258 réponses à ce sujet

[Xinoxlx]

The only thing this thread really made me think about is you shouldn't have to use skill points on tactic slots. In game I heavily micro two people which would be impossible without pausing. Even with tactics I can't have them all doing what I want 24/7 so I will end up microing them all at one point. (Why is there no "If enemy is holding friendly use skill X" for tactics for one thing.)



Pausing i've always found made the game require more strategy while still having a real-time combat feel. The entire game-play in DA is designed around it, if you have a problem then this game much like Baldur's Gate and Icewind dale are simply not for you.

[SleeplessInSigil]

BTW, to JackFuzz the OP, you might love Temple of Elemental Evil.

Modifié par SleeplessInSigil, 02 janvier 2010 - 11:20 .

[bas273]

BUT still sometimes I have to pause. 

That's your problem. I can complete the game on Easy mode with four warriors and nothing but the right mouse button.

I'm currently in the process of trying to find out if pausing can be
disabled via a mod, I will then attempt to make modifications to the
game to make a "realtime" mod that is balanced.  Realtime decisions
leading to realtime victories are soo much more rewarding than pausing
space & time in order to do a 360 with the mouse looking for enemy
mages.

Uh... yeah right. You do realise that you don't have to press the spacebar? You're making statements here and present them as facts. But it's your opinion, nothing more. I think realtime decisions are less rewarding. When I pause the game I'm using micromanagement and tactics to win a battle. That's more difficult and challenging than doing it all in real-time. I set up ambushes, use AoE spells (Cone of Cold + Virulent Walking Bomb + Stonefist), correctly position my team, etc. Dragon Age, like Baldur's Gate, is more a tactical RPG. It sounds like Oblivion is more your kind of game.
I see Dragon Age as a RTSRPG, a real-time strategy role-playing game. And I don't know if you have played RTS games before but almost every RTS (Total War, Battle for Middle-Earth, Command and Conquer) has a pause button.

I understand that one needs to pause to control their companions.  But
isn't that what combat tactics are for? The problem is the AI for your
companions is broken. Often times your companions wil do the dumbest
things possible and you have to pause in order to fix their broken
AI.   That isn't tactics, that is retarded.  Pausing to fix broken AI
is a design flaw.

No that's not what combat tactics are for. You can choose whatever you prefer. You can play in real-time, use the pause button and/or set up tactics. You can also use the pause button to manage the actions of your main character and your other team members will simply follow the tactics you've set up for them in the tactics menu.

Because when you pause the moment is lost, you've admitted defeat and turned on a form of god mode (pausing).

Admitted defeat? I think you've admitted defeat when you're playing on the Easy difficulty because you can't resist to press the spacebar.

I respect your opinion but a rant about the pause button?

Modifié par bas273, 02 janvier 2010 - 11:21 .

[Xinoxlx]

knownastherat wrote...

Let's face it, trolls create the most popular threads simply because who does not like to troll? I know I do, don't you?

Let's face it, saying people are trolls is part of the new wave of human behaviour to deflect blame off themselves. Instead of admitting "Yeah I was a moron there" you just go "lol i troll joo."

Picture related for the OP: Mods just closed your thread on this before.

http://s91.photobuck...59934019682.gif

[DragonRageGT]

JediNg wrote...

ITT: img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/JediNg/funnies/Feedingtrollslol.jpg

you know that those are Orcs, right? Not really trolls? \\=)

[DragonRageGT]

Spaghetti_Ninja wrote...

RageGT wrote...

Both of you never played Lord of the Realms 2 apparently.

I did, actually, like 15 years ago. A really simple game.

I meant the guy who agreed with OP before your post, Ninja. Should have quoted. Yeah, simple and funny game. And addictive too! And mixed TBS with RTS.

[Carrissis]

I like the pause ability. Reminds me off true table top gaming. Back in the days when you got all your friends together, drank beer and ate pizza for that long night of gaming.

I remember some combat instances taking upwards of a hour to get through while everyone figured out what they were going to do.

My only gripe is DA:O was not mutli-player. I hope that Bioware's next game has mutli-player support and open world building like NWN1 did.

[knownastherat]

Xinoxlx wrote...

knownastherat wrote...

Let's face it, trolls create the most popular threads simply because who does not like to troll? I know I do, don't you?

Let's face it, saying people are trolls is part of the new wave of human behaviour to deflect blame off themselves. Instead of admitting "Yeah I was a moron there" you just go "lol i troll joo."

Picture related for the OP: Mods just closed your thread on this before.

http://s91.photobuck...59934019682.gif

I did not say (I think) trolling is bad. It was just an observation or a statement. Trolls do get attention because it is the nature of trolling. Most forums revolve - live around trolling, and my opinion is that better to have forum with trolls than without them. I admit to trolling .. will you sue me? But denying trolling, claiming I am adding something essential to the discussion, something everyone needs to know about,  seems kinda childlish to me.

Modifié par knownastherat, 02 janvier 2010 - 11:56 .

[Raven-sb]

hmmm admit defeat, no I don't think so. Rather then rush in swords flashing, arrows flying and spells blasting, pausing allows me to stop, access the situation, use the appropriate talents, move individual party members to the most strategic spot, etc etc. Slowly and carefully like the tortise and the hare, gets the job done. But hey if that's not your play style then fine, what ever gives you the most enjoyment from the game, but to say pausing is admiting defeat is a bit of a reach.

[Statue]

Without the pause key I wouldn't like DAO as much. I appreciate the AI tactics in the same way I appreciated the AI scripts for BG1/2 and NWN1/2 - I think they're nice for other people but personally prefer to micromanage so generally don't use them.

I'd go further in defence of the micromanaged play in fact, I'd have really liked to see configurable autopause options a la BG2 (action complete = autopause = so I then make the next action decision). I know it slows the pace down and some do like to play letting the computer make tactical decisions for them, and that's fine as the game is designed well to cater to them - it caters less well to micromanagers by virtue of only having one autopause condition plus manual pausing, but crikey if they were absent micromanging players would be even less catered for.

Not only do I consider AI inferior to my own decision making skills (not being boastful, just realistic about how limited AI is in recognizing contexts beyond simple IF/THEN pairings), but also for me part of the enjoyment of party-based TRPGs is personally co-ordinating the combined efforts of the characters. Without pause I wouldn't have that enjoyment, I'd be restricted to controlling one character and letting the AI control the others. That would entail that I would have less say over some tactical decisions. AI scripts can't account for everything that I like to factor into tactical decisions. Placing tanks just outside a doorway to create a bottleneck to restrict the ability of the enemies inside to get to my squishies, placing AOEs, wards, and glyphs optimally - those and other things are outside of the scope of the AI tactics however you configure them, but are important if you enjoy playing as tactically as possible. With no pause, I'd not be able to do that, and the tactical breadth of the game would for me be reduced down to only the contexts covered by the IF/THEN statements, plus I personally don't enjoy creating effective AI scripts half as much as I enjoy micromanaging the action. 

Some people really enjoy scripting AI for chess play, I'm more a fan of playing chess and making each and every decision (I'm not at all suggesting using the AI scripts in DAO is as complex or difficult as scripting chess AI here, I'm drawing attention to the difference between playstyle preferences in arriving at the same result (a move of a chess piece or an action for a DAO character). I prefer to arrive at that action by my own on-the-fly contextual reasoning rather than from having set up as good AI IF/THENs as I can).

Pause doesn't equal fail, whether for the game or for the player. It equals the sole way in DAO of ensuring that what your characters in this party-based game do is actually really what you want them to do. There are more elegant ways of achieving that outside of DAO - I enjoy turn-based play, and I appreciated the configurable autopausing of BG2 (if there was a configurable autopause mod for DAO I'd grab it quicksharp) - but it's not that the DAO pause key is the problem; for me it's more that it works but not as conveniently for my playstyle as configurable autopausing or true turn-based play might (which I know is not everyone's cup of tea).


There are alternate ways to play DAO. It has features like the AI tactics that cater to real-time-micromanaging-jugglers (those that flick as quick as they can between characters to tell them what to do), to real-time-observer-controllers (those that prefer to focus on controlling their one character and allowing the AI to handle the others), to AI-script-enthusiasts (those that enjoy configuring the best possible sets of IF/THENs and testing their effectiveness in different situations and against different enemies); and it has features like pausing to cater for full-on-micromanagers (those who enjoy making all the decisions) and part-time-micromanagers (those who enjoy making all the decisions sometimes but not others). Because of the variation in preferred playstyles, I wouldn't advocate removing the functions that support any of those types of play. As a micromanager, I don't use the AI tactics much, but would not want to argue for its removal as I respect the playstyle preferences of others. It's fair enough that DAO tries to cater to those different playstyles, as it reflects the differences in preferences in party-based TRPG players (though I personally think DAO does a better job of catering to real-timers than it does to micromanagers, because the pause feature could have been supported by configurable autopausing without that compromising any other playstyle - I'd ultimately prefer fully turn-based play, but as I've said I know that's not everyone's cup of tea and DAO being turn-based would compromise some playstyles whilst the presence of configurable autopausing wouldn't).

If you don't enjoy playing in a particular way, DAO provides other ways for you to play. I'm not sure disabling pause would accomplish anything for any of the playstyles that couldn't easier be accomplished by just not pausing (and if by not pausing things were too hard for a player, they could switch down the difficulty). 

TLDR version: Pausing isn't dumb, it's lovely for micromanagers (but not as lovely as some other systems). Why disable pause when the same would be accomplished by not pausing?

Modifié par Statue, 02 janvier 2010 - 12:15 .

[Onli]

If you want to pause then pause...
If you dont, then simply lay off the space bar aye.

Modifié par Onli, 02 janvier 2010 - 12:08 .

[Schneidend]

Baldur's Gate was my first RPG, and Baldur's Gate II is my favorite RPG of all time. I'll give you three guesses as to where I stand on this issue, and the first two don't count.

[Yozaro]

SleeplessInSigil wrote...

Have to agree with OP about there being no effective "middle-ground" between TBS or RT.

Effective? How is this mechanism not effective? Effective how?

Bioware has done a great job by letting the player use what he likes:
 - You can play the game in real time...
 - ...or you can pause and micromanage everything
 - You can also set AI for your party members, if you want.
 - Oh, and you DON'T have to pause the game if you don't want to.

I would call that 'effective', just because of the fact that it works and it's fun.

EDIT: Even Total War games have this mechanism. It would be really annoying to command 20 units at the same time without the ability to pause and decide what to do. That way it's not about your ability to use the mouse really fast, but the ability to actually use your units the best way possible. RPGs or strategy games should not be only about speed IMO.

I really don't get it. Why are you whining about something that you're just allowed to use, but you don't really have to use it? If pausing was forced, then I would understand your whining.

Modifié par Yozaro, 02 janvier 2010 - 01:03 .

[Must have name]

Original Thought
Aah yes, let's face it...  Pausing is dumb.  It's either realtime or turn based. There is no middle ground.

There is a middle ground. This game is just one example of that middle ground. If you'd rather play without pausing, you can do. You'll just need a bunch of solid tactics and some quick reflexes.

Modifié par Must have name, 02 janvier 2010 - 12:53 .

[FlintlockJazz]

We have the ability to pause for one simple reason: we are human. We are not able to simultaneously control and assign commands to four characters, and within seconds, whereas the computer can control and assign actions to all our opponents simultaneously within a second, especially since it doesn't need a user interface to do so. We have to assign commands via a interface of mouse and keyboard, taking time to click etc... so we need the pause to put us on a more equal footing with the computer. Simples.

[Edelwolf]

pausing does make the game a little easier. Simple.



This doesn't bother me at all.

[royen1]

Nah, pausing is fine for this type of game. Would have preferred TB, but I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for those fixes...

[Yozaro]

Magnum Opus wrote...

As a mage-lover, there are many spells in this game that can be fired off very, very quickly. That means that unless I set up the tactics/AI to take care of those things for me, I'm going to be spending 95% (probably not literally 95%, but also probably not far from the truth) of the time spent in the opening volleys of combat paused. Pause, select enemy, select spell, select other mage character, select spell, unpause for the fraction of a second it takes for the mages to cast their spells, pause, possibly select target, select spell, select character, possibly select target, select spell, unpause for the fraction of a second it takes to....

You know that you don't have to do that? The AI you can set up for the characters works pretty well. At least I haven't had any problems with it. Every now and then I give them orders to use AoE spells etc.

Maybe even should be better, if western developers didn't break out in hives at the mere thought of making a turn-based, party-based RPG. But, these days, I'll take what I can get. And its not as if the system doesn't have its advantages, too.

Then people would whine about it being turn-based. As they did with Final Fantasy games. BioWare has done a great job by allowing players to choose whether to micromanage or not. Final Fantasy XII did a better job by allowing players to choose between pausing and real-time (though the battles still had other issues).

Besides, going down in combat is almost as meaningless in this game as it was in Mass Effect, so it's not like I can't afford to have a few people lose it every now and again, as long some somebody's still up and running.

That's actually about the difficulty, not the pausing vs. real-time/turn-based. There are many other games with a similar mechanism, where dead characters come back to life with low health after the battle. It works and it's less annoying than the need to use some specific items every time somebody goes down (e.g. Phoenix Downs in FF).

[Ishbo]

I love this ridiculous mod you're making. You can always just not press spacebar?



I would probably respect your opinion of pausing if it weren't for ridiculous statements like 'Pausing means you admit defeat.' How does it do this? Why does pausing mean you admit defeat?



I think pausing is great because it allows you to use all your characters to their fullest, and not just press random keys at various times like in MMOs, hoping that you pressed in time. I don't see how playing in real time is more enjoyable at all - pausing allows me to position my characters exactly where I want them to me at every stage of the fight and use exactly the right spell at exactly the right time.

[Gorath Alpha]

Why is there a second one of these same threads after a moderator already shut down the first one?

http://social.biowar...528903/1#528927

[Kerad Kralc]

Gorath Alpha wrote...

Why is there a second one of these same threads after a moderator already shut down the first one?
http://social.biowar...528903/1#528927

 I think it's because the OP changed his/her tone from the first post.  But really, JackFuzz, just don't pause the game.  

[MOTpoetryION]

the only reason they made us be able to pause is so we can FIX their prehistoric AI. Come on boiware you have talent working for you thats obvious but your AI is garbage .

It would of been nice to have a battle recorder so you could watch a battle pause free  ,after it was done.

Modifié par MOTpoetryION, 02 janvier 2010 - 02:55 .

[Darthvegeta8000]

Bonkz wrote...

wanderon wrote...

Not pausing = twitch gaming where the players dexterity means more than the characters - thats not roleplaying to me - roleplaying is planning the character and making decisions on the role he plays as he interacts with the world and those in it and his success in his venture should have nothing to do with the physical characteristics of the PLAYER.

Nor do I find playing mini-programmer by setting your party AI tactics to be much based on roleplaying either it's more like computer combat simulation and the end result seems to be an interactive movie you can direct and watch play out in front of you. Frankly I am quite satisfied to leave tactics to a minimum and micromanage the entire party much of the time. I want to PLAY the game not watch the computer play it for me.

Pausing is essential to a CRPG for me - no pausing means I leave the game on the store shelf and go play one that has pausing.

Exactly. This post wins.
A "Party" based RPG demands a pause function. Some RPG's are turn based as well but there is no rule to either be turn based or if not, then nothing.
It is designed around the pause function cause you cannot control 4, 5 or 6 companions without having to switch around a bit to order them something. Pausing is what helps you do that.
If the game depended on whether you are fast enough with the mouse and keyboard and not on the management of your companions then it wouldn't be called dragon age but Call of duty.

About the "If you pause the game, you accept defeat", no offence ment but thats the silliest thing i've heard. Ever thought that a game could be designed to be difficult, so that players need to manage their companions during combat to win a battle? That's why it is a "party" based RPG.
Some people, including myself, dont like the use of tactics. I like to plan what my companions do in almost every situation so for me a pause was and is necessary. Does that mean that i "fail" in the game? From your post, that is what i understood. 

If i only handled one character then we could discuss it further.

Spot on. It's impossibly to control all four chars in character and tactically sound without the pauze button.
At easy and all it's not that big a thing but with higher difficulties it makes a lot of difference.

[ToJKa1]

JackFuzz wrote...

Pausing means you admit defeat.  It means the situation was so overwhelming you were forced to pause, accept defeat in order to win. Once a situation is "overwhelming", that is usually the moment you are about to lose and suffer a defeat. 

For me, switching to easy is admitting defeat. That is why i rather abuse inanimate objects than switch to easy

Pausing however, is an essential function in this game's combat mechanics. The tactics can cover only the most basic situations, which is why you need to have the pause function to make the other party members do something smart. The tactics system simply cannot be used as an AI replacement, it's purpose is to simply keep the non-player controlled characters busy, so you don't need to give them each and every move, was this a turn-based game the whole system would be unnecessary. Pausing also allows you to plan your next move, so that success isn't determined solely by your reaction time, there are plenty of other games that work that way.

So i personally i think: why fix what isn't broken?