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

[Infinitron]

That's why I said that the consequence of that approach would be that it'd be in your interest to have as few ranged characters as possible. Or don't you think that's an issue?

They wouldn't necessarily be able to pool together and share arrows under such a system. (Even so, I doubt it would be a huge deal.)

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I don't get what you're saying. Were talking about the bottomless stash right? Or do you want everybody to get their own ammo stash in some type of third inventory they can't share? Also, if you doubt it would be a big deal as even six ranged characters wouldn't run out of ammo then, again, you might as well make it infinite.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't get what you're saying. Were talking about the bottomless stash right? Or do you want everybody to get their own ammo stash in some type of third inventory they can't share? Also, if you doubt it would be a big deal as even six ranged characters wouldn't run out of ammo then, again, you might as well make it infinite.

No, I'm talking about a special per character "arrow bar" analogous to a mana bar.

And it wouldn't be a big deal because the tradeoff of having fewer ranged characters is that you have, well, fewer ranged characters. You're trading firepower for ammo.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Ah right, didn't get you then. So arrows stop being an item, not just basic ones? I can see Sawyer going for it; would make a lot of things easier to balance.

edit: nvm you said just for basic.

 

[Delterius]

Given that in the IE games you could carry hundreds of arrows with no issues of financial or carry weight nature, I remain unconvinced that common arrows even constitute inventory management of any kind. So yeah, Lol Dnd players indeed.

 

[Dorateen]

I hope ammunition is limited, and there are only three goddamn arrows in the entire dyrwood forest. Use them wisely!

 

[Rake]

I thought Sawyer said ammunition would be among the craftable items. So ammunition will propably be limited but you can craft new arrows every rest spot.

 

[April]

One thing I'd really like to have in a IE style game is the ability to switch between different scripts easily on an individual basis.

Say, I'm fighting some big bad and my wizard is on passive, the big bad gets his spell shield removed whereafter I switch the wizards script to full aggressive single target simply by pressing a button on the ability bar of the selected character.

 

[Infinitron]

I get the feeling Josh doesn't really want or anticipate people using scripts. I suspect the game is being designed with full manual control in mind.

 

[Arkeus]

I get the feeling Josh doesn't really want or anticipate people using scripts. I suspect the game is being designed with full manual control in mind.

It's been broadly hinted at yes, that scripts or AI tactics are supposed to be minimized.

 

[April]

I sincerely hope you're wrong on that point. While it's something I've learned to live with in BG, being lazy I mostly rather drag the fights out slightly then manually doing 3 clicks each to have my casters cast magic missiles at the opposition.

In the BG games it helps that auto attack fighters by far are the highest sustained damage dealers, making them very useful to clean up won encounters.

 

[Roguey]

I thought Sawyer said ammunition would be among the craftable items. So ammunition will propably be limited but you can craft new arrows every rest spot.

Special ammo. Crafting bog-standard ammo sounds pointless.

 

[Gozma]

If a game has decisions that are rote enough that they can be handled by scripts and tedious enough that you'd want to do so, something is already very wrong.

 

[April]

So, what's your solution to the fact that when half the enemy force is dead the combat turns trivial? Shared healthpool? The ninja law of inverse power? The enemy surrendering (which could be awesome, but hardly applicable in all circumstances)?

If you think of the player as something of a strategist, allowing the player to give general orders such as to unleash all single target hostile magic at the remaining enemies starting with the highest level magic wouldn't make the game any less engaging, would it? It would simply recude pointless clicking.

Or you might prefer playing competitive starcraft instead, I hear they measure skill by clicks per minute.

 

[Gozma]

If this isn't partially an inherently fun action game, as in like it's fun just to do stuff with the controls and that kind of thing like a good platformer or brawler, it's gonna be bad. Rtw/P is a crap system that has to be covered up with fun and content so you don't use it.

 

[Infinitron]

So, what's your solution to the fact that when half the enemy force is dead the combat turns trivial?

There's a reason they call it "auto-attack", you know.

And if you've been following the updates, you know that all classes in PE have auto-attacks, including mages who have an unlimited magical area effect "blast" that they can use.

If this isn't partially an inherently fun action game, as in like it's fun just to do stuff with the controls and that kind of thing like a good platformer or brawler, it's gonna be bad. Rtw/P is a crap system that has to be covered up with fun and content so you don't use it.

Uh except what April just mentioned is equally a problem in TB. In fact, it's more of a problem. Say hi to the bugbears!

 

[Gozma]

I am the guy that says all RPGs have bad combat, I am not one of the ToEE da bess crew

This is a squad tactics RPG that is about the combat

 

[Infinitron]

I am the guy that says all RPGs have bad combat

Anyway, what April says is pretty dumb. Combat becomes dull after you've already basically won? Uh yeah, that's kind of a universal problem in pretty much any game with mass combat. Ask for morale failure and critical hits on enemies with morale failure so you can mow them down quickly, I guess.

 

[Liston]

So, what's your solution to the fact that when half the enemy force is dead the combat turns trivial? Shared healthpool? The ninja law of inverse power? The enemy surrendering (which could be awesome, but hardly applicable in all circumstances)?

Introduce a resource that is spent in combat like health. Make that resource limited and expensive to replenish ie rest restrictions and little to no healing between fights. Make it challenging to move from one rest point to another and punish player for bad tactical decisions (it is likely to lose a lot of health because of just one oversight). Now although you are certain that you are going to win when half the enemy force is dead you would still want to remain as efficient as possible in order to lose little health.

If you want to play games where your input can be easily replaced with "cast offensive spells" scrip without losing efficiency you might want to check out the games that have been released in the last decade I'm sure that you will find that a lot of them are to your liking. I hear that all that matter is something called DPS.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

I get the feeling Josh doesn't really want or anticipate people using scripts. I suspect the game is being designed with full manual control in mind.

It's been broadly hinted at yes, that scripts or AI tactics are supposed to be minimized.

Good I really hated companions AI in DA:O especially when it would turn itself on after I turned it off.

 

[hiver]

Its only a problem to perfidious sycophants that shouldnt really play these kind of games at all.

Fucking lazy ass couch munching bitches on social warfare ...
What an inane complaint.

Whats even worse is devs seeing these few inane posts automatically go into damage control panic mode and then shit the game down just so these... one, two people wouldnt feel like the combat isnt fun "once you wiped out half teh enemy" bla, bla, ba blah.

That would make some minimal amount of sense - and even then it would be fucking stupid, only if you were playing a strategy game where you control an army - like in the fucking TW:R 2 , where the enemy would have similar number of combatants against you.
Then you would need to make the fucking mental adjustment of IMAGINING that wiping half of enemies for some reason means you are still at full or close to full number of personnel and that their health, mana, ammo and all other resources are just fucking great.

What the fuck are you people talking about... for fuck sake this thread...
If this was my forum i would be deleting whole pages out of shame someone might actually see it.

I am the guy that says all RPGs have bad combat, I am not one of the ToEE da bess crew

ble, ble, ble - BLE, mhe Gle BLE ... look at me.. im so hip and edgy, talking crazy shit like my ass was a electric blender without cover ...ble, ble nblehh.

I am the guy that says all RPGs have bad combat

ffs... thats worthy of a brofist? That?

Anyway, what April says is pretty dumb. Combat becomes dull after you've already basically won? Uh yeah, that's kind of a universal problem in pretty much any game with mass combat. Ask for morale failure and critical hits on enemies with morale failure so you can mow them down quickly, I guess.

Yeah sure! FFS... :facepalm:

Why dont we just dispense with all of that bullshit altogether and just mow down everything quickly so we can enjoy teh... story. and romances.
GET BACK TO FUCKING BIOWARE LAWN YOU F`ING KIDS!

 

[Shadenuat]

I hope encounters in game would be interesting enough you won't want to auto-attack through all of them, and done well enough you won't have to make six characters run after a wolf who had his morale broken so he decided to run to the opposite corner of the map.

I can't just name an RPG where combat ended when you actually won, not when you coup-de-grace'd every living being on the screen up to that child somewhere on the outskirts of the map who originally stole your Highwayman fuel cell controller.
Even if enemies surrender, usually you still need to kill every one of them for the script/cutscene to run.
While busywork would probably be solved by auto attacking, general killall design doesn't actually make sense. In P:E we have stamina instead of HP though, I wonder how that works for enemies. Would you need to coup de grace everyone after they fell in battle, or will there be options? Who knows.

 

[Arkeus]

While busywork would probably be solved by auto attacking, general killall design doesn't actually make sense. In P:E we have stamina instead of HP though, I wonder how that woks for enemies. Would you need to coup de grace everyone after they fell in battle, or will there be options? Who knows.

The stronghold has prisons where you can stuff enemies that surrendered, if you remember.

 

[Infinitron]

That's probably only for specific cases.

I'm pretty sure that for enemies, stamina effectively equals health. Maybe an enemy group with a powerful healer can "wake up" their members who have run out of stamina and fallen down, but if they all run out of stamina, they're basically dead.

 

[Shadenuat]

Isn't Josh a fan of symmetrical approach to combat and liked party o party battles the most from IE? Enemies, at least humanoids, should follow same rules for health&stamina as player characters.