1008 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

Xewaka wrote...
It's not an opinion. Over the top tactical view allows more information input. Strategy games go for that vision to allow a better information input to the player. This information is used to perform more elaborated tactics on the player part. It also allows to crank up the complexity of the encounter because the player can handle larger amounts of information. It has been indicated in the article that encounters had to be simplified to set in with the rear camera.

Objectively, based on amount of information effectively displayed, "eagle-eye" cameras are superior, and tactical combat benefits more from that kind of information display.

Eagle-eye tactical is not the same thing as the isometric view. The isometric view is top-down, so you lose a significant amount of depth perception.  Even zoomed out, you can only see to the edges of the screen. In contrast, the OTS camera (and hiked up versions of it) let you see the field at depth as well as to get perspective.

Since Total War was mentioned before in this thread, let me roll with an example from there:

When I play TW, formations are best served by the most top-down view possible, because that allows you to get your formation right. But notice how the TW camera doesn't hide the borders - it doesn't keep the enemy hidden from you at the side of the screen until the moments of contact, because these manuevers themselves require tactical prowess. It is precisely the dynamic control of formation and space that is most important.

The isometric camera, IMO, does a poor job of giving you depth perception. It gives you a wider perception, but  that's it. I thought the best camera in DA:O was zoomed up enough that you started to have that "angled-down" view that let you get a wide view around characters but at the same time let you see depth.

Archers were the worst offenders, because they could actually fire out of the range of the tactical camera.

[Saboera]

I'm very optimistic in Dragon Age 2 but I really hope the tactical camera isn't 100% ruled out yet. This is massively disapointing to a lot of party based games fans. You guys, in my opinion, are making a huge mistake design wise by removing it. To elaborate, the following.

I recently played Drakensang, which is a party based game in the same vein as DA:O and NWN2. The camera handling in that particular game is exactly what is described here and its also why it stopped me from loving the game instead of having to leak a F bomb everytime I wanted to issue orders around.

Being locked on a character and not being able to go overhead is not fun at all. It's clunky and cumbersome to order characters around with this type of camera. When you have 6-7 enemies and you want to specifically target the mage in middle of that pack behind the big ogre blocking your view, it suddenly becomes about finding the right angle where you can click a small portion of the mage target box, it interrupt the gameflow a lot and becomes excessively annoying after the 3rd misclick sending your spell or ability on a grunt instead of the priority target intended.

Now it's not too bad when you are in large open areas since you have a lot of space to manoeuver around but when you are in narrow areas it's when the problem skyrocket and goes from annoying to rage inducing as your camera hit the wall, preventing you from having any sort of half decent angle that gives you a good view of the fight. It's particularly even more painful when you are using a ranged class to boot, trying to target that guy hitbox far away in the pack of grunts.

What the overhead view allows for, is an ease of manoeuvrability around and more specifically in narrow areas where zooming out different directions is not an option due to the boundaries like the walls. Being able to go through the roof overhead makes corridors, small room and narrow areas encounter that much more enjoyable as you aren't stuck in the freaking wall or roof trying to target that one guy with impossible camera angles.

Now I understand that some people don't play the game in a strategical way and prefer to stay close to the action and control a single character, more power to them, but there is also a crowd like me who enjoy being able to quickly go to a commanding view to issue orders before going back into the action. We aren't missing any details this way, we just like, you know, to play with the party part in our party based game. What's the point of having a party if you aren't gonna use them?

On that note, while mass effect 2 is a great game, it has one of most atrocious party handling system ever, to the point where you might as well just let the A.I. do their own thing but it's ok since it's not focused on the party and the companions are merely there for the ''squad feeling''. Dragon age on the other hand is being sold to fans as a party based rpg. Please let us use our party properly.

I'm not an elitist and believe that games should be optimized to make use of the console features as best as it can, but seeing things like this is disapointing when we know much effort has been put in the game to increase the gameplay quality for console while the PC is basically getting backhanded by having enjoyed features like the overhead view removed. Consoles gameplay has been tailored to have better targeting system with the action button, why take a step in the opposite direction and making it harder and clunky for the PC?

Modifié par Saboera, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:38 .

[Piecake]

I'm a bit concerned if a situation where one of your companions was in another room, scouting or something) and you want one of your other companions to attack an enemy inside. However, when you switch to that companion that isnt in the room yet it switches to their camera angle and you cant attack them.

This situation happened to me quite a few times in DAO (different situations than this, like when one character is really far away from the other and when you switch to the other, the iso camera just doesnt move far enough so you cant do what you want to do) and annoyed me to no end.  Just the drastic switch in camera perspective from one character to another and then not being able to do what i wanted to do was extremely jarring/annoying

Oh, and I thought squad mate interaction/banter was much better in ME2. Though this might be because I thought the majority of your squadmates in ME1 were pretty dull while in ME2 they were on of my favorite aspects of the game

Modifié par Piecake, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:36 .

[andar91]

Brockololly wrote...

andar91 wrote...

One thing I'm not overly pleased about in relation to the camera is my growing suspicion that friendly fire is going to disappear in this game. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling it's only going to be on the higher difficulties. I played Origins on Normal and had no problems. I won't throw a fit or not buy the game over it (if this is true), but it'll make me a little disappointed.

In the thread Peter Thomas had going a while back, he mentioned at the time, only Nightmare had friendly fire. Which to me, makes things considerably less tactical as you can simply spam fireballs in the middle of your party with no consequences.

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to use the term "spam" since we still have cooldowns, but I essentially aggree.  I suppose I can always pretend there's friendly fire lol.  I can pull a Slyvius and have everything happening in my head.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Meltemph wrote...

Did you purposely skip over the part where I said I didn't use it? I'm guessing you didn't and just wanted to throw that out, huh?

It was a generic "you".

It was more then just being too easy. It was very obvious the game was not designed with ISO as a main use.

I disagree very strongly.  Try to select a book in a cluttered environment like the Mage Tower.  With the iso cam, the entire selection system worked differently, completely independently of the characters' field of vision (ulike the third-person camera).  So if you saw a crate behind a pile of rubble, and you wanted to select it, with the iso cam you could just select it, but with the third-person cam you needed to move your characters such that one of them could see the crate unobstructed.  The iso cam was a terrific annoyance remover out of combat.

I switched between the cameras during combat, but much of my non-combat travelling and was done with the iso cam, because it just worked better.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:39 .

[In Exile]

Let me illustrate what I mean with examples. Here is the isometric camera (looking at it now makes me realize just how I didn't use it despite thinking I did):



Now here is a rough approximation of the angle I play at:


http://pcmedia.games...840117-000.jpgp


Do you see how the depth is retained too?

Modifié par In Exile, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:40 .

[Bryy_Miller]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Meltemph wrote...

So wouldn't it be preferable if they made the encounters more complex instead of nerfing the camera?

No, not to me. You cant have a game's difficulty properly adjusted for if you have a movable iso camera, imo. You have to, imo, pick which camera angles you are going to build for(when you are dealing with a game like this). Why would I want them wasting time on iso camera angles if they are going to design the game around a non iso camera?

I understand people wanting "features" but to me I would rather have the game be designed properly, and to me the fights in DAO clearly were not, for the most part.

If the iso cam makes the game too easy, and game difficulty matters to you more than the iso cam does, then just don't use the iso cam.

Why should fans of the iso cam have to pay the price for your lack of self-control?

Perspective, people. It's a video game. Getting angry is fine, but let's not try to make it more than it is.

[upsettingshorts]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
What character were you typically controlling when combat began?

Well, I played a dual wield rogue, a two handed warrior, and an Arcane Warrior mage through my complete playthroughs, but did carry a nuker mage with me fairly often that I would assume direct control of all the time.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
This might have something to do with it.  If you tended to run into combat (say, you controlled the tank) then you'd be used to having the camera in amidst the combat right from the beginning.

Almost never controlled the tank except in boss fights.  I found it too passive an experience compared with Age of Conan in which raid tanking was probably the most challenging RPG experience of my gaming life.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Whereas, if you tended to engage from much farther away (as I did, typically opening with a carefully placed glyph following by some long-range archery, or some similar approach), then the moveable camera counted for a lot.

I didn't use gylphs much, so I'll give you that.  Well, at least that I'm ignorant as to how vital the isometric camera was for it.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
In the real world, you can tell a lot about the environment around you because you have binolcular vision.  You can judge distance from a single vantage point.

But this isn't true in DAO.  Because you're looking at a two-dimensional image, you can't properly judge distances without moving the camera laterally.

Eh, a couple decades in gaming has allowed me to gauge this quite accurately.  I'm not sure how I would have been as good as I was in sieges (massive PVP) in Conan if I wasn't.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
  And how far you need to move the camera is proportional to the square of the distance from your target, so at long ranges you needed to move the camera a hell of a lot.  Or, you needed to reduce that distance.  A free-roaming camera allowed that.  DA2's camera sounds very much like it will not.

Your issue seems to be with the removal of a free-roaming camera when paused and not the removal of the isometric view itself, does it not?  If it's the former, than I actually agree with you.  But I'm not entirely convinced yet that is what Laidlaw/Epler were saying, though I'm leaning the same direction you are in that it's probably gone.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:42 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Piecake wrote...

I'm a bit concerned if a situation where one of your companions was in another room, scouting or something) and you want one of your other companions to attack an enemy inside. However, when you switch to that companion that isnt in the room yet it switches to their camera angle and you cant attack them.

This is what I'm talking about.  DAO wouldn't let you select things if the character on whom your camera was centred couldn't see them.

But the iso camera had no such restriction.

[StingingVelvet]

Apollo Starflare wrote...

Fair enough it certainly explains why there is more of an outcry this time around, but my point about it not meaning Bioware has been corrupted by EA and is only capable of making shooters and hack n slash games (or however the argument goes) just because one or two features doesn't follow the RPG rulebook stands.

I suppose for me a Bioware game is a Bioware game regardless of what machine it is optimised for. I just don't understand why for some people not having the complete isometric camera view is an issue on the level it is being presented here. The game is still tactical, the game is still recognisably a Bioware story centered RPG with party control and inventory amongst others staples.

Well you have to understand that to a lot of us older PC-centric gamers we feel like our hobby is literally dying.  That is very exaggerated of course, but it feels like that, it feels almost like we are under attack.  For years we had what we consider to be the best RPGs, tactical RPGs with real choice and consequence, 100s of hours of content and real expansions with dozens more.  Mod tools, free additions, long-term support and patching, complex gameplay that rewarded focus and interest rather than simple twitch gameplay.  For people like me RPGs since KotOR, roughly, have been slowly but surely killing off these benefits.  Simplified gameplay, short and over-priced DLC rather than expansions, lack of support, lack of tactics, lack of real choice and consequence, etc. etc..

Dragon Age, while not perfect, was a step by Bioware back toward the 90's era of RPGs.  They said it was a spiritual successor, it led on the PC and took advantage of the PC's technical superiorities, and it played like a tactical RPG, not a twitch game.  We even got a real expansion for it.  We were thrilled, even if it was not as good as BG2 and Planescape and all those it was still a great homage and a step in a lovely direction.

So combine those feeling of disappointment and of being under attack with the pleasure we felt at Dragon Age and then BOOM, add-in a seemingly streamlined and console-focused sequel to Dragon Age that seems to, on the surface, throw out a lot of that greatness.

It's kind of crushing.

That's the exaggerated and dramatic version of it, the truth varies from person to person.  I myself and more easy-going about it than many, but the core emotions are still there.  It's a shame when your hobby's best days are like 12 years past.

[Meltemph]

Try to select a book in a cluttered environment like the Mage Tower. With the iso cam, the entire selection system worked differently, completely independently of the characters' field of vision (ulike the third-person camera). So if you saw a crate behind a pile of rubble, and you wanted to select it, with the iso cam you could just select it, but with the third-person cam you needed to move your characters such that one of them could see the crate unobstructed. The iso cam was a terrific annoyance remover out of combat.

Like I said I didn't use iso, except in the early stages of me playing the game, just to see what it was like and stopped using it as soon as I realized how it trivialized so much content, to me.

But as for your point, I had no problems finding or clicking on things w/o using iso. And there again, to me that just trivializes the whole point of finding codex's. I mean, why would I want to see 3 halls over, past the rather large bookshelves, just so I can "game" the system.

But then again, I actually found looking for codex's to be very enjoyable.

I switched between the cameras during combat, but much of my non-combat travelling and was done with the iso cam, because it just worked better.

 I'd say that what you found as an annoyance, trying to click on things w/o being in iso, is more a tribute to why I don't want it. If finding codex's w/o iso was such a paint/annoyance to so many people, they need to make them less annoying, imo. Although, me personally, not using iso, I found it to be fine.

Modifié par Meltemph, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:45 .

[In Exile]

Upsettingshorts wrote..
Well, I played a dual wield rogue, a two handed warrior, and an Arcane Warrior mage through my complete playthroughs, but did carry a nuker mage with me fairly often that I would assume direct control of all the time. 

Just to comment on this, I always use my AoE nuke mage on the camera angle I show. But then I also do not use tactics at all, so I happen to control all party members.

I didn't use gylphs much, so I'll give you that.  Well, at least that I'm ignorant as to how vital the isometric camera was for it.

Glyphs are AoE. The isometric cam use for AoE always comes down to what angle you need to aim, and IMO, to hit an enemy party at range, you need the depth you can't get with isometric (because when you are in range for the isometric camera, you trigger the enemy to attack you, spoiling the ambush).

Now that I think about it, I may well have broken encounters because I always ambushed enemies by using the camera this way.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Your issue seems to be with the removal of a free-roaming camera when paused and not the removal of the isometric view itself, does it not?

Yes.  I've even said before that I wouldn't mind losing the top-down view as long as we retained a free-roam - I might even prefer a lower-angle free-roaming camera to the iso camera.

If it's the former, than I actually agree with you.  But I'm not entirely convinced yet that is what Laidlaw/Epler were saying, though I'm leaning the same direction you are in that it's probably gone.

Mike's reaction was fairly clear.  The camera is locked on the character you are controlling (I wonder what happens if you have more than one character selected - and I'm still hoping for the ability to select none of the characters and let tactics run all of them at once).

[Wicked 702]

In Exile wrote...

Let me illustrate what I mean with examples. Here is the isometric camera (looking at it now makes me realize just how I didn't use it despite thinking I did):

*snip pics*

Do you see how the depth is retained too?

That would also be the angle at which I would generally play as well, given the choice. The camera was probably my biggest complaint about the 360 version, in addition to the draw distance, as it was really quite horrid. And before anyone tries to bring up the "limitations of a console," please keep in mind that I've played plenty of other games since then with much richer environments and longer draw distances. I would chalk it up to difficulties with a ported engine, not the hardware itself.

[upsettingshorts]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Mike's reaction was fairly clear.  The camera is locked on the character you are controlling (I wonder what happens if you have more than one character selected - and I'm still hoping for the ability to select none of the characters and let tactics run all of them at once).

That's how it worked half the time in Dragon Age: Origins, too.  Unless you were paused, in fact, unless I'm remembering incorrectly seeing as I really only tried the camera out a couple of  times.

If he replied to this post and said, "No, you can't move the camera while paused either" I'd take that as confirmation that a free camera is gone.  And that'd be pretty annoying for me, too.

It's the whole cult of the isometric camera that bugs me. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Glyphs are AoE. The isometric cam use for AoE always comes down to what angle you need to aim, and IMO, to hit an enemy party at range, you need the depth you can't get with isometric (because when you are in range for the isometric camera, you trigger the enemy to attack you, spoiling the ambush).

There were environments in DAO where your enemies were up on a platform relative to the party, and the iso cam was the only way to get a good look at their arrangement (the low-angle camera couldn't see their feet).

[Piecake]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Piecake wrote...

I'm a bit concerned if a situation where one of your companions was in another room, scouting or something) and you want one of your other companions to attack an enemy inside. However, when you switch to that companion that isnt in the room yet it switches to their camera angle and you cant attack them.

This is what I'm talking about.  DAO wouldn't let you select things if the character on whom your camera was centred couldn't see them.

But the iso camera had no such restriction.

And I still had that problem in DAO if companions were too far away from each other since the iso camera in that was limited.  Maybe the camera in DA2 fixes all of that, but i really cant see how.  Ill reserve judgement until i see/play the game, but i can help but think that a full iso camera would have solved all of my camera annoyances in DAO

[Xewaka]

In Exile wrote...

Let me illustrate what I mean with examples. Here is the isometric camera (looking at it now makes me realize just how I didn't use it despite thinking I did):

+snipped images+

Now here is a rough approximation of the angle I play at:

Do you see how the depth is retained too?

The Depth angles you show were the ones I resorted to when isometric was inefficient (very long range engagements, where the roam wouldn't reach). The rest of the time I was on iso, because combat tended to close quickly into melee and the screen got too cluttered for my taste.
However, I also played with tactics disabled an controlling manually each party member, so I needed a more detached camera for playability.
Were you relying on tactics or manually controlling party members?

Modifié par Xewaka, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:47 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

If he replied to this post and said, "No, you can't move the camera while paused either" I'd take that as confirmation that a free camera is gone.  And that'd be pretty annoying for me, too.

You didn't actually need to be paused to move the camera in DAO, did you?

I'm going to check that as soon as I get home.

[Khayness]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

You didn't actually need to be paused to move the camera in DAO, did you?

I'm going to check that as soon as I get home.

What, ofc you don't have to.

[Vaeliorin]

I always used the tactical camera for targeting spells that weren't single target. The lack of it is going to make AoE spells all but useless to me (especially since I refuse to play on a difficulty without friendly fire.)

[Sylvius the Mad]

Vaeliorin wrote...

I always used the tactical camera for targeting spells that weren't single target. The lack of it is going to make AoE spells all but useless to me (especially since I refuse to play on a difficulty without friendly fire.)

Same here.  The game world needs to make sense, and to make sense explosions have to be dangerous.

[Utoryo]

Here's an idea based on the conversation above: allow a free-roam and/or top-down camera only under the following condition: the game is paused OR no characters are selected (which you'd simply do by clicking anywhere empty on the battlefield or press a hotkey). If a character is selected and you unpause, you immediately enter his/her viewpoint.

Modifié par Utoryo, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:54 .

[In Exile]

StingingVelvet wrote...
Well you have to understand that to a lot of us older PC-centric gamers we feel like our hobby is literally dying.  That is very exaggerated of course, but it feels like that, it feels almost like we are under attack.  For years we had what we consider to be the best RPGs, tactical RPGs with real choice and consequence, 100s of hours of content and real expansions with dozens more.  Mod tools, free additions, long-term support and patching, complex gameplay that rewarded focus and interest rather than simple twitch gameplay.  For people like me RPGs since KotOR, roughly, have been slowly but surely killing off these benefits.  Simplified gameplay, short and over-priced DLC rather than expansions, lack of support, lack of tactics, lack of real choice and consequence, etc. etc..

Here is the thing, and this is something very partial to me.

The games I like are very few. Games like New Vegas, or Baldur's Gate, or Fallout 1/2, with their puppet protagonist, they don't appeal to me. These games ask me to invent a game for me, but they actually make the sort of protagonists I would like (charismatic leaders, social movers, etc.) impossible, because the all of that sort of interaction is left for the imagination of the player.

KoTOR was really a dramatic moment for me, becuase here you had this leader protagonist who was part of the team, who you could become by making choices for, but still had a real role in the story. Jade Empire was the same.

Mass Effect was incredible, because here you had this voiced protagonist, alpha-type leader, who you could still pick & choose and alter the personality for. There was one game that followed up on this: Mass Effect 2.

The Witcher has a living protagonist, but you have no choice. Fixed apperance and fixed gender - that doesn't make me connect to the character. Dragon Age - that took a step back to KoTOR and JE. Alpha Protocol - fixed gender and apperance.

Dragon Age 2 is the third game, ever, that gives me what I want. So I have such a hard time caring when I hear about PC gamers and their tens of 90s era games.

[Atakuma]

Utoryo wrote...

Here's an idea based on the conversation above: allow a free-roam and/or top-down camera only under the follow condition: the game is paused OR no characters are selected. If a character is selected and you unpause, you immediately enter his/her viewpoint.

I endorse this idea.