Engagement System Questions

[Infinitron]

badgame posters are triggered by this thread

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I was wondering about that bit about per-encounter abilities being a "turn-based" mechanic myself. I guess whoever said may have intended to convey that the entire concept of "per-encounter" makes more sense in a game where there's a discrete separation between real-time non-combat mode and turn-based encounter mode? Or maybe he's just dumb

 

[Darth Roxor]

badgame indeed

 

[tuluse]

Hey, didn't *I* propose the slow down mechanic?

Also, my final thoughts are that engagement causes as many problems as it's solves. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's just treading water. That said, I don't see how anyone could call it as implemented "elegant" or "simple".

 

[Crooked Bee]

That said, I don't see how anyone could call it as implemented "elegant" or "simple".

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badgame is basically fuck you, suck my dick: josh sawyer's personal dream forum experience. They will defend him to death.

 

[felipepepe]

I'm still more butthurt about the itemization, the lack of hard counters and the subsequence mediocre encounter design. These hurt the game much more than the engagement system.

 

[Ninjerk]

Yeah, I could certainly live with engagement if the itemization was more interesting than as, I believe Blaine said, 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

[Sensuki]

badgame posters are triggered by this thread

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Well I'm sure someone will pass this on

This bela guy thought Mulahey was hard!?!?@?!!. That's an incredibly easy encounter and you don't even need a single ranged character to beat it. I'm pretty sure you could solo it with a Fighter if you interrupted Mulahey's spellcasting. Then he goes on to say that after 5-10 seconds enemies will re-target in the BG games ... lol? They re-target on the very next frame that they qualify for it. Harry Potter is my spirit animal seems to think that Engagement stops ranged kiting, lol? Not only can you abuse the fog of war in Pillars of Eternity with ranged characters against a lot of encounters (shoot, move out of line of sight, enemies turn around - rinse/repeat) but if you shoot from a distance and then run, even with Engagement and Movement recovery slow, you can still kite if the map space permits - it doesn't do JACK SHIT to stop kiting . I don't like MMO style aggo mechanics either and I can't remember if someone suggested them or not, but I certainly didn't and MMO aggro mechanics are not the only alternative to the Engagement system - as if most people have only ever played MMOs or turn-based games or something?? And to his fifth point, if you stick a sole tank forward of the party, everything will aggro to him - you don't need a fucking engagement system to do it.

Then again from what I can gather, the mechanic was made for these types of people, so it doesn't surprise me at all that they would enjoy it.

The Engagement system isn't some magical fucking holy grail solution - it's just an AI targeting clause and a disengagement attack. The AI targeting stuff is fine by me as long as it's for the enemy AI only but disengagement attacks, just like AoOs are fucking retarded in real-time.

And I also agree that there are far bigger problems with the game - bland copy paste encounters, abysmal loot/itemization and basically 100% repetitive combat - I know the game is bugged, but I've been performing the same actions every encounter since I left the Temple of Eothas.

I also think the trap/lock XP really ruins level progression as well. I've probably got more XP from traps/locks than anything else IIRC.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I could certainly live with engagement if the itemization was more interesting than as, I believe Blaine said, 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

Well, that's not entirely true as we've since discovered, because the developers were apparently too shortsighted to realize that applying DR as a flat integer reduction to weapon damage disproportionately penalizes small, fast weapons. Large, slow weapons that deal shitloads of damage per attack are therefore superior later on in the game when enemies' DR begins to bloat. Even well before Act 2, I was seeing Fine fast weapons (of the appropriate damage type for the enemy) dealing, like, 2 fucking damage. Breathtaking. Yes, I'm aware of the Graze system.

It's such a simple thing, should be obvious to any tabletop or cRPG veteran, and apparently not a single person at Obsidian noticed it. D&D solved this with THAC0 back in the day, although there was still damage reduction, but it wasn't the default armor system used by every Tom, Dick, Harry, and annoying black cunty ghost.

Even still, the game's only gotten easier as I've moved past Act 2 on Hard, even while continuing to use fast weapons.

 

[mutonizer]

Not sure what you guys got against current itemization. I'll check the thread about it for specifics but so far, no real complains about it from me. Humanoid mobs drop what they use, somewhat. Other mobs drop components and whatnot. There are unique items here and there though mostly from chests/hidden areas and not just mobs.

Do you want more "treasure" tables for mobs or something? More uniques for difficult encounters?

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah, I could certainly live with engagement if the itemization was more interesting than as, I believe Blaine said, 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

Well, that's not entirely true as we've since discovered, because the developers were apparently too shortsighted to realize that applying DR as a flat integer reduction to weapon damage disproportionately penalizes small, fast weapons. Large, slow weapons that deal shitloads of damage per attack are therefore superior later on in the game when enemies' DR begins to bloat. Even well before Act 2, I was seeing Fine fast weapons (of the appropriate damage type for the enemy) dealing, like, 2 fucking damage. Breathtaking. Yes, I'm aware of the Graze system.

It's such a simple thing, should be obvious to any tabletop or cRPG veteran, and apparently not a single person at Obsidian noticed it. D&D solved this with THAC0 back in the day, although there was still damage reduction, but it wasn't the default armor system used by every Tom, Dick, Harry, and annoying black cunty ghost.

Even still, the game's only gotten easier as I've moved past Act 2 on Hard, even while continuing to use fast weapons.

Psst, I think you're not meant to use small, fast weapons on those high DR enemies. Those multi-weapon weapon proficiencies that "don't make sense" exist for a reason

 

[Blaine]

Psst, I think you're not meant to use small, fast weapons on those high DR enemies.

Thing is, on balance, slow, high-damage weapons are just as effective against low-DR enemies too.

Therefore there's no real reason to use small, fast weapons on anything (at most you'd go with Average), which means there's an entire class of useless vendor trash weapons in the game.

Also, even if that weren't the case, the amount of micro required to not only switch between weapons to change appropriate damage type, but to also swap between light and heavy weapons and any combination thereof, would be (and is) absurd. There's no reason to ever do that, though, because as Sensuki has discovered, you're well off just giving everyone Arbalests and Estocs.

 

[Infinitron]

Eh, weapons switching was pretty common in the IE games.

The tradeoff between fast-low damage and slow-high damage isn't as distinct in a traditional RPG as it is in something like Fallout: New Vegas where player reflexes are a factor, but when combined with interrupting and magic weapons that apply status effects upon hitting, it might be a different story.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Psst, I think you're not meant to use small, fast weapons on those high DR enemies. Those multi-weapon weapon proficiencies that "don't make sense" exist for a reason

Problem is nearly everything has some sort of DR so the only small, fast weapons that hold any appeal to me are stillettos. Maybe if you were building some high-interrupt char with beefed up Perception but I don't really see the point of it (and don't have good enough of a grasp on the whole interrupt system anyway).

 

[Sensuki]

Not sure what you guys got against current itemization. I'll check the thread about it for specifics but so far, no real complains about it from me. Humanoid mobs drop what they use, somewhat. Other mobs drop components and whatnot. There are unique items here and there though mostly from chests/hidden areas and not just mobs.

Do you want more "treasure" tables for mobs or something? More uniques for difficult encounters?

Containers are the biggest problem. They're using fucking random loot tables. Even most hidden caches aren't really worth even looking at because you know it's going to be some shit item you do not want. Looting is just plain unsatisfying. The most classic example I can think of is Cail the Silent - there's a fucking gigantic pile of gold painted/modelled onto the map and you go over and loot the container and get like I dunno 12 golden coins and a gem, and some generic shit cunt random magic item from the other one. That pretty much sums up loot in this game - that the designers themselves have been playing shit games for so long that they've forgotten what real loot is like (that may be a bit unfair actually - perhaps it's in the DESIGN DOCUMENT - use these containers for loot to save time, or some crap like that).

It's very clear that corners have been cut here.

 

[Gord]

Psst, I think you're not meant to use small, fast weapons on those high DR enemies.

Thing is, on balance, slow, high-damage weapons are just as effective against low-DR enemies too.

Therefore there's no real reason to use small, fast weapons on anything (at most you'd go with Average), which means there's an entire class of useless vendor trash weapons in the game.

Also, even if that weren't the case, the amount of micro required to not only switch between weapons to change appropriate damage type, but to also swap between light and heavy weapons and any combination thereof, would be (and is) absurd. There's no reason to ever do that, though, because as Sensuki has discovered, you're well off just giving everyone Arbalests and Estocs.

Interestingly they had similar problems with energy weapons in F:NV initially. Eventually they got patched to have higher penetration (esp. with special ammo).
Unfortunately they don't have ammo in PoE, so as a kind of band-aid solution they could add armor penetration as an crafting option.

Edit: Although I think that there's an argument for making different enemies require different weapon types (like fast low damage vs slow high damage), at least if you want to "optimize" your damage output against them.

 

[Blaine]

The tradeoff between fast-low damage and slow-high damage isn't as distinct in a traditional RPG as it is in something like Fallout: New Vegas where player reflexes are a factor, but when combined with interrupting and magic weapons that apply status effects upon hitting, it might be a different story.

Yeah, well, I still use light weapons for the time being on my Rogue, but mainly because damage bonuses, crit stacking, and sneak attacks help to ameliorate their low damage. I'd probably be better off with an Estoc anyway in most cases, though, particularly since positioning the Rogue and then waiting for recovery time before the weapon swing bar even begins to fill takes long enough as-is.

 

[Sensuki]

Actual light weapons are crap unless you've got a really nice magical one early-ish in the game. I did use a Fine Flail for a little while early on. Currently I'm favoring Dual Spears (Treave's Conqueror Spear and Ritezzi's Thorn atm), Two Weapon Fighting and Vulnerable Attack.

 

[tuluse]

Light weapons are nice for ciphers because you just want to build up focus anyways.

 

[Perkel]

I'm still more butthurt about the itemization, the lack of hard counters and the subsequence mediocre encounter design. These hurt the game much more than the engagement system.

yep. Encounter design really hurts game.
From time to time you have some more powerful enemy but overall you are non stop fighting with trash mobs.
Roderick fight was awesome though.

Generally i think less is more. They should remove some mobs and buff one or two in pack. Give them different color and some neat ability or two. Hell make some abilities unique. Like some Xurip chief that will be able to take any xurip body and buff itself.

Still it is not that bad. Way better than BG1 worse than BG2.

 

[Blaine]

There are tons of trash mobs in this game, you only get limited Bestiary XP from them, and they tend to drop crap, e.g. 5p weapons and shields or Anonymous Crafting Ingredient #24. However, they're typically guarding interesting places and/or treasure, and the way they're arranged/patrolling can be interesting as well at times, so that's all right. Also, there's a pretty decent variety, and by the time you get sick of fighting certain enemy types you're usually moving on to another.

Except Shadows and Shades. There were way too many of those teleporting black cunts, for much too long.

 

[Sensuki]

Light weapons are nice for ciphers because you just want to build up focus anyways.

I use Grieving Mother with a Blunderbuss, one shot gives me enough for two Mind Blades.

 

[Johannes]

Eh, weapons switching was pretty common in the IE games.

But not really for simple DPS maximising purposes. You switched weapons to gain a specific resistance or on-hit effect or such. Something qualitatively different instead of just quantitatively.

 

[Infinitron]

In a game with no hard counters, there's no difference between those things.

 

[tuluse]

I use Grieving Mother with a Blunderbuss, one shot gives me enough for two Mind Blades.

Makes sense with all the hits, if a fight went long (which they never do) it might still make sense to switch to light weapon after firing.

Probably makes more sense to just use two blunderbusses though.

 

[felipepepe]

My Cipher goes melee, with a two-handed sword. With all that might and damage bonuses, it hits really hard.