Pretty disappointed, this launches in December?

[Sensuki]

You're confusing system design with combat animations and cooldowns between attacks.

[Valeris]

I think you are wrong with your basic assumption that PoEs combat is inferior to that of any other IE game, and nothing what you could say is going to change that. Shocking, I know.

[Sensuki]

You seem to be assuming that when I say that the IE games combat flows better than PE's does you assume I'm talking about absolutely everything to do with combat and ignoring the fact that I've stated multiple times I'm talking combat animations, the combat idle animation and recovery time.

 

Your above example is a complaint about system design:

 

Fighters: Miss Miss CRIT DEATH ONE HIT KILL miss miss.

 

This is to do with D&D's d20 + attack bonus vs AC (or Thac0 system), and has nothing to do with animations - also could be possible that you built your Fighter incorrectly if you're missing that often. Max attack bonus Fighters don't miss that often in any of the games.

 

Mage: Casting cloud spell X and abusing the ai OR casting overpowered melf´s minor meteorids OR casting elemental damage spells and hoping for the next resting opportunity.

 

This is a complaint about spell design, and also has nothing to do with combat animations or recovery time

 

Rogue: Trying 5x to get into stealth mode, missing one of three sneak attacks OR doing lethal ONE HIT KILLS and then micro manage the hell out of them OR shortbow for minor damage.

 

This is another issue with the attack system, you can miss sneak attacks in PE also but it's exacerbated by grazes usually.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Sensuki

[Gladiuss8@gmail.com]

Currently, it is inferior.

[Mayama]

Let your characters attack each other and you will notice that almmost everyone attacks every 6 seconds. Its actually slow it only feels fast because in a 5v5 fight you get confused and can't tell anymore who did what.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Mayama

[Seari]

I think you are wrong with your basic assumption that PoEs combat is inferior to that of any other IE game, and nothing what you could say is going to change that. Shocking, I know.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I think you are wrong with your basic assumption that PoEs combat is inferior to that of any other IE game, and nothing what you could say is going to change that. Shocking, I know.

 

Sensuki asking Josh Sawyer about the quality of PoE combat in his RPGCodex interview:

Josh: "Honestly, I think it will take us a while to exceed the complexity of IWD2 fights. IWD2 and BG2 were built with a lot of tried-and-true scripting functions that programmers and designers developed over previous titles and expansions. Like any other feature, AI in PoE is being built from the ground up, so we have to add layers of complexity over time."

[Mayama]

 

I think you are wrong with your basic assumption that PoEs combat is inferior to that of any other IE game, and nothing what you could say is going to change that. Shocking, I know.

 

Sensuki asking Josh Sawyer about the quality of PoE combat in his RPGCodex interview:

Josh: "Honestly, I think it will take us a while to exceed the complexity of IWD2 fights. IWD2 and BG2 were built with a lot of tried-and-true scripting functions that programmers and designers developed over previous titles and expansions. Like any other feature, AI in PoE is being built from the ground up, so we have to add layers of complexity over time."

 

Yeah all those people saying herp derp they had better AI in BG2. Why is the AI so ****ty in PoE 15 years later. Its like saying herp derp why cant you build a proper moon rocket... they build the first one 50 years ago!

[Quantics]

Sensuki asking Josh Sawyer about the quality of PoE combat in his RPGCodex interview:

Josh: "Honestly, I think it will take us a while to exceed the complexity of IWD2 fights. IWD2 and BG2 were built with a lot of tried-and-true scripting functions that programmers and designers developed over previous titles and expansions. Like any other feature, AI in PoE is being built from the ground up, so we have to add layers of complexity over time."

 

 

Honestly I think it's entirely fair, as long as they do keep on working on the AI after the release. 

 

If they consistently show us that they are committed to improving the game, I'll be a happy child. Even if it implies paying a bit more for add-ons and expansions.

[archangel979]

 

 

 

 

The Stream from PAX Prime showed Beta v271 which looks a lot more like Icewind Dale 2 - which is a step up from PE v257 but still not as good as the other IE games in terms of combat pace/flow/feel.

Pardon me?

Lvl 5-7 combat in Baldurs gate 1 / 2:

Fighters: Miss Miss CRIT DEATH ONE HIT KILL miss miss.

Mage: Casting cloud spell X and abusing the ai OR casting overpowered melf´s minor meteorids OR casting elemental damage spells and hoping for the next resting opportunity.

Rogue: Trying 5x to get into stealth mode, missing one of three sneak attacks OR doing lethal ONE HIT KILLS and then micro manage the hell out of them OR shortbow for minor damage.

WoW. So much fluff and flow.

 

Take off the nostalgia goggles please!

Don't lie. Fighters don't miss or score critical hit often. Misses are attack animations that are not representing real attacks.

With mages you abuse sleep and horror like you did from the start. The off screen AoE abuse is problem of AI only.

Rogues are kill or do nothing classes but invaluable outside combat and for scouting. Also can be easily dual or multiclassed to be more direct combat competitive.

 

And I hope to see PoE combat in later levels to be as awesome as in BG2. I am just playing BG2EE and my lvl 11 party has awesome fights vs Thayan mages and their high level fighter guards. The whole fight is adjusting to what is happening at the moment (including my non-casters). Lack of melee engagement actually lets me use my melee as I need them on round by round basis. To outsider it would look like mess and random but I know exactly what each of my 6 characters is doing and what each enemy is doing.

 

I hope PoE will be able to replicate this at higher levels near the end with access to many many different abilities.

[Quantics]

Pardon me?

Lvl 5-7 combat in Baldurs gate 1 / 2:

Fighters: Miss Miss CRIT DEATH ONE HIT KILL miss miss.

Mage: Casting cloud spell X and abusing the ai OR casting overpowered melf´s minor meteorids OR casting elemental damage spells and hoping for the next resting opportunity.

Rogue: Trying 5x to get into stealth mode, missing one of three sneak attacks OR doing lethal ONE HIT KILLS and then micro manage the hell out of them OR shortbow for minor damage.

WoW. So much fluff and flow.

 

Take off the nostalgia goggles please!

 

 

I agree.

 

Let's also hope that PoE will attract attention from the modding community. It's essential for a game like this to allow the user base to generate mods and fixes. 

 

I don't think I would have enjoyed replaying BG2 as much without the BG2 Fixpack. 

Edited August 31, 2014 by Quantics

[Valeris]

 

Pardon me?

Lvl 5-7 combat in Baldurs gate 1 / 2:

Fighters: Miss Miss CRIT DEATH ONE HIT KILL miss miss.

Mage: Casting cloud spell X and abusing the ai OR casting overpowered melf´s minor meteorids OR casting elemental damage spells and hoping for the next resting opportunity.

Rogue: Trying 5x to get into stealth mode, missing one of three sneak attacks OR doing lethal ONE HIT KILLS and then micro manage the hell out of them OR shortbow for minor damage.

WoW. So much fluff and flow.

 

Take off the nostalgia goggles please!

 

 

I agree.

 

Let's also hope that PoE will attract attention from the modding community. It's essential for a game like this to allow the user base to generate mods and fixes. 

 

I don't think I would have enjoyed replaying BG2 as much without the BG2 Fixpack. 

 

The BG2 Mods are awesome, and were needed so badly regarding combat.

 

But people not only have to take off their nostalgia goggles like Sensuki or how this guy is called wears them; they also have to accept: You don´t sell games because they have an awesome AI. You sell them despite of having a terrible AI. I mean, since 1996 AI in games made literally zero progress. NPC-enemies are still as stupid as they were in the early ninetees. Sometimes it seems different cause they are more heavily scripted. But that´s it.

 

Sad reality is, a clever AI is nothing that promotes a game in the current market situation.

[Gromnir]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67291-more-like-bg2-please/?p=1492281

 

relevant comments... at least immediate relevant.

 

start reposted

 

--the last thing we want is d&d attributes. am thinking we mentioned elsewhere, multiple times, that ad&d made character development choices beyond first level largely inconsequential. once abilities, class, and *groan* kit were chosen, it were largely game-over for character development.  each class had a prime attribute or two, and drop rest attributes to 3 were making perfect sense... unless you really wanted your monk to abuse the keldorn armour bug. for a fighter, we needed as much strength as possible, and dex and con were good too. a sorcerer didn't need a damned thing, so unless you wanted to abuse limited wish spell, you could turn a sorcerer into a high con pack mule if you really wished to. etc. if we gave an equal number of points to 5 people playing a fighter character (am aware that with asinine rolling this wouldn't be possible) and told all 5 to build the most efficacious fighter they could with those points, we would end up with 5 largely identical fighters. stoopid. d&d class system with obvious dump stats were stoopid. d&d with only meaningful choices at level 1 were stoopid. thac0 and dual-class/multi-class, and the fact that by 12th level it didn't matter what stats you had anyways 'cause magic items determined your efficacy were all freaking stoopid.  ok, so we discussed more than attributes, with this point, but d&d attributes were stoopid.

 

-- bg2 benefited from being the... 5th ie game? yeah, fifth. bring up such stuff as diversity an number o' monster foes ignores the fact that black isle and bioware had worked for years to end up with the diversity and depth o' content you eventual saw in bg2. expecting a similar catalog o' monsters and spells n' such would be unrealistic and unfair. compare to bg1 instead wherein we fought the same hobgoblin, gnoll, and kobold ambushes innumerable times, and wherein ogre mages were stand-ins for demons.

 

-- from a tactical perspective, it also took 5 games to get to bg2 refinement. bg1 had us use 1 tactic for any and all combats. priest would summon as many skeletons as possible. when we saw enemies, our mage and priest/druid would then cast aoe such as web or entangle. depending on our mood, we would then have mage lob in a fireball and kill or cripple everything while the rest o' our party reduced any combined foe to kibble via ranged weapons. the skeletons would act as meat(less) shields for anything that got past grease, web, entangle. heck, if we were feeling particular impatient, we would add haste to our archers who probable had arrows o' piercing. spam monster summons, webs and fireballs while maintaining steady rain o' missiles. spells such as confusion or hold person/monster were overkill, but if we had 'em, why not use 'em?  it were serious moronic the way we could approach every combat exactly the same way. but again, it took 5 games to get to bg2 sophistication. 

 

end reposted

 

there is some revisionism that exists regarding the ie games. tactical sophistication o' bg? HA! bg2 levels o' diversity, challenge and sophistication took many years and multiple iterations. furthermore, the ie version o' the ad&d rules had its own peculiarities and limitations. we find PoE rules mechanics far superior to anything we saw in the ie games (though we had fewer complaints about iwd2.) ad&d were a pnp rules set that the biowarians (mal)adjusted to work in a crpg environment, and the results were quite enjoyable... fantastic even given what they had to work with. nevertheless, the basic combat mechanics o' PoE strike us as being far superior to what we got in bg, and tactical sophistication is also a major improvement over all early ie games.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited August 31, 2014 by Gromnir

[khermann]

Off topic, but an I the only one here who absolutely loved ToEE? Granted, buggy, but the CO8 mod has great bug coverage and enhancements, and the tactical combat remains one if my all time favorites alongsode IWD and BG series.

[Mayama]

Off topic, but an I the only one here who absolutely loved ToEE? Granted, buggy, but the CO8 mod has great bug coverage and enhancements, and the tactical combat remains one if my all time favorites alongsode IWD and BG series.

ToEE is the only rpg where I personaly enjoyed every encounter because combat itself was fun.

[prodigydancer]

 d&d attributes were stoopid.

D&D rules were never intended for use in CRPGs. But so it happened that more than one D&D based game was created and now most of those games are considered legendary classics of the genre. I suppose their success had more to do with Forgotten Realms than with the ruleset but still people remember them as great old D&D games. And the attribute system (along with dice rolls and +X items) is considered an essential part of the overall charm.

 

Emotional attachment may not follow the rules of logic but it's a powerful thing nonetheless.

Edited August 31, 2014 by prodigydancer

[Gromnir]

Off topic, but an I the only one here who absolutely loved ToEE? Granted, buggy, but the CO8 mod has great bug coverage and enhancements, and the tactical combat remains one if my all time favorites alongsode IWD and BG series.

toee COMBAT, when not bugged into unplayability were exceptional... although it did suffer some balance issues limited to toee and not d20. example: Reach Weapons for Everyone!  the game, as a crpg and as a whole, were brilliant (sarcasm) as we were charged good money so we could beta an unfinished and stanky pile o' sweaty gym clothes and old cheese. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Bester]

>So let me try this again. I apologize in advance for the cynicism below, but I am compelled to say my piece.

>I'm old by gamer standards, older than some of the developers, and I've playtested my share of games.

>But having core mechanical issues like pathfinding

 

>pathfinding

>core mechanics

>old, wise dude whose advices we should all heed

 

DOES NOT COMPUTE. My god. Do you even realize that they just took A* Pathfinding and didn't write a single line of code for that? Do you even realize that a school kid could understand that algorithm, or that there's nothing "core" about it, you can just improve it in 5 minutes if you want to?

 

The bugs they had are so minor, it's likely they've already fixed them all by now. The only bugs that I'd worry about if I was them are the GUI bugs. I pity Obz cause they're stuck with the old Unity OnGUI ****, when the new uGUI beta just got released. What a waste. They've written thousands of lines of buggy code and all of that could be made in a few simple clicks a few months from now when the 4.6 gui becomes stable.

Edited August 31, 2014 by Bester

[khermann]

@Mayama, thank you for validating my feelings.

 

@Gromnir, heh yeah reach weap + opportunity were extremely op. Until the co8 mod made this enforcable i just played that only barb (or whatever fighter class i chose to bring, but just 1) could use reach weapon. It's totally playable that way and the combat is magnificent, every encounter is tactical bliss.

 

Anyone who hasn't played TOEE with CO8 really should give it a shot.

 

Edit: http://www.co8.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=31

Edited August 31, 2014 by khermann

[khermann]

@Bester,

Yes that is fair criticism, thank you. Pathfinding is not a great example, I may have been reaching a bit because I didn't want to trash the obvious challenges with how the combat and xp systems integrate (so hot right now!)

 

Anyway, thank you.

[Stun]

 

 

I think you are wrong with your basic assumption that PoEs combat is inferior to that of any other IE game, and nothing what you could say is going to change that. Shocking, I know.

 

Sensuki asking Josh Sawyer about the quality of PoE combat in his RPGCodex interview:

Josh: "Honestly, I think it will take us a while to exceed the complexity of IWD2 fights. IWD2 and BG2 were built with a lot of tried-and-true scripting functions that programmers and designers developed over previous titles and expansions. Like any other feature, AI in PoE is being built from the ground up, so we have to add layers of complexity over time."

 

Yeah all those people saying herp derp they had better AI in BG2. Why is the AI so ****ty in PoE 15 years later. Its like saying herp derp why cant you build a proper moon rocket... they build the first one 50 years ago!

 

LOL terrible analogy.

 

We've got dune buggies driving around on Mars now. We didn't have the technology for that 50 years ago.

[Gromnir]

if the technology used to to drive rovers (am not believing we have seen a dune buggy on mars) were the same and compatible with scripting game ai, you would indeed have a very powerful point.

 

PoE is new game with new code which, although Gromnir is no expert on such things, suggests to us that one could not simple plug-in infinity engine ai improvements into PoE. in fact, technology, as it becomes more complex, almost necessarily becomes more buggy... not to be confused with your hypothetical dune buggy. the more complex the system is, the more things can go wrong... is another o' those axioms. thus we necessarily add a level o' complexity to ai that were not there 15 years ago.

 

am expecting many tools the developers has at their disposal nowadays is better and more efficient, but it is our understanding that building games is also more complex today than it were 15 years ago.  am not certain how the balance works in favor or against developers. am aware that developer staffs is necessarily much larger today.

 

even so, on this issue, we is not speaking with any expertise. am admitted only slightly more aware o' increased scripting difficulties or streamlining since 2000 than we is regarding genetic modifications to achieve drought resistant corn.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[archangel979]

Off topic, but an I the only one here who absolutely loved ToEE? Granted, buggy, but the CO8 mod has great bug coverage and enhancements, and the tactical combat remains one if my all time favorites alongsode IWD and BG series.

If you want awesome D&D combat, Knight of the Chalice is even better. If you can get over the simple graphics that game has some of the most challenging and fun D&D turn based combat. The last (optional) fight is one of the most fun fights in any game. 

[Guest 4ward]

when Bioware released tales of the sword coast just 6 months after BG1 i would assume they were in a similar situation Obsidian is now. Relatively small but talented dev team with funds that were, well not as huge as Bioware has nowadays. Yet still they released TotSC just 6 months after BG1 and for me TotSC was a completely other level than BG1, the fights against the Tana-ri in the cultists' house or Duergar's tower already had BG2 level, so i'm hopeful it will turn out that way for PoE as well.

[Seari]

 

I... I do not remember your love, Bioware. I have tried. I have tried to recreate it, to spark it anew in my memory, but it is gone... a hollow, dead thing. For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory. And then nothing. I look upon you and feel nothing. I remember nothing but you turning your back on me, along with all the others.

That is so hilariously accurate, yet sad at the same time.

 

You were the chosen one. You were supposed to bring us the best RPGs, not get bought by EA.