Proposed new health system, i.e. the one time I'll complain

[Abel]

Hum? What about healing mechanics? Does that mean that there is no health anymore? You got endurance, and 3 knock out = death? With silly regenerating again? I'm not sure i grasped everything yet, but at first sight it's worse than in Pillars 1, where my main concern was about the lack of healing spells to manage health as a strategic resource over a long dungeon crawl without having to spam rest because your wizard took one hard hit (along with the whole concept of 100% endurance regeneration). I'm more and more worried...

 

Anyway thank you. But i probably won't watch these videos. They are 1H long and since i'm french, i would have to struggle like hell to understand every single sentence, which would end up consuming my brain along with 4 or 5 hours minimum for each video.

[anameforobsidian]

I absolutely like support the health system the way it was.  But I see some people denying that the complaints even exist.  I've also heard a lot of these health system complaints.  A lot.  The six most common complaints have been: 

1. health
2. camping supplies
3. too much to keep track of / too confusing
4. wizards aren't better than everyone else 
5. loot being too samey
6. No romances

I disagree with each and every one of these, but it's noticeable that this is what they've worked on changing for Pillars 2.

1. Injuries instead of health.
2. No more cast per day, instead do a hidden cast per day by using replenishing resources like Grimoires.
3. Smaller parties.
4. Unified status effect system with counters (this way they can mollify the BG2 style spell-counter spell crowd, and separate them from the quadratic wizard crowd)
5. Limited thematic enchantments, soul-bounds
6. Ew.

 

Of the changes they made, health is likely the worst.  Unified statuses will probably be an improvement.   I can see how hidden dailies and enchantments could work out.  The five man party may be ok, and romances are skippable.  

 

What makes the decision for health so galling is that JE Sawyer is going against his own instincts as a designer.  He said something like "I thought it was fine but other people complained."  Health & Resting was one of the few areas that Pillars had a step forward from the Infinity Engine games.  The gameplay pushed you harder, didn't let you tank grind through bosses, and led to some great fights where your characters were too beat up to be healed any more.  In BG, the most sensible path was to play supernova all the time, and then clicked the rest button until the monsters let you sleep (gaining some small xp and loot in the process).  If they change the health system to just injuries, they'll loose a lot of those edge cases.

 

I also suspect players will complain more, because they'll keep playing through injuries and then feel like there wasn't enough warning when a character dies.

[Abel]

I did not follow everything about these changes. I was only aware of points 3 and 6. I may have to make my brain bleed and watch these videos after all. I can't make a judgement without having enough material to fully understand what Josh is thinking. But still, i'm a bit worried by several things i learned since yesterday.

[Hertzila]

Check out the Pillars of Eternity Reddit and search for "Q&A". You should find transcripts of the various Q&A streams.

 

You miss out on the visual content of the streams, but if listening to English is not for you, maybe the text format is better.

[Varana]

Reading is also way faster.

Really, I hate information videos when they just could write that down somewhere, i.e. there's no information in the visuals.

[/OT]

[Fluffle]

OP should have added a poll, then we could have all voted, seen how many prefer which system, then spent twelve pages debating the interpretation of the poll results, whether forums are representative of the players of a game overall, whether the options gave fair options or split groups up, poll creator's obvious biases influencing the poll options, etc.

 

First let me say that I am also in HUGE support of the health/endurance system of PoE 1 and I wouldn't want it replaced in PoE 2 with something else.

 

Secondly I would also really appreciate if someone would set up a poll where we can vote on the health/endurance system of PoE1.

[Abel]

Check out the Pillars of Eternity Reddit and search for "Q&A". You should find transcripts of the various Q&A streams.

 

You miss out on the visual content of the streams, but if listening to English is not for you, maybe the text format is better.

 

Thanks for this, i will have a look . I can somewhat watch and understand videos, but  several times 1H (with US accent) tend to give me headaches because i must really concentrate and struggle to understand what is said. I learned english by myself by reading on the net with a dictionnary and have only 1 occasion every several years to put it in pratice by actually speaking and listening to an actual english speaker ^^. So, i'm not used to it.

[rjshae]

I always had the feeling that healing spells are kind of weak in this game and this is OK.

 

The priest class healing spells seem to scale fine up until level six spells. Why isn't there an equivalent of the D&D heal spell? The only healing spell at that level is minor intercession. For high level parties facing a tough encounter, that lack of a heal spell is really felt. My priest ends up spending several 'rounds' spamming enough heal spells to get the melee fighters back up to snuff. There's a big gap between restore critical endurance and resurrection.

[IamNOOB]

What you say is true BUT it is not a BAD thing , it makes the game interesting. Do not count on healing but BE SMART AND AVOID being close to death which requires healing. High defences and team work along with crowd control is the way here. So that is why I like the battles in PoE. Of course you can rely on kiting, too

[Silent Winter]

 

OP should have added a poll, then we could have all voted, seen how many prefer which system, then spent twelve pages debating the interpretation of the poll results, whether forums are representative of the players of a game overall, whether the options gave fair options or split groups up, poll creator's obvious biases influencing the poll options, etc.

 

First let me say that I am also in HUGE support of the health/endurance system of PoE 1 and I wouldn't want it replaced in PoE 2 with something else.

 

Secondly I would also really appreciate if someone would set up a poll where we can vote on the health/endurance system of PoE1.

 

Done:

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92184-new-health-system-poll-version/

[Wormerine]

Agreed. I think the health/endurance system was excellent. Injuries are annoying.

I like injuries the way they were implimented into PoE1 - penelty for being kocked out. This way being knocked out had consequences but still didn't make a big deal out of it. I thought that health/indurence system was the best fix to the problem Infinity Style games had for a while. In IE games being knocked out usually required a quickload (or resurect which was just annoying.) On they other hand games like KOTOR has no consequnces of being kocked out. PoE found a sweet middle ground for me. I would suggest better explaning the mechanics in the intro of PoE2 rather than changing the system too much (not a fan of injury system of Tyranny.)

[1varangian]

I would welcome an injury based system.

 

Having two separate values for endurance and health and injuries on top feels unnecessarily complicated. Injuries and health both work for the same goal which is providing an incentive to rest. So one of them should be axed, and injuries are more immersive and descriptive than a second numerical value.

 

Injuries should also be possible without getting knocked out. That would make combat feel more random and real. Always getting an injury from being knocked out gets repetitive and predictable and it just turns injuries into something of a chore.

Edited April 7, 2017 by 1varangian

[Ninjamestari]

I'm not really sure that incentivizing resting is that useful a goal, considering how pointless a mechanic it is in its current non-limited form.

[Silent Winter]

Having two separate values for endurance and health and injuries on top feels unnecessarily complicated. Injuries and health both work for the same goal which is providing an incentive to rest.

I'm not sure health was there to provide an incentive to rest.  I think of it more in terms of making resting after every fight unnecessary.  Health and Endurance meant you had to watch yourself in most fights or you'd go down, but you didn't need to rest that often.  Injuries will provide a malus, meaning I'll probably rest more often to get rid of them (like after getting injured in a scripted interaction now).