334 réponses à ce sujet

[Tirigon]

@ Catcher: I can see why some people would find that kind of combat good. For me, however, it would not be more challenging (Challenge meaning not only hard, but funny and interestingly hard) but simply annoying.

The few occasions when fights are very long are already the hardest imo; but they are also the most boring, because after a certain time your mana and stamina is so low you can rarely use spells (what, to me, makes the most fun in DAO combat) unless you swallow potion after potion. Warriors even need Awakenings to have that possibility.



And about your proposition of spawning the enemies behind you: In a few cases that already happens, and I hate it every time. Spawning enemies during a fight is real crap anyways Imo. In addition it would punish you for defending your mage / archer with your meelees and thus making a good combat plan even less useful.





I would really prefer enemies using their skills more wisely; In terms of strength they are already strong enough, at least when playing on nightmare, and unless you play an AoE-mage, their numbers are good enough, sometimes even a bit too good thus really challenging you.

[soteria]

Also, it's quite common for a game to end up being easier than the designers were aiming. No developer gets all that much playtest time with the final version before they start locking stuff down. It's not like Bio deliberately made constitution and willpower into dump stats and then lied to us about how to build characters.

No, I think they genuinely made a mistake. Unfortunately, it's hard to make a game harder after release.

I've seen that twice. Both times the poster was mercilessly mocked, both for being a bad player and for being too stupid to just turn the difficulty down to a setting he liked.

You know, this really made me laugh, because I realized that I have seen exactly what you're talking about. And, I remember the guy who claimed that playing on Hard was necessary for RP reasons.

What do you consider "high"? I find that revenants are pretty threatening in melee until pretty close to the endgame, but I haven't bothered to crunch the numbers yet.

I was specifically referring to the dual wield warrior charging generic archers, since it was asserted that he would suck at that. I don't know about dex levels, but for defense, around 170 makes you pretty much completely unhittable, even by the two heavy-hitting 2h warrior bosses. At 140-150 you can ignore most other bosses. Around 110-120 is usually the "realistic" number I shoot for on my warriors, and you'll avoid most attacks from normal enemies at that point. You won't dodge a double strike (you can't), but revenants shouldn't threaten your warrior at 120 defense, assuming he's the only one in melee. I'd consider 100 "average" defense for mid-game, and anything below 100 means you're going to need constant healing if you taunt.



170 defense is probably unattainable for most players, but 140 is doable with some planning and buffs, and any warrior with a decent group should be able to maintain 120 with buffs/debuffs. With a synergistic group, I consider it "enough."

[CybAnt1]

Tirigon wrote...

I´m all for variety but not in the "This monster = this weapon, that monster = that weapon" style you suggest. I like a whole lot of enemies, and a whole lot of ways to kill them without being limited to a single strategy for each.

I don't think I was saying "make anything unkillable unless you have the one & only flaming sword of bozongo in your possession". Oh yeah, I hate that. D & D had creatures that could only be damaged by silver, or iron, weapons, or magic weapons. It really pissed you off if nobody in your party had any. 

I think I was saying, "Hmmm, we're facing flaming owlfangs. Maybe now's a good time to get out the ice arrows."

Not that flaming owlfangs should be unkillable if you don't have them, or even that they should totally be immune if all you happen to be lugging around are fire arrows. It's just that the fire arrows do less damage. And BTW you can kill flaming owlfangs with a rather garden-variety 2 by 4, without any elemental or other enchantments, it's just that something with cold power gets a little leg up on them. 

And BTW you should be able to get a nice edge on the flaming owlfangs with a wide variety of stuff: cold runes, cold bombs, cold spells, cold coatings, cold enchantments, etc. 

Now riddle me this batman: here's my question. Why even bother having five different types of elemental damage in DA in the first place (fire/cold/lightning/acid-poison-nature/spirit) and btw have creatures that have varying differing degrees of the five types of resistance ... unless, btw, they want a component of the game to be ... varying the kind of elemental attacks you use? 

I mean, all I'm really saying, gang, is the mechanic happens to be in the game already, except the knowledge of it is totally unavailable to players both ingame and metagame (I mean, there IS stuff already resistant to fire or vulnerable to fire, resistant to poison or vulnerable to poison, etc.), and the reality is you're just so rarely fighting creatures who have it. 

I think nothing needs to be changed about this mechanic - it's already there - I'd like to occasionally see more creatures that make use of something that's already there. And make this knowledge something the player can know, through whatever knowledge-acquisition-mechanic. 

[uberdowzen]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Actually I think you can, and the way to do this is by making choices matter more and scaling them to difficulty.

So a fire rune might only make a 12.5% difference against an ice based foe on Easy difficulty. While on normal it might make a 25% difference, on hard maybe a 50% difference and on nightmare a 100% difference.

What you can then do is upscale enemy health or downscale player damage by difficulty, so that using those tactics, while not essential for normal rank enemies, definately starts to become essential for Lieutenants, Bosses and Elite Bosses.

See in theory, that sounds great, but in practice I don't think game design is quite that simple. You can't, for example, just make the above changes and expect it to work. You have to test the entire game to make sure it doesn't make any fights too hard, and when it doesn't work you have to change it again, playtest the entire game again, and while this is all happening the deadline is fast approaching. Also, I don't want harder difficulty levels to be like that, I just want a slightly harder version of the game I love.

Upper_Krust wrote...

Which is why I am stressing we should give the monsters greater identity so that you don't fight them in the same way.

Again great in theory, but the reason LO has so many monster etc, is because they don't have to spend as much time on combat environments (from the videos I've seen arenas are recycled and not all that interesting to begin with), exploration environments, a dynamic plot or console ports.

Upper_Krust wrote...

It seems to me that while 3D models take longer to make, they take less time to modify.

I think they're easier to add animations to, but it's a horrible process to edit them. And why do they need to modify them, the issue here is the creation part. If you're making 80 or so unique enemies you're going to be more concerned with the creation process not the modifying.

Upper_Krust wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

Uh, yeah. If it was broken surely they would fix it.

I disagree. Bioware are not omniscient...

http://social.biowar...page/da-patches

Upper_Krust wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

I don't think so. Anyway if they were so obviously over-powered they would have noticed in testing.

...Just like they noticed Awakening was so easy? Just like they noticed all the bugs in the game during testing?

Awakening was easy but it wasn't that easy, also that was developed in much less time. I could probably count all the bugs I encountered in Origins on one hand.

Upper_Krust wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

Yes, but they are a much harder class to develop. Done badly and they'll be underpowered.

Done badly they can be overpowered or underpowered, but done right they can be balanced.

So, wait, they are balanced?

I don't really take issue with the more enemies thing. I never really felt I needed more enemies but more enemies are always nice. My issue with your orignal argument was that you said that you said that because LO had more enemies and the choices you made in combat were more critical that those points alone make LO better than DAO, ignoring a whole host of features like the dynamic plot, combat that makes use of terrain etc.

[CybAnt1]

The potential problem with this is the "golf club bag" syndrome mentioned earlier, where players are forced to lug around huge pile of gear in order to be able to deal with encounters.

Again, I think my point would be, you should be able to kill anything with anything. 

I just think there can be mechanics where some things work better than others. You just get a better edge fighting the flaming owlfangs with an ice sword than a fire dagger. But they're not 100% resistant to fire, maybe just 25% resistant, so it's not like you can't kill them if all you have is a fire dagger. And when all else fails, there's normal weapons with normal damage. 

So you don't have to have a golf bag with everything. Because you don't have to have everything. However, every once in a while it might be useful to have something. 

[CybAnt1]

I guess my point would be ... I find it a bit disappointing that the game offers me a choice between fire arrows and ice arrows when for all intents and purposes, 90% of what I'm fighting it doesn't really matter which one I choose. Given they have the same damage bonus, and not much is particularly vulnerable or resistant to either, there's no point to the choice. Given no point to the choice, it almost feels like, then why have it there in the first place? Make all arrows fire arrows.



Why use anything other than fire bombs? It seems redundant to have fire bombs, and ice bombs, and acid bombs, and spirit bombs. Indeed, given the fact that the choice rarely matters, having to carry around give different types DOES seem silly.



The weird thing is, everyone's focusing on the damage resistance/vulnerability aspect of my argument, and it's only half.



The other thing I'd like to see are just more creatures with special abilities, and that actually use them, and that the player has to come up with responses to.



Is there anything in the game that ever poisons YOU other than (some) spiders? No wonder there are no poison antidotes or cure poison spells. It's kinda unfair you're using poison on them but they never use it on you.



The truth is, what I'd really like to see most of all, to be goshdarnhonest, is a greater variety of creatures. Not "OK I'm turning the corner, what grouping of darkspawn will be in the next room". Because, as I keep emphasizing, it seems like 90% of the game is fighting darkspawn in different arrangements, combinations, and formations.



I'm a "variety is the spice of life" kinda guy. I'd like to see more. I think that's the main thing I'm saying. And I understand those who say "DA doesn't need any more (monster) variety". Well, as I keep saying, if the devs. won't do it, maybe modders will.

[CybAnt1]

No, I think they genuinely made a mistake. Unfortunately, it's hard to make a game harder after release.

Dunno. I am not a challenge player. And I guess by that I mean I don't enjoy playing with god codes where nothing can kill me, nor do I want my opposition melting like butter in 2 seconds, but on the other hand I don't want every battle to seem like I'm a masochist craving my next whipping either, nor do I have any problem with the fact that I can reload from a previous save when I get wiped out, or that I don't get wiped out unless my entire party gets wiped out. That works for me just fine. Yes, Flemeth cleaned my clock on playthrough one, and all I can say is I would have hated to restart my game from the beginning. 

So I usually play on Easy or Normal. I admit it.

But I do agree with your point. The game should be Hard on Hard (or Nightmare), and it's a design problem when it's not challenging the people who want/crave it.  

Frankly, it didn't seem to me that Origins was too easy on Normal, but Awakening was, and what's maybe worse is it was too easy on Nightmare. Something really got borked there. 

[Tirigon]

soteria wrote...

Sure you can. Regardless of your class, you have access to every class in the game via companions. If the dual wield warrior has high dex and decent armor he will take hardly any damage. He doesn't even have to use abilities, just autoattacking will be enough... it's quite possible he could be completely unhittable by the archers and only take a few points of damage from their special attacks.

Are we talking about soloing or something? I *guess* a mage might have a hard time against the revenant in that case (I don't know), but otherwise, I can't agree. In either case the strategy is simple--only one character in melee range, and have everyone else use ranged weapons. Unless you don't have any potions or no bows on anyone AND no mage, I can't see it being hard.

Unless we're talking about self-imposed restrictions--and if we are, I think that pretty much proves my point--Nightmare isn't hard for the players who choose to play on it. As far as I know.

Sure, unhittable dualwielder can solo everything, but there are a few levels to go before you are unhittable.  Try soloing 10 archers on lv 12 or so.

And revenants are hard because they tend to switch targets rather often, and because they can kill even warriors with 30 armor with 4 or 5 hits.

[Upper_Krust]

Tirigon wrote...

So what if I want to play on high difficulty because I want a challenge (for example I always play Nightmare nowadays in DAO or it´s too easy) but still don´t want to have the "Ice enemy: Get fire sword, shadow enemy: Get holy sword" kind of play?!

Well two points on that. Firstly, you are wanting the game to be more difficult, but you still want the combat to be 'lazy'. That seems a tad inconsistent.

Secondly, you wouldn't necessarily set-up a combat so that only one choice mattered. So you wouldn't have to use the fire sword on the ice enemy...but it would help.

I´d like it if you actually had to use different strategies for different enemies, but equipping a sword with different enchantment IS NOT!!! using different strategies, it´s carrying more useless items.

I only used the Fire vs. Ice example because its the most simple to understand. You can have multiple choices to make in a  given combat. Off the top of my head...

1a. Who to attack.
1b. Who not to attack 
2a. What to attack with.
2b. What not to attack with
3a. When to attack
3b. When not to attack (or defend/heal/buff)
4. Where to attack (such as the Peluda monster I discussed earlier, but also could be relevant for multi-part monsters.

Also, use fire spells on fire demons in DAO and you will see that it´s already very much like you want it to be.....

...and they are better because of it. But as you note above, the Fire vs. Ice (or vice versa in this case) is the most basic approach to this you can take.

[Tirigon]

CybAnt1 wrote...

I don't think I was saying "make anything unkillable unless you have the one & only flaming sword of bozongo in your possession". Oh yeah, I hate that. D & D had creatures that could only be damaged by silver, or iron, weapons, or magic weapons. It really pissed you off if nobody in your party had any. 

I think I was saying, "Hmmm, we're facing flaming owlfangs. Maybe now's a good time to get out the ice arrows."

Not that flaming owlfangs should be unkillable if you don't have them, or even that they should totally be immune if all you happen to be lugging around are fire arrows. It's just that the fire arrows do less damage. And BTW you can kill flaming owlfangs with a rather garden-variety 2 by 4, without any elemental or other enchantments, it's just that something with cold power gets a little leg up on them. 

And BTW you should be able to get a nice edge on the flaming owlfangs with a wide variety of stuff: cold runes, cold bombs, cold spells, cold coatings, cold enchantments, etc. 

Now riddle me this batman: here's my question. Why even bother having five different types of elemental damage in DA in the first place (fire/cold/lightning/acid-poison-nature/spirit) and btw have creatures that have varying differing degrees of the five types of resistance ... unless, btw, they want a component of the game to be ... varying the kind of elemental attacks you use? 

I mean, all I'm really saying, gang, is the mechanic happens to be in the game already, except the knowledge of it is totally unavailable to players both ingame and metagame (I mean, there IS stuff already resistant to fire or vulnerable to fire, resistant to poison or vulnerable to poison, etc.), and the reality is you're just so rarely fighting creatures who have it. 

I think nothing needs to be changed about this mechanic - it's already there - I'd like to occasionally see more creatures that make use of something that's already there. And make this knowledge something the player can know, through whatever knowledge-acquisition-mechanic. 

Well, I uderstand you wrong then. I thought you wanted creatures to be unkillable if you don´t have the right weapons, thx for clarifying.

I still don´t see your point, though. What you described here seems to me to be exactly what DAO is atm. Creatures do have resistances and weaknesses, a few strong ones are even immune to some kinds of damage, but everything can de killed without you exploiting ther weaknesses.

The main problem is that fire / ice etc... weapons are too weak. I mean, what is +2 fire damage?! My level 25 archer rogue in awakenings could easily hit for 150 or more damage with a single arrow.......

[soteria]

Dunno. I am not a challenge player. And I guess by that I mean I don't enjoy playing with god codes where nothing can kill me, nor do I want my opposition melting like butter in 2 seconds, but on the other hand I don't want every battle to seem like I'm a masochist craving my next whipping either, nor do I have any problem with the fact that I can reload from a previous save when I get wiped out, or that I don't get wiped out unless my entire party gets wiped out. That works for me just fine. Yes, Flemeth cleaned my clock on playthrough one, and all I can say is I would have hated to restart my game from the beginning.



So I usually play on Easy or Normal. I admit it.



But I do agree with your point. The game should be Hard on Hard (or Nightmare), and it's a design problem when it's not challenging the people who want/crave it.



Frankly, it didn't seem to me that Origins was too easy on Normal, but Awakening was, and what's maybe worse is it was too easy on Nightmare. Something really got borked there.

I agree with most of what you've been saying, and I appreciate the perspective of someone who isn't a hard/nightmare player but still thinks combat could have been more interesting. That made me think of Chrono Trigger, actually. To me it's a game that wasn't necessarily that hard, but had interesting combat. The way enemies were introduced, at first normal attacks worked for everything. Eventually you gained magic, and then for a time everything was vulnerable to only magic--your normal attacks would only do a fraction of what they used to do, so it was obvious you needed to change tacks. Then they started to vary it, so facing new enemies meant finding out whether they were vulnerable to physical or magic damage, and possibly which elements.



Also, talking to people in the world would often give you clues as to how to beat new enemies. One person might tell you that lightning stuns certain enemies, and another might tell you that goblins were only tough before you burned their weapons. Later, you fight a couple unarmed goblins, completely annihilating them. Then you would fight an armed goblin who did good damage and was tough, until you cast a fire spell on him. Then he died easily. In other words, they made it so the type of player that loves talking to everyone would have an advantage in combat.



I guess what I enjoy about the JRPG in general is running into a new boss or creature type and knowing that I would be rewarded for paying close attention to environmental clues and boss actions. Does he counter certain types of attacks? Does he take extra damage from certain abilities, or deal certain crippling status ailments? Many fights weren't necessarily hard, but they rewarded you for thinking. That's something I think is lacking in DA:O, where so few fights require you to pay much attention to what enemies are doing.



On the other hand, I'd like to point out some of the things DA:O has done well, compared to a lot of these other games that we're comparing it to. First, a relative lack of useless spells and abilities. With a few exceptions, almost everything is useful. That is in stark contrast to the ginormous DnD spellbooks that had only a few useful spells. Additionally, DA:O has very few luck-based abilities, or abilities that sound good but rarely work or don't work when you want them to. What I'm talking about is the typical status ailment abilities from JRPGs like sleep or confuse or poison or demi, and save-or-else spells from DnD. In most JRPGs, bosses are immune to everything except various forms of damage, and other enemies usually don't warrant debuffs. DnD made immunities rarer but instead basically gave you a 1/10 chance of actually landing the spell, in practice making non-resistable and straight damage spells more valuable. Or, every tough enemy would be dealt with by first drilling down their resistances and saves, and following up with disintegrate/finger of death. I hated the "cool ability that never works" development mindset and I'm glad they largely abandoned that for DA:O.

[Tirigon]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Tirigon wrote...

So what if I want to play on high difficulty because I want a challenge (for example I always play Nightmare nowadays in DAO or it´s too easy) but still don´t want to have the "Ice enemy: Get fire sword, shadow enemy: Get holy sword" kind of play?!

Well two points on that. Firstly, you are wanting the game to be more difficult, but you still want the combat to be 'lazy'. That seems a tad inconsistent.

Well, it´s possible to make "lazy" combat challenging. For example Dark Messiah of Might and Magic as warrior: Combat consists mainly of blocking and hitting, blocking , hitting, blocking... and occasionally a kick in between. But on Hardcore difficulty it was still challenging, sometimes even TOO hard because many enemies would kill you with 1 or 2 attacks, meaning the slightest mistake could kill you.

I only used the Fire vs. Ice example because its the most simple to understand. You can have multiple choices to make in a  given combat. Off the top of my head...

1a. Who to attack.
1b. Who not to attack 
2a. What to attack with.
2b. What not to attack with
3a. When to attack
3b. When not to attack (or defend/heal/buff)
4. Where to attack (such as the Peluda monster I discussed earlier, but also could be relevant for multi-part monsters.

All these choices are important in the current DAO combat system already. Well, 4 not so much, but even that is partly there with backstabs and flanking bonusses.

Modifié par Tirigon, 14 avril 2010 - 04:59 .

[Upper_Krust]

Tirigon wrote...

I would totally agree if we had a Jade Empire way of fighting because in Jade Empire, you can evade or block EVERY attack of EVERY enemy you ever encounter, provided you are skillful enough, what is quite hard even if you are a very good player.
But the point is, it IS possible.
In DAO, no matter how good you are, you WILL receive damage, simply because you can´t block or evade attacks with your skill as player but based on your stats.
So the ideas you describe wouldn´t make the game more challenging, but simply impossible if your equipment isn´t strong enough.

Incorrect. Thats like saying you can't beat an Elite Boss if your equipment isn't strong enough. Yet Dragon Age has Elite Bosses and Boss fights.

Encounters don't have to all be equally challenging (in fact they shouldn't). Some can be easy, others tough, others downright difficult.

The idea of stacking encounters in the way I mentioned is to give Hard and Nghtmare difficulty more of those difficult challenges by combining several easier encounters together.

[Tirigon]

Upper_Krust wrote...


Incorrect. Thats like saying you can't beat an Elite Boss if your equipment isn't strong enough. Yet Dragon Age has Elite Bosses and Boss fights.

You couldn´t if there were no potions.

[Upper_Krust]

uberdowzen wrote...

See in theory, that sounds great, but in practice I don't think game design is quite that simple. You can't, for example, just make the above changes and expect it to work. You have to test the entire game to make sure it doesn't make any fights too hard, and when it doesn't work you have to change it again, playtest the entire game again, and while this is all happening the deadline is fast approaching.

So do we rush a game out to meet some nebulous corporate deadline or do we playtest it properly and try to make the best game we can?

No one is suggesting we just 'make the above changes and expect it to work'.

Also, I don't want harder difficulty levels to be like that, I just want a slightly harder version of the game I love.

How did you know what you liked before Dragon Age came along? In general people don't really know what they like until you let them try it.

Again great in theory, but the reason LO has so many monster etc, is because they don't have to spend as much time on combat environments (from the videos I've seen arenas are recycled and not all that interesting to begin with), exploration environments, a dynamic plot or console ports.

No one is even suggesting Dragon Age needs more enemies (though that would be nice). What many of us have been suggesting is that they make the existing enemies more unique.

I think they're easier to add animations to, but it's a horrible process to edit them. And why do they need to modify them, the issue here is the creation part. If you're making 80 or so unique enemies you're going to be more concerned with the creation process not the modifying.

Modifying enemies to create variants is a staple of the genre, done in moderation it can vastly multiply the seeming variety within the game. Of course the key is to give the variant a new 'schtick' so that its not simply more hit points and higher damage.

http://social.bioware.com/page/da-patches

...these 'patches', they come AFTER the games release don't they.

...and they are a massive help for console gamers I can tell you. Console gamers, remember those, the ones who bought the highest percentage of copies of Dragon Age and also paid more for it in the process.

Awakening was easy but it wasn't that easy, also that was developed in much less time. I could probably count all the bugs I encountered in Origins on one hand.

Awakening was that easy, even casual gamers are beating it on Nightmare for goodness sake.

So, wait, they are balanced?

No, but they could be.

I don't really take issue with the more enemies thing. I never really felt I needed more enemies but more enemies are always nice.

First and foremost it needs better enemy diversity and identity.

My issue with your orignal argument was that you said that you said that because LO had more enemies and the choices you made in combat were more critical that those points alone make LO better than DAO, ignoring a whole host of features like the dynamic plot, combat that makes use of terrain etc.

I have never once said Lost Odyssey is better than Dragon Age. IN FACT I actually state in my opening post this isn't a thread about which game is better. Its about areas where Lost Odyssey is stronger (Enemy Diversity/Design/Numbers and Consequences of Combat Choices) and what can Dragon Age learn from those areas.

[Upper_Krust]

Tirigon wrote...

Upper_Krust wrote...

Incorrect. Thats like saying you can't beat an Elite Boss if your equipment isn't strong enough. Yet Dragon Age has Elite Bosses and Boss fights.

You couldn´t if there were no potions.

Are you saying no one has beaten the Elite Bosses without potions?

Secondly, who is saying we remove potions from the game?

[Upper_Krust]

Tirigon wrote...

Well, I uderstand you wrong then. I thought you wanted creatures to be unkillable if you don´t have the right weapons, thx for clarifying.

I still don´t see your point, though. What you described here seems to me to be exactly what DAO is atm. Creatures do have resistances and weaknesses, a few strong ones are even immune to some kinds of damage, but everything can de killed without you exploiting ther weaknesses.

The main problem is that fire / ice etc... weapons are too weak. I mean, what is +2 fire damage?! My level 25 archer rogue in awakenings could easily hit for 150 or more damage with a single arrow.......

This is exactly the point I have been raising from the start!

The consequences of your choices in combat make so little difference that they become next to irrelevant.

[Upper_Krust]

soteria wrote...

I agree with most of what you've been saying, and I appreciate the perspective of someone who isn't a hard/nightmare player but still thinks combat could have been more interesting. That made me think of Chrono Trigger, actually. To me it's a game that wasn't necessarily that hard, but had interesting combat. The way enemies were introduced, at first normal attacks worked for everything. Eventually you gained magic, and then for a time everything was vulnerable to only magic--your normal attacks would only do a fraction of what they used to do, so it was obvious you needed to change tacks. Then they started to vary it, so facing new enemies meant finding out whether they were vulnerable to physical or magic damage, and possibly which elements.

Also, talking to people in the world would often give you clues as to how to beat new enemies. One person might tell you that lightning stuns certain enemies, and another might tell you that goblins were only tough before you burned their weapons. Later, you fight a couple unarmed goblins, completely annihilating them. Then you would fight an armed goblin who did good damage and was tough, until you cast a fire spell on him. Then he died easily. In other words, they made it so the type of player that loves talking to everyone would have an advantage in combat.

I guess what I enjoy about the JRPG in general is running into a new boss or creature type and knowing that I would be rewarded for paying close attention to environmental clues and boss actions. Does he counter certain types of attacks? Does he take extra damage from certain abilities, or deal certain crippling status ailments? Many fights weren't necessarily hard, but they rewarded you for thinking. That's something I think is lacking in DA:O, where so few fights require you to pay much attention to what enemies are doing.

Agreed. A good game will educate you (in the games mechanics) as it goes along. The strength of this approach is that the game can (later on) assume a rudimentary level of player competence when it mixes and matches gameplay.

The fire sword may have been great against the ice demon, but now I am having to fight an ice demon and a fire demon at the same time! That crazy undead sorceror keeps summoning demons should I beat him first? That darn Genlock Thief just stole my fire sword! Healing spells and potions don't work in this area until after I destroy the spirit altar at the centre of the room...etc.

[tmp7704]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Are you saying no one has beaten the Elite Bosses without potions?

It's possible, but then it's rather obvious the ability to increase amount of hp available to the character helps a lot in pulling that off. Without the healing the possible ways to achieve it become limited -- either the monster is prevented from dealing damage to the player(s) while the player(s) can still damage it, or it's a matter of dealing much more damage to the monster than the monster can deal to the players (these two are somewhat related) 

Bottom line would be, while DA gives the player lot of power in all these areas (restoring hp, limiting incoming damage, dealing damage) arguably having this sort of power in all three areas make things much easier than having it in just one or two of these fields. And the heal-based survival is probably easiest and most universal, since it doesn't require any specific character builds and/or tactics -- any character can heal self as much as they want as long as they bother to craft the pots.

Modifié par tmp7704, 14 avril 2010 - 06:11 .

[Tirigon]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Tirigon wrote...

Upper_Krust wrote...

Incorrect. Thats like saying you can't beat an Elite Boss if your equipment isn't strong enough. Yet Dragon Age has Elite Bosses and Boss fights.

You couldn´t if there were no potions.

Are you saying no one has beaten the Elite Bosses without potions?

I doubt it´s possible on Nightmare, at least in DAO. May be different in Awakening, which is a lot easier.

Well, of course you might find a way to cheat the boss (like the Ogre in Ostagar; there is a place where you can shoot and can´t be attacked).

Secondly, who is saying we remove potions from the game?

The person to whom I responded when I said I would agree in a Jade Empire like combat.

[Tirigon]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Tirigon wrote...

The main problem is that fire / ice etc... weapons are too weak. I mean, what is +2 fire damage?! My level 25 archer rogue in awakenings could easily hit for 150 or more damage with a single arrow.......

This is exactly the point I have been raising from the start!

The consequences of your choices in combat make so little difference that they become next to irrelevant.

All right, as said, I agree. All has been a unfortunate way of articulating our similar opinions:crying:

[Catcher]

   Wow! All sorts of stuff flying around so I'm going to abandon most direct quoting and go straight to the individual posters/points.
  
   UpperKrust - I like the thinking of applying some more, shall we say unique, defenses and some attacks too for higher rank opponents. There are a couple of caveats, of course. First, the lack of a detailed combat feedback mechanism in DA makes special defenses particularlly more frustrating for the Player. Second, the more unique powers/defenses that you add, the more effects, animations, AI checks, etc. you're going to need which will drain resources from other areas. If I may be so bold to suggest, some of the need for specials could be filled simply by applying Player-available skillsets to opponents in a more efficient/ruthless fashion. We sometimes forget that the job of being a good level and/or combat designer has become akin to fighting the Borg. Not only do developers have to contend with a fan base that will get playtime of several orders of magnitude greater than even the most lavish playtesting department, we now have youtube and wiki and more options to share weaknesses/exploits than we had in 1999. In that way, Bioware should first study DA: O and DA: A before they study any other game. I think soteria listed off several possible Nightmarish character builds. With some focus and tightened AI scripts, making a couple of Elite level versions of those to unleash on the Player should be just as scary as a character specced out that way. It's been a pleasure.
  
   PS: I looked up the puluda. Didn't realize the tarrasque came from a similar legend/area. Throw one of those in there with some cosmetic changes to avoid a lawsuit and a lot of old Players will need new shorts after playing.
   
   
   Tirigon - Thanks for reminding me that there's far more different ways to have fun in Bioware games than what I might find fun. I'm afraid I come from an Old School mindset that goes back to 1st Edition AD&D that states that one can only have fun in combat if one has to withold casting every spell using every trick in the book because you'll never know when you'll need it.  I think, however, that something more has to be done other than tweak AI if the Player is not to be limited in her/his options outside of the cooldowns and selection barriers. The anecdotal evidence on these boards is suggesting a statistical trend that the DA system really starts to break down as Players obtain higher levels (16+) where said Player has a certain critical mass of talents, spells, and gear. Nerfing is one approach but I think that would also lead to less fun for you and it's really not my preferred method either (though Bioware needs to bring out the Nerf TREE when it comes to Mana Clash). Let me illustarte a less radical approach to redoing level design without the phased combat that might tickle your fancy. Your typical encounter level in DA: O has multiple encounters with critter/grunt level mobs with no leader and very few special conditions (like traps, platforms, tricky setups, etc.) There's only two or three encounters per level that are really designed to be challenging to a fully speced out Party, the rest is filler left over from the old days of D&D where those encounters were meant to attrit artificially limited Party resources. That limitation no longer applies to DA and so I see no more reason for the combat filler. Concentrate on making say six really meaningful and engaging combats per level and fill the rest with Lore, storytelling, and atmosphere. As an added bonus, levels would no longer have to be quite so unidirectional since you don't have to soften the Party up before the big encounters. This wouldn't "fix" everything, but it would focuis on making encounters that are furfilling for a fully specced Party instead a (mythically in DA) drained Party and you'd hopefully need all your skills to survive while getting a unique encounter. Thanks for your time.
  
  
   CybAnt1 - The way you find out about resistances is the same way you would find out in Real Life, when you use a elemental type that something is resistant/immune to you see lower numbers or "Immune" on the screen. Part of the problem is the lack of a combat log and part is that elemental immunity doesn't carry over to effects so you can still "freeze" undead eventhough they are resistant/immune to cold damage. While adding gameplay elements to lore entries and the ability to 'research' enemies through local lore was discussed during the development of Dragon Age, that appearantly didn't make it into implementation.  Also, it may just be because of where I've adventured in my current runthrough, but there seem to be many more undead than darkspawn. Of course, there should be more darkspawn sincve Ferelden is suffering a Blight but that may be a moot point for DA2 since it seems we're getting away from Blights. In any case, many critters use special attacks including poison. It's just that, as UpperKrust and I discussed, these abilities seem to be specced more to the damage over time and short-term debilitation which isn't signifcant enough for many Players to notice when the remaining characters can keep blasting and chugging their way to victory. Thanks for your input.

[uberdowzen]

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

See in theory, that sounds great, but in practice I don't think game design is quite that simple. You can't, for example, just make the above changes and expect it to work. You have to test the entire game to make sure it doesn't make any fights too hard, and when it doesn't work you have to change it again, playtest the entire game again, and while this is all happening the deadline is fast approaching. [/quote]

So do we rush a game out to meet some nebulous corporate deadline or do we playtest it properly and try to make the best game we can?

No one is suggesting we just 'make the above changes and expect it to work'.[/quote]

No, of course not, but Dragon Age already took 3 years to make, are you willing to wait 4? And if you are, how is that fair on the thousands of gamers who like the game as it is?

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

Also, I don't want harder difficulty levels to be like that, I just want a slightly harder version of the game I love.[/quote]

How did you know what you liked before Dragon Age came along? In general people don't really know what they like until you let them try it.[/quote]

Um, huh? I knew I'd like Dragon Age before it came along because I'd played almost all of Bioware's previous games and loved them all to bits. That argument doesn't really make any sense.

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

Again great in theory, but the reason LO has so many monster etc, is because they don't have to spend as much time on combat environments (from the videos I've seen arenas are recycled and not all that interesting to begin with), exploration environments, a dynamic plot or console ports.[/quote]

No one is even suggesting Dragon Age needs more enemies (though that would be nice). What many of us have been suggesting is that they make the existing enemies more unique.[/quote]

Sorry, I misunderstood in your original post. Just to clarify you have no problem with the number of enemies?

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

I think they're easier to add animations to, but it's a horrible process to edit them. And why do they need to modify them, the issue here is the creation part. If you're making 80 or so unique enemies you're going to be more concerned with the creation process not the modifying.[/quote]

Modifying enemies to create variants is a staple of the genre, done in moderation it can vastly multiply the seeming variety within the game. Of course the key is to give the variant a new 'schtick' so that its not simply more hit points and higher damage.[/quote]

Do you mean like is some games where they change the colour of the enemy and give it different abilities? That's way easier to do in 2D than in 3D. In 3D you have to make an entirely new texture whereas in 2D you just need to change the tone of the pixels. Anyway, there are plenty of variants, Genlocks for example have different weapons which give them different abilities. And then there are emissaries. So do you expect, for example, Genlocks using a sword and a shield to have different sword and shield abilities to you? What else are they gonna use?

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

http://social.biowar...page/da-patches[/quote]

...these 'patches', they come AFTER the games release don't they. [/quote]

Yep, that's why we call 'em patches.

[quote]
...and they are a massive help for console gamers I can tell you. Console gamers, remember those, the ones who bought the highest percentage of copies of Dragon Age and also paid more for it in the process.[/quote]

Um, wait a minute, where did that come from? I did a quick Google search and all I found was something saying the game was doing well overall and something saying it wasn't doing well on consoles. Also remember that "sales figures" don't take into account Steam, Impulse, Direct 2 Drive etc. And you paid more because you got your console cheaper, that's your problem.

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

Awakening was easy but it wasn't that easy, also that was developed in much less time. I could probably count all the bugs I encountered in Origins on one hand.[/quote]

Awakening was that easy, even casual gamers are beating it on Nightmare for goodness sake.[/quote]

You may be right, but I think we're losing the point.

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

So, wait, they are balanced?[/quote]

No, but they could be.[/quote]

So, they can be balanced unless what?

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

I don't really take issue with the more enemies thing. I never really felt I needed more enemies but more enemies are always nice. [/quote]

First and foremost it needs better enemy diversity and identity.[/quote]

You seem to be complaining about the fact that enemies use the same abilites as you etc. Again, what else are they meant to use? DAO is based on DnD and that how it works in DnD. It's not a flaw it's just how it works. This way you know how to counter things.

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]uberdowzen wrote...

My issue with your orignal argument was that you said that you said that because LO had more enemies and the choices you made in combat were more critical that those points alone make LO better than DAO, ignoring a whole host of features like the dynamic plot, combat that makes use of terrain etc.
[/quote]

I have never once said Lost Odyssey is better than Dragon Age. IN FACT I actually state in my opening post this isn't a thread about which game is better. Its about areas where Lost Odyssey is stronger (Enemy Diversity/Design/Numbers and Consequences of Combat Choices) and what can Dragon Age learn from those areas.
[/quote]

From your original post:

[quote]While by no means perfect, on the above points I note, Lost Odyssey is vastly superior to Dragon Age.[/quote]

Did you mean the entire game or the points you mentioned?

I'd just like to go back to your point about more enemy variety. If we're talking in turns of gameplay, I've always thought of having too many different enemies is like having a version of Rock Paper Scissors with 60 or so possible options. The game is not improved (in fact it becomes much worse) and the players just get confused. Dragon Age already has a lot going on and I find even the unique enemies in the game I group in to lots of melee, ranged and magical enemies.

Modifié par uberdowzen, 14 avril 2010 - 08:38 .

[SphereofSilence]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Actually I think you can, and the way to do this is by making choices matter more and scaling them to difficulty.

So a fire rune might only make a 12.5% difference against an ice based foe on Easy difficulty. While on normal it might make a 25% difference, on hard maybe a 50% difference and on nightmare a 100% difference.

What you can then do is upscale enemy health or downscale player damage by difficulty, so that using those tactics, while not essential for normal rank enemies, definately starts to become essential for Lieutenants, Bosses and Elite Bosses.

It's certainly an idea worth looking at.

The way I see it, since BW greatly expanded the player base via PS3 and Xbox360, a great portion of  DA players might find it not fun should the game's designed with more thinking involved and tactical variety, especially when the majority are relatively inexperienced with RPGs. I'm quite sure any future installments of Dragon Age will be designed to bring as many new players as possible in mind as well as catering to the less hardcore majority - in other words, the same kind of 'dumbed down' game play like what we see in Origins/Awakening may return. 

With the system you're suggesting, potentially those player base can enjoy the game on easy or normal difficulty, while for those of us who enjoy a challenge or greater tactical variety can play on hard or nightmare. It's a win-win for both groups, assuming if this scaling of choices is able  to meet both goals. Not that I'm saying that implementing this alone will solve all problems, but it certainly a step in the right direction. 

Modifié par SphereofSilence, 14 avril 2010 - 09:44 .

[soteria]

Tirigon wrote...

Upper_Krust wrote...

Tirigon wrote...

Upper_Krust wrote...

Incorrect. Thats like saying you can't beat an Elite Boss if your equipment isn't strong enough. Yet Dragon Age has Elite Bosses and Boss fights.

You couldn´t if there were no potions.

Are you saying no one has beaten the Elite Bosses without potions?

I doubt it´s possible on Nightmare, at least in DAO. May be different in Awakening, which is a lot easier.

Well, of course you might find a way to cheat the boss (like the Ogre in Ostagar; there is a place where you can shoot and can´t be attacked).

It's definitely possible.  Follow the link in my signature--it includes pretty much every difficult boss/encounter in Origins.  In some of them I point out ways you can "cheat," but it's never the primary strategy.  The one fight I sometimes get flak for is one that I pre-cast a glyph into a room with a bunch of archers and a boss, but seeing as how I've done it without mages and I've even seen it soloed (without potions), uh, yeah.