Kjaamor

Personally, and perhaps this is why I find PoE comparatively easy compared to a great many of the other backers, I used to pause in the IE games pretty much whenever I was going to give a command, and often to review the situation and give a command, whereupon finding out everything was fine, I would unpause without even issuing one! On the second part of your point, I know QA has its issues, but it must surely be better than the garbled mess of ideas bubbling out of the Backer stew. Right now there are very few issues we agree on, and to add to that many people disagree louder than others.

It wasn't. I'm not bringing Lephys into the conversation at all. I've done my own part in calling out the manner of his discussion in the past and am not defending him here. I'm simply pointing out that you suggest and defend the elements that make your overall ideas and anti-ideas work, but when asked why your overall ideas should be embraced you quickly revert back to the "It's obviously better" and have next to no argument for why. That's fine unless you're making your arguments out to be objective or as if they result from a higher knowledge base than others on the forums, which you frequently do. On the subject at hand, I do not mind blocking when it is done in the context of fighting, just when it is in the context of pathfinding. The enemy are trying and may eventually get through the PoE blocker, they are trying and will never get past the IE one. Engagement is a system that attempts to resolve those issues, amongst others. That you do not recognise them as issues is fine, but that is your opinion and no amount of graphs or length of word document will change that. If I have become more mocking of late, it is because I have become exasperated with opinion being stated as if it were fact. In the past I have supported your position on countless issues. In the last week I have supported your points on at least two different topics. To suggest that this argument is somehow personal, unrelated to the subject matter, or that I am simply incapable of processing your points is to have arrogance for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Anyway, hope you enjoyed your gig.

And that, children, is what we call a straw man.

See, you make so many references to your interpretations of the maths, and write these long-winded papers and suggestions, but ultimately it is posts like these that make up your argument. "Guess which is more fun? That's right, it's the one I prefer. Case closed." I know it's the internet, but there seems to be an increasing amount of posts from many parties that are set out like they're factual analysis, and are in fact no different from all the other opinion-based posts here on the forums, however well-typed they might be.

Go-go-gadget Caps Lock.

Also, while the concept was nice, the whole "Arquebuses blast through Arcane Veil while other ranged weapons can't" is currently the most redundant piece of PoE lore yet. I'm not so bothered, truth be told. The last BG2 playthrough I did was with a magic-based party and the power of mages is immense. I'm not one for the stick of balance +1 particularly, but let's be clear, Mages have very much had their time in the spotlight and don't necessarily have to be all powerful in this game too. Mages just need to be functional enough that I don't look at my party and go "Hmm. If I kill off the wizard it might crash the save, but it could allow me to make a fourth rogue..." Of course, what would be an awesome mechanic, would be if Mages were the most powerful class, but when grouped acted in the opposite manner to Priests - The more there are the less powerful each individual becomes. However at the current rate I'm doubtful that the multi-priest concept will make it into gameplay, much less a new, rebalanced wizard one.

I have nothing against any of your proposals, but I think that in many respects you're overcomplicating the issue. The biggest problem I have with the wizard class is the lack of clarity as to whether spells will hit allies or not. The language in spell descriptions is ambiguous and in previous betas (I haven't cast many spells since the first) has been outright inaccurate. The benefits of spells potentially hitting enemies has never been outweighed by the risk of them potentially hitting allies and that is why I almost never use them.

Rogue hobbles weakened mob - mob tried to get away but can't, and the rogue gets at least one if not multiple hits in while mob is trying to tactically retreat. This sounds familiar somehow...

The thread exploded in my absence, but just to clarify some minor points raised a few pages back I would like to clarify my position. For me, engagement doesn't have to exist in terms of suffering health penalties for disengagement, and I would more than encourage the use of stickies and stuns as a form of engagement. There are many ways to explore how to make engagement work, and I am against ditching the mechanic entirely. Again, for me, there are two very specific examples of IE kiting which need to be addressed (amongst others), which are actually the result of opposing approaches to aggro in the IE games. 1. The Benny Hill 5 characters use ranged weapons, the final character is the bait. The bait character runs in loops around the screen staying closest to the mob but out of harms way, while the other characters range onto it until it dies. No-one takes a hit. See "The Ogre with the Girdle" from BG and (and this is absolutely unforgivable in my eyes) "Saverok from BG". 2. The "Oh, I'm sorry." "Oh, I'm sorry." "Oh, I'm sorry." 5 characters use ranged weapons, the final character is the stopper, you have a relatively tight corridor. The ranged characters are attacking the mob and it wants to attack them. It walks down the corridor. You attempt to walk the stopper just past it. Both mob and stopper bump into one another and then immediately briefly retreat and the mob tries to get past on the other side. Player then gets his stopper to walk past the mob on the same side again. The process repeats. Eventually the mob dies. No-one takes a hit. PoE needs to address this, as it has attempted to address the off-the-screen spell bombard exploit. Some form of engagement system is one of many ways to do so.

All right, that was somewhat hysterical but I must admit I nodded and laughed.

It's first worth pointing out that initially I played by maxing Intelligence, Perception and Resolve purely to explore dialogue. Having long-since explored most of what is on offer in the beta by this point, here are my combat stats. Might I usually max out might on classes I intend to use for direct dps (Rogue, Ranger, One experimental wizard build that sucked, Barbarian). I rarely run out of attribute points in key areas for pure dps classes, but for dps/off-tanks like the Barbarian, I usually settle for 16 or 14 might. If a class is not designed to do dps (Cipher since Ignition was dumped, Fighter), then I usually dump this. Constitution If the class is designed to take damage (Fighter, Monk), I max Constitution. If the class is direct dps or cc (Wizard, Cipher, Chanter) and I feel is unlikely to take damage, I dump Constitution entirely. In off-tanks, this, like might, usually sits at 16 or 14. Dexterity I don't prioritise Dexterity because most of my dps tends to come either from Rogue spikes or Charms. Nor do I dump it, however. Dex normally sits around 10 but can go as high as 18 if I have points to spare. Perception Perception is blatantly the daddy for everyone but tanks. Dps/CC get it maxed, Off-tanks get as much as I can spare, and Tanks dump it entirely. Intelligence Ciphers, Wizards and Tanks/off-tanks get a skinful, Barbarians get a load, dps classes dump. Resolve Ciphers get this maxed at all costs. I would probably give Priests and Druids it if I made them. I don't. The rest dump it. ------- General pattern is to dump everything other than my chosen core stats (which often are at odds with Obsidian's), and max those. From there, spread the remaining points first on the secondary attributes for the class, then finally spread the rest equally between the redundant ones.

Agreed that the combat isn't nearly as fun as it could be. Party design issues, in my mind, basically boil down to the fact that at the moment it is very hard to get by without a fighter (I find myself somehow ideologically opposed to Monks and do not use them). There are many reasons for this, but the key one for me is that currently Fighters are the only ones who naturally regenerate Stamina in combat, and while they certain should regenerate Stamina fastest I think that if Barbarians and Paladins at least could regenerate a little, or if there were talents that allowed passive stamina regeneration, the party might not be so hard set.

I await clarification from the man himself before we're both guilty of putting words in his mouth, but my understanding of Sensuki's position is that he feels that the engagement system is, within the reasonable time frame of PoE's completion, irreparably broken and would best be removed entirely and replaced with the movement mechanics of the IE games. The fundamental position of me and Sensuki - or at very least between me and Sensuki - is that I believe that kiting in the IE games was a poor mechanic that should be ironed out, while he believes that it is one of the defining aspects of the IE games and something that PoE owes itself to emulate. We both believe in reasonable movement within combat, we both believe that at present the engagement system is broken. Potential improvements to the system have been offered in other threads, but this is besides the point. My position on the matter is that anti-solutions - that is refusing to innovate and simply copying the IE games verbatim rather than trying to fix their issues and improve upon them - should not be lauded and that PoE has to be assessed ultimately on its own merits and not judged by simply how closely it replicates the IE games. Sensuki might like what ultimately boils down to an IWD mod, you might like it, and hell I would almost certainly love it, but the press and general public would tear it apart and that severely limits the scope for future party-based RPGs. I've no mind to wait another ten years for them after this.

I always preferred the IE implementation of 2nd Edition because, amongst other things, I always thought that the skills and feats largely contributed to an illusion of choice rather than actual choice. The feats appeared horribly imbalanced to the point where each class only ever had a few they would pick from, and the skill system inevitably felt like a choice you made at character creation and then an arbitrary piece of scrolling and clicking in each level thereafter. Personally, if they could do something close to 2nd Edition where diversity was handled by spell/weapon choice and something akin to multiclassing, I would be happier. Realistically, since that view looks pretty unpopular around here, I would at least ask that character background and character level defines skill more than talents do, and if they could remove around 90% of the current talents from the game, that'd be awesome, too, since most of them will never be selected by anyone and they're little more than clutter at present.

The sad truth is that doing so would probably bring a few idiots over to your side on the matter. If the current implementation is broken for the guard, it's already almost certainly broken for Korgrak.

Well, yeah, but that's an unfinished implementation against a single mob. Part of the problem I have with a lot of the debates on the subject is that they repeatedly refer back to the comparison between the completed IE games (patched and often modded) and a beta version of PoE that no-one in their right mind would consider close to finished in terms of its mechanics.

CTD = Crash to Desktop Personally, I've not got that far on this patch, I've generally just tested builds on Medreth and the Beetles and then gone back to play Wasteland 2.

Surely it is more sensible to talk about the flaws in the features of the game rather than citing as traps evident bugs that will likely be fixed by the next patch. In other news, half of those traps you describe I use regular to make mincemeat out of enemies on hard! ...but, yeah, there are substantial problems and I do wonder if it was sensible to release the Beta in the various states that it has been in, because as of the latest patch it remains broken in its features as much as in its bugs.

That it doesn't work all the time does not make it any less abusive when it does, any less than the fact that you can still use web and cloudkill in scripted (i.e. not off the screen) fights makes off-screen bombing abusive. Show me a piece of IE gameplay where kiting is dangerous and exciting and I'll show you four where it's safe-as-houses and despite all those extra clicks is no more tactical than not punching yourself in the **** instead of using pause. Again, not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that, but it is preposterous when you act holier-than-thou for using it over other tactics/strategies.

But they're responding in a manner that also leaves them helpless and at a disadvantage that is no more intended than them being smashed off-screen by AoEs.

Indeed. I would rather keep it to one action at a time. Currently, unless the Effects of AoEs are seriously adjusted, the on-character display is all too frequently hidden, or unclear. I prefer circles filling as clock faces to bars because I feel it helps to create a distinction and avoids there being too many similar looking meters at a glance. The enlarged portrait size isn't crucial, of course, but it is important that there is sufficient clarity in which character you select. I actually did a fpw at the Ford today, because I thought I had my tank selected and in fact had my whole party, who proceeded to walk into a group of beetles, squishies first. The line around the frame must be a different colour to the background within.

You speak as if I am somehow suggesting that Kiting and counter-kiting shouldn't exist. I'm not (and not even in the other thread where I'm actually arguing that PoE wanted to try something new and that should be allowed and improved rather than just reverting entirely to IE game mechanics). I'm simply pointing out that despite your cast-iron beliefs in it, there is nothing objectively more rich, exciting, and honourable by choosing to break the pathfinding rather than use the rest mechanic. I'd also point out that such behaviour is no more tactical than off-screen AoE spam is strategic. (Also, for the record on resting, I advocated timed quests in order to prevent rest-spamming, until it became abundantly clear that 99% of players abhorred them)

Why is that bull**** other than your own subjective opinion? So mass webs and cloudkills, then. It makes very little difference to the the point that without any hacking, the game enables and encourages you to do that. It also doesn't make pushing a Yuan-ti around with a Strength 6 Rogue because it wants to reach your wizard any less abusive.

At a risk of sounding like the complete snob that I am, BGEE =/= BG in terms of difficulty and in many gameplay areas. Anyway... My point is not that you console-commanded your way through any of the IE games, but that your definition of "fairly" is entirely subjective in the context of comparison to Shevek's tactics. Rest-spamming is no more "unfair" - and no more conceptually dissonant - than counter-kiting mobs so that their pathfinding cannot reach you. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, or that your successes or experiences of the IE games are in any way invalid as a result, but I am saying that suggesting that your manner of playing the game is "fair" and implying that Shevek's is not is absolutely preposterous.

Is this for the lulz or for real?