How to fix combat: A contradictory wish - slower, but faster

[IndiraLightfoot]

There has been great feedback on Deadfire combat from lots of peeps.

 

Penetration needs to be a forgiving, sliding scale vis-a-vis armour.

 

One thing I and many others were struck by was the speed of the combat, and the lack of a real slow mode, which certainly helped making PoE1 a great game in some respects combatwise.

Given some recent tweets, I think they'll adjust the slow mode feel in the game, for sure.

In short, a slower combat mode, yes, please!

 

Another thing has been the complaints of the slow spell casting, and the sentiment that casters can't keep up with melee classes (not even by a long shot.) And not only that, spells often miss - since casters seem to be Accuracy-deprived.

 

I'd like to see faster spell casting, with much better accuracy, and perhaps even more spells per encounter.

 

Also, there was a bug that snuck into the beta. The recovery time for 1H-weapons has an average of 1s, while twohanders and ranged weapons are considerably slower. IIRC, Josh said that the 1H-weapons should be 3s in average.

Well, here's my contradictory wish. I would very much love to see that fast 1H-weapon speed kept. This is one of the few things in combat that feels right and fun right now. I'd argue that the best adjustment would be to speed up the recovery for everything else instead. 

I've seen posters say that they hate the recovery time in itself. Well, I'll settle with it being fast and not a drag. When it's slow, it also f**ks with the beautful animations Obsidian have made.

 

Everything should have much faster recovery time, and the 1H-weapon bug of quick 1s should rather show the way.

I'm very curious on how such a beta test would be received.

Edited November 19, 2017 by IndiraLightfoot

[Archaven]

I agree on faster spell casting and faster recover. Slow spells and recovery should only be for very powerful and high level spells.

[drchocapic]

I agree on the faster weapon recovery, seeing a two-handed fighter stare at his enemy for half a year between attacks looks ridiculous and feels weak.

 

I also think that some of the casting times (chanter summons are a good example) are way too long. If a spell is going to take that long to cast then it should be powerful enough to turn the tide in battle and that's absolutely not the case right now. Give me either faster spells or keep them slow but give them more impact.

[AndreaColombo]

Agreed on faster recovery.

 

Armor recovery penalties have been made too steep and two-handers are very slow. It’s no fun to stare at your guys sitting through an endless recovery cycle.

 

I also agree with the addition of a slow mode as in the first game. Pacing is fine in normal mode; just give us faster recovery and a slow mode we can toggle.

 

Spells should be faster and casters should have access to different spells at various levels that grant Concentration for different amount of times (and at higher levels, perhaps, in conjunction with inspirations that can counter afflictions that would remove concentration, so they’d have a “safety layer” before their concentration is dispelled/taken away.)

Edited November 20, 2017 by AndreaColombo

[Novem]

I don't want the spellcasting to be faster. I think it's perfect how it is right now. What needs to be adjusted is the impact of the spells, not the speed. Rewarding good positioning and smart spell-use is a great way to solve the problems inherent in a per-encounter system (spells need to be made underpowered for balance) and a per-rest system (spells need to be conserved unnecessarily, making casters only situationally powerful).

[IndiraLightfoot]

Hmm, if casting in general will stay this slow, then the spell changes have to be gargantuan with huge impacts, I'm not sure I want that. All I ask for is that caster classes are on par with martial classes.

 

And I found this gem in Backer Beta impressions (gem, as in, thinks like me...   ):

 

 

 

1. Penetration is a lovely mechanic, but as others stated, it should be percentage based, instead of point based. Watching my team killing flies gets old really fast.

 

2. Fight pacing: the "bug" causing one-handed weapons to strike with 1 sec recoil is actually a feature in my experience. Battles are too much slowed down, characters are idling instead of fighting. I would "speed up" all the mechanics so that in base-speed we will experience somewhat a realistic flow of actions (real-time like). Then, I would definitely re-enable the ability to slow-down time if needed, as well as keeping the option to speed it up for trivial encounters. All these, together with the Pause function, will keep the flow engaging.

 

 

 I love you, Hariwulf!

[Tanred]

Now there is a question if speeding up the recovery wouldn't require lowering damage for weapons at the same time, else the combat could become way too fast.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Tanred

[IndiraLightfoot]

Now there is a question if speeding up the recovery wouldn't require lowering damage for weapons at the same time, else the combat could become way too fast.

Yeah, that certainly will need some fine tuning, but having watched vids of level 6 parties in games like PoE1, BG, NWN1 & NWN 2, PoE2 is actually in some respects slow, if you've made your characters resilient and armory- enough. I can have fights in PoE2 that go on for minutes.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I couldn't resist:

 

As I've played more I've changed my opinion slightly on the pace of combat.

 

It's true that it's not too as bad against enemies other than Lagufaeth, and hearing that the recovery for one-handers is a bug and will go to 3 seconds does actually sound slow to me. Furthermore, the cast times are truly nuts considering how likely spells are to fail and do literally nothing, I think those definitely have to be fixed especially since some of them take almost as long to cast as their actual effect time.

 

All that said, I still think the game needs a Slow Mode. I don't understand why the devs thought taking it out was a good idea at all.

 

Super, slow down the base combat speed so new players don't have to fiddle with Slow Mode, but then still give us a Slow Mode that reduces it by 25% percent rather than half, or whatever number makes sense.

 

Or give us a slider, honestly it's something I expected to see in PoE when they first introduced Slow Mode and I don't know why they never did that in the first place. In settings: "Slow Mode slows time by: 10% |-----------| 50%". I'm pretty sure that's what Freedom Force had, and it was a wonderful thing.

 

I for one far prefer playing these games quasi-turn-based in the sense that I get a lot of time to think and react as things are happening, and a slow mode makes that a thousand times more enjoyable and than pausing or especially auto-pausing all the damn time.

I love you as well, Answermancer!

[Wormerine]

I do find combat very difficult to follow though it might be a result of my PC not handling glory of unoptimized alpha gameplay. Whenever there is bit AOE spell casts game stops for couple seconds calculating results.