322 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

I'm not quite sure what "player reaction" means there. You liked the fight being based on twitch skills?

[robertthebard]

Gotta love the waffling: From "They would never do that" to "That's not a good example". The fact is, there are more than a couple of examples in the previous games where you are cutscened into a combat that you may or may not be prepared to deal with, and some of them are unavoidable.

However, I'll use a more simplistic one: The Alpha Ogre in Ostagar, where Flemeth has to rescue the Warden and Alistair. If Shield Bash isn't Al's bar, and the mage doesn't have paralysis, characters that get grabbed can be finished. This is a fight that, on the first run, you have no idea what's in there, you are cutscened in, and there's no way out. If you were limited to skills you could use by the UI, it could get pear shaped really fast, causing a reload. If one isn't proficient at setting up tactics, it could get pear shaped really fast. Yet we have people claiming that BioWare would never put us in these kinds of situations where not having access to trained abilities would matter? They can do it, they have done it, and they will likely do it again.

[Reaverwind]

Gotta love the waffling: From "They would never do that" to "That's not a good example". The fact is, there are more than a couple of examples in the previous games where you are cutscened into a combat that you may or may not be prepared to deal with, and some of them are unavoidable.

However, I'll use a more simplistic one: The Alpha Ogre in Ostagar, where Flemeth has to rescue the Warden and Alistair. If Shield Bash isn't Al's bar, and the mage doesn't have paralysis, characters that get grabbed can be finished. This is a fight that, on the first run, you have no idea what's in there, you are cutscened in, and there's no way out. If you were limited to skills you could use by the UI, it could get pear shaped really fast, causing a reload. If one isn't proficient at setting up tactics, it could get pear shaped really fast. Yet we have people claiming that BioWare would never put us in these kinds of situations where not having access to trained abilities would matter? They can do it, they have done it, and they will likely do it again.

 

People ought to have figured out by now that the cutscene prelude is Bioware's MO for any major fight. Now, they may shock me and move away from that nonsense, but they seem to be overly fond of delivering a cinematic experience, like it or not.

[robertthebard]

People ought to have figured out by now that the cutscene prelude is Bioware's MO for any major fight. Now, they may shock me and move away from that nonsense, but they seem to be overly fond of delivering a cinematic experience, like it or not.

We have already seen an example that shows they haven't moved away from that, in one of the recent gameplay vids involving Leliana and Dorian.

[JeffZero]

I'm thankful they haven't.

[Sylvius the Mad]

BioWare's design almost always includes set-pieces where you can't avoid a fight, can't scout beforehand, and require tactics that are specific to that fight. Even better if it begins with a cutscene that leaves your PC out in the open while shutting off the exits behind you.

And we should raise a hue and cry every time they do it.

Because it's not okay.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I dislike the Rock Wraith fight because it relies on different mechanics from any other fight previously in the series.

I got to that fight, and I got killed by the AoE. I got killed a bunch of times by the AoE. And I never tried hiding behind the pillars, because I knew that AoE attacks in Dragon Age were not impeded by environmental obstacles. They never had been before (and I think they never were again).

That was tetrible design.

Now, to some degree the Broodmother did the same. There, there were attacking creatures (the tentacles) which couldn't move onto parts of the floor. The difference here is that this fight doesn't require that the player notice that. So I don't really mind the Broodmother fight.

But the Rock Wraith can't be beaten except by luck or metagaming.

[UniformGreyColor]

That severely limits the tactics aspect of the game, though. Unless you pick alot of passive abilities, and ones that enhances other abilities, there really isn't any point in having more than 8.

 

I don't know if BW is thinking about this, but it looks like when going up the skill tree there are both passives and non-passives that you have to go through in order to get the. hopefully, ultimate skill or passive in the tree.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't know if BW is thinking about this, but it looks like when going up the skill tree there are both passives and non-passives that you have to go through in order to get the. hopefully, ultimate skill or passive in the tree.

I would prefer shorter trees, but more of them, in order to eliminate the linear advancement.

[Wolfen09]

the only thing i see it being a major problem for is mages, as they have access to a ton more spells than the warriors and rogues who can survive with a small amount of skills and a ton of passives.  However, i really dont care that im limited to 8 abilities, i build strategies around what im given, if that means i screwed up by having a certain skill i dont need for a certain situation then it just adds an element of suspense.  means i screwed up and now i have to find a way to pull my ass out of the fire.  thats fun to me

[NRieh]

 

the only thing i see it being a major problem for is mages, as they have access to a ton more spells than the warriors and rogues who can survive with a small amount of skills and a ton of passives.

That's if they do have those 'tons of passives' and if they are allowed not to keep those passives hotkeyed. E.g. sometimes one needs attack speed, sometimes one needs crits\hits or armor penetration. Most common and essential passives are usually scripted to 'self-any' or 'enemy sighted' (can't remember the exact tactic phrasing), sometimes to other more specific conditions.

[Pasquale1234]

That's if they do have those 'tons of passives' and if they are allowed not to keep those passives hotkeyed. E.g. sometimes one needs attack speed, sometimes one needs crits\hits or armor penetration. Most common and essential passives are usually scripted to 'self-any' or 'enemy sighted' (can't remember the exact tactic phrasing), sometimes to other more specific conditions.

I think you may be confusing passives with sustains. IIRC, passives have historically been treated like permanent bonuses. There is no need to activate them once you've learned them.

-------------------

I'm guessing that the answer to the question posed by this thread is "yes". I would expect that the game will automatically adjust tactics any time the enabled (hotbar) abilities are changed, and perhaps present the tactics screen for the user to re-configure. IOW, it will auto-delete any abilities removed from the hotbar from the tactics configuration. Past games have always auto-updated the pre-programmed tactics selections (except custom) as the characters learned new abilities.

I would also like to suggest a possible reason for the 8-ability per character limit that has not yet been mentioned: memory management.

Frostbite 3 is a different animal with a different resident footprint, and requires a different approach to memory utilization. As I understand it, they are trying to avoid load screens and make the experience more seamless - which requires frequent dynamic loading of higher-res tiles and textures, objects, spawn points, etc., as the player approaches areas. And since DAI's world appears to be more populated than that of previous games - well, those rabbits, deer, birds, butterflies and their associated animations and fx all need some memory.

Each individual activated or sustained combat ability has associated logic, animations, fx, etc., that must be loaded into memory to be used. So - they've allocated memory for 32 for the player's party, and likely need some additional space for the enemies' combat abilities.

It's also possible that everything associated with combat is loaded on the fly - in which case, the 8-ability limit might represent as much data as they could load without the player experiencing lag when going into combat.

I also feel like I read somewhere that this game will have some non-combat abilities, so I'm wondering if there is a separate set of abilities that will be available when out of combat. If so, they would also require a chunk o memory.

Consider, too, the various operating environments they are expected to support. Consoles are known quantities; they know exactly what they have to work with in terms of resources. PCs vary widely, and developers are understandably keen to support as many configurations as they realistically can. You might have a tricked-out gaming rig that exceeds all of the minimum specs, but you can bet there will be a number of people who will try to play the game on underpowered machines, and pitch a fit and demand support when it doesn't work very well.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

the only thing i see it being a major problem for is mages, as they have access to a ton more spells than the warriors and rogues who can survive with a small amount of skills and a ton of passives.  However, i really dont care that im limited to 8 abilities, i build strategies around what im given, if that means i screwed up by having a certain skill i dont need for a certain situation then it just adds an element of suspense.  means i screwed up and now i have to find a way to pull my ass out of the fire.  thats fun to me

 

The Dragon Age team at Bioware is now part of the Qun and have caved in to the demands of the Qun. Hence, they are doing their best to subvert mages while proclaiming freedoms and choices. 

[EnduinRaylene]

That is a very good possibility for the 8 ability limit Pasquale. The PS3 and 360 are so far behind even middling PCs that it wouldn't be a surprise to find they are liability in some way or another in the design of the game. Up until the big marketing push with all the trailers and info we've had in the last few months I was quite reserved about DAI mainly due to the fact that I wasn't confident a cross gen title could deliver without significant sacrifices to run on last gen hardware. It had seemed like they found some magic to overcome this but the 8 ability limit may very well be that sacrifice. I mean they couldn't even have a holster mechanic in ME3 because of console limitations. Frostbite might be much better at scaling and streaming data than UE3, but there's only so much you can do with 8 year old hardware.

 

Still though, if the 8 abilities design choice was one they decided upon very early on and designed the gameplay around, I still think it could work out well if everything is appropriately crafted and balanced around it, or at least not be a problem and liability as so many people make it out to be. 

[LexXxich]

I have no words. No words!

[Pasquale1234]

That is a very good possibility for the 8 ability limit Pasquale. The PS3 and 360 are so far behind even middling PCs that it wouldn't be a surprise to find they are liability in some way or another in the design of the game.

It's also possible that a desire to support lesser PCs is part of that. Developers want their games to be accessible to as many users as possible, and always have to make compromises in what they might like to do with the game versus hardware limitations.
 

Up until the big marketing push with all the trailers and info we've had in the last few months I was quite reserved about DAI mainly due to the fact that I wasn't confident a cross gen title could deliver without significant sacrifices to run on last gen hardware. It had seemed like they found some magic to overcome this but the 8 ability limit may very well be that sacrifice.

It's still a choice. They could have supported more active combat abilities instead of, for example, 8 deer at the watering hole or having mud, sand, and grassy areas closely co-located. Exploration of a bigger, more interesting and varied world was something they clearly wanted to do in this title, so that in itself would implicate sacrifices in other areas.

I also have the impression that newer platforms will have higher-res graphics, and perhaps more objects in the world than older platforms. For example, the 8 deer at the watering hole on a PS4 might be 4 deer at the watering hole on a PS3.
 

Still though, if the 8 abilities design choice was one they decided upon very early on and designed the gameplay around, I still think it could work out well if everything is appropriately crafted and balanced around it, or at least not be a problem and liability as so many people make it out to be.

That would be my expectation. Really, what's the typical end-game level in these games - maybe 24ish or so? If a lot of the entries on the skill trees are passives and upgrades, the 8-ability limit might not be so limiting after all.

[LexXxich]

Not so limiting after all

In my opinion, no matter how much it restricts, it's still too much. Because in my opinion, there's no merit to a system that restricts already restricted things.

In case someone mentions Vancian casting, here's a counterpoint: wizards can choose from hundreds of spells. They can potentially have all the possible arcane spells in their spellbook. Their casting limits are the result of character attributes, and can be changed with character development and gear. No D&D-based CRPG restricts wizard's casting ability with UI.

[Alodar]

the only thing i see it being a major problem for is mages, as they have access to a ton more spells than the warriors and rogues who can survive with a small amount of skills and a ton of passives.  However, i really dont care that im limited to 8 abilities, i build strategies around what im given, if that means i screwed up by having a certain skill i dont need for a certain situation then it just adds an element of suspense.  means i screwed up and now i have to find a way to pull my ass out of the fire.  thats fun to me

 

Strategy is long term planning -- what enemies to fight, what groups to make alliances with, what resources to cultivate, what abilities you choose at level up.

Tactics are the methods you use to achieve your strategy.

 

 

So the only way you can build strategies around what you are given is to put thought into what abilities you choose when you level up. What situations could that ability be used in, how could it work with your other abilities.

 

 

So if you had a poor strategy, in your words "you screwed up by not choosing a skill for a certain situation", you would still have that level of suspense. It would still mean that "you screwed up and would have to find a way to pull your ass out of the fire". You would not be able to correct your strategic failure unto you leveled up and had the ability to choose a better strategy.

 

 

If there were no limitation of 8 abilities per combat you would still be able to enjoy the same fun. As long as encounters were well designed and challenged you what you chose a level up matters.

 

 

The limitation of 8 abilities per combat nullifies your strategic choices. You built resources that you arbitrarily can't use for the up coming battle. So it's not strategic.

It is not tactical either because it is a removal of tactical options for no other purpose than to make you less effective in the upcoming encounter.

 

 

It's the equivalent of fighting with your sword in the wrong hand so your not as effective against your enemies.

Or a mage choosing to only target enemies that are wearing red.

Neither of those are tactical or strategic choices.

 

 

What you describe as fun can be achieved without an arbitrary restriction of 8 abilities

If BioWare chooses to design a variety of interesting and challenging encounters you would get the play style you enjoy.

.

 

 

Having 14 abilities and only being able to access 8 in a given combat is the equivalent of characters closing their eyes before the encounter because if they had them open saving the world would be just too darn easy -- and that's certainly not fun for me.

[Pasquale1234]

Strategy is long term planning -- what enemies to fight, what groups to make alliances with, what resources to cultivate, what abilities you choose at level up.
Tactics are the methods you use to achieve your strategy.
 
So the only way you can build strategies around what you are given is to put thought into what abilities you choose when you level up. What situations could that ability be used in, how could it work with your other abilities.

These 2 paragraphs - copied directly from the post as is - are inconsistent with each other. The first lists multiple strategic elements the game provides, and the second claims that you have only 1.

You've also neglected to mention anything having to do with party balance - the fact that you can, for example, have one follower specialize in fire and ice while another specializes in spirit and arcane - or invest one in crowd control skills while another is pure DPS - and then choose which followers you take along for any given quest or exploration trip.

It looks to me like this game will offer abilities and strategic choices that we've not seen in a DA game before. An ice wall barrier - that's new, as is the idea of being able to roll to avoid taking damage. A decision of whether to try to save a keep or village could also have long-term strategic impact - not only affecting your reputation, but also determine access to resources. If, for example, a master craftsman, potion-maker, or other supply chain perishes in the village because you did not save it, that decision could carry some hefty long-term impact.
 

The limitation of 8 abilities per combat nullifies your strategic choices. You built resources that you arbitrarily can't use for the up coming battle. So it's not strategic.

Rather than nullifying your strategic choices, it adds weight to them. You still decide which abilities to activate. Do you upgrade a skill you already have, or take the first level of a different skill - and if your hotbar is already full, which other ability will you remove from it?
 

It is not tactical either because it is a removal of tactical options for no other purpose than to make you less effective in the upcoming encounter.

Whether anything is removed depends on how many unique abilities you have at the time, and whether your hotbar is already full. Whether it makes you less effective in the upcoming battle depends on the encounter and which abilities you have available. Except for the encounter design, these things are all still your choices.

Multiplied for the fact that you make those choices for all companions and raised to the nth power to account for all of the permutations of possible party composition from which you can choose.

You continually refer to the limit of 8 as "arbitrary" - and I feel pretty sure that it is anything but. A limit of 10 might be arbitrary, but any value that is an exponent of 2 typically has programming reasons behind it.
 

Having 14 abilities and only being able to access 8 in a given combat

We don't really know whether it's even possible to have that many unique abilities by end-game. The skill trees appear to have passives that you must take to gain access to other unique abilities. We don't know anything about the potency of base attacks, weapons, upgrades, or anything else at this point. Given the limits of stamina / mana / potions along with cooldowns, you might not be able to spam a lot of abilities in combat, anyway.

I've been playing a lot of Dragon's Dogma lately, which limits you to 3 abilities per weapon (6 for mages and sorcerers). That game not only has 5 unique archmagicks (elements) with each enemy type having various weaknesses / resistances to them, but also has some enemies nearly impervious to magick while others are highly resistant to physical damage. Add to that the fact that the only party member you can control is the PC (the other 3 are pawns controlled by AI), the fact that encounters often have combinations of enemies all with different strengths and weaknesses, and you have a game that provides some unique challenges.

When you don't have the exact set of abilities ideal for a specific encounter at your fingertips, you have to do the best you can with what you have available - and that makes for a much more tactical experience.

[AlanC9]

That is a very good possibility for the 8 ability limit Pasquale. The PS3 and 360 are so far behind even middling PCs that it wouldn't be a surprise to find they are liability in some way or another in the design of the game.

I hadn't thought about that aspect. It's been stated that ME3 didn't have holstering because the new combat animations used up all the memory on consoles.

[EnduinRaylene]

I hadn't thought about that aspect. It's been stated that ME3 didn't have holstering because the new combat animations used up all the memory on consoles.

It's definitely a possibility, but still just speculation, especially because DAO and DA2 were able to support all those various animations and effects for the different spells/abilities on the older consoles. We have no idea how FB3 streams and loads data into memory compared to UE3 or the Eclipse engine, so those kinds of things might not be a factor at all. If there ever was a culprit outside it being simply a design choice I'd say this is the best bet compared to controller or MP limitations dictating the design, but still it's far from confirmed.

 

Even then though, I'm willing to bet if they were faced with hardware limitations they chose 8 abilities purposefully still, and from what we know have clearly made it a core element in the overall redesign of the combat system. I can't imagine 8, or rather 32, abilities was the ceiling of what they could load into the memory at any one time, but they chose that for design reasons over other limits like 10 or 12.

[robertthebard]

It's definitely a possibility, but still just speculation, especially because DAO and DA2 were able to support all those various animations and effects for the different spells/abilities on the older consoles. We have no idea how FB3 streams and loads data into memory compared to UE3 or the Eclipse engine, so those kinds of things might not be a factor at all. If there ever was a culprit outside it being simply a design choice I'd say this is the best bet compared to controller or MP limitations dictating the design, but still it's far from confirmed.
 
Even then though, I'm willing to bet if they were faced with hardware limitations they chose 8 abilities purposefully still, and from what we know have clearly made it a core element in the overall redesign of the combat system. I can't imagine 8, or rather 32, abilities was the ceiling of what they could load into the memory at any one time, but they chose that for design reasons over other limits like 10 or 12.

So what you're saying is, despite all the claims made to the contrary, the limitation is likely due to consoles? Let's take a look at this idea:

Radial menu for skill use: out.

MP limited to 4 active skills and 4 potion slots: in.

(But Rob, why is this important to the discussion? Simply because they felt that it would be too cumbersome to make the limit 8 for MP with a controller, due to hardware limitations, ie, you can only access 8 "action" keys on a controller. 4 for skills, and 4 for potions.)

Total number of skills accessible via a controller: 8, including the modifier key.

Hardware == parts of the machine that you can actually touch, as opposed to software, which is code. So, a controller is hardware.

Looking at it in context, with all the factors figured in, you're likely correct, partially. Hardware limitations, in this case, the controller, w/out a radial menu for skills, is the logical reason we're limited to 8 skills on the PC. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky they didn't limit everyone to 4?

[EnduinRaylene]

So what you're saying is, despite all the claims made to the contrary, the limitation is likely due to consoles? Let's take a look at this idea:

Radial menu for skill use: out.

MP limited to 4 active skills and 4 potion slots: in.

(But Rob, why is this important to the discussion? Simply because they felt that it would be too cumbersome to make the limit 8 for MP with a controller, due to hardware limitations, ie, you can only access 8 "action" keys on a controller. 4 for skills, and 4 for potions.)

Total number of skills accessible via a controller: 8, including the modifier key.

Hardware == parts of the machine that you can actually touch, as opposed to software, which is code. So, a controller is hardware.

Looking at it in context, with all the factors figured in, you're likely correct, partially. Hardware limitations, in this case, the controller, w/out a radial menu for skills, is the logical reason we're limited to 8 skills on the PC. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky they didn't limit everyone to 4?

Not at all likely, I clearly said it was speculation and didn't hold up very well when taking into consideration the fact that the Eclipse engine didn't have that problem so it would be odd that FB3 would. Simply put it's a more plausible reason for the 8 ability limit, had it not simply been a design choice, compared to just saying it's the controller's or MP's fault.

 

You keep putting the cart before the horse and ignoring a wealth of context and information we have about the game. Controller limitations may have been the reason, or a reason, why the limit is 8 and not 10 or 12, but the idea behind the limit more than likely came well before the number itself, as in it wasn't due to the console's controller or MP.

 

There are two scenarios:

 

1) There was a hardware limitation, though rather unlikely, that prevented accessing all abilities on the last gen consoles and thus required a limit on the active number of abilities at one time, say 40-50 was the max, meaning 2-4 abilities per character would be left on the radial wheel. They then decided, probably after much debate and a wide variety of reasons, that 8 abilities was the optimal number, possibly in part due to the console controllers being able to accommodate all 8 at once without the use of the radial menu.

 

2) It was a design choice, not a limitation due to hardware, where they came out from the start with the idea to limit the number of active abilities and then, once again after much debate and a wide variety of reasons, decided that 8 abilities was the optimal number of active abilities and was possibly influenced by console controllers over 10 or 12 abilities.

 

In both instances the choice to limit abilities came before the actual number. Your theory is:

 

1) Someone found they could remap the controllers and get two more hotkeyed abilities bumping the total from 6 to 8 and then made a huge and sweeping decision to limit everyone to just 8 based on that alone, despite the prior two games giving total access to all the abilities, on every platform even with consoles only having immediate access to just 6 abilities. In addition this was also possibly done to make the game more action friendly, despite the fact they brought back the tactical camera as well as expanding it on consoles for the first time, still are using the radial menu for potions and party commands, took away most healing spells and all around have made changes that make the game less action oriented in many respects compared to DA2.

 

2)MP can't rely on radial menu since it can't pause the game and so they have to rely on what is immediately available to them, which is a max of 8 hotkeyed abilities and potions on console controllers. Then they decided "Hey why not limit the SP to just 8 abilities too despite not having any of the issues MP has in regards to using a radial wheel to access other actions and even though we'll still keep the radial menu for commands and access to potions." An MP mode that they made very clear unlike its sister mode from ME3 was completely and totally separate from the SP mode and had no bearing whatsoever on your progress or ending in that part of the game.

 

It doesn't add up, especially the MP angle, neither makes any real sense or seems plausible when everything else we know about the game is taken into consideration. 

[UniformGreyColor]

I would prefer shorter trees, but more of them, in order to eliminate the linear advancement.

 

I partially agree with that and I understand where you are coming from, however, another way they could do it is similar to the way Skyrim did their perk system (though I have largely forgotten what the vanilla perk trees looked like). The similarity I am trying to draw is that they could have instead made a root system (regarding an actual tree mind you) rather than a hierarchy with only two branches with little to no specialization within a certain branch. Why they chose to do it the way they did IDK, but I would guess it has something to do with making things simpler and more compact rather than making things more complex and elaborate.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I partially agree with that and I understand where you are coming from, however, another way they could do it is similar to the way Skyrim did their perk system (though I have largely forgotten what the vanilla perk trees looked like). The similarity I am trying to draw is that they could have instead made a root system (regarding an actual tree mind you) rather than a hierarchy with only two branches with little to no specialization within a certain branch. Why they chose to do it the way they did IDK, but I would guess it has something to do with making things simpler and more compact rather than making things more complex and elaborate.

What they've done, though, is constrain the number of different possible builds.