Second impressions thread! [Build 278 version]

[JFSOCC]

That could work but there are some potential logic issues: e.g. fire bow, switch to melee weapon set, move until Recovery expires, switch to ranged set, fire.

 

 

 

That could work but there are some potential logic issues: e.g. fire bow, switch to melee weapon set, move until Recovery expires, switch to ranged set, fire.

 

Put a penalty on switching weapons that is greater then the recovery time.

 

and add perks/abilities that reduce recovery times for weapon switching or reloading.

[Sensuki]

Heh! You're sure selling it in a nice way!

 

Let's hope it's just me being frustrated over the newness of it all.

I wouldn't say it's the newness. I play the IE games, Dota 2 and old school RTS games (AoE2, wc3, c&c generals, battle realms, sc1 etc) fairly often and I wouldn't say that PE offers much 'newness' other than some of the system design. Right now it plays like it's struggling to get out of NWN2 horrible RTWP mode.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

Although NWN2 fitted my playstyle very well, and it was based on a system I adore, I can see your point about it having flaws. Another recent game by OE that rarely gets mentioned in this context is DS3. It's combat was hard, fast and frustrating, and unfortunately, for the most part not fun at all. Luckily, I found an exploit with my Anjali in constant fire form, so I basically blinked my way through that game on the hardest setting. It was not pretty, but parts of the story was, due to George Ziets' great writing. What I really fear is PoE meeting the same fate as DS3. It would really benefit going back to the IE roots in this regard, IMHO.

Edited September 5, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Starwars]

I thought DS3's combat was fantastic (though nothing like the other installments of course).

 

Similarily, I think I'll much prefer PoE's combat to the IE games once the kinks get worked out. There are still issues on the visual clarity, and I think the posts made about percentages here and percentages there are very true and certainly don't do much to ease on into the experience. It feels too cluttered. Hopefully they can make that happen.

 

Yeah, other than that, I like this a whole lot more. I'm doing way more with my party all in all, and there are still moments where I can relax a bit more and let dudes auto-attack. The pacing feels a lot better to me after the second patch, though I'm sure it can be tuned even better.

[Quantics]

The solution is simple:

There should be an Actual Damage and Actual BAT (Base Attack Time) displayed in the inventory screen preferably one for each weapon slot.

 

The item should display the base attack time in seconds on the item tooltip and item description (which includes the length of the animation frames and recovery time frames). When you equip the item, the actual damage (including bonuses/penalties) and actual base attack time (including bonuses/penalties) are calculated and displayed under/next to the weapon set.

 

You should then be able to mouse over them and see the formula that makes them up

 

 

This is an excellent suggestion ! I'm just quoting it in case anyone has missed it.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Quantics

[Captain Shrek]

Large numbers (of Health and Damage) are actually *required* because of the DT system. There's like 10-12 types of armor or something and Josh has staggered them in 1 DT intervals.

 

D&D numbers wouldn't work because something like 5-8 damage for instance (one of his earliest examples of a Longsword damage) would do nothing against 8 DT.

 

Is combat fun this way?

 

(MMO-ish tank pushed to the frontline, loadouts from the rear, rinse and repeat.)

 

Are we enjoying it? Are we frustrated because it's all new? Or are we frustrated because it simply is not fun?

 

I'm asking this, because this is a perfect opportunity to rectify combat and make it into something that most people intuitively enjoy and understand. Let's not waste it, peeps.

I don't think so. I actually don't mind the higher amount of micromanagement, but some people - such as the majority of the RPGCodex think it's horrible and that the system would be way better if it was turn-based because it seems you pause very often.

 

What I'm not enjoying is that there seems to be little flexibility in how combat plays out. There's one optimal way and the rest are not as good. The IE games wasn't really like that at all. You could cheese stuff, sure but if you played normally there were a variety of different playstyles you could use for party setups.

 

THere are 12 kinds of armours??? WTFLOL.

 

Anyway.

 

That still can be sorted out by readjusting the numbers a bit and limiting HP itself. Right now HP scales linearly I guess with level. That definitely needs to go, even from DnD.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I thought DS3's combat was fantastic (though nothing like the other installments of course).

 

Similarily, I think I'll much prefer PoE's combat to the IE games once the kinks get worked out. There are still issues on the visual clarity, and I think the posts made about percentages here and percentages there are very true and certainly don't do much to ease on into the experience. It feels too cluttered. Hopefully they can make that happen.

 

Yeah, other than that, I like this a whole lot more. I'm doing way more with my party all in all, and there are still moments where I can relax a bit more and let dudes auto-attack. The pacing feels a lot better to me after the second patch, though I'm sure it can be tuned even better.

 

As for DS3: It had nothing on the other instalments, true, but I still disagree. It was pretty deplorable.

 

And no, if anything, the pacing has gotten worse for me in combat with the new patch due to non-shuffling path finding, a DT with weird spikes, making fights a dragged out business, plus, like you said, no way to make informed decisions due to the contrived percentages intersecting like crazy. And I don't see that improvement in visual clarity, except for one thing, there is no dog-piling any more. Always something, I guess.

Edited September 5, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Hiro Protagonist II]

it is high time for OE and for us to ask ourselves the BIG QUESTION:

 

Is combat fun this way?

 

(MMO-ish tank pushed to the frontline, loadouts from the rear, rinse and repeat.)

 

Are we enjoying it? Are we frustrated because it's all new? Or are we frustrated because it simply is not fun?

 

I'm asking this, because this is a perfect opportunity to rectify combat and make it into something that most people intuitively enjoy and understand. Let's not waste it, peeps.

 

The 'balancing' is probably what annoys me the most. And this started with IWD2. I honestly thought Obsidian wouldn't go back to IWD2 type balancing where if your Sorcerer wears different types of armor, then you could be hit up to things like 35% spell failure. I ended up wearing robes or nothing for my Wizards or Sorcerers because a) I wanted my spells to go off every time, and b) my mages were already at the back of the group and reasonably protected with a lot of the encounters in the game. We didn't see this with the BG games or IWD1. But then armor was restricted to different classes and I was okay with that. Armor gave bonuses, not % penalties. There's them damn percentages again.

 

But with Josh, he wanted all armor to be viable to all classes and that meant giving pluses and penalties to 'balance' it all out. You can't have Plate being better because everyone will just upgrade to Plate so then penalties are added. So? In the previous IE games that's what I did and I enjoyed it and there were no penalties. It's just one of the many reasons why IWD2 is my least favourite of the IE games. And this design philosophy has carried over to PoE but even worse. And it's why ranged characters in PoE are better off not wearing any armor at all. It's just not fun when your mage or chanter or whatever class is on full health, at a safe distance from the battle but have a 20%, 35% or whatever percentage recovery time. Well, throw the armor away, go stark naked and lob those spells without penalty. Seriously, the strategy is so laughable that if I mentioned this to my pnp group. They would be like WTF? What sort of game is this? 

 

There's too many negatives, penalties and everything else to negate the positives on items, especially the armor, to try and balance everything out and make everything 'viable'. I also find the attribute system does my head in where every number from 3-18 is viable. Even a 3 gives bonuses. There are things that should give penalties that don't like attributes and there are other things that do give penalties like loot which I think shouldn't because it makes me not want to use that loot. And this is all in the name of balance.

 

The system is horrible on paper and it's horrible in practice. When the system is a turd, no amount of tweaking is going to change that turd. It will still be a turd. So no, combat is not fun for me and I want to avoid it, and it's not just no kill xp. It's everything about combat. The MMO/4th ed type roles (tank, dps, leader, controller), to the different recovery times of each character (what's wrong with the 6 sec rounds in the IE games?), to everything else I've encountered with combat. And this is coming from a fan of 4th ed who has played 4th ed for years. It does not translate into PoE because there are core fundamental things from 4th ed that have been ignored while cherry picking some things from the combat, but ignoring other things from the 4th ed combat. You can't go cherry picking different things while ignoring other things from 4th ed combat and also cherry picking things from other game systems and then throw it all into a pot and out pops a rpg system for a computer role playing game, especially when halfway in development you still haven't decided on the attributes, skills and talents. It comes across as all fly by the seat of your pants design in an excel spreadsheet with tweaking a percentage here and there and saying, 'looks great'. 

 

And then there's the stamina/health problem which shortens the adventuring day to a couple or few encounters (depending on the encounters), unless you're exploiting the system (nudism, enemy A.I., fog of war, etc). Then you have to take an extended rest because your tank is nearly dead while the rest of your party is on full health. This doesn't happen in 4th ed combat because of one fundamental thing - healing your health. And you can press on and continue the session, and do more or avoid encounters, but you can still press on. We have a rule that we don't have an extended rest all session. Most of the time it works and it makes for strategic combat or sometimes we avoid combat through dialogue. With PoE, you can't when enemies already have red circles around them and blocking your path. You have to stop and rest for that one character if they are critically low on health. So yes, encounter and daily powers from 4th ed are good and provide that strategic combat, but it's useless if you're resting every couple/few encounters which you don't do in 4th ed pnp. You even have rituals that can spread the healing to your other characters. So while the world design of not having healing potions or healing spells might be 'cool' to some people, it doesn't translate to a crpg imo. The design is flawed.

 

The Baldurs Gate games and IWD1 combat I found was fun. The items (armor, weapons) were great and there were no penalties. I didn't have to have naked Mages because an armor gave me a % spell failure or whatever. With PoE, things like the  armor is uninspiring with all the negatives associated with it, and I want to avoid combat as much as possible when completing a quest because I don't find it fun to then to have to go back to the inn or camp and rest when I can't even heal one of my party members. Even simple FedEx quests like the Ogre require me to rest and that's not fun.

[Sensuki]

That still can be sorted out by readjusting the numbers a bit and limiting HP itself. Right now HP scales linearly I guess with level. That definitely needs to go, even from DnD.

The HP number system I would say is more 4E inspired than anything else.

 

snip

The fortunate thing is we can catch these flaws in the design and request improvements/alterations - which is what we're doing currently.

 

But yeah armor seems borked atm. The accuracy penalties for Heavier shields actually reduce your overall DPS something shocking as well.

 

There's too many negatives, penalties and everything else to negate the positives on items, especially the armor, to try and balance everything out and make everything 'viable'. I also find the attribute system does my head in where every number from 3-18 is viable. Even a 3 gives bonuses. There are things that should give penalties that don't like attributes and there are other things that do give penalties like loot which I think shouldn't because it makes me not want to use that loot. And this is all in the name of balance.

I think my revised attribute system poses a better solution to what they have currently. If you care to read the thread when it goes up it will include a lot of charts / comparisons and such that will also help everyone understand attributes better

Edited September 5, 2014 by Sensuki

[Captain Shrek]

 

That still can be sorted out by readjusting the numbers a bit and limiting HP itself. Right now HP scales linearly I guess with level. That definitely needs to go, even from DnD.

The HP number system I would say is more 4E inspired than anything else.

 

Care to explain/link? Never played 4E before.

[archangel979]

Large numbers (of Health and Damage) are actually *required* because of the DT system. There's like 10-12 types of armor or something and Josh has staggered them in 1 DT intervals.

 

D&D numbers wouldn't work because something like 5-8 damage for instance (one of his earliest examples of a Longsword damage) would do nothing against 8 DT.

 

Is combat fun this way?

 

(MMO-ish tank pushed to the frontline, loadouts from the rear, rinse and repeat.)

 

Are we enjoying it? Are we frustrated because it's all new? Or are we frustrated because it simply is not fun?

 

I'm asking this, because this is a perfect opportunity to rectify combat and make it into something that most people intuitively enjoy and understand. Let's not waste it, peeps.

I don't think so. I actually don't mind the higher amount of micromanagement, but some people - such as the majority of the RPGCodex think it's horrible and that the system would be way better if it was turn-based because it seems you pause very often.

 

What I'm not enjoying is that there seems to be little flexibility in how combat plays out. There's one optimal way and the rest are not as good. The IE games wasn't really like that at all. You could cheese stuff, sure but if you played normally there were a variety of different playstyles you could use for party setups.

 

And that is solved by giving armors different DT based on type of weapon used against it. Like IE game did it. Historically Plate armor was really good vs slashing weapons, less useful vs bludgeon and high penetration piercing weapons like arrows and bolts destroyed it. 

Chain was good vs slashing and somewhat vs bludgeon but was almost useless vs any kind of Piercing weapons. 

 

They just need to make armors less good vs different kind of weapons.

Edited September 5, 2014 by archangel979

[IndiraLightfoot]

Hiro:  Yeah, help us polish this "turd" then! Armour needs a huge reworking, you certainly got that point across. Also the resting, health/stamina, need to be revisited with broad, brave and new strokes.

Like you, I see rest spamming (especially at the inn) as a big annoyance. That's "degenerative gameplay" all over again. It has nothing on save-scumming in the IE games, which I was perfectly fine with, btw. In the IE games, it's something of a sport to get lost in some wilderness, run out spells and ammo, and then try to survive the whole thing and reach an inn or some vendor later.

Edited September 5, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Sensuki]

And that is solved by giving armors different DT based on type of weapon used against it. Like IE game did it. Plate armor was really good vs slashing weapons but bludgeon and high penetration piercing weapons like arrows and bolts destroyed it. 

Chain was good vs slashing and somewhat vs bludgeon but was almost useless vs any kind of Piercing weapons. 

 

They just need to make armors less good vs different kind of weapons.

This is actually already a thing, the values are just not shown in the UI. Plate armor has -50% DT vs Shock damage for instance. Chain does basically nothing against Crush damage.

 

However, the 2H weapons of these types - the Estoc and the Morningstar most notably, outshine any other weapons of their damage type due to the DT system at the moment. Maces and Stilettos are also very good because of their -DT property, which is hugely valuable. Better than any other special property any other weapon has.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

 

That still can be sorted out by readjusting the numbers a bit and limiting HP itself. Right now HP scales linearly I guess with level. That definitely needs to go, even from DnD.

The HP number system I would say is more 4E inspired than anything else.

 

 

No. HP in PoE has nothing to do with 4th ed. I have no idea what it's based on or why the numbers are so high.

 

For example:

Level 6 Rogue in PoE - 117 hps

Level 6 Rogue in 4th ed - 58 hps

 

Also defences:

PoE Rogue - Level 6

Def - 30

Fort - 45

Ref - 72

Will - 45

 

4th ed Rogue - Level 6 (Min/Max with Op items in my character builder)

AC - 22

Fort - 17

Ref - 23

Will - 17

Edited September 5, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Sensuki]

No. HP in PoE has nothing to do with 4th ed. I have no idea what it's based on or why the numbers are so high.

Yes it does. You get a higher amount of HP at level 1 (like 4E) and then a set lower number at every level thereafter (like 4E). The Con bonus is a % of total, rather than an integer added on top at every level.

 

I've already explained why the numbers are so high - it's because of the DT system. If you're wearing armor that reduces 10 damage per hit, then you need higher damage weapons. To compensate you need higher HP numbers.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Sensuki

[Infinitron]

Maybe the DT values should be fractions. 

[archangel979]

 

And that is solved by giving armors different DT based on type of weapon used against it. Like IE game did it. Plate armor was really good vs slashing weapons but bludgeon and high penetration piercing weapons like arrows and bolts destroyed it. 

Chain was good vs slashing and somewhat vs bludgeon but was almost useless vs any kind of Piercing weapons. 

 

They just need to make armors less good vs different kind of weapons.

This is actually already a thing, the values are just not shown in the UI. Plate armor has -50% DT vs Shock damage for instance. Chain does basically nothing against Crush damage.

 

However, the 2H weapons of these types - the Estoc and the Morningstar most notably, outshine any other weapons of their damage type due to the DT system at the moment. Maces and Stilettos are also very good because of their -DT property, which is hugely valuable. Better than any other special property any other weapon has.

 

So what is the problem then? Can't they just tweak the numbers? 

 

Also, the reasoning about Leather armor needing to be as good as Plate armor is fail from the start. Plate armor was just better in real life. End of story. But there was a serious penalty. It cost more than a common person would earn his whole life. You also needed to upkeep it, carry it (have a squire and pay his wages) and so on. If you wore one but were not of right social status, you would be accused of stealing it and killed. 

 

These things can be simulated in cRPG easily. Armors can break and have durability. Repairing one costs a decent amount of money. A very small chance can break it immediately until repaired for lots of money again. Maybe even have a way to lose it permanently and needing to buy new one. 

 

Leather armor on the other hand costs little and less to repair or replace. Have money be an issue in the game so players need to choose in a realistic manner what to use. Then there is no need to make gamist and bad reasons to make leather armor as useful as plate.

Edited September 5, 2014 by archangel979

[Sensuki]

Maybe the DT values should be fractions. 

You mean percentages?

 

That was something I mentioned earlier in the thread. Warcraft 3 used percentage based armor because of this issue I believe (but they used integer based damage).

 

So what is the problem then? Can't they just tweak the numbers?

The problem is that due to DT being an integer, weapons with a higher damage per hit will always be better vs DT, because the lower damage weapons are attacking more often to make up for the lower per-hit damage, they are opposing DT more often, thereby raising effective DT by the same amount as their increase in IAS (Increased Attack Speed).

 

Currently, the weapons are roughly balanced to deal similar damage at 0DT, as soon as any DT is added, 1H Fast Weapons fall off instantly. The higher the DT gets, 1H Normal weapons become ****ty too, unless you're opposing a favorable armor type. 2H weapons outshine all the other weapons at the moment after even semi-low DT values come into play.

 

Percentage based armor would normalize this so that the weapon styles are even against each other, however Josh could also tweak the numbers a bit so that the average DPS at 0 DT is not the same, and create a system where some kind of efficacy curve exists for all three weapon styles/speeds.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Sensuki

[Infinitron]

Archangel: Durability? Let me tell you about durability.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Infinitron

[Infinitron]

 

Maybe the DT values should be fractions. 

You mean percentages?

 

That was something I mentioned earlier in the thread. Warcraft 3 used percentage based armor because of this issue I believe (but they used integer based damage).

 

 

No, I mean fractions as in floating point numbers.

 

DT 1.0, DT 1.5, DT 2.3, etc.

 

There you go, smaller numbers for HP and damage and everything. 

Edited September 5, 2014 by Infinitron

[archangel979]

Archangel: Durability? Let me tell you about durability.

Ouch. Well at the time, it probably made sense. People though armors would work like in IE games, not this Leather armor = Plate armor crap.

[Captain Shrek]

Maybe there shouldn't be (lol) 12 kinds of armour.

[Infinitron]

 

Archangel: Durability? Let me tell you about durability.

Ouch. Well at the time, it probably made sense. People though armors would work like in IE games, not this Leather armor = Plate armor crap.

 

 

I'm not sure why you think it "=". Plate armor has higher DT than leather armor, but makes you slower. It's a fairly reasonable tradeoff even if you're a simulationist.

 

(But generally speaking I'd recommend staying far away from this game if you can't deal with "gamism".)

[Sensuki]

Maybe there shouldn't be (lol) 12 kinds of armour.

I've offered two solutions to the problem that would both work (armor percentage and weapon damage range tweaks). The amount of different armors in the game is a cool thing.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

Yes it does. You get a higher amount of HP at level 1 (like 4E) and then a set lower number at every level thereafter (like 4E). The Con bonus is a % of total, rather than an integer added on top at every level.

 

I've already explained why the numbers are so high - it's because of the DT system. If you're wearing armor that reduces 10 damage per hit, then you need higher damage weapons. To compensate you need higher HP numbers.

 

 

You're right. I forgot, even a 3 gives a bonus. That's why the numbers are so high. FFS.

 

I think I'm better just ignoring the mechanics and play the game. Trying to understand this will give me a stomach ache.