Pretty disappointed, this launches in December?

[Luridis]

I posted in this thread back in August and give it a break. A whole lot of stuff has been fixed since then, which is pretty much what I expected. What I didn't expect is some of these last minute weirdos coming on to the forums and talking themselves up like their feedback is the most important in the world. Yet, not only did they not back the game, but they also do not have access to the beta where they can actually see how anything works at the moment. To quote the most recent noodle-noggin...

 

 

Mr Sawyer, devs.

 

When i first read about the game and engagement mechanic, for some reason i understood that only the "soldier" builds, our front line fighters, will have this ability. It makes perfect sense if one is actually trying to improve this class over its D&D progenitor. But to my amazement... i  lately discovered that you Devs gave engagement to every single thing in the game???

 

Why in the seven hells would you do that?

Thats the very reason why the gameplay is such a mess as it is now, from what i gather.

 

Why would he do that? Probably because he's an experienced game developer and designing mechanics is something they sorta do... professionally. How can you form a personal opinion of what a mess it is if you can't actually try it yourself?

 

Well, I guess we can hope they'll get bored and leave when it becomes apparent no one is taking them seriously.

 

Sure, I've seen some non-backers and come here to suggest features. But, forming opinions on the state of a game you're not playing based off of hearsay that, "it's a mess" isn't real constructive. Someone already said that after all, a more constructive input would come from someone who's actually playing it and doesn't find it "a mess" or does find it one, and why in either of those cases.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Luridis

[Karkarov]

Actually Lurdis I (and many others) feel like engagement needs some touch ups and part of the suggestions I made previously was giving it only to "tank" characters since the entire mechanic was invented just to make them extra relevant. 

[Stun]

Actually Lurdis I (and many others) feel like engagement needs some touch ups and part of the suggestions I made previously was giving it only to "tank" characters since the entire mechanic was invented just to make them extra relevant.

I agree with this.

 

Way way back, when Josh first described the concept of the engagement mechanic, I thought it was a great idea. And the first thing that popped into my mind was precisely what you're saying: It would give front line combatants more of a "foot print" on the battlefield. It would make them more tactically meaningful beyond just the 'meat shield' role. My mind began racing, thinking about all the cool options the game would give me to control an encounter with my fighter - options that the IE games didn't give us, beyond the usual fare (like creating chokepoints in narrow passages; blocking enemy access to your mage by exploiting enemy path-finding, etc.)

 

But no. It didn't turn out this way in implementation, did it. The fact that everyone gets this engagement power -AND- the piss poor Enemy AI that effectively makes this engagement power meaningless for the player -AND- the chaotic nature of the visuals/feedback -AND- giving some enemies free, uninterruptable teleportation powers, rendering the engagement mechanic pointless.... It all feels like the system has collapsed upon itself.

 

But even all that would be ok, if it wasn't for the fact that the current implementation of the Engagement mechanic takes it a step further and actually prevents even traditional tactical gameplay - Like repositioning and tactical retreats, and rushing to the aid of a party member who's in trouble etc.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Stun

[Sensuki]

Wouldn't be as terrible as it is now, but they're not going to change it. With engagement disabled, movement affecting status effects like Hobbled actually matter quite a bit. CC abilities are really all that's necessary, I will try my hand at modding and see how I go.

[Luridis]

 

Actually Lurdis I (and many others) feel like engagement needs some touch ups and part of the suggestions I made previously was giving it only to "tank" characters since the entire mechanic was invented just to make them extra relevant.

I agree with this.

 

Way way back, when Josh first described the concept of the engagement mechanic, I thought it was a great idea. And the first thing that popped into my mind was precisely what you're saying: It would give front line combatants more of a "foot print" on the battlefield. It would make them more tactically meaningful beyond just the 'meat shield' role. My mind began racing, thinking about all the cool options the game would give me to control an encounter with my fighter - options that the IE games didn't give us, beyond the usual fare (like creating chokepoints in narrow passages; blocking enemy access to your mage by exploiting enemy path-finding, etc.)

 

But no. It didn't turn out this way in implementation, did it. The fact that everyone gets this engagement power -AND- the piss poor Enemy AI that effectively makes this engagement power meaningless for the player -AND- the chaotic nature of the visuals/feedback -AND- giving some enemies free, uninterruptable teleportation powers, rendering the engagement mechanic pointless.... It all feels like the system has collapsed upon itself.

 

But even all that would be ok, if it wasn't for the fact that the current implementation of the Engagement mechanic takes it a step further and actually prevents even traditional tactical gameplay - Like repositioning and tactical retreats, and rushing to the aid of a party member who's in trouble etc.

 

 

You missed the point of my post. I'm not saying whether or not engagement is working correctly. I was expressing frustration with people coming in who are not in beta expressing opinions about how broken a game they've never actually played is.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Luridis

[nipsen]

 

But even all that would be ok, if it wasn't for the fact that the current implementation of the Engagement mechanic takes it a step further and actually prevents even traditional tactical gameplay - Like repositioning and tactical retreats, and rushing to the aid of a party member who's in trouble etc.

 

Imo, if Obsidian made sure the node-generation for the AI was tighter (or possibly let the AI move slower initially, until the AI finds the right target, etc.), and made sure that the creatures don't warp through a fighter that otherwise would have engaged the creature. And then added visual cues, animation states, etc., to how some creatures might happily ignore the attacks of opportunity and charge a specific target. And generally made sure that mobs move at different speeds - taken this part of the presentation seriously, more or less, and understanding how important that really is for the impression of the game that you shouldn't need to know the rules to make sense of the abstraction you see..

 

If they had done that, they would have been able to kill about 4 months of bs "balancing" and "Q&A", along with the utterly fruitless ruleset changes. Never mind the UI and interface changes, or the leveling mechanics. Presumably in an attempt to simplify the actual ruleset, rather than make the presentation of it more approachable. Frankly, however thought that was a good idea cost OE a considerable amount of money. Even before the game launched.

[Yonjuro]

...when Josh first described the concept of the engagement mechanic, I thought it was a great idea. And the first thing that popped into my mind was precisely what you're saying: It would give front line combatants more of a "foot print" on the battlefield. ...

But no. It didn't turn out this way in implementation,...

 

But even all that would be ok, if it wasn't for the fact that the current implementation of the Engagement mechanic takes it a step further and actually prevents even traditional tactical gameplay - Like repositioning and tactical retreats, and rushing to the aid of a party member who's in trouble etc.

 

 

 Right. Engagement needs to have an upside rather than just fixing the downsides. Sensuki's engagement exploit was fixed but we still have a mechanic that, so far, takes away more than it gives back.

 

 Some ideas in no particular order:

 

 -- If your character has taken too much damage it is (almost) strictly better to heal in place than to retreat. If AoO worked only when passing an opponent that would not be the case. (Maybe this would cause other problems?)

 

-- You can engage with a wizard, put up a protection spell, do some small number of in-close direct damage spells and then use the 'switch places' ability to switch places with a front line capable character. However, why would you ever do that? It uses up two additional spells/abilities, is much riskier and isn't better than just lobbing a long distance damage or CC spell and moving up the front line character to engage. Again, one is strictly better than the other. The melee range spells need to be really compelling to make this a viable tactic.

 

-- I can think of a lot more examples but I'll just leave this here for now to see if anyone (reads this and) has ideas about engagement either for the release or for a mod.

[nipsen]

It's a good set of suggestions. But if you consider that initially, the system wasn't designed for the war of attrition setup it turned into. Or that you were supposed to be able to place characters with fairly obvious and significant weaknesses and strengths in the right positions, and so on, to tilt the battle in your favor. If you consider that, then all of the rescue attempts are a bit misplaced. Or, you need to see those suggestions as attempts to extend the more simplistic setup the game currently has. I.e., the engagement mechanic doesn't really exist, and you can't add things to the game now that will make that mechanic work. Instead, all of it must be attempts to make the current system more dynamic and entertaining. That will compensate for the fact that the strategic element in the battles are no longer dependent on the innate class and character abilities, but instead exclusively on the trigger-abilities and spells.

 

Personally, I think that's futile. And it amounts to essentially creating a new game. Which is why I was not very impressed with the changes - that it would make it necessary to do a massive amount of ..unneeded work. And that if it at all was successful, it would make that entirely new game. That wasn't this more subtle, "lo-magic"-ish universe where realization of soul-power takes all kinds of different shapes depending on the character's imagination. But instead that it suddenly revolves around the timing of the trigger-abilities.

Anyway.. barring that OE turns around and offers the original system as an alternative, free dlc version of the game or something like that. Obviously the game needs more imaginative front-line abilities that serve the same purpose as a well-placed and well set up party would have in the original set. That compensate for the lack of actual strategy as it is now. Things like teleporting characters, soul channel to the tanks, stun type of spells that change the entire encounter, buffs that cause actual power-balance changes (with possibly longer casting times, and locking the priest in place, etc.), freeze or fire spells that augment allies (fire increases movement and reflex, ice causes stronger attacks and resilience), cover abilities and magic barriers over areas, seals that seal away enemies, teleports that can work on enemies, void cracks that swallow enemy arrows and spells and channel them at a target, that sort of thing.

[PrimeJunta]

@nipsen, a quite a few of your imaginative abilities are already in. There is teleportation in a number of forms, there is a soul channel to a tank, there are stun-type spells/abilities that change the entire encounter, there are buffs that cause power-balance changes, there are spells that damage foes and help friends (not sure if they're freeze/fire though), several types of seals although nothing as drastic as some of the high-level DnD ones (maybe at higher spell levels, though?), there are at least some teleport abilities that work on enemies, and there is damage reflection. No cover or barriers though (those could be difficult to do because of pathfinding issues, I believe).

[Karkarov]

 Some ideas in no particular order:

 

 -- If your character has taken too much damage it is (almost) strictly better to heal in place than to retreat. If AoO worked only when passing an opponent that would not be the case. (Maybe this would cause other problems?)

Yeah the biggest thing they could do to fix engagement (and it might be enough by itself) is to just make it so you only trigger an engagement attack when you actually "leave" an enemies engagement range, not when you simply move after being engaged.

[Yonjuro]

It's a good set of suggestions. But if you consider that initially, the system wasn't designed for the war of attrition setup it turned into. Or that you were supposed to be able to place characters with fairly obvious and significant weaknesses and strengths in the right positions, and so on, to tilt the battle in your favor. ...

 

Personally, I think that's futile. And it amounts to essentially creating a new game. Which is why I was not very impressed with the changes - that it would make it necessary to do a massive amount of ..unneeded work. And that if it at all was successful, it would make that entirely new game. That wasn't this more subtle, "lo-magic"-ish universe where realization of soul-power takes all kinds of different shapes depending on the character's imagination. But instead that it suddenly revolves around the timing of the trigger-abilities.....

 

 

 I'm not really following your point here. Suppose, for example, a rogue had the innate ability to avoid disengagement attacks (or perhaps a modal ability called "move deceptively" or something). Does that address your concerns about adding spell like abilities or do you mean something else?

Edited January 3, 2015 by Yonjuro

[Yonjuro]

 

 Some ideas in no particular order:

 

 -- If your character has taken too much damage it is (almost) strictly better to heal in place than to retreat. If AoO worked only when passing an opponent that would not be the case. (Maybe this would cause other problems?)

Yeah the biggest thing they could do to fix engagement (and it might be enough by itself) is to just make it so you only trigger an engagement attack when you actually "leave" an enemies engagement range, not when you simply move after being engaged.

 

 

 That might do it. At least, there is probably a simple change (or a few of them) that would make engagement work a lot better. Mainly, it feels like movement is more constrained than it really should be right now. 

 

 There is always a movement penalty, that is, if you move you aren't doing something else to help win the fight. Engagement, as currently implemented, is adding a second penalty that will sometimes hit you at the worst possible time, when you need to tactically retreat.

[archangel979]

 

Some ideas in no particular order:

 

 -- If your character has taken too much damage it is (almost) strictly better to heal in place than to retreat. If AoO worked only when passing an opponent that would not be the case. (Maybe this would cause other problems?)

Yeah the biggest thing they could do to fix engagement (and it might be enough by itself) is to just make it so you only trigger an engagement attack when you actually "leave" an enemies engagement range, not when you simply move after being engaged.

 

Or put in a toggle in the game that turns it off (like they said they will have for conversation thingies and info above character heads) so we don't need to mod their game from day 1!!

There is certainly a big enough group of people that would like to play without it. Even if it will not work perfectly they can add a warning when you click it that the game is not balanced around removing it and that there might be problems with it. Divinity: Original Sin showed you a similar warning if you tried to turn off the INGAME option that limited you from rotating the camera 360 degrees.

Edited January 3, 2015 by archangel979

[nipsen]

 

It's a good set of suggestions. But if you consider that initially, the system wasn't designed for the war of attrition setup it turned into. Or that you were supposed to be able to place characters with fairly obvious and significant weaknesses and strengths in the right positions, and so on, to tilt the battle in your favor. ...

 

Personally, I think that's futile. And it amounts to essentially creating a new game. Which is why I was not very impressed with the changes - that it would make it necessary to do a massive amount of ..unneeded work. And that if it at all was successful, it would make that entirely new game. That wasn't this more subtle, "lo-magic"-ish universe where realization of soul-power takes all kinds of different shapes depending on the character's imagination. But instead that it suddenly revolves around the timing of the trigger-abilities.....

 

 

 I'm not really following your point here. Suppose, for example, a rogue had the innate ability to avoid disengagement attacks (or perhaps a modal ability called "move deceptively" or something). Does that address your concerns about adding spell like abilities or do you mean something else?

 

Well, I'm more worried about how these abilities would not really obey the same rules as the rest of the game. And that ability is in the game already, no, except it's not completely 100%, in that it is supposed to decrease visibility or break engagement, not simply make the character invisible? I'm just saying that having these sure-fire abilities will orient the game around them, when they always trigger and don't really relate to the ruleset. Instead of taking seriously that all the actions in the game should take place within the high-level abstractions. Which the game is well on it's way towards dropping completely anyway.

 

But if that's where OE is going, they'd need to add more of those abilities and take the new design seriously instead. Or else you're going to end up with kind of weak spells and abilities that don't really make enough of a difference in the fights to really bother using them.

 

Like I said, with the original ruleset you would have a pretty obvious framework where the spells are a bit more dynamic - that a low-level spell could be useful and almost a certain status infliction if you designed your wizard that way. Or it would be a sure-fire high damage dealer in an interrupt situation if you designed the wizard that way. And this way the spells would be situational and potentially very powerful. As it is now, that falls flat, because all of the characters will be governed pretty much exclusively by class type. Reducing not just the options you have when building characters, but also streamlining the fights and making them more predictable, in the sense that the classes will typically behave the same way every time.

 

That's the d&d sickness that PoE actually solved with the ruleset initially. But which OE decided wasn't such a good idea to keep, for whatever reason.

Edited January 3, 2015 by nipsen

[PrimeJunta]

Or put in a toggle in the game that turns it off (like they said they will have for conversation thingies and info above character heads) so we don't need to mod their game from day 1!!

There is certainly a big enough group of people that would like to play without it. Even if it will not work perfectly they can add a warning when you click it that the game is not balanced around removing it and that there might be problems with it. Divinity: Original Sin showed you a similar warning if you tried to turn off the INGAME option that limited you from rotating the camera 360 degrees.

 

That would not work. It's not a matter of balance; it's that it makes a lot of the spells and abilities useless or un-fun. It would still be playable, but certainly not much fun.

 

I believe Sensuki's and Bester's grand plan of making a grognard mod for the game is better: remove engagement and revise all abilities related to it, replacing some with entirely new ones. This is a quite a lot of work however.

[nipsen]

 

I believe Sensuki's and Bester's grand plan of making a grognard mod for the game is better: remove engagement and revise all abilities related to it, replacing some with entirely new ones. This is a quite a lot of work however.

 

A new game altogether, yes?

 

Luckily for them, I guess, OE has changed PoE so much that those two changes really will be all that's needed to complete it.

 

Sadly, that means the battles in the game will probably be pretty uninteresting and boring at launch.

 

So clearly, OE made the right call on this one..

[Stun]

A new game altogether, yes?

 

Luckily for them, I guess, OE has changed PoE so much that those two changes really will be all that's needed to complete it.

 

Sadly, that means the battles in the game will probably be pretty uninteresting and boring at launch.

 

So clearly, OE made the right call on this one..

Nope. Not seeing how removing the engagement mechanic from the current state of the game will somehow make combat any less interesting. The engagement mechanic, as it is, brings exactly nothing to the table save for destroying your characters when they try to move around in the middle of a fight. So removing it will do nothing but allow your characters to...freely move around again... like in a normal RPG. Edited January 3, 2015 by Stun

[archangel979]

 

Or put in a toggle in the game that turns it off (like they said they will have for conversation thingies and info above character heads) so we don't need to mod their game from day 1!!

There is certainly a big enough group of people that would like to play without it. Even if it will not work perfectly they can add a warning when you click it that the game is not balanced around removing it and that there might be problems with it. Divinity: Original Sin showed you a similar warning if you tried to turn off the INGAME option that limited you from rotating the camera 360 degrees.

 

That would not work. It's not a matter of balance; it's that it makes a lot of the spells and abilities useless or un-fun. It would still be playable, but certainly not much fun.

 

I believe Sensuki's and Bester's grand plan of making a grognard mod for the game is better: remove engagement and revise all abilities related to it, replacing some with entirely new ones. This is a quite a lot of work however.

 

Yes it would as it would be an option toggle and what you described is all balance. Character now having abilities that don't do anything is about balance and that is why the warning would exist.

Implementing such a toggle would shut up all naysayers.

 

Sensuki said turning off engagement is commenting one line in code. How hard is to make a toggle that does exactly that (puts a if.. then there)?

Edited January 3, 2015 by archangel979

[PrimeJunta]

Nope. Not seeing how removing the engagement mechanic from the current state of the game will somehow make combat any less interesting. The engagement mechanic, as it is, brings exactly nothing to the table save for destroying your characters when they try to move around in the middle of a fight. So removing it will do nothing but allow your characters to...freely move around again... like in a normal RPG.

 

We had an interesting discussion about this with Sensuki elsewhere, and I think I finally get where you guys are coming from.

 

What you're saying is not true though. Engagement does bring something else to the table: it makes it possible to control the battlefield by unit positioning rather than by use of crowd control spells, and then execute stuff like flanking with your wizard to blast with a spell. I.e. it makes it play more like a conventional RTS.

 

I just fired up IWD and am playing it like Sensuki explains he was playing it. It is a lot more fun that way than the way I've been playing it, and I now entirely understand that once you've mastered that style, it becomes quite central to the IE experience.

 

I'll stick with it for a while to see if it grows on me, but at this point anyway I still prefer the more deliberate and more "controlled" pace and shape engagement gives to encounters in P:E.

 

But... you guys have convinced me that something of value was lost as well, and I now understand what you mean when you say that P:E combat does not have the "feel" of IE combat.

[Sensuki]

it makes it play more like a conventional RTS.

No it doesn't, it's the opposite. The Infinity Engine games were built using an engine made for an RTS, and thus, combat feels a bit RTS-y. You can control the battlefield with unit positioning (AND movement) in the Infinity Engine games. Pillars of Eternity feels way more like it was made for "RPG Combat" and pretty much all RTwP RPGs that have "RPG combat" have very bland and often clunky combat.

 

Engagement is more of a mechanic suited to turn-based than anything else.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Sensuki

[Azmodiuz]

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

 

This game is supposed to launch at the end of the year, is that right? "Winter 2014" , "December 2014"

 

I can't see how that is possible given where the game is at today.

 

Bugs, giant, glaring, basic gameplay bugs are everywhere. Subscribe to the Bug forum and you'll see, or better yet, just play the game. I'm old by gamer standards, older than some of the developers, and I've playtested my share of games. I expected more from a game that is only a few months away from release, a lot more.

 

It's impossible to play the game and feel like the backers are THE QA for this game, yet we're not even given a bugtracker, only a forum that buries threads in to oblivion.

 

The fit and finish is abysmal for a beta, in my opinion, with notable exception to the obviously heavy investment in aesthetic backgrounds and some assets. There obviously has been a heavy emphasis on developing the story archs and dialogs, too, which is great. But having core mechanical issues like pathfinding, from this team, is hard to excuse - this should be a slam dunk, not to say that pathfinding is easy, but look at who we're talking about here... this should have been a priority.

 

The outdoor scale is off. I know IW games don't do 1:1 scaling in outdoor environments but it is just off, walking around town feels like a group of giants romping around a dollhouse-scaled town. I may be in the vast minority in this, but for me it's enough to disrupt immersion. 

 

The feeling I get is that the development has wandered down paths of priorities that they were most interested in, making "cool looking stuff" and "cool stories" - which is awesome! Don't get me wrong, but while working hard to generate content, the game mechanics have been relegated to "just do enough so we can see our content, we'll work out the playability issues later once we get our playtesters (backers) in"

 

I hate to sound so cynical, I want this game to be a huge success, but I'm not really interested in struggling through broken game after broken game the throwing "bug reports" down a forum black-hole. I would be spending almost as much time documenting problems as I would playing. I didn't back this game for the "insider" honor to be a primary playtester and bug reporter.

 

So take this all as "wah wah don't play if you can't handle it and don't want to contribute to the quality of the game" (thought I already HAVE contributed to the quality of the game, quite a lot, thank you very much), or, to be more fair : that I'm simply not a good candidate for this backer beta and am disappointed with the technical acumen applied thus far to the mechanics and stability so close to release.

 

I hope the team is skilled and managed well enough to get in the coverage needed before launch .. from my perspective, however, it doesn't look promising. I truly hope I am surprised and would be so delighted to be wrong.

 

I'll probably check back in after a patch or two, but until we get a bugtracker and the game isn't constantly telling me to search the bug forum, see if the bug has been reported, and enter a 'new'  bug or add to that thread, I simply won't be participating in bug reports.

 

Good luck everyone, for what it's worth the parts of the game that do work predictably I am reasonably pleased with it and the content.

Theres been very little comment from the developers as this approached and passed the December deadline. Now its sometime this year, first quarter. Anyone taking best it comes out in the summer/fall instead ? 

[Yonjuro]

 

 

.....

 Suppose, for example, a rogue had the innate ability to avoid disengagement attacks (or perhaps a modal ability called "move deceptively" or something). Does that address your concerns about adding spell like abilities or do you mean something else?

Well, I'm more worried about how these abilities would not really obey the same rules as the rest of the game. ...

Like I said, with the original ruleset you would have a pretty obvious framework where the spells are a bit more dynamic .....

 

That's the d&d sickness that PoE actually solved with the ruleset initially. But which OE decided wasn't such a good idea to keep, for whatever reason.

 

 

 

 Ok, I think I understand your point now. You may be right, but I think a lot of the system design necessarily ends up being redesigned/finalized during play testing. On paper, a designer puts together something using logic and probabilities that has enough complexity to be interesting, but when users get ahold of it, only then do you see if your sufficiently complex ruleset turns out to be fun to play. So, I tend to think that OE played with the new ruleset and added new things and jettisoned old things to improve it incrementally. I don't personally design games but I have experience in the UX process for other software and that's usually how it goes (somebody's brilliant vision gets dashed on the rocks of real users' experience with it). YMMV.

[Lord Wafflebum]

@Azmodiuz

 

First quarter 2015. Devs have announced through kickstarter, emails, and forum they would delay it until Q1 2015.

[Yonjuro]

 

Nope. Not seeing how removing the engagement mechanic from the current state of the game will somehow make combat any less interesting. The engagement mechanic, as it is, brings exactly nothing to the table save for destroying your characters when they try to move around in the middle of a fight. So removing it will do nothing but allow your characters to...freely move around again... like in a normal RPG.

 

We had an interesting discussion about this with Sensuki elsewhere, and I think I finally get where you guys are coming from.

.....

But... you guys have convinced me that something of value was lost as well, and I now understand what you mean when you say that P:E combat does not have the "feel" of IE combat.

 

 

 This sums up the perceived issue pretty well. Engagement is reducing combat movement and tactical movement was a large part of the IE games for a lot of people. That's the downside.

 

...

What you're saying is not true though. Engagement does bring something else to the table: it makes it possible to control the battlefield by unit positioning rather than by use of crowd control spells, and then execute stuff like flanking with your wizard to blast with a spell.

...

 

 This is the (potential) upside that I haven't been seeing. I'll have to mess around with this some more - I genuinely haven't seen the upside to engagement as currently implemented - perhaps there is something worth saving.

 

 That said: Is it possible that you are experiencing the way enemy AI is implemented more than the engagement mechanic? Another way to put this is, if you used Sensuki's mod that removes engagement, would it break the game for you? That might be an experiment worth trying. If your play style is no longer supported with the mod, that would be a great argument in favor of the engagement mechanic. 

 

 I suspect that it's possible to get the best of both worlds (assuming world 2 has a best part; I reserve judgment  until I explicitly try the tactics you mentioned):  more tactical positioning plus tactical use of engagement by making some changes to how engagement works.  

 

 Simply put, engagement adds an additional movement penalty (above the opportunity cost) - the penalty can be applied selectively or reduced and you end up with more movement.

[PrimeJunta]

Thing is, I like engagement. I like to see how one of my frontliners locks a unit, or more, in place. I like to use the rogue's Escape ability to get her out of trouble, or the fighter's Knockdown to break engagement on a unit who's putting a buddy in danger, or the monk's badass kick thing to kick out someone who got behind my lines. It's not just the movement: it's dealing with the entire mechanic.

 

I totally realize that this is not how the IE games did it, and therefore being unhappy about it in an IE games successor is reasonable. But I still like it.

 

Been playing IWD today; almost through Kresselach's tomb. With Sensuki's hints I'm playing it better, but it's still not as much to my taste as P:E. I can run away when I get into trouble, but the unit I run away from chases me and I can't use other units to make it stop. I can run behind enemy lines, gank that skeleton mage, and then get to a better position. But I just don't like that style of gameplay as much as being able to fix the battlefield with unit positioning. 

 

So regarding that aspect of IE gameplay -- movement -- the accusation you guys often level at us, that we never liked IE combat much, is actually true. Hate to admit it, but there it is. 

 

I would add, though, that there's a great deal about IE combat that I did and do enjoy, in particular the "crispness" of selecting units and issuing orders, and the enormously wide variety of ways with which you can deal with various situations. But IE movement, no, 'tis true, not so much. Guilty as charged. 

 

I'm pretty sure by now that we're dealing with a subjective preference: tactical movement as opposed to tactical positioning. I prefer tactical positioning with movement -- after the initial rush to get into place -- more deliberate and costly. The grognard gang (and I am using that term affectionately) prefers tactical movement, with tactical positioning part of a constantly changing picture.