Cubiq

I noticed that the AoE of some of the healing spells has decreased, like 2nd level priest spell that does healing over time for a longer duration. This kind of forces me to ignore most of the buffs and save nearly all of my spells for healing, since vs tougher enemies, on hard, the damage spikes can come too quickly to react fast enough if you just wasted a spell on buffs. (even if the priest is completely naked)

I think there is some kind of bug with the dificulty setting. I started the game on hard and the fights were pretty tough, but after i died once in the orge cave, everything became cakewalk the second time. Spiders were dropping like flies all of a sudden. Tried moving the difficulty slder, but nothing changed. I noticed i was no longer getting poisoned by the spiders also.

I went to pick up the ogre's head on hard dificulty, and this is my impression of combat that i felt i didn't like. Still can't do anything if one of your character's health starts to get low in combat that is surrounded by +2 enemies. It makes the combat really annoying. Now as soon as i see it i just press the reload button. Combining the engagement mechanic with the no healing policy is a horrible system. The combat runs fluently however the starting tactics needs work. I went to the beetle forsest and it feelt like an MMO grind. The starting tactics were alway the same. Locate a group of mobs, pull with spell, then send tank to pick everything up. You get several spells you can cast on them that doesn't initiate combat, like web and a fire wall. So now you replaced pre-buffing with traps. It's the same thing. There are more abilities now, for each class. Sounds fun, untill you realise you now need to keep pausing to keep clicking abilities for every class, since some of them are per encounter and you're pretty much wasting them if you don't use them.

@ PrimeJunta Sorry i finally got around to reading the reply because of all the work i've had in the past week, i just want to clarify some of the points. Yeah i know they can engage 3 enemies at once, but that would require them to come at you in a straight line. I've seen that there are some ambushes in the beta where you get surrounded by ghosts, you have a lot of difficulty getting the attackers off of your party members, with just your fighters. If it was just bugs then i would understand that it's just beta, however the combat is pretty much copying NWN2 fighting, so you can tell in what direction they want to go. And i never liked combat in that game, where combat was static and your main focus on melee was pressing abilities buttons, for the occasional effect like knockdown. Even though fighters in IE games didn't have many abilities, you would still spend nearly 80% of the time on them, repositioning them to engage the correct enemies and running out of fire. Sure you can take it too far and cheese in IE games with running around, but think it still beats being punished for every movement you make. I would prefer even turn based over this, since in most of the games you can actually move around turn per turn. @Mayama Well, like i said CC is just a spell, you could do that in BG as well with a mage/priest/druid. But it doesn't matter, it is what it is, if you guys like it, then go for it. I'm off

This is going to be my last post, since i'm kind of depressed how this game is turning out to be, so i just bare with it. From all that i've seen, i don't believe that it will be easier to hold the line than in Baldur's gate. I believe that it will be exactly the opposite, if the AI gets even slightly more intelligent. Lets say you intercept 3 melee enemies that are coming at your 2 warriors. Your warriors have now successfully held the line. Now what would happen if all 3 of them chose a different target. Your warrior would intercept one and would force the enemy to engage him. Your 2nd warrior would chose a different target and would engage that one. But now there is 1 free to attack your party. So how do you get 1 of your warrior to engage the 3rd target? You either need to use a knockdown on the already engaged target, so you can disengage, or have a successful roll versus the stagger check when you eat a disengagement attack. Now here comes the complicated part: From what i've seen the knockdown only hits on your next swing timer and since the swing timers are pretty long and counting on whether or not your knockdown will even hit, the probability of the enemy reaching one of your party members before you can stop him with your warrior is pretty high (i've actually seen someone try to do this on a stream and failed) Now if your party member needs to run away from the 3rd enemy, just so they wont reach him, then you're basically just doing what you did in Baldur's gate, and not really holding the line anymore. However in Baldur's gate you could run away indefinitely, while here you have a limited amount of time before they reach you and engage you (unless you're running in a straight line to the other end of the map). Now here is where i think it gets harder than in BG games. Your character now needs to try using their escape abilities, (if they even have any) to stop themselves from getting killed, while in BG games you would just keep running in circles, and even get a spell off because their swing animations would slow them down. So now you need to keep activating knockdowns with your warriors until they succeed or try to heal him through disengagement strikes, then try to get him to reach the enemy, all the while, you are using escape abilities with your runaway party character, just for 1 single bonus enemy. Potentially you could save them if you had another tanky class in your party, but what about if there are 2 bonus enemies or 3? In Baldur's gate you could just have the weaker characters just run in circles and they could even attack with a ranged weapon of a quick spell, to slowly kill the pursuer, or even just have your melee quickly move in position to create a wall, without the fear of getting punished for it. (i know you can use charm/stun spells, but you can also do that in BG) The way that Sawyer talked about how "party positioning" will have a very important role in the game, makes me think that the AI actually needs to be this stupid, so that they will all run directly in a straight line at the first thing they see, otherwise you would have massive headache every little fight.

Can you really hold the line? From what i've seen the reason is mainly the poor AI that makes them simply attack the closest thing at the start of the combat.

This is exactly what i feared was going to happen when i first read about the the engagement mechanics. What was the point of having real time combat, if melee are going to be nailed to the ground the moment combat begins.

Sensuki, in the video you mentioned that the run speed is too fast and that you kind of plow through the map too fast, losing the feeling of exploration. Can you try using the stealth walk speed to explore a hostile map? Perhaps if they made monsters have higher range of aggro it would force you to use the stealth mode to explore the map more carefully? That way you can still have fast run speed when you you're on your second or 3rd run.

Cool stuff Sensuki One thing i would definitely like to change in the character creation menu, is putting the portrait selection before the 3d appearance modding. Because you can create a 3d character with something unique, like purple hair and then realize in the next step that there are no portraits of character with purple hair, so you end up going back to the 3d model to change it to be more like the portrait will have to go with.

Oh okey, i only saw the video of the player checking the expert mode at the beginning of the game. I didn't know there are extra options. Nevermind then.

I have seen some people play the beta and i have noticed something that i feel would be annoying in the game and feel the need to mention. When you check the Expert mode at the start of the game you lose the circle that indicates the spell range when casting an AoE spell. Baldur's gate also had this however, in Baldur's gate you were able to cast the buffs/heals out of combat so you could learn the ranges of AoE spells with a bit of experimenting. However in PoE you can only use buffs while in combat. And that is not the best time to experiment, unless you want people to save scum simply to learn mechanics. My request is to add a separate option that toggles the spell range circle along side the expert mode. I don't want to see skill check text next to my answers options however i do want to see the spell range circles, because i can't cast spells freely enough to learn them.

It's a shame there's no evening sunlight. but i guess with static shadows it could look weird so maybe that's a good thing. I wonder if you guys find it confusing if you need to make any touch ups after rendering, when you have to work while having objects floating in air.

HAHAHA now it's my fault. I specifically said that "I don't think you'll be able to solo as a fighter unless you actually overpower the boss enemies in raw power, considering you can't really kite effectively in this game with the Engage mechanic." It was you who started trying to prove that you CAN kite with this post: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66149-can-we-really-play-the-whole-game-with-just-one-character/?p=1448031 Even though i was talking to IndiraLightfoot at the time. And after you've been proven that you don't even have a clear grasp of the mechanics, you became butthurt and now you're telling me how i'm misleading the conversation. No one but Hiro and Sarex actually takes your post seriously anymore Stun. You're just forum troll no one gives a **** about anymore. I'm done replying to your little troll posts. Did they say you can't use figurines to "engage" the enemy? No Did they say they don't like the mechanics where you use the summons to tank? Yes

Well aren't you optimistic I guess you could take it that way, but counting on that monsters will probably have less defenses than you, could mean that you would actually take damage quicker than if your character was tanking it. Also i would like to point out that all escape abilities we already know of have only a 1 time per combat use. (except monk stun, it doesn't say how many times they can use it, but he needs to use wounds to execute it.) I still believe the chances of you able to continually get away from your opponent is very slim. The developers really seem intent on trying to stop kiting, so i doubt they will be lax on such things.

Well... i doubt you'll be able to use a summon to tank the opponent, because of the link i posted above where Sawyer says : "and using summons as hit point bag nose tackles can cause harm to the summoner" This will probably include figurines, otherwise why would they even try to implement this combat mechanic if you could get around it with something everyone can use.

Why would this make kiting viable? Did the developers say you will be able to hide in plain sight with stealth?

Thanks for the reply MReed, it saved me a lot of typing. I'll just refrain from typing more until i see if Sawyer will reply. And about Figurines http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63037-summoning/?p=1414557 Using them as a tank tool may not be possible, as the developers seem to be against this kind of mechanic.

When you get nailed the fleeing opponent staggers with a hit animation which allows the pursuer to immediately reengage the target, hitting him again and again with the disengagement attack, until he either misses (the attacks have a bonus on accuracy) or you use a fleeing ability. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Melee_Engagement Ok.. so how do you kite with a Polearm or a ranged weapon when the attack recovery only recharges when you are standing still? Sawyer said that the whole point of this mechanic is to prevent kiting, in the Attack Speed thread. The point is more on the idea that it's better to stand still than to kite the opponent considering the disengagement attacks have more accuracy and damage, making you have to overpower the opponent directly.

I have a strange feeling that Josh is trying to completely remove any kind of kiting, and that that's mainly the reason he's using the Engage mechanic, giving Rangers pets, and pausing attack recovery during movement. Hopefully he will answer the question i posted in the Attack Speed thread.

But how do you build a mobile fighter? From what i've read regarding the Engage mechanic, the only way you'll be able to get away from the enemy with a melee fighter after you've done damage, is with a knockdown or some form of CC. And if CC are so effective versus bosses then won't it be easy mode to just get a group of 6 fighters and then chain CC him? Yes there should be more ways to fight the enemy, but if i remember correctly Sawyer said that the game won't be as combat passive as PS:T, and he said directly that there will be fights that you can't avoid. Maybe you'll be able to weaken them beforehand like in IWD2, but i doubt it's going to be considerably, otherwise it's going to be a cakewalk for a party of 6.

I also agree that it's weird that your character can run half of the map and still not able to get his weapon ready for the next swing. But by the sound of it, it's more of a balance issue than a logic issue. Could Josh tell us why it's better to completely shut down recovery during movement? Do you believe that any kiting breaks too many things in the game? Or is there another reason? (Like maybe the CC abilities already allow you to gain distance and therefor having recovery regenerate while moving would make kiting too strong?)

Well from what I've seen I don't think you'll be able to solo as a fighter unless you actually overpower the boss enemies in raw power, considering you can't really kite effectively in this game with the Engage mechanic. (And I doubt CC attacks are going to work on them very well.)

What about if the monster is just running away, from a fear spell or morale failure. Will the Engage mechanic be enough to allow melee to hit the target? As far as i know that only works when the opponent isn't moving, so will melee be able to damage a fleeing opponent at all?

One of the things that triggers moral failure in IE games is damaging someone for a huge % of their health in a very short time. Probably in a single round. If they drop from 100% to 10% very fast, they will most likely start to run away.

Wizard berserker mode, i like that, i just hope there are ways to cancel such dangerous buffs in case you get hit and find out you won't have enough stamina left for the duration of the buff. Otherwise you'll just be watching your impending doom.