Valci

Well you just said "I like that" in regard to the way tabletop translated to BG. Some of us happen to think certain things were less then ideal (to put it mildly)... So I was responding to exactly what you said... An "I like that" statement.

And you're completely entitled to your opinion Goddard... Just, don't expect everyone else to agree. You know what they say... Opinions are like arseholes... Everybody's got one

Honestly no and I've played the game dozens of times. I turn off party AI generally cause casters don't know what they're doing in combat so I'd rather manually do that part ... And I always forget about it after that...

@Abel Yup, that about sums it up for me at least... I actually liked some of those mechanics and as said before and if tied in to story elements etc. all the better... Having a disease that needs special components to cure and such. But as far as healing goes yeah, having it autocast after combat would be fine. I'm OK managing the resource of "nr. of casts available per day" I'd just rather not do it manually for each character...

This guy has it right imho. Despite camping supplies being depicted as a campfire it's "metaphorical". Those supplies entail much more then just firewood. Hence the idea that you can treat your wounds while camping... Personally I really enjoy what they've done with resting in PoE. You have limited resources in camping supplies, permanent conditions in injuries etc. and ask without the hassle of having to manually heal the endurance (keep in mind that it's endurance and not the more valuable resource which is health for which you still have to manage camping supplies or use talents). I genuinely love the balance of it. But we've veered quite a bit from the original topic in truth which was pre-combat buffing...

To each his own I guess... For me a lot of these things (though not all) were just a massive time sink and added very little. And yes, healing post combat was just a repetitive series of click that you had to do over and over for no good reason. It added nothing to the game. Now, maybe for you the party was ever changing but for me once I got the NPCs I knew I wanted they stayed the same throughout. And I always did my best to get the NPCs I wanted as early as possible. Gear does progress that much is true but it's true for PoE also. I guess it's a matter of perspective... A lot of the things we've talked about were interesting for me the first time around m maybe but the more playthroughs I did the more tedious they got... But like I said, to each their own. I do agree about adding more non combat stuff to do like puzzles and such though... Don't get me started on the "good" and "evil" thing... Worst system ever. It's a chore to play as an evil party. Tons of quests give you reputation just fire competing them (even if you're not overly benevolent)... And while you can increase rep at a temple, decreasing it requires saying stupid action like senseless murder of some innocent... Instead of building a character that for instance simply puts himself before others, punishes betrayal, is motivated by money etc. you have to go whack commoner nr.371 or risk your evil companions leaving you...

Because it requires so much "intelligence" to know to have an antidote, and elixir of health or a scroll of restoration (or their respective assorted divine spells) right?! It's a "tactical" thing right? ... hogwash. It's a chore... i did it cause i didnt have a choice but it doesnt add anything to the game. It was a time sink basically... In tabletop its fine cause its just a roll of the dice... Ironically, you waste more time in the computer game where you need to wait for each casting animation to finish. In PoE you have injuries as a consequence that are permanent debuffs of various sorts (until you rest, if you have camping supplies)... And it's good enough. No need to make more of a hassle of it in my opinion. Certain specific status effects that are hard to get rid of are fine if they make sense story wise and for me should be related to a quest (like when you were poisoned and had to get the 2 components of the antidote in BG1)... But for me, they shouldnt be stuff you have to deal with every second fight...

Well they did punish it... You can be ambushed. But aside from that it works as intended. That's why I have the option to have healing spells cast on rest. Otherwise they'd have given me an option to have healing outside of combat cast quickly which didn't include resting to function. Since that is not the case I can only assume that the game as it is functions as intended... Using a function of the game as provided by the developers (no mods, console crap and such) cannot be classified as abuse in my view... @4ward For me casting or spell availability wasn't the issue. Over the whole of my recent play through in BG1 EE I rarely felt the need to rest because even the mages in my party rarely cast any spells. When I wanted to go through mobs quickly I just cast 3 fireballs simultaneously... 1 from each of the 2 "the one gift" (fireball necklace) that I found and one from a wand of fire... No spells expended from the spellbook at all. I'd cast the odd cloudkill for tougher monsters, greater malison or lower resistance sometimes... But for the most part I didn't need to. Healing post combat after the tougher fights just took too long so I'd often just rest - 1 click... Simple enough. Sometimes i used potions cause even those work faster then healing and i can have each of my characters simultaneously drink one... Or a temple if available at the end of a dungeon. Standing there wasting clicks and time waiting for each individual spell to be cast is pointless and does nothing to further the game for me.

Sorry but imposing artificial restrictions on myself doesn't cut it for me. I play BG (and any game) the way it was intended. BG was designed to let me rest at any time (almost) with the risk of getting ambushed... That's the way it was intended. I'll increase the difficulty sure, but purposely NOT using a game feature that was designed to work in a certain way? Not for me. Same reason why I'll probably never play this type of game solo. I know you can beat it solo... But it was designed as a party based game... So I play it as such (and always with max. allowed party size). Some people enjoy that sort of stuff but that doesn't mean developers should change the way a game is designed to cater specifically to that group of people. Now, if I had an option in BG for my healers to auto-cast healing post combat until everyone was full (or they ran out of spells) I would probably have rested less, but I don't have time to waste on unnecessary clicks. As for this idea that you wouldn't rest in a dungeon or backtrack in order to rest... I think it's hogwash. It's much more believable to me that after my party spent hours fighting hordes of monsters and clearing a level that they would find a relatively safe place on the level and rest a while taking turns on guard duty rather then push on and on ignoring the built up fatigue that swinging a sword would bring. How is that less realistic then your character proceeding on with an arm hacked off, bleeding out on the brink of death but refusing to find a place to make camp and patch themselves up?! Hell, even the healthy ones would need to rest their sword arm if we're going for realism (which the fatigue system in these games does not). So yes, unless you intentionally played the game differently then how it was designed BG was virtually the same...

For me at least it does nothing of the sort... I always had at least 1 cleric/druid in my party with heals and poison removal on hand... and the main character got poison removal as a special ability if you played as a "good" aligned character so you were guaranteed to have it when necessary. Besides antidotes were never in short supply. So all it did was add unnecessary clicks to the equation for me. I got nothing from it... Besides in PoE its endurance that regenerates not health which is a different resource... and personally i prefer the new system... makes the game much more streamlined...

In short ??? No. There are such things as quality of life improvements of which this is one.

I think a lot of stuff like healing post combat or using an antidote potion is redundant... In the sense that it is implied. If you had to you'd do it but it's a time waster... So many actions/clicks and time spent doing nothing to further the "plot" or continue exploring etc. In BG (which as I mentioned I'm currently replaying) I found myself abusing resting simply because wasting so many clicks on healing/neutralize poison and the like gets really old really fast. You need to select the healer, click on the casting icon, click on the spell then click on the target hero... And then wait for the casting animation to conclude. Rinse and repeat until everyone is topped off... I much prefer the streamlined version of modern games tbh and the health/endurance system was for me at least a nice touch. I don't know about anyone else but my gaming time is limited as it is... I'd rather not waste time unnecessarily.

I never said it was a problem in the setting. However, the setting was hand-crafted by human brains with a preconception of magic. Or, more specifically, it's not really Obsidian's fault that I don't get more than one preconception of magic in games. It's more the industry as a whole. PoE's a lot better than others. The worst culprits are the "You get firebolt, ice bolt, or lightning bolt. Then you get fire AoE, ice AoE, or chain lightning. BOOM! You're a mage! Creativity, FOREGONE!" games. But, really, just the idea that anyone who wields magic must be a squishy, ranged person who just tosses out giant bombshells and hopes they never get close to someone is pretty prevalent in fantasy RPGs. You don't see a lot else. Even when you do, it's just a 50/50 blend of regular weapon fighting and ranged bomb-tossing to make a super edgy/cool "battlemage." Which is cool, I suppose, but they're just missing so many good opportunities to say "Hey, what about just a melee mage, whose magic was designed around fighting up-close?" It would just be a different approach to the employment of magic, entirely. I'm not saying no one's ever done it. It's just extremely rare. I believe the fundamental preconception of how magic works is a barrier to creative design. I agree that there are a lot of creative ways you can "work the magic" as it were ... But for me a lot would be non combat related to tell you the truth...... Either way, I believe that what you're taking about could feasibly work but less so in a class based system imho. At least not in a meaningful enough way to differentiate from already existing classes while not making them redundant at the same time... At least to me (and plz correct me if I'm wrong) it looks like what you're talking about is sort of a paladin but instead of faith/belief giving him "powers" it's arcane knowledge... Now, in a skill based (classless) system which is balanced as such you could feasibly build such a character but as it is in PoE you either get something that's too similar or something that is so powerful that it makes other classes redundant. Or maybe I'm just lacking in imagination... there's always that possibility

Why is this a "preconception" in the world of PoE though? As far as I can remember the idea is that magic takes a lot of study and is also physically demanding. It's all about "mens sana in corpore sank" for me... But it also implies that the character didn't have the time to dedicate to martial training which others like the fighters were doing from a young age. It makes sense in the setting at least. In addition to that it's about trade offs and balance too... Why would you ever pick a fighter of you can just pick a mage that can fight just as well while at the same time having the ability to enhance himself, his weapons and their the occasional fireball at you? Moreover, in Deadfire we have multiclassing and something like a fighter/mage will more or less be able to do just that... The trade off being that since you focus on 2 disciplines simultaneously you'll gain your powers slower and won't specialize as far as a single class will (won't gain access to the very high end abilities)... As far as we know all multi classes will also have a stand alone name like "battlemage" ... So I don't really see the problem here...

So sayeth the ancient game code we excavated forth from the earth, or so sayeth the game code that didn't exist until some humans got together and designed it thusly? omgFIREBALLS's general point is that there's plenty of room for a greater equipment-effectiveness spectrum for the casting role, which is true. Just because Fighters and the like get relatively greater martial benefits from weapons and such doesn't mean that it's somehow illegal or wrong to allow for interesting benefits for casty folk as well. That's one of the still-quite-rigid things about DnD-esque magic. You start out with "you can fling a couple of fireworks at people, but for the rest of combat, you're just going to flail around nigh-ineffectively with a weapon." And they justify this with "well, when you get higher level, you'll be able to just recreate reality with your willpower and summon a planet from elsewhere in the solar system to crash down upon your foes, so it's okay." Obviously it's less extreme of an incline in Pillars, especially Deadfire, what with booting Vancian magic to the curb and going with per-encounter stuff. But, why shouldn't a caster get the option to go much more passive with their build? Why should their strength so rigidly rely upon all their active abilities? We've got multi-classing now, and we're all about some options for character builds. So why not a caster spectrum for weapons? Doesn't even have to be caster-specific. Just a subset of equipment that allows you to finely tune things other than martial prowess. Even for a Fighter, it could be an option to focus more on your abilities and such than on pure weapon to-hit chance and damage, etc. which is perfectly fine if you design a game that way. Then my fighter or monk or rogue or ranger (etc) should have as many active (spell-like) abilities as a mage has spells so that i can focus on that with those classes rather then martial prowess. But then we might as well go classless and just have a big tree of talents and/or abilities to pick from and build our character however we chose... Some people like that... Personally i like the class system with roles that are more or less clearly defined. In this instance though what im saying is that it's not fair for one class to have the option to go any which way while the other does not... either you allow all classes the same flexibility and options (like the aforementioned equal number of activated abilities/spells) or you have more strictly defined roles... Im not a fan of the "i want to have my cake and eat it too" mindset personally so theres that...lol

oh i see what you mean... i guess thats something that can be considered so long as spells dont inherently get (+accuracy) ... i want a level playing field across the board. In this example each class (either caster or not) should have the same sources of accuracy available for them in an offensive sense...

Requiring me to have previous knowledge of the "lore" of monsters either from the tabletop rulebook or from having played the game beforehand is BAD design in my opinion... Its as simple as that. Its bad design to "force me" to have a certain specific spell or class available to beat an encounter... So yes, a balanced party (coupled with good knowledge of game mechanics and good execution) should be able to beat any encounter. When i talk about world monster lore (for lack of a better term) i mean their story, their motivation etc etc. I like that part... which i get in PoE too... Them having specific mechanics that i need to know about in advance and that require me to (for example) change the composition of my party? No thanks. In BG you CANNOT be stunned while attempting to buff because you do it PRE combat. Whereas in Pillars a well placed enemy stun disrupts you and you have to go through the fight WITHOUT that buff. It makes fights more dynamic. Also, you dont reduce the actions... its the same number of actions only condensed into a smaller time frame => more dynamic combat (again). In BG you can cast all your buffs pre combat and in combat you only need to worry about dealing damage (aside from a potion of health or such) ... In Pillars you have to get the buffs off during the fight which means the character casting them is not participating in combat with damage while hes doing it. You get the tactical choice of "is my priest better served casting a buff, a heal over time, a damage spell or hitting the enemy square on the head with his staff"? In addition to this the fact that engagement between you and the enemy is simultaneous it makes the fight more challenging (and more fair) in and of itself.

oh an encounter can absolutely be tailored with that in mind... but a whole game? It's certainly not impossible... but is it worth it? How do you compensate the non-caster classes ? and so forth... the way its done is very simple and clear cut to me. Casters have spells and attacking is an afterthought while non-casters need to attack to do damage... each gets what it needs. It's possible ofc to have unique items for each... like a caster would get a weapon that increases AoE or DoT duration or whatnot... but these effects are already in the game. Most just arent on weapons. I remember BG having class specific items which was nice for flavor but it was intended like that from the get go. Aren't playing a Paladin and dont have Keldorn in your party? tough luck, you cant use the best weapon in the game (Carsomyr)... Do i want that for Pillars? Not so much...

But then we're barely improving over PoE1. You still have to find some obscure item to buff up your spellcasting, whereas a sword is upgraded by a fine sword, available in countless places. On account of what, giving you extra Fireballs? It doesn't really qualify for me. Pretty much every weapon you can come up with ends up as, it does this thing that in a way enhances spells, but this same thing also enhances melee abilities, and a fighter could wipe out a village with it in half an hour. It's not a caster weapon in my book as long as it does way more for melee. I see the design philosophy behind not wanting weapons that are for casters only but we don't need to go there, we just need to give casters the same smooth weapon progression that fighters have. There are loads of weapons that are effectively for not-casters only, because they have no value beyond what they can smack someone for and at least my casters don't smack in a difficult fight. I'm sure someone can correct me if i'm wrong but as far as ive seen a mage or druid or priest has far more active abilities (in the form of spells) then the fighter, ranger or rogue... A class based system will inherently have classes that are more gear dependent then others. A warrior's main source of damage is as you say immediately affected by his weapon... a mage's is not. If we flip the coin in reverse then why not give not caster classes the same number of "spells" (for lack of a better word) as the caster classes?! I mean, why does my mage get 3 extra spells at level up (potential sources of damage, CC, etc.) while my warrior gets one (at best) ?! ... that doesnt seem fair does it? I know i'm pushing the argument a bit... but there are no "caster specific" weapons imho simply because casters are not dependent on weapons inherently for damage... i think adding an extra layer for casters only would just add to the imbalance of caster vs non-caster i mentioned above cause you basically want to have your cake and eat it too... Dunno, maybe it can be implemented in a way that doesnt disadvantage non-casters (who depend on weapons) to casters (who depend on spells) ...

Now I can think of arguments in favour of five over six, most notably the fact that combat was often hectic in Pillars due to much fewer passive character classes than the old IE games and the fact that this would likely get worse with the increased availability of combat abilities in Deadfire; but as Sedrefilos says none of us really know whether it'll be better or worse until the game is released. Actually, I do know whether it will be better or worse already. The big mistake you make is assuming the issue of party size is, for all players, all about combat. For me, the party size issue has nothing to do with combat, or any other aspect of gameplay for that matter. The progressive development of my party characters during the course of "adventuring" with them is what I care about in my games. This is why even though I have played through PoE1 many times, I've yet to actually finish the game, because "winning" or "beating the game" are not at all important to me. By the time my party reaches a high level I start losing interest in the game because there's no more character development left to be done. So I just quit and restart from the beginning again. Developing my characters is what's fun for me, and having only five to develop instead of six, by definition, means I will have 1/6th less fun therefore "worse" for me. Thats all well and good but as a developer id think they would want to cater to the majority of their customers rather then some niche cases... So by all means, 5 may be "worse" for you then 6... but it may be "better" for 90% of the players at the same time...

personally id really like it if they made more "combat staffs"... aside from the basic ones (which admittedly you can enchant) i dont remember finding any unique ones that didnt have some sort of jewel or ornament or whatever at the "top" end of it. I'd like more staffs that are for cracking heads (yes, my priest likes to fight with a staff so there) ... you know, having metal reinforcements at either end (being symmetrical) and perhaps even having the lash effect on both ends ... stuff like that. Most unique staffs look too much like a mage's staff for me...

Tell me this, intelligently does this mean to you we should remove the ability to cast anything before hand. We should make ALL creatures weaker and only cast things that you can recover from? OR 1. This isn't Meta information. It is knowledge about the world you "live in". Games now assume you know nothing of the world and they are all created for the lowest common denominator. So how can this be incorporated into a game and not also leave out the people that know nothing about D&D or world lore? For me when I started playing BG I knew nothing about D&D and I was a child. I learned about D&D, forgotten realms, the sword coast, the monsters, and Elminster and Drittz etc..etc.. 2. Since we already have things like perception and intelligence and game clues and stories why not make it so the player can pre-buff AND also get clues as to what you might be facing. This adds more variety. This also matches closer to a real encounter. If all you want to do is run from one encounter to the next you are basically playing Diablo. You click the number 1 or 2 button. This has its place and can be fun, but this is not what I consider learning about the world and it doesn't make you much care about the monster you face. You don't need to learn the lore or care about the type of enemy you have. You know that the game developers have already watered down everything to make it so you can overcome the situation as long as you fit within the level requirements. Usually this is limited by some gate keeper that stops your progression. The cool thing about BG was if you were tricky you could get into all sorts of interesting situations even though you were very low powered. Again some people thing this is some how a fluke or a bug, but it is just a different way to play. Some creatures having some weaknesses and having some things you can exploit can be fun. I am not saying ALL exploits are good such as spamming a AoE effects to a dragon from a distance. Obviously this is a matter of creature intelligence. Claiming that eliminating pre-combat buffs reduces the difficulty or indeed caters to the lowest common denominator is disingenuous to say the least. In actuality i feel that quite the opposite is true. It doesnt mean that you make monsters weaker either... not having an instant (i win) ability doesnt inherently make monsters weaker. In fact i would argue that the opposite is true. In BG1&2 the most difficult encounters were just a matter of practice (not intelligence)... you did it enough times that you figured out that you need prot. from fear or prot. from petrification or spell x and y to remove the protection spells of a lich etc etc etc. Combat was not reactive at all. Which meant that if you beat an encounter once you then had 100% record against said encounter on every following playthrough... Pre-combat buffs compound the issue even further. The way pillars does it is for me far more interesting. Since you can only buff after combat starts there is a chance (for example) that your buffing character will get stunned and wont be able to get the spell(s) off which dramatically changes the encounter. I much prefer the unpredictability of it. For the RP aspect i guess that is a matter of taste. The story in Pillars was well enough structured for me that for the big encounters you would learn enough about them ahead of time. You know theres a big bad (The Master) at the bottom of the endless paths and youre not even forced to fight him outright so you have enough time to prepare etc. So you are presented the lore/clues as you call them plenty... its your choice if you chose to rush through text/dialogue same as it was in BG. And no... i didnt "care" about every random mob in BG either... just the big ones. Additionally, when it comes to realism i feel the opposite (at least as far as dungeon crawling goes) ... you dont know what you will find when you enter a new room... is the big bad there or isnt he? Would make no sense to waste buffing spells if you dont know. So realistically youd buff after you perceive the threat. At least thats my view. So all in all i think the Pillars system makes fights more difficult and dynamic (not easier) as well as being more realistic. Btw i have no problem with the idea of constructive criticism... in fact i generally encourage it... i just happen to not agree with the point you are making. As much as i love BG, i think the design in this aspect of the game lends itself to repetitiveness and detracts from replayability due to encounters only requiring previous knowledge to beat, not being dynamic etc.

Pre-buffing makes for a much more boring gameplay experience for me in the rinse and repeat sort of way... Not to mention certain encounters are more or less unwinnable unless you prebuff and have meta knowledge. For instance, I'm currently replaying BG:EE 1 and 2 and I know that every time I'm about to face a dragon (and really, a lot of encounters with magic uses too or basilisks etc) I pre cast resist fear (or prot from petrification or similar) which by itself makes said a world of difference... In some cases literally turning a borderline unwinnable scenario into a cakewalk... But for me it's also bad design. I shouldn't be required to have previous knowledge of the game to beat it. The game should give me the chance to adapt on the fly etc. Just my 2 cents ofc...

personally i'm not a fan of classless systems... i LIKE the fact that i can define my character via his/her class and that to a certain extent the class determines my role (with more or less flexibility depending on the game). I also enjoy narrative focused games rather then sandboxes which i find incredibly boring. The whole reason i play an RPG has to do with being part of a story (and an important part at that)... If i wanted to be just random dude nr. 7849 id play a life simulator. But that's just me...

Absolutely... Also, with multiclassing there should be enough options combat wise for those that like that sort of thing. For me it will likely be all single class for the first couple of playthroughs at least cause I like specialized characters more...