666 réponses à ce sujet

[Blindandbloody]

H4rdL0v3 wrote...

4 play throughts already?? Holy smoke how long does it take you to beat the game!?
Just finished my first with 60 and a half hours, says i completed like 45% of the game.

That percentage is I believe for all quests in the game. I haven't done all the quests, only because I'm searching for a darkspawn sword. Bah, I thought it was a random drop. Maybe only certain darkspawn will drop one from certain quests...

[Schyzm]

yes, mages destroy everything. they have all the good abilities and lyrium potions are infinite.

[Protterg]

I just finished the game last night and had none of these problems. I didn't have 3 mages, I didn't have to rely entirely on potions, nor was I destroyed by every enemy mage I came across. I ran with Alistair tanking, Wynne healing, Leliana...uh...rogue'ing and having a sexy accent, and my PC DW warrior. Wynne wasn't even casting any offensive spells, just healz. I found the game to be challenging in a gooooood way. I had a blast playing this game and I consider that you might be crazy...or bad at games.

Modifié par Protterg, 16 novembre 2009 - 05:55 .

[MandatoryDenial1]

Some interesting thoughts here.

On balancing:  Yes!  Rogue/warriors are severely limited.  I think two things should be done to fix it.  First, stamina regeneration needs to be set way up there.  Second I think better armor is probably the way to go.  Honestly I would like to see armor get warrior/rogue restricted runes/enchants as well.  I think this is the better way to go code wise.  This way there is a real tangible benefit to being an armor wearer.  The players can then meaningfully customize and hopefully it will lead to  a more enjoyable experience for those who are not so much a fan of heroic fantasy and not solely magic fantasy rpg's.

Also this might be controversial, but I really think elves get heavily shafted in this game.  The human noble origin is amazing.  Not only do you get better stats gameplay wise but you also get the Mabari hound when you run up the tower.  Try fighting that ogre with two red shirts.  O'k I will give concede the mage is a nice cannon but the archer guy is worthless.  Honestly I think I am going to give up my elf since i am having no fun being destroyed buy that ogre on normal and having the red shirts last 5 seconds combined and try another human and this time make him a rogue.

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.

I was not forced to be bad taking morrigan.  With the gift system I had morrigan basically loving me up until the time she left.  Maybe it was just me but I got the distinct impression that Jowan was supposed to be a party option while playing the game.  Perhaps in a DLC addition we will see Jowan added to the mix.  That would be fun IMHO.  I would also like to see a hardening/softening of some of the key characters in order to better accomidate individual play style.  Honestly I was a tad bit disappointed Morrigan was not more like Viconia.

Modifié par MandatoryDenial1, 16 novembre 2009 - 06:04 .

[egervari]

Garrand wrote...

egervari wrote...

Okay, you have 4 mages out on the battle field. Immediately, they start casting stun effects and cone of cold. This all happens after a cutscene.

What do you do? Go.

This never happens in the game (unless it's in TWK), so it does not matter what /would/ happen. This is not a multiplayer, competitive game - this is a scripted single player game, in which melee does very well compared to, say, NWN or BG.

Your argument was first and foremost that melee was trash - which just is not true. Would a melee character stand up to a mage 1v1? Of course not! And they are not supposed to, within this world. This is why you don't see the above mentioned quad mage enemy party that could ruin your day. I had *zero* problems throughout the entire game running with Rogue main, Alistar, Shale, Wynne.

The fact that the game does not punish what really is extreme cheese (chain-potion-chugging by mages) with either longer potion cooldowns or less abundant materials is a bigger issue than supposed melee inadequacy.

It does happen in the game - it's the brother's killer quest for the magi collective.

[Sup3rBill]

This game hasn't been out long enough to judge it's balance. I highly doubt that anyone has MASTERED the game mechanics let alone fully utilized what is given. Socialize with your NPC's for added buffs, learn your abilities (and spells) and know when to use them. Don't over-rely on "Tactics". In a couple months everyone will be saying mages suck and warriors and rogues own etc etc. This is an RPG not an adventure game. Don't expect a blow through from A-Z in a matter of hours.

[Sup3rBill]

..........great forum software............

Modifié par Sup3rBill, 16 novembre 2009 - 06:20 .

[Sup3rBill]

This game hasn't been out long enough to judge it's balance.  I highly doubt that anyone has MASTERED the game mechanics let alone fully utilized what is given.  Socialize with your NPC's for added buffs, learn your abilities (and spells) and know when to use them.  Don't over-rely on "Tactics".  In a couple months everyone will be saying mages suck and warriors and rogues own etc etc.  This is an RPG not an adventure game.  Don't expect a blow through from A-Z in a matter of hours.

[Lequin]

haven't been having the major issues you guys have......yea, mages have more to do, and can change the tide of the battle if you micromanage them since they're so versatile compared to the other classes(heal/cc/nuke all in one). but it's not really that big of an issue for me, the other classes are far from useless and have very good traits as well. rogues with traps(rangers with badass pets!!!). warriors with stun/knockdown abilities. mages aren't like mandatory, i cleared the entire dwarf areas with no caster at all. didn't chug as many pots as i thought i'd need (shale is damn good at tanking! especially aoe tanking).

it's a single player game so i don't see why balance is such a huge deal, every class is quite viable, and you have 3 party slots to make up for your shortcomings, so why the class vs class debate?

my char is a 2hander dwarf warrior and he's at 47% of party damage
as for
"
Okay, you have 4 mages out on the battle field. Immediately, they start casting stun effects and cone of cold. This all happens after a cutscene.

What do you do? Go."

never happened to me, but being a dwarf I tend to resist 1/10 of magic spells(awesome btw) and as a 2hander warrior, immune to stuns with indomitable always on. there's 4 targets for the npc mages to aim at. so if i resist CoC, warcry to knock them off their feet, and go smack them? ;p

Modifié par Lequin, 16 novembre 2009 - 06:21 .

[Blindandbloody]

I had fun when I killed Jowan

[Schyzm]

Sup3rBill wrote...

This game hasn't been out long enough to judge it's balance. I highly doubt that anyone has MASTERED the game mechanics let alone fully utilized what is given. Socialize with your NPC's for added buffs, learn your abilities (and spells) and know when to use them. Don't over-rely on "Tactics". In a couple months everyone will be saying mages suck and warriors and rogues own etc etc. This is an RPG not an adventure game. Don't expect a blow through from A-Z in a matter of hours.

no they won't.  my party started w/ my pc(mage), sten, alistair, leilan.  when I got to wynn I instantly kept her and dropped leilan.  and then I eventually figured out sten is awful so I took back morgain.  with 3 mages nightmare is basically trivial.  and there's no way that in the current state warriors/rogues can compete.  there are lots of things to still "master"(if anyone bothers) about mages, but they simply have all the amazing abilities and work from an unlimited resource pool.  stamina and the mundane abilitis given to warriors and rogues don't really have a chance.

[H4rdL0v3]

See, now that made sense, good post Schyzm, Morrigan more then once was the crucial part of my team during a fight and having 2 or 3 of her with a decent tank and ya, i could prolly play on hard or nightmare myself. But having 3 melee fighters with 1 caster that does the healing and mob control all at once is a different story, so those saying "oh i dont see ur problem", ya just keep it to yourself and stop wasting your time posting useless comments... (no offence)

Modifié par H4rdL0v3, 16 novembre 2009 - 06:32 .

[Raisthlin Arckon]

H4rdL0v3 wrote...

btw, for everyone saying they play on hard or nightmare without having to scale the difficulty down, i'd love to see some vids of your big fights on those difficulties, I would not mind seeying how you guys do it, post youtube link or whatever.

im about to go to bed and work for the next 2-3 days but i will make a vids of me soloing ogre and darkspawn hordes on hard and nightmare as well as some quest related battles on hard/nightmare. I do it for fun all the times. Soloing is great!

[Unbroken Lineage]

H4rdL0v3 wrote...

btw, for everyone saying they play on hard or nightmare without having to scale the difficulty down, i'd love to see some vids of your big fights on those difficulties, I would not mind seeying how you guys do it, post youtube link or whatever.

Enjoy.  google video search: dragon age nightmare difficulty

[Devlen12]

Unbroken Lineage wrote...

Skellimancer wrote...

Its infuriating just how powerful mages are.

Mages are, by definition, more powerful than warriors and rogues and so on.  In what fantasy RPG is this not the case?

Eleanore wrote...

Hm. So just don't play with three mages? I play with Rogue/DPS Mage/Healer/Tank, and so far I find it challenging yet not unfair.

I'm playing a crowd control mage, with Zevran, Shale and Wynn on hard and it's great fun, no cakewalk.

Lets see... D&D 1st 2nd and 4th Editions. Mages were on par with thier counter parts, its everyone that started with the whole end of 2nd with skills and feats that started making mages really really dumb and dont even get me started on 3 and 3.5

Wizards in the FIRST pin and paper games were not the gods they are.  It was simple, the mage nukes the ****** out of you or you get to him first and he drops faster than a dress on prom night.

I love how everyone says oh lore this lore that when the first people to put them to use for games did it right.

RIP Gary

[egervari]

Lequin wrote...

haven't been having the major issues you guys have......yea, mages have more to do, and can change the tide of the battle if you micromanage them since they're so versatile compared to the other classes(heal/cc/nuke all in one). but it's not really that big of an issue for me, the other classes are far from useless and have very good traits as well. rogues with traps(rangers with badass pets!!!). warriors with stun/knockdown abilities. mages aren't like mandatory, i cleared the entire dwarf areas with no caster at all. didn't chug as many pots as i thought i'd need (shale is damn good at tanking! especially aoe tanking).

it's a single player game so i don't see why balance is such a huge deal, every class is quite viable, and you have 3 party slots to make up for your shortcomings, so why the class vs class debate?

my char is a 2hander dwarf warrior and he's at 47% of party damage
as for
"
Okay, you have 4 mages out on the battle field. Immediately, they start casting stun effects and cone of cold. This all happens after a cutscene.

What do you do? Go."

never happened to me, but being a dwarf I tend to resist 1/10 of magic spells(awesome btw) and as a 2hander warrior, immune to stuns with indomitable always on. there's 4 targets for the npc mages to aim at. so if i resist CoC, warcry to knock them off their feet, and go smack them? ;p

It's pretty obvious that you haven't got very far, or are not playing the pc version of the game. Do you realize that resist of 1/10 spell, while better than nothing, is pretty low? That still means 9 times out of 10, you will still be hit with the cone of cold or the stun. That means if you die in a fight because of this, you have to reload on average 10 times for it to not disable and kill you. 

When people say, "Wow, the 5% bonus to spell power of arcane mastery is SO AWESOME!", I laugh. 5% of nothing is still nothing. I just bought a magister lord staff, and my heals still suck, although the mana regen on it is noticable.

You mention all the knockdown and stun abilities - these are not very useful against mages that are far, far deep into enemy territory. Once you get far into the game, you'll realize just how crap those abilities are in those situations.

Really, at level 10 or 11, Dragon Age plays like one type of game... and then it totally changes. All those spells and tactics you thought worked well no longer work well anymore. It's purely an anti-mage world at that point, where dwarves have elven mercenaries, and the darkspawn have emissaries, and just about every battle has at least 1 mage, if not more. There are more mages in the game to play against than there are in the actual magi circle.

[Odd Hermit]

I think part of the problem is that Mages in this game are basically mage/clerics, but with access to every spell without many limitations. You can basically pick your way around grabbing the best from each school. + Mana being nearly a non-issue. If magi had smaller mana pools but more regen in combat that could help.

If they separated some of the healing/buffing spells into a new class(or added some them into different classes' specializations) that might help too.

Cooldowns on various debilitating effects could also be increased.

Modifié par Odd Hermit, 16 novembre 2009 - 08:27 .

[CastorKrieg]

egervari wrote...
Really, at level 10 or 11, Dragon Age plays like one type of game... and then it totally changes. All those spells and tactics you thought worked well no longer work well anymore. It's purely an anti-mage world at that point, where dwarves have elven mercenaries, and the darkspawn have emissaries, and just about every battle has at least 1 mage, if not more. There are more mages in the game to play against than there are in the actual magi circle.

This has always been the case. DId some people forget BG1&2 and NWN1&2? Worst enemy? Mage. Best class in-game? Mage. They are devastating when leveled up. THhe problem in DA:O is that mages are just as powerful at lvl3 as they are on lvl13, there is no steep difficulty curve to balance the fact that they shine more than other classes later on.

[egervari]

CastorKrieg wrote...

egervari wrote...
Really, at level 10 or 11, Dragon Age plays like one type of game... and then it totally changes. All those spells and tactics you thought worked well no longer work well anymore. It's purely an anti-mage world at that point, where dwarves have elven mercenaries, and the darkspawn have emissaries, and just about every battle has at least 1 mage, if not more. There are more mages in the game to play against than there are in the actual magi circle.

This has always been the case. DId some people forget BG1&2 and NWN1&2? Worst enemy? Mage. Best class in-game? Mage. They are devastating when leveled up. THhe problem in DA:O is that mages are just as powerful at lvl3 as they are on lvl13, there is no steep difficulty curve to balance the fact that they shine more than other classes later on.

Again, totally agree with this. But when you have 2 mages to get in the game, and 1 is healing, that leaves 1 mage left and you must basically play evil and anti-chantry for her to not want to kill you and to get her approval buffs. The other option is to make a mage yourself, which I think at this point, is the only "right" choice for an easier game. Otherwise, you are basically forced to take Wynn and Morrigan every single playthrough. That's not balance, nor is it choice. Current character count: 5 warriors, 2 rogues and 2 mages. Considering mages are the most diverse, having 2 of them is pretty limited. Hence the real balance problem.

Modifié par egervari, 16 novembre 2009 - 08:42 .

[Ultrazennn]

The problem lies in the basic structure of the game from about the halfway point on.  You start facing so many enemies at one time, that unless you have characters that can deal with AOE (both damage and control) you are kind of hosed.

There are many points in the game where a melee heavy party is fine, but the latter half of the game becomes quite a joke with any character that is only dealing single target anything.

There are a couple of ways to mod/fix this.

1.  Tone down the enemy spawn numbers, and up the toughness of each mob.   This is a major pain in the butt, as you have to go into each individual instance and place the new number of mobs.

2.  Give melee classes some meaningful AOE abilites.

3.  Give melee classes more meaningful abilities that deal with ranged damage.  This could easily be done through itemization, and a few tweeks to a few skills.

#2 will be my choice when I get around to modding the game.  This is a fairly easy tweak as far as the database goes, just need to set the radius on things etc.

The game becomes very fond of perching about 6-10 ranged classes in difficult to get too places later on in the game, and it renders melee focus characters all but useless, as they will either be dead or pot 3 times just trying to get there.

Easy fix, and one that I'm sure will come.

******spoiler*******








The other side of this coin, is that it's increadibly easy to cheese your way through most of the game with an all physical party, by equipping max range bows and standing out of agro range killing things one at a time.  That's also a coding problem in the AI awareness radius that needs to be fixed by Bioware.  There are some important fights that are made absolutely trivial by this, like the one against the caster that ports around down in the werewolf dungeon.

All that being said, my best playthrough to date was 1 tank, 1 rogue, 1 mage CC/dps, and one healer.  I don't actually see that as being that unbalanced, as a CC/DPS mage is a different class entirely than a dedicated healer.  Also taking into consideration that at higher difficulty levels, many of the powerful mage spells are also friendly fire nightmares.  Playing the game on hard or nightmare, and spamming around infernos and blizzards isn't all it's cracked up to be without a lot of micromanaging.

[Ultrazennn]

I also have a question to the people that are having problmes with melee characters in general.  Are you using your mages to support your melee characters?  Casting the heroic series of buffs for example.  One of them can make your tank all but immune to ranged damage, another turns them into a quisinart, another makes them tough as nails in melee fights etc.

For example, spec a mage up to haste, cast heroic offense on a rogue, and plop the rogue behind a tough mob, if the rogue is speced right they will absolutely destroy any other spec/class you can come up with as far as DPS goes, it's not even close.  My rogue in my main playthrough did more DPS by at least a 3 to 1 margin than any other character in the party, including the big AOE users.

There are a *ton* of spells in the mage spec trees that will turn your melee characters into absolute beasts.  The beauty of the game is you can't spec everything, there are choices to be made.  If you choose to hang your melee characters out to dry by specing your mages into nothing but offense, then yah, they are going to be sub par.

I *do* agree that having 3 mages that all know mass paralyze tends to trivialize a lot of the game, but I don't agree with the fact that melee characters are utterly useless.  I've done a playthrough where my melee characters were all but invicible death machines, *if* my mages were playing a role that supported that playstyle.  It's a synergy issue and a player choice issue.

[Auraad]

NOT if it stays SP ... if they'd go MP, however, it'd be needed.

[Schyzm]

Ultrazennn wrote...

I also have a question to the people that are having problmes with melee characters in general.  Are you using your mages to support your melee characters?  Casting the heroic series of buffs for example.  One of them can make your tank all but immune to ranged damage, another turns them into a quisinart, another makes them tough as nails in melee fights etc.

For example, spec a mage up to haste, cast heroic offense on a rogue, and plop the rogue behind a tough mob, if the rogue is speced right they will absolutely destroy any other spec/class you can come up with as far as DPS goes, it's not even close.  My rogue in my main playthrough did more DPS by at least a 3 to 1 margin than any other character in the party, including the big AOE users.

There are a *ton* of spells in the mage spec trees that will turn your melee characters into absolute beasts.  The beauty of the game is you can't spec everything, there are choices to be made.  If you choose to hang your melee characters out to dry by specing your mages into nothing but offense, then yah, they are going to be sub par.

I *do* agree that having 3 mages that all know mass paralyze tends to trivialize a lot of the game, but I don't agree with the fact that melee characters are utterly useless.  I've done a playthrough where my melee characters were all but invicible death machines, *if* my mages were playing a role that supported that playstyle.  It's a synergy issue and a player choice issue.

it's not so much "having problems" with them as there's no point in taking them a long.  Not only do you have to give up an extra healer, a ton of cc and whole lotta super powerful spells so you can have some melee character with bad abilities, that is stuck using stamina.  And even then you're suggesting after giving up an entire mage character and all its abilities you should give up even more mage spell slots just to try and buff up that melee character.  

not to mention that a lot of bosses have all sorts of crazy knockdown abilities and damage auras.

[Sikaryan]

chizow wrote...

That's the point though, DA:O's reliance on mages removes much of your choices because the game is so mage-centric by design.  Not to mention mages have more viable choices within their Spell trees compared to Rogue/Warrior, as the weapon/class talent trees themselves are nowhere near as flexible and modular compared to Mage spell trees.

So my gf plays with:

Alistair (Tank)
Leliana (Bard/Archer, yes Archer!)
Shale (in Rock Mastery mode!)
MC (Caster Spirit Healer + Blood Mage, no Cone of Cold, no Stonefist, no Blizzard!)


And it's damn easy. What was the problem again?
Archery ain't gimped. Mages aren't overpowered.

Mages are more versatile, but come on, this is Magic, what did you expect? Seriously? This is a RPG, not World of warcraft, there is no Arena here, things don't need to be balanced, Earthdawn (a Pen&Paper RPG) isn't balanced either.

Yes, 3 Mages make it easier because there's some things you can exploit. Since the game isn't impossible or even tough without 3 Mages, this is entirely a moot point though.

[Lequin]

egervari wrote...

Lequin wrote...

haven't been having the major issues you guys have......yea, mages have more to do, and can change the tide of the battle if you micromanage them since they're so versatile compared to the other classes(heal/cc/nuke all in one). but it's not really that big of an issue for me, the other classes are far from useless and have very good traits as well. rogues with traps(rangers with badass pets!!!). warriors with stun/knockdown abilities. mages aren't like mandatory, i cleared the entire dwarf areas with no caster at all. didn't chug as many pots as i thought i'd need (shale is damn good at tanking! especially aoe tanking).

it's a single player game so i don't see why balance is such a huge deal, every class is quite viable, and you have 3 party slots to make up for your shortcomings, so why the class vs class debate?

my char is a 2hander dwarf warrior and he's at 47% of party damage
as for
"
Okay, you have 4 mages out on the battle field. Immediately, they start casting stun effects and cone of cold. This all happens after a cutscene.

What do you do? Go."

never happened to me, but being a dwarf I tend to resist 1/10 of magic spells(awesome btw) and as a 2hander warrior, immune to stuns with indomitable always on. there's 4 targets for the npc mages to aim at. so if i resist CoC, warcry to knock them off their feet, and go smack them? ;p

It's pretty obvious that you haven't got very far, or are not playing the pc version of the game. Do you realize that resist of 1/10 spell, while better than nothing, is pretty low? That still means 9 times out of 10, you will still be hit with the cone of cold or the stun. That means if you die in a fight because of this, you have to reload on average 10 times for it to not disable and kill you. 

When people say, "Wow, the 5% bonus to spell power of arcane mastery is SO AWESOME!", I laugh. 5% of nothing is still nothing. I just bought a magister lord staff, and my heals still suck, although the mana regen on it is noticable.

You mention all the knockdown and stun abilities - these are not very useful against mages that are far, far deep into enemy territory. Once you get far into the game, you'll realize just how crap those abilities are in those situations.

Really, at level 10 or 11, Dragon Age plays like one type of game... and then it totally changes. All those spells and tactics you thought worked well no longer work well anymore. It's purely an anti-mage world at that point, where dwarves have elven mercenaries, and the darkspawn have emissaries, and just about every battle has at least 1 mage, if not more. There are more mages in the game to play against than there are in the actual magi circle.

actually, just past the landsmeet and still with the same tactic i do however use morrigan for CC'ing now and kill enemy mages asap while other stuff are put to sleep. with alistair tanking, juggernaut set, ring of ages, still not a huge issue...