136 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

I think it's reasonable to say that we never intend to make combat tedious.

I did some quick looks through Combat's tasking, and at no point did the word "tedious" come up.

So in that regards, we recognize that there are aspects that people find of DA2 and DAO combat that are tedious.

In some ways we hope to alleviate that, but unfortunately what some people find interesting, others may find tedious, so I can't promise no one will find things tedious.

[In Exile]

Tootles FTW wrote...

I thought the Rock Wraith was the only boss fight that mixed it up (I'm referring to the "hide behind rocks!" mechanic) -

Except that then you're just fighting with the terrible camera and controls. It was an action-adventure/platforming style boss that doesn't lend itself at all to having to simultaneously control 4 characters with poor AI pathfinding. It's like the Corypheus battle in the DLC.

[Adugan]

David Gaider wrote...

sea- wrote...
Wasn't that a goal with Dragon Age 2 as well?  No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Hence why we're waiting to discuss the matter further until we can actually show what we're working on. Until then, you'd only have us saying "this is our intention" and your only response would be to state your skepticism. Which is fair. If your expectation, however, is that we'd lay out all our plans without anything to show, engendering all sorts of questions which we could only answer with verbal description... then, no, that's not going to happen.

I dont know if you will read this, but if you look at the DAO character sheet you will see that the player is a pretty bad war criminal. I got somewhere around 2000 creatures killed and 800ish humans. I doubt if there was something like this IRL that a person would kill a legion of enemies all by himself. Maybe have less *30 enemies appear!* or *you turn the corner and 5 enemies attack! You turn the next corner and 5 enemies attack!* and more *you see a giant menacing qunari all by himself wearing super heavy armor*. It would be more believable.

Modifié par Adugan, 12 décembre 2012 - 09:31 .

[TheJediSaint]

Personally, if I my PC can step out of the door to his house at night and not be attacked by an army of bandits, twice, on his way to the market, then I'll be happy.

[Arppis]

I actualy enjoy trash fights. Well... when the combat mechanics are fun. Most of the time they weren't in previous DA-titles. I played these games for story and coversations.

[Uccio]

The biggest problem with DA2 combat was that it looked like two characters were swinging their weapons through thin air even someone was standing straight in from of them. Most of the swings looked like they flew right through opponents body combined with hypersonic combat speed. Thats why DAO slower dodging and blocking and occasional hit made the combat look much more real.

[Kenshen]

I must be wierd or something because the Rock Wraith and the High Dragon fights are two of my favorites in the series. The only fight that so far I can not beat on the highest difficulty setting is the one in Mark of the Assassin right after starting the hunt. That aoe the arcane horror casts is just nasty.

[DarkSpiral]

Adugan wrote...

I dont know if you will read this, but if you look at the DAO character sheet you will see that the player is a pretty bad war criminal. I got somewhere around 2000 creatures killed and 800ish humans. I doubt if there was something like this IRL that a person would kill a legion of enemies all by himself. Maybe have less *30 enemies appear!* or *you turn the corner and 5 enemies attack! You turn the next corner and 5 enemies attack!* and more *you see a giant menacing qunari all by himself wearing super heavy armor*. It would be more believable.

You don't get branded a war criminal by killing peopel in a fair fight.  Just saying.

As for the ginat quanari in heavy armor thing; solo fights are usually the least interesting (in my experience), and I know I'm not alone.  Sure, DA2 has been criticized for having way to many "horde" battles, but going the other way isn't any better.  And, to be honest, I'm not sure concerning themselves over the PC's kill score is a investment in time and resources that would serve the quality of the game.

[Pzykozis]

Adugan wrote...

I dont know if you will read this, but if you look at the DAO character sheet you will see that the player is a pretty bad war criminal. I got somewhere around 2000 creatures killed and 800ish humans. I doubt if there was something like this IRL that a person would kill a legion of enemies all by himself. Maybe have less *30 enemies appear!* or *you turn the corner and 5 enemies attack! You turn the next corner and 5 enemies attack!* and more *you see a giant menacing qunari all by himself wearing super heavy armor*. It would be more believable.

"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."

No war criminals here.

[Kangaxx628]

Along with no tedious fights, please leave scattershot and its insta-stun on the dust heap of history. And give me back my mana clash! I love wiping out masses of summoned shades with that bad boy, only thing that made the Baroness fight bearable. Additionally, please do away with the uninterruptable stealth activation, timing that tended to waste a useful spell.

[TheRealJayDee]

TheJediSaint wrote...

Personally, if I my PC can step out of the door to his house at night and not be attacked by an army of bandits, twice, on his way to the market, then I'll be happy.

Amen!

That's a problem I have with most RPGs and games in general that try to tell a meaningful story and deal with serious themes - it's hard for me to take things like murder and death in general (and pretty much all things that tend to be rather gruesome and ugly) seriously and expect my character to be moved by them if at the same time he spends most of his day slaughtering his way through all kinds of stuff and looking cool doing it. Especially the huge amount of human enemies that were casually hacked into bloody pieces in and around Kirkwall (on Hawke's way to his favourite bar, on his way to the market etc) were problematic imo.

I see that it's hard to make a game with a huge combat aspect and avoid this problems. Still, I would like to play a game in which combat is a) rather rare  dangerous c) not neccessarily something that's presented or perceived as "cool". Especially in a story that's supposed to be about heroes that start as rather normal people killing somebody should mean something.

[Wulfram]

I think the thing that most guarantees a fight will feel tedious is if it just feels like it's getting in the way to no purpose. The Kirkwall attacks were a pain because I wanted to be somewhere else, and instead I have to trawl through these guys.

[jpbreon]

The Grey Nayr wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Direwolf0294 wrote...
Dragon Age has had some pretty terrible fights over its two games, one expansion pack and multiple DLCs. Two that immediately spring to mind are the Rock Wraith fight at the end of Act 1 in DA2 and the High Dragon in Act 3. Simply put, these fights are not fun. It's not that they're too difficult or anything, because they're not, it's that spending 10 - 15 minutes beating on the same monster is just mind numbingly boring.

Going into DA3, can we perhapes avoid more fights like this and instead replace them with shorter fights that are more difficult? If a fight really must last more than 10 minutes, can you spruce it up a bit? Give the boss multiple forms that are visually quite different, give them dialogue to say during the fight, have the enviroment change during the course of the battle (for example, you start the fight in the castle and end up out in the courtyard). Anything to make them more interesting.

Having more interesting big combats (and also less "trash fights") is indeed one of the focuses of the combat team. It's nothing we can really talk about at this point, however.

Nothing like Corypheus plz. That guy was dreadful. Companion AI really sucked during that fight and followers keep getting killed, leaving the player controlled character to fight alone. And only a mage character really works for me during that fight because of their ranged abilities.

Also plz be rid of the cooldown period on potions. I don't get what was up with that.

:earn how to play the game. I modded DAO to put in potion cooldowns, because the "chug potions nonstop so I don't have to use any tactics and bash endlessly on monster til dead" is dreadfully boring. 

[Nerevar-as]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think it's reasonable to say that we never intend to make combat tedious.

I did some quick looks through Combat's tasking, and at no point did the word "tedious" come up.

So in that regards, we recognize that there are aspects that people find of DA2 and DAO combat that are tedious.

In some ways we hope to alleviate that, but unfortunately what some people find interesting, others may find tedious, so I can't promise no one will find things tedious.

Please, this time around bother with balancing Nightmare instead of bloating enemy HP & Damage and throwing immunities in. Fighting half an hour the same creature is not funny (and who tested the duel with Arishok?). Maybe having enemy powers and tactics depend on difficulty level?

[Allan Schumacher]

Please, this time around bother with balancing Nightmare instead of bloating enemy HP & Damage and throwing immunities in. Fighting half an hour the same creature is not funny (and who tested the duel with Arishok?). Maybe having enemy powers and tactics depend on difficulty level?

Arishok is a situation where I realized that even as "Tech QA" I should still find a way (somewhow) to play the game. I didn't get to that part until after the game was submitted to Cert and I wholeheartedly agree that it's poorly done as a 1-on-1 fight.

As for Nightmare, the unfortunate thing is that Nightmare targets a particularly niche crowd. It's a lot more valuable to have people making sure normal difficulty is working, and less so for Nightmare. Which sucks to hear if you're a nightmare fan.

Now we could do things differently with Nightmare than we did with DA2. What you suggest would indicate that the creature's level could be bumped up (this would unlock other skills, on top of providing additional resources). This works regardless of level scaling or not (with no level scaling, we bump the level up. With level scaling, we still bump the level up).

Changing tactics is muuuuuuuuuuch harder. This works in a game like Chess, because all difficulty levels do in a board game is limit the search space (they don't see as many moves into the future). Having actual AI routines that only come into play for Nightmare difficult would not be a trivial thing to do. Furthermore, if those AI routines are interesting and make the AI behave in a more plausible way, there's probably a value case for such routines to exist for all difficulty levels.

[Dave of Canada]

Theoretically, could encounter design be changed to be more tactical without needing health bloat? Phalanx formation for enemy warrior groups, archers on ledges being shielded by mages and needing to be pelted to breach the shield or attacked from behind, etc.

On easier difficulties, you could "bullrush" the encounters and still win but on higher difficulties, it would result in suicide.

[Tigerman123]

There was nothing wrong with the HP and DPS levels of enemies on nightmare, if anything they should've been higher. Arbitrarily increasing enemy stats on higher difficulties forces you to use your limited resources more efficiently, which is the essence of a challenge

[Kangaxx628]

Tigerman123 wrote...

There was nothing wrong with the HP and DPS levels of enemies on nightmare, if anything they should've been higher. Arbitrarily increasing enemy stats on higher difficulties forces you to use your limited resources more efficiently, which is the essence of a challenge

No, making me spend an hour smacking around an opponent instead of 15 minutes only challenges my pain thresold, not my skill. The same way nonsensical immunities in opponents merely prolongs a fight, but doesn't add any exitement upon completion. Unfortunately, I was spoiled by the complexitiy of the DnD spell system in Baldur's Gate 2 where enemy mages required a little thought as to moves and counter moves, as opposed to DA2 where it is a wait for the bubble to finish, wait for the inevitable teleport, than save an interrupt for the massive AOE spell they'll use then mash until ready to serve.

[Anomaly-]

Tigerman123 wrote...

There was nothing wrong with the HP and DPS levels of enemies on nightmare, if anything they should've been higher. Arbitrarily increasing enemy stats on higher difficulties forces you to use your limited resources more efficiently, which is the essence of a challenge

That's a poor man's challenge, and it annoys the hell out of me.

I just posted this in another thread:

Anomaly- wrote...
In regards to difficulty in general, I believe DA has done it all wrong, especially DA2. I've had no interest in playing on the harder difficulties due to how they are handled. Instead of scaling enemy stats to ridiculous levels, the scaling should be on enemy numbers and relative intelligence. I just get no satisfaction out of playing on a difficulty where the common mook is vastly superior to my characters, and the only reason we win is because we mug them 4 on 1. Doesn't seem very heroic, nor is it much fun.

However, if instead enemy numbers and AI are scaled up, suddenly every encounter becomes more epic and you feel more heroic and satisfied. That's what I would expect from higher difficulty levels. Enemies should always play by the same rules as the player, that is what gives the world and mechanics consistency. Where an increase in numbers doesn't make sense, the enemies in question should instead be replaced by more powerful counterparts, ie: a hurlock becomes a hurlock alpha or an ogre.

Modifié par Anomaly-, 13 décembre 2012 - 03:19 .

[Tigerman123]

It makes no sense to scale up enemy ai when only a small number of players actually use the higher difficulties, in fact even if there was an even distribution it still would be a poor use of resources given that AI is feature akin to the graphics or the user interface, it should be at an optimal level for all customers regardless of their tolerance for combat.  I don't see the problem, strategy games designers are often forced to use cheating AIs on harder settings in order for there still to be a challenge for better players, which involves the same thing, ramping up their stats in lieu of making them more sophisticated which is too difficult a problem

Presumably there are technical limitations as to the number of enemies that can be on screen at any given moment, additionally I don't think that the higher difficulties were actually supported beyond altering enemy stats given the small number of users, changing values in a database is much easier than modifying a level to increase the number of critters

Tbh I think it's a mischaracterization of nightmare to say that it was a slog or anything like that, does this look like a slog?

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube.com/watch

The game works very well at that level if you have a properly set up party, in fact the higher enemy HP values are necessary to provide any obstacle at all, if it weren't like that everything would die more or less instantaneously , which wouldn't be very fun.  What are the supposedly inflated stats high relative to? Normal and hard, but those are clearly misnomers, back in the day DA2's hard would be the equivalent of normal, you don't even need to control any member of your part other than Hawke in order to beat it, given that he or she can rampage around like a demi god evaporating enemies with their mere presence

Modifié par Tigerman123, 13 décembre 2012 - 05:45 .

[freche]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Changing tactics is muuuuuuuuuuch harder. This works in a game like Chess, because all difficulty levels do in a board game is limit the search space (they don't see as many moves into the future). Having actual AI routines that only come into play for Nightmare difficult would not be a trivial thing to do. Furthermore, if those AI routines are interesting and make the AI behave in a more plausible way, there's probably a value case for such routines to exist for all difficulty levels.

You should combine the AI routines with more scripted behaviors on higher difficulties.

Enemy A got something that causes stagger, he knows he got a friend around that can benefit from stagger. So he uses the ability.
Enemy Archers see someone with low HP so they ignore their current target and try to finish him off fast.
Enemy Mage sees a friendly with low HP he casts a heal.
etc.
Condisions to make Enemies work together.

Make a couple of different specs on each class for enemies to randomly pick from when they spawn. Will make fights a bit different from each other.

Also add a chance that they will have a potion, poison, rune enchanted equipment etc that they WILL use.


As for AI, pathing was kind of crap in DA2 but that I'm sure you already knew.

Make Tactics work better if having characters with similar tactics.
If I have as highest priority for two characters to stun closest mage I don't want them to stun at the same time. I'd like to see that one stuns first and the other one will then either stun 2nd closest mage (if there are more then 1) or wait until the first stun wears off.

[Sabariel]

The one-on-one duel with the Arishok still makes me breath fire. Running in circles for an hour is not heroic or fun.

[ScotGaymer]

"No TEDIOUS fights!"

Subjective opinion is subjective.

[Pedrak]

TheRealJayDee wrote...

Still, I would like to play a game in which combat is a) rather rare  dangerous c) not neccessarily something that's presented or perceived as "cool". Especially in a story that's supposed to be about heroes that start as rather normal people killing somebody should mean something.

I support this. Fewer fights, but more unique, challenging, and requiring different tactics and weapons.
And with an emphasis on danger and fear rather than on  "cool" moves and implausible jumps and enemies vaporizing into fountains of blood.

Combat should be difficult, brutal, and terrifying. It shouldn't feel like swatting flies - meaning low-level mooks who ambush you every two paces ("LOL these dudes again"). I mean, these encounters have their place too, late in the game, to make the player feel empowered, but they shouldn't be too many. The average fight should feel more like walking through a forest at night and hearing a werewolf approaching long before it comes, preparing for the battle, positioning your companions, having to use fire, silver weapons, knowing that if you cast area of effect spells they will hurt you and your party too. And it's dangerous because it's powerful, clever, and unforgiving if your tactics arent' sound - not because it's a HP sponge.

For my personal tastes, both DAO and DA2 could have probably featured half the combat they had, and they would have actually felt tighter and with less padding.

Modifié par Pedrak, 13 décembre 2012 - 02:56 .