72 réponses à ce sujet

[Vaeliorin]

wowpwnslol wrote...
How about a compromise?

No instant ressing/full healing on nightmare difficulty. I think it makes perfect sense.

Let casuals have their softcore RPG experience with zero frustration, effort and instant gratification, but allow real fans of RPG games to be frustrated and ultimately rewarded for their efforts.

I think in this case everybody wins.

I'm not remotely casual, and I want full healing after every battle.  I'm ambivalent about instant rezing, though rezing in general doesn't make sense in DA's setting, given that dead is dead.  If it's nothing more than an annoyance like casting an unlimited spell (i.e. no rare/hugely expensive components), using an unlimited item (not necessarily unlimited on hand, but unlimited and cheap to acquire), or just clicking)I'm pretty darn opposed to it.  If we're going to have death and rezing in a game, it needs to be important, a major drain on resources or a hard quest to pull it off (which of course means 95% of people will just reload, making it kind of pointless.)

Anyway, the reason I want full healing after every battle is because I want every battle to be relentlessly difficult.  If the designers don't know what resources in terms of health/mana a player is going to have in every fight, they can't tune the fight to be as hard as it can possibly be.  Instead you end up with something like BG or BG2 where the vast majoirty of the fights are uninteresting trash that you just kind of wade through without really having to try.  Unfortunately, Bioware has pretty much proven that the only way they can come up with a challenging fight is through massive use of cheese on the part of the enemies.

What I want is for every fight to be potentially lethal, painfully challenging and without full healing after fights (or a real live DM), that simply isn't something that can happen.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Vaeliorin wrote...

wowpwnslol wrote...
How about a compromise?

No instant ressing/full healing on nightmare difficulty. I think it makes perfect sense.

Let casuals have their softcore RPG experience with zero frustration, effort and instant gratification, but allow real fans of RPG games to be frustrated and ultimately rewarded for their efforts.

I think in this case everybody wins.

I'm not remotely casual, and I want full healing after every battle.  I'm ambivalent about instant rezing, though rezing in general doesn't make sense in DA's setting, given that dead is dead.  If it's nothing more than an annoyance like casting an unlimited spell (i.e. no rare/hugely expensive components), using an unlimited item (not necessarily unlimited on hand, but unlimited and cheap to acquire), or just clicking)I'm pretty darn opposed to it.  If we're going to have death and rezing in a game, it needs to be important, a major drain on resources or a hard quest to pull it off (which of course means 95% of people will just reload, making it kind of pointless.)

Anyway, the reason I want full healing after every battle is because I want every battle to be relentlessly difficult.  If the designers don't know what resources in terms of health/mana a player is going to have in every fight, they can't tune the fight to be as hard as it can possibly be.  Instead you end up with something like BG or BG2 where the vast majoirty of the fights are uninteresting trash that you just kind of wade through without really having to try.  Unfortunately, Bioware has pretty much proven that the only way they can come up with a challenging fight is through massive use of cheese on the part of the enemies.

What I want is for every fight to be potentially lethal, painfully challenging and without full healing after fights (or a real live DM), that simply isn't something that can happen.

And, as you well know (but others might not), I'm of the entirely opposite opinion.  I think having every fight be relentlessly difficult is not only tedious, but also contrived.  It's simply not plausible within the setting.

That, I suppose, is what difficulty settings are for.  Unfortunately, BioWare has made it such that difficulty settings affect not only difficulty, but also details of teh setting which affect verisimiltude.  I think friendly fire is vital, but I can't have it without Nightmare.  I think junk mobs are vital, but I can't have those without Casual or Normal.

[Sir JK]

The biggest issue I find with these ideas is that they combine poorly with the systems already in place. There's not really any consumables (except potions) that drive protection and healing, all that is based on recharging mana-levels and cooldown timers.

Even if health did not recover, mana still would. It's crucial because otherwise we'd end up struggling through many fights... having blown off all mana and are now stuck using standard attacks to finish off our opponents. After the fight, we'd simply have to use that to heal the party. Except now it takes up to the cooldown (which is what... 30 seconds?) four times... so there's a potential of 2 minutes you do nothing but waiting for a cooldown timer to tick down.

It's basically the same thing, it just takes considerably more time.

Some solutions to that idea would be to:
1. Further limit healing considerably. But now you need a system in place to prevent damage from happening to the party. If you cannot restore health in combat, then you need methods of preventing it. Not just having a tank, but having methods that completely nullify or minimize damage done.
2. Rework the entire system from scratch to ensure that everything is based on consumables. Not just healing and death. But all abilities, all character progression, all challenges. Everything.
3. Scrap the hp system in favour of an injury system. Where recieving an injury is crippling, but preventable with decent strategy and tactics.

As for death, it comes with a slew of problem. Whether it's referred to as death or casulty or just plain incapacitated (ie. character not dead, but won't be fighting for the forseeable future) matters not. What matters is that either you need a way to reverse it reliably, or you need replacements. More characters will inevitably mean less developed characters. They need not be personality-less, but they'll have less to explore and experience than fewer companions. Simply because creating one takes time and resources.
The other alternative is to provide means to reverse it. Whether that is items you lug around or having to bring them to a temple/hospital matters little. It does add a logistical element to the entire thing. Most of the time, like the healing, it will only add a back-and-forth between areas. A lot of time for little gain. Of course, that could be mitigated by ensuring that there's a "time limit" (narrative time, so no timer ticking down. But one that do recognice area transitions) to most quests. But then players would reload rather than lug downed companions around. Not to mention that if you don't it'll be particularly difficult to complete the thing.

[Xewaka]

I doubt they'd implement permadeath for a simple reason: Far too much work is spent in making the NPCs (Voice Acting, cinematics, design, etc) to allow them to be randomly murdered outside of scripted parts.

[AkiKishi]

Cimeas wrote...

MichaelStuart wrote...

For survival gameplay to work, you have limit all forms of healing.
Potions need to be rare.
magic needs to be limited.
Resting needs to only be allowed at home bases
Homes bases than self need be difficult to get to. In both Dragon Age games the home base was only a few minutes away, It should ideally take a few hours real time to get to a home base.

May I also suggest limiting the ability to save, be only available at home bases. Theirs nothing better to make people play more cautiously with health than the possibly of losing a few hours of hard worked gameplay.

Not sure if sarcasm....or crazy...

He just described Grandia EX.

FF's worked in a similiar manner. You could save anywhere on the overland map. But only at specified locations otherwise. Part of the problem is letting people save anywhere. Developers don't want people saving themselves into a corner or a no win situation.

[nightscrawl]

CELL55 wrote...

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.

Same here.

Neverwinter Nights had a "rest" feature to regain health and get rid of minor debuffs, but you couldn't use it if there were "enemies near by." This was sometimes buggy and even if you were around a corner, completely out of sight of some enemies the game wouldn't let you rest. So you just had to stand around a while, use some potions, heal spell, or a first aid kit.

It's all relative. People will do what they feel they have to do in order to get through the game. Whether that is reloading, waiting around 5 minutes for health/mana to regenerate, or going to a temple and paying an exorbitant amount of money to heal or cleanse disease. Having the need to do any one of those things does not make the game any more fun, dynamic, realistic, or interesting in my eyes. Not one bit.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 14 juillet 2012 - 08:38 .

[nightscrawl]

MichaelStuart wrote...

May I also suggest limiting the ability to save, be only available at home bases. Theirs nothing better to make people play more cautiously with health than the possibly of losing a few hours of hard worked gameplay.

Or you know, really pissed off when they died because they lagged when their anti-virus kicked in or something lame like that.

BobSmith101 wrote...

Part of the problem is letting people save anywhere. Developers don't want people saving themselves into a corner or a no win situation.

I will agree that the constant saving can lead to issues though. There have been times where I have quicksaved myself into a corner. Either I ran into a bug in the game, or was unable to leave and switch out for better party members or other supplies, or some such issue that ultimately forced me to go back hours to a hard save before the problem happened. I recall having to replay a significant chunk of NWN2 because of that.

On the other hand, quicksave before conversations has been tremendously helpful/entertaining/amusing and I'd hate to lose that.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 14 juillet 2012 - 08:49 .

[Cimeas]

Sure, you know what, if I was making BG3/DA3 or whatever I would probably make it more action and casual-oriented but I would include a hardcore mode. At the end of the day if people want to punish themselves go ahead. As long as they don't touch normal difficulty it's fine, and if others enjoy that kind of game, let them have it imho.

[AkiKishi]

Cimeas wrote...

Sure, you know what, if I was making BG3/DA3 or whatever I would probably make it more action and casual-oriented but I would include a hardcore mode. At the end of the day if people want to punish themselves go ahead. As long as they don't touch normal difficulty it's fine, and if others enjoy that kind of game, let them have it imho.

It's normally not that simple. Some games for example save your character on death. Even if you reload the game , they are still flagged as dead. If that character is integrel to the story, well you just broke the story.

It's less about punishment and more about the player sharing the harshness of the world without a get out of jail free card like reloading.

[Cimeas]

Hmm, howabout, completely seperately from easy, normal, hard, they just include a 'classic' mode with tough death penalty, limited health potions, friendly fire, no regenerating health or mana?

I agree about every fight being hard though. Sometimes, I want to feel like a 'boss', a hero who vanquishes his opposition. In DA2 why should a horde of random thugs who band together in the Docks, or some citizens who don't like the Qunari, be as hard to defeat as some dragonlings, or some of those weird creatures in the Deep Roads. It seems pointless.

I loved the fact for example, that in The Force Unleashed (an action game, I know) even at the highest levels you were still occasionally fighting standard storm troopers and it gave you this tremendous feeling of power to be able to take out 10 of them at once, throw another 20 off a bridge, just vanquishing an army.

Modifié par Cimeas, 14 juillet 2012 - 01:16 .

[Maclimes]

I think it could be made to work, with relatively minor modifications to the systems already in place.

First, remember that in the lore of Dragon Age, there's no resurrections. So it would have to be something different.

First, keep the whole "jump back up after combat" thing, where they jump up with an Injury. That has been part of the DA games, keep it. But first, make the injuries truly bad, with both mechanical penalty and animations to match. When the character receives an injury, pick randomly from:

* Broken Arm: One arm is useless. No more dual-wielding, shield use, or two handers, and mage staves would be significantly less accurate and powerful. The remaining arm would have the hit chance and damage reduced, due to lack of balance.
* Broken Leg: Movement speed reduced to a shuffle, Dodge chance becomes 0%, and all attacks suffer a penalty to hit (lack of balance again).
* Head Trauma: Character suffers major penalty to dodge and hit chance. Character will occasionally randomly become Stunned, Immobilized, or even attack a nearby ally randomly instead of their correct target.

Next, get rid of Injury Kits and any spell that would heal long-term Injuries. Combat Healing should be restricted to short term effects (scrapes, bruises, fatigue, ... in short, health points). Healing an Injury would require you to hobble back to town/camp, and spend X amount of gold on proper healing.

If a character takes 3 Injuries, they are instead "Unconscious". If you leave them where they are, they will die. Permanently. Forever dead. Or you can carry them on your back, returning to the town/camp for healing. Whichever character is carrying the unconscious party member cannot attack or dodge, and moves at a reduced speed.

The "Forever Dead" option could be left out, I suppose, if plot dictates that the character is necessary. (I would prefer, however, that the plot be written to accommodate that your companions could die. Minor adjustments to DA:O could have made it so that no companions needed survive at all).

These options could be adjusted for different difficulty levels. Make the penalties more/less severe. Make the number of injuries needed to pass out higher/lower (or non-existent). Reduce/Increase the cost of healing.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sir JK wrote...

1. Further limit healing considerably. But now you need a system in place to prevent damage from happening to the party. If you cannot restore health in combat, then you need methods of preventing it. Not just having a tank, but having methods that completely nullify or minimize damage done.

The effective crowd control available to mages in DAO basically already did this.  I routinely fought enemies in DAO without taking damage (that was my objective in every fight).  Stealth and Traps also help with this.

You're imagining a stand-up toe-to-toe fight, but in that sort of encounter you're always going to take damage.  What the game needs to do is give the player the tools to approach combat in a different way.

As for death, it comes with a slew of problem. Whether it's referred to as death or casulty or just plain incapacitated (ie. character not dead, but won't be fighting for the forseeable future) matters not. What matters is that either you need a way to reverse it reliably, or you need replacements.

I don't think either of these ins necessary.  If the game is designed such that it's possible to avoid having anyone fall in combat, then there don't need to be replacements.  Permanent loss of party members creates an incentive not to die.

[Sylvius the Mad]

nightscrawl wrote...

Same here.

Neverwinter Nights had a "rest" feature to regain health and get rid of minor debuffs, but you couldn't use it if there were "enemies near by." This was sometimes buggy and even if you were around a corner, completely out of sight of some enemies the game wouldn't let you rest.

It wasn't buggy.  It was based on distance - just around the corner wasn't far enough.  Remember, just because you can't see someone doesn't mean you can't hear or smell him.

[Brodoteau]

So while I agree that injuries and the violence need to have more consequence, most of the above only achieve one thing, as mentioned above: take up a lot of time. I don't really want to add more time into a game for the sake of an artificial mechanic. It just slows down the game. And if you are like me, you try not to sacrifice your idiot companions (who often get themselves killed) because it is inconvienient to not have them for the rest of the fight. (Especially in the wave-happy DA2 world).

Which is why I also favour lots of save points. Real life sometimes means that I have to stop playing and go do something, so the inability to SAVE makes this very frustrating. Look you can pause/stop a DVD at the exact point you want, you can put down a book, you can pause an MP3 player, you can put someone on hold on the phone, you can even pause live TV; why should video games not allow this same mechanic? It is entertainment afterall. I don't want to be punished because I have other things to do.

Finally, I played BG and BG2 (my favourite games ever) and I rested all the time. I rested comically in the middle of a dungeon while the fate of the world was in the balance; who didn't rest before heading to face Irenicus while the Elven city was being destroyed in BG2? (Just imagine the conversation: Oh, I know Irenicus is draining the Tree of Life and all that, but I'm really tired and just need a quick 8 hour catnap to recoup some spells. I'm pretty sure he won't be finished when I'm done.). All this does is cause the gamer to game the system or it breaks immersion terribly. So it becomes a trade-off, while there is a consequence for injuries the game itself becomes less "time-sensitive."

[Maclimes]

Brodoteau wrote...

Which is why I also favour lots of save points. Real life sometimes means that I have to stop playing and go do something, so the inability to SAVE makes this very frustrating. Look you can pause/stop a DVD at the exact point you want, you can put down a book, you can pause an MP3 player, you can put someone on hold on the phone, you can even pause live TV; why should video games not allow this same mechanic? It is entertainment afterall. I don't want to be punished because I have other things to do.

Both DA games let you save at any time, anywhere, as long as you weren't smack in the middle of combat or dialogue.

[Realmzmaster]

@Maclimes,

What you are describing are the games based on D & D mechanics. TOEE had the bandage or heal skill to stabilize an injured party member. Conditions like poison or disease could slowly kill the character if not treated. Some D & D based crpgs had petrifaction, disintegration etc. D & D had spells and /or potions that could reverse these conditions or the party had to haul the character to a healer. Resurrection or raise dead in D & D based games have a possibility of failure. The game would also have to implement a way to know whether the character has a chance at survival or not. D & D based games have the saving throw. That type of information would have to be given to the gamer and a way to improve that action would have to be implemented.

Most if not all of what you are suggesting is in the d20 ruleset from WoTC/Hasbro. Bioware would have to walk a thin line to avoid copyright infingement. It could be done. The question would be is it worth it. Also the license for all D & D based games is at the moment held by Atari and it is exclusive.

If perma-death is included then any quests associated with that companion cannot be done (since resurrection is not available in the DA world) and must not have an impact on the story like Yoshimo does in BG2. If the companion's death does have an impact on the main story then it must be reflected in game that means a way of reflecting each death must be written for each character. That would also mean no replacement would be available.

The only thing that would be accomplished is a lot of reloading which is fine.

Resting at only INNs was present in both the Bard's Tale and early Might and Magic series. It simply would not work especially for gamers with family including young children.

Also having to lose 3 or 4 hours work of play because that is when you last saved at the Inn is problematic and introduces tedium.

While much of these suggestions appeal to the hardcore crpg gamer in me the lack of save anywhere would be a deal breaker.

[MichaelStuart]

Final fantasy 3 on the Nintendo DS had some thing called a quick save.
It allow you to save anywhere but auto deleted the save file once it was loaded.
This system could be used for people who don't have time to get to a save point.

[AkiKishi]

MichaelStuart wrote...

Final fantasy 3 on the Nintendo DS had some thing called a quick save.
It allow you to save anywhere but auto deleted the save file once it was loaded.
This system could be used for people who don't have time to get to a save point.

Fire Emblem has the same feature as do many hand held games. It would be a better thing to have than a hardsave. Of course you would still need some method of hardsaving like points or on the world map etc.

[Maclimes]

Realmzmaster wrote...

@Maclimes,

What you are describing are the games based on D & D mechanics. TOEE had the bandage or heal skill to stabilize an injured party member. Conditions like poison or disease could slowly kill the character if not treated. Some D & D based crpgs had petrifaction, disintegration etc. D & D had spells and /or potions that could reverse these conditions or the party had to haul the character to a healer. Resurrection or raise dead in D & D based games have a possibility of failure. The game would also have to implement a way to know whether the character has a chance at survival or not. D & D based games have the saving throw. That type of information would have to be given to the gamer and a way to improve that action would have to be implemented.

Most if not all of what you are suggesting is in the d20 ruleset from WoTC/Hasbro. Bioware would have to walk a thin line to avoid copyright infingement. It could be done. The question would be is it worth it. Also the license for all D & D based games is at the moment held by Atari and it is exclusive.

The only "system" I described is a character being injured after a fight, and having to go back to town to heal up. I'm fairly certain that D&D is not the only game system that uses that mechanic. 

D&D also uses base attributes (like Strength, Dexterity, etc) to determine your derived stats, and uses a series of abilities gained as you level up to reflect your character's improved skill set. So does nearly every single RPG ever made, including every Dragon Age game.

There is not even the barest of a hint of copyright problems there. 

Realmzmaster wrote... 
While much of these suggestions appeal to the hardcore crpg gamer in me the lack of save anywhere would be a deal breaker.

I never said anything about losing the ability to save anywhere. I have a wife and two kids. I may need to stop playing at a moment's notice. The ability to save at any time is very important to me.

[Sir JK]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The effective crowd control available to mages in DAO basically already did this.  I routinely fought enemies in DAO without taking damage (that was my objective in every fight).  Stealth and Traps also help with this.

You're imagining a stand-up toe-to-toe fight, but in that sort of encounter you're always going to take damage.  What the game needs to do is give the player the tools to approach combat in a different way.

I actually agree with you Sylvius. I was merely laying out how combat looks, because right now the tank pretty much soaks damage. If it could be changed in that manner (coupled with a lessened focus on combat and more alternative ways to solve conflicts) I'd actually be pretty happy.

I don't think either of these ins necessary.  If the game is designed such that it's possible to avoid having anyone fall in combat, then there don't need to be replacements.  Permanent loss of party members creates an incentive not to die.

That could work.

[wowpwnslol]

Vaeliorin wrote...
Anyway, the reason I want full healing after every battle is because I want every battle to be relentlessly difficult.

There are different ways to make a battles difficult, do not forget that. In D&D throwing multiple encounters per day at your players would render mages/wizards useless as they would run out of spells after a couple of encounters, while melee classes would chug down a potion, use a med kit and continue to fight. Sending loads of trash to deplete party resources before fighting the big bad boss was a viable option - healing after every fight and replenishing mana, eliminates that option. You simply cannot gradually wear down a party in DA universe. Even "deaths" are made trivial by cheap injury kits readily available from merchants.

Sure, challenging fights with uber elite god slaying monsters of apocalypse are awesome, but my point is that regular fights should tax players' resources such as mana and healing potions. Right now it is not so in DA series, because you can blow everything on every encounter knowing that you would instantly regain lost resources after the fight is over. It just doesn't make sense that a party loses absolutely nothing in a non boss encounter. Sending an army of  weak zombies, for instance, after a player party should weaken it. Instead it's free XP because, hey, we regain resources instantly after every fight....

I do not view taxing deaths and limited healing as "frustration" and slowing the game down - I view it as a strategic barrier to overcome and to add another layer of tactics to my RPG experience.

[nightscrawl]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

It wasn't buggy.  It was based on distance - just around the corner wasn't far enough.  Remember, just because you can't see someone doesn't mean you can't hear or smell him.

I hadn't wanted to elaborate too much on this single feature of NWN, but since you brought it up... There were instances where I would run really far back the way I had come and still be unable to rest. I am one of those people who kills everything. I leave no stone unturned. If I go into some cave to kill a group of bugbears for a quest, you'd better believe that group is extinct by the time I'm done. So when I don't see any enemies around for miles, and the game gives me no indication that there are enemies near by, I do consider that buggy, yeah.

Also, the mechanics of dungeon crawling in NWN didn't really work like that. Enemies saw you and they came after you. I don't see why I would be able to kill enemies in a room, close the door, rest, and then go kill their neighbors in the next room in one dungeon, but not in another.

[Sylvius the Mad]

nightscrawl wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

It wasn't buggy.  It was based on distance - just around the corner wasn't far enough.  Remember, just because you can't see someone doesn't mean you can't hear or smell him.

I hadn't wanted to elaborate too much on this single feature of NWN, but since you brought it up... There were instances where I would run really far back the way I had come and still be unable to rest. I am one of those people who kills everything. I leave no stone unturned. If I go into some cave to kill a group of bugbears for a quest, you'd better believe that group is extinct by the time I'm done. So when I don't see any enemies around for miles, and the game gives me no indication that there are enemies near by, I do consider that buggy, yeah.

You're calculating distance along the corridor, rather than as a straight vector.  you might need to walk for several minutes to reach the enemiy, but that doesn't mean he isn't only 10 metres away - those 10 metres just aren't traversable.

the best example of this in the NWN OC was probably in the cryot level beneath Neverwinter where yuo encountered the Yuan-Ti.  The level was a huge ring, and the final battle was in the centre.  Almost every part of the level was close enough to the centre chamber to prevent resting (rooms on the outside edge of teh ring were not), even though that centre chamber was only accessible from the far side of the ring.

It was ambiguously documented, but it worked as designed.  That's not buggy.

Also, the mechanics of dungeon crawling in NWN didn't really work like that. Enemies saw you and they came after you.

NWN enemies made Spot and Listen checks just the same as your character did.  The mechancs were symmetrical.