How to Fix the Attribute Design in Pillars of Eternity

[Seari]

Maybe RES should be the one to affect action speed, or maybe not? Makes sense thematically at least - firm determination.

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

Deflection on Int makes slightly more sense than on Res, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

Intelligence would become the attribute for all front-line warriors and meh on casters. 

 

If you believe that deflection can't be put on an attribute that makes RP sense, stick to your vision. 

 

Bigger AoEs seems pretty good for casters, IMO.

 

Ultimately my vision is that PoE is a "gamist" game so I err on the side of solutions that produce what I see as better gameplay even if they don't fit perfectly from a simulationist perspective.

 

Mechanics:

Of the two statistics currently tied to Intellect, Duration is obviously far superior. The AoE bonus is not very valuable at the moment due to the "my AoE is too big and I can't make it smaller" problem - not sure if that's planned to be customizable pre-cast with the mouse wheel or something. That said, even if that is fixed, AoE will still be much less powerful than Duration IMO. In light of that fact, combining AoE with Deflection doesn't seem like it would end up with an overpowered attribute, but I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't be underpowered either. Doesn't immediately strike me as a good or bad idea though - worth a try. Duration is very very powerful, so tying Concentration to it doesn't seem like a bad idea either since Concentration is kind of "meh" in my opinion. If it did turn out to be overpowered, the Concentration or Duration bonus could just be decreased to balance it.

 

I know some people have objected to it, but I still think that if the marginal increased area for AoEs were made foe-only for friend-or-foe spells (e.g. a Fireball that, in the expanded margin, only affects hostiles), it would immediately become much more valuable.  

[morhilane]

I think resolve should be renamed. Stamina changed to endurance was a good thing. Resolve also needs to change, imo. I'm not feeling it at all.

 

Just think of Resolve has the shounen protagonist main stat: it's all about believing that you can do it!

[Shadenuat]

 

I know some people have objected to it, but I still think that if the marginal increased area for AoEs were made foe-only for friend-or-foe spells (e.g. a Fireball that, in the expanded margin, only affects hostiles), it would immediately become much more valuable.

It's an idea for Talent but it's very unintuitive to make different parts of radii friendly fire or not. An option to increase&decrease radii with a mouse would be ideal.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I disagree.  I don't think it's unintuitive at all.  We currently have (for next BB update) highlighting for whom will be affected by an AoE and we will eventually have both the core AoE and marginal AoE increase displayed.  This should make it very clear.

[Labadal]

While you are still reading this: Could one get different colors for damage numbers for critical hits and grazes? I use the combat log fairly often, but it would give more immediate feedback if my character is doing more grzes, normal attacks or critical hits versus a foe.

 

I know this might be a suggestion some people will dislike a lot, but it would help a guy with poor vision.

[J.E. Sawyer]

We'll look into that.  We did already (today) shift the log over to use the primary color for characters in the log, which really helps locate different characters in it.

[Shadenuat]

 

I disagree.  I don't think it's unintuitive at all.  We currently have (for next BB update) highlighting for whom will be affected by an AoE and we will eventually have both the core AoE and marginal AoE increase displayed.  This should make it very clear.

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

Edited September 13, 2014 by Shadenuat

[Matt516]

 I know some people have objected to it, but I still think that if the marginal increased area for AoEs were made foe-only for friend-or-foe spells (e.g. a Fireball that, in the expanded margin, only affects hostiles), it would immediately become much more valuable.

 

It's an idea for Talent but it's very unintuitive to make different parts of radii friendly fire or not. An option to increase&decrease radii with a mouse would be ideal.

 

Seconded. While there's nothing wrong with that suggestion persay (as in I don't understand why people would object), it would be less intuitive than just letting the caster scale the AoE. That said, if you want to buff AoE as a stat, that's definitely one way to do it. The customizable AoE option is more intuitive, but still leads to situations in which you might want to cast a larger spell but can't do so because allies are in the way. With the foe-only expanded radius, increased AoE actually gets a lot more powerful since you can use the largest AoE all the time. You'd want to be careful with that though, as by buffing AoE and putting it with Deflection you run a slight risk of creating an overpowered stat - though this would probably be mitigated since classes that use lots of AoE probably won't take a huge number of hits and vice versa. The edge case of the super Deflective Barbarian with crazy Carnage does raise concerns, but I like Barbarians so I don't really care. xD (you could nerf them in other ways if it was just too powerful)

 

 

Random thing - a while back, I had the idea that you could scale the AoE with the mouse wheel, and the Duration would scale inversely with the AoE - would give the player a choice between casting a really small intense fireball or a really large weak fireball, basically. You'd get more total AoE/Duration as Intellect increased, of course. It wasn't the best idea, but it's relevant here so I thought I'd mention it.

 

EDIT: Found it. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67742-how-to-solve-the-aoe-problem-while-making-the-int-stat-more-compelling-and-int-characters-smarter/?hl=excel

Edited September 13, 2014 by Matt516

[Seari]

Would changing the size of a fireball with your mouse even be possible in unity? That would be a really baddas feature.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Bigger AoEs seems pretty good for casters, IMO.

 

Ultimately my vision is that PoE is a "gamist" game so I err on the side of solutions that produce what I see as better gameplay even if they don't fit perfectly from a simulationist perspective.....

 

.....I know some people have objected to it, but I still think that if the marginal increased area for AoEs were made foe-only for friend-or-foe spells (e.g. a Fireball that, in the expanded margin, only affects hostiles), it would immediately become much more valuable.  

 

It's logically inconsistent. It doesn't *feel* "right". If a Wizard has the capability to totally shield friendlies on margin, why can't they do that with the whole spell? I would make more sense to have a series of talents..Spell Shaping I-V to be able to avoid friendly fire throughout the entire radius of certain levels of spells. Even talents which mitigated by percentage would be welcome over nothing. Right now friendly fire is such a concern, that it is almost more practical to avoid Intellect than to utilize it.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Random thing - a while back, I had the idea that you could scale the AoE with the mouse wheel, and the Duration would scale inversely with the AoE - would give the player a choice between casting a really small intense fireball or a really large weak fireball, basically. You'd get more total AoE/Duration as Intellect increased, of course. It wasn't the best idea, but it's relevant here so I thought I'd mention it.

 

EDIT: Found it. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67742-how-to-solve-the-aoe-problem-while-making-the-int-stat-more-compelling-and-int-characters-smarter/?hl=excel

 

 

You're not alone in that concept. Many of us have been discussing scalable AoEs since the concept of Intellect was first announced. Mouse wheeling AoE dimensions would be magnificent.

[Shadenuat]

Changing Cones degree by increasing their range to a more like wide ray or decreasing it and shaping cone into more like a fan form would also be kewl.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Shadenuat

[curryinahurry]

 

 

Ultimately my vision is that PoE is a "gamist" game so I err on the side of solutions that produce what I see as better gameplay even if they don't fit perfectly from a simulationist perspective.

 

 

 

Although I like your latest adjustments, adding deflection, etc., from a 'Gamist" perspective, I think the OP's suggestions work better as they are more clear and create distinct categories for attributes instead of mixng/matching which I guarantee will lead to continued confusion

[Matt516]

 

Random thing - a while back, I had the idea that you could scale the AoE with the mouse wheel, and the Duration would scale inversely with the AoE - would give the player a choice between casting a really small intense fireball or a really large weak fireball, basically. You'd get more total AoE/Duration as Intellect increased, of course. It wasn't the best idea, but it's relevant here so I thought I'd mention it.

 

EDIT: Found it. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67742-how-to-solve-the-aoe-problem-while-making-the-int-stat-more-compelling-and-int-characters-smarter/?hl=excel

 

 

You're not alone in that concept. Many of us have been discussing scalable AoEs since the concept of Intellect was first announced. Mouse wheeling AoE dimensions would be magnificent.

 

 

Yeah - the novel thing about my idea was to have Duration scale inversely with AoE, adding a bit of tactical choice beyond "big as possible without friendly fire".

 

 

Right now friendly fire is such a concern, that it is almost more practical to avoid Intellect than to utilize it.

 

Well that's the problem he's trying to solve - selective AoE spells is a bit odd from a simulationist standpoint (a little too odd for my taste as I remarked), but it is from a mechanical standpoint a good way to solve the problem. It's clear that either that or scaleable AoE is necessary to make INT more viable though.

[Labadal]

It sounds like something that could be doable. The question is how it would work for other spells than fire balls. For damage dealing spells, this sounds like a non-issue. The problem arises when one has to apply it to buffs or debuffs.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

 

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability.  Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all.  I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.

[Matt516]

Although I like your latest adjustments, adding deflection, etc., from a 'Gamist" perspective, I think the OP's suggestions work better as they are more clear and create distinct categories for attributes instead of mixng/matching which I guarantee will lead to continued confusion

 

I do think that Sensuki and I's original suggestion puts the attributes into much more well-defined "boxes", making the whole thing easier to understand. I still prefer our system, I think it's a bit more elegant what with the mirrored attributes and 3 categories and such. But I also spent the past 2 weeks developing it, so I'm bound to be a bit biased.

 

But honestly I think pretty much most of the suggestions that've been brought up in this thread would improve the current system. Josh's ideas (and by extension the PoE team's ideas I assume) have also been good - as I remarked in an earlier post, they're not really unbalanced (probably). And some of the proposed boni do fit a little better from an RP perspective.

 

I dunno - I'm thrilled by the discussion that's going on right now. :D

I still prefer our system, but either way I think we're going in the right direction. Except if we mess with Might or Constitution. As I mentioned earlier, I think that would just make further balancing even more difficult.

[Matt516]

 

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

 

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability.  Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all.  I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.

 

 

I think the only real reason for the resistance (assuming this would be balanced properly) is the RP perspective. I'm personally more of a mechanics focused person myself, so I can look past it - but many people won't like a system like this unless there's some plausible game-world explanation for it.

[Razsius]

 

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

 

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability.  Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all.  I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.

 

 

I fail to see why the range of abilities can't scale with the AoE on the Intellect stat.  Would be really nice to be able to "bombard" enemies with my Wizard and gives the stat potential use on some single target ranged abilities.

 

Edit: Some abilities feel way to short ranged anyways.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Razsius

[Elerond]

 

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

 

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability.  Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all.  I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.

 

 

This is also my take, even as scalable AoE sound cool idea, they actually only work to make area increase less meaningful buff. Which is why I supported friendly fire free zones when this topic previously come up in these forums.

[Lasweetlife]

 

 

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability. Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all. I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.

Same here. I really don't understand why this is an issue. Having the additional AoE be free from friendly fire makes it valuable without making it a liability. I also don't see why we can't have both a scalable AoE and any increase above the base AoE size being friendly-fire-free.

[limaxophobiacq]

Personally I'd prefer to keep Int as is but this is very biased from liking to make characters who arent dum-dums and wanting to play a Chanter.

 

Would take Int from being really good for chanters for the increased duration of Phrases and summons to not that important at all. Resolve being important for chanters abilities makes sense though given that it's described as being important for convincing performances.

 

Splitting duration and AoE would at least make Int not be the one and only stat for Priests (it might actually make it not that important at all since some of the best priest spells have huge AoEs as a  base and dont really need the Int bonus), but it would make it even less vital for wizards which doesn't feel very appropriate.

 

Actually Deflection + AoE would probably make Int more important for Barbarians than for Wizards, which is pretty crazy (barbarians want both, wizards only really need the later).

Edited September 13, 2014 by limaxophobiacq

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

I think the only real reason for the resistance (assuming this would be balanced properly) is the RP perspective. I'm personally more of a mechanics focused person myself, so I can look past it - but many people won't like a system like this unless there's some plausible game-world explanation for it.

 

I do and don't understand that perspective.  I understand wanting a justification, but it's always seemed fitting to me.  Many AoE spells/effects originate at a point and spread outward.  Fireball is probably the most obvious example, but I tend to think of most effects that way.  You're a super smarty, so as you extend the AoE outward, you are able to selectively shape it at the margins, where it terminates.  You can't do it on the interior because that's the origin of the effect, where it's emanating from.  That's always been my view of it, anyway.

[Elerond]

 

 

Is there some technical issue that makes changing radii difficult? Because you're going for some weird way around the issue instead the most obvious one.

Seeing AoE affect characters is great (in ToEE creature circles changed color and glowed for that), but what if player is a big fan of "fair4all" friendly fire and expects it affect everyone from high difficulty he have chosen for his playthrough?

 

We have a bunch of people saying "yeah, AoE increase doesn't really seem that valuable", mostly because the marginal increase can be a liability.  Allowing you to scale it down solves the liability problem, but also means that in those circumstances, you get literally no benefit from it at all.  I still really don't get why this is such a spot of resistance when making the margins safe doesn't remove friendly fire, it makes INT valuable all the time instead of sometimes being a liability, and it doesn't require adding a UI layer on top of the system just to regulate AoE sizes.

 

 

I think the only real reason for the resistance (assuming this would be balanced properly) is the RP perspective. I'm personally more of a mechanics focused person myself, so I can look past it - but many people won't like a system like this unless there's some plausible game-world explanation for it.

 

 

If character has so much control over spell/ability because of their high intellect that they can increase area that it effects one could assume that they can use that control to make sure that they don't hit their friends.