6 réponses à ce sujet

[SomeoneStoleMyName]

Hi.

Ive played video games for about 20 years, and i always loved high difficulty for the challenge it brings. The main reason is that the added challenge always equaled higher fun factor for me.

Im afraid that even though i loved DA:2 the enemy encounter design ruined the experience to a large degree for me personally, and i want to warn everyone from new players to old schoolers like myself to play NORMAL difficulty the first time if you want to enjoy it. The game is hard sure, but, its hard for the WRONG REASONS.

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Let me explain:

Fighting down tonns of mobs, using everything you got: Check

Using 5 minutes to autoattack down a lieutenant because all resources like stamina and mana are drained: Che...  ah crap nm, the lieutenant used a potions. New 5  minutes of autoattacking.
And another potion...

And another ... and another... and there he finally died.

/Goes around corner

500 new mobs waiting for you.

A new long fight continues and you lose 2 teammates. Result? Kiting a lieutenant down for about 15 minutes of move-attack-move-attack OR reload and do the encounter again perfectly. Unless if an enemy archer survived... which is likely, considering alot of the enemies in this game are archers.

Want the partymembers you LIKE? Forget about it. You have to powergame hard and min-max to the extreme. That almost made a powergamer and elitist like myself **** my pants at first, when  a friend told me it was so. Little did i know the game would throw legions after legions of enemies at you.

The problem with DA:2 is that you wont encounter, say, a group of 6 thugs, 6 archers and a mage or maybe an assassin. Youll encounter 50 thugs, 50 archers and 1-3 "Elite" mobs in several waves of attacks. Your party isnt dying from lack of abilities, you arent dying because of lack of skill, or gear, or whatever else excuse someone will defend the difficulty with. You will die because 500 dogs can kill 4 lions. Youll die not from a stab but from a thousand cuts and bruises.

When youve killed a gang nighttime trying to reach a quest, expect to meet atleast 3-4 gangs more on the way - each consuming tremendous amounts of time and energy for very little reward (VERY low exp compared to investment). The combat system itself isnt what is ruining it, it is the enemy encounter system. Every fight is a long and tiresome event of ATTRITION WARFARE.

 Personally i didnt find the skill and advancement system as dumbed down as people wanted it to be. It allows a great deal of customization when it comes to abilities. The statsystem is still a joke though, as it is really deterministic. People will almost always go the same stats with a character, deviating from the "Best thing" will in most cases weaken your character. (IE: If someone can tell me the benefits of ever getting 40 cunning with a mage character let me know)

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In closing i want to say that im surprised that there are people left in kirkwall at all. After the thousands of thousands of people the "champion" of kirkwall has slain its weird the seeker isnt refering to you as "The butcher of Kirkwall" or "Hawke, the lord of genocide" Hell, with the notority youd gain from all the legions youve killed, even the most powerfull entities of Thedas should ****** their pants at the sight of you.

To sum it up:

Combat system and abilities itself  isnt to blame for anything. It does however also suffer from the inflation of enemies (Example: single target CC having severely diminishing use)

but

The enemy encounter design is made way to far in quantity over quality.
Lieutenants and bosses has astronomical amounts of health.
Encounters are to frequent.
Almost every single fight in the game is attrition warfare.
The only "strategy" is a mad button mashing DPS race.
Because of the enemy design single target CC is diminished in value because most lieutenants are immune, highly resistant or have shortened duration from it. (Normally a strategic choise would be to CC the hardest mobs and kill stragglers)

Possible solutions:

Lower amount of enemies. 6-12 enemies is plausible/ok, that 50 bandits made a small army to wait for you is not.
Lower encounter rate. Fighting from time to should be fun and a challenge, not a superlong boring thing that stabs you in the face at every possible corner.
Make the weaker enemies stronger, and the stronger enemies slightly weaker to balance out encounters.
Give enemies more varied attacks and abilities with a better AI instead of just autoattack and/or 2-3 abilities/spell pattern rotation.

Feel free to agree/disagree.

[HawXV2]

I find it quite enjoyable.

[Drew_Weidner]

Arishok on nightmare...My head nearly popped. Can't wait for High Dragon...

I do agree that the wave enemies are a headache. They always jump in and i have no stamina to taunt and hold anything, generally resulting in a dead healer.

[frozentwist]

You could always learn to properly use abilities of your characters - enemy lieutenants melt under those 26k assassinates =) Tip: Stack Mark of Death + Hex of Torment + Improved Petrify

One-shotting some tough bosses made my day. Regrettably, the toughest ones are immune to most of the spell / talent combinations, so you have to slowly grind them down (most demons, dragons, etc.)

Loved nightmare mode, it actually brought a challenge for me, something I have not experienced in a while. Yes, I had to re-load a difficult encounter several times, but doesn't it make it that much more enjoyable defeating it?

The biggest problem

[Joshd21]

So now Nightmare is too hard? you wanted nightmare, now you got it.

[Freestorm Skinn]

Fascinating original post. Thank you for that.

[rumination888]

The devs should re-label the difficulties into the following for the PC, from easiest to hardest:

Story mode <--- default difficulty
Nightmare
Action gamer
Console gamer

This will make it so only people who actually appreciates a challenge will play on "console" difficulty, while people who are looking to inflate their ego without putting the time to think will play on "nightmare". This will solve all the posts about healing cooldowns, the false assumption that you must take take Anders/Aveline, and whole host of other difficulty complaints.

Modifié par rumination888, 14 mars 2011 - 04:25 .