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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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by theflightless

"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.

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Originally Posted by theflightless
"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. ... To again quote this nonsense,

Care to point out the fault in logic in that?


Originally Posted by theflightless
Three points vs twenty will not discourage or encourage planning ahead.

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.

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by theflightless
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.

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"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?


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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by theflightless
I am suggesting they do not use labor systemically changing the game based on feedback from pax

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.


Originally Posted by theflightless
I don't buy that you, agreeing with me, refuting your own statement

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.


Originally Posted by theflightless
p.s. There is not going to be the potential competitive usage of movement in pvp.

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.

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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?

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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.

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"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.


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Originally Posted by theflightless
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 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.

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Originally Posted by theflightless

I don't understand why you think that.


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.

Quote
king boreas


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)

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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.

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.


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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.

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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.


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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.

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