Disengaging a tank is so simple

[Sensuki]

you need to pause constantly to be able to play the game properly.

 

There is a difference between needing to pause to make decisions and needing to pause to be able to read information that is not displayed visually at a glance.

 

How is having to pause all the time to collapse UI elements to read information a good thing? If anything all it is is a result of obtuse system design combined with a failure in the department of visual and UI design.

 

there's no way to accelerate combat in Infinity Engine games

This is also untrue

 

I play the Infinity Engine games at 40 FPS animation speed (aka 33% faster than normal speed).

 

 

See that AI Update / Frame rate slider, move that along and it speeds up the game. 30 FPS is too slow for me and the animations look laggy, I find that 40 FPS is the best combination of pace and smoothness (YMMV). At 40 FPS, per unit round timers are now 4 seconds.

 

Here is an example of combat at that speed

 

 

there IS "dispelling" in PoE; setpieces like the dragon fights, the vithrack bounty, the xaurip hordes with paralyzing spear thrusts and most notably the fish-people from hell from TWM with their paralyzing ranged dart-guns. The "dispel" is having your priest cast Prayer against Imprisonment in order to decrease the duration of these status effects while also providing defense against it at the same time. There is another form of "dispelling" coming from the chanter with a particular invocation that decreases the duration of Frightened/Terrified by half, another popular affliction in other setpieces, like fighting undead raedric or fampyrs inside caed nua, or, again the dragon fights.

 

the main problem is these examples i'm giving are extremely few and easily 80% of the combat doesn't require PoE's different style of dispelling afflictions since none of the afflictions are mortal (nothing like a Disintegration) and they vanish on end of combat.

I know these spells have been in the game for quite a long time, but they do not remove effects. Therefore, they are not dispelling. When I played the game, I did not use a single spell to reduce the durations of any effects on my characters. I did not need to. Most non-CC afflictions are so mild that they can simply be ignored.

 

as for quaffing potions; this DOES exist in PoE mainly the potion of recovery (IIRC) which decreases any affliction's duration by half or some such. basically a universal antidote potion. the main differences here being that the afflictions themselves are less-than-lethal and afflictions aren't cured only shortened in duration.

That's right and 99% of the time, it's worthless to bother. I think I might have used one once in my playthrough, but maybe not even.

Edited November 1, 2015 by Sensuki

[Fenixp]

I generally enjoy faster paced combat and I would never attempt to read a situaion without pausing a game anyway, so ... There you go I suppose. I like when real time with pause system is actually designed in such a way that you need to periodically pause the game to play it, otherwise I feel like it's just a real time system with pause function (yeah, there's a difference, no matter how small). I love that the combat feels so quick and deadly. As for what's better about a game being less readable in real-time - not much at all, then again I never claimed Pillars of Eternity is more easily readable than Infinity Engine games, quite the contrary actually. But I have no issues with pausing to read and analyze a situation, so I honestly don't care.
 

This is also untrue
...
I play the Infinity Engine games at 40 FPS animation speed (aka 33% faster than normal speed).

Which is why I specifically said 'Accelerate combat' as opposed to 'accelerate the whole game' ;-) I don't particularily enjoy playing games faster than intended, for various reasons.

[Sensuki]

As I said before, there is a difference between needing to pause to issue commands to reduce the game-time delay of your unit actions and pausing the game to collapse UI elements to read the information.

 

Pillars combat bores me because it is essentially over as soon as it starts, if your alpha strike is good, you will win and it's just a matter of going through the motions and spamming your per-encounters to keep your advantage. That's not fun to me. That is simply rote banality. IE combat requires you to wait and see what enemies do and respond to enemy actions. You can't just breeze through with your pre-determined set of actions, ignoring what they are doing (unless you light yourself up like a Christmas tree with pre-buffs, of course).

 

I don't particularily enjoy playing games faster than intended, for various reasons.

Such as?

Edited November 1, 2015 by Sensuki

[aweigh0101]

man i just got one-shotted by an ankheg in bg1. THAT's quick and deadly.

[Sensuki]

Indeed, in BG1 you can meet your end quickly if you're not careful.

[Zenbane]

I am interested in discussion, there are no forum rules here saying that posters have to stay on topic.

Typing words without directing them towards the issue at hand (aka, "topic") is not a discussion, it's just someone typing words. Bots are scripted to do the very same thing. So while you're interested in the general concept of discussion (typing words), I tend to be more interested in an intellectual exchange of ideas.

 

You're taking the word read as a literal expression implying "reading words" when I was referring to "reading the play".

This has never been about what you are referring to. The whole reason you and I are having a discussion (well, I'm trying to discuss while you are just typing random words) is because you jumped in to an exchange between Gairnulf and myself. I originally responded to Gairnulf in terms of "reading the play" but he corrected me by saying he specifically meant "easier to read." You jumped in to defend his English and somehow confused yourself in to thinking that the whole "reading the game" debate really took place between you and I lol

 

You have no idea what you're interjecting in to this conversation.

 

In Pillars of Eternity, you have to constantly pause the game if you want to find out some information because the game is a visual cluster****, there's so much crap that pastes into the combat log and it's in an uncomfortable spot to read while the game is unpaused.

I already addressed this; as have other posters addressed the things you keep saying over and over again. But I think you made your point: this is about you winning some discussion based solely on your ability to type "the last word."

 

[wanderon]

Winning the discussion? Wait! Are there prizes? Is there an age limit? 

[Zenbane]

Winning the discussion? Wait! Are there prizes? Is there an age limit? 

I think you get a free Nerf of your choice in the next patch 

[Fenixp]

As I said before, there is a difference between needing to pause to issue commands to reduce the game-time delay of your unit actions and pausing the game to collapse UI elements to read the information.

And as I said before, I honestly don't care :-P The information is available in UI and I have the game set to autopause every time something significant happens. I never argued that Pillars of Eternity is as readable as Infinity Engine games, but since all of my decisionmaking is happening in paused mode anyway in both engines, for me, the difference is tiny.

 

IE combat requires you to wait and see what enemies do and respond to enemy actions. You can't just breeze through with your pre-determined set of actions, ignoring what they are doing (unless you light yourself up like a Christmas tree with pre-buffs, of course).

Well, the former is what Pillars made me do a lot more than Infinity Engine games, whereas in Infinity Engine games I tended to have precisely the latter issue. So... Eh.

 

Such as?

Such as this being completely irrelevant to this discussion ;-) You'll just have to take my word for it, I dislike speeding up general gameplay, even in real time strategy games.

[Gairnulf]

Pillars combat bores me because it is essentially over as soon as it starts, if your alpha strike is good, you will win and it's just a matter of going through the motions and spamming your per-encounters to keep your advantage. That's not fun to me. That is simply rote banality. IE combat requires you to wait and see what enemies do and respond to enemy actions. You can't just breeze through with your pre-determined set of actions, ignoring what they are doing (unless you light yourself up like a Christmas tree with pre-buffs, of course).

Maybe part of the problem is that enemies in PoE don't seem to offer much in terms of tactics, compared to enemies in the IWDs and BGs, of those mostly in BGII? They just try to gang up on the nearest character, last I played the game with a party. I'd be curious to see evidence (posted on youtube for example) of enemies directing fire at different party members, or splitting between ranged and melee. They seem to act smarter in TWM, although I haven't tested combat thoroughly.

 

As a counter example, I remember one of the first fights in BGII, the Duergar dwarves in the starting dungeon. They had three ranged fighters in the room's corners, one caster and I think two melee fighters. It's always been a tough fight for me at the beginning of the game, and more important - whether it's achieved by placement and assigned weapons or by scripting, they seem to be working in concert, their actions give you that illusion. That's what's rarely seen in PoE. I guess those are differences in gameplay that you need to have played a lot of IE games in order to notice. Most people immediately declared how PoE plays like the IE games, but that's so far from the truth it's not worth the writing to disprove.

 

To add to Sensuki's arguments, here is one example of PoE's enemies predictability. If you have the indicators enabled, you can see what an enemy is about to cast while his recovery cooldown is progressing, and if your recovery is coming faster, you can beat him to his casting with some protection against his spell/ability, if you have one. This is just the UI effectively giving out the enemy's next action.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the IE games you couldn't see what an enemy is casting until it appeared in the combat log. You could make a guess based on the casting animation, but the few casting animations were shared between many spells, so it wasn't really all that easy as it is in PoE to see the spell's icon in the enemy's overhead circle.

 

Finally, I really did use a masculine pronoun with the word "friend". I should type more carefully. In my native language nouns have gender and "friend" is masculine, hence the mistake. Anyway, arguing over words on a forum isn't interesting to anyone, and if Zenbane doesn't believe me, there is nothing I can do either way.

Edited November 1, 2015 by Gairnulf

[Sensuki]

I already addressed this; as have other posters addressed the things you keep saying over and over again. But I think you made your point: this is about you winning some discussion based solely on your ability to type "the last word."

Excuse me, you insulted Gairnulf based on what I believe to be a misconception about what he posted, and now because I said some things you don't agree with about a game that you like you're doing the same to me? Are you kidding? 

 

Oh yes, I'm the one trying to win a discussion ... I'm the one that instead of talking about game mechanics, starts criticizing the fact that someone replies to off topic points. types a lot of words, actually debates issues and defends a friend from abuse.

 

Here Gairnulf is on the previous page talking about the game, and then you come along and go "Do you even understand English????" and accuse him of lying. That's some antagonistic posting right there.

 

This has never been about what you are referring to. The whole reason you and I are having a discussion (well, I'm trying to discuss while you are just typing random words) is because you jumped in to an exchange between Gairnulf and myself. I originally responded to Gairnulf in terms of "reading the play" but he corrected me by saying he specifically meant "easier to read." You jumped in to defend his English and somehow confused yourself in to thinking that the whole "reading the game" debate really took place between you and I lol

You were the one that responded to my complaint about Pillars of Eternity combat visual clarity citing the ability to read unit statistics in a unit tooltip box as an example of "being easier to read". Other than being able to see some stats, it doesn't have anything to do with the actual gameplay. You can optionally use that information to influence your decision making, but that's it.

 

I think it's pretty clear that I have a firm grasp on what I'm interjecting into the conversation, but you're trying your hardest to break it down.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in the IE games you couldn't see what an enemy is casting until it appeared in the combat log. You could make a guess based on the casting animation, but the few casting animations were shared between many spells, so it wasn't really all that easy as it is in PoE to see the spell's icon in the enemy's overhead circle.

Yeah, that's right. Pillars is more transparent, and thus easier by default. I won't deny that the Combat HUD is extremely useful for testing purposes though! Found quite a few bugs because of it.

 

Well, the former is what Pillars made me do a lot more than Infinity Engine games, whereas in Infinity Engine games I tended to have precisely the latter issue. So... Eh.

A lot of players simply cannot help themselves and end up abusing rest spamming in the IE games to make combat easier for themselves. I've never done it as I really enjoy strategical resource management. If you do it, you're opting out of tactical gameplay, and most likely making the game less fun.

 

The Infinity Engine games offer you the ability to tactically respond to enemies in combat, or strategically prepare against them through pre-buffing, and you can use any combination of both. The catch is that when you pre-buff, you tend to use more spells than you would have if you just waited to see what enemies did and cast the ones you need in combat and as a result, you run out of spells faster across your adventuring day.

 

Most players that still play today probably are using the Rest Anywhere mod as well, which makes it as simple as a button click, and you don't have to worry if you're not in an area that permits resting. I also use it, but I try and last as long as possible between rests, particularly in Icewind Dale, as it is a linear game.

 

The Lead Designer of this game, Josh Sawyer believes that the majority of IE players used rest-spamming extensively (something I disagree with, I think that less people do it than he thinks). As a result, the game was designed FOR these people. Management of Strategical resources was largely taken away with the abundance of per-encounter abilities, meaning that players always have many active abilities to use every encounter so that no one ever gets the feeling of being low on spells or anything like that. Rest spamming was also slightly policed, with the use of camping supplies ... this approach seems to have been somewhat effective in regards to these people.

 

But for me, and others like me, it has absolutely wrecked the combat feel ... as our gameplay style ... you know actually playing properly and not spamming rest, was not even considered - and while it's completely unnecessary in Pillars of Eternity, you always have an overabundance of resources and this overabundance largely eliminates any tactical consideration of use, it just becomes spam every per-encounter every combat. The game was designed for people who are more into strategical decision making and that's why decision making for combat mostly takes place before encounters begin. Pillars combat is probably more fun the worse you are at the combat, because if you make mistakes then at least you'll have to make tactical decisions.

 

Good for you that you fall into the target audience for the combat, on the other hand I have shattered dreams, and I'm seriously pissed off about it.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[Fenixp]

To clear up my playstyle, Sensuki: First of all, I am not a power gamer. Unless I really, really enjoy a game big time, I won't try to look for the most efficient builds or playstyles - when I merely find the combat good or so-so, I focus on roleplaying a lot more than on tweaking my party to make it more efficient in combat, which was definitely the case in Infinity Engine games. Furthermore, I played all of them on Normal difficulty and played trough all of them about 1.5x (aside from Planescape which I finished 3 times already). I do not believe I have abused rest spamming - then again, it's quite hard to tell how often did designers want you to rest since the game gives you no indication of this, so I only ever rested when I felt like I needed to, that was just about the best I could do as I really didn't enjoy resting after every battle - as you said, it would make resource conversion meaningless. I did not use a mod which would unlock resting. I won't claim that I'm particularly good at Infinity Engine games, but that's partly due to the fact nothing ever motivated me to get good at them.

 

As for Pillars of Eternity, that I have finished twice, and both were roleplaying focused runs on normal. Since I greatly enjoy the game and its combat, I want to make at least a third playtrough once second part of the expansion is out on a higher difficulty level. I'm pretty sure I'm far worse than you at the game's combat system and have no aspirations to get better than you at it, I'm quite simply not that kind of player. With that said, I still stand by the argument that all Pillars of Eternity is doing is to make gaming more diverse and interesting for all of us, sadly not all of us will appreciate the same things about the same game, that's just reality of subjectivity.

 

As for your shattered dreams, well, I do hope you have learned and won't back a KS project without either giving creators a lot of leeway or without being absolutely certain how is the project going to turn out, as I said, the reason why I did not back Pillars of Eternity was that it wasn't based on Dungeons and Dragons and so I knew the ruleset could end up being just about anything.

[Gairnulf]

The only fix I've found to the "overabundance of resources" problem is playing solo on PotD. When I played with a party I reached the end of Act II and passed the whole White March without ever having to learn the particulars of combat. That's how easy it is. True, that was not on PotD, yet "Hard" is supposed to be "the opposite of easy".

 

Also, if the difficulty of combat is coming from the player's lack of memorized spells or per-rest abilities, and not from particular circumstances, more or less unique to the encounter, combat will inevitably seem repetitive and the player will have to use the same set of actions over and over. Compare to combat in the IE games, or to combat in TWM.

 

If I have to win more than 3-4 encounters with the same "tactics" in the span of an hour, then these encounters should not have been there in the first place. There is no new information, just robot-like repetition.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Gairnulf

[Sensuki]

As for your shattered dreams, well, I do hope you have learned and won't back a KS project without either giving creators a lot of leeway or without being absolutely certain how is the project going to turn out, as I said, the reason why I did not back Pillars of Eternity was that it wasn't based on Dungeons and Dragons and so I knew the ruleset could end up being just about anything.

Despite hating the game, I actually learned a lot from the Kickstarter, Development Updates and participating in the beta and I am using this experience in a positive fashion on another project (will have more info on that in a few months). I regret upping my pledge to the $250 tier for the physical rewards because TBH they're not that good, and I didn't like the game. The game isn't good enough or popular enough for my sealed CE and extras to be worth much money either.

 

I think my expectations were fair enough actually, based on what the developers said. The area of the game that ended up best delivering was the Environment Art. Constantly throughout the development cycle they used the buzzword tactical combat ... except the combat isn't very tactical. It's just a buzzword they use. Josh Sawyer also explicitly mentioned reactive tactical combat a fair few times, and the game is the polar opposite. When I raised concerns about the combat in the beta, I was told that it would be different in the full game with the full range of levels and creatures. It wasn't ... it was worse tenfold.

 

Indeed, after my experience with this game, I have not backed a single crowd-funding project since. I have lukewarm opinions about both Wasteland 2 and Divinity Original Sin. No longer do I believe that a well-known developer has the heart to produce a good game. They came to crowd-funding for their own benefits - to be able to make more money and not have to deal with meddling publisher supervising producers.

 

The real heart lies with the smaller companies - Logic Artists, Whalenought Studios, Iron Tower, Styg (who is making Underrail). Medium sized companies like Obsidian, inXile, Larian (and now Hairbrained) care more about the success of their company than they do about the quality of their products and I believe that their games will ultimately be too lowest common denominator for my enjoyment.

 

Actually, what's worse than the crap combat (IMO) is how terrible the story and plot of the game is. That to me was the bigger disappointment. I would actually finish the game if the story/plot was good, but my goodness it's bad for an Obsidian game. It's also telling that Chris Avellone, Obsidian's ex-best writer is very, very hesitant to even mention the game, let alone talk about it.

 

And yeah I'm a "serial power gamer" .

 

Pillars is pretty good for 'role playing', as you can make lots of different character concepts and stuff. Even if it is largely superficial. As I said before, for me combat feel is far more important to me than a wide array of choices at character creation and level up.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[TheisEjsing]

 

Josh Sawyer also explicitly mentioned reactive tactical combat a fair few times, and the game is the polar opposite. When I raised concerns about the combat in the beta, I was told that it would be different in the full game with the full range of levels and creatures. It wasn't ... it was worse tenfold.

Did you finish the full game? 

[drty]

Honestly, I don't understand why someone still have the stomach to argue with a guy who is overtly admitting that he hates everything about the game. Seems to me, he thinks of it as kind of the righteous crusade against unbelievers, that should be punished for the act of illegitimate expropriation of his sacred money.

 

Besides, the flow of this discussion is getting so far away from the OP (no more talking about disengagement attacks or engagement system in general), that it's time to ask moderators to close it, I guess.

[Sensuki]

Did you finish the full game?

Nah I didn't. Stopped in Act 3. Haven't touched the game since April.

 

What I read about the last part of the game in this thread pretty much assures me that I definitely made the right decision: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-writing-in-this-game-is-average.98103/

Edited November 2, 2015 by Sensuki

[Zenbane]

Honestly, I don't understand why someone still have the stomach to argue with a guy who is overtly admitting that he hates everything about the game. Seems to me, he thinks of it as kind of the righteous crusade against unbelievers, that should be punished for the act of illegitimate expropriation of his sacred money.

 

Besides, the flow of this discussion is getting so far away from the OP (no more talking about disengagement attacks or engagement system in general), that it's time to ask moderators to close it, I guess.

 

Agreed. I quickly realized Sensuki is more interested in pharming post counts than doing anything remotely close to RPG gaming. He has nearly 10,000 posts but hasn't beaten the game yet lol

 

He thinks he made the right choice to stop playing the game, but repeatedly fails to the see the irony in his incessant posts about the game he supposedly stopped playing. A smarter gamer would have... you know... moved on

Edited November 2, 2015 by Zenbane

[Fenixp]

Actually, what's worse than the crap combat (IMO) is how terrible the story and plot of the game is.

But uh...

But I bloody loved the story and the plot :-/ Seriously tho, been trough that discussion already, again a topic on which opinions are torn and again a topic which has been discussed to hell and back. It definitely rates among my favorite videogame stories (and no, I really am not a complete illiterate who'll take anything for good :-P I'm not as lame at reading as I am at playing videogamez!) I can definitely see why would a lot of people dislike it tho, and I see some issues with the story myself. Let's not get into actual arguments tho.

 

Honestly, I don't understand why someone still have the stomach to argue with a guy who is overtly admitting that he hates everything about the game. Seems to me, he thinks of it as kind of the righteous crusade against unbelievers, that should be punished for the act of illegitimate expropriation of his sacred money.

We're on discussion boards. They exist solely for people to discuss their standpoints. I absolutely love (almost) everything about Pillars of Eternity and will freely admit I'm a bit of a fanboy, does that render my arguments meaningless? The worst it does is make me biased, but it's videogames we're talking about here, it would be difficult to find a person without opinion on anything while playing them ;-) And act of discussion, especially with a person as courteous, informed and willing to give detailed explanations as Sensuki (oh sure, he has slipped in places, but so have I - we're all passionate about our hobby, lack of emotion would be a bit strange), is a joy in and of itself - it's enriching, educational and helps me understand aspects of game design I usually don't care about. Remember, without opposition, discussion would be no discussion at all, and I'll always respect a person who can disagree with me in a civilized manner a lot more than a person who agrees with me without saying why.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Fenixp

[Zenbane]

We're on discussion boards.

That's a poor excuse to keep perpetuating what clearly becomes completely nonconstructive and repetitive diatribes. Just look at how many times you and Sensuki say something like, "And as I said before." Yes it's a discussion board, but the goal should at least resemble something meaningful.

 

The occasional banter and pointless exchange is natural, expected, and often entertaining. But in this case, it's just painful and unnecessary.

 

Your posts are very well thought out and constructive, but your judgement could use some empowering. Sensuki already stated that he doesn't care to stay on topic during a discussion, he doesn't like the combat in PoE, and he doesn't like the plot. I don't think he should be banned since he isn't a blatant troll, but he should definitely just be ignored. The online forum equivalent of being sat in the corner with a dunce cap. The only person that really keeps encouraging him at this point is you lol

 

As drty stated, this thread should be closed.

[Gfted1]

How about everyone discuss the posts and not the posters, please. If youre not interested in the discussion then you dont have to participate.

[Zenbane]

*edit*

 

wrong thread

Edited November 2, 2015 by Zenbane

[Sensuki]

A smarter gamer would have... you know... moved on

I haven't posted here in months. Someone on the RPGCodex linked me to a thread, and then I found this discussion. I have actually moved onto new business, as I stated earlier in the thread and I'll have more information on that later in the year. For those that follow my youtube channel, keep an eye on it.

 

The majority of my post count is from the Pillars of Eternity beta forums. I reported 600+ bugs during the beta. You're welcome.

 

I don't think he should be banned since he isn't a blatant troll, but he should definitely just be ignored.

Oh yes, those you disagree with must be silenced!

Edited November 3, 2015 by Sensuki

[Guest 4ward]

 

i for one am glad that you're decided to join the forums again, Sensuki. In the coming months it should be decided if there's a PoE2 and if Obsidian will keep this system. For me, it's pretty clear that now that i've tried out the game myself, a sequel with this kind of combat doesn't interest me at all. What will always remain a mystery to me is that entire melee needed to be an automatic jedi-force like pulling of units. Josh Sawyer showed in that KS update an example to illustrate what he meant and Obsidian introduced new abilities like knockdown. If the player has that abilities to disable/slow down certain enemies, then isn't that already what Josh&co wanted to achieve? Why then on top of that have units be magnetically pulled together?

 

Perhaps i'm alone in thinking so, but the automatic melee IMO leads to having more enemies than for example in BG2, because enemies to appear to behave smart and flank and that kind of stuff need to appear in greater numbers to pull that off. So, asking for fewer enemies as long as that system is present isn't possible IMO. And if the difficulty of battle lies in the numbers of enemies, then i believe that those enemies also cannot be really fearful like in BG2 as fighting several vampires with abilities like direcharm, faster moving and level-drain in melee is not possible without instantenously moving away. Instantenously spreading out is also very much important for AI and enemy AI. The fight vs the Duergar from BG2 which Gairnulf mentioned is a good example.

 

The immunities that Obsidian now included make enemies tougher to beat in the sense that it takes longer to get them down, but just like with casting 'prayer vs.' from Durance or drinking a potion for countering it's more of a decision before you face the enemy with your entire party on the battlefield. For example, i can initiate combat with one unit and leave the others back. Then once combat starts and i know what type of enemy i'm facing and how many i then can cast 'prayer vs.' before the enemies have reached my party and a guy like Kana can already be in his 2nd invocation and get the possibility of casting summons. Also, i believe that the melee system is crowd control in itself and thus the status effects in this game don't last that long as in BG2 and that might be the reason why Obsidian decided to have stats/rolls influence the effects' duration. I believe though that stats/rolls should only decide whether a spell or ability is succesfull but not have an influence on the duration of the effect.

[Sensuki]

Just doing a drive-by. I have no confidence that PE:2 will even remotely cater to my preferences. Feel free to PM me if you want to chat though, I'll get an email.