thelee

Yeah I think the issue is that simply messing around with the custom formation doesn't activate it, or does some weird default. I've always gotten into the habit of clicking on it any time I change my party, just to prevent stuff like this from happening.

I've had this come up a few times, and the fix is just to click on the formation again. This seems to "reset" the positions for everyone. For me, seems like the trigger is when I recruit/dismiss a character. I guess the game doesn't re-apply the formation in that case and they get some sort of default position.

Do you guys have spirit of flame on them? If so, then I think this might be the same cause as what's causing people to get all sorts of extra spells. (I think if you dismiss a party member and re-recruit them at the stronghold (maybe some saving/loading is involved, and maybe you have to be in brighthollow), the game permanently re-applies all effects. I thought it was just limited to spells.)

badges1: hiravias comes with a bonus level 1 spell talent, that's what's triggering it.

I *believe* this is an interaction with dismiss/recruit at stronghold plus one of the following: a) one of the bonus spell talents b) an item that grants bonus spells Equip a character with an item OR set them up with a bonus spell talent. Dismiss them. Then later, recruit them. They will permanently have 1 additional spell of that type (as if the bonus spell effect gets erroneously re-applied). You can keep doing this though I stopped at 10 spells/level by chance. There doesn't appear to be a way to reset a character's spells/day to the correct amount. With this odd bug, my level 8 Durance has 10/10/10/3 spell casts (he's equipped with the Seal of Faith or whatever ring which grants a bonus level 1, 2, and 3 spell) and my level 8 druid (forget his name) has 10/4/4/3 spell casts (he joined the party with Bonus Level 1 Spell Talent). Aloth, who I didn't give any of these types of bonus spell talents/items, always has the correct number of spells when I recruit/dismiss him.

I love the update. Stealth is way better, combat feedback is better, spellcasting is better, and at least for me the game is much stabler, though there are still some weirdness and issues.

There are two components to graze. Accuracy and deflection. (See many above posts discussing this, including apparently actual evidence of deflection.)If anything, Deflection is now higher because INT boosts it. With roughly 10 lower accuracy and higher deflection, you will see more grazes. Deflection may also be lower because INT also penalizes it. EDIT: Deflection may also be lower because it's been manually adjusted through some mechanism.

............................ seriously? I didn't make the claim that people are going to see a lot more grazes, the OP did and I said that's probably because ACC-DEF is 10 lower, which would result in more grazes. For humanoid enemies, they will follow the rules of the system. A Level 5 Ranger will have his base accuracy, (Level-1)*3 Bonus Accuracy from Progression, Perception bonus to accuracy and bonuses from buffs and items. I doubt they would have changed any NPCs base stats around that much, but once again - I can check as I am saving all of the files from the different versions. Of course I've played the new version, are you kidding me? I never encountered the defenses bug, because I never fought a Paladin in my testing. I haven't said sfa about combat either, you're putting words in my mouth. The DoT bugs are fixed, so poison isn't as bad now. I think they also fixed Deep Wounds too. The Dyrford Crossing is way easier because they removed a lot of the beetles from the map, and your characters now have more health. That's probably why it feels more breezy. Even if you didn't make the claim (though I quote "Due to the recent Attribute system changes, you now get absolutely fark all Accuracy from Dexterity, therefore you are going to see A LOT MORE grazes in this build.") you certainly have been arguing that viewpoint. Again, ACC-DEF is not 10 lower necessarily because accuracy and deflection are now a zero-sum game (to an extent), and the neutral point may have been further adjusted (these has been the crux of my argument). My combat breeziness has had nothing to do with the Deep Wounds bug (essentially I had to kill off those archers rapidly anyway in 278 because of its severity, so ironically they didn't factor much into my fighting). Beetles may or may not be true, but the Skaen temple definitely seems to have all the same encounters.

There are two components to graze. Accuracy and deflection. (See many above posts discussing this, including apparently actual evidence of deflection.)

I think you forgot your /sarcasm tag?

I think you're missing it, too. I don't see any evidence to back up "more grazes" which basically amounted to either specious reasoning not backed up by actual experience of playing 301 or wild speculation. Second, I'm making the claim that, as a game system of classes, accuracy *hasn't* been nerfed (which was sensuki's basis for making his specious claim), see my other posts, which I've not actually heard a counter-argument to. I could be wrong in my reasoning, but no one has actually addressed my points. Sigh, once again you're missing my original point. This thread was about grazes, the OP complained about grazes. I explained WHY there are more grazes, because Accuracy as a base is 10 less. The end. As for my "I think the values need tweaking", all attributes have been nerfed. The maximum Might bonus you can get now is quite small to previous, so is the maximum duration and AoE values, Concentration ... etc Everything is weaker. People did not want weaker attributes, they wanted meaningful attributes. Therefore, raising the per-point bonuses of everything to be higher would accomplish this. You make the claim that we are probably going to see a lot more grazes, a claim that is hard to actually back up with any actual experience with the game. I mean, have you played 301? Are you actually making the claim that you can statistically determine from your combat log, beyond random noise, that you are getting a lot more grazes? Even anecdotally, are you claiming that combat is more tedious now (since by definition by having more grazes you will be doing less damage to enemies), which goes counter to my own experience and also some other first-impressions I've read? If not, your base claim is wrong. And while I also do not have a statistical comparison to make of before and after 301, anecdotally and my own sampling of enemies (EDIT: and now elerond's) suggests your base claim is wrong. There are no more grazes because despite the "nerfing" of accuracy, the neutral point has been moved in some way - either because NPCs have been deliberately weakened (like if enemies didn't use classes [or special non-player-accessible classes with custom base values] and needed manual downgrades), are equivalently affected (because they use the same system), or because who knows the deflection bug was overly rampant in 278 and the game was never intended to play like that to begin with. EDIT: regarding "Everything is weaker. People did not want weaker attributes, they wanted meaningful attributes. Therefore, raising the per-point bonuses of everything to be higher would accomplish this." I don't disagree that higher per-point values would be better (the marginal benefit from Might and Intelligence are way worse than before, 2% vs 3%, and something like 3% vs 5%) - but Obsidian did make them more stats meaningful (if not necessarily more of a stat meaningful) by spreading out combat benefits across stats (spreading Intelligence across Resolve, moving Dex to Perception).

I think you're still missing what I'm saying. It doesn't matter that they have character classes - that actually favors *my* argument, because unless humanoid enemies are cheating, they are equivalently affected by any stat change/rebalancing. I'm not sure how differently I can phrase it. All PC classes have gotten "nerfed" in the sense that their baseline is now at 10. But guess what - unless class NPCs have been cheating, so have they as well. And in particular for acc vs deflection, given the stat re-balancing in 301, if you see a fighter-type enemy with equivalent deflection as before (because my running assumption is that in 278 fighter-type enemies rarely had significant intelligence since they offered near-0 benefit to those types of classes), that most likely means they have had their intelligence *specifically buffed* so they could have their equivalent deflection, and that came at the expense of stat points elsewhere (unless Obsidian deliberately cheated them in the redesign with extra stat points to make the game harder), which makes them elsewhere weaker. And if they haven't had their intelligence buffed, then they automatically lost deflection in the re-balancing, effectively canceling out any perceived loss in accuracy on the part of PCs (since it is now, in effect and almost by definition, a zero-sum game between accuracy and deflection). The exceptions would be if non-humanoid enemies are non-classed and have their own system for health/damage/defenses (Oblivion/Skyrim-style), they would thus need manual re-balancing to maintain the same neutral point.

I think you're completely missing what I'm saying. If doesn't matter if all of a sudden Perception now gives -2 accuracy per point below 18 so long as there is an equivalent shift in what was the "neutral" point that game designers were using to balance combat.

They don't *need* to adjust the neutral point in terms of PC vs classed NPC conflicts, because given that NPCs were themselves constrained in some way for stat points (i.e. they don't have 18 in all stats), they have been equally affected as PCs. Barring any stat redistribution, a 278 PC Fighter loses as much accuracy to 301 as a 278 NPC fighter does in 301 (same with deflection, etc.) Put another way, given a finite set of stats, a point to increase or maintain deflection now comes at the cost of another point, such as a point to increase accuracy, which did not use to happen. So if an enemy NPC class has more or equivalent deflection to 301 (which in my sampling, has not been the case in 301, unless I was inordinately affected by the deflection bug in 278) it comes at the expense of making the NPC weaker in some other aspect. Non-classed enemies would have to be re-tuned and again, I have no evidence to indicate that this hasn't been the case. EDIT: it may also be the case that they way non-classed enemies are implemented may be through pseudo-classes or by stats anyway, and if that is the case, then re-balancing may not actually have been necessary for reasons given above. In effect, the neutral point is automatically moved.

Yes I do. Here's the source code from v301 and v278 that calculates attribute bonuses http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68744-is-might-a-dump-stat-is-perception-the-dps-stat/page-4?do=findComment&comment=1517063 That doesn't actually disprove what I said, it just reiterates what's already known about in stats in 301.

Do you actually have documented proof that the deflection base values haven't been adjusted? They may not have been for players, but looking at enemy stats themselves indicates that enemy deflection scores are lower (though these are all noisy data points - 278 had the deflection bug and 301's combat is much faster regardless - I rip through enemies like a knife through butter in 301 vs 278). Well, the fact that they haven't been adjusted for player classes (and presumably for NPCs based off of player classes since they use the same system) is my first bit of evidence. Beyond that, I don't know - I haven't gone through and compared every single creature's scores before and after. That said, it sounds like you're not quite sure either haha. Given that they didn't bother to adjust the player class default scores (which would've been very easy to do), I find it unlikely that they went through and adjusted all the other NPC scores (monsters, etc). I disagree that player scores are easier to do versus enemies. If we're talking about a simple move of the needle, you could easily make a wholesale change across the entire database of enemies with a set change trivially (presuming that Obsidian has fairly standard tools in place) - and given the state of combat in 301 anyway, it sounds like they were re-balancing enemies to begin with. More to the point - directed more at sensuki in particular, justifying anecdotally wrong or specious evidence (that there are more grazes now) with unverified or wrong information (that essentially Obsidian has nerfed everyone by moving the neutral point without compensation in some other means), while at the same time writing up series of game design tips to people who are actually feted game designers strikes me as the very definition of arrogance. You can call that an ad hominem if you will, but i wasn't using his alleged arrogance to dispute his argument, so it's not really an ad hominem in the debating fallacy sense. (I.E. I was not saying "he is arrogant, therefore he is wrong" I was saying "he is wrong, and the way that makes him wrong makes him arrogant") EDIT: for NPCs that use the same system, they wouldn't need to do any re-balancing, because they would be equally impacted by any needle moves that PCs endure. (i.e. if a fighter suddenly gets -5 deflection because of the intelligence change, so too would an NPC fighter, likewise for accuracy or e.g. health/stamina bonuses/penalties)

Do you actually have documented proof that the deflection base values haven't been adjusted? They may not have been for players, but looking at enemy stats themselves indicates that enemy deflection scores are lower (though these are all noisy data points - 278 had the deflection bug and 301's combat is much faster regardless - I rip through enemies like a knife through butter in 301 vs 278).

instead of just complaining you should file some bugs. for myself, this version is much more stable than the last, though obviously this may vary from person to person. if you don't file bugs, it'll be harder for developers to actually know what are the most problematic issues.

Dude, do you even know what a "beta" is? Pro-tip: what companies like Google and Blizzard do (like how Gmail was in beta forever and Blizzard has open betas for their games that last a long time) is *not* the norm for what a beta actually is. An alpha is *really* raw. You do not want to be playing an alpha, I'll tell you that much. That is pretty much prototyping so that designers and programmers can iterate.

You're wrong, and it seems it's because you're missing a grasp on simple math. Put another way, let's say everything used to be 20 and you used to have a +5 bonus to it. Now everything is 25 and you have a +0 bonus. Of everything is 30 and you have a -5 penalty. Did anything actually change? No, the net effect is 25. Most of the attribute "re-balancing" that occurred in 301 is simply that the neutral point has been adjusted. Basically, everything used to be net positive gains from a base of 3. Now everything is positive if greater than 10, negative if less than 10. But the overall math hasn't largely changed because the neutral point has simply been moved (sometimes dramatically to a point where a comparison before/after can't be meaningfully made, like with virtually every wizard spell range/AoE). And plus, anecdotally, I rip through combat faster in 301 than I did in 278 (and I'm on hard now instead of normal) and less anecdotally I know just from looking at enemy stats in combat that their deflection scores are lower. I'm actually amazed that you apparently have the arrogance to write up all these game design tips but can't have this basic insight. It's also fairly interesting the small shift in psychology that people have had, where everything used to be a dump stat, but now stats are apparently interesting, solely because of a shift from everything being a + to some being a - and some being a + (I guess this is loss-aversion at work and whichever game designer wanted to pull off this "trick" on people dissatisfied with the previous system has succeeded). EDIT: it may be that the benefit for any given attribute needs to be raised a bit (e.g. it's arguable whether a 2% damage/health bonus per might is worth the marginal stat increase, especially when you have spells and effects that buff or debuff it on the order of 1 or 2 points and that's supposed to be "significant"), but the argument that things have gotten nerfed simply because instead of a +10 you have a +3 or something is off the mark.

Also, before you call for a feature to be removed from the game (like so many people here like to do), you should ask yourself the following two questions. 1) Do I actually understand this aspect of the game? (See also: "Chesterton's Fence", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence ) 2) Do I not like this aspect of the game simply because it is unfamiliar or different? ("Because it's different/not what I'm used to!" is not a good reason for anything.)

The only thing you need to concern yourself with - in battle - is pretty much just Endurance. Endurance is what matters within a battle, whereas Health is something you should concern yourself with from rest to rest. In essence, it's the difference between "tactics" and "strategy." Within one battle, you need tactics to manage how your characters are dealing with their Endurance. Across many battles, you need to make sure that health loss is being shared in a way s.t. you won't be out of camping supplies when you most need it. The only time you have to worry about Health and Endurance at the same time is if you've gone far enough without rest that you have a character who's been taking a lot of damage that they have less health remaining than endurance. And in that case, it's still not too bad because by default the character won't die the first time they hit 0 health, they'll just be knocked out and then maimed. Personally, I love the Health/Endurance system. It solves several interrelated tedium for many other similar games: 1) time spent doing nothing but healing. This was the worst thing about the original Baldur's Gate (since a lack of "Heal on Rest" meant you *had* to spam Cure Light Wounds all the time) and several other games (like having to sit down and eat food in World of Warcraft). You (generally) only need to worry about your characters' fighting capacity *in combat* since outside of combat they regenerate Endurance so quickly they'll be at full Endurance for the next fight. 2) Absolutely needing dedicated healers. Any game system that *requires* you to have a specific role reeks of a broken game system, IMO, and it's because of inertia and nostalgia that we tolerate so many games where you can swap out fighter/rogue/mage-types, but generally always need a priest-type. Now, intelligent "aggro" management will get you through any one batle, and the rapid out-of-combat endurance regeneration takes care of the rest. 3) Rest-spamming. You don't need to rest-spam anymore (and not only because it's impossble due to limited camping supplies), and you're encouraged--in a way not done so in most other RPGs--to intelligently manage your character's abilities and how much damage they're taking in combat because--while they'll almost always be at full endurance for any given fight, their health provides a long-term cap on their effectiveness. I.E. if you run every battle MMO-style and let BB-fighter take all the damage, you'll find you need to rest when most of your party still has most of their abilities left (and you'll be running down your campign supplies rapidly). On the other hand, if you're able to switch out who takes punishment (i.e. to another tank-like character or even your BB Priest or BB Rogue at times) and balance out the damage, you'll be able to go a lot futher betwen rests.

I glossed over a lot of this thread, but I do not understand the grazes=>attrition=>unfun argument. You people *do* realize that if grazes go away, it's not like all of a sudden those become full hits? So intead of A) graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze => maybe enemy dies you'll get B) miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss => enemy still hasn't died yet and given how critical hits work (they can be pushed off the d100 roll), without grazes you could potentially have stalemated fights. Essentially, getting rid of grazes would require a massive re-balancing and re-working of hte game. And I don't know about you, but B) is much more attrition-y than A). At least with A you get forward movement in any situation. Grazes also have the benefit that you can have partial spell application in a unified mechanic.

+1 to this

[Description of the issue] Enemies will attack each other even if far off-screen, which ends up keeping my party in combat and preventing resting/recovery/looting. [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] Example: 1) Play backer beta 301 2) Fight some enemies 3) Eventually this will happen. [Expected behaviour] Surely enemies can restrain themself in such a way that I randomly am not kept in combat? In an extreme case I sat around about a few minutes while waiting for something to happen. [Files] Screenshots is attached (it's hard to tell, but there is a gigantic engagement arrow in the fog of war between a beetle and a skaen guy. Save game for another instance of this issue is linked: http://www.upload.ee/files/4279869/3a1ba403d66948668ecee9257cb9d8a3_DyrfordRuins_7701921.savegame.html