Thoughts from a casual gamer

[Shevek]

Sensuki: Considering that MANY folks have complained over the amount of active skill use (the last thing on Sawyer's tumbler I think), I have significant doubts that the devs will add more active skill use now that they got it right. If this were a TB game, I would be right there with you. However, with RTwP, design has to shift a bit with regards to active skill use.

 

Waffle: I will put it plainly. Easy is already easy. I am not against that. Its just already simple. There is nothing for them to change short of turning the game into a Lego title with ZERO difficulty. Part of the issue is that the beta takes place in the mid levels in a place that is off the main quest. Also, town combat is tuned up a bit since you can rest at the inn immediately. This makes that first fight in town pretty tough for a newbie. You ecperience should be different in the full game when you start at level 1 on the main quest areas.

[Sensuki]

They're adding more every patch with the talent system. It would simply be a matter of reworking some of the class abilities. Class abilities are optional now too

 

They don't have to be active either, they can be done passively or modally too, like I said - random example is to give Paladins an aura that slows enemy movement speed, want to stop a guy running away? toggle that on. Fighters could have a modal that does less damage but adds a secondary attack roll to slow or something like that.

 

You don't get a free invisible attack from a broken system, but you can control melee.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Razsius]

Some "casual" gamers sure have gotten pretty uppity about a guy who doesn't want PoE to be the erratic, visually stifling, trap choice induced mess that combat in this game currently is.  In a word, combat in this game right now is a joke.  Here's just a few of the many trap choices you can make:  Playing a Paladin (currently bugged), playing a wizard, playing a barbarian, playing a priest (lol buffs), using one-handed weapons (outside of rogues), using bows, using lvl 2 BB wizard spells, using any ability without the "proper" amount of accuracy, the list goes on.  Combat consists of hitting the space bar every other second or so and issuing the one of 3 useful commands you can give to each character and hoping they don't graze.  The masses would have a field day with this.  The reviewers of various magazines would probably cry tears of blood.

 

Waffle:
1. I find normal to be pretty damn easy. I havent bothered with easy but if its easier than normal I dont what to tell you.
2. Super casual gamers may not be the target audience for this game. They stated as much during the kickstarter.
3. Sensuki also said the game was easy. He just doesnt think its fun. He wants more tactical depth. That generally means harder to master, fyi. Reread the thread.

As for #3 Sensuki might have forgotten that he managed plenty of fail himself in his earliest beetle videos.  How's that prayer against restraint working for you regarding wood beetle poison Sen?

 

As for melee engagement, I came up with a system that rewarded: using your brain, tactical movement in and out of melee (without eating disengagement attacks) which also coincided with ability use, and proper use of "zones of control".  Unfortunately, though I am going to post it eventually and see what the beta testers think about it the chances of melee engagement being reworked are I expect in the "slim to none" category so i'm not sure it even matters.

[Shevek]

Sensuki: Well, they may add those abilities or something like that. Who knows. I just dont see engagement as this horrible flaw. I do think engagement attacks do a bit too much damage but there is no need to remove an entire mechanic when a simple tweak can address a concern.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Shevek

[nipsen]

 

On the difficulty I want to play I don't feel I should have to pay excruciating detail to damage mechanics, what weapons do and don't work on what enemies, flawless tactics and wise use of spells and abilities. This was a huge issue for me in v278, and it feels even worse in v333. I don't know what it was like in v301, because unfortunately it seems being at work is my new hobby.

 

My hope is that someone takes notice of this and tweaks a difficulty setting for folks like me. I have enough analysis and planning to do at work; I have neither the time or patience for it in what is supposed to be my relaxing activities. 

Welcome, first person on the forum who actually play games for fun :D

 

No.. I think you're pointing out something very critical with the entire beta project. That the real problem you run into as a player isn't balancing, it's not lack of mathematical damage models that have a perfectly linear scale in each 1 vs 1 duel (which we have very few of), it's not how many skills there are, it's not about which attributes mean what, or how the character is built. The game wouldn't "feel" fair if the damage distribution was a perfect 50% hit ratio, and so on. No matter how much you simplify all of the mechanics to get them more "predictable" - the fact remains that game as it is presented is brutal. That's really all there is to it.

 

So probably what's missing is an option to play the game without having to initially read pages and pages of rules, study the numbers, and then make a solid character - or, as it is now, a max/min build. To even survive the first fight on easy. I mean, it used to be possible early on to make any party survive ..three, four times longer by just knowing a tiny little bit about how the mechanics worked, exploiting the classes' strengths, and casting the right spells.

 

But that too is a high initial threshold - even if everyone in the beta accepted that you're probably supposed to pick up a couple of things during act1 (which starts with a tiny party, and where you get to whack small minions, and use one power at a time, etc) - you can't expect that people will play the beta, somehow understand all of the meta-game intuitively, and then somehow make in-depth mechanical design critiques.

 

That's not what we're reading here, and the first post in the thread probably is the most honest critique I've read on the forum.

 

In other words - I think that if "easy" really was "easy" - none of the feedback bs we've had around here would have happened.

 

(Another thing - the linear "level up and become overpowered if you're stuck" damage model system similar to what you have in BG is actually more difficult to understand for fresh video-game folks than something more.. action-movie like? Book-like..? Or compared to something a bit more narratively pleasing, I guess? Where a critical hit actually kills people, or where tanks can take more than one hit, things of that sort. "Ooh, you need to spam potions!". "Ooh, you need to pre-buff! And exploit how critters seem to ignore you for one round if you're kiting carefully!".. Things like that makes no sense to anyone who hasn't grown up on Baldur's Gate. 

 

I mean, try to understand that it doesn't make sense to people who play role-playing games on pen and paper either. If you put a good role-playing gamer in front of BG, he or she will likely think it's a bit dumb. That it is at best an ok, passable conversion of the pnp ruleset to a video-game - which is all it is. A system that incorporates some parts of the ad&d ruleset, with partial success. It's not the holy grail of either role-playing video-game mechanics, or of role-playing games.)

[Sensuki]

As for #3 Sensuki might have forgotten that he managed plenty of fail himself in his earliest beetle videos.  How's that prayer against restraint working for you regarding wood beetle poison Sen?

I will be the first to admit my earliest beetle videos are horrible, I said that in the thread I posted them in too. Those were produced in my first few combat scenarios in the game. I didn't play much v257 combat because it was pointless with the broken selection and commanding. I assume by the rolleyes you were being antagonistic though? 

 

Seen my latest ones?

 

I have 90 in game hours logged now, come a long way since then.

 

As for melee engagement, I came up with a system that rewarded: using your brain, tactical movement in and out of melee (without eating disengagement attacks) which also coincided with ability use, and proper use of "zones of control".  Unfortunately, though I am going to post it eventually and see what the beta testers think about it the chances of melee engagement being reworked are I expect in the "slim to none" category so i'm not sure it even matters.

What are your broad ideas because I am quite literally doing the same thing. I will not accept anything that takes over my characters like what happens in the current system though because I find that annoying as hell (MMO Aggro mechanics).

 

Currently the melee engagement system requires you to use actives (if you have them) to have a chance at dodging those bs attacks, pretty much like it was a turn based game. I reckon it should be the other way around, if you want to control combat you've got to use abilities to do it - that's more tactically interesting. And I was going to present a bunch of actives/modals/passives that could potentially fit the bill.

 

However first I have to write the "why Melee Engagement sucks" bit, got plenty of notes but I need some more videos of it, and my mod without it.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Kjaamor]

Some "casual" gamers sure have gotten pretty uppity about a guy who doesn't want PoE to be the erratic, visually stifling, trap choice induced mess that combat in this game currently is.  In a word, combat in this game right now is a joke.  Here's just a few of the many trap choices you can make:  Playing a Paladin (currently bugged), playing a wizard, playing a barbarian, playing a priest (lol buffs), using one-handed weapons (outside of rogues), using bows, using lvl 2 BB wizard spells, using any ability without the "proper" amount of accuracy, the list goes on.  Combat consists of hitting the space bar every other second or so and issuing the one of 3 useful commands you can give to each character and hoping they don't graze.  The masses would have a field day with this.  The reviewers of various magazines would probably cry tears of blood.

 

Surely it is more sensible to talk about the flaws in the features of the game rather than citing as traps evident bugs that will likely be fixed by the next patch. In other news, half of those traps you describe I use regular to make mincemeat out of enemies on hard!

 

...but, yeah, there are substantial problems and I do wonder if it was sensible to release the Beta in the various states that it has been in, because as of the latest patch it remains broken in its features as much as in its bugs.

[Lord Wafflebum]

@Shevek: But that's exactly what I'm worried about. The beta is supposed to be OE's prime example as to what to expect from the game. I actually didn't have an issue with the town combat. Once outside of town is where my main issue lies. So, I would say some of the game on Easy difficulty is where it should be. I can't figure out if the rest of the beta is ok because they've made the initial encounter outside of town is WAY too difficult. Also, the argument that this is made game is somewhat moot. They give us a bunch of free levels at the beginning of the beta to bring us up to the level we should be at for the area. Level balance exists, but challenge level does not mesh. 

 

I very much disagree that reducing encounter difficulty would turn this into a children's game. I think it does a disservice to the flow of the game that I should have to put the thought and effort into every single encounter that I need to for boss fights. I realize you look down on my gaming abilities, but I sure was not having these issues in v278. The only thing that slowed me down getting through the beta content in v278 were the numerous bugs. v333 on Easy feels like a much higher difficulty level.

[Sensuki]

Beetles are pretty easy but they do high per-hit damage, and the poison can rack up if you don't suppress it or kill the Wood Beetle causing it quickly.

 

The spider groups are a bit more problematic. They bypass 10DT (bug) and the ones that have Petrify are f'kd up. Also the one that casts the freezing pillar repeatedly over and over again is pretty funny. Last time it did it four times in a row and because of the bug where when FX is cast in v333 it creates a duplicate of it for every character hit by it I couldn't find the spider among the multiple persistent pillars Managed to kill it with my rogue at the end, but had 4 chars KO'd by the consecutive pillars.

 

The Rain Blights and Forest Lurkers are pretty gnarly too.

[Shevek]

Waffle:

1. I just ran through Dyrford Crossing on normal. I only pause to retarget when an enemy went down. I used no active abilities. I killed all the beetles, spiders, wyverns etc using auto attack and a chanters song. It was easy on normal. Easy is easier than normal. Therefore, easy is easier than easy already. If you dont want to use active abilities then build a party for passive attacking. Its a bit tough for a casual to figure this out in beta since start you out with a full party at mid level. In the full game you start at level 1.

 

2. The beta gameplay is not necessarily representative of the full game since it starts you off at the mid levels and off the main quest path (to avoid spoilers).

[Sensuki]

Waffle:

1. I just ran through Dyrford Crossing on normal. I only pause to retarget when an enemy went down. I used no active abilities. I killed all the beetles, spiders, wyverns etc using auto attack and a chanters song. It was easy on normal. Easy is easier than normal. Therefore, easy is easier than easy already. If you dont want to use active abilities then build a party for passive attacking. Its a bit tough for a casual to figure this out in beta since start you out with a full party at mid level. In the full game you start at level 1.

What's your party health afterwards though? The reason people put effort into the combat is to reduce the total amount of Health damage they take.

 

Sure I could go through auto-attacking as well, but if I put more effort in I lose less health. That's why I play like a spaz in my IWD playthrough, because I was trying to go as far as possible in the game before having to rest.

 

I also recall Josh saying that the content in the beta is underwhelming (as in not great encounters / pretty easy compared to other parts of the game I guess).

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

Just talking about the Crossing outdoor part. Not the spider cave or the statue cave. Almost everyones health is max. Fighter is down to about 80%. In the cave I do have to use some charms and the occaisonal heal. Still not pausing like crazy tho. I will try the spider cave ahain to see how I do with little pausing or skill use.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Shevek

[Sensuki]

Yeah I meant the outdoor bit. The reason why I pause when Fighting the beetles and stuff is because Fighters, Rogues etc have per-encounter abilities that you can use every encounter. Playing 'well' I guess is using those per-encounters as much as possible to reduce the incoming damage. I *always* cast the Priest interdiction, I *always* open with Crippling Strike (later the Rogue gets some other cool per-encounters) and I usually use Knockdown at least once.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

Ya. I used none of that just to prove a point. All outdoor guys dead. Almost everyone at max health. Fighter at 80%. Seriously, its not a difficult game.

[Lord Wafflebum]

@Shevek:

1. I have absolutely no idea how you're managing this. I do use abilities (although admittedly conservatively) and I would build a party that could handle my more passive style of play, but I have no idea how. I try not to be critical of the fact that there's very little guidance on how best to build up your character because it is the beta, but the fact that I've tried multiple builds and consistently failed seems to suggest a larger issue. 

 

2. If that's the case, then the beta doesn't seem like a worthwhile venture for OE. My understanding of the backer beta is to give backers a feeling for how the game is going to play. Did they say otherwise?

[Sensuki]

Ya. I used none of that just to prove a point. All outdoor guys dead. Almost everyone at max health. Fighter at 80%. Seriously, its not a difficult game.

Oh I think there's no Adra beetles on Normal (if that's the difficulty you're playing on). Adra Beetles hit like a truck, 40-80 damage or somewhere around there per hit.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

Well. Thats fine. Hard should be hard. I am just addressing Waffle here who thinks Easy is Hard.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Shevek

[Razsius]

I will be the first to admit my earliest beetle videos are horrible, I said that in the thread I posted them in too. Those were produced in my first few combat scenarios in the game. I didn't play much v257 combat because it was pointless with the broken selection and commanding. I assume by the rolleyes you were being antagonistic though? 

 

Seen my latest ones?

 

Sorry I wasn't really poking fun at you.  Was more poking at beta testers saying the BB is "easy."  Yea sure it's easy now but we've ALL made our fair share of idiot goofs to get to a level where it's now easy even on hard+ difficulties. It's high end meta knowledge requirement to even do what Shevak posted above.  Took me exactly 2 tries on hard to down Medreth's group in v333 and the first time I almost won (only the cleric was left).  Beat it after the second attempt with a paladin using one handed weapon style and a one-hander with a ton of health to spare.  Getting "good" like this requires quite a bit of study into very opaque game systems.  I think most of us forget that last part.

 

 

 

What are your broad ideas because I am quite literally doing the same thing. I will not accept anything that takes over my characters like what happens in the current system though because I find that annoying as hell (MMO Aggro mechanics).

 

Currently the melee engagement system requires you to use actives (if you have them) to have a chance at dodging those bs attacks, pretty much like it was a turn based game. I reckon it should be the other way around, if you want to control combat you've got to use abilities to do it - that's more tactically interesting. And I was going to present a bunch of actives/modals/passives that could potentially fit the bill.

 

However first I have to write the "why Melee Engagement sucks" bit, got plenty of notes but I need some more videos of it, and my mod without it.

 

I'll throw you a bone here Sen.  No aggro mechanics or things like that and simple play that you should be used to if you've played the IE games.  The first and broadest part of the "rework" is for multiple targets to be able to engage a single one and for it to play into disengagement as well.  So if you say have a boss engaged to your fighter and you need to run your fighter out you send in a melee to engage the boss and the fighter can now run without eating disengagement damage (though he might still die to normal attacks, abilities, etc.).  What about multiple enemies?  Don't worry I have ideas for those as well but with the above you should be able to easily understand how the system is suddenly a whole lot less limiting.  More on all this later as i'm a slower typer and I might as well post it in whole at some point and get everyone's thoughts.

 

Note: I dislike AoO myself in real time games but I don't think it's going anywhere so I don't consider complete removal an option.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Razsius

[Lord Wafflebum]

@Razsius: Thank you. That's what I've suspected from Shevek and I being unable to come to any sort of terms of agreement. I truly wish I had more time to play and learn the systems, but I simply don't. It's a factor I think needs to be taken into account for those of us that need Easy difficulty.

[Shevek]

Waffle:

You noy knowing how to build a passive party is normal since they plopped you into beta at the mid levels with a bunch of characters. Beta is not casual friendy.

 

Do this:

Make a barbarian. Use a two hander. Get feats that make your aoe attacks accurate and give you deflection for using a two hander - passive bonuses. Focus on int and might. Pick a background where you start with a 2 hander. Stick priests heavy armor on him. Give him priest's 2 handed hammer as backup for armored guys.

 

Take xbow from fighter. Give it to priest. Take big shield from priest and give it to fighter. Have fighter use priests one handed hammer too. Have rogue use a bow. Sell off other rogue melee weapons. Sell of wizard melee weapons.

 

Buy a new adventurer. Get a chanter. Get the background where you get a poleaxe. Give chanter wizards armor. Use chanter song that gives fire dmg. Focus on resolve, int, and dex.

 

Now kill the town guy. Then kill off your wizard - not passive friendly and aoe sucks. Get a cypher. Make him a WOOD elf with high resolve and per. Turn in quest and level everyone up. Now go kill the rest of the beta with your passive combat party.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Shevek

[Sensuki]

I'll throw you a bone here Sen.  No aggro mechanics or things like that and simple play that you should be used to if you've played the IE games.  The first and broadest part of the "rework" is for multiple targets to be able to engage a single one and for it to play into disengagement as well.  So if you say have a boss engaged to your fighter and you need to run your fighter out you send in a melee to engage the boss and the fighter can now run without eating disengagement damage (though he might still die to normal attacks, abilities, etc.).  What about multiple enemies?  Don't worry I have ideas for those as well but with the above you should be able to easily understand how the system is suddenly a whole lot less limiting.  More on all this later as i'm a slower typer and I might as well post it in whole at some point and get everyone's thoughts.

 

Note: I dislike AoO myself in real time games but I don't think it's going anywhere so I don't consider complete removal an option.

Yeah I've never actually lost to Medreth, but I just reload when one of my characters gets KO'd because to me that's a loss. Because v333 was so different from v301 and I was so used to just auto attacking stuff doing nothing it was a bit of a cold shower like "oh I actually have to try now". Eventually I worked out how to easily beat it, just had to read that the Monk was dealing 120 damage per hit if I so much as hit him once with anything.

 

Here's my idea anyway:

 

I don't like either of the components of Melee Engagement - targeting clauses that make your units attack enemies when engaged or vice versa, and I don't like the disengagement attack system. It's a poor attempt at implementing a turn-based system in real-time combat. So I just don't think Engagement should be a concept. The AI targeting clauses should be sensible and classes that 'should' have stickiness should be given passive/modal/active abilities to be sticky. Enemies probably aren't going to run away/move around much but they could stuff to give the player a harder time.

 

When Melee Engagement is removed (tried it by modding it) it feels way more like playing an IE game because you can freely maneuver around. However there's a couple of things that need to be done in order to make it feel better. Currently the interaction between attacks and moving targets is not very good, and there are basically no AI targeting clauses outside of 'first enemy sighted' or 'enemy that attacked me first'. IE style targeting (from HoW or IWD2 or BG2) combined with some abilities for players to control melee should be fine, and those abilities while also being used to make units sticky also have other uses, such as being able to safely get away and will also likely create interesting chain combos and stuff like that.

 

Have you seen my videos showing how broken Engagement is? I think we can make a case personally because for me it's like the #1 thing making it not play like an Infinity Engine game. I know heaps of people that don't like it as well. There's a couple of vocal forumites here that do though. Most people seem to be more concerned about being able to make the enemy attack them, and that's easy to do with targeting clauses. Right now it's actively working against the player though.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Lord Wafflebum]

@Shevek:

Thanks for the advice, I'll try exactly that.

[Sensuki]

I wouldn't focus on INT and MIG I'd make sure you max Perception first, tbh

 

CON also gives more survival than INT does for Barbarians, because they have a low deflection anyway. Deflection is only better for survival than CON if Deflection is already quite a bit better than enemy ACC, which is pretty much never in v333.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

One final bit of advice. Lead with your tank. He had a big shield. Let enemies target him then dog pile one enemy at a time.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Shevek

[prodigydancer]

Note: I dislike AoO myself in real time games but I don't think it's going anywhere so I don't consider complete removal an option.

I think that keeping the engagement system is not a sane option.

 

And when people say "well it's just an AoO after all, what's so wrong about it?" it's basically not looking at the whole picture. You can't detach melee engagement from the rest of combat system and defend it on the ground that there's nothing wrong with the concept itself. Eating an AoO is a really big deal in PoE not because AoO is a bad concept but because of how health/endurance and resting supplies systems make health a very limited and precious resource.

Edited November 9, 2014 by prodigydancer