Shouldn't all spells be per combat encounter? Not per rest?

[scrotiemcb]

 

 

All spells and abilities should be on cooldowns, like D3. Some offering a faster recovery than others.

And I could add that although it may not seem that way, at all - in actual reality, Gft1ed is in fact making that statement with an acute and total awareness of the narrative flow in a dungeon, intricate knowledge of how this would affect the mechanics in the game on every level, and also in fact knowledge of what all people who want to play the game really wants.

 

Unbelievers and apostates may perhaps feel the need to ask: "But Gifted1 - how dost thou know these wondrous things about how all things fit together?". But it is not necessary to question, because he simply knows such things.

It may also seem that Poe's Law may add some level of ambiguity to nipsen's statements. But this would be unbelievable, as Gifted1's infallibility is sacrosanct.

 

Edited April 29, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[Gfted1]

Im glad you guys are finally coming around but tis sad to see nispen still has so much hurt in the butt. Cooldowns offer the added versatility of being used more or less often, based on the duration of the battles.

[Captain Shrek]

Im glad you guys are finally coming around but tis sad to see nispen still has so much hurt in the butt. Cooldowns are basically the same as Vancian but with the added versatility of being used more or less often, based on the duration of the battles.

 

Not sure what you mean here. Vancian magic is associated with spell preparation as well and slots that are typically fewer than known spells. If you are referring to sorcerer like casters then it *might* make some sense. 

[Gfted1]

I was in the middle of editing that out but since you ask, spell preparation is still in PoE, at least wrt mages (everyone else gets the full monty right out of the gate, right?) . They will eventually become per encounter as you level up too. I feel that's not so dissimilar to cooldowns as those can be set to different timers (based on spell / ability strength). So, you wind up with a similar system that doesn't introduce a moronic resting mechanic.

 

Of course this is all conceptual handwaving. If I ever get around to playing PoE Ill be entering god mode immediately after character creation.

[Captain Shrek]

Personally I am more in favor of the Psionic point buy system for Erudites. Now that is magic done right. It is a pity that psionic powers are no where close to what wizards get. 

[Gfted1]

Ive always been a fan of Psionics too but we just never got around to using them when I used to pnp. Iirc, they were garbage back in 2E also.

[Captain Shrek]

The psionic system inspired my groups new ruleset. It's amazing. But right now tied closely to the setting we use (also in house). Might forward it to you if you are interested. 

[Crucis]

From reading just the first page, it's quite clear to me that Luzarius is unhappy that he can't play an OP per0encounter wizard, is unhappy that very few people agree with his PoV, and wants the devs change the rules to punish players who play the game as intended.  That is, punish the players who use the rest system judiciously (as intended) and who seem most likely to be those who disagree with him.

[Gfted1]

The psionic system inspired my groups new ruleset. It's amazing. But right now tied closely to the setting we use (also in house). Might forward it to you if you are interested. 

 

Awesome! Is it something you can c&p into a PM? I don't generally give out my email address.

[Captain Shrek]

It's a PDF   .

[luzarius]

I failed miserably and inside raedric's hold I ended up resting after every fight with that one NPC dude.  I slaughtered EVERYONE with great ease on POTD difficulty, trial of iron.

 

I WAS WEAK AND GAVE IN TO THE TEMPTATION OF FREE AND UNLIMITED RESTING, LOL.

 

I should be ashamed!

[Lady Evenstar]

I actually would support more stringent resting limitations, but it's clear this would raise hell from many, many prospective players.

It would certainly be a major departure from the spirit of the IE games.  I'd be fine with them doing this in a future game, though. I wouldn't buy that game, but if Obsidian wants to develop games in which player activities are that tightly controlled, that's their prerogative, so long as they don't misrepresent their intentions to prospective supporters.

[nipsen]

From reading just the first page, it's quite clear to me that Luzarius is unhappy that he can't play an OP per0encounter wizard, is unhappy that very few people agree with his PoV, and wants the devs change the rules to punish players who play the game as intended.  That is, punish the players who use the rest system judiciously (as intended) and who seem most likely to be those who disagree with him.

That could be a version of the end to the tale, but there's a preface to that story. Before we had access to the beta, Obsidian let on that they were discussing how to do away with rest-spamming, or if they should get rid of it. And if so, how that would have to be done. I'm assuming there were things involved such as whether to respawn mobs, or make it possible to become ambushed, that sort of thing instead. It was discussed a bit on this forum, and elsewhere as well.

 

It's also something you kind of discuss a bit with your players when GMing - you don't want some clever player to keep casting their spells all at once, and camp on every tree-stump. So you invent a time-limit, or you require people to hold watch for monsters and spies, that sort of thing. And this solves itself with imaginative players: you pressure them lightly to make sure they keep moving as far as possible before resting, and reward them gently for driving the adventuring. And in a dungeon, when you have limited supplies, you want to force the players to pick and choose the loot they need, to make choices. While making it all interesting enough to make them press on to see what happens next. You also want to create some tension - when do they actually have to retreat? - to tie a spectre of failure to their backpack somehow. This means you add an element of planning to the quest, and allow players to think ahead. This seems so basic, but it's what transforms a dungeon trek into an adventure, right..?

 

Can you possibly replicate that in a game? Have people rush into a dungeon, overextend themselves, and force the player party to retreat? Or to have them carefully plan how to ration their resources and spells? Would it be possible to let the party wear down their fighters, only use buffs and smaller spells sparingly, in expectation of the really big fight later on, in a game? In most adventure role-playing games, you have to imagine that part and essentially create your own rules along the way. And that can work. Parts of BG2, and several of the sequences of fights in IWD2 lets you do that extremely easily. 

 

But in the end the spell-system and the spawn groups were created in such a way that you had to turn the difficulty down to normal at least, and create fairly specific types of spellcasters to get that feeling of completing a dungeon by hauling yourself out by the fingertips. And you could always just.. go back and rest and try again, or reload. And you would run into situations later on when a specific spell would be able to kill a troll easily, and that you couldn't really predict that all the time. So saving spells would just be the same as exposing yourself to danger, and essentially either forcing you to stock up on healing potions, or to memorize more healing spells. In IWD2 you could convert normal spells to healing spells with the clerics, though - that worked really well. So that you could not just compensate by blowing some low-level spells. But that you also could decide whether to use smaller indirect spells to help shift the battle, or to just heal with them afterwards. That's the kind of thing that makes you look for opportunities to use spells more cleverly. And allows that questing I described through a dungeon, because it extends the time you can use spells before resting, and to actually use all the spells you have before deciding you're spent. As opposed to having three useful but situational spells, and then being useless afterwards and forcing you to rest. Same with that one single ability the fighting type classes have.

 

So the spell system in PoE extends on that, with the levels having a set number of casts for all memorized spells, and allowing you to choose more strategically. As well as with the per-encounter abilities, that you might accept that a type of class might have. It makes sense, and does away with the problem that you can never really use your class-specific abilities. That - of course - makes perfect sense in a pnp game, since you run into maybe two fights before each adventure day ends. In a game, you run into more, and suddenly gaining that one blinding strike per rest doesn't make sense. So having these as per-encounter makes all kinds of sense.

 

The way health is dealt with in PoE comes from that as well - a way to extend the adventuring day, and make the players feel that they're running ragged, instead of just ending up with "oh, I guess I'm out of spells now - resting time, or else I'm going to lose too many hp in the next fight".

 

The experience point model as well, with no battle xp and only quest xp comes from this - you want people to quest ahead, not rake the dungeon for every single mob to make sure you're strong enough for the next one. Those mechanics are silly, and if possible should be done away with. This is the kind of thing a developer of games like this, just like a GM for pnp games, will think a lot about. Not because you want to make the game more difficult, but because you want to make the game easier to understand and easier to play for people who don't obsess over numbers and damage popups. Because believe it or not, this is how you get relatively normal people to play a game.

 

So doing this for a developer of a game that is supposed to appeal to people, is not only a good idea from a gameplay perspective, it makes sense economically as well. You want to make the game accessible, but not simplified an unsatisfying.

 

What remains then is to make sure the spells and abilities are actually useful if you use them strategically. That the skills and character strengths and weaknesses actually matter. That it feels rewarding to use them well, and to use them to your advantage. And as I'm fond of telling people, the first draft for PoE actually did that. It wasn't perfect, but it focused so well on how you would place your troops and use the then relatively meager and situational spells to shape the battle, to for example exploit the fighters well, or to compensate for the strengths of the enemies, or the weaknesses of your own troops. And because those encounters varied so much, and the scale was the same for your own characters as for the enemies (massive strength, usually weak dexterity, etc.), that meant you could for example hold back a heavy fighter with a nimble one, while moving in from the flank with the heavy hitters, and so on. Or use slow type spells to avoid masses of weak enemies. Or cast the sustained spells to neutralise poison damage, etc. And end up with interesting ways to decide battles with just a few strategic spells. So you could create specialisations like that and have groups with very few attacks they would be completely defenseless against. And then end up with completing the dyrwood dungeon if you were thinking ahead, and completing it and feeling as if you did really well. Or, that you ended up in the final battle and you were simply so weak that you would feel compelled to compromise with the boss. Did you launch into a battle with everything you see and use up too many spells and wear your party down, instead of sneaking past the dragon-kin in the sidecave? Well, that's too bad. You made a mistake, and now you're paying for it. Retreat and find a safe place to rest, or take a chance.

 

That sort of thing would not open up with a more linear approach, where you decide on having a predictable party, predictable number of enemies, and requiring you to go through all of them on the way to the goal, while allowing you to rest with no risk. Basically, you preclude all of it with a few design-decisions right there.

 

So what happens after that, after the invaluable feedback from the endless fount of wisdom that is this forum and Obsidian's omipresent community team, is that all the character-classes in PoE were normalised to lose all the specialisation options. While the way you engage in battles become more and more dependent on direct damage and simple HP tug-o-wars. Until you get what is there in the final game, which - for all the cosmetic differences - is an identical system to what you had in BG2. Where you have super-abilities you ration out, while expending spells like candy. Because since the direct damage spells are so significant, and the best way to avoid taking damage. Or, since the mobs have very few weakness and strength specialisations, like the player characters, it's the ranged spells and the abilities that make a difference. So you preempt damage and extend the adventuring day, like in BG2, by casting spells and avoiding actually engaging in battles. Once the spells are done, you're wearing down the health. And you end up having to rest when the spells are spent. Ration the spells, and you take damage. It's pretty much mechanical. Use damage dealing spells and survive, try to engage and it's about luck.

 

And we end up at this point, where people are kind of unhappy with how you're forced to play an rts-type logistics minigame, where getting camping supplies is basically the one thing you need to take care of before going into a dungeon. Have too few logs for a campfire - well, go back to the nearest town.

 

That's the kind of situation that any GM or game-designer would see as a complete defeat. That they're forcing the player to obey some mechanic that fells narratively invalid. It's the result of the idiocy organised by a couple of very active people in the community, and I'm assuming some of Obsidian's testers. Against the design Josh had put up, while dismissing that any of the objections to it. But that's the way things work at Obsidian apparently.

 

But fear not - the same people now have the solution: make all the abilities cool-down abilities, and all is solved! Just make the game into Diablo 3, and everyone will love it! Presumably we're getting closer to what "the community" allegedly wanted when they funded the PoE kickstarter, according to Obsidian's community folks. And how much bs the kickstarter pitch turned out to be, in spite of Obsidian initially making good on it.

 

Like I said, it's still amusing to see this in practice. I feel very sorry for game-designers who had their game literally screwed over by people who should know better. And that not more people stall when seeing what became of the game is a bit strange - reading the reviews is like reading a hundred different ways to avoid pointing out how the limitations in the licensed d&d design for crpgs still is as hopelessly simplistic and unsatisfying to play as ever.

 

But it's still hilarious to read the total surprise in the reactions from people around here when people point out that they might not be entirely satisfied with a battle-system that essentially is exclusively reduced to stalling you from reading the next set of dialogue. All tension is gone from that part of the game, and it's very obvious that it's the case.

 

And I guess trolls will fly before anyone of the supremes admit that this result was not just predictable, but specifically predicted for you in detail ahead of time.

[scrotiemcb]

@nipsen: I found your tale quite interesting. I would definitely appreciate any links you could provide me to beta backer suggestion threads which eventually made their way into the game, such that I could analyze the process. (Clearly I'm not a backer myself.)

 

In general, though, I'm a disciple of Malcolm Gladwell when it comes to customer (in this case, player) feedback. If you keep things simple, like asking players to rate an experience from 1 to 10, I feel you'll get good feedback. On the other hand, if a game designer lets players decide how to fix problems on public forums, your result is going to be a bunch of amateurish slop, because players are not game designers. Heck, even properly diagnosing problems is far beyond the purview of playerbase competence. Like a patient at the doctor's office, the only thing players are collectively qualified to do is say where it hurts. As such, I am almost universally appalled at the results of community-driven design "improvements," and I feel they're responsible for many games losing their artistic vision and being reduced to a less enjoyable version of their original selves.

 

TL;DR: Forumer suggestions are 99% trash that makes games worse.

Edited May 1, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[Jimmysdabestcop]

I think all spells should have been per encounter or magic should have been like the cipher. There is no need for 3 different ways to handle magic in 1 game.

 

Right Priest/Druids auto learn all spells. Wizards need a book and can only pick 2 spells per level and have to find other books. But no spells or books are sold. And ciphers is based on focus and can cast whenever they want.

 

Should have picked 1 system an applied it to all casters. If you never played a RPG you probably be confused. IE Games using DnD 2nd Edt all casters had to memorize spells and rest to activate it. And you could find scrolls to memorize or buy spells.

 

It doesn't make sense for Wizards to have to have spells written down and quickslot launch different books but not be able to buy spells at a spell shop.

 

Resting was needed in order to memorize in IE games but not in PoE so not sure why spells aren't per encounter or focus based. If per encounter could have made it 2 spells per level per encounter. I honestly think focus would have worked for all casters though.

 

Could have saved per day stuff for really unique powerful items only.

 

And even camping could then be eliminated for Inn Rest Only. Or make it unlimited. It seems out of place. Because no random encounters. Take Icewind Dale if you were playing HOF mode one wrong move in an encounter and your team can be wiped out of spells and heals. Now you can camp sure but most likely its gonna spawn a random encounter and your party could be messed up or even wiper out.

 

As long as you have 1 camp. You can always camp nothing bad will happen. Fast travel back to town and buy more and rest at an Inn for some awesome bonuses.

 

So in essence camping doesn't increase the difficulty factor at all. It doesn't really give you resources to manage. Its not even something you have to think about. In reality the only thing it does is possibly annoy the player.

 

And with fast travel and no random encounters there is no reason besides role play reason to not go to an inn and get bonuses all the time.

 

Camping doesn't really bother me but it does just seem weird and out of place to me. The same way 3 magic systems in 1 game world doesn't make sense.

[Odd Hermit]

Yes, though with some adjustments for balance. Or, alternate system for caster that limits them in a more meaningful way.

 

Bottom line is it makes no sense whatsoever to hold back in combat outside of extremely trivial encounters which don't matter.

 

If you look at it from a role-playing perspective, who in their right mind is in a fight where they could die and is thinking "well IDK I might need this 3rd level spell for a boss later..."?

 

 

 

It's not real resource management. It's just hoarding / dumping based on fight difficulty, but of course if you don't know the fight you should never be holding back since that could get you killed. Trying to get a feel for the difficulty of a fight is not always something you have time to do before a difficult fight gets out of hand.

[Dadalama]

about the rest restrictions convo...

 

What about just use random encounters during rests. Small chance to get an encounter, you can set watches throughout the night. Wizards need a full 8 hours of sleep. But only if you sleep in a dangerous area.

 

In pnp I usually roll a d6 and roll the encounter table on 1, but if the area's more dangerous I'll make the chances higher. Not all encounters are big monsters either, the most common are things like Racoons eating your food.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Dadalama

[Gromnir]

^great, and everybody has that option.

Personally, I've never even considered going back to an inn after every fight - that'd be boring and nuts.

 

same.  

 

am not a fan o' spells per rest, but before we knew wizard or priest casting mechanics, the board populace were discussing the issue and were not favorable towards a mana, fatigue, or other mechanic that would allow for per encounter spel use.  the further the poe wizard were removed from D&D/ie mechanics, the greater were backer resistance.  the backers were overwhelming demanding that the poe wizard be familiar and that its casting be closer to vancian than not.

 

aside: limiting saves and/or rests in specific areas is the worst solution we have heard yet.  we were annoyed enough with not being able to rest in the wailing banshee lighthouse and that were in defiance bay.  limiting camping supplies does result in us hoarding spells, but the alternatives suggested is no more appealing than is humping back to an inn after every fight.  hell, in our plays o' poe so far, we specific designed aloth to take weapon focus noble, all the blast abilities, and a few o' the ranged combat powhaz in an attempt to make our wizard more useful when not casting spells.  as between taking sceptre enhancements with abilities or talents v. returning to the inn frequently, we chose sceptre.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[nipsen]

@nipsen: I found your tale quite interesting. I would definitely appreciate any links you could provide me to beta backer suggestion threads which eventually made their way into the game, such that I could analyze the process. (Clearly I'm not a backer myself.)

(...)

 

TL;DR: Forumer suggestions are 99% trash that makes games worse.

I'm not technically a backer either. I donated the pledge money away to an autism foundation on Obsidian's behalf.

 

The thing is that people like Gift3d over there would argue that if 9/10 forumers would instinctively recoil at a mechanic, however well argued it was, or how well the intention with the mechanic came through in practice - then this would reflect the opinion of all players of the game, and the mechanic became "objectively bad". Arguments would be like this: "if I don't instinctively understand how it works, without playing the game, or trying to understand the mechanic, it's unlikely that anyone else will understand it either". And: "when you need to explain it in so many words, it's obviously difficult to understand". Like explaining how eyesight works, before you can be allowed to see anything at all, I guess. Things went off the rails from there.

 

Documenting how it ended up isn't very easy, though. For example, Matt and ..Sensuki, who posted a 50-page paper arguing for an attack-roll distribution that approached a system very much like flipping a coin -- this is now not possible to download. The forum-posts are still here, where they explain unspecifically what they wanted, and how everyone else in the world wants it as well. Hooking in on the "dissatisfaction" of "everyone", that was then answered in this one suggestion. But the actual paper is gone. Whether that is because dropbox started to purge links, or if it's because they deleted it, who knows. They also both alternate between denying they wanted what they described, criticising the way their suggestions were taken on board, and between claiming they didn't want what the game ended up with. Which makes sense to a certain extent - like I've said before, the only thing the "hostility" to the first PoE draft seems to have proved to Obsidian and at least Paradox was that anything that wasn't as simplistic and linear as what the community expected, was a hard sell.

 

Paradox has for example based their business around creating games specifically for niche-audiences, based on direct feedback. And if you took the feedback seriously, it's natural for them to find that inventing anything new at all - which is what Josh did with the initial draft, and he was obviously not pitching this as a small adjustment to the IE games formula, but something new altogether - is more risky than going with something that is perceived as being more established. It's ironic that this would be the conclusion, though -- that a kickstarter and and effort to sidestep the usual publisher shortcut theories about popular appeal, would end up being tied by the same limitations in the end. And that players and gamers would then end up supporting it as a concept - getting the least creative design, bound very obviously by the licensed d&d conventions from the IE games -- when you have talent like what Obsidian has pitching something new and imaginative.

 

Because like Gromnir explained, a lot of the new mechanics, however well argued, were not received well on the forums. Afterwards, they were taken out. Josh talked about Grognards and the difficulty of selling new mechanics to blood-fans, so I can't imagine they didn't notice or discuss this. And even though some of the mechanics are kept cosmetically in the game right now -- the accuracy mechanic where an accurate character will score easy critical hits (and convert grazes to normal hits) if the opponent has low dodge... basically, a huge knight in massive triple-plate armor will have a damage treshold, but his weaknesses against an opponent able to strike weak points is obvious -- it's not possible to exploit it very easily in the game. In that all the character bonuses have been put into class variables, and toned down until they don't make much difference. Like Josh insisted, it's still more dynamic than the IE games, but I would argue that all of the opportunities given by the ruleset have been toned down so far eventually that they're practically not there any more.

 

Might was the same thing - a lot of ... very harsh criticism turned up against it. For all kinds of long and well-argued rationalisations having to do with intuitive design, narrative flow, and whatnot. But when you got into the specifics, it turned out that the only problem was that pumping might to max didn't automatically translate into increased damage. When these very loud people expected that this would be the case.

 

I'd like to say "some of us argued", but it was just me, who said that, well, you know, there's so many ability points here that you can max a second stat. That there's these "pairs" of abilities that make up the traditional d&d character abilities. Maxing Might+Dex could be similar to maxing Strength. Resistance+Constitution could be similar to CON.

 

That's not completely correct, the ruleset went beyond that, and opened up character ability pairs you don't have in D&D, like a specialist fighter with high perception and high dexterity. Which used to mean, in the game, a nimble character able to interrupt ability and spell-casts really easily, and who would score critical hits very easily. You could alter that concept into a... two-handed long-sword wielding striker, for example, with less hit-points, but more skills and resilience enough to wear light armor. It was really fun figuring out builds like that. Lots of wizzard builds that could be made with it as well - the weak super-illusion specialist, who can cast a cantrip on an entire village area, if they're weak-minded enough. Or on the other end, a wizard who can create a fireball with the diameter and impact radius of a bullet, but who will destroy that one target in one hit, if he hits, etc.

 

But the character ability pairs explain how they were thinking when they created the system. And that wasn't good enough, apparently because random folks on a forum didn't want to understand it. It got a bit comical, when the first patch essentially doubled the character ability points, to let people max even more stats. To avoid "trap builds", as sensuki called the might only builds that dropped all the stats except might and con, presumably because they simply weren't as strong as was expected (even though the builds did exactly what was advertised: ability to deal out and take immense amounts of damage, but be very weak against interrupts and status attacks/contact spells that bypass armor). Removing Res as well, or finding that perception was a dump-stat -- it made the characters vulnerable against the touch-attacks, and made it necessary to win the battle on range, before any engagement. So it forced a specific type of specialisation, that had strengths, but also weaknesses if the entire company was made up that way. Accepting this wasn't good enough, though - and adding twice the amount of points, to just allow everyone to build characters with no weaknesses wasn't good enough (because you could still remove stats that potentially created a weakness) - and eventually they dropped the percentage score/1-100 distribution, and went back to a 3d6 scale instead. So people could, I don't know, do things you never do on pnp, like drop stats to 1 and max the stats you like, to game the system, etc. And then things were great, apparently.

 

And in the end they took that seriously, and normalised the significant stats so you couldn't make a character with any weaknesses - and moved the rest to class-abilities. Making the entire character creation essentially cosmetic, and the stats only really significant in dialogues.

 

So we get what we ended up with - very few character abilities that really matter, an engagement system that.. has no real import, and is indistinguishable from what you have in BG2, where it really only harms the player characters when they try to place themselves, along with the AI when it breaks. And with spells that function mostly as a way to wear down the HP of the targets before they get close enough to wear down yours.

 

And we're forced to play the game in a very specific way, that mimics a style of play that follow extremely closely how some die-hard BG fans play that game (and which the rest of us invented our own rules to avoid at all cost, because it's boring as heck to play that way).

 

So when I play the game now, I've ran into several situations where I either run into "overpowered mobs", because I've skipped past areas I'm apparently supposed to rake for xp first. And mini-bosses that launch a scripted sequence of initial spells that break the rules you have to obey. And that's where the challenge is in the game now - in gaining levels and new abilities+spells, while using your eventually comically overpowered spells to deal with mini-bosses that have super-abilities that go way beyond the rules elsewhere. Until you run out of fizz and need to spend log-resources or go back to a town to survive.

 

Like I said, you can very easily see where that design comes from, and why people prefer a less restrictive approach to the simplistic d&d license implementation that were the IE games. Gf1t3d describes it as "D3", other people compare it to MMO-type action games. And that's fine. Go and play WOW and D3 until your brain bleeds, I don't care.

 

But there was a different design for PoE that aimed for strategic play of the kind that the IE games promised in spirit, so to speak, and that pnp role-playing gamers don't need a long tale to understand the draw to. And in the final game, that type of play isn't possible to even imagine along the way. PoE is more BG2 than BG2 ever was, in other words.

 

 

Camping doesn't really bother me but it does just seem weird and out of place to me. The same way 3 magic systems in 1 game world doesn't make sense.

It's more about making some of the wizard spells that disobey the limitations of the other soul magic need more preparation, while the casts should be rarer. It's narrative flow on one hand, and a game-balance mechanic on the other. If I GMed a game where wizards have access to offensive spells with massive range, that can target specific targets on a distance, conjure up fireballs, create fire out of thin air, etc. (as opposed to druid magic or cipher magic that draws on souls of particular targets, mold elements and nature spirits, or can channel strength from the character itself, and so on -- I think cipher magic is still limited that way in the game, btw, that it can't target areas without a target to explode from) -- then I would not allow magic like that to be intuitively remembered or cast. Because it isn't narratively pleasing - a wizard is supposed to be powerful, but at great cost and mental discipline excluding everything else. They sacrifice something to gain mastery of a type of magic no one else has access to. But it's also problematic in that if you allow magic like that to be cast as often and as easily as per-encounter type spells, then you need to tone the magic down, and change how spells are created and memorized.

 

So to avoid making wizards and everything else a sub-class of ..sorcerer, to allow these insane artificial pyres that no one else can cast to be more common, you have to invent limitations to it. Without those, you would either need to make everything the same, or end up with making the magic too powerful and too common. PoE has some sort of weird compromise between the two approaches in the end - magic in general is very powerful compared to everything else, but you basically need to use it in every encounter to get through the mobs without taking too much damage.

 

And we run into the "adventure day problem" again - where a player that's presented with the current spell-lineup feels, for good reason, that magic should not be limited in the way it is. After all, it's not strong enough to be uniquely useful in specific situations, and you need to use it to get past certain bosses and powerful creatures. Making you very vulnerable when the spells are spent, forcing you to rest. So you notice right away that it is fair, and won't really disrupt the flow of the game, to have almost all the spells as cool-down abilities. Since the game is balanced now against spamming spells in every encounter, and this is forcing you to play the log-collection mini-game to keep going in a dungeon, which isn't very satisfying.

 

 

Bottom line is it makes no sense whatsoever to hold back in combat outside of extremely trivial encounters which don't matter.

 

If you look at it from a role-playing perspective, who in their right mind is in a fight where they could die and is thinking "well IDK I might need this 3rd level spell for a boss later..."?

 

You could say that. But the idea, it seems, was to give the wizards low-level casts that were quick and uninterruptable (which used to be incredibly powerful), along with a standard ability type "book slam", and the staff bolt cast. And then let the high-level spells take more preparation - that again might make the wizard vulnerable during the cast. So you end up with an opportunity for keeping the usefulness of low-level spells far into the game (unlike in d&d, without some GM creativity that breaks the game-rules), while making high-level spells a sort of event - you defend the wizard while they're preparing the spell, and might end up in danger if the area cast isn't planned well. And having some genuine output for the effort that's unlike all the other magic in the game. The same was the case with the enemy spell-casters - powerful spells would take a long time to cast, and potentially be worth the risk in rushing them, or making it possible to interrupt with a low-level immediate cast.

 

And now it suddenly makes sense to save that spell for the right occasion, no? To justify having a separate and sometimes cumbersome spell-system for wizards that is unique from the other types of casts.

[JONNIN]

I am not real keen on POTD & TOI,  but here is my take on it so far (doing it very, very slowly and carefully)

-- almost everything that is per/rest is garbage.   The single exceptions to this are healing -- bandage talents and healing spells are critical to many boss fights and so you conserve them against trash and use them when you must, rest when you are getting low or before a boss. 

 

Lets take for example hauling in 2 paladin moonlikes to tank.  They heal from racial, they can lay on hands per encounter, aura gives DR,  second aura gives accuracy.  Bandage avoids camping for 1-2 more fights.   If you can arrange for most trash fights to mostly beat on these 2 characters,  you can avoid resting for ages, often for an entire map or more.   In the back, a cipher never runs out of spells,  and a chanter can summon stuff that can pseudo-tank or provides dps.    The priest just uses a bow or wand until you get to boss fights, might use the per encounter heal big aoe but not actual spells most of the time -- he is your trump card and if you actually use the priest's spells on trash fights  that is your red light that the area you are in is too hard for you.

 

Using ideas along these lines, you do not need to rest until your health gets knocked down to about 50% or so -- because you have so few per-rest abilities that need to be reset.   Basically -- when the tank's health bar goes red, time to go to the inn.

 

That said, the per-rest classes are poorly designed, the wizard is the worst of the lot.  Priest is almost as bad.  Neither priest nor mage do anything in trash fights at all, so that is 2 useless characters 90% of the time..!   Druid is better -- it can at least animal form and kill a few things each fight, though it is a little squishy for doing that late-game. 

 

I would love to see them give these classes just a few, say 2-3, per encounter or even spammable things to do in each fight. 

 

[Tigranes]

Triple Crowning a wizard at the moment, per rest is just fine, though of course that is the most extreme case of reliance on per-rest abilities, meaning I have to rest more often that I'd prefer (i.e. sometimes more than once a map). 

 

"I would love to see them give these classes just a few, say 2-3, per encounter or even spammable things to do in each fight. "

 

They have it already.

[Gfted1]

The thing is that people like Gift3d over there would argue that if 9/10 forumers would instinctively recoil at a mechanic, however well argued it was, or how well the intention with the mechanic came through in practice - then this would reflect the opinion of all players of the game, and the mechanic became "objectively bad". Arguments would be like this: "if I don't instinctively understand how it works, without playing the game, or trying to understand the mechanic, it's unlikely that anyone else will understand it either". And: "when you need to explain it in so many words, it's obviously difficult to understand". Like explaining how eyesight works, before you can be allowed to see anything at all, I guess. Things went off the rails from there.

Poor poor nipsen. Trying so hard to launch a pithy zinger that you cant even get the basics right. But once more for the cheap seat, I couldn't care less what anyone else thinks of the game mechanics. Im only worried about what I think of the game mechanics and searching my posts will bear that out. One of the times youre going to be right so keep trying!

[luzarius]

Eder: "Well, we killed one shadow, drinks at the tavern?"

 

*party agrees*

[Jimmysdabestcop]

I dont know it still seems magic is all over the place in PoE. They should have just got rid of the wizard books and gave access to all spells. Their spells per rest doesn't change. So why add an extra mechanic in the game that Druids and Priests don't have? It just seems odd and out of place.

[Gromnir]

I dont know it still seems magic is all over the place in PoE. They should have just got rid of the wizard books and gave access to all spells. Their spells per rest doesn't change. So why add an extra mechanic in the game that Druids and Priests don't have? It just seems odd and out of place.

the developers clear wanted unique gameplay for different classes.  give chanters different themed spells from wizards is not unique gameplay.  cipher focus building is intended to play different from other casters.  wizards got their grimoires, which adds different tactical concerns. if druid wildshape actual were useful beyond the early stages o' the game, that would also be creating a uniqueness to druidic play.  what is out-o'-place, if anything, is that the casting mechanics for priests, druids and wizards is a bit too similar, but that is what the community wanted.  for the familiar classes with ie analogues, the fan base insisted/inisits on making the poe versions play more like the ie/d&d versions.  can't have a poe paladin that is relative weak on offense 'cause that ain't what bg2 did. weren't any different for the fighter when the beta were initial released.  many beta testers wanted to know why the fighter couldn't dps better.... it were wrong that a poe fighter couldn't do damage and absorb damage with equal faculty, in spite o' the fact that many such complaints were coming from folks who had actual applauded the direction o' fighters announced in this thread... with the notable and almost singular exception o' karkarov.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66380-update-81-the-front-line-fighters-and-barbarians/?hl=front-liners

 

ciphers and chanters and wizards, oh my.

 

is all 'posed to play different.

 

HA! Good Fun!