beta, we have been able to get excellent feedback from our backers that we are using to shape Eternity into an even better game. We really can't thank you enough."

Quetzalcoatl: No worries! I can live with another class having a Sleep-like spell, but like Stun points out, a cramped area of effect and for merely 10 secs in this hectic form of combat, and at level 5 at that. No thanks!