809 réponses à ce sujet

[MerinTB]

Realmzmaster wrote...
I am not confusing data and programming. I have programmed for more than 30 years. I was a system analyst in my every day job in case you forgot. I was programming Fortran and COBOL back in the 70's. The programming to implement the button is already there in the programming logic. You can run the tactics in both DAO and DA2 without any animation. Strip away all the animation and you can run the battles. The computer can run the battles independent of any animation and calcualte any conceivable distance on the battlefield. Computer Wargames have been doing it since their inception. Battles in DAO and DA2 are simple on a smaller scale. It can take in all the variables of your party build match them against the enemy and run the battle.

Exactly.

A battle in a cRPG like DA:O, that relies on statistics almost exclusively (some movement / placement / obstructions of the animation), is so pathetically easy for a computer to figure out.  A REALLY stripped down example of this - a Blue figther and a Red fighter.

Blue fighter has an attack rate of 50%, and a dodge rating of 25%.
Red fighter has an attack rate of 75%, and a dodge rating of 10%.
Each has 10 hit points, each hit deals 1 point of damage.

They start facing each other, no movement.

Anyone with even basic programming skills could set up the code needed to run that combat repeatedly, and post turn by turn results.

Now you just stack complexity upon complexity by adding more options, like different attack options, range and movement, etc.  But computers can handle this, and this kind of programming has existed for a very long time.

You take ANY game, like an RTS, and watch two armies fight without your input.  The A.I. for both sides is working. 

You play DA:O and take your character out of the mix - pull your MC back - and watch the battle.  In fact, have some real fun and watch one of the "random encounters" on the road where soliders fight darkspawn and you join in, or Loghain's men fight the Bann's men and you join in, or in the Deep Roads where spiders fight darkspawn and you can let them kill each other, take a temporary side, or target them all.

The coding is already there in DA:O.  All you have to do is pull out ONE element... the PC's manual control of a character.

This isn't some sci-fi, futurist desire to see a game coded to be able to handle this.  It absolutely already exists.

----

The complexity of tracking flags or doing this isn't what requires games to need hoardes of programmers.  It's the physics engine, the clipping issues, making sure the fighting looks right and works with 3D models in a 3D environment, etc.

Not the caculations of stats, percentages, if-thens, etc.

Modifié par MerinTB, 24 juillet 2013 - 03:09 .

[addiction21]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

The programming is there. If it can calculate the manual combat the necessary statements are already implemented otherwise it could not perform manual combat.

You're confusing data with programming.

No he is not.

Also trying to argue player skill or decisions is meaningless. Any player choosing the auto-resolve has already forfeited them.

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
The concept that a game isn't entertaining if a group of four people can't, over the course of maybe a few months in-game, slaughter roughly what we may consider 35% of the viable large-mass fauna and humanoid population in a given area is insane. Literally, sociopathic.

We're not just killing them. We're stripping their corpses of all valuable goods and selling them for profit.  

Modifié par In Exile, 24 juillet 2013 - 04:32 .

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I strongly oppose this insistence on BioWare's part that the PC always act as the party's spokesperson.  Even more so beacuse they appear to have fallen into this design by accident.  At least some of the BG2 writers (accoreding to David gaider) believed that's how BG2 worked, even though it didn't, and in fact the ability to use any party member as spokesperson was explicitly documented in the BG manual.  But ever since BG2, they're enforced this limitation, and I hate it.  It's anti-party.  They keep making party-based games, but they undermine that design right from the start by preventing appropriate distributions of roles within that party.

Whether or not it was document in the BG manual, you can see from the conversations that they assume that the PC is speaking. Their content does not otherwise make sense. 

[MerinTB]

I preferred IWD where whomever reached an NPC first was the one speaking, or SoZ where you could choose who responded.

[Ieldra]

I'm currently playing a DA2 game with liberal use of the "killallhostiles" cheat script, and I think a button with such a function in the lowest difficulty setting exclusively would be a very nice addition to any CRPG. I haven't been in a single fight I actually missed playing through in the complete Act I and both DLCs, though I didn't use the cheat with Corypheus because I thought it would mess up the scene script. 

Having said that, I also realized how much the "everything's an ambush" design detracts from the variety of possible scenes. In DAO, I could develop the survival skill to notice enemies before they noticed me, walk forward until right before they would see me and start a surprise attack. Most enemies were visible from afar, and there was no separate "combat mode", so that either with stealth or AOE spells I could surprise them if I wanted and bothered to play things slowly.

There are several reasons why I hate DA2's combat, but it's only now I realized how much I hate being forced into "insanely fast action" mode, while having, as a player, a sniper mentality. I do not want stealth be a part of the action as DA2 insists, I want stealth to be an element to give me an advantage before the combat even starts. I want to be able to approach enemies unseen and create an ambush of my own, and if that makes the actual fighting lose two levels of difficulty - well, that's exactly why I like to sneak up on enemies and spend time on pre-combat positioning.

In terms of time spent with activities in the game, I find pre-combat positioning and scouting interesting while I find the actual fighting rather less so. So DA2 took the things away that makes dealing with enemies interesting for me and forced everything on me that I do not like in video game combat.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 24 juillet 2013 - 11:39 .

[Fast Jimmy]

MerinTB wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...
I am not confusing data and programming. I have programmed for more than 30 years. I was a system analyst in my every day job in case you forgot. I was programming Fortran and COBOL back in the 70's. The programming to implement the button is already there in the programming logic. You can run the tactics in both DAO and DA2 without any animation. Strip away all the animation and you can run the battles. The computer can run the battles independent of any animation and calcualte any conceivable distance on the battlefield. Computer Wargames have been doing it since their inception. Battles in DAO and DA2 are simple on a smaller scale. It can take in all the variables of your party build match them against the enemy and run the battle.

Exactly. 

A battle in a cRPG like DA:O, that relies on statistics almost exclusively (some movement / placement / obstructions of the animation), is so pathetically easy for a computer to figure out.  A REALLY stripped down example of this - a Blue figther and a Red fighter.

Blue fighter has an attack rate of 50%, and a dodge rating of 25%.
Red fighter has an attack rate of 75%, and a dodge rating of 10%.
Each has 10 hit points, each hit deals 1 point of damage.

They start facing each other, no movement.

Anyone with even basic programming skills could set up the code needed to run that combat repeatedly, and post turn by turn results.

Now you just stack complexity upon complexity by adding more options, like different attack options, range and movement, etc.  But computers can handle this, and this kind of programming has existed for a very long time.

You take ANY game, like an RTS, and watch two armies fight without your input.  The A.I. for both sides is working.  

You play DA:O and take your character out of the mix - pull your MC back - and watch the battle.  In fact, have some real fun and watch one of the "random encounters" on the road where soliders fight darkspawn and you join in, or Loghain's men fight the Bann's men and you join in, or in the Deep Roads where spiders fight darkspawn and you can let them kill each other, take a temporary side, or target them all.

The coding is already there in DA:O.  All you have to do is pull out ONE element... the PC's manual control of a character.

This isn't some sci-fi, futurist desire to see a game coded to be able to handle this.  It absolutely already exists.

----

The complexity of tracking flags or doing this isn't what requires games to need hoardes of programmers.  It's the physics engine, the clipping issues, making sure the fighting looks right and works with 3D models in a 3D environment, etc.

Not the caculations of stats, percentages, if-thens, etc.

I'm not disagreeing with anything you all are saying, but you all are making my point for me. The logic isn't currently built in the system. Right now. In its current form. It does not exist. It may in other games, but it does not exist in the DA series so that, if you had a modkit, you could just "add a button interface."

You all seem fairly confident that it could be easily implemented. I'll defer to your expertise, but I'm still also holding out the caveat that we don't know how the combat system has been changed in DA:I, so I don't feel comfortable making any assertation about what would be easy and what would not.

That being said, even if it was simple to implement in most cases, there would still be special cases, like boss battles or plot-critical events. Would the feature be disabled for these? If so, it would seem to be forcing the player to go through combat, at normal speed, at arguably some of the most difficult points in the game. But, if not, it requires setting up special considerations, like possibly which NPCs were saved, or if certain goals were accomplished within certain time or parameter thresholds.

Then we need to consider the testing involved. Nearly every encounter in the game would be tested to make sure a random event or script didn't cause the hooks to disable the animations of the purposes of simulation to the return screen, where the scene's actors would need to again walk around or be able to engage in the next round of combat without the system assuming it will be doing the auto-resolve again.

Again... I'm not saying it is impossible. If what you both say it true, it may not even be difficult. But it will still need to be made. It will be outside the current realm of scope and will require additional layers of testing to make sure it has no bugs. And it will, as I original argues, place unnecessary barriers/questions/decisions on the shoulders of the dev team to handle. And, to parrot myself, these events are so rare from Bioware as is that any obstacle is going to make unique instances even that much more rare. 

My solution of a super-easy difficulty can exist within the current system setup, it has already been implemented once (ME3) and solves the proem at hand. Of the many complaints about ME3, the boringness of the combat is not one of them. Despite it having lots of combat (and lots of WAVE combat - in fact, the final battle is only a number of increasingly difficult waves, back to back to back). So it seems that the Narrative difficulty of ME3 quells the concerns of those players who do not like combat as an endless activity in a video game. 

[Fast Jimmy]

MerinTB wrote...

I preferred IWD where whomever reached an NPC first was the one speaking, or SoZ where you could choose who responded.

Given the cinematic nature of Bioware games, I don't think they would rework every conversation possible so that Aveline, Isabella or Hawke could be the main speaker. That would be a monumental effort. 

[MerinTB]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
I preferred IWD where whomever reached an NPC first was the one speaking, or SoZ where you could choose who responded.

Given the cinematic nature of Bioware games, I don't think they would rework every conversation possible so that Aveline, Isabella or Hawke could be the main speaker. That would be a monumental effort. 

It would be a monumental amount of reworking existing games like DA:O and DA2.  That is true.  It doesn't really work with a cinematic game like ME or DA, also true.

And....

I prefer my games to be less movies and more novels.

That comes down to a design prerogative - and BioWare has CLEARLY made their choice - you get to SHAPE the main character (not create), and you can RECRUIT PRE-MADE party members.

All that said -

DA:O and DA2 had places where who spoke wasn't necessarily your MC.  As in you kind of got to choose.  In DA:O, for example, when you were doing the Blackstone Irregulars mission of giving out death notices to the spouses - you could defer it to another character.  In DA2 you had times where you could prompt a companion to make an argument for you.

Grant, those are much more limited than, say, IWD.  And still more limited than SoZ.  But it existed.

[Fast Jimmy]

True.

But Sylvius is advocating the BG model, where whoever had the highest Charisma score would actually do the talking (their portrait was shown and everything). You could play a non-charismatic lummox and not pay social penalties for it (like in games like Fallout or Arcanum) by having another party member cover your shortcomings.

THAT would be impossible without a silent PC. And even then, it would have many instances of illogical responses unless a lot of careful attention was paid to when the PC would be definitely the one speaking.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Whether or not it was document in the BG manual, you can see from the conversations that they assume that the PC is speaking. Their content does not otherwise make sense.

First of all, I don't think it really matters whether BG handled it particuarly well.  It's still a good design, and one I'd like to see return.

And second, I disagree with you.  While BG2 certainly had the problem you describe (and it is one of the reasons I think BG2 is the inferior game), the NPCs in BG tended to address the group.  In-game documents referred to the group.  The party members themselves referred to being in the top spot as leading.  Remember?  "Now, Minsc leads.  Swords for everyone!"

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
And second, I disagree with you.  While BG2 certainly had the problem you describe (and it is one of the reasons I think BG2 is the inferior game), the NPCs in BG tended to address the group.  In-game documents referred to the group.  The party members themselves referred to being in the top spot as leading.  Remember?  "Now, Minsc leads.  Swords for everyone!"

I did love that part of BG.  Jaheira was so condescending that of course she should be in charge.

The idea of being a party MEMBER instead of a party LEADER appeals to me, if you have to have an MC.  Think of how little "enticement" would be needed to cajole a player to visit certain places if they had joined a group and the group leader was calling the shots.  I mean, I don't want that in EVERY game, but I also don't want my character to always be "the most important person in the <setting>"

[Mornmagor]

Maybe some people should switch over to graphic novels or fantasy movies.

I understand wanting to bypass combat, but it is a rather essential part of RPGs where stats and managing your abilities in general matter.

Now, for DA2 type of combat, where the enemies magically appear out of thin air, or falling from the imaginary rooftop in waves, i say instead of bypassing combat, moving away from that lame enemy spawning mentality all together.

There are also cheats available if you just want to skip combat stuff.

I agree that there should be choices available so you can resolve situations without having to resort to combat every time, but some fights just cannot be avoided.

Some people remind me of a friend, that supposedly likes adventure point and click games, but he hates solving the puzzles, so he always plays with the solution at hand. It kinda makes playing the specific genre redundant.

However, it's your choice, if you want an option that "skips" combat and automatically announces you as the winner (because, you can't lose, right?), fine, Bioware could make a setting in options for "Difficulty - Non Existant", and call it a day.

The thing is, what is the point of all those talents, attributes, skills, abilities, magics? Filler?

Modifié par Kuroi Kishin, 24 juillet 2013 - 09:41 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

True.

But Sylvius is advocating the BG model, where whoever had the highest Charisma score would actually do the talking (their portrait was shown and everything). You could play a non-charismatic lummox and not pay social penalties for it (like in games like Fallout or Arcanum) by having another party member cover your shortcomings.

THAT would be impossible without a silent PC.

Perhaps.  But then that's a cost imposed by the voiced protagonist, and I want people to know about that cost.

The only good decisions are informed decisions.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Kuroi Kishin wrote...

The thing is, what is the point of all those talents, attributes, skills, abilities, magics? Filler?

Roleplaying.  Why does your character learn one talent rather than another?

Also, I should point out that the OP wanted an auto-resolve, not an auto-win.  Defeat should absolutely be possible with an auto-resolve.

[MerinTB]

Kuroi Kishin wrote...
Maybe some people should switch over to graphic novels or fantasy movies.

(...)

Some people remind me of a friend, that supposedly likes adventure point and click games, but he hates solving the puzzles, so he always plays with the solution at hand. It kinda makes playing the specific genre redundant.

However, it's your choice, if you want an option that "skips" combat and automatically announces you as the winner (because, you can't lose, right?), fine, Bioware could make a setting in options for "Difficulty - Non Existant", and call it a day.

The thing is, what is the point of all those talents, attributes, skills, abilities, magics? Filler?

Or.... maybe some people should, at the very least, read the OP's post and comprehend it before setting up a straw man argument to knock down.  A tad bit more of the laziest of efforts would be to at least find the posts of some people in the thread trying to explain what they want.

For example...

I'm advocating an auto-resolve.  My first DA:O playthrough wouldn't be 128 hours if I wanted to avoid all the combat or auto-win.

Instead of retyping this stuff out, or trying to advocate that you should be "reading 20+ pages of posts", I'll redirect you to my summation here - http://social.biowar...199/25#17030737

Not wanting to call myself a prophet or anything, just someone who understand human nature, but I did say this in that post - "No, of course not, because someone will see the thread title and post their own "skipping combat means you don't like playing games, go read a book" response and the whole "auto-win" misunderstanding will be reborn."

Modifié par MerinTB, 24 juillet 2013 - 10:37 .

[Realmzmaster]

The OP talks about ways to speed up combat. I talked about an autoresolve and/or autowin button.
The auto resolve button that both MerinTB and I have advocated still requires the gamers to level up the party. That means all those talents, skills etc are still useful. The party must get stronger to survive the battle with an autoresolve. Autoresolve keeps the possibility of defeat.

At lower levels like casual or story mode the autoresolve can become the autowin button. It is like story mode in Mass Effect 3 without having to go through the combat. It is an option that the gamer can select if he/she so chooses.

[MerinTB]

Ragabul the Ontarah wrote...
I've just been replaying Planescape Torment and was reintroduced to a simple mechanic that seems relevant to this conversation: the ability to run away. No auto - resolve button required. If I don't feel like fighting random thugs in the street, I can just run away from them. Something like this would at least help avoid the most monotonous variety of random encounters.

Older cRPGs had great mechanics for that as well.  When an encounter happened, you had options - you could parley, you could try to intimidate your opponents into standing down, you could try to avoid the fight, and you could try to flee.  Such options brought back into cRPGs would mitigate some of the problems addressed in this thread as well.

[Fast Jimmy]

MerinTB wrote...

Ragabul the Ontarah wrote...
I've just been replaying Planescape Torment and was reintroduced to a simple mechanic that seems relevant to this conversation: the ability to run away. No auto - resolve button required. If I don't feel like fighting random thugs in the street, I can just run away from them. Something like this would at least help avoid the most monotonous variety of random encounters.

Older cRPGs had great mechanics for that as well.  When an encounter happened, you had options - you could parley, you could try to intimidate your opponents into standing down, you could try to avoid the fight, and you could try to flee.  Such options brought back into cRPGs would mitigate some of the problems addressed in this thread as well.

Such options do not fit into a cinematic design very well. Adding voiced lines for all possible fighitng NPCs to include lines about surrendering or standing down is extra work, time and budget. 

The philosophy is that if you can't show it like a movie, then don't have it. Just have combat instead - it's already easily added.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Such options do not fit into a cinematic design very well.

Then cinematic design doesn't fit in RPGs.

The sheer scope of the opportunities that have apparently been lost by moving toward cinematic design is staggering.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 25 juillet 2013 - 08:38 .

[Olmerto]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Such options do not fit into a cinematic design very well.

Then cinematic design doesn't fit in RPGs.

The sheer scope of the opportunities that have apparently been lost by moving toward cinematic design is staggering.

Bioware has clearly moved away from the traditional notion of a cRPG. It's a conscious decision. They thankfully still espouse many RP elements, but I'm afraid the classic cRPG ship has sailed here. But there are now other avenues, like P:E and Torment, so you can really let BW off the hook and let them go where their creative juices take them.

[Fast Jimmy]

Olmert wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Such options do not fit into a cinematic design very well.

Then cinematic design doesn't fit in RPGs.

The sheer scope of the opportunities that have apparently been lost by moving toward cinematic design is staggering.

Bioware has clearly moved away from the traditional notion of a cRPG. It's a conscious decision. They thankfully still espouse many RP elements, but I'm afraid the classic cRPG ship has sailed here. But there are now other avenues, like P:E and Torment, so you can really let BW off the hook and let them go where their creative juices take them.

I'd say they don't still espouse many RP elements. I dont' think level progression, character stats or equipment are the domain of RPG's anymore. If they were, Black Ops 2, Tiger Woods and FIFA would be the highest grossign RPGs of all time.

Conversation options are what Bioware brings to the table that is a pre-dominantly RPG quality these days. And the conversation options are taking a back seat to the cinematics. That's why I think DA2 was so tepidly received - it doesn't have the mechanics/design to fit into a classic cRPG, it's not a good action adventure game (despite combat being sped up, it's still doesn't hold a candle to a game like Devil May Cry or God of War in that department) and it's not as strong cinematically as a linear game like Uncharted or Bioshock Infinite.

It just... is. Their creative juices are taking them in too many directions at once, in my opinion.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 25 juillet 2013 - 09:46 .

[MerinTB]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Conversation options are what Bioware brings to the table that is a pre-dominantly RPG quality these days. And the conversation options are taking a back seat to the cinematics. That's why I think DA2 was so tepidly received - it doesn't have the mechanics/design to fit into a classic cRPG, it's not a good action adventure game (despite combat being sped up, it's still doesn't hold a candle to a game like Devil May Cry or God of War in that department) and it's not as strong cinematically as a linear game like Uncharted or Bioshock Infinite.

It just... is. Their creative juices are taking them in too many directions at once, in my opinion.

On this we can agree.

They are trying to satisfy too many audiences at once, and paying the price in delivering mediocre experiences on all those fronts.

[Fast Jimmy]

^

The optimist in me says DA2 was developed in >18 months, so maybe it isn't all shortcomings of their design philosophy, but just not enough time to flesh it out.

The realist in me looks at ME3 and its 2 1/2 year dev cycle and says "nope, this just doesn't seem to work."