25 réponses à ce sujet

[Mathias]

I enjoy playing on the Nightmare difficulties, but what I don't enjoy is not being able to cast certain spells, because casting them would cause damage on my party members as well. Sometimes it's not so bad if you're casting those 2-3 yard AoE spells, but when you have spells such as Fire or Lightning storm that lays down some serious destruction on the field, I generally can never use them! It just creates a crutch on my spellcasters because I can't unleash their full potential. Friendly Fire should be optional in order to create a higher challenge in your playthrough, but forcing it on us is a very annoying mechanic.

 

I'm currently playing DA2 on Nightmare difficulty as a mage, and the enemies are tough enough but it's worse that I have to create a different build than what I really want. I want to spend points on big AoE spells, but I know it would be a waste of ability points. Bioware please don't force this annoyance on me.

[Turnip]

I wouldn't expect that to be an option. Since they revealed that we can't be spirit healers, will have limited health potions, and no health regen, I feel like Bioware is going out of its way to make this game as difficult as possible.

[Ribosome]

Have you seen the AreleX guides? AoE spells are extremely effective on nightmare

 

The entire primal school of magic doesn't cause friendly fire damage, by the way, so you can abuse tempest to your hearts' content

[Deflagratio]

Shouldn't be an option for the Hardest Difficulty. That's why it's the Hardest.

[Mathias]

No I'm sorry, I completely disagree. Handcuffing a player's ability to do something, or having certain attacks do damage to your party, is a cheap way of making the game more difficult. Friendly fire should be removed, it just makes things more annoying than challenging. There are plenty of games that demonstrate how to make a game challenging, without having your attacks screw over your party members. If you need to have something like that in your game, then perhaps your hardest difficulty, isn't hard enough.

[TurretSyndrome]

No I'm sorry, I completely disagree. Handcuffing a player's ability to do something, or having certain attacks do damage to your party, is a cheap way of making the game more difficult. Friendly fire should be removed, it just makes things more annoying than challenging. There are plenty of games that demonstrate how to make a game challenging, without having your attacks screw over your party members. If you need to have something like that in your game, then perhaps your hardest difficulty, isn't hard enough.

 

How is it cheap? If you throw a fireball in a certain area, you don't think it should damage your friends if they are in the vicinity of the blast? And it's not like they are killed immediately, they only take some damage. Not to mention you are well aware of that fireball(unless you set Tactics in a peculiar manner) coming your friends' way, so why can't you just micromanage? You say you want the difficulty, the challenge, but you don't want to deal with having your party pull back when you cast an AoE spell? 

[In Exile]

No I'm sorry, I completely disagree. Handcuffing a player's ability to do something, or having certain attacks do damage to your party, is a cheap way of making the game more difficult. Friendly fire should be removed, it just makes things more annoying than challenging. There are plenty of games that demonstrate how to make a game challenging, without having your attacks screw over your party members. If you need to have something like that in your game, then perhaps your hardest difficulty, isn't hard enough.

 

There is zero-handcuffing. It does not take a lot of time to learn how to keep enemies in front of you in a kill zone so you can launch AOEs with impunity. FF does not even remotely increase the challenge. All it requires is that you avoid standing still while enemies rush you, which isn't an especially ridiculous demand on the highest difficulty. 

 

Using Varric, Merril, Force Mage Hawke and Anders as a trio can absolutely slaughter enemies just by combining firestorms, lightning storms and arrow rains with the Force Mage spells that keep enemies in place. 

[Ribosome]

Can you please elaborate on how players are being handcuffed? I don't understand

[jncicesp]

I'd wanna have it on for lesser difficulties, but it is something that makes the combat of the game more challenging... so it probably should be on the most difficult option.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I insist on friendly fire.  If a bomb goes off in a room, it should hit everyone.  I even modded DA2 to enable friendly fire at all difficulty levels.

 

But friendly fire is one of the reasons that asymmetrical mechanics are bad.  Friendly fire in DA2 was vastly more damaging to Hawke as his party than it was to the enemies.  It should be equally damaging.  Then it becomes a useful gameplay tactic to induce friendly fire in our enemies (NWN and NWN2 both did this well, until FF was patched out of both games shortly after release - this is the main reason I oppose forced patching).

[Bond]

NO ! Also..



"There are too many minor things which may take day or two but there are thousands of them" - dev comment. Or in other words - we decide these things.

 

[Mes]

I'm not a fan of friendly fire. 

[wolfhowwl]

Good lord, OP.

It's called NIGHTMARE for a reason.

 

Either get ****** good and deal with the FF or turn down the difficulty.

[DrBlingzle]

I agree. I think a simple on/off toggle would be great. Of course this raises the problem of people completing the game on nightmare more easily than others. In this respect I think bioware should look to the new thief game. I haven't played it but the difficulty settings looked clever and well thought out.

[Amfortas]

What I'd like is the tooltip to clearly state which spells/ abilities damage everyone and which affect only enemies. In DAII I remember half the mage spells say does X to enemies, when they do in fact the same to party members. Another reason to think friendly fire in that game was added as an afterthought.

 

As for the OP's request, I wouldn't mind it for low difficulty modes.

[syllogi]

I'm still waiting to officially hear that friendly fire is available on NORMAL difficulty, so I don't really have a problem with a toggle for those who don't enjoy it.

 

For me, though, the point of wanting friendly fire on normal difficulty is that there would have to be more single target spells and abilities, and combat is just more fun when I need to concentrate on strategy instead of mashing the same three buttons again and again in every fight.

[In Exile]

I insist on friendly fire.  If a bomb goes off in a room, it should hit everyone.  I even modded DA2 to enable friendly fire at all difficulty levels.

 

But friendly fire is one of the reasons that asymmetrical mechanics are bad.  Friendly fire in DA2 was vastly more damaging to Hawke as his party than it was to the enemies.  It should be equally damaging.  Then it becomes a useful gameplay tactic to induce friendly fire in our enemies (NWN and NWN2 both did this well, until FF was patched out of both games shortly after release - this is the main reason I oppose forced patching).

 

There were times when enemies were caught in certain enemy mage spell cones that would 1-hit KO your own party that would barely damage them because of the asymmetry. That was bad. 

[Realmzmaster]

While Bioware is at it Bioware should take the planning out of combat at Nightmare level.

DA2 only had FF on Nightmare.

DAO had percentage based FF on levels Normal to Nightmare (100% FF).

 

So now posters want to nerf the hardest setting because it is too hard? That is the purpose. Nightmare is meant to be the most challenging level. Taking into account FF in battle is not that hard as In Exile stated. It requires more planning.

 

For example: If I know I will have my mage make great use of fire spells I equip the rest of the party with fire resistant armor and salves. In DAO Wade's drakeskin armor was perfect when used with Greater Warmth balm. The only damage that the party member would take  take is a little fire damage and the concussion damage from the blast. The warden could drop fire bombs at his/her feet when surrounded by enemies.

 

Also as Ribosome notes the Primal school's Lightning spells do no FF because Lightning can be directed.

 

So I can see Bioware creating new Achievements: I beat Nightmare without FF and I beat Nightmare with FF. 

[Omikuji]

I do think that there should be a friendly fire option, but not for the higher levels. I kinda play on the easiest level because I really just want to play for the story and characters (Battles aren't all that thrilling to me, they feel slow and uninteresting to me personally and I have never been able to get the tactics to work in a way where I don't have to constantly stop in battle and order them to do certain things making the battles even slower. I'm not playing these games for the fighting system. I have never been a fan of these style of battle systems, I'm a turn based person) and friendly fire as a mage in the lowest level just feels like I can't just relax. 

 

Certainly when I line up a shot just right and then suddenly one of my companions run right in the way of it completely ruining what I was doing. I'm on the easiest difficultly and I still accidentally knock out everyone I like because I don't want to micro manage my placement in fights when everyone just bunches up. 

 

But if you're purposely putting yourself in the harder difficulties, the friendly fire is apart of the difficulty. It's apart of the lore as well where the mages have this habit of accidentally everything in the room if they go full tilt on their magic. Nightmare in turn should be, well, a nightmare to play. That's why it's called it.

[Avaflame]

I would like the same thing as the OP for the opposite reason; I want FF on the lower difficulties. In Origins I always played on Nightmare because it had FF because I'm a freak about certain things in my video games and I don't like my enemies getting scorched to death by flame whilst my companions just waltz right through it. In Origins that was fine, but I found DA2's Nightmare was much more challenging and with my other personal restrictions (no potions of any kind, no knock outs) I found the combat just too tedious and having to go to the lower difficulties and losing FF. Combined with the potential of them limiting the ability to heal magically in Inquisition, I'm worried I'll probably have to forego Nightmare again so I'd really prefer if FF not be tied to the difficulty level like that.

And while we're on the topic of FF, I'd like to suggest bring back the companion statistic so we could see how much FF a companion has accumulated. In Origins I could just check after a fight to see if everyone was at zero so I could move on. In DA2 I found myself restarting the game several times just because someone got a little too close to Fenris' greatsword and I couldn't be certain that they weren't hit by it. Like I said, I'm a freak.

[kasanza]

Nightmare is very difficult, but not because of your skill level, OP. Mainly the bad AI of non-controlled party members walking into your attacks. It just requires you to take a lot of time setting up tactics and using rune slots on armor for elemental resistance. The rune slots in your companions armor provide a lot of resistance (I think usually around 90% on PS3, since their armor levels with them). You mainly need to enchant the runes of elements that you mainly cast. You'll still end up one-shotting your companions every once and a while if you use a warrior's cross-class finishers but, o well. Sometimes you will have to micro-manage your companions to spread out (like you do when they clog up doorways or their pathing mechanics leave them stuck against an object trying to walk through it) but again, that's not based on your skill just limited game mechanics.

[In Exile]

Nightmare is very difficult, but not because of your skill level, OP. Mainly the bad AI of non-controlled party members walking into your attacks. It just requires you to take a lot of time setting up tactics and using rune slots on armor for elemental resistance. The rune slots in your companions armor provide a lot of resistance (I think usually around 70% on PS3, since their armor levels with them). You mainly need to enchant the runes of elements that you mainly cast. You'll still end up one-shotting your companions every once and a while if you use a warrior's cross-class finishers but, o well. Sometimes you will have to micro-manage your companions to spread out (like you do when they clog up doorways or their pathing mechanics leave them stuck against an object trying to walk through it) but again, that's not based on your skill just limited game mechanics.

 

Using tactics and allowing the AI to control anyone is always going to play sub-optimally. The better approach is the "hold" command along with directly pausing and controlling. I don't think I've ever used elemental resistance runes on nightmare runs, with the one exception of the high dragon fight because it just spams fire to get Aveline's fire resistance up. 

 

Also, if you use a 2H warrior you shouldn't use another melee character - that's just asking for trouble. 

[kasanza]

I don't like to pause the game much. It just feels sluggish. And I try to never control my party members. I was trying to give an example of seamless gaming where you play Hawke and the A.I. your companions. If the OP decides to play nightmare and wants to cast spells without worrying too much, then elemental runes help substantially. But of course, there will be times when a two-handed warrior will follow BRITTLE tactics and scythe a few enemies that just got coned right next to a mage and one-shot the mage as well.

The point was, you're always going to end up dealing some FF, but it can be managed without too much pausing and actively micro-managing your team. I think the biggest issue is your team can't have thousands of health like mobs, so when your skills dish out 500 damage it hits your team far harder % wise than it does the enemy and that can be frustrating. Plus, you do have to restrict your play style for the difficulty. Its actually easier to forego a tank and run an all ranged party in nightmare, especially if your Hawke is a force mage that can slow and pull enemies into massive A.O.E. You can also use threat redirects to manage enemy placement to help Firestorm casting with reckless abandon.

All that being said, I think combat in DAI is going to be less intense than DA2. Too many people complained about it being more action-oriented in the second outing, so combat has been said to be somewhere between the first and second game. Even with limited healing options, I think BioWare is going to make it less taxing. I just hope cross-class combos are still present. I really enjoyed having to use good teamwork to manage enemies (although it was rather lame to be attacked by waves of enemies dropping out of the sky after I thought the fight was over).

[Suko Reia]

I hate friendly fire but I understand the point to have it...

so I can live with it...

[Mathias]

Can you please elaborate on how players are being handcuffed? I don't understand

 

I have big AoE spells that I can't use because it would hit my party as well. So I gotta pick something else. In fact I shouldn't have spent those talent points on those spells if I'm never gonna use them. If I'm gonna play on Nightmare, that limits to type of builds I can go for. That's handcuffing to me.

 

 

Good lord, OP.

It's called NIGHTMARE for a reason.

 

Either get ****** good and deal with the FF or turn down the difficulty.

 

 

I've already beaten Nightmare three times on DA:O and once on DA2. I am good, in fact i'm beastly at most games I play. But that doesn't mean I can't disagree with certain mechanics of a game. Friendly fire should be an option if you don't want to deal with the hassle. Because there's a difference between something that's a challenge, and something that's a hassle.

 

 

Having options is a good thing people. As criticized as Thief was, it was praised for how many different options for increasing/decreasing the game's difficulty there were. If you want FF, you can have it, and for those who don't want to deal with it they can turn it off.