174 réponses à ce sujet

[Zalocx]

Cordyte wrote...

That being said I still love me some NWN, if you've got a decent pc and 10$ on gog.com. NWN Diamond edition, NWN + all the expansions.

Don't forget that even all these years later there is a triving mod community that has done things like put in every 3.5 PrC known to man into the game. NWN at its barest may have been a simplification of BG2 with a "meh" main campaign. But that toolset did wonders I tell you

[syllogi]

Cordyte wrote...

I don't understand why this is such a difficult topic. 

             The statement "if you want FF play on nightmare" makes no sense to me. Is it not believable that someone would want to deal with FF but not the increased health, damage output or number of enemies from Nightmare mode? 

             Just because you want to play and deal with FF, to create a more tactical. thoughtful type of play. Does NOT mean you want to deal with super powered enemies who can take 3 times the amount of damage. You can desire a tactical game, but not want buffed upped enemies.

              Ie DAO normal or hard mode. The enemies were balanced, and the FF made you think but not have to game the system to do well. You just had to be a bit more situationally aware. Where as on nightmare mode you HAVE to game the system, and that's fine there are alot of people who like min/maxing finding that perfect build and party make up.

             Basically some people want tactics but not have to min/max or game the system. The two things do not always go together. That being said I can see a case for the reverse, ie someone who wants the tougher enemies of nightmare but does not want to deal with FF. It goes both ways.

This post sums up my thoughts on the matter pretty well.  The loss of friendly fire is going to be a huge problem for me, and I usually play on Normal.  I'd be willing to play on Hard to get friendly fire back, and I actually thought that was going to be the case before I read this thread.  Nightmare only, though, where the big difference is only a matter of adding health to enemies and lowering damage dealt?  Ugh.

I love playing mages in DA:O, and part of the experience for me was dealing with friendly fire.  Taking that away is obnoxious, the demo made it very clear that mages are way overpowered without having to worry about FF.  It's a huge deal that I'm being told that the only way I can have an experience that I find fun is to max the difficulty to a point where I'm just taking longer to kill stuff -- that's *not* fun for me.  Ugh.

Sometimes I wonder why the designers of this game even bothered, since they hated everything that made DA:O interesting.  

[Echoes]

iOnlySignIn wrote...

Cordyte wrote...

I don't understand why this is such a difficult topic. 

             The statement "if you want FF play on nightmare" makes no sense to me. Is it not believable that someone would want to deal with FF but not the increased health, damage output or number of enemies from Nightmare mode? 

             Just because you want to play and deal with FF, to create a more tactical. thoughtful type of play. Does NOT mean you want to deal with super powered enemies who can take 3 times the amount of damage. You can desire a tactical game, but not want buffed upped enemies.

              Ie DAO normal or hard mode. The enemies were balanced, and the FF made you think but not have to game the system to do well. You just had to be a bit more situationally aware. Where as on nightmare mode you HAVE to game the system, and that's fine there are alot of people who like min/maxing finding that perfect build and party make up.

             Basically some people want tactics but not have to min/max or game the system. The two things do not always go together. That being said I can see a case for the reverse, ie someone who wants the tougher enemies of nightmare but does not want to deal with FF. It goes both ways.

Well reasoned. I failed to see why we are stuck with these pre-made difficulty levels instead of many toggle switches where we can adjust enemy health, tactics, FF and other options INDEPENDENTLY.

If BioWare ignores this (which they likely will), then I pray that some modder will ractify this mistake. Has any such mod been created for DA:O?

I believe there are for DAO check the Dragon Age Nexus mod database. As for DA2 I plan on modding it in provided they eventually release some kind of tools to do so. I know they aren't on release, and are coy about wether or not they ever will.  Bioware is usually good about mods, so I expect to see tools within a year of release. Which is not entirely uncommon.

I'd love to do so at launch, but I'd rather not have to backwards engineer the game. A software engineer I am not.

[Echoes]

Zalocx wrote...

Cordyte wrote...

That being said I still love me some NWN, if you've got a decent pc and 10$ on gog.com. NWN Diamond edition, NWN + all the expansions.

Don't forget that even all these years later there is a triving mod community that has done things like put in every 3.5 PrC known to man into the game. NWN at its barest may have been a simplification of BG2 with a "meh" main campaign. But that toolset did wonders I tell you

I agree completely, so many great mods for the game. I came across mods that did not resemble NWN at all. It was briliiant.

TeenZombie wrote...

This post sums up my thoughts on the matter pretty well.  The loss of friendly fire is going to be a huge problem for me, and I usually play on Normal.  I'd be willing to play on Hard to get friendly fire back, and I actually thought that was going to be the case before I read this thread.  Nightmare only, though, where the big difference is only a matter of adding health to enemies and lowering damage dealt?  Ugh.

I love playing mages in DA:O, and part of the experience for me was dealing with friendly fire.  Taking that away is obnoxious, the demo made it very clear that mages are way overpowered without having to worry about FF.  It's a huge deal that I'm being told that the only way I can have an experience that I find fun is to max the difficulty to a point where I'm just taking longer to kill stuff -- that's *not* fun for me.  Ugh.

Sometimes I wonder why the designers of this game even bothered, since they hated everything that made DA:O interesting.  

I'd hesitate to say they hated everything that made DAO, DAO. That seems like a reactionary comment. Regardless some of their choices are dissapointing. Again though I do like the demo, and will probably like the game. I plan on playing on Nightmare hopefully they balanced it so that I dont have to hammer on enemies for ages to kill them, and hopefully that isn't the crux of the difficulty setting.

Again, FF doesn't mean you want a grind.


I always hesitate to get too mad with streamlining these days, mostly because I've seen one of my favorite series get truly dumbed down.

I don't like calling any sequel to a game dumbing down, unless they match the oversimplification that is the Raven Shield (not R63 xbox) to Lockdown transition. Now THAT is oversimplification. Planning phase anyone?

Modifié par Cordyte, 25 février 2011 - 06:47 .

[F4d3s]

TeenZombie wrote...

Cordyte wrote...

I don't understand why this is such a difficult topic. 

             The statement "if you want FF play on nightmare" makes no sense to me. Is it not believable that someone would want to deal with FF but not the increased health, damage output or number of enemies from Nightmare mode? 

             Just because you want to play and deal with FF, to create a more tactical. thoughtful type of play. Does NOT mean you want to deal with super powered enemies who can take 3 times the amount of damage. You can desire a tactical game, but not want buffed upped enemies.

              Ie DAO normal or hard mode. The enemies were balanced, and the FF made you think but not have to game the system to do well. You just had to be a bit more situationally aware. Where as on nightmare mode you HAVE to game the system, and that's fine there are alot of people who like min/maxing finding that perfect build and party make up.

             Basically some people want tactics but not have to min/max or game the system. The two things do not always go together. That being said I can see a case for the reverse, ie someone who wants the tougher enemies of nightmare but does not want to deal with FF. It goes both ways.

This post sums up my thoughts on the matter pretty well.  The loss of friendly fire is going to be a huge problem for me, and I usually play on Normal.  I'd be willing to play on Hard to get friendly fire back, and I actually thought that was going to be the case before I read this thread.  Nightmare only, though, where the big difference is only a matter of adding health to enemies and lowering damage dealt?  Ugh.

I love playing mages in DA:O, and part of the experience for me was dealing with friendly fire.  Taking that away is obnoxious, the demo made it very clear that mages are way overpowered without having to worry about FF.  It's a huge deal that I'm being told that the only way I can have an experience that I find fun is to max the difficulty to a point where I'm just taking longer to kill stuff -- that's *not* fun for me.  Ugh.

Sometimes I wonder why the designers of this game even bothered, since they hated everything that made DA:O interesting.  

exactly..for me its not about the difficulty of the game but the reaslism of it. I mean lets face it, in DAO with FF on I personally makybe killed someone in my party less than a handful of times in multple playthroughs. But what I did like is that it made me observe, analyze, think and learn, even if it was inconsequential to the outcome, it 'immersed' me deeper into the battle at hand and also made me learn to use different spells at different times, thus making it a more complete and thourough gaming experience.

With the demo, I felt like I was just spamming 3 spells (granted you dont get that many in the demo)..fireball, ice, got agro? mind blast..wait for cool down, rinse and repeat.

[Sylvius the Mad]

iOnlySignIn wrote...

Well reasoned. I failed to see why we are stuck with these pre-made difficulty levels instead of many toggle switches where we can adjust enemy health, tactics, FF and other options INDEPENDENTLY.

Peter Thomas said he'd be willing to give us the information we'd need to create that mod, even.

FF is controlled within each ability.  We'd just have to modify all of them to get it back.

[Mordaedil]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

iOnlySignIn wrote...

Well reasoned. I failed to see why we are stuck with these pre-made difficulty levels instead of many toggle switches where we can adjust enemy health, tactics, FF and other options INDEPENDENTLY.

Peter Thomas said he'd be willing to give us the information we'd need to create that mod, even.

FF is controlled within each ability.  We'd just have to modify all of them to get it back.

Even though he said that, I am a bit withholden from buying the game because of moddability.

I have a feeling the game certainly won't be as easy to mod as Dragon Age, which means my dreams of making the game a Power Rangers cross-over are in jeopardy.

[Gvaz]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Alodar wrote...

Casual : Able to completed by suboptimal control of one character
Normal: Able to be completed by optimal control of one character
Hard: Able to be completed by sub-optimal control of whole party.
Nightmare: Able to be completed by optimal control of whole party.

By these standards, the demo is set on Casual.

I agree. I can let everyone die and as a mage just kite to my heart's content.

Of course, I'm not a bad player and no one dies, even when im not pausing.

Not that that's a big accomplishment, but i suppose here on these forums it is.

[Shinimas]

kjdhgfiliuhwe wrote...

It is available on nightmare. It has been implied due to the way encounters work, friendly fire will be far less forgiving than in previous Bioware Games.

FF has always been unforgiving in BW games. But in DA2 it's not about the danger, it's just about the fact you can't really set up AoE without hurting anyone due to the hectic nature of combat.

[Mordaedil]

Kinda extra true when you consider that the fighter's greatsword does damage in an arc in front of him, making it a constant AoE attack.

[Amioran]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Peter Thomas said he'd be willing to give us the information we'd need to create that mod, even.

FF is controlled within each ability.  We'd just have to modify all of them to get it back.

That's not the problem. It's very easy to do a mod that changes abilities behaviour to include FF. The problem is that if you do this you will have unpredictable results on the difficulty of encounters. This a serious modder must take in consideration. You cannot post a mod that actually breaks gameplay for those using it. So a seriour modder would have to chance many parameters to balance the gameplay again and have a sort of context within the range of the levels, and this takes a lot of time and it's either difficult to do well.

[Mordaedil]

Warning, following this post is the most annoying way of quoting someone.

Amioran wrote...

That's not the problem. It's very easy to do a mod that changes abilities behaviour to include FF. The problem is that if you do this you will have unpredictable results on the difficulty of encounters. This a serious modder must take in consideration. You cannot post a mod that actually breaks gameplay for those using it. So a seriour modder would have to chance many parameters to balance the gameplay again and have a sort of context within the range of the levels, and this takes a lot of time and it's either difficult to do well.

Uhm, what? Why not? This doesn't matter to people who simply wish for there to be friendly fire, they only want that feature and will download the mod and use it with disregard to what Bioware considers balance.

Amioran wrote...

That's not the problem. It's very easy to
do a mod that changes abilities behaviour to include FF. The problem is
that if you do this you will have unpredictable results on the
difficulty of encounters. This a serious modder must take in
consideration. You cannot post a mod that actually breaks gameplay
for those using it. So a seriour modder would have to chance many
parameters to balance the gameplay again and have a sort of context
within the range of the levels, and this takes a lot of time and it's
either difficult to do well.

Modding = serious business. Not really, because it doesn't really matter to these people who want it. Maybe it'll be unplayable, but so what? It's a mod, their choice of poison.

Amioran wrote...

That's not the problem. It's very easy to
do a mod that changes abilities behaviour to include FF. The problem is
that if you do this you will have unpredictable results on the
difficulty of encounters. This a serious modder must take in
consideration. You cannot post a mod that actually breaks gameplay
for those using it. So a seriour modder would have to chance many
parameters to balance the gameplay again and have a sort of context
within the range of the levels, and this takes a lot of time and it's
either difficult to do well.

Haha, you've never modded before in your life.

"It's very easy" depends ENTIRELY upon the structure of their scripts and could be a complete nightmare to circumvent or at least a tedious event of going into each script that allows it to affect friendly NPC's, or it could even be hard-coded into the game, making it impossible. We don't know until the game is released and the toolset configured to handle DA2, sadly.

Also, there are no serious modders. Only really bored modders.

Modifié par Mordaedil, 25 février 2011 - 10:33 .

[Amioran]

Mordaedil wrote...

Uhm, what? Why not? This doesn't matter to people who simply wish for there to be friendly fire, they only want that feature and will download the mod and use it with disregard to what Bioware considers balance.

Sure there are many modders that would do that, in fact I specified SERIOUS modders. I would never post a mod that breaks gameplay balance in certain unpredictable occasions so that users installing it will have a broke experience in many cases. I will never post a mod that destroys the balance between difficulties with unpredictable spikes that cannot be anticipated.

 You can think it a thing having to do only with the user, but it's not so easy. Doing a mod should be like releasing a patch addressing some things. If you break others what would be the purpose? Sure, as I said there are many who do just that but those I don't call modders at all.

Mordaedil wrote...
Modding = serious business. Not really, because it doesn't really matter to these people who want it. Maybe it'll be unplayable, but so what? It's a mod, their choice of poison.

Sorry, but this is exactly the motive why you see so many mods around that causes more problems than they are worth, and also the motive that the very good mods around are much better than those and those authors you are sure about their work.

If you want to just remove FF without caring for any other consequence you can do it in one minute. Everybody can do it, you don't need someone doing it for you. If you want to break your game do it for yourself.

Mordaedil wrote...
Haha, you've never modded before in your life.

Really? I was the creator of Better Archery and Better Combat for DAO, two of the most endorsed mods at the time. It is very easy to remove FF in the DA engine. There's a condition (coming from a core include) that you can change that changes the behaviour when selecting targets. Do you really think that for Nightmare difficulty they created different scripts for the abilities or different routines all the time? LOL. 

You have no idea of what you are talking about, as it is many times the case here it seems.

Mordaedil wrote...
Also, there are no serious modders. Only really bored modders.

Beep... wrong. Thanks for participating.

Modifié par Amioran, 25 février 2011 - 10:52 .

[Mordaedil]

Oh goodness me, you are just precious!

Amioran wrote...

Sure there are many modders that would do that, in fact I specified SERIOUS modders. I would never post a mod that breaks gameplay balance in certain unpredictable occasions so that users installing it will have a broke experience in many cases. I will never post a mod that destroys the balance between difficulties with unpredictable spikes that cannot be anticipated.

 You can think it a thing having to do only with the user, but it's not so easy. Doing a mod should be like releasing a patch addressing some things. If you break others what would be the purpose? Sure, as I said there are many who do just that but those I don't call modders at all.

Who the hell are you to decide who gets to call themselves modders or not? Also, the difference between a serious modder and a regular modder is... What, the amount of scripting they write?

Mods aren't the same thing as a patch you know, they are always optional user-created content and anyone treating them like official patches that everyone should use is probably too full of themselves to see their own mistakes and incapbility to produce anything valuable.

Amioran wrote...

Sorry, but this is exactly the motive why you see so many mods around that causes more problems than they are worth, and also the motive that the very good mods around are much better than those and those authors you are sure about their work.

If you want to just remove FF without caring for any other consequence you can do it in one minute. Everybody can do it, you don't need someone doing it for you. If you want to break your game do it for yourself.

I guess I haven't really been deep into Dragon Age modding, but usually a mod that is "more trouble than it is worth" probably isn't worth looking at even the label of.

As for "anyone can do it", you can say that about almost any mod, besides the ones that take actual talent, like new models packs that aren't ripped from another game or conversion mods or whatever. The difference is that not everyone knows enough scripting to do it, understand computer systems well enough to do it and even if they did, they probably wouldn't like to look into how you go about doing it.

Also, we're talking about implementing friendly fire, not removing it. Removing it just makes everything really easy.

Amioran wrote...

Really? I was the creator of Better Archery and Better Combat for DAO, two of the most endorsed mods at the time. It is very easy to remove FF in the DA engine. There's a condition (coming from a core include) that you can change that changes the behaviour when selecting targets. Do you really think that for Nightmare difficulty they created different scripts for the abilities or different routines all the time? LOL. 

You have no idea of what you are talking about, as it is many times the case here it seems.

Haha, so I was not only wrong, but I was wrong in that you consider yourself a serious modder because you've worked on making balance mods that I can't find no matter where I search for it. But from Google, it looks like your entire view on BALANCE is horribly skewed, seeing as you see "better archery" as machine gun nests.

As for friendly fire in Dragon Age 1, we got it on a developer notice that friendly fire works differently from that in Dragon Age 2, and got told that he would need to look into where it checks for targets to hit determining friendly fire incidents in the game. I don't know if we heard from him again, but Sylvius would know, I think, since he specifically requested it.

As for creating different scripts for nightmare mode, no, they don't, that'd be stupid, but they obviously have controllers that check for difficulty for determining whether a target gets hit or not, but if that is located in an included script or as a check in the script for the specific spell itself, I don't know. They did some really stupid scripting in both Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights, before the expansions released.

Amioran wrote...

Beep... wrong. Thanks for participating.

Okay, tell me, what is the difference between a serious modder and a scripter without a paycheck?

EDIT: Removed improper sillieness out of respect for Cordyte. I don't mean offense here.

Modifié par Mordaedil, 25 février 2011 - 11:46 .

[Echoes]

Amioran wrote...

Mordaedil wrote...

Uhm, what? Why not? This doesn't matter to people who simply wish for there to be friendly fire, they only want that feature and will download the mod and use it with disregard to what Bioware considers balance.

Sure there are many modders that would do that, in fact I specified SERIOUS modders. I would never post a mod that breaks gameplay balance in certain unpredictable occasions so that users installing it will have a broke experience in many cases. I will never post a mod that destroys the balance between difficulties with unpredictable spikes that cannot be anticipated.

 You can think it a thing having to do only with the user, but it's not so easy. Doing a mod should be like releasing a patch addressing some things. If you break others what would be the purpose? Sure, as I said there are many who do just that but those I don't call modders at all.

Mordaedil wrote...
Modding = serious business. Not really, because it doesn't really matter to these people who want it. Maybe it'll be unplayable, but so what? It's a mod, their choice of poison.

Sorry, but this is exactly the motive why you see so many mods around that causes more problems than they are worth, and also the motive that the very good mods around are much better than those and those authors you are sure about their work.

If you want to just remove FF without caring for any other consequence you can do it in one minute. Everybody can do it, you don't need someone doing it for you. If you want to break your game do it for yourself.

Mordaedil wrote...
Haha, you've never modded before in your life.

Really? I was the creator of Better Archery and Better Combat for DAO, two of the most endorsed mods at the time. It is very easy to remove FF in the DA engine. There's a condition (coming from a core include) that you can change that changes the behaviour when selecting targets. Do you really think that for Nightmare difficulty they created different scripts for the abilities or different routines all the time? LOL. 

You have no idea of what you are talking about, as it is many times the case here it seems.

Mordaedil wrote...
Also, there are no serious modders. Only really bored modders.

Beep... wrong. Thanks for participating.

I hate to call you out, in fact I really hate internet squabbles for any reason. But neither Better Archery nor Better Melee appear on Dragon Age Nexus. Nor does the Better Combat mod, which was apparently a combination of Better Archery and Better Melee.  Judging by the forums on Nexus you pulled them yourself, also judging by what is actually said in the forums they weren't what I'd call well endorsed.

Also apparently the maker of those two mods was banned from Dragon Age Nexus.

Also please do not resort to ad hominem attacks, reasoned discussions are always better than calling "beep, wrong" and "thanks for playing".

Everyone here is more than happy to listen to what you have to say, just please try and be civil here. There is no need for ad hominem attacks or any other sort of uncivil behaviour, we can talk about this without the constant quips. Present your arguments in a reasonable fashion and people will read and respond in kind.

Also sweetie, making the player overpowered and making the game easier than it's supposed to be is still "breaking the game". Balance works both ways, in favour of the player and in favour of the enemy. There are two sides, that is why it's called "balance". It's like a scale.

Regards

Cordyte

Modifié par Cordyte, 25 février 2011 - 04:41 .

[Palanthiss]

FF is about good positioning , realism and tactics.

Difficulty mode is about damage stats and enemy resilience, nightmare mode being known as a punishing mode for tough players, not the casual ones.

Putting FF in nightmare mode means casual players are "dumb" and don't want to play with tactics like in BG 2.

This is an epic fail for my point of view. I really love this game but being forced to play on nightmare doesn't make any sense...

In my country (France) nearly all professionnals journalists (for PC) already noticed that and reported their disappointment to Bioware...
I can't see why they don't put FF as a separate option, which would allow much more freedom about the game we wanna play ( and isn't freedom the big idea of Bioware these days ? )

Modifié par Palanthiss, 25 février 2011 - 12:02 .

[Mordaedil]

It's kind of weird, I noticed that we get called stupid a lot of the time lately, like why we couldn't change difficulty in the demo was because people are stupid and could accidentally get the wrong impression of the game if played on a harder difficulty. Ie. they encourage people to make uninformed purchases of the game based on the demo.



Great move!

[Lumikki]

Yeah, but if people are stupid?



I generally, friendly fire just change situation to be little different. Meaning how much and when area affect attacks are used. I think best option would be it to be in game options. So, people can chose how ever they like it.

[syllogi]

A toggle would be nice, but what was the reasoning behind not at least letting us have friendly fire on Hard?  I had no problem with that idea, but of course, I was misinformed.  If someone is willing to play on one level above Normal, doesn't that indicate that they're making a personal decision to have a "harder" game experience, and they don't mind being forced to play intelligently?  For me, friendly fire is more interesting than just raising the difficulty alone.  I have serious misgivings about the game, when they tell me that PC combat is pretty much the same, but from what I gathered in the demo, it is significantly easier and less fun because of the lack of friendly fire.  Positioning my party, making choices about spells, choosing when to hold everyone back or to let one or two charge in...these are fun to me.  Spamming AOE spells without consequence isn't fun.  I might as well be playing Fable 3 if I want that.

[FieryDove]

TeenZombie wrote...

A toggle would be nice, but what was the reasoning behind not at least letting us have friendly fire on Hard?  I had no problem with that idea, but of course, I was misinformed.  If someone is willing to play on one level above Normal, doesn't that indicate that they're making a personal decision to have a "harder" game experience, and they don't mind being forced to play intelligently?  

Despite what other people in this thread have said, many kinds of answers were given by the devs but none of them matched. We may never know the truth.

I'll just go with my gut feeling since the answer came from some other things is many gamers turn things on and do not pay attention, then die and complain in rage.

[mintcar]

I think friendly fire was entirely workable in the Baldur's Gate and even Dragon Age: Origins, but I can't imagine playing with friendly fire in this game. Characters are just too mobile, jumping all over the place. Naah. I think it'll be plenty strategic with the new ability to dodge behind cover and other more MMO-like features, but just don't think friendly fire would work that well.

Playing Baldur's gate, I would just place my tank at one position between the enemies and the rest of my party, then cast grease, tangle and loads of fireballs right in front of him so that the enemies had to walk through that. This was possible due to the slow pace, huge gameplay areas and the fact that the characters would stay in one place, hacking away at their foes.

In this game though, all areas are cramped by comparison, enemies are on you in seconds and characters are moving around when they fight. I wouldn't be so sure the game is easier or less strategic just because there is no friendly fire keeping all that in mind.

In fact, I think it might be a good idea to ballance the game around there not being friendly fire. That way everyone can act simultaniously to defeat foes, and if they ballance it correctly it should still be challanging. I guess it makes setting traps less crusial, though.

[Merced652]

yo bro there was like no meaningful friendly fire in me2, why should i suffer it in da2 huh?

[wowpwnslol]

Friendly fire is a privilege for those players who play nightmare. Want FF? L2P and switch to NM mode. I am tired of scrubs crying about difficulty instead of learning to adjust.