820 réponses à ce sujet

[cactusberry]

I'm fine with how it looks. I wasn't expecting a lot of ability slots, so no surprise there. I might end up using a controller, but I haven't decided yet.

[Joseph Warrick]

It's strange to see the Keep-style icon for Solas alongside the comic-style icon for Blackwall and Cole. Are they independently switchable?

[Deflagratio]

The 8 ability limitation is bad. No character should ever have an ability earned through levelling up and spending points that then cannot be used simply because you've run out of power slots to put it in.

 

Origins was a PC game with a console port. It seems we've now reversed the priority, and Inq will be a console game with a PC port, bound by the limitations of a damn controller. I don't think it is an accident that this info was revealed at the same time as the Keep--the Keep is delightful, sure to get a ton of deserved positive attention, which will serve to distract from the predictably negative reaction to the gimped PC control scheme.

 

 

I believe it's been established without want of any more information that the control scheme and ability limitations doesn't have anything to do with the consoles, as the previous games did not have the limitation.

 

It's strictly a design choice you can agree or disagree with, but both the radial menu and the ability slots have been tooled in a way that defines specific roles in a more narrow spectrum. D&D has spellbook limitations, Dark Souls has Attunement slot limitation. DA:I is hardly the first game to take this direction.

[Oloos]

the gimped PC control scheme.

 

A UI is not a control scheme. Nor gimped.

 

We are in front of a gameplay decision, and the UI is wrapped around. Not the other way.

 

 

As for the limitation of the 8 slots, i must say that i just checked my DA2 characters (for the Keep but still) and what i saw is that none of my characters, nor my companions had more than 9 or 10 abilities in the quickbar. So... Well, 8 will not be a huge change from DA2.

 

And by the way, planning a build of 8 abilities in a quickbar is a very fun thing to do in Guild Wars, even if DAI won't have as many abilities available than GW, i think it would still give us some interesting decisions to make depending the oponents.

[Fredvdp]

I think they're making a mistake and that they know it's a mistake. Otherwise they would have told us about this a long time ago.

 

The biggest issue to me is that Frostbite 3 is very difficult to mod. If someone manages to mod the game files to allow for more abilities during combat, then I'll name my Inquisitor after them.

[Illyria God King of the Primordium]

The 8 ability limitation is bad. No character should ever have an ability earned through levelling up and spending points that then cannot be used simply because you've run out of power slots to put it in.

 

Origins was a PC game with a console port. It seems we've now reversed the priority, and Inq will be a console game with a PC port, bound by the limitations of a damn controller. I don't think it is an accident that this info was revealed at the same time as the Keep--the Keep is delightful, sure to get a ton of deserved positive attention, which will serve to distract from the predictably negative reaction to the gimped PC control scheme.

Oh lordy here we go.  

 

Allow me to make similar comments to those above me - assuming that the max level is 30, and you play a human mage with a tome of arcane lore or two, then you probably have a max of 33-34ish ability POINTS.  Assuming you upgrade each of your abilities then by the end of the game you have a max, MAX of about 14 abilities.  That's not a lot, and 8 is a goodly percentage of them.  

 

Also, as the controller could have had radial access (a la ME), I'm not sure where your assertion that consoles are those this move is for comes from.  

[Boss Fog]

I think overall the UI looks fine, however it seems like they are wasting actionbar slots with the PC commands (the far right slots) and potion slots.  They could've easily made the PC commands into keybinds instead of forcing them on the actionbar.  Not a real big fan of this design.  

[Jester]

Alright, after my initial outrage about 8 slots for abilities, it's time to cool down and comment on the rest.

 

1. Mana/stamina and health bars:

They should decide on one system and stick with it. Either do stamina and health both around the portrait (like in DA:O), or make stamina to be a separate bar, under health bar (like DA2). Combining both systems in such a weird way is confusing and difficult to read. 

The health bar itself has a strange choice of colours and design. Why fragmented bar, and why is it green?

 

2. Character potraits:

I actually really like this design, it's coherent with graphical style that they've introduced in DA2 during Varric's between-acts transitions. It seems to be the same style as DA Keep. It looks good and I like it very much.

 

3. Potion slots:

Three slots for potions seem suitable at first glance (health, lyrium/stamina and 1 more), but when you consider just how many different potions, poisons, bombs and things like that DA2 introduced, it just doesn't seem to be enough. I seriously doubt that they'll cripple crafting, so it might be hard to actually find enough space to use different potions or poisons/bombs. I realize, that each character has 3 slots, but probably each character ill need health and lyrium/stamina potions. I'm sceptical so far, we'll see how it actually works in-game. 

 

4. The visual design:

Quickbar looks aesthetically pleasing, at least to me (looks cool and clean it other words). The empty bar above skills looks like experience bar. Minimap looks fine as well. I'm not sure whether this magnifying glass (Tab) is necessary here, previous titles worked just fine without something like that taking space on the screen. 

 

well if DA2 can be used as a example, i just loaded up a post-ending save and even by using every single skill book and potion in the game you end up with 10-12 activated abilities

 

True enough. But you also had probably 2-4 sustained abilities. And level cap in DA2 is probably lower than in DA:I. I mean, Dragon Age 2 is about 50 hours long for completionist? My first playthrough with MotA DLC (no Legacy yet) netted 65 hours. I skipped 2-3 side quests, but struggled heavily with combat on Nightmare, due to my inexperience. 

DA:I on the other hand is supposed to be 150 hours for completionist. Let's call it 120 hours for doing all side quests and main story but without finding all collectibles/stufff like that (sounds reasonable). This is still at least twice as long as DA2. So gaining more abilities/levels would be justified.

[Krazy Krazer]

Yeh, I also checked my Dragon Age 2 save, I'm a level 26 mage and I have about 10 active abilities and 1 sustained.

[Degenerate Rakia Time]

True enough. But you also had probably 2-4 sustained abilities. And level cap in DA2 is probably lower than in DA:I. I mean, Dragon Age 2 is about 50 hours long for completionist? My first playthrough with MotA DLC (no Legacy yet) netted 65 hours. I skipped 2-3 side quests, but struggled heavily with combat on Nightmare, due to my inexperience. 

DA:I on the other hand is supposed to be 150 hours for completionist. Let's call it 120 hours for doing all side quests and main story but without finding all collectibles/stufff like that (sounds reasonable). This is still at least twice as long as DA2. So gaining more abilities/levels would be justified.

DA2 has no hard level cap but the max you could reach is 27, according to the Raptr Q&A from july DAI has a hard cap of 25-30 (i guess it still wasnt set at the time)

[Dunbartacus]

The 8 ability limitation is bad. No character should ever have an ability earned through levelling up and spending points that then cannot be used simply because you've run out of power slots to put it in.

This is your opinion on a conscious design decision made by Bioware. I for one am optimistic about it which is my opinion and neither of us will know which is correct objectively speaking likely until the games released.

[Kingthlayer]

Didn't they pretty much announce 8 ability slots months ago when they were showing off consoles?  Did the PC gamers here really think they were so special that BioWare was going to change a major aspect of their game just for them?

 

I'm no fan at all of not being able to use my full ability rotation at all times, but this isn't new news, it's old, I dealt with it months ago.  It's not that way because BioWare is still making this game on the 360 or whatever, it's a choice made by BioWare, is it the wrong choice?  Yes it is, but at the end of the day they made that choice and they're sticking with it.

 

And regardless of BioWare's choice, somebody will find a way to mod the UI and allow us PC gamers to use our full ability pool at all times instead of being arbitrarily limited.

[riverbanks]

Stopped reading the other thread when it descended into chaos, so forgive me if this has been asked before.

 

Have we discussed what the grey icons all are? I'm assuming the hand is our good old follow/hold position, and the horse head is maybe to summon our mount in the open. So what are the other three icons, the Inquisition symbol, the stop sign and the crosshair?

[FiveThreeTen]

The UI looks fine, but I don't think the menus will be too different from the console versions.

The 8 slot limit is a pretty big disappointment, but I am willing to go on the wait and see approach for now.    I will have to play the game to know if that feels like its too limiting.    I do know that ESO was fun enough at low levels when 5 slots was all you needed, but by the time you hit level 50 and had spent 100 hours doing the same animations OVER and OVER and OVER... it grew very tiresome.    It felt very handicapped and forcing you to play your character a specific way, because you didn't have space for abilities that were only marginally useful. 

^This. Feeling "handcuffed" is the perfect way to describe ESO leveling and ability gain. While we do have companions in DA as opposed to ESO to vary things a little, the 8 slots limit that we can't even change during combat is still a major disappointment for me atm.

[Krazy Krazer]

Stopped reading the other thread when it descended into chaos, so forgive me if this has been asked before.

 

Have we discussed what the grey icons all are? I'm assuming the hand is our good old follow/hold position, and the horse head is maybe to summon our mount in the open. So what are the other three icons, the Inquisition symbol, the stop sign and the crosshair?

 

I'd assume the first one is "move to","stop","cancel action", "move freely?"... guessing lol.

[EnduinRaylene]

DA2 has no hard level cap but the max you could reach is 27, according to the Raptr Q&A from july DAI has a hard cap of 25-30 (i guess it still wasnt set at the time)

As well I believe they stated a while ago that level progression will be quick at first but progressively harder as the game goes on. So levels 1-15 maybe rather quick but levels 16-25 might take just a long and then levels 26-30 might take longer than the preceding 25. So we might acquire close to 8 active abilities rather early in the game, but soon thereafter we may see level ups and ability points to spend less and less as the game goes on.

[Novos]

The UI seems fine. And i have decided not to extend the discussions on 8 ability limit until we see a more in depth combat demo or the game itself. While i think of it as a concerning decision, it may not come as bad as we speculate given the whole game is designed to compliment it.

 

I wonder if that camera is a fixed one or an adjustable one like it was before. I mean can we adjust zoom, angle and rotation and leave it there as we please for any desired situation ?

 

While it has been said that the whole game can be played like this, we only saw switching to third person view immideately in all of the footage available like if there is a toggle or something... 

[Mystranna Kelteel]

At this point my only real, viable concern is that they may change Sera's portrait.

 

 

Dear BioWare,

The above portrait is glorious.  If it is not in the final game PREORDER CANCELED

 

kthx

[Giltspur]

If encounters are designed to work with a variety of eight (really, 32) abilities, then choosing which eight (really, 32) abilities I'm going to use can feel another choice and help invest me in that character more since deciding on my key abilities is a form of character identification.  But if encounters are built on the assumption that you will be switching out your bar to new abilities to better counter what you learned while dying, that wouldn't be to my tastes.    Oftentimes with these design decisions I don't know what to say about them until I test them out in combination with all of the other features in the final game.  I'm not worried though.  I have a hard time imagining Bioware adding an encounter that I can't handle with whatever 32 abilities I have loaded up given that I would have a variety of encounters in mind when picking my 32 abilities.

[Cigne]

What I'd like to know, is there going to be an option for swapping weapons in the UI (like DAO) or will we have to go into the inventory menu (like DA2)?

[durasteel]

A UI is not a control scheme. Nor gimped.

 

We are in front of a gameplay decision, and the UI is wrapped around. Not the other way.

 

...

 

And by the way, planning a build of 8 abilities in a quickbar is a very fun thing to do in Guild Wars, even if DAI won't have as many abilities available than GW, i think it would still give us some interesting decisions to make depending the oponents.

 

In each of the previous DA games, you could use any ability a character had trained whenever you decided to do so. In this game, you're limited to 8. If you've trained 12 or 14 active abilities, then, you have 4 or 6 of them that you cannot use at any given time.

 

That's gimped.

 

And by the way, if there was one thing I would never have asked for by way of a change from DAO or DAII, it would be "please give us a reason to spend more time screwing around with our hotbars." Might be a very fun thing for you to do, but I'd rather just have all my abilities out there for me to use when I feel like it.

 

I'm hoping for an interface mod soon after release.

[Illyria God King of the Primordium]

Alright, after my initial outrage about 8 slots for abilities, it's time to cool down and comment on the rest.

 

1. Mana/stamina and health bars:

They should decide on one system and stick with it. Either do stamina and health both around the portrait (like in DA:O), or make stamina to be a separate bar, under health bar (like DA2). Combining both systems in such a weird way is confusing and difficult to read. 

The health bar itself has a strange choice of colours and design. Why fragmented bar, and why is it green?

 

Noticed this getting some flak, if I may respond?  

 

I like the bars being separate - it allows for quick and easy identification of both without much trouble.  Having them side by side led to me (in DA2) constantly worrying about their ratio to each other, and in DAO a friend of mine kept on fearing she was on low health when she was in fact on low stamina/mana.  

 

The green I think is because green looks better in a more natural landscape than red.  Red fit with the more brown/grey colour palatte of Origins and 2 - here the world seems much more...flourishing, and green proves more noticeable and unobtrusive.  The fragmentation is to allow health comparisons - presumably each fragment is a set amount, as some people (Blackwall) have far more fragments than others.  This is also better than DA2 as it allows for cross party total health comparisons without the 'why is Aveline's health bar covering half of my screen?' issue.  

[riverbanks]

...oh I just noticed the bookmarker thingies showing where Solas and Cole are queued to move. That is seriously useful. No more companions tripping all over each other because I forgot if I've already told someone to stand in the exact same location.

[durasteel]

...

 

Also, as the controller could have had radial access (a la ME), I'm not sure where your assertion that consoles are those this move is for comes from.  

 

The radial menu pauses the game. This is not the same team that created ME3, and this team clearly made the decision to emphasise the action over the tactical in the UI and control schemes by removing active abilities from the radial menu. They didn't just pull the number 8 out of their backsides, it reflects the buttons available on console controllers. 

 

They've tested and tweaked this, I assure you. In this process, they apparently determined that people using a controller prefered having 8 mapped abilities to using a radial menu for active abilities. 

 

So, when designing the PC interface for keyboard and mouse users, we see the same limitation of 8 active abilities. Now, I ask you... do you think the KB+M interface is limited to 8 slots because (a) "it's a fun tactical challenge;" or ( b ) because the console versions are limited to 8, and we wouldn't want to ship the game with an advantage for PC gamers?

[Novos]

If so; they really seem ugly to me. I think the art they use for this purpose on the controller ui is way better than this...