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At the current state of the game, combat remains its major flaw, where instead, this should be one of its major strengths. Obsidian is trying their best to eliminate bugs & tweak combat to make it fluid & fun-to-play. Backers are crowding the forums suggesting ideas on how to 'fix' combat since everybody wants combat to feel as enjoying as in the IE games, but also refreshed, absent GM sucker punches and not susceptible to exploits and cheesy tactics. All of this effort is sincere and worth commended for. The purpose of this poll is to determine whether you feel a radical change in combat should occur. Back in the IE D&D-like games, there where 'invisible' combat rounds that determined each & everyone's actions. Although that is arguably not the best way to handle combat in a RTwP game, it worked well placing limitations & making combat more easily to control (for the GMs) and easier for the player to handle. It is easier for a GM to design encounters when she knows what each combatant can & cannot do due to mechanical limitations of the combat round. This knowledge can extend to balancing out every single game aspect, from encounters to begin with, up to class abilities & weapons/armor. It may be possible that combat in PoE is 'chaotic' as many describe due to the absent of such a limitation. However, this does not cancel the fact that with everyone's best effort combat can be made to work retaining its current round-free state. You can vote about it, say your opinion & make your predictions/suggestions.

I am sorry as I do not know this should be at the engine or mechanic section so I will post at both and let the admin decide. Short Version Exploit on the slow motion function to let the game zoom on a character and play in slow motion the animation that deal the killing blow or successfully perform a feat of awesomeness, or was beaten to near death. Finishing the action the camera can zoom back and run in real time. This is good for aesthetics and helps the information crunch of which character need attention or further command. People have the option to skip that all if they want. If possible Unity Engine can do a playback of the animation. Long Version One of the advantages to TB is that you get the information/aesthetics of each event at the moment it's resolved. RTwP makes it hard to track this as multiple events is played together constantly. Active pause of the player may be out of sync and miss some events. Auto Pause may not let the player know what is causing the pause unless the player look at the text breaking the flow. In no way I am stating TB is better than RTwP as both system have their pros and cons, I am stating how to improve the RTwP so it's weakness can be shore up and exploit some strength of the TB. Eternity already will implement a Slow Motion Function, so why not take advantage of it a step further to exploit it's strength? When a character do a deathblow, a great feat of strength, or under great duress, the game will go into slow motion and zoom in the particular character so the player can enjoy the animation or take action like switching target, run or heal. After the action ends the camera will zoom back and run in real time again. This function is skip-able with a button. If there are multiple such event happens at once, the latest character event will play into the player attention and the other character portrait will flash if they have a event that require the player attention. This function will be optional and customizable. In customizable, the player may not want to see the victory animation of the character triumph over a lowly rat but want to see the victory over a giant, so the player can select this function to happen only against strong opponents only. Or based on level, filtering out victory animation on foes 5 level lower than the character. The player can select if they want to see a really smart move from them like a fireball defeating 20 rats with good positioning and luring. So they can select the option to see animation if a character action affect 5 foes. The player also can choose to see the animation of a costly skill (determined by mana / ability level / casting length / cool down time) The player can set to slow down / pause and zoom in to a character under 25% health, finished action, stunned / blinded / feared. As such the game can enjoy the benefits of faster combat and more manageable information gathering and more satisfactions of the aesthetics animation. The developers also do not need to code a lot as this function just build on the slow motion function. If they want to take it up a notch higher they can do a playback / reverse time like prince of Persia Sand of Time, but I don't know how much work the developers need for that.

I am sorry as I do not know this should be at the engine or mechanic section so I will post at both and let the admin decide. Short Version Exploit on the slow motion function to let the game zoom on a character and play in slow motion the animation that deal the killing blow or successfully perform a feat of awesomeness, or was beaten to near death. Finishing the action the camera can zoom back and run in real time. This is good for aesthetics and helps the information crunch of which character need attention or further command. People have the option to skip that all if they want. If possible Unity Engine can do a playback of the animation. Long Version One of the advantages to TB is that you get the information/aesthetics of each event at the moment it's resolved. RTwP makes it hard to track this as multiple events is played together constantly. Active pause of the player may be out of sync and miss some events. Auto Pause may not let the player know what is causing the pause unless the player look at the text breaking the flow. In no way I am stating TB is better than RTwP as both system have their pros and cons, I am stating how to improve the RTwP so it's weakness can be shore up and exploit some strength of the TB. Eternity already will implement a Slow Motion Function, so why not take advantage of it a step further to exploit it's strength? When a character do a deathblow, a great feat of strength, or under great duress, the game will go into slow motion and zoom in the particular character so the player can enjoy the animation or take action like switching target, run or heal. After the action ends the camera will zoom back and run in real time again. This function is skip-able with a button. If there are multiple such event happens at once, the latest character event will play into the player attention and the other character portrait will flash if they have a event that require the player attention. This function will be optional and customizable. In customizable, the player may not want to see the victory animation of the character triumph over a lowly rat but want to see the victory over a giant, so the player can select this function to happen only against strong opponents only. Or based on level, filtering out victory animation on foes 5 level lower than the character. The player can select if they want to see a really smart move from them like a fireball defeating 20 rats with good positioning and luring. So they can select the option to see animation if a character action affect 5 foes. The player also can choose to see the animation of a costly skill (determined by mana / ability level / casting length / cool down time) The player can set to slow down / pause and zoom in to a character under 25% health, finished action, stunned / blinded / feared. As such the game can enjoy the benefits of faster combat and more manageable information gathering and more satisfactions of the aesthetics animation. The developers also do not need to code a lot as this function just build on the slow motion function. If they want to take it up a notch higher they can do a playback / reverse time like prince of Persia Sand of Time, but I don't know how much work the developers need for that.

Hi Obsidian. So here's an idea for your UI. Have you ever played Baldur's Gate or Baldur's Gate 2? You have? Good. So have you ever considered where most people pause the game? It's mainly during combat if you didn't know. Now what specific part of combat do most people pause the game? The answer is likely to be parts where multiple clicks need to be made: specifically during inventory management (getting potions) and spell casting. So my idea: We were having a discussion on the glorious codex about good UIs for Torment and someone mentioned the NWN2 "spell hot button" used to bring up the spell list in that game. I thought to myself, you know, it would be nice if the game would autopause whenever I bring up my lists of spells to cast one during combat. So my idea is basically to take the old BG2 autopause conditions and to come up with a few new options. Set it up for players who really do like to pause but only while battling. Give us a few toggleable options to autopause the game when the "cast spell" list comes up, when the "use item" command is used, or other locations in game where the amount of time it takes to do an action is longer than a few seconds. So for example, i probably won't pause when I kill an enemy (althought that mgiht be an option for other people who do) but I definitely pause when I'm casting a spell with my mage. I need to click through a list of spells, make sure I got the right spell, click a target, etc. That takes time and it's difficult to do that when I've got enemies in my hair. so the system autopauses whenever i pick my mage and i hit the shortcut button for "cast spell." same for other similarly sensitive sections in game. (yeah i hope you noticed the shortcut button for cast spell). hope this makes sense.