137 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

iakus wrote...

That's just it, though.  the endgame was still combat-heavy.  It just lacked a boss battle.  You still had to fight your way to each of the objectives

I'm just pointing out that game challenges can have combat without having a "boss battle"  In this particular case, fighting your way to several objectives to complete a task.  It's the challenge that makes it special, not the individual boss

How are we defining "fighting your way to each of the objectives?"

Are you referring to the entire Area 51 level?

[Iakus]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

iakus wrote...

That's just it, though.  the endgame was still combat-heavy.  It just lacked a boss battle.  You still had to fight your way to each of the objectives

I'm just pointing out that game challenges can have combat without having a "boss battle"  In this particular case, fighting your way to several objectives to complete a task.  It's the challenge that makes it special, not the individual boss

How are we defining "fighting your way to each of the objectives?"

Are you referring to the entire Area 51 level?

For the most part, since the stuff needed for the final missions are scattered throughout the complex.  Page's personal defenses to disable.  Or the reactors to overload, or the router to activate for Helios.  There was a wide variety of enemies, and plenty of them, thanks to the Universal Contructors.  There were keys to find, computers to hack, hazards to navigate, shortcuts to find, with NPCs ready to urge you towards their preferred ending.

[PsychoBlonde]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Anyway, in a game where you fight a lot, an epic last boss fight where you use all the skills you acquired during the game is mandatory. The question is: should it be against the main antagonist?

This is probably the best reasoning for a boss fight actually! (by having a lot of combat, it sets a level of expectation)

I'd agree with this.  The final "act" of the game should be some kind of climactic use of the skills you, the player, have honed during the game.  If those skills are primarily or exclusively combat skills, then there needs to be a bigass fight.

If the game revolves more around other gameplay (or uses combat and stealth in combination), then it doesn't need to be a bigass fight.  But since the only major gameplay in the series thus far has been combat, that kind of means a bigass fight is mandatory.  Otherwise it'll be a huge anti-climax.

For what its worth, the Quest for Glory games were AWESOME at doing this. 

Playing different classes lent you different skills and different solutions to problems. This was especially highlighted at the end games, where you tackled the ending showdown with various skills that you had used and developed in the game in line with your class (a thief would walk a tightrope to sneak into magic chamber, a fighter would bust in head first through a brigand ambush, a mage would use a self-destruct spell on his magical staff to blow up an enemy mage, etc.). 

Games that only have combat as the only difference between classes can really only have combat as the final obstacle. Otherwise, a player might feel a real sense of disconnect.

Heh, I don't remember the Q4G games like that, but that may be a result of the fact that I generally wound up building a character who did (mostly) everything, so my approach to the end was a bit scatter-brained.  That, and generally when I'd find A solution to a problem, I thought it was the ONLY solution, so I just did that.

Note, though, that I said "a bigass fight", not necessarily a "boss fight" meaning that you fight some ridiculously overpowered single dude or the ROSD + minions.  There just has to be a big combat, because the Dragon Age games are all combat.

There are a lot of ways to approach that, though.  You could have several tough combats between different objectives.  You could have to solve a puzzle while fighting, or weaken a boss through specific means, as in Legacy.  DDO has a fun raid where the boss is invulnerable to attack and you have to defeat him by dropping pillars on him then shooting him with a big energy gun.  I know some games do this in an incredibly annoying way where you have to pull off a ton of incredibly fiddly **** in a particular order and one little mistake totally screws you up.

Oh, and another thing I think ought to be important for Dragon Age:  The game is also about your interactions with your companions.  So shouldn't they ALL be involved in the final fight sequence?  Origins did that, DA2, not so much.

[Allan Schumacher]

iakus wrote...

How are we defining "fighting your way to each of the objectives?"

Are you referring to the entire Area 51 level?

For the most part, since the stuff needed for the final missions are scattered throughout the complex.  Page's personal defenses to disable.  Or the reactors to overload, or the router to activate for Helios.  There was a wide variety of enemies, and plenty of them, thanks to the Universal Contructors.  There were keys to find, computers to hack, hazards to navigate, shortcuts to find, with NPCs ready to urge you towards their preferred ending.

I remember most of the level, but I was mostly asking because I don't remember having to kill anyone.  It's been a long time since I last played it though.  My friend says he mostly just turned on camo and silent running.  I definitely didn't do that (I tend to lean towards stealthy combatant), but I do remember closing the doors to the UCs.

I remember Spector mentioning he was disappointed that three people had to be considered dead by the game, but I am chatting with some friends on Steam trying to remember who.

I know Anna is one (technically she can be glitched, but the intent of the game was for her to be killed, lest Jacobsen never give you the key to leave UNATCO).  I think the other is Lebedev (narratively his death cannot be avoided.  A friend of mine dragged is tranquilizered body to Manderley but he was still dead.  One things Gunther is, but I thought you could run from Gunther.  I am thinking the third is either Gunther or Page himself, although Page's fate is nebulous during the Helios merge.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 15 décembre 2012 - 05:19 .

[Plaintiff]

QueenPurpleScrap wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

It's got to be big, to be major. With DAO you have to defeat the Archdemon. No other ending really makes sense. In DA2 maybe the final climax could have been getting somebody from both sides to the mediation table. Some of the steps to be completed before the final sit down:

• Once that was agreed to Anders would have confessed to you what he did and then you would have to stop the bomb.
• Get that mind-bending red lyrium sword away from Meredith
• Have a viable candidate (possibly yourself) ready to step in as Viscount

Any failure of these steps could have resulted in what was the final boss battle. Nor does it mean that lack of a battle couldn't still spark trouble with the other Circles. Rumors start about what almost happened, the red lyrium sword is stolen before it can be destroyed, etc. We already have hints of some force manipulating events, that force would just have to work harder if Kirkwall doesn't explode.

That said, I do agree boss battles should be interesting and different from the regular battles. I actually liked the Corypheus boss battle because it was so different. It really mattered who you took with you. Definitely it was more tedious if you had the wrong people with you (and sometimes my LI was so not the right person). I would be willing to have fewer boss battles if they were more intricate, interesting, difficult, greatly affected by your party members.

I don't think that could make sense, given the story. We know from the beginning of DA2 that war is imminenet. Any attempts at negotiation already failed, the story is just about finding out why.

[Rawgrim]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

What about something simmilar to the landsmeet in DA:O? Only alot longer and more complex. Where everything you have done earlier in the game will affect how things go?

[Iakus]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

iakus wrote...

How are we defining "fighting your way to each of the objectives?"

Are you referring to the entire Area 51 level?

For the most part, since the stuff needed for the final missions are scattered throughout the complex.  Page's personal defenses to disable.  Or the reactors to overload, or the router to activate for Helios.  There was a wide variety of enemies, and plenty of them, thanks to the Universal Contructors.  There were keys to find, computers to hack, hazards to navigate, shortcuts to find, with NPCs ready to urge you towards their preferred ending.

I remember most of the level, but I was mostly asking because I don't remember having to kill anyone.  It's been a long time since I last played it though.  My friend says he mostly just turned on camo and silent running.  I definitely didn't do that (I tend to lean towards stealthy combatant), but I do remember closing the doors to the UCs.

I remember Spector mentioning he was disappointed that three people had to be considered dead by the game, but I am chatting with some friends on Steam trying to remember who.

I know Anna is one (technically she can be glitched, but the intent of the game was for her to be killed, lest Jacobsen never give you the key to leave UNATCO).  I think the other is Lebedev (narratively his death cannot be avoided.  A friend of mine dragged is tranquilizered body to Manderley but he was still dead.  One things Gunther is, but I thought you could run from Gunther.  I am thinking the third is either Gunther or Page himself, although Page's fate is nebulous during the Helios merge.

Stealth as an option would be another example of "using skills you've learned through the game."

The three characters that have to die are Anna, Gunther, and Walton.  Though the first two can be killed via their kill phrases and not be fought. at all (Lebedev can be saved, though it's very difficult, gotta kill Anna before she kills him, and you don't have her kill phrase yet)  You can escape Walton the first time you face him, but he'll turn up a later on and you have to finish him then.  

[Direwolf0294]

For me it comes down to whether adding a boss fight would be at the expense of a good story. If they'd have to force the story to go down a certain path that may not make sense to have a boss fight take place. Using Mass Effect as an example, the boss fight at the end of ME2 was terrible out of place and felt very forced, while the lack of a boss fight at the end of ME3 made perfect sense and kept the story flowing at a good pace. If DA3's story allows for a final boss fight, than sure, have a boss fight, but if they're going to have to twist the story and make it feel forced just to include a boss fight I'd much rather they avoid it.

Modifié par Direwolf0294, 15 décembre 2012 - 05:53 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Stealth as an option would be another example of "using skills you've learned through the game."

The three characters that have to die are Anna, Gunther, and Walton. Though the first two can be killed via their kill phrases and not be fought. at all (Lebedev can be saved, though it's very difficult, gotta kill Anna before she kills him, and you don't have her kill phrase yet) You can escape Walton the first time you face him, but he'll turn up a later on and you have to finish him then.

Simons does not have to die according to my friend :S (I always kill him the first time in the undersea base)

I think the game still treats Lebedev as dead, however, even if you kill Anna. Simply because "off screen" UNATCO eventually offs him.


Although I think we're mostly arguing in agreement here. Yes you can use stealth, but Deus Ex was brought in because of it being combat heavy. Without going back into that discussion, as someone that isn't a fan of boss fights, and typically struggled with the idea of why must our game have a boss fight, I could understand simply because BioWare games are typically very combat heavy, so it could be reasonable to assume that the final conflict resolution would also be combat heavy.


Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

[Iakus]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

Good question, as I very much consider it an important gameplay facet.

I wonder, though, if it's because conversation can have "right" and "wrong" answers, so once you know the pattern  you can "win" the conversation?

Of course, once you know the combat pattern of a boss, you can pretty much win that too 

[Foolsfolly]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that it's important to have a final challenge (of some sort) as part of a climax to a story.

My question is, must it be a boss fight? Or could it be a challenge presented in a different way?

It depends on the game in question, doesn't it? Having the big finale based around a puzzle and three riddles could work well enough in a point-and-click adventure game but would be out of place and detrimental to a FPS.

If one of the game's core mechanics is combat than a combat finale is both expected and anticpated. If it's a game that focuses much more on dialogue and choice then a beat-em-up isn't really expected or a wise design decision. The new Deus Ex is an example of this failing the core of the game was rather well done and always revolved around choices... then the boss battles were simple shoot-em-ups completely devoid of anything that made the core gameplay worthwhile. The boss fights did not match the game.

Thief (one of my favorite games ever) did not focus on combat. It's big final boss fight involved sneaking up to a god of chaos and nature and steal his plot device and replace it with a fake one so his 'End the World Now' spell would catastrophically fail and blow up on him. Perfect fit for the finale of that game. Terrible boss fight for a game like Halo.

In DA3's case, which I'm guessing here, it will be similar to DA1 and 2. And as such should have some kind of choices present and some tactical squad combat.

Allan Schumacher wrote...

But
why rule diplomacy out completely? Why not have an epic battle of
words? I mean this is a Bioware game, it's going to have some awesome
writing as well as gameplay. Maybe something that tops Mass Effect 3's
final persuasion options in terms of how profound and complex it is.

I'm more referring to the notion of, why must we have a boss fight.

In
general I am not a fan of boss fights, but there are a lot of people
that are. I'm just trying to facilitate discussion to delve deeper.
There's an obvious implicit analogue to ME3's ending, which lacked an
overt boss fight, and many complained about it.

Now, were
they upset simply because there wasn't a "boss fight" (go and fight
using the combat gameplay and win against a very powerful last foe?), or
was the climax resolution simply not sufficient. They would
have preferred something more meaningful, even if it wasn't necessarily
direct combat with the game's combat gameplay.

In my opinion it was both.

I'd been waiting for the Harbinger fight since he was introduced in ME2 and while I have no ****ing clue how you'd do that fight that 'How are they going to do this' factor only made me crave that fight all the more. Because it was going to be awesome. It was going to be like Beowulf vs the Wyrm, Shepard's all-or-nothing knuckle busting drag out brawl for the survival of all life.

****. To. The. Yes.

Didn't happen. I felt not only let down but like I didn't get what I'd been waiting for and bought eagerly.

Then there's the fact that, let's face it, ME3's ending is weak for quite a few reasons but the largest one being how unemotional, clinical, and disjointed the rest of the series the whole Catalyst encounter felt. And that Shepard didn't have one damn choice in the entire what 17 sentences the Catalyst had to explain both why it even existed and why we're talking to some god-child instead of fighting Reapers?

Oh, and the focus on Cerberus being the Evil Empire instead of a focus on stopping and battling the Reapers.

Lemme say, ME3 had a lot of problems. The boss fight's one of them but it's a lesser problem in the greater scheme of things.

[Foolsfolly]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

Perhaps because it's more like... part of the GUI, maybe? I mean it's a way in which we interface with the game. You wouldn't expect the final boss to have you sort out your inventory system either, even if you sometimes spend as much time in menus as you do fighting in certain RPGs.

It's not... 'gameplay' where you do cool things and fight giant monsters or hordes of zombies, ya know?

They're wrong, especially with games with divertent gameplay based on dialogue choices. But at the same time you can easily see how talking someone to death is less cool and satisfying than dashing their brains against something heavy.

Unless the villain has really well established beliefs that you as the PC have been proving wrong the entire game. Then being able to break their conviction can be all the more satisfying .... then you can dash their brains against something heavy.

Cake's better enjoyed when you're eating it.

[Nightdragon8]

imo Dues Ex :HR boss fights where horrible. either the AI got stuck or the AI cheats 100% stealth was not really an option in the boss fights.

also yea, in ME1, ME2 we had boss fights. ME1 was Searn- then reaper Searn (could skip the first part by para-renagading dialoge ME2 the human reaper baby. in Mass effect 3 it wasn't even a dialoge battle at all. Unless we wanna count "Murader sheilds" as a boss.

If anything should being in Fallout NV, where if you had enough speech you could not do the boss battle and still win.

Its just considering we dont know what the story in DA3 is going to be all about, pretty sure its the Templars vs Mages war. You could do it but. the big question is "how" you are going to achive a non fight ending. Maybe if you where the prefect diplomat conviced people on both sides of the conflict to reach a "cease fire" then you may be able to pull it off. But you will have to make it a whole game length type achievement.

Also you need to make it so its not that easy to get.

[Drone223]

Direwolf0294 wrote...

For me it comes down to whether adding a boss fight would be at the expense of a good story. If they'd have to force the story to go down a certain path that may not make sense to have a boss fight take place. Using Mass Effect as an example, the boss fight at the end of ME2 was terrible out of place and felt very forced, while the lack of a boss fight at the end of ME3 made perfect sense and kept the story flowing at a good pace. If DA3's story allows for a final boss fight, than sure, have a boss fight, but if they're going to have to twist the story and make it feel forced just to include a boss fight I'd much rather they avoid it.

Execution is also a major factor when deciding to have a boss fight or not, if devs are unable to come up with a good way to impliment a boss fight it might be best to have no boss fight at all and just stick with dialogue as like you said have a boss fight that feels forced.

Modifié par Drone223, 15 décembre 2012 - 10:11 .

[Dr Mew]

Well here's my view on the situation;

Combat heavy RPGs are often expected to have final boss fights so that the player can gauge how powerful they have become, especially if they've had to fight the boss previously and had their behinds handed quite easily back to them. For example: In FF7 (I am assuming mostly everyone has completed it so... spoilers.)  if you didn't have the 2/3 epic fights with Jenova and then the final fight with the real sephiroth and instead simply talked him out of basically destroying the world - it would feel as if they weren't staying true to their goals and this ruin that feeling of emmersion.

Same as if you were to talk the Arch Demon out of his blight, it wouldn't make sense. And in my own personal experience, games where you don't actually fight main villian usually have a large anticlimatic ending to them - because you're getting yourself prepared a beast of a fight and then its ripped from your grasp.

So I feel that a final boss battle is key, although how it is portrayed can make all the difference.

And of course the combat system is key in how you can portray your ending, I often find it disheartening if in a cinematic; my character is seen doing combat feats I can't do in normal game play. Which is why I liked Dragon's Domga - pretty much had complete control over how my charactered acted within combat.

[philippe willaume]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

But why rule diplomacy out completely? Why not have an epic battle of words? I mean this is a Bioware game, it's going to have some awesome writing as well as gameplay. Maybe something that tops Mass Effect 3's final persuasion options in terms of how profound and complex it is.

I'm more referring to the notion of, why must we have a boss fight.

In general I am not a fan of boss fights, but there are a lot of people that are. I'm just trying to facilitate discussion to delve deeper. There's an obvious implicit analogue to ME3's ending, which lacked an overt boss fight, and many complained about it.

Now, were they upset simply because there wasn't a "boss fight" (go and fight using the combat gameplay and win against a very powerful last foe?), or was the climax resolution simply not sufficient. They would have preferred something more meaningful, even if it wasn't necessarily direct combat with the game's combat gameplay.

Well having been one of complainer final boss fight had nothing to do with the complaints, yes that was mentioned in some cases. however the main focus was that he original ending had even less exposition,
contextualisation and closure than the DA:2 ending and that it was advertised choice will influence the ending.

A good bunch of us where happy with the story being told, but with creative liberty comes the duty of exposition and contextualisation, especially when the plots change direction just at the end. IE if you want to tell me a story, don't expect me to make up half of the ending on my own.
You don't need to cross ever t and dot every I but you need to give me clues as to why it is going the way it is going.
Not knowing or not making rational sense is fine, after the reapers are alien and they might not see thing as we do but tou need to tell me or give my some clues that this is what YOU, as a writter, intented.

Now BW is its worse ennemy in that matter. DA:2 and ME:3 are a prime exemple.

the Quun in Kirkwall story arc is fantastically done, there are several actually different resolution and they depend on what you have done before.  the ending is brough into context in light of those descission and we are told enough to have a clear picture or at least build a theory and you have enough closure for that arc


It is the same with the Geth and quarians or the genophage cure. In fact those two are very charged emotionally to boot.

And then in both game after giving us that level of quality, you gave us an ending that in comparison looks  half-assed, half explain in comparison, and it leave a felling of "that will flipping do, type of job".

what makes it even worse is that I think changing the focus of the story at the last minute and changing the perspective of the whole game at the end and having to make a choice based on that was a really  good twist.

What i mean is best illustrated when you compare Mordrin, grunt or Legion final scene and Liara or Jarvick final scene.

The bit that was missing from the ending was that it was not as good as the ending of some sub arc not that it lacked a Boss fight.

Phil

Modifié par philippe willaume, 15 décembre 2012 - 04:50 .

[Wulfram]

The final boss fights in the past two games were oddly easy. Not talking in absolute terms, but relative to the rest of the game.

Mostly they seemed too skewed towards defence - they had plenty of hitpoints, but they didn't put out enough damage to really worry you. The only scare in the DA2 battle are the robots which shoot flames - though can do a good bit of damage.

[philippe willaume]

iakus wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

Good question, as I very much consider it an important gameplay facet.

I wonder, though, if it's because conversation can have "right" and "wrong" answers, so once you know the pattern  you can "win" the conversation?

Of course, once you know the combat pattern of a boss, you can pretty much win that too 

Usually the most profitable path to XP and loot is by mincing the opposition, if you avoid the fight you miss out.

as well in the game play it is not often used asreal alternative to combat/thieving but used more to move either relations and the story 

So that tend to diminish the relative importance in game play compared to other means and reinforce the story driving role.

Personally I think that conversation is an integral part of the game and that it give opportunities to resolves situation other than by force. 
It would even be cool if you have specific line per class in certain situations.



phil

Modifié par philippe willaume, 15 décembre 2012 - 11:31 .

[Pzykozis]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

Probably because they're not easily defined as gamey, they have no challenge no method of losing or winning and no real consequence aside from choices it normally falls into being something either like basic input i.e. movement in the world or something like a GUI. That doesn't apply to all dialogue in all games of course.

[philippe willaume]

Wulfram wrote...

The final boss fights in the past two games were oddly easy. Not talking in absolute terms, but relative to the rest of the game.

Mostly they seemed too skewed towards defence - they had plenty of hitpoints, but they didn't put out enough damage to really worry you. The only scare in the DA2 battle are the robots which shoot flames - though can do a good bit of damage.

Hello, i would say that for DA:2 it is not that clear cut.

With and ultimate build, both final both are
 as you said oddly easy  but really no fight was really hard.

With a not so optimum build they can be tedious to
tears.



For DA:0 i agree with you totally



Now i suspect that if like me you did as many side
quest as possible, we probably add a power differential in our favour, which is
not necessarily bad per se. I see that has a way to make sub-optimal build viable
so i can take the expense of making optimal build easier
Phil

Modifié par philippe willaume, 15 décembre 2012 - 04:49 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Having said that, to move the conversation a bit away from that: why do people often not consider conversations to be an aspect of the gameplay system?

I would say because there is no challenge, at least with DA's system.

You can't fail at talking. Its not like, say DE:HR or AP where you can abjectively "lose" a conversation. DA's system is pretty much "dialouge/optional investigate/choice that allows you to input character decision or personality/next set of dialogue."

There's no challenge to that. And, while conversation may be a part of the gameplay, it was never a CHALLENGING part of the gameplay. And that's what the end needs - a challenge.

With ME3's ending, the only challenging part about the end section's dialogue was understanding the hodge-podge logic.

If a game makes conversations loseable (meaning they could be increased in challenge), then that would be different. 

Example: Fallout 1 puts you face to face with The Master. Unless you have a Science skill or Speech skill (and then choose the right options in a number of lists), it will result in a fight. Because it requries you to have a character built in a certain way AND make the right conversation choices, it is acceptable for this to be the end. You can convince The Master to abandon his evil plan not just by choosing an "Auto-win" conversation option available to everyone, but by having a certain character build and an understanding of the NPC's logic and the game world.

Not to mention you had to fight through tons of enemies just to get to his lair anyway, which was a bit of a challenge as well.

[Wulfram]

The last conversation with TIM could have been some sort of dialogue boss battle, with the possibility of him taking over your mind or just shooting you. But it would need to be a bit more difficult than just picking the coloured choices over and over again..

Though that sort of dialogue battle can be rather constraining to characterisation, if there aren't multiple routes to victory. And if there are multiple routes to victory, how do you keep difficulty?

[dversion]

I found that the large scale battle at the end of Dragon Age Origins was far more of an climax than the last boss fight. It felt like I was putting all of my work to use when calling in reinforcements.

[Wulfram]

dversion wrote...

I found that the large scale battle at the end of Dragon Age Origins was far more of an climax than the last boss fight. It felt like I was putting all of my work to use when calling in reinforcements.

Bits where your hard work pay off are an important component of end games, yeah.  ME2 does this pretty well, too.

ME3 doesn't do a good enough job of showing the impact - you are getting benefits from all your war assets, but there's barely a hint of that conveyed in the game.

[Phate Phoenix]

I agree with most of the other posters: the final sequence should reflect what the player has done through the game. I do think a boss battle is necessary, whether that means it's just your party versus the main antagonist, or a giant battle. (Personally, I loved DAO's finale and seeing something like that again would be great: two armies fighting each other, your entire team taking part in some way, eventually facing down your main antagonist.) That said, since Dragon Age is also heavily influenced by dialogue, I think it, too, should have some impact on the battle. Perhaps you can sway someone to your side if you've hit all the correct dialogue choices throughout the entire game, similar to triggering the epic one-on-one combat with the Arishok in DA2, or TIM's final encounter in ME3.

Also, all for making the dialogue system harder. In DAO, skills aren't entirely too important (or can be foisted off onto your companions), so filling up Coercion quickly is easy enough with little trade off. DA2 didn't really have this, just a tone system. Maybe have it tied to Cunning/Strength alone, or make the trade-off of picking a conversationalist character directly effect combat effectiveness? Perhaps a system closer to (I know, I know) Skyrim's?