666 réponses à ce sujet

[Althernai]

egervari wrote...

- They made the easy difficulty easier. This to me seems like a step in the wrong direction. Many people said easy was already easy... and they made it easier?

The Easy difficulty is intended for people who have no interest in the combat at all and just want to play through the story. Some people were complaining that certain fights are still too hard on Easy difficulty, so they went and made it even easier.

- On normal, some battles can be frustratingly cheap. Such battles should be scaled back, or fix the problems below and maybe they won't be a problem. Once the party gains in levels, the normal battles become easy, and even the boss battles become pretty easy too. The hardest are battles with mages, or mage-like effects - exploding fire with shattering shots mixed into a single attack, cone of cold, mass stuns and/or knockdowns, etc.

I don't see anything wrong here. Being offensively nasty and defensively weak is practically the definition of RPG mages. There is a variety of tactics that deal with this (party mages, stealth, archery), usually by killing them before they do their stuff.

- melee abilities cost too much stamina.

Willpower will help with that. It's also an incentive to wear lighter armor. Again, this is a problem with how some people are playing the game, not with the game itself.

- Bonuses to stats or dervived stats is just bad.

There might be some bugs here and if so they should be fixed.

Arcane Mastery is supposed to give a big bonus to spellpower, yet I don't see any real impact.

It's a 5% bonus (essentially +1 in D&D). It should be noticeable, but just barely.

- With the over-emphasis on mages, it makes "should be balanced" parties "unbalanced". Many people have stated if they could run 4 mages, they would.

Many people don't know how to play games like this one. A single mage is sufficient as long as you treat your rogues and warriors right. A skilled player can make do without any mages at all, but given your post, stick with 1 mage.

Because not all skills are equal, there should be a way to respec, unless suffer the consequences of playing 30+ hours to redo the characters (or cheat).

There's a mod for that. The real culprit here is the vague official documentation -- if we knew what the abilities actually did, there would be no need for it -- but the mod is there if you screwed up.

-  Poor ai becomes a problem

Poor AI is always a problem. Nobody has found a way to fix this for any game. You can get the 25 Tactics slots mods and try writing the AI yourself.

[chizow]

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

No one forces you to play with mages. Play on easy and take it easy.  Or you can bump up the difficulty if you build the rest of your team accordingly, accounting for the various needs: damage mitigation, damage output, crowd control, targetted de-buffing, healing and so on.  It's much easier with one or two mages, but you have all of the tools in the warrior and rogue lines.  Go to town.

In what other party-based fantasy RPG have you ever opted-out of taking magic users? In what other party-based fantasy RPG is taking all melee a viable option?

Actually, Bioware does force you to play with mages with the design decisions they made with their game.  You shouldn't have to drop difficulty levels to overcome poor design decisions, especially when those decisions eliminate the very choices you're advocating by forcing a largely homogenous gameplay experience.

Even if you did drop difficulty level, that doesn't change the ineffectiveness of physical vs. magic characters.  Again, no one really cares that magic characters are imbalanced, they just want other classes buffed so that they can actually experience a different gameplay experience with said physical classes and not have it end up being an exercise in frustration.  

Rebalancing talent trees and changing fundamental aspects of stamina use/regain have nothing to do with mages, they would simply make physical characters a more appealing alternative to the current state of gameplay where everything gravitates toward mages.

[chizow]

egervari wrote...
I would agree with all of this. If they gave more choices of mages, that would great. I can understand why they didn't unload a bunch of characters like in BG2, because of all the voice-overs, but I would have gladly skipped getting another warrior character to have a neutral mage.

Bioware did a good job giving the player a tank, an archer, a duel wielder, etc. But there at least 4 major types of mages with way more customization and we only have 2.

I think if I play again, I'm going to be a dps/cc mage asap. I'm just so far into the game now that I can't take Morrigan or she'll probably turn on me. Even sten is a problem somewhat, and I have to find the perfect dialog trees to not lose any or much report with him :/ I did the dwaren place last, so I am using sten for most of my playthrough. Man, I should have went to the dwarven place first... but how was I to know which locations would and wouldn't give me characters? I wasn't reading spoilers :/

Yeah I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that the game has limited replayability simply due to the fact mages are better at everything to the point rolling a physical character isn't even fun or worthwhile.  Again, I agree with much of what you've said, you can see a list of suggestions I'm hoping Bioware pushes through in future patches.  Once again, none of my suggestions are to nerf mages, they're simply to buff other classes to make them a more enjoyable and viable alternative to mages.

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/9/index/191687

[Unbroken Lineage]

Where does this expectation come from?



I ask again: In what other party-based fantasy RPG have you ever opted-out of taking magic users?

[wrdnshprd]

i have a rogue/tank/mage/mage party. i only use morrigan for her cc (very little dps unless shatter or sleep/horror procs) and wynne for her heals (and stonefist). if i didnt have morrigan, i could easily use liliana (make her archer i think?). thus i could see only using wynne and then you would have to be the cc or pick liliana and then you would only need one mage.

[Amish Love Machine]

egervari wrote...

It could be that I am not running 2 mages that I think the game is unbalanced. I don't run morrigan for the pure reason that she disagrees with everything I do. I had her at hostile within hours of getting her. Wynn is the only other character I can pick... so I guess if you want to be a "good" character, you have to play as a dps/cc mage yourself? It would appear so. Seems pretty limited.

That's not accurate. My warrior was a goody-goody and took Morrigan everywhere and, while she didn't like some of my choices, I had her digging me relatively quickly.

[tinfish]

the difficulty does seem to be a bit random, the odd fight seems to be set at a vastly higher difficulty than all the others, and it is rarely even a boss encounter, ussually a failry normal (i beleive they are intended to be normal encounters) will be almost unwinnable.



leaving you with a choice of spending 30 minutes heading back to camp to swap party members, when it rarely helps with these strangley difficult battles, or swapping to cassual (wich is far far too easy)

[chizow]

Crawling_Chaos wrote...

Mages have ALWAYS been the most powerful characters, in every fantasy RPG EVER.

However, they have always also been the weakest. You get a rogue to get up close to them and they will be down in seconds, or get an archer to killshot them in a few hits.

It is true, if you play without a mage you will be at a loss, but it is definitely possible to play without a mage on a high difficulty.

1) Bioware has said they wouldn't sacrifice gameplay and balance for the sake of lore or realism.
2) That's the problem here, mages aren't the weakest in any regard. They're also the most resilient with the right build (really only need AW). 

Also, in other games you did have options to make other party builds a viable alternative, like defensive clerics, paladins, or bards/minstrels as secondary or primary healers, but not in this game.  You have to rely on mages or potions.

[Amish Love Machine]

I rarely take 2 mages with me and, 90% of the time, don't run into problems. My usual team was me (dual-wielding warrior), Allistair (talented to tank), the French girl (usually set to range) and Morrigan, who I talented to heal if need be. That worked out rather well. Every now and then I'd bring Wynn and drop the archer but those moments were few and far between.

[chizow]

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

Where does this expectation come from?

I ask again: In what other party-based fantasy RPG have you ever opted-out of taking magic users?

And I ask again, who is talking about opting-out of taking magic users completely?  Its simple math here, the game favors magic users as they are the best at everything.    There are 2 mage NPCs in the game and you have the option of taking a mage as your PC.  Ideally, you would take 2 mages at least on a playthru, meaning you're going to have a largely homogenous gameplay experience from one playthru to the next because you'll either be taking Wynne, or Morrigan or both.  If other classes were more viable with less downsides compared to mages, more people might be willing to take that route, but as it is now, that's simply not an enjoyable experience or proposition because of the massive disparity in class capabilities.

[penetrable]

In this game, mages are healers/cc/dps/tanks all in one.  If you just get armor and defense buff spells in addition to combat magic, an arcane warrior using only robes tanks better than a shield specced warrior in full massive armor.  Not mentioning his ability to heal himself and do whatever else he wants.  Mage abilities need to be more costly or more specialized so you can't do everything better than other classes.  At the very least, warriors should get some more abilities to allow them to tank better than a mage in robes using combat/arcane shield/rock armor.

[brazybear]

Skellimancer wrote...

Its infuriating just how powerful mages are.

The annoying part is when people say its lore and mages are rare, yet all monster groups have a mage.

I think the main designer of DA:O was a Kensai/Mage Baldur's Gate fanatic.

Hoping some decent Modder will rebalance this.

Hah, after reading most of the replies here, it is pretty funny how everyone says it's lore and they're rare, yet almost all the groups you face will have a mage or two.

Anyways, I'm playing as a Tank with a two-handed sword, ranged rogue, sword+shield warrior, and another rogue...lol, just kidding, of course the last character's a primal mage on normal and there have been some extremely tough battles.  Don't use any automation at all and pretty much plan out every two seconds of the battle manually, even hitting pause right after a pummel shot to manually walk a character forward and do a follow up attack.  I like the challenge but see what people are saying about mages.  But if they change the balance now and nerf that one insanely powerful mage in my party, I'm not sure if I could still win the tougher battles I've had.  

Modifié par brazybear, 15 novembre 2009 - 11:57 .

[drcloak_333]

chizow wrote...

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

Where does this expectation come from?

I ask again: In what other party-based fantasy RPG have you ever opted-out of taking magic users?

And I ask again, who is talking about opting-out of taking magic users completely?  Its simple math here, the game favors magic users as they are the best at everything.    There are 2 mage NPCs in the game and you have the option of taking a mage as your PC.  Ideally, you would take 2 mages at least on a playthru, meaning you're going to have a largely homogenous gameplay experience from one playthru to the next because you'll either be taking Wynne, or Morrigan or both.  If other classes were more viable with less downsides compared to mages, more people might be willing to take that route, but as it is now, that's simply not an enjoyable experience or proposition because of the massive disparity in class capabilities.

This hits the nail on the head, big time.

Modifié par drcloak_333, 16 novembre 2009 - 12:00 .

[Unbroken Lineage]

So, there exist other party-based fantasy RPGs which meet your criteria of permitting the player to enjoyably opt-out of taking magic users?

[ValnKmere]

ome people object to playing on a lower difficulty. I have never
changed it myself, and I won't. I want to play the game straight and
not cheat in any way, even if the game is cheating.

Wait, so if you think the game is unbalanced that you feel you need 2+ mages in your party then it's cheating?

I played through with one mage on "Normal" for my entire first playthrough.  I didn't need two.  If you want to feel the need to be nuking everything mages then go for it.

Here's the rub: play how you want to play.  The game isn't unbeatable with only one mage.  If your endgoal is to only beat the game, do it however you want.  No one is making or requiring you to have multiple mages.  If you're having problems maybe tactics need to be adjusted.

I am sure there are many people who have played the game without having multiple mages.

[lazorexplosion]

All this crying about mages being unbalanced is so overrated IMO. I've played with a mage PC in a two mage group and a warrior PC in a one mage group both on hard difficulty and if anything the warrior PC one mage group has been easier. Just make sure you've got poison skills and the warrior can have tons of single target DPS, AOE damage from talents and bombs and can tank and hold aggro.



The only really unbalanced thing about mages is that the arcane warrior spec makes mages far too good at too many things (especially tanking) and if you think that unbalance is ruining the game, then don't play imba arcane warriors.

[Narelda]

I think the game is very well balanced as it is. It's on the hard side, if you compare it to other games. All "rebalancing" would do is make someone else feel like the game wouldn't be balanced anymore. There's always ways to "cheat" the system and find set-ups that are more powerful than others. That's called power gaming. Kensai/mage.

What's more important is, that all possible set-ups have a chance of beating the game. Even if you choose all the lowest level skills, or the most non-combat skills only, you should be able to beat the game.

[NovaLevossida]

My only real problem with mages is that they largely invalidate other playstyles. Mages just about do everything better, easier, and they also have more lasting power (since mages can drink potions all day to restore mana but melee classes rely on talents combined with deathblows to restore stamina). While it was fun to stealth around on my rogue, the mage simply handles those situations by just running in the room and raining death down from above.

As I'm currently playing a 2-handed weapon DPS warrior on this playthrough, I have to say I'm underwhelmed with its damage output. It doesn't rack up the single target damage like a momentum-fueled backstabbing assassin spec rogue, and it doesn't have nearly the AoE damage to come close to a mage (or, should we say, the cooldown on two-handed sweep is too much to be of much use as a CC option). I'm kind of left wondering why I'm even bothering trying a DPS 2H warrior since it's nowhere near the capacity of other classes or other builds.

The worst thing about the warrior class is the Berserk ability. It turns itself off every time you put your weapon away, so I'll always be in situations where I'm facing waves of enemies or progressing through an area fighting enemies and when I take out the current group I'm fighting, I'll immediately head to the next group that I clearly see on the mini-map, but the Berserk ability will turn itself off before I get to them because my character put his weapon away. Or I'll activate it near the end of one group while I clearly see another group coming and my character puts his weapon away before I can get the attention of the new group, effectively meaning I used Berserk for all of 4 seconds worth of buffs before it automatically clicked itself off and then I have to wait 30 seconds before I can use it again.

But hey, that Combat Magic and Spell Might stays up without frustration.

Modifié par NovaLevossida, 16 novembre 2009 - 12:59 .

[Pyrate_d]

Mages are definitely too powerful--there's no doubt. I think that increasing stamina regeneration significantly would balance things out more.

[newcomplex]

cipher86 wrote...

Yes, the game has an overreliance on mages, and as such many parties are considered unbalanced (like you said). If you decide to roll with a classic Tank/Warrior DPS/Rogue/Mage party, you're setting yourself up for a REALLY difficult (at times near impossible) playthrough, whereas if you go Tank/Mage/Mage/Mage, well, it feels like the game was designed for this sort of party.

Not really.

Tank/2x physical dps/mage worked fine for me on hard.   Theirs a sort of spike in difficulty between when you can get your 2nd tier and 3rd tier spells, and another one between your tier3 and tier4 spells, but for the most part, it was pretty manageable.   After tier4 spells, your melee/ranged just do so much dps that it doesn't matter.   

Their is difficulty, but its still pretty fair, all it requires is a bit of planning and tactcs.   The game just feels retarded with more then a single mage.    

Modifié par newcomplex, 16 novembre 2009 - 01:12 .

[guru7892]

Brillobreaks wrote...



If the game had PvP, or was multiplayer, it would be a problem. But it doesn't.

yeah but morrigans a total **** and I don't want her in my party, she just tags along because she can drink lyrium and **** woop-ass. I have to give her bling bigger than lil jhon's every time I do something remotly good (or make a comment about how cute she is when she thinks she's being bad) so she doesn't leave me with one less lyrium-to-pwnge machine. I mean my other one is pretty old and might break down soon.



I try to play two rogues a mage and a tank. It generaly devloves to two mages, a tank, and a rogue.(I'm a rogue and I regret it)



My biggest gripe is that I can't really see how to visualize the way tactics work. honestly the game generaly devloves into pulling people out of mobs with a rogue into some traps around a corner and then having the rest of the party kill them. when the mob is small enough I run in and actually fight them, mostly using mages against larger targets to get though the armor.



I die a lot



I haven't wrapped my head around the logic of this game yet. bioware didn't build a simple or intutive combat system either so its another layer of complexity for me to get though. its seems to mostly devolve into a couple core spells and abilities, that makes you wonder what the point of the other ones is.



like animate dead. does that spell even work? I was expecting zombies (maybe a smoker or a boomer, but any zombies would be welcome), but that never happened. I cast the spell and nothing happened? I filled out a 4 slots for effectively nothing. I was never trained to know or use any of these spells or abilites, so I flail around hopping everyone dies except one of my party members.



the reason why this game is so hard is becuase nobody knows what the hell is going on! if you asked bioware to explain the game design of DAO they will probably talk about dark heroic fantasy, story, and and emersive world. however those interactions are pretty much taken care of by a dialog system, movment through the game world (real time 3d simulation), and the art pipeline (models and textures). the problem is that it isn't really game design, its interactive story design. obviously they had some programmers with interesting ideas about spells interacting with each other and they kinda tried to do stuff with that but the combos are soo illogical I've only found one (level 13 ish).



honestly most fantasy RPGs have no logic and relational systems (and I honestly get off to those things). so do you know what this means? it means I have to redesign the game pretty much from scratch after I get the darn tooset working, again. I'm sorry there is no system for you to work off of that is good and makes sense to people. now this is what I'm gonna be doing winter break. *sigh*



I wanted to make a module...



wait where am I going with this?

[chizow]

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

So, there exist other party-based fantasy RPGs which meet your criteria of permitting the player to enjoyably opt-out of taking magic users?

Right, just as soon as you can name any other party-based fantasy RPG where mages do everything better than any other classes in the game, thereby invalidating any reason to play said classes.  Again, no one is talking about "enjoyably opting-out of taking magic users", they're talking about finding a reason to take anything but magic users, which doesn't make any sense in this game because magic users do *everything* better than non-magic users.  And its not by a little bit, its often not even close. 

[egervari]

It does have a balance issue brillobreaks when the player is essentially forced to be bad and take morrigan, or make a pc mage. Heck, you only have 2 mages to get in the entire game and you basically have to get both of them. It's a little unbalanced in that regard.

[egervari]

chizow wrote...

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

No one forces you to play with mages. Play on easy and take it easy.  Or you can bump up the difficulty if you build the rest of your team accordingly, accounting for the various needs: damage mitigation, damage output, crowd control, targetted de-buffing, healing and so on.  It's much easier with one or two mages, but you have all of the tools in the warrior and rogue lines.  Go to town.

In what other party-based fantasy RPG have you ever opted-out of taking magic users? In what other party-based fantasy RPG is taking all melee a viable option?

Actually, Bioware does force you to play with mages with the design decisions they made with their game.  You shouldn't have to drop difficulty levels to overcome poor design decisions, especially when those decisions eliminate the very choices you're advocating by forcing a largely homogenous gameplay experience.

Even if you did drop difficulty level, that doesn't change the ineffectiveness of physical vs. magic characters.  Again, no one really cares that magic characters are imbalanced, they just want other classes buffed so that they can actually experience a different gameplay experience with said physical classes and not have it end up being an exercise in frustration.  

Rebalancing talent trees and changing fundamental aspects of stamina use/regain have nothing to do with mages, they would simply make physical characters a more appealing alternative to the current state of gameplay where everything gravitates toward mages.

I have to agree with this entirely. Forcing the player to use mages as 50% of their party make up is choice limiting design... definitely not the opposite.

If they reworked how stamina worked... that would go a long way to fixing it. As of right now, the bonus to rejuv is so small that it's practically not worth having. It makes no difference in the heat of battle. You might get... one more skill every minute? Whoopie-do.