sser said:
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.
I disagree with Anthony Davis about real-time with pause as a whole. I don't believe that RTwP games simulate turn-based games. The Infinity Engine games and the Neverwinter Nights games are a real-time with pause implementation of D&D mechanics.
One of the mistakes made in this implementation for both NWN games is including Attacks of Opportunity in real-time because the mechanic doesn't work. Even you agree that the way they did it in Pillars of Eternity is bullshit.
I agree with both Grunker and AINT about stuff like per-encounters and engagement being pulled from turn-based games, that's because they are. It's because Josh and the other guys at Obsidian primarily play tabletop and turn-based games and they don't know any better. That's what they're familiar with. TBH they should stick to making turn-based games because I don't think that they have ever made a game with good real-time combat gameplay other than Josh with the Icewind Dales but that system was created by BioWare.
Pillars of Eternity's combat system without Engagement IS a real-time system (with pause). The only things that stick out like a sore thumb are engagement and per-encounter abilities - and I mentioned both of these things as issues in the OP.
TBH, I'm not sure why you're bringing up the opinions of other people when you think the system is shit. You don't see me doing that. I can just as easily cherry pick arguments from people that align with my own from the Obsidian forums or from related topics here, but I'm not going to because it's unnecessary.
The Baldur's Gate forums are run by Beamdog for the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Editions. Those games include a story mode. Nuff said.
random from Beamdog forum said:
That makes sense though. It should be pretty easy to stab someone who turns around and tries to run away.
This person probably thinks that either AoOs are realistic (they're not) or has the same problem as you do, thinking that units who move in combat drop their guard and has issues differentiating the rules of real-time and turn-based like you do.
I always thought kiting was a bit cheesy
Kiting can be cheesy, but the Engagement system does not prevent kiting.
See these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hts36Nws3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aINHF86FPQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQw_dr0Wd0g
...it forces you to not go randomly around with your squishy mage first: it favors strategy.
Yes, it favors strategy. Engagement makes the game less tactical though.
I love how this will make playing a Wizard and kiting the whole game much harder. Neat.
Playing a Wizard is harder because their protection spells are fucking shit, not because of Engagement. Wizards can get fucking dropped easily without protection in the Infinity Engine games. Kiting is not made harder because of Engagement, it's just as easy, but a bit less effective because ranged attacks are slower in Pillars of Eternity than the Infinity Engine games.
Curse whoever thought to give the enemies decent AI.
Not sure what this means, but you and I both agree that the AI in the game is bad, and is not suited to dealing with Engagement.
It makes moving your guys lot more tactical...
This person is confusing strategy with tactics, because moving in Pillars of Eternity is actually less tactical. You want to move as little as possible, so you implore a strategy around that.
It forces you to think about positioning and movement pre-fight quite a bit
Yes it does. However it removes basically any tactical movement after engagement from the game, which is boring and annoying.
That's Attack of Opportunity from 3E. Temple of Elemental Evil and NwN1/2 have it I think. ... kiting is stupid.
Mhm, except 3E and ToEE are turn-based games. This person also seems to think that the system deals with kiting, when it doesn't.
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Not sure what Grunker is on about, didn't read his post in the thread. He dislikes Engagement for different reasons to me.
People who prefer turn-based to real-time games (Anthony Davis, arguably yourself too?) will probably like the Engagement system because it pretty much is included for such people. I see it as a pollution to real-time gameplay.
A different "Zone of Control" system would be an improvement on the Engagement system but I don't think it has any place in this game, which was supposed to be an Infinity Engine style game, with Infinity Engine style combat. However because the developers can't into real-time games and a bunch of their friends wanted a turn-based style mechanic like this in, they added it in.
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
I'm with LF_Incline on this one, this is the reason why modern real-time games have more disables. Disables and Crowd Control facilitate unit stickiness. You don't need a zone of control system.
If you never caught the enemy mage in the first place, not even a Zone of Control system will stop them running. This is the problem that you and others have in thinking that 'Zone of Control' type stuff prevents kiting - it doesn't even address 95% of real situations where people kite in games because the Zone of Control only addresses it temporarily IF you actually get in range. Most kiting takes place when ranged characters attack from a distance and then keep running away. As a melee unit, you're never going to be able to do anything against that if you
never get in range in the first place.
The AI doesn't have to act like a player might anyway. I don't know of many games that do that, although there are a few older games that attempted it - Dark Reign and Age of Empires 2 spring to mind. It's actually kind of sad how far gameplay has fallen on the list of priorities for games
when games from the 90s had better AI that was much, much harder to code than today when it's a lot easier to code.