Conduit0 wrote...
optimates0193 wrote...
I wanted to comment on this part here. The combat absolutely requires less tactics, regardless of the difficultly level. You are correct in that the basics have essentially changed in those two ways. What you've missed (or ignored) is the drastic difference in the design of encounters.
Nearly every fight has waves that spawn in on top of you at random locations. This means you can't possibly strategically position and move your characters,. The only feasible strategy is to keep everyone lumped together in a blob and focus fire bad guys down. Not to mention some of the special abilities of lieutenants. I want to form a chokepoint with my two warriors to keep my mage safe? Oh, that assassin just teleported right past everyone and backstabbed him anyway. I want to stealth my rogue in behind the enemy line and take out that mage? Oh, the mage just bubbled up and/or teleported away. These things completely change the way the game plays, and not for the better.
Were there winning stratgies in DA:O? Absolutely. But at least in that game I had the freedom to choose how I'd approach the fight and the game rewarded me for taking a tactical approach. In DA:2, my only choice is to keep everyone in a blob moving together and focus fire targets. There's not even a point in using cross class combos really, because the speed of the combat is so fast that everything dies pretty quick anyway. When you realize you're going to be doing the same thing fight after fight after fight, it starts to become boring.
Now I just want to preface this responce by stating that I think the wave mechanic was massively overused and makes many encounters needlessly tedious.
However, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there was nothing "strategic" about the combat in DA:O. Abusing a hopelessly simplistic enemy AI is not strategy by any stretch of the imagination. Every encounter in DA:O fit one of two formats. Format 1, choke point, draw enemy to choke point, drop overpowered aoe, go make sandwich, return to collect loot. Format 2, no choke point, send in your virtually immortal tank who couldn't lose a enemy even if he was farting mustard gas, while the rest of the party kills everything in sight without fear of ever coming under attack. And yes, this holds true even on nightmare.
I'm sorry that DA:O made you feel like a tactical genius because its encounter mechanics screamed, "ABUSE ME". While DA2 forces you to adapt to a changing battlefield, actually requires you to actively protect your squishier companions, and forces you to use control and aggro management abilities to keep fights under control. But I guess you're right, that does make it a far less tactical game. 
I feel like we must have been playing two different games or something.
To say there was nothing strategic about DA:O combat is disengious at best. Were some encouters abusable? Abo****ely. Was the combat perfect? Not at all. But there were plenty of fights that required you to actually think. Not every fight was the same. There was enough variation that you had to think from time to time to succeed. Dropping AOE's required careful placement because of friendly fire, otherwise you could end up doing as much damage to your group as you did to the enemies.
And tanks that had permathreat? Didn't really experience that. My dual wield warrior and healer would manage to pull threat at times. In some fights, I would have to split my group and have my dps warrior off tank if my tank was being overwhelmed, which would happen. Archers were extremely deadly. In some fights, I would have the tank grab the melee's attention, have my mage and rogue assist the tank, while my dps warrior went to deal with the archers. The point is, I disagree with your assertion that there was only two ways to approach a fight. You had many different options which would work with varying degrees of success depending on that particular encounter.
DA2 doesn't require me to adapt at all, so I really don't understand what you're referring to. I ALREADY KNOW what's going to happen. I'm going to get surrouned by enemies after the first wave goes down. Enemies will appear out of nowhere. There's no surprise. There's no tactics necessary. I don't need to adapt to anything. I just need to keep everyone grouped together. Aggro is initially and strongly determined by proximity. All of the main aggro abilities are AOE and really, you just need to run the bravery aura with the upgrade while keeping the group together. There's no point in placing anyone anywhere as a result. Just lump 'em up and lay the smack down.
I don't even to worry about prioritzing my targets most of the time! A group of archers shooting at me? Who cares? They do comparable damage to melee now and lost their special moves. Plus, with the far more cramped spaces you're fighting in, your blob of heroes can get to them no problem. There's a Coeterie mage over there? No point in me really going after him yet, cause he's just going to bubble up and become invulnerable while I slaughter everyone else. Assassin running around? No point in me going out of my way to kill him first or CC him, cause he's just going to teleport and backstab whoever he feels like.
These are horrible mechanics because the player has no way to stop them In DA:O, if an ogre picked up my tank and started to pound him in the ground, guess what? I can do something about that! I need to have my character's use interupts or stuns and the ogre would drop the target. Or I could try to heal through it, if my stuns were on cool down, although there was no guarentee of success. Same thing when a dragon would decide to turn my rogue into a meal or when a spider would pin Sten to the ground and start to eat him.
DA:2's version of this? Assassin disapears into thin air to backstab my mage. *shrug* Tough luck. If the mage survives, suck down a potion and zerg 'em down. Ogre telegraphs a bull rush attack? Take two steps to the right.
So, c'mon. I really don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that DA2 requires the same level of strategy and thought that DA:O did. DA:O's combat is not perfect by any stretch and it does have it's flaws, but to say it's as simplistic as DA:2's combat? That's just not right.
Modifié par optimates0193, 01 avril 2011 - 05:24 .
Retour en haut
despite being IN the world, I did not touch it, change it, affect it. I could *know* my companions, but only talking to me when they felt like it or needed something, it wasn't the same connection. Still fine, just not DA:O level. DAII is kind of the Carver to our Hawke of the Dragon Age series thus far I guess, in an uncomfortably-fitting analogy. 
