Shinian2 wrote...
Did you play Baldur's Gate? Silly question, I know. I'm sure you did. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure no matter what I did the mobs targetted my PC, because of the storyline. EDIT: and I'm sure my only other party member, Imoen, would ahve made an excellent tank. 
In any case, you make some bizarre assumptions. I play mages in almost every game I play. I said that in my post. I know how powerful they eventually are.
The reason I played a fighter was because he had more hitpoints, not because the game play was easier.
And it doesn't count as a legit reason for what, exactly? Give me a break, it was 10 years ago.. 
I have never had a problem getting targeted in the first dungeon or the entire game for that matter. You should have had Minsc and Jaheira by that point if you rescued them and have Minsc tank. Hell, I even beat BG2 solo once as a Mage, and the first dungeon was of no trouble.
Sir JK wrote...
AuraofMana: That is both the Baldur's Gate
(I and II) main strength and main weakness I think. The spell system is
fairly complex, with a myriad of varied options that do all sorts of
thing, and much of the difficulty of the game comes from making sure you
have the right spell ready at the right time and understanding the
mechanics behind it.
Simply put: A steep learning curve (the mechanics) followed by a primarily logistical challenge.
To be honest, the system was a lot more complex, but there is a difference between complexity and complication. The system looks daunting at first, but if you read the spell description it ends up being pretty easy to understand. While there are a degree of having the right spells at the right time, there is much leniency behind that. There is never a point in the game where you need a specific spell, or even a Mage, to go through. Having the right weapons in your arsenal makes the game easier, but it is not required.
Sir JK wrote...That's
also Baldur's Gates (and indeed, D&Ds) primary weakness though. The
challenge is so intimately tied to the spellcasters. In fact... all of
it lie in the spellcasting system. The D&D crpgs does this a bit
better than the tabletop game (or so I've understood) but the entire
difficulty provided stands and falls with the numerous options provided
by the spellbooks. Remove that from the equation and the same game would
be trivial (or impossible depending on if you actually accomodate from
this).
That's somewhat a weird statement, since spellcasters are a huge part of the game and an essential part of it; of course it would affect the game much. Now, the thing about spellcasters is that they are much more complicated to play than someone who depends on physical damage (Fighters, Rogues, Rangers, etc.) There is never a doubt in that. The result of that is powerful enemies would usually contain spellcasters of some sort (but usually in a mixed party), and powerful bosses can usually cast spells. This adds more complexity to the challenge, as there are many ways to beat down a spellcaster. A powerful boss with pure physical damage, however, is very linear and would offer only a few different approaches for the player.
Dragon Age circumvents this by having warriors and rogues be complex (although not at the level of the Mages) by having active abilities. While this alleviates some issues, the lack of complexity in the spell system made the game very easy. I'll elaborate on this:
The thing about BG II's spellcasting is that it is complex (a lot more complex than Dragon Age). There are a ton of spells and most of them have interesting and
varied effects. There are a ton of attributes on a character (different saves, for example) and randomness is a bigger factor. This creates a dynamic gameplay where scenarios are seldomly the same. Some might argue this is too much.
However, this allows for more uniqueness in each character. In BG II, most boss fights with suitable difficulty (i.e., your character isn't cheesing or overleveled) offer different challenges and require different solutions. Spellcasting comes to mind where enemies would be layered with defenses and require you to act accordingly. Enemies would also use different abilities and require you to deal with them accordingly.
This is completely untrue in Dragon Age. While there are a certain difference to enemies, there are fewer approaches and solutions.
A typical scenario of a Dragon Age player is that someone would discover a way to play his party within a few hours, if not earlier, and stick to it the entire game, and very rarely does he or she need to change that gameplay according to the situation. What exacerbates this is that your character will find some sort of combat role very early on and stick to it for the rest of the game. A Warrior in Dragon Age will either become DPS or tank and never change the role (unless, say this is the only Warrior you have early game and you want to build him/her to be DPS, but for now you'll tank due to lack of alternatives). This is completely untrue in BG II because a Fighter can easily switch roles depending on gear, formation set up, and party changes (i.e. Clerics uses more healing spells and defense buffing spells as opposed to damage buffing spells). The fact that Fighters lack the active skills Warriors do in Dragon Age contributes to this too.
One thing I have discovered is that the difficulty in Dragon Age is a joke. I realized because of the lack of complexity in the magic system, layers of defenses do not exist, and as such, I can approach every single fight with the same solution: CC. CCing is somewhat useful in BG II, but usually requires you to beat the enemies' saves and protection spells. Besides a few skills, there are no defenses to this in Dragon Age, and thus the gameplay become very simple. This also works with nuking. One of the infamous example is the Virulent Walking Bomb. There is simply so few defenses against it and enemies will drop like flies. By carefully aggroing your enemies, you can easily kill the boss with the AOE effects.
The lowered complexity of spellcasting in Dragon Age is made a bit more interesting in the spell combos, but there are too few and besides one or two, do not add any new gameplay aspect that would otherwise increase the complexity.
Sir JK wrote...But the Dragon Age series does not work that way. There
are cooldowns and realtime as opposed to once-per.turn spellcasting and
turns. The system relies on the renewable resource mana instead of
limited spellslots. The rogue and the warrior have abilities as well. A
lot fewer spells overall, particularly utility and control spells.
The
primary flaw of the system is that, it revolves around the "vancian"
spellcasting system so that once removed it becomes painfully clear that
there was almost nothing there beyond it. There is no tactics in the
classic crpg system beyond the "right power/ability/spell at the right
time". Everything is else is there to provide some tools to provide for
this (such as tanks occupying the target until the spell is ready or
rogues wittling down weak opponents so a spell won't have to be wasted
on them).
To be honest, a mana system is a lot better than the system DND has from a gameplay perspective. In fact, I like the mana system more. I also agree that classes like Warriors and Rogues should have as many active abilities as casters do (something Dragon Age improves, but still doesn't reach. Remember how in DA:O you can max out all the skills you want on a Warrior and still have points left over?) Having less spells is also a good thing
if the complexity is either kept or reduced without affecting gameplay, something Dragon Age does not manage.
Another problem with Dragon Age is that... well we all know Bioware is terrible at balancing classes. Balancing isn't as huge of a problem in SP games as do in MP (which gets me worried about TOR). However, because Bioware had been restricted to the DND system (which is a good thing, tbh...) in the past, there wasn't that much problem. As soon as Bioware ventures out and makes its own IP (ME and DA), the balancing is horrendous. Look at Mass Effect, the adept is completely OP. ME2 fares somewhat better but suffers from different balancing problems. Dragon Age has OP Mage characters where things like CCing, among other things, equals easy victory, even on Nightmare. This escalates in Awakening where everyone dominates. Then Bioware tries to provide a challenge in Golems of Amgarrak and it becomes one of the hardest fights. There is never a middle ground where there should be an approriate challenge. This feeds to the the depth and difficulty problem these games suffer from.
Simply put, Bioware doesn't like the restrictions DND puts in its games, but at the same time cannot design a gameplay system to match the balance and complexity that is DND (DND has been out there for a while and played by many, so this is reasonable, but doesn't make the problem go away). While Bioware is known for its storylines, balancing games is not Bioware's strong point, and stepping away from DND has shown this very clearly. I am hoping this problem doesn't escalate to the point where it makes the game unbearable. The next step in Mass Effectifying Dragon Age 2 further lowers the complexity which doesn't bode well. For me, Bioware's latest ventures (this, lack of support and patching, Awakening) has me troubled.
Modifié par AuraofMana, 27 novembre 2010 - 03:48 .
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the computer AI characters have lots of hp, or do more damage. And as far as I can tell, the majority of enemy mobs in the majority of games don't do things like heal each other, or work in tandem (at the very least, not like a human would direct them). So once you, as a player, get a rhythm down, the difficulty of an arbitrary fight ends up being related how the fight is scaled to your characters' levels and not much else.
