On Healing: a New Idea

[Monte Carlo]

It matters not - the core issue is this:

 

The mechanic means that the designers have to up the difficulty of encounters in cities for no other reason than to satisfy the mechanics.

 

A design problem?

 

I would suggest it is. It seems glaringly inconsistent to have scaled encounters everywhere else but not in a place with multiple resting zones, just to feed the machine.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Pretty much MC.

Edited September 7, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Sarex]

Uh... some of the city fights in BG2 were plenty tough. The beholders. The vampires. Kangaxx for cryin' out loud. 

 

I specifically said trash fights, maybe I should have bolded it.

[Infinitron]

We're comparing PoE which would be more comparable to BG1 in terms of levels (heroic tier) to BG2 which was more paragon tier now? I noticed on the Codex Infinitron you take issue comparing PoE with BG2 (eg. Thieves and Rogues) but do want to compare PoE with BG2 with city fights.

 

I'm comparing it to something you're supposed to like. Whether or not PoE's city fights are actually inspired by BG2 is a different matter.

 

 

It matters not - the core issue is this:

 

The mechanic means that the designers have to up the difficulty of encounters in cities for no other reason than to satisfy the mechanics.

 

A design problem?

 

I would suggest it is. It seems glaringly inconsistent to have scaled encounters everywhere else but not in a place with multiple resting zones, just to feed the machine.

 

It's not a problem if the outcomes are positive. From my perspective, higher difficulty is always a positive outcome.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Hmmm. So glaringly broken mechanics are fine as long as they make stuff tougher because that's what you like?

 

I'm happy it suits your preference, but it doesn't mean it isn't broken.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

I'm comparing it to something you're supposed to like. Whether or not PoE's city fights are actually inspired by BG2 is a different matter.

 

Well we both know harder city fights are not inspired by BG2 and you know that. It's inspired by ease of access to inns. eg. resting. Such inspiration. There's an inn over there so we'll make this fight hard.

Edited September 7, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Infinitron]

^ Hmmm. So glaringly broken mechanics are fine as long as they make stuff tougher because that's what you like?

 

I'm happy it suits your preference, but it doesn't mean it isn't broken.

 

It's what everybody should like.

 

What exactly are you suggesting as a solution, anyway?  Not allowing people to rest in towns so that the difficulty of encounters can "safely" be scaled down?

 

Or maybe the game should just be less difficult than it could be. Who's dumbing down our games now, eh?

 

(Seriously, this is an incredibly dumb argument. I can't believe you guys are saying these things.)

Edited September 7, 2014 by Infinitron

[Sarex]

You are missing the point.

[Ashen Rohk]

Re: OP - I wouldn't mind temporary health regens, but I don't think that they should removed the maimed status. By the time I'm out of spells and getting fatigued, my guys are usually pretty much dead on their feet anyway and I'm quite enjoying the non-spam resting of PoE over IE games.

 

What would be broken is if the camping supplies had the inn bonuses.

[Infinitron]

You are missing the point.

 

Look, it's very simple.

 

RPGs allow you to rest in towns.

 

The fact that RPGs allow you to rest in towns means that battles in town lack a strategic context. It means you'll never arrive at a town battle after having suffered through a long, difficult dungeon slog that wore away your health, daily abilities, consumables and other resources.

 

Therefore, if individual town battles are on the same difficulty level as dungeon battles, those battles will actually be significantly easier.

 

This is not something that is unique to the design of Pillars of Eternity. This is a problem in almost every RPG of this type.

 

You're acting like Sawyer has "created" some problem here. He hasn't created anything. In this case, he's taking the traditional template and working with it. He's doing exactly what you wanted him to do with this game.

 

Now, I'm sure that not literally every battle in town will be super-tough. If you ambush a peasant in some alley, he'll be weak. But the scripted battles, the quest-related battles? Those should be difficult.

Edited September 7, 2014 by Infinitron

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Your daily powers will become encounter powers because you'll be rest spamming after each fight. And taking the view that people will rest spam and then increasing the difficulty for these rest spammers, this is the sort of thing that encourages rest spamming even more. And with daily powers becoming encounter powers for each fight then maybe this is what Josh has in mind and will adjust the encounters to this. This means that if someone wants to roleplay and not rest spam, they are at a disadvantage if they've already used a daily or a few on a previous fight.

Edited September 7, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Captain Shrek]

 

Ouch! That's bordering on the bizarre, Infinitron.

 

JESawyer

"In those cases, combat will likely be tuned for a "full-bore" party. It's easier to make strategic adaptations if you fail a fight and can immediately change the party's loadout, but such fights will have a heavier emphasis on efficiency and tactical precision."

 

This is really bad news for diversity, surprises and exploration in general. PoE will become weird in this way.

Leader in your party: "We're in a town now. Beware, all enemies here are better than dragons in caves 3,000 feet up Ominous Mountain or the lich lord in Untergang Crypt. See, that thug by that barrel there. He has wrestled a frost giant to his knees with a secret finger grip."

 

A CRPG of this kind shouldn't ever has to resort to that kind of predictability just in order to save a flawed resting health/stamina system. 

 

I'm actually speechless right now. I'll have to get back on this.

 

 

Sometimes games have to be designed to emphasize fun over balance. Whowoulddathot?

[Iucounu]

Your daily powers will become encounter powers because you'll be rest spamming after each fight. And taking the view that people will rest spam and then increasing the difficulty for these rest spammers, this is the sort of thing that encourages rest spamming even more. And with daily powers becoming encounter powers for each fight then maybe this is what Josh has in mind and will adjust the encounters to this. This means that if someone wants to roleplay and not rest spam, they are at a disadvantage if they've already used a daily or a few on a previous fight.

You could always scale the encounters for rest-spammers, couldn't you?

 

.. oh god, I'm infected

[Hiro Protagonist II]

There was varying difficulty of battles in the city of BG1. There were easy, medium and really hard encounters but they made sense in the context of the game world and it wasn't because players had access to an inn. I'm all for varying degrees of difficulty, but it needs to make sense. Having access to an inn to rest is really bizarre.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

You could always scale the encounters for rest-spammers, couldn't you?

 

Which appears Josh is doing.

 

Q. What about town battles, where a rest spot is always close by? In those battles, the party is always at full power.

Josh: In those cases, combat will likely be tuned for a "full-bore" party.

 

The question is a bad question because you may not be at full power.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Alright, I'm back. I have digested this, and I am calmer.

Do I still think this is an un wise and strange design decision?

Yes.

 

Why?

 

 

 

The mechanic means that the designers have to up the difficulty of encounters in cities for no other reason than to satisfy the mechanics.

 

 

 

Even worse, this is yet a clear hint at the entire rest/health/stamina-mechanic being flawed (there are already plenty of threads on these issues).

Instead of fixing it - making it good and intuitive - (perhaps even add some more straightforward healing in-combat and in-between combat, tried recipes in a gazillion CRPG predecessors, I don't know) - Josh prefers to keep the mechanic and adapt the entire game experience. This is wag the dog in its truest meaning!

 

There was varying difficulty of battles in the city of BG1. There were easy, medium and really hard encounters but they made sense in the context of the game world and it wasn't because players had access to an inn.

This is the case with BG1 and BG2, as well as NWN1 and NWN2, they had varying difficulties in cities and elsewhere. Good CRPG design has varying difficulty and pacing as staple commodities. Sprinkled into this are complete surprises as well, spikes in difficulty, strange pacing through puzzles or riddles or complex traps, and so forth.

 

I didn't jump the gun. This is worrisome. I really hope this will be changed, and that it's the last time, problems with mechanics are patched up through adapting the entire game to its flaws. In essence, this means that the RPG part of the game, including story, companion interactions, will suffer too. Our lasting memories of these PoE cities will be: Combat in them were difficult throughout. Wildernesses become easy/medium passages between islands of difficulty (dungeons, with a clear-cut boss in them). In earlier threads, over a year ago and more, spent some time pushing for as varied and  unpredictable encounter design as possible, because this makes combat fun. I do recall proponents for balance and all, which is fine to a degree, but here, I reckon, we see a new kind of balance.

System balance > mechanics > variety > gameplay  

Edited September 7, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Shevek]

It makes sense that town fights would be tough. Not only are you well rested and fully outfitted but so are your opponents. And in BG2, many of the difficult fights were in town (the liches leading to Kangaxx comes to mind).

 

Also, they stated that the encounters will be tuned to a party going full bore. It just means the encounters will be made with the understanding that players will be able to blow their ability wad on every encounter. Thats not so bad. This does not necessarily mean all city fights will be harder per se. It could mean that the fights are just larger (a-la Copper Coronet).

Edited September 7, 2014 by Shevek

[Darth_Gandalf]

I still don't see how it makes sense for stamina to be healed by magic and elixirs while health is healed by resting. Seems to me like it should be the other way 'round.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Josh recently wrote that the Health/Stamina is being changed right now. Stamina will be renamed into Endurance, and Health will become a class-based variable, instead of static.

 

J.E. Sawyer, on 11 Sept 2014 - 05:46 AM, said:

Only tangentially related, but we've already made changes to the Stamina (soon to be Endurance) and Health system that should a) make front-line characters (like fighters) more survivable in the long-term and b) make the system clearer overall.
 
The previous system kept Stamina and Health values pretty much equal.  Behind the scenes, as you took damage, a fraction of what went to Stamina would go to Health.  That fraction was smaller for barbarians with Thick-Skinned, but otherwise it was the same for all classes.
 
We now simply apply damage 1:1 to Stamina (Endurance) and Health, but Health is determined differently for different classes (but always through a multiplier).  Front-line characters are expected to take a lot of abuse and get combat-healed more often, so they have a superior ratio of Endurance to Health.  This will (well, actually it already does in our initial playtests) help prevent front-liners from forcing the party to rest after two fights even when the rest of the group has a lot of per rest abilities and Health left.  The ratios are very easy to tune, but most importantly, it is much, much clearer how everything works.

 

Edited September 11, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Racker]

In the IE games I was literally resting after each combat. Combat ends, rest, move on. Pretty annoying. How much more often do you have to rest in PoE actually? You can't get more often than after each combat!

 

I think the issue is that camping is limited, so you eventually have to return to town after a certain amount of rests, right?

[nipsen]

"Inns are a design flaw".

 

"Massacring the city is too difficult".

 

...what?

[Silent Winter]

Fights in cities can be made tactically harder by limiting your options (magic-police a la Athkatla / civilians around (AOEs are a no-no for 'good' parties) / guards who'll join in if an 'evil' party uses those AOEs / ?)

 

I'd certainly like to think it's only the 'big' fights that get altered as 'full bore' (e.g. special enemy adventuring party - but we should meet those in wilderness too - or a bounty-hunter / kangaxx / other) - but there should also be regular 'mobs' to keep you guessing, some relatively easy, some especially hard.  "What? a party of thieves? Watch how I beat them with one hand tied behind my-" *kapow* "...woah!"

 

As for healing health, I like the bandaging idea but it's not such a big deal for me as long as there's some thought put in to a competent player not needing to rest-spam.

[Mayama]

I never get why I can run around in those games and murder people as long as a quest is tied to it or its a random encounter. Do the guards think "nevermind thats a quest target, lets look in another direction"? Like those two bandit groups in dryford, you can kill 5 people in nobody bothers.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Mayama

[PrimeJunta]

@Indira: Every game has content designed to match its mechanics. Every single one. And also mechanics to match the content. It's a game of push-me-pull-you to get it right.

[IndiraLightfoot]

PJ: I feel just like Silent Winter here, this down here is the baseline for me:

Fights in cities can be made tactically harder by limiting your options (magic-police a la Athkatla / civilians around (AOEs are a no-no for 'good' parties) / guards who'll join in if an 'evil' party uses those AOEs / ?)

 

I'd certainly like to think it's only the 'big' fights that get altered as 'full bore' (e.g. special enemy adventuring party - but we should meet those in wilderness too - or a bounty-hunter / kangaxx / other) - but there should also be regular 'mobs' to keep you guessing, some relatively easy, some especially hard.  "What? a party of thieves? Watch how I beat them with one hand tied behind my-" *kapow* "...woah!"

 

As for healing health, I like the bandaging idea but it's not such a big deal for me as long as there's some thought put in to a competent player not needing to rest-spam.

 

I just don't like big swaths of a CRPG getting predictable in one aspect or another just to fix a mechanical problem. Sometimes, you have to let balance go, just for the sake of gameplay, variation and nice surprises. Mind you, I still believe that those cities will be like Silent Winter describe them. However, I reckon all of the fights there will have their lowest level boosted. So, surprise fights will be like that party by the docks in the shadow plane version of Mulsantir or the late-to-the-party-annihilate-all badger in that barbarian lodge, so most of the fun and the variation in rhythm will be retained.

Edited September 11, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot