Group Weapon Swap.

[Karranthain]

Group weapon swap is just one of these things I wish I had when playing Infinity Engine games. Weapon switching was rather unwieldy, as you had to do it manually for every character in your party. In the end I chose not to bother with it altogether.

 

The proposed solution is very simple - when the player selects several (or all) characters in the party, the UI would have an option for a group weapon swap. That way we could easily and painlessly switch between, for an instance, melee and ranged weapons on the fly.

 

Give the approaching enemies an opening volley and then switch to melee to meet them head-on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jarmo]

Which would be real nice.

 

Also, holster all weapons with one click.

If that made it into the game, did it?

[Sensuki]

 

Terrible idea.

 

A tab-through key would be nice though. For instance if you marquee select a bunch of characters in an RTS or MOBA and press TAB it cycles through each of the selected units.

 

Let's say the weapon swap key is W, you could just tab W, tab W, tab W, tab, W

Edited July 15, 2014 by Sensuki

[Karranthain]

What exactly is terrible about it?

 

To clarify - you'd obviously still be able to do it manually for each character if you chose to.

 

 

Which would be real nice.

 

Also, holster all weapons with one click.

If that made it into the game, did it?

 

Judging from the screens, both sets of equipped weapons are visible, but I'm not sure if you can actually "holster" the currently used weapon.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Karranthain

[Sensuki]

What exactly is terrible about it?

There is only ONE instance where it would be useful, and that is at the start of an encounter IF a lot of your characters happen to be equipped with ranged weapons in one slot and melee in the other, and after firing a volley of ranged you swap them over to melee.

 

This mentality also assumes that combat will not be differentiated enough (individual encounters with enemies that have different strengths/weaknesses/resistances and positioning AND encounters over the course of the game).

 

Ranged weapons (other than implements) all do piercing damage. It's the melee weapons that have the damage type and propery variety, therefore it's going to be likely that the majority of weapon swapping that you do may be before an encounter due to in-game or meta-gamed prescience or during an encounter.

 

It may even be detrimental to not have certain characters (such as Fighters and Barbarians) to not have their melee weapons equipped immediately upon engagement, because the time it takes for them to fire a ranged weapon then swap to melee and engage in melee could mean that they were not able to gain the positional advantage that they should have if they had been melee ready at the start of the encounter.

 

Long story short: I expect combat to have way more varied circumstances than a rinse and repeat ranged volley followed by melee combat.

 

Individual micro management of units is something that Josh Sawyer wants players to do more often in combat for Pillars of Eternity, where they may not have in some of the IE games (particularly BG1 and IWD1).

Edited July 15, 2014 by Sensuki

[Karranthain]

How does a weapon swap toggle affect the circumstances of combat exactly? It's strictly an UI convenience, an additional option you're not obligated to use and which obviously may not be optimal in all situations. Not to mention the fact that you could, for an instance, select three characters and swap only their equipment etc.

 

Also, do tell where exactly I imply that the combat will not be differentiated enough.

 

I don't think that busywork (to quote you: "Let's say the weapon swap key is W, you could just tab W, tab W, tab W, tab, W". Do you seriously consider this good gameplay? It would only make sense in a game without a on-demand pause anyway. This is not an RTS or MOBA.) constitutes fun individual micro management either. Even if you disagree, it's still just an option, which you can choose to ignore completely.

 

And how does that make sense anyway? Your player isn't somehow able to bellow commands to his companions?

Edited July 15, 2014 by Karranthain

[Chilloutman]

Ehm, weapon groups were already in IWD2, doubt that we will miss them in PoE. Its standart these days

[Karranthain]

Ehm, weapon groups were already in IWD2, doubt that we will miss them in PoE. Its standart these days

 

There were, but you couldn't swap the currently used weapon set for several character at once - at least that's what I remember (haven't played it in a while).

[Sensuki]

Do you seriously consider this good gameplay?

Yep. What the **** is wrong with having to do repetitive actions? You have to do them in other games, particularly in FPS, RTS and MOBAs. I probably do somewhere around 100-160 APM in DotA 2 (which is average to slow apm), quickly spamming tab and W a few times is absolutely not out of place for me.

 

For such a limited use case, it's not worth dedicating a UI button for.

 

The UI's already been mostly finalized as well. There won't be a button for it, or a large demand.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Sensuki

[Karranthain]

 

Do you seriously consider this good gameplay?

Yep. What the **** is wrong with having to do repetitive actions? You have to do them in other games, particularly in FPS, RTS and MOBAs. I probably do somewhere around 100-160 APM in DotA 2 (which is average to slow apm), quickly spamming tab and W a few times is absolutely not out of place for me.

 

For such a limited use case, it's not worth dedicating a UI button for.

 

The UI's already been mostly finalized as well. There won't be a button for it, or a large demand.

 

 

Nothing wrong with it. I just don't think it makes any sense in a game which features active pause. You're not competing against time (which is a staple in the genres you've listed).

 

I'd argue that it isn't as limited as you suggest - but to be fair, neither of us can know this beforehand.

[Sensuki]

Pause actually makes it even less of an issue. Like I said, the number of times where you'd want to swap multiple unit's weapons over to their secondary slot at the same time will be very limited.

 

End of story really.

[Jarmo]

 

 

 Also, holster all weapons with one click.

If that made it into the game, did it?

 

Judging from the screens, both sets of equipped weapons are visible, but I'm not sure if you can actually "holster" the currently used weapon.

 

The spare set on back I noticed, and it's great.

Now it's more about if we can not hold weapons in ready to kill stance when wondering about in towns and bars.

 

 

 There is only ONE instance where it would be useful, and that is at the start of an encounter IF a lot of your characters happen to be equipped with ranged weapons in one slot and melee in the other, and after firing a volley of ranged you swap them over to melee. 

 

I'd expect that to be a rather common case, assuming the the characters do have ranged weapons.

Simply select the ones that do and hit swap. Having all have ranged on the same slot.. well it'd make sense to have them so, if you can group swap.

 

I don't see how requiring less actions instead of more, wouldn't be a good design.

No need to have a special UI button if there's not one already in place. Just use the same button/key you'd use on single character,

just make it apply for all selected characters.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Jarmo

[Sensuki]

I don't think so really.

 

In the IE games - of which I am currently replaying. There is only one instance where I swap a ranged character's weapon - when they are engaged in melee combat by an enemy.

 

My warrior classes are always equipped with melee weapons so they can enter the fray as fast as possible to get to the correct enemies. in BG2 and Throne of Bhaal, ranged weapons don't do much damage per hit compared to melee weapons and getting those characters into position (sometimes they can get a hit off on an enemy mage or lich BEFORE their contingency/spell trigger protections even activate.

 

In Pillars of Eternity, Josh has stated that ranged weapons will deal reduced damage in comparison to melee weapons to avoid the situations you had in IWD1 and BG1 where ranged weapons were in most encounters, way better than melee weapons, full stop. He has also said that using arbalests and firearms in the manner that we are discussing in this thread (fire a full party volley of ranged and swap to melee) is actually too powerful and thus the damage of arbalests and firearms will be reduced.

 

If you intend to play this way all the time, then sure, you may be doing this every encounter. But across the vast majority of players and class combinations, I think that dedicated melee and dedicated ranged characters will be far more common than everyone doing a Darklands style opening volley.

 

I'd prefer finer control of swapping my characters weapons. I'd prefer to be able to tab through selected characters and swap their weapons individually than the game swapping every selected character's weapon for me at the same time.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Sensuki

[Jarmo]

 He has also said that using arbalests and firearms in the manner that we are discussing in this thread (fire a full party volley of ranged and swap to melee) is actually too powerful and thus the damage of arbalests and firearms will be reduced.

 

We'll just have to see how that works out.

 

My view is, if ranged damage is reduced enough that doing an opening volley won't be worth the effort, then using ranged weapons won't be worth the effort at all. But by my reading that sounds like it's a good tactic in game. If it's too effective now, it will probably still be effective after the adjustment, just not overly so.

[Karranthain]

As for the way the combat will turn out - we'll just have to see. The beta is coming, so we'll get that chance soon enough!

 

Just one more thing:

 

I'd prefer finer control of swapping my characters weapons. I'd prefer to be able to tab through selected characters and swap their weapons individually than the game swapping every selected character's weapon for me at the same time.

 

One does not preclude the other.

[Sensuki]

It does because the way that the PE UI is designed is that every function of the game must have a coinciding UI button - that's just how they're doing it.

 

We don't even know if the game has a swap weapon button like you would find in ARPGs, as in the IE games both sets of weapons were represented on the UI, and you had to click them to change, in IWD2 they could be assigned different hotkeys (one for each set). The game also supports more than one weapon set (through the use of talents).

 

I have a feeling that the design is probably more along the lines of what the IE games did in this regard instead of the ARPG way. But I'm not sure.

 

With their current design philosophy having a swap weapon and everyone swap weapon BUTTON and function just seems like a waste of UI space, and a waste of programming resources.

 

Tabbing through units is also most likely something they have not included as I do not think many of the PE devs are that well versed in RTS or MOBA games/controls.

[sb5]

I think I remember a playthrough of IWD where melee and crossbows were swapped frequently and in a group. I can be wrong though. The party was called Dwarven Death Squad with good reason, crossbows nailing everything alive before axes split the remaining faces.

[PrimeJunta]

If every character has the same number of weapon slots, why not assign hotkeys to each of those, and apply it to all selected characters? Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, say. Then equip slashing or piercing weapons in slot 1, crushing weapons in 2, and ranged in 3. Ctrl+A, Ctrl+3 at the start of the encounter, then select your front line and Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2 to switch to melee.

[Karranthain]

If every character has the same number of weapon slots, why not assign hotkeys to each of those, and apply it to all selected characters? Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3, say. Then equip slashing or piercing weapons in slot 1, crushing weapons in 2, and ranged in 3. Ctrl+A, Ctrl+3 at the start of the encounter, then select your front line and Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2 to switch to melee.

 

That'd work well, yes.

[Sensuki]

RTS style controls please. When I have multiple selected characters I want to handle each character's actions seperately, no ****ing group controls other than what's available in the current UI box.

[Karranthain]

Just a heads up from Josh:

 

 

I don't remember that exact circumstance, but there is not currently a recovery time in place when weapons are switched.

 

But it's going to change:

 

 

 

I find this odd.

 

Switching weapons mid combat is a tactical decision and it should, in my opinion, come with some sort of a cost.

 

Wasn't there a recovery time for wizards switching grimoire's by the way?

 

Yes, sort of.  Wizards do not have a recovery time/penalty, but their spells are locked out for a while after they switch.  Tim is going to add a recovery time (2 seconds to start with) when any character switches weapons (PC or AI).

 

Edited July 25, 2014 by Karranthain

[Valorian]

Two seconds is a tiny penalty for the benefit of hitting 40% harder or getting 25 deflection. 

[Lephys]

Also, how does that weapon-swap action time fit in with other action times?

 

I mean, normally, you make an attack (for example), and then you've got X seconds of recovery time until you can take another action, right? So, does that stack? If you fire your bow at an approaching foe, and you have a 5 second recovery time... what if you just switch to your sword then? Does it take 7 seconds before you can attack again, or is it still just 5?

 

Seems reasonable for it to not-stack, and maybe just apply a minimum to the recovery time. If you fired your bow, say, and you waited 'til you only had 1 second left until you could fire again, but at that point in time (you're not keeping up with it this precisely while playing... it just so happens that this amount of time has passed when you decide/do this), something's running toward you, and you decide "Yeah, screw it, better switch to melee." Well, now that you're swapping weapons, you're not ready-to-go in 1 second. Maybe it takes 3, then.

 

In other words, the weapon-swapping probably shouldn't delay something unless it's actually interrupting some amount of time during which you would've been ready. *shrug*

[fangGWJ]

This is an outstanding idea.  There were several times I essentially kited with my whole party to thin the mob in the infinity engine games.  Or range focus fired on the enemy mages because if you waited to slog through the melee underlings to get to even just one caster, that caster wiped your party in 1-2 rounds.

 

If you could also bind it to a key that would be great.

[Valorian]

Now all characters start with 4 weapon sets (it was 2 before) accessible in combat? What about the previously mentioned talents that increase the number of available weapon sets?

I suppose it's possible it was just for the demo or the character had these talents.