Went back to the game... and there's an astonishing bug (still)

[xzar_monty]

So, things being what they are, I went back to the game... and there's this astonishing bug in the game, after all these years. I did some searching on the net, and apparently it's a legitimate concern.

It goes like this: during combat, when you direct one of your characters to drink a potion, you will see the drinking animation, but the potion is not consumed. I just lost my group to this: I tried drinking healing potions, but all I ended up doing was wasting time and getting hit more. The animation is there, but no potion is drunk, and the amount of potions in my inventory does not go down by one.

Frankly, this looks absurd.

[Boeroer]

Turn off AI: tada! It works.

AI seems to want to do other things than drinking boring potions.

Fun fact: although I have thousands of hours in Deadfire I never encountered this bug. Because I neither use AI nor do I use potions. Double tap!

Edited March 29, 2020 by Boeroer

[thelee]

On 3/29/2020 at 12:06 PM, Boeroer said:

Turn off AI: tada! It works.

AI seems to want to do other things than drinking boring potions.

Fun fact: although I have thousands of hours in Deadfire I never encountered this bug. Because I neither use AI nor do I use potions. Double tap!

that's because this was a bug introduced extremely late, unfortunately, like one of the last 4.0s or maybe even 5.0.

 

it really ticked me off, because it was something they obviously broke with turn-based mode and never fixed - before using consumables was a rock-solid operation which was a huge improvement from poe1 where i have literally soft-locked the game via consumable usage.

[AeonsLegend]

Not as bad as the "screw you I'm stuck eternaly TRYING to do something" bug. The only way to fix that is to issue a new command to that character, but sometimes only movement works which may force a disengagement attack if you're unlucky.

[Boeroer]

For me the "x" for cancelling your current action worked well then. 

But I didn't see that bug for a long time now. 

[AeonsLegend]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

For me the "x" for cancelling your current action worked well then. 

But I didn't see that bug for a long time now. 

I've seen it recently as well. Sometimes x works, sometimes it doesn't

[Boeroer]

I guess I didn't see it because recently I mainly do test stuff with the console in old savegames and don't really do any proper playthrough.

I had the feeling that bug was somewhat "playthrough-related". In some I never saw it, in others it occured all the time (often with casters).

[thelee]

1 hour ago, AeonsLegend said:

I've seen it recently as well. Sometimes x works, sometimes it doesn't

i think it depends on your AI setttings and scripting. on some of my more aggressively scripted characters and/or with autoattack enabled in a situation where they want to auto-attack (e.g. aggressive, or defensive and being attacked), x-cancelling never works for getting consumables used.

[AeonsLegend]

28 minutes ago, thelee said:

i think it depends on your AI setttings and scripting. on some of my more aggressively scripted characters and/or with autoattack enabled in a situation where they want to auto-attack (e.g. aggressive, or defensive and being attacked), x-cancelling never works for getting consumables used.

I don't use AI. I have it turned off.

[Boeroer]

Mee, too. When speaking about the endless action-abort cycle then AI off seems to be a problem. With AI on I think that bug doesn't show (as much). Maybe that's just my impression though.

Edited April 1, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

To be fair it might happen a few times per playthrough. It's not that often that it actually bothers me. It's just kind of annoying when you're issueing commands and about halfway through the fight find out Maia isn't doing anything lol.

[thelee]

oh sorry,  i got my replies mixed up - i thought you were referring to the consumable usage bug, not the "stuck doing nothing" bug. my bad. yeah i very occasionally get the "stuck doing nothing" bug and x-cancelling does fix it.

[Boeroer]

I once had a hireling (Livegiver Druid) who would suffer from this in every fight. Kicked him, made the same guy (more or less I guess) again in another inn and it was mostly gone.

[xzar_monty]

Seems to me that to ensure potion drinking, you have to untick "Auto-attack as a default option", otherwise your characters may well not drink, despite the animation being shown. I just had a fight where I had to untick this and then tick it again, because if it is unticked and one of your characters happens to be in a melee, you will have to manually direct him/her to make every single swing, the character does absolutely nothing without being explicitly told to do so, even if a melee is already ongoing.

[thelee]

11 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Seems to me that to ensure potion drinking, you have to untick "Auto-attack as a default option", otherwise your characters may well not drink, despite the animation being shown. I just had a fight where I had to untick this and then tick it again, because if it is unticked and one of your characters happens to be in a melee, you will have to manually direct him/her to make every single swing, the character does absolutely nothing without being explicitly told to do so, even if a melee is already ongoing.

yeah, i made sure to have a hotkey for the AI toggle, so whenever i need to use a potion i quickly disable, and then i just have to remember to listen to the "potion drunk" sound to turn it back on again.

 

really annoying bug, a shame that it got introduced

[xzar_monty]

Yesterday I was in a fight where I turned off auto-attack and potions still weren't drunk (on at least three occasions), but I am unsure as to whether it was a bug or a real combat-related interruption. Is potion drinking something that can be interrupted if a character is hit in the middle of it?

[AeonsLegend]

It definitely can be interrupted yes.

[xzar_monty]

Ok, thanks. And fair enough.

[thelee]

4 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Ok, thanks. And fair enough.

in fact, if interrupted, you actually lose the item anyway as if you used it. as far as i'm concerned, it's the main argument for concentration on front-line melee-ers.

[AeonsLegend]

46 minutes ago, thelee said:

in fact, if interrupted, you actually lose the item anyway as if you used it. as far as i'm concerned, it's the main argument for concentration on front-line melee-ers.

True, this is also why when buffing I always use the buff with concentration first unless I need another one and it is instant. To be fair interrupt is I think also based off of damage received or maybe crit? Usually a tankier character is less likely to be interrupted. This is why pulsing healing that are automated are best as they can not be interrupted once active. Like Paladin's Exalted Endurance or spells like Moonwell, etc...

[thelee]

14 hours ago, AeonsLegend said:

To be fair interrupt is I think also based off of damage received or maybe crit?

depends on the ability. abilities that can interrupt specify whether they interrupt on crit, hit, or graze, though due to the mechanics of some abilities the tooltip is wrong.[1]

(enemy) rogues are the worst for this, since all their abilities interrupt at least on hit. late game (especially in forgotten sanctum), enemy monks are super annoying because their AI seems to love using skyward kick and that both knocks up and interrupts on a graze (so not only would you lose an item, but if someone was trying to cast a heal on the victim, the heal is wasted because the victim was temporarily untargetable; requires some quick micromanagement to cancel/reuse the effect). 

 

[1] magran's fire (the top-level priest spell) is one i can think of off the top of my head. it says it interrupts on crit, but the way it works is that it creates a tiny area that drops fire nukes into it (like a tiny meteor swarm or rain of holy fire), and each of those nukes interrupt on hit. You can literally interrupt-lock extremely tough enemies like this because of how quickly they are hit with these fire projectiles.

Edited April 3, 2020 by thelee

[xzar_monty]

16 hours ago, thelee said:

in fact, if interrupted, you actually lose the item anyway as if you used it. as far as i'm concerned, it's the main argument for concentration on front-line melee-ers.

Ok, in that case I'm almost certain it was the classic animation bug even with AI completely turned off, because no potions were lost.

[Gel214th]

Yeah. A most annoying bug indeed. If you have the potion as part of the Behaviour Ai they seem to drink it. But if you direct them to, they will not. It is annoying having to turn off AI and micromanage that little drink potion scenario while you may have other things to handle with the other characters. At this point I am guessing it won't get fixed. I wonder what new players must think when they click to chug a potion and nothing happens and a few seconds later the character dies , must be confusing as heck for them. 

[Boeroer]

Yeah, that's not cool. Won't get fixed - at least for PC - because Deadfire saw its last patch a long time ago. Don't know if this can get modded out, but since this problem seems to be deep-rooted I doubt it. Can't one do some weird AI-scripting magic to circumvent that problem maybe?