Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

Infinitron gets answers: http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/

melnorme asked: You're against "no brainer" RPG activities like prebuffing, etc. But doesn't an overly punitive engagement mechanic make tactical positioning a "no brainer" by ensuring that the absolutely correct tactic is to never disengage from melee? Shouldn't disengaging from melee be a viable option that players can be expected to choose at least, say, 33% of the time?

That’s not always the absolutely correct tactic. Even in our internal play week people voluntarily broke Engagement a lot. Characters with high Deflection voluntarily broke Engagement, especially if they had taken Graceful Retreat specifically for that purpose. If they didn’t have the Deflection to do it, they would use abilities on their engaging foes specifically to remove the Engagement effect. Stun, Prone, Paralyzed, and several other afflictions cancel any Engagements held by the targeted character.

As with many other aspects of the game, there are elements of Engagement that don’t work well. Communication of the Engagement state is overly noisy (that’s been addressed in our local build). Extended Engagement distances result in chain Disengagement attacks (not intended and we’re talking about how it should be handled). If, after addressing those issues, Disengagement attacks still feel too powerful, adjusting the practical effects of the attack is pretty simple.

melnorme asked: Idea: Cut down on UI effects visual clutter in Pillars of Eternity (such as melee engagement indicators) by optionally displaying only information pertaining to the currently selected character. Select them all to see everything, select nobody to get a panoramic clutterless view of the battle.

In the next BB update, you should see cleaner Engagement indicators. Engagement is primarily displayed on the selection circle itself in a clear but low-key way. The Engagement arrows (showing who is Engaging whom) are only shown when a specific character is being hovered on or when the game is paused.

 

[Sensuki]

Stating that extended engagement range is the cause of the problems is a bit of an oversight, especially considering my Barbarian and Rogue examples.

They show all engagement arrows when paused? who makes these ui design decisions

 

[tuluse]

Oh great we're going to get Paradox style "maps" of information now. I can't wait to cycle through 16 different visual states.

 

[Seari]

They are truly clueless.

 

[Infinitron]

They show all engagement arrows when paused? who makes these ui design decisions

Uh, it's not an illogical decision? It's assumed that you want to see all the information towards making a decision when you pause the game, because that's when you're giving the most complex orders.

But if you pause a LOT then maybe you want the game to look uncluttered and pristine even when you're paused - perhaps this could be configurable.

 

[Athelas]

I don't think I've ever seen a disengagement attack miss. Has anyone?

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah I have, but it's very rare.

Uh, it's not an illogical decision? It's assumed that you want to see all the information towards making a decision when you pause the game, because that's when you're giving the most complex orders.

But if you pause a LOT then maybe you want the game to look uncluttered and pristine even when you're paused - perhaps this could be configurable.

Just another thing that I have to cut from the game code on release, lucky we're saving every single .dll file.

 

[Infinitron]

Uh, it's not an illogical decision? It's assumed that you want to see all the information towards making a decision when you pause the game, because that's when you're giving the most complex orders.

But if you pause a LOT then maybe you want the game to look uncluttered and pristine even when you're paused - perhaps this could be configurable.

Just another thing that I have to cut from the game code on release, lucky we're saving every single .dll file.

I don't get it, though. You DON'T want all the information on screen at once? Isn't that how the IE games worked? You didn't have to click on or mouse over individual characters to see anything other than the little scroll describing their health.

Also, I interpret from your response that this is actually the way the game works right now, so my question to Josh must have come across as a bit weird.

 

[Sensuki]

Engagement arrows used to be always shown in combat. I and others repeatedly asked for them to be at least changed to only when characters are selected or moused over, someone on their internal team probably qq'd because they couldn't be fucked mousing over so they made everything show on pause again (not in currently, but it will be in the next build).

FUCK_OFF

I don't need 40 fucking Engagement arrows on the screen amidst Spell FX and other shit when it's already hard enough to tell what's going on.

And yeah I micro pause very often.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, that explains why I didn't notice the arrows existed at first.

 

[GrimEx]

If anything there should be more games with RTwP system, to me it is superior to TB. If I remember correctly FTL was RTwP and the game is loved worldwide.

 

[Hormalakh]

melnorme asked: You're against "no brainer" RPG activities like prebuffing, etc. But doesn't an overly punitive engagement mechanic make tactical positioning a "no brainer" by ensuring that the absolutely correct tactic is to never disengage from melee? Shouldn't disengaging from melee be a viable option that players can be expected to choose at least, say, 33% of the time?

That’s not always the absolutely correct tactic. Even in our internal play week people voluntarily broke Engagement a lot. Characters with high Deflection voluntarily broke Engagement, especially if they had taken Graceful Retreat specifically for that purpose. If they didn’t have the Deflection to do it, they would use abilities on their engaging foes specifically to remove the Engagement effect. Stun, Prone, Paralyzed, and several other afflictions cancel any Engagements held by the targeted character.

Why would a character with a high deflection have to break engagement?! They should be winning the accy-defl race and getting hits without getting hit. What are they doing? Breaking engagement and "kiting" the players? How exactly does that help solve the broken mechanic in the first place?

What I'm not hearing is: "this mechanic really stopped players from trying to kite the AI" -OR- "we felt that the mechanic really helped make melee characters have strong zone control." Instead, I'm hearing all about how people were trying to avoid the mechanic in the first place.

As with many other aspects of the game, there are elements of Engagement that don’t work well. Communication of the Engagement state is overly noisy (that’s been addressed in our local build). Extended Engagement distances result in chain Disengagement attacks (not intended and we’re talking about how it should be handled). If, after addressing those issues, Disengagement attacks still feel too powerful, adjusting the practical effects of the attack is pretty simple.

So in other words: if it's broken, we'll try fixing it. If it's still broken, we won't make it a huge deal. But fuck if they're going to drop the shit mechanic.

 

[Arkeus]

Why would a character with a high deflection have to break engagement?! They should be winning the accy-defl race and getting hits without getting hit. What are they doing? Breaking engagement and "kiting" the players? How exactly does that help solve the broken mechanic in the first place?

If your high-deflection char is being engaged while enemy DPS are attacking your wizards/clerics, you want to run and protect those.

And that's a half-second "scenario". Do try and actually think about what he is saying instead of being edgy.

So in other words: if it's broken, we'll try fixing it. If it's still broken, we won't make it a huge deal. But fuck if they're going to drop the shit mechanic.

Maybe they don't think it's a broken mechanic.

 

[Sensuki]

Why would enemy DPS be attacking your wizard/cleric? If that enemy DPS was melee, they'd have been snagged by the engagement slots of your melee characters, and if not, they'd be targeting them because they are closer.

Nothing targets your Wizard or cleric unless you're a dumb idiot and have them at the front of the party, or your frontline is dead.

 

[Shevek]

Ranged enemies in last dungeon regularly target squishies in your party despite melee being out in front.

 

[Athelas]

Yeah, the enemy A.I. (including melee enemies) frequently targets party members in the back now, since the latest update.

The engagement system is still terrible though.

 

[Sensuki]

Nah you can manipulate it so they don't. If the enemy cannot see your backline when combat is initiated they will never target them unless a certain condition is met. Shevek often pulls enemies to his party, and that is a way to make sure that all enemies target your frontline.

If you initiate combat with a backline character (such as Rogue with Arbalest) that will trigger targeting from a ranged enemy.

 

[Sensuki]

Some DotA style micro abuse with Cautious attack, fuck it up with the first few attacks though



lol

Would be much better with 2H weapons though.

 

[The Fish]

Where does this obsession with ugly floating icons come from? Wasteland 2 had those hideous massive globes at the edge of every area even though a small visual change to the cursor when hovering over the area edge would have sufficed.

Can developers not appreciate the elegance in having mechanics good enough to remove the need of indicators? for example God Hand's complete lack of nasty floating arrows and foot rings. Or subtle indicators like infinity engine characters changing stance once given an action to perform with the game paused. Wasn't it the case that they neglected having that small change in stance in an early build of Pillars of Eternity before Sensuki pointed it out or am I misremembering?

 

[Bester]

Out of all the floating stuff, the most annoying I find are the floating portraits for off-screen characters. You can turn them off in the options, but that's a little drastic. I want IE style minimalistic arrows.

 

[Athelas]

The mini-portraits look much better than those arrows (which were far more obtrusive). Not that I care since I always turn all that stuff off.

 

[Sensuki]

They should only appear when you mouse over the character portrait like in the IE games. They don't need to be shown on the screen at all times.

 

[Shevek]

Nah you can manipulate it so they don't. If the enemy cannot see your backline when combat is initiated they will never target them unless a certain condition is met. Shevek often pulls enemies to his party, and that is a way to make sure that all enemies target your frontline.

If you initiate combat with a backline character (such as Rogue with Arbalest) that will trigger targeting from a ranged enemy.

That is not true of all enemies since the last patch. I am telling you the ghosts in the last dungeon target my back line even if they enter combat after I send in melee.

Edit: Also, though pulling still works, I have been shifting strategies a bit since AI has gotten a bit better and enemies are switching targets a bit. You can still pull ok but you can also do ok with no "main tank" and just send in a squad (eventually using guardian stance). That makes combat run a bit smoother. I do have to heal a bit more but now that Paladin and Priest get per encounter healing, its no biggie.

 

[Seari]

So they just instagib themselves on disengagement attacks?

 

[Shevek]

They use ranged attacks.