Stop Right Now Thankyou Very Much

[MReed]

 

constantine, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:constantine, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

I'm sorry but I can't feel sorry for those of you who can't kite in Pillars of Eternity.

 

Who says you can't? So far Sensuki has proven you can kite just fine, and i don't expect Josh to be able to prevent it. Engagement only works if the opponent manages to come right beside you. Nothink stops you from having the character the AI is targeting running in circles, while the rest of the team shower them with arrows,summoning creatures and casting spells.

Same deal with the "no pre-buffing" rule. Having buffs only in combat is irrelevant. Nothing stops me from engaging combat with my rogue while the rest of the party is far away, and once combat starts i have the rogue run away while the rest of the party buffs itself. How is that different from pre buffing? I could go on and on.

Long story short, Obsidian should design the game so the most logical way to play it is fun, without care about those who will try to abuse the system because you know what? You can't do **** to stop them.

 

 

 

Mechanics other than engagement prevent single character kiting (e.g. one character with a ranged attack getting unlimited attacks against one or more foes, by simply moving away / around the foes).  You are correct that multi-character (far, far more common in the IE games than single character veresion) kiting is currently quite possible, and engagement can't address it, regardless of any changes made.  That was Sensuki's point -- engagement doesn't help reduce kiting, and that's the whole justification for including it in the first place, so it should be removed.

[Katarack21]

 

Long story short, Obsidian should design the game so the most logical way to play it is fun,

Logic is subjective; it depends on the knowledge of the individual to arrive at probable conclusions. Aether and the humour theory of disease were both perfectly logical conclusions based on the knowledge at the time; both were wildly incorrect. There is no "most logical" way to play; there is only the specific play style that is most natural and fun for you.

Edited December 17, 2014 by Katarack21

[Lephys]

That was Sensuki's point -- engagement doesn't help reduce kiting, and that's the whole justification for including it in the first place, so it should be removed.

Ehh... was it really the whole justification for it? I think the engagement update said a lot more than just "because kiting!"

[Mlatimudan]

I think the point of engagement is that you can't just walk past someone trying to hit you, and I also think it isn't to prevent kiting since you can just kite from farther away but rather to make it easier to protect your back line.

 

Of course it also makes it easier for enemies to protect theirs but that should be fun/challenging.

[Malekith]

Katarack21, on 18 Dec 2014 - 12:16 AM, said:Katarack21, on 18 Dec 2014 - 12:16 AM, said:Katarack21, on 18 Dec 2014 - 12:16 AM, said:Katarack21, on 18 Dec 2014 - 12:16 AM, said:Katarack21, on 18 Dec 2014 - 12:16 AM, said:

 

Malekith, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:Malekith, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:Malekith, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:Malekith, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:Malekith, on 17 Dec 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:

 

Long story short, Obsidian should design the game so the most logical way to play it is fun,

Logic is subjective; it depends on the knowledge of the individual to arrive at probable conclusions. Aether and the humour theory of disease were both perfectly logical conclusions based on the knowledge at the time; both were wildly incorrect. There is no "most logical" way to play; there is only the specific play style that is most natural and fun for you.

 

Read my above examples. Engaging combat with one character while the rest are a mile away, having a character running in circles while the rest storm of arrows the opposition, resting after every fight,cloudkill and fireballing the fog of war so no enemy sees you and fight back etc. were clear loopholes. Maybe logical wasn't a good word choice, but you get my meaning. All of the above were clearly ways the developers didn't intent to be played. So using them was clear abuse of the system.

 

For the record, i don't think this is nessesarily bad. Some players want to beat the game using the game's system, while others want to break te system and find that one loophole, OP built/strategy/whatever. That it trivalizes the game's content isn't a problem for them, the fact that they found a way to break the system is enough satisfaction. So...let them. Players who want to play the game as it meant to be played should have fun with the system devs created.

People who enjoy breaking the game and mess around with the devs plan more often than not they create their own fun.

The people who soloed BG2 on insane with Ascension and SCS2 instaled had plenty of fun, even using every cheesy tactic and loophole imaginable

Edited December 17, 2014 by Malekith

[Lephys]

For the record, i don't think this is nessesarily bad. Some players want to beat the game using the game's system, while others want to break te system and find that one loophole, OP built/strategy/whatever. That it trivalizes the game's content isn't a problem for them, the fact that they found a way to break the system is enough satisfaction. So...let them. Players who want to play the game as it meant to be played should have fun with the system devs created.

The trick, though, is to make sure that you don't make it inadvertently easy for people who aren't trying to exploit the game system to do so. For example... If some foe keeps trying to attack your "back line," and you just rudimentarily decide "I'd better flee from those dudes," occasionally stopping to attack, and that works just fine -- you outrun the foes, AND keep getting to attack them, due to bad AI or what-have-you -- then you've got a problem.

 

The player shouldn't have to go out of his way just to not-exploit something. There's nothing wrong with exploitable stuff existing, so long as you actually have to go out of your way to exploit it.

 

That's the threshold at which the problem exists... when the intended way to intuitively play the game and the exploit live in the same house.

[Lord Wafflebum]

What you guys call exploits I call strategy. I've never been fond of fair fights myself. The less fair the better.

[Katarack21]

I can agree with much of what you're saying. Here's a few questions for you.

Somebody pointed out earlier that BG1 appears to have the encounters balanced for fully healed, all-magic-available parties. I think this is true, but in this hypothetical situation assume that it is.

All else being completely identical, if this one thing was true would it change how you feel about rest spamming? Would it change your thought of it from an exploit to legit game play?

I ask because, the first time I played through BG1, not resting constantly never occurred to me. Never entered my mind. From the moment resting became an option, I was "abusing" the rest function. I never thought about "breaking the system" or analyzing anything; it just seemed like how you should be playing this game. I feel that kind of thing is probably more common than people think; the people who actively seek out how to break the system are the rarity. Most people just play within the rules of the mechanics, but however they feel is natural and fun.

[Lephys]

What you guys call exploits I call strategy. I've never been fond of fair fights myself. The less fair the better.

That's fine, but "strategy" actually has a set definition. "I'm invincible and you're not" isn't a strategy, for example. That's just being superior. The absence of challenge isn't a strategy, as a strategy is employed to overcome a challenge.

 

Thus, to me, "this game's code doesn't limit you enough to prevent inherent challenge from being siphoned away" is not good strategy, because I didn't even do anything but perform a fundamentally not-bad action and the "challenging" foe was rendered useless against me.

 

In other words, through no amount of effort on your part, beyond the baseline amount of effort required to play the game (obviously if you just sat there and didn't ever move or attack, you'd never win a battle), was the enemy overcome.

 

Or... playing a game of chess against someone in which you can move your pieces wherever you want and they can't... that doesn't mean you're using good strategy. Strategy doesn't even come into play by the time you've won, due to the sheer difference in your capabilities.

 

So, yeah, kiting's fine, just like stunning's fine. But, I don't want perpetu-kiting any more than I want an active ability that stuns your opponent for 100 seconds. It wouldn't be that "OH no, stuns are bad and need to die!" It would be that stunning is arbitrarily ridiculously beneficial.

[Osvir]

 

 

It would be interesting, though, to see the NPCs respond to the positioning of the player's characters, in real-time, prior to the player initiating dialog with Meredith. 

Or have dialogue not pause the game, and characters in the background moving depending on your C&C in dialogue.

 

 

If the NPCs can move and the PCs cannot (during dialog), then that's not fair -- and, in fact, this happens all the time.  We call it a cutscene...   It is certainly possible to have a UI that supports movement of both NPCs and players during dialog (for example, NWN 1&2), but using that functionality to setup an encounter will (as you pointed out) result in players hurrying through the conversation / aborting the conversation / ignoring the conversation, all of which are bad.

Hm yeah, point noted.

 

Hypothetically speaking (not intended for this iteration of Pillars of Eternity, but musings for a future RPG/combat system, Obsidian or not): What about a HOMM (Heroes of Might & Magic) or even Blood Bowl, or a jap-SRPG (think Disgaea) combined with an Infinity Engine combat system?

 

Namely, the "Tactical" stage, the point where you get to deploy and position your units before the Combat Turns begins. I've never seen that in a real-time game, it could make combat pretty interesting but could ruin a lot of immersion:

 

- If combat is about to start = Pause the game

- Tactical Stage: The Player is allowed to position their units within a circle/radius, the enemy units will do the same.

- Ready/Done = Start Real time Combat phase.

 

Thinking about it some more whilst brainstorming this post (and thus contradicting my previous statement above), Blood Bowl actually does this, in its real-time mode (and it works really well). But it is confined to a single and differently colored "chess board". How would such a thing function in more open spaces and open scenarios such as bigger world RPG's?

Edited December 18, 2014 by Osvir

[archangel979]

Interesting line of discussion, but... Taken too far it leads to another hated (well, at least in my opinion) mechanic:  Encounters where "stupidity is the only option" for player placement (ex: the Gromier encounter near the beginning of BG2:TOB).  This occurs any time the designer forces the player (and opponents) into a per-arranged formation prior to starting the encounter, most commonly via a cutscene.  This also covers situations where enemies spawn in behind / around the party despite the fact that the areas in question have been previously cleared (barring special abilities, such as teleportation, which should be rare).

NWN2 was full of such situations, I remember I was going crazy all the time because my squishy main character kept being sent in front...

[MReed]

 

Hm yeah, point noted.

 

Hypothetically speaking (not intended for this iteration of Pillars of Eternity, but musings for a future RPG/combat system, Obsidian or not): What about a HOMM (Heroes of Might & Magic) or even Blood Bowl, or a jap-SRPG (think Disgaea) combined with an Infinity Engine combat system?

 

Namely, the "Tactical" stage, the point where you get to deploy and position your units before the Combat Turns begins. I've never seen that in a real-time game, it could make combat pretty interesting but could ruin a lot of immersion:

 

- If combat is about to start = Pause the game

- Tactical Stage: The Player is allowed to position their units within a circle/radius, the enemy units will do the same.

- Ready/Done = Start Real time Combat phase.

 

Thinking about it some more whilst brainstorming this post (and thus contradicting my previous statement above), Blood Bowl actually does this, in its real-time mode (and it works really well). But it is confined to a single and differently colored "chess board". How would such a thing function in more open spaces and open scenarios such as bigger world RPG's?

 

 

I think it would be necessary to also include a "combat arena" (as seen in most JRPGs).  For those not familiar with JRPGs, this means that there is an "Overworld" UI where your party is represented by a single character, and "Combat mode" where your characters are represented as individuals, on a pre-set map that is related to the area of the overworld that you were in before, but not identical -- among WRPGs, the ancient Gold Box games worked in this way, for example.

 

In addition to allowing a "tactics mode" prior to the start of combat (which could, and should, take into account individual character abilities to control what order in which actors are placed, how flexible their positioning is, and a variety of other factors) it would have the following benefits:

 

1) It would finally solve the pathfinding issue that has plagued 3rd person / party based WRPGs since they were first conceived of.

  1a)  It would allow more creativity on the part of (overworld) map designers -- today, map designers have to design to minimize pathfinding problems, after all.

2) It would make formations work as intended -- the starting locations (from which tactics could be used to further re-position) would be based on the per-selected formation.

3) It would provide a clear demarcation between "combat mode" and "non-combat mode" -- if you've ever played HOMM or the Kings Bounty games, did it even occur to you to try to "pre-buff" your units?

4) It creates the opportunity to create skills and abilities that are unique to fighters that aren't clear analogs to mage abilities -- a fighter could increase the flexibility of all party members in positioning, reduce options for the opponents, or even (although this stretches a bit) ensure that the combat arena obstacles are more favorable positioned for their party (v. the opponents). 

 

It is important to note what wouldn't change:

 

1) Combat could still be RTwP (just with a turn-based tactics before things get started)

2) The backgrounds (in both overworld and arena) could still be pre-rendered / handpained isometric artwork.

3) The dialog system could remain the same

4) Fleeing from combat would still be possible (if all of your characters are within X units of an edge of the arena, and no opponents are within Y distance, the party can flee -- this is, if I'm remembering correctly, how the gold box games implemented it)

5) The player could still split the party (to allow a stealthy character(s) to proceed the party) -- that isn't something that JRPGs support, but I don't see any obvious reason why it would be difficult or problematic.to do so (obviously, if the split party gets into combat, the only units available would be the one in the smaller party).

 

An interesting concept that I'd be interested in seeing someone implement in the future -- a melding of WRPG and JRPG playstyles.  Not something that I'd like to see for POE, or POE 2 even, but branching the franchise to implement something along these lines would be OK with me.

[Lord Wafflebum]

When I was in basic training my Drill Sergeant told us, "if you're not cheating, you're not trying." I'm not saying make it so that your character is invincible, but the criticisms of say setting up your guys to your advantage before fighting Medreth is strategy. That's called establishing a perimeter when a potentially violent situation is about to arise. Kiting is also a strategy. I like to kite a particularly tough melee opponent for awhile with a ranged character until I've brought down their health considerably, then lure them into an ambush where they get destroyed. 

 

However, those that call it an exploit are right, too. Strategies ARE exploits to give you a one-up on your opponent. Otherwise every fight we got into would have to have a 1:1 ratio of party:enemy. Outnumbering your opponent is also an exploit.

 

Simply put, exploits are the tools of victors. While I agree some exploits need to be worked on (most of which Sensuki has already pointed out), tactics that take advantage of enemy weaknesses should not be barred. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

[Hassat Hunter]

Actually, the idea is that the opposition needs to be stronger than the party. While technically they are the stronger, the player can still beat them by beating smarter than the AI... not exploiting some loophole.

 

It's why strong encounters are usually more satisfying than the easy meat, you know they should technically make mince-meat of you, yet you survive, and become victorious...

 

Also, lol at this topic going from "Obsidian better removes engagement since it can't fix the AI to go around this single exploit" going towards "AI should be super-human like and do all kinds of stuff AI's never have been able to do"...

[MReed]

When I was in basic training my Drill Sergeant told us, "if you're not cheating, you're not trying." I'm not saying make it so that your character is invincible, but the criticisms of say setting up your guys to your advantage before fighting Medreth is strategy. That's called establishing a perimeter when a potentially violent situation is about to arise. Kiting is also a strategy.

 

Yeap, you are absolutely correct -- now why would Merdith, a human of presumably reasonable intelligence, allow you to position your units in ideal position to ambush his party before talking to him?    You are absolutely correct that this sort of gameplay is so common in WRPGs that I doubt anyone doesn't do it 100% of the time without even thinking about -- but it doesn't change the fact that it is as much an exploit as casting cloudkill on dragons in BG2 from off the screen and waiting for them to die.  Both would never work against a human opponent (playing the NPCs) after all.

 

 

Actually, the idea is that the opposition needs to be stronger than the party. While technically they are the stronger, the player can still beat them by beating smarter than the AI... not exploiting some loophole.

 

It's why strong encounters are usually more satisfying than the easy meat, you know they should technically make mince-meat of you, yet you survive, and become victorious...

 

Also, lol at this topic going from "Obsidian better removes engagement since it can't fix the AI to go around this single exploit" going towards "AI should be super-human like and do all kinds of stuff AI's never have been able to do"...

 

You are correct that the opponents (in a "fair" fight) are generally statistically stronger that the player -- another advantage given to the foes in RPGs of all flavors (even P&P) is that they can spend 100% of their resources on this single fight, while the player has to worry about conserving resources for the next fight / deal with diminished resources from the previous fight.  After all, win or lose, the player's foes are only going to have to fight once...

 

Moving from engagement to AI isn't all that surprising -- my major objection to engagement is that it makes it impossible to build an AI for foes much more complex than the current AI: "If all you have are melee attacks, move towards the closet target and attack.  Continue to attack that target until it dies."  Sensuki's major objection to engagement is that it makes this simple tactic the best tactic 95%+ of the time for the human player.

 

I suppose you could say that engagement does do a good job at leveling the playing field between humans and the AI for NPCs:  They both will follow the same, simplistic, strategy for melee combatants.  I'm not sure I'd call that progress, though.

[Captain Shrek]

This is a single player game. Leveling the playing field is not required. In fact, it should depend on the kind of encounter you face. Wizard with level 9 spells as you enemy? You best go with a lot of scrolls ready. or get your butt handed to you. 

[Lephys]

However, those that call it an exploit are right, too. Strategies ARE exploits to give you a one-up on your opponent.

By sheer definition of the word, yes. You're literally taking advantage of the situation.

 

But, what people so negatively refer to as an "exploit" is when you take advantage of an unintended flaw in the mechanics. Taking advantage of a bug, for example, would be a blatant exploit. It starts getting a little fuzzy on the technical legitimacy of the terminology when you're not dealing with outright bugs, though. Loopholes best describe it, I think. The point is that it's unintentional, as per the design goal. If it's a disconnect between the design goal and the design execution, it's something that will most likely be negatively referred to as exploitable.

 

There's really a very fine line between a bug, and an unintended design loophole. A loophole's technically working as it's design (which a bug is not), but is not accomplishing its design goal, which is kind of the point of mechanic design, and, I dare say, the entire game itself.

[Sedrefilos]

This is a video game, not real life. There must be a ruleset that you play into. Now, if the designers have intentionally put kiting in, this is ok. If they've build mechanics that are supposed to prevent kiting and you still kite... that's a problem because their design is flaud and might lead to "awkward" gameplay.

 

Kiting is not a problem or something wrong by itself.

[Lord Wafflebum]

@MReed

Heh, if I wanted to waste ultra amounts of time I could split my crew and sneak up on Medreth in hidden ambush locations to simulate real life, but that's a lot of work. Ambushes happen all the time in real life, and if you aren't using the element of surprise in combat then you greatly increase your risk of being dead soon. 

 

@Lephys

And by design if they want to eliminate some common cheap tactics, then by all means. There's only so much OE can realistically squash given AI and game mechanics limitations, tho. Even if they could eliminate all the cheapness folks such as myself utilize I worry the game would then become punishingly difficult and alienate more folks than they would care to do. Or I could just be an idiot that's getting bumsore because I won't feel superior to a video game AI.

[MReed]

@MReed

Heh, if I wanted to waste ultra amounts of time I could split my crew and sneak up on Medreth in hidden ambush locations to simulate real life, but that's a lot of work. Ambushes happen all the time in real life, and if you aren't using the element of surprise in combat then you greatly increase your risk of being dead soon. 

.

 

If you did that, and the stealth mechanics that are currently in the game were used, then I'd have no objection -- assuming that the NPCs never detected your party, a human in the same position could not have responded better.  This would be a difficult thing to pull off, so the easier combat (perhaps even trivial combat) would be appropriate compensation for the pre-combat work put in.

 

 

@Lephys

And by design if they want to eliminate some common cheap tactics, then by all means. There's only so much OE can realistically squash given AI and game mechanics limitations, tho. Even if they could eliminate all the cheapness folks such as myself utilize I worry the game would then become punishingly difficult and alienate more folks than they would care to do. Or I could just be an idiot that's getting bumsore because I won't feel superior to a video game AI.

 

Assuming that Obsidian came up with some amazingly good AI and innovative mechanics that eliminated all of the common exploits / loopholes that we are all familiar with from WRPGs, and somehow didn't manage to introduce any new ones, then yeah, the difficulty would be out of whack.  But fixing that is trivial -- just lower the combat stats and abilities of the foes until the desired level of difficulty is reached.

 

That's the whole problem with exploits / loopholes:  if you try to increase the combat abilities of foes to compensate for their existence, the primary effect is to make using the exploits more necessary.  Depending on what exploits are being discussed, you can eventually end up in a position where the game play is absolutely trivial (because the exploits / loopholes render the foes unable to damage the PCs, for example)  if you use exploits, but absolutely impossible if you do not (because you've ramped up the damage for foes to the point where they always hit, and minimum damage is enough to one-shot-kill any player character), achieving zero percent customer satisfaction.

 

Obviously, Obsidian isn't faced with that in regards to kiting (or any other mechanic, for that matter), but the presence of exploits / loopholes places an upper bound how difficult the game is.  There is never any limit on how easy they can make the game, though.

[Lord Wafflebum]

I'm pretty lazy and tend to not want to spend the 20 minutes setting up a proper ambush so I'd just as rather surround the enemy group with my band of merryfolk. In reality, if your crew were being surrounded by another crew out of the blue, the initial reaction would likely not be "To VIOLENCE!" Would they be on guard and suspicious? Absolutely yes, likely with weapons at the ready, but there simply isn't and will not be a mechanic to deal with that sort of situation. I agree the work put in should reflect your ability to control an encounter, but there are often going to be certain elements of a game like this that one might just need to roleplay.

 

And i do appreciate the need to minimize certain exploits. My whole thing has just been to caution against defining too many tactics folks employ as exploits and attempting to eliminate their usage. I'd argue too much of a focus on that gets too close to allowing only a certain amount of prescribed tactics, thus eliminating differing levels of creativity in regards to how to approach different encounters.

[constantine]

When will the next build go live ?

[Stun]

 

And once it's removed Sensuki can just kite them around, as he's also proven already... but apparently that's not exploiting?

 

Anyone want to fill me in on the major part of the fandom being against this? So far I only have seen Sensuki going about it, making 30+ threads about it, having most post in them himself, and still not getting the majority in all these threads to back them. I, personally, am very happy Obsidian doesn't bow to one incredibly loud single person.  If they removed stuff left and right because just one person has some personal vendetta with it, not much of the game would be left, would there be now?

 

And, seriously here people... the "proof" a system needs to be removed is because the AI can't handle it yet? Might aswell throw all systems off the table. Why have bots at in games? Heck, why have the game itself, if the AI can't handle I'm sure we just need to remove it.

 

As for the "It must play like DoTA"... nope... It must play like you control 6 DoTA's at the same time. Can't handle that in realtime? That's okay, we've got pause for that. It's not just there for ****s and giggles you know. Use it before we take it out since the AI doesn't use it!

 

This is wrong. Sensuki and I have been discussing engagement for weeks now and many of the arguments put forth are ones that Sensuki and I talked about together. To say that Sensuki is the only one arguing for the removal of engagement is specious.

 

Add me to your group.

 

I actually don't mind the fact that the engagement mechanic in this game is hilariously exploitable. In fact, I think it's awesome that it is... in that Degenerate-Gameplay-in-your-face-to-Sawyer kind of way.

 

What bothers me, and has ALWAYS bothered me, about the engagement mechanic is how constricted and untactical it makes combat feel. One of most tactical moments in any major, party based battle is when things aren't going your way and you have to stop and change your game plan....move people around, reposition your priest, move your mage a little to the left so he can cast his cone-attack without frying half your party, etc. etc. Well, you can't do that in this game. Someone will die for it. Almost exclusively in this beta, success/failure depends on the friggin first 3 seconds of the encounter. If you're favorably positioned, you'll be fine. If not, you're dead.

 

That may be fun to some people. Not me. That's not how I define deep tactical combat.

Edited December 20, 2014 by Stun

[Lephys]

What bothers me, and has ALWAYS bothered me, about the engagement mechanic is how constricted and untactical it makes combat feel. One of most tactical moments in any major, party based battle is when things aren't going your way and you have to stop and change your game plan....move people around, reposition your priest, move your mage a little to the left so he can cast his cone-attack without frying half your party, etc. etc. Well, you can't do that in this game. Someone will die for it. Almost exclusively in this beta, success/failure depends on the friggin first 3 seconds of the encounter. If you're favorably positioned, you'll be fine. If not, you're dead.

Which is precisely why it (and damage numbers, among other things) need adjustment.

 

"You need to deal with this melee person engaging you" isn't causing all that. Not having enough ways to do so, and being insta-slain unless you do it just right, is.

 

It's all variable. Croikey. Why is that hard?

 

"Too hot in the room? TEMPERATURE WAS A BAD IDEA!"

 

"Wait, maybe we should try to cool the room or..."

 

"NO MAN! WE'VE GOTTA GET RID OF TEMPERATURE!"

[Nakia]

Speaking as a casual player and no expert on the mechanics I have no problem with the engagement system itself.    It seems realistic to me.  It is my casters I worry about.  I try to position them so they can move around and be protected by my tanks and the rogue.