Spell balance and synergy. (I play mostly just mages).
While your class balance now is little bit better than it was in DAO, where mages where extreme powerfull. Now you spell balance is little bit off. Problem is that damage spells are superior to anything else.
There is very little control needed, because damage spells has inbuild control component. This means that damage spells are alot more usefull now than they where in DAO, because you don't need seperated control. How ever, because you don't need so much control, controlling spells lose they usefulness. Why have separate control, if damage spells does it too?
Also you have shorten control effects. What makes game more just nuke them, because it's the most efficient way to deal enemies now. I like my self more when damage was just damage and to control you actually tryed to control enemies. It feeled more tactical, than just nuke them down with super spells.
Second thing is long coold downs, specially healing, but also single target spells. Now I can understand that healing aren't wanted to be so strong, but it's also gameplay what difference from damage making. Because so few healing spells and long cool downs, this spell area also lose it usefulness as gameplay.
Now buffing seem to be fine in DA2, so it still has it use. Debuffing, not sure about that, because it's effectiveness is allways little hard to see.
How ever, my point here is damage spells are too dominant, because inbuild control effect. Also long cool downs have mages rely on staff alot, what doens't really support so much feeling to be spell caster. I don't see any different between magic bolt from staff hiting enemies or arrow. Just because visuality is different, the gameplay isn't. Don't think you can fool people think other ways.
Now in nightmare difficulty you bring resistances in the gameplay. What was fine, but like allways you over do it. Having some high resistance to some enemies is fine. But having allmost all enemies to have some elemetal resistance is not. It basicly makes so that some area of spells become useless allways agaist enemies. It's not hard to figure it what they resist, but it also limits mages ability cast spells. Like taking of they spell choises, it isn't fun. Next time try to make AI better or have co-op actions between enemies, than trying to make game difficulty higher by limiting spells use for players.
So, if you want to fix this, take off most inbuild control effects from damage spells and let mages have seperated control spells. Also keep control spells effects longer enough, so that they are usefull compared to damage spells. Reduse single target attack or defensive spells coold downs, so that mages can feel more like spell casters. You allready have mana limitig the situation, let people use it. Allow all mages have every kind of spell types.
Also cross class combination attacks are fine for higher effects, but so was single class combinations. Oh yeah and nukeing some enemies huge health down for 10 min with staff's attacks is NOT fun. Knock backs where nice, but also little bit over used, let enemies also miss sometimes. Friendly fire should be toggle as choise, because it has good and bad effects to the gameplay, depending what player likes.
Why don't eletrical based AOE spells be affected by friendly fire? Does eletric have some kind of intelligent how they reconise they targets? Don't make exceptions, if there is FF, then it's there for all AoE's.
My suggestion for spells, let fire based spells burn as damage done in time (DoT), but don't let it affect enemies movement. Let Ice based spells slow and freeze enemies, but do less damage. Let fire and ice based spells cancel others effect in same targets. Meaning fire removes the freeze and slow effect and cold removes the DoT effect. Let electricity affect stamina, but not movement. Let earth based spells knock back/down enemies like control, but do very little damage it self, unless enemies are frozen, then combination of these spells does more damage. Let sprit damage spells have small change to confuse/sleep they targets and/or have affect to mana.
Point here is that player should not just spamm the spells, but also think what affect they have. Sometimes it's not good to cast sertain spell after some other type of spell, while sometimes other type of spell can make it better. Have sertain synergy, positive or negative between different kind of spells. Other example, if enemies are confused or sleep after some spirit spell, casting other kind of spell can wake them up. Don't let player just spam all spells without any thinking how they affect each others.
I'm gonna show some more examples how this would work, about this different type of spell affects. Let see if you have cast spirit spell what has make some enemies sleep. Now if you cast fire spell on them, they will wake up and start to have burn effect. Now you cast spirit spell again, you can't make them sleep, because they are on fire, but you could make them more confused. Now you cast ice spell, what cancel the fire effect, but leave the confuse effect. So, now some of them are confuse, some are slowed and some are frozen. You cast earth based spell, what can knock down most of them, but frozen ones takes alot more damage than this spell would normally do. Now you cast fire spell again, what make all slowed enemies fast again and wakes all frozen enemies. This is what I mean by spell synergy. Yeah, I did not cast eletric spells, because it basicly just would take stamina out of enemies, what is more usefull as slow enemies use of special attacks. Or spirit spell what sucks mana pool, so that mages ability cast would be more limited.
AoE spells should be slow, but single target spells fast.
PS: There is miss spoken words in dialogs, in family events in beging in Kirkwall first home. You know when the mother talk's, she says "You three are from ..." But there is just two of us?
Modifié par Lumikki, 09 avril 2011 - 12:41 .
Retour en haut
makes me sad panda that they rushed it.
