Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

PoE engagement disabled in IE Mod pros and cons

Sensuki

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
9,799
Location
New North Korea
Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Why on earth would you want something like this in an Infinity Engine game anyway? It's a mechanic for people who don't enjoy IE combat, simple as that really.

P funny that it kind of nullifies the effect of Stuck and a few other afflictions too.
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
BG2 AI, I think, favors going after the squishiest characters, a behavior that becomes even more pronounced when using the SCS mod, which is even smarter about it. Since there is no taunt in AD&D there are basically three ways to deal with the problem:
  • obstruction, i.e. using terrain to keep the enemy from attacking your squishies, which is abusing shit AI because only retards and Persians would let themselves be funnled into such positions
  • kiting, which is obviously little more than the cheesiest kind of AI abuse
  • dealing with the problem via spells and other crowd control measures, which isn't always viable and very RNG dependent
Even the biggest idiot should recognize that a combat system in which your most effective tactics to control the battlefield are based on abusing the AI is not particularly good design. In Pen&Paper AD&D this wasn't as much of a problem, because the game was based around "theater of the mind" combat, where players and the dungeon master control the narrative and can do whatever the fuck they want in terms of movement and enviromental interaction - but that does not translate particularly well into isometric CRPGs, which are more akin to tabletop miniature wargames and feature larger and more complex encounters.

3rd Ed. D&D moved towards a more complex and structured simulationist combat system that heavily ecouraged the use of miniatures. Once you start using miniatures, you need proper movement rules and you need ways to bring structure into combat and give the players means to control the battlefield to some extend. That's why in 3rd Ed., AoO became a thing . 3rd Ed. D&D is a lot better suited for CRPG combat than AD&D. The problem in NWN2 was that AoO simply stopped mattering at higher levels, which is owed to the fact that high level gameplay in 3rd Ed. D&D is an horrible and irredeemably broken mess.

What PoE does with engagement is "fix" AoO so it actually works as intended. The implementation might be a bit heavy-handed, but it works reasonably well. If you get swarmed or ghosts teleport to your squishies, there are still of plenty of options in a game in which crowd control effects are ubiquitous. Just learn to deal with it. I really don't understand all the whining. I doubt Engagement would even be much of a controversial an issue if it was not for a prolific poster like Sensuki incessantly screeching about it in several forums.
 
Last edited:

hiver

Guest
Just learn to deal with it. I really don't understand all the whining

Everyone does fucking deal with it. Its not complicated, is it? Dealing with it is the fucking problem. Its bad to play with and it doesnt achieve anything except locking down fights even more, without any finesse or diversity or difference, comprende?
And it is not affected by the player (no player agency cardinal sin) except indirectly in two most crude ways. By making any kind of single step in combat, any combat with anything, and by using items and spells that are basically Sensuikis "remove disengagement" mod, only provided in increments.
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
Everyone does fucking deal with it. Its not complicated, is it? Dealing with it is the fucking problem. Its bad to play with and it doesnt achieve anything except locking down fights even more, without any finesse or diversity or difference, comprende?
Yes, comprende. You want to kite retard AI around like a munchkin and call it "tactics" and "agency". Got it.
 

Sensuki

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
9,799
Location
New North Korea
Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
You do realize that the part that deals with the AI targeting is kept in our no engagement mod. That part is not the issue, it's the disengagement attacks which make the game like fucking Tower Defense: The game.

Engagement doesn't fix kiting btw. As long as you've got ranged, and some speed you can kite any enemies around the map. Doesn't work on some enemies in some instances (e.g. - you can kite Shadows/Shades around if their first target never stops moving until they change to a new target). These vids are from an older BB patch, but it still works - it's actually worse now because enemies return to their original position once they lose sight of you in the fog of war.





This is not a turn-based game, or a D&D game, btw - just in case you haven't noticed.
 
Last edited:

hiver

Guest
Everyone does fucking deal with it. Its not complicated, is it? Dealing with it is the fucking problem. Its bad to play with and it doesnt achieve anything except locking down fights even more, without any finesse or diversity or difference, comprende?
Yes, comprende. You want to kite retard AI around like a munchkin and call it "tactics" and "agency". Got it.
No, thats what the game does and what Sensuki wants to do.

I want to make something better out of it.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/engagement-system-solution.98075/
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
You do realize that the part that deals with the AI targeting is kept in our no engagement mod. That part is not the issue, it's the disengagement attacks which make the game like fucking Tower Defense: The game.
Tower Defense? Can you turn down the fucking hyperbole a bit, for fucks sake? So a ghost teleports next to your squishy (who is probably so very squishy in the first place because you've also been constantly bullshitting about how it's not a good idea to put armor on anything but a tank), so what to do? Knock it prone or petrify it or paralyze it or pushback it and then move out of melee range. There, problem solved, especially if you have an off-tank who can then pick up engagement.

SO WHAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM HERE? You actually WANT a combat system in which you can simply turn around and walk away from a melee and attack something else with little or no repercussions? Why? Because "tactics" or "diversity" or some other kind of meaningless babble that basically translates into "I'm trying to pass off my personal preference as an objective principle of good combat design"?

Engagement doesn't fix kiting btw.
It effectively minimizes the problem to the point at which it's not a viable tactic in most, if not all, encounters. And it's not just a kiting fix, it mainly serves the same purpose the AoO-system serves in D&D, i.e. giving you a means of area/encounter control that does not rely on doorway hugging like in the IE games. There is a fucking good reason why every D&D Edition after AD&D had some sort of AoO-system going.

D&D 5E let's you take a disengagement action to get out of melee without an AoO but you're effectivly losing a turn, which is quite significant, and it does not guarantee that the opponent will not simply re-engage you next turn. Having to use an CC ability or spell in PoE is not much different: you have to put some effort into actively dealing with enemies who rape your squishies, you can't just fucking move your guys out of harms way and be done with it.

The only viable alternative I see to an AoO/Engagement system would be a threat/taunt system, which is probably the most retarded solution anyone has ever come up with because it requires you to accept the notion that an opponent would rather attack the guy in plate armor who instults his mother than the guy in a cloth robe standing in the back who is constantly unleashing all sorts of arcane horrors upon him.
 
Last edited:

Sensuki

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
9,799
Location
New North Korea
Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
I find it humorous that you use, of all examples - shades/spectres as an example to try and ridicule me when I don't have a problem fighting against shades/spectres even with engagement on. Their AI is fucking dumb, so all you have to do is make sure that you either have the characters you don't want targeted in higher freeze DR than the ones you do (Hide and Scale Armor have higher freeze DRs in the early game) or you simply plant them out of line of sight.

You're conveniently ignoring every single issue with the system - such as units being able to get a free, instant attack against any unit they are engaging as long as they have a melee weapon in their currently equipped weapon set. They can be casting a spell, in the middle of using a scroll, mid-attack animation swing against a completely different unit - and they still get a disengagement attack. You cannot tell me that any of those cases are "good combat design".

And then you have the gumption to tell me that disables are a good way of 'breaking engagement', that's real funny because this is one of my exact problems with the system - the game does not need engagement because in these types of games - in the Infinity Engine games and in other real-time RTS style games you FUCKING USE DISABLES to control enemy movement. That is what I have been fucking saying the whole time. If you want to control the battlefield, you should have to fucking DO SOMETHING about it - such as use disables. Holds, Stuns, Fear, Charm, Paralyze, Petrify, etc - this is what you did in the Infinity Engine games to disable enemies, and one of the good things about the 2E games was that there were hard counters and immunities, so you couldn't just use the same tactic on every encounter.

It baffles me that you think that melee enemies need free invisible attacks to deal with moving nearby enemies, when all you have to fucking do is just issue an attack command against them and fucking hit them back. Shoot them with a ranged weapon, use a fucking ability on them - you know, normal things you do in real-time combat, you react to the enemy in real-time. You act at the same fucking time, you don't need a fucking system that gives you free invisible actions just because some nigger next to you moved.

Combat is an abstraction. Just because in the game when you issue a move command the character models turn away from enemies to run, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are dropping their guard. If they had a larger animation budget, they could probably afford to have an animation where characters still face the enemy when they're moving forward and backward or something. But I'm not fucking retarded and characters turning around in combat doesn't break my immershun and thus require punishing, like a lot of the 'realismfags' here (even though AoOs are in no way, realistic).

----------

You say that 'engagement effectively minimizes kiting' - what kiting? The most useful form of kiting in the Infinity Engine games and in Pillars of Eternity is to shoot an enemy with a ranged character, and then run that character around while the rest of the party stands still and shoots the enemy AI chasing the moving character. That's the style of kiting that people actually use, and neither engagement, nor movement recovery slow stop this style of kiting. In any real-time isometric game that has different movement speeds for units, ranged weapons and the space to move around - there is going to be kiting. The only way to stop it is some kind of fatigue system where units get tired and suffer a movement slow after running for a while, and not that I really give a shit about any of that, because I don't do that kind of retarded kiting as it's simply not fun.

The engagement system penalizes micro-movements in combat such as stepping to the side to allow a character to fit in the pathing space (which is particularly useful in this game with the fucking woeful combat pathfinding), retreating to make use of a formation or chokepoint and micro'ing wounded characters back from the frontline. These are all valid and fair things in the Infinity Engine games and in other games of this style. They're not required to win, so I fail to see how you and others get your undies in a bunch over being able to actually perform these actions.

I couldn't give a fucking rats arse about D&D 5E, because D&D 5E like all other editions of D&D is a tabletop turn-based game. This is not a tabletop turn-based game - it's a real-time with pause computer game, where unit actions occur simultaneously in real-time.

You sound like you're just copy/pasting what Josh Sawyer says on the subject. To which I can only do this:

misc-jackie-chan.svg


You don't need a fucking AoO system or an MMO threat/taunt system, you just need good AI targeting clauses, snappy target re-acquistion and enemy AI that actually uses disables themselves. Go play some other games other than RPGs to see how it's done.

Obsidian's Melee Engagement system is the buggiest most awful system there is and it is a fucking disgraceful black mark on real-time with pause combat design.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,951
But I'm not fucking retarded and characters turning around in combat doesn't break my immershun and thus require punishing, like a lot of the 'realismfags' here (even though AoOs are in no way, realistic).
As a realismfag, I completely agree with this. This is a real time game, if a character actually turns his back to the enemy and runs for it (as opposed to just moving back or to the side without lowering his guard), two things can happen:

His opponent is busy (casting a spell, his sword stuck in someone else, whatever), so he can't follow and attack at this moment.
His opponent is not busy, follows and hits him in the back.

Either way, free disengagement attacks out of nowhere are unnecessary - both things can and should happen in real time. To satisfy realismfags like me you can also add some defence penalty for the character that has turned his back so that when his opponent strikes it's going to hurt.
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
You're conveniently ignoring every single issue with the system - such as units being able to get a free, instant attack against any unit they are engaging as long as they have a melee weapon in their currently equipped weapon set. They can be casting a spell, in the middle of using a scroll, mid-attack animation swing against a completely different unit - and they still get a disengagement attack. You cannot tell me that any of those cases are "good combat design".
I'm not ignoring it, it simply doesn't bother me. Compared to the mental gymnastics that accepting something like a threat/taunt system requires from the player, having combatants do an AoO while casting a spell seems fucking mild in comparison - not to mention easily fixed, if so desired.

That is what I have been fucking saying the whole time. If you want to control the battlefield, you should have to fucking DO SOMETHING about it - such as use disables. Holds, Stuns, Fear, Charm, Paralyze, Petrify, etc - this is what you did in the Infinity Engine games to disable enemies, and one of the good things about the 2E games was that there were hard counters and immunities, so you couldn't just use the same tactic on every encounter.
You would still have the problem that the concept of the heavily armored frontline fighter would be kinda meaningless in a game, in which the opponent can beeline for your squishies with impunity and in which said frontline fighter had no actual tools to keep the enemy engaged. This is what you are effectively suggesting.

AoO allows "tanks" to establish a zone of control and leaves the spell stuff and the crowd control for those enemies that break through and for situations in which your are getting swarmed and gangbanged from several directions. That seems to be a decent solution, especially for a game that (until high levels) has rather limited spellcasting and no IE-style rest spamming. In fact, the only reason why your solution does kinda sorta work in IE games is because of the virtually unlimited spellcasting resulting from the rest spamming / 15 minute work day bullshit in these games.

I somewhat agree about immunities and hardcounters but I don't see how that is related to the Engagement system in particular.

don't need a fucking system that gives you free invisible actions just because some nigger next to you moved.
But maybe I want to hit the nigger next to me when he makes a move.

Combat is an abstraction. Just because in the game when you issue a move command the character models turn away from enemies to run, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are dropping their guard.
Yes, combat is an abstraction and that's exactly why shit like getting invisible attacks out of turn does not bother me AT ALL. Maybe you should apply your own logic to your own arguments for once. Why is not getting fucking hurt for turning your back towards the enemy that you are currently fighting covered under "combat abstraction", while AoO are not?

The engagement system penalizes micro-movements in combat such as [...] retreating [...] micro'ing wounded characters back from the frontline [...] all valid and fair things in the Infinity Engine.
Oh, retreating to choke-points and withdrawing a wounded fighter from the front are "micro-movements"? I'm assumming this is not to be understood literally but is some sort of RTS gook slang. It's actually still a "valid and fair" thing in PoE, you just have to CC the enemy and then you can "micro-move" your ass to your heart's content.

You don't need a fucking AoO system or an MMO threat/taunt system, you just need good AI targeting clauses, snappy target re-acquistion and enemy AI that actually uses disables themselves. Go play some other games other than RPGs to see how it's done.
Like what?
kermit.png


Obsidian's Melee Engagement system is the buggiest most awful system there is and it is a fucking disgraceful black mark on real-time with pause combat design.
And you are a melodramatic vagina who has become so emotionally invested in the idea that AoO in RT-games is TEH WORST THING EVAH that you continue to rave and rant like a fucking loon against a perfectly functional system
 
Last edited:

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,835
Location
Lulea, Sweden
Haha okay buddy, the only games that have AoOs in them that are RT games are NWN1, NWN2, Pillars of Eternity and Blood Bowl RTwP mode (which nobody plays). Every other game doesn't have them, because designers of other games aren't turn-based designer wannabes that try and implement turn-based mechanics into real-time games.

Ever heard of the word "abstraction" ?

what you mean? Those games was based upon turn-based games and used their rules. Apart from this one that have its own rulesystem. Its not about whether they are some sort of made-up-wanna-be-by you, its about whether they see it a feasible function in their system. I just claimed it is important and said why in my last post. I am not talking about its implementation in this game, I am just arguing against some notion that this is a feature that should only be in turn-based games.
 

Shevek

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2003
Messages
1,570
Honestly, engagement works pretty well. I actually think its one of the better AoO-like systems out there since it doesn't work like typical AoOs. Instead of threatening an area, you engage a target. It makes a lot of sense.

The notion that "its a turn based thing that doesn't belong in real time" is a poor argument. First, because these games are made entirely of turn based things since they inspired by tabletop play. Second, no system, be it tb or rt, has ever implementated an engagevent system(of which I am aware of). While it is similar to AoO, it, again, doesn't threaten an area. Finally, its a poor argument because there is no thought behind it. It is a blanket statement with no supporting rationale.
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
Second, no system, be it tb or rt, has ever implementated an engagevent system(of which I am aware of). While it is similar to AoO, it, again, doesn't threaten an area.
I think once put into practice, the difference becomes more or less academic or restricted to fringe cases.

Finally, its a poor argument because there is no thought behind it. It is a blanket statement with no supporting rationale.
I think Sensuki has set his mind on the idea that just because it's real-time, it should, on a fundamental level, play like an RTS. IIRC he even uses "RTS" in his videos when he talks about combat.

Personally, I prefer the rules and stats based approach to combat movement instead of freely "micro-ing" my guys back and forth like in some RTS game.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
There is nothing wrong with the engagement system. The system works well, if you want this kind of combat system. If you want something more like an IE game, you disable it.
 

Sensuki

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
9,799
Location
New North Korea
Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
AoO allows "tanks" to establish a zone of control and leaves the spell stuff and the crowd control for those enemies that break through and for situations in which your are getting swarmed and gangbanged from several directions. That seems to be a decent solution, especially for a game that (until high levels) has rather limited spellcasting and no IE-style rest spamming. In fact, the only reason why your solution does kinda sorta work in IE games is because of the virtually unlimited spellcasting resulting from the rest spamming / 15 minute work day bullshit in these games.

Uhhhhhhhh. AoOs do not create a zone of control, they themselves do nothing to hinder movement (in PE they can cause an interrupt though). The thing that does affect this is the AI targeting clauses which cause units to aggro to other units. The player can actually disable this for their party members in the game options but it's a horrible fucking idea (works great with No Engagement mod though). Your statement about rest-spamming and no engagement is also a fucking lie. As the largest proponent against the system, I also never rest spam in the IE games. Never. I play to extend the adventuring day as far as I can go, and I find it fun finding ways to beat encounters when I'm low on resources, which you can do through smart play.

Holding enemy aggro in the IE games was never a problem because all you had to do was use positioning and re-positioning. Since it is only the player that rests and the player has the tools available to control combat, it has absolutely nothing to do with the availability of crowd control resources. You can absolutely use cc/disables but it is no means necessary.

I somewhat agree about immunities and hardcounters but I don't see how that is related to the Engagement system in particular.

The Engagement system is one of the things that contributes to combat playing the same every time - you use your same few characters meant for tanking to engage melee units at the front of the party 'formation' every single time. This was not something that I did in the Infinity Engine games. Combat was way more free form and much more like a proper melee that varied from encounter to encounter rather than the same fucking set up every fucking encounter like Pillars of Eternity.

But maybe I want to hit the nigger next to me when he makes a move.

Issue an attack command.

Yes, combat is an abstraction and that's exactly why shit like getting invisible attacks out of turn does not bother me AT ALL. Maybe you should apply your own logic to your own arguments for once. Why is not getting fucking hurt for turning your back towards the enemy that you are currently fighting covered under "combat abstraction", while AoO are not?

You have to be joking right? You accepted that combat was an abstraction, insulted my position and then tried to use simulationism to explain your point. You ignored the very thing I pointed out in my sentence that you quoted:

Just because in the game when you issue a move command the character models turn away from enemies to run, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are dropping their guard.
=/=
Why is not getting fucking hurt for turning your back

Sounds like you're having a bit of trouble with the abstraction concept. These games have delays between attacks, if you move a unit between the delay, it is supposed to be 'safe' to move. If they can begin an attack animation, they'll play one and hit you, and moving will not save you from targeted ranged attacks.

Oh, retreating to choke-points and withdrawing a wounded fighter from the front are "micro-movements"? I'm assuming this is not to be understood literally but is some sort of RTS gook slang. It's actually still a "valid and fair" thing in PoE, you just have to CC the enemy and then you can "micro-move" your ass to your heart's content.

No. You look at any other isometric real-time game that has melee combat that isn't an NWN game or Pillars of Eternity and you look at how this plays out. The ONLY games that have this mechanic are games that are pulling from turn-based - the NWNs, taking it because it exists in 3E, Blood Bowl because it was designed as a TB game and then they gave it a RTwP mode (Which is horrible and nobody plays it) and derp derp - they thought they'd use it in Pillars of Eternity because some some SA fags who probably thought NWN2 had good combat asked for it.

You don't waste crowd control spells just to be able to do these actions in Pillars of Eternity because there is literally no point, you just play differently because these options are not worth considering. You use strategic decision making to make up for the lack of tactical responses to such scenarios.


The Infinity Engine games. Dungeon Siege, Aarklash Legacy, Age of Empires 2, Battle Realms, Total Annihilation Kingdoms, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Age of Mythology, Starcraft (against zerg etc) ... the list goes on ...

And you are a melodramatic vagina who has become so emotionally invested in the idea that AoO in RT-games is TEH WORST THING EVAH that you continue to rave and rant like a fucking loon against a perfectly functional system

It's not perfectly functional. The system is buggy. Disengagement attacks trigger when they are not supposed to. Engagements often don't end properly. They had to create four UI elements just to make it somewhat legible what the hell is going on and the system which was meant to be helpful to new players is the highest cause of player deaths that I have seen. I am also not alone.

Personally, I prefer the rules and stats based approach to combat movement instead of freely "micro-ing" my guys back and forth like in some RTS game.

The Infinity Engine was an RTS prototype and the Infinity Engine games play a lot like an RTS with a few player controlled units.
 

jagged-jimmy

Prophet
Joined
Jan 25, 2008
Messages
1,550
Location
Freeside
Codex 2012
Yes?

As i said, such "punishment" should be something under control of a player, as a skill, with options and all ?
Not as automatic invisible extra hit that every creature in the game does, automatically - from wolves to pigs to every zombie and skeleton and sludge and whatever have you.

You should be able to move in combat - actually, as there is no combat where you really have to stand firmly in place else you die - which is just hilarious to think about. Not to mention how good old "two dudes stand in place and swing away" was criticized since these kinds of games began.
Only now its really systemic.

Did you read what you quoted or thats just for show?
Being able to play with it as it is - is not an achievement. It requires no special effort, the point is that it sucks for specific reasons explained dozens of times so far.

If only appropriate classes and creatures had it, it would be in the game in appropriate quantities, and more directly useful, therefore better tactically and fun.
I tried making sense of all the "reasons" and so far i got:

I want to move around the battlefield
Battle is too static if i cannot move whenever i want
Disengagement attack has no animation and makes no sense, because being attacked is enough
Engagement is for realismfags and it sucks
Engagement is not detailed enough i want to control it as a skill

Is there something else? Because i am trying to understand why it sucks... I played through all IWDs and BGs and i have no problem with engagement in PoE. The reasons above do not seem controversial to me.
 

hiver

Guest
There is no "moving whenever i want" in what i say, and it hardly needs your re-translation, especially so distorted one.
Nor do i think anything like "Engagement is for realismfags and it sucks" - which is utter nonsense and just shows you havent read a single thing im saying.

You saying "i dont mind it" is also equivalent to zero, in the context.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
1,871,744
Location
Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
PoE has shit pathfinding
PoE has disengagement attacks
PoE has tons of shit to micro

Your frontline guy chases in too deep into a bottleneck (literally one step when you weren't looking). Anyone behind him can't reach enemies. Frontline guy is now engaged and will suffer disengagement attacks from three enemies. Waste a spell fixing AI fuckup or reload save?

If it was just one attack from the enemy that was ready to retaliate then sure, it wouldn't be a big deal. Removing disengagement attacks certainly doesn't fix the shit combat, that's for sure. Like enemy AI that targets the same party member in every situation...
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
PoE has shit pathfinding
PoE has disengagement attacks
PoE has tons of shit to micro

Your frontline guy chases in too deep into a bottleneck (literally one step when you weren't looking). Anyone behind him can't reach enemies. Frontline guy is now engaged and will suffer disengagement attacks from three enemies. Waste a spell fixing AI fuckup or reload save?

If it was just one attack from the enemy that was ready to retaliate then sure, it wouldn't be a big deal. Removing disengagement attacks certainly doesn't fix the shit combat, that's for sure. Like enemy AI that targets the same party member in every situation...
You fucking up when moving your party in confined spaces does not mean the system sucks. Not AI can or should make up for player retardation.

Seriously, can you people get your fucking stories straight? One guy is complaining that there is not enough "micro" because Engagement makes things too static, the next guy complains that there is too much micro. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
1,871,744
Location
Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Oh, so it is me moving the AI who repositions himself so that happens? Glad to know.

Since you seem to have difficulty with those concepts, there are such things as meaningful micro and meaningless micro. Meaningless being shepherding retarded AI to avoid instant punishment from foes that couldn't realistically retaliate in that situation.
 

Kiste

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2013
Messages
636
avoid instant punishment from foes that couldn't realistically retaliate in that situation.
Oh, so we're back at the realism debate now? Whether something is "realistic" or should be subsumed under "combat abstractions" seems to be entirely contingent upon the personal preferences of the person who is making the argument.

At any rate, if "retarded AI" is the problem, then that's what you should be whining about, and not about the engagement system.
 
Joined
Dec 31, 2009
Messages
6,933
Haven't really seen many pathfinding problems, tbh.

The most jarring problem with movement is that they for some reason went for the "everything is left clicks" system like in some old RTS's. It means when you are gonna select a dude, you may misclick and get all your selection to walk over to that location instead. If they had used left button for selection, and right button for attacks and movement like proper games do, they wouldn't have that problem.
 

Kingston

Arcane
Joined
Jan 13, 2007
Messages
4,392
Location
I lack the wit to put something hilarious here
PoE has shit pathfinding
PoE has disengagement attacks
PoE has tons of shit to micro

Your frontline guy chases in too deep into a bottleneck (literally one step when you weren't looking). Anyone behind him can't reach enemies. Frontline guy is now engaged and will suffer disengagement attacks from three enemies. Waste a spell fixing AI fuckup or reload save?

If it was just one attack from the enemy that was ready to retaliate then sure, it wouldn't be a big deal. Removing disengagement attacks certainly doesn't fix the shit combat, that's for sure. Like enemy AI that targets the same party member in every situation...
You fucking up when moving your party in confined spaces does not mean the system sucks. Not AI can or should make up for player retardation.

Seriously, can you people get your fucking stories straight? One guy is complaining that there is not enough "micro" because Engagement makes things too static, the next guy complains that there is too much micro. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.

Seems to me like people are saying the same thing: you can't do any micro (even though you need to) because engagement locks you down.

Anyway, to me combat mostly now boilds down to is getting positioning correct, reloading if it doesn't, and then waiting for the right moment to make AoE attacks. There isn't that much else you can do in combat, which is also partly due to the speed at which combat is over. It isn't very engaging or all that fun.
 

Matalarata

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 8, 2013
Messages
2,646
Location
The threshold line
Wow! Talk about tactical genius itt...

I'd just like to point out how turn based systems like pathfinder and D&D offer way more options around AoO. You have the disengagement action but, more importantly, the 5-foot step. That means a squishy character can trade moblity for a modicum of safety, move in the direction of other party members and STILL act in the same unit of time. You also have a dedicated skill, acrobatics/tumble (wich gives you other uses outside of battle) and unblanaced spells like sanctuary or shadow door to deal with "engagement".

Now compare this with PoE wizard "grimoire slam". What a fuck up, thanks to abysmal accuracy it never procs. Tactical options to disengage for a wizard? Fetid Caress/Cypher-in-group and hope you do not miss the enemy engaging the wizard. Fortunately you have a decent protective spell at level 3, because those on the first 2 level suck grognard's balls. Hell fucking DRAGON AGE had better defensive crowd control spells, you could always throw rock/winter grasp/mind blast and reposition your casters.

Sensuki got any video of PoE working with the no engagement mod?
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom