725 réponses à ce sujet

[ipgd]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

I am still in the "Actively irritated by this"...Moving closer to "complete indifference to the future of the franchise".

Come, now. If not for complaining about DA2, what else would you do with your life?


And, here's a nice little diagram/explanation on how to make every single encounter laughably easy for the confused:

[AngryFrozenWater]

Mr.House wrote...

Zjarcal wrote...

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Also, unlike in DA:O you cannot prevent your companions from using talents and spells in DA2.

Were we playing the same game? Because it was entirely possible to prevent companions from using talents or spells.

I guess we got the working DA2.

I am afraid not. Select one or more characters in DA2 and they'll remain passive, until you command them. Do the same in DA2 and they'll continue fighting and using talents and spells.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 30 juin 2011 - 04:13 .

[KnightofPhoenix]

ipgd wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

I am still in the "Actively irritated by this"...Moving closer to "complete indifference to the future of the franchise".

Come, now. If not for complaining about DA2, what else would you do with your life?

Derail threads in other ways, of course.

[Zjarcal]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

I am afraid not. Pause DA:O and select one or more characters and they'll remain passive, until you command them. Do the same in DA2 and they'll continue fighting and using talents and spells.

Eh... how about selecting the hold button? Or disabling any tactics and manually selecting when to use talents or spells (which is what I did in Origins too)?

Not that hard really.

EDIT: I also need to try that in DAO because I never actually saw companions remains passive when selecting them unless I actually hit the hold button (unless their behavior was set to passive).

Modifié par Zjarcal, 30 juin 2011 - 04:16 .

[ipgd]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

I am afraid not. Select one or more characters in DA2 and they'll remain passive, until you command them. Do the same in DA2 and they'll continue fighting and using talents and spells.

Non-directly controlled characters will continue through with tactics, but the primary selected character will not. If you really need to stop a character from using tactics, disable them, make them move or or stick them on hold out of range/line of sight. It's not particularly difficult.

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Derail threads in other ways, of course.

You're certainly very good at that.


ALL RIGHT SHOWER TIME

Modifié par ipgd, 30 juin 2011 - 04:20 .

[adlocutio]

Theagg wrote...
I rarely had to use choke points to deal with waves, not even on Nightmare. I used tactical positioning and selective targeting. So I disagree with you this was a failing. But, repostioning to chokepoints is something that people used in Origins a plenty too. I can recall back in the Brecillan ruins for example (since I am replaying that part of Origins now) having to do that several times to deal with waves of undead and skeletons pouring from various rooms. Retreat to a better point and pull of small groups of the undead was the only option. And the number of times I have seen people resort to kiting more difficult foes in Origins also demonstrates how often people broke the difficulty of that game, using exploits. So DA2 isn't the only game guilty.

I'm not saying it was necessary to use chokepoints in DA2, even on nightmare- it wasn't.  I'm saying it is the first logical tactical response to waves surrounding you.  So the developers should have anticipated chokepoints being used by players and adjusted the AI accordingly.  They didn't.  Chokepoints take a hard fight and make it easy. That, at least to me, is a failing.  Don't even get me talking about kiting.  Kiting, imo, should never be a valid tactical option.  That is, it's easy to come up with a plan to defeat kiting, so it should be consistently defeated in game.

I'm not saying Origins was without flaws, in some cases the same flaws.  I'm saying imo, they were worse, more frequent, more pronounced, more difficult to ignore in DA2.

'Tedious' is, of course a subjective desrciption not an emperical statement. I didn't feel it was tedious. We differ then.

Of course. But did you find both games' combat equally enjoyable?  One more than the other? Why? You must acknowledge they were different, even if you don't thnk those differences mattered.

It may be a game with action elements but its nothing like a true action RPG. The Witcher series is that (since many seem to be suggesting Dragon Age takes a lead from that) and that alone is why I cannot get into the Witcher. The combat in The Witcher is tedious, to me. Whereas I can still do pretty much everything in DA2 I could do in Origins when it comes to combat. (PC player not console) In the same way, so if it has shifted towards action RPG, its in a nuanced and subtle way that is perfectly acceptable.

I don't know what your definition of "action-RPG" is, but those are Bioware's words, not mine.  And, I assume, it was their intention to make a true action-RPG, whether you think it is that or not.  I'm not arguing that Origins wasn't similar, just that they removed non-combat roleplaying tools (i.e. skills, origin stories) and kept or increased the focus on action in DA2.  I don't think the difference is so nuanced and subtle, due to the exclusions.

I can't speak to the Witcher, as I only played the original briefly before uninstalling it.  Ultimately I think we may share more views than not, but I don't think you can escape the logic that an RPG should have more tools for roleplaying, not fewer.  It's fine if a company wants to move away from that, but then they are making less an RPG and more something else - whether action, story, fps, whatever.  Anyways, thanks for responding.

Edited for shameful grammar

Modifié par adlocutio, 30 juin 2011 - 04:24 .

[AngryFrozenWater]

Zjarcal wrote...

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

I am afraid not. Pause DA:O and select one or more characters and they'll remain passive, until you command them. Do the same in DA2 and they'll continue fighting and using talents and spells.

Eh... how about selecting the hold button? Or disabling any tactics and manually selecting when to use talents or spells (which is what I did in Origins too)?

Not that hard really.

EDIT: I also need to try that in DAO because I never actually saw companions remains passive when selecting them unless I actually hit the hold button (unless their behavior was set to passive).

The hold button works fine, but it only effects movement.

In DA:O you could simply select a character to disable its tactics or if you wanted to do that permanently then you could simply untag a single checkbox in the tactics dialog of that character which caused all entries to be diabled. In DA2 both these methods are unavailble. However, you can disable the tactics by untagging each entry in the tactics list for that character. That's rather cumbersome and not a real option to use on the fly.

Don't believe me? Try all this out. I've just done the same, because you guys made me doubt. But I am afraid it really works as I described.

[Brockololly]

lv12medic wrote...

Aaleel wrote...

That was supposed to be wood?  I thought the walls looked like they were chiseled out of rock.  Walking around Kirkwall made me think most of the buildings from lowtown on down were built from the remains of a rock quarry vs. being timber built structures.  I may be wrong, I don't know.

Here, let me check...


But seriously, Kirkwall was one ugly, boring, drab looking city. BioWare has never been very good at creating believable cities ever since BG2 but Kirkwall was especially bad not least of all because you were stuck there the whole game.

[ipgd]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

The hold button works fine, but it only effects movement.

In DA:O you could simply select a character to disable its tactics or if you wanted to do that permanently then you could simply untag a single checkbox in the tactics dialog of that character which caused all entries to be diabled. In DA2 both these methods are unavailble. However, you can disable the tactics by untagging each entry in the tactics list for that character. That's rather cumbersome and not a real option to use on the fly.

Don't believe me? Try all this out. I've just done the same, because you guys made me doubt. But I am afraid it really works as I described.

"You cannot prevent your companions from using talents and spells in DA2" and "preventing your companions from using talents and spells is less convenient in DA2" are not the same thing.

[AngryFrozenWater]

ipgd wrote...

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

The hold button works fine, but it only effects movement.

In DA:O you could simply select a character to disable its tactics or if you wanted to do that permanently then you could simply untag a single checkbox in the tactics dialog of that character which caused all entries to be diabled. In DA2 both these methods are unavailble. However, you can disable the tactics by untagging each entry in the tactics list for that character. That's rather cumbersome and not a real option to use on the fly.

Don't believe me? Try all this out. I've just done the same, because you guys made me doubt. But I am afraid it really works as I described.

"You cannot prevent your companions from using talents and spells in DA2" and "preventing your companions from using talents and spells is less convenient in DA2" are not the same thing.

You want to win a discussion and you already won the discussion a few posts back, didn't you? You are not willing to talk about gameplay, so why bother responding to me at all?

[ipgd]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

You want to win a discussion and you already won the discussion a few posts back, didn't you? You are not willing to talk about gameplay, so why bother responding to me at all?

What.

Either make a relevant reply or don't.

[adlocutio]

Morroian wrote...
The mechanics are largely the same the difference is a matter of emphasis eg. actions being front loaded. I still find positioning to be important in DA2, along with the requirement to reposition. 

My experience in Origins was that in most fights I could usually position once to establish threat/form a line of battle, get backstab position, then use combos, crowd control, whatever to burn down the enemies as I saw fit. Most fights for me lasted seconds, so pacing wasn't an issue.

In DA2 my experience was artifically extended by waves,which forced me to reposition several times at least to compensate for enemies appearing all around me.  Also enemy attacks were avoidable by movement.  This is a key difference which changed the nature of combat, imo.  So the Ogre fight in Lothering, for example, meant:
1. run up to ogre
2. swat away
3. Ogre jumps/ does whatever
4. run away.
5. Ogre lands
6. repeat
Now, obviously things like stonewall, nightmare, whatever could change how this plays out, but it does not change the fact that a huge amount of my time in DA2 combat was spent moving around rather than fighting.  Much moreso than Origins. That became tedious for me quickly.  I should mention I only played on nightmare.

I don't think DA2 is much different from DAO in this regard. Anyway an action rpg is still an rpg, there is still an emphasis on creating and shaping the character of Hawke, especially through dialogue and character interaction. Especially in comparison to say ME2 which IMHO just barely qualifies as an rpg.

This is interesting to me, because obviously the things we think are important in an RPG are different.  My complaint in regards to action-rpg DA2 vs. story-rpg (as Bioware called it) Origins was the removal of non-combat roleplaying tools such as Origin stories, skills, and in general the ability to resolve problems with anything other than combat.  I'm NOT saying that Origins was the apex of roleplaying in videogames, nor could you always avoid combat, just that the means by which to roleplay were diminished in DA2. 

I really wouldn't think of ME/ME2 as roleplaying games at all.  I would call them cover-based shooters with (some) player-defined stats and abilities, and an interactive story.  I know that may sound like semantics to a lot of people, but to me the distiction is an important one:  that the point of a roleplaying game is to roleplay, first and foremost.  Now, you can surely roleplay in other types of games, or in hybrid action-rpgs or what have you, but roleplaying is not necessarily the point in those games.  See what I mean?  Now that's not to say I don't like ME/ME2. Quite the opposite.

What I'm seeing, though, is it seems no company wants to take a roleplaying-first approach in their games, and I would passionately argue that we're losing a lot by this - more than we're gaining.  I'm also NOT saying that combat shouldn't be fun or that story shouldn't be important.  But they should serve their rightful master in an RPG.

Thanks for responding.

[AngryFrozenWater]

ipgd wrote...

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

You want to win a discussion and you already won the discussion a few posts back, didn't you? You are not willing to talk about gameplay, so why bother responding to me at all?

What.

Either make a relevant reply or don't.

Your initial reply wasn't exactly charming, was it? And you keep on doing that in the next. Why should I argue with you? You already won the discussion in your own peculiar way. So be glad and move on.

[ipgd]

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Your initial reply wasn't exactly charming, was it? And you keep on doing that in the next. Why should I argue with you? You already won the discussion in your own peculiar way. So be glad and move on.

If you don't want to argue with me, don't? I am interested in discussing the topic on hand. If you want to discuss that topic, great. If you want to repeatedly bring up irrelevant tangents and steer the discussion towards a hilarious internet cat fight, don't.

[AngryFrozenWater]

ipgd wrote...

AngryFrozenWater wrote...

Your initial reply wasn't exactly charming, was it? And you keep on doing that in the next. Why should I argue with you? You already won the discussion in your own peculiar way. So be glad and move on.

If you don't want to argue with me, don't? I am interested in discussing the topic on hand. If you want to discuss that topic, great. If you want to repeatedly bring up irrelevant tangents and steer the discussion towards a hilarious internet cat fight, don't.

So be it.

[lazuli]

ipgd wrote...

And, here's a nice little diagram/explanation on how to make every single encounter laughably easy for the confused:

*snip*

Well, except for the Ancient Rock Wraith and about two or three other encounters in the entire game.  But yes, that is a startlingly accurate diagram of DA2's combat.  It illustrates the strategy that got me through (most of) Nightmare.

[adlocutio]

Filament wrote...
I can't say I spend a huge amount of my time moving around rather than fighting in DA2, but I would say that the fact that I can move around as a tactic to avoid getting hit and the game is responsive to that as opposed to it just being futile because the enemy's going to hit me anyway, is a big plus for DA2 IMO. There was a lot of marketing BS about DA2, but as far as combat responsiveness goes, I think they lived up to that promise.

I had one playthrough as a mage on nightmare.  If I wasn't moving around I was being hit.  Better not to get hit, right?

Could we compromise so that the responsiveness is drawn from character skill rather than player skill?  Therefore it would be a roleplaying element instead of just a gameplay one.

Edit: What I mean is, instead of my having to manually reposition my pc to dodge the incoming rock hurled by the ogre, what if my character could dodge it using his own dexterity or a tumbling skill?

Modifié par adlocutio, 30 juin 2011 - 05:27 .

[Morroian]

adlocutio wrote...

Morroian wrote...

I don't think DA2 is much different from DAO in this regard. Anyway an action rpg is still an rpg, there is still an emphasis on creating and shaping the character of Hawke, especially through dialogue and character interaction. Especially in comparison to say ME2 which IMHO just barely qualifies as an rpg.

This is interesting to me, because obviously the things we think are important in an RPG are different.  My complaint in regards to action-rpg DA2 vs. story-rpg (as Bioware called it) Origins was the removal of non-combat roleplaying tools such as Origin stories, skills, and in general the ability to resolve problems with anything other than combat.  I'm NOT saying that Origins was the apex of roleplaying in videogames, nor could you always avoid combat, just that the means by which to roleplay were diminished in DA2. 

I really wouldn't think of ME/ME2 as roleplaying games at all.  I would call them cover-based shooters with (some) player-defined stats and abilities, and an interactive story.  I know that may sound like semantics to a lot of people, but to me the distiction is an important one:  that the point of a roleplaying game is to roleplay, first and foremost.  Now, you can surely roleplay in other types of games, or in hybrid action-rpgs or what have you, but roleplaying is not necessarily the point in those games.  See what I mean?  Now that's not to say I don't like ME/ME2. Quite the opposite.

What I'm seeing, though, is it seems no company wants to take a roleplaying-first approach in their games, and I would passionately argue that we're losing a lot by this - more than we're gaining.  I'm also NOT saying that combat shouldn't be fun or that story shouldn't be important.  But they should serve their rightful master in an RPG.

This seems a good place to bring up this interview with Casey Hudson on ME3:
http://www.computera...ough-decisions/

A quote on rpgs:
"People really want us to deepen the RPG aspect of the experience. We interpret that as being about the kind of intelligent decision making around how you progress. To us, the RPG experience isn't necessarily about stats and loot. It's about exploration and combat and making a good character-driven story and good progression. 

We had progression in Mass Effect 2 in armour and weapon choices but that activity chain was too simple. That whole activity chain I think was a button we weren't really pushing in ME2 and specifically were trying to hit for ME3."

Now his definition of rpg is quite similar to my tastes even though I don't think ME2 fulfilled his criteria. DA2 emphasised characterisation and character interaction, albeit within some constraints, and dialogue which are all the means by which I personally like role playing.

[adlocutio]

Filament wrote...

I do think they gimped defense too much. It went from being way overpowered in Origins' system to apparently useless in DA2 with the 80% cap and 40% reduction vs bosses. If defense (or some other such mechanic) were more useful (and could let you evade area of effect spells as well) that would be welcome.

I wouldn't want to lose the ability to manually dodge thrown rocks, though.

I appreciate that responsiveness is important to you. But to me, manually dodging rocks is tantamount to tedium, at least without some kind of dive or scatter button.  (actually, that's not a bad idea.) The concepts of AC or saving throws were invented to bypass this kind of thing (also, of course, to better fit in a round-based system).  The more combat is based on my skill, rather than the PC's, the less it can be called roleplaying.

Then again, I guess that works for puzzles, too.  That is, I shouldn't be solving puzzles, my PC should.  Problem is, I like solving puzzles. Contradiction? Do I contradict myself? So I do. I am large, I contain multitudes. (Whitman)

[HTTP 404]

is it really so bad for Ray and Greg to support their employees and their product?

[adlocutio]

Morroian wrote...
This seems a good place to bring up this interview with Casey Hudson on ME3:
http://www.computera...ough-decisions/

A quote on rpgs:
"People really want us to deepen the RPG aspect of the experience. We interpret that as being about the kind of intelligent decision making around how you progress. To us, the RPG experience isn't necessarily about stats and loot. It's about exploration and combat and making a good character-driven story and good progression. 

Not quite how I would define roleplaying, but I certainly appreciate them thinking along these lines, and , imho, any (well implemented) addition  to roleplaying is a welcome one.

[Gunderic]

ipgd wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...
I don't buy that **** already. I love Varric and I'd hate it if eveyrhting that I see bad in DA2 was because he was such a lovely douche. That's like...no.

It is, though. I mean, that's why they went with an ureliable narrator in the first place, so they could do **** that doesn't make any sense

It's... comforting to know that the entire sequel was actually Varric's screw-up, then.

[CroGamer002]

Well DA2 is superior to DA:O.


*flameshield on*