Combat Vid - Hard with a Custom Party

[Captain Shrek]

 

Still, I remain adamant on (and I sorta heard in your tone while playing it that you do agree to some degree), that this kind of combat isn't much fun.

Why?

-For it to work, you need to repeat the same tank(s) at front, and ranged char(s) at back system all the way

-Baddies move too fast

-You get jumbled melee messes, and with the bright spell FX on top, you can hardly see what's going on

-Imagine playing a wizard with almost no armour, dual-wielding stilettos at the front, and then a fighter with a bow at the back. Well, PoE isn't very kind to those kind of set-ups, especially not when you level up and pick abilities and skills.

 

 

Well, I see your points Indira, but I agree with Shevek. The game is pretty much "doable" with his builds without much micro. And that is GREAT! 

 

What you are asking for is what Josh was initially proposing, with the flexible builds. I think that was never a very reasonable view. You CAN build wizards that can melee and can take damage, but that makes the game too much micro and you lose a lot of time simply pausing to get things right.  

 

I just felt that battle fainting was a bit too gamey for my taste (as it was in NWN and NWN2 and DA games) but I think we can all pass that as a quirk. 

 

@Shevek.

 

Nicely done.  That was one of the better uses of tanks I have seen in a while. 

What would you say about a barbarian build focused not on damage but rather on AOE + interrupt? Would that be even better as a tank than a Fighter? You could then use the fighter to keep the enemy bosses down. 

[Shevek]

Shrek:

-I don't think the Barb's Carnage attacks interrupt that much. I take interrupting blows and accurate carnage but I don't see what many interrupts happening.

-I don't think the Barb can tank very well since his deflection is so extremely poor and he doesnt have a defensive modal like the Fighter. I think he makes a good dps/offtank though thanks to his endurance regen clicky.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Captain Shrek: I certainly agree with that. In fact, with a few tweaks, we would have a combat system that's playable and decently enjoyable.

I also agree with your point that Josh somehow dropped the goal of very flexible builds.

And personally, battle fainting is weird and very gamey, but still, I truly loved the NWN2 series anyways, including parts of its combat. For me, the character building was the part that was most fun in that series, aside from the obvious, the great story and companions in MotB.

 

I just don't want to settle on builds and classes and spell selections that are too barebone and simplistic. If we have a chance to voice the opinion that we want more ofit, we may get it. Look at what happened with all of the specialisations we got from Josh. That was thanks to the community!

[Sensuki]

What specializations?

[Shevek]

Captain Shrek: I certainly agree with that. In fact, with a few tweaks, we would have a combat system that's playable and decently enjoyable.

I also agree with your point that Josh somehow dropped the goal of very flexible builds.

And personally, battle fainting is weird and very gamey, but still, I truly loved the NWN2 series anyways, including parts of its combat. For me, the character building was the part that was most fun in that series, aside from the obvious, the great story and companions in MotB.

 

I just don't want to settle on builds and classes and spell selections that are too barebone and simplistic. If we have a chance to voice the opinion that we want more ofit, we may get it. Look at what happened with all of the specialisations we got from Josh. That was thanks to the community!

Well, remember, kits weren't a thing until BG2. Maybe that kinda thing will have to be put off for the xpack. For the record, I think more class flexibility would be a good thing as well.

[Captain Shrek]

Shrek:

-I don't think the Barb's Carnage attacks interrupt that much. I take interrupting blows and accurate carnage but I don't see what many interrupts happening.

-I don't think the Barb can tank very well since his deflection is so extremely poor and he doesnt have a defensive modal like the Fighter. I think he makes a good dps/offtank though thanks to his endurance regen clicky.

 

 

That was my feeling too. Somehow I can't grasp how the interrupt system works. If I can pump that I am sure the barbarians would be amazing tanks by the virtue of disrupting enemy actions. 

 

 

Captain Shrek: I certainly agree with that. In fact, with a few tweaks, we would have a combat system that's playable and decently enjoyable.

I also agree with your point that Josh somehow dropped the goal of very flexible builds.

And personally, battle fainting is weird and very gamey, but still, I truly loved the NWN2 series anyways, including parts of its combat. For me, the character building was the part that was most fun in that series, aside from the obvious, the great story and companions in MotB.

 

I just don't want to settle on builds and classes and spell selections that are too barebone and simplistic. If we have a chance to voice the opinion that we want more ofit, we may get it. Look at what happened with all of the specialisations we got from Josh. That was thanks to the community!

 

Yeah. Builds was my favorite part of NWN2. I am sorry that it is gone. I also lament the simplistic spell system, the amazement of D&D casting is no longer there somehow . 

[prodigydancer]

I really advise everyone to watch Sensuki's videos ITT. They show how you can manipulate the system via abusing stealth and hard CC openers to ensure that fighting ends before it even starts most of the time. In previous threads my and others predicted such scenarios and here we go.

 

Sadly, even if Obsidian ramps up incoming damage at higher difficulties it won't help one bit because for any skilled player it'll only reinforce the desire to work around melee engagement and health/endurance systems by rolling a kill-them-before-they-can-respond kind of party.

 

Also I agree that in IE games attack resolution system was better. Tanking worked because most of the time you wanted and you could afford to bet on your tank's AC against the enemy's CtH. You didn't get hit all the time in melee and when it happened you could heal the tank or bounce aggro to an off-tank or kite or, when all else failed, gamble again. The cruel certainty of taking damage in melee in PoE makes the game less tactical and less interesting. It encourages playstyles and party compositions that allow the player to exploit or circumvent some of the more frustrating mechanics. Do we want that? I know I don't.

Edited November 15, 2014 by prodigydancer

[IndiraLightfoot]

What specializations?

Sorry. All of those new skills, as they are called high and low now in PoE. All of the sudden, we have lots more to pick from when we level up etc. Before that, levelling up wasn't very exciting at all, and the classes felt very one-dimensional. They still pretty much are, though, compared to D&D 3.5 NWN2 goodness.

[Sensuki]

Talents?

 

Ehh, your base classes are less effective / get less abilities. It's now completely possible to make trap builds - and half the talents are horrible too.

 

Good thing they're moddable.

 

I really advise everyone to watch Sensuki's videos ITT. They show how you can manipulate the system via abusing stealth and hard CC openers to ensure that fighting ends before it even starts most of the time. In previous threads my and others predicted such scenarios and here we go.

 

Sadly, even if Obsidian ramps up incoming damage at higher difficulties it won't help one bit because for any skilled player it'll only reinforce the desire to work around melee engagement and health/endurance systems by rolling a kill-them-before-they-can-respond kind of party.

Imagine 5 ciphers

Edited November 15, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

Most the talents were added very recently. They still need time to play with them. For comparison, I remember reading that Fallout's entire perk system was made over 1 weekend or some such. In other words, a lot can happen very quickly with regards to talents/perks/feats/etc in crpg systems. With the dev team they have, I am going to hold off judging the slate of talents until a patch or two.

[Captain Shrek]

There is nothing and never was anything wrong about sub optimal builds. Same holds for min maxed overpowered builds. 

 

Finding out optimal builds, theory crafting and munchkining NWN2 was totally the real fun aspect of "mechanics". Earlier IE games were too restrictive in that sense. But they skill had multi and dual classing which allowed a small measure of variability. 

 

I just want to make clear right here, that this is not a justification of broken design; i.e. inherently bad or inherently OP classes/feats etc. It is a justification of a distribution of builds that can go from bad when build badly (wizards as tanks) and builds built well (wizards that are spell focused). Every single classed build should lie in the centre of it. 

[Sensuki]

They're fairly easy to make. Thing is they've basically just copy pasted a bunch of D&D-like talents, half of them aren't really that good for this game.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

Finding out optimal builds, theory crafting and munchkining NWN2 was totally the real fun aspect of "mechanics". Earlier IE games were too restrictive in that sense. But they skill had multi and dual classing which allowed a small measure of variability. 

 

 

Indeed. It was later, at higher levels, that many of BG2 combos really shone, whereas in NWN2, I can show you builds at level 7-11, where very exciting stuff happens already. In that respect, 3.5>2nd ed, easy.

 

All I want is a huge variety, it needn't be balanced to any absurd degrees, though, some basic balance is always nice. It's like Lego. I want those good old huge Lego boxes with heaps of various pieces, without any build-instruction manual. I don't want some concept Lego box with weird pieces that can only be built into some insect robot that chops up and down with a trident.

Edited November 15, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Shevek]

Indira:

As a NWN2 fan, I am sure you know about Kaedrin's mod, but if not, you should check it out. It adds a bunch of PRCs, feats, etc. I used that in my last playthrough of MotB and it was a blast.

 

Edit: Be careful to avoid the OP stuff though. Some of the PRCs can trivialize content. Still, it adds quite a bit to character development.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Shevek

[Captain Shrek]

Indira:

As a NWN2 fan, I am sure you know about Kaedrin's mod, but if not, you should check it out. It adds a bunch of PRCs, feats, etc. I used that in my last playthrough of MotB and it was a blast.

 

Edit: Be careful to avoid the OP stuff though. Some of the PRCs can trivialize content. Still, it adds quite a bit to character development.

 

 

NWN2 is pretty much trivial with any build. 

[Shevek]

Shrek:

True

Edited November 15, 2014 by Shevek

[Razsius]

This thread is pretty much the "everything I hate about PoE combat" thread.  Shevak's playstyle is an extremely boring playstyle that involves almost no forethought (other than party creation/level up choice) and little to no play skill.  This would be perfectly fine on a difficulty like easy but on hard?  You've got to be kidding me.  Click drag, select enemy to left click then watch has to be the most droll combat i've literally ever seen.  I've played visual novels with a more robust combat system (no i'm not joking).  I have to thank Shevak though as I always sort of wondered wth kept bothering me about the PoE combat.  I now know what it is.  My actions don't actually matter.

 

I mean sure I can save myself quite a bit of health loss or I can watch my fighter fall over "dead" and as the case goes and Shevak would say 'He'll get back up.'  Any game that even pretends to be "balanced" has to abide by the laws of choice and consequences.  If you pay essentially nothing then there was no choice to begin with.  Welcome to the Pillars of Eternity Backer Beta... enjoy your stay.  There are of course disadvantages to a game that's too easy and has otherwise really boring combat.  Take Kotor 2.  For much of the game various npcs will go on and on about Darth N (forgot his name) being the biggest, baddest, soul sucking boss baddie around.  So when you finally get to him you're thinking "Man this fight is definitely going to SUCK."  But he's an absolute pushover.  Biggest roleplay break ever.  You have this entirely too long conversation with Visas about how you can't possible win and here I am with the difficulty set on hard and i'm having trouble staying awake considering how easy it is.  "Visas are you BLIND we're doing jus... err sorry you are."  Would of been a great comedic section but i'm pretty sure Obsidian wasn't going for that.

 

Pillars of Eternity combat is a lot like that.  The pacing is simply one of it's many problems.  Oh what I wouldn't give for the days of yore where difficulty settings actually mattered and potentially dieing was a real possibility.  Where grazing fireballs for 9 damage wasn't a possibility.  Where cold, hard, cc mattered and lasted for a LONG time.  Where if your class had an active ability it gave the oomph you needed in a potentially dire combat.  Where characters could actually miss and you weren't 3 shot at all but the lowest levels.  Where per day abilities were balanced to matter... oh those were the days.

[Shevek]

Again, this is for trash combats and thats pretty much how I played through them in the Infinity Engine games (with difficulty mods and at high difficulty; again, I am referring to trash mobs). The only time this didn't work was for cheap enemies like beholders or mindflayers but thats what spells/summons are for.

 

If you want crazy micro ALL the time, thats why Path of the Damned was made.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Shevek

[Sensuki]

There are lots of ways in the IE games to facilitate left click forget play, such as casting haste on your warriors and you win. I believe in an earlier thread you confessed you abused web and cloudkill spam a lot as well.

Some of the encounters were really fun though - Twisted Rune, Final Seal Guardians - you can't play those without micro you'll get b00ked.

There's an older quote from Josh (circa 2012) saying he wants PE on Hard to be like the hard fights from BG2 and IWD2 all the time - that's what I want.

[Shevek]

kristibrud666 said: PoE has a lot of activity from all party characters. Much more than any Infinity Engine game - and as I understand it you're not even done with adding new talents. One consequence of this is the frequent pausing required. In the backer beta, it feels a little tiresome, and that's just with the amount of pausing to defeat beetles. An equivalent fight in BG2 would be maybe two pauses for a couple of spells or somethingAre you alright with this or is this something you're looking to addresssomehow?

 

Tim, George (Wang), and I have been implementing a (very) large number of new Talents.  We waited until we had Backer Beta feedback before designing many of them so we could find common ways in which people wanted to distinguish their characters.  Another goal with the Talent system was to allow people to bias their characters more heavily toward active or passive maintenance.

 

Right now I’m rearranging the order in which fighters receive Abilities and Talents as they gain levels.  With these new arrangements, it should be easy to build (for example) a fighter with all passive and modal Abilities or, if you really feel like it, a fighter that has a large number of active Abilities.  I believe this will give people the maintenance flexibility they want in individual characters and their parties as a whole.

http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/

 

Seems like JE's perspective might have shifted after those initial 2012 statements.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Shevek

[Captain Shrek]

This thread is pretty much the "everything I hate about PoE combat" thread.  Shevak's playstyle is an extremely boring playstyle that involves almost no forethought (other than party creation/level up choice) and little to no play skill.  This would be perfectly fine on a difficulty like easy but on hard?  You've got to be kidding me.  Click drag, select enemy to left click then watch has to be the most droll combat i've literally ever seen.  I've played visual novels with a more robust combat system (no i'm not joking).  I have to thank Shevak though as I always sort of wondered wth kept bothering me about the PoE combat.  I now know what it is.  My actions don't actually matter.

 

I mean sure I can save myself quite a bit of health loss or I can watch my fighter fall over "dead" and as the case goes and Shevak would say 'He'll get back up.'  Any game that even pretends to be "balanced" has to abide by the laws of choice and consequences.  If you pay essentially nothing then there was no choice to begin with.  Welcome to the Pillars of Eternity Backer Beta... enjoy your stay.  There are of course disadvantages to a game that's too easy and has otherwise really boring combat.  Take Kotor 2.  For much of the game various npcs will go on and on about Darth N (forgot his name) being the biggest, baddest, soul sucking boss baddie around.  So when you finally get to him you're thinking "Man this fight is definitely going to SUCK."  But he's an absolute pushover.  Biggest roleplay break ever.  You have this entirely too long conversation with Visas about how you can't possible win and here I am with the difficulty set on hard and i'm having trouble staying awake considering how easy it is.  "Visas are you BLIND we're doing jus... err sorry you are."  Would of been a great comedic section but i'm pretty sure Obsidian wasn't going for that.

 

Pillars of Eternity combat is a lot like that.  The pacing is simply one of it's many problems.  Oh what I wouldn't give for the days of yore where difficulty settings actually mattered and potentially dieing was a real possibility.  Where grazing fireballs for 9 damage wasn't a possibility.  Where cold, hard, cc mattered and lasted for a LONG time.  Where if your class had an active ability it gave the oomph you needed in a potentially dire combat.  Where characters could actually miss and you weren't 3 shot at all but the lowest levels.  Where per day abilities were balanced to matter... oh those were the days.

 

 

The problem is quite obvious here. What you want is nothing that the PoE can deliver at the moment. PoE is basically a mediocre tune down of IE games. IE games were hardly perfect; they suffered from HP bloats, trivialized powerful magic and irrational resting abuses. Also, one can claim that the encounters were also trashy many a times. 

 

Regardless of all that opinion of mine, IE games were fun, because of the awsome combat they created due to implementation of the magic system. The combat was brutal but fast in the levels post 4 (Level 1 to 4 sucked hard). 

 

As I see it, PoE combat fails to address ANY of these crucial issues, except maybe, MAYBE, that of resting abuse. Too much micro only makes PoEis frustratingly long. Your abilities are hardly overwhelming and if they are overwhelming, then I would hazard that it is a bug and not a feature from the design point of view, which is tragic. I would rather play Shevek's passive builds than waste time microing underwhelming balanced combat. I just see no point in that. 

[Sensuki]

"Combat sucks so make it easy"

[Captain Shrek]

"Combat sucks so make it easy"

 

Pretty much. 

[Sensuki]

Spoken like a true codexer 

 

[Malekith]

Sensuki, on 16 Nov 2014 - 12:43 AM, said:

Spoken like a true codexer 

 

Well, hard and boring is the worst possible combination for a game's combat. If combat can't be made good (and while i agree with most of your posts and like your determination to improve this game, i fear Josh won't listen as is seems that most of the problems of PoE combat is by design since Josh believes they make good gameplay) i would prefer a select all->attack playstyle and play this game as a second PST