No buffing outside of combat, why?

[Sabin Stargem]

I am in favor of prebuffing being allowed.  However, I would like to suggest an alteration:  Combine buffs and attacks into a single spell.  By casting spells on party members, you create a buffing effect, while casting on enemies would be an offensive one.  By tying buffs and attacks to the same resource, a choice has to be made about which effect the player prioritizes for a given situation.

[Zorfab]

 

 

Uh... rests are a limited resource. You get two camping supplies on Hard, plus whatever you pick up on the way. If you're careless with your spells, you'll find yourself backtracking a lot (just see the whaaing about it in several threads here). 

 

(OTOH if you're not careless with your spells, 2 supplies + whatever you find is plenty.)

No they are not. Rests are unlimited because the game does not punish or ban you from going back to a village or city and buy more of them.

 

Having to trudge back in shame to the inn is punishment enough for me.

 

Losing progression due to sloppy play would be a punishment. I would cry from joy if the hardest mode actually enforced the difficulty it is supposed to have!

Edited April 5, 2015 by Zorfab

[View619]

I am in favor of prebuffing being allowed.  However, I would like to suggest an alteration:  Combine buffs and attacks into a single spell.  By casting spells on party members, you create a buffing effect, while casting on enemies would be an offensive one.  By tying buffs and attacks to the same resource, a choice has to be made about which effect the player prioritizes for a given situation.

 

How does separating attack spells and buff spells not already address this?

[PrimeJunta]

 

 

 

Uh... rests are a limited resource. You get two camping supplies on Hard, plus whatever you pick up on the way. If you're careless with your spells, you'll find yourself backtracking a lot (just see the whaaing about it in several threads here). 

 

(OTOH if you're not careless with your spells, 2 supplies + whatever you find is plenty.)

No they are not. Rests are unlimited because the game does not punish or ban you from going back to a village or city and buy more of them.

 

Having to trudge back in shame to the inn is punishment enough for me.

 

Losing progression due to sloppy play would be a punishment. I would cry from joy if the hardest mode actually enforced the difficulty it is supposed to have!

 

 

Fair enough. I'm not that hardcore.

[Gairnulf]

 

 

The main issue is because a lot of people think it's bad for game balance.

 

In short: if you allow prebuffing, then you either A) balance everything with that in mind, punishing all those who don't want to go trought the tedious (and rather brainless) routine of prebuffing before every fight, or B) balance everything as if it didn't exist, which would make fights trivially easy when you do prebuff.

That's just your assumption unless you can source it to a developer saying so.

 

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66073-new-pc-gamer-interview-with-josh/

 

Oh ok, I learned something new.

 

BTW, I am really in love with the logic of:

1. You don't want stash - the feature is in, if you don't like it don't use it

2. How come you don't want a 'respec' option - it doesn't hurt your gameplay if you don't use it. So if you don't like it don't use it but why do you deny it to the players who want it you evil person?

3. Prebuffing - oh nononono, it would be a no-brainer and everybody would be doing it! It can't be allowed.*

 

* - See the argument on engagement, "Moving around during battle, people don't need that anyway."

Edited April 5, 2015 by Gairnulf

[Emerwyn]

 

Honestly, one of the things I hated most of NWN was the 2 minute pre-buffing before every combat. It felt dull and redundant, yet you felt forced to do it to have realistic chances to beat every encounter. Bulls Strengthx6, Bear's Endurancex6, Barkskinx6, Mage Armorx6, Spell Resistancex6, Freedom of Movemenx6, Zzzzzz...... 

 

I like this better, where combats are balanced around the party starting fights debuffed and using those buffs as a resource rather than a mandatory condition to win.

 

I won't tire of pointing out that in PoE buffs are *not* mandatory nor would they suddenly become mandatory if you could cast them before combat. Therefore: no valid point.

 

 

I think you didn't understand a thing of what I said.

[manageri]

Ok, since some people still don't understand why prebuffing takes choises away rather than adding them, I'll explain it in tedious detail (which you pro-prebuffers should enjoy).

 

Having buffs castable before combat gives you two choises - you can cast them before combat, or during it. If you're 7 years old, this may at first seem like - oh my gosh, that's two options so prebuffing is more options!!! However, what we're actually trying to figure out here is whether there are added GOOD TACTICAL options, not simply more options in theory, so this level of scrutiny in insufficient. So let's see if we can figure this out, by pretending PoE has prebuffing as an option:

 

Option 1: I wait until combat to start using my buffs. But oh snap, its ****ing combat, so all those enemies are now also doing stuff! How did I not see this coming!? So after those three buffs I wanted to cast with my priest are completed, a good 10 seconds or so has already elapsed, during which I not only did not have all those buffs up to boost my party, I also was unable to use the priest for anything else, like poking the enemy with my kill-stick. This option thus doesn't seem all that awesome, so let's give it a sad face =(

 

Option 2: I cast those three priest spells right before combat, then charge the enemies. Bolstered by their awesome new stats my heroes are much more effective right away, and I can even use the priest to cast offensive spells, making the enemy even weaker! Why didn't I think of this before!? Verily, this option deserves a big ol' smiley face =)

 

So why would I then, given these "more options", ever not buff before the fight? How does that EVER make sense? And no, saying "well sometimes you wanna use all your spell slots to cast offensive spells hurr" is not relevant, because on those cases it's not about WHEN you buff, it's about whether you buff at all. The fact remains that IF you buff, you want to buff before the fight, and the only reason you wouldn't want to buff at all is if those buff spells are terribad, which would be a larger balance issue, especially when those buff spells don't take away time in combat and hence have infintely less opportunity cost. Since many buffs in the game are decent, it sure as hell would be a more effective option to spend some spell slots on buffs prefight than it would be to save all those slots for offensive spells if prebuffing was an option. We've seen this **** countless times with D&D CRPGs so let's not pretend prebuffing wouldn't be a no-****ing-brainer, duh.

 

Therefore the devs would have to balance the fights with the assumption that the party shows up with 600 buffs up, and be forced to make the enemies tougher, which defeats the whole ****ing point of prebuffing in the first place. And since we now figured out, even the 7 year olds, I trust, that prebuffing is the way to go ALWAYS if you're trying to play smart, we can also deduce that since we show up to the fight with all of our desired buffs up, the actual tactical choises we now have for the priest once combat starts are reduced, since we already got all the buffs up. Therefore prebuffing = less tactical choises = dumbed down, AND it makes the game more tedious by having you do the stupid ****ing buff routine before every (serious) fight. Clearly Josh figured this out (like a decade ago, I'm sure), and decided it makes no sense whatsoever to make the players endure that crap. Thank you, Josh.

 

For those of you who miss prebuffing, I suggest the following: Before every fight where you would like to buff, pick up your keyboard and wave it around like a magic wand, chanting appropriate blessingy-sounding words. Imagine - and this is really important now for that IMMERSION you so desperately crave - that your party is getting buffed! Now imagine that the devs anticipated this, and made the enemies appropriately tougher too! Now do the fight exactly like before. Congratulations, you now wasted your time doing the stupid buff ritual and ended up with an otherwise identical game experience, just like if they'd have added prebuffing - enjoy.

[Gairnulf]

Having buffs castable before combat gives you two choises - you can cast them before combat, or during it.

Wrong. You can also refrain from using the buffs and save them up for later. The rest of your argument is invalid.

 

I am having great fun with people who write walls of text just in order to defend some developer's decision. There is a word for such people.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Gairnulf

[PrimeJunta]

Jeez, manageri, you're starting to annoy me. You just keep repeating what you already said without, y'know, addressing the counter-argument.

 

Such as: if you cast three priest buffs one after the other, the first one will likely have run out by the time the third one takes effect -- or, at best, will run out a couple of seconds into the encounter. The buffs are bleeping short. This makes timing absolutely crucial. If you cast that excellent level 2 regeneration effect too early, you're wasting half of its potential. If you cast that fantastic level 3 buff to all defenses too early, same thing. 

 

With these durations + limited resting, it only makes sense to pre-cast them in very specific circumstances. It's not at all like "Prot from Evil 10' radius" after every rest in BG2.

 

If any of you have an actual counter-counterargument to this, I'd like to hear it. Having you parrot Josh's argument over and over again is getting tiresome, and I say this as someone who actually likes most of Josh's design on P:E.

[Zorfab]

 

Having buffs castable before combat gives you two choises - you can cast them before combat, or during it.

Wrong. You can also refrain from using the buffs and save them up for later. The rest of your argument is invalid.

 

I am having great fun with people who write walls of text just in order to defend some developer's decision. There is a word for such people.

 

I would agree with you otherwise, but the game does not give you incentive to do that. You have 0 reason to save spells because you can always get more in a snap as long as the location allows you to push rest button or go backwards until you can (and rest in an inn for long term buffs for your next attempt to boot).

[Emerwyn]

I think the pro-prebuffing crowd just refuses to see that even if the duration of the buffs isn't made longer, combat pre-buffing would completely throw the challenge (the little there is already to be fair) into the dirt, especially so in endgame. Combats are already rather trivial after level 6-7 even in Path of the Damned diffiulty, where you spend your 2-3 first combat "rounds" juggling between finding a good position for your frontline to hold the enemy party from mobbing your backline, and finding a safe position for your healer/ranged DPS to stand, and then trying to squeeze in the casts of Consecrated Ground, Bless, Relentless Storm, etc. If you entered combat with them already pre-buffed and all you had to worry is about positioning and nuking the game would lose a very large strategical value as well as it would be just insultingly easy. Even more so when your priest gets Salvation of Time to prolong all active buffs.

 

You may think differently, but don't take me for an idiot just because I have an opinion that differs yours. There is also a word to define such people.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Emerwyn

[Elerond]

As long as chanter can't chant outside combat and summon unlimited number if creatures to kill everything from map without me needing to risk my party I will say that any other class should not have ability pre-buff because otherwise it will kill my immersion with the game

[PrimeJunta]

I think the pro-prebuffing crowd just refuses to see that even if the duration of the buffs isn't made longer, combat pre-buffing would completely throw the challenge (the little there is already to be fair) into the dirt, especially so in endgame. 

 

No. It. Wouldn't.

 

Because most of the time pre-buffing isn't even the optimal strategy. It would be useful in some specific cases, where it would permit alternative approaches to the fight.

 

That said, getting overleveled for the endgame clearly is a problem. I was a proponent of encounter scaling in the crit path à la Baldur's Gate 2 Chapter 2 quests, but that got shouted down. Perhaps XP does need a nerf, even if it would make players who only pursue the crit path underleveled. But that's nothing to do with the question under discussion here.

Edited April 5, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Volourn]

"I think the pro-prebuffing crowd just refuses to see that even if the duration of the buffs isn't made longer, combat pre-buffing would completely throw the challenge (the little there is already to be fair) into the dirt, especially so in endgame. Combats are already rather trivial after level 6-7 even in Path of the Damned diffiulty, where you spend your 2-3 first combat "rounds" juggling between finding a good position for your frontline, a safe position for your healer/ranged DPS, and squeezing in the casts of Consecrated Ground, Bless, Relentless Storm, etc. If you entered combat with them already pre-buffed and all you had to worry is about positioning and nuking the game would lose a very large strategical value as well as it would be just insultingly easy. Even more so when your priest gets Salvation of Time to prolong all active buffs.

 

You may think differently, but don't take me for an idiot just because I have an opinion that differs yours. There is also a word to define such people."

 

If it's not balanced for a challenge that's on the devs. It's their job to balance it. If combat is 'already trivial' than you are admitting they failed.

[View619]

 

 

 

 

Uh... rests are a limited resource. You get two camping supplies on Hard, plus whatever you pick up on the way. If you're careless with your spells, you'll find yourself backtracking a lot (just see the whaaing about it in several threads here). 

 

(OTOH if you're not careless with your spells, 2 supplies + whatever you find is plenty.)

No they are not. Rests are unlimited because the game does not punish or ban you from going back to a village or city and buy more of them.

 

Having to trudge back in shame to the inn is punishment enough for me.

 

Losing progression due to sloppy play would be a punishment. I would cry from joy if the hardest mode actually enforced the difficulty it is supposed to have!

 

 

Fair enough. I'm not that hardcore.

 

 

To be fair being forced to spend around 2-3 minutes running to an inn and back isn't really a punishment, since you still gain the same result. I think putting a duration on quests would strengthen the implementation of the rest system.

[Emerwyn]

Combat in Path of the Damned was pretty fine until you outlevel everything, to be fair. That's why I think pre-buffing can only make it worse. 

 

Most of the struggle you find in endgame, as I described in my previous post, is squeezing in the first few crucial casts while finding a good positioning. If you take that away, you're only caving a deeper grave into the game's lack of endgame challenge. 

[PrimeJunta]

Well, it gets the job done for me. I'm careful with my strategic resources because I don't want to trudge back to the inn to resupply. YMMV if you have a high tolerance for boredom.

[endolex]

Ok, since some people still don't understand why prebuffing takes choises away rather than adding them, I'll explain it in tedious detail (which you pro-prebuffers should enjoy).

 

Having buffs castable before combat gives you two choises - you can cast them before combat, or during it. If you're 7 years old, this may at first seem like - oh my gosh, that's two options so prebuffing is more options!!! However, what we're actually trying to figure out here is whether there are added GOOD TACTICAL options, not simply more options in theory, so this level of scrutiny in insufficient. So let's see if we can figure this out, by pretending PoE has prebuffing as an option:

 

Option 1: I wait until combat to start using my buffs. But oh snap, its ****ing combat, so all those enemies are now also doing stuff! How did I not see this coming!? So after those three buffs I wanted to cast with my priest are completed, a good 10 seconds or so has already elapsed, during which I not only did not have all those buffs up to boost my party, I also was unable to use the priest for anything else, like poking the enemy with my kill-stick. This option thus doesn't seem all that awesome, so let's give it a sad face =(

 

Option 2: I cast those three priest spells right before combat, then charge the enemies. Bolstered by their awesome new stats my heroes are much more effective right away, and I can even use the priest to cast offensive spells, making the enemy even weaker! Why didn't I think of this before!? Verily, this option deserves a big ol' smiley face =)

 

So why would I then, given these "more options", ever not buff before the fight? How does that EVER make sense? And no, saying "well sometimes you wanna use all your spell slots to cast offensive spells hurr" is not relevant, because on those cases it's not about WHEN you buff, it's about whether you buff at all. The fact remains that IF you buff, you want to buff before the fight, and the only reason you wouldn't want to buff at all is if those buff spells are terribad, which would be a larger balance issue, especially when those buff spells don't take away time in combat and hence have infintely less opportunity cost. Since many buffs in the game are decent, it sure as hell would be a more effective option to spend some spell slots on buffs prefight than it would be to save all those slots for offensive spells if prebuffing was an option. We've seen this **** countless times with D&D CRPGs so let's not pretend prebuffing wouldn't be a no-****ing-brainer, duh.

 

Therefore the devs would have to balance the fights with the assumption that the party shows up with 600 buffs up, and be forced to make the enemies tougher, which defeats the whole ****ing point of prebuffing in the first place. And since we now figured out, even the 7 year olds, I trust, that prebuffing is the way to go ALWAYS if you're trying to play smart, we can also deduce that since we show up to the fight with all of our desired buffs up, the actual tactical choises we now have for the priest once combat starts are reduced, since we already got all the buffs up. Therefore prebuffing = less tactical choises = dumbed down, AND it makes the game more tedious by having you do the stupid ****ing buff routine before every (serious) fight. Clearly Josh figured this out (like a decade ago, I'm sure), and decided it makes no sense whatsoever to make the players endure that crap. Thank you, Josh.

 

For those of you who miss prebuffing, I suggest the following: Before every fight where you would like to buff, pick up your keyboard and wave it around like a magic wand, chanting appropriate blessingy-sounding words. Imagine - and this is really important now for that IMMERSION you so desperately crave - that your party is getting buffed! Now imagine that the devs anticipated this, and made the enemies appropriately tougher too! Now do the fight exactly like before. Congratulations, you now wasted your time doing the stupid buff ritual and ended up with an otherwise identical game experience, just like if they'd have added prebuffing - enjoy.

 

Not one of the assumptions you put into this have any basis. Since you put so much work into this, let me try a final time to explain:

 

"you can cast them before combat, or during it"

-- you can also simply cast less of them, or none at all, which is perhaps advisable in the majority of encounters (give or take according to difficulty settings)

 

Option 1: Again you seem to assume that for every time, having all the buffs up is a must. It isn't.

Option 2: see above.

 

"So why would I then, given these "more options", ever not buff before the fight?"

-- Because you cannot know before a fight whether you are going to need those buffs or not. So if you buff without knowing if you actually need to buff at all, if you insist on casting buffs before every fight, you deprive yourself of tactical flexibility. At some other point in this thread, someone accurately pointed out that fog of war often prevents you from scouting the complete enemy camp, making you think it's an easy encounter when it isn't. Sure you can buff anyway just to make sure, but then you can cast less Pillars, less Barbs, less whatever Priests cast that supposedly does damage.

 

"Therefore the devs would have to balance the fights with the assumption that the party shows up with 600 buffs up".

-- No. Just no. They wouldn't have to do a thing. Especially if they made it an option.

 

"We've seen this **** countless times with D&D CRPGs so let's not pretend prebuffing wouldn't be a no-****ing-brainer, duh."

-- Perhaps to you, because it's something you always did. Me, I only cast *really* long-term buffs pre-combat (and by long term, I mean minutes or even hours gametime and therefore useful for multiple encounters, which was something NWN allowed).

 

"And since we now figured out, even the 7 year olds, I trust, that prebuffing is the way to go ALWAYS if you're trying to play smart, we can also deduce that since we show up to the fight with all of our desired buffs up, the actual tactical choises we now have for the priest once combat starts are reduced"

-- You could stow that condescending  '7-year-old' crap and realize that no one forces you to play this way if pre-buffing were enabled. So if the priest now has less tactical options left, it is not the fault of the game, but a result of your own decisions.

[Gairnulf]

 

 

 

The main issue is because a lot of people think it's bad for game balance.

 

In short: if you allow prebuffing, then you either A) balance everything with that in mind, punishing all those who don't want to go trought the tedious (and rather brainless) routine of prebuffing before every fight, or B) balance everything as if it didn't exist, which would make fights trivially easy when you do prebuff.

That's just your assumption unless you can source it to a developer saying so.

 

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66073-new-pc-gamer-interview-with-josh/

 

 

There's a little vindictive **** of a gnome inside of me that giggles every time someone rolls their eyes and asks for a source, and then someone slaps them with one.

 

Say hello to your little gnome

 

Most of the issues with the combat only flag is restoring the game state after a save/load is performed. As you probably have noticed, we've had a fair share of issues with save/load over the course of the Backer Beta. Since you can't save in combat, we don't need to restore combat only abilities after a load. There are a few balance reasons, but most of those are minor compared to the save issues. We are going to evaluate combat only stuff moving forward (Paladin auras have been discussed), but I can't promise any changes right now.

[manageri]

Jeez, manageri, you're starting to annoy me. You just keep repeating what you already said without, y'know, addressing the counter-argument.

 

Such as: if you cast three priest buffs one after the other, the first one will likely have run out by the time the third one takes effect -- or, at best, will run out a couple of seconds into the encounter. The buffs are bleeping short. This makes timing absolutely crucial. If you cast that excellent level 2 regeneration effect too early, you're wasting half of its potential. If you cast that fantastic level 3 buff to all defenses too early, same thing. 

 

With these durations + limited resting, it only makes sense to pre-cast them in very specific circumstances. It's not at all like "Prot from Evil 10' radius" after every rest in BG2.

 

If any of you have an actual counter-counterargument to this, I'd like to hear it. Having you parrot Josh's argument over and over again is getting tiresome, and I say this as someone who actually likes most of Josh's design on P:E.

 

The fact the buffs are short is irrelevant, it only affects how many buffs you can cast. If the buffs last something absurd, like in D&D games like 10 minutes, you can cast as many as you want. The only difference in PoE is that if you have, let's just say for the sake of simplicity, all buffs lasting 25 seconds with 5 sec cast+recover time, You can only throw up a few. This changes NOTHING about the fundamental nature of the argument, just how long the mandatory pre-fight buff dance lasts. Even with PoE buff durations you could drastically boost your party's stats with multiple casters, especially with that priest spell that prolongs all your buffs.

 

It's you who's evading the argument. I look forward to your next butthurt non-response.

[manageri]

"So why would I then, given these "more options", ever not buff before the fight?"

-- Because you cannot know before a fight whether you are going to need those buffs or not.

 

Gee, yeah, I really can't figure out whether it's better to be buffed than not. Oh, yeah, I also really can't figure out whether the devs might ever expect me to be using all those big buffs they gave me for the hardest fights. Such difficult questions.

 

"you can cast them before combat, or during it"

-- you can also simply cast less of them, or none at all, which is perhaps advisable in the majority of encounters (give or take according to difficulty settings)

 

It's not a valid TACTICALLY SOUND option not to show up buffed for a fight when that's permitted. Theoretically it could be that all buffs are so ****ty that it's better to save spell slots for offensive spells, but in that case the ability to prebuff would be pointless, duh. The fact is that IF buff spells are worth casting then it is ALWAYS better to cast them right before combat than during combat, as doing so does not take away time in combat, again, DUH.

 

Option 1: Again you seem to assume that for every time, having all the buffs up is a must. It isn't.

Option 2: see above.

 

If prebuffing is permitted then it's a must for the DEVELOPER to balance things with that in mind. failure to do so results in a badly balanced game. It therefore becomes a must for players to do it to meet that challenge. Duh.

 

"Therefore the devs would have to balance the fights with the assumption that the party shows up with 600 buffs up".

-- No. Just no. They wouldn't have to do a thing. Especially if they made it an option.

 

Saying "no" is not an argument. Nonononnononononnononononoononono. See? I might as well smashed the keyboard with my face and posted the result.

 

"We've seen this **** countless times with D&D CRPGs so let's not pretend prebuffing wouldn't be a no-****ing-brainer, duh."

-- Perhaps to you, because it's something you always did. Me, I only cast *really* long-term buffs pre-combat (and by long term, I mean minutes or even hours gametime and therefore useful for multiple encounters, which was something NWN allowed).

 

Many, if not most, good buffs in NWN(2) are long lasting. If it's a particularly tough fight then casting round/level (which is more or less the shortest duration that the vast majority of spells have) spells before the fight starts is also greatly effective, which means the fight is either balanced for that, which makes it too tough if you don't do it, or it's not balanced for that, and it becomes a joke when you do it. We all know this from experience so why are you pretending it's not the case?

 

"And since we now figured out, even the 7 year olds, I trust, that prebuffing is the way to go ALWAYS if you're trying to play smart, we can also deduce that since we show up to the fight with all of our desired buffs up, the actual tactical choises we now have for the priest once combat starts are reduced"

-- You could stow that condescending  '7-year-old' crap and realize that no one forces you to play this way if pre-buffing were enabled. So if the priest now has less tactical options left, it is not the fault of the game, but a result of your own decisions.

 

Indeed, if the game lets me choose between a sword and a 21st century assault rifle that does 900 damage per second, well it's just the player's own damn fault if they choose the assault rifle, right? No blame whatsoever belongs to the devs for bad design, RIGHT?

[InfiniteEternity]

No. Mainly because of technical issues with Unity's "saving of the game state".

Time to use another engine then.

[endolex]

 

"So why would I then, given these "more options", ever not buff before the fight?"

-- Because you cannot know before a fight whether you are going to need those buffs or not.

 

Gee, yeah, I really can't figure out whether it's better to be buffed than not. Oh, yeah, I also really can't figure out whether the devs might ever expect me to be using all those big buffs they gave me for the hardest fights. Such difficult questions.

 

"you can cast them before combat, or during it"

-- you can also simply cast less of them, or none at all, which is perhaps advisable in the majority of encounters (give or take according to difficulty settings)

 

It's not a valid TACTICALLY SOUND option not to show up buffed for a fight when that's permitted. Theoretically it could be that all buffs are so ****ty that it's better to save spell slots for offensive spells, but in that case the ability to prebuff would be pointless, duh. The fact is that IF buff spells are worth casting then it is ALWAYS better to cast them right before combat than during combat, as doing so does not take away time in combat, again, DUH.

 

Option 1: Again you seem to assume that for every time, having all the buffs up is a must. It isn't.

Option 2: see above.

 

If prebuffing is permitted then it's a must for the DEVELOPER to balance things with that in mind. failure to do so results in a badly balanced game. It therefore becomes a must for players to do it to meet that challenge. Duh.

 

"Therefore the devs would have to balance the fights with the assumption that the party shows up with 600 buffs up".

-- No. Just no. They wouldn't have to do a thing. Especially if they made it an option.

 

Saying "no" is not an argument. Nonononnononononnononononoononono. See? I might as well smashed the keyboard with my face and posted the result.

 

"We've seen this **** countless times with D&D CRPGs so let's not pretend prebuffing wouldn't be a no-****ing-brainer, duh."

-- Perhaps to you, because it's something you always did. Me, I only cast *really* long-term buffs pre-combat (and by long term, I mean minutes or even hours gametime and therefore useful for multiple encounters, which was something NWN allowed).

 

Many, if not most, good buffs in NWN(2) are long lasting. If it's a particularly tough fight then casting round/level (which is more or less the shortest duration that the vast majority of spells have) spells before the fight starts is also greatly effective, which means the fight is either balanced for that, which makes it too tough if you don't do it, or it's not balanced for that, and it becomes a joke when you do it. We all know this from experience so why are you pretending it's not the case?

 

"And since we now figured out, even the 7 year olds, I trust, that prebuffing is the way to go ALWAYS if you're trying to play smart, we can also deduce that since we show up to the fight with all of our desired buffs up, the actual tactical choises we now have for the priest once combat starts are reduced"

-- You could stow that condescending  '7-year-old' crap and realize that no one forces you to play this way if pre-buffing were enabled. So if the priest now has less tactical options left, it is not the fault of the game, but a result of your own decisions.

 

Indeed, if the game lets me choose between a sword and a 21st century assault rifle that does 900 damage per second, well it's just the player's own damn fault if they choose the assault rifle, right? No blame whatsoever belongs to the devs for bad design, RIGHT?

 

 

"It's not a valid TACTICALLY SOUND option not to show up buffed for a fight when that's permitted..."

-- Yes it is, for precisely the reason I named: You don't know if buffing was necessary or if you have wasted spell slots on it. No amount of pounding your chest rhetorically will help the fact that you can't at the same time claim that

 

a) applying all possible buffs before any encounter would suddenly become mandatory if allowed and

AND

b) buffing everything possible is non-mandatory if pre-buffing is not allowed.

 

You have to decide: Is it necessary to apply all buffs in most combat situations, regardless of pre-buffing being possible or not? I say it isn't. Anything else is beside the point. Any 'combat opportunity cost' is being paid for in spell slots. Every time you cast a spell instead of another spell, your arsenal gets smaller. That's enough of an incentive to invest some thinking into whether you really want to buff everyone with short duration stuff for every fight.

 

"if the game lets me choose between a sword and a 21st century assault rifle that does 900 damage per second"

-- Same false analogy like that other guy with the +5 sword. Pre-buffing wouldn't be remotely as powerful as you make it out to be. The fact remains: You cannot seriously complain about less tactical options when you're the one doing the limiting. "Oh geez, I always show up for fights fully buffed, now my priest can't cast anything anymore, boohoo, I blame the devs for FORCING ME TO DO THIS!" <--- do you seriously not realize how inane this sounds?

[glenn3e]

Saying "no" is not an argument. Nonononnononononnononononoononono. See? I might as well smashed the keyboard with my face and posted the result.

 

This is pretty much the OP's arguments right now. Pre-buffing is terrible for the game and the game is much better now tactically with without it. I still fail to see any argument proving otherwise besides the above quote.

[endolex]

 

Saying "no" is not an argument. Nonononnononononnononononoononono. See? I might as well smashed the keyboard with my face and posted the result.

 

This is pretty much the OP's arguments right now. Pre-buffing is terrible for the game and the game is much better now tactically with without it. I still fail to see any argument proving otherwise besides the above quote.

 

 

And I don't see any argument proving pre-buffing should be prohibited. From Sawyers statement to the pro-prohibition posts here: They all depend on false assumptions about what players do, what players find fun and what players would be 'forced' to do if this was an option.