82 réponses à ce sujet

[Marionetten]

Dragon Age II boils down to figuring out the cheapest combos and exploiting them as frequently as possible. Whirlwind and Chain Lighting for example will make short work out of any group. Petrify is downright ridiculous for boss fights with its upgrade.

It's not a difficult game beyond that. The actual strategy lies in figuring out a working party composition. Once you've got that down it's smooth sailing.

[Sylvius the Mad]

So far I'm finding DA2 Hard a bit less challenging than DAO Hard, but it could be that I haven't seen enough of DA2's combat yet.

The first time I fought the Ogre in Ostagar in DAO, I died again and again until I finally killed it. After that, it was an easy fight.

The first time I fought the real Ogre in the Korcari Wilds in DA2, I died again and again until I finally killed it. But there the difficulty arose from an error in the game's documentation, and since then I've had no real trouble with anything.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 18 mars 2011 - 12:02 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Marionetten wrote...

The actual strategy lies in figuring out a working party composition.

That could be a problem.  I always build my party for RP reasons, not effectiveness reasons.

[Ethereal Llama]

I'm playing on hard and can't remember how much of a challenge I had with Origins but the difficulty in DA2 seems to come and go. Obviously if you try to fully clear the game like most of us probably do the ends of each act will be easier (better equipment/get use to your party etc). As a mage I struggled with hard for the first half of act 1 but after that I'm finding it actually quitIe easy, with the exception of the rock wraith, arishok, and high dragon. I spend most of my time with the whole party selecting just basic attacking each underling until the boss is alone, long story short I think Aveline is too good a tank and that takes away from the games difficulty

[Khayness]

DA 2 Nightmare's mojo pretty much boiles down to trial and error, thanks to the waves. Much harder than DA:O Nightmare.

It's manageable most of the times, but when another group arrives with a deadly elite, and you can't handle it, then it's an instant reload. It really walks the thin line between challenge and waste of time. It feels really cheap.

Golem Nexus room fight and the Xebenkeck fight is bat **** insane thanks to that.

[Marionetten]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Marionetten wrote...

The actual strategy lies in figuring out a working party composition.

That could be a problem.  I always build my party for RP reasons, not effectiveness reasons.

So do I. My intended party consisted of Fenris, Varric and Anders... which also happens to the be one of the most powerful compositions on Nightmare when paired with another mage which is what I always play as. Yes, I got exceedingly lucky.

And yes, it's somewhat unfortunate that some combinations just don't work on Nightmare. You really don't want to pair a two hander with say Isabela.

[BP20125810]

To me there is a difference between difficulty and frsutation. Tale WoW for example. You could have a quest where you kill bugs to collect their armor. Sometimes the armor has like a 1 in 3 chance in dropping, so you would have to kill 15 bugs. The thing is though, killing 15 bugs isn;t any more difficult than killing 5 of them. The low spawn rate just makes it more frustating, which is bad. To bring this back to Dragon Age, DA2 is much harder than DAO, but that is because the gameplay makes it much more frustrating, not more difficult and tactically rewarding.

[bluedevil99]

Played hard on both games. DA2 is harder in the sense that I am having to restart more fights. It is also much, much more tedious and a lot less fun. DA2 feels a lot like single player World of Warcraft: take all the annoying things like endless boss health bars, cheap AOEs, endless adds, aggro management, and completely remove the social aspect.

Also to answer another point: difficulty should not be about trial and error. Having to retry a fight until you memorize spawn locations is not difficult, it is tedious. "Difficult" should be about whether you understand your characters' abilities, how they work together, and how best to use them in different situations. There are so many fights where my casters/ranged chars were positioned in a place where a dozen adds just happened to spawn right on top of them, often in rather illogical positions. *sigh* reload....

[ehcaba]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

So far I'm finding DA2 Hard a bit less challenging than DAO Hard, but it could be that I haven't seen enough of DA2's combat yet.

The first time I fought the Ogre in Ostagar in DAO, I died again and again until I finally killed it. After that, it was an easy fight.

The first time I fought the real Ogre in the Korcari Wilds in DA2, I died again and again until I finally killed it. But there the difficulty arose from an error in the game's documentation, and since then I've had no real trouble with anything.

That's an interesting point. The ogre fight at the beginning of both games was easily the most challanging fight and required kiting to get through.

My problem with DAO is the same tactics in the same order worked on all fights. Choose your combination of mage CC death and kill all mobs. Rinse/repeat. The quality of the story was good but the gameplaty had 0 replay value to me.

So far in DA2 tthe game play is a little more dynamic and each class seems unique and fun and the fights require different approaches. I am not deep enough to comment on the story.

On nightmare DA2 is much harder than DAO and requires more thought. So far.

[SteelViper266]

DA2 is harder > DAO on normal difficulity never played hard/nightmare also my toon fights naked because of the enormous arrgo pulled from mobs...Plate = certain death. Warriors are supposed to tank but can't in DA2 imho.

[Larryboy_Dragon]

IMO DA2 is far, FAR easier on easy, normal and hard. You don't need to micro-manage battles at all - just a few tactics and then micomanage Hawke and you're golden.

Somewhat ironically, on nightmare DA2 is more tactical then DA:O on consoles. In fact it approaches Baldur's gate.
This is because DA2 adds the all important 'move' command. DA:O didn't have it on consoles. Togeather with the 'hold command' it opens up the door to tactics that never worked on DA:O since you had to 'drive' each character to a location.
In normal nightmare battles this is almost always means, 'select all' and then the command 'move all to far off place so when the next wave spawns in you don't get ganked from all sides'. Then hold the fighters in the doorway.

[TeamLexana]

I'm finding it harder with my dual weild rogue because the camera angles, single targeting issues, and not having enough talents available. I feel nickle and dime'd going through and picking talents and it takes a long time to make the dw rogue useful. For me, I don't like being BA in just the last 15 mins of the game, I want to enjoy that crap for MOST of the game. I finally broke down and force leveled up with a glitch and it's so much more fun, lol.

DW's are slow to build in DAO as well but there's a breaking point around level 12-14 or so if you stay the course where you just go ahhhhh, there we go, that's better, but I couldn't find that in DA2.

[TeamLexana]

Larryboy_Dragon wrote...

IMO DA2 is far, FAR easier on easy, normal and hard. You don't need to micro-manage battles at all - just a few tactics and then micomanage Hawke and you're golden.

Somewhat ironically, on nightmare DA2 is more tactical then DA:O on consoles. In fact it approaches Baldur's gate.
This is because DA2 adds the all important 'move' command. DA:O didn't have it on consoles. Togeather with the 'hold command' it opens up the door to tactics that never worked on DA:O since you had to 'drive' each character to a location.
In normal nightmare battles this is almost always means, 'select all' and then the command 'move all to far off place so when the next wave spawns in you don't get ganked from all sides'. Then hold the fighters in the doorway.

Oh that reminds me. It's also harder because "hold" doesn't really work anymore on the consoles. Party members still move around. Anders in particular when told to "hold" so he'll stay near an archer or something for his healing aura will still strangely charge that dragon you are trying to melee and die, thus messing up your well thought out tatical plan. Idiot Anders. God I hate him so much now, lol.

[Nathan Redgrave]

TeamLexana wrote...

Oh that reminds me. It's also harder because "hold" doesn't really work anymore on the consoles. Party members still move around. Anders in particular when told to "hold" so he'll stay near an archer or something for his healing aura will still strangely charge that dragon you are trying to melee and die, thus messing up your well thought out tatical plan. Idiot Anders. God I hate him so much now, lol.

From what I can tell, it seems like characters don't like to get too far away from the character in control even when you tell them to sit tight and wait, which causes all kinds of annoying things. During the Ancient Rock Wraith boss, a character you hide behind a pillar on the other side of the arena will edge out into the wraith's room-killing attack because it's just a little too far away; characters will walk headlong into sawblade traps and get themselves injured while one of your characters is running around looking for a disarm switch; stuff like that.

[sevenplusone]

bartgaathard wrote...

When discussing the difficulty of the fights in DA2 compared to DAO it's important to make an honest comparison, which means:
- Judge both games at the same difficulty level: normal, hard or nightmare.
- Try to compare your current DA2 experience with what you remember from the first 1 or 2 weeks playing DAO.
- Only talk about unmodded DAO.

When talking difficulty, the general opinion on these forums boils down to the following 2 statements:
1. DAO required a lot more strategy, had more different skills and FF on all levels. Therefor DAO was harder. People supporting this view often refer to DA2 combat as just "button mashing".
2. DA2 fights have larger numbers of mobs, longer cooldowns on potions and healing spells and since most mobs just spawn out of thin air you can't "prepare" for them. Therefor DA2 is - especially in NM mode - at least as hard as DAO.

My personal experience though is that DA2 is quite a bit harder than DAO (which doesn't make it a better game, per se). I would even go that far as to say that DAO nightmare = DA2 hard mode. For me it's primarily the following things that made DAO fights a lot easier to survive:
- Strategic zoom level
- More healing spells, with shorter timers on them
- No spontaneously spawning mobs
- Party seemed to respond better to commands than in DA2 (bug or feature?)

What's your view?

DA:O Nightmare required 0 strategy because you could spam heal your way through everything. You can literally do naked solo runs in DA:O with 0 problems.

DA2 is harder, mostly because you CANT spam heal your way through everything. DA2 Nightmare is still easy as hell, so I'm hoping DA3 Nightmare will actually offer a challenge.

[Wintermist]

I don't like to compare the two because combat is so different. I prefer the old style where reinforcements doesn't appear out of thin air ruining your combat planning. It's too chaotic now in Dragon Age 2 in my opinion.

[Morocius]

Played DA2 on hard because i wanted to start easy, have to say it is fairly hard not just due to the waves spawning on top of you. But Rogues will pretty much destroy Anders no matter what i do. Even Merril got destroyed fairly fast by templar hunters eventhough she was 55% magic 45% con specced with rock armor on.

Boss fights aside from the Arashok were decent, Arashok was just an annoying hit and run frenzy which took ages (2h/vanguard+second wind build with no stuns)

In hindsight i have to admit that most of the times i was to lazy to CC and only Merril would cast improved horror on an elite. I didn't use a dedicated tank either, unless you count a 2h warrior (me) as one.

[Larryboy_Dragon]

TeamLexana wrote...
Oh that reminds me. It's also harder because "hold" doesn't really work anymore on the consoles. Party members still move around. Anders in particular when told to "hold" so he'll stay near an archer or something for his healing aura will still strangely charge that dragon you are trying to melee and die, thus messing up your well thought out tatical plan. Idiot Anders. God I hate him so much now, lol.

That is a truth fact.
It was a pain the the arse that everytime you go to far they forgot their commands and wondered off from their places. Often when I'd go to draw in the mobs I'd glance up to see the goons trailing me.

[Loc'n'lol]

Wintermist wrote...

I don't like to compare the two because combat is so different. I prefer the old style where reinforcements doesn't appear out of thin air ruining your combat planning. It's too chaotic now in Dragon Age 2 in my opinion.

Meh, once you've come to expect reinforcements possibly coming from anywhere, you just have to let your party stick relatively close together (you don't want the squishies to be isolated from the tanks) and mix up having a back up plan with a little improvisation. That makes fights much more dynamic IMO.
I'll give you that the form could use work, namely enemies shouldn't be able to spawn that close to party members, and instead have backup spawn points so that you can't completely lock them off.

[Adhin]

I have only 3 real gripes with DA2 combat. 1, bosses often have about 4-5 times more HP then where I just get tired of dealing with it. It's like they have this universal %hp boost for difficulties past normal, and they balanced the 'duration by HP' for normal which felt 'just about right'. Then you play in Nightmare and that 10 minute fights taking up 30 minutes, if you don't wipe horribly. I think massive HP gain should of been left out of Nightmare or at least been heavily stepped down for elites and higher. Basically if how long the wraith lasted on normal was just before the point I was getting to bored to deal with it, if it had the same amount of HP in NM but the adds where a bigger pain (like they are in NM) woulda been more 'enjoyable'.

Random immunities for no reason in NM, wtf! Why is a ****ing bandit immune to lightning and cold. Why is every Qunari immune to lightning? I feel like im playing some goddamn ****ing pokemon elemental bull**** with all that. They seriously need just a basic hardcore like toggle that vegas had. Turns FF on, adds the new AI behavior, bleed out at 10% hp. THen they could leave NM to be the absurdly 'makes no sense' BS it has going now and I could still have all the parts I 'do' love about it in Hard.

And then wave combat, I like it in certain situations I want to make that clear. Boss fights it adds a lot to, changes things up. Even some larger normal encounters it's nice, lots of spiders coming out of no where. Or more forces coming in from some off-point like in the deep roads with the darkspawn showing up after your halfway through. Some of that can be done well but A LOT of its handled kind of poorly. Bandits just dropping out of the sky, or, worse yet as has been mentioned, certain things just SPAWNING right next to your group with no entry point AT ALL.

Feel like they needed to step out the wave combat a bit more, use it about half the time and only in situations where it wasn't so glaring with the 'magically appears oh noes!' BS.

[TeamLexana]

One real annoying thing with the spawns is it messes with me hearing my companions banter, lol. At least in DAO/A, I could see on the map with survival skills that I was comming up on some enemies so I'd know to stop if I wanted to hear banter, lol. I have very little warning with the new system. I guess it makes sense though, Hawke hasn't gone through the joining so they don't have the spidey sense for darkspawn that gameplay wise also let you sense all enemies, lol. But it's still annoying.

Plus, it is pretty cheesy to be honest. Kinda feels like I'm in an arcade game were enemies keep spawning through the level till you reach the end of the monster crawl.. The other method always had me running into a group of enemies and felt more real. That's just my opinion though.

[L33TDAWG]

I enjoy the combat in DA2 because of the "flash" and "glamour" they put in to it. Although, the boss fights you encounter on nightmare difficulty are not fun, nor will they ever be. The basics of all of the boss fights in DA2 is: take bosses health down between 10 - 25%, kill wave of enemies, take boss health down 10 - 25%, kill wave of enemies, and etc. The fights are creative with the different phases that they have made for each boss, but having to kill wave after wave of enemies is ridiculous beyond comparison, seeing as how the bosses health is always over 50,000 it seems.

Compared to DAO, DA2 fights are tiresome and rather dull because of all the kiting and how looooong the fights are on nightmare. After completing DAO once on nightmare, never again did I have trouble completing the game because you know how to play your class and the right ways to bring down the bosses. It seems that for DA2 there isn't any way to speed up the process of taking down a boss because of the constant wave spawning and how much health the boss has. I really felt like I mastered DAO once I was able to take down the High Dragon in record time and still enjoy the fight each playthrough. DA2 doesn't present this feeling; it feels great to kill the boss, but you really aren't looking forward to spending 20 - 40 minutes trying it each time you go, and topple that with how many times you'll end up dying on each fight and you have a disaster!
For me, I'll take DAO over DA2 combat any time.

Modifié par L33TDAWG, 18 mars 2011 - 01:56 .

[Mecher3k]

sevenplusone wrote...

DA:O Nightmare required 0 strategy because you could spam heal your way through everything. You can literally do naked solo runs in DA:O with 0 problems.

DA2 is harder, mostly because you CANT spam heal your way through everything. DA2 Nightmare is still easy as hell, so I'm hoping DA3 Nightmare will actually offer a challenge.

I love people like you are far too stupid to realize that all you have to do in DA:O is to NOT SPAM HEALS. Don't bring an healbot and don't spec as a arcane warrior blood mage. Hurr Derr.

DA2 is harder because of retarded game mechanics only. Take those out and it is much easier then DA:O.

[sevenplusone]

Mecher3k wrote...

sevenplusone wrote...

DA:O Nightmare required 0 strategy because you could spam heal your way through everything. You can literally do naked solo runs in DA:O with 0 problems.

DA2 is harder, mostly because you CANT spam heal your way through everything. DA2 Nightmare is still easy as hell, so I'm hoping DA3 Nightmare will actually offer a challenge.

I love people like you are far too stupid to realize that all you have to do in DA:O is to NOT SPAM HEALS. Don't bring an healbot and don't spec as a arcane warrior blood mage. Hurr Derr.

DA2 is harder because of retarded game mechanics only. Take those out and it is much easier then DA:O.

Is insulting me really necessary?

If you want to make DA:O Nightmare even a tiny a challenge, then you have to avoid the best gear, not buy healing potions, and not bring a healer. You really have to go out of your way to make it difficult, and avoid certain specs. That's not fun. In DA2, you can spec however you want and you wont be able to snooze your way through it, thus more fun. Still, DA2 Nightmare still not as difficult as I would like it to be.

The devs did a really good job with DA2 Nightmare combat in comparison to DA:O, the design route they took is one I hope they plan on using in the future. If they make DA3 truly challenging, I will be even happier. Lowering class scaling on Nightmare for DA3 will definitely help make it more of a challenge.

Modifié par sevenplusone, 18 mars 2011 - 09:42 .

[Taritu]

A game where I cheesily kite bosses around the room for 20 minutes isn't "hard', it's "stupid" and "lame". DAO required not taking certain builds, but there were some decent fights that made sense in that game (for example the Denerim gangs).