RPG aspects

[Bjaarn]

Hi,

After having played the demo my feelings are abit mixed. I liked the demo, it felt challenging which sadly cant be said for many games these days and felt true to most aspects of the original (which I played/liked alot).
_But_ there are two things that I feel are real game breakers. The first and most obvious one beeing the poor AI (which has already been stated in severals threads). This will probably be fixed in coming patches as so many ppl are complaining about it.
The second one is the absence of the RPGishness of M1 where you had some uncertenty to all the fights. In M1 all attacks had a chance to completely miss their target. This meant that a newly spawned Wizard had atleas some chance of beating say a skeleton archer if the archer missed a few shots. In M2 each attack always hits and always makes a fixed amount of damage which makes the game terrebly predictable and more like a RTS (say Starcraft) where you always know the outcome of each battle. Now this is probably a design choise to make the game more ballanced in MP but still it removes alot of the dynamic and excitement of the game...
Any thoughts?

 

[unmerged(79717)]

In M2 each attack always hits and always makes a fixed amount of damage which makes the game terrebly predictable and more like a RTS (say Starcraft) where you always know the outcome of each battle. Now this is probably a design choise to make the game more ballanced in MP but still it removes alot of the dynamic and excitement of the game...
Any thoughts?

Well M1 actually went to the other extreme. Defenses always worked perfectly. A 95 parry would block 19 out of 20 attacks regardless of the opponents attack skill. As a result, units with high defenses would be locked in endless battles because neither could score enough damage on the other to break the deadlock. When HoA was coded, we found that combat system unworkable for an RPG because as heroes and monster became more powerful every battle was a stalemate.

 

[Bjaarn]

But still from what Ive seen the damage is completly fixed (ie an attack always makes 3 damage to a specific enemy at specific level/gear) which is the complete opposite from M1. Atleast a litte variation (say 1-3 in stead of just 3) would have made for more excitement...