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Pillars of Eternity Does it Again! (Daggers)

Discussion in 'Release 16 Feedback' started by Poor game design, Mar 30, 2015.

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  1. Floors

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    Actually I like Drizzt. Although the books should have quit after the dark elf trilogy, but Salvatore had to eat so ;)

    Not all dual wielders are OP - think of a thief type with a wicked dagger and a main gauche ... that's not too bad compared to a Great Sword, for example. Is that really OP ?

    I mean, I allow dual wielding generally. But only medium sized weapons. Holding a real long sword - it's heavy. There's no way you can really use 2 and be effective. You couldn't even hold two Claymores....

    I balanced it in my tabletop games by having things like potions, one use items, and other important things unavailable if you don't have a free hand in combat. You are really giving up stuff to use that second weapon.... then I think it balances alright.

    In most computer games tho, they allow you to use potions without thinking about how you could actually use it with your hands full with sword and shield or dagger and main gauche in combat....
     
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  2. Drocis the Devious

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    Artemis Entreri always gets robbed by R.A.'s love affair with the overpowered Drizzt.

    Sure you can balance duel wielding. But few games do - it's either useless or over powered.

    I haven't tried dual wielding in SOTA this release. But prior releases seemed wrong to me. It seems to me that there should be a scale of weapons and shields that looks something like this....

    * One Blade and No Shield is the fastest.
    1. One Blade is always ALWAYS faster than two blades. ALWAYS, I don't care who you are.
    2. One Blade and a Shield is ALWAYS faster than two blades. I still don't care who you are.
    3. One Blade and a Shield is ALWAYS better defense than two blades. No you're not fast enough.
    4. Two Blades is ALWAYS going to do more damage than one blade. But now is where we get into a problem of speed verses defense.
    5. To balance out Two Blades vs. One Blade, in SOTA, we have to basically call it a draw to balance it. Two blades might do 20 damage and one blade might do 10. But one blade is faster and can get in two hits for every two hits of the dual wielder (that's balanced). Meanwhile, a sword and shield might do 10 damage but might also take an extra 10 damage (that's balanced). So it doesn't really make a difference if you take two blades, one, or one and a shield, you're still doing the same damage.

    That's balanced. Anything else just creates one build being better than the other.
     
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  3. Burzmali

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    The problem there is that you've created a perfect balance, ergo all systems are demonstrably equal even in the short term, hence choosing one over the other is relevant and the player has no real input into their combat loadout.
     
  4. Drocis the Devious

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    Yes, but that's what the base of any combat system should be. It's only when you apply skill or environment, or perhaps gear that the equation should change. Those options are player made, and can be adapted to play style.

    It's a lot easier to balance one type of sword verses another, when you have a base system that is "balanced" as opposed to a base system that is completely shifted towards say "being an archer" or "magic".
     
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  5. Drocis the Devious

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    I didn't like Baldur's Gate. I think Pillars of Eternity is far superior to that game. Pillars feels more open world (though it's certainly not) and less liniar than Baldur's Gate.

    Regarding the off hand stabbing once. I'm not really interested in "reality" here. Nor am I interested in all the variations that we might come up with. I'm only interested in game balance. So if you have access to an off hand that you can use to repeatedly do significant damage to your opponent, then I fail to see how that would ever be balanced to a point where everyone wouldn't have to use dual wielding just to compete.
     
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  6. The Hendoman

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    s'very good point. it's going to require some watching and tweaking to ensure variety.

    i *loved* BG and was so pleased it would run on my slowpoke system @ the time...

    shield bash with damage = offhand damage?
     
  7. Burzmali

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    You want balance not perfect balance. Look at all the MOBAs out there, if ever a genre relied on balance, it's that one, but you can neither objectively show that two heroes are perfectly balanced nor show them one to be clearly superior. Current thinking is that you create the base system (raw dps) as unbalanced and then balance it at the highest level possible, through item and skill synergies if you can but through ammo use and range limitations if necessary. The objective is prevent apples to apples comparisons whenever possible. Is 5 dps worth 3 ft of range?
     
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  8. Drocis the Devious

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    My opinion obviously doesn't matter here. But if I were a multimillionaire that called the shots in his own game company, here's what I'd instruct my dev team to do.

    Balance the game. We're not going to develop the combat system through obfuscation. We're not going to ask people to show us how it's not balanced, we're going to show people how it is. Need a working model for your combat system? How about Chess. That's the most skill based and balanced player vs. player combat system ever invented. So let's start there conceptually. Don't do what other games do and try to balance it as the complaints come in. Make a balanced core system that is fair and fun to play and then add on a few features at a time and balance those before you add more stuff.

    Is that harder to do? I would assume so. Is that time and resource intensive? Again, I would assume so. But I suspect that we'll save time and money in efficiently balancing the combat system from the beginning, and surly our customers will be happier with this arrangement verses asking silly questions like "Is 5 dps worth 3 ft of range?" That question is so subjective we could spend the next 5 years debating it (and fixing it) and still have people tell us we're wrong. Just make a balanced game where player skill determines outcome.

    Regarding "player skill" notice how Chess doesn't require twitchy movement or a fast internet connection because it's entirely turn-based? So let's use turn based elements in our combat system to make reflexes and technology a minimum impact on getting a successful outcome in player vs. player. Notice that I didn't say let's make the game turn-based. I said "let's use turn based elements", there's a difference.
     
  9. Burzmali

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    Chess has had over 1000 years of tweaking to get the balance to the point that is broadly accepted, and it still isn't perfectly balanced:
    Code:
    White wins   37.35%
    Black wins   27.41%
    Drawn		35.23%
    So what I'm hearing is that you want the player with the most gold and/or luck to win... Because in a turn-based game that has a far more restricted set of options than Chess (like say Checkers) it is trivial to "solve" the game and engage in "perfect" play, which would bring all combat down to the equipment each player was using and their luck as the deciding factor.
     
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  10. Drocis the Devious

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    I don't think Chess has changed very much over the last 200 years. We haven't been making games that long. It's also very important to understand that while White may have an advantage, players don't get the luxury of always being white. So the point your making is not very strong, if it's even valid.


    Are you saying we can make a Chess video game but we can't make a Chess "turn-based element" combat system that won't actually be the equivalent to checkers? I disagree. I think that if we can make a Chess Video game, and certainly we have and can. Then we should have no problem making a combat system that is based at its core on the same fundamental and non-checker like challenge.

    Also I didn't say anything about gold or luck. I only mentioned player skill.
     
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  11. Retro

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    TLDR: Weapons in general need some unique trait that gives players a reason to use a variety of different weapons that goes beyond highest dps, as the game currently stands there is absolutely NO reason besides roleplaying not to just use the highest dps weapon. (Especially for the low DPS weapons)

    Give us a reason to use them and make them viable in PVP.

    Thanks... (yeah what OP said;))
     
  12. Burzmali

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    Chess is very old and has been stable for a while, but to compare it to modern games, it spent a millenium or so in beta, which is longer than I am willing to wait for SOTA's release version. If you think that white's advantage is nullified by playing black as well, you should look into high-level chess tournaments, as getting white in a "best of X" setting is a significant advantage. In addition, white's advantage leads to the the black player often playing to draw instead of win which results in an asymmetric game which has frustrated many in the upper levels of the chess community.

    I don't believe it is possible to create a turn-based combat system that is as "balanced" as chess, with a depth complexity on par with chess, with the funds and time available to the developers.
    Following my prior point, any complicated system that SOTA could possess that is based on a "balanced" raw dps system will be datamined and optimized in a trivial amount of time and strategy guides will be created to maximize your chance of winning any encounter with a given set of equipment. Following such guides requires no skill, only gold and luck.
     
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  13. Drocis the Devious

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    We disagree on everything but this...


    I don't want a raw DPS system.
     
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  14. Burzmali

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    Hmm....

    Sounds an awful lot like a balancing raw dps is what you are looking for from that post.
     
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  15. Drocis the Devious

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    That post assumes we have to have DPS at all because the devs already made that decision and their base combat system works the way that it does. It's entirely based off of DPS.

    I'd much rather have a system that had blocking and countering making DPS irrelevant.
     
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  16. TantX

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    ArcheAge had weapon procs that provided bonuses inherently. Swords gave a higher parry chance, katanas a higher crit chance, spears a higher chance to ignore physical armor, and so on. With that, you could provide innate bonuses to certain weapons: daggers crit more naturally, and when put in an off-hand, also boost parry chance. I think the pirate cutlass has a higher crit chance, but curved weapons could proc an extremely brief attack speed boost from time to time (so if you use two curved weapons, that proc will trigger more often). Other weapons seem to have natural benefits built in, like maces breaking armor. Food for thought.
     
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  17. Numa

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    With the Moon vanish & sneaking skills , cutting throats is one special dagger move that I can think of where using a sword doesn't make much sense. Backstab of course has been a classic thief move since forever.

    There could also be some social or adventure mission scenes were carrying a large weapon is forbidden (ie. who carries a sword to a formal banquet ???) but daggers are perfectly acceptable. Not to mention, also concealable.

    Daggers also have more utility than swords as far as non-lethal activities are concerned. Let's face it , swords are designed for one purpose only - for killing people. I"d much rather have a dagger with me if camping or surviving in the wilderness. That's why it makes such a good side weapon for archers, you"re not going to skin your bowshot deer with a sword that's for sure.

    Give the dagger some skinning/harvesting ability and that's already one good reason for players to carry one.
     
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  18. The Hendoman

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    muhahah have you seen Wastelands two yet? talk about a good resource gathering system..... and the rest of the game is pretty retro-awesome too!

    The Hendoman
     
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