What people don't understand about the Arishok fight is first that it's optional, second it's a boss fight. Trying to solo it with a suboptimal build is like trying to solo a Dragon with a suboptimal build.
This is part of the design. It can be argued that the design choice is wrong since a story driven duel (and a huge marketing point) should be more involved that simple autoattacking contest, but it is what it is.
If Bioware just produced the same thing all the time, we'd rightly criticize them for a lack of innovation.
"we"? No. You might. I wouldn't. Certain Bioware/Black Isle/etc. titles innovated more slowly. I was very happy with that. BG1,IWD,BG2, IWD2 etc. cool. DA:O, apart from some poor QC was great. In my all time top 20 of games. In my top 5 of CRPGs. As was ME1 for story based FPS. At that point I thought "Bioware is back into the #1 spot for me!" Since DA2 & ME3 they have fallen a long way in my view.
Criticise for lack of innovation? Change, for change's sake, isn't better.
All this doesn't mean that DA:I can't be a great game (for many customers). I wish they had save this sort of 'development' for a different cycle of titles.
You know I kind of have to thank these Youtubers....a bunch of them have been like crash test manaquins. Showing me the kinds of errors to avoid, and giving me ideas of tactics to use. One guy Had Varric shooting at enemies through a window. That was freaking brillaint. Heck he could used Varric to pull the enemy through a minefield of traps, magic and a hail of arrows LONG before they got into melee range with Cassandra.
Heck I can not WAIT to see how the Specializations work with this!
No, no it is not. Those Barriers last a whole 20 seconds. That would nothing with a fight like the Arishok, no matter how many times you cast it. You will likely run out of Mana and Potions before he is defeated.
They've already said you can upgrade the barriers, and that it stacks with other abilities like guard, and that you can recast it again pretty quick.
DA2 had pleanty of "mitigation" abilities, as listed above. You could keep these up most of the fight and it does not change how annoying the fight is. The Arishok fight is now basically going to be EVERY fight in DAI.
That was DA2....this is DA:I which has completely changed how combat works, how the areas are designed, how crafting and magic work, so the DA2 experience doesn't really help to inform how this game will play. I've watched a number of fights in DA:I from people with varying skill levels and none of them ever made me think o the Arishok fight.
For DAO. Heroic Defense/Aura, Forcefield, Glyphs, Mass CC, Mitigation abilities of the tank. Just with the "heroic" line you can make the tank pretty much immune to physical damage.
For DA2. Obscure Effects, Fatiguing Fog, Gravitic Ring, Barrier and many more with lesser effects. But any combination of these 4, especially upgraded, makes the party completely immune to damage for an extended period of time, and can be rotated.
And in addition to these, there are gameplay elements like kiting, dodging the slow animations etc.
Sounds to me like the defensive abilities were broken, not necessarily healing. In fact, I'd bet it's because of those defensive abilities that we have players who claim that they were able to defeat Nightmare mode for both DAs without requiring a healer or potions. In any case, the fix for this seems simple to me: stop mana/stamina regeneration and limit potions.
With these in place, players would be forced to actually DPS and play intelligently during a fight instead of kiting to heal mana/stamina or spamming pots and you'd get to keep a playstyle that many people like.
You are missing the point that the fight with the Arishok was balanced around the possibility you may have had infinite healing at your disposal.
Again folks are applying DAI mechanics to DAO/2 combat and saying it won't work.
The fight was balanced with you having a party in mind, not infinite healing.
"we"? No. You might. I wouldn't.
Fair enough. I shouldn't have spoken for anyone but myself.
DA2 had pleanty of "mitigation" abilities, as listed above. You could keep these up most of the fight and it does not change how annoying the fight is. The Arishok fight is now basically going to be EVERY fight in DAI.
What does Arishok fight have to do with that? That fight was unfair, because (for most classes) Arishok had insane health compared to your damage, was able to heal and if he started hitting you, you were as good as dead (especially with mage).
I can see no common ground between Arishok duel and DA:I combat.
Sounds to me like the defensive abilities were broken, not necessarily healing. In fact, I'd bet it's because of those defensive abilities that we have players who claim that they were able to defeat Nightmare mode for both DAs without requiring a healer or potions. In any case, the fix for this seems simple to me: stop mana/stamina regeneration and limit potions.
With these in place, players would be forced to actually DPS and play intelligently during a fight instead of kiting to heal mana/stamina or spamming pots and you'd get to keep a playstyle that many people like.
That's along the lines on what I said and the reason healing is irrelevant. As far as nightmare goes, healing alone isn't enough to sustain the extra damage, so a player is forced to play with defensive cooldowns. It's not that you don't "need" a healer for Nightmare. It's that a specialized healer does more bad than good. You want more damage and more definitive ways to mitigate damage. Healing is just not enough.
Limiting mana regen and potions is not the solution, it wouldn't change the playstyle, provided everything else stays the same. For DA2 at least, potions were limited enough to not matter. In fact injury potions were arguably more important. It's strictly better to sacrifice a secondary party member than to waste abilities to save him after he performed his function.
What does Arishok fight have to do with that? That fight was unfair, because (for most classes) Arishok had insane health compared to your damage, was able to heal and if he started hitting you, you were as good as dead (especially with mage).
I can see no common ground between Arishok duel and DA:I combat.
I really hope you're right, but seeing Solas being one-shotted over and over again does not inspire much hope in me.
That's along the lines on what I said and the reason healing is irrelevant. As far as nightmare goes, healing alone isn't enough to sustain the extra damage, so a player is forced to play with defensive cooldowns. It's not that you don't "need" a healer for Nightmare. It's that a specialized healer does more bad than good. You want more damage and more definitive ways to mitigate damage. Healing is just not enough.
Limiting mana regen and potions is not the solution, it wouldn't change the playstyle, provided everything else stays the same. For DA2 at least, potions were limited enough to not matter. In fact injury potions were arguably more important. It's strictly better to sacrifice a secondary party member than to waste abilities to save him after he performed his function.
And why exactly wouldn't a mana/stamina limit work? Also who says everything has to stay the same? You'd obviously balance the game around not having mana/stamina regen as they balanced DA:I around not having healing spells.
Healing magic is described to be a complex and hard school to master. Yes. But I was talking about the basic Heal spell.
Given that it was an easy first tier spell in the other games, it didn't look too complex.
Yes, you keep saying this. We get it. I'll say it one more time, game mechanics are not indicative of lore. These characters are all experienced, yet they start at level 1 and unrealistically progress during the short period of the game (less so with DA2 but a common game play mechanic for rpg's so that a player has fun "leveling up".) You can't equate game mechanics with lore. If you do that, you've got to come up with a lore reason why they level up so fast. There is no lore reason, because it's a game play mechanic.
I really hope you're right, but seeing Solas being one-shotted over and over again does not inspire much hope in me.
You mean by the Giants? Those guys were clearly above the players level, and likely required more thought to face at that point than I saw most people use in these vids.
Patrick, I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but honestly, that wasn't reassuring at all to me; it all still sounds just absolutely terrible. Why try to fix something that isn't broken? I guess it will be Easy difficulty for me then, because this just doesn't sound like it'll be too much fun otherwise to be perfectly honest.
You know recently, the more news I hear about this game the less I get excited; so many of these changes sound absolutely terrible to me.
And why exactly wouldn't a mana/stamina limit work? Also who says everything has to stay the same? You'd obviously balance the game around not having mana/stamina regen as they balanced DA:I around not having healing spells.
Because building around defensive abilities requires far less usage of abilities than a build around healing. Limiting the resource will hit the second build harder than the first.
Also I can't make a comparison for a different game. If we are to change everything then there are better points to balance than limiting the resource. In fact doing that is curing the symptom, not the disease. Theoretically it can work but looking at games that feature this (namely mmos), the point of limiting the resource is to promote synergy. Like bringing a class that can help others save/regenerate mana but has lower healing output or more specialized.
Same. I love healing. It's what I do in every game if given the chance. It's my go-to spec.TBH, as much as I'm pushing for a healer playstyle, I do agree with this. I'm personally looking forward to the game and seeing how everything works and if anything, I actually think healing will be TOO abundant. I just think that they could've balanced the game to include healing spells and actually catered to a wide variety of players instead of just giving up on it completely.
Because building around defensive abilities requires far less usage of abilities than a build around healing. Limiting the resource will hit the second build harder than the first.
Also I can't make a comparison for a different game. If we are to change everything then there are better points to balance than limiting the resource. In fact doing that is curing the symptom, not the disease. Theoretically it can work but looking at games that feature this (namely mmos), the point of limiting the resource is to promote synergy. Like bringing a class that can help others save/regenerate mana but has lower healing output or more specialized.
Well, DA is touted as a party oriented RPG, so why not?
Well, DA is touted as a party oriented RPG, so why not?
DA already has mechanics based on synergy. Adding even more will force players into less party building options. They stated that they are trying to avoid this. For an mmo it's different. If there is a class that tops the meters, then you need a reason to bring anything else (and making people that don't play it to have a harder time finding guilds).
The healing changes will make the game easier.
The individual fights will be easier because they're attritional, they're not intended to be a serious threat by themselves. And if you do suffer significant attrition, you can simply pop back to camp and be fresh and ready to go .
That's along the lines on what I said and the reason healing is irrelevant. As far as nightmare goes, healing alone isn't enough to sustain the extra damage, so a player is forced to play with defensive cooldowns. It's not that you don't "need" a healer for Nightmare. It's that a specialized healer does more bad than good. You want more damage and more definitive ways to mitigate damage. Healing is just not enough.
Limiting mana regen and potions is not the solution, it wouldn't change the playstyle, provided everything else stays the same. For DA2 at least, potions were limited enough to not matter. In fact injury potions were arguably more important. It's strictly better to sacrifice a secondary party member than to waste abilities to save him after he performed his function.
Just to add, the defensive rotations worked well even when you had to deal with bosses, and even for the general nightmare of aggravation that was the Corypheus fight (which on nightmare was really just an endurance contest and a fight against poor pathfinding).
and even for the general nightmare of aggravation that was the Corypheus fight (which on nightmare was really just an endurance contest and a fight against poor pathfinding).
Soooooooo many f bombs and cuss words shouted at my TV during the battle. So many times I almost threw my controller at the wall.
The healing changes will make the game easier.
The individual fights will be easier because they're attritional, they're not intended to be a serious threat by themselves. And if you do suffer significant attrition, you can simply pop back to camp and be fresh and ready to go .
DA already has mechanics based on synergy. Adding even more will force players into less party building options. They stated that they are trying to avoid this. For an mmo it's different. If there is a class that tops the meters, then you need a reason to bring anything else (and making people that don't play it to have a harder time finding guilds).
But again, if the game is balanced around mana/stamina regens, then they shouldn't have a need for a class that is continually restoring these resources. Not only that, but we're also pretty much forced to bring certain classes along for specific actions. Without a rogue in your party, you'd be unable to pick a lock to rescue Leliana, for example, without a warrior, you can't bash down a gate to capture a fort, and without a mage, you can't energize a bridge to cross over it to seal a rift and their barrier spells are defined as being needed in the early parts of the game. If a hypothetical mana/stamina regenerator was included, why would they be different than needing a certain class to proceed with a mission or needing a mage to cast barrier spells in order to survive? And who'd say that you wouldn't get more options for resource healing later in the game such as the healing bombs we have in DA:I, which would prevent such a mana/stamina regenerator from being a party staple?
completely understand, and well explained.
but
I am sad because I feel realism (in a fantasy world? eh?!) means most mages have healing ability. We wouldn't have the wardens without it. Wynne would be useless as anything else.
I've always found potions that bounce you back from the near dead e.g. a hole though your middle, unlikely.
Shepard's one step from death, presses a button and is beating the crap out a reaper a second later? no way. A mage mumbles a spell and the hole heals, much more like it
no matter, I will enjoy the game, become addicted as usual.
But (started a sentence with 'but' ugh) being immersed in this world I will always know that mages are healers and be sad 
I don't see how this will actually make the game easier. Bio games -- almost all CRPGs, really -- have always had a bunch of fights that aren't a serious challenge, and with full post-combat healing they amount to nothing. The healing change can't reduce the challenge to below nothing, can it?
Well, most of the non-challenging fight's you could still mess up if you were sufficiently dopey
yes, it is. In DA2 if a character needed a heal, I had the option of "Cast a spell OR have them quaff a potion".
Okay, say Varric quaffed a potion instead. Well for those few seconds he's drinking a potion instead of doing what he does best and that's blasting away at things. Less DPS. Whereas my healer could pop a heal spell on him (either group heal if everyone needed it or single person, both on different cooldowns) while he continues to wail on the bad guys with Bianca.
DAI's system now requires that he quaff that potion--costing dps--because my Inquisitor and all her helper mages no longer have that option to heal him instead.
There's a thrown heal potion as well, so you could just have your mage toss the aoe heal at them for exactly the same effect.
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