Engagement System Questions

[ArchAngel]

And I would absolutely change the damage for a slowing aura. It accomplishes all same goals while also not killing minor movement during combat. Then you could give an ability to fighters or talents or class abilities that also give additional debuffs or something.

 

[Gord]

PoE?
1. No skills that protect. And feats are too weak.
2. You cannot move at all. Yesterday I wanted to move a bit to help my other character take down another enemy faster. everyone was close but not within weapon reach but if I did try to move I would get hit and die. Stupid...
3. It does not need to be extra punishing (with greater chance of critical hit).


Can we at least get that Athletics gives you deflection vs engagement attacks? Like 1 Athletics = 3% to deflection (or 5%)

Luckily all this sounds like something that could potentially be fixed easily in a patch, contrary to replacing the engagement system with something else entirely:
1. Add/rework a few skills
2. See tuluse's comment - it seems that movement penalties are bugged and/or too restrictive right now. Also an (optional) area-indicator could help noobs like myself.
3. Again something that can be balanced easily.

 

[mutonizer]

So I'm not trying to troll anyone here, and I'm not trying to blindly defend Josh, or whoever designed the engagement system...
but I don't get the hate for it..[..]

While it has problems and despite all the "this and that" above (some of which are true and whatnot), it's mainly a question of personal preferences I think.

As Sensuki suggested, just watch some of his let's play IWD. I HATE playing like he does, I think that's moronic and felt it was back in the days as well, with actors running full speed without any hindrance whatsoever. Combat was always the weakest point in IE games for me. As for PoE, I really enjoy combat. It's more stable in a way. Sure you can cheese it, but I mean, you can cheese IE games very easily as well so that's not important. It can be improved I'm sure and hopefully it will, alongside pathfinding and whatnot, but already in this somewhat infancy stage for the engagement system (and rest of combat), I'm having way more fun fighting around then in IE games.

But at the end of the day, it's personal preference. People who like it just want to see it improved. Others can simply mod it out I guess.

 

[Grunker]

I like the stickiness idea - but again, writing an idea like that on a forum and then translating it into a rules system useable by a computer is a lot harder.

Well sure, but what else should I be doing with my time

Wait, what? I am playing through Icewind Dale right now and this is simply not true. It's the very reason Josh engineered the engagement system at all I suspect. Keeping my squishies safe is a matter of casting a movement spell and kiting the enemy. IE's problem was that it disfavored melee characters - especially enemies since they were seldom hasted - not the other way around.

I remember in BG2 lining up two fighters in front of a door thinking I had perfect positioning to keep anything from coming through, but they would just push my characters out of the way and walk right through anyways. I can understand wanting to stop this.

Sure, it's just that I don't think melee characters being too strong was the problem in the IE-games, and I think Josh would agree

 

[Grunker]

I didn't mind AoO in NWN2.

I guess there's one of every kind of person out there

 

[Jarpie]

I have only played for couple hours, but what could make the system maybe a bit more interesting would be abilities like taunt where you could taunt the enemies break the engagement and move so you'd get the engagement attack opportunity as enemies apparently doesn't really break off.

 

[Sensuki]

If you have the ability to engage more than one enemy in PoE, you can move to engage a second enemy. At least I could with Eder - I'm not sure how far you can move though.

You can't move at all. You'll suffer a disengagement attack. Once you're engaged, if you even click the mouse to move, you'll suffer a disengagement attack on the next frame.

Do you know exactly how the engagement system works? I do. If you're not sure how it works I can tell you exactly how it works.

 

[ArchAngel]

PoE?
1. No skills that protect. And feats are too weak.
2. You cannot move at all. Yesterday I wanted to move a bit to help my other character take down another enemy faster. everyone was close but not within weapon reach but if I did try to move I would get hit and die. Stupid...
3. It does not need to be extra punishing (with greater chance of critical hit).


Can we at least get that Athletics gives you deflection vs engagement attacks? Like 1 Athletics = 3% to deflection (or 5%)

Luckily all this sounds like something that could potentially be fixed easily in a patch, contrary to replacing the engagement system with something else entirely:
1. Add/rework a few skills
2. See tuluse's comment - it seems that movement penalties are bugged and/or too restrictive right now. Also an (optional) area-indicator could help noobs like myself.
3. Again something that can be balanced easily.

I agree with you. But these same points have been talked about on Obsidian forums for like 3-4 months and they did ZERO about these things.

 

[tuluse]

Luckily all this sounds like something that could potentially be fixed easily in a patch, contrary to replacing the engagement system with something else entirely:
1. Add/rework a few skills
2. See tuluse's comment - it seems that movement penalties are bugged and/or too restrictive right now. Also an (optional) area-indicator could help noobs like myself.
3. Again something that can be balanced easily.

Well yeah, they're not going to throw engagement out wholesale at this point in the game. Some things like the movement key I suggest would help.

Any brand new systems I suggest are more for Obsidian to think about for future games.

 

[tuluse]

You can't move at all. You'll suffer a disengagement attack. Once you're engaged, if you even click the mouse to move, you'll suffer a disengagement attack on the next frame.

Do you know exactly how the engagement system works? I do. If you're not sure how it works I can tell you exactly how it works.

Hmm, really? I thought you could move as long as you stayed close enough to the entity engaging you. The AI creatures seem to be able to.

 

[ArchAngel]

I didn't mind AoO in NWN2.

I guess there's one of every kind of person out there

I explained why. All my characters had Tumble or feats or just good defenses. Also I know D&D very well and how to abuse everything. NWN2 was super easy to me and I didn't even need to move through AoO often

 

[Sensuki]

Hmm, really? I thought you could move as long as you stayed close enough to the entity engaging you. The AI creatures seem to be able to.

Yes really, and no they don't. Engagement arrows are only visible if you're holding TAB or mousing over an engaged unit, so you may just be getting the illusion of that happening. 95% of the time engaged units won't move, although I've seen it happen a few times.

It used to be the way you thought you understood it in the very earliest beta versions. They changed it in v301.

I explained why. All my characters had Tumble or feats or just good defenses. Also I know D&D very well and how to abuse everything. NWN2 was super easy to me and I didn't even need to move through AoO often

The dumbest thing about AoOs in NWN2 was enemy AI would suicide on your party.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I'm not very good at this breaking apart quote stuff, but I'll give it a shot. I don't know how you guys do it so quickly.

I have a complete Icewind Dale playthrough on youtube where I control the unit targeting in 99% of the encounters, because I think about how unit targeting works. If I know the conditions that make enemies change targets, then I'm going to know how to manipulate the battlefield right? If people don't think about those kind of things, then of course they're going to struggle. The targeting AI in the IE games is fucking snappy as man, once enemies qualify for a re-target it happens on the next frame.

and how many playthroughs did it take for you to get to the point where you knew every fight and every map? how much cheese did you have to rely on, even subconsciously?

Why? Even real-time games simulate combat, just because a unit turns around it doesn't mean that that turning around has to symbolize dropped defenses/running away just because the budget isn't there to animate it properly and/or that wouldn't make good gameplay having units shuffling around like a realistic battle in a game with this camera perspective and this many units.

You just answered your owned question as to why you are vulnerable. You TURNED AROUND and showed your back to an enemy. That qualifies as the very definition of dropping your defenses. Whether it's because you wanted to walk or run away from that enemy or whatever, you wanted to move away from an enemy that is trying to kill you. That puts you at risk. There are talents and abilities that can reduce or eliminate that risk.

I've seen enemies break engagement, and you can also cheese engagement to your advantage by pulling them across the edge of frontline's engagement circle.

I have not seen this, but I'm also not trying to cheese it. I do believe you though that it could happen.

There is no Attack of Opportunity in any Icewind Dale game. How long has it been since you last played one?

I meant NWN. I got confused because I was thinking in my head how there were plenty of other weird and crappy mechanics in IE games, like shooting point black into an axe-weilding mob who is in your face, without penalty and how in NWN, they used 3.0 which caused a penalty for that. IWD2 used 3rd edition, there weren't AoOs in that game? It has been a while.

I'm going to say bullshit to the statement that (all) RTwP games are simulating turn-based mechanics. The pause exists for you to be able to manage a party in real-time because it's difficult to control six characters with multiple abilities at once. The original intent of the IE games may have been to simulate turn-based mechanics in the way that attacks and actions occur, but in reality the way they are implemented is not dissimilar to how attacks and attack cooldowns in Fighting Games or other real-time games such as Warcraft 3 work. Personally I don't care what the original intent was, they definitely play like a real-time game and they definitely have an RTS feel to them as well. Everyone is NOT on the same 6 second round (in the Infinity Engine games). There are individual round timers for each unit.

I'm not sure how to argue this point with you about every character being on the same 6 second combat round. I haven't seen the code in quite a while and I don't trust my memory, so I'm going to have to let this go till I have time to go through the code. I'll go ask Dan Spitzely.

I don't care about the AD&D rules. This is not about D&D.

No, but that was in the IE games and it was dumb.

The AI targeting clause that causes your party members to stop and attack their engager - that is an aggro mechanic. It can be disabled, but it's horrible because you suffer disengagement attacks all the time because they occur on the very next frame after you've been engaged if you're still moving. I'm glad they implemented this option though because it allowed us to make our mod good.

only if they aren't already engaged. that just makes sense. why is that problem?

I disengage if I need to move out of a persistent hazard that does damage, such as Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar. Otherwise I don't put myself in the position where I need to disengage, you can play around it through unit positioning in most encounters.

So we kind of agree at least on this point that there are reasons to move.


There was PLENTY of screwy mechanics in the IE combat. Pathfinding was NOT good, it was at BEST merely ok. At the worst, it was a trainwreck.
Ranged combat was not handled well.
Melee had its own issues for me it was mainly the fake attacks and the lack of locking down an enemy.

I admit it has been a while since I have played them and I am not relentlessly replaying them over and over again learning every last detail till it is second nature. I don't because I don't think combat in IE games was that good. Yeah, there were satisfying moments, but there were far more frustrating moments.

I do think sometimes that you can learn something so well that you can no longer see the faults in it because you have adapted to the point where you handle the faults on a subconscious level.

 

[Seari]

Not to change the point, but there is plenty of other messed up shit in the 2nd edition IE games, for example, you could shoot bows and other ranged weapons, point blank, into enemies without penalty. I'm not seeing how that combat system is superior.

Actually you would get rekt by going with a ranged weapon in melee because you get AC penalty.

 

[Grunker]

The dumbest thing about AoOs in NWN2 was enemy AI would suicide on your party.

Second-dumbest was you clicking to go down a stair and your character suiciding to four vampires on his way to get to another staircase further away, lol.

There was PLENTY of screwy mechanics in the IE combat. Pathfinding was NOT good, it was at BEST merely ok. At the worst, it was a trainwreck.

Stop and think what this means for Pillars Pathfinding. At a bare minimum, if I face an enemy character, and I click to the left of him, I would go left. I've seen characters in PoE try to go the far way around more than once. I think it's because PoE has lots of tiny debris on some maps and rather than cut between the enemy and the debris, the characters choose to avoid objects entirely.

 

[ArchAngel]

I explained why. All my characters had Tumble or feats or just good defenses. Also I know D&D very well and how to abuse everything. NWN2 was super easy to me and I didn't even need to move through AoO often

The dumbest thing about AoOs in NWN2 was enemy AI would suicide on your party.

Yea well that was the problem of crappy AI.

 

[ArchAngel]

Not to change the point, but there is plenty of other messed up shit in the 2nd edition IE games, for example, you could shoot bows and other ranged weapons, point blank, into enemies without penalty. I'm not seeing how that combat system is superior.

Actually you would get rekt by going with a ranged weapon in melee because you get AC penalty.

And you also got -4 attack penalty in addition to that -4 AC penalty

 

[Anthony Davis]

If you have the ability to engage more than one enemy in PoE, you can move to engage a second enemy. At least I could with Eder - I'm not sure how far you can move though.

You can't move at all. You'll suffer a disengagement attack. Once you're engaged, if you even click the mouse to move, you'll suffer a disengagement attack on the next frame.

Do you know exactly how the engagement system works? I do. If you're not sure how it works I can tell you exactly how it works.

I didn't do it through movement. I didn't click to move.

Eder had one enemy locked down. Another enemy was running past towards another character, but not TOO close to Eder. I told Eder to attack that enemy, again no move order was issued. He hit the other enemy and then he had TWO engagement lines and was engaging both enemies. He did have his Defender ability on which allows him to engage two enemies.

That's how I did it and continue to do it. Again, NOT WITH A MOVE ORDER.

 

[Grunker]

I didn't mind AoO in NWN2.

I guess there's one of every kind of person out there

I explained why. All my characters had Tumble or feats or just good defenses. Also I know D&D very well and how to abuse everything. NWN2 was super easy to me and I didn't even need to move through AoO often

NWN2 AoOs weren't stupid because they were hard. Nothing is stupid simply because it is hard. NWN2 AoOs were dumb because the AI did not have even the most basic understanding of how they worked, and because taking feats and skills to circumvent poor rules-application is just plain dumb. But fuck this, I am not going to argue the merits of NWN2 AoOs. Life's too short for some things.

 

[ArchAngel]

I didn't mind AoO in NWN2.

I guess there's one of every kind of person out there

I explained why. All my characters had Tumble or feats or just good defenses. Also I know D&D very well and how to abuse everything. NWN2 was super easy to me and I didn't even need to move through AoO often

NWN2 AoOs weren't stupid because they were hard. Nothing is stupid simply because it is hard. NWN2 AoOs were dumb because the AI did not have even the most basic understanding of how they worked, and because taking feats and skills to circumvent poor rules-application is just plain dumb. But fuck this, I am not going to argue the merits of NWN2 AoOs. Life's too short for some things.

What poor rule? They imported both AoO and skills and feats directly from PnP. It was a good rule in pnp and it was good in NWN2. Only AI part was badly implemented. And that is not the problem from AoO.

But in PoE , the rules themselves are badly implemented, not just AI

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

I got confused because I was thinking in my head how there were plenty of other weird and crappy mechanics in IE games, like shooting point black into an axe-weilding mob who is in your face, without penalty

It's pretty funny that you keep bringing this up since the only issue here is one of realism/verisimilitude, after all the debates that have been had over PoE's lack of the same.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Not to change the point, but there is plenty of other messed up shit in the 2nd edition IE games, for example, you could shoot bows and other ranged weapons, point blank, into enemies without penalty. I'm not seeing how that combat system is superior.

Actually you would get rekt by going with a ranged weapon in melee because you get AC penalty.

And you also got -4 attack penalty in addition to that -4 AC penalty

No, the enemy just got a +4 to attack.

I got to be careful about how I write things. When I said penalty, I meant an enemy attack, like an attack of opportunity. I didn't meant to be confusing.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I got confused because I was thinking in my head how there were plenty of other weird and crappy mechanics in IE games, like shooting point black into an axe-weilding mob who is in your face, without penalty

It's pretty funny that you keep bringing this up since the only issue here is one of realism/verisimilitude, after all the debates that have been had over PoE's lack of the same.

Meh.

 

[Aenra]

am i the only one finding all this pathetic?
they built upon shit. You can iterate on the ways to counter said shit all your damn life;
or you can eschew said shit altogether and pick a superior combat model. Period.
simple way. Usually the most effective way as well. Just saying yeah?

 

[Sensuki]

and how many playthroughs did it take for you to get to the point where you knew every fight and every map? how much cheese did you have to rely on, even subconsciously?

Understanding enemy AI is cheese now is it? I've played the games a lot, yep. But it doesn't take much to notice that if you move a guy behind another guy and enemies target the guy in the front (and plenty of other easy to notice cases) then you can have lots of control.

Edit: I've never rest-spammed in the Infinity Engine games, or web/cloudkill spammed, or any bullshit like that. I get no satisfaction from such things.

You TURNED AROUND and showed your back to an enemy. That qualifies as the very definition of dropping your defenses. Whether it's because you wanted to walk or run away from that enemy or whatever, you wanted to move away from an enemy that is trying to kill you. That puts you at risk. There are talents and abilities that can reduce or eliminate that risk.

The character model turned around in the game, which is merely an abstraction. I don't think it's a good idea to try and use realism to explain that turning around in battle should net a penalty when the game uses fucking cooldowns between attacks (often seconds long) and invisible, instant, automatic attacks against units that even think about moving that can occur on the same frame as them either making an attack against that unit, or even a different unit if they have multiple engagements. Is that realistic? Not in the slightest.

I meant NWN. I got confused because I was thinking in my head how there were plenty of other weird and crappy mechanics in IE games, like shooting point black into an axe-weilding mob who is in your face, without penalty and how in NWN, they used 3.0 which caused a penalty for that. IWD2 used 3rd edition, there weren't AoOs in that game? It has been a while.

Yeah, I thought so. You've gotten the two mixed up before. No, IWD2 did not include AoOs (thankfully). By the way in the IE games you did get a penalty for shooting in melee in at least IWD2, if not the AD&D games as well. And also - there's no point blank shooting penalty in Pillars of Eternity and I don't see you complaining about it.

No, but that was in the IE games and it was dumb.

See above.

only if they aren't already engaged. that just makes sense. why is that problem?

Sure, it makes sense for the system because it would be terrible without it. It's still an aggro mechanic though that overrides your player issued commands - I hate (systemic) things that do that.

So we kind of agree at least on this point that there are reasons to move.

You move when you have to. I like to move when I want to. There's a big difference.

There was PLENTY of screwy mechanics in the IE combat. Pathfinding was NOT good, it was at BEST merely ok. At the worst, it was a trainwreck.

In combat pathfinding in the IE games with 40K search nodes is better than Pillars of Eternity's pathfinding. There are still several quite bad pathfinding bugs atm. Pillars of Eternity has better overland pathfinding.

Ranged combat was not handled well.
Melee had its own issues for me it was mainly the fake attacks and the lack of locking down an enemy.

Fake attacks was only in Baldur's Gate 1 & 2. IWD didn't have them. There's a mod called ToBEX which removes them from BG2, btw. Locking down an enemy wasn't an issue IMO, just gotta use movement and positioning to qualify for target re-acquisition.

I admit it has been a while since I have played them and I am not relentlessly replaying them over and over again learning every last detail till it is second nature. I don't because I don't think combat in IE games was that good. Yeah, there were satisfying moments, but there were far more frustrating moments.

I do think sometimes that you can learn something so well that you can no longer see the faults in it because you have adapted to the point where you handle the faults on a subconscious level.

IMO, the Infinity Engine games have the best real-time with pause combat. You obviously like Pillars of Eternity more, fine. Are there any other RTwP games that you felt did it better too though? Personally I think that the main strength of Pillars of Eternity is the character building options. Attributes still need another re-work, but the ability and talent system is very good and the freedom to use different types of items and how those are handled work well as well. Actually using things like modals and active abilities fairly often is pretty fun and more involving than the IE games, and stuff like Foe only AoE and stuff like that is cool and can be used tactically. But the 'general' feel of the combat is still quite messy IMO, and the movement-based tactics just aren't there.