Captain Shrek

Hmm. In your tier system, I really do not see the need for the tier 1 to exist. Whittling down resources is bound to happen in a game where the resource economy is not broken. In that case the encounters just become a nuisance that need to be eliminated to proceed. Also, I measure the quality of an encounter by the presentation; take the IWD2 encounter near the Shaengarn bridge. There are two things there: A totally infuriating trash mob and a conversation with the enemy commander regarding the bridge quest. I would ask you this: if the trash mob were NOT there, would you mind? I loved the dialogue and the encounter after that (Stop the trolls/pgres/giants before the destroy the bridge). It could have been done better, but it was already pretty good. But you know what? The entire army of generic villains I had to face right after that battle nearby (or before depending on how you approach the bridge) left such a bad taste in my mouth that overall I marked down the game as having negative score. That is the real problem. I think people respond better to encounter that make sense and have tactical scenarios, like in this case do it within a specific amount of time. Other such scenarios could involve using environmental resources to engage enemies or even holding control of certain areas etc. Instead, most RP games just throw trash at you. Simply having hard enemies is just not enough. The context in which they are presented creates the real "feel" of the combat. The rest is simply annoyance.

I don't get it. The thing I suggest also has a consistent no-regenerating HP. And the injuries remain. Healing should be per rest. Supplies are already limited. So why two bars?

Dirty laundry.

Just a small question: Why is anyone interested in collecting crap? I mean, why does every enemy have to drop loot? It is actually easy to justify why you would not pick that crap up, as you are under tension, being pursued, have limited carrying capacity and don't care. This way only special loot needs to be dropped/present thus negating the entire problem.

Alright. My real issue with the combat is not concerned with the individual elements. But rather the observation that combat as a whole feels VERY boring. Now, I have to admit that this is because the encounter design in the beta and the demo twitch was probably just demonstrative of the mechanics. This might mean that the actual encounters in the main game will be interesting enough to overshadow the boring and clumsy feeling of the mechanics themselves. I strongly believe that the most important aspect of a single player game is finally content. The mechanics are important, yeah, but with good storytelling and smart positioning of enemies in interesting situations can totally save the game. Deus ex does it that way at least. But, looking back at Obsidian's previous efforts in the encounters area, I think I am justified in having my doubts.

Lol. That was pretty much the worst design decision ever in my opinion. Hard checks are the only correct solution. That way you can lock content for particular builds and still have a lot to do for everyone. AoD does it so well.... Why can't others see the magic of this idea, I have no clue.

On a side note, i wonder how the developers even imagined people will be able to play this, as there is no way to escape combat if you accidentally pull more mobs than you can handle. Play the perfect game with autism level of patrol path memory? I personally have never seen the point of an iron man mode. I always prefer to power through the game (duh) and almost never reload (because I never have to) but feel that ironman is basically meant for masochists.

It's been puzzling for me, why we need two health bars. As you point out, just having an injury system that triggers every time when you faint in combat is actually enough motivation for the player to NOT lose all the "endurance". I would suggest removing the stamina system entirely. just replace it with one bar that is affected. And the penalty for emptying that is simple: You have 0 health left AND an injury. Now to recover the health you must either rest or use magic. The game already has healing magic.

We don't need "equally useful" or "equally combat worthy" classes. What we need is enough content in the game to justify the abilities of the classes. I find it awfully hard to believe that it is impossible to create situations where core DnD classes (as an example) are NOT useful. It is not that hard to come up with situations and restrictions that allow full set of abilities as they are to be preserved, all the while making all abilities useful. It is the basis of god encounter design. Any average DM will pull it off. That is why people still play Fighters and Monks in D&D games. In the end it all boils down to how the content is implemented.

What is this with people? How is it wrong to "game" the system? Is it not an effing game? Also, I see no reason NOT to game it, if you feel so strongly about it. Oh, the game allows me to reload! I hate that crap! But my hands! They just can't stop pressing F6!!! What do? What do? Check the ironman mode genius.

Fair enough. That is because most people discussing the issue vehemently have already reached conclusions and presented them in other threads. Even worse, they have all read each other's posts and know what is being said.

Just a question Osvir. What does any of the mechanics you propose require an Endurance/HP split? Just a single bar would work there with the injury system.

And how is "save-scumming" bad.

Good job getting into the thread after 6 pages and ignoring them all. *Frankly, I don't worry about engagement mechanics either.

Also, it needs to be pointed out that wizards being powerful was a pretty meta situation. In most non-trash cases, you needed to know which spells to prepare. So yeah, Wizards were not really broken. As others have pointed out earlier, even this was true only at high level. Just a reminder: Druids and Clerics were equally good at those levels. Not to mention that Wizards needed to be played VERY manually, thus their power came at a cost. Which is fine.

I have a feeling that way too much time is being spent discussing the engagement mechanics. At some point in time you have to ask if that is so much of an issue. I believe that removing it or keeping it, does not really change so much, It's not going to rescue PoE combat from its mind-numbing mediocrity. I would seriously reconsider other aspects of the game, like combat speed and lack of out of combat magic, buffing etc over this triviality.

Sure. But that is nothing short of a copout. So even if it is true (which it only partially is), it is not a nice way to treat the backers. If they really did not mean to create the same or at least similar experience, then it should have been in the pitch. A fair way to put it would have been: "We are taking the storytelling and art from BGs and the combat will be completely new experience".

I would also like to see roll modifiers.

What do you mean?

I agree. I think the inpolitness scales exponentially with every patch or so, because people feel like their time to force changes is running out. Discussion was always heated, but I think it started to get to a point where it is really annoying that the basic approach to any conversation is being hostile and personal feuds are interrupting the topics more often than necessary. I know that I care less and less about the forums recently because even the content its really just the same stuff that has been discussed for a long time now for the most part. Basically, people prefer to rage and whine instead of being constructive. I guess this needs rationalization: In any argument, the loudest and the passionate have the highest chance of making an impact. People writjng essays are read, yeah, but People writng one liners? they are heard. Not that it applies for this game. For PoE, Devs only care about the mythical min maxer who is apparently the average player. I'm not so sure about this. If I was to make a game, I would consider the people that made the most reasonable and realistic argument, given how the game is shaping up. I always feel like people that are loud and crave for attention should be disregarded in favour of actual arguments and in my line of work, that is usually the case. I'm sure that in PoE, devs care for the QA team because they are probably a more reasonable audience than the mythical IE games average player that most people claim to be. If you are actually implying that forum members who make LONG WINDED post == rational arguments then you are wrong. Just because someone is polite and calm does not make them right. In any case, people who are right AND witty are probably going to overtake opinions of anyone else. But as I pointed out, forum members are ignored in most arguments, no matter what their opinion in quality.

I agree. I think the inpolitness scales exponentially with every patch or so, because people feel like their time to force changes is running out. Discussion was always heated, but I think it started to get to a point where it is really annoying that the basic approach to any conversation is being hostile and personal feuds are interrupting the topics more often than necessary. I know that I care less and less about the forums recently because even the content its really just the same stuff that has been discussed for a long time now for the most part. Basically, people prefer to rage and whine instead of being constructive. I guess this needs rationalization: In any argument, the loudest and the passionate have the highest chance of making an impact. People writjng essays are read, yeah, but People writng one liners? they are heard. Not that it applies for this game. For PoE, Devs only care about the mythical min maxer who is apparently the average player.

I am the last person who can be accused of this Sensuki. You should know better.

I have a feeling that the combat is OKAY as it is, right now. It is not great, but is something we can all live with, from passive players like Shevek to Active players like Sensuki . I will take this ooportunity to emphasize that that Carthage must be destroyed Enduarance, Graze and DT must be removed. Removing them is "simply commenting a few lines of code. As for the OP, I thoroughly agree: Garish displays of lighting should be toned down to improve visibility in the game. I would rather have garish displays of visual decals and status seffects, but that is too late to add to the game.

As Josh already explained, complaining about core issues *now* with hardly 4 months left is pointless. I think the energy involved in it should be spent elsewhere.

This entire hard counter/ soft counter debate is *so* off the point that I am surprised any of these people enjoyed playing IE games or even ever liked to play PnPs. Magic is not *only* about combat. Magic is all about flavor. Flavor of what? Of having extraordinary and enigmatic occurrences. It is not about fighting people, although that is one of its aspects. The fault of IE games was that they did not create utility for their utility spells, i.e. lack of implementation in the game where the spells could be used outside of combat in a flavourful fashion all the while furthering the story and creating content. What needs to be done to fix it, is to reassert that content and make magic actually feel magical. Right now, it is just colored glowing arrows. When the only difference between magic and non-magic is fireball and a vial of alchemical fire, the game is nothing but a chore.