Combat Mechanics accessibility / comprehensibleness

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

I find it very hard to make any accurate predictions about the effect of actions in combat with the current system. This is a flaw in my opinion of the combat system in PoE I / II. Is anyone having a good intuitive grasp on the mechanics and can share perhaps some general advise how to quickly estimate the outcome of actions ?

Also, please do not misunderstand my point. I am talking about the predictability of the system, not the difficulty of combat itself. The combat is rather easy but most of the time when i use abilities i feel like giving it a try and hoping for the best instead of actually using the mechanics the game offers, since i am not able to plan a few steps ahead with the current system. 

 

I would prefer for example "standardized" numbers on abilities that change more granular/discrete rather than all these percentages and floating point numbers. Combined with the graze/hit/crit system it becomes nearly impossible to predict how long something will actually be in effect and then you also need to factor in the casting time/action time. And this is just for the time/duration, the same goes for damage and healing. I never now how long it will take to take down an enemy unless i have fought the same kind of enemy before, which is rather unsatisfying.  

 

 

[Cartoons Plural]

yeah i think its made that way hth

[Verde]

Obsidian is not very clear in their systems, or writing. Even the ability descriptions can be vague, almost comically so. It's why I harp on the writing.

Edited December 2, 2018 by Verde

[Cartoons Plural]

i remember when world of warcraft came out and consumers had to program add ons to perform essential tasks during raids and as i recall nobody really complained that the mechanics were obscured

 

sometimes they don't want to tell you everything so it takes you longer to break it

Edited December 2, 2018 by Cartoons Plural

[Archaven]

I speak on potd upscale experience. Basically enemies have bloated stats. All your attacks, nukes and deuffs will mostly miss. Game is designed for plain auto-attacking early game. Your skill does nothing. Some drugs have been nerfed and only cost flat +5 ACC which not going to help you in most cases (for a short duration).

 

The solution is to get up to certain level. 10 you start to get good. And feels really good at level 12. You can complete alot of content at starting at level 12. The simplest reason is controlled accuracy. There are other mechanics like armor and penetration as well.

 

In conclusion, I find that I love poe1 system far better than poe2.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

im not the best person to explain all the ins and outs, but system is essentially d100

 

most rolls are resolved via d100 + accuracy - (defensive stat).

 

if u roll under 15 u miss, under 50 u graze. 100+ is a crit.

 

grazes are -50% damage/duration. crits +50% damage/duration

 

most % changes are additive as far as i can tell. if u hit someone for 20 damage and u have +30% from ur weapon (6) and +20% from ur might (4), ull do 30 damage.

 

things get a bit more complex with lashes and stuff. i know in poe1 u could pick talents that modified the damage *before* the % might increase, making it multiplicative rather than additive, but ud have to ask once of the systems dudes like boeroer or maxquest about that.

 

I find it very hard to make any accurate predictions about the effect of actions in combat with the current system.

 

I never now how long it will take to take down an enemy unless i have fought the same kind of enemy before, which is rather unsatisfying.  

 

tbh, this is just a feature of most tabletop systems. like u could never be certain of a result bcs u never knew when the d20 was going to fk u over. PoE's system is actually designed to be *more* predictable and with more graded outcomes rather than the binary pass/fail of dnd.

 

Like if u play something like baldurs gate or kingmaker ull see the RNG is far more severe.

 

EDIT: also i have to give a shout-out to baldurs gate for dropping the counter-intuitive madness of AD&D/2e upon u without any explanation. 'Siri, what is "THAC0"?' lol.

Edited December 2, 2018 by Triple - A Foxy Lad

[xzar_monty]

The system is vague, rather hard to master, not intuitive at all and much of the time very badly explained. Whoever wrote those ability descriptions would be sacked immediately as a publicist, for instance, because they don't know their job. In short, it would be quite justified to call the whole thing a mess.

 

But then, as the OP quite rightly points out, combat is really very easy, so in essence it doesn't really matter if you understand nothing, because you always win anyway.

 

Somehow, despite all this, the game remains quite interesting, at least for me where I am now (level 16).

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

Is also realized that this makes it very hard for me to pick any skills when leveling up, since i barely know how strong the effect will be. Especially when comparing two talents. I have no clue which one is better since i can't tell how it will play out. A few talents are straightforward but many are very hard to judge for me. I think a clearer system would also help with character building.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

The system is vague, rather hard to master, not intuitive at all and much of the time very badly explained. Whoever wrote those ability descriptions would be sacked immediately as a publicist, for instance, because they don't know their job. In short, it would be quite justified to call the whole thing a mess.

 

think the term ur looking for is 'copywriter', not publicist. yep, explaining things is that hard.

 

the game comes with a massive encyclopedia, written in pretty concise English, and there are hyperlinks everywhere.

 

like, im garbage at learning systems. whenever we bust out a new boardgame, i get someone else to learn the rules for me. ive lost count of the times weve gone scurrying to reddit etc looking for clarification on ambiguously worded manuals. but even a dullard like me can scan through deadfires cyclopedia and understand most of it.

 

like how intuitive do you expect any complex new system will be? take, for example, numenera. its a crazy simple system, but it took me hours to read it and learn it well enough to dm it confidently, because it was new rather than another d20 knockoff, and i had to internalise hella new concepts.

 

Also, i have to restate. ur named after two characters from a 2e ad&d game. THAC0 tables, man. *THAC0 TABLES*. also the totally arbitary progression of bonuses tied to abilities - like okay, STR does nothing until 16 when it adds one to ur damage roll? AC goes down? Leather armour says AC 8 when it decreases ur AC by 2? the one-shot RNG of d20 + a 4hp lv1 mage? the video games themselves making little effort to explain *anything*?

 

Is also realized that this makes it very hard for me to pick any skills when leveling up, since i barely know how strong the effect will be. Especially when comparing two talents. I have no clue which one is better since i can't tell how it will play out. A few talents are straightforward but many are very hard to judge for me. I think a clearer system would also help with character building.

 

ye, but if ur new to the system, ur straight up not going to know that **** until uve put it into practice. thats part of the appeal of these games for many people, putting in the graft to learn and master a new system, taking advantage of quirks and stuff.

 

like the first time my brother played Dark Souls, he built a pretty useless character because the games good at letting u do that. he just shrugged it off and did better the next time around. and u should watch people trying to learn League of Legends, thats always a laugh.

 

like, if u think its opaque, then... i dunno, i hate to get all 'back in my day' etc. but i dont think yall appreciate just how bad things could get. like in the notorious synnibarr u had to calculate the square root of things. and im sure theres some crazy wargame somewhere that uses logarithms. if u can imagine it, it probably exists.

 

and for contemporary stuff, look at kingmaker. the encyclopedia's not as good despite being based on an established system, and newcomers to the game or 3.5e are highly unlikely to come up with viable builds until the cosh of experience has fked them over - unlike deadfire, the games not balanced to let a broadly rational but new player blunder through it.

 

Also have u seen the maths behind most JRPGs? theyre the stuff of nightmares. that genre typically doesnt explain anything. it coasts on trivial difficulty and the ability of the player to beat challenges through raw attrition. if u want a er, 'laugh' trundle over to good ol gamefaqs and look up the giant txt files explaining the inner workings of something like FFVII. its horrifying.

 

 

like i just screengrabbed that at random. there are prob worse examples.

 

honestly, ill leave judging the system itself to peeps with a better mind for it. but the presentation of deadfires system makes me proper wet. i want more in that vein, not less.

[xzar_monty]

I did mean publicist. Your attempt to make an argument on the basis of my username was the point where I stopped reading, I have to say.

[house2fly]

It's laid out for you as much as it can be, pretty much. You select an ability and hover over the enemy you want to use it on, and it shows you what your chances to hit are and why. If your ability/attack does damage, it'll show you what percentage of your full damage it'll do and why. When you attack there's a little summary in the combat log of what happened and why. Hover over an enemy and you can see their defences. Etc

[Ælfwine]

It's laid out for you as much as it can be, pretty much. You select an ability and hover over the enemy you want to use it on, and it shows you what your chances to hit are and why. If your ability/attack does damage, it'll show you what percentage of your full damage it'll do and why. When you attack there's a little summary in the combat log of what happened and why. Hover over an enemy and you can see their defences. Etc

 

One thing I don't like about the 'hover over' system in combat is that it doesn't tell you when your attack type will do absolutely nothing due to immunity or some other reason. Sure, I can glance over at the current effects to see it, but I'd rather it just say 0% instead of 100%. Sometimes it also doesn't show you your attack type (slashing, crushing, etc.) next to the percentage. I'm still not sure what that indicates.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

I am aware of that, but that usually only gives me the ability to judge the outcome right at the moment when i am about to cast something. It does not help much when i want to plan ahead or when i am leveling up and trying to pick a talent. I have to rely on the preview for pretty much everything and never can get an intuition for it. Although it works and is playable like this, i don't find it too enjoyable. 

What you also don't see is how buffs/debuffs will improve your efficiency. For some stats it is easy but for others it is very hard to judge, take all the percentage conversion skills as example. I can barely tell if it is better to improve my accuracy or my might or my chance for up conversion. The preview does not help much there. 

 

 

It's laid out for you as much as it can be, pretty much. You select an ability and hover over the enemy you want to use it on, and it shows you what your chances to hit are and why. If your ability/attack does damage, it'll show you what percentage of your full damage it'll do and why. When you attack there's a little summary in the combat log of what happened and why. Hover over an enemy and you can see their defences. Etc

[asnjas]

No i am good. Its pretty clear when buffs debuffs drop off. Its clear what abilities do. Its all right there in the ui.

 

The tooltips for abilities are good enough. Some abilities are not as described but good enough to understand what it does. There are times when ive come upon a forum post that better described an ability but obvidion can not write an essay for a tooltip.

 

Like others have mentioned, the game goes a long way to provide information links and an ingame journal with mechanics. I remember old games i was stuck on whther a higher or lower number meant a char had better defence. The only problem with poe2 is how detailed can it get. If there is confusion id say it lies with the player.

[Guest Psychovampiric Shield]

 

It's laid out for you as much as it can be, pretty much. You select an ability and hover over the enemy you want to use it on, and it shows you what your chances to hit are and why. If your ability/attack does damage, it'll show you what percentage of your full damage it'll do and why. When you attack there's a little summary in the combat log of what happened and why. Hover over an enemy and you can see their defences. Etc

 

One thing I don't like about the 'hover over' system in combat is that it doesn't tell you when your attack type will do absolutely nothing due to immunity or some other reason. Sure, I can glance over at the current effects to see it, but I'd rather it just say 0% instead of 100%. Sometimes it also doesn't show you your attack type (slashing, crushing, etc.) next to the percentage. I'm still not sure what that indicates.

 

I think it is a glitch, not an indicator. In these cases,  damage type is disregarded, penetration is calculated against base armor value and typically less or more off (some examples of when penetration is totally off: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/106741-some-tooltips-missinge-since-210/?do=findComment&comment=2115073 )

Edited December 8, 2018 by Psychovampiric Shield