Shevek

It does feel bland. I cant think of one instance where I would pick a ranger. To me, the pet is a liability and space on the frontline is limited. Basically, in my front line, i have space for 3 melee guys (1 of which is using a reach weapon) so it doesnt get too crowded in hallways. Why would i give one of those spots to a rangers pet? I am not sure what can be done about how unexciting the class is though.

Ya, rangers and that shared health thing is an issue.

I want to respond to this: "a tanking Fighter being absolutely mandatory at this point" No its not. I ran with a dps fighter, paladin, melee chanter, ranged rogue, cipher and a priest. I did not need a single shield or defender stance to kill everything in the beta.

Ya but as dps. The Paladin was actually better at soaking up dmg than the dps fighter due to passive bonuses and the accuracy aura made killing much faster for all. I like paladins alot - very useful with LoH. If they make the other aura selectable earlier i can see two paladins as being a valid choice (though I would stick with a paladin, dps fighter, chanter frontline). I probably could have subbed the fighter with a rogue and had been fine but I like the knockdown+guardian stance. I do think barbs need some love but they are still interesting. You should try a custom party. Classes are feeling pretty good overall.

Well, I did a play through with no defender mode and no shield user. It was enjoyable. I didnt tank as well but i killed things faster. My adventuring day was about the same since dmg was spread around my melee guys.

Thats true. The other day I played up through the Vale of Shadows up to the temple of the Forgotten God in IWD:EE just to remember the early game a bit more (on highest difficulty). I had an Inquistor, an un-nerfed Cleric/Ranger, a Gnomish Fighter/Thief (Helm of Trusted Defender!), an Archer and a Cleric/Illusionist. It was pretty much select all attack but I did get into some dicey situations early on. I single pulled once in a while and at others I just went in. The game loved to throw numbers at you. Many many skeletons, goblins, etc. Still, they still felt like trash encounters to me. I like them though.

Well, lol, this would be a separate discussion and I would hate to derail the thread over it. I can see what you are saying but, honestly, even old PnP modules have trash encounters in them. We can argue over their value, I guess. I enjoy them but I totally respect that you don't.

I prefer the dungeon crawl spaces to have less trash and more tier 2/tier 3 encounters like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep. Those all had a few trash fights but were mostly harder than the bears, gibberlings, bandits and gnolls populating the world outside. That makes them were you go for the tough set piece stuff and insures people of all skill levels can happily follow the critical path while wading through many tier 1 encounters (and occaisonal tier 2/3). Thats pretty much how the IE games did it anyways. You wanted a challenge, you went to go butcher a dragon or whatever. Edit: That isn't to say that the percentage of tier 1 encounters shouldn't drastically be reduced as the difficulty level increases, btw. This is what PoE is trying to do with the adding of difficult enemies by difficulty I think. Edit 2: If I am missing some of what you are saying, my apologies. I am ninja posting from work. So I am only quickly reading through forum posts.

The need for trash encounters is indeed debatable. I like them but I understand why you dont. They were, however, prolific in 90s/early 2000s era rpgs (both the IE games and even the Fallouts, etc). Even ToEE had trash random encounters.

@Captain Shrek I am of the opinion that encounters for a game like this should be tiered. Tier 1 is a standard trash encounter that may widdle down party resources (Health) but requires little more than SelectAll+Attack or similar such tactics with very minimal skill use if the party is built for passive play. Tier 2 may be either a large group of weak enemies or a smaller group of skilled enemies. Here some skill use may be needed against troublesome enemies or when the RNG just doesn't roll your way. These encounters would more dramatically impact party resources (Health + ability use). A Tier 3 encounter is a tough encounter. This could happen dynamically as a wandering group joins a static group mid combat or a set piece encounter at the end of a dungeon, etc. This is where you may consider resting prior to fighting (if possible) and painstakingly using a set of abilities, etc. To make these encounters interesting, they really need to differentiate enemies. I think the engagement system affords an opportunity to help with that. Look at the design of the Monk class. With abilities like Flaggelants's Path, Rooting Pain, Stunning Blow and so on, that class is designed to disengage itself rather readily. What if select ENEMIES were designed this way. What if to differentiate encounters of various tiers select skilled enemies could be designed to have similar abilities. What if the elder wolves you meet in Dyrwood know down the tank and went for the lowest armored character in view? The key, I think, is to leave Tier 1 encounters nice and easy but pepper more Tier 2 encounters with a few enemies as described above more liberally throughout the map. To make combat more fun in general, I think the disengagement abilities need to be a bit easier to pull off (instant, more effective/numerous, etc) and maybe look at adding a cooldown or some such to disengagement attacks themselves. These are not particularly difficult fixes, I think, but the devs would know better.

I think Sensuki deserves a lot of credit for finding these abuses. His efforts will, one way or another, improve the game. I do believe that AI can be adjusted to close in on Player Characters with greater care, however. Essentially, when giving chase, enemies could change targets to nearest PC as they close to avoid being eviscerated by engagement attacks (maybe even having close range lunging attacks on certain enemies to aid this). After such a fix, I am sure that a similar exploit could still be executed via shuffling units about but that will require significant player input and would be no more of an exploit than the MANY ways to trivialize combat in the IE games. Basically, if the exploit is tedious to pull off, I say let the player do it. If its a simple thing to do (positioning and a couple mouse clicks), then it needs to be curbed. I will say that if AI cannot be altered to ensure enemies give chase in a smarter manner (or maybe even outfit more enemies with switchable ranged attacks), then I will join Sensuki in saying engagement should go. There is no way you should be able to so easily set up casual ambushes. I just don't think that is a difficult issue to fix however. I really can't wait till Sensuki posts his videos and the devs, hopefully, respond.

I think I see what you are saying. I just think that kinda seems like achieving stickiness by implementing what seems like bad AI. Maybe I am missing somthing and if so, I apologize.

The visuals stuff I am all for. Mechanically, I like the Zone of Control idea. I have been advocating a minor snare for a while and I like the idea of not penalizing the player for "five foot steps" as it were. I also like the idea of giving engagement attacks an internal cooldown. I am not sure about the other mechanical changes though. I really think visual feedback and the above two mechanical changes is more than enough. The other changes are extraneus and can introduce a host of issues.

I think he means his fixes. If so, it should read, "do you believe these fixes should be applied to the current implementation?" Edit: A better poll would have been a set of checkboxes where people could vote on specific fixes he proposed (and be able to pick more than one) so we could see which ones draw the most support.

FYI, alot of folks have been saying how fighters are too inflexible build wise (myself included) but I just did a moderately successful playthrough with a dual wielding dps fighter in the party. No shield. No defender stance. I just went for guardian stance towards the end and dps abilities (confident aim, etc) early on. It was a worthy edition to the party - basically a DPS offtank than can knock crap down and give deflection bonuses to other melee that is really close by. I prefer it to a barbarian. Having no dedicated tank meant I had to play slightly more active but it wasnt too bad. I had both a Paladin and a Priest, so tossing out an occasional per encounter heal wasn't too tedious. Anywho, I would like to see guardian stance available earlier so players can choose between that and defender stance early on. As an aside, I would made a similar suggestion for the paladin. It would be nice if Zealous Endurance were available earlier so players can choose between that or Zealous Focus early on. Making these alternative stances/auras available earlier would also make it more viable for parties to have two paladins or two fighters in the party.

Not so, Paladin Aura and Cautious Attack work together. Edit: I am pretty sure they are supposed to work together. I think it has something to do with the Chanter Song enabling itself when combat starts.

Is the Chanter Song and Cautious Attack meant to be mutually exclusive? A couple of times I noticed than when my Chanter starts singing, Cautious attack stops working. Anyone else experience this?

They dont like AoOs and prefer mobility to be the norm to allow for what they perceive as easy tactical repositioning. It is an issue of perspective. If is A is moving from B, who should the burden of action fall on? Should A work to achieve mobility or should B work to maintain the current encounter position? Engagement is built such that mobility is achievable but must be worked toward (the efficacy of disengagement tactics being up for debate).

I dont doubt that there are minor issues with the implementation that a rare few know how to abuse. That being said that is a single problem with the mechanic. Does it stand to reason that an entire mechanic should be removed rather than addressing a handful of abuses? Is engagement so open to this sort of abuse that it must be removed? Are the devs completely incapable of addressing these issues in a timely manner? Nothing I have seen suggests that. If the devs took the axe to every feature or ability that someone had abused up to this point, this game would be streamlined down to Guantlet.

Both linear and nonlinear designs have merits. I will say my favorite part of BG2 was the beginning when I could just roam around and do quests and pick up NPCs in whatever order I saw fit. Every time I replay the game, that is always the section I enjoy the most. After that, game feels like it drags a bit. As far as endings, I like the Fallout slideshow of consequences.

Ya, maybe its like Kubrik or Lynch movie. I makes sense if you are sufficiently loaded.

Uh huh, I dont hear an argument. I hear nonsense.

Lol, you claim to want great AI and then you so say no great AI is not possible. Blah blah blah. Your tripping over yourself, man.

Or you can have engagement and give certain skilled enemies (in set piece encounters or in a few tough trash encounters) the same engagement breaking abilities/tactics as the player (knockdowns, stuns, etc). That would give encounter design an added dimension and help differentiate encounters/enemies. You can have dynamic set piece encounters and casual friendly trash encounters. Engagement has the possibility of adding quite a bit to the palatte OE can paint with when crafting this game. Or we can throw the baby out with bathwater and go back to funneling all enemies through doors.

@Falkon Ive been trying to figure out the unity editor (I want to start on some mods). This is much harder than editting the dialog.tlk, some bams and 2da files, lol.