23 réponses à ce sujet

[ziloe]

So with the newest video featuring some of the combat, what are people's thoughts?

Personally, when it comes to the tactics they mentioned, it seemed more so tactics people would utilize in games like Dark Souls or Elderscrolls, etc. (i.e pulling the tower shield) And less so what people saw from games like the original Baldur's Gate. Maybe it's just because the developer was using the 360 controller, as opposed to the keyboard, but I didn't see any mixture between the first and the second game. And more so, just an improvement on the latter DA2 combat system.

((Discuss))

[Allan Schumacher]

/eats popcorn

[Allan Schumacher]

ArenCordial wrote...

Its just baffling that they went on about party focused tactics and strategy, then didn't show any.

You don't know whether its a hopeful sign or a very bad one.

The only thing we have to go off of is a God of War style chain throwing and a W2/Kingdoms of Amular style 1 v 1.

I'm curious who cut the video, since I found that surprising as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

SMillar21 wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

ArenCordial wrote...

Its just baffling that they went on about party focused tactics and strategy, then didn't show any.

You don't know whether its a hopeful sign or a very bad one.

The only thing we have to go off of is a God of War style chain throwing and a W2/Kingdoms of Amular style 1 v 1.

I'm curious who cut the video, since I found that surprising as well.

So there are clips with team work tactics?

Seconded 

Well, if GI did the cutting, that could make sense.

"Show first twenty seconds of combat Friday, then next week (Mon, Wed, Fri) showcase progressively more detailed combat."

It would be my marketing strategy, honestly.

Overthinking my comment guys.  I don't actually know what all was shot for GI (I was doing my own thing while the crew was around).  It's simply a comment of 'it seems weird to put the tactical commentary with the single player footage" and I'm curious if it was a GI cut that ended up putting them together.

As for the party combat?  Well, lets just say you need a baseline of getting one person able to do thing before you can get more than one person doing things.  In other words, probably not quiiite ready to show.

When the videos are released it's the first time I watch them as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

Mmmhhh... they have tried the same design approach in DA2 and the result was a failure.

We actually used the same approach for DAO Consoles as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

At this point I don't know the answer to that question.

Still over a year out.

[Allan Schumacher]

So in your opinion, how much of the gameplay will change from what we've
seen when the shift from pre-alpha to something like beta? Just in your
personal opinion and not as a promise or any binding statement type
thing?

Hard to say.

From a system perspective, it's about trying out ideas for how the combat will play out. In terms of conceptualizing "WHat type of character will this be?" as well as "What are considered appropriate ways for the player to approach opponents of these types?"

So the guy with the big shield. A straight forward enough concept in that he's someone that if you attempt to smash him head on is often just going to be ineffective. So Josh showed off the hook shot ability and for most characters it'll jolt the target towards the character using the ability, although with the shielded guy his shield protects him from the primary effect, but if you hit him in the shield with it, it does knocks him off balance and makes it easier to attack him.

An alternative way of dealing with the shielded guy, is to simply move people behind him so they are hitting him in the rear while someone else holds his attention.

So the idea is to allow for hostiles that are more than just "walk up and use attacks like normal" (those still exist too, though), and how can we create them in ways that it's intuitive towards what needs to be done, while still having ways on experimenting so that the player can learn new tactics by trying things out.


From there, we can build up a bit more. So lets say we have this shield guy and we really like him. Are there any variations to encounters that we can leverage with this guy? We can have an encounter with 4-5 guys. If he is one (or more) of those hostiles, how can we leverage that to make interesting combat encounters so that the AI appears to be working (at least somewhat) in unison as well?


Now worst case, we end up going "ERrrr... shield guy is more annoying that interesting." (Which sucks if you spend a lot of time working on creatures and their abilities), so maybe we dial down how often he's used, or just scrap him altogether. That could happen, although given we've shown you the guy, there's a reasonable degree of assurance that he'll probably exist in some form when the game is released.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 17 août 2013 - 08:02 .

[Seb Hanlon]

Folks, if you have a personal beef or an argument over terms of argumentation, please don't derail the thread with it.

[Seb Hanlon]

LPPrince wrote...

I'd like to think Mr. Hanlon's getting some of our feels for what we saw and taking that into consideration.

We are always watching.

[Allan Schumacher]

And DAO's console version was considered inferior to the PC one and was not received as well in term of gameplay. Infact, the discrepancy between the two version of the game was one of the reason the dev team used to justify the shift to a more action game with DA2 if memory serves me right.

DAO Console was very well received. Just not by everybody. There are those that think DAO PC is inferior as well (I'm not one of them, I prefer DAO PC).

If you're referring to the specifics of the combat, however, you'll need to drill down a bit more into what aspects of the combat were, in fact, not so well received.


The point was that you were incorrectly focusing on our decision for DA2 (since that's the bad one and all), when the philosophy still worked in the prior game.

Can I ask you a simple question? In the video, Laidlaw say that what sets Dragon Age apart from the competition in terms of gameplay is party based combat. I agree. But what's the point of making it a "party-less" game at normal level making the experience less "pure" for the vast majority of the player base who plays on normal?

Because even if the player is able to focus on just playing their own character, it's still a party based game with party combat.

If you'd prefer, we could just deactivate party AI and force the player to do everything. I suspect that that wasn't what you were thinking, however.

There's a poster in this very thread that is very much into DA series for its party based, tactical combat, and he's specifically saying that his ideal is one where the party members can still be set up to behave properly so that his input is no longer required. To the point where he says he hates the moments in DAO when his inputs are required.

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't see how having a shield makes any difference if you have a team that can strike from behind while another person stands in front.

If you can't see, does that mean you imagined all the possibilities?

Your assumption seems to be that, since there's a party, it's 4 on 1. What if the fight was 4 on 4? Imagine it was 4 shield guys! (which would be silly and lame, IMO)

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 17 août 2013 - 11:52 .

[Allan Schumacher]

That just means we need to come up with a reason to make sure you can't just always default leave him to last. Or rather, that it may not always be the best decision.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think I just had a happy. Though hate is a bit strong--did I say that (unless you're referring to a certain madman)?

You may not have used the word hate. I actually kind find the post anymore haha. In any case, you weren't a fan.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm talking about our thought process for how to address the difficulties. Whether or not that was actually the case may not be the case.

If Mike felt that DAO was still too difficult on normal, that suggests that maybe we didn't reach it.  Which is a fair enough assessment if DAO Consoles are believed to have better combat than DA2's.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 18 août 2013 - 01:21 .

[Allan Schumacher]

When I say I dislike twitch gameplay, I really just don't like fast-paced gameplay. But since I can't formulate an argument for that based on anything other than personal preference, I argue from world coherence because that seems to me to be a more objectively defensible position.

I'd say it's still subjective, and frankly if the beef is that you prefer it to be slower, that's still sufficient. You don't need "objectively defensible positions" for stuff like this, and in some cases (like Leliana being susceptible to a death blow, and citing THAT specifically as why Leliana should not have returned) it can obfuscate your actual point.

To go back to Leliana's example, when someone who doesn't like that Leliana's return undermines their choice and they think that's lame substantiates their position by focusing on a "headless Leliana" they're also sending a message that says "We should have made sure Leliana couldn't be killed with a deathblow in DAO." Which I don't think would actually satisfy that person.


To be honest, saying that you don't like the faster paced gameplay because while you enjoy our games, when the combat is fast paced you're more prone to making mistakes which ultimately makes the game less enjoyable is still pretty darn well reasoned feedback.

Speaking from a personal bias, but I can understand that concern much better, and do a better job of concluding "Other people could be in the same position as him" as opposed to strict adherence to in game world explanations which I may find myself wondering "Is this just Sylvius' special brand of crazy?"

So, will the combat encounters enforce the party's relative position such that they don't start the encounter sufficiently scattered such that the enemy is already surrounded (albeit at range)?

In DAO, I often moved my party members separately to surround opponents (sometimes even moving a considerable distance through corridors to circle around to another entrance to a room) in order to set up these flanking attacks. Doing this in DAI would seem to render these shielded opponents considerably less threatening.

Sounds like a viable approach. You've done something to make encounters with those guys easier. I honestly wouldn't want to take that away from you. Of course, as encounter designers I think it'd be fun if they tossed some challenges that way so that their flanks are maybe better protected from time to time. And sometimes an encounter will just be set up that such flanking won't really be possible (i.e. on a castle wall or something).


Though your more cavalier approach to party members DOES make me think of something that I should email myself as a reminder (not combat related, but exploration related. Our levels are much larger, and Frostbite is awesome with streaming. We may need to incorporate some sort of tether to make sure people don't go TOO far away or you'd blow memory for sure. I don't know how far away that would be, however).

[Allan Schumacher]

Well we didn't. Are you finished now? Because you're not saying anything new at this point.

[Allan Schumacher]

Maybe someone should tell us to gather our party before venturing forth.

I was actually thinking this myself.

[Allan Schumacher]

1) he presses a control pad button while manipulating a stickand misses by a mile, seems manual to me given that

Can you give me the precise moment in the video when the harpoon missed due to manual aim? I ask this because it's not manually aimed.... Unless you consider choosing a target manual aim.

But if it did miss, then I have a bug to file!

[Allan Schumacher]

That could still happen. Josh Stiksma (I hope I spelled that right) mentioned not throwing a metal chain at a lightning-charged target. Maybe we'll experience more blowback if we hook, say, an ogre, and the ogre yanks on the chain, throwing YOU off balance. That would be kinda cool.

I know Seb lingers in this thread too, but I was thinking about stuff like this and saw some similar posts in this thread. I'll be sure to pass this on to Seb and Josh because I do think that it's interesting!

[Allan Schumacher]

Filament wrote...

He misses at 2:33

Ah yes, thanks.

There are issues with how the targeting system is working right now, and it's a bit more accented because at this time you can use abilities (any of them) without a valid target.

So in that sense, you could argue that every ability has an element of "manual aim" to it.


Welcome to work in progress stuff folks.


EDIT: I did laugh that there's footage of our in game autokill shortly afterwards... XD

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 18 août 2013 - 07:47 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Vilegrim wrote...

RaidenXS wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Overthinking my comment guys.  I don't actually know what all was shot for GI (I was doing my own thing while the crew was around).  It's simply a comment of 'it seems weird to put the tactical commentary with the single player footage" 

Multiplayer? Confirm or Deny?!

More likely 'single player on screen' as opposed to 'entire party on screen.;

Yup.

[Allan Schumacher]

No offense meant here Allan, but shouldn't you guys check what will get covered by Game Informer and what footage will be released and how it will be released? Isn't that the point of Quality Assurance? You may chalk this up to "fans overreacting again, nothing new" etc, but for instance many, many on NeoGAF for example have already dismissed this simply because of the mixed messaging of this video.

I have zero clue how something like the Game Informer exclusive works.. I do know that there are aspects of the GI article that did surprise some people (although mostly minor stuff), which leads me to believe that they have autonomy to do things how they like.

And no, that isn't the point of Quality Assurance and I'm not quite sure I like the implication I'm reading into your decision to make a statement like that either.

I'm not chalking this up to "fans overreacting" either. I can understand the concern people have given the juxtaposition. It's why I made the comment in the first place.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 19 août 2013 - 05:01 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I'd prefer we not distract this into a "what is an RPG" type of discussion because in my experience the term is not easily defined and very personal.

[Allan Schumacher]

The debate has a poiint because it is pre-alpha and nothing is set, if this was beta, their would be no chance of a change that central,.

The debate is a red herring because people have their own definition of what an RPG is. I don't want people to get into a debate over whether or not it's an RPG because people will argue from a variety of different angles and they're all going to believe they are not incorrect in their assessment.

Someone can see the combat video and still imagine it being an RPG. Other people will see it and say that this cannot be an RPG. Since there is no agreement on what an RPG is, getting boiled down in what is or is not an RPG is not particularly productive, since the things you feel (pre-alpha or not) are required for an RPG may not be what other people feel are required.

And you are still not going to answer my question about what kind of mechanic the dogde roll was? Talent, manuel, automatic?

I simply hadn't seen your question. I don't have the opportunity to read and respond to every post (and sometimes I straight up read posts too quickly and miss things in the post themselves)

In any case, it's an activated ability, at least at this time.

(Although a post like that does put me in an awkward position.  EDIT: Referring to encouraging people to make posts of that nature because I missed a question earlier.  There are better ways to repeat a question than assuming I'm being malevolent in my reasoning for not answering it)

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 19 août 2013 - 09:59 .