21 réponses à ce sujet

[Bayonet Hipshot]

I was playing Skyrim with the Requiem mod and it was a fun, challenging and immersive experience for me.

 

However, the way the mod altered the game difficulties got me thinking about game difficulties in RPG and how they can be improved and added upon. 

 

For the sake of  discussion, let us just stick with Dragon Age. In previous Dragon Age games, there were difficulty levels where each level came with a certain fixed presets and values that we, the player do not know beforehand. 

 

What Requiem did was to do away with fixed difficulty levels altogether and instead introduce adjustable bars for things like "Damage dealt", "Damage taken", etc. 

 

I was thinking that perhaps Dragon Age should follow this.

 

So instead of Easy, Normal, Hard, Nightmare...we have adjustable bars for specific things. Things such as damage dealt, damage taken, friendly fire damage, health pools as well as toggle-able options for things like enemy using advanced tactics, environmental effects, etc.

 

Which means when you open the game menu, there will be a section devoted to difficulty alone. There we will have a main bar which denotes difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard, Nightmare, Custom) and below them you will have the adjustable bars and toggle-able options for the list of things I stated in the previous paragraph.

 

This means you have two options. One is to just select a game difficulty and go with it OR you could make your own custom difficulty and play the game your own way. 

 

Thoughts ? 

 

 

[Wulfram]

I definitely want seperate control for friendly fire.  The rest might be cool - often I'd rather see increased damage for enemies rather than increased hitpoints that can turn the game into a slog - but it's friendly fire that I'd really want

[Althix]

worst example of how you can change difficulty for the game is DA2.

 

in DAO however... well in some situations you really should use some tactical approach, but such situations were very rare.

 

Even latest Dark Souls 2 game is... lacking difficulty or rather challenge...

 

Skyrim with a mod is not very good example either, because game is bad.

 

Damage taken and damage done, health pool or friendly fire are not the things which may or may not make game challenging. It's more about how combat is designed, group compostion of the enemy, what enemy can do (like types of enemy.) Tactics must be included in every aspect of the game, from a character creation and group composition to how you level you character. Who you target first and how you protect yourself.

 

In general diversity of options available to a player and to his enemy, and how both parties utilize these options - this what make combat process fun in my opinion. Sliders for damage done and received won't do a trick in terms of challenge and difficulty.

[TurretSyndrome]

Being able to tinker with certain parts of difficulty is something that I certainly like to see in DAI. However, since achievements will be involved for playing on a certain level of difficulty, I believe the "stock" difficulties that come with the game should be left alone. You will still be able to change certain parts of them however, but the moment you do that, they become "custom", regardless of what difficulty setting you chose to modify.

 

For example, lets say you chose Nightmare. You switch friendly Fire off and it immediately switches from Nightmare to Custom while keeping the rest of the settings of the difficulty mode intact. Kind of like how default tactics work.

[tempest238]

Although it sounds like an intersting idea. I personally wouldnt use it. I play through on normal or easy until i have played and seen as many of the different stories and outcomes as possible. For DA2 I have 4 complete play throughs, one for each class and one on the hardest difficulty. For DAO, I have i think 5 or 6 playthroughs. Not even all of the origin stories yet. So I doubt ill play the hardest on DAO at this point in the games life.

 

In all honesty tho. At this point in DAI's developement. Your idea has like a 5% chance on making it into the game. You would be best off suggesting this for a future game.

With just over 5 months left before launch. With 1 to 1 1/2 months for certification and actual physical production of the games disc formats. That leaves 3 to 4 months for bioware to finish up the game. And any AAA developer is going to leave plenty of time to debug and fix errors in the game. So I honestly think at this point in the games developement, bioware is done adding in new code to the game. They should be focusing on fixing the game. Those developers not tasked with doing so, have probably started the first DLC already.

Not only that. But I am willing to bet they have a small team working hard to make sure the is 0 errors in whatever gameplay they wish to show at e3.

[BrotherDragon2]

After needing a break from DA I played XCOM: Enemy Unknown and they had an interesting solution to this. After a player had completed one game at hard or higher level the new game setup allowed a whole host of customization settings including advanced flanking, more variable damage and many others. I found this really added to the replay interest in the game. Better yet, this feature was added for free after the game was released! Definitely worth looking at.
______________________________
"I'm trying to think but nothin' happens" -Jerome "Curly" Howard

[BrotherDragon2]

A follow up on my last post, the story of how XCOM: Enemy Unknown came to be is worth retelling. Jake's goal was as much as anything to create a game that he would himself still be playing ten years from now.

http://www.polygon.c...raxis-sid-meier
______________________________
"I'm trying to think but nothin' happens" -Jerome "Curly" Howard

[NoForgiveness]

Being able to tinker with certain parts of difficulty is something that I certainly like to see in DAI. However, since achievements will be involved for playing on a certain level of difficulty, I believe the "stock" difficulties that come with the game should be left alone. You will still be able to change certain parts of them however, but the moment you do that, they become "custom", regardless of what difficulty setting you chose to modify.

 

For example, lets say you chose Nightmare. You switch friendly Fire off and it immediately switches from Nightmare to Custom while keeping the rest of the settings of the difficulty mode intact. Kind of like how default tactics work.

 

This. I don't care about changing the difficulty, personally. But if people do actually want it then this seems the best way to implement it. 
 

[Al Foley]

I would actually really love this, or just the combination of two as people have mentioned, I am worried about the health per se...and if you have the 'Casual' difficulty have it so your health recharges and you get more access to potions, but then the enemies be really easy peasy and then you don't ever die and you do not have to use tactics and get immersed, then what do you do?  But then when you take it up to Normal then suddenly everything can kill you easily and your health does not rechrage so you cannot get through the game and it becomes a chore...what do you do?  I would like this.  May not ever use it because I am intrigued to see how they balance the game for no recharging health, but then if I have to run back to camp every five minutes and its becoming a chore, I might.  ANd I know of a lot of people who might really appreciate this as an option.  AN option only. 

[Tielis]

With the way they keep reiterating the fact that they've made things more challenging, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm even going to be able to enjoy it, or whether I'll simply be so frustrated that I won't even be able to play.

 

I really hope they put in a "Narrative" mode like they did with ME3.  I play for the story and the characters and that's it.  I'd skip combat completely if I could.

[aTigerslunch]

I had an issue pertaining to this, bound by blood is good to play as a warrior but not so much in other classes. They hit too hard in medium difficulty. If slider was used then enjoying the story would of be good without loosing too much immersion. Needs a balance but I think they already have all this setup and may learn more soon. The slider difficulty could be useful though. Id not want it to be too easy nor too hard. The enemy are set levels last I heard.

[ladyoflate]

With the way they keep reiterating the fact that they've made things more challenging, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm even going to be able to enjoy it, or whether I'll simply be so frustrated that I won't even be able to play.

 

I really hope they put in a "Narrative" mode like they did with ME3.  I play for the story and the characters and that's it.  I'd skip combat completely if I could.

 

I think someone said on Twitter that there would be no story mode because 'we want it to be challenging'. Which sort of misses the point of it for me, since I have a pretty low stress threshold for things that are supposed to be fun, and I'd be reading a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book if I could.

[In Exile]

I think someone said on Twitter that there would be no story mode because 'we want it to be challenging'. Which sort of misses the point of it for me, since I have a pretty low stress threshold for things that are supposed to be fun, and I'd be reading a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book if I could.

 

We'll see how that plays out in practice. This may be like TW2 marketing, i.e., catering to the idiosyncrasies of the audience most likely to explode with internet hate until release despite not introducing many of the features they're asking for in the game. 

[TurretSyndrome]

I think someone said on Twitter that there would be no story mode because 'we want it to be challenging'. Which sort of misses the point of it for me, since I have a pretty low stress threshold for things that are supposed to be fun, and I'd be reading a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book if I could.

 

From a player perspective, what's "fun" is subjective, so what you said is true. But when I think from a developer's perspective, I get what they're saying too. I mean, say you create a game and you put a lot of effort into all its elements. How would you feel if all of a sudden, people want an option to what parts they want to play? To you, it's all part of the experience. To them, they want  to experience the parts they like. 

 

So I understand if people want a "Narrative" mode where there is combat but it's really easy. But a story mode where there is absolutely no combat? I'm not so sure. There's also the argument "but if you're making the combat so easy that you'll win no matter what, what's the point of having even that 'minimum combat mode' in the first place?" Well, that's where my dilemma begins.

[The Elder King]

For now we know that FF is indipendant from the difficulty level, so you'll can set it how you want with every level. At last it was like this during PAX EAST.
There was a mention had the different treshold of health regeneration might be indipendant from the difficulty level, but it's not sure, since the opposite (tresholds being different based on the DL) was said as well.
I'd like if we can have freedom in customizing the difficulty levels with indipendant bars.

[Deflagratio]

Never been a fan of the "Sliders for everything" solution personally, it just strikes me as a suggestion born of entitlement. For my what little worth my opinion is on the matter, I prefer pre-sets because I'm a developer-side sympathizer at heart. I leave the art to the artists, plus iterating on difficulty so gradually as "Sliders for Everything" doesn't actually push any challenge, and gives you no control benchmark.

 

Now, all that said, I'm not going to scream in opposition of it, Mount & Blade had difficulty sliders for just about everything, and my solution was to max them all and put the game at whatever the max difficulty % turned out to be (128% or 148% or something weird like that, I could never find a setting that put it higher).

[AkiKishi]

If you remove combat from DA it becomes a very short game. Bioware games are not that hard anyway. Try playing Bound by Flame or Orcs and Men if you want to see a hard RPG. Even the easiest level will give Insanity or Very Hard a run for its money.

 

You can make the game as easy as you like and as long as it does not creep into the higher levels no one will mind, but removing the option for combat changes the game fundamentally. 

[simpatikool]

I like the games to be challenging. What I really did not like was Skyrims Master etc settings. All it did was give the enemy a zillion hit points. I much prefer enemies who use various tactics to take me down. I like the challenge of those types of combats, it is like a puzzle in a way.

[Orihime]

im not as epic with difficulty basicly i play easy aka casual

 

its how i roll x]

[Deflagratio]

I like the games to be challenging. What I really did not like was Skyrims Master etc settings. All it did was give the enemy a zillion hit points. I much prefer enemies who use various tactics to take me down. I like the challenge of those types of combats, it is like a puzzle in a way.

 

 

Actually Skyrim's difficulty didn't increase enemy HP, it simply changed damage scaling globally. At Master the Player deals 0.5x Damage and takes 2.0x damage. On the newer Legendary Setting, that is 0.25x and 3.0x. So basically if you have a Sword with 400Damage rating, each hit only does 100 damage.

 

The huge problem with this global scaling is how it crippled certain playstyles. Destruction magic for example, doesn't have the same degree of scalable damage on the player end (abundant Gear that boosts damage and smithing), while spells from the Illusion school are completely immune to the difficulty scaling. A Frenzy Spell cast at Legendary is arguably more powerful than a Frenzy spell cast on Novice, because you are gaining a temporary ally that's scaled to the Legendary difficulty.

[Al Foley]

Actually Skyrim's difficulty didn't increase enemy HP, it simply changed damage scaling globally. At Master the Player deals 0.5x Damage and takes 2.0x damage. On the newer Legendary Setting, that is 0.25x and 3.0x. So basically if you have a Sword with 400Damage rating, each hit only does 100 damage.

 

The huge problem with this global scaling is how it crippled certain playstyles. Destruction magic for example, doesn't have the same degree of scalable damage on the player end (abundant Gear that boosts damage and smithing), while spells from the Illusion school are completely immune to the difficulty scaling. A Frenzy Spell cast at Legendary is arguably more powerful than a Frenzy spell cast on Novice, because you are gaining a temporary ally that's scaled to the Legendary difficulty.

....that...explains a lot.