Just a general assessment from BBs. What would happen of the Recovery time (also known as global cooldown in some circles) were completely eliminated? Instead replaced with animation time for different actions being different? 

 

Opinions?

Recovery time was something that was added in umm, either late last year, or early this year. It's kinda similar to how the Infinity Engine games did it but not quite. Recovery time is fine, just the numbers and formulas need to be tweaked, and moving should not pause unless you've got a firearm.

 

Better transparency is also required on the UI. Currently nothing shows how long an action + recovery will take.

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by Sensuki

I think it is not fine. It feels very artificial and does not have any reason to exist beyond disallowing Kiting. It is a very lazy band-aid for a real issue. The kiting problem ought to be addressed with AI, by allowing AI to act against it or kite itself frustrating the player tactically instead of with a passive mechanics. 

 

May be adding maluses on shooting while running will help if anyone is listening! 

 

Would then make sense to have a "shot on the run" talent. 

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by Captain Shrek

I'm not sure if you've read our paper: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity/Sensuki_Matt516_Attribute_Rework.pdf

 

Scroll to page 13 and it tells you how recovery time works.

 

It's similar to the Infinity Engine games (and likely the other round-based RTwP D&D games), except in the IE games all characters perform actions in a 6 second time division. Extra attacks are gained through the character system, rather than a granular percentile speed increase.

 

That's the only difference really, in that now actions are less uniform.

 

recovery time pause while moving is what exists to 'prevent kiting' but I think it actually creates more issues than it solves. Made a mod that removes it if you're interested: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68867-sensukis-suggestions-024-recovery-time-should-not-pause-while-moving-mod-video/

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by Sensuki

I don't care about IE games 6 second rounds. The comparison is pretty much moot at this point in time. It was a bad system for IE games which should really have been TB. But that ship has long sailed. 

 

So concentration on the problem at hand, PoE is an ACTION GAME. It should use mechanics that suit it better than using stuff that was a hack in the first place. Best solution: go for action based animation time. Actions that are hard to pull off should take more time and give more benefit, i.e. spell casting. While actions that are easy to pull off should have smaller animation time, i.e. most fighter/rogue attacks. 

 

Incidentally this also solves the problem with per-encounter stupidity associated with knowckdowns. If those actions are very rewarding but available infinitely many times, just making them slow would be not only realistic (in the sense you have to prepare for it, execution is fast) but also tactical. 

It's not an action game mate, it's supposed to have RTS style gameplay. Most RTS games have global cooldowns for unit attacks, pretty much all of them actually.

 

It just feels crappy at the moment because of bad/lack of animations, poor UI feedback and the values are not tweaked properly yet.

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by Sensuki

Well IE did it better with each weapon or spell having different speed. You chose spells to cast based on this speed and not only its effects. How many times I would wait until enemy started casting nasty cc spells and then cast speed 1 magic missile.

I want this back. This global recovery is too simple.

The formula could use alteration, absolutely.

 

I can mod the recovery time formula, but I also need access to the prefabs, currently I don't have that.

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by Sensuki