55 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

Loot and items are reasonable rewards for snooping around behind rocks and in random barrels.  Still doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever.

Character development is not.  I shouldn't miss out on all too scarce chances to talk to my companions because I decided to focus on the mission, not checking out every nook and cranny.

[Emzamination]

...If you want to speed through missions that's your business, but don't complain when you miss out on certain items.

Modifié par Emzamination, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:05 .

[thats1evildude]

"Dear Bioware, I am too lazy to search for loot like a proper adventurer. Could you please hand everything to me on a silver platter? Also, if there was some kind of menu command that removed monsters from the game, that would be great. I find combat far too exerting for my poor thumbs."
 
What would you prefer? Should the PC in DA3 have a Christmas tree that companion gifts magically appear under?

Modifié par thats1evildude, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:09 .

[Wulfram]

Emzamination wrote...

...If you want to speed through missions that's your business, but don't complain when you miss out on certain items.

I'm not complaining about missing out on items, I'm complaining about missing out on the opportunity to talk to my companions.

Which is an incredibly stupid way to punish people for choosing not to take time out from saving the world to rummage through garbage.

[Battlebloodmage]

It's a staple mechanic in RPG games. There has to be a purpose to exploring the world. There's no point if everything you found is trash.

[Tootles FTW]

When they are items that open up new dialogue with companions, I think that they should be available for purchase in the Black Emporium should you miss them. Much like the missed resources are, for example.

There should have been more companion gifts, period, for friendship/rivalry assistance - it makes me have to hardcore meta each quest with "Okay, who gives what points on this quest if I plan on choosing these options?". Having the OPTION (emphasis here) to fall back on presents would be welcome should, say, Isabela not be at 50% friendship/rivalry near the end of Act 2 and you don't want her to abandon you.

I've played DA2 seven times now and it's still a pain in the ****.

[Emzamination]

Wulfram wrote...

Emzamination wrote...

...If you want to speed through missions that's your business, but don't complain when you miss out on certain items.

I'm not complaining about missing out on items, I'm complaining about missing out on the opportunity to talk to my companions.

Which is an incredibly stupid way to punish people for choosing not to take time out from saving the world to rummage through garbage.

I'm sure you can find a few seconds in the 9999999999999999999999x mission time limit to do a little search and retrieve, no?

What does it say about you as a hero or a lover/friend if you're not willing to go that extra mile?

[Lennard Testarossa]

How about we leave gifts out of the game altogether?

Gifts essentially ruined DA:O's influence system by making love, loyalty and secrets dependent on your showering them with trinkets. Who cares that the character never accompanied you and that you barely ever spoke a word with him? If you've got a handful of shiny stuff in your inventory, he'll be your most loyal friend and lover regardless.

Tootles FTW wrote...

There should have been more companion gifts, period, for
friendship/rivalry assistance - it makes me have to hardcore meta each
quest with "Okay, who gives what points on this quest if I plan on
choosing these options?". Having the OPTION (emphasis here) to fall
back on presents would be welcome should, say, Isabela not be at 50%
friendship/rivalry near the end of Act 2 and you don't want her to
abandon you.

If what you say does not matter anyway, the whole influence/friendship/rivalry system is completely pointless, might as well scrap it.

I'd find it a lot more reasonable not to make content dependent on either consistently agreeing or disagreeing with your companions.

Modifié par Lennard Testarossa, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:18 .

[Wulfram]

Battlebloodmage wrote...

It's a staple mechanic in RPG games. There has to be a purpose to exploring the world. There's no point if everything you found is trash.

There can be good items.  There just shouldn't be irreplacable items whose absence limits our ability to interact with and get to know our companions.

[Tootles FTW]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

How about we leave gifts out of the game altogether?

Gifts essentially ruined DA:O's influence system by making love, loyalty and secrets dependent on your showering them with trinkets. Who cares that the character never accompanied you and that you barely ever spoke a word with him? If you've got a handful of shiny stuff in your inventory, he'll be your most loyal friend and lover regardless.

I like the F/R system of DA2 way more than the "I like you"/"I am never going to talk to you about anything, ever" mechanic, but it still needs hardcore tweaking. 

My very first vanilla playthrough of Dragon Age 2 I didn't realize until Act 3 that I had completely missed out on my chance to romance Fenris (who I had been pursuing since the first -icon reared it's head)  because I had taken him on missions where I was nice to mages (+ Rivalry) and missions where I was nice to slaves (+ Friendship).  Playing the game completely organically and exactly how I wanted, and with the companions I wanted, and I ended up screwing myself out of his romance.  Needless to say I was beyond irritated. 

F/R should serve to set the tone in companion conversations, and not be used to blockout content.

[Maria Caliban]

Kingdoms of Amalur had one of the most evil things I've ever seen in an RPG: respawning crates and barrels. I'd roam through an area, lovingly destroying every last one for the 5 silver it netted me, and then when I passed through again they had sprung up again like mushrooms after a rain.

I think Dragon Age should take a clue from World of Warcraft or Diablo and put random loot in crates and barrels, give them a .0001 chance of dropping an item that gives you a 20 second chat with a companion, and then fill their areas with hundreds of respawning crates.

[DarkKnightHolmes]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Kingdoms of Amalur had one of the most evil things I've ever seen in an RPG: respawning crates and barrels. I'd roam through an area, lovingly destroying every last one for the 5 silver it netted me, and then when I passed through again they had sprung up again like mushrooms after a rain.

I think Dragon Age should take a clue from World of Warcraft or Diablo and put random loot in crates and barrels, give them a .0001 chance of dropping an item that gives you a 20 second chat with a companion, and then fill their areas with hundreds of respawning crates.

Respawning crates.... my God. I'll be stuck in one place forever.

[Maclimes]

I'm okay with exploration, to a degree, to find relevant gifts and such. Especially smaller ones.

But there have been some real bad one sin DA2. The example I can think of, off the top of my head, is the book for Fenris. It's in a random, featureless sack that only appears in the Elven Alienage, at night, during Act 2. A place that you never have any good reason to go to, and since you've already been there, you may not ever realize you have any reason to "explore" there. It is, frankly, absurd.

[Wulfram]

Emzamination wrote...

What does it say about you as a hero or a lover/friend if you're not willing to go that extra mile?

It says

1.  You actually care about those you're supposed to be rescuing, rather than being an uncaring bastard.
2.  You'd like to give them something actually decent, not found trash.

@Filament - if it's got a distinctive visual, that would help a lot.  The worst part is that the knowledge that these gifts are out there effectively forces you to search Every. Single. One. of the hundreds of those god damn barrels.

[Lennard Testarossa]

Tootles FTW wrote...
I like the F/R system of DA2 way more than the "I like you"/"I am never going to talk to you about anything, ever" mechanic, but it still needs hardcore tweaking.

You only lose the option of romance, which, I think, isn't all that bad. At least it didn't make the companion-related quests dependent on your F/R rating. DA2's treatment of companions was infinitely superior to DA:O's.

[Wulfram]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

You only lose the option of romance, which, I think, isn't all that bad.

Well, they also might end up trying to kill you 'cause you didn't enslave that elf girl and encourages your cousin to talk to her father.

[ScarMK]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

How about we leave gifts out of the game altogether?

Gifts essentially ruined DA:O's influence system by making love, loyalty and secrets dependent on your showering them with trinkets. Who cares that the character never accompanied you and that you barely ever spoke a word with him? If you've got a handful of shiny stuff in your inventory, he'll be your most loyal friend and lover regardless.

Tootles FTW wrote...

There should have been more companion gifts, period, for
friendship/rivalry assistance - it makes me have to hardcore meta each
quest with "Okay, who gives what points on this quest if I plan on
choosing these options?". Having the OPTION (emphasis here) to fall
back on presents would be welcome should, say, Isabela not be at 50%
friendship/rivalry near the end of Act 2 and you don't want her to
abandon you.

If what you say does not matter anyway, the whole influence/friendship/rivalry system is completely pointless, might as well scrap it.

I'd find it a lot more reasonable not to make content dependent on either consistently agreeing or disagreeing with your companions.

You're not forced to give the gifts to them you know.  I don't remember Leliana's chantry amulet holding a knife to my throat threatening me if I didn't give it to her.  Don't want em, don't use em.  However they allow people like me to have any thing that happens inside their head outside of the game, to be reflected in game.  I want to pretend I go out to a bar and tease Alistair while drunkenly hitting on Leliana?  Gifts allow me to have that little "fantasy" reflected in the game.  As long as gifts are optional, I'll happily defend gift spam.

[Terrorize69]

DA2, most the gifts were rare and valuable, with a story and history behind them. Like Merrills Keeper ring and Avelines shield.

They were worth finding, wasn't like finding a box of chocolates on a spiders corpse.

So I hope BW keeps gifting like DA2, rare gifts that actually had a story and meaning behind them.

[Challseus]

As someone else has pointed out, I'd actually argue against the "gift system" in general. It just made the influence system seem too arbitrary. Sure, there could be some exceptions to the case, but in general, if you want to get the most out of your companion, you should have to talk to them, and bring them along with you during your various missions. I'd say the things that happen during the experience of exploring a world should outshine you just giving some random gift to someone.

[Wulfram]

Challseus wrote...

As someone else has pointed out, I'd actually argue against the "gift system" in general. It just made the influence system seem too arbitrary. Sure, there could be some exceptions to the case, but in general, if you want to get the most out of your companion, you should have to talk to them, and bring them along with you during your various missions. I'd say the things that happen during the experience of exploring a world should outshine you just giving some random gift to someone.

I think that's a fair criticism of the Origins system, but I don't think it really applies to DA2.

[Pzykozis]

I kind of agree but I mean if youre in elven ruins and you have an elven friend it doesn't seem that unlikely that perhaps there'd be something hidden there that they might like, of course perhaps theres no real reason to make such a thing hidden. I'd explore even if there was nothing to find just 'cause...

[Lennard Testarossa]

ScarMK wrote...
You're not forced to give the gifts to them you know.  I don't remember Leliana's chantry amulet holding a knife to my throat threatening me if I didn't give it to her.  Don't want em, don't use em.  However they allow people like me to have any thing that happens inside their head outside of the game, to be reflected in game.  I want to pretend I go out to a bar and tease Alistair while drunkenly hitting on Leliana?  Gifts allow me to have that little "fantasy" reflected in the game.  As long as gifts are optional, I'll happily defend gift spam.

No, they were not optional. The entire influence system, which is the basis of your interaction with your companions, relied on the existence of gifts.

And as for that fantasy... I don't really see how this is made possible by gifts or impossible by their absence.

[Tootles FTW]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

Tootles FTW wrote...
I like the F/R system of DA2 way more than the "I like you"/"I am never going to talk to you about anything, ever" mechanic, but it still needs hardcore tweaking.

You only lose the option of romance, which, I think, isn't all that bad. At least it didn't make the companion-related quests dependent on your F/R rating. DA2's treatment of companions was infinitely superior to DA:O's.

Oh, agreed with that, but I don't like it when any content is denied to me simply because I didn't meet an arbitrary internal number, the biggest issue I have being Isabela ditching you in Act 2.  That her loyalty is tied to your F/R percentage makes both my dialogue choices with her, as well as my active party at any given time, nothing but a numbers game.

And for the romance thing, I don't see why I should be blocked from romancing a character unless I make a decision that would fundamentally disgust them - which isn't even the case in DA2, since I can quite easily take Oriana as a slave and yet Fenris will immediately jump into the sack with me afterwards so long as I have a certain % on the F/R scale.  To me, that action should have blocked the romance completely - NOT the %.

[ScarMK]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

ScarMK wrote...
You're not forced to give the gifts to them you know.  I don't remember Leliana's chantry amulet holding a knife to my throat threatening me if I didn't give it to her.  Don't want em, don't use em.  However they allow people like me to have any thing that happens inside their head outside of the game, to be reflected in game.  I want to pretend I go out to a bar and tease Alistair while drunkenly hitting on Leliana?  Gifts allow me to have that little "fantasy" reflected in the game.  As long as gifts are optional, I'll happily defend gift spam.

No, they were not optional. The entire influence system, which is the basis of your interaction with your companions, relied on the existence of gifts.

And as for that fantasy... I don't really see how this is made possible by gifts or impossible by their absence.

Then it's a flaw with character interaction in general if there weren't enough options to gain their approval without gifts.  As for the second point, it allows you to change their approval/disapproval (the feast day pranks), to reflect what you believe their reactions to be.

Modifié par ScarMK, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:37 .