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

[Roguey]

Soft counters are more fun than hard counters.

 

[Irenaeus]

Ok.

 

[Ninjerk]

What makes a hard counter desirable?

 

[Arkeus]

What makes a hard counter desirable?

Coming back after we were killed and stomping on the one trick pony.

 

[Ninjerk]

That seems kind of flimsy...

 

[Cynic]

I preferred the vaporware tag for lolz

 

[Zetor]

BG2 was pretty bad when it came to hard counters, too. Try doing the beholder lair in the Underdark with and without a cloak of mirroring or shield of balduran -- or the mindflayer lair with and without potions of clarity / chaotic commands.

 

[Shadenuat]

What makes a hard counter desirable?

You must always take one into consideration, change your tactics, it takes your resources. Soft counters are just a light spanking to the player, which can be avoided by simple luck or perseverance. If you throw yourself enough times at something in modern games, it usually dies, even if you don't understand why that happens. In Infinity games, you can throw yourself a dozen of times at something, but until you wake up and start adapting, you'll die every time.

Try doing the beholder lair in the Underdark with and without a cloak of mirroring or shield of balduran -- or the mindflayer lair with and without potions of clarity / chaotic commands.

Everyone did beholders without shield of balduran, because shield of balduran only came with specific release (cheesy Deirdre, she should never been in the game, bleh). And neither potions nor chaotic commands are necessary against mind flayers. Saying that chaotic commands are hard counter against those is like saying that protection from fire is a hard counter for red dragon.

 

[Infinitron]

Shadenuat In a game where resource degradation is a real problem, light spankings gradually add up and become one big spanking. See for instance System Shock 2, where each individual fight is fairly easy, but the game as a whole is a constant struggle for survival.

 

[Ninjerk]

What makes a hard counter desirable?

You must always take one into consideration, change your tactics, it takes your resources. Soft counters are just a light spanking to the player, which can be avoided by simple luck or perseverance. If you throw yourself enough times at something in modern games, it usually dies, even if you don't understand why that happens. In Infinity games, you can throw yourself a dozen of times at something, but until you wake up and start adapting, you'll die every time.

It seems to me it's a thoughtless change to one, arbitrary tactic rather than changing "tactics." When things are arbitrary it removes the possibility of intelligent play. What say you?

 

[Space Satan]

Yeah, fighting mages when you are stuffed with globes of invulnerability, spell protection, invisibility, Missile protection adn stuff was such fun. And if they had all that in sequence too, youl had great time waiting for n+1 minutes until all that spells expire. And the funniest thing - even Breach, Greater Breach, remove magic and other protection removers could not counter some combinations.

 

[Shadenuat]

System Shock 2 is a game in secured environment, you are not free to get to a tavern and recover all your HP's. With such freedom soft counters would never pile up, unless you lock party in a dungeon with a scripted event.

What say you?

I would say I am confused.

 

[Infinitron]

I do believe PE is being designed in such a way that soft counters will pile up. That's what the crusade against "rest spam" is all about - forcing players to deal with a long term strategic context.

 

[RK47]

Soft counters are just a light spanking to the player,

Sorry. You guys are just too driven by PVE to understand that soft counters are more fun and interesting.
I dislike hard counters in competitive games cause it creates such a rigid counter-meta game. Scissor Paper Stones.

Just look at Blood Bowl, there is no hard counter or save/reload to fall back to. You only get one shot at this. You fuck this up, you risk a turn over or the guy just walking to the end zone to score one over you. You can build a player to counter certain builds or plays, but none of them will shut it down 100% of the time. They might even not make a difference if they get taken out early on or out-distanced by a quicker player willing to take risks.

Light spanking isn't what I'd describe soft-counters in Blood Bowl.

 

[Logic_error]

Encounters as puzzles. I like that.

 

[Zetor]

Try doing the beholder lair in the Underdark with and without a cloak of mirroring or shield of balduran -- or the mindflayer lair with and without potions of clarity / chaotic commands.

Everyone did beholders without shield of balduran, because shield of balduran only came with specific release (cheesy Deirdre, she should never been in the game, bleh). And neither potions nor chaotic commands are necessary against mind flayers. Saying that chaotic commands are hard counter against those is like saying that protection from fire is a hard counter for red dragon.

Actually a lot of people did beholders with shield of balduran, since the bonus merchants were everywhere on the interwebs about 1 month after the game's release. The cloak of mirroring was also available before underdark, and made gauths completely ignorable instead of the high-damage menace they normally were (I don't remember if it worked on the 'save or die' type beams or not).

Anyway, my point is that gimmicky enemies that are extremely lethal if you don't have the "right" items or spells, but become trivial if you have them (beholders vs spell turning and beam reflection, or mindflayers vs greenstone amulet / brine potions / potions of clarity / chaotic commands on frontliners) aren't really fun.

Give me an enemy adventurer party that actually does more things than spam 10 save-or-die abilities per round at me any day.

 

[Shadenuat]

Gauths, a high damage menace
Everything becomes trivial after you finished the game a few times.
And now, let's be fair to cute little flying balls. By their nature, they are not a badly designed monsters. They are supposed to be that cosmical horror and an ultimate challenge. And they are not just gimmicky one-dimensional enemies - they are powerful and intelligent spellcasters to the boot, not just flying laser turrets. However, they were designed for a turn based game, there are rules for how many rays they can shoot and how players can destroy the eyestalks and such. In that type of controlled battlefield, save-or-something effects do not pile up into a ball of chaos which RtWP can be.
Still I am all for save-or-something effects even in RtWP and hard counters to spells. I imagine some sort of sawyeristic dreamland, where if someone casts a hold person on party a few of guys start moving 25% slower, while trying to dodge a basilisk with a ray attack who plays an obnoxious animation to show you that now he's attack will do 200% more damage and stun you for 3 seconds unless you dodge it. Terrifying shit

 

[Kem0sabe]

Only goes to show how everything is better with turned based combat, RTwP needs to die in regard to crpg's.

 

[Ninjerk]

I would say I am confused.

What is the point of presenting the player with a choice between one good alternative and a much greater alternative of 100% wrong-and-you-will-die alternatives as opposed to one good alternative and and one bad alternative that still allows the player to react to one of his choices being less effective?

EDIT: I just now read your last post and that reads like a great encounter as opposed to running up on an encounter, not having the right spell memorized so you lose. At least that's what I'm thinking of when we say hard counters.

 

[Shadenuat]

You exaggerate "one spell you loose" part greatly.

 

[Logic_error]

The encounter puzzle need not have a single solution. And there needs to be proper foreshadowing (the stone statues in front of a medusa lair as a crude example).

 

[DraQ]

Hmmm. Sounds a lot like Skyrim actually.

Funny you mention that because Skyrim makes a pretty good case for being able to use shit you aren't specialized in - you can get disarmed, enemy melee attackers not infrequently decide to grab their fallen comrade's ranged weapon when they have no chance of reaching you directly, despite not being good with it and so on.
Unless you have a readily useful natural weapon you may have a perfectly good reason to pick something you are not good with at some point.

Another funny thing about Skyrim is that it involves pretty decent system naturally limiting swinging and casting - you need hands to cast spells. Some can be cast with one hand, some require both.

Ability to do so also removes artificial contrivances from the picture when building quests and plot.
Want to put on faction's armour to impersonate someone or maybe a suit of armour that has been built enchanted specifically to allow survival in some sort death-zone no spells cast readily in the field can shield you from, or maybe need a hammer made and enchanted by long extinct mysterious race to whack the heart of dead god and a matching armoured gauntlet to be able to hold this hammer without your eyes boiling out of your skull?

Nigga, pls. You're a mage, you can't use heavy armour or warhammers because your class restrictions say so.

Problem?

Do note that two out of three examples above appeared in Morrowind, one as obligatory plot point too.

Why? Because a mage can do more damage with great sword, that he can hardly lift, than with a dagger? That would mean that the game doesn't need any daggers at all then, because bigger is always better under any circumstance.

You're retarded, seek help.

Even in degenerate damage centric systems there is far more to weapon selection than just damage - you have speed, reach, encumbrance, bonuses and maluses from ease of use, additional effects such as different knockdown chance or different damage types and their modifiers.

Still, I get where you are coming from, but a scrawny little motherfucker like a mage does not carry a great sword and full plate mail around with him "just in case he needs it".

Full plate and GS are pretty fucking heavy. Such mage will have problems carrying other things he will needs unless endowed with high STR, but this demands sacrifices to be made when building this character.
GS makes for a pretty bad last resort weapon too, because it's harder to draw quickly and when something is in your face it's already too close for GS. In general good system should encourage almost all characters to carry daggers as backup weapons.

It's not "ARBITRARY RULES!!!", it's simply that they dedicate their time to studying and practicing magic, which is physically and mentally exhausting. Or is it?

But still find time to clear dungeons and mountains, or travel on foot through forests... but no he can't lift a sword and "stick them with the pointy end"

I dare say that there's more to swordfighting than lifting it and sticking the enemy with the pointy end, but I'm an amateur in the field.

It is sticking the enemy with the pointy end that does said enemy in, though, and even a complete amateur can do that.
Trickier parts generally involve avoiding enemy doing it to you and bypassing enemy defense, but we aren't talking about mages participating in clean 1-on-1 sword duels with warriors. We are talking about mages picking up a melee weapon and sticking it where it counts or when they are desperate enough.

In general no generic, human produced weapon or armour should have hard stats requirements either, meaning it should be technically usable by anyone.
But then, there is also stamina. Anyone can put on a suit of armour and walk around in it, or pick up a heavy weapon and swing it a few times. The problem is when you have to keep that up for prolonged periods of time.

Of course, heavier weapons should have maluses depending on strength, something like flail should give you ample opportunity to crit yourself if you try to use it without skill. Speqaking of maluses - speed of an attack and attack rate are fucking important, especially if you can interrupt enemy actions with successful attacks.


Also, I'm longing for combative mages who aren't frail dudes in bathrobes going against hail of arrows and shit.

Assuming that mages are relatively rare and powerful, they are very obvious targets. This means that if you're an adventuring mage, you either:
-avoid direct confrontations as much as you can, especially if they are actual battles with lots of people fighting
-put on the heaviest armour you can carry, preferably boosting it with magical defenses because you can be sure as fuck that every enemy with ranged attack will do their best to hit the guy who mutters and waves his hands around
-are very, very dead

Main archetypes in such game would look as follows:
-bathrobe mage - frail scholar dude, may or may not be a viable adventurer, but is generally not a viable combatant, will use diplomacy guile and trickery as often as possible to avoid being face to face with someone with nasty piece of steel
-battle mage - less frail scholar dude, wears heavy armour to be viable in combat, is much less mobile than warriors due to having to sink a lot of his potential into developing his intellectual and magic skills and not being in shape to run around in plate armour, poor stamina, sucks at melee.
-warrior - armoured dude, heavy hitting, durable and mobile
-archer - less armoured dude, good at fighting at distance
-thief - sucks at combat, good at stealth and subterfuge.
-monk - extremely mobile, but depending on being as unencumbered as possible. May be lethal in low numbers encounters and against slow, but heavy hitting monsters. Gets murdered if there are more arrows in the air than he can deflect or weave between.
-assassin - like thief, except less diverse skillset and good at stabbing or sniping someone unsuspecting then getting the fuck out.

 

[Infinitron]

In Project Eternity, a mage wearing heavy armor will cast spells at a lower speed than a mage wearing lighter armor.

 

[Logic_error]

So it is confirmed that the game is NOT round based like in IE/NWN1/2?

 

[Sensuki]

From the first day of the Kickstarter The game uses real time br0