79 réponses à ce sujet

[HoonDing]

soteria wrote...

Pretty much every fight in DA can be completely trivialized with a sufficient quantity of (infinitely available) potions.

Same is true for BG2. Practically every enemy drops potions of greater or superior healing. I had to buy a potion case for all my party members because I had too many. Not to mention, high-level fighters have such good saving throws that not even enemy mages no longer pose a threat, except for spells like Imprisonment... or Fallen Solars with vorpal swords.

[Gecon]

soteria wrote...

Theres some extremely hard battles left, just like in BG, which remain hard even if you have mastered the game, but thats all.

Unless you're talking about playing with self-imposed restrictions, I disagree. And I think BG is the same way. Kangaxx is either borderline impossible or laughably easy, depending on whether you have a way to counter Imprison or whatever it's called. Pretty much every fight in DA can be completely trivialized with a sufficient quantity of (infinitely available) potions.

I didnt mentioned Kangaxx so I dont understand why you believe I was refering to him. Theres quite a couple of strategies against Kangaxx, the easiest one is to have Aerie with Spell Immunity: Abjuration and the Mace of Disruption +2 hack him to pieces in no time. Theres also scrolls of spell immunity and with Simulacrum you can even "copy" them without wasting the originals. In any case, Kangaxx is a cakewalk once you know the right strategy.

But theres not always strategies for everything, at least I dont know one for all the places in BG. The mage attacks at the beginning of BG1 are just insanely hard. Have too many of your attacks miss and the opponent will manage kill the main character. Other than reload, I know nothing against it.

I also remember some insanely hard fights in the BG1 addon, and some other hard fights in other places.

And in DA:O its the same. For example, I havent yet found strategies to handle mobs without dying in the Fade section. In the Mage Origin, there are spiders in the optional dungeon and on nightmare level there is a good chance that your spells get resisted - and these buggers have overwhelm. Additionally, with bad luck, you can manage to get two of them. Also, with bad luck with drops, you might not have a mana potion yet.

Theres other places where I havent found a good strategy, even if DA:O overall has turned into a cakewalk just like BG is to me now.

[soteria]

I mentioned Kangaxx because a lot of players trot him out when they want to talk about hard fights in BG2. Throwaway example; I could have used any of the dragons or other bosses.

The beginning of BG isn't hard, it's stupid. Either you one-shot the enemies or they one-shot you; there's not really any middle ground until you level a couple times. Fights that are determined purely by luck like that aren't hard, they're just random. 'Hard' implies skill, after all. When your dwarf warrior gets Ogre-rammed three or four times in a row in the Fade and you die, that's not from the game being hard, that's just bad luck (and design).

Conversely, I'd say the boss fights in the Orzammar section of the game have more genuine difficulty than most anything in BG2.  My first time through BG2 I was really only reloading due to perma-death (TOB was harder), but there were a few bosses in DAO that gave me pause for a while.

Modifié par soteria, 24 mai 2010 - 08:07 .

[Viz79]

Well its a bit strange - lots of people find DA difficult but there is no way these people would have if they played the original BG/Planescape/Icewind Dale games. So they are clearly new to this genre of rpg gaming.



HOWEVER if you are one of the people that played the game that this is supposed to be the spiritual successor to, then Nightmare is far too easy. The fact that the devs were talking about how challenging nightmare was for 'them' must have been a downright lie - there i absolutely no wy. I am playing with a mod called 'Simple Increased Difficulty' that adjusts modifiers to make the combat harder and to stop potion chugging by creating a cooldown and that results in the sort of difficulty required.



Basically Easy-Hard may be correct for the average gamer but then if they wanted to also cater for the old school gamer who this was made for aka BG players, Nightmare should have been harder unmodded. Thank goodness for mods.



I have heard Awakening is horribly easy though which implies Bioware is dumbing the game difficulty down. Luckily the mod I am using applies to Awakening too (although I am told the potion cooldown doesnt sadly) but we shall see how it goes.



I dont mind Bioware having easier difficulty levels but make Nightmare actually be what it is supposed to be!

[maxernst]

Viz79 wrote...

Well its a bit strange - lots of people find DA difficult but there is no way these people would have if they played the original BG/Planescape/Icewind Dale games. So they are clearly new to this genre of rpg gaming.

You're quite wrong.  I played all those games except Icewind Dale and found it quite difficult at first...and even on my second playthrough, the revenants are still hard.  I'd still call it more difficult than Planescape: Torment, which didi not have a lot of challenging combats...actually, you can get through large stretches of the game without fighting at all. The others were much easier for me because I was intimately familiar with AD&D rules...I already knew what all the spells did, what resistances and abilities most of the enemies would have, etc.  If anything, I think the people who say that DA:O is easy for people who've play a lot of  MMORPG's are probably closer to the mark, because the combat tactics are more akin to those.

Modifié par maxernst, 27 mai 2010 - 01:23 .

[Loerwyn]

Dragon Age is... I don't want to say hard, but it's not the easiest. If you're not used to RPGs, or perhaps D&D-style RPGs, then it's going to be confusing. Do you take Str or Dexterity as a warrior? If you're a tank, do you need constitution and willpower? It's those sort of decisions that to a seasoned player seem easy, but to someone unversed in RPGs aren't as easy.



I also think Dragon Age suffers from poor itemisation in regards to gear. There's the debate over do certain "benefits" actually make a difference (e.g. Weakens Darkspawn, I think) and just some poor decisions that increase Dragon Age's difficulty for some for no reason at all.



But yeah. Not the easiest, not the hardest.

[AlanC9]

Viz79 wrote...
HOWEVER if you are one of the people that played the game that this is supposed to be the spiritual successor to, then Nightmare is far too easy.

That's the sort of argument that got me to start the thread. This simply isn't true unless this group of players also found the IE games easy. DA isn't any more easy than the BG games. Not because DA isn't easy, but because the BG games are easy too. (PS:T as well, as maxernst says, but that game isn't really about combat so it doesn't matter.)

Sure, potion spamming makes makes most DA fights easy. But you can potion spam in BG1 and ToB as well. You can't in BG2 since you can't buy extra-healing potions, but you don't need them anyway.

There are a couple of fights in the BG series that are fairly tough, but that's true in DA as well.

[I Valente I]

As far as RECENT rpg's go, then yes DAO is very difficult. All other next-gen rpg's that I've played, Oblvion, Fallout, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy etc. have been very, very easy. In comparison to these, Dragon Age is very difficult.

[Seagloom]

I found the Baldur's Gate series harder than Dragon Age but neither game is too difficult if one knows what they are doing. Potion spamming isn't as effective in the BG games as in Dragon Age IMO, because they don't recover as much HP, comparatively speaking, at higher levels. Not that it matters.



Try to think of difficult combat encounters in both games as puzzles. The Baldur's Gate series had harder to solve puzzles. Without using the right protective spell or item to block a dragon's breath, negate that Wail of the Banshee, stop petrification or level drain, ect... it was very easy to end up with a terribly crippled or dead character. The Baldur's Gate series had a tendency to throw the player into precisely scripted battles where only a short list of precise tactics guaranteed victory. Aec'Letec and the Death Knight in Tales of the Sword Coast, Firkraag, Kangaxx, that enemy party in the sewers under the Temple District, Demogorgon, the Twisted Rune, and so on in Baldur's Gate 2...



Each of major battle was difficult, nigh impossible, in its own way. It was possible to still win through luck of the dice, but not very likely, and rarely without casualties. I know, because on my first game was best strategy was casting Haste and clicking attack, then healing through magic or potions as needed. I remember how gratifying it was to defeat certain enemies then. Now those same battles are so one-sided it feels rigged in my favor. That's what happens when solving a puzzle I already know the answer to.



Dragon Age had fewer battles of this nature. I can't describe them in detail due to spoilers. That one spider fight I'm sure everyone is familiar with is a good example. Another is the house of blood mages. Those two fights were tough at first, before most of us knew how overpowered Mana Clash was or figured out which abilities and salves make that spider a joke to kill.



DA takes it easy on the player. Enemies won't lob Mana Clash at you or use Force Field cheese. There is no way to taunt your side into gunning for their tank. Magic is also way too easy to come by. Mana is quickly replenished and with the right spells a party can almost fight forever. It's very easy to brute force through DA with a dedicated healer like Wynne along. That isn't possible in BG. Save for Heal, cure magic doesn't recover HP fast enough and the finite spell slots of a cleric imposes another limitation. Ditto on crowd control and death spells, which only last for so long before the party needs to stop and rest. Resting, of course, presents a danger of random ambushes. That can be very bad when everyone is hanging by a thread and resources have nearly been expended. In DA, no problem: just stand around and wait a bit between fights.



Lastly, the great divider in difficulty is protagonist death. Losing your main character in the Baldur's Gate series is an instant game over. No questions. All that means in Dragon Age is your character is unavailable until the next combat or whenever someone can throw a Revival spell at them. Injuries don't end the game.

[Viz79]

maxernst wrote...

Viz79 wrote...

Well its a bit strange - lots of people find DA difficult but there is no way these people would have if they played the original BG/Planescape/Icewind Dale games. So they are clearly new to this genre of rpg gaming.

You're quite wrong.  I played all those games except Icewind Dale and found it quite difficult at first...and even on my second playthrough, the revenants are still hard.  I'd still call it more difficult than Planescape: Torment, which didi not have a lot of challenging combats...actually, you can get through large stretches of the game without fighting at all. The others were much easier for me because I was intimately familiar with AD&D rules...I already knew what all the spells did, what resistances and abilities most of the enemies would have, etc.  If anything, I think the people who say that DA:O is easy for people who've play a lot of  MMORPG's are probably closer to the mark, because the combat tactics are more akin to those.

I don't really understand your differentiation with MMOs - they also stick with the same rules that cRPGs do. i.e. you need a tank to take the damage and pull the attention of the mobs, a healer to ensure people stay up and limit damage, crowd control via stuns etc and then damage via melee or magic. This is consistent with pretty much every single RPG ever made. The positioning of your group whether in a MMO or a CRPG also maintains the same rules - keep your mages out of damage, try and make sure your rogues etc dont pull aggro and try and keep it all on the tank. Finding traps, pulling aggro, using cover, its all the same!

WIth these staple rules in the game, I still need to use the simple difficulty mod to ensure fights remain challenging and interesting. I need to use combos like freezing and then attempting to shatter with stonefist (which often doesnt work with my game) or trying to mass stun with overlap of runes etc and use a whole bunch of tactics to win fights. And boy is it fun to do so... an it reminds me of the old Bioware games. Perhaps its nostalga but I am pretty sure I wasnt able to just run through the game like I can do on Vanilla NIghtmare without any real challenge. Heck maybe I just became better with these games over the last ten years... but then surely did all the other players that played those games at the time?

I just dont understand how 'nightmare' lives up to its name. Is it a nightmare?! What was the purpose of nightmare difficulty - wasnt that for the old school players? And who can say 'normal' on DA isnt too easy? The biggest criticism of Awakening that it was too easy!

Update: Seagloom's post really does help clarify things - its the case of feeling trepidation at a boss encounter because you KNOW its going to be tough. In my game, they always are and I have to try imaginative ways to win each time.  That was Baldurs Gate, That ISNT Vanilla Dragon Age. As I said, thank goodness for mods so I can enjoy DA as it should have been!

Modifié par Viz79, 27 mai 2010 - 08:19 .

[AlanC9]

Seagloom wrote...
 Now those same battles are so one-sided it feels rigged in my favor. That's what happens when solving a puzzle I already know the answer to.

But were these puzzles actually hard? Take Dragon Fear. You get screwed the first time because you're not expecting it. After that, it only hurts you if you're too lazy to find Remove Fear in the manual.

Lastly, the great divider in difficulty is protagonist death. Losing your main character in the Baldur's Gate series is an instant game over. No questions. All that means in Dragon Age is your character is unavailable until the next combat or whenever someone can throw a Revival spell at them. Injuries don't end the game.

Reloading doesn't end the game either. A bad die-roll making me reload doesn't make a battle hard since I can just do the same strategy again and win the next time.

[MerinTB]

My view -

overall, BG2 was far easier than DAO.

For DAO, even the beginning fights can be challenging.  There are chances to go down if you aren't paying attention at any point in the game.  I'm on my 3rd playthrough and it still holds true.

For BG2 most encounters, especially the random battles, are pathetically simple that take no real planning, no thought-out tactics, nothing short of healing potions and a good tank and good cleric.

There are "tough" boss battles in BG2, more so than in DAO overall - but with some important notes -

DAO doesn't have fights that need a specific strategy or spell to win, nor do you need to (nor can you really) "buff-up" before a big fight like 2nd Ed D&D rules let you do in BG2.  The DAO big fights can be won in many ways - for example, I only used Cone of Cold a few times in my first playthrough with Morrigan (whom, most often, I shapeshifted) and I only had the Mana Alteration spell line for my MC mage playthrough and I rarely touched it (preferring fire spells and buff spells.)  And I've not yet had an Arcane Warrior.  There's no "have to" for spells or skills in DAO to win.
BG2, however, forced you to really need to take certain spells - namely protection spells, especially against magic, and spells that removed magic protection.  I don't think I've ever used the Templar abilities to remove effects nor the mage spells that do so in DAO, but in BG2 (in my experience of 1 full playthrough, 1 SoA extra playthrough, and 3 other partial plays) you HAD to face facts that at higher levels magic was ALL that was important even if your enemies often were extremely magic resistant.

And don't even get me started on how I feel about "save or die" spell garbage.

---

I guess what I'm saying is that BG2 forced you to do certain things or lose in certain big fights but otherwise was a cakewalk, but DAO is at least mildly challenging in even the simplest of fights even if there are no "MAGIC YOU DO DEATH / BUT I'M IMMUNE TO MAGIC!" super-tough boss battles.

I think DAO, in general, requires more tactical play and better allows for different tactics to be effective, at all levels of combat, with a relatively limited number of character build options whereas BG2 gave more character options and customizability but required certain tactics to be used (or else) and was often super-easy to win battles save for several "designed to give you a headache" fights where the enemies had immunities to most things you'd normally try.

[MerinTB]

And, for the record, I've played Icewind Dale probably a dozen times.

And played (part-of(repeatedly)) BG1, BG2 "2" times, PS:T (part-of(repeatedly)), IWD 2 several times, ToEE (part-of(repeatedly)) as well as cRPGs going all the way back to Ultima 1 and Wizardry.

Come up with reasoning as you like, but there are people who "know RPGs" who think DAO's difficulty was fine.

[Seagloom]

AlanC9 wrote...

But were these puzzles actually hard? Take Dragon Fear. You get screwed the first time because you're not expecting it. After that, it only hurts you if you're too lazy to find Remove Fear in the manual.

Reloading doesn't end the game either. A bad die-roll making me reload doesn't make a battle hard since I can just do the same strategy again and win the next time.

There were battles in the BG series that had so much going on you had to plan further than one or two spells. Such as the sewer battle, the fight with that party on the second floor of the Den of Seven Veils, that final encounter with the demons guarding Demogorgon's chamber, Draconis (toughest dragon BioWare has done to date IMO), ect. I'm not going to list them all, but there are several throughout the series.

That said, I can't disagree that once you know what to do, it's easy. I found Dragon Age was easier though. There isn't anything special to figure out in Dragon Age. I just kept plowing ahead. I had characters fall, sure, but I only ever had a total wipeout fighting a certain dwarf and their golems, and that was because I didn't bring a healer and had one poultice to work with. I was trying to finish that questline first and overestimated my party. There wasn't a single encounter in DA that I played, including its optional scaly lizard fights, that I found challenging. Having to reload means I need to rethink my course of action. Endlessly pushing onward with a few bumps on the road is only a challenge to my attention span.

Technically nothing ends the game since we can retry as often as desired. Personally, I consider reloading after a loss, well, a loss. I see being unable to move forward due to an obstacle a challenge. If the criteria here is how hard combat is and not the difficulty in overcoming challenges, then Dragon Age wins by virtue of Baldur's Gate battles often being an all or nothing affair. My definition of challenge is different than yours and Merin's I guess.

Modifié par Seagloom, 27 mai 2010 - 09:50 .

[Seagloom]

MerinTB wrote...

And, for the record, I've played Icewind Dale probably a dozen times.
And played (part-of(repeatedly)) BG1, BG2 "2" times, PS:T (part-of(repeatedly)), IWD 2 several times, ToEE (part-of(repeatedly)) as well as cRPGs going all the way back to Ultima 1 and Wizardry.
Come up with reasoning as you like, but there are people who "know RPGs" who think DAO's difficulty was fine.

Of those games I would consider the Icewind Dale series harder than BG2, if only because they cut out much of the cheese players could pull in BG2. Black Isle's lead designers for those games actively sought to avoid spells like Project Image and Sequencer because they found them overpowering. (And I agree those spells were overpowered in BG2.)

I think one reason Dragon Age combat requires more management is smarter AI. Playing Throne of Bhaal with Ascension is brutal for the uninitiated because enemies are scripted to use counters for all the popular player tricks. Ditto with the Tactics mod. ToEE's mods are the same. The game becomes waaay harder when AI opponents work the system as if they were players. Not that mods count, of course.

The Baldur's Gate series relies too much on scripted encounters that can only go one or two ways and don't react to the player. Dragon Age does that too, but the enemies are plain smarter. So, as noted at the end of my response to AlanC9, I agree that from a certain viewpoint (maybe most viewpoints?) Dragon Age is more challenging.

[HoonDing]

Most battles in BG are hard because there's so much going on with enemy mages triggering & sequencing spells that one can't see the forest through the trees. But ultimately it comes down to rushing enemies with your über fighters spamming Greater whirlwind while the mages use True sight + Breach/pierce magic/warding whip/etc. & summon planetars.

Or one simply drops some cloudkills & closes the door.

Icewind Dale 2 was 'artificially' hard, with enemies spawning out of thin air in the back of the party mages. *sigh*

In many ways, Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to Icewind Dale 2, with the combination of endless grinding & ambushes. But I find that in Dragon Age tactics are not even needed... potion spamming wins all battles no matter how much one messes around. There are no instakill spells or nasty domination/charm/level drain spells that require one to be one's toes.

Seagloom wrote...

There were battles in the BG series that had so much going on you had to plan further than one or two spells.
Such as the sewer battle, the fight with that party on the second floor of the Den of Seven Veils, that final encounter with the demons guarding Demogorgon's chamber, Draconis (toughest dragon BioWare has done to
date IMO), ect. I'm not going to list them all, but there are several throughout the series.

What was so different about Draconis, other than him being able to turn invisible? Only difference with Firkraag, Saladrex et al. is having to cast True sight. 

Modifié par virumor, 27 mai 2010 - 10:15 .

[Seagloom]

virumor wrote...

What was so different about Draconis, other than him being able to turn invisible? Only difference with Firkraag, Saladrex et al. is having to cast True sight.

Draconis also used Spell Immunity to make that invisibility difficult to tear down, summoned up fodder to distract the party, and dispelled your group's buffs when he was close enough. That was in addition to his habitual use Stoneskin and Mantles. He also healed when dying and was smart enough to stay mobile. There were times he ran just to mess with your party. Every other dragon mindlessly rushes one of your characters and ocassionally stops to use its breath weapon or throw out a weak spell that wastes its turn. Even Abazigal followed that pattern. I used to find that particularly hilarious.

Modifié par Seagloom, 27 mai 2010 - 10:37 .

[HoonDing]

I see... I only remember him turning invisible, but nothing more hardcore. But throughout BG 2 I made it a habit to always cast Creeping Doom on powerful enemy casters, which prevents them from casting.

And at that point of the game one is surely able to cast Timestop, giving enough time to remove all his protections.

Modifié par virumor, 27 mai 2010 - 10:36 .

[Tirigon]

Swordfishtrombone wrote...

I think you should judge the difficulty of a game based on your FIRST playthough, not your n:th.

I think you should judge on repeated playthroughs. For example, I think DAO is quite easy, even on Nightmare difficulty. However, on my first playthrough I found even Easy too hard - not because DAO is a hard game but because of my total ignorance of combat mechanics and good builds.

[Seagloom]

virumor wrote...

I see... I only remember him turning invisible, but nothing more hardcore. But throughout BG 2 I made it a habit to always cast Creeping Doom on powerful enemy casters, which prevents them from casting.

And at that point of the game one is surely able to cast Timestop, giving enough time to remove all his protections.

I liberally used Insect Plague and Creeping Doom too. Those were great spells. Now that you mention Time Stop, Draconis cast that too. He would throw out a Time Stop and then pummel a vulnerable character for the duration. That said, you're right that any mage could likely win the entire fight with one cast of Time Stop and a few Horrid Wiltings or Comets.

Modifié par Seagloom, 27 mai 2010 - 10:47 .

[Tirigon]

Seagloom wrote...

DA takes it easy on the player. Enemies won't lob Mana Clash at you or use Force Field cheese.

Wrong. Today I had a fight were I was FORCED to abuse the "inferno through wall" casting to stand a chance because the enemy used 3 holy smite on my Mage PC to start - even though my PC was out of their sight!!!!, so the first thing in that fight before I even could do anything was my PC being dead and the rest stunned / knocked down and severely wounded.

[soteria]

I confess, after Firkaag the rest of the dragons kinda blended together. I can kinda remember them, but not their names, and I don't really remember one standing out as the hardest. I will say in BG2's favor that Demogogron was harder than any fight in DA:O. Maybe there was some cheap trick to kill him, but I didn't find it, wasn't high enough level at the time to face him directly, and didn't have a convenient save to return to for coming back later.

I guess what I'm saying is that BG2 forced you to do certain things or lose in certain big fights but otherwise was a cakewalk, but DAO is at least mildly challenging in even the simplest of fights even if there are no "MAGIC YOU DO DEATH / BUT I'M IMMUNE TO MAGIC!" super-tough boss battles.

That kinda sums it up for me. Most of the "difficulty" came from save-or-else abilities that had a hard counter. Once you found the counter, it was easy.

[soteria]

Trigon, Mana Clash is not Holy Smite, and templars are scripted to cast it on on enemy mages as their first tactic slot. That's what's supposed to happen when a mage attacks multiple templars--die. It's what templars are trained to do.

[Tirigon]

soteria wrote...

Trigon, Mana Clash is not Holy Smite, and templars are scripted to cast it on on enemy mages as their first tactic slot. That's what's supposed to happen when a mage attacks multiple templars--die. It's what templars are trained to do.

But is it supposed to happen when they can´t see the mage? Cos I knew they do that and I stood back and entered the room with a stealthed rogue  to open with a paralysis / inferno combo from out of sight and they still cast it.

In the end, I shapechanged to bear to have enough hp to survive and stood further back - they casted but didn´t move afterwards so I could burn them all through the wallcast.

It was actually quite funny, except for the 3 reloads until I managed to surviveB)

[Seagloom]

Tirigon wrote...

Seagloom wrote...

DA takes it easy on the player. Enemies won't lob Mana Clash at you or use Force Field cheese.

Wrong. Today I had a fight were I was FORCED to abuse the "inferno through wall" casting to stand a chance because the enemy used 3 holy smite on my Mage PC to start - even though my PC was out of their sight!!!!, so the first thing in that fight before I even could do anything was my PC being dead and the rest stunned / knocked down and severely wounded.

I can't get into specifics on this forum, but if you're referring to the encounter I think you are, I never had trouble with it. I never had to reload and or suffered the loss of party members fighting templars. They were a bit hard in that last fight where you got three of them with mage backup. A bit. Nothing worth pulling hair over.

Modifié par Seagloom, 27 mai 2010 - 11:10 .