14 réponses à ce sujet

[KristinCousland]

I have loved the gameplay vids being released so far.  Combat seems fast, yet somewhat realistic.

Think Lord of the Rings movie "realism".

Yet, one effect stuck out to me as sore thumb.

A sword stroke seems to conjure up rocks from the ground.

To me this totally broke my immersion, and I am surprised to see this particular detail not being mentioned much here on bioware.social.

Combat style matters a great deal to me, and I was one of those who actually chose to not buy Dragon Age 2 
after trying out the demo.  The anime style combat animations were very off-putting, even though I was a huge Dragon Age Origins fan - to date one of the best games I have ever played.

Due to the excitment of Inquisition, I finally decided to get DA2 for the story. However, I still sadly struggle with the wild animations, though playing as a shield warrior seems to alleviate the problem somewhat.

So what are your thoughts on the rocks emerging from the ground after a particular fanciful sword stroke in inquisition, and combat "realism" in general?

Like in DA2 the warrior swung a gigantic two handed sword like gravity and intertia did not exist and rogues seemed like escapees from cirque de soleil.  I believe that in a fantasy setting it is even more important that the rest of the world obeys known laws of physics.

Anyhow, I am really interested in your thoughts?

Cheers,

Kristin 


The rock conjuring phenomenon can be viewed at 1.45 in the video below:

[Allan Schumacher]

'I don't like it' is a fine reason to not want something in the game.

I'd just like to echo this.

I can appreciate people willing to attempt to substantiate their position, but you do run the risk of obfuscating your point.


Saying "I think this looks silly/bad/whatever" is a pretty unambiguous thing to say. Saying that you find something unrealistic provides opportunities for me to overthink: "Are there other things that she feels are unrealistic? How much realism does she want? There are other things I consider unrealistic, how come that isn't an issue."


By extension, it doesn't give these outs to people that may challenge you (with varying degrees of aggression).

If someone asks "Why not?" and "I think it looks silly/stupid/bad/whatever" is not sufficient, you at least have enabled yourself with the ability to determine whether or not you really want to continue down this path of discussion.

It's okay to simply not like the way something looks!

Cheers.

[Allan Schumacher]

Arcane Warrior Mage Hawke wrote...
So can I **** about arrows not one hit killing the PC or fire spells not turning the pc into charcoal?:innocent:

You sure can.  Whether or not we feel it's appropriate is another thing altogther

[Allan Schumacher]

How about this? I think it is safe to say that most (if not all) of the people on the "realistic" side, for lack of a better term, were okay with DA:Origins. Why not use that as the baseline as to what we feel is realistic vs. unrealistic?

I still don't think that the term realistic is very accurate in this sense. It'd probably be clearer to simply say that you prefer the way DAO did it. I think people use the term often use the term "realistic" because it justifies that what they like is simply more appropriate and more in line with what they would like to see. If a person can convince other people that it's realistic (and hence, believable and appropriate) then you've "recruited more people."

See, what I don't get is this... DA:Origins was in development for atleast five years. An engine was developed for it, lore was developed for it, combat system, art style, etc. Why throw most of that out for the sequal? Why take all that time to make new animations and new art style, when so little time was given for development? Makes no sense.

The Eclipse engine is part of an evolution of an engine, going as far back as Aurora (with some attempted quick fixes and emergency rebuilds in there, from what I hear, as well). But the roots go back to Neverwinter Nights. It wasn't a new engine created specifically for Dragon Age.

A lot of what you saw in DAO (i.e. hornless Qunari) were because of fundamental issues with the state of the engine, and as you say, the game was in development for 5+ years so suggesting that you break down the issues with the character rigging design would have added more time onto that. Which would have meant even more risk and so forth, and the greater chance of a game having dated visuals and other things like that.

Given that spending even more time wasn't really an acceptable option, the choice would have come down to whether or not the Qunari (and Sten) simply get cut from the game altogether.

Mike L. talks alot about lessons learned... I don't think THIS lesson (DA2 combat style) has been learned.

This is where the challenge lies. How does one make a game for someone that prefers DA2's combat over DAOs, while you give the impression that any sort of legacy of DA2's combat is a negative thing for the game.

I see people make call outs to "Press a button, something awesome happens" and how this is just another example of it, when in reality the idea we were looking for for DA2 was that the combat was simply responsive. When you pushed the button, your character did something.

[Allan Schumacher]

Wouldn't it be great, if Bioware could offer two options to keep their
wide ranging base of fans/customers engaged preference-wise, and
ultimately happier?
(1) More Realistic/tactical/subdued, and
(2) More Stylistic/fantasy/outrageous.

The primary issue with providing that option is that it is a huge load of work on the animators.

If the animations end up allowing for some different effects (such as whether or not it imposes a transform on the entity), it means that your combat fundamentally plays differently in both of these modes two, which is when it starts making people like me cry and go into the fetal position because testing will get increasingly complex.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 20 septembre 2013 - 05:34 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I realize it's likely more a pipe dream - primae facie.

Fair enough. You did say that.

But then I started to wonder, how much work actually does go into making all these animations and how much work would it be to make 2 versions of the same thing?
In this department, I am uninformed and looking to be educated.

I don't know the full numbers, unfortunately, but I do know that animations are constantly being worked on throughout the development cycle, and that game development is, in a lot of cases, really a series of a whole heck of a lot of not particularly huge tasks. So it'll still come at the cost of something else.

The thing is, if it's *only* the animations, that's one thing. That would still put a restriction in that you couldn't have one gameplay mode have an animation that had any discernible difference in how the game played, or it gets messy really quick.

[Allan Schumacher]

Yet due to the frontloading of the damage and the animation
having to be resolved in full, it actually took more time for party
members to acknowledge your orders in DA2 than it did in DA:O, where
they automatically and immediately interrupted the task they were
working on to acknowledge your commands (which is how I measure
responsiveness: by time to acknowledgement).

That's fine, but it's actually not relevant to why I brought the point up.  In your eyes we failed to deliver on that (fair enough), but saying that the inclusion of the rock effect is evidence of us wanting "push a button something awesome happens" is more just a reflection for how that particular line missed its mark.

Though people harping on it IS a great way for me to disengage.

Since I want it to be more realistic, I'll say I want it to be more realistic

That's just it though.  I am not convinced that you just want it to be more realistic.  You want it to be a way that you like it more.  Or rather, I think you want it to not look stupid.


However, we've now just added bleeding and fatal wounds, as well as infections.  If the Inquisitor gets hit, there's a high risk of death and complications later on (Yes, I recognize I have gone in the far extreme).


If you don't like something, and you ask for more salt when the lack of salt isn't actually the problem, then it means we'll not address it in the way that you would like.

If we change the sword swinging animation to something more realistic, it won't make you happy.


Further, if there was an actual in game explanation for the effect and why it exists, would it make you happier?  If realism is genuinely the issue, then my assumption is no.  But if you're willing to accept other unrealistic aspects, then I get confused.  Why is *this* violation of realism unacceptable?  My assumption is because you think it looks stupid.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 20 septembre 2013 - 04:11 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Realism isn't the same as Realistic. There are numerous unrealistic elements that I accept, and would argue are commonly accepted as part of what it's probably best to start calling something like "unstylised" combat. Health bars and inventories and recovery are all things we're so familiar with they're part of a baseline for the genre and don't represent a fresh challenge to expectations.

I understand that realism isn't the same as realistic. But if we're making realistic a continuum, it's not exactly trivial to determine something lies on that continuum, especially as people have different levels of tolerance for different things.

I do want it to not look stupid.

And this is exceptionally useful feedback.

The reason it looks stupid to me currently is because it doesn't look realistic. Or if that word is giving people trouble, because the Warrior is doing something that cannot be explained by human capabilities, or even preternatural human abilities, but requires magic.

But now I'm confused, and will now be applying your terminology more generally. As such, I have now concluded "Hmmm, I think he wants warriors to be similar to AD&D fighters, and as such it may be best to just recognize that combat won't be why he likes this game, and he'll probably only enjoy it for other reasons." Is my deduction correct, or have I read too much into your statement? Because I consider a vast majority of the abilities used by both rogues and warriors in both DAO and DA2 to not be natural and to, in reality, require some level of "magical" abilities. Even the ones that, on an aesthetic level appear to be performed via a realistic animation.

But the lack of realism remains a bad thing

For you, is the ultimate ideal for martial combat to be a perfect replication of reality? (barring magic users of course). I understand you can say that there may be other good things that are more important, but I'm focusing the question purely on the specific aspect of combat.

[Allan Schumacher]

Would it only be "because I think it looks stupid" if a guy has a knife pierce his skull in a cinematic and doesn't die? Am I not allowed to say that seems unrealistic, perhaps because the same thing happens with arrows frequently in gameplay?

So if the murder knife didn't exist and people didn't instantly die in a cutscene, it'd be less of an issue?

What you're describing here is consistency, and that the inconsistency bothers you. We *could* have the cinematic have fatal wounds not happen (so your Warden can repeatedly stab the guy in the Korcari Wilds until he is at 0 hit points). It'd remove the inconsistency.

Or are you suggesting that the combat in Dragon Age games should instead mirror the actions that we see in the cinematics?

[Allan Schumacher]

Probably. I really don't know how you can jump to a tabletop game in a thread about aesthetics.

I didn't jump to a table top game. I jumped to Baldur's Gate. Or Icewind Dale.

In terms of aesthetics, maybe.  The phrasing seems like it's a trap to
draw me into an indefensible position.  In terms of gameplay,
no.  Realism is an objective, but secondary to being fun and
challenging.

The question was more geared "If it can be done, is absolute realism an ideal?"

You put yourself into an ambiguous (if not indefensible) position, however, with your last line.

As such, you claiming that the sword strike effect as being unrealistic not further fogs up the water for me.  But you acknowledge that realism shouldn't take priority over fun and challenge.  Would this mean that you actually find that the sword strike effect is simply not fun enough, and it should be changed/removed for that.

Because that's a different thing than whether or not it's realistic.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 21 septembre 2013 - 01:22 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Third pointless entry in a row

If we include your posts would we be up to 6?

[Allan Schumacher]

Rawgrim wrote...

Kind of feels like a staged fight. I am given an uzi, my opponents are given clubs.

The fight was definitely not set up to be an overly challenging fight by any means (or even a challenging one in general)

There's still a lot of AI work that would need to be done, and it's mostly just a challenge of how do you include things in the demo.  For the purpose of this, it's simply the idea that the tactical camera is back, and how you as a player can utilize it.  There were also elements such as Cassandra charging a frozen enemy down and shattering the enemy.


Some of the specific fights and conflicts shown in the demo have already been changed and whatnot in more recent builds.

[Allan Schumacher]

EDIT: I wonder if Allan's still reading the thread... not that it matters really. I enjoy the discussion itself.

I have returned.

Unfortunately I'm not certain I share your enjoyment.

[Allan Schumacher]

What can you say about easing the disparity between the player and the enemies? Like, will enemies use the same animations as the player, the same abilities?

I do not know the answer to this question. I wouldn't expect perfect overlap, however. There will probably be some level of abilities that only the player has, while at the same time there being some abilities that only NPCs have.

I remember a tweet about enemies using actual tactics (archers behind shield walls, for example) but that's all I can really say has been said about combat.

I have seen some of the behaviour trees (since I'm ramping up on them) and this sort of stuff does exist, at least in an early way. Whether or not the finished product has it done sufficiently will likely depend on the person. Hopefully everyone is happy, but there will probably be some that feel it's too deterministic, and others that feel the opposite, and so forth.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm closing this thread now because the hyperbole is literally frustrating to read at this point.


Note, I consider it an undermining of one's argument if you feel the best way to get your point across is to constantly use hyperbole to illustrate it. And it's happening by supporters on both sides.