Hormalakh

I don't know what MMO aggro mechanics has to do with combatants not being able to move away from engagement radius (unless double-clicking). I don't think you're reading the suggestion carefully. You're talking about what happens during an engagement and I'm talking about how disengagement should work. The point isn't to "aggro" an enemy or whatever. It's to make sure that "cheap shots" with engagement don't occur due to the fast-paced nature of the game. Once a player is engaged by the enemy, they should have to make a conscious effort to want to disengage (to run away or readjust positioning). The enemy can continue to do whatever it wants, but if the enemy is engaged, and wishes to do something other than attack the engaging opponent, then it will have to encur an attack. I'm not saying that engaging an enemy should automatically make them attack you. I'm saying that when you've engaged an enemy (or an enemy has engaged you), that you should be aware of that and allowing for a little stickiness will make this easier. If attack rounds are slow enough, then this shouldn't pose much of a problem because at the very most you'd take one attack before making the decision disengage. MMO style aggro mechanics isn't what this is about; it's about being able to understand where your character is without taking "cheap shots." For actual engagement mechanics, I don't have much of a say right now. TL;DR. You can still disengage with my suggestion. It just takes away from the NWN2 style of getting cheap shotted, amkes it easier to understand. Making disengagement an actual choice as opposed to "oh oops I ran too far away" (the NWN2 effect) and making that choice easy to do (double-click/ctrl-click/etc), avoiding the MMO effect, will go far in making engagement mechanics feel better.

unless an opponent actively attacks, engagement should not activate. For multiple engagements, the enemy should have to shift-click (or something to that effect, maybe right click all enemies and last enemy that is right-clicked will be first to be attacked, all other right-clicked opponents should be also engaged when within range). this way you don't have crazy engagements occuring as enemies are running past each other or Lephy's fear of random AoO attacks occuring randomly (if you are running past someone and they haven't actively engaged you, AoOs don't happen.) i disagree with lephys' suggestions that AoO should alsways activate. I like the accuracy malus, but it should be possible to miss with a high enough difference in accy-defense. Also, no slow downs as you have to consider the possibility that enemies will be engaged/disengaged/re-engaged and mulitple slow downs can really put off players from combat. And as for changing the range, if you get caught within range of Engager you should be caught, (if he right-clicked you or attacked you, etc). It should be easy to engage and disengage. If you want to be ranged,

I really think that being in engagement should be "stickier" than it currently is. When fighitng enemies, engagement should lokc you within the circle of engagement unless you actively try to go out of engagement. Something like having to double-click instead of single-clicking or having to push a "disengage" button and then moving (or both options, even). Or ctrl/alt-clicking. Something that would notify you that you are actually disnegaging. At the very least, it should be an option. Also, the current mechanic is so buggy and unrecognizable that it's really tough to give much feedback at this point, just like Cubiq has mentioned.

The skills that we have in PoE are currently woefully out of balance. Some skills are more important to have and are useful OUTSIDE OF CONVERSATION NODES, which I consider to be separate things. The thing about skills is that they sort of play as "sandbox mechanics" in that there is really no specific location or condition to utilize or play them, whereas utilizing skills and other elements in conversation nodes is more of a scripted environment, so it is important to consider these two scenarios separately. So, going back to the skills, I believe that they are woefully out of balance. The five skills we have stealth, mechanics, athletics, lore, and survival have varying usefulness outside of scripted environments. As I've said before, the lore skill is by far the more useless of these skills because of the meta-gaming element and noob-trap aspects to it (only noobs pick it and it's a trap skill). The XP "bonuses" to the bestiary/Pokedex - which feels shoe-horned in - non-withstanding, this skill really has no place in the game (again outside of conversation nodes). Furthermore, there really is no "each character gets value out of the skill" aspect to lore. This skill needs serious reworking! Athletics seems very esoteric and currently is a little unclear as to how "fatigue points" are calculated and so plays as a random fatigue generator (lack of information to the player as to what/how fatigue is calculated, might as well make it random). Mechanics, stealth, and survival are much better in terms of having both individual value as well as "sandbox mechanics" playing styles. They work as tools (though survival less so, sort of plays as a passive ability almost) that the player can use to solve problems, etc. ----------------- The solution: I've been thinking about survival, lore, and athletics and ways to "balance them" without having to use out-of-place mechanics like XP bonuses, etc. One way to do this would be to consider having a random encounter mechanic where the chance of having a random encounter is based on LORE and survival (more emphasis on LORE). While the total survival pool would determine the chance of a random encounter, each character's individual LORE skill would determine the difficulty and number of enemies (totalling a cumulative number of monsters). This way each character is required to consider lore as a viable skill to purchase. The reasoning behind it would be that as characters know more about the different monsters and their habitats (lore skill) they are better prepared to tackle them individually or or by-pass them completely. The other mechanic would be a more granular camping supplies (thinking like a camping supplies bar). The speed at which campiung supplies are then utilized would be based on each character's individual skill in X or Y skill. I haven't really fleshed out this idea yet, but it is another mechanic to consider when trying to balance the skills as they currently stand.

apparently that's intended. ... don't ask

Time for some interpolated rotoscoping!

i said it in my second post: earlier feedback means less time and resources wasted on things that are getting bad feedback. see also cubiq's response.

also, giving more frequent beta updates will allow the devs to waste less time on things that the backers don't think matter too much and focus more time on things that do matter (like combat). if the up[dates are too far apart, the devs will be going down a path and then changing course (after having spent too much resources in that way).

The current rate of patches is probably a little bit slow, but I also think that a patch every week might be a bit too quick. inXile promised weekly patches for Wasteland 2 during the beta but were unable to achieve it because the studio/team was simply not built for that quick of a turnover. You guys likely have a larger in house team than they did (I guess?) and have been adding extra programmers over the last few months (nice to hear that Dan Spitzley is on the team ). You guys might be able to handle a patch a week, but is a patch a week worth it ? The beta backers are not on the project full time, and while many people are usually pretty keen on a patch day, it's because the wait for the patch was long and people have been hanging out for it. I have a feeling that a patch a week will kill many people's enthusiasm and result in less overall testing being done, especially when the smaller patches will not be containing 'big' changes like the last few have. Most of the bug reports come in the first week of the new patch, particularly in the first few days, and then bug reports slow down. Suggestions/new threads tend to come after a few days/bit longer as people have had a chance to thoroughly play the new version and formulate an opinion. I think every two weeks would probably be more ideal, it would allow you enough time to get in moderate fixes, it gives more of the backer base time to get to try the build and it at least allows for some anticipation. There are a lot of people that are simply jumping into the new patch for an hour or two and posting about it on the forums, and this is reflected in the hours logged on their steam profile. I don't know if a patch a week gives people enough time to fully test the patch - particularly with stuff like changes to ability and spell mechanics, it's very hard to go through all the classes in a week and respond to the changes, particularly when the changes are not documented (as they were not in the last patch). I think this could end up promoting less 'thorough' testing overall. I might be wrong, but I thought I'd post my concerns anyway. it's not our job to test for them. if we find bugs and report our experiences that should be enough. They also can but -likely wont- change everything in the beta every week. For completionists like you, you can just test the parts that have been changed. That would require the devs to mention what changes they've made. I think one week might be a little ambitious because of the overhead time it takes to upload a patch and obsidian's "need to appease the backers" but a two weeker or a one and a half week per update shouldn't be too bad.

wow.....i thought those arrows were decorative.

The same thing happens when you open the inventory screen. It does weird things with the bow and arrow.

I actually bet you could probably get the same information to show up on the inventory screen, in the individual chacter's profile, below defense, accuracy, etc. Just make that section scrollable so that you can see all that information. Then I won't have a problem of having two different screens to worry about. I can just right-click my character's profile and all the info I need will be at my fingertips.

The info sheet needs a little work. I won't go into another UI mockup like I did last time, but we should at least be able to switch between party members quickly while in the info sheet. Am I the only one trying to compare my team members to each other?

Elves can't wear helmets right. Dwarf hair shows through. That's one shaggy helmet. The poor wizard can't see!

So who decides which feedback is worthwile to listen to? If you refer to josh, he also gave perfectly fine reasons why bestiary exp would work within his vision, so I don't see a problem there. Regarding the lore skill: I get your arguments, but you can apply these arguments for all the other skills as well, so why does lore deserve all the bashing? You can't use any skill directly in combat. Mechanics work only for traps before combat starts, stealth has a very limited use since you can only use it to initiate combat (if at all), athletics concerns only minor penalties you can probably deal with by proper resting and survival only effects potions. All of this is purely optional stuff you won't need to play through the game, so for combat purposes all skills are equally useless unless you want to actively use them. Consequently, if you think that all skills in PoE suck, go ahead, that's fine with me. However, regardless of how many playthroughs you do, you will always be able to use the skills outside of combat in conversations and scripted events, so dismissing them as useless is wrong. As I understood it, the vision was that they are supposed to define your character and help you play them outside of combat, the combat bonuses are just a little bonus on top and not supposed to be their defining quality. Poopposting and saying "I WANT COMBAT XP WAH WAH WAH" is not good feedback. I already told you: no good arguments have been brought forth to convince Josh otherwise. He would have mentioned these if it was the case. I haven't seen any quotes from Josh saying why besiatry XP is good - only that they are considering it. The lore skill dserves particular bashing because of its roles when it comes to playing the game several times and its complete irrelevance when dealing with meta-gaming: it is completely superfluous. It feels shoehorned in because there is creativity lacking in skill design. Trap-placing, lockpicking, stealth have particular relevance and value outside of strict combat as well as value in every iteration of the game that you play - you can't meta-game any of those things. Yes, athletics isn't really a skill as much as it is a "perk" and I would agree that as it stands, it is also fairly weak. But again, it contains value with each gameplay. You will use that skill every time you start a new game. Lore does not have this value and is completely minimized with meta-gaming. If I was to make the "lore skill" relevant, I wouldn't do what Josh and co are doing; with static enemies that have no stat changes from one game to the next. If lore is to actually be a worthwhile skill, randomization of enemy statistics/attack types/etc need to be implemented so that a player who actually invests in lore in EACH game, has something worthwhile to gain from that skill. Each game would have randomized elements that you can know by using the LORE skill and thus brining back value to the skill. This is a difficult task and something I'm sure that unless they've planned for from the beginning would be too hard for them to design in at this point in the game. Going from their previous reasonings for how they design, they wouldn't even consider this solution. Instead, we'll be stuck with static enemy stats that any player who's played the game will know, completely nullifying the lore skill. And for the noobs who pick the lore skill, the rest of us "veterans" will laugh at them for picking the joke skill that nobody would actually pick. Thus, two huge design flaws in Josh's "most excellent design masterpiece of all-time." Trap (as in useless and trapping the new player) skills and the ability to play combat degenerately with 0 points in lore. Traps were why Josh went all crazy on making every attribute matter and a whole bunch of other contortions with the D&D recipe. Now he's reintroducing it again with Lore.

I am mad.

So you basically say that they shouldn't be able to change their decisions based on feedback, regardless of how bad that decision turned out in regards to how fun the game is to play? I'm sure the decision with bestiary exp is not only because of the vocal minority of backers here on the forums but also because of the playtests they are doing at the moment. Also, lore is not a worthless skill in combat. It changes the rate at which you uncover information about your enemies, and information is crucial for tactics. The addition of bestiary exp is not changing the value of the lore skill, as you can get all the bestiary entries and exp even with minimal lore. Lore decrease the number of fights you need to fill in the bestiary entries, which means that you may get access to information about the enemy during the very first fight you actually have with them (fight 3 lions, one falls, get additional information about the remaining 2). Is it useless if you have a walkthrough? Yeah it is, but a game should not be designed with a walkthrough in mind, and if you use one to neglect lore, then it's really your own decision and not the games fault, at least IMHO. In particular, if you want to be peacefully as possible, max the lore skill and you reap the benefits during the first couple fights. If you want to get rewarded for your battles for a longer period of time, neglect the lore skill. If the feedback isn't worthwhile, they shouldn't listen to it. There haven't really been any great reasons as to why combat XP should be put into place other than "Combat generally is boring to play in PE and so at least make it worthwhile for us!" Josh himself has said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that if his game isn't fun without XP adulterating the gaming experience, that he doesn't want gamers playing it. The problem with combat isn't the lack of XP: it's the combat. XP will not make me enjoy it any more. At that point, I'd just be expected to suffer through it. As for what you said re: the lore skill, it again flies in the face of Josh's design goals when it comes to PoE. He has stated several times that he'd like to minimize meta-gaming as much as possible. This is exactly why we don't have hard-counters and other "fun and unexpected" things that were plentiful in the old IE games. It's because Josh doesn't want players making decisions without the maximum available information, and once you know that information, the challenge is already gone. Even without a walkthrough, once you've played the game once or twice, there's really no reason to play the game with the lore skill, as you'd already have an idea as to what to expect with each enemy. It's a poorly designed skill just like Josh believes hard-counters, etc were poorly designed. "Pretty much all games get it wrong." Josh's game is no exception, it seems.

"Gotta fill out my Pokedex!" OR "Listen adventurer I've got a list of things I need you to kill for me: here it is. 500 golbins, 300 trolls, 20 dragons, 10 giants ... Oh if you invest in some skill that's otherwise worthless, I'll give you a discount on your kill list."

No, unbelievably, I found something I agree with when it comes to the combat-xp fans: stick to your guns, Josh. If you say XP comes from completing an objective, then leave it at that. This is the "crafting skill" fiasco all over again. Lore is a worthless skill in combat and has no value when meta-gaming is considered and so now it is being "remedied" by offering some sort of value by giving trivial amounts of XP. It goes against the whole idea of you get XP only for completing objectives. It further minimalizes players who want to have a mostly "kill-free" gaming experience. And ultimately flies in the face of the main reason why combat XP was taken out. If we have trap xp, lore xp, etc, why not have combat xp? Stick to your guns, devs. You said there'd be no XP outside of objectives. Keep it that way.

Well, then it's even MORE rewarding if it is fun AND you gain XP from it AND you gain stat points from it AND you gain new abilities from it AND you gain gold from it.Where do we draw the line on that train of thought, I wonder?We draw it where it is a problem to balance or outside the design scope. If each combat would give you something cool like some traits based on enemy you killed that would be very cool but it needs to be balanced and part of design.XP is easily balanced as they have been using combat Xp for a long time now and they also know players like it. Not every player likes it. Some of us hate it.

Any thoughts on solving the problem cubiq? I see a lot of disagreements, valid as they might be, but no real solutions.

the developers need to consider mechanics that fit a REAL-TIME game where players are focusing on several things going on at once. This means that disengagement should be 1- visible, you should be able to tell immediately that you want to disengage and that you are taking a risk; your disengagement should be notifiable even before it occurs 2- deliberate, you shouldn't accidentally click too far out of the area of engagement and suddenly get hit with free attacks. Like an "escape" ability, you should be well-aware of what you're doing 3- real-time, if this is a real-time game, then you should have the opportunity to cancel a disengagement in real-time. There have to be solutions offered that make these considerations. Here are two ways I can imagine that can make disengagement more applicable in a real-time environment. 1- Allow AoO areas to be small when initially engaging so that they are only enabled when it is near-deliberate that the player wanted that character nearby the enemy. Then make disengagement areas significantly larger, so that small adjustments +/- error in clicking/path-finding would not trigger engagement attacks. 2- Make it quite obvious that a character will disengage when making choices. This would have to be real-time information, so we can't have "pause when disengaging" as the only option for something so significant. You need a different mouse icon when clicking further out, a red highlight, or something else that's fairly obvious that tells the player immediately that they are going out of engagement. Then perhaps you might want to put in a "slow" effect when players are exiting engagement areas. Even a 80% speed that immediately notifies the player, "oh man I've deliberately disengaged, if I'm sure, I can watch what happens or I can quickly readjust." This would be a real-time mechanic. A fellow poster on the Codex also made a great suggestion: hattip Grunker

They'll have more attack spells. Also, yes the more powerful ones could use contingency spells. Not true. You have limited spells. Every time you use a pre-buff spell; you do so at the expense of an attack spell. by definition pre-buffing means doing so before combat has started. there is no question between pre-buffing and attack spells. you can pre-buff and still thorw an attack spell.

Not true if they have limited duration. Lets say you have six pre-buff spells. If you try to stack them all they'll run out of time so you can only really have three on at a time. Which ones do you choose? That's a strategic decision. Then there's the issue of pre-buffs vs attack spells. Do you want another pre-buff, or another fireball? That too is a strategic decision. Plenty of thought can go with pre-buffing. except your enemies never get to pre-buff. so what do you do then? give them all contingency spells? any prebuff you place is better than no prebuff. ultimately making prebuff or not to prebuff not a question: you should ALWAYS prebuff.

he's trying really hard to come up with a reason for players to get the "lore skill." still near worthless value.