Playing DA:I Cleared My Doubts About Engagement Mechanics In PoE

[MReed]

Just for grins -- here is a script file (meant to be used for a fighter class party member) for BG 2:TOB.  To be clear, I didn't write this, I extracted it from the eSeries [edited] scripts that can be found here:  http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?app=downloads&showcat=25&sort_order=DESC&sort_key=file_submitted&num=10&st=10.

efighter.txt

Edited November 21, 2014 by MReed

[Mr. Magniloquent]

The gMinion and particularly the eSeries AI scripts are excellent. They are among the mods I consider standard.

[Tuckey]

To me disengagement mechanic is crying out for skills that combat the penalty for disengaging. Something like blinding strike for a fighter should allow them to move away from an engaged enemy without penalty. Just make it a limited use skill per encounter or something.

 

A wizard could even have a spell or two to assist the fighters if they need to disengage, like say dazzle.

[MReed]

To me disengagement mechanic is crying out for skills that combat the penalty for disengaging. Something like blinding strike for a fighter should allow them to move away from an engaged enemy without penalty. Just make it a limited use skill per encounter or something.

 

A wizard could even have a spell or two to assist the fighters if they need to disengage, like say dazzle.

 

Such skills already exist -- the concern is that these skills fall into one of two camps:

 

1) Useful for other purposes (e.g. Knockdown, Stuns, and the like) and are likely to be used long before the player realizes that disengagement is necessary.

2) So narrow in focus that nobody (should) select them -- giving up talent that will allow you to kill an opponent in exchange for a talent that allows you to withdraw safely is simply not a good choice.

 

Some people argue that skills in the #1 bucket are good, because they force the player to make a hard decision on whether or not to use the skill early or save it in case withdrawal turns out to be necessary at a latter time.  The "no engagement" group believes this isn't a valid dilemma because the correct choice is always to use the skill early in the hopes of avoiding the need to disengage at all.

 

YMMV, of course.

[Jon of the Wired]

To me disengagement mechanic is crying out for skills that combat the penalty for disengaging. Something like blinding strike for a fighter should allow them to move away from an engaged enemy without penalty. Just make it a limited use skill per encounter or something.

 

A wizard could even have a spell or two to assist the fighters if they need to disengage, like say dazzle.

 

There are already many, many such skills.

[Jon of the Wired]

 

To me disengagement mechanic is crying out for skills that combat the penalty for disengaging. Something like blinding strike for a fighter should allow them to move away from an engaged enemy without penalty. Just make it a limited use skill per encounter or something.

 

A wizard could even have a spell or two to assist the fighters if they need to disengage, like say dazzle.

 

Such skills already exist -- the concern is that these skills fall into one of two camps:

 

1) Useful for other purposes (e.g. Knockdown, Stuns, and the like) and are likely to be used long before the player realizes that disengagement is necessary.

2) So narrow in focus that nobody (should) select them -- giving up talent that will allow you to kill an opponent in exchange for a talent that allows you to withdraw safely is simply not a good choice.

 

Some people argue that skills in the #1 bucket are good, because they force the player to make a hard decision on whether or not to use the skill early or save it in case withdrawal turns out to be necessary at a latter time.  The "no engagement" group believes this isn't a valid dilemma because the correct choice is always to use the skill early in the hopes of avoiding the need to disengage at all.

 

YMMV, of course.

 

 

It seems like bucket (1) and bucket (2) contain every possible skill, by construction, which makes it a fairly vacuous argument.

[Guest 4ward]

Personally from what i’ve seen in videos and read here so far, i’d think that some disengagement abilities aren’t well-balanced. Perhaps a separate ‘disengagement’ skill allowing the player to allocate points could have worked better? (next to the lore skill and the other few skills in the game) If a player invested enough points on level-ups in such skill it would allow for safe disengaging at later stages of the game against multiple enemies? What of the abilities then, tune them down or make them passive (offensive ones occurring on criticals e.g.) ?

[Rostere]

 

Personally I am loving DA:I so far.  Is it a 10/10, uh no.  Not very many games are.  But it is easily a 8/10 so far.

You must be a special kind of person to like singleplayer MMOs.

 

I think that has already been established. To be honest, I have no idea what he is doing on these forums.

[Tuckey]

Okay wasn't aware there were skills for disengaging, having not played the beta. I have watched people play the beta a lot through and didn't notice any effective disengaging so I thought I'd suggest something.

 

Seems like those skills might as well not even be there for all the good they do...

[Cubiq]

This is what i currently feel as well. The per battle abilities aren't usually good enough to help with disengaging.

You need to rely on per rest abilities to hit multiple enemies and they usually take time to execute, so it's currently easier to just heal through the damage, since you're going to waste a rest ability anyway.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Cubiq

[archangel979]

 

 

Personally I am loving DA:I so far.  Is it a 10/10, uh no.  Not very many games are.  But it is easily a 8/10 so far.

You must be a special kind of person to like singleplayer MMOs.

 

 

I think that has already been established. To be honest, I have no idea what he is doing on these forums.

 

Trying to turn PoE into crappy RPG like DAI.

[Shevek]

There are AoE knockdowns and disengagement debuffs the chanter can do every combat. The cipher gets aoe knockdowns and pushbacks as well. There are talents that give defense vs disengagement attacks. There are numerous per encounter knockdown etc abilities. Perhaps there is a combination of us needing increased awareness/understanding of these abilities and the devs maybe using our input to improve them somewhat or add a few more.

[Namutree]

There are AoE knockdowns and disengagement debuffs the chanter can do every combat. The cipher gets aoe knockdowns and pushbacks as well. There are talents that give defense vs disengagement attacks. There are numerous per encounter knockdown etc abilities. Perhaps there is a combination of us needing increased awareness/understanding of these abilities and the devs maybe using our input to improve them somewhat or add a few more.

Improving them is what is needed.

[Sensuki]

increased awareness

 

Edited November 23, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shevek]

[Guest 4ward]

This is what i currently feel as well. The per battle abilities aren't usually good enough to help with disengaging.

You need to rely on per rest abilities to hit multiple enemies and they usually take time to execute, so it's currently easier to just heal through the damage, since you're going to waste a rest ability anyway.

that's the issue, spells / abilities unless they're instant are not really effective when you’d want to disengage. So, talents are really interesting to look at for me since i take it it’s a passive thing? So i checked PoE’s wiki and there’s like 1 talent (next to wild running which is a ‘reward talent’) that specifically addresses disengagement and that talent is ‘Graceful retreat’. According to wiki it grants a bonus to all defenses against disengagement attacks. It’s available to all classes, yet are there any prerequisites and when does Graceful retreat become available? Is there any scaling on level-ups? Anyone tried it?

[Sensuki]

Why would you? It's a trap choice.

[Guest 4ward]

i was thinking if that talent would be/become powerful enough to get me over the free AoO it’s better than to stay in melee and wait for some healing spell while being constantly interrupted against multiple enemies (at some point i’ll probably also run out of healing options). So, i’d rather like to move out and engage somewhere else if necessary. But perhaps i don’t get your point, Sensuki.

[Sensuki]

Just pick a talent that gives you a bit more Deflection instead, you'll take less damage over the course of the adventuring day. 99% of disengagement attacks are vs Deflection, and probably ~90% of auto-attacks are vs Deflection. Why pick a bad ability that only gives you something when you make an inferior tactical choice anyway (moving in melee) when you could just pick something that improves your Deflection and is useful in pretty much every encounter ?

Edited November 23, 2014 by Sensuki

[Shallow]

Wait, actually no, I decided not to.

 

Nothing anyone says, and nothing I say will change anything for the people that have already made up their minds. I am not playing with Engagement, I will test the game with it on, but I am removing it and changing the abilities, spells and whatnot related to it. I will fight for things that make this better to play with - such as better AI targeting clauses and better attack animation interaction with moving targets.

 

Obsidian probably won't change it but that's on them, there are many people here that want a combat experience closer to the IE games. I know you don't and I know Shevek doesn't either. But don't expect me to stop arguing about it You won't find many people on this forum more persistent than I am.

Like it or not you're playing with AI engagement, whether you remove it yourself it's still the same horrible AI that will behave in more or less the exact same way regardless of whether engagement is in. The way I see it, it's really silly having things like flanking bonuses, glass cannons behind the front line, etc, when the enemy AI is too incompetent to take advantage of flanking or make any attempt at targeting the glass cannons, granted without those things you just have generic melee units attacking each other which isn't fun at all, but that just goes to show how important a decent AI is in a human vs computer RTS (and IE style combat is certainly RTS, even with the pausing, slightly less with the syncd rounds).

 

From what I've seen I'm slightly for engagement, the system has potential, and would make some flanking/avoidance decisions a bit more tactical as it'd take more time getting around enemies with the melee characters that enemy isn't focusing on, but I don't really care whether the system stays or not. Better AI is essential though, if engagement is in, AI needs to try to flank, get around, block, and disengage when it is tactically appropriate to do so, and AIs need to fight like groups, utilizing various melee units for different things, if engagement isn't in, the AI needs to do all those other things, currently it does absolutely none of them. From what I've seen, with engagement on the AI will move towards the first unit that attacks them/first unit they see, and will exclusively focus on that enemy until it dies/they get engaged by someone else without reaching the enemy, I haven't seen video without engagement, but I'd assume the AI does more or less the same besides perhaps only not focusing on the first unit that attacks them when it's impossible to get there. When people are fighting in an RTS (well a certain kind of RTS anyhow, some have very different combat) the goal is to remove the other players glass cannons, prevent the other players from removing your glass cannons, push the other players into positions were they're vulnerable to AoE attacks from you (or any kind of special attacks, really), whilst keeping yourself from being vulnerable to AoE attacks your opponent can execute. PoE more or less allows for the player to do all those things, however it feels really empty and loses all fun and reactivity when your opponent just zerg rushes the first thing it sees with little to no tactics.

[Namutree]

 if engagement is in, AI needs to try to flank, get around, block, and disengage when it is tactically appropriate to do so, 

 

Then the mechanic needs a serious overhaul, as it's never tactically wise to disengage. 

[Shallow]

 

 if engagement is in, AI needs to try to flank, get around, block, and disengage when it is tactically appropriate to do so, 

 

Then the mechanic needs a serious overhaul, as it's never tactically wise to disengage. 

 

It's probably viable once every million years if you don't have a way to disengage without penalty, and still rarely viable if you do, but it's still occasionally gonna be useful, for example if a character in the back line has next to no health or little stamina provided the player can't get the character up and running again, this is generally a better move for an AI than for a  player though, as each AI group only ever have to fight one fight, either they beat you or they don't, but they don't have the tactical question of sacrificing someone for higher overall chances of not losing everyone, because their losses are irrelevant provided they win. Whether you'd want AI to be reluctant to do such moves when it could lead to much more likely death of a character is up to you, but in any event, at times doing such moves is clearly objectively the best thing to do, at which point the AIs should certainly try to do them.

[Guest 4ward]

Just pick a talent that gives you a bit more Deflection instead, you'll take less damage over the course of the adventuring day. 99% of disengagement attacks are vs Deflection, and probably ~90% of auto-attacks are vs Deflection. Why pick a bad ability that only gives you something when you make an inferior tactical choice anyway (moving in melee) when you could just pick something that improves your Deflection and is useful in pretty much every encounter ?

i see, thanks, Sensuki. What would you say if before damage of AoOs is applied there would be a separate calculation to determine if and how succesfull the AoO is where ‚graceful retreat‘ would work in your favour? E.g. i disengage, enemy rolls with 10sided dice, then i roll with a 10sided dice and then a value from ‘graceful retreat’ is added to my score (e.g. on lvl 1 you get 1 from ‘graceful retreat’). If the result is < or equal 0 the AoO is not successful. 1-4 would be treated as a graze, 5-8 as a hit and applied in the standard attack resolution calculation. Do you think that would work or would it even make things worse?

[Namutree]

 

Just pick a talent that gives you a bit more Deflection instead, you'll take less damage over the course of the adventuring day. 99% of disengagement attacks are vs Deflection, and probably ~90% of auto-attacks are vs Deflection. Why pick a bad ability that only gives you something when you make an inferior tactical choice anyway (moving in melee) when you could just pick something that improves your Deflection and is useful in pretty much every encounter ?

i see, thanks, Sensuki. What would you say if before damage of AoOs is applied there would be a separate calculation to determine if and how succesfull the AoO is where ‚graceful retreat‘ would work in your favour? E.g. i disengage, enemy rolls with 10sided dice, then i roll with a 10sided dice and then a value from ‘graceful retreat’ is added to my score (e.g. on lvl 1 you get 1 from ‘graceful retreat’). If the result is < or equal 0 the AoO is not successful. 1-4 would be treated as a graze, 5-8 as a hit and applied in the standard attack resolution calculation. Do you think that would work or would it even make things worse?

 

If disengagement attacks had a decent chance of failing then they wouldn't be so broken.

 

It should be a 1D10; if the attacker rolls a 1: It auto-fails. If they roll a 10: It auto-succeeds. Otherwise it would be based on some kind of stat resolution.

 

Each class should have a retreat and engagement stat that goes up every few levels. Fighters are good at landing disengagement attacks, but bad at retreating. Rouges are good at retreating, but bad at landing disengagement attacks. That could make it a bit more interesting...

 

Another interesting idea is if it was just based on dexterity. The DEX of the one trying to retreat vs the DEX of the one trying to punish retreating.

Edited November 23, 2014 by Namutree

[Shevek]

I've been playing with it. If you use relevant active skills like knockdowns and stuff like the chanter song, its not that hard to make a tactical retreat when a character is in trouble. Can you run around constantly? No. Can you move out of the way when health is low. Ya. Can these be made a bit better? Sure.

 

The passive talent that defends against disengagement attacks can be taken in addition to passive defensive talents (its not either or) but I do think it could be made better (like maybe giving it a chance to turn disengagement hits into grazes or some such in addition to the def bonus). Many of the knockdown abilities have fast casting times but it might be nice if there was a talent that took all knockdown/stun/etc abilities and made those casting times a bit faster.

 

The system does not need an overhaul. Its nearly where it needs to be. All talents are not in yet and are not final. Lets give them some feedback here.

 

As an aside, I cant wait until the AI is worked in and we begin to a few enemies employ some of these tactics. It might be nice if particularly skilled enemies knockdown the party tank and player must occaisionally react to a skilled enemy switching targets once it has freed itself from engagement. This would go a long way to truly making enemies feel different. So long as this is not a common occurance, it would add some nice oh crap moments once in a while and during the set piece combats without adding to tedium against trash encounters.