Cubiq

I don't know if you guys are talking about long duration buffs or the ones currently in the game but if it's the latter then you guys serriously overestimate the effect buffs are going to have on balance in this game. A buff or 2 at the start isn't going to change the outcome of the battle so much that it would require seperate balance tunning, especially since the average duration of most buffs last around 30 seconds. (depending on your Reslove) Harder encounters last longer than that, and the easier aren't worth buffing for. Also instead of my priest casting a buff spell, he can already cast an attack spell if i want to be wasteful with spells. If you screw up your positioning you're going to get killed either way. The reason Bg2 was different was because it had instant death spells that required you to prebuff and prevent them. Also spells like stoneskin, self polymorph, fire resistance and the like were extremely powerful that outright changed the course of the battle.

To be fair barely anyone really goes it so much effort they post videos, so that makes him stand out more than the rest.

can't edit my post I'm not against fixing the mechanic,

Gonna have to write a massive post for this, so i'll try to be very short and just hit the points you guys made. (Hope you guys play beta since i'm going to talk like you know what i'm talking about. If not, tell me and i'll try to explain my points more clearly.) @Hormalakh I'm not sure i want this, because of so many abilities you already have high maintenance, having extra ability button to move most of the time, will really drive me up the wall. This is a very good smoother approach, however it's still going to add extra annoyance (to me at lest), when you're bashing low level monsters. If you try to fight beetles in beta as a level 8 character with collected gear, you can pretty much keep running around with your fighter, eating disengagement attacks, and you will see he takes very very very little damage. There's also the issue of trying to disengage several times, for example you move out to help one of your party memebers, the combat slows down, and you decide to continue walking away. Your character gets hit as a result, staggers, and the enemy engages you again, now you need to move out again and combat slows down again, etc. The mouse highlight i'm happy with, but it's not going to help much since most of the time it's the pathing AI that screws you, when you click close by and your character decides to go all around everyone, and gets murdered by disengagement attacks. Problem is that fixing the pathing AI also won't help much since you sometimes can't tell whether or not, he will be able to squeeze through a certain gap and whether or not he will be able to move so close to the wall, etc. causing him to just go around the other way. This is going to be an issue, because you need the fleeing character to be very close, as Obsidian designed the engagement mechanic so that the pursuer can re-engage the target if they failed the concentration check and stagger when they get hit. If you look at the videos i posted above, even though it's the wrong person that get's hit, you will see that the distance before the engagement hit actually happens is already very large. I don't know if this is due to a simple bug, engine limitation, or if they need to greatly improve the code, so that the position refresh rate of each character is grately increased. If it's the latter then increasing the disengagement distance will cause the mechanic to work even worse, as i really don't think they will be able to code it so well it will work very reactively. @Lephys This is a huge problem. The biggest point of the engagement mechanic was so that it would be easier for the melee to "hold the line". (I'm actually really against the engagement mechanics as a whole, since i found i could hold the line pretty well in IE games if you position correctly, and you would very very rarely get punished for it.) However if you remove the melee's ability to engage several people as they pass by you will end up with your back characters getting killed very easily. If your fighter runs up to intercept the pursuers, like i did in the videos above, and only manages to stop 1 enemy, then he will have to eat a disengagement hit, just to go help one party member in the back, since they can't hold vs a melee on their own. They can't use their escape abilities, because it will do them no good, if your fighter isn't near to stop or pick up the pursuer, as the enemy will easily reach your party member again on his own. (Yes, some escape abilities will cause them to lose the target, however they will most likely target the next weak party member, since they will be nearer.) Well like i said above, having extra ability buttons for movement is really something i think the game shouldn't have, the maintenance is already pretty high in beta. If you want to implement this, then i really think something else should be removed. I'm no against fixing the mehcanic, i'm just really not fond of the idea "extra action to move", since if it fails you need to keep repeating it.

Something along the lines of not having to stand there and buff up before every combat.

I would love if they enabled out of combat buffing. The reason is because i feel that it would not really change much in how players could use it. (or misuse it) Pretty much all of the buffs have very short durations, this is why i feel that you would be wasting spells if you tried to prebuff extensively before combat, mainly because your spells are limited by your camping supplies. I feel that the currenty "faded out" buttons breaks the consistency of the spells, since there does not seem to be any lore-like reason behind it. I also find it annoying that you can not cast any buffing spells, even though your wizard is in the midst of casting a fireball directly at the next group of enemies. Instead you need to wait for the fireball to hit the enemy before you can even start issuing orders to some of your characters, like your priest. I know you can slightly abuse the system by buffing yourself before casting a fireball creating slightly more damage, however you will be wasting buff duration, before the fireball finishes casting + enemy reaching you, so the damage will probably even out in the end.

I probably souldn't comment on this, since i still haven't actually read up on how weapons are suppose to work, but i think i found that it matters a lot with what type of weapon damage you do versus each type of enemy. You should use blunt damage versus beetles, otherwhise you can to 30-50% damage less to them. (the percantage is purely on feeling, so i'm hoping someone will correct me on this) I noticed a lot of the time, that there's at least 1 of my characters that's doing only 0,5-2 damage per hit.

Does it by any chance at least show the "Loading" text with the black background? My game would hang during loading screen sometimes.

You want arguments yet claim we don't know any better, so what you're after IS toxic populism.

I don't want the combat to be slowed down too much, because a lot of it depends on what weapons you are carrying. If you don't use an overpowered bulid with the current atribute system, and if you use the wrong weapons vs the enemy, the battles are actually tediously long. If they want to slow down the combat, then lower the reduction difference between weapons vs each armor. That, or actually allow weapon swaping during combat, from the inventory.

Oh ****, you just made my day!

Well i think it's working, just the order of who gets hit is wrong. I've done some more battles and it looks likes it's actually impossible to hit the enemy with an disengagement attack. Every time the conditions are right, it's your character who gets hit, instead of them. However if you try to run away from the enemy you get hit just fine. (Except with the burrowing beatles. If they decide to follow the fleeing character with their burrow teleport they won't perform a disengagement attack, when you run away. Trying to repliacte this bug again atm to see if this always happens) The hits are also impossible to tell when they happen, since most of the time the attacking character will perform no swing animation when doing disengagement attack. This needs to be fixed as well.

This is something i noticed and it bothered me as well. When i go through the inventory i prefer to see it's name faster rather than switch between party members. It makes overview of your inventory faster.

You can pull the enemies away 1 by 1, by getting in stealth mode by making them become semi alert of your pressence. I don't know if this is intended or not.

[Description of the issue] -When the enemy disengages from your party member, they will hit your character with a disengagement attack instead of be the ones to get hit. -Enemeis can pass the fighter without being engaged. These videos show a lot of buggs happening, so it's best to read the disciption below each video. [Other remarks / Comments] The Cowled Man is the one with the hammer The Cowled Woman is the one with the musket. I tried this again with the enemy party near the Dragon Egg, and it had the same effect as shown on these videos. [Detailed examples] Here is the first video: What happens is I used my mouse to attack the Cowled Woman, however because the Cowled Man is near her, my fighter decides to ignore my order and attack the Cowled Man, thus engaging him. After he runs past, my fighter gets hit by the disengagement attack. (The lag in the hit is pretty huge, I don't know if my fighter could even re-engage the enemy if it worked properly) Meanwhile this all happens the Cowled Woman passed without even getting engaged, even though she was the main focus of my attack. Second video: Here I also attacked the Cowled Woman with the musket first. However as the Boar passed, my fighter decided to ignore the order and automatically attacked the Boar as it ran past. I tried to manually attack the Cowled Woman again, however my fighter was recovering from the auto attack he made on the Boar and didn't bother to engage her. As the Cowled Woman got too far, I tried to engage the Cowled Man, and that's when I took the disengagement hit from the Boar, allowing the Cowled Man to pass unhindered. Third video: This one shows the bug the most. What I did, is just let the fighter stand in their path and not attack anything. What happened is the Boar ran past my fighter and then performed a disengagement hit on my fighter, while he was standing still. Extra video: These are here just to see some more examples of the same bugs Same as the first one. I attacked the Cowled Woman first, my fighter decided to ignore my order and attack the Cowled Man, while the woman ran ahead without any engagements. Extra video 2: Tried to attack the Cowled Woman again. My fighter decided to attack the Boar first. After that i tried to engage the Cowled Woman again but to no avail. However what did happen was that my Fighter actually managed to engage the Cowled Man on his own, as he ran past him. (It happens very rarely that you can actually engage 2 characters as they pass you)However it was again my Fighter that got hit by the Cowled Man's disengagement hit After that the Boar also does the disengagement attack, and then performs another hit on my fighter again for some strange reason, as shown in the log. You can see the Cowled Woman stop in this video, however this is mainly ecause the AI has failed her. From what i can tell from testing is that she appears to be trying to use the musket and failing. [Expected behaviour] The enemies should not be able to run so closely past the player fighter without being engaged. The disengagement attacks should hit the enemy not the player.

Nope, i wanted people to see here first, and tell me if i screwed something up, since i'm not 100% sure how engagement mechanics work. Particularly the part where most of the enemies can run past the fighter, without any engagement. Plus i want to find at least 1 more group of enemies i can try this on. EDIT: Ok i tested this again with the other party near the dragon egg. The same thing happens. Also from what i've seen it's currently impossible for your party to hit the enemy with a disengagement attack. I had a Boar chase my wizard and the rest of the party were chasing the Boar, and the only one to make disengagement attacks was the Boar on the wizard. I'll report this in the bug report thread.

Ok i can't test the simultaneous disengagement because makeing 2 of your party members attack each other, doesn't cause them to also engage each other.

Ok here are the videos. Before we get in to the videos, I'll just point out a few things: The Cowled Man is the one with the Hammer in his hand, so you know who I'm talking about. And the Cowled Woman is the one with what appears to be a musket in her hand. (She tries to melee the wizard every time though.) I'll also mention that I forgot to level the fighter in the first 2 videos, however the results are always the same. On all of them the fighter has the Defender mode active, so he should be able to engage at least 3 enemies. (he has 18 in Intellect and Perception) I even have the Hold the line talent on the 3rd and 1st Extra video and you can see it does nothing in this situation. And third. You can see that the enemies are already hostile, before the fireball hits. This is because there is a bug that once you engage this group of enemies, they will always stay hostile, even if you reload to before you actually attacked them. Here is the first video: What happens is I used my mouse to attack the Cowled Woman, however because the Cowled Man is near her, my fighter decides to ignore my order and attack the Cowled Man, thus engaging him. After he runs past, my fighter gets hit by the disengagement attack. (The lag in the hit is pretty huge, I don't know if my fighter could even re-engage the enemy if it worked properly) Meanwhile this all happens the Cowled Woman passed without even getting engaged, even though she was the main focus of my attack. Second video: Here I also attacked the Cowled Woman with the musket first. However as the Boar passed, my fighter decided to ignore the order and automatically attacked the Boar as it ran past. I tried to manually attack the Cowled Woman again, however my fighter was recovering from the auto attack he made on the Boar and didn't bother to engage her. As the Cowled Woman got too far, I tried to engage the Cowled Man, and that's when I took the disengagement hit from the Boar, allowing the Cowled Man to pass unhindered. Third video: This one shows the bug the most. What I did, is just let the fighter stand in their path and not attack anything. What happened is the Boar ran past my fighter and then performed a disengagement hit on my fighter, while he was standing still. Extra video: These are here just to see some more examples of bugs Same as the first one. I attacked the Cowled Woman first, my fighter decided to ignore my order and attack the Cowled Man, while the woman ran ahead without any engagements. Extra video 2: Tried to attack the Cowled Woman again. My fighter decided to attack the Boar first. After that i tried to engage the Cowled Woman again but to no avail. However what did happen was that my Fighter actually managed to engage the Cowled Man on his own, as he ran past him. (It happens very rarely that you can actually engage 2 characters as they pass you)However it was again my Fighter that got hit by the Cowled Man's disengagement hit After that the Boar also does the disengagement attack, and then performs another hit on my fighter again for some strange reason, as shown in the log. You can see the Cowled Woman stop in this video, however this is mainly ecause the AI has failed her. From what i can tell from testing is that she appears to be trying to use the musket and failing. Now you can see in the videos that I only tried this on the same group of enemies. So after that I went out in to the forest and tried with lions and beetles. What happened was that as soon as I placed my fighter in their path, they automatically decided to attack him and didn't really try to run past him, to get to the wizard. They appear to be a bit dumber, so I couldn't test if this happens elsewhere as well. I'll try the simultaneous disengagement between pary members later.

Ok i'll try to make some video footage later in the day and post is here before posting to on the bugs forum, to see if anyone knows whether i was doing something wrong. I'll try that with having party members attacking each other and see what happens, though it will probably show wrong if it's bugged.

maybe obsidian hotfiexd the file on the steam and that's why it only updated now and not before, when you ran the file check?

As we're on the subject of models Are dwarf's hands suppose to be this small? They look incredibly skinny.

Ok i've tried som testing and i have no idea what's going on anymore. Here's what i did: A fighter with Defender mode should be able to engage 3 enemies. So i put my wizard at the front of the group and have him cast a fireball at the group of enemies. This will make them immedietly target the wizard (as he is the closest one to to the enemy) and run after him. Now i try to get my fighter to intercept all the enemies he can. What happens is, nearly all of them run past him wihout getting a disengagement hit. The only one that sometimes get's stopped is the one i force my fighter to attack directly with the mousen, as he runs past. I put it in slow motion, and i can see the engagement arrows connect with my fighter to nearly all of the enemeis that pass him, however none of them get hit by a disengagement attack. (i checked the combat log) The weirdest thing is that my fighter is taking hits as they run past him. My fighter is getting hit by all the disengagement attacks, even though i tried multiple times and made sure that my fighter was standing perfectly still, while they run past him. I was using the BB fighter companion for the test. Can anyone replicate this?

I just checked on my game and all of the healths were normal on all dificulties, including Trial of iron on and off.

I assume the countdown would run simultaneously for all characters in the vicinity. How many characters are you expecting to engage? For most classes it can only be one. But if we're talking about a fighter, then that's interesting, maybe there's some kind of gradual time-based mechanism already? Or maybe it's just buggy. I'm really pressed for time atm, so i'll get back to you on that, when i have more time to test it. And yes i meant the BB fighter, with the modal ability ON. I don't know if he has the hold the line talent as well though.

I think there is a problem with the whole animation thing. Because it would take time to engage multiple characters, a lot of them would be able to walk right through, and go straight for the weaker party members. Even now, when it's instant you can't always engage all your enemies before they run through you, if their target isn't the fighter.