77 réponses à ce sujet

[errant_knight]

Well, I found that I had to move up pretty quickly as I became more profficient with the tactical combat. I played easy for the first game while I was figuring it out--I'd never played combat before. Halfway through my second game, I found that it was TOO easy and swithched to normal. It wasn't long before I upped it to hard, and now I always play on nightmare--and sometimes that's too easy. I don't find it a different experience, as a need to move up to have the same experience. I do make frequent use of the pause to arrange my tactics, heal, etc. If one was trying to play in real time, which really isn't intended, then the more casual levels would be necessary for most people, I think.

I should probably note that I enjoy combat that's a nail biter, and I don't play a PC who's godlike, but a person who's struggling to succeed in a difficult situation. I find it more interesting that way.

Modifié par errant_knight, 26 juillet 2010 - 04:48 .

[Sir Pounce-a-lot]

I played it on the "Normal" difficulty.  I never tried any of the others.  I figure that normal is the most realistic to the Dragon Age Universe.

[Addai]

I generally play on Easy. I can play it on harder difficulty settings, but I see no reason to. I play the game for story purposes- mostly NPC interaction- not to grind through endless mobs.

[Sylvius the Mad]

soteria wrote...

Does that extend to wanting enemies to have the exact same spells and abilities as the player? To me, that is a major failing in Dragon Age. From a realism/RP perspective, perhaps we would have perfect symmetry between player and monster, but in fact there is a basic asymmetry there already. An ability that the player can use to quickly kill a single enemy may seem balanced and fun to the player, but the opposite cannot be said to be true. The player avoids friendly fire, because he wants to win without injuries, preferably. The enemy doesn't care and is perfectly willing to shoot two or three fireballs at you, killing you and their own allies alike. It's little consolation knowing that they wiped out their whole force to get you though, is it?

If they reasonably would have access to the same abilities, yes.

Ogres can do things my characters can't do, because my characters aren't ogres.  But if meet a human rogue, I see no reason why it shouldn't have access to the same talents I do unless I've somehow invented it or recovered some ancient knowledge myself (so, for example, it makes no sense that there are any other Arcane Warriors in DAO, as that knowledge was lost until I recovered it, so how did they learn it?).  So I really liked those fights with archers in Denerim, which were just about the only time in the game the enemies used effective crowd control tactics.  I liked that my characters could be stunned or paralysed just like my enemies could.

It's a shame the darkspawn never learn Mana Clash.  If they did, maybe I'd have to go more effort to ensure I never had two mages anywhere near each other.

[R-F]

I swapped between normal and casual on Dragon age quite a bit over my 3 playthroughs, mostly because of how lazy i am in micro-managing the companions and their battle pre-sets. Also i was getting schooled early in the game so i never swapped the difficulty once my characters could hold their own.

This isn't true for all the games i play though, basically just this one. I had a ton of fun playing ME2 on insanity, but its light on micro-managing.

Modifié par R-F, 26 juillet 2010 - 09:53 .

[Tigress M]

This is a very interesting topic for me. I am one of those people that hates having to struggle through fights and so will generally play on the easiest mode available. HOWEVER, that being said, I now play DA on Nightmare and absolutely love it.



First, DA is one of the only games I've ever eagerly replayed and after several playthroughs I decided I'd test my fighting skill on Normal mode. I was shocked to discover that most (not all, but many) of the tactics I'd settled on worked in this mode. I then graduated to Hard and finally, Nightmare.



I have seen others mention their own personal handicaps they've forced themselves to use (like no healers or no pot sucking, etc) and I'd like to share mine because it is something I'm quite proud of. I have completed the game on every lvl without the MC dying and have survived up through Hard without anyone in my party dying. My only complaint is that I didn't get an achievement for keeping the entire party alive throughout the game. LOL



So to wrap up my windy post, let me just say that on the whole I'm more about the story/quest line than the fighting, but DA has proven to be a wonderful exception to the norm and I am still thoroughly enjoying the game after seven moths of play.

[Splindicator]

Tigress M wrote...
I have seen others mention their own personal handicaps they've forced themselves to use (like no healers or no pot sucking, etc) and I'd like to share mine because it is something I'm quite proud of. I have completed the game on every lvl without the MC dying and have survived up through Hard without anyone in my party dying. My only complaint is that I didn't get an achievement for keeping the entire party alive throughout the game. LOL

Damn.  You definitely deserve an achievment for that!

Here ya go:

 
<pluhkonk>

Happily Ever After - 100 Gs
(Survived the game on any mode with no one...dieing...ever.)

[Vaeliorin]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
It's a shame the darkspawn never learn Mana Clash.  If they did, maybe I'd have to go more effort to ensure I never had two mages anywhere near each other.

Actually, there are enemy mages who can cast Mana Clash.  I've never actually seen one do it successfully, but I've seen "Mana Clash" pop up over enemy mages.  Sadly, it's usually right as their dying, so I'm not sure if Mana Clash will one shot one of your party members like it does most enemy mages.  I think that might have been in Awakening, however, and last I knew you hadn't played Awakening yet.

Still, you probably don't want to keep two mages next to each other because that makes it easy for enemies to glyph of neutralization both your mages, and getting GoN'ed sucks.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I do generally spread everyone out anyway to avoid AoE effects. It's a shame so many of the big fights happen in such small rooms. I love how far you can run around in the Caridin/Branka fight.

[Steel Majere343]

DWSmiley wrote...

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.

good points, the thing about judging a spirit healers usefulness though is just becasue you (and some others) may not use its abilities much they are still there. All that means is they are more usefull than you are experiencing.

If you have not used lifeward then you are missing out, it effectively saves your tank from death. that combined with revival will make sure your tank is standing through ANY battle.

As far as the rebuttles (is that how its spelled? im not 100%) against my arguement that it only takes willingness to curb ones playstyle in order to beat nightmare or any higher level difficulty then they are playing on currently, i'll say this.

While yes i agree, there is a diffrence in execution, for the majority of players i think this rings true. Again i am not saying having a spirit healer and 2 thousand pultices and CC is NECESSESSARY, but i'm just laying out things i could do if i absolutely wanted to beat the game on nightmare.

No matter how many ways you discover to beat the game on nightmare there are MORE ways on easier difficulties. Because what is asked of you is significantly lower.

Just to clarify, difficulty barely effects this game at all truly. Enemy stats are not changed, only PARTY stats are changed. Stuff like friendly fire, defense bonuses, natural resistance.

The difficulty picks your parties strength not the enemies, thats how this game works. So many complaints regarding the difficulty become clear when considering this.

The diffrence from normal to nightmare is miniscule really save for friendly fire, trap damage, and healing effects recieved. Enemies have the same HP, the same attack power, the same everything, the same skills even. This is explained both on the wiki and on the bioware published "missing manual".

So the reasoning behind people saying casual is too hard is simple. Its barely diffrent from nightmare. Your party stats and healing effects/friendly fire are all that change, enemies do the same amount of damage and have the same amount of health.

And vice versa people saying nightmare is too easy, well, its basically exactly the same on normal, sorry to burst any bubbles . Other than friendly fire and healing effects recieved, the enemies are the exact same. Stats and all. So basically your just playing on normal with friendly fire toggled on.

If anyone is going to question this i urge them to look at the places i mentioned. Bioware themselves explain how the difficulty works, so yes its true, you are taking the same amount of damage from an attack that you would take on casual, even on nightmare. and yes its true, enemies have the same amount of health.

[DWSmiley]

Steel Majere343 wrote...

...there are MORE ways on easier difficulties. Because what is asked of you is significantly lower

...The diffrence from normal to nightmare is miniscule really

You seem to be disagreeing with yourself there.

It has been said that the biggest gap in difficulty is casual to normal and I have no reason to doubt it.  But the differences between normal and nightmare are not miniscule, as follis has pointed out.

I suppose there are people who rely on exploiting the AI to win on nightmare, just so they can brag about it to their friends.  If that's what they enjoy, great.  But many people play on nightmare because they enjoy the biggest challenge the game can provide - nail biters, as errant_knight said.  In which case, there is no point in exploiting the AI.  In fact, many go further and limit the use of abilities and tactics that make the game too easy.  For instance, I prefer fights with enemy mages to be exciting so I never use mana clash.  Others limit themselves further - no potions, no companions, etc.

Kudos to the devs for providing different levels of difficulty to cater to different interests.  As I noted before, though, if Bioware were to expand the difficulty ranges in DA2, it seems the bigger gap is at the harder end of the scale.

[Steel Majere343]

I think someone above had the right idea when they said that it would be better to just include a number of sliders to pinpoint difficulty. Instead of calling casual, well..casual and normal normal perhaps just having a huge options menu where you adjust things, how often enemies use abilities and such would be cool.Normal isn't hard on the whole the problem is is those few battles that are way out of wack for some reason or other.

The flame demon encounter is one of those battles. A newcommer traveling along and getting the misfortune of hitting that battle would be pissed to no end, that fight will literally tear you up.
Its not because the skeletons are exceptionally high health or do exceptional damage on their own. The problem is bioware got a little to crazy with the fight. let me lay it out for you and you decide if they got carried away.

7 skeleton servants who all know massive blow, critical hit (a fourth tier abilitiy) and sunder armor (of which they will use on your tank to make his armor rating 0), then youve got 4 or 5 flame traps in the middle of the field, then you have an elite flame demon in the backround who uses fireball a lot which only effects you since all of the servants are conveniently on fire so the fireball does no damage to them.

when you play this out your tank dies very quickly due to having zero armor rating from having 7 skeleton servants use sunder armor on him at the same time, if hes not dead in the first few seconds you have a flame demon in the back who throws fireballs out, if your not done now all 7 of them know critical strike and massive blow which they also like to use at the same time.

Most of the time you dont even have time to react to heal your tank. I remember my tank being at 75% health, i ordered him to use a health pultice, he was knocked down by a fireball, before he could even stand and before i could heal him at all the seven skeletons rushed over and killed him due to his zero armor rating.

I guess to be fair they have fixed many of these outragous fights (hopefully that one will be next, i tire of turning it to casual every time i see the flame demon appear).
I know some of you relish in challenge and probly enjoy the flame demon encounter for this reason, but i say if they want to make it that difficult, put it in a side quest or something, a completely optional fight just like the high dragon. Do not just put it in a random encounter, there isn't even an autosave.

Also to be fair the fight wasn't supposed to turn out like that, that much is clear. As it stands that is the most difficult fight in the game second to trying to kill ser cauthrian, simply because there is no way to counter a downed armor rating and because all of the skeletons have that ability your tank myswell just walk in with no armor on at all.

if you don't know this encounter or do not believe its difficulty you must side with the templars and its a random encounter that happens during travel obviously.
I'v thought about it and unless you have warmth balms or a massive crowd control AoE (such as sleep or mass paralysis) its pretty difficult, and i am 90% sure it was not intended to be as tough as it is, it was likely one of those battles not play tested and turned out wrong.
I certainly would enjoy watching bioware attempt to play this fight and telling me what exactly they figured the player would do in this scenerio.

Anyways back on point, fights like those and the old wolf battle where your party gets jumped by a pack of wolves who all know overwhelm. I doubt it was meant to give players as much pause as it did (and still does even with the patch that was supposed to help).
For the sake of players who havn't played MMOs they should also put a page in the codex about party composition. Due to the fact that every facet of the game includes a spirit healer for you and a sword and shield warrior it should be clear to everyone that the playstyle was meant to replicate that of MMOs.
Tank,Healer,DPS/Backup, DPS/Backup is the clear intention here.

It may not force you to choose them but its clear this is what bioware had in mind. In lelianas song, origins, and awekening a sword and shield warrior is given along with a spirit healer.
The only reason Darkspawn chronicles doesn't have a spirit healer is because that DLC is largely diffrent from the game as a whole. Your party in that DLC are basically meaningless. If one dies you just recrout another therefor you don't need to heal them.

So there should be a little intro page for beginniners explaining this, a friend of mine was about to sell the game out of peer frusteration until i explained this to him. He thought it didn't matter and you were just supposed to pick whoever you want, but when i showed him how the warrior is supposed to hold attention, etc. he gave it another shot.

He ultimately still sold it because he didn't like the games balancing (as many people and reviewers have noted before me).
That may be a part of it too, some people like the games fluctuant difficulty but others, like me, find that confusing. Confusing because most people get the impression that their party is well built and doing good when they can beat some battles, then when they get slapped in the face by a bunch of wolves it becomes difficult to tell if it was just the battle was meant to be hard or if its your party that is ultimately lacking.

Modifié par Steel Majere343, 08 août 2010 - 01:30 .

[Steel Majere343]

anyways i'll be intrested to see where they go from here patch wise. should nothing significant change I'll continue to play on casual and actually have some fun versus constantly worry if im picking the perfect ability at the perfect time and all that. on casual if you have a good party you will have absolutely no trouble at all. Basically meaning a sword and shield warrior, a spirit healer and two others of your choice (so unless you are a mage, wynn and two others).



An intresting idea that a friend of mine brought up was to take easy out altogether, make normal easy. Hear me out.



Think of it this way, normal wouldn't really be normal, it would be easy just called normal. From there if players are finding it too easy they could turn it up to hard (normal) and so on.



Its kind of a trick but i think it would solve frusterations altogether. Turning the difficulty DOWN has a huge stigma and most people hate to do that. But starting from easy and turning it up based on your experience would cause no frusteration right?

[AClockworkMelon]

If the members of my party were smart enough to not walk into AOE attacks I'd play at hard difficulty. But they aren't, so I don't.

[Steel Majere343]

Im not sure if it is the AI, sure that could use improvement in some aspects but the micromanagement basically is the game. tactics are just meant to give general pre-orders, not to pre order an entire battle. That's impossable. You can't give all the orders for a fight before it even happens.



And having a rogue move automatically behind an enemy may be cool but it may also take away some of the responsibility. If a rogue is just automatically gonne get into position its almost a waste of time even having backstab. you myswell just give them extra damage since they will always move themselves into backstab position anyways.



I basically just hate the limited healing spells that are available. I know some may disagree but i wish that there was heal, then one stronger version of heal, then regain, then group heal. regain barely ends up helping me a whole lot and im tired of relying on just two healing spells basically to keep my tank alive in heavy fights.



The game is about fun, so who cares if another heal spell heals too well really. If i really wanted to just focus on winning that bad you have already included multiple spells that dominate, so whats the true harm in just one more heal. Call it mass heal or something. put regain after heal instead of rejuvination then mass heal right after that. Then just keep mass rejuvination at the end.

[elearon1]

Well, me, I play the game for the story and the character interactions - so casual or normal tend to be my defaults. I want a little challenge, so typically I'll start a game on normal, but I also get annoyed and frustrated easily when I have to replay a battle more than twice - and I don't like min maxing every aspect of the combat system - so sometimes I'll drop the difficulty if I find myself in a tight spot and then forget to raise it again for awhile.



Another issue is, in most of these games you are constantly fighting your way through wave upon wave of monsters or regularly recurring encounters that don't actually add anything to the story. I want to get to the next big plot twist or interesting mission, not get stuck duking it out with the same battle a dozen times until I can get every little placement of my characters and their timing right.



I have nothing against the people who like those things, however. I figure each person finds his enjoyment in a different fashion and that is fine-dandy; but I do have to roll my eyes when people prance about with the attitude that "I'm so terribly superior to you because I run my games at XXXMaddSkillsUberInstaDeath level and *you* - scum - play casual."

[Steel Majere343]

ya that is annoying. i think there is a place for that kind of reload fest gameplay. I dont think that place is normal lol.



There should also be some guidelines for people that are new so they don't completely screw up their characters. For example, be more clear on what stats are important for which class in the in-game descriptions.



Beyond that as i said before, explain party compisition. Don't leave it up to the player to figure that out, its not fun getting mercelessly slaughtered without a chance of success because you chose to roam with three rogues and a warrior thinking itd be fine.



My final change would be to completely take out pultices and just add that other healing spell.

[Loerwyn]

Steel Majere343 wrote...
There should also be some guidelines for people that are new so they don't completely screw up their characters. For example, be more clear on what stats are important for which class in the in-game descriptions.

Or not, of course. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that Mages need Magic and that Warriors need Strength. One of the "joys" of RPGs is discovering it all for yourself, but also using your head. You're given the talents and skill trees before you even step into the game, so you can see from the start you'll need 16 Cunning at some point if you want to hit the "end tier" skills, and that you need 36 Str for a certain talent if you're a warrior.

Steel Majere343 wrote...
Beyond that as i said before, explain party compisition. Don't leave it up to the player to figure that out, its not fun getting mercelessly slaughtered without a chance of success because you chose to roam with three rogues and a warrior thinking itd be fine.

Again, that's a bad thing. If the player cannot be bothered to think about the game, why are they playing an RPG? You get Morrigan relatively quickly and as soon as she's yours (or earlier, if you have a Dalish Elf or rolled a Mage yourself) you can look at the Mage talent tree and see what spells they get. The healing spells aren't hidden!

Steel Majere343 wrote...
My final change would be to completely take out pultices and just add that other healing spell.

What about pre-Morrigan, huh? What about if you kill Wynne and somehow get rid of Morrigan? Healing poultices are there as back up and emergency. If your mage is out of magic and cannot cast a spell, you can use them to heal.

Most of your suggestions simplify the game unnecessarily. The game is not supposed to nanny you and hold your hand through every hard fight. There's a wealth of information on the internet, and there's two strategy guides out (Origins and Awakening), so there's plenty of places to find information if you need it.

[Steel Majere343]

on the first point, you have played through the game. Not everyone likes to be confused to all hell. it doesn't take a rocket scientist but this is a game, not the SAT's. the only thing NOT telling people will do is allow new players to get half way through the game and then realize their whole playthrough is messed up because they invested way too much into constitution for their warrior or something.



The joys of an rpg are role playing, not figuring out which stats are necessary for who, which should already be made clear. They do do this to some degree already but not enough IMO.



As for party composition, if anything do it for their sales. I'v seen many people sell the game because they cant figure out how the hell to play lol. By not informing new players that party balancing is indeed part of the game and just throwing characters at them, its not helping.



Its not that they cant bother to think about the game, how are you supposed to think about something that you don't even know exists? when i started the game i had previous MMO experience so i knew what to look for.



The healing spells arn't hidden but the significance of them are. Maybe not for you because again, you have experience. But for someone just stepping in and looking at the spells, they are all the same. A newcommer picks what sounds cool, because they don't know about "tankin" or a "healer" or "dps" so the healing spells hold little significance when you take that out of the equation.



On point 3, of course there would need to be changes to accomodate the no pultices. The trick here is to not use up all of your heals and by giving another heal spell that would be a non issue.



As for them being simplifications that are non necessary, im sure the same thing was said with just about every change to RPGs in history.



"What? the computer is going to roll the die? this is unecessary. Seriously? there are health pultices? this simplification is unnecessary"



lol.

[Steel Majere343]

oh and if you kill wynn and get rid of morrigan your basically screwed anyways, well its possible, but not very fun, even with pultices. have fun chugging pultices for 50+ hours.



the same could be said if i brought up, what if you told all of your party members to leave? what then?. well, you'd be screwed.

[Serenade]

I always play on normal or higher. I never touch casual, and that goes for all games i play.

[soteria]

sigh...

Modifié par soteria, 09 août 2010 - 08:45 .

[soteria]

stupid forums.

Modifié par soteria, 09 août 2010 - 08:46 .