Engagement System Questions

[Sensuki]

Engagement is fucking retarded with things like Confuse - charm a party member, your running party member next to them suffers disengagement attack. Teleport bug shadows (not their teleport, they are bugged) - moving char suffers disengagement attack.

 

[tuluse]

So at level 4 my 8 con (admittedly low) cipher will go down from a single crit if engaged by a raedrick guard. I know I'm playing on hard, but this seems a little harsh.

It also means guard moves and gets 1 attack and I try to run triggering disengagement attack I'm almost certain to go down.

Wearing fine leather armor btw.

 

[Sensuki]

Wait til you disengage a more powerful creature such as an Elder Bear, or Crystal Eater spider.

 

[Ellef]

I assume you guys are only sticking with engagement for feedback purposes?

 

[Sensuki]

Yep.

 

[tuluse]

I assume you guys are only sticking with engagement for feedback purposes?

I will be playing the whole game as Obsidian intended it.

 

[Bubbles]

I will be playing the whole game as Obsidian intended it.

Might take a few months of patching to get that.

 

[LizardWizard]

One shotted, eh? If you go into melee, wear armor.

Whats the point of armor if they're just going to reload if they get knocked out?

 

[Grunker]

I assume you guys are only sticking with engagement for feedback purposes?

The system is very obviously designed with engagement in mind. Like I said earlier, disabling it is much like disabling the quest compass in a game that gives you no directions in dialogue or the journal. It would screw the balancing completely.

Besides that, writing a review with such a key component disabled would be missing the point.

tuluse: are you meleeing? If so CON 8 + leather seems underdoing it. I have CON 14 and heavier armor on my cipher, and I'm still pretty squishy. This game takes armor pretty seriously.

 

[Sensuki]

Oh man, confusion and engagement together are just a joke, either your party member gets engaged next to you and your characters around him cannot move or suffer a disengagement attack, or the confused party member moves and suffers a disengagement attack from all of your party members. To get around this bullshit I'm just sending a single guy forward and having everyone else with ranged weapons / coming in at a delay.

What crap affliction design.

The other thing with this is that your party member doesn't trigger the engagement AI from your party, they'll ignore the engaged party member and just keep running, so if you run three different characters past a confused ally, he'll get a disengagement attack on all of them.

 

[Zed]

Well, there's always this:

When you make a Blinding Strike attack, it breaks all your engagements (bug).

All attacks can cause interruption, no?
Thus breaking engagement, no?

When you make an attack against someone, it's not supposed to end engagement with them.

What ends engagement?
Disorientation, knockdown, knockback (grimoire slam)?

 

[da_rays]

Nice read on this thread. Taking a bit of time off work to share my experience a bit. Not too far, about 12h in. Just killed the fattiest spider i've encoutered. so the engagement system....while im far away from being in love with it, I got used to it. After getting wreck a few times , or getting Aloth'ed ( got your squishie mage/chanter/or w/e burn to pulp, yup its a new verb) almost every encounter , i was like ''Damn i feel so , da fuck ami doing wrong?'' Like a lot of people commented , the first 5 sec of every some fights are CRUCIAL. I've adapted a bit sure, with 2 Fighters ( My character and Ed ) with 3 knockdown each , the skill that let you get 1 more in engagement , grimoire slam , fights are a bit more manageable. And know that i know that my fighter can take a few pixely step without procing engagement auto stab in the eye, its all the better , while 1 fighter try to get and keep the most dangerous beast close to him and knocking down potential problem , the other is running around trying to protect my other teamates. Its doable. Its working. but its a fucking mess to achieve sometime, and i fear my reign will stop when i'll encounter a strong boss or something with a few casters in the lot.
/endofmyexperiencerantbitchin

that said , engagement could be so much more. There is potential in there. I would be happy with some minor debuff to the damage done by this AoO . I clearly dont know the hardcore detail of engagement mechanic/AI/pathfinding , but this thread help me understand it a bit more. While PoE is clearly a spiritual BG3 , I like to think of PoE by itself , maybe not comparing it too much to the IE game ( while a lot can be learn from them ) . Yes , its very difficult to do so.

I do like the concept of engagement, but this thing need to be tweak a bit. It feel wrong ( for me) that EVERY FUCKING LIVING( or not ) THING can engagement lock you down.

so thats my thoughts on this for now.....keep posting guys , its a very interesting subject and i'd like to read a lot more from this debate.

and to end thing a bit on the more positive side, the overall feeling of the game for me: while far from perfect , its one hell of a good entertainment.

Also, mutonizer

Sorry man but "interesting" ranges from skullfucking a 2 years old to reading a book

You own me a fresh cup of coffee....its all over my fucking screen now -_-

 

[LizardWizard]

Oh man, confusion and engagement together are just a joke, either your party member gets engaged next to you and your characters around him cannot move or suffer a disengagement attack, or the confused party member moves and suffers a disengagement attack from all of your party members. To get around this bullshit I'm just sending a single guy forward and having everyone else with ranged weapons / coming in at a delay.

What crap affliction design.

The other thing with this is that your party member doesn't trigger the engagement AI from your party, they'll ignore the engaged party member and just keep running, so if you run three different characters past a confused ally, he'll get a disengagement attack on all of them.

Yeah, ghosts chain confusing a party member gave me issues. I think my Barb one shot'd my rogue with a carnage and sometimes my party would start auto-attacking the confused party member. Although this isn't particular an engagement problem, just bad design in general.

 

[Infinitron]

Made a thread about my Starcraft siege tank idea: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73...ace-like-deploying-a-siege-tank-in-starcraft/

Has anybody ever suggested this before? In retrospect, I'm not sure why this wouldn't have been Obsidian's very first idea for engagement.

 

[Sensuki]

just bad design in general.

I know I said it was an issue with the affliction design. Confusion shouldn't change the team of a party member.

Has anybody ever suggested this before? In retrospect, I'm not sure why this wouldn't have been Obsidian's very first idea for engagement.

I don't think many of them are super familiar with RTS games, at least they don't design with an influence from it - otherwise we wouldn't have engagement.

 

[Kruno]

I agree with da_rays. It has taken me several new characters and 8 out of the 12 hours played on my new monk in order to get used to the engagement system. Keep in mind you really should have 2 tanks minimum and take traits that force them to engage more enemies at once.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Well, there's always this:

When you make a Blinding Strike attack, it breaks all your engagements (bug).

All attacks can cause interruption, no?
Thus breaking engagement, no?

When you make an attack against someone, it's not supposed to end engagement with them.

What ends engagement?
Disorientation, knockdown, knockback (grimoire slam)?

The IE mod

 

[SniperHF]

I agree with da_rays. It has taken me several new characters and 8 out of the 12 hours played on my new monk in order to get used to the engagement system. Keep in mind you really should have 2 tanks minimum and take traits that force them to engage more enemies at once.

So far I've been able to get by fine on hard anyway with a single tank type. I use Eder for that and then a combination of my PC Cipher and a roll-your-own Barbarian as psuedo tanks to help hold the line if need be. Neither one could replace Eder as a true second tank. In situations where Eder died they failed miserably at it. But if there is a larger mob they do the job.

I do use a ton of AOE status effect attacks like Mental Binding.

The only thing that took me awhile to get with Engagement was the visual cues were not immediately apparent. Especially with all the other crap going on in the battles.

 

[Blaine]

I knew Anthony was gonna get whalloped as soon as I read the title of this thread. Not all of the arguments against Engagement were completely valid, and there are some compelling arguments for it (or a variant of it), but on balance it's become pretty clear that the Engagement system needs work. Thankfully, mods will probably fix it.

I was impressed by Grunker's assessment of the combat system being one that screams, "Man, I wish we were designing a turn-based game." If only they had! But they couldn't, because most Obsidrones differ from Biodrones only in that they're not as obsessed with pansexual romances involving angsty transethnic genderqueers with bloated victim complexes and hearts of gold. When Torment settled on turn-based, the unwashed masses sent hate mails and demanded refunds. What a flying flock of fucking retards.

The only respectable Codexers I've seen defend the engagement system are Roguey, storyfags who don't care and have no dog in the fight (but do wish to stick up for Obsidian), and contrarians and ne'er-do-wells wishing to self-aggrandize with variants of "git gud skrub, kek."

 

[tuluse]

tuluse: are you meleeing? If so CON 8 + leather seems underdoing it. I have CON 14 and heavier armor on my cipher, and I'm still pretty squishy. This game takes armor pretty seriously.

No, I primarily use a bow, but occasionally I get caught in melee. That part should happen. Going down as fast as I do seems unnecessary.

It's also fine armor, I only have 1 other set of fine armor, so I assume I'm not supposed to be decked out for Raedrick's Keep. I have 8 DR and my tankiest tank has 10 right now (I think I do have a 12 DR armor, but I haven't seen a need for it yet).

 

[Grunker]

I was impressed by Grunker's assessment of the combat system being one that screams, "Man, I wish we were designing a turn-based game." If only they had! But they couldn't, because most Obsidrones differ from Biodrones only in that they're not as obsessed with pansexual romances involving angsty transethnic genderqueers with bloated victim complexes and hearts of gold. When Torment settled on turn-based, the unwashed masses sent hate mails and demanded refunds. What a flying flock of fucking retards.

Well like I said, I love me some RTwP. I thrive on that shit. So I'm not one of the "TB is surperior unwashed maggots"-fags. It's just that the devotion to 4th edition D&D, the sea of modifiers and all the complex positioning mechanics seems to me like they would work better in a turn-based environment, and I'm willing to bet that's what Josh would have wanted to make this game in. Real time functions better when you have more wiggle-room and more mechanics focused on constant movement, as seen in IE-games or MOBAs.

Still, the irony remains that this is probably one of the best RTwP games I've played. Even with the flaws, the fundamental design at display here makes most fights way more interesting than much of what goes on in the IE-games or Dragon Age. Seeing as those are some of my favourite games, that's high praise.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Thankfully, mods will probably fix it.

You mean the non-engagement stuff in the IE-mod? Cause as far as I can tell all that'll ever do is remove the restrictions on the player to move around as he pleases, while still keeping the AI in the illusion that movement is penalized. The main thing engagement is meant to achieve is to make IE-like AI (don't break through to squishes, etc.) rational; remove engagement without putting something substantial in its place that keeps the AI's behavior rational (slow down auras, flanking, whatever) and all you're left with is retarded AI to exploit at your leasure.

 

[Grunker]

^ i believe blaine meant in the future, bruv.

 

[Roguey]

The only respectable Codexers I've seen defend the engagement system are Roguey,

I could take or leave it, since it doesn't seem like it's going to change my playstyle any. I'd be static with, I'd be static without.

However, If I were Josh, I would have stuck to my 01-02 era instincts in regards to aoos in real-time games and ignored the requests from the Tamerlanes of the world who didn't know or care about the consequences of their desires.

 

[Blaine]

You mean the non-engagement stuff in the IE-mod? Cause as far as I can tell all that'll ever do is remove the restrictions on the player to move around as he pleases, while still keeping the AI in the illusion that movement is penalized. The main thing engagement is meant to achieve is to make IE-like AI (don't break through to squishes, etc.) rational; remove engagement without putting something substantial in its place that keeps the AI's behavior rational (slow down auras, flanking, whatever) and all you're left with is retarded AI to exploit at your leasure.

I would never use that mod as it stands.

What a proper Engagement mod would do is drastically reduce Disengagement damage, by half or more, and perhaps add a short +50% recovery/-50% movement speed debuff to the victims to help ameliorate the loss of megadamage. I'd base the accuracy of Disengagement damage (which is currently 100%, it seems) on the actual Accuracy stat.

The AI should be altered so that it occasionally Disengages too and the player enjoys some of the benefits of the Engagement system other than convenient tanking. Let's be real here: The enemies are all gonna die. That's their fate. They don't have to rest after every other battle; they're simply dead. They don't need to worry about six teleporting ghosts locking down and gangraping their wizard, and they don't need any camping supplies.

I've watched a Shadow teleport over to Aloth, paused the game, ordered Aloth to retreat, and then more than half of Aloth's Endurance is gone, just like that. Huge, instant, free action, 100% accuracy damage. It's obnoxious.