809 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

^

Redcliffe was another example of gameplay/story integration. As the NPCs who fell in combat there really DID die. Not through a cutscene or a murder knife piece of dialogue, but combat alone.

[Ziggeh]

Ieldra2 wrote...
(1) In DA2, combat is a tedious chore even in Easy mode.
(2) It's a matter of principle. Why should people who play mainly for the story not be allowed to get the parts they don't like over with fast? Why should I be forced to play through all the combat again if all I want in my nth replay is to see story options I haven't seen before?

While I personally support games being flexible in accommodating various methods of play (provided that it doesn't compromise the primary focus) I think from a development perspectives dialogue and combat are fairly distinct states.

Unlike more passive mediums dialogue is, by and large, information. Once heard, in game terms, it's redundant - thus the option to skip it.

However in combat repetition isn't just of value, but it's primary method. There is no redundancy, whether the player expecially cares for it or not.

Which brings us to point 1. The combat being weak isn't an argument for making it skippable, but an argument for making it better. No designer is going to willingly devote resources to allowing the removal of something on the basis that it's knowingly weak, not when they could be used to improve it.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mike Laidlaw's involvement in this thread is cause for hope. Not just that he's hear, but that he's taken the time to say these specific things.

If BioWare truly were moving in a direction they knew we wouldn't like, it wouldn't particularly benefit them to lead us on like this. As such, Mike's statements suggest that BioWare genuinely does want this game to appeal to the more traditionalist RPG players.

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If BioWare truly were moving in a direction they knew we wouldn't like, it wouldn't particularly benefit them to lead us on like this.

I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. Whether by intentional deception or unrealized perspective, the team could mislead people to expect DA:O2 (a generic term I'm using for simplicity's sake) and have it result in many pre-orders or sales from consumers who took the words at face value. This would be foolish of the consumer... but many consumers behave (quote) foolishly. And it would result in higher revenues for Bioware. 

I have very little doubt that the combat for DA:I will be good. Or at least better than DA2. But the combat isn't what I'm most worried about them carrying over from DA2's design. 

A game with boring/mindnumbing combat/gameplay can still be quite enjoyable if the story, character freedom options and replayability are high. These fronts I am not as convinced that DA:I will not stick more with the the DA2 design.

[CronoDragoon]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
A game with boring/mindnumbing combat/gameplay can still be quite enjoyable if the story, character freedom options and replayability are high. These fronts I am not as convinced that DA:I will not stick more with the the DA2 design.

If DA2 had ended with a more divergent finale based on who you sided with, and had more epilogue slides like DAO, would there have been anything significant lacking in the replayability department in your mind?

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 26 juillet 2013 - 06:11 .

[SlottsMachine]

Tbh, I would expect them to had a narrative mode or something similar like ME3.

[Mornmagor]

MerinTB wrote...

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."

I read your summary.

You're saying it's not an auto-win, so it has the possible option to lose as well.

In order to exactly calculate if you should win or lose the fight, it would take a serious amount of programming, and still the amount of times where the result is not what you expected would be frequently encountered as a situation.

And then what? Re-load to fail again?

The "fast forward button and see what happened" - auto resolve doesn't work. The amount of time you spend on actually fighting the sequense out would be less than the amount of time you need to adjust tactics on everyone before each fight and/or reloading because you might have failed, unless the difficulty setting is so low you can't possibly lose. Letting the computer handle the situation might not go as well as you probably think, and the amount of time it would take to pull off from Bioware might be longer with ambiguous results.

RPGs are all about combat, you need to deal with it. Some combats are used for story telling as well. A simulation procedure like Football Manager is what your suggestion reminds me.

Calling others' arguments "strawman" or whatever, does not make your thesis any stronger.

One of your points is something i agree with totally, however.

Beating the game so many times that i just want to see the story from another percpective, and still fight if i choose so, but skip the boring stuff.

Okay sure, but wouldn't it be faster and easier to actually make combat easier by difficulty sliding it to "no difficulty" so you can rush through what you don't need, and you would still be able to tweak it again if you feel like you want the challenge in this particular fight.

I don't get why all the "make it run faster", or auto-resolve it, with the sequense or not.

Modifié par Kuroi Kishin, 26 juillet 2013 - 06:41 .

[Ieldra]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Mike Laidlaw's involvement in this thread is cause for hope. Not just that he's hear, but that he's taken the time to say these specific things.

If BioWare truly were moving in a direction they knew we wouldn't like, it wouldn't particularly benefit them to lead us on like this. As such, Mike's statements suggest that BioWare genuinely does want this game to appeal to the more traditionalist RPG players.

Not sure which side you're speaking of at the moment, but I consider myself rather traditionalist in that I want tactical combat less dependent on reflexes and hand-eye-coordination instead of actionized combat as in DA2. On the other hand, I'm fairly anti-traditionalist in that I think the traditional overemphasis on combat in video RPGs is the result of a lack, namely the inability of early game engines to give the player sufficient agency in story events, while it only took rule implementation and a low-powered AI to do combat well. Combat simulation is what computers do well and have been use for even before video RPGs existed, so combat is what we got in RPGs. I think that needs to change. Standard encounter mechanics in RPGs need to have combat only as one option among several.  

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. Whether by intentional deception or unrealized perspective, the team could mislead people to expect DA:O2 (a generic term I'm using for simplicity's sake) and have it result in many pre-orders or sales from consumers who took the words at face value. This would be foolish of the consumer... but many consumers behave (quote) foolishly. And it would result in higher revenues for Bioware.

Only in the short term.  It could also poison the well, preventing consumers from trusting them in future.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

^

Redcliffe was another example of gameplay/story integration. As the NPCs who fell in combat there really DID die. Not through a cutscene or a murder knife piece of dialogue, but combat alone.

Absolutely, and that was brilliant.

That's how the Virmire choice in ME should have worked.  It should be a design goal to put as many action choices as possible into gameplay sequences rather than dialogue sequences.

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

The question is whether Bioware is looking out for the short term or the long term.

They seem to have learned from DA2 that the short-term isn't a viable target.

[Realmzmaster]

Kuroi Kishin wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

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."

I read your summary.

You're saying it's not an auto-win, so it has the possible option to lose as well.

In order to exactly calculate if you should win or lose the fight, it would take a serious amount of programming, and still the amount of times where the result is not what you expected would be frequently encountered as a situation.

And then what? Re-load to fail again?

The "fast forward button and see what happened" - auto resolve doesn't work. The amount of time you spend on actually fighting the sequense out would be less than the amount of time you need to adjust tactics on everyone before each fight and/or reloading because you might have failed, unless the difficulty setting is so low you can't possibly lose. Letting the computer handle the situation might not go as well as you probably think, and the amount of time it would take to pull off from Bioware might be longer with ambiguous results.

RPGs are all about combat, you need to deal with it. Some combats are used for story telling as well. A simulation procedure like Football Manager is what your suggestion reminds me.

Calling others' arguments "strawman" or whatever, does not make your thesis any stronger.

One of your points is something i agree with totally, however.

Beating the game so many times that i just want to see the story from another percpective, and still fight if i choose so, but skip the boring stuff.

Okay sure, but wouldn't it be faster and easier to actually make combat easier by difficulty sliding it to "no difficulty" so you can rush through what you don't need, and you would still be able to tweak it again if you feel like you want the challenge in this particular fight.

I don't get why all the "make it run faster", or auto-resolve it, with the sequense or not.

So you can run the battle manually and still lose. What do you do then? You re-load and try to change your tactics and fiddle with your companions tactics. You then try the battle again and how the new tactics allow the party to win. The same thing that occurs if you lose using an auto resolve button.

You change the party tactics. Try the battle again and see if you win.

The auto-resolve is an option that a gamer can choose to use or not. It also does not require a massive amount of programming because the programming is already there. Bioware had in DAO and I sure it was probably in DA2 the ability to let the program run all the tactics scripts. That feature was use for testing purposes which at its core is an autoresolve. The only difference is that the animations are shown. So no massive programming needed. The same rules used to resolve combat maually can be used for an auto resolve button.

[Realmzmaster]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

^

Redcliffe was another example of gameplay/story integration. As the NPCs who fell in combat there really DID die. Not through a cutscene or a murder knife piece of dialogue, but combat alone.

Absolutely, and that was brilliant.

That's how the Virmire choice in ME should have worked.  It should be a design goal to put as many action choices as possible into gameplay sequences rather than dialogue sequences.

I agree it was very good. Unfortunately such story/combat integration is far and few in crpgs. Most of the combat serves only one function and that is to level up the characters. I would like to see experience given for the solution to a quest and multiple ways to reach the solution other than combat.

I would like to see quests where the object is to use stealth so no one dies and the party loses experience for each person the party ends up killing. The party gets all the experience points if no one dies and the mission is accomplished. For each person that the party has to kill there is a chance for exposure and failing the mission.

MotA trid something like this with the stealth experiment in the castle. Hawke could fight through or sneak through.
Iwould like to see more quests where combat is not an option. I would like to the return of non-combat skills to handle such quests. Iam playing Alpha Protocol and Deus EX:Human revolution right now. It is refreshing to have the option not to kill everything in sight.

[MerinTB]

Kuroi Kishin wrote...
You're saying it's not an auto-win, so it has the possible option to lose as well.

Correct.  Like in Total War.  Like in Wizard's Crown.  Like in Dawn of War: Soulstorm.  Or other games not being mentioned.

The computer calculates who wins, in seconds, and tells you the outcome.

As in Total War, Wizard's Crown, DoW:S, you tend to use auto-resolve for combats that are not terribly important and/or that you know you have a high liklihood of winning already.

Kuroi Kishin wrote...
In order to exactly calculate if you should win or lose the fight, it would take a serious amount of programming, and still the amount of times where the result is not what you expected would be frequently encountered as a situation.

Serious amount of...

The tactics exist.  The game can already have two different groups fight each other without player intervention (darkspawn vs. spiders in the Deep Roads, for example.)  The game can already run EVERY party member by itself without your input, with the sole exception of whichever character the player has currently selected has his tactics turned off because you have him selected (as it would be annoying to have to manually turn off tactics each time you selected someone OR have to fight against the tactics set on a given character while trying to give your own orders to them.)

The "serious amount of programming" needed would be to 1 - have NO party member selected by the player (no problem as this would be auto-resolve, happen off-screen, the player couldn't select and control someone anyway - it is just setting no party member to player control, this is NOT extra programming of any noticeable amount) 2 - coding in the auto-resolve prompt and then the auto-resolve results screen.

The game can already do an auto-resolve in real time... pull one of the party members away from the battle and hide him or her and let the battle play out.  The two-points of main difference for what is being proposed is 1 - have that fourth party member using tactics and involved 2 - the coding for the option and results screen.

A computer doing calculations doesn't need to run that battle in real-time (as in how you'd watch it play out.)   It is definitely far less processing power not having to display the animations.

It took more programming to make the animations for the flying, flipping, teleporting rogue in DA2 than it would take to jury-rig an auto-resolve on top of DA:O.

Kuroi Kishin wrote...
And then what? Re-load to fail again?

That's an issue for a different discussion, as in "what to have happen if you don't win combat", but for the point of this discussion?

Yes.  Like if you lost while controling the battle yourself.

Kuroi Kishin wrote...
RPGs are all about combat, you need to deal with it. Some combats are used for story telling as well.

This is a tired cliche.  No, they aren't.  Most of my table-top role-playing experiences, even 4E D&D, has little to no combat.  Role-playing games are about (tired of hearing this yet?) role-playing.

You can win Fallout 1 & 2 without having a single fight, I'm fairly certain.  I know I had no fights on one of the runs of Fallout 2 I did.

Kuroi Kishin wrote...
Calling others' arguments "strawman" or whatever, does not make your thesis any stronger.

Attacking an argument no one is making to discredit them is a logical fallacy.  It doesn't make your argument stronger.  That is called a straw man.

For example, here I go doing a straw man -

Kuroi Kishin, girls can play RPGs too.  Your saying that RPGs are all about combat is excluding girls, some of whom like combat, some don't, but why are you against girls?

...

Also, Kuroi Kishin, why do you think that Dragon Age games have ridiculous programming?  You say that implementing a new feature would require serious programming.  You think that BioWare doesn't taking coding seriously?  Who are you to attack the work ethic and integrity of those who work for BioWare?

See?  Isn't that pointless?

Pointing out that someone is actually NOT addressing your argument, or that someone is misrepresenting a whole group of people by saying they stand for something that they actually don't, is very useful.  It helps to bring the discussion back to the real points, not imaginary ones that are easy to defeat and that no one was making.

Realmzmaster wrote...
The auto-resolve is an option that a gamer can choose to use or not. It also does not require a massive amount of programming because the programming is already there. Bioware had in DAO and I sure it was probably in DA2 the ability to let the program run all the tactics scripts. That feature was use for testing purposes which at its core is an autoresolve. The only difference is that the animations are shown. So no massive programming needed. The same rules used to resolve combat maually can be used for an auto resolve button.

True enough.

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

You should be able to save the VS in ME, though, if you're going to make it a combat issue. I deliberately go out of my way to heal the NPCs in that fight.

And as a side issue, fights with enemies related to the story really need to follow the game mechanics. You didn't play ME3, but there's a fight where the character you're fighting periodically recharges his shields. The thing is, he's invincible while he does this. And then eventually the game goes into a cutscene where he gets away. It's intensely, intensely frustrating.

Yes.  In the BDtS DLC for ME, you can't save the hostages and stop the terrorist.  You can't even try to do that (I'd hav elet you try, even if that meant you'd almost certainly fail on both counts).

I don't mind gameplay events where one outcome is virtually guaranteed, but we have to be allowed to try.  And succeed, if we somehow manage it.

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...
You should be able to save the VS in ME, though, if you're going to make it a combat issue. I deliberately go out of my way to heal the NPCs in that fight.

And as a side issue, fights with enemies related to the story really need to follow the game mechanics. You didn't play ME3, but there's a fight where the character you're fighting periodically recharges his shields. The thing is, he's invincible while he does this. And then eventually the game goes into a cutscene where he gets away. It's intensely, intensely frustrating.

Yes.  In the BDtS DLC for ME, you can't save the hostages and stop the terrorist.  You can't even try to do that (I'd hav elet you try, even if that meant you'd almost certainly fail on both counts).

I don't mind gameplay events where one outcome is virtually guaranteed, but we have to be allowed to try.  And succeed, if we somehow manage it.

I especially despise parts of a story in a game where a prescripted result happens, and then the game rubs the player's face in the results of said prescripted result.

[Plaintiff]

Pfft. So much for "outcomes should not be based on player skill".

[Sylvius the Mad]

MerinTB wrote...

You can win Fallout 1 & 2 without having a single fight, I'm fairly certain.  I know I had no fights on one of the runs of Fallout 2 I did.

I remember someone, many years ago, claiming she had played a pacifist all the way through Baldur's Gate, and didn't actually have to kill anyone until the last two encounters.

[In Exile]

Plaintiff wrote...

Pfft. So much for "outcomes should not be based on player skill".

That argument generally means "skills I don't have". The best example being combat. 

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

You can win Fallout 1 & 2 without having a single fight, I'm fairly certain.  I know I had no fights on one of the runs of Fallout 2 I did.

I remember someone, many years ago, claiming she had played a pacifist all the way through Baldur's Gate, and didn't actually have to kill anyone until the last two encounters.

How did you get past the final boss of Fallout 2? There is no dialogue option to get past him. Unless you count having the mercs and turrets kill him instead of you as no combat? 

[Fast Jimmy]

Plaintiff wrote...

Pfft. So much for "outcomes should not be based on player skill".

Certain things should be base on player's skill. How well my character aims a bow is not one of them. If my character is a master archer or a total novice shouldn't be hindered or overcome by how much I can manipulate the controls of the game pad. If is the character's skill that should be paramount in that case. 

How well I understand the mechanics, the strategy of the game, the tactics of my enemies, the strengths of my party, etc. SHOULD be based on player's skill. Those are meta-game aspects of the experience - my character can't know that they have an increased critical hit chance in a given scenario or that stacking buffs will result in a a higher overall DPS for the party... it makes no sense for a character to have those kinds of skis. So that is where a player's skill should come into play.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 27 juillet 2013 - 02:56 .

[Fortlowe]

I think twitch based gameplay gets a bad rap in the RPG space. Powers should work like you say Jimmy, but when simply doing the basic attacks of shooting the bow or swinging the axe or jabbing with the dagger, I should have to bring some level of active input on the players part IMO. Better stats should make the player more effective when doing so, but auto attack is not my favorite part of the game.

[Nefla]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Pfft. So much for "outcomes should not be based on player skill".

Certain things should be base on player's skill. How well my character aims a bow is not one of them. If my character is a master archer or a total novice shouldn't be hindered or overcome by how much I can manipulate the controls of the game pad. If is the character's skill that should be paramount in that case. 

I actually find this type of combat to be the only style that is fun and engaging for me, it keeps me on my toes and is different each time vs a game like DA2 with the constant mashing of a few buttons where you don't even need to be facing your opponent. Of even DA:O where you can set detailed tactics and constantly pause and manually input when necessary, once your tactics are good enough it's just a game of rinse and repeat until you win. Neither have a sense of urgency to me and neither are fun or entertaining. I would never choose to enter into combat in DA if I didn't have to (the exception being to kill someone like Vaughn Urien for story reasons but NEVER random encounters) the combat system in games like Skyrim is the only kind I like