340 réponses à ce sujet

[Zubie]

Renmiri1 wrote...

People like me love DA2 combat. Because we love COMBAT and action.

People who love DAO combat usually do not like any MMO or any game that is not turn based, painfully slow chess like strategy "combat".

Coming from someone who played WoW hardcore for a good 5-6 years I disagree with this. I preferred DAO's combat.

Neither game had great combat though. Set the proper tactics and they both become damn easy. DA2's pace was better but way too fast and DAO's animations were far better. DAO offered more options when it came to playstyles and you weren't stuck with a specific character when you needed a certain role in your group. In the end, it was DA2's animations that killed it for me. They were beyond awful....

DA2 was just filled with endless enemies you could kill in one hit. What's the point of that? Why not just have a few enemies that are harder to kill? Enemies in DAO also had the same skillset you did and weren't limited to 1 or 2 moves.

Both battle systems have room for improvement but out of the two, I think DAO showed more promise.

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Is interesting that people who hate DA2 combat don't seem to know what the roles of Tank, DPS, melee, range, etc.. are.

It just confirms my impression. People who loved DAO combat don't really like combat at all. Am I wrong ?

 
Yes, you are completely wrong. Generalization doesn't make it's a fact. I've played MMO since 2000. Ragnarok Online was my first MMORPG and I still ocassional play few MMORPGs like Granado Espada or even browser F2P MMORPGs like Wartune. I'm well aware of the term Tank, DPS, Damage soaking,  boss raiding, guild wars, imbalance classes like mage and archer, etc..

I've played action beat em up games like Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat etc.. too since 1998 with my SNES. And I still don't like DA 2's combat.  

Renmiri1 wrote...

Would you have enjoyed the game more if you could completely skip all combat ?

Depend on what what kind of games are you talking about. If it's RPG, I'm concern more about roleplaying flexibility, whether I can assume the role of the character or not. Everything else is secondary. If you're talking about fighting games then I would concern more about combat's mechanics like pace, tactics, skill, DPS, defense and offensive rating, equipment etc.. And those things are not what I was looking in DA 2. 

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 09 septembre 2012 - 06:35 .

[Renmiri1]

Oh please... On DAO you could kill enemies with a shout! Massacre ?

And having a move that keeps you rooted in the ground like Reaving Storm shows how static unmoving and not dynamic combat is on DAO.

Have you ever tanked on WoW ? You can't just stay on one spot hacking, you have to pay attention to your party, the floor, healer mana... DAO is way too slow and static to cut it. At least DA2 forces you to get of your arse and go rescue your healers from the parachutting mobs!

[Cygnus x1]

I have been critical at times about this game.
My over all view of this game is Yes its alot of fun.
The graphics are superb ,they really are, I was on the Gold coast just looking at everything.
The game is not perfect but its a good game,when compared to the expectations of DAO thats when things go wrong a bit.
As a stand alone game,story, voice acting ,artwork it is a quality game.
I have been critical but I've gone back for my 2nd play through and came to the conclusion this is a really good game, and yes its fun.

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Oh please... On DAO you could kill enemies with a shout! Massacre ?

Really? I never knew anything like that could happen. Just a shout?

Renmiri1 wrote...

And having a move that keeps you rooted in the ground like Reaving Storm shows how static unmoving and not dynamic combat is on DAO.

I'm not familiar with Reaving Storm' skill so I have no clue what are you talking about.

Renmiri1 wrote...


Have you ever tanked on WoW ? You can't just stay on one spot hacking, you have to pay attention to your party, the floor, healer mana...

That's interesting? What interesting to be a tanker is to soak all damage that you're virtually become indestructable. Imagine rogue's super crit end up causing only 1 damage per hit. That's the ultimate tanker build.

Renmiri1 wrote...

DAO is way too slow and static to cut it. At least DA2 forces you to get of your arse and go rescue your healers from the parachutting mobs!

Rescue the healer or other companions? For what? They'll end up running into enemies respawn center anyway since they're all dumb AI. Especially Varric. He just loves to run straight into enemies crowd. 

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 09 septembre 2012 - 06:56 .

[Yrkoon]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Oh please... On DAO you could kill enemies with a shout! Massacre ?

Massacre is not in DA:O.  It's in Awakening.   Can we employ a bit  more honesty in this debate?  Thanks.    I've got a completely different  set of opinions about Awakening's combat.  It's not even remotely fair to lump the two together as one and the same. 

And having a move that keeps you rooted in the ground like Reaving Storm shows how static unmoving and not dynamic combat is on DAO.

What?  AGAIN.  You're talking about Awakening.  Stop changing the subject.

Have you ever tanked on WoW ?

Enough of this.  Why in the world are we using WOW as a f**king benchmark for combat in a single player RPG?  Dragon Age. Is. Not.  An.  MMO.   It's not Supposed to have the same combat mechanics.  Many of us here loved DA:O's combat because it was refreshingly, and deliberately DIFFERENT from the boring and utterly unimaginitive garbage of WOW. 

And by different, I mean massively different.  It employs a completely different philosophy.  For example.  You don't even need a tank in DA:O.  The combat system is diverse enough to allow for alternatives to the  cookie cutter  MMO template.   In DA:O,  A party of mages can work together to adequately  win every encounter.  As can a party of warriors, or a party of Rogues, or.... no  party at all.  I Soloed DA:O  with a mage.    It worked.  The items, skills, talents and specializations allowed for success.  That's called freedom.  And diversity.  A system that allows  the player to use his imagination and solve combat challenges in several different ways   IS A GOOD ONE.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 09 septembre 2012 - 07:06 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Renmiri1 wrote...

On WoW and several other games, Warrios are NOT the top damage. They are TANKS and as such draw all the enemy fire and have a thick armor and good damage resistence.

Which is genuinely perverse design, I think.  I never understood why this approach made any sense at all except in terms of forcing players to work together (which has no relevance in a single-player game).

Renmiri1 wrote...

To me is mainly to get all options of dialog. DA2 is not "click to talk" like DAO is so to fully see what your companions say and act, you need to play different classes and different personas. Carver and Bethany being the obvious one, but also LI wise, the romances play a lot different if you romance someone first or take Isabela first. And Sarcastic Hawke is a lot different than Diplomatic Hawke or Direct Hawke. And your companions reaction to your Hawke change with it.

Sometimes you find an "easter egg" completely by surprise. I was recording something on Legacy and got a dialogue between Hawke, Anders and Fenris that wasn't documented anywhere. Was hilarious!

So for you, replaying a game is simply a means to experience more of the game's content.  That makes sense.

I replay games to find out how different PC's fare.  I'll design a character with a specific personality to see what effect that personality has on how the story unfolds.  But DA2 doesn't let me do that, because I'm not actually allowed to implement a personality of my own design.  I'm only allowed to have Diplomatic Hawke, Saracastic Hawke, or Aggressive Hawke, without any nuance or shades of grey.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 09 septembre 2012 - 07:07 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Again, on DA2 Warriors are tanks. Tanks use their stats to increase threat (draw all the enemy fire to them) and
increase survival (since they are the ones in front of the dragon being chewed up, they need to be pretty resilient). By having to focus on those two attributes tanks can not and do not have a lot left to raise their damage. No tank will top a DPS (Damage per second) chart, not unless your damage dealers really really suck.

Why not?  Why not have Warriors excel in all aspects of combat, while other classes excel only in some aspects of combat, but make up for it by having greater versatility or a wider range of non-combat abilities?

The tank-centric design we see in MMOs makes no sense at all outside of a combat-only environment where class balance is at all important.  But class balance doesn't matter in a single-player game, and there's far more to a traditional BioWare game than combat.  It's not just an ass-kicking simulation; it's supposed to be a coherent and believable setting, and MMO-style tanks violate both.

Renmiri1 wrote...

Is interesting that people who hate DA2 combat don't seem to know what the roles of Tank, DPS, melee, range, etc.. are.

We know.  We just don't care.  Combat doesn't need to waged on those terms.

DAO, for example, didn't require a tank at all.  You could use mages to do all of the crowd control.  And why do tanks have to be Warriors?  Leliana made a good tank in DAO - either by maxing her strength and wearing massive armour, or by maxing her dex and just not gettign hit.  The dex-tank in DAO was a refreshing change from WOW-style mechanics.

And, frankly, from a roleplaying perspective, why is any character eager to get hit?  I generally consider any combat encounter entirely successful only if none of my characters take any damage at all - because that would be their preference, and when I'm roleplaying the characters' preferences are all that matter.

It just confirms my impression. People who loved DAO combat don't really like combat at all. Am I wrong ? Would you have enjoyed the game more if you could completely skip all combat ?

I would have enjoyed DA2 more if I could have skipped all of the combat, yes, because DA2's combat was a tedious chore.  But I wouldn't have wanted to skip DAO's combat, because DAO's combat offered valuable roleplaying opportunities.  My DAO Warden could be a coward, and that informed his combat style.  Choosing what skills your character learns and what tactics he employs are roleplaying opportunities, but DA2's combat simply didn't offer enough different ways of approaching combat to make that fun.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 09 septembre 2012 - 07:19 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Tommyspa wrote...

Not a bad thing, exactly. There are times when you are locked in death animations  where you are taking damage or ones where they miss their target entirely, even though it still kills them.

True.

Friendly fire only existed on hard and nightmare on Origins, not exactly a huge difference worthy of a complaint at all.

That's a pretty big difference, actually.  DAO's Hard was a level playing field.  The mechanics didn't favour one side or the other.  But in both games, Nighmare is arbitrarily difficult in ways that don't necessarily make any sense within the setting (DA2's arbitrary elemental immunities ar a good example of this).

DA2 offered no way to play a fair game.  Either you had a massive advantange (no FF), or the game's mechanics were laughably unbalance.

Stealth was completely unnecessary in Origins, you can't pretend it wasn't.

What do you mean by necessary?  It was necessay if you wanted to play a stealthy character.  If your only goal is to "beat the game" (a concept I'm not even convinced is meaningful in a roleplaying game), then yes, stealth wasn't necessary, but if your goal is to roleplay characters with different personalities then having different tactical options available to them is an unequivocal win.

At best you turn into a black cloud no one in the game can see somehow and deliver one critical hit before you reappear. If you really strech it you can claim your "reconniasance" was necessary, but that would require the game being difficult enough to actually require it, which it doesn't even come close to being.

See?  You're presupposing that everyone plays the game the way you play the game, and then pointing out that these features don't help play that way.  Your argument is circular.

Refer to stealth, nothing even begins to be necessary here to play the game even on its most difficult parts, fancy sure, but not something that makes gameplay good.

What makes for good gameplay is a roleplaying game is any opportunity to roleplay.

Boss battles were never deadly, explosive tactical affairs. You can beat every boss and basic enemy with the same basic tactics. Cone of Cold to freeze groups. Fireball to knock them all down. Kill all mages and archers before they pick you apart and spam every activated ability to have until everything it dead and spam the extreme number of potions you accumluate in the game when you have lower health. And fighting Dragons? Make your party consist of a spirit healer, two people to run up and hit it and someone else to attack from a distance. It is down in 5 minutes, not exactly a tactical affair.

You just did it again.

Nothing bad about waves in combat, other than you not liking it. If anything it makes you regroup your characters as they drop in around you meaning you actually have to adjust your tactics actively.

How about how it violates the coherence of the setting by having enemies who didn't even exist 5 seconds ago suddenly swarm over you?

-Turbo speed  crap. Who was the misguided fool who thought it would be a good idea to make combat in an RPG be arcade like?

More "I don't like it, it sucks"

Let me try:

DA2's increased combat speed made it vastly more difficult to implement elaborate tactical plans when compared to DAO.

And before you point out that DAO didn't require elaborate tactical plans, read my stealth response again.  I don't care at all whether elaborate tactical plans benefit your playstyle.  You're not being forced to use them.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 09 septembre 2012 - 07:30 .

[Yrkoon]

Agreed with all of the above but I wanna focus on this because it strikes at the core of the entire combat debate:

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Stealth was completely unnecessary in Origins, you can't pretend it wasn't.

What do you mean by necessary?  It was necessay if you wanted to play a stealthy character.  If your only goal is to "beat the game" (a concept I'm not even convinced is meaningful in a roleplaying game), then yes, stealth wasn't necessary, but if your goal is to roleplay characters with different personalities then having different tactical options available to them is an unequivocal win.

An unequivocal necessity, even.  And not just stealth.  The Staff requirement  for mages (which you mentioned earlier) also applies here.   If you wish to play a mage in DA2,  then the  game will literally force you to roleplay a mage with a staff.   (Mage Hawke has a staff  physically grafted to his body)  But lets for a moment forget the absurdity of this.    The important thing is that The game will not allow you to role-play a Mage who uses a dagger instead of the traditional  mage's walking stick, despite the fact that it would be  totally prudent, from the story's perspective,  for Mage Characters  to do whatever it takes to  not blatantly advertize the fact that they're mages, like walking around with  a giant glowing mage staff strapped to their backs.    But  lets forget about that, too. 

Instead, lets focus on the fact that mages in DA2 have no weapon choices whatsoever.  None.   They must use staves or else....wait, there is no "or else".  You must use staves if you're a mage.  Now I'm sure there's some people here who totally applaud this ridiculous lack of choice, and prefer it to the system we had in DA:O where Mages could use staves.... and any other weapon.     And of course, there are others who  will chime in with feigned indifference and say:  'who cares!', even as they pretend to want player agency and choice in their RPGs,  and  even as they bore us with their fully defined and well thought out combat preferences/opinions , comically arguing that DA2's combat was more dynamic and versatile  than DA:O's.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 09 septembre 2012 - 08:33 .

[Sir JK]

I genuinely enjoyed DA2 alot, much more than I enjoyed DAO (that's not saying I didn't enjoy DAO mind). I do think DAO is the better game (as in better made), but I think DA2 is way more fun to play. Partly I enjoy the plot a lot more; it engages me more than DAOs plot which, while excellently executed, was fairly standard. I've played games that revolves around gathering allies to save the world before. The personal story I liked, mostly because I hadn't really played that in a traditional rpg for a very long time.
I also felt that some of the big choices in DAO didn't really fit the narrative (dwarven succession, I'm looking at you) and was given to me by merit of being a PC rather than earning that power. That DA2 focused on the personal and not on the grand political was much more preferable to me.

I find the companions and the interactions between them about equal in the two games. The accesability is superior in DAO (and that is a rather important thing), but DA2 explores their lives and personality a bit better I feel.

I do not have much taste for filler combat in either game. A good fight when narratively appropriate, sure. Bring them on, I say. But filler combat I would not lose sleep over if it was removed. I felt I could stand it better DA2, mostly because it kept me on my toes. I had to interact with the combat mechanics due to the fast pace and the waves, which allowed me to easier skim over the fact that there was another filler fight. In DAO howerver, I feel like I'm mostly watching moves execute. I'm not really planning more than I am in DA2, which means that to me the difference between the two is that in the former of the two games I'm mostly waiting for the fight to end whereas in the later game I'm actively ending the fight. Naturally I prefer DA2 then.
Boss fights are different mind. DA2 is more gimmicky I feel, whereas DAO relies on good tanking, good damage and good healing. I still find DA2 more engaging, but there's less of a difference in that regard.

The voice, I am a fan. It allowed me much much more of the expression I desire. I acknowledge that there were flaws with it's execution and hope those will be fixed for future games, but I liked it.

There, that's my opinion and analysis thereof.

----

Which is genuinely perverse design, I think. I never understood why this approach made any sense at all except in terms of forcing players to work together (which has no relevance in a single-player game).
...
Why not? Why not have Warriors excel in all aspects of combat, while other classes excel only in some aspects of combat, but make up for it by having greater versatility or a wider range of non-combat abilities?

It's an artifact from the change to DnD 3.0 in the beginning of the last decade. Combat became the primary focus of the system. The other approaches becoming marginalised. As such all classes had to have a combat focus to be relevant. Rogues became damage dealers. This has later been distilled in the trinity of Tank-DPS-Healer of MMOs. But at it's core it was defined by the change in DnD. Which has formed the basis of a large part of today's western Roleplaying systems (the alternatives exist and floruish on the tabletop market, but there's virtually no computer games built according to them).

The problem is not that trinity, it is merely the logical conclusion of the balance necessary to justify the other classes. But rather that there is in fact no challenge systems in place for Social, Enviromental or Mystical conflict. As such, all classes present are designed to complement one another in combat. Rogues then have to make damage, mages have to run Area of Effect, healers have to heal and warriors... well... tanking is the only thing left. There are variations of this, of course.

As long as no other forms of challenges exist as formalised mechanics (and binary succeed/fails does -not- count), there is few ways to avoid this without rendering a class unjustified.

[philippe willaume]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

I on the other hand would pick DA2 especially given DAO's mages and rogues.

Mages are the main reason I would choose DAO's mechanics.  I couldn't stand DA2 mage gamplay.  Plus, spell combos are amazing.

And Rogues?  Rogues in DA2 were frightfully one dimensional.  Plus, they lacked the recon stealth abilities of DAO Rogues.

Amen to that
in fact i would extend that mono dimentionality to the warrior class as well.
phil

[Ice-Whiz]

I enjoyed playing da2, and, though the combat was unrealistically fast, at least dual-wielders used both their swords in standard attacks. In dao i dislike that one sword would hang uselessly unless used for a special attack or finishing combo...but if the o combat was sped up a little, not as much as 2 just a bit, i think the combat would have been more enjoyable to watch and do, while still allowing strategic thinking. Imo that is.

[bEVEsthda]

wsandista wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Good God. I can't believe people here are praising DA2's Combat. Despite DA2's mountain of irredeemable flaws, excuse me, mountain range of irredeemable flaws, I'd rank the Combat as the worst part of the entire game. The arbitrary shoe-horning of the new class rescrictions (warriors can't dual-wield or use bows, Rogues can't use swords, mages can't use anything but staves)  Alone was enough to damn the entire system.

But it was only the very surface of the garbage heap.

-Finishing moves are gone.
-Friendly fire is gone, unless you play on the the highest setting
-Stealth game play is gone.
-The ability to lay traps. perform reconniasance, and plan ambushes was removed.
-Boss battles went from being deadly, explosive tactical affairs in the first game to being nothing more than long, BORING battles of attrition, and not difficult at all in the second game.
-Wave combat for every encounter. <gag>
-Turbo speed  crap. Who was the misguided fool who thought it would be a good idea to make combat in an RPG be arcade like?
-combat Animations. Give me a break.   They were embarrasingly childish. Like watching a bugs bunny or road runner cartoon. Despite what Bioware says, they were NOT designed for adults. They were made to excite and amaze kids.

Oh and one more thing... Mages gyrating around and twirling their staves like professional martial artists does NOT make them more fun to play. Just more sad to watch. As it stands, the only thing they gave mages was a warrior feel. But if I want that feeling, I'll just play a friggin Warrior. And Rogues? They Ruined them. Killed them. Destroyed everything that they're are supposed to be. Rogues used to be the subtle silent killers who strike from the shadows. But in DA2, they're the opposite. They're the flashy acrobat center stagers with machine guns.

<gag> But back on topic. No. I didn't find DA2 fun at all. I found it hideously horrifying. I found myself questioning my own gaming tastes (after all, my eyes weren't deceiving me. The game box DID say Dragon Age and Bioware, so this had to be the same kind of game I had been playing since I fell in love with Bioware in 1999.... right?)

I agree with everything written here.

I too, of course, agree.
With all the words. But it actually don't mean so much to me. I don't play any of these games for the combat action. Neither do RPG'ers in general. Just consider - how popular would Skyrim be, if combat mattered much to the people who play it?

I'm mainly repulsed by DA2's combat because it's so obviously targeting 14y old boys who skip school.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 09 septembre 2012 - 10:15 .

[Shevy]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Is interesting that people who hate DA2 combat don't seem to know what the roles of Tank, DPS, melee, range, etc.. are.

It just confirms my impression. People who loved DAO combat don't really like combat at all. Am I wrong ? Would you have enjoyed the game more if you could completely skip all combat ?

I prefer Origins' combat big times over DA II and I perfectly know combat "roles". I played a priest and warrior back in WoW when the end game was tough ( Naxxramas 40 back in classic and Sunwell in BC). I love combat, but DA II's hurts my eyes with these "I'm trying to look cool"-animations swinging oversized twohanders like a featherduster or rogues stabbing 25 times a second.
On top of that the wave mechanic killed your tactics and class "roles". While my warrior might be tanking the toughest foes, a new wave born out of thin air twoshots your mages ( on nightmare). So to play tactical u have to know where the waves will spawn. It was one of the most terrible and boring combat I ever "enjoyed" in an rpg.

[Gileadan]

 I was very, very disappointed with DA2, and didn't get much enjoyment out of playing it. I did finish it, but it felt like I was barely limping over the finish line.

First, the story, such as there was, never got me interested. The prologue fell totally flat for me, and the story as a whole never recovered from it. There were just too many stupid things in it that served to distance Hawke and the storyline itself from me. The failed tear-jerker scene when your sibling died, Deus-ex-machina Flemeth, the intro when you meet Varric... you made a name for yourself (says  Hawke), you desperately need coin (says your other sibling), and when said coin is stolen, all Hawke has for that is "Hey!"    Gotta wonder what name exactly Hawke had made for himself there. Bumbling idiot?

Fetch-quests like "Remains of Sister Plinth".  Bloody hell. So you come across a bunch of bones in the ground, and you not only see that those bones were a chantry sister in life, but also what her name was and who her next of kin is? Alrighty, open your backpacks, guys, stuff the rations a bit tighter and make room for the bones! No problem, here we go. 

Companions were a big stumble backwards since Origins. I liked Varric, Aveline and Isabela well enough, they were a very funny party together. Anders, Merrill and Fenris? I avoided them. I can't stand it when a game makes me feel like I'm a traveling therapist and hands me a bunch of certified nursing cases as "companions". It felt like "getting to the sob story" was another quest - whenever you were granted an audience with your companions, that is.

Combat was too dumbed down and drawn out at the same time to be fun. Game mechanics that looked like they were directly lifted out of WoW, lack/impossibility of using tactics and a well planned setup, randomly spawning enemy waves, enemy classes oddly different from your own party with rogues as tanks AND killers and everyone else as cannon-fodder.

Overall - I can forgive a lot of technical shortcomings and quite a few in gameplay when I find a game's story engaging and want to know how it continues and ends. Sadly, that was exactly that DA2 was lacking for me. I never got into the story, I never got into the protagonist, and so all these flaws really galled the experience for me, so much that I found it hard to believe I was playing a BioWare game.

But then again, I did delude myself. I played the demo. I honestly thought that it was quickly slapped together to appease the clamors for a demo, not something from the finished product. No way a real BioWare game would have such a lame beginning, right? When I saw the first trailer with Merrill in it, I thought they had forgotten to remove a placeholder model in their haste. Man, was I in for a wake-up call.

Modifié par Gileadan, 09 septembre 2012 - 10:19 .

[bEVEsthda]

Renmiri1 wrote...
It just confirms my impression. People who loved DAO combat don't really like combat at all. Am I wrong ? Would you have enjoyed the game more if you could completely skip all combat ?

I don't know if you're right or wrong. I would assume you're right (if we limit ourselves to your picture of "combat").

But that's also a big part of the problem. Bioware RPGs "are supposed" to be a different kind games, for a different audience. There are plenty of mindless, consolish romps that cater to your tastes. So why does DA have to be like that too? Why do all games have to be like that?

 The defining structure of the gameplay is: There is nothing but fighting. Every fight is a staged, isolated, compact set (thanks to autohealth, mana etc). And the fighting is always to the death, for all units, regardless of odds. And only way of winning is to kill everything.
And then the "Bosses". Another archaic console game paradigm. And they are exactly like the classic bosses from scrolling shooters and platformers. Dodge around and slowly whittle down a mountain of HP.
- And then you pick up the glowing powerups and bright jewels!

If this is all that the game is going to be built up around (and it is, nowadays, thanks to console dominance and the big corporations like EA), then to justify all this relentless slaughter, which progressing through the game entails, the story served on the side has to depict that opposition as *evil*. ...Or mechanical, or alien. Or all things together, to dehumanize what is killed.

And that's it. All there is to it.

And that's all you want? Same sh*t over and over again? In every game?

I would put forward that this is a very big reasons why the vast majority of the potential market for videogames regard videogames as drivel and an utter waste of time. As long as the industry is just focusing on the very small and unwealthy segment of kids who don't want to be inconvenienced by anything else than this drivel, over and over again, they're never going to reach the same entertainment media market as movies, novels, music.

It's not easy to grow out of this hole the industry have dug themselves down into. But cRPGs, western and japanese, definitely represented the biggest opportunity to do so.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 09 septembre 2012 - 01:09 .

[Vaeliorin]

Renmiri1 wrote...
On WoW and several other games, Warrios are NOT the top damage. They are TANKS and as such draw all the enemy fire and have a thick armor and good damage resistence. Top damage usually comes from ranged classes since the melee classes need endurance or evasion to survive being vulnerable to the boss attacks. Rogues for instance use evasion and are pretty overpowered on WoW but not as much as on DA2 

Because there's totally not a Fury tree for warriors in WoW, right? Or an Arms tree, because everyone knows big two-handed weapons do no damage.

Honestly, DA2's combat problems are myriad, ranging from a lack of interesting talents for warriors and archers to terrible encounter and enemy design. I do like that they tried to make the boss fights more interesting, but I don't feel like they were very successful at it. DA's combat is not without its flaws, but it was, to my mind overall the better experience.

Regardless, both games were ridiculously easy even on the hardest difficulty, and I think that's something that needs to change.

Modifié par Vaeliorin, 09 septembre 2012 - 10:39 .

[Orian Tabris]

DA2 is fun. Duel-Wield rogue is by far the most fun, running around, leaping at enemies, and so on. Backstab and the like, especially. All three classes are fun though.

The only thing not fun, is trying to cater to the companions rivalry/friendship.

[philippe willaume]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Good God. I can't believe people here are praising DA2's Combat. Despite DA2's mountain of irredeemable flaws, excuse me, mountain range of irredeemable flaws, I'd rank the Combat as the worst part of the entire game. The arbitrary shoe-horning of the new class rescrictions (warriors can't dual-wield or use bows, Rogues can't use swords, mages can't use anything but staves)  Alone was enough to damn the entire system.

But it was only the very surface of the garbage heap.

-Finishing moves are gone.
-Friendly fire is gone, unless you play on the the highest setting
-Stealth game play is gone.
-The ability to lay traps. perform reconniasance, and plan ambushes was removed.
-Boss battles went from being deadly, explosive tactical affairs in the first game to being nothing more than long, BORING battles of attrition, and not difficult at all in the second game.
-Wave combat for every encounter. <gag>
-Turbo speed  crap. Who was the misguided fool who thought it would be a good idea to make combat in an RPG be arcade like?
-combat Animations. Give me a break.   They were embarrasingly childish. Like watching a bugs bunny or road runner cartoon. Despite what Bioware says, they were NOT designed for adults. They were made to excite and amaze kids.

Oh and one more thing... Mages gyrating around and twirling their staves like professional martial artists does NOT make them more fun to play. Just more sad to watch. As it stands, the only thing they gave mages was a warrior feel. But if I want that feeling, I'll just play a friggin Warrior. And Rogues? They Ruined them. Killed them. Destroyed everything that they're are supposed to be. Rogues used to be the subtle silent killers who strike from the shadows. But in DA2, they're the opposite. They're the flashy acrobat center stagers with machine guns.

I disagre 100%

DAO combat was near unplayable to me. Too slow.

But then I radided harcore on WoW for years so I like combat, not a chess game pretending to be combat  You know, battles ? No pause, no turn based, your toon can die ?

People like me love DA2 combat. Because we love COMBAT and action.

People who love DAO combat usually do not like any MMO or any game that is not turn based, painfully slow chess like strategy "combat".

hello

I think you are missing the point
I like combat and action.
That being said when combat and action are repetitive
through and entire game I find it Tedious with a capital B

Don't get me wrong, there is lots of intellectual effort in
creating an optimal build, but on DA:2 this is still Tedious. through in fairness
I should say that it is more boring that tedious at that stage.

You mentioned that warrior are supposed to be tanks well yes
and that is what Aveline ends up being most of the time.

Now take a look at the vanguard berserker (S&W or THW)
and you have a mincing factory that gives a new meaning to DPS.


The problem most of us have with DA:2 Combat is that we will do exactly the same thing from ACT I to ACT III. And yes  I would agree that it is not dissimilar to DA:0 with two mages in the party and using fire cone/ball/storm + grease + tremor for added bonus.

Now in DA:0 every body had two specialisations, So you could adapt how you played to what the situation was and that is what we miss.

What I am getting at is that I need to used more team co-operation and I have a much more varied play in a Cliff of Dover or in ME 1 than I did in DA:2. So speed of action is not a determining factor

Sure we could ague over what is optimum speed with orwithout pause or distinct planning phase with a limited set of command you can give you crew (or bullet time or pause) but the end result is the same i.e.adapt what you do  to the terrain and circumstances.

phil

Modifié par philippe willaume, 09 septembre 2012 - 10:45 .

[eroeru]

Renmiri1 wrote...
It just confirms my impression. People who loved DAO combat don't really like combat at all. Am I wrong ? Would you have enjoyed the game more if you could completely skip all combat ?

Look at what you're saying for a second.
"people who loved combat don't really like combat".

That is nonsensical.

Though I can see some merit in likewise thinking. It is certainly one thing to love combat for the fact that it is combat and fighting and such - this is brought about from the animations (Combat as seen - it is the type of enjoyment when you watch movies where there's action). Another thing entirely is enjoying combat for strategic elements, and planning (yet it is still combat, and saying that "if you get the second type of enjoyment out of it, then you don't like combat" is nonsensical)

In what way does this "other" type of enjoyment of combat manifest itself? Well, I'd distinguish three types:

1. Combat is one way in which your RP build will show what it does, thus giving relevance to RP, also it gives diversity to RP (it's more interesting to role-play a guy who has to fight time by time than it is to role-play a life-long farmer);


2. planning out your stats will finally have consequences (which is basically the same as 1, only that planning stats for better (sic!) combat results exclusively is different from RP as the enjoyment differs in category or type - also, stats aren't a strictly necessary requirement for RP)


edit: for the planning to be relevant, you'd need to actually think rather than choosing a "role", eg tank, healer etc. Roles are stereotypes that many RPG players want to, and can in many games, break.

I do not think of choosing a "role" as "planning out your stats" here. The two are mutually exclusive in my book.


3. planning out the encouter, as one clear set of a game, iff you can distinguish discrete elements as "moves" (think chess), where time doesn't play a role (pause-function), gives a strategic thrill. Tactics are also sometimes neat, but as to tactics, the pause-functionality and discrete differentation of movements aren't a part of it (think "tactical shooter" or to a lesser extent, WoW combat). And so did the pause-function partly lose its functionality and meaning in ][.
I certainly think strategy (more-or-less DA:O combat) to be a better and more enjoyable type of planning - the reflexes part is minimized in favor of brain activity.:P


These three points were neglected in favor of the flash and slash in mindlessly-to-be-enjoyed combat.


an edit: alright, there is certainly a third category of combat enjoyment as well - this being the "pure gameplay" element, where you enjoy strictly the (imaginary) control of an "avatar" in itself, in merit of quickly and logically shown changes in the gameworld via your pressing a button.

Suffice to say I'm not a fan of this, as it is still mindless, though it is more important in games than the purely "action as seen" element.

Modifié par eroeru, 09 septembre 2012 - 12:57 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Going back to Renmiri's comment again, even if I was interested in an MMO-type power leveling design, DA2's lack of consistency in attributes and complete lack of guidance on how this arbitrary system works makes it a guessing game.

For instance, by having Cunning work as a defense stat instead of the more obvious Dexterity, the strategy guide actually says that all classes should put one point in Cunnign every level (wih more for Rogue classes). Why, in any world, would I spend a point in Cunning when I am trying to create a warrior tank? It requires a huge leap in logic... a leap I would be find with if the game actually TOLD you this in game or in the manual, but they don't.

If a game is focused on combat as the only means to every single situation, and if an extreme level-scaling mechanic is at play that can make enemies detrimentally more powerful when you level up if stats aren't correctly allocated (like it was with DA2), then NOT explaining the attributes correctly is really poor execution. It's just another slap in the face from a combat system that forces you to play very specific roles and builds in combat, for no reason whatsoever other than an attempt to copy and paste MMO builds.

[Merlex]

[quote]Tommyspa wrote...

[quote]Yrkoon wrote...

-Finishing moves are gone.[/quote]
Not a bad thing, exactly. There are times when you are locked in death animations  where you are taking damage or ones where they miss their target entirely, even though it still kills them.



[quote]-Friendly fire is gone, unless you play on the the highest setting[/quote]
Friendly fire only existed on hard and nightmare on Origins, not exactly a huge difference worthy of a complaint at all.[/quote]

Yea, because simplification, and less options are better right?
[quote]


[quote]-Stealth game play is gone.[/quote]
Stealth was completely unnecessary in Origins, you can't pretend it wasn't. At best you turn into a black cloud no one in the game can see somehow and deliver one critical hit before you reappear. If you really strech it you can claim your "reconniasance" was necessary, but that would require the game being difficult enough to actually require it, which it doesn't even come close to being.



[quote]-The ability to lay traps. perform reconniasance, and plan ambushes was removed.[/quote]
Refer to stealth, nothing even begins to be necessary here to play the game even on its most difficult parts, fancy sure, but not something that makes gameplay good.
[/quote]

Some people have different playstyles. Not everyone wants the straight DPS button mashing every fight, every playthough. Different combats styles are unnecessary, if you want the same mindless combat every time.

[quote]


[quote]-Boss battles went from being deadly, explosive tactical affairs in the first game to being nothing more than long, BORING battles of attrition, and not difficult at all in the second game.[/quote]
Boss battles were never deadly, explosive tactical affairs. You can beat every boss and basic enemy with the same basic tactics. Cone of Cold to freeze groups. Fireball to knock them all down. Kill all mages and archers before they pick you apart and spam every activated ability to have until everything it dead and spam the extreme number of potions you accumluate in the game when you have lower health. And fighting Dragons? Make your party consist of a spirit healer, two people to run up and hit it and someone else to attack from a distance. It is down in 5 minutes, not exactly a tactical affair.[/quote]


Same basic tactics. There lies the problem.

[quote] 



[quote]-Wave combat for every encounter. <gag>[/quote]
Nothing bad about waves in combat, other than you not liking it. If anything it makes you regroup your characters as they drop in around you meaning you actually have to adjust your tactics actively.[/quote]

Wow, your defending wave combat? Yea your right, because enemies dropping from the sky makes sense.

[quote]



[quote]-Turbo speed  crap. Who was the misguided fool who thought it would be a good idea to make combat in an RPG be arcade like?[/quote]
More "I don't like it, it sucks"[/quote]

I'm not crazy about it either. It does make it feel like an arcade game, rather than a RPG.

[quote]



[quote]-combat Animations. Give me a break.   They were embarrasingly childish. Like watching a bugs bunny or road runner cartoon. Despite what Bioware says, they were NOT designed for adults. They were made to excite and amaze kids.[/quote]
The irony of expressing this idea in this way seethes with irony.[/quote]

 I would say the combat animations were designed for action RPG console players, rather than roleplayers.

[quote]


[quote]Oh and one more thing... Mages gyrating around and twirling their staves like professional martial artists does NOT make them more fun to play. Just more sad to watch. As it stands, the only thing they gave mages was a warrior feel. But if I want that feeling, I'll just play a friggin Warrior. And Rogues? They Ruined them. Killed them. Destroyed everything that they're are supposed to be. Rogues used to be the subtle silent killers who strike from the shadows. But in DA2, they're the opposite. They're the flashy acrobat center stagers with machine guns.[/quote]Yeah let's pretend this isn't also ironic and not more "I don't like it, it sucks"
[/quote]

Mages twirling their staves around with every basic shot was silly looking. The fact that mages would stand toe to toe in melee, even when set to ranged is stupid. Anders runs right into trouble all the time.

You seriously believe that a dagger should do more basic damage per hit than a long sword or even a two handed sword?

Modifié par Merlex, 09 septembre 2012 - 01:07 .

[Fallstar]

It was a kinda fun game if you could completely remove DAO from the picture. But I couldn't, and the sheer disappointment basically spoiled DA2 for me. I can see how it is a decent enough standalone game, but in Howe's words, "I...deserved...more...bleurgh"