883 réponses à ce sujet

[ziloe]

Wow. This thread got big, lol. And Mr. Schumacher, thank you for all your answers to our concerns. Just another reason why I appreciate these forums.

Modifié par ziloe, 20 août 2013 - 10:43 .

[Anomaly-]

It seems I'm late to the party, but here is how I feel about the subject:

I like that they're considering things like poison being ineffective, positioning, etc. What I don't like is things that just seem gimmicky, which is what I'm afraid of with the shield guy. That's the way I felt about a lot of stuff in DA2, from the Zelda like bosses with their patterns, to the cross class combos and buying potions from shops. At that point, it basically plays like an action game.

Complexity is good to have, but all the complexity in the world won't matter if you have no depth. For example, it doesn't matter if your attack damage is part of a ridiculously complex formula when you have no reason to invest in any more than 2 attributes. There is no depth to that system, and it offers you few choices. In DA2, boss fights like the rock wraith had a right way of doing things. Attributes had a right way of spending them. Poisons were just bought from a shop and required no skill investment so there was no reason not to use them. There was a clearly optimal way of playing that centered around constantly trying to set up cross class combos. These are all qualities of an action game. Actual tactics and strategy require you to make choices and offer you more ways of accomplishing something, rather than less.

Say I want to pursue poisons. I should be able to do that, and there should be a tangible difference in gameplay when doing so. For example, the goal then may be to move around the battlefield trying to poison as many targets as possible before it wears off your weapon. This may be very effective against certain enemies, while less effective against, say, undead. Additionally, the power of poisons could scale to an attribute that doesn't have many other benefits in combat. Now there are holes in my game which I need to try to patch in different ways. By the way, I think something like poison should actually be very effective against heavily armored opponents, but it requires high armor penetration or a critical hit to take effect (the idea being that you managed to find a gap in the armor).

In my mind, tactical RPG combat requires just as much if not more thought and planning outside of battle as it does while in it. When those things are basically determined for you, and all you're left with is responding to visual cues from the enemy and timing your skills, you really just have an action game. I'm hoping there are several different options for dealing with the shield guy, for instance. I also hope those strategies come about naturally as a consequence of the game mechanics, rather than some gimmicky mini-gameesque tactic specifically intended for that enemy.

My 2 cents. More like a dime, really.

[cindercatz]

@Anomoly-
Great points. I agree completely.

I love your description of building your character as a poisoner, and how that would change the way you approach a battle. I hope there's a lot of character build flexibility and approachable complexity like that in DA:I, very much so.

Modifié par cindercatz, 21 août 2013 - 10:15 .

[Bleachrude]

Er,, there _IS_ a definition for tactical RPGs and that's games like Disgaea and Fire Emblem (console games I might add).

DA:O certainly wasnt anywhere close to what Disgaea was in terms of "positioning being important".

[DarthLaxian]

Bleachrude wrote...

Er,, there _IS_ a definition for tactical RPGs and that's games like Disgaea and Fire Emblem (console games I might add).

DA:O certainly wasnt anywhere close to what Disgaea was in terms of "positioning being important".

and i am sorry to say:

i liked it that way (i want to have fun in a game - and it is not fun for me to move people in positions and constantly switching character to make sure they stay where i put them and so on...but - i don't want pure DA2 (or witcher 2) either (meaning: constant button mashing, dodging, moving etc.))

greetings LAX

[Sylvius the Mad]

You shouldn't have to switch characters to make sure they stay where you put them. They should just follow instructions.

DA2 was bad at this.

DAO was better, but still required some workarounds.

[AlanC9]

Anomaly- wrote...
Complexity is good to have, but all the complexity in the world won't matter if you have no depth. For example, it doesn't matter if your attack damage is part of a ridiculously complex formula when you have no reason to invest in any more than 2 attributes. There is no depth to that system, and it offers you few choices. In DA2, boss fights like the rock wraith had a right way of doing things. Attributes had a right way of spending them. Poisons were just bought from a shop and required no skill investment so there was no reason not to use them. There was a clearly optimal way of playing that centered around constantly trying to set up cross class combos. These are all qualities of an action game. Actual tactics and strategy require you to make choices and offer you more ways of accomplishing something, rather than less.

I've seen this sort of thing in strategy games too -- Paradox has been a particular offender here. Or, say, MoO2, where there are a lot of techs but most of them are just bad (though this can be interesting if you're playing an Uncreative race and have to work with whatevery you get)

[Vilegrim]

Having human mobs use the same mechanics as the party helps alot as well, if I see a tactic that works well against me, speccing to use it myself feels logical I mean if a huge tower shield and shield wall tactics works against me, it stands to reason tha tI should be able to reply in kind, it also works for some bosses, would Loghain have been such a fun fight if he had weird abilities? To me it was awesome because he was a character, who showed how nasty a properly specced sword and board warrior could be (or not, depending). The other extreme, the Arishok in DA2 was just a bag of hit points and getting out the way of a charge, their was no way to abosrd the lesson he taught you and turn it against other people later in the game, because he taught you nothing that you could use, he didn't demonstrate tactics and abilities you may not have thought of in quite the way he used them, he was just another mob doing things you couldn't with a huge number of hit points, as human as a dragon or an ogre, therefore to me, the character he had been shown to have, the battle prowess was reduced to oh look a n other mob o'doom. Now with the Arishok maybe it could be justified, but when every single human opponent is like that, using abilities you don't have, in ways you obviously cannot, to do strange things..it makes you wonder who trained them, and more importantly why the party are the only people on Thedas to have the skills and talents they have.

A realkly old school example: in BG and BG2 who didn't look at the NPC big scary mages and think: wow when I can do that it will be AWESOME! That was missing from DA2, and it was to my mind a major loss.

Modifié par Vilegrim, 21 août 2013 - 07:10 .

[Anomaly-]

Vilegrim wrote...
snip

That's pretty much what I was touching on when I said

I also hope those strategies come about naturally as a consequence of
the game mechanics, rather than some gimmicky mini-gameesque tactic
specifically intended for that enemy.

but you just explained it in greater detail. Well said.

Modifié par Anomaly-, 21 août 2013 - 10:08 .