2x2 strafing undermines character building [edited]

[1varangian]

rather than looking at it like "2x2 strafing undermines character building," you should view it as "everything i know about old games does not apply to this one." your characters are not super-powerful, as want to be in many other types of RPG games, and as a result, you have to be better at avoiding damage completely as opposed to outlasting damage. every bit of combat in this game hints exactly at this premise. if you cannot learn to adapt to this model of combat, you will have a decidedly more difficult game experience.

I think you missed the point there. It's that the strafing makes combat trivially easy. And if I turn difficulty to max then the character building aspect of the game matters even less.

[\/4n!ll4 ][c3]

how easy combat is with it is entirely dependent upon how fast you are with your actions. even strafing, if you are slow, you will still get hit, often, and if you dont time things correctly, even after you have strafed, you will get hit. often. with the exception of the dodge skill, everything in this game does something to make your characters kill monsters faster, not last longer. if there were ways to actually make your characters more resilient to damage outright, then too much about the game's combat system would have to change.

and really, character development in this game starts and ends with mastering your damage skill as quickly as you can. is that a problem? i dont really believe that it is, because all that really does is changes the game to based on character skill and perception as opposed to "hey man, watch what this new sword i got can do."

if you stand there and try to go toe to toe with a monster, you will die. that is part of the design of the game. you have to outsmart your enemies in order to survive, just like you have to outsmart the dungeon in order to make it out alive. this is a principle theme of the game. if you just stand there tanking an ogre, you arent really outsmarting anything or anyone. you are just dieing due to foolhardiness.

if you wanted it to be like other RPGs, there is a lot that has to be added to this game also. for example, there is no healing class, which is pretty important when you are trying to make characters that can actually tank damage.

i wouldnt consider myself bad at this game, but going against the casters on level 10 is proving to be quite a challenge for me, forcing me to reload several times. the ogres can be a pain, too, because one hit can do upwards of 3/4s of any of my characters' hitpoint pool.

also, DLC and patches can radically change how this game could end up being played in the future, and when/if that happens, the 2x2 strafing mechanic could be made highly ineffective or just outright unnecessary. but again, a LOT about this game would have to change before that could.

[Eobersig]

... and really, character development in this game starts and ends with mastering your damage skill as quickly as you can. ...

You might have missed it, but that is practically the whole point of this thread.

You seem to be fine with it, but other people ask why we have the other skill trees when they don't matter anyway.

(And get yourself a new user name.)

[Megami]

I would go that far and call the 2x2 cheese an exploit. There is no way this was intended by the devs.

[Saice]

I would go that far and call the 2x2 cheese an exploit. There is no way this was intended by the devs.

Oh it was intended. It was something that was core to DM which this game is basically pays homage to.

And 2X2 is not the only way you can "exploit" the AI.

Backpedaling in long hallways can be just as effective

Doors... gotta love doors. Don't have the skill to dodge just open a door take a few smacks and close door.

Long range. Some mobs in the large rooms you can hit at the edge of your vision and they will be dead before they can reach you.

Pit Tarps. Mobs are not smart enough not to step on closed pit traps that you can then open. or any trap for that matter they are then happy to stand on a poison cloud trap until they die if it means they can punch you while doing it.

The point is mid to late game many of the mobs are built to wipe out your party if you fight them toe to toe or at lest put such a drain on you that your only option is to back track to res or rest. The combat is made that your goal is really to avoid getting hit in the first place then to trade blows. This is also why many of the mid to late game encounters have a group of mobs making pure 2x2 more difficult. If you look at the map you will notice that there are a lot of random open spaces 2x2 or so in size this is not random at all but setup to give you places to retreat to with mobs when needed.

[\/4n!ll4 ][c3]

... and really, character development in this game starts and ends with mastering your damage skill as quickly as you can. ...

You might have missed it, but that is practically the whole point of this thread.

You seem to be fine with it, but other people ask why we have the other skill trees when they don't matter anyway.

(And get yourself a new user name.)

the only class it actually has a truly detrimental effect on is the wizard, because some spells are just worse than the others. but all the same, you can level spellcraft 17 i think, and then any other single element to 34, and you will still be more than effective enough to complete the game. my characters were level 14 when i finished the game, and i got 3 skill books, so they all had 34 in one primary stat and 17+ in a secondary stat, and i had no issues. non of my characters could do everything, which is fine, and really, aside from the swords, axes, maces, and staffs i found, i dont feel like i was missing anything in the game. there was some areas i couldn't get to on level 7, because i couldnt cast the darkness spell, but meh.

the character building works in this game as it is supposed to, its just not so robust as what a lot of people likely have come to be accustomed to in current games. the only way this is a problem is because there isnt really any way to find this out until you actually play the game, which i mean, hey, thats part of playing the game. i could see a clear purpose to every skill in this game, and i also found out (even though i had to restart because i made the same mistake above) very quickly that not specializing in one skill would do more to hurt me than trying to be mediocre in all.

there are other things in this game that are problematic though, but those are just design decisions that probably didnt pan out as expected more than outright bad decisions.

as for tactics others might consider exploiting or "cheesing," get to the areas of the game where you can see they deliberately removed the ability to be able to do that, or severely hampered the ability to do so, and you will see quickly that that is exactly how they expected players to fight. or, just watch the trailers and see that that is indeed what they are doing as well.

this game is very similar to demon's souls/dark souls, in that the design of the game is expressly to kill the player, and it is up to the player to figure out how not to die. once you figure out how to, the games all become incredibly easy.

[Whisper]

Thing is with current 2x2 dancing system - your choice of starting party, your skill selection, your stats, your equipped items - they don't really matter much compared to your 2x2 dancing skill.

What topic starter say: your skill in 2x2 dance is 1000 times more important then any choice you do in character building, character equipement, character stats/skills, party composition.

[\/4n!ll4 ][c3]

i dont know that i either agree or disagree with that. basically when i made my characters (i used all rogues, after reading a lot here on the forums and finding out about issues with the combat system balance), and it came to choosing skills, i knew 2 things needed to be ensured: the front row could protect the back row, and the back row could kill what needed to be killed.

since i knew this going in to the game, i knew that meant i needed to focus on damage for my back row and defense for my front row. if i wouldnt have done this, i would have had a MUCH more difficult time playing this game, as was already proven by my first play attempt, even with 2x2 fighting. if i would have tried for assassination, daggers, and dodge with my front characters, all that would have happened is they would get hit much more often than i needed them to, so they wouldnt survive, so i knew i just needed to scrap going for big damage with them, and focus primarily on evading. so that was a very important choice i had to make regarding skills that had a very noticeable effect in game.

further, in regards to the back row, i made one character spec in throwing and one in missile weapons. going missile with both probably would have yielded more damage in the long run, but it also would have gimped my back row damage for twice as long as it was anyway. you dont find the crossbow until considerably longer after you find the short bow, so speccing in missiles and having to use throwing weapons would have been pretty crappy to deal with.

also, i also had to make a choice if i wanted to go full missile/throwing or pump some points into dodge for the benefits from that, such as the health, the armor proficiency, the evasion bonuses and resistances, all of which had very important effects on my game experience.

character speccing does have very large, and very noticeable benefits in this game. could things have been done to make them more meaningful? yeah, absolutely, and i think balancing them would be a very welcomed change. but there are too many things about the game that have to be rebalanced to accommodate this, which would then make this a completely different game. it would turn it into a hack and slash dungeon crawler rather than a strategic dungeon crawler.

[Whisper]

character speccing does have very large, and very noticeable benefits in this game. could things have been done to make them more meaningful? yeah, absolutely, and i think balancing them would be a very welcomed change. but there are too many things about the game that have to be rebalanced to accommodate this, which would then make this a completely different game. it would turn it into a hack and slash dungeon crawler rather than a strategic dungeon crawler.

What strategic about 2x2 dancing?

It is THE answer to anything in combat. And much more important then any choice you do for your party.

[Sande]

Perhaps our dance masters need to accept that they are very good at strafing.

Congratulations.