1625

(Vin I need to see your Dos2 rants)

1626

I do as well. XCOM is XCOM - every fight is a tactical challenge that must be carefully played out. PoE2 is PoE2… a fight might be a tactical challenge but it’s just as likely to be against a bunch of kobolds. I’d rather just the CPU roll them and move on.

1627

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t prefer TB overall but both systems have their merits. It took me 3 tries before Pillars combat finally clicked with me but when it did it was glorious. Same with BG2.

Question for those who have played both modes in PoE2 - how does interrupt work in TB mode? One of my favourite things in PoE1 was locking down enemy casters with fast swinging melee characters.

1628

I played up to arriving in Port Maje.

I’m a fire Godlike Tempest (Druid and Barbarian) that pops frenzy and then an animal form (usually bear, for the extra armour) and I am enjoying turn based very much.

1629

I didn’t get as much time to play this as I’d have liked, we’re cleaning the house and preparing for guests and my son and I wanted to watch the rest of the second Punisher season (which we did wrap on and it was excellent).

What I did play was almost exactly what I hoped for - that is, there are still a few rough edges here and there (I’ve seen a few times where an AI ally attacks a foe that’s already been dropped, for example, and I don’t think the heavy armor penalties are bad enough to not want most characters in heavy armor, but also it looks like disengagement attacks aren’t a thing as I can freely walk away from, back to, and even circle around an enemy to flank without any retaliation, all for example).

It’s still in beta, but I have a party put together of hand made characters and I’m eager to dive deeper into it, and I will post my impressions and observations over on the official forum.

For those that prefer RTwP I’ve been saying this for years, but RTwP has higher highs and lower lows in terms of fun factor, I think. Turn Based is pretty even keeled across that plane - it’s always about the same level of fun, but when it really works it still just works about like you would want or expect. It’s pretty safe.

RTwP can be super, super frustrating, but sometimes when you have unpaused the game and see your considered strategy play out before you it can be glorious in a way turn-based could never really approach, both visually and tactically satisfying.

So I kind of go either way, the last few years. I used to be die hard turn-based but as I had more and more of those highs with real-time, it’s hard to say I would never want to go back.

I think it’s awesome they are making this a choice. This turn-based mode already feels much better than the recently released Torment RPG, which didn’t have a lot of variety or interesting systems to play with so the turn-based combat felt like a slog. So I have very high hopes that in the coming months it’s going to get further refined and polished and probably end up being my go-to way to play.

1630

My char got hit by disengagement, I think.

1631

Mine as well. I think you can tell if they are engaged and will suffer damage by the RED and GREEN line of arrows between each character.

1632

Short version, since this is off-topic: The armor system actively punishes party diversity or interesting combinations in favor of just raw (generally physical) damage. It renders the magic system nigh irrelevant since by the time any elemental (or other interesting) effects are allowed to occur the target is nearly dead anyway. It also makes every combat three times longer than it needs to be.

PoE2’s mechanics actually strike me as a much stronger foundation on which to build a turn based system, really, since it’s basically alternate-universe D&D.

1633

You know what, that makes sense - for some reason I thought it would work like in D&D/Pathfinder where moving away triggered it, but in the RTwP version only engaged foes can be struck for free, which is where that red line comes in. However, the reason I moved my wolf away was he was nearly dead by the thing pounding on him, so I pulled away wincing and knowing that was probably the end, but it never attacked him, and it should have. So I’m not sure what’s going on. More testing needed, I suppose.

1634

Exactly. Im not sure what causes the RED arrow to connect from the enemy to your character (s) but once it does, you take damage for disengaging.

UPDATE:

Found this:

When two opposed combatants come near each other and one of them

* has a melee weapon equipped
* is not moving and
* is not currently at his or her maximum limit of engagement targets (the standard is 1),

the other character will become Engaged . When an opponent is Engaged by an attacker, moving any significant distance away from the attacker is called Disengagement and will provoke an automatic Disengagement Attack [1].

If the attacker switches to a non-melee weapon or performs a non-melee-based action, Engagement immediately ends. If the attacker moves away from their Engagement targets, is paralyzed, knocked down, or otherwise prevented from maintaining a threat, Engagement will also immediately end. If the attacker has a limited number of Engagement targets (as most do) and switches his or her attack focus to a different character, Engagement immediately ends.

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Melee_Engagement

1635

Basically, engagement is not automatic and universal: the enemy has to have available room in their engagement limit, and have a melee weapon equipped (I belive in TBS mode, the not moving requirement is automatically satisfied when its the player’s turn).

Also, the disengagement attack still has to hit. If the enemy fires off the disengagement attack but misses, there’s no damage.

Also, the early enemies tend not to have the specialized tanking abilities that give a higher engagement limit or higher chances to hit on disengagement.

My impression is that engagement/disengagement is working as intended, and that disengagement in TBS mode will become more of an issue as we face tougher foes in later game battles.

1636

Before I dive in I wonder – I found hard setting pretty easy in real time. Even after the patches. And I am certainly no pro. I wonder if difficulty has changed with turn-based. In other words: How has difficulty changed? Maybe I will try a super hard (what is it --nightmare? I forget) turn based and just see. (of the damned?)

1637

I don’t know – I’m playing on normal, and I’ve run into some fights that made me save scum a good bit, but they may have been fights I was too low to be fighting. You can always try whatever level you wish, and see what you think. You won’t have to put too much time in to find some challenging encounters, and you can restart if it’s too easy/ hard.

Edit: I don’t claim to be any kind of pro, either. And I had not played the game before now.

1638

The biggest complaint I’ve seen is that Dex is now a meaningless stat for everyone other than casters.

Apparently there are “rounds” (I haven’t played it as of yet, so I’m going by other people who have) so being 25% faster means… you just get higher initiative in a round. If things rolled continually, then Dex would mean something probably, you’d go more often, just like in RTwP, but since it’s all round-based ala DnD, it doesn’t mean much except for how fast your spells cast.

1639

I agree about dex. I was considering it as a dump stat in turn based. This makes resolve more interesting. I rolled a paladin up (well ok a multi class pally/fighter “crusader”) and I thought that felt right. I intend to try it deeper soon.

Dex was a huge rogue stat. Maybe we ought to look at rogues now differently?

1640

Why? In RTwP it affected your Reflex Defense and increased your attack speed. I’m assuming Reflex defense is the same (ability to avoid area of effect stuff), so then having higher attack speed doesn’t make your next turn come around faster in turn-based?

1641

He’s talking about turn based, where DEX doesn’t mean much (except it influences when in the turn order “cast” spells/abilities take effect). Sure, lowering DEX influences reflex as well in turn-based, but that was never the big draw in real-time - rather, people liked DEX for the bonus to action speed. Which is king in real-time. Since everyone always gets a turn every round, it rarely matters if you went “first” or not. I mentioned this on the official forums, as well as pointing out that it’s rather silly to NOT put everyone in full plate armor now, they just go later in the round, but have much better defense. Except casters. Keep them out of armor, for the faster casting. Which also removes one of Pillars core tenets - putting wizards in armor if you wanted to.

They have some work ahead of them, but I really like what they are doing, and I think most of it’s working. It just needs some tweaks, and some polish.

1642

I mean you still can. If anything they’re maybe the least changed by it in a way. Everyone else just kind of gets a freebie on heavy armor.

I think Pillars really needs a “rolling” initiative system. If you’re really fast, you should get to act 1.5 times to a slower guy’s 1 time. Plenty of games have tackled this issue, it’s weird they went with hard rounds in a game that’s mostly dictated by percentages. It works in D&D because initiative is a minor side effect of Dex. In Pillars TB, it’s basically the only effect, which is wonky. For TB it needs to add a shitload of Deflection or the like to be any good, but then Resolve becomes the new crap stat.

1643

Since the turn based stuff didn’t lift my skirts, I wish the design team could’ve added two more levels and a PL X in that last DLC. That would’ve been fun.

1644

Oh yeah, I forgot armor only effects INIT not casting time (like DEX does). For some reason.

I also think heavier armor could at the least reduce movement speed or something.