559 réponses à ce sujet

[TheMadCat]

Malanek999 wrote...

bobobo878 wrote...

Given how Dragon Age sold nearly twice as many copies as Mass Effect 2, I don't think dumbing down the rpg elements would help.

Is this really accurate? I am quite curious as to how well both ME2 and DA did from a financial point of view.

I doubt it's accurate, Mass Effect 2 shipped out around 2 million copies in it's first week alone for PC/360, Dragon Age shipped out a total of 3.2m copies across all it's platforms three months after release. More then likely ME2 has stomped DA by now. Sources for both figures below.

pc.ign.com/articles/106/1067807p1.html

www.1up.com/do/newsStory

[Tirigon]

EA is like the Archdemon´s Blight: They move on, almost unstoppable, consuming everything in their path and leaving only waste behind. Let´s hope BioWare or at least another company finds an able Warden to stop them.

[KragCulloden]

For what its worth I loved Mass Effect - loved it. Played ME2 once, despised it, haven't touched it since nor bought any DLC for it. Loved Kotor, Kotor II (<--favorite) NWN, NWN2, all NWN 1 and 2 EPs, love Dragon Age: Origins. If ME2 is selling better than DA, my gaming future doesn't look too cheery.

[AlanC9]

TheMadCat wrote...

Had plenty of CC, was a full Entropy mage with a few boxes in Spirit as well.

Gotcha. Try it as a mostly Primal mage and it won't seem that easy.

One problem with DA is that having the right abilities makes all the difference. Since they have to make the game beatable without an optimized party, if you have one.....

[maxernst]

It seems to me that people are meaning three completely different things by casualized. Some are concerned about losing the romances and characterizations. Others are mostly concerned with reducing the difficulty, which to some extent is at odds with the desire to roleplay. Finally, there are some who are worried about reduced complexity--which is different from difficulty.



I really doubt that Bioware is going to drastically pare down the interaction with the companions and the romances. That's their house style, they've been VERY successful with it and I can't imagine that they're foolish enough not to have noticed that these elements are popular. I haven't played the Mass Effect games (yet), but I'm guessing that if these are less evident there, it's because their audience is trained on shooters not traditional RPGs.



I'm skeptical too of the whole RPG's are all going to action and away from roleplaying, too. If you look back at the old line RPG's, really Ultima was the only series with much roleplaying--Might & Magic, the Bard's Tale, Wizardry all emphasized action. The period around when BG2, Torment, Arcanum, Fallout 2 came out was really a bit anomalous...great, but not typical of the RPG genre over time.



I'm not so sure about difficulty. It's possible the games won't be as difficult (although I don't recall the BG games as being especially difficult either). RPG's are a different animal than strategy games. As Alanc9 has pointed at, the game has to be playable with a non-optimized party. Some people will--for roleplaying reasons--want to make non-optimal choices. If the game is not playable for them, it's not a good RPG. I confess while I'm as hardcore as they come on some issues, difficulty is not one of them. I hate being forced to min-max or play in a style I don't enjoy to get through a game and I've quit a number of games for that reason--System Shock 2 (mentioned by another poster) was one of them. As much as I liked the story and atmosphere, the gameplay was too great an exercise in frustration. Difficulty levels address that, you say. Well, coding better A.I. is not that easy and it's never been a particular Bioware strength--the same inch forward/pull back technique was just as effective in the BG games as in DA:O. Maybe they made better use of the spells, but it seems to me BG2 cheated and enemies were able to get off a lot of spells in less than the casting times the PC had--maybe my imagination? A greater variety of enemies would help, but (like AI coding), these things cost money and development time, too. BG2 had more enemies, BG1 probably had less varied enemies (it seemed like endless humanoids which are really boring).



The last--complexity. Complexity is probably a bigger barrier for players unfamiliar with traditional RPG's. It's not clear to me that older bioware games were more complex--they were in some ways (more spells, more classes), but non-magical combat was far simpler under AD&D rules than DA:O. Complexity can support roleplaying in enabling someone to customize their character...but it can complicate the difficulty question. Simply put, the more abilities you have, the more susceptible the system will tend to be to min/maxing.



And as I've said before, I just don't see where people get this idea that BioWare was this little niche company that was a labor of love before big bad EA got hold of it. Baldur's Gate was one of the most heavily hyped RPG's ever--we were hearing about it for long before it came out. It sold 2 million copies which is huge for a PC game. Bioware is the Valve of RPG's. Every game they put out is an "event" and that was so from the beginning.,

[Jonathan Shepard]

TheMadCat wrote...

Zy-El wrote...

I've always wondered about the players who've claimed that Nightmare is a breeze - could it be that they are console players where the game has been "dumbed-down" to appeal to a casual audience.  It would stand to reason that the majority of console users are accustomed to "button-mashing" rather than the more challenging PC games out there.

I'm still playing DA on the PC at normal difficulty and my party still gets wiped out sometimes and I have to re-load from previous save.  Realize that what my mistake was and eventually win the battle after making some tactical adjustments ("Toast the Darkspawn mage first - before he casts Chain Lightning!!!").

Nah, I find nightmare to be a breeze and I haven't owned a console since the N64. It's just not a difficult game, period. There isn't enough of a variety in enemies to cause any real shifts in tactics over a short span, what enemies there are are extremely limited in terms of abilities, the combat mechanics being so simple as a whole increase the ease of the game. Even playing with an RP build and party (IE not min/maxing going for the most effective stuff ASAP) I managed to beat nightmare without my PC dying on my one full playthrough. There were a few close calls and challenging spots but overall it was fairly easy for me.

You obviously didn't play rouge, have Wynne die, and leave Dog behind, without spoiling yourself of how to beat the game on Nightmare using the internet then.
I could just pass through normal without looking up what to do. Took me 40 hours to beat the game using nothing but the choices I made. And I made the "wrong" ones a bunch of times. >_>

[Mr.Doe]

This is a difficult topic for me but I feel I need to share my opinion as I bought Dragon Age based on the commercials and thought it would be a hack and slash dungeon crawler, I was a little more than dissapointed with the stiff combat at first but having played RPGs before I warmed up to it and grew to love the game, that said ME2 did quite a few good things with its "Casualization" such as fix the broken as hell combat which allowed me to kill the entire game with a pistol; the Dragon age equivilent to this would be allowing me to move away from the charging ogre and not get hit despite being 15 feet to his left. and maybe make Armor behave more like Armor and less like bulky cardboard that makes people not like you and add some class/Specialization based dialogue options like being able to **** out mages as a Templar.

[Indoctrination]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dragon Age 2? What's that?

Even if a sequel isn't the big February DA surprise, I'm sure you guys will do a full sequel one day, so this topic is still valid, yes?

[Indoctrination]

Bfler wrote...

" If DA2 ends up being a hack 'n' slash action game with a dialogue system tacked on to it, I'm not buying it."

Isn't that what Awakening already is?

Very amusing, but no. Awakening may have been a half assed expansion, but
it was still Dragon Age at its core. When I say hack 'n' slash I mean change the game to be more like Dynasty Warriors or Devil May Cry. Basically I don't want them to give a big middle finger to everyone who appreciates DA:O as an RPG.

[Vicious]

bobobo878 wrote...

Given how Dragon Age sold nearly twice as many copies as Mass Effect 2, I don't think dumbing down the rpg elements would help.

Don't know where you get your info, but everywhere I've looked Mass Effect 2 outsold standard DAO  badly  and continues to do so.

If I was EA I would be thinking the same thing, personally.

Kotor II (<--favorite

Bio didn't make that. [snip]

 NWN2,

Bio didn't make that one either.

Modifié par Vicious, 14 mai 2010 - 04:09 .

[alickar]

i seen the dragon age 2 relese date on gamespot why would they say tht it got a four out of five G4 rating

[AlanC9]

maxernst wrote...
I'm not so sure about difficulty. It's possible the games won't be as difficult (although I don't recall the BG games as being especially difficult either).

Since I'm just finishing a BG1 run tonight, I guess i can speak to this as well as anyone. It's not so much that these games were hard -- a few boss encounters excepted -- as that mastering them didn't get you as far as it does in DA. With optimal play in DA you'll crush all opposition. Not quite so in BG -- you're at the mercy of a bad save or initiative roll in a way that doesn't seem to apply in DA. I think that's because DA enemies don't use the full spectrum of abilities against you; for instance, you don't see much CC applied against the party.

The main thing I came away with was that the combats aren't very different. I don't think the ratio of trash fights to serious encounters is any worse in DA, aggro management is essential in both games though the tools differ, and spellcasting isn't really much less varied in DA. If anything, I use fewer different spells in the BG games, since at any particular spell level the optimal spells are pretty obvious. Plus the trick of pulling enemies to the party that you mention, though at least in DA the encounters look like they're designed around you being smart enough to do this.

BTW, excellent post.

[yasuraka.hakkyou]

Tirigon wrote...

EA is like the Archdemon´s Blight: They move on, almost unstoppable, consuming everything in their path and leaving only waste behind. Let´s hope BioWare or at least another company finds an able Warden to stop them.

lol. this quote FTW.

[soteria]

Since I'm just finishing a BG1 run tonight, I guess i can speak to this as well as anyone. It's not so much that these games were hard -- a few boss encounters excepted -- as that mastering them didn't get you as far as it does in DA. With optimal play in DA you'll crush all opposition. Not quite so in BG -- you're at the mercy of a bad save or initiative roll in a way that doesn't seem to apply in DA. I think that's because DA enemies don't use the full spectrum of abilities against you; for instance, you don't see much CC applied against the party.

I usually ended up using fewer spells in BG 1&2 because I wanted to save them for when I really needed them, and resting could be a pain. Maybe if I replayed BG with a guide to remind me where all the tougher monsters were, that wouldn't be a problem, but for me the vancian casting system always ended up meaning I avoided casting spells, at least for my companions.



What I found as far as mastering the tactics in those games was that yeah, it didn't go as far because of the save-or-else spells and possibility of perma-death. Similar to DA, a lot of the fights could be as easy as you made them. The final boss was no match for the power of a wand of summoning, for example. Side note: my main gripe with BG is starting at level 1. I am of the opinion that DnD is borderline unplayable below level 3, since you're one hit away from dying to pretty much everything and don't have any abilities to speak of.

[TheMadCat]

The last--complexity. Complexity is probably a bigger barrier for
players unfamiliar with traditional RPG's. It's not clear to me that
older bioware games were more complex--they were in some ways (more
spells, more classes), but non-magical combat was far simpler under
AD&D rules than DA:O. Complexity can support roleplaying in
enabling someone to customize their character...but it can complicate
the difficulty question. Simply put, the more abilities you have, the
more susceptible the system will tend to be to min/maxing.

Complexity in an RPG is much more then simply the number of spells and classes you have. To me D&D is no more complex then DA:O, it's much more refined due to the couple of decades it's got over Origins but in reality they are very similar systems with about the same amount of complexity. To me complexity is the amount of depth within the various systems; the combat mechanics, the character development on a stat level, the class system, the loot and reward systems, ect. Dragon Age implemented these of a very basic and shallow level, but it's really no different then any other BioWare game in the past. BioWare games really are about as simple as they can get without becoming something like a Diablo with a story, though I suppose the Mass Effect series has fallen within that rank. It's not a knock on them at all, I'm just simply surprised that people are worried Dragon Age might get "dumbed down", it's already built fairly simple.

Some people will--for roleplaying reasons--want to
make non-optimal choices. If the game is not playable for them, it's
not a good RPG. I confess while I'm as hardcore as they come on some
issues, difficulty is not one of them. I hate being forced to min-max
or play in a style I don't enjoy to get through a game and I've quit a
number of games for that reason--System Shock 2 (mentioned by another
poster) was one of them.

Difficulty is no doubt a touchy subject due to the wide variety of the audience and play styles. But personally there was very little challenge in this game even nightmare, and I'm still completely shocked at threads I see complaining normal is to hard. The AI is incredibly dumb, but as you said AI has always been a weakness for BioWare, the lack of eveny types results in deja vu effects, what you did to defeat that last group of Darkspawn will almost certainly work on the next one considering they are almost always composed the same number and types, they have nowhere near the arsenal of talets/spells the player and their companions have which gimps them even more, they lack the ability to consume pots(?) while the player/NPC's have no restrictions aside from self imposed, and there are never any curveballs thrown in to force you to change your strategy mid-battle.

I understand the need to avoid forced powergaming, afterall half the fun in the game is building the character you want. But I don't think the difficulty Nightmare should be the breeze it is and I'm certainly no powergamer. Let's not even step into the realm of Awakening.

[AlanC9]

Edit: @ soteria         Yeah, that's the problem with Vancian casting.

You can get through early BG1 fairly easily if you optimize AC on your lead characters and have them pull all the aggro, while everyone uses ranged weapons. There isn't too much in the early game that can hit a target in plate mail.

But after replaying this I can't see DA as being inferior.

Modifié par AlanC9, 14 mai 2010 - 07:17 .

[dan107]

Dick Delaware wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Dick Delaware wrote...

Much of the game's length was due to the long dungeon-crawl sections of the Deep Roads and The Fade. If anything, that is Origins' biggest weakness, so I think we would do well not to forget that.

The Fade and the Deep Roads were my favourite parts of the game.

I personally liked the concept behind The Deep Roads and The Fade because it had a pretty cool atmosphere and I liked the lore surrounding dwarves, but it really was a dungeon crawl. It was very long, and even though the combat was nice and challenging at times (forcing the player to think), it could get tedious because there was so damn much of it. After you've beaten the boss, you think it's over... and then you have to go through another section, go through the traps, more combat after that... cool atmosphere, but goddamnit, it really was a bit much. And there's no way of avoiding it. I guess it's accurate to say I liked it in spite of the dungeon crawl, not because of it.

I just think it's ludicrous when some posters here talk about DA:O as if there wasn't a lot of the filler combat that brought the game down at times.

I agree. The biggest problem with DA was mind-numbingly boring, repetitive, never ending combat. The whole Urn of the Ashes temple was like a 4 hour dungeon crawl with NO story progression or exposition whatsoever. Just wave after wave of meaningless throwaway enemies. Even on nightmare, once you got the tacticts down, they were a breeze. Cone of Cold, Overpower, Overpower, Assault, Assault, Heal, repeat. If this wasn't a Bioware game, and I wasn't 100% confident that something good was coming at the end there were at least 4 points where I would've just stopped playing the game for good.

Bioware really needs to work on pacing for DA2. More than 15 minutes of doing the same combat over and over gets tedious very quickly, let alone several HOURS worth. It's just not acceptable in a modern RPG.

Modifié par dan107, 14 mai 2010 - 06:54 .

[Chuvvy]

Damn it EA we get it you lost a **** ton of money and your trying to get it back. But don't screw up everything. You already dumbed down ME. And have completely alienated the used game market. Don't do something else stupid.

Modifié par Slidell505, 14 mai 2010 - 07:15 .

[AlanC9]

TheMadCat wrote...
BioWare games really are about as simple as they can get without becoming something like a Diablo with a story, though I suppose the Mass Effect series has fallen within that rank. It's not a knock on them at all, I'm just simply surprised that people are worried Dragon Age might get "dumbed down", it's already built fairly simple.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but are there any CRPGs that you do consider to be complex?

But personally there was very little challenge in this game even nightmare, and I'm still completely shocked at threads I see complaining normal is to hard. 

I'm guessing that this is because you actually pay attention to things and analyze them.

I remember a fairly contentious thread about HotU where a non-D&D expert player was complaining that the game was way too easy. It turned out that he simply read the rules and figured out that a fighter going for Overwhelming Critical would be good. He built it, and it was. Too good. No challenge. Some posters thought he was lying and things degenerated.

One of the Bio devs dropped by the thread and essentially said that the poster had simply beaten the system. Not really Bio's fault, since WotC wrote the rules. But IIRC he took the positions that this wasn't a problem at all, since a player who masters the system should be able to win easily, and that in any event there was no way to limit the advantage of mastery without  penalizing players who couldn't or wouldn't achieve mastery.

I'm not quite sure if I agree with this design philosophy, but I understand the point.

Modifié par AlanC9, 14 mai 2010 - 07:33 .

[AlanC9]

dan107 wrote...
Bioware really needs to work on pacing for DA2. More than 15 minutes of doing the same combat over and over gets tedious very quickly, let alone several HOURS worth. It's just not acceptable in a modern RPG.

Really?  Which RPGs  don't have repetitive combat?

[TheMadCat]

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but are there any CRPGs that you do
consider to be complex?

Hmm, can I count EVE Online? That is a brain burner.

But not really no, not from this decade at least. Darklands, some of the Ultima games and Daggerfall seem to come to mind, but I was way young back in the day and that may just be distorted memories, though I do remember Darklands being fairly deep and brutal. Arcanum was pretty good to, not sure when it was released though. Simplicity is a standard in RPG's these days though, it's what the market demands afterall. Again it's not a fault and I'm certainly not trying to knock it, I just don't understand why people are viewing DA:O as such a deep and complex game and fear EA is going to "dumb it down".

I'm guessing that this is because you actually pay attention to things
and analyze them.

I remember a fairly contentious thread about
HotU where a non-D&D expert player was complaining that
the game was way too easy. It turned out that he simply read the rules
and figured out that a fighter going for Overwhelming Critical would be
good. He built it, and it was. Too good. No challenge. Some posters
thought he was lying and things degenerated.

One of the Bio devs
dropped by the thread and essentially said that the poster had simply
beaten the system. Not really Bio's fault, since WotC wrote the rules.
But IIRC he took the positions that this wasn't a problem at all, since a
player who masters the system should be able to win easily, and that in
any event there was no way to limit the advantage of mastery without
 penalizing players who couldn't or wouldn't achieve mastery.

I'm
not quite sure if I agree with this design philosophy, but I understand
the point.

See, my problem is there really didn't feel like there was a system to beat. It was all just incredibly straight forward, predictable, and simple. I understand there is a limit to how difficult they can make things, but in Origins it just didn't seem like much thought was given to the enemies you encounter. Instead of creating deep and well rounded enemies they chose to try and overwhelm you with mindless and talentless hordes and to me that was just a poor way to go as it creates a bit of a balance problem tilted heavily towards the player about mid way through the game where it begins to feel a bit more like a chore slugging effortlessly through the hordes. There were a few other things, such as no real restrctions placed upon the player or their party for consumables but that's forgiveable as it can impeed on others enjoyment. But the way they designed the enemies really leaves a lot to be desired.

[Tirigon]

TheMadCat wrote...

what you did to defeat that last group of Darkspawn will almost certainly work on the next one considering they are almost always composed the same number and types,

That´s because Darkspawn are rather mindless creatures (at least in DAO) - it wouldn´t make sense in the story if they were intelligent.

they have nowhere near the arsenal of talets/spells the player and their companions have which gimps them even more, they lack the ability to consume pots(?) while the player/NPC's have no restrictions aside from self imposed,

And I think that´s good. Some fights last far too long already even without enemies using potions, and then there is the matter of the enemy having much more HP than you.

[Tirigon]

AlanC9 wrote...



I'm guessing that this is because you actually pay attention to things and analyze them.

I remember a fairly contentious thread about HotU where a non-D&D expert player was complaining that the game was way too easy. It turned out that he simply read the rules and figured out that a fighter going for Overwhelming Critical would be good. He built it, and it was. Too good. No challenge. Some posters thought he was lying and things degenerated.

One of the Bio devs dropped by the thread and essentially said that the poster had simply beaten the system. Not really Bio's fault, since WotC wrote the rules. But IIRC he took the positions that this wasn't a problem at all, since a player who masters the system should be able to win easily, and that in any event there was no way to limit the advantage of mastery without  penalizing players who couldn't or wouldn't achieve mastery.

I'm not quite sure if I agree with this design philosophy, but I understand the point.

This.

And it is the same in DAO. I mean, my first char was rogue - I sucked so hard, I died VERY often on easy difficulty  until it bored me and I started a new char.

That was mage. I started on normal, learned the game mechanincs, got better and later played on Nightmare.

My 3rd char was warrior - I played on Nightmare all the time and got the not dying achievement.

Now I went back to the start and play a rogue again and because I knew the right build by now I was on Lv 7 already stronger than with my other chars on 16 or so and wish I could increase the difficulty beyond nightmare.


But does that mean DAO is too easy? Imo it does not - it just means that I got better at the game. A game in which a good player has a really hard time would suck because new players would stand no chance.

[Demitra]

My own experience about DAO: The game started promising, I was impressed with the variety of conversations, emotions and how they shape up a situation, the plentiness of problem solving techniques...etc. I loved the approval system, adored the chances that I could talk to my party members almost about anything. When I got close to the end, just before the Landsmeet, I noticed that the conversation options kinda..'dried out' then it became just slash and hack. Although there were more than one possibility to take the story onwards, i felt i did not have much chance to turn it out anymore. All my party was full of target dummies. I really wish they can fix that dinamic environment amongst characters and a proper continuing fromthe point where everybody shapes up their own story instead of giving them a fix start. I find it cheap to give a fix start instead of letting people start with their own preferances really. I am also not buying the second if I cant get answers that I couldnt get in Awakening.

[Elanareon]

Being not casual is not about difficulty... It is about having a good game mechanics that express more or less of realism that takes effort to understand and apply. There is this game that is suppose to be hard but i consider it mainstream/casual because its just click click clikc jump jump