Skeletons army animation

[bigsun123]

It's obvious you haven't played the beta or checked out any of the preview videos, but it's fairly obvious when combat starts and ends. As long as you are engaged in combat, it counts as one encounter. If you are still engaging one group of enemies and run into another group of enemies, that's still just one encounter.

 

Encounters end as soon as the last enemy is dead.

I haven't played the beta, correct. I have linked to a video, and I encourage you to check it out at the time I mentioned. The enemy falls and there are still several seconds where the spell was active while the player was trying to get to the next enemy. He didn't get to them in time and all his effects wore off with no warning. This would be frustrating to me, as I would expect effects to either last the full duration or have some better indication of ending.

 

Not really obvious to me.

 

Voss, I believe some of the issues with the save games and combat states are due to the team being new to working with Unity.  There's also some issues with not allowing a single person to enter buildings alone, like you are encouraged to do in some thieving quests in BG1.  Again, minor things but I'm not sure how the budgets for the respective games allow for what features to get in.

 

Back to the topic at hand, yes I would like an animation for the skeletons disappearing, it would be a better notification and less immersion breaking.  Also, I would like the summons and effects to last for the full time of the spell if possible, instead of disappearing sooner if enemies are killed more quickly.

[Stun]

I imagine it's too late to change now but frankly I think abilities per encounter could be replaced with a cool down for the same effect.  If I have an ability that I can only use once per battle, and there's a couple fights spread out on a map, what counts as a battle?

Wait.... There are no 'per battle' abilities in PoE. There are per encounter abilities instead. This may sound like pointless semantics but it isn't. You see, unlike MMOs and ARPGs, encounters in PoE are self-contained. That is to say, if a map has 2 fights in it, they will be reasonably spread out so that you will not 'accidently" trigger them both at once. And therefore your question is a no brainer. You will know when a fight is over. A fight is over when you've killed all the enemies in front of you.

 

 

 

If I run into another encounter while the combat state is on then I don't get to use that ability again, and I have no way of knowing when the arbitrary combat state is about to end.

First, the combat state isn't arbitrary (it's the opposite of arbitrary. it's rigidly defined--which is its real problem). Second, the only time your scenario will happen is if you try to make it happen, like for example, sending your wizard off into the distance during combat to toss a fireball into the fog of war. But why would you do that except to deliberately try to trigger that second encounter for "challenge" purposes, or for tactical purposes (to make optimal use of abilities that you can only use once per day)?

 

 As for cooldowns. Ugh. No. Lets not go there.

Edited February 25, 2015 by Stun

[Ark Evensong]

What? No. There are plenty of occasions in the Beta where it can be rather dicey whether or not a second group joins the encounter or not. I've had a number of 'adds' during encounters, and also a good number where combat would end and start up again not 5 seconds later. This was without trying to game the encounters. Could I exert more control over it? Sure. But the concern is valid.

Doesn't bother me personally, but I was never really into IE style combat anyway.

 

Perhaps an (my?) ideal solution would be to have an toggle option where the combat stance doesn't end until all effects end, with a nice big "End Combat Now" button on the UI to go ahead and cancel it manually. Give the player more control over the "Keep useful effects active" or "Refresh Encounter Abilities" choice.

 

I'd also like a "Enter Combat mode" button that works without enemies in sight, but I haven't thought all the (balance) implications for that through. Might be good reasons for it's non-inclusion.

[Luckmann]

 

It's obvious you haven't played the beta or checked out any of the preview videos, but it's fairly obvious when combat starts and ends. As long as you are engaged in combat, it counts as one encounter. If you are still engaging one group of enemies and run into another group of enemies, that's still just one encounter.

 

Encounters end as soon as the last enemy is dead.

I haven't played the beta, correct. I have linked to a video, and I encourage you to check it out at the time I mentioned. The enemy falls and there are still several seconds where the spell was active while the player was trying to get to the next enemy. He didn't get to them in time and all his effects wore off with no warning. This would be frustrating to me, as I would expect effects to either last the full duration or have some better indication of ending.

 

Not really obvious to me.

 

Voss, I believe some of the issues with the save games and combat states are due to the team being new to working with Unity.  There's also some issues with not allowing a single person to enter buildings alone, like you are encouraged to do in some thieving quests in BG1.  Again, minor things but I'm not sure how the budgets for the respective games allow for what features to get in.

 

Back to the topic at hand, yes I would like an animation for the skeletons disappearing, it would be a better notification and less immersion breaking.  Also, I would like the summons and effects to last for the full time of the spell if possible, instead of disappearing sooner if enemies are killed more quickly.

 

 

Oh, it'll be plenty frustrating, I'm just saying that it'll be obvious to you once you play. You'll notice when combat starts and ends. That doesn't mean that that mechanic, the fact that there's even a difference between "combat" and "not combat" won't be frustrating as all hell. It will, precisely because of the issues you describe.

 

I already see myself sending a "runner" to the next group of enemies just to keep combat going so specific effects stay up between the two "encounters".