243 réponses à ce sujet

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Fewer quests with 'padding' fights that have no relevance to the quest and exist solely to 'make things more interesting' would be good.

I loved that MotA (during the Hunt part) interspersed travel with simply seeing what the other hunting parties were up to! Having a dog run up to me and sniff was brilliant

[Annihilator27]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

simfamSP wrote...

What I think RPGs lack these days are quests that involve more chit chat and less hack 'n slash.

Would you be offended if I expanded that to say: "more quests that involve non-combat activities, including talking but also other stuff."

And then said "Okay!"

And then remained distressingly vague about when/where and how, because I have to?

Yeah, maybe. Just pretend I didn't say anything. *nodnod*

Hmmmmm, Find him.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Brockololly wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Would you be offended if I expanded that to say: "more quests that involve non-combat activities, including talking but also other stuff."

Well, in order to have quests which involve non combat activities maybe then we need non combat skills which we can actively progress in and level up as the game goes along? Or are those still "vestigial" ?

Not if implemented well. I do not think they were implemented well in DAO. You could perhaps even draw the conclusion that we want to both bring them back and do them better in the future. Or, alternatively, wild speculation.

[The dead fish]

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

[Mike Laidlaw]

Sylvianus wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

Generally speaking, I prefer puzzles they way we put them into MotA or Legacy: easy or optional to get past, but with a harder and more involved version with candy on the other side. (XP, Loot, crafting mats, etc)

[TEWR]

Sylvianus wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

I'd like to see puzzles on the level of the God of War series myself.

They were fun. Not too complex, but fun and a welcome sight. I don't know how I'd describe the difficulty of them though. I didn't find them to be hard, but that's just speaking for me.

And of course, they should be optional.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 16 décembre 2011 - 04:03 .

[The dead fish]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Sylvianus wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

Generally speaking, I prefer puzzles they way we put them into MotA or Legacy: easy or optional to get past, but with a harder and more involved version with candy on the other side. (XP, Loot, crafting mats, etc)

In this case, I am totally for puzzles;
It doesn't bother me if it's easy enough, or better optional.

And i think it's good because everyone is happy  with this solution. I just feared, more puzzles harder for the future. ^^

Modifié par Sylvianus, 16 décembre 2011 - 03:34 .

[Firky]

I wrote a page back about taking damage in BG2's Amaunator room, but was mulling it over, and that wouldn't make sense in DAII (or Origins) because health regenerates when not in battle, and there's no real cost.

So, a gauntlet style puzzle, but if you fail it (especially deliberately) take damage, but throw an enemy in the room to fight so it's meaningful. (That's the combat junkie talking.) Or, start removing stat points. (That's the masochist.)

[Brockololly]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...
Not if implemented well. I do not think they were implemented well in DAO. You could perhaps even draw the conclusion that we want to both bring them back and do them better in the future. Or, alternatively, wild speculation.

Fair enough. They certainly could have been better than they were in DAO, but I don't know that simply stripping them out alltogether was the right route either. I mean, if its going to be said that a major cornerstone of an RPG is player progression, and you spend a fair amount of time conversing or exploring or crafting or smithing or making potions, then it would be nice to be able to actively put points into those skills and get special non combat abilities when  leveling up and selecting combat skills and abilities.

And then being able to actively use those abilities and get tangible feedback from using those noncombat abilities in game. Whether thats picking a specific persuade or intimidate option or smithing an awesome sword or solving a quest because your survival skill or a companion's survival skill was high enough- thats just as important in an RPG as it is shield bashing or sneaking up and slicing somebody's throat.

[The dead fish]

It's just that  I am primarily interested in the story, I need to know quickly what will happen after lol, I don't like to be stuck for hours on one puzzle ( I'm so bad that I can get stuck for a long time, or maybe I 'm not patient  enough with that stuff actually ), at least the fighting, that's fun.. Puzzles are just annoying to me. :innocent:

Modifié par Sylvianus, 16 décembre 2011 - 03:54 .

[Mike Laidlaw]

Brockololly wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...
Not if implemented well. I do not think they were implemented well in DAO. You could perhaps even draw the conclusion that we want to both bring them back and do them better in the future. Or, alternatively, wild speculation.

Fair enough. They certainly could have been better than they were in DAO, but I don't know that simply stripping them out alltogether was the right route either. I mean, if its going to be said that a major cornerstone of an RPG is player progression, and you spend a fair amount of time conversing or exploring or crafting or smithing or making potions, then it would be nice to be able to actively put points into those skills and get special non combat abilities when  leveling up and selecting combat skills and abilities.

And then being able to actively use those abilities and get tangible feedback from using those noncombat abilities in game. Whether thats picking a specific persuade or intimidate option or smithing an awesome sword or solving a quest because your survival skill or a companion's survival skill was high enough- thats just as important in an RPG as it is shield bashing or sneaking up and slicing somebody's throat.

I agree on all of these points.

[DreamwareStudio]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Brockololly wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Would you be offended if I expanded that to say: "more quests that involve non-combat activities, including talking but also other stuff."

Well, in order to have quests which involve non combat activities maybe then we need non combat skills which we can actively progress in and level up as the game goes along? Or are those still "vestigial" ?

Not if implemented well. I do not think they were implemented well in DAO. You could perhaps even draw the conclusion that we want to both bring them back and do them better in the future. Or, alternatively, wild speculation.

My comments are in relation to DA 3, so perhaps they are not apt but this got me to thinking about DA 3, so...

Ugh...seriously?  Without the reward of non-combat skills, the non-fighting quest for more loot or whatever is nothing really more than another see-Spot-fetch-this quest (a major issue in DA 2).  I would think a reward for wisdom or cunning when having solved a complex puzzle would be a far greater reward than money you can acquire via another method or a suit of armor (assuming you can change the armor of the NPCs in DA 3, otherwise the extra armor is a non-factor) or whatever.

Any great RPG at least attempts non-combat related quests and offers non-combat related skills.

Having said all that, if you're going to do non-combat related quests, make the quests more than just a reward for cunning and/or wisdom, etc..  The skill boosts should be a side effect of obtaining the overall goal.  That goal should be something really meaningful (say, saving one of your party members, ala Bodhi kidnapping the party member the PC romanced in BG 2).

Bodhi, btw, was some kind of villain.

More than anything, though, be creative this time around.  PLEASE.

Modifié par google_calasade, 16 décembre 2011 - 04:36 .

[The dead fish]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Sylvianus wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

I'd like to see puzzles on the level of the God of War series myself.

They were fun. Not too complex, but fun and a welcome sight. I don't know how I'd describe the difficulty of them though. I didn't find them to be hard, but that's just speaking for me.

And of course, optional.

I never played God of War, but it sounds good when I am reading you.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 16 décembre 2011 - 03:56 .

[TEWR]

Sylvianus wrote...

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Sylvianus wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

I'd like to see puzzles on the level of the God of War series myself.

They were fun. Not too complex, but fun and a welcome sight. I don't know how I'd describe the difficulty of them though. I didn't find them to be hard, but that's just speaking for me.

And of course, optional.

I never played God of War, but it sounds good when I am reading you.

Yea, the puzzles in God of War were mandatory to move on -- as it was a linear game -- but they were fun and fairly simple (to me anyway. Other people may disagree, as I can't judge the complexity of a puzzle based on how I found it).

Off the top of my head is a puzzle from the first game. You have to push a crate through a barrage of Undead Archers to the other side of a ship so you can jump to the ledge above you. If the crate gets damaged too much, it breaks apart and you have to start over.

Fairly simple, to the point, and it allows you to move on.

What I'd like to see are puzzles akin to those used throughout the GoW series. Some should be mandatory imo, but mostly they should be optional. Fun and not incredibly complex in that you're going "Now what?".

Some puzzles even involved using your enemies to your advantage, like when Kratos kicked hellhounds through a portal to act as weight for a platform.

EDIT: Actually, some puzzles were optional I think. Though they dealt more with getting Red Orbs, Gorgon Eyes, etc. and not with the story.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 16 décembre 2011 - 04:14 .

[addiction21]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Brockololly wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...
Not if implemented well. I do not think they were implemented well in DAO. You could perhaps even draw the conclusion that we want to both bring them back and do them better in the future. Or, alternatively, wild speculation.

Fair enough. They certainly could have been better than they were in DAO, but I don't know that simply stripping them out alltogether was the right route either. I mean, if its going to be said that a major cornerstone of an RPG is player progression, and you spend a fair amount of time conversing or exploring or crafting or smithing or making potions, then it would be nice to be able to actively put points into those skills and get special non combat abilities when  leveling up and selecting combat skills and abilities.

And then being able to actively use those abilities and get tangible feedback from using those noncombat abilities in game. Whether thats picking a specific persuade or intimidate option or smithing an awesome sword or solving a quest because your survival skill or a companion's survival skill was high enough- thats just as important in an RPG as it is shield bashing or sneaking up and slicing somebody's throat.

I agree on all of these points.

If I knew it would not cause havoc I would want a larger signature box.

[TEWR]

Filament wrote...

Sounds good. But, I hope you guys are taking into account the issues people had with the stealth feature in MotA. It was nice, but not exactly perfect.

Yea the stealth in MotA was a nice experiment, but there's a lot that needs to be done to it to make it better imo.

Like getting caught should make the stealth part cease, at least until the enemies in the immediate area are dead.

I forget what other stuff I've said should be done to the stealth. Have to do some digging in some old threads.

[Mike Laidlaw]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Filament wrote...

Sounds good. But, I hope you guys are taking into account the issues people had with the stealth feature in MotA. It was nice, but not exactly perfect.

Yea the stealth in MotA was a nice experiment, but there's a lot that needs to be done to it to make it better imo.

Like getting caught should make the stealth part cease, at least until the enemies in the immediate area are dead.

I forget what other stuff I've said should be done to the stealth. Have to do some digging in some old threads.

We're well aware. Limitations of what you can do without core executable changes (which a DLC cannot do). A worthwhile experiment, though, I think.

[Atakuma]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Filament wrote...

Sounds good. But, I hope you guys are taking into account the issues people had with the stealth feature in MotA. It was nice, but not exactly perfect.

Yea the stealth in MotA was a nice experiment, but there's a lot that needs to be done to it to make it better imo.

Like getting caught should make the stealth part cease, at least until the enemies in the immediate area are dead.

I forget what other stuff I've said should be done to the stealth. Have to do some digging in some old threads.

You didn't have any weapons or armor in the stealth portion IIRC, so failure is essentially death in that situation.

[TEWR]

Atakuma wrote...

You didn't have any weapons or armor in the stealth portion IIRC, so failure is essentially death in that situation.

Well, Hawke and Tallis end up pulling their weapons out when they get caught, so they did have their weapons on them.

Somehow.

I'm just saying should the stealth idea be used in the future and the person is armed it shouldn't be a moment where the guard yells out "Thieves in the chateau!" and then everything goes back to normal as if the player hadn't been caught.

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

We're well aware. Limitations of what you can do without core executable changes (which a DLC cannot do). A worthwhile experiment, though, I think.

Oh indeed. It was definitely a worthwhile experiment. Not perfect -- though nothing ever is -- but the differentiation between combat stealth and stealthy stealth in the DLC is something I've supported and hope to see more of in the future.

I'm glad to read that you guys are aware that the stealth also needs to be improved.

[Firky]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...
I'm glad to read that you guys are aware that the stealth also needs to be improved.

I didn't like stealth much in MotA, but I also don't think it "needs to be improved."

Technically, you could argue that if DA was moving away from your more open/interactive world of genre, two discrete paths for stealth and combat, as well as simply teleporting back to Tallis for another try might be internally consistent.

I didn't particularly like it, personally. But stealth in MotA did make me really question which fantasy RPGs do it well. I don't think anyone's nailed it yet. But I'm seeing some potential in MotA's approach.

[Melca36]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Sylvianus wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

I don't want too many puzzles. Puzzles are annoying.

This. Seriously.
There are some people who love that, there are other folks who think they are totally boring.=)

Generally speaking, I prefer puzzles they way we put them into MotA or Legacy: easy or optional to get past, but with a harder and more involved version with candy on the other side. (XP, Loot, crafting mats, etc)

The puzzles in MOTA were great. They weren't overly difficult and I especially liked the one with the runes and the one that unscrambled the floor portrait.

[SkittlesKat96]

I agree with you there OP, I don't usually say this about games but DA 2 had too much combat.

I've played a lot of obscure and non-obscure hardcore Rpgs with lots of text and stat managing and those are really frustrating but games with way too much combat are also pretty frustrating.

I think to fix this they just gotta keep making combat more dynamic and interesting and try to tone it down a bit and/or put more variety in quests.

I hear the DLC's have done well in terms of combat, but I haven't played the DLC myself yet (going to wait until the next DLC expansion then I'll buy it all in one batch, I'll have enough money by then.)

As for puzzles I'm not really sure what to think about them, some people find them too hard, some enjoy them. I enjoyed some of the puzzles in KOTOR and DA:O but some are a pain. I suppose I agree that they should just be optional, and the ones that are mandatory shouldn't be too hard.

Modifié par SkittlesKat96, 16 décembre 2011 - 06:53 .

[Fraevar]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Would you be offended if I expanded that to say: "more quests that involve non-combat activities, including talking but also other stuff."

And then said "Okay!"

And then remained distressingly vague about when/where and how, because I have to?

Yeah, maybe. Just pretend I didn't say anything. *nodnod*

I would love this, Mike. The best parts of DA:O for me were the non-combat moments where you could actually take time to get to know characters or learn about the world and the plot. Storytelling will always suffer if forced onto an action-model, because the deeper stuff is skipped. ME2 had this problem, but even so the best few loyalty missions they managed were the non-combat ones. Thane's and Samara's.

I know some are going to give you a hard time on this, but I hope you stick with it - Leliana's arc in DA:O would not have been as meaningful as it was if not for the quiet moments by the campfire. So please - more of this, don't be afraid to slow the pace down a bit

[nightscrawl]

simfamSP wrote...

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up of every quest involving some combat encounter in RPGs. I'd really like for something new.

What I think RPGs lack these days are quests that involve more chit chat and less hack 'n slash. I want to be involved in a crime scene investigation where I need to find out who the murderer is - like an Agatha Christie novel (Poirot?)

Or be involved in rebuilding an old defence and having to speak to certain people and having different ways to get to the final outcome.

Maybe having a quest that involves riddles and puzzles.

Anything just something that doesn't have to involve me killing a band of mercenaries just because they haven't got a clue about the person they are messing with.

More quests like 'saving the Warden from prison' and less 'Deep Roads' I think. Or just a nice balance of the two.

Before I add anything else, I'll say first that I agree with you 100%. While I'm not crazy about outright puzzles on the floor like those used in MotA, situations involving creative thinking can be fun. I'm reminded of some wonderful modules made for Neverwinter Nights by Adam Miller. I was browsing, came upon his work over at the NWvault and was hooked by his storytelling abilities. But the important distinction is that I had to seek out that content because I was specifically interested in it.

While I agree that almost all of DA2's various quests involve combat of some kind -- the notable exception being a certain young mage in Act 3 -- and that there should be a broader range of content, they shouldn't lean too heavily in one direction or another or else they won't sell product.

I also would like to see them build on the concepts that worked in the DA2 DLC and include them in DA3, and perhaps slow the pacing down a bit. I felt that Act 2 seemed especially rushed: the Arishok needs to see you right away, then you have to go find a certain templar, and other such things. While you can put off any of these quests as long as you want, you still have the conversation with the NPC telling you to go somewhere in an urgent tone. If the events of MotA were actually a part of Act 2 or 3, it might make sense for Hawke to be going to various parties and such and would considerably alter the pacing of the game.

I think things like that would appeal to the combat players as well as the story enthusiasts.

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

simfamSP wrote...

What I think RPGs lack these days are quests that involve more chit chat and less hack 'n slash.

Would you be offended if I expanded that to say: "more quests that involve non-combat activities, including talking but also other stuff."

And then said "Okay!"

And then remained distressingly vague about when/where and how, because I have to?

Yeah, maybe. Just pretend I didn't say anything. *nodnod*

You're just evil .

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Brockololly wrote...

Well, in order to have quests which involve non combat activities maybe then we need non combat skills which we can actively progress in and level up as the game goes along? Or are those still "vestigial" ?

Not if implemented well. I do not think they were implemented well in DAO. You could perhaps even draw the conclusion that we want to both bring them back and do them better in the future. Or, alternatively, wild speculation.

For some reason this response reminded me of the crafting minigame that was in DAO/DAA. Crafting in that game was horrendous. Please never implement it that way again. That's not to say that player crafting should be totally absent, as in DA2. Because I like to have my Persuasion skills maxed on my PC for greater options in quests, I'm more limited on the amount of points I can put in crafting skills, so I'm forced to use my friends to craft for me. This would be fine except I have to buy vials and such from a vendor NPC, and if I don't have hoards of gold, I might have to enter and leave a store building several times in order to get all of the components together (this mainly applies to having Oghren craft runes for me in DAA), and then get to an area where I can use my friend to craft.

Brockololly's post reminded me of crafting because a "non-combat skill which we can actively progress in and level up as the games goes along" almost perfectly describes the crafting in World of Warcraft. If you want to make any sort of decent money, you must have a crafting skill of some kind. If you want to have the best additions to your gear you must have a crafting skill (each one gives their own unique benefits). During some periods in the game the best weapons came from crafting. So it really wasn't optional at that point. That is where I don't want to be with Dragon Age. I like the idea of it being optional, or perhaps Nightmare players might want to invest in it for resist gear, or something along those lines.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 16 décembre 2011 - 09:30 .