820 réponses à ce sujet

[robertthebard]

I didn't realize you had intimate knowledge of the combat and encounter design... please do enlighten us poor peasants that haven't yet managed to play the game.

Do share, what are the advantages of having to revamp your skill bars and tactics instead of swapping to a different bar, turning off tactics, and taking more direct control of the party? I'm anxious to hear what your great insight into gaming brings to the table. So yeah, do share. I'm all ears to see what makes this such a brilliant addition to the DA franchise. Maybe it's the reload button? Because, since you can't change out your skills in combat to skills that may actually work in the fight you're in, and you can't swap bars, I anticipate that, other than the skill tree for swapping and leveling, and the tactics menu to readjust the tactics to correspond to your current skill bars, the reload button will be the most pressed button in the game when, with all your intimate knowledge of gaming, you find out there's no way to compensate for all the mobs being immune to your uber mage build because you can't swap to spells that might be more effective. Go ahead, enlighten me.
 
 

Is there some precious benefit in possibility that some ability will get used once in blue moon, compared to scenario where it doesn't get used? That outweights creating situation where the player actually has to consider their abilities and choose the ones they believe to be optimal?

edit: it's not like having to choose your abilities in advance wasn't also a staple of old RPG mechanics (the spell slots and memorization of them). One, that, iirc hilariously enough DA:O was the game to do away with, much to the outrage of those who claimed this is 'worst design' and stepping all over the BG corpse.

In swtor, I'm betting healers in my Ops group party are glad I don't have to pick between my defensive buffs and skills like Phase Walk, that not only increases their healing efficiency, but allows me to teleport to them at the click of a button, if they stay in the aura it lays down. I'd bet that they'd lament me keeping my offensive attack skills over the guard skill that reduces their incoming damage. I literally looked at my bar today and thought "If I were limited to 8, what would I get rid of", and came up empty, other than I could take my speeder off my hot bar. I mean, it's not like we'd really need class buffs, or that I absolutely have to have Taunt, my AoE taunt, or Wither on the bar, I'm a tank, why have high threat skills on there when I may need to guard the healer and provide them a way to increase their efficiency with Phase Walk? I don't use most of these skills while I'm soloing, so surely I don't need them in a group, right?

It doesn't matter how often, or not I use a skill. What matters is, if I need the skill, and I've trained the skill, it should be available for when I need it. The same applies to every member of my party, whether they are with me or not. I shouldn't have to peak over the top of a hill, metagame what skills are and aren't going to work, and then spend 10 minutes to a half hour, depending, revamping 4 hot bars and 4 characters tactics to make sure nobody is doing 0 damage per attack. This isn't tactical, it may be strategic, and it's certainly metagamey, but it's not tactical. In so far as I can tell from what we have, it's a time sink. Are they getting paid by the hour that I spend in game? Surely not in the SP campaign, so why do I need a time sink? There is no shifting gears on the fly, you're locked into whatever gear you're in when the fight starts. I hope you can keep one or two skills for every possible circumstance on your bar, while you're applauding the change, because if you can't, you're going to be, as I said above, hitting the reload button a lot.

[AlanC9]

And my assessment of their effort on that front will include a consideration of whether they've allowed for things like out-of-combat stealth and the laying of traps, not to mention the strictness with which they enforce class roles.
 
Because the direction they headed in DA2 was the exact opposite of the one they're claiming motivates them now.

I don't quite follow this. DA2 required plenty of the sort of planning ahead Laidlaw's talking about. It's a good deal less forgiving of bad builds and bad party composition. And I don't see what class roles have to do with this subtopic.

[mugwuffin1986]

They're not even different things in a roleplaying game.  The lore, and the characters' awareness of it, is an integral part of the gameplay.

 

All gameplay is roleplaying, and all roleplaying is gameplay.  If the lore informs one, it informs the other, for they are not two things.

 

 

I don't even know how to respond to this.

 

...

 

Encounter & combat design still play a massive part, take a look at some of the new videos. They show detailed tooltips on the types of abilities that an enemy will be weak or resistant to.

 

Dorian in "Lore" and you as the PC would know not to throw "Fireball" at an enemy resistant to it... so your ability bar should reflect that for the area you're currently exploring.

 

I've said this so many times in both these threads, nobody here has played the goddamn game... you haven't engaged a single enemy yet and already this is the worst thing ever.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't quite follow this. DA2 required plenty of the sort of planning ahead Laidlaw's talking about. It's a good deal less forgiving of bad builds and bad party composition. And I don't see what class roles have to do with this subtopic.

If there's only one path to success, there aren't many decisions to be made.  Choosing among one options isn't interesting.

[tmp7704]

In swtor, I'm betting healers in my Ops group party are glad I don't have to pick between my defensive buffs and skills like Phase Walk (..)

And yet, are your healers upset that you aren't able to select every single perk in all three specializations at the same time, to enhance all of your skills instead of just certain, narrower subset? Even though you have all these skills, and so you should be able to use them all to their maximum effect at any time?

Or do they simply treat this limitation as natural part of the game, if just because that's all the game has ever allowed you?

[AlanC9]

Do share, what are the advantages of having to revamp your skill bars and tactics instead of swapping to a different bar, turning off tactics, and taking more direct control of the party? I'm anxious to hear what your great insight into gaming brings to the table. So yeah, do share. I'm all ears to see what makes this such a brilliant addition to the DA franchise. Maybe it's the reload button? Because, since you can't change out your skills in combat to skills that may actually work in the fight you're in, and you can't swap bars, I anticipate that, other than the skill tree for swapping and leveling, and the tactics menu to readjust the tactics to correspond to your current skill bars, the reload button will be the most pressed button in the game when, with all your intimate knowledge of gaming, you find out there's no way to compensate for all the mobs being immune to your uber mage build because you can't swap to spells that might be more effective.

Will a competent player actually get himself into that sort of trouble very often? This sort of thing could happen in DA2 on Nightmare since enemies have a lot of resistances, but if you're choosing to play on Nightmare you're signing up for unfair combat.

[robertthebard]

 
I don't even know how to respond to this.
 
...
 
Encounter & combat design still play a massive part, take a look at some of the new videos. They show detailed tooltips on the types of abilities that an enemy will be weak or resistant to.
 
Dorian in "Lore" and you as the PC would know not to throw "Fireball" at an enemy resistant to it... so your ability bar should reflect that for the area you're currently exploring.
 
I've said this so many times in both these threads, nobody here has played the goddamn game... you haven't engaged a single enemy yet and already this is the worst thing ever.

Yep, they do at that, and do you know why they did that? Because it gives you a chance to peak over the hill, see what you're up against, and rebuild your party, yet again, so that you're not doing 0 damage per attack with your mage. That's going to be some really stale gameplay, let me tell you.

[AlanC9]

If there's only one path to success, there aren't many decisions to be made.  Choosing among one options isn't interesting.

There are plenty of good DA2 builds., though.

[Sylvius the Mad]

 

I don't even know how to respond to this.

Were you not expecting to find someone who doesn't share your assumptions about game design?

Encounter & combat design still play a massive part, take a look at some of the new videos. They show detailed tooltips on the types of abilities that an enemy will be weak or resistant to.

I've noticed those.  I look forward to an in-game explanation of how the characters will know those things.  Because if they don't, I will not take them into account when making combat decisions.

 

Just as I refuse to consider information I've learned from cutscenes where the PC wasn't present.  Like Loghain's hiring of Zevran.  Or even Loghain's betrayal of Cailan.

Dorian in "Lore" and you as the PC would know not to throw "Fireball" at an enemy resistant to it... so your ability bar should reflect that for the area you're currently exploring.

And the areas will be that homogeneous, will they?

 

If there's no in-game explanation for the restriction, then a single instance where my characters want to use an ability they have, but it doesn't happen to be in their hotbars right then, is a game-breaking event.

[Sylvius the Mad]

There are plenty of good DA2 builds., though.

I wouldn't know.  I barely played the game, and I didn't understand the mechanics at all (because they were so poorly documented).

[AlanC9]

I wouldn't know.  I barely played the game, and I didn't understand the mechanics at all (because they were so poorly documented).

Since you don't know much about DA2, are you sure you're competent to talk about what direction the game took the franchise in?

[robertthebard]

And yet, are your healers upset that you aren't able to select every single perk in all three specializations at the same time, to enhance all of your skills instead of just certain, narrower subset? Even though you have all these skills, and so you should be able to use them all to their maximum effect at any time?

Or do they simply treat this limitation as natural part of the game, if just because that's all the game has ever allowed you?

No, because they know that I'm tank spec'd, and expect that I took the tanking tree. The other two, being DPS trees, really wouldn't do much to enhance my tanking ability. More to the point, however, is that every skill I did train? It's on my bars, and ready to use, unless it's Passive. Will I need every one of them in every fight? Nope, haven't run into that yet, despite tanking NiM ops, but when I do need them, I don't have to lament not being able to quick slot them for the Op in question. I don't have to pick and choose what may or may not be important for an Op I've never run, and I don't have to spend hours and hours wishing I could have just one more skill on the bar while I'm busy autoattacking while waiting for my two skills that actually work in this situation to come off cooldown. I'd bet they don't lament me not being a Jugg tank at the same time as an Assassin tank too, whatcha think?

[AlanC9]

Yep, they do at that, and do you know why they did that? Because it gives you a chance to peak over the hill, see what you're up against, and rebuild your party, yet again, so that you're not doing 0 damage per attack with your mage. That's going to be some really stale gameplay, let me tell you.

This is just a little hysterical. Your mage has one ability that won't hurt these enemies? Use something else.

[robertthebard]

This is just a little hysterical. Your mage has one ability that won't hurt these enemies? Use something else.

If none of the abilities you're using work, you're not able to pick something else, no changing skills in combat, remember? This is such a grand idea, isn't it?

Wait, the context is wrong here. This situation can't happen, because I can peak over the hill, mouse over the enemy, see what they're immune to, and then spend 10 minutes to a half hour, again, depending on what everyone's using at the time, resetting skills and tactics to accommodate my metagame knowledge of what lies ahead. Yeah, this is a grand idea.

[tmp7704]

No, because they know that I'm tank spec'd, and expect that I took the tanking tree. The other two, being DPS trees, really wouldn't do much to enhance my tanking ability.

So, they expect you to make a choice of a "spec" based on the role you're supposed to play at the given moment. And this is, apparently, not the worst design choice ever?

[In Exile]

They're not even different things in a roleplaying game.  The lore, and the characters' awareness of it, is an integral part of the gameplay.

 

All gameplay is roleplaying, and all roleplaying is gameplay.  If the lore informs one, it informs the other, for they are not two things.

 

Lore and gameplay can't line up coherently, with very rare exceptions, I often mention Order of the Stick in this context. In that comic, we see what D&D should be like if characters are actually aware of the D&D ruleset. Goblins is another comic that also does a good job in illustrating what it would be like to have D&D rules and characters aware of those rules. 

[mugwuffin1986]

Do share, what are the advantages of having to revamp your skill bars and tactics instead of swapping to a different bar, turning off tactics, and taking more direct control of the party? I'm anxious to hear what your great insight into gaming brings to the table. So yeah, do share. I'm all ears to see what makes this such a brilliant addition to the DA franchise. Maybe it's the reload button? Because, since you can't change out your skills in combat to skills that may actually work in the fight you're in, and you can't swap bars, I anticipate that, other than the skill tree for swapping and leveling, and the tactics menu to readjust the tactics to correspond to your current skill bars, the reload button will be the most pressed button in the game when, with all your intimate knowledge of gaming, you find out there's no way to compensate for all the mobs being immune to your uber mage build because you can't swap to spells that might be more effective. Go ahead, enlighten me.
 

 

In Dragon Age: Origins I have an Arcane Warrior Mage, he is awesome, the best Mage in town not only is he an Arcane Warrior he's also quite proficient at Shape-shifting, Spirit Healing, the occassion Elemental attack and just splooges Entropy from all his pours. 

 

Where is the design here?

 

There isn't any, across my party I could have upwards of 80 abilities by the end of Origins, excluding passives & sustained abilities. Why bother crafting interesting encounters that require a little more thought regarding party & spell composition, when I can just throw waves of enemies at people because they'll never have to worry about being prepared.

 

Why may I ask, is it such a big deal to prepare for an encounter? Why bother crafting interesting encounter mechanic/design (something I might add people cried for after DA2's wave system) when I can just throw people at you. Why bother to ensure you have party synergy and a well crafted tactics set-up, when the PC has 40 abilities on his hotbar.

 

Why do you need a screen filled with abilities for Dragon Age to be a good game? 

 

The games combat will be designed in tandem with it's enemies/encounters, this game has a lot of new mechanics all of which would have been thought out and designed together.

 

Look as an example.

 

 

You might remember from this video the Qunari Mage had a lot of Frost/Ice/Water abilities to capitalize on the Venatori's weakness to it, Iron Bull was the tank setting up a bottle neck and pulling everyone towards him, which allowed the DPS to do their jobs and the dev was constantly shifting between the party using their abilities, this new 8 ability system (32 across the party) is to encourage party play as well as more thought from the player on what will be useful and when.

 

It's clear from my time reading a lot of the threads most (not all) hardly touch the companions, they'll stick them on auto-pilot and faceroll to the credits. I imagine the ability cap was designed with this partly in mind.

 

I'm sorry you don't like the direction the game is heading... but at least they've put more thought into it this time than they did in DA2.

[robertthebard]

So, they expect you to make a choice of a "spec" based on the role you're supposed to play at the given moment. And this is, apparently, not the worst design choice ever?

You know, cherrypicking is really bad form. How about we get to the meat of the post you decided to snip, you know, the part where I mention that all the skills that I actually trained to get where I am are actually available to use when and if I need them.

[In Exile]

If none of the abilities you're using work, you're not able to pick something else, no changing skills in combat, remember? This is such a grand idea, isn't it?

Wait, the context is wrong here. This situation can't happen, because I can peak over the hill, mouse over the enemy, see what they're immune to, and then spend 10 minutes to a half hour, again, depending on what everyone's using at the time, resetting skills and tactics to accommodate my metagame knowledge of what lies ahead. Yeah, this is a grand idea.

 

I don't understand your hysterics. I agree that a limit on abilities is generally annoying - but the idea behind scouting is actually quite good. It avoids a serious problem that ability limits have had in the past: trial-and-error gameplay. With scouting, I could prepare for any encounter without save-scumming. 

[EnduinRaylene]

If none of the abilities you're using work, you're not able to pick something else, no changing skills in combat, remember? This is such a grand idea, isn't it?

Wait, the context is wrong here. This situation can't happen, because I can peak over the hill, mouse over the enemy, see what they're immune to, and then spend 10 minutes to a half hour, again, depending on what everyone's using at the time, resetting skills and tactics to accommodate my metagame knowledge of what lies ahead. Yeah, this is a grand idea.

This is such bull. Where do you even come up with stuff? 10-30 minutes to change a couple of abilities and tactics. This is a game, not the planning of Waterloo. It's not that difficult.

 

Not only that but you're completely ignoring any kind of semblance of balance or intelligent encounter design that takes the 8 ability limit into account when designing said abilities, or enemies or their weaknesses and strengths or levels or pretty much anything that actually matters. You'll never roll up on enemies and find that none of the 32 possible abilities you have among your party doesn't do any kind of damage to them. Never.

 

Why on earth would BioWare apparently reduce the availability of spells and abilities to 8, in what many are saying is a result of trying to accommodate console players and the more real time/action only gameplay, only to then create totally random and incomprehensible enemies and encounters that require you to spend a half a freaking hour to adequately outfit your party? Something most stereotypical console gamers would absolutely hate. That's absurd.

[robertthebard]

In Dragon Age: Origins I have an Arcane Warrior Mage, he is awesome, the best Mage in town not only is he an Arcane Warrior he's also quite proficient at Shape-shifting, Spirit Healing, the occassion Elemental attack and just splooges Entropy from all his pours. 
 
Where is the design here?
 
There isn't any, across my party I could have upwards of 80 abilities by the end of Origins, excluding passives & sustained abilities. Why bother crafting interesting encounters that require a little more thought regarding party & spell composition, when I can just throw waves of enemies at people because they'll never have to worry about being prepared.
 
Why may I ask, is it such a big deal to prepare for an encounter? Why bother crafting interesting encounter mechanic/design (something I might add people cried for after DA2's wave system) when I can just throw people at you. Why bother to ensure you have party synergy and a well crafted tactics set-up, when the PC has 40 abilities on his hotbar.
 
Why do you need a screen filled with abilities for Dragon Age to be a good game? 
 
The games combat will be designed in tandem with it's enemies/encounters, this game has a lot of new mechanics all of which would have been thought out and designed together.
 
Look as an example.
 
You might remember from this video the Qunari Mage had a lot of Frost/Ice/Water abilities to capitalize on the Venatori's weakness to it, Iron Bull was the tank setting up a bottle neck and pulling everyone towards him, which allowed the DPS to do their jobs and the dev was constantly shifting between the party using their abilities, this new 8 ability system (32 across the party) is to encourage party play as well as more thought from the player on what will be useful and when.
 
It's clear from my time reading a lot of the threads most (not all) hardly touch the companions, they'll stick them on auto-pilot and faceroll to the credits. I imagine the ability cap was designed with this partly in mind.
 
I'm sorry you don't like the direction the game is heading... but at least they've put more thought into it this than they did in DA2.

Which leads to the scenario I have already described. If, for example, the last set of encounters were the other way around, immune to cold, vulnerable to fire, you're now going to have to alter spells and possibly skills to accommodate, along with any tactics related to those skills. You'll also notice in that video that there weren't 4 devs. So while the dev was busy hopping from one party member to the other, the rest of them were behaving according to their given commands, and tactics. All of these would have had to have been set up prior to the pictured encounter, which I did snip to keep the quote shorter. So it becomes a game of metas, you peek at what you're up against, rebuild your party as needed, rinse and repeat. That's going to get tedious really fast, all because "well, we don't want people facerolling the content"? No matter what they do, people are going to face roll the content, up to and including the dragons. So that seems like a lot of wasted dev time to me.

[mugwuffin1986]

Were you not expecting to find someone who doesn't share your assumptions about game design?

 

 

I've noticed those.  I look forward to an in-game explanation of how the characters will know those things.  Because if they don't, I will not take them into account when making combat decisions.

 

Just as I refuse to consider information I've learned from cutscenes where the PC wasn't present.  Like Loghain's hiring of Zevran.  Or even Loghain's betrayal of Cailan.

 

 

And the areas will be that homogeneous, will they?

 

If there's no in-game explanation for the restriction, then a single instance where my characters want to use an ability they have, but it doesn't happen to be in their hotbars right then, is a game-breaking event.

 

Well... I'm afraid we will have to agree to disagree.

 

For me you shouldn't have to restrict your design by having to label a mechanic with an in-universe purpose/reason.

[tmp7704]

You know, cherrypicking is really bad form. How about we get to the meat of the post you decided to snip, you know, the part where I mention that all the skills that I actually trained to get where I am are actually available to use when and if I need them.

I'm sorry, but that was actually the part which highlighted the point I was trying to make -- that is, having limitations in some aspects of the gameplay can be in itself fine, and treated as something perfectly natural.

The backlash is, imo, happening because this kind of limitation is being applied to area where you aren't (yet) accustomed to dealing with it. The "meat" of your post that I snipped was, effectively, statement that currently you don't have to make choices that you might regret. But actually having to make these choices doesn't need to turn out as horrible as you fear -- you already do such selection in some other area(s) of the game, and having to do it doesn't appear to upset you as much as you think it will, when applied elsewhere.

[mugwuffin1986]

Which leads to the scenario I have already described. If, for example, the last set of encounters were the other way around, immune to cold, vulnerable to fire, you're now going to have to alter spells and possibly skills to accommodate, along with any tactics related to those skills. You'll also notice in that video that there weren't 4 devs. So while the dev was busy hopping from one party member to the other, the rest of them were behaving according to their given commands, and tactics. All of these would have had to have been set up prior to the pictured encounter, which I did snip to keep the quote shorter. So it becomes a game of metas, you peek at what you're up against, rebuild your party as needed, rinse and repeat. That's going to get tedious really fast, all because "well, we don't want people facerolling the content"? No matter what they do, people are going to face roll the content, up to and including the dragons. So that seems like a lot of wasted dev time to me.

 

You're making the assumption that the abilities have been designed to be that restrictive... we know nothing of them, other than what we can assume will be carried over from previous titles.

 

But even then we know nothing of the effects of upgraded spells or the new passives etc... To me it looks like they're really pushing for people to use the party, but hey... if the abilities are poorly thought out it could very well lead to the constant UI reloading/swapping you seem to be worried about.

 

I still don't see the harm in tweaking your parties tactics/abilities occasionally as you progress or even for a particular encounter. I don't think the combat will be a problem, I don't think the combat will become tiresome either. People play MMOs for years with the same abilities, people have been playing Street Fighter for 20 odd years doing the same combos, if something is fun... it's fun, repetition is generally not a factor.