So that was terrible...

[Dangermouth]

The combat system is garbage. So's the new 'story', but I'll leave that aside.

 

Defender: doesn't.

 

Disengage - I get hit. They don't.

 

They target my mage who usually lasts 3 seconds.

 

The AI is artificial, yet unintelligent in the extreme - back to micromanaging and trying to get one sneak attack in so I can prep the group before they're overwhelmed and hope to get in a few summons (usually at least 3 per chanter) to stem the tide of the terrible 2 or 3 enemies I have to face. The Grieving Mother also seems to hardly ever gain focus or do anything much anymore.

 

Enemies now seem very fast whereas my characters are now slow.

 

A basic, ordinary war veteran and brawler can and does mean several restarts: they're harder than the Adra Dragon.

 

Difficulty is set at the lowest: I'm not interested in 'hardcore' and have a low view of those who do.

 

My team is the one that I took into the final battle and won with except that one of it is now lvl 14 already because I sent him off to do a quest so they ought to be able to do something.

 

Extremely poor all round so far and I have little motivation to play the game (hence my coming on here to post, something you'll see I have done infrequently, to gripe).

[Spirtikus]

Just get a melee fighter/barb/paladin in your back lines when setting the formation, to pick up any unwanted rushes to your back line. This means the enemies need to pass two disengagements at least if they want to reach your squishies.

 

[archangel979]

 

 

 

It's not. It's terrible news. What's the point of having a combat-sticky engagement mechanic if it's just ignored by the enemies? The whole purpose of "engagement", from what I understood, was to avoid the BG scenario where your ranged squishies are just constantly rushed. Like in actual D&D, where there are limitations on combat movement and a tank character can actually hold enemies and protect ranged characters.

 

This is exactly the worse aspect of BG combat--the total inability for a tank to tank. It does seem to be a regular part of combat in the expansion and it's ****ing ****. I don't want to have to drag my goddamn fighters across the battle field five goddamn times while constantly re-positioning my main character to avoid instantaneous melee death *EVERY GODDAMN BATTLE*. My tanks are built defensive, with ****ing multiple-engagement talents and deflection and ****, to ****ing tank--to hold multiple enemies on them. Literally my entire party is built around the simple concept of holding enemies on my tanks and dealing damage with my damage dealers. Every item I have, every talent I took, every spell I know--it's all built around that one simple strategy.

 

If they're just going to completely ignore engagement and run off after my casters every. single. time. (as they have been doing) then this entire expansion will be nothing but a constant micromanagement slag of chasing characters around a battlefield. How fun. Yay.

 

Wow. First time I see a post of someone who understands BG combat wasn't perfect, and that the engagement idea is there for a reason. Finally.

The things I suffered in the beta forums

 

I'm guessing some more balancing is needed. Obviously the fighter can't have high deflection + high accuracy + extra engagements + high damage. So saying it's the op's problem if his/her fighter doesn't punish disengagement is kinda silly.

 

Actually both him and you don't have a clue what you are talking about. In Bg games it was super easy to tank. You kited a bit with ranged and sent your tank after the chasing enemy and the enemy went back to attacking the tank. Also the squishy classes had good cc spells that would take out of the battle those that came to hit them.

 

This change to PoE is awesome for people that use IE mod and turn off disengagement attacks, we can now play it almost like BG since enemies will disengage more often (with no penalty with IE mod) and you will need to kite and not just tank&spank like in vanilla PoE

 

 

So kiting is your perfect combat mechanism instead of engagement? wtf?

Seriously tired from all the people who want an IE clone.

Just go fund a game that use the real IE. People have overhauled BG2 into a completely new game before.

 

No I funded this one as it promised to be best of all IE games. And then it was bait and switch. But IE mod exists, thank god.

I did my first play without IE mod and the gameplay experience was terrible. But the Patch 2.0 changes sound good to play with IE mod.

 

As for real IE, yes Siege of Dragonspear will be my day 1 purchase.

[Katarack21]

No I funded this one as it promised to be best of all IE games.

 

 

No, it didn't. Watch that video again sometime. It promised to be "the next great RPG experience". It promised to be "inspired by the great IE games you loved". It even promised to be "brought to you by the people responsible for IWD I & II".

 

It never promised to be best IE game ever. It never even promised to be an IE game. It's system is so very different that if you played it in the exact way you played an IE game, you'd probably die.

 

It's combat is *better*, in part because tanks can tank and you don't have to resort to kiting everything to make up for the lack of a tanking mechanic.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Katarack21

[archangel979]

 

No I funded this one as it promised to be best of all IE games.

 

No, it didn't. Watch that video again sometime. It promised to be "the next great RPG experience". It promised to be "inspired by the great IE games you loved". It even promised to be "brought to you by the people responsible for IWD I & II".

 

It never promised to be best IE game ever. It never even promised to be an IE game. It's system is so very different that if you played it in the exact way you played an IE game, you'd probably die.

 

It's combat is *better*, in part because tanks can tank and you don't have to resort to kiting everything to make up for the lack of a tanking mechanic.

 

It promised to have best parts of the 3 IE series. What you think they said I don't care.

The end result didn't have that, any of that. It has something similar but worse.

 

Engagement + tank&spank made combat super boring. But you can fix that as I described earlier.

Edited August 27, 2015 by archangel979

[Killyox]

 

Use spoiler tags in future.

[View619]

FWIW, enemies in earlier areas make use of disengagement too. I fought the Black Meadow gang (POTD) and had a few units attempting to rush Aloth specifically. Disengagement attacks tore up one who was hell bent on him, and a fighter only disengaged because:

 

1. There was a clear path to Aloth.
2. He had the health to deal with the strike.

 

Proper use of disengagement interruption tactics covered him. I don't think enemies bum-rushing your backline will be an issue later, assuming you have units that can dish out disengagement damage and have methods of moving your squishies away at minimal risk.

[Katarack21]

 

What you think they said I don't care.

Those are not "what I think they said". Those are *quotes* from the original Kickstarter launch video.

[Judicator]

I don't understand people who say you can't tank in IE games. The enemies always targeted the character closest to them. Just send in your Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian first and that's that.

[hk79v1]

I don't understand people who say you can't tank in IE games. The enemies always targeted the character closest to them. Just send in your Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian first and that's that.

Er I think that enemies will move on when they can't actually GET to your character(i.e. they're surrounded).

[drunetovich]

Just make party full of tanks and roll over every PoTD fight on full auto, why bother with casters at all?

[archangel979]

 

What you think they said I don't care.

Those are not "what I think they said". Those are *quotes* from the original Kickstarter launch video.

 

Those are one quotes. They also had many other quotes and marketing and stuff.

[Katarack21]

The fact is they were very honest and upfront from the beginning about this being a spiritual successor to the IE games. They never said it was going to ban IE clone. I honestly have no idea where you got that from because they were so very forthright and direct about their intentions.

[archangel979]

The fact is they were very honest and upfront from the beginning about this being a spiritual successor to the IE games. They never said it was going to ban IE clone. I honestly have no idea where you got that from because they were so very forthright and direct about their intentions.

Where did I say it needs to be IE clone? I just said they made a worse game using worse mechanics while promising the game that has best of different IE series. Edited August 28, 2015 by archangel979

[Katarack21]

 

The fact is they were very honest and upfront from the beginning about this being a spiritual successor to the IE games. They never said it was going to ban IE clone. I honestly have no idea where you got that from because they were so very forthright and direct about their intentions.

Where did I say it needs to be IE clone? I just said they made a worse game using worse mechanics while promising the game that has best of different IE series.

 

You are far from the first person to come here bitching about how you expected the distilled, concentrated essence of the Infinity Engine to be duplicated, rocked up and injected directly into your brain, and how pissed you are that they actually made the game they said they would instead.

[Guest 4ward]

I don't understand people who say you can't tank in IE games. The enemies always targeted the character closest to them. Just send in your Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian first and that's that.

 

just don't pay attention to that talk, it's just a matter of preferred playstyle, with the narrow corridors and fewer enemies and with guys like korgan or minsc you could do anything, with free movement allowed. All this talk about cheesy tactics, dishonorable evil things you'd to enemies in BG2 with both games being rtwp, it's just disguise for their preference of their passive playstyle. I bet i could easily protect my casters better than in any situation in PoE, since i had protection spells – as in protection not just defense – which i launched before battle even started.

[Killyox]

 

The fact is they were very honest and upfront from the beginning about this being a spiritual successor to the IE games. They never said it was going to ban IE clone. I honestly have no idea where you got that from because they were so very forthright and direct about their intentions.

Where did I say it needs to be IE clone? I just said they made a worse game using worse mechanics while promising the game that has best of different IE series.

 

Disagreed.

 

Mechanics are nothing fancy but vastly prefer them to Dnd 2 and Dnd 3 & 3,5

 

Also mechanics were not "best" of IE series that's one and second they could not use those mechanics even if they wanted due to copyright. They said they will make a spiritual successor to IE games and all things considered I think they did damn well. Except companions... not impact or relations or interjections from them.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Killyox

[Katarack21]

I'm curious what area(s) you are having problems with and what your current party level is?

The first map in Cragholdt Bluffs is what generated the frustration that lead to this thread. My party was level 11. I eventually got through the map, but it was *VERY* hard and very, very frustrating. Each battle took my three or for tries throughout the lower part of the map-when I got up to dealing with the undead, it became much less frustrating.

 

The problem seemed to be the particular abilities and fighting style of the enemies...and, of course, I now realize that I was under-level.

[majestic]

Well, I finished Siege of Crägholdt on normal with a level 12 party having the classical 1 tank 5 ranged setup.

 

It was a rather entertaining experience involving a bunch of reloads (that even made me use a trap for the first time ever by the way) and I loved every second of it, but I can see how it would frustrate players.

 

The biggest issue is that if you show up there unprepared one could truly get the idea that certain encounters and enemies (e.g. the Steelspine Magus) were designed with the intent to hard-counter the de-facto standard Pillars of Eternity endgame party and strategies players developed since the original release.

 

It feels a bit like the sort of **** move that Kuroisan was in Baldur's Gate 2, except he came with a fan modification and Weimer clearly stated he created him just to make players feel pain of having their own tactics used on them.