91 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

freche wrote...
...The Set Attribute system is much better and it's much easier to relate the characters attribute toward other characters in the same universe...

Your post very good. You can see the problem in another sphere: with respect to armour in DA2.

[Althix]

freche wrote...
So while my character is equal strong through out the game, he becomes less dexterous as I "progress". So as I said my character hasn't progressed, in fact he has become worse.

no. if you going to gym simply to pump up muscles, you progress from str 16 to str 40, you can lift heavier objects and deliver more punishing strikes.
However before the gym with dex 10 you can not execute back flip, and after gym you can't do it either because your dex remained on the same level.
Because more str is your goal. You are not less dexterous, you just stronger.

Modifié par secretsandlies, 14 janvier 2013 - 03:08 .

[DPSSOC]

secretsandlies wrote...

freche wrote...
So while my character is equal strong through out the game, he becomes less dexterous as I "progress". So as I said my character hasn't progressed, in fact he has become worse.

no. if you going to gym simply to pump up muscles, you progress from str 16 to str 40, you can lift heavier objects and deliver more punishing strikes.
However before the gym with dex 10 you can not execute back flip, and after gym you can't do it either because your dex remained on the same level.
Because more str is your goal. You are not less dexterous, you just stronger.

But he's saying that's not how it actually translates.  Level 1 you need 20 Strength to wield a sword, later levels you need 40 to wield another sword exactly the same size.  You've doubled your Strength but you aren't actually able to lift any more than you could before.  Similarly with Dexterity if at level 1 your dexterity of 10 is enough to wield a dagger, by later levels you need a much higher Dexrity to wield the same dagger.  Nothing has changed about the equipment; size, shape, and mass are consistent from beginning to end, but you've needed to pump a ridiculous amount of points into stats just to stay on par.

It'd be different if you started wielding a 20 Strength Longsword and by 40 Strength you're one handing a Maul, that would indicate actual progression, you are demonstrably stronger than you were before (able to effectively wield a much larger/heavier weapon in one hand).

It's the same with damage output.  From level 1 to level 20 you're still doing the same damage (in terms of % of enemy health) because everyone else has scaled with you.  It still takes the same number of blows to down a Templar in An Act of Mercy as it does in Last Straw.  Nothing about your character is actually improving because relative to everything around you you're still at the same spot.

This is as opposed to a game like Skyrim where as you progress the same enemies take less and less effort to defeat.  In DA2 a random thug in act 1 is just as hard to kill as a random thug in Act 3, in Skyrim a random thug early game goes down in ten blows, late game he's going down in one.

[Althix]

soo.. you know that steel sword is heavier than sword made of cast iron right? because steel has a higher density and as result it is heavier. And you need more efforts to wield steel sword even if cast iron sword have "exactly same size".

Also DA2 game is all about abilities, auto attack can deal 100 damage, when ability can deliver 9K of damage. DA2 is action, you should fight with abilities, it's not Origins where abilities is a bonus to auto attack.
It is not about that stats of your character doesn't mean a thing, it's because game is crap in many aspects. Stats have meaning, you can start a rogue with leveling his cun before dex - and see what happens. (30-40 damage and 300-500 is a difference right?)

[freche]

secretsandlies wrote...
soo.. you know that steel sword is heavier than sword made of cast iron right? because steel has a higher density and as result it is heavier. And you need more efforts to wield steel sword even if cast iron sword have "exactly same size".

Really?... The difference between a steel longsword and an iron would be somewhere around 0.1-0.2kg. Hardly something you have to become stronger for.

[karushna5]

I like the leveling system, as there are multiple useful attributes, like in DA O. I would like if you have a high stat and it could be useful that you get extra dialogue because of it, Cunning had this a few times in DA O. It would be very nice, to say I have high Strength and can push him aside, or extra intimidate, or say I have high Willpower and resist the magic spell.

[Althix]

true. but i have no idea what weight aurun vulcanic or whatever have.
Also Basarath-Kata is bigger than let say standart two handed sword.

[freche]

secretsandlies wrote...
Also Basarath-Kata is bigger than let say standart two handed sword.

That is the beauty of the Set Attribute system, all human two-handed swords require X str and a Qunari two-handed sword would require Y str.

It's much easier to get logical and "realistic" requirements for equipment.

If my character can use full plate armor at the beginning I should be able to use it at the end too (unless there is a good explanation as to why I shouldn't).

[Althix]

emmm... i am afraid "realistic" was lost somewhere. perhaps in the middle of development of combat system and talents system.

Besides what explanation do you expect? This is Basarath-Kata it is huge, unwieldy, you can't even take a firm grip on it because it's not designed for humans? However if you have str x and dex y you can use it?

Set Attribute system would require from player better understanding why he want str 18 agi 10 and what impact this will have of overall gameplay. This complexity is not needed for majority of players. And after DA2 with its combat and overall value of any given attribute i think we will not find any system that would require some brains at least to use it in coming games.

Modifié par secretsandlies, 15 janvier 2013 - 01:26 .

[Fast Jimmy]

 I and others had mentioned a system where the use of Attributes would affect how equipment was used. I thought I would draft up some examples of how exactly this type of system would work. 

Each piece of equipment would have an Attribute requirement. This would not prevent a character from using the equipment, but it WOULD offer penalties for doing so, depending on the strength of the equipment and the deficit that your character has. 

Heavy Armor -Constitution
Light Armor (including robes) - Cunning
One Handed Weapons (including daggers) - Dexterity
Staves - Willpower
Two handed weapons (including bows) - Strength
Shields would be classified as either heavy or light armor, depending on their stats. 

Okay, so you may be saying "what about Magic?" That's the real fly in the ointment here. Magic comes into play when using any and all magical equipment. For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume any equipment with stat, skill or damage modifications to be magical. 

In addition, the severity of the penalty corresponds to the how powerful the equipment is (or, rather, how high the attribute requirement is) in relation to the character's attribute score. Okay, so how does that last part work? Lets take a look. BTW, Don't focus so much on the exact amount of the penalty or the nature of it, just more the concept. 

Let's start with Heavy Armor. It's penalties would work as follows:

0-15 No penalty (meaning if you had 10 Constitution and equipped a piece of heavy armor with a 15 Constitution requirement, you wouldn't feel any penalty)
15-25 All skills/spells suffer a 25% increase in cost
25-35 Character movement and attack speed reduced by 1/3
35-45 Damage reduced by 1/3
45-55 Critical hit chance for enemies increased by 10%
55+ Total Defense score reduced by 1/3

Again, just spitballing numbers and penalties, nothing set in stone. 

So let's take this for a test run.

Let's say you have a set of chain mail with a Con requirement of 40.  If you have a character with a strength of 45 who puts it on, it works fine. If that character has 30, they will suffer a damage penalty of 1/3. If they have a Strength of 20, they will suffer the 1/3 damage penalty AND their movement/attack speed would be reduced by 1/3. If a character has a score of 15 or less and tries to put on this chain mail, they will be saddled with the damage penalty, the speed penalty AND the cost increase to all spells/skills. Which would be pretty crippling. Similarly, if the armor had a lower or higher requirement, it would affect the character appropriately. 

Now, let's look at Magic penalties:

0-15 No penalty
15-25 Magical stat bonuses reduced by 50%
25-35 Skill/Spell cost increased by 25%
35-45 Damage resistance decreased by 1/3
45-55 Health reduced by 25%
55+ Magical Damage done at 5 HP/sec

This would make Magical items ineffective to those without Magic, or even down right dangerous for truly powerful magical weapons. In addition, the regular requirements for that piece of equipment still apply. 

Again, another example:

Magical Plate Mail of Fanciness - Defense 120, + 10 Strength, + 100 HP, Con Requirement: 60 Magic Requirement: 60

If a character with 60 or more of both Attributes equips this, they would be able to do so with no penalty.
However, if a character has 50 Con and 60 Magic, they will have defense reduced by 1/3 (down by 40, down to 80). If they have 50 Con and 50 Magic, they will have that defensive penalty AND have to deal with taking magic damage in combat.
 If they have 50 Con and 40 Magic, they will have defense reduced to 80, will take constant damage and have their health reduced by 25%.
 
And so on and so forth. 

So, in the case of a build, one would need to have a weapon Attribute (Strength or Dexterity) an armor Attribute (Constitution or Cunning) and then decide if you want to put points into Magic to see if you can use the best Magical equipment without penalty. This would, of course, be in addition to the stat bonuses putting point in other Attributes provided (more stamina/mana for Willpower, more Health for Constitution, more spell power for Magic).

If one focused as a warrior on all Strength and Con, you could wear nice armor and wield a good two handed weapon. But you would not be able to use much of any magical weapons (or, if you do, you may have to deal with a constantly draining/reduced health). If, instead, you were playing a sword and board character, you may want to focus on Dex and the appropriate armor choice (heavy or light, depending on your shield and other armor preference). 

With this, you could have a Strength based rogue (archer) with a Constitution splint armor build. You could have a Mage that focuses on not only Magic and Willpower, but also Cunning.

Anyway, this could use some tweaking, I know, but the basic idea is there. What do you guys think?

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 15 janvier 2013 - 02:46 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Jimminy Christmas! Not only a double post, but a format car wreck double post!

Delete this, please, and I'll work on formating the first guy. Geez.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 15 janvier 2013 - 02:43 .

[DPSSOC]

secretsandlies wrote...
soo.. you know that steel sword is heavier than sword made of cast iron right? because steel has a higher density and as result it is heavier. And you need more efforts to wield steel sword even if cast iron sword have "exactly same size".

Actually a steel sword weighs a good deal less than an iron sword.  Cause while an equal volume of steel weighs more than iron, steel is much stronger so you need much less of it to make an effective weapon.  That's the funny thing about weapons, unless they rely on being heavy (say for a warhammer) improvements tend to result in them becoming lighter and easier to wield while still being stronger.

secretsandlies wrote...
It is not about that stats of your character doesn't mean a thing, it's because game is crap in many aspects. Stats have meaning, you can start a rogue with leveling his cun before dex - and see what happens. (30-40 damage and 300-500 is a difference right?)

Yes but it's a meaningless difference.  Look at it this way, you're in a car chase going 40 km/h, you speed up to 60, but so do the people chasing you, so you speed up to 80, again they match you, 100 they match you, 120 they match you, etc.  No matter how fast you go they always go just as fast so you never gain any ground.  So you've gained nothing from increasing your speed, but had you not you would have been quickly caught.  That's the DA2 system from attributes, to equipment, to abilities you can never get ahead only keep from falling behind.

So if increasing attributes doesn't actually gain you anything, in relative terms, why not just keep them where they were from the start?  If you never, or rarely, increased an attribute would the game be that different?  If your stats stayed at what you set them in CC and improvement came from better equipment and abilities would it be any worse?

[Biotic Sage]

A lot of people like Skyrim's model, but to me it has some pretty glaring flaws. While in theory it makes sense that the more you do something like swing a sword, the better you get at it, in practice it doesn't make for the ideal paradigm of character building in an RPG.

For example, if I'm playing a character who I want to be good in Destruction magic and Sneaking, then I shouldn't need to constantly be worrying about whether I'm destructioning or sneaking enough in the game to keep my skills honed acceptably higher than other skills. It makes for a very bothersome, tedious meta-dilemma for the player.

Another example is Smithing in Skyrim. Maybe I want to be really good at Smithing, but I want to quest and accumulate a lot of gold and items first. Should I really have to worry about making sure I smith a few things every time I go to town just to keep my Smithing skill in line with my other increasing skills? If I don't keep up with it, when I eventually do want to smith some armor and I'm at a high level, I will suck at smithing. Obviously this isn't acceptable to players, so what they'll do is grind out about 10,000 iron daggers all at once in order to get the Smithing skill up enough to be viable. Grinding out 10,000 iron daggers isn't fun for anybody.

[Althix]

Biotic Sage i guess you are missing something in your tes gameplay. Because it is obvious that during a quest you can mine ore, accumulate gold and smith things upon returning to quest giver. Problem with skyrim is not how your skills levels, but that you can't control your level ups. I blame console players for that.

@ DPSSOC if we are talking about damage by autoattack, then yes. Your example with a car is correcnt one. However you do not fight with autoattacks in DA2, you fight with abilities and those abilities depending on attributes.
It's like your example that you can't escape a chase, but with turbo boost on my car.

Modifié par secretsandlies, 15 janvier 2013 - 09:42 .

[DPSSOC]

secretsandlies wrote...
@ DPSSOC if we are talking about damage by autoattack, then yes. Your example with a car is correcnt one. However you do not fight with autoattacks in DA2, you fight with abilities and those abilities depending on attributes.
It's like your example that you can't escape a chase, but with turbo boost on my car.

Not really because again abilities scale with everything else.  Yes an ability does more damage than an auto attack but it never does any more damage to an enemy (in terms of % of total hp) from level 1 to 20, you start off dealing 50 damage to an enemy with 100 hp and by the end you're dealing 5k to an enemy with 10k hp.  By the time you unlock the next ability it's taking the same chunk as the last one when you first got it.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying I should be some kind of uber-god laying waste to Dragons in one hit, but if we never actually gain anything why not take us off the hamster wheel?

[Althix]

mmm no you can deliver punishing blow to group of mobs killing them in one attack. To do that you are stacking damage modifiers from different abilities. With high str attribute as primary, for example.

p.s. It is not a fault of current attributes system that mobs so stupid and tough. It is a fault of developer, that combat and overall mechanics are horrible.

Modifié par secretsandlies, 15 janvier 2013 - 11:06 .

[eroeru]

Overall, a classical /DAO system would fit.

I'd add a speed or agility -attribute and an aim-attribute.

The speed/agility would account for some damage bonus for all weapons, which may partly come from you hitting faster ergo hitting more (though with a damage-bonus that is less than from strength and aim but more than intelligence - think hit-per-round). edit: also, it could slightly affect the speed of running.

Aim accounts for ranged damage, though the requirement for ranged weapons (+ all other non-magical equipment) would still be strength and/or dexterity.

Otherwise dexterity would account for defense and maybe small weapon damage, strength would account for either all weapon damage or only large weapon damage, and carry-weight.

Endurance would be for hitpoints and resistances, though the hitpoints from it would not be added only on level-up, but also retroactively. The guy who had, say, 30 endurance at the start, having the same at level 10 won't in hitpoints differ from the guy who magically acquires 1 --> 30 hitpoints at level 10.

Intelligence is for potency of spells, traps, some (little) all-round damage and additional dialogue options (I'd say responses from companions), Wisdom is for spell-defense, identifying weapons (which gives extra bonuses to them as opposed to not letting you equip) and some "insight" dialogue options, which are additional dialogue options for yerself. Tomes advance only Wisdom and Intelligence. You can buy many of these from a book-store.

All attributes can account for "skill"-checks.


Now, I do not think Bioware'll use this, as for one thing, they've most probably already decided on such mechanics and secondly, my ideas are probably not so good/not to their liking /not befitting to their overall schemes and plans. But it felt kinda good to think and write through my preferred game-mechanics.

Modifié par eroeru, 23 janvier 2013 - 12:23 .