67 réponses à ce sujet

[Anomaly-]

Kileyan wrote...

I do like more complicated character builds, but I cannot blame Bioware for getting away from some of the AD&D 3.5'ish stuff. Some of it was a little over the top complicated. If I recall some of the higher end "talents" and class spec kits in the D&D game literally required spending stat points down the wire from level 1, or  you would never ever being able to use that super cool whirlwind or get that class specialization that you wanted. It was a bit over complicated and unforgiving.

I actually don't really like the D&D system, for several reasons. I was glad they moved away from it with Origins. A system that is robust doesn't have to be overly complicated. I'm quite pleased with what I was able to do through modding Origins.

[d4eaming]

Kileyan wrote...

I do like more complicated character builds, but I cannot blame Bioware for getting away from some of the AD&D 3.5'ish stuff. Some of it was a little over the top complicated. If I recall some of the higher end "talents" and class spec kits in the D&D game literally required spending stat points down the wire from level 1, or  you would never ever being able to use that super cool whirlwind or get that class specialization that you wanted. It was a bit over complicated and unforgiving.

I can't imagine someone on a console(unable to mod or respec), after 60 hours of play finding out they misspent a stat point on intelligence at level 4, and now could never acheive enough dex to get the one top talent they had imagined their character around.

This is me in Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark, and Shadows of Undrentide. I put one too many points into str for my warrior rather than dex? Time to scrap the entire game and start over from the beginning, because now I can't be a battlemaster.

No thank you.

[Anomaly-]

d4eaming wrote...
If you don't call that theory-crafting, then we obviously have wildly different definitions of that term. And yes, WoW is complicated. I don't know where you get the notion it isn't.

I will concede that I haven't played WoW in a very long time, and I only played it briefly. There were other games I enjoyed more, back in my MMO days. I'm not sure if saying it's not complicated is precisely what I meant. There may be dozens of variables involved to make it complicated, but the point is, anyone can go look up a guide for the best way of doing something. That's what I don't like. I like to come up with my own approaches, and like I said, DA2 made it very difficult, and often impossible, for me to do that.

What is your suggestion? Rogues have always favored dex/cun. Warriors have always favored str/con. Mages have always favored wis/int. That is simply the nature of the very foundation of the system, that is based on DND. Could you make an effective warrior using int as a big stat? Not likely. Rogues didn't need int, mages were useless using str. What would even be the point?

My suggestion is making just about every stat useful to every class to at least some degree. This is how I modded the attributes in Origins:

Strength:
+0.5 to attack with melee/ranged weapons
75% of
attribute modifier for all weapons
+0.6 to
physical resistance
Adds to intimidation coercion checks
-0.5% fatigue

Dexterity:
+0.5 to attack with melee/ranged weapons
+0.3 to
physical resistance
+1 to defense
25% of attribute modifier for all weapons
1% ability cooldown reduction (all classes)
0.1% physical crit chance


Willpower:
+5 mana/stamina
+1 mental
resistance
+0.5 mana/stam regen
+0.5 spirit, fire, and cold res
+1% spell duration

Magic:
+1 spellpower
+0.25 mental resistance
%0.25 spell resist
0.5% fatigue (mages only)
Majority of spells now scale more aggressively to spellpower
Added scaling for potion effects

Cunning:
+1 armor penetration
+0.25 mental resistance
Bonuses to stealing and stealth checks
Bonuses to persuade coercion checks
-1% to targets spell resist (can't go lower than 0)
0.5% spell crit chance
Added with magic in resistance checks (attacking, not defending)

Constutition:
+5 health
+0.6 to physical resistance
+0.25 nature and electric res
+0.25 HP regen
Added scaling for healing effectiveness

That actually isn't the complete list, I can't seem to find it at the moment. There were also many talent changes, and additional talents that would further change the functionality of certain attributes.

This flexibility, combined with better randomized itemization allows for much greater variety in builds. The itemization also allows for situations and choices you might not have expected. For example, playing a mage I may come across a ring that adds +7 cunning, which is now very competitive with my other ring that adds +4 magic. This now provides you with an interesting choice, where previously there would be none.

As for DA's leaning toward story rather than combat- combat is filler. Combat happens in between the character building dialogue. The ultimate goal is to tell a certain story, not to provide a tactical simulation. I can name plenty of games that can give you a tactical game rather than a story game (anything from Master of Orion to economy sims to Dune 2000 and any game that requires controlling units- in those games, story comes second to the micromanaging of the tactical sim).

Unfortunately, I haven't heard of any of those games. I also have no doubt that none of them have anywhere near the budget that Bioware games have. That being said, I don't expect a tactical sim, precisely. I just expect robust and varied character development and gameplay. I wouldn't expect it if it wasn't provided to me before, but it was.

I enjoy experiencing the world and it's mechanics. The story, to me, is a backdrop for those things. Story will change little on subsequent playthroughs, while gameplay and overall experience can change significantly.

DA is not a tactical sim, and it's silly trying to turn it into one.

Why is it silly? I was able to do it just fine with Origins (after some modding), and the result was excellent. Though again, tactical sim isn't really accurate.

Modifié par Anomaly-, 22 décembre 2012 - 01:54 .

[Augoeides]

Anomaly- wrote...

You missed the point entirely. Obviously, wasting points is not my goal. The stat system in DA2 is made far more linear by tieing essentially everything of importance to a class to 2 given attributes. For instance, in Origins I had to consider how much strength to invest in, to be able to use certain gear. DA2 just tied gear requirements to dexterity -- a skill that already had a lot of usefulness lumped into it -- for convenience sake.

That's just one example of a factor you no longer have to consider in DA2.

That's assuming you wanted to use Rogue armor, quite a few mages for example, particularly blood mages will dump in STR and CON to get some of the warrior universal armors which helps them get neccessarily beefier so their self drainage + enemy attacks don't wipe them out. Similarly there's nothing stopping you from utilizing mage or warrior armor for aesthetic appeal via stat dump. DA:O was much the same in many ways, there was no real amount of skill involved in paying attention to stats so that you could get your rogues into good leather and your warriors into good armor, or vice versa if the whimsy struck you. You look at the stats required and you say: "Well I need X to wear Y, so from the Z stat points I get at level I'm gonna allocate V to X until it reaches the appropriate level". Big whoop, I'm TOTALLY into the mood now.

You find one ingredient, you don't make it, and you don't invest any skill into it. I already said why that's a problem.

Bzzt, wrong, you find several ingredients because some things require more than one source which means you HAVE to explore thoroughly because you cant just keep returning to that elfroot spot or buying from Varathorn and if you don't explore you might just end up VERY short of the ingredient you need with no way to fix it.  The ONLY difference in skill is that you don't once every so now and then click on the herbalism icon when appropriate to unlock more potions. The only person this could ever prove detrimental to is a) a person with potions master fantasy or someone who enjoys adding an extra step to something for the sake of the extra step. I didn't use herbalism in DA:O except for that one quest in Orzammar, and I didn't make potions in DA2 via the stalls. The potion crafting has added little to my game experience as it is and why would it? It was far more useful to put points in Persuasion so I could persuade without turning Cunning into my only stat levelled, Combat Training, Tactics and Survival if only for the passive bonuses to your resistance and stats they gave.

As I said, the gameplay isn't there.

That's right no more running back to the same spot over and over to farm an Elfroot so I can finally open the menu and go clickety clickety click and get my potion but ONLY once I've remembered to buy that recipe and level a few times and go clickety click on the Herblism icon, assuming I have the token amount of the stat requirement on Morrigan. Wait, I don't think there is one... OH WELL BACK TO DUMPING 2 MAG 1 WIS ON MORRIGAN EVERY LEVEL . Why did I do that? Because that was effective on her, I also did the same for Wynne... despite this by end-game they were two VERY different mages in personality and purpose in combat. Sure they got a token bit of Con or Cunning here or there, either because a skill annoyingly required it, or because it was Con, there's almost never a  real downside to dropping a little in Con in RPGs.

In DA:O? I gathered most of my materials. I didn't pay for much. Crafting in DA:O could be used to make money. That's what I'm talking about when I say an alternative approach to gameplay.

Okay. I'm not sure why you'd need to do crafting runs to make money in DA:O but okay if that's what makes you happy. 

But as I said, it did nothing to add to gameplay or differentiate characters. For that reason, it may as well have been in the form of an NPC who sells potions. That would provide essentially the same mechanic, and would make those things accessible for people who want them without dabbling in different gameplay.

But it did add gameplay, it added an urgency of focus to exploration.  Furthermore, if you can just buy potions, why would you make them? Aside from my tiny money saving, and frankly there was an abundance of poultices, injury kits and whatnot in DA:O and in DA2 with the cd timers pushed up reliance on a stack of pots wasn't that smart.

In fact, DA2 does offer the same essential service (that you 're suggesting) of buying potions but it forces you to earn the ingredient sources or deny yourself that of that possibility.

Overall it sounds like you're just advocating for "gameplay" that extends a pre-existent process for the sake of extending it.

I could seriously empathize with your points if this were a discussion on say... Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim and their alchemy mechanics which exist in a very different context of open play than Dragon Age's.

Modifié par Augoeides, 22 décembre 2012 - 03:02 .

[d4eaming]

Anomaly- wrote...

d4eaming wrote...
If you don't call that theory-crafting, then we obviously have wildly different definitions of that term. And yes, WoW is complicated. I don't know where you get the notion it isn't.

I will concede that I haven't played WoW in a very long time, and I only played it briefly. There were other games I enjoyed more, back in my MMO days. I'm not sure if saying it's not complicated is precisely what I meant. There may be dozens of variables involved to make it complicated, but the point is, anyone can go look up a guide for the best way of doing something. That's what I don't like. I like to come up with my own approaches, and like I said, DA2 made it very difficult, and often impossible, for me to do that.

I've played since 2007, through four expansions. A lot has changed. I mean a lot. My primary class is hunter, and my primary spec is beast master. I have to juggle my prime stat, agility, with +hit, +crit, +mastery, weapon imbues and armor enchantments, gem slots (and gems themselves have to be balanced so you can use your meta gems which require certain combinations of other colored gems to be in your gear), plus my skills, my skill procs, my weapon procs, my enchantment procs, my trinket and ring procs, my cooldowns, my pet, my rotation. It's so much s--- to keep track of I have a dozen addons just so I can tell when my abilities come off cooldown, to give me a custom HUD, I have keybinds and macros. Hell, I even use a mini-keyboard because moving, jumping, casting spells, and managing the camera are simply not possible on a standard keyboard and mouse. And I still suck at the game.

^^^ That? Please god no, do not put that into my RPGs, Bioware, I will sacrifice my firstborn to make it so.

When you talk about wanting complexity, or more involvement, or micromanagement, or something even kind of like that, the above is what comes to mind.

DAO's system was not complicated. Having to raise herbalism (which I ultimately never even used, so it was wasted), and traps that I never had enough mats to use, pickpocketing was useless, stealth wasn't useful because of cutscenes, the skill that let you talk to the halla at the Dalish camp- all of that was ultimately useless to my defeating the archdemon, and were completely wasted stats. I play on a PS3, so telling me to mod it doesn't help. DAO had only an illusion of complexity, simply by offering up options that were not very useful and distracted from the bulk of necessary abilities. Pursuasion was actually a necessity. Not overtly, no, but if you wanted to keep your options, you had to take it.

I enjoyed DA2's system without needless tinkering. I wanted a sword-and-board warrior tank, so I made one. I wanted an archer rogue, so I made one. The game gave me enough to give my character's flavor and visual distinction. Having Seb in my party didn't really make me feel they overlapped too much. I gave him skills in opposition to my own, and my archer retained his own identity.

I don't come to games like DA, NWN, BG, or ME for complexity and tinkering. I come to them for a story. It seems that BW shares the same idea with the way they have taken their games. Adding in "fluff" can be nice, but only when it doesn't pull skills away from the necessities that could end up with you unable to even complete the game because you made the "incorrect" choices. I can't count how many characters I started and deleted in NWN and its expansions because I didn't "theory craft" enough and forgot I needed one more point in an opposing, unecessary attribute so I could take my specialisation, therefore ultimately crippling my gameplay. That isn't fun. It seems very weird to me that people want to inject that into story based games like DA.

(And I have played story based games that don't give you any choices at all in stats of abilities, and they are still amazing games. Blood Omen/Soul Reaver/Defiance, I am looking at you.)

[Foolsfolly]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Celene II wrote...

XX-Pyro wrote...

You can put as much effort or as little effort into creating and upgrading a character in DA2 as you could in DA:O.

Tell that to Herbalism and Persuasion skills

Your counterpoint has nothing to do with the amount of effort one puts into planning their build, just that the non-combat skills don't exist (which many will argue were trivial to allocate and didn't require much thought anyways).

Step 1- Get all Persuasion skills as they open up.
Step 2- Get all Herbalism skills for Morrigan.
Step 3- Potent Lyrium Potion crafting.
Step 4- You're never without money, tons of potions, and there's literally no discussion in the game where you come out on the bottom.

It takes almost no effort to plan, sure. But they weren't trivial. It was damn near god-mode since no matter what you're getting the best equipment and an endless supply of pots.

Of course, this roughly equates to an exploit. Although one I'm happy to use since... you know it's more like a captalistic venture than typing something and gaining money. Plus it was just tedious enough to sometimes discourage me from even doing it.

[Celene II]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Celene II wrote...

XX-Pyro wrote...

You can put as much effort or as little effort into creating and upgrading a character in DA2 as you could in DA:O.

Tell that to Herbalism and Persuasion skills

Your counterpoint has nothing to do with the amount of effort one puts into planning their build, just that the non-combat skills don't exist (which many will argue were trivial to allocate and didn't require much thought anyways).

Because a game removes an entire part of leveling up doesnt reduce the amount of planning? Does that mean your saying DAO was a weak game cause skills were silly or are you saying that DA2 was streamlined because it didnt have them. Has to be one or the other.

You have to be insulting one or the other.


____________________________________________

FIREBALL - DAO STYLE
Area of Effect - Sphere  7.5 meters
Initial fire damage: (100.0 + Spellpower) * 0.3.
Fire damage over time: (100.0 + Spellpower) * 0.3. Over Duration: 5.0s.
Range: 25 meters
Activation 40 mana
Cool Down 10 seconds
Conjuration time: 1s.
Tremendous knock down potential

Activation base is in mana and values vary with fatigue%.
Fire Damage values are displayed in the game as the color: Orange.
Arcane Warrior Spellcasting: The spell requires be cast with your weapon sheathed.


FIREBALL DA2 Style

Fire damage: 1.35x Base Damage
Elemental force: 3x 
Activation 25 mana
Cool Down 20s

The sheer reduction in information across every aspect of DA2
The loss of equiping your companions
The loss of skills
The loss of major specializations
The loss of  near 50 spells from DAO to DA2

I wasnt trying to be an angry itch about the entire thing and i wouldnt have lashed out on the "non combat skills" if it had not been so late but maybe we can have a discussion about all those differences?

[mr_afk]

From a purely game mechanics perspective, DA2 is actually considerably improved compared to DA:O. Ignoring the rather strong language/tone, this thread compares to the two games reasonably well.

Firstly, DA:O wasn't very balanced, with overpowered specialisations/abilities (e.g. arcane warrior) and useless specialisations (e.g. shape shifter).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there were numerous (unfixed) bugs which had significant impacts on the gameplay.

To quote a few:

• ~30-40% of abilities/item properties either do not function properly, or do not work at all. abilities/properties that should modify threat do not do this;
• abilities/properties that should modify attack animation speed either do not do this or do this in a buggy/messy/glitchy way;
• aura-like abilities stack (Rock Mastery, Rally);
• crossbows being unaffected by attributes, thus leaving the whole weapon class totally useless.
• The list, in fact, is much much much longer.

As such, 'theorycrafting', or optimised builds in DA:O revolved around avoiding the numerous bugs, trying to avoid the cheesy abilities that made the game too easy, and taking into account the preset abilities that companions were stuck with. My personal peeve was the attack speed bugs, which rendered it impossible to use haste (or even Shale) with archers in the party.

On the other hand, abilities and specialisations are a lot more balanced in DA2, with almost every ability or ability tree potentially useful (and not to mention, working as they should).
The introduction of proper threat management and cross-class combos also increased the ability to create parties and tactics that synergise well.


With better game mechanics, the ability to 'theorycraft' is improved, since rather than working around various bugs etc you are able to experiment with different combinations of abilities and/or party setups.


In terms of attributes, it's hard to say that DA:O is much more complex than DA2. While it's true that the armour requirements system is a little basic (and counter-intuitive) in DA2, it's not like characters in DA:O had to focus on more than two or three stats anyway.
Mages still focused on increasing magic (and willpower), rogues focused on dexterity or cunning (using lethality), and warriors focused on strength/dexterity (and constitution).

While the unrestricted access to weapons in DA:O allowed more potential weapon setups (e.g. warrior archers), I personally found the differences based on specialisation type in DA2 to be greater.

So imo, overall, I would say that there are more distinctly flavoured ways to build a character in DA2 than DA:O. I was also going to mention that DA2 has more potential for experimental builds like elemental warriors (warriors/rogues wearing robes), crit mages (mages wearing rogue armour), etc, but I'm not sure how intentional that was.

Modifié par mr_afk, 22 décembre 2012 - 07:00 .

[Anomaly-]

[quote]Augoeides wrote...
That's assuming you wanted to use Rogue armor, quite a few mages for example, particularly blood mages will dump
in STR and CON to get some of the warrior universal armors which helps them get neccessarily beefier so their self drainage + enemy attacks don't wipe them out. Similarly there's nothing stopping you from utilizing mage or warrior armor for aesthetic appeal via stat dump.
[/quote]

Yes, dump points into stats that do nothing for me to equip an armor that also does nothing for me, beyond aesthetic appeal. That's an example of fighting with the mechanics.

[quote]
DA:O was much the same in many ways, there was no real amount of skill involved in paying attention to stats so that you could get your rogues into good leather and your warriors into good armor, or vice versa if the whimsy struck you. You look at the stats required and you say: "Well I need X to wear Y, so from the Z stat points I get at level I'm gonna allocate V to X until it reaches the appropriate level". [/quote]

Yep. You could also consider building around other gear that may require more strength, or perhaps none at all. This gear would also be useful to you beyond aesthetic appeal, and the whole thing would feel much more smooth and natural without the mechanics fighting you every step of the way.

[quote]
Big whoop, I'm TOTALLY into the mood now.[/quote]

Doesn't appeal to you. I get it.

[quote]
Bzzt, wrong, you find several ingredients because some things require more than one source which means you HAVE to explore thoroughly because you cant just keep returning to that elfroot spot or buying from Varathorn and if you don't explore you might just end up VERY short of the ingredient you need with no way to fix it. [/quote]

I'm sorry, let me fix that. Sometimes you find two ingredients. That made sense too, right? Somehow I can order 100 potions requiring 1 elfroot from this one node, but I can't order a single potion requiring 2 elfroots until I find another arbitrary node. I never had to explore thoroughly to find them, or anything else in DA2.

That last part actually suggests the mechanic is far less forgiving than DA:O's.

[quote]

The ONLY difference in skill is that you don't once every so now and then click on the herbalism icon when appropriate to unlock more potions. The only person this could ever prove detrimental to is a) a person with potions master fantasy[/quote]

Bingo. But is that the only difference? The whole process of managing materials and inventory is taken out. You can say whatever you want about it, but I enjoy it, and I'm not the only one. I like having to consider whether I should keep a certain material in case it may prove useful down the road, or what I should bring with me before I head out to a dangerous area.


[quote]The potion crafting has added little to my game experience as it is and why would it? It was far more useful to put points in Persuasion so I could persuade without turning Cunning into my only stat levelled, Combat Training, Tactics and Survival if only for the passive bonuses to your resistance and stats they gave. [/quote]

Useful for your purposes, perhaps. What if I'd like to play a shy herbalist who likes to avoid combat as much as possible, but doesn't possess the charm to persuade people their way?

[quote]
That's right no more running back to the same spot over and over to farm an Elfroot so I can finally open the menu and go clickety clickety click and get my potion but ONLY once I've remembered to buy that recipe and level a few times and go clickety click on the Herblism icon, assuming I have the token amount of the stat requirement on Morrigan. Wait, I don't think there is one... OH WELL BACK TO DUMPING 2 MAG 1 WIS ON MORRIGAN EVERY LEVEL . Why did I do that? Because that was effective on her, I also did the same for Wynne... despite this by end-game they were two VERY different mages in personality and purpose in combat. Sure they got a token bit of Con or Cunning here or there, either because a skill annoyingly required it, or because it was Con, there's almost never a  real downside to dropping a little in Con in RPGs.[/quote]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

[quote]
Okay. I'm not sure why you'd need to do crafting runs to make money in DA:O but okay if that's what makes you happy.  [/quote]

No, you don't need to. If you needed to, that would be a problem. You also don't need to persuade anyone. You can get through the entire game without it, if you wish.

[quote]
But it did add gameplay, it added an urgency of focus to exploration.[/quote]

When I realized how the mechanic worked, I felt no urgency.

[quote]
Furthermore, if you can just buy potions, why would you make them? [/quote]

Because you can, if you're skilled in them. For starters.

[quote]
Aside from my tiny money saving, and frankly there was an abundance of poultices, injury kits and whatnot in DA:O and in DA2 with the cd timers pushed up reliance on a stack of pots wasn't that smart. [/quote]

Those are all balance issues that are easily fixed. Simply make injury kits harder to get a hold of. I modded the crafting skills to tie their usefulness to attributes/skill level of the one using them, as well as added talent ranks to relevant specializations to further boost them. Now crafting is a legitimate approach to gameplay in it's own right, and you can no longer just leave crafting "mules" in camp. Problem solved. I just wish they had added things like this in DA2 instead of scrapping so many systems completely.

[quote]
In fact, DA2 does offer the same essential service (that you 're suggesting) of buying potions but it forces you to earn the ingredient sources or deny yourself that of that possibility. [/quote]

Yes, I know it does. That's my complaint. It's essentially just a shop, with the arbitrary requirement of finding something first. You could just hide the shop and have the exact same mechanic.

[quote]
Overall it sounds like you're just advocating for "gameplay" that extends a pre-existent process for the sake of extending it. [/quote]

That's not at all what I'm doing.

[quote]
I could seriously empathize with your points if this were a discussion on say... Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim and their alchemy mechanics which exist in a very different context of open play than Dragon Age's.
[/quote]

Why should they be so different?


[quote]d4eaming wrote...
^^^ That? Please god no, do not put that into my RPGs, Bioware, I will sacrifice my firstborn to make it so.[/quote]

No, that's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for real options and diversity, and gameplay mechanics that facilitate rather than hinder them.

[quote]
DAO's system was not complicated. Having to raise herbalism (which I ultimately never even used, so it was wasted), and traps that I never had enough mats to use, pickpocketing was useless, stealth wasn't useful because of cutscenes, the skill that let you talk to the halla at the Dalish camp- all of that was ultimately useless to my defeating the archdemon, and were completely wasted stats.[/quote]

Again, these are simply balance issues that are easily solved. I was able to make all of those skills much, much more useful and rewarding.

[quote]
I play on a PS3, so telling me to mod it doesn't help. [/quote]

I'm not telling you to mod it. I'm telling you that because I was able to easily mod it in with limited access to the engine and achieve excellent results, I can see no reason for Bioware not to do something similar and improve on features instead of scrapping them. It's entirely doable.

[quote]
DAO had only an illusion of complexity, simply by offering up options that were not very useful and distracted from the bulk of necessary abilities. Pursuasion was actually a necessity. Not overtly, no, but if you wanted to keep your options, you had to take it. [/quote]

Again, balance.

[quote]
I don't come to games like DA, NWN, BG, or ME for complexity and tinkering. I come to them for a story. It seems that BW shares the same idea with the way they have taken their games.[/quote]

But the facilities were there for these kinds of things in the past. Every Bioware game I've played has involved character progression. I don't think they mean to just half ass it.

[quote]
I can't count how many characters I started and deleted in NWN and its expansions because I didn't "theory craft" enough and forgot I needed one more point in an opposing, unecessary attribute so I could take my specialisation, therefore ultimately crippling my gameplay. [/quote]

That's not what I'm after.

[quote]It seems very weird to me that people want to inject that into story based games like DA.[/quote]

Again, I'm not trying to "inject" anything that wasn't there before.

[quote]
(And I have played story based games that don't give you any choices at all in stats of abilities, and they are still amazing games. Blood Omen/Soul Reaver/Defiance, I am looking at you.)
[/quote]

Thing is, when I play a game, I want to play a game. If I just want story, I can read a book, and get an even better story knowing that the book doesn't also have to include graphics, gameplay, and potentially bad voice acting, or censor itself to fall into a certain ESRB rating category. I've thoroughly enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire, The Wheel of Time, and several other fantasy series. I enjoy a good story just as much as the next guy, but that's not my main interest when playing a game.

It's much the same reason I don't pay $80 for better speakers on a laptop, knowing that they will only take more power away from the other components, and still won't be of the same quality as standalone speakers I can buy separately.

Modifié par Anomaly-, 22 décembre 2012 - 07:23 .

[Anomaly-]

mr_afk wrote...
Firstly, DA:O wasn't very balanced, with overpowered specialisations/abilities (e.g. arcane warrior) and useless specialisations (e.g. shape shifter).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there were numerous (unfixed) bugs which had significant impacts on the gameplay.

As such, 'theorycrafting', or optimised builds in DA:O revolved around avoiding the numerous bugs, trying to avoid the cheesy abilities that made the game too easy, and taking into account the preset abilities that companions were stuck with. My personal peeve was the attack speed bugs, which rendered it impossible to use haste (or even Shale) with archers in the party.

Again, all balance issues. My point remains that DA:O's overall design lended itself much better toward variety and options. It just needs to be properly balanced, bug tested, and expanded on.

On the other hand, abilities and specialisations are a lot more balanced in DA2, with almost every ability or ability tree potentially useful (and not to mention, working as they should).

I completely disagree. I found stealth profoundly underwhelming, and I really felt little difference in gameplay between classes/specializations. Assassinate was also rather overpowered.

The introduction of proper threat management and cross-class combos also increased the ability to create parties and tactics that synergise well.

It made cross-class combos nearly essential for efficiency.

In terms of attributes, it's hard to say that DA:O is much more complex than DA2. While it's true that the armour requirements system is a little basic (and counter-intuitive) in DA2, it's not like characters in DA:O had to focus on more than two or three stats anyway.
Mages still focused on increasing magic (and willpower), rogues focused on dexterity or cunning (using lethality), and warriors focused on strength/dexterity (and constitution).

Damage was also tied to strength instead of dexterity for Rogues. You could tie it to cunning instead, but that required some skill investment. Personally, I modded that to give 75% benefit.

I wasn't claiming DA:O's attributes were overwhelmingly more complex than DA2's, but they were more complex. I am advocating that with the proper balancing and testing, they can be made much more complex and rewarding than in either game. DA2 went the opposite direction instead, and took a minimalist approach. Whether this was because of time constraints or because that is really the direction they want to take now remains to be seen. I'm not claming the mechanics of DA:O were stellar or perfect, but they were definitely closer to the right direction, in my opinion.

Modifié par Anomaly-, 22 décembre 2012 - 07:26 .

[d4eaming]

Anomaly- wrote...

(And I have played story based games that don't give you any choices at all in stats of abilities, and they are still amazing games. Blood Omen/Soul Reaver/Defiance, I am looking at you.)

Thing is, when I play a game, I want to play a game. If I just want story, I can read a book, and get an even better story knowing that the book doesn't also have to include graphics, gameplay, and potentially bad voice acting, or censor itself to fall into a certain ESRB rating category. I've thoroughly enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire, The Wheel of Time, and several other fantasy series. I enjoy a good story just as much as the next guy, but that's not my main interest when playing a game.

It's much the same reason I don't pay $80 for better speakers on a laptop, knowing that they will only take more power away from the other components, and still won't be of the same quality as standalone speakers I can buy separately.

Hahaha. Ok, dismiss those games out of hand (have you ever played them? Have you even heard of them?) and tell me a book would be better. Legacy of Kain is a story, always has been, always will be. Watch the VA outtakes on youtube and that will be abundantly clear. (Simon Templeton, who voiced Kain, also voiced a character in ME, and has probably also voiced a great deal more- and he is f---ing amazing.)  Those games have exploration and puzzle solving, and a great lore that is pretty well unparalelled. Combat is secondary, and only really there to slow you down. But you want to dismiss story based games, because you'd rather read a book, and yet keep going on and on about how DA should be more combat focused, when it is a story based game. You clearly don't really understand the whole point.

There is way more than enough "gaming" within Legacy of Kain, mostly involving puzzles and alternate use of terrain, and putting together various pieces of the reaver in such a way that you can unlock areas that were previously barred from you. While I can't see DA going that extreme, they follow the same basic idea of presenting a story in a rich, colorful world, where combat is not the main focus.

I mean really. Stop trying to turn DA into something it never was.

[Gazardiel]

After devoting numerous half-hour sessions to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion exclusively for potion grinding, it's a welcome change to have a simplified, non-hoarder ("grab all herbs in sight!") potion/bomb/poison crafting system that rewards one round of exploration per act with items that enhance play but that aren't necessary. I like skill building as much as the next person, but that would have detracted from the story flow of the game too much.

It is too bad that non-combat skills have tended to be seen as a waste of skills that could go into combat, but that's more of an overall trend towards optimization of combat over character building (which instead is represented by cultivation of character voice and moral choices in DA2).

[mr_afk]

[quote]Anomaly- wrote...

[quote]mr_afk wrote...
Firstly, DA:O wasn't very balanced, with overpowered specialisations/abilities (e.g. arcane warrior) and useless specialisations (e.g. shape shifter).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there were numerous (unfixed) bugs which had significant impacts on the gameplay. 

As such, 'theorycrafting', or optimised builds in DA:O revolved around avoiding the numerous bugs, trying to avoid the cheesy abilities that made the game too easy, and taking into account the preset abilities that companions were stuck with. My personal peeve was the attack speed bugs, which rendered it impossible to use haste (or even Shale) with archers in the party.[/quote]

Again, all balance issues. My point remains that DA:O's overall design lended itself much better toward variety and options. It just needs to be properly balanced, bug tested, and expanded on.


...I found stealth profoundly underwhelming, and I really felt little difference in gameplay between classes/specializations. Assassinate was also rather overpowered.
[/quote]

How you personally found something isn't the be all and end all of things.

Stealth is one of the most useful abilities for a shadow rogue, especially when paired with shadow veil and disorientating criticals. It drops all threat, makes you obscured (increasing defence), and gives you a +50% bonus to critical damage.
While assassinate and other spike damage abilities are undoubtably good, they have significant cool-downs and take a heavy investment to fully max out. i.e. still balanced.

If you found the gameplay between a DW assassin similar to a forcemage, you're probably doing something wrong. Each of the classes and specialisations focus on various different things - rogues are about single target spike damage, mages around crowd control and aoe attacks, and warriors around threat management/tanking and aoe damage.

Basically, on an objective level, DA2 was balanced where DA:O was not. As for your point about DA:O's 'design' - how does your point hold up? Unless you want to start discussing whether branching ability trees or linear ability trees present more options? (keyword: linear).
Just out of interest, how many times did you play DA2 and on what difficulty?

[quote][quote]
The introduction of proper threat management and cross-class combos also increased the ability to create parties and tactics that synergise well.[/quote]

It made cross-class combos nearly essential for efficiency. [/quote]
I know you said 'nearly', but nothing is close to necessary in the game. You can solo the game on nightmare on any class which means that cross-class combos are definitely not necessary. However, they add potential for complexity in party design, and reward planning or 'theorycrafting' your party setup.


[quote]Damage was also tied to strength instead of dexterity for Rogues. You could tie it to cunning instead, but that required some skill investment. Personally, I modded that to give 75% benefit.

I wasn't claiming DA:O's attributes were overwhelmingly more complex than DA2's, but they were more complex. I am advocating that with the proper balancing and testing, they can be made much more complex and rewarding than in either game. DA2 went the opposite direction instead, and took a minimalist approach. Whether this was because of time constraints or because that is really the direction they want to take now remains to be seen. I'm not claming the mechanics of DA:O were stellar or perfect, but they were definitely closer to the right direction, in my opinion.

[/quote][/quote]
While damage (to some extent) was tied to strength, optimised rogues went with cunning due to the additional armour penetration. But that's besides the point.
Complex does not necessarily mean better. The DA2 system is simpler in that the primary attribute determines base damage, dexterity determines critical chance, and cunning determines critical damage.
Having attributes that partially increase damage for certain weapons and not others adds complexity- but also confusion. More than half of the gameplay guides in the DA:O forums are explaining how the mechanics actually work, and the various exceptions to the rules etc.

And I really don't see the relevance of referring to how you modded everything. Presumably someone could mod the DA2 system just as well - making your point about the potential to improve things rather moot.

Modifié par mr_afk, 22 décembre 2012 - 08:07 .

[Genshie]

I felt like the change in terms of what certain stats did in DA2 kind of weaken rogues. Cunning and Dex now work differently than they do in Origins which always throws me off after playing a complete playthrough. I have to always reread what the stats do now after moving on to DA2. I actually preferred the stat builds in Origins than DA2. I don't like how they pretty much cut everything in terms of specs in half with rogues only being able to use bows/daggers same thing with every other class as well. I feel like I have to dumb myself down now since I over think from playing Origins to the simplified DA2. The main thing I like most about DA2 is that combat is alot faster.

Modifié par Genshie, 22 décembre 2012 - 08:03 .

[Anomaly-]

Starting to feel a bit outnumbered, but that's cool.

[quote]d4eaming wrote...
Hahaha. Ok, dismiss those games out of hand[/quote]

I didn't dismiss anything. I simply stated why story is not my primary motivation for playing games. I didn't say any of those games were bad. I'm not sure why you would take offense.

[quote]
(have you ever played them? Have you even heard of them?)[/quote]

Nope.

[quote]

But you want to dismiss story based games, because you'd rather read a book, and yet keep going on and on about how DA should be more combat focused, when it is a story based game. You clearly don't really understand the whole point.[/quote]

If that's what you've taken away from this, then you really haven't understood my point. I was never asking for more combat, but rather better quality combat, gameplay and progression. And again, this really isn't anything new. DA2 is the only Bioware game I've played that I felt took a step backward in that area.

[quote]
I mean really. Stop trying to turn DA into something it never was.
[/quote]

I'm not.

[quote]mr_afk wrote...
How you personally found something isn't the be all and end all of things.[/quote]

No, but you made a statement of fact, and I find it pretty questionable.

[quote]
Stealth is one of the most useful abilities for a shadow rogue, especially when paired with shadow veil and disorientating criticals. It drops all threat, makes you obscured (increasing defence), and gives you a +50% bonus to critical damage.[/quote]

I don't remember everything about the DA2 skill trees now, but I do remember looking at the shadow tree and seeing better ways of doing pretty much everything. There were better ways of gaining more critical damage, and losing threat (which I actually never needed to do anyway). Another example of redundancy. The time it took me to enter stealth would only ever cost me time when I could be doing damage, with equivalent or better critical bonuses coming from elsewhere.

[quote]
If you found the gameplay between a DW assassin similar to a forcemage, you're probably doing something wrong. Each of the classes and specialisations focus on various different things - rogues are about single target spike damage, mages around crowd control and aoe attacks, and warriors around threat management/tanking and aoe damage.[/quote]

As a Rogue, I no longer really had to survey the battlefield and plan my line of attack. I no longer needed to manage ingredients and resources. All I did was move from target to target hitting the same skills, and waiting on the same cooldowns. I experienced no meaningful difference from playing a Warrior.

[quote]
Basically, on an objective level, DA2 was balanced where DA:O was not.[/quote]

Again, I find that a pretty questionable statement of fact.

[quote]
As for your point about DA:O's 'design' - how does your point hold up? Unless you want to start discussing whether branching ability trees or linear ability trees present more options? (keyword: linear).[/quote]

The skill trees in DA2 were just larger. You still had to take talents you didn't really want to get to ones you did. That said, I don't really mind that. I have often said that I felt the skill upgrades in DA2 were a step in the right direction.

I just felt the skills could have been better designed, and a more flexible attribute system would have helped to achieve more variety in gameplay and builds.

[quote]
Just out of interest, how many times did you play DA2 and on what difficulty?[/quote]

1.25 times, first on normal, then attempted on hard.

[quote]
I know you said 'nearly', but nothing is close to necessary in the game. You can solo the game on nightmare on any class which means that cross-class combos are definitely not necessary. However, they add potential for complexity in party design, and reward planning or 'theorycrafting' your party setup.[/quote]

I don't see it as complexity or strategy at all, because there is no drawback. To make the use of cross class combos truly tactical, their use should be more situational, and require more consideration than simply matching two skills you already use together often for a free 400% damage increase.

[quote]
While damage (to some extent) was tied to strength, optimised rogues went with cunning due to the additional armour penetration. But that's besides the point. [/quote]

Like I said, reduce lethality's effect to 75% and now you have more to consider.

[quote]
Having attributes that partially increase damage for certain weapons and not others adds complexity- but also confusion. [/quote]

Sure it does, but a well designed system will still be plenty accessible for people who want to do something simple. If the system is intuitive, things should be pretty straightforward. Pages of documentation won't be necessarry.

[quote]
And I really don't see the relevance of referring to how you modded everything. Presumably someone could mod the DA2 system just as well - making your point about the potential to improve things rather moot.
[/quote]

But you can't mod DA2 to do it. Obviously, a large reason for that is the fact that we didn't get a toolset for it. But even if we had, my work would have really been cut out for me. The reason being that the facilities for most of these things are already in place in DA:O, but not in DA2. That's why I assert that DA:O was further in the right direction. My only point in talking about what I've modded is showing that the drawbacks of Origins can be easily fixed without scrapping entire systems and losing out on a whole lot of gameplay.

Modifié par Anomaly-, 22 décembre 2012 - 08:35 .

[XX-Pyro]

Celene II wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Celene II wrote...

XX-Pyro wrote...

You can put as much effort or as little effort into creating and upgrading a character in DA2 as you could in DA:O.

Tell that to Herbalism and Persuasion skills

Your counterpoint has nothing to do with the amount of effort one puts into planning their build, just that the non-combat skills don't exist (which many will argue were trivial to allocate and didn't require much thought anyways).

Because a game removes an entire part of leveling up doesnt reduce the amount of planning? Does that mean your saying DAO was a weak game cause skills were silly or are you saying that DA2 was streamlined because it didnt have them. Has to be one or the other.

You have to be insulting one or the other.


____________________________________________

FIREBALL - DAO STYLE
Area of Effect - Sphere  7.5 meters
Initial fire damage: (100.0 + Spellpower) * 0.3.
Fire damage over time: (100.0 + Spellpower) * 0.3. Over Duration: 5.0s.
Range: 25 meters
Activation 40 mana
Cool Down 10 seconds
Conjuration time: 1s.
Tremendous knock down potential

Activation base is in mana and values vary with fatigue%.
Fire Damage values are displayed in the game as the color: Orange.
Arcane Warrior Spellcasting: The spell requires be cast with your weapon sheathed.


FIREBALL DA2 Style

Fire damage: 1.35x Base Damage
Elemental force: 3x 
Activation 25 mana
Cool Down 20s

The sheer reduction in information across every aspect of DA2
The loss of equiping your companions
The loss of skills
The loss of major specializations
The loss of  near 50 spells from DAO to DA2

I wasnt trying to be an angry itch about the entire thing and i wouldnt have lashed out on the "non combat skills" if it had not been so late but maybe we can have a discussion about all those differences?

Reduction of information? That's like saying when I go laptop shopping, I should buy the one that tells me it has a 16 inch screen and touch-finger lock over the one that says just 16 inch screen, because, you know, useless features (read: information, in terms of the games) is so important in how I plan my character. It isn't. I really didn't take into account fireballs range when I planned my character in DAO.

Loss of equipping companions? I'll give you that, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the theorycrafting topic. Therefore this is a moot point and means nothing on this thread.

Loss of skills, of which I'd bet my arse Herbalism and Persuasion were maxed first in any given party on almost every character. Fact of the matter is, Bioware made terrible skills for DAO. It's a shame, and they could have done better, but maybe they didn't have ideas to implement them in DA2- also the change in crafting system could have helped contribute to this. Skills did not develop characters, they were gimmicks in DAO. 

The loss of major specializations? I'm honestly not sure what you mean here, did you even play DA2? I definitely saw specializations there- and they were made more meaningful considering they were all valid and you couldn't have 4 of them by the end of the game+DLC's. Your character was, you know, SPECIALIZED. This argument is simply wrong.

The loss of meaningful spells was much lower than 50 I'd say. Every spell in DA2 feels like it's doing something different, which to me is a great job on BioWare's part. More spells would be a bonus for DA3, as long as I can have a meaningful debate with myself over which one to pick. Also, many DAO spells were highly situational or quite frankly only taken to get to the third or fourth ability on the tree- that isn't good design.


EDIT: As for the first part of your post which I seem to have missed. DAO was not a bad game because skills were silly, DAO could have been better if skills were more meaningful. Skills did not degrade the game, they just were fairly useless. As for DA2, streamlining is not always a bad thing, and in the case of skills I'd say it was a good thing considering it gave them time to work on something else. If you're so insistent on bashing DA2 like you do in almost every post you make- do it because of reused environments and lack of exploration, so Bioware focuses on things that actually made the game less popular than DA2.

Modifié par XX-Pyro, 22 décembre 2012 - 12:10 .

[Wulfram]

XX-Pyro wrote...
 If you're so insistent on bashing DA2 like you do in almost every post you make- do it because of reused environments and lack of exploration, so Bioware focuses on things that actually made the game less popular than DA2.

I don't think that re-used environments were really all that big a deal - they were focused on because they were very blatant and unambiguously bad, but it's not like the game couldn't have been great even with them.

And personally I'd never class a lack of exploration as a bad thing, though I know that other people disagree.  Still, I don't think most people come to Bioware games for the exploration - KotOR was really low on exploration as far as I recall, but is remembered as one of their greats.

[XX-Pyro]

Wulfram wrote...

XX-Pyro wrote...
 If you're so insistent on bashing DA2 like you do in almost every post you make- do it because of reused environments and lack of exploration, so Bioware focuses on things that actually made the game less popular than DA2.

I don't think that re-used environments were really all that big a deal - they were focused on because they were very blatant and unambiguously bad, but it's not like the game couldn't have been great even with them.

And personally I'd never class a lack of exploration as a bad thing, though I know that other people disagree.  Still, I don't think most people come to Bioware games for the exploration - KotOR was really low on exploration as far as I recall, but is remembered as one of their greats.

Perhaps I wasn't clear when I said lack of exploration. I meant the one city concept did not work in DA2 because nothing changed between acts- therefore there was no visible time passage and we were exploring the same cityy throughout the whole game. Had their been visible changes, I would have probably been fine with it. Lacking those, the DAO system was better in that there was a variety of areas. That's all I meant by lack of exploration.

As for rehashed environments, it ties into the exploration issue a little bit. When you're stuck in the same city and the same 3-4 dungeons for all the hours you sink into the game, it's going to eat your mind inside out. I think the effect this had on people is seriously underestimated.