Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Jaesun]

That's a FPS.

 

[Hobz]

DA:O also has tanks and aggro. It's basicly MMO combat where you can pause and control more than one char. The likelyhood of Sawyer going that way is pretty low...

 

[The Bishop]

DA:O's combat is boring, but other than both of them not being round-based like D&D, PE's combat is really nothing like it. It really isn't.

Damnit, you're already in the alpha?!

No, but from what I've read, I can list any number of differences.

DA:O has OP mages. PE will be more balanced.

DA:O has cooldowns. PE has per-encounter abilities and per-rest abilities.

DA:O has mana. PE has spell preparation.

DA:O has infinite health regeneration and powerful healing spells. PE has limited health buttressed by stamina regeneration, with tightly limited rest areas and no healing.

DA:O has hordes of identikit mobs. PE will have a diverse bestiary of unique monsters.

The key difference IMO is that DA:O had pretty much no positioning and replaced it with MMO style aggro mechanics. And what we heard from Obsidian so far indicates very strongly that positioning, movement restriction, and flanking is going to be key in PE.

 

[Duraframe300]

Obsidian had designed their own combat system from scratch before?

Yeah, Alpha Protocol.

Alpha Protocol had stuff mandated and was mainly copying (worse) what came before it. Not to mention was the first experience for the designers in terms of tps.

 

[Infinitron]

The key difference IMO is that DA:O had pretty much no positioning

Not entirely true, you got bonuses for attacking enemies from behind.

 

[Rake]

The key difference IMO is that DA:O had pretty much no positioning

Not entirely true, you got bonuses for attacking enemies from behind.

Irrelevant when the combat is so easy

 

[The Bishop]

The key difference IMO is that DA:O had pretty much no positioning

Not entirely true, you got bonuses for attacking enemies from behind.

AFAIK it only applied to rogues and caused targets to turn towards the attacker almost immediately, so you could only maybe land a couple of hits.

Although yes, you could use positioning to your advantage in DA:O. My favorite method was to summon a bear, jam it in a doorway with forcefield, and then proceed to shell the enemy on the other side.

Other than that there was pretty much no way to stop mobs from getting to your squishies, which is kind of the whole purpose behind positioning in the first place.

 

[Gozma]

Obsidian had designed their own combat system from scratch before?

Scratch is a funny way to spell 4E

 

[Excidium]

Obsidian had designed their own combat system from scratch before?

Scratch is a funny way to spell League of Legends

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

Laying traps could get very cheesy in BG2. No big loss IMO.

yeah, sure, time stop, improved allacrity, chain contingency, simalcrum and 3 spell sequenced abidalzim's horrid wiltings are peachy keen but when a rogue gets more than one shitty attacky per round with no strength bonus mind you it suddenly gets "very cheesy"...

 

[Jaesun]

Laying traps could get very cheesy in BG2. No big loss IMO.

yeah, sure, time stop, improved allacrity, chain contingency, simalcrum and 3 spell sequenced abidalzim's horrid wiltings are peachy keen but when a rogue gets more than one shitty attacky per round with no strength bonus mind you it suddenly gets "very cheesy"...

What cRPG did rogues right then?

 

[Rake]

Laying traps could get very cheesy in BG2. No big loss IMO.

yeah, sure, time stop, improved allacrity, chain contingency, simalcrum and 3 spell sequenced abidalzim's horrid wiltings are peachy keen but when a rogue gets more than one shitty attacky per round with no strength bonus mind you it suddenly gets "very cheesy"...

A thiefthat can solo Demogorgon without taking a hit IS cheesy

 

[Roguey]

What it'll actually be:

Dragon Age 1's combat.

Nah, I doubt there'll be encounter-wrecking op abilities here.

Also Josh wants to have combat encounters where enemies have different resistances which automagically makes it more interesting.

AFAIK it only applied to rogues and caused targets to turn towards the attacker almost immediately, so you could only maybe land a couple of hits.

Warriors receive flanking bonuses (a bonus to attack rating and critical chance), rogues also receive backstab damage. Mages usually wouldn't receive much benefit since staves always hit. Enemies only target them immediately if they do enough damage to outrank the warrior on the threat table.

Other than that there was pretty much no way to stop mobs from getting to your squishies, which is kind of the whole purpose behind positioning in the first place.

Positioning was important when it came to distance-based threat which doesn't decay. Plus not getting caught in aoe spells.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Positioning, outside of getting hit by aoe spells, was completely irrelevant in DA:O. It didn't matter if your tank was blocking a doorway - if your casters stole aggro, the mobs would magically sliiiiiiide through to attack them. The flank bonus was far too small to matter. Aside from couple of the boss fights that were directly stolen from WoW, DA:O had zero interesting fights and that's not just due to shitty encounter design but also due to shitty mechanics.

If PE combat even resembles DA:O combat, it will be shit. Luckily, Infitron has all the answers, so this does not seem to be the case.

 

[Delterius]

Positioning, outside of getting hit by aoe spells, was completely irrelevant in DA:O.

Positioning is irrelevant in DA2, where waves are the norm and friendly fire is limited to HP bloat/random elemental immunities difficulty mode.

In DA:O, as with in the IE games, AoEs are a primary concern for positioning. The mana/cooldown spellcasting system makes it a constant concern, since mages here are spammy. That's not even including bombs and traps, which are also dirt cheap in the game. Furthermore, while the flanking bonus was barely noticeable, Rogue backstabbing was the difference between a string of critical strikes or shitty damage.

This is, of course, without counting the party's formation so that characters can easily support each other. Though I rarely needed to keep track of it since environments were so small.

While Bottlenecks were downplayed, you could often block doors with two characters. Sometimes one, especially if you are using the golem.

 

[GarfunkeL]

What sort of DA:O you played? Because you definitely didn't play the game I did. Where can I obtain this magical version of DA:O where bombs and traps matter, where enemy mages spam spells, rogue backstabbing is a common threat and bottlenecks can be utilized? Perhaps it's the same magical version where the plot is well written, the AI is smart, the characters believable and relatable, the sex scenes steamy and character progression exciting. I've only heard of this mystical version existing in the minds of Bioware Social regulars but please, kind sir, reveal this RPG Ark of the Covenant to the unworthy masses.

 

[Infinitron]

What sort of DA:O you played? Because you definitely didn't play the game I did. Where can I obtain this magical version of DA:O where bombs and traps matter, where enemy mages spam spells, rogue backstabbing is a common threat and bottlenecks can be utilized?

Hard difficulty?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Yeah, I played on Hard.

 

[Jvegi]

I can fathom how anyone would want to make those 4 hour corridor runs even longer by having to mess with all this shit. Combat in DA:O was awful because there was so much of it, without any variety. The system itself was ok, but it was wasted.

 

[Roguey]

Bombs and traps are never essential, but enemy mages do cast their best spells quicker and more often on hard/nightmare and letting any character get flanked for an extended period of time is going to drain health fast. Any bottleneck is nice to have whenever you're facing an encounter with a lot of archers (cause of line of sight).

 

[Delterius]

Oh no, DA:O isn't a godsend by any means.

Bombs and traps don't matter outside of the hardest (often bloated) encounters. Enemy mages won't spam spells because the spellbook is insanely unbalanced (and the more useful spells would probably one shot you, as they one shot the enemies). Rogue backstabbing isn't a threat because the AI isn't smart enough to use it (unless there are 8 rogues attacking a single character, so they'll eventually strafe towards his back, but most enemy rogues are scattershot spamming archers anyway). Their world building forgot to make the actual setting of the game interesting, so the plot is as generic as it can be. Bottlenecking is, as I said, severely downplayed by the RTwP implementation (though that was certainly part of the 'spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate thing' ). And yes, by now you should have realized that I don't actually think the AI is very smart. Neither is there enough of a bestiary to make up for the poor AI and at least try to make encounters interesting. Let's not even speak of the sex scenes.

Nonetheless, these are all things that you can and most likely will do yourself. Players probably used AoE spells every second (per mage), they probably used backstabbing rogues as well. Some might even have arsed themselves to use bombs. And bottleknecks could often be used, as I did, with two characters blocking the wider doors. So I don't think anyone gets to say 'aside from something that is a constant in every single of those filler encounters, I do think positioning is useless'. That'd be one the same level of Biosocial, just the opposite of it. The game you're looking for is DA2.

Bombs and traps are never essential, but enemy mages do cast their best spells quicker and more often on hard/nightmare and letting any character get flanked for an extended period of time is going to drain health fast. Any bottleneck is nice to have whenever you're facing an encounter with a lot of archers (cause of line of sight).

In my experience, it feels like the more powerful spells are actually 'unlocked' from the enemy mages' spell tables. That they still cast more or less randomly, just that they might use that fireball spell now that you aren't playing on normal/hard anymore.

 

[Brayko]

LOL Dragon Age.

There's only 2 Bioware games worth anything, and I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to know which ones.

 

[Roguey]

In my experience, it feels like the more powerful spells are actually 'unlocked' from the enemy mages' spell tables. That they still cast more or less randomly, just that they might use that fireball spell now that you aren't playing on normal/hard anymore.

In the Deep Roads, every mage I came across was consistent in opening each fight with a crushing prison unless I immediately disabled them.

 

[Delterius]

In my experience, it feels like the more powerful spells are actually 'unlocked' from the enemy mages' spell tables. That they still cast more or less randomly, just that they might use that fireball spell now that you aren't playing on normal/hard anymore.

In the Deep Roads, every mage I came across was consistent in opening each fight with a crushing prison unless I immediately disabled them.

Well, by then I'm/the first guy into the breach is probably mostly immune to enemy magic. But, curiously, the only consistent mage I remember was from the Deep Roads as well, the only one in the game who casts Curse of Mortality. It always hits and I don't think resistance matters with it.

 

[The Bishop]

While Bottlenecks were downplayed, you could often block doors with two characters. Sometimes one, especially if you are using the golem.

You couldn't really block them per say. While mobs would very likely attack the character they are closest to (which is the one you put in doorway), the only reason they wouldn't attack others was aggro mechanic. If a mob happened to target a character behind the one "blocking" his way, he'd just slide through and be on his way. A sufficiently fat character (like a summoned bear) in conjunction with forcefield spell could become a real physical obstacle in the enemy's way, but unless you want to resort to such cheesy tactics it was aggro all the way. And escaping AOE effects sounds more like kiting than actual positioning.