My thoughts on the issues with combat systems

[Sensuki]

I never played the Infinity Engine games like that, not even on my earliest playthroughs :/

[Infinitron]

Yeah, it's pretty horrible, isn't it? Makes you wonder how Obsidian's internal playtesters play the game.

[Cubiq]

Sensuki, do you remember which post talks about your interrupt mechanic?

You mentioned it in the OP and i want to see what you guys came up with.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Cubiq

[Sensuki]

Which one sorry?

 

I didn't propose a change to interrupts, just that they were removed from attributes in favor of range - which I think is bad.

[Cubiq]

Interrupts

 

I still think that the attribute system we proposed in our paper has some advantages over the current one.

This paper i mean, or post or video or whatever it is.

[Doppelschwert]

Thanks for the write up, although I disagree on many levels.

 

I'm not sure on the attack resolution. Capping critical hits and misses is a good suggestion, but I think with proper numbers one should be able where it is not necessary. So I don't think it's a systemic issue, but you're solution takes care of it anyway, so that's fine by me.

 

Regarding the armor system, I think that using DR all the way through is possible to adress the issue, but it is as infinitron says, its pretty boring from a mathematical point of view. Again, I think proper scaling is a problem here which could be adressed instead. At the moment, I feel like DT is not properly balanced against base damage of actions in the first place, which is a problem in itself, regardless of damage bonus.

One way to adress this is to make DT chance based, like in DOTA2. You have a certain amount of DT, but only a 75% (I'm guessing here) chance to actually use it. Quality of your armor increases the chance, but not the DT itself. Give some talents in armor usage that increases the chance further. You still have an incentive to use larger weapons instead of small ones against armor, but the smaller ones don't suck so hard anymore consistently. The effect is that the DT range is smaller (as it doesn't scale with quality of gear) so you can make the damage values of basic actions smaller as well. I think this would help while still having tactical choices. Shields can stay the way they are, but be buffed.

 

I agree that attributes need more impact, but I think the actual system is fine when they properly buff the numbers. Making 8 the baseline is an arbitrary and not useful change imo as you can just shuffle the base values around such that the effect is the same while 10 still is the zero point. Given that we live in decimal world, I think 10 should remain the zero point.

 

That is all for now.

[archangel979]

How about increased accuracy gives a bonus vs DT instead of higher critical chances? Then give an accuracy bonus to smaller faster weapons. Then you can make fast and high accuracy characters that have low damage weapons but can still go through higher DT because instead of crazy criticals they ignore parts of DT fairly often.

Vs enemies with bad armor they don't do extra as they would not in RL (big sword does more damage than a small dagger vs unarmored target). It also simulates nicely how in movies those with fast weapons find holes in armor (which is represented by increased accuracy).

 

To go into more detail, +1 accuracy over defense does not give more +1% critical chance but +1% to ignore half DT of target. So you get 5% crit chance and rest of accuracy increase goes into hit + chance to ignore half DT value.

Edited November 3, 2014 by archangel979

[Sensuki]

Thanks for the write up, although I disagree on many levels.

 

snip

I am a DotA 2 player, but I don't think that Josh/Obsidian would be interested in using a PRNG chance for armor to actually work. I was thinking about that when I proposed moving DT to shields because that's how Stout Shield/PMS/Vanguard works in DotA/DotA 2

 

You will however recall that DotA 2 has percentile armor, and it uses the formulas I mentioned on page 1 to determine armor - the DotA 2 armor system is quite interesting actually, even though it is percentile.

 

For positive Armor, DR =((armor)*0.06)/(1+0.06*(armor))

For negative Armor, its damage increase = 2-0.94^(-armor) since you take more damage for negative armor scores.

I just quoted these as an example of a more interesting percentile armor formula the devs could look at as a reference. But flat DR may be easier to balance / understand.

 

I also stated that if damage bonuses were integers rather than percentages, the current system would be fine - as that's how it worked in the Fallouts, so we know that it can work in that instance.

 

I don't think there will be a range of ACC-DEF where there will be proper numbers. Since content in PE does not scale, the player will be able to attempt said content at basically any level they please, if it is not crit path content. This creates situations where player ACC/DEF will be either way higher or way lower than enemy ACC/DEF and in those situations, the player will either mow through the content getting consistent critical hits and lollerskating away at the difficulty, but when they try and go up against higher level content, they'll be one-shotted by enemies scoring critical hits very often.

 

Making crits normalized to the dice roll would help alleviate these extremities.

 

Changing attributes from the 10 to 8 range is not an arbitrary change. It gives players more headroom for positive bonuses, while still keeping the plus and minus system.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Sensuki

[Fiebras]

I think a portion of the problems with combat are the bugs/glitches bot in the combat itself as in the abilities, as well as the creatures not having been updated to the new systems and mechanics.

 

Nonetheless:

 

Attack Resolution: I agree that it feels like it needs tweaking (not so much "balancing") but the problem with "certain enemies being really really hard to damage with physical attacks lategame" can be easily solved by having said enemies have a weakness to other damage types. Not so much venturing into "rock papers scissors" territory but having a campaign with enough varied enemy types so as to make it a good idea (but not the only only solution) to have a varied party composition as oposed to 3 Rouges/Ciphers, 2 Fighters/Barbarians and a Priest/Druid.

I think this is just a "sit down one afternoon and then just mechanically work through it" problem thats gonna get fixed as a natural part of development.

 

Armor System: I disagree that they should remove DT unless they are aiming for a more simplistic system. DT + DR are good as a pair as it allows you to have a wider variety of options when designing enemies and a such, more interesting. A fire elemental can have 200% DR to burn damage -100% to freeze damage and have a DT that allows fighters to hit it ocasionally, whith the added effect of taking burn damage with every hit.

Also, they really ought to label the weapons speeds properly in the tooltips as everything is currently "average" speed which lends itself to confussion for those that havent looked at the core files.

I find the current armor system rather obtuse for new players but quite understandable once you work it out. And we dont need more +/-% values please those are quite obtuse unless we are talking about DR.

 

Shields: DT and DR on shields would be interesting. Its not uncommon for a shield in a fantasy setting to block say dragonfire. We havent seen much beyond the basic shields so i would expect there to already be such shields planned.

 

Attributes: In BG your CON was such a big deal. You had your fighters with 55 hp while your wizards had like 14 for most of the game. Atributtes felt like they had such a huge impact. In PoE everyone has like 200+ hp at level five. When everything is big numbers small increments feel like less of a big deal. As you say, the atributes arent as important as their secondary effect/bonus (+ accuracy, + defflection); an effect/bonus that you can obtain very easily and in MUCH larger amounts through items and talents/skills.

 

The attribute system feels like its is just there to provide a base template of a character which can evolve into being whatever through all the options available through the game (enchanting, skills, traits, trainers, consumables, buffs, etc.), with its most notable impact being at the very start when you are level 1. I think its an acceptable compromise to be able to reach the design goal of "every build viable" even if it ends up making atributes feel diluted compared to IE games. Its just a matter of thinking about it from another angle.

 

On the other hand it IS sorta a big deal when you consider most of the bonuses it gives you are % based. That means the more you go through the game and add base integrers to benefit from/be hurt by that +/-% you will really feel the impact of those starting choices though by how much it remains to be seen in the full game. Its sorta like Path of Exile were all the increments you get are % based with just a few static integrers spread around the skill tree to the point were from a sinle +80 hp node you are getting about 1000 hp later on. I think thats one of the angles they are going for.

 

Interrupts: I have never noticed much about interrupts except for the wizard spell that allows you to interrupt. I think they can be pretty powerful if built around and theres already some new talents/skills/traits that make interrupt builds more viable but otherwise have no strong opinions on it.

 

 

I never played the Infinity Engine games like that, not even on my earliest playthroughs :/

Nonetheless theres many people that played like that quite a bit and will probably play like that in PoE. Its enough for Obsidian to consider it. Just like there are people that will use only the slow mo wile others wont use pause or slow mo at all. Its quite a number of ways Obsidian has given to experience the game and combat.

Though with so many ways to experience it, its gonna be hard to tweak it so that everything feels right.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Fiebras

[prodigydancer]

I never played the Infinity Engine games like that, not even on my earliest playthroughs :/

Heh. I remember playing IE games like that. I was a total RPG noob, I didn't know anything about D&D and had to google what that "d" letter in weapon descriptions stood for. In DA:O I was also pausing a lot (on Nightmare) until maybe level 10. DA2 on Nightmare was one huge pausefest.

[Sensuki]

I think a portion of the problems with combat are the bugs/glitches bot in the combat itself as in the abilities, as well as the creatures not having been updated to the new systems and mechanics.

 

Nonetheless:

 

Attack Resolution: I agree that it feels like it needs tweaking (not so much "balancing") but the problem with "certain enemies being really really hard to damage with physical attacks lategame" can be easily solved by having said enemies have a weakness to other damage types.

The issue I described has NOTHING to do with Damage Types. Damage Types assumes that you can actually hit the enemies. If their accuracy and defenses are a lot higher than yours, then you're going to be missing often and they're going to be scoring consistent critical hits on you - or vice versa, if they had worse accuracy/defenses than the party. This is because the current Attack Resolution is extreme at both ends. So your idea here would not make a lick of a difference.

 

Armor System: I disagree that they should remove DT unless they are aiming for a more simplistic system. DT + DR are good as a pair as it allows you to have a wider variety of options when designing enemies and a such, more interesting. A fire elemental can have 200% DR to burn damage -100% to freeze damage and have a DT that allows fighters to hit it ocasionally, whith the added effect of taking burn damage with every hit.

Once again, missing the point. DT and DR was used in the Fallouts, and it was fine because damage bonuses were dealt in integers rather than percentages, so bonuses to damage scaled well against DT. The system is more akin to the turn-based Fallout games (1/2/Tactics) however and those games did not have to deal with percentile increases to real time attack speed. This system does, and DT is what makes raw attack speed not very good, because for each extra attack you make, you are opposing DT again and thus increasing the effective DT of the target (this is something that Matt and I examined in our attribute paper).

 

I have stated that the current system could work with integer damage bonuses, or it could work with DR only. I don't think the devs will be able to get it to feel good with the current system, it will be a balancing nightmare IMO. The recommendation was based upon the fact that if they make one of those two changes, it would be MUCH EASIER for them to get it right IMO.

 

Also, they really ought to label the weapons speeds properly in the tooltips as everything is currently "average" speed which lends itself to confussion for those that havent looked at the core files.

Absolutely. Been calling for this for a long time. They need to show the values in seconds and milliseconds.

 

I find the current armor system rather obtuse for new players but quite understandable once you work it out. And we dont need more +/-% values please those are quite obtuse unless we are talking about DR.

Don't know who you're talking at there (me or Obsidian) with the second sentence, but yes the armor system is easier to understand once you learn how it works.

 

Shields: DT and DR on shields would be interesting. Its not uncommon for a shield in a fantasy setting to block say dragonfire. We havent seen much beyond the basic shields so i would expect there to alreasy be such shields planned.

I have seen beyond the basic shields because I've summoned every item in the game into my inventory to check for art bugs / see what they do. The problem is that basic shields are terrible. I also said only DT on shields, not DR. That suggestion was also in conjunction with the suggested armor change.

 

 

Interrupts: I have never noticed much about interrupts except for the wizard spell that allows you to interrupt. I think they can be pretty powerful if built around and theres already some new talents/skills/traits that make interrupt builds more viable but otherwise have no strong opinions on it.

There's one new talent. I actually don't think it's working properly either. I just checked how the file is set up in Unity and it looks to be missing something. I will be able to test it in the game to see if it's working shortly. I am going through all of the Talents and figuring out what they actually do, because the descriptions more often than not do not show the actual values.

 

 

Nonetheless theres many people that played like that quite a bit and will probably play like that in PoE.

That's not the point though. If good/experienced players are pausing very often in combat, then new players are going to hate it. Many of the people on the RPGCodex that are not as familiar as I am have literally given up because they think the combat is that terrible. If any of my RL friends tried to play this - they would hate it, and these are people that played the Infinity Engine games. While they are not necessarily good at them, they enjoyed them. It might be okay for the people that use the slow feature or auto-pause - but for people playing on the default speed (you know the speed that it's supposed to be balanced for) it's pretty horrible at the moment.

 

My suggestions don't touch speed because I think there's more important issues than speed that need to be fixed before action speed is looked into. Movement speed should be looked at right away, but action speed should be left until later IMO.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

This paper i mean, or post or video or whatever it is.

Oh right - this one

[Fiebras]

The issue I described has NOTHING to do with Damage Types. Damage Types assumes that you can actually hit the enemies. If their accuracy and defenses are a lot higher than yours, then you're going to be missing often and they're going to be scoring consistent critical hits on you - or vice versa, if they had worse accuracy/defenses than the party. This is because the current Attack Resolution is extreme at both ends. So your idea here would not make a lick of a difference.

 

I worded it poorly. Theres other defenses beyond Deflecton like Fortitude, Reflexes and Resolve. You already have attacks that attack specific defenses. The point being: for enemies that are hard to hit with a certain attack, they should be able to be easily hit with another type of attack. Though I may be looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

 

 

Once again, missing the point. DT and DR was used in the Fallouts, and it was fine because damage bonuses were dealt in integers rather than percentages, so bonuses to damage scaled well against DT. The system is more akin to the turn-based Fallout games (1/2/Tactics) however and those games did not have to deal with percentile increases to real time attack speed. This system does, and DT is what makes raw attack speed not very good, because for each extra attack you make, you are opposing DT again and thus increasing the effective DT of the target (this is something that Matt and I examined in our attribute paper).

 

Fair enough, but I still dont see how removing DT fixes the problem. Also, I can see how extra attack speed would be good if you are making an interrupt build or a build that relies on applying a certain attack modifier/ on-hit-chance effect several times.

 

 

There's one new talent. I actually don't think it's working properly either. I just checked how the file is set up in Unity and it looks to be missing something. I will be able to test it in the game to see if it's working shortly. I am going through all of the Talents and figuring out what they actually do, because the descriptions more often than not do not show the actual values.

Yeah, many skills and traits not showing their value makes it diffucult to test and understand them properly. This also extends to items.

About Shields: I think DR on certain shields would be good if only for the tactical options.

 

 

That's not the point though. If good/experienced players are pausing very often in combat, then new players are going to hate it. Many of the people on the RPGCodex that are not as familiar as I am have literally given up because they think the combat is that terrible. If any of my RL friends tried to play this - they would hate it, and these are people that played the Infinity Engine games. While they are not necessarily good at them, they enjoyed them. It might be okay for the people that use the slow feature or auto-pause - but for people playing on the default speed (you know the speed tha

t it's supposed to be balanced for) it's pretty horrible at the moment.

 

Just because some players hate it doesnt mean others will.

Nonetheless I agree that the current default speed is horrible, but I think its not so much the speed as much as the amount of things you have to take in and decide at every character´s combat round (for which the default speed is too fast).  I can see myself getting bored/saturated of pausing 5-10+ times every encounter or watching every encounter in slow-mo (though I find slow-mo more tolerable than pausing as its not a clear stop to the action). So yeah, it needs tweaking.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

That's not the point though. If good/experienced players are pausing very often in combat, then new players are going to hate it. Many of the people on the RPGCodex that are not as familiar as I am have literally given up because they think the combat is that terrible. If any of my RL friends tried to play this - they would hate it, and these are people that played the Infinity Engine games. While they are not necessarily good at them, they enjoyed them. It might be okay for the people that use the slow feature or auto-pause - but for people playing on the default speed (you know the speed that it's supposed to be balanced for) it's pretty horrible at the moment.

 

 

^This times a thousand! If this isn't fixed, combat will be pretty disastrous, and I say that with decades of all sorts of CRPGs under my belt.

[Sensuki]

I worded it poorly. Theres other defenses beyond Deflecton like Fortitude, Reflexes and Resolve. You already have attacks that attack specific defenses. The point being: for enemies that are hard to hit with a certain attack, they should be able to be easily hit with another type of attack. Though I may be looking at the problem from the wrong angle.

Your suggestion wouldn't work really. It would partially address issues with party members struggling to hit higher than level creatures/enemies, but it wouldn't address the fact that enemies would be critting you often - as they currently can do in the beta. Wind Blight can book half of my characters with 150 damage criticals from some AoE ability that procs often, because the creature's accuracy vastly exceeds many of my character's defenses. Also what if those enemies are humanoid enemies with classes? That would mean that 'they would have to break the rules' where rather than following the rules of the system they would be randomly tougher/weaker and not follow the rules. This is something that players do not enjoy (see complaints about Amelyssan the Black in ToB not being affected by Time Stop etc) and not something Josh would go for because he is an advocate of unified mechanics.

 

I think moving crits to natural roll of the dice would fix the issue. My case would be stronger with some math to go with it, but I've got to wait Matt516 to have some free time where he feels like helping

 

Fair enough, but I still dont see how removing DT fixes the problem.

If armor was DT only, it would fix the issues with faster, less damaging weapons and spells being bad against armor, because they would not suffer from the effective DT increase by being a 'fast' attack. Against flat DR, all weapons and spells would suffer the same loss of damage, assuming they are opposing the standard DR value. Let's say Plate Armor has 50% DR. Let's say Daggers do 6-8 damage and can attack three times before a Greatsword can attack once, but a Great Sword does 18-24 damage. Both Dagger and Greatsword can deal 18-24 damage in that time span, and they would both suffer 50% damage reduction against plate armor. That is EASY to balance.

 

Currently the formulas are much harder because of DT. Weapon damage ranges are balanced against 0 DT, which makes 1H Fast and 1H Normal weapons bad against any DT at all, unless you are using a Stiletto or a Mace. 2H weapons are currently king. Arbalests and Guns are far better than bows and implements. All because of DT.

 

 

Also, I can see how extra attack speed would be good if you are making an interrupt build or a build that relies on applying a certain attack modifier/ on-hit-chance effect several times.

Absolutely, although currently on-hit effects are pretty OP. You only need to score a Graze with Deep Wounds for it to apply, so you're better off just equipping dual stilettos and going to town with it (same with other DoTs). That needs to be fixed, but it's unrelated to this issue. Interrupts would be more useful if characters attack faster, and that is a benefit of attack speed. However faster weapons have lower interrupt rates than medium ones do etc.

 

Yeah, many skills and traits not showing their value makes it diffucult to test and understand them properly.

My last effort before I go to sleep today will be to get a thread up about Talents. I'm going through every Talent, finding out what it does and then I'm going to test for broken ones.

 

Just because some players hate it doesnt mean others will.

Nonetheless I agree that the current default speed is horrible, but I think its not so much the speed as much as the amount of things you have to take in and decide at every character´s combat round (for which the default speed is too fast).  I can see myself getting bored/saturated of pausing 5-10+ times every encounter or watching every encounter in slow-mo (though I find slow-mo more tolerable than pausing as its not a clear stop to the action). So yeah, it needs tweaking.

That's one of the reasons why I haven't included any suggestions about the speed, because I think there are other issues that need to be fixed first before speed is looked at. Movement speed though - needs to be looked at right away.

[Lychnidos]

 

I also stated that if damage bonuses were integers rather than percentages, the current system would be fine - as that's how it worked in the Fallouts, so we know that it can work in that instance.

 

 

Wouldn't an additive damage bonuses make Might disproportionately more useful for low damage/high speed weapons compared to high damage/low speed ones? Though that could create an interesting dynamism, because then if you want to use a high damage/low speed weapon it'll most likely be more useful switch to Dexterity.

[Sensuki]

Possibly, although at least you know you're still getting the same flat damage increase Most other games use integers for damage and either integers or percentiles for armor. Not many use flat percentiles for every damage increase for _everything_

[Doppelschwert]

I am a DotA 2 player, but I don't think that Josh/Obsidian would be interested in using a PRNG chance for armor to actually work. I was thinking about that when I proposed moving DT to shields because that's how Stout Shield/PMS/Vanguard works in DotA/DotA 2

 

You will however recall that DotA 2 has percentile armor, and it uses the formulas I mentioned on page 1 to determine armor - the DotA 2 armor system is quite interesting actually, even though it is percentile.

 

For positive Armor, DR =((armor)*0.06)/(1+0.06*(armor))

For negative Armor, its damage increase = 2-0.94^(-armor) since you take more damage for negative armor scores.

I just quoted these as an example of a more interesting percentile armor formula the devs could look at as a reference. But flat DR may be easier to balance / understand.

 

I also stated that if damage bonuses were integers rather than percentages, the current system would be fine - as that's how it worked in the Fallouts, so we know that it can work in that instance.

 

I don't think there will be a range of ACC-DEF where there will be proper numbers. Since content in PE does not scale, the player will be able to attempt said content at basically any level they please, if it is not crit path content. This creates situations where player ACC/DEF will be either way higher or way lower than enemy ACC/DEF and in those situations, the player will either mow through the content getting consistent critical hits and lollerskating away at the difficulty, but when they try and go up against higher level content, they'll be one-shotted by enemies scoring critical hits very often.

 

Making crits normalized to the dice roll would help alleviate these extremities.

 

Changing attributes from the 10 to 8 range is not an arbitrary change. It gives players more headroom for positive bonuses, while still keeping the plus and minus system.

 

 

Yeah, I recognized the formulas. But to be honest, I think from a mathematical point of view, they are pretty boring. Basically, the formula just describes just a linear growth of effective health. For example, you can interpret a 50% DR into 200% effective health, and if you make DR dependent on armor like in the dota formula you quoted, then you get that basically every point in armor increases your effective health by const% (if anyone cares for the details, I could deduce this fact). You could make armor grant constitution and the effect would be exactly the same from a mechanical point of view. I don't like this kind of armor because its a sham in a sense. It's easy to balance, but hard to understand what is actually going on.

 

I also don't think the fallouts were properly balanced, especially regarding armor, but YMMV.

 

Regarding the difference in ACC/DEF, that is certainly a problem, but DnD can pull it of as well, so I don't see why it couldn't work with some proper balancing. If over the course of 10 levels, your ACC only increases by 50 points, then there is a lot of room for actually tweaking. If you have a range of -15 to +15 around a baseline, which translates to 6 levels in this scenario, then the crit chance is ok. I think the problem lies more in the inflated numbers of accessible buffs to accuracy. But yeah, your solution with caps is fine either way - I'm actually asking for both, not for one or the other.

[Sensuki]

I also don't think the fallouts were properly balanced, especially regarding armor, but YMMV.

I am far from a Fallout expert. I was just pointing out that they are basically using the same system here except with a different variable that I think makes it even harder to balance.

 

Regarding the difference in ACC/DEF, that is certainly a problem, but DnD can pull it of as well, so I don't see why it couldn't work with some proper balancing. If over the course of 10 levels, your ACC only increases by 50 points, then there is a lot of room for actually tweaking. If you have a range of -15 to +15 around a baseline, which translates to 6 levels in this scenario, then the crit chance is ok. I think the problem lies more in the inflated numbers of accessible buffs to accuracy. But yeah, your solution with caps is fine either way - I'm actually asking for both, not for one or the other.

Your ACC will increase by 33 from class bonuses at maximum level, as currently you get +3 per level. Then there's also your Starting Accuracy, Perception score, any talents/weapon bonuses/buffs etc that alter that and then the Attack Resolution conversion formulas, like the Hearth Orlan's Hit to Crit if attacking same target as an ally. Even though there is buff suppression, it is still theoretically possible to get very high accuracy values.

 

I personally don't think proper balancing will smooth out the edge case issues where party accuracy/defense is heaps lower or heaps higher than enemy acc/def, and that's why I proposed making crits rely on the die roll, as that would smooth out those edge cases, and make the game more fun IMO. Crits would also become more exciting/cool.

Edited November 3, 2014 by Sensuki

[Doppelschwert]

Yeah, I agree with that.

[tdphys]

I'd really like to back up Sensuki's critical hit resolution idea here... 

 

1.  One of the major things that normalizing the ciritical hit chance would do is detach perception from getting crits, which would allow room to put modifiying

the crit range on another stat for balancing purposes ( int I'd propose)

 

2.  Actually having a capped critical hit chance, rather then allowing high-per characters to always crit,  will give crit focused characters a reason to pick

dexterity ( agility? ) to increase the frequency , imho,  make it a valid stat choice.

 

3.  It would allow higher crit bonuses, giving that kind of sneaky, high damage, high risk play style that some (perhaps me?) like to play.   Using mechanics to get a better crit chance (attack from behind?  other character is engaged) requires more tactical thought. 

 

4.  It would give more strategic decisions in character building and tactical decisions in combat since there would be two paths to damage, crits and regular hits.      you'd need to rely on high crit against soloish monsters with high DT,  and good hitting for mobs of low DT creeps.

 

5.  Ultimately, balancing would be easier, since you can effectively tighten damage range per minute based on the difference between character levels/  differences in Per/ Def  etc..  

[Hiro Protagonist II]

That's not the point though. If good/experienced players are pausing very often in combat, then new players are going to hate it. Many of the people on the RPGCodex that are not as familiar as I am have literally given up because they think the combat is that terrible. If any of my RL friends tried to play this - they would hate it, and these are people that played the Infinity Engine games. While they are not necessarily good at them, they enjoyed them. It might be okay for the people that use the slow feature or auto-pause - but for people playing on the default speed (you know the speed that it's supposed to be balanced for) it's pretty horrible at the moment.

 

Yep. And we're experiencing this with trash mobs like beetles let alone all the other enemies in the game.

[Gladiuss8@gmail.com]

I'm pretty sure that Sensuki will enjoy making those suggestions more than the actual game ;d

[Karkarov]

Like I said, haven't done the maths. Have to wait a while for Matt to become free again, so I thought I'd just put this out there to see if it was worth looking into.

In all honesty if I could change stats how I wanted them to be the 10 is 0 would stay, Int would go back to what it was, Resolve would pick up Deflection and give a bigger buff to Will Defense, Dex would get back Accuracy and keep action speed just make it .5% per point, accuracy would lose the crit thing, Perception would get interrupt back but also gain a crit bonus to compensate for it's removal from Dex, Might and Con would be unchanged, Range bonus would be dropped, the interrupt talent would get slightly nerfed to compensate for perception having interrupt again but not too much, and lastly a resist interrupt talent would be put in as well.

[Sensuki]

I'm pretty sure the party moves slower in this version ? Enemies still move as fast (if not faster), but party members seem to move slower.