364 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

TucoBenedicto wrote...
I never EVER said otherwise. I just think it's a *necessary* work if you want to give a fair amount of freedom to your players.

I'm sorry? This exchange sounds like you are saying it is not more work.

TucoBenedicto wrote...

Amioran wrote...

TucoBenedicto
wrote...

The whole thing about "friendly fire being hard to
balance" is just bull****.

Beep... Wrong.
Thanks for partecipating.

I'm sorry but I don't really care
about how hard you try to advocate this bollocks, they still untrue, and
you still an incompetent.

To me it seems like you've shifted your argument.

'Cause you are obviously reading it wrong. they are 4+4. 8 difficulty settings spacing between easy with FF off and Nightmare with FF on.
And you odn't have to balance all 8 of them, you can just balance the 4 with FF on and then give people a toggle, as I already stated many times.

You are really having a hard time wraping your mind around what I am saying.

It is not about balancing each difficutly. It is about making sure each difficutly is indicative. If you use FF as the baseline, removing FF might change your other settings, i.e. no FF hard could be easier than no FF normal.

Not very relevant. People who don't want FF on are obviously people aiming for a less challenging experience, so they will get what they are looking for with a toggle.

....

It has nothing to do with less challenge. It has to do with accurate information. You need to balance the non-FF difficutly to make sure the ordinal scale of nightmare, hard, normal, easy is accurate.

And again, wouldn't it be exactly what "no FF people" were looking for?
If you pick an easy setting and toggle off the FF option, you are clearly asking yourself  for an even easier version of the game, and so on for any other level.
It isn't a problem cause it's exactly what these people are demanding.

You don't understand. They may want an easier game, but they don't want no FF hard to mean easier than no FF normal. How many more ways could I possibly say this for you to understand?

It would be a huge problem if the game was balanced around "FF off" and they accidentaly made it almost impossible cause of bad design with skills and spells not balanced for FF on.

You keep fixating on the absolute difficulty, but that's not the problem. It's the relative difficutly within the toggle that is the problem.

Arguing against FF and then demanding a more challenging game just doesn't make any sense, to be honest. Who would do that?
it would be like asking for a professional motorcycle with small wheels for children on  each side.

No one is doing that. You're the only one that makes this argument.

[Aermas]

In Exile is saying that it is difficult to judge how challenging the game will be between Easy FF+ & Easy FF- or Normal FF+ & Hard FF-.



Tuco is saying that with a Toggle there will be two different lines of difficulty, each exclusive to it's own. Meaning Normal FF+ has not relevance comparing it to Normal FF-.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Amioran wrote...

Irrelevant. If you include an option it must work for everyone, it cannot be a specific thing for a specific audience. It must work for everybody and in this case, as I already explained, it isn't possible.

Simply you cannot do a thing for a specific audience in a game open to everybody, it makes no sense logically.

Then there can never ever be toggles for anything, or the abilty to mod the game, or edit .ini files, or anything of the sort.  The only way that the whole game is open to everybody is if the whole game is immutable and everyone gets exactly the same game.

Mods aren't for everybody (certainly specific mods aren't for everybody), and yet they gave us a toolset for DAO so we could make them.  Plot helpers aren't for everyone (they ruin some people's games, and their absence ruins other people's games), so they gave us a toggle to turn them on or off.

By your reasoning, the game shouldn't support 16:10 screen resolutions because many people's screens can only support 16:9 aspect ratios.  That's nonsense.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

It is not about balancing each difficutly. It is about making sure each difficutly is indicative. If you use FF as the baseline, removing FF might change your other settings, i.e. no FF hard could be easier than no FF normal.

So drop the descriptive one-word labels.  Problem solved.

[In Exile]

Aermas wrote...

In Exile is saying that it is difficult to judge how challenging the game will be between Easy FF+ & Easy FF- or Normal FF+ & Hard FF-.

Tuco is saying that with a Toggle there will be two different lines of difficulty, each exclusive to it's own. Meaning Normal FF+ has not relevance comparing it to Normal FF-.

I understand what he is saying. It just doesn't address my point, because if Easy FF+ is harder than Normal FF+, you just created a stupid and incoherent system.

[Perfect-Kenshin]

David Gaider wrote...

Akka le Vil wrote...
Why can't it simply be a toggle ?

Because it has a profound effect on the difficulty. Hence it being attached to the difficulty.

Or that, anyhow, is what I assume. Attaching things to toggles is great, but if someone flips that on and doesn't know that it will suddenly make their "Easy" game not quite so Easy anymore... well, that wouldn't be good.

Well if it is not quite so easy anymore, they can like, yah know, turn the toggle OFF.

[Dave of Canada]

Perfect-Kenshin wrote...
Well if it is not quite so easy anymore, they can like, yah know, turn the toggle OFF.

They have to balance every difficulty around it, they have to make sure it works on every difficulty and they'd have to make sure it doesn't cause problems anywhere on any difficulty with any class / party member combination. When you're limited to one difficulty in general, it narrows down the potential problems and workload.

Slapping on a toggle isn't a small little change, else we'd have a toggle for everything.

[TucoBenedicto]

In Exile wrote...

To me it seems like you've shifted your argument.

No, I didn't. And I will not do it.
It's just you having some hard time grasping what I was saying. Of course adding a toggle about frindly fire it's a little extra work with the GUI, but isn't  such a big deal considering how they ALREADY have two different difficulty level with FF on or off. Also, I was arguing about the fact that I don't think this is a big balance issue, it's just an option.

So, just to recap:
I never ever said it would be "less work" to give us a toggle, cause it's nonsense, but I odn't think it's going to a huge issue to handle, not at all.

You are really having a hard time wraping your mind around what I am saying.

It is not about balancing each difficutly. It is about making sure each difficutly is indicative. If you use FF as the baseline, removing FF might change your other settings, i.e. no FF hard could be easier than no FF normal.

So that's the problem for you?
Then I'm sorry but this argument is just plainly stupid. How can it be a relevant issue? Having hard time understanding the difficulty level? Seriously?

It has nothing to do with less challenge. It has to do with accurate information. You need to balance the non-FF difficutly to make sure the ordinal scale of nightmare, hard, normal, easy is accurate.

Thisi s a joke, I'm sorry. 
First, how having an option which clearly explain "turn this on or off for friendly fire" can be any more hard to understand compared with just one single word like "medium" or "hard"?
Are you assuming people can't read a tooltip?

You don't understand. They may want an easier game, but they don't want no FF hard to mean easier than no FF normal. How many more ways could I possibly say this for you to understand?

I'm sorry but there's no issue understanding it, there is an issue accepting it as a valid argument. It isn't anything deep or complex to understand, it's just a very stupid point you're advocating, about something dramatically irrelevant.
Also, you are arguing almost like since today Bioware developers were praised for their perfectly balanced games. Well, they aren't. They never were. They probably never will be.
So how can something trivial like that can be a problem?

You keep fixating on the absolute difficulty, but that's not the problem. It's the relative difficutly within the toggle that is the problem.

No, it isn't. What really matters balancing a game is having extreme situations working fine. Easy is decent, nightmare works fine and is challenging without being excessively frustrating or impossible to handle? Nice.
To anything between those two points you must ask just to not be broken.

Modifié par TucoBenedicto, 18 décembre 2010 - 11:20 .

[Ayanko]

There will always be friendly fire, (Extreme scary close up).....ALWAYS

[Dave of Canada]

Ayanko wrote...

There will always be friendly fire, (Extreme scary close up).....ALWAYS

Even in cutscenes, selling and buying stuff of a merchant and in the credits.

You can die in the credits if Bethany casts fireball on you, so instead of reading the names you run around and hope to god she hasn't been practicing or you didn't spend much points on her.

[TucoBenedicto]

In Exile wrote...

Aermas wrote...

In Exile is saying that it is difficult to judge how challenging the game will be between Easy FF+ & Easy FF- or Normal FF+ & Hard FF-.

Tuco is saying that with a Toggle there will be two different lines of difficulty, each exclusive to it's own. Meaning Normal FF+ has not relevance comparing it to Normal FF-.

I understand what he is saying. It just doesn't address my point, because if Easy FF+ is harder than Normal FF+, you just created a stupid and incoherent system.

You are picking a wrong exemple (how can be easy with FF on be harder than normal with the same FF on cause of a toggle?)  or just speaking nonsense, your pick.

Maybe what  you were trying to say is:
"if easy with FF+ is harder than normal with FF off you cratea stupid incoherent system", right?
In that case, it's just a pointless issue. Difficulty levels aren't something carved in stones.
If someone want FF off on normal almost surely he isn't going to bother understanding if that makes it more or less hard than with FF on.
Jesus christ,  there are games like Space Rangers 2 (a masterpiece, btw) or Mount & Blade where difficulty settings were totally decided by a long list of toggles, and you are trying to make it sound like if having just one of them will be a nightmare to handle.

Modifié par TucoBenedicto, 18 décembre 2010 - 11:31 .

[Ayanko]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Ayanko wrote...

There will always be friendly fire, (Extreme scary close up).....ALWAYS

Even in cutscenes, selling and buying stuff of a merchant and in the credits.

You can die in the credits if Bethany casts fireball on you, so instead of reading the names you run around and hope to god she hasn't been practicing or you didn't spend much points on her.

True version of the Game, Bethany blows up Pal vollen causing the Qunari to be extremely peeved, the result WAR. It's up to Hawke and the Gang to explain Friendly Fire.
New Dragon Age Two Line "My Bad"
Shall Take over Dragon age orgins "I should be going"

[ErichHartmann]

Hmmm....

Friendly Fire is always on in Icewind Dale regardless of difficulty setting (pretty sure damage doesn't scale either).  Keeps me on my toes.  I mean fights would be so much easier if I could just spam AOE mage attacks while my fighters were on the front lines without fear of killing them.  Oh well.....

[TucoBenedicto]

ErichHartmann wrote...

Hmmm....

Friendly Fire is always on in Icewind Dale regardless of difficulty setting (pretty sure damage doesn't scale either).  Keeps me on my toes.  I mean fights would be so much easier if I could just spam AOE mage attacks while my fighters were on the front lines without fear of killing them.  Oh well.....

Also, I would like to point how turning off Friendly fire defeats the whole purpose of picking a spell  which have effects just on opponents instead of a "neutral" one which strikes even allies.
This alone is a biggest balance issue than most of the meaningless ones pointed in this thread as "hard to manage properly".

Modifié par TucoBenedicto, 18 décembre 2010 - 11:44 .

[Aermas]

In Exile,



It believe that Tuco means to say that a FF+ difficulty setting has no relevance being compared to a FF- difficulty setting as there are substantial enough gameplay differences to be incoherent when compared against each other.



Basically making two brackets in which to play; the FF+ & FF-

[In Exile]

TucoBenedicto wrote...

You are picking a wrong exemple (how can be easy with FF on be harder than normal with the same FF on cause of a toggle?)  or just speaking nonsense, your pick.

You've finally gotten it! Yes, this is the problem. Now do you see how stupid that sounds? Well, it can actually happen. It has to do with how you alter the AI skill and ability distribution across diffculties, how the targeting changes at higher difficulties, and how the % resistances change for the heroes. The statistics aren't a major deal because most games nowadays just scale everything up, but AI tactics and targeting makes a difference.

Let's say you balance with FF. The AI is designed to not avoid its own mooks in combat with AoE and but does avoid/run out of AoE cones, so it has been given a very precise target scheme to compensate: it beelines for the weakest threat, which scales in terms of armour. Like the PC in DA:O, the enemy can also switch from ranged to melee. In easy-normal, it will go for heavy/medium; at hard-nightmare, it will target light/mage robe. With concentrated archery fire, this can quickly decimate your team. 

With FF on, you're keeping your team spread out, and you're trying to herd the enemies away with your melee tanks and keep your glass cannons protected. With FF off, you just group up and spam AoE; expect the enemy can do this too, and focuses on your tanks. The enemy AI still avoids your AoE cones at the same frequency, but now you've got your team bunched up. This makes you more vulnerable to AoEs, and losing your tanks early might make the battle even harder than losing your mages.

Or it might not. But the designers can't be sure how the AI targeting would respond to difficutly without FF without playtesting it. They'd have to make sure that targeting heavy/medium on easy-normal still makes it easier than targeting your tanks on hard-nightmare.

Basically, to make sure that easy is easier than normal, you have to playtest that. FF dramatically interacts with every feature of the AI and statistical system. You have to check that. You can't just put in a toggle, change 1 variable, and then say everything is the same if the variable interacts.

Your reaction is the perfect example:

TucoBenedicto wrote...
So that's the problem for you?
Then
I'm sorry but this argument is just plainly stupid. How can it be a
relevant issue? Having hard time understanding the difficulty level?
Seriously?

You can't even conceive of how the difficutly setting could lie to you. But that very thing has to be tested.

That's how an FF toggle creates work.

[Dorian the Monk of Sune]

TucoBenedicto wrote...

The whole thing about "friendly fire being hard to balance" is just bull****.
There are not different balance settings with FF on and off. You don't have to. You have just to balance a game to work properly with FF ON and then put an option to disable it for people who want an easy mode. That's all.

Balancing different difficulty settings around the FF being on or off is just a wrong way to design/balance a combat system.
And it doesn't matter how pompous Amioran sounds advocating this joke of an argument, He's simply and plainly wrong.

Its only difficult to balance when its off and you have area spells that you can spam. If balance is paramount you leave it on.

Modifié par Dorian the Monk of Sune, 19 décembre 2010 - 01:16 .

[Perfect-Kenshin]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Perfect-Kenshin wrote...
Well if it is not quite so easy anymore, they can like, yah know, turn the toggle OFF.

They have to balance every difficulty around it, they have to make sure it works on every difficulty and they'd have to make sure it doesn't cause problems anywhere on any difficulty with any class / party member combination. When you're limited to one difficulty in general, it narrows down the potential problems and workload.

Slapping on a toggle isn't a small little change, else we'd have a toggle for everything.

Dave, I think you're just making a cat out to be a mountain lion; it is by no means a complicated issue. Easy mode (presumably) still has dumber enemies, lower enemy stats and whatnot. It's just that with friendly fire on, your party can injure each other with AOE attacks. I see no need to consider anything further in regards to balancing given that FF is completely optional. If a player feels that the difficulty is unbalanced with FF on, they can turn it off. It's their CHOICE to turn it on in the first place.

Though if they want to augment the effects of FF with each difficulty, they can do what they did in the first game and have it to where the party only receives 10-50% damage on lower difficulties, but receives 100% damage on higher difficulties.

[Selene Moonsong]

I think BioWare has it right, based on difficulty rather than a toggle. In essence, if such an option were a toggle, even 'Nightmare' would be a breeze, so what would be the point?

Personally, I play games on normal and easy, being more interested in story and plot-lines rather than combat, and prefer to allow NPCs to act under AI than rather than micromanaging them during combat, and allowing for the assumption that AI spells that are cast be assumed by the rest of the characters that the caster is targeting AOE spells so as not to endanger the rest of the party. So, I see making such options based on difficulty rather than a toggle the most logical means. Otherwise, it would upset the balance of the game.

Modifié par Selene Moonsong, 19 décembre 2010 - 01:29 .

[Perfect-Kenshin]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

I think BioWare has it right, based on difficulty rather than a toggle. In essence, if such an option were a toggle, even 'Nightmare' would be a breeze, so what would be the point?

Simple. Remove the toggle on higher difficulties.

Personally, I play games on normal and easy, being more interested in story and plot-lines rather than combat, and prefer to allow NPCs to act under AI than rather than micromanaging them during combat, and allowing for the assumption that AI spells that are cast be assumed by the rest of the characters that the caster is targeting AOE spells so as not to endanger the rest of the party. So, I see making such options based on difficulty rather than a toggle the most logical means.

I understand your preferences well and you are certainly entitled to them.  Even so, allowing for a toggle would not affect your gameplay preferences. It's no different than you having the option to decide to micro manage or just allowing the party member A.I to do the job. The point is that the game is flexible enough to let you play based on your preferences. People such as I are simply asking for a little more flexibility.

Otherwise, it would upset the balance of the game.

Again, if the player feels it's unbalanced, he/she can turn the toggle off. If he/she likes the challenge, he/she can keep the toggle on.

[Ziggeh]

Perfect-Kenshin wrote...
it is by no means a complicated issue. Easy mode (presumably) still has dumber enemies, lower enemy stats and whatnot. It's just that with friendly fire on, your party can injure each other with AOE attacks. I see no need to consider anything further in regards to balancing given that FF is completely optional.

Lets say they've put in an encounter that throws spike damage at you. You occasionally have to react quickly to keep everyone on their feet as large amounts of damage comes in very quickly and eases off in cycles.

To make that challenging you need to carefully control that damage, ensure that it's enough to be problematic, but not too much to be overly lethal. Now turn on the toggle. Constant, unavoidable damage to everyone in melee. Suddenly your careful damage is too harsh, because the rate of damage is no longer controlled.

That's quite an extreme example, but controlling throughput is very much a part of the balancing process, and randomly adding to it defenstrates much of that work. It's not as simple as throwing elements in and letting god sort it out. That's a recipe for poorly designed, inconsistent challenges.

Perfect-Kenshin wrote...
If a player feels that the difficulty is unbalanced with FF on, they can turn it off. It's their CHOICE to turn it on in the first place.

Except it's not a case of it being challenging or difficult, it's about functioning poorly as a difficulty setting. Maybe some fights stay roughly the same but with added consistent damage, while others become several orders of magnitude harder as you can no longer keep up with the aoe.

They've made a number of changes and concessions in order to more tightly tune DA2, clearly aware that it's something Origins fell down on. The idea that they would give you access to content that hadn't been playtested and retuned is something I, and I imagine they would see as deeply unprofessional.

Perfect-Kenshin wrote...
Though if they want to augment the effects of FF with each difficulty, they can do what they did in the first game and have it to where the party only receives 10-50% damage on lower difficulties, but receives 100% damage on higher difficulties.

And there is a reason they're not doing that, they've even given us that reason.

Modifié par ziggehunderslash, 19 décembre 2010 - 02:43 .

[Dorian the Monk of Sune]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

I think BioWare has it right, based on difficulty rather than a toggle. In essence, if such an option were a toggle, even 'Nightmare' would be a breeze, so what would be the point?

Personally, I play games on normal and easy, being more interested in story and plot-lines rather than combat, and prefer to allow NPCs to act under AI than rather than micromanaging them during combat, and allowing for the assumption that AI spells that are cast be assumed by the rest of the characters that the caster is targeting AOE spells so as not to endanger the rest of the party. So, I see making such options based on difficulty rather than a toggle the most logical means. Otherwise, it would upset the balance of the game.

You and most are overanalyzing things. Compared to contemporary RPGs DAO is difficult. Compared to most RPG the game is unbalanced even with its mechanical level scaling system. Yet it still sold 3 million copies on consoles alone. It wasn’t that long ago when people doubted if western RPGs could sell at all on consoles.

So why is such a big deal being made over friendly fire? Friendly fire only affects balance and difficulty if you have spamable area spells and AI that doesn’t recognize the tactic. If you want balance then either you eliminate such spells or you keep FF by default. There are other ways to reduce difficulty but if you have those spells without ff balance takes a major hit. You cant have one without the other.

Modifié par Dorian the Monk of Sune, 19 décembre 2010 - 04:41 .

[Ziggeh]

Dorian the Monk of Sune wrote...
Friendly fire only affects balance and difficulty if you have spamable area spells and AI that doesn’t recognize the tactic.

I'm not sure what you mean about ai, do you mean "doesn't move out of?" So, say, it's only a problem if someone is always in melee range, always doing aoe damage, and the dagger rogues don't realise that them standing in melee would be a bad idea?

Dorian the Monk of Sune wrote...
If you want balance then either you eliminate such spells or you keep FF by default. There are other ways to reduce difficulty but if you have those spells without ff balance takes a major hit. You cant have one without the other.

I'm probably being dense, but you mean spammable aoe? You're saying having spammable aoe and FF on is the only way to have balance?

[Peter Thomas]

Friendly fire is only on Nightmare. There were discussions on it months ago (including toggles, having it not be toggle-able in certain modes, and even locked difficulty levels) and that was the decision that was reached.



For reference, here are our current goals for difficulty balance:



Casual - Able to be beaten playing a single character sub-optimally, with the rest of the party using default AI tactics.



Normal - Able to be beaten playing a single character optimally, with the rest of the party using default AI tactics.



Hard - Able to be beaten playing the entire party sub-optimally, either controlling directly or using custom AI tactics.



Nightmare - Able to be beaten playing the entire party optimally, either controlling directly or using custom AI tactics. Friendly fire active.