318 réponses à ce sujet

[naledgeborn]

Non-Combat skills. It was a dimension of the original that I missed the most in terms of gameplay. I understand that having NPCs craft items leaves the game open to exploits (cloning potions, ect) but as is, the Rogue class was missing it's fundamental edge of being the "smart" combatant. I say restrict potions and runes to Mages, poisons and traps to Rogues, and introduce smithing for Warriors.

Also stealth gameplay. I looked forward to playing Orzamar as a Rogue because of the Deep Roads. You could unlock chests and disarm traps which is the class staple. But you could also stealth and scout ahead.Assess the situation. Lay your own traps and plan ambushes. It made it a "thinking man's" class. And it was a great feeling when you saw your plan executed or an exciting "oh sh!t" moment when something went wrong and you had to improvise and go with the flow. I miss those varying approaches to combat.

[Mocker22]

I havn't read this whole post but here is my personal wish list.

-Make Friendly Fire a toggle on and off. I would prefer playing Hard with FF on.
- Silly one but I want to be able to delete characters wthout having to go through Xbox dash board. Make this like ME is.
-Please make the Hold position command a toggle for each character! Xbox is rough man!


Off topic a bt but I have 1 wish for ME3. Conversation choices should be chosen exclusively with the A button, and X only be able to skip a line, NOT able to chose your next convo choice. I hate that I can accidently hit a choice I didn't want. DA2 does this better on Xbox at least.

This is a great idea Luke. It's nice to see Bioware takin some innitiate to find out wha we all want!

[Luckywallace]

Big issue for me with DA2 and its combat was that it was fantastic... once you got to about level 12 and upwards and had a reasonable ammount of skills to use. Before that it was mostly just spamming basic attacks because that was all you had.

I can understand that it makes some sense to start the game at Level 1 but I think everyone would appreciate at least the option to import a New Game + so we can have interesting combat from the start of any further playthroughs or simply an option to start the game at a higher level - it was because of this that I only ever played Origins once while I played Awakening three times.

The 'quick level up' cheat from the fetch-quests was a life saver for DA2 in making another playthrough interesting from the start but it was obviously not intenetional and was patched-out so it seems at the moment that Bioware always intends us to start a Dragon Age game at a low level with just one or two skills... please don't let that be the case, combat is better and more tactical when you have more abilities!

[TangZheYan]

Luckywallace wrote...

Big issue for me with DA2 and its combat was that it was fantastic... once you got to about level 12 and upwards and had a reasonable ammount of skills to use. Before that it was mostly just spamming basic attacks because that was all you had.

I can understand that it makes some sense to start the game at Level 1 but I think everyone would appreciate at least the option to import a New Game + so we can have interesting combat from the start of any further playthroughs or simply an option to start the game at a higher level - it was because of this that I only ever played Origins once while I played Awakening three times.

The 'quick level up' cheat from the fetch-quests was a life saver for DA2 in making another playthrough interesting from the start but it was obviously not intenetional and was patched-out so it seems at the moment that Bioware always intends us to start a Dragon Age game at a low level with just one or two skills... please don't let that be the case, combat is better and more tactical when you have more abilities!

I see where you're coming from, but may I suggest that instead of starting at a higher level, maybe implement faster levelling along with steeper difficulty scaling for enemies?  Starting at max level is kind of defeating that feeling of accomplishment that I think is really core to most RPG players' love for the genre.

That being said, I think you're right about DA2 combat being a little dull fromt he beginning and more variety of abilities would probably improve on that.  I think a good solution would be to start characters at level 1, as is standard, but maybe provide them with more starting skills (remminiscent of DAO) or else increase the speed at which one levels up, but make the beginning mobs much more challenging than they were in DA2.  That would allow an intelligent player to level quickly enough that he wouldn't spend much play time acquiring interesting skills, but he would have to work for it.  Then, if the difficulty continued to scale properly throughout the game, you could have not a game of quick-level-grinding, but a game of challenging, rewarding battles that made you feel as though you and your character had really accomplished something.

 I know that BIoware wants to keep DA accessible, however, and pumping up the difficulty in order to accomodate a higher max level and quicker leveling would probably alienate players who were to new to the series or even the genre.  So as not to discourage new players, perhaps xp-gain could be tied to your difficulty settings, or even a system similar to the one Luke suggested a few pages back where a player could adjust multiple settings and then be provided a difficulty "rating" based on those settings.

It's just a thought.

[Tainan7509]

I hope we can be able to talk to our companion whenever we want like in DAO. This will make the players have a sense of interaction more than in DA2.
Also, add small mini game like playing poker or gambling with Isabela or even Varic for fun. It will make the game more in depth and more interaction. And we can get to know better about our friends than just waiting for personal side quest.

Hope my suggestion will help.

Thanks

Modifié par Tainan7509, 23 août 2011 - 12:43 .

[StingingVelvet]

Luke Barrett wrote...

How does everyone feel about the combat direction after playing Legacy DLC? Are we on the right track?

YES.

Just finished it (late I know) but I loved combat in Legacy.  It felt designed, it was challenging on hard without being annoying and the environmental effects added some extra thought to the proceedings.

More please.

[cephasjames]

StingingVelvet wrote...

Luke Barrett wrote...

How does everyone feel about the combat direction after playing Legacy DLC? Are we on the right track?

YES.

Just finished it (late I know) but I loved combat in Legacy.  It felt designed, it was challenging on hard without being annoying and the environmental effects added some extra thought to the proceedings.

More please.

I thought Legacy was a good improvement, but MotA was even better. I was pleasant;y purprised at the more challenging fights. I was actually caught off guard the first challenging fight.

[Heather Cline]

I believe that the next Dragon Age game should be given more development time so it is as polished as possible. DA2 was too rushed, we didn't get the finished game that I saw being played in the online demo's that were aired.

Another thing I would like to see brought back from Dragon Age Origins is that our choices have a far reaching effect in the game. In DA2 with the exception of a couple of choices regarding your sibling who survived and getting rid of certain companions at loyalty quest points, we did not have any far reaching decisions in the game. In Legacy we had more control over our decisions. In MotA we did not. We were rail roaded into letting Talis walk away with the scroll instead of taking it from her as an option.

Many people are upset about the choice thing and I can say that though I am not as upset as others, I do feel that the choice part should have had more far reaching effects.

A good example of a choice made in the game deals with Grace and the mages from Starkhaven. I chose to let them go free. But it doesn't matter if you let them go free, they still end up at the circle. Then later on Grace for no apparent reason is pissed at my Hawke and then captures either my surviving sibling or my LI and then goes all blood mage crazy. It didn't make sense for her to do that if I was benevolent and let her go free anyways.

Another example is Orsino. If you choose to side with him and the mages at the end of the game, he goes blood mage crazy even though you're winning. It makes no sense.

If you side with Meredith in the game and destroy Orsino she turns on you anyways. Again makes no sense especially if you aren't mage.

I believe having our choices actually have an impact like they did in Dragon Age Origins will go far in making for a better game in any Dragon Age sequel.

Beyond that I have no other suggestions for game improvements right now.

Modifié par Heather Cline, 17 octobre 2011 - 08:34 .

[nightscrawl]

Kail Ashton wrote...

First and foremost: Open world travel, never understood why you 1- had such a in depth world but only allowed people to go to certin spots of it 2- given the entire battle system is already derived from final fantasy 12 right down to the tactics & ai team mates, why not go with the open world exploration it used as well?

This'd open up alotta optional things to pad out gameplay, could keep the random events from origins, recycle enemies(you do love to recycle!), the job boards and such could actually be diverse, have monster/bounty/whatever hunting, i'd say unique speciel monsters to hunt (sure it's been done, but again might as well go the whole mile with ff12 "inspirations") good exscuse for more high dragon fights (recycled? >__>) lotta stuff you can do with an open explorible world time, budget & actual imagination

Keep the stupid paper map for fast travel, you guys need to catch up with the rest of the modern rpg world here, and add more weapon styles (polearm!)

I only partly agree with this. I dislike the open-world travel like Final Fantasy or (amusingly) Pokémon, sometimes used in DAO, where you're traveling along... and RANDOM ENCOUNTER. I find those quite annoying. In DAO there were some plot encounters that happened that way and I didn't really feel it was necessary. On the other hand, if there was an open road that we could travel on, then once the quest is accepted, you can just have the NPCs spawn somewhere along the road that we encounter like any normal circumstance.

As far as world travel goes, I really enjoyed the Neverwinter Nights model. It really made the world feel very large and open, even though there were basically only a series of square maps connected by link portals. You had your square map with landscape elements (including a road) and once you were there you could go anywhere you wanted. There might have been a cave with some bugbears or trolls or huge bugs, or some other miscellaneous wildlife that you might encounter on the map itself that wasn't there for plot purposes, but only to make the area feel more alive.

As far as speedy travel is concerned, a model like Guild Wars uses/used might be helpful. You are forced to travel to a location on foot the first time: going through the landscape, killing things along the way; or perhaps even the route is along one of their Missions. When you reach the end, a portal opens up for you on the map and you can just travel there instantaneously any time, since you have proven you can take the route. In Guild Wars also there is the actual world laid out map-style. You have the option of just traveling from town to town and then just using the map from that point on, or you can travel on and through any of the other inter-connected maps. It really adds a hugeness to the whole world. There doesn't have to be anything on those maps (a town, specific goals, a dungeon), but there can be wildlife. Why are The Wilds so dangerous? Designing maps like that is the way to show us!

I'm not suggesting that a game like Guild Wars should be copied outright, but only that there are various ways (including those used by Bioware in the past) to do things that will enhance the experience of the gameplay as well as bolster the lore along with it. Mr. Gaider is brilliant and wonderfully creative, but lore is nothing without a world to support it.

[FedericoV]

- More CCC. They are the most interesting feature of the gameplay because they force you to make a long term plan for your party. But there are very few of them and the effects are not that varied. The whole party gameplay should be builded around CCC.

- I would like to have more options at high levels: it seems that once you arrived at level 14-18, you have allready all the meaty skills. The gameplay became repetive because of that. For hig level charachters, why not CCC based on 3 classes?

- More buffs and debuffs options to the various kind of elemental damage, especially during boss fights, maybe allways linked to CCC. Or you could use a similar system to the 3E of D&D where clerics could turn every spell they have choosen in a heal. So, for example, you could upgrade fireball in the corrispondent buff/debuff spell protection/remove protection from fire.

- Connected to the pont above: give us the tool to debuff bosses and semibosses or build them in a different way. Every class and every build should feel usefull during boss fights, instead DW rogues and non-healing mages are worthless in those situation.

- If you want us to controll a party of 4 charachters, give us ISO view back.

- Party of 5 or 6 charachters (even if one or two are henchmen that you can controll only with tactics).

- Don't scale the difficulty on the number of charachter you are supposed to controll.

- Autoattack as default option. Twitch gameplay as optional and mostly for casual level of difficulty.

- Melee charachters should have more skills with dash animation to reduce the need to micromanage movement.

- If you want to introduce cool duel scene, make it workable for every class. The duel with the Arishock was an exercise in kiting if you were playing a mage and it was absolutely anti-climatic.

- I know, that's quite generalistic: but I would like to feel more in controll. Especially in prolonged boss fights, there comes a point where everything looks caothic, you loose focus and feel overwhelmed by animations, informations and such. Instead of feeling adrenalinic, it becomes a chore. The final battle in DA2 was a complete mess in that sense. I do not understand what was happening most of the time.

Modifié par FedericoV, 17 octobre 2011 - 10:42 .

[TEWR]

Luke Barrett wrote...

How does everyone feel about the combat direction after playing Legacy DLC? Are we on the right track?

sort of. I think that all of the enemies should use the same animations as us and not just the most powerful enemies in a group.

Like... all generic mages should use the first three mage combat animations before it repeats, and they should be given some of the mage abilities we use (Winter's Grasp, Stonefist, Rock Armor, etc.).

But the most powerful mage in a group (whatever rank they would be) would use all five animations and various spells (both ones we use and his own unique ones).

2H enemies could use the first animation, the second animation, and then the fifth animation.

You get the idea.

But that aside, the combat is getting better and I just think that your boss battles need work. Corypheus' needed some more attacks outside of the elemental ones. Like.... he's supposed to be a Tevinter Magister. Why doesn't he use some sort of blood magic on the companions to heal himself? Why couldn't he make the earth element be used as both a maze and at other times have stalagmites rise from the floor, with the icicle stalactites still falling.

All in all, a vast improvement and a step in the right direction, but imo it needs more work.


EDIT: I feel I should clarify that I believe the animations the enemies use are only an element towards making tactical combat, but actual enemy tactics and abilities are also important.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 18 octobre 2011 - 01:42 .

[AKOdin]

Luke Barrett wrote...

How does everyone feel about the combat direction after playing Legacy DLC? Are we on the right track?

An unreserved YES. While I know the enemies are still coming in "waves," the way the dlc inserted them into combat was much more immersive. Carta bursting out of rooms (as opposed to falling from the ceiling) was nice. I particuarly liked the genlock alpha shield trick- once I encounted the first one, every shield I came close to was a potential enemy to be noted.

As the dlc continued, I DID feel that unburrowing was used overmuch. Ideally, I feel enemies pre-placed in areas I can see is more enjoyable from a gameplay perspective. If I can count on the six enemies left on screen being the only remaining enemies, I'm free to use my big damage talents. The wave system makes me reserve them in case a commander or emissary pops in.

Moving forward, I'd appreciate fewer and tougher enemies as opposed to lots of disposables. For example, Hurlock Alphas have some sort of special attack where the ground has rocks emerge in a line towards you. The alphas went down so quickly that I didn't see this attack until the just before meeting the grey warden mage! [Playing on Hard difficulty with an Act 1 party].

On a more general note, the art area design for Legacy was very nice. There were several times where I stopped moving forward and just rotated the camera around. The swamp/subterranian lake felt like a step backwards with the un-differientiated green, but maybe that is just me. Also, if a DLC is going to release another "bad thing" into thedas, can the player character please stop being forced to enable it. I would have killed Janeka on general precautionary principles. Smug smile walking away... I have a murder knife!

Overall I thought it was one of the better DA dlc's, almost on par with Warden's Keep (lost in the loot department, but better in visuals and equally good in lore), and second to Shale (which has become my personal gold standard for DLC's.)

[pmartini]

Firstly let me say that Baldur's Gate I and II consumed my life in high school. I believe that I lost my sanity during the shadow dragon fight in BG2. Anyway moving on today, the game play aspects I would change are as follows:

1. The party hold selection. I want my party to be strategically placed where I put them and stay there ie wizards, archers, healers out of the melee.

2. Please bring back races. I like Hawke he is a great guy and champion blah blah blah, but in an rpg I want to create my own character and pick his/her race. I just feel more attached to my character. In fantasy, everyone has a race that they specfically want to play and enjoy reading about or playing. I know it may take longer to create individual start up stories for the characters, but imo DA:O was perfect all around in this catagorey.

3.Fully equipable companion armor. I really enjoy equiping my companions with armor and weapons and seeing them change. Badass armor on my character, looks badass on my  other characters too. I'm sorry but a 2-Handed Fenris rushing into a cluster of enimies in a robe, is not too bad ass. Equiping them how I want and in what armor I want makes it so they are more distintive and more "my own" party.

4.Specializations. I hate to say it, but bring back all the specs from DA:O and A.  In my opinion rogues and mages are the only ones that got the good end of the deal on talents. Defensive and offensive warriors have no talents at all other than like 2 attacking abilities. Everything else is an activated and sustained mode. Their is hardly an archer tree that rivals DA:O/A and where is the ranger sub class. I found that to be one of the greatest party additions available. Also please make all specializations available to all characters. If I want Fenris to be a tank because I like him more than Avaline then can I get some tank ablities for him. Don't limit us in our choices, just let us make them. Also, rogues are useless now since the only can unlock stuff and see traps when you are about to trigger them if you aren't directly controlling them. No pickpocketing, stealth has no use now(used to use it to scout), and ca'n't dual wield blades swords, but can dual wield axes? Also Can you bring Arcane warroirs back and let may warrior dual wield swords/axes/maces please.

5. Hidden info/secrets areas, quests, items. I played through DA:O and DA:A multiple play throughs(5x) and I always would find something I forgot or some barrel or chest hidden away or a random quest I missed.... something. DA2 it seems there was a lot lost, there was no incentive or crazy quest that you had to search for to find. The little things like that make it more enjoyable for me.

6. Make equipment matter. In DA 2 there was tons of stuff, but it was all referenced as ring, greater ring, belt, junk, etc...etc...It made the game feel like your team spent time making filler to fill the game. Also and this is huge please, please when I kill a named character/bad guy/elite can you have him drop loot specfically for killing him. Like if I kill a guy at the end of a quest which encompassed 3 acts can I please not get 1 gold and 46 copper from him, it just doesn't seem right. Also, please allow us to be able to equip archers with different types of arrows, ie fire/ice/acid/etc. I feel like that is basic rpg element stuff.

7. Customizable/Craftable equipment. Bioware has really gone along way in this area, especially with Legacy. I feel that maybe some red dragon armor or something along those lines with stats we get to choose would be a welcome addition. Something that lets us make our defensive warrior more stalwart or our 2-Handed warrior a cyclone of terror on the battlefield. Nothing frustrates me more than when I see the best armor in the game, non-player specific, that has attack power and attack speed +100 health and +damage resistance.

8. Make choices that actually matter. I don't knwo if I'm the only one, but no matter what I did in DA2 I couldn't save my "X" no matter what I did. That was super frustrating and took out a lot of the rpg elements. Make every quest over all matter. You kill the thugs all around the streets of Kirkwall, you get a little off from merchants. You save so and so's kings daughter you can possible court her and become a noble. Something along those lines. Also, can we bring back trophies placed in your domicile from DA:A and the gifts from DA:O and A. THose were nice additions that I really enjoyed. Also, can doing certain actions make certain party memebers leave again once they hate me. I found it funny that someone who totally hated every choice I made would stike around, until the end when I pissed them off at then end of act 3. Forgot about the 100 or so innocent people I made suffer, the just became rivals and powered up and stuck around anways....not believable.
I didn't meant to block text the place up, but to me DA:O and Awakenings were thr:owbacks to BG2 and caused nostalgic happiness when I played them. And don't get me wrong DA 2 has many high moments, but it just felt like pieces were missing.

Modifié par pmartini, 18 octobre 2011 - 05:36 .

[ladyofpayne]

• I love social elements in MOA, it's very intresting, and it allows player to rest from battles. bioteam please do it in DA3.
• Stealth- gameplay for rogue is good idea. But in MOA it was too long part of the game, I really tired of it. In DA 3 will need some places where rogue can do it. 

Modifié par ladyofpayne, 18 octobre 2011 - 05:13 .

[Foolsfolly]

Luke Barrett wrote...

How does everyone feel about the combat direction after playing Legacy DLC? Are we on the right track?

Yes. A thousand times yes. I really enjoyed the combat in Legacy. You guys did fantastic work there.

Now to my suggestion for either a patch/DLC (highly unlikely since it's a GUI thing) or for DA3 (I hope).

Replaying DA:O right now on the Xbox. The Battle Menu Shortcuts (X, B, and Y) can hold 6 abilities. Can we increase that to 9?

Going through the radial menu for abilites isn't such an inconvience but it's enough of one for me to not use some abilities as much I otherwise would. I'm mid-way through Origins and I know by the time I'm in Awakening I'll have a ton of activated talents that I'm just not going to use often.

The problem exists in DA2 for the Xbox as well, especially by late game.

As a further suggestion I'd say it would work like this:

X, B, Y - the first page of Battle Menu Shortcuts.
Right-Trigger +X, B, Y - the second page of Battle Menu Shortcuts.
Right-Trigger+Right Bumber +X, B, Y - the third page of Battle Menu Shortcuts.

You've probably gotten this suggestion before. And if it's in DA3 I'd be very very happy.

[Koldred]

Combat related:
1. I enjoy the pace of combat in DA2 over Origins. Combat as a whole feels more responsive and fun. The auto-attack combos are also fun to watch.

2. Feels like warrior regen mechanics could use some tweaking. Running out of stamina so quickly is not fun. Being forced to invest talent points in Battlemaster is not fun, the alternative is watching the warrior auto-attack...a lot. Is the mechanic based on killing blows? Seems like I get nothing when one of my party members gets the killing blow instead of Hawke. Having the stamina regen be based around dead bodies would probably work better, although there would still be instances where the warrior is forced to do nothing but autoattack. 

3. Corypheus can be a frustrating fight due to pathing issues. Had several instances where two of my companions got stuck in corners and then BBQ'd.


General Stuff:
1. Would be nice to bash open locked chests. 

2. Traps and locked chests giving xp is bad, especially traps. You know people will reload just to get that extra bit of xp if they walk into a trap instead of disarming it. Increasing trap detection range could help, but having to switch characters will annoy some people.

3. Not sure if skills need a comeback. Finding recipies and resources encouraged exploration, would've been nice if there were more places to explore. Crafting in DA2 is more convenient, compared to Origins. Origins had weapon and armor crafting quests, what happened to those?

4. Regarding persuasion, there were technically instances where Hawke could use persuasion. Convincing Feynriel's father to help you required you to be a diplomatic Hawke, convincing the Qunari Outcast to help you against the Tal Vashoth required an aggressive Hawke. Too few instances for people to notice apparently. Personally, I'd rather persuasion involve using that 5th option(left-middle) on the conversation wheel. You ask the NPC questions that eventually open up a persuasion option based on the information you learned. People tend to be a lot more agreeable when you take an interest in them, or they might let slip something that they shouldn't have.

Random:

Props to the animation department and the improved engine, really brought more life to the characters. Facial animation and gestures both felt more believable this time around. Hoping to see another jump in quality and variety with DA3. 

[Foolsfolly]

General Stuff:
1. Would be nice to bash open locked chests.

What's the point of having locked chests if anyone can open them?

[nos_astra]

Foolsfolly wrote...

General Stuff:
1. Would be nice to bash open locked chests.

What's the point of having locked chests if anyone can open them?

Atmosphere.

One of my standard mods for DAO was the Lockbash mod. Opening a chest with a key or nimble fingers would give you access to all of the goodies inside. Using brute force could destroy some of the stuff.

Makes for good roleplaying if there are several ways to open such a chest.

[nightscrawl]

Foolsfolly wrote...

General Stuff:
1. Would be nice to bash open locked chests.

What's the point of having locked chests if anyone can open them?

I did not like the rogue class in DAO. I never used it. DA2 rogue is amazingly fun, melee and ranged versions, but I never used the DAO rogue. I leveled Leliana's lockpick to max and then went back through every area with a fine toothed comb at the end to get everything I might have missed. Being able to bash locks takes away the requirement of having a rogue in the party.

A good compromise would be that picking locks gives exp, but bashing them does not. So, you are not penalized for not bringing a rogue (especially in areas only accessible once during a quest) by being deprived of loot/money.

[Foolsfolly]

klarabella wrote...

Foolsfolly wrote...

General Stuff:
1. Would be nice to bash open locked chests.

What's the point of having locked chests if anyone can open them?

Atmosphere.

One of my standard mods for DAO was the Lockbash mod. Opening a chest with a key or nimble fingers would give you access to all of the goodies inside. Using brute force could destroy some of the stuff.

Makes for good roleplaying if there are several ways to open such a chest.

I'll nod my head for roleplaying purposes. If you want to play a barbarian who hammers a chest open that's a perfectly legit roleplaying choice (I've played them myself).

But to me the chance to destroy the things inside makes it a non-choice to me (much like KOTOR2) and someone on the team needs to know how to lockpick. Same with XP awarded for lock picking and not for bashing. There's more incentive to lockpick than not.

Which doesn't mean I'm against the option, if they have the option I wouldn't complain about it... just from a gameplay perspective there is a punishment for not having a Rogue (broken items or less XP).

And if bashing them open had no drawbacks... then again you have to wonder why have locked chests in the first place?

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Combat

It might be anti-intuitive to a gameplay designer, but I felt like too much effort had been put into many of the DA II fights. I do love challenging and unique encounters, but they don’t all have to be that way. If every encounter is hard/unique/etc then none of them really stand out.

I felt that the real root of the “every battle spawns more foes” problem was that someone had taken the time to say, “how can I make THIS battle better” for nearly every single fight (and unfortunately used the same mechanic and an attempt to do so). The end result was that every combat, including many that were supposed to be unique, started to feel like boring grind.


Specializations

Honestly 3 specializations isn’t enough. More than anything limiting specializations hurts game replay more than anything else. You can build something really cool for one game, but it lowers incentive to play the game again if the next character you build who is the same class essentially ends up with the same specializations each time.

Partially this is a RP thing and not a game play issue … but I would argue that gameplay is at stake here too. Playing a Shapeshifter/Blood Mage in DA:O was far different than playing an Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer both in style and substance.

Some of the standard “class” ability trees might actually have made decent specializations with a few tweaks.


Leadership

So maybe I’ve been tainted by too much 4th edition D&D, but I’m starting to view buffing abilities as being a form of “leadership.” It’s pretty clear that the NPC leaders and lutenits have this kind of philosophy. They buff their teammates so much that they frequently become target #1.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that same philosophy extended to the player character a bit more. I felt like many of the mage & warrior buffs were good leadership material, but they came a too high a price in terms of both ability point investment and stamina reserve needed, for what they actually delivered. I would really like to be able to play a Warden / Hawk / whatever that really “felt” like a party leader based on his ability to improve those who travel with him.

I’m not adverse to keeping generic class buffs as they were in DA II and saving more major buffs to Specializations paths, but this is something I want more of.


Cross class Combos

These were by and large OK, but it irked me a bit that they seemed to require so much “setup” both in terms of ability point investment needed and in difficulty needed to actually get them working in combat. Maybe it’s my limitation as a player but I never seemed to be able to time Chain Reaction to take advantage of STAGGERED. On the other hand, with proper tactics my NPCs seemed to be able to use these well by playthrough 2 & 3. That meant that my Hawk ended up being the guy who set up CCCs more than he took advantage of them.

This kind of goes back to the Leadership section, but IMHO the tweak I would make is to make conditions a bit easier to inflict. Say Brittle on base Cone of Cold rather than requiring the upgrade. It’s fine making the timing a bit tricky and requiring investment to get the extra damage / effect if it’s just a bit easier get the base conditions in play.


Treasure

The more I’ve replayed DA II the less I’ve liked it’s treasure system. Part of this is a scaling issue, but it really bugs me that random generic items end up being far better than many specific / special items. I would really like for the unique items to have some sort of usability that transcends just their raw act specific damage numbers. Having equipment improve with leveling was perfectly fine for some items, but IMHO it’s not the only way to fix this. What I would really have liked to have seen was items that were unique in other ways. Having an Act I staff that offered +25% to a damage type, or worn/equipped items that improved certain sustained abilities (for example Amulet of Stone that improves Rock Armor by +20% or Captain’s Shield that improves Battle Synergy).

I would love items that actually contained useable abilities, but I can guess at some of the balance and technical issues that would make these impracticable.

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Meh.  Double post.

Modifié par Vanderbilt_Grad, 19 octobre 2011 - 01:25 .

[Foolsfolly]

Having an Act I staff that offered +25% to a damage type, or worn/equipped items that improved certain sustained abilities (for example Amulet of Stone that improves Rock Armor by +20% or Captain’s Shield that improves Battle Synergy).

This is an interesting avenue to explore, BioWare.

[nightscrawl]

Vanderbilt_Grad wrote...

Specializations

Honestly 3 specializations isn’t enough. More than anything limiting specializations hurts game replay more than anything else. You can build something really cool for one game, but it lowers incentive to play the game again if the next character you build who is the same class essentially ends up with the same specializations each time.

Partially this is a RP thing and not a game play issue … but I would argue that gameplay is at stake here too. Playing a Shapeshifter/Blood Mage in DA:O was far different than playing an Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer both in style and substance.

Some of the standard “class” ability trees might actually have made decent specializations with a few tweaks.


Leadership

So maybe I’ve been tainted by too much 4th edition D&D, but I’m starting to view buffing abilities as being a form of “leadership.” It’s pretty clear that the NPC leaders and lutenits have this kind of philosophy. They buff their teammates so much that they frequently become target #1.

I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that same philosophy extended to the player character a bit more. I felt like many of the mage & warrior buffs were good leadership material, but they came a too high a price in terms of both ability point investment and stamina reserve needed, for what they actually delivered. I would really like to be able to play a Warden / Hawk / whatever that really “felt” like a party leader based on his ability to improve those who travel with him.

I’m not adverse to keeping generic class buffs as they were in DA II and saving more major buffs to Specializations paths, but this is something I want more of.

Very interesting points here... I'll expand on these two.

Specializations: In terms of story, I felt that the way specializations were handled in DA2 was certainly a step backward. True, in DAO some of them only involved buying a book, but the ones that required you to do something specific or even just be taught by a companion after building a relationship with them just fit better in terms of RP.

I've seen it mentioned in the past by Bioware people that they don't want specs to turn into something that a player feels obligated to do to improve their character, or that a person ends up missing out on something simply because he wasn't in the right place at the right time, or didn't talk to a certain NPC to get a quest chain going. I think those issues can be solved with something that was implemented in DA2: automatic journal quests prompted by an event. The easiest examples are the companion related quests after reaching a rivalry/friendship milestone with them. You hit a mark and Questioning Beliefs appears in your log. For a specialization (let's say we keep the level 7 and 14 models), you hit the required level and depending on your class you get a quest for a spec. Perhaps a Blood Mage quest might suggest you go to a keep's library to examine a book you saw in a corner on a previous visit, or perhaps it's done in a similar way to Avernus's research and the Grey Warden blood abilities from Warden's Peak DLC. If all specs are available immediately, you can have three quests appear in the log and specific information stating that you "may only complete one quest at this time". When the quest is done or accepted, the others are removed. And I think I may speak for many mage players that making a deal with a demon to be a Blood Mage is awesome, and we want to see it again!!

In terms of existing abilities, specifically regarding the mage primary damage trees, I felt that it could have been organized a bit better. In general, I don't really see a separation between the various elements of fire/frost or stone/lightning. Those can all be considered as "earthy" type skills, or all basic elemental type skills, just like they are in DAO. If paring them off is necessary, perhaps that could have been done a bit differently as well: lightning/fire can be a complete damage tree (lightning can set things on fire), where as frost/stone can be a defensive tree (frost can be used to slow or be slippery, or encase in ice like Brittle currently works - there is also the mountain [stone] erosion of freeze/thaw cycles where water gets in cracks, freezes and expands, eventually causing parts to break off over time.) If you want to keep these four elements, examining the relationship between them can help skill designers come up with more unique combinations.


Leadership: I read this paragraph and I mainly got "buff tree" out of it. I think it would be helpful to have a tree designated for buffs, even if it is exclusive to the PC, and unique to each class. This give players the opportunity to focus on pure damage, or stand behind and direct the action, using their activated buffs in response to events in a fight. Rogue talents Goad and Brand, Warrior's Rally, and Mage Haste are really great activated abilities and a step in the right direction. However, I would also like to see fewer sustained party buffing abilities (Heroic Aura), having them move toward an activated buff that we can use at a good time (perhaps before a good CCC setup is exploited, or when there is a boss burn phase).

Modifié par nightscrawl, 22 octobre 2011 - 06:06 .