hiver
Guest
The current implementation of this system went into one kind of extreme by giving this capability to every creature and NPC in the game. This creates all kinds of negative consequences and effects on several big features of the game.
In Josh Sawyer terms, the current implementation of it is completely unbalanced.
Its not breaking the game, but it doesnt bring anything positive to it at all. And it brings a lot of negatives to the way combat functions as a whole.
It hobbles the player, its not even something the player has any control over - and it cripples the enemy Ai completely.
Which creates combat gameplay as it is now. Enemies rush in, everyone gets engaged and then its group gangbang until someone gets exterminated.
For some it may be tolerable, but it can be done in much better ways.
NOT by removing it but by IMPROVING it.
Removing it altogether is just an opposite extreme to the extreme implementation already in effect and that would bring nothing good to the gestalt of the game, very much the same as this current extreme implementation doesnt.
You dont use a screwdriver for everything you do. And you dont throw it away either.
You use different tools in the way that is most efficient. You use a specific tool for specific job or purpose.
SOLUTION:
Engagement skill should be the sole provenance and unique skill of the Fighter class.
It makes perfect sense in every way i can imagine and it would work great in the game built on IE games foundations.
Everyone are complaining how fighters are not interesting for years already, while other classes have all these cool unique abilities and spells and whatnot. So when i first heard about the Engagement it seemed to me it was presented as if it will be addition to fighters class. To my horror i discovered it was given to every single thing in the game.
Such ability is clearly something that requires a lot of training and discipline, but also knowledge, thinking on your feet, being aware of a lot of things in combat situationaly, using it intentionally, with precision and discipline. Ergo - pure trained, disciplined fighter material.
It makes no sense whatsoever for various animals and creatures to have it, or in fact any other class either.
It creates a lot of bad negative effects that were not intended.
It hobbles enemies, it makes no sense to see animals using it at all, or their Ai paying any attention to it, to the point of breaking the whole internal coherence of the setting. It paralyzes the player, and its completely out of player control.
The game enables it for you, and it does so for every single thing that moves in it.
You dont control anything, only suffer through consequences.
If it was an ability that only fighters have, it would or could work beautifully, in several different ways.
1. It would make fighters actually special and unique and very, very valuable as a class.
2. It would free the Ai because now it is completely hobbled by "engagement for all" design.
3. It would make the world and gameplay more plausible, reasonable and logical for players to simply get naturally.
4. it would remove all bad effects current implementation is producing unintentionally.
5. It would allow positioning in combat to be more free, more diverse and thus to play a bigger role.
Therefore, it would improve the whole combat.
Additional measures:
- An engagement talent could be allowed for a very few other select classes, such as specific Paladin builds and maybe Barbarians, but only in its lowest, most basic form. Those classes would not be able to improve it any further.
For example a specific Paladin background could have it already applied - showing that kind of paladin had some military training.
It could be allowed as a talent for some specific classes. A specific Barbarian build could take that talent, signifying a barbarian that had some military training. Various smaller tradeoffs can easily be designed here, if there is any need for it.
But that MUST NOT be allowed to improve over the most basic level - since that should be Fighter territory only.
All the other classes already have their own special unique abilities. Plenty of them.
They really dont need this fighter specific unique ability too.
But fighters surely do. It needs to be something unique to fighters. Their very own area of expertize.
It could be given to some specific enemies or creatures too. But adjusted properly for each of them, as needed to increase difficulty of fighting them, or as sensible as it would seem.
For example:
- some undead that were soldiers in life could still "remember" enough of it to have the most basic level.
- some human enemies like bandits could have it - IF - they are army deserters or similar - and fighters by class.
- naturally any other enemy that would be a fighter class should have it in full.
- it could be added to some monsters and creatures that would reasonably have attacks that would in effect behave like some sort of "engagement-disengagement" feature - but this should be done extremely sparsely and where it would really fit.
Kiting:
The Engagement and disengagement mechanics alone CANNOT prevent kiting, since kiting has TWO parts. Escaping from close or melee range (which is all engagement can affect) - and the ranged part - which should be handled through specific ranged skills.
This is how i imagine it would work in gameplay - with some additional details thrown in for good measure:
Once engagement ability becomes the sole provenance of fighters, with few other select classes being able to have its basic form only...
- The fighter should have better defense or offense against engaged targets.
- He should be able to improve these stats through leveling and increase how many targets he can engage.
- He should be able to occasionally inflict some criticals and various status effects when dishing out reactive disengagement attacks, that should mostly affect enemy movement, speed and agility.
- He should be better at disengaging himself, even doing it with intent and precision- or in other words, be capable of offensive disengagement moves too.
This ability to inflict critical hits, to inflict status effects and to decide exactly which ones should be additional engagement specific skills - therefore unique for fighters - that can be specifically chosen and improved by the player.
When a fighter is able to engage two or three enemies at once, he should be able to choose which ones to engage by aiming and selecting them - provided they are in appropriate range.
That would mean you are using your fighter tactically, to surgically and precisely deal with specific changing threats inside the combat by literally choosing which ones to engage, instead of the game doing it automatically for every single thing that moves.
A fighter that is able to move around more freely, change targets, inflict more critical strikes when engaged, disengage more easily or even disengage with an attack move, all under control of the players of course (plus whatever other skills a fighter has) - is superior by every imaginable measure to current version.
- A Fighter should also have increased chances to disengage without penalty versus other fighters, but usually would be able to move freely and disengage and engage some other enemies as necessary, of course.
So it would be nice if fighter could learn to also offensively disengage at higher levels, by performing a disengagement attack - which would need to be a critical hit, to succeed. (for example)
If it succeeds, the fighter effectively scores a critical hit, achieves some status effect and then disengages from that enemy.
(Which would make natural sense visually and therefore it would be easily understandable to every player.)
- The enemy is momentarily disrupted or even hurt, some smaller status effect is applied... and you move away to engage someone else. -If you want to.-
So, for a gameplay example....
- when you fight those Lions that can be encountered in one of the maps. -
First, the lions should have bigger stealth in those grasses and their attacks should be sneak attacks that cause knockdowns. And they should attack as a pack more often, with some better movement around and to the flanks,.... instead of suicidally running into the party one by one.
Anyway...
A fighter should be able to engage up to three of them, - by choosing which ones to engage himself.
That would make the fighter:
- Stop them from attacking others,
- Have better defense or offense against them,
- Dish a critical or two if they try to disengage - (which they should since they are animals and cannot be aware of tactics of engagement and disengagement)
- Disengage himself with a critical attack on one (or more) selected targets (or without that move spent if player chooses not to use it)
- Then move away and aim at and engage specific other Lions that would be attacking the rest of the party by that time.
- All these smaller abilities arising from a more balanced design (ha!) should in fact be smaller fighter specific unique skills that should serve as a way for players to improve these additional smaller abilities.
You can introduce these as talents that open up after some specific point in the build is reached.
As skills, or as perks to the skills. Whatever works best.
At the same time, the rest of characters and animals and creatures would be able to move around more freely since nobody would be engaged by everything around them. Which would show in the way Ai is handling combat.
And if you would want to have easier time with such enemies you would then have a very, very good reason to take a fighter or two with your team.
Then, the rest of the classes can play off the fighter beautifully.
Just imagine how nicely a rogue can play off on such situations, against already engaged enemies, locked down by the fighter. What a nice tandem that would make. So natural too. Fighter locks them down, rogue comes from the flanks and they just make minced meat in between them.
Or Fighter and a Paladin, helping from behind with his auras and commands while also being able to fight, only with no or very limited engagement abilities. Behaving more like a commander then a fighter in combat, giving bonuses and buffs to fighters and others in the team.
Same would go for Ciphers, Chanters... anyone.
And isnt that what a party based combat should be?
Using different classes and their supposedly unique abilities so they help and enhance each other and play off each other?
To do that in this case you must first have a different class - which means a class with its own unique abilities.
/
- Yes i am aware the engagement doesnt break the game and you can find ways to abuse it and cheese it.
If thats the highest goal a game combat system should have to satisfy you you can just gtfo and save me or reading such comments.
The purpose of this post isnt to get approval from every schmuck on the codex or anywhere else.
Mister Badler was kind enough to accept this suggestion and forward it up through the devline so the devs should know about it already.
The purpose of this post is to present that there is a solution that is not another overblown extreme of having a mechanic that is applied to every single creature in the game, or overblown extreme of removing it completely.
In Josh Sawyer terms, the current implementation of it is completely unbalanced.
Its not breaking the game, but it doesnt bring anything positive to it at all. And it brings a lot of negatives to the way combat functions as a whole.
It hobbles the player, its not even something the player has any control over - and it cripples the enemy Ai completely.
Which creates combat gameplay as it is now. Enemies rush in, everyone gets engaged and then its group gangbang until someone gets exterminated.
For some it may be tolerable, but it can be done in much better ways.
NOT by removing it but by IMPROVING it.
Removing it altogether is just an opposite extreme to the extreme implementation already in effect and that would bring nothing good to the gestalt of the game, very much the same as this current extreme implementation doesnt.
You dont use a screwdriver for everything you do. And you dont throw it away either.
You use different tools in the way that is most efficient. You use a specific tool for specific job or purpose.
SOLUTION:
Engagement skill should be the sole provenance and unique skill of the Fighter class.
It makes perfect sense in every way i can imagine and it would work great in the game built on IE games foundations.
Everyone are complaining how fighters are not interesting for years already, while other classes have all these cool unique abilities and spells and whatnot. So when i first heard about the Engagement it seemed to me it was presented as if it will be addition to fighters class. To my horror i discovered it was given to every single thing in the game.
Such ability is clearly something that requires a lot of training and discipline, but also knowledge, thinking on your feet, being aware of a lot of things in combat situationaly, using it intentionally, with precision and discipline. Ergo - pure trained, disciplined fighter material.
It makes no sense whatsoever for various animals and creatures to have it, or in fact any other class either.
It creates a lot of bad negative effects that were not intended.
It hobbles enemies, it makes no sense to see animals using it at all, or their Ai paying any attention to it, to the point of breaking the whole internal coherence of the setting. It paralyzes the player, and its completely out of player control.
The game enables it for you, and it does so for every single thing that moves in it.
You dont control anything, only suffer through consequences.
If it was an ability that only fighters have, it would or could work beautifully, in several different ways.
1. It would make fighters actually special and unique and very, very valuable as a class.
2. It would free the Ai because now it is completely hobbled by "engagement for all" design.
3. It would make the world and gameplay more plausible, reasonable and logical for players to simply get naturally.
4. it would remove all bad effects current implementation is producing unintentionally.
5. It would allow positioning in combat to be more free, more diverse and thus to play a bigger role.
Therefore, it would improve the whole combat.
Additional measures:
- An engagement talent could be allowed for a very few other select classes, such as specific Paladin builds and maybe Barbarians, but only in its lowest, most basic form. Those classes would not be able to improve it any further.
For example a specific Paladin background could have it already applied - showing that kind of paladin had some military training.
It could be allowed as a talent for some specific classes. A specific Barbarian build could take that talent, signifying a barbarian that had some military training. Various smaller tradeoffs can easily be designed here, if there is any need for it.
But that MUST NOT be allowed to improve over the most basic level - since that should be Fighter territory only.
All the other classes already have their own special unique abilities. Plenty of them.
They really dont need this fighter specific unique ability too.
But fighters surely do. It needs to be something unique to fighters. Their very own area of expertize.
It could be given to some specific enemies or creatures too. But adjusted properly for each of them, as needed to increase difficulty of fighting them, or as sensible as it would seem.
For example:
- some undead that were soldiers in life could still "remember" enough of it to have the most basic level.
- some human enemies like bandits could have it - IF - they are army deserters or similar - and fighters by class.
- naturally any other enemy that would be a fighter class should have it in full.
- it could be added to some monsters and creatures that would reasonably have attacks that would in effect behave like some sort of "engagement-disengagement" feature - but this should be done extremely sparsely and where it would really fit.
Kiting:
The Engagement and disengagement mechanics alone CANNOT prevent kiting, since kiting has TWO parts. Escaping from close or melee range (which is all engagement can affect) - and the ranged part - which should be handled through specific ranged skills.
This is how i imagine it would work in gameplay - with some additional details thrown in for good measure:
Once engagement ability becomes the sole provenance of fighters, with few other select classes being able to have its basic form only...
- The fighter should have better defense or offense against engaged targets.
- He should be able to improve these stats through leveling and increase how many targets he can engage.
- He should be able to occasionally inflict some criticals and various status effects when dishing out reactive disengagement attacks, that should mostly affect enemy movement, speed and agility.
- He should be better at disengaging himself, even doing it with intent and precision- or in other words, be capable of offensive disengagement moves too.
This ability to inflict critical hits, to inflict status effects and to decide exactly which ones should be additional engagement specific skills - therefore unique for fighters - that can be specifically chosen and improved by the player.
When a fighter is able to engage two or three enemies at once, he should be able to choose which ones to engage by aiming and selecting them - provided they are in appropriate range.
That would mean you are using your fighter tactically, to surgically and precisely deal with specific changing threats inside the combat by literally choosing which ones to engage, instead of the game doing it automatically for every single thing that moves.
A fighter that is able to move around more freely, change targets, inflict more critical strikes when engaged, disengage more easily or even disengage with an attack move, all under control of the players of course (plus whatever other skills a fighter has) - is superior by every imaginable measure to current version.
- A Fighter should also have increased chances to disengage without penalty versus other fighters, but usually would be able to move freely and disengage and engage some other enemies as necessary, of course.
So it would be nice if fighter could learn to also offensively disengage at higher levels, by performing a disengagement attack - which would need to be a critical hit, to succeed. (for example)
If it succeeds, the fighter effectively scores a critical hit, achieves some status effect and then disengages from that enemy.
(Which would make natural sense visually and therefore it would be easily understandable to every player.)
- The enemy is momentarily disrupted or even hurt, some smaller status effect is applied... and you move away to engage someone else. -If you want to.-
So, for a gameplay example....
- when you fight those Lions that can be encountered in one of the maps. -
First, the lions should have bigger stealth in those grasses and their attacks should be sneak attacks that cause knockdowns. And they should attack as a pack more often, with some better movement around and to the flanks,.... instead of suicidally running into the party one by one.
Anyway...
A fighter should be able to engage up to three of them, - by choosing which ones to engage himself.
That would make the fighter:
- Stop them from attacking others,
- Have better defense or offense against them,
- Dish a critical or two if they try to disengage - (which they should since they are animals and cannot be aware of tactics of engagement and disengagement)
- Disengage himself with a critical attack on one (or more) selected targets (or without that move spent if player chooses not to use it)
- Then move away and aim at and engage specific other Lions that would be attacking the rest of the party by that time.
- All these smaller abilities arising from a more balanced design (ha!) should in fact be smaller fighter specific unique skills that should serve as a way for players to improve these additional smaller abilities.
You can introduce these as talents that open up after some specific point in the build is reached.
As skills, or as perks to the skills. Whatever works best.
At the same time, the rest of characters and animals and creatures would be able to move around more freely since nobody would be engaged by everything around them. Which would show in the way Ai is handling combat.
And if you would want to have easier time with such enemies you would then have a very, very good reason to take a fighter or two with your team.
Then, the rest of the classes can play off the fighter beautifully.
Just imagine how nicely a rogue can play off on such situations, against already engaged enemies, locked down by the fighter. What a nice tandem that would make. So natural too. Fighter locks them down, rogue comes from the flanks and they just make minced meat in between them.
Or Fighter and a Paladin, helping from behind with his auras and commands while also being able to fight, only with no or very limited engagement abilities. Behaving more like a commander then a fighter in combat, giving bonuses and buffs to fighters and others in the team.
Same would go for Ciphers, Chanters... anyone.
And isnt that what a party based combat should be?
Using different classes and their supposedly unique abilities so they help and enhance each other and play off each other?
To do that in this case you must first have a different class - which means a class with its own unique abilities.
/
- Yes i am aware the engagement doesnt break the game and you can find ways to abuse it and cheese it.
If thats the highest goal a game combat system should have to satisfy you you can just gtfo and save me or reading such comments.
The purpose of this post isnt to get approval from every schmuck on the codex or anywhere else.
Mister Badler was kind enough to accept this suggestion and forward it up through the devline so the devs should know about it already.
The purpose of this post is to present that there is a solution that is not another overblown extreme of having a mechanic that is applied to every single creature in the game, or overblown extreme of removing it completely.
