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So. just started playing this game, despite failing to get into Baldur's gate, repeatedly. I like it already.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:56
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Seashell Salesman posted:Once I realized the stash had unlimited space I just chuck every single item into it at all times. There should be some mode selector that toggles between either having a stash or having individual inventories, having both just feels very clunky and redundant. One of the hardcore options does limit your use of the Stash. To what extent I don't know but it's there.
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Jun 2, 2015 19:17
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Scorchy posted:Hmm shouldn't it be on pre-order on Steam by now I'm pretty sure rope kid has said they aren't doing pre-orders for the expansions.
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Aug 20, 2015 15:50
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Hollismason posted:I don't like twitch games, what are the best Auto Pause functions. I think it's auto pausing to much right now. I have it on slow game play and auto pause. I should prob just do slow game play and just pause when I want to. Enemy spotted and Target Destroyed are both critical IMO. Set the movement stop for Enemy Spotted as well. Consider Combat Start if you like to start throwing combat only abilities ASAP. Also consider Hidden Object Found. I personally don't like Auto Slow because I think the game is slow enough as it is. Re: Dialogue pretty much only critical dialogue that you'll always hear doing a quest will be voiced. The more obscure/off the beaten path the quest is or the more buried within the 20 questions dialogue branches, the less likely the lines will be voiced.
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Sep 6, 2015 02:45
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Perhaps the best thing to do would be to give some examples of potential synergies as loading screen tips. That'll give new players a strategy they can try and clue them into this way of thinking. I mean, I've been plugging away at the game recently and barely cleared Act 1 on Normal, (and thinking of starting over anyway) but I never once thought about how "inflicting affliction X makes spell Y more likely to stick" until these recent posts spelled it out for me.
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Nov 22, 2015 02:30
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The Sharmat posted:Yeah the loading screen thing isn't a bad idea. Playing on Normal it's not surprising you haven't thought about it at all because it's really not an issue on that level. I've thought about it way more on PotD, although as Rascyc says fortitude is a bit of a wash on that because it seem to b a really common very high defense on PotD to the extent it's hard to even bother assailing it. I meant like, even if I was playing on something harder, I never would have thought of that. At all. Normal as it is is kicking my rear end enough and I'm finding it far and away harder than anything Baldur's Gate has thrown at me so far (albeit, haven't finished BG2 yet). There's probably some key thing to do with combat that I'm just not getting. That's a common thing I've found with RTwP RPGs in general, that there's something that needs to be made clear to the player that, to someone inexperienced, just isn't.
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Nov 22, 2015 07:29
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Khizan posted:A large percentage of the fights in the game can be trivialized by dragging the fight into a chokepoint. Then you just block the chokepoint with Eder while your guys used ranged weapons and pikes and attack them over Eder's shoulder. This will get you through a looooot of the game without incident or any real tactics other than this. Ratios and Tendency posted:Are you fighting shades at level 3 or something? This is baffling. I think my problem is that I'm not doing enough damage. I was reading some old posts where people were whining that Kana never got to three chants for a summon in any fight ever but he gets there for me in every single fight, often twice though just barely. That said I have no idea how to increase my DPS. Now that I've picked up Pallegina I tried making her the main tank and respecced Eder into dual-wielding but now he just goes down like a bitch in 15 seconds as a worst case scenario and best case his DPS doesn't seem to be affected in the slightest and enemies still take ages to kill. I can't put anyone else in my party (PC Cipher, Aloth, Durance, Kana) on the frontlines because if Eder with his high CON and plate armor goes down that fast everyone else would just get one-shotted. Elias_Maluco posted:Incidentally, that's why I love FFXII and DA:O. Excelent automation so that most fights are played by themselves, requiring micro managing only on special fights, like bosses. I think the main reason that RTwP works for BG in particular, is specifically because of the "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" nature of D&D. Non-caster classes require very little managing at all, even without setting up AI scripts. Casters on the other hand, in spite of their obtusely massive skillsets, don't need too much management either because of just how strong each individual spell is in and of itself. Most fights where you're gonna use a spell, you're gonna use one, maybe two, and even those fights aren't common. At the upper limit we're looking at like, I dunno, nine counting pre-buffs? I'm trying to remember exactly how I handled Firkaag but I think that fight and Sarevok are the only fights in either BG so far where I've used a significant number of spells. As far as DAO goes. It's clear they wanted to close the gap in activeness between casters and non-casters, but this left the game VERY micromanagey so they crib FF12's gambit system to compensate. We can probably argue all day about how effective it is but in my opinion, outside of mages spamming mana potions, it wasn't terribly useful since my characters would often not have stamina to use abilities when I needed them to, but it was decently effective when used minimally. Basically what I'm saying is that RTwP systems in the most successful games are heavy on automation, and owe their success in part to that. The player in these games is there to strategize and give orders, not to take direct control and and manage absolutely ever single action a character can take individually. The player is not executing strategies, their characters are, based on the order the player gives them. Head Hit Keyboard posted:That's a common thing I've found with RTwP RPGs in general, that there's something that needs to be made clear to the player that, to someone inexperienced, just isn't. I'd like to address this line of mine since I think that might've kicked off this whole "RTwP is BAAAAAADD" discussion. I'll start off by saying that, I started binging on RTwP RPGs starting with DA:O earlier this year, and I've had a lot more fun with them than I ever expected to. In retrospect I shouldn't be too surprised by this since FF12 is one of my favorite games of all time. But each RTwP game I've played, including FF12, has had one niggling thing that made the game excruciatingly difficult until I figured it out. In FF12, it was all the equipment gimmicks. It's really easy to play that game and just give everyone heavy armor because that has the best defense values, while completely missing the far more significant boosts to strength that heavy gives, boosts to magic that mystic armor gives, and boosts to HP that light gives. Also, weapon formula gimmicks like guns in that game being stat independent or katanas being as reliant on magic as they are strength. Even on paper these distinctions don't seem significant but in practice the difference is night and day, especially with the armor. In DA:O it was the importance of pulling. I'm going to use the first room of the Tower of Ishal as a reference for this because failing that room over and over caused just enough stress to burn that fight into my brain. Arrows are dangerous in DA:O, really dangerous. If you try to charge into that room your party will be wrecked by the enemy arrow volley and then you have get into melee with a bunch of enemies with a very low health party, while archers are still plinking at you. It's -POSSIBLE- to do it this way but you'll be out a lot of potions, since enemies are probably going to be hurting you just as fast as you heal the damage off. What you have to do to not lose your sanity is have an archer shoot an arrow at one of the distant melee enemies and pull them into the entryway where your melee can deal with them without arrows flying at them all the time. It is not obvious or even intuitive IMO that this is a thing you can even do, and I have two reasons for this. 1) the very real time nature of the game has my brain thinking in "action" mode naturally rather than strategic, so short of traps I wasn't even considering the lay of the battlefield in the slightest. And 2) I honestly expected the enemies to not be that moronic. I mean, sure limited AI and all but I honestly would've thought their aggro range wouldn't go that far down simply because of the clear advantage of their own positioning. Especially given that the enemy archers themselves I couldn't seem to pull at all. In BG1, it was something that I understood fairly simply but I can tell a lot of new players to that game don't, and that's the safety of range. Average starting character in BG1 is going to have what, 8-12 HP typically right? Low enough that realistically getting hit can be equated with getting killed. Most enemies in the first few areas of BG1 are explicitly melee only. From Candlekeep to Beregost at least there are almost no significant groups of enemies that use ranged attacks. So using your own ranged attacks to kill all these 3-5 HP enemies before their swords can get anywhere near you is the key to suriviving until you get those first level ups and can actually risk going into melee. And I think there must be some similar thing to PoE as well and I just haven't figured it out yet. All of these things though are things that should in some capacity be told to the player in the game if for no other reason than to get thought-process rolling. That's something that the tutorial areas in all of these games fail at is making sure the player is in the right mindset, and the games do suffer for it.
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Nov 22, 2015 17:28
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Octo1 posted:You probably shouldn't be fighting lions and druids at level 5, try doing some more quests in Defiance Bay first. Also, make sure to enchant your weapons with elemental lashes, those are the simplest way to make your characters deal more damage. So what level should I be before attempting to go to Dyrford village? I mean, I know the plot hasn't shuffled me there yet but the companion pickup guide I was trying to follow has you going there before even Defiance Bay so I'm probably getting a mixed message somewhere.
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Nov 22, 2015 20:12
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This might seem odd coming from the guy who was just saying the game was really hard but I think if you're going to limit resting then it would be better to go whole hog and limit it to just inns and other such fixed locations. You have this many spells available, you have this much health, and that's what you get for, typically, an entire dungeon. I also think that enemies should respawn so players can't go "lol run back to inn spam" and actually have to  , but that might just be my Dragon Quest nostalgia talking.
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Nov 24, 2015 05:20
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Khizan posted:I think that BG/BG2/etc actually did Vancian casting way better than PoE did. Huh, I actually feel the exact opposite to you. Spells with planned obsolescence are awful because either A, there's nothing in that level range where the spell is useful that it's actually worth using the spell on, or B, the spell becomes a crutch that suddenly gets taken away from the player and now they have no idea what they're doing. In BG I find I'm avoiding anything with planned obsolescence out of sheer fear that I might become too reliant on it. Better I learn to live without now than figure it out the hard way later. Spell memorization is similarly terrible because if you ever have the wrong spells set up that can outright screw you. Combat should never be decided before it starts. This is something that can only work if the player has clairvoyant knowledge of what's coming and what works against it, otherwise it's going to end up with Quickload->Shuffle Spells->Rest cycle over and over again as the best case scenario. This isn't something challenging or fun, just tedious. I kinda agree that figuring out how many of each spell to allot yourself isn't bad and in fact is pretty fun, but the fact that in this case it's tied to the former just ruins it IMO. As it stands, a character casting a spell impacts their ability to further cast any further spells of that level. And that's where I think the problem lies. Casting Fetid Caress for example doesn't impact my further capability to cast Slicken. This is why I prefer mana systems to vancian ones because every casting affects how much you can further cast, and it does so without prejudice to spell levels or anything of the sort. As far as overlap goes, perhaps it could be better in Pillars but Wizard Styles is right that BG isn't much if at all better.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:24
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Furism posted:Since 2.0 enemies seem to ignore that behavior a lot though and rush past the Fighter if they find a juicy target not too far - and eat the Disengagement Attack. They might even change target if, say, my Rogue walks close-by in order to get behind the target. It's not a problem exactly but I find Engagement unreliable now and I have to be much more cautious than before. I think the enemy takes into account your accuracy and damage potential when deciding whether they risk disengagement. I'm experimenting with this at low levels sure but I've found enemies far less likely to run around Eder when he has a Sabre only than when he has a Hatchet and Larder Door for example. How they'll handle retargeting when flanked seems up in the air. Sometimes enemies will switch to hitting my barely armored monk, sometimes they stick to Eder anyway. That's where I'm finding a lack of consistency.
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Nov 25, 2015 17:23
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Yeah there are lots of ways to get around unwanted engagement. Usually what I've done is have my Cipher use Mind Wave or Amplified Thrust. If Eder's available he'll knockdown. If it's a case where my character has decent deflection and their's doesn't I might just risk disengagement anyway. Regardless though, PoE's combat doesn't seem to be about movement to me, it's about resource management, and unwanted engagement forces you to use your resources to deal with it. Really, I love engagement as a mechanic. Finally something that allows tanks to function properly without relying on stupid AI like the Infinity Engine games or overly gamey mechanics like Aggro. It also punishes kiting which is the literal best thing to me.
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Nov 26, 2015 16:18
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All I'll say on the the attribute discussion is I'm glad that at least every point makes a difference here and I will forever hate the AD&D/BG system of "Are your stats min/maxed? If not then lol".
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Nov 27, 2015 23:17
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Dick Burglar posted:Keep rerolling stats until you've got huge numbers in every stat. "You can, therefore, you must."
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Nov 28, 2015 19:57
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Alchenar posted:I disagree (different reason). This sort of thing results in 'the game' being reduced to the tactics screen and every fight feeling identical because the same stuff happens every time without your input. What you really want is either a turn-based system or a real-time-slowed-to-the-point-of-pause system that gives the player enough time to evaluate all their options and pick the best one. And a bunch of varied fights that mean there's never a single optimal party tactic you can pull out over and over again reliably. Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why not just set up for routine poo poo like targeting, healing, etc. Some things are so routine but the in-game AI just gets it wrong anyway. In my game at least, Kana on Summoner AI will always opt for skeletons over the ghost, and I will always pull the ghost out when Kana gets three chants. This is something I would set up as a tactic because it would let me put my attention elsewhere so I wouldn't have to worry about it. As it stands, its annoying busywork in every fight. I wouldn't hand stuff like Wizard or even Cipher spells over to tactics because my choice of what to use varies so wildly from fight to fight that I couldn't set up the checklist necessary.
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Dec 1, 2015 15:27
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pentyne posted:Well "faster" only in the sense of burning through every single high level ability asap because you can just quick-save and rest to get back up to 100%. The BG D&D system always wanted this idea of "hoard your spells carefully!" but in practice it was always "rest after every encounter" and treat every encounter as the final battle. Furism posted:Sure you could do that in BG but since nothing prevented you from spam-resting, most people would just do that. In Pillars you are somewhat limited by the amount of camping supplies you can carry so it's more restrictive. It's still quite generous though so you don't have to be super careful even on PotD. LibbyM posted:I played through NWN, IWD, all those games by resting after every battle. Pillars is super forgiving with the camping system, but it at least makes me stop and think for half a second before using per rest abilities. I feel like this mainly existed as a band-aid fix for systems that BioWare/Black Isle couldn't remove. Namely spell preparation. Especially by SoA levels it's easy to go several battles or sometimes even dungeons without resting, but there were plenty of times I was forced to rest not because I ran out of spells but because I didn't have the spells I needed set up. To be honest, I don't understand why PoE didn't just do away with non-inn rests entirely. In BG I accepted it because D&D mechanics taken straight are terrible for a video game and there needed to be some sort of out on that part, but to me, PoE has no such excuse and resting in the middle of a dungeon just feels like straight up cheating to me. It's probably a good part of the reason why I've never actually gotten into Act 2 despite having plugged 50 or so hours into the game over the past 8 months. I'm not against the attrition per-rest systems, in fact I welcome it, but having, and it being balanced around, an on-demand refresh button, limited use or not, just feels wrong. It makes more sense to raise the amount of health/per-rest charges you get and do away with camping supplies and the rest button entirely.
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May 24, 2016 16:43
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Lotish posted:Am I playing wrong? Part of what I consider the "test" of a combat encounter is "how can I get through this using few enough resources I don't have to rest." I feel the same way, with the little difference that I don't feel like I failed when I buy camping supplies, rather I feel like I failed when I use them. Resting outside of inns feels like cheating to me.
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May 28, 2016 18:10
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Arivia posted:Actually they should just use FFXII's Gambit system. That's literally what DAO and DA2's tactics systems were though, just upgraded. DA2's I remember being even more advanced than even DAO's Advanced Tactics mod and I want to see more games use that.
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Jul 12, 2016 16:56
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RTwP is great for systems that are simple and ask for a lot of repetition of actions. If a system is too complex then making it RTwP is more likely to make it feel even slower than if it was turn based, when you account for having to process information. I think PoE already skirts the borderline here.
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Jul 17, 2016 14:58
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The recent update to KoTOR2 adds controller support, KoTOR1 hasn't received the same treatment though.
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Aug 2, 2016 01:05
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The Lord Bude posted:I've just started playing this awesome game a few days ago - I was a backer, but I never got around to it till now, which is kinda good since I get to do all the content at once. It's taken me a while to get used to all the mechanics and how stats interact, because I went into the game from a D&D background, and made some false assumptions (it's weird that might affects spell damage for eg). So now I'm in act 2, I've finally got all the companions, aside from the ones in the expansions, and I have some questions: I'm using that exact same party minus weapon setup (MC dual wields swords, Eder dual wields sabers, Durance gets an Arquebus). My last slot has Kana in it. Sure-Handed-Ila was reason enough to keep Kana around, but Dragon Thrashed is just silly. Kana just existing provides some pretty great passive effects. I use Kana ranged mostly (Arbalest) but he's the first one to pick up a weapon (Tidefall, in my case) the back line gets threatened somehow. He's also my scroll/summon totem user since I rely on his actives the least. The best weapon type for melee dps is sabers. High damage, fast thanks to dual-wielding, and has good uniques out there like Bittercut. For tanking there's Tidefall (regeneration on hit) on the more damaging side, but beyond that I don't know of any in particular. As for ranged, earlier in the game there's a clear bias towards guns/arbalests for their higher damage, as weaker stuff like hunting bows and even war bows will have trouble piercing DR. As better variants and enchantments come out though, DR becomes less of an issue so war bows look better. IMO the only hunting bow worth using is Stormcaller, the soulbound bow in WM1, and possibly the most consistent ranged weapon in the game. Also regarding the trap thing, Auto-Pause on Hidden Object Found. Use it.
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Aug 2, 2016 15:22
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My two cents. A lot of the perceived difficulty of these types of games is, in my opinion, a result of poor tutorialization. I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins a bit lately interspersed with sessions of this game and both do an absolutely wonderful job of teaching the player... how to interact with the interface. And that's about it. There's nothing to explain to the player how they're supposed to actually play the game. There's nothing to point out how important buffs, debuffs, or positioning are, or more importantly, how to even properly use these things. Like, in Dragon Age, one of the very early areas you go through has, in the very first room a winding path of barricades lined with traps that at the end opens into a group of enemy archers. Now supposedly this is the tutorial for this sort of thing but absolutely everyone, myself included, will just charge through and inevitably get murdered because to us, there's no reason we can do anything else. Now if one the party members were to simply speak up, ask if you had a plan, and offer some examples of battle strategies like say send a rogue in stealthed and disarm the traps, or shoot arrows over the barricades to draw the enemies to us. Hand-holding, sure, but when most of these players look at DAO or PoE and the first thing they think of is Diablo, I think a little handholding to get the point across becomes necessary. Even just once. Get the player in the right mindset and you get the ball rolling. If they aren't in the right mindset then they'll just flounder in frustration until something hopefully clicks, but if they believe they're in the right mindset when they're not, nothing short of an in-depth tutorial is going to get them on the right track.
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Sep 2, 2016 04:21
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GrumpyGoesWest posted:I'm pretty sure the devs added a steam controller profile if that would help. The profile is pretty dated and one of the bindings in it doesn't actually match the correct key in the default keybindings. Still, with some tweaking and a little of bit of practice the game plays great with the Steam Controller. I play it with the Steam controller from my couch 90% of the time.
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Sep 2, 2016 15:53
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I'd bet real money that a sizable chunk of the players who suck at the game don't understand what engagement is.
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Sep 4, 2016 00:29
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How do I Ranger? When I tried to use Sagani her fox pet just died a lot.
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Sep 9, 2016 18:07
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Shock is better. Returning Storm and Relentless storm are stupidly amazing.
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Oct 1, 2016 17:08
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Artificer posted:I figured that it would be easier, but I dont know if I want to miss out on the sweet sweet murderloot and xp. You don't get XP from murder in this game.
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Oct 24, 2016 18:21
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The thing that finally got me through act 1 was disavowing the very idea of a proper tank and just using bulky DPS as my frontline instead.
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Nov 13, 2016 16:11
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