Is it just me or combat is really tedious?

[IndiraLightfoot]

archangel979: You have certainly put forward a system that's simple, intuitive and deep enough to accommodate for all sorts of armours and combat scenarios. Gratz! Now, fingers crossed for some dev to pick this up and realizing that this would indeed make the game much more fun!

[Msxyz]

IndiraLightfoot:

 

Having a queued set of events indeed makes things harder to follow. In classic turn based mechanics, simple actions are completed within one turn while the most complex ones require multiple ones. Thus, the subdivision of actions into "finite" slices of time typical of turn based combats makes very easy to understand what's going on in the battlefield and to strategically conduct the fight. Interruption is contemplated as the chance to disrupt those actions which take more than one turn. 

 

In PoE the asynchronicity between the actors makes very difficult to issue commands at the right time unless the game is systematically paused. Questionable design choices aside, I feel most of the current difficulties stem from being able to click on the commands fast enough after having understood what's going on in the screen.

 

The (sad) irony in all of this is that, under layer of abstractions and obtuse math, Obsidian ended up designing PoE more as an action RPG than a RTwP game, since it's the eyes, the nibleness of fingers and ability to quick reasoning that are constantly pushed!

Edited September 12, 2014 by Msxyz

[IndiraLightfoot]

Msxyz: I agree. The least we can do is to tell them how and where this feels wrong for a CRPG with RTwP like this and then hope they'll listen. 

[Arsene Lupin]

Msxyz: I agree. The least we can do is to tell them how and where this feels wrong for a CRPG with RTwP like this and then hope they'll listen. 

 

Honestly, with how little time they've allocated for the remainder of development it seems unlikely they intend to listen to any suggestions re: already-implemented systems. 4 months is sufficient to iron out bugs, but is it sufficient to strip out and replace--or at minimum refine--the systems they've already got in place?

[Captain Shrek]

Probably not.

[archangel979]

archangel979: You have certainly put forward a system that's simple, intuitive and deep enough to accommodate for all sorts of armours and combat scenarios. Gratz! Now, fingers crossed for some dev to pick this up and realizing that this would indeed make the game much more fun!

Small chance with it being buried deep in here. And for its own topic, I would need to do the math so it works with d100 and I don't really feel like doing math today :D

Edited September 12, 2014 by archangel979

[Doppelschwert]

They added a whole new mechanics and number system that ignores damage done and armor reduction of that damage and they calculate interrupts based on that needlessly complicated system. That is not needed or realistic. Morning Star that cannot pass your armor is not better at interrupting than a dagger that just pierced your eye for massive damage.

 

I think the assumption that it's unrealistic is off here. Even if an attack hits your armor, you'll feel the blow, regardless of how much damage that put to your ripcage. That can interrupt your momentum during swining your weapon or mess with your concentration during spellcasting, and that is actually the condition on when an interrupt can incur - on not being missed. I understand why someone would be against the system, but IMO realism is not an argument here.

 

 

Doppelschwert:  What archangel979 just said. And it's all obscure and extremely complicated to keep track of, even at a point in time when you happened to pause the game. It's all redundant and superfluous. Interrupt can be done so much simpler, as in for instance the D&D5 example. people want slighty simpler and cleaner system, with feedback that they can understand. Sure, you can hide a lot under the hood or some blax box, but the more you hide, the more frustrating in a RPG combat system that is meant to be transparent. There are of course lots of PnP RPGs, where all numbers and mechanics are hidden and at GMs discretion only. However, this is a computer game. 

 

Tabletop and PnP games have easy rules because people want to play the game when they sit together around the table instead of doing maths. The computer does the maths for you, so that is one issue. The other issue is, that the feedback is independent from this. You'll see a roll in your log when it's implemented. Interruption against 67 - success. That's not any different if you went with another system to come up with the numbers. I don't think the numbers matter, as long as you understand how they come about.

 

Was anyone who is complaining about interrupt now complaining about the way saves are calculated on spells in DnD 3.5? That's even more arbitrary, because the saves don't fall into only one of 7 categories, like interrupt does, before applying stats.

 

Basing interrupts on damage done is way more intuitive than some crazy system based on type of weapon only. They don't even need to change how the bonus from Perception and Resolve works, just change that 50 into damage done. Than you can still have armors that give a bonus to interrupt or to concentration. 

 

EDIT: And they don't even need to add different interrupt bonuses for weapons, just have amors have different DT vs different type of weapons which is both realistic and intuitive. So with some weapons you will be able to do more damage depending on armor and have a higher chance at interrupt. 

 

As I said before, this is a question of flavour. Tying more stuff to damage done makes the attributes watered down and linked to each other, while they are independent right now. I don't want to need points in might in order to make my points in perception worthwhile. The people liking this suggestion are ironically also the people that wan't more diversity in the attribute system.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Heh! It all depends. Obsidian did the entire IWD2 in 8 months! Think about that, and think about all the changes D:OS underwent in 4 months time. So, the big question is: Will they listen?

[Infinitron]

Lots of grognardism ITT (especially from Arsene Lupin who really needs to read up on what the health/stamina system is trying to accomplish)

 

The combat is basically fine. It's just more difficult across the board then the type of stuff you encounter at the beginning of the IE games. Which makes sense considering the beta isn't an area from the beginning of the game.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Infinitron

[Captain Shrek]

It's not hard at all. It is just too fussy and feels kind of pointless.

[archangel979]

 

They added a whole new mechanics and number system that ignores damage done and armor reduction of that damage and they calculate interrupts based on that needlessly complicated system. That is not needed or realistic. Morning Star that cannot pass your armor is not better at interrupting than a dagger that just pierced your eye for massive damage.

 

I think the assumption that it's unrealistic is off here. Even if an attack hits your armor, you'll feel the blow, regardless of how much damage that put to your ripcage. That can interrupt your momentum during swining your weapon or mess with your concentration during spellcasting, and that is actually the condition on when an interrupt can incur - on not being missed. I understand why someone would be against the system, but IMO realism is not an argument here.

 

The blow you feel is decided by the damage you take. The Bludgeon weapons did better vs plate armor because you felt this blow which translates into that armor being less effective in stopping damage and that damage than being translated into higher chance to interrupt, No need to add another crazy mechanic to simulate what is already a part of Health/Stamina.

 

Doppelschwert:  What archangel979 just said. And it's all obscure and extremely complicated to keep track of, even at a point in time when you happened to pause the game. It's all redundant and superfluous. Interrupt can be done so much simpler, as in for instance the D&D5 example. people want slighty simpler and cleaner system, with feedback that they can understand. Sure, you can hide a lot under the hood or some blax box, but the more you hide, the more frustrating in a RPG combat system that is meant to be transparent. There are of course lots of PnP RPGs, where all numbers and mechanics are hidden and at GMs discretion only. However, this is a computer game. 

 

Tabletop and PnP games have easy rules because people want to play the game when they sit together around the table instead of doing maths. The computer does the maths for you, so that is one issue. The other issue is, that the feedback is independent from this. You'll see a roll in your log when it's implemented. Interruption against 67 - success. That's not any different if you went with another system to come up with the numbers. I don't think the numbers matter, as long as you understand how they come about.

 

Was anyone who is complaining about interrupt now complaining about the way saves are calculated on spells in DnD 3.5? That's even more arbitrary, because the saves don't fall into only one of 7 categories, like interrupt does, before applying stats.

 

Easy rules does not mean bad rules. PnP rules work, mathematically and often are realistic. No need to design convoluted systems just because you are working on a cRPG. 1+1= 2 is better than 2x2-2. 

 

Basing interrupts on damage done is way more intuitive than some crazy system based on type of weapon only. They don't even need to change how the bonus from Perception and Resolve works, just change that 50 into damage done. Than you can still have armors that give a bonus to interrupt or to concentration. 

 

EDIT: And they don't even need to add different interrupt bonuses for weapons, just have amors have different DT vs different type of weapons which is both realistic and intuitive. So with some weapons you will be able to do more damage depending on armor and have a higher chance at interrupt. 

 

As I said before, this is a question of flavour. Tying more stuff to damage done makes the attributes watered down and linked to each other, while they are independent right now. I don't want to need points in might in order to make my points in perception worthwhile. The people liking this suggestion are ironically also the people that wan't more diversity in the attribute system.

 

 

It is question of immersion and making this less convoluted. By adding this to damage, you can choose to raise Might or Perceptions or both. This can be fixed by changing some attributes, Perception is a dump stat anyways and will need to be changed.

Edited September 12, 2014 by archangel979

[Arsene Lupin]

I think some of the frustration that is felt with combat comes from being thrown into the deep end, so to speak.

 

That's certainly part of it. I think another (big) part of it is just the lack of feedback. IE the lack of SFX. When you don't hear a sword clashing against armor, it's hard to feel like the attack has accomplished much. That there's no visible HP stat, either, further distances the player from the combat.

 

 

Heh! It all depends. Obsidian did the entire IWD2 in 8 months! Think about that, and think about all the changes D:OS underwent in 4 months time. So, the big question is: Will they listen?

 

DOS was in open alpha/beta for closer to 8 months, not 4. 

Edited September 12, 2014 by Arsene Lupin

[Hiro Protagonist II]

While I'm looking forward to Sensuki and Matts attribute system, it's not going to change the fundamental flaws with a lot of the other designs. And there are many. Health/Stamina, pigeonholing classes, xp system, unintuitive game system, etc.

 

The whole combat system needs an overhaul and needs to be slowed down like the IE games imo. The real time is too much real time and I feel it needs the 6 second rounds in the game. It's just too confusing who is doing what.

 

The camera angle makes it worse. The IE games were more top-down and you could see your characters behind enemies. At the moment, I can't see where my characters are if they're behind enemies. They're completely blocked out. Have a look at my post with the first picture with the fight at the Dragon egg. I've selected the Rogue as you can see the rogue powers are up but you can't really see her because she's behind the enemies in melee. And when you have a few enemies in melee, your character is completely hidden - all due to the camera angle. And this makes it worse because you have no idea if you are flanking or maybe you not? I have no idea if I'm in the right position or if I'm just slightly off. Flanking is guess work at the moment for me if I can't see my rogue. It would be good if something came up (say an icon on my portrait or above it) to indicate my rogue is flanking. At the moment, I have NFI.

 

When you're playing Diablo, you're just clicking and maybe selecting different skills while still clicking and hitting enemies. And that's only one character. In a 6 party team, you're trying to issue commands practically every second and it becomes a pause spam-fest because of having no rounds. Just watch Sensuki's beetle videos. You can't just issue commands, sit back and watch what happens for a couple of seconds and then issue more commands like the IE games with its rounds. You have about 1/2 a second before doing something next. With this system each character has a different recovery time which makes it hard to see who is doing what. You're focusing on your Mage and your Rogue has already recovered and I may not have noticed that. So I'm finding it becomes a spam fest to see who is doing what.

 

My Solution. Bring back rounds so it slows down combat. But then the whole recovery time system needs to be scrapped, which leads into other systems being re-designed. It's like trying to unravel a puzzle.

[archangel979]

Yea, it seems like a mess and it will not be fixed in this time until release. Best we can hope for is redesigned attributes, more intuitive Health/Stamin with a bit longer Adventuring day and all the feedback implemented that Sensuki asked for and more (like in BG games when you hit someone with a weapon there is a small red animation that plays and you know you hit them). Damage numbers help but I for one don't want to play with damage numbers over the head, that is not classic RPG style. 

[Infinitron]

I've seen a preview of Sensuki and Matt's attribute design. I'm not sure it's the type of thing that'll make anybody here very happy. They're very faithful to the principles of Sawyerism.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Infinitron

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

Heh! It all depends. Obsidian did the entire IWD2 in 8 months! Think about that, and think about all the changes D:OS underwent in 4 months time. So, the big question is: Will they listen?

 

DOS was in open alpha/beta for closer to 8 months, not 4. 

 

No need to tell me. I was there. I just meant - very much happened in four months time.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I've seen a preview of it too. But my concerns aren't about the attributes for now, it's the combat and other problems with the game. Fixing the attributes (while a worthwhile endeavour) isn't going to fix the problems we have at the moment with combat imo. While I'm getting quite good at it, it's still tedious for me and it's something I want to avoid. I've been mainly practicing with the classes for those encounters I can't avoid in the final game.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[IndiraLightfoot]

Infinitron: I've taken a peek as well. It's a great endeavour for balancing the attributes, combat-wise and RPG-wise. I agree with Hiro. It won't fix the problems with combat, its feedback problems, its overview problems, its pacing, etc. This is stuff that's up to us to change, if we don't think combat is fine.

[archangel979]

I've seen a preview of Sensuki and Matt's attribute design. I'm not sure it's the type of thing that'll make anybody here very happy. They're very faithful to the principles of Sawyerism.

What does it matter, it is not like we know OE is going to change anything or anything based on Sensuki/Matt document.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Well I mentioned combat includes recovery time, which ties into attributes, armour that you could be wearing, which might tie into other things. I don't think you can just do one thing and fix it due to being tied to so many things. You might be able to tweak something here and there, but it comes across as something so entrenched within various parts of the system that the fixes will be small. We're not going to see rounds as that would remove things like recovery time and affect the attributes and skills. So I see us being stuck with this type of real time system without rounds. eg. arpg with pause.

[Elerond]

"Listen to your community, but be aggressive in your triage and remember that game development requires enlightened despotism, not democracy. Communities are diverse and as such you’ll get conflicting opinions. You need a strong core vision to guide you through their feedback, and you need to stick to that vision, no matter how vocal they become. But you do need to listen and recognize the underlying causes of problems being reported. Often communities will complain about the symptoms of something that’s wrong and it’s not always easy to discover what the root cause is. 

 

Also remember that the vocal minority does not represent the majority, no matter how hard their claims. The majority doesn’t have time to write thousands of posts. And if you encounter some uncivilized people on a forum,  ignore them. They’re not worth the emotional stress they may cause. You wouldn’t deal with them in real life either."

 

- Wise words from Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios, which I feel are quite appropriate for this and some other topics here.

[archangel979]

"Listen to your community, but be aggressive in your triage and remember that game development requires enlightened despotism, not democracy. Communities are diverse and as such you’ll get conflicting opinions. You need a strong core vision to guide you through their feedback, and you need to stick to that vision, no matter how vocal they become. But you do need to listen and recognize the underlying causes of problems being reported. Often communities will complain about the symptoms of something that’s wrong and it’s not always easy to discover what the root cause is. 

 

Also remember that the vocal minority does not represent the majority, no matter how hard their claims. The majority doesn’t have time to write thousands of posts. And if you encounter some uncivilized people on a forum,  ignore them. They’re not worth the emotional stress they may cause. You wouldn’t deal with them in real life either."

 

- Wise words from Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios, which I feel are quite appropriate for this and some other topics here.

 

This is hilarious as he just posted on his blog this:

 

The release of D: OS was one big crunch period with all the good and bad that come with it. If the game ultimately did well, it’s because of the outstanding performance of the team when “the going got tough and the tough got going”.

A lot of the crunch was caused by our decision to listen to the feedback we received through our Kickstarter and Steam Early Access communities. While it often was tough to read through all of the criticism, it was clear that integrating the best parts of the feedback would be well worth the effort and improve the game massively. We didn’t hesitate for a minute.

 

Edited September 12, 2014 by archangel979

[Msxyz]

"Listen to your community, but be aggressive in your triage and remember that game development requires enlightened despotism, not democracy. Communities are diverse and as such you’ll get conflicting opinions. You need a strong core vision to guide you through their feedback, and you need to stick to that vision, no matter how vocal they become. But you do need to listen and recognize the underlying causes of problems being reported. Often communities will complain about the symptoms of something that’s wrong and it’s not always easy to discover what the root cause is. 

 

Also remember that the vocal minority does not represent the majority, no matter how hard their claims. The majority doesn’t have time to write thousands of posts. And if you encounter some uncivilized people on a forum,  ignore them. They’re not worth the emotional stress they may cause. You wouldn’t deal with them in real life either."

 

- Wise words from Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios, which I feel are quite appropriate for this and some other topics here.

 

Enlighted dispotism is an excellent principle in theory but fails in practice, especially when you mistake confidence and inability to understand the other people's point of view for true enlightment. History teaches us that despots meet often unhappy ends and even the few that successfully accomplished something (and peacefully died in their beds) couldn't prevent their creations to crumble when they were no longer around to impose their will.

 

Just because this time Obsidian doesn't work for a publisher that set their schedule and goals, it doesn't mean they can do as they please, especially since these issues are raised from the very people who funded their game!

 

Swen flatly stated that he will no longer use this method of fundraising! I can't really blame him because I understand he must have felt constantly pulled in different directions by the community. However, he has carefully listened to the feedback to the point of almost completely overhauling the gameplay so close to the release. There are no reason to expect anything less from Obsidian.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Msxyz

[Elerond]

 

"Listen to your community, but be aggressive in your triage and remember that game development requires enlightened despotism, not democracy. Communities are diverse and as such you’ll get conflicting opinions. You need a strong core vision to guide you through their feedback, and you need to stick to that vision, no matter how vocal they become. But you do need to listen and recognize the underlying causes of problems being reported. Often communities will complain about the symptoms of something that’s wrong and it’s not always easy to discover what the root cause is. 

 

Also remember that the vocal minority does not represent the majority, no matter how hard their claims. The majority doesn’t have time to write thousands of posts. And if you encounter some uncivilized people on a forum,  ignore them. They’re not worth the emotional stress they may cause. You wouldn’t deal with them in real life either."

 

- Wise words from Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios, which I feel are quite appropriate for this and some other topics here.

 

This is hilarious as he just posted on his blog this:

 

The release of D: OS was one big crunch period with all the good and bad that come with it. If the game ultimately did well, it’s because of the outstanding performance of the team when “the going got tough and the tough got going”.

A lot of the crunch was caused by our decision to listen to the feedback we received through our Kickstarter and Steam Early Access communities. While it often was tough to read through all of the criticism, it was clear that integrating the best parts of the feedback would be well worth the effort and improve the game massively. We didn’t hesitate for a minute.

 

 

 

Quote is from same blog post

[Infinitron]

"Best parts" being the key phrase

Edited September 12, 2014 by Infinitron