26 réponses à ce sujet

[wsandista]

I think they should be closer to DAO, where there are several roles each class can fill, instead of being railroaded into 1(or 2 for mage) role per class.

Also, they should remove class restrictions on equipment. That way on the off-chance someone wants to equip a mage or a warrior with a bow they are able to.

Modifié par wsandista, 29 mai 2012 - 02:58 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Ideally, there won't be any.

Since that's not likely to happen, I agree with the OP. Each class should have multiple combat roles it can fill, depending on build even how it's used.

[wsandista]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ideally, there won't be any.

You mean like Shadowrun?

[brushyourteeth]

It's pretty likely that we'll have a few classes to choose from and we'll only be allowed to choose one, but that one class will have some impact on the PC's story. I'm not sure how it will work, and I usually like to mix and match abilities, but I'm excited to see how it pans out. As long as we leave Bard by the wayside, unless it's given a serious upgrade.

[Sylvius the Mad]

wsandista wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ideally, there won't be any.

You mean like Shadowrun?

Or GURPS or Fallout.  There are lots of classless RPG systems around.

Give us skills to mix-and-match.  For lore reasons, obviously magical ability will only be selectable at level one (since everyone is either a mage or isn't, and there's no way to change that).

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 28 mai 2012 - 05:50 .

[robertthebard]

wsandista wrote...

I think they should be closer to DAO, where there are several roles each class can fill, instead of being railroaded into 1(or 2 for mage) role per class.

Also, they should remove class restrictions on equipment. That way on the off-chance someone wants to equip a mage or a warrior with a bow they are able to.

Other than Spirit Healer, which is a pretty defining role, I think you may actually mean Specializations?  Because frankly, I can fill a lot of roles with a rogue, depending on what non-specialization trees I take from/max out.  Even with that, they opened up a lot of the specializations, as far as I can tell, since a ranged character can now be either a Duelist, or an Assassin.

Equipping a mage with a bow is, and should be problematic.  For one thing, the way the staves work now, it would be both slower, and less effective than just sticking with the staff.  For another thing, you are going to have to gimp either your magic score, or your will score to take points in Dex, otherwise, you may as well just sell the bow anyway, because you're not going to hit a lot with it.  Even the bows with low Dex requirements, or no dex requirements aren't going to be as effective as a staff damage wise.  What is the base bow?  5 damage, with like 3dps?  Yeah, that's worthwhile.

I don't know why they did away with warriors using bows, or with dual wielding, for that matter.

[Sylvius the Mad]

robertthebard wrote...

Equipping a mage with a bow is, and should be problematic. 

That it wouldn't be an effective build is no reason to prohibit it.

[robertthebard]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

Equipping a mage with a bow is, and should be problematic. 

That it wouldn't be an effective build is no reason to prohibit it.

Maybe not to you.  But to me, even if I could use one, I wouldn't. 

However, for the sake of fun, let's look at some things that could be done with it:

If you've got a bow equipped, you can't run toggles, and you can't cast.  A bow is not a "magic" weapon, and as such, cannot focus your magical energies.  Now, when they did away with varying styles, they did away with weapon swap, don't get that either, so in order to cast, you have to manually switch back to a staff.  Now, at the beginning of an adventure, that wouldn't be an issue, since my inventory is pretty clean, but an hour in, and finding the weapon will take a minute, or could.

Note that I'm not going to touch the warrior tree, because quite frankly, I don't get the changes there either.  I don't see any reason that a warrior can't pick up most weapons in game and go to town.  This was an arbitrary change that I don't get, and don't support.

[Sylvius the Mad]

robertthebard wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

Equipping a mage with a bow is, and should be problematic. 

That it wouldn't be an effective build is no reason to prohibit it.

Maybe not to you.  But to me, even if I could use one, I wouldn't. 

However, for the sake of fun, let's look at some things that could be done with it:

But the prohibition doesn't gain you anything.  Why do you want to prevent players from doing things that you don't want to do?

If you've got a bow equipped, you can't run toggles, and you can't cast.

DAO allowed some spells to be cast with a non-staff weapon equipped.  There's no reason to assume a univeral prohibition on casting while using weapons.

A bow is not a "magic" weapon, and as such, cannot focus your magical energies.

A focus isn't necessary, though.  In DAO we could cast with no  staff equipped.

Now, when they did away with varying styles, they did away with weapon swap, don't get that either, so in order to cast, you have to manually switch back to a staff.

Again, you don't need a staff to cast.  Also, why are we limiting ourselves to the designs used in DA2 or DAO?  I argues that DAO's weapon-swap button was overly limiting, as you could only swap between two different weapon sets.  If they used the hotbar system from NWN, we could have as many different weapon sets as we wanted.

Now, at the beginning of an adventure, that wouldn't be an issue, since my inventory is pretty clean, but an hour in, and finding the weapon will take a minute, or could.

And that's why the list inventory is bad.  I've been saying this for years.  The list inventory forces the player to navigate it every time he wants something.  A sortablwe grid allows the player to find exactly what he wants right away every time.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 28 mai 2012 - 06:24 .

[robertthebard]

My mage set up was hypothetical, having no basis in current games reality.

I rather liked the tabbed system better than sortable inventory, especially since it tends to auto sort most stuff. Having played games with multiple pages of sortable inventory, sometimes finding stuff that's not commonly hotbarred is actually harder than it would be under the current DA2 system.

With the swap button, I could equip melee/ranged, and that's about all I'd need. Barring a warrior class that might want to, if they aren't required to tank, having a 2h weapon set up for DPS. While I did have warrior types set up as you mention, with multiple hot bars set up for situational weapons, with the limited hotbars it could be more trouble than it's worth, unless the hotbars are set up differently.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I found two weapons was sufficient for all but one of my characters (I tended to play mages without a staff equipped - I just didn't like the staff auto-attack mechanic). But for one of my characters, I really wanted a third set. He was a dagger & shield warrior with some 2H abilities for extra stuns. I'd have liked to be able to swap in a ranged weapon, as well.

The auto-sorting is specifically the thing I want to go away, plus I'd like to be able to display more items on the screen at once. A grid can show me more than a list. I'd rather not ever have to go looking for something in my inventory. If I sorted it myself, then I know where everything is. I can even leave gaps in which newly acquired equipment can appear.

As for limited hotbars, I'd suggest limiting them less. NWN showed us that we can have alternate hotbars activated by depressing a key (in NWN's case, Shift, Ctrl, and Alt all activated different hotbars).

[wsandista]

robertthebard wrote...

Other than Spirit Healer, which is a pretty defining role, I think you may actually mean Specializations?  Because frankly, I can fill a lot of roles with a rogue, depending on what non-specialization trees I take from/max out.  Even with that, they opened up a lot of the specializations, as far as I can tell, since a ranged character can now be either a Duelist, or an Assassin.

No I meant roles like Tank, damage, support, or CC.
In DA2, Warriors were Tank
Rogues were damage
Mages were Support(with creation and part of arcane tree) or CC.

All abilities and weapon restrictions railroaded my characters into a role that depended on their class. The method for performing the role might change, but the role does not.

Equipping a mage with a bow is, and should be problematic.  For one thing, the way the staves work now, it would be both slower, and less effective than just sticking with the staff.  For another thing, you are going to have to gimp either your magic score, or your will score to take points in Dex, otherwise, you may as well just sell the bow anyway, because you're not going to hit a lot with it.  Even the bows with low Dex requirements, or no dex requirements aren't going to be as effective as a staff damage wise.  What is the base bow?  5 damage, with like 3dps?  Yeah, that's worthwhile.

For one, I dislike how magic mechanics were changed in DA2. Magic should come from the mage and be independent of equipment, the staff is just an accessory to channel it more efficiently which is why it had a spellpower bonus in DAO).

Secondly, just because something isn't optimal(or even effective), doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option. By that logic, ability trees like primal or specialist should be removed, since they are not as effective as other talent trees.

I don't know why they did away with warriors using bows, or with dual wielding, for that matter.

My understanding was that it was to make each class more unique, although from a tactical standpoint, removing ones ability to do ranged attacks is stupid.

[Paul E Dangerously]

I can kind of see why they did it, since the DAO Warrior and Rogue had a lot of overlap. One just picks locks and has stealth, but most of the same options. It wasn't an ideal solution and they know that, but how to give the Rogue and Warrior different feels if you open weapons to all classes?

Different quest options, maybe?

[LolaLei]

brushyourteeth wrote...

It's pretty likely that we'll have a few classes to choose from and we'll only be allowed to choose one, but that one class will have some impact on the PC's story. I'm not sure how it will work, and I usually like to mix and match abilities, but I'm excited to see how it pans out. As long as we leave Bard by the wayside, unless it's given a serious upgrade.

Well, if the protagonist is a really bad singer then he/she could always deafen them... that counts as a skill right?

[jmk1999]

i want a quick swap option for rogue again (assuming rogue is the only one who can use range weapons). i liked mapping my weapon change to the quick buttons. i also want to be able to use other weapons rather than just daggers or bows on rogue. other than that, i hope the mage role is similar to DA2. i hated how boring it was in DAO... either that or bring back the arcane warrior specialization. i'm a hack 'n slash sorta person.

[wsandista]

Sopa de Gato wrote...

I can kind of see why they did it, since the DAO Warrior and Rogue had a lot of overlap. One just picks locks and has stealth, but most of the same options. It wasn't an ideal solution and they know that, but how to give the Rogue and Warrior different feels if you open weapons to all classes?

Give them different ways of filling a role.

Take Damage for instance.
A Warrior could be an excellent damage character by having high base damage output, while a Rogue could also deal out high damage with high critical chance and critical damage or sneak-attacks/backstabs. Both paths adequately fill the role of damage quite well while remaining different enough.

[wsandista]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

wsandista wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ideally, there won't be any.

You mean like Shadowrun?

Or GURPS or Fallout.  There are lots of classless RPG systems around.

Give us skills to mix-and-match.  For lore reasons, obviously magical ability will only be selectable at level one (since everyone is either a mage or isn't, and there's no way to change that).

I haven't played GURPS in a while, but I think that the GURPS system may be a little difficult to implement in a videogame. Fallout did a classless very well, but I fear the possibility of a dumbed down classless system like in Skyrim that does not feature ability customization in the character creator.

[robertthebard]

wsandista wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

Other than Spirit Healer, which is a pretty defining role, I think you may actually mean Specializations?  Because frankly, I can fill a lot of roles with a rogue, depending on what non-specialization trees I take from/max out.  Even with that, they opened up a lot of the specializations, as far as I can tell, since a ranged character can now be either a Duelist, or an Assassin.

No I meant roles like Tank, damage, support, or CC.
In DA2, Warriors were Tank
Rogues were damage
Mages were Support(with creation and part of arcane tree) or CC.

All abilities and weapon restrictions railroaded my characters into a role that depended on their class. The method for performing the role might change, but the role does not.

Equipping a mage with a bow is, and should be problematic.  For one thing, the way the staves work now, it would be both slower, and less effective than just sticking with the staff.  For another thing, you are going to have to gimp either your magic score, or your will score to take points in Dex, otherwise, you may as well just sell the bow anyway, because you're not going to hit a lot with it.  Even the bows with low Dex requirements, or no dex requirements aren't going to be as effective as a staff damage wise.  What is the base bow?  5 damage, with like 3dps?  Yeah, that's worthwhile.

For one, I dislike how magic mechanics were changed in DA2. Magic should come from the mage and be independent of equipment, the staff is just an accessory to channel it more efficiently which is why it had a spellpower bonus in DAO).

Secondly, just because something isn't optimal(or even effective), doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option. By that logic, ability trees like primal or specialist should be removed, since they are not as effective as other talent trees.

I don't know why they did away with warriors using bows, or with dual wielding, for that matter.

My understanding was that it was to make each class more unique, although from a tactical standpoint, removing ones ability to do ranged attacks is stupid.

Don't remove Specialist, I love it.  I take what I need from the whole tree to get Harmony, and then run Power full time on rogue Hawke, and give speed to all other rogues to toggle for combat.  I may do the rogue Hawke thing for Isabela on my warrior and mage playthroughs.  It worked really well with Assassin/Shadow, and on my current NM run, I'm going to use Shadow/Duelist for a melee rogue, with the Specialist capped at Harmony.

In my first PT, which I had to start over because I was such a noob, my rogue filled all those roles.  CC with the flasks, tank with a combination of Scoundrel and Shadow, and sometimes, while I was getting effective tactics worked out, all w/out spoilers I might add, my rogue would be the last party member standing, and sometimes it would be 2 or 3 of the tougher enemies left, and I had to improvise my way through them.  This is what's making me replay rogues a lot, there's so many possibilities in the trees, and I want to try them all.  Even though I do have that extra little shop DLC, with the pots that would let me do it, it's hard to feel out new abilities towards end game, it's much easier to find what does and doesn't work early, or what situations call for what, anyway.  Add to that that I've always preferred rogues and rogue types anyway.

My thought process on gimped party members is that I don't bring them.  If it's my character that's gimped, then I just can't play it.  Trying to be front line, or using a bow would sufficiently gimp my mage enough for being a mage that I might as well have rolled a rogue or warrior anyway.  Not that I feel that that is justification to disallow somebody else to gimp their characters, just my take on the situation.  In other words, it's not "three cheers for BioWare for not letting you gimp your toon" as much as "why would you want to?".  I hope that distinction is clear.  Personally, since this isn't an MMO, and you wouldn't ever be in a party with me on a toon that I considered gimped, it's not my problem.

[wsandista]

robertthebard wrote...

In my first PT, which I had to start over because I was such a noob, my rogue filled all those roles.  CC with the flasks, tank with a combination of Scoundrel and Shadow, and sometimes, while I was getting effective tactics worked out, all w/out spoilers I might add, my rogue would be the last party member standing, and sometimes it would be 2 or 3 of the tougher enemies left, and I had to improvise my way through them.  This is what's making me replay rogues a lot, there's so many possibilities in the trees, and I want to try them all.  Even though I do have that extra little shop DLC, with the pots that would let me do it, it's hard to feel out new abilities towards end game, it's much easier to find what does and doesn't work early, or what situations call for what, anyway.  Add to that that I've always preferred rogues and rogue types anyway.

I think we my have different definitions of "Tank".
How did you tank with Shadow or Scoundrel? They look like anti-tanking ability trees to me.

[robertthebard]

wsandista wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

In my first PT, which I had to start over because I was such a noob, my rogue filled all those roles.  CC with the flasks, tank with a combination of Scoundrel and Shadow, and sometimes, while I was getting effective tactics worked out, all w/out spoilers I might add, my rogue would be the last party member standing, and sometimes it would be 2 or 3 of the tougher enemies left, and I had to improvise my way through them.  This is what's making me replay rogues a lot, there's so many possibilities in the trees, and I want to try them all.  Even though I do have that extra little shop DLC, with the pots that would let me do it, it's hard to feel out new abilities towards end game, it's much easier to find what does and doesn't work early, or what situations call for what, anyway.  Add to that that I've always preferred rogues and rogue types anyway.

I think we my have different definitions of "Tank".
How did you tank with Shadow or Scoundrel? They look like anti-tanking ability trees to me.

Decoy with Shadow, to give them something else to think about, which is letting the decoy tank, and I may have meant duelist for the other, I was still on my first cup of coffee.  With Gauntlet, and the follow up passives, it's pretty easy if you upgrade them.  Decoy was especially useful when I was getting my party noob killed all the time.  Especially once you get the version that blows up.  If you time it right, with one of those exploding potion flasks, it's pretty devastating.  Note:  Do not do that in Nightmare mode with party members close by, it kinda sucks.

[Sylvius the Mad]

wsandista wrote...

I haven't played GURPS in a while, but I think that the GURPS system may be a little difficult to implement in a videogame.

My understanding is that Fallout was originally intended to be a GURPS game, but then Steve Jackson pulled the license.  Thus, SPECIAL was born.

[brushyourteeth]

LolaLei wrote...

brushyourteeth wrote...

It's pretty likely that we'll have a few classes to choose from and we'll only be allowed to choose one, but that one class will have some impact on the PC's story. I'm not sure how it will work, and I usually like to mix and match abilities, but I'm excited to see how it pans out. As long as we leave Bard by the wayside, unless it's given a serious upgrade.

Well, if the protagonist is a really bad singer then he/she could always deafen them... that counts as a skill right?

If so, I know some seriously strong candidates for DAIII's next protagonist!

[wsandista]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

wsandista wrote...

I haven't played GURPS in a while, but I think that the GURPS system may be a little difficult to implement in a videogame.

My understanding is that Fallout was originally intended to be a GURPS game, but then Steve Jackson pulled the license.  Thus, SPECIAL was born.

Really? Learn something new everyday.
The biggest hurdle I see would be balancing the negative aspects that provided extra points to put towards positive attributes. It could be open to some serious abuse.

[nightscrawl]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

For lore reasons, obviously magical ability will only be selectable at level one (since everyone is either a mage or isn't, and there's no way to change that).

If we're going to be sticking with our same three basic classes, I think bringing back the Arcane Warrior would be the best bet for a physical combat mage.

Here is an RP scenario: you have a mage who is an apostate and has been one her whole life. She knows she is a mage, can do some minor, self-taught things, but has no real ability to focus her spells in an effective way as Circle mages. Living on the run, on the streets, trying to conceal her mageness she became proficient in physical weapons: swords, daggers, slings, perhaps bows or crossbows as well (although such ranged missile weapons come at a greater expense and maintenance than blades). The magic is secondary to the physical ability.

We know that not all mages in Thedas are Circle-taught. It's perfectly reasonable and logical to me that some would have physical prowess as well as magical ability, and that some of those would be able to use both of those skill sets in harmony and become a greater warrior because of it.

Choosing a class that uses magic shouldn't automatically mean that you are also "squishy."

I can also compare mages to have the same potential as hybrid classes in World of Warcraft. These are classes that have the ability (though different talent trees) to heal, tank, and damage. Blizzard's main goal was that in allowing a player to assume any of the three roles (or sometimes just 2/3) that they would never be "the best" when it comes to damage, leaving the pure damage classes (those who can do nothing but damage) as the top damage classes in game. The hybrids are essentially sacrificing some of their damage for the bonus of versatility.

They have since moved away from this a bit, but I felt the concept was a good one. The Arcane Warrior can function in a similar way: mages can be built for and expected to function as magical damage dealers and healers and will be the best (and of course the only) at that. You can (and should) have the option to make an Arcane Warrior if you wish, but it might not be the best tank (s/s warrior) or the best melee fighter (dw rogue).