Hormalakh

I kind of like this idea if I understood it correctly,. though I'd make a few changes. I'd leave the inventory on the Right side as it is, but I would make the weapon sets/armor/quick bar toggle-able on the right hand side. Basically, if you right-clicked your character's portrait, it would toggle between the inventory and their equipped items (like you've started to show). Though, there's still a little bit more clicking.

soo...... what was QA's verdict? I guess we'll find out in a few hours, but I'm guessing not positive?

With combat getting all sorts of light shone on it, I think the developers are fairly clear on what needs work and they have their work cut out for them. But at the same time, there are other systems that need some addressing. As a refresher: 1- Crafting and enchanting: I have seen very few comments about these two systems. Personally, I find the crafting and enchanting systems fairly difficult to test because of the multiple components needed before much testing can be done. I would ask the developers to give us a beta version with very quickly accessible items to help us in enchanting and crafting. I can say that I find the UI for both, fairly unappealing the last time I played with those systems (it was a long time ago, admittedly). Please make testing these systems easier so we can give better feedback. 2- Grimoire UI, and other UI. Gairnulf has been kind enough to start conversations on a few of these topics. I would ask other backers to do the same. What do you find useful, not so useful, confusing, etc? Personally, I really detest the current grimoire UI - there is a lot of things missing and it is fairly difficult to understand. It has the beginnings of looking nice, but can stand a few more iterations. Certain things are difficult to understand (memorizing spells from new grimoires, adding spells to grimoires). Furthermore, I don't really like the way spells are listed. I've been meaning to work on a mock-up of a new Grimoire UI, but I just have been too lazy to do so. Maybe I'll work on it in the next few weeks. Anyway! Let's give the devs some feedback on things that matter or that haven't gotten a lot of attention.

yes yes. nothing to see here. move along.

Thread "Engagement Mechanics - Problems and Solutions" was started by Namutree. "Raz's Perspective: A Dissertation on Engagement mechanics" was started by Razsuis. "Engagement Questions" started by tdphys. ... and so on and so forth. We have now established that you cannot read. Please try again after finishing elementary school. We'll wait. Promise.

This is wrong. Sensuki and I have been discussing engagement for weeks now and many of the arguments put forth are ones that Sensuki and I talked about together. To say that Sensuki is the only one arguing for the removal of engagement is specious. I held back from making an opinion about engagement for months while I gave Obsidian the opportunity to fix this mechanic way back when the beta first started. Yes, these arguments about engagement being anti-tactical are that old. I thought that if they had a chance to fix the system with enough time, that it wouldn't be too much of a big problem. But time passed and new bugs and exploits continued to pour forth from this ill-devised mechanic. Finally at v364, I decided enough is enough. Too much time and energy had been put into a thoroughly flawed and broken system. I then spoke for a few days against this mechanic and put forth a few arguments and then I talked to sensuki about my arguments. Sensuki has done a lot of the heavy lifting and produced these videos, but other backers have made plenty of contributions in arguing against this mechanic.

it will be difficult to change the angle of the games even between poe1 and poe2 if there is a possiblilty of doing a BGT like as the maps are baked at that specific angle and to change the angle to be consistent would mean that every map needs rebaking/paintover passes/etc.

[Description of problem:] Currently, the stealth mechanic is a little abusable in that characters with very high levels of stealth (the bb rogue) can continue to stand near enemies without having to worry about being spotted as the filling of the yellow circle is too slow and not dependent upon how close they are to enemies. In fact, standing in certain positions next to creatures will not trigger the yellow circle filling at all (behind a beetle, for example). [steps to reproduce:] 1- Enter the Skaen temple from the tanner's shop. 2- Your bb rogue should be in scouting mode. 3- Try to get past the beetles. It is fairly easy to do and the distance between your character and the creatures does not change the rate at which the yellow bar is filled. 4- Position your bb rogue behind the first stone beetle that is in the water (on the right hand side). If the beetle is facing southward, and you position your rogue north of him, the yellow bar will not fill for several seconds. [What should happen:] The stealth yellow bar should be a function of how close you are to an enemy. The closer you are, the faster the yellow bar should fill. This disallows players from continuing to stand next to enemies for extended periods of time and makes getting too close riskier.

If they want to actually work on this, different races should have different gaits in the first place. They've tried to saving animating time by using the same "skeletal" animation for all the races, but anyone who understands physiology would know that a short stocky character would move very differently than a tall character. This would obviously take time and attention to detail, which I doubt would occur. something about money and not enough time and other things to fix. http://vimeo.com/79098420

AMD Athlontm X2 Dual-Core QL-64 2.10 GHz is 64-bit capable. If you need 4 GB of ram, in addition to buying some ram, you might need to upgrade your OS (to 64-bit, if it isn't already).

[Description of issue:] When a character is initially engaged by an enemy, the character's program AI overrides the engaged character's player-directed commands and forces the character to auto-attack the engaging enemy. This is disruptive and plays as a (fairly bad and very frustrating) aggro mechanic, which can interrupt spells, abilities (drinking a potion for example), and any other variety of commands. It causes the player to lose control of their character. The only thing "getting" engaged should do is stop a character from moving or move-attacking as movements can trigger a disengagement attack (whereas no other action outside of moving should provoke a disengagement attack). [steps to replicate:] 1- Have your character be allowed to get engaged by an enemy. 2- While the enemy is coming to engage your character, perform any action that does not involve movement (drink a potion, set a trap, cast a spell, use an ability, etc). 3- Your character's action, if not completed, will stop and your character will begin to attack the engaging enemy. [What should happen:] Characters who are initiating or in the middle of an action (and are not MOVING) should first be allowed to complete that action. Thereafter, if character AI is turned on the character should begin auto-attacking after completing that action. If character AI is off, the character should stand in position until the next action is given. Movement (either straight move or attack-move or rotate formation-move) while being engaged should stop the character and auto-attack should begin (again if AI is on) or the character should stop (if AI is off). A short (non-obtrusive) UI feedback mechanism (visual or sound) may be employed to inform the player that their character is now engaged.

Don't, for the sake of brevity, cut information that is vital. I notice that the UI designers have ha da tendency to do that (with item descriptions or spells). For example, in the combat log, I believe these things are important: 1- was it a hit/miss/graze? 2- how much damage? 2a - numbers up to one decimal point (12.3 vs just 12) unless you're using usual rounding rules (>.5 rounds up). 3- What kind of damage (piercing/crushing/etc). 4- Any procs associated with it? 5- Any abilities being fired with it? 6- name of spell cast. 7- durations for some things (too many to count). Ex: Elmyra grazed/hit/missed wood beetle: Piercing (6), +fire (15 over 3 sec) +critical (2.5). Wood beetle knocked down by Elmyra (5 sec) -OR - Elymra grazes/misses/uses knock down: hit (5 sec), +damage (10), +hobbled (2 sec). Things I don't really think are important 1- colorful text (how obnoxious is this? yeah....) 2- big text ( though font size can be changed) 3- proper, verbose prose (i.e. "The wood beetle grazed your hero, Conan, for 15 endurance points and 6 health points while also knocking out its teeth. The lamentations of its women were heard.") 4- the durations for other things. 5- to hit rolls (though others care about this, so good thing its optional for those who want it) 6- what weapon you used to do it with basically, i want information that will make me change my decisions (procs will do that, prose won't), know something about my enemy (durations, how hard i'm hitting/ they're hitting), know what abilities are in play. that's all i can think of for now.

You should really look into Defense of the Ancients (dota2) and turn rate, Josh. I've mentioned it several times before, but in case it hasn't caught your attention, it should. http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Turn_rate It's a very simple and elegant disincentive to high movement (at least in regards to turning) and solves the problem of "kiting" - though again not fully. It's simple and intuitive, yet covers quite a few cases of "high" movement.

of course, I don't expect that these arguments will convince everyone. This is, after-all, my own impression of the system. But I do challenge everyone to take a moment and use a critical eye towards the mechanics. Nobody is trying to downplay all the hard work that the developers have put in to making this game. Everyone is appreciative of the risk and challenge they took on by making this game. This conversation really isn't about ego or saying who's right and who's wrong. It's about making a better game. It's about what kickstarter was supposed to be about from the beginning - getting feedback from the players and ultimately making changes based on that feedback. At the end of the day, who's right or who's wrong really doesn't matter. What matters is that in 5-10 years down the line, will this game fall in the category of "games I wish I could play again for the first time" or "games that were good enough for what they were."

if you have been following along, there have been major issues with engagement in every single one of the beta versions. first it had to do with long-range disengagement attacks (see cubiq for that one), then people were dying left and right and didn't know why (see casual gamer redux for that), now we've got this thing. who knows what's next. frankly I see your optimism, but I am much more likely to accept sensuki's analysis of the matter. the dudes been beta-testing like crazy and has a very strong understanding of the system. and when he says that the game is less tactical than without the system, I seriously consider that sentiment. And I see that he's right. Many of us have played the beta long enough to notice the little differences and things that are much much harder to pull off. yes, some of it is good, but a majority of it is bad. and it's less fun and just more frustrating. there are better ways of doing this. blind optimism is willful ignorance of the problem. engagement is less tactical, less fun, more time consuming, bug-laden, more finicky, unnecessarily complex, and ultimately not suitable for a real-time combat game.

Being able to regroup by momentarily disengaging (pulling back) and getting healed up before going back into battle should be a viable strategy. You can't reliably do that in this game. You just have to hope that while your engaged character is getting beat on, you can pull off a "heal endurance" spell before s/he gets downed.

It's not just the exploit that's the problem with engagement. It actually makes combat less fun. Having actually had a chance to play the game with this newest beta, engagement basically comes down to a game of tag. Once you're tagged, you stay where you are until the battle is over. Tactical positioning is now only something you think about at the beginning of battle. it is very frustrating that once you get "tagged" by an opponent, you're basically stuck there. no amount of "escaping" or anything will save you. the engagement mechanic also screws up a lot of the actions you try to give your characters because of how it's actually implemented. what happens is that as soon as you're engaged, your last command is canceled and you are automatically "aggro-ed." So your character suddenly auto-attacks the engager. And then if you try to run away, you're hit by a AoO and you get interrupted (so you can't run away). This gives your opponent time to engage you again. And the cycle repeats itself, until you tell yourself, "well, if I'm going to go down, I might as well hurt the guy." I've tried using my thief to scout ahead and many times if he gets spotted, that's it. He's dead. His escape ability really doesn't give him much of a chance of running away if he's engaged by more than one guy. Not much of an escape if you ask me. You do lose a lot of the positioning and tactical movement that happened in IE games during combat. Basically, positioning in this game all comes down to initial positioning. You set up your pieces where you want (with scouting or whatever) and you just stay there. I mean look back to Josh Sawyer and Jesse Cox (the twitch marathon)- the poor guy had to keep asking Josh Sawyer (I counted at least three times) whether he could move his guy. And josh kept telling the dude "no that's a bad idea." By the end Jesse was basically just asking Josh what to do next because at least I felt he had no idea what was going on. And it's not just a matter of UI either. It's intuitive to want to move your player back when he's fragile and level 2 and getting attacked by a wolf/bear/group of bandits. It might not be the best idea, but at least its doable and you don't suddenly just die because the disengagement attacks finished you off.

What part? That the engagement mechanic doesn't work? Look at the first page for that. Square block in round peg? That's an idiom/saying (like your Swedish sayings). That it's wise? Well, the priest of Oghma says, "Wisdom is only possessed by the learned."

Yes. Yes, it is. They tried their new approach and it didn't work like they thought it did. It's not wise to keep bashing a square block in a round hole if it didn't fit the first time. I'm not advocating that they try a totally new, fresh approach from scratch. I'm saying that if they fell back to "how IE did it, even with the kiting" they've still made an improvement. At the very least, we all knew and loved that old system. If they want to "evolve" that system, then they should look at the past decade in real-time games and the advanced made in THAT field (not turn-based D&D) for a real-time problem they're having (and kiting is a real-time problem, or bum-rushing). You don't have those problems in a point-based, turn-based system.

For some strange reason I got this feeling that Obsidian (Sawyer) are not that familiar with Dota and it's mechanics. Josh Sawyer has played League of Legends before, though he doesn't play it regularly. Other developers on the team do play it though. I can't speak for Dota. But the point wasn't "DoTA." The point was that they need to look at real-time games - hell even IE games for solutions. I remember when they first pitched this game to us, one of their talking points was that since this is a computer game, they would be utilizing computer technology to move away from the hybrid real-time/turn-based model that IE had and to move closer to a more real-time game with "decimals!" and "complex math!" Seems that this only applied to how damage was applied, but nothing else. This game would be very different, I believe, if a few savvy RTS developers were in the mix when developing a real-time tactical combat game.

Solutions include, but are not limited to, crowd control abilities (knockdown), physical blocking, paying attention to when an enemy is bum-rushing your back line to move your party members back until your melee gets that stun off. Good AI by the computer to do the same thing (hell, the computer should know that you're moving your characters to the back - all it would take is a line like "if they are positioning a character near a ranged opponent or squishy opponent AND a melee ally is close by, move squishy opponent back, ask ally to drop a stun/cc ability; focus down on squishy guy).

Yeah right, I am used to pause in middle of battle in DotA to assign commands to all characters under my command. Seems like you probably playing only with bots xD. You dont come up with new solutions? you just copy other games? LOL but turn rate is actually not bad idea the point isn't that dota doesn't allow you to pause. I don't want this game to be DoTA, believe it or not. But I think that solutions should be taken from wherever they make the most sense. Like it or hate it, the games that are intuitive in their feel for tactical combat always are more fun to play. You don't need a whole lot to understand how movement and positioning work in games like DoTA2. Why shouldn't the developers utilize those mechanics in their games? Because the word RTS offends you? Not a good reason.

The engagement mechanic is "recreating the wheel." When there are other solutions that have been used in the past, why start fresh with a totally un-tested, new approach?

the last time an answer was given, it was stated that the engagement mechanic would not be taken out (not in a million years). just that it would be tweaked and changes would be made to make it "better." I'm paraphrasing, of course.

That's terrible logic. It supposes that completely removing what is obviously a core design mechanic has no opportunity cost of its own. You could turn it on its head and say, every second spent making a new rough mechanic to appease a verbose but limited set of backers could be better spent fine-tuning the existing one. And in reality, radical changes midway through a game development project almost never signal an uptick in quality. And I doubt the engagement mechanic is the single thing holding back the game like you imply. Christ, they just added limited VO that's been planned the entire time. The Linux build isn't even working at all yet. Look - if you want to fix this problem, you don't come up with a new solution and hope for the best. You look at what other games have done to solve this problem. Not a single Real-time game uses such a mechanic to solve the melee/ranged problem. They use other mechanics. CC abilities, AI. Dota2 has an intuitive turn rate mechanic that basically makes it extremely difficult to kite. And it lacks all this extra hubbub. Real-time solutions for a real-time game.