currently playing both bg1 + poe and... breakdown of rtwp

[aweigh]

i'm currently playing poe on POTD on a fresh 2.03 run thru the game (yes, i love POE fuck all of you) while also concurrently playing thru BG1 (currently about to go to baldur's gate, but want to do durlag first) and it's actually a very good exercise in RtwP design education if you will.

i go from poe to bg1 and have immediate examples of what is better handled in what context and i'mable to compare the two on the fly, without nostalgia glasses. Infinity rtwp is much better implementation of... RTWP combat

HOWEVER PoE rtwp is a completely different and new implementation of rtwp that eschews the RTS design philosophies which have been the core of rtwp rpg combat for decades in favor of an attempt in layering the poe rtwp system with mechanics and modifiers (multiple unit states of recovery independent of animation, universal movement most of the time in terms of speed so there's little point in outrunning a mob unless you're buffed/geared to do so specifically, punishing any and all movement during battle that's not made without taking into account proximity of enemy engagement threat-zone, etc)

honestly i fucking LOVE poe's rtwp combat. but you know what? i am also loving bg1 right now. they're just different rtwp systems, one is more reactive (infinity engine) and requires careful and strategical manipulation of your units mobility in order to best utilize the game tools, and the other is less about unit manipulation in terms of mobility but rather the poe system asks player similar things that non-rtwp crpg tactical combat games ask and the player has to invest his focus not on reacting to enemy movement but on anticipation of unit placement, on evaluation of unit tools in order to best take advantage of the enemy's movement, i.e. complete opposite of bg style basically optimal way to play is to move as little as possible by emphasizing the opening gambit and making tactical use of a specific place and organizing your units formation in ways that tactically benefit from engagement so as to lock down the enemy and force them to trap themselves into getting flanked by two of your units or getting seperated from the rest of his enemy allies since attempting to flee from your unit engaging him guarantees his death.

just like sensuki as mentioned countless times it is an implementation of rtwp that emphasizes design ideas and player choices that are normally made in turn-based CRPG's or war-games, and it is absolutely and completely different in every level imaginable from infinity engine rtwp.

but it's not worse. it's different. and for a lot of players like myself who do NOT enjoy rts games (never have, never will), it's the most enjoyable rtwp combat i've ever experienced. 10/10 would shill for obs again.

 

[Drudkh]

Maybe before anything, i should mention that RTS is my fav and most respected genre of gaming :D

poe system asks player similar things that non-rtwp crpg tactical combat games ask and the player has to invest his focus not on reacting to enemy movement but on anticipation of unit placement

Surely, and unforunately a turn based system is abscent in this exercise so PoE serves the player situations in which they must focus on positioning ahead of time (yet, that positioning often requires units to spread out a bit so when the conflict starts, buffing is a pain in the ass because aoe spells on cover so much ground) then adjust their actions to what can be done after enemy units have stuck on.

The PoE system does make the DA Origins/SCL system seem like a total bore. I agree that it's good in its own way and i'm fine with it not being the same as BG/IW, but in its current state it encourages save scumming because if the enemy AI just randomly happens to make any unexpected moves, disengage penalties provide an almost certain death to ally mages and priests, (on PotD) so why not just load up again, especially if you're a gamer like myself who considers the losss/KO of even one character a failure.

I think that the PoE system is great in its own way too, but disengagement penalties are not only a source of complaints for shit birds that can't get pre-conflict position correctly, but even the enemy AI gets shredded by engagement penalites because it goes nuts in random situations, and the companion AI is susceptible to the same issues because of this games trash coding.

Btw, what's your positon on the changes with the new white march enemies not being harder because they hit harder but because many of them simply have paralyze/stun moves that have an umbrella solution with using a simple priests spell, so ultimately they are just waste the players time rather than force them to think in a new way? I can't even bring myself to finish the white march because fighting the enemies is the same experience as the normal game (which i don't mind) except for all the stun/paralyze enemies.

 

[aweigh]

as of patch 2.03, well i'll just quote myself here lol

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82975-a-closer-analysis-on-class-balance-and-the-203-patch/

"i think the biggest change in 2.03 is the UNDOCUMENTED increase of enemy engagement "threat-zone", in addition to the also undocumented text pop-up displayed on a disengagement-attack.

I also opine the disengagement attacks' dmg values were increased/tweaked because I DEFINITELY notice in my current run on potd taking MUCH more damage, and MANY more disengagement attacks than ever before (due to the increased threat zone). the combat log does NOT specify the details of the disengagement-attacks so i can't present "proof", but all you have to do is get into a fight with some lions and try to kite them from close (i.e. just make them chase you) and you will immediately notice the lions "trapping" your unit as soon as they get close and immediately inflicting a disengagement-attack for considerably more damange than i've ever noticed before.

i picked lions to test with because they're fast, and unlike other mobs they don't give up chasing you (perhaps this is ALSO due to the 2.03 increased threat zone ranges). there is a very noticeable and new distance at which some enemies can land the disengagement-attack on your unit that was not there before.

NOTE: i play on potd, and it is POSSIBLE these changes i am detailing don't happen on other difficulties."

sawyer will know sleep never more whilst players dost kite!!!! his dreams have become twisted with thoughts of tiny NPC's being led away from the melee instead of towards it by some invisible arrow of points.

 

[aweigh]

oh, as for your question: one the one hand i like the harder encounter in the TWM. for my first Potd + TWM playthrough a few weeks ago it was the first time i made a specific point of having EVERYONE in the party take the mental fortress and body control talents. EVERYONE. t'was also the first time i actually stopped and paid attention to my saving throw numbers, and started speccing my units with the goal of reducing these afflictions chances of scoring a HIT, and instead at the very least GRAZE, as the GRAZE durations are like 1-3 secs, while a TWM fish-monster's paralyze will do like 7-10 secs on a hit, and god forbit he gets a fucking crit.

on the other hand i think it's the most un-fun way to ramp up difficulty in combat setpieces and honestly i am a LITTLE worried that TWM 2 will double-down on this design. there are so many other ways to create an interesting encounter like compromising the party's positioning in a sudden ambush, or have YOU ambush the enemy; things like tweaking the enemy a.i. to better use the terrain and to better use their options. they could also use more items as well, (20 year old bg1 can do this with a simple mod tweak...). well, there are so many ways it requires it's own thread. i believe you get my drift.

a perfect example of how stupid and un-fun these AFFLICTION WARS: THE SAWYERING is the final bounty versus group of elite Vithracks. first time i got there i was lvl 11 and felt like a god already having steam rolled TWM right before and like i'm just gonna lol-autoattack these morons and i just had to fucking laugh out loud when fight started and immediately entire team is dominated for 10+ seconds and also stunned for 5+ seconds, so there was literally nothing i could do except reload and spec myself for the charm-wars and then plan accordingly. i didn't need more attempts, and not saying this was even difficult, just way more involved than regular PoE fights. unfortunately it's a gimmick with diminishing returns, since it obligated me to spec most of my party p. much the exact same way, and the game almost became: stack up your saving throws and always pick the same affliction defense talents, kind of killing the joyful diversity in poe's builds.

don't get me wrong, doing that is not necessary at ALL, only if you REALLY want to game the fuck out of the system. an experienced player already knows this is the most optimal way to spec yourself because he/she already knows all the late-game encounters and he/she already knows that the ONLY way to lose them is to lose control of your party because they're afflicted. there is no other way to lose really, and the exp. player knowing this will realize he/she can just stack up on affliction resistances and thus diminish "difficulty" of these late-game encounters but sadly in return the joy of creating diverse unit builds with different talents and stuff is greatly reduced.

 

[Sensuki]

The game is not balanced for Path of the Damned players. You're playing against creatures with increased stats, and that is the source of your problem right there.

It might be harder, but it's a dumb kind of hard.

(I mention this because if you say "on PotD ..." to a developer they will most likely discount anything you say thereafter because of that fact. This is a reason why when testing the game I never played PotD.)

 

[ArchAngel]

Since you are playing 2.03 a lot let me ask you this: Is pathfinding still crap in PoE? At release if you have that 2-2-2 formation set and you didn't move your 2 front line characters at all as soon as combat started none of your other characters could pass between them although there was enough room for the 3d model. I used to send my rogue forward to start battle and he would always get stuck trying to pass to back line so I had to manually move one of the front liners, and then move him back to close passages for enemies.
In mid line I had Kana and Durance and in 3rd line Aloth. So when I wanted to cast a spell with Aloth that has shorter range he would move forward to get into range but get stuck between Durance and Kana and start doing "the retarded AI dance".

Is this shit still in the game?

 

[roshan]

My problem with combat in PoE (PotD mode) was that it was just pretty much completely random. At the beginning of each battle, the enemies run up to your characters, and everyone get stuck up in a clump, in which you cannot even make out what is going on due to the shitty viewing angle and overdone, glowy and indistinct spells effects. How do you fight battles where you cannot even see any of the characters?

In the IE games, due to the RTS style movement and animations, you could predict exactly how long an enemy would take to reach your characters, which enemies would end up in front of others, etc. Accordingly you can target your missile attacks, debuffs or hard counters. But in Shitternity, the enemy that is closest to your party will often somehow end up reaching you the last. And any spells you cast have absolutely no effect on this. I tried the web spell, and it reduced the movement rate by an insignificant amount for a fraction of time so small that it was useless, and that was when it did a full hit, with a graze the effects simply didn't exist. I tried some kind of slow spell but it seems the casting time of the spell was longer than the effect time. And the debuffs do almost nothing. And once everyone is clumped up, there is nothing more you can do, you cannot even move your characters around. All that matters at this point is your level, seemingly the sole important stat in the game, because if you outlevel enemies, then combat is a cakewalk, otherwise, if they outlevel you, your characters get slaughtered. Not enough levels? Too fucking bad, go and grind some shitty quests first.

And this is not even taking into consideration all the bugs (don't know if these have been fixed yet) - you cannot even target enemies, often most orders and commands issued end up not doing anything, your characters will run around the entire clump to attack an enemy that happened to be just beside them. And worse of all is the lack of basic features such as being able to disable combat AI. Your characters will keep on doing utterly stupid shit, such as breaking formations, that you never ordered them to do.

And what are you left with in terms of combat options? All you can really do once your characters are clumped is spam your per encounter abilities, which is a mindless process as it requires no thought from you. And you are doing this every battle. Pointless spamming of abilities for no real purpose, without any resource management concerns or any sort of thought process behind it.

All this leads to a combat system that is fundamentally uninteractive, tedious and boring. There is no real gameplay challenge, the only challenge is fighting against your own character's AI scripts and the buggy pathfinding, and looking for crappy quests to grind to increase your level. There is no special trick that you can pull to win a battle (unlike in IE games where a number of spells were easily game changers if applied correctly), because most spells have no effect on the proceedings. You can't even move around. Most of what happens is randomly decided within the first few seconds as the enemies rush towards you.

It's an abomination of a game, the systems and combat are just atrocious, the products of a complete imbecile.

 

[aweigh]

the path finding has improved... i GUESSS; but it is still extremly common to send your tank to the left to head off a mob and because you fucked up (or were just tired and lazy) and didn't make a good formation before the combat there is your fucking priest like 3 feet in front of the fighter so obviously the fighter... fucking goes in a freaking long ass winding circling turn around the priest, and it becomes funny/annoying because you obviously also clicked the priest out of the fighters path, so the two bumfuck each other no matter what you do.

it does require quite a bit of EXACT ground-clicking to plan ahead your party's paths to their spots. i think i have full blown stockholm syndrome tho cos the more i play poe the more i enjoy the asinine unit-navigation mini-puzzle each wonderful encounter brings.

will my 4 martial units each go exactly where i sent them? will two of them decide to change targets because the game calculated they're closer to an engagement threat-zone from another enemy mob than they are to the empty space you want them to go to? the excitement never ends.

 

[aweigh]

--a lot of factual stuff--.

yes. and... no. there are new dimensions now in current build there weren't previously; sawyer and company doubled down on engagement mechanic and it is now incredibly important. as a matter of fact all of my recent bounty-fights (those are "hard" lewl) have required very tactical manipulation of my units so as to

1) never leave them exposed and vulnerable to flanking. (the enemy a.i. now flanks you)
2) always keep rigid control of all my units so as to never "break" my formation i.e. blocking entry to the inner group of caster units while also not exposing the "frontline"'s flanks or open a hole in the formation.
3) very careful and SPECIFIC focus-firing on enemy mobs in accordance to: their level of danger to my current formation/party/defenses; which are fast (monks, lions, etc), which are slow, which are melee and hit hard, and which are ranged/casters.
4) pausing and clicking and changing orders constantly to navigate the utter visual clusterfuck of biblical proportions that every big poe encounter becomes. it doesn't DEGENERATE into this, mind you, it BECOMES an actual melee. /apologist mode
5) utilizing every tactic possible to disable/CC some mobs so some of your units can engage some of the other mobs so as to control space in which your other units can break through the remaining enemy mobs and engage enemy casters/ranged because otherwise you will lose GG (10 second dominations LOL)
6) you have to always position party members to be able to flank the enemy. the absolute most important thing is to focus fire every tool in a thought-out way to bring down a mob or a group of mobs. the easiest way to lose any of the potd fights that are actually hard is to have every party member select a different target. p. much guaranteed party wipe.

the level of micro MANAGEMENT is absolutely insane. note that i do not mean "level of micro" as in an RTS/MOBA/IE games... i mean the sheer amount of careful and specific pausing and clicking and giving orders and cancelling orders and targeting mobs and changing targets for better use of space and pausing after every big enemy spell that utterly covers entire screen in an indecipherable eye-illusion you must solve... i hate it but i love it at the same time. it is truly a completely different way to implement a RTWP system. i am actually currently... quite optimistic for poe 2. sawyer will not rest rtwp becomes = it's actually turn-based but without turns so you have to pause ever 0.3 seconds TM.

 

[Ninjerk]

RK47

 

[AwesomeButton]

Since you are playing 2.03 a lot let me ask you this: Is pathfinding still crap in PoE? At release if you have that 2-2-2 formation set and you didn't move your 2 front line characters at all as soon as combat started none of your other characters could pass between them although there was enough room for the 3d model. I used to send my rogue forward to start battle and he would always get stuck trying to pass to back line so I had to manually move one of the front liners, and then move him back to close passages for enemies.
In mid line I had Kana and Durance and in 3rd line Aloth. So when I wanted to cast a spell with Aloth that has shorter range he would move forward to get into range but get stuck between Durance and Kana and start doing "the retarded AI dance".

Is this shit still in the game?

Yes, actually it produces funny scenes where a buch of spiders are pressing against each other trying to get to Aloth for example, but they can't reach him, because the path is blocked by your front line. As a result they just keep pushing themselves against your front liners instead of switch their attacks, and you get to whack at them without any repercussions. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

Another example would be when you order a party member to cast a single-target spell on some enemy, but that enemy is still moving and hasn't locked into combat with someone from your party. Your caster will usually mess up navigating towards the target, if his spell is out of range, and will run into other enemies who will get at him at melee range, and it's GG for him.

and that was when it did a full hit, with a graze the effects simply didn't exist.

I agree. Grazes of timed afflictions are pure bullshit. For the time it takes a character to go through his recovery animation the graze effect (2-3sec) is over, and you don't get a chance to hit the enemy while he still has the affliction. So the graze has been the same as a miss.

 

[roshan]

will my 4 martial units each go exactly where i sent them? will two of them decide to change targets because the game calculated they're closer to an engagement threat-zone from another enemy mob than they are to the empty space you want them to go to? the excitement never ends.

Sounds like a lot of fun.

 

[Drudkh]

Since you are playing 2.03 a lot let me ask you this: Is pathfinding still crap in PoE? At release if you have that 2-2-2 formation set and you didn't move your 2 front line characters at all as soon as combat started none of your other characters could pass between them although there was enough room for the 3d model... Is this shit still in the game?

Yes, it's still exactly the same as the launch version of the game, yet i have to defend PoE when it comes to path finding actually, it could be improved, (that's for sure) but going back and testing the path finding of the BG and IW games after the release of PoE i was surprised to find that my nostalgia was clouding the fact that the engine for PoE does much better in this regard. Sure commands are processed in a much snappier pace in the IE engine, but you can depend on your units to move in an order much more in the uniform that you've chosen in PoE.

It's an abomination of a game, the systems and combat are just atrocious, the products of a complete imbecile.

lol, try speaking like this on the official obsidian forums and watch as all the white knights jump on you trying to protect the precious feelingz of the devs. Little do they know that some of us are not simpletons trying to play a game of bashing stuff for fun like children but are simply trying to make counter arguments in order to provide thoughtful criticism.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yes, it's still exactly the same as the launch version of the game, yet i have to defend PoE when it comes to path finding actually, it could be improved, (that's for sure) but going back and testing the path finding of the BG and IW games after the release of PoE i was surprised to find that my nostalgia was clouding the fact that the engine for PoE does much better in this regard. Sure commands are processed in a much snappier pace in the IE engine, but you can depend on your units to move in an order much more in the uniform that you've chosen in PoE.

In Bg1EE I found pathfinding 100% better than PoE.

 

[Xeon]

I liked the PoE custom formation and also when you hover on a target, you get tidbits info about them, what they have for buffs, debuffs and all that jazz.

Combat, I kinda like BG1 better, its slow and kinda clean or something, I can almost keep track of everything going on, in PoE a lot of things happen kinda fast even with slowest combat speed and seem kinda hectic someitmes if that makes sense. Also one thing I really dislike in PoE, there is almost no sure way to protect your self from statues attack[?] like in IE. I really like how with just a little bit of planning and preparations, the entire combat is set in IE I think.

Also why is everything is short duration in PoE, In BG you can summon undead and they last for 8 hours, you can drink a potion and some lasts for 10min I think but in PoE everything feels very short.

 

[Drudkh]

In Bg1EE I found pathfinding 100% better than PoE.

Actually, the more i think on it, you are right. Units do seem to say in the preset formation better in PoE, but once a battle begins it can be a real mess, i almost forgot how i'm so used to overdoing it with the micro that the player can't simply click on an enemy to attack it that's across the battlefield because often the AI will take the hilarously longest route possible around everyone so at this point it tend to break movement orders down into shorter commands so i know they'll go where i want. Also, there's the issue of simply getting an ally unit to move inbetween the space of two characters that are close, but have just enough room for a character to go thru, that can turn into a multi-click process as well.

 

[Sensuki]

Yes, it's still exactly the same as the launch version of the game, yet i have to defend PoE when it comes to path finding actually, it could be improved, (that's for sure) but going back and testing the path finding of the BG and IW games after the release of PoE i was surprised to find that my nostalgia was clouding the fact that the engine for PoE does much better in this regard

Yeah this is flat out lies. Any IE game set to Path Search Nodes 40,000 has better pathfinding than Pillars of Eternity. There are specific instances where Pillars is better, and the IE games have some specific pathfinding quirks but the ones in Pillars are FAR worse in my opinion (because they occur in combat), but overland travel is much easier and requires less management than the IE games.

IE games have 3 pathfinding problems:

#1: Pathing takes into account black fog of war, meaning that if a single pixel line of FoW is blocking vision, the character will try and path around instead of going straight. Pillars doesn't have this problem, overland travel is easy and works as it should for the most part.

#2: Pathfinding falls apart in close spaces and characters bump into each other and turn and walk the other way. This means you have to manually control units in tight spaces. IE pathfinding responds kinda poorly to geometry, particularly in BG1.

Pillars doesn't have this problem when the party is traversing the map (works as it should regarding pathing over the navmesh), but the navigation around other units is pretty bad and often characters always take the long route to path around a clump of units rather than the shortest path.

#3: Characters can get stuck on the edge of unit selection circles, but it's an easy thing to fix.

This happens to a worse degree in Pillars, especially for enemies where they just run on the spot when they can't get through a space between units and for some reason see the shortest path around. The Engagement system confounds fixing pathing errors in melee, as well.

 

[roshan]

#2: Pathfinding falls apart in close spaces and characters bump into each other and turn and walk the other way. This means you have to manually control units in tight spaces. IE pathfinding responds kinda poorly to geometry, particularly in BG1.

This is supposed to be fixed by the next updates (?) to the EE. Characters will walk through closed spaces in a line, no more bumping on each other and then heading the opposite way.

 

[Sensuki]

Oh ok cool. Still won't make me install the EE though Years of playing IE has made me able to manage this problem without thinking

 

[purpleblob]

I still can't understand why anyone would buy EE, to be honest. There are tons of awesome mods out there for vanilla. Also, I find EE version quite buggy. My hubby is playing BG2:EE now and random characters are spawning at wrong places and duplicate themselves. High Lord Oisig appeared in Spellhold maze

 

[Space Insect]

I can never understand all the complaints about EE bugginess. When I played them (a while after release btw) I got very few bugs.


Back on topic though, I agree that the combat in BG1 was very fluid.

 

[SCO]

Pathfinding in RT combat is a different (harder, because it interacts game mechanics) problem than in fixed maps.
In combat you need to take into account not the enemy positions as they are but as they ideally 'will be' in the future time that they're likely to intersect and reschedule those or modify the paths.

I'd guess PoE is not even attempting this (probably for good reason seeing as it sounds like a nightmare to code).

I believe BG just ignored collision between toons in combat or just put them as much smaler than the actual toon in combat.