Out of combat buffs

[Cubiq]

I don't know if you guys are talking about long duration buffs or the ones currently in the game but if it's the latter then you guys serriously overestimate the effect buffs are going to have on balance in this game.

A buff or 2 at the start isn't going to change the outcome of the battle so much that it would require seperate balance tunning, especially since the average duration of most buffs last around 30 seconds. (depending on your Reslove)

Harder encounters last longer than that, and the easier aren't worth buffing for.

Also instead of my priest casting a buff spell, he can already cast an attack spell if i want to be wasteful with spells.

If you screw up your positioning you're going to get killed either way.

 

 

The reason Bg2 was different was because it had instant death spells that required you to prebuff and prevent them.

Also spells like stoneskin, self polymorph, fire resistance and the like were extremely powerful that outright changed the course of the battle.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Cubiq

[gkathellar]

 

It's also called tactics. Sometimes you do make a mistake only to find out that you should have done things differently.  I would more appreciate the issue, by addressing with sensible writing: You enter a Basilisk cave, but with enough lore/gather information/spot+wisodm realize that you need to protect yourself from being turned to stone. So you cast the protection from petrification buff. Removing pre-buffing is a lazy, incompetent way out of this problem. 

 

 

For the sake of precise argument - what you're referring to isn't tactics, but rather, strategy. There is an excellent article on the distinction, although it's been a while since I've read it in full, so I may be inconsistent with it in terminology. I strongly encourage everyone to read this article, but here's the best TL;DR I can offer without diluting the content:

• Tactics are used in an individual engagement or a more confined set of engagements - and there's a lot of sophistication and complexity to tactics. In a firefight, tactical decisions like providing cover fire, advancing or retreating, and using terrain, are made by field officers and individual soldiers. In baseball, the pitcher and catcher make tactical decisions about how to strike an individual batter out. In a business deal, it is persuading the other party to give you more in return for less. In an IE game, the decisions to use a fireball on a given group of enemies, to use a debuff before you try a stunning fist, and to have your archers concentrate fire on the guy who's going for your wizard are all tactical. Good tactical decisions are made on the field of play. Tactical victories are victories within the scope of a particular engagement.
• If tactics are used in battle, strategy is used in war. Strategy could be called the art of winning by planning, or the art of winning by cheating - sometimes the distinction is fuzzy. In a firefight, the officer thinking about how much ammunition they need to conserve for future firefights is thinking strategically. In baseball, the manager deciding who will play in a particular game and when to take the pitcher off the mound, the coach figuring out training regimens, and the owner deciding whether a player is worth hiring, are all thinking strategically. In a business deal, the strategist skews the other party's sense of value before talks even start, ensuring a favorable outcome. In an IE game, strategic decision-making includes everything from party composition to how you use your limited supply of gold - but the use of out-of-combat buffing is strategic, too. Good strategic decisions are made before reaching the field of play. Strategic victories are victories within the scope of a larger, broader set of objectives than the ones immediately in front of you.

 

Virtually all games have both strategic and tactical decisions, but it's definitely true that some games focus more on one than the other, and that they limit the degree to which one effects the other. You can customize your characters and jobs and whatnot in many games, which give you strategic advantages, but at the end of the day, you can't sneak up behind the bad guy and fireball him until you're both in combat. As often as not, there are good reasons for that. So when people (like Josh Sawyer) talk about "opportunity costs," and minimizing the number of decisions that are always correct, they're thinking about the game's tactical play, and how certain strategic options could compromise it.

 

Opportunity costs, to be clear, refer specifically to time and resources that you could spend doing something else - taking one option costs you the opportunity to take another. You could cast magic missile, or you could cast a buff, for instance. Memorizing one over the other, and using your limited ammo for spells on either, is a strategic opportunity cost. But if you can cast the buff out of combat, well ... why would you ever cast buffs in combat? The worry that follows is that it affects tactical play negatively. Buffs cease to be tactical spells, becoming wholly strategic (and then we get into this whole set of uncomfortable and obnoxious accusations about metagaming and whatever, and nobody needs that).

 

The flip side of this is the view that being unable to pre-buff affects strategic play negatively in much the same ways, which is no less important. Moreover, as you say, giving players opportunities to think strategically can have a distinctly narrative edge to it, and the alternative may seem to some as though the game is lacking something. This is a strong argument. I can't give it as much detail because I've put less thought into how to put it forward, but I want to be 100% clear that I think it has real basis. I know that earlier in this thread, I was against pre-buffing - I'm less certain, having given it some time to stew. There's merit to either side, and the more I think about this, the more I think that there's no magical equation or formulation that says, "well, this negative effect is more problematic than the other, so we'll go with this one."

 

But what I do maintain is that there's got to be a balance point, where both concerns can be addressed to a degree. Players should be able to make strategic decisions that give them an "unfair" tactical edge - that's part of the legacy of the IE games, it's part of the genre, and if we're being totally honest, it's just a thing that makes nerds like us happy (going in with a knowledge-based edge is very chic in the dedicated PC gaming crowd, and we all know it). But at the same time, saving your resources for tactical decisions shouldn't be objectively inferior, because that's no less degrading to play than the alternative.

 

The tactics vs. strategy question at the core of the conversation about pre-buffing is a complicated one, with origins in tabletop gaming. I have views on how it plays out there (where, honestly, it can be a lot easier to manage because of the often inherently ad-hoc nature of tabletop gaming), but I don't have the depth of knowledge in video game design - or even just Pillars of Eternity's internals - to feel confident in putting forward answers. But I do encourage people to think of this not as a yes-or-no question. There are a lot of different things that play out in any decision, and it's easy to overlook criticism of one's own viewpoint in the certainty that the critic must have very different priorities than one's own, when in fact they're often very similar (this particular remark is not directed at anyone in particular).

 

tl;dr gkathellar why you so optimistic about human beings

[PrimeJunta]

Good post, @gkathellar. These design decisions are all about balancing one thing against the other. Binary thinking is rarely all that fruitful in general.

[Captain Shrek]

I think by your article Pre buffing is tactics, not strategy as it is done for the battle and not for the war. I am acutely aware of the difference. This was written about an year ago:

 

 

 

The way this word gets thrown around is seriously injurious to mental health. There needs to be a real guide for morons to understand what things like resources and depth are. So here is some very basic description of what the word Tactics ought to mean in video games.

First, I need to explain that I am NOT borrowing the meaning from a dictionary. I am going to take the description from experience (with games and real life) and if you do not agree with this approach, I cannot take your criticism seriously. Also, nothing revolutionary is being said here. If you are reading this to get new insights , give up now. 

Alright.

Within most combat engagements, planning is done on two non-exclusive but sufficiently differing ways:

1) Long term planning
2) Short term planning

The requisites of decision making are typically information regarding your own position and supplies and the enemy’s position and supplies. In rare occasions the enemies movements (plans) are also known. Given this information a manager/general needs to decide how to control the production of supplies, how to expend them and how to move units. 

Whatever can be expended(used) and produced is a resource.

Long term planning typically involves allotment of resources and unit movement. But its salient feature is that it also involves resource production that takes time to be available. This kind of planning is called as strategy.

Short term planning is typically limited to resource handling and unit movement in a very restricted area and in most cases as a direct response/preemption to the opponent planning. This is called Tactics. Thus tactics can only allow allotment of available resource. Not all resource types may be available during tactical maneuvers. The ones that are or can be made available are called as tactical resources. 

Please understand that strategic resources are always being produced and allotted EVEN during tactical maneuvers. But that is by definition considered a part of strategy. Thus tactics always deal withlimited resources.

In computer games, the most usual tactical resources are:

1) Units 
2) "Health"
3) mana / stamina / fury etc indicating a resource to do special actions
4) Choice of weapons and armor
5) Spell's / special ability
6) Stances
7) Potions / grenades/ traps (grouped, but serve differing functions).
Time
9) Positioning of units

It is not too difficult recognize these obvious resources. Since in video games, you are playing in a semi-rigid scaffold, the job of a good designer is to manage encounters and provide resources to implement combat as targeted towards a requisite group. 

This brings us to the question as to what is tactical depth. 

Tactical depth is essentially a measure of how many viable options in terms of the above mentioned resources can one use at any "point of time". The quotes are purposeful, since the concept of point of time differs according to how a game is implemented. In Real Time games without rounds, it is indeed possible to perform more than one option and sometimes unrestrained number of options depending upon the resources available at the same "point of time". This indirectly serves as a measure of TIME spent as resource. In Round Based games the numbers of options one can utilize are hard coded, only to be modified by "free actions" or special conditions. In Turn Based game a similar restriction based on context exists, although it tends to be much tighter. Tactical depth is NOT the number of options that you can perform per unit of time. It is the numbers of options that are available. It is desirable than many such options be there (how many?), since that quantifiably increments the quality of the challenge. The larger the number of such options and more balanced (?!) the number of winning options amongst these determines how well implemented tactics in a game are.

 

 

 

I guess you chief point is: 

 

 

 

But what I do maintain is that there's got to be a balance point, where both concerns can be addressed to a degree. Players should be able to make strategic decisions that give them an "unfair" tactical edge - that's part of the legacy of the IE games, it's part of the genre, and if we're being totally honest, it's just a thing that makes nerds like us happy (going in with a knowledge-based edge is very chic in the dedicated PC gaming crowd, and we all know it). But at the same time, saving your resources for tactical decisions shouldn't be objectively inferior, because that's no less degrading to play than the alternative.

 

 

I really doubt pre buffing is unfair. If it is, then it is a design failure for the Encounter. Any encounter that does not take into account what the potential skill of the player is a bad encounter. At the same time, it is an AI failure. This is sad because BG2 happened 10+ years ago. If the enemy can not even try to nullify your pre-buffs that would be terrible, no?

Edited October 8, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[Karkarov]

I really doubt pre buffing is unfair. If it is, then it is a design failure for the Encounter. Any encounter that does not take into account what the potential skill of the player is a bad encounter. At the same time, it is an AI failure. This is sad because BG2 happened 10+ years ago. If the enemy can not even try to nullify your pre-buffs that would be terrible, no?

I will throw you a bone Shrek in that gkathellar's post is very very long and full of tons of verbiage.... maybe too long even.  Probably.

 

That said he is correct in what he is saying.  This is why there is no prebuffing, in a nutshell, Obsidian wants buffs to be a tactical choice you make because you decide the buff is more valuable at that moment than an attack, a heal, or even a debuff.  If you could cast buffs before the fight even starts they no longer have a tactical value, because of course you are going to buff before the fight starts.  It is what we call a "no brainer" or "having your cake and eating it too".  They don't want you to use a buff because "well duh!!!" they want you to use a buff because at that moment, in that fight, you think that buff is the most tactically sound thing to do.

 

Also one last thing.  There is no player skill in pre buffing.  Like I said, when it has no tactical risk or cost then it become a no brainer and everyone will do it.  Why?  Because it is obvious and has no risk, so why wouldn't you?

Edited October 8, 2014 by Karkarov

[Captain Shrek]

But as I have tried to demonstrate several times before (and I have no clue why this argument keeps appearing again and again) is that the Buffing is basically allotting a spell slot. In IE games, you could rest a bit too often, especially in IWD2 to get back all those slots. If that is eliminated, then NO! Buffing is NOT a no-brainer.  Maybe you should explain what is wrong with this argument first. 

[PrimeHydra]

But I do encourage people to think of this not as a yes-or-no question. There are a lot of different things that play out in any decision, and it's easy to overlook criticism of one's own viewpoint in the certainty that the critic must have very different priorities than one's own, when in fact they're often very similar (this particular remark is not directed at anyone in particular).

Exactly, which is why it's frustrating to read posts that read, to paraphrase: "Here are more idiotic opinions that run counter to my own. I'll quote them and then tell each poster why they, and not the game, are at fault." it doesn't make for very constructive discussion.

 

It's true--a lot of the more hostile responses to threads like this conveniently (and sadly) ignore the fact that we all want the same thing: An awesome Pillars of Eternity. Nobody here wants a dumbed-down game lacking in either tactics or strategy. I wish people would quit accusing other beta backers--other people who paid money to support a hardcore, retro-style CRPG--of being n00bs. It's obnoxious and incorrect.

 

On that note, the complaint was never that pre-buffs "make me think too hard about tactics/strategy." That's not the issue. The issue is that a lot of prebuffing in this game's ancestors was tedious. It wasn't fun. Shift+clicking to queue up Chaotic Commands on each individual in a six-person party because you know there are Umber Hulks over the next hill (because they killed you all last time in a frenzy of Confusion charms) is just annoying.

 

A better implementation of this strategy would have been a Mind Shield 10' Radius spell.

 

The strategy comes in choosing the spell as part of your loadout before heading to Umber Hulk country.

 

The tactics are employed when your wizard casts Mind Shield 10' Radius instead of Fireball or any number of other actions upon enemy sighted.

 

"Prebuffing", as understood by myself and most of the other "no thanks" users, is the tedious, mechanical, and repetitive process of applying "mandatory" buffs before jumping into the fray. That's what we don't like. We're just as big combat tactic geeks as the ones who like casting a bunch of beneficial spells before the enemy notices them.

 

PS: OP, you should add a poll to this thread, it would be interesting to see the results.

Edited October 8, 2014 by PrimeHydra

[Karkarov]

But as I have tried to demonstrate several times before (and I have no clue why this argument keeps appearing again and again) is that the Buffing is basically allotting a spell slot. In IE games, you could rest a bit too often, especially in IWD2 to get back all those slots. If that is eliminated, then NO! Buffing is NOT a no-brainer.  Maybe you should explain what is wrong with this argument first. 

Resting is limited, but it isn't gone.  As others have said you don't need buffs anyway for most fights.  For those that you do it would not be very hard to save up enough rest supplies to get in a rest, use your prebuffs, then go in.  Obsidian wants it to be more than a spell slot lost, they want it to be a tactical choice/and have an opportunity cost.  As was said, there is no tactical or opportunity cost when you are prebuffing, just a lost spell slot.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Karkarov

[Captain Shrek]

 

But as I have tried to demonstrate several times before (and I have no clue why this argument keeps appearing again and again) is that the Buffing is basically allotting a spell slot. In IE games, you could rest a bit too often, especially in IWD2 to get back all those slots. If that is eliminated, then NO! Buffing is NOT a no-brainer.  Maybe you should explain what is wrong with this argument first. 

Resting is limited, but it isn't gone.  As others have said you don't need buffs anyway for most fights.  For those that you do it would not be very hard to save up enough rest supplies to get in a rest, use your prebuffs, then go in.  Obsidian wants it to be more than a spell slot lost, they want it to be a tactical choice/and have an opportunity cost.  As was said, there is no tactical or opportunity cost when you are prebuffing, just a lost spell slot.

 

Why isn't a lost spell slot a tactical choice? You could put, say,  a fireball in there. Right? Also, it looks to me from your description that the resting economy is broken. Maybe fixing that is the real solution? Wouldn't that be a good thing either way?

[ambrusynev]

Yeah for me the type pre-buffing when you put on your defensive spells before a closed door was one of the most tedious things in IE games.

Plus sometimes it also involves a good chunk of metagaming, since you know what to expect behind that bog standard door which your character naturally can't know for sure. I think this type of enemy specific pre-buffing weakens the RP experience as a whole and I hope the devs won't change their minds about it. 

Edited October 8, 2014 by ambrusynev

[Labadal]

 

For those that don't like buffing pre-combat, it wouldn't hurt your enjoyment of the game if it was allowed in Pillars of Eternity. If you don't like to do it, you don't have to.

 

I would like to see the option implemented before release.

As long as spells like stoneskin or ghost-armor aren't in the game. Those spells wreck balance. 

 

I don't really care for balance, and even if I did, there's always a way to balance them.

 

Half the fun of combat was pre-buffing and preparation in the IE games. I know this might sound strange to some, but it added to the fights. I'm fighting something that will destroy me if I don't have a resistance to this or that, better cast it to protect myself.

 

In PoE, fights are over so quickly that I don't feel the need to use buffs with the wizard. I only use the priest for buffs.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

PJ finally reached the ultimate truth. :D

 

BTW, pre-buffing doesn't exist because part of the cost of the buff spells is in the time used to cast them during combat. It's a design decision, and actually rectify the horrible BG implementations where if you didn't have the buffs you were simply missing bonuses, while in PoE buffing is a non-obvious choice.

 

Hiro, could be useful taking a look outside of your box, once in a while.

 

There were a lot of instances where I casted buff spells in combat with the IE games. Negative plane protection is one because it has a very quick casting time (it's almost instantaneous) and very short duration. It was better to cast it after combat started than prior to it. So it wasn't all rote pre-buffing. There were benefits waiting for combat to begin to cast your buff spells.

 

Uomoz, could be useful without his usual distorted hyperbolic examples.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Hiro Protagonist II]

When I said no more than half the length of a "normal" fight, that's what I meant, so if we're assuming a "normal" fight lasts twenty seconds, then the max Resolve duration for the buff would be no more than ten seconds, and the duration with average Resolve would be six seconds. Considering these numbers, there's two factors that make pre-buffing maybe not the best idea. First, pre-buffing by definition has to be done outside of the detection radius of enemies, so if you're pre-buffing a character built for melee or with short range attacks, they're going to be wasting buff time just getting into range of the enemy. If the buff only lasts six to ten seconds, then a lot of the buff could be wasted. Second, even in the best case scenario where you're buffed for the first half of the encounter, that may not be the best time for the buff to be active. For example, if you're fighting a Wizard, they could pop off Arcane Veil right at the beginning of the encounter and if you've pre-buffed with a damage increasing buff, it's mostly going to waste. If you'd held off and cast the buff during the fight, it would have been much more effective.

 

Of course, even if the buff durations are short there will still be times when pre-buffing is the best choice. I'd argue that the goal is not to make pre-buffing always bad but to make sure it's not always good. If there are dominating tactics in combat, such that you can just play through every fight the same way without putting any though or effort into it, that's not fun. In the IE games pre-buffing, especially with some of the extremely long duration buffs, was a dominating tactic. It just became mindless busywork, because you were always going to cast those buffs. There was no meaningful choice.

 

As an aside, PoE does have long duration buffs, but it models them as modal abilities so you don't have to tediously recast them. Also, they either have penalties as well as benefits, or you have to chose one to have active from a set, so there is some meaningful choice involved.

 

After looking at the BB Priest spells after I posted that response and unless Obsidian nerfs buffs to oblivion, I can't see buffs lasting 10 seconds on max resolve of 21. It wouldn't make any sense to do so. You'd get maybe one or two hits on the enemy and the buff would be gone. So it would be better to use specific spells and their durations from the beta. As I pointed out before, a lot of BB Priest buff spells are around the 37.5 second mark and a couple up to 75 seconds. I'd assume these spells would have a longer duration if you maxed out Resolve with a player created Priest, but I've never tried creating a priest.

[Lephys]

It's all relative to the "normal" time for an encounter. IF the average combat time is intended to be 20 seconds, then 10 seconds would be a decent max relative to that 20-second combat time.

 

If 20 seconds isn't an appropriate combat time, that's a whole different thing. Obviously, factors need to be adjusted such that combat doesn't regularly last 20 seconds or less.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

As I said, best to go off specifics from the beta than conjecture. I made up the 10 second buff and 20 second encounter because I wasn't accessing the beta when I posted at the time. Now that I've looked at the beta and went over the spells, the duration times seem okay to me. And it's better to go off the beta to give feedback to Obsidian than conjecture.

[Uomoz]

 

PJ finally reached the ultimate truth. :D

 

BTW, pre-buffing doesn't exist because part of the cost of the buff spells is in the time used to cast them during combat. It's a design decision, and actually rectify the horrible BG implementations where if you didn't have the buffs you were simply missing bonuses, while in PoE buffing is a non-obvious choice.

 

Hiro, could be useful taking a look outside of your box, once in a while.

 

There were a lot of instances where I casted buff spells in combat with the IE games. Negative plane protection is one because it has a very quick casting time (it's almost instantaneous) and very short duration. It was better to cast it after combat started than prior to it. So it wasn't all rote pre-buffing. There were benefits waiting for combat to begin to cast your buff spells.

 

Uomoz, could be useful without his usual distorted hyperbolic examples.

 

 

So you are proving that pre-buff is unnecessary and reactive buffing is instead an interesting choice? Wow, I didn't expect you to change your narrow mind!

Edited October 9, 2014 by Uomoz

[Hiro Protagonist II]

So you are proving that pre-buff is unnecessary and reactive buffing is instead an interesting choice? Wow, I didn't expect you to change your narrow mind!

 

What are you on about? I was never in one or the other camp. I know that something so simple can be so hard for you to understand. Perhaps when you leave school in a few years you might have some grasp with reading and comprehension and join the rest of us adults with contributing something worthwhile to the discussion.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Uomoz]

Are you acting retarded or you really are? You are pro pre-buff, and you just stated something completely opposed to that. Rofl

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Are you acting retarded or you really are? You are pro pre-buff, and you just stated something completely opposed to that. Rofl

 

You're the one who's retarded. As I said, I was never in one or the other camp. Point to a post in this thread where I am pro-buff. You can't. Because I have never said I am pro-buff.

 

What I have said is I've never argued against pre-buffs over the last two years of this game's development and I was calling out those who did and have since flip-flopped over the issues like PrimeJunta since the beta has been released. And PrimeJunta is still flip-flopping over it, dependant on the duration of the spells. If it's short, it's okay. If it's long, he's against it.

 

So yes, you're the one who's retarded. You're the one who incorrectly infers from my posts what my position is. It's what I expect from an idiot troll like yourself who can't grasp simple things like reading and comprehension.

[Uomoz]

Pfffff, sorry Hiro I'm distracting you from your personal war on all of those that oppose your opinion. Back to it! xD

 

PS you should really take a vacation from posting on video games' forums, given the amount of people that blacklisted you around here.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Pfffff, sorry Hiro I'm distracting you from your personal war on all of those that oppose your opinion. Back to it! xD

 

PS you should really take a vacation from posting on video games' forums, given the amount of people that blacklisted you around here.

 

Ah the weakling troll blows over and crumples like the wet bag that he is. I called you out and you couldn't back up your claims. Maybe you should go on a vacation from your trolling because that's all you seem to contribute in these threads. Or maybe you should have asked your parents to buy that Beta key so you can contribute some feedback to the bug forum and make yourself useful.

 

And blacklisted me? LOL. So one person putting me on ignore is being blacklisted now. I don't care about PrimeJunta because he makes a lot of stuff up (eg. PoE Fighter) and I'd welcome the trolls like yourself to put me on ignore. But it seems you can't hit that ignore button. Must be something wrong with you and not me if you can't put me on ignore. That's quite telling.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Uomoz]

Or maybe I find fun in trolling you, and it's working? xD

 

BTW, my few posts, with the few hours I had the time to spend on the beta, are definitely a lot more worthy that the 5k words hatred-filled essays you post obsessed with your opinions.

 

Sincerely, your own nerve wracking troll.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Or maybe I find fun in trolling you, and it's working? xD

 

BTW, my few posts, with the few hours I had the time to spend on the beta, are definitely a lot more worthy that the 5k words hatred-filled essays you post obsessed with your opinions.

 

Sincerely, your own nerve wracking troll.

 

Yep, I know you're a troll. Good to see you admit it. And you still haven't proved anything with me being pro-buff. But that's okay, I know you can't because I've never said I was pro-buff. But keep jumping to those incorrect conclusions. Also, it's not nerve wracking to me. Must be nerve wracking to you though for you to get so heated over this. Sounds like it's you that needs the vacation.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Uomoz]

I just see a very little person, filled with hatred, arguing with everyone, and easily irritable. I don't really care what your point is, I just have such a great deal of fun trolling you at any chance I get. xD

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I just see a very little person, filled with hatred, arguing with everyone, and easily irritable. I don't really care what your point is, I just have such a great deal of fun trolling you at any chance I get. xD

 

Hahaha. An admitted troll calling me a very little person filled with hatred. You're describing yourself as you're the one who's easily irritable and jumps in to throw angry posts at me. Yep, you do jump to those incorrect conclusions about me. Good to see everyone on this forum can see you being the troll that you are.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II