Lephys

^ That, and I don't think his qualm is with hard counters of any kind, per se (for example, poison, and an antidote for poison), as much as it is with the extent of the counter. Namely, "you're screwed because of this ability, except when you completely negate it with this other ability." It's like... advantage whiplash. "We're protected from 72 things, via this magical shield!" "Nope, I just dispelled your entire magical shield! MUAHAHA!" I do feel it's a lot more interesting when both sides typically just influence factors in their favor. I much prefer to overcome an obstacle than to cast "anti-obstacle" on it.

I wouldn't quite put it that way -- "something more relevant to PoE," since PoE doesn't exclude romance. It's not as if a proper implementation of romance would make the game cease being about anything-not-romance, and suddenly revolve around romance. That being said... This is true. It's not that romances NEED to be in a cRPG. It's just that they also don't need to specifically not be in a cRPG. If they're in, they need to not suck, and to play nice with the rest of the game's design.

But they are being lost. Just, temporarily. And, unless you find camping supplies after every single encounter, your ability to rest is limited. So, sure, the factor values could render things moot, but the system still has you losing resources that could've been useful at some given time (at which you were without them). Granted, being too careful is definitely a bad idea. It's kind of a bell curve. If you just save them all, you're going through a lot of trouble you wouldn't need to, for no ultimate benefit. If you use them all too quickly, then you're putting yourself through a bunch of situations in which you could've used some abilities before you next rested. @Mr. Magniloquent: To be fair, they said they were making a game in the spirit of the IE games, Not making a game in the spirit of the D&D universe. I don't believe that designing a different magic system and a different combat system from the ground up inherently causes the game to fail to resemble the IE games. That being said, I'm not saying the magic system is flawless, or that other people like it so it's better than what you like, which is somehow stupid. But, I fear you're harboring an irrationally inflated level of resentment toward Josh and Co., to be honest.

Fair enough. You're entitled to believe that, and I have no proof that you're wrong. But I also have no proof that you're right. That, and, while I realize that what I want it to be might stray a bit from what they want it to be, I'm trying to go by how it was presented as a concept in the original Melee Engagement Update. All I recall being mentioned as issues it was meant to fix are foes blazing past your melee peeps and laughing all the way, and ludicrous kiting. Nowhere in any of that do I see "we don't want anyone to be able to move." So, *shrug*... maybe they don't want anyone to move at all, and that's their goal? But, if it is, they certainly didn't state that very clearly. That, and I'm more worried about how the goal "should" be accomplished, and less worried about what the devs simply want to do for no reason at all. Because, I trust that they are actually applying reason to their decision-making process. If they aren't, then there wouldn't be much point in any of this at all, because we'll just end up with the game they arbitrarily desire to code, and hardly anything'll make sense. "We want Fighters to have jetpacks. There's no reason for them to. We just want it." A fair point. This speaks to the possibility that they may want to just forgo the "chance to not suffer horribly for disengaging" stuff and focus on the "you definitely get to disengage in some form or fashion" stuff. And/or various other tweaks to the system. Again, that's kind of the point. No one's telling you to stop having problems with the current implementation. I'm just saying "Yeah, that's a problem... what if it weren't?" And, again, if you'd rather not bother going down that road, then that's fine. But I don't think that means there's anything wrong with myself or anyone else choosing to do so. Yeah, with-or-without engagement, I'd still like the AI to be as improved as it can be. But, especially with. Regardless of whether or not it's technically the fault of engagement, or the fault of AI, I don't want a game in which AI doesn't react to engagement, for example.

While Sawyer won't personally be advising a new player playing the gold release, I'm fairly certain some manner of tutorial will accompany the game. Screwing up simply because you lack knowledge about the game is not really a testament to the difficulty of the game.

I dunno... I mean, unless you have like 1 designer and 100 coders, it seems like imagination is always going to outpace coding/resources.

There's our first problem right here. If magic has to be conceptualized and designed only within the constricting confines of soullessly gamey MMO and ARPG terminology, then this entire discussion is hopeless. You don't get the magic behind magic. And I lack the communication skills to explain it to you. Suffice to say, we're ALL going to need to re-condition our minds and try to erase the DECADE of damage that games like WoW and Dragon Age have caused to the entire RPG genre. Whoa whoa whoa... DPS is an actual thing. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. Now, I'm with you in that I hate it when it becomes THE basis for design. It's simply a measurement, that, when referenced accordingly, can be valuable. In terms of Doppleschwert's argument, he's simply using the literal definition of DPS to say that, if you're more powerful and you do damage (which is quantified in some manner for the purposes of a ruleset for a game, so that it's not an indefinite amount of damage), then you're going to be doing MORE damage in the same amount of time. Thus, damage per second. Damage per minute. Damage per (insert time interval here). It doesn't really matter. The amount of damage you're capable of issuing forth is going to be greater in a given amount of time than it was when you were less powerful. So, if you had Firebolt, then acquire the ability to cast Fireball, OR teleport someone to a dimension in which they get torn apart by the fabric of reality (doesn't really matter what affect the spell has, so long as it produces the equivalent of some measure of damage, for the sole purpose of comparing it to prior damage-producing spells you were able to cast), then you don't want it to take an amount of time to cast proportionate to the extra damage it's doing. And the closer you get to that, the more pointless it becomes. "I used to be able to cast a 3-second spell and kill a dude. Now, I can cast a 15-second spell and kill 5 dudes." That's great, IF you can pull off the spell. You'd be better off casting the 3-second one 5 times and having a much greater chance of not-losing-concentration or being murdered to death, etc. It's a perfectly valid point. There's no need to go off on Doppleschwert for all crimes ever committed in affiliation with the term "DPS."

You have a very, very strange definition of "meaningful," it would seem. Trust me, I have preferential qualms with the attributes as well (Might is strength AND magic?! Ahhhhh!), but... A) I understand them, even if I don't expressly prefer them, and B) That has nothing to do with whether or not the effects of attribute values affect significant combat factors. @Josh: Maybe if you were to hire a dedicated forum liaison, to simply read every single qualm people have, and say "Yes, we totally have qualms with that, too, but for various reasons, we are not yet making a change to that, specifically," people might understand it? I don't know why people assume that, if you're not actively posting about it at the moment, and/or it's not going into a new build within the next 24 hours, you (the whole dev team, really) are simply 100% in love any and all specifics of the current build, and consider it complete. *shrug*

No, 'cause the stamps cost too much. It can be Morse-coded, though. Or perhaps carrier-pigeoned.

I dunno... you're a Rogue. Perhaps you've been here discreetly, all along, and you just now emerged from the shadows? o_o /suspicion.

I really wish you had tried that first, before normalizing the combat stats of all the classes. Hindsight is 20/20. 8\

Okay... here's the problem. I'm arguing the concept, and you're countering with the happenstancical current state of the code, without regard for what the concept should be. Let me ask this: What's the difference between an implementation that doesn't yet match the concept, and a bug? Hardly anything. "Yeah, when you click on this guy, it's supposed to start a conversation. Instead, it teleports your party to the waterfront." Do we see that and say "OMG, there's no reason to talk to people, because talking gets you teleported to the waterfront"? No. We say "Oh, better fix that so it does what it's supposed to do." So, what I'm saying regarding engagement is, the choice to move, in the engagement concept, is not a bad choice. The choice to move in the current implementation is. Those options are a joke to spend your points on as things currently stand. Guess what... people think combat's too fast, so they slowed it down. They didn't remove combat speed and go with something else. It's called tuning. Any specifics that aren't strictly required for the concept's goal are completely expendable. The concept of engagement does not require unlimited free instant animation-less attacks. Nor does it require that there be a bunch of trap-choices in the game in the form of disengagement options. So, no, I'm not telling you "lolz, I was talking about this, so you have to be talking about that too, and I somehow won something here." This is not intended to be hostile in any way, just to clarify. I'm simply trying to point out that I'm really not concerned with arguing what engagement does or doesn't do if it isn't in the interest of at least conceptually improving/optimizing it into something that would actually work in the game. I realize that you're pointing out oodles of perfectly valid problems with the current state of the engagement system. But, when I say something like "moving isn't a trap choice," what I mean is, the decision to move does come with the option to disengage first, as opposed to the system literally preventing you from doing so and restricting you from any movement at all, ever. And the reason I point that out is because, if you can disengage then move, then how you are allowed to do that needs to be adjusted, obviously. If enemies were all critting way to frequently, you'd adjust the crit range. "Oh, hey, a default 20% is kind of high, it turns out... let's move it down to 5." So, when I see "Hey, it's almost ridiculous to actually outfit your character with viable disengagement options," I immediately thing "that should be remedied." Not "Clearly we should cut out engagement's heart with a spoon and feed it to harpies." I'm sorry if that's crazy. I can obviously only see it from my perspective. But, I'm also not trying to get you to like this, or say "Yes, I should be spending all my time worrying with this." No, your alternate system is perfectly valid. However, until such a choice is made to not-fix engagement, I don't see either choice supercedes the other. I'm not pointing out ways to fix engagement in an effort to stifle any and all arguments you have in favor of Active Ability Stickiness. So, I just think maybe you could try to recognize the validity of the attempt to course-correct the engagement design, whether you, yourself, deem your own time worthy of that attempt or not. Why does everything on this forum have to devolve into the friggin' Thunderdome of points? I think all our valid points should be allowed to have a party together, with a disco ball, and lasers, maybe a bouncy castle. I guess if they can't, then worst-case scenario, we just need two different threads. One for "Hey, what if we went with this system," and one for "Hey, what if we tried to fix engagement?". Boom. Everyone wins, as I don't see the two discussions as mutually exclusive. They're simply hypotheticals until we know what Obsidian's going to do.

It matters exactly as much now as it did before, however much that was. If "Oh no, won't that drive people away?" was a legitimate concern of yours, then I don't see why you're suddenly no longer worried whether it will or won't be a big deal to sales numbers and game popularity, simply because the design isn't going to be changed at this point. It's not as if the results of that decision have ceased to be. But, if you'd simply no longer care to discuss it, that's fine, and we'll do that. No worries.

Curses! And here I was just about to lawyer it up and say that that "one" big tree was actually a collection of smaller trees that had merged in their growth at some point in the past, perhaps all while casually polishing my monocle in a condescending fashion. 6_u

Yeah, last I heard (maybe it changed and I just missed the memo?) was that all abilities, spells or no, had three tiered cast-lengths: short, medium, and long. Or, originally I thought it was cast time. It may now be that it's the amount of recovery time after using it? Or some combination of both. All I know is, three tiers were mentioned, a while back, in regard to the time-cost of ability usage. Oh, and that's not including instant abilities, I suppose. So, yeah, I think the "standard" cast time Josh referred to is like, the short cast time? So there should still be a medium and a long (4 seconds and 6 seconds, or maybe 5 seconds and 8 seconds? *shrug*)

I had that "can't exit the game" problem when last I played, but I couldn't really figure out any more useful info about it. I had to kill the process, and I haven't gotten to play again since (this was... last Friday, or this Monday?)

First, I just wanna say that the act of kiting isn't bad. The ability to freely execute it without ever being touched is bad. Intelligently retreating and taking advantage of range and speed is a tactical choice in a given situation (namely one where you have both a range and speed advantage). It's always being able to do so pretty much whenever you want (basically, a lack of any manner of counter-tactics, and/or too frequent of a presence of both range and speed advantages, etc.) that's the problem. And this does have a lot to do with AI. Second, you don't necessarily have to program AI to predict things and choose actions in the most efficient manner ever. In fact, when you do that, it tends to just be more complex, but still predictable (a la the comparison above of the foe never changing targets to the foe always reliably changing targets under certain conditions). The thing that separates humans from AI is "randomness," for lack of a better word. If two human generals are fighting a battle with their troops, one can say "Ahh, he's going to expect me to do A, so I'm actually going to do B." Or, to look at it another way, imagine you're in control of that example creature that's being kited by the player. Would you just switch targets every single time someone did a certain amount of damage to you? Or would you try to figure out a way to make it difficult for the player to know when you were actually going to change your course of action? The latter, most likely. Now, you'd think all that through, but the difference in action is basically that, when presented with various options (change targets versus stay the course, versus maybe use an ability, etc.), sometimes you're going to pick A, sometimes you'll pick B, and sometimes you'll pick C. One time, when you get hit with a huge attack, you might just bullrush that person who made the attack. And other times, you might switch to a ranged weapon and unload on the person with the lowest health, etc. So, really, I think the most significant factor in AI is unpredictability. Maybe that one ogre you run into switched targets a lot, while this other one just keeps charging the same target, or does something different. Basically, you still write the AI to figure out a list of viable options (you wouldn't have it do stupid things that don't make any sense, basically), and then you'd have it roll to determine what to do. What this means for the player is, every time you try the same tactic twice against a given type of enemy, you won't really be certain how the enemy's going to react. *shrug*

Oh, no worries. I wasn't judging you. If you were playing on EASY, I wouldn't even be judging you, . But, definitely kudos for trying Nightmare. Like I said, in the ME games, I did all three on Insanity (although one or two missions in ME2 were RIDICULOUS on Insanity). But, after trying DA2 on anything above Normal (as a Mage), I can't bring myself to do my first playthrough of Inquisition on Nightmare, 8P. I am but a pansy, pansy Elf Mage, haha. Anywho, yeah, their lore consistency is... a bit fragmented. I mean, as far as I can tell, if you even so much as PLAYED Awakening, automatically your Hero of Fereldan never perished. AND, Morrigan has a child with you no matter what, it seems? Or maybe she has a child with someone else no matter what, and it just doesn't tell you? I dunno. I saw an awful lot in the Tapestry at DragonAgeKeep.com that made me very, very puzzled, and I just remember things not making any sense as presented to the player about such things (Morrigan, you're aliveness in Awakening as the same person, etc.) when playing through the game, at the very least. They've definitely changed their minds an awful lot.

^ Is that lack of friendly-fire specific to the ice trap mine ability? 'Cause I toggled friendly fire on the second I started playing, (And lemme tell you, that chain-lightning ability that's like the first/quickest spell you get as a Mage is no joke if you don't pay attention to enemy placement and proximity. It's definitely not a simple matter of button-mashing with that.) But yeah, it doesn't really bother me. I think it's irrationally exaggerated hatred, personally, but I get that there are oodles of people out constantly praising Bioware for being a deity or something. So, I think when you start saying "I dunno, I kinda like the gameplay," people can't pass up the perceived opportunity to try and give a "Bioware lover" a reality check. All I can say is, if anyone's waiting for me to "realize" how not 10/10 DA:I is and become stricken with disappointment, I believe that person is the on who's going to be disappointed, since I expect it to, best-case-scenario, be a 7/10, and maybe as low as a 5/10. So, if it is, then it will still just be meeting my expectations. The biggest reason I picked it up is that there aren't a ton of other RPGs on PS4 at the moment. So it's not like I'm foregoing a sea of amazing RPGs and buying the sub-par one. I just want an RPG to enjoy on my PS4. Not a masterpiece. That, and people act as though Biowares games cost more than other games, instead of the same exact $60. Yeah, if they were all "Oh, THIS one's gonna be AMAZING! So we're charging $100 instead of $60!", you better believe I wouldn't even bother with it. But, "Oh no, they spend OODLES of money for voice-acting and all these flashy special effects, and the story and such suffer in comparison!". Great. Then they have to sell that many more copies to make a profit. That's their problem, not mine. I don't need to do a hype-to-actual-quality analysis before I buy a game, just to make sure I never only moderately enjoy a game that was SUPPOSED to be phenomenal. Same thing happened with Destiny. I enjoy Destiny with my friends, and I hope that they expand the crap out of it. But, I don't think it's nearly lived up to its hype. Doesn't mean I have to dislike it. Again, no matter how much they spent on making it, I still only paid $50 for it. Let me put it this way... I've gotten FAR worse games, before, than DA:I or Destiny, for the same price, if not more.

Yeah, I just... if you fix the engagement system, then it ideally provides plenty of options for actively avoiding, creating, and otherwise interacting with Engagement. I don't understand why "Oh, you want a single, passive mechanic to exist?" somehow means you must also want all of combat to be passive. It's not like the options are between engagement OR active-use debilitating effects. That's what gets me so much in these debates. People argue against unwanted situations that their mind conjures, which are more specific than the actual design concept. It's like saying "Hey, we'll just take a car to get to our destination," and getting the response "No, I HATE loud muscle cars!"

Ahh, I see. Yeah, I'm too novice at programming to comment on that,

Yeah, I don't know what they're planning versus what's currently implemented, but a handful of animation variety would be pretty lovely.

Leliana? I can't recall for certain (as I was speeding through the Keep thing -- not knowing it was a website and not an in-game thing until last night when I sat down to play the game -- to get my world state accurate to my previous playthroughs), but I'm pretty sure if you load the correct world state, she's not alive. And yeah, I can't really attest to the PC controls/specifics, but I would think the rest of the game, at least, is 99% similar on the PS4. Granted, I know it's hard to separate out something like a game's controls and still talk about gameplay despite that, but... I dunno. Like I said, if there's anything you're still curious about, I'd be glad to update you after I've played more of it. @Gairnulf: I have no doubts as to the non-optimal quality of the story, etc. To put it simply, though, how good their writing/narrative-design is compared to how good it should be (what we would ideally like in an RPG, what we should get for the huge budget of the game, etc.) is on a different scale, for me, than the simple question "can I and do I enjoy playing through this game?" I just cannot bash an entire game solely on the fact that a bunch of components are less than ideal. It's like eating at some place that everyone tells you has THE most delicious food ever, and, upon tasting your meal, realizing that it's just-plain tasty, and not anything super special. You STILL get a tasty meal. Your taste buds aren't having a party, but they're also not prompting you to vomit. I mean, I enjoyed DA 2 enough to get through it once. I'll never, ever play through it again, ever. But I didn't feel the need to "walk out of the theater," so to speak, partway through it. And I enjoyed playing through the Mass Effect Trilogy, despite the oodles of things I'd change about it. Thus far, I'm enjoying DA:I, but I could very well hate it in another 4 hours. But, so far, it feels a hell of a lot better than 2, which I made it through. So... *shrug*. Maybe I'm just dumb or crazy? But that's just how I involuntarily function. I can't hate something that isn't terrible, just because it fails to be spectacular. On-topic, though, I am curious to see how the "tactical" party play pans out. Especially since I'm playing on hard. DA2 on Nightmare was stupid. So I bumped it down to Hard. Still pretty dumb. I just put it on Normal, eventually. ME3 on Insanity left little room for error in reacting to enemy movements and placement, but it wasn't stupid-diculous, I will say. DA 2 was just "everything has infinite health, AND like 5 insta-heal potions in its pocket, AND is immune to half your magic, you stupid Mage!", and there was absolutely no controlling anything in combat. I had to CC an enemy 70 times before it died, so "Oh, I'll hold these guys with my tank while this other person does this!" went straight out the window. So, hopefully this one won't be as bad. I've been able to control enemies a decent bit thus far, but I am but a lowly nublet at the moment, heh. Playing a squishy Mage is already WAY more fun, though, and I don't even have things like Barrier, or the awesome-sounding-but-I-haven't-seen-it-yet Frost-Blink spell, etc. I've just had to run from things and use other people to immobilize it or cut it off at the pass. It may very well demand something akin to Engagement from PoE, but that may also just be due to HP values, hindrance durations, enemy numbers, etc. We shall see. 8P

I understand that. That's the point I'm trying to make. One isn't better than the other, really, and they both (in concept) accomplish the same thing. But, it's silly to compare what you would do with concept A to what you wouldn't do with concept B, and declare a victor. If you're not going to explore what you would do with concept B, then why even compare them? That's my beef. And, as I've mentioned before, since engagement's already in, why not at least explore the available tuning options and try at least one more iteration before switching to a different core concept that you're going to have to iterate on a few times anyway?

I don't find it so. Then again, I've only played for a little under 3 hours. I can get back to you when I hit 15 hours or so, if you'd like. Honestly, I think people have existing reasons to dislike Bioware, so they carry those over into every little minor complaint they have about it. It seems pretty tactical to me, honestly. There are some pretty interesting abilities for Mages, at least, that I've seen. But, again, I haven't played it for very long. Maybe it noticeably sucks later on? *shrug*