Am I the only one who think that combat is still too fast and chaotic? + idea

[Sky_walker]

As in the title.

I never had any problem with combat in Infinity Engine games (mind you: I played few of them over last 3 years, so it's not just looking through the rose glasses of my childhood memories) and yet I somehow keep on struggling with PoE combat. I love the depth it offers, I love the mechanics, but.... at the same time I always struggle with the GUI, doing everything as I would like to do it and I'm being forced into pausing the game every moment, distributing orders, and trying to somehow manage tons of things that games make very difficult to manage. I honestly cannot imagine full real-time combat in PoE, I'd be massacred by first random critter. And yet somehow it was possible in older IE games.

 

A quick ideas to improve the situation:

• Add casting progress bars to the bottom UI - somewhere next to the character avatar (over it?).
  It's really frustrating that I need to carefully watch how the animation plays and THEN pause the game to give a next order. Right now you can see progress bar on how caster spells out the spell, but then the animation plays and there's nothing clear and obvious in the GUI telling you how this animation progresses and how long is it till my character will be able to cast the next spell. Oh, and it's just just spell for that matter - it's everything, how sword swings are going, bow firing animation plays, etc. etc.
• Perhaps also: Allow me to queue orders, or at least: make it clearer which order is next and how long till my character will be able to do it.
  So in the encounter with random scarabs I wouldn't have to manage everything all the time and constantly engage in a click fest but rather distribute orders for my characters and just let the battle unfold, intervening only when needed (Call me lazy, but the amount of clicks this game forces me to do tends to be exhausting, and I won't be getting any younger).

 

If anyone got any hints how to manage current combat better in existing mechanics - I'd be delighted to hear them, cause I really struggle. But none the less in my humble opinion GUI should do everything to help players interact with the game world, not be an obstacle, and right now for me it feels like an obstacle.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Gairnulf]

One of the reasons I dislike the halos UI over the characters' heads is because I keep concentrated on them, hardly minding the battle. At least they can be turned off, and then you're in the situation you were in the IE games, where the cooldowns are invisible.

 

However, unlike the IE games, PoE's cooldowns are relatively fast - 2-3 seconds I think. Probably it's this that makes battles seem too fast to you. Personally, I think the cooldowns can be cut down even further and the animations slowed down to compensate for that. I imagine it would bring a different feel to overall combat speed, and I've described it in previous threads, but there is no way to test my theory.

 

The best advice I can give you is to pause often and put in the effort to read the log. Also, compare the little lines above the characters' heads which mark how much is left until the cooldown time passes and they can do another action.

[Sensuki]

The reason is because per-hit damage is very high in a lot of cases, it's never really been to do with action speed.

[Gairnulf]

The reason is because per-hit damage is very high in a lot of cases, it's never really been to do with action speed.

Well, you can see he says:

 

• It's really frustrating that I need to carefully watch how the animation plays and THEN pause the game to give a next order. Right now you can see progress bar on how caster spells out the spell, but then the animation plays and there's nothing clear and obvious in the GUI telling you how this animation progresses and how long is it till my character will be able to cast the next spell. Oh, and it's just just spell for that matter - it's everything, how sword swings are going, bow firing animation plays, etc. etc.

[Sensuki]

I don't have that problem. If there was a different animation for recovery time and combat idle I wouldn't even use the Combat HUDs.

[archangel979]

Reducing the damage would already make the game slower. Compared to IE games at lvl 5 or so, everyone dies too fast.

 

Also visuals are not helping (too much VFX and transparent characters)

 

I base this on all the videos I seen since I don't have access to beta.

[Gairnulf]

"Am I the only one who think that combat is still too fast and chaotic?"

 

No, basically all people that saw and played think that with exception of Sensuki and few other people. But mainly Sensuki.

I wouldn't say it's very chaotic for me by now either, but that's the result of both playing v.364 and of having around 40 hours total with the beta

[Starwars]

I like the current speed of things. I think the continued visual chaos (though it has been improved a lot) contributes to the feel of things going too fast. But the actual speed is fine for me.

[Sky_walker]

Reducing the damage would already make the game slower. Compared to IE games at lvl 5 or so, everyone dies too fast.

 

Also visuals are not helping (too much VFX and transparent characters)

 

Yes... you got a point with these two.

First of all visuals and GUI are not as helpful as they could be

And secondly high damage from each hit makes enounters last really short in a real time.

 

I seen some people posting on how they're dissatisified with the fact that Perception and Might are - basically - two ultimate skills, cause one "miss" RNG throw can easily make a difference between winning and loosing. Having lower damage per hit would lower the importance of RNG and put more pressure on a strategy and your tactical management of abilities, spells and items.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Sensuki]

The swingy damage is pretty crazy, I'm honestly surprised that damage this random exists in a Sawyer game.

[Gairnulf]

Talking about high damage per hit, my girlfriend started a monk character yesterday, and these monks pop people like we pop baloons medreths gang exploded in a couple of touches

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Combat hasn't been chaotic for me since v300? I've lost track of the iterations, but I believe it was the second update. I think most of the ability activation and recovery times still need tweaked, but otherwise I'm fine with the pace of combat.

[Gladiuss8@gmail.com]

Yup, combat feels way too fast and it's not only what Sensuki pointed out. There are so many things that contribute to combat feeling clunky, like - camera angle, poor/not enough character animations, unreadable graphics, unclear spell casting time and casting animations, there are too many things going on in the background, making the "invisible" combat, there is not enough space between characters and enemes, so that engagement is too fast. There 's no balance between spell casting time, and enemies getting in melee range with your characters. There is many more, and sadly, pretty much nothing important was fixed yet.

[Shevek]

I think the pace of combat feels good but more can be done on the ui/feedback side.

[Sky_walker]

like - camera angle

What? What's wrong with camera angle? You know it's an isometric game, and that's how isometric games look like, right?

[archangel979]

 

like - camera angle

What? What's wrong with camera angle? You know it's an isometric game, and that's how isometric games look like, right?

 

Some do, but it is at a lower angle than IE games and as such characters hide each other more than in IE games.

[Sky_walker]

 

 

like - camera angle

What? What's wrong with camera angle? You know it's an isometric game, and that's how isometric games look like, right?

 

Some do, but it is at a lower angle than IE games and as such characters hide each other more than in IE games.

 

Fair enough. Though to be honest I never had a problem with camera angle. It always felt natural to me, like in a proper isometric RPG. As Gladiuss pointed out - there's a problem with spacing of the characters - and that IMHO is more important matter and something that if fixed would also solve this concern.

[Sensuki]

Spacing of the characters? Lol ? In the outside environments that issue is because of the low camera, not because of the character spacing.

[Sky_walker]

Spacing of the characters? Lol ? In the outside environments that issue is because of the low camera, not because of the character spacing.

Yea, good luck with chaning the camera angle. You might just as well wish for a completly new game. All of the back-drops would have to be re-done to make that happen.

And spacing of the characters migrates problem cause you see far less overlapping between them as well as between them and the enemies. It got nothing to deal with characters being obscured by arches or stuff like that, but let's face it - this happened in old Infinity Engine games too and they somewhat-solved it by allowing you to see through stuff but it was still far from perfect. It's just the nature of isometric games.

[Sensuki]

All I was saying is that it was because they did not design in accordance with the lower camera angle. It is an unfixable problem. There are a lot of 'rookie' mistakes in the design for the isometric space. Obsidian as a company have never done an isometric game before.

[archangel979]

All I was saying is that it was because they did not design in accordance with the lower camera angle. It is an unfixable problem. There are a lot of 'rookie' mistakes in the design for the isometric space. Obsidian as a company have never done an isometric game before.

There is always PoE2 to fix this stuff :D

[Sensuki]

Yeah hopefully for the expansion and beyond they don't do any lower camera angle maps, and drop the 16:9 ratio for map size and go back to something that's more of a square.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sky_walker]

I'm yet to see an isometric game where they'd change a camera angle between the base game and an expansion pack. I wouldn't get my hopes high for that one. PoE 2 is more realistic, if at all.

[Sensuki]

It's not a hard thing to do, all they have to do is render the exterior maps at the same angle as the PE interior maps (which use a higher camera).

[lolaldanee]

It's not a hard thing to do, all they have to do is render the exterior maps at the same angle as the PE interior maps (which use a higher camera).

the angles are different? interesting.. why would they do that, it only creates needless trouble