575 réponses à ce sujet

[cindercatz]

Amping up the arcade aspects of combat wouldn't do DA3 any favors for me. That's specifically what I most disliked about DA2, including and especially the CCCs, which I couldn't stand precisely because they encouraged a particular, repetitive style of play. Pattern recognition is boring, though it gets a little better the more complex you go, and a DA game is so long and has so much combat that relying more heavily on pattern/arcadey type systems is a recipe for disaster, at least for me. I'd much rather have much more advanced battlefield tactics catered too. Give bonuses for where and how the units are placed in relation to the enemy, their allies, and the terrain, build in cooperative AI, for both the party and enemy groups. Have larger, more interested and varied battle environments and a system that makes use of it. More strategy gaming influence, less arcade influence. I'd rather combat become more interesting in the direction of a Total War than your average aRPG. CCCs and pattern heavy arguments make me cringe a little every time I see them.

Filament wrote...

I think injuries having a semi-permanent cosmetic affect would be nice (scars, idling animations, using staff as a cane). Being able to reverse it with semi-expensive magic would also be nice. Having a permanent/semi-permanent stat reduction would make me sad. I like how the trend in platformers seems to be to make death as unpunishing as possible (allowing them to ramp up the difficulty of the level itself) as I don't feel like punishment is really an effective incentivizing tool in a game that allows power word: reload/continue/etc. It just piles on frustration.

I love the compounding cosmetic injury effect thing. The Arkham games do that (and a few other games), and it's brilliant.  It helps tie the combat and the storytelling together and adds to immersion. And since BioWare is the character/dialogue company and that's a major foundational element of DA, building in a few dialogue nods or minor scene alterations along with that would be even better. It's just extra reactivity. So it's not a combat fail punishment at all, but it does make your gameplay success/fail rate more significant to the storytelling and thereby more relevant to the player, in a different way.

edit: more cooperative AI I mean. There's already some at play in DA:O, and some skills added a bit of that element to DA2. Just more better badder is all.

edit 2: Consumables: I never carried more than 10 or 15 potions in DA2, most of which I paid to craft. The fact that I was paying for them early had a small effect on my usage, because I didn't want to spend game currency for consumables when I was trying to save up to afford more expensive upgrades or armor or whatever. Conversely in DA:O, where finding the higher level potions for purchase was more rare, I was a lot more willing to spend for them, even though I could make my own, which I also enjoy, with a little loot grinding or ingredient shopping. I wouldn't typically spend the two sovereign, but I'd buy the entire stock of the next level down, and craft more of the lower level items. I also made sure to spend points for poison and traps for at least one character, because I loved the way the non-combat skills could play into dialogue and side quests.

Traps I did use tactically in DA:O, but there just weren't that many occasions where they were particularly useful. I used them to aid in ambush type scenarios when my party was particularly underpowered against certain enemies in certain encounters in the game. I enjoyed them, even if I didn't use them so much. And using poison I typically reserved for when I was half way through a dungeon and out of inventory space more than any particular tactical reason. I liked crafting them and selling them, though, and I'm sure their effects were beneficial. I'd like all of that back. Edit: Also, I used particular a particular lot in this particular paragraph.

Modifié par cindercatz, 23 mai 2013 - 12:01 .

[Fast Jimmy]

One concern with this is that, the later a consequence is presented, the weaker the relationship to the stimulus is. Giving players permanent stat decreases some time after the event runs the risk of seeming arbitrary, and placing barriers on the player understanding why said penalties were enacted.

I would say it is more of an upfront part of the way the game works. The game should tell you, in no uncertain terms, that this is a possibility. Not in the manual, not in Player's Guides... but the game itself. I find that is one area Bioware games, in general, are often very lacking in. Explain the systems you make and people might appreciate them more.

Need For Tutorials Rant aside, if the player knows this is a possibility, that does more to deter the actual act than the punishment.

Did you know that, statistically speaking, having sex with an HIV-positive person will result in transmission of the disease only 1 in 27 times through regular intercourse? Yet how many people would knowingly risk that and not use the proper protection for a possibility of dire consequences? I would say not many - there are many people who (rightly so) would tell you that bodily transmission of fluids with an infected person is a guaranteed death sentence.

That is an extreme example, but I think it demonstrates my point - the fear of the consequence can be an effective deterent, even if the exact consequence is not known directly after the mistake was made.

[Fallstar]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

DuskWarden wrote...

Going back to the mod thing: If Bioware are going to continue to sell weapon and armour packs of terribly low quality, it makes no business sense for them to release a toolkit which extremely talented modders will use to put anything they can do to shame. Few would buy the official item packs when far higher quality items could be downloaded for free.

This myth has been addressed repeatedly. The absolute #1 factor in the sales of DLC has always been whether the game remains installed on your PC/console's hard drive. Very few people are willing to reinstall a game to play newly released DLC, especially when there is already a steady stream of other games constantly being released competing for player attention. Toolkits/mods extend the lifetime of the installed game, which leads to more potential customers for DLC and microtransactions, far surpassing any revenue they might gain by 'protecting' their item pack sales.

The real main reasons that mod kits are difficult to release are generally:

#1. The toolkit for internal development almost always incorporates third party software/middleware that the studio has licensed for development purposes, but cannot release publicly for legal reasons. Bioware has the rights to distribute their own toolkit, but not Perforce, Havok, Motionbuilder, etc.
#2. Toolkit software often requires integration with other software tools that must be stripped and removed from the toolkit by programmers for the same reason as #1, as well as rigorously tested by QA.
#3. Console gamers don't get mods, so you'd have to justify spending programmer time on a feature utilized by less than 1/3 of your player base.

Just to give you an idea, the game I'm currently working on requires four additional proprietary and licensed software tools working in tandem in addition to the main toolkit for asset creation, all to do things like govern dependencies, version control, build streamlining, etc. in addition to just editing and creating new content. That stuff needs to be extracted and removed from the toolkit in order for it to be legally released to the public.

I never looked at it that way, thanks for the info.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If you were in a fight, would it be your objective merely to survive, or also to avoid being hurt?

If Hit points were in any way a meaningful representation of real life, this would have more significance.

You sound like In Exile.

I actually found myself losing more fights in Karate if I was too concerned about not getting hit, as it tempered my aggression too much and made me hesitate.

Did you lose without getting hit?  No.  Obviously I'm not trying to lose fights.  I'm trying to win, and within that set of outcomes, I favor those where I take less damage.

I partly do this to help me ignore the health regeneration outside of combat.  I really don't like how health regenerates in the DA games, so if I can get through a battle without taking any damage I've effectively undone that feature.

I'd argue that through learning how to take hits, and recognizing the vulnerabilities I presented to open up said hit, my skill growth in kumite was accelerated.  To the point where I'd understand an appreciable amount of improved experience gain in an RPG if you didn't flawlessly defeat your enemy.

That would make sense, though with regenerating health it would create some perverse incentives to take damage intentionally.  This would only really work if hit points were in any way a meaningful represtation of real life.

[cindercatz]

That's one reason I'm so in favor of more synched animation in regular combat. HP to me doesn't represent health as much as it represents.. mental stamina, I guess, concentration exhaustion. I always internalize it as imagining those attacks are being parried, dodged, barely deflected, and the real hit is the one that drops you and inflicts the injury. They're highly skilled combatants fighting with blades, clubs, and arrows, not to mention the elements, so for me actually seeing them take hits and shrug them off at all is jarring.

So more synched animation, aside from just being nicer to look at, means when you see an actual flush hit, it does what a hit should do and drops you, or your connection drops the enemy. Just a thought.

Modifié par cindercatz, 23 mai 2013 - 06:18 .

[Allan Schumacher]

This would only really work if hit points were in any way a meaningful represtation of real life.

Fortunately they aren't (and certainly never have been - at least not in any BioWare game. Maybe in a Shadowrun game), so we aren't bound by such restrictions.

It's great that you wish to completely avoid getting hurt, however, to be somewhat difficult, I did in fact win a match where I was the only person to get hit (i.e. my opponent did not get hit, and lost the match), because he decided to kick me in the face and it wasn't a full contact match. So yes, in fact, it was possible to lose without getting hit.

Furthermore, my Karate matches were much MUCH more likely to be determined via score, rather than knockout. So I could lose 1-2, or win 6-4. I got hit twice as much in my win, but the important thing is that I won.

Sometimes, from a roleplaying perspective, I recognize (or am at least led to believe) that there's a sense of urgency. A lot of the time fighting ultra-defensively is exceptionally slow, and when I see that someone is in a sense of peril, I'll be more aggressive and am more open to potentially taking hits because ultimately I know I'll be through the fight faster at that serves the story I am creating more appropriately.

So, in conclusion, it seems like a "players will get different things out of a system." Looks like another difference between myself and Sylvius.


As for your dismissive response to me pointing out hit points only being an abstraction of real life, it was more along the lines of "What does it mean to have 1 HP?" as well as "How come my health goes up so much faster than my damage?" to the eventual point of "It seems silly that I'm intrinsically incapable of killing my foe in a single hit." Since none of those things really have real life analogues. I.e. is having 1/4 HP the same as having 1/100 HP?

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 23 mai 2013 - 08:11 .

[Allan Schumacher]

That is an extreme example, but I think it demonstrates my point - the fear of the consequence can be an effective deterent, even if the exact consequence is not known directly after the mistake was made.

You don't even need to use HIV as an example. People are notorious for overestimating the likelihood of seriously threatening (or fatal) events occurring against them. Real life, unfortunately, isn't like a video game.

You say you'd like us to make sure the player is aware through in game mechanics? How so? If there isn't a specific event that is obvious, it will still come across as random. You'll still get paranoid gamers that feel that the game is out to get them, and so forth. So if there is a specific event, what stops players from just loading when that event happens, since the 1 in 27 (or much lower, as I've heard) chance just doesn't happen?

After all, as you indicate, knowing that it could happen has a powerful effect on people. How many people whom, after being notified of having unprotected sex with someone known to be HIV positive, would love to go back in time and "reload" prior to that encounter, even if they haven't been tested positive yet themselves?

I would make a caveat here. I don't think making potions/poisons/etc.
more available would help. Players will hoard items even if they can
carry 10, 20 or even 100 of them and they fall from the sky like
gumdrops. HOWEVER, I think DA2 took a step in the right direction with
this, but implemented the feature incorrectly.

If you had below a
certain threshold of an item, enemies/loot would drop them. Otherwise,
they would not. Example: if you had only one healing potion, it would be
quite likely that an enemy would drop a potion. If you had five, an
enemy would never drop a potion. This was done to prevent hoarding huge
inventories (where it was successful) but it still didn't increase
utilization rates because players felt the consumables were even MORE
rare than before... even though actually consuming said consumables
would result in more consumables being dropped!

Where are you getting your data for utilization rates?

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 23 mai 2013 - 08:24 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Fortunately they aren't (and certainly never have been - at least not in any BioWare game. Maybe in a Shadowrun game), so we aren't bound by such restrictions.

Right, but because of that those perverse incentives to take extra damage would then be a problem.

It's great that you wish to completely avoid getting hurt, however, to be somewhat difficult, I did in fact win a match where I was the only person to get hit (i.e. my opponent did not get hit, and lost the match), because he decided to kick me in the face and it wasn't a full contact match. So yes, in fact, it was possible to lose without getting hit.

Furthermore, my Karate matches were much MUCH more likely to be determined via score, rather than knockout. So I could lose 1-2, or win 6-4. I got hit twice as much in my win, but the important thing is that I won.

I agree that winning is more important.  My point was that there were fewer ways to win in DA2 with the no damage option having been largely eliminated.

Sometimes, from a roleplaying perspective, I recognize (or am at least led to believe) that there's a sense of urgency. A lot of the time fighting ultra-defensively is exceptionally slow, and when I see that someone is in a sense of peril, I'll be more aggressive and am more open to potentially taking hits because ultimately I know I'll be through the fight faster at that serves the story I am creating more appropriately.

Sure, but that will differ from character to character.  Some characters will allow the urgency of the situation to overcome their risk-aversion (assuming they have any), and some won't.  Giving players more tolls allows a wider range of roleplaying possibilities.

So, in conclusion, it seems like a "players will get different things out of a system." Looks like another difference between myself and Sylvius.

That was exactly my point.

As for your dismissive response to me pointing out hit points only being an abstraction of real life, it was more along the lines of "What does it mean to have 1 HP?" as well as "How come my health goes up so much faster than my damage?" to the eventual point of "It seems silly that I'm intrinsically incapable of killing my foe in a single hit." Since none of those things really have real life analogues. I.e. is having 1/4 HP the same as having 1/100 HP?

I wasn't trying to be dismissive.  I was trying to point out that your own earlier statement about hit points had effectively already countered your damage/experience proposal.

I would agree that hit points should be better explained, as should those damage progressions.  Looking at tabletop RPGs, most of them handled these questions very badly (D&D certainly did).  But you mentioned shadowrun, and GURPS also had what I think was quite a sensible relationship between hit points and damage.

[Fast Jimmy]

Where are you getting your data for utilization rates?

I believe it was from an interview with one of the doctors (Ray, if memory serves me correctly) back in 2011. I'm trying to pull it.

It talked about consumables, particularly medigel in ME and potions in DA2, and how they were trying to encourage players to use them, but players would hoard them greedily.

[Tinxa]

As for poisons and granades I never used them in DA2. I didn't even know I had them in my inventory most of the time and when I noticed them while cleaning out the junk I said to myself "Oooh I have to try poison sometime" but I never did.

I think it would help to have certain creatures that can only be killed by poisoned weapons. That worked really well for me in BG games. You had trolls that could only be killed by acid or fire, so suddenly I had to search my inventory for those acid arrows and acid bombs I was hoarding and actually use them. During the level with the trolls I grew accustomed to using acid with my weapons and then I also used acid later on against other enemies.

[Nerevar-as]

I can´t remember how many potions I had by the end of Neverwinter Nights. Or the KOTOR equivalent. There´s a tendency to save them for later, not helped by the fact that potions makes things easier, but (Witcher games aside) are not really necessary at first, and later the bonus they give is too low compared to the PC´s base stats. I´d like more games where they are an integral part of gameplay, but I guess that´s not likely these times where oversimplification seems to be the norm.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Where are you getting your data for utilization rates?

I believe it was from an interview with one of the doctors (Ray, if memory serves me correctly) back in 2011. I'm trying to pull it.

I recall that, as well.  I don't recall the source, but I recall the content.

I can totally see how that produced the opposite of the intended result.  I'm certainly much more likely to consume a potion if I have 99 more, but if I have only 4 more that's a far smaller emergency reserve.

I do like one aspect of the DA2 approach - by not dropping extra potions to be hoarded, it effectively simulated Hawke selling excess potions.  There was still a benefit to using fewer potions - you got more non-potion loot.

But without documenting the system for the players, they had no reason to expect their apparently limited supply to be automatically replenished.  Perhaps a per encounter healing ability instead of potions would work better - that's basically what DA2's potion dropping system amounted to, anyway.

[Joy Divison]

I don't know if it is a good idea for game designers to encourage players to play a certain way, use otherwise tneglected aspects, or appreciate all the aspects of the game. If the game is good as is advertised and we are generally invested, we'll figure much of this out and find our own reasons and ways to enjoy the game.  We all play these games differently for different reasons and speaking for myself I dislike it when game designers use carrots and sticks to get me to play the game a certain way.

Since the topic of potions is on this page, I fail to see why encouraging me to use them (or consumables in general) is a desirable goal. I do not like consumables, in particular potions. I find it utterly unrealistic that in a middle of a melee fight one could somehow grow a third arm, rummage through a backpack full of various loot, pick out precisely the type and magnitude of the potion that was wanted, and drink it without any consequence from the enemy. Maybe I find traps and poisons for cowards, peasants, thugs, unbefitting of a warrior for a particular character I am roleplaying. I'd rather not the game encourage me to explore the consumables because the designers think they are cool, properly balanced, or add something to the game that I'd miss. If consumables are as good as the designers think they are and they coincide with my playing style or a certain character I am playing, I'll eventually figure this out. I'd rather not be punished for not playing the "right" way.

I'm also not sure having penalties for dying or losing a fight will encourage players to fight better or try harder. Speaking for myself, I try as hard as I can in every fight. If I suffered some sort of intelligence loss down the road to my wizard I would reload the game and become annoyed that I'd have to replay the 2 or 3 some odd hours. But that's me. A lot of people aren't as fascinated by the combat. In their spare time don't read the strategy boards or think of ways to min/max their builds, or intuitively know the entropy tree is suboptimal. They don't "try as hard" in combat because it is not the aspect of the game they like the best. Encouraging them to "try harder" will undoubtedly frustrate many people. Again speaking for myself, I do not find the romances these games offer as compelling as other people. I just don't. I'd rather not be encouraged to do them in the first place, let alone "try harder" to get the best endings/avoid character penalties should I decide one game to give it a shot.

tl;dr - we all play these games for different reasons and have different things we like about them. Speaking for myself, I'd rather not be penalized for not doing something "right."

Modifié par Joy Divison, 23 mai 2013 - 11:57 .

[Rhazesx]

I'm waiting to see how much DA3 is call of dutyized before I buy it. I got well over 800 hours of DAO. Just recently bought DA2 for cheap and only because I'm DA3 is great like Origins. One play through of DA2 was enough I'm going to try and finish some of my other characters from 2 but I could just easily use a save game generator for them if I buy DA3.

[Peer of the Empire]

Plaintiff wrote...

I don't think toolkits are nearly as popular as you make them out to be, and I've yet to see any proven correlation between a toolkit and improved sales of the base game on any platform.

Hell, most people on this forum who want a toolkit aren't even making that argument. Their position has always been that it "extends the life of the game", which isn't something a developer necessarily wants.

Toolkits dramatically increase the quality of the experience

[Lotion Soronarr]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I was never a fan, and seeing such a thing was often a reload for me while growing up, so I doubt it's really changed that much.

I remember playing Jagged Alliance 2, and taking a critical hit in the shoulder and losing like 47 points of dexterity.  That's a reloadin'.
Hit in the head losing 15 points of wisdom?  You better believe that's a reloadin'.


Note, however, that that doesn't mean it's not necessarily a good thing.  Though I "hated" it, it was a mechanic I understood and, oddly, appreciated.  I just often treated it as equivalent to death excepting minimal situations.

Maybe I'm not remembering properly, but I do recall those points can be restored with medical treatment.
Of course, peopel have tendancy to reload whenever things go bad, but what exactly is their treshold and what they consider bad varries.

I could - for example - reload the game any time I get hit. Even for 1 damage. Does that mean HP is a bad mechanic?


********

Regarding HP abstraction - I see HP as life points. Buffed for gameplay sake, but still "life".
1-hit-kills can work in a game where the player controls only 1 character (for example: Operation Flashpoint), but for a party-based game it's too unwieldy. There's too much going on and the randomness factor is greater.

I never saw it as "battle stamina" or "battle readiness" or "abiltiy to avodi damage" or whatever.
When you have a dozen stats that affect battle performance it becomes redundant to dump part of that role to yet another composite stat.

Block is for blocking, dodge is for dodging, parry for parrying, defend is for defending, attack for attacking, etc...
HP is physical health.

Modifié par Lotion Soronnar, 24 mai 2013 - 10:30 .

[Rhazesx]

Peer of the Empire wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

I don't think toolkits are nearly as popular as you make them out to be, and I've yet to see any proven correlation between a toolkit and improved sales of the base game on any platform.

Hell, most people on this forum who want a toolkit aren't even making that argument. Their position has always been that it "extends the life of the game", which isn't something a developer necessarily wants.

Toolkits dramatically increase the quality of the experience

Not only do they increase the quality of the experience they increase the replayabilty, the increase the sales of the game and dlc. 

Skyrim like all other Bethesda games which have modkits has many mods with over 2 million downloads some at 4 million+. I got 1300 hours out of Skyrim my mod file is over 16 gigs and will get a few hundred hours more later this year when I play it again. Bioware releases some of the worst dlc I have ever seen. I feel ripped off after some of their $10 dlc which is why I skip most of them. If there was a toolkit where modders could expand on those dlc I would own them all.

If ever a game needed a modkit its DA2 with its 5 zones reused a dozen times each.
 

[Mistress9Nine]

Well I got a bajillion hors out of Crusader Kings, so clearly they need to implement strategy elements... yeah this is not how it works. Skyrim is a sandbox game, DA is not.

[Rhazesx]

Mistress9Nine wrote...

Well I got a bajillion hors out of Crusader Kings, so clearly they need to implement strategy elements... yeah this is not how it works. Skyrim is a sandbox game, DA is not.

I'm not sure why you used a game that is basically a AAA Advanced facebook game as an example. If your going to stretch that far you might as well went a little further and used Pong. Just because DA2 isn't a sandbox doesn't mean it shouldn't be modded. 

[Plaintiff]

Peer of the Empire wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

I don't think toolkits are nearly as popular as you make them out to be, and I've yet to see any proven correlation between a toolkit and improved sales of the base game on any platform.

Hell, most people on this forum who want a toolkit aren't even making that argument. Their position has always been that it "extends the life of the game", which isn't something a developer necessarily wants.

Toolkits dramatically increase the quality of the experience

... Which has nothing to do with what I said.

Whatever benefit they have only applies to a minority of the total player base anyway, so there's no reason to make developing one a priority.

[Peer of the Empire]

Plaintiff wrote...

Peer of the Empire wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

I don't think toolkits are nearly as popular as you make them out to be, and I've yet to see any proven correlation between a toolkit and improved sales of the base game on any platform.

Hell, most people on this forum who want a toolkit aren't even making that argument. Their position has always been that it "extends the life of the game", which isn't something a developer necessarily wants.

Toolkits dramatically increase the quality of the experience

... Which has nothing to do with what I said.

Whatever benefit they have only applies to a minority of the total player base anyway, so there's no reason to make developing one a priority.

That's a saving money issue, we are talking about gameplay experience.  Playing quality user created content, another advantage PC games have, or are supposed to have

[Realmzmaster]

Peer of the Empire wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Peer of the Empire wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

I don't think toolkits are nearly as popular as you make them out to be, and I've yet to see any proven correlation between a toolkit and improved sales of the base game on any platform.

Hell, most people on this forum who want a toolkit aren't even making that argument. Their position has always been that it "extends the life of the game", which isn't something a developer necessarily wants.

Toolkits dramatically increase the quality of the experience

... Which has nothing to do with what I said.

Whatever benefit they have only applies to a minority of the total player base anyway, so there's no reason to make developing one a priority.

That's a saving money issue, we are talking about gameplay experience.  Playing quality user created content, another advantage PC games have, or are supposed to have

So why would Bioware develop a toolkit that can be used only by a minority in minority, because even most PC gamers do not mod. Far better to make DLC or expansions that all platforms can use rather than spending those zots on a toolkit.

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

Nerevar-as wrote...
I can´t remember how many potions I had by the end of Neverwinter Nights. Or the KOTOR equivalent. There´s a tendency to save them for later, not helped by the fact that potions makes things easier, but (Witcher games aside) are not really necessary at first, and later the bonus they give is too low compared to the PC´s base stats. I´d like more games where they are an integral part of gameplay, but I guess that´s not likely these times where oversimplification seems to be the norm.

Strange.. I associate an "integral" use of potions with some of the most simplfied RPGs. The Gauntlets and Diablos, etc..

Dungeon Siege, maybe? Was there anything else the player needed to do?

I'm not sure consumable-based gameplay is a tradition worth keeping.