Matt516

Haha thanks!

Don't you see what's wrong with this statement? Not really. AoE and Duration are huge in combat (especially Duration). They just can't be purely broken down into damage or health. The combat system has enough depth for there to be considerations other than "am I making their numbers go down faster than mine are going down". Or to put it a better way, that's still the ultimate goal of combat but there's enough depth for there to be all sorts of ways to do it. So no, I don't think there's anything wrong with that statement.

Yeah I'm fine with the removal of Charisma. The poster child for "dump stats" since its inception - a "purely non-combat" stat if I ever saw one. Much prefer the more elegant "everything helps in and out of combat" design goal. In a game with heavy focus on both combat and dialogue, the player shouldn't be forced to spend limited resources between the two systems (as an attribute system with clearly "combat-only" or "non-combat only" stats would do)..

Good thread, nice points. 2 counterpoints: 1) PER/INT/RES are not the only stats used in conversations. Theoretically, all 6 of the stats should be used in conversations to some degree, such as Intimidate (MIG), Act Quickly (DEX), and... yeah I dunno what CON would be used for. But it could be used for something. Anyway, I find the suggestion that PER/INT/RES are the "primary conversation" stats to be suspect - there's no reason the other 3 stats can't be used for something in conversations, and I believe that they will. 2) Thinking of PER/INT/RES as "non-combat" stats is also wonky to me. Yes, PER and RES are vastly underpowered in combat right now (inc thread from Sensuki and I on how to fix that), and OE has acknowledged this and plans to do something to fix it. INT is also a combat stat, just not directly related to dps or survivability. But in any case, all the stats are supposed to be "combat" stats. The fact that they aren't is indicative of a problem with the stat system atm, not a foregone conclusion. So I guess TL;DR is... your thread is more suitable as a "here's what's wrong right now" thread than a "this is how it will be in the end" thread. All 6 stats should be viable both in and out of combat. The BB is limited in scope, so my first point may not be addressed in it (though I'd expect it to be in the main game), and my second point has already been acknowledged as a problem by OE and will hopefully be fixed. In the end, if OE does their jobs right, you should be able to build whatever kind of character you want and play the game the way they would play it. So if being witty in conversations is important to you, yeah you'll probably want to up PER and INT - but that'll be you playing a smart character. If you play a dumber character with other strengths, I'd expect that they will be able to solve conversation problems in different (but equally viable) ways.

Hiro, Uomoz - take it to pm. Your bickering has ceased to be productive for anyone.

Yup. Refer to BG:EE for a good example of before/after for this kind of feedback. Original BG had very little info on how final THAC0, AC, etc were calculated. BG:EE made huge leaps in clarity and showed you where pretty much everything came from.

If this is how it works, I'd be fine with it. I'm not sure that's true, though...

With the amount of clutter in the log already, I actually greatly prefer the brief "Bob grazes Bill for 2 damage". There's still a "Bob's weapon is ineffective against Sally because of high DT" message if their Deflection is really high (and an auto pause option to go with it).

I like MIG, PER, and RES from a role-playing perspective, tbh. MIG is a teeny bit problematic b/c of the corresponding lack of a physical strength attribute, but not really a huge issue IMO. The problem with PER and RES is entirely from a balance/game mechanics perspective if you ask me. The role-playing is fine. Thread on how to balance those coming up from Sensuki and I, btw.

IIRC the tooltip on lvl up didn't even mention that it attacked whichever was lower... but I may have misread. Thanks for the clarification, y'all! It is a great passive. :D

Cool. The tool tip didn't mention anything about that, so I wasn't sure.

Just a quick question: I was looking at the Barbarian's "Brute Force" ability, which causes their attacks to attack Fortitude instead of Deflection while reducing the Accuracy of any enemy hit. Cool stuff. But is there a way to toggle it on and off? If not, I think there should be. Otherwise the Barbarian is at a significant disadvantage vs. enemies with high Fort and low Def. Which kind of defeats the purpose of the ability. IMO this should be a modal, not passive ability. That is all.

<--------- The hopeless cynic hopes you're right. Well, I should preface this by saying that I do have little "real" programming experience (I work mostly with MATLAB). But - from what understanding I do have of the logic and mathematics behind this kind of AI, I can't imagine that it should be too complicated to implement. Assuming it will work with a weighted probability system like Josh Sawyer laid out here: http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/79942961685/answering-about-ai-enemy-types-and-their-abilities , implementing it is easy - only tuning should be difficult. And even then, that shouldn't be too hard (from how I would imagine doing it if it were my job).

Oh certainly - I do the same thing, playing about half optimal and half RP. But I think they can certainly get those two things fixed before release. Armor speed penalties can be adjusted in about an hour of work (if that), and AI, while a bit more difficult to fix, is something they've already said they're working on. So I'm fairly hopeful they'll get it at least mostly sorted before release.

And as was pointed out, there really isn't any reason why "naked" ranged characters shouldn't be viable in many encounters. Yeah, Josh pointed that out, but it doesn't mean he's right. He's not a god, last time I checked (though I guess he has god-like influence over the game). At any rate, I'm not a fan personally of the idea a character needs to be unarmored to optimize their attacks. This is just way too "gamey" for my taste. It depends on what you mean by "optimize". If an archer wants to fire arrows as fast as possible in real life, then technically the best way to do that would be not to wear armor. That said, there are 2 reasons why this isn't the best strategy in real life. Namely, the danger of being shot and/or stabbed. Also, the fact that wearing armor (light armor in particular) probably only slows you down a little bit - maybe 5-10% in total firing speed. Note that neither of these reasons for archers wearing armor is perfectly reflected in PoE at the moment. Once the AI is fixed and the speed penalties are tuned, they will be and the problem will go away. That is - going naked into battle will still give archers a slight speed advantage (as it should), but will come with the disadvantage of being more vulnerable. Just tuning issues.

That's the crux of it IMO. Falling in combat should be punished somehow, because as it is there's no penalty (AFAIK) for doing so.

There's a really simple solution to this one. Remove Detection from the scouting mode. It doesn't belong there anyway. Give it its own "detect" button that can be switched on/off at will without making everyone walk slo-mo. Oh sorry, what am I thinking. We can't do that. It'd be too IE-game-like, and we all know those games are synonymous with Degenerate Gameplay. See, this is what I'm talking about. Josh Sawyer doesn't think the IE games are synonymous with DG - he just finds some aspects of them DG. You may disagree about what was or wasn't DG, but turning the term into a pejorative doesn't really help anyone - it's a useful term when used correctly. And your suggestion is spot-on. They need to just make detect hidden a passive thing of some sort. EDIT: And let's be honest - as great as the IE games were, there's no denying that some aspects of the game design were degenerative - the IE games were fantastic but they weren't perfect.

Eh not exactly. *snip* I think you're still not seeing exactly what he's saying. Yes, a character in heavy armor gets a ton less actions (33% less, to be precise) than a naked character. The point is that the effectiveness of DT scales with the number of attacks you receive. So if you're fighting 5 guys, and each of them is attacking you once every 3 seconds, that's 50 times in 30 seconds that your DT procs. If your DT is 10, that's 500 damage prevented. Versus only 5 actions lost by you (15 for unarmored in 30 seconds - 10 for heavy armored assuming not dual-wielding). Which is (ballparking here) about 75 damage lost (assuming 15 damage average on a hit). The effectiveness of DT scales with the number of enemies you're fighting, while the penalty scales linearly since you can only actively attack one enemy at a time. So if a character is going to take a lot of hits from a lot of different targets, higher DT is insanely beneficial in terms of preventing damage. My numbers are really rough, but hopefully they demonstrate the point - if you're engaging 1 guy at one time, then yeah you get more damage from being unarmored than you prevent with high DT. But if you're engaging 5 guys... you can only hit one guy at a time, but they can all hit you. That DT acts on every attack. Which is why (even though it needs some tweaks) the armor system does at least incentivize armor for tanks.

Well yeah, but can you name a single game in which damage prevention is not *always* better than healing? By definition, if you can avoid damage in the first place, that's better than healing it after the fact. That has always been true and will always be true - PoE isn't at all novel in this way. As for healing *always* being the wrong choice, that's simply not true. Healing *always* results in additional tactical resources - i.e. stamina. It *can* results in a corresponding sacrifice of strategic resources - i.e. health (if the healed stamina is damaged again). But stating that healing is, by design, *always* the wrong choice is simply incorrect. It betrays a failure to think beyond the overall strategic level. Tactical healing can be beneficial in certain circumstances - it just isn't *always* beneficial. The current system requires more thought than just throwing all of your healing onto a damaged character. So calling it a trap is disingenuous - some players may heal themselves to death - but that would be because they just assume healing works the same in PoE as in other games (i.e. always good). Healing is treating a symptom rather than reaching a cure - that's how they want it to be from a lore standpoint. It's weird - in answering your posts I'm actually finding myself convincing myself away from my initial position. xD In any case - I still think the incentives are messed up, but I don't think it's as dire as you think. This different way of using healing is just that - different.

Well, healing still has tactical value. In fact, the current design makes healing a way of essentially "buying" more tactical resources by sacrificing strategic resources - something I'm ok with. It's unorthodox, but not "degenerative" in and of itself. I think of it kind of like giving someone an adrenaline rush so they can help out in the short term but actually hurt themselves more in the long term. Actually, when you think of it that way, even my own complaint of DG goes away. So maybe we're just thinking of it wrong. Calling healing a "poison" is disingenuous - it doesn't actually hurt you, though it does put you into a position where you can be hurt more. Again though, it's about sacrificing strategic resources (health) for a tactical (stamina) benefit. And as Infinitron pointed out, you might want to do this in some cases (where you need the tank to keep protecting the back line). Or if you're having a really large fight where the tank needs to absorb a huge amount of damage but can only do so with heals. Again - the Health/Stamina system is certainly different... that doesn't make it bad. What is bad (IMO) is the unintuitive fact that optimal play involves letting your characters fall. Though as I've pointed out (weakening my earlier argument - oops ), there are ways to think about this that don't involve thinking of healing as a "poison" but instead a tool for trading strategic for tactical resources.

Well, and I actually classified that as non-DG in my OP. The concept of "tanking" I have no problem with (though people should stop complaining that their tank is then losing all of his health haha ). The main DG-related problem with the Health/Stamina concept IMO is the disincentivization of healing.

I agree that there's a bit of a strange/perverse incentive here, but it's not always the optimal decision if, you know, you still need that fighter to prevent your other characters from losing health. You're not operating in a vacuum. Good point - there are definitely other factors at play that mitigate it a little bit. I still find the incentive structure flawed at the moment though. Also (just a general thing) please everyone note that the 4 issues I mentioned here were my best attempt to categorize things into DG and non-DG problems - there are certainly some fuzzy areas in all of them. Please don't dogpile me because I missed one. O_o (not that Infinitron did anything of the kind). My main purpose in posting this was to get people to stop using DG as a joke or sarcastic term and to realize that it is actually a very useful term if done right. Whenever I see "Degenerative Gameplay" I read it "Flawed Incentive Structure", because that's what it means. Some people will try to find exploits no matter what, and you can't do much about those - but I would tend to say that in general, if DG occurs, it is the fault of the designer and not the player. Players should be expected to try to perform optimally - thus if a system requires absurd behavior to perform optimally, it is producing DG.

Uggh.... It's like Phase Spiders...

You're missing a pretty important part of the equation here, though: Incoming damage. By virtue of being a tank, that character will generally take on more enemies. More enemies means more incoming damage. The DT will affect every single one of those incoming attacks, whereas an attack speed increase will only affect that character's damage output. I think you will quickly find that greater DT avoids a hell of a lot more damage to the tank, than an increase in attack speed will affect damage output. Yup.

I've noticed a lot of people really don't like the term "Degenerative Gameplay". I'm really not sure why. You may disagree with how Josh Sawyer uses the term "Degenerative Gameplay" (now DG) sometimes, especially when he's referring to a mechanic or system you don't like... but that doesn't mean the term is flawed. Far from it. DG is an incredibly useful term, because it describes (as I understand it) a situation in which the incentive structure of a game mechanic is flawed. DG, as I've seen it used, describes game mechanics that lead players to take actions that would be absurd or ridiculous within the context of the game world because of metagaming concerns. Rest-spamming is a classic example. A properly designed game reflects the in-universe incentives to the player as game incentives, leading them to act in such a way that the optimal course for the player is similar to or identical to the optimal course for the characters in the game world (if you were reading a story or something). DG occurs when a game mechanic is poorly designed, incentivizing the player to do something that would be absurd within the context of the game world or story. Such as stopping for an 8-hour nap every 5 minutes. Now, obviously you'll never be able to remove all sources of DG from a game as complex as this - but that should be the goal. And I think Josh Sawyer's goal of doing so is admirable. I think he's made some good steps. I also think he's made some missteps. And I think when talking about mechanics that aren't working, we should be careful to distinguish between DG and just mechanics we don't prefer. I'll give a few examples here of some disputed mechanics that are DG, and some that aren't: Disputed mechanics that are not a significant source of Degenerative Gameplay: - If the fighter tanks all the hits, I have to rest with him before all the other characters. This, while maybe not a mechanic everyone is fond of, isn't DG in and of itself. "But Matt," you may say... "when my fighter runs out of health and the rest of the party doesn't, I have to rest every 5 seconds. And that's DG!" Well... sort of. The fact that the current game mechanics encourage rest-spamming is DG - but the fact that this occurs because the fighter taking all the hits loses all his health before the characters who aren't taking hits is not DG - because that makes sense. If a party of adventurers wanders around, and has one guy doing all the close-range fighting and getting hit all the time, of course he will be more wounded than everyone else. So the fact of a tank taking all the hits and causing resting isn't in and of itself DG. The DG in that case (rest-spamming) results from a problem with the Health/Stamina system, which I'll (kind of) go into a little bit later. - Since armor slows you down, there's no point in putting armor on my ranged characters! This is another example of a mechanic that, while maybe poorly balanced atm, isn't actually DG. It makes sense that someone who wants to (for example) fire arrows as fast as possible wouldn't wear armor. Now, maybe there need to be more no-slowdown plain clothes in the game. Maybe the slowdown from armor that exists needs to be reduced. Maybe enemies need to be smarter and attack your ranged characters more often, causing you to have to make a tradeoff. Maybe all of these are true! But the simple fact that characters who want to attack as fast as possible shouldn't wear armor isn't in and of itself a source of DG. That actually makes sense within the game world. The AI issues that don't punish you for that may be though. Fortunately, we've already heard those will be improved. Disputed mechanics that are a significant source of Degenerative Gameplay i.e. bad design i.e. these need to be fixed: - When my fighter is taking a lot of hits, it makes more sense to let him fall than to heal him because of the Health/Stamina system. Oy... This is the biggest one IMO. It makes zero sense that it is a better tactical decision to let someone fall than to heal them. It just doesn't. Right now, the optimal decision for the player when a party member is taking lots of hits is to just let them fall unconscious, because healing them will only result in the loss of more health. The current mechanics incentivize just letting your characters fall unconscious because there is not any penalty for letting them fall. I.. just.... nope. Bad design. Fix it. Now, the fix doesn't need to come in the form of removing the Health/Stamina system. Remember that sources of DG are, at their core, from bad incentive structure. There needs to be an incentive to heal your party members instead of letting them fall. I have a few suggestions for possible solutions. I'll start with the ones that don't involve removing Health/Stamina (which I understand Josh is quite fond of), then move on to a few more radical suggestions: 1) Cause healing spells to heal a small amount of health as well - perhaps 1/6 or 1/8 as much as stamina. And only allow them to be used in combat (i.e. on "recent" wounds). This could make sense lore-wise (combat-only restriction means that only very recent wounds can be healed, which would fit with their lore reasons for no strategic healing) while allowing the player to use healing to somewhat alleviate the issue with frontliners losing all their health. Would also mean that healing is always a good thing - as it should be. 2) Have enemies attack downed characters, doing health damage vs reduced defenses. This would absolutely solve the problem, absolutely make sense (why does a wolf or beetle stop savaging you when you fall, exactly?), and absolutely be very punishing. This could be somewhat alleviated by making it a reduced ratio of health damage (definitely 1/4, maybe even 1/8), and would probably also be smart to only have non-intelligent enemies do this (as wild animals should keep attacking/eating, whereas smart enemies would realize they should move onto another threat). Even if only non-intelligent enemies did this, the DG problem would be fixed - after all, playing dead against a humanoid enemy would be a viable tactic in real life. Just not against everything. 3) Take a wound every time a character falls. minus-whatever to attributes until rest. Not a perfect solution, but it would resolve the incentive issues. 4) And finally (not gonna happen), remove health altogether and allow a certain number of falls before being maimed (dependent on class and talents). This would completely solve the incentive issues, making healing an altogether good thing (as it should be). That's all I've got on the healing DG problem. Josh, pls read. :3 - If I want to find hidden items, I have to walk around in scouting mode all the time. This is just dumb. Walking around in constant scouting mode with the game in fast motion is the optimal way to play right now. And that's stupid. Scouting needs to be overhauled (i.e. with some passive component) or removed. Structuring a game mechanic such that the optimal strategy is to do something absurd is the absolute definition of degenerative gameplay. That's all for now. Thanks for reading!