77 réponses à ce sujet

[F-C]

Bluto_Longneck wrote...

There is a level cap, set at 25, if I'm to believe the really good players.

Not that I would reach that anyways, as an average player.

The MANUAL lies.

the thing is you cant actually get to level 25 doing all of the content in the game and not using a cheat or console command to artificially boost your level.

that effectively makes it a no level cap game.

they have to set a limit on it somewhere, if a number goes to infinity it will cause your computer to crash. so they set it above what you can possibly reach.



there is a big difference between that and say a game like fallout3 where you hit level 20 and cannot gain any levels and still have 30% of the game left to do.

[NetBeansAndJava]

F-C wrote...
the thing is you cant actually get to level 25 doing all of the content in the game and not using a cheat or console command to artificially boost your level.

Just wanted to add that there are 2 xp bugs and 1 "exploit" that allow you to gain infinite xp (or near infinite).  Still, you're right that the lvl cap can't be normally reached.  However, this will not hold true if they keep adding new dlc.

[Bryy_Miller]

there is a big difference between that and say a game like fallout3 where you hit level 20 and cannot gain any levels and still have 30% of the game left to do.

Fallout 3 is an open world, though.

[Bluto_Longneck]

F-C wrote...

Bluto_Longneck wrote...

There is a level cap, set at 25, if I'm to believe the really good players.

Not that I would reach that anyways, as an average player.

The MANUAL lies.

the thing is you cant actually get to level 25 doing all of the content in the game and not using a cheat or console command to artificially boost your level.

that effectively makes it a no level cap game.

they have to set a limit on it somewhere, if a number goes to infinity it will cause your computer to crash. so they set it above what you can possibly reach.



there is a big difference between that and say a game like fallout3 where you hit level 20 and cannot gain any levels and still have 30% of the game left to do.

 
They could've set it at 25 or 58 or 999, I wouldn't care less,

The MANUAL tells me it is unlimited, I don't care what excuses there are, That's what it told me.

But I do understand what you're saying and totally agree.

If only the frigging MANUAL could've said the same.

[Jordi B]

I would prefer if there was some respawning, like some of the earlier posters said. In some places it just seems more realistic. If I kill things in a forest and come back after what must be days, maybe even weeks, I don't expect every carcass I left there to be in the exact same place and I do expect there to be wild animals. This is not about grinding, and this being a story-based game is no excuse. I think more realism would be better for the story...

Also, I think it wouldn't hurt to put in some way to grind for those players that want to. The fact that the game is story-based doesn't mean it can't also be other things. It is not crazy to question the absense of elements that would be easy to add, are present in other RPGs, could possibly increase realism and could attract a lot of people.

At the very beginning the game mentions that there is a place where the people are constantly fighting darkspawn (even when there is no Blight). For me it would not be crazy if this would be a place you could travel to in order to fight a pretty much never-ending stream of darkspawn. I can even imagine there being a repeatable quest that would ask for darkspawn-scalps or something. It seems to me that such a location wouldn't detract from the story at all. If anything, it would make it more real, since this is a location that the story talks about. I'm sure other missions and locations can be conceived of that would fit perfectly with the story and still allow you to continuously gain XP.

Should BioWare have added this to the game? Well, I would have really liked realistic (re)spawns. I don't think grinding locations/missions are necessary, but they wouldn't have hurt the game. I think it's fine that the game stops at the end though. It wouldn't be very satisfying for me to walk around in a world with no missions and exhausted dialog options.



BTW do real random encounters actually exist in this game? It seems that every "random" encounter has something to do with some side quest, making it not really random.

[xguild]

Well programically (for anyone who ever worked in the confines of something like the NWN engine) there are some issues with scalability, false spawns and balancing the whole thing out. One of the biggest challenges when creating a living (respawning) game world is to maintain balance in so doing. Im not saying its not possible, it very well is, but it takes a lot of time and effort. I imagine in a single player story based RPG it was probobly a decesion made at some point to say "hey do we really need this in the game".



I have made decesions like that when building my own NWN 2 modules and quite often I chose to make things "none respawning" intentionally just to avoid the time and effort it would take to balance it out since in effect it wasn't a nescessity to make the module enjoyable and could create so many problems mechanical (balance wise) by adding it.



I am quite certain however that it is possible within the scope of the engine and toolset to make respawnable monsters and while I cant think of any areas that I have seen in the game so far where this is the case (as its mostly story driven encounters as far as I have seen so far), I do believe there is a convention for it.

[Aidunno]

Since when is this game realistic. It's a fictional story with fictional magic, weapons with fictional effects etc. Picking what "realism" bits people want would mean a million different people wanting different levels of realism of which quite a few would not be realistic at all, only what they percieve to be realistic. This is a fictional story with fictional gameplay. If even weapons were realistic you wouldn't get past your origin story.



But taking another point futher.. Darkspawn killing in the deeproads would probably be the way to go for those who want grinding, although unless you could "randomise" things it would get boring pretty quickly.



You do occasionally get "random" encounters not related to anything else. I know I came across 3 shades while leaving lothering on one playthrough which almost wiped my party.

[Jordi B]

xguild: Could you elaborate on the issues you mention with implementing respawning (scalability, false spawns and balancing)? I'm not trying to question you or anything, but it just seems to me like balance should not be that big a problem. If you can beat certain enemies once, then you should also be able to beat them again. If you want to put new enemies into an area (for instance, wild animals come back to a forest after you wiped out the undead/werewolves/darkspawn), just put ones that are not stronger than the original enemies. Also, what kind of scalability are you talking about and what are false spawns?



Aidunno: maybe "realism" isn't the right world. However, just because there is magic in a setting, doesn't automatically mean that things don't need to make sense. In a fantasy world, you can introduce supernatural things, but it should still be done in a consistent way. It seems like Dragon Age is pretty much going for "exaggerated Middle Ages + monsters and magic". The things that are added onto "regular Middle Ages" are all explained in one way or another so you can get a feel for how this world works. In a world like this, I think most people can agree that it makes no sense that if you have defeated some enemies somewhere at some point in time, that this area is thereafter abandoned by all life for all eternity. What would be the explanation for this?

If you make the respawning "sensible*" (is that a better word?), then how could it be a bad thing?



* I would say that it's sensible to have the respawning enemies be things that would normally roam the type of location that you're in. If there are darkspawn around, maybe some day you run into another "patrol". If it's a forest: animals, a cave: spiders(?), etc. Also, it probably shouldn't happen too often (and I think probably not while you are still on the map, but possibly only after a certain amount of ingame days).

[Aidunno]

AS already mentioned you then have the problem of "scaling". Encounters in a location at present are scaled to when you first enter the zone. Do you really want to come back later and just fight things which are too easy ? If it rescales each time you go to a location the idea of coming back when you can potentially handle the monsters goes out the window.

[Jordi B]

Ah, yes ,sorry, I forgot about that. I don't think it's a big problem if these respawns would be too easy, but admittedly, this really is just my own opinion and I can easily see a lot of people disagreeing. The thing is, for me, the respawns should be there for realism (not challenge or grinding). To me it seems more realistic that if I level up a little, I can now easily beat things that are in a low-level area, respawned or not. I think that the only problems here are with the scaling mechanism itself (although I think I kind of like the mechanism). Whether respawning exists doesn't change anything.



"Do you really want to come back later and just fight things which are too easy ?"

Well, the answer depends on the situation. If I "fled" an area to go level up somewhere so that I can more easily beat the monsters there, then the answer is of course "yes". My other scenario is that I don't want to come back to fight things (easy or not), but I want to come back for something else (maybe return to a quest-giver) and find that the world is dynamic. Other reasons for wanting respawns are grinding and possibly added challenge. For grinding you probably want whatever gives you the most XP the fastest. I don't know if that means the enemies should be hard or easy, but in this cases the answer to the above question might be "no" (I don't know). These are however not the reasons *I* want respawning, so I think that implementing *my* kind of respawing should be fairly easy to implement.

Additionally, we could have grinding/challenge respawning (for instance in certain areas or missions as I proposed previously). For these areas you might have a scaling issue, but since they would be specifically built for a challenge (and should be optional), I think the rescaling option would work fine there.

[xguild]

Jordi B.. the problem with balancing is that the player continues to level up and the game only to a limited extent controls where a player can and can't go. The result is that a player might go into an area where spawning monsters are way too tough (beyond his level) or monsters are way too easy (way below his level). To counter this you have to have some sort of scalable encounter system in which monsters are spawned as a reaction to the players current level and group.



In NeverWinter Nights this was done in having versions of monsters and setting a difficulty for each spawnable encounter however this was done through encounter triggers (areas that a player steps on would cause the spawn). In a more true spawning system (time based) this is even harder to acomplish since the spawns take place even when a player is not in the area.



In any case their has to be programming logic in place to ensure the monsters players encounter (the ones that spawn) are balanced to what level the player is.



In MMO's this is done through area scaling, in games like NeverWinter Nights its done through trigger scaling and there are a few other methods but the logic has to be there and like I said it takes a lot of extra programming and logic effort to acomplish this which means more development time.



When i developed Mithril City Online for NeverWinter Nights 1, the areas, dialogue and scripting took 50% of our time. The balancing of encounters and scaling them to make the gameworld appropriate for players of different levels took the other 50% of the time and to be quite honest looking back at that gameworld I honestly don't think we ever got it quite right. There where still lots of places in where monsters that spawned where either too weak or too strong but NWN 1 had the additional difficulty when it came to balance in that not all classes of the same level where created equal. For example a Level 3 mage had a considerably harder time (maybe even impossible in some cases) to take on challanges that a Level 3 Barbarian could basically walk through.



Balancing dynamic combat encounters is THE hardest thing in game development to do right.

[Aidunno]

Jordi B : Fair enough.. discussion points logical although to be honest I only go to the mage tower and forest more than once for crafting supplies.

Modifié par Aidunno, 03 décembre 2009 - 12:18 .

[xguild]

Jordi B wrote...

Ah, yes ,sorry, I forgot about that. I don't think it's a big problem if these respawns would be too easy, but admittedly, this really is just my own opinion and I can easily see a lot of people disagreeing. The thing is, for me, the respawns should be there for realism (not challenge or grinding). To me it seems more realistic that if I level up a little, I can now easily beat things that are in a low-level area, respawned or not. I think that the only problems here are with the scaling mechanism itself (although I think I kind of like the mechanism). Whether respawning exists doesn't change anything.

"Do you really want to come back later and just fight things which are too easy ?"
Well, the answer depends on the situation. If I "fled" an area to go level up somewhere so that I can more easily beat the monsters there, then the answer is of course "yes". My other scenario is that I don't want to come back to fight things (easy or not), but I want to come back for something else (maybe return to a quest-giver) and find that the world is dynamic. Other reasons for wanting respawns are grinding and possibly added challenge. For grinding you probably want whatever gives you the most XP the fastest. I don't know if that means the enemies should be hard or easy, but in this cases the answer to the above question might be "no" (I don't know). These are however not the reasons *I* want respawning, so I think that implementing *my* kind of respawing should be fairly easy to implement.
Additionally, we could have grinding/challenge respawning (for instance in certain areas or missions as I proposed previously). For these areas you might have a scaling issue, but since they would be specifically built for a challenge (and should be optional), I think the rescaling option would work fine there.

What your basically asking for is a semi persistant single player game world. 

As a game developer you kind of have to make a decesion on what it is that your game is going to be good at, its quite impossible to create an all inclusive game that works out the logic of every concievable possibility, even for a wealthy developer its quite a stretch for a single player title.

If Dragon Age has a flaw its that the Toolset is a buggy mess which means the mod community's hands at least for the moment are severly tied, but what your asking for is certainly within the scope of the toolset and from what I have seen of it, its all very possible to acomplish these things.  Wether we actually see any of it implemented in player mods will depend on wether or not Bioware is going to spend some time and money fixing the toolset and bringing it to a functional state.  For the moment however, for the type of game your looking for, NeverWinter Nights 1 and 2 are your best bet as everything your talking about has been done quite well in that game and the toolsets great flexibility and scripting language are responsible for that success.

[Jordi B]

Edit: I was not responding to xguild's post immediately above this one, but the one above that.

xguild: Thank you for the explanation! Like I said, my goal for respawing would be to have a more lifelike world. On a first pass through an area, I want to be challenged, so here balancing/scaling issues come into play. I'm sure this is very hard and takes a lot of time, but Bioware already did this. On later visits, I just want to feel like I'm in a living environment/world, which means that there should probably be critters if appropriate. I don't care about challenge now. In fact, I would probably be very annoyed if every area I already cleared would be very challenging again and again. However, even if I did care about the challenge, it seems to me like the balancing/scaling work was already done for the "initial spawning".

Aidunno: don't you think it's silly that even a long time after you've finished the mage tower, two templars are still scrubbing the floor around some carcass? They will never make any progress and this breaks immersion for me (slightly). Everything in the world (almost) always remains exactly as you left it. This specific situation could not be fixed with respawning, but more lifelike forests for example could to some degree.

Modifié par Jordi B, 03 décembre 2009 - 12:41 .

[Jordi B]

xguild wrote...

What your basically asking for is a semi persistant single player game world. 

Am I? I think for some designated areas, you would just put some creatures/groups (of the level previously determined for the area) that may or may not spawn (random) + maybe a timer so respawning doesn't happen too often. Does that qualify as a persistent world?

xguild wrote...

As a game developer you kind of have to make a decesion on what it is that your game is going to be good at, its quite impossible to create an all inclusive game that works out the logic of every concievable possibility, even for a wealthy developer its quite a stretch for a single player title.

Well, sure, I understand that. It just seems quite easy to me. But I could very well be wrong. It's not like I have experience making games myself. Also, just because a game developer made some decision to (not) include some feature, doesn't automatically mean that it wouldn't have made the game better. I'm not blaming them or anything. Of course, they have to make good business and scheduling decisions. And the game turned out great (yet not perfect).

xguild wrote...

If Dragon Age has a flaw its that the Toolset is a buggy mess which means the mod community's hands at least for the moment are severly tied, but what your asking for is certainly within the scope of the toolset and from what I have seen of it, its all very possible to acomplish these things.  Wether we actually see any of it implemented in player mods will depend on wether or not Bioware is going to spend some time and money fixing the toolset and bringing it to a functional state.  For the moment however, for the type of game your looking for, NeverWinter Nights 1 and 2 are your best bet as everything your talking about has been done quite well in that game and the toolsets great flexibility and scripting language are responsible for that success.

I wouldn't know about that, but I hope they give modders all the tools they need.

[El Codge]

It's be nice if there's a DLC or mod for The Proving in Orzammar, where you could keep going back and entering Tournaments.



Expand it a bit, make it like Gladiator ("Welcome back to the Warden, come to pit his wits against this terrifying Ogre we've captured in the dead trenches!") - basically make it a constant source of combat for when all you want to do is lop the heads of people,

[Aidunno]

Jordi B - don't you think it's silly that even a long time after you've finished the mage tower, two templars are still scrubbing the floor around some carcass?

Never needed to go that far more than once, and that was for a sidequest I missed doing the main questline. Too much else to do rather  than to keep redoing areas already done. This I think is the point. You never have to go to an area already cleared for main story purposes. If you do then it's normally for a sidequest or something which doesn't push the story forward and so can be done quickly without miscellaneous monsters slowing you down. That way you can quickly get back to the main story.

Also consider for "realism" or whatever you want to call it... If an area is cleared of a type of monster it would still take ages for another group to move in. Guess the main trouble is that there is no sense of "time". If there was then I would say Yes, include respawning after x weeks. Then again I would also be pushing for a deadline past which you lose the game as the darkspawn take over and introduce a sense of being up against the clock.

Modifié par Aidunno, 03 décembre 2009 - 01:08 .

[xguild]

Well I can tell you the classic line a software developer from any circle will give you is that "Given enough time and money I can do anything". Everything is within the scope of development for a game, you can pretty much create anything you can create in your imagination. The problem is that developers never actually have unlimited money and time, so when developing software in particular games most meetings about the game are not about "what can we add", but rather "What can we remove".



Games that suffer from Kitchen Sink Idis (as I like to call it where you attempt to put every kick ass concept you can come up with into a single game) never see the light of day. I learned a lot from my experiances using the NWN1 and NWN2 development tools, I was on a lot of projects and I can tell you that 90% of the ones that failed, did so because the designers where too ambitious. Trimming the fat of a game is one of the most important things you can do in a development cycle because the more you add the less will actually work and the less likely you are to create a successful game.



From a players perspective I suppose that's not much comfert to know, i mean no one wants to hear that when developers meet they spend most of their time trying to figure out what NOT to put in a game but I recommend anyone (even none programmers) who is interested in gaming to throw themselves into a game development project in any one of the hundreds of development communities out there. Not only will you find a new appriciation for games all together but you will find yourself far more impressed with games like Dragon Age which is really an astounding achievement in the industry.



Many people on this forum complain that Dragons Age is "Unsipired... a clone, or lacking features" and I can say with 100% certainty that none of them are game developers, because anyone who has ever developed a game knows how special Dragons Age actually is.

[Aidunno]

xguild wrote ...

Many people on this forum complain that Dragons Age is "Unsipired... a clone, or lacking features" and I can say with 100% certainty that none of them are game developers, because anyone who has ever developed a game knows how special Dragons Age actually is.

Couldn't agree more although I am not a game designer (I am a programmer though).

[Cydz]

Arkrend wrote...

so you pretty much think repeatable gamplay is stupid?

Only speaking for me but repeating  game play Is the most stupid thing ever created. It is was developers put
in when they don't have imagination to create proper content. And if
you enjoy killing something that respawn over and over for no reason
there are plenty of mmo for you.

Arkrend wrote...

so basically you make you character get all his gear gold and after you beat it and there is not sh*t to do you dont care?

you said it your self, you already beat it why grind pointless mobs for no reason?

Arkrend wrote...

you would like logging onto your main character and kill a few groups of darspawn or do a repeatable just for fun?

nope

Arkrend wrote...

i
just feel after i beat the game my character was gone and all that work
i put in him is worthless why come out with dlc's with new weapons when
you cant even use them do to the fact the enemys are all dead.do you
get what im saying man?

But it was not worthless after
all you could not finish the game without it. It's like saying the
pages in a book you read are worthless only cause you read them once.
The upside in games like this is that you can actually redo them and
the story change in some ways.

Modifié par Cydz, 03 décembre 2009 - 03:47 .

[telephasic]

There are a limited amount of respawns in the game actually. I've found them twice in the Bracilian Forest. Once while I was working on the main quest, I backtracked to the dalish camp and was surprised to see several new groups of enemies. Another time, after that questline was finished, I entered an area via the world map travel and was surprised to find a small group of darkspawn waiting for me. This was the first of the main quests I did. If I had went to Orzammar first, perhaps the Deep Roads would respawn a little bit by the endgame.

[CPutra]

I agree with respawnable enemies, at least in a few places.

I think The Deep Roads are good candidates for respawn, it is there the breeding grounds for Darkspawn.

[telephasic]

Arkrend wrote...
Bry miller have you ever played any other rpg's besieds this?most all have repeatable quests and respawnable enemys its what makes it worth coming back to.and how you reply to my questions makes you sound like a d*ck.and its just a simple idea/request some sort of respawns would be nice.cuz playing in a dead world sucks,and after you beat it why cant you continue playing?like you can on fable elder scrolls most all great rpgs.i think respawns and repeatable quests are major to a handful of players.

Really?  Most?  
Off the top of my head -
BG1 - Respawnable enemies in wilderness (and one dungeon), no repeatable quests
BG2 - Much more limited respawning, no repeatable quests
Icewind Dale - No Respawns, no repeatable quests
Icewind Dale 2 - No Respawns, no repeatable quests. 
Planescape: Torment - Respawning in only one area of the game, no repeatable quests
KOTOR - No respawning, no repeatable quests
KOTOR2 - No respawning, no repeatable quests
Jade Empire - No respawning, no repeatable quests
NWN - I seem to remember there was no respawning in the main quest areas, no repeatable quests
Arcanum - No respawning, no repeatable quests
Vampire The Masqurade: Bloodlines - No respawning, no repeatable quests
Ultima Series - Little/minimal respawning, no repeatable quests
Dark Sun games - No respawning, no repeatable quests
Might & Magic Games - No respawning, no repeatable quests

The Bethesda games are the only ones I have ever played which have regular respawns.  And that makes sense, because Bethesda games are about grind, not plot - they are single-player MMOs.  Grind is not what Bioware games are about. 

Modifié par telephasic, 03 décembre 2009 - 04:21 .

[Arkrend]

yeah those are old games,all new rpgs should have respawns.

[Ogre2010]

Arkrend wrote...

Why isnt there any?why isnt there any repeatable quests?Will they ever come out with a patch for respawnable enemys?this game was perfect untill my world bacame dead,i understand i could create another character but i worked on my main guy and would like to somtimes play him just to kill enemys around the map,this is what ruined two worlds for me,game is dead.so please add respawnable enemys in a dlc or patch or somthing.somthing to make you want to continue playing your character.like fallout 3 i got pretty much everything in that game but its still fun to travel the wastland killing enemys here and there.please agree with me people.

Nah.