9 réponses à ce sujet

[SDNcN]

First bad new I've heard about DA:2. Sebastian Hanlon just confirmed on the live-chat that dual-wielding will be restricted to rogues (I think he said Archery is as well). Goodbye armored eviscerators.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Indeed, most of you are right in your suppositions.



Removing dual wield specialization from warriors allowed us to not only make the classes more distinct, but to make the dual wield attacks all distinctly rogue-ish. A warrior in plate mail being fast with two daggers I could handle, but flipping and rolling into attacks? That didn't make sense. So, we could either have boring, vanilla dual-wield anims, or we could make them for rogues and deliver lithe, acrobatic combat for a class that should be just that.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Addai67 wrote...

This may be a stupid question, but why not just have warrior-oriented DW animations? I.e., animations that don't involve insane flipping and such nonsense. I mean, the qunari in the trailer is obviously a DW warrior, so...? Doesn't have to be dual daggers- could have been big-ass axes or war hammers.

Coulda woulda shoulda at this point, I guess.

Two reasons:

1) were we to do that right, it would be a very large investment in time. We would be doing a full set of runs, attacks, and special maneuvers all warrior themed. This in and of itself isn't why we didn't do it, though. That would be:

2) It would again make warriors and rogues have similar skill sets, something that we are trying to avoid. I would like your class choice to have a much more significant impact this time around.

On the upside, this decision means that both sword and shield and two-handed are significantly improved in terms of both feel and animation fidelity as well. Rogues weren't the only ones to get a lot of love for DA2.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Brockololly wrote...
As for the whole making things more unique- if thats the intent, then why are we giving mages melee attacks if they're supposed to be the field artillery?

Because holding your staff at your armpit and going "pew pew" is not cool. At least, I sure don't think it is.

No one said that mage melee attacks were particularly good, just that you don't look lame while you do them.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Andrastee wrote...

Of course, it's possible that Duncan is just so awesome he transcends ability trees.

It's his Epic Beard specialization. It has four abilities:

• Permanent Grooming;
• Breaks all the Rules;
• Women Want Me;
• Men Want to Be Me

While we only know for certain that he had up to the second ability, I think it's pretty obvious that Duncan knew where to spend the talent points.

[David Gaider]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Though, that wasn't unique to Duncan.  Loghain also switched classes between the books and game.

I complained about that quite a lot during DAO's development.  We were explicitly told that switching classes was impossible, and yet that's exactly what Loghain did.

So my books should obey the limitations of a game environment? To what end? You'll note that the books had cloaks and horses, as well. I make no apologies.

Modifié par David Gaider, 15 septembre 2010 - 04:38 .

[David Gaider]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
And you shouldn't.  I place the fault with the game, not the books.

The game should obey the limitations of the game's setting.

And this, I assume, is bizarre Sylvius Logic -- the kind of logic which trumps all manner of resources, gameplay and balance for the sake of... what, exactly? We do not adhere pedantically to the setting except where it suits us. The fact that there are no horses evident in the game doesn't mean they don't exist in the setting. And the fact that the Warrior class in DA2 doesn't allow dual wielding doesn't mean there aren't small-w warriors in the setting that use two weapons. Are they Rogue class? Are they Warrior class? Does it matter?

Gameplay and setting are not completely divorced, but neither are they married. I know they are in your mind, but I doubt you're going to convince us anytime soon that your particular tastes are what we're interested in. Or what most people are interested in. Or what might be wise to pursue.

I know you won't take that personally-- you've certainly made that evident enough with your posts-- and I don't mean it personally. But there you go.

[Seb Hanlon]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

So my books should obey the limitations of a game environment? To what end? You'll note that the books had cloaks and horses, as well. I make no apologies.

And you shouldn't.  I place the fault with the game, not the books.

The game should obey the limitations of the game's setting.

The game does indeed obey the limitations of the setting. I can't promise there's nothing you can do in DAO, or in DA2, that's forbidden by established canon, because I know there's bound to be a handful of cases where this one character said this one thing and it's a SCREAMING CONTINUITY ERROR ZOMG, but we pay attention to these things.

edit: ninja'd by Mr. Gaider. not intending to gang up.

Modifié par Seb Hanlon, 15 septembre 2010 - 05:11 .

[David Gaider]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Seb Hanlon wrote...

The game does indeed obey the limitations of the setting.

And that the technical designers think this is important means a lot to me.  Thank you.

Let me point out the caveat there, however: when it comes to a conflict between the setting and gameplay the resolution is generally an easy one: the setting must bend or change.

And I don't mean a casual conflict. Tech Designers are going to accomodate the setting whenever they can, just as Seb pointed out. But if there's an issue where the game design needs to change and the only thing standing in the way is the fact that X has been stated in the setting at some point-- well, that's not a good enough reason. The idea that setting logic should trump everything else simply doesn't exist, despite how important the setting might be to me or any fans of the lore.

Ideal? No, but that's simply how it is.

[Seb Hanlon]

Oh, man, I remember this thread! Please don't resurrect six-month-old threads.



[#import "necrolock.h"]