200 réponses à ce sujet

[metatheurgist]

CybAnt1 wrote...
There's no fun in trudging back and forth dungeon to town to dungeon, 50 times. I hear we are getting ground mounts for DAI because of the bigger areas.

Having played most RPGs I don't recall ever doing that for healing. The only time I did that was when my inventory got so full that everyone was crawling. Healing was only a problem if the cleric went down, and that was just me playing like crap.

[Fast Jimmy]

In Exile wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...
I agree. I think enemies should move within an area to make easy back tracking to town dangerous, if not downright impossible.

So then the re-load button just becomes the passive regen. Everyone will just set it up so they can absolutely curbstom every encounter with 100% perfect health and little mana use. 

And if you force people against that, then you'll eventually have your game just thrown away.

Actively creating aggravation for players is probably the worst design choice ever. I will never understand the desire to, rather than make the game challenging, just actively punish players. 

How would you propose making the game challenging in a game that allows people to fully regenerate health and mana with zero cost? HP bloat and enemy waves? Because any other tactic - improved AI, resistances to certain attacks/elements, unqiue attacks/effects such as environmental or creature specific - will disappear when a player can just drop the difficulty down to Casual. 

I'm not saying playing on Casual is bad. Or even not good. But what other possible suggestions would you have for making a game easier that relies on autoregen? Injuries? Because people complained about those in DA:O so much that they became ignorable entirely in DA2.

[Fetunche]

I'd prefer smarter enemies.

[Wulfram]

You create challenge by making the combat difficult even for a party which is fully healed. It does leave a question as to what to do with minor fights that aren't really supposed to kill the party, but personally I'd say we could do with less of those anyway.

Injuries were far more ignorable in Origins. It was a bit worrying how often my PC was making huge decisions with a cracked skull, because losing cunning was irrelevant.

Surely those things are supposed to disappear when people drop down to casual? That's a "I'm not interested in this combat, get me through ASAP" level.

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

I don't think you need incentives to make people choose diplomacy or stealth or whatever if those options exist - just make sure that the player isn't getting screwed on XP. Lots of people choose stealth in Dishonoured or Deus Ex, despite it really being pretty easy to just shoot everyone. Of course the difference is that stealth gameplay in those is fun and reasonably challenging, which is difficult to achieve in a party game, and to be honest even in solo with true RPG mechanics.

Agreed on stealth being hard in a party game. In fact, it is flat out impossible without a detached overhead camera. So I'm glad that looks like it is making a come back.

The way PnP handles stealth is that it is a tool in a very diverse bag of tricks that rogues have. More often than not, it isn't used for bypassing entire areas, but rather to get to a strategic spot and then do an action that helps the overall party. I think what might be better is the removal of player control over stealth actions. 

For instance, you tell your rogue to stealthily go up to a high point and rig a trap for the enemies below. In most games, how fast you move your rogue, whether they get into the line of sight of enemies, what other actions you take that might garner attention - these are all things the player controls and does, instead of strictly basing it off of the rogue's character skill. You can make a low skill rogue able to do amazing things if you time their actions perfectly, while you can make a master of stealth just run right in front of someone and be seen when they were supposed to be "in hidiing."

If, instead, you give the command for something to be done and your rogue's stealth skill was the determining factor in whether they were seen, not the player's control of their movements, this would be more conducive to party gameplay. That way, you won't have to babysit your rogue while your party is either standing dumbly by, waiting for the rogue to finish, or they can actively engage in combat and when (or if) the rogue succeeds, it would turn the battle.

Conversely, you could do this with other actions, like Mages placing magical runes or sigils before an attack while the rogue is scouting/sneaking, while a fighting might work on placing themselves on better ground or using a Survival skill to determine the paths of enemies in the area, so they can have a better idea where things are after the fight. Etc.

If you can make multitasking tons of non-combat skills at once for a party fairly easy, then people will actually use it. I don't think XP will (inherently) be the thing that makes them accepted and used more widespread.

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

You create challenge by making the combat difficult even for a party which is fully healed. It does leave a question as to what to do with minor fights that aren't really supposed to kill the party, but personally I'd say we could do with less of those anyway.

Injuries were far more ignorable in Origins. It was a bit worrying how often my PC was making huge decisions with a cracked skull, because losing cunning was irrelevant.

Surely those things are supposed to disappear when people drop down to casual? That's a "I'm not interested in this combat, get me through ASAP" level.

But that's not a challenging SYSTEM, that's just difficulty scaling.

A system that let's players choose other methods over combat may intrigue people who don't like combat. Just because someone hates the tedium of RPG combat doesn't mean they might hate setting up effective traps and choke points, where you never even have to draw a sword. Or using a combination of magic and a rogue's snearkery to create a distraction and get the whole party by.

If you make the very concept of combat hard, with non-regening health and mana, then people will actually explore the idea of "hey, maybe I shouldn't run up and pick a fight with every single creature that the game allows me to." 

Fighting the entire world should be an insanely impossible task, for any difficutly. 

[Fast Jimmy]

Not to beat a dead horse...


...but this is how I view it. In many games, if you are beat to a pulp midway through the dungeon and have to sleep/fast travel back to an inn/what-have-you, it is a reflection that you failed (or, at least, struggled hard) in combat.

But that's not the way it HAS to be. It can instead reflect that you didn't use any of your non-combat skills.

Don't want to truck back to town? Then maybe you should have had your rogue stealthily scout out that giant room open room while the rest of your party checked out a side tunnel. Or maybe you should have had your mage throw up some runes to protect him before running down and picking a fight with a group of bandits, because then there is no tank to keep his squishy self safe.

Or maybe, and just call me crazy here... MAYBE you make a game where diplomacy, bribery, negotiation and other skills like that are insanely important not because they net you more XP or better rewards, but because if you really fought everyone you came across, you'd be absolutely ripped a new one on a constant basis?

That's my argument for more "hardcore" combat systems. Because they open the door not only to prodding the player to explore to combat mechanics a little more closely, but they also can be used to create and nurture countless other systems and tactics outside of dropping the enemies health number down to zero faster than he can do the same to you.

[Wulfram]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

But that's not a challenging SYSTEM, that's just difficulty scaling.

I don't think I see the distinction, or at least it's relevance

A system that let's players choose other methods over combat may intrigue people who don't like combat. Just because someone hates the tedium of RPG combat doesn't mean they might hate setting up effective traps and choke points, where you never even have to draw a sword. Or using a combination of magic and a rogue's snearkery to create a distraction and get the whole party by.

If you make the very concept of combat hard, with non-regening health and mana, then people will actually explore the idea of "hey, maybe I shouldn't run up and pick a fight with every single creature that the game allows me to." 

Fighting the entire world should be an insanely impossible task, for any difficutly. 

I think you forget that people do enjoy RPG combat, and wouldn't wish to be driven from it by the punitive tedium of needless traipsing.

Also, how about actually we get all these nice non-combat options first, rather than focusing on how we can force people to use them?

[Spectre slayer]

Fetunche wrote...

I'd prefer smarter enemies.

From everything i've been hearing, you'll get your wish.

The enemies will use complex tactics and work together for example( one they gave out a while ago) an archer is hiding behind a shielded guard advancing on the player, while an axe weilding bruiser attacks you, while prowlers stealthy creep up behind and try to back stab you while working injunction with a mage that damaged you and buffs and debuffs you and them. They take into account your location, how much health you have left, cooldown time and use all this to plan their attacks.


Dragon's are different and seem to be stronger and tougher and require different strategy's to beat each one, they will use some interesting tactics and I think I heard that they can change the concentration of their fire to melt our cover, so overall the enemies will be much smarter.

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

I think you forget that people do enjoy RPG combat, and wouldn't wish to be driven from it by the punitive tedium of needless traipsing.

Also, how about actually we get all these nice non-combat options first, rather than focusing on how we can force people to use them?

Because it will be exactly like Origins - non-combat skills that serve no function and are therefore cut in future games because it doesn't fit into the scope of an all-combat system design.

[Wulfram]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Because it will be exactly like Origins - non-combat skills that serve no function and are therefore cut in future games because it doesn't fit into the scope of an all-combat system design.

So give those non-combat skills a function.  Allow people to skip many fights using skills, and gain advantages in fights that aren't skippable.  Allow skill use to get different/better story outcomes, and people will be queueing up to take them - in Origins Coercion.as a skill was pointless only because there was no real reason not to take it.

I mean, if you go very far in this you probably risk being called not a true RPG, because for better or worse CRPGs are largely defined as a genre by combat, but I'm sure it'd be an interesting game.  But it's really got very little to do with the presence or absence of health regen.

[Pasquale1234]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

If you make the very concept of combat hard, with non-regening health and mana, then people will actually explore the idea of "hey, maybe I shouldn't run up and pick a fight with every single creature that the game allows me to." 

Fighting the entire world should be an insanely impossible task, for any difficutly.

IIRC, Mike mentioned that in a demo - the idea that a player might not want to take on every battle available in the game, and I have the impression that this is one of the reasons why they are limiting regen - to give players more meaningful strategic choices.

In DAO and DA2, skipping optional combat worked pretty well for a couple of reasons:
1) There were quite a few optional sidequests with avoidable combat - like the mooks running around at night.
2) Everything was level scaled, which made it easier for the player to ignore XP / level-up opportunities.

As I understand it, level scaling is also going away in DAI.  This fact, in and of itself may introduce more challenge and strategic planning, because players will find they might not want to enter some particular area until they are a certain level.  It also means players will be less likely to skip any XP opportunity, because leveling up will become much more crucial in being successful in all of the areas of the game - and it has the potential to make players feel like they're grinding for level-up.

So - it strikes me as an odd combination of features to add.  On the one hand, making it less desirable to engage every potential enemy while at the same time making it even more important to level-up.

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Because it will be exactly like Origins - non-combat skills that serve no function and are therefore cut in future games because it doesn't fit into the scope of an all-combat system design.

So give those non-combat skills a function.  Allow people to skip many fights using skills, and gain advantages in fights that aren't skippable.  Allow skill use to get different/better story outcomes, and people will be queueing up to take them - in Origins Coercion.as a skill was pointless only because there was no real reason not to take it.

I mean, if you go very far in this you probably risk being called not a true RPG, because for better or worse CRPGs are largely defined as a genre by combat, but I'm sure it'd be an interesting game.  But it's really got very little to do with the presence or absence of health regen.

Yet if you took Coercion, you sacrificed Tactics slots (which did suck) and also Combat Training skills, meaning you would do less damage and (if you were a mage) increase the chance of interupts.

It had the potential to be interesting, but the game had to be designed for situations in which these skills had any real value. Stealth was worthless except for the few times when it was critical. Same for things like Survival or Poisons. 

I'd rather see a system devoted to fleshing these systems out more holistically. But the value for a developer to do this only stands to work if the standard, default response can't always be combat. Or, if you choose combat every time, it will make the game much harder... just like if you tried choosing Stealth as an option every time, it would be harded (read as, completely impossible). 

Make the game punishly difficult to play myopically - that includes combat as your sole option - and suddenly you've got a game that forces the developer to make non-combat skills just as refined and interdependent to gameplay as combat.

[Laughing_Man]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Yet if you took Coercion, you sacrificed Tactics slots (which did suck) and also Combat Training skills, meaning you would do less damage and (if you were a mage) increase the chance of interupts.

It had the potential to be interesting, but the game had to be designed for situations in which these skills had any real value. Stealth was worthless except for the few times when it was critical. Same for things like Survival or Poisons. 

I'd rather see a system devoted to fleshing these systems out more holistically. But the value for a developer to do this only stands to work if the standard, default response can't always be combat. Or, if you choose combat every time, it will make the game much harder... just like if you tried choosing Stealth as an option every time, it would be harded (read as, completely impossible). 

Make the game punishly difficult to play myopically - that includes combat as your sole option - and suddenly you've got a game that forces the developer to make non-combat skills just as refined and interdependent to gameplay as combat.

It sounds good and all, but if as common as it is for video games to become a failures even without adding this difficult balancing act, I doubt that a game like this will work as intended. It will simply become frustratingly difficult.

That said, I would be interested in playing a game that made something like this happen.

[Fast Jimmy]

Sparking interest in something beyond the stale, formulaic models are all I seek to do in life.

[Fetunche]

This is change for changes sake, there was no need to fundamentally alter the gameplay experience to make DAI, DA in name only, all they had to do was continue the story and add new quests and characters.

[seraphymon]

If this is there way of trying to make it more strategic.. they've already failed. As has been discussed, getting around this feature would just be wasting time waiting for healing spells or so. If that's the case this feature is not needed. Its about the actual encounter not some stupid gimmick.

What was wrong with Origins way? potions aside we had a good out of combat regen that was neither fast or too slow.. that way we could continue right away and risk having lower health/mana or wait around to regen in case there is a difficult fight.. I mean MMOs are built on this because it works.. Hell if need be why not some food or a sit feature in order to gain more health/mana out of combat faster?

[Pasquale1234]

Fetunche wrote...

This is change for changes sake, there was no need to fundamentally alter the gameplay experience to make DAI, DA in name only, all they had to do was continue the story and add new quests and characters.

That's pretty much what I thought when I finished a run of DAO and installed DA2...

[BubbleDncr]

From what I remember in the interviews, they made this change to make people think about whether a fight is worth getting into or not.

I always liked in DA:O trying to talk my way out of fights. It was a bit much in DA2 to fight and kill everyone you met. So I'm hoping that maybe, rather than just making people skip combat all together due to heath concerns, they just have more opportunities to resolve things in non-combat methods (coercion, stealth, etc), and having to worry about health is just their way of encouraging other methods.

[Lvl20DM]

This type of thing (non-regening health) will work (or won't) depending on a host of other factors. I don't think this will force us to play a certain way any more than having health fully recover. This might be done to encourage tactical thinking and planning beyond the next encounter. I suspect it also means that fights simply won't be as difficult (on average) as they were in previous games. Bioware isn't out to frustrate us.

[mikeymoonshine]

BubbleDncr wrote...

From what I remember in the interviews, they made this change to make people think about whether a fight is worth getting into or not.

I always liked in DA:O trying to talk my way out of fights. It was a bit much in DA2 to fight and kill everyone you met. So I'm hoping that maybe, rather than just making people skip combat all together due to heath concerns, they just have more opportunities to resolve things in non-combat methods (coercion, stealth, etc), and having to worry about health is just their way of encouraging other methods.

This as long as they can somehow make it so you still get the XP. 

[mikeymoonshine]

Fetunche wrote...

This is change for changes sake, there was no need to fundamentally alter the gameplay experience to make DAI, DA in name only, all they had to do was continue the story and add new quests and characters.

The DA2 Combat was soo boring though. I actually don't care that much about it being overly challangeing just as long as it involved more strategy. 

DAO combat had strategy, even if you were just playing on casual but DA2 had almost non. 

[coldflame]

Vexed Forest wrote...

So I was watching this video and it said there was no passive health regen and limited potions 

This is purely my opinion, but I don't like this. Any game I've played that has included both of these has been annoying. It kind of forces you to min/max your build instead of playing what you think is fun. It also somewhat makes you play the way the devs want and not necessarily the way you want. I get that they are pushing more strategic elements but there are other ways to do this. And realism? This type of realism in video games annoyes me. You can break down a keep door with a sword (here) so.......I'm getting mixed messages.

Maybe it could be a toggleable option? The regen, not the potions. I think limited potions is fine by itself.

Anyway, thats just my opinion. I would like to know yours.

And on a sidenote, I know my destiny in DA:I is to be a Qunari mage. I hope I can accomplish this.

(I know its been discussed before, but I wanted to put my own opinion out there)

I think it is going to be like what we have in ME3, if you've played that game. Personally I don't like self regenerating healthbar. Games are getting easier and easier these days. Why can't we go back to the good old Baldur's Gate days...

[Raven489]

^^
Whenever I see someone saying "Why can't we go back to the good old Baldur's Gate days" I always think "What does that even mean?" I looked up when the first Baldur's Gate game came out and I was only 4, so I of course know nothing about that game. 

As for no health regen, I expect to die a lot! I suck at video games in general, I just play for the story and characters! 

Modifié par Raven489, 24 janvier 2014 - 12:21 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

mosesarose wrote...

Taking away regeneration mana would be nuts. I mean that's all mage abilities becoming useless after a certain point in battle.

Or those battles (and dungeon crawls overall) will simply require more planning and forethought, like in games with Vancian casting systems.

Vancian wasn't a good system, but it had some good features, and non-regenerating mana returns some of those good features.