You guys are forgetting fast travel though right? As soon as you find a location, you can just zip back and forth like skyrim.
So if you journey from A -> B -> C -> D and you run out of potions. You can zip back to A, grab potions, then travel back to D.
I'm not sure how enemies respawn, which is certainly important, but at least you won't need to go through B and C again.
Not that staring at loading screens makes it much better...
A focus ability.It's not the same. Still, if you think it's important enough to change the title you're welcome to start your own thread.
Actually as it stands with your title it is. Only way it wouldn't be is if you put "No basic healing spells whatsoever" or "No mana based healing spells whatsoever", at the very least very least you should link the group heal tweet in your OP instead of willingly being misleading.
I thought the way Dragon's Dogma handled healing struck a good balance between being too easy or too challenging.
Health did not regenerate, but when you took damage there was a threshold to which your health could be replenished with a mage's healing spell.
Health potions were not infinite, either, but the restriction on how many you could carry was dependent on the size of your character; I played a tiny character and couldn't carry many items or equipment before becoming Encumbered.
Toward end-game there were armor sets you could acquire that gave you health regen, and by the time I acquired this armor I had been through hell and back - so it made the game feel super easy.
Not to mention that it took significantly longer to cast and you had to move to the spell for it to take effect too. Placement was just as important as getting the spell off.
My understanding is that fast travel is only to camps.
Oh, well, that's less nice.
You guys are forgetting fast travel though right? As soon as you find a location, you can just zip back and forth like skyrim.
So if you journey from A -> B -> C -> D and you run out of potions. You can zip back to A, grab potions, then travel back to D.
I'm not sure how enemies respawn, which is certainly important, but at least you won't need to go through B and C again.
You could never fast travel from inside a building/cave/dungeon/deep roads/fade....so yes, I would say that it means we will be doing some amount of backtracking if we need to get back to a camp. Unless there is a camp every few fights, in which case why implement this feature in the first place?
A lot of people are picturing trying to play DAO/2 with no heals. Of course that wouldn't work, those games weren't balanced for that. But how well were they balanced with heals, really? I'm not a numbers guy, but I like a good fight. And here's what made it make sense for me.
There's a very simple reason why this is a good decision, and it's also why the balance in DAO/2 was all over the map. It's in the question "How many health points does a player have?" Because we need to know this before we can design an encounter and know how balanced it is.
So, how many HP? Well, we'd hope it starts with "somewhere between the minimum for a mage and the max for a warrior, varied based on party makeup." Okay, good place to start. That's a real number. We can build encounters that do somewhere within that range of total damage + effects.
Now add in healing. How many HP does the player have? "Somewhere between the minimum for a mage and the max for a warrior, plus somewhere between the minimum and maximum number of healing spells/potions and between the min/max of their mana/potions."
Okay, how much HP is that exactly? Since potions restore mana, and potions also restored HP, the actual number of potential HP was somewhere between the minimum for a mage and the total amount of gold you had available to spend on potions. And the later in the game it was, the more the top reached astronomical numbers. And so the greatest power the player had in previous games was not any one of their abilities, it was the ability to make the number of HP impossible to estimate.
And to counter effectively infinite HP, "balance" meant we needed to hit the player with far more potential damage than their characters could withstand, and do it all but instantly. In effect, replacing HP damage (unknown limits) with death/resurrection (known limits). Or we had to stop them from chaining potions, meaning more enemies that put them to sleep or confused them, or otherwise made the player not able to take action. Alpha strikes and crowd control, neither of which were tactics that were fun to face again and again, because they "balanced" by removing actions, by removing control.
Now in Inquisition, by reducing healing, by actually defining HP to a range that can have real numbers in it, we can better balance encounters. And no, players can't rely on chaining potions. So what do they get instead?
Abilities/gear/choices that actually have an effect on the battle that is greater than infinite health on your belt. And because your greatest ability isn't chugging potions, we need less effects that shut you down. You spend more time in control of your characters making more varied decisions to have a greater effect on the flow of the battle. You have regen from spells and potions and gear. You have effects you can craft that grant health on enemy deaths. You have damage mitigation through abilities and buffs and crafting. Limiting health and balancing enemies accordingly makes more tactical choices viable while keeping the challenge.
Does this make it more difficult? On Nightmare, Well, you asked for a challenge, and you'll have one that you can overcome in many more viable ways than previously possible.
But what about Easy? Well, last weekend, on Easy/Casual, starting the game with a mage and me not saying a word, my seven year old played for two hours that included many battles, including rifts and beating the crap out of a low level Pride demon. No party wipes. I covered his ears once.
I think you'll be fine.
I think I am okay with this. This coupled with the 8 ability lock is bearable for me now that I have decided to go with an Archer Rogue. Still haven't decided on Tempest or Artificer though.
I think I am okay with this. This coupled with the 8 ability lock is bearable for me now that I have decided to go with an Archer Rogue. Still haven't decided on Tempest or Artificer though.
but those of us who play mages, and warriors to a lesser degree, are getting shafted with such a restriction
but those of us who play mages, and warriors to a lesser degree, are getting shafted with such a restriction
Don't you mean Mages and Rogues? Warriors get a secondary health they can bring back up themselves.
but those of us who play mages, and warriors to a lesser degree, are getting shafted with such a restriction
No.
You're being presented with CHALLENGE
I'm actually still positive about this change. Before an adventure you have to stock up on gear / potions etc. That adds investment to the journey. Each fight isn't self-contained and irrelevant to the next. You make a mistake in one fight and suddenly you have to be more careful in the next. Or alternatively you've planned well and you have a better chance vs the final "boss" fight.
I love healing classes, spent hundreds of hours in guild wars playing a healer. But I didn't really think the healing stuff in DA:O was particularly fun, so perhaps that is why I'm not really fussed that they are changing the system.
Don't you mean Mages and Rogues? Warriors get a secondary health they can bring back up themselves.
I meant the 8 ability restriction, not health
To be fair, I'm not seeing a lot of difference between spamming heals and spamming Barrier...
No.
You're being presented with CHALLENGE
I'm having a challenge artificially forced on me.
Did mages forget how to cast healing spells all of a sudden? Do potions now weigh 10 pounds each?
I think I am okay with this. This coupled with the 8 ability lock is bearable for me now that I have decided to go with an Archer Rogue. Still haven't decided on Tempest or Artificer though.
Wth... archery??? No more Archmage? o.O I know the game is restrictive and all but I never expected that response...
But since that's horribly off-topic, let me also say that I don't think the new rules on health management will be that bad. It may get a little annoying and the backtracking may get tedious, but Dodge, Guard, Barrier, Crowd Control, Mines, Walls, and good old fashioned Kiting seem like more than enough to get us through the game. If we are careful, we won't need to do much backtracking in the first place. It's just something we'll need to adapt to, not an insurmountable obstacle.
To be fair, I'm not seeing a lot of difference between spamming heals and spamming Barrier...
The difference appears between fights : barrier is only useful during battle while heal can replenish your health after the fight is over, if you decide for exemple to wait a little longer at the same place and spam your health spells asap.
Globally, I suppose that the restriction on the healing could bring more challenges, for exemple if while exploring an area (or while trying to accomplish a mission) some events triggers themselves forcing our inquisitor to make a strategical decisions, intervene or not, knowing that comming back latter is not an option.
just another thing about this game that people are freaking the F out about that doesn't bother me at all
I'm having a challenge artificially forced on me.
Did mages forget how to cast healing spells all of a sudden? Do potions now weigh 10 pounds each?
Great now I'm imagining each member of the party wearing a huge healing potion camelback in combat 
Edit: then spending the next several minutes after combat peeing 
I'm not worried about it being too difficult, but I am really sad I can't be a healer. That was my favorite role in the previous games. 
I think Barrier prevents all damage until it wears off, though... I seem to recall everyone's Barrier fading at the same time, regardless of how much damage they'd taken while encased in it. Am I mistaken? Guard I will agree with you on.... that's clearly additional HP that gets chipped away from taking damage.
That still makes it temp HP. It's just variable based on how much punishment you get. And if enemy damge goes up with difficulty, then as if healing went up with difficulty. Barrier-type abilities actually scale up a lot more on difficulty than pure heals.
Actually I have played plenty, and most of them base gameplay around the lore. Its actually the norm. I also work for an rpg company as a designer, author, and lore-writer.
None of them are. The worst offender is D&D. Order of the Stick does a great job showing how a world where the D&D lore matched up with the gameplay and ruleset. We've got people who view death as meaningless (if annoying) because of resurrection, people outwardly encouraging murder because of their awareness of how XP works, etc.
Did mages forget how to cast healing spells all of a sudden? Do potions now weigh 10 pounds each?
Actually, according to the lore:
Creation requires considerable finesse, more than any other school, and is therefore rarely mastered. Those mages who have made a serious study of creation are the highest in demand, useful in times of peace as well as war.
Oh sure Hawke and the Warden had a talent for it....but notice that none of the experienced mages in DAI have skill for and the Merill (herself a very powerful mage with access to ancient elven knowledge) was unable to caste heal as well.
As for potions, you'll have to spend the Inquisitions "Power" to allow you and all your forces to carry more potions if you so desire.
Actually, according to the lore:
Oh sure Hawke and the Warden had a talent for it....but notice that none of the experienced mages in DAI have skill for and the Merill (herself a very powerful mage with access to ancient elven knowledge) was unable to caste heal as well.
As for potions, you'll have to spend the Inquisitions "Power" to allow you and all your forces to carry more potions if you so desire.
I don't think it takes a "master" to cast one spell from a particular school.... I think you're grasping at straws with this lore argument. It was a combat mechanics decision, unrelated to lore.
edit: I don't see any mention of lore in Lukas Krisjanson's post in this thread... everything he said was related to game mechanics and balancing. This most likely the reason specific characters in DA2 lacked certain spell trees. They didn't remove Creation from Merrill because of lore, no matter what justifications you bring up...
Seems crafting is going to be a decent part of DA:I. Not only the weapons and armor, but obviously crafting potions. With the set ups I usually have, never consisting of healers, potions was always what I depended on, but I always ran out too. I think there is a bigger focus to really use your skills in DA:I and that's not a bad thing at all.
No offense to anyone, but Wynne wasn't the most interesting of the choices available in DA:O. Though I did like her. Anders is liked by some, but I never really found him too appealing as a companion. In DA2, he seemed a bit too dramatic as well. So there went the "healers", unless you chose to play that role yourself. I am imagining that if we did have a healer in DA:I, he/she wouldn't have been my first choice again. Maybe, maybe not. Potions will do me just fine as I choose the group of my liking.
I haven't seen it, but I imagine we still have the ability to use the settings to automatically heal ourselves at certain percentages (yeah, I forgot the name). We'll be fine.
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