Stop Right Now Thankyou Very Much

[Chilloutman]

I can't afford to be an optimist at this point in development with a few more months until shipping.  And as someone already said, I would rather hope they put their resources in making pencil drawn items 2D art instead of trying to salvage a flawed mechanic.

 

Making combat feel static and not being able to adapt to new situations or making a tactical retreat without major penalties is not my idea of good design.

Do you really expect programator drop his work and start doing 2D art? lmao

[Chilloutman]

 

If you are unnable to understand that your character is engaged and its not best idea to just turn your back on attacker and flee its problem with your expectation/gamestyle, not with mechanic.

This has nothing to do with the presented arguments and why the engagement mechanic sucks so much.

 

I dont see any argument axept those which are obviosly defects, not intended behaviour, care to elaborate one? Only one i seen was 'I cant run away freely, i got hit by enemy' well for me its good feature not bad. Any other?

Edited December 4, 2014 by Chilloutman

[Captain Shrek]

 

I can't afford to be an optimist at this point in development with a few more months until shipping.  And as someone already said, I would rather hope they put their resources in making pencil drawn items 2D art instead of trying to salvage a flawed mechanic.

 

Making combat feel static and not being able to adapt to new situations or making a tactical retreat without major penalties is not my idea of good design.

Do you really expect programator drop his work and start doing 2D art? lmao

 

 

 

No.

 

He is asking for resources to be allocated so that things that *can* be honestly salvaged at this point, be salvaged.  

 

Of course, if the developers find free time for the combat improvement then it should be spent there. But not otherwise. 

Edited December 4, 2014 by Captain Shrek

[Osvir]

Whz on Earth do you people want to take 'features' from real time games. This is ral time with pause. Heck in BG or IWD I spend more time in paused mode than in real time. To me it feels you have problems because you dont pause enough and then make mistakes in fast paced battle where its expected from you to control multiple characters with a lot of ablilities. If you are unnable to understand that your character is engaged and its not best idea to just turn your back on attacker and flee its problem with your expectation/gamestyle, not with mechanic. It is easy for me to disengaged if I really want, all you have to do is stun your opponent and you are free to go (granted, if you are engaged by 3 enemies than its your tactical fault and you have to deal with it) IE feel != realtime strategy or moba game) RTS - micromanagement of multiple units with very limited amount of abilities with macromanagement of base and resources Moba - controling single character with limited amout of abilities in fast paced multiplayer environment. Non of those have anything to do with pausable RPG (even if its real time with pause) Pause is your strategic instrument to not die horribly

This is about issues of the Engagement System as it's currently is implemented, Chilloutman, and I think it is also a bit about "Should Obsidian focus their energy on a new system? Or the current system?" and there is only one party that can answer this question really, and that's Obsidian.

 

The system has its flaws, no doubt Hormalakh, I believe this is because it's a work in progress title (and that the Beta is not what's first to be polished but the actual game is), others believe it is a bad system based on its current iteration/revision. We have no idea how the system feels like next build, or if Engagement is as exploitable or not, if there's more stability or if it's worse. Well, I have no idea, but I think it would be much improved in one or more aspect

 

It's a weak system (technically!! Code, script, slowdown, clarity), currently, to be honest, but this is what I'd expect from any in-development project. Every Early Access I've participated and experienced have all improved every single build, and Pillars of Eternity Public Beta too. I expect a Beta to be weaker than a final product, sometimes overpowered, sometimes underpowered. Balance, AI, Clarity, Stability. The combat system is easy to exploit at the moment, and crush your enemies if you use techniques and abilities in a specific sequence and cheese every battle, or even exploit bugs (I really think this all just boils down to: The Disengagement Attack/System is not working as "expected").

 

Will it be as easy to exploit, or bug, in the next iteration?

 

I believe you can exploit any game if you are deductive, patient, methodical, and if your purpose is to break the game.

[Chilloutman]

 

 

I can't afford to be an optimist at this point in development with a few more months until shipping.  And as someone already said, I would rather hope they put their resources in making pencil drawn items 2D art instead of trying to salvage a flawed mechanic.

 

Making combat feel static and not being able to adapt to new situations or making a tactical retreat without major penalties is not my idea of good design.

Do you really expect programator drop his work and start doing 2D art? lmao

 

 

 

No.

 

He is asking for resources to be allocated so that things can be honestly salvaged at this point be salvaged.  

 

Of course, if the developers find free time for the combat improvement then it should be spent there. But not otherwise.

 

I doubt that coders currently have any other work than combat. Transition system is in place, save/load is in place, invetory/equiping items is there, navmesh is there, engine is done by Unity, multiplayer is not in, quest system is in (but its more on scripters, not coders). Journal is in. Basicaly all features requiring larger amount of coding are already in.

[Captain Shrek]

I also want to point out that the time for broad strokes is now gone. Effort should be spent on fixing what is sub-optimal in the game. I appreciate Sensuki's efforts and probably even agree with some of his arguments. But right now removing this mechanic will not really:

 

1) Help the game, as it would mean fixing a lot of other things linked with it.

2) Improve anything, because this is not an RTS! I have no clue why some people keep conflating these things. 

[Trodat]

 

 

If you are unnable to understand that your character is engaged and its not best idea to just turn your back on attacker and flee its problem with your expectation/gamestyle, not with mechanic.

This has nothing to do with the presented arguments and why the engagement mechanic sucks so much.

 

I dont see any argument axept those which are obviosly defects, not intended behaviour, care to elaborate one? Only one i seen was 'I cant run away freely, i got hit by enemy' well for me its good feature not bad. Any other?

I could also ask why you backed this game and then are supporting something that trivializes combat positioning and functions completely differently from the IE games.

[Chilloutman]

 

 

 

If you are unnable to understand that your character is engaged and its not best idea to just turn your back on attacker and flee its problem with your expectation/gamestyle, not with mechanic.

This has nothing to do with the presented arguments and why the engagement mechanic sucks so much.

 

I dont see any argument axept those which are obviosly defects, not intended behaviour, care to elaborate one? Only one i seen was 'I cant run away freely, i got hit by enemy' well for me its good feature not bad. Any other?

 

I could also ask why you backed this game and then are supporting something that trivializes combat positioning and functions completely differently from the IE games.

 

Man you should find vocabulary to get meaning of word 'trivialize' because from your post it seems you have completely oposite expectation.

 

Trivial is that you can move freely without consequences

Tactical/Complicated means that there are difficulties you have to overcome

 

What I dont like about game are for example atributes as 'power', or pink VFX on dirty fighting (probably connected to dirty dancing in this game xD)

[IndiraLightfoot]

I also want to point out that the time for broad strokes is now gone. Effort should be spent on fixing what is sub-optimal in the game. I appreciate Sensuki's efforts and probably even agree with some of his arguments. But right now removing this mechanic will not really:

 

1) Help the game, as it would mean fixing a lot of other things linked with it.

2) Improve anything, because this is not an RTS! I have no clue why some people keep conflating these things. 

Just because the first IE-game, BG, was based one particular version of one?

All I'm convinced of so far is that Sensuki's exploits of the engag/disengage-mechanic is well formulated and they certainly need fixing.

But, having played BG and IWD2 recently, I certainly loved the combat, but I didn't play it like Sensuki does. My playstyle is more in line with Shevek's. Some people dismiss it as passive and standing still (Well, I do adore 4Xgames and Civ), but I certainly enjoy it to bits. I had fun playing NWN2, and I am sure I will have fun playing this.

However, my guess is that those people really p`**sed off about this (Seari, Hormalakh? Is this how you play?) are quite possibly people that play like Sensuki - lots of pausing, and, paradoxically, moving, whereas I just slack around and position my guys after a plan while I do it mostly live and often take too much damage for my own good. However, it's fast and fun and rather easy and laid back. I'm not playing Ironman mode that way, that's for sure, but it works like a charm.

 

EDIT: I do save scum a lot as well.

Edited December 4, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Osvir]

It actually makes combat less fun. Having actually had a chance to play the game with this newest beta, engagement basically comes down to a game of tag. Once you're tagged, you stay where you are until the battle is over. Tactical positioning is now only something you think about at the beginning of battle. it is very frustrating that once you get "tagged" by an opponent, you're basically stuck there. no amount of "escaping" or anything will save you. the engagement mechanic also screws up a lot of the actions you try to give your characters because of how it's actually implemented.

(post truncated, you can click on the quote upper right-corner to be directed to the original)

 

There are several ways to get out of Engagement, and move around, or help with breaking engagement for someone else (Knockdown, Blinded). Though, there aren't any ambigious tools that everyone can use (I think). I'd like to see a Talent that makes it easier to break out of disengagement without taking a hit, or an Smoke Bomb item to blind everyone, but the character can escape (and AI too of course).

 

In the IE games:

- Low health 

- Move (Instantaneous, Reactive Re-Positioning)

 

In Pillars of Eternity:

- Soon low health (Preparation)

- Disengage Skill (Recovery Time, Reactive Re-Positioning)

- Move

 

Re-positioning is readily available in Pillars of Eternity for some classes. And perhaps some might think my next idea is too much "League of Legends" but, if every Class had some sort of "Disengage" ability or attack, a Talent Skill, Disengaging might not be much of an issue. As you can then choose to stand your ground, or choose to use re-positioning tactics.

 

- Throw Sand/Dirt/Gravel

This talent allows the Character to resort to underhanded tactics, and throw sand in the opponents face! This allows the Character to escape in a brief window! If successful, the Target will be blinded, and the Character will not suffer a disengagement attack if moving away / 1 Per Encounter, Duration 0.X

 

EDIT: I also think it's odd that there aren't any "Resurrect" spells, abilities or items in the Beta. According to both Update #24 and the Official Wiki ("Vitality"), there's supposedly ways to bring back people into the fight. As I said, I haven't seen any of this in the Beta, and this is also an important feature to consider or abstract in the current Combat system (when someone is downed in the Beta, you can't bring them back in-combat, at the moment, but with this feature of bringing back units, it'll add more control too). Will the final version have "bring back" Endurance healing spells? And/Or have I completely missed it in the Beta?

 

In other words, 0 Endurance shouldn't equal "knocked out for the duration of combat", but there should be interactive ways to bring them back in-combat too.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Osvir

[Seari]

Just because the first IE-game, BG, was based one particular version of one?

 

All I'm convinced of so far is that Sensuki's exploits of the engag/disengage-mechanic is well formulated and they certainly need fixing.

But, having played BG and IWD2 recently, I certainly loved the combat, but I didn't play it like Sensuki does. My playstyle is more in line with Shevek's. Some people dismiss it as passive and standing still (Well, I do adore 4Xgames and Civ), but I certainly enjoy it to bits. I had fun playing NWN2, and I am sure I will have fun playing this.

However, my guess is that those people really p`**sed off about this (Seari, Hormalakh? Is this how you play?) are quite possibly people that play like Sensuki - lots of pausing, and, paradoxically, moving, whereas I just slack around and position my guys after a plan while I do it mostly live and often take too much damage for my own good. However, it's fast and fun and rather easy and laid back. I'm not playing Ironman mode that way, that's for sure, but it works like a charm.

 

EDIT: I do save scum a lot as well.

 

Yes I do move my characters around during combat, and it amazes me that a lot of people don't. It seems a truly boring way to play to me, but I don't really care.

 

What does piss me off is that these same people seem to go out of their way to defend engagement, which makes our kind of playstyle impossible. Even when it doesn't affect their own in any way whatsoever.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Engagement would work very well....in a turn-based game.

 

Unfortunately it's a mess in Real Time, and should be cut out.

[prodigydancer]

A part of making something really great is finding wisdom and courage to acknowledge that some of your ideas were just bad and scrap those bad ideas before they seriously damage your whole project.

 

I sincerely hope Obsidian will do the right thing.

[Yonjuro]

 

However, my guess is that those people really p`**sed off about this (Seari, Hormalakh? Is this how you play?) are quite possibly people that play like Sensuki - lots of pausing, and, paradoxically, moving, whereas I just slack around and position my guys after a plan while I do it mostly live and often take too much damage for my own good. However, it's fast and fun and rather easy and laid back. I'm not playing Ironman mode that way, that's for sure, but it works like a charm.

 

 I don't put myself in the group of people who are pissed off about this. There are abilities to break engagement and, if there aren't enough of them, Sensuki has already made a mod to remove engagement (and I can live with the animation problems that it will cause,) so how pissed off should I really be?

 

 However, I typically use a lot of movement in the IE games. Especially for fights like the bandit camp in BG1 where there are groups of archers that will join in after you are in middle of the fight and a difficult melee character that you need to keep away from your back line (err, and you may only have a back line sometimes).  In cases like that (and there are a lot of them), movement is not really optional, is it? How can you keep your party alive without it?  

 

..

EDIT: I do save scum a lot as well...

 

 I tend to play with no reloads (I will reload if I push the wrong button or something but I won't reload for failed saving throws or anything like that). I just find the games more fun that way. 

[Namutree]

 Especially for fights like the bandit camp in BG1 where there are groups of archers that will join in after you are in middle of the fight and a difficult melee character that you need to keep away from your back line (err, and you may only have a back line sometimes).  In cases like that (and there are a lot of them), movement is not really optional, is it? How can you keep your party alive without it?  

 

 

 

Summon a bunch of skeletons and have them kill all the bandits. Or just be really over leveled. Or just have everyone in your party wear large shields. Or be a team of archers yourself. Use that spell (I forget it's name) that grants you immunity to arrows. 

[Sensuki]

I am going to report the animation glitches as bugs, because they're present in the game anyway, they're just harder to reproduce.

[YunikoYokai5]

Just going to throw my two pennies in this, although it won't progress anything at all about the whole discussion. 

 

I won't lose sleep if they get rid of engagement and I won't cry if they keep it. Mostly because I am so unused to IE and similar styles of combat I could adjust fairly easily (that and I'm terrible at combat and strategy )

 

We have people who are all for engagement, we have those who are completely against it. I won't even try to pretend I understand the hatred or the love for engagement. Either way, one group of people will be dissatisfied in the end. If what I had read is true and Obsidian are keeping engagement then I doubt calls to have it removed are going to be heeded. My only suggestion would be to suggest ways of improving it (more abilities, spells specifically designed to counteract disengagement, maybe certain classes can get a bonus that means they can escape disengagement relatively unharmed or have more chances to cause interrupts so you can back your people away safely, like a smoke-screen or something). 

 

I don't know how to fix this because I don't fully understand the exploits, problems, AI flaws and everything else that goes into something like this. I leave that to the people who know what they are talking about. Hopefully the devs step in and try to resolve this since I am sick to the back teeth of seeing so many threads on this forum dominated by this engagement argument. Just my opinion, of course. 

[Yonjuro]

Summon a bunch of skeletons and have them kill all the bandits. Or just be really over leveled. Or just have everyone in your party wear large shields. Or be a team of archers yourself. Use that spell (I forget it's name) that grants you immunity to arrows. 

 

 Sure, these are all options,  but these games are beatable without any spellcasters, with an underleveled party, with a party that can't use shields at all and without any archers. That's part of the reason why they have replay value.

[Namutree]

 

Summon a bunch of skeletons and have them kill all the bandits. Or just be really over leveled. Or just have everyone in your party wear large shields. Or be a team of archers yourself. Use that spell (I forget it's name) that grants you immunity to arrows. 

 

 Sure, these are all options,  but these games are beatable without any spellcasters, with an underleveled party, with a party that can't use shields at all and without any archers. That's part of the reason why they have replay value.

 

Fine. Use the wand of monster summoning. Drink lots of health potions during the fight. Use a team of stealthy characters for sneak attacks. Use oils of speed. 

[Osvir]

 

 

Summon a bunch of skeletons and have them kill all the bandits. Or just be really over leveled. Or just have everyone in your party wear large shields. Or be a team of archers yourself. Use that spell (I forget it's name) that grants you immunity to arrows. 

 

 Sure, these are all options,  but these games are beatable without any spellcasters, with an underleveled party, with a party that can't use shields at all and without any archers. That's part of the reason why they have replay value.

 

Fine. Use the wand of monster summoning. Drink lots of health potions during the fight. Use a team of stealthy characters for sneak attacks. Use oils of speed. 

Ignore fighting the bandits completely even, infiltrate their base and pretend to be a bandit yourself. You don't even need to fight all of them at all. Sorry, a bit irrelevant as the discussion is about combat, but thought I'd throw this in as well. I wanted to point out that you could defeat many battles in the Infinity Engine games by using many different tactics. Thus far in the BB, there's many different ways to overcome battles/obstacles as well.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Osvir

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

..

EDIT: I do save scum a lot as well...

 

 I tend to play with no reloads (I will reload if I push the wrong button or something but I won't reload for failed saving throws or anything like that). I just find the games more fun that way. 

 

I certainly know that thrill.

It's a bit like going Hardcore in Diablo or Expedition: Conquistador, two kinds of challenges which I enjoyed immensely.

[Yonjuro]

 

....

Fine. Use the wand of monster summoning. Drink lots of health potions during the fight. Use a team of stealthy characters for sneak attacks. Use oils of speed. 

 

 Sure, summons are still an option in the IE games if you have a spellcaster and you can summon enough enough creatures with the wand that you don't need to fight at all. Using traps would be another option but tactics using movement are probably useful in that case to lure enemies to the traps.

 

 Using sneak attacks or oils of speed gets us back to tactics that use a lot of movement. Standing in one place and chugging health potions does not require movement (though it might not be the most interesting way to play). 

 

...

Ignore fighting the bandits completely even, infiltrate their base and pretend to be a bandit yourself. You don't even need to fight all of them at all. Sorry, a bit irrelevant as the discussion is about combat, but thought I'd throw this in as well. I wanted to point out that you could defeat many battles in the Infinity Engine games by using many different tactics. Thus far in the BB, there's many different ways to overcome battles/obstacles as well.

 

 

 You don't need to fight anyone in the bandit camp, you just need to open the chest in Tazok's tent and loot the scrolls. You can do that entirely with stealth but I think we're starting to derail the thread here and that wasn't my intention when I asked a mostly rhetorical question about the value of movement in combat.

 

 Let's get back to tactics using movement vs. engagement. Currently engagement is broken. The question is whether it's worth fixing or would it be better to remove it.

 

 I tend to think that it would be better to remove it because movement already has a cost. I agree with you that there are different ways to overcome obstacles in the BB, but there is a certain sameness to the combat. Get a tanky character to hold enemies in place and use a bunch of abilities that amount to either 'do damage to enemies at a faster rate' or 'get enemies to do damage at a slower rate'; whoever gets ground down last wins.  I think that a big part of the sameness is due to the limited movement options (and some of it is due to the available spells, but that's a different thread).

Edited December 4, 2014 by Yonjuro

[Grotesque]

I cant wait for them to implement the promised changes to the engagement system so that Sensuki can abuse and exploit the system once more and forevermore 'till the end of time.

[prodigydancer]

I cant wait for them to implement the promised changes to the engagement system so that Sensuki can abuse and exploit the system once more and forevermore 'till the end of time.

This may be fun to watch but in the long run it's counterproductive. Attempting to fix engagement that is. PoE isn't some self-funded indie vaporware, it's a commercial project that has to be released within a reasonable time frame so they don't have all the time in the world to experiment with one broken combat mechanic. And that's why I find Josh's comments deeply disappointing. He obviously wants to compromise in a predictably hopeless attempt to please everyone at once. It'll take time and effort better spend elsewhere.

 

They should have let backers vote on "Do you think melee engagement is important enough to keep it and dedicate additional resources to its development?" Wording could be different - the point is that I doubt the pro-engagement crowd would even win such a simple vote. They're pretty vocal but they have very little of substance to offer in defense of their point of view.

Edited December 7, 2014 by prodigydancer

[Sensuki]

I don't think so, they just want to keep the system. For some insane reason they think it's good lol