Sensuki vs Medreth [Youtube Series]

[Seari]

They just really want new leather boots.

[Guest 4ward]

i believe Josh Sawyer hasn't playtested the game's combat yet. I can't imagine that he as lead designer of IWD would approve of this. Back to the drawing board for him and the team i guess, i hope they can turn it around in the next 4-5 months.

[Gairnulf]

Withdraw is such a ****ty name for the spell, while Sanctuary is perfect. I guess this is another instance of changing things just for the sake of it.

"... The situation heated up quickly, so the mage was forced to cast a quick Withdraw..."

[Kjaamor]

Here's a Ranger version

 

 

 

Perhaps they're a tribute to the abysmal targeting clauses of the IE games? Memories of my fighter playing Benny Hill with an Ogre while five ranged characters killed it in BG.

 

But yes, of course that stuff needs sorting. On a conceptual level, I approve of the engagement mechanic because I think that when it is working it will serve the concepts of front and back line well. However without appropriate clauses and containing the bugs it does at present, it is difficult to judge how effective it will eventually be.

 

...but once those bugs and clauses are sorted, it offers a better combat experience than the chase/block cheese of an awful lot of the IE game battles. Said as a Grognard, etc.

[Sensuki]

In the same fashion as the previous video

[Sensuki]

Perhaps they're a tribute to the abysmal targeting clauses of the IE games?

None of them were that bad and Icewind Dale: HoW had pretty good targeting clauses, so did BG2.

 

On a conceptual level, I approve of the engagement mechanic because I think that when it is working it will serve the concepts of front and back line well.

It won't work. I will continue making videos that prove that it abusable/broken and buggy.

 

I support sticky mechanics, just not this one.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Sensuki

[Cubiq]

But yes, of course that stuff needs sorting. On a conceptual level, I approve of the engagement mechanic because I think that when it is working it will serve the concepts of front and back line well. However without appropriate clauses and containing the bugs it does at present, it is difficult to judge how effective it will eventually be.

The engagement mechanic can't work unless you leave the AI to be as thick as a brick like it is now.

All they would need to do is walk around the fighter while he is already engaged by someone else and you are screwed since the fighter can't turn around and help. If you do, you can risk getting your fighter killed.

If they made the disengagement attacks so weak that the fighter can get away, then what's stopping the enemy from simply walking past your front line as well?

And if you are okey with leaving the AI to be this stupid then why do you need the engagement mechanic at all since they already flock to the first person they see and completely ignore the back line?

Edited November 7, 2014 by Cubiq

[Sensuki]

Pretty much, and the extra Fighter engagement range is completely exploitable, I have a video uploading now that I scored four disengagement attacks in a row with two characters against one guy. Pretty funny.

[Sensuki]

Look how much of a joke this is

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NA6nVsjh30

[Kjaamor]

None of them were that bad and Icewind Dale: HoW had pretty good targeting clauses, so did BG2.

 

The original BG was particularly terrible because it outright depended upon you abusing the "Mob melee attacks the closest party member" mechanic, and as you yourself were discussing on these very forums not so long ago, IWD has the similarly awful mechanic of enemies trying to walk past your front line to get to your back, but enabling you to block off their pathfinding with your front-liner.

 

 

The engagement mechanic can't work unless you leave the AI to be as thick as a brick like it is now.

All they would need to do is walk around the fighter while he is already engaged by someone else and you are screwed since the fighter can't turn around and help. If you do, you can risk getting your fighter killed.

If they made the disengagement attacks so weak that the fighter can get away, then what's stopping the enemy from simply walking past your front line as well?

And if you are okey with leaving the AI to be this stupid then why do you need the engagement mechanic at all since they already flock to the first person they see and completely ignore the back line?

 

Nothing of what you say is evidence that the engagement mechanic will not work as intended.

 

First you position the fighter to maximise the number of enemies he can engage so they do not reach the front line. If you fail to position correctly, then you should be taking disengagement attacks. If you wish to reposition when you already have 3+ enemies engaged, then you can expect to take a battering for repositioning.

 

Of course, the tactics underpinning this is the question of how strong do you need your front-line to be? Will you try with one tank? A tank and an off-tank? A tank and two off-tanks? This was one of the things that the old "What Party Will You Make" threads were born of; the question of how strong or weak you wanted your two lines to be. At no stage in development was it said that one fighter can always hold the entire enemy front-line, and nor should it be this way. The front-line is a line, not a single person. This is what was promised.

 

Of course, they haven't quite delivered as of yet, because the engagement mechanic and clauses need a lot of work. But that is not an argument against it working on a conceptual level, and your point only serves to show its potential.

 

Look how much of a joke this is

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NA6nVsjh30

 

That is broken indeed.

 

Two second consideration fix:

 

1. Defender mode greatly limits speed.

2. Speed penalty remains five seconds after toggled off.

 

Give the team a minute, and I'm sure they can do rather better than that.

[Sensuki]

You shouldn't implement mechanics to make up for the targeting deficiencies of your AI - that is just dumb, and no game I know does that, well okay - Dragon Age: Origins / Aggro mechanics kind of do that.

 

Engagement should be just dropped in favor of mechanics that actually work in real time - slows, disables and stuns are the bread and butter of RTS stickiness and that's the direction PE should go in. None of this trying to convert a turn-based mechanic into a real-time game horsedung. Because it will not work.

 

You would still abuse disengagement attacks with your suggestion, just not as badly as that one by drawing aggro with one character and then running them into the range of a Fighter with Defender on (or even better, multiple Fighters). They were abusable in Neverwinter Nights 2, they will be even more abusable in Pillars of Eternity because you have more finite control over your units.

 

Any change they make, I will be able to break it.

 

Oh not to mention that all you have to do to enemy Fighters is just micro your units around his Engagement AoE and he won't be able to catch you because he'll be too slow with your suggestion

 

Random examples of "RTS style stickiness":

 

The Fighter could have an active 1/encounter that does an AoE attack with a melee weapon and sacrifices damage in order to afflict a slow or hobbled. Hobbled units are ****ing **** slow when they run away and have worse defenses.

 

Paladin could have an MS decrease aura that slows units movement speed down.

 

Fighter could have a mode that reduces his damage but increases his interrupt. Interrupts are basically an 0.5s ministun.

 

There's a bunch of ways you could do it, but you should not give free attacks with no animation just for moving one pixel outside of an engagement range. The concept is just retarded.

 

The original BG was particularly terrible because it outright depended upon you abusing the "Mob melee attacks the closest party member" mechanic, and as you yourself were discussing on these very forums not so long ago, IWD has the similarly awful mechanic of enemies trying to walk past your front line to get to your back, but enabling you to block off their pathfinding with your front-liner.

If you have more units than the enemies do, you will be able to kite them. It happens in every RTS game. Unfortunately Pillars of Eternity usually has small encounters, whereas most of the IE games usually had more enemies than the party.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Sensuki

[archangel979]

 

But yes, of course that stuff needs sorting. On a conceptual level, I approve of the engagement mechanic because I think that when it is working it will serve the concepts of front and back line well. However without appropriate clauses and containing the bugs it does at present, it is difficult to judge how effective it will eventually be.

The engagement mechanic can't work unless you leave the AI to be as thick as a brick like it is now.

All they would need to do is walk around the fighter while he is already engaged by someone else and you are screwed since the fighter can't turn around and help. If you do, you can risk getting your fighter killed.

If they made the disengagement attacks so weak that the fighter can get away, then what's stopping the enemy from simply walking past your front line as well?

And if you are okey with leaving the AI to be this stupid then why do you need the engagement mechanic at all since they already flock to the first person they see and completely ignore the back line?

 

As I said before, easy solution is to do this like in 4e D&D. Instead of giving critical hits as part of disengagement, let fighters mark targets (this would be done automatically like engagement works now) and those targets have a penalty to attack and fighter has a bonus to attack if they don't attack the person that marked them. So they can run back to back line but they won't do much and will be killed fast by a fighter coming after them (or hitting them while they are moving past him). Combine this with slower move speed and it will work good.

 

Then like in 4e paladins can mark enemies that while those ignore the paladin they receive damage per second or 2 seconds.

 

And give something to monks as well.

 

Of course they need to fix AI so you cannot kite whole group with one guy while another puts bolts into them for free.

[Sensuki]

Screw turn based mechanics. It's not a turn-based game.

[Kjaamor]

You shouldn't implement mechanics to make up for the targeting deficiencies of your AI - that is just dumb, and no game I know does that, well okay - Dragon Age: Origins / Aggro mechanics kind of do that.

 

o_O Mechanics that account for the way AI or human players target have been the staple of RTSs since their creation!

 

Engagement should be just dropped in favor of mechanics that actually work in real time - slows, disables and stuns are the bread and butter of RTS stickiness and that's the direction PE should go in. None of this trying to convert a turn-based mechanic into a real-time game horsedung. Because it will not work.

 

...

Any change they make, I will be able to break it.

 

Citation needed?

 

Also, the game does not have to be unbreakable, just as the IE games weren't. Solo Monk BG2 depended upon breaking the mechanics. All you have to do is make it so that "breaking" the game is more tedious and unrewarding than "playing" it, and there is nothing so far which suggests that this goal cannot be achieved.

 

You would still abuse disengagement attacks with your suggestion, just not as badly as that one by drawing aggro with one character and then running them into the range of a Fighter with Defender on (or even better, multiple Fighters). They were abusable in Neverwinter Nights 2, they will be even more abusable in Pillars of Eternity because you have more finite control over your units.

 

...but then when the clauses are even remotely sorted out, does the mob still follow the initial aggro when engaged or transfer to the new, engaged aggro? And if you have multiple fighters set up to disengage-slay this mob, will its comrades make mince-meat out of your back line?

 

It all depends upon the nature of the clauses, which are currently barely implemented at all.

 

...and also, it was an example of how to fix the broken mechanic off the top of my head in two seconds. It was meant to serve as an example of how quickly solutions for these things can be come up with, not a final mechanic suggestion.

 

Oh not to mention that all you have to do to enemy Fighters is just micro your units around his Engagement AoE and he won't be able to catch you because he'll be too slow with your suggestion

 

Such mechanics are not necessarily a two way street, and I don't believe that there needs to be a level playing field between humans and AI. The AI, after all, we can reasonably expect to play the game as intended and not use game-breaking exploits. At least after beta.

 

 

If you have more units than the enemies do, you will be able to kite them. It happens in every RTS game. Unfortunately Pillars of Eternity usually has small encounters, whereas most of the IE games usually had more enemies than the party.

 

Kiting is a gameplay mechanic that many RTSs and similar games thrive upon, but it does not lend itself particularly well to the idea of epic melee combat and it is perfectly acceptable to try and drive Kiting (as opposed to moving) from a RTwPRPG.

 

I don't often buddy up to the immurshun crowd, but one thing I hated about the first BG was the way that to win combat my Hard-as-nails tank had to run around the battlefield screaming in panic whilst a conga-line of enemies behind him fell to his mates in the bushes with bows. It didn't seem very realistic. It certainly wasn't particularly tactical. It had minimal strategy. And the very last thing it was was heroic.

 

And I do not believe that this mechanic has to survive into the next generation of RTwPRPGs.

[archangel979]

Screw turn based mechanics. It's not a turn-based game.

What? These things have nothing to do with turn based.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Look how much of a joke this is

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NA6nVsjh30

 

What would you expect to happen as an alternative? Your character's attacks came from beyond that guard's reach, naturally it is going to pursue. Being outnumbered 2:1, your other warrior both flanks him with attacks and even slows him slightly. What part of this is inappropriate? If that guard had stopped and fought your second warrior after being struck...that scenario would be just as easily taken advantage of when you outnumber the enemy 2:1.

 

I don't agree that this is an example of engagement being broken. To me it felt like a demonstration of effective skirmish tactics. Your use of spears was deliberate, as they were a necessary component of this demonstration. That's the point of a reach weapon, and that's why they make such great skirmishing weapons. Had you been using daggers, this scenario would have been quite a bit different. I can't find anything wrong with the tactics and outcome of this video.

[Sensuki]

o_O Mechanics that account for the way AI or human players target have been the staple of RTSs since their creation!

Bull****. Give me an example? The only thing I can think of is AI 'teams' getting faster resource accumulation on harder difficulties and that has absolutely nothing to do with combat mechanics

 

Citation needed?

Citation for what

 

...but then when the clauses are even remotely sorted out, does the mob still follow the initial aggro when engaged or transfer to the new, engaged aggro? And if you have multiple fighters set up to disengage-slay this mob, will its comrades make mince-meat out of your back line?

Theoretical situations are not going to help you here. The situation you described here would only occur if you are dumb enough to position your ranged units in targeting range in the first place.

 

...and also, it was an example of how to fix the broken mechanic off the top of my head in two seconds. It was meant to serve as an example of how quickly solutions for these things can be come up with, not a final mechanic suggestion.

I don't think it was a good example because I was able to see how broken it would be in a further two seconds.

 

Such mechanics are not necessarily a two way street, and I don't believe that there needs to be a level playing field between humans and AI. The AI, after all, we can reasonably expect to play the game as intended and not use game-breaking exploits. At least after beta.

I do, because then you can leverage combat situations with ENCOUNTER AND ABILITY/SPELL DESIGN which makes the game far more fun when you face interesting and challenging encounters rather than banal encounters in combination with a mechanic that serves to handicap the player.

 

Kiting is a gameplay mechanic that many RTSs and similar games thrive upon, but it does not lend itself particularly well to the idea of epic melee combat and it is perfectly acceptable to try and drive Kiting (as opposed to moving) from a RTwPRPG.

 

I don't often buddy up to the immurshun crowd, but one thing I hated about the first BG was the way that to win combat my Hard-as-nails tank had to run around the battlefield screaming in panic whilst a conga-line of enemies behind him fell to his mates in the bushes with bows. It didn't seem very realistic. It certainly wasn't particularly tactical. It had minimal strategy. And the very last thing it was was heroic.

 

And I do not believe that this mechanic has to survive into the next generation of RTwPRPGs.

That's what I thought, there seems to be a horde of people out there that get butthurt about the existence of kiting gameplay and are fully willing to remove any corresponding tactical movement in combat to try and remove it.

 

In v257 Obsidian had also paused recovery time while moving because heaven forbid someone move around in combat in the attempt of actually doing something tactical.

 

You can still kite enemies around with Melee Engagement and with proper enemy AI targeting clauses - all you need is a bit of micro. There are a lot of people out there who do not find micromanagement fun and seem to want to remove as much of it as possible from games. I actually like moving my units around. I enjoy making tactical decisions in combat and changing my positioning and targeting based on new situations. There seems to be a crowd here who thinks combat is all about preparation and execution, as if it's this binary thing where you you make a choice and then execute that choice and then live with the consequences of that choice, with little to no room for error correction or adapting to unforseen circumstances. Only games with ****ty combat have that, and as primarily a competitive FPS and casual RTS/MOBA player, which are all about moment-to-moment decisions rather than strategy I have to vehemently oppose this notion.

 

The primary reason why I want Melee Engagement removed is because I want to be able to tactically retreat in combat. In turn I want encounters on Hard to be designed around the need for tactical retreating in combat. Josh said last year during the Vertical Slice that there was an encounter in the VS that only a handful of the developers could beat, and it required a bunch of tactical retreating (which I think is the Menpwgra encounter in the Dyrford Crossing). I understood that to mean that you had to switch aggro of your units, micro wounded ones back to heal and rinse and repeat and that sounded fantastic to me because that's what I enjoy doing. However now I see that since enemies have never done anything but target the first unit they see, he probably meant that all you had to do was send one guy in ... and lure them around while ranged units peppered them with spells and arbalests.

 

Melee Engagement does not and will not prevent kiting, all it does is hamstring melee units into binary standstill combat once they have reached engagement range. Every decision they have made regarding moving in combat has been in an effort to try and remove or penalize it, some of which are the most banal gameplay decisions I have ever seen.

 

Combat in Pillars of Eternity is currently not very fun and all it requires to beat is trial-and-error wombo combos. I found the Infinity Engine games to be more reactionary and more freeform. Sure there were exploits, sure there was imbalance, sure you could kite - but if you actually played fair, combat was really fun and it was enjoyable to control and move units around in combat.

 

Pillars of Eternity feels more like Neverwinter Nights 2 combat at double speed to me, it might look like an Infinity Engine game, the control scheme might resemble it, but the combat still has a ways to go to feel anything like it.

 

I don't agree that this is an example of engagement being broken. To me it felt like a demonstration of effective skirmish tactics. Your use of spears was deliberate, as they were a necessary component of this demonstration. That's the point of a reach weapon, and that's why they make such great skirmishing weapons. Had you been using daggers, this scenario would have been quite a bit different. I can't find anything wrong with the tactics and outcome of this video.

HAHAHAHAH YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING - the attacks are free of recovery time and rinse-repeat abusable, but I am not really surprised you think that based on the way you assign attributes to characters. Sorry but I think you'll be in the minority there.

 

By the way the use of a Pike and a Quarterstaff are not related to the range that those free attacks occured. I could have had a Dagger equipped and that would have been the range that the attacks triggered. Engagement is independent of weapon reach.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

Personally I have no problem with engagement, but the enemies also need to not be total morons.  As the system exists now the AI is too dumb for it to work.  They need to tighten up both to get this where it needs to be and perhaps remove engagement all together from non tank based characters.

[Sensuki]

I've already removed it from the game in a mod - I have no problem with doing that for release either, but the AI Targeting and probably the way melee attacks interact with moving targets need a lot of work for it to be remotely fun to play, with or without Melee Engagement.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I don't agree that this is an example of engagement being broken. To me it felt like a demonstration of effective skirmish tactics. Your use of spears was deliberate, as they were a necessary component of this demonstration. That's the point of a reach weapon, and that's why they make such great skirmishing weapons. Had you been using daggers, this scenario would have been quite a bit different. I can't find anything wrong with the tactics and outcome of this video.

HAHAHAHAH YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING - the attacks are free of recovery time and rinse-repeat abusable, but I am not really surprised you think that based on the way you assign attributes to characters. Sorry but I think you'll be in the minority there.

 

By the way the use of a Pike and a Quarterstaff are not related to the range that those free attacks occured. I could have had a Dagger equipped and that would have been the range that the attacks triggered. Engagement is independent of weapon reach.

 

Engagement is independent of weapon reach? Can you cite this? That would be an odd implementation--glaring actually. I haven't been able to observe one way or the other. Can you reference this? I'd be appreciative.

 

I don't see how your demonstration exhibited abuse though. You effectively kited that guard. In a 2:1 match-up, there is little an out-numbered melee opponent can do against skirmish tactics from comparable enemies. Each warrior not being pursued took advantage of the guard's exposure, harrying it with both damage and by impeding it. I don't know what kind of alternative you conceive for this scenario. You mention "slowing movement speed, stuns, disables...", but the guard only ever had one opportunity to strike BB fighter. How exactly would the guard have employed any sort of ability against your characters?

 

Engagement attacks serves to provide a penalty for casually waltzing around a combatant while simultaneously allowing warriors to impede enemy movement. Both of those are functioning. The attack has to be "free", because if it was subject to recovery, then engagement attacks would never execute due to some other action's cool-down. The only changes I would make to engagement, would be so that the engagement attacks still ignore recovery from other actions, but suffer recovery time from the engagement attack itself like any normal attack. I would also have the interrupt probability enhanced, whilst accuracy was downward pressured towards grazing.

[Sensuki]

Engagement is independent of weapon reach? Can you cite this? That would be an odd implementation--glaring actually. I haven't been able to observe one way or the other. Can you reference this? I'd be appreciative.

I'll make a new video.

 

I don't see how your demonstration exhibited abuse though. You effectively kited that guard. In a 2:1 match-up, there is little an out-numbered melee opponent can do against skirmish tactics from comparable enemies. Each warrior not being pursued took advantage of the guard's exposure, harrying it with both damage and by impeding it. I don't know what kind of alternative you conceive for this scenario. You mention "slowing movement speed, stuns, disables...", but the guard only ever had one opportunity to strike BB fighter. How exactly would the guard have employed any sort of ability against your characters?

 

Engagement attacks serves to provide a penalty for casually waltzing around a combatant while simultaneously allowing warriors to impede enemy movement. Both of those are functioning. The attack has to be "free", because if it was subject to recovery, then engagement attacks would never execute due to some other action's cool-down. The only changes I would make to engagement, would be so that the engagement attacks still ignore recovery from other actions, but suffer recovery time from the engagement attack itself like any normal attack. I would also have the interrupt probability enhanced, whilst accuracy was downward pressured towards grazing.

The attacks are coming from outside of weapon reach and they are FREE, instant and independent of recovery time. I don't give a fig for simulationist arguments. Let me record a video with a dagger.

[Sensuki]

Just did like 4-5 of them in a row HAHA, would have been easier with two Island Aumaua Fighters. Daggers and Stilettos have the same engagement range.

[Captain Shrek]

BTW.

 

I tried out your no engagement mod.

 

It quickly devolved into having to micro more than in the vanilla, as I had to rearrange every so often. Thankfully the AI is too dumb to take advantage of the lack of engagement and behaves stupidly as it refuses to follow up on DPS chars. 

 

So in short summary:

 

The good: The combat with the mod feels more like IWD. Kudos for that.

The bad: The AI is not made for this mod. Which means that only the PC benefits. 

[Sensuki]

Yeah if the AI was designed for no engagement it would feel pretty much exactly like the Infinity Engine game combat - literally one of the only things holding it back.

 

That's why I think they should use other methods of unit stickiness, because it just feels better.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

Here's the Dagger/Stiletto version