Codexers cannot into PoE ruleset, part N

[Infinitron]

Can somebody explain what a "hard counter" is? and/or give an example of one (possibly from early 2000s RPGs)

What it actually means is this: http://he.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hard+counter

In practice, people are using it here to describe the concept of total immunity to something, and sometimes pretty much any OP CC/debuff spell, regardless of whether they actually "utterly dominate".

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Certain effects are obviously very powerful (prone, petrify), others seem almost inconsequential (hobbled, frightened).
From what some people have written here it seems that at least on PotD it does become necessary to use buffs/debuffs a lot more compared to the lower difficulties.

It's true that on PotD I actually felt compelled to use the spells at my disposal, whereas on hard I usually just spammed a few low-level per-encounters which proved sufficient most of the time. That also lead to me discovering a few spells I considered (by reading the description) useless previously, like for instance, Nature's Mark, a level 1 druid spell, nice AoE, -10 deflection to enemies. Doesn't matter below PotD but here it helps quite nicely.

 

[Pope Amole II]

others seem almost inconsequential (hobbled, frightened).

Nah, these two are rather fine. Hobbled is just a specific tool - it gives -24 reflexes and enables sneak attack easily. It also usually lasts very long - like, the druid's 1st level thorn field or whatever lasts 30 second, has a huge area and continuously applies hobbled. So it's very easy to use properly - just open the combat with it and then follow with a plethora of reflex-targeting AoE spells. 1 point of accuracy/protection is +/- 2% DPS so -24 reflexes is a lot of extra damage for you.

Fritghtened is -10 accuracy = -20% of foes' DPS. Considering that on hard battles last 30-40 seconds and a properly built 1st level barb has 15-30 seconds of AoE frighten, I don't see what the problem with it is.

 

[ArchAngel]

Certain effects are obviously very powerful (prone, petrify), others seem almost inconsequential (hobbled, frightened).
From what some people have written here it seems that at least on PotD it does become necessary to use buffs/debuffs a lot more compared to the lower difficulties.

It's true that on PotD I actually felt compelled to use the spells at my disposal, whereas on hard I usually just spammed a few low-level per-encounters which proved sufficient most of the time. That also lead to me discovering a few spells I considered (by reading the description) useless previously, like for instance, Nature's Mark, a level 1 druid spell, nice AoE, -10 deflection to enemies. Doesn't matter below PotD but here it helps quite nicely.

My Hard experience was also spamming per encounters abilities and after lvl 9 low level per encounter spells. Rarely I had to use actual slots. As a result I usually only rested when fatigue kicked in and usually ignored the first level of fatigue as well

 

[Gord]

others seem almost inconsequential (hobbled, frightened).

Nah, these two are rather fine. Hobbled is just a specific tool - it gives -24 reflexes and enables sneak attack easily. It also usually lasts very long - like, the druid's 1st level thorn field or whatever lasts 30 second, has a huge area and continuously applies hobbled. So it's very easy to use properly - just open the combat with it and then follow with a plethora of reflex-targeting AoE spells. 1 point of accuracy/protection is +/- 2% DPS so -24 reflexes is a lot of extra damage for you.

Fritghtened is -10 accuracy = -20% of foes' DPS. Considering that on hard battles last 30-40 seconds and a properly built 1st level barb has 15-30 seconds of AoE frighten, I don't see what the problem with it is.

I think my biggest issue with those two in particular was that whenever it happened to my own party, it was just "yeah, whatever". Especially since many enemies have them as a secondary effect that last 2.78423 seconds (hobbled) or an aura that can not or hardly needs to be countered anyway (maybe I'm wrong on that account, though).
Of course, if more enemies used sneak attacks against your hobbled fighters, that might change.
Also, if you have only one sneak-attack capable party member (or none at all, considering there's no rogue companion), hobbled is less useful, too. It did become useful once I wanted to reduce enemies reflex defense, but that was sadly not necessary very often on hard (again, that's something that should be changed, imho).

 

[Shevek]

I think it could be worth exploring some things like e.g. an interrupt-based fighter build.
But ultimately a fighter is going to fight, preferably melee, that's what he is supposed to do after all. If you want something completely different, choose another class.
They are anyway already more interesting than (pure) IE fighters.
Casters as usual have some more diverse choices, e.g. melee mage (concentration and defense) vs ranged caster, AoE vs raw damage, stuff like this.

I have two fighters in my current party. One is a Fire Godlike with middling str but high perception that dual wielding (rapier/dagger) in leather. The other is a moon godlike who dumped per and pumped str to boost dmg and passive healing and uses plate/two handers. They take different talents, play differently and contribute to the party in very different ways.

 

[Seari]

Can somebody explain what a "hard counter" is? and/or give an example of one (possibly from early 2000s RPGs)

Fire elementals are immune to fire damage, dragons can't be knocked down, undead are immune to mind affecting spells, etc.

 

[Pope Amole II]

I think my biggest issue with those two in particular was that whenever it happened to my own party, it was just "yeah, whatever".

Sure, but that's not the problem of the system - that's the problem of an encounter design. Honestly, with what is already in the game, without changing much, you can create a lot of tough and various encounters - for example, a two-leveled area, a pit with some ledges. Druids stand on them and the pit swarms with trashmobs. Encounter entrance leads into the pit itselfs and the stairs to the ledges are across it. Once you enter the area, druids cast said field of thorns and begin to spam you with reflex-targeting spells, so you have to slowly break through the pit to get at them. Of course, that's if you're using the most basic approach possible.

Honestly, the problem with PoE is not that it doesn't deserve to get bashed - it's all for the wrong reasons. The core system is fine and, with proper encounter design, lots of good stuff can be created with it. It's just that the game is half-baked - it's painfully obvious that the team didn't have sufficient funds to create this so they cut a lot of corners. It's a bitter kickstarter reality and, of course, it's not really an excuse - for all their gamer friendliness and publisher hating, kickstars spew too much bullshit and rely too much on the samey deceptive tactics as their mortal money-grubbing CEO enemies.

But it's not the PoE's problem alone and, frankly, the Wasteland 2 should've been hated in an equally rough measure (there was critique here but not as much). Because it's also a halfbaked game and what was released last autumn was more like pre-alpha - only now, this summer (?) there's gonna be a proper release, obfuscated as an enhanced edition or whatever.

Same with the PoE - now that they have a huge cash influx, the inevitable addons will be much higher in quality. Patches, maybe, depending on how greedy they are. Should be, theoretically - the core is very strong and you have to be a real dumbfuck to fail to create something tasty with it. If you have the time and resources. So if those addons come up and fail, then yeah, the bashing is justified altogether. But, at the moment, it's more like bashing the beta - who does that? It's just that

A game - and everything it contains - should be judged by how the developers intended it to be.

The thing is, we can't know their intents. They may say whatever they want, but they're not exactly stimulated to tell us the truth - after all, their goal is to peddle their ware to us. So they may say whatever, but the only proper difficulty of PoE is PoTD. That's just how it really operates.

And, once again, this culture of constant lying should get criticized first and foremost. That's the real problem here.

 

[Gord]

I think my biggest issue with those two in particular was that whenever it happened to my own party, it was just "yeah, whatever".

Sure, but that's not the problem of the system - that's the problem of an encounter design. Honestly, with what is already in the game, without changing much, you can create a lot of tough and various encounters

I'd even say it's neither (at least not entirely), it's a problem of balancing. While I personally would have done some things differently, I think the base system is solid. Even the oft-criticized encounters, if they would contain the same enemies as now, would be more challenging and varied if they tweaked the AI, spell/ability-selection and effect-strength (or maybe that can already be considered changing the encounter design).
Of course I wouldn't mind some improved encounter design on top of it.

Honestly, the problem with PoE is not that it doesn't deserve to get bashed - it's all for the wrong reasons. The core system is fine and, with proper encounter design, lots of good stuff can be created with it. It's just that the game is half-baked - it's painfully obvious that the team didn't have sufficient funds to create this so they cut a lot of corners.

I think it deserves to be criticized, but not to be hated on just because it's not perfect or not a 100% recreation of a 15 year-old game engine that had its fair share of problems as well.

But you are right that the big Kickstarters so far all suffered from the fact that the devs had bitten off more than they could chew. Obsidian, inXile, HBS, Larian were all guilty of that to some extend. In a way it's understandable - you need to sell your product and in order to do so, it has to be desirable to people. But then you realize that even very successful kickstarters actually don't provide such a large budget for games that try to compete with products from AAA publishers.

It was good to see that at least HBS seems to have learned their lesson. The SR:HK kickstarter was far more humble and within the scope of what seems realistically possible for them to achieve.

 

[Sensuki]

1 point of accuracy/protection is +/- 2% DPS so -24 reflexes is a lot of extra damage for you.

How much DPS a point of accuracy gives you is dependent on both your bonus damage and attack speed, and which range of ACC-DEF you are in.

 

[Shadenuat]

The core system is fine

How so? It's very easy to hate PoE core system:
- One-accuracy-to-rule-them-all which makes leveling up more important than most of character building decisions you make, fighters and mages
- The universal crit/miss/graze system that makes magic swingy, unreliable and hard to use properly with multiple effects running out in seconds, while others crit for massive damage or stay for half a minute
- The total absence of immunities by design, making even weakest effects as powerful as high level ones (remember how they finally nerfed Slicken?), just packing on top of each other to the point that no enemy, of any class or type, can stand against them
- Convoluted, unintuitive stats, often clashing with roleplaying options
- Real health and combat health segregation making combat not deadly and not important, and breaking some of the interesting builds (tankomage would last 4 times shorter in adventure day than barb or fighter)
- Invisible, massively op AOO's built in into fast paced RTwP engine
- Trash options in skills and perks that make you combine many underwhelming small options to create something that matters in combat but still looks underwhelming

 

[Tigranes]

This isn't what you claimed originally.

Yes it is.

Let's examine what I originally said:

that rarely matters because you don't need to heal in this game unless you're in danger of dropping (and sometimes that's debatable too), if you're healing for the sake of healing and you're not actually going to drop you're just wasting a resource if it's a per-rest or consumable, and also wasting an action.

You stated that this isn't true (which is wrong, it is true) and referred to your experience with solo and a small party on PotD because you don't like controlling six characters.

I then said that

Yeah in Act 1 with smaller or solo parties. No surprise there, as you're still not past the point where the game becomes stupidly easy. That point in Hard difficulty is level 4, in PotD it's a bit further on due to the nature of the buffed stats.

Act 1 is where you're in danger of going down the most. The only two healing potions I ever used were both in Act 1. Once in Valewood when I had my single PC and once in the Temple of Eothas, on Eder.

The fact remains that if you are not in danger of going down, you do not need to heal your Endurance in Pillars of Eternity and even then, going down is not necessarily a bad thing unless you play like I do with self-imposed restrictions on characters dropping. In Baldur's Gate 1 there is no rest until healed, so all healing matters. In IWD1, IWD2 and BG2 there is a rest until healed option, so technically you only really need to heal characters to prevent them from dying ... but this happens quite regularly. As any warrior class in any of these games, you will get damaged and you will need to either use healing potions or healing spells/scrolls to heal yourself so you can keep going.

You don't have to do this in Pillars of Eternity.

Thus, bonus healing rarely matters because healing rarely matters.

Nobody ever needs to heal in any game if they don't feel like their characters are in danger of going down. So there's really no problem with the healing system in the game according to you - the problem apparently is that the game is so freaking easy nobody ever drops.

I addressed the difficulty issue - which is the actual issue here - by telling you how I agree POE should have been more difficult in a number of ways, but that the morons going 'OMG left clik everything lol in bg2 i would be dead all the time' was retarded. (No, your dudes aren't "frequently in need of healing" in IE games, not without SCS.) Instead of addressing that, you've chosen to just continue on and on about healing, when you don't actually have a point that pertains specifically to healing.

 

[Shevek]

One thing I wish they would do is reduce the accuracy and defense you get from level up from 3 to 2. That would increase challenge later and increase the value of acc/def item and ability bonuses while also maintaining the threat of lower level enemies.

 

[Tigranes]

The core system is fine

How so? It's very easy to hate PoE core system:
- One-accuracy-to-rule-them-all which makes leveling up more important than most of character building decisions you make, fighters and mages
- The universal crit/miss/graze system that makes magic swingy, unreliable and hard to use properly with multiple effects running out in seconds, while others crit for massive damage or stay for half a minute
- The total absence of immunities by design, making even weakest effects as powerful as high level ones (remember how they finally nerfed Slicken?), just packing on top of each other to the point that no enemy, of any class or type, can't stand against them
- Convoluted, unintuitive stats, often clashing with roleplaying options
- Real health and combat health segregation making combat not deadly and not important, and breaking some of the interesting builds (tankomage would last 4 times shorter in adventure day than barb or fighter)
- Invisible, massively op AOO's built in into fast paced RTwP engine
- Trash options in skills and perks that make you combine many underwhelming small options to create something that matters in combat but still looks underwhelming

Some points I agree with, others are debatable, but let's get the WTFs out of the way:

-Magic isn't 'hard to use properly', it is extremely effective and easy to plan for. I don't know how I feel about magic damage critting, but what is this 'swingy' stuff
-Is anyone still complaining that disengagement is "OP"? Try actually disengaging from enemies when you need to, and discover that, oh wow, it's not much different from AOO's.

 

[Shadenuat]

Well replace hard to use with "hard to plan properly". Like planning and protecting yourself from Domination, for example (graze, dominated for 5.22 seconds!). There is no particular orderly, tactical fashion (breach > lower immunity > lower saves > final nuke) in the way you use magic in this game. Mostly because it's as easy and effective to spam some spells as create a combo.

Even PopeAmole in his character building videos pressed on how strong and easy it is to hoard on +spells per encounter for casters and just spam shit, because you are a spam-caster (like a cleric).

Is anyone still complaining that disengagement is "OP"?

It's shit and it's stupid. It still is after all the patches, and pathfinding just multiplies it. If you play the game by default aka tank&spank, you might forget about it. But a more tacticool playthrough with many short ranged or melee characters would eventually resolve in at least a few ragequit shutdown pc angrycodex rant moments.

 

[Gord]

Well replace hard to use with "hard to plan properly". Like planning and protecting yourself from Domination, for example. There is no particular orderly, tactical fashion (breach > lower immunity > lower saves > final nuke) in the way you use magic in this game.

Is anyone still complaining that disengagement is "OP"?

It's shit and it's stupid. It still is after all the patches, and pathfinding just multiplies it. If you play the game by default aka tank&spank, you might forget about it. But a more tacticool playthrough with many short ranged or melee characters would eventually resolve in at least a few ragequit shutdown pc angrycodex rant moments.

Actually that is exactly the way you can do it:
1st buff your accuracy, then lower enemy defense with a debuff, probably followed by another one, then cast the spell you want.
Of course that doesn't guarantee a success, but it will statistically move more grazes into hit territory and probably create some crits as well.
Considering that in DnD (including IE) games, spells didn't result in automatic successes all the time either, it's not that different.

And no, disengagement isn't half the problem one would think from all the 'sperging going on about it.
Learn to deal with it and accept that PoE isn't a game were you constantly shuffle every character all over the screen.

Finally, the absence of immunities has nothing to do with how powerful 1st level spells are.

 

[Uniia]

- One-accuracy-to-rule-them-all which makes leveling up more important than most of character building decisions you make, fighters and mages

I think that many balance problems with difficulty curve are made even worse by how much of your characters power level comes from passive stats from leveling. Less stats/level would make overleveling a lesser issue as you would not slaughter enemies so easily with just basic attacks when ahead of the difficulty curve. It would also make your actual character building choices(both talents and itemization) matter more which definitely wouldn't be a bad thing in this game.

I don't know anything about modding PoE, but reducing statgains on leveling in IEmod or smt(assuming it's possible) could improve gameplay and difficulty curve more than just reducing XP gain, which is a nice bandaid but also delays ones access to interesting abilities. I'd much rather have hard fights with weaker stats and powerfull spells than hard fights with less impacting narrower choice of abilities.

It would be nice to be level 10-12 in the endgame on hard and not have most fights be trivial even with just basic attacks because your raw stats do all the work with almost no effort. The game is already way too centered around accuracy and clearing thrash mobs with aoe while limp indestructible tanks keep their attention so PotD emphasising those aspects even more sound very unappealing way to add difficulty.

Reducing statgains won't make PoE spells as impactfull compared to stats as the powerfull ones in IE, but I think many would find the heightened spell impact a good thing. Universal % stat reduction has the potential to make casters overpower physical classes so quite a lot of iterative tinkering might be necessary to keep physical damage dealers relevant.

 

[Shadenuat]

Actually that is exactly the way you can do it:
1st buff your accuracy, then lower enemy defense with a debuff, probably followed by another one, then cast the spell you want.

First of all, the flow of PoE's combat rarely allows for anything as complex as that. But that's not systemic criticism I guess. Still you can improve your chances of landing a solid hit by just rolling d100 table twice instead of wasting time and getting nuked by the enemy spells while you do all that.
I can't believe anyone really bothered with combos for this game. Because everything works fine anyway. People were only pressed into using Petrify for EP boss. Is it because the rise in accuracy overwhelms your needs for debuffs, or the flow of combat, or because of encounter design? It is a problem either way.

Considering that in DnD (including IE) games, spells didn't result in automatic successes all the time either

Wrong, many spells were very reliable. Attacking spells couldn't "miss", worst which happened was 1/2 damage. Debuffs often applied automatically (like Doom). Cloud spells generally worked, always. Many spells were reliable enough. Save-or-die spells were not as reliable, but that's their point.

And no, disengagement isn't half the problem one would think from all the 'sperging going on about it.

It's bloody aggravating when it works poorly, and when it works as intended you either don't notice it or ignore it.

Finally, the absence of immunities has nothing to do with how powerful 1st level spells are.

The absence of immunities is a important reason why many spells are very powerful. But the accuracy and per-encounter spells is what matters more. And that's their "core design". As classic spellcasters progress through levels, their amount of per-encounter abilities just multiplies compared to any other class. If they will remove that and make more per-day stuff, that criticism is off, of course.

 

[Sensuki]

Nobody ever needs to heal in any game if they don't feel like their characters are in danger of going down. So there's really no problem with the healing system in the game according to you - the problem apparently is that the game is so freaking easy nobody ever drops.

You do if healing is a part of long-term resource management, and it's not in Pillars of Eternity.

I'm still confused as to what you were originally disagreeing with in the original statement you quoted, which was

Yeah, although that rarely matters because you don't need to heal in this game unless you're in danger of dropping (and sometimes that's debatable too), if you're healing for the sake of healing and you're not actually going to drop you're just wasting a resource if it's a per-rest or consumable, and also wasting an action.

but this isn't true (not to mention the logic in your statement isn't actually logical).

What bit exactly isn't true? You said that you thought healing isn't super important, and now you're also agreeing that you don't need to heal unless you're in danger of dropping. Am I missing something here?

I addressed the difficulty issue - which is the actual issue here - by telling you how I agree POE should have been more difficult in a number of ways, but that the morons going 'OMG left clik everything lol in bg2 i would be dead all the time' was retarded. (No, your dudes aren't "frequently in need of healing" in IE games, not without SCS.) Instead of addressing that, you've chosen to just continue on and on about healing, when you don't actually have a point that pertains specifically to healing.

I don't think it is a difficulty issue, it's a design issue. The removal of healing resource management is deliberate and with the set per-rest health, you can't have enemies throwing around big damage numbers all the time just to force you to use heals, because it ruins the pace of adventuring (which was the case earlier in the beta when characters had lower health values).

Pope Amole II thinks that healing is overpowered. I don't. It's got nothing to do with healing, it's just the other systems that create the complete polarization of character roles.

Healing in this game is less useful than it is in any Infinity Engine game.

 

[Shadenuat]

Well if we talk *just healing* then Pope is right, healing is overpowered and too ease-of-use by design of spells. Compared to IE games it is:
- Not reach-range
- AoE
- For some spells continious and automatic (Consc. Ground, Moonwell)
- Spells stack with each other

 

[Sensuki]

Not sure that's what he meant but you're right about that - not reach range, AoE and more stuff that heals in general. However, I didn't use Consecrated Ground or Moonwell in my playthrough. Most of the time I used Iconic Projection because it also does damage (minimum of 15 IIRC?).

Personally I think it's designed that way because if it wasn't you wouldn't heal at all, most likely.

 

[Gord]

First of all, the flow of PoE's combat rarely allows for anything as complex as that. But that's not systemic criticism I guess. Still you can improve your chances of landing a solid hit by just rolling d100 table twice instead of wasting time and getting nuked by the enemy spells while you do all that.
I can't believe anyone really bothered with combos for this game. Because everything works fine anyway. People were only pressed into using Petrify for EP boss. Is it because the rise in accuracy overwhelms your needs for debuffs, or the flow of combat, or because of encounter design? It is a problem either way.

It's indeed not necessary most of the time (on hard and below that is, which is all I played on so far), but it can be very useful with the few strong enemies that bring high defenses. If it's not necessary otherwise, the spells sound reliable enough to me (and that's how I experienced them).
That aside, I've said since release that I think that esp. spell durations should be boosted in some cases.

Wrong, many spells were very reliable. Attacking spells couldn't "miss", worst which happened was 1/2 damage. Debuffs often applied automatically (like Doom). Cloud spells generally worked, always. Many spells were reliable enough. Save-or-die spells were not as reliable, but that's their point.

Half damage (and duration where applicable) is what happens when you graze in PoE, which is the most common non-hit result against high-resistance enemies.
From the system-POV, the main issue imo is not the accuracy vs resistance and graze-hit system, but a problematic balancing of the respective numbers.

It's bloody aggravating when it works poorly, and when it works as intended you either don't notice it or ignore it.

Again, why? Because it means you can't simply run around freely? If you want to build a mobile character, give him the right talents for the job and choose a class that brings some class-abilities (well, admittedly that's theory to some extend, e.g. Rogue escape talent isn't working properly...).
There are other ways to work around disengagement: Protect your engaged characters with spells, disable/debuff attackers first, or soak up the damage, which stops being an issue after you have a few levels under your belt.

The absence of immunities is a important reason why many spells are very powerful. But the accuracy and per-encounter spells is what matters more. And that's their "core design". As classic spellcasters progress through levels, their amount of per-encounter abilities just multiplies compared to any other class. If they will remove that and make more per-day stuff, that criticism is off, of course.

If spells wouldn't be powerful, we would have people complaining about how even more spells are shit.
Also didn't you just say that spells are not reliable enough?

The unified accuracy isn't so bad, imo, but I'd like to see more enemies with specific high resistances against certain attacks/spells (e.g. the Prone effect from Slicken). That's something the system supports, it's just barely used.
I'm not so sure about how to understand you sentence about per-encounter vs per-day abilities. Initially all abilities are per-day and only low level spells become per-encounter on high levels. Which is unnecessary, if you ask me, so I wouldn't mind keeping that per-day but simply increasing the slots a bit more.

 

[Shadenuat]

Again, why? Because it means you can't simply run around freely?

Because it is not implemented into a flow of combat in a right way (which works around action speed and recovery).

I'm not so sure about how to understand you sentence about per-encounter vs per-day abilities.

You understood it correctly, it is unnecessary to have so many per-encounter abilities.

 

[Shevek]

My dw fighter has high deflection (thanks to high per and res) and medreths armor that gives +15 def vs disengagement attacks. That makes him mobile enough for me to set up flanking or do some repositioning with him. My big lumbering plate dps guy isnt quite as mobile but i think its cool he isnt.

 

[Gord]

Because it is not implemented into a flow of combat in a right way (which works around action speed and recovery).

That is a rather broad and unspecific thing to say.