77 réponses à ce sujet

[Yrkoon]

Steel Majere343 wrote...


So tell me, where does your pride sit?

Interesting subject.

My pride hangs out on Normal.  No matter what.      By definition, it's the mode that the creators of the game meant it to be.

As for the fun factor-- I'll still stay on normal, but  I'll impose my own challenges if the game is too easy. and try to discover new exploits if the game is too hard

An example  of the former would be to,  say, Solo-run a game.  (You'd be surprized at how much you can discover  about the game's combat system by soloing.  And yes, it does add a whole new element of fun to the game)

On the flipside, If  normal mode is too hard, I'll find myself instinctively power gaming and seizing  on every little engine exploit I can find to give me the fighting edge.  And contrary to one of the main premises of this thread, I do NOT  see this as "limiting" or "less fun"  (since when does challenge = work/not fun?) . 


Lastly, I'm not sure I agree with the  notion of  renaming easy mode "unlimited" and renaming   Hard  mode  "limited".    If a Game's nightmare setting is so hard that only 2 or 3 types of tactics  can  ever be successful, and only a very specific type of party can complete it  then I say  the nightmare setting, and in fact, the entire game design is probably flawed to begin with.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 25 juillet 2010 - 04:41 .

[Templar Vilmon]

I'll set it on easy mode sometimes just to get through certain areas quickly, especially if I'm fighting grunts. I like to kick it up to hard or nightmare for the key battles. One thing I'll say about easy mode is you feel like a total god - and sometimes after a hard day at work I need to just pummel things.

As far as the article about a lot of people playing on easy - well this game is pretty hard compared to a lot of other rpgs on the market. I find it a lot harder than games like Oblivion or Fallout 3, which IMHO are the other standard bearers for the genre. If you're not used to playing these games then I can see it's quite a challenge.

Modifié par Templar Vilmon, 25 juillet 2010 - 06:07 .

[Steel Majere343]

Yrkoon wrote...

Steel Majere343 wrote...


So tell me, where does your pride sit?

Interesting subject.

My pride hangs out on Normal.  No matter what.      By definition, it's the mode that the creators of the game meant it to be.

As for the fun factor-- I'll still stay on normal, but  I'll impose my own challenges if the game is too easy. and try to discover new exploits if the game is too hard

An example  of the former would be to,  say, Solo-run a game.  (You'd be surprized at how much you can discover  about the game's combat system by soloing.  And yes, it does add a whole new element of fun to the game)

On the flipside, If  normal mode is too hard, I'll find myself instinctively power gaming and seizing  on every little engine exploit I can find to give me the fighting edge.  And contrary to one of the main premises of this thread, I do NOT  see this as "limiting" or "less fun"  (since when does challenge = work/not fun?) . 


Lastly, I'm not sure I agree with the  notion of  renaming easy mode "unlimited" and renaming   Hard  mode  "limited".    If a Game's nightmare setting is so hard that only 2 or 3 types of tactics  can  ever be successful, and only a very specific type of party can complete it  then I say  the nightmare setting, and in fact, the entire game design is probably flawed to begin with.

thank you .  i'v found this topic extremely successfull in my game design forums for digipen U.

If i may clarify what i meant by renaming the names of easy and normal; i meant more of a shakespearian concept. A rose by any other name is still a rose, well easy by any other name would still be easy, but would the stigma surrounding it still exist? i think not.

Well overcomming challenge is fun, certainly, but at what cost? hours of trial and error? what is this "playing smart" that people seem to through around like it takes an IQ of a million to understand? Again this game takes no specific smarts to succeed at, it just depends on how much your willing to curb your playstyle. and that is what i mean by more limiting.

Normal is hard for me because i don't meta-game or take advantage of many overpowered abilities. I dont horde pultices, i generally don't have a spirit healer, i don't have many (if ANY) crowd control abilities with my mage (usually prefering to take the out of the way lines like spell bloom and dispel magic). I could play on nightmare too if i wanted, just learn forcefield and get my pultice count up to 1,000, and have a spirit healer. "win button".

So you see it has nothing to do with intellegence or "HARDCORE" ability. games like this do not require skill, everybody can move a rogue around an enemy. everyone can think of the basic placement options that you have. Its not as if you can order your team into some ellaborate trojan horse plan.

You only really have a couple tactical options that do not rely on what abilities you chose. And that is what im talking about here. All you are saying is that you have found a way to complete hard mode in different ways. But im not disputing that that is possible, im saying there are MORE ways on casual.

Those of you saying you miss when normal was hard, that changed for a reason. That would be completely counter productive. Why do that?
Make hard, hard lol. Thats why there are other difficulty levels. I wish casual were normal. normal should be accessable to everyone, if they want more challenge then you bump that up yourself.

But DAO is hugely missleading when it says "Normal- for most people", thats a lie if iv ever heard one. i agree with every review site out there when they said that the game is unbalanced and some fights are simply impossable under certain circumstances.

Yes the majority of the game is more than fine on normal, but there are a select few fights that are just rediculasly hard for a normal difficulty. Sure there are only a few but that is little consolation. If anything it just causes mass confusion to be doing well in one segment of the game, beating down on everything, just to be attacked by wolves or a bunch of critter monsters and be pulverized. Is it fun to be pulverized? maybe to certain crowds.

[KethWolfheart]

I tend to play on either easy or normal for the most part. I prefer the story, characters, role playing, companions, etc. the most. I do enjoy some combat but not to the point that it takes over the game. So I tend to play on easy for most of the "trash" fights and then switch to normal for bosses and special encounters.



On subsequent play through I tend to stick to normal - but it depends on the game as different games determine easy/normal in different ways.



But one thing I do, which I only briefly saw mention of by other posters, is adjust difficulty myself (through self-imposed meta-gaming). For example:



- AOE Spells: I don't like the idea that on easy AOE spells only do half-damage to your own party. So I avoided using them unless my party was out of the effect. Sometimes I might misjudge but overall I pretended how I would do it for real.



- Potions. I hate being a potion addict so they were saved for critical times and even then I would hesitate.



- Companions. I never pick companions based on their class abilities. That removes all the fun. I pick who I like and make do with that. If that means playing things easier than I do.



- Equipment. I only select equipment for power reasons minimally. I never wore a helmet in the game, hated how they looked, nor the mage hats. My mage I am playing right now wears light leather armor as I hate the robes. Plus he feels they provide better protection out in the wilderness than a bathrobe. Overall I pick equipment for looks and practicality. For weapons - well weapons I tend to go all out more, but even there I will destory/sell an "evil" weapon even if it is a better weapon if I am playing a good party.



- Quests. I will skip quests (and hence rewards and XP) if it doesn't mesh with my role-playing for my main character.



- Spells. I go for diversity, themes and role playing. True I will usually at least get at least one heal spell at minimum (but usually heal, group heal, revival), if playing with a Mage, but in general I try to avoid the cookie-cutter win tactic. I prefer trying to find clever uses for what spells I do follow.



Anyhow I find the "casual" mode more relaxing and enjoyable. All that being said I also enjoy pumping up special end battles to hard, or even nightmare, just so I can test out how my character and party, shabby as they are, might do.

[ElectricWizard]

I play my characters on hard or nightmare. I actually played my latest 2-handed warrior on "normal" because I like the idea of him taking things down easily, but if I know the game is supposed to be more epic at a certain point, I possibly turn it up to hard again.

[Splindicator]

Interesting topic since I just responded to the "difficulty spikes" one and found this to be the biggest problem with the game for multiple reasons.

First I don't find anything wrong with people wanting to play on Casual.  However, I don't think you should ever really get stuck on Normal mode either, especially if you've played games all your life.  The biggest thing with games for me these days, especially long games like this one, is not getting stuck or reloading...reloading...reloading.  I think that's why people play many games on easy/casual.

For this game, I started on Normal because I've played many bioware games and just thought it would be the best first experience.  I think Normal is slightly broken on the console versions.  The learning curve is a bit too high and leads to high frustration eventually.  You definitely run into many long reloads and stuck moments, but not right away, and not within the first 8 hours even.  By that time you should "know" how to play the game and overcome every situation in combat, but really have no clue because up to that point it hasn't be so hard.  So you haven't really learned to fight yet other then just let everyone do their thing.  Eventually you run into some big frustating walls abrutply, and switching to Casual to get un-stuck, at least for me, felt like cheating.  Once you get past that wall, leaving it on Casual, everything is too easy.  Yet certain Normal moments are a bit too hard?  Makes no sense.

I will say, until I ran into these walls, I pretty much just wanted to "play" the game, and didn't focus on too many of the details, other then my character, especially the tactics section.  I thought my party had "self preservation."  Meaning they'd take a healing poutice if need be.  They do not, and it's not so easy to micro-manage them on the console versions.  Eventually, when I started messing with this stuff, just giving them a tactic to heal themselves helped.  Up until those walls, it felt fine, but man, when you hit them, it's like...what happened?

One thing I noticed switching to Casual in one instance, the battle went from a hard monster and many henchmen, to just the hard monster.  Probably other factors too, but going form many vs 4 to 1 vs 4 was a huge difference.  And kind of disappointing even.  Not satisfying, not challenging, but better then being stuck.

Since I just finished the game, I started playing it again...on Normal still.  In the back of my mind, I'm wondering if I will get stuck, or have I learned enough about the game to either avoid certain situations until my characters are more powerful, or will my playing tactics be good enough to overcome those situations.  Honestly, I don't even think this should be a question for Normal, I should be playing on the next higher difficulty.  Mostly I find normal just about right though, and then there are those, "where did this come from" moments.

[Steel Majere343]

ElectricWizard wrote...

I play my characters on hard or nightmare. I actually played my latest 2-handed warrior on "normal" because I like the idea of him taking things down easily, but if I know the game is supposed to be more epic at a certain point, I possibly turn it up to hard again.

now this i understand and relate to.

Not that i dont understand the other points but this is close to home for me.
The one and only gripe i have about knocking down difficulty levels is that some moments are ment to be epic and you don't really feel that without the incredable difficulty.

I mentioned a dragon earlier and i bring that back up here. Although its no slash = dead enemy even on casual it does take away some of the feel. Beating it on easy, sure it can be tough depending on what you have with you and who at the time, but there is nothing quit like wittling down its health in a long drawn out battle to FINALLY drain that last bit out of its health bar, half your team either dead or with serious injuries and the other half completely out of stamina, tired out of their minds.

The other bosses,meh, i didnt feel much of a diffrence on easy versus casual with the level of epicness felt.

The reason is because those were mostly required to do, the fact that the dragon is optional makes it all the more appealing, even if you die one thousand times, its an optional fight so its difficulty is merited.

Fights that players don't have to do can and in some cases (such as here) should be off the wall hard.
But when it comes to the storyline itself...well
 
lets put it this way, i dont know how many of you are studying game design or any other form of game technology but you probly know what i mean when i say that i'm a fan of the beatin path playstyle.

This means that i like the idea of having the "path" or storyline relatively easy to walk through, not so easy as to not be challenged AT ALL but easy to where maybe  one party member dies on a boss fight, maybe.

But off the beatin path, if a player journeys away from the storyline i like to throw in challenges. Even side quests should be subject to this. They are not mandatory, you can ignore it all together.

That part i like, but things like random encounters me and bioware have entirely diffrent opinions on. They noted that some boss fights are only available through random encounters to "keep players on their guard". While this sounds nice, in execution its horrid to me.

[Steel Majere343]

Splindicator wrote...

Interesting topic since I just responded to the "difficulty spikes" one and found this to be the biggest problem with the game for multiple reasons.

First I don't find anything wrong with people wanting to play on Casual.  However, I don't think you should ever really get stuck on Normal mode either, especially if you've played games all your life.  The biggest thing with games for me these days, especially long games like this one, is not getting stuck or reloading...reloading...reloading.  I think that's why people play many games on easy/casual.

For this game, I started on Normal because I've played many bioware games and just thought it would be the best first experience.  I think Normal is slightly broken on the console versions.  The learning curve is a bit too high and leads to high frustration eventually.  You definitely run into many long reloads and stuck moments, but not right away, and not within the first 8 hours even.  By that time you should "know" how to play the game and overcome every situation in combat, but really have no clue because up to that point it hasn't be so hard.  So you haven't really learned to fight yet other then just let everyone do their thing.  Eventually you run into some big frustating walls abrutply, and switching to Casual to get un-stuck, at least for me, felt like cheating.  Once you get past that wall, leaving it on Casual, everything is too easy.  Yet certain Normal moments are a bit too hard?  Makes no sense.

I will say, until I ran into these walls, I pretty much just wanted to "play" the game, and didn't focus on too many of the details, other then my character, especially the tactics section.  I thought my party had "self preservation."  Meaning they'd take a healing poutice if need be.  They do not, and it's not so easy to micro-manage them on the console versions.  Eventually, when I started messing with this stuff, just giving them a tactic to heal themselves helped.  Up until those walls, it felt fine, but man, when you hit them, it's like...what happened?

One thing I noticed switching to Casual in one instance, the battle went from a hard monster and many henchmen, to just the hard monster.  Probably other factors too, but going form many vs 4 to 1 vs 4 was a huge difference.  And kind of disappointing even.  Not satisfying, not challenging, but better then being stuck.

Since I just finished the game, I started playing it again...on Normal still.  In the back of my mind, I'm wondering if I will get stuck, or have I learned enough about the game to either avoid certain situations until my characters are more powerful, or will my playing tactics be good enough to overcome those situations.  Honestly, I don't even think this should be a question for Normal, I should be playing on the next higher difficulty.  Mostly I find normal just about right though, and then there are those, "where did this come from" moments.

my thoughts EXACTLY, almost to a T.

Thats exactly what my issue is with normal here. Instead of truly enjoying the game on normal i am constantly worried about up comming fights that i may or may not get stuck in.

[Spaghetti_Ninja]

It's awesome that this game has such distinct difficulty levels. That way, complete nubs can enjoy the rich story and characters and cruise through it easily, and those enjoying to be challenged can switch to Nightmare.



If more people play Easy than Nightmare, so be it, won't keep me up at night.



As long as future games will continue to have the Nightmare option.

[soteria]

follis2 wrote...

Therefore I also hate it when games force you to play through at least once in order to unlock the hardest level.

Having to play through twice to unlock Insanity on ME was just annoying. Usually I feel like I haven't *really* beaten a game until I beat it on the highest difficulty.

The stark contrast between the "nightmare is too easy" and "normal is too hard" crowds never ceases to amaze me. I often wonder what Bioware makes of it. Before release, I remember they repeatedly said that Nightmare was soul-crushingly hard and that no one would be beating it without frequent pausing, an optimized group, and liberal potion use. Obviously, it didn't work out like that for those of us that actually play on Nightmare. I've never seen them comment on the difficulty since release, so I'm curious to see what they do in DA2.

SteelMajere343 wrote...

If i may clarify what i meant by renaming the names of easy and normal; i meant more of a shakespearian concept. A rose by any other name is still a rose, well easy by any other name would still be easy, but would the stigma surrounding it still exist? i think not.

It depends. It would still be the "easiest" difficulty and would probably be perceived as such by the players who currently attach a stigma to "easy." What you're suggesting has been done in a good number of games, especially in the RTS and FPS genres. The question would be, "How hard is the game in the first place?" The understanding, I believe, is that Normal is the "recommended" setting for first-timers.

Maybe another way to design difficulty settings would be to allow players to pick and choose from various options, such as friendly fire, enemy resistances, player attack/defense bonuses, etc. Given the large amount of QA involved in testing so many variable settings, I think it's unlikely that we'll see such a thing.

Normal is hard for me because i don't meta-game or take advantage of many overpowered abilities. I dont horde pultices, i generally don't have a spirit healer, i don't have many (if ANY) crowd control abilities with my mage (usually prefering to take the out of the way lines like spell bloom and dispel magic). I could play on nightmare too if i wanted, just learn forcefield and get my pultice count up to 1,000, and have a spirit healer. "win button".

Are you saying that you personally would have to adopt such tactics to win on nightmare or that they're necessary for everyone? The latter is patently false. I'm sure you're aware that nightmare has been soloed by every standard class and build, ruling out the presence of the "OP" mage abilities you listed. I play on nightmare without any poultices for personal reasons, and I'm aware of a number of players who play on nightmare with their own limitations on potion use (or they use a mod to make it harder in the first place).

So you see it has nothing to do with intellegence or "HARDCORE" ability. games like this do not require skill, everybody can move a rogue around an enemy. everyone can think of the basic placement options that you have. Its not as if you can order your team into some ellaborate trojan horse plan.

I disagree. I think that the contrast between "nightmare is too easy" and normal is too hard," and then the odd "easy is just impossible" should make it obvious that some disparity in skill exists. As I said above, the tactics you seem to think are necessary to succeed on nightmare aren't needed, at all. You suggested in your OP that you think pride is keeping people from playing on easy like they maybe ought to. Fair enough. Is it possible that your pride is keeping you from admitting that skill is a factor in this game? The obvious rejoinder is that it's my pride that makes me insist that I'm better, but I believe the evidence backs me up in this case.

But DAO is hugely missleading when it says "Normal- for most people", thats a lie if iv ever heard one. i agree with every review site out there when they said that the game is unbalanced and some fights are simply impossable under certain circumstances.

Which fights are those? Before you answer with possible spoilers, I'd suggest you follow the link in my signature.

[Steel Majere343]

soteria wrote...

follis2 wrote...
Therefore I also hate it when games force you to play through at least once in order to unlock the hardest level.

Having to play through twice to unlock Insanity on ME was just annoying. Usually I feel like I haven't *really* beaten a game until I beat it on the highest difficulty.
The stark contrast between the "nightmare is too easy" and "normal is too hard" crowds never ceases to amaze me. I often wonder what Bioware makes of it. Before release, I remember they repeatedly said that Nightmare was soul-crushingly hard and that no one would be beating it without frequent pausing, an optimized group, and liberal potion use. Obviously, it didn't work out like that for those of us that actually play on Nightmare. I've never seen them comment on the difficulty since release, so I'm curious to see what they do in DA2.

SteelMajere343 wrote...
If i may clarify what i meant by renaming the names of easy and normal; i meant more of a shakespearian concept. A rose by any other name is still a rose, well easy by any other name would still be easy, but would the stigma surrounding it still exist? i think not.

It depends. It would still be the "easiest" difficulty and would probably be perceived as such by the players who currently attach a stigma to "easy." What you're suggesting has been done in a good number of games, especially in the RTS and FPS genres. The question would be, "How hard is the game in the first place?" The understanding, I believe, is that Normal is the "recommended" setting for first-timers.
Maybe another way to design difficulty settings would be to allow players to pick and choose from various options, such as friendly fire, enemy resistances, player attack/defense bonuses, etc. Given the large amount of QA involved in testing so many variable settings, I think it's unlikely that we'll see such a thing.

Normal is hard for me because i don't meta-game or take advantage of many overpowered abilities. I dont horde pultices, i generally don't have a spirit healer, i don't have many (if ANY) crowd control abilities with my mage (usually prefering to take the out of the way lines like spell bloom and dispel magic). I could play on nightmare too if i wanted, just learn forcefield and get my pultice count up to 1,000, and have a spirit healer. "win button".

Are you saying that you personally would have to adopt such tactics to win on nightmare or that they're necessary for everyone? The latter is patently false. I'm sure you're aware that nightmare has been soloed by every standard class and build, ruling out the presence of the "OP" mage abilities you listed. I play on nightmare without any poultices for personal reasons, and I'm aware of a number of players who play on nightmare with their own limitations on potion use (or they use a mod to make it harder in the first place).

So you see it has nothing to do with intellegence or "HARDCORE" ability. games like this do not require skill, everybody can move a rogue around an enemy. everyone can think of the basic placement options that you have. Its not as if you can order your team into some ellaborate trojan horse plan.

I disagree. I think that the contrast between "nightmare is too easy" and normal is too hard," and then the odd "easy is just impossible" should make it obvious that some disparity in skill exists. As I said above, the tactics you seem to think are necessary to succeed on nightmare aren't needed, at all. You suggested in your OP that you think pride is keeping people from playing on easy like they maybe ought to. Fair enough. Is it possible that your pride is keeping you from admitting that skill is a factor in this game? The obvious rejoinder is that it's my pride that makes me insist that I'm better, but I believe the evidence backs me up in this case.

But DAO is hugely missleading when it says "Normal- for most people", thats a lie if iv ever heard one. i agree with every review site out there when they said that the game is unbalanced and some fights are simply impossable under certain circumstances.

Which fights are those? Before you answer with possible spoilers, I'd suggest you follow the link in my signature.

very well put counter points! . ill reply to the ones directed towards me as i really have no note worthy opinion of whether or not nightmare is unlocked after or before a first playthrough (i never play games on the hardest difficulty).

I wasnt really trying to say you need those tactics to win, excuse me if it sounded as such. No, no, i was just saying anyone could play  on nightmare if they are willing to do whatever it takes to play at that level. Which brings me directly into your next point of saying that skill is involved.

Thinking on your point i have to admit it does seem like there is a skill boundry setting players apart, as i could not solo nightmare i don't think.

But if there is skill involved it is transparent to me, i don't see where skill would fit in a strategy game really. Intellegence yes, maybe a tiny bit. Break this game down and what components do we have?

We have character placement, knowing what skills to learn, and knowing how to build each character. I could actually go on to counter myself by saying that chess certainly requires skill yet ALL that is is character placement, meaning DAO would take significantly MORE skill to play.

Even when considering this i still can't pin exactly where skill comes into play in DAO. Your point makes me believe some skill is likely required, but in what area? Surely everyone knows where to have their team stand, surely everyone can look at a skill page and deem which abilities are more usefull. I don't deem those skills so much as common sense.

Perhaps pride may bias my own opinion some, im not immune to human emotion (on teusdays ). But i still say that if i did not care how i played the game and solely wanted to beat the game on nightmare. I could do so. What i think the problem is is that people don't always want to play at maximum efficiency all the time. The majority of players could beat nightmare by just using those things i mentioned above (spirit healer, pultices, etc).

Hell if i wanted, get TWO spirit healers, 2,000 pultices and a whole mess of CC attacks. That doesn't sound appealing to me at all though, so that is why i'm saying maybe its not AS MUCH skill based as some people may believe.

Modifié par Steel Majere343, 26 juillet 2010 - 08:27 .

[Vaeliorin]

soteria wrote...
The stark contrast between the "nightmare is
too easy" and "normal is too hard" crowds never ceases to amaze me. I
often wonder what Bioware makes of it. Before release, I remember they
repeatedly said that Nightmare was soul-crushingly hard and that no one
would be beating it without frequent pausing, an optimized group, and
liberal potion use. Obviously, it didn't work out like that for those
of us that actually play on Nightmare. I've never seen them comment on
the difficulty since release, so I'm curious to see what they do in
DA2.

To be entirely frank, I've come to the conclusion that there are folks at Bioware who aren't exactly hardcore when it comes to game difficulty.  The comments about how hard DA was supposed to be, along with the atrocious builds they generally give to NPCs in their games (seriously, the recommended level up settings in games like NWN are horrible) lead me to believe that they don't go out of their way to make the best builds possible (which is perhaps intentional, I suppose.)

I don't say that to disparage them, by any means, it's just something I've noticed.

Steel Majere343 wrote...
Hell if i wanted, get TWO spirit healers, 2,000 pultices and a whole mess of CC attacks. That doesn't sound appealing to me at all though, so that is why i'm saying maybe its not AS MUCH skill based as some people may believe.

I think you overestimate the usefulness of spirit healers.  You get 2 extra heals, one of which (Group Heal) I rarely use, mostly because I tend to let my mages (when they're not the PC) run on auto-pilot.

[Steel Majere343]

Vaeliorin wrote...

soteria wrote...
The stark contrast between the "nightmare is
too easy" and "normal is too hard" crowds never ceases to amaze me. I
often wonder what Bioware makes of it. Before release, I remember they
repeatedly said that Nightmare was soul-crushingly hard and that no one
would be beating it without frequent pausing, an optimized group, and
liberal potion use. Obviously, it didn't work out like that for those
of us that actually play on Nightmare. I've never seen them comment on
the difficulty since release, so I'm curious to see what they do in
DA2.

To be entirely frank, I've come to the conclusion that there are folks at Bioware who aren't exactly hardcore when it comes to game difficulty.  The comments about how hard DA was supposed to be, along with the atrocious builds they generally give to NPCs in their games (seriously, the recommended level up settings in games like NWN are horrible) lead me to believe that they don't go out of their way to make the best builds possible (which is perhaps intentional, I suppose.)

I don't say that to disparage them, by any means, it's just something I've noticed.

Steel Majere343 wrote...
Hell if i wanted, get TWO spirit healers, 2,000 pultices and a whole mess of CC attacks. That doesn't sound appealing to me at all though, so that is why i'm saying maybe its not AS MUCH skill based as some people may believe.

I think you overestimate the usefulness of spirit healers.  You get 2 extra heals, one of which (Group Heal) I rarely use, mostly because I tend to let my mages (when they're not the PC) run on auto-pilot.

you are significantly downgrading the usefullness of spirit healers. iv played wih one and one without and the diffrence is inbelievable. its not just "2 heals".

lifeward saves your tank from death, and revival is obviously integral. group heal is great when both regeneration and heal are down.

[Vaeliorin]

Steel Majere343 wrote...

Vaeliorin wrote...

soteria wrote...
The stark contrast between the "nightmare is
too easy" and "normal is too hard" crowds never ceases to amaze me. I
often wonder what Bioware makes of it. Before release, I remember they
repeatedly said that Nightmare was soul-crushingly hard and that no one
would be beating it without frequent pausing, an optimized group, and
liberal potion use. Obviously, it didn't work out like that for those
of us that actually play on Nightmare. I've never seen them comment on
the difficulty since release, so I'm curious to see what they do in
DA2.

To be entirely frank, I've come to the conclusion that there are folks at Bioware who aren't exactly hardcore when it comes to game difficulty.  The comments about how hard DA was supposed to be, along with the atrocious builds they generally give to NPCs in their games (seriously, the recommended level up settings in games like NWN are horrible) lead me to believe that they don't go out of their way to make the best builds possible (which is perhaps intentional, I suppose.)

I don't say that to disparage them, by any means, it's just something I've noticed.

Steel Majere343 wrote...
Hell if i wanted, get TWO spirit healers, 2,000 pultices and a whole mess of CC attacks. That doesn't sound appealing to me at all though, so that is why i'm saying maybe its not AS MUCH skill based as some people may believe.

I think you overestimate the usefulness of spirit healers.  You get 2 extra heals, one of which (Group Heal) I rarely use, mostly because I tend to let my mages (when they're not the PC) run on auto-pilot.

you are significantly downgrading the usefullness of spirit healers. iv played wih one and one without and the diffrence is inbelievable. its not just "2 heals".

lifeward saves your tank from death, and revival is obviously integral. group heal is great when both regeneration and heal are down.

Lifeward rarely gets cast in my experience, and I always set up my mages to cast it if Ally Health < 50% (it's after both heal and regenerate in the queue, however) and revival I doubt I've used half a dozen times since my first playthrough (and I didn't use it often in my first playthrough, probably less than 10 times, several of which were when a certain sidequest auto-killed 3 of my party members.)

[DragonRacer13]

I've been gaming most of my life and I am a fan of the casual/easy settings. When I was younger, that was because I was still learning the mechanics of gaming and easy mode kept things from getting too frustrating. Now that I am married and have a fullt-ime job, I don't have as much time to game, so I don't want to spend my precious little gaming time throwing myself uselessly at some impossible boss battle over and over again. Plus, after spending 8 hours feeling like I'm smashing my head against a wall at work, the last thing I want to do is come home to the same experience.

I game to have fun. For some people, hard challenges are fun. Why else would puzzles and crosswords be popular? But for me, fun is feeling like I am awesome and powerful as I slice through darkspawn and fun is experiencing the world and my companions and the storylines and focusing on those things rather than fretting over how I'm leveling the characters or spamming potions so I can walk ten feet without constantly dying.

But to each his own. Gaming is a personal experience and should be treated that way. What is fun for one might not be fun for another. And I especially don't think it matters with an offline game... not as if we are competing with each other in an online deathmatch or something (I hear my husband yelling and screaming with Modern Warfare 2 and honestly wonder if he's truly having fun or de-stressing by putting himself through that after work...).

[wanderon]

Steel Majere343 wrote...


you are significantly downgrading the usefullness of spirit healers. iv played wih one and one without and the diffrence is inbelievable. its not just "2 heals".

lifeward saves your tank from death, and revival is obviously integral. group heal is great when both regeneration and heal are down.

I think this points to one of the flaws in your arguments - you assume becuase you find something in the game: difficult or easy - useful or not so useful etc that everyone else must find it so as well. You seem to assume that what you have learned or discovered about playing the game are exactly the same things everyone else has learned and that everyone is either playing more or less the same way you are or that they are playing in specific manners that you re aware of and choose not to play (overpowered spells, optomized characters etc) and you more or less discount the possibility that they could be playing in ways you have not thought of yet or other ways you may choose not to play (pausing every few seconds to reassess and reissue commands for instance or always scouting ahead under stealth or the manner in which they allocate items or any number of other nuances that can effect how the game plays out at different difficulty levels).

I think you are also mostly oversimplifying the huge range of options present in the game and the vast number of choices that are made effecting how the game plays from minute to minute and encounter to encounter in order to make your point that the game is in the end very simple with limited options (which I mostly disagree with).

To be more specific I think those choices include:
who comes along on each encounter,
how they are developed along the way.
how they are outfitted,
what specific actions each one may take in battle 
how lucky or unlucky they are at it,
how often the player pauses and what he does at each pause,
whether he tries to draw enemies out or charges in,
what kind of spells are chosen at every step and how effective or inneffective his casting of them is based on:
his stats,
the enemy stats,
which enemies ir freindlies he targets first, second, third and then:
the outcome of each of those choices as well as other action choices for each and every party member,

and as the battle continues:
what enemies have been taken out & which are still functioning
and how effective each one of THEIR actions is,
who makes their resistance check and who doesn't on both sides of the ball,
do new enemies get uncovered or do they not, 
how tactics have been set or not set,
what level you and the enemy are (which may effect the number of tactics available) etc etc etc.

Start changing these things to something else at any point in that list and all of a sudden you have a different scenario on your hands which may then lead to the whole "My kingdom for want of a horseshoe nail" proverb or perhaps to success. (YMMV)

( http://en.wikipedia....a_Nail_(proverb )

[soteria]

SteelMajere wrote...

But if there is skill involved it is transparent to me, i don't see where skill would fit in a strategy game really. Intellegence yes, maybe a tiny bit. Break this game down and what components do we have?

We have character placement, knowing what skills to learn, and knowing how to build each character. I could actually go on to counter myself by saying that chess certainly requires skill yet ALL that is is character placement, meaning DAO would take significantly MORE skill to play.

Even when considering this i still can't pin exactly where skill comes into play in DAO. Your point makes me believe some skill is likely required, but in what area? Surely everyone knows where to have their team stand, surely everyone can look at a skill page and deem which abilities are more usefull. I don't deem those skills so much as common sense.

I think there's a difference in these games between knowing and doing. A friend of mine is among the top ranked Warcraft 3 players on Battle.net. Now, I consider myself to be fairly good at strategy games, but he blows me out of the water, even in single player games. I told him that I have a hard time beating the hardest AI 1v1, and he just laughed and showed me how he could beat the AI using only heroes (I wouldn't have even believed that was possible). Even though I watched him do it, and technically speaking I *know* what the strategy is and how to execute it, in practice I don't do the right things. Even after I watched his demonstration, it was still an impossible feat for me.

It must be the same in DA:O, because I get comments like this on some of my videos: "even on casual its still impossible. i can handle the arch**** its the darkspawn that keep killing my healers." That's an actual quote of a comment on my Archdemon video--and the video shows how to avoid fighting any darkspawn at all in that fight. It seems clear that there's a gap between knowing the strategy and executing it.

Vaeliorin wrote...

To be entirely frank, I've come to the conclusion that there are folks at Bioware who aren't exactly hardcore when it comes to game difficulty. The comments about how hard DA was supposed to be, along with the atrocious builds they generally give to NPCs in their games (seriously, the recommended level up settings in games like NWN are horrible) lead me to believe that they don't go out of their way to make the best builds possible (which is perhaps intentional, I suppose.)

It certainly seems like they can't be too "hardcore." I keep on saying I'd be willing to help them test the game, free of charge, to give them a different perspective... ahem.

follis2 wrote...

One other indicator that Dragon Age certainly requires skills is that you noticeably get better the more you play. On my first playthroughs I struggled to get through even the origin stories without reloading all the time whereas I now breeze through them. I guess that's also why people start complaining about nightmare being too easy. They simply have become better at the game, so good in fact that they don¨'t find it challenging anymore, just like a gamer can become tired of a racing game because it is no longer challenging.

It's true that any game will become easy with practice. I found the learning curve in DA:O to be steep, but exceptionally short. Halfway through my second game I bumped it up to nightmare, and hardly noticed a difference. IMO, it should have taken a little longer to master the hardest difficulty.

[soteria]

@wanderon

Although I frequently find myself disagreeing with you... good points.

[Yrkoon]

Yeah, I've never in my life used Life ward.  And I only very rarely use mass heal.
For me, once I'm about halfway through the game, I'm no longer concerned about "staying alive"    My focus is more on "destroying the enemy as quickly as possible".  And as far as that goes, you're gimping your party if you use your mage as a full-time  medic on the battle field.  Wynne should be nuking those darkspawn just like Morrigan or anyone else in your party would.

But back on topic, the more I think about the notion that  Easy mode = Unlimited, and Hard =  Limited, the more I  disagree with it.   It's human nature to find  a tactic that works, then keep doing it.    This is going to happen regardless of the difficulty setting of a game.  

 And as far as people not using certain  companions or party setups due to the difficulty setting....   I've never heard  anyone say such a thing.  Again, if you're playing on nightmare and feel you HAVE to take a healer and 2000 healing pots to make it through, then you have no business playing on nightmare, and  in this case,  it means the only  limitations here are the ones  you're placing on  yourself.


Lastly:

Well overcomming challenge is fun, certainly, but at what cost? hours of trial and error?

Yes?

in my 15+ years of gaming, the most memorable  gaming moments for me are the epic battles that took me hours to finally conquer.  That's the thrill of Gaming.  


 

what is this "playing smart" that people seem to through around like it takes an IQ of a million to understand? Again this game takes no specific smarts to succeed at, it just depends on how much your willing to curb your playstyle. and that is what i mean by more limiting.

No,  Playing smart is being a tactician.  A battlefield general.  It takes a specific mindset which has very little to do with intelligence in the classic sense of the term.  It has more to do with experience and learning from past mistakes..  If you just took on a Dragon and it  BBQ'd your party, then "playing smart" dictates that the next time you face that dragon, you remember to bring along a bunch of Greater warmth balms  (for example).  But it has nothing to do with game limitations (you can easily  still kill that dragon without greater warmth balms.)

Playing smart dictates that you don't send your mage in  to melee with that Revanent.  Playing smart means you experiment with the different gear  in the game and see  what works best and when, then remembering  the results.  Playing smart means  not repeating the same tactic  if it failed you horribly the first time.

Playing smart means you know that there's a dozen ways to  deal with ANY encounter on ANY difficulty setting in this game.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 26 juillet 2010 - 02:25 .

[DWSmiley]

Vaeliorin wrote...

[I think you overestimate the usefulness of spirit healers.  You get 2 extra heals, one of which (Group Heal) I rarely use, mostly because I tend to let my mages (when they're not the PC) run on auto-pilot.

Indeed.  Even if a newbie had access to infinite healing they would not make it through a nightmare play.  You can't always be healing.  At some point you have to attack and at other points your characters are incapacitated.

Taking a party through normal vs. nightmare depends on what one enjoys.  If you enjoy learning the best tactics and how to build the strongest characters, as I do, then you end up playing nightmare.  It's impressive if you can figure that all out yourself but I just read the posts of the more knowledgeable players.    If you don't enjoy that then nightmare will be no fun and fun is what it's all about.

Soloing requires more than just reading the right posts, though.  One needs careful observation of all the details of combat situations, a very good sense of options, and (presumably) the patience to try, try again until the right tactics are achieved.  I assume I could do that if I really wanted to but I don't.  However, I appreciate the sense of satisfaction (not superiority) that motivates some to do it.  To each their own.

Modifié par DWSmiley, 26 juillet 2010 - 02:07 .

[DWSmiley]

follis2 wrote...

I do agree with you about the learning curve in Dragon Age not being long enough for those who want a lasting challenge. I played the most realistic rally simulation ever made, Richard Burns Rally, regularly for about 2 years. But I never felt I really mastered that game although of course I improved. I am not saying that it should take 2 years to master Dragon Age on nightmare but it could definitely have been even harder for it to remain a challenging game for longer. 

Reading this thread has made me all the more sympathetic to the devs.  People bring to these games such a wide range of expectations and interest (and, yes, ability to some extent).  But it does seem they missed more on the upper end of challenge than the lower.  Ideally, they would recruit some of the soloists as game testers in the future though whether that makes commercial sense depends on how many are looking for a greater challenge.  It would be interesting to know how decisions are made on the cost/benefit ratio of more challenge scaling vs. less.

One thing I find no fault with is having npcs who are not min/maxed.  It's fun for some of us to develop the strongest pc possible but companions should be more realistic, if that is the right word, which typically means a somewhat more balanced set of attributes.  For instance, just because strength is by far the best attribute for two-handers, that doesn't mean Oghren ought to be max strength when recruited.

[Splindicator]

Yrkoon wrote...
 the most memorable  gaming moments for me are the epic battles that took me hours to finally conquer.  That's the thrill of Gaming.  .

Definitely agree with this.  There were a few battles in the game(normal mode) where I did not think I would win, but I did feel like I had a chance and kept at it, despite the horrible load times.  You do feel farily satisfyied after winning one of these.

The problem was, the two or three unavoidable battles where my party was wiped out before I could do much.  Not wanting to get in the stuck for hours or even load an old save game to replay parts, I put it on Casual.  Fearing I'd run into more of this type of battle, long load times, and frustration, I left it that way for a little while and found combat completely boring not even requiring effort.  At this point the game becomes just about talking to people.  So I switched back.  Mostly it was fine after a certain point.

Playing the game again, so I'll see if those "stuck" moments reappear.  As people have said, mabye I've just learned enough now that those battles won't be show stoppers.

Going back to the original point of this topic, Normal shouldn't have any show-stopping, difficulty switching moments imo.  And I don't mean dieing from poor play or bad strategy.  You should be able to overcome them on your first/only playthrough without downgrading, especially after 8+ hours of play.  Might take some time, but not impossible.  If you've played the game 2-3 times, I'm sure normal is a breeze.  Maybe for some, the first time was a breeze at these spots, but I had several where I didn't feel I had a chance.