Confirmed - per-encounter spells are getting nerfed

[Njall]

 

Pillars, on the other hand, has mechanics simulating battle fatigue (in form of endurance/health system + fatigue system + vancian casters) and encounters designed appropriately to count on parties not being to go all in all the time...

Ive never seen a game where the mooks weren't at full power when you encounter them. Youre saying that in PoE you will encounter half wounded parties and casters who have already blown their spells for the day? The game some how scans your health, endurance and current spells/abilities and scales the game accordingly on the fly?

 

Uhm, nope, to my understanding, he's just saying that, despite the fact that you can just backtrack to the nearest tavern and rest before every fight, thus starting each and every fight at full resources, the game still assumes (and is still balanced around the fact that) you won't be using your per-rest abilities every fight, and that you'll only rest from time to time. 

IOW, such mechanics are in place for a reason, whether or not they're appropriately enforced, and the fact that they can't be enforced despite being assumed makes balancing the game harder.

Edited October 19, 2015 by Njall

[Gfted1]

I wonder what this invisible balance point is? Not the first fight, you'll still be at full power and that's not fair. By the third or fourth fight attrition should have taken its toll and your party will be suitably weakened?

[Njall]

I wonder what this invisible balance point is? Not the first fight, you'll still be at full power and that's not fair. By the third or fourth fight attrition should have taken its toll and your party will be suitably weakened?

Well, ideally, all of them. The game is balanced around the assumption that you'll face n fights before needing to rest; thus, there's no specific encounter that's a suitable challenge by itself, but all of them are supposed to represent a suitable challenge across the adventuring day.

You could nova during the first fight and be completely drained by the time the second encounter comes by, or you could save your daily resources and slog through the first fights of the day while obliterating the more challenging fights; in the end, what matters is that, provided you face the n combat encounters you're assumed to face over the course of the day, you've expended a significant chunk of your daily resources (how significant is up to the dev's idea of "challenge").

[Fenixp]

Gfted1: Eh, from what I have seen it still scales up from easier to more difficult encounters, forcing player into conserving his resources and only going all in when things get quite tough. Generally speaking tho, I'm pretty sure encounters in Pillars are just generally easier than if you could always use all your abilities.

 

You have hit nail on the head tho - the biggest issue with per rest mechanics seems to be balance. Encounters in RPGs are hard enough to balance as it is, with all the potential tools player has at his disposal. Adding a sort of decreasing power curve to that and guessing where will player restore it is completely insane. Then again, many times in the past have experienced designers shocked me in how accurately were they able to predict what will player do at which point in their game.

[Njall]

Gfted1: Eh, from what I have seen it still scales up from easier to more difficult encounters, forcing player into conserving his resources and only going all in when things get quite tough. Generally speaking tho, I'm pretty sure encounters in Pillars are just generally easier than if you could always use all your abilities.

 

You have hit nail on the head tho - the biggest issue with per rest mechanics seems to be balance. Encounters in RPGs are hard enough to balance as it is, with all the potential tools player has at his disposal. Adding a sort of decreasing power curve to that and guessing where will player restore it is completely insane. Then again, many times in the past have experienced designers shocked me in how accurately were they able to predict what will player do at which point in their game.

Well, yeah, but that's actually the kind of (tricky) balance games like D&D have being promoting for ages ( and PoE is intentionaly based around that same model ).

Resource management is a form of challenge in itself, and one that can be fun to boot, it's just that balancing a class with a finite number of resources against one that can go on all day is hard at best, impossible at worst, especially when you're trying to balance a game where, aside from having a different resource management model, the classes also come in varying degrees of complexity, and, since you can't predict which kind of party the player will be putting together, estimating what would make for a good challenge becomes pretty hard.

Edited October 19, 2015 by Njall

[Gfted1]

Since spells don't scale with level what do you think would be a good compromise for allowing more casts as enemies get tougher? Cooldowns maybe?

[KDubya]

Since spells don't scale with level what do you think would be a good compromise for allowing more casts as enemies get tougher? Cooldowns maybe?

 

I think you'd have to either:

 

1.)  Make all spells and abilities per encounter, completely remove the rest mechanic and health. Then balance the encounters based on max strength every fight. Probably cut spells down to one or two per level instead of four, or have them chosen at level up like an ability. Or go with cool downs.

 

2.) Have all classes need to generate focus like Ciphers do, no Vancian casters at all.

 

3.) Do nothing and let modders mod and players self regulate however they see fit.

 

#1 and #2 require a big revamp of the entire game so that is pretty unfeasible.  #1 would be like Dragon Age Origins, I think #2 would have been the most original and best solution but maybe a new game will try something like that.

[Njall]

Since spells don't scale with level what do you think would be a good compromise for allowing more casts as enemies get tougher? Cooldowns maybe?

 

That's not an easy question, especially because it's based on a false premise: pretty much every spell that doesn't do damage, or heal, or add defense in the form of DR scales quite well with level. It might not be comparable to a higher level spell, but every spell that adds a static bonus to either accuracy or defense, that increases your speed, reduces or increases a duration or debuffs or takes out of the fight an opponent using your own ( scaling ) accuracy is generally every bit as good at high level as it used to be at low level.

 

As Kdubya says, you'd have to redesign the whole thing from scratch if you wanted to come up with something balanced. 

That, or you just accept that the game can only be balanced to an extent and just wing it.

Edited October 19, 2015 by Njall

[blinkicide]

 

Since spells don't scale with level what do you think would be a good compromise for allowing more casts as enemies get tougher? Cooldowns maybe?

 

I think you'd have to either:

 

1.)  Make all spells and abilities per encounter, completely remove the rest mechanic and health. Then balance the encounters based on max strength every fight. Probably cut spells down to one or two per level instead of four, or have them chosen at level up like an ability. Or go with cool downs.

 

2.) Have all classes need to generate focus like Ciphers do, no Vancian casters at all.

 

3.) Do nothing and let modders mod and players self regulate however they see fit.

 

#1 and #2 require a big revamp of the entire game so that is pretty unfeasible.  #1 would be like Dragon Age Origins, I think #2 would have been the most original and best solution but maybe a new game will try something like that.

 

 

or

 

4)  Create penalties to resting through content design:

 

    -- create repercussions to advancing time: e.g. change quest outcomes (e.g hostages start being killed off as demands ignored, missing boy more likely to be found dead than alive, town faces doom in 12 hours, you only have that long to do whatever can be done ), 

 

    -- dungeons, you can't exit the same way you entered to run back to town to rest. 

[Fenixp]

I don't think locking player anywhere would be a good solution. Giving him better reward for doing the dungeon in one go and lessening it every time player leaves could work rather nicely tho.

[Vivec]

Well wouldn't be better if they made magic cause much more fatigue? Even with per-encounter spells mages would need to rest. It would fit with "Vancian casting being demanding on the body" DnD cliche?

[tinysalamander]

Well wouldn't be better if they made magic cause much more fatigue? Even with per-encounter spells mages would need to rest. It would fit with "Vancian casting being demanding on the body" DnD cliche?

 

Do we seriously need more rests?

[Vorad]

Personally I'm fine with the mechanics as they are already but since people complain about "rest spamming"  a possible solution could be to have a cool-down on resting say... max 8 hours per day of in game time. Again for me personally it works just as fine as is at the moment.

 

On the per encounter change for casters, it's not really a big deal and personally I don't mind that much however something must be said. Balance and what a class should be like are two completely different things. If people want to balance all classes so that everyone performs the same then so be it but one certainly cannot claim to compare a sword and board meatbag(I'm looking at the fighter) with a highly intelligent arcane master(i.e. Wizard). Yes the "fighter" stereotype of hero should be straightforward easy to play and able to overpower his opponents with his sheer strength and ferocity but lets just face it in a world were magic exists and some individuals are "gifted" with the ability to "toy" with their soul or the souls of others who do you think would have the edge in the long run, the guy who swings the sword or the guy who can make 1000 swords swing themselves to battle?(Anyone found the white march room of swords in Cragholdt(spelling) siege funny? I did!)

 

For me a balanced "high level Wizard"  should be capable to:

1. Have better understanding of the Arcane therefore low level spells needing preparation at low levels should be easier for him to cast so some kind of per encounter low level spells would make sense.
2. A high level Wizard has more profound knowledge on his art therefore he is able to cast more imposing/destructive high level spells(the new spells are a bit lackluster but ok... I have high hopes on the new expansion)
3. A high level Wizard should be able to enhance the spells he knows already from his early days at the academia therefore some kind of "metamagic feat" available at high levels which would allow the wizard to "empower" his already known spells at a cost would be nice.
4. The more in depth one studies the Arcane the highest the risks involved there should be some diminishing returns to balance the fact that casters, wizard in this case are considered to be "OP" in late-game. Perhaps all this mental focus will have it's toll on some aspect of the individuals life... insanity levels/tests for example after a wizard casts a high level spell he could be "tested" for fatigue or some other condition etc...(something similar to Dragonlance's casting conditions)

All spell-casters commute in some way direct or indirect with the gods, take priest for example. Can we claim now that the battle impact at high level of a guy who talks directly to the gods and can become their avatar and drains his power from the divine be equal to someone who is very skilled at using weapons? Same arguments with druid and so on.

 

So short story if magic is a dominant factor on "fantasy" rpg then the guys who got a better chance at exploiting "magic" will eventually be the dominating power in the endgame. If we want all classes to be equal then either a) remove magic from the game or b) allow magic to be used by every single class. There is a reason why paladin, monk and maybe barbarian are better than fighter at the moment when we get near the endgame.

[tinysalamander]

The more in depth one studies the Arcane the highest the risks involved there should be some diminishing returns to balance the fact that casters, wizard in this case are considered to be "OP" in late-game. Perhaps all this mental focus will have it's toll on some aspect of the individuals life... insanity levels/tests for example after a wizard casts a high level spell he could be "tested" for fatigue or some other condition etc...(something similar to Dragonlance's casting conditions)

 

IMO, you are unlikely to find a good balancing point for this. If the difference between safe and unsafe options is minimal it does not really matter. If it is a high risk – high reward scenario players will likely use those options if they can ignore or heavily mitigate the penalties (say hello to Suppress Affliction) as odds are against you.

 

Your foes' combat life is 1 encounter so it doesn't matter that much if enemy caster is paralyzed/loses all endurance/drops deads. You, however, do not have that luxury as your expected combat life is the whole game, which is quite a number of encounters and you are bound to fail sometime even if the chance is low. If the chance is high and not easily ignorable it promotes save-load behavior.

 

Personally I'm fine with the mechanics as they are already but since people complain about "rest spamming"  a possible solution could be to have a cool-down on resting say... max 8 hours per day of in game time. Again for me personally it works just as fine as is at the moment.

 

Will not work because someone who wants to rest will. Double time speed and wait. You can push your players only so far before they'll start hating you, and I think this is pushing it into that direction.

[Teioh_White]

It's difficult to do in semi-open  world  that IE games have. Something like Wizardly style dungeon crawlers, it's easy to do. You enter whatever the dungeon/level is at full strength, and you have to clear it with minimal or no replenishing resources, making management essential. If it's not going to happen, can just hit 'restart level', and it'll start over right before one enters the dungeon/level.

 

IE style core gameplay mechanics can work in such a system, but they're all a little too 'loose' in the worlds at the moment to have such clear demarcations on what a 'level' would be. PoE for example, the endless dungeons could easily work in such a system, but wandering around Defiance Bay for that horrible sidequest-fest first half of Act 2? Bit of a non starter, considering how amorphous it is.

 

A per encounter system like BW did in Dragon Age 1-2 works better in the semi-open world state of IE games. The only modern RPG I can think of that really does 'levels' was Shadowrun and the Souls series. And Shadowrun has never really tried to flex it's gameplay at all, and the Souls games veer too far off from IE to have many useful parallels.

 

As for an issue with casters lower level spells getting weaker as mobs get tougher, it's a non issue as Caster's,

1. get new spells, as good or better at current level than old ones were at those.

2, still have their old spells, and while not as strong as they were, are still useful, and can be used in larger amounts to get the same effect on a fight as a newer spell...which gives them more staying power than they had at the start,

3. caster's are far from helpless in this game even when not casting, this isn't BG with a gimped THACO and terrible equipment choices and

4. part of the balance of the caster; it's trade off for being better than the others at time has to come from being lesser at other moments. Otherwise the game should just identify that Wizards will make the game considerably less challenging. (I think it was....Nox or something? That did a similar thing, but hard Fighter as the easy class).

 

Or just scrap the system; plenty of systems for having good gameplay, and it's not so much important which one Devs pick, just to execute it well.

[Vivec]

 

Well wouldn't be better if they made magic cause much more fatigue? Even with per-encounter spells mages would need to rest. It would fit with "Vancian casting being demanding on the body" DnD cliche?

 

Do we seriously need more rests?

 

I'm not getting it. Playing on hard i never need to rest more than once during a map/level. Is there realy a problem such as "being force to rest"?

[Elerond]

Since spells don't scale with level what do you think would be a good compromise for allowing more casts as enemies get tougher? Cooldowns maybe?

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61129-reddit-qa-part-2-with-tim-cain/

 

"Diablo169 asks...

Could you please provide a bit more detail on how skill/spell cooldowns are going to factor into the games combat system?

 

Sure, let me give some specifics on how we are planning to incorporate cooldowns into the wizard class. First off, cooldowns are NOT on individual spells. For any particular spell, you cast it, and when you are done, you can cast it again right away. But one limitation is on spells of a particular level. When you cast a certain number of those spells, in any combination, then the whole spell level group goes into a cooldown, and you can't use any of them until that cooldown has passed. That cooldown is long enough that for short battles, you are limited to casting a certain number of spells for each spell level. For long battles, that cooldown might expire and you can start casting those spells again.

 

The other cooldown has to do with your grimoire. A wizard may know a lot of spells, but he can only cast a few basic spells plus the ones that are in the grimoire that he is holding. Grimoires vary in size, holding various numbers of spells of different spell levels, and the player is free to load up his different grimoires with spell combinations of his choice. But once combat begins, switching grimoires causes a cooldown for all of those spells, leaving the caster only able to cast his basic spells until the grimoire cooldown passes. This means the player will have to think carefully about which spells he adds to a grimoire and under what situations he would want to switch one for another."

[tinysalamander]

I'm not getting it. Playing on hard i never need to rest more than once during a map/level. Is there realy a problem such as "being force to rest"?

 

In general, casters want to feel like spellcasters, not poor man's crossbowmen, and you need to recover those slots somehow…

 

It doesn't mean you can't finish the game using Blast with you wizard most of the time aside from boss battles, but it's just not as fun.

[Vorad]

Regarding grimoire cooldowns and spell diversity after playing several playthroughs with wizard as main I have reached to a conclusion that there can actually be a handful of spells which are useful throughout your entire game without the need to swap grimoires and suffer from cooldown in combat.

 

My grimoire for almost the entire lategame looks like this:

 

My build on wizard:

Arcane Veil

Blast

Interrupting Blows

Dangerous Implements

Scion of Flames

Secrets of Rime

Heart of the Storm(profit the most out of the maelstorm scrolls due to both fire, frost, lightning damage)

 

Instead of Heart of the Storm one could pick Spirit of Decay for corrode spells or Hardened Veil for extra protection. I would suggest Hardened Veil as an alternative however. I am not posting this as a Wizard build per se, I am mostly mentioning that as is at the moment one can actually manage to have a set of spells/abilities which can perform quite well in a universal way without the need to suffer through the grimoire swap cooldown mechanism.

 

 

 

[KDubya]

Regarding grimoire cooldowns and spell diversity after playing several playthroughs with wizard as main I have reached to a conclusion that there can actually be a handful of spells which are useful throughout your entire game without the need to swap grimoires and suffer from cooldown in combat.

 

My grimoire for almost the entire lategame looks like this:

grimoire.jpg

 

My build on wizard:

Arcane Veil

Blast

Interrupting Blows

Dangerous Implements

Scion of Flames

Secrets of Rime

Heart of the Storm(profit the most out of the maelstorm scrolls due to both fire, frost, lightning damage)

 

Instead of Heart of the Storm one could pick Spirit of Decay for corrode spells or Hardened Veil for extra protection. I would suggest Hardened Veil as an alternative however. I am not posting this as a Wizard build per se, I am mostly mentioning that as is at the moment one can actually manage to have a set of spells/abilities which can perform quite well in a universal way without the need to suffer through the grimoire swap cooldown mechanism.

 

I've also never even thought of swapping a grimoire in combat. Like you I pick the four spells per level that best fits my gameplay. The only difference is I like Spirit of Decay more than Heart of Storm as I like the corrode spells more than lightning. Other than that I'd say our spell picks are like 90% the same.

[Vorad]

I've also never even thought of swapping a grimoire in combat. Like you I pick the four spells per level that best fits my gameplay. The only difference is I like Spirit of Decay more than Heart of Storm as I like the corrode spells more than lightning. Other than that I'd say our spell picks are like 90% the same.

 

I really like the corrode spells as well but that fortitude save in all of them is a bummer even though the accuracy buff makes it a more viable tactic nowadays... that's why I would like more interaction with the spells to begin with.

 

Right now a wizard learns potent spells every 2 levels but he just does that he learns and casts that spell over and over and there are no talents (apart from the elemental damage ones) that help a wizard interact more dynamically with his spells, change the shape(aoe into cone into line into tiles as desired) or other parameters of a spell why not even the targeted save for instance... I really hope they bring some interesting "metamagic feats" into this game.

[Guest 4ward]

 

i don't switch grimoires either so far. Why would the player switch grimoires anyway? You can have a party with more than one wizard. You can copy the spells from other grimoires into your own, try out the spells and since you can rest anywhere simply adjust your own grimoire to the following battle if you think you need to. In addition, Durance has a lot of diversed spells and Kana with his invocation/mana casting can cast summons all battle long as long as he doesn't drop himself.

 

Disabled units can easily be replaced by summoned ones. I tend to just cast arcane assault and maybe also minolettas missiles if i have the feeling that i'm not doing damage fast enough and with that i get away with so far, the rest i'm doing with unlimited ammo. Perhaps the grimoire witching idea was good as an idea for this game, since perhaps the developpers thought that the system of stats affecting duration of status effects and spells missing, grazing or hitting would lead to enough decision-making during combat so much so that the player would need to have to rely on different spells and switch grimoires but in practice with this game it's not the case.

 

IMO, spells should either hit or miss (saving throw) and have a certain predesigned duration/AoE and that should not be effected by stats (which i believe would be easier to design and balance specific encounters for the devs as well). If through character builds i can negate those effects and take affect on those things, then the usage of spells for counter lose importance. I believe also that the sticky melee system is in itself crowd control and should be dismissed for an eventual PoE2. Things certainly can be improved through enemy design like invisible/untargettable opponents or opponents who are protected and you'd need to break these protections in the first place. But another thing going for tactical decision-making during combat in the old games was the simple hit or miss and really nasty status effects which you had to counter especially considering that your chars would die in battle.