Combat demonstration

[juanval]

Hello guys. I like everything I see in Pillars of eternity: The setting, creatures, classes, images... But, What about combat? This is the only feature I'm worried. If combat mechanics are succesfull, this game will be great.

 

Have developers thought in showing us how combat works in next updates? It would be nice that developers could show us a video of a party of heroes fighting against some enemies, pausing game and giving orders to heroes using the interface.

 

What do you think?

[Quadrone]

Eh, generally I would of course be happy to get an actual gameplay demonstration but I also know what would happen if Obsidian did an early preview before the game got somewhere near Beta status.

From what I have seen arround several Kickstarter games is that the fans (not even excluding myself) are seldomly able to grasp what "Work in progress" and "alpha" means.

Cue massive threads about perceived problems with the game, lots of dissapointed comments and mocking over "floating stones" or similar obvious oversights.

 

Tldr; Sure would like to see it but I can wait until Obsidian is ready to show it themselves.

[Hassat Hunter]

Cue massive threads about perceived problems with the game, lots of dissapointed comments and mocking over "floating stones" or similar obvious oversights.

We've already had that in the form of "they don't respond to impacts. Animations suck. What the hell is this?

*they still have a year *

[Pipyui]

We've already had that in the form of "they don't respond to impacts. Animations suck. What the hell is this?

*they still have a year *

 

But uninformed outrage is so much easier than understanding.

 

Obsidian will show us a little more when they've made a few more leaps and bounds forward of the last video, but I wouldn't anticipate another before a full, polished gameplay video come late this year in earnest.

 

It'd be neat to get a short little demo of some of the active abilities and modals (like the warrior's ability to hold combatants), but I'd really like to see a brief UI demonstration.

[nikolokolus]

Demonstrating half-baked animations and mechanics seem to do more harm than good because most people "cannot into undermastand" what Alpha state game play actually means.

 

So, I guess that's my way of saying I can wait until the beta. 

[Greensleeve]

What everyone else has said. Most people who backed this game are quite emotionally invested in it. Therefore, loads of nitpicking, all the time, regarding all things. This means that half-finished placeholder animations are just likely to cause tremendous outrage as opposed to a genuine appreciation for the state of the game.  

[Lephys]

I wait patiently for someone commenting on the already-released trailer (or a future video clip) to actually be so ignorant as to say "Omg, this gameplay footage looks so bad... it's like they didn't even finish the game before putting out this video!"

 

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about that stuff, though. The "faction" of people who are going to fail to comprehend that it's alpha footage aren't really the majority of people who were going to be interested in the specifics of the game's design anyway. To use Call of Duty in a cliche fashion (for which I'm not ashamed), if it were the next Call of Duty game, then yeah, it'd probably do a lot of damage. However, this is a game most of those people probably weren't going to check out anyway.

 

You've basically got the ignorant judgers (know nothing but judge as if they're well-informed), then the neutral people (don't really bother to actively check out all games they hear about and judge stuff very much, 'cause they'll just sort of hear about them eventually, anyway), and finally the people who are actually informed and whose sole purpose in life it is to correct the ignorant judgers.

 

Out of these groups, most of the neutral people will hear both sides and ultimately think "Oh, well, that's a pretty good video then, actually, and that game will probably not be horrible." Even some of the ignorant judgers will come around, because, if they cared that much about sticking to their opinion of the game, they'd be after an informed opinion in the first place.

 

Essentially, people are either interested in actually finding out about the game, or they aren't. If they can't be bothered to do more than watch a 2-minute video, then decide the game will suck because the visuals weren't flawless, then they probably were never going to care about PoE in the first place, and they probably don't really run in the same circles as people who will (or, if they do, the people who actually care will still bother to learn about the video and state of the game, because finding out whether or not it's a game they want to get and play is more important to them than getting to boost their self-esteem by exercising their power to arbitrarily bash other people's efforts and creations.)

[Sedrefilos]

What everyone else has said. Most people who backed this game are quite emotionally invested in it. Therefore, loads of nitpicking, all the time, regarding all things. This means that half-finished placeholder animations are just likely to cause tremendous outrage as opposed to a genuine appreciation for the state of the game.  

 

Nah. Bladur's Gate's animations looked like placeholder animations anyway, so maybe people will go all excited like "whoa! it's exactly like the BGs! Great work guys!"

 

kidding ofcourse

Edited March 4, 2014 by Sedrefilos

[J.E. Sawyer]

We still have more work to do before we show combat in-depth.  We're doing regular combat playtests to work out a lot of issues.  Specifically, the pacing, which had been too fast before, has been slowed down to a more IE-appropriate speed.  Additionally, we have our Interrupt/Concentration system in, so characters will play hit reactions if they fail their concentration check.  Our VFX artists and audio guys are also working through a large list of effects for combat (spells, hits, footsteps, etc.).

[Quadrone]

We still have more work to do before we show combat in-depth.  We're doing regular combat playtests to work out a lot of issues.  Specifically, the pacing, which had been too fast before, has been slowed down to a more IE-appropriate speed.  Additionally, we have our Interrupt/Concentration system in, so characters will play hit reactions if they fail their concentration check.  Our VFX artists and audio guys are also working through a large list of effects for combat (spells, hits, footsteps, etc.).

 

Always love to hear these little updates on progress.

[Lephys]

We still have more work to do before we show combat in-depth.  We're doing regular combat playtests to work out a lot of issues.  Specifically, the pacing, which had been too fast before, has been slowed down to a more IE-appropriate speed.  Additionally, we have our Interrupt/Concentration system in, so characters will play hit reactions if they fail their concentration check.  Our VFX artists and audio guys are also working through a large list of effects for combat (spells, hits, footsteps, etc.).

Most of us trust that you guys are diligently smoothing all this out. No worries,

 

On the topic of interrupts, I just had a quick thought/question:

 

How will you handle the real-time possibility of a bunch of attacks warranting interrupt/concentration checks all within a very short amount of time (fraction of a second)? Will it just be "you can only be interrupted once every X seconds/parts-of-a-second"? Or maybe they'll stack? (you got hit by 5 arrows in 1 second, so you roll 5 concentration checks, and are interrupted 5 times in a row).

 

I was just curious. It seems like if all the attacks aren't accounted for, then your party'd be kinda screwed if you didn't space out your attacks. *shrug*. Not necessarily the end of the world. Just something I was curious about.

[Hassat Hunter]

I'm expecting realtime (stacking up interrupts sounds really silly). The worry of course is... stunlock. Or in this case interuptlock.

[Lephys]

I'm expecting realtime (stacking up interrupts sounds really silly). The worry of course is... stunlock. Or in this case interuptlock.

Well, there's much more you can do than just have them stack and call it a day. They could stack in with progressively-reduced intensity (1 success is a .5 second interrupt, 5 successes is a 1.5 second interrupt, etc., for example). I was merely pointing out various example approaches/possibilities.

 

Stunlock is a concern, but so is the situation in which you just command your whole party to attack that Wizard who's trying to cast a bad-news spell, only to only get 1 actual concentration check simply because you didn't manually ensure that everyone's attack fell 1.3 seconds apart. Does that make sense?

 

Imagine if other stuff did that. "Oh, 6 people attacked all within 1 second? Well, you only got 1 armor penetration check."

 

So, I'd say they're both concerns, which is why I'm curious what Josh's/the team's thoughts are on that.

[Bryy]

 

Cue massive threads about perceived problems with the game, lots of dissapointed comments and mocking over "floating stones" or similar obvious oversights.

We've already had that in the form of "they don't respond to impacts. Animations suck. What the hell is this?

*they still have a year *

 

Hey, watch it.

 

Posting that stuff isn't final due to them still being a year out gets you banned on NeoGAF.

[Silent Winter]

 

I'm expecting realtime (stacking up interrupts sounds really silly). The worry of course is... stunlock. Or in this case interuptlock.

Well, there's much more you can do than just have them stack and call it a day. They could stack in with progressively-reduced intensity (1 success is a .5 second interrupt, 5 successes is a 1.5 second interrupt, etc., for example). I was merely pointing out various example approaches/possibilities.

 

Stunlock is a concern, but so is the situation in which you just command your whole party to attack that Wizard who's trying to cast a bad-news spell, only to only get 1 actual concentration check simply because you didn't manually ensure that everyone's attack fell 1.3 seconds apart. Does that make sense?

 

Imagine if other stuff did that. "Oh, 6 people attacked all within 1 second? Well, you only got 1 armor penetration check."

 

So, I'd say they're both concerns, which is why I'm curious what Josh's/the team's thoughts are on that.

 

Or the advantage to getting all 6 attacks 'at once' is that any attacks landing during an interrupt animation can land for a guaranteed hit (though your way may be easier to implement).  Definitely don't think they should stack but a progressively reduced increase would be ok (logorythmic increase?).  Either that or no increase and it's down to the animations and leave it at that.  How often will 6 blows land at exactly the same time anyway?  If they're landing just after each other then the timer/animation can reset.

[DCParry]

 

I'm expecting realtime (stacking up interrupts sounds really silly). The worry of course is... stunlock. Or in this case interuptlock.

Well, there's much more you can do than just have them stack and call it a day. They could stack in with progressively-reduced intensity (1 success is a .5 second interrupt, 5 successes is a 1.5 second interrupt, etc., for example). I was merely pointing out various example approaches/possibilities.

 

Stunlock is a concern, but so is the situation in which you just command your whole party to attack that Wizard who's trying to cast a bad-news spell, only to only get 1 actual concentration check simply because you didn't manually ensure that everyone's attack fell 1.3 seconds apart. Does that make sense?

 

Imagine if other stuff did that. "Oh, 6 people attacked all within 1 second? Well, you only got 1 armor penetration check."

 

So, I'd say they're both concerns, which is why I'm curious what Josh's/the team's thoughts are on that.

 

 

I would prefer just a straight independent effect, so if you get hit with (at completely imaginary and arbitrary time stamps): 2 Arrows (0.0), 1 Arrow (0.2), 1 Arrow (0.4), 2 Arrows (0.6)

 

First 2 Arrows, you make on concentration check and fail one, so you are interrupted/staggered/whatever until 0.5. You are hit at 0.2, make you check, at 0.4 you fail so you are now stunned until 0.9, for the last volley you make one check and fail one, now being stunned until 1.1.

 

I think intensifying the effect for number of simultaneous checks would lead to a sort of "degenerative" gameplay situation, but I could be mistaken. Of course, this discussion could be exaggerating the danger of actual interruption by arrows for anyone with a halfway decent concentration.

[Gyges]

This is why i love this project. People getting antsy because of a trailer, developer comes to the forums and soothes the masses. /thread

[Lephys]

How often will 6 blows land at exactly the same time anyway?  If they're landing just after each other then the timer/animation can reset.

That's true. I wasn't very worried about them landing at exactly the same time. But, yeah. I was just wondering how that functionally would work, is all.

 

I think intensifying the effect for number of simultaneous checks would lead to a sort of "degenerative" gameplay situation, but I could be mistaken. Of course, this discussion could be exaggerating the danger of actual interruption by arrows for anyone with a halfway decent concentration.

We were talking about the opposite of intensifying the effect. Thus, instead of "that'll be .5 seconds of interrupt, times 7 hits, so... you're not doing anything for the next 3 and a half seconds! 8D", it would be less for each subsequent strike within a very short window of time.

 

*shrug*

 

I think I was just curious about a mechanic, and am not trying to exaggerate the danger of anything, since I don't really know how much of this functions, exactly, in-game.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Interrupts don't queue and an Interrupt always has a fixed (tiny) duration.  If someone actually gets hit by six attacks concurrently, they probably have to worry more about their Stamina than being interrupted.

[Lephys]

Curiosity: satiated. Thanks, ^_^

[JFSOCC]

Eh, generally I would of course be happy to get an actual gameplay demonstration but I also know what would happen if Obsidian did an early preview before the game got somewhere near Beta status.

From what I have seen arround several Kickstarter games is that the fans (not even excluding myself) are seldomly able to grasp what "Work in progress" and "alpha" means.

Cue massive threads about perceived problems with the game, lots of dissapointed comments and mocking over "floating stones" or similar obvious oversights.

 

Tldr; Sure would like to see it but I can wait until Obsidian is ready to show it themselves.

still, best to catch those things early, no?

[Quadrone]

 

Eh, generally I would of course be happy to get an actual gameplay demonstration but I also know what would happen if Obsidian did an early preview before the game got somewhere near Beta status.

From what I have seen arround several Kickstarter games is that the fans (not even excluding myself) are seldomly able to grasp what "Work in progress" and "alpha" means.

Cue massive threads about perceived problems with the game, lots of dissapointed comments and mocking over "floating stones" or similar obvious oversights.

 

Tldr; Sure would like to see it but I can wait until Obsidian is ready to show it themselves.

still, best to catch those things early, no?

 

 

Not necessarily.

That's because most of these errors/problems are "perceived" problems not actually real ones.

What I mean with that is that as long as PoE is not feature complete many of the games mechanics (or pretty much anything else) are working just enough that Obsidian can test them but are missing all the polish and bells and whistles.

So if they show is the game in such a state the same thing that has happened with the "missing hit animations" will happen on a greater scale.

For short, there will be lots of angst about stuff Obsidian didn't forget/failed to do, but just didn't get arround to do yet ,as for now, it just has to work and not look good.

So I don't think it is in Obsidians interest to put out a video now, when instead of impressing press and newcomers, they have to run arround and calm the enraged fans afterwards.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Quadrone

[Tauron]

I am looking forward to see some combat sequences. How and what tactics we can use, depending on the class.

[Gyges]

From what i recall, a dev said since they finished with South Park: The Stick of Truth they are getting a few more people to do animations, so i suppose we aren't gonna see anything until its up to par with what they consider "close enough" to the final product.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Gyges

[mlwhitt]

I have to agree.  I rather see polished combat that I can really get behind than some "staged" combat or "so/so" combat.

 

Demonstrating half-baked animations and mechanics seem to do more harm than good because most people "cannot into undermastand" what Alpha state game play actually means.

 

So, I guess that's my way of saying I can wait until the beta.