Captain Shrek

I strongly disagree, because kiting is silly tactic that works only because AI programming is poor. Which of course don't mean that players should not use it in their tactics repertory if it works in the game, but if it works it is mostly because developers didn't do perfect job. Well, you are wrong then. Kiting does not work because AI is bad. Kiting works because it is a good tactic. What AI fails at is to respond to it. In fact, I would ENCOURAGE kiting by adding special talents and skills (tumble). By default, Kiting should have penalties i.e. moving and hitting gives you a penalty to attack roll etc. ,

Daily reminder: There is nothing wrong with kiting whatsoever.

I have always had a problem with looting in RPGs. But I must admit what follows is an opinion and not an objective fact. Looting has always been a mainstay of RPGs. Who doesn't like the drop of the Nameless light? But I have several problems: 1) Drop of mundane objects of little value. 2) +X weapons/armors 3) Enemies with gold coins 1) Mundane objects RPGs are simulations of heroic adventures and quests. Most battles are supposed to happen in hostile confines where there is constant threat and danger. In that scenario, it is not hard to explain why the PCs would not stoop to rob every corpse. Maybe time is a factor? Or there is a danger of letting down guard? etc. This makes much more game sense, as robbing everything that an enemy carries, can easily break or desensitize game economy. It would be actually much more sensible if weapons of practical use and armour were relatively rare like they are in the real world. As most RPGs ignore this (Except the Gothic games), they suffer from ridiculous design issues. What is the solution? Take the Gothic route. Make good weapons and armour something that can only be obtained with great effort. Enemies hardly ever drop anything other than monsters dropping crafting resources and that too if you have the relevant skills. This will NOT make the game uninteresting as some might imagine. If the combat is bad enough so that I have to be bribed every step of the way with loot, then the loot is not going to rescue the fun anyway. Especially terrible loot at that. 2) +x weapons The laziest route of a designer in creating loot is the +x weapon. Seriously? I mean it takes effort to write the story and a contextual story for loot to be interesting. When you get a +1 sword it kills that the fundamental thrill of a magic item, making it a mundane object as this particular object has nothing tying it to the lore of the game other than shallow description "magical". Magic should always sound enchanting and resonate with the lore. PoE has 'soul' magic, so all the magical items should explain why they have a certain kind of power. Bonus points if no two magical items are the same. There should always be a story reason to avail these things and their placement should reflect that reason. 3) Gold drops In most RPGs I play, the gold drop is level scaled. As in, tougher enemies carry more gold. This ****ty idea needs to die for several reasons. Gold is NOT a good currency and hardly would a character with common sense carry that much stuff in his pockets (1000 GP, yeah, right). Now, it *would* make sense that the gold you pick up is the abstraction of things you robbed off corpses. but that can be dealt way better for example terminating every combat encounter with a small pop up telling you how much gold you earned from it. It would also make sense that the gold you earn is miniscule (for reasons mentioned earlier) thus preserving some sensible economy in the game. Thus, to summarize: No trivial loot. Magical objects rare and meaningful. Less gold more story.

The bigger problem is not the friendly fire as much it is creating tactical situations where friendly fire can be avoided. The way the game works right now, we have a problem of not creating scenarios where the enemy can be huddled up in a group. The only time this happens is RIGHT at the start of the combat. Which sucks.

This. So much. I always HATED that mechanic in D&D, and I hated it more in BG. Instant-death-if-I'm-no-prescient, unless I'm lucky. How is that fun?! How is that "awesome"? It sucked. I made me nerd rage every time. I have a simpler solution. Give the player a hint in the story. For even better stroytelling, link it to a skill. Thus he does not have to metagame to know it. This is thus not a problem of hard counters, but rather bad design.

Who the hell domesticates lions? They invariably turn on their masters in practice. Also, lions that have never seen man are more likely to be AFRAID of them than otherwise. Man is taller on an average and has unknown smell to them.

I din't doubt that your feels come from actual gameplay. Unfortunately, they are from the BB which is a very short snippet of the game and it (hopefully) is not representative of the final build in terms of encounter design. I think you will agree with me that that this aspect is probably one of the most important parts of the game. So really, none of us can say what the final game will be like. So we agree. IE games had horrible stat implementation. BUT. One should bear in mind that the last IE game was 12 years back. Much has happened since then and many games that can be held as improvements over IE design have been made. I mean OE themselves made a game called NWN2. Maybe you heard about it. This game is a step BACK from that. And please! No **** about how that was not an IE game. By that standard even this one is not. If we are talking about how to improve UPON IE games, then that discussion has to be holistic and meaningful. Restricting to one category is hardly a viable course of discussion. Not to mention, games like Darklands were also thrown around as sources of inspiration. As of now all of I have seen in that regard is the horrible endurance mechanic and starting screens. I wonder if the developers actually played Darklands or watched youtube videos of it. What made it so special, was the setting and the skill system. No one remembers it for the combat or the stamina.

Err what? Not that I think you are wrong or anything. It's just that this qualification is pretty much insubstantial. As in, there is no real way to compare D&D sets with the PoE sets. Right now, you are just basing your judgement on "feels". If at all there be an objective criterion, then it would be not only NOT obvious at this stage (with a demo, not even a real beta) but also subject to fluctuations as the core mechanics of PoE has changed a lot since its inception. And I mean A LOT. There was regeneration. Now there is none. There were cooldowns, now it is per rest. Spells were to become per encounter from per rest. At will from per encounter. Now, NOT. etc. Stats were constantly altered to the point even now it is not certain they are to perform as they do. Skills are completely in the limbo. These are very crucial design differences. I would hazard that the game does not really have a fixed and clear design goal in terms of mechanics.

Knights of the Chalice. The best D&D based game out there. It's based on OGL.

This is false. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/oglfaq/20040123f

I am not even sure Kiting needs to be solved. In fact, it needs to be encouraged through certain abilities or talents.

Well, by unique if you mean different in ability names and usage then yeah. They don't feel very special. A lot of them are just ONE class from D&D split into many classes. I guess the only different one is the Cipher which is a psionic-like class. But he also feels more like a Wilder, really.

I am actually not sure how engagement mechanics is a solution for kiting. can someone explain to me how that adds up? I have been hearing this thing for quite a while now.

I can only agree. I have no idea why this kind of progression was necessary. It's not even a homage to D&D anymore as the classes are nothing like in IE games. I confuse.

I also want to point out that the time for broad strokes is now gone. Effort should be spent on fixing what is sub-optimal in the game. I appreciate Sensuki's efforts and probably even agree with some of his arguments. But right now removing this mechanic will not really: 1) Help the game, as it would mean fixing a lot of other things linked with it. 2) Improve anything, because this is not an RTS! I have no clue why some people keep conflating these things.

Do you really expect programator drop his work and start doing 2D art? lmao No. He is asking for resources to be allocated so that things that *can* be honestly salvaged at this point, be salvaged. Of course, if the developers find free time for the combat improvement then it should be spent there. But not otherwise.

I have a feeling that the developers should have just dropped the class act and gone for a class-free society. Would have been a classical example of outclassing the issue. Right now the system lacks class.

If you find the combat more fun just by taking out the engagement mechanics, then something is very wrong with you.

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Beastmaster

This is going to become DOtA now, isn't it?

It's not that hard really. But it does reduce the combat to an appreciable degree. Which is NOT a bad thing at all if you think about it. We need better-designed challenging encounters and not trash mobs.

Actually, technically a Beta is the real game with the almost finished content. The BB *is* the demo.

I am really surprised that people don't get tired of this. I mean really, think about it. In the IE games the toughest battles *were* set pieces where enemies had specific tactical advantages. Unfortunately these were limited to spellcasting. So the most interesting battles were against mages who would hide behind summons or guards and cast devastating spells from their vantage points. Would you not rather have more of these set pieces? I am also highly disturbed by the assertion that the 'tier 1' as you call it is somehow essential in the critical path. Can you elaborate on that? or am I getting you wrong? I have also objected in the past to the idea, that ALL builds need to succeed. Why? If you really screw up a particular class concept, i.e. give the fighters in PoE ranged weapons and send the chanter in melee, should that not be discouraged? Or is it necessary to still make it succeed? If you really want an unfettered class, why have a class at all? Class-less systems are so much fun! Just go for them! But this insistence that all skill levels should be able to finish the critical path is sure to be the biggest spanner in the works for getting a good encounter design. Such a criterion will practically ensure that the critical path encounters are basically NOT set pieces but rather just a bunch of enemies thrown together so that they can be defeated by anybody. There are alternatives to this: During character creation itself the game can emphasize that certain classes need certain skills. And then still provide a variety by allowing alternative skills, all of which are good.

Did you like them? Also, if at all someone feels obliged to have them, can't there be a dedicated dungeon crawl area in the game? Like there is one in the PoE game, this 13 level thing. So anyone two bloodthirsty can make a bee line for that place.