Will Pillars of Eternity have better combat system than Dragon Age Origins?

[Lephys]

The example I gave (finding a way to spell-pre-buff in PoE despite the no-spell-prebuffing rule) is what we were discussing here and what Inkblot was responding to. It obviously will never happen "unintentionally". It will always happen only when the player deliberately makes it happen.

Because it's impossible that the game simply doesn't allow for it to happen. If there is a way to do it, I don't understand why it's "obvious" it won't happen unintentionally. You're fleeing from a final enemy in some encounter, and it happens to take you close enough to another group that you just keep all your current buffs and continue fighting, even though your only intention was to not-get-killed by that foe who was chasing you. Seems just as likely as anything else to me.

 

Yet we don't really mind the first case. We're OK with it! It's the second case that, on this forum, has damned those IE games as terrible, unfun, untactical pieces of garbage that they are!

Or it's just something that could be improved. Have you never eaten a meal that wasn't disgusting, and was quite fine and good, but could've used more seasoning or something? There ya go. Something doesn't have to be horrible just to be not-perfect.

 

Again with the jumps to binary space. You can't ever just say "but a lot of people seem to think this adjustment would work better." It's always gotta go straight to the superlative "but everyone on this forum either thinks like I do: that the old way of doing it is AMAZING, or they think the new way of doing it is amazing and the old way is CRAP!"

 

I gotta say, that's really unproductive. Not that you'll listen to this nonsense-fountain.

 

*spraaayyyyyyyyyyyyy*. Toss in a coin! Make a wish!

 

 

Another funny observation: Look at how prevalent pre-buffing is in the IE games (cRPGs using the D&D ruleset), versus an actual PnP session of D&D. Sure, you did it sometimes, but if you didn't know what was in a cave, you didn't just stack 7 effects on your whole party, then hope they were all useful. And you sure as hell couldn't reload after dying to some encounter, only to now use your crazy, metaphysical knowledge from the afterlife to "strategically" prepare for a fight your party isn't even supposed to know about.

 

In PnP, you prepare for stuff by making intelligent decisions, in general, and being cautious. Not by just having all the right pre-buffs on at all the right times, and making sure everyone's as enhanced as they can be before every fight.

 

Then, you've got stuff like "What if someone just mass dispels your party at the beginning of the fight?" How do you hard counter that? By literally the opposite of pre-buffing for preparation. Now it's a coin toss. Do I keep 10 buffs on everyone for the start of every fight? Or do I prepare for things that like to instantly dispel all my effects (if they can help it)?

 

*shrug*. I'd just much rather deal with a little intelligent planning (approach, party formation, readied weapons/spells, stealth and trap use, etc.), then deal with combat as it comes, than have 30% of the combat system being what all passive effects you can overlay onto your peeps before anyone even makes a move.

 

But, that's just me.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Lephys

[Volourn]

"Are things like constant saving and reloading, repetitive, rote application of pre-buffs, trekking back and forth between a dungeon and a shop, shuffling things around in and between inventories, or repetitively killing the same respawning monsters over and over again enjoyable activities?"

 

I'll play your trollish game the way it is meant to be played:

 

Simple answer is YES.

 

 

 

"If you're facing a beholder for the first time, you have no idea what to expect. He'll have to kill you a few times first."
 

\I am playing a small violin for you right now.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Volourn

[Ffordesoon]

Are things like constant saving and reloading, repetitive, rote application of pre-buffs, trekking back and forth between a dungeon and a shop, shuffling things around in and between inventories, or repetitively killing the same respawning monsters over and over again enjoyable activities?

I agree with you, but to be fair to those on the other side of this issue, I can remember times when I've enjoyed each item on that list. I've just never enjoyed all of them in the same game, and I certainly don't think they're good for a broadly linear cRPG with a strong narrative focus.

[Stun]

Except that if you're facing a mage for the first time, you'll expect him to cast spells, because you'll know what a mage is, as you can actually play one and the mechanics are all in the manual. If you're facing a beholder for the first time, you have no idea what to expect. He'll have to kill you a few times first.

Or just hurt you a few times first before even an idiot begins noticing he's getting hit with magic. You do realize that flesh to stone and disintegrate are not the only beholder rays, don't you? (in fact, if I'm not mistaken, Beholder AI in an unmodded Bg2 sees beholders casting Cause Serious Wounds, Fear, and Anti-magic Ray as their opening attacks. And even later when they cast Disintigrate and Flesh to stone you can.... you know... Save against them a few times before you get killed.

 

But I understand. Our arguments sound so much better when we exaggerate.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

@Volourn – Thank you. At least you have the sense to state up front that you like you're game to be designed to play this way. What puzzles me about Stun is that he's twisting himself in all these knots to "prove" that the game is not, in fact, designed to be played that way.

[Stun]

You're right Junta. Maybe instead of trying to spoonfeed you ways in which even a pop-a-moler may enjoy BG2's combat, I should just get out my little violin and play it for you as we cry together about the unfair harshness of life in general.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Stun

[Ffordesoon]

I would like to respectfully point out something that has perhaps been overlooked in this discussion: a lot of BG2's spells look pretty darn similar. Which may not sound like much of a problem, except that it totally is, because you can't definitively go, "Oh, he cast Cause Serious Wounds on me, I should do the following" without getting hit by it and watching the combat log like a hawk. This is assuming it's one of the spells that shows you what it is in the combat log, which is somewhat rare. Add to that the vast list of spells, each of which has its own unclear name and icon, and the fact that you can't practice magic openly in Athkatla without paying 5,000gp, and the fact that your only slightly unsquishy early game mage gets taken to Spellhold along with all her spells at the end of Irenicus' dungeon. These in themselves are fairly serious impediments to systemic transparency.

[Stun]

I would like to respectfully point out something that has perhaps been overlooked in this discussion: a lot of BG2's spells look pretty darn similar. Which may not sound like much of a problem, except that it totally is, because you can't definitively go, "Oh, he cast Cause Serious Wounds on me, I should do the following" without getting hit by it and watching the combat log like a hawk. This is assuming it's one of the spells that shows you what it is in the combat log, which is somewhat rare. Add to that the vast list of spells, each of which has its own unclear name and icon, and the fact that you can't practice magic openly in Athkatla without paying 5,000gp, and the fact that your only slightly unsquishy early game mage gets taken to Spellhold along with all her spells at the end of Irenicus' dungeon. These in themselves are fairly serious impediments to systemic transparency.

Yes, I imagine bad eye sight, or the unwillingness to read a combat log window as it scrolls during combat can indeed be seen as a "problem" for someone.

 

But for those people, BG2 has customizable auto-pause settings.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

@Stun. You're incorrectly assuming that I didn't enjoy BG2's combat. I did. Eventually. It has its problems and could be improved on, but overall I thought it worked great. I enjoyed it so much I played all the other IE games after I finished BG2/ToB, and eventually got good enough at them that I'm having no trouble at all with IWD2. Not at your fanatical level I'm sure, but still competent enough that I'm only saving frequently because the damn thing occasionally crashes, and I clear most boss fights on the first try.

 

What I didn't like about BG2 is that I remember when I first played it, I felt that it was unfair. It was constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were.

 

I did eventually figure it out, but I did not enjoy that part. It was tiresome, tedious, repetitive, frustrating. I made several squib builds and had to start over several times, then run through the content I had already cleared before. It was not fun, nor fair. I had read the manual quite thoroughly, and I had played PnP D&D for years. Yet I kept getting reamed by enemies I didn't understand, who were attacking me in ways I didn't understand.

 

It was also the first IE game I played.

 

I eventually figured it out and proceeded to enjoy the game. I remain convinced that BG2 would not have been any the worse if the Athkatla content had been staggered and spread out a bit, with clearer (in-game) indications about which quests are harder than others, and if there had been better -- or indeed any -- in-game information to be had about which monsters are to be expected where, what kinds of attacks and immunities they could be expected to have, and how they could be countered. I would not have wanted that information to be shoved into my face, but if there had been a grizzled monster-hunting veteran at the Copper Coronet who would give you pointers if you bought him beer, for example, it would have made getting into the game enormously less frustrating.

 

I.e., it seemed obvious to me that the game was designed and balanced to be played with trial-and-error reloading. I felt then, and continue to feel today, that that's lazy and unimaginative design masquerading as challenge.

 

If that makes me a mouth-breathing slope-browed popamolian responsible for the Decline, then fine, so be it.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

What I didn't like about BG2 is that I remember when I first played it, I felt that it was unfair. It was constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were.

 

I did eventually figure it out, but I did not enjoy that part. It was tiresome, tedious, repetitive, frustrating. I made several squib builds and had to start over several times, then run through the content I had already cleared before. It was not fun, nor fair. I had read the manual quite thoroughly, and I had played PnP D&D for years. Yet I kept getting reamed by enemies I didn't understand, who were attacking me in ways I didn't understand.

 

Can you give some specific examples? What the game was 'constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were'.

[Stun]

What I didn't like about BG2 is that I remember when I first played it, I felt that it was unfair. It was constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were.

Wait a minute. Wait one stinkin' minute. I remember engaging you a while back in a rather laborious, detailed, technical discussion about D&D, complete with the typical badge-of-honor claims by both of us that we've got the old manuals, and have been playing since we were babies.

 

How can someone with a vast D&D background not know every detail about anything that's being thrown at him in Baldurs Gate 2?

 

The gripe you're making is a common one for other people, but it shouldn't even remotely apply to people like you.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Stun

[Hiro Protagonist II]

^ Valid point. I don't understand how someone with such vast knowledge can know so little.

 

Anyway, my question was more that I had very little knowledge of pnp D&D and I didn't find it that hard to get through both BG games. In fact, I probably missed half the quests as I didn't realise there were so many. I also never knew Minsc was a NPC in the original game when I played it. And never played the canon party in BG until after I played BG2. I thought wow, that's kind of an interesting party and went back to BG1 to play it.

 

I found BG2 gives you so many hints that it's hard not to be prepared. Flail of Ages in the De'arnise Keep is practically thrown at you near the start once you get out of the starting dungeon and it's one of the best weapons in the game. It's like the game is saying, 'here, you'll need this weapon to complete this quest'. And a lot of quests were like that.

[Ffordesoon]

 

I would like to respectfully point out something that has perhaps been overlooked in this discussion: a lot of BG2's spells look pretty darn similar. Which may not sound like much of a problem, except that it totally is, because you can't definitively go, "Oh, he cast Cause Serious Wounds on me, I should do the following" without getting hit by it and watching the combat log like a hawk. This is assuming it's one of the spells that shows you what it is in the combat log, which is somewhat rare. Add to that the vast list of spells, each of which has its own unclear name and icon, and the fact that you can't practice magic openly in Athkatla without paying 5,000gp, and the fact that your only slightly unsquishy early game mage gets taken to Spellhold along with all her spells at the end of Irenicus' dungeon. These in themselves are fairly serious impediments to systemic transparency.

Yes, I imagine bad eye sight, or the unwillingness to read a combat log window as it scrolls during combat can indeed be seen as a "problem" for someone.

 

But for those people, BG2 offers its auto-pause settings to instantly solve such gamer deficiencies. (hint: auto-pause on spell cast)

I don't have a problem with reading a combat log, nor is my eyesight bad. I meant exactly what I said. Many spells look exceedingly similar to vastly different spells. There's no way around that. It's fact. Auto-pausing on spellcasting (in addition to being an irritating waste of a key press in many cases) does not mitigate the fact that a lot of spells have similar animations, models, etc. There is no way around that being confusing, especially for new players.

[PrimeJunta]

Can you give some specific examples? What the game was 'constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were'.

Read this thread. I already did.

 

How can someone with a vast D&D background not know every detail about anything that's being thrown at him in Baldurs Gate 2?

 

The gripe you're making is a common one for other people, but it shouldn't even remotely apply to people like you.

Because I used those D&D materials to run campaigns, not as bedtime reading. That means I used those parts which were relevant to my campaigns, and ignored those parts that were not. In particular, I ignored most of the monsters. I mean sure, I leafed through the monster manuals, but most of them didn't fit my campaign so I didn't do anything with them, and didn't know much about them.

 

My longest-running campaign (at that time) was based on the Al-Qadim setting. I also was pretty stingy about awarding XP, largely due to my dislike of high-level gameplay in AD&D (IMO things get ridiculous fast once past level 12 or so, with the sweet spot between levels 3 and 10 or thereabouts). The upshot is that I had -- still have -- a pretty good handle on AD&D spells up to level 5 or 6 or thereabouts, and of the capabilities of the monsters I actually used in my campaigns. If I recall correctly, this included critters like geniekind, various desert-specialized monsters, various aquatic and semi-aquatic monsters (I had a Kuo-Toa civilization in there somewhere), yuan-ti and naga, rakshasa; there may have been a golem or two, but as I recall no abominations, and no dragons as monsters (as NPC's, yes).

 

I.e., my knowledge of (A)D&D is by no means encyclopedic. It is a working knowledge I've gotten by running campaigns in it for a very long time, mostly in worlds of my own devising, and covers the areas which I needed to cover in order to run those campaigns. So I'm very comfortable with the Planes and many of their denizens (because I ran a Planescape campaign), with the stuff that went on in my Al-Qadim campaign, and with magic up to level 5 spells or thereabouts (towards the end of my campaigns a few of my characters did get access to level 6 spells and perhaps one of them even got the odd level 7 one, but that was for such a short time and there were so few they ever used that I never got a good feel for what's available at that level), but I only know the Forgotten Realms from computer games, and Dragonlance not at all. 

 

The state of my books tell pretty well what I know and what I don't. The PHB and DMG are literally held together with duct tape and have pages falling out even so, same thing for the Al-Qadim sourcebook, but my Monster Manuals are in good to near-mint condition, and I don't even have a lot of the supplements.

Edited May 1, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Stun]

I don't have a problem with reading a combat log, nor is my eyesight bad. I meant exactly what I said. Many spells look exceedingly similar to vastly different spells. There's no way around that. It's fact. Auto-pausing on spellcasting (in addition to being an irritating waste of a key press in many cases) does not mitigate the fact that a lot of spells have similar animations, models, etc. There is no way around that being confusing, especially for new players.

Enough with this ridiculousness. Spells look the same? I'll ask again, did you try reading their descriptions?

 

By the way, if you're merely referring to their graphic animations then I'd very very concerned about PoE, as you will likely have the same gripe with its magic. There is no way Obsidian has the funding to make every spell animation be super distinctly different from the others. And if they're not, then we will get people like you complaining that Arcane Veil looks too similar to Minor Arcane reflection, and the whine will be: Well, how am I supposed to know what defense that enemy mage has put up!? <waah>

Edited May 1, 2014 by Stun

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

I don't have a problem with reading a combat log, nor is my eyesight bad. I meant exactly what I said. Many spells look exceedingly similar to vastly different spells. There's no way around that. It's fact. Auto-pausing on spellcasting (in addition to being an irritating waste of a key press in many cases) does not mitigate the fact that a lot of spells have similar animations, models, etc. There is no way around that being confusing, especially for new players.

Enough with this ridiculousness. Spells look the same? I'll ask again, did you try reading their descriptions?

 

By the way, if you're merely referring to their graphic animations then I'd very very concerned about PoE, as you will likely have the same gripe with its magic. There is no way Obsidian has the funding to make every spell animation be super distinctly different from the others. And if they're not, then we will get people like you complaining that Arcane Veil looks too similar to Minor Arcane reflection, and the whine will be: Well, how am I supposed to know what defense that enemy mage has put up!? <waah>

 

 

This was brought up before in another thread. Dispel Magic and Remove Magic was one example. They're the same spell? WTF?   Quite an entertaining couple of pages in that thread after my initial post.

[Ffordesoon]

I worry that it'll be the same in PoE, yes. And yes, I am referring to the animations. The ones that exist solely to tell the player visually what spell a dude just cast. It's kind of a big deal for those animations to be similar enough that reading their descriptions is necessary to identify them - and that's assuming you know what spell is being cast, which you often don't. Enemy spells that don't hit a party member are not listed in the combat log.

 

And yes, you bet your ass I'm going to complain if spells aren't distinct enough. If that bothers anybody, well, sucks to be you. I want this game to be great, and I'll piss off as many people as I have to to make it great.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Ffordesoon

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

Can you give some specific examples? What the game was 'constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were'.

Read this thread. I already did.

 

You listed one. Beholders. And yes, I went through the whole thread. How about actually giving examples (notice the 's' on the end of examples) instead of saying you did which you haven't. And I'm requesting specifics, not general monsters. As I said, a lot of quests gave you items that helped you along and gave you hints.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Stun]

Enemy spells that don't hit a party member are not listed in the combat log.

What? What a load of baloney. Would you like to see some screenshots that illustrate how wrong you are? Or do you just need someone to walk you though those oh-so-complicated adjustable Feedback options in the game's main menu that you couldn't figure out?

 

Here's a shot of 2 enemy spell casters casting a defensive spell on themselves.

 

 

And here's a shot of a demon casting a summoning spell:

 

 

 

 

 

This was brought up before in another thread.

God damn. What a tragic collection of totally hopeless modern gamers bitching about how the IE games don't hand-hold you tight enough. I am glad I missed that thread. And so is my stomach. Edited May 1, 2014 by Stun

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

Enemy spells that don't hit a party member are not listed in the combat log.

What? What a load of baloney. Would you like to see some screenshots that illustrate how wrong you are? Or do you just need someone to walk you though those oh-so-complicated adjustable Feedback options in the game's main menu that you couldn't figure out?

 

Well it is Ffordesoon's first time playing BG2 so he may be missing stuff like what's happening in the combat log.

 

I do find it interesting that so many new people on this board who backed PoE have either not played the IE games before or only just playing them now or recently. I can't wait for PoE to be released, to see if it has the same combat mechanics, the same type of encounters, same type of anything as the IE games that so many people deride as faults in the IE games.

[Bryy]

God damn. What a tragic collection of totally hopeless modern gamers bitching about how the IE games don't hand-hold you tight enough. I am glad I missed that thread. And so is my stomach.

Stun, do you honestly get this upset or is it just an act?

 

Because come on. Video games and the internet.

[PrimeJunta]

 

 

Can you give some specific examples? What the game was 'constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were'.

Read this thread. I already did.

 

You listed one. Beholders. And yes, I went through the whole thread. How about actually giving examples (notice the 's' on the end of examples) instead of saying you did which you haven't. And I'm requesting specifics, not general monsters. As I said, a lot of quests gave you items that helped you along and gave you hints.

 

 

To tell you the truth, I don't even remember the details. It's been a long time since my first play-through of BG2. What I do remember is that intense feeling of frustration and unfairness, and almost giving up on it several times. I'm glad I didn't because once I pushed past that point, the game opened up and it remains one of my favorites. I do remember exactly when that happened: when I took the slaver quest on the east side of the Copper Coronet. Until then, everything I had tried had ended up with a very quick reaming. Beholders. Golems. Vampires. A freakin' dragon for crying out loud.

 

By the time I got to Kangaxx, it was a fun challenge, not a frustration.

 

(Edit: this on top of my general beefs with AD&D, which I think is probably the worst mainstream system of game mechanics, ever. I only played it as PnP because of the breadth and depth of the lore, since I couldn't be arsed to port it over to some saner system myself.)

Edited May 1, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Namutree]

I'm sure the combat in this game will be at least good. I mean, this is Obsidian we're talking about. IWD/IWD2 had the best combat of the IE games. So it would be odd if they failed to make a good system.

[tajerio]

I'm also sure that no matter how long this argument about the specifics of combat in BG2 goes on, PoE's combat will not be closely similar to BG2's, and no one will be proved right.

[Ffordesoon]

@Stun:

 

You know, I knew I was taking a shot in the dark on that one, because I hadn't played the game in a few days and couldn't remember whether or not it was true. My bad.

 

@Hiro:

 

I watch the combat log every single battle. I miss stuff sometimes. My God, can you ever forgive me for making mistakes that quite a lot of intelligent people seem to have made?