392 Discussion

[PrimeJunta]

On Hard... yes. You have to move fast and take out the Adra Beetles quickly or you're dead, and taking out the Adra Beetles quickly is to a significant degree a matter of luck.

 

Alternatively, you have to use cheesy tactics like the ever-overpowered Slicken. Their damage output is way OTT and not fun.

 

On Normal, no it's not particularly swingy. I've run through 392 about a dozen times testing the different classes, and combat outcomes have been very similar unless I screw up somehow. The stone beetles are just that much more forgiving than the adra ones.

[Doppelschwert]

I think the crit range is the only problem in PoE regarding the combat swinginess - if you remove crits, then PoE has a slightly more predictable damage output pattern compared to IE - conceptually, it's not really changing a lot whether you miss or do little to none damage.

What became obvious to me when I built my 400 crit damage rogue yesterday was that the individual talents are fine, but the stacking is not. I don't think the solution would be to nerf the individual talents or that there is stacking - either the individual talents become to weak or there are situations like in DnD where your buff ability is useless because you have already equipped an item that has a superior bonus.

 

I think the solution would be to have the accuracy bonus give diminishing returns for the crit range. Compute the crit range as it is in the game now and then either divide it by 5 or take the square root and multiply it by a constant. That way you don't end up with a guarenteed crit on every hit no matter how hard you try. I think that is more elegant than having a hard cap on crit range .

 

A lot of those side effects of Wounds were confusing to players so we drastically simplified how they work. Every X amount of damage (default is 20, IIRC) that a monk takes (after DR) adds a Wound to the monk. Wounds are a resource that can either be spent or can sit on the monk for about 30 seconds (again IIRC). Wounds do not prevent or absorb damage.

A bit about Monk wounds.

 

 

So, is that already in or will that be introduced in the next patch? I honestly couldn't tell from playing through the beta yesterday. That's also kind of ****ty because that somehow defeats the whole purpose and the most interesting synergies of the class. If there is no incentive to use up wounds immediately and given that some of the more interesting class features are per encounter now anyway, I might as well ignore spending wounds completely and build a monk around all the passive abilities and use the wounds to fuel the turning wheel flame damage.

[Sensuki]

I was thinking more of being at the receiving end of whiff-whiff-whiff-crit.

 

Wear a helmet.

 

However, I think we play some of the encounters in them differently, and I, arguably, play them wrong -- or can't enjoy them for what they are, anyway, whereas you particularly relish them.

 

What encounters? I'd like to hear which specific ones you don't like, and what you do in them.

 

Consider your "standard" IWD encounter. You're pushing into a dungeon, and find a group of foes, mixing melee and ranged with a couple of casters. I think all of us would play this encounter in more or less the same way: hold the choke point with melee units, use ranged attacks and spells to take down or suppress the enemy casters and attempt to counter their spells if possible, then CC to debuff, and damage in various ways to destroy.

 

I don't play encounters that have casters (or archers) that way. In the Infinity Engine games, casters are usually the primary target of the encounter and NEED to be taken down as quickly as possible. This is the case in BG1 and IWD1 more often than BG2 and IWD2 I think. The fastest way to down a caster is usually take them down with your best melee character. I use a ranged character to try and interrupt their first spell, then send my best melee character ahead to quickly make short work of the caster. I also find that I often spread aggro around. Ranged units are scripted to change weapons when attacked in melee, and usually have a higher hit chance with their bow than their sword, so bum rushing them with melee characters is more effective than holding a choke point, as that forces them to change weapons, and thus they deal less damage. This doesn't happen if they do not have a secondary melee weapon and in rare instances, some ranged characters, and many monster archers will continue to use their ranged weapon. 

 

However, then there are those other kinds of encounters: the ones which happen on an open map, where the enemies materialize from thin air, or which start after a cutscene, or you're locked in a room with them. There is no choke point, and you're kind of mixed in with them. I hated those ones because there was no way to control and stabilize the space: my side here, their side there. Instead it just felt like mad chaos, something I would eventually only win through trial and error and a certain amount of luck. (Thinking especially about one or two mage encounters towards the end of IWD here, for example.)

 

You, on the other hand, I believe, especially relished that challenge. You had to rush to gank the highest-value enemies quickly, rush to help a fellow in trouble, react quickly when something happened, maybe use AoE's that are likely to hurt the enemy more than FF hurts you, and so on. Fast-paced, frantic, and, no doubt, extremely thrilling if you're good enough at it.

 

Yes. Setpiece encounters in the Infinity Engine games are the best encounters in the game. Myself, Hiro Protagonist II, Stun, Malekith, Raszius and many of the other people that are big fans of the Infinity Engine game combat all love the setpiece encounters the most.

 

The upshot is that I like features like engagement, because it lets me stabilize the space in an open area more or less like if there was a choke point, whereas you dislike it because it stops you from making those quick moves to gank the enemy caster or help a buddy out; having to do something special to disengage gets in the way, costs resources, and changes the pacing of the game. Conversely, you strongly dislike features like uncertain attack outcomes, because it means you can't rely on the heroic move you're doing working even if you did pull it off, whereas I'm much less bothered by it because in the stabler battlefield I like an individual attack matters less.

You're clearly not getting the IE experience you want. Those open battles decided by daring moves through enemy lines won't happen, or at least there's much less room for them. I, on the other hand, will enjoy those types of maps and encounters more because I'm able to control the space better.

 

Ultimately this is a matter of preference: what I see as weaknesses and the least enjoyable aspects of the IE games, you see as strengths and their most enjoyable aspects, and therefore central to the experience. There's no way P:E can make both of us entirely happy. That's unfortunate, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to be on the winning side here -- even if you, personally, through the effort you've put into the BB, would very much have earned that privilege.

 

Pretty much. This game seems to be designed for the people that did not like the key things that are quite unique to the Infinity Engine combat among combat in other RPGs, and one of those is definitely the setpiece encounters after cutscenes or dialogue and the way that you deal with those encounters, and I am pretty disappointed how the overall design of the game has turned out. At least you seem to understand my point of view. I am pretty frustrated bordering on angry about how combat in this game has turned out, and I can only hope that we can get full access to the game prefabs so I can try and mod the game into more of an Infinity Engine experience for myself and those that are disgruntled with the design of this game.

 

A lot of it stems from the fact that this game has been designed like a turn-based game in many ways, and Obsidian's general unfamiliarity with designing for an isometric game.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

Thanks. At least now we understand each other. In your shoes, I'd probably give up on the BB at this point, and then enjoy the game for what it is when it comes out.

 

That's probably what I'd do if it did tilt towards your preferences in these areas rather than mine.

 

That said, the next time I fire up IWD, I'll try playing it like you suggest. Perhaps I too will see the light.

[Sensuki]

I am not giving up on the BB. The more things that I can get into the game that make it so that I don't have to mod it in the better. Bester has already been able to implement many of my UI change requests with ease. I also need to do some research into the animation glitches that occur where melee characters in recovery are trying to attack moving targets. Those glitches should be more noticeable now that re-engagement has a delay, so it may be possible to get Obsidian to fix them so that a No Engagement mod won't look retarded (it plays fine, it just looks silly).

 

For the past 1.5 months or so I've mostly been focusing on bug hunting anyway.

[Sensuki]

This is also something you definitely do not see in Pillars of Eternity, due to the size of areas, encounter design style and the general game design geared more towards 4E style play

 

 

 

Splitting the party up like that ends very badly in PE. Most encounters are contained within the same screen.

[Sensuki]

So, is that already in or will that be introduced in the next patch?

It's been in since about v333

[Doppelschwert]

 

So, is that already in or will that be introduced in the next patch?

It's been in since about v333

 

 

Thanks, that explains a lot. It felt like something was off when playing the monk, but I was never sure if they changed something or not. Given that you don't need to spend the wounds anymore, I guess thats a small buff to lesser wounds and turning wheel then.

[GordonHalfman]

 

A lot of those side effects of Wounds were confusing to players so we drastically simplified how they work. Every X amount of damage (default is 20, IIRC) that a monk takes (after DR) adds a Wound to the monk. Wounds are a resource that can either be spent or can sit on the monk for about 30 seconds (again IIRC). Wounds do not prevent or absorb damage.

A bit about Monk wounds.

 

 

So, is that already in or will that be introduced in the next patch? I honestly couldn't tell from playing through the beta yesterday. That's also kind of ****ty because that somehow defeats the whole purpose and the most interesting synergies of the class. If there is no incentive to use up wounds immediately and given that some of the more interesting class features are per encounter now anyway, I might as well ignore spending wounds completely and build a monk around all the passive abilities and use the wounds to fuel the turning wheel flame damage.

 

Yes this was my thought exactly, I understand wounds didn't work that well but this change is disappointing. 

[archangel979]

Sorry to interfere being someone that is not playing the backer beta, but saying that IE combat is not swinging sounds... stragne. Last night I'm playing IWD EE, I'm at Vale of Shadows or something like that and I'm fighting a single lesser shadow. 2 successful ranged hits bring it down to Near Death, then 6 people gang up the poor thing relentlessly attacking it. So I put my hands behing my head and watch the fight, only to see 7 characters missing all the time and then the Shadow downs my cleric before the others put it down. Now this is some annoying stuff! This should have not happend no matter how bad the character builds are. And this, or something like this, happened several times afterwards.

If 95% of attacks are hits (grazes, normal hits or crits) in PE, things like above can not hapen, no?

Shadows are hard to hit as they are ghostly forms. You have 50% miss chance on all attacks vs them in addition to your normal hit chance.

That is why you use Magic Missile to finish them off as Force effect spells ignore miss chance.

[archangel979]

I think the crit range is the only problem in PoE regarding the combat swinginess - if you remove crits, then PoE has a slightly more predictable damage output pattern compared to IE - conceptually, it's not really changing a lot whether you miss or do little to none damage.

What became obvious to me when I built my 400 crit damage rogue yesterday was that the individual talents are fine, but the stacking is not. I don't think the solution would be to nerf the individual talents or that there is stacking - either the individual talents become to weak or there are situations like in DnD where your buff ability is useless because you have already equipped an item that has a superior bonus.

 

I think the solution would be to have the accuracy bonus give diminishing returns for the crit range. Compute the crit range as it is in the game now and then either divide it by 5 or take the square root and multiply it by a constant. That way you don't end up with a guarenteed crit on every hit no matter how hard you try. I think that is more elegant than having a hard cap on crit range .

 

 

A lot of those side effects of Wounds were confusing to players so we drastically simplified how they work. Every X amount of damage (default is 20, IIRC) that a monk takes (after DR) adds a Wound to the monk. Wounds are a resource that can either be spent or can sit on the monk for about 30 seconds (again IIRC). Wounds do not prevent or absorb damage.

A bit about Monk wounds.

 

 

So, is that already in or will that be introduced in the next patch? I honestly couldn't tell from playing through the beta yesterday. That's also kind of ****ty because that somehow defeats the whole purpose and the most interesting synergies of the class. If there is no incentive to use up wounds immediately and given that some of the more interesting class features are per encounter now anyway, I might as well ignore spending wounds completely and build a monk around all the passive abilities and use the wounds to fuel the turning wheel flame damage.

 

When D&D 3.0e came out high level fighters came up with a powerful way to build a character. You get scimitars (for good base critical chance), two weapon fighting, get feats that improve critical chance and get keen property on those scimitars (for more crit chance). And finally you get a Vorpal weapon (instant death on critical due to cutting off the head). Now you have 7 attacks per round and each attack kills instantly 45% of the time. To say nothing survived the first round of attacks is an understatement (most died in first few rolls).

 

What did owners of D&D do? They fixed it for 3.5e by only letting Vorpal work on roll of 20 on a scale of 1 to 20 which means you only had 5% to instant kill anyone with it now no matter how much normal critical you built for. They also made it so you could no longer stack feat that improves critical chance and Keen ability for weapons that does the same.

 

Systems that let critical bonuses run amok were all proven bad in the past. There was a good reason why IE only had critical on roll 20 and with some weapon styles on 19 and 20. D&D 5e also has reverted to critical ONLY on 20 and with specialization on 19 and 20.

 

PoE needs to fix its critical hit system before release, the game combat will always be crap as it is now.

[PrimeJunta]

@Sensuki Re moddability, I think it would actually be interesting to do a "grognard" mod for P:E. It should be totes feasible, but it's clearly about a lot more than removing engagement. You'd also have to revise all the spells and specials that are partly or even completely designed to deal with it. Not a small job, but I'd certainly try it. 

 

Once I learn to play IWD properly anyway.

[Doppelschwert]

When D&D 3.0e came out high level fighters came up with a powerful way to build a character. You get scimitars (for good base critical chance), two weapon fighting, get feats that improve critical chance and get keen property on those scimitars (for more crit chance). And finally you get a Vorpal weapon (instant death on critical due to cutting off the head). Now you have 7 attacks per round and each attack kills instantly 45% of the time. To say nothing survived the first round of attacks is an understatement (most died in first few rolls).

 

What did owners of D&D do? They fixed it for 3.5e by only letting Vorpal work on roll of 20 on a scale of 1 to 20 which means you only had 5% to instant kill anyone with it now no matter how much normal critical you built for. They also made it so you could no longer stack feat that improves critical chance and Keen ability for weapons that does the same.

 

Systems that let critical bonuses run amok were all proven bad in the past. There was a good reason why IE only had critical on roll 20 and with some weapon styles on 19 and 20. D&D 5e also has reverted to critical ONLY on 20 and with specialization on 19 and 20.

 

PoE needs to fix its critical hit system before release, the game combat will always be crap as it is now.

 

 

Yeah, I agree with you. What they did in 3.0 was a little silly, although you still can build powerful crit dependent characters with the weapon master in D&D 3.5. A weapon master with kukris still has a crit chance of 40% in that system. However, it's balanced by the prerequisites of the weapon master and the low initial damage of the kukris, and a lot of enemies are immune to critical hits as well, so a crit system in itself is not automatically bad in my eyes.

With the design philosophy of pillars, you can't have these things, so crits have to be restricted in some other way. I feel like diminishing returns in increasing crit probability is a possibility. The way the game seemed to play out yesterday I guess that cirtical multipliers are used on total damage after adding bonus damage - I think first adding critical multiplier on basic weapon damage and adding bonus damage afterwards would go a long way too balance this as well, so that you can't one shot every enemy with 400 damage just be flanking them and hitting them with a buffed sneack missile critical attack anymore.

[Sensuki]

@Sensuki Re moddability, I think it would actually be interesting to do a "grognard" mod for P:E. It should be totes feasible, but it's clearly about a lot more than removing engagement. You'd also have to revise all the spells and specials that are partly or even completely designed to deal with it. Not a small job, but I'd certainly try it. 

 

Once I learn to play IWD properly anyway.

 

Yeah ideally it would be a complete redesign of the mechanics and encounters to feel a lot more like playing IWD1:HoW, BG2, IWD2 etc. Use of integers instead of percentages will be another thing.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Sensuki

[Sedrefilos]

 

Sorry to interfere being someone that is not playing the backer beta, but saying that IE combat is not swinging sounds... stragne. Last night I'm playing IWD EE, I'm at Vale of Shadows or something like that and I'm fighting a single lesser shadow. 2 successful ranged hits bring it down to Near Death, then 6 people gang up the poor thing relentlessly attacking it. So I put my hands behing my head and watch the fight, only to see 7 characters missing all the time and then the Shadow downs my cleric before the others put it down. Now this is some annoying stuff! This should have not happend no matter how bad the character builds are. And this, or something like this, happened several times afterwards.

If 95% of attacks are hits (grazes, normal hits or crits) in PE, things like above can not hapen, no?

Shadows are hard to hit as they are ghostly forms. You have 50% miss chance on all attacks vs them in addition to your normal hit chance.

That is why you use Magic Missile to finish them off as Force effect spells ignore miss chance.

 

Thanx for the info but that wasn't the point of my post. That was just an example; I could go deeper with more examples but I'm covered in a way anyway by PrimeJunta.

[archangel979]

 

 

Sorry to interfere being someone that is not playing the backer beta, but saying that IE combat is not swinging sounds... stragne. Last night I'm playing IWD EE, I'm at Vale of Shadows or something like that and I'm fighting a single lesser shadow. 2 successful ranged hits bring it down to Near Death, then 6 people gang up the poor thing relentlessly attacking it. So I put my hands behing my head and watch the fight, only to see 7 characters missing all the time and then the Shadow downs my cleric before the others put it down. Now this is some annoying stuff! This should have not happend no matter how bad the character builds are. And this, or something like this, happened several times afterwards.

If 95% of attacks are hits (grazes, normal hits or crits) in PE, things like above can not hapen, no?

Shadows are hard to hit as they are ghostly forms. You have 50% miss chance on all attacks vs them in addition to your normal hit chance.

That is why you use Magic Missile to finish them off as Force effect spells ignore miss chance.

 

Thanx for the info but that wasn't the point of my post. That was just an example; I could go deeper with more examples but I'm covered in a way anyway by PrimeJunta.

 

Well it was a bad example. Shadows also ignore target armor and only your dexterity and magical armor like mage armor stops them. So it was not that stupid that you missed them while they killed your low level cleric.

 

Get us better example if you want to prove anything. The first two archer strikes was the lucky part of the story, others mission after that was normal. Also you might be talking here about apples while we talk about oranges. Swinging in IE games is also due to each swing not being a real attack. The added additional swing animations so your melee guys don't stand around doing nothing most of the round.

 

But what we talked about was that in PoE damage is too much. Critical hits happen too often and do too much damage and even what is considered a miss in IE games, in PoE is a graze that also does damage. So unlikes IE games, PoE combat can end up much faster and seems like it is crazy (this is what multiple people have reported, personally I have not played beta). Sensuki has reported losing lvl 5 characters from single criticals and others reported their rogues doing 400 damage on a critical which one shots anything.

Edited January 3, 2015 by archangel979

[Sensuki]

FFS

 

[Luckmann]

FFS

 

 

...

 

There's no excuse.

 

Really, just the fact that there are combat and non-combat actions strikes me as weird, because there's so many abilities you might want to initiate combat with, but can't.

[Karkarov]

FFS

In all honesty I think it is time the "soloists" wake up and smell the coffee.  You won't be one manning this game with anything other than maybe a chanter.  It was not designed around it, they didn't consider it, and it isn't being looked at.  Yes Cipher has restrictions but in an actual party they are not huge.

[TheisEjsing]

Have faith Karkarov. Someone will break it in time. =)

[Luckmann]

 

FFS

In all honesty I think it is time the "soloists" wake up and smell the coffee.  You won't be one manning this game with anything other than maybe a chanter.  It was not designed around it, they didn't consider it, and it isn't being looked at.  Yes Cipher has restrictions but in an actual party they are not huge.

 

 

While I am in no way suggesting that there should be any specific "solo-play"-support, it should be mechanically supported. If it's an issue soloing, it's an issue in a group.

 

Think of it like this way, instead:

 

The Cipher has no way to initiate combat with an offensive power.

 

Why would that be acceptable, whether you're soloing or not?

 

I still fail to understand why there'd be such strong Combat-Only restrictions on powers at all.

[Karkarov]

The Cipher has no way to initiate combat with an offensive power.

 

Why would that be acceptable, whether you're soloing or not?

 

I still fail to understand why there'd be such strong Combat-Only restrictions on powers at all.

Ah but that's not true.  For one thing walking up and "stabbing a guy" is a offensive power.  Just not a really fancy one.  Also Ciphers have the soul lash thing which should be active when combat starts and helps them do a bit of damage as well.  Most of those abilities were disabled out of combat because they were too powerful, solo cipher just mind controls a guy and waits for everyone to engage him.  Solo cipher uses a dot that doesn't aggro, one shot kills who game.  Solo cipher.... blah blah blah.

[Nakia]

I like the cipher class, it is a bit different from the others.    I may take a cipher for my first playthrough of the game.   Wonder how it would work teamed with a monk.  A fighting machine and a mind control machine.  Hmm.  But then I never solo this type of game there are plenty of solo games available.

[prodigydancer]

I still fail to understand why there'd be such strong Combat-Only restrictions on powers at all.

Because no fun allowed. The change is disappointing but expectable. I no longer have any faith in PoE developers because I've seen time and again how their thinking works. Cipher has abilities that are incidentally very strong openers? Would the solution be to work hard on balancing? Hell no! We'll just restrict players from using them as openers, problem solved. Edited January 5, 2015 by prodigydancer

[Ragniz]

Can you open combat with those cipher spells agaisnt hostile targets?

 

I can see why they would ban opening combat with charm though, since it's a easy meat shield just like summons, but the rest should be fair game.