Some [constructive?] criticism

[ZaZu]

Hi there. I'm gonna say i've had a great time playing backer beta so far. And i'm looking forward to the full game, which i'm sure will be great! However, i believe there are many issues that should be adressed for a good game to become even better. I'll try to present my vision of it in a somewhat  constructive way while sticking to the high priority feedback list that was in the kickstarter update.

I apologize in advance as i'm probably going to repeat things that were already said on this forum, but sadly i just don't have enough energy to look through all the topics here. So, here goes...

 

Character creation

 

Attributes and skills

• So far i just don't think that attributes have enough impact on how it feels to play the charater. Apart from the extra dialogue options there's not much reason to care about them at all. Even in IE-age games there was quite the difference between a wizard with 16 INT and one with 18, and i believe this should actually be improved in PoE.
• It's really hard to get a grasp of the health/stamina thing since it's never actually explained to player. Also, i'm not sure i like this whole concept at all. Currently it just looks like complicating things without proper reason - do we really need a second health bar? Most rpgs are doing fine with just one. 
• Absence of a "roll" feature during character creation just makes attributes feel even more lifeless and mechanical. You end up just distributing points, making a generic "average adventurer" with some equally average abilities. That's not fun.
• Only 5 skills and no perks, really? After ToEE and NWN2 it just feels incredibly shallow, there should be a lot more options here or else every character of the same class will just feel, well, the same.

Classes

• It surely feels like PoE is following IE games quite closely here, and unfortunarely that means that caster classes (priest, wizard, druid etc) are just far more entertaining than fighter classes (fighter, barbarian, rogue, paladin). They were dull in BG and IW, and they're still incredibly dull in PoE. There should be much more options for these guys, more unique skills and perks for them to become an interesting choice for your main character. You know, it's not much fun just being able to knockdown someone, while the guy next to you can breathe fire and shoot lightnings from his eyes.
• Speaking of the options and unique abilities, every class so far just badly needs a LOT more of these! Like take paladins for example: being able to choose an order for your guy is great, but it just doesn't feel like there's any difference between them! All you get is this generic numerical bonus corresponding to whether you're not upholding the moral code of your order or something. This isn't enough! A unique set of spells, for example, would work much better. And what about poor rogues? In IE games they were just walking lockpicking/trap disarming tools. Here, they aren't even like that, they're just fighters with a "Blink" spell.
• Seriously, i'd rather have fewer classes, but have them really feeling unique and fun to play, than having soulless fighters and rogues to choose from. D&D games somehow addressed this with prestige classes and such, but still most fun came from certain character's unique abilities (Planescape: Torment being the prime example of this).
• Speaking of unique characters: do we really need the Adventurer system? Not only can't i imagine why would anyone prefer a generic custom adventurer to a real character with a backstory and personality, the system just doesn't make sense as it is! You're basically paying a ridiculously low sum of money for a voiceless slave who then just follows your every order. I didn't like this in recent Divinity game and i sure can't see a single reason for it to exist in PoE. It's better to have an option to create a golem or something, or to buy an actual slave to do your bidding while getting some quests and backstory along with this.

Races

• So we have your totally ordinary humans, dwarves, elves, halflings (Orlans) and half-orcs (Aumaua). And then there's one "extreme" race (Godlike). Feels balanced enough, if not too creative. I feel the races should have more bonuses/penalties to make them more interesting to play. Also it would be nice for them have to some racial skills and abilities too. Like if the Aumaua are an aquatic race, why does nothing about their abilities suggest so? Why not give them at least some water-related stuff? 
• Actually, Aumaua design is by far the one i dislike the most. First, they look like a mix between the Na'vi from Avatar and the Qunari from Dragon Age. Second, again, their racial bonuses (+2 Might and improved defense or speed) have nothing to do with them being an aquatic race! I mean, they're obviously just half-orcs with funny faces! And finally, why would a race whose civilisations are "based on naval dominance" be like that? Naval civs are made of traders and colonists, not of 2m-tall powerhouses! Unless they behave like vikings or something, they should be a slender, delicate race, worshipping the gods of Sea, using some kind of water-related magic and such. Sorry, but otherwise they're just blue orcs with ships.
• The Godlike, being an "extreme" race, are actually, well, not at all extreme. Of all the races in this game it's them who should feel unique and absolutely not alike to everyone else! Remember Ignus from PST? That's how a fire godlike should be! Not like a totally ordinary human with some funny head. Playing as a Godlike should be a totally different experience, they should have their own perks, their own spells, some critical bonuses and penalties for being nature's abominations. Otherwise there's no point in having them playable at all.

Other

• Player's options regarding class, background, culture and such should be limited according to other choices that player has made. You know, like they were in BG where it was impossible to make a paladin that's not Lawful Good. I mean, freedom of choice is a great thing, but being able to make pointless decisions has nothing to do with it. I call this "useless freedom". It's like in the ungodly lore-murdering NWN2 when you could play as a drow (a freaking drow living in a human swamp village!), and it's never even adressed properly in the entire game, making that option entirely nonsensical. In PoE you have a similar option of, for example, being a Wild Orlan barbarian, who is actually an aristocrat from Aedyr. Or a Death Godlike priest from Old Vailia (aren't people there, uhm, used to KILL ANY CHILD with such appearance?) who uses his spare time to work as an artist. This would be most unusual in this world, and if you're not going to make NPCs react to this appropriately (and it's impossible to do so for every stupid option there is), that just wouldn't make any sense! This is the kind of stuff that makes games like Skyrim (with tons of stupidity just constantly happening around you, even when you're not trying to do anything stupid) or Divinity: Original Sin (where you can kill half of the town and nobody will notice, and much more stupid and game-breaking decisions are available) fail miserably in terms of immersion. Sometimes limits are actually a good thing to have! And choices that make no sense just shouldn't be available to the player, period.
• You get even more of this useless freedom when it comes to character appearance. Just explain to me: why do you give a player an option to adjust his character's looks while not giving him an appropriate portrait to go with? Why do you let player to choose a male portrait and voice for a female character and vice-versa? Is it "just for lulz"? Well it doesn't look like fun to me for certain. The portrait system in IE games somewhat worked fine because all the character models just looked pretty much the same and you never really payed any attention to Minsc's model having hair, for example. Here, you can tweak character appearance to your liking, but it still would be pointless because you don't get a portrait for him. I say just make a variety of portraits and make a preset model for each. Or add a "Custom Appearance" option where you could add a custom portrait (good luck finding one of those for an Aumaua or a Godlike), choose a custom head/hair/figure and such. Otherwise the whole thing makes as much sense as the "Big Heads" graphics.

Combat

• So far combat feels quite chaotic and is rather confusing even with constant use of auto-pause. The Infinity Engine had a lot less detail, and yet then it's been much easier to tell what's going on on the screen, than here. There should be more visuals indicating what a character's doing and what condition is he in.
• Spellcasters are my main concern. In IE games, each spell had its casting time, casting sound and casting animation, so you could always tell when someone is casting something and sometimes even predict what it is. Here it looks like a character is just standing for a while and then SUDDENLY he throws a fireball. Sometimes i don't even notice enemy spells because of that, or forget about what my character was supposed to cast.
• Combat controls feel unresponsive. In IE games when you give an order to someone, even during the pause, you immediately get a response from him, both visually and in sound. In PoE you never can tell whether the guy is going to do what you've told him or not. Many times did i tell a wizard to cast some spell before switching to another character, just to find a minute later that he never did it.
• There should be some other way of presenting combat information about enemies. The box that pops up when you hover your cursor over an enemy is overburdened and should really only tell you his health and status effects. For everything else i suggest an "inspect" button or something like that.

Exploration

• I have mixed thoughts about the Scouting system. At the very least it needs some kind of a distinct animation, walking instead of running =\= stealth.
• Cloaks and amulets occupy the same slot. Really, guys? It's impossible for people in this world to wear an amulet and a cloak at the same time?
• Crafting feels pretty much like in NWN2, which means it's useless and not worth the effort. For a crafting system to exist in a game, it should be either absolutely necessary for survival or extremely rewarding (i.e. things that you can craft should be better than those that you can loot). Otherwise, it's just another pointless mechanic that 99% of players will never use. Focusing on enchanting instead of crafting might be a better option - especially if there will be not only numerical enchants, but unique too (like enchanting your sword to apply a certain status effect on your enemy).
• Why bother yourself implementing a Time/Calendar system if it doesn't affect the game in any way except for graphics? Shops working 24/7, people just standing around at night - this just looks even more stupid when there's a big clock around, telling you what time it is. This was acceptable back in 1998, not 16 years later!
• Dialogue system should be thoroughly explained to player, as currently there's no way to tell what do all these "Clever-Minor" things mean. Other than that, conversations are great and quest system works just fine.

User Interface

• The spells/abilities icons are somewhat too small and look too much alike, it's really hard to find a spell you need (especially when you're a priest).
• Inventory interface elements are way too small. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with stuff like character sheet, journal and inventory to be full-screen, like in IE games, but with bigger icons and buttons so i don't have to strain my eyes all the time. Or there may be 2 options, like "small icons" and "big icons".
• Combat log is somewhat confusing and you can't customize what it's showing to you (like filter out spells cast or damage dealt, or to filter your allies or your enemies). It's hard to find what you need there.
• it takes way too much effort to choose a specific character instead of the whole party.
• Resting/camping interface should be revamped with an ability to specify exactly how many hours do you want to spend resting. Similarly, there should be an option to rent a room in an inn for more than 8 hours.

 

Well, that's about it for now. I tried to be as benevolent as possible and i sure hope my ranting would help to improve the game at least a tiny bit. Have a great day and a great life!

Edited August 24, 2014 by ZaZu

[MasterPrudent]

It's really hard to get a grasp of the health/stamina thing since it's never actually explained to player. Also, i'm not sure i like this whole concept at all. Currently it just looks like complicating things without proper reason - do we really need a second health bar? Most rpgs are doing fine with just one.

It's a backer beta; not the full game so you don't get niceties like a tutorial or a manual. I assume that the full game will have one of those in order to explain the mechanic.

 

The reason for the split is that it turns stamina/health into a tactical and a strategic resource that introduces new (and fun!) layers of decision making. Healing a character during an individual encounter now comes with both risk and reward as giving the character more stamina in an encounter is likely going to result in further draining their health. I dig it.

 

Absence of a "roll" feature during character creation just makes attributes feel even more lifeless and mechanical. You end up just distributing points, making a generic "average adventurer" with some equally average abilities. That's not fun.

If you really think rolling dice is fun than get out your dice and roll; no one's going to stop you. In any case most implementations of dice rolling in CRPGs have resulted in players clicking a button until they get the largest number of points to spend so I'm not sure what their is to recommend this feature. Perhaps you imagine a system where you roll for each ind attribute? I imagine that could be fun but for the most part I like to plan out my character concepts.

 

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with "average adventurers". Even with the current, relatively minor, boosts that attributes give I've messed around with a few different character concepts. For example I've built both a high int/low might cypher that focuses on spells with debuffs/status effects.

 

Only 5 skills and no perks, really? After ToEE and NWN2 it just feels incredibly shallow, there should be a lot of more options here or else every character of the same class will just feel, well, the same.

Josh Sawyer has said that more talents are coming but they're waiting on beta feedback to help them design/implement ones that feel useful to players.

 

It surely feels like PoE is following IE games quite closely here, and unfortunarely that means that caster classes (priest, wizard, druid etc) are just far more entertaining than fighter classes (fighter, barbarian, rogue, paladin). They were dull in BG and IW, and they're still incredibly dull in PoE. There should be much more options for these guys, more unique skills and perks for them to become an interesting choice for your main character. You know, it's not much fun just being able to knockdown someone, while the guy next to you can breathe fire and shoot lightnings from his eyes.

They've intentionally kept the number of active abilities some classes have to a minimum because they don't want to overwhelm the player by requiring them to micromanage a party of six characters with large numbers of active abilities. Given that combat still feels a little hectic I think they made the right decision. YMMV

 

Speaking of unique characters: do we really need the Adventurer system? Not only can't i imagine why would anyone prefer a generic custom adventurer to a real character with a backstory and personality, the system just doesn't make sense as it is!

Many players find there's a character whose personality they loathe but whose class they want in their party. Many other players just want to experiment with crazy party set-ups (six gish party, whoo!). This system accommodates those people without requiring the designers to create loads of additional content.

 

Freedom of choice is a great thing, but being able to make pointless decisions has nothing to do with it.

You hate fun. I get it.

 

Combat controls feel unresponsive. In IE games when you give an order to someone, even during the pause, you immediately get a response from him, both visually and in sound. In PoE you never can tell whether the guy is going to do what you've told him or not. Many times did i tell a wizard to cast some spell before switching to another character, just to find a minute later that he never did it.

This is a known bug. It'll be fixed.

 

There should be some other way of presenting combat information about enemies. The box that pops up when you hover your cursor over an enemy is overburdened and should really only tell you his health and status effects. For everything else i suggest an "inspect" button or something like that.

This box only comes up when you mouse over AND hit tab, right? It's pretty much already an inspect button. Frankly I don't know what I'd do without it. I love being able to clearly see which defence I'm attacking and which defence I should be attacking.

 

Dialogue system should be thoroughly explained to player, as currently there's no way to tell what do all these "Clever-Minor" things mean.

Again dude, this is a beta. You get your fancy documentation and tutes when you get the full game. I suggest that until then you watch one of the many demos obsidian did with the starting area and the beta area; both explain the concept fairly well.

 

The spells/abilities icons are somewhat too small and look too much alike, it's really hard to find a spell you need (especially when you're a priest).

Size is a legit complaint but when it comes to style you should know that they're currently using place holders from IWD2.

 

It takes way too much effort to choose a specific character instead of the whole party.

Agreed, I'd prefer a single click to the current double click.

Edited August 24, 2014 by MasterPrudent

[ZaZu]

It's a backer beta; not the full game... Josh Sawyer has said that more talents are coming... They've intentionally kept the number of active abilities some classes have to a minimum... You get your fancy documentation and tutes when you get the full game...

 

 

Yeah, i get it. I just wanted to stress how important these will be to have in the full game. Stop being so defensive, it's not that i'm complaining about anything, you know. I'm just pointing out that these issues should be adressed in the full release. 

 

 

If you really think rolling dice is fun than get out your dice and roll; no one's going to stop you... I imagine that could be fun but for the most part I like to plan out my character concepts.

 

I'm not asking for rolling to be the only way to create a character. I'd like it to be added as a feature, exactly because i don't wan't to actually roll the dice when the game could do that for me. Maybe it could correlate with the game's difficulty setting, like in more hardcore modes you have to roll, and in more casual ones you can just distribute points as you like it, i don't know.

 

 

Many players find there's a character whose personality they loathe but whose class they want in their party. Many other players just want to experiment with crazy party set-ups (six gish party, whoo!). This system accommodates those people without requiring the designers to create loads of additional content.

 

 

This is great and all, but it doesn't change the fact that the Adventurer system doesn't make any logical sense in the game's world. Being able to buy customizable slaves from a local store is not fun because it ruins the immersion. Again, if people really want this feature so badly, it could be implemented in some other, more rational way. Like you can hire  adventurers for a limited amount of time, or you should pay them regularly, or make them have their own limits and goals so that they don't just follow you to the end of the world. Or even better, make some Dr. Frankenstein in this world, who is able to create new life after you've provided him with some quest and materials, so he creates golems with different class abilities for you. The possibilities are quite endless here.

 

You hate fun. I get it.

 

 

The kind of fun you're talking about i can get in any sandbox game there is. In an old-school RPG like PoE i'd like the world, my character included, to make sense. And i like this world to be alive and react appropriately to my actions. Again, this is called "immersion". There's no point in doing or being something extraordinary, if the world isn't going to acknowledge this in any way. There are thousands of games that allow you the "freedom" to do stupid s**t and just the very few of them that actually try to create a believable world where freedom actually comes from being able to make a lot of different yet meaningful decisions.

 

This box only comes up when you mouse over AND hit tab, right? It's pretty much already an inspect button. Frankly I don't know what I'd do without it. I love being able to clearly see which defence I'm attacking and which defence I should be attacking.

 

 

Uhm, no it doesn't?.. I'll have to double-check on this one. Well, maybe with some tweaks it would be more useful to me. Currently i find the thing just too grotesque and confusing to be helpful.

Edited August 24, 2014 by ZaZu

[Seari]

This mentality that every class needs to have the same amount of abilities is what made the combat a cluster**** mess(besides the bugs). There is a reason why the warrior classes in the IE games had few abilities, you're controlling a party of 6 characters after all.

[MasterPrudent]

 

Uhm, no it doesn't?.. I'll have to double-check on this one. Well, maybe with some tweaks it would be more useful to me. Currently i find the thing just too grotesque and confusing to be helpful.

Oh, you're right, my mistake. Hitting tab just brings it up for all the creatures in the area. Anyway I like it - it makes me a much more effective player - but I can see why others might find it confusing.

 

 

This is great and all, but it doesn't change the fact that the Adventurer system doesn't make any logical sense in the game's world. Being able to buy customizable slaves from a local store is not fun because it ruins the immersion.

I think being able to hire mercenaries fits into the world's logic just fine and that having to pay them regularly, or whatever, would be rather tedious and outstrip any benefits gained from added "immersion". I mean, remember how painful it was to keep returning to the thieves fortress in BG2? Sure, it was realistic but it was really tedious.

 

Frankly I think that immersion is a poor excuse for doing anything in a videogame. I mean would you give up that wonderful 4th wall breaking Psycho Mantis moment because it ruins your immersion? Do you think that developers should be transitioning towards full body controls because keyboards and controllers break your immersion? Why are you interested in videogames at all when clearly what your really after is an elaborate LARPG?

 

As for the character stuff I think you've just got to stretch your imagine somewhat. Maybe someone wants to give a female character a male voice because they're role-playing a transgender character or a character with damage vocal chords. Maybe they want to  play an Orlan who improbably  married his way into the aristocracy or who is carrying out some sort of Nigerian Prince scam.

Edited August 24, 2014 by MasterPrudent

[ZaZu]

 

This mentality that every class needs to have the same amount of abilities is what made the combat a cluster**** mess(besides the bugs). There is a reason why the warrior classes in the IE games had few abilities, you're controlling a party of 6 characters after all.

 

I'm not talking about every class having the same amount of abilities, i'm talking about the aforementioned abilities being more distinct for every class, more fun to use and presenting player with more options to build an interesting character. 

 

 

 

I think being able to hire mercenaries fits into the world's logic just fine and that having to pay them regularly, or whatever, would be rather tedious and outstrip any benefits gained from added "immersion". I mean, remember how painful it was to keep returning to the thieves fortress in BG2? Sure, it was realistic but it was really tedious.

 

Only they don't act like mercenaries, more like robots. Again, there are multiple options on how to make it more logical without stripping the benefits from it.

The thieves fortress in BG2 just wasn't rewarding enough once you've finished all the quests there, that's why it was tedious. You just had no reason to get back there as you could easily get more money from adventuring. Not that you needed much money anyway. 

 

Frankly I think that immersion is a poor excuse for doing anything in a videogame. I mean would you give up that wonderful 4th wall breaking Psycho Mantis moment because it ruins your immersion? Do you think that developers should be transitioning towards full body controls because keyboards and controllers break your immersion? 

 

 

Actually, i believe that immersion is one of the most important things in RPGs, but you're taking it to the extreme. You don't need tactile sensations to immerse yourself in a game. Just like you don't need them when you're reading a book. If an adventure book is badly written, has plotholes, makes no sense and is generally stupid, you'll have no fun reading it. Same goes with RPGs.

You know, PST, for example, has a hell of a setting with lots of crazy stuff going on. And there's a lot of restrictions and some silly stuff, too. But still it's easy to immerse into it because there's some twisted logic behind everything that is happening there, and it's fun trying to figure out that logic. That's what computer role-playing is all about - you get a world that lives by its own rules, and you're trying to adapt to these rules. You're trying to act like a real character living in this world would act. And when there are no rules, or the rules make no sense, or the rules only exist until someone decides to break them - then there's no point in roleplaying either, the illusion just falls apart. It's like playing on a RP server in WoW - everyone is  pretending to be orcs and elves, but there's no way you can forget that they're actually some real people with no life. And that's exactly why LARPGS are not for me - there's simply no illusion whatsoever and therefore, no immersion.

 

Maybe someone wants to give a female character a male voice because they're role-playing a transgender character or a character with damage vocal chords. Maybe they want to  play an Orlan who improbably  married his way into the aristocracy or who is carrying out some sort of Nigerian Prince scam.

 

 

Yeah, playing as a transgender with damaged vocal chords would be cool, if the world would acknowledge this somehow. And when there's no difference if you're a transgender that looks like Brian Boitano and talks like Elvis Presley, or an ordinary human female, then having that option is clearly pointless. 

Again it's not fun to be able to do something if the game doesn't have any content to support your actions. It's not fun to have options that don't lead anywhere. Every decision must have consequences - that's what's making a world - and a story - credible. Otherwise, it'll be like when some kids playing in the backyard are trying to pretend they're knights fighting a dragon, and then another kid comes along shouting "I'm shooting the dragon with my laser gun, pew pew!", ruining it for everybody. Rules and restrictions exist in games for a reason. Sometimes you just have to accept that there are no laser guns in a game, or transgender Nigerian Orlan princes for that matter.

Edited August 24, 2014 by ZaZu

[PrimeJunta]

This mentality that every class needs to have the same amount of abilities is what made the combat a cluster**** mess(besides the bugs). There is a reason why the warrior classes in the IE games had few abilities, you're controlling a party of 6 characters after all.

 

Have we even been playing the same game?

 

A wizard has 4 uses of each spell from L1 thru 4, all potentially different. That's 16 active-use abilities, plus Arcane Veil.

 

Fighters have two modal abilities, that always-on regeneration thing and Defender mode, plus Knockdown, and slowly gain more mostly modal abilities.

 

How do you get from that to "every class needs to have the same amount of abilities?" Seriously, it sounds like you haven't even tried the beta.

[Utukka]

Personally I'd rather them not limit the ability to "hire"/create characters/mercs because of a few people that I'll never play with would "ruin" it by creating something that I consider to be dumb and out of place. That's the great thing about single player + being an adult, I can pick who I play with and how it's played. I can easily create my own sets of characters that make sense within their world and I don't need them to enforce such behavior.

 

Now I wouldn't mind certain things being added in...such as a player created Paladin not tolerating being in a murdering/lieing/thieving party...but they in my opinion, don't need to limit player freedom too drastically. Small things that make sense/are easy to implement wouldn't be bad.

 

For example, I've ran through Baldurs Gate countless times. I played out all sorts of varied party compositions. My favorite experience with BG2 was what was called a "Random No-Reload Challenge". You basically had a party of 6 that was 100% random, name, race, class, stats, everything. You literally picked NOTHING. It was an extremely fun experience taking such a varied combination and running it no-reload on the hardest difficulty level. Lots of characters died to say the least.

 

I'll be extremely disappointed if I'm not able to do this. Even more disappointed if it takes me a long time in game to be able to do this.

 

As for character portraits...there's plenty of players that will draw/create their own. I imagine some players have already started creating theirs. There's plenty of websites that you will be able to go to to get player created portraits that will match certain combinations that the developers "neglected".

 

-Most traits are being withheld, lots more to come!

 

-I believe they said that Paladins will gain special abilities throughout the game based upon their order and their decisions in game. I just don't think it's currently part of the beta

 

-Stats - I'm in wait and see mode. I think resolve/int etc will mean a lot more in the final game when there's more scenarios available. The beta is mostly limited in this, full of bugs, and is more of a teaser of what's to come. Maybe I'm just too optimistic.

 

-I like the health/stamina. I get it's not explained in game currently...but I'm being optimistic that it will be explained when the real game is released. Being that your party starts at level 5 and is technically in a position that is beyond the tutorial phase of the game.

 

-I wouldn't mind seeing race have a bit more of an impact. Again..here's some more optimism....for example, the god likes do start with 1 passive unique abilty...keep in mind that the real game could easily expand upon this. Regions also impact starting gear if I remember correctly. Could expand more as game goes on/levels increase. They could also potentially tie trait bonuses in as well to regions when the system is implemented.

 

-I think the combat is confusing because from a lot of the videos I watch...people are so zoomed out, everything is tiny on screen. The models in BG2 seem "fatter"/take up more space combined with BG combat was slower paced so you had more time to tell what was going on. I also think this will be less of a problem when people understand what's happening around them, It's unreal how many people I've seen on twitch/youtube that are just getting slaughtered.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Utukka

[Pray]

I disagree with most of the points made by the poster but have to strongly agree that melee classes need more actives. There should be something engaging about playing a melee class, not just posiotioning and hoping he lives/dies long enough for the "interesting" classes to do their part.

[Grotesque]

"Frankly I think that immersion is a poor excuse for doing anything in a videogame."

 

I laughed so hard I crapped my underwear.

Help!?

Edited August 25, 2014 by Grotesque

[MasterPrudent]

Frankly I think that immersion is a poor excuse for doing anything in a videogame."

 

I laughed so hard I crapped my underwear.

Help!?

Was it the poor way I phrased it or the sentiment itself? If it was the latter you might want to have a read of this or this.

[ZaZu]

Was it the poor way I phrased it or the sentiment itself? If it was the latter you might want to have a read of this or this.

 

 

Sorry, i just can't take arguments from the guy that made Uncharted (why don't we just listen to some CoD or Dota 2 dev's comments about immersion? wouldn't it be mind-blowing?) seriously. His talk about attention may apply to action games and some jumpscaring horrors, i don't know, but it has nothing to do with RPGs, adventures or strategies. The guy believes that when people talk about immersion, they mean that a player should indeed feel like the virtual world is actually real, and like he's actually inside it. Hence the aimless comments about virtual reality, fourth wall and such.

That reminds me of how some filmmakers think that if they do they movie in 3D, then it would be more immersive for the viewer. Guess what, it won't. That's why Avatar never worked for me, despite all the cinematography and the effects designed to grab me by the *attention bottleneck*. 

And as for the games, to me they are not virtual reality, more like simulated reality. In games you simulate different situations in different worlds, and immersion comes from how feasible that simulation feels.

 

That's the great thing about single player + being an adult, I can pick who I play with and how it's played.

 

Okay, so why don't you play a sandbox game, then? Why choosing a narrative-based, story-driven one? 

And again, i'm not talking about freedom of choice, it's just that i prefer it when the *game is meant to be played in many different ways*, rather than *you have many different ways to play the game not the way it's meant to be".

 

My favorite experience with BG2 was what was called a "Random No-Reload Challenge". You basically had a party of 6 that was 100% random, name, race, class, stats, everything. You literally picked NOTHING. It was an extremely fun experience taking such a varied combination and running it no-reload on the hardest difficulty level. Lots of characters died to say the least.

 

Uhm, i thought in BG2 you could only create one character. Maybe you're talking about IWD2 instead?

Edited August 26, 2014 by ZaZu

[PrimeJunta]

Uhm, i thought in BG2 you could only create one character. Maybe you're talking about IWD2 instead?

 

You can create a full party in BG2. Just start in multiplayer mode.

[freche]

 

My favorite experience with BG2 was what was called a "Random No-Reload Challenge". You basically had a party of 6 that was 100% random, name, race, class, stats, everything. You literally picked NOTHING. It was an extremely fun experience taking such a varied combination and running it no-reload on the hardest difficulty level. Lots of characters died to say the least.

 

Uhm, i thought in BG2 you could only create one character. Maybe you're talking about IWD2 instead?

If you start a multiplayer game in BG you can make a complete 6 man custom party.

[Monte Carlo]

This mentality that every class needs to have the same amount of abilities is what made the combat a cluster**** mess(besides the bugs). There is a reason why the warrior classes in the IE games had few abilities, you're controlling a party of 6 characters after all.

 

This. For the love of God, this.

[Monte Carlo]

 

Uhm, i thought in BG2 you could only create one character. Maybe you're talking about IWD2 instead?

 

You can create a full party in BG2. Just start in multiplayer mode.

 

 

I only play BG2 nowadays with a custom-built party. Sadly, I doubt I'll be playing PoE thirteen years after release.

[IndiraLightfoot]

This mentality that every class needs to have the same amount of abilities is what made the combat a cluster**** mess(besides the bugs). There is a reason why the warrior classes in the IE games had few abilities, you're controlling a party of 6 characters after all.

 

I suspect this is one of the keys to making the combat much more enjoyable, yes. As long as PoE is Real Time (sic!) with Pause,

I'll gp out on a limb and propose the following changes to PoE, inspired by the RTS game COH2:

-Reduce the abilities for Fighters and Barbarians (well, perhaps most classes) heavily. Let them have one or two active in-combat one-per-ecounter abilities, but let them earn them by fighting for a few seconds, perhaps landing successful hits is required, or filling up some "muni-like meter" that will only make it to one use tops in low levels and perhaps two in PoE2, at level 18.

-Using combined arms with six different infantry teams in a battle vs a number of enemy teams in COH2 (obviously in real time), is really tough - I often even forget to use one of those muni-cost abilities in the heat of battle So, for PoE, with endless class/race/talent combo builds, we need some automated basic fighting for that - using ranged when required, and close-combat weapons when that's required, and we need attack on the move (I know this is controversial, but such AI would be very interesting to see, even if you get to pause). Every character could have two weapon sets: one for ranged and one for close quarters fighting.

-Let us issue basic combat commands action cue style, like in COH2, by using SHIFT + a series of immediate orders (move there, use that rare abilty, retreat to there), I can point+click fast onto the field of battle.

In short, PoE needs to acknowledge and use the field of battle more, literally, the surface of it all, needs to behave, clear and sound, intuitively.

 

EDIT:

Lots of bonus stuff from this:

- Speed will matter a lot (could be a great combat/class balancer)

- Range, literally, can balance stuff up too - damage-wise, percentages, etc

-Strategy, without the need to resort to turn-based grids, like D:OS, for instance.

Edited August 26, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Monte Carlo]

Maybe making some (I reiterate, some) options passive rather than modal for melee classes might help. For example, the Paladin's flaming aura ability might activate after 'x' amount of activity. Lots of people will hate not having control, but at the moment I don't appear to either.

 

Besides, as a CoH vet I am a devotee of RNGesus!

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, a small amount of select passives was implied in my drastic suggestions for combat improvement. Whatever it takes, since I think they will stick with real time with pause.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Josh has built a pretty complex system, great for building lots of classes, and for some reason, I reckon, it would work quite well as a PnP RPG, but like he said himself:

J.E. Sawyer, on 25 Aug 2014 - 9:27 PM, said:

 

Stun, on 25 Aug 2014 - 9:17 PM, said:

Now if we could just get them to slow the combat speed down a bit so we can enjoy seeing the effects of our enchanted weapons in action, this game would jump several more spots closer to Ideal.

 

Before we start tuning a lot of values, we need to get the basic bugs fixed.  The next update to the BB should clear out the most frustrating aspects of simply selecting, moving, and executing commands reliably.  Then we can look at overall combat speed tuning, among other things.

It seems it still remains to turn it into computer RPG combat, and as long as I see "Real Time" in their declared RTwP-system, I'll suggest stealing a lot of working solutions from the RTS scene, and specifically, from those games where you control several units at once.

[Mayama]

It seems it still remains to turn it into computer RPG combat, and as long as I see "Real Time" in their declared RTwP-system, I'll suggest stealing a lot of working solutions from the RTS scene, and specifically, from those games where you control several units at once.

The whole "combat is to fast" argument has alot to do with lack of training, I made 3 playthroughs and the game gets easier to manage if you have some experience with it. Its not really fast, most of your party members do one action every 6 seconds if not interupted, the rogue hits every 4 seconds. You have usually more than one seconds for every character which is quite long if you know what you are doing andyour fighters do not need to use a ability every second. Right now when I jump into the game to try stuf out combat feels really slow.

 

If feels like a lot of those "combat is to hectic" complains come from people that do not want to learn and adapt to the system. When I played BG for the first time it was overwhelming and I had to pause constantly. Same thing here.

 

A quality of life additon would be adding hotkeys for your party members like 1-6 and hotkeys for the skills. Thats basicaly everything you need.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Mayama

[IndiraLightfoot]

Mayama: Like I've said elsewhere, I am one of the few that actually like the fast pace in the PoE beta. In NWN2, for instance, I rarely pressed pause. All the issues have to do with lack of control, wonky or non-existent feedback, and overlapping dog-piling of your party and your opponents. Hence, my suggestions.

[Mayama]

Mayama: Like I've said elsewhere, I am one of the few that actually like the fast pace in the PoE beta. In NWN2, for instance, I rarely pressed pause. All the issues have to do with lack of control, wonky or non-existent feedback, and overlapping dog-piling of your party and your opponents. Hence, my suggestions.

Yeah the feedback is the real problem, one of the BB wizard level 1 spells has a working casting animation. Just try it out on one of your party members, it adds so much to it by just telling you what the character actually does for 3 seconds.

[Monte Carlo]

 

It seems it still remains to turn it into computer RPG combat, and as long as I see "Real Time" in their declared RTwP-system, I'll suggest stealing a lot of working solutions from the RTS scene, and specifically, from those games where you control several units at once.

The whole "combat is to fast" argument has alot to do with lack of training, I made 3 playthroughs and the game gets easier to manage if you have some experience with it. Its not really fast, most of your party members do one action every 6 seconds if not interupted, the rogue hits every 4 seconds. You have usually more than one seconds for every character which is quite long if you know what you are doing andyour fighters do not need to use a ability every second. Right now when I jump into the game to try stuf out combat feels really slow.

 

If feels like a lot of those "combat is to hectic" complains come from people that do not want to learn and adapt to the system. When I played BG for the first time it was overwhelming and I had to pause constantly. Same thing here.

 

A quality of life additon would be adding hotkeys for your party members like 1-6 and hotkeys for the skills. Thats basicaly everything you need.

 

 

Ah, the old "it's not us, it's you" argument.

 

Thing is, my rough calculation is that 85% of the forum 'don't want to learn' and find the pacing / experience of combat a bind.

[ZaZu]

You can create a full party in BG2. Just start in multiplayer mode.

 

Wow, i never even knew that. And i'm still playing BG2 from time to time, too, but i'd never even think of doing something like that. Mostly because, you know, there's a whole Icewind Dale franchise created exactly for this + there's ToEE, it's spiritual successor, + there's a million other games when you can just walk around in a fantasy world killing monsters. This is not what made BG2 so memorable to me.

Now i know that apparently there are some people that are willing to turn a game with great story, great set of characters and great atmosphere into a hack'n'slash fest just because they love battle encounters and/or how AD&D combat system is represented there. Are these guys Obsidian's target audience now? If they are, then i wish i'd known that before backing PoE, because i had in my head that a game representing the "legacy of the Golden Age of computer role-playing" should be oriented towards, well, the whole role-playing part, instead of butt-kicking for goodness. 

Edited August 26, 2014 by ZaZu