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[lyleoffmyspace]

Why was the wave based combat in DA2? It was stupid, ruined immersion and turned every fight into an endurance fest and threw positioning out the window entirely.

It's fine in some situations (eg. last stands) but stupid for the vast majority of fights.

So...any idea why Bioware put it in?

[thats1evildude]

I didn't mind it. Since it gave me more people to kill.

I like killing.

[Maike91]

lyleoffmyspace wrote...
So...any idea why Bioware put it in?

To save time

[Face of Evil]

Maike91 wrote...

To save time

How does putting more enemies in a game save time, except in Insane Troll Logic World?

Modifié par Face of Evil, 31 mai 2012 - 06:15 .

[Nomen Mendax]

Maike91 wrote...

lyleoffmyspace wrote...
So...any idea why Bioware put it in?

To save time

Agreed, it's probably a lot easier to pad gameplay time with waves of enemies than to make separate encounters.  I dislike waves of enemies, unless there is some sensible reason for it (such as being in an actual battle).  Waves of what are essentially muggers (i.e. Kirkwall nightime encounters) are particularly stupid.  

[Maike91]

Maike91 wrote...

lyleoffmyspace wrote...
So...any idea why Bioware put it in?

To save time

I'll just quote Nomen Mendax

Nomen Mendax wrote...
Agreed, it's probably a lot easier to pad gameplay time with waves of enemies than to make separate encounters.

 

That's why they reused the maps so often, too.

[bEVEsthda]

Because they decided to implement a combat system that can be/will be/is significantly limited/impacted by hardware specifications (combat systems which are engineered not to be, are much more interesting, IMO).

When this is then run on a XB360, they cannot have enough opponents to balance the player's ridiculous nukepower skills. So they send them in waves.

[lyleoffmyspace]

Blah...same reason why no enemies ever seem to use the same abilities as the player as well too I suppose?

[PsychoBlonde]

According to the pre-release info, they were trying to build the game in such a way that combat would suddenly and radically change so you'd have to react to it, which the waves (sort of) accomplished, but not without also accomplishing a lot of OTHER things that NOBODY wanted.

So, I think the lesson here is this:

Big changes mid-combat, maybe not desirable
Adds raining from the sky, DEFINITELY not desirable

It seems to be a trend in games like this nowadays to try to mix things up (particularly in boss fights) by having phases, specials that must be dodged, adds, etc. Yet, still, my favorite fights are generally the ones where you have none of this crap.

I think what bugs me the most about the phases, specials, and adds, is that it's not about using what you've learned about combat up until that point. Instead, you have to learn what the boss specials are (often by dying to them the first time) and also things like "where does that party-nuking mage spawn halfway through so I can have someone on the spot to stun them before they murder my party"? It requires a certain amount of meta-game knowledge.

Whereas when you have a boss fight where it's just an enormously tougher and nastier version of a standard mob, you're using what you've learned elsewhere in the game, and when you fail, it's because, say, you weren't managing aggro and CC and damage quite well enough instead of, say, oh, the boss pulled a new special out of his ass and you didn't know how to avoid it.

I'm not wholly against the novel special-oriented boss fight, but I don't think that they're necessarily the be-all, end-all of fun combat.

Oh, and I don't much like the "bossy companions" thing, where they try to militate against the instant "what just happened?" TPK by having your companions shout out things like "WE'D BETTER RUN!" or "QUICK, WHILE HIS BACK IS TURNED!!"  If you have to rely on this sort of thing, it's a sign that you're not telegraphing what's going on nearly well enough.  Also, if my companions KNOW how to fight the boss why do I have such an effing hard time getting them to stay out of the effing AOE's?

Modifié par PsychoBlonde, 31 mai 2012 - 06:37 .

[Provi-dance]

Face of Evil wrote...

Maike91 wrote...

To save time

How does putting more enemies in a game save time, except in Insane Troll Logic World?

Because it's far easier to throw in hordes of cannon fodder enemies with ridiculously inflated hit points, where the only "tactical" factor is the player's patience, as opposed to carefully designed non-scaled and dangerous combat encounters with enemies that function under the same principles/mechanics as the player character and party members.

This disaster stemmed from a combination of factors:

a) The don't/didn't know better.

They thought/think it's fun.

c) It took less time to design/implement.

[lyleoffmyspace]

Origins combat was great because you'd see a situation, prioritise the enemies who would be the most problem and then go in. You'd have to be really careful about positioning and some encounters were really hard.

In DA2 all that is thrown out the window and it just seems to be "spam abilities and potions" and occasionally turn some modes on and off.

[bEVEsthda]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

It seems to be a trend in games like this nowadays to try to mix things up (particularly in boss fights) by having phases, specials that must be dodged, adds, etc. Yet, still, my favorite fights are generally the ones where you have none of this crap.

I think what bugs me the most about the phases, specials, and adds, is that it's not about using what you've learned about combat up until that point. Instead, you have to learn what the boss specials are (often by dying to them the first time) and also things like "where does that party-nuking mage spawn halfway through so I can have someone on the spot to stun them before they murder my party"? It requires a certain amount of meta-game knowledge.

Whereas when you have a boss fight where it's just an enormously tougher and nastier version of a standard mob, you're using what you've learned elsewhere in the game, and when you fail, it's because, say, you weren't managing aggro and CC and damage quite well enough instead of, say, oh, the boss pulled a new special out of his ass and you didn't know how to avoid it.

Yes. Absolutely. This is what they aspire to. All of them. They really do. Every genre. But it's not a new trend. It's ancient. It's your old console gameplay paradigm from videogaming's stone age. The old scrolling shooters, the combat platformers. And the reason everybody is pushing in this braindead and boring direction, is that according to current "knowledge", thinking and schooling, this is what video gaming is supposed to be about. - At heart. And everything else is just fluff and decorations. Want to make a game? Make environments, make weapons, make characters, make Bosses, make story. But the underlying form of the gameplay remains the same old, same old. Bash the baddies, whittle the boss, pick up the glowing things, go to next level.

I don't know where all the magnificent creativity and diversity, from the Atari ST and Amiga days, disappeared. But it has disappeared.
I'm very tempted to blame the dominance of the consoles though. A combination of fulfilling the traditional expectations from the market (about what a video game is), the limitations of the input device, controller, the limitations of saving system and hardware specs. And then maybe also the fact that more developers are trained, educated in the craft, rather than selfmade, and thus taught a system.

Whatever, I happen to think it's bad.

[TEWR]

Waves of enemies aren't an inherently bad idea, when used appropriately -- whether other posters take that to mean sparingly is up to them. I'm just saying when used appropriately.

There's an enormous disparity in how the gameplay and combat is handled. How the waves of enemies are handled is only part of that.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 31 mai 2012 - 06:55 .

[Dakota Strider]

A place where waves of enemies would make sense. The Battle of Ostagar (if the player character had been allowed to participate). The Battle of Denerim. Makes sense since there should be hordes of enemies in a battle between armies. In DA2, perhaps when fighting the Kossith inside the city, it made sense. And it would have made sense against darkspawn in the Underdark, However, making that a staple of every combat in DA2 was either one of two things: 1) Laziness. They did not think through the consequences, and thought they could cut corners. 2) They were Rushed. I prefer to think this is the case, to basically give them the benefit of the doubt. And cutting corners was the only way they could make the deadline.

[PsychoBlonde]

bEVEsthda wrote...
The old scrolling shooters, the combat platformers. 

Ah, I think I know what you mean.  How do mechanics like these make any sense in a game where you're controlling 4 characters instead of 1, though?

Heck, before release they pretty much said "this game won't have active dodging", and what do we have, bosses with specials you have to dodge (or take cover from, which is essentially the same thing).

[TEWR]

Dakota Strider wrote...

A place where waves of enemies would make sense. The Battle of Ostagar (if the player character had been allowed to participate). The Battle of Denerim. Makes sense since there should be hordes of enemies in a battle between armies. In DA2, perhaps when fighting the Kossith inside the city, it made sense. And it would have made sense against darkspawn in the Underdark.

Pretty much. In part, it depends on how easily explainable hordes of enemies are.

Interesting thing: In the climax of Act II you fight only about 110 Qunari -- counting Elven converts -- prior to when you confront the Arishok. That seems like a fair number.

I can say that I don't think DAII's problem was that it suffered from "waves for the sake of waves" but rather "a severe case of poorly implemented waves".

Kirkwall, if you actually look at both the lore of the setting as well as what factors a city faces, seems to justify the use of waves. Justified, but not necessarily done the way I think they should've been. The way the combat with them was designed however is what I feel is the problem.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 31 mai 2012 - 07:19 .

[Asch Lavigne]

I didn't mind the waves, it was the new waves "jumping in" animation that bugged the hell out of me. Especially in buildings and caves... so, so bad.

Modifié par Asch Lavigne, 31 mai 2012 - 07:30 .

[PsychoBlonde]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Interesting thing: In the climax of Act II you fight only about 110 Qunari -- counting Elven converts -- prior to when you confront the Arishok. That seems like a fair number.

Yeah, that part of it was actually kind of reasonable, in fact, the TOTAL NUMBER of Qunari you can fight IN THE GAME is about what you'd figure a major ship-of-the-line would have as crew/marines.

It's not that the street gangs were TOO BIG in some absolute sense, either, it's that the non-gang population of the city was TINY by comparison.  Also, most street gangs aren't going to fight to the last man.

[TEWR]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Yeah, that part of it was actually kind of reasonable, in fact, the TOTAL NUMBER of Qunari you can fight IN THE GAME is about what you'd figure a major ship-of-the-line would have as crew/marines.

Indeed. You're told by the Viscount that the Arishok landed with a few hundred men -- so between 300 and 400 I imagine -- so it's perfectly reasonable.

Although I'm not sure we actually fight 300-400 Qunari. A fair chunk of that number died offscreen.

Although the Tal-Vashoth for some reason didn't break off their horns, as we were told Tal-Vashoth do.

But that's another matter.

PsychoBlonde wrote...

It's not that the street gangs were TOO BIG in some absolute sense, either, it's that the non-gang population of the city was TINY by comparison. Also, most street gangs aren't going to fight to the last man.

That's also a factor. Kirkwall's lifelessness contributed to how the waves were perceived as a problem.

As for the gangs fighting to the last man, most didn't. The Journal tells you that most were left with some pretty negligible numbers. Some -- like the Bloodragers or the Followers of She -- were forced to fight to the last man.

But I agree with you, certainly

[PaulSX]

because they wanted to make it like mass effect 2.
the wave mechanics in ME2 is great, but they did a pretty bad job in DAII

[Uccio]

Makes the game a whack fest. Booring as h*ll.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Because they wanted to give the player the experience of being vastly more powerful than his enemies, so the enemies had to be weak. Then, to create interesting encounters, there had to be lots of enemies. Then, because the consoles couldn't render enough enemies on screen at the same time while also doing AI calculations, they introduced the enemies in waves.

[upsettingshorts]

lyleoffmyspace wrote...

Why was the wave based combat in DA2? It was stupid, ruined immersion and turned every fight into an endurance fest and threw positioning out the window entirely.

It's fine in some situations (eg. last stands) but stupid for the vast majority of fights.

So...any idea why Bioware put it in?

Rushed.

Issues with DA2 fall under two broad categories:

- Things they wanted to do, and pulled off with wildly different levels of success
- Things they were forced to do due to time constraints

It's not that hard to figure out which is which.  Stuff from the first category are likely to reappear in DA3, with possibly different execution.  Stuff from the second category are unlikely to.

Ever seen anyone from BioWare come on the forums and defend the waves (No) ?  Catch the lampshading they did in MOTA ("It's always an ambush")?  Second category.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 31 mai 2012 - 09:43 .

[Wulfram]

I don't think Waves themselves happened because they were rushed. The boring implementation was probably because of that, but the basic idea was clearly because they thought it would spice up combat.