188 réponses à ce sujet

[Wozearly]

AgenTBC wrote...

"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.

The way to manage who receives damage in a single player game should be positioning not aggro....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 don't feel that's necessarily true. The wider 'trinity' tends to be about Damage, Control and Support.

In this context, all things being equal, it doesn't matter if your support function is lowering incoming damage, boosting outgoing damage or healing damage taken. Each gets you to the same place in the end, if they're equally effective. Similarly, Control could involve forcing enemies to attack a preferred target, making it harder for them to use positioning, or sharing the defensibility of a 'tank' with another class.

Damage is going to be a constant need, as sooner or later the enemies do have to be put six feet under, but there's again a sliding trade-off between the high-risk glass cannon strategy and the more enduring, less immedately dangerous builds.

If the tank's tactic is to insult the enemy's mum and have trained opponents charge them then that does seem unrealistic...but could be avoided if higher level enemies were more resistant to taunting effects (but, for example, able to be controlled by affecting their movement, positioning, knockdowns, etc). The tank then becomes a more priority target as until they're dead, you can't deploy sufficient control of the battlefield to attack and kill your preferred targets.

Ultimately, highly defensible tank characters are normally the choices that draw the most control/support abilities to ensure they have a useful battlefield role. Otherwise why bother sticking great armour and defensibility on someone if all the enemy just go..."Nah, leave him 'til last - kill the squishies". You'd just end up with a party of DPSers and healers as this would always be more effective.

Done right (and generally speaking, Origins did it pretty damn well), each character should be able to use an element of each line, so that irrespective of your setup and the 'flavour' of your damage, support and control functions your group is able to be effective. In some situations one setup is better, in others another will be, but nothing should be impossible.

If anything, the most frustrating part of Origins on Nightmare was how a couple of enemy mages could apply a mix of ranged control and damage effects to completely nobble my usual strategies and put me on the back foot, already needing healing and lacking control of the encounter...but completely my fault, given that I was prioritising melee survivability and damage rather than magic resistance and relying on Mana Clash and other caster-killer abilities to deal with that threat.
If/when that failed, the AI was rather depressingly good at exploiting my suddenly exposed weaknesses.

Looking forward to seeing how DA2 implements the same.

Modifié par Wozearly, 04 février 2011 - 02:57 .

[Arthur Cousland]

hawat333 wrote...

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.

I look at the character data page way too much.  If someone falls in battle or somehow my dual wield rogue does friendly fire somehow with daggers (not archery), I have to reload.  I'd actually be relieved if DA2 didn't show this info, then I'd just let companions die and have the mage revive them instead of reloading.

[AgenTBC]

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?

That's how it SHOULD work, yes. But the point of a quasi-MMORPG aggro system like in DA is that the tank can pull the attention of enemies back to himself even though he isn't dealing the most damage with Taunt abilities and the like. That's the problem; the way heavy infantry protects archers should not be by insulting the enemy but by physically placing themselves between the enemy and the archers and preventing the enemy from reaching them.



This is hugely easier to design in a turn based combat system than a real time one, which is why virtually all cRPGs now use a quasi-MMORPG system which is far less tactically oriented but easier to manage in real time.

[Rimfrost]

Not sure that taking out the biggest mortal threat is always step one. Do you attack enemies like that when playing DA:O or PnP RPG? I think a better tactic is to take out the healer and the wizard as both, while they do less damage, can control the battle field more. So if the AI in DA:O goes to much after the damage dealer then it will help the player keep control of the battle field.

[Rimfrost]

Also having your mage do the most damage is not necessarily the best tactic. Controlling, slowing enemies, healing is in general more effective and will not cause damage. If the AI simply looks for damage then it will help the player.



With dark spawn it was justifiable that they went after the damage dealer as they where somewhat mindless but for humans or qunari's I was (am) hope for other tactics

[hawat333]

Arthur Cousland wrote...
I look at the character data page way too much.  If someone falls in battle or somehow my dual wield rogue does friendly fire somehow with daggers (not archery), I have to reload.  I'd actually be relieved if DA2 didn't show this info, then I'd just let companions die and have the mage revive them instead of reloading.

Oh, I know the feeling.
Every time one of my characters fall in battle, I hit the reload button. Regardless of the difficulty. On higher difficulty levels, there were some dragon battles I've been repeating for 16 times or something like that.
I was really bugged by the sidequest in the forest which puts all your characters -except for one- into sleep, gameplay-wise making them 'fallen in battle'. Still, I couldn't skip it, as it was a sidequest, and I have to do every little one.

[Yrkoon]

Personally, I think Aggro should be purely gender based.

Apparently you'll be fighting alot of Qunari in DA2.  So the logic will be:

1) Qunari sees your party.  Notices Isabela engaging in melee.   
2) gets enraged because women shouldn't be 'warriors'.
3)  Result:  Qunari ignores your tank, ignores your mage who's pelting him with lightning, ignores the healer, .... makes a b-line towards Isabela....

Modifié par Yrkoon, 04 février 2011 - 03:33 .

[Ziggeh]

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.

I've always though of Aggro as an abstraction of positioning, that it's a simple way of representing something that would otherwise be complex. Much like health bars. It's be interesting to see, say an anatomy based damage system, or a "threat" one that involved physically standing in the opponents way, but I'm not sure either would be more engaging, and both would be far harder to present.

[errant_knight]

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.

Great post, thanks! Now I'm bloody worried, though. I want friendly fire, but I don't want to be forced to manage aggro with talents or use rogues. Hmm...I suspect a problem. I sure wish there was friendly fire at lower levels.... Maybe I'll be better off playing at a lower level and reloading after battles if friendly fire damage was done.--but that would be totally lame. I'll have to ponder that. Not sure I like what I'm hearing about healing either, but I'll have to see how that works in practice.

Modifié par errant_knight, 04 février 2011 - 03:56 .

[Chibi Elemental]

It will probably end up being like origins, in regards to trinity meaning... You can do fine with a few loads and frustrations here and there, but in the end if you run the trinity it will be easier... dose not mean you have to.

[Andraste_Reborn]

I am definitely in favour of Nightmare being harder! The changes sound good to me.



I'm hoping though, that with the right build it will be possible for a 2-handed warrior to tank. Aveline is almost certainly the only sword-and-board warrior companion in the game, and I don't want to spend every run either playing a shield oriented warrior or taking her with me all the time. (Not that I'm not looking forward to Aveline! But even if I like her, I like to try out different character combinations in different runs.)

[Alodar]

Nightmare is... unfair, though I can't describe all the ways that it is.

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.

Which is why I really wanted to have friendly fire on a lower setting.

However, I've done a couple of solo-Nightmare runs with DAO, so here's hoping I'm up to the task.


Alodar 

[hangmans tree]

I tend to opt for fun characters with useful abilities not the so called trinity. It always was a problem for me. I dont want to have to use a pattern to play the "correct way".

Another problem with the nighmare is that I hear opponents do more damage and have better resistances/greater healt. Is that correct?

Why? I was hoping that they will increase usage of tactics and abilities, bonuses and critical chances (by enemies). Making hurlocks do more damage is a easy way up and doesn't equal fun. Its rather spam.

[ErichHartmann]

Even though I still haven't beat the Harvester on Nightmare (pathetic of me, I know) I hope DAII has a similar level of difficulty.

[Wozearly]

Tsai Zhou wrote...

It will probably end up being like origins, in regards to trinity meaning... You can do fine with a few loads and frustrations here and there, but in the end if you run the trinity it will be easier... dose not mean you have to.

I only found deviating from the trinity to be significantly more difficult when I did *serious* deviations from it - either in terms of the classes used, or heavily biasing your group to be, for example, a bunch of melee glass cannons.

Generally all of the classes have enough up their sleeves to support one another effectively with the right tactics - but when you limit your tactical variety, the possibility of something taking advantage of that gap is much higher.

The trinity's only true advantage is flexibility - other setups only seem worse because its easy to forget the dozen times when you wiped enemy groups 30 seconds faster and only remember that one blasted encounter where you had to keep reloading because the mages and archers ripped your melee team to shreds, which you walked through fine with the more flexible 'trinity' setup.

2 cents.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Peter Thomas wrote...

On Nightmare, where damage done by enemies is increased

I'm hugely disappointed by this.  I hate that I have to change the setting's other rules and break encounter balance in order to get friendly fire.

[balchagi]

distinguetraces wrote...

Peter Thomas wrote...
Nightmare is... unfair

Thank you for the detailed response. Unfortunately, you've confirmed exactly what I was afraid of.

I don't want to play on Nightmare as you describe it. I don't want to play without friendly fire.

So -- I find myself without any appropriate level at which I can enjoy your game. Otherwise, it looks great. But, more and more, I have a sinking feeling at the prospect of combat.

I can understand your worries. It always irked me that nightmare mode
automatically means enemies having ungodly amounts of health and
suddenly doing increased damage while your supposed hero of legend can't take a few hits. I would like to see advanced tactics and more varied skill usage, but when the player is able to penetrate those, it shouldn't take a million hits to down a  basic enemy. I can accept it for magical and fantastic creatures like golems and dragons, but not for every enemy in the game.

That said, I did find nightmare difficutly on DAO not very nightmarish, so I do look forward to a harder nightmare mode. I would like to see party wipes where I can't help but admire the AI tactics that were set up rather than rolling my eyes because my warrior and rogue can't take down a single enemy together.

[Mr_Steph]

Wait I thought that friendly fire was on every setting except easy, just that only on nightmare it does 100% damage?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mr_Steph wrote...

Wait I thought that friendly fire was on every setting except easy, just that only on nightmare it does 100% damage?

In DA2, friendly fire is only active on Nightmare.

Well, that's not quite true.  Friendlty fire is always active for your enemies.  All difficulty levels allow your foes to hit each other, but only on Nightmare are the laws of reality applied equally.

[Nighteye2]

Yrkoon wrote...
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.

The only thing is that a field general will count all damage, not just damage dealt to him/her personally. Whereas in DA:O, the darkspawn did not care how much damage you were doing to their fellow darkspawn, as long as another party member was doing more damage to them, personally.

[Rimfrost]

hangmans tree wrote...

I tend to opt for fun characters with useful abilities not the so called trinity. It always was a problem for me. I dont want to have to use a pattern to play the "correct way".
Another problem with the nighmare is that I hear opponents do more damage and have better resistances/greater healt. Is that correct?
Why? I was hoping that they will increase usage of tactics and abilities, bonuses and critical chances (by enemies). Making hurlocks do more damage is a easy way up and doesn't equal fun. Its rather spam.

To me it's funny that first people want the game to be REALLY hard but then yet  not have to play in a  (close to) optimal way. I don't think you can have it both ways. 

Well you can, if you play as bad as I do (and make sub optimal party choices based on what I like) and play in Normal you do have a challenge

To your other point, if they could make their AI smarter they would apply this to all level making all levels more fun to play. Ramping damage and/or number of opponents seem to be the only reasonable way.

I mean the AI in DA:O is not that good. If they could improve the AI why not apply it for all levels?

Modifié par Rimfrost, 04 février 2011 - 07:31 .

[Peter Thomas]

JediHealerCosmin wrote...

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

It may be possible, but would be very hard.

During combat, unexpected situations may pop up. Failing to deal with those quickly can be very damaging to your party. Lethality is higher on Nightmare, so the negative effects of mistakes or delays is increased. I couldn't see myself playing without pausing, but that's also my preferred way to play.

Higher difficulties require larger degrees of party control. Pausing and be able to issue orders to the entire party is one of the main ways of giving you that control.

[JediHealerCosmin]

Peter Thomas wrote...

JediHealerCosmin wrote...

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

It may be possible, but would be very hard.

During combat, unexpected situations may pop up. Failing to deal with those quickly can be very damaging to your party. Lethality is higher on Nightmare, so the negative effects of mistakes or delays is increased. I couldn't see myself playing without pausing, but that's also my preferred way to play.

Higher difficulties require larger degrees of party control. Pausing and be able to issue orders to the entire party is one of the main ways of giving you that control.

Thank you very much for the info and your time