124 réponses à ce sujet

[Xewaka]

bsbcaer wrote...

Granted Im not the most observant of people sometimes, but when playing BG, I didn't see or notice anything saying more than "Minsc hits Gibberling for 8 damage"  Nothing about circumstances, penalties or bonuses about that hit on the Gibberling  were in that conversation/combat log

In the case of damage absorption, for example, it would say: "Mins hit Ooze for 0 damage (8 absorbed)". That is the kind of info I miss on DA:O.

[Sylvius the Mad]

bsbcaer wrote...

Granted Im not the most observant of people sometimes, but when playing BG, I didn't see or notice anything saying more than "Minsc hits Gibberling for 8 damage"  Nothing about circumstances, penalties or bonuses about that hit on the Gibberling  were in that conversation/combat log

It showed the dice rolls and all the bonuses and penalties.  it's possible you had to turn that on, but it was certainly available.

So that way you'd know based on your first attack that you rolled a 6, but with your strength and specialisation you actually got a 12, and that hit, so you could count that backward and work out what the minimum value for the target's armour class was.  You could then plan the rest of the battle knowing that you're at least 75% likely to hit your opponent with every subsequent attack from that character, and you'd have a minimum expected success rate for all of your other characters as well (because you'd know their bonuses already).

Getting this much information from DAO required many more datapoints, and even then you'd never know anything for sure.

[Sylvius the Mad]

hangmans tree wrote...

O think that this lvl2 attacker should be better at dealing damage not decrising ones armour. In this case not only lvl2 deals greater damage (class progress I gueass) but he bypasses the armour by higher margin too.

All that would mean was that a higher level attack got a bonus both to damage and to armour penetration, which makes sense as long as there's some aspect of skill associated with armour penetration.

And there probably should be.  DAO didn't have that, but in that respect I think DAO was unnecessarily simplistic.

There are many chages I don't like for DA2, but this one sounds good.

[bsbcaer]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

bsbcaer wrote...

Granted Im not the most observant of people sometimes, but when playing BG, I didn't see or notice anything saying more than "Minsc hits Gibberling for 8 damage"  Nothing about circumstances, penalties or bonuses about that hit on the Gibberling  were in that conversation/combat log

It showed the dice rolls and all the bonuses and penalties.  it's possible you had to turn that on, but it was certainly available.

So that way you'd know based on your first attack that you rolled a 6, but with your strength and specialisation you actually got a 12, and that hit, so you could count that backward and work out what the minimum value for the target's armour class was.  You could then plan the rest of the battle knowing that you're at least 75% likely to hit your opponent with every subsequent attack from that character, and you'd have a minimum expected success rate for all of your other characters as well (because you'd know their bonuses already).

Getting this much information from DAO required many more datapoints, and even then you'd never know anything for sure.

I guess you had to search for it and actually turn it on  I've been playing it perfectly fine and dandy without all that.  I figured out which were resistant to what through trial and error (eg. certain oozes needing to be attacked with magical weapons) and looking at the conversation box to see if someone cast a particular spell. 

I guess Im more from the Minsc school of playing (You point, I kick!) because that sounds a little too much like work/math to do that for every battle from a simple wolf to the end boss....

[Sylvius the Mad]

The math is fun.

[Xewaka]

The math makes it fun. Knowing the system increases the enjoyment of the same.

[bsbcaer]

Question is...how many Mathletes and their ilk bought the game? I know that you're for toggles and numbers and the nuts and bolts of things, but you have to think of the vast majority of players who may not be like you and seeing all those numbers and the like might turn them off. Now, Im not saying keep all the numbers on characters sheets and the like (I'd like to see how much damage Toggle Hawke is doing to Hurlock A for example), but you can't overload the players with numbers and data anymore.



As for the "why don't they make it an option then" argument, I think you, I, and many others have seen some of the dev's answers to that questions so it shouldn't really need to be rehashed

[Sylvius the Mad]

Apparently it was even an option in BG. It wasn't mandatory.

The calculations are already taking place within the game. I just want to see them.

[bsbcaer]

Xewaka wrote...

The math makes it fun. Knowing the system increases the enjoyment of the same.

Don't disagree that knowing the system increases the enjoyment of the game (see Sylvius' analogy of sports and rules), but knowing the system and being barraged with numbers on screen (or even in the conversation log area) are two different things.  Seems to me that they've fixed or scrapped some parts of the system that weren't working as well (or like) they should in the first game, so they're learning from their mistakes.  Then again, Im in the more story/environment/characters camp than systems/numbers camp

[Wulfram]

Mostly, a combat log is nice to see if the reason you're sucking in this fight is because you've been rolling poorly or if there's another, fixable, reason.



It was also frustratingly difficult without a combat log to get a clear idea how often the enemy were missing, which made working out how much you needed more defense a matter of guesswork.

[crimzontearz]

Uh.....how did you not realize an enemy would miss?

[Wulfram]

crimzontearz wrote...

Uh.....how did you not realize an enemy would miss?

You could tell that the enemy was missing sometimes, or that they were missing all the time, or that they were never missing.  Getting more specific was very difficult.

Modifié par Wulfram, 23 novembre 2010 - 07:01 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

The numbers let you determine exactly how often the enemy is likely to miss over time.

[Qset]

In DAO, the numbers appear above the characters heads as well as resisted messages etc etc, you could see the basic hit for weapons as well as any contributions from runes, poisons etc - its just a shame that it doesn't get echoed to a combat log somewhere that you can either see in game GUI in some way like in BG or at the very worst dump to a logfile outside of the game and look at either in a different window or later on

I would have thought there was an option in the console or debug mode to do this to some degree but its likely that they disabled or removed the debug module from the shipped game for performance reasons. Of course, console is still there but there is no combat log option that I can see.

[standardpack]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Pseudocognition wrote...

Will there be a place to keep said armor for us equipment hoarders?

Maybe, if you ask reallllllly nicely.
And are kind to puppies.

I'm kind to kittens... does that count?

[upsettingshorts]

The math is fun.  Especially in games where theorycrafting is a big part of the fun. Then you can show off numbers to people for the lulz.  It gives the player a sense of accomplishment to get a really low or really high number because it means they have gained an understanding of the rules and system, and used it to their advantage.  With the numbers, it's easier to express this feat.

If I say, "In Age of Conan I was able to absorb hits from a raid boss whose one-hit kills on their primary target after a certain amount of time are designed to call for rapid aggro swapping to the point that I didn't need to swap aggro" gets across the idea, sure, but when I explain that tanks geared for the encounter had something close to 14,000 HP, and the boss's attacks could do anywhere from 14,000-40,000 damage depending on equipment and player class, and I was getting hit for 1,300 and holding aggro to save the raid when another tank couldn't grab aggro off me, it makes more sense.  

Likewise DPS charts, healing meters, all provide the player input on how good they're doing.  Some of it is epeen, but to me I used stats like the DPS chart to help me figure out how much more damage I could do without pulling aggro off the tank, and if I knew I could do X damage with a decent tank in Y boss fight, I could do almost 2X damage with a great tank in Y boss fight - because the DPS meter told me so.  Otherwise I would have only some ambiguous sense of how often I used my abilities in some previous fight.  It also helped me to evaluate the tanks themselves, because I knew I could go "balls to the wall" on DPS in fight X, and do Z damage with a fantastic tank.  If I do Z damage or less and the tank can't hold aggro, then not only do I have to scale it back/use an aggro losing ability quickly, but the tank has pretty solid evidence that there's room for improvement in their game.

The math provides information on the rules of the game, and from it we can reverse engineer how to exploit the system to our advantage.  If we do not care about this at all, the math is irrelevant.  If we enjoy theorycrafting or even the satisfaction of seeing big numbers scroll up or down, then it's part of the fun.

That's mostly MMO examples, but the same idea applies to a lot of games, including single player CRPGs.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 23 novembre 2010 - 07:58 .

[In Exile]

crimzontearz wrote...

So...you never noticedin DAO that your 2 hander warrior dealt more damage to golems than it did to fleshy things? Or that high level enemies were taking less damage than regular hurlocks? You never stopped for a moment to do a quick calculation of how muchextra damage a sustainable added to your attacks and figured out how much it would add against a better armored individual?

Personally, no. DA:O was not punishing enough even on nigthmare to make you care about armour penetration, especially given the high damage potential & CC of mages and how overpowered they were.

That's not to say that I don't power game & number-crunch, because I do, but there are diminishing returns on effort. In this case, in DA:O, I don't think the effort was warrranted.

bsbcaer wrote...
Don't disagree that knowing the system
increases the enjoyment of the game (see Sylvius' analogy of sports and
rules), but knowing the system and being barraged with numbers on screen
(or even in the conversation log area) are two different things.  Seems
to me that they've fixed or scrapped some parts of the system that
weren't working as well (or like) they should in the first game, so
they're learning from their mistakes.  Then again, Im in the more
story/environment/characters camp than systems/numbers camp

It's not about seeing numbers on screen. It's about knowing how damage occurs and changes to know the relative benefit of damage.

Is fireball better than cone of cold? It apparently burns and has knockdowns while cone of cold freezes. But what's the damage tradeoff? As it turns out, at 100 spellpower it's 120 dmg for fireball and 68 dmg for cone of cold. Knowing that is important.

[upsettingshorts]

I noticed the golem-busting armor penetration, but then when I played my 2H warrior it was in a Tactics heavy game in which I controlled the character 90% of the time, so I got used to seeing his damage numbers flying overhead and could tell when they changed.

Not with any precision though, I just noticed the numbers getting bigger.  Not "bigger by X."

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 23 novembre 2010 - 08:07 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

If it matters, measure it.

This is written on my wall.

[tmp7704]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I noticed the golem-busting armor penetration, but then when I played my 2H warrior it was in a Tactics heavy game in which I controlled the character 90% of the time, so I got used to seeing his damage numbers flying overhead and could tell when they changed.

Not with any precision though, I just noticed the numbers getting bigger.  Not "bigger by X."

I just noticed there's a specific talent granting damage bonus against golems/constructs in the 2h talent group and presumed it works for characters who had it. Had zero interest in finding out exact values, though -- i tend to play with damage numbers and other such nonsense turned off to reduce the clutter, watching the rate at which hp bar shrinks works for me as good enough indicator to tell whether the enemy is going to die or if ther'll be some trouble.

[Grand_Commander13]

In Exile wrote...

Is fireball better than cone of cold? It apparently burns and has knockdowns while cone of cold freezes. But what's the damage tradeoff? As it turns out, at 100 spellpower it's 120 dmg for fireball and 68 dmg for cone of cold. Knowing that is important.

Finally something we can agree on!  Enhanced Tooltips is my favorite mod, by far; even better than Personal Annoyance Remover, and the only one I'd consider essential.  I really hope DA2's tooltips come pre-enhanced.

[Hurrrr]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

ErichHartmann wrote...

It would always be there with a toggle if you wanted to see the number crunching.

Sure.  Make it like the codex or the journal.  They're always there, but you needn't look at them if you'd rather not.

I asked when DAO came out if they could patch in a combat log. No dice, told me that it was too system intensive. So thats your reason, and ONLY reason.

[In Exile]

Grand_Commander13 wrote...
Finally something we can agree on!  Enhanced Tooltips is my favorite mod, by far; even better than Personal Annoyance Remover, and the only one I'd consider essential.  I really hope DA2's tooltips come pre-enhanced.

If we're playing party based RPGs, at some point deep down we're all number crunching nerds. 

Laidlaw said that he wants proper talent descriptions this time around. I hope he delivers.

[Qset]

In Exile wrote...

Grand_Commander13 wrote...
Finally something we can agree on!  Enhanced Tooltips is my favorite mod, by far; even better than Personal Annoyance Remover, and the only one I'd consider essential.  I really hope DA2's tooltips come pre-enhanced.

If we're playing party based RPGs, at some point deep down we're all number crunching nerds. 

Laidlaw said that he wants proper talent descriptions this time around. I hope he delivers.

same here, I really liked the adv tooltips mod as well. I believe Mike has said that detailed tooltips etc are in, of course you might be right Exile, it might turn out as vapourwave

[Blacklash93]

Sometimes I can't help but feel that in all the ways DA2 is tryng to follow in ME2's footsteps, it's lagging behind greatly.

It's already been stated that DA2's new dialouge system won't be as dynamic as ME2's. For example, you can't have characters walking and talking at the same time with the dialouge wheel active. The faces are off, too.

DA2 is trying to have better graphics, but the environments look sterile and boring with no intricate detail in anything.

They're aiming for quicker, more exciting and action-oriented combat at the expense of some depth, but it just comes off as a clunky, unreactive hack n' slash with awkward animations. ME2, on the other hand, played like a very solid shooter with very reactive combat and hit-detection. DA2's saving grace is that it's not sacrificing nearly as much depth, however.

Now with the static companion outfits, there's no armor customization system to make up for it. Not even a pallette swap option.

Modifié par Blacklash93, 27 novembre 2010 - 12:13 .