223 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

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

That's debatable, I'd say (and subjective).

I don't dispute that.

But that's kind of the point, isn't it?  We don't all enjoy the same thing, so forcing us all to play in the same way will necessarily alienate some players.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

metatheurgist wrote...

It's been a long time but didn't companions in BG die permanently as a result of combat? 'course you could say that with save games you can erase that consequence just by reloading.

In my experience this was the most common thing that would happen (it's what my friends and I did)

That doesn't diminish the value of the feature, though.  An option not taken has value simply in having been an option.

[grumpymooselion]

There's something to be said about challenge versus tedium where solo play of a game is concerned. Many difficulty settings for games, not just RPGs, don't actually add any challenge - only tedium. Tedium results from things like blowing up enemy health to obscene portions, making them do idiotic amounts of damage, lowering your health or damage and so on. These are pretty common tricks, especially the blowing up of enemy health, or slapping layers of shields and armor to strip off of them first. This is all tedium, it's the same thing you'd be doing on a normal difficulty setting, but there's 'more of it' . . .

Challenge to me, at Jimmy pointed out comes in when a developer really knows their game, and the abilities within. Harder difficulties with progressively better AI, new tactics for the AI, new mobility and ability options for the AI. New types of AI and new abilities and tactics from the enemy than you're used to see. And so on, these are better examples of things that might actually result in challenge, but not the only things.

Singleplayer games benefit most from a developer that's really willing to sit down and go, "What would actually be challenging here?" rather than the usual, "I dunno, let's just give it a billion health. That'll make it hard. Right?" Right?

[Fast Jimmy]

Janan Pacha wrote...

There's something to be said about challenge versus tedium where solo play of a game is concerned. Many difficulty settings for games, not just RPGs, don't actually add any challenge - only tedium. Tedium results from things like blowing up enemy health to obscene portions, making them do idiotic amounts of damage, lowering your health or damage and so on. These are pretty common tricks, especially the blowing up of enemy health, or slapping layers of shields and armor to strip off of them first. This is all tedium, it's the same thing you'd be doing on a normal difficulty setting, but there's 'more of it' . . .

Challenge to me, at Jimmy pointed out comes in when a developer really knows their game, and the abilities within. Harder difficulties with progressively better AI, new tactics for the AI, new mobility and ability options for the AI. New types of AI and new abilities and tactics from the enemy than you're used to see. And so on, these are better examples of things that might actually result in challenge, but not the only things.

Singleplayer games benefit most from a developer that's really willing to sit down and go, "What would actually be challenging here?" rather than the usual, "I dunno, let's just give it a billion health. That'll make it hard. Right?" Right?

The problem is that the devs won't know what skills the player will have, nor what members of the party that are present. Did you level Anders to be a healer? Or did you maximize the Vengeance skill tree? Does your tank have aggro skills? Or did you make your warrior more of a damage dealer? Does your rogue have any sneak skills? Any trap skills? Any backstab abilities? Not to mention they won't know when they design the level if you are going to be level 2 or level 20 sometimes (imagine going to the Brecillian Forest first and every enermy within being insanely over-powered).

So I understand why they do level-scaling. For all the praise the BG games get, they gave you nearly no control of how your character leveled up. If they were Level 5, they had access to X amount of Y skills. The only control you had was the ability to decide if you wanted to Multi-class them (from my experience, only actually beneficial in one circumstance, Imoen).

In a game where you can be in the middle of different quests, with different party members, who can be leveled/built in different ways and can be different levels, how easy is it to be able to predict what a player would do in combat? Or, more specifically, how do you give the player the right environment/setup to use alternative strategies when you don't know what tools they will have at their disposal?

So I can see the draw of level-scaling, as it keeps things on a fairly even keel. But I would much rather prefer dungeons/areas with wildly varied level creatures (with high leveled-creatures/encounters being avoidable, but 100% deadly for low level players to engage in) and multiple approaches to solving nearly every encounter possible. Quality over quantity, as well. If I get only 5-10 fights in a full, long, developed dungeon, but they are truly amazing and test the ability of my party (if I so desire when I put it on Hard/Nightmare, at least), then I would be a happy camper.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Non-combat skills were not "less than steller". They were useless flavour to irrelevant.

Flavour isn't useless, nor is it necessarily irrelevant to combat.  If that flavour drives combat-relevant roleplaying choices, then there's your relevance.

Let's list in order the things that had no bearing on DA:O combat:

And I'm going to go through this point by point, but I want to start by saying that I disagree with your definition of the word "bearing".

The need to scout ahead. It added no value, and once seen, you triggered the encounter anyway.

It didn't affect your likeliood of defeating the encounter.  Why is that the only standard by which your assigning value?

Traps. They did nothing. The best possible traps in the game added less value than a single dmg spell from a mage, and that ignores the absolute horror it was to actually pull an enemy into a trap.

Unless you don't have a mage, or your character derives particular joy from the his own ingenuity in laying traps.  Once again, your definition of value relies upon a host of unjustified assumptions.

Persuade skills existed, but they were broken. Pick persuade rank III+, and you basically auto-win all dialogue. It has the delightful [Persuade = WIN] button next to it, so there is never a danger you're confused about how you're going to win the conversation.

I agree that identifying Persuade options was a bad idea.  If you actually wanted to do the thing the Persuade option did, then it was an I WIN button, and that's bad.

Other skills were useless, making it absolutely a no-brainer to pick persuade (unless you chose to gimp yourself). Therefore, you were a "superman, best of all worlds".

The other skills were not useless.  Survival was awfully handy in telling you which spell to pre-cast to kill everything in the next room.  And I still don't accept that traps were worthless.  Unnecessary, yes, but not worthless.

Level scaling combat. DA2 does this to a greater degree than DA:O. But DA:O combat isn't hard. You can take on Orzammar from the start if you have a mage PC. Which was the problem with DA:O - all abilities except DMG-dealing abilities generally sucked, and mages had AOE DMG, meaning that "first to fireball" = WIN.

You're forgetting Paralysis Explosion.  But, yes, mages were far more capable than other classes.  But that also made perfect sense given the setting's lore.  DA2 made, I think, a serious error in moving away from that. Also, just because an obvious path to victory exists does not force you to take that path.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 22 mars 2013 - 05:31 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

metatheurgist wrote...

It's been a long time but didn't companions in BG die permanently as a result of combat? 'course you could say that with save games you can erase that consequence just by reloading.

In my experience this was the most common thing that would happen (it's what my friends and I did)

That doesn't diminish the value of the feature, though.  An option not taken has value simply in having been an option.

Agreed.

[grumpymooselion]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Janan Pacha wrote...

There's something to be said about challenge versus tedium where solo play of a game is concerned. Many difficulty settings for games, not just RPGs, don't actually add any challenge - only tedium. Tedium results from things like blowing up enemy health to obscene portions, making them do idiotic amounts of damage, lowering your health or damage and so on. These are pretty common tricks, especially the blowing up of enemy health, or slapping layers of shields and armor to strip off of them first. This is all tedium, it's the same thing you'd be doing on a normal difficulty setting, but there's 'more of it' . . .

Challenge to me, at Jimmy pointed out comes in when a developer really knows their game, and the abilities within. Harder difficulties with progressively better AI, new tactics for the AI, new mobility and ability options for the AI. New types of AI and new abilities and tactics from the enemy than you're used to see. And so on, these are better examples of things that might actually result in challenge, but not the only things.

Singleplayer games benefit most from a developer that's really willing to sit down and go, "What would actually be challenging here?" rather than the usual, "I dunno, let's just give it a billion health. That'll make it hard. Right?" Right?

The problem is that the devs won't know what skills the player will have, nor what members of the party that are present. Did you level Anders to be a healer? Or did you maximize the Vengeance skill tree? Does your tank have aggro skills? Or did you make your warrior more of a damage dealer? Does your rogue have any sneak skills? Any trap skills? Any backstab abilities? Not to mention they won't know when they design the level if you are going to be level 2 or level 20 sometimes (imagine going to the Brecillian Forest first and every enermy within being insanely over-powered).

So I understand why they do level-scaling. For all the praise the BG games get, they gave you nearly no control of how your character leveled up. If they were Level 5, they had access to X amount of Y skills. The only control you had was the ability to decide if you wanted to Multi-class them (from my experience, only actually beneficial in one circumstance, Imoen).

In a game where you can be in the middle of different quests, with different party members, who can be leveled/built in different ways and can be different levels, how easy is it to be able to predict what a player would do in combat? Or, more specifically, how do you give the player the right environment/setup to use alternative strategies when you don't know what tools they will have at their disposal?

So I can see the draw of level-scaling, as it keeps things on a fairly even keel. But I would much rather prefer dungeons/areas with wildly varied level creatures (with high leveled-creatures/encounters being avoidable, but 100% deadly for low level players to engage in) and multiple approaches to solving nearly every encounter possible. Quality over quantity, as well. If I get only 5-10 fights in a full, long, developed dungeon, but they are truly amazing and test the ability of my party (if I so desire when I put it on Hard/Nightmare, at least), then I would be a happy camper.

This goes back to things like 'class' selection as the decider for difficulty rather than a difficulty setting, as well as who you bring with you as these choices translate into a focus, shifting out what the player won't have and telling the game what the player will have. Nothing is perfect, but a good developer looks at a game with three classes and says, 'these are the things that will, generally, challenge each of these classes, regardless of ability sellection. It then follows that these three lines of difficulty are marked by your own character's class selection, and additionally when you set out - looking at who you have with you - saying, '2 of these three three are here, these are the things I must provide challenge for.'

You said with the 'Anders as a Healer' thing there arises some complication, but overall the answer is to target the basis of the class for this consideration, rather than the specific lines the class in question may follow.

Yes it's more work. Yes it's easier to go the other route. My view on the easier route doesn't change much for that knowledge though. I just prefer thought out set pieces to trash anyways. I'd probably change how companions advance, still letting you control their advancement but keeping it within the range of 'one of the possible roles of their class' since the only character I actually care about customizing is my own ever since they stopped letting me actually customize my companions in many ways anyway but that's neither here nor there.

Further I'd note that there have been games that offered different paths for a class through a game, in the 3-4 class range, allowing, say, your Thief to finish the game quite different from your Fighter - even seeing different things. Going through it a second or third time, as the same class, may not yield challenge as the first, but the basic first experience of a class does insist, 'think like this class to achieve success down this path' rather than 'kill this mob with 1,000,000 health that's just like this mob with 100 health'. This, of course, is complicated in a game where you have a party of multiple classes but perhaps even that is solvable when you consider all the ways Bioware take out companions out of the equation when it suits them anyways.

Modifié par Janan Pacha, 22 mars 2013 - 05:50 .

[Kidd]

EDIT: This is the moment I realise it's a good thing to refresh a thread before typing up a reply when it's been hours since I refreshed it last. Here I thought I had learnt that lesson already~~

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I rock at Monopoly. Let's play right now, honestly. I'm a winner. I can take down nearly anyone I play. 

But I've lost to the computer in Monopoly before. Why? Because the person who created the game understood how to play Monopoly, so the "Hard" AI is actually really smart. 

But it seems that changing the difficulty in RPGs these days doesn't increase AI, it just increases damage done, bloats HP and assigns arbitrary immunities.

Sure is true. One of my favourite moments in gaming comes from the Megaman franchise (I know, not an RPG, but the thinking translates into RPGs as well), namely Megaman Zero 2.

In the first game you face off a few times against this one villain who is a bit tricky to beat, but not overly so. He has several weaknesses, the largest one being that you can fool him into shooting at you three times. If you jump over the third blast, you will always be able to land a blow to his head for massive damage. So every time I faced him on every playthrough, I'd charge my attack while waiting for that third shot, jump it, slash - victory.

So Capcom knew this was what people were doing. It was the most obvious weak point of his AI pattern. So in Zero 2, you rematched the guy. Only this time, if you jumped at him after the third blast of his gun, he'd unleash his one new move - an anti-air uppercut. Wham, all of a sudden he shot down my one strategy and I'd have to find new openings to attack. I've never felt so outplayed in my life. It was great!

If Megaman Zero 1 was Normal difficulty, and Zero 2 was Hard difficulty, that would be fantastic and make me feel a much higher incentive to care about higher difficulties in RPGs.

Modifié par KiddDaBeauty, 22 mars 2013 - 07:18 .

[Allan Schumacher]

The tricky part of your example is that it took two games to conclude that.

I agree that game difficulty should scale better than just upping numbers. On some level doing what you and Jimmy describe can be straight forward, but on other levels it's less easy.

For example: The difference between using standard attacks and special skills is a lot easier to set up than determining how to use cross-class combos in an intelligent and reactive way. If you make the AI too prescriptive in applying those cross-class combos, it becomes easy to game the system (and it can just be difficult to properly have it set up).

I don't actually know the costs, though, so I am speculating somewhat. I'll ask Mike about it when he gets back from PAX East and pass along your posts.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 22 mars 2013 - 07:48 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

The tricky part of your example is that it took two games to conclude that.

I agree that game difficulty should scale better than just upping numbers. On some level doing what you and Jimmy describe can be straight forward, but on other levels it's less easy.

For example: The difference between using standard attacks and special skills is a lot easier to set up than determining how to use cross-class combos in an intelligent and reactive way. If you make the AI too prescriptive in applying those cross-class combos, it becomes easy to game the system (and it can just be difficult to properly have it set up).

I don't actually know the costs, though, so I am speculating somewhat. I'll ask Mike about it when he gets back from PAX East and pass along your posts.

It is difficult, I wouldn't dream of saying otherwise. It basically requires the combat team to be as good as the most veteran player will be after a few months of playing the game before the combat system is even fully operationalized (or require going "back to the drawing board" a number of times after a combat system has been finished). With a game like Monopoly, it is easy (relatively) to devise an AI that plays smart. After all, Monopoly has been out for nearly 100 years. You all will have to devise a system that requires experienced players to think on the fly, while not completely scaring and penalizng novice players who just want to be able to one-hit everything to more on through the story.

Also, speaking of the Megaman issue, this could be something that lends itself better to episodic content? Using not only player choice for shaping the story, but also combat tendencies and oft-used player strategies, adjusting enemies' tactics accordingly?

But that is far beyond the scope of the next DA game, honestly. Maybe for the new Bioware IP?

[Allan Schumacher]

Also, speaking of the Megaman issue, this could be something that lends itself better to episodic content? Using not only player choice for shaping the story, but also combat tendencies and oft-used player strategies, adjusting enemies' tactics accordingly?

Episodic content does indeed allow improved iteration based on consumer feedback (since it actually exists.... haha)

It is difficult, I wouldn't dream of saying otherwise. It basically requires the combat team to be as good as the most veteran player will be after a few months of playing the game before the combat system is even fully operationalized (or require going "back to the drawing board" a number of times after a combat system has been finished). With a game like Monopoly, it is easy (relatively) to devise an AI that plays smart. After all, Monopoly has been out for nearly 100 years. You all will have to devise a system that requires experienced players to think on the fly, while not completely scaring and penalizng novice players who just want to be able to one-hit everything to more on through the story.

There's an aspect of simply knowing the rules, but there's a bit more to it than that. With monopoly, only one player moves at a time. That makes a gigantic difference (I actually worked on the ORTS Research Project at my university one summer and this was cemented home. I assisted with improving 2D pathfinding algorithms as well as combat mechanics for target prioritization between opposing squads).

So a good player can determine a particular sequence against a particular enemies, but the biggest thing is that the player is adaptable. If you know Storm of the Century is amazing, and while you're setting it up you realize the AI is threatening you in some other way, you can abort and shift to a different strategy. However, depending on the circumstances, you may NOT change your strategy.

The adaptability due to real time changes in the environment is a large part of what makes it so difficult. Which is why a difficulty level that is basically "use abilities" or "don't use abilities" is much easier to do as it's binary.

[Renmiri1]

The bosses on WoW pve raids, the ones that took 6 months and now take 3-4 weeks to beat are AI bosses. But even then, most of the difficulty comes from getting 25 people to not f*** up and down the millions of HP before the enrage timer hits.

Still there are some fun mechanics that make fights challenging even while soloing old content.. My tank has twice the HP of a level 60 boss and I can do around the same damage a level 60 raid did back in the day yet some level 60 raid bosses can kick my behind if I don't pay attention. On Lich King, the whole floor caved in certain phases and on others flying valkiries came and took some of your players to their deaths. On another dungeon, which I soloed for years to get a tiger mount (and never did -.-) you had to kill the boss and his 3 minions and all 3 minions had to die at the same time or they resurrected with full health.

And there are some level 60 bosses that even now, with a fully geared team of 5-6 level 90s you will probably wipe.

And Allan, Mass Effect 2 and 3 combat was pretty good for SP. If you guys can get something similar for DAI, it will make me and everyone here happy (I think, not speaking for everyone)

[Wulfram]

I don't think better AI should be how you distinguish difficulty levels. I think all difficulty levels would benefit from smarter AI opponents, there's no reason to leave it for the highest levels.

Though I'd argue the main problem with the combat in most recent CRPGs is that there's too much you can gain from your "build", and your equipment. It makes tactics less important when you can get a huge DPS advantage. Things would be much better if that sort of thing was limited to tactical options, with only very limited advantages possible to basic stuff like damage.

[Nomen Mendax]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

The tricky part of your example is that it took two games to conclude that.

I agree that game difficulty should scale better than just upping numbers. On some level doing what you and Jimmy describe can be straight forward, but on other levels it's less easy.

For example: The difference between using standard attacks and special skills is a lot easier to set up than determining how to use cross-class combos in an intelligent and reactive way. If you make the AI too prescriptive in applying those cross-class combos, it becomes easy to game the system (and it can just be difficult to properly have it set up).

I don't actually know the costs, though, so I am speculating somewhat. I'll ask Mike about it when he gets back from PAX East and pass along your posts.

Incidentally, the other thing that you can do is differentiate between different types of opponents at the same difficulty level.  For example I would like to see zombies attack my party in a less effective way than elite guards.  I'd expect the elite troops to make sensible decisions about who to prioritize attacks on whereas I'd expect the zombies to go forever happened to be closest.  So tanking against zombies should be much easier than against elite troops.

However, one of the problems I have with DA2 is that the combat is so fast that it might be difficult to see the opponents intentionally doing things like cross-class combos.  In my ideal world movement and positioning would be a lot more important than they are in DA (Origins or DA2) so that you could see the opponents intelligently trying to flank you.

Modifié par Nomen Mendax, 22 mars 2013 - 09:19 .

[Yrkoon]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

Sure,  it's "perfectly possible" to create just about any type of game and call it  a CRPG, but if it doesn't have combat, then it won't look like one.

to you

To the industry.

Renmiri1 wrote...
You are not even convincing theis whole thread so the odds that your opinion is law to "everyone in the world" are pretty low, but hey, you wanna think that it is, then enjoy your daydreaming.

This thread currently sees debate on whether we should be able to *skip* combat in an RPG, not "whether an RPG should come out without any combat, combat systems, or combat character classes".  Totally different issue.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 22 mars 2013 - 10:05 .

[Yrkoon]

Plaintiff wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...
Sure,  it's "perfectly possible" to create just about any type of game and call it  a CRPG, but if it doesn't have combat, then it won't look like one.  it won't play like one.  It won't feel like one.    And it probably won't even be  LABLED as one. Instead, everyone in the world  will see it as what it is:  Something other than an cRPG.  And before you spew the nonsensical retort we've heard from Mark Darrah and Mike Laidlaw --- NO, Farmville and Call of Duty are NOT RPGs simply because they've got some "RPG elements".

If Call of Duty is not an RPG, then clearly combat is not a defining aspect of the RPG genre.

LOL  I am always amazed by the creative logic on this forum.

Really? do we need  to explain  that  All crpgs  have combat but not all games that have  combat are RPGs? 

Plaintiff wrote...

The only type of "fresh change" we can really hope for is a game that's got *less* combat  or where combat exists but can be bypassed with non-combat skills.     And those types of games  can be *great*.when they're done right.  But the bottom line will still be the same:  Combat and everything associated with it is still there  (weapons.  encounters, combat classes).  Otherwise you're not playing a  cRPG, you're playing an Adventure game.

If an adventure game allows you to roleplay, then in what sense is it not an RPG?

Well, lets see,   Adventure games generally don't have Leveling, don't have combat, don't have character builds  etc.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 22 mars 2013 - 10:19 .

[Fast Jimmy]

^

Quest for Glory has stats that are leveled up, but still has Sierra style adventure mechanics.

Man, this thread has been GOLD for my QFG references.

[Yrkoon]

Quest for Glory V was an Action RPG with tons and tons of combat.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 22 mars 2013 - 10:34 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Quest for Glory I was not.

In any case, I find semantics arguments about what is or is not an RPG doesn't really go anywhere, and ask that it be toned down.

[Kidd]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

The tricky part of your example is that it took two games to conclude that.

That is very true. I imagine it also speaks volumes of the amount of QA that might be needed to ensure higher difficulty features are implemented "the right way." Half a million players playing your game on launch sure out-tests any internal QA, after all.

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I agree that game difficulty should scale better than just upping numbers. On some level doing what you and Jimmy describe can be straight forward, but on other levels it's less easy.

Definitely. You could still sprinkle in some boss' AoE damage spell also stunning its targets on a higher difficulty, giving a certain type of mook access to a variation of their normal attack that deals less damage but knocks back, etc without too much work, I think? Strong emphasis on the "I think" here.

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I don't actually know the costs, though, so I am speculating somewhat. I'll ask Mike about it when he gets back from PAX East and pass along your posts.

You've said this in so many threads now. Has Mike ever looked annoyed when you dump yet another bunch of posts on his lap? =) I am imagining responses like this,

"Damn it, Allan. Not only are you wasting my time by showing me quite a few posts that I don't find as good as you do. Even worse are the brilliant ones, cause now I know these ideas and have no time to implement them."

[Allan Schumacher]

You've said this in so many threads now. Has Mike ever looked annoyed when you dump yet another bunch of posts on his lap? =) I am imagining responses like this,

This is why I typically email him!

[Renmiri1]

Email and run... My favorite trick with the dev team's I've been in contact with.

[Sakanade]

DA2 would be so much better with auto-resolve, so many pointless, mindgrindingly boring fights in that game.

[Paul E Dangerously]

Does anyone else find it funny that people take a "We want a skip combat" option seriously, but if you suggested a "skip story" option would draw a million replies about "dumbing down", " they're catering to the CoD crowd" and the like?

Modifié par Sopa de Gato, 23 mars 2013 - 01:46 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Sopa de Gato wrote...

Does anyone else find it funny that people take a "We want a skip combat" option seriously, but if you suggested a "skip story" option would draw a million replies about "dumbing down", " they're catering to the CoD crowd" and the like?

You can already skip story. You don't have to listen to a word anyone says most times in DA games. Sure, you have to make a dialogue decision every once in a while, but that's not really a huge inconvenience. 

So I'd say a Skip Story button is about already here.