8 réponses à ce sujet

[MichaelStuart]

Am I the only one who felt that levels and attributes where pointless in Dragon age 2.
When ever I leveled, enemys leveled with me, so I never got stronger.
Attributes didnt really seem to do anything except when I put alot of them in willpower or constitution.
When you level, you do get Talents points, but I found I most of the talents useless because they only seem to work on low level enemys.
The only time I felt I got stronger was when I found a powerful piece of equipment with the right runes or when I had a lot of potions and poisons.

So should Dragon age 3
1.Get rid of levels and attributes, and focus on equipment
2.Make levels and attributes feel more relevent

or should I stop complaining, play the game on easy if I'm finding it hard and enjoy the story
     

[Allan Schumacher]

I know we're evaluating stuff like this going forward.  I can't say much more than that though


Although I think the idea is that, as you get more powerful, your versatility opens up.  You unlock abilities deeper into trees which are often quite powerful, and in many cases are direct upgrades to already existing abilities.

Part of the challenge of games with non-essential content is providing balance for those that do every little quest and those that prefer to follow only the main story.  I find myself leaning towards making the more difficult content off the crit path for this reason.

Games like BG and KOTOR used level caps, which I know is a huge disappointment for a lot of players because once you hit the cap you're effectively heavily restricted for any more player progression, and I think a lot of what draws people to RPGs is the idea of player progression.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 23 avril 2012 - 05:29 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Some monsters are just tougher than others. And then leveling does more than just give you new flashy stuff to use. The monsters actually gradually become easy.

What are your thoughts on determining the challenge of crit path, presuming that there is optional content? Are you thinking along the lines of "Allow that content to be optional (in that you can choose what to do), but some/most of it still must be completed in order to achieve a sufficient level of proficiency with your character?

[Allan Schumacher]

My opinion is that it is optimal to determine the order of the critical path for the player. And then enforce it by using monster difficulty in progressive areas. This removes some degree of freedom of choice in "direction" but it opens up quite a bit of freedom for the development team to craft the world. The gain is the perception of being in a real world where your experiences advance along with your character advancement.

I understand the idea of gating, but maybe I'm just tired (about to head to bed), but I'm still not 100% sure how your answer relates to the crit path of content that must be completed in order to complete the story and game.

You are talking about limiting the direction, which is gating and is something easily seen in a game like Fallout New Vegas, where giant Deathclaws prevent you from easily walking straight to Vegas. That requires a much more open world than one that exists in DAO or DA2 (or even older BioWare games..... probably the closest thing is the original BG).

Could you maybe think of an example to better illustrate? I am guessing you're thinking along the lines of DAO where maybe going to Redcliffe is the "easy" choice, while checking out Orzammar can be gated to be more challenging and assumed to be content that is tackled after Redcliffe?

Which is fine and I can understand that.  But does that mean you're okay with the game being a total cakewalk if the player does a ton of sidequest content before hitting Orzammar, compared to those that just do the major plot points?

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 23 avril 2012 - 06:53 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Allen, to your comment and point... I don't think determining the difficulty of the Critical Path to match up with the lowest common denominator of experience of not doing any side quests is a wise idea. While it does make the side quests more enjoyable by making them difficult, it has two major flaws.

I wasn't necessarily thinking that all side quests are more difficult, just that (without level scaling) that seems to be a safer place to put side quests.  So SOME side quests will be particularly challenging.  At it's core though, what I'm saying is that without level scaling, we still need to be mindful of the game experience of those that tend to only do the crit path because they like the stories we present.

One, for a completionist such as myself, it makes the main quest, which should be the true struggle and where you would want a greater level of difficulty in order to feel a sense of accomplishment, a cake walk. This is not a reward. While I do not want untold, horrific difficulty at every turn (at least on my first playthrough, I'll go back and muck around with Nightmare later), I feel like a super easy main quest experience cheapens the entire journey. Case in point is ME3 - the new way of doing their Reputation system (while not a true level up mechanic, is based on how many side quests you do and less on staying true to a particular style of behavior) let me do everything in the main quest with the best possible outcome, hands down. No challenge or sense of loss or choice, I can just select "Auto-Win" every time because I did side quests. That detracts from the meaning of choice and, while there should be a best case scenario that can be achieved, it shouldn't be as simple as beating someone over the head with my High Level Hammer.

Two, if you make all side quests harder, then that penalizes my ability to pick and choose what side quests I do. For instance, if, at the beginning of the game, I want to skip all the side quests about saving kittens from trees because they sound like time killers, but then late in the game, I want to tackle really interesting side quests, such as "Forging the Armor of The PROTAGONIST!" will I not have a high enough level to this without countless reloads or starting over, because I skipped the kitten saving?

My solution is that you make the game progressively hard, regardless of if you are doing the main quest or a side quest. You make the end of the main quest the hardest part of the game, not make it a footnote (hello, Skyrim). And then you give a way for the player to level grind. After all, are we REALLY to believe that the only enemies you can fight in all of Thedas just HAPPEN to be the ones we run into in our quests?

Keep the necessity of level grinding at a minimum, if possible. And give multiple approaches to situations OTHER than just strict combat, so that a player with the right skills and some creative problem solving could get past an area, despite being a lower level than what one would think would be required if they were doing the combat route.

Its not an easy task, and I don't want to pretend it is not. But there is a fine line between making the game incredibly easy for anyone who is a completionist and then making every fight the same difficulty throughout the game, which alternates between boring and infuriating.

Based on your expectations of the game getting progressively more difficult, it almost sounds like you'd be in favor of a level scaling system that does scale, but gradually tips itself to scaling against the player to provide an ever increasing challenge.  I'm pretty sure this is not what you're trying to say though.


How do you reconcile the idea of the main plot line being increasingly more difficult for the player, when the player can presumably do any number of sidequests to make himself more powerful, while at the same time not forcing players to do optional sidequests.  It seems like you're suggesting that all side quests be equal in terms of difficulty (to prevent forcing you from doing the quest to save the cats in order to forge the armor of the protagonist).

Wouldn't your solution of allowing players to grind require those that are only interested in the story to paradoxically do a larger share of the grinding in order to proceed through the main story?


Maybe side quests shouldn't be scaled but the crit path should be, to ensure the crit path continuously provides additional challenge?  But then people that do all the side quests feel like the extra time they put in was unproductive, or worse, counter productive.  I agree it's not a simple problem.

[Allan Schumacher]

Avejajed wrote...

I play on casual so the whole game is easy. I don't feel any less accomplished when I'm finished. Though I have a feeling some people think I should be ashamed of myself for it.

I don't think you're in as small of a minority as you may think.

Even myself, I have only played BioWare's games on Normal difficulty.  In BG2 it provided me with ample challenge, and since games like KOTOR I find myself playing them more for the story and the characters and not so much for the challenge.

That doesn't mean I think we should ignore those that prefer the challenging combat either though.  I don't think it's impossible to appeal to both in some capacity since the elements are not intrinsically linked in RPGs IMO (whether or not a game has a good story/combat is relatively independent of the other.  As long as the other doesn't get in the way I think most people are happy that they get what they want).

[Allan Schumacher]

Just to make sure I'm clear on Jimmy's points:

Essentially, if you survive the combat with minimal damage, then the combat isn't all that challenging and you won't get much experience because you weren't really challenged. Take a lot of damage and still survive, though, and you'll gain more experience.

Is this correct? (I've been half following the thread and some of the posts have been longer so getting a chance to keep up has been tricksy these past few days).

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

In a nutshell, yes. With details on the exact XP spread, the caveat that the enemies would not scale and a requirement that health would not automatically regenerate after every fight and injuries would make a return from DAO. 

Also - they used to just call me Jimmy... but that... that was a long time ago. Fast Jimmy's the name now. 

Okay.  This DOES mean that the game kind of self balances in that players that struggle will receive more experience, which eventually balances out in that the poorer players will get less xp since they'll be a higher level killing lower level guys.

How would you change the level up mechanics though, because right now I'd see this as punitive to better players, since poorer players open up greater versatility to their characters through additional abilities, and one thing I enjoy about RPGs is unlocking additional abilities.  If I find myself gaining less xp because I'm roflstomping the game, do you have any concerns that I'll actually find the game less enjoyable since I'll get less cool new abilities to play with compared to a poorer player?

[Allan Schumacher]

BobSmith101 wrote...

It's the players that suck who need the most help though. This is one of those weird things with Japanese games in particular. You get S ranks and you get bonus stuff that makes it easier to get more S ranks, you get D ranks and you get no bonus stuff which makes the game harder.
While I get the idea of rewarding exellence, it's self defeating unless your just doing S rank stuff for bragging rights.

Poorer players may need more assistance, but is the best way to provide them that assistance unlocking more abilities and giving them a more varied and perhaps more interesting gameplay experience than a better player.

One - previously, you had discussed nerfing the main quest diffuclty,
since not everyone would do the side quests. I feel like THAT is
penalizing a player more than an invisible XP mechanic that most players
will not even feel. After all... how many fights in the DA universe
have people really and truly barely taken a hit on? Few and far
between... and almost unheard of in large or hard fights, where you
usually get the most combat XP.

You'll need to elaborate on how that is more punitive, since I'm not quite following.

So, yes, it does penalize the player... but then again, with the
concept of side quests, someone is always getting penalized. If you do
them, the person who does not is penalized and may rage-quit because
they cannot get past a certain point in the main quest. If you nerf the
main quest, the side quest of saving the cat from a tree can be a harder
difficulty than slaying the dragon, which is bonkers when you step back
and look at it (obviously, I'm speaking in hyperbole). And if you level
scale everything, saving the kitten from the tree will be EXACTLY as
hard as slaying the dragon, which is also ridiculous.

What I meant by having side content be more difficult is that optional content is where we can unleash the Kangaxxs, Firkraags, Gaxkangs, and so forth.  I'm not suggesting that a sidequest of saving a cat in a tree being more difficult than killing a dragon on crit path, and if I did then I misspoke and apologize.  What I meant is that we can be more liberal with the difficulty of optional content because we can more easily force the player to be very powerful with really powerful equipment (achieved by doing other content, crit path or optional) and not worry as much if we've just outright ruined someone's entire game experience because he loves BioWare games for the story and characters and we placed something prohibitively powerful right on crit path.

It came back soaked in red ink. I had failed to collect all the
information needed (even in my imaginary scenario, ironic, I know), to
take into account varainces that could cause issues, to address the risk
levels of varying solutions in greater detail and, all in all, didn't
do the assignment right. It was a crushing blow and made me realize that
the course was not going to be cake walk. But this lesson stuck with
me. After I got my degree, I was given a promotion at my work and now I
write or review BRDs on a weekly basis. But none of those BRDs compare
to the amount of learning I received getting back my first one soaked in
red ink. 

There are many tasks I have learned in my professional
and educational careers for the first time. But it is only the
assignments we do particularly bad on that stick out with us and give us
the most instruction and feedback.

This is actually meta and doesn't require in game xp to be reflected.  You cannot ignore the player and the player will learn how to play the game better through particularly challenging combats just the same as you learned through your schooling.  You wouldn't have learned as much if you intentionally made errors just so that your professor could bleed all over your paper, which an in game system that rewards experience for struggling through combats can do.


As you say, always be leveling, but if someone is getting 50% xp because they are dynamite at combat, it's going to greatly complicate things and the differences between someone typically getting closer to 50% experience and 200% experience is going to approach 4 times the experience difference which would mean poorer players would get access to significantly more powerful (and often cooler) abilities.  And given that it's a reflection of player skill, you actually remove the xp component from the player's character, since someone playing through their second time is going to inevitably get less experience because they'll just be better at the game.  An example in my experience was dealing with the Revenants in DAO.  They were very, very difficult for me my first playthrough, but on my second playthrough I had learned strategies to deal with the Revenants so that I could actually deal with them at lower levels than my first playthrough.  So I'd be getting less experience for meta reasons, because my character performs better at combat not because my character is innately better, but because the player controlling him is.


It's a tricky problem and I don't mean to sound outright dismissive of your solution, but I'm concerned about it being exploitable and when people realize that this is how it works, they get additionally upset or feel compelled to play the game a certain way in order to maximize their rewards.  So I think continued refinement would be necessary.  It is possible that it becomes more self-regulating than I give it credit for, since a poorer player that is one or two levels higher now finds the combat easier than the superior player simply due to character level difference. 

So how would you deal with the "Always be leveling" goal when taking into account that there could be varied experience gains depending on how good players are at the game?  On paper it sounds like good players will simply level less, but it sounds like you might have ideas to help mitigate that.