PrimeJunta's BB v257 summary

[Pray]

Really nice post. Also want to say "suck it" for asking for more feedback in combat - i suggested this the first day the beta was out and you poo-pood. it for nostalgia.

 

Also, I had to edit this post because I quite like your comment about the archer sub-type fighter. I think this is an absolute must and so very much fits into the ideals the designers have been espousing. The word fighter seems to be implicitly intended to be "low maintenance tank," when it should mean more than that, or not at all that, if you want it to be. Archer sub-type seems like a great start.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Pray

[PrimeJunta]

Really nice post. Also want to say "suck it" for asking for more feedback in combat - i suggested this the first day the beta was out and you poo-pood. it for nostalgia.

 

Also, I had to edit this post because I quite like your comment about the archer sub-type fighter. I think this is an absolute must and so very much fits into the ideals the designers have been espousing. The word fighter seems to be implicitly intended to be "low maintenance tank," when it should mean more than that, or not at all that, if you want it to be. Archer sub-type seems like a great start.

 

I did? I do not recall even thinking that let alone saying it. Are you sure it was me and we were talking about the same thing?

 

Edit: I hazily remember something about fidget animations or more animations in general. Could that have been it? 'Cuz those I still file under "nice to have but not essential."

Edited August 28, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[Messier-31]

So you say that the ranger simply MUST have a pet companion - as it is not facultative in the style of DnD wizard's familiar?

Edited August 28, 2014 by Messier-31

[Pray]

 

Really nice post. Also want to say "suck it" for asking for more feedback in combat - i suggested this the first day the beta was out and you poo-pood. it for nostalgia.

 

Also, I had to edit this post because I quite like your comment about the archer sub-type fighter. I think this is an absolute must and so very much fits into the ideals the designers have been espousing. The word fighter seems to be implicitly intended to be "low maintenance tank," when it should mean more than that, or not at all that, if you want it to be. Archer sub-type seems like a great start.

 

I did? I do not recall even thinking that let alone saying it. Are you sure it was me and we were talking about the same thing?

 

Edit: I hazily remember something about fidget animations or more animations in general. Could that have been it? 'Cuz those I still file under "nice to have but not essential."

 

I made a very eloquent post about how the game needed more graphical polish in order to better translate what was happening on screen into feedback for the player, and the old timers concluded that i was demanding a Diablo clone and yada yada IE never had good graphics etc! It was a rather absurd backlash, and you specifically said you'd rather have less graphical representation for nostalgia's sake. 

 

Oh how spurned i've been. 

[PrimeJunta]

Okay, I must've missed the "in order to better translate what was happening on screen into feedback for the player," and focused on the "graphical polish."
 

I still think the game's graphics are polished enough. By "feedback" I mean things like --

• Character icon border brightening when mousing over the character in the scene, and vice versa
• Icons representing status effects and the character's current action on the portrait
• Character's selection circle+portrait border flashing in a different color when something important happens (Monk gains Wound, cipher gains Focus, chanter completes phrase and make an Incantation, character is Interrupted, etc.)
• Sound effect associated with gaining a Wound, being Interrupted, Interrupting, etc. 
• Character model turning grey when Petrified

Some of these are arguably graphical, but not what I usually think of in terms of "graphical polish." "Graphical polish" for me means stuff like more and better animations, more and better textures, more and better visual FX and so on. These are IMO already fine as they are.

 

Sorry about the misunderstanding (if that's what it really was).

[Cubiq]

@Cubiq The AI needs work, yes, but it is noticeably harder for enemies to just move past your defenders. They get stopped and slapped hard if they disengage. It works. We'll see how it shapes up when the AI gets better.

This is going to be my last post, since i'm kind of depressed how this game is turning out to be, so i just bare with it.

 

From all that i've seen, i don't believe that it will be easier to hold the line than in Baldur's gate.

I believe that it will be exactly the opposite, if the AI gets even slightly more intelligent.

 

Lets say you intercept 3 melee enemies that are coming at your 2 warriors.

Your warriors have now successfully held the line.

 

Now what would happen if all 3 of them chose a different target.

Your warrior would intercept one and would force the enemy to engage him.

Your 2nd warrior would chose a different target and would engage that one.

But now there is 1 free to attack your party. So how do you get 1 of your warrior to engage the 3rd target?

You either need to use a knockdown on the already engaged target, so you can disengage, or have a successful roll versus the stagger check when you eat a disengagement attack.

Now here comes the complicated part:

From what i've seen the knockdown only hits on your next swing timer and since the swing timers are pretty long and counting on whether or not your knockdown will even hit, the probability of the enemy reaching one of your party members before you can stop him with your warrior is pretty high (i've actually seen someone try to do this on a stream and failed)

 

Now if your party member needs to run away from the 3rd enemy, just so they wont reach him, then you're basically just doing what you did in Baldur's gate, and not really holding the line anymore.

However in Baldur's gate you could run away indefinitely, while here you have a limited amount of time before they reach you and engage you (unless you're running in a straight line to the other end of the map).

 

Now here is where i think it gets harder than in BG games.

Your character now needs to try using their escape abilities, (if they even have any) to stop themselves from getting killed, while in BG games you would just keep running in circles, and even get a spell off because their swing animations would slow them down.

So now you need to keep activating knockdowns with your warriors until they succeed or try to heal him through disengagement strikes, then try to get him to reach the enemy, all the while, you are using escape abilities with your runaway party character, just for 1 single bonus enemy. 

Potentially you could save them if you had another tanky class in your party, but what about if there are 2 bonus enemies or 3?

 

In Baldur's gate you could just have the weaker characters just run in circles and they could even attack with a ranged weapon of a quick spell, to slowly kill the pursuer, or even just have your melee quickly move in position to create a wall, without the fear of getting punished for it.

(i know you can use charm/stun spells, but you can also do that in BG)

 

 

 

The way that Sawyer talked about how "party positioning" will have a very important role in the game, makes me think that the AI actually needs to be this stupid, so that they will all run directly in a straight line at the first thing they see, otherwise you would have massive headache every little fight.

[Mayama]

First fighter engages one enemy second one the other and your cypher, druid whatever CC's the one that trys to eat your backline. It would be nice if theirs actually a challange which I cant cheese my way out with kiting a monster endlessly while the rest of my party whacks at it.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Mayama

[Sylvanpyxie]

 

 

First fighter engages one enemy second one the other and your cypher CC's the one that trys to eat your backline.

No no, that's not how it works. Not at all.

 

What you do is your Cipher CCs everything and then you kill them.

[PrimeJunta]

@Cubiq fighters have an engagement limit of 3 in defender mode. They will engage anyone within melee range. A single sword 'n board fighter can control a pretty hefty region of space this way, more if you give him a reach weapon. Two characters side by side, one of whom is a fighter, will form a line.

 

I'm fairly confident it'll be a lot different than the shoulder-to-shoulder-in-a-doorway thing you had in the IE.

 

I'm sorry you're bummed about the game BTW. Betas are not for the faint of heart. From where I'm at this game holds enormous promise, but they do have their work cut out to bring it to fruition. They're also taking on a quite a task: they're inviting comparison with mature, five generations refined games, on their first try.

 

I played BG1 earlier this year, and frankly I didn't think it was all that great. The AI was primitive, the encounters often repetitive (I don't think I ever want to see another kobold again), and there were plenty of ways to cheese it. The engine came a long way from that to BG2 and IWD. If P:E manages to do significantly better than BG1 it will already have done well, even if it doesn't match the dizzying variety of BG2 or the meticulously crafted environmental combat puzzles of IWD.

 

So what I'm saying, I guess, is that mood swings are to be expected and it would be wise to attempt to moderate them as far as possible.

[Mayama]

The engine came a long way from that to BG2 and IWD. If P:E manages to do significantly better than BG1 it will already have done well, even if it doesn't match the dizzying variety of BG2 or the meticulously crafted environmental combat puzzles of IWD.

 

I doubt (hope) that most here do not expect something with the enormous range of BG2. It was more or less a big expansion the basics were made in BG1.

[Cubiq]

@ PrimeJunta

Sorry i finally got around to reading the reply because of all the work i've had in the past week, i just want to clarify some of the points.

 

Yeah i know they can engage 3 enemies at once, but that would require them to come at you in a straight line.

I've seen that there are some ambushes in the beta where you get surrounded by ghosts, you have a lot of difficulty getting the attackers off of your party members, with just your fighters.

 

If it was just bugs then i would understand that it's just beta, however the combat is pretty much copying NWN2 fighting, so you can tell in what direction they want to go. And i never liked combat in that game, where combat was static and your main focus on melee was pressing abilities buttons, for the occasional effect like knockdown. Even though fighters in IE games didn't have many abilities, you would still spend nearly 80% of the time on them, repositioning them to engage the correct enemies and running out of fire.

Sure you can take it too far and cheese in IE games with running around, but think it still beats being punished for every movement you make. I would prefer even turn based over this, since in most of the games you can actually move around turn per turn.

 

 

@Mayama Well, like i said CC is just a spell, you could do that in BG as well with a mage/priest/druid.

 

But it doesn't matter, it is what it is, if you guys like it, then go for it.

I'm off

Edited September 8, 2014 by Cubiq