Really enjoying game, but some stipulations

First, let me say how much I love this game. 9/10. If the few issues I have with it are mended, 10/10, and I will buy it for some friends.  Total nostalgia and hommage to Baldur's Gate/Planescape series and the other strategy RPG's i grew up with and played relentlessly when I was a wee lad.

 

However, one thing that i enjoyed more about those games that I am not enjoying so much in PoE is how you basically have two health bars. The endurance versus health is totally unecessary and adds a level of tedium for me that breaks the fun of the game. Having to camp way too much. Having to rest way too much, and no way to restore health by the priest/druid in the party casting a spell out of combat? Come on... Something easily done in Baldur's Gate that helped catalyze the gameplay rather than artificially extend it...

 

Granted I am only about 10 hours into the game, but I am not enjoying having to rest and camp so much. 

 

I also don't like how easily spells are interrupted while trying to cast. I dislike how few spells you get to cast  (using the tired method of spellcasting that even DnD abandoned, that of memorizing your spell "slots") before having to rest yet again.  Wizard in the party is getting basically two-shot knocked out in some fights.  Reduce the damage EVERYONE does across the board or increase everyone's health. Make fights last longer with everyone doing less damage to one another so that those lovely nice spells you coded into the game can actually get used, rather than just HEAL HEAL HEAL burn burn burn. Combats are either really fast, or not fast enough, or your wizard/priest/monk gets hammered and knocked out almost immediately before the (lets be honest) very slow cast time of some spells can go off. 

 

Fighter could use quite a few more class abilities as well.

 

Maybe I am bad at the game and don't quite "get it" just yet, but I am playing on Normal and some fights are just impossibly tough, with 5 members in the party (namely the battles with the Priests in the Lord's castle --- their unavoidable spells hit entirely too hard in my opinion).

 

Thanks for your time, guys, and thank you for giving us such an amazing game. It was well worth the money spent and I play it literally any moment I can spare.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my post from another thread,

 

 

I can say that Grieving Mother and Kana Rua both are best companions to bring along if you thinking to reserve Durance and Aloth spells in each encounter, The idea behind chiper is that you cast spell as long you have decent focus, which easy to generate them using blunderbuss since each hit is actualy +6 hit, and Kana Rua have a chant that can speed up your firearm reload time and he does have summons spell and some really good AOE invocation to use as well. With them you have decent spell ability that you can spam in each encounter without worrying to rest. PoE force you to rethink by not playing cheesy or in short word 'cheating' especially in combat, manage your spell wisely, use trap or lure to choke corridor and door entrance to block melee engagement, position your priest/druid on center to best utilize endurance regeneration spell and read your bestiary and check out what type of armor/weapon/spell best utilize in fort coming encounter, keep at least each type of armor that best use against different type of enemy so that you might offset your speed with better DR, even against kith it best to scout see what type weapon/armor they are wearing so that you might adjust you weapon and spells you going to utilize before battle encounter. that's what I love about PoE it does justice to CRPG mechanic since 2nd Ed DnD rules. If you hate the combat maybe you aught to play this game like the old IE games to much.

I just want to say, no offense intended, is that if you think the two health bars are unnecesary, it means you didn't understand well how it works. Those bars are an example of good design. But of course, specially for the people who comes from baldur's gate, this feature forces the people to stay out of their confort zone. Rest spam. Once you learnt it, the game balance was off. And it's not the first, neither the last that forces you to come back to town to rest.

I just want to say, no offense intended, is that if you think the two health bars are unnecesary, it means you didn't understand well how it works. Those bars are an example of good design. But of course, specially for the people who comes from baldur's gate, this feature forces the people to stay out of their confort zone. Rest spam. Once you learnt it, the game balance was off. And it's not the first, neither the last that forces you to come back to town to rest.

 

 

Doing something that many people dislike for nostalgia sake doesn't necessarily make something good game design.  I wouldn't mind having to rest if I could regain my spell slot usages without having to rest to do it.  I dislike that. A mana bar would be so much better.  There are two health bars, but no mana bar?  it's just backwards and has been abandoned by every single RPG maker in modern times.

 

I just want fights to last longer without my wizard/priest/monk dying in two hits every single time. Everyone and i mean everyone, friend and foe alike, doing less damage across the board would preserve difficulty and make the fights more about strategy than about hitting as hard as you can as fast as you can while spamming "Heal" spells that don't actually heal.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Martimus

I think why they went with hard/soft HP and its briliant idea.

Anyone who played any of the old RPG Like Baldurs gate, Icewind dale, Planescape torment know how after each battle we must rest to replenish HP or spells.How often we quick save/load due to bad outcome of fight when priest went down etc.This system is more realistic, and way more fun.

The combat and character creation is way more easier.There is little to no min-maxing, due to fact that atributes contribute across all sorts of damage and combat performance.So it is supper hard to screw up PC.Only time i had hard time was when i faced teleporting enemies (shados and beetles) that bypased my line of tanks and go straight for squishy casters.

 

This is my post from another thread,

 

 

I can say that Grieving Mother and Kana Rua both are best companions to bring along if you thinking to reserve Durance and Aloth spells in each encounter, The idea behind chiper is that you cast spell as long you have decent focus, which easy to generate them using blunderbuss since each hit is actualy +6 hit, and Kana Rua have a chant that can speed up your firearm reload time and he does have summons spell and some really good AOE invocation to use as well. With them you have decent spell ability that you can spam in each encounter without worrying to rest. PoE force you to rethink by not playing cheesy or in short word 'cheating' especially in combat, manage your spell wisely, use trap or lure to choke corridor and door entrance to block melee engagement, position your priest/druid on center to best utilize endurance regeneration spell and read your bestiary and check out what type of armor/weapon/spell best utilize in fort coming encounter, keep at least each type of armor that best use against different type of enemy so that you might offset your speed with better DR, even against kith it best to scout see what type weapon/armor they are wearing so that you might adjust you weapon and spells you going to utilize before battle encounter. that's what I love about PoE it does justice to CRPG mechanic since 2nd Ed DnD rules. If you hate the combat maybe you aught to play this game like the old IE games to much.

 

 

Which brings me to another point: why is that Druid regeneration AE so small? Why can't it be party-wide? That really is a ridiculously small AE effect on that spell. It's such a weak effect all things considered, that making it party-wide would be so much better, since the heal is so minimal and so slow.

 

I enjoy the difficulty of the game. My characters are level 4 and 5 right now and I am having fun. I just think some things need to be tweaked.

I don't get why people are taking so much damage all the time. My front line fighters are pretty sturdy and take most of the damage while my support characters stay back and cast spells and use abilities. With the exception of the teleporting enemies, this seems to work fine, and I often don't even use up all my camping supplies before I get back to town. However, in Baldur's Gate, I also didn't use rest spam as I never thought of doing that. With the exception of after major battles, the only reason i ever really rested in BG was because my characters got fatigued, and when I did rest I often still had unused memorized spells. I don't know what other people are doing while playing these games that makes them have to rest so often.

I don't get why people are taking so much damage all the time. My front line fighters are pretty sturdy and take most of the damage while my support characters stay back and cast spells and use abilities. With the exception of the teleporting enemies, this seems to work fine, and I often don't even use up all my camping supplies before I get back to town. However, in Baldur's Gate, I also didn't use rest spam as I never thought of doing that. With the exception of after major battles, the only reason i ever really rested in BG was because my characters got fatigued, and when I did rest I often still had unused memorized spells. I don't know what other people are doing while playing these games that makes them have to rest so often.

 

So you haven't had instances where your druid runs in to cast a spell that requires them to be close to the other party members or to the enemies and then the enemies are just turning to hit them, really really hard? 

 

The heal spells not actually restoring health doesn't irk you at all? It does me. Having to spam those heal spells keeps me from using the other cool spells.

 

You aren't having instances where you run your fighter into a pack with others back in the previous room and the mulitple enemy Priest casters decide to obliterate them with a spell that nearly one-shots them from way back? 

 

I am more than open to being wrong, and I fully admit I could probably improve my strategic planning...I just want fights to last longer with more time to use spells other than constant heals.

First, let me say how much I love this game. 9/10. If the few issues I have with it are mended, 10/10, and I will buy it for some friends.  Total nostalgia and hommage to Baldur's Gate/Planescape series and the other strategy RPG's i grew up with and played relentlessly when I was a wee lad.

Yep, it's a good one. I've been loving the hey out of it too.

 

However, one thing that i enjoyed more about those games that I am not enjoying so much in PoE is how you basically have two health bars. The endurance versus health is totally unecessary and adds a level of tedium for me that breaks the fun of the game. Having to camp way too much. Having to rest way too much, and no way to restore health by the priest/druid in the party casting a spell out of combat? Come on... Something easily done in Baldur's Gate that helped catalyze the gameplay rather than artificially extend it...

 

Granted I am only about 10 hours into the game, but I am not enjoying having to rest and camp so much.

Your problem isn't the dual health bar. Your problem is that you have to rest too much. That's because you're not very good at the game, which is hardly surprising if you've only put 10 hours into it. I clocked about 75 hours in the BB and it still took me a couple of hours to get comfortable with the real thing.

 

I will assure you, though, that once you've got it figured out, you do not need to rest too much. More than half the time I'm resting because of fatigue, not because I'm out of health or spells.

 

I.e., take a deep breath and read up on the core mechanics, then experiment a bit and it'll start going fine. The keys are (1) locking things down with your tank, (2) attacking your enemy's weakest defense (Deflection, Fortitude, Reflex, Will) in order to either do direct damage or debuff a defense that lets you do damage, and (3) the best defense is a strong offense.

 

I also don't like how easily spells are interrupted while trying to cast.

Give your caster higher Resolve or keep him away from the front line. I bet you couldn't cast worth a damn if someone was trying to stab you in the kidneys while you're doing it.

 

I dislike how few spells you get to cast  (using the tired method of spellcasting that even DnD abandoned, that of memorizing your spell "slots") before having to rest yet again.

Again, not my experience. Use the per-encounter abilities in every encounter, and bring out the big guns in the big fights. I'm finding that I run out of spells and health usually around when fatigue hits.

 

Wizard in the party is getting basically two-shot knocked out in some fights.

Then figure out a way to keep him out of trouble better. The incorporeal undead are nasty this way though as they target your wizard first and can teleport in, but there are ways of dealing with those too.

 

Reduce the damage EVERYONE does across the board or increase everyone's health. Make fights last longer with everyone doing less damage to one another so that those lovely nice spells you coded into the game can actually get used, rather than just HEAL HEAL HEAL burn burn burn.

I strongly disagree. Nothing is duller than a fight that drags on due to hitpoint bloat. If you're using a good strategy, most fights are over in about 30 seconds with everyone still standing. I've been playing without a priest for a stretch and it's not materially more difficult. I'm extremely happy that Obsidian made fights challenging by having things do more damage rather than having them have more hitpoints.

 

Combats are either really fast, or not fast enough, or your wizard/priest/monk gets hammered and knocked out almost immediately before the (lets be honest) very slow cast time of some spells can go off.

Play better. 

 

Fighter could use quite a few more class abilities as well.

Fighters get the same number of class abilities as every other class.

 

Maybe I am bad at the game and don't quite "get it" just yet, but I am playing on Normal and some fights are just impossibly tough, with 5 members in the party (namely the battles with the Priests in the Lord's castle --- their unavoidable spells hit entirely too hard in my opinion).

Yep, you are bad at the game and don't get it yet. There's no shame in that; it takes more than 10 hours to learn for most of us.

 

Thanks for your time, guys, and thank you for giving us such an amazing game. It was well worth the money spent and I play it literally any moment I can spare.

Stick with it. IME it wouldn't be the same without the frustration. The feeling of achievement is that much more glorious when you figure out something you were doing wrong and turn a formerly unwinnable fight into a doddle.

 

Also... you may be underleveled for what you're attempting. Raedric's Hold is a reasonable challenge for a level 4-5 full party or so. If you're going in at level 3 with a smaller party, you're going to have a hard time.

 

I just want to say, no offense intended, is that if you think the two health bars are unnecesary, it means you didn't understand well how it works. Those bars are an example of good design. But of course, specially for the people who comes from baldur's gate, this feature forces the people to stay out of their confort zone. Rest spam. Once you learnt it, the game balance was off. And it's not the first, neither the last that forces you to come back to town to rest.

 

 

Doing something that many people dislike for nostalgia sake doesn't necessarily make something good game design.  I wouldn't mind having to rest if I could regain my spell slot usages without having to rest to do it.  I dislike that. A mana bar would be so much better.  There are two health bars, but no mana bar?  it's just backwards and has been abandoned by every single RPG maker in modern times.

 

I just want fights to last longer without my wizard/priest/monk dying in two hits every single time. Everyone and i mean everyone, friend and foe alike, doing less damage across the board would preserve difficulty and make the fights more about strategy than about hitting as hard as you can as fast as you can while spamming "Heal" spells that don't actually heal.

 

 

Can you elaborate the point about making fights more about strategy, if damage is lowered? I get that it will change certain aspects of the game, e.g. make battles longer, but why would it make it more about stragegy?

I just want fights to last longer without my wizard/priest/monk dying in two hits every single time. Everyone and i mean everyone, friend and foe alike, doing less damage across the board would preserve difficulty and make the fights more about strategy than about hitting as hard as you can as fast as you can while spamming "Heal" spells that don't actually heal.

 

No, reducing overall damage output actually makes the game both easier and less tactical. The reason you don't think so is because your playstyle is reactive when it should be proactive.

 

With low damage-per-hit ratio it's easy to react to problems. "Oh, my wizard is taking hits - I should bring my fighter close to protect him!" You may think this is an example of tactical thinking, and you're right - but it's only the lowest form of tactical thinking.

 

High damage-per-hit ratio means you have to manage the conditions in your favour so that you stop those problems before they ever happen. If your wizard can only take one or two hits, then you should do something to prevent them from getting hit in the first place, and this requires that you understand the flow of battle and the multiple ways things can go wrong and make some contingency plans. This requires a noticeably higher level of tactical planning than just reacting to immediate threats. If you see high damage-per-hit combat as just frantically dealing lots of damage as fast as possible, that just reveals you're not thinking about it at a high enough level.

 

 

This is my post from another thread,

 

 

I can say that Grieving Mother and Kana Rua both are best companions to bring along if you thinking to reserve Durance and Aloth spells in each encounter, The idea behind chiper is that you cast spell as long you have decent focus, which easy to generate them using blunderbuss since each hit is actualy +6 hit, and Kana Rua have a chant that can speed up your firearm reload time and he does have summons spell and some really good AOE invocation to use as well. With them you have decent spell ability that you can spam in each encounter without worrying to rest. PoE force you to rethink by not playing cheesy or in short word 'cheating' especially in combat, manage your spell wisely, use trap or lure to choke corridor and door entrance to block melee engagement, position your priest/druid on center to best utilize endurance regeneration spell and read your bestiary and check out what type of armor/weapon/spell best utilize in fort coming encounter, keep at least each type of armor that best use against different type of enemy so that you might offset your speed with better DR, even against kith it best to scout see what type weapon/armor they are wearing so that you might adjust you weapon and spells you going to utilize before battle encounter. that's what I love about PoE it does justice to CRPG mechanic since 2nd Ed DnD rules. If you hate the combat maybe you aught to play this game like the old IE games to much.

 

 

Which brings me to another point: why is that Druid regeneration AE so small? Why can't it be party-wide? That really is a ridiculously small AE effect on that spell. It's such a weak effect all things considered, that making it party-wide would be so much better, since the heal is so minimal and so slow.

 

I enjoy the difficulty of the game. My characters are level 4 and 5 right now and I am having fun. I just think some things need to be tweaked.

 

AOE of spell and how long the spell last is govern by Intellect, as far I  know Hiravias if you pick him, he has 11 Int only 6% wider, you might want to boost his Int using item or using resting with INT bonus or just chew some potion/food to improve his INT or just make a new generic druid to your liking with better INT

The two health bars is one of the major improvements of the system, in my opinion! It 'feels' less like a hack and slash, healing-potion-fest and more like a 'real world' fantasy.

 

(Obviously, non-gamers would laugh at this statement - but they ain't here)

 

I just want fights to last longer without my wizard/priest/monk dying in two hits every single time. Everyone and i mean everyone, friend and foe alike, doing less damage across the board would preserve difficulty and make the fights more about strategy than about hitting as hard as you can as fast as you can while spamming "Heal" spells that don't actually heal.

 

No, reducing overall damage output actually makes the game both easier and less tactical. The reason you don't think so is because your playstyle is reactive when it should be proactive.

 

With low damage-per-hit ratio it's easy to react to problems. "Oh, my wizard is taking hits - I should bring my fighter close to protect him!" You may think this is an example of tactical thinking, and you're right - but it's only the lowest form of tactical thinking.

 

High damage-per-hit ratio means you have to manage the conditions in your favour so that you stop those problems before they ever happen. If your wizard can only take one or two hits, then you should do something to prevent them from getting hit in the first place, and this requires that you understand the flow of battle and the multiple ways things can go wrong and make some contingency plans. This requires a noticeably higher level of tactical planning than just reacting to immediate threats. If you see high damage-per-hit combat as just frantically dealing lots of damage as fast as possible, that just reveals you're not thinking about it at a high enough level.

 

 

This is totally true BUT do note that at a certain point of "high damage" with reliable ranged weapons and spells in the mix, tactics more or less devolve into "ambush or die" (Pillars does not reach this point on any setting).

Wizard in the party is getting basically two-shot knocked out in some fights.  

 

In Baldur's Gate your wizard is usually dead if they get hit by anybody or anything when they are in 1-2 level. So my suggestion is start to use those tactics that kept your wizards alive in BG also in PoE.

As a Baldur's Gate 2 big fan (800 hours on the game maybe) i can tell you that i find these 2 lifebars quite exciting.

 

You rest too much because you get hurt too much that's all. Oh and you're not supposed to use your limited spells each time you encounter some 2nd class bandits.

 

 

I can understand you don't like the healing system (which heals only your endurance and not your life - green bar), but you'll get used to it.

 

 

 

I got the occasion in this topic to make one "stipulation" like the OP : i didn't found bad characters yet, are they missing ? Tell me what you think.

Two heal bars should mean less resting, not more. Every battle you are starting with a full endurance bar. You only need to regain health when your it gets low due to attrition from lots of battles, or one really difficult one. This system is a nice middle ground between easy-mode regenerating health bars and games where you had to run back to the inn constantly.

First, let me say how much I love this game. 9/10. If the few issues I have with it are mended, 10/10, and I will buy it for some friends.  Total nostalgia and hommage to Baldur's Gate/Planescape series and the other strategy RPG's i grew up with and played relentlessly when I was a wee lad.

 

However, one thing that i enjoyed more about those games that I am not enjoying so much in PoE is how you basically have two health bars. The endurance versus health is totally unecessary and adds a level of tedium for me that breaks the fun of the game. Having to camp way too much. Having to rest way too much, and no way to restore health by the priest/druid in the party casting a spell out of combat? Come on... Something easily done in Baldur's Gate that helped catalyze the gameplay rather than artificially extend it...

 

Granted I am only about 10 hours into the game, but I am not enjoying having to rest and camp so much. 

 

I also don't like how easily spells are interrupted while trying to cast. I dislike how few spells you get to cast  (using the tired method of spellcasting that even DnD abandoned, that of memorizing your spell "slots") before having to rest yet again.  Wizard in the party is getting basically two-shot knocked out in some fights.  Reduce the damage EVERYONE does across the board or increase everyone's health. Make fights last longer with everyone doing less damage to one another so that those lovely nice spells you coded into the game can actually get used, rather than just HEAL HEAL HEAL burn burn burn. Combats are either really fast, or not fast enough, or your wizard/priest/monk gets hammered and knocked out almost immediately before the (lets be honest) very slow cast time of some spells can go off. 

 

Fighter could use quite a few more class abilities as well.

 

Maybe I am bad at the game and don't quite "get it" just yet, but I am playing on Normal and some fights are just impossibly tough, with 5 members in the party (namely the battles with the Priests in the Lord's castle --- their unavoidable spells hit entirely too hard in my opinion).

 

Thanks for your time, guys, and thank you for giving us such an amazing game. It was well worth the money spent and I play it literally any moment I can spare.

 

POE reminds me a little bit of both Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil. I can definitely some elements of both mixed into the game. 

I think you make a valid point about more class abilities for the fighter or giving something more for the fighter to do. 

My spellcasters and ciphers are pretty busy during a battle but it seems like my fighter just goes around hacking people for most of the fight. 

Eder can knockdown people and he has some modes and passive abilities but he doesn't seem to have many ACTIVE abilities. 

 

I also agree a little with the variety of spells for wizards. I thought it was a little strange that ciphers could essentially use their abilities as long as they fought actively but wizards were still limited to the Vancian system. I also haven't been switching grimoires that much during combat. NWN's spell system just seemed to have more variety and more summoning spells. 

The druid spell system in POE, at least to me, was much more fun to play with. 

 

Martimus, some recommendations I would make, if you haven't done so already, is to try to put your spellcasters in the back of the party formation or to change the party formation a bit so that the fighters and heavy-fighters take on the brunt  of the assault. 

You could also try sending a few party members out at first to lure the priests or enemies into the position that you want them to be at, at a specific chokepoint where your fighters and heavy hitters can engage the enemies, and then send in the entire party or use the spellcasters to cast area of effect spells. 

You could also try pausing during combat and actively moving the spellcasters out of the enemies' reach.

In regards to casting time, it also helps experimenting with different armor, since they affect recovery time.  

The Lord's castle is also optional so you could always come back later to take care of it.