20 réponses à ce sujet

[Norastus]

I have to start by saying that I really like the game (no need to flame because my complaint is really over an implementation detail.) It's difficult to make yet another HSTW (Hero Saves the World) RPG game without being stale and boring. The storyline is good. And the character development is superb.

But I suppose years of BG, NWN, ToEE, Elder Scrolls, and decades of DM-ing D&D have left me overly attuned to the math behind combat. After all, everyone works to give their character a particular edge...  high HP tank, high DpS rogue/ranger/monk, defense through exceptional stealth/invis, mage with nuclear weapons, etc.. My penchant has always been to max out defense, attain high HP, and buff out one particular offensive skill. This leads to a character that is rarely hit by enemy attacks (at least by low and mid-level foes), which consequently alleviates the need for incessant healing. For me, this makes the game much more playable.

This does not seem to be possible in DAO. After painstakingly building a character to near 100 defense, I found that regardless of the encounter, my character would continue to consistently take damage from low level characters. The expected result would be virtually no hits, with low levels landing only 1 point of damage.

Since I don't have the time to come up to speed on the toolset and I've not been able to find precise combat formulas on the internet, I ran a simple test. I reinstalled v1.01, did the level up cheat at Ostragar with Duncan, and then updated to v1.03. So using a 25 level character (oddly enough all your other NPC automatically become level 25 as well) with a defense of 98, I went through the refugee fight (clearly all low level chars with wimpy weapons) and the bandit fights in Lothering... and sure enough, my character continued to take constant hits and damage as if from mid or higher level characters.

This leads me to conclude one of two things. Either there is a major bug in the combat mechanics that calculate the "ToHit" value (which I highly doubt) OR the enemy characters always scale to an attack and damage level that track with your character's evolution. In any case, this manifests itself as a condition in which your character's DEFENSE statistic is useless, since it appears to provide no substantial reduction in hit rate. If this is true, it would be far better to spend your time buffing up armor and putting your attributes into increaing your attack statistic. As far as I can determine, there is absolutely NO value in running your DEX up past 36.

If anyone with game mechanics expertise has any insight into this "anomaly" I'd be extremely grateful.

[Rhys Cordelle]

I'm not an expert on mechanics, but I can tell you you're definitely wrong about defense. 98 Defense is certainly not going to make you unhittable, but pump it further and you will notice a huge difference. My archer has such good defense from her high dex rating (and the option of using Defensive Fire), that she can tank Revenants. I think about 120 defense is where I started really noticing how little damage I was taking, and I was able to push it up to 160-something eventually (and that wasn't even a min/max build).



Your experiment with the refugees is likely to do with the fact that you took advantage of an exploit to raise your character to maximum level at a point in the game where such a level should be impossible. For a level 7 character the refugee fight is quite easy.

[beancounter501]

yhea, a 98 defense is not nearly high enough if you want to be unhittable. You need that 150 range to be really hard to hit. But a 98 will cause some misses - just not enough.

[Rhys Cordelle]

It sort of needs to work that way. A low level rogue shouldn't be capable of tanking.

[Yrkoon]

Rhys Cordelle wrote...

I'm not an expert on mechanics, but I can tell you you're definitely wrong about defense. 98 Defense is certainly not going to make you unhittable, but pump it further and you will notice a huge difference. My archer has such good defense from her high dex rating (and the option of using Defensive Fire), that she can tank Revenants. I think about 120 defense is where I started really noticing how little damage I was taking, and I was able to push it up to 160-something eventually (and that wasn't even a min/max build).

Your experiment with the refugees is likely to do with the fact that you took advantage of an exploit to raise your character to maximum level at a point in the game where such a level should be impossible. For a level 7 character the refugee fight is quite easy.

^this, Pretty much.  Also I'll point out that  "unhittable-ness"  is equally unattainable in  just about all the games mentioned by the OP.  Take BG2 for  example.  You can have an AC of -24  (essentially the engine's cap on Armor class), and simple Fire Giants and Iron Golems  will still be able to hit you at will.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 20 mai 2010 - 11:16 .

[Yrkoon]

Norastus wrote...
This leads me to conclude one of two things. Either there is a major bug in the combat mechanics that calculate the "ToHit" value (which I highly doubt) OR the enemy characters always scale to an attack and damage level that track with your character's evolution..

The Latter.   It's common knowledge that  the enemy mobs in this game scale to your level.  Which means what you're really describing here is the Game's difficulty and Balance.  Not flaws in the combat system mechanics.  DA:O is indeed a challenge  to new players.    And just like  in  D&D,  things other than melee eventually win out  in the end in terms of superiority on the battlefield.  Try power-gaming a spell caster in your next playthrough

 If this is true, it would be far better to spend your time buffing up armor and putting your attributes into increaing your attack statistic. As far as I can determine, there is absolutely NO value in running your DEX up past 36.

^um... Yes?    Depends on the warrior, but  what you're saying here is  pretty much exactly how I build my  warriors, whether they be 2-handers,  dual-wielders  or sword & Shielders:  get your dex up just enough to  reach the talent requirements you want to take, then spend everything else on Strength.  And in the meantime, scour the game for the  highest armor rating gear you can find.

That said, if you ever play  Awakening, you'll be in for a pleasant surprize.   A Dex of oever 60   suddenly makes your archers god-like.  And the enemies stop scaling, and your Health goes through the roof.   Of course, I don't consider this a good thng  (I actually enjoy challenge), but you might.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 20 mai 2010 - 11:43 .

[old book]

DA handles level scaling better than some games. Enemies in a region are always in a certain level range; they'll never be under X or over Y. Some enemy types have a fixed level range; no level 3 Revenants or level 25 rats. So, if you do enough side quests, you can hit a level where some areas will be easy for those times when you want to feel Uber. You can also find and tackle enemies way out of your league for the challenge.



I like a fixed world myself, where a given enemy is always a given level and your level has nothing to do with it, but DA handles things pretty well. The "Your DM would scale encounters for you, and the developers are the DM in this campaign" argument is fair enough.



That said, you can min-max your character into being nearly impossible to hit or hurt. It requires top tier equipment and buffs, but there are progressions and builds that work pretty well.

[Catcher]

     There's a formula on the Dragon Age Wiki here which you'll find very enlightening. It explains how the system determines chance to hit when simply comparing Attack versus Defense. With a Defense of 98, an attacker with an Attack of 50 (middling-low I would think) still has a 6% chance of hitting. A few other factors complicate things. First, most encounters in DA: O are scaled but are scaled to a range. I'm not sure what the "top" in Lothering might be since it's intended as the place you are to visit first after Ostagar. Second, attackers attacking from the flank and rear get a bonus to Attack in the 15-20 range which is significant particullarly when your being mobbed (literally and gamewise). Hope that helps.

[KragCulloden]

What is ToEE? Just curious.

[AlanC9]

Jeez, Norastus -- hyperbole much? Not being able to make hit-proof characters doesn't exactly mean "fatally and irreparably flawed." Or were you just trying to drive thread views up?

Others have handled the substance for me. Note that it would be really hard to implement DA without scaling, since there's something like half the game that can be visited in any order the player chooses.

Modifié par AlanC9, 20 mai 2010 - 05:27 .

[AlanC9]

ToEE is Temple of Elemental Evil. The old AD&D adventure done as a 3.5 game, in the real 3.5 turn-based rules rather than the NWN/NWN2 adaptation.



If you like D&D it's worth a shot with the fan-made patches, though that team made some bad decisions and the basic design approach is like having a really bad DM run you through the module.

[old book]

Temple of Elemental Evil. A pretty good port of D&D 3.5, buggy on first release but the modding community did amazing things with it. Lots of fun if you just wanted clasic D&D hack & slashing.

Modifié par old book, 20 mai 2010 - 06:48 .

[AlanC9]

I thought I should be clear about the "bad decisions" I mentioned. Co8's basic design assumption was that every party would have a pure-class rogue in it. Their endgame design fails badly if you don't have either a high-level rogue or a high-INT character in the party, even though that party has worked perfectly well up to that point. You can get through so much of the game by then that there isn't time to train up a new rogue, but I think you can work around it by dicing up a new wizard just for purposes of getting past that area.



It's the sort of mistake amateurs make, but it's not a big deal, really.

[old book]

That's right, ToEE was 3.5, not 3.0.



I liked what Co8 did a lot, myself. They fixed a very long list of bugs, and made an effort to keep what new content they did add balanced and lore (and rule) friendly. They may not have done a perfect job (some things planned were left undone as people left, some mistakes were left unfixed) and you can always argue over tastes, but they did very good work. Not saying you don't have a right to point out mistakes; just giving another point of view.



I agree that DA:O's scaling works pretty well, better if the player isn't power leveling with mods or exploits.

[AlanC9]

Sure, they did do a lot of good work. I suppose I'm more upset by a project that fails at a couple of things than one that's a botch from beginning to end.

Modifié par AlanC9, 21 mai 2010 - 04:52 .

[Yrkoon]

Catcher wrote...

     There's a formula on the Dragon Age Wiki here which you'll find very enlightening.

Nice link!

I was browsing through that page when something caught my eye that  I hadn't noticed before in my game:

OnHitDmg
When a weapon hits, a number of OnHit properties can be triggered: Damage from Runes, Damage from Enchantment Spells (Flaming Weapons, Frost Weapons) and Poisons. These OnHit properties are not triggered when activated talents are used.

Say what?

Am I reading this right?    So my two hander, who's wielding Starfang with 3 grandmaster elemental runes (+5 fire, +5 electrical, +5 Cold)  is not doing   the +15 elemental damage when he mighty blows his opponent; or when he sunder armors his opponent, or when he Critical strikes his oponent?

Modifié par Yrkoon, 23 mai 2010 - 01:41 .

[soteria]

That's correct, though there is a mod that changes that. There's no technical reason they didn't have runes and poisons apply to specials; it just didn't get done before they got to QA. Also, I'll just point out that if you really want to make your warrior indestructable, Templar S/S wielding a dagger, ~38 str for armor and max dex is probably the way to go. High hp can be obtained by gear, of course, and high physical resist to avoid stuns would be desirable.



The reason for using a dagger is to get better auto-attack damage from dex... and besides, faster weapons work better with poisons/runes. I think it's a kinda boring character, but whatever.

[tmp7704]

Norastus wrote...

If anyone with game mechanics expertise has any insight into this "anomaly" I'd be extremely grateful.

There's some data from developer on page here: http://dragonage.gul...tributes/attack

Hit = Random(100) < (AttackRating - DefenseRating)

basically, you'd need 100 point of difference between your defense score and the attacker's score to ensure you aren't getting hit. Since even low level characters seem to have ~50 points worth of attack score, that means need for defense score of 150+ early on, 200+ late in the game.

Note lower values are also given to provide you with benefit of being hit less, you just have to drop the notion you'll be immune to damage at all. Which is hardly "fatally and irreparably flawed" in my book, i'd rather call the opposite situation (min-maxing leading to character impossible to be hit) to be a case of that.

[soteria]

^^ Whatever the numbers say for enemy attack ratings, I don't know, but I've found 150-170 to be enough defense to almost never get hit, especially after using abilities like Miasma and Cripple.

[Lintanis]

old book wrote...

Temple of Elemental Evil. A pretty good port of D&D 3.5, buggy on first release but the modding community did amazing things with it.

 Sounds a bit like DA:O  :whistle::lol:

[Maedryc]

Actually, becoming unhittable is perfectly feasible in this game.
With my dex focused duelist/assassin I was pretty much unhittable by level 14: your defense value has to be 104 points higher than your opponent's attack value.
Yes, at lower levels this is pretty hard to do.
However, since attack increases by 0.5 point for each point of strength or dexterity while defense increases by 1 point for each point of dexterity, if you focus on dexterity your defense value will quickly outpace your enemies' attack values.
In addition, most high level opponents spread their stats around instead of focusing on a single offensive stat, so becoming unhittable becomes easier and easier the higher your level.
(Incidentally, this is why I think the combat engine is flawed: since attack and defense depend on your stat allocation rather than your level, eventually the game will reach a point where level scaling becomes pretty much useless as a balance tool )

Modifié par Maedryc, 24 mai 2010 - 01:41 .