4 réponses à ce sujet

[Arius23]

Now I'll be the first to admit, I did not utilize Morrigan's SS skills whatsoever in Origins, but not because they were not cool, but because they felt weak compared to the mage spells.

I think the idea of mages transforming into creatures and ripping apart enemies like rabid wolverines is awesome and should be implemented and improved upon in future DA games.  I do believe, however, the skill should be limited to only apostate mages from the wilds or something similar.

Is anybody else for this?  Any word from Bioware if they have plans to re-implement this skill in future games?

[Luke Barrett]

I think with skills like this is becomes a very delicate balancing act between being useless and way too strong. Also, after feedback that suggested 6 was way too many specializations and it would be better if we had less specs with more depth; we therefore pulled the number back to 3 with room to grow a little if the need arose - with that in mind it becomes a case of whether Shapeshifter is warranted over some other essential specs. I think if we said we're adding one more of the old specs to the mage class and made a poll, Shapeshifter would not be on top

...but yes I agree that it would be cool

Modifié par Luke Barrett, 18 juillet 2011 - 06:42 .

[Luke Barrett]

Filament wrote...

I would think that kind of poll would be a bit biased on account of people voting based on what they thought of DAO's shapeshifter (ie it sucked) as opposed to just not liking the concept in general.

Certainly possible... secretly it was just a veiled attempt to say that Arcane Warrior is clearly the superior choice

[Peter Thomas]

Luke Barrett wrote...

I think with skills like this is becomes a very delicate balancing act between being useless and way too strong. Also, after feedback that suggested 6 was way too many specializations and it would be better if we had less specs with more depth; we therefore pulled the number back to 3 with room to grow a little if the need arose - with that in mind it becomes a case of whether Shapeshifter is warranted over some other essential specs. I think if we said we're adding one more of the old specs to the mage class and made a poll, Shapeshifter would not be on top

...but yes I agree that it would be cool

Ok... those weren't the actual reasons Shapeshifter was cut or really the reason for the number of specializations.


1) The shapes weren't very impressive, visually. They were pretty much like the stuff you fought throughout the game which ends up being kind of meh by the end. I'm a super powerful mage who can change forms and I choose... a spider? Not even a giant spider, just a moderately sized one. The shapes should have been much more impressive. Turn yourself into an inferno golem or a dragon or something, but that leads to other issues. (Inferno Golem was the one I was rooting for)

2) Shapes take up too much memory. To be able to swap the character out and load another in his place (without a stutter from disc access), you need to have the model, its animations and its textures all in memory all the time. Shapes that are very impressive, or have lots of other abilities and animtions take up more memory, which then can't be used for anything else. There is a constant fight for memory all the time on every game we make. If there is a class that takes up an extra couple MB of memory on the chance that maybe 20% of players take it, it's low hanging fruit.

3) Impressive shapes are too big. It would be awesome to turn into a dragon, but then you couldn't fit through any of the doors. Levels need to be constructed with the various sizes in mind right from the start, otherwise problems will occur. DA2 did not, so there would be a bunch of issues if we had creatures too big. You trigger a fight where you need to kill someone in another room. Everyone else is fine, but the dragon just can't seem to make it. It's realistic, but not that fun. And it would need to deactive itself when combat ends or add huge amounts of complexity to other areas. "Why don't Templars recognize my mage" becomes a lot worse when you're 20 feet tall and dripping lava.

4) Shape abilities weren't distinct enough. I'm a mage, so my specialty is generally long range damage and support. I take Shapeshifter and turn into... a bear. That gives me some Health, maybe some armor, and I can run up to people and hit them. Which is basically what a Warrior does. Except without all the Warrior abilities. Or Warrior equipment. And I can't use any of my own class abilities. Any shape that a new Shapeshifter class would be able to turn into should specialize or expand Mage gameplay, not turn it into a sucky version of another class. New, epic, shapes should be used, but they run into the problems above.


If shapeshifting is going to be used, it needs to be consciously included right from the start of design. People may assume that it was easy since it was present in DAO, but they don't really know any of the sacrifices that had to be made to make that happen. It is not a trivial thing to add for all our platforms.

Modifié par Peter Thomas, 24 juillet 2011 - 01:34 .

[Peter Thomas]

Torax wrote...

I figure development just went to a more simple focus design.

Warrior = Damage or Tank (Melee Exclusive)
Rogue = Damage (Melee & Ranged)
Mage = Damage or Healer (Ranged Exclusive)

Even though they did some cool melee animations here and there. I like how the ranger pulls out a dagger for his free hand if someone gets in close.

Warrior = Melee AoE
Rogue = Melee or Ranged Single Target
Mage = Ranged AoE

This gives each class a distinct form of engagement and method of dealing with enemies. Warriors need to close with as many as possible. Mages need to stay away and cluster targets as much as possible. Rogues have flexibility in that they can choose range of engagement. Though they do more damage, since it's all concentrated on a single target, they need to be more concerned about positioning and placement on the battlefield, as well as target priority.