EI Mod and my opinions

[Namutree]

and tough fights do force you to react or come up with strategies.

 

Nope. Tank & Spank pwns all.

[Namutree]

One thing I'd like them to change with P:E has nothing to do with the mechanics and everything to do with monster stats: give some of them much stronger resistances to some things. As it is, blind/prone/paralyze + dd works against everything, and the effect of the debuff amounts to more or less the same thing (you get hit less, they get hit more). With varied (near) immunities on monsters we'd have to vary our tactics a good deal more.

This is exactly what I suggested in my expansion suggestion thread. Yes, we need enemies that can't be defeated with every strategy. There need to be some hard counters and hard resistances. Players should have to adapt rather than come up with a single battle plan, and use it in all battles to win against everything.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Namutree

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

Hmmmm. You don't hear people talking in the background in Defiance Bay? You shouldn't be able understand them, but you should be able to hear what sounds like lots of people talking in a city...

 

If you turn the music off, is it silent? Maybe you've encountered a bug?

 

Okay, I turned the music off and yes, you're right. I can hear them in the background (only just). I had the music on around 18 on the slider and it drowned out the voices. But it's different from the BG games where you could hear people talking in the background as well as people walking by with the music on. Also, it'd be good if you click on people, they say something vocally and not just pop up words. I liked the way it was in the IE games, even if they said only a couple of words.

 

Can you have a slider for the background voices? I tried the voice and effects sliders but it didn't seem to do anything to the background voices. Maybe you could add the background voices to the effects slider?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 Tank & Spank pwns all.

 

Pretty much. Scout, tank and spank.

 

Playing on hard, and auto-attacking. Quite often not using GM's spells which I could. Just letting them use their ranged weapons. It's also funny seeing mobs circle your tank, round and round ignoring your other characters as the mob tries to get in but can't because your tank already had a few mobs on him. So the mob goes ring around a rosey until an opening presents itself when another mob in melee dies.

 

Perhaps a modder will mod in some enemy AI scripts.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Matt516]

You surely must mean BG2, since BG1 didn't have any companion personality at all. Really.

 

Also, pretty sure it didn't have much of a VO for people either, it's BG2 that came up with the partial VO that PoE set forth (and IMO taken a bit too far).

 

BG1 CNPC:s had loads of personality, and it conveyed those personalities largely without talky talky talky talky talk talk, which is a feat in itself. I'd take Xan over Aloth or Edwin over Pallegina any day of the week.

 

To be fair, Aloth and Pallegina are some of the least interesting companions in PoE. Eder, Sagani, and (of course) Durance are all pretty great.

 

BG1 still had somewhat more flamboyantly interesting companions though to be sure. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is probably largely personal preference. I see merit in both styles, tbh - BG1's were more larger-than-life and ridiculous in an extremely entertaining way, whereas PoE's are a bit more focused on believability, which means that they're naturally a bit drier.

[Ichthyic]

before the sensuki fan club rolls on, I still find the argument about engagement seems to ignore all the AOO stuff that exists in a lot of DnD games

sorry, but it really isn't much different, and I disagree that sensuki is on to anything here.

there was an AOO penalty if you tried to move through bad guys in most DnD combat games, as there should be.

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat.

sorry, thumbs down.

just going on record with this.




 

[Matt516]

 

I agree with everything Sensuki said about the game. I'm playing through it but feel it's not as good as the previous IE games. Combat is copy paste and if you send a tank up front and have a firing squad of 5 party members some distance away shooting everything, it's all very easy. So much so that I don't have my firing squad wear any armour. The A.I is exploitable even if you try not to exploit it. The A.I. is just plain dumb.

 

One of the things I do miss is the town/city life of the BG games, the banter and chatter, the hawkers trying to sell their wares, the voices that carry from out of nowhere that make the towns and cities feel alive. Just the hustle and bustle of life. This is missing in PoE. It's just music and rarely I hear someone speak. Most of town/city NPCs just stand there and pretty much do nothing. And most don't even walk or turn around when you click on them. And some areas of Defiance Bay feel deserted.

Hmmmm. You don't hear people talking in the background in Defiance Bay? You shouldn't be able understand them, but you should be able to hear what sounds like lots of people talking in a city...

 

If you turn the music off, is it silent? Maybe you've encountered a bug?

 

 

I've been playing Defiance Bay for a bit, and I don't recall any hustle/bustle noises. No weird audio settings on my end. I'll listen again next time I play and report back if it is indeed missing.

 

While we're at it, how about some hustle/bustle for the stronghold as well?

Would need a few NPCs standing around for that to make sense of course, but the audio could really address the "dead" feeling the stronghold has right now.

[Matt516]

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat.

 

Dunno if this is "fan club" by your definition (whatever that means), but Sensuki isn't a D&D devotee, he's an IE devotee. AoO wasn't in IE, he likes IE combat, so he doesn't like engagement.

 

I'm a big fan of engagement, myself, so this isn't some sort of dogpile of the anti-engagementers... but you're mistaken about where he's coming from. It's not a D&D thing, it's an IE thing. (Sensuki, correct me if I'm wrong).

[Luckmann]

 

 Tank & Spank pwns all.

 

Pretty much. Scout, tank and spank.

 

Playing on hard, and auto-attacking. Quite often not using GM's spells which I could. Just letting them use their ranged weapons. It's also funny seeing mobs circle your tank, round and round ignoring your other characters as the mob tries to get in but can't because your tank already had a few mobs on him. So the mob goes ring around a rosey until an opening presents itself when another mob in melee dies.

 

Perhaps a modder will mod in some enemy AI scripts.

 

 

I've seen plenty of mobs do this even when there's an opening, just sorta stacking up in a bundle of 4-5 enemies, only 2 of which is attacking the tank. I think ties into the whole pathing and mapping issue, though, not just the AI being bad and the combat shallow. There's been so many places where I can see that my party members would fit, but can't actually walk at all. But in some cases, there's big open areas and the enemy just doesn't path around eachother to get to me.

 

And as much as I enjoy murdering them with AoE:s when they make themselves such easy targets, you're still right, I most often actually do not even feel that I need to use the spells, AoE or otherwise.

[Zoolimar]

 

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat.

Considering that the game is a real-time with pause instead of turn based I don't see how it is a problem. There is many other ways to make engagement matter.

 

You can stack penalties to defense for each enemy that engages a character and is not engaged himself.

You can give bonus attack speed to weapons per their type (x2 for small and fast, x1.5 for average and x1.2 for heavy and slow)

You can make more abilities that give other advantages then character is not engaged.

[Namutree]

before the sensuki fan club rolls on, I still find the argument about engagement seems to ignore all the AOO stuff that exists in a lot of DnD games

 

sorry, but it really isn't much different, and I disagree that sensuki is on to anything here.

 

there was an AOO penalty if you tried to move through bad guys in most DnD combat games, as there should be.

 

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat.

 

sorry, thumbs down.

 

just going on record with this.

 

 

What does this have to do with anything? Who cares about D&D? 

[Ichthyic]

 

he's an IE devotee

and all those IE games he likes were based on the DnD ruleset... duh.

 

still seeing serious fail in his argument.

 

it's time to move forwards, not backwards.

 

 

 

 

[Ichthyic]

wow, you guys are totally, totally clueless.

bowing out now, because this thread is filled with people who have no clue what they're talking about.

 

[sparklecat]

wow, you guys are totally, totally clueless.

 

bowing out now, because this thread is filled with people who have no clue what they're talking about.

 

 

I think the problem at present is that people have no clue what you're talking about.

[Luckmann]

 

 

You surely must mean BG2, since BG1 didn't have any companion personality at all. Really.

 

Also, pretty sure it didn't have much of a VO for people either, it's BG2 that came up with the partial VO that PoE set forth (and IMO taken a bit too far).

 

BG1 CNPC:s had loads of personality, and it conveyed those personalities largely without talky talky talky talky talk talk, which is a feat in itself. I'd take Xan over Aloth or Edwin over Pallegina any day of the week.

 

 

To be fair, Aloth and Pallegina are some of the least interesting companions in PoE. Eder, Sagani, and (of course) Durance are all pretty great.

 

BG1 still had somewhat more flamboyantly interesting companions though to be sure. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is probably largely personal preference. I see merit in both styles, tbh - BG1's were more larger-than-life and ridiculous in an extremely entertaining way, whereas PoE's are a bit more focused on believability, which means that they're naturally a bit drier.

 

 

Absolutely, I specifically chose Aloth and Pallegina because I agree with that sentiment (moreso for Pallegina than Aloth, honestly), and I specifically mentioned Xan and Edwin because they ooze personality. There are plenty of rather personality-less characters in BG1, too, and there are amazing characters in PoE (Durance, Edér).

 

My point was that BG1 characters definitely had personality, and text is no guarantee that a character is deeper or more interesting. And while I do prefer more interjection- and conversation-heavy characters compared to the alternative, it ultimately has little bearing on how I feel for the character, and it depends on how that personality is conveyed unto me, as long as it is all consistent (inconsistency when it comes to things like this infuriates me, such as the ME2 DLC Companions, or the various companions in Arcanum; some had dialogue and interjections, some didn't have anything, some were voiced, others not).

 

The only BG1 characters I remember that fits the "ridiculous" label are probably Minsc and Tiax, maybe Shar-teel (..not sure if I write that name right). But even Minsc is far less grating than in BG2. Virtually all characters in BG2 that was in BG1 went through flanderization.

 

 

before the sensuki fan club rolls on, I still find the argument about engagement seems to ignore all the AOO stuff that exists in a lot of DnD games

 

sorry, but it really isn't much different, and I disagree that sensuki is on to anything here.

 

there was an AOO penalty if you tried to move through bad guys in most DnD combat games, as there should be.

 

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat.

 

sorry, thumbs down.

 

just going on record with this.

First of all, I don't think anyone has argued for combat to be more D&D-like.

 

Second, saying "This is not D&D enough" is just as flawed of a fundamental argument as "This is not IE enough". It's nonsense. It ultimately doesn't matter how D&D did it at all, nor how IE did it. At best, they can serve as explaining examples or as a reference to preference (Such as Sensuki's "I like the IE games, ABC is how it worked there, and XYZ is why that is better"). What matters is why Å would be better than Ä and how it interacts with Ö, and the actual arguments around the issue.

 

Thirdly, AoO is different to Engagement in an number of ways, but it is not worth going into, because ultimately, I don't think anyone that dislikes Engagement will want Attacks of Opportunity either. Either would serve a purpose in a turn-based environment (Divinity: Original Sin is an excellent example, without being D&D). In a real-time game, not so much. It's needless, exploitable, and restrictive.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Luckmann

[Namutree]

 

 

he's an IE devotee

and all those IE games he likes were based on the DnD ruleset... duh.

 

 

With alterations due to the fact it's RTwP. Duh.

 

 

 

it's time to move forwards, not backwards.

 

How does introducing mechanics meant for turn-based into a RTwP game constitute "moving forward" exactly?

[PrimeJunta]

 

 

he's an IE devotee

and all those IE games he likes were based on the DnD ruleset... duh.

 

still seeing serious fail in his argument.

 

it's time to move forwards, not backwards.

 

AD&D didn't have AOO's. Those were introduced in D&D3.

 

(I also am in the pro-engagement-attack camp BTW. But do let's keep our facts straight, shall we?)

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I've seen plenty of mobs do this even when there's an opening, just sorta stacking up in a bundle of 4-5 enemies, only 2 of which is attacking the tank. I think ties into the whole pathing and mapping issue, though, not just the AI being bad and the combat shallow. There's been so many places where I can see that my party members would fit, but can't actually walk at all. But in some cases, there's big open areas and the enemy just doesn't path around eachother to get to me.

 

And as much as I enjoy murdering them with AoE:s when they make themselves such easy targets, you're still right, I most often actually do not even feel that I need to use the spells, AoE or otherwise.

 

Yeah, there's that with one or two enemies attacking the tank and the rest of the enemies in a line behind.

 

example:

 

 

 

Scouting

 

 

Tank and Spank

 

 

 

 

 

But I'm actually talking about ring around the rosey.

 

Example:

 

 

 

Scouting

 

 

Ring around the rosey.

 

 

 

 

I had a better example but forgot to save the screen shots as my ranged characters were nearly against my tank but the enemies kept targeting my tank. Also, my other characters aren't wearing any armour. I was able to move my other characters down below the crane and mop up all the wizards and continue around and then help out the tank. Pretty easy fight when the enemy concentrates on one character (tank) and ignores the rest of your party. Hopefully a modder will put in some enemy AI scripts to attack more than one person.

 

Okay, I have a better example below. Following the yellow arrow, Lady Valtas completely ignores my other party members who aren't wearing any armour and goes around and attacks my tank. I'm not even trying to exploit the A.I.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 12, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[View619]

wow, you guys are totally, totally clueless.

 

bowing out now, because this thread is filled with people who have no clue what they're talking about.

 

 

 

Played an IE game before? For better or worse, there are no attacks of opportunity in those games. And for the record, many people in the discussion enjoy the idea of engagement but think it needs to be tweaked before it really shines. Even though D&D is irrelevant to this discussion, you were allowed to move within a certain number of feet without triggering free attacks or use a withdraw action iirc, which you can not even do in POE unless the opponent is disabled. My main issue with POE's engagement is that every movement action is an assumption that you are fleeing, so I can't even side-step without triggering a free attack with increased accuracy.

 

Regarding AI, I have to wonder how difficult it would be to make a priority script where the AI always targets units with the lowest defenses or DR, only engaging the tanks when forced to due to engagement. Is it due to the fear of increasing the challenge across the board? Better to have players feel like gods instead of mere mortals?

Edited April 12, 2015 by View619

[Sensuki]

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat.

 

sorry, thumbs down.

 

just going on record with this.

There were no AoOs in AD&D, or the Infinity Engine games. Who's more on point here, me or you?

[Sensuki]

@Sensuki I wish you'd stop saying that P:E's combat is "RTwP for people who don't like RTwP." You taught me to love RTwP (and I'm really digging BG2 now), but I still like P:E's combat also (and believe that its mechanics have enormous potential for fun which could be tapped simply by adjusting the numbers).

I didn't say that in this thread, I said people who didn't enjoy Infinity Engine combat, which you didn't, until after a bit of coaching.

 

While that joke I use is not a total truth I'm seeing plenty of "I didn't like combat in the Infinity Engine games but I like combat in Pillars of Eternity", mostly from people who prefer turn-based combat to real-time with pause.

 

Here's a shorter post about why I don't like it, because it's not reactive:

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/quickfire-systemic-criticism-that-contributes-to-banality-of-gameplay.98429/page-6#post-3857129

 

Your suggestion about altering enemy defenses doesn't force the player to react to something the enemy does, it's just another strategical consideration, and not a tactical or reactive consideration - which is the BIGGEST problem with the combat.

 

It's not a bad idea though, but it wouldn't make much of a difference for me.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Sensuki

[ComplyOrDie]

 

 

 

I find the "no engagement" part of the mod very strange.

 

I understand why Sensuki dislikes it, although I disagree. But, engagement is a really central part of how combat is designed in PoE.

 

Remove engagement and it seems to me you're just sort of left with a scrum.

 

Remove Engagement and nothing changes. The AI still acts like it's there. Engagement is not a very large part of how combat is designed in PoE, all it does is inhibit movement and forces everyone to cluster up and stay there, and saves the developers from having to make an AI that would move around and make decisions that would improve their position on the battlefield, for the same reason the player won't do it; it'll murder you with instant free invisible attacks if you even try to move *towards* the opponent that is engaging you.

 

The biggest problem with Engagement has always been for it to excuse it's own existence. I play with it on simply because the game is made for it, and there are Abilities and Spells and Talents that deal specifically with it, and I don't want to break pre-existing interacting functionalities, but it doesn't really add anything by itself.

 

I can't think of any RPG that ever had half-decent AI myself. Certainly not the IE games where enemies almost always just mobbed the first thing they saw. Difficulty in RPGs single-player game has never, ever come from the AI anyway in my experience, unless it's a very tightly scripted boss battle. It's always hard by making the enemy bigger and badder than the player so they have a challenge to overcome.

 

Not really disagreeing with you, just pointing that out. Albeit I do think engagement is preferable to everyone running around willy-nilly like in Baldur's Gate, I love establishing a frontline.

I think this is especially true in Baldur's Gate. It is filled with Mages which would be some of the most powerful ones in Faerun if they only knew how to open a door and well were smart enough for a sensible spell selection and usage of their spells.

 

 

http://www.gibberlings3.net/readmes/readme-stratagems.html

 

The frustrating thing for me is this has been done for Baldur's Gate by one person in their spare time (albeit over many years). It's a solid, partially randomized AI that basically makes intelligent enemies do intelligent things, example, they actually use good contingencies and sequences, and precast spells like stoneskin because if you were a mage you would have an 8 hour spell on so you didn't get backstabbed randomly one day. It doesn't break immersion, and nothing breaks the rules, it's just the AI intelligently uses the same tools that the player has available precisely how difficulty should be done.

 

I just don't think game developers see AI as a priority, which is partially understandable, although less so for single player RPGs like this. I don't care that the Starcraft single player AI doesn't exist because the replayability comes from human opponents, for a game like this you don't have that luxury, and many players want that feeling of challenge everpresent not once in a blue moon as it is with PoE on all modes at the moment.

 

Overall I actually prefer the systems in PoE, nearly all your options in BG came from spellcasters and particularly Wizards, but at the moment the vast majority of fights are basically decided in the first ten seconds, because nothing is thrown at you which forces you to adapt. This is a mix of scripting and bad/inaccurate/"bland" enemies (they look cool but are usually a bag of hitpoints with varying degrees of (in)accuracy). You couldn't stand toe to toe  not doing anything with many enemies for very long in BG no matter how pimped your tank was, certainly at higher levels.

 

And yeah, the final fight in Vanilla BG1 was not more interesting than Vanilla PoE. Difference is Sarevok was fun but so were all the end chapter fights and a ****load more besides, here the final battle sticks out like a sore thumb in that you actually have to think a bit.

Edited April 12, 2015 by ComplyOrDie

[Ohioastro]

 

wow, you guys are totally, totally clueless.

 

bowing out now, because this thread is filled with people who have no clue what they're talking about.

 

 

 

Played an IE game before? For better or worse, there are no attacks of opportunity in those games. And for the record, many people in the discussion enjoy the idea of engagement but think it needs to be tweaked before it really shines. Even though D&D is irrelevant to this discussion, you were allowed to move within a certain number of feet without triggering free attacks or use a withdraw action iirc, which you can not even do in POE unless the opponent is disabled. My main issue with POE's engagement is that every movement action is an assumption that you are fleeing, so I can't even side-step without triggering a free attack with increased accuracy.

 

Regarding AI, I have to wonder how difficult it would be to make a priority script where the AI always targets units with the lowest defenses or DR, only engaging the tanks when forced to due to engagement. Is it due to the fear of increasing the challenge across the board? Better to have players feel like gods instead of mere mortals?

 

 

 

And the lack of attacks of opportunity makes the IE games poor simulations.  They have a completely artificial set of rules that have been put on a pedestal to be worshiped uncritically.  I'm playing parallel games of IWD2 (hard) and PoE (PoTD).  They're both fun.  The IE pathfinding is truly awful - as in, send critical party members or opponents completely the wrong way awful.  PoE is light years better.

 

If you fight opponents in an open room, as opposed to blocking them in a doorway, they *do* target backfield players.  Archers target wizards.  Fampyrs target backfield players. 

 

If I have a critique on the engagement system, it's that the AI should be able to use tools to break it.  Things like this would do a *lot* more to up the difficulty of the game than amateur game redesigning and fussing with the experience level curve.

[ComplyOrDie]

 

 

wow, you guys are totally, totally clueless.

 

bowing out now, because this thread is filled with people who have no clue what they're talking about.

 

 

 

Played an IE game before? For better or worse, there are no attacks of opportunity in those games. And for the record, many people in the discussion enjoy the idea of engagement but think it needs to be tweaked before it really shines. Even though D&D is irrelevant to this discussion, you were allowed to move within a certain number of feet without triggering free attacks or use a withdraw action iirc, which you can not even do in POE unless the opponent is disabled. My main issue with POE's engagement is that every movement action is an assumption that you are fleeing, so I can't even side-step without triggering a free attack with increased accuracy.

 

Regarding AI, I have to wonder how difficult it would be to make a priority script where the AI always targets units with the lowest defenses or DR, only engaging the tanks when forced to due to engagement. Is it due to the fear of increasing the challenge across the board? Better to have players feel like gods instead of mere mortals?

 

 

 

And the lack of attacks of opportunity makes the IE games poor simulations.  They have a completely artificial set of rules that have been put on a pedestal to be worshiped uncritically.  I'm playing parallel games of IWD2 (hard) and PoE (PoTD).  They're both fun.  The IE pathfinding is truly awful - as in, send critical party members or opponents completely the wrong way awful.  PoE is light years better.

 

If you fight opponents in an open room, as opposed to blocking them in a doorway, they *do* target backfield players.  Archers target wizards.  Fampyrs target backfield players. 

 

If I have a critique on the engagement system, it's that the AI should be able to use tools to break it.  Things like this would do a *lot* more to up the difficulty of the game than amateur game redesigning and fussing with the experience level curve.

 

 

This is also a very good point. Melee opponents crowd your tank, engaged or otherwise, and don't leave until the tank is dead (generally never). At the very least the non engaged ones should quickly realise there's a bigger threat. Further, if the tank is stunned briefly etc. by an enemy wizard (more of this please), go and kill the actual threats in the meantime. Having a couple of trolls rampaging through your casters and archers would be far preferable to the current situation.

 

I have no issue with engagement the AI just needs to be better designed for it.

Edited April 12, 2015 by ComplyOrDie

[gkathellar]

what sensuki wants is NOT anything like DnD combat

... so? Do we want D&D-style combat, or IE-style combat? (Hint: the second one.)

 

(And of course, this is putting aside the fact that in 3E-based games, AoOs stop happening as soon as you get +14 to Tumble.)