188 réponses à ce sujet

[Peter Thomas]

AgenTBC wrote...

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!

One of the reasons that difficulty was easier on Awakening was that, while player abilities ramped up in power, the creature scaling system couldn't really follow the same trend.

This may displease some people, but creatures no longer scale in the same way as the player. This allows us to make their balance better at all player levels, and on all difficulty levels.

[Alodar]

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.

Solo Nightmare sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun


Alodar

[Peter Thomas]

Refara wrote...

"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

YMMV for boss battles. Some I had to repeat numerous times, others I did the first time with varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes it's luck and sometimes it's good planning. We've tried to differentiate them from each other and add factors to complicate them. Almost all can be dealt with without any foreknowledge, assuming you pay attention to what happens in the encounter and are flexible enough/have a flexible enough party to deal with it.

[Mr_Steph]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

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.

Arh buh 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Peter Thomas wrote...

This may displease some people, but creatures no longer scale in the same way as the player. This allows us to make their balance better at all player levels, and on all difficulty levels.

I still wish creatures didn't scale with the PC at all.

[Peter Thomas]

balchagi wrote...

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.

One of the reasons for increasing enemy health and damage is to encourage efficiency from the player. They don't have to be huge increases compared to the normal game (which can lead to boring grinding on single enemies), but should be significant enough that a party that isn't as close to optimal will suffer.

One of the ways of looking at it is that it would take the party X seconds of focus firing to take down a given enemy. Higher difficulty increases that time, causing complications due to threat management, additional damage taken in that period, additional ability usage, enemies repositioning themselves, etc. The time increase doesn't have to be huge, but has to be enough that the other factors will end up having an impact on how the fight progresses.

Enemy damage dealt can be viewed in a similar way. My tank can stand up for X seconds under the enemy assault. Higher difficulty means that time is shortened. I would have to be better protected, have an off-tank, be able to decrease enemy DPS for a while, incapacitate them, or find some other method to be able to extend my own survivability time.

For advanced tactics and additional abilities, someone else had mentioned this earlier: If we did have that, why wouldn't we include it at all difficulty levels? We want to give all players the best, most varied experience possible, and design decisions have to be justified based on that. Tweaks and special additions were put in on Nightmare that makes enemies harder or, in some cases, act a bit differently, but changes that require significant amounts of resources (which abilities and additional scripting do) would need to be justified and, given all other constraints, probably can't be. A few of us have tried to put in things that will complicate Nightmare, but it was limited to extra time we had over the course of development.

[KyleOrdrum]

I'm actually on both sides of this argument. I think friendly fire should still be there for at least hard mode. That being said, nightmare on origins was wayyyy too easy. I just finished a game with 4 reavers. Let that sink in for a minute, no healer, no ranged damage...just a big spot of insane AOE DPS, and people who didn't die easily. So yes...yay for harder nightmare; boo for no FF on hard.

[Eternal Phoenix]

SammyJB17 wrote...

Wouldn't that be the holy quadrality?

This thread just got PWNED.

Also @ Peter Thomas

Where is John, Matthew, Philip, Andrew and the others?

Also:

If the leveling scaling is handled well, then I can't complain but I still want to feel like my character has improved.

Modifié par Elton John is dead, 04 février 2011 - 08:31 .

[Nighteye2]

Peter Thomas wrote...

Refara wrote...
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

YMMV for boss battles. Some I had to repeat numerous times, others I did the first time with varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes it's luck and sometimes it's good planning. We've tried to differentiate them from each other and add factors to complicate them. Almost all can be dealt with without any foreknowledge, assuming you pay attention to what happens in the encounter and are flexible enough/have a flexible enough party to deal with it.

Will all the boss battles you managed to win the first time you tried them be made more difficult before DA2 is released? :innocent:

[Rimfrost]

Nighteye2 wrote...

Peter Thomas wrote...

Refara wrote...
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

YMMV for boss battles. Some I had to repeat numerous times, others I did the first time with varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes it's luck and sometimes it's good planning. We've tried to differentiate them from each other and add factors to complicate them. Almost all can be dealt with without any foreknowledge, assuming you pay attention to what happens in the encounter and are flexible enough/have a flexible enough party to deal with it.

Will all the boss battles you managed to win the first time you tried them be made more difficult before DA2 is released? :innocent:

Urgh, I find most boss battles boring and repetitive and to often the main boss simply has a ridicilous amount of hit points. Having to play it over and over is no fun. I kinda like the idea that witcher 2 will try where the boss battle is it's own little mini game. That way it can become more cinematic and more story driven with more back and forth banter. To me that is more interesting then "here comes 1000 critters let's go".

[Nighteye2]

Rimfrost wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...

Peter Thomas wrote...

Refara wrote...
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

YMMV for boss battles. Some I had to repeat numerous times, others I did the first time with varying degrees of difficulty. Sometimes it's luck and sometimes it's good planning. We've tried to differentiate them from each other and add factors to complicate them. Almost all can be dealt with without any foreknowledge, assuming you pay attention to what happens in the encounter and are flexible enough/have a flexible enough party to deal with it.

Will all the boss battles you managed to win the first time you tried them be made more difficult before DA2 is released? :innocent:

Urgh, I find most boss battles boring and repetitive and to often the main boss simply has a ridicilous amount of hit points. Having to play it over and over is no fun. I kinda like the idea that witcher 2 will try where the boss battle is it's own little mini game. That way it can become more cinematic and more story driven with more back and forth banter. To me that is more interesting then "here comes 1000 critters let's go".

They shouldn't be made more difficult by simply giving the boss more hit points - but enemy waves could be an option, or special directional attacks that require the player to think about positioning to avoid the entire party being hurt. The high dragon battle in DA:O did the latter very well.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Peter Thomas wrote...

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem.

It occurs to me that Peter isn't saying we need a Warrior.  He's saying we need a tank.

I enjoyd using Archer tanks and Rogue tanks in DAO.  So far I've seen no reason why they won't work in DA2.

[JrayM16]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Peter Thomas wrote...

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem.

It occurs to me that Peter isn't saying we need a Warrior.  He's saying we need a tank.

I enjoyd using Archer tanks and Rogue tanks in DAO.  So far I've seen no reason why they won't work in DA2.

Precisely, creativity can circumvent most party building problems. 

[Wozearly]

Nighteye2 wrote...

They shouldn't be made more difficult by simply giving the boss more hit points - but enemy waves could be an option, or special directional attacks that require the player to think about positioning to avoid the entire party being hurt. The high dragon battle in DA:O did the latter very well.

Tough line to walk, that. Personally, I find it a tremendous wind-up when bosses do the "incredible deadly attack of doom" that immediately wipes you until you learn how to avoid it, at which point its child's play.

You know...that kind of MMO mentality that says "grind it and wipe until you learn it, then do it in your sleep". Doesn't make for fun encounters, IMO. I love those that have you skating through by the skin of your teeth, but not ones that are just unreasonably difficult on the first attempt because you don't know what's going on.

The high dragon in DA:O was a good fight, but the fact that half my party insisted on running into point blank range so that it could wing-sweep or flame breath them with impunity was...arrrgh!

Personally, the golem room in GOA did it for me. It was hard, and could go wrong in all kinds of ways, but I still managed it first time - albeit with only the warden still standing and at <5% health. Ironically it was my future playthoughs where I got regularly turned into paste in that room.

Modifié par Wozearly, 04 février 2011 - 11:14 .

[andar91]

Wow, look at all of the info. So...are healers useless now, or does that just apply to Nightmare mode? Because I always took Wynne and (being a mage player) always took Heal and Group Heal as a precaution.

[Peter Thomas]

andar91 wrote...

Wow, look at all of the info. So...are healers useless now, or does that just apply to Nightmare mode? Because I always took Wynne and (being a mage player) always took Heal and Group Heal as a precaution.

Healers are useful, just don't base your strategy on being able to outheal incoming damage.

[Harid]

Peter Thomas wrote...

andar91 wrote...

Wow, look at all of the info. So...are healers useless now, or does that just apply to Nightmare mode? Because I always took Wynne and (being a mage player) always took Heal and Group Heal as a precaution.

Healers are useful, just don't base your strategy on being able to outheal incoming damage.

Healers were already useless in DA:O in Nightmare, that's hardly anything  new.

[errant_knight]

JrayM16 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Peter Thomas wrote...

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem.

It occurs to me that Peter isn't saying we need a Warrior.  He's saying we need a tank.

I enjoyd using Archer tanks and Rogue tanks in DAO.  So far I've seen no reason why they won't work in DA2.

Precisely, creativity can circumvent most party building problems. 

See, this is my worry. I don't like to use a tank. I find it unrealistic and a really bad way for a leader to treat a person under their command. It's not that I don't want to use a warrior tank, it's that I don't want to use a tank at all. One of the things I really enjoyed in DA:O was that if attention was paid to strategy, and to party tactics, as well as to having the party work together efficiently, it was unneccessary. I'd prefer not to be forced into a particular style of play. Although it does sound like there might be ways to control the flow of battle without using aggro.

Modifié par errant_knight, 05 février 2011 - 02:45 .

[TJPags]

errant_knight wrote...

JrayM16 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Peter Thomas wrote...

If you want to play without a tank on Nightmare, you will have to solve the crowd control problem.

It occurs to me that Peter isn't saying we need a Warrior.  He's saying we need a tank.

I enjoyd using Archer tanks and Rogue tanks in DAO.  So far I've seen no reason why they won't work in DA2.

Precisely, creativity can circumvent most party building problems. 

See, this is my worry. I don't like to use a tank. I find it unrealistic and a really bad way for a leader to treat a person under their command. It's not that I don't want to use a warrior tank, it's that I don't want to use a tank at all. One of the things I really enjoyed in DA:O was that if attention was paid to strategy, and to party tactics, as well as to having the party work together efficiently, it was unneccessary. I'd prefer tot to be forced into a particular style of play. Although it does sound like there might be ways to control the flow of battle without using aggro.

^^  this.  So much this.

I hate the idea of a tank.  I've always found that the right party combo, with the right tactics and skills, can handle any battle.

I'll be really disappointed if Nightmare is unplayable without using a tank strategy.  I'll do my damndest to see that it isn't.

[In Exile]

Harid wrote...
Healers were already useless in DA:O in Nightmare, that's hardly anything  new.

That's not true. Or rather, it depends on your approach. A 3 mage party on nightmare could outheal damage and make you invincible. Heal was also crucial for the infinite "mana" bloodmage build.

[In Exile]

errant_knight wrote...
See, this is my worry. I don't like to use a tank. I find it unrealistic and a really bad way for a leader to treat a person under their command. It's not that I don't want to use a warrior tank, it's that I don't want to use a tank at all. One of the things I really enjoyed in DA:O was that if attention was paid to strategy, and to party tactics, as well as to having the party work together efficiently, it was unneccessary. I'd prefer not to be forced into a particular style of play. Although it does sound like there might be ways to control the flow of battle without using aggro.

Peter Thomas never said you needed a tank. He just said you needed to be able to solve crowd control problems and the tank happens to be the ideal way to do it.

[errant_knight]

In Exile wrote...

errant_knight wrote...
See, this is my worry. I don't like to use a tank. I find it unrealistic and a really bad way for a leader to treat a person under their command. It's not that I don't want to use a warrior tank, it's that I don't want to use a tank at all. One of the things I really enjoyed in DA:O was that if attention was paid to strategy, and to party tactics, as well as to having the party work together efficiently, it was unneccessary. I'd prefer not to be forced into a particular style of play. Although it does sound like there might be ways to control the flow of battle without using aggro.

Peter Thomas never said you needed a tank. He just said you needed to be able to solve crowd control problems and the tank happens to be the ideal way to do it.

Yes, that's why I said it sounds like there are other ways to control battle.

I also got the feeling they're less than optimal, however, whereas before, using a tank was just one of a number of playstyles that worked equally well. Still, he was trying not to give too much away, so it remains to be seen.

Modifié par errant_knight, 05 février 2011 - 04:11 .

[Harid]

In Exile wrote...

Harid wrote...
Healers were already useless in DA:O in Nightmare, that's hardly anything  new.

That's not true. Or rather, it depends on your approach. A 3 mage party on nightmare could outheal damage and make you invincible. Heal was also crucial for the infinite "mana" bloodmage build.

If you needed to heal in a 3 mage party you were doing it wrong, and poultices did a better job at healing than cure spells did as a Blood Mage or well. . .anyone, anyway, especially in Nightmare, where IIRC Heal was nerfed anyway.

Modifié par Harid, 05 février 2011 - 04:26 .

[In Exile]

Harid wrote...
If you needed to heal in a 3 mage party you were doing it wrong, and poultices did a better job at healing than cure spells did as a Blood Mage or well. . .anyone, anyway, especially in Nightmare, where IIRC Heal was nerfed anyway.

There was no need to really use a consumable in any battle save those close to the endgame because group heal was good enough. Why waste any kind of healing item? 

What a 3 mage party did well AoE killers via fireball + direct damage. As for blood mages, a spirit healer/blood mage combo allows you to boost spellpower while casting out of health, using blood sacrifice to heal and group heal to restore your mana pool's health.

[In Exile]

errant_knight wrote...
I also got the feeling they're less than optimal, however, whereas before, using a tank was just one of a number of playstyles that worked equally well. Still, he was trying not to give too much away, so it remains to be seen.

Using a tank as a tank wasn't at all wasn't optimal in DA:O... so we'll see how it gets implemented.