Could this game lead to an improved combat system?

[Gralq]

Before you frantically dismiss my little question !

 

Consider: I just want to know what the general feeling towards real time - pause is. Second, we all know that in terms of money making and popularity the way to go is fast paced MMO's  :/  .. which would never bring another Baldur's gate

 

 

Playing the BB..was it not the feeling that something is really lacking to make the combat really impressive? I mean honestly as excited as I am to see this game come true, I can't help to feel that combat won't be anything exceptional. Even with polished animations and very flashy spells.. would that look that impressive, I don't know, stimulating?  Didyou played company of heroes in its time? You know what I mean?

 

Also, I am one of those who believes that in this system combat tends to be too chaotic.  In the sense that, at early levels you have to pause every 3rd of a round to micro your 4hp mage and move your rogue to its place.  Lack of attacks of opportunity and a constant 3 to 1 enemy/ally ratio tends to become a pause+change path every time your front line is ignored or broken

 

Now I think this game will be good and very well worth (as long as it is properly patched after release) because I can see behind the scenes the good effort put into it.   My hopes are that it will inspire a bigger budget project with a new combat system that is NOT your tipical WoW / diablo game.

 

 

Same thing, just one instruction per round:

 

This kind of game could use a somewhat  turn based system.  But not a turn per character, I'm talking a real time game that:

 

-Begins combat at pause

-issue your orders

-watch the fun

-go back to pause

 

= End of combat,option to watch a real time replay and enjoy

 

I've seen this in some indie games but can't remember their names.  Wouldn't that be interesting? It could be, for example, every order you issue has to be at a possible location so the character would move and do it.  When a collision happens each character has its configurable action, like try acrobatics and move ahead, or attack. Heck if the game is all 3d you could have very nice responsive animations like the character suddenly turning its attention to the incoming tank

Implementation considerations aside, all in its time.

 

The pluses are potential for much better animations. A real sense of differentiation in terms of a fast and a slow character. threat areas/attacks of oportunity and above all, something not as slow as turn based.

 

Anyways, I don't mean to sound critical and think about what's next when PoE is not even out.. but the BETA made me think. What do you think?

[IndiraLightfoot]

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I believe that DA:I will have something like this - where you can use a tactical mode, and then queue up orders for your characters, and then sit back and watch how it all unfolds.

[Moirnelithe]

RTwP worked fine in NWN 1 & 2, not sure why it seems to be such a chaotic mess in PoE. Patch 301 was an improvement though. You can set combat pause at the start of combat in the options btw. Sitting back and watching the combat unfold sounds a bit boring to me.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Moirnelithe

[Lephys]

I'm not sure how that would really differ much from the current system. You can already set auto-pause conditions to whatever you want.

 

That, and, while the ability to queue up actions is nice (cast shield on this guy, and then cast Haste on this other guy, etc. -- you pretty much know you want to perform those two actions in that order, as fast as possible), having the system revolve around queued up actions would become quite troublesome, as it's the nature of tactical combat to issue commands in reaction to combat occurrences as it unfolds. It's very hard to react to things that remain in the future. 8P

 

So, I dunno, I understand your tentative concern, but I don't think it's really a definite problem, at least not as precisely as you've described it. Definitely voice your concerns with how combat might end up, to make sure the devs get that feedback. But, they've still got plenty of tweaking to do before this thing is finished.

 

It's current state isn't "Okay, we think we've nailed everything down perfectly! What, do you guys have a problem with it or something? We MIGHT tweak something if you have a big enough issue, u_u..."

 

As someone else pointed out, it's a very iterative process. The easiest way to figure out what exactly needs tweaking/changing is to roll with sort of an educated guess for your current build, then gather feedback and data and refine your educated guess for the next build.

[Macrae]

See your point but no, instead, what would be better is making animation more fluid and attack recovery times shorter, while at the same time for example make it impossible to stop time and pause completely for higher levels, instead permitting only to go in slow-motion for these difficulties..

[Lephys]

while at the same time for example make it impossible to stop time and pause completely for higher levels, instead permitting only to go in slow-motion for these difficulties..

For what it's worth, it's pretty easy to restrict yourself to no-pausing. A regular Twitch streamer wanted to challenge himself beyond the bounds of the game FTL, so he instituted his own "No pause" mode by simply un-mapping the key for Pause (I think it was spacebar in that game, too). He knew he would probably reflexively TRY to pause, so he just prevented himself from pausing (Unless he clicked on the GUI somewhere to pause, but that's a lot harder to reflexively do in an instant before remembering "oh yeah, no pauses," and simply not-doing it.)

[Darji]

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I believe that DA:I will have something like this - where you can use a tactical mode, and then queue up orders for your characters, and then sit back and watch how it all unfolds.

Yes it does.  And by the looks of it it is  great. but I can not say much until I actually can play it. 

 

Also with the delay maybe it is really time to think about revamping the whole battle system and make it turn based. With it being like this it is not good or even serviceable...

The rollplay aspect is really really good but the combat seems absolute terrible as it is now...

 

And the combat in NWN worked better because it had actual D&D rules. Eternity does not. 

Edited October 3, 2014 by Darji

[PrimeJunta]

NWN had a pretty good implementation of DnD.

 

DnD itself stinks though.

[Infinitron]

Combat in NWN good? What planet is this?

[Monte Carlo]

NWN had a pretty good implementation of DnD.

 

DnD itself stinks though.

 

Which is why it's the world's most successful and much-loved RPG, right?

[Moirnelithe]

Combat in NWN good? What planet is this?

I have low standards regarding combat since I mostly play for the story and character development. If it doesn't confuse the hell out of me I'm pretty much happy. Unfortunately PoE combat completely baffles me which results in putting the game on easy and letting all the chars wack the enemy on auto-attack (gave up on spellcasting in disgust after wiping my own party with the AoE's a little too often). 

[Lephys]

^ It shouldn't when it's finished. They're kind of still working on everything under the hood, right now. I'm confident that once they get numbers and specifics more situated, they'll go ahead with fleshing out all the user-friendly UI intuitiveness, and a full, comprehensive tutorial on the finalized system.

 

It's really not that complex at the moment. It's just hard to tell how complex it is or isn't, unless you've been following it this whole time.