A query on combat gameplay

[Zenbane]

If you lurk on Something Awful, Sensuki brags there as well about spamming Save/Reload as a strategy to get through challenges. If you make fun of the irony though, he'll pretend he uses Save/Reload to "learn and get better" - but really he's abusing it to advance. But yeah... PoE forces players to "play bad" because you can carry a max of 4 camping supplies lol

Edited November 22, 2015 by Zenbane

[Sensuki]

I do reload if a character goes down because to me that is poor performance, and in the Infinity Engine games, characters died when they go down.

 

I prefer those mechanics to the pissant mechanics that Pillars of Eternity has in place of it that gives people a massive amount of room for error, and thus I still play by them.

 

Save scumming implies that you reload to get an optimal dice roll on a check/luck your way through something, reloading to simply do something better/different is not save scumming. Do you ever see me doing that in any of my videos ? I doubt it.

 

There are a few instances in BG1 where I openly admit I save scum - and those are all for pickpocketing. There isn't really anything worth pickpocketing in BG2.

Edited November 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Fenixp]

I do reload if a character goes down because to me that is poor performance, and in the Infinity Engine games, characters died when they go down.

I agree, trekking to a temple in order to revive a character who died due to poor dice roll is an extremely involving activity and I wish more games implemented it. Thankfully you get resurrect spell in BG2 which makes this slightly less annoying (and makes death lose even the tiny meaning it had to begin with, aside from when your character gets randomly gibbed.)

 

At least they made health into a meaningful resource in Pillars of Eternity. And when character dies, that character actually dies - there's nothing you can do about it. But the 'nothing you can do about it' part is not based on a dice roll but on poor resource management performance, which is as it should be as far as I'm concerned.

Edited November 24, 2015 by Fenixp

[Sensuki]

Well I think the IE games gave you a choice in how you handled death - you could reload, you could role-play it or you could use the available resurrection resources (or a mix of both) - there's nothing wrong with that/you don't have to make players conform to the "one true way of playing".

[Fenixp]

Well usage of available resurrection resources is roleplaying it - my party is swimming in money at all times and there's never a reason to not resurrect a party member.

 

And Pillars of Eternity also gives you a choice, as much as IE games if not more. You can reload every time your character is knocked unconscious, you can reload every time your character actually dies and then there's a settings option which further allows you to adjust how is death handled.

 

At any rate, reloading to improve your performance is most certainly not save scumming. It's... Well, it's playing the game.

[Sensuki]

My bad, I meant role-playing "true death", some people get a new character when one dies.

[Fenixp]

Oh you mean the terrible mechanic where death of PC means an automatic game over which makes absolutely no sense given the fact there's resurrection in the world :-P It makes a lot of sense implementation-wise as the player would be forced to do nothing but resurrect PC when he/she dies and that introduces a lot of potential exploits (Biff the Understudy to take PC's place? Ha!) Still, don't get me started on PC 'dying' when he gets petrified with two mages with memorized 'remove petrification' right behind her, grrrr.

[Sensuki]

No no, people who simply recruit a new NPC when one dies. There are people that do that. I do it in BG1 sometimes haha, especially with Khalid

Edited November 24, 2015 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

No no, people who simply recruit a new NPC when one dies. There are people that do that. I do it in BG1 sometimes haha, especially with Khalid

Typically right after Khalid tried to show off his skills by fighting an ogre... naked, and unarmed am I right?

[0rangekun]

No no, people who simply recruit a new NPC when one dies. There are people that do that. I do it in BG1 sometimes haha, especially with Khalid

 

 

 

No no, people who simply recruit a new NPC when one dies. There are people that do that. I do it in BG1 sometimes haha, especially with Khalid

Typically right after Khalid tried to show off his skills by fighting an ogre... naked, and unarmed am I right?

 

 

Sorry, Khalid but I can only bring five people with me, and Coran's just way, way better than you are.

 

It definitely has nothing to do with stealing the man's wife, though. Definitely not.

[Tigranes]

Both IE games and POE had two tiers. First there is recoverable death (normal death in IE, knockdown in POE) which can be rolled back (resurrection spell/trek to town vs. simple end of combat), and then there is irrecoverable death ('chunking'/etc in IE, death in POE). In both cases, you could choose to roleplay death in a number of ways - treat recoverable death as 'true death', reload for both kinds of death, etc. 

 

The issue with IE games was that it was such an unnecessarily huge pain in the arse to pick up the dead dude's equipment, go back to a temple, then re-equip the bastard. It was a massive timesink. Permadeath is also quite hard to achieve in IE if you are competent. I ended up Ctrl+R'ing dead characters to save the pointless time-waste (and then throw out some loot to 'pay' for it), and then house-ruling that 3 normal deaths = permadeath. 

 

The issue with POE is that the lack of a wounds/injury system and plentiful camping supplies make knockdowns too inconsequential, if you are competent. (If you aren't great at combat, then knockdowns DO start to threaten permadeath, but then the problem is people who want a casual hassle-free combat now get an experience of attrition they don't want, while people who want a challenge don't get it.) What I had imagined when I first heard about stamina/health is that a knocked down character could still be damaged for health by enemies, which would lead to fun scenarios trying to save that guy from being permakilled (a la D&D and the death saving throws). 

[MunoValente]

The issue with POE is that the lack of a wounds/injury system and plentiful camping supplies make knockdowns too inconsequential, if you are competent. 

 

I think something like the injury system from DA:O would be good for making knockouts mean a little more.  Pillars already has injury statuses related to the scripted events, seems like they could attach them to knockouts as well.  Would make things like Wound Binding or Field Triage better as well, you could use those to eliminate injuries as well as health damage.

[AndreaColombo]

They are attaching wounds to knockouts as an option in patch 3.0

[Fenixp]

The issue with POE is that the lack of a wounds/injury system and plentiful camping supplies make knockdowns too inconsequential, if you are competent.

Generally speaking you don't want a system which makes the game harder for players who play badly unless you're constructing a permadeath experience. You touch upon that point in the very next sentence, albeit within a different context. I've never seen an injury system which wouldn't be completely inconsequential, utterly annoying or both at once. Edited November 24, 2015 by Fenixp

[Zenbane]

Save scumming implies that you reload to get an optimal dice roll

No. "Save scumming is where something happens in a game that you don’t like as a result of your actions, and so you load an earlier save for a chance to undo it. It’s cheating, in other words"

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/03/01/confessions-of-a-save-scummer/

 

Which is something you definitely do:

 

There was some fight in Knights of the Chalice that I reloaded like 100 times to beat.

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-review-darth-roxor-on-disappointment-thy-name-is-pillars-of-eternity.98676/page-100#post-3932497

 

Also, you not only Save Scum in games, but you also Save Scum on forums:

 

You compare PoE, a game you admittedly haven't even played entirely to your own imaginary version of Baldurs Gate, where you can't rest spam and every encounter is a unique little snowflake requiring such wonderful and complex combat tactics such as "drinking potions and running your party around the enemy to manipulate their targeting AI". Basically you're wrong on most of your PoE complaints and either lying or simply misremembering how the IE games actually played.

 

he just played the IE games in a very specific and idiosyncratic way. Most of the stuff he's talking about, like manually dodging your tanks around, always seemed like a really exploitative way to play to me

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3706905&pagenumber=435&perpage=40#post444036827

 

If anyone pays close enough attention, it becomes clear as to why you complain about certain things. eg, you hate disengagement in PoE because it means you can't exploit combat AI the way you did in BG.

 

You tried and failed on Something Awful (over 1,00 posts there), you tried and failed on RPGCodex (over 8,000 posts there), so you reload your redundant postings here (over 9,000 posts on Obsidian). Goodness! SA gave you the "Autistic Aspergers" logo, and RPGCodex gave you the Cucker logo; you really should take a hint already. Some one-time good intention advice: stick to posting about games that you actually enjoy, because your attempts to ridicule games you dislike falls flat due to your inherent nature to inadvertently reveal your personal gaming tactics which end up being a hundred times worse than the thing you're trying to ridicule. Forum jumping won't help because you know... the Internet.

 

You're a good QA tester, Sensuki, but a terrible analyst.

 

White March 2, a PoE turn-based spin-off, and a PoE sequel will rock the socks for RPG lovers everywhere. Love it or leave it lol 

Edited November 25, 2015 by Zenbane

[Sensuki]

If anyone pays close enough attention, it becomes clear as to why you complain about certain things. eg, you hate disengagement in PoE because it means you can't exploit combat AI the way you did in BG.

 

Swing and a miss there, mate.

 

You can control AI targeting in Pillars of Edernity exactly the same as you can in the IE games through movement and positioning. Engagement only punishes the instances where your characters are engaged. You put more emphasis on controlling the targeting before characters enter melee, and since many enemies prioritize targets by their DR, you can manipulate it through changing armors.

 

You tried and failed on Something Awful (over 1,00 posts there), you tried and failed on RPGCodex (over 8,000 posts there), so you reload your redundant postings here (over 9,000 posts on Obsidian). Goodness! SA gave you the "Autistic Aspergers" logo, and RPGCodex gave you the Cucker logo; you really should take a hint already. Some one-time good intention advice: stick to posting about games that you actually enjoy, because your attempts to ridicule games you dislike falls flat due to your inherent nature to inadvertently reveal your personal gaming tactics which end up being a hundred times worse than the thing you're trying to ridicule. Forum jumping won't help because you know... the Internet.

Tried and failed to do what exactly?

 

I've been a poster on this forum since the day the Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter launched. On Something Awful, anyone can pay money to give someone an avatar and a tag. Previously a user named Furism bought me a photo of the Flagellation of Christ coupled with some rough latin words "hater of fun" or something like that. I got my current avatar and tag because of my criticism of Pillars of Eternity after the game launched, someone paid money to give it to me. I could pay money to remove it if I wanted to, but I don't care - it's funny to think that someone was triggered so hard that they spent $10 usd to do that to me (twice) and there are multiple people who posted that they thought it was unjust (it was nerd rage, nothing more).

 

I do not forum jump, I have posted on all three forums since 2012.

 

My Codex cuck tag is for (quote, paraphrase - DarkUnderlord) making a post stating I had permission from "The Management" to do something I didn't have permission to do. It doesn't have anything to do with my opinions on Pillars of Eternity. Infinitron thinks it's poetical though.

 

You will also find that most people who are good at games think about games from a "how something works" perspective. If you know what causes enemy AI to do certain things, why should you not take advantage of it? In Josh Sawyer's most recent podcast interview he talked about the AI for Hitman: Blood Money and said that because the AI is very consistent, he can do all sorts of fun things in the game that give it a lot of replayability. By your definition, he would be "exploiting enemy AI" as well. Yet he thinks that it's awesome and fun and helps make Blood Money one of his favourite games ...

 

In DotA2, enemy AI is deterministic and behaves a certain way, and you can do various things to manipulate what the computer AI does, whether it's pulling creeps, not auto-attacking, auto-attacking and pulling waves a certain way - it's part of the gameplay. Just as manipulating enemy targeting in any game is part of the gameplay. You could also say it's a part of player skill. 

 

In your post here from this thread, you talk about enemy AI: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82874-disengaging-a-tank-is-so-simple/?view=findpost&p=1744944

 

From my experience in RPG games, I simply refer to his as Aggro. Holding Aggro traditionally comes from doing enough damage to hold the mobs attention. Therefore, a good way to pull aggro away from your Tank is to either out-damage the Tank too quickly, or cast a powerful Heal spell (which is treated as out-damaging the Tank).

 

AI Targeting / Aggro is not damage-based in the Infinity Engine games or Pillars of Edernity, it is handled differently. What you are doing in your statement here where you 'hold aggro' is manipulating enemy AI targeting because you know how it works. It is exactly the same as what I do, so don't you think you're being a bit hypocritical here?

 

Your attempts to ridicule games you dislike falls flat due to your inherent nature to inadvertently reveal your personal gaming tactics which end up being a hundred times worse than the thing you're trying to ridicule.

I doubt that. One thing I have noticed is that my posting strikes a nerve with quite a few people, such as yourself, and if anything it's reassurance that I'm doing something right . Despite the fact that my views anger some people, there are quite a number of people that agree with what I say. You only started targeting my posts because you got pissed off that I called you out for being an **** to Gairnulf, and ever since you've been going on an anti-sensuki rampage. I must admit it's fun to inspire such reactions from people

Edited November 25, 2015 by Sensuki

[Fenixp]

What on earth is wrong with you guys? If you need to be in a sheltered environment where everybody agrees with you, follow these steps:

 

1. Click your profile in the upper left corner

2. Click Edit my profile

3. Click "Ignore preferences"

4. On the bottom of the page, type "[insert name of member here]" and check "Posts", "Signature", "Messages"

5. Click "Save changes"

 

There, you no longer see anything Sensuki posts and you don't have to resort to personally attacking a user who doesn't break the forum rules in any way, shape or form. How hard was that?

 

Cant EDIT: minor edit of the name. Otherwise, I believe Fenixp give sage advice here.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Fenixp

[Cantousent]

I gulaged a bunch of posts. Normally, I would take the time to clear out all the personal stuff from the posts, but I don't have time and I don't think there were any probing analyses that aren't covered in other posts otherwise. Please give over vendettas. Fenixp gives good advice above.

[Zenbane]

I think Sensuki and myself had a fair dispute. It never got ugly and we ended fairly. I see no reason to have purged any of it. If Fenixp doesnt like reading it then he should take his own advice.

[Guest 4ward]

 

i prefer the BG2 way of health and resting. It's easier to understand for me. I have low health, no health potions and no healing spells so i backtrack to a resting place and rest. In PoE i have the relation health/endurance/fatigueness which isn't clear when it's best to rest. Resting in BG2 feels to me also more how i think resting should feel, i.e. backtracking to a safer place and not being able to rest on the same spot where i just battled creatures. And if i cannot rest because of lack of supplies in PoE then i have to backtrack all the way back to an inn mainly just to buy supplies becasue my party couldn't carry more than 2. This is where resting feels artificial and becomes annoying for me. In BG2 i simply imagine that the chars in my party carry enough supplies in their imaginery backpacks and that it's a matter of finding a safe place. As far as injuries go, i'm not a fan. It's when do injuries go away what for me causes the issue. I think they needlessly complicate things, BG2 system is clear, simple.