Matt516

What you mean is, of course, you've never encountered a system that deviated further from D&D norm than maybe renaming a stat to something else, or adding in a stat for a unique mechanic. Dragon Age 2's system is only superior in your eyes because it's closer to D&D. Unlike D&D /= unintuitive. And I'm thinking most people coming in from less D&D-inspired games will take one look at Might, read the description, and go "okay, I can work with this" instead of "where's my strength stat?" This is the big thing I don't think people are getting. D&D basically defined the western RPG. The only reason we thing STR, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA are core to any RPG attribute system is that every single game we've ever seen has done it or a variation. Sometimes DEX is split into DEX and AGI. Sometimes there's WIL replacing or in addition to WIS. But really.. think about it. Pretty much every western RPG you've ever played has owed it's attribute system to D&D. It's a testament to how great D&D's attribute system was. But that doesn't mean it's the only good one. I personally find the world OE is building to be very compelling. The way they're implementing the concept of the soul into the lore and the mechanics alike is pretty cool. And although their stat system may be unintuitive to those raised on a D&D derived stat system, it isn't bad. Try not to compare it to D&D, but instead to a story you might read. Can you imagine a world in which people with strong souls were just.. stronger? At fighting, magic, healing.. at anything? It's unintuitive to us, sure. But that doesn't mean it's bad. I think it's a fascinating system, and I really hope they don't cave to pressure and change it. Balance it, sure. The stats need some serious balancing. But I'd be very sad if Might went away and was replaced by Strength and (something else). I want to see how this attribute system plays out.

I'd be ok with quests failing - but not if you get no experience. Characters gotta grow somehow. I think the big push seems to be for objective-based experience, which seems like a happy medium between combat xp and quest xp.

Yeah. Hopefully they'll solve the issue with INT soon though. Because disincentivizing it like that is really just ridiculous.

Here's a link to a (non Beta-specific) post I made about a new system for utilizing INT bonuses for AoE abilities. Would love some feedback. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67742-how-to-solve-the-aoe-problem-while-making-the-int-stat-more-compelling-and-int-characters-smarter/

Here's a link to a (non Beta-specific) post I made about a new system for utilizing INT bonuses for AoE abilities. Would love some feedback. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67742-how-to-solve-the-aoe-problem-while-making-the-int-stat-more-compelling-and-int-characters-smarter/

I personally like the Might attribute. The bonuses might need to be tuned, but I don't have any problem with one attribute controlling damage for everything. It's certainly untraditional, but just because it isn't D&D doesn't mean it's not bad.

Hello all. As you probably know, there is currently a problem with area-of-effect abilities and INT - namely that the inability to adjust the AoE of certain abilities can actually be a disadvantage instead of an advantage. With really high INT, you sometimes end up in situations where you are hitting yourself with a negative AoE spell. This disincentivizes INT as an attribute - and disincentivizing an attribute is never a good idea when building RPG systems. Some have proposed a system in which AoE is adjustable. This is a great idea. And it seems obvious that they'll have to implement it at some point if they don't want to completely gimp certain INT builds (fireball that kills the entire party? anyone? ). But I'd like to go further. What's the point of an INT-based character, anyway? From both a thematic and a mechanical perspective, an INT focused character should be able to tactically control the battlefield through intelligent use of abilities. An adjustable AoE would support this goal from both a thematic and mechanical perspective - but why not give the character (and player) even more choice? I propose a system in which the AoE of abilities is adjustable... but when you increase the AoE, the duration decreases (boo!).... and when you decrease the AoE, the duration increases (what? ). Basically, there would be a discrete number of distributions (equal to your INT) that you could adjust on the fly (with mouse wheel while targeting, for example). At one end of the spectrum, you are applying your entire INT bonus to increasing the duration, and at the other end of the spectrum you are applying your entire INT bonus to increasing the AoE. Obviously if the ability has no AoE, the duration is just maximum and if the ability has no duration the AoE is still adjustable. This would take the tactics of AoE control abilities to an entirely new level. With a merely adjustable AoE, you're just adjusting the AoE to get the maximum ability coverage without hitting your own people. But with a sliding scale of applying your INT bonus to either AoE OR duration, we've achieved the ultimate in INT character decision-making - a system in which the intelligent character is able to masterfully adjust their abilities to fit the tactical situation, weighing the pros and cons of a battlefield-blanketing minor stun vs an incredibly powerful small area stun (for example). I've attached a link to a spreadsheet with some more information and the ability to try out some different curves for bonus values (since obviously the numerical values of the bonuses would have to be adjusted if this were implemented). Unfortunately the forum wouldn't let me upload it. :/ Link here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity%20INT%20fix.xlsx Older versions of Excel: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity%20INT%20fix.xls Thanks for reading! It would make my day to get a dev response on this (even if it's just "that would be cool but we don't want to do it").

I paid for d20 based game just like Torment,BG and IWD as was advertised in the kickstart not for this mess.If you read the combat rules, you'll see that PoE is indeed a "d20 game" in the sense that it uses d20 rolls to calculate hit chances, etc. Unless you meant a "D&D game", which is completely different and not what was advertised. :3 EDIT: Oops. Mods, feel free to delete this duplicate post.

I paid for d20 based game just like Torment,BG and IWD as was advertised in the kickstart not for this mess. If you read the combat rules, you'll see that PoE is indeed a "d20 game" in the sense that it uses d20 rolls to calculate hit chances, etc. Unless you meant a "D&D game", which is completely different and not what was advertised. :3

Although I would personally prefer if it was not tied to stats or skills as in both those games. Should just be something you can do.

Let us write our own scripts. See Dragon Age Origins and Final Fantasy 12 for examples of well implemented player scripting for NPCs.

I believe I have noticed this happening without toggling it on - however, I may have toggled it on using S since I've accidentally tried to scroll with WASD a few times. Will update if it is indeed happening without being turned on. That said, it would be nice to have some feedback when slow motion mode is turned on.

Commenting to remind myself to do the math on exactly how much DEX increases your expected dps (will edit after work). The long and the short of it though is that 1 point of DEX equates (in general) to a 1% increased chance to crit, and a 1% decreased chance to miss. Graze and hit chances stay the same unless you move past 5 points difference, in which case crit or miss chance is at 0 and either graze or hit chance starts decreasing instead. Like I said, I'll crunch the numbers.. My hunch is that each point of Might equates to a higher expected dps increase though. In which case the devs will need to decide if they want that to be true or not.

Seconded on not limiting as many (or any) monk abilities to weapons. It's the unarmed specialist class, for goodness' sake. You're already giving up weapon enchantments by going unarmed - why should you have to give up your bread and butter abilities (i.e. Stunning Blow) as well?

Yeah I think we really have to wait for the combat sounds, feedback, UI, etc to be in a better state before making big sweeping statements about this or that combat mechanic and how it doesn't do anything.

Was just about to post on this, performed a quick search, and voila! Good job. On a side note, it would be great if the forum "flood control" on searching was disabled. Don't know how you could flood the forum by searching a lot but it certainly makes it difficult to iteratively search for a specific bug when you have to wait 15 seconds between each search. :/

Hmm. I'll see how it behaves once they say they've fixed the movement and AI issues. There are so many bugs in the Beta build right now that it's really hard to diagnose what's going on or figure out the game mechanics.. :/

You're right, a lower damage weapon would get less flat damage from the percentage increase. But why were you using that lower damage weapon in the first place? Presumably, it attacked faster. If we take two weapons: one low damage with high attack speed, and one high damage with low attack speed - but both having the same DPS? Then a percentage increase will affect the DPS of both weapons in the same way. All other things equal, the percentage increase does not favor any weapon types when you look at it from a DPS perspective (which is the only sensible way to look at it). Now, with armor and damage reduction.... there may be an argument to be made that the higher damage weapon benefits more because less attacks total = less chances for the armor to reduce damage. But I'm not 100% clear on how armor is implemented in PoE so I don't want to make big statements about it.

While your suggestions are usually quite stellar, Sensuki, I think you're off base here. Percentage damage increase is actually the only way to make damage bonuses not favor one weapon style or the other. Flat damage increases will seriously favor any weapon that strikes more.

PrimeJunta, I think you've got it completely right. The only point of customizable stats is to allow variety, and if any given character archetype must have certain stats to be effective, there's no point in even having stats.

That is how I would expect it to work, but from what I've seen in the documentation that's been released so far and in my limited play, I haven't noticed disengagement attacks. Characters just seem to be unable to leave engagement. I can't link the page while I'm on mobile, but I think it's in the backer beta how to play section that they say characters are not able to leave engagement once engaged without using a special escape.

Great suggestions. I think there's definitely some need for the attributes to be reworked, and I'm a fan of a lot of your suggestions.

So.. I fully understand the concept of melee engagement, and I like it a lot. What I'm not quite clear on is why it has been implemented NOT with the traditional "attack-of-opportunity" implementation, but instead a "cannot leave without special abilities" implementation. Is there some reason for this? I sort of understand the mechanical reason for it (allowing frontliners to CC enemies) but I'm not clear on the rationale... if you're fighting with someone, nothing's stopping you from running away except the fact that you'll be turning your back on them (hence the traditional "attack-of-opportunity").

Hello all. I love the reputation system. It's fantastic. Obsidian's decision to have dialogue options in most conversations that have different ways of saying (essentially) the same thing isn't new. The IE games had that kind of thing all the time for flavor. What I absolutely love is Obsidian's decision to attach role-playing mechanics to these previously-just-for-flavor dialogue choices. Now if you go around acting like an aggressive ass all the time, people will remember you as one. It's great. What I don't love is the fact that the dialogue options not only tell you which type of reputation each option will increase (a must-have for player clarity in my opinion), but how severe the reputation increase is. So you'll see something like [Aggressive - Minor] next to a dialogue choice. This is a bit too much information, in my opinion. It changes what was previously a brilliant marriage of role-playing choices and mechanics into a mechanically-driven decision. Now obviously the presence of this severity indicator doesn't ACTUALLY keep someone from role-playing with their choices - but in my opinion it breaks the immersion. Instead of being like "oh, I can be aggressive here, or I could try to be clever" the player goes "hmm, do I want a minor aggression reputation increase, or a minor cleverness reputation increase?". I'd love it if this severity indicator was removed or (even better) a toggleable option in the options menu. That way people could choose if they wanted to see it or not. That's my $0.02. Thanks for reading!

That said - completely divorcing health and stamina seems like a bad idea IMO. The reason being that I honestly cannot conceive of a character who would have high health and low stamina from a roleplaying perspective. I can, however, conceive of a character who has high stamina and low health - what if stamina was tied both to CON and RES? Make stamina a certain percentage of health, and let that percentage go up with RES. That way you could have characters who are just beefy in general, but also have characters who are physically weak but have the resolve to fight on.