Radical suggestion

[mrmonocle]

Cut 50% of abilities, because with the bursting combat we'll never get a chance to use them, also I'd like to have fewer balanced out abilities than a ton of crap, in BG2 fighters did greatly with just auto attacking and were still fun, here you try to give every class a lot of stuff to play with but it ends up with either micromanagement headacke or just auto attacking and it's no fun at all.

Edited August 20, 2014 by mrmonocle

[AdaMusic]

Cut 50% of abilities, because with the bursting combat we'll never get a chance to use them, also I'd like to have fewer balanced out abilities than a ton of crap, in BG2 fighters did greatly with just auto attacking and were still fun, here you try to give every class a lot of stuff to play with but it ends up with either micromanagement headacke or just auto attacking and it's no fun at all.

 

Good point. I certainly agree. For me this would not only make the gameplay make more sense, but also increase immersion and make magic feel more special. I think this would be a good game design decision.

[tjorb]

The fights don't last long enough to even use half of the abilities my party currently has.
My cipher is the worst of all because for some reason they have a really long recovery time so you at most get 2 abilities off during a fight and ciphers can't even auto attack during the recovery.

Imo fights should last a bit longer and decrease the time it takes to cast certain spells and remove the overly long recovery time.

[Sammael]

Cut 50% of abilities, because with the bursting combat we'll never get a chance to use them, also I'd like to have fewer balanced out abilities than a ton of crap, in BG2 fighters did greatly with just auto attacking and were still fun, here you try to give every class a lot of stuff to play with but it ends up with either micromanagement headacke or just auto attacking and it's no fun at all.

Blame this on D&D 4E which Josh is a big fan of.

[PrimeJunta]

Strongly disagree. IE fighters (and melee classes in general) were boring, boring, boring. Glad they've put serious effort into making them more lively.

[mrmonocle]

Yeah DnD 4... every class plays the same.

 

IMO the whole cipher mechanic would work with just 1 ability, let's say soul lock. You lock on 1 enemy and all the stuff the cipher has got now happens automatically between the chiper and the target.

 

And chanter shouldn't chant without a bottle of ale IMO.

 

All the ideas the devs came up with are cool in PnP when 1 person controls 1 character, but when 1 controls 6 and it's a computer, not a table...

Edited August 20, 2014 by mrmonocle

[Greensleeve]

Yeah DnD 4... every class plays the same.

 

IMO the whole cipher mechanic would work with just 1 ability, let's say soul lock. You lock on 1 enemy and all the stuff the cipher has got now happens automatically between the chiper and the target.

 

And chanter shouldn't chant without a bottle of ale IMO.

 

All the ideas the devs came up with are cool in PnP when 1 person controls 1 character, but when 1 controls 6 and it's a computer, not a table...

 

Have you ever played 4E? Or even read through the classes and various Player Handbooks? Because I think you'll find that classes play very differently from one another. 

[Mrakvampire]

 

Have you ever played 4E? Or even read through the classes and various Player Handbooks? Because I think you'll find that classes play very differently from one another. 

 

 

I've actually played a lot and I agree that D&D 4E is a mess. 

 

I also agree that amount of abilities should be cut by 50% or even by 75%. It's NOT FUN AT ALL to pause every 0.7 secs to manually activate abilities for all characters. Combats are not fun, they are like... routine work, yes, I found proper phrase in my hamster vocabulary. Combat with all these multiple manually activated abilities is hard routine (!) work.

 

Or just make this game turn-based.

[derriesen]

I see the developers intention to make every class impactfull and interesting to play. However the amount of available abilities is pretty high and there is only a limited amount of abilities which actually make sense before thy become copies with just adjusted stats of each other.

 

I would like to see abilities that are very distinct from another and change the position I´m in in combat alot more. Right now I´m always just autoattacking every trash mob with all my chars and on harder fights I cast the same three buffs from my cleric, nuke the strongest target and thats it. Paladin, fighter and rogue have the same stuff on all the time. There is no need for situational awareness atm and no real abilities to support it. Id rather have less abilities with stronger limited use otions than having a ton of stuff that basically does the same and makes the game feel more like an arpg.

 

Dont get me wrong I like the game very much so far and I really like that thise old boring character types like fighters get more involved right now. But jsut as I said, more impact less redundance.

[Headbomb]

I agree that the number of abilities for each character is overwhelming. Taking the fighter as an example, the active abilities are, according to the Wiki

 

Active

---------------------------------------

* Into the Fray - Yank an enemy into melee from a short distance away.

* Knock Down - Knock down a single enemy.

* Mass Knockdown - Knock down groups of enemies.

* Unbending - For a moderate time, the fighter will recover 50% of lost Stamina from an attack over the 5 seconds following it.

* Unbroken - When used, the fighter will stand back up with 50% of her Stamina, and gain a short term boost to their defenses and Damage Threshold.

* Surge - Regenerates stamina rapidly for a short amount of time.

* Vigorous Defense – Dramatically increases all defenses for a short period of time.

 

Modal

----------------

* Defender – sacrifices melee accuracy for melee defense.

* Guardian – lowers the fighter's Accuracy but increases Deflection for allies within a short range.

--------------------------

 

Now I don't know about you, but that is a lot of maintenance for a fighter. It's good that you have tactical options, but you almost need to pause every round to make use of everything, and there's a lot of redundancy. And you have up to 5 other guys to take care of as well. A lot of those could be merged, or turned into passive, or redesigned in some way. For example, consider

 

* Into the Fray - As is.

* Knock Down - As is, except it's automatically upgraded to Mass Knockdown at Level X / by a Feat. Or you get to knock down a certain amount of enemies per level.

* Unbending - Turn into a passive. Automatically triggers once per encounter, X times per rest, if you go down under 50% stamina.

* Unbroken - Turn into a passive. Automatically triggers once per encounter, X times per rest, one round after you get to 0 stamina.

* Surge - Get rid of it. Redundant with Unbending.

* Vigorous Defense - As is.

 

So now, what does this look like for a fighter?

 

Active

------------------

* Into the Fray - Yank an enemy into melee from a short distance away.

* Knock Down - Knock down one enemy. More at higher levels depending on feats and/or level.

* Vigorous Defense - Dramatically increases all defenses for the fighter for a short period of time.

 

Modal

------------------

* Defender – Sacrifices your melee accuracy to increase melee defense (self).

* Guardian – Sacrifices your melee accuracy for increase melee defense (allies).

 

Now your Fighter is still interesting, and you don't have to micromanage everything about them. Every class could use such a redesign.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Headbomb

[Tartantyco]

Do keep in mind that you don't have the ability to rest and recharge all abilities after battle in this game, so there have to be more abilities available to you.  You're not supposed to use them all in every single encounter.

[Zeeky]

I also agree that there are too many abilities.  Feels like I'm controlling a party of 6 IE wizards.

[Starwars]

I completely disagree about cutting out abilities. Keeping the player active with many abilities to use might be the biggest strength of PoE combat at the moment and I'm loving that part of it. Plus, with the way resting is set-up, I imagine it will be a long term decision also what to use and what to not use.

[Ahvz]

* Into the Fray - As is.

* Knock Down - As is, except it's automatically upgraded to Mass Knockdown at Level X / by a Feat. Or you get to knock down a certain amount of enemies per level.

* Unbending - Turn into a passive. Automatically triggers once per encounter, X times per rest, if you go down under 50% stamina.

* Unbroken - Turn into a passive. Automatically triggers once per encounter, X times per rest, one round after you get to 0 stamina.

* Surge - Get rid of it. Redundant with Unbending.

* Vigorous Defense - As is.

 

With the limited rests setup, Unbending and Unbroken should remain active abilities. Automatically activating them could lead to strategic problems (having your fighter stand up just in time to catch an attack) and/or burning those uses on trash encounters (oh, look, a wood beetle! the priest is mid-cast for a heal but this triggers instead, sorry). Surge would also be less redundant with your current ideas, being the only manually activated stamina regen.

[Zeeky]

 

* Into the Fray - As is.

* Knock Down - As is, except it's automatically upgraded to Mass Knockdown at Level X / by a Feat. Or you get to knock down a certain amount of enemies per level.

* Unbending - Turn into a passive. Automatically triggers once per encounter, X times per rest, if you go down under 50% stamina.

* Unbroken - Turn into a passive. Automatically triggers once per encounter, X times per rest, one round after you get to 0 stamina.

* Surge - Get rid of it. Redundant with Unbending.

* Vigorous Defense - As is.

 

With the limited rests setup, Unbending and Unbroken should remain active abilities. Automatically activating them could lead to strategic problems (having your fighter stand up just in time to catch an attack) and/or burning those uses on trash encounters (oh, look, a wood beetle! the priest is mid-cast for a heal but this triggers instead, sorry). Surge would also be less redundant with your current ideas, being the only manually activated stamina regen.

 

Why exactly does PoE have limited rest?  What was so bad about the way it was handled in IE games?  Being able to rest when I want as much as I want (in other words, play at my own pace) seemed great to me.  It's a single player game after all.

[Billy O]

I say give us more passive abilities. That way we still have interesting effects with less micromanagement. 

[Lasweetlife]

I'm definitely in the more abilities camp. However, I think with a class like fighter, more of these abilities should be optional. That way a person could choose to build a high-maintenance fighter or a low-maintenance fighter.

 

Personally, I think the bigger problem, through no fault of PoE's, is the fact that it will be designed and balanced around having a 6-person party. Even in the IE games, I always used a 4-character party because it was easier to control. With the more (potentially) "active" fighters in PoE, I think I will most definitely be sticking with a 4-character party just so I am not overwhelmed. I just hope the game is balanced in such a way as to make that viable.

[Headbomb]

I completely disagree about cutting out abilities. Keeping the player active with many abilities to use might be the biggest strength of PoE combat at the moment and I'm loving that part of it. Plus, with the way resting is set-up, I imagine it will be a long term decision also what to use and what to not use.

 

This would be true if those were per rest abilities. Except they are per encounter abilities. So it makes no sense not to use them.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Headbomb

[morhilane]

Do keep in mind that you don't have the ability to rest and recharge all abilities after battle in this game, so there have to be more abilities available to you.  You're not supposed to use them all in every single encounter.

 

People seems to have a problem with this. A lots of the abilities are situational. They aren't meant to be used in each and every encounters even if they are per encounter. They exist in case you need them and want that character to play that way. You can easily let the fighter tank without ever using any of his abilities if you want, they are not required has long has you create a party strategy that works without it.

 

And that strategy exist, because I never bother with micro-managing BB Fighter. I micro-manage the spell casters only.

[Karkarov]

The abilities are fine.  The classes with lots of per encounter abilities have a much more limited set of ability choices.  The characters with limited ability uses have tons of abilities to choose from.  It strikes me as being fairly balanced and I have had plenty of fights so far where I got plenty of ability uses in.

[Headbomb]

 

And that strategy exist, because I never bother with micro-managing BB Fighter. I micro-manage the spell casters only.

 

 

Not my experience. A fighter left to his own is a dead fighter. To me, it's consistently the one PC that's always down.

[Co0n]

Cut 50% of abilities, because with the bursting combat we'll never get a chance to use them, also I'd like to have fewer balanced out abilities than a ton of crap, in BG2 fighters did greatly with just auto attacking and were still fun, here you try to give every class a lot of stuff to play with but it ends up with either micromanagement headacke or just auto attacking and it's no fun at all.

 

I personally just think that more spells should be "per Rest" and only very few spells should be "per Encounter". That way choosing spells wouldn't be so much of a nobrainer and make People think of if they want to really waste that spell or not.

[Sylvanpyxie]

 

 

Not my experience. A fighter left to his own is a dead fighter.

I also had a few issues with the Fighter when I first started testing. May I ask, are you keeping his passive modes active? is he receiving buffs from the BB Priest? and are you using the Priest's debuff abilities to lower the enemy damage? I've found that, using my Priest the best I can, I can keep my Fighter auto attacking on the front lines with little to no problems while my damage dealers mob up the more dangerous mobs.

 

Personally, I like the fact that Melee classes appear to have more active abilities available, it makes them far less boring to me. But I've found that their active abilities are hardly essential to the everyday fights, in fact the only time I've ever had to use my Fighter's active abilities is against the Ogre and Spider Queen, so far.

[Sacred_Path]

auto attacking in BG was fun you say

[hairyscotsman2]

Cut 50% of abilities, because with the bursting combat we'll never get a chance to use them, also I'd like to have fewer balanced out abilities than a ton of crap, in BG2 fighters did greatly with just auto attacking and were still fun, here you try to give every class a lot of stuff to play with but it ends up with either micromanagement headacke or just auto attacking and it's no fun at all.

Nope. There will be no and low maintenance abilities for your style of play (buffs, auto-interupts etc). The current active use abilities suit the style of myself and others just fine.