Josh says: PoE's Fighters and Rogues aren't boring

[IndiraLightfoot]

Pray: That will work too, anything that makes attributes more important than they are now!

 And your suggestion captures Resolve being "enduring pain" as well. Of course, a high Resolve could also counter (a little) some possible bad effects of fighting on low health.

[Sensuki]

Theoretically you could have talents that do reduce the ratio, but I'm a bit worried that would be an automatic choice for any power gamer on many of the classes, and it would be mandatory for pretty much all characters if you create a party without front line characters.

 

That's why I don't think just saying "talents will fix it" is a good idea. It's better to get the core systems worked out properly than to apply patch fixes to the situation with talents, as it doesn't address the core of the problem.

 

One of the design goals is that all classes, character builds and party compositions should be viable - and this decision possibly goes against those goals.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Theoretically you could have talents that do reduce the ratio, but I'm a bit worried that would be an automatic choice for any power gamer on many of the classes, and it would be mandatory for pretty much all characters if you create a party without front line characters.

 

I agree. The power gamer in me is salivating at the thought of this.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I agree there should be a way to end combat state and then be able to transition areas - like getting far enough away.

I was just going with what is, rather than what I'd like to be. - The proposed solution works for the current system.  Changing system means a knock-on effect for Obs to consider. 

Still, guards at an entrance needn't move away - and once you leave combat state, your invisi-party is visible again and has to go back and fight those guards.

Your 'using it to go through a dungeon' example brings up a good point - 'combat mode' should stop once you're out of sight of enemies (or far enough away) for this to not be overly expoitable.

 

It's still exploitable with the guards at the entrance. I won't bother explaining the exploit (because we're just going around in circles) but whatever Obs puts in, I'll run with it. I want to try out my ninja party.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Pray]

Theoretically you could have talents that do reduce the ratio, but I'm a bit worried that would be an automatic choice for any power gamer on many of the classes, and it would be mandatory for pretty much all characters if you create a party without front line characters.

 

That's why I don't think just saying "talents will fix it" is a good idea. It's better to get the core systems worked out properly than to apply patch fixes to the situation with talents, as it doesn't address the core of the problem.

 

One of the design goals is that all classes, character builds and party compositions should be viable - and this decision possibly goes against those goals.

 

Then either make the talents less attractive (.75 +.75) or also make heavier armors reduce the ratio of stamina to healthy damage 10% reduction for light, 15% for medium, 20% for heavy?

 

If talents are so strong that they are "must haves," then that means either that talent is too compelling or the others are not compelling enough - it's as simple as tweaking the numbers and making it work.

 

Just more ideas.

[Shadenuat]

Wouldn't it be more flexible to tie health/stamina ratio to Constitution and let players themselves decide if their character would be good at taking damage or not.

 

Can add useless Resolve there too. So chars with highest Con&Res would have best hp&stamina values.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Shadenuat

[IndiraLightfoot]

Wouldn't it be more flexible to tie health/stamina ratio to Constitution and let players themselves decide if their character would be good at taking damage or not.

Now, that's a nutcracker! I was tip-toeing around a solution like that. Nice, Shadenuat!

 

At least for me, this solves three things:

-The ability to be able to stand on the frontline and have more health/sustain more damage is a character quality fit for an attribute, not a class attribute.

-Also, this makes the pick of at least one of the attributes a much more interesting and weighty decision.

-The idea of a health multiplier in relation to stamina/endurance should stay in that CON/END spectrum of the mechanics.

[Wombat]

 

 

Yep, it's your misunderstanding since I've made it very clear to you.

 

And as I said, if you have a party of 6 rogues which you can have in the game and they all go into stealth at the same time, even in combat, they all turn into ninjas. So yes, it's a critical misunderstanding on your part. Trying to make out that it's me is just poor form and a very weak tactic. But nice try trying to deflect this onto me instead of debating the points.

 

 

Well, yes, then, it's my misunderstanding but it's not intentional at all.  I haven't imagined the possibility of building a party exclusively composed of Rogues, so, I failed to understand your words "a rogue only party" till I read your following posts.  I'd say, it's just another case of the simplicity of English language vs me.

 

Yep, it's your misunderstanding since I've made it very clear to you.

 

And as I said, if you have a party of 6 rogues which you can have in the game and they all go into stealth at the same time, even in combat, they all turn into ninjas. So yes, it's a critical misunderstanding on your part. Trying to make out that it's me is just poor form and a very weak tactic. But nice try trying to deflect this onto me instead of debating the points.

 

Technically, it can be avoided by a Rogue who can get invisible is only the one that initiated the combat or that hits first, making the other rogues out of Scouting Mode.  The solo scenario can be trickier but, off the top of my head, time or movement limit on the ability may help.  For example, if the Rogue moves or attacks, it makes him/her visible.  In any case, I'd rather wait till the devs work out Kaz's idea, which I'm personally looking forward to, at the moment.

 

 

 

Kaz has done most of our UI art and he grew up on the IE games, so he (and many other people on the team, honestly) has a lot of feedback for UI and general gameplay issues.  Obsidian encourages everyone on the team to give feedback.  Designers still give the majority of feedback but we get it from everyone.

Somehow, I wonder this is why you supported German football in the previous World Cup-it's nice to see how they work in unison while bringing up different ideas contrasting themselves against what they were in the age of Beckenbauer "der Kaiser."

 

 

As for Health/Stamina, I feel it might again have opened the Pandora's Box of classless system with choice of different abilities/talents, which was, IIRC, once D&D 4ed. was rumored to be.  Personally, I like class less system but, again, I'd rather wait till I see how the new implementation will play out.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Giving "frontliners" bigger health multiples only further reinforces the role stereotypes (FIGHTERS ARE TANKS). How about we shift this sort of thing to talents, and let the player decide how his fighter should be played. 

 

(All Classes) - Made of Iron (I) Increases the stamina to health multiplyer by 1.

Made of Iron (II) Increases the staimina to health multiplyer by an additonal 1.

 

This prevents us from reinforcing class roles, and allows for versatility in ALL the classes.

 

By adding these simple talents and not forcing them upon certain classes, we've already opened up a significant amount of play styles across all classes!

 

While I believe there is plenty of latitude to broaden classes through talents, I am not optimistic that PoE will go that way. The inherent class designs of PoE enforces specific class roles. At this point of development, that pigeon-holing is already entrenched. I'll be holding my breath over this one I think.

[BobbinThreadbare]

Bobbin, what you're talking about are different versions of D&D. Fighters in PoE are Fighters from 4th ed. They're quite inflexible.

 

Also, rogues should be in melee as is the case with 4th ed. That's the best way to play them.

There were no 4E IE games, and I've never played it. I'm comparing fighters to how they worked in the IE games which this game is a spirtual successor to.

Edited September 11, 2014 by BobbinThreadbare

[Infinitron]

Josh has more to say over at Something Awful: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3593502&pagenumber=253#post434739652

 

 

I'd like to step back and say something that really needs to be said as we're working on expanding the flexibility of certain classes: class-based games will always have problems with meeting two criteria: 1) all classes feel like they are good at doing certain things 2) all classes are good at the things that all players want them to be good at. Logically implicit in 1) is that if classes are good at certain things, other classes are not as good at those things. There's really no way around this short of deconstructing the entire system into completely interchangable components, at which point you've made a classless system with only the cosmetic labels of classes over the framework. Those sorts of systems tend to be short on unique character mechanics as they often do not fit well into a modular framework (e.g. a 3.5 warlock's casting system).

 

Within our class-based system, we want players to feel like they can build and play characters of any given class with a good amount of flexibility and customization. That's why we're looking at the fighter and rogue specifically right now. They are two classes that have been on an odd collision course through most editions of A/D&D for a few reasons:

 

Lore-wise, fighters and rogues/thieves (along with barbarians) have usually been the least innately magical of all classes. Not many people blink at paladins healing people and casting spells, rangers making vines pop out of the ground, or monks Dimension Door-ing across a battlefield. So right out of the gate, you have two classes that are framed as not using magic unless it's coming from items. What do people do (mechanically) if they're not using magic? In combat, they use weapons. Outside of combat, they use skills.

 

Thus, fighters and rogues were framed as (especially in 3.X) The Dudes Who Were Good with Weapons and Bad With Skills and The Dudes Who Were Good with Skills and Bad With Weapons. A 3.X fighter gets 2 skill points a level, is generally (not always) discouraged from putting points in Int, and if they wear armor (which they probably will), the armor gives moderate to massive penalties to using almost all of their class skills. 3.X rogues are insanely good with skills (when they're not being made irrelevant by casters, but that's another discussion), and although they have Sneak Attack, 3.X invalidates Sneak Attack in myriad circumstances. Undead, constructs, elementals, oozes, plants, incorporeal creatures, etc. all immediately shut the rogue's Sneak Attack down unless the player has splat books that allow them to optionally purchase their way around it, one feat at a time. So while you can claw your way out of each class' respective pits through a bunch of careful character engineering, the default design tends to make fighters check out when skills are involved and regularly stymies the rogues' ability to actually have a consistently strong role in combat. This is a way to distinguish characters, but it's a way that often (effectively) excludes them from contributing meaningfully to large sections of the game.

 

If you consider it to be a worthwhile goal for characters to be able to contribute meaningfully to all aspects of the game, these two non-magical, weapon-based character concepts are probably going to come into conflict. There are only so many things that classes can be good at if they're conceptually not supposed to use magic while they are swinging swords and shooting bows. And again, when you start carving out a space for a class to be good at something, you're logically doing so in contrast to other classes not being as good at it. If one class or set of classes are markedly good at doing spike damage, yes, logically the other classes aren't going to be as good at it. If two classes are markedly good at causing AoE damage, other classes either aren't doing AoE damage or they're just not as good at it. This also applies to the ability to deflect/negate/suck up damage.

 

When I told our QA testers that people have problems with fighters, their eyes grew wide. Fighters are, mechanically, very well-suited to holding a line, resisting physical attacks, and taking the hit when their defenses are overcome. Still, they understand, as I do, that people want fighters to be able to do more than just take hits. That space and their options within it are what we're talking about defining now. But please, come on, let them (and barbarians, paladins, and monks) be fundamentally better at taking hits. It's an important but modest calling, and we're not going to balance the game so that if you don't have one of these classes, it's insanely hard. Wizards do not need to be The Dudes Who Can AoE Nuke You and Gish and Take as Many Hits as a Fighter and Make all Skills Irrelevant Because Magic. Ultimately, it's just 11 numbers that are used as ratios. If the gap feels too punitive, tuning only requires us to change a single number.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Infinitron

[IndiraLightfoot]

Infinitron: Thanks for posting this. It sounds promising. Hopefully, rogues and fighters do get to fork out from the get-go into at least two different roles in combat, while still being rogues and fighters.

[Valorian]

Health is a strategic resource and because resting is practically limitless it is less important than endurance. Therefore it's not a big deal that a few selected classes (that will, if played to their potential, deal with a lot of physical punishment) get a more favorable endurance:health ratio.

 

Also, I like it a lot that some classes feel "mundane" and aren't loaded with clearly supernatural abilities.

[BobbinThreadbare]

Ok, another idea I had. To keep the spirit of IE games where fighters attacked fast and hard while wearing armor, maybe a class talent they can take that lets them ignore some amount of armor slowdown?

[Shadenuat]

 

When I told our QA testers that people have problems with fighters, their eyes grew wide. Fighters are, mechanically, very well-suited to holding a line, resisting physical attacks, and taking the hit when their defenses are overcome.

As a fan of IE I am used to a more proactive role of fighters and all physical classes - like running around clouded in defensive buffs and Haste, chunking everything with a two-handed sword into little pieces. Less controlled and more lethal combat probably added to experience.

 

God I'm almost in the "make combat more visceral" territory here.

 

In the end there are just too many classes. Smaller amount of core classes with multiple specializations would have probably worked a lot better. But we're past that I get it.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Shadenuat

[Infinitron]

Shadenaut: One thing that needs to be considered is that Pillars of Eternity seeks to address two famous imbalances of D&D.

 

The first of them - high level wizards being overpowered - has been discussed extensively, here and elsewhere, during the game's development.

 

The second of them - low level fighters being overpowered - hasn't been discussed so much, and that's what we're encountering now.

 

Even if fighters are made more flexible somehow, they'll probably never be the beasts they were at low levels in the IE games.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Infinitron

[rjshae]

Ok, another idea I had. To keep the spirit of IE games where fighters attacked fast and hard while wearing armor, maybe a class talent they can take that lets them ignore some amount of armor slowdown?

 

How would that work in reality? Unless you are employing magic, you can't ignore the physics of inertia.

[Gromnir]

 

 

When I told our QA testers that people have problems with fighters, their eyes grew wide. Fighters are, mechanically, very well-suited to holding a line, resisting physical attacks, and taking the hit when their defenses are overcome.

As a fan of IE I am used to a more proactive role of fighters and all physical classes - like running around clouded in defensive buffs and Haste, chunking everything with a two-handed sword into little pieces. Less controlled and more lethal combat probably added to experience.

 

God I'm almost in the "make combat more visceral" territory here.

 

In the end there are just too many classes. Smaller amount of core classes with multiple specializations would have probably worked a lot better. But we're past that I get it.

 

am thinking your experience with ie fighters is what josh is talking 'bout.  maybe he needs be more explicit... not that Gromnir is suggesting that you are confused. shade seemingly grasps the concepts josh is presenting even if you don't like'em. nevertheless, there does appear to be... confusion. in the developer updates, Rangers and Rogues has been identified as the- what were the term- heavy-hitters? if rogues and rangers is now the weapon-based damage dealers, and that is their Role within the PoE 11 class system, then by necessity, fighters will be less good at "chunking everything." 

 

when the issue o' classes were first raised, we noted that we weren't a fan o' classes, but if you really wanted such things while maximizing customization, having two classes would have been more than enough-- split into casters and non-casters. 'course our suggestion were not popular.

 

is a class system, with many classes. am thinking folks is gonna need to accept that if you wanna play a chunking warrior with a two-handed sword, you can do so in PoE, but you should probably play as a rogue. is gonna be different.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

edit: changed melee to weapon-based. rangers is clear better at ranged combat than melee... unless you count the animal companions, which you should. is a bit confusing actually.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Gromnir

[illathid]

How would that work in reality? Unless you are employing magic, you can't ignore the physics of inertia.

Simulationist! Kill it with fire!

[PrimeJunta]

Yay. That explanation of Josh's bumps up my optimism several notches. I certainly have no problem with barbs and fighters being inherently better at absorbing damage than other classes. I just want my musketeer... or, basically, other options besides front-line tank.

[Sensuki]

In his latest SA post he said Monks and Barbarians have been tweaked. Dunno about Fighters though.

Edited September 11, 2014 by Sensuki

[Marceror]

I got the impression fighters and rogues were starting to be looked at more closely.

[Matt516]

I think we should wait and see for the most part with this change. Giving different classes different Stamina/Health ratios is actually a suggestion that had been brought up in one of the Health discussion threads. As was giving different classes different numbers of allowed "knockouts" before they die. This new system, while not quite the same as those two, is very close to it. It also aims to address the "I have to rest because my fighter is out of health" issue, which was a HUGE bugbear for these forums (though I haven't seen it mentioned as a positive of the new system in this thread yet).

 

I guess what I'm saying is: I think this could end up being much better than what we had before. Still not perfect, sure - but this change is in direct response to our feedback about the adventuring day, etc. And while it does add to differences between the classes (not really a problem imo), it also had the potential to fix a lot of the issues we've been complaining about.

[PrimeJunta]

I got the impression fighters and rogues were starting to be looked at more closely.

"Within our class-based system, we want players to feel like they can build and play characters of any given class with a good amount of flexibility and customization. That's why we're looking at the fighter and rogue specifically right now."

[Gromnir]

sadly, am thinking the greatest hurdle is nostalgia and/or nomenclature. testers o' the game and the folks in QA may not necessarily be bat-crap crazy bg fans such as seem to make up the majority o' the message board populace. heck, is so difficult to convince people on this board that folks who literal spend an hour (or more) on this board multiple days a week, may not represent average fans of PoE. point is, when folks in QA play PoE, they don't have the... commitment to the game that some folks hereabouts do. folks in QA will recognize that they got eleven different classes to choose from and that the classes is each distinct and having a useful role... other than paladins. unfortunately/fortunately, the QA folks may not know what a fighter is s'posed to be. the bat-crap crazies know that a fighter is not only s'posed to be able to wade into battle and laugh off direct hits from a trebuchet, but if that character switches build slightly, they should be "chunking everything."

 

perhaps the biggest mistake obsidian made with classes were simply giving them recognizable names? doubt it. call the rogue a landsknechte instead,and am doubting obsidian board fans would see the class different. besides which, obsidian were obviously trying to replicate some o' the familiar ie game class archetypes.

 

that being said, am seeing how the developers can be confused if their QA feedback is extreme different from the geek feedback they is current getting from boardies who admitted represent a small % o' the potential purchasers o' PoE. QA don't necessarily know what an ie game rogue needs to be for some folks. 'course, in all honesty, we is having great fun playing the rogue characters, so we ain't actually on-board with the agenda o' the thread. don't mess with our rogues and we is okie dokie. we haven't played a fighter other than the bb fighter, but it does seem more like an mmo tank than a bg fighter, but we don't see that as a bad thing either. regardless, we get developer confusion if QA and board feedback is extreme different... but the difference don't surprise us neither. 

 

and yeah, we is still figuring out the best way to manipulate the health/stamina mechanic... which is gonna be changing? perhaps the changes will make fighters more resilient, but won't that make'em even more tanky and less like bg fighters? 

 

"classes suck" is our starting point, so we could be doing the sinister laugh shtick as people complain. that aint the case. we kinda like most o' the classes, particularly the casters. the thing is, and we mentioned this elsewhere, we is already starting to play fighters a particular way... same with clerics and wizards and other classes. the obsidian goal were customization and diversity yes? nevertheless, we is already getting a fixed notion o' how best to play a ranger, and that shouldn't be the case. am looking at the changes to health and stamina and at least initially it looks like those changes reinforce our notions o' the proper roles o' classes, which we actual think is a bad thing.

 

when next update comes along, we will reevaluate... again.

 

oh, and as far as we can tell, paladins still suck.

 

HA! Good Fun!