Radical suggestion

[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.

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

 

Nope. I've played loads of RPG systems since 1984. I think it would be incredibly naive to call Josh a big fan of any one particular system. He strikes me as someone who picks systems apart and picks what works best for the story and setting it needs used in.

I have no problem whatsoever with other people being able to build fighters and rogues and any class at all with nothing but point and click usage. I don't believe they should expect everyone else in the gaming community to share their point of view, to the point that no other play option is available.

4e just balanced in a far to rigidly structured way, to the point where combat ground out and RP was stifled. For D20 PnP play, 13th Age does a far better way of balancing classes without rigidity or slowing combat or stifling RP. 13th Age just wouldn't translate to PC very well, nor do earlier iterations of D&D. D&D is not a good system for a computer game at base usage. The sheer number of auto-win options is just plain silly. Difficult fight? Reload until the big bad fails the Death save vs your auto-win ability. Very few PnP systems are good for PC. The Runequest use of skill to increase skill idea worked well for Morrowind etc but the rest of the system wouldn't translate well. Warhammer FRP 1E and 2E is a great, gritty PnP game but would be naff on PC as well (imagine a RPG with enforced translation of RTS spells). The Dark Eye is probably about the best on PC but even that needs tweaked for optimal use on a PC game.

 

I'm incredibly glad that Obsidian are doing their own system with a mix of ability use and recovery options.

[Brother Pain]

I'd rather cut down on the abilties casters have honestly. I'd much rather manually activate the (comparatively few) abilites my frontliners have, than micromanage my mage, cleric and cipher. A modal ability that let's your casters be "healer", "support", or "blaster" without my constant input would be nice.

[morhilane]

 

 

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.

 

 

I never said I left the fighter to his own. I said I didn't micro-manage him. The only thing I do with BB fighter is putting one of his modal on (I tried both) and I let him swing away on the front line while my priest buff the party, CC stuff, restore stamina and debuff enemies, my wizard cast spells once in a while and use his wand, my rogue launch arrows stupidly or fight melee depending how close the enemies are to her.

 

For my own character, it's totally depends what I'm playing.

[GrinningReaper659]

I haven't played around with a lot of classes in the beta yet, but it seems that a good fix for all issues of this sort would be to have plenty of choices in abilities - active or passive, so that as your fighter levels up you have the option to take moderate passive bonuses if you're the sort of player that doesn't enjoy micromanagement of warriors (I'm sure this describes quite a few players); and if you prefer the micromanagement you have the activated abilities available to you. Such a variety of passive vs. active choices as characters progress would allow a great level of customization to party builds that could potentially satisfy everyone's tastes.

 

If creating many more active abilities were needed it would seem more tedious, but it seems to me that it would be somewhat simple to add some passive ability choices to the classes (this is coming from someone that doesn't actually know how much time/effort this would require, so feel free to tell me if I'm full of it).

[Quadrone]

Holy ****, are you people insane? Cut abilities? By half or more??

 

 

 

What?

 

 

 

Are you telling me auto attacking with your fighter is fun but activating one of his 3-5 abilities is overload?

Or that having big and nuanced spell lists is undesireable, like you know, how it was in Baldurs Gate?

This forum is driving me nuts. Good thing it's way too late to even consider lunacy like this.

[mrmonocle]

 activating one of his 3-5 abilities is overload?

3-5*6 every 2 seconds

Edited August 20, 2014 by mrmonocle

[Mrakvampire]

Are you telling me auto attacking with your fighter is fun but activating one of his 3-5 abilities is overload?

 

Exactly. That's why I suggest to cut active non-caster abilities or transform them into passives.

[Quadrone]

 

 activating one of his 3-5 abilities is overload?

3-5*6 every 2 seconds

 

 

Oh please spare me the hyperbole, combat in PoE is hardly that different from Baldurs Gate or Icewind Dale.

Activate one ability on your Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Paladin early on then park them in melee combat, actvate other abilities when needed.

Priests, Chanters, Druids and Wizards sling spells from the back for greatest effect.

You did read that PoE is trying to mimic the Infinity Engine RPGs when you backed this game didn't you?

If so, then I don't understand how the addition of some active abilities for the melee classes now makes everything too complicated for you.

[silverlock]

I'd rather cut down on the abilties casters have honestly. I'd much rather manually activate the (comparatively few) abilites my frontliners have, than micromanage my mage, cleric and cipher. A modal ability that let's your casters be "healer", "support", or "blaster" without my constant input would be nice.

 

I'd definitely like to see this. If the spells/abilities are "classified" up back then being able to set a "healer", "support" or "damage" modes would be useful. Perhaps a later (i.e. post-release) step would be able to create custom "sets" where you drag in a bunch of spells (in order) and the party member cycles through them from combat start -> end. Buffs, some CC, some heals, and step in to take control as needed.

 

As for the argument of "too many abilities": I disagree. I think some of this could go away by stretching combat out a little (not too much) and increasing health pools to make encounters a bit longer.

 

Some limited ability queuing (n = 2?) would be useful: get your Fighter to Knockdown enemy B, and then change to Enemy A. Wizard CC's enemy C and attacks enemy A, etc, etc. 

[Karkarov]

 

 activating one of his 3-5 abilities is overload?

3-5*6 every 2 seconds

 

Uh correction....

 

It is 1-2 abilities, and one of those abilities can only be used once a rest.  BB Fighters other two abilities are modal and you simply switch them on and off, and considering what his job is I have no idea why you would ever turn either of them off.  So at best you have to "use an ability" with him 3 times in one fight, cause the ability that is per encounter can still only be used twice an encounter.

[Mayama]

 

 

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.

 

 

You mean "it is not fun for me". I played BG etc. that way. Pausing all the time adjusting my commands and options.

[Answermancer]

No. Keep it as is, I'm already enjoying the combat despite all the bugs.

 

Every class should have cool things that they can do besides auto-attacking, even if some have more than others.

[Ratoo]

I like having all the abilities so far.  The combat does seem overwhelming right now for me personally, because I'm not sure when how recovery time is working right now.  I've seen mention of auto-attack not working properly which I imagine is making it much harder to get a proper sense of what is going on.  But I've told party members to do things, seen that little recovery bar going down and then not do anything until I give them a new order.

 

Another big difference from BG is the lack of AI scripts.  I have no idea if they intend to include them or something like them, but at the very least in BG you could trust character you left untouched to attack something.

 

If we can get combat to be less confusing, I think asking about the number of abilities would be more appropriate then.

[Matt516]

 

 

 

 

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.

Nope. I've played loads of RPG systems since 1984. I think it would be incredibly naive to call Josh a big fan of any one particular system. He strikes me as someone who picks systems apart and picks what works best for the story and setting it needs used in.

I have no problem whatsoever with other people being able to build fighters and rogues and any class at all with nothing but point and click usage. I don't believe they should expect everyone else in the gaming community to share their point of view, to the point that no other play option is available.

4e just balanced in a far to rigidly structured way, to the point where combat ground out and RP was stifled. For D20 PnP play, 13th Age does a far better way of balancing classes without rigidity or slowing combat or stifling RP. 13th Age just wouldn't translate to PC very well, nor do earlier iterations of D&D. D&D is not a good system for a computer game at base usage. The sheer number of auto-win options is just plain silly. Difficult fight? Reload until the big bad fails the Death save vs your auto-win ability. Very few PnP systems are good for PC. The Runequest use of skill to increase skill idea worked well for Morrowind etc but the rest of the system wouldn't translate well. Warhammer FRP 1E and 2E is a great, gritty PnP game but would be naff on PC as well (imagine a RPG with enforced translation of RTS spells). The Dark Eye is probably about the best on PC but even that needs tweaked for optimal use on a PC game.

 

I'm incredibly glad that Obsidian are doing their own system with a mix of ability use and recovery options.

Finally someone comes out and says it! The D&D systems are not ideal for CRPGs. Not at all. Does no one remember how incredibly RNG the combat in BG was? It was fun, sure - but it was also about reloading if one of your characters took an unlucky crit and got gibbed, or if you just didn't roll well enough in general. There was so much RNG that it hurt the tactical nature of the game. Sure, tactics still mattered - but you could lose or win through no fault of your own as well simply due to a string of lucky or unlucky dice rolls.

 

I guess what I'm saying is: D&D has had some great systems, but not all of them are well suited for CRPGs... Especially not 2e, which BG was based on. So we should maybe think about taking off our rose colored glasses where BG is concerned. It was an incredible game, and remains so to this day. But the combat had a lot of weaknesses, and I think PoE can improve on some of those.

[Styger]

I agree, there is too much going on for me to actually utilize in my gameplay. Druid for instance comes to mind; there are far too many spells for a class that should be ideally a support role. Heals, buffs/debuffs, melee attacker. Instead, I find myself reading every tooltip over and over, wondering if something is even worth casting. Most of the time I just give up casting all together.

 

That being said, there's something else that could be improved upon. I find that the ability for priests, druids, wizards, etc., to be able to cast like bards/sorcerers from DnD is too much. I'd much rather have to take the time to select my spells prior to resting, rest, and then have only the spells I want/need. I could understand from a rp perspective that a druid shouldn't have to memorize spells, but it would still greatly diminish some of the stress of combat. 

[Dray Truoc]

I personally like the variety and quantity of abilities.  You may choose not to use them, but it certainly gives you variety in how you play your party members.  Keep in mind, too, that we're only playing levels 5-8.  As battles get tougher, you may need to dig deeper in to your ability drawer.

 

I think it's worth persevering with a new system (especially one that's buggy) to see how it plays once the bugs are cleaned up.  I know these are all just idea/suggestions, but overall, it's a bit early for scrapping systems yet.