Captain Shrek

The stupid arguments against pre-buffing make a comeback. I don't even... It's hardly the only cost. And by any sensible reckoning the least important one as the thing is called "pre" buffing. It's also called tactics. Sometimes you do make a mistake only to find out that you should have done things differently. I would more appreciate the issue, by addressing with sensible writing: You enter a Basilisk cave, but with enough lore/gather information/spot+wisodm realize that you need to protect yourself from being turned to stone. So you cast the protection from petrification buff. Removing pre-buffing is a lazy, incompetent way out of this problem.

The duration argument is also a pretty bad one. It does not matter how long the buff is, the real question is what does it replace. Does it mean that you can't use one of your other spells which matters in the battle? And if a single buff is SO useful that it is always good to have it? Those are the questions which need to be addressed. Now, of course if the buff duration is 24 hours then that is a badly designed duration. But if it lasts a 1o mins, then it is quite okay.

I think if you need the sort of boosts that pre-buffing gives you it should be available in some other manner - enchantment - better gear - whatever - it shouldn't require spellcasters to be buff-bots that start every day casting long term buffs on the entire party. If you DON'T need them to progress through the game then it becomes an easy button if the encounters are anything like IWD2/NWN2 and you can rest anywhere to regain spells then yeah, you will be relegated to being a buffbot with buff like that. It has nothing no do with the ability to prebuff.

Maybe being consistently wrong is also an off-putting thing? But, I digress. I still see no reasonable argument here against out of combat buffs. I see some stupid argument (buffing is always good! Why won't you??? ITS DEGENERATE!!! Its boring!!). None of these is even close to correct. "It is boring" is pretty much subjective. "Why won't you" Is idiotic as I would like to conserve that spell slot for other things.

Right now attributes don't affect things so much. Items/Classes/talents are the more important features.

It was actually the best part of the game. The rest of the combat was purely filler. I never expected to have 100% replayability in that game. But to date I enjoy the mage battles. Once every year.

Maybe making enemies have special powers to instant-rebuff would be the real solution? Makes sense in a tactical game where the AI can check for your attack type and protect itself. So instead of idiotic teleportation powers maybe make them smarter? It can be explained in the game by mentioning that it is one of the creatures at will power.

This is simply the fault of trivializing magic and bad AI. To blame it on "pre-buffing" is pretty much insane.

Of course, the result is the same. That is not even something I disagree. The disagreement seems to me, is that you are saying that the means are just cosmetic and should be eliminated in favor of simplicity.Now that is where I would claim this is really not true. That is a design flaw. Different *means* ought to give you a different story. You used sneaking to get to the Tower where the treasure is? Then you get the clue about a secret entrance into the palace. You used Magic to stone meld into the Kitchen room? Then you get a clue about who will be poisoned at the ball party. You used brute force to charge the castle? Well, then you get to destroy the villains bodyguard corps which makes him vulnerable. This is all about content. It is about how the Designer implements it. If the choices are really cosmetic (read biowarian) then yeah, the result is the same and nothing makes sense. Why even fight? Just give us a "story/RPG" mode.

I think that really highlights how badly "magic" has been used in games. And no, magic is not fx damage in combat, or at least that is the lazy way of doing it. Magic in fact may not even cause damage, but rather bring about change in the tactical conditions. Enemies have good ranged units? it starts raining hindering their visibility or even a mist rolls up that makes ranged combat practically impossible. Enemy is a strong warrior? he goes berserk attacking his own units. Or his sword becomes rusted by sudden decay. That is the right use of magic which will satsify all the requirements of being distinct magic is from combat. As to magic just being "another way of jumping over gorges". That is a pretty good way to eliminate all classes. Why have even two abilities? Just one that describes everything you can do and call it "ability". I mean why break down doors? Right? That is pretty much an alternative to lockpicking!

That's just your conscience speaking. :D

Then admittedly the design has succeeded. If any given combination of classes can trump the game, it would seem Josh has managed what he wanted to get in this regard.

Meh. The best system would actually take the difference in the terminology into account. Magic is inherently flashy and extraordinary in the way humans understand the word. It ought to be over powering to justify that feeling. I would be very happy if wizards could do that. I particularly despise a design that views magic as only special fx damage dealing in combat. magic should be about molding the world in uncanny ways, like shaping the earth or creating storms/rain/summoning creatures etc. Only then really can it be appreciated as something really distinct from fighter combat. Take for example the rain spell in D:OS. Now *that* is magic well done. Now from the perpsective of the game, it should also have limitations that allow fighters to justify their importance in war. There are two ways as I see it, to make that work: 1) Fighters need no resource to use their skill. So they are always up to the task. Wizards on the other hand require special resources, like gems or ritual sacrifices for casting spells etc, which limit how often they can cast the spell. 2) Figthers are fast. At the briefest requirement they can act. Spell casters require a lot of preparation, but if they are ready they are practically invulnerable. A combination of this would completely eliminate the shallow "per day" system which has no reason to exist beyond game logic that everything needs to be balanced. There is a danger here however that the fighter no longer seems "interesting". That can be easily avoided by giving them more tactical options, awesome abilities (which need to be from 80's movies) that remind you of olympic heroes; both sports and mythos.

Have you tried it out elerond? I suggest that you do it and let me know how it goes. Would be awfully nice of you.

That's theres no "opportunity cost" to prebuffing. Wut. He wants it to cost the player to buff up when they could be fighting. But what about tactics? Isn't buffing before battle more sensible? And that has the oppurtunity cost of NOT knowing which buffs may be useful. I mean, come on! In BG2 the problem was hard scripting. it has been 10+ years since then. Shouldn't the solution be a better AI and not Bathesada feature removal?

That's theres no "opportunity cost" to prebuffing. Wut.

What was Josh's argument against pre-buffing anyway?

All classes were designed so that they have useful role in the combat. Priest were designed to be support characters, which is role they do quite well in my opinion, even though I feel that chanters and paladins are better choice for support character, because of their passive de/buffs, where priest is much bit too high maintenance support character for my taste. But I have find out that with my play style priest is most effective when I use them as debuffer that makes rest of my party much more deadlier. Healing spell I have find out to be somewhat useless, because I don't usually need restore endurance to any of my characters before fight has ended and then endurance regenerates in seconds to full. Not really no. Let's say you make a party of 8 Wizards. What chance do you really have in the game? Would you be able to enjoy it? I doubt it.

So. by looking at the stats posted for this update, it looks like that the attributes actually contribute quite little to the overall numbers. Can some one now compare the bonuses from Class versus from Items? Like for example, is accuracy contributed most from Class / skill or items?

Its boring according to all non fanboy people I asked. Almost lifeless.

It's not hypothetical, players have been requesting more and more actives for years. Just go into the Fighter and Rogue are boring thread in the Gameplay & Mechanics sub-forums and read some of the posts there to see such requests. A small part of me think that WoW is to blame for that, it made a lots of new gamers believe that having 30+ active abilities was how a cRPGs was supposed to be played (even if you technically use only like 5 of them). eh? I never played wow and I still feel that Fighters and Rogues in cRPGs are boring. And I need to highlight that, that they are boring in COMPUTER GAMES derived from PnP. In fact fighters and rogues (especially the latter) are great in PnP. I have been playing a Rogue for ages in my earlier campaigns and they get a lot of tactical choices either in the social scenario or the combat one through magic items, traps etc. None of these are even close to relevant in cRPGs.

Is it a party based game? An RPG or an adventure game Point and click?

Maybe. What I gleaned from the videos you made is that as long as some general positioning rules are followed, the actual tactical stuff is immaterial: tanks in front, DPS/Healer in the back or if the DPS is melee then flanking. Also, I would suspect that having no collision based model would actually SIMPLIFY pathing. It would be unrealistic, yes, but trying to fix that now does not really seem like a serious issue.

This is really bad. But with combat map so larger than the char size does it matter? Positioning need not be that accurate in such a game.

Bring spell UI back from NWN2. NOW. FFS.