Injury System is way too brutal

[Vladmorik]

The injury system, at the moment, seems to be a very viscous cycle of making characters totally useless and spamming rests. If a character gets injured, through combat OR traps OR I imagine dialog scenes, you are then practically (mechanically) forced to have your entire party take a full rest. Why? Well, the injured character is so debilitated by the new injury system that they become completely worthless for combat. -25% health per injury? All that begets is the character becoming more likely to get injured in the next combat. Again. Over. And. Over.

I rather like the immersive feeling of *not* needing to sleep after every other fight, and not needing to save scum just to keep that fleeting sense of time in the story rich RPG game. I'm okay with having fewer spells on account of them being 'encounter' types now, but I'm also totally fine going back to the PoE 1 system of injuries and spells if it gets rid of this current problem.

Also, on a side note, it seems totally inefficient and subpar to build a rogue for both stealth and mechanics at the same time. At the moment, my rogue is barely capable of doing either of them and I haven't branched any points off in any other direction. Every available point has been split between just those two, and she is more or less totally unreliable for dialog scenes and most locked objects/traps. I've had to reload at least 10 times alone due to having half my party injured from traps I was completely unable to detect or disarm, and .. y'know.. not wanting to spend 8 hours sleeping per hallway.

[Novem]

Don't think I agree with you here. I played on Veteran and I only rested once or twice throughout the entire course of the Beta. Managed it just fine with only a couple wipes.

 

By the way, you can see traps with your eyes. You just need to slow down, pay attention, and avoid them. Not to mention that Mechanics is not how you detect traps, you detect them with Perception. If you want you're rogue to be able to see traps, make sure they have higher Perception. Or make a character/adventurer with a higher Perception stat.

[Vladmorik]

Don't think I agree with you here. I played on Veteran and I only rested once or twice throughout the entire course of the Beta. Managed it just fine with only a couple wipes.

 

By the way, you can see traps with your eyes. You just need to slow down, pay attention, and avoid them. Not to mention that Mechanics is not how you detect traps, you detect them with Perception. If you want you're rogue to be able to see traps, make sure they have higher Perception. Or make a character/adventurer with a higher Perception stat.

You really can't. There's not really a point to disagree with here, man, so I don't know what you're responding to. You can see SOME traps, such as spike traps, with your eyes. Other traps, such as many necrotic lance traps, are -totally- invisible at all times. Though that may be an issue with model loading, as sometimes there are corpses with sight lines that I can't see but can loot, but as it stands it makes no difference. If you happen to not see a trap yourself and auto path into it, it's either you have to rest. Again. Or you reload.

 

 would also assume that a character with 15 perception wouldn't have an issue detecting them, but so far said rogue built for traps and perception has only detected two traps, and I've manually worked around many more than that.

 

But, otherwise, the injury system remains way too overbearing. Injured people become more likely to become injured again and force require rests due to how strong the debuffs are, that is just how it is. You get many skill malices and the massive quarter of your hp removed, so unless the character that is injured is one that stays well away from the combat at all times.. or you managed to cheese the game in a way that you're so impressively over powered that nothing can beat through your armor or self healing.. ..which would be a totally different unbalanced issue..

[dam]

But, otherwise, the injury system remains way too overbearing. Injured people become more likely to become injured again and force require rests due to how strong the debuffs are, that is just how it is.

 

Yeah I get you man.

 

As opposed to real life, where injured people get stronger and stronger over time, because that's what injuries do, they make you stronger.

Man if only the devs could see that, and give buffs for each injury characters sustain...

 

 

Sarcasm aside though, while I dislike the injury system (like really ? 25% hp off in one go ? DO NOT WANT), your over-exaggerations do not help your point.

[Novem]

But uh... yea, there is a point to disagree with, and I did. Your judgment of the system was based on an anecdote, I offered my experience to counterbalance it. I did multiple fights with active injuries and made it through them just fine on most likely a harder difficulty than you (you can correct me on that point if I'm wrong). It seems to me that you just didn't effectively play around your injuries, not that they're in some way overbearing. Especially since I played with a party that I would consider poorly spec'd all around. The auto-leveled Wizard and Rogue in particular were really suboptimal. Not a single time in the Beta did I ever die in the same fight more than once (except for one fight early on where I was still figuring out my party and playing with the stealth systems), I didn't do any save scumming, and I only rested once. The injuries felt fine to me.

 

Your traps complaint is a completely different point. I had 16 perception on my MC and I spotted every single trap in the entire beta, so I can't attest as to whether or not certain traps are invisible but I seriously doubt that's what Obsidian intended. Which would make it a bug.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Novem

[tinysalamander]

 

But, otherwise, the injury system remains way too overbearing. Injured people become more likely to become injured again and force require rests due to how strong the debuffs are, that is just how it is.

 

Yeah I get you man.

 

As opposed to real life, where injured people get stronger and stronger over time, because that's what injuries do, they make you stronger.

Man if only the devs could see that, and give buffs for each injury characters sustain...

 

Too much realism in the game design will make it unplayable. And spiral of death is a real design problem.

[Tigranes]

 

 

There's not really a point to disagree with here, man, so I don't know what you're responding to

 

Not yet having played the beta, now I am less inclined to believe your opinions on the matter.

[dam]

 

There's not really a point to disagree with here, man, so I don't know what you're responding to

 

Not yet having played the beta, now I am less inclined to believe your opinions on the matter.

 

 

Well, OP has a point in the fact that injuries get really unforgiving, because your character then becomes that much more likely to sustain another injury.

However, it's not very much more brutal than POE 1's , where an injury would nuke 30 of your accuracy at level 2, basically making you unable to hit sleeping sheep.

[Vladmorik]

Wow, seems people very much want to dismiss mechanics for the sake of defending the game. I don't know what there is to discuss here; maybe I came off too overbearing on the subject due to frustration from other issues, if so I apologize for that. But my point remains. Currently the beta is very short, and it became very clear that if I made mistakes (as we all do, that's why quicksave and quickload is such a beloved function and so popular) that I'd HAVE to reload because it was alarmingly punishing. I'm fine with taking lumps due to an error I make, story or mechanic wise, but this is harsh enough that it very much disrupts the flow of the game. We don't need to make a ton of rests due to the length of the closed beta, but I'm assuming the full game is going to be MUCH longer, and it's going to add up.

For the one who said you haven't played, every time you get an injury you lose 25% of your max health, up to 4 times. At the 4th time, you die instantly, permanently. Every trap triggered gives an injury, every time you are knocked unconscious gives an injury, and I imagine (but have no evidence to support as of yet) that much like PoE 1, it's possible to get injuries from poorly done scenes during dialog events. On top of the -25% max health, you get variable malices, such as minus to stats, to accuracy, defense, etc etc. This isn't an opinion, this is just how the mechanics currently function.

The opinion is that I feel that is way too potent and pushes people to just instantly reload around it, or spam rests to fix every small error that is made.

[Novem]

No, we disagreed with aspects of your assessment, and you dismissed our disagreements. I'm not saying things to defend the game, I just feel the injury system works well as it is. I'm not saying I'm right about that, I'm just sharing my perspective. You should share yours without dismissing ours. Otherwise there's no way to reach a system that's agreeable for most. You need to realize that you are only describing your experience with the system, and not everyone has the same experience. I wasn't being forced to constantly rest, and I certainly wasn't being forced to save scum to progress as long as I was being attentive and playing efficiently.

 

So yes, I see your opinion, I just don't agree with it. That doesn't mean you're wrong, we'd need more data to figure that out.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Novem

[IndiraLightfoot]

I actually like the hefty consequences of injuries, but I fear that our characters get them a bit too easily.

[Tartantyco]

@Vladmorik This only becomes a problem because of your assumption that it shouldn't be harder to keep an injured party member alive.

[DozingDragon]

Injuries are fine, although bringing back field triage as an ability (so there’s an ability cost) or allowing individual characters to remove injuries through a high cost consumable (a scroll perhaps) would also be fine. If you don’t want to trek on with injuries but you also don’t want to rest then I don’t see why a way to mitigate injuries wouldn’t work as long as there is a sufficiently high cost associated with it.

[Gairnulf]

The injury system, at the moment, seems to be a very viscous cycle of making characters totally useless and spamming rests. If a character gets injured, through combat OR traps OR I imagine dialog scenes, you are then practically (mechanically) forced to have your entire party take a full rest. Why? Well, the injured character is so debilitated by the new injury system that they become completely worthless for combat. -25% health per injury? All that begets is the character becoming more likely to get injured in the next combat. Again. Over. And. Over.

I rather like the immersive feeling of *not* needing to sleep after every other fight, and not needing to save scum just to keep that fleeting sense of time in the story rich RPG game. I'm okay with having fewer spells on account of them being 'encounter' types now, but I'm also totally fine going back to the PoE 1 system of injuries and spells if it gets rid of this current problem.

Also, on a side note, it seems totally inefficient and subpar to build a rogue for both stealth and mechanics at the same time. At the moment, my rogue is barely capable of doing either of them and I haven't branched any points off in any other direction. Every available point has been split between just those two, and she is more or less totally unreliable for dialog scenes and most locked objects/traps. I've had to reload at least 10 times alone due to having half my party injured from traps I was completely unable to detect or disarm, and .. y'know.. not wanting to spend 8 hours sleeping per hallway.

1. You are NOT required to take a full rest after one character has been injured once.

2. What you are incentivized to do by this system is to preserve your party members, so that they don't get knocked out in the first place, and take special care for those who have been injured. Keep them in the back line.

3. The health/endurance system in PoE was an attempt at something, and that attempt failed. It was aiming to make players conserve their resting supplies for the moment they were low on their long-term health. In reality, there was an abundance of camping supplies and you always had the ability to backtrack to an inn for the resting bonus. There were the added issues of confusing many players by having two health pools, and of the fact that all damage you took was substracted from both health pools at once, after which you short-term pool regenerated. This lead to situations where your supposedly "long-term" health matters more than your supposedly "short-term" endurance, because if you go into combat with less health than you have endurance, you could be permakilled for running out of health before your endurance has actually ran out.

 

This system is much better than in PoE, 25% loss of max health has enough bite to provoke a reaction from the player and force him to alter his tactics, and I like that, and it serves the purpose that health/endurance was to serve.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Gairnulf

[Breckmoney]

I've taught I think four people to play PoE1 and in all four cases the health/endurance split was the most confusing game mechanic. So it seems like a good mechanic to look at changing. Maybe the balance is a bit on the harsh side at the moment, I don't know, but this if nothing else seems like a system that's far more understandable.

[demeisen]

​​

In reality, there was an abundance of camping supplies and you always had the ability to backtrack to an inn for the resting bonus.

​

​Yes, agreed, but therein lied the problem: resting was far too easy to come by, and effectively unlimited.  I don't want to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater.

​

​The answer is to have meaningful rest limitations, coupled with per-rest abilities, so that small fights become meaningful, require thought around how many resources to expend to beat them in the most efficient manner, and there are long term considerations.

 

Yep, that means I can get in over my head, and it means I have to push myself to continue when my group has been ground down to the bone, exhausted, running on sheer grit and a single wizard CC plus two remaining cleric buffs, lest I fail entirely because I couldn't make it to the next place to rest.  But that's how I want it.  It want it to be punishing and brutal for my party, not hold its hand and give it everything back after each fight so everything is carefully curated to ensure my success.

 

If the game is designed so that I cannot fail, it also denies me the satisfaction of succeeding.

​

​I realize that dynamic is out of vogue, which is why I argue for a new-game checkbox to switch off automatic spell and health regen.  Then the people who want regeneration after each fight can have it, and those of us who want a punishing game of frantic clawing for survival deep in a crypt of undead things can have it too.

​

[Aramintai]

I think right now it's not the injuries that are brutal, but the difficulty. Even on Relaxed I got my butt handed over to me a dozen of times. Game balance usually is among the last things that devs polish out.

[veteran81]

I've taught I think four people to play PoE1 and in all four cases the health/endurance split was the most confusing game mechanic. So it seems like a good mechanic to look at changing. Maybe the balance is a bit on the harsh side at the moment, I don't know, but this if nothing else seems like a system that's far more understandable.

really? I actually liked PoE 1's health and endurance mechanic. It kept you from having to rest more often (which just becomes a spam rest fest that I don't really care for) it also imo made the constitution stat more appealing as well.

 

I liked the injury to endurance loss to actual health pool system. It made sense to me at least. You were only then forced to rest one one of two things happened. 1) two many injuries and the risk of dying or 2) to little actual health.

 

Kind of surprised by some of the responses in this thread. Also let's tone down a little on the hostilities here guys.

[Boeroer]

3. The health/endurance system in PoE was an attempt at something, and that attempt failed. It was aiming to make players conserve their resting supplies for the moment they were low on their long-term health. In reality, there was an abundance of camping supplies and you always had the ability to backtrack to an inn for the resting bonus. There were the added issues of confusing many players by having two health pools, and of the fact that all damage you took was substracted from both health pools at once, after which you short-term pool regenerated. This lead to situations where your supposedly "long-term" health matters more than your supposedly "short-term" endurance, because if you go into combat with less health than you have endurance, you could be permakilled for running out of health before your endurance has actually ran out.

This system is much better than in PoE, 25% loss of max health has enough bite to provoke a reaction from the player and force him to alter his tactics, and I like that, and it serves the purpose that health/endurance was to serve.

 

Not true. You could never have more endurance than health. If current health is lower than your max. endurance then endurance is capped to the value of actual health.

 

Now you can just pile up healing effects and you won't go down - while you skill everthing towards offense. At least the health system of PoE1 prevented such exploitation to an extend. 

[Katarack21]

 

 

There's not really a point to disagree with here, man, so I don't know what you're responding to

 

Not yet having played the beta, now I am less inclined to believe your opinions on the matter.

 

 

Well, OP has a point in the fact that injuries get really unforgiving, because your character then becomes that much more likely to sustain another injury.

However, it's not very much more brutal than POE 1's , where an injury would nuke 30 of your accuracy at level 2, basically making you unable to hit sleeping sheep.

 

That's bull****. You can go into a fight with 30 accuracy and survive it. You might have a hard time killing the enemy, but you can do so. You *cannot* go into a fight with 50% health and survive it. Two injuries=50% health is MUCH more brutal that one injury -30% accuracy.

 

I literally never worried about injuries in PoE 1. Never considered them, never factored them in, never had any problems. Injuries in PoE 1 never affected whether I could or could not achieve something. Now, in this beta, injuries are the deciding factor on when I rest, and I *have* to rest *ALL THE TIME* because I'm *constantly* being forced to half health because of traps and damage.

 

Two injuries on you protagonist and your at half health. Really? You know what that means? That means I hit two traps, I rest. That means I get half my party knocked out, I rest. Every. Time.

 

That's the problem. In PoE 1, I could get my whole party but one guy knocked out in every combat and still go six, seven combats before I rested. Here, I do that *twice* and you bet your ass I'm resting. In PoE 1, I could hit seven, eight traps and still go forward--here, I hit two traps and I'm resting, every time.

 

It doesn't encourage one to change their tactics. It encourages one to spam rest.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Katarack21

[Breckmoney]

 

I've taught I think four people to play PoE1 and in all four cases the health/endurance split was the most confusing game mechanic. So it seems like a good mechanic to look at changing. Maybe the balance is a bit on the harsh side at the moment, I don't know, but this if nothing else seems like a system that's far more understandable.

really? I actually liked PoE 1's health and endurance mechanic. It kept you from having to rest more often (which just becomes a spam rest fest that I don't really care for) it also imo made the constitution stat more appealing as well.

 

I liked the injury to endurance loss to actual health pool system. It made sense to me at least. You were only then forced to rest one one of two things happened. 1) two many injuries and the risk of dying or 2) to little actual health.

 

Kind of surprised by some of the responses in this thread. Also let's tone down a little on the hostilities here guys.

Oh I'm not saying I didn't like it - I very much did. I think lots of people liked it once they figured out how it worked. I'm just saying that for many people it was a very confusing mechanic where weird stuff could happen. One moment Eder could be literally unkillable, never going below 90% endurance, and the next he hits his health cap and can't be healed at all and starts dropping quickly. Without knowing what it all really represented that's very confusing.

[cheesevillain]

I literally never worried about injuries in PoE 1. Never considered them, never factored them in, never had any problems. Injuries in PoE 1 never affected whether I could or could not achieve something.

 

Is that a good thing? I'd say that's the sign of a terrible mechanic.

 

 

It doesn't encourage one to change their tactics. It encourages one to spam rest.

 

 

I experienced this too. The shame is that I don't even check what injury my character has received by the second injury. The loss of health is too great. Ideally, I should be tempted strongly at injury 2, and tempted just a little at injury 3, that I can juuuuust make it through the next fight without resting. And maybe I do, or maybe I don't. That's a choice that's meaningful and feels good to get right, and once in a while, to get wrong. But right now I rest automatically at injury 2, even at lower difficulties.

 

The new system is really cool, but it needs to be less punishing.

[Katarack21]

 

I literally never worried about injuries in PoE 1. Never considered them, never factored them in, never had any problems. Injuries in PoE 1 never affected whether I could or could not achieve something.

 

Is that a good thing? I'd say that's the sign of a terrible mechanic.

 

 

Oh, I agree. I was attempting to show the incredible disparity between the two systems, not that the PoE system was necessarily superior. I was *excited* about an injury system that would actually be effective, but this is *way* to far the other direction. 

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

There's not really a point to disagree with here, man, so I don't know what you're responding to

 

Not yet having played the beta, now I am less inclined to believe your opinions on the matter.

 

 

Well, OP has a point in the fact that injuries get really unforgiving, because your character then becomes that much more likely to sustain another injury.

However, it's not very much more brutal than POE 1's , where an injury would nuke 30 of your accuracy at level 2, basically making you unable to hit sleeping sheep.

 

 

 

Nah I had the same thoughts. The injuries in the first game were randomized and often didn't "matter" for that particular character -- for example, if your healer lost accuracy, he could still buff and heal. 

 

With that random element gone every injury is basically time to rest. 

[Grotesque]

I am Barrack Obama and I approve this injury system