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Quickfire Systemic Criticism that contributes to banality of gameplay

Sensuki

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Another issue that is kinda related to the OP is the Stealth system. The game revolves so heavily about correct positioning and opening and the Stealth system allows you to see the enemy composition and set up perfectly on them pretty much every single encounter.
 

lurker3000

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Tru this. I think I ran every dungeon/ outdoor area in Stealth + fast mode. That's about the same speed as normal BG2 walking so it was not that big of deal and it lets you position for every battle.
 

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Feel free to be as ignorant as you like. The whole point of turn-based is that one unit acts at a time. When it is one unit's turn, it is not another unit's turn. Even when AoOs and Overwatch procs, the action for those play on another unit's turn, but not at the same time as that unit's action, those actions proceed before them.
 

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Another issue that is kinda related to the OP is the Stealth system. The game revolves so heavily about correct positioning and opening and the Stealth system allows you to see the enemy composition and set up perfectly on them pretty much every single encounter.
The serious difference in how stealth works in the IE games and in PoE comes into play here - in the IE games there was a periodic stealth check and the the areas were supposedly sampled with their light level. This means once you entered stealth it actually mattered if you'll stay in shadowy areas and there was still a chance you would fail the stealth check even if there was no one around. In PoE you can't fail a check until you hang around non-party members for long enough. It's funny in how many respects PoE is a kiddies' game.

Units do not take turns simultaneously in turn-based.

:nocountryforshitposters:


I didn't read much else I hadn't read before.
Well, they don't, obviously. The fact that you can base your turn's actions on the information who did what and whose turn comes next should be enough evidence.

There's nothing wrong with soft counters or the game system in practice, sure. But in practice, a lot of encounters - especially, as you say, along the critical path - lack variety and challenge. Much of the game feels like a first draft in terms of encounter design. Simple stat and AI tweaks will help, but there's a deeper problem. I shouldn't roll through POTD using the most obvious strategy for every encounter.

The engagement system is partly at fault here. Many encounters are determined, especially on POTD, by your initial positioning. If you can get the right enemies engaged in the right away, you've pretty much won. The AI isn't robust enough to handle an engagement system, and there aren't enough skills that allow the player to escape from engagement. Fights are determined before they've really gotten on and pretty much regardless of player action (besides casting damage spells and the same debuffs over and over again). This is exacerbated by the lack of hard counters, too.
Similar impressions here. Regarding positioning, I bet not many people are using the custom formations interface, you have to right-click on either of the lat two pentagonal formations in the formations menu. Once you order your party in that interface in the way you usually position them - frontline and back line, you don't even need to micromanage their positioning before combat any more.
 
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Sensuki

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That's phase-based, not turn-based. I spoke about that in my previous posts.

I will also repeat that this is not what RTwP is, because unit actions are asynchronous.
 

Mastermind

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Another issue that is kinda related to the OP is the Stealth system. The game revolves so heavily about correct positioning and opening and the Stealth system allows you to see the enemy composition and set up perfectly on them pretty much every single encounter.
The serious difference in how stealth works in the IE games and in PoE comes into play here - in the IE games there was a periodic stealth check and the the areas were supposedly sampled with their light level. This means once you entered stealth it actually mattered if you'll stay in shadowy areas and there was still a chance you would fail the stealth check even if there was no one around. In PoE you can't fail a check until you hang around non-party members for long enough. It's funny in how many respects PoE is a kiddies' game.

In BG2 you could turn your entire party invisible and not only scout enemy formations but take your sweet time positioning all your characters (including melee ones) for maximum pain.
 

Sensuki

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Yeah sure, you could do that but it would cost finite resources such as Invisibility spells or potions. I don't know of anyone who did that every encounter as it was not necessary.

Not something I ever did personally, either. Sometimes I'd make my Thief of Mage invisible before a fight, that's it.
 

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Another issue that is kinda related to the OP is the Stealth system. The game revolves so heavily about correct positioning and opening and the Stealth system allows you to see the enemy composition and set up perfectly on them pretty much every single encounter.
The serious difference in how stealth works in the IE games and in PoE comes into play here - in the IE games there was a periodic stealth check and the the areas were supposedly sampled with their light level. This means once you entered stealth it actually mattered if you'll stay in shadowy areas and there was still a chance you would fail the stealth check even if there was no one around. In PoE you can't fail a check until you hang around non-party members for long enough. It's funny in how many respects PoE is a kiddies' game.

In BG2 you could turn your entire party invisible and not only scout enemy formations but take your sweet time positioning all your characters (including melee ones) for maximum pain.
Yeah, you could, for the combined price of the invisibility potions you would use, and only for as long as you could even find them in shops of course. This wouldn't even be cost-effective with the loot you would get from many dungeons, if you would do it for every encounter.

That's unless you mean to save-scum with the same set of potions, but you can't pay me enough to play like that :)

So I can think of PoE as of an IE game where I have infinite invisibility potions in addition to infinite inventory?
 
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Mastermind

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Another issue that is kinda related to the OP is the Stealth system. The game revolves so heavily about correct positioning and opening and the Stealth system allows you to see the enemy composition and set up perfectly on them pretty much every single encounter.
The serious difference in how stealth works in the IE games and in PoE comes into play here - in the IE games there was a periodic stealth check and the the areas were supposedly sampled with their light level. This means once you entered stealth it actually mattered if you'll stay in shadowy areas and there was still a chance you would fail the stealth check even if there was no one around. In PoE you can't fail a check until you hang around non-party members for long enough. It's funny in how many respects PoE is a kiddies' game.

In BG2 you could turn your entire party invisible and not only scout enemy formations but take your sweet time positioning all your characters (including melee ones) for maximum pain.
Yeah, you could, for the combined price of the invisibility potions you would use, and only for as long as you could even find them in shops of course. This wouldn't even be cost-effective with the loot you would get from many dungeons, if you would do it for every encounter.

So I can think of PoE as of an IE game where I have infinite invisibility potions in addition to infinite inventory?

What the fuck are you talking about, I just bunched up all my characters around my sorcerer and had him cast Invisibility 10' Radius.
 

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Yeah and how many of those can you cast per day ?

Or did you rest spam :smug:

Sensuki said:
I don't think that because it was possible to rest spam in the Infinity Engine games that this was the intended way to play, and any statements made from the basis of having rest spammed are null and void in my opinion.
 

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Another issue that is kinda related to the OP is the Stealth system. The game revolves so heavily about correct positioning and opening and the Stealth system allows you to see the enemy composition and set up perfectly on them pretty much every single encounter.
The serious difference in how stealth works in the IE games and in PoE comes into play here - in the IE games there was a periodic stealth check and the the areas were supposedly sampled with their light level. This means once you entered stealth it actually mattered if you'll stay in shadowy areas and there was still a chance you would fail the stealth check even if there was no one around. In PoE you can't fail a check until you hang around non-party members for long enough. It's funny in how many respects PoE is a kiddies' game.

In BG2 you could turn your entire party invisible and not only scout enemy formations but take your sweet time positioning all your characters (including melee ones) for maximum pain.
Yeah, you could, for the combined price of the invisibility potions you would use, and only for as long as you could even find them in shops of course. This wouldn't even be cost-effective with the loot you would get from many dungeons, if you would do it for every encounter.

So I can think of PoE as of an IE game where I have infinite invisibility potions in addition to infinite inventory?

What the fuck are you talking about, I just bunched up all my characters around my sorcerer and had him cast Invisibility 10' Radius.
I assumed you mean with potions only, I don't know why. And if you were not save-scumming but rest-spamming... Oh well, if that was a fun way to play for you, your business.
 

Mastermind

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Yeah and how many of those can you cast per day ?

Or did you rest spam :smug:

6

You don't have to do it for every encounter (in fact setting it up is kind of annoying when you can just blow through trash mobs the old fashioned way) and you can still send someone to scout with regular invisibility (or wizard's eye) and the overwhelming majority of enemies will ignore you.
 

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Surely you can see the difference between a 3rd level spell and a group stealth button that allows you to strike with everyone before you're spotted.
 

Sensuki

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Yeah, and tbh that's pretty fair at the level of play in BG2 anyway, you're giving up on other spells that could be a lot more useful in combat just to do some scouting.
 

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Surely you can see the difference between a 3rd level spell and a group stealth button that allows you to strike with everyone before you're spotted.

You can avoid doing that if you don't like it just like you can avoid rest spamming in BG2.
 

sser

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That's phase-based, not turn-based. I spoke about that in my previous posts.

I will also repeat that this is not what RTwP is, because unit actions are asynchronous.

Call it whatever you want, but for the love of all that is holy don't say phase-based is some new game system wholly divorced from turn-based and real-time. Every single one of those games advertises themselves as turn-based. The phases are part of the turns. That's why if you play these games they say "Turn 1, Turn 2, Turn 3" (or in the case of Gangsters, Week 1, Week 2). Two phases constitute a turn. It's not one big blob of phases. All these games end the exact same way: after the execution phase. Because that's the end of the turn. You can't have a game just end on the 'planning' phase for what should be obvious reasons.

The entire point of that before you went off on some semantics tangent was to illustrate how many different ways there are to produce a turn-based game, and how many of them are trying to push for a more cinematic feel without making it about player skill. Understanding where RTWP came from is important in identifying turn-based elements in games like PilloE, Dragon Age, Games of Thrones RPG, etc. RTWP from the start was a mask to disguise turn-based elements. Those above games are an extension of that, every advancement being more and more clever in how they go about it.

Please read: I'm not saying those games are turn-based, I'm saying a great deal of their underlying mechanics borrow greatly from turn-based games because genuine real-time is far too difficult for most players to manage. The difficulty in that design only increases the more 'characters' you add into it.

Think of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. It utilizes a very similar if not nearly identical timed-cooldown system that PilloE does. Your weapon designates how fast you shoot and it literally clocks you by seconds. BiA is real-time with pause, but that cooldown mechanic? That's turn-based. Because if you compare how 'fast' BiA is to how really fast something like Men of War or even Cannon Fodder is, you instantly see the actual difference between a real-time game, and a real-time game that uses turn-based elements to keep the player from getting completely overwhelmed. The gameplay mechanics are distinctly turn-based, but you leave the actual "turns" (which most people understand as pauses) in the hands of the player. There's no possible way someone can genuinely have a history of playing games and not, say, see the 'pregnant pauses' characters are taking in games like Dragon Age.

I mean you are quite literally arguing against a turn-based mechanic in Disengagement. Those free attacks characters get that has you red in the face stems directly from turn-based mechanics in AD&D. You're pissed off because free-attacks while simultaneously taking another action seems unrealistic, because you think PilloE is a genuine real-time game. You're pissed off because you fail to see the underlying turn-based elements, so you're confused as to why this is happening in your real-time game.
 

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Surely you can see the difference between a 3rd level spell and a group stealth button that allows you to strike with everyone before you're spotted.

Yes, the first is pretty useful while the latter just gives you a slight edge.
 

sser

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By the way, I think a great deal of the whining about Disengagement would cool down if A) You didn't get machinegunned with free attacks, and B) If you dodged the first one then that's it, the opponent doesn't get anymore.

For all the utter bullshit about this or that, I'm still not happy about how the combat system works, but figured I'd throw a suggestion out there on how I would fix it.
 

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A disengagement is a resourceless attack in a game that is built around limited encounters and, as a result, resources.
 

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Call it whatever you want, but for the love of all that is holy don't say phase-based is some new game system wholly divorced from turn-based and real-time. Every single one of those games advertises themselves as turn-based. The phases are part of the turns. That's why if you play these games they say "Turn 1, Turn 2, Turn 3" (or in the case of Gangsters, Week 1, Week 2). Two phases constitute a turn. It's not one big blob of phases. All these games end the exact same way: after the execution phase. Because that's the end of the turn. You can't have a game just end on the 'planning' phase for what should be obvious reasons.

The entire point of that before you went off on some semantics tangent was to illustrate how many different ways there are to produce a turn-based game, and how many of them are trying to push for a more cinematic feel without making it about player skill.

...

Think of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. It utilizes a very similar if not nearly identical timed-cooldown system that PilloE does. Your weapon designates how fast you shoot and it literally clocks you by seconds. BiA is real-time with pause, but that cooldown mechanic? That's turn-based. Because if you compare how 'fast' BiA is to how really fast something like Men of War or even Cannon Fodder is, you instantly see the actual difference between a real-time game, and a real-time game that uses turn-based elements to keep the player from getting completely overwhelmed. The gameplay mechanics are distinctly turn-based, but you leave the actual "turns" (which most people understand as pauses) in the hands of the player. There's no possible way someone can genuinely have a history of playing games and not, say, see the 'pregnant pauses' characters are taking in games like Dragon Age.

I went off on a tangent because you think that cooldowns between attacks has something to do with turn-based, and it doesn't. It's to control the speed of attacks/actions, and the pace of combat and to allow for a wide array of different strength attacks while balancing them.

Controlling the speed Attacks/actions in real-time games are handled in one of two ways. There is either no delay between animations ending and playing, and the speed at which units can perform these actions is dependent on the speed of the animations of those actions. Some games control attack speed by speeding up the animation speed, because there is no delay between attacks (ARPGs often do this - Diablo, Titan Quest, etc but this mechanic doesn't have anything to do with 'constant input' from the player).

Pillars of Eternity USED TO be like this too while the game was in pre-production, but they changed it to have a cooldown between actions because of pacing reasons, and to help make it feel more like the Infinity Engine games, because the Infinity Engine games had delays between animations depending on how many attacks per round you had.

The second way is to have a delay between actions - this is employed in lots of real-time games dating back to, as I said, the sidescroller games of the 80s, and probably early RTS games as well. This mechanic is deeply rooted in real-time games. It has nothing to do with turn-based games or trying to emulate unit turns. It is a way to handle the pacing of combat and to balance strong attacks versus weak attacks and things like that (as is slowing up/speeding down animation speed), however with a delay between attacks you have more room (time) to work with when controlling these elements.

In Pillars of Eternity's system, it is theoretically possible to have a recovery time of zero if you have a high enough attack speed. Josh Sawyer talked about it on the forums a couple of years ago. When recovery time reaches zero, extra recovery speed increases then affect animation speed instead of recovery. It's not possible to reach that point in the default game with the default items, but it's possible for there to be no delay mechanically - because it's a mechanism to control attack speed and combat pacing, not to simulate turns.

Understanding where RTWP came from is important in identifying turn-based elements in games like PilloE, Dragon Age, Games of Thrones RPG, etc. RTWP from the start was a mask to disguise turn-based elements. Those above games are an extension of that, every advancement being more and more clever in how they go about it.

Please read: I'm not saying those games are turn-based, I'm saying a great deal of their underlying mechanics borrow greatly from turn-based games because genuine real-time is far too difficult for most players to manage. The difficulty in that design only increases the more 'characters' you add into it.

I don't remember what the first real-time with pause game was. I'm only 27. Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age and the Game of Thrones RPGs are all very new. Dragon Age doesn't really have anything to do with turn-based - sure BioWare used to make games from turn-based tabletop systems, but Dragon Age has more in common with an MMO than it does with those games and real-time MMOs borrow from RTS and Action combat. I haven't played the Game of Thrones RPG. There are things in Pillars of Eternity that borrow from turn-based, like the Engagement system - yes, I acknowledge that and that is one of my fucking problems with the system, as you speak of below. However cooldowns between attacks have nothing to do with simulating unit turns, which is one of the points I was disputing that you made the whole time.

I already talked about why RTwP exists in previous posts. It doesn't really have too much to do with the underlying mechanics. In Darklands case I believe it's to make it easy to micromanage multiple units. RTwP in Darklands looks pretty simple. For latter games it may be because it's more cinematic, as you said. More recent RTwP games have given characters more active actions other than auto-attacks to make it more interesting. Pillars of Eternity goes to extremes in this.

I mean you are quite literally arguing against a turn-based mechanic in Disengagement. Those free attacks characters get that has you red in the face stems directly from turn-based mechanics in AD&D 3E D&D. You're pissed off because free-attacks while simultaneously taking another action seems unrealistic, because you think PilloE is a genuine real-time game. You're pissed off because you fail to see the underlying turn-based elements, so you're confused as to why this is happening in your real-time game.

I am not confused at all, I understand perfectly, but yes I am arguing against this mechanic because it does not belong in a real-time game [see my reply to Anthony Davis here]. Pillars of Eternity is a real-time with pause game, not a turn-based game. Cooldowns between attacks has absolutely fucking nothing to do with turn-based. Disengagement attacks do.

I know that most of the Pillars of Eternity team wants to make a turn-based game, and I think they should just do that and not pollute real-time gameplay with blatantly ham-fisted turn-based mechanics. They've gone to extreme lengths to try and justify their broken system.
 
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sser

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A disengagement is a resourceless attack in a game that is built around limited encounters and, as a result, resources.

Well yeah, that's the point. The AD&D combat booklet literally describes it as a "free attack." It's meant to penalize you for being out of position. One of the, well I guess my, primary issues with it is that unlike D&D, Disengagement affords enemies in PilloE as many free attacks as they want.

I still think the very crux of this debate is that people want to kite. My contention that A) Kiting is not a form of positioning but instead AI-abuse and B) You could only kite because the AI in IE-games was dumbed down still stands.

I would fucking loooooove for people to try and kite in BG2 if enemies didn't have leashes. If enemies followed the same rules players did the amount of bitching would be endless.

Imagine, for a second, that every action you take in "positioning" in the IE-games is instead taken by the AI. What would you say? What would you do?

"What the fuck? The enemy mage just keeps running. This is really annoying!"

"What the fuck, the enemy fighter just glues himself to my mage and I literally can't do anything to stop him!"

People seem to be completely clueless to the fact that every notion you have of "positioning" in the IE games stems from the AI being dumbed down, because it would be a bloody nightmare if it wasn't.

So, again, what is being asked for is not just the loss of Zone of Control/Engagement, but also the loss of some AI functionality/independence. Because if you lose the former, and the big bad knights in PilloE still lock onto your mages like homing missiles, you're going to have a bad time. And this is especially true because, unlike the IE-games, you cannot pre-buff your wizards.



Yes I am, because this mechanic not belong in a real-time game [see my reply to Anthony Davis here]. Pillars of Eternity is a real-time with pause game, not a turn-based game. Cooldowns between attacks has absolutely fucking nothing to do with turn-based. Disengagement attacks do.

And yet... they put it in. I did like that Mr. Davis, in his defense of Disengagement, said RTWP games are simulating turn-based games. I'd also like to point out that many people said PilloE has the design of a turn-based game.

Grunker said:
The system is underlines my core issue with combat so far. So much of it is designed by someone who said to himself, every step of the way, "man I would have rather designed a turn-based system."

So very, very much this. Between engagement and per encounter abilities the core mechanics of the combat seem implemented straight from a turn based game. PoE feels like a RTwP system that wishes it was turnbased.

What's that you were saying about PilloE not having a current of turn-based design flowing through it?



For what it's worth I was somewhat curious to see how the BG fans took hold of the system.

From a Baldur's Gate thread on PilloE's engagement:


That makes sense though. It should be pretty easy to stab someone who turns around and tries to run away.

I always thought kiting was a bit cheesy

So it functions like attacks of opportunity?

...it forces you to not go randomly around with your squishy mage first: it favors strategy.

I love how this will make playing a Wizard and kiting the whole game much harder. Neat.

Curse whoever thought to give the enemies decent AI.

It makes moving your guys lot more tactical...

It forces you to think about positioning and movement pre-fight quite a bit

That's Attack of Opportunity from 3E. Temple of Elemental Evil and NwN1/2 have it I think. ... kiting is stupid.

Here's Grunker in your linked thread:

Keeping my squishies safe is a matter of casting a movement spell and kiting the enemy.



Tell me about kiting retarded AI, George.

pet pet pet
 

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