PoE engagement disabled in IE Mod pros and cons

[aweigh]

so i actually bought this thing instead of pirating it, which is like a goddamn christmas miracle for me (i only play street fighter 4 and kof 13 for about 2 years now) and right now i'm waiting for the IE mod to catch up to the 1.03 patch which will take a few more days for me since i have the GOG version (i only use steam for street fighter and every time i log on i get inundated with match requests and i feel bad for ignoring my peeps) so whenever i have the oppoturnity i'll opt for a non-steam version.

anyway i read up on how the engagement mechanic works and i read most of sensuki's posts about it in the obsidian forums but to be honest i'm a lazy shit who can't make up his mind until someone on the codex spells it out for him; from what i gather the big thing is that enemies have zero reason to dis-engage from the character they are currently engaged with therefore the player never benefits from landing attacks of opportunity on the enemy, while at the same time this system effectively prevents the player from dis-engaging HIS unit from the enemy as the following AoO he'll receive for disengaging is usually a death sentence.

there are arguments about "cycling through units" and that reads like a load of horseshit wow who the fuck wants to play like that? it's so ridiculously game-y my head wants to explode.

honestly, what's the big fucking deal with engagement right now? it works almost exactly like AoO's in most computer versions of DnD and it promotes the development of a "tank" build that doesn't feel stupid.

anyone else care to put in their 2 cents? i've seen a lot of talk about this on Obsidian forums but those are shit. I want the codex hivemind opinion. GIVE IT 2 ME

 

[tred]

my 2 cents:
engagement is a very interesting mechanic. I really like it (and usually I am a whiny shithead when it comes to combat). It gives a realistic feel to combat: you die if you don't plan it before it happens. It's not perfect yet, but I think mods will make it even better. Play with it. If you want to go back to infinity engine combat then just disable it.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Engagement rocks. Also enemies in this game are smarter than the IE ones, they will often go for your squishies if not engaged. It's better than IE where you just try to draw aggro from the mobs and they then slap your tanks until they die.

 

[aweigh]

yeah i did the tedious task of going thru from beginning to clearing out temple of eothas on game version 1.02 using IE mod 4.51 first with engagement enabled and then with engagement disabled and TBH fights were a LOT more tactical with engagement ENABLED. i made a short video of a specific encounter in temple of eothas that clearly showed how much more logical the encounter went with engagement (using pc, eder and aloth) compared with it disabled. i'll post that later too busy at the moment.

 

[Grape_You_In_the_Mouth]

I think engagement is great but only insofar as the skills allow characters to have frequent reasonable options of disengaging. So far the skills are a little lackluster from what I'm seeing, but rogues have some ace ones that make it better. I'm guessing it's difficult to code and balance fights that play around with engagement/disengagement, but as a design it seems very promising. As of right now engagement feels only punitive to me and not the AI which doesn't react/switch targets much anyways.

 

[Sensuki]

Time to banish the fucking lies in this thread.

honestly, what's the big fucking deal with engagement right now? it works almost exactly like AoO's in most computer versions of DnD and it promotes the development of a "tank" build that doesn't feel stupid.

AoOs are a mechanic designed for a turn-based game and they do not work in real-time games. AoOs in NWN1 and NWN2 were fucking terrible. The NWN2 implementation was definitely the worst of the two, and IMO Engagement is just as bad, if not worse than that.

It gives a realistic feel to combat: you die if you don't plan it before it happens.

REALISTIC? ROFL - what kind of weed are you smoking? The Engagement 'system' consists of two things - an aggro mechanic (otherwise known as an AI targeting clause) and a disengagement attack that is instant, has no animation, is free from recovery time and there is no limit to how many you can proc in a period of time (only against a single attacker, where there is a 2 second cooldown). So, you're trying to say that instant attacks that can occur against another target when you're mid swing against a different one is realistic?

It's not realistic and tbh - this is an Infinity Engine style game, so 'realism' can take a big fuck off anyway.

The second statement is not a demonstration of tactical gameplay, it is a demonstration of STRATEGICAL gameplay. Engagement forces you to consider engagement before you enter combat so you have to, as you said - plan your unit positioning. Engagement also reduces or completely removes movement based tactics not related to ability use from the game because it punishes all movement in combat while engaged, and recovery time is also slowed by 50% while moving - leading to static banal shit boring combat that punishes you for moving at all, and is less tactical than it would be without engagement.

Also enemies in this game are smarter than the IE ones, they will often go for your squishies if not engaged. It's better than IE where you just try to draw aggro from the mobs and they then slap your tanks until they die.

Enemies in this game are not smarter than enemies in all of the Infinity Engine games. There is a bit more complexity to the AI than Baldur's Gate 1 although that's about it. Some of the layers of 'complexity' is also often trivial or completely retarded, such as the mechanic you just mentioned. Trolls and such will ignore engagement and chase a single target. This is fucking dumb because trolls are slow creatures - all you have to do is mouse over the troll to see which unit it is targeting, and then run that unit around in circles. The troll will just keep following and not deal damage to your party because they coded them to be fucking dumb - great AI design there guise.

Your second statement is also incorrect, because you can switch enemy aggro in the Infinity Engine games which I demonstrated consistently throughout my IWD Let's Play on Youtube. How long has it been since you played an Infinity Engine game and have you ever actually tried to switch enemy aggro? Depending on the game, enemies do actually switch targets. They definitely do in Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, often as a reaction to being hit in melee, or they will target the nearest character with the highest AC.

yeah i did the tedious task of going thru from beginning to clearing out temple of eothas on game version 1.02 using IE mod 4.51 first with engagement enabled and then with engagement disabled and TBH fights were a LOT more tactical with engagement ENABLED. i made a short video of a specific encounter in temple of eothas that clearly showed how much more logical the encounter went with engagement (using pc, eder and aloth) compared with it disabled. i'll post that later too busy at the moment

Excuse me, but do you even know what the word tactical means? Refer to my above quote. I expect your video is going to be very flawed because the fights in the Temple of Eothas vs Shades and Shadows are pretty dumb. Shadows and Shades always target Aloth because he (most likely) has the lowest Freeze DR, if you don't want enemies to jump to him you just leave him in the next room, because once shadows jump to him, he can't run away because he's engaged and will probably be crit for 40 damage, and if he goes near shades at all they'll hit him with their ranged freeze attacks.

Without Engagement you should have more tactical options available because Aloth won't be cemented to the spot he gets jumped at. I personally haven't played the temple without engagement yet, but it wasn't very difficult if I just stuck Eder in the doorway and sat Aloth in the next room and had my Rogue PC drop the shadows with a Dual Wield Blinding Strike.

 

[aweigh]

that's the thing tho

i don't think Aloth SHOULD be able to move away easily once a shade teleports to him; he's a wizard who has spent his time learning magic not close-quarters combat. he SHOULD be dead and NOT have good mobility if engaged in melee. anyway i always have aloth in high-DR armor dual-wielding +Deflection axes... why? because there is no in-game reason not to really. yes the armor lowers his action speed but it's not enough of a difference IMO; i'd much rather have Aloth fire spells a bit slower while being adequately protected than fire them very fast while dying as soon as a shade teleports to him -- and i DON'T want to be babysitting him so that I can click on him and move him away from the shade in that example. i find engagement system reduces micromanagement and that's all that matters to me. i intensely dislike having to micro-manage squishies by moving them around, or what i saw being referred to as "unit cycling" in some threads.

that also gives Aloth an opportunity to use his close-range Touch spells without having to move around the battlefield; he has spells for when he's backlined and has spells he can use when he finds himself engaged.

being able to just click on him and move him away from the shade is too easy-mode and the game isn't exactly that hard anyway.

 

[The Glitterdust Golem]

It's dangerous enough for things to get through to the back with having to relocate/defend your squishy being all the punishment that's needed. The free engagement attack given for trying to break away is completely needless and just encourages reloading that much sooner. I like engagement so far as a tank can 'hold' the attention of a few enemies for so long in a way that makes sense with their talents, but I've found the free attacks to add nothing of value. At all. From what I can tell, the IE-Mod still rewards taking the +engagement talents, which is nice. Enemies aren't shy of running rings to get to your backline, I've found, often to their own detriment by everything else attacking them.

In fact, ranged units - especially those with guns - target my mage (who is my main PC, so I have a lot of fun *there* without max HP) to the point of their own deaths. In one of the Brackenbury houses, gunmen would try to target my mage who remained the entirety of the floor away, running back and forth on the spot (I blocked the doorway) until they were gibbed. The AI definitely isn't clever about targeting, it's just a few simple hard targeting scripts for certain enemies and engagement included, or not, hasn't changed that for me.

The things that remain dangerous in this game, regardless of engagement attacks, are charms, confusion AoEs, and that one really annoying repeat-lightning storm attack. Things that break control of your formation no matter what your options are set to.

 

[aweigh]

i only wish we could dual wield shields i'd have all of my non-melee units dual wielding shields since PoE has nothing resembling spell failure

 

[Sensuki]

that's the thing tho

i don't think Aloth SHOULD be able to move away easily once a shade teleports to him; he's a wizard who has spent his time learning magic not close-quarters combat. he SHOULD be dead and NOT have good mobility if engaged in melee. anyway i always have aloth in high-DR armor dual-wielding +Deflection axes... why? because there is no in-game reason not to really. yes the armor lowers his action speed but it's not enough of a difference IMO; i'd much rather have Aloth fire spells a bit slower while being adequately protected than fire them very fast while dying as soon as a shade teleports to him -- and i DON'T want to be babysitting him so that I can click on him and move him away from the shade in that example. i find engagement system reduces micromanagement and that's all that matters to me. i intensely dislike having to micro-manage squishies by moving them around, or what i saw being referred to as "unit cycling" in some threads.

that also gives Aloth an opportunity to use his close-range Touch spells without having to move around the battlefield; he has spells for when he's backlined and has spells he can use when he finds himself engaged.

being able to just click on him and move him away from the shade is too easy-mode and the game isn't exactly that hard anyway.

I don't have a problem with people enjoying the engagement system, some people will for one reason or another.

Wizards in this game aren't like Wizards in D&D - they can wear any armor, use any weapon, take pretty much any talent. The only difference between them and the other classes really other than their abilities is their natural accuracy and deflection, so I don't think your claim that Aloth "shouldn't be able to move away" is valid. This is a gamist game, and it's not realistic.

I enjoy micromanagement, I also enjoy real-time and real-time with pause. I enjoy moving my units around and using micromanagement to solve problems in encounters. So while I understand why you might like engagement more, I don't accept that engagement is more tactical or better than without engagement. You may just not care about the plethora of issues the system has.

The Aloth and Shade situation isn't even the worst case scenario - and there are a few ways to deal with it - your way of boosting his Deflection and Armor are okay, but Aloth still takes damage - which is why I put him in the next room.

There are many more instances where engagement is fucking stupid, and the worst one is when one of your characters get charmed/confused and score a disengagement attack against every nearby party member, so in order to get around it you just send a single character forward against those enemies.

 

[lurker3000]

To be honest the only time i found the engagement system to be a pain was when I did not have a full party. Now with Aloth in the third line its not a big deal.

 

[aweigh]

oh... i agree with you 100% that engagement isn't in any way MORE tactical. if you actually go back and read my post(s) i used the word "logical" and i definitely didn't mean tactical. i mean... i just posted i only wish i could have Aloth dual-wielding shields in order to game it even more, i am fully aware of what you're talking about.

i suppose my entire point boils down to "i find the engagement system allows my old-man reactions to micro-manage my units' abilities without having to worry overmuch about frequently pausing and moving them around the battlefield"; and i think that's exactly what they had in mind considering you have to micro-manage even fighters (knockdown) every encounter, i think they wanted units NOT moving around much but instead constantly cycling through their many different abilities.

i agree that this is NOT at all like infinity engine games or like an RTS at all. i like that. i've never liked RTS's. the only IE game i ever finished was Torment and i remember fights were so dumb in that game you rarely had to move units around but instead just use your abilities correctly.

 

[Sensuki]

My Aloth has 0 knockouts, indeed once you get more party members he rarely gets targeted. I had a few characters in Fine Robe armor, and no one targeted Aloth, ever, even when he was really close by just outside of engagement range.

i agree that this is NOT at all like infinity engine games or like an RTS at all. i like that. i've never liked RTS's. the only IE game i ever finished was Torment and i remember fights were so dumb in that game you rarely had to move units around but instead just use your abilities correctly.

^ Josh Sawyer if you're reading this post - see! see! Nothing like the Infinity Engine games.

i suppose my entire point boils down to "i find the engagement system allows my old-man reactions to micro-manage my units' abilities without having to worry overmuch about frequently pausing and moving them around the battlefield"; and i think that's exactly what they had in mind considering you have to micro-manage even fighters (knockdown) every encounter, i think they wanted units NOT moving around much but instead constantly cycling through their many different abilities

This is strange, because I actually have to do A LOT more pausing because of the engagement system. I didn't have to do much pausing at all in the Infinity Engine games because I understood how targeting AI worked and I just made a few moves at the beginning of combat, got things set up how I needed to and then usually spent a lot of combat unpaused.

In Pillars of Eternity I micro-pause WAY WAY more than I ever did in the Infinity Engine games to micro manage unit abilities, and to pause to react to new engagements, or to correct a misclick because if I misclick move a unit, that's disengagement attacks, and a reload for me.

Engagement has nothing to do with 'reducing pauses'. Some Something Awful goons asked for punishing movement in combat and they got it, at the cost of fun gameplay for me and a lot of other people.

 

[Blackguard]

I really enjoy it. It's probably the single biggest improvement in PoE combat over IE games for me.

 

[Sensuki]

Let me guess, you prefer turn-based games?

 

[Xeon]

Grimore Slam make Aloth's attacker switch target after being knocked back, often time to the melee attackers. Aside from Shadows leaving my melee units and attacking my more squishy units, engagement doesn't seem too bad.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

my 2 cents:
engagement is a very interesting mechanic. I really like it (and usually I am a whiny shithead when it comes to combat). It gives a realistic feel to combat: you die if you don't plan it before it happens. It's not perfect yet, but I think mods will make it even better. Play with it. If you want to go back to infinity engine combat then just disable it.

Yeah, I see people using this argument on Codex these days and I don't understand it in the slightest, for all the things you can use to defend the Engagement system, realism just ain't one of them.

Look at this picture, the bitch hit me with an invisible, short-distance physical attack while simultaneously casting a spell, how on earth is that realistic?

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Melee is supposed to be dangerous. When someone engages Aloth it's always "oh shit!" moment.

Caster engaged? Push, pull, disable the attacker. Can't be done? Remove Caster from combat by protection spells (Priest/Druid).

Battle is too static, because movement is punished? Non-engaged characters can move freely. Engaged fighters don't have to, why would you want them to move?

Seriously, i didn't see a single one 100% valid argument against it. Just subjective opinions, which Sensuki seems to suggest is the only truth. With proper positioning it's almost never an issue. And for times where someone engages your casters, well tough luck - handle it.

IE running in circles, abusing shit AI/pathfinding is certainly not a better option...

 

[Zero Credibility]

I turned engagement off because it was just taking what fun I could find out of my game. I don't like how static it makes everything, it made the game feel even less like an IE game - once engaged I couldn't move at all without taking damage. I want to be able to move a fighter a step back to position him in a chokepoint without eating damage. Can't. I want to move him a step to the side so that my other fighter doesn't just uselessly dance in place behind him because he can't reach enemies (as it happened all too often). Not without disengagement attacks. I want to be pull an injured character out and plug the hole in my lines with a fresh one. Not a chance, he's down.

Not even NWN2 was this obnoxious with its AoO. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember there you can move characters a little without triggering AoO from everyone.

 

[Athelas]

I turned engagement off because it was just taking what fun I could find out of my game. I don't like how static it makes everything, it made the game feel even less like an IE game - once engaged I couldn't move at all without taking damage. I want to be able of move a fighter a step back to position him in a chokepoint without eating damage. Can't. I want to move him a step to the side so that my other fighter doesn't just uselessly dance in place behind him because he can't reach the enemies (as it happened all too often). Not without disengagement attacks. I want to be pull an injured character out and plug the hole in my lines with a fresh one. Not a chance, he's down.

Not even NWN2 was this obnoxious with its AoO. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember there you can move characters a little without triggering AoO from everyone.

I'd say NWN2 is less obnoxious about it for a number of reasons:
1. Having a high or even just decent Tumble skills prevents most AoO's from hitting you, if I recall correctly. PoE has no effective defense against disengagement attacks, exarcebated by the fact they are stronger than regular attacks.
2. NWN2 is easier than PoE, so even triggering AoO's is not much of an issue.
3. AoO's have no hit animation in NWN2 and combined with #1 and #2, they barely registered (for me at least ). In PoE engagement more visibly disturbs the flow of combat.

So in conclusion: they produced an even worse implementation of attacks of opportunity (which have no place in a real-time game to begin with) compared to NWN2.

 

[Xeon]

There are some talents that raise your deflection when disengaging I think, Don't know if they really help or not tho.

 

[made]

The last RTWP game I played had straight-up taunt and aggro mechanics a la MMOs. I'm still working out the kinks of the engagement system but it seems to do a decent job keeping combat from becoming an even bigger clusterfuck than it already is.

 

[Bleed the Man]

I turned engagement off because it was just taking what fun I could find out of my game. I don't like how static it makes everything, it made the game feel even less like an IE game - once engaged I couldn't move at all without taking damage. I want to be able of move a fighter a step back to position him in a chokepoint without eating damage. Can't. I want to move him a step to the side so that my other fighter doesn't just uselessly dance in place behind him because he can't reach the enemies (as it happened all too often). Not without disengagement attacks. I want to be pull an injured character out and plug the hole in my lines with a fresh one. Not a chance, he's down.

Not even NWN2 was this obnoxious with its AoO. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember there you can move characters a little without triggering AoO from everyone.

I'd say NWN2 is less obnoxious about it for a number of reasons:
1. Having a high or even just decent Tumble skills prevents most AoO's from hitting you, if I recall correctly. PoE has no effective defense against disengagement attacks, exarcebated by the fact they are stronger than regular attacks.
2. NWN2 is easier than PoE, so even triggering AoO's is not much of an issue.
3. AoO's have no hit animation in NWN2 and combined with #1 and #2, they barely registered (for me at least ). In PoE engagement more visibly disturbs the flow of combat.

So in conclusion: they produced an even worse implementation of attacks of opportunity (which have no place in a real-time game to begin with) compared to NWN2.

I think saying is a worse implementation is false. It's more obnoxious if you think this type of mechanics have no place in RTwP systems, but is definetly a lot more well thought and executed (still has tons of issues though, which is why I think guys like you should keep complaining about it's systemics faults, because your feedback is miles better than mine would be in order to improve it for futher iterations)

 

[hiver]

Let me guess, you prefer turn-based games?

No, he is trolling you.


Anyway, the engagement is a problem for more things then you look at.

While it may serve some purpose to have it all disabled that doesnt really improve things as Engagement could if it was an actual skill the player had control over and options about how to change and improve, through talents and so on.
And if it was an ability only a specific class had, not every creature in the game.

... there is still people repeating how its all "ah you cant turn your back on a guy you know...?" or "you caen turn ye back on a Lion!"
But thats not what is actually happening in the game. In the game its just this automatic invisible hit you get from every single thing if you try to move in any way while "engaged" and you are engaged with everything, because just everyone have that ability. There is no such specifics or details about it to make it only happening when its a "guy" or if "you turn your back", or against "some animals"

It doesnt make any sense whatsover for every creature to have this ability, not if you look at it fro internal PoE setting and lore logic point of view, or if you look at it from an actual natural realism point of view.
And it plays badly so its not a case of something out of sinc but thats maybe fun or useful so you turn a blind eye to.

Most of you go off about realism and how you dont care for it, you are just saying you dont like some specific distorted version of "realistic approach". For example, an actual well thought out realism in this case would be to design things so they maintain IE feel but do various features better, not to make a "reality simulator" out of it.


http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/engagement-system-solution.98075/


-
minus the pointless comments bellow it, of course.
i guess they just had to express negativity in general principle, somehow.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Enemies in this game are not smarter than enemies in all of the Infinity Engine games. There is a bit more complexity to the AI than Baldur's Gate 1 although that's about it. Some of the layers of 'complexity' is also often trivial or completely retarded, such as the mechanic you just mentioned. Trolls and such will ignore engagement and chase a single target. This is fucking dumb because trolls are slow creatures - all you have to do is mouse over the troll to see which unit it is targeting, and then run that unit around in circles. The troll will just keep following and not deal damage to your party because they coded them to be fucking dumb - great AI design there guise.

Your second statement is also incorrect, because you can switch enemy aggro in the Infinity Engine games which I demonstrated consistently throughout my IWD Let's Play on Youtube. How long has it been since you played an Infinity Engine game and have you ever actually tried to switch enemy aggro? Depending on the game, enemies do actually switch targets. They definitely do in Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, often as a reaction to being hit in melee, or they will target the nearest character with the highest AC.

Woa talk about sand in the vagina. First of all, the targeting mechanic may be unfortunate for trolls but for everyone else - and in many cases for the trolls as well - them targeting weaker enemies is a problem for you. So the AI is clearly smarter than in the IE.

You kind of defeat your own argument when you try to "disprove" that IE enemies doesn't swap targets. I mean say you're correct, and they do swap to the nearest character sometimes... That character is almost always a tank. So just sending your two or three tanks and a summon in front of you will e-z tank everything and the dumb enemies will usually not bother to go for the back row. Engagement system wins, again.