559 réponses à ce sujet

[dan107]

AlanC9 wrote...

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?

NWN2, Kotor 1, Kotor 2, ME1, ME2, and Jade Empire just off the top of my head. In all those games the dungeon crawls were far shorter and were broken up by story driven encounters. The problem is not that the combat in DA is less fun than in other RPGs, it's just the sheer amount of it. After a couple of hours of wading through more or less the same enemies with no story progression or character development it just stops being fun for me.

[Tirigon]

In ME1 and even more in ME2 the combat plays a much larger role than in DAO....

[SDNcN]

dan107 wrote...

NWN2, Kotor 1, Kotor 2, ME1, ME2, and Jade Empire just off the top of my head. In all those games the dungeon crawls were far shorter and were broken up by story driven encounters. The problem is not that the combat in DA is less fun than in other RPGs, it's just the sheer amount of it. After a couple of hours of wading through more or less the same enemies with no story progression or character development it just stops being fun for me.

The Knights of the Old Republic series also had non-combat skills that could be used throughout the game as an alternative to fighting/talking your way past an encounter. That was awesome.

[AstralFire]

....The things people will gripe about.



I'm personally more concerned about the shoddy patch support. At its core, most BioWare games have been little more than 'dungeon crawlers with fancy dialogue attached.'

[Fraevar]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dragon Age 2? What's that?

http://www.eurogamer...-age-2-for-2011

The one your bosses let slip a few days ago

[CybAnt1]

The Knights of the Old Republic series also had non-combat skills that could be used throughout the game as an alternative to fighting/talking your way past an encounter. That was awesome.

Well, DA does let you use Persuade or Intimidate to avoid certain combat situations... the question is, how often? Ever so rarely it also lets you "Cunning" yourself out of a situation through a Cunning check ... but again very rare. 

The real question is, why aren't there more situations where, say, a rogue could avoid combat? Let's say I need a key to get past the gate. I could kill the guard for the key. I could also sneak up and steal it from him without killing him. Or maybe even trick him out of it (Cunning check, above). 

Good RPGs offer players lots of options to resolve a situation, including avoiding killing where you don't have to. But of course, the primary XP source is from killing enemies, so most will take that route anyway. (DA does offer XP from some non-combat actions, but not as much as maybe it could.) 

It would be cool if Stealing could be used to resolve more quests (other than Slim Coudry's) so it had a real purpose, other than being a second loot stream (bug aside). 

[Vany666]

IN MY HEAD: It would be so cool to save Alistair from something like him being kidnaped by Darkspawn or some new kind of monsters, hihihihi. That would be thrilling. WOOHOO SAVE HUSBAND

[maxernst]

dan107 wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

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?

NWN2, Kotor 1, Kotor 2, ME1, ME2, and Jade Empire just off the top of my head. In all those games the dungeon crawls were far shorter and were broken up by story driven encounters. The problem is not that the combat in DA is less fun than in other RPGs, it's just the sheer amount of it. After a couple of hours of wading through more or less the same enemies with no story progression or character development it just stops being fun for me.

NWN2 didn't have repetitive combat?  You've got to be kidding me.  The entire first chapter was just endless repetitive combats.  Sure, there were more small areas but the actual gameplay was almost entirely one combat after another.  It did get better in the last two acts, but the first seemed to go on forever.  How many bandits and thieves do I need to kill?

Repetitive combat has been a staple of RPG's for a long time.  I'd guess that the percentage of time spent in combat is higher in most RPG's than in a game like Half-Life. It's the only way they can pad out the game for 100 hours of gameplay.  Personally, I'd rather have a really good quality 20-hour game, but the market as a whole won't pay $60 for that.

BG1 & BG2 had plenty of repetitive combat, too.  The only RPGs I can think of that were not mostly combat were Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment, and Arcanum.  Oddly, however, though their gameplay was more varied in a sense, with the exception of P:T, I don't think their character development was particularly deep.

[AlanC9]

dan107 wrote...

NWN2, Kotor 1, Kotor 2, ME1, ME2, and Jade Empire just off the top of my head. In all those games the dungeon crawls were far shorter and were broken up by story driven encounters. The problem is not that the combat in DA is less fun than in other RPGs, it's just the sheer amount of it. After a couple of hours of wading through more or less the same enemies with no story progression or character development it just stops being fun for me.

But there's just as much combat in all those games. The dungeons are shorter, but you find the same stuff in the next one. You're not talking about the combat, you're talking about the pacing

And I have absolutely no idea what you're thinking of when you put ME on that list.

Modifié par AlanC9, 14 mai 2010 - 04:33 .

[gingerbill]

I dont think the changes to ME2 were a mistake in the context of that game i think they wroked , sure i would rather there was more RPG to it but i think it was still a great game , for me it had no replayability though , played it once and loved it but couldnt be bothered playing it again as all my enjoyement came from the story.



Those type of changes would ruin DA2 though ,DA is a proper RPG and i cant see bioware ruining it by making DA lite.

[gingerbill]

NWN2, Kotor 1, Kotor 2, ME1, ME2, and Jade Empire just off the top of my head. In all those games the dungeon crawls were far shorter and were broken up by story driven encounters. The problem is not that the combat in DA is less fun than in other RPGs, it's just the sheer amount of it. After a couple of hours of wading through more or less the same enemies with no story progression or character development it just stops being fun for me.

I think the combat in DAO was my favourite of all those games , i love pausing and having a think then watching it play out . All those games had at least as much combat as DAO , no way did DAO have significantly more combat than those games . Apart from the deep roads theres not many times you are in combat for a long peroid of time and i enjoyed that as it was a change of pace , i felt like i was miles from civilisation fighting.

[Sylvius the Mad]

soteria wrote...

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.

Isn't that just an element of strategy that DAO lacks?

DAO is all about tactical decision-making.  Each significant encounter stands alone - your full resources are available to you, and using them doesn't carry any negative consequences that will disadvantage you in future encounters.  As such, there's no need for any large-scale strategic planning.

BG, on the other hand, rewards strategic planning.  The ideal outcome to a fight in BG involved you having cast just enough spells to win while also keeping your melee combatants (assuming you had any) alive.  If they still had full HP, you probably wasted spells, and wasting spells meant you either needed to rest an extra time (exposing you to extra danger) or that you wouldn't have as many resources for future encounters.

This, I think, was a strength of BG.  DAO doesn't require nearly as much forethought.  If you've constructed a party in DAO that can win a fight, then all you need to worry about is winning each individual fight.  But in BG, a well constructed party can still be caught short as a result of poor planning.  Running out of spells - or arrows, depending on the party - might doom the party.  Those wyverns in Cloakwood are an excellent example - if you arrive there with insufficient resources available, they can kill you quite easily.

DAO is more like a game like Dungeon Siege in this respect.  Once you've constructed a good party and learned a successful tactic, you don't really need to think about combat anymore.  But in BG you always need to think about combat because it's possible to render yourself impotent by misusing your abilities.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

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

Play BG with 4-5 mages in your party (I typically used 4 in BG and 5 in BG2) and you'll see far more opportunities to be creative with combat than DAO ever provides.

A 3 mage party in DAO does succeed in some ways, and it's aided somewhat by the special abilities available to non-mages, but the smaller party really does force you to stick with a given combat role for each party member.

[maxernst]

Play BG with no spellcasters and see how creative you find the gameplay.

[AlanC9]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Play BG with 4-5 mages in your party (I typically used 4 in BG and 5 in BG2) and you'll see far more opportunities to be creative with combat than DAO ever provides.

Such as? 

Anyway, if I have to deliberately do something suboptimal in order to make the combat more interesting, the system has already failed.

Modifié par AlanC9, 14 mai 2010 - 07:47 .

[TheMadCat]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Play BG with 4-5 mages in your party (I typically used 4 in BG and 5 in BG2) and you'll see far more opportunities to be creative with combat than DAO ever provides.

Such as? 

Anyway, if I have to deliberately do something suboptimal in order to make the combat more interesting, the system has already failed.

Sort of like when you suggested I go with a Primal build for my mage.

[Dick Delaware]

CybAnt1 wrote...
Well, DA does let you use Persuade or Intimidate to avoid certain combat situations... the question is, how often? Ever so rarely it also lets you "Cunning" yourself out of a situation through a Cunning check ... but again very rare. 

The real question is, why aren't there more situations where, say, a rogue could avoid combat? Let's say I need a key to get past the gate. I could kill the guard for the key. I could also sneak up and steal it from him without killing him. Or maybe even trick him out of it (Cunning check, above). 

Good RPGs offer players lots of options to resolve a situation, including avoiding killing where you don't have to. But of course, the primary XP source is from killing enemies, so most will take that route anyway. (DA does offer XP from some non-combat actions, but not as much as maybe it could.) 

It would be cool if Stealing could be used to resolve more quests (other than Slim Coudry's) so it had a real purpose, other than being a second loot stream (bug aside).

Being able to avoid combat is pretty rare in DA:O. Off the top of my head, there's the bandits in Lothering, Caladrius, Kolgrim if you side with him (though you fight the Guardian later), and that's all I can think of right now.

In terms of dialogue, I think we need more variation of speech skills. Having just a single coercion skill isn't enough. It would be far more interesting if you had abilities like Persuasion, Deception, Streetwise (ability to tell when others are lying). It would open up a lot more opportunities in the game, both in quest solutions and general roleplaying.

[Tame1]

Another thing that'd help the game is DnD style cast resting and spell pacing.. DA:O really lakcs that.

[Vaeliorin]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

soteria wrote...
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.

Isn't that just an element of strategy that DAO lacks?

DAO is all about tactical decision-making.  Each significant encounter stands alone - your full resources are available to you, and using them doesn't carry any negative consequences that will disadvantage you in future encounters.  As such, there's no need for any large-scale strategic planning.

BG, on the other hand, rewards strategic planning.  The ideal outcome to a fight in BG involved you having cast just enough spells to win while also keeping your melee combatants (assuming you had any) alive.  If they still had full HP, you probably wasted spells, and wasting spells meant you either needed to rest an extra time (exposing you to extra danger) or that you wouldn't have as many resources for future encounters.

This, I think, was a strength of BG.  DAO doesn't require nearly as much forethought.  If you've constructed a party in DAO that can win a fight, then all you need to worry about is winning each individual fight.  But in BG, a well constructed party can still be caught short as a result of poor planning.  Running out of spells - or arrows, depending on the party - might doom the party.  Those wyverns in Cloakwood are an excellent example - if you arrive there with insufficient resources available, they can kill you quite easily.

DAO is more like a game like Dungeon Siege in this respect.  Once you've constructed a good party and learned a successful tactic, you don't really need to think about combat anymore.  But in BG you always need to think about combat because it's possible to render yourself impotent by misusing your abilities.

The problem with this is that it makes combat balancing much more difficult for the devs.  When you know what resources the party will have at the beginning of every fight, you're able to make fights that will push the party to the edge every time, while with D&D style casting you have to be more forgiving (not that this is something they actually took advantage of in DA, sadly.)

Honestly, D&D style casting (and limited use items) always resulted in me never using spells unless I absolutely had to (haste is usually enough to get through most difficult encounters that don't specifically require a spellcaster in my experience) and as such, the mage in my party spent most of the time as a useless tag along.

Honestly, I much prefer the DA style of combat/casting, because it actually allows me to do fun things in combat other than just sit there and auto-attack.

[SDNcN]

Dick Delaware wrote...

In terms of dialogue, I think we need more variation of speech skills. Having just a single coercion skill isn't enough. It would be far more interesting if you had abilities like Persuasion, Deception, Streetwise (ability to tell when others are lying). It would open up a lot more opportunities in the game, both in quest solutions and general roleplaying.

They should rework the skill system as a whole. Handling it like the skills in 4th edition dnd would be nice. Attributes could increase the skill score, but the player can also pick certain skills they want a character to excel at.  Here is a quick example of how that would translate into Dragon Age.

Acrobatics: Modified by Dexterity. Increases the character's chance to dodge and lets a character reach certain areas.(Climbing into a second story window, walking across a narrow ledge in a dungeon)

Arcana: Modified by Magic. Allows the character to make knowledge check comments about spirits, magic, or the fade.

Athletics: Modified by Strength. Increases the character's chance to resist stuns and knockdowns and used in checks they require muscular strength. (Moving a heavy object, kicking down a door)

Bluff: Modified by Cunning. Used as a skill check for lying, gambling, or making a disguise.

Diplomacy: Modified by Cunning. Gives a bonus to approval gained from companions and used for skill checks involving persuasion or inspiration.

Dungeoneering: Modified by Wisdom. Allows the character to spot medicinal plants within the area and a chance to show nearby rooms on the minimap.

Endurance: Modified by Constitution. Increases the character's chance to resist posion, disease, and sleep effects.

History: Modified by Cunning. Allows the character to make knowledge check comments about laws, customs, legends, and past events.

Insight: Modified by Wisdom: Used for skill checks involving sensing motives,  moods, or detecting lies.

Intimidate: Modified by Strength. Gives a bonus to approval from certain companions and used for skill checks involving threats.

Nature: Modified by Wisdom. Bonus to nature resistance and reveals nearby animals on the minimap. Also a skill check for anything involving the outdoors.

Perception: Modified by Cunning. Gives a bonus to hit with ranged weapons. Also a skill check for seeing hidden objects or doors and allows character to see humanoids in nearby rooms on the minimap.

Streetwise: Modified by Cunning. Decreases store prices and used for skill checks involving haggling and
gathering information.

Tame1 wrote...

Another thing that'd help the game is DnD
style cast resting and spell pacing.. DA:O really lakcs that.

That is one thing from the older editions of DnD that should stay out of Dragon age.

Modifié par SDNcN, 14 mai 2010 - 11:44 .

[KragCulloden]

Tame1 wrote...

Another thing that'd help the game is DnD style cast resting and spell pacing.. DA:O really lakcs that.

Oh God No...that had to be sarcasm right?  I actually enjoy playing magic users now because that horrid system from DnD and NWN is finally gone. 

[KragCulloden]

[quote]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.[/quote]

[/quote]

Have to say I disagree completely.  Loved the pacing in DA:O and never found it tedious.  You can leave the deep roads at every single transition point and return to camp or anywhere on the map - you are not stuck traversing the entire thing in one go if you don't want.  The levelling system is about perfecting your characters for combat - combat is the payoff and the lab for your levelling choices - I have no problem with the amount of combat in the game. 

[AlanC9]

TheMadCat wrote...
Sort of like when you suggested I go with a Primal build for my mage.

Heh. I didn't say it was a good idea.

[Tame1]

KragCulloden wrote...

Tame1 wrote...

Another thing that'd help the game is DnD style cast resting and spell pacing.. DA:O really lakcs that.

Oh God No...that had to be sarcasm right?  I actually enjoy playing magic users now because that horrid system from DnD and NWN is finally gone. 

No I mean it, the caster having literally NO CAST TIMES and NO DELAY between spells makes the game play something akin to an action game, not an RPG.

Like seriously, you can sling 5 spells in 2 seconds if you mash fast enough. The game needs cast times, atleast. Not just on the huge gigantor AoE spells.

[SDNcN]

Tame1 wrote...

No I mean it, the caster having literally NO CAST TIMES and NO DELAY between spells makes the game play something akin to an action game, not an RPG.

Like seriously, you can sling 5 spells in 2 seconds if you mash fast enough. The game needs cast times, atleast. Not just on the huge gigantor AoE spells.

There are cooldowns on a number of spells which is more than enough.