I am concerned that the scaling down of action point economy will no longer allow the proper resolution to move strategically as well as cast, while stacking fractional turn AP. The depth of combat in DOS1 came from making tough choices about very small movements, and deciding whether to move one step and stun an opponent, or move none and heal an ally. The entirety of the strategic analysis wouldn't have been possible without a high resolution (in action points) of any sequence of moves in a given battle.

Any mathematicians want to go ahead and take some guesses at how the loss of fractional recombinations across a few turns will effect the complexity of battles?

This feeling I wrote couple of times on the forum since AP "streamlining" announced.
DOS uniqnues and smooth feeling of transfering time from one turn to another makes it more realtime.
Any other turn based game is about - move or loose your action.
Make one AP as "bigger quantum of time" means less chance to save a fraction. Less smoothness, less strategic-wise. More binary.

PvP mode sounds very promising. There migh be a lot of people who are too slow or too lazy or want more dept than usual MOBA. Or might want somethin more action that card games.There is a huge market when play it good. More strategy less random, make it a new 3D chess.

I would really want more AP.
6-20 AP is good.
Count to 20 is common sense.

I think the best way to give more movement freedom would be to give characters a small amount (1-5m) of 0 AP movement each turn, more depending on your speed. Any movement beyond this would cost AP. I think this would do leagues to make the game more mobile and especially give rogues or fast characters more opportunities to utilize their movement while keeping the game both strategic and fast paced.

Not like it wasn't ideal to avoid moving or use action-oriented moves like battering ram as much as possible in the first game either. Another option for Larian is to integrate movement into more skills, especially rogue and warrior ones, like leap attacks, grapple skills, a short range netherswap + attack kind of spell for rogues or the like. This skills could be weaker than straight attacks, but obviously would be versatile.

As far as a mathematical reduction in possible combinations of actions from a reduction in AP resolution, I'm guessing it's still a pretty massive amount, essentially infinite if you consider various movements to different locations as different actions, and still gargantuan just considering the possible skill combinations alone without regarding movement. What combinations are strategically viable is another story, but still seems like a lot of options are available.

It definitely adds time to consider and count the AP of a 4 AP action, a 7 AP action, a 2 AP action, and 2 AP of movement, for example, or maybe you should do 2x 3 AP actions, a 6 AP action, and 3 AP of movement? Whether actual strategic value is sacrificed for the convenience of dealing with just 3-4 AP is something I'll have to see from playing myself, but my first impression from the videos is that, yes, movement needs some love, but combat overall looks pretty similar and in many ways improved to me.

Wow.
That sounds good. Low AP, but combat is not so static. I realy like it.
With Low AP then first step is super expensive so combat tend to be static. your idea sir, definately deserves to be tested. Maby everyone gets 2m then you could get bonus free movement meters by investing in rogue/man-at-arms trees. Perhaps talent Quick shoes ?

Yes!

Have you eaten a smart soup for breakfast?

Anyway, shrink deafult attack/spell to One AP removes interesting talent - Elemental affinity. I relly like this talent, its most specific of DOS - element magic for me.

I actually find this combat to be MORE strategic personally. Before you ended up with such a large amount of AP that you more reasonably ran out of moves before you ran out of AP... with moves that often felt like they used random amounts of AP.

Now? Every single AP matters. There are no superfluous choices. With AP costs being very strategic.

Your point of view is somewhat twisted. In fact is oposite, less AP per turn more superfluous actions.

Check this:
8 AP per turn
- 1AP move, 2AP HP potion, 4 AP cc, 1 AP saved --> next turn I could summon 9 AP Master Level spell

3AP per turn
- 1AP move,1AP HP potion, 1AP cc spell, no saved no tactic --> Next turn summon 3AP Master level spell


As you can see, in the streamlined version, there is less chance to pass a fraction of time to next turn. e.g. less tactic. Less chance to manage your AP, it is more "use it or waste it". That is --> less tactic.

Also usage of superfluous actions is more often when passing AP is not very strategic. Less AP, less passing AP to another turn means --> Less tactic

Tactics are how skills and moves are used and combined, not how many AP you can carry over to the next round. If larger numbers mean most people don't try planning 3 or 4 moves in advance, it isn't more tactical than if smaller numbers do encourage that.

Anyway, that's the point of playtesting and getting feedback at PAX East, etc.

Yeah, as has been mentioned before, the XCOM games provide good tactics with what could be described as 2AP-per-turn. That said, it is also fundamentally different, with tactics that rely more on positioning than on frequent use of skills.

That's a big plus for XCOM. Much of the time you're trying to position your troops correctly, and using an ability is a pretty big deal. I am still sceptical about whether this is a good thing for D:OS2 until I have a chance to try it.

The ideas I like so far (these were also used in XCOM):

• Melee abilities should provide some free movement in order to help melee characters position effectively.
  
• Ranged abilities shouldn't require any free movement, but they should provide some capacity for aiming around obstacles. Also, perhaps instead of having a strict range limit, they should simply have range penalties.

One important thing to remember here is that this is PRE-ALPHA footage. This is a thing I've said over and over during PAX to people who came to our booth. The numbers, the UI, everything will probably strongly change until the release of the game. People that have played at PAX really liked less AP but do that means that we'll have 6 max AP when the game will be released and that we'll get 3 per turn? Probably not. Everything is subject to change.

Also, for the range, this is where our new elevation system comes into play here. Being on a higher position really gives a lot of bonuses to range and damage.

We want to play this pre-alpha dangit!

You had to be at PAX for that

too far!

Or you know... Don't do a 1AP CC spell and thus have 4AP next round. Which is a rather sizable advantage.

But as for the "strategy" it comes forth in the AP costs.

Since... it is 3AP per turn... 6AP total...

And it isn't Xcom that gives me the reason to say that the 3AP per turn is more strategic.

It is because in Divinity Original Sin the AP costs basically broke down and were mostly nonsense... and your goal was to basically break the game over your knee and cast as many skills in a turn as possible OR to do filler moves in the mean time.

Now? The AP cost of a skill DIRECTLY co-relates to how much of an effect it has on the battlefield, if done correctly, with few exceptions... AND there is no way to inflate your AP out of control so the skills never have to "adjust" to someone having double the amount of AP available.

Can this be done with a 6ap system? Sure... I have no objection... But my "More strategic" isn't with the amount of points but rather with the consistency and how every SINGLE point is absolutely vital as opposed to being kind of superfluous.

0 point: Features and shifts
1 point: Minor advantage
2 point: Major advantage
3 point: Tide Turning skill

With source points being the wrench in the machine.

As opposed to the old system of:

1-9: Whatever

I'm mostly worried about being just barely out of range, or having an inconvenient obstacle and being forced to waste a valuable action point just to take a couple of steps to position yourself correctly. If you have 4 AP and want to use a 4 AP skill, this is a pain. I had the same issue in the original D:OS, actually, but the issue will be more prominent if the total AP is reduced.

I do like that bows now fire in an arc. Theoretically, this should help.

I also had the same issue in XCOM occasionally, but it was pretty rare, especially considering half of your AP was usually reserved for movement anyway.


Would it be unrealistic to hope you'll have a similar presentation at PAX Australia? XD

Here is a thing id like to see with the new AP system: screw cooldowns.

Since you cant play Ap tetris anymore, i see no reason for cooldowns on many of the combat spells.
Its already a descision wether or not you play a powerfull spell or a weak one, rather in in Original Sin 1 where you would always cast the powerfull ones if you could get away with.
Plus the source point system that already manages the REALY powerfull spells.

So imo, the cooldown mechanic is just a restriction that doesnt need to be there anymore.

hh, nice way how to describe a system.

I loved original UFO:Enemy unknown and Terror from the deep. The AP system there was like 60AP per turn. One step per 6AP. Pretty granular. You could move a grenade for 5AP from your belt to your hand then throw it for certain amount of AP. Then equip another nade from your bag to the hand for 10AP, or perhaps make 2 steps, or perhaps knee. A lot of options, a lot of possibilities to combine. Tetris. You could control charaters, you could choose from many options what to do.

The new age of UFO comes with 2AP system. How many action you could combine? Pretty dumb. I played that new version for about half an hour.

That is a moment which reminds downthere is a binary code.

Wish:
Make it so that on the edge of range probability of hit fades out. e.g. no sharp edge here is 90% chance to hit and 20cm further you cant hit at all.

Lets say: range is 15. Beond 15m you get minus 5% for every 0.1m That is way more close to analog reality. only add an context icon Out of range to be informed.

Good suggestions, but with DOS 2 due to be released in about 6 months I wonder how much of the combat system is already implemented and can't be changed without adding to the development time. Maybe these ideas will be incorporated into an Enhanced Edition

Gradual reduction in hit chance is definitely harder to balance than a binary in/out of range, but could be interesting (hard to balance with stuff like the source point version of bless that guarantees you hit, though.) Would be kind of cool if aoe skills like fireball would become innacurate like throwing grenades without pinpoint if you cast them out of range. Another idea, perhaps as a talent or stance, would be to be able to sacrifice health to cast with more range.

Also, they're probably still in the stage where they can add new combat features or make major rebalances, so I wouldn't worry that anything is set in stone by any means. I would not be surprised if the release got delayed, either. December seems pretty ambitious for the scope they're going for to me, though I imagine they're getting good at cranking stuff out at this point.

Source Bless guarants hit up to a max range. Out of range there is the fade out. Where do you see a problem ?

I'd say source bless applies universally within your attack range, but yes it doesn't really pose a challenge to a distance based hit chance.

If I remember correctly you could do two movements for one AP in D:OS if the individual movements were small enough (I know I've had moves that cost 0 AP after my previous action was a movement. This was most apparent on characters with high movement.

All that being said your still going to have a relatively binary hit chance for melee weapons (limit to how far your sword reaches) so you would still have the potential issue of being just out of range of an attack and need to spend an AP repositioning.

This is sort of an ok discussion. A couple things :

"Your point of view is somewhat twisted. In fact is oposite, less AP per turn more superfluous actions."

This is exactly right, for the same reasons that

"to integrate movement into more skills, especially rogue and warrior ones, like leap attacks, grapple skills, a short range netherswap + attack kind of spell for rogues"

this is wrong.

The attachment of more weight to any singular, unique outcome (set of events or actions) reduces the control over each "unit," of function within that weight.



"Tactics are how skills and moves are used and combined, not how many AP you can carry over to the next round. If larger numbers mean most people don't try planning 3 or 4 moves in advance, it isn't more tactical than if smaller numbers do encourage that."

This is silly. There seems to be a misunderstanding - I am not arguing for more action(Can be viewed as sum of units of function per turn) - I am arguing for finer control over that action (This can be viewed as the minimum discrete groupings, or proportion of total action controllable at a time; i.e. quanta). Three points vs twenty will not discourage or encourage planning ahead.

Another note - the other silly response, about how divinity 1 had so many action points you didn't have to make meaningful choices with them - again, I am arguing for better control over splitting those actions across multiple actions (many small actions, rather than doing, let's say, one or two over-powered skill and making a choice of movement in which there is no pressure to optimize your route because 1 yard - 4 yards is all just "1 ap.") and not just "more action." I like my games challenging.

I want the total divorce of movement from skills, and all the bullshit about height tactics can be fueled to greater strategic competitiveness by that.





To again quote this nonsense, "Tactics are how skills and moves are used and combined, not how many AP you can carry over to the next round. If larger numbers mean most people don't try planning 3 or 4 moves in advance, it isn't more tactical than if smaller numbers do encourage that."
pedantic, purposefully industry-specific semantic reponse - what dictates how skills and moves are used and combined is the action point economy. Example -

turn 1.
10 ap.
move distance of 1 ap towards enemy, heal ally with 3 ap, while remaining out of sight of enemy archer.
6 ap left.
turn 2.
regain 4 ap, 10 total.
move 1 ap towards enemy, into sight, and cast aggressive 5 ap spell, move 1 ap back from enemy to regain vision coverage from smoke/fire, buff ally with 4 ap cost spell.


the choices to use these skills and in this sequencing relies upon a high resolution (quantization, or breakdown) of actions, allowing for the movements and saving of ap to chain together into a complicated second turn.




"Anyway, that's the point of playtesting"

I don't know what you mean. Is there a playtest version with different ap assignments, and integrated balance, for a higher resolution action point economy?

I'm not sure they would make extremely radical changes since the game system is more mature now, but yeah it's possible. Larian changed quite a lot of stuff regarding the way AP works and a whole host of other things during the course of the D:OS 1 alpha/beta. Quite a bit more than other developers do publicly

The forum is still archived down there, read the major patch threads.

Care to point out the fault in logic in that?



That is exactly the observation made that prompted this change in the first place. These changes were tried out in a test level first to see if they would work as expected, playtested and evaluated in-house, and more playtesting done publicly (PAX East, etc) to get feedback on the combat. Even more people will try it out and give feedback once the alpha/beta starts.

how are we going to know if they work if we don't get the alpha!

I don't think it makes sense to make judgements on the entire player bases' usage of the ap system based on who goes to pax. Ship the alpha as early as possible, that's how you get free playtesting that is more representative, i.e. worth working on. Belaboring on behalf of pax feedback seems like reacting to initial impressions, and specific game mechanics are not usually under critical consideration.

The reason we don't have our hands on the Alpha right now is that the Pax version is... Basically held up with paperclips and glue.

A test of a test.

---

Besides as I said the issue with the high ap system is that ultimately it proved arbitrary.

The low ap system so far has shown it succeeds at making every ap and move matter. Something the old system failed spectacularly at.

"The low ap system so far has shown it succeeds at making every ap and move matter. Something the old system failed spectacularly at."

I don't understand why you think that.

The most obvious issue with your statement is that an ap of movement is now a large range, so essentially a step more or less does not matter unless you are at the maxima. How are you missing this? Why is this conceptually or quantitatively hard for people? There is a larger range of behavior which changes nothing regarding how your ap is spent - this is losing meaning.

Additionally, (though this is beside the point - why don't you understand what resolution means? It is not about amount, and I am concerned that you don't get that. I am adding this, assuming by "failing to make every ap meaningful," you mean "there were too many actions available per turn for the abilities/movement system to make use of") The old system put a lot of pressure on you to effectively use AP while waiting on cooldowns and maintaining strategic positioning - in essence, the potential surplus of AP (i.e. lost ap, due to constitutional max) was a piece of overall strategic logic. I agree that the game OS:1 could have been a little more sparing at some points, though as mentioned, this led to its own interesting behavior - however, in the harder fights (the funnest ones - bracchus at lvl 8 poor gear, or king boreas without statues at lvl 12) every single action point mattered. Those fights came down to single ap differences in survival vs. failure.

In fact, a strategy reliant upon what I think you mean, "meaningless," ap, would be 1. never move towards the enemy, and let them burn ap as you stack it and 2. accrue a lot of buffs and movement bonus - the movement to stack more ap by moving away, and the buffs to use that stacked ap - so you could make use of "too much" "meaningless" (if it was meaningless, you were playing it wrong, or didn't understand what you could have been doing) action in combat when a less proactive, less thoughtful player would not have found something to do. It is not always necessary to do this to achieve victory, and I didn't always do it (the difficulty just isn't always there), but sometimes I would, and these, along with the ones like boreas and bracchus as described, are the fights I expect more of, and the fights I would like to see the ap system fully engage with.


As to the alpha/pax thing, I don't know why you think that it's held together by string. They already have the platform built.


I am also not suggesting they release it now - I am suggesting they do not use labor systemically changing the game based on feedback from pax, and instead work hard to flesh out their classes and abilities until they can release an alpha that is playable, based more so on the template of the previous game and play-testing done in house.


"That is exactly the observation made that prompted this change in the first place. "

I don't buy that you, agreeing with me, refuting your own statement that more AP resolution leads to a lack of planning ahead, supports having far less resolution for AP.

Do you see this?

The appropriate theoretical testing would be to form a tree of permutations possible within a given turn, given more or less action point resolution, and then measure(matched pairs testing, after balancing abilities and movements) the possible gains/losses in buffs/healings/debuffs/damages/movements (compare variance of each parameter, vs. perhaps total variance on an integrative scale) with the OS1 style AP resolution and the new one, just to get a quantity for what possibility is being missed out on with such obtuse AP quantization.
I think the parameters active per turn with more ap resolution would be uniformly (across any encounter) increased, and ideally this can be tied to thoughtfulness/fun of playing. That correlation would in itself need tested, but there is ideally an intuitive understanding of it.

alternative to all of this, do the current dumb blunt AP thing and have everybody move around like tanks because tactical retreat costs the same as moving 1/10th of a meter.



p.s. There is not going to be the potential competitive usage of movement in pvp. It would require finer distinctions of movement direction that the current 3 action point system is capable of picking up, to make it a subtle competitive tool. loosing this potential tactical factor is silly. Pvp is a loser in this change, it looses a depth of distinction between how thoughtful players are being. And it's brand new. I thought changes might support new features, rather than make them relatively less fun.

The system was prototyped, tested and implemented before PAX. PAX was just one of the first opportunities for a lot of people to try it out publicly.



I wasn't agreeing with you. When you said 'A does not lead to B', I meant by my reply that 'A leads to B' was the observation that prompted this change.

Let's say you are stuck working late, and the only place around to get food is a vending machine that has 15 different price points and only takes nickles. Are you going to count your bag of nickles and work out the best combination of things to get (the longer you take, the later you have to stay until you are done), or would a more likely behaviour be to dump a handful of nickles in the machine until you can get a granola bar, since it is the only semi-health thing there, then do the same so you can get a bag of chips since that would be the most filling, then a bar, and... there isn't enough left to get gum, so hit the change return button? If you would count nickels, would most people? Would you if it were pennies?
Now, compare that to a vending machine that takes only quarters, and has 3 price points. Now how many people would count their quarters and work out what they could get in advance?

At some point, increasing the resolution decreases clarity, and lack of clarity leads to people approaching combat less tactically. Obviously decreasing the resolution too much reduces the ability to be tactical, but that (among other things) is the point of prototyping, testing and feedback.



When theory and observation conflict, it is the theory that is wrong. People have played the new combat system, including quite a bit in PvP.

If you meant not to agree with me, you could have said so.

You also are choosing an arbitrary limit on the thoughtfulness required to appreciate the benefits of productive ap expenditure. Why are you choosing it where you do? I.e. at dumb 3 points?

lastly - I don't think I follow your point about pvp. There doesn't seem to be one. People have played it - has it been compared to a higher res ap implementation, with those same players?

I thought it was pretty obvious, especially give the context of the first half of the post.

I didn't choose anything, and wasn't involved in the prototyping or testing. However, it is hardly arbitrary to have basic skills cost 1 AP, intermediate 2 and advanced 3.

Again, I thought it was obvious that my point was that actual experience playing with a particular system outweighs theory about how it may not work.
Considering that all of the internal testers and many of the public testers at PAX have played D:OS, yes, it has been compared to a similar system with higher AP.

"I thought it was pretty obvious, especially give the context of the first half of the post."

It wasn't obvious, because you framed your response by alluding to my meaning in a previous post( 3pts. vs. 20 does nothing to encourage or discourage planning ahead) as the context. You didn't create any independently clear context, and I did a good job interpreting my own.

You could cite the evidence that 3 points leads to better planning ahead than 10, I'd like that and it would make sense to post.


"However, it is hardly arbitrary to have basic skills cost 1 AP, intermediate 2 and advanced 3."

That is extremely arbitrary. It defies all context of the previous game that would indicate that there is more to effective use of skills than that. It collaterally leads to a lack of motivation for the player to plan movement optimally and the effective use of specific positioning.


"Considering that all of the internal testers and many of the public testers at PAX have played D:OS"

This seems good, and I'm pleased to hear that. I thought it might be more casul-centric testing. Divinity appeals to a specific subset; the turn-based rpg systems with position elements under the strategic control of the player (d:os and xcom) do not appeal to the generic gamer as much as I would like, and more importantly, the experience with the previous action point system (which is hands-down the coolest interface mechanic in an rpg I've ever experienced, and is largely why I favor conceptually the combat system in divinity) is crucial for criticisms to be applicative here.

"I didn't choose anything,"

You chose to justify a theory with a specific level detail in the example. I want to know why you think the analogous arbitration in the scope of the game interface leads to the choice of three points as detailed enough to satisfy.
Because the example was analogous, it is presumable that you have also chosen the three point system as theoretically a better level of detail than a finer grain system. This is a choice that you presumably have some rationale for making.

Because that is the opinion and observation of the people who designed, prototyped, tested, implemented and are continuing the development of the system. Since no dramatic changes are being made after a fair bit of public playtesting and feedback, I would assume no critical issues were observed or significant negative feedback given.

You know how in some bad MMOs you basically just use skills one after the other as if you are playing the piano with your keyboard?

Divinity Original Sin boiled down to that after the immediate start of the game. At about... level 7 or so.

You basically go through all your skills in rapid succession and often can forget about tactics altogether as you try to luck into one of your MANY CCs actually landing. Even if you have a strategy (Usually summon, CC, and area denial) you usually had so much AP you could just lump a bunch of moves into a single turn.

In fact all the rogues I had would, if the fight lasted more then 2 rounds, have used every single one of his abilities and have them all on cooldown... Even if I gave them ALL the rogue abilities in the game.

Meaning this whole "Thinking about what is the most important and necessary ability" usually became weaker and weaker... With the AP costs usually being mostly random as some of the most vital abilities have 0-3ap with quite a few total waste 9ap skills.

And that isn't even getting into the fact that the game is flat out broken in the PCs favor. You have so much AP over the opponent in Divinity Original Sin even in Tactics mode you just end up outclassing all the enemies anyway... To the enemies suffer far too much in the action turn economy.

While the Low AP system where you only get 3ap and skills use 1-3 in accordance to how much of an impact they have and to their credit the AP costs are pretty much exactly where they should be. With 3aps being tide turning on their own.

AND because the Low AP system is 3ap a turn with 6 max if you save up... EVER. It means that they can finally balance the action economy so that tactics mode is no longer "Hard at the start, then kind of easy as it goes on"

And what is this big flaw of the 3ap system people keep complaining about?
1) Movement taking 1ap
and
2) Not being able to play AP tetris
and
3) Not using 10 skills per round one after the other.

Oh which 2 and 3 were flaws.



That train wreck? He himself isn't even the tough part of the entire fight, he just never dies (mostly because of the cheap tactics of the fight, which I hope isn't in the enhanced edition... he doesn't need more healing).

---

To be fair, I guess I could just be too good at the game.

But my fight with Hyberion wasn't so much "Use all the AP or else!" so much of a slog where your just was to undo his good turns... then on the off turns damage him. I won when the boss basically self-destructed, which I was glad for because he healed to full many times in that fight.

And I did it with two deadweights (Well... one dead weight, and another who could CC summons)

What you describe is an unbalanced character, combat and (as part of it) AP system (beside issues with combat AI) but not a system that is broken in itself; the evaluation of the old system's rules and the relations between its elements can't be based on the scaling issues, unless they aren't a result of the system itself. But I can't see that; we're talking of two different things: 'scale' or 'proportion' and systemical structures (relations between elements). So the problems of the old system don't imply the necessarity to change the system as a whole (which elements it consists of, how they are related, which rules of playing follow from them etc. and how these things are related to other aspects of the game), at least they can't rationalize the design of the new system (what does not mean there can't be reasons to create a system like this).

The reasons why players could easily achieve high amounts of AP and benefit from them in D:OS 1 (speaking of EE here) is how player damage - enemy damage - resistance - vitality - crowd control - stats from equipment were balanced. There was no need to invest many points in constitution (due to equipment boni, easy control of enemies, not enough enemy damage, level multiplicator), so they could be invested in speed and the main attribute. There were no significant benefits from investing in other attributes. So making AP more expensive (notible disadvantages from low values in other attributes in some regards, so high AP builds are difficult but viable) and other attributes more attractive and important would be a way to prevent AP inflation that doesn't have penalties.

Maybe I missed something but as far as I see the new AP system is completely independent from character development? 3 AP per turn, 6 max AP throughout the whole game for every character? So AP economy is reduced to combat actions (always in the same way) and not part of character and party building any more? And every skill has fixed AP costs, independent from character stats? So 3 AP per turn, 6 max AP, same AP costs for skills through the whole game without any possibility to optimize things in regard to AP?

If so, I wouldn't be sure if it was a good decision to separate the AP system from character development (i. e. role identity, too) in an rpg.

I second abraxas responding to neo; those capable of reading almost two pages, or even just one or two posts prior to neo's post - as the main points have had to be restated because of the subtlety/challenge of the concept at hand - could easily avoid irrelevant commentary. Regarding resolution of ap, not amount of it, is the question at hand.

The point that the ap cost of an ability has a static value and is no longer integrated to the character class is something that I have not really appreciated yet. It does appear that their intention would be to no longer have interaction between ability level and ap cost of abilities. The motivation to loose the high resolution of ap as well as loose the interactivity might be one and the same, as one supported the other - without finer discrete action amounts, any change in ap costs for an ability would have to be relatively large, a big course chunk of cost cut off. This would streamline character building into direct supports of specific abilities that would be most advantageous to the build to have be low-cost.

An alternative would be to switch cooldown modification by a capped decrease gauged by ability level.

This is a separate issue from ap resolution.

Also, thanks for clarifying that reasoning, raze.
In the short videos of PAX pvp and some of the single player gameplay, I have noticed the simplification of decision-making (loss of choices) and been irked by it. It might just be that I prefer longer turns, enacted by requiring more tedious forethought to account for each possibility, than most players. There is still a pretty good range of opportunities, but they are all obvious and uncomplicated.

The problem is NOT the amount of action points, but the stat system itself.
You can make an effective char by spending points only in the primary stat and speed. Since you attack first you can CC the enemy and often you do not take damage at all. Enemies are also not very intelligent in how they use their action points (e.g. they move too much).

In Pillars of Eternity they created a stat system where every stat has some use for each char. Sure, you can make effective chars where you dump some stats and max out others. But in D:OS some stats are completely useless to several chars. Players who know a little bit about character creation will use this and create completely overpowered chars.

solution: Make a system where the power of the skills of a "class" (skill tree) is NOT only dependent on a single stat. Maybe some skills are dependent on several stats or different skills from one skill tree depend on different stats. (or a combination of both) This makes sense especially for skill crafting, where you can combine skills from different trees.

arbitrary examples:
- You stab an enemy into the eyes (bonus damage and chance to cause blind). Your damage is based on strengh and the blind chance based on dex.
- A ranged attack that confuses the enemy: dex is used for hit chance and int is used for confusion chance.
- perception influences your hit chance when you aim at certain body parts or attack a target that is more than 10 meters away.

about 3 action points: Have you played shadowrun returns? ( I played dead man switch and dragonfall). There you have 2AP in the beginning and 3AP later. When you attack with a melee weapon, 1AP is used for going to the enemy and attacking it. Some attacks need more than 1AP. I liked those games.
Maybe having 3AP is a good idea and it makes the game more tactical, not less. At least you cannot use AP stacking as tactic to CC all enemies before they can act.

I will wait until I have played D:OS2 myself before I make my final judgement.

madscientist, this is a different issue. Make a new thread to discuss it, please. The 3 ap commentary at the end, that is actually relevant to how an amount of possible actions can be controlled by the player, is referential and lost on me.

" At least you cannot use AP stacking as tactic to CC all enemies before they can act."

AP stacking is not related to resolution of action points, it's related to the amount of action you're given per turn and how you choose to use them. Look up and understand what quantizing is, and wrap your mind around the idea that the amount of something is not related to how many pieces it is divided into.

Additionally, you are arbitrarily deciding that this tactic is somehow undesirable or invalid. If you'd like to explain why that is clear to you, I encourage you to make a new thread and lay it out for us. It's not the subject of this thread. To continue trying to contribute to this subject, grasp the quantization vs. amount thing and think about it.

"Maybe having 3AP is a good idea and it makes the game more tactical, not less."

this is not at all supported by anything that you've said. It's not intelligible, or thoughtful. It's just a free-standing conclusion, following a reference that you liked a different game that did things differently.

Sorry, but I do not understand what you want. What should be changed in order to make the game better?

There are only a few things that influence the combat system:
- The amount of action points you have (fixed or variable, if variable what does it depend on)
- What skills can be learned?
- How many skills can a char learn?
- How many AP costs each skill?
- How far can you move for 1 AP?
- Can you take AP from one turn to the next (if yes, how many)
- cool down (how long for what skill, fixed or variable, if variable what does it depend on)

What do you think how to set these parameters?

regarding my example: Shadowrun ruturns is as close to D:OS2 as a game from a different developer can be. Its a classless and turn based system, you have several party members, you have 3AP and you have the usual RPG skills (melee and ranged attack, CC, summons, . . .). The mayor difference is that in shadowrun a char can only have up to 3 weapons, 6 skills and 6 items in combat.

You can hardly improve an existing system without comparing it with other systems.

EDIT: updated my list of parameters

The way I understood this conversation, some people have been discussing old system vs new system as a whole instead of these parameters madscientist mentioned. You can design a 20-ap-system where no character can ever do more than 3 actions per round. And a a 20-ap-system does not inevitably include speed as it was implemented. That's why Larian does not need to reduce the amount of ap to these low levels. Erasing speed from the stat list would have been sufficient.

Speed as a stat was omnipotent and it has gone with the new system, which most probably will be for the better.

Now why do some folks deem a 3-ap-system problematic?
- movement
- RNG
- spell design

Spending 1/3rd of your DPs sounds too costy for melee classes. Especially if you have some "normal" hit chances like 70%. This would mean that, in most situations, a melee combatant had to move for 1 ap, and then a 30% chance to deal half damage each round. The chance of dealing none is rather realistic.
I find this spectrum of possibilities too diametrical and the outcome too chaotic.

Some reasonable system would allow for each character to
- move freely over short distances without heavy punishment (I don't mean free of charge)
- attack up to 5 times per round
- cast up to 3 cheap spells per round (mind the cooldowns, though)

Such a system could be alike the following:
- 10 ap per round, (with carry over, maximum is 15 points)
- a normal attack costs 2 ap
- few, the cheapest and least useful, spells cost 3-4 ap; most spells cost 6-8 ap

Now to address whether a system that has more AP could easily take the place of the 3AP system.

Yes of course. Really all it is, is numbers. What the 3AP system introduced that needed to be addressed was AP inflation, Limiting the number of actions in a turn, as well transforming AP cost into how useful the skill is on the battlefield (and Nothing else!), And to boot putting the enemy and the player on a similar playing field without destroying the action economy.

Don't get me wrong, low cost but highly effective skills have their place. Heck 0ap skills are essentially class features you activate (and often essential to using that character).

Heck I was open to the idea that someone could get a talent or ability to later have 4ap a round. Yet ultimately the amount of AP the player should have access to NEEDS to be constrained.



This is basically the opposite of what I want. Especially since the game itself couldn't handle enemies with as fruitful turns as you have, often needing to kite enemies as a full attack turn could kill you in one hit.