164 réponses à ce sujet

[FellowerOfOdin]

 This is mainly directed to Bioware, yet every comment is appreciated - my view on a game's difficulty is just one among many and I consider myself being a core player who is pretty good at games.

In my eyes, however, games became a lot easier compared to the past - just have a look at the very old games, you usally had 3 lives, a continue if you were lucky and that's it, game over, restart, no mercy! From this point on, games usually became a lot easier and shorter.

Bioware games are not an exception here, in the contrary, they are a very good example. I do not say that easier games are worse by definition as easier games are better for casual players and they seem to be a strong and still growing market, yet we core gamers would like to get some attention as well

Baldur's Gate was brutal. The first enemy in the game could instantly kill you, you could be ambushed all the time e.g. when you rest, people attacked you without warning, enemies were challenging to say the least (Drizzt!) as they had the same chances to e.g. score a critical hit the party had, a lot of them had damage resistance, etc. etc. etc. 

Neverwinter Nights lowered the difficulty, the game was a lot more user-friendly, forgiving and overall, allowed people to actually make mistakes - I am aware of the fact that this is also because of the new D&D rules applied to the game.

Mass Effect was a huge step down from difficulty, even on the highest difficulty level, where players could easily solo whole groups of enemies - just remember the soldier class allowing you to revive the entire team every...45 seconds? 

Now to the Dragon Age series. Awakening followed the trend as well - if you had some RPG experience, you knew what to do aka get a tank, a healer and damage dealers. Your tank soon became close to immortal, mages had enough CC to control the entire Darkspawn army...even on Nightmare, it hardly was a challenge once you got the hang of it.

Awakening...well, not much to say here, huh?  Overpoweredness hit the roof with the new Tier 4 talents and quite a few extremely good items.

Now, again, this is not a rant. All games were really, really good games, most of them had an outstanding storyline and the Baldur's Gate series is still at the top of RPGs. Yet I, personally, want my games to be a true challenge, Awakening e.g. was not as fun as the main game, also because it was too easy...you could just cake-walk through the game 

So, basically, what can we expect from Dragon Age 2 and its difficulty? Will it be even easier than DA:O and DA:A or can we core gamers expect a real challenge in march?

Thanks for all replies!

[The Lesser Evil]

I expect it to be no more difficult than Dragon Age: Origins, but I don't necessarily think of that as a bad thing. For me, the challenge wasn't what made Dragon Age: Origins fun.

It was the diversity in choices you got when it came to your character. Not just the different origins (since that's going away in Dragon Age: No Origins), but the choices you had while leveling the different classes. Warriors had three distinct builds, Rogues had two (but with different approaches to stats that gave it a different flavour still) and Mages could be built in more ways than I can count.

On top of that, there was the impressively developed game world, interesting, fun and well-rounded companions, and an engaging storyline. All in all the game gave you more than pretty much any game I can think of. For example, the different classes in Mass Effect weren't nearly as distinct as the ones in Dragon Age (a lot of overlap with hybrid classes), the characters nowhere near as memorable, and the attachment to the game world completely lacking compared to Dragon Age with all the planet hopping.

The challenge, for me, was finding new challenges on every playthrough, trying to discover all the different approaches to conversations and the plot as a whole, and ways to play the different classes multiple times, yet find new and exciting things to do with them again and again.

So no, I don't expect more "challenge" in the traditional sense from Dragon Age 2, but if it challenges me to spend 50 hours on a single play-through, keeps me up till 6 in the morning and draws me into its game world as often as Dragon Age: Origins did, I'll gladly settle for that type of challenge.

[Lord_Valandil]

Hmmm...

I don't want impossible games, like Ninja Gaiden. I don't have too much time to play, and being killed again and again just irritates me.

I understand your point, but...those who want a challenge, play it on Nightmare.

[Maverick827]

FellowerOfOdin wrote...

The first enemy in the game could instantly kill you, you could be ambushed all the time e.g. when you rest, people attacked you without warning, 

Absolutely none of that sounds fun to me.  I want to be challenged, not suffer from Fake Difficulty.

[Mehow_pwn]

If you want a really challage then close your eyes and play it I can guarantee you it will be challanging:D

Jokes aside I have to agree with you to some degree.. The game that made me most pissed off when they made it easier was WoW and Dragon age.. since you could get a mount on lvl 20.. and on awanking you never die.. no matter how noob you were unless you played nightmare

Modifié par Mehow_pwn, 21 octobre 2010 - 09:32 .

[Lord_Valandil]

Maverick827 wrote...

FellowerOfOdin wrote...

The first enemy in the game could instantly kill you, you could be ambushed all the time e.g. when you rest, people attacked you without warning, 

Absolutely none of that sounds fun to me.  I want to be challenged, not suffer from Fake Difficulty.

This.
Enemies who do ONE HIT KILLS, or who attack all the time, and that kind of crap...I don't like 'em.
Cheap deaths are not fun.

[Mehow_pwn]

Lord_Valandil wrote...

Maverick827 wrote...

FellowerOfOdin wrote...

The first enemy in the game could instantly kill you, you could be ambushed all the time e.g. when you rest, people attacked you without warning, 

Absolutely none of that sounds fun to me.  I want to be challenged, not suffer from Fake Difficulty.

This.
Enemies who do ONE HIT KILLS, or who attack all the time, and that kind of crap...I don't like 'em.
Cheap deaths are not fun.

The only game that I know that had something like that were singelplayer was fallout 3 , Diablo, Borderlands and demon souls and to be honest Demon souls was the most diffuclt rpg I played since ever I guess that both online and Offline

[Paul E Dangerously]

Three things.

A lot of games were difficult back in the NES/SNES era to do things like making them harder to beat, so you'd have to either buy the game or rent them again. Some were also ports of arcade games, which were difficult for similar reasons.

Baldur's Gate was difficult because it ran on 2nd Ed D&D rules, and low level D&D characters in the early editions die at the drop of a hat.

NWN was 3rd Ed, which was less brutal in that aspect.

Modifié par Sopa de Gato, 21 octobre 2010 - 09:38 .

[Chris Priestly]

Once everyone comes to an agreement on what is or is not difficult*, we will adjust our game design accordingly. Until then, we will continue to put it differing levels of difficulty to let players adjust the difficulty as they see fit.


* I expect this to happen right after everyone agrees on what the best pizza topping is.

[Lord_Valandil]

Mehow_pwn wrote...

Lord_Valandil wrote...

Maverick827 wrote...

FellowerOfOdin wrote...

The first enemy in the game could instantly kill you, you could be ambushed all the time e.g. when you rest, people attacked you without warning, 

Absolutely none of that sounds fun to me.  I want to be challenged, not suffer from Fake Difficulty.

This.
Enemies who do ONE HIT KILLS, or who attack all the time, and that kind of crap...I don't like 'em.
Cheap deaths are not fun.

The only game that I know that had something like that were singelplayer was fallout 3 , Diablo, Borderlands and demon souls and to be honest Demon souls was the most diffuclt rpg I played since ever I guess that both online and Offline

Yeah, I've heard a lot of things about Demon Souls.
I bet it's a good game, but I don't really want to play it, not that I like super-easy games, I like challenges, but I usually get bored when there's an enemy, or a boss who can destroy you with just one hit...the Reapers in Resident Evil 5, for example. I hate those things.

[Lord_Valandil]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Once everyone comes to an agreement on what is or is not difficult*, we will adjust our game design accordingly. Until then, we will continue to put it differing levels of difficulty to let players adjust the difficulty as they see fit.


* I expect this to happen right after everyone agrees on what the best pizza topping is.

I don't think that will ever happen, Mr. Priestly. Someone will always disagree.
Mmmmm...pizza...now I want a pizza...

Modifié par Lord_Valandil, 21 octobre 2010 - 09:47 .

[Chris Priestly]

Lord_Valandil wrote...
I don't think that will ever happen, Mr. Priestly. ...

That was kind of the point.

[Stinkface27]

I don't mind if the "Normal" difficulty is easy. I don't mind if all the difficulties are easy so long as there is a brutally challenging Nightmare/Insanity mode.

[Ulous]

Difficulty is always in the mind of the player as far as i'm concerned, once you know how to play a game properly it gets easier and easier.

I remember the days of Shadow Of the Beast 2 on the Amiga, that seemed like the hardest game in the world ever, but once I played it to death and my own memory started taking over it became easier.

The one thing that a game must be above all else is "fun" in my opinion, if an annoying difficulty damages the fun factor of a game then it will end up in the bargain basket within a week.

[bjdbwea]

It is quite likely that the game will become easier, just as books or movies become more shallow once they are written with the goal of selling as many copies to the general mainstream as possible. In the case of video games, that could still be solved by providing more challenging difficulty settings, but DA as well as ME 2 for example weren't exactly challenging even on the highest settings, once you had understood and mastered the simple (in comparison to similar games back in the days) gameplay.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 21 octobre 2010 - 10:54 .

[Lord_Valandil]

I don't understand why people keep saying that the games in the past were far more difficult, blahblah, like if they were a 60 year old grandpa.
Yeah, of course they were more difficult, I had a NES and never finished a game...because everytime I died, the game returned to the title screen. But they were also simpler, didn't have options to save the game, among many other things...
Those times have passed. It's time to move on.

I guess you can never make everyone happy.

Modifié par Lord_Valandil, 21 octobre 2010 - 10:12 .

[Ulous]

bjdbwea wrote...

but DA as well as ME 2 for example weren't exactly challenging even on the highest settings, once you had understood and mastered the simple (in comparison to similar games back in the days) gameplay.

As Chris also mentioned earlier how do you agree on what makes that "hardest" difficulty actually "hard"? Increase the HP/Resists of what you are fighting? Lower the characters HP/Resists? Make the A.I. more clever? Or all of the above? But whichever you choose somebody is always gonna complain about it.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Chris Priestly wrote...

* I expect this to happen right after everyone agrees on what the best pizza topping is.

Anchovies, Anchovies
you're so delicious!
I love you more than
all the other fishes!

[Blastback]

I think that the hardest settings should be truely difficult, but as a more average skilled player, I don't want games to be to hard. Like Ninja Gaiden. I played for a week, and never beat the first boss on the lowest difficulty. I'm sorry, I can appreciate a challenge, but that is just not fun at all.

[Lord_Valandil]

Blastback wrote...

I think that the hardest settings should be truely difficult, but as a more average skilled player, I don't want games to be to hard. Like Ninja Gaiden. I played for a week, and never beat the first boss on the lowest difficulty. I'm sorry, I can appreciate a challenge, but that is just not fun at all.

Ninja Gaiden...my game was broken, it froze before the beginning of mission 7.
And that was it, I couldn't return it to the store, and didn't want to buy a new one...because I wasn't having fun.

Modifié par Lord_Valandil, 21 octobre 2010 - 10:27 .

[Lord_Valandil]

Double post. Sorry.
Stupid internet.

Modifié par Lord_Valandil, 21 octobre 2010 - 10:26 .

[Shadow_broker]

Play Super Meat boy



THAT GAME IS INTENSE

[Dave of Canada]

Hawke, when defeated, will stand up with a scar somewhere on his / her body while losing 200-300 experience. This harsh punishment can be solved with healing potions to heal the scars or carrying rez potions should you die in combat, giving you a full heal.

[Shadow_broker]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Hawke, when defeated, will stand up with a scar somewhere on his / her body while losing 200-300 experience. This harsh punishment can be solved with healing potions to heal the scars or carrying rez potions should you die in combat, giving you a full heal.

Fable 2 right?