223 réponses à ce sujet

[MichaelStuart]

Realmzmaster wrote...

I have read the posts. I see posters asking for an auto resolve button and confusing it with an auto win button. With a true auto resolve button the party can still lose the encounter.Two old games from the 1985 and 1986 : Wizard's Crown and Eternal Dagger had auto-resolve buttons. Those buttons were not auto win buttons. The player had to make sure that his/her party could beat the enemy before even considering using this button. If the player miscalculated the party's strength versus the enemy's strength the party could lose party members to death. The player was then given the option to continue the fight either using auto resolve again or manually taking control of the fight. The player was also given the option to retreat (if possible). Other games have auto resolve buttons like Mount & Blade and Age of Wonders but it requires the player to know when he/she has the advantage in strength.

There is a fine difference between auto resolve and auto win. Auto resolve has a chance of failure.

Do we get to see the game auto resolve the combat or does it just skip and show you the result?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Rawgrim wrote...

If you dislike combat, the rpg genre is not for you.

That wasn't the question.

Some of us like much CRPG combat, but not DA2's CRPG combat.  By letting us auto-resolve combat, that would expand the game's market to include those people who don't like that specific game's combat.

[Sylvius the Mad]

MichaelStuart wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

I have read the posts. I see posters asking for an auto resolve button and confusing it with an auto win button. With a true auto resolve button the party can still lose the encounter.Two old games from the 1985 and 1986 : Wizard's Crown and Eternal Dagger had auto-resolve buttons. Those buttons were not auto win buttons. The player had to make sure that his/her party could beat the enemy before even considering using this button. If the player miscalculated the party's strength versus the enemy's strength the party could lose party members to death. The player was then given the option to continue the fight either using auto resolve again or manually taking control of the fight. The player was also given the option to retreat (if possible). Other games have auto resolve buttons like Mount & Blade and Age of Wonders but it requires the player to know when he/she has the advantage in strength.

There is a fine difference between auto resolve and auto win. Auto resolve has a chance of failure.

Do we get to see the game auto resolve the combat or does it just skip and show you the result?

If we could just deselect everyone and have Tactics run the whole party for us, that would simulate the auto-resolve while letting us watch.

The only game I can recall that ever let us do that was the original Dungeon Siege.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 21 mars 2013 - 10:59 .

[Nefla]

The kind of combat I actually like and look forward to is player skill/reflex based. I love combat with a huge variety of abilities or combinations. I hate cooldowns, I prefer magic/stamina/etc...that you can refill with potions or abilities or other ways. I hate autotargeting, I want to be able to position my own character, line up my own archery or magic shots and hit or fail based on my skill. I want headshots to do way more damage than limb shots. I hate having every enemy "hidden" as in they appear out of nowhere or drop from the ceiling or whatever, I want to be able to see that giant spider at the end of the hall, or those thugs nearby and decide how I will proceed with the battle, maybe sneak around or lay out traps/oil/decoys to push the battle to my advantage. (having some enemies hidden makes sense, but not all of them) I want to have the option to take on enemies that are a lot stronger than me if I want, I want actual boss fights that are difficult, interesting, and have multiple ways of being won. (not just the same crappy AI with 1,000,000 hp) I would never skip combat in a game like Skyrim,(my kind of combat) I would skip combat in a game like Kingdoms of Amalur some of the time, I would skip exploding wave combat like in DA2 100% of the time.

[MichaelStuart]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MichaelStuart wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

I have read the posts. I see posters asking for an auto resolve button and confusing it with an auto win button. With a true auto resolve button the party can still lose the encounter.Two old games from the 1985 and 1986 : Wizard's Crown and Eternal Dagger had auto-resolve buttons. Those buttons were not auto win buttons. The player had to make sure that his/her party could beat the enemy before even considering using this button. If the player miscalculated the party's strength versus the enemy's strength the party could lose party members to death. The player was then given the option to continue the fight either using auto resolve again or manually taking control of the fight. The player was also given the option to retreat (if possible). Other games have auto resolve buttons like Mount & Blade and Age of Wonders but it requires the player to know when he/she has the advantage in strength.

There is a fine difference between auto resolve and auto win. Auto resolve has a chance of failure.

Do we get to see the game auto resolve the combat or does it just skip and show you the result?

If we could just deselect everyone and have Tactics run the whole party for us, that would simulate the auto-resolve while letting us watch.

I would support a option to let the game play for you.
But really this wouldn't solve the problem, that combat is long and repetive.
From experience, watching someone play Dragon Age's combat is even worst than playing it.

[Yrkoon]

Just throwing this out there.... BG2 had a neat (and natural) compromise on the issue. At higher levels you had spells that let you to instantly destroy trash mobs, thus allowing you to skip the more mundane combat.

This is a proposal I would support:  *earning* the ability to skip combat.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 21 mars 2013 - 11:03 .

[MichaelStuart]

Yrkoon wrote...

Just throwing this out there.... BG2 had a neat (and natural) compromise on the issue. At higher levels you had spells that let you to instantly destroy trash mobs, thus allowing you to skip the more mundane combat.

This is a proposal I would support:  *earning* the ability to skip combat.

How long does it take to get to those levels?

[Sylvius the Mad]

MichaelStuart wrote...

I would support a option to let the game play for you.
But really this wouldn't solve the problem, that combat is long and repetive.
From experience, watching someone play Dragon Age's combat is even worst than playing it.

Given that you set up the characters and the tactics settings, it really isn't the game playing for you.  It's you playing in a more hands-off way.

The need to offer constant inputs it was makes combat monotonous.  Diablo and The Witcher suffer badly from this.

[Sylvius the Mad]

MichaelStuart wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Just throwing this out there.... BG2 had a neat (and natural) compromise on the issue. At higher levels you had spells that let you to instantly destroy trash mobs, thus allowing you to skip the more mundane combat.

This is a proposal I would support:  *earning* the ability to skip combat.

How long does it take to get to those levels?

In BG2, dozens of hours.

The BG games got advancement rate just about perfect.

[MichaelStuart]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MichaelStuart wrote...

I would support a option to let the game play for you.
But really this wouldn't solve the problem, that combat is long and repetive.
From experience, watching someone play Dragon Age's combat is even worst than playing it.

Given that you set up the characters and the tactics settings, it really isn't the game playing for you.  It's you playing in a more hands-off way.

The need to offer constant inputs it was makes combat monotonous.  Diablo and The Witcher suffer badly from this.

I would still have to have to watch five minutes of the game doing the same moves.
Dosn't matter how good something looks. Watch it enough time people will get bored of it.
Constant inputs at least gives the player something to do, even if it becomes repetitive.

Modifié par MichaelStuart, 21 mars 2013 - 11:53 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Rawgrim wrote...

Topsider wrote...

imbs wrote...

Topsider wrote...

Maybe people like to control the story, and combat is just a distraction? Video games are different to books, films, television, since none of those allow you to create a character and make choices that affect the outcome. The player is in charge and it feels great.

No problem. Play a different video game. Not enjoying gameplay in a video game is akin to not enjoying the writing style of a book. Just pick up a different book.

What if someone loves the story but hates the combat? Does that mean they should never consider buying that game, even if they'd like to? Include a "skip combat" button and maybe they would? A win for them, and no loss to others. It's optional.

I don't hate combat - however, it's obvious that tactics and strategy are less important these days. It's all about action. Bosses have enormous health because they are mindless creatures, literally. No AI to speak of. I think most people would appreciate "intelligent" combat, but not button mashing for 10 minutes because the enemy has a million hitpoints.

If you dislike combat, the rpg genre is not for you.

Really? While plenty of RPGs rely on combat (or entirely on combat, as far as player involvement goes), there are those which in which the RPG elements not only minimize the relevance of combat, but avoid it all together.

I'm not talking about just old-school games or pen and paper: Fallout: Vegas is a game in which you can have a very viable pacifist playthrough by relying on anything and everything except your own combat. I should know: I took an endurance-1 Courier through a game in which any raider punk with a gun could kill me, let alone the local armies. It took intelligence, stealth, some companions, and a good deal of hiding behind boulders hoping the nearby gunfight wouldn't hit me. I spent the entire final battle effectively stealthing my way past the fighting between two armies.

Probably my most RPG-worthy playthrough of that game, in all honesty.

[Yrkoon]

MichaelStuart wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Just throwing this out there.... BG2 had a neat (and natural) compromise on the issue. At higher levels you had spells that let you to instantly destroy trash mobs, thus allowing you to skip the more mundane combat.

This is a proposal I would support:  *earning* the ability to skip combat.

How long does it take to get to those levels?

A decent amount of time.  Death Spell was the first of these insta-kill AOEs that you could get, and it was a 6th level spell, which means your mage could get it at about 12th level.  In BG2 terms, if you were using a full 6 member party, you got it about 20-30 hours in, or right about the time when you got tired of having to fight   packs of Yuantis, Trolls, Sahuigan, mephits, imps, quasits goblins, hobgoblins etc.


Play for another 30-40 hours and your cleric's turn undread ability would become powerful enough to instantly destroy packs of vampires, wraiths, skeleton warriors and zombie lords.   And after about 100 hours, your mage's Wail of the Banshee  can kill just about anything  that isn't of unique status.  Also, if you got lucky, even *dragons*  could be instantly killed with a single Finger of Death

[Fast Jimmy]

I would still have to have to watch five minutes of the game doing the same moves.
Dosn't matter how good something looks. Watch it enough time people will get bored of it.
Constant inputs at least gives the player something to do, even if it becomes repetitive.

Which is why I maintain that cooldowns are the real problem here.

If your standard attack could do decent damage, and special skills and spells were only used in truly hard/unique/as-neccessary encounters and to use them frivolously would (greatly) hurt your chances of survival, then you would have a much more nuanced game. This would be balanced with the fact that enemies would have very strong normal attacks as well (especially to "squishy" classes like mages) and so you would need aggro skills, as well as unit placement and understanding of terrain/environment to keep your party alive.

People confuse single player action mechanics with single player party mechanics. They are quite different. Insisting that classes be balanced to output the same DPS and have roughly the same survival rates make combat extremely boring - it makes all your units nearly alike, while level scaling makes all of your enemies nearly alike. It forces everything into one, long monotonous blur.

There is no fear of death (since your companion will get right back up after the fight with full health and mana and a minor dent in their stats which can be cured completely with readily abundant injury kits), no variety in your gamestyle (since the warriors, rogues and mages in your party all wind up just being DPS max/mins for the most part), no variety in enemies (since other than arbitrary stat immunities on nightmare and the occassional appearance of one-shot kills in certain enemy types, they are had the same tactics of swarm and swing) and no variety in the moves used (since you will be using the same four skills pretty much the entire game until you get a certain skill unlocked, which would then replace one of the members of your spam-a-lot arsenal)... it is all just same, same, same.

It isn't even an issue of difficulty. It is a matter of the design of the game, from its very foundations, is to make combat such a passive, mindless activity that it begs this conversation.

But I don't think the solution is skippable combat (or, at least, an auto-win button, which is what people who are saying they would want this feature are actually asking for). I think we need a deeper world system. Not a deeper combat system, but a deeper way to interact with the world, and to feel the world interacting with us.

This includes non-combat skills that actually do more than activate a random quest/dialogue option once in the game. These would be actual solutions used in actual gameplay or situations.

This includes a sense of risk, that if you just stroll into combat and spam the buttons, you will either be hurting because of your lack of tactics or you will waste resources/setup and be at a terrible disadvantage later on in the same dungeon.

This includes scenarios where the game reacts to the fact that you are fighting, reacts to what steps you take when you fight and has events that can happen in the middle of a fight that are tied to the story and can be seen.

This includes class design so that if you are looking at doing the most damage consistently, a warrior is the best class. A class design that says having a mage be the studious and intelligent of the classes should not equate them spamming a nuke spell over and over and over again, but rather be required to use magic intelligently, in context sensitive situations or to even conserve magic unless it is truly needed. A class design that says rogues can unlock chests... and can provide valuable information on enemies by scouting (and a system that gives you some type of incentive for knowing the position, formation, equipment, etc. of an enemy so that stealth/scouting actually matters), can provide invaluable cover through archery, can lay traps or can interact with the environment in ways that make dumb enemies die quickly and smart enemies stop their advancing and change routes/tactics. It basically requires classes that aren't driven by the standard DPS model that WoW has infected us with.

This includes, most of all, game designers not giving up and saying "someone likes the story so much that we can never compete for their attention with the actual gameplay." Giving up on the gameplay front (notice, I am not saying the combat front, but the GAMEPLAY front) is to surrender the idea that your game, itself, can be fun.

I have faith that this can be done. I have faith that Bioware is wanting to be the one who can make this possible. And we do know that Bioware is working on at least portions of these, since Tweets have discussed things such as ranged fighters pinning enemies down, while shield characters provide cover, or the fact that there is a stealth gameplay element which is different than just becoming invisible in combat. So with this in mind, I think we can all safely assume that the gameplay of DA3 will be, at the very least, an attempt to make this entire conversation moot.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 22 mars 2013 - 01:09 .

[Renmiri1]

Rawgrim wrote...

If you dislike combat, the rpg genre is not for you.

What do the letters R P G in RPG mean ?

Is any of those letters in the world "combat" ?


You have a mental definition of RPG that needs combat. I disagree. To me the only thing a game needs to have to be an RPG game is to allow me to role play.

I do not enjoy turn based combat and could barely stand DAO's combat but story was so good I muddled through. My boyfriend gave up after Ostagar. I'm glad I stuck to it because I loved the game and loved DA2 and combat in DA2 was bearable.

TW1 also had slow clunky combat and the story was so hetero male centric (those playing cards for one nighters with women  ) so I just abandoned it after the first city.

Bottom Line, your mental definition of RPG is not mine and every single player combat is subpar. At least for now. There is no AI that can beat a skilled human on the other side of the battle, or one in your party. Maybe in the future. IBM finally got computers to play decent chess. But for now, if combat is what floats your boat, then RPGs are not the best option for you.

PS: The bracer t o avoid randon encounters and trash on FF12 was a level 30 item iirc

Modifié par Renmiri1, 22 mars 2013 - 01:16 .

[AlanC9]

Rawgrim wrote...

If you dislike combat, the rpg genre is not for you.

CRPG, anyway. I can think of some PnP games where combat wasn't something you did a lot.

[mickey111]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I would still have to have to watch five minutes of the game doing the same moves.
Dosn't matter how good something looks. Watch it enough time people will get bored of it.
Constant inputs at least gives the player something to do, even if it becomes repetitive.

Which is why I maintain that cooldowns are the real problem here...

yeah, that and the regen health/mana and the hundreds of healing items. To keep it short and sweet, the problem is that Bioware are afraid. They're afraid that if they design the game in a way that inconvieniences the players that they'll alienate us at worst case scenario, or at least find the game to be frustrating or boring. While thier is an argumenet to be made that gameplay can get too punishing and inconvienent, it's also true that making things difficult for the player is one of the core pillars of good gameplay design. All they've got to do is punish people for screwing up too badly and for not taking at least 5 minutes to learn how the game is to be played and suddenly all of the combat will have some actual tension, and fun. Is that too much to ask, Bioware? You can't design a game and expect it to be enjoyable if it doesn't ask the player to put their ass out on the line and risk getting burned. Winning wouldn't feel so good if it weren't for failure and actual consequences for losing.

Modifié par mickey111, 22 mars 2013 - 02:44 .

[mickey111]

Here is a thought: how about a compromise - we hold on to ME3s idea of a story mode where everything that the plaayer looks at just falls over and dies immediately, and we leave the top two hardest difficulties for people who only want a to challenge themselves to a tactical game where health doesn't regenerate, companions don't pick themselves off the ground for no real reason immediately after combat ends and we don't find injury kits in every waste basket scattered about fereldan? This would fix at least half of my grievances with what I currently consider to be a broken game. It would be a lot more fun for me then.

[Kizzim]

RPG is not synonymous with combat.
Most RPG's lately (Fallout New Vegas being an exception) rely on the combat to be the main element of the story and forget those of us who prefer a non combat option. I'd be all for a skip button, but only in trash mobs. If I have no option other than to fight a main boss then obviously I'd like to do that fight myself.

[Sylvius the Mad]

MichaelStuart wrote...

I would still have to have to watch five minutes of the game doing the same moves.
Dosn't matter how good something looks. Watch it enough time people will get bored of it.
Constant inputs at least gives the player something to do, even if it becomes repetitive.

It's not the input that's fun - it's the thinking behind the input that is fun.  Repetitive inputs don't require thinking.

[DarkSpiral]

Kizzim wrote...

RPG is not synonymous with combat.
Most RPG's lately (Fallout New Vegas being an exception) rely on the combat to be the main element of the story and forget those of us who prefer a non combat option. I'd be all for a skip button, but only in trash mobs. If I have no option other than to fight a main boss then obviously I'd like to do that fight myself.

It isn't?  Since when?  Okay, it migh tnot be part o the genre's name, but I can't name a single RPG I've ever played where the rules for combat weren't the largest (in printed material), most complex part of the game.  Or took up most of the time during play.

Sure, its always nice to have options on important fights, like the finale or major plot points, for non-combat solutions.  But combat has been an important part of RPGs since they day they came in to existence.

Unless you're talking about complicated, tactial comabt, in which case....wait no, that's been part of the gene since day one, too. 

Modifié par DarkSpiral, 22 mars 2013 - 07:21 .

[Topsider]

Rawgrim wrote...

Topsider wrote...

imbs wrote...

Topsider wrote...

Maybe people like to control the story, and combat is just a distraction? Video games are different to books, films, television, since none of those allow you to create a character and make choices that affect the outcome. The player is in charge and it feels great.

No problem. Play a different video game. Not enjoying gameplay in a video game is akin to not enjoying the writing style of a book. Just pick up a different book.

What if someone loves the story but hates the combat? Does that mean they should never consider buying that game, even if they'd like to? Include a "skip combat" button and maybe they would? A win for them, and no loss to others. It's optional.

I don't hate combat - however, it's obvious that tactics and strategy are less important these days. It's all about action. Bosses have enormous health because they are mindless creatures, literally. No AI to speak of. I think most people would appreciate "intelligent" combat, but not button mashing for 10 minutes because the enemy has a million hitpoints.

If you dislike combat, the rpg genre is not for you.

I don't dislike combat... if I did I wouldn't have been playing rpgs for over 20 years. I do, however, dislike certain types of combat - bosses with huge health, and waves. These are artificial methods of prolonging a fight because most enemies are stupid. AI is nonexistant. Battles in DA2 are more about endurance than actually beating the opponent, you simply outlast them. 

Remember that fight in Dragon Age when you faced your own party? I liked that more than the Archdemon. My favourite encounters in the BG series were also against enemy parties - eg. Twisted Rune... Nalmissra... 
Grimgnaw's gang in HotU was pretty good, too. Hard but fair.

DA3 will almost certainly improve on DA2's combat, but I'd be tempted to auto-resolve if a battle was repetitive - hacking away at a mindless boss until the health bar depletes is tedious, not fun.

[Kidd]

mickey111 wrote...

Here is a thought: how about a compromise - we hold on to ME3s idea of a story mode where everything that the plaayer looks at just falls over and dies immediately, and we leave the top two hardest difficulties for people who only want a to challenge themselves to a tactical game where health doesn't regenerate, companions don't pick themselves off the ground for no real reason immediately after combat ends and we don't find injury kits in every waste basket scattered about fereldan? This would fix at least half of my grievances with what I currently consider to be a broken game. It would be a lot more fun for me then.

I... I... I'm bringing out the T-word!

I'd love to be able to play in such a mode in at least one of my playthroughs. Kind of like Fallout New Vegas' Hardcore Mode. But here's the thing, I'm not sure I like the idea of tying tying these things to higher difficulty levels. Would we have Narrative, Easy, Normal, Hard ("Hardcore"), Nightmare (still "Hardcore")? That means you can't have a harder battles without changing some of the base mechanics of the game, nor can you change them without getting more difficult enemies.

A toggle would solve it though, and I'd love such a toggle. That sounds fantastic, actually!

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MichaelStuart wrote...

I would still have to have to watch five minutes of the game doing the same moves. 
Dosn't matter how good something looks. Watch it enough time people will get bored of it.
Constant inputs at least gives the player something to do, even if it becomes repetitive.

It's not the input that's fun - it's the thinking behind the input that is fun.  Repetitive inputs don't require thinking.

To an extent. I much enjoyed the option to turn off auto-attacks in DA2 on console, myself. Hitting A to attack made me feel more immersed since it felt like I was actively taking part in battle myself. The third person camera lends itself very well to that sort of thing, I couldn't imagine turning off auto-attacks being anything but an annoyance in BG for instance.

Modifié par KiddDaBeauty, 22 mars 2013 - 08:50 .

[MichaelStuart]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MichaelStuart wrote...

I would still have to have to watch five minutes of the game doing the same moves.
Dosn't matter how good something looks. Watch it enough time people will get bored of it.
Constant inputs at least gives the player something to do, even if it becomes repetitive.

It's not the input that's fun - it's the thinking behind the input that is fun.  Repetitive inputs don't require thinking.

I never said it was fun, I just said it give me something to do.

[Yrkoon]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Rawgrim wrote...

If you dislike combat, the rpg genre is not for you.

What do the letters R P G in RPG mean ?

Is any of those letters in the world "combat" ?


You have a mental definition of RPG that needs combat. I disagree. To me the only thing a game needs to have to be an RPG game is to allow me to role play.

Right.  But just about all computer role playing games force you into the  Role of either a Warrior, a  Mage  or a Rogue  (or their respective variants).  This assumes combat by definition.   Otherwise you're  just Role-playing a fighter who doesn't fight,  Or a mage who doesn't fling spells etc     And there's  a different genre to describe that sort of thing:  adventure game.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 22 mars 2013 - 11:06 .

[Fast Jimmy]

^

Some games have successfully straddled that line. Like the QFG series. Part Sierra adventure, part stat-driven RPG. It had wildly different solutions to combat, quests and individual story lines based on your class. It gave you the option of combat usually right alongside the option to avoid it completely, even if that option was simply running (running used stamina, which affected the efficacy of all your skills and also caused you to take damage or die if you did actions with no stamina).

I already even plugged QFG this week. This one's just a freebie!