archangel979

Finding bugs is only one part and less interesting one. Main point is to test out system and mechanics and give feedback. Bugs that prevent that are not welcome :D

I think it would be better to have durations work of character levels or have fixed duration then to have one attribute controlling it all. It will just create situation where durations are too long or too short and you cannot fix it in a good way without making problems in other places.

Thanks for the correction on Hold Person. However, Hold Monster not affecting friendlies was exactly what I wrote above? Maybe you misread something here. Yes I did. Because I assumed you were comparing it with Hold Person, not Web. Hold Monster and Web are different kind of CC spells and cannot really be compared. They work on different kind of creatures and are defended against with different protections. Their AoE is even completely different. Web works on whole area and can catch anyone walking into after the spell is cast while Hold spells only work on specific subjects and don't work on anyone coming near the original targets afterwards. Stinking Cloud is more of a continuation of Web.

It was a design decision made early on before the Kickstarter finished. I would've thought if they were testing the combat, even a year ago when we saw the teaser trailer, they would've noticed there were problems with it. A decision should've been made to introduce rounds like the IE games when they knew they had a problem. Not persist in trying to 'fix' it because in my opinion, I don't think it can be fixed to a degree where it will be like the IE games. They might be able to slow it down, but the lack of rounds is the problem for me. The combat feels like I'm playing an arpg like Diablo, trying to control 6 characters at once, constantly pausing to issue commands and not 100% sure when they have fully recovered to issue a new command. You don't need rounds, just slow down combat, move speed, damage dealt (and made D.T. system work with it probably by changing it into % of damage reduced) and implement queue for next action so you can give another action at any point and it will continue with that action into as soon as current one is finished. But I don't want NWN full action queue as it was worse when you could queue 4 actions as after 2 rounds you had no idea what would happen soon. Another way to fix this, would be to implement a system from Jagged Alliance: Back in Action where when you paused you would get into a special screen where you could give multiple actions to your squad members and easily sync their action with one click. If you want to see it in action, you can find videos of it on youtube. It was a best part of that game, and although the game wasn't as successful this part was done well (for those that could live with new Jagged Alliance not being Turn Based anymore)

So if Accuracy is 5 more than deflection it is impossible to miss anymore?! And grazes fully implement secondary effects of attacks? They need to change the system into 1d100+accuracy vs 1d100+deflection (or 1d20 instead of 1d100 if those two values are going to be similar through most of the game).

I agree that NWN engines had worse combat than IE games, and that RTS design is the way to go. But it needs to be noticeable slower than now to work well. OE might be afraid that if it is "too slow" they might turn away new younger players that are used to modern action based RPGs.

And Score is then compared to some table where it says if it is miss, graze, hit, or critical hit?

What? Hold Person was lvl 2 for clerics, and lvl 3 for Wizards. Hold Monster never affected your allies. You mistook it for Confusion (lvl 4) which worked on all in area while Chaos (lvl 5) only worked on enemies. And AoE spells in IE games were balanced by not showing you their AoE before casting. So each casting you needed to guess if you are going to do FF or not.

I don't think they want to make this game as hard as Blackguards. Although I enjoyed it a lot, it is not for average gamers. And game like Blackguards does not work without Turn Based system.

Do we know how accuracy vs deflect works exactly? Is it 1d100+ Accuracy bonus vs 1d100+Deflection value? And same accuracy is used vs other 3 defenses,right?

Following more simulation design rules than gamist design rules. Like latest D&D, it is simulationist first and gamist second although it puts fun and classic D&D design above both.

As gkathellar said, hit chance seems to great in beta, especially for low level characters. In D&D and IE games characters miss more at lower levels as HP is lower and it only takes few hits to finish a combat. At higher levels it is easier to hit but life is much higher and damage is done through multiple hits. It balances itself out. Here is seems both damage is great and hit chance is great and combat ends very fast.

One can dream But if the modding tools are powerful enough, I would like to see a mod that makes attribute bonuses more realistic and more complex. If someone makes such a mod, I will use it immediately.

Maybe it would if we split Melee accuracy and ranged accuracy for all types of damage. So some spells would be classified as melee spells and some as ranged spells (melee would be those that have low range like Burning Hands in BG or Ghoul Touch; I don't know how many of those exist in the game so I didn't want to say to just have spells like Ghoul Touch or Vampire Touch as melee) and each would have its own accuracy Stat. Lets say Dexterity is for melee accuracy and Perception for ranged accuracy. Also I would split damage into melee damage and ranged damage and if wizards wanted to focus on melee and wearing armors he would raise Might which governs melee damage while he would raise some other stat (like Intellect) if he wanted to raise ranged damage. With this system we got offensive stats on 4 stats. Now put some defensive stat useful for melee on Perception or Intellect (and defensive stat on Might or Dexterity that is also useful to ranged characters) and characters cannot ignore stats.

There are No. I to IV?

Good video, I just finished watching it. I agree with most of your suggestions. The ones I didn't were minor ones and not worth mentioning. What happens if you attack monsters so you are on the right part of the screen and combat log has been move left like you wanted? Also big font in combat log is needed for some people. What we need is a way to choose font size as well a way to make combat log large like in IE games (I would often make it large during messy battles to see what happened in last round)

They seem to. I mean, the BBXs level at the same time as each other and the PC. I guess it makes sense considering the simplistic XP system. That is not the reason. In AD&D different XP tables were part of balancing classes. Wizards were pretty powerful but also took forever to level. Since PoE design is about balanced classes they don't need to give them separate XP tables. Funny think, in 3.X D&D they gave all classes same XP tables but kept spellcasters as most powerful classes.

1 hour.. hmm, I cannot do this from work like I usually do for your other videos :D

You misunderstood my meaning. Deflecting physical attack and reducing its damage come down to the same thing and it protects from same kind of damage. It still does not change the fact that wizards should protect themselves with magic first and use armor only if they tend to be in melee often. The penalty of wearing armor for spellcasters is more significant than for weapon users, so it is expected they will not wear it (as it reinforces the archetype wizard in robes) so I am only saying there should be plenty of good defensive spells that will protect the caster.

We're discussing a game with no actual healing, remember? Dead people do no damage (and neither they do anything useful for that matter). People having naked backline characters has more to do with how the game currently punishes you for wearing any kind of armor. BTW, most low level robes in IE games were purely cosmetic too. Now if a ranged caster, for example, can neither be realistically effective while wearing medium or heavy armor nor realistically survive while wearing light or no armor, what's the point of sacrificing a party roster spot other than "you're supposed to have a wizard in your party if it's a fantasy game"? When the margin of error is too small, the option is no longer viable in practice no matter how sound it's in theory. Which brings us back to how design on everyone gets to wear armor might not be a correct one. I enjoyed having my wizard protect themselves with spells while fighters used armors. I still want wizards to have enough magical defenses that armors are not needed or wanted for them unless they are in melee all the time like fighters are. In release version, I hope to see multiple defensive spells that actually work.

No. It was to mitigate degenerative gameplay like rest spamming and save scumming. By taking health healing out of the game, it would make players play strategically by not rest spamming with a regenerating stamina mechanic. With regenerating stamina, this would mitigate rest spamming. This does not prove its purpose is to remove rest spamming. The second part of the quote does not talk about that specifically. From what I understood the health/stamina system is to make healing spells less important while also letting players fall during combat without dying. It also creates a non-replenishable resource that was needed since most abilities were moved from 1/day to 1/encounter.

The goal could be to get past an encounter on your way to a quest objective. Not if said encounter is on a map completely outside you goal/quest. Than it is just a trash mob encounter and should reward players with something more. Or the combat could be fun and engaging. Why are you not getting this? Go tell OE to make all spider and beetle encounters fun and engaging then by removing them from the maps and giving us something better. I don't have access to beta but from what I seen, I don't care to fight random animals that don't give me anything back. I would rather skip all those fights. It is about as fun as fighting a group of nameless goblins that give you 35xp each when you are lvl 10+ even if this encounter is harder (which makes is even more irritating, at least you deal with goblins with 1 fireball). They have to decided to go with good design. Design that caters to only one type of player is not good design. The point is that XP was invented to solve a problem. Judging by your comments one would think the problem was that GM's sucked at designing encounters. XP is a useful mechanic for controlling the pacing, which also ties into the learning curve. How and when XP is given is largely irrelevant as long as the designers achieve the desired pacing. XP is here to give players sense of progression. Even in PnP players play for progress of their characters, not to see if they can beat random animals while walking through the forest. PoE left trash mob fights in the game like we had in BG2 but decided to not give any reward for them. Their current approach works for a game like IWD where all fights are parts of some quest and there are no random encounters. But they are going to have map exploration like in BG games, they have to change their design.

Oh, yes, thank you. I was totally in danger of losing track of this conversation. Point? You tell me, you mentioned Portal first. I told you my thoughts about it. And sometimes victory is its own reward. Progression for the sake of it because sometimes the means by which you progress are inherently rewarding, without the need for a hamfisted pat on the back in the form of XP or *shudder* "Achievements". Yes, victory is a good reward when you have interesting, multi-layered combat that is part of some goal/quest. When that part is missing, other things are needed. Like XP or memorable loot (not animal parts). That's a problem with encounter design and the currently unbalanced and clunky combat. Adding kill XP would simply be treating the symptoms. If an encounter serves no purpose, then it should be removed. So you recommend we remove all encounters on the maps that are not part of quests? And have empty maps? Or we can add minor quests that are connected with different trash encounters. Or we can add XP to trash encounters. Not much, just enough so they don't feel completely pointless. I've been playing BG2 too and XP has never been a significant motivation for anything I do in that game. If I found myself checking the XP bar after each encounter that would be a sign that I was bored with it and should be doing something else. XP is a useful mechanic for controlling the pacing in a non-linear game, but that is all it should be. Linear games like Zelda have absolutely no need for XP because the designers have precise control over the options available to the player at any given point. If you're making a game and find yourself treating XP like an inherent component of the reward structure, then you're probably designing an MMO or aRPG. Genres known for having one-dimensional reward structures and for being addictive because of it, though personally I just get bored all the faster. So we are too different kind of players, and BG2 caters to both of us. That makes it a good game. Maybe PoE designers should learn something from this. And I looked at XP only after non-quest related encounters that were not cakewalk and gave solid XP, I didn't check it after each goblin or gnoll killed. I love leveling in these games, it makes me happy. I don't understand the point of this second part. PoE is a non-linear game FYI. The inability to change one's mind is not a virtue. I got no clue what you mean with this. Is this supposed to be some kind of insult?

I would love to have interruption be based on damage dealt in combination with base interrupt of weapons. That way we still have two stats governing how often it happens (damage and accuracy). It is also more intuitive that more damage makes it harder to resist being interrupted.

I still hope that once mechanics are set in stone all the percentages are going to be turned into closest equivalent integers for preservation of sanity of players.