202 réponses à ce sujet

[soteria]

themaxzero wrote...

soteria wrote...

Wait, MYCT asked if people arguing against further balancing changes think nightmare is hard enough, and got a response, "You can always use a mod if you want to make it harder." That's not an answer, exactly... so do you? Is Nightmare hard enough as-is, without playing with "house rules" or a mod?

It depends on your definition of 'hard'. Will you have to reload now and again? Yes. Will you have to use pots and salves, yes (depends on party make up). Will you have to make somewhat min maxed (in that that they are built for performance not RP) characters, yes.

Will you have pull your hair out screaming during every boss fight, probably not.

Really you only way you will know is if you play nightmare yourself.

...you just danced around answering the question, again.  You sound like a certain politician:  "It depends on your definition of..."  I think it's pretty easy, same as AgenTBC, myself.  My question was, do YOU think it's hard, not "Will I find nightmare hard?"  Playing nightmare myself wouldn't tell me whether other people think it's hard, now would it?  Does that make sense?

[tanerb]

freeze duration from 20 to 4 seconds? wow, you just killed blizzard.

[FedericoV]

I think that the changes to the spells are all very good, reasonable and needed. I've reloaded some tough battles and they improve the gameplay a lot, especially for the people who likes to play on harder difficulties. Blizzard and Crushing Prison were "no brainer" and could trivialize game tactics.

Now there are more reasons to invest in the other primal damage spells than Blizzard.

Now there are more reasons to invest in spells like Petrify or Glyph of Paralysys. Btw, Glyphs and Hexes are the most funnier and most tactical spells in the game imho.

Now it's harder to build a mage that DPS, Heal and controll at the same time, but not impossible.

Now talents like Holy Smythe have more relative value because of the very long stun.

So, I think that it's a very good patch that changes the game for the better. Thanks devs.

The people who do not like those changes can play the game on normal or stop to play the game with a 3 mages party .

Modifié par FedericoV, 08 décembre 2009 - 11:14 .

[Staylost]

FedericoV wrote...

I think that the changes to spells are all very good and needed. I've reloaded some tough battles and they improve the gameplay a lot, especially for the people who likes to play on harder difficulties.

Blizzard and Crushing Prison were "no brainer" and could trivialize game tactics.

Now there are more reason to invest in the other primal damage spells. Now there are more reasons to invest in spells like Petrify or Glyph of Paralysys. Not to say that Glyphs and Hexes are the most funnier and more tactical spells in the game imho. Now it's harder to build a mage that DPS, Heal and controll at the same time, but not impossible. Now spells like Holy Smythe have more value because of the long stun.

So, I think that it's a very good patch that changes the game for the better. The people who do not like those changes can play the game on normal or stop to play the game with a 3 mages party .

CP could CC only one non-boss character, how does that trivialize game tactics?

[Magus_42]

Yaron Jakobs wrote...

Quick correction:
Crushing Prison total DOT damage is lowered by around 15%.

For all those who are worried about the spell's effectiveness: the spell can still be very effective as CC - it is still one of the most powerful spells in the game. Don't forget there is no resistance check against it.

I'm not "worried" about the spell's effectiveness. I've played with the new spell, and I know it no longer does the job I expect it to do (disable high-threat target). As I said before, this wouldn't bother me if I wasn't stuck with this spell on characters with significant play time invested in them. Making this sort of drastic balance change in a single player game with such a long campaign seems very poor to me. I don't like the rules changing in the middle of a game.

[TheMadCat]

So, I think that it's a very good patch that changes the game for the better. The people who do not like those changes can play the game on normal or stop to play the game with a 3 mages party

The problem is I don't think they did anything to really "balance" or fix the spells, rather they went and made them less annoying when used on the player. It's still easy to build a multi-purpose mage and the power/exploits are still there and the part I don't like is the purposes three of the spells had are now completely changed.



People keep saying this is balance or a nerf but honestly I don't really see it as such.

[Magus_42]

Staylost wrote...

CP could CC only one non-boss character, how does that trivialize game tactics?

For at most 20 seconds, even. Not very long relative to many of the game's fights, and the cooldown was huge. It was tactically useful, but not an auto-win button by any means.

Is there really supposed to be no resist check against CP? I'm pretty sure I've seen it resisted in game, although this is rare.

[TheNecroFiend]

themaxzero wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

themaxzero wrote...

Matthew Young CT wrote...

its the holy trinity because it is immutable. cc simply reduces the enemies DPS to 0, nothing more.

No CC replaces tanking. Its a form of damage mitigation. A good tank can make damage taken trival too, nerf tanks?

Apparently, you are misinformed.  CC mitigates damage to the tank by limiting the number of mobs that are actively attacking the tank, or that have escaped from the tank to attack other party members.  If you are using CC to kill mobs, thereby eliminating the need to tank, then this patch is exactly what you need to teach you to play.  Yes, I went there.  In an ideal situation, only the guy in the heavy armor should be getting hit, and unless you're playing on Easy mode, with no friendly fire, then you can't CC all the mobs anyway.

It's funny, because my usual tactic for a boss fight with minions is to have my tanker fight the boss, and my dpsers take down the minions, if I have a healer type to keep the tank afloat.  If the tank dies, it's over.  If you're as anal about equipment on your party as I am, then this should work out rather well.  Why do I do this?  Because after a couple of years off of SP games, during which I played MMO's and watched how parties function, I have found that this is the ideal set up.  If I could have a larger party, I'd probably include an off tank for peskier mobs, or for when there's more than one yellow named mob in the crowd.  If you burn down the minions, leaving only the boss to fight, things can go pretty smoothly.  If the minions are ranged, then CC spells like Blizzard are handy to try to keep them out of the fight, or Mass Paralysis, and then focus on the melee, including the boss, if he happens to be melee.  There are times where this will not apply, and in those instances, my ranged crew works on the boss, and my tank keeps the melee minions away from the party.

Using this tactic, I did a certain party members ambush, and only killed two attackers, excluding the ranged boss, who gave up at the point of death.

It depends on the game WoW uses a strict tanking setup for damage mitigation. Whereas City of Heroes uses a much broader structure where you CC from Controllers or Dominators could substitute for a traditional tank. I prefered the City of Heroes model. Gave players much more flexibility in creating groups. This is partially the model DA had till 1.02.

Just for the record I have tanked endgame raids in WoW (4 years) and lvl 50 taskforces in City of Heroes (2 years). In addition I have played RPGs for over 20 years so yeah lets continue this pissing contest.

Heh, tanks were irrelevant in CoH. I loved the fact that they chucked the old and dated tank/healer/DPS trinity out the window.  8 man Defender/troller orCorruptor teams just buzzsawed everything in it's path. On heavy troller or defender teams it was always amusing to see the tanks get the pity spot on a team.

[FedericoV]

Staylost wrote...

CP could CC only one non-boss character, how does that trivialize game tactics?

Because it was the "kill yellow mages" button, at least in my game experience.

A spell should never be that good for both controll and damage. If it does both things like Crushing Prison, one of the two effect have at least to be moderate. Otherwise there is no sense in taking a 4th tier talent like Holy Smythe (that has a long stun but it's very poor in terms of damage and mana drain).

The impact of those changes is not that mages now are underpowered. Mages are still the stronger class of the game and mean, I do not have any problem with that. It's a single palyer game and magic is supposed to be that powerful.

Simply, the choice in mage building are more interesting now. While before the CP and Blizzard spell line were no brainer and all mages were taking them.

Modifié par FedericoV, 08 décembre 2009 - 11:33 .

[Georg Zoeller]

Actually, no.

The way blizzard works is that it reapplies the freeze duration every tick while in the area of effect.

The only thing this changes is that after blizzard goes away, it no longer freezes the target for another 20 seconds after the last tick.

tanerb wrote...

freeze duration from 20 to 4 seconds? wow, you just killed blizzard.

[Hyunsai]

The funny thing about those arguing with "vocal minority" stuff is that some of the balance changes were already effective in the consoles version.



So we can say it is working as intended now...

[WillieStyle]

I find the CC discussion interesting.

One poster claimed that CC is just the analogy to tanking and gives you more options against bosses instead of the tank/heal/dps trinity.



I disagree. The analogy would be apt if all bosses did was dps down one party member at a time and the tank could be sure she always had aggro (if played correctly). Tanking only mitigates boss dps against the tank. But bosses can do more than just dps the tank:

-They can cast spells or used ranged attacks against random party members. This is admittedly rare in DA:O but it does increase the complexity of boss fights.

-They can use multi-target or AoE abilities against the party. This is rather common in DA:O and also makes boss fights harder.

-They can heal themselves or allies. This is also rare in DA:O but is another potential source of difficulty.

-Finally, they can CC/debuff the party. This is the biggest reason why CC is superior to tanking in DA:O and really all games like it.



A tanked High Dragon can still stun: stun the party; breathe on non-tanks; back-kick the rogue behind it; tail-swipe/massive-attack in a cone either behind or in front of it.

CC prevents it from doing any of these things.



When it comes to balancing difficulty, the general rule of thumb is that there should be multiple roughly equally viable options. If option a is more effective than option b in fight 1, it should be less effective in fight 2 etc. But this simply cannot be done with CC because against any enemy that does more than just dps a single target at one time, CC wins HANDS DOWN against any other strategy.



The only effective solution is to either:

-Significantly reduce CC against multi-faceted enemies (ie. Bosses)

or

-Significantly reduce the dps of a group with CC options and add either cooldown intervals or diminishing returns so that the relative length of time per fight the boss remains crowd-controlled remains fixed across groups.



The latter is rather hard to do but Bioware's changes actually come close by limiting both the cooldown and duration of CC spells. The other thing to do would be to force greater specialization on mages so they can't be so effective at both dps and CC at the same time.

[Thrasher91604]

SheffSteel wrote...

Yaron Jakobs wrote...

Quick correction:
Crushing Prison total DOT damage is lowered by around 15%.

For all those who are worried about the spell's effectiveness: the spell can still be very effective as CC - it is still one of the most powerful spells in the game. Don't forget there is no resistance check against it.

But it doesn't always stop people, does it? What are the rules for that?

On a 1.01a patched game last night, an orange enemy resisted or was immune to a CP (missed the floaty message). So perhaps the only explanation consistent with Yaron's statement is that oranges are immune.

BTW, I REALLY wish there was a console so you could review the battle afterwards....

[Thrasher91604]

You have to work really hard to try to prove a truism is false, but it's doubtful you'll convince anyone (i.e. saying that having more options is not having more options).

[WillieStyle]

Having more options where one option is FAR better than the rest isn't really having more options.



If option 1 is far easier than options 2-5, then either:

-Option 1 is challenging for person X in which case options 2-5 will be frustratingly difficult.

In this scenario, person X only has 1 option.

-Option 2-5 are challenging for person X in which case option 1 is too easy.

In this scenario person X only has 4 options.



Adding option 1 did nothing to increase the number of options available to person X.

[Magus_42]

FedericoV wrote...

Because it was the "kill yellow mages" button, at least in my game experience.

CP by itself won't kill a yellow mage, at least not in my games. It will do significant damage, and combined with other things can kill them, but if you just throw CP on the mage and ignore him, he'll come out alive and usually heal himself immediately when the effect ends.

The damage didn't change all that much anyway, so if it was killing mages before it will still be killing them for you with the patch.

[Thrasher91604]

Uh, no, the value of the options is not the point.



What matters to many is having them, and a choice, and variety. Optimality has nothing to do with it.

[WillieStyle]

Thrasher91604 wrote...

Uh, no, the value of the options is not the point.

What matters to many is having them, and a choice, and variety. Optimality has nothing to do with it.

This is obviously false.  If you added a class that made the game 10,000 times harder than it is now (perhaps the class randomly heals your enemies or damages the party), the vast majority of people would never use that class.  It would be effectively as though Bioware hadn't added the class at all.

Similarly, if you added a class called "the maker" that could insta-kill every enemy on the screen with no-cooldown and no mana cost, the vast majority of people wouldn't use that class either.  Again, any developement time put into the class by Bioware would be effectively wasted.

[Estoppel]

Damar Stiehl wrote...

All I want for Christmas is all the nerf herders, gravedancers and general similar malcontents packed in a box with a bow and shipped back to World of Warcraft... gods save us from vocal minorities that will harp, drone and warble until the experience is ruined for everyone.

That said, the duration and damage "fixes" are undone by substituting a pre-patch version of spell_constants_h.ncs, plus the partial abi_base override I cooked last night to restore the cooldowns to their original values. Easy, if a touch crude. I'll be posting the mod up when I get home tonight.

Wow thanks! I'm waiting for it!

[Thrasher91604]

WillieStyle wrote...

Thrasher91604 wrote...

Uh, no, the value of the options is not the point.

What matters to many is having them, and a choice, and variety. Optimality has nothing to do with it.

This is obviously false.  If you added a class that made the game 10,000 times harder than it is now (perhaps the class randomly heals your enemies or damages the party), the vast majority of people would never use that class.  It would be effectively as though Bioware hadn't added the class at all.

Similarly, if you added a class called "the maker" that could insta-kill every enemy on the screen with no-cooldown and no mana cost, the vast majority of people wouldn't use that class either.  Again, any developement time put into the class by Bioware would be effectively wasted.

You really don't understand the concept of choice and roleplaying, do you?

[Aesir Rising]

Someone posted a dev quote that prison has no resist check. That may be true, but it still fails to land frequently enough on yellow and especially orange MOBs, blowing a 1 minute cooldown. Sometimes I get a 2nd try during a fight. Anyway, maybe it has a SomeOtherThing check that it fails. But it's not guaranteed to land.

Oh, and this is on Hard mode.  I don't think the 2.5% resist is what I'm seeing. It fails to land more than 1 time out of 40.

Modifié par Aesir Rising, 09 décembre 2009 - 01:04 .

[Schyzm]

I see the fanboi crazies screaming endlessly at ppl who have criticism of the game have lost.

[TheMadCat]

Schyzm wrote...

I see the fanboi crazies screaming endlessly at ppl who have criticism of the game have lost.

Out of curiousity, what exactly have they lost?

[Schyzm]

TheMadCat wrote...

Schyzm wrote...

I see the fanboi crazies screaming endlessly at ppl who have criticism of the game have lost.

Out of curiousity, what exactly have they lost?

the argument that balance is meaningless and everyone who has any objection to balance in a single player game is *insert personal insult here*.

[CBGB]

Yaron Jakobs wrote...

Quick correction:
Crushing Prison total DOT damage is lowered by around 15%.

For all those who are worried about the spell's effectiveness: the spell can still be very effective as CC - it is still one of the most powerful spells in the game. Don't forget there is no resistance check against it.

Hmm... there is a resistance check against it as a hold, yes?