please change something about confusion

[Madscientist]

I play PoE and there is one thing that sometimes confuses me (the player) more than my char.

 

When I confuse/charm/dominate an enemy, his circle becomes green, he profits from party buffs and you have to force your char to attack the enemy.

When one of my chars is confused, his circle changes too and when I have another char selected and I click on the confused char the default choice is to attack the confused char.

 

suggestion:

When they are not under the influence of effects that change their behaviour, enemies are red and party members are green (as now).

When they are under the influence of such an effect, both enemies and party members always change their colour. If confused enemies and party members change to the same colour or to different ones needs to be dicussed. The default interaction with confused enemies stays "attack" and while you cannot control confused chars, you do not attack them by just clicking on them. Non confused party members should not attack confused party members as default bahaviour of the AI.

 

result:

- You do not accidentally attack your party members any more.

- You can easily attack enemies. You have to kill them anyway to end combat.

- It is easier to see who is enemy and who is friend. When you fight a group of humanoids in full equipment, all chars can look very similar. Is the man in the plate armor a party member or a confused enemy?

 

Of course, you are still able to attack a confused char if you want (e.g. paladin with aegis of loyalty) and you can chose not to attack a confused enemy.

[MortyTheGobbo]

There have been vague mentions of confusion working entirely differently now, in connection with the Berserker subclass of Barbarian. Its side-effect of hitting allies with Carnage was referred to as "confused".

 

But that's not something to base anything off on. I'd like confusion to be less of a binary "screw you" effect, but if it stays as is, I can definitely get behind clearing it up. Confusing enemies in PoE 1 got... well, confusing.

[Enoch]

Yes, Josh said somewhere that the "Confused" status effect now means -5 INT and all AoE effects are just AoE, with no discrimination between friend and foe.  Which is to say that it no longer changes the combatant's classification as an ally/enemy.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Enoch

[Tigranes]

Yes, Josh said somewhere that the "Confused" status effect now means -5 INT and all AoE effects are just AoE, with no discrimination between friend and foe.  Which is to say that it no longer changes the combatant's classification as an ally/enemy.

 

Ugh. Really? Rubbish. So you go from a qualitatively distinct state which introduces new gameplay elements, to a trivial annoyance that half the time won't even be noticed by half the players (so it doesn't really matter if your Rogue built for single target damage dealing is 'Confused'). 

 

Terrible choice.

[Madscientist]

I am almost sure that PoE2 will have at least one status effect were you cannot control a party member and he shows one of the following behaviours:

- confusion: Char acts randomly, like attacking friend or foe, walking around or doing nothing at all. (like in PoE)

- berserk: The char attacks a random creature with his weapon, target can be friend, foe or neutral (there were some "cursed" weapons in BG1+2)

- charm or dominate: The char attacks your party or supports the enemy with all the abilities he has (PoE and IE games)

- fear or panic: The char will run away from the battle (BG1+2)

 

I have no evidence, but almost every RPG had such effects.

 

Enoch, do you have a link to Josh´s post?

I know that a barbarien subclass will have a stronger frenzy that also hits party members, but the things you say are new to me.

[Enoch]

 

Yes, Josh said somewhere that the "Confused" status effect now means -5 INT and all AoE effects are just AoE, with no discrimination between friend and foe.  Which is to say that it no longer changes the combatant's classification as an ally/enemy.

 

Ugh. Really? Rubbish. So you go from a qualitatively distinct state which introduces new gameplay elements, to a trivial annoyance that half the time won't even be noticed by half the players (so it doesn't really matter if your Rogue built for single target damage dealing is 'Confused'). 

 

Terrible choice.

 

Keep in mind that afflictions are tiered in Deadfire.  1 Hobbled-type affliction gets you Hobbled, 2 get you Stuck, 3 get you Held, etc. (Note: I'm making up the specifics here.)  Confused is likely a first-tier affliction.  There may still be higher-tier ones that approximate "Confusion" effects in Pillars 1 and D&D rules.  Or maybe not-- it led to a lot of challenges with respect to friend-foe AoE effects in Pillars 1 (e.g., confused enemies benefiting from party buffs) and was generally a pain in the rear for the player to deal with (such as in having to specifically order enemies re-targeted after they were hit with a Confusion effect), so there are some reasons to leave it out.

 

Enoch, do you have a link to Josh´s post?

At the moment, no.  It was in a SA post, which is blocked from my present location.  If you follow Infinitron's link in this thread you should be able to find it somewhere in p 4-6 of the results (IIRC).

Edited October 16, 2017 by Enoch

[Enoch]

Update:  Direct link to the rope kid post about Confusion.

[Lephys]

The weird thing about that is... doesn't INT still affect AoE radius size in Deadfire? If so, then the confusion effect is partially self-defeating. "I'll make it so that your beneficial spell will hit EVERYONE who happens to fall inside this circle! MUAHAHAHAHA! Oh, also, the circle is smaller, thus it's easier to miss the people you don't want to hit with it. MUAHAHAH... hah... hahah?"

[Wormerine]

The weird thing about that is... doesn't INT still affect AoE radius size in Deadfire? If so, then the confusion effect is partially self-defeating. "I'll make it so that your beneficial spell will hit EVERYONE who happens to fall inside this circle! MUAHAHAHAHA! Oh, also, the circle is smaller, thus it's easier to miss the people you don't want to hit with it. MUAHAHAH... hah... hahah?"

Unless things changed since PoE1 reducing someone’s radios is a negative only. Only the “core” radius of the spell hit both friend&foe while extended via INT radius hit foes only.

[rjshae]

The weird thing about that is... doesn't INT still affect AoE radius size in Deadfire? If so, then the confusion effect is partially self-defeating. "I'll make it so that your beneficial spell will hit EVERYONE who happens to fall inside this circle! MUAHAHAHAHA! Oh, also, the circle is smaller, thus it's easier to miss the people you don't want to hit with it. MUAHAHAH... hah... hahah?"

 

The smaller radius will be a penalty either way, and the friendly fire factor will make the spell more difficult to safely position in a melee environment. It doesn't seem very self-defeating. But they could always make it worse by inserting a random targeting error.

[Lephys]

^ I understand, but confusion:

 

1) Converts the entire target circle to friendly-fire/enemy-aid. AND 

2) Makes that target circle smaller.

 

In a way (not in 100% of ways, mind you), that seems counter-intuitive. That would be like a bleed effect (for example) that made its target take X damage for every step they took, but also slowed them so that they couldn't take nearly as many steps as they'd usually be able to. It's still effective, but it makes itself less effective.

 

Imagine your targeting circle is 20 meters, and you get confused. Now, it's... I dunno, 16 meters. So, it's easier for you to either ONLY hit enemies with your bad spell, or ONLY hit allies with your good spell, because the circle you're having to target isn't as large. I realize that the smaller circle is still a detriment if you, say, want to hit your entire party with a beneficial spell, but the effect of confusion is that that would've ALSO hit any enemies within that area. It's a weird catch-22 almost, which is why it just seems weird to modify INT at all instead of simply applying the base confusion effect of "this thing I don't want to happen to these people will happen to these people."

 

Also, I understand what you're saying, and I'm unclear on how it's different from 1's system. Maybe in Deadfire, not as much stuff has friendly fire built in? Or maybe this is more punishing on difficulties that don't use friendly fire than it is on difficulties that do? I have no idea. Either way, I think healy/beneficial spells ONLY hit friendlies before, didn't they? So at the very least, that effect is a definite negative (those hitting your enemies, that is) with the Confusion effect.

 

*shrug*. Unclear on a few things, but the main pertinent thing is the -5 INT penalty. It seems out of place with the information I currently have.

[Lephys]

The smaller radius will be a penalty either way, and the friendly fire factor will make the spell more difficult to safely position in a melee environment. It doesn't seem very self-defeating. But they could always make it worse by inserting a random targeting error.

 

Yeah, it's not that the entire effect cancels itself out or anything, but the smaller radius inherently gives you less space to accidentally hit friendlies with bad stuff and enemies with good stuff. So, the two factors are working against each other, to an extent.

 

Also, that would be freakin' AWESOME if instead of the INT penalty, it just made your targeting circle like... 3 times larger, and you weren't sure exactly where, within that circle, your actual target was going to be, if that makes sense. I dunno if that's what you were getting at with the targeting error, but it's what immediately came to mind when I read that. Just keep your actually spell effect radius the same size, but give you a much-less-precise targeting "reticle" for the spell/ability. 8D