72 réponses à ce sujet

[wowpwnslol]

I think instant ressing after combat should go in DA3. It's just another feature created to make the life easy for kids/consolers/casuals.

Death should be meaningful and rare. Companions shouldn't be treated as expendables, allowing them to die out of convenience should never happen. It would add to strategy to the game to make players protect the weaker party members instead of just allowing fighter classes to hammer away at enemies, allowing squishies to die because they know they'll res after combat is over. I remember in BG2, a party member dying was big, especially so if you didn't have access to resurrection spells. I often reloaded, even though I won the battle because I lost a party member. In DA2? I often used party members as sacrificial meatshields for tanking assassin backstabs in order for my main character to survive and win the battle.

Dragon Age 3 should make death relevant again. Resurrection spell should be very high level and lower level parties should have to carry the body of their companion to a temple and pay a hefty cost to have the body resurrected. Make actual party tactics relevant again, instead of your companions being meatshields.

Alternatively, make injury kits extremely costly and non viable to use after every fight. Death should matter. In DA universe, death means absolutely nothing.


Second issue is full healing after every battle. This should be removed. Why would you instantly heal and regenerate mana/stamina after every fight? This screams console action game to me and has no place is slower paced RPG world. The monsters who  depleted some of party members' resources such as mana/health should carry an impact for the next battle. In DA/DA2 if you win a fight without losses, you lose nothing. You are instantly at full health/mana after the combat. I propose in DA3, characters should not full heal after every fight. Healing HP's should only be done via items/spells/potions. Regeneration of mana could be accomplished with something like meditation (chance to be interrupted by monsters when your character is meditating) and mana potions. In Baldur's Gate 2, you didn't even full heal after resting if you didn't have healing spells or regeneration items. Why is DA universe dumbed down to istantly full heal you after every battle? Because kids don't want to be inconvenienced?

In short: Remove instant ressing (or make injury kits prohibitively expensive), remove full healing/full mana after every fight. Make death relevant again.

[wowpwnslol]

ChookAttack wrote...

I think that part of your post is the one of the reasons why party members are merely unconscious instead of dead.  If the majority of people are going to reload rather than play with the consequences of a dead party member, then the death mechanic is superfluous.  If no-one allows party member death, why retain it?

The possibility of prohibitive death makes you care about your party members. A mage may be a huge asset, but when he's getting hammered by several melee mobs, you will  want to drop everything and save him, instead of allowing him to die and instant res later after the battle is done like he's some inconsequential meatshield. It makes you utilize more strategy and plan to keep your weaker party members alive and considering that in DA universe casters classes have not nearly enough tools to allow them to get away from danger like in D&D games, it places even more importance on positioning during battles and careful co-ordination between tanks, healers and casters.

I agree that there should be some balance between instant reload if anyone dies and let everyone die because they'll res after the battle. Right now, though. DA is way too forgiving on character death. Low cost injury kits are not enough to stop you from simply allowing your party members to die because it's convenient.

[Daerog]

I'm not sure if BW will ever allow characters to just die in random battles, may cause difficulties in story.
Maybe in big battles? Or if they decide to just have companions add flavor to the game, rather than being central or important in any way to the story, I can see it.

I think higher difficulty, slower recovery after fights? I don't think a party member needs to have the potential of death in order for the PC to care if that person dies in a fight or not, the fights just need to be more difficult with combat roles that the PC assigns companions being more vital. The healer going down sounds bad, so protect the mage. The tank going down is bad, or dps dropping because the Reaver went down. Fights should be harder if a quarter of the groups strength goes down.

In short, death is fine, but seems silly in a random battle, people would just reload, and if they just reload, whats the point? Death in a scripted battle may work, though. I'm not a fan of the idea, but wouldn't care if it was in or not, I save enough as it is.

Modifié par DaerogTheDhampir, 13 juillet 2012 - 01:45 .

[ashwind]

wowpwnslol wrote...

I think instant ressing after combat should go in DA3. It's just another feature created to make the life easy for kids/consolers/casuals.

Death should be meaningful and rare. Companions shouldn't be treated as expendables, allowing them to die out of convenience should never happen.....

I do not agree that this change is to make life easy for casual players etc. Turn base games in the past allows for precise control of all characters. The newer games however suffer from bad AI. DA2 is not the only game that suffers from this but lets use it as an example.

How can I keep them alive all the time if they keep doing stupid things on their own? Hold position! Hold! Still they pull out a dagger and walk right up to the boss? It is not impossible but it is very frustrating - In my DAO playthrough, I made sure nobody died - everyone survive all encounters but it is painfully tedious.

I use to be fighting only against enemies and control the flow of battle, today I have to fight against stupid AI and chaotic enemies that act like sucidal terroirist who does not care about anything cept land a hit on you.

[Swordfishtrombone]

I doubt they'll turn the clock backwards on this issue - too many people have gotten too used to the way things are nowadays.

Though I hope they do some brainstorming on how to bring back a more tactical element into the battles, given the low cost to dying companions. The way some of the big battles in the more recent Bioware games have been done is scripting - like the Kai Leng battle in ME3, or the final fight in DA2 - and I don't much care for this.

A battle with scripted sequences where the big baddie is invulnerable a part of the time while you battle it's minions is a poor substitute for a challenging battle that requires tactical thinking.

I look at BG2 as a great example of a game where tactics mattered a great deal, and where there were battles that were near impossible, until you figured out a clever tactic.

I don't think that this success was ALL down to the high cost to dying, and no effective health regeneration (and a limited number of spells for mages to use before resting), though these did play a part.

I think that a major part of it was the magic system - the number and nature of spells available, and powerful spell combos, as well as the emphasis on protective spells used by enemy mages that you really needed to dispell.

Mages were dangerous because they put up barriers of various kinds, and were able to cast dangerous spells while so protected. This was KINDA like the bosses in later games that become invulnerable for a period, except that they were only invulnerable, if you hadn't prepared properly, with counter spells.

In DA2, mages can put up a barrier, but they cannot cast any spells while in that barrier - that makes them much less dangerous; you can concentrate on other enemies while their barrier is up, just keeping an eye on when it fades, and then refocus on the mage.

It would be better if the mages were more like BG2 mages in that they'd have a set of protective spells that wouldn't hinder their spell casting, and if you had available to you spells (and maybe some tallents) that did nothing but dispel protections.

I wish they'd dial down on the scripting of big fights, and think of other ways to make the encounter challenging.

[Direwolf0294]

These are terrible ideas. For one, not resurrecting or regaining health after a battle doesn't make the game more hardcore, it makes it more tedious as you sit around waiting for your heal spell's cooldown to finish and your mage's mana to slowly fill up. Anyone who thinks making people wait 5 minutes in between battles is a good idea should never be let near game design. Secondly, games should be trying to avoid situations where players feel they have to reload and redo content because they didn't complete it perfectly. If I can go through an RPG without ever feeling the need to reload because I performed poorly during a battle or stuffed up a conversation then that's a good RPG.

[CELL55]

Direwolf0294 wrote...

These are terrible ideas. For one, not resurrecting or regaining health after a battle doesn't make the game more hardcore, it makes it more tedious as you sit around waiting for your heal spell's cooldown to finish and your mage's mana to slowly fill up. Anyone who thinks making people wait 5 minutes in between battles is a good idea should never be let near game design. Secondly, games should be trying to avoid situations where players feel they have to reload and redo content because they didn't complete it perfectly. If I can go through an RPG without ever feeling the need to reload because I performed poorly during a battle or stuffed up a conversation then that's a good RPG.

This +1. OP, if you have a problem with using your party as disposable meatshields, there is a simple solution to this problem: stop using them as disposable meatshields when you are in no way forced to use them as such. Other players should not have to suffer inconveniences because you have a problem with how YOU play the game. 

[Jonathan Seagull]

To repeat something that's already been mentioned, no one actually dies in regular fights. They only fall unconscious. Unless everyone falls, and then I guess the bad guys murder your unconscious body up real good. Whether any of that makes sense is another matter. But actual death in Thedas is supposed to be a big deal, that you can't just come back from (well, most people can't). There aren't resurrection spells because actual death is meant to be permanent. So to introduce a mechanic like that would require significant changes to the nature of the setting. Not saying they couldn't do that if they wanted to, but there are in-game reasons as well as player-based why the system works the way it does.

I'd also suggest that, if you're genuinely trying to get the devs to consider alternatives, peppering your argument with condescending remarks about other players may not be the way to go.

Modifié par Jonathan Seagull, 13 juillet 2012 - 03:20 .

[Realmzmaster]

ChookAttack wrote...

Oh, I agree with you that it makes for a more tactical game. The first computer game I ever played was the old D&D Pool of Radiance on 5 1/4 inch floppy (lol, that makes me feel very old). I can remember one of the early battles was in a cave with dozens of kobolds. It took me hours to get through that battle as my mages kept getting killed. As you said, that was the attraction. Getting killed wasn't an issue because working out the tactics to enable my low level party to survive was what was fun.

With today's games, that would be a difficult thing to replicate. The real time with pause makes it very difficult to allow more than the basics of tactical game-play without pausing every second to give new orders, which defeats the point of having real time combat at all. Unfortunately, Bioware don't want to make turn based games any more which means the tactical game-play will be reduced to accomodate the flow of real time combat and cinematics.

Personally, I don't think I will be purchasing Bioware games for their RPG elements any more. If I purchase their games it will be on the understanding that they are action games, not RPG's.

Bioware has never made a turn based game. BG1 through DA2 are all pausable realtime. True turn based games based on the D & D ruleset are Pool of Radiance: Myth Drannor (3.0) and Temple of Elemental Evil (3.5). The suggestions being made here are based on the 2.0 ruleset.

3.0 and 3.5 rulesets allow for unconcious characters. If the hit points (health) fall to -10 then the character dies, but the character while unconcious has a chance to stabilize or a companion has a chance to use the Heal skill or a cleric has the chance to cast a healing spell.

The 4.0 ruleset took it further in that a character is considered bloodied at half the character's maximum hit points. If the character reaches zero the character falls unconcious. The character can continue to take damage as a negative number up to the value of being bloodied or half the maximum hit points. So if a character has 100 hit points it will not die until health is -50.

In NWN the character and henchmen  respawned at a temple if the health reached zero rather than having the gamer reload.

So regenerating health and mana is just the latest step in the progression. If you did not play D & D or the earlier cRPGs then none of this matters to you.

[Cultist]

Been tellin' about injuries a long time ago.
Dragon Age games starting with DA2 tend to use any dialogue only as a prelude to inevitable battle. I assume DA3 will ony worsen the situation. More console arcade and Call of Dutyness, less RPG in attempt to attract kids that shun complex RPG systems and mechanics.

[deuce985]

Some of these ideas are bad for a lot of reasons. Most of it has been touched on already. I'd articulate more until I saw this in your first few sentences:

I think instant ressing after combat should go in DA3. It's just another feature created to make the life easy for kids/consolers/casuals.

Good job at generalizing a group of people just because they don't share your gaming tastes. Bravo.

Modifié par deuce985, 13 juillet 2012 - 06:47 .

[Sir JK]

The issue with damage and permanent/provisional casualties isn't that they make things more difficult as such. But rather that they require means to protect oneself against them. If the combat is very fast, health levels drop real quick, healing is limited, the total number of companions few and ressurection is impossible then permanent casulties will only serve as a point of frustration, not a source of tension.

In a sense, in order for it to work it must be more difficult for a properly managed party to lose a member. Not equal or less. You need to have more protective tools overall and a greater ability to use them.

This is not a trivial change. As it looks right now, the system does not really support this.

[Cutlass Jack]

I'm not sure how you're playing the game OP, but companions don't die because the player finds it convenient. They often die because the companion UI does something stupid. Letting them raise up after a fight covers for that.

You're not really selling me that Bioware should alter the game for everyone just so you'll stop using your people as disposable cannon fodder. Sounds to me like the problem is more with you. Don't play the game that way and problem is solved.

I'm all for adding more genuine tactical options to the game. This isn't one. Its just brings more reloading to the game.

[AkiKishi]

It depends on the design. If the game allows regeneration anyway you just make people sit around while it occurs.
The only time this ever becomes interesting is in areas like the FF bonus towers. The games have no regeneration so managing your HP/MP to be able to get to the 99th level and then still have enough left to beat the boss (you can only save every 10 levels) is a game in itself.

Otherwise you are just making the system more tedious than it needs to be.

OP maybe you should actually play some games designed for consoles and then you won't sound so clueless.

[Cimeas]

No, games should not punish the player, many would just reload fights because why should I run half an hour back out of the dungeon just to go to a temple to resurrect the player? Everyone would just reload anyway, defeating the point and making you have to fight again just to avoid an extra hour of work. Ridiculous.


Having said that, I want influence loss if you let companions get injured in battle. -1 reputation every time.

[PsychoBlonde]

wowpwnslol wrote...

I think instant ressing after combat should go in DA3. It's just another feature created to make the life easy for kids/consolers/casuals.

Actually, no.  This system was created in DA:O so that every. single. combat. could be highly resource-intensive and put you at risk of failure without leaving you in a situation where you were near the end of a sequence and could not progress because you'd run out of health pots.  Leaving the dungeon in order to go back to town to get resources is very flow-breaking.  They also didn't want to have a ton of pointless identical pushover combats.

Personally, I also like to have real attrition and resource-management in games, but it wasn't created  to "make life easy" for anyone, it was actually meant to make every individual combat HARDER.

Sadly, the result, for me at least, was to make combat a horrible, tedious grind that didn't matter in the slightest.

[rapscallioness]

No.

[philippe willaume]

if the tactics are tunable and the companion do what you ask them immediatlt and not after finish the animation.
Death might be strong but a given compnion can be wounded and has to stay home for one adventure (they did that in silent storm 2) or stuff to that effect I.E wounded companion is sent home, you pick up a new companion from the pool, the clock advances to simulated the time spent getting the wouded out/ replacement to arrive. that companion is not usable untill you go back to camp)

phil

[AkiKishi]

philippe willaume wrote...

if the tactics are tunable and the companion do what you ask them immediatlt and not after finish the animation.
Death might be strong but a given compnion can be wounded and has to stay home for one adventure (they did that in silent storm 2) or stuff to that effect I.E wounded companion is sent home, you pick up a new companion from the pool, the clock advances to simulated the time spent getting the wouded out/ replacement to arrive. that companion is not usable untill you go back to camp)

phil

That sort of system requires a large pool of companions which DA does not provide.

It's like one notch below Fire Emblem. Where a character dying is gone for good (aside from the Lord your alter ego in which case it's a reload) but it won't cause too many problems unless you really make a habit of it because of the large roster.

As I recall BG also had a mechanic where it was possible for a character to be "chunked" beyond possibility of resurection (in the game anyway).

Modifié par BobSmith101, 13 juillet 2012 - 07:08 .

[InfinitePaths]

People just want a hardcore RPG for DA3,and so do I.But i think this has gone a little bit to far.I think insta heal/mana after comabt is very usefull.It is pointless to just wait for health/mana to refill or use health/lyrium potions outside combat.I think insta health/mana after combat saves you time.Just becouse we want an RPG doesn't mean we have to put some old school elements that suck!Like Perma-companion death(i almost got cancer when i saw that post somewhere),or time wasting stuff with no real pourpose like waiting for your health/mana to regenerate

[Sylvius the Mad]

HeriocGreyWarden wrote...

People just want a hardcore RPG for DA3,and so do I.But i think this has gone a little bit to far.I think insta heal/mana after comabt is very usefull.It is pointless to just wait for health/mana to refill or use health/lyrium potions outside combat.I think insta health/mana after combat saves you time.Just becouse we want an RPG doesn't mean we have to put some old school elements that suck!Like Perma-companion death(i almost got cancer when i saw that post somewhere),or time wasting stuff with no real pourpose like waiting for your health/mana to regenerate

First of all, if you're playing the game in a way that you find boring, then that's your fault.

Second, the obvious solution if we're trying to prevent you from waiting to regen health and mana is to make health and mana not regenerate on their own at all.  Let's require healing skills or potions or resting to restore health and mana.  Then let's limit access to healing skills, potions, or resting.  That would restore an aspect of strategic gameplay that has been intentionally left out of Dragon Age so far.

And I'd also like to see some sort of consequence to letting characters fall in battle.  Perma-death would work for me, but I'm open to other suggestions.