188 réponses à ce sujet

[HolyAvenger]

Well yes true, I was speaking about DAO mechanics...

[Peter Thomas]

errant_knight wrote...

Well, I play DA:O with two sword and shield (with no aggro management), a healer mage with a few offensive/defensive spells--but mostly dedicated healing, and mix up who I put in the last slot. I have no problems at all and only have people die in a few boss battles. Almost never everyone forcing a reload. I don't think DA2 will be harder than DA:O, so no, I don't think you'll be forced into a party configuration by playing nightmare

There were a number of new mechanics introduced in Nightmare this time to make it more of a challenge. I... er... am not sure what I can discuss about that, though.

In my Nightmare playthrough, I had a weapon and shield warrior (tank), a dual weapon/archer Hawke (DPS), an offensive/healing mage (AoE DPS/healing), and either an archer (DPS) or another offensive mage (AoE DPS). This conforms to the holy trinity you mentioned, but there is a reason why each of those things is important in the context of DA2 on Nightmare.


Tank

In DA2, you generally have a party size of 4. That's not that many people. Usually you will be outnumbered, sometimes by a lot. The threat system is essentially the same as DAO. If you do lots of damage to an enemy, you will become their target. A new concept in DA2 is force. If an enemy does a lot of damage in a hit, you will be knocked around (or whatever) by the force of the blow. On Nightmare, where damage done by enemies is increased, force is also increased as a consequence. Allowing a weak character to get swarmed will cause them to be ineffective or dead. Threat/aggro management is important to prevent that. Also, since force is based on damage done, a highly armored character (or one with lots of Strength, like I mentioned in a previous thread) will be most likely to resist that force. This is the reason that a tank is an important part of gameplay. Damage is redirected from where it will do the most harm (squishy, knocked around character) to where it will do the least (tank character).

Other methods of reducing the damage are by not being where the damage impacts (running in circles; constant micro; doesn't work against most ranged attacks), or by CC effects preventing the enemy from attacking (constant ability use; decreased effectiveness of most effects on higher difficulties; some enemies immune).

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem. There are abilties for each class that can do things like that, but constantly using them will mean that there are a lot of other things you aren't doing at the same time. Like damaging the enemies. You're probably only slowing them down.


Healer

Healing is important, but it's more for emergencies than a constant spam. This was a conscious design choice in DA2. If I find myself relying on that one heal to save me, then I'm probably going to wipe anyway. In my case, the utility of the mages wasn't primarily in healing, but in AoE DPS and varying damage types (to take advantage of enemy resistances/vulnerabilities).

Healing type spells are essentially substitutes for healing potions that don't cost you finite resources. The number of healing potions in the game is lower than DAO, and they are a less frequently used resource. This makes healers good, but the time and mana spent using them isn't being used to damage the enemy. You may only be drawing a battle out, not winning it. This is why I only had a single healer, and didn't have much in the way of healing abilities. Time spent healing was not time spent winning the fight.


DPS

Having DPS characters, however, is vitally important. Nightmare is... unfair, though I can't describe all the ways that it is. Being able to thin out enemy numbers quickly, do enough damage to cause force effects on them, and lowering the health of higher ranked creatures quickly is kind of essential. On Nightmare specifically, there were certain (surprisingly plentiful, non-boss) single enemies that, if my party was reduced to my tank and a single DPS character, I was not able to do damage quickly enough to kill them. Sometimes it meant a slow death, sometimes a fast one. On some, even my entire party (as I had built it) was only barely enough.

DPS, by itself, isn't enough. There are enemies that can take too much damage, or attack in too large numbers that can't be whittled down in short time. Characters built more towards DPS are also the ones most likely to be affected by the force of enemy attacks. They're strong, but weak in other areas that the other roles make up for.



If you can provide effective solutions to the problems that each of those roles addresses, then you wouldn't be required to use that role as such.

[Dave of Canada]

Amazing and informative post, Peter.

[BomimoDK]

If you can provide effective solutions to the problems that each of those roles addresses, then you wouldn't be required to use that role as such.

which you can in a beautiful way actually. You'll be doing this at the price of bumping the difficulty up a notch. If you've got the usual setup then hard is hard and Nightmare is Nightmare.

The way that the D&D hardcore fanatics that jump down everyone throats about too low difficulty circumvent this problem by going 4 archers or 3 warriors or other mad stuff. What this does is to force you to think outside of the box that you guys set down for our convenience and joy. It's a pretty cool alternative since using 4 archers to take down a High Dragon REALLY forces you out of the box and you're juggling every skill and watching for every opportunity while tapping your spacebar to pieces.

The rush is insane and it's undeniably challenging. I like to see it as Hard out of the box= Nightmare, Nightmare out of the box = Hell. I've yet to do an out of the box run of Origins but i imagine the same sadistic aproach will be viable for purists and hardcore Roleplayers. Two warriors, a Golem and myself as archer in Origins sounds like a semi-sadistic approach.

[JediHealerCosmin]

Thank you for the information Mr. Thomas.
A small (possibly sadistic) question: is it possible playing on Nightmare without pausing too much? :innocent:

[Lotion Soronarr]

Sticksandstones987 wrote...

distinguetraces wrote... I had planned to have my mage run a party of three mages plus a tank (GentHawke, "Anders", Merrill and Fenris)

You want a 2H warrior to be your tank? They generally have pretty ***** amounts of health.

2-handed swrods are excellent defensive weapons mind you. With full plate you'd be a pretty tough nut to crack.

[Xandrar]

Awesome post Peter, thanks!

[Nighteye2]

Sounds interesting, Peter. But it still seems to me that the current Nightmare mode should be the default for the Hard mode, with a new Nightmare mode added that's one notch harder, more challenging.

[jsw0816]

am i the only one that not recive a beta code for dragon age legends cause i i still havent gotten one

[AgenTBC]

I hope Peter is right and Nightmare is going to be really damn hard in DA2. It will make my day! I can and will forgive a multitude of sins for a challenge. But I'm not confident that he will be shown to be correct: Nightmare mode in DA:O was mostly easy enough that I'm not sure Bioware's meter is calibrated properly. And I'm not sure that Awakening can be said to have difficulty levels at all since a baby hamster with a blindfold on could beat it by randomly hitting the mouse with her nose.



But I hope I'm wrong! I'll be one happy camper!

[Walker White]

Peter Thomas wrote...
This is the reason that a tank is an important part of gameplay. Damage is redirected from where it will do the most harm (squishy, knocked around character) to where it will do the least (tank character).

I understand that this is how the tank has evolved, as popularized by WoW.  But this is such an artificial mechanic. If you had humans going against one another, no one would ever go after the tank first.  You always kill a healer, summoner, or controller first (unless you cannot reach them).  So what this does is expose the RPG as a chess game against an artificial, pseudo-intelligent opponent.

One of the main reasons why WoW created aggro and the tank mechanics was because of network limitations. WoW has auto-homing attacks in wide open spaces; this relaxes the latency requirements on the network, since you do not have to guarantee that everyone has a consistent view of player position.  The WoW aggro system was how they were able to introduce tactics into this combat environment.  

In a non-networked game this is not as important because you can replace it with alternatives, like cover.  In fact, that is one way to think of a Tank: logical cover substituting for spatial cover.  We know that we can combine spell casting and melee combat with spatial cover; see Mass Effect. I understand that people do not want DA to become Mass Effect.  But  I am uncomfortable that we are accepting mechanics designed to address network latency issues as the way things "have to be done" in a single player game.

[Tleining]

@ Walker White

if you have humans going against one another, wouldn't you make sure that the troops that first come into contact with enemies have the best body armor/protection available, and let them make a lot of noise, so that no one notices the snipers who take out enemies, hopefully without being noticed?

Also, tanks in games usually have abilities like threaten etc. making enemies go for them.

[magicwins]

Peter Thomas wrote...

*Awesomeness snip*

After reading that, not only am I going to play the demo, I'm going to try out a 2 Hander and a Sword and Boarder, to see if what you're saying translates into what I think it does. The concept of dishing out solid damage, and taking the heat and standing your ground when no-one else does, was something that Origins attempted, but I didn't really feel it, so I stuck to mages. But you've convinced me to give the warrior class another shot .

[Yrkoon]

Peter Thomas wrote...

errant_knight wrote...

Well, I play DA:O with two sword and shield (with no aggro management), a healer mage with a few offensive/defensive spells--but mostly dedicated healing, and mix up who I put in the last slot. I have no problems at all and only have people die in a few boss battles. Almost never everyone forcing a reload. I don't think DA2 will be harder than DA:O, so no, I don't think you'll be forced into a party configuration by playing nightmare

There were a number of new mechanics introduced in Nightmare this time to make it more of a challenge. I... er... am not sure what I can discuss about that, though.

In my Nightmare playthrough, I had a weapon and shield warrior (tank), a dual weapon/archer Hawke (DPS), an offensive/healing mage (AoE DPS/healing), and either an archer (DPS) or another offensive mage (AoE DPS). This conforms to the holy trinity you mentioned, but there is a reason why each of those things is important in the context of DA2 on Nightmare.


Tank

In DA2, you generally have a party size of 4. That's not that many people. Usually you will be outnumbered, sometimes by a lot. The threat system is essentially the same as DAO. If you do lots of damage to an enemy, you will become their target. A new concept in DA2 is force. If an enemy does a lot of damage in a hit, you will be knocked around (or whatever) by the force of the blow. On Nightmare, where damage done by enemies is increased, force is also increased as a consequence. Allowing a weak character to get swarmed will cause them to be ineffective or dead. Threat/aggro management is important to prevent that. Also, since force is based on damage done, a highly armored character (or one with lots of Strength, like I mentioned in a previous thread) will be most likely to resist that force. This is the reason that a tank is an important part of gameplay. Damage is redirected from where it will do the most harm (squishy, knocked around character) to where it will do the least (tank character).

Other methods of reducing the damage are by not being where the damage impacts (running in circles; constant micro; doesn't work against most ranged attacks), or by CC effects preventing the enemy from attacking (constant ability use; decreased effectiveness of most effects on higher difficulties; some enemies immune).

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem. There are abilties for each class that can do things like that, but constantly using them will mean that there are a lot of other things you aren't doing at the same time. Like damaging the enemies. You're probably only slowing them down.


Healer

Healing is important, but it's more for emergencies than a constant spam. This was a conscious design choice in DA2. If I find myself relying on that one heal to save me, then I'm probably going to wipe anyway. In my case, the utility of the mages wasn't primarily in healing, but in AoE DPS and varying damage types (to take advantage of enemy resistances/vulnerabilities).

Healing type spells are essentially substitutes for healing potions that don't cost you finite resources. The number of healing potions in the game is lower than DAO, and they are a less frequently used resource. This makes healers good, but the time and mana spent using them isn't being used to damage the enemy. You may only be drawing a battle out, not winning it. This is why I only had a single healer, and didn't have much in the way of healing abilities. Time spent healing was not time spent winning the fight.


DPS

Having DPS characters, however, is vitally important. Nightmare is... unfair, though I can't describe all the ways that it is. Being able to thin out enemy numbers quickly, do enough damage to cause force effects on them, and lowering the health of higher ranked creatures quickly is kind of essential. On Nightmare specifically, there were certain (surprisingly plentiful, non-boss) single enemies that, if my party was reduced to my tank and a single DPS character, I was not able to do damage quickly enough to kill them. Sometimes it meant a slow death, sometimes a fast one. On some, even my entire party (as I had built it) was only barely enough.

DPS, by itself, isn't enough. There are enemies that can take too much damage, or attack in too large numbers that can't be whittled down in short time. Characters built more towards DPS are also the ones most likely to be affected by the force of enemy attacks. They're strong, but weak in other areas that the other roles make up for.



If you can provide effective solutions to the problems that each of those roles addresses, then you wouldn't be required to use that role as such.

Wow.

I think I  just learned more  about DA2's combat in the last 3 minutes than I have in the last 3 months.

Thank you.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 04 février 2011 - 02:46 .

[HolyAvenger]

Hmm interested in seeing how this "force" thing works. Sorta sounds like the Overwhelm ability that a few creatures and Dog had in DAO that was very effective in early-game and against mages.



I still think intelligent players who are on top of the game mechanics will not need the holy trinity.

[AgenTBC]

Walker White is pretty much spot on: "Aggro" is and always has been a kludge needed in a MMORPG environment but in a single-player game it is unrealistic and suspension of disbelief breaking when used with intelligent opponents like well-trained enemy soldiers. Animals, beasts, monsters, and the like, sure, but a well trained enemy warrior is not going to sit around beating on a guy wearing heavy armor and with a tower shield while a mage wastes him from 20 feet away, he's going to bull rush the mage no matter how much the guy in heavy armor insults his mom or whatever.



The way to manage who receives damage in a single player game should be positioning not aggro. Choose tactical positions like narrow halls, squishies behind guys in armor. Fight in doorways. Fight at the top of stairs. And so on. If you're fighting in an open field and a smart enemy is still going after your heavy infantry while ranged guys chew them up it's just bad design.



It looked to me like the smarter enemies tended to go after your mages and ranged guys more often on Nightmare in DAO than otherwise which is good. But that may have been my imagination.

[ref]

Peter Thomas wrote...

errant_knight wrote...

Well, I play DA:O with two sword and shield (with no aggro management), a healer mage with a few offensive/defensive spells--but mostly dedicated healing, and mix up who I put in the last slot. I have no problems at all and only have people die in a few boss battles. Almost never everyone forcing a reload. I don't think DA2 will be harder than DA:O, so no, I don't think you'll be forced into a party configuration by playing nightmare

There were a number of new mechanics introduced in Nightmare this time to make it more of a challenge. I... er... am not sure what I can discuss about that, though.

In my Nightmare playthrough, I had a weapon and shield warrior (tank), a dual weapon/archer Hawke (DPS), an offensive/healing mage (AoE DPS/healing), and either an archer (DPS) or another offensive mage (AoE DPS). This conforms to the holy trinity you mentioned, but there is a reason why each of those things is important in the context of DA2 on Nightmare.


Tank

In DA2, you generally have a party size of 4. That's not that many people. Usually you will be outnumbered, sometimes by a lot. The threat system is essentially the same as DAO. If you do lots of damage to an enemy, you will become their target. A new concept in DA2 is force. If an enemy does a lot of damage in a hit, you will be knocked around (or whatever) by the force of the blow. On Nightmare, where damage done by enemies is increased, force is also increased as a consequence. Allowing a weak character to get swarmed will cause them to be ineffective or dead. Threat/aggro management is important to prevent that. Also, since force is based on damage done, a highly armored character (or one with lots of Strength, like I mentioned in a previous thread) will be most likely to resist that force. This is the reason that a tank is an important part of gameplay. Damage is redirected from where it will do the most harm (squishy, knocked around character) to where it will do the least (tank character).

Other methods of reducing the damage are by not being where the damage impacts (running in circles; constant micro; doesn't work against most ranged attacks), or by CC effects preventing the enemy from attacking (constant ability use; decreased effectiveness of most effects on higher difficulties; some enemies immune).

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem. There are abilties for each class that can do things like that, but constantly using them will mean that there are a lot of other things you aren't doing at the same time. Like damaging the enemies. You're probably only slowing them down.


Healer

Healing is important, but it's more for emergencies than a constant spam. This was a conscious design choice in DA2. If I find myself relying on that one heal to save me, then I'm probably going to wipe anyway. In my case, the utility of the mages wasn't primarily in healing, but in AoE DPS and varying damage types (to take advantage of enemy resistances/vulnerabilities).

Healing type spells are essentially substitutes for healing potions that don't cost you finite resources. The number of healing potions in the game is lower than DAO, and they are a less frequently used resource. This makes healers good, but the time and mana spent using them isn't being used to damage the enemy. You may only be drawing a battle out, not winning it. This is why I only had a single healer, and didn't have much in the way of healing abilities. Time spent healing was not time spent winning the fight.


DPS

Having DPS characters, however, is vitally important. Nightmare is... unfair, though I can't describe all the ways that it is. Being able to thin out enemy numbers quickly, do enough damage to cause force effects on them, and lowering the health of higher ranked creatures quickly is kind of essential. On Nightmare specifically, there were certain (surprisingly plentiful, non-boss) single enemies that, if my party was reduced to my tank and a single DPS character, I was not able to do damage quickly enough to kill them. Sometimes it meant a slow death, sometimes a fast one. On some, even my entire party (as I had built it) was only barely enough.

DPS, by itself, isn't enough. There are enemies that can take too much damage, or attack in too large numbers that can't be whittled down in short time. Characters built more towards DPS are also the ones most likely to be affected by the force of enemy attacks. They're strong, but weak in other areas that the other roles make up for.



If you can provide effective solutions to the problems that each of those roles addresses, then you wouldn't be required to use that role as such.

"Nightmare is unfair" exactly what I wanted to hear!
I want a challenge.
I got another question, in boss battles, or the hardest fights in the game, I hope they aren't over in like 2 minutes. Are the hardest battles in the game fairly long? I remember my first time doing Gaxkang without any of the overpowered abilities in DA took some time, but it felt really good after all the time it took for the one attempt and it felt really rewarding. Will boss encounters genuienly be "difficult" and take a few attempts to get down, or will if you are experienced and know tacticts be able to adapt on the spot and be able to "one-shot" every encounter

[hawat333]

distinguetraces wrote...

I'm pretty much stuck with playing DA2 on Nightmare mode because that's the only way to get friendly fire. No choice, so there it is. 

Really? There's no friendly fire on normal?
That's disappointing.
The more I hear about DA2 difficulty settings the more I assume that DA2 Nightmare will actually be DA:O Normal.
That's a shame.

[Arthur Cousland]

Nightmare difficulty wasn't that bad in Origins.  At least in DA2, you'll have a mage from the start, whether it's Hawke or Bethany.  If you build your companions so they're not made of glass, then having a tank isn't as essential.

Just because friendly fire doesn't deal damage to your companions on the lower difficulties, that doesn't mean that you can't play as if it does exist.  In Origins, on the character data screen, it still recorded friendly fire, even if my companions didn't actually take any damage.  I always tried to keep friendly fire and injuries at zero.

[Yrkoon]

AgenTBC wrote...

Walker White is pretty much spot on: "Aggro" is and always has been a kludge needed in a MMORPG environment but in a single-player game it is unrealistic and suspension of disbelief breaking when used with intelligent opponents like well-trained enemy soldiers. Animals, beasts, monsters, and the like, sure, but a well trained enemy warrior is not going to sit around beating on a guy wearing heavy armor and with a tower shield while a mage wastes him from 20 feet away, he's going to bull rush the mage no matter how much the guy in heavy armor insults his mom or whatever.

The way to manage who receives damage in a single player game should be positioning not aggro. Choose tactical positions like narrow halls, squishies behind guys in armor. Fight in doorways. Fight at the top of stairs. And so on. If you're fighting in an open field and a smart enemy is still going after your heavy infantry while ranged guys chew them up it's just bad design.

It looked to me like the smarter enemies tended to go after your mages and ranged guys more often on Nightmare in DAO than otherwise which is good. But that may have been my imagination.

I agree with all of this, but didn't Peter point  out that aggro will see the mobs going after the person that  does the most damage?

Well?  if that's your mage  (which, in many  of my DA:O playthroughs, it WAS) then  they would go after him, yes?

Edit:  which makes perfect sense to me.  Any intelligent field general will  order his men to take out the biggest mortal threat ASAP.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 04 février 2011 - 02:43 .

[ref]

Dissapointed as well for FF not being in other difficulties, but oh well. I see where other people are coming from for wanting it, I was going to play on Nightmare regardless so it doesn't really affect me.

Modifié par Refara, 04 février 2011 - 02:47 .

[Count Viceroy]

AgenTBC wrote...

Walker White is pretty much spot on: "Aggro" is and always has been a kludge needed in a MMORPG environment but in a single-player game it is unrealistic and suspension of disbelief breaking when used with intelligent opponents like well-trained enemy soldiers. Animals, beasts, monsters, and the like, sure, but a well trained enemy warrior is not going to sit around beating on a guy wearing heavy armor and with a tower shield while a mage wastes him from 20 feet away, he's going to bull rush the mage no matter how much the guy in heavy armor insults his mom or whatever.
.

If this situation was 'real' the guys at the front would either stop the other people running past just by being in the way, or cut them down from behind if they try to get through anyway.

Modifié par Count Viceroy, 04 février 2011 - 02:45 .

[Gabriel S.]

Peter Thomas wrote...

errant_knight wrote...

*snip*

*snip*

Dang... spoken like a true playah!

[ref]

Yrkoon wrote...

AgenTBC wrote...

Walker White is pretty much spot on: "Aggro" is and always has been a kludge needed in a MMORPG environment but in a single-player game it is unrealistic and suspension of disbelief breaking when used with intelligent opponents like well-trained enemy soldiers. Animals, beasts, monsters, and the like, sure, but a well trained enemy warrior is not going to sit around beating on a guy wearing heavy armor and with a tower shield while a mage wastes him from 20 feet away, he's going to bull rush the mage no matter how much the guy in heavy armor insults his mom or whatever.

The way to manage who receives damage in a single player game should be positioning not aggro. Choose tactical positions like narrow halls, squishies behind guys in armor. Fight in doorways. Fight at the top of stairs. And so on. If you're fighting in an open field and a smart enemy is still going after your heavy infantry while ranged guys chew them up it's just bad design.

It looked to me like the smarter enemies tended to go after your mages and ranged guys more often on Nightmare in DAO than otherwise which is good. But that may have been my imagination.

I agree with all of this, but didn't Peter point  out that aggro will see the mobs going after the person that  does the most damage?

Well?  if that's your mage  (which, in many  of my DA:O playthroughs, it WAS) then  they would go after him, yes?

Edit:  which makes perfect sense to me.  Any intelligent field general will  order his men to take out the biggest mortal threat ASAP.

That's what a tanks taunt and other threat gaining abilities are for, so that they can get aggro ASAP on groups.

[hawat333]

Arthur Cousland wrote...
Just because friendly fire doesn't deal damage to your companions on the lower difficulties, that doesn't mean that you can't play as if it does exist.  In Origins, on the character data screen, it still recorded friendly fire, even if my companions didn't actually take any damage.  I always tried to keep friendly fire and injuries at zero.

That's a very good point, I have to admit that I've never looked at it this way, but it seems to be right idea, thanks.