Let me first, to repurpose Tolstoy, say that great games are all alike; every poor game is poor in its own way. So the fact that I'm talking about problems more than praise is because everyone knows and can point to the great things in DAO. The characters, the storytelling, much of the world, most of the voice acting, etc. Lets take that as a given.
I hope the devs take the following as it is meant; How I think a very good game with the potential for greatness could have met that potential. Here are four issues in ascending order of importance andifficulty to fix:
First, a minor matter of preference. If you're going to make difficulties called "hard" and "nightmare", you really have to make them difficult. I realize that not everyone has the same skill level so I'll even ignore "hard" being easier than I feel it should be. But "nightmare"? Really, this needs to be made a lot more difficult.
Second, moving forward with games not using the DnD license was the right decision. It allows a great deal more freedom and control. But you have to balance things better. The good part of using the DnD license as in Neverwinter Nights 2 is that they've done most of the balancing for you. But in DAO, some supposed prestige classes are useless, like Shapeshifting. Specializations should make you more powerful but using Shapeshifting is actually greatly detrimental. Which is too bad because it's a great idea. You need to make sure that all these things work at least moderately well.
The next two are the most important.
Third, social skills and party member stats are not used nearly enough in dialogue with NPCs or quest events, which is a step backwards from NWN2 and expansions. Right now the great majority of dialogue and so forth is the same whether or not you are a stupid brute who cant do anything but swing a sword or a brilliant mage who knows everything there is about survival and herbalism. Your stats and skills (and party members) should open or close far, far more dialogue options. You see it occasionally but much too rarely.
Lastly, Bioware has clearly internalized how important a diverse group of interesting characters in your party are. The stories of your companions are very well done. HOWEVER, it is way, way, way, way too easy to get their attitudes towards you very high, very quickly, and far, far, far, far too easy to avoid upsetting them. The affinity increases from gifts and camp dialogue are far too high and happen far too quickly. Decreases from dialogue are too low and too easy to avoid. The affinity increases and decreases from actual, you know, actions in the world are far too rare and far too low.
In other words, you can find a companion and plop them in your camp and basically never take them out of camp, and yet they can pretty easily be turned into someone who will share their biggest secrets and dreams with you, and who is willing to die for you or declare you their soulmate. Which is ridiculous. In order to reach that state you should have to bring them with you almost everywhere for almost as long as they are available in your party. There should be a lot more +/- responses to your actual actions and those should be of greater magnitude.
For example, Leilana is in love with my character and yet if I hire an "escort" in a brothel all that happens is -1 from her? Really? Hey, I'm glad there was at least something since I half expected no response but it should be more like -10. Nobody cared one way or the other than I killed an honorable knight in a "duel"? Nobody cared one way or the other how I handled the end of the werewolf/elf war? Nobody cares one way or the other about far too many things.
On first glance this might seem trivial, but it is not. The interactions between party members is of paramount importance in a game like this, and has been so since Planescape: Torment through NWN2 and expansions. Making it so easy to unlock all the party dialogue and romances and quests and such while it is almost impossible to annoy them defeats much of the purpose of this party system and turns what should be the games greatest strength into a neutral at best.
In the future, affinity increases from gifts and most dialogue need to be much less, some of that dialogue should have stat/skill pre-requisites, and affinity increases/decreases from actions should be much more frequent and of greater magnitude.
You want this sort of thing to be something that builds and flows naturally through the game, not something tacked on where you can just throw some items at the character and blindly click through their dialogue while never taking
them out of camp. I'd point to Dak'kon in Torment and much of the stuff in NWN2 as good examples. If NWN2 was like DAO, you could have gotten both Bishop and Elanee to be your staunch companions at the same time just by chatting them up during camp.
To summarize what I'm saying about companion affinity in one succint message: It should not be possible to reach a high affinity (and the resultant bonuses and dialogue options) through camp and gift interaction, it should require them to be in your actual party for a long time in order to get (what should be) more frequent and higher
magnitude shifts in affinity from things that happen (quests, decisions, etc) during actual play.
Positive and negative shifts should happen organically from your playstyle and choices, not arbitrarily and unnaturally from artificial effort during camp. It is a key thing to make this sort of game work better. Critical, really.
As I said, this should not be taken to mean I don't think DAO is a very good game. Just that the ways it is good are obvious and true of most very good games while the ways it needs to be improved are specific to its faults.
edited to fix some layout problems
Modifié par AgenTBC, 09 novembre 2009 - 11:47 .
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