No buffing outside of combat, why?

[manageri]

 

"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.

 

The only way casting buffs can be a waste is if those buffs are really bad. I already explained this. If that's the case, then it's a moot point whether precasting is allowed because you wouldn't ever do it then with those crappy buffs. Also, the fact that prebuffing has no opportunity cost makes pre-cast buffs vastly superior, relatively speaking, to the same spells cast mid combat.

 

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.

 

If pre-buffing is possible then it's mandatory for the devs to account for that possibility. How the hell do the devs account for the possibility, if not by raising the challenge of the fights, thereby making it mandatory for the players to do it. Really, please do tell how they are supposed to do that in detail, we're all waiting with bated breath.

 

 

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.

 

 

No one's claiming it's mandatory in ALL fights, but the tougher ones (because not every single fight is meant to really challenge the player, but the boss fights etc typically are).

 

Ignoring the impact of opportunity costs is absurd. This is the equivalent of putting your hands over your eyes and pretending not to see the evidence. Having a buff cast before the fight leaves the character free to do other things. A priest buffing in combat is doing nothing else. In the most extreme example, which would be a character buffing throughout the entire fight instead of having all those buffs precast, this would the same thing as whether or not the character is paralyzed for the ENTIRE fight. Are you saying it's not a big deal whether your priest is paralyzed all the time? Even half the time? A quarter of the time? Because ignoring opportunity costs is that idiotic.

 

 

"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?

 

I already explained why it's the game that limits the tactical options if prebuffing is enabled, not the player.

[glenn3e]

Again, I 'm still waiting for manageri's answers to be refutted besides avoiding, saying nothing and then repeating that no argument was made.

[Emerwyn]

I've just re-done the final boss of certain multi-floor underground dungeon in Path of the Damned difficulty (will keep it as that so it's spoiler-free).

 

Whoever says that pre-buffing wouldn't change the difficulty because well, buffs are so short, is playing a different game than I am.

 

I mean, if only you could enter that combat being protected/immune against domination and paralysis, even if just for 10-15 seconds, the encounter would be a trivial steamroll. 

 

 

 

Honestly, I'm glad they're leaving it as it is. The game doesn't need to be easier just to please bad players. There is a difficulty slider for a reason.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Emerwyn

[Daemonjax]

From a design point of view, it's a lot easier to make an rpg when the player characters are limited to only walking around and interacting with world objects via scripted conditions (so no charming people then talking to them or whatever).

 

It also makes combat easier to balance when pre-buffs won't matter either way, like for food and potions.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Daemonjax

[endolex]

@manageri, I feel this will be my final reply, we're going in circles here, and I get the impression there's little chance of any side convincing the other here. But let's go nonetheless, one final round:

 

"The only way casting buffs can be a waste is if those buffs are really bad. I already explained this. If that's the case, then it's a moot point whether precasting is allowed because you wouldn't ever do it then with those crappy buffs."  / "Ignoring the impact of opportunity cost is absurd..."

-- Final word, just to repeat: A buff is a waste if it is NOT NEEDED for a quick victory with minimal health loss, no matter how powerful it is. if I waste a spell slot on buffing something I don't need buffed for an encounter, I waste a spell slot. And a spell slot has its own opportunity cost: Once I cast a spell of a certain level, I can cast less spells of that level, which is always a loss of opportunity. If I pre-cast all my buffs for the first three encounters in a dungeon, I'll have a priest without anything left to cast. And it will be my own damn fault if I have done so, not the dev's. If I let the priest cast spells the entire fight, be they support or offensive, I achieve the same result of running dry. The impact of being able to buff before an encounter instead of being forced to ALWAYS decide 'on the fly' (and that's real force, because it does remove a tactical option instead of leaving it the player's choice) is non-existent. And let's face it: In a really tough fight, your priest will do nothing else but buff, debuff/ control and heal anyway. That is what they excel at. Not the only thing they can do, but what they do best.

And finally: If you say you are only talking about the tough fights, which in your opinion most fights aren't, then why the hell would it matter if players even where 'forced' to pre-buff if it only concerns a minority of encounters in the game?

 

"If pre-buffing is possible then it's mandatory for the devs to account for that possibility..."

-- How do devs account for the possibility of players being able to limit access to their stash? Do they design dungeons around it, drop less loot, or do enemies drop just as much loot, FORCING PLAYERS to decide what they pick up and what they don't? How do devs account for the possibility of players disabling the 'maim' feature, which can result in character death? Do they lower enemy damage? Do they FORCE PLAYERS to lower the difficulty or to have a priest in a group always?

 

Nothing would be forced here, especially not if pre-buffing (or as I prefer to call it: "being able in a C-RPG to cast all my spells when- and wherever the hell I want to, thankyouverymuch) were possible as an OPTION you can activate or de-activate to suit your invidiual notion of how you weigh opportunity cost. It's allowing for choice in how players want to play the game.

 

And I dare you tell me now that such an option would omg FORCE PLAYERS TO ACTIVATE IT, because then you can attack every other option in Pillars as useless because by your logic, players will always play at Ultra Easy with all helper features on. Why even design harder difficulty sliders or Trial of Iron and the like, if raising the level of a challenge makes absolutely no sense from a player point of view? 

Maybe applying behavior economics on questions of gaming psychology works only to a certain degree, and certainly not for this topic, I'm sure.

 

Difficulty balancing is not at all required in a game where players can set so many options to adjust difficulty in so many ways to adjust their very own challenge level. The only time you ever have a problem is either if 'ultra easy' is too hard for many or 'ultra hard' is too easy for too many. 

Which is why I believe no balancing at all has been done for encounters (again, against what would you balance them? Against supposed inventory, supposed party composition, supposed character level, each and every difficulty setting and option? Get real.)

Edited April 7, 2015 by endolex

[endolex]

Again, I 'm still waiting for manageri's answers to be refutted besides avoiding, saying nothing and then repeating that no argument was made.

 

See above.

[bigdogchris]

Funny, buffing before combat is "bad for game balance" but having unlimited inventory/weapons/equipment/poitions/scrolls is totally OK and not unbalanced.

Edited April 7, 2015 by bigdogchris

[endolex]

Funny, buffing before combat is "bad for game balance" but having unlimited inventory/weapons/equipment/poitions/scrolls is totally OK and not unbalanced.

 

"balance" is a null term anyway in PoE. This has been established several times in this thread already.

[k1rage]

only being able to buff in combat basicly elemates the point of a buff lol

 

also for role play purposes its ridiculous lol some how my casters just cant cast lol

[RedSocialKnight]

Funny, buffing before combat is "bad for game balance" but having unlimited inventory/weapons/equipment/poitions/scrolls is totally OK and not unbalanced.

 

You have really strictly limited combat items.

 

You have an unlimited stash -- which affects nothing in game balance but convenience.

[manageri]

"The only way casting buffs can be a waste is if those buffs are really bad. I already explained this. If that's the case, then it's a moot point whether precasting is allowed because you wouldn't ever do it then with those crappy buffs."  / "Ignoring the impact of opportunity cost is absurd..."

-- Final word, just to repeat: A buff is a waste if it is NOT NEEDED for a quick victory with minimal health loss, no matter how powerful it is. if I waste a spell slot on buffing something I don't need buffed for an encounter, I waste a spell slot. And a spell slot has its own opportunity cost: Once I cast a spell of a certain level, I can cast less spells of that level, which is always a loss of opportunity. If I pre-cast all my buffs for the first three encounters in a dungeon, I'll have a priest without anything left to cast. And it will be my own damn fault if I have done so, not the dev's. If I let the priest cast spells the entire fight, be they support or offensive, I achieve the same result of running dry. The impact of being able to buff before an encounter instead of being forced to ALWAYS decide 'on the fly' (and that's real force, because it does remove a tactical option instead of leaving it the player's choice) is non-existent. And let's face it: In a really tough fight, your priest will do nothing else but buff, debuff/ control and heal anyway. That is what they excel at. Not the only thing they can do, but what they do best.

 

 

If the buff wasn't needed because the fight is very easy then you don't need the spell slot either. This is beside the point anyway since what you're descibing is a player casting an inferior spell (the buff) rather than a superior (offensive mid-combat) spell, which is a tactical mistake they can make in combat as well and hence has nothing directly to do with pre-buffing. And if all you mean is that it's possible for the player to cast 50 buffs to fight 2 xaurips and and end up with no spell slots left for the next fight against 20 drakes, then again, bad spellslot management is also a mistake the player can make in combat and is irrelevant to the specific topic of pre-buffing.

 

 

And finally: If you say you are only talking about the tough fights, which in your opinion most fights aren't, then why the hell would it matter if players even where 'forced' to pre-buff if it only concerns a minority of encounters in the game?

 

 

The fact players must do something tedious less does not make the tediousness of it any better. I'm sure there are really ****ty players out there who actually struggle with the game, and if they could pre-buff they would feel mandated to do so. It would also be a real issue for me if/when the game gets some good difficulty mods.

 

 

 

"If pre-buffing is possible then it's mandatory for the devs to account for that possibility..."

-- How do devs account for the possibility of players being able to limit access to their stash? Do they design dungeons around it, drop less loot, or do enemies drop just as much loot, FORCING PLAYERS to decide what they pick up and what they don't?

 

 

There's nothing to account for since this only forces the player to spend time running all over the place lugging loot around. It's entirely up to the player if they want to enable this moronic "please waste my time for no reason" feature, it doesn't affect balance in any way.

 

 

How do devs account for the possibility of players disabling the 'maim' feature, which can result in character death? Do they lower enemy damage? Do they FORCE PLAYERS to lower the difficulty or to have a priest in a group always?

 

 

Maiming is the same thing as the difficulty slider. Difficulty is about...umm, difficulty? I don't even know what to say here because this is so far off topic. And yeah, the devs have in fact accounted for the fact you can get your guys permanently killed by having the whole endurance system, so getting your dudes knocked out is perfectly safe.

 

 

Nothing would be forced here, especially not if pre-buffing (or as I prefer to call it: "being able in a C-RPG to cast all my spells when- and wherever the hell I want to, thankyouverymuch) were possible as an OPTION you can activate or de-activate to suit your invidiual notion of how you weigh opportunity cost. It's allowing for choice in how players want to play the game. And I dare you tell me now that such an option would omg FORCE PLAYERS TO ACTIVATE IT, because then you can attack every other option in Pillars as useless because by your logic, players will always play at Ultra Easy with all helper features on. Why even design harder difficulty sliders or Trial of Iron and the like, if raising the level of a challenge makes absolutely no sense from a player point of view?

 

 

Ok, as long as the option to be able to pre-buff also comes with buffs to the enemies any time you use this feature, then you're absolutely right, it would be just fine as an option.

[tinderbox]

I never enjoyed the necessity of pre-encounter buffing in Baldur's Gate, especially once you hit Throne of Bhaal.. On the other hand, I did rather enjoy the in-battle challenge of applying buffs and de-buffs.

[Parsong]

This absolutely kills so many Wizard builds.

 

 

The wand summons is actually worth building around, 4 talents and three other buff spells. But it can barely be done because how buffs work.....so you have to constantly chain pull or you're screwed. 

 

 

You can't buff until in combat, but once combat ends the spells go away.... Combine this with spells per rest and it becomes a huge joke.  I'd bet you this is the reason so many people pick Cipher over Wizard (ever seen any poll since beta? It's a landslide).  He has almost no builds and part of it is due to buffing mechanics.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Parsong

[Trauma_Hound]

 

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.

 

The buffs that really matter (not counting chants here) have limited uses per rest (and once the lower-level buffs become per-encounter, they are not as strong anymore). Therefore, clearly not "every fight" would need to be designed to depend on buffing. But larger encounters ('boss fights') definitely *should* give the player the opportunity to prepare everything they have at their disposal. It just doesn't *feel* right from a player / storytelling perspective otherwise, no matter how balanced it might seem.

 

 

Plan your pulls with care and do so in a manner where you have time to pop a buff off or two before they get to you if you want buffing time, it would be more realistic that way also cause I don't think enemies would just sit around while they listened and watched you from a distance casting your buffs.

[wotdlois]

what i have been doing to get around it, is sending in a scout well ahead of the main party, usually my ranger with the crossbow and agro the enemies with her.  Once the combat music starts i pause it, que her move to behind the main party so she starts running back as soon as the pause is released.  During the pause i cast all my protection buffs on the main group while the enemies begin chasing my ranger.  By the time they engage the main party the prebuffing is done and i can begin to cast FOE AOE spells.  

 

This helps alot so you dont waste combat time casting buffs while your party gets hacked away.  Gets the buffing out of the way so you can concentrate on dps interrupt and domination spells.

 

I would always go through the ritual of brebuffing 8-9 spells in the older games before every fight and save it before combat began.  Nothing was worse than prebuffing for an eternity and forgetting to save it, only to realize after you got hammered and had to do it all over again.

 

I guess the system works as it is, you just have to know how to work around.  Adapt to it and conquer!

[Mdalton31]

because this game is missing so many different things that are 10 years ago and shouldn't be missing its retarded.

There is no excuse for this stuff that isn't in this game.. It literally makes my mind hurt as to why so many things are not in this game and were in games like baldurs gate which I played when I was 19 and im 32 now.

[glenn3e]

Would you like single looting and no ranged weapon ammo too? Because that is also missing from BG2. The game is much better without these stupid tedium things and I love that they can balance it without pre-buffing. Those backward minded people who can't accept these should just go back to playing Baldur's Gate and let the people who enjoy this game to have the game balance around no prebuffing. 

[Katarack21]

because this game is missing so many different things that are 10 years ago and shouldn't be missing its retarded.

There is no excuse for this stuff that isn't in this game.. It literally makes my mind hurt as to why so many things are not in this game and were in games like baldurs gate which I played when I was 19 and im 32 now.

Congratulations, I was fooled. Good job.

[ibanix]

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.

 ^ this, exactly. BG/BG2 fights were "cast all prebuff spells, attack, move to next encounter, repeat"

[endolex]

 

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.

 ^ this, exactly. BG/BG2 fights were "cast all prebuff spells, attack, move to next encounter, repeat"

 

 

Nope, never played that way. Because if I had, I'd have run out of buff spells after three or four encounters. Less at earlier levels. The point is to be able to prepare when you know you're gonna need it, not do it for every of the millions of fights in this kind of game.

[Luckmann]

 

Funny, buffing before combat is "bad for game balance" but having unlimited inventory/weapons/equipment/poitions/scrolls is totally OK and not unbalanced.

 

You have really strictly limited combat items.

 

You have an unlimited stash -- which affects nothing in game balance but convenience.

 

Not true. The Unlimited Stash is definitely affecting the game economy and incentivizes murderhoboing.

 

That said, the "Combat Only" items are at least twice as ridiculous as the "Combat Only" Spells and Abilities.

 

 

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.

^ this, exactly. BG/BG2 fights were "cast all prebuff spells, attack, move to next encounter, repeat"

 

Not only is that not true, but a more important point to be made is that this is not an Infinity Engine game, and is not bound to the rules of any edition of D&D.

 

As was settled earlier in the thread, the fact that there were issues in BG/2 does not mean that the same issues have to exist in PoE. It is not an all-or-nothing situation. This entire argument that keeps being repeated is a false dichotomy and argumentum ad.. mechanicum?

Edited April 10, 2015 by Luckmann

[NathanH]

 

a more important point to be made is that this is not an Infinity Engine game, and is not bound to the rules of any edition of D&D.

As was settled earlier in the thread, the fact that there were issues in BG/2 does not mean that the same issues have to exist in PoE. It is not an all-or-nothing situation. This entire argument that keeps being repeated is a false dichotomy and argumentum ad.. mechanicum?

 

Yes, this thread is being quite tedious because of this mistake.

 

In PoEt we have:

i) Resting restrictions

ii) Short-duration buffs only

iii) In-combat casting only.

 

I think it's uncontroversial to say that having at least one of these is a good thing. It's probably true that having two of them is a good thing. But three? Maybe that's too much.

[MaxDamage]

No thats a wonderful mechanic and should definately stay.

 

1)Thats for balance. Neither you nor the opponents get a quick start. And you re still allowed to smack them with ranged/spells first.

 

2)No frustrating prebuffing for the player. Prebuffing is something that was rly annoying in BG2 although quite neccessary. Im enjoying the fact this part of the game is gone.

 

Rest restriction is on the other hand stu.d and should go away. 

a)loading screens are too long.

b)ironman forces you to plow through all those loading screens while youre running to the inn and back.

 

Frustrating mechanic, they should just dump the rest system completely and leave it for the PnP geeks, instead we should hav eeverything replenished after each combat. Or make this mod.

Edited April 10, 2015 by MaxDamage

[NathanH]

My only potential criticism of the resting restrictions would be that they might be too low on the harder difficulties. They're perfectly fine, perhaps even over-generous, on Normal.

 

The reasons for resting systems versus having everything available in every battle are as follows:

 

i) You can have major battles and minor battles in one dungeon without having the minor battles be completely irrelevant.

ii) It creates a "resource management" mechanic that many people like.

iii) You can have some really rather powerful spells, because you can't use them that often.

Edited April 10, 2015 by NathanH

[MaxDamage]

It becomes a huge chore on PotD / Ironman because you know you should rest every battle because every one can lose you your savegame. It really needs the mod or a game option removing rests entirely.

 

You could plow through all the loading screens. Or iroll20s rest if you value your time.

Edited April 10, 2015 by MaxDamage