Graze gotta go, no?

[Namutree]

Using MMO as a pejorative isn't really useful. Some features of MMOs are good and some are bad. If you don't like the more normalized damage, criticize it on those terms, not by calling it "MMOish" and expecting that to settle the argument.

 

Also realize that it really is a matter of personal preference. Some people prefer more random combat, some people prefer less. Myself personally, I like a balance. I found the BG combat system far too RNG for my liking. Any system in which a battle can have an entirely different outcome purely based on RNG is flawed IMO. I shouldn't be playing my fights by reloading until the dice roll in my favor (which is what BG demanded in many cases). That said, I do like a bit of RNG and lucky crits are fun. Hence why I like the current system.

 

But this is all personal preference - as is yours. We can talk all day about why we have our preferences, but it's important to recognize that there's not necessarily a "best" way to do it.

Baldurs Gate never demands a reload for a better RNG outcome. If you handle things right you shouldn't need to get lucky. I played through BG1 again about a month ago; never died, and never needed to rely on good luck.

[Captain Shrek]

Exactly. In fact in BG/BG2 if you have to constantly save/reload to win, it means that you have severly handicapped your build. I believe that this was one of the motivations for the "balance" ideology behind PoE. It has a severe issue of trying to regulate how players play the game instead of letting us invent and improvise. 

Edited September 27, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[lolaldanee]

Grazes are fine, health damage from grazes is not

[Uomoz]

For as much as I love the BG series (and my consumed 5cd version says so!), the little control I had over the wild d20 system rng was a design flaw, imho. 

Edited September 27, 2014 by Uomoz

[Endrosz]

I have no idea how "normalized damage" became synonymous with MMOs in this thread. Clueless much?
 
Here's a character sheet from Guild Wars 2. This is a character using Berserker gear, which is geared towards critical hit % (first red border) and critical hit damage % (second red border). Its damage output is anything but normalized, roughly every second hit is a critical hit, so it matters a whole lot when unloading your initial burst whether you get criticals or not. Three hits can be all critical with an 1/8 chance, and zero criticals with another 1/8 chance. The critical hits themselves are more than 2.5 times the normal damage (the basic crit damage is 150%, the 111% is on top of that = 261% of normal hit damage), and that's not counting the damage range of the weapon itself. So 3 hits results in 1/8 chance of about 8x normal damage, 1/8 chance of 3x normal damage, with all other results in between. That's a bigger spread than ADnD!

 


To the topic at hand, I fully agree with Matt: it's a matter of preference mostly. At low level, you watch a string of misses with the occasional hit, at high level, you watch a flurry of hits with an occasional miss. Not less boring than having graze in the mix.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Endrosz

[Fiebras]

I think graze is fine.

 

For the record that picture you are showing as evidence in the OP is against Medreth´s buffed up Priest, who was the last guy remaining and as such had the most buffs. He had like 100+ deflection at the end or something and he was a dwarf to boot. Please include this disclaimer.

 

aeonsim is correct in assuming the Cowled Dwarf had very high defenses. It would be nice if people posted their own combat logs. Graze spam doesnt happen against lions for instance.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Fiebras

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Grazes huh?

 

[Cantousent]

Sounds kind of like a nomenclature thing again.  I mean, if there were simply a mechanic that allowed some marginal hits to do some but not as much damage, it wouldn't matter, right?  It's like the poster up above who suggested having the toggle for off or on for grazes.  Why not do that for hits?  For misses?  For spells cast?  I mean, what if they didn't identify grazes as such but simply used the same term for all damaging hits.  Some would technically be grazes in the mechanics, but the log would only identify a low damage hit.  If combat generally takes too long and there are too many grazes, it's not a problem with the idea of a wider damage spread.  It's a problem with the underlying mechanics.  However, I will say that having some opponents who must be taken down basically through attrition is not in and of itself bad.  You just don't want to have a lot of long slogging encounters throughout the entire game.  A few well armored enemies that require more endurance on the part of the fighters and perhaps a few well placed spells sounds great.  On the hand, the whole idea that it makes combat too fast because *more* damage is actually dealt, I don't see why combat should take longer anyway.

 

That said, some of the battles in the beta are excruciatingly drawn out, but the log seemed to indicate that some of that might have been bugs and I haven't tried combat in the newest patch yet.

[thelee]

I glossed over a lot of this thread, but I do not understand the grazes=>attrition=>unfun argument. You people *do* realize that if grazes go away, it's not like all of a sudden those become full hits? So intead of

 

A) graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze => maybe enemy dies

 

you'll get

 

B) miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss => enemy still hasn't died yet

 

and given how critical hits work (they can be pushed off the d100 roll), without grazes you could potentially have stalemated fights. Essentially, getting rid of grazes would require a massive re-balancing and re-working of hte game.

 

And I don't know about you, but B) is much more attrition-y than A). At least with A you get forward movement in any situation.

 

Grazes also have the benefit that you can have partial spell application in a unified mechanic.

[archangel979]

I really don't understand why some people on these forums backed PoE. It seems they barely liked IE games. Is it because of loving later Obsidian games?

Anyways there are too many of you here and you are too loud and it will kill this game for the real fans of the IE games. More time I spend here it makes me more and more worried for the final product.

I been wating too long for the next BG quality game and it seem I might be getting next DA:O instead.

Edited September 27, 2014 by archangel979

[Tamerlane]

Grazes are cool. Adding granularity to the results of random rolls is cool. Videogames are cool.

 

EDIT: Ahaha, "Real Fans!".

Edited September 27, 2014 by Tamerlane

[Namutree]

I glossed over a lot of this thread, but I do not understand the grazes=>attrition=>unfun argument. You people *do* realize that if grazes go away, it's not like all of a sudden those become full hits? So intead of

 

A) graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze, graze => maybe enemy dies

 

you'll get

 

B) miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss => enemy still hasn't died yet

 

and given how critical hits work (they can be pushed off the d100 roll), without grazes you could potentially have stalemated fights. Essentially, getting rid of grazes would require a massive re-balancing and re-working of hte game.

 

And I don't know about you, but B) is much more attrition-y than A). At least with A you get forward movement in any situation.

 

Grazes also have the benefit that you can have partial spell application in a unified mechanic.

It's not just how much damage you do to the enemies; it's how much they do to you. The grazes are making the combat more consistent and it goes both ways. The consistency is making combat less varied and less interesting.

[Namutree]

I really don't understand why some people on these forums backed PoE. It seems they barely liked IE games. Is it because of loving later Obsidian games?

Anyways there are too many of you here and you are too loud and it will kill this game for the real fans of the IE games. More time I spend here it makes me more and more worried for the final product.

I been wating too long for the next BG quality game and it seem I might be getting next DA:O instead.

I think it's that while a lot of people here like the IE games; they don't really like the game play as much as the other elements. Story, customization, and the UI.

 

I loved the IE games and wish that Obsidian had made poe more like them; including the mechanics. That said just because some people here don't like the mechanics of the IE games doesn't mean they weren't fans of everything else.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Namutree

[Uomoz]

Classifying people using the parts of IE games they like the most is a wrong way to approach discussion on this board imho. 80% of the people here love IE games, dismissing that and stating that there are only few real IE fans is completely wrong.

[archangel979]

Classifying people using the parts of IE games they like the most is a wrong way to approach discussion on this board imho. 80% of the people here love IE games, dismissing that and stating that there are only few real IE fans is completely wrong.

If 80% do I don't see them. OE completely ignored the saying "If it ain't broken don't fix it" and people here mostly applaud them for it.

As I said, one day you will also get new DA:O and people will recognize this. After release there will be hell from real fans.

[Cantousent]

The mechanics of IE games were all based on Dungeons and Dragons.  Mostly 2ed.  Obsidz couldn't even get the license for Dungeons and Dragons and, if they could, WotC would probably insist that they use the latest version of the rules.  Obsidian was never going to try to completely replicate the DnD rules.  I personally don't think they should have.

[Uomoz]

I think that even if they had the license, they'd have rewrote the rules completely. Ports (from console to PC or from paper to videogame, it's the same) are never really that good.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

The mechanics of IE games were all based on Dungeons and Dragons.  Mostly 2ed.  Obsidz couldn't even get the license for Dungeons and Dragons and, if they could, WotC would probably insist that they use the latest version of the rules.  Obsidian was never going to try to completely replicate the DnD rules.  I personally don't think they should have.

Get out of here fake fan!

[Namutree]

The mechanics of IE games were all based on Dungeons and Dragons.  Mostly 2ed.  Obsidz couldn't even get the license for Dungeons and Dragons and, if they could, WotC would probably insist that they use the latest version of the rules.  Obsidian was never going to try to completely replicate the DnD rules.  I personally don't think they should have.

They still could have taken a very similar approach if they wanted to. I feel they should have, but I won't accuse anyone of "not being a true fan" just because they didn't like everything. 

[Captain Shrek]

The mechanics of IE games were all based on Dungeons and Dragons.  Mostly 2ed.  Obsidz couldn't even get the license for Dungeons and Dragons and, if they could, WotC would probably insist that they use the latest version of the rules.  Obsidian was never going to try to completely replicate the DnD rules.  I personally don't think they should have.

Slightly off topic, but Isn't SRD open licence? 

[Cantousent]

 

The mechanics of IE games were all based on Dungeons and Dragons.  Mostly 2ed.  Obsidz couldn't even get the license for Dungeons and Dragons and, if they could, WotC would probably insist that they use the latest version of the rules.  Obsidian was never going to try to completely replicate the DnD rules.  I personally don't think they should have.

Slightly off topic, but Isn't SRD open licence? 

 

I don't know.  That's a good point, though.  I mean, it would make virtually the same rules possible.  I think they'd have angry folk on that end too.  ...But I'm like Namutree.  I won't call someone names for wanting the same mechanics.  Well... maybe in a fit of irrational anger, but then I'll regret it.  :Can't huge grin icon:

[Captain Shrek]

Don't get me wrong. I am not one of the people that thing D&D is the best evaaar! In fact I have quite a few gripes with it. All I believe is that D&D is tested enough to still allow a good game as long an experienced DM is around to design it. Just calling it terrible and making an untested mechanics is not helping this game.

 

If you think about it, this game has had so many changes since its inception in terms of the mechanics that I wonder if there really ever was a core design.

 

1) The local cooldowns are gone replaced with global ones

2) The regenerating stamina thing is gone for all classes

3) Resting is now possible everywhere and limited by supplies instead of earlier resting only in inns

4) Attributes renamed / their functions radically changed (perception : from stunlock to accuracy)

etc

 

I have been around enough to realize that a lot of these changes are occurring a bit too slow. A slightly more critical approach from the player base might look discouraging, but it is what will finally help repair these problems since this is a completely untested mechanics for the game. 

[Matt516]

I really don't understand why some people on these forums backed PoE. It seems they barely liked IE games. Is it because of loving later Obsidian games?

Anyways there are too many of you here and you are too loud and it will kill this game for the real fans of the IE games. More time I spend here it makes me more and more worried for the final product.

I been wating too long for the next BG quality game and it seem I might be getting next DA:O instead.

I'm sorry, but no. NO. Just because someone doesn't like the exact same things about the IE games as you do or is interested in seeing a few new things tried does not make them not a "real fan" of the IE games. There are people in the world who love those games in a slightly different (or even *gasp* very different!) way than you do. Recognize that.

[Fiebras]

Looking at the enchantment list there are some that are 10% graze-to-hit and 10% hit-to-crit. Theres also SEVERAL + accuracy enchantments. I assume all these stack with racial abilities and whatnot.

 

There seems to be several ways to make grazes a thing that doesnt happen often so I honestly wouldnt complain about grazes too much.

[archangel979]

 

I really don't understand why some people on these forums backed PoE. It seems they barely liked IE games. Is it because of loving later Obsidian games?

Anyways there are too many of you here and you are too loud and it will kill this game for the real fans of the IE games. More time I spend here it makes me more and more worried for the final product.

I been wating too long for the next BG quality game and it seem I might be getting next DA:O instead.

I'm sorry, but no. NO. Just because someone doesn't like the exact same things about the IE games as you do or is interested in seeing a few new things tried does not make them not a "real fan" of the IE games. There are people in the world who love those games in a slightly different (or even *gasp* very different!) way than you do. Recognize that.

 

That just means they are not real fans. Just as I am not a real football fan because I only watch it on TV while others go to stadiums or go abroad to follow the teams.

I want PoE to be the whole package. DA:O was not and that is why it was worse. PoE does not need to be D&D, but it needs to feel similar to playing IE games. Changing mechanics left and right does not help that. Spellcasting has already been dumbed down, grazes are bad, health system sucks, Might is magical damage as well as physical, stats have way too weak affect on game mechanics, only a few skills that you cannot use outside of scripted sequences, super high damage and life values as a result of DT system and so on.. all of that that is worse. EDIT: I forgot, Bag of Holding(limitless stash) from the start of the game, maps too small, they even removed the amulet slot LOL... there are other things like enemies moving way too fast but I expect this to be fixed.

I only like limited resting and encounter abilities that let caster do more during combat without worrying about wasting spells.

Edited September 28, 2014 by archangel979