Doppelschwert

Maybe for melee, but the ranged units that kite in AoE2 are ridiculously annoying hahah, no human can do it as perfectly as that. That's true. But I somehow remember them as being easily pullable to my own archers, although it's been ages since I played the game. I know, i'm the one who found them, posted the videos and reported them. Yet from all i've seen i'm not convinced that just fixing those bugs will help in the long run, if you expect the enemy AI to be at least a little bit smarter. Aw, now I feel stupid for not remembering it was your thread, sry. Can never remember who did what if there is no profile pic... Great work you did there, by the way! I agree that fixing those bugs won't be enough, but I'm curious to see what new talents are available in the next patch. I think what is ultimatively needed to fix these issues are more abilities that change position of the enemies (like a forcefield for example). I

I think this is a bit of a loaded statement. Have you ever played Age of Empires 2 ? Ranged units in that game automatically kited you all the time. It's not like they can't program units to kite. If Ensemble Studios were able to do it in 1998, then there's no reason it cannot be done now. Second, enemies don't need to be able to take advantage of that kind of stuff. Think of games like Starcraft, particularly the Brood War campaign. The 'static encounters' in that game can be somewhat difficult (particularly in the more RPG-style missions where you don't have a base) because the 'encounter design' was good. All those enemies do is follow their simplistic AI clauses - they attack the closest units on sight and sometimes use their abilities. That's it ... but it's still challenging because the game and encounters were well balanced. You actually have to kite, you have to micromanage your units to be able to finish those levels. If you don't, you'll lose your units and not have enough to beat later fights. The reason I use RTS games for an example is because The IE games had RTS-style gameplay, more similar to something like Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2 as opposed to their 3D counterparts like the KotOR games, Neverwinter Nights and whatnot. Kiting has always been a part of RTS gameplay. It is as much in Single Player as it is in Multiplayer. The developers can try and fight kiting if they like, but I think doing so is resisting natural RTS gameplay, why not take advantage of it instead ? As shown in my above IWD video, you can't just sit all of your party members and stand still and attack Belhifet because he does too much damage combined with status effects, you have to micro your characters off him when they get damaged otherwise they will die. I assume that was part of the normal design/balancing for that fight ... I have no idea why that kind of gameplay is being resisted. I have played all these strategy games, yes, and I also kited in them because it's expected from the player. However, your argument is besides my point: You can have a game with RTS gameplay and kiting and you can have a game without that, as you already pointed out with the games you listed. That decision is up to the designer of the game. If you include RTS gameplay and kiting, then it is only natural that you will design your encounters around that - otherwise the content is too easy for people that actually use it. Consequently, the game will make you kite sooner or later, which is also shown by your IWD example. I'm not claiming that's bad, I'm claiming that it's different and that the designers didn't seem to want that. Granted, given that the game is supposed to be a spiritual successor of the IE games, I see why you would want to have RTS gameplay included, and that's fine by me. However, I think we can agree that a player will be way better at using kiting tactics than any AI anyone ever will come up with, so by that logic it will be an unfair advantage towards the AI (in the sense that the AI will not able to use the tactic to the same degree). I'm not claiming that this is bad per se, but the way I understand the game design goals, it is a mechanic that is supposed to even this out. As I stated before, I don't really care, I just want to argue what the motivation behind the mechanic is, given what we can infer about other information in the game, like the wild sprint ability. First of all I'll point out that i support Sensuki's suggestion on allowing attack wait time to recharge while moving, as i don't think you can abuse the system with it, so that solves kiting. I already pointed out, things are not equal. The enemy has greater numbers, affliction melee attacks, greater defenses, faster running speed, not to mention other mechanics like able to heal to full health in combat. (yes it already happened to me) Not really, spells barely do any damage. And you actually need to put some tactics in to it to work. Currently the enemy simply runs at the first thing they see, so you can already make use of the spells most of the time as they clump up, yet this don't unbalance the combat. Once the AI becomes smart enough to target members at the back, they will spread out more and at that point area attack spells will become completely useless. So what's better? Keeping the AI dumb, so you can actually use some of the spells? Or adding a mechanic where you can compensate for the enemy becoming smarter. No you can't, the buffs aren't going to save you from the bonus disengagement attacks get and the reduced deflection the barbarian gets, try it if you don't believe me. (see image below) The cone knockdown is pointless because the whole reason for you to reposition is so you can clump them up in the first place, where you would then be able to use aoe attacks, like cone knockdown. The sprint gives you -20 deflection Let's say that there's a talent that puts this penalty deflection to 0 Now you need to give him some armor and a shield so that they will actually be able to receive some damage. (trust me you need it) So what you ended up is with a gimped fighter that doesn't have defender mode. Here's the result on Hard difficulty: http://i.imgur.com/C69E3N3.jpg This is a Barbarian with the BB fighter's armor and shield, versus a couple of beetles that Sensuki has been complaining are too easy. I don't have Sprint activated so there is no deflection penalty and i have 15 in intellect, which gives +5 deflection. (i can upload a video if you don't believe it) Getting stopped by a disengagement attack isn't that big of a deal. The damage is. Edit: i think i just found a bug where the difficulty of the game sets to easy once you use quickload. The slider on the difficulty doesn't actually move however after you reload you start doing x2 damage and the enemy is only doing 0.5-2 damage to you even on disengagement attacks. Maybe this is why people have been complaining why the game feels too easy. I'll need to do some more testing. I think we are talking at cross-purposes. In the case you didn't know, the way the game is set up at the moment, disengagement attacks are bugged and balancing is way off. I don't think its sensible to discuss how good the mechanic is based on that. Of course, in a given scenario things are not equal, but in my opinion the way you design your system should be based around that assumption. You then buff enemies afterwards to compensate for bad AI so that they can compete. I personally also think it is fine if you are not able to position your enemies for AoE spells in every battle, and that the fighter running around does not solve the problem of AoE spells, especially because the spells should be a feasible alternative every now and then without having a fighter in the party. Lastly, I'm not sure if your argument is to taken seriously if you talk about hard difficulty, when the same is probably viable in normal difficulty. If you play on hard, at some point there should be mechanics that make it actually more tactical, which it appaerently seems to do. Again, I think it is possible to have a nice game with or without the mechanic, but we should wait until it actually works before we judge it. Up till then, most arguments basically boil down to: I prefer this mechanic over that mechanic.

The mechanic is there to help you hold the line with a single character and it's currently not even doing that, it's not there just for a restriction on classes. And as i said, people have been complaining of the fighter being too plain. So now you have something else to do with it. And it's not like it's going to make any other mechanic obsolete. You will still be required to use escape abilities by other party members. The enemy also doesn't seem to have the stamina mechanic and can heal itself fully, so arguing what it can do to you and what you can do to it is pointless. Currently the enemy is so dumb it will simply attack the first thing it sees. That's the only reason the engagement mechanic works atm. It completely falls apart once enemies start attacking from different directions. I don't think things are really balanced at the moment. For instance the Priest has a level 1 spell that wraps your character in a bubble, and basically protects him from nearly all physical harm (except bleed effects, which lose a lot of power since the fighter can regenerate during combat) Casting this spell on your tank every fight will currently allow him to basically never get damaged. Yet the spell needs to be there so that it can be used to protect your weaker party members if they get in a jam. I get where you are coming from, but I still think the mechanic was introduced in order to make the fights more fair for the AI. Of course, the AI is not finalized yet, but I think it's fair if I say that no matter how good it will be in the end, it will neither be able to plan with positioning nor will it be able to recognize kiting correctly. I think that the reasoning for engagement is that all other things being equal, the player would easily win a fight where he has access to these kind of tactics, as he can abuse the AI to do stuff that he wants while the AI can never get you to move your units to specific spots just by kiting or similiar stuff. Now with engagement, you can still do this kind of stuff as a barbarian with sprint, but that is the reason there are so heavy down sides to it. However, note at this point that you could easily buff your barbarian to deal with the attacks better, so that you can effectively already have what you want for a short period of time, but at a higher cost. Regarding the stamina of enemies, well, this would only be asymmetric if the enemy would heal their total hp more than at least 3 times over in a single fight, and I don't think that happens common enough to justify the extra work of implementing a health system for them. Regarding the balance of abilities and stuff - yeah, they are not balanced at the moment. But even ignoring actual values I think that the difference between a per rest / per encounter / modal ability says a lot about the aspired balancing point. I wouldn't have a problem with your suggestion when it would be a per rest ability or otherwise limited. Then again, note that you can use knockback to disengage and reposition. I think it would work better if you would achieve this power by some upgrade of already existing abilities. For example, let the barbarian diminish the deflection penalty with a talent or make the fighter knockdown a small cone instead of single target with a talent. That can give you similar tactical choices while still working with the mechanic. That being said, I think this just boils down to a matter of liking or disliking the engagement mechanic, where I think that some people that are against it simple want an unfair advantage over the AI (which are then probably the same people abusing this and complaining that the game is not challenging enough). I personally could live with both, but I like that its inclusion makes it more fair for the AI without losing much tactics, as you can still do everything you could do before, only in a more tactical way.

Yeah, of course. My point is this: Why would you use an limited ability with such a high opprtunity cost if you could just use a modal ability with less downsides instead? If sprint is meant to be a balanced ability the way it is now with all the downsides, your proposal is basically like a superpower.

I'll just leave this here: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Wild_Sprint Edit: It's not exactly doing what you propose, but conceptually it's close enough. My point is that given this ability being limited use and all that, your suggestion would be way too strong. The mechanic is supposed to be limiting those classes, so if you remove these restrictions completely, then the mechanic is missing its point in the first place. Also, why should you be able to set up your enemies for free in the first place when the AI won't be able to do the same to you? The problem with kiting you mentioned is a concern as well.

These don't bypass the Mechanics skill check, if I understand correctly. And what about traps? TBH, I don't know what picks do. I assumed they added some amount of (+) to whatever check is used to pick a lock thus lessening the Mechanics skill "requirement". Traps would still be a problem though. As far as I know, that is correct. Conceptionally it's really just the same as lockpicks in DnD. That's the reason why I voted 'no'. Also it contributed to me stop caring about wasteland 2 and stop playing it.

Which separate building would that be? It certainly won't be the megadungeon, as it will have puzzles and other stuff besides combat.

Given what I know from close combat, I think the right fighters are way too close to each other as well. You could just increase the selection circles by 1.5 times in both directions. Maybe someone (sensuki?) wants to make a mod for this to see how it feels?

Great news, everyone! But futurama aside, is there a rough estimate for the arrival of the patch? Personally, I'd prefer more patches with less content then the opposite, but it's probably easier for feedback and development the way it is now.

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.

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.

The way your question is worded sounds like english is not your first language and you don't know the word 'bestiary'. If this is the case, a bestiary is usually a book about animals with various data about them. In the context of games, a bestiary is almost always a collection of data about enemies you encountered in the game, often with stats and information about them. In PoE, the bestiary contains the stats of all enemies that are not humanoid and you fill in additional information about their stats by killing the enemies. The speed is governed by the lore skill and bestiary exp means that you are awarded for filling in information about enemies by killing enough of them. The point is that the entry for a specific enemy is complete filled out long before you have killed all the enemies of that type, so you only get rewarded with exp for the first couple slain enemies of a type. If an enemy has a boss version, it would have a different entry in the the bestiary as it is probably considered a different species. Because humanoids are not in the bestiary, it won't be blown up by the sheer amount of custom NPC adversaries with different stats / gear, and it won't give an incentive to kill them during quests for the bestiary exp.

Why would the system be radically changed at the moment? That would only be the case if the new sources of exp make up a lot of the total exp in the final game, which we don't know and which I strongly doubt. My personal guess would be that the amount of exp you can get from the bestiary and discoveries (and from skills, if they implement that at all) won't be more than 20% of the total exp available in the game. Subquest exp is just the total exp of the quest redistributed to different points of time, so it's not really a conceptional change at all. The introduction of these new exp sources only takes place to make the gaining of exp less discrete and more continous, so that it has a better psychological effect of rewarding the player for playing the game. IMHO, the design of Torment does not apply to PoE. I think it's even questionable for the goals it wants to achieve, but oh well, I'll see how it turns out.

As much as I like let's plays, there is no reason why this thread should be in the backer beta discussion subforum.

No, no, just ... just no. I know it's tradition, but I am so, so tired of that tradition. A ranger is a guy who roams across the wilderness. There is nothing linking that archetype to fighting with paired blades, other than giving players a way to play the Drizzit (and that wasn't even related to his being a ranger! 1E drow were all ambidextrous!). You want a ranger? This is a ranger. These are some rangers. And you know what, fine, this can be a ranger too; but he fights with a blade in each hand because he got a racial feature or spent some feats or whatever, not because he's a ranger. /nerdrage I expected the power rangers among one of these links, am disappointed now. On topic: I don't feel like there need to be special benefits for certain weapon styles on a class, as they already have certain advantages/disadvantages encoded in the general mechanics (attack speed, absolute damage, accuracy and deflection). In particular, if you wanted to make someone better at a certain weapon style, you might as well provide it as a general talent so that every class has the opportunity. (I see the distinction between ranged and melee as something different in this context, as you can still choose your weapon in each category). A nice talent for rangers would probably be a talent that shifts vulnerability between pet and ranger, that is, the ranger could receive X % more damage while the pet receives X % less damage during some short time given that they share the same effective health, it would be a good way to reduce damage. It's not necessary with the AI at the moment but alternatively, one could imagine some similiar effect to damage or accuracy.

I'm fine with DnD. Still, by suggesting to make the rogue a skill monkey, you are making exactly what I said you were: Disregarding design intent and wanting more DnD. There are no skill monkeys in PoE, as combat and noncombat skills are separate and every class gets the same amount of the latter. This being your first example, it may have been wrong to understand the other suggestions the same way, but the context would be there. I'm also asking for more wiggle room in classes, don't get me wrong. You said characters should choose one exclusive skill tree to go down, but this has an issue IMHO: Skilltrees should be balanced against each other -> you basically have to treat every skill tree as a separate class -> 22 classes Otherwise, if one skilltree is just better, why have the other one at all. In particular, why do we need to restrict this? Just don't make the talents exclusive and let them combo into each other. More freedom, more builds and actual easier to balance, as you only need to balance single talents against each other, not sets of them. Regarding your fighter party: I would hardly qualify what you describe as a all fighter party if they are multiclassed or using kits from BG2, as your initial argument was about BG1 in the same level range. For the rest, that is, fighters from vanilla BG1, you are actually confirming what I said: They only differed in weapons and amount of optimization in stat distribution, as you can easily dump all stats but strength, constitution and dexterity. If anything, BG1 vanillla should be the point of comparison for PoE, not some modded game that had several iterations. You can compare that to PoE2 or something along those lines. I probably come off harsher as I intend to, but I think it's important to focus on giving feedback that is actually applicable to the game. Regarding the topic, it would be nice if there were some general talents concerning more efficient uses of traps in order to specialize in ambush style kind of fighting.

So you're basically asking for 22 classes instead of 11 and a lot of stuff from DnD, totally ignoring the design intent in the process as always. *sigh* Let me guess, every fighter had a different weapon and their stat allocation were not equally optimized? I'm sure it feels very distinct to hit baddies with different weapons and that is something PoE can never achieve at this very moment. Seriously? For one time, I'd like to see one of these threads give actual useful feedback that respects the design intent instead of going all like: 'Make me some more DnD'. I think what they'd want to hear is the design of actual talents with a clear vision of how they are supposed to make a class more viable in a new situation it wasn't before, without it stealing the role of another class. For example, you could give the monk an ability that converts wounds into healing for everyone around him except himself, attenuating the necessity of a priest. Or, which has already been mentioned, giving the monk a taunt-like ability to make his class ability work better.

The game didn't encourage you, it was your choice. That XP is not needed to continue playing the game. It was only in your brain that you felt you somehow would fail if you didn't do it. Don't blame the system for your own needs/wants. I started the game with 4 characters at the same level. I took care that no one ever died in any battle. Still, there is a gap of exp between every two characters that is continuing to be so large that the largest gap is getting as large as a whole level. One character of mine has all the speech skills. She almost never gets any exp for using the skills because you can almost never use them. So I thought - you know, there are a lot of bombs lying around, maybe by letting her use the demolitions skill, she'll level up at a more even pace. If i have the - imho - low standard that every character may contribute in the same amount to the game - then the game encourages me to do this, as the exp gap is direct feedback about how often you can use the skills of the char outside of combat, and if I want them to contribute evenly, then I should somehow equalize these values. Also, the way the game is designed I need this extra level in order to be able to have a low chance at the most skill checks in the first place, given how high they are designed in most maps I visited up till now. If there was a little fluctuation of about 10% of the exp needed to hit the next level, I would ignore it, but this gap is way too high and even increasing over time. Imho, that is just bs gamedesign. Yeah, I confirm your point - that's only what I want. But that is also a stupid argument, as you can use it against any complaint towards any game. I don't need to do that if I want to complete the game, but I can't really enjoy the game if I'm constantly reminded that I'm stupid for not using a guide when I tried to make a useful character and gave her all the speech skills. Games and their mechanics should be transparent. TLDR: Bad designed systems feed into me feeling like I have to do this. EDIT: If you removed all the exp that is not combat exp, you'd still have the same choices, I'd have a party of even leveled characters and I wouldn't mind dumping all the speech skills on a single character. That is far superior to the way it is handled now IMHO, so I'd like to see an argument how the exp is helping in this case to make the game more fun. So basically, I'd like to know the same stuff as PJ.

I agree, lockpick and trap exp is a bad thing. The benefit of picking locks is getting loot and the benefit of disarming traps is not getting acid in your face, there is no need to further reward that behaviour. Perfect example for degenerate gameplay: In wasteland 2, I recently got to an area with three possible routes connecting to the same place. Every route had a minefield and I spent some time clearing all three minefields just for the exp, although I would've only needed one way to get where I wanted and although it's boring as ****. The game even encouraged me to do so because all my other party members are way ahead in exp because they were able to use the skills more often than the guy with dismantling traps.

Like what? If they're planning to keep narrative designers - Eric, Carrie, Matt, Robert on for the duration of the project, what else should they work on? I'd actually argue they'll do more narrative work for the expansion - they can write up more ideas and quests and select the best ones, improving the overall quality.

I think this is just a big scam that was set up a long long time ago to mess with the release date bet in the other thread On a more serious note, that's probably the right call. Alles wird gut. EDIT: On an unrelated note, I'm not the least bitter for losing that bet prematurely

The idea seems nice on paper, but assuming a char can reach up to 30 lvls in later installments, how would that system hold up? Given that there are 11 classes, this sounds almost as a bit too much customization overall if you want to properly implement and balance enough talents/feats that you can still feel like your char actually had a lot of choice at such a high level. I also feel that there are only so many things that you can implement as talent/feats when you still want to make them feel unique and separate from each other. I love customization, but if there aren't supposed to be a lot of bad choices like in DnD, I don't see this working out with expansions in mind. For example, I think talents should be class specific, and if you want to feel like you are really given a choice, I think you need at least twice as many talents as there are slots for each class. For this game alone that would boil down to 4 * 2 * 11 = 88 distinct talents. You can do with less, but I'd rather have less slots with relatively more choices than more slots and relatively less choices. If you treat talents/feats as the same pool, as it is now, then you have automatically more choices compared to slots, so it's easier to feel like you really made a selection out of a great pool, which I think is important in customization.

5 Deflection seems too low considering Paladins have like 20 acording to that list. If Barbarians are meant to be that squishy they they dont make as good front liners, especially since they already have Frenzy which lowers their deflection further. I interpreted Deflection as affecting spells but I was confusing it with Accuracy, ignore that. Fortitude, Reflex, Will should be able to make Spells/Abilities graze, but only at very high values. Like, your mind control spell isnt gonna do anythig to a Mindflayer and you arent gonna knock that Uranium Golem on its butt. Of course, the problem with all this is that our Abilities/Spells dont seem to get stronger outside if they crit and for that accuracy and might is the best bet for less grasez lategame it seems. But even then theres a cap to how much damage you can do or how much an ability is going to be successful. At some point you will maybe only graze. I dont know if abilities/spells are all "this is what you get, nothing more and nothing less" outside talents. If PoE follows a linear increase in enemy defenses eventually that Fireball isnt gonna do much even if it crits. So the way I se it (and Im on a tangent here already) the only way to bypass those high defenses is stacking multipliers. Like, classes could get say "+20% more damage" or "spells inflict -20 reflex before hitting" talents. Or you will need to use debuffs and buffs more, which can make fights last longer. For example, in Path of Exhile you get a small base hp pool that only increases by a bit and the skill tree progression encourages you to stack as many +% hp multipliers you can get. Same with damage, and many skills and talents take mainhand weapon damage into account to stack multipliers and effects. Or you could remove graze from spells entirely but that still doesnt get rid of the posibility that lategame your damage spells arent gonna be as strong as they used to be earlygame or that your other spells arent as reliable. I hope that makes sense, I went on a bit of a ramble there I feel. Spells and abilities and attacks alike take your accuracy rating into account, which increases while leveling up. At the same time, deflection, reflex, will and the last I can't remember fortitude rise as well while leveling up, so ignoring base specific modifiers, the chances to hit / grace / miss / crit for two characters at the same level would always be the same. Therefore, your spells don't get weaker over time, at least not in terms of how they are hitting the target. The formula is always the same: Base Accuracy + Modifiers vs. Base Defence + Modifiers will result in miss,grace,hit or crit. The difference lies in which defence is targeted and which modifiers are recieved based on the action. The values of Accuracy and the defenses both raise while leveling up.

Spoiler Tag would have been nice, as a lot of this stuff seems to be outside of the beta. I only skimmed it (as I don't want to be spoiled), but the sheer number alone implies its stuff outside of the beta.

Josh commented somewhere that renaming thieves to rogues in transition from DnD 2 to DnD 3 was meant to reflect the change of focus of the class. Apart from that, the rogue in PoE can still do all that stuff you listed from IWD/ BG2. Given that combat and non-combat skills are strictly separated in PoE, they had to give the rogue some role in combat.