This is the age-old (well, age-old in terms of videogaming, anyway) argument of Realism vs. Gameplay. At some point in the development process, one has to be sacrificed for the sake of the other. Personally, I would pick gameplay over realism 100% of the time: it is, after all, a game. If I want realism I'll look out the window.
Now, I agree with you Poopy, party members falling down ('dying') and getting straight back up at the end of the fight and regenerating all their health is unrealistic. I'm not buying the other arguments from the posters here about it representing the party members healing you or this that and the other; it is flat out unrealistic. But it's a
gameplay choice. I played Baldur's Gate I, II, and ToB to death when they came out, and for many years afterwards. In Baldur's Gate I, there was no Raise Dead spell for your party members, because the level cap was at level 8, 9, or 10, depending on your class, far too low to be unlocking level five Priest spells. If a party member died in combat, you had to pick up all their gear, trudge back across the map, travel to a temple, hand over money for them to be raised, then re-equip all their gear. It was tedious, it was irritating, it was not fun. Realistic, yes, you could argue, given the 'game rules' of that world, but boring as hell in practice. So it ended up that if a party member died the vast majority of gamers (though I appreciate you're probably not in this group) would simply reload the fight and do it again. Not much realism there.
By the time you get to Baldur's Gate II, when your party members did start getting Raise Dead, the reloading behaviour had become so ingrained you didn't bother casting it. You just reloaded, and saved those spells slots for more important things (like Flamestrike :-p). And as for the Rods of Resurrection, well. Once you got hold of those, you never had to worry about dying ever again! Ten charges each, instantly resurrect a party member back to full health, and there were two of them in the game you could get hold of quite early on. You spend 10K for the first one and then loot the other from Mekrath in the sewers and then you're home dry. Twenty resurrections, twenty 'lives', twenty times of being killed and getting straight back up again. More than enough to get you through that game and ToB as well, where there was a
third one available, if I recall correctly. You didn't even have to wait for the end of the fight, either. And you could recharge it if you knew the cheesy merchant sell-it-then-steal-it-back trick. At least in Dragon Age when your party members get back up they have some marks on them.
My point is (though I have digressed somewhat), the cleric/healing mechanic in the Baldur's Gate games didn't add challenge, it added tedium. At the end of a hard fight, my clerics would spend a good couple of minutes casting healing spells to put everyone back up to full health, and then I'd have to clamber out of the dungeon to find a place to rest to get my spells back before carrying on. Or I'd try and rest in the dungeon and get ambushed three or four times, finally heal, and then have to rest again to get all of those spells back. I'd much rather accept the idea that my Dragon Age characters get 'knocked out' and get back up again with injuries than the thought of my BG character getting his head down for eight hours just outside the dragon's lair.
And that's that. That is what I believe. The Baldur's Gate healing system (which was of course the D&D 2nd Ed. healing system) was incredibly boring. The Dragon Age system is by no means perfect, but I believe it to be a big improvement, because at no point does it become tedious. I will take gameplay over realism any day of the week, and so would the vast majority of gamers. If that disappoints you, if that angers you, that's your prerogative. But I don't think you're going to get what you're looking for here.
Modifié par President Josiah Bartlett, 08 octobre 2010 - 09:10 .
Retour en haut
