334 réponses à ce sujet

[Victor Wachter]

Hi all,

We have a lot of plans for the future and want to steer towards making future games and releases in the Dragon Age franchise the best they can possibly be. Over time, we'll be asking the community questions about their game experiences and feedback.

Today, we're interested in your party's tactical AI and the tactical interface. We'd like to gather your feedback about how your followers and the creatures of Dragon Age behave. Here are some points that we are particularly interested in:

• How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
• What would you improve in the tactical interface?
• Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
• How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
• Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
• What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?

Both positive and negative feedback are encouraged. Positive feedback will help us repeat all the good stuff you liked. Negative feedback will help us identify the areas where we need to improve.

We're also interested in learning how often you modify the tactics system. Please visit the tactics system poll to let us know!

If you are new to Dragon Age: Origins and have no idea what the tactics system is, you should take a little time to experiment with it. You can access the tactical interface through the button at the top of the screen (the one that looks like a targeting reticule) or by pressing the "\\\\" key on the PC, on Xbox 360, go to the character screen and then press Y. On PS3, go to the character screen and press the triangle.

Modifié par Victor Wachter, 06 janvier 2010 - 08:04 .

[Adaram]

--Reserved-- I don't have time to make my comments right now, but I have some

[Viglin]

First, great to see such interaction.

As to your questions, ld say for the most part it works great, but lve seen a few things that ruin it;

-Archer not switching to melee when being engaged in melee...even thou set to
-Archer switching to melee even thou theres no close threat[lve had to make sure only a Bow was equipped to stop this...especially on Lelina]
-Non controlled npc standing around not fighting, especially seen on Alistair.
-Shots thru walls that mobs can make bt we cannot, especially spell-wise

[Feechir]

I generally like the tactics system (on the PS3). I rarely have to take control of tanks or healing mages after setting up their tactics, but often have to take control of damage dealing mages and rogues.



Regarding mages, I generally don't cast AoE type of spells unless I'm controlling them because my character always gets caught in the spell. I think this could be resolved by adding a check to see if a friendly character is in area of effect.



With melee rogues (someone who knows better can confirm this), whenever I see them in battles, they're rarely flanking their target. I would like to have the option of flanking a target in certain circumstances (i.e., if enemy status is stunned, flank)

[Thoron Draugohtar]

How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use? I find it easy however I spend alot of time working on tactics.


What would you improve in the tactical interface? Maybe make a shortcut so that changing tactics is easier to access. I find that changing tactics in a bad situation takes too long.


Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings? So changing the tactics from scrapper to defender, for example?


How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions? Some members like Wynne are very much bound by the tactics which is great but I found that after changing to custom tactics and back the party members will not attack automatically.


Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances? Sten and Oghrens suicidal missions count?


What kind of different ways would you want to control your party? If they are a rogue maybe the option to disarm traps automatically if they are spotted.

Hope it helped.

[castaftw]

I think the tactics feature was a brilliant idea although it was incredibly limited when you got the hang of it.

I myself use the addon called Advanced Tactics, version 2.8 at present I believe, and the creator has made a lot of effort to tweak your in game tactics feature to what it really should have been when the game was launched, if you haven't already I urge you to look the features over and consider implementing them in a patch.



With the tactic feature I think your goal should be to get your party do exactly as the player wants to without ever controlling other than the MC. Here is a few things I have missed:

More tactic slots! If I want to control my party in an advanced way more slots are simply needed.

Mage aoe spells is not at all safe to use in tactics at the moment, you should implement some way of checking if party members is in the way of the aoe.

The "jump to x" should be able to jump backwards instead of only forward, enabling you to make "loops" under the conditions you want.

The "Enemy/Ally: status x" should include just about any buff/debuff/ability in the game to be able to get your party to react to exactly the things you want.

A button to disable the tactic.. party members still auto attacking, using behaviour, but ignoring tactics.



These were what I could think of at the moment

[AndreaDraco]

I may be in the minority, but I almost never use the Tactics, since I like to pause a lot and issue precise orders to every companion, including moving them around into strategic positions.



However, when I do use them, I strongly modify them, using only the Custom ones, since I generally don't find the preset ones adequate to the gazillions of possible different scenarios that the game offers. And having a preset mage casting Cone of Cold around equals to a mass suicide

[Cundu_Ertur]

The biggest difficulty I have had is with trying to get characters to switch from ranged to melee. The AI knows how to do this, because guard and darkspwn archers do it all the time, they fire arrows until I get close, and then swap to melee (or run until cornered and then swap to melee). Then they swap back if they aren't in melee anymore. I just can't get my rogues to do the same.

And Morrigan insists on Cone of Colding my melee team. A !NOT tactic would be nice for area spells, as in if area of effect includes friendly, don't use it. This is something that I don't think the AI knows how to do, though, since enemies routinely fireball each other.

[Ingthar]

The tactics are easy too setup. It looks like they work very well, but that is hard to judge in the midst of battle.



What I am missing is the condition "X is surrounded by N enemies" where X is a companion, the condition "ally or myself", more tactic slots (what about two new slots for each new combat skill) and some logical and conditions, like "if X is surrounded by 2 enemies and X has health < 50% then".

[Cadaver Lord]

My biggest complaint rests with ranged characters blinding running around corners into melee chasing a target (who's seeking cover or baiting. I would love to see some sort of "minimum distance" option available to ensure archers and mages aren't moonlighting as fighters.



I'd also like to see some global tactics that aren't queued with general tactics and have a higher priority...if that makes any sense whatsoever.

[Lithium Rapture]

How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?

It isn't difficult, some of the wording is really vague, for example all of the "status" tree.



What would you improve in the tactical interface?

Remove combat tactics as a skill and allow the maximum for each character from the start.



Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?

It took a lot odf experimenting to get Morrigan to not rush into melee distance, I assumed "ranged" would work like it does for Leliana. But only "cautious" seemed to work. Why would she rush in "ranged"? Also her shapeshifting is completely broken. There are several threads on this.



How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?

As responsive as I have set them. They do much better than I assumed they would after scripting nwn ai.



Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?

Already covered.



What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?

I usually have one strategy for bosses and another for mobs for each party member. It would be nice to be able to have more than one set of tacttics.

[NHolder79]

Formations: I would like to be able to set a formation and have my party maintain that formation and spacing as they travel from point to point, even if the spacing must fluctuate according to the environment.

[TheGreenLion]

I think I like the tactical interface, but it lacks a few options as to the state of dead party members...perhaps one or two more but that one sticks out for me.



I don't know where I'd begin trying to improve it, but if there were an option of a tactic to keep characters from roaming farther into danger (you pull a group out of a room with two groups, ranged mage/rogue avoids melee correctly in the wrong direction and runs into the group you didn't want pulled) perhaps something that makes a boundary that they can't cross? Sometimes they even run into traps that have been spotted by a rogue in their effort to avoid melee contact. AoE spells tend to be cast directly around the caster (I've tried Glyph of Paralysis on an enemy target yet it still gets placed underneath the caster if not manually placed. Can't be positive but I think that's what happened last time I tried it.)



I'd say that for most of the times my party members are fairly responsive (setting your "tank" to attack anyone attacking your mage) has worked well for me, as have all of the attack target of X type tactics.



I haven't noticed much unsual behavior myself.



I think we have pretty decent control of them now, what would be nice is to have the ability to choose more than one type of ability to use in a single tactic situation (enemy-target of X-use/cast ability/spell choice 1, 2, or 3) with the order being how you put em in first unless one of em is on cooldown. I'd just like to be able to use less tactics slots for something I'd have listed for the same purpose but being a different ability/spell I've had to double my tactics use if I want them to use 2 different spells or abilities for the same type of tactic.



Hmm, that's all I can think of at the moment.

[mirglip]

How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?



Easy.



What would you improve in the tactical interface?



Add movement tactics such as fleeing or running to tank etc.



Add advanced tactics that could be unlockable or earned (for example a rouge that goes behind his target without being asked, or a mage that checks before doing AOE damage).



Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?



How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?

--Pretty responsive from what I have seen.



Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?



Archers go melee when they are supposed to be shooting. Keep shooting when they are supposed to melee



What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?



Position movement tactics (i.e. archers in the back melee in front and rogues on a flank). Or something so that when you engage battle your units can be set up appropriately. It would be AWESOME if we could configure where our group movement circles were in like a movement tactics setting.

[Dragoon001]

I don't like the tac system. First that you have to unlock the slots sucks, it even courage to not use it.
Also I played Baldur's Gate and there the tactics system was much more sophisticated.
DAO miss even simple things like automatic switching between ranged and melee weapons. I have to setup this myself and waste valvable tactics slots. The end I just drop it.
I miss the ability to write your own AI tactic scripts like in BG, but since you have now to develop for console too. It has to be simple I guess.

Know what? Install Baldur's Gate II on your computer and compare what BG2 Tactics is capable against DAO. And I do not mean all the fancy stuff. Just alone the base behavior for classes like Mages, Fighter and Thief. This gives you an overview what DAO is missing. Which is sad since you already have the knowledge how to do it right and done it It would even work with consoles.

Oh also checkout NWN 1 or 2, doesn't matter and try  Tony_K's Henchman Inventory & Battle AI mod v1.08 (NWN1) or Companion and Monster AI 2.2 (NWN2)
http://nwvault.ign.c...isting&id=15260
It's amazing what he was able to do with your tools. That guy know how to build a tactics system.
No seriously, if you want to know how to do an intelligent tactic AI and tactics Interface checkout his work and talk to him. I swear you will bow to him at the end of the day.

Modifié par Dragoon001, 06 janvier 2010 - 08:30 .

[Bibdy]

I found it VERY intuitive and easy to use for a system which defines AI, so big kudos there, and some of the hints during loading screens for ideas on how to use tactics were very welcomed. Would like more of those.



About the only thing I would change about the tactics system is accessing more slots by using skill points. The benefit just isn't there. There's only so many skill points you can get in the game (only 7 or 8 per character - where maxing Combat Tactics is necessary for 2 classes, Stealing is very helpful for money making and Coercion is very important for the main character). Dropping an entire line of something neat like Trap Making or Poison Making to get more tactic slots, giving the character slightly better AI, just doesn't seem worth it. Its an option, but its a rather silly one.

[Thomas9321]

I use it on occasion, but no major overhauls. If I try and set it to do anything too complex let Cone of Cold a cluster of enemies I end up suffering more often than not. There needs to be an 'avoid freindly fire' tactic for it to be as useful as I'd like it to be. Because of me not wanting the trust tactics too much, I also end up not setting up abilities so my Mages and such end up quite underpowered unless I control them. But overall I feel its a good system, but it will never be as good as a human controlled character and needs a few tweeks.

[Mummolus]

I like the tactics system, although like others I rather wish that either the slots didn't need to be unlocked or that each character started with more.

One thing I've found difficult is getting my healer to revive downed party members - whether this is because there's no option to target fallen party members or because the option is vaguely worded, it might be worth looking into.

Some of the status options are hard to decipher as well - for example there are options for stunned, immobilized, paralyzed, trapped, etcetera but a lot of these seem to overlap or simply aren't what they seem to be.

[trickfred]

I though it was a great system, the only problem I had is that there weren't enough slots at lower levels. It was much easier to make more complex tactics setups at later levels, but I don't see why we should have so few slots to start with. Lower level characters have very few skills anyways, so why put even more limits on them?

Edit: I thought of something else: multiple 'custom' tactics sets, so I can make 2-3 different sets, and rotate between them, instead of having to re-do the one available custom set each time I want to change strategies.

Modifié par trickfred, 06 janvier 2010 - 08:40 .

[Skydiver8888]

I adore the tactics system, because I'm a programmer, and I love being able to (semi) program my AI. FFXII was fun, and I'm glad you guys went with this system.



The only improvement I'd love to have is a more robust conditional structure. Add the option for AND/OR boolean operators in the first part (the IF statement) of the tactics (as in, Enemy > Long Range AND using magic attack > use ability > paralyze). Yes, it would be more complex, but nothing would force people to use it. Add it in a way that the second condition is optional somehow.



I could also suggest allowing for some form of ELSE function, but i think you can kind of simulate that now with enough slots.



Finally, more slots! more slots! I know you can mod that in, but make it accessible to all =)



PS: I also agree about the party formation note. I want to control my mage, but *have* to switch to my tank before running to a new room or my mage gets owned. This of course goes back to my personal penchant for trying to eke as much out of the tactics as I can.

[BTA1]

I really like the tactics system. Only real problem I've had was when I assigned Zevran to use Deahroot extract when the enemy was high ranked. Every time he did that he just stopped. The tactic never ended and I couldn't get him to move until I removed it from his tactics or only had 1 of the extract with me. So "use item" probably needs an improvment.



I also would like an option like "two or more party members' health below X%", (that and mana/stamina lvl) so you can assign Group Heal and Mass Revenjugation.

[4bs.zer0]

All in all tactics I find tactics ok. My main problem is when I decide to direct characters by myself. This is when I miss the ability to queue different abilities for each character onto a stack. It can get very tedious to pause every few miliseconds to issue a new command.



Also, reserved mana/stamina from sustained abilities should be off limits to tactics. I hate when Wynne turns off haste to cast regeneration or something. :-)



I would like an option to name my custom tactics sets. "Custom 1-2-3" is ok; giving it my own title would be better.

[Sir Karl]

 How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?

I find the tactical interface intuitive and easy to use.

What would you improve in the tactical interface?

I would like to have the possibility to define more than one precondition, e.g. Wynne is attacked by melee and has <25% health.

More diverse and specific triggers would also be a plus.

Not really interface related, but I would like to have more tactics slots.

Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?

Yes, usually they do. However, I have the feeling that they do not use any talents beyond the ones they have a rule for. Which is quite a pity, since the number of tactics slots is so limited. 

How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?

They are quite responsive, although Alistair can always improve on his potion-chugging speed and Wynne on her healing spells 

Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?

No, besides getting stuck in the geometry from time to time.

What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?

I like the way it is: party members on AI autopilot (except for some rare more difficult encounters) and me controlling only the main character.

[herwin1]

I did a playthrough with a female human rogue, and now I'm playing a male civilised elven mage.

For the rogue, I had to add use of healing poultices, deep mushrooms, and lyrium potions when appropriate. I also had to set up a default attack command. I found the rogue was often badly positioned in hand-to-hand fighting. I had to remember to hit the 'h' key to activate movement. The tank had difficulty gathering in the leading charge. The mages had a definite tendency to fire off AoE spells on the front line.

For the mage, I find I use mind blast a whole lot more now. That means moving up close behind the front line. It's all quite finicky.

[Sloth Of Doom]

I think the tactics system works quite well as is. I have never really run into an issue where my party members have done something unusually or unwanted unless that situation was brought forth by user error. (As most complaints I see on these forums tend to be).



One thing I would like to see added is the ability to 'hold position' on individual characters.



One thing I would like to see improved is party members avoidance of hostile AoE spells. Despite claims, I have yet to see a party member balk at charging through a blizzard to poke someone with a knife.