List necessities you think would fix the game in broad strokes

[IndiraLightfoot]

I couldn't resist, since I feel some issues are bigger than just tweaking numbers, attributes, or combat action speed and recovery. It's very easy to lose sight of the macro level in the midst of all this microing, as it were.

 

So, please, be my guest, list things you really think must be in the game to fix it in its current BB state. Precision is not needed here. It's much more important that you list things that matter, things that would affect gameplay in a big way, that would give you that feel, vibe or immersion you deem necessary in a spiritual successor of the IE games.

 

Here goes nothing:

-Attributes should matter a lot. Each unit increased should have weight and meaning in combat and in the game world/setting

-Keep health, drop stamina, and make those maimed states prolific and more varied and effective

-Karkarov has written some fine posts on armour, check them out. I want them employed

-I'd rather have BG:EE with quick loot as our inventory in PoE than the current inventory system

-The stash, kill it with fire. One year ago, I was accepting its existence. This is no longer true.

-Have limited ammunition, stacks of arrows, bolts, darts, bullets, what not

-Stealth should be individual, and then reworked in accordance with mutonizer's thread on it under BB bug forum.

-BG:EE has some fantastic rest screens. I'd love to see that in PoE as well.

-Remove, or at least hide all percentages, decimal numbers or fractions. I want low and clean numbers in combat for everything: armour, to hit, deflection, resistances, you name it.

-Small-increment xp. I don't care how you do it, but the replayability of the game would benefit immensely from it

-I'll trade crafting for better and more varied encounter design any day.

-Larger outdoor maps, please! Let them sprawl, lower the encounter density at times.

-Let there be some talent or some improvement at every level up, this to increase build diversity

-Let classes start already at level 1 with like three distinct choices. I don't like this one class, one build, philosophy. For instance: ranged ranger, two-weapon ranger, and ranger with no animal companion. 

-Lower the intensity of most spell effects, including sounds. You'll thank me for this later.

-Remove the recovery pips above the player characters, and make the UI and the abilities, including the combat log, be placed in the centre, compare this to Sensuki's suggestions on an improved UI. Another alternative, would be going full-on BG:EE UI, with borders on the left and right side of the screen, and keep looting and combat log in the middle.

-Rethink the constant damaging going on in combat, this no matter of how well you play, you'll be sanded down in health by 40%, slowly but surely. Yuk! I want to see a system where landing a hit is a thing in itself. No more grazes. Either you hit or you miss. Keep crits if you wish, but vary damage in a way that is exciting enough - a little RNG in this very respect would help strengthening replayability and general RPG-fun.

-Give us more non-combat "talents". Make sure that the BB's "either you have Perception or Intellect maxed out, else you won't have no convo tree fun" is diversified a lot more.

 

I could go on, but it's probably best I'll stop here...for now. 

Edited September 6, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Uomoz]

90% of this are not even possible to change anymore, you know that? It's too late to change things like stamina/health. Focus your feedback on things that can actually change.

[Sarex]

Heh, if I knew how to do this I would have been a game designer, but here goes nothing:

 

In order of importance

 

-Combat pacing, trash fights should be trash fights. You should not be required to micro manage so much for them(at all for a matter of fact). It will get tiring fast.

-Scrap stamina, bring back healing.

-Better AI.

-More contrast between characters and the background.

-IWD2 inventory.

-Attributes need to have much larger impact on the game.

-Change the xp system to something that is more finely distributed. Preferably go back to the IE system.

-Dial back the numbers on everything. Values should be in the range of the IE games (health, damage, armor, will, etc.)

-More ambient sounds

 

This is all I can think off now.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Sarex

[IndiraLightfoot]

90% of this are not even possible to change anymore, you know that? It's too late to change things like stamina/health. Focus your feedback on things that can actually change.

Wrong. Compare this with the D:OS alpha and beta, which occurred during a few months, and 90% of the kind just mentioned were indeed changed. Add to that, they had reached much further into their reiterations than OE has done. Also, there's a strong possibility of PoE getting postponed in order to make it a great game instead of something more forgettable.

[PrimeJunta]

Whoa, that's a lot of stuff. Largely good stuff, some stuff I disagree with, some that I'd file under nice to have. And some, frankly, just sound like reflexive conservatism--"make it like it was in the IE games, whether it makes sense or not."

 

Right now, my highest priorities would be something like...

1. Combat feedback and transparency. What's happening, to whom, when; how much damage am I doing, how much is getting through; why or why not; how much are they doing and how much of that is getting through. Includes simplifying the numbers.
2. Combat AI. Pick targets more intelligently, not always the closest guy or the guy who last attacked. 
3. Pathfinding, in and out of combat.
4. Combat balance, including spells and specials.
5. Better, more, and more diverse talents. Use these to break the currently role-limited classes out of that straitjacket (rogue and fighter in particular), and add variety and pizzazz to the currently serviceable but somewhat boring ones (wizard, priest).

Medium priorities:

1. Stealth. It stinks. Make it work. Has to be individual, must be more to it than not letting some circles intersect. If all else fails just copy IE stealth and throw in some invisibility spells/scrolls/potions. For extra credit, let us lay traps.
2. Inventory. It's unnecessarily fussy. I'd solve it in the opposite way you would: keep the quickslots and weapon sets, but then give us unlimited party inventory which self-sorts by type and value. I do not consider dragging icons from one place to another an enjoyable gameplay element.
3. Armor. Make it more attractive all around, e.g. by lowering penalties on light armor and adding value to heavy armor, e.g. deflection bonus.
4. Stats. Make them matter more, make RES and especially PER less dumpable, and iron out some of the unintuitive bits about them.
5. Rethink the recovery mechanic. Experiment to make sure it feels right. I'd start by making movement interrupt recovery for different weapons in different ways: melee weapons, spells, and light ranged weapons should be able to recover while moving, perhaps somewhat slower than when standing still, while you do need to stay put to crank an arbalest or reload a firearm.
6. XP. Award frequently and in small doses.

Low priority:

1. Better and more consistent UI's all around. Apply, Cancel, Accept buttons everywhere applicable. Trading should require less clicking and scrolling. Info panes should make more efficient use of screen space to display more info. Etc. and so on.
2. Better animations, sound and visual FX, animations to the background, etc.

From your list, there are a few things I disagree somewhat strongly about:

1. Limited ammunition: God please no. I do not want to deal with stacks and stacks of arrows/bullets/bolts/darts anymore. Please?
2. Health/stamina, with no magic strategic healing. Keep it. It's a material improvement over the IE.
3. Randomness in combat. No. Please keep the current more deterministic system. Hell, make it more deterministic: fixed damage by weapon, x0.25 to 0.5 on graze, x1.5 to x2 on crit. This would also help with combat transparency a lot.
4. Noncombat talents: no, thanks. Base noncombat stuff on stats and skills, keep talents for combat. The split is simple, straightforward, and understandable. Don't unnecessarily complicate it.

Edited September 6, 2014 by PrimeJunta

[IndiraLightfoot]

Heh, if I knew how to do this I would have been a game designer, but here goes nothing:

 

In order of importance

 

-Combat pacing, trash fights should be trash fights. You should not be required to micro manage so much for them(at all for a matter of fact). It will get tiring fast.

-Scrap stamina, bring back healing.

-Better AI.

-More contrast between characters and the background.

-IWD2 inventory.

-Attributes need to have much larger impact on the game.

-Change the xp system to something that is more finely distributed. Preferably go back to the IE system.

-Dial back the numbers on everything. Values should be in the range of the IE games (health, damage, armor, will, etc.)

-More ambient sounds

 

This is all I can think off now.

Nice work, Sarex!

This is a thread where we get to play Feargus for a minute or two. Then we call in Josh to our office and let him have it.

[IndiraLightfoot]

PrimeJunta: Heh! You went one step further and prioritized your broad strokes! Nice.

 

As for the stuff you disagree with the most, I do take comfort in that I won't loose any sleep if the limited ammo won't be in (I do really like that mechanic, but i'ts not a prio), and the same goes for non-combat talents. But 2 and 3, I really like those changes that I proposed, and I've already grown tired of the health/stamina split after almost 15 hours of this beta. Imagine, what I'll think of it after 150 hours!

[Marceror]

The benefits of attributes need to be less esoteric.

 

I don't put points into Resolve because I simply am not certain, exactly, what it's doing for me. In D&D it was very clear what benefit of raising an ability was, and what the tradeoffs were to raise a different one instead.

 

INT increases the length of abilities and size of AoE? Does that really matter? And to which classes? Hell if I know. Let's dump that one too.

 

Might, Con and Dex, okay, those all seem reasonable. Let's max those for every character and leave the scraps for the other attributes.

[PrimeJunta]

@Indira ... get used to it...?

 

The health/stamina split is irritating in the beta but IMO it's irritating not because of the mechanic itself, but because of the ratio (too hard on health) and because of the AI (one guy always takes all the damage, forcing a rest). Correct these two and I believe it'll work fine.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I forgot to mention that limiting ammo would limit any naked ranged characters at the back galore. It would be useful to limit those somehow. Hmm. 

[Sarex]

@Indira ... get used to it...?

 

The health/stamina split is irritating in the beta but IMO it's irritating not because of the mechanic itself, but because of the ratio (too hard on health) and because of the AI (one guy always takes all the damage, forcing a rest). Correct these two and I believe it'll work fine.

 

I just don't see it. I know what it is supposed to do, but it just seems bad to me. I don't think it's a balancing issue either.

[Monte Carlo]

I like Indira's list on the whole but find myself indifferent about ammo.

 

As for 'conservatism' well conservatism is good. At it's best, conservatism stands for stewardship and cautious progress, scepticism of change for the sake of it and evidence-based arguments for overturning what is tried-and-tested.

 

I think more conservatism in the design ethos of this project would have been a Good Thing

[Yonjuro]

 Great list! Additions (and subtractions) inline:

 

 

"-Attributes should matter a lot. Each unit increased should have weight and meaning in combat and in the game world/setting"

 

 Yes. I get why smoothing the rough edges (I mean smoothing in the mathematical sense here) is important, but the attributes go too far in that direction.

 

Also, while the classes have a distinct feel, they are too straitjacketed into a role. E.g. a fighter is purely a tank - there is no good ranged option for fighters and a limited DPS option. One would need to play a ranger or rogue for those roles. I was expecting the attributes to matter and to make the classes more flexible and I think, if done well, it would make the game more replayable.

 

 

"-Keep health, drop stamina, and make those maimed states prolific and more varied and effective"

 

 I get this, but I think it can be fixed by tweaking values.

 

"-I'd rather have BG:EE with quick loot as our inventory in PoE than the current inventory system

-The stash, kill it with fire. One year ago, I was accepting its existence. This is no longer true."

 

 Agree. Most people who played BG2 will, on their deathbed, remember their wedding day, their first child and finding that bag of holding in the Spellhold maze. If you can access an unlimited inventory everywhere is that OP? Don't care. If you have that, quick loot is trivial to implement.

 

"-Karkarov has written some fine posts on armour, check them out. I want them employed"

 

 Yup, there was a very nice thread on that with actual reasoned discussion.

 

"-Have limited ammunition, stacks of arrows, bolts, darts, bullets, what not"

 

I like magic arrows etc. but I don't think it's game breaking to leave them out.

 

 

"-Stealth should be individual, and then reworked in accordance with mutonizer's thread on it under BB bug forum."

 

 This one is important. It gives new tactical possibilities and they're interesting possibilities. In particular it adds in some IE goodness in that rogues can position for a backstab-like thing.

 

"-Small-increment xp. I don't care how you do it, but the replayability of the game would benefit immensely from it"

 

 I would be interested to see a discussion of this that doesn't devolve into a full thread of "SawyerMeister MeisterSawyer took away our toys and is therefore evil." But realistically, that apparently can't happen so, I don't expect anything to happen with XP until somebody makes a mod.

 

"-I'll trade crafting for better and more varied encounter design any day."

 

 I agree but I don't think having crafting is game breaking (just very uninteresting).

 

 

"-Let classes start already at level 1 with like three distinct choices. I don't like this one class, one build, philosophy. For instance: ranged ranger, two-weapon ranger, and ranger with no animal companion. "

 

 Agree. I mentioned something related under attributes.

 

"-Rethink the constant damaging going on in combat, this no matter of how well you play, you'll be sanded down in health by 40%, slowly but surely. Yuk! I want to see a system where landing a hit is a thing in itself. No more grazes. Either you hit or you miss. Keep crits if you wish, but vary damage in a way that is exciting enough - a little RNG in this very respect would help strengthening replayability and general RPG-fun."

 

 Yup. As I mentioned above, the functions are too smooth. It makes the fights and the character builds too bland. The game currently revolves around managing health. That doesn't even sound fun.

 

 tl;dr

 

Must fix: 

 

 1. Open up the attribute ranges so they matter.

 2. Make the classes more flexible so there is more than one fighter, ranger etc. build realizable by selecting the attributes.

 3. Make the fights more than managing health bars by making the attack resolution functions less smooth.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Yonjuro

[Sensuki]

- Better Performance (UIs are all really laggy, some maps have horrible FPS)

- Better Load times, with less hitching

- Pathfinding that properly checks for the shortest path often, taking into account units, trajectory and navmesh space

- Mirroring of IE combat feedback and animation style

- Adjustments to Recovery times (globally or per-item)

- Slower movement speed

- Scale some creatures down so they don't take up as much space (like the beetles)

- Make characters stand out from the environment more

- Fix the issues with character sorting and occlusion

- Fix the combat AI, Josh's tumblr post sounds like they're aware of it

- Revamp Attributes and Attribute Point Buy so that it meets the design goals

- IWD2 inventory

- Fix the adventuring day length by tuning damage and the Health System

- Move the Main HUD elements around so the combat log can be read on the fly

- Make all the UI elements more uniform looking with uniform navigation

- Bring back Right click cancel

- Improve character animations, especially combat stances, fidgets and add more weapon attacks

- IE style blood particles on hits

- Tone down the Spell FX, remove all AoEs from AoE buffs and debuffs and make the FX per-unit only

- Redo the UI art to scale higher than 720p (all screens are 720p)

- Add in some sound design

- Fix looting UI

- Fix Shopping UI

- Per character Stealth

- Automatic Mechanics Search when idle, or pixel-hunt for hidden caches

- More flexible class abilities / defenses

- Fix female armor proportions on all races

- Fix the controls, so many tasks have a broad function rather than individual, such as the TAB key

- Fix the fog of war, make it line of sight

- Change NPC selection circle color to blue so NPCs don't look like a party member

- Add in Selection Circle slider so we can control when they are displayed

- Separate sliders for Tooltip feedback

- Better combat music and more IE style music production/mixing - use percussion ffs

 

All I can think of off the top of my head, probs have more in notes

Edited September 6, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sarex]

"-I'll trade crafting for better and more varied encounter design any day."

 

 I agree but I don't think having crafting is game breaking (just very uninteresting).

 

Crafting should be like it was in BG2. Hunting down pieces and forging them in to a whole. That was great and it served as a money sink.

[PrimeJunta]

 

@Indira ... get used to it...?

 

The health/stamina split is irritating in the beta but IMO it's irritating not because of the mechanic itself, but because of the ratio (too hard on health) and because of the AI (one guy always takes all the damage, forcing a rest). Correct these two and I believe it'll work fine.

 

I just don't see it. I know what it is supposed to do, but it just seems bad to me. I don't think it's a balancing issue either.

 

Health is the functional replacement of the D&D cleric's healing spells, no more, no less. Run out of heals, rest. Run out of health, rest. It just needs to be tuned so that it 'feels' that you have about as much health as you would have had cleric heals.

[TheNationer]

Very minor: I'd change the appearance of the Amaua and how the characters look without armo(u)r xD I know that sounds weird, but the fact they're just like oddly coloured + shaped without actual non-combat clothes perturbs me < I know that's silly and facile, before you decide to tell me so.

 

But:

I'm liking the way its going tbh, and I've got my trust well and truly in Josh and the crew = I'm in the less vocal positive camp, e.g. those who don't comment 20 times a day. Each to their own on how to deliver your feedback, but if many of you could look at your character screens irl, then you'd see that you don't have very many 'diplomatic' points 

Edited September 6, 2014 by TheNationer

[aeonsim]

Broad strokes, sure 3-4 months of bug fixing, balance passes and QA should fix the game.

 

Which I'm pretty much sure is the obsidian plan...

 

In more detail PrimeJunta's high priority list pretty much covers it...

Edited September 6, 2014 by aeonsim

[Namutree]

Most important:

 

A) Give us 50% more health and introduce a health penalty for running out of stamina (Except the barbarian).

 

B) Double the combat importance of attributes. I don't want to play as the hero, "Standard Mcdefault" until halfway into the game when talents finally let me make a build.

 

C) Fix the UI. Right now the UI is terrible and needs to be fixed.

 

D) Introduce discovery xp. This game needs some xp that isn't tied to quests. Giving us 100-xp when we find a special area would do a lot to make the game more fun to explore.

 

Less important:

 

A) Lower the trash mobs hp. These fights are tedious and exploration would be funner if the enemies went down faster.

 

B) Reduce armor speed penalty. The armor in this game comes at too high a cost. reducing the speed penalty by 20% would make the game more enjoyable. When I say a reduction of 20%, I mean that a speed penalty of 30% would be reduced to 24%. That or simply increase the defense bonus.

 

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Namutree

[Pray]

So my question is (and this also relates to a comment made by Sawyer about armor) - Once the AI turns on to backliners, or ignores front liners, how do we make it so that the enemies turn back on our front liners?

 

Do we have to give them more damage and less armor to make them more attractive?

 

Doesn't this all turn into one heavy armor is ****, circle jerk?

[Bulkbu]

- Rework the attributes. Make attributes have weight and effect your character in very different ways. "There are only viable builds" isn't an argument in a cRPG. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Willpower, Intelligence, Charisma/Perception make way more sense and allow for building individual characters. Making those stats requirements for equipment, dialogue and quests not only makes sense because its a "classical" approach, but because its intuitive and logical. You want to play a character who likes to steal stuff but likes diplomacy over fighting? Go for dexterity and charisma. You want to roleplay a insanely stupid but strong dwarven warrior? Low intelligence, high strength and constitution.

 

- Rework armour.

Heavy armour: a lot of protection, high movement penalties, very fast fatigue, makes spellcasting very difficult.

Medium armour: solid protection, medium movement penalties, relatively fast fatigue, allows spellcasting, but its difficult.

Leather armour: a little protection, slight movement penalties, minor fatigue, spellcasting with minor handicaps

Cloth armour: almost no protection, no movement penalties, no additional fatique, no penalties on spellcasting

 

- Polish combat. Better pathfinding, pacing, balancing etc

 

- Killing monsters/exploration awards experience. Doesn't have to be a lot, but no experience reward at all feels illogical. Your characters get better and more experienced with every fight!

 

- Rework the UI. Aesthetically fine, but who has come up with this? Even the IE games' UI was more convenient to use

- Polish animations/movement speed. Characters seem to float sometimes. They should move slower in general

- Rework inventory system. A simple grid stash for every character managable through tab selection would do. Current solution is suboptimal to say the least.


 

[Yonjuro]

 

 

@Indira ... get used to it...?

 

The health/stamina split is irritating in the beta but IMO it's irritating not because of the mechanic itself, but because of the ratio (too hard on health) and because of the AI (one guy always takes all the damage, forcing a rest). Correct these two and I believe it'll work fine.

 

I just don't see it. I know what it is supposed to do, but it just seems bad to me. I don't think it's a balancing issue either.

 

Health is the functional replacement of the D&D cleric's healing spells, no more, no less.

 

 Well, it's less in that you could also use potions, scrolls and items to augment (or do without) the cleric's (or druid's or paladin's or BG PC's etc.) healing spells. The health/stamina mechanic removes the need for a cleric, but doesn't give the other options to lengthen your adventuring day. Balancing it will help, but there are still no other ways to augment health.

[Headbomb]

Right now, mechanics wise, there needs to be a big balancing effort made. There's too much HP to go through in general. Weapon damage is all over the place (esp. with ranged weapons). Armor is too effective vs small weapons. It's fine that combat is slower, but an enemy with 400 HP at 2-5 HP per hit is just boring. A level 10 tanky type character should have around 150-200 HP, tops.

 

Something like (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm Armor as DR variant in D&D3.5)

Armor          Deflection   DT vs S P C   Recovery   Weakness

----------------------------------------------------

* Robe             10%            0 0 0      0%       None

* Padded           15%            1 0 1     10%       None

* Leather          20%            2 1 1     20%       None

* Hide             25%            2 1 3     20%       None

* Scale            30%            3 3 1     30%       +30% Shock Damage

* Breastplate      35%            3 3 2     30%       +35% Shock Damage

* Mail             40%            4 4 1     40%       +40% Shock Damage

* Brigandine       45%            4 4 1     40%       +45% Shock Damage

* Plate            50%            5 3 2     50%       +50% Shock Damage

 

Then make weapons deal something like

* Quick  1H  5-10 dmg (Daggers, Stilettos, Clubs, etc...)

* Normal 1H 10-15 dmg (Spears, Longswords, Maces, etc...)

* Slow   2H 15-20 dmg (Pike, Greatswords, Morningstar)

 

This is already implemented, sort of, but the reduced DT from the table above means you probably need a somewhat reduced damage. Maybe not since I added deflection to armor. Also make it so graze is 1 dmg at minimum, rather than 0.4 or 0.7 damage you sometimes see. Or just get rid of it entirely. Likewise, concerning spell-power, some guiding table should be also made and followed

 

Spell     Target         DoT (per 5 sec)

Level Single  Area   Single Area  Duration

1      20-30  10-15   10     3    15+1*Char Lvl

2      30-50  15-25   15     6    15+2*Char Lvl

3      40-70  20-35   20     9    15+3*Char Lvl

4      50-90  25-45   25    12    15+4*Char Lvl

5     60-110  30-55   30    15    15+5*Char Lvl

6     70-130  35-65   35    18    15+6*Char Lvl

7     80-150  40-75   40    21    15+7*Char Lvl

8     90-170  45-85   45    24    15+8*Char Lvl

9    100-190  50-95   50    27    15+9*Char Lvl

 

Now the point isn't to streamline every spell so that they all make the same damage with different visuals, but this can act as a baseline. Then come up with rules, such as if you add a single effect, decrease damage by 1 spell levels. If you add an area status effect, decrease damage by 2 levels. If you increase duration, decrease damage, etc...

Edited September 7, 2014 by Headbomb

[Grotesque]

- real money sinks

- no level cap whatsoever

- item sketches

[PrimeJunta]

Well, it's less in that you could also use potions, scrolls and items to augment (or do without) the cleric's (or druid's or paladin's or BG PC's etc.) healing spells. The health/stamina mechanic removes the need for a cleric, but doesn't give the other options to lengthen your adventuring day. Balancing it will help, but there are still no other ways to augment health.

 

Healing potions/items were, for me at least, always a supplementing feature. The only game I used them regularly was IWD2 where I knew enemies would drop them regularly so there was no point to hoard them. In all the others they were emergency-use only, i.e. when I screwed up somehow, or in rare instances I wanted to push through further than my cleric's healing would allow.

 

The purpose of stam/health is still the same: you have a tactical health resource (stamina in P:E, hit points in DnD), and a strategic health resource (health in P:E, cleric heals+potions in DnD). The former is relevan in an individual fight, the latter determines how far you can go before resting. The purpose of the mechanical change is to broaden the cleric's role from a heal-o-mat.

 

The idea is sound. The implementation is currently flawed; for one thing priest gameplay is less varied in P:E than it is in DnD. The priest is my favorite DnD3 class by far, because it can be built in so many diverse ways and it remains true to the concept. The P:E priest is a buff-o-mat.