Shevek

Man, you really need to learn to speak more respectfully. I cannot respect anyone's opinion when they call people retarded, cowards, unskilled, etc. Right now, you have gone from a guy that I kinda thought had some interesting ideas for the game (some which I agreed with and some which I didnt) to a dude that is using this forum to forward his own agenda, promote himself and tear down anyone who disagrees with him. Engagement has its own design goals. It can be fixed to meet its goals within the original game design. That much has become clear. Fyi, all those ridiculous insults of yours against those that defend those goals apply to the folks that designed the system as well. Think about that as you rant and rave.

It really boils down to some folks wanting to move unimpeded and being very willing to slow the movement of enemies using a set of active skills (rather than passively using engagement). This is for gamers that enjoy micromanaging every combat and are more than willing to spend twice as long pausing away through mundane encounters. Some think that would somehow equate into a more tactial overall experience. In other words, they know engagement can be fixed to meet its ends. They just have a fundamental disagreement with those ends. To my mind, its a bit late to get into a disagreement about design goals. And, certainly, having a fundamental shift in design goals and radically redesigning game systems seems like it what be a poor decision and one that quite frankly is advocated by only one subsect of the audience.

It's bad if you have set your expectations for an RPG. If you don't mind an interactive movie with flashy effects, cheesy dialogue and a forced story, where you have a minor role in selecting which lines would characters say and which not (but the general course of events remains the same), that's basically what DA has turned into. Plus horrible controls if you are playing with mouse and keyboard. This is to be expected. Bioware died a while ago. It was a slow death, to be sure, but a death all the same. The exact moment when they gasped their last breath is easy pinpoint.

Lephys: A substantive answer to our posts CANNOT be made because this issue is one of perspective. Situation: Actor A is moving away from Actor B. 1. Some feel the burden should be on Actor B to maintain stickiness. 2. Others feel the burden should be on Actor A to maintain mobility. The game was designed for option two. Nothing I have seen thus far has convinced me that option two cannot work through the engagement system while still allowing mobility to be a viable, if limited, option. In other words, there is no real reason to rip out existing game systems when these systems can be tuned and improved. The notion that they CANNOT be improved is absolutely ridiculous. Some folks are raising a stink because they take issue with core design decisions. Well, its a bit late for all this if you ask me.

*fingers crossed*

Ya, its a bit of a shame. I liked spell sequencers.

Wiki has spell lists and info on animal forms.

http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Pillars_of_Eternity_Wiki That has lots of the answers you want.

So, you just called this guy retarded. You do realize these aren't the Codex forums, right?

So, you think movement should be required and that somehow having to weigh your options is less tactical? If the choice is currently considered a "trap" by some, the solution is NOT to reduce the options that the player must weigh. The solution is not to FORCE them to move. Instead, the solution is modify the mechanic so that it is slightly less punitive and players have to weigh their options so at times moving is worth it to make small, well thought out moves and at others it is not (or even to improve the use of limited engagement breaking mechanics so those that enjoy active and mobile play can use those to achieve their ends). What you are suggesting would not make the game more "tactical" at all. Active ability use is extremely limited (within the context of this discussion). In larger combats one will expend those uses of relevant abilities fairly quickly. This goes for both the enemy and the player. Will the beginning of combat be very still and then devolve into the enemy and players doing the Benny Hill dance as endurance drops and abilities are used up? Will the move to such a system require more use of such abilities? Will the tactics boil down to just weighing whether to snare an enemy or kite it? Is that tactics? Is that in line with what everyone feels combat should look like? Moreover, active use abilities to limit movement require a fair amount of pausing. I just don't want to be on the look out every second of combat to see that an enemy has moved three pixels to the left and that I want to knock them down before they move out of range of my "sticky ability" and butcher my ranged characters or force them to run around until the enemy gets bored. This would make smaller, trash combats absolutely terrible. I just don't see that as terribly fun. Its sounds horribly tedious and not tactical at all. I just dont think that a large body of players sees it as good for the game to do what you suggest and dramatically increase the level of micromanagement. I hear a bunch of empty promises and loaded rhetoric there. I do not see a concrete alternative that would justify ripping out core gameplay mechanic and rebalancing an entire system in the final months of a game's development.

That's a well thought-out explanation but I'm not entirely convinced. Concerning summoning, wizards were the worst summoners in BG. Their first summoning spell was the 3rd level Monster Summoning 1 which spawns such weak creatures that they can only serve as a brief diversion. The entire Monster Summoning line was basically this weak. Mages could summon elementals in BG2 but they were relatively weak (compared to priest summons), had a very long casting delay and a chance of the elemental turning against the wizard so this could only be used pre-battle. So I'm not terribly concerned that wizards are not summoners in PoE as they never were good summoners anyway and PoE tries to do away with pre-battle metagaming mechanics. Absence of utility magic - Fleet Feet, Arcane Dampener, Minor Grimoire Imprint look like valid counterexamples to me. Spell damage - I haven't played the beta much, but based on its description Minoletta's Missiles look more powerful than Magic Missile until character level 5, with a fixed 3 missiles. Jolting touch is basically chain lightning at level 1 - probably not doing a ton of damage but better than anything a level 1 mage could cast in BG. There are lots of AoE spells with damage over time, much more than in BG it seems. Effects like death, petrification; the 6th level Gaze of the Adragan petrifies enemies within the area of effect so it's like a much more powerful version of the 6th level BG petrification. Also "The 6th level Death Ring "potentially destroys those with low stamina" so similar to death spell, more situational but potentially more powerful - could conceivably kill higher level targets. Seems more interesting to me than the all-or-nothing Death Spell. BG had no spells of lower level with such devastating effects. Immunities - high-level immunities led to problematic gameplay in BG2 - basically an obscure rock-paper-scissors dispelling game, I despised it so I welcome less focus on immunities this time around. That said, Arcane Reflection and Minor Arcane Reflection are spell immunity spells and there are several spells that grant effects similar to mirror image or increase defense in some way. All the very interesting spells you mention - Simulacrum, Project Image, Time Stop, Limited Wish, were very high-level spells in BG2 and BG2 was a high-level campaign. PoE is not a high-level campaign, it's more akin to IWD in its reach. There's no reason to expect very high-level spells in PoE. Mages were never that powerful or interesting in low-level D&D, they got ridiculous in high-level D&D and BG2 illustrated that but there's no reason to expect PoE should be anything like BG2 or high-level D&D in regard to its mages. Those are some decent points.

Make everything rebindable. Let people do whatever control scheme they want.

I would be ok with that. That will not impact trash combats at all (since they are short) but will be meaningful in larger encounters. Edit: Also, rather than a health dot on KO, you could just hit the character with a chunk of health damage (that might be easier to implement). Like, a player gets KO'd so they get hit with a one time hit to health equal to 10 or 15% of the max right off the bat.

"Only cares." No.

Well, maybe I like having enemy movement punished too. I dont like having them prance around my tank as if he wasnt there. I dont want every fight to be in a doorway. With the changes you propose, come changes to enemy AI. I dont think many of us want additional crap to do to stop the a wild pack of beetles (or any other trash mobs) from ping ponging around the battlefield and butchering my party.

Then you have some disagreement with BOTH developers and a sizable plurality of us who think the engagement mechanic makes sense. Moreover, no one has said anything is "needed." However, if one were to strip away everything that wasn't "needed" we would just play pong. It helps drive combat and it is linked to both AI and character development.

I love that neutral language you are using there. Way to presume positive intentions and put the issue first. Anyways, I just don't think that you are really keeping the concerns of others in mind when you make your recommendations. Again, I do not mind effort and tactical thought in large combat set pieces but the IE games themselves were not set up to have long tactical encounters for every trash combat. Frankly, I do not think that when you are making these suggestions that you are speaking to the concerns of many forum goers who may not with to get into a chess match over killing every single random insect they stumble across in this game. Would isometric freeze tag be fundamentally better? I just don't think it has been demonstrably shown that pausing every two seconds and running in circles while popping potions is actually better. I don't think exploiting idiotic AI to block incoming enemies with other party members and watching them stand idle for a few seconds while the AI figures it should switch targets is partticularly deep gameplay. How is it less boring to pause 20x more in trash combats when you already know you are going to beat them? Look, we all know where the money is in IE combat. Its in fighting those big, memorable encounters than occur a handful of times throughout the game. Those are what need to feel good, require thought and be engaging. The other combats minus well be short so we can enjoy the story and feel powerful as we gear up for those encounters. PoE at least gives some value to the trash encounters by having them widdle down party health and resources. This gives them additional value that IE trash combats did not have thanks to rest abuse. I do not see your position all that different. You have stated numerous times that you "will not accept" a system of free attacks. You have quoted other RTS titles and looked to history rather than the reality of this titles, its goals and where it can go. In other words.. Pot. Kettle. Black. In most IE combat, I didn't need to either. Again, we have to remember what we are talking about here. This is just good ole trash combat. The IE games were like 80-90% trash combat that required little more than select all attack. If you truly want to stick with the IE formula and combat is such a big deal there, why do you want more micro in every combat? Speak for yourself but don't ignore those around you. Like you I listen and speak but you fail to understand that the burden of proof lies on you. You are asking to change a game system and, ultimately, to make the game more focused on micro managing and pausing in trash combat than the IE games. You are going counter the design of this game and the design principles of the game series that inspired it. I guess I would say, listen to yourselves. Well, I will wait on hearing what the devs have to say about that process and pipeline. That was a bit ago. We are a little late in the game to start playing around by removing entire fundamental mechanics from something as central as combat. Also, there has been no hard data to prove that the system CANNOT be made to work. It is currently working with certain playstyles and players are able to interact with all content with it implemented. The notion that it cannot be made to work for other players is far too absolute to be true. I love this confrontational argument style you have. In any case, I don't consider my style abusive but I can see how you would think that. I also think similar claims could be made to running around doing cartwheels and sprints in combat...ignoring all the pointy swords... as you run about turning your backs on enemies. This is all perspective. I just feel that more upfront combat is a bit more true to life. Also, we can argu about tactics and reacts until we are blue in the face. However, the IE games were not a feast for the tactical senses in all its trash combats. I do think that unrestricted movement in a combat zone is not particularly good design. I get that some may enjoy it. However, for someone who is arguing about design principles of the game, you yourself should know that unrestricted movement in combat is very much against the stated design principles of this game.

I don't need to pause due to engagement. How will the proposed solution being discussed here continue to allow stickiness while not increasing pausing for my playstyle? What if I don't want to react to keep the enemy sticky? I like that engagement takes care of that for me. The combat is good for me right now. So, I don't see any universal logic in this statement. Again, you are making assorted judgements here and attempting to overgeneralize them. First you say combat isnt very good. It plays just fine on my end and plenty of folks can play through the Beta just fine so long as some bug doesnt mess up a save or something. Second, you claim that engagement (not spell design or encounter design or the undergearing of beta characters or anything else) is to blame. You even make the EXTREMELY HYPERBOLIC assertion that a single game mechanic is SABOTAGING a game. If the game were SABOTAGED, it would be unplayable. However, it is very playable in its current state. Finally, the removal of any system as pervasive as engagement is very much a BAD IDEA. Game development isnt like changing a tire. This isnt taking off the Goodyear and just slipping on a Firestone. If engagement is removed, they have to rework the AI and a host of talents/abilities. Again, this is a foolhardy thing to consider. You are stating this from your play experience in beta. This is skewed. In beta, they drop you in the middle of act 2 with a large party. Starting at level 1 with a smaller party against weak act 1 enemies will afford new players plenty of time to learn the ropes before they reach where we are in beta now. If designed well, these early levels can easily inform players how to succeed in combat. Again, you are claiming these mechanics are bad. Again, that is a subjective value judgement. You are also stating that bad mechanics need to be removed. This is incorrect. Mechanics can be adjusted if need be. Removal is a terrible option. Additional, the term "bad mechanic" is extremely loaded. You might find fault in the implementation but to say the mechanic is bad is a terribly manipulative way to describe this situation. I do not believe this statement to be correct. I doubt programming game mechanics simplyboils down to CTRL+C and CTRL+V. Moreover, I do not see engagement as a huge risk. AoO's are not new. This is a gross over simplification that totally ignores the current state of the game at present.

Melee stickiness through abilities would most likely add additional micro management and pausing to the game. Is that something folks really want? How many of us want to pause more as we battle the ever antagonistic beetle? And, for what? The game is playable now and will only get better as game systems are improved. I for one really like the idea of the engagement system. It doesnt not hamstring me in the current implementation and I am sure that any issues some have with it could be resolved through adding some kinda engagement attack cooldown or lowering damage on those attacks a bit, etc. In any case, we are not serving this forum community or the game in general by demanding the surgical removal of game mechanics that we will not accept on principle or some such foolishness. Listen we all have parts of the game that we may personally not 100% enjoy or philosophically agree with. I and some others would like combat xp but I am happy the devs listened and at least worked in some beastiary xp. Similarly, I would like 15 or more skills rather than 5. It is a bit late for that but I trust that they will work to improve their current implementation. I also would love magic to be more magical. Still, I know they have their design goals and they are making this game for more than just one subset of this forum. We all may not be thrilled with engagement. Some like the idea but others do not. The reality is it is a mechanic we have. Why dont we work as a community to help OE improve whats there rather than start some foolish dust up to rip systems out? What will they do with engagement related abilities or the current AI if they opt for removal? What of these new abilities? What if the new systems some are calling for are more troubled than what they removed? OE is not dumb. They arent about to jeopardize their game (or, at least, I hope they wont) by ripping out a fundamental gameplay system due to griping from folks in a backer beta forum playing an incomplete version of the game. They certainly shouldnt even consider that as we move ever closer to release.

1. I understand and appreciate those points. In the video I comment that I dislike that fighters (or monks) are needed to "tank." That being said both a fighter and a monk are joinable npcs. Also, I think the paladin would make a respectable tank if they pick up the modal that gives them some deflection and they pick up weapon/shield style (especially with LoH). The paladin is another joinable npc, btw. Any of those can serve as a party tank or, of course, a player made character. 2. Basically, the game gives you options when it comes to party members and talents to deal with its challenges. 3. I actually don't think you have to use these strategies to beat hard either. I was just showing that their are ways to play without excessive micro on hard. As an aside, I was hoping more classes could fill this kind of role. OE claimed that classes would be a bit more flexible. That is not the fault of core combat mechanics tho. It is an issue with character development.

I do think lore would be nice if characters with the lore skill got small, passive offensive bonuses (defensive bonuses would have less utility at range) against beastiary enemies that are fully or partially unlocked. A sort of "know your enemy" thing. The higher the skill and the more the bestiary is unlocked for the enemy, the higher the bonus (but never a super dramatic increase). This way everyone would benefit from it. Just like everyone benefits from athletics, survival and, theoretically, stealth. Mechanics still is only good on one character.

You may think that since the only words you pay attention to on these forums are your own.

Then use the search engine.

For me, one tactic makes both gamist and simulationist sense and the other is a circus act. Still, if you want to play a game of freeze tag in the middle of combat, the IE games will always be there for you.

You would think the point wouldn't have to be made but I kept seeing posts about excessive micro on mundane encounters, so... I didn't use a druid. If you make a Barb, the rest of the classes I used I think will be available as companions. I actually wanted to use a Paladin (which will be available as a companion) instead of Barb but Pally auras are broken (imagine him with zealous focus + savage attack, maybe with the one handed fencing style for more accuracy/cool looks, hehe). Also, you may not have total control over how npcs are built but you should get them in Act 1, I think. They should be in levels 1&2 (maybe 3), so you will have lots of control over how to build them up even if you can't 100% min/max the stats. I don't think you have to be an experienced hardcore munchkin to make a successful PoE party. Still, the video was on Hard which is supposed to be for IE veterans (according to in game descriptions). On easy or normal, you can play that way without optimal builds.