77 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

Marbazoid wrote...

There are problems with the attribute system but those flaws are due to the way Bioware chose to implement attributes in both DA:O and DA:2.

These problems are not to do with "attribute systems" as a whole. Many games in the past have used these systems and, in my opinion, implemented them better.

There are certainly better systems that in DA:O and DA2.  But those systems still aren't particularly good for CRPGs

They have value for tabletop games, because they allow you to adjudicate situations that the are not specifically catered for in the rules by giving an idea of the characters broad abilities.  But this capacity isn't very useful in a single player CRPG, because there's no capacity for spontaneity - the character can only act in ways that are designed in advance.  And the DA attributes system's ridiculous stat inflation makes this sort of use fairly pointless anyway.

My initial thoughts were to advocate returning to a more traditional stat system such as in D&D or in V:TM, without the stat inflation.  And I'd welcome that if that's what we got.  But I couldn't and can't see what that system would really be adding to the game that couldn't be better achieved through the talents.

@Bfler
Skyrim's abolishing of it's attribute system was indeed an inspiration - the game truly lost absolutely nothing of value by doing so.  Though I'm not advocating bringing in "perks", only expanding on talent trees - though of course both are inspired by similar systems.

@Master Shiori 
One of the major advantages of my proposal would be abolish the sort of hamster wheel advancement that requires you spend points merely to keep up.  That sort of thing is a false choice and thus boring.  Keeping pace should happen automatically with levelling. 

The player should be left to choose what new capabilities they wish, not waste time on maintaining the status quo.

[Marbazoid]

Wulfram wrote...

There are certainly better systems that in DA:O and DA2.  But those systems still aren't particularly good for CRPGs

They have value for tabletop games, because they allow you to adjudicate situations that the are not specifically catered for in the rules by giving an idea of the characters broad abilities.  But this capacity isn't very useful in a single player CRPG, because there's no capacity for spontaneity - the character can only act in ways that are designed in advance.  And the DA attributes system's ridiculous stat inflation makes this sort of use fairly pointless anyway.

My initial thoughts were to advocate returning to a more traditional stat system such as in D&D or in V:TM, without the stat inflation.  And I'd welcome that if that's what we got.  But I couldn't and can't see what that system would really be adding to the game that couldn't be better achieved through the talents.

Your proposed system seems to be a move in the direction of the way mmorpg's do things. Basically, you have combat statistics, but these are improved with equipment. The rest of your character is determined by your class, and the talents you choose when levelling up.

I don't see those systems as bad, but it may be perceived as a further removed opportunity for player agency. Something which Boware has mentioned, as being one of the main areas they hope to improve in DA3.

Modifié par Marbazoid, 04 octobre 2012 - 01:37 .

[Fallstar]

Why abolish attributes. The system in both DAO and DA2 worked fine. In Origins you'd generally pump primary and secondary attributes, with a sprinkling of points elsewhere. But there was plenty of variety. EG do you make your rogue full on cunning for a glass cannon, or turn it into a dex tank, do you get the str to use full sized weapons or stick with daggers etc.

DA2 was a bit weirder, especially as most classes ended up putting points into dex and cun end game (because they had a seriously messed up hidden diminishing returns system with stacking in DA2), which gave rogues a bit of an advantage there. (As they were the only attributes they'd pump). But it still worked OK.

Removing attributes seems unnecessary basically.

Modifié par DuskWarden, 04 octobre 2012 - 01:44 .

[Maclimes]

Worst case scenario, just add in an optional system that auto-levels attributes. Let that be behind the scenes for people who don't want to min-max or customize stats. You choose an "archetype" at the beginning of the game (Archer, Tank, etc) and the game does the math for you. Or you can continue to do it yourself, manually, the traditional way.

[Wulfram]

Marbazoid wrote...

Your proposed system seems to be a move in the direction of the way mmorpg's do things. Basically, you have combat statistics, but these are improved with equipment. The rest of your character is determined by your class, and the talents you choose when levelling up.

I don't see those systems as bad, but it may be perceived as a further removed opportunity for player agency. Something which Boware has mentioned, as being one of the main areas they hope to improve in DA3.

Moving away from the false and boring choices of the attribute system to real and interesting choices does not reduce player agency.  Rather the opposite.

As for MMOs, from what I've seen - which isn't a great amount, and concentrated at low levels - they're mostly examples of boring or non-choices.  Largely because you don't actually get to choose the bulk of your talents, you just have to traipse back to the trainer to buy your allotment for the level.  That certainly isn't something I'd advocate emulating.

@Maclimes
In that case, what purpose is the attribute system serving?

Modifié par Wulfram, 04 octobre 2012 - 01:57 .

[Nomen Mendax]

Wulfram wrote...

...

And it's inherently ridiculous to have the PC end up with 5 times the strength they started out with.

It's only ridiculous if the strength attribute maps to something like how much you can bench press in a linear way - I never assumed it did.

I don't think I'd want to abolish attributes, but I very much would like to see them used out of combat (and agree with your point that they are not used very much), and for that matter I'd very much like things to do that weren't wither combat or talking to people.

Modifié par Nomen Mendax, 04 octobre 2012 - 02:01 .

[hexaligned]

I'd agree in so much as I think they need to pick what style of game they want to make, and just throw everything that doesn't support it in the trash. Not that hybrid games can't be good, I just don't think Bioware is good at making them.

Personally I would prefer if they added a whole slew of new stats to the game, and to make them actually meaningful in terms of character building. But I can enjoy brainless action games too, depending on other factors.

[Fawx9]

Oh FFS, its like I'm back at the D3 beta boards.

You can go ahead and remove attribute spending if you like, but there better be a damn good way of progressing your character through talents/skills, cause if you shift the stat collecting to gear you'll end up with the hell hole that is D3 itemization.

My view on the subject: You're going to need to spend points into something. If you get talent A that does two 110% weapon damage attacks then your going to need to spend extra points in that talent later so it goes to 120%,130%, etc. Because if you say "We'll just use items to boost base damage by large amounts" then those items better drop regularly or your going to have a lot of annoyed players who get stuck on progression, and I would much rather this not turn into an item farm game.

And if you're spending points is there that much of a difference from strength, and a talent like ME has that increases weapon damage?

Modifié par Fawx9, 04 octobre 2012 - 02:08 .

[Wulfram]

Fawx9 wrote...

Oh FFS, its like I'm back at the D3 beta boards.

You can go ahead and remove attribute spending if you like, but there better be a damn good way of progressing your character through talents/skills, cause if you shift the stat collecting to gear you'll end up with the hell hole that is D3 itemization.

My view on the subject: You're going to need to spend points into something. If you get talent A that does two 110% weapon damage attacks then your going to need to spend extra points in that talent later so it goes to 120%,130%, etc. Because if you say "We'll just use items to boost base damage by large amounts" then those items better drop regularly or your going to have a lot of annoyed players who get stuck on progression, and I would much rather this not turn into an item farm game.

And if you're spending points is there that much of a difference from strength, and a talent like ME has that increases weapon damage?

Well, if I had my way I'd reduce item progression quite dramatically. It's another thing that creates false choice - do I use this sword, or this one that's better in every way?  Far better to have two items of fairly similar power, but which provide different things.

I don't really see the need for increasing damage dramatically with level.  But if you want to do it, you can simply make it happen automatically as a function of player level, rather than forcing the player to pay an attribute or talent tax just to keep up.

Look back to DnD - you don't have to buy Base Attack Bonus, and you shouldn't.  Though in recent editions you are more or less obliged to keep investing your classes main stat, and items that boost that stat, just to keep up with the enemies, and that's the sort of design that I'd like to get rid off.

Modifié par Wulfram, 04 octobre 2012 - 02:20 .

[Fawx9]

Wulfram wrote...

Fawx9 wrote...

Oh FFS, its like I'm back at the D3 beta boards.

You can go ahead and remove attribute spending if you like, but there better be a damn good way of progressing your character through talents/skills, cause if you shift the stat collecting to gear you'll end up with the hell hole that is D3 itemization.

My view on the subject: You're going to need to spend points into something. If you get talent A that does two 110% weapon damage attacks then your going to need to spend extra points in that talent later so it goes to 120%,130%, etc. Because if you say "We'll just use items to boost base damage by large amounts" then those items better drop regularly or your going to have a lot of annoyed players who get stuck on progression, and I would much rather this not turn into an item farm game.

And if you're spending points is there that much of a difference from strength, and a talent like ME has that increases weapon damage?

Well, if I had my way I'd reduce item progression quite dramatically. It's another thing that creates false choice - do I use this sword, or this one that's better in every way?  Far better to have two items of fairly similar power, but which provide different things.

I don't really see the need for increasing damage dramatically with level.  But if you want to do it, you can simply make it happen automatically as a function of player level, rather than forcing the player to pay an attribute or talent tax just to keep up.

Look back to DnD - you don't have to buy Base Attack Bonus, and you shouldn't.  Though in recent editions you are more or less obliged to keep investing your classes main stat, and items that boost that stat, just to keep up with the enemies, and that's the sort of design that I'd like to get rid off.

If we aren't ramping up damage and health pools over time(either from talents/attributes), where does the player get a sense of progression from?

Taking away damage increase leaves us with skills. Skills which are almost never on par with each other. No matter how hard devs try there will always be a few builds that just work better than others, and for the most part thats fine. However, if you get this build halfway through the game and you dont get any other meaningful increases to your character you are effectively killing the sense of character progression when it comes to combat.

Now maybe thats what you want, a base character only defined by base skills and no other factors for combat purposes, but you risk coming very close to turning this into feeling like a 3rd person action game at that point(when it comes to combat). I'm not sure how many people are going to be onboard for that.

Side note: By removing attributes you remove the chance that players find a way to break the game. By this I mean come up with a ridiculous build that just somehow works cause you have enough health, or you augmented your chacaretr in some other silly way. BW can make an auto assign that you could use if you find it tedious but removing choices for build is never a good idea (imo).

[MichaelStuart]

If getting rid of attributes also gets rid of dice rolling, I support this even more.

[BlueMagitek]

I like attributes.

It would be nice if there was an option for them to have more of an effect on the story (instead of sneaking into a base, a high CHA character might be able to bluff his way in, for example).

Of course, in DA:O this was somewhat simulated by the skills, which often required a minimum attribute for a skill.

[Marbazoid]

Wulfram wrote...

Moving away from the false and boring choices of the attribute system to real and interesting choices does not reduce player agency.  Rather the opposite.

As for MMOs, from what I've seen - which isn't a great amount, and concentrated at low levels - they're mostly examples of boring or non-choices.  Largely because you don't actually get to choose the bulk of your talents, you just have to traipse back to the trainer to buy your allotment for the level.  That certainly isn't something I'd advocate emulating.

Your advocating a completely new system, rather than fixing the flaws in the current system.

And what I meant by reducing the perception of player agency, is what happened in mass effect 2. Even though the inventory and weapon system presented fake and boring choices in Mass Effect, the move to the Mass Effect 2 system was perceived as a reduction in player choice, when in actual fact it was the complete opposite.

Many, including myself, felt that fixing the flaws and improving on the classic inventory and weapons would have been more elegant.

And you have a point about the mmo comparison, I didn't think that one through enough.

Modifié par Marbazoid, 04 octobre 2012 - 02:49 .

[Cutlass Jack]

The problem is not attributes. The problem is how recent Bioware games like DA2 and SWTOR use attributes. In that game everyone had a primary stat that was really the only thing they needed. So it really could have just been called 'Primary stat' and 'Secondary Stat' and been done with it.

What the game really needs is for all attributes to have some use to every player no matter what the class. So that there actually is some real decision making involved in how you do your build. Figuring out your primary stat and merely dumping points on it is not a build strategy.

Torchlight 2 I thought did a very good job of this. Every stat had value to everyone. So you had to make some choices on how you handled your increases.

Modifié par Cutlass Jack, 04 octobre 2012 - 03:01 .

[Messi Kossmann]

[Wulfram]

Marbazoid wrote...

Your advocating a completely new system, rather than fixing the flaws in the current system.

I'm advocating focusing on the good part of the current system

And what I meant by reducing the perception of player agency, is what happened in mass effect 2. Even though the inventory and weapon system presented fake and boring choices in Mass Effect, the move to the Mass Effect 2 system was perceived as a reduction in player choice, when in actual fact it was the complete opposite.

Many, including myself, felt that fixing the flaws and improving on the classic inventory and weapons would have been more elegant.

You're right that there is a risk of there being that perception, particularly given the way Bioware's games have been seen to be moving.  Given the current mood this probably isn't the best time to ask Bioware to slaughter an RPG sacred cow - but given the lack of actual information about the game, I felt like taking a tilt at this windmill.

Perhaps there could be ways of avoiding the presentational issue.  Like keeping the new talent trees as being called Attributes, with seperate Attribute points to be spent on them during a seperate phase of the level up process, but having them be designed to be functionally equivalent to talent trees.

As for fixing the attribute system, it seems to me that doing so would actually require at least as drastic a change to the overall Dragon Age system as what I propose.  If you remove the assumption that massive hordes of attribute points must be dumped straight into the classes main stats, which to me has to be the first step to any attempt to fix the system, then you'd still have to make the same sort of adjustments that you would if you simply abolished the whole thing.

[Inprea]

I prefer to keep the attribute and skill systems. I rather enjoy designing my characters though I would like it if they'd have more of an influence in how the game played and how the character looked. A mage with hardly any strength should not look like a chiseled warrior and a warrior with near max strength should not look like a barbie doll.

Moving such things to the skill tree would just clutter up the skill tree as far as I'm concerned. Besides I like that well thought out builds and considered stats reward players. The fact that someone who just randomly assigns points without considering their influence ends up with a broken character is also quite funny.

[Fawx9]

Cutlass Jack wrote...

The problem is not attributes. The problem is how recent Bioware games like DA2 and SWTOR use attributes. In that game everyone had a primary stat that was really the only thing they needed. So it really could have just been called 'Primary stat' and 'Secondary Stat' and been done with it.

What the game really needs is for all attributes to have some use to every player no matter what the class. So that there actually is some real decision making involved in how you do your build. Figuring out your primary stat and merely dumping points on it is not a build strategy.

Torchlight 2 I thought did a very good job of this. Every stat had value to everyone. So you had to make some choices on how you handled your increases.

Isn't that what DA:O had?

I mean each of the attributes could be useful to just about any class (except for magic). They even were used to unlock some of the base skills.

Because each of them were usefull, it allowed the PC to be built around whatever they wanted, not you "Level 10: you get 10 attack rating and 5 defense rating". 

Go back to the more complex style, if you want to fix attributes, dont gut them.

[Cutlass Jack]

In DA:O attributes were more useful yes. They weren't universally useful but better. Attributewise, DA2 absolutely went in the wrong direction. But in my opinion Skyrim did the ultimate expression of that wrong direction.

[marshalleck]

Dark Souls has a near perfect system of attributes and equipment/abilities tied to said attributes. Look there for direction.

[Wulfram]

DA:O was slightly better in that there was a choice between Str and Dex for non mages, and the requirements for talents gave some incentive to buy both. Though Constitution and Willpower were even worse, and it still mostly encouraged one stat builds. Trying to make investing in Magic for non-mages seems like it's very much a fools errand.

The one attribute system I've liked that I played recently was V:TM's (yes, I took my time getting around to that). Increasing costs as you invest more heavily is a good way to encourage diversification. But implementing something like that in DA would be basically the same as abolishing the existing system.

Modifié par Wulfram, 04 octobre 2012 - 03:41 .

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Well, the DA 2 Attribute system isn't exactly the best system.

Generally speaking, I agree with Pirate Jack, though I have not played T2. Still, if we're not going to suggest fixing it, or creating a new one, then might as well roll all of it into the Talent system.

It would be hilariously funny to watch PR handle accusations of "dumbing down", if nothing else.

Modifié par CrustyBot, 04 octobre 2012 - 03:54 .

[Fawx9]

Wulfram wrote...

DA:O was slightly better in that there was a choice between Str and Dex for non mages, and the requirements for talents gave some incentive to buy both. Though Constitution and Willpower were even worse, and it still mostly encouraged one stat builds. Trying to make investing in Magic for non-mages seems like it's very much a fools errand.

The one attribute system I've liked that I played recently was V:TM's (yes, I took my time getting around to that). Increasing costs as you invest more heavily is a good way to encourage diversification. But implementing something like that in DA would be basically the same as abolishing the existing system.

Didn't it only encourage one stat builds if thats what you wanted?

My DW warriors loaded up on  Str/Dex/Cunning/Const (possibly not the most effcient way to play, but it worked for me).

If an attrubute like willpower is lacking, buff it. There was no reason to go down the DA2 route, and then becuase of that scrap the system.

[Sir JK]

It's an interesting notion, the equalient to your suggestion have been pulled off succesfully in many rpg systems. Some vastly more complex than any dnd derivate have ever been. I could see the attributes being collapsed into talents to be a rather succesful move. The attributes is little more than manually level-adjusting various stats anyways...

However, I would also be in favour of going the other route and upping their importance. Tying the attributestats more into the narrative and actually making spending points on the stats a means to customizing the capabilities of a character.

As long as there's a clear and distinct purpose behind the attributes (or their equalients in a talent system) it could be a very rewarding, engaging and interesting system that really adds to ones roleplaying. But having attributes for the purpose of having attributes or because rpgs always have is only a path leading to a soulless system that adds nothing and needlessly limits you.

Basically... the attributes needs to do something or one may as well be rid of them.