Turn Based mode beta bugs and feedback

[Reinne]

I've been playing the TBmode beta and have encountered these bugs so far:

-Sometimes when kana starts his turn the game seems to wait forever for his chant to start, requiring you to load an old save and redo the fight.

-The chill fog spell visual effects don't linger after casting and only return at the start of each turn. (don't know if this affects other lingering aoe effects.)

-I've had a summoned phantom with the chanter class ability make an enemy seemingly endlessly paralyzed.

-When using the halt spell against enemies they take some time to decide what to do(usually nothing), but sometimes spam their 'growl' sound until their turn ends. 

-A lot of enemies spam the message that they engaged in combat with a character even if it's not their turn, usually when then can't reach the character with a melee attack.

-When recruiting Aloth in gilded vale, during combat he decided to skip all of his turns.

-When loading a save just before a character takes their action you commanded them to take, most graphics turn black and the game freezes

-Some spells like iconic projection hitboxes don't seem to align with the aoe shown, though i believe this issue already existed before in rtwp.

-Sometimes the combat start message appears randomly mid combat, though things such as per encounter resources aren't reset.

 

Feedback:

-Currently if you choose to melee attack an enemy but you can't reach them the action remains queued up, if you then switch to a ranged weapon you immediately attack. It would be better if switching your weapon cancelled your attack action.

-The game doesn't really make it clear enough how initiative works in turn based mode.

-Enemy detection range for when combat starts is way too small, I've had enemies that appeared on the turn list use abilities to buff themselves whilst out of range, never moving to attack. and combat can end without defeating them.

 

[Reinne]

I've encountered some more bugs:

-The firebrand spell form the belt of the royal deadfire cannoneer takes a full action instead of a free action.(I assume this is an oversight since all other summoned weapons and the druid version of the same spell seem to be free actions)

-Sometimes when using the fighter into the fray ability nothing happens and I am unable to take any actions with that character(though animations still play) until I reload the game. When hovering over the into the fray ability it's greyed out and says it's already active.

-The trader Ponamu Bird-Scorned doesn't become hostile when attacked, and in turnbased mode combat starts anyway and doesn't stop until you defeat him.

 

[Reinne]

More bugs/issues I encountered: 

-Spreading plague spell works weird in tbmode, it continues to chain to targets outside of the caster or characters turn forcing you to pause the game in order to even try to avoid it.

-I've started encountering lots of issues where I can't reach enemies with a melee attack and I'm forced to disengage to get in range, primarily when using Itumaak to attack Oozes and Lagufaeth though it occurs with other characters as well.

-Dragon breath from the drake enemies seems to do nothing, an animation plays but that's it. The combat log shows no hits or misses.

-A lot of enemies with chain attacks fail to play the attack sound effect when attacking the first time, primarily noticeable with trolls.

Feedback:

-Allow the fast and slow mode shortcut buttons to affect combat speed in turn based mode.

-Chanter phrase buildup is just way to slow since the last patch, I have straight up been unable to even use the lowest level chanter abilities the entire time.

 

 

[Swells]

Chiming in with some of my own thoughts.

Chanters require a complete overhaul in TB, they are worthless in their current state and feel awful to play:

• Chants trigger at the start of their turn, meaning if you are out of range of targets when their initiative starts, the first cast goes to waste.
• That first chant does not contribute to invocation count for some reason.
• If you just end turns, chanting does not progress.
• Linger seemingly does nothing, even with high int the chants I tested lasted one round.
• Offensive chants do not have a damage indicator in the logs.
• Chant progression is seemingly static comparing Kana and a high dex character, around 3 turns just to get a new chant.
• Invocation duration is nowhere near proportional to the amount of time it takes to acrue points, especially summons.

Interrupts are way too powerful. I've fought opponents into a state of being stunlocked and conversely been knocked out of the battle by a chain of attacks interrupting my characters.

Unclear relationship between action speed and actions you can take. Sometimes characters get an extra round, but that could be interrupts at play, it's hard to keep track of and the thresholds are a mystery. Same with using firearms, it seems that my chanter skips a turn or two after using a crossbow. This is arguably the most important information needed for the player given how many skills impact action speed. If action speed has the player miss rounds it has the knock-on effect of making heavy armour unusable since one-action economy makes turns infinitely more desirable than a small bump in defence.

Abilities seem to scale 1 turn for every 6 seconds of duration. This has some severely lopsided results that really harms martial classes, such as wizard and fighter having near enough the same accuracy buff but the wizard getting way more mileage by merit of the class prefering to stack int. This is on top of Wizards having 5 other action-free buffs they can pop off that lasts 15+ turns (ignoring the per-rest limit, as most can be changed to per encounter as the game progresses and resting is only a real limitation for specific challenges). Summons are impacted the most, lasting only a couple of turns and being way less beneficial than a damaging spell of equal value. E0ven if we fixed the issues the chanter faces, the current summon duration would still render half its moveset and power fantasy unusable.

Non-controlled allies glitch frequently and don't act on their turn.

Interrupts and DoTs don't interact well. DoTs trigger on an enemy's turn, so if you interrupt the enemy and get an extra round to attack and reapply the DoT, it won't do anything. I believe the most recent DoT applies too, so if you crit and then follow up with a graze the DoT damage is weakened.

Spellcasting is a frustrating experience. Even with planning, enemies can just decide to readjust their priority and move out of the AoE entirely. You can't cancel or retarget your spell so it feels like spellcasting is wasted a lot more than RT. Additionally, the interrupts add onto this frustration by knocking a player out of the casting entirely, I gave up on casting spells more often than not just seeing how far down the initiative it would take to cast. I question the merit of even having this system, since there are classes with instant-cast nukes and debilitations that don't feel overpowered by comparison.

Lastly, this isn't a turn-based issue, but you can no longer mod in your own voice files for player characters. Rolling back to legacy patch 3.7 the folder structure is there and I can mod voice files no issue, but all the other patch branches no longer allow it. It's a shame since it was one of the things I was most excited for revisiting the game and I would argue has as much impact as being able to add in your own portraits. I hope it's not out of scope for the devs to fix, otherwise it leaves patch 3.7 being the best version of the game for customization.