I dont see how you are figuring what the right and wrong ways to play are in these games. Its fairly arbitrary as far as I can tell.
I don't believe I ever used the word right or wrong. (Quote me?). What I did say is that there are people (yourself included) that complain about the IE combat being boring/too easy/etc etc when you admittedly cheesed them.
Fuckwits like IHaveASmallDick here fail to see that there is a large difference in the gameplay outcomes between rest-spamming in the IE games ... and whatever it is that I do when I play Pillars of Eternity (playing normally I guess?)
Rest spamming in the IE games *removes* the strategical gameplay considerations from the game. Health isn't really a problem due to the abundance of healing resources in the game (there are so many potions) but people are probably too lazy to click an icon three times to heal and instead use the rest button ... which also replenishes all of their per-day resources - spells, item uses and whatnot. Things that do have a *big* impact on the difficulty of encounters.
Rest-spamming combined with pre-buffing is the worst because not only are you removing the strategical gameplay considerations, you are also removing tactical reactivity from the game by protecting yourself through the roof against all of the attacks from creatures in the encounter. I have absolutely nothing against pre-buffing, and I think it is a great mechanic when combined with strategical resource management. However rest-spamming takes that away and makes it possible for you to become nigh immune to everything every encounter, which takes the fun out of the game and makes it boil down to select all + left click and virtually no other player input during the encounter.
Perhaps you guys don't find on the spot thinking fun? I'm not sure.
---
Now, what is it that you guys are complaining about, apparently I 'run around in circles' or something in combat. Well, I've got over one hundred videos on my youtube channel of Pillars of Eternity and Icewind Dale. Aside from the Kiting Demonstration videos that I made to try and prove that Engagement was a pointless mechanic, do you actually see me running around in circles in my videos? I doubt it. You only talk about it because it's basically the only ammunition that you have against my argument, and even then it's not even a very good one. Pretty much anyone that plays will make unit movements based on enemy actions. Vampire is coming at Aerie, she's already been level drained and she's the one with the Restoration spells which she'll lose if the vampire hits her - what do you do? You make Aerie run! You intercede with Minsc or something and put her out of the way so she doesn't get level drained. Everyone with half a brain makes decisions and performs actions like that without even really thinking about it - it is instinctual. However, I am also a DotA player and in DotA you have to meticulously manage the aggro of your character so that you don't take too much damage from creeps, and that has taught me to always be actively thinking about unit targeting in games.
Most of the work regarding unit targeting in Pillars of Eternity is done with pre-positioning which is made very easy through the Stealth mechanic and the fact that you have an absolute bullshit line of sight while in stealth, so you can perfectly position your party members before you enter an encounter (which you couldn't do in the Infinity Engine games to a hostile encounter ... at least for the whole party unless they all had Stealth or Invisibility, which is both meticulous and in some cases has resource costs). You can see what units are in the encounter pretty easily even with Stealth level 0 and set up your party so that your desired tanking units are the closest to the encounter. Now ... where exactly is the cheesing here? Is this opting out of strategical or tactical gameplay? No, it's not.
The big difference for me here between the Infinity Engine games and Pillars of Eternity is that strategical positioning is not really required for most encounters in the Infinity Engine games because you generally make tactical movement adjustments in combat to react to what enemies do. Unfortunately because of the Engagement system and the movement recovery slow - this becomes pointless/a worse decision than getting it right during 'strat time'. This is part of what I mean when I say that Infinity Engine combat is tactical and Pillars of Eternity's combat is strategical - because in Pillars of Eternity, the game is won or lost during the encounter setup, getting into position and picking the right opening abilities. The start of Infinity Engine combat barely matters, it is won based on the decisions you make in the encounter, the reactions you make to enemy actions.
The existence of per-encounter abilities also play a part in the stacking of strategical gameplay, and largely contribute to combat becoming a set series of rote actions. Combat openings are usually opening up with a string of per-encounter abilities (sometimes dailies) which have no resource cost whatsoever. Most abilities have more than one use per encounter as well, and thus, you are virtually always opening with a per-encounter action. Each per-encounter ability requires a hotkey click or mouse click, a mouse movement to the location of the target's selection circle and a mouse click on the target. Virtually every class in the game has multiple per-encounter abilities, and most classes in the game have per-encounters that are offensive. Thus, the majority of actions you are performing in combat is selecting characters and firing off per-encounter abilities targeted at enemies. You have an overabundance of them, so there is virtually no thought (or tactical consideration) required, it just becomes a mindless activity of rote per-encounter spam. Anyone who thinks the mere existence of per-encounters and the use of them is 'tactical combat' (I'm looking at you Josh Sawyer) is kidding themselves.
In a different universe where there was a lot more cost-benefit analysis involved, then and only then, it might they be.
- and then he continued to beat the dead horse himself.
