EI Mod and my opinions

[Sensuki]

Re: "Targeting abuse"

 

This is how I go about it

 

Scenario: Archers in Pillars of Eternity target "backline characters"

 

This can be annoying and cause your backline characters to take way more damage in combat than your tanks will. You don't necessarily have to react to it in individual encounters because there's not much of an immediate penalty other than taking damage/possibly facing a KO for those chars.

 

So, I think about why archers target backline characters, what is the targeting clause? Often it's because they have low Deflection, or low DR. I think some enemies even prefer targets based on position in party formation. So one way of dealing with this problem is altering who they target by changing these numbers. You can give backline characters heavier armor, and they won't be targeted by archers. If it's Deflection, well there's not too much that can be done about that. If it's party formation slot then you can flip them around ... put Eder in slot 6, problem solved.

 

If you can't make enemies change targets this way, you can do it through positioning and movement. Some enemies don't re-target very often (melee enemies), archers do though, soon as they can see a character that fits their targeting clause, they will target them. So you can simply either leave such characters out of combat until the archers are dead (hint, kill them first) or you can have them come in late, where they may be targeted but probably won't get many shots off. You can also cheese various enemies by having the characters they are targeting in line of sight, but out of range if you can block off enough of the pathing space. The pathfinding is terrible, so they'll most likely get stuck behind their allies and run on the spot lol.

 

And finally if you don't want to / can't do any of those you can just deal with the archers first - disable them and stuff like that.

 

There are usually a few ways to solve problems simply through understanding targeting in many games, including the Infinity Engine games and Pillars of Eternity. This is just general gameplay sense IMO.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

I don't think a mod would help. The problem with rest-spamming (and the other easy exploits) in the IE games is that it nudges people into playing them wrong, i.e. with tedious, rote, and unenjoyable tactics. If you're aware that rest-spamming is a problem then it's a pretty short step from that to self-limiting; a mod on top of that would be icing on the cake.

 

Simply put: not rest-spamming in the IE games is a self-imposed limitation, no different than any other way to gimp yourself to up the challenge. The fact that you can invites you to use it. The fact that the game designers did not intend the game to be rest-spammed, and that rest-spamming results in an experience that's a great deal less fun, reflects a design flaw of the rest mechanics. Going "LOL casual" at people who do the obvious thing is stupid.

 

I also contend that the designers of the IE games did not intend the game to be played "Warcraft style" by exploiting AI targeting. If they had, they would have made the AI much more consistent across the games, and introduced mechanics specifically oriented around that style of gameplay. Instead, they made extremely rich systems with special attacks, immunities, counters, combined effects, and so on and so forth. I.e., you're also playing it wrong, if "wrong" means "not like the designers intended."

 

You've certainly earned the right to vent and be as snide as you like, with the work you put in the BB, but if you are, expect to be called out on it. "Tactical" does not equal only "high-actions-per-second tactic to exploit AI targeting," nor does "reactivity" equal only "doing something when the AI switches targeting." You're hyper-specialized and consequently your understanding of these concepts is hyper-narrow. There's way more to tactics and reactivity than that. And if anyone who plays BG2 differently than you is "doing it wrong" then so are you.

 

Now, how productive do you think it is to sling these kinds of "lol n00b/lol southkoreanstarcraftnerd" at each other? From where I'm at, not very.

 

If all you're doing is venting your disappointment, by all means carry on, but I'm bowing out of it. If you want to have an actual discussion which may even contribute to a better P:E through rebalance patches, mods, expansions, or sequels, then that's a conversation I'm interested to have.

 

And finally, I do not have a great deal of respect for someone beating a game by breaking the AI. It's game AI for crying out loud. A few lines of code. It doesn't take all that much intelligence or effort to reverse-engineer or break it. It's just another kind of exploit, albeit one that takes a bit more skill and effort to discover and apply than, say, rest-spamming or web+cloudkill from BVR. If you do that and then discover that the game isn't much fun because the resulting exploit is too easy, Imma break out my tiny violin for you. And if your measure of excellence in a game is how many actions per second you need to be able to execute to break the AI, then I'm glad they didn't make this game for you.

Edited April 13, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[tinderbox]

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You guys split your party up that much? Holy cow. I've always kept my party fairly tightly together. Even in the IE games I've always done that. It just wouldn't seem ... I dunno ... it just seems hella weird to me.

[Valsuelm]

 

 

So yes, I can see why people who rest spammed are triggered by my opinions. Perhaps you don't enjoy resource management, or tactical gameplay - fair enough, but there is a large difference between playing the Infinity Engine games properly, and playing Pillars of Eternity.

 

There should be a mod for the IE games that combats rest spamming. Maybe there is one and I don't know it.

 

 

There is one. It's called 'self control'.

 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

There was nothing in the game or the manuals saying that you shouldn't rest-spam.

 

Logic fail.

[Namutree]

 

 

 

So yes, I can see why people who rest spammed are triggered by my opinions. Perhaps you don't enjoy resource management, or tactical gameplay - fair enough, but there is a large difference between playing the Infinity Engine games properly, and playing Pillars of Eternity.

 

There should be a mod for the IE games that combats rest spamming. Maybe there is one and I don't know it.

 

 

There is one. It's called 'self control'.

 

 

Where can I download it?

[Luckmann]

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You guys split your party up that much? Holy cow. I've always kept my party fairly tightly together. Even in the IE games I've always done that. It just wouldn't seem ... I dunno ... it just seems hella weird to me.

 

...what? "Split up"? They're even still on the same screen, and he's not even zoomed out very far in most of those pictures.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

 

 

 

 

You guys split your party up that much? Holy cow. I've always kept my party fairly tightly together. Even in the IE games I've always done that. It just wouldn't seem ... I dunno ... it just seems hella weird to me.

 

 

What are you talking about? They're practically together and my fighter is only a very small distance away from the rest of the party.

[Zwiebelchen]

I think the general problem of PoE and the reason why a lot of IE lovers might dislike the combat of PoE is that both tanks and DDs are heavily overtuned in their roles.

 

In other words: tanks are too tanky and DPSers are too DPS and encounters are balanced around this concept. This basicly enforces MMO-style combat by default, leaving almost no room for reactivity in combat (your tank got CC'ed? Reload...).

 

If we compare the IE games to PoE in that regard, we will notice that tanks in the IE games (fighters, paladins, monks, barbarians) had a lot higher offensive potential than properly specced tanks in PoE, but also didn't tank much better than clerics or druids. This created a dynamic that allowed continuing a battle even if your maintank or main DPS got disabled. After all, your cleric or fighter/druid was an equal substitute for your fighter in tankyness and your tank could still effectively bring the enemy down, even when the mage ran out of spells.

 

 

Battles in PoE by default do not allow the level of "bull****" that the IE games allowed, as all those mass CC spells from the IE games would absolutely break the game and after all your spell slots have been used, you are pretty much forced to rest unless your group only consists of cheesy barbarians or ciphers.

 

But I am positive that with a proper amount of rebalancing, PoE can fix this issue. There is nothing wrong with engagement either, I feel it just has to be tweaked a little to make the mechanic more usable (spells that play with it rather than avoid it and enemies "taking" the disengagement attack given the proper attack priorities).

Deflection stacking needs to be nerfed... armor choice should clearly play a bigger role than it does currently. Recovery penalties should be adjusted so that you can't just spam spells at absurd speeds if you wear cloth only. Enemy AI obviously needs some changes aswell. I agree that there's some (in other fields more) tweaking required before the combat in this game feels tactical, but I don't agree with you in the way that the underlying systems are fundamentally wrong. After all, battle already feels interesting for several well-designed encounters in the game:

 

- Spore cave battle

- Raedric's Hold final battle

- Lighthouse battle

- Shades ... but less of them. The concept is nice, but it got repeated way too much to be interesting.

 

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them, as it replicates the epic feel of the BG2 group battles almost perfectly (given the low level of the encounter, this was a very challenging task to begin with!). Spores are a perfect example on how just a single enemy ability can change the whole combat - I wished there were more battles like this that had an "ability theme". It's exactly the kind of "problem solving" that I miss in many of the other battles in the game.

 

So ... basicly ... just give us more of those and tweak the tankyness and AI in the game and we have an fun and challenging tactical experience.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[tinderbox]

...what? "Split up"? They're even still on the same screen, and he's not even zoomed out very far in most of those pictures.

 

 

 

Okay, not my game but I'm being lazy. My standard attack formation would be something like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typically I play my party in very close support of each other, for buffing/debuffing, and try to exploit flanking opportunities myself by sending other party members around the tank characters. One thing I have been enjoying a lot is using Aloth on a flank to do fan or line attacks across a bunch of foes. It works. I think it rewards manouvreing. I'm sure Sun Tzu would approve?

 

I suspect some of my playing style could be the influence of Total War, which demands that units support each other and rewards flanking and rear attacks and charges (which makes a lot of sense in the context of field warfare). In TW an unsupported unit is often toast really quickly.

[tinderbox]

 

 

 

 

 

 

You guys split your party up that much? Holy cow. I've always kept my party fairly tightly together. Even in the IE games I've always done that. It just wouldn't seem ... I dunno ... it just seems hella weird to me.

 

 

What are you talking about? They're practically together and my fighter is only a very small distance away from the rest of the party.

 

 

I was looking at the first two battles.

[Sensuki]

Simply put: not rest-spamming in the IE games is a self-imposed limitation, no different than any other way to gimp yourself to up the challenge.

This is bullcrap. If this is 'true' then one could say that not left lean glitching in Call of Duty 1 is a self-imposed limitation, and because you don't left lean glitch, you're gimping yourself. Or duping items in Diablo 2 or Titan Quest.

 

It's not - it's exploiting the game.

 

Going "LOL casual" at people who do the obvious thing is stupid.

I haven't said "LOL casual". I'm pissed off at people who rest-spam and then complain that the Infinity Engine combat was bad or something, because they rest spammed and could use Cloudkills over and over. These people are part of the reason why this game is like it is.

 

I also contend that the designers of the IE games did not intend the game to be played "Warcraft style" by exploiting AI targeting. If they had, they would have made the AI much more consistent across the games, and introduced mechanics specifically oriented around that style of gameplay. Instead, they made extremely rich systems with special attacks, immunities, counters, combined effects, and so on and so forth. I.e., you're also playing it wrong, if "wrong" means "not like the designers intended."

Personally, I don't think this has anything to do with it. If what Josh Sawyer says is true, most designers aren't good at games themselves. It's probably just aligning of the stars that Baldur's Gate happened to be developed with an RTS engine, and thankfully it was. I'm not sure why you're going to the lengths you are to try and justify rest spamming against simply playing well (understanding AI targeting) - something that people do in all sorts of games.

 

They would have made the AI as good as they could with the budget that they had for spending programming time on AI. Yeah, I'm a human and I'm smarter than the AI. SCS / Rogue Rebalancing AI is harder to deal with.

 

You've certainly earned the right to vent and be as snide as you like, with the work you put in the BB, but if you are, expect to be called out on it. "Tactical" does not equal only "high-actions-per-second tactic to exploit AI targeting," nor does "reactivity" equal only "doing something when the AI switches targeting." You're hyper-specialized and consequently your understanding of these concepts is hyper-narrow. There's way more to tactics and reactivity than that. And if anyone who plays BG2 differently than you is "doing it wrong" then so are you.

Who ever said anything about "highest APM tactic"? The game is real-time with PAUSE so there's no such thing as a high APM as if you use pause at all, you can take as long as you like to perform any of your actions. Neither did I say anything about "reactivity" from AI switching targeting.

Sounds like you've been mass triggered by someone asking me if I play DotA, which I do.

 

If you read what I actually said, I was complaining about there being not many scenarios where I have to change my strategy or react to enemy actions (other than a few basic ones, which actually includes reacting to enemy targeting - the thing you are accusing that I'm saying the game lacks". I talked about several systemic issues not even remotely related to Engagement or AI targeting. I talked about the unified attack resolution mechanics, armor mechanics, shields, lack of hard counters, lack of immunities, the way in which afflictions work, the lack of strategical resource management. Several other things not even remotely related to what you're talking about.

 

Now, how productive do you think it is to sling these kinds of "lol n00b/lol southkoreanstarcraftnerd" at each other? From where I'm at, not very.

Woah, someone's mad. I accused people of rest spamming, nothing more.

 

If all you're doing is venting your disappointment, by all means carry on, but I'm bowing out of it. If you want to have an actual discussion which may even contribute to a better P:E through rebalance patches, mods, expansions, or sequels, then that's a conversation I'm interested to have.

Someone mentioned my name in the thread, which is why I came here. People wanted to know why I stopped working on the mod, and it turned into a discussion. If those people had not asked, I would not be here.

 

Personally I don't think I will be contributing to discussions regarding patches, mods, expansions etc because the core design caters to people who didn't really like the Infinity Engine combat that much, who prefer turn-based combat and people who rest spammed the Infinity Engine games. None of those people are me. So sure, I'll complain but I'll let you guys dictate where you want it to go, because I don't think anything is going to save it for me (or several other people who have the same disappointments with the game as I do).

 

And finally, I do not have a great deal of respect for someone beating a game by breaking the AI. It's game AI for crying out loud. A few lines of code. It doesn't take all that much intelligence or effort to reverse-engineer or break it. It's just another kind of exploit, albeit one that takes a bit more skill and effort to discover and apply than, say, rest-spamming or web+cloudkill from BVR. If you do that and then discover that the game isn't much fun because the resulting exploit is too easy, Imma break out my tiny violin for you. And if your measure of excellence in a game is how many actions per second you need to be able to execute to break the AI, then I'm glad they didn't make this game for you.

I think that's being a bit hyperbolic. Actually understanding AI targeting and using it to your advantage seems to trigger you well, you can smash people in multiplayer by reacting to their targeting as well. I see it as simply a gameplay skill even against a computer - because it's the recognition of what the opponent is doing and making the correct choice in response to it that is the skillful part of it and this is true against human opponents and computer opponents. When you're playing against AI in chess/single player RTS/whatever game - you win by learning what the enemy does, it doesn't matter who they are. An example - Dark Souls is all about learning the 'routine' of the enemy bosses, so that you learn when to block, when to dodge, all that kind of stuff. It is the EXACT SAME THING here.

 

Even when playing competitive games, when you play against the same people multiple times - you learn what they do, and if they don't change what they do (which, most people don't) then you have the means to predict their actions, and beat them.

 

I don't see rest spamming as a skill, because you're completely bowing out of the strategical resource management side of the game, which people who don't rest spam take part in. I actually don't have anything against people who do rest spam, if they find playing the game fun that way - that's fine, but I do have a problem with people coming here saying that the Infinity Engine combat was bad because they didn't take part in several elements of the gameplay by using an exploit.

 

You'd probably hate games like Aarklash Legacy, with your preferences, because that game is all about controlling enemy targeting.

 

I think one of the aims of the design for Pillars of Eternity has been to actually take away the need to adjust to anything. Once you've learned the system initially (which for me, was very early during the beta) there's nothing more to it. You can use the same strategy in most encounters and it works. All I'm doing is following a pre-determined script, and it's boring for me.

 

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them,

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll.

 

I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else.

 

If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I was looking at the first two battles.

 

And if you read my posts, I was highlighting the scout, tank and spank wins most (that I've done so far) if not pretty much all battles in the game. And In my second example, I highlighted the 'ring around the rosey' problem and then gave a better example with the above screen shot with Lady Valtas who ignored my nude (except for their capes) ranged characters and went right in front of them to attack my fighter. I even had a better example but didn't save the screen shot where my characters are even closer and the enemies were circling the tank trying to hit him.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Namutree]

 

Simply put: not rest-spamming in the IE games is a self-imposed limitation, no different than any other way to gimp yourself to up the challenge.

This is bullcrap. If this is 'true' then one could say that not left lean glitching in Call of Duty 1 is a self-imposed limitation, and because you don't left lean glitch, you're gimping yourself. Or duping items in Diablo 2 or Titan Quest.

 

It's not - it's exploiting the game.

Let's not place exploitable but intended mechanics in the same category as glitches and bugs.

[tinderbox]

 

I was looking at the first two battles.

 

And if you read my posts, I was highlighting the scout, tank and spank wins most (that I've done so far) if not pretty much all battles in the game. And In my second example, I highlighted the 'ring around the rosey' problem and then gave a better example with the above screen shot with Lady Valtas who ignored my nude (except for their capes) ranged characters and went right in front of them to attack my fighter. I even had a better example but didn't save the screen shot where my characters are even closer and the enemies were circling the tank trying to hit him.

 

 

Do you guys regularly use these exploits?

 

No wonder you find it so easy. Or, perhaps, no wonder I find it so hard sometimes. (Janus and all that)

 

It just never would have occured to me use that sort of tactic.

[Zwiebelchen]

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them,

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll.

 

I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else.

 

If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story.

 

 

So... you basicly metagame'd this encounter hard by sending in your tank alone to trigger the dialogue that you couldn't know would turn out to be a battle. Come on, really? The fight is fun and challenging when doing it the way it was intended. Ever wondered why the NPCs are placed in a half-circle? That's because the dialogue triggers at a distance in which you are surrounded by those guys.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[Zwiebelchen]

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them,

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll.

 

I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else.

 

If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story.

 

 

So... you basicly metagame'd this encounter hard by sending in your tank alone to trigger the dialogue. Come on, really? The fight is fun and challenging when doing it the way it was intended.

[Sensuki]

If you know that you're going to get into a fight, why would you deliberately position your entire party in the middle of all of the enemies? Sounds like a case of being braindead to me. I knew I wanted to kill Raedric, and I could see the enemies standing around the dais. That's not metagaming, that's being smart.

 

You wanna know an encounter that allows you to pre-position that is way, way better than this one? The Final Seal Guardians in BG2. Doesn't matter where you put your party, it's still a hard fight.

 

Even the fight against Lamalha and her Amazon chicks in BG1 at the back entrance of the BG1 mines is harder than this one if you go to the mines early in the game.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[tinderbox]

Yeah I wouldn't do that either. For role play reasons, I couldn't think to do anything except send in my PC. And it always seems to make sense to me (as strategy) to keep friends close by in a twitchy situation. I can't metagame it like that.

[PrimeJunta]

Personally I don't think I will be contributing to discussions regarding patches, mods, expansions etc because the core design caters to people who didn't really like the Infinity Engine combat that much, who prefer turn-based combat and people who rest spammed the Infinity Engine games.

 

See, this is why it's kinda pointless to talk with you about this stuff anymore. 

 

So vent away, Sensuki. I hope you'll eventually be able to discover some enjoyment in the game. You would have earned it.

Edited April 13, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Director]

If you know that you're going to get into a fight, why would you deliberately position your entire party in the middle of all of the enemies? Sounds like a case of being braindead to me. I knew I wanted to kill Raedric, and I could see the enemies standing around the dais. That's not metagaming, that's being smart.

 

You wanna know an encounter that allows you to pre-position that is way, way better than this one? The Final Seal Guardians in BG2. Doesn't matter where you put your party, it's still a hard fight.

 

Even the fight against Lamalha and her Amazon chicks in BG1 at the back entrance of the BG1 mines is harder than this one if you go to the mines early in the game.

 

So resting when I run out of spells in BG is exploiting the game, but making use of prior knowledge of an ambush to make it a pointless fight in PoE is .... just being smart?

[Sensuki]

In my opinion, spamming rest is exploiting the game. What I mean by that is, if you've only got two level 3 spell slots and you rest every time you use both of those up, then that's rest spamming IMO.

[Zwiebelchen]

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

[tinderbox]

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

 

 

^^^ this. I mean, in the IE games you could make another party member the leader. But here the PC is obviously the driving force in all interactions with the world. Sending Eder in to be some sort of ambassador/mouthpiece while you sip tea downstairs and wait for everything to go to hell in handbasket and come running to mop up the mess is clearly not what should be occurring.

[Zwiebelchen]

 

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

 

 

^^^ this. I mean, in the IE games you could make another party member the leader. But here the PC is obviously the driving force in all interactions with the world. Sending Eder in to be some sort of ambassador/mouthpiece while you sip tea downstairs and wait for everything to go to hell in handbasket and come running to mop up the mess is clearly not what should be occurring.

 

 

... but it would definitely make for an awesome satire fantasy movie.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Zwiebelchen