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[nightscrawl]

^ One would assume that since it is suggested for Hard that it would also be suggested for Nightmare as well. As in, "Nightmare has the same stuff Hard does, along with friendly fire."

 

The text also only says the need of controlling your PC in Normal also, but wouldn't you have assumed that it also applied to Casual?

 

At any rate, as far as tactics use goes, there were some really great guides for tactic use with DA2. AreleX's class guides in particular were extremely helpful since they contained detailed instructions on how to set up your tactics for each follower. DA2's tactic system was a lot more robust that DAO's and those guides are one example of that. However, AI is still AI and can't substitute for human control in some situations, as the previously mentioned Corypheus maze.

[upsettingshorts]

Well the tactics system never presumes to control movement as an independent action.  So fights where movement is crucial necessarily demand taking some manual control.  I don't know that anyone would dispute that. 

[Bekkael]

I support the option for my PC to sit on companions. Maybe after a few ales?

[nightscrawl]

Well the tactics system never presumes to control movement as an independent action.  So fights where movement is crucial necessarily demand taking some manual control.  I don't know that anyone would dispute that. 

 

The area where you can choose basic companion behavior (aggressive, ranged, etc) specifies whether your followers will chase mobs that run away and whether they will move out of AoE damage. Certain settings are better or worse for certain fights. If you are running around the maze and slowly picking off the mobs you don't want it set to aggressive or it's likely that the followers will try to get to the mobs if you attack them, even if you have Hold on, and probably die.

[upsettingshorts]

That's why I specified movement as an independent action.

 

The basic behavior modifies more than just movement.

[Lebanese Dude]

Well the tactics system never presumes to control movement as an independent action. So fights where movement is
crucial necessarily demand taking some manual control. I don't know that anyone would dispute that.

I never said that a player cant play on nightmare while only controlling 1 character.

I just said that complaining that the game FORCES you to control your characters on higher difficulties is essentially uncalled for. This is equivalent to complaining that Deity difficulty in civilization games should not force me to micromanage.

Sure you can win, but the game is balanced to the difficulty played.

DA is a partybased game, so micromanaging your characters is expected. This can be achieved through proper tactics and unit cycling.

[Sylvius the Mad]

While I enjoyed Origin's story a great deal, the gameplay had a headache-inducing flaw: babysitting companions. In the hardest fights, tactics proved about a dozen conditions, and fifty lines, short of useful. Most of the time, I had to turn off tactics and play all four characters, if I wanted to get anything done.

This was actually a design goal.  You were expected to play all of the characters to perform well.

 

DA2's difficulty levels were even described in terms of this.

 

Casual = Play one character

Normal = Play on character optimally

Hard = Play the whole party

Nightmare = Play the whole party optimally

 

It's a party-based game.  You're not babysitting the companions; you're playing them.  Remember, you are not the PC.  You are an invisible hand that governs the entire party, including the PC.

[CybAnt1]

I can tell you that one of my biggest complaints in CRPGs for a long time has been horrible AI. The big problem with NWN, and NWN2 was not much better, was horrible companion AI. 

 

I would say DAO's was OK, but really only worked GOOD with the Improved Tactics mod. The big problem with that mod is it created other weird problems, including once blocking a doorway with an invisible block. Also, if you wanted good Tactics, you had to pump up Cunning & Combat Tactics skill, and wait to level to gain more tactics slots. 

 

DA2's Tactics were good on their own sans mod, the presets worked pretty well, and now the only thing controlling your # of slots was level. I went in and tweaked them a bit, but the flexibility of options were good as was the relative depth of the presets. All in all I liked it. Only thing missing? I sure would love a "see trap, don't step on trap, dummy" AI option. 

 

Anyway, sans the overhead camera, I pretty much adjusted to a stick to controlling the PC style, after some heavy tweaking of tactics, but went back to micromanagement on boss & other tougher fights. 

[Xerxes52]

*snip*
Only thing missing? I sure would love a "see trap, don't step on trap, dummy" AI option.
*snip*

This definitely needs to be in, if not as a tactic, then as a basic part of the AI pathfinding.


One thing I would also like to have is a larger radius for the party members to move and fight without returning to the player. In DA:O and DA2, I would see party members fighting distant enemies, but once they reached a certain range (say, because they were trying to reach a far away archer), they would drop everything and run back to the player.

And as said above I despise the DA2 healing delay. When using healing or health potions, there should be no delay at all. I would even go as far as cancelling whatever animation is currently going on so the AI can use their spell or potion faster.

[upsettingshorts]

This was actually a design goal.  You were expected to play all of the characters to perform well.

 

DA2's difficulty levels were even described in terms of this.

 

Casual = Play one character

Normal = Play on character optimally

Hard = Play the whole party

Nightmare = Play the whole party optimally

 

It's a party-based game.  You're not babysitting the companions; you're playing them.  Remember, you are not the PC.  You are an invisible hand that governs the entire party, including the PC.

 

Yet if you allow that there is more defintion of "play," and more than one path to "optimal," it exists within the realm of possibility that one of the methods by which difficulty levels can be mastered is rigorous Tactical planning. Therefore, asking for better tools with which to accomplish such a task (eg. more or better Tactics) is not in conflict with this design philosophy.  After all, in that context "play the whole party optimally" could very easily mean "program the entire party's Tactics optimally."

 

And I'm going to conspicuously avoid the other possible discussion that could spring out of this post.

 

Edit: For the sake of clarity, I play with Tactics primarily for pacing reasons.  There's nothing binding that preference to primarily controlling the PC.  I could primarily control any character within the party and still be getting what I want out of the system.  Whether or not my invisible hand is responsible for the PC or the whole party doesn't really enter into this particular discussion.  Or the merits of Tactics in general.

[TurretSyndrome]

Don't understand what people don't get with that request I made. Why is there a "game should be played using this way"? The way the game is played is decided by the player itself, not you, so stop telling others how the game is intended to be played. Sure, the difficulty is set with player utilizing all four party members in the game, this fact is known by all who play it, no need for enlightenment on that part, but if someone decides to do a solo run, duo run, triple run, basic armor run, no upgrades run etc etc, and similarly all party AI run, THEY CAN!.

 

It's not for you to decide what others should be doing in their copies of the game. Sheesh...

[CybAnt1]

My personal position is that DA2's Tactics AI was the best I've seen, but to date, there is no CRPG I've seen with the "perfect" AI or even close (by that, I mean, not occasionally watching your party members do things in battle that are just counterproductive or counterintuitive or make you go "doh") ... until there is (maybe in the next 25 years, once they've also worked out realistic speech recognition and synthesis for dialogue), I'm still going to control all 4 characters, especially when things get tough.

 

And yes, we already know that one thing, that DAI will accommodate both styles of play, micromanagement, and running on tactics. 

 

BTW, yes, enemy AI should get better, too. Come on, they should be smart enough not to fall for the perennial "peel/kite, divide, and conquer" and figure out how to get around chokepoints I've made for them. But, hey, both enemy and ally AI hopefully can only keep getting better and better. Part of that has to be pathfinding, of course. 

[Unknown_Warrior]

I hope to god there's never another fight like Corypheus ever again.

 

Corypheus was bad, but the Sky Horror from MotA was a hundred-times worse.

Even worse was that I brought two close-range companions and I had NO idea that fight was coming up.

I'm also fairly sure I wasn't able to switch my party by that time, either.

[Rolling Flame]

Corypheus was bad, but the Sky Horror from MotA was a hundred-times worse.

Even worse was that I brought two close-range companions and I had NO idea that fight was coming up.

I'm also fairly sure I wasn't able to switch my party by that time, either.

 

"Oh, it's just an Arcane Horror, this shouldn't be-"

 

*Total party wipe*

[Sylvius the Mad]

Yet if you allow that there is more defintion of "play," and more than one path to "optimal," it exists within the realm of possibility that one of the methods by which difficulty levels can be mastered is rigorous Tactical planning.

Those weren't my definitions.  BioWare (Laidlaw, I think) made those claims.

 

You can play the game however you like.  I was objecting to the description of controlling all of the characters as "babysitting".

[Xerxes52]

I hope to god there's never another fight like Corypheus ever again.

The first part with the firewalls was alright (other than the AI not realizing the fire is painful), but once the rock maze popped up the AI pathfinding took a nose dive, and then the firewalls actually became dangerous. Was there a separate navmesh (or whatever pathfinding system was used) that was loaded for the rock maze? It sure didn't seem like it.

[theflyingzamboni]

Corypheus was bad, but the Sky Horror from MotA was a hundred-times worse.

Even worse was that I brought two close-range companions and I had NO idea that fight was coming up.

I'm also fairly sure I wasn't able to switch my party by that time, either.

 

"Oh, it's just an Arcane Horror, this shouldn't be-"

 

*Total party wipe*

 

That was an unpleasant surprise initially. Waltzed in with my rogue/assassin, Isabela, Tallis, and Merrill(?). Squish city.

 

Once I ran it a couple times though and figured out what was coming at me, I absolutely slaughtered the Sky Horror and his cronies with the joyously obscene damage of an assassin and a debuff mage working in tandem.