The don't support it. But the license belongs WotC who are in their full rights to decide what to do with it. To demand otherwise (that they fulfill your expectactions and ideas how they game should look like, because you've played BG1 & 2) is classic fan entitlement.
I guess "demanding it" is a little bit overboard but WotC mainly want people's money for anything they do, so telling them in no uncertain terms what would lead to you spending money on what they do is fair I think.
Just as every person has the right to withhold that money if they don't like what WotC is doing. But they'd be disappointed, that's just human nature.
I would support a Pillars of Eternity-style attack roll system with "grazes" in place of most misses. In PoE, a 1-15 is a miss, a 16-50 is a "graze" (50% less power), 51-100 is a hit (100% power), and anything above 100 is a critical hit (150% power). It's a 1d100 roll with an attack Accuracy weighed against the target's Defense. It's still possible for the player to get strong enough defenses that certain critters can't break it, and it's still possible for enemies to have such strong defenses that certain characters can only do scratch damage at best.
It's just that the difference between rolling 50 and rolling 51 isn't the difference between dealing 30 damage or dealing zero. The attack roll is still just as important as ever, but the role of chance isn't so polarizing, and it's harder to get a truly unbreakable defense (X can't hit Y unless it rolls a 20).
I don't know if that's what Larian might do with BG3, but I liked that part about PoE, and I've never heard other people complain about PoE's attack roll system.
In my opinion all this problem of missed shots or to hits can simply be solved with customizable difficulty settings like for other games like P:KM. Even the old BG and NWN had difficulty levels including D&D Core Rule Difficult and balance CA, Hit Point, Save ecc. ecc. to the user.
If I like to play the slower D&D Core rule or a more "story mode" system it will be the end user who chooses it to his taste.
PoE's combat system received a lot of criticism over it being slow and overbalanced. I know that because I've delivered a considerable portion of that criticism myself. I'd be careful with borrowing anything from that system, as even seemingly harmless parts of it could have contributed to the philosophies that made it that way. The grazes in particular could have contributed to it by making fights against trash mobs more draining on the health of the player characters, especially the tanks, therefore requiring their health to be raised, which in turn could have caused the balance of the entire game to inch towards more tanky combat.
@chimaera Larian has outright stated in interviews that WotC gave them "Full Freedom" to do what they want. They put themselves right out there saying that "If the game sucks, its entirely our fault." So no, I will not make excuses for them or pass the buck to WotC. Larian accepted full responsibility, so full responsibility is what they will get.
@ThacoBell
Whether the old BG fans consider the game a faithful adaptiation is irrelevant as to whether the game will be a success. Which is what counts for WotC.
Plenty of old Fallout fans raged when Bethesda got the franchise. Plenty of Morrowind fans raged about the dumbing down in Oblivion & Skyrim. Yet the games sold very well, because they appealed to the new generation fo players.
At the same way that 4e failed on dnd, that SCL failed...
There are some things on the chopping block, however. It's an interpretation of D&D, specifically 5th Edition, because porting the core rules, which Larian tried to do, doesn't work. Or it works, Vincke clarifies, but it's no fun at all. One of the culprits is missing when you're trying to hit an enemy, and while the combat system has yet to be revealed, you can at least look forward to being able to smack people more consistently.
"You miss a lot in D&D—if the dice are bad, you miss," he says. "That doesn't work well in a videogame. If I do that, you're going to review it and say it's shit. Our approach has been implementing it as pure as we can, and then just seeing what works and what doesn't. Stuff that doesn't work, we start adapting until it does."
Hey, I didn't say anything this time, I was just pushing like and agree buttons. Though I guess my counterargument would be that he didn't specifically say they've removed attack rolls, even though I agree that the way he described whatever it is they did does sound like they did something akin to that. So the meaning is still somewhat up to interpretation until they decide to make it clear.
I would support a Pillars of Eternity-style attack roll system with "grazes" in place of most misses. In PoE, a 1-15 is a miss, a 16-50 is a "graze" (50% less power), 51-100 is a hit (100% power), and anything above 100 is a critical hit (150% power). It's a 1d100 roll with an attack Accuracy weighed against the target's Defense. It's still possible for the player to get strong enough defenses that certain critters can't break it, and it's still possible for enemies to have such strong defenses that certain characters can only do scratch damage at best.
Et cetera
Guys, maybe it's not clear why people are bothered by Vincke's comment about attack rolls. It's not about attack rolls in particular. It's about what what portends about other design decisions. Let me try to clarify:
Vincke: "We started with a really full and faithful adaptation of the D&D rules."
Us: Cool, BG2 had that and we love BG2.
Vincke: "But some things don't really translate well to video games."
Us: Okay, fair enough, BG2 changed some things and left out some things, and then changed some other things to make up for what was left out. Thieves and bards lost something in the translation, for example, but we still don't mind playing thieves and bards.
Vincke: "For instance, in D&D, when you roll to hit, sometimes you miss. That's no fun."
Us: Wait... what?
Vincke: "Our game would be considered terrible if the player went around missing targets in combat."
Us: Um, BG2 has LOTS of missing targets in combat, and it's the best-reviewed CRPG of all time. Also,. this new game is supposed to be a direct sequel to it...!
Vincke: "So we removed to-hit rolls from the game."
Us: Wait... to-hit rolls aren't like the Climb Walls or Read Languages skills, or Charisma checks or something like that. To-hit rolls are the most fundamental and often-used game mechanic in BG2. If they're willing to change something so basic... what else from the best CRPG ever made are they going to turn their backs on?
Interviewer: "Can you tell us more about the combat mechanics, maybe put our minds at ease a little bit?"
Vincke: "Erm, ah... no."
Us: Oh God, it sounds like they are planning to throw out a bunch of stuff that I love about BG2, and make a wildly different game, anmd they're just afraid to come out and say so. In 18 years of hoping and waiting for BG3, this is not what were hoping and waiting for.
I think the consternation is 100% appropriate, and to be expected.
1) If you disapprove of such consternation, I encourage you to rethink whatever life choices led you to go around policing other people's emotions.
2) If you are zen-like and want to remind people to wait and see, I'll remind you that waiting and seeing is BORING.
3) If your point is that Larian makes good games and you are excited about the next Larian game regardless of whether it preserves what made BG2 great (BG2 being, after all, a different and very old game), that's perfectly fine, but it doesn't mean I have to be excited about it. (See #1 above.) The prospect of a fond hope (like, say, of one day seeing a BG3 that is a lot like BG2), no matter how remote, being finally and fully crushed, is wont to generate disappointment and lamentations. It's human nature.
PoE's combat system received a lot of criticism over it being slow and overbalanced. I know that because I've delivered a considerable portion of that criticism myself. I'd be careful with borrowing anything from that system, as even seemingly harmless parts of it could have contributed to the philosophies that made it that way. The grazes in particular could have contributed to it by making fights against trash mobs more draining on the health of the player characters, especially the tanks, therefore requiring their health to be raised, which in turn could have caused the balance of the entire game to inch towards more tanky combat.
I think (at least unless you play on the highest difficulty levels) that combat in PoE in the latest iterations is quite fast. One issue especially with the PoE 1 was that there were too many trash packs that were tuned to the point that you had to least pay attention and expend some limited abilities (i.e. wizard spell slots).
But if you know what works it can be quite fun and fast, i.e in PoE a Wizard using conjured weapons can very fun to play. But disablers work great, too.
I mean, the interview says:
"porting the core rules doesn't work"
"our approach has been [to see] what works and what doesn't"
"if the dice are bad, you miss... if [Larian] does that [reviewers will] say it's shit"
"some things are on the chopping block"
You can split hairs all you want, but the point is that Vincke held up one of the most "core" of core D&D rules, which is the rule that comes into play more often than any other one in BG/BG2 (except, I guess, movement speed?), and claimed it doesn't work in a video game. Which, I don't know how you say that if you are an enthusiastic BG/BG2 player.
The situation just reads less as "this developer that is passionate about BG2 wants to make BG3" and more as "this developer that is passionate about D&D wants to make BG3." It suggests Larian doesn't quite get, or care about, what made BG and BG2 such great games.
If you love D&D, that's generally great. If you specifically love BG2, it's not so great.
Not only this, but hit/miss is present on all RPG's that i remember from 90s/00s. He probably doesn't like much other games from the time.
On Might & Magic VII, Dragon's Breath deals 1-25 points of damage / dark magic level, so at skill level = 10, could be 10 damage or 250 damage. And resistances works on chances based Hell, even Diablo 1/2 has hit/misses. And to remove the spell failure chances and melee missing from Morrowind to Oblivion, Bethesda literally re writed all combat and made an combat with huge hp inflation, so you never miss, you your char at max STR and max weapon skill needs to swing your weapon 50 times to kill an Xivilai(possible at later levels), this is not funny.
What make this old shcool RPG's special, is that they have immersive mechanics. not cooldowns, bows with 13m range, armor that never deflects any hit, etc.
PoE's combat system received a lot of criticism over it being slow and overbalanced. I know that because I've delivered a considerable portion of that criticism myself. I'd be careful with borrowing anything from that system, as even seemingly harmless parts of it could have contributed to the philosophies that made it that way. The grazes in particular could have contributed to it by making fights against trash mobs more draining on the health of the player characters, especially the tanks, therefore requiring their health to be raised, which in turn could have caused the balance of the entire game to inch towards more tanky combat.
I think (at least unless you play on the highest difficulty levels) that combat in PoE in the latest iterations is quite fast. One issue especially with the PoE 1 was that there were too many trash packs that were tuned to the point that you had to least pay attention and expend some limited abilities (i.e. wizard spell slots).
But if you know what works it can be quite fun and fast, i.e in PoE a Wizard using conjured weapons can very fun to play. But disablers work great, too.
I suppose to me the difference is that in Baldur's Gate (BG1 especially) I don't get hit a lot, and I also don't have a lot of health. So every time one of my characters gets hit, it counts, and I feel it. Similarly, enemies don't have a lot of health either—with a few exceptions, which are consequently quite powerful enemies—and every time I deliver a hit to them, I do considerable damage. Especially when I use AoE spells.
So I'm in a scenario where combat is actually exciting. Every time a hit happens, I either cheer or cringe inside. In a way, receiving and delivering hits in Baldur's Gate affect the psyche in a similar way to how football fans feel every time a team scores a goal in a football game, although to a much lesser extent.
Comparably, most of the fights in PoE feel to me more like I'm watching a fight break out in an old folks' home, where the participants slowly drain each other's stamina by delivering ineffective pats to the other team and lying down on the ground when they begin to feel tired. Projectiles and attacks hit consistently but are also pretty ineffective, and so are most spells and abilities. The best I can do is boost my team with some abilities in order to help them drain the enemy's health bars faster than they can drain mine.
Most of the time I decide to pause and give orders in PoE, I feel like I could have just finished the fight without pausing. A lot of the time I either feel bad because I'm not using my character's abilities a lot, or I feel dumb because I've used them where I didn't need to. And the occasions where I actually need to are few and far between.
I'm not saying the BG system is perfect. For example, it's well known and undeniable that ranged attackers dominate the battlefield in BG1. However, I don't think it has any flaws that couldn't be fixed with some numbers tweaking. Meanwhile, in my opinion, PoE's combat system is robust and intricately designed, but also built on a swamp.
Granted, I've only played PoE1, and I think I've either played on normal or on the difficulty that's one step harder than normal. I don't know if PoE2 managed to get away from any or all of these problems.
I suppose to me the difference is that in Baldur's Gate (BG1 especially) I don't get hit a lot, and I also don't have a lot of health. So every time one of my characters gets hit, it counts, and I feel it. Similarly, enemies don't have a lot of health either—with a few exceptions, which are consequently quite powerful enemies—and every time I deliver a hit to them, I do considerable damage. Especially when I use AoE spells.
So I'm in a scenario where combat is actually exciting. Every time a hit happens, I either cheer or cringe inside. In a way, receiving and delivering hits in Baldur's Gate affect the psyche in a similar way to how football fans feel every time a team scores a goal in a football game, although to a much lesser extent.
This is a really good description why the BG / 2e combat system feels GOOD.
Hits matter. The player gets really good feedback how dangerous an enemy is. And how tough and evasive they are. The system gives enemies character, i.e. hard to hit but squishy or slow and tanky. A fireball that one hits a group feels powerful.
Hot take: I actually think the combat in PoE is better than in BG. Actually, PoE is, in a lot of ways, just a better game in general. If it wasn't for my nostalgia, it would probably unseat BG2 as my favorite crpg.
Hot take: I actually think the combat in PoE is better than in BG. Actually, PoE is, in a lot of ways, just a better game in general. If it wasn't for my nostalgia, it would probably unseat BG2 as my favorite crpg.
Yep, for me too. The IE games are no longer my go-to games when I want to play an old-school cRPG anymore (which is also why i don't really care that much about the long-overdue 2.6 patch). PoE1 and P:K are those games for me now (with Realms Beyond and Black Geyser still to come as well), and a new PoE or Pathfinder game announcement will be far more exciting for me that this BG3 announcement.
Hot take: I actually think the combat in PoE is better than in BG. Actually, PoE is, in a lot of ways, just a better game in general. If it wasn't for my nostalgia, it would probably unseat BG2 as my favorite crpg.
I think this is correct. One big problem that people are overlooking is that you can kite with zero consequence in BG. It really breaks alot of the intended strategic depth of 2e combat. And it actually results in combat gameplay, especially at the lower levels, that more resembles RTS games than tabletop RPG's.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a fan of it. But BG combat is highly cheese-able in a way that's not the case in PoE.
I'm super glad Obsidian added back in engagement and consequences from that. I think it's a tad unfortunate that they made this mechanic less important/easier to overcome in Deadfire.
One big problem that people are overlooking is that you can kite with zero consequence in BG. It really breaks alot of the intended strategic depth of 2e combat. And it actually results in combat gameplay, especially at the lower levels, that more resembles RTS games than tabletop RPG's.
"Can" /= "will." Kiting in BG is literally, physically uncomfortable. Lots of people don't bother, since it's quicker and more exciting to get up in the ogre's face.
But the fact that the game engine supports kiting means it supports other things as well, such as retreating while combat is still going on. I.e. tactical retreats. You can fall back to another position and regroup, you can fight in a inn or a store or a church. You can use natural chokepoints and blind spots, set up ambushes and traps. Et cetera. All in a dumb little pixellated 2D abstraction of a fight.
I really dread hearing something like, Larian is going to implement curated, bespoke combat encounters, in locales designed specifically for that purpose, with "lots of" environmental interaction. Each battle will be a little puzzle to solve - basically, a minigame. And once you've solved it and messed with the environment in like three different ways, it will become super boring.
Freedom to kite means freedom to do lots of other stuff, and often enough it results in hectic, exciting battles, which almost never play out the same way twice.
What evidence do you have of whether people kite or don't? Also, it's paradoxical to say people don't generally kite and then to go on a list the glorious and sundry things kiting permits.
Even if people don't kite as a frequent tactic, people are using the freedom of a zero-engagement system to easily move their wizards or other squishies out of danger. Or even your tanky fighter when their health got low. I mean, come on, who here hasn't kited with their fighter while waiting for the next turn to chug a potion?
Because of this, you don't have to pay as much attention to positioning or guarding as you would otherwise (you have to do these things in Golbox or PoE). For as much as some BG fans here complain about the action-y nature of newer RPG's, optimized play in BG involved a lot of action-y, RTS play style. As you've said in your description, yes, there is a lot of freedom. And I can agree that some of the emergent gameplay that such a free system was cool. But, I think if we're being honest, much of it was cheesing some of the systems (such as with exiting areas) or the enemy AI.
Also, since we were talking about PoE, it's possible to design a combat system and world that isn't about having specific locales or interactions that influence the fight. That's pretty much what Obsidian did in the original. Also, legitimately asking, have you played the Original Sin games? They offer a lot more freedom regarding combat than your post here seems to let on. You can flee combat. You can fall back. Most of the encounters don't actually center on some terrain doodad.
For what it's worth, kiting is even more impossible in the Firewine dungeon than re-grouping the party. Kiting requires so much more time, attention, and space than regular fighting that people basically never kite unless only a single player is on the screen. I heavily, heavily micromanage my party, and kiting is easily the slowest and most uncomfortable thing you can do with movement in the game. I've done my fair sharing of kiting over the years, and kiting is something I only do when I feel pressed, simply because it's so inconvenient.
Pillars of Eternity probably went a little too far with the limitations on movement. They do prevent kiting under most circumstances, but considering the fact that critters don't get high APR anyway, movement rates barely vary at all, and hitstun is very brief unless you're using slow-moving weapon, the "engagement" system wasn't really necessary to prevent kiting.
For what it's worth, kiting is even more impossible in the Firewine dungeon than re-grouping the party. Kiting requires so much more time, attention, and space than regular fighting that people basically never kite unless only a single player is on the screen. I heavily, heavily micromanage my party, and kiting is easily the slowest and most uncomfortable thing you can do with movement in the game. I've done my fair sharing of kiting over the years, and kiting is something I only do when I feel pressed, simply because it's so inconvenient.
Pillars of Eternity probably went a little too far with the limitations on movement. They do prevent kiting under most circumstances, but considering the fact that critters don't get high APR anyway, movement rates barely vary at all, and hitstun is very brief unless you're using slow-moving weapon, the "engagement" system wasn't really necessary to prevent kiting.
This is not my experience, and it makes me wonder if we're talking about different things with the word kiting.
Example: It's laughably easily draw enemy aggro on one tank member of your party and just click once to move them in a long straight line parallel to the rest of your party. Because movement speed tends to be the same for the majority of monsters and your characters, those enemies will tend to continue chasing the same character -- their closest target. And you can just set your five other members to wail away with ranged weapons. And thankfully the base AI was solid at finding new targets after kills, so you didn't even have to micromanage them. Even if enemies re-targeted, hit recovery stuns and their low HP pools kept them being a serious threat.
I'm not talking about kiting as only the kind of short move-stop-short move-stop-etc.
It trivialized alot of the early gibberling/wolves/gnolls/kobold content. This is a big reason why bows and such dominate in BG1. Admittedly these kinds of tactics waned in effectiveness as you leveled up. But even in later combat, it was trivially easy to swap guys in and out of the front line. That meant that you didn't have to plan ahead so much in combat. You could let one front line guy soak some damage, hit a heal potion, painlessly move them to back line while you waited for the timer to chug another.
It's laughably easily draw enemy aggro on one tank member of your party and just click once to move them in a long straight line parallel to the rest of your party. Because movement speed tends to be the same for the majority of monsters and your characters, those enemies will tend to continue chasing the same character -- their closest target. And you can just set your five other members to wail away with ranged weapons.
That's kind of a specific example, though. In that case, we're talking about a single enemy facing a full party of 6. Kiting is more complicated--that is, it requires more clicking and pausing--when you're working with multiple enemies. Even in Pillars of Eternity, you can string enemies along like that pretty easily, if there's only one of them.
Generally I say "lure" instead of kite when I'm talking about using a character as bait for an enemy. I say "kite" when the character running from the enemy is also the one attacking it (I think that's the typical meaning in the community). That's how I distinguish between the two attack patterns.
Comments
I guess "demanding it" is a little bit overboard but WotC mainly want people's money for anything they do, so telling them in no uncertain terms what would lead to you spending money on what they do is fair I think.
Just as every person has the right to withhold that money if they don't like what WotC is doing. But they'd be disappointed, that's just human nature.
It's just that the difference between rolling 50 and rolling 51 isn't the difference between dealing 30 damage or dealing zero. The attack roll is still just as important as ever, but the role of chance isn't so polarizing, and it's harder to get a truly unbreakable defense (X can't hit Y unless it rolls a 20).
I don't know if that's what Larian might do with BG3, but I liked that part about PoE, and I've never heard other people complain about PoE's attack roll system.
If I like to play the slower D&D Core rule or a more "story mode" system it will be the end user who chooses it to his taste.
At the same way that 4e failed on dnd, that SCL failed...
I agree with almost everything that you have said. But one question. Did he said that?
You hit the Core Point !!!!! I fear this !!!
I think (at least unless you play on the highest difficulty levels) that combat in PoE in the latest iterations is quite fast. One issue especially with the PoE 1 was that there were too many trash packs that were tuned to the point that you had to least pay attention and expend some limited abilities (i.e. wizard spell slots).
But if you know what works it can be quite fun and fast, i.e in PoE a Wizard using conjured weapons can very fun to play. But disablers work great, too.
Not only this, but hit/miss is present on all RPG's that i remember from 90s/00s. He probably doesn't like much other games from the time.
On Might & Magic VII, Dragon's Breath deals 1-25 points of damage / dark magic level, so at skill level = 10, could be 10 damage or 250 damage. And resistances works on chances based Hell, even Diablo 1/2 has hit/misses. And to remove the spell failure chances and melee missing from Morrowind to Oblivion, Bethesda literally re writed all combat and made an combat with huge hp inflation, so you never miss, you your char at max STR and max weapon skill needs to swing your weapon 50 times to kill an Xivilai(possible at later levels), this is not funny.
What make this old shcool RPG's special, is that they have immersive mechanics. not cooldowns, bows with 13m range, armor that never deflects any hit, etc.
I suppose to me the difference is that in Baldur's Gate (BG1 especially) I don't get hit a lot, and I also don't have a lot of health. So every time one of my characters gets hit, it counts, and I feel it. Similarly, enemies don't have a lot of health either—with a few exceptions, which are consequently quite powerful enemies—and every time I deliver a hit to them, I do considerable damage. Especially when I use AoE spells.
So I'm in a scenario where combat is actually exciting. Every time a hit happens, I either cheer or cringe inside. In a way, receiving and delivering hits in Baldur's Gate affect the psyche in a similar way to how football fans feel every time a team scores a goal in a football game, although to a much lesser extent.
Comparably, most of the fights in PoE feel to me more like I'm watching a fight break out in an old folks' home, where the participants slowly drain each other's stamina by delivering ineffective pats to the other team and lying down on the ground when they begin to feel tired. Projectiles and attacks hit consistently but are also pretty ineffective, and so are most spells and abilities. The best I can do is boost my team with some abilities in order to help them drain the enemy's health bars faster than they can drain mine.
Most of the time I decide to pause and give orders in PoE, I feel like I could have just finished the fight without pausing. A lot of the time I either feel bad because I'm not using my character's abilities a lot, or I feel dumb because I've used them where I didn't need to. And the occasions where I actually need to are few and far between.
I'm not saying the BG system is perfect. For example, it's well known and undeniable that ranged attackers dominate the battlefield in BG1. However, I don't think it has any flaws that couldn't be fixed with some numbers tweaking. Meanwhile, in my opinion, PoE's combat system is robust and intricately designed, but also built on a swamp.
Granted, I've only played PoE1, and I think I've either played on normal or on the difficulty that's one step harder than normal. I don't know if PoE2 managed to get away from any or all of these problems.
This is a really good description why the BG / 2e combat system feels GOOD.
Hits matter. The player gets really good feedback how dangerous an enemy is. And how tough and evasive they are. The system gives enemies character, i.e. hard to hit but squishy or slow and tanky. A fireball that one hits a group feels powerful.
You need to FEEL the hits.
Yep, for me too. The IE games are no longer my go-to games when I want to play an old-school cRPG anymore (which is also why i don't really care that much about the long-overdue 2.6 patch). PoE1 and P:K are those games for me now (with Realms Beyond and Black Geyser still to come as well), and a new PoE or Pathfinder game announcement will be far more exciting for me that this BG3 announcement.
I think this is correct. One big problem that people are overlooking is that you can kite with zero consequence in BG. It really breaks alot of the intended strategic depth of 2e combat. And it actually results in combat gameplay, especially at the lower levels, that more resembles RTS games than tabletop RPG's.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a fan of it. But BG combat is highly cheese-able in a way that's not the case in PoE.
I'm super glad Obsidian added back in engagement and consequences from that. I think it's a tad unfortunate that they made this mechanic less important/easier to overcome in Deadfire.
What evidence do you have of whether people kite or don't? Also, it's paradoxical to say people don't generally kite and then to go on a list the glorious and sundry things kiting permits.
Even if people don't kite as a frequent tactic, people are using the freedom of a zero-engagement system to easily move their wizards or other squishies out of danger. Or even your tanky fighter when their health got low. I mean, come on, who here hasn't kited with their fighter while waiting for the next turn to chug a potion?
Because of this, you don't have to pay as much attention to positioning or guarding as you would otherwise (you have to do these things in Golbox or PoE). For as much as some BG fans here complain about the action-y nature of newer RPG's, optimized play in BG involved a lot of action-y, RTS play style. As you've said in your description, yes, there is a lot of freedom. And I can agree that some of the emergent gameplay that such a free system was cool. But, I think if we're being honest, much of it was cheesing some of the systems (such as with exiting areas) or the enemy AI.
Also, since we were talking about PoE, it's possible to design a combat system and world that isn't about having specific locales or interactions that influence the fight. That's pretty much what Obsidian did in the original. Also, legitimately asking, have you played the Original Sin games? They offer a lot more freedom regarding combat than your post here seems to let on. You can flee combat. You can fall back. Most of the encounters don't actually center on some terrain doodad.
Pillars of Eternity probably went a little too far with the limitations on movement. They do prevent kiting under most circumstances, but considering the fact that critters don't get high APR anyway, movement rates barely vary at all, and hitstun is very brief unless you're using slow-moving weapon, the "engagement" system wasn't really necessary to prevent kiting.
This is not my experience, and it makes me wonder if we're talking about different things with the word kiting.
Example: It's laughably easily draw enemy aggro on one tank member of your party and just click once to move them in a long straight line parallel to the rest of your party. Because movement speed tends to be the same for the majority of monsters and your characters, those enemies will tend to continue chasing the same character -- their closest target. And you can just set your five other members to wail away with ranged weapons. And thankfully the base AI was solid at finding new targets after kills, so you didn't even have to micromanage them. Even if enemies re-targeted, hit recovery stuns and their low HP pools kept them being a serious threat.
I'm not talking about kiting as only the kind of short move-stop-short move-stop-etc.
It trivialized alot of the early gibberling/wolves/gnolls/kobold content. This is a big reason why bows and such dominate in BG1. Admittedly these kinds of tactics waned in effectiveness as you leveled up. But even in later combat, it was trivially easy to swap guys in and out of the front line. That meant that you didn't have to plan ahead so much in combat. You could let one front line guy soak some damage, hit a heal potion, painlessly move them to back line while you waited for the timer to chug another.
Generally I say "lure" instead of kite when I'm talking about using a character as bait for an enemy. I say "kite" when the character running from the enemy is also the one attacking it (I think that's the typical meaning in the community). That's how I distinguish between the two attack patterns.