559 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

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.

Plenty of RPGs have instant or near-instant casting. 

[Zanderat]

DAO has already been dumbed down enough for the Konsole Kids. Let's hope we don't get more Awakening style "talk to trees" nonsense.

[Lintanis]

I think its more of the world is more fast paced now everything has to be now now now, so the games are starting to go that way to.

[Dick Delaware]

SDNcN wrote...
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.

Totally agree with you, especially on the skill checks involving things like Insight, Intimidate, Diplomacy, Streetwise, and History. It could open up a lot of doors in dialogue - certain characters could be impossible to come around to your way of thinking with one skill, but are more easily persuaded using another. For example, a tough-as-nails mercenary leader might just become more bold if you intimidate him no matter how much of a badass your PC is, but he melts like butter if your female PC seduces him.

It's really a shame that in most games you get a ton of variety in combat skills, yet you only get a catch-all "coercion" skill in Dragon Age that covers every speech check in the game. It's absurd - it's like having a single skill for combat called Weapons that allows you to be great at dual-wielding, archery, sword and shield, and two-handed weapons all at once. It's a boring way to do things. The only upcoming game that I've seen try to do this is Age of Decadence.

Not sure about how things like Acrobatics and Dungeoneering could be applied in Dragon Age, though. Great for an Elder Scrolls game, but I'm not sure how you'd put it in a BIoWare game that's put together in set pieces like DA:O.

[gingerbill]

hehe OI! dont say that Mr priestly , you know theres a DA 2 , now get back to work you havent got time to post

[maxernst]

I think the game would be better if mana costs were higher, mana regeneration was slower and lyrium potions more scarce for game balance. Or maybe make it so you couldn't cast ANY spells during the cooldown time But the whole resting for spells mechanic doesn't work very well in a computer game. It's just an annoyance to periodically spend time wandering back to a safe place to rest. It's boring and breaks up game continuity, especially if you decide (after fighting a battle unsuccessfully) that you need to reload and go back to base because you really need spells that you didn't memorize that day. Honestly, the whole memorizing spells mechanic in D&D never made any sense to me in a tabletop game, let alone a computer game. The idea that spellcasting is a draining mental activity so that someone may be too exhausted to cast any more spells or can only cast low power spells at a particular time makes sense. The idea that you forget how to do something that you just did five seconds before and need to relearn it every day makes no sense at all.

I like the idea of having more non-combat skills, too.  Some table top games have gone too far down that route IMHO  and produce skills that overlap too much, but a bit more than just coercion would be nice.   

Modifié par maxernst, 15 mai 2010 - 05:57 .

[AlanC9]

Zanderat wrote...

DAO has already been dumbed down enough for the Konsole Kids. Let's hope we don't get more Awakening style "talk to trees" nonsense.

Huh? Talking trees have been in fantasy literature for a long time.

[Feraele]

Zy-El wrote...

Big_Stupid_Jelly wrote...
On the 'casual' aspect, I normally play DA on Normal, well I do now i've got the hang of it, but sometimes I drop down to casual, usually near the end of the game. I also got the game recently on PC to see if the graphics were any better, and something I found was I found the game much harder on the PC, to check I played the same section on the Xbox and I breezed through it, on the PC I got slaughtered.

Anyway just because a game can attract a casual audience, doesn't necessarily mean it has to be dumbed down for said audience...anyway isn't that was difficulty settings are for?

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!!!").

Hah I have that all set up in tactics...next visible mage, next visible rogue, next visible warrior...and specific whammies applied to each kind of enemy.    If a ranger I have my pet overwhelm mages..first thing.

I graduated from Easy mode ..in November last year, am playing Hard mode now..but funny thing is I still think certain fights seemed harder in easy mode than they do now.  lol

As for the topic,  my hope is for continuity and more good story telling.     No paring down, no stuff left on the cutting room floor....keep those good original ideas, don't throw them away, even if EA tells you..no time, no money.

I know...wishful thinking.....

Modifié par Feraele, 15 mai 2010 - 08:40 .

[libreQc]

Until we don't hear "EA said that DA 2 is going to have really, really, REALLY good graphic" there is still hope. Because nothing destroy more a game than put everything in the graphic and nothing in, well, the game and to then have the dumb ass new generation of gamer (of which i'm sadly a part of) saying that it is the greatest game ever when it is in fact a pile of vomit ''kmph"oblivion"kmph"



Seriously now, as long that dragon age 2 have a complex story and npc it will be okay (even if they make the game easier( and i don't see how they could)). But they should take a big look at BG2, because one of the flaw of DA was that there wasn't enough dialogue( even if they we're great) and maybe put more effort in the sidequest.

ps: sorry if my english is bad

[SDNcN]

libreQc wrote...

Seriously now, as long that dragon age 2 have a complex story and npc it will be okay (even if they make the game easier( and i don't see how they could)). But they should take a big look at BG2, because one of the flaw of DA was that there wasn't enough dialogue( even if they we're great) and maybe put more effort in the sidequest.
ps: sorry if my english is bad

Dragon Age had more Dialogue than Baldur's Gate 2.

[libreQc]

in think not, with all the sidequest, the long main quest and all the interaction between the npc and with the romance(that were far more complexe than the one in dragon age( Jaheira and Viconia))

[soteria]

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've never played the ME games or Jade Empire, but the others are every bit as repetitive as DA, if not more. Don't you remember the orc caves from NWN2? Fight after fight was just killing more orcs. In town, it was bandits. There were times when I actually forgot what I was supposed to be there for. Kotor had different pacing, but both Kotor games had extremely repetitive combat. Every fight was the same: Enemy spotted! Master Flurry or Master Crit or Force Storm or whatever your go-to damage ability was, and bingo. And Kotor2 had some really long stretches of combat of its own, especially as you got close to the end. Come to think of it, the combat tended to drag out toward the end of the first Kotor, too.



Those games *might* have had better pacing overall, but the fights were nowhere near as interesting, imo. Very very few fights required any thought more than applying one of each stim-pack and activating a shield. In fact, I think only the final fight in Kotor differed from the generic "hit 'em till he dies." Not to mention, it was always a little comical having certain fallen jedi stop the combat to tell you how much stronger the dark side was, when you had dropped them to 0 health in a single combat round.

[soteria]

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.

Sylvius, I had to smile when I saw your post.  I should have known you would respond to that comment. 

Sure, that's fair.  We've been over the lack of real strategy in DA:O before.  In many ways, it's a strength, to me, because individual battles are more fun. I *want* to use my spells and abilities frequently, but you're right, the consequences for fighting poorly or even inefficiently are next to nonexistent.  Injuries are a step in the right direction, but they're really not that punishing.

Final Fantasy XIII had an interesting way of dealing with this problem.  Instead of making you rez or heal or cleanse party members out of combat (that happened automatically, much like DA:O) they tied several powerful abilities to a resource called "technique points" or something.  You could summon allies, rez the dead, heal, or deal some extra damage as emergency abilities, but you only regained the technique points very slowly.  If you used three out of your five points it might take seven or eight battles to restore the lost points.  Or, a very expensive item would do it quickly.

What I liked about that system was that you were really free to use all your "normal" abilities in combat, but for hard fights or times when you made a mistake or were just in a hurry, you could call up some extra power.  I prefer that to a system that punishes me for using my spells.  To put it another way, I agree that strategic ability use is good, but I disagree that I should hesitate before using a spell as mundane as chromatic orb or magic missiles or fireball (in BG2).

[Zanderat]

AlanC9 wrote...

Zanderat wrote...

DAO has already been dumbed down enough for the Konsole Kids. Let's hope we don't get more Awakening style "talk to trees" nonsense.

Huh? Talking trees have been in fantasy literature for a long time.

Have you played Awakenings? 

[SDNcN]

Zanderat wrote...

Have you played Awakenings? 

Talking to trees is an exaggeration. It was nearly the same as having cutscenes pop up when you walk over a certain area.It was flawed for a number of reasons but it was a step up from having the companion's stories bogged down in exposition.

Going back to your whole "Konsole Kiddies" statement. Bioware didn't develop the console version. They developed for the PC first and had Edge of Reality port the game to consoles.  Considering this improved PC sales I'd really doubt Bioware or EA would want that to change.

http://www.gamasutra...ns_Paid_Off.php

Modifié par SDNcN, 16 mai 2010 - 04:11 .

[screwoffreg]

As someone said earlier, I thought Dragon Age sold really, really well. 3.2 million copies, is it? That's not bad at all for a "purer" RPG. The only games in the genre that really blow that out of the water are MMORPG's (not a fair comparison) or Final Fantasy, which no one can really beat.

With that said, I'd be curious as to the incentive to change up strategies with the game.  It sold better than the FPS/RPG hybrid Mass Effect 2, which is very surprising considering how much marketing they did for the game.

Modifié par screwoffreg, 16 mai 2010 - 04:33 .

[AlanC9]

Where did this rumor that DA outsold ME2 come from?



@ Zanderat -- that's the problem with exaggerating. If someone isn't with you already you don't communciate anything. I thought you were talking about a certain spirit in DAO.

[hexaligned]

I think to what degree it does get mainstreamed is going to depend on how well their MMO sells. I don't really have much hope for it doing well, It looks very linear and shallow by MMO standards. More like a multiplayer KOTOR, add to that Bioware has no exp balancing pvp games, and their games are notoriously buggy...unbalanced PVP and bugs are what drives MMO players away in droves. They might hook some of the hardcore SW fans for awhile, the wow kiddies are not going to like that kind of game though. Bioware has sunk disgusting amounts of money into it already, and it still has a fair amount of dev time left, not to mention things like server maintance and a dedicated patch team after it's released. I have a gut feeling they are going to take massive loses on it. If they do... expect them to try and make up profits wherever they can, mainstreaming DAO (more than it is) being the obvious option.

[screwoffreg]

AlanC9 wrote...

Where did this rumor that DA outsold ME2 come from?

@ Zanderat -- that's the problem with exaggerating. If someone isn't with you already you don't communciate anything. I thought you were talking about a certain spirit in DAO.

Dragon Age has sold 3.2 million copies according to EA, but that was back in February.  ME 2 has only sold 1.6 million in NA and Europe.

[AlanC9]

1.6 million? Where'd you get that? EA said they sold 2 million in the first week.



Are you maybe muddling up single platform figures with combined figures?

[FieryDove]

AlanC9 wrote...

1.6 million? Where'd you get that? EA said they sold 2 million in the first week.

Are you maybe muddling up single platform figures with combined figures?

Places like this:

http://www.totalvide....html#EAFY11SCH

Many news sites reported that amount.

[TheMadCat]

I'm confused, there's about a dozen sites saying ME2 sold around 2m in it's first week of launch, though that was EA's sales to retailers. Still I don't see retailers sitting on 400k units of ME2 almost 4 months after release. Someone goofed somewhere, and I'm going to say it's on this new data. No way in hell ME2 has only sold 1.6m in almost 4 months, especially since ME sold over 2.5m on the 360 alone let alone PC sales.

www.mcvuk.com/news/37369/Mass-Effect-sales-top-2m

www.1up.com/do/newsStory

Modifié par TheMadCat, 16 mai 2010 - 09:06 .

[spottyblanket]

Doesn't get what now--causualized? Is that even a word. At least don't spell it with the scary American-zation! I hate putting 'Z' 's where they do not belong. Just looks horribly wrong. 0_o



This is a Bioware game, it will have all it's modes, from easy to nightmare. The fact it has an easy mode shows that it is a geared to all audiences. Dragon Age is a good game, let more people play it I say. You should worry more about the story and the characters rather than who plays it....

[screwoffreg]

TheMadCat wrote...

I'm confused, there's about a dozen sites saying ME2 sold around 2m in it's first week of launch, though that was EA's sales to retailers. Still I don't see retailers sitting on 400k units of ME2 almost 4 months after release. Someone goofed somewhere, and I'm going to say it's on this new data. No way in hell ME2 has only sold 1.6m in almost 4 months, especially since ME sold over 2.5m on the 360 alone let alone PC sales.

www.mcvuk.com/news/37369/Mass-Effect-sales-top-2m

www.1up.com/do/newsStory

ME 2 SHIPPED two million units, not sold.  I am trusting EA's internal figures over anyone others.  It was on their quarterly report that they gave the 3+ million number for DA and I believe they mentioned the sales for ME 2.  Why would they underreport sales figures?

Shipped vs sold is a common confusion.  Final Fantasy XII, for example, claims to have shipped 5.2 million units but in no way has sold that many.  It begs the question why developers even give the "shipped" number.  I can ship 50,000,000 units of something but if only 1,000,000 sell, who cares?

Modifié par screwoffreg, 16 mai 2010 - 10:40 .

[DKJaigen]

FieryDove wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

1.6 million? Where'd you get that? EA said they sold 2 million in the first week.

Are you maybe muddling up single platform figures with combined figures?

Places like this:

http://www.totalvide....html#EAFY11SCH

Many news sites reported that amount.

During the quarter ended March 31st 2010 over 1.6 million copies of
Mass Effect 2 were sold across Europe and North America