To understand this, you have to understand that DA:O combines two vastly different styles of games; a role playing game and a real-time strategy game. For the sake of this article, a “role playing game” is any game where the player acts the role of a character by making decisions based on the character’s personality, and a “real-time strategy game” is any game played in real time (opposed to in turns) and strategic decisions are made. DA:O utilizes smooth transitions between these games to create a truly immersive experience. Specifically, the choices made in the role playing game have direct consequences in the real-time strategy game – but not vice versa. This interaction between the two games suggests one thing; that the role playing game is the core game and the real-time strategy game is a supplemental game. I believe that this attitude is reflected in the quality of each of these game experiences. The role playing game is extremely well polished, but the real-time strategy game is not so much. And it is the real-time strategy game that I find fundamentally flawed.
The purpose of this article is to critically analyze DA:O with a focus on the much overlooked real-time strategy game. In the following sections, I will go over what I find works and what is flawed, and give suggestions on how to fix it. The major areas that I will discuss are attributes, skills, and talents/spells, as these are what determine what characters can do in combat and how well they perform. I will strive to repair the system and not rewrite it wherever possible; however some areas need more work than others.
Attributes
A characters attributes are the core qualities that define the characters aptitude in combat. If these are flawed, the rest of the character structure will be flawed. I find that DA:O attributes are only partially flawed.
As it stands DA:O had six attributes, which are defined as follows:
Strength
- increases damage from all weapons except crossbows and staves
- increases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased
- prerequisite for most weapon talents and higher-level armor and weapons
- contributes to physical resistance and intimidation
Dexterity
- increases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased
- increases attack score in ranged combat by 1 for each point purchased
- increased defense by 1 for each point purchased
- increases damage from piercing weapons- prerequisite for some weapon talents
- contributes to physical resistance
Willpower
- increases mana or stamina by 5 for each point purchased
- contributes to mental resistance
Magic
- increases spellpower by 1 for each point purchased
- increases effectiveness of potions, poultices, and salves
- prerequisite for higher-level staves and many spells
- contributes to mental resistance
Cunning- increases effectiveness of rogue talents
- prerequisite for many skills
- contributes to armor penetration, mental resistance, and persuasion
Constitution
- increases health by 5 for each point purchased
- contributes to physical resistance
DA:O has a good selection of attributes. There are not too many nor are there too few. Each attribute provides some bonus which is not replicated elsewhere, making each attribute important to some degree. However, this system has an interesting quirk in that not every attribute has the same importance to every character. For example, warriors and rogues have little use for Magic as they do not use spells. And mages have little use for Strength as they do not use weapons or armor. This in itself is not a flaw. It just makes balancing that much more difficult because it is hard to compare aptitudes between characters of different builds. Consider the following set of attributes: Power, Accuracy, Defense, Energy, Perception, and Health. It is bluntly obvious as to the utility that they provide any character, and in a strictly mechanical sense this attribute scheme might prove superior. But alas DA:O is primarily a role playing game and as such an allusion to living characters takes precedence. So such a quirk is an acceptable compromise. Yet as these attributes are, they could still use some adjusting.
Consider how these attributes contribute to attack score (chance to hit). Strength and Dexterity both contribute equally to melee weapon attack score, but Dexterity is the sole contributor to ranged weapon attack score. And spells and staves do not even have an attack score: they never miss. This gives mages a huge advantage over warriors and rogues.
Another issue of concern is that both Dexterity and Magic provide two ways of mitigating damage. Dexterity contributes to both physical resistance and defense score and Magic contributes to both mental resistance and effectiveness of potions, poultices, and salves.
One story-driven issue that concerns me is the existence of an attribute called magic. There are several playable races that are averse to magic, namely dwarves and animals, yet they still have Magic as a viable attribute.
To balance all of these issues and to create a stronger allusion in role playing, I propose the following attribute scheme:
Strength
- increases damage from all weapons except crossbows and staves
- increases attack score in melee combat by 0.5 for each point purchased
- increases stamina by 1 for each point purchased
- increases effectiveness of some warrior talents
- contributes to physical resistance
- contributes to intimidation in conversation
- prerequisite for most weapon talents and higher-level armor and weapons
Dexterity
- increases damage from piercing weapons
- increases attack score in melee and ranged combat by 0.5 for each point purchased
- increases stamina by 1 for each point purchased
- increases defense by 1 for each point purchased
- prerequisite for some weapon talents and higher-level bows
Constitution
- increases health by 5 for each point purchased
- contributes to physical resistance
Willpower
- increases aptitude of many spells
- increases attack score for spells and staves by 0.5 for each point purchases
- increases mana and stamina by 3 for each point purchased
- increases effectiveness of potions, poultices, and salves
- prerequisite for many spells and high-level staves
Intelligence
- increases aptitude of many spells
- increases attack score for spells and staves by 0.5 for each point purchases
- increases mana by 1 for each point purchased
- contributes to mental resistance
- contributes to knowledge and wit in conversation
- prerequisite for many skills and spells
Cunning
- contributes to armor penetration
- increases attack score in ranged combat by 0.5 for each point purchased
- increases mana by 1 for each point purchased
- increases effectiveness of some rogue talents
- contributes to mental resistance
- contributes to persuasion in conversation
- prerequisite for many skills
Notice the major changes. I eliminated the need of an attribute whose sole purpose was to increase mana or stamina by dispersing that role among the other attributes. This allows players to specialize in more interesting attributes without ignoring their limiting resource. The new Willpower may appear to be a direct combination of the old Magic and Willpower, and in a way it is. I wanted to make it easier for mages to accumulate mana and to make this attribute more appealing to warriors and rogues – and I think it does both. I also spread the role of skill and spell aptitudes into the new mental-oriented attribute Intelligence. This is important for balancing attribute roles and it makes role playing more interesting. I will get more into Intelligence’s contribution to role playing when I go over skills. In this scheme, each category of attack score is split evenly between two attributes. It is also important to note that spells and staves now have an attack score. I will discuss its implications further when I go over spells. And finally, each attribute now contributes to only one source of mitigating damage.
There is also an implied change to spellpower. Spellpower is still the intrinsic measure of spell aptitude, as it is affected by specializations, staves, and certain spells. But now spellpower no longer gains a direct boost from any one attribute. Instead, different spells rely on spellpower and one of either Willpower or Intelligence to determine the spell’s aptitude.
Skills
There are only a few things I would change about skills. These issues deal primarily with the way characters receive skills and their interaction with other aspects of the game. But I would leave the skills themselves relatively unchanged. For these reasons, I will not go into specific detail about what each skill does, but rather how characters interact with them.
DA:O skills are Coercion, Stealing, Trap-Making, Survival, Herbalism, Poison-Making, Combat Training, and Combat Tactics. There are two of these skills that I would suggest removing completely. They are Coercion and Combat Tactics. I will explain these two skills, the reasons for their removal, and my suggestion for filling in the gaps.
“Coercion reveals new dialogue options that can convince other characters to change their minds, sometimes revealing new paths through a plot or more favorable terms for a deal. If a Persuade option appears in dialogue, your chance of success is determined by your rank in Coercion and your cunning score. If an Intimidate option appears instead, success depends on Coercion and your strength score.”[Dragon Age: Origins PC game booklet pg. 13]
What a great concept! I absolutely love the idea of having your character’s attributes affecting plot. In fact, I wish there was more of it. But what I don’t like is that it is tied to a skill.
All other skills have some impact on combat. Coercion does not. This alone suggests that it is unfit as a skill. An even bigger issue is that the only character who can invest in the skill is the primary character. Since the player only has control over the main character’s dialog, obviously the player would not want to invest skill points in Coercion with other characters. But this means that the main character must sacrifice skill points just to gain control over plot options. This just seems silly to me.
Instead, Persuade and Intimidate options should rely solely on cunning and strength respectively. And if it is really important to have these options influenced by some other force, character level should be it, not a skill. Additionally, I would like to see Knowledge and Wit have an impact on dialogue and plot. These options would be influenced by the attribute intelligence, but they would act slightly differently. Instead of always being presented as options with a chance of failure, they would only appear if intelligence is high enough. In other words, they would only appear if the check was successful. There are already many witty options available in dialogue. I just want them to rely on intelligence and there to be more of them.
Being I am on the subject of skills and dialogue options, I would like to give my complements for incorporating other skills in dialogue as well. Though it is rare, there are a few instances where an attribute or a skill is used to qualify a dialogue option. These are great and I wish there were more of them.
The other skill I would remove is Combat Tactics. “Each rank in this skill increases the number of slots available on a character’s combat tactics sheet. Since each slot governs one conditional action during combat – for example, instructing a mage to heal any character whose health falls below 50% – having more slots available means you can design more elaborate battle plans for your party.”[Dragon Age: Origins PC game booklet pg. 14]
Now before I say anything else, I would like to give my complements to the combat tactics system. It provides the most complete and customizable control over character AI that I have ever seen in this type of game. But why impose artificial limits on the system?
The existence of such a skill baffles me. It is like creating a skill that gives the player greater control over mouse sensitivity. Since the player has control over only one character at a time, some AI is vital. Combat tactics allows the player to customize the AI, making it truly useful. In other words, combat tactics serve as the interface for AI. What purpose is served by limiting control of the AI’s interface? It certainly affects gameplay. And I would argue that it affects gameplay similarly to a skill limiting mouse sensitivity. My experience with such a limitation is only frustration.
The solution is simple: remove the limitation on combat tactics. This means remove the skill and give every character access to the full gamut of combat tactics slots.
Now that useless skills are out of the way, I want to propose the concept of rogue-only skills. Rogues receive more skill points than warriors or mages. For every two skill points a warrior or mage receives, a rogue gets three. That is a ratio of 1.5 more skill points. One might wonder what a rogue would do with more skill points. And the answer is… not much. Rogues have access to the same number of skills as other classes. That means that rogues could acquire every skill at max level 1.5 times faster than other classes. This is not necessarily a problem, because it would require a rogue to be such high-level that it is virtually unachievable in the game. But there are far more pressing reasons to introduce rogue-only skills.
Rogues have two talent lines that both look like skills, act like skills, and feel like skills. These talents are Deft Hands and Stealth. For all intents and purposes, these talents are skills. The only difference is that these skills require talent points to acquire. This is just silly. Just make them rogue-only skills and be done with it.
There is one other skill that I would suggest also making a rogue-only skill. That skill is Trap-Making. This change is relevant for several reasons. First, it provides a bonus to trap detection which is only beneficial to rogues. Secondly, it has intrinsic synergies built into Deft Hands and Stealth. Deft Hands allows a rogue to detect higher-level traps and there is a whole level in Stealth that is dedicated to allowing the rogue to use items while in stealth, which is especially useful with traps.
I would like to add one additional skill: Team Cohesion. This skill grants an attack bonus if an ally is surrounding the target. At higher ranks, the character gains attack bonuses from multiple allies. This skill uses Cunning as a prerequisite.
Following all of these suggestions, that would leave Stealing, Survival, Herbalism, Poison-Making, Combat Training, and Team Cohesion as common skills and make Deft Hands, Stealth, and Trap-Making rogue-only skills. That makes a total of six skills for warriors and mages and nine skills for rogues. That means rogues would have 1.5 times the number of skills than other classes. Coincidentally that is the same ratio of a rogue’s skill points compared to other classes.
I also have a few small tweaks to some skills. The crafting skills, namely Herbalism, Poison-Making, and Trap-Making all have a level requirement. I find level requirements for skills, talents, and spells unintuitive and sloppy. Instead, the requirement should be based on an attribute and I propose that intelligence be that attribute. They should follow the same pattern of 10 – 12 – 14 – 16 as other common skills which require cunning. I also feel that Combat Training should gain the same intelligence requirement as the crafting skills. (Combat Training could also incorporate intelligence to determine the bonuses it provides.) This requirement is to compensate for weapon talents loosing their dependency to Combat Training, which I will discuss further later. The last minor tweak I wish to make to skills is with Stealing. The cooldown for Stealing is six seconds. I find this amount of time too long and very annoying. I suggest it be just long enough for the player to realize whether they were successful or not, which would be about one to two seconds.
Another skill related issue also deals with approval rating. Every recruited character has an approval rating. As characters approval increases, they gain plot skills which provide an attribute bonus. I love this idea. It places a practical reward on engaging characters in conversation effectively. But the problem is that not every character receives these rewards.
There is one recruited character which starts at maximum approval rating, and subsequently never receives approval rewards. (Though, this may be due to that fact that this particular character does not have access to any skills.) An easy and obvious fix comes to mind: simply give that character the benefits of having maximum approval.
A more important issue is that the primary character does not even have an approval rating. This means that the one character that you must take with you into every battle is unable to receive attribute bonuses due to approval. To remedy this, I suggest giving the primary character an approval rating that functions slightly differently. The primary character’s approval rating would not fluctuate directly through dialogue and plot like other characters. Instead, it would be calculated as the mean (average) of every other active character accompanying the primary character. With this system, the primary character’s approval would depend on the other companions’ approval and could change depending on who comes along into battle.
Another thing to consider is which attribute the primary character’s approval would affect. Every recruited character receives approval bonuses to a specific attribute. While each recruited character has a specific class and default build, the primary character is completely customized. This makes choosing a single attribute for approval much more difficult due to the variants in character builds. There are a number of acceptable solutions to this problem. The safest bet is to choose Constitution, since every class can benefit from it. The most intuitive choice is Intelligence, as it would reflect a greater understanding of interpersonal relations. But those might not be the most advantageous choices for the primary character’s build. The attribute could depend on the character’s class: warriors would grant Strength, rogues Dexterity, and mages Willpower. Or the player could choose an attribute during character creation.
Talents and Spells
Talents and spells are a huge beast to tackle. So huge in fact that any suggestions for new talents or spells would need to be thoroughly tested before they could hold any ground. All I can do here and now is to point out some of the major flaws and give some suggestions on how to resolve them.
I will start will weapon Talents. Warriors and rogues both use weapon talents. In fact, they have many of the same ones: Warriors have access to every weapon talent that rogues have and then some. This is not necessarily a problem, but it does make warriors and rogues very similar.
The biggest pickle I have with weapon talents in general is that they require a certain level in the skill Combat Training. Also, certain talents and spells have a level requirement. I find these types of requirements too limiting. Players deserve greater control over character development. I believe both of these types of requirements should be removed and that talents and spells (and skills) should only have an attribute requirement, if any at all.
Another issue with weapon talents is that there is no cross-over between categories. Each weapon talent is tied to a specific combination of equipment. The categories are Dual Weapon, Archery, Weapon and Shield, and Two-Handed. To benefit from a specific weapon talent, one must be wielding the correlating weapon scheme. There are many talents that do virtually the same thing. The only major difference is that they require a different weapon scheme. For example, there is a talent Shield Bash (requiring a shield) and a talent Pommel Strike (requiring a two-handed weapon). They both have a chance of knocking the target to the ground. There are many more examples of this. My suggestion is to rework the talent system to allow talents to work with multiple weapon schemes. So for instance, you could replace Shield Bash and Pommel Strike with a talent called Bash, which can be used with either a shield or a two-handed weapon. You could make it the first talent in one of the Weapon and Shield talent lines. The other talents in the same line might be exclusive to shield use, but at least this would provide some cross-over of talents.
A more specific issue deals with Archery tactics. Over all, these talents prove far less effective in combat in most situations. There are a few situational gems, such as using Critical Shot on a distant frozen foe, but success in such endeavors is rare at best. This is the case for a number of reasons.
One obvious reason is that ranged attacks and ranged talents miss often. This is most likely due to the penalty imposed on attack score for being at far range. Instead of such a severe attack penalty, I would suggest that rate of fire be adjusted according to range. So as the enemy gets farther away attacks take more time to fire and as they close in attack rate increases.
Another reason is that for a character to be effective at ranged combat, the character must maintain some distance on the target. The problem is that once the enemy is upon an archer, he is done being effective in combat against that enemy unless the archer switches to melee combat. Archers need some way of maintaining distance while maintaining fire. The simple solution: allow archers to attack on the move. Unfortunately, this is impossible with the current game engine. What makes this worse is that all ranged attacks and archery talents take an excessively long time to aim before firing. Even if an archer runs back to create some distance, the time it takes to aim and fire will usually allow the enemy to be back in the archer’s face. Compare that to mages and their spells. Most spells are cast instantly. That affords mages to cast a spell, run back, and cast a different spell without waiting in between. Mages can even spam one spell right after the other. Such cannot be said for archery talents. If it was possible for characters to attack on the move, I would suggest that all weapon attacks and talents be allowed to be used while moving but spells require the character to stop.
Next I will talk about spells. But before I get into it, I want to share an observation about talents and spells. Talents and spells come in three varieties; Activated Abilities, which “incur an immediate cost in stamina or mana”, Passive Abilities, which “are permanent effects [and] do not consume stamina or mana”, and Sustained Abilities, which require an upkeep of stamina or mana.
Many talents are passive abilities (approximately one third of them), while almost no spells are passive abilities. This means that many talents do not consume stamina, but almost every spell consumes mana. Consequently, mages consume approximately 1.5 times as much mana as warriors and rogues consume stamina. This is one of the reasons why I made the attribute Willpower provide more mana in addition to increasing spell aptitude.
The changes to spells were already implied when I talked about attributes, but I will explicitly go over them now. Each spell is either Willpower based, or Intelligence based. That means that their aptitude is derived by that attribute and any prerequisites are in that attribute. The other major change is that targeted projectile spells, such as Lightning, now have an attack score and have a chance to miss. To balance this with area spells, like Fireball, and spells which do not launce a projectile, such as Drain Life, such spells will have an extra layer of damage reduction based on one of mental resistance, physical resistance, or defense score. For example, Fireball damage would be resisted by defense score and fire resistance, and Drain Life damage would be resisted by physical resistance and spirit resistance. It is also important to note that spells that do not deal direct damage, such as Vulnerability Hex, would not be subject to damage resistance.
Other Issues
There are a few other issues that were probably oversights and not intended design decisions. One such oversight is that the Qunari and Animal races do not have racial benefits, making them 4 attribute points short compared to Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. Since the attributes changed so much, all racial benefits should be reconsidered. So, I suggest the following racial benefits: Humans get +1 strength, +1 dexterity, +1 willpower, and +1 cunning; Elves get +2 willpower, and +2 Intelligence; Dwarves get +1 strength, +1 dexterity, +2 constitution, and +10% chance to resist hostile magic; Qunari get +2 strength, +1 willpower, and +1 constitution; and Animals get +1 strength, +1 intelligence, and +2 constitution.
Another related issue is that Animals do not have access to any skills. I feel that they should definitely be able to learn Survival and Combat Training. The only skills they would definitely not be able to learn are the crafting skills. Stealing is borderline in my opinion. While it may not be practical for an animal to pick somebody’s pocket, it is not completely out of the question.
Another related concern is that the Mabari War Dog only has eight talents. That’s right, only eight! A few more options would be nice.
Final Thoughts
All things considered, Dragon Age: Origins is a great RPG even though combat could use a lot of work.
Modifié par SamuraiWindu, 08 décembre 2009 - 09:26 .
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