Infinity engine question

[Ffordesoon]

Tactics Ogre PSP is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better.

[Tamerlane]

Put me down in the camp that enjoyed IE combat more in theory than in practice. I like my RTSes and I can get a lot of enjoyment out micromanaging groups of dudes with varying abilities and restrictions, but hot damn do I ever get tired of casting Bigby's Lesser Don't Die To Stuff and Mordenkainen's Greater Make That Guy Die To Stuff Again every other fight.

 

All said, I'm not too worried about the combat in PoE. I figure it'll be BG2 quality at the very least, which I generally tolerated and sometimes enjoyed, and I certainly expect it'll end up substantially better.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Tamerlane

[Hassat Hunter]

I'm somewhat confused here...

 

Yes, I hate turnbased with a passion too.

Yes, I am utterly flabbergassed that the RTS setup of IE games didn't allow someone perfect control, while it allows supreme control over any other RPG teambased system to date.

 

What's going on?

[Cubiq]

Yes. You can.

 

Pause your game. Grab your wizard and select your spell. Then grab your fighter and click where you want him to retreat. Then unpause your game. Your wizard will then cast the spell you selected, and at the same time, your fighter will retreat.

 

Are You sure you've played the IE games?

 

^ What Stun said

 

I have seen people on this forum genuinely not know how to play IE games.

And up until this point thought that maybe i'm just misunderstanding what they are saying, but are people really not able to grasp that you're suppose to pause the game before issuing a command?

I was 10 years old when i played the first IE game and i managed to figure that out.

[Hassat Hunter]

Maybe DA:O ruined them with "AI" and they all think that's an IE game?

Cause, I don't even recall an AI taking over in BG1/2/IWD1/2/PS:T... and I love it. Full control.

[khalil]

Are You sure you've played the IE games?

Yes, and I don't trust the fighter to retreat in a sensible way. Perhaps this was just me, but I found that a lot of times the characters would go in some winding route that takes him halfway across the map and through huge packs of enemies when all I wanted was for him to move five feet to the left.

Then you don't remember much about Icewind Dale.

You are right, perhaps I should go replay Icewind Dale to revisit the epic tale of PC cleric #2, and the tragic death of his lover PC mage #1.

If there is a plot to icewind dale, then it fell into the same trap as FF12, in that the story follows some random pricks instead of whoever the story is really about. You saw an amazing story, I saw a string of cliches that existed only to drag me from dungeon to dungeon, ending with a boring twist that doesn't really change anything.

And up until this point thought that maybe i'm just misunderstanding what they are saying, but are people really not able to grasp that you're suppose to pause the game before issuing a command?

I was 10 years old when i played the first IE game and i managed to figure that out.

You're misunderstanding. I know you pause the game to issue commands, but I dislike how the commands get followed. See above.

Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? It's not uncommon for the dwarves to kill themselves because they decided the best way to dissemble a scaffold would be to stand on top and remove the floor from beneath their own feet or something else equally stupid.

Giving commands to the characters in IE games felt like that, except whereas in dwarf fortress you can have up to two hundred dwarves (so one dying of stupidity isn't that bad of a thing), IE games let you have six guys max, so a character dying due to pathing errors is a lot more important.

 

Maybe DA:O ruined them with "AI" and they all think that's an IE game?

Cause, I don't even recall an AI taking over in BG1/2/IWD1/2/PS:T... and I love it. Full control.

One more, I'm referring to how my commands are often carried out very badly.

[Ffordesoon]

Shockingly, not everyone plays games the same way or keys into the same things other players do.

 

Don't be snobs.

[Naurgalen]

You could let the AI in BG2 do some things, but it was too basic, in most battles it would mean loosing several characters.

[Hassat Hunter]

No, I don't recall that either.

What I said was executed to the letter... especially since they have no AI of their own (or if they had, I never enabled it).

 

This pales in comparisson to, say, Knights of the Old Republic II, where I can queue several orders, only to have all of them be disregarded as soon as I switch people.

 

If orders were executed badly, I would probably say human error... or if apparently AI was involved, that might be the fault at hand. IE-games were made for maximum control, not AI controlling your team.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

In BG2, you can easily micromanage by turning off the AI and selecting evey autopause option. If you're trying to micromanage using only the spacebar, you're going to have a devil of a time.

[Greensleeve]

Well, the pathing was beyond atrocious in the IE games. The party could not in any way walk as a group, which was incredibly dangerous for combat. I've certainly had deaths because a party member decided to retreat towards the enemy, thinking that's the shortest available option. 

[Ffordesoon]

AI defaults to on in the IE games.

[Stun]

No, I don't recall that either.

Neither do I. In BG2, If a battle seemed to be so potentially deadly that you risked "losing a few characters", then basic gamer instinct usually took over and you tended to 1) pause the game and issue specific commands, and 2) re-think your tactics (see #1)

 

But since this debate is a comparison, lets take a look at your options in a turn based system.

 

Ok, you're in a particularly tough battle and you fear the potential of "losing a few characters". what do you do? Well, for one, you can't do a party retreat. Each character must wait for his turn. This means that you might be able to get a couple of characters out of harms way, but of course it's very rare when everyone in your entire party gets a turn before an enemy does.

 

So lets see... party member #1 and #2 get their turns. You order them to fall back to a safer position. Now it's enemy #1's turn. He activates a nasty attack against Party member #3, who was just standing there, waiting, because it wasn't his turn. He dies as a result. Now it's Enemy #2's turn. he does the same thing to Party member #4. Party member #4 is now down to 1 hitpoint. But, good news. It's Party member #5's turn now. And he's a cleric! So you order him to move to Party member #4's side and cast heal. Problem: Enemy #3 is in the way, and gets an attack of opportunity. He nails party member #5 with his axe. Party member #5 thus gets his heal spell interrupted. It's now Enemy #5's turn. He's the sorcerer in the back. He's casts Dominate on party member #1 and orders him to attack party member #2.

 

 

Ahem. No thanks. I'll take Real time with pause.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Stun

[khalil]

In Shadowrun Returns (one of the best turn based games I've played in a while) the party members all go, then the enemies all go.

I really liked that system, as it was simple, and at several points gave more options than the standard approach to turn based games.

[Stun]

Well, the pathing was beyond atrocious in the IE games.

There's no such thing as a party based RPG with decent path-finding. So this is a pointless argument.

 

But I can say this. If we have to deal with bad path-finding, I'd MUCH rather deal with it in a RTwP system than in a turn based system. Because at least with RTwP, you can... you know. Pause the game when you see a character run off in the wrong direction, and guide him back. But with turn based, you can do nothing but sit there and watch that character derp his way to catastrophy.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Stun

[Tamerlane]

Unless you play one of the many, many turn-based games that allows you to undo move actions.

[Jarrakul]

This is quickly descending into a mud-slinging contest, but do want to say that, imo, IWD and its expansions had the best stories of all the IE games save PS:T. They were, pretty consistently, the stories of grand plots and machinations by important people on many different sides right up until the moment those plans got horribly messed up by this random group of adventurers that just came blundering through because they had no idea what they were doing. I kind of love that. You definitely weren't the main characters, in the traditional sense, but you were the focus of the action, which is all you really need to be in a game. Honestly, I have no idea why people are so obsessed with being important in games. Sometimes it's more interesting when you're not.

 

Now, IWD2 on the other hand had a sad, sad waste of a plot. It was trying to be a very special episode about racism, which would've been bad enough, except all the racists were right because the half-breeds were all evil sadistic bastards who worshiped the god of evil sadistic bastards. But IWD1 was good.

[khalil]

I personally feel that having interesting side characters doesn't make up for the fact that the people IWD follows around are boring. If the other characters are more interesting, I'd like to have followed them around instead.

While I don't mind the main characters not being important, I do mind them being boring. If the characters had some sort of personality, or story, or goal, or anything other than a collection of sound bites you chose during character creation, I might have cared a bit more.

[Stun]

I personally feel that having interesting side characters doesn't make up for the fact that the people IWD follows around are boring.

What does this even mean?

 

In Icewind Dale, The PLAYER is the one who creates those characters, remember? If they're boring then blame falls on the lazy player who 1) didn't try to role play those characters, 2) didn't take some time to write anything in the Biography section of those characters.

 

But I get it. We've been seduced by Bioware-drama. Where characters aren't interesting unless you can romance them. And plots suck unless they're delivered via long cinematic cut scenes <gag>

Edited March 19, 2014 by Stun

[Greensleeve]

 

I personally feel that having interesting side characters doesn't make up for the fact that the people IWD follows around are boring.

What does this even mean?

 

In Icewind Dale, The PLAYER is the one who creates those characters, remember? If they're boring then blame falls on the lazy player who 1) didn't try to role play those characters, 2) didn't take some time to write anything in the Biography section of those characters.

 

But I get it. We've been seduced by Bioware-drama. Where characters aren't interesting unless you can romance them. And plots suck unless they're delivered via long cinematic cut scenes <gag>

 

 

So you're saying that they're boring because we didn't larp the party? Even if they have a bio, there's zero reactivity to what you do. The characters you create are nobodies who don't exist as anything more than hp bags with swords. They're not boring because we've been seduced by BioWare characters, though they're certainly all easier to invest in than the IWD characters (except for Mission Vao), but because we've want characters of the Obsidian calibre. We want the Kreias, the Briannas, the Kaelyns, the Ganns, the anyone-from-Alpha-Protocols, the Boones, the Casses, and the Joshuas. We want characters with personality and reactivity. And even if we get all these, if there's zero interactive possibility with these characters, there's no point. 

 

IWD has some cool characters, Kresselack in particular (Tony Jay is awesome), but the party is utterly faceless and uninteresting. So you're stumbling around other events wondering why you don't have those guys in your party instead of PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, PC5, and PC6. You can respond to the little dialogue there is, but it doesn't matter who says what. 

[Stun]

but because we've want characters of the Obsidian calibre. We want the Kreias, the Briannas, the Kaelyns, the Ganns, the anyone-from-Alpha-Protocols, the Boones, the Casses, and the Joshuas. We want characters with personality and reactivity. And even if we get all these, if there's zero interactive possibility with these characters, there's no point.

If by "We", you mean "some people" I won't argue.

 

But maybe we shouldn't forget that we also asked for, and got, the Adventurer's hall for PoE, a feature where we can create a whole party of "Hp Bags with swords", so as to re-live that total party customization magic that the Icewind Dales were all about.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Stun

[Cubiq]

You're misunderstanding. I know you pause the game to issue commands, but I dislike how the commands get followed. See above.

Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? It's not uncommon for the dwarves to kill themselves because they decided the best way to dissemble a scaffold would be to stand on top and remove the floor from beneath their own feet or something else equally stupid.

Giving commands to the characters in IE games felt like that, except whereas in dwarf fortress you can have up to two hundred dwarves (so one dying of stupidity isn't that bad of a thing), IE games let you have six guys max, so a character dying due to pathing errors is a lot more important.

 

I haven't played Dwarf Fortress but if you see your character going the wrong way, then:

Press pause,

select the character

and micromanaged it around the thing it was blocking him.

 

You can micromanage your characters literally by the milliseconds. And i can guarantee you that you don't actually need to, no matter how terrible people claim the pathing ai was.

The only way your argument would work is if your character was uncontrollable for that time duration while he is moving.

And he isn't.

And while you are micromanaging that melee, your wizard is casting the spell without any problems.

Which was the whole point of Stun's and my post when you quote me, remember?

 

 

 

 

And if anyone has problems with such micromanaging, then the game obviously isn't for you. It's not a secret that the game is intended for the niche market.

Just like turn based games, and those have it MUCH, MUCH worse than that.

Usually such games don't even have a party AI or pathing and usually require you to move 1 character at a time.

And in most games you can't move directly toward the enemy in one turn either.

 

 

Oh and since the pathing in Eternity will be much better than in the IE games, using this argument as one of the reasons to not follow IE combat design, is useless.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Cubiq

[Hassat Hunter]

In BG2, you can easily micromanage by turning off the AI and selecting evey autopause option. If you're trying to micromanage using only the spacebar, you're going to have a devil of a time.

 

Even without auto-pause, micromanagement was easy. It didn't mean it allowed you to automatically win all the time since you still needed to keep your wits about, and some mages could seriously screw you over, but it was never because of a lack of control.

That's one of the best things of IE, the control. Never would I imagine someone saying it was bad. It's about the best thing IE did.

Well, the pathing was beyond atrocious in the IE games. The party could not in any way walk as a group, which was incredibly dangerous for combat. I've certainly had deaths because a party member decided to retreat towards the enemy, thinking that's the shortest available option.

On how many search nodes did you put it? It can get pretty bad on lower settings for old machines, but more modern who could easily notch it up to 100k, no.

And as said, if you notice a NPC going wrong, all it takes is space and move otherwise.

AI defaults to on in the IE games.

I seriously doubt that. AI would defy the whole purpose of IE isometric. I barely fiddled with controls (especially first time I played it) and it's never been on for me, ever.

Considering the first time I had no idea what D&D was, and was so horribly bad at the game, I had to use the equipment "export/import" cheats to survive the first map (and kept attacking the bears... what can I say, I was young and stupid)... still, no AI.

Neither do I. In BG2, If a battle seemed to be so potentially deadly that you risked "losing a few characters", then basic gamer instinct usually took over and you tended to 1) pause the game and issue specific commands, and 2) re-think your tactics (see #1)

I really can't imagine having a character be uncontrolled (especially a mage) unless you gave them the attack order and they just kept at it.

I suppose, yup, this is the first time ever I learn there's AI for your party members in the IE-games, instead of total dominance over all your puppets. And how many IE-games have I played? All of them you say?

 

This isn't about "playing different ways"... this is "playing a FPS using just your keyboard and ignoring the mouse" kind of different...

[Cubiq]

I seriously doubt that. AI would defy the whole purpose of IE isometric. I barely fiddled with controls (especially first time I played it) and it's never been on for me, ever.

Considering the first time I had no idea what D&D was, and was so horribly bad at the game, I had to use the equipment "export/import" cheats to survive the first map (and kept attacking the bears... what can I say, I was young and stupid)... still, no AI.

No he's right.

Your own character starts with the AI script set to "None"

But other characters that joined your party had AI script set to "Default"

Which basically did only 1 thing:

Attack back when hit, with whatever weapon currently equipped.

 

It doesn't counter your point just clarifying what he probably meant.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Cubiq

[khalil]

 

I personally feel that having interesting side characters doesn't make up for the fact that the people IWD follows around are boring.

What does this even mean?

 

In Icewind Dale, The PLAYER is the one who creates those characters, remember? If they're boring then blame falls on the lazy player who 1) didn't try to role play those characters, 2) didn't take some time to write anything in the Biography section of those characters.

 

But I get it. We've been seduced by Bioware-drama. Where characters aren't interesting unless you can romance them. And plots suck unless they're delivered via long cinematic cut scenes <gag>

 

Assuming I understand what your post, you are claiming that a blank page is the best story ever because you can write anything on it, and if I find the blank paper boring it's my fault for not writing an interesting story on it.

I don't buy a game so I can make up my own story, I can do that for free.

(Also, as a side note, romance is not required to have an interesting character. I'll take Dak'kon over Aerie any day, and don't get me started on some of the mods out there. I saw a single screenshot of the Immoen one and it ended up costing me 2d12 SAN)

And if anyone has problems with such micromanaging, then the game obviously isn't for you. It's not a secret that the game is intended for the niche market.

Just like turn based games, and those have it MUCH, MUCH worse than that.

Usually such games don't even have a party AI or pathing and usually require you to move 1 character at a time.

And in most games you can't move directly toward the enemy in one turn either.

I don't have a problem with micromanaging things, I just like being able to do them one at a time. I like being able to micromanage a fighter without worrying about the archer running out of arrows and needing for me to fetch some more from his inventory. I like doing things one character at a time.

And I really hated how the mage would inevitably get killed by kobolds if I spent more than five seconds in the inventory screen, but that problem was BG1 exclusive.

This isn't about "playing different ways"... this is "playing a FPS using just your keyboard and ignoring the mouse" kind of different

That's the default control setting for Wolfenstein 3D, the first FPS.(Although that depends on whether or not you count Catacomb 3-D, but that used the same control scheme, so the point is moot.) Edited March 19, 2014 by khalil