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[robertthebard]

A good example of this is the Lightning ability chain in Origins. Four spells for Lightning, but here's what they do:
 
1. Lightning Damage.
2. Conal Lightning Damage.
3. AOE Lightning damage (can spell combo into SotC)
4. Lighting damage that is AOE dependent on enemies nearby.
 
Here's the Lightning Bolt ability in Inquisition:
 
1. Lightning damage that also paralyzes with the length of paralysis dependent on number of nearby enemies and gives enemy Shocked status effect (my supposition: which is a status effect for CCCing)
 
By the Origins system, if an enemy was Resistant to Lightning 2 of those spells was useless, and the other 2 kinda are as well. But with this new system it also paralyzes which can be very useful against enemy lieutenants AND it sets up a CCC for great damage, possibly regardless of elemental affinity.

Unless being immune to lightning means they're immune to the effects? If a mob is immune to cold, is cone of cold going to freeze it, or tickle it? I mean, that is a side effect of cone of cold, aside from direct damage, it also created Brittle. But if the mob's immune to it, you're not getting the brittle, you can't freeze/burn/shock something that's immune to the element.

[Morroian]

Honestly, I suspect changing abilities might only be necessary on Nightmare, and preferred on Hard. I can see BioWare overselling the tactical necessity...I can't see them making encounters unmanageable on anything other than the hardest difficulty.

 

Its not primarily a matter of whether its needed its  more around choice in a rpg and the lack of it and variety in combat, its fun to use all those difference abilities in games where encounter design and tactical complexity is a weak area. Unless Bioware have suddenly improved in these areas even from the DA2 DLC (which were a big improvement from DA2 itself) then it won't be made up by having those fun choices.

 

Also I note that romances get a relatively detailed forum post but nothing detailed on this yet.

[Innsmouth Dweller]

Unless being immune to lightning means they're immune to the effects? If a mob is immune to cold, is cone of cold going to freeze it, or tickle it? I mean, that is a side effect of cone of cold, aside from direct damage, it also created Brittle. But if the mob's immune to it, you're not getting the brittle, you can't freeze/burn/shock something that's immune to the element.

well cone of cold still froze revenants in DA:O irrc... but maybe they changed something here as well

 

EDIT: yeah...

[robertthebard]

well cone of cold still froze revenants in DA:O irrc... but maybe they changed something here as well

It's been a few days(read a few hundred days)since I fought them in Origins, but were they immune to cold there? I don't even recall if they were immune to cold in DA 2, actually. If not, it's a moot point, since mobs that aren't immune are of course susceptible to the damage and the side effects.

[EnduinRaylene]

A cone of cold against a cold immune/resistant mob, no matter how modded, will be a wasted spellslot. Shield Bash, against an immune/highly resistant mob will be a wasted skill slot. Depth of skill won't change anything if it's effects are minimalized or neutralized by the target. Meaning that, regardless of how deep these skills are, there may well be circumstances where they're useless. This means that, in order to prevent yourself from being locked out of stuff that may be useful when other stuff isn't, you're not going very deep into any skill, because the points are, presumably, limited by your character levels. You may be able to get away with these investments with some of your companions, depending on how their skills/specs are set up, but really, if you really like Viv, are you going to be willing to leave her in camp for an entire map because her spec's direction makes her completely useless in a specific area? Isn't this "depth" taking away from RP opportunity then, thus making it more shallow instead?

 

That's only an issue if you believe the game will throw many enemies at us that have complete, or near complete, resistances to certain elements which we have no indication of. As well as assuming you can only roll with one element and to do otherwise will make you a generalist that fails to succeed at any one school, which also isn't the case. As best as we can tell the leveling system and skill trees seem to point to allowing you to become fully proficient in two base trees and a specialization tree. So if you are invested in the Ice tree and meet an enemy with Immunity to Ice then you can fall back on your second tree say Spirit and use spirit attacks to inflict status effects and CCC. You don't have to exploit an enemies weakness either, it's just there for you to capitalize on if you so choose. There will likely be several other means of inflicting extra damage on enemies outside natural weaknesses, like creating your own with the CCC. Maybe they are immune or resistant to Ice, but maybe that spellcan still inflict the Status effect on them which would still be useful for your Warrior or Rogue to exploit for extra damage. Just because the main use of a spell might not be effective doesn't mean it's possible secondary effects are rendered useless. That's the whole point in adding depth and variety to the abilities, they become more than meets the eye.

 

Actually, using what you've laid out here, if I'm using a fire spell against a mob that's vulnerable to it in order to create ccc's, that's exactly what I'm doing, exploiting their weaknesses. The way I'm going to do that? I'm going to look at the ingame Prima guide provided with the tactical camera: I'm going to sneak a peek at what I need, and rebuild my party accordingly. Wasn't it you that said that that's cheating? I mean, what's the difference between having the strategy guide on the desk, or using the ingame provided version? Because it's in game it's not cheating, or more accurately here, metagaming? To my mind, metagaming what I need for an encounter is metagaming what I need for an encounter, whether it's using in game tools, save scumming, or the Prima Strategy Guide, all provide the same results; advance player knowledge of how to prevent myself from failing/making the combat easier.

 

I don't really care what you do, if the Dev's intend for you to peak over a hill then that's what they want you to do, and again we have no real indication that is what they want us to do. Instead it seems like they want us to use our Inquisition and our Scouts to do that kind of stuff for us so we can just prepare before actually going out and not have to worry about scouting out enemies ourselves. But if you choose to do that anyways, despite the game giving you other options, that's your choice, as is using a guide. But just because you choose to do that, or because you feel you must do that in order to succeed in combat, in no way means that that's actually true. I feel the need to explore every nook in games, complete every quest and open every chest and find every item, but that's because I feel that way, it doesn't mean the game demands that of me because I could most certainly not do all those things and still finish the game and no be punished in any way for doing so.

[Illyria God King of the Primordium]

It's been a few days(read a few hundred days)since I fought them in Origins, but were they immune to cold there? I don't even recall if they were immune to cold in DA 2, actually. If not, it's a moot point, since mobs that aren't immune are of course susceptible to the damage and the side effects.

Nope, Revs weren't immune to cold.  Mobs that were immune could still be frozen, though chances were reduced.  

[Innsmouth Dweller]

Nope, Revs weren't immune to cold.  Mobs that were immune could still be frozen, though chances were reduced.  

well... wiki says nature and cold. don't recall nature, but sure as hell my cold warden had the time for a smoke during those fights. not to mention the hind behind pillar tactics cuz mass pull was OP one shot, heavy on plates too, so every bit of cc helped. cone of cold included (if i was lucky and it was not resisted).

[robertthebard]

That's only an issue if you believe the game will throw many enemies at us that have complete, or near complete, resistances to certain elements which we have no indication of. As well as assuming you can only roll with one element and to do otherwise will make you a generalist that fails to succeed at any one school, which also isn't the case. As best as we can tell the leveling system and skill trees seem to point to allowing you to become fully proficient in two base trees and a specialization tree. So if you are invested in the Ice tree and meet an enemy with Immunity to Ice then you can fall back on your second tree say Spirit and use spirit attacks to inflict status effects and CCC. You don't have to exploit an enemies weakness either, it's just there for you to capitalize on if you so choose. There will likely be several other means of inflicting extra damage on enemies outside natural weaknesses, like creating your own with the CCC. Maybe they are immune or resistant to Ice, but maybe that spellcan still inflict the Status effect on them which would still be useful for your Warrior or Rogue to exploit for extra damage. Just because the main use of a spell might not be effective doesn't mean it's possible secondary effects are rendered useless. That's the whole point in adding depth and variety to the abilities, they become more than meets the eye.

Somebody linked me a screenie of a Venatori to show me the tooltips for the ingame strategy guide: Immune to cold, or maybe it was fire, and vulnerable to the other, the opposite of what they were immune to. It's not only likely that they'll throw mobs at us that are completely immune to some of the stuff that we have, it's already in game. It was in the last game too. Since I've already stated, repeatedly, that the most successful mage is going to be a generalist, to prevent a lockout of abilities in any situation. I'm trying to figure how, if I'm immune to electricity, I can be shocked, since being shocked in the context of it being applied by lightning, means that I'm not immune to electricity.
 

I don't really care what you do, if the Dev's intend for you to peak over a hill then that's what they want you to do, and again we have no real indication that is what they want us to do. Instead it seems like they want us to use our Inquisition and our Scouts to do that kind of stuff for us so we can just prepare before actually going out and not have to worry about scouting out enemies ourselves. But if you choose to do that anyways, despite the game giving you other options, that's your choice, as is using a guide. But just because you choose to do that, or because you feel you must do that in order to succeed in combat, in no way means that that's actually true. I feel the need to explore every nook in games, complete every quest and open every chest and find every item, but that's because I feel that way, it doesn't mean the game demands that of me because I could most certainly not do all those things and still finish the game and no be punished in any way for doing so.

Evidently, you care a great deal about what I do, that's why you spend so much time trying to convince me that I'm wrong, or that the way I do it is wrong. What you are failing to take into account is that, if you're peeking over the hill and mousing over enemies to see if you're going to have to change up your abilities and tactics to accommodate the fight or not, you might as well have the Prima Guide on the desk in front of you. The information you're gleaning from either source is exactly the same, obtained in the same manner, player agency. Do you think the mobs are wearing t-shirts that say "I'm immune to fire, but vulnerable to cold. I have 324 HP, and I'm level xx"? If not, then you are looking at the Prima guide, and using player knowledge to accent character knowledge. This is, unfortunately for this conversation, known as metagaming. For clarity, it doesn't matter if it's the tooltip, or the actual book, the information is exactly the same.

[Reaverwind]

 

 

So the game won't simply be about exploiting inherent weaknesses in enemies but also creating your own and capitalizing on both. Say an enemy has a weakness to fire so you have your Rogue hit them with an attack that inflicts Disorient and then have your Mage strike them with a Fireball which they're already naturally weak too, but on top of that it can inflict even more damage while they're Disoriented. That built in layering effect adds to the game in ways that a multitude of mostly static abilities may not be able to.

 

I'm not holding my breath for that kind of depth, particularly since Bioware has always been weak in encounter design. I'd remind you that DA2 featured abilities that were supposed to open up weaknesses for exploitation, but the implementation was seriously lacking.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Indeed. It seems like (if this system is done well, which I hope it is) it will trim a lot of the extraneous fat - spells like Spellbloom that do little but delay you getting hold of Stinging Swarm.

But that was an important part of the cost of Stinging Swarm. Having abilities of different usefulness really spruces up the abilitt tree, I think. It gives you one more thing to consider when spending your ability points.

[Illyria God King of the Primordium]

But that was an important part of the cost of Stinging Swarm. Having abilities of different usefulness really spruces up the abilitt tree, I think. It gives you one more thing to consider when spending your ability points.

Eh, I guess.  But I feel it could've been better implemented by, say, making Stinging Swarm decent but not OP at first, and giving it upgrades to build in power.  That would've made more sense to me.  

[EnduinRaylene]

Somebody linked me a screenie of a Venatori to show me the tooltips for the ingame strategy guide: Immune to cold, or maybe it was fire, and vulnerable to the other, the opposite of what they were immune to. It's not only likely that they'll throw mobs at us that are completely immune to some of the stuff that we have, it's already in game. It was in the last game too. Since I've already stated, repeatedly, that the most successful mage is going to be a generalist, to prevent a lockout of abilities in any situation. I'm trying to figure how, if I'm immune to electricity, I can be shocked, since being shocked in the context of it being applied by lightning, means that I'm not immune to electricity.


Evidently, you care a great deal about what I do, that's why you spend so much time trying to convince me that I'm wrong, or that the way I do it is wrong. What you are failing to take into account is that, if you're peeking over the hill and mousing over enemies to see if you're going to have to change up your abilities and tactics to accommodate the fight or not, you might as well have the Prima Guide on the desk in front of you. The information you're gleaning from either source is exactly the same, obtained in the same manner, player agency. Do you think the mobs are wearing t-shirts that say "I'm immune to fire, but vulnerable to cold. I have 324 HP, and I'm level xx"? If not, then you are looking at the Prima guide, and using player knowledge to accent character knowledge. This is, unfortunately for this conversation, known as metagaming. For clarity, it doesn't matter if it's the tooltip, or the actual book, the information is exactly the same.

There being enemies with immunities and BioWare throwing them at us left and right are two different issues, that was my point. We have no reason to believe every enemy we face well have immunities, let alone wildly didn't ones within the same area. As to the effectiveness of spells they may be immune to, that entirely depends on the type of status effect a spell can impart an enemy, you may not be shocked but paralyzed or stunned. The damage that spell inflicts might not effect them but the status still might.

And I really don't care how you pay the game o do care how you characterize it. You have no proof or real evidence a generalist mage well be the best. We have only partial info on the actual spells in a couple of the trees, but practically no info on the passive abilities which make up nearly half the trees, as well as upgrades. Both of which could have huge implications on the strength and effectiveness of your character, something a generalist would have sacrifice, along with end tree spells which are likely the most powerful. So you definitively saying they well be the best is far from true or accurate.

Same with your characterization of the tool tips. We still don't know how we come about this information. Whether it's through continued interaction with the enemy and first hand experience with these resistances, and or through our Scouts in the Inquisition, and any possible upgrades they require first to provide basic or detailed information. All we know is that the information can be had, but how it gets there is still a mystery, which may prove to be very important.

So if you choose to pay Prima 30 bucks for a guide make game easier that's your choice, I don't care what you do in your game but I do care how you present opinion and conjecture as fact. You may actually be right in all this, but we don't know enough to actually prove that right now and that's all that matters.

I'm not holding my breath for that kind of depth, particularly since Bioware has always been weak in encounter design. I'd remind you that DA2 featured abilities that were supposed to open up weaknesses for exploitation, but the implementation was seriously lacking.

Everything in DA2 was lacking for the most part. The game was made in 11 to 14 months. The foundation of CCC is solid, it just needs to be fleshed out more. And they've had almost 4 years to do that in DAI.

[Jester]

I'm not holding my breath for that kind of depth, particularly since Bioware has always been weak in encounter design. I'd remind you that DA2 featured abilities that were supposed to open up weaknesses for exploitation, but the implementation was seriously lacking.

While encounter desingn in DA2 was poor (mostly wave based combat, riddiculously overpowered enemy rogues/mages, bosses with extremely inflated hp), that in both DLC's was much better.

No enemies spawning out of thin air, more enemy types (like archers actually utilizing some talents) and far better boss fights.

Best examples of that are probably Alpha Wyvern fight - without good strategy and good micromanaging this fight is nigh impossible on Nightmare, Duke Prosper fight, especially last stage, and of course - Corypheus fight. God damn, that fight was crazy. It was probably the best, most rewarding and challanging encounter I've ever played in any RPG since modded Irenicus and Amelissana fights in BG2 (Tactics & Ascension mods - those fights are just insaaaaaane). 

BioWare has clearly learned it's lesson, when you compare this to unimaginative boss fights from original DA2.

Deal a crapton of damage - fight a dozen weak minions - deal a crapton of damage - fight another wave of annoying minions...

Ancient Rock Wraith, High Dragon, Orsino, Meredith... all of those boss fights followed exactly the same scheme. The only exception was Arishok duel, which was handled extremely poorly due to combat mechanics of the game (only with a DW Assassin/Shadow Rogue this actually looks like a duel). 

 

 

Therefore, I'm hoping that despite the 8 abilities limit, the combat system will actually have a lot of depth, and boss fights will be interesting. 

I'm still disappointed after seeing this weird design decision, but BioWare gained a lot of credit after Legacy DLC, at least in my books. 

[Reaverwind]

While encounter desingn in DA2 was poor (mostly wave based combat, riddiculously overpowered enemy rogues/mages, bosses with extremely inflated hp), that in both DLC's was much better.

No enemies spawning out of thin air, more enemy types (like archers actually utilizing some talents) and far better boss fights.

Best examples of that are probably Alpha Wyvern fight - without good strategy and good micromanaging this fight is nigh impossible on Nightmare, Duke Prosper fight, especially last stage, and of course - Corypheus fight. God damn, that fight was crazy. It was probably the best, most rewarding and challanging encounter I've ever played in any RPG since modded Irenicus and Amelissana fights in BG2 (Tactics & Ascension mods - those fights are just insaaaaaane). 

 

 

The Corypheus fight was pulled almost straight out of the Deadmines (with some simplification), and that fight is a matter of timing. Not really challenging or interesting (especially after you've done the original 20+ times). I don't consider adapting certain mmo battles to the DA series a good thing.

[Jester]

The Corypheus fight was pulled almost straight out of the Deadmines (with some simplification), and that fight is a matter of timing. Not really challenging or interesting (especially after you've done the original 20+ times). I don't consider adapting certain mmo battles to the DA series a good thing.

Never played that game.

I can honestly say that I enjoyed Corypheus fight a great deal. I found to be a satisfying, climactic end to a long and interesting quest. 

It felt like I'm facing an extremely powerful mage with unique abilities. One that could easily destroy my entire party with his magic, if I was not careful, who could shape the battlefield to serve his own needs and could summon guardians that were a challange in given circumstances, without flooding the screen with waves of enemies. 

And one who's tactics could be used against him. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Eh, I guess. But I feel it could've been better implemented by, say, making Stinging Swarm decent but not OP at first, and giving it upgrades to build in power. That would've made more sense to me.

That would make it more powerful by reducing the opportunity cost of selecting it.

Opportunity costs matter.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Never played that game.
I can honestly say that I enjoyed Corypheus fight a great deal. I found to be a satisfying, climactic end to a long and interesting quest.
It felt like I'm facing an extremely powerful mage with unique abilities. One that could easily destroy my entire party with his magic, if I was not careful, who could shape the battlefield to serve his own needs and could summon guardians that were a challange in given circumstances, without flooding the screen with waves of enemies.
And one who's tactics could be used against him.

I hated that fight. The guardians could be easily handled by the infinitely resummonable spectral dog as long as you kept running the circuit to stay ahead of the fire.

It was just am exercise is pathfinding frustration, and it was but the last of a long string of really contrived fights in Legacy. Those golems with disparate immunities who attacked in series (rather than jointly) were probably the worst, though.

[Illyria God King of the Primordium]

That would make it more powerful by reducing the opportunity cost of selecting it.

Opportunity costs matter.

Not necessarily.  If it had started as something kinda useless (decreases enemy defence, no unit hopping), with three upgrades to increase it to the level of the full thing with the last available being the damage dealer (the other two, presumably, being hops-if-enemy-dies and reset-counter-on-hop), it'd have a similar opportunity cost, but without extra ability flab.  

[Sylvius the Mad]

Not necessarily. If it had started as something kinda useless (decreases enemy defence, no unit hopping), with three upgrades to increase it to the level of the full thing with the last available being the damage dealer (the other two, presumably, being hops-if-enemy-dies and reset-counter-on-hop), it'd have a similar opportunity cost, but without extra ability flab.

Yes, if the first step is effectively useless, that would be equivalent.

[Illyria God King of the Primordium]

Yes, if the first step is effectively useless, that would be equivalent.

Indeed.  So it's perfectly possible for a less abilities/more upgrades system to retain the fun and opportunity cost of a more ability heavy game.  I of course don't know if DAI has done this successfully, and I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  

[Sylvius the Mad]

Indeed.  So it's perfectly possible for a less abilities/more upgrades system to retain the fun and opportunity cost of a more ability heavy game.  I of course don't know if DAI has done this successfully, and I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  

Of course, I think we should still be able to use the un-upgraded versions of abilities even after we've upgraded them.

[Kharn-ivor]

Reduce complexity. I'm afraid that that's exactly what it means. Unless there's some version of English that I'm not aware of, reducing the complexity does indeed equate to dumbing down. So how does this add to tactical game play? You splash a couple of abilities from every tree you can take, varying them enough so that there is no time when your bar is totally ineffective, set up your tactics accordingly and play the game. Not much strategy involved, other than learning to build a "Jack of all trades" character. The alternative is to constantly be aware of immunities before encounters so that you can change skills and tactics settings as needed, if needed, per encounter. If I'm choosing between one or the other, I'm choosing the one that's not having me rebuild my party any time the circumstances would seem to warrant it, because this isn't an MMO, and timesinks aren't required.

No dumbing down is reducing depth, streamlining is reducing complexity. Go has very little complexity but huge depth.

As an example imagine a game of Rock paper sissors with 2 added hand signals like rock paper scissors lizard spock , that's a typical case of complexity over depth, you add more rules, more options, but the options give you no more depth, strategically you gain nothing from the additions.

A lot of game design aims for elegance, ie maximum depth for minimum complexity .

Would be good to have a Bioware game designer step in and give his/her view.

 

The problem with your example is that you would end up with a huge bar of skills that can deal effectivly with anything you come up against, so where is the challenge?  Surely a major part of the challenge is choosing which skills you want to use, the risk/reward of each skills and their unique function. By making you choose they are asking you to be clever about it not to simply grind out every skill so you can easily beat everything.

[robertthebard]

No dumbing down is reducing depth, streamlining is reducing complexity. Go has very little complexity but huge depth.
As an example imagine a game of Rock paper sissors with 2 added hand signals like rock paper scissors lizard spock , that's a typical case of complexity over depth, you add more rules, more options, but the options give you no more depth, strategically you gain nothing from the additions.
A lot of game design aims for elegance, ie maximum depth for minimum complexity .

Kind of like arbitrarily deciding that we can't use certain skills by limiting skill use to what's on the hot bar when we enter combat, and not having expandable bars.

Would be good to have a Bioware game designer step in and give his/her view.

Indeed.
 

The problem with your example is that you would end up with a huge bar of skills that can deal effectivly with anything you come up against, so where is the challenge?  Surely a major part of the challenge is choosing which skills you want to use, the risk/reward of each skills and their unique function. By making you choose they are asking you to be clever about it not to simply grind out every skill so you can easily beat everything.

The challenge falls to the Devs, just like it always does with combat design and balancing. Essentially, what everyone who thinks this is a grand idea is saying is: It's ok that the only way you could come up with to keep combat interesting, after the wave system in DA 2 flopped with a lot of players, was to make it artificially difficult by limiting what we can do with no in universe reasoning at all. Combat has changed in each installment, some of the changes good, better attack speeds, ccc's, some, not so much, wave combat and now character amnesia.

Iron Bull: Sorry Sera, I'd have loved to have tripped that guy while he was running past me to get to you, but for some reason, I couldn't recall how to do it. But hey, next time, I'll be able to, as I seem to have remembered now.

Sera: Yeah, I would have used my Defensive Roll to get away, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't do it, I forgot what the steps were to do it. But I seem to have it clearly in my mind now, so maybe next time it won't be a big deal.

This is what we're being given this time around. Characters that forget skills that may be useful in specific situations, in order to make things more "tactical". What it really is is a poor design choice. Again, depending on how many skills we really have. If we're limited to 8, and that's all the actives we have, obviously the above dialog can't happen. If we have 16, then our characters will always only be 1/2 as effective as they could be at any given time, given that that's late in the game.

[Grayvisions]

My concern with only 8 Slots is that I played Guild Wars 2 for a while. 8 Slots seems okay at first but after 20-30 hours I found myself REALLY wishing I had more versatility than those 8, unalterable (during battle) slots provided me. I come from a generation of turn-based RPGs (Final Fantasy, Disgaea, etc.) where each character had dozens of abilities, and I loved every moment of that. I kind of miss it.

 

At the same time, however, in Dragon Age: Origins, I ~never~ used all the slots I was given. I'd fill them with abilities, yes, but when it came down to it I never used the bulk of them. I was so busy switching between all my characters (Switch to PC, use Haste, switch to Morrigan, pile on debuffs/curses, switch to Alistair, taunt and Knockdown, switch to Zevran, lynch mages) that by the time I made it back to my PC, my main spells were off cooldown. So, we'll see. Not thrilled at first glance, but still open to the possibility.

[Morroian]

No dumbing down is reducing depth, streamlining is reducing complexity. Go has very little complexity but huge depth.

As an example imagine a game of Rock paper sissors with 2 added hand signals like rock paper scissors lizard spock , that's a typical case of complexity over depth, you add more rules, more options, but the options give you no more depth, strategically you gain nothing from the additions.

A lot of game design aims for elegance, ie maximum depth for minimum complexity .

 

I agree with this, I know a lot of people deride Skyrim for dumbing down but IMHO it was a clear case of good streamlining, there was no reduction in depth from Oblivion but the design was much improved. Time will tell whether DAI is such an example. My issue is that I think it was needless because abilities and tactics were fine in DA2 not requiring any further reduction in complexity.