334 réponses à ce sujet

[IRMcGhee]

My experience of the tactics system is almost identical to the previous poster, so I won't bother to repeat his points. I'd only add that the presets tactics list created by selecting Archer, Defender etc need looking at since at least some of the problems some players seem to be having appear to be down to those (such as archers and mages closing to melee range). Not every player wants to spend time fine-tuning the presets themselves (I do, but then I've been playing games that use systems like this about as long as they've existed. Yes, I'm that old:))

[Crell77]

At first I found the tactics system confusing, but after getting used to it, I found it was fairly easy to use.

The only thing i can think of to improve it would be adding some tactics choises to use Ballistas when they are present, and when to use the ballistas.

For the most part the party seems to react as expected, but there are random times when they seem to ignore their set tactics.

The party seems to respond well to different tactics, although I haven't changed the preset tactics much.

I have seen some party members just stand around not attacking at all, it seems to be random when it occurs though.

As of additions to the tactics system, I can only think of set targets for certan blood mage spell, like blood sacrifice, it would be very handy to tell the blood mage to target a ranger pet for the spell.

[Jonkenden]

[*]How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
[/list]It's great, I really find it easy to use and makes perfect sense to me.
[*]What would you improve in the tactical interface?
[/list]I'd like to add more options and conditions to thoose already there, for example for a party member status I'd like added "Dead" so I can have my healers ressurect the dead automatically. Another option I'd want is a way to keep my melee from rushing into large AoE spells without resorting to "Hold" order, this order has the bad side effect of causing my melee to not move anywhere to engage an opponent even if they are almost next to eachother.

Maybe "watch out for active spells in your path" condition or something with reaction options "Stay out" or "switch to ranged" or similar. Or how about "Engage within medium range" "Engage only in short range" options?

Another issue I kept having was my mage switching from his arcane warrior weapon sets to his staff without my say, this might be an issue from me not testing the various "behaviour" options.

Behaviours definetly helped fix my archer issues with bow switching to melee though, I prefer them to keep using bows when they have melee archer talent.
[*]Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
[/list]Yes I haven't noticed any strange behaviour apart from strange weapon sets switches, but thoose could be related to behaviour settings.
[*]How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
[/list]They react quick enough for me
[*]Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
[/list]I recently had issues with a boss battle in the anvil of the void, where my party members simply ran straight into the boss statue in the center and got themselves stuck there. I had to manually move them around and order them to attack the ghosts. This might simply be because of how that boss works.
[*]What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?[/list]As mentioned I'd like more options for the tactical settings, beyond that im very pleased. I enjoy controlling them all myself at times but also enjoy sitting back and just controlling my main character. An idea might be to add in specific tactical sets as a hotbar icon. So I can change my entire party tactics with a single click depending on circumstances, for example a boss fight versus a fight against scrubs. Maybe the ability to name this button myself.

[kaya08]

• How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
  Its set up fine no issues there. A 3rd condition could be helpful. Currently you have it set up so that when x happens the character will use y. Having a 3rd condition that allows you to program who they use it on would be nice.
  
• What would you improve in the tactical interface?
  I'd unlock as many slots as possible without the need for speccing. The basic non tactic controlled ai is frankly abysmal. Anything that helps you program your allies to act in the vaguely intelligent manner would be very helpful and would save a lot of frustration.
  Also a condition to get allies to use a knockback skill when a mabari uses overwhelm or similar attacks would be nice.
  Also if I send Alistair for example to hit a mage with assault then please give some condition that willl make him continue attacking that mage until its dead. As opposed to hitting it with assault and going straight back to attacking the heaviest armoured enemy in the room.
  
• Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
  NO! There seems to be some kind of bug that makes my allies simply ignore commands. Wynne is the most obvious (seeing as when she decides to ignore commands I die). I had her set up to heal any allies dropping below 75% health. I'd drop down to 20% health and she'd be attacking a random enemy with both heal and group heal available to use. Even after waiting for her to finish her current attack she didn't use either. Happens fairly often.
  I've since set up commands to heal at 75%, 50%, 25% and 10% separately and that seems to work but is pretty expensive on available slots.
  
  Also I set up wynne to use lifeward when my tank drops to <25%. She'll continue trying to cast it after he's dead and will pretty much do nothing else until I disabled it.
  Also I tried setting up sten to use the AoE 2 handed skill (can't remember the name). with the 'enemies: clustered 2 or more' condition. Hoping that he'd seek out enemies bunched together to use the skill. He didn't he stood in the spot doing nothing with the skill in his action menu (I got the same result with other AoE attacks). Much the same as Wynne with lifeward. I'm not sure what that condition was designed for but it currently seems pretty useless and I've started using 'self: surrounded by' instead. Its not perfect seeing as by and large he won't be getting much attention if my tank is doing its job.
  Another set up I was trying to get was for wynne to use rejuvenate on herself when she dropped below a certain mana point. I tried the 'self: mana or stamina' condition but she started using it on all allies (none of which were low on stamina). I'd prefer it to only be used on her with that condition, with 'allies: stamina or mana level' being used for allies.
  
• How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
  They aren't. see above. It seems to me that only the most basic conditions work (and occasionally even they don't work). They're also quite slow to react in general.
  
• Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
  See previous points.
  
• What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?

Being able to stack commands would be a godsend.

 I don't change tactics often. At this stage I set them up to do the absolute basics, anything more complicated I've tried to use hasn't worked. I manually command them to do most things at this stage.
Kudo's for making the effort to improve where possible. And I should just say that despite the tactics not really working I've enjoyed the game a huge amount (I voted it game of the year in quite a few polls in fact).
[*]

Modifié par kaya08, 09 janvier 2010 - 01:17 .

[CharlieBingo]

Heres my 2 cents. (PS3 user)

wouldnt it be nice if your rouge (not you, but a member of your party) where able to disable traps and open locks automaticly?

And, being able to comand how close your companions stands in combat. for instance, if you have a ranger, the ranger will automaticly seek higher ground

Being able to stack commands would also be nice.

otherwise im very happy about the tactics system

(sorry for the bad spelling)

Modifié par CharlieBingo, 09 janvier 2010 - 02:24 .

[Rav2C]

The only real issues I've had with the tactics interface is the lack of certain options for activating talents/powers. An example of such would be using the Mage Rez spell when the party member is at 0% Health. There's no way currently to select to use it under such circumstances. There isn't even a condition state called dead or death.

Also, tying it to a skill, I'm not in favor of that. One should be able to set their tactics however they want for all their skills.

My only complaint with the system as a whole... controlled characters do NOT use their tactics AI. Why even have a tactics screen for the PC when it doesn't get used except for the behavior pulldown setting (Default, Aggressive, Cautious, etc). The AI should work for the player-controlled character at all times unless the player is actively controlling them.

[Franpa]

What would I improve in the interface? outline tactics that can't be performed with the current behavior setting with red.

[undeadgnomeking]

I have a couple of comments about the tactics system.



Things I've had problems with:

I've seen Wynne get stuck on a Ally Health < 50% : Group Heal tactic in which she won't move in range to cast the ability, but won't move to the next command, thus standing there looking confused while the party gets beat down.



Also, tanks don't have enough tactics slots in the world to give them appropriate priorities. I can never get Alistair to do what I want him to do no matter how carefully I assign him tactics.



Things I would like to see:

I would like to see more specific status commands. Like be able to assign a high priority tactic for Alistair to use Shield Bash on an enemy that's overwhelmed or pinned a party member. Or tell Wynne to resurrect a dead party member. That would really help me out.



Additionally, I would like to be able to give them formation instructions, like in the Baldur's Gate games. Or at least following distances like in the NWN games.

[TuringPoint]

I think the system could use more specific conditions, or time-sensitive sequencing. An example is that I want Wynne to petrify and shatter the nearest enemy in combat. I can do this by telling her to petrify nearest enemy, and then another line of code tells her to cast stonefist on an immobilized enemy. Why not an enemy affected by a spell that can shatter? Or specifically under the effect of petrification, or cone of cold?

Speaking of Wynne, why isn't there a group health qualifier for her group healing skill?

There are numerous times I thought it would be nice to have more than one action or more than one qualifier for an action.

How about, "the enemy with lowest health within 5 meters" as a qualifier, so my warrior doesn't go running for the one with lowest health?  Even nearest enemy with lowest health would be great.

Rogues have nothing to tell them to flank an enemy. A flanking action would be great - for warriors or rogues, or even mages when they run out of mana. In such a case it might be good to have to qualifiers, such as "if mana is < 10, flank target of PC".  It would also be nice if characters could be asked to use weapon sweeps only if they have multiple enemies in the arc in front of them?

Also, the organization of the tactics conditions etc. could be tidied up.
It's difficult to know where to look for certain qualifiers and actions.

Some sort of passive bonus to a character with tactics skill would also be nice. As powerful as the tactics system is, it isn't strong enough to stand on its own as a bonus at this point, not equal to the other skills - and yet the game makes you think you should invest in it, because there is no way to have enough lines of code to actually script full behaviors - there are only very basic qualifiers.

Spatial intelligence, multiple qualifiers, and clearer organization. A tutorial on the tactics system would have been nice as well.

Modifié par Alocormin, 09 janvier 2010 - 08:28 .

[Nhomis the Dark]

I find it hard to let party members make individual actions while in battle. Especially when I want someone to stay OUT of the battle, and the other 2 to participate; the ‘stand ground’ button only seems to work for the whole party and not for individual party members.



The party AI is quite good in battles. I have to admit that my warrior tank has a lot easier fight if I let the AI take control of it, and play one of the magic users to heal. As a matter of fact I would like an option to allow the AI control the whole party in a fight, including the main chr.



-Switching weapons when an if – than condition is met: let the party member automatically switch back to the old weapon set once the condition is no longer active – rather than using another entree for switching back weapons.



-I would like to have an option to import AI scripts. Take Guild Wars as an example: profession based, and when uploaded the game neglects those setting which are unavailable (e.g. because you did not yet activate a skill).



Important: A cutscene should NOT automatically bring all party members clustered on the same spot, and/or dismiss effects (like stealth); it should be possible to position the team, cast effects and than let one of the chr’s trigger the event while leaving the preparations in tact.

[Jcdenton69]

The only time I entered the tactics screen was when I got a new party member and I entered the tactics menu to disable them. I played around with the tactics for a little while and in general I found it easy enough to use, but I much prefer manually controlling my party.

[squid5580]

A couple things I would like to see changed is as follows.



1. More slots to start with. And lose the whole skills increase them deal. It sucks having to waste a skill when you have already limited them.



2. Make it more clear on the whole >< thing. I wasn't sure if hp>10% heal or if hp<10% would heal them at 10%



3. Give us an elemental option. If an enemy is on fire or more importantly frozen give us a tactic to deal with that.



4. And this is the biggie. Include more information in the instruction book. Use recycled paper so no trees are harmed.



And pretty much what ahs been said on the first page (I didn't read any further than that).

[ChristEater]

* How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
Very easy. I doubt it can get much simpler than selecting a target and then an action.

* What would you improve in the tactical interface?
Add AND/OR/NOT operators. I think it would vastly improve tactics as a whole. I haven't read through this thread, but I'm certain I'm not the first one to suggest this.

* Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
I've only tried default.

* How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
I haven't had any problems.

* Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
Not really.

* What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?
You sould take a look at the user created Advanced Tactics mod. It adds a lot of options that I would have liked to see in the vanilla tactics system.

[DirtOne]

Hello newcomer here, just tought this thread was important enough to share my experience.




How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?  Pretty simple, easy to use once you understand how it works
[/list]
What would you improve in the tactical interface?  I guess I would add a little complexity to the actions, like make sten hold his ground and only attack     who   ever targets morrigan. I know the game has something similar but never actually managed to do it.
[/list]
Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?   Pretty much, except some rare cases where alistair wouldnt do a thing until i took control of him, then the AI would react as normal

How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions? They did what they was told on most cases

Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances? In some battles sometimes archers would auto switch to mele even tho i had them set not to do so unless engaged in mele fights

What kind of different ways would you want to control your party? More complex actions or reactions when entering in fighting mode, like the sten example above. Maybe rogue salways move to the back of the enemies automatically.[/list]Hope this helps..

BTW cant wait for awakening 

[Franpa]

Franpa wrote...

What would I improve in the interface? outline tactics that can't be performed with the current behavior setting with red.

Okay, time to be more detailed. When specifying a Tacitc for someone there is a menu followed by 2 (or 3) sub-menu's derived from the option you chose in the first menu, right?

Specify items in the 1st sub-menu that are not supported by outlining them in red, as well as outline in red talents/skills in the 3rd or 4th sub-menu.


This will reduce the possible combinations that need testing etc. and still provide a nice degree of usefulness.

[sassperella]

How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?  
[/list]Pretty easy for the most part


What would you improve in the tactical interface?
[/list]The actual interface itself seems pretty sound, maybe just some extra options to cover circumstances that are not covered at the moment.


Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
[/list]           Mostly, again the ranged/melee weapons seems a bit broken and also setting morrigan as healer and ranged,  she happily runs in and uses her staff even when people are under the allotted amount of health or mana for the spells.



How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
[/list]Again pretty good mostly, except healing, I find that even when party members are under allotted min health  the healer is still attacking. I find this mainly with morrigan set as healer less so with wynne, even with the same tactics set up.


Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
[/list]Only healing as mentioned.


What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?[/list]Again, previously mentioned, it would be nice to be able to set up rogues to attack from behind, to make backstab useful from a purely tactics point of view this is a must.

Also mentioned the ability to set group heal if several people are low on health.

Also a more intelligent AI for AoE spells so the computer tries to avoid friendly fire.


I think a there are definitely two camps of people play this game, those that love pausing and those that love to set tactics and just let their other characters do their own thing. It would be nice if all difficulties could be played using either method with just a smidge of the other method to help out. That is if you didn't like pausing, tactics could cover most of the game, but on exceptionally hard fights on hard difficulties pausing would be needed some of the time. Or if you like pausing you can set minimum tactics to cover just the main bases to get your party moving.

On the whole though it's pretty good. On easy I find that you need only pause a minimum amount with tactics set which is the game style I like and why I play the easier setting. If, in the future, this could be extended to work well in harder settings, I'd happily take the challenge

[Carodej]

I'm playing the game on a PC and the 1.02 patch.  The only mod I use that relates to tactic is one that increases the base number of tactics slots to 30 (and I have used 29 slots for Wynne, and that while she was relatively low level).  While I love this game, I thinks improving the tactics would make it that much better.
 

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

The tactical interface is very easy to use.  That said, it's very simplicity makes it less functional (e.g. it requires two lines do a logical AND by using the "jump to" command, which also seems to be broken).  Further, how the different Behaviors impact the AI is neither intuitive nor explained (the general idea is easily understood, but the exact mechanics are not obvious).
 

What would you improve in the tactical interface?

I wish there was a check for frozen or petrified enemies so my 2H warrior with Critical Strike or my Stonefist casting mage would know the optimal time to use these abilities.  Right now, for instance, I just have a mage set with Petrify and the next line Stonefist with the same triggering condition in the hope that I get the combo to go off at the right targets at the write time.  A check for fallen ("dead") characters would be useful to automate casting of Revival.  (I'd also recommend checking out the Advanced Tactics mod, from what I read it has these that I know I want, plus several other potentially useful additions/corrections.  I haven't actually installed it yet, so I can't personally vouch for how well it works, but the comments people write about it make it seem quite promising.)
Various new groups would also be useful.  Specifically, checks of "any 2 party members," "any 3 party members," "all 4 party members," "2 clustered enemies with 0 party members nearby," "3 clustered enemies with 0 party members nearby," "4 clustered enemies with 0 party members nearby," "5 clustered enemies with 0 party members nearby" are towards the top of my wish list.  Possibly similar groups of clustered enemies with 1 party member nearby as well.  As an example of why such grouping is better, the following is my basic code for Wynne to use her Group Heal the way I want her to...
1) Hero: Health >= 75% ==> jump to 5
2) Alistair: Health >= 75% ==> jump to 5
3) Leliana: Health >= 75% ==> jump to 5
4) self: Health < 75% ==> activate Group Heal
5) Hero: Health >= 50% ==> jump to 9
6) self: Health >= 50% ==> jump to 9
7) Alistair: Health < 50% ==> activate Group Heal
8) Leliana: Health < 50% ==> activate Group Heal
9) Alistair: Health >= 50% ==> jump to 13
10) Leliana: Health >= 50% ==> jump to 13
11) Hero: Health < 50% ==> activate Group Heal
12) self: Health < 50% ==> activate Group Heal
Naturally this also has to be updated whenever I replace Alistair or Leliana in the party.  I would much prefer to do this with some of the groups I suggested above, that is...
1) all 4 party members: health < 75%  ==> activate Group Heal
2) any 3 party members: health < 50%  ==> activate Group Heal
So I could take 12 lines of tactics code that may need updating and simply replace it with two lines that do the same thing and require no updating upon switching NPCs.  I think that most users would find this second set of tactics much easier to set up and understand too.
I haven't looked under the hood yet at the underlying code, but right now I also spend many slots on making sure the Heal spell is cast on the more or less optimal character.  Continuing Wynne's code...
13) self: Health < 10% ==> activate Heal
14) ally: Health < 10% ==> activate Heal
15) self: Health < 25% ==> activate Heal
16) ally: Health < 25% ==> activate Heal
17) self: Health < 50% ==> activate Heal
18) ally: Health < 50% ==> activate Heal
So I use three basic lines of tactics to enforce a crude prioritization based on who has the lowest health, but have to double that because "ally" does not include "self."  I wish there were different, more understandable options for "ally" - such as "ally, not including self" and "ally, includes self."  So I'd like to be able to do something like...
3) all 4 party members: Health >= 50%  ==> jump to 5
4) ally, includes self: lowest Health  ==> activate Heal
I realize that groups of enemies without party members "nearby" can be a difficult thing to check for because the "nearby" we really want is the area effect of the spell I want the mage to cast.  But I really wish I could have a line like...
#) 5 clustered enemies: 0 party members nearby ==> activate Fireball
Further, I would like a command that could check for types of actions that another party member is doing.  Basically something like...
#) Morrigan: casting AoE spell with friendly fire ==> move out of/avoid moving into AoE
I doubt these could work perfectly in a game, I'd expect errors in timing to still cause some damage due to friendly fire.  But as it stands, I've even avoided selecting some of these sorts of spells at level up for Morrigan and Wynne because right now your basic choices are casting only at the start of combat, lots of micro management, not casting the spells, or quite easily losing a battle for yourself by casting spells like Cone of Cold on your party members.  If the AI could be made to minimize the number of times party members are hit by these AoE, then I would definitely use these spells more.
Something on the "then" side of the tactics (the right hand side), mainly for rogues.  Instead of merely "attack," also have an "attack from behind" option.  Additionally (or alternatively), having a "move to flanking position" of an enemy target could be useful.
Having the ability to use brackets (to help order tactics) with AND, OR, and NOT would be a great improvement to the current system as well.  Plus I'd like some while loops (or something similar).  Even a "jump to" that went upwards in line numbers could serve as a workable, albeit less elegant, way to loop.
The ability to switch scripts and behaviours in a script would also be something nice to see.  Especially when combined with switching weapons sets under the certain conditions.
If the above additions are not added, then I think some autopause functions would be great.  Part of the reason I don't like to micromanage the party members is that their actions all take different amounts of time, and pausing them and changing what they are doing might be better if I had only just waited.  But if we had tactics options that paused the game whenever a) an enemy is killed, a party member is killed, and/or c) a special action (spell cast, talent activated, etc.) is complete - well, then I would be much more willing to micromanage.
Also, more default tactics slots (instead of me needing to use a mod) would be great.  Further, either making the tactics skills much better (say a bonus of five or more slots and maybe adding a small bonus to the characters defense and armor), or just dropping this as a skill.
 

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

Yes, or at least most of the time.  I don't have a save in a place to check the details, but I noticed that Dirty Fighting messes up any rogue/archer using whatever AI the game defaults the NPC to.  In particular, I notice Daveth always runs to meets those wolves in order to use Dirty Fighting on them - while he has his bow equipped.  This is not what I would expect to happen as his default behavior in the game.  Once you look at the tactics, you can see this is easy enough to fix, but I don't think the game should have this as his normal Behavior.  I may be wrong, but I think Leliana does this by default as well.
Also, the detection of enemies range seems off.  For instance, in the Korcori Wilds, I often can spot enemies and attack them with my bow.  The other party members just stand around doing nothing unless I manually command them to attack as well.  They're usually fine once they start the first attack, but it doesn't seem right that I have to actually have them start the attack.  This problem happens basically all of the time when you see enemies at very long range (longer range than the game uses to switch your party into combat mode).
The other side of this is that my party members occasionally detect enemies that I don't see once we are in battle.  Sometimes these enemies are behind walls, closed doors, etc.  They go charging off after these, even when not set to Aggressive Behavior.  This happens to me much more rarely than the previous problem, but it still happens occasionally.
Another problem is how they move in order to shoot a target that has line of sight blocked.  The default is to run towards the enemy.  This would be great for anyone usin meless attacks.  But ranged or magic attackerss would usually be much better served if the AI tried to move laterally or to take higher ground.  I often have to manually call back party members who have sped off to get closer instead of moving a step or two to the right or left which would have made the enemy in unbroken line of sight a lot faster and at less risk to them,
There are some other problems, but they seem more appropriate for a category below.
 

How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?

I am not sure exactly what this question is driving at, most of the problems I think seem more fitting to the question below.  I will say they seem a bit slow to react in some cases.  But other than that, the only other problems are really when the AI seems to be broken.
 

Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?

Oh yeah, I have definitely seen the party members behave unusually!  My biggest complaint is that "jump to" seems to be broken.  Using the basic tactics for Wynne I described above, I often find Wynne casts Group Heal when she is the only one below 75% health.  I also tried a similar set up to my first four lines there, except I had four lines with "jump to" and then a "self: any ==> Group Heal" - and this made Wynne routinely cast Group Heal at the start of every battle, before anyone was wounded.  I have also seen the Group Heal being cast at what looked like appropriate times as well, and I don't see Wynne casting the spell as often as the cool down allows, but I don't know if that means the "jump to" commands work some of the time or if I am just not paying attention and Group Heal is being cast more often than I notice.  Either way, there seems to be something very wrong with "jump to."  (And I do play Wynne less often in part because it takes so many slots to automate her best abilities, and that while I am unsure if they are really being activated when desired.)
Another thing I have noticed is that sometimes party members simply seem to go on some sort of pause while doing an action.  I have seen this in a variety of actions, but with warriors and rouges, as well as mages.  But the only specific examples I can recall as I write this are when Morrigan or Wynne cast Heal.  Most of the time it goes off just fine.  But sometimes they will just show Heal as their action and the seconds will go by.  If I take command of the NPC and manually set that action to occur, it always proceeds fine.  But sometimes any action just seems to hang there and not actually do anything.  (It shows by their portrait as if the action is being taken, but I can wait for several seconds and nothing occurs.)
Similarly, something else that I noticed is that occasionally a character just does nothing (and there is no action even showing next to their portrait).  So far, the only thing I have noticed that these instances have in common is that they normally take place shortly after I take the party off of Hold.  I often sneak into a room with a rogue while the rest of the party is Holding outside the area, then pause, then command initial attacks for all four party members and take off Hold, switch back to my PC rogue and finally unpause.  The initial attacks always go off, but occasionally one of the party members does nothing after that.  Even more rarely I have had it happen to two party members at once.  If they are in melee, they usually do more than their initial attack, but then will just stop doing anything after their opponent is down.  My guess is that somehow the Hold condition did not properly clear on the party members (perhaps because I switched control of the various characters rapidly while the game was paused combined with whenever I actually take off the Hold).  But whatever the reason, if I take control of the character and select an action manually, when I return to my PC (or whatever character I want to control), the formerly frozen character has no more problems for the rest of the battle.  Anyway, I am only guessing at to the cause, but I definitely notice that sometimes a party member simply does nothing, despite having AI commands that should prevent this.
 

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

The general way it's done now seems good to me.  I can fully control any individual in the party.  In a more general way, I can command all of them at once, or I can command any combination of two or three of my party members.  I mostly prefer to just control the PC (as that is supposed to be me), and I like to think of the AI tactics I set up as my general instructions to them as well as their basic intelligence to follow these orders.  Which is why the few bugs and the awkwardness - or even worse, the inability - to set up certain useful spells in tactics is frustrating to me.  So the your basics are good, but I would say the main things needed are some bug fixing, many new conditions, and more tactic slots being standard.

[Nomen Mendax]

How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
The interface is fine, using it successfully is harder but that's because it is relatively complex and simplifying it would make it less useful.

What would you improve in the tactical interface?
There are a few things I'd like added to it. 

• Compound conditions, i,e, adding AND and OR to the language. 
• Compound actions.  As others have noted this is sort of possible using the JUMP TO statement but this is not an ideal way of doing it.  Making your program contain an if statement using JUMP TOs wastes a lot of tactic slots and requires a JUMP TO <default condition> to effectively close off the conditional statements.  I also suspect that something like an if statement would be more intuitive to non-programmers than creating your own using JUMP TO.
• More conditions.  I've learnt not to get my characters to act as mage hunters as too often this means they will charge madly through a group of enemies and fail to achieve anything.  But there are some spells I'd really like to interrupt so being able to recognize things like spells with a long casting time would be good.

Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
Yes, although I haven't really studied it that much.

How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
I need to check this

What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?
I really like the current tactical system, and I'm pretty sure I haven't mastered it yet.

As a final point I'll add my voice to those who don't like the number of tactics slot being skill based (and, yes I know there is a mod for it).  It seems a bizarre design decision as you are making a character skill relate to the game interface.  If you think that having lots of empty tactics slots is too daunting for beginners then allow users to decide how many tactics slots to have in a drop down slot.  Another alternative would be for a new slot to appear as soon as you've used the last one, so there is always one empty tactics slot.  Again having what is basically something related to play style dependent on a character skill seems very odd to me.

[Dlokir]

First point, I think tactics is one of the best feature of the game, so it's very cool you look at improving it.

=> How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
The interface setup itself is easy to use at some exceptions.

The best points are:

• The drag&drop to reorder,
• conditions/actions set that are easy to read,
• the "save as" system (at the exception of overriding management and generic names).

The in game interface is much more difficult to use. The main troubles are coming from the unclear interactions:

• The interaction with tactics and PC controlled. It's a lot of trouble that control a PC disable all tactics.
• The interaction with tactics and order manually given previously.
• The interaction between tactics sets and general behaviors (long range/aggressive/and so on) is very confusing.

But there are also some troubles coming from the tactics setup interface:

• To select an object you get a list with a scroll, fine but when the list is too big it is truncated (1.02 version).
• User made sets have generic names, that make them less easy the use (different colors for user sets and presets would be fine).
• Summons tactics aren't saved, that's very tedious.
• When you change a set to save it as another, you have no clue to know if you are overiding an empty set or not.
• Behaviors aren't saved with the tactics set, not cool because many sets won't be compatible with many behaviors including the default.
• This interface mix tactics and behaviors but the game is largely unclear about the interaction between the two.
• Some conditions are missing, see in improvements suggestions for some proposal.
• Some actions are missing, see in improvements suggestions for some proposal.

=> What would you improve in the tactical interface?
My suggestion list:

• Solve all problems quoted in the previous section.
• Allow some more user made sets, 3 is fine but sometime not enough. To keep a limit, 5 would be cool with custom names.
• The current maximum number of slots could afraid many players but some more would be better, perhaps 15 would not be too much. To make it less impressive all empty slot should not be shown, and the player could add more.
• Number of tactics slots available should not be linked to skill points used. The problem is that the default number of slots is a lot too low for many skills setup.
• Add meta sets, it's sets the user define for the whole party, when you select a meta set, one set (and behavior) is selected for each member of the party.
• Find a way to allow hold command on a single PC and show it clearly in game for each PC.
• Give a visual hint when you set a condition that will never occur because of previous conditions. The user should be able to see a text explaining why. And this should not be forbidden, just shown visually.
• Add an in game help for tactics.

Another point is to add some more conditions (I bet most has already been quoted in previous posts or done by the Advanced Tactics mod):

• Surrounded by less than x (this is mainly to deactivate a sustained state)
• Enemy already engaged (this is mainly to allow jump to tactics that don't switch from current target to another)
• Attacked by more/less than x
• No summon already summoned (this is mainly to not override a manual summon and allow set multiple summons)
• Dead
• Beside self/followers have also party to include both.
• Beside self/followers/party, have also allies and party and allies.
• Allow group conditions for allowing more area spells, the problem is conditions should be relative to enemies and allies because of negative effects on allies.

More actions would be nice too (again, I bet most has already been quoted in previous posts or done by the Advanced Tactics mod):

• Toggle sustained state, as one more action category for sustained states. With some conditions this category would mean few but not much than many possible setup already available.
• Allow cast more spell related to group conditions, currently only sustained states are allowed with for other stuff.
• Switch to another set (I know it's like using a very big set, well still cool for people ready to complex setup).
• Switch to a Behavior.
• Activate an AI mode improving backstabing/flank attacks.

=> Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
In general it's good, troubles are coming from:

• Unclear interactions with controlled PC, like sometimes non controlled PC rushing close to the controlled PC for unclear reasons.
• Unclear interaction with behavior, the typical problems are related to weapon switching. I got two weird stuff related to this. Some setup involved constant weapon switching for some combination of tactics setup and behaviors. PC switching to another weapon when you didn't expect it.
• Weird behaviors about sustained states activations, for the same condition set like self/any some states are activated and some not in same conditions.
• Manual order set during a pause for a PC not selected after the pause, sometime it works and sometime not, the reasons are unclear.
• Troubles to understand some interactions of commands in a tactics list.

=> How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
Overall this seems quite good, problems seem mainly coming from some lack of conditions and actions and some weird interaction with behaviors.

=> Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
It's a complicate system and it's hard to identify if it's something coming from the setup and some conditions of the fight or from some more weird causes.

=> What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?
Here few suggestions:

• To have in parallel to the tactics a more developed auto pause setup. Mixing the both in a same interface panel would be too complicate and would involve too many tactics slots. But more auto pause options would be very nice. Some pause condition suggestion: No more target, dead, heal/mana/endurance bellow a defined level,sustained state stopped/activated, new attacker above x attackers (in game the player should have a visual hint of all attackers of a controlled PC plus perhaps the last attacker highlighted).
• The auto pause setup mentioned above could be allowed for a general setup (all party members), or optionally independently for members or set of members, details to clarify!
• Find some way to mix well tactics and controlled PC. I understand it's a little complicate because some time you just want select a target and let tactics work and some other time only have the PC do standard attack to a target. But current system is very tedious.
• Allow stack commands, like 2/3 would be enough, with a way to review current commands in stack.
• Add an option to slow down time during fights.

Modifié par Dlokir, 10 janvier 2010 - 07:39 .

[Aesir Rising]

Wanted to add to my prior post on a previous page:

I'd like to see a new in-game UI panel for creating custom Behaviors.  I don't think the Behavior presets cover the range of possibilities demonstrated in:
C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Dragon Age\\tools\\Source\\2DA\\aibehaviors.xls

I think if there were a way to create custom behaviors in-game, I could resolve my issues with ranged and magic AoE related combat actions for the party members I'm not controlling.

Perhaps the UI panel could look like a table with columns for each behavior characteristic, and a check box in each column to enable/disable such characteristics.  This would mimic the table data in aibehaviors.xls.

Then, the option to name and save user-created behaviors, for use in the game between sessions and between characters would provide the ability to set up whatever behaviors you wanted and re-use them across game sessions and characters.  Perhaps even export them for use by others that might otherwise be intimidated by this complexity.

Screenshot of aibehaviors.xls



p.s., I wish the forum would stop inserting arbitrary backslash characters in paths after editing a post.

Modifié par Aesir Rising, 10 janvier 2010 - 07:41 .

[Mr. Neopolitan]

Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
[/list]My one critisism is how easy it is for enemies to bypass individuals and charge your rearmost troops

.  For example: several enemies charge from far away.  I send out one or two warriors to knock them back (shield bash for example).  The intent was to stop the enemy charge in its tracks.  What happens though is the enemy character bumps into the warrior, and continues running past.  The warriors, upon being bumped, stop, set themselves for their attack, but then stop again because the enemy is now out of range.  Then they're forced to chase the enemy down.

I'd prefer it if some attacks could be performed on the run, instead of making a full stop first.

[papakapp]

Victor Wachter wrote...

Hi all,

• How easy or difficult do you feel the tactical interface is to use?
• I started multiple characters to go through the tutorial multiple times because i didnt grasp it all the first time.  I also looked around online to see if i could find any help there.  I still don't really understand how the situations on the left hand colum relate to the actions on the right hand colum.  It looks like it could be fun if a person understood it, but I have only played about 10 hourd in 2-3 months because it takes so much work to learn.
• What would you improve in the tactical interface?  I would add a paragraph of hovertext that explains every variable that a player can change, and maybe do a 1-2 hour tutorial that was designed by a person that is not a programmer, but rather a person who has no programming experience whatsoever who learned the system.
• Do your party members react as you would expect them to under different tactical settings?
• I'm not sure because i dont fully understand the combat system
• How responsive are your followers to different tactical conditions?
• Either they are very unresponsive or I dont understand it at all
• Have you seen them behave unusually in any circumstances?
• Yes, they regularly run into aoe
• What kind of different ways would you want to control your party?  I would like a "get out of AoE" command and a "don't stand between the mob and a caster" command.  If they exist then i would like a better in game tutorial telling me more about them.

[*]

Modifié par papakapp, 10 janvier 2010 - 10:10 .

[Rogue-13]

This is not strictly to do with the tactics interface, but is about the behaviour/AI, and it may have been mentioned before, if so I appologise, but I would like to see melee interception work correctly.

For example - a warrior is ordered to attack an enemy ahead, the warrior runs towards enemy, meanwhile, the enemy decides to attack a mage behind the warrior.  Result? The warrior runs into enemy, they bump, the enemy scoots past and attacks the mage, while the warrior runs forward a few steps then stops, cue "Huh? where'd he go?", sometimes the warrior will turn round to engage, sometimes not.

The warrior should see the enemy approach, anticipate, and hit the bugger when he's close enough, or at least hit the enemy as it's moving past and paying little attention to defence.  (the same of course, should also apply in reverse).

I also find it amusing to watch the "magic shield bash" where a character initiates shield bash on an enemy moving away from them, resulting in an enemy 6-10 feet away suddenly getting knocked flat, but thats not relevant here.

[fantasypisces]

I find the tactics system easy enough to use, but it does have it's limits.

Sometimes the AI can be a bit wonky. Like it just doesn't feel like there is enough decision making in terms fo the AI.
For instance, I want a few more options, such as "Do this at this time, unless this" but that might get to confusing.

I usually don't run with tactics at all, because I like to more micro-manage it myself (with pausing). There can be certain times where you want your party member to stun someone, "If being attacked by melee attack, use dirty fighting" but then after they use dirty fighting they keep attacking that person, instead of going back after the person they were originally targeting. I just don't know how you can change that.

Without fail, the AI always attacks someone CC'd with force field, I do not know why. I force field someone, and they all go after that enemy. I tell them to attack someone else, then they immedietly go back to the force fielded person.

Or similarly, enemy at 50% health, attack them. Unless I turn it off they will always go after that person (which can be annoying when aoe is involved and a lot of things are at 50%) because I want them specifically targetting a certain mob, and they will then do it when I tell them to, but as soon as I go to a different companion, then the person immedietly runs off to random mob #5 to start attacking them.

So I think there might need to be some function where the companion keeps attacking the person they were told to. If they switch to tactics to stun someone, then they should go back to who they were originally fighting, but I have no idea how to implement that.

BUT MY BIGGEST BEEF AND RECCOMENDATION FOLLOWS!
If I have a character set to ranged stance, NEVER EVER EVER switch to melee weapon unless I tell them to. Every single playthrough, and many battles in each playthrough I will have Leliana (or my PC) set to ranged, but when an enemy gets within five feet they switch to their melee weapon. If I change it to Self: Any: Switch to ranged weapon, then they get stuck in place constantly switching between melee and ranged weapons and not doing anything till I move them farther away.

So please please please, if in Ranged stance, or with Self: Any Switch to Ranged weapon, NEVER HAVE THEM SWITCH TO MELEE!

That's my biggest gripe.

Overall I am probably a bad person for advice, I never use tactics because invariably they fail to do what I want. But I don't have much of an idea to fix it.

[AlmondBrown]

I have added a small snippet in the POLL comments but this particular one just occurred to me.

A tactical condition is needed that when the last enemy on the field DIES that all tactical scripts STOP.

It is a real waste of Resources to have Party Members quaffing potions, based on the Tactical setup, to replenish either Mana or Health bars when the game will do that for all members between fights for FREE.

So, after a Battle,  some sort of  "IF Enemies = 0 then Hold check could be performed to save those often precious resources.