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  1. Typed Pillars of Eternity into Google News for the heck of it and found this great preview. These guys liked the beta, and they voice a lot of the same concerns we have. On the lack of combat XP (argue about it here, not in this thread): This debate already has a thread so I'm not going to touch the quote, just wanted to share their view. On pause-and-play vs. turn-based battles: This point deserves some serious debate--arguably more so than the XP thread. Granted, selection circles no longer overlap, but that hardly dilutes the argument. For my part, I agree that turn-based combat would solve the issue. I'd be fine with a well-implemented system, so don't count me among the "purist" backers; fun trumps purity any day. However, realtime-with-pause can work. The missing ingredient is AI scripts. Imagine playing an IE game without any basic scripts whatsoever, and clearing out a mob of baddies. Suddenly the micromanagement involved becomes more akin to the PoE beta. Realtime-witth-pause worked in the IE games because you could delegate no-brainer behavior, such as having your ranged character keep their distance or having a barbarian auto-engage their nearest enemy. Going up against a bunch of goblins requried a lot fewer clicks than tactically taking down a dragon. That's how it should be. Without any sort of scripting, I think I'll be spending more time in pause mode than out of it, and will miss the balanced flow of IE-era battles.
  2. I'm having a bit of trouble with the asynchronous nature of combat. This is not a problem for standard attacks, but certainly makes spells and abilities unwieldy. Even with a cleric and wizard standing idle naked in reserve, they often do not have enough time to appropriately respond or apply spells both offensively and defensively. Add the necessity of armor with their own standard attacks, and it's almost as if they are acting independently of the battle conditions. The shifting melee contributes to a high degree of misses, since spells need to be cast at the edge of their periphery to avoid friendly fire. Action and equipment delays regularly necessitate a healing spell to be cast at the first sign of damage or risk it being cast on a corpse. Having each actor on their own unique time-sequence with the added potential for each to be altered by interruption and movement, the exact nature of the problem is difficult to discern. The experience is reminiscent of solving multivariable calculus. If I were to guess, I would wager that the problem is with the standardized cool-down and use speed of spells/abilities. I think that they too will need some variation--likely based on spell level and attribute scores rather than weapon type. To reiterate, I'm not sure. I'm just wondering if this is a problem for others, and what their thoughts might be.
  3. Hello all, Only played a little bit of the new build, but from what I've seen it's vastly improved. Gives me a good deal of hope that they've made this much progress in 2 weeks. Combat and combat feedback have been improved... but something really has to be done about that log. Show less (especially regen), smaller font, better color coding, I dunno. But something really has to be done. It's far too chaotic at the moment to be useful. That's all. It's not really a bug, just an improvement that needs to be made.
  4. Old thread. In the red corner, we have people who want to stick with the tradition of Infinity Engine games. Over in the blue corner, the wide eyed idealists who want fair XP distribution for all players regardless of playstyle. And apparently there's a few people who lept in and started painting another corner yellow advocating for learn-by-doing. Still have plenty of corners in this ring, it's not a triangle. So give your feedback. But I want a nice clean discussion, no low blows or personal attacks.
  5. Ok... here's the thing.... I really, really do not like the interrupt mechanic as currently implemented. Not as something that can happen from any attack. Interrupting spells in the process of casting - fine. Interrupting attacks, but using a spell or ability - fine. But this whole "any attack can interrupt any action" mechanic? Nuh-uh. Nope. Bad mechanic. And here's why, from a game design standpoint. Interrupt, as currently implemented adds RNG to battle, but in a really unpredictable way that is hard to anticipate. Good, rewarding mechanics are all about giving the player various tools to make intelligent decisions with. Making an intelligent decision about interrupt is extremely, extremely difficult. As I've gone into more detail about here: (http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67761-dps-vs-accuracy-deflection-heres-the-maths-enjoy/?p=1493755), actually figuring out how interrupt affects your effectiveness in combat is highly nontrivial. Interrupt (and by extension the current version of RES/PER) is extremely difficult for a player to place a value on, which means that any build choices regarding interrupt aren't because the player knows what they're trading off, but more based on a qualitative "feel" for which they like better. And don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking qualitative feels. Despite what my math-focused posts may lead you to believe, I am not a powergamer or a min/maxer. I like doing the math and knowing what my choices are, but I rarely derive any enjoyment from simply choosing the most optimal thing. I like to RP in CRPGs, and my choices about stats and abilities and weapons and armor are often affected by that. So don't misinterpret me here - I'm a fan of qualitative choices. And many players are. But that's no excuse for bad design. Even if a player wants to make a choice based on what they qualitatively prefer or find more fun, that doesn't mean they shouldn't also have the tools to know what the implications of their decisions are. So to summarize - I think interrupt (as currently implemented with anything able to interrupt anything) is a bad mechanic. I think the game would be better without it. What do you think? And to round off my argument with the final nail in my web of logic and reasoning... Boo interrupt. PS - Remember that it's still early enough to potentially make large changes to the mechanics. And while I don't think interrupt ruins the game or anything, I think it would be undeniably better without it (at least without the current implementation.) If people agree with me, maybe OE will see it and think about improving it. If not, then OE doesn't need to change anything because the majority of their testers don't care.
  6. I've noticed some people asking about how much damage increase a point of Accuracy is worth. I've also noticed some people making incorrect arguments based on incorrect information. So I figured "Hey, I'm an engineer. I'll do some maths." So I did. Here's the maths. It's a plot of your average dps (relative to the base damage) versus your accuracy. Calculated using the rules given in the wiki for combat rolls as of today. . This can be used (among other things) to tell when (if anywhere - hint, it's nowhere) DEX gives you more damage than MIG. Summary below: Accuracy/Deflection within 5 points: Marginal gain/loss for 1 Accuracy: 1.5% dps (relative to base dmg) Accuracy/Deflection within 5-45 points: Marginal gain/loss for 1 Accuracy: 1% dps (relative to base dmg) Accuracy/Deflection outside 45 points: Marginal gain/loss for 1 Accuracy: 0.5% dps (relative to base dmg) There are the numbers. All other things being equal, the Accuracy bonus from DEX always gives you less dps increase than the damage bonus from MIG. When fighting enemies with Deflection much higher or lower than your Accuracy, each 2 points of Accuracy is equivalent to 1 point of MIG (where dps is concerned, that is. dps isn't everything of course). Please take this math into account when making arguments about stats, power, the value of inherent Accuracy bonuses (boni?), the value of DEX relative to MIG, etc. I'm done mathing for tonight. Peace. PS - Source file for doing your own maths: New Excel: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity%20DPS%20calc.xlsx Old Excel: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity%20DPS%20calc.xls EDIT: A quick note about why DEX, while giving less damage than MIG, isn't unilaterally inferior to it. DEX affects Reflex save instead of Fort save. This lets you dodge AoE attacks. Also, the % increases in dps I've calculated also apply to spell/ability duration increases/decreases on graze/crit, which aren't affected by MIG at all as far as I know. So for scripted interactions that take DEX, characters who want to dodge AoE attacks, and characters who are more interested in getting long duration abilities/spells by critting with them, DEX is better. There may also be one-off abilities/passives that give bonuses from DEX as well - I'd imagine the rogue will have some.
  7. I´d like to be able to put the Combat log, quest log, character information, inventory and such and drag it over to my second monitor. (like playing the game in window mode and placing the info tabs on the other monitor) This might not be possible with the current engine? ,but maybe on a stand alone application? This might not be possible but I'd sure love to see more advanced options like this. What crazy dream features would you guys have liked to see in the game? PS: This game will look awesome on a 4K monitor
  8. As it stands right now in the bb 257 I find combat too cluttered/chaotic to be playable. Being able to rotate the camera view would be extremely helpful but so would making clicking or moving the cursor over a character/enemy's health bar select/give info on the object/character. The health bars seem to find a way to be seen unlike the actual character, and if you could highlight the selected character then combat would be considerably less chaotic.
  9. In Project Eternity Update #12: Reddit Q&A with Tim Cain, Tim mentioned that there would be an option that would auto-pause when a character had a new ability or action they can do, basically when the characters next 'turn' starts. Currently we have a lot of pause options but there isn't really one equivalent to this one, which I think would be the most useful one there is. I am just throwing it out there because I don't want it to be missed as I find it extremely important. For reference at about 5:25 seconds : http://youtu.be/1Uyzap5FcgI?t=5m25s
  10. When using skills, draw an arrow from caster to target. Like in this image from Dota 2. It can be improved upon from Dota - if cast target is so far away you need to move, make the target cursor or arrow yellow. If moving will provoke a disengagement attack or will move you into engagement range of an enemy when casting, make arrow or cursor red.
  11. Seriously, its hard to keep up with conversation when there are three threads on same subject...
  12. A big shortcoming of the game so far is that combat is too difficult to read. This is caused by 2 main factors - the UI feedback (which Sensuki has discussed in depth) and the actual visuals themselves. Even when ignoring the bug causing characters to overlap each other, it's evident that the "readability of characters and enemies in battle is poor. Here is a screenshot which captures some of the issues: In it, the characters are correctly spaced and the overlap bug is not in effect. There is a spell effect going off, and the battle is partly obscured by an arch. While these situations are quite common in combat and contribute to readability issues, there are other factors such as: Low contrast on character models. Also the colour saturation seems lower than the background. Results in characters looking spectre-like and weightless. Not enough edge definition on character models. It's hard to see where one character ends and another begins. This is exacerbated by polygon overlap, but that can't be helped. Sprite sorting didn't have this issue. Poor selection circle visibility High contrast and detailing on background. Especially the tall grass blades. This combined with the low contrast and subtlely defined character models is catastrophic. Stamina and action indicators above characters introduce further clutter. Perhaps, these should be turned off by default or tweaked? The stamina indicators being individual dots instead of one bar also appears to introduce unnecessary visual noise. Now contrast this with a similar combat scenario in Baldur's Gate: While the background is darker, thereby lending selection circles better visibility, there is: Higher definition of character silhouettes in relation to background definition. Higher contrast within light and dark on character models, giving them weight and form. Much better selection circle visibility A higher angle top down view reduces occlusion darker, more defined shadows gives characters further visibility. Please contribute to this thread with visual examples of combat clutter and we can try to discuss what specifically it is that Obsidian needs to do to improve combat readability from a graphical perspective.
  13. 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").
  14. hi , after 1,5 hours i have find -with certain spell the mage go close to enemy and hit everything ( like with fireball or acid cloud ) this happened when the party is in a small zone -i not understand why mage/cleric/druid don't cast spell occasionally but instead go in closecombat -the game cursor vanish and appear the classic window cursor -godlike don't have the head slot ( maybe is intentional ) -when ranger use "cripple Shot" enemy are stuck but continue to attack my party member even if they are far
  15. As I understand they've said they just want combat to be for the fun of it. Taking away experience rewards from enemies just seems like it will leave the combat a bit unrewarding. I feel like I will skip even trying to get in fights because there's not much benefit and mostly detriment. You risk your characters getting hurt/knocked out/killed for what, beating enemies juts for the fun of it? There's always a balance of risk vs. reward in these kinds of games and it seems that balance has been upset. Sure some enemies may drop items, but that'll be the only reward of combat? I think it's a mistake for them not to give any exp. Perhaps cutting the exp gains from enemies down so that you don't gain a ton, but none? That means the only point of the game is to just grind through quests as fast as you can with no reason to kill enemies and skip all unnecessary stuff. It pigeon holes players into playing one specific way. What if players don't want to do many quests? The only way to play if you want to get anywhere is by questing now. There's no just going out and adventuring around killing things as a form of progression. Let's face it, players want to be rewarded and they want to get that reward via the fastest means possible. That means is going to be skipping unnecessary combat and leaves combat in general feeling like a chore that you must do along the path to grinding out these quests. I haven't played the beta myself so this is just as I understand it from what I've heard and read. Just wanted to get my thoughts out about this.
  16. A suggestion for the UI when in combat when there are many enemies and it gets really crowded. It would be helpful to get a UI bar with a roster of enemies so it is easier to aim and allows easier monitoring of specific enemies. Not sure if anyone else feels the need for it, but I feel it would make combat management easier. Thanks, keep it up.
  17. Here is the list of things I know\suspect to effect attack speed: * Monks and probably other classes can gain bonus to their attack speed through abilities. But does all class has the same base attack speed? * Each weapon type has its own attack speed, implements are the fastest, swords faster than great axes etc, right ? * Certain attack styles (and maybe talents?) can increase attack speed, for example attacking with two weapons is faster than with one. * Armor with higher protection rating slow you down. Any ideas?
  18. We have been given a lot of info on how Stealth work outside of combat, but I don't recall any specifics about how would it work during combat(i.e. rouge hide in shadows), I don't suppose its a non-combat skill only so any thoughts? We have the alertness states (creatures will investigate if you move in too close and cry out an alert and attack if they find you) maybe they will play a role during combat as well e.g. alerted/engaged creatures will have an increase detection radius and thus far harder to fool. Or maybe there will be a check for entering stealth during combat, because if now everyone can sneak, then it will be too simple to just pull a Houdini during combat and or troll path finding with the act.
  19. So having nearly completed and explored just about everything in this game, I have yet to encounter any bugs, but some of the gameplay is so insanely frustrating and arbitrarily senseless that I have wanted to punch my laptop. BUTTON MASH QUICK TIME EVENTS These things in your game are an abomination, they don't serve to better the gameplay or increase the challenge, they make the game ANNOYING, FRUSTRATING AND NOT FUN! I nearly stopped playing when I hit the Alien Probe event, and again at Randy's Abortion, it's ridiculous Alien Probe: pretty much can't be beaten with a keyboard, unless you want to damage it. Randy's Abortion: the dilation part is again impossible to beat with a 360 controller without damaging it, and the suction part needs a better indicator. The needle part does not respond correctly to your button presses sometimes, just to screw you over. Goth Dance: obnoxious, has to be done nearly perfectly to get it to work, I've missed like, three or four presses and that caused it to fail, again, better indicators needed. Boss Fight Quicktimes: Kenny's summons are not the worst but really annoying when you have slow reaction time and aren't expecting it, theres no real warning. FINAL BOSS For the love of god make a checkpoint happen right before farting on kenny's balls or at least refill the player's mana. I deleted my save in frustration because after that whole long-winded boss fight I had no mana, used a potion and ended up overloading on it and letting cartman die, causing me to have to replay THE ENTIRE FIGHT. ugh. SAVING Saving needs to happen on-the-spot recording everything that's happened instead of just shunting you back to the last checkpoint and clearing all your progress, again, obnoxious and arbitrary and a poor way to use saves in an RPG STATUS EFFECTS Burn and Bleed might need to be toned down a bit, they're kind of insanely powerful Stun, Sleep, Gross Out and Pissed Off on the contrary are useless at the end of the game because nearly everything is immune to them. Maybe give these statuses alternate effects on immune enemies or take away some immunities, because they become pretty much worthless by the time Nazi Zombies become a thing. BUDDIES Jimmy is just awful, there's almost no reason to use him, he does no damage and only boosts your PP, which you can do with a potion, and if you have the perk you can get the Attack Up his buff would have given you for using said potion. Also the potion doesn't take up a turn. Make Jimmy;'s quest give him the Flute as a weapon that deals AoE damage to everything and inflicts a debuff, that would really help, also giving him some form of healing, give him HP/PP regen buff as his special ability instead of PP boosting, this would make him really good Stan's final ability is awful, just awful, his spin does more damage, to more enemies, please fix. Kenny is kind of bad all around. he's hilarious, but pretty boring and sort of an "everyone does his job better" character. I still feel like he should transform into Mysterion sort of like butters does. ENEMIES Enemies have a large number of issues: 1. They're dumb, and can't prioritize targets and don't really use strategy 2. They don't even use the same mechanics as the players, they can't block, counterattack, or use free items 3. They don't have a very wide range of abilities, except bosses, and the ones they do have are generally solved with a cure potion 4. Strange, sometimes arbitrary values of XP for defeating them, I've gotten 5 XP for killing 4 elves and 20 XP for killing 2 elves, both at level 4. 5. They can't change positions at all, might not be a bad feature to implement in DLC. 6. Late game most enemies are just obnoxiously hard to kill with really high armor, there's not much variance, no squishy super high damage mages or super beefy heal tanks or back rank snipers, just lots of nazi zombies. EQUIPMENT The leveled class-specific gear you get for completing portions of the main storyline is generally completely useless by the time you get it. Also some gear is just flat out broken, like the SWAT Helmet, which can allow you to pretty much win every non-boss fight without ever giving your enemies a turn, just drink a cheapo 2$ speed pot, AoE damage/debuff effect first hit either a spell or a bomb/bouncy weapon weapon Bleed/Burn on it, then go to town with the Katana (also stupid broken) one dude after another. Also the weapon system doesn't make a whole lot of sense, once you get the Katana basically every other melee weapon is a worse choice. You really need to split the balance better: Statistically superior weapons and armor with no strap-on/patch slots Weapons and armor with unique effects and 2-4 strap-on slots but really low/no overall stats Some stuff that fits somewhere in the middle of those two And WHERE ARE MAH SET BONUSES? you guys went to the trouble to include all these armor sets, but no full set bonuses? WHAS UP WIT DAT? PERKS Some perks are basically mandatory like the one that gives you Attack Up every time you use a potion, or the +20% to HP, others are totally useless and serve no purpose at all, like most of the fart perks, might want to do some tweaking. Moar Perks is never a bad idea either. MANA What the heck is up with the mana mechanic? I never seem to have ANY mana at all because it apparently doesn't come back after fights or even regen over time and I can't fill it up because I'd just crap myself, needs some work. I might suggest that instead of mana potions, all potions increase mana very slightly, and mana regens over time in the game, and you can use toilets to lower mana, and you get one turn to use your overloaded mana before crapping yourself except against Jimmy's Brown Note. OVERALL COMBAT BALANCE The basic mechanics need some work, because nerfing/buffing other aspects of combat could make things worse or better, take things as a whle and just try to make combat more interesting, make mechanics flow together better. ~~~~~ Now that I'm done, I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for making such an awesome game, and I hope you can make it even better.
  20. After reading the recent update, there's something that's been gnawing on my mind. Most classes seem to have a fairly obvious preference for melee or ranged combat, while others can go either way depending on preference. A Fighter seems to have a melee bias, a Ranger would likely use ranged weapons exclusively, and a Rogue could put either option to good use. So far, so good. This distinction makes sense given the combat roles of each class. The thing I'm not sure about is when it comes to different weapon types in the same range category. A typical example would be a melee Fighter vs a melee Rogue. Assuming they're both interested in dealing damage, an archetypal fighter might choose to go with a big greatsword to cleave his foes in half, while a typical Rogue would be more inclined to grab a dagger in each hand for quick, precise stabs and slices at the enemy's vulnerable spots. Something similar can be imagined for ranged weapons, where you might have a choice between an arquebus (high damage but hard to reload and not accurate at long range) or a longbow (less point-blank damage, but better range and speed). Does Eternity have such a distinction? Is there any reason to pick one weapon type over another, or will there be a "best choice" for every situation? For example, D&D somewhat simulates this situation by giving the Fighter a higher damage modifier when having high strength and using a two-handed weapon, while the dual-wielding Rogue won't miss that modifier since he has lower strength and would rather get extra attacks to apply his sneak attack bonus to. Note that I'm not necessarily talking about damage types (like a club doing crushing damage vs a sword doing cutting damage), but more a general sense of choosing what weapon type your character will specialise in. In some games there is a clear "best choice", where for whatever reason one weapon type is simply more efficient in any given situation. For the sake of this question, I am completely disregarding the fact that many players simply choose their weapon type for flavor reasons. While that's of course a very valid way to pick your preference, it's not really relevant to the mechanics of the game. The way I see it, looking at the various games I've played in the past, there are factors that can influence what is "best" and often multiple of those can play a role at the same time. A few examples include: All classes have a default preferred weapon type, which means they either can't use any other weapon types or they simply get artificial bonuses to one type that make other types less desireable. This is a very simple to understand and straight-forward system, but does tend to restrict player choice. Even if it's just a bonus or penalty to certain types, it still feels restricted and artificial because it's just some arbitrary modifier that isn't based in the rest of the game's mechanics. Some weapon types simply have better options available. Like there are some awesome magical spears in the game while the best mace is kind of lame, so specialising in maces is less desireably than spears. While this makes sense, I feel that it rewards "spoilers" (how else would you know about those spears when you make your character) and penalises players for making choices that they have no way of knowing that they are bad for the endgame. Weapons have different damage types. For example is the game has many enemies that resist piercing damage, this will make spears a very undesireable weapon. On the other hand this tends to be one of the most frustrating options, like when your strongest character specialises in spears and you are in an area with many enemies immune to piercing damage. Suddenly your main source of damage is useless and the game becomes much harder than it would be if you chose to specialise in axes. Mechanical differences like attack speed are in my opinion one of the more interesting options. A light dagger can swing faster than a heavy axe even though it deals less damage, so you have to choose whether a character needs to hit fast or hard. However this can also quickly devolve into a simple DPS race, where an axe does 12 damage every 3 seconds while a dagger does 5 damage every 1 second, so the dagger ends up having a simple statistical advantage and there's no real reason to choose the axe. In some games, all weapons are more or less equal (with minor penalties in one area roughly evening out against minor bonuses in other areas, for example damage vs accuracy) which offers the best options for character customisation (you want a Rogue with a giant mace and a Wizard dual-wielding hatchets? There's no reason not to do it!), but makes some sacrifices in terms of variety since all choices end up feeling very much the same. So after all that text, my question is simply how does Eternity handle the differences between weapon types. Does it encourage a certain weapon type to be used with certain classes or play styles and if so, how?
  21. I'd like that sometimes critical hits mean a "permanent" effect, like a scar, a missing finger or eye, a leg injury and the like. Some of this effects could be heal with powerful magic o healing skils, On the other hand the most severe may be permanent, but it's consequences may halved with the appropiate means.Other ways to make not all severe injuries permanent would be healing them with a mission (to recover a very strange and rare herb that grows in a certain place, or finding a long lost legendary healer,...), or using some items that are limited (meaning that you have to decide using it in one injury or in another). This could also affect to NPC members of the party, and the main character could heal them easier. That could mean that a NPC of the party must retire eventually due to his grave wounds, but since there are more NPC who may substitute him it doesnt mean that the rest game is affected. This would encourage that more NPC are used during the game and make each encounter more intense.
  22. I was wandering and I believe it hasn't mentioned before, but do we have any idea about the enemies' health condition indication? Will it be like we can see their remaining hit point or maybe, like the IE games, a description of it (uninjured, near deth etc)?
  23. I wanted to talk about the difficulty of P:E. I skimmed the first few pages and couldn't find a topic about it, so I decided to create one. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but here we go: I've been replaying DA:O on nightmare and couldn't help but notice how easy it is. When I played it for the first time I found it was more difficult than other games this generation, but that feeling went away when I got used to the mechanics. Now I just wail on the enemies and wait for them to die. That's not good combat. I know Obsidian is trying to capture the IE games, but those weren't *hard* per se, just obnoxiously luck based. I want to use tactics and all tools I have at my disposal. You should be punished for memorizing only damaging spells on your mage etc. The question is: How badly should you be punished? How difficult should the game be? How different should the experience be between normal and hard? How do you define difficulty in RPG's in general? Should anything be designed around luck? I have no idea where to even begin answering those questions, so I'll refrain from having an opinion before I read some of yours.
  24. Update by Josh Sawyer, Project Director and Lead Designer Last week, our art director, Rob, showed you our godlike concepts and dazzled you with an in-depth technical breakdown of how we're doing animation rigging on the project. This week, we'll be talking about a different technical subject, but one that's more connected to gameplay: engagement -- specifically, melee engagement. Melee engagement is a solution to two common problems in the Infinity Engine games: melee characters' inability to control an area and ranged characters' ability to "kite" melee characters. In the Infinity Engine games, melee characters could be quite powerful in toe-to-toe combat, but many opponents found ways to foil those characters with little difficulty. Fast characters could easily rush around a slower melee character with impunity and ranged characters could backpedal perpetually out of reach. If you're familiar with D&D 3E/3.5/4E/Pathfinder's attack of opportunity mechanics, Project Eternity's melee engagement fills a similar role by making melee combatants "sticky". Coming near a melee combatant means being drawn into Engagement with him or her, a state that can be risky to get out of. Here's how it works: when two opposed combatants come near each other and one of them a) has a melee weapon equipped b) is not moving and c) is not currently at his or her maximum limit of engagement targets (the standard is 1), the other character will be Engaged. When an opponent is Engaged by an attacker, moving any significant distance away from the attacker will provoke a Disengagement Attack. A Disengagement Attack has an inherent Accuracy bonus, does significantly more damage than a standard attack, and will call a hit reaction animation while momentarily stopping the character's movement. When it's initiated, a Disengagement Attack automatically breaks Engagement on the target, but if the target is also the attacker's current melee target, the attacker will typically be able to re-establish Engagement before the target can move farther away. In this manner, melee combatants, especially ones that have high Accuracy and damage per hit, have a solid mechanic for keeping enemies close to them -- or making the cost of escape extremely expensive. Of course, there are other ways to end Engagement. If the attacker switches to a non-melee weapon or performs a non-melee-based action, Engagement immediately ends. If the attacker moves away from their Engagement targets, is paralyzed, knocked down, or otherwise prevented from maintaining a threat, Engagement will also immediately end. If the attacker has a limited number of Engagement targets (as most do) and switches his or her attack focus to a different character, Engagement immediately ends. We believe that Engagement can give AI a clear "decision point" where they can evaluate the threat of their new status and choose the appropriate course of action. For player-controlled characters, it makes melee enemies more potent threats and presents players with tactical challenges to solve. We want Engagement to be a mechanic that players and enemies can mess with using a variety of class Abilities and general Talents, so we will be experimenting with a variety of elements to that end: Fighters' Defender mode allows them to engage two additional targets and increases the range at which they engage targets. This gives fighters much greater capability to control the area around them. The limited-use Escape ability lets rogues break Engagement without provoking a Disengagement Attack. It is generally best used when the rogue's enemy is preoccupied with another target. Barbarians can use Wild Rush to temporarily ignore the movement stop and hit reactions from Engagement and Disengagement Attacks, respectively -- though they can still suffer massive damage while powering through. The wizards' Grimoire Slam allows them to attack an enemy in melee with their magically-charged grimoires, unleashing a concussive wave of energy on contact. If it hits, the attack knocks the target back, usually far enough to break Engagement in the process. Additionally, creatures may have their own special abilities related to Engagement and Disengagement Attacks. We hope that the system itself is easy to understand but allows for increasingly complex tactical considerations over the course of the game. That's all for this week! Let us know what you think of the mechanic on our forums. Your feedback, as always, is appreciated. In our next update, in addition to our usual weekly content, we'll also be continuing our thrilling coverage of Chris Avellone's playthrough of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
  25. Hail, elves. It's been a while since we've had a mechanics update, so I'd like to cover a variety of topics today: the basics of our "non-core" classes, our cooldown system (or lack thereof), an update on how attacks are resolved, and another update on the evolution of our armor system. I'd also like to show you a dungeon tileset test render and some sweet shakycam of some of the combat basics running in engine. Non-Core Classes We've previously discussed the design of our "core four" classes: fighter, priest, rogue, and wizard. The non-core classes are the other seven: barbarian, paladin, ranger, druid, monk, chanter, and cipher. Like the core four classes, the non-core classes all start the game with two active or modal abilities and one passive ability. When it comes to the balance of active/modal and passive options, the classes generally reflect their D&D counterparts, with spellcasters having more active use abilities and weapon-based classes being oriented toward more passive or modal abilities. Even so, it will be possible to push a spellcaster toward more passive talents and to optionally buy more active/modal abilities for traditionally low-maintenance characters. While all classes will have many more abilities as they advance, here are some basic elements for each of the seven classes. Barbarians can use Wild Sprint a limited number of times per day, allowing them to rapidly rush across the battlefield to a distant target while ignoring hazards along the way. Paladins have limited healing capabilities, but their Revive command allows them to instantly snap an unconscious ally awake with a large Stamina boost. Rangers' animal companions are so closely bonded to their masters that they share Stamina and Health pools, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Druids can Shapeshift into animal forms, gaining natural -- and some supernatural -- abilities associated with those creatures. Monks absorb a portion of incoming damage and convert it into a Wounds resource they can use to power their soul-based abilities (such as Stunning Blows) through any weapons they use, including unarmed strikes. Chanters begin the game with a number of phrases they can arrange to form songs with different effects. Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr is a phrase that causes allies' weapons to emit magical flames. Cipher powers often gain intensity as they maintain focus. Their basic Mind Jab starts as a minor irritant but can build to inflict devastating damage. Cooldowns Early on, some folks asked about cooldowns and both Tim and I agreed that we weren't opposed to using them in some form if it made sense for our mechanics. To be more explicit about it, the only way in which we are currently using anything cooldown-like is for per-encounter and per-rest abilities. Per-encounter abilities can be used a number of times in an encounter and are then disabled until combat ends. Per-rest abilities can be used a number of times after resting before you must rest to recover them. We've previously discussed grimoire-switching for wizards possibly invoking a cooldown. It's more likely that grimoire-switching will be limited through the inventory system and not by a cooldown. We also have modal abilities that can be turned on and off at will, with some abilities being exclusive to others, meaning you can only have one active at a time. Attack Resolution I've talked about this a bunch on the forums, but not in an update. All attacks in Project Eternity compare the attacker's Accuracy value to one of four defenses: Deflection (direct melee and ranged attacks), Fortitude (body system attacks like poison and disease), Reflexes (area of effect damage attacks), and Willpower (mental attacks). A number between 1 and 100 is generated to determine the attack rules. If the Accuracy and target defense are the same value, these are how the results break down: 01-05 = Miss 06-50 = Graze 51-95 = Hit 96-100 = Critical Hit A Hit is the standard damage and duration effects, a Graze is 50% minimum damage or duration, a Critical Hit is 150% maximum damage or duration, and a Miss has no effect. In a balanced Attack and defense scenario, the majority of attacks wind up being Hits or Grazes. If the Accuracy and defense values are out of balance, the windows for each result shift accordingly, while always allowing for the possibility of a Graze or a Hit at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Damage Type vs. Armor Type We've previously talked about how different weapon damage types (Slash, Crush, and Pierce) fare against Damage Threshold (DT) in the game. We implemented that system and found that while it worked well on paper and scaled well, it was unintuitive when put into the game. It was not possible for players to make informed decisions about what weapons to use against a given armor type because doing so required making relative damage vs. DT calculations for all weapon types, i.e. having a spreadsheet open for comparison at all times. In light of this, we are going to try a more explicit damage type vs. armor type model where armor, regardless of its DT, has a familiar weight classification: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Damage types are either good or bad against a given weight classification. When a damage type is "bad" against an armor type, it does half damage before DT is applied, making it very inefficient. Within the "good" types of damage, there's still an efficiency curve against DT for meticulous players to figure out, but it has less impact than avoiding "bad" damage types in the first place. Energy-based attacks (like most spells) oppose a different characteristic of the armor, its substance type (Natural, Armor, or Spirit) and like damage types, have good and bad opposition characteristics. Weapon bonus damage that is energy-based is applied to the target separately, but at a fractional DT value matching the bonus damage. E.g. if a sword has a fire effect that does +15% the sword's damage, it is opposed by 15% of the target's Damage Threshold. Tileset Trials and Tribulations Environment artist Sean Dunny has been experimenting with building tilesets for our dungeons. "Tilesets?!" you may be saying (or thinking). It may be a surprise, but many Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment levels started from a tileset or modular unit base. We use these tilesets to generate basic renders for testing layout, navigation, and combat. Once we like the basic layout, we refine it by adding additional "meta" (special) tiles, modifying the tiles individually in the layout, adding lights, and of course having an artist do a 2D touchup pass. That's all for this week. Thanks for reading! Update by Josh Sawyer
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