41 réponses à ce sujet

[Vicious]

They have a specific job or duty that you recruit them for (This is an Inquisition we're forming not a god damn football club), and while they aren't out with you that's what they do. Training mages/warriors/overseeing keep finances/defenses, smithing weapons or building ballistae, that sort of thing. When they leave, their jobs are delegated to another NPC so it's not like suddenly nobody is training your warriors while you are running around with Cassandra, she just does it better than they do.


Who hates my idea?

Modifié par Vicious, 21 septembre 2013 - 09:19 .

[Killdren88]

I just assume the companions I don't bring just gossip.

[ramnozack]

Maybe you could send inactive companions on diplomatic missions to peacefully take over an outpost (I forget what there called >.<) and whether they are successful or not depends on a variety of things, like that companions personality, the number of missions successfully completed, natural skill in negotiation, racial tension, magical tension, past relations against that faction, etc.

Maybe have some unique quests where you control the companion on the mission and negotiate yourself.

[RogueWriter3201]

Taura-Tierno wrote...

Not sure if this has been discussed ...

I've always had some difficulty with suspension of disbelief regarding companions who don't tag along on adventures, especially in Dragon Age: Origins. You've got all of these people who're helping you stop the blight ... but most of them just sit tight in a camp. I get that we need some kind of limit on the party size, but I'd like to see a real, in-game reason for the others not joining you. Why only bring 4 people, when there's no reason at all not to bring five or six or all of your allies? 

DA2 handled this a bit better, since your companions had lives of their own. DA:I seems to be more epicly quest-oriented, though, so I would like to see that issue handled in a good way. In DA:O, I always liked to imagine that those you don't bring did other things, solved problems or went on missions that weren't as critical as what the Warden did. Would be nice to see something like that.  

From what I've seen in interviews it looks like they're going to expand on what they had in DAII in that companions who aren't with you will have agendas and missions of their own while you're out and about. On top of that I *believe* (could be thinking of another ingame "resource") you'll be able to dispatch them on small objectives during their down time, a mechanic used in Star Wars: The Old Republic to help not only build XP and Skills, but to add to the sense that your companions weren't just hanging out waiting for you to pick them to go questing with you. I really enjoyed that. 

[Laughing_Man]

Hmm... I'd love to see sending the rest of your companions to attack from a different route against a castle for example, maybe actually meeting them during the assault.
(you won't be able to directly control them, just the same as other friendly npc's who fight on your side)

[fiveforchaos]

Karsciyin wrote...

I would have figured Fenris would use those seven years in Kirkwall to clean up the bodies in the house he was squatting, but... nope

Could be nice to add some 'artificial actions' as they call them. In previous games (and ME1/2) characters just stand in place, maybe playing a typing animation, but usually standing around looking goofy.
ME3 did a little better by having them move around the ship after certain missions, though they can make people harder to find.

I'm suggesting maybe get them to do little things within their home zones. Varric might be at his table with a drink, or standing at his desk looking at papers, or checking over Bianca, or w/e, and he moves from one to the other. Vivienne reading from a stack of books, or standing by the fireplace looking at the flames, or playing with magic in her hands.
Even in DAII:E we saw your standard NPCs wandering around, talking to each other, picking stuff up from the ground and such.

I don't see why, companions can't go around and chat with each other if the pace we're using as a "campsight" isn't too large. I never minded having to search for companions a bit if it meant listening in on some good dialogue in ME3. Of course, if say, our companions are all living in separate parts of a city like they did in DA:II, I'll concede that it can get a little impractical to have them wandering around like that, but something castle size should be perfectly manageable. 

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Yus. This topic seems to be my intent wheel 2.0.

Let the idea spam begin!

A camp/castle/stronghold mechanic where you assign tasks to companions would be one way I'd look at making non-active companions useful and still fun to play with.

The game could link the stats and skills of a character to various activities that accumulate or manage resources, then provide a variety of outcomes encompassing success, failure and partial successes depending on the time (counted by quest completions and plot progression) in-between visits and the relevant skills/stats.

Some examples include:
Management of your keep (law enforcement/treasury)
Blacksmith (Upgrading Equipment)
Alchemist (Creates Potions)
Librarian/Researcher (Looks for new Codex Entries - Could enable certain specialisations)
Merchant (Trade with Cities and allow unique/generic equipment to be bought at the Keep/Camp)
Scryer (Runecrafting)
Spy (Gathers Rumours about important People and Locations that may be useful in quests)
Survivalist (Creates Traps and Poisons)

For example, it's one way to remove the tedium out of crafting. Just assign the upgrading of items to a companion while you go out questing. You might not always get what you wanted when you return, but you will likely get something and perhaps a small conversation with the companion regarding their work.

It's one way to showcase a bit of reactivity too without having too many issues re: additional content. Have such a system interact with the companion's disposition level with the Inquisitor. If a party member is being assigned a job they are not enjoying and they are not good at, have that negatively affect their relations with the Inquisitor and implement appropriate feedback (conversations, ambient dialogue, disposition level, etc) to reflect the deteriorating relationships.

Conversely, reward smart party management and task assignment with disposition increases over time, and small to significant bonuses to the success and/or effectiveness of the task. Along with some positive running commentary, or occasions where companions will stick up for a verbally besieged Inquisitor, it would greatly help in integrating non-active companions into the game.

Combined with Laidlaw's words about dropping or reducing the gating of companion arcs via disposition, I don't see any potential for abuse when it comes to quest lines and the like.

In an ideal world, this would eventually lead to random events, junctures and dilemmas where NPCs will be forced to make decisions off-screen that may have ramifications for the PC when they return. It'd be nice if such events were included and the decision making process took into account the NPC's skillset and their personality.

i.e A companion is assigned to potion creation and a travelling alchemist offers them an experimental recipe that allows them to create a new type of potion/poison, at a significant price. An impetuous or naive companion would buy the recipe without question, where a more reserved or logical one would first haggle the price down, then ask to inspect/test the recipe before buying, triggering a skill check.

A successful skill check gets you a new potion/poison recipe for minimal cost.
A failed skill check gets you a dud recipe that is weaker than normal ones for minimal cost.
Not even triggering the skill check gets you a dud recipe for maximum cost.

Perhaps even have these events link together in reactive but self-contained off-screen quest lines.

An ideal world.

None of this is something I'd expect for DA:I, but something that I do think needs to be done in some fashion if BioWare wants to make non-active companions useful without having to worry about creating too much additional story-related content.

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Taura-Tierno wrote...

DA2 handled this a bit better, since your companions had lives of their own. DA:I seems to be more epicly quest-oriented, though, so I would like to see that issue handled in a good way. In DA:O, I always liked to imagine that those you don't bring did other things, solved problems or went on missions that weren't as critical as what the Warden did. Would be nice to see something like that.  

I liked how Wing Commander 3 handled this. If you didn't take certain companions with you on missions, after a certain number of missions they'd approach you to try and figure out why. 

The game worked a different way to Dragon Age, but I kinda wish something similar could be worked out. I can imagine the Inquisitor's team-mates wondering why their boss hired them if they're never invited to join the action. 

[DooomCookie]

Apparently Bioware have come up with a solution to this. I agree that in DA2, the characters were more convincing and felt like they had their own lives, but you couldn't talk to them to that was missing.

[Amirit]

Knight of Dane wrote...

I've always had the idea that companions you don't bring are assumed to experience the quests regardless, in all biowares games.

Wrex will mention being with you on the misson to the Rachni Queen in Mass Effect 3 wether or not he actually was in Mass Effect.

This. All of your companions in all BW games mention at some point that they were with you in every mission. If it is not secifically indicated by anothe NPC "only so many your followers can come with you" (like in Deep roads expedition) - by defolt they are all with you.

[David7204]

That's broken down somewhat in ME 3. There are missions where squadmates only comment afterwards if they were there.

[DarkSpider88]

 After reading this post I think it would be awesome if party members you don't use very often come up to you in camp and say "hey since you left me to twiddle my thumbs while you were on a mission, I went exploring some nearby caves and found something you need to see."

what at would be even better is if each character had a couple unique quests to find and give if they are left on the sidelines. Also this would add some replay ability to the game by sort of forcing layers to use different parties each game to get the unique quests of other companions left at camp.

[SofaJockey]

There has to be some suspension of disbelief. Picking up Wynne in the Tower of Magi means I leave one other party member behind. But where did they go? The door is sealed, but they disappeared. And I could have selected other party members who were back at camp to be teleported through the Templar barricade.

Result: Best not to worry about it :-)

[GDog89]

Diplomatic Missions ( Alliances, Trading Routes, Defending Keeps) would be reasonable