436 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

They do not put the Genlock in room 23A of the Deep Roads to kill you. Those combats are basically nothing more than ways to gain XP in DAO.

That's what they are for the player, anyway. For the devs it's a way to pad the game length, right?

[sjsharp2011]

That tensd to be my strategy as well I've found going 2 mages against the dragons but against normal enemies yeah I go with that strategy as that works best for me as well except in my case I happen to be the mage at the moment as I'm playing as one in my current playthrough

[Rawgrim]

BG1 had some danger, mostly first half of the game. Hobgoblins with poison arrows, at level 1? Noooooooo! By BG2 they were XP feasts for battles. The limited healing casting made difference in the feeling of danger -- also you had epically fewer potions than in DAO in BG2 for example. You were basically playing the DAI model where you were being worn down by the death of a thousand cuts. DAI does have the closest feel to BG where I feel like I need to be careful. There were a lot of "f it" moments in DAO and DA2 as far as combat went because I could make it right immediately afterwards.

You might not like spamming barrier but spirit healers were basically spamming heal spells so the effect is mostly the same just which bar are you filling up the red one or the blue one. I think more than healing spells what is missing from the quasi-clerics are all the buff spells where you can feel like a helper instead of a killer.

 

BG1 didn't have dangerous fights other than during the first half of the game? Wyverns, That group of fighters\clerics\mages outside the Cloakwood mines, The crowd of fighters and mages inside the mines, Daevorn, The fight in the caves under candlekeep, the fight a top Seven Sails (think it was called that), the fight in the whorehouse you access through the sewers, the fight at the throne room where Sarevok and the dopplegangers tries to kill of the entire council, the fight before that church of Bhaal, Sarevok himself.

 

None if these particulary harder than a hobgoblin with poisoned arrows?

[Realmzmaster]

Add me to the camp that wants Healing restored. What did the mages get stupid since DA:2?  It's been established cannon that mages can heal (See Anders!!!. Personally, I think the new healing system is a rip off, as much as being limited to the number of potions I can carry. 

 

Seriously, if anyone can post a link to an article explaining why the healing system is so restrictive in this game, I'd appreciate it.

 

Regards,

Emmy

 

Yes mages can heal, but the lore specifically states that it is like magical surgery and takes time to perform. Therefore it has to be done outside of combat over a period of time.

The reason that Anders and Wynne are suppose to be able to heal in combat is that they are inhabited by spirits therefore they are spirit healers.

The mistake Bioware made in DAO was allowing all mages to have a heal spell. DA2 specifically limited Anders and Hawke (if a mage) to the heal spell. I think allowing Hawke to have the heal spell in combat was a mistake lore wise.

 

DAI has Resurgence which is a focus ability but only for the Knight-Enchanter specialization. Resurgence acts like a group heal spell.

 

If Bioware is going to have the healing spell return Bioware needs to re-write DA's lore.

[Sidney]

BG1 didn't have dangerous fights other than during the first half of the game? Wyverns, That group of fighters\clerics\mages outside the Cloakwood mines, The crowd of fighters and mages inside the mines, Daevorn, The fight in the caves under candlekeep, the fight a top Seven Sails (think it was called that), the fight in the whorehouse you access through the sewers, the fight at the throne room where Sarevok and the dopplegangers tries to kill of the entire council, the fight before that church of Bhaal, Sarevok himself.

 

None if these particulary harder than a hobgoblin with poisoned arrows?

 

Let me make this simple: boss fights are designed to be lethal. Trash mobs, are not 99% of the time. The hobgoblins were only notably tough because poison on level 1 D&D characters is a rough go. In both BG1 and DAI the "tough" fights are mostly tough if you are improperly leveled.

[Rawgrim]

Let me make this simple: boss fights are designed to be lethal. Trash mobs, are not 99% of the time. The hobgoblins were only notably tough because poison on level 1 D&D characters is a rough go. In both BG1 and DAI the "tough" fights are mostly tough if you are improperly leveled.

 

Some of those I mentioned aren't bossfights at all. You run into plenty of fights like these at various locations in the games. Groups of adventurers or villains that have no connection to the main story at all.

[Homer2101]

Yeah, I think that in general, DA2 had the most satisfying method. Even when traveling around with a high level Bethany or Anders, my group wasn't suddenly invincible and mana could be drained very quickly. I can't help but feel that DA2 got so much hate on so many levels that BioWare tried very hard to get away from anything associated with it, even the stuff that was actually good.

 

If I had to choose the method of combat with which to create a basic template for a new DA, it would definitely be DA2. I'd certainly bring back Arcane Warrior or something like Knight-Enchanter though, but without the barriers.

DA2 healing sacrifices long-term tension and strategy at the altar of short-term excitement. At the end of each combat encounter in DA2, the player winds up back exactly where she started, so the outcome of each combat is either a complete win or a complete loss. Since the player ultimately can only win, the impact of each encounter is meaningless on the overall experience of the dungeon; it is irrelevant whether the player plays well and skilfully, or squeaks by with one character left standing.

 

Combat in RPGs based on the old Dungeons and Dragons format, such as Origins and DA2, all revolve around managing a single resource -- health, which is the single damage buffer. Once that buffer runs out, the character dies and the player must reload to an earlier point or similar or similar. All player tactics in such games revolve around managing the health resource, including managing other ancillary resources such as spell slots and grenades and ammo and what have you.

 

In theory, the player has a finite long-term healing capacity, which the player is encouraged to conserve through clever tactics. In practice, without adjustment the player always has access to too much healing, so that both the immediate encounter and all subsequent encounters can be resolved through spamming potions and/or magic. This dovetails with a fundamental rule of game design: the player is always richer than the designer assumes. Origins falls into this category -- at all difficulties, the player has an infinite supply of potions and magic, and so can roll through every encounter by chugging potions.

 

DA2 attempts to incentivize short-term strategic thinking by restricting the player's immediate access to healing. Healing spells and potions in DA2 are subject to lengthy cooldown timers, which prevent the player from spamming them and make their use a tactical decision. At higher difficulties, the player must time use of healing spells and potions to best effect in the knowledge that she will not have access to them for a substantial period of time afterwards. This forces the player to think tactically and introduces stress and excitement, because improper use of the now-finite healing resources has consequences.

 

However, DA2 has no long-term healing resource management. Each encounter consequently is an independent moment which has no bearing on the player's consequent actions. An encounter where the player uses five potions has identical long-term impact to an encounter where the player uses no potions -- none whatsoever. Consequently, there is no need for long-term resource conservation or strategy, and so no long-term stress and resulting excitement. DA2 successfully makes each fight potentially exciting, but the overall progress through a map quite boring, because while each encounter can be lost, there's no need to conserve long-term resources. And this is exactly what we see players reporting -- each individual encounter may be exciting, but eventually it becomes a slog because none of them seem to matter.

 

The alternative to DA2's approach of constraining short-term access but allowing unlimited long-term access, is to constrain player access to healing in the long-term but allow the player to consume her available resources at any rate she desires. This has best been done in Half Life 2, where the player is occasionally allowed to replenish a portion of her health but then is free to run down that health in any way she pleases until her character dies. However, this approach only works well in either highly linear games such as HL2, or in games where a "dungeon master" of some sort can actively adjust access to healing resources depending on the players' choices. In open-world games, the players have access to too many potential combinations of abilities and equipment to allow the developer to predict the appropriate access to healing. In open-world games such as Inquisition, the player inevitably will have either too much healing, making combat trivial, or too little healing, making combat so dangerous that the player will become inured to stress and find combat not exciting but merely tedious.

 

Inquisition sidesteps the issue of single-tier healing resources by breaking up health into separate long-term and short-term resources which are wholly independent of one another. In Inquisition, the player is not supposed to use health as the primary resource buffer; the player is instead supposed to avoid damage through tactics and skills and to absorb damage through barrier and guard. Health in inquisition is a long-term resource that the player is strongly encouraged to conserve across multiple encounters. Unlike in Origins, the player can no longer spam healing potions to win a fight, and unlike in DA2, winning a fight through bad strategy has significant consequences for the player's ability to adventure further. I have had numerous occasions of coming to the last stage of a dungeon or series of encounters with one or two potions remaining and all of the party at below 50% health, and of wishing that I had done some things differently in earlier encounters, and of wondering whether I could mitigate sufficient damage to clear the dungeon. That sort of tension is impossible under the healing-spam mechanics of Origins and the infinite-potions mechanics of DA2.

 

The complaints of players having to return to camp after consuming all of their potions indicate that the system is working -- the system is designed to encourage players to figure out the game and to play it well, rather than to merely chug potions and cast healing spells.

 

The problem, of course, is that players have been conditioned by thirty years of bad game design to treat health as a disposable resource, and potion spam as an inherent part of an RPG. Even though multi-tiered health systems have been successfully implemented across all genres for the past ten years or so. This was my original assumption, and it took until level 8 or 10 for me to break it. So players tend to see a health pool and a set of healing potions, and assume, even if only subconsciously, that these are the same disposable resources that they can squander at will. Unfortunately, Bioware seemingly plays to this bad convention by making guard-generating and barrier-generating skills seemingly-optional even though they are integral to Inquisition's combat system.

 

I say all of this after having played almost nothing but healing-support characters in various MMOs and multiplayer games for over fifteen years. Both my Warden and my Hawke have focused on healing. To say that I like the healing role would be a gross understatement. But a healing-specialist cannot be simply grafted onto the current Inquisition combat system without breaking the whole thing; that would return us back to the healing-spam of Origins with its fairly uninteresting combat, or at best to DA2 and its isolated encounters that have no long-term impact, where the way in which the player wins an encounter is wholly unimportant.

 

The system is not perfect. It can be greatly improved.

 

The following would improve the current health and combat system:

 

- Barrier should be an ability inherent to all mage classes. Barriers are an inherent part of the mage class, even if only as backup for when four Greater Terrors chain-stun the squishies or a giant spawns on top of Dorian and eats his pretty face. That would reinforce Barrier's status as a core skill for mages, and encourage players to use it from the beginning. At the moment, players have to look through the skill trees to figure out that the barrier skill exists, then realize that they should use it to absorb damage, then decide that it is worth the investment of a spell point fairly early on when they might also be eying other rather useful skills like immolate and chain lightning.

 

- Probably barriers should not absorb quite as much damage, or have a longer cooldown. Or maybe reduce the effectiveness of each barrier cast within 5 seconds of the previous or something. Then again, chain-casting barriers is not all that effective against enemies with knockdown on Nightmare.

 

- Warriors should generate Guard with each hit; remove their ability to regenerate stamina with each hit to compensate. That will reinforce the warrior's position as the primary front-line fighter, and will further encourage players to use them as such. It will differentiate two-handed warriors from dagger rogues; currently the two overlap too much because both are high-dps but fairly squishy melee types. Instead the warrior will get greater resilience, but the rogue will get better damage output.

 

- Allow players to see their health, barrier, and guard as specific numbers. Currently it seems as though barrier absorbs much more damage than guard, but it's impossible to verify due to lack of any specific numbers on the normal UI.

[TheOgre]

I just hope that the current model does not stay the same or continues in the future. Would far prefer DA2's model if we are going with an arcade hack and slash. MMO threat% and open combat where enemies cannot be forced to focus on your warrior just by proximity is pretty bad with an MMO combat system.

[AlanC9]

Some of those I mentioned aren't bossfights at all. You run into plenty of fights like these at various locations in the games. Groups of adventurers or villains that have no connection to the main story at all.

Almost all of the stuff you listed was on the critical path. I suppose you can get through without killing any wyverns, though I've never managed that myself. OTOH, I didn't think the wyverns were all that difficult for a player who knows what the hell he's doing. Is the Seven Suns optional? I always thought you had to finish Scar's missions to get back to Candlekeep, but it's been a while.

[Ysandre]

I was one whose DA:O and DA2 characters were healers. I heal in MMOs; have for years. I do miss not being able to heal ... however, I have learned to adapt and move on.

 

Now, having said that? Out-of-combat health regen, to me, only makes sense. Over time, you do recover, if you don't go back into battle immediately. This is, imo, a flaw in DA:I. Not insurmountable, but a flaw.

[saladinbob]

This has nothing to do with RPG elements. If anything the DAO model really eliminated the need for a lot of RPG elements. i still find it funny so many people had to have a healer along when potion spam was light years more effective in DAO. DA2 the healer was far more useful once they put potions on cooldown which oddly didn't get as much griping but makes far less sense.

 

Regeneration isn't a solution to the problem because it makes exploration of the world trivial. Bioware is basically "right" about what they are trying to solve. Their games, going all the way back, have non-dangerous combat. There is no other way to say it. They do not put the Genlock in room 23A of the Deep Roads to kill you.  Those combats are basically nothing more than ways to gain XP in DAO. They want to create some sort of tension in combat and death isn't a viable form of tension for them to create - this isn't XCOM in other words - now avoiding a wound is the tension because you realize that those are going to aggregate over time. In other words, you might not be worried Bear AC3456 is gonna kill you but you are at least worried he might damage you enough that  the next bear could wipe your party before you get to the forest chateau or you will be so abused once you get there you can't complete your mission. It does add some element of risk back into the game.

 

I'm not entirely happy with the way it works but returning regen or healing magic makes a game that isn't too difficult once you get the mechanics down - and especially not once you get to the middle levels-  wholly trivial.

 

Works perfectly well when your health/shields (depending upon game) regenerates in Mass Effect and before you say Dragon Age isn't Mass Effect, it's clear for anyone with sense to see that that's the direction Bioware are taking this IP in so why not go balls deep and implement the same healing system? It's either that or we have to suffer the constant pain of going back to camp to heal up only to have to then fight our way back to our objective. On grounds of gameplay alone, I'm not against DA:I not having healing magic, but what's replaced it doesn't work well enough to allow the game to run smoothly. You say regeneration will make world exploration trivial but how much exploration can you have when you have to return to camp to heal up? If you had better placed pots caches and ooc regeneration you'd have more world exploration, not less.

[Dai Grepher]

I am doing fine with just the potions, even playing on Nightmare. I just play smart. I have never had to return to a previous camp in order to restock. I always restock at the next campsite. Meaning, I claim a new camp and restock there.

 

HOWEVER, I agree that healing magic should be brought back. It is a storyline element as much as a gameplay element.

 

Also, the reasons for not having healing magic have all been completely nullified by bugs.

 

They wanted us to play strategically, right? Well... when healing outside of combat can be done simply by removing your helmet/shield/armor/belt and then putting it back on... I think that kind of defeats the whole purpose of strategy.

 

Next, they wanted it to be more realistic. Well... potions aren't realistic. Your wounds and burn marks go away when you drink magical fluid?

 

They wanted it to be difficult or exciting. But how is it difficult when you can simply fast travel back to camp to heal completely? All that does it make it annoying and frustrating to have to slow travel back to where you were.

 

They didn't want healing magic to be the focus? Don't know if this was a reason or not, but Knight Enchanter has healing as the focus ability. And there are weapons and rings that restore health on each hit or each kill. So items heal but mages can't, unless they are Knight Enchanters?

 

There is also the healing grenade, which acts similar to a healing spell. In fact, my mage carries these around, and in my headcanon he has a healing spell.

 

So yeah, bring back healing magic.

[Sidney]

Some of those I mentioned aren't bossfights at all. You run into plenty of fights like these at various locations in the games. Groups of adventurers or villains that have no connection to the main story at all.

 

...and unless you suck at what you are doing those aren't tough fights either.

[Sidney]

Works perfectly well when your health/shields (depending upon game) regenerates in Mass Effect and before you say Dragon Age isn't Mass Effect, it's clear for anyone with sense to see that that's the direction Bioware are taking this IP in so why not go balls deep and implement the same healing system? It's either that or we have to suffer the constant pain of going back to camp to heal up only to have to then fight our way back to our objective. On grounds of gameplay alone, I'm not against DA:I not having healing magic, but what's replaced it doesn't work well enough to allow the game to run smoothly. You say regeneration will make world exploration trivial but how much exploration can you have when you have to return to camp to heal up? If you had better placed pots caches and ooc regeneration you'd have more world exploration, not less.

 

Well but ME's combat is rather trivial as well -- and also not designed to kill. Really this is endemic is almost all RPG's  compared to actual tactical games -- there is no real risk in most fights (even leaving aside resurrection magic or what not). There aren't in Skyrim either even though it is a wildly different type of game much risk vs a given enemy.  You really have a drop the ball to die in those games. Given that fact, unless you attrit health like BG2 or DAI there isn't any measurable risk.

 

It isn't about more or less exploration per se. It is bout the fact that with healing or regen you could crash through the entire hinterlands in one go and thus take a big world and make it seem a lot smaller.

[Jeffry]

It isn't about more or less exploration per se. It is bout the fact that with healing or regen you could crash through the entire hinterlands in one go and thus take a big world and make it seem a lot smaller.

 

Which wouldn't exactly be a bad thing. The game already has more than enough optional locations, I even would say that dropping 2 of them would make the game better (and all that time spent on them could be directed somewhere more imporatant). If you have to make your locations seem bigger by forcing you to fast travel away and backtrack, you are doing something wrong in my opinion. And this was an issue especially in Hinterlands, since it was really early in the game, many classes flat out sucked at that point, you didn't have access to the +4 potions perk yet and frikin templars and god-damn bears kept spawning right in your face out of thin air at the very same spot you were literally just looting the previous group of enemies.

[saladinbob]

Well but ME's combat is rather trivial as well -- and also not designed to kill. Really this is endemic is almost all RPG's  compared to actual tactical games -- there is no real risk in most fights (even leaving aside resurrection magic or what not). There aren't in Skyrim either even though it is a wildly different type of game much risk vs a given enemy.  You really have a drop the ball to die in those games. Given that fact, unless you attrit health like BG2 or DAI there isn't any measurable risk.

 

It isn't about more or less exploration per se. It is bout the fact that with healing or regen you could crash through the entire hinterlands in one go and thus take a big world and make it seem a lot smaller.

 

 

That's the entire point which you're obviously missing because it doesn't appeal to you. There are people who want to explore without constant interruptions and the inconvenience of having to go back to camp. It breaks immersion, not to mention being a pain in the arse for a lot of us. You don't have to like Mass Effect to appreciate how well the system works for those three games.

 

Since Inquisition, like Mass Effect, places the emphasis on fast paced action, the same system would work well for this game. The pot caches are already in the game, they're just too infrequent and illogically placed, for example, being stashed behind walls you need to break down in order to get to which is no use if your not playing a warrior. If you're going to make a game based around fast paced action the game needs to flow to allow that pace to continue uninterrupted. Because of regeneration and plentiful and sensibly placed heal ups Mass Effect's pace works well. Inquisition's does not.

[Dai Grepher]

^But can't those people just avoid random enemies?

 

Though I do agree that there should be multiple paths to hidden treasure. A treasure hidden behind a breakable wall should have a crawlspace for a rogue to slide through, or a space for a mage to Fade Step through. Also, breakable walls should be destructible by various means, such as an artificer's explosive trap, or a two-handed warrior's mighty blow, or a rift mage's stone fist.

[Jeffry]

^But can't those people just avoid random enemies?

 

No, the bears are onto you If the Wardens recruited bears, there would be no more blights, the darkspawn would be scared sh*tless.

[Sidney]

That's the entire point which you're obviously missing because it doesn't appeal to you. There are people who want to explore without constant interruptions and the inconvenience of having to go back to camp. It breaks immersion, not to mention being a pain in the arse for a lot of us. You don't have to like Mass Effect to appreciate how well the system works for those three games.

Can we stop with immersion like that is a thing? Immersion is just a code word for what I like. Thus for me exploration is immersion breaking beyond all reason because these areas are actually insanely small, impossibly populated and geographically senseless.

That aside, while you might enjoy roaming about in God mode I suspect that the wailing and gnashing of teeth if you could wander with impunity would have been even more widely decried. Combat, I think we all agree, should be dangerous. I mean people with sharp sticks and fireballs want to hurt us. The challenge Bioware has faced in both DA and ME franchises is how to create a sense of risk in combat. As much as I love turn based, overhead tactical games even I gave to admit the ME combat is better than any of the DA series combat. The DA stuff should come a lot closer to hitting my happy buttons given my preferences but it keeps falling flat.

[Rawgrim]

Almost all of the stuff you listed was on the critical path. I suppose you can get through without killing any wyverns, though I've never managed that myself. OTOH, I didn't think the wyverns were all that difficult for a player who knows what the hell he's doing. Is the Seven Suns optional? I always thought you had to finish Scar's missions to get back to Candlekeep, but it's been a while.

 

Have a look at all of those groups of badguys about the map. There is a red wizard fellow on the east side. You have that kickass group near the basilisks (those are rather tricky too), Sirens, that dart thrower and his buddy. The list goes on. That "brood mother" inside the spider den (yeah that is where Bioware got the idea for the brood mothers) is a hard fight as well. Certain druids in Cloakwood can make life really hard for you as well.

[Rawgrim]

...and unless you suck at what you are doing those aren't tough fights either.

 

Lame argument. You can use that about every game. "If you don't solo the game on Nightmare it is because you suck at the game".

[Homer2101]

^But can't those people just avoid random enemies?

 

Though I do agree that there should be multiple paths to hidden treasure. A treasure hidden behind a breakable wall should have a crawlspace for a rogue to slide through, or a space for a mage to Fade Step through. Also, breakable walls should be destructible by various means, such as an artificer's explosive trap, or a two-handed warrior's mighty blow, or a rift mage's stone fist.

Folk can easily avoid random enemies, and I have done so in both the Hinterlands and now in Hissing Wastes. Sometimes I don't want to deal with the encountered enemy, and sometimes I can't handle them and so am trying to avoid a party wipe. There's nothing wrong with running from dragons, after all. Folk who want easier combat where they don't have to worry about using potions because everything explodes anyway can always turn down difficulty. I have also done this in one instance where I just wanted to blitz the quest before bed time.

 

I'd like to agree with you that multiple paths would be a good thing, but my tabletop experience has been that it just makes everything feel homogenous and needlessly the fourth wall. Nothing wrong with smashing the wall if it serves a purpose, but am not sure that in this case any good purpose would be served. If players know that every obstacle can be overcome no matter who they are or what they bring, then they stop trying to think strategically and just roll through the world expecting things to go their way. Inquisition seems to strike a nice balance; almost no map with class-gated areas is locked off from future exploration, so the player can almost always come back with a different party. That encourages players to rotate their party lineup and to get to know all of the various characters. On the one or two maps that are locked off to future exploration, the player is rewarded for bringing a balanced party. 

 

 

That's the entire point which you're obviously missing because it doesn't appeal to you. There are people who want to explore without constant interruptions and the inconvenience of having to go back to camp. It breaks immersion, not to mention being a pain in the arse for a lot of us. You don't have to like Mass Effect to appreciate how well the system works for those three games.

 

Since Inquisition, like Mass Effect, places the emphasis on fast paced action, the same system would work well for this game. The pot caches are already in the game, they're just too infrequent and illogically placed, for example, being stashed behind walls you need to break down in order to get to which is no use if your not playing a warrior. If you're going to make a game based around fast paced action the game needs to flow to allow that pace to continue uninterrupted. Because of regeneration and plentiful and sensibly placed heal ups Mass Effect's pace works well. Inquisition's does not.

 

Mass Effect 3 is much more punishing than Inquisition to players who do not properly manage their long-term healing. In Inquisition, the player can almost always teleport to camp; the game provides very plentiful fast travel beacons so that the player usually does not have to travel far to get back to wherever they came from. Considering that the target audience of Inquisition should enjoy poking the game world, and considering that a player will usually not see everything along a path on their first run-through, backtracking is a very solid design choice. In ME3, if a player runs out of medigel midway through a level and no restocks are forthcoming, she may well be forced to either reload to an earlier save. The alternative in both games, of course, is to reduce the difficulty level.

 

The primary difference is that ME3 is a very linear game where Bioware can predict with fair accuracy when the player is likely to run out of medigel, and to balance medigel dispensers accordingly. Inquisition is an open-world game with many more permutations in player power and resources, and no sane developer would even attempt to provide static in-world healing supplies and pretend that the results are in any way balanced.

 

Anyways. Bioware has been allowing players to adjust the difficulty to their liking in every game since at least Origins. Folk who prefer to explore the game without worrying about combat can do so under existing game mechanics. However, trivial combat is generally a much bigger issue, since the vast majority of players want some sort of challenge, or at least an illusion of challenge. The current health system provides a good mix of long-term and short-term resource management for players who want a challenge, and can be adjusted as necessary by players who desire more or less challenge from combat.

 

"Immersion" is a very poor justification for any mechanics. Ditto for "lore," "canon," and various other fuzzy concepts. If a game mechanic does not work, it should be discarded even if it fits the lore; if the gameplay is bad, no amount of lore will save it in the long run. For example, according to the lore, both Solas and Vivienne are accomplished mages of considerable power. But giving the player access to level 20 mages when the player is only at level 5 would be silly unless all other characters are powered up accordingly, with all the silliness that implies. So we quite sensibly get a Solas and a Vivienne who match the existing party's level, even if it makes them seem rather underpowered in relation to the lore.

[Homer2101]

Lame argument. You can use that about every game. "If you don't solo the game on Nightmare it is because you suck at the game".

Except that a fair number of folk in this thread and elsewhere have quite expressly been arguing that the healing system is bad because it makes the game difficult. Personal difficulty is largely irrelevant when discussing the fundamental game mechanics. Bioware provides players with the option of adjusting difficulty to suit their desires. But certain mechanics provide much more solid gameplay than others, and certain mechanics are inherently flawed.

 

No amount of adjustment can fix Origins's flawed gameplay. The system is so prone to potion and heal spamming that it's the optimal strategy at every difficulty level. Because the design is inherently flawed, adjusting difficulty is meaningless to providing the player with interesting strategic and tactical choices and encouraging the player to become better at the game. Similarly, DA2's difficulty slider has nothing to do with whether the player has to consider how she wins encounters.

 

The advantage of Inquisition's system, which is very similar to the ME3 health system but with the necessary adjustments for differences in genres, is that players can be given choices in how to manage encounters, and can choose to deal with the consequences of their poor decisions. The prospect of winning several encounters but losing the dungeon or failing to reach an objecting is one of the things that can make combat interesting, and more than just a series of fights that the player will inevitably win. Or the player can set the difficulty down and not deal with any of it, which is a perfectly valid choice.

 

Regarding copying the ME3 health system, in most instances of Inquisition that would be impossible to achieve. Too much of Inquisition is non-linear, so that Bioware cannot predict the direction from which a player might come, or where they might pass through, or what level they may be or what their needs might be. Where the game is linear and long, Bioware does provide the player with restock caches, which seems like a good design choice. In effect, Bioware has already copied the meaningful parts of ME3 and adopted them to Inquisition's needs.

[Hexoduen]

I'm on Nightmare, I love a good challenge in Dragon Age, and prefer strategy and tactical gameplay over simple button-mashing. But at the moment all I'm really doing in Inquisition is button-mashing barrier, it's plain out boring when playing the healer.

 

You might say I also just button-mashed healing spells in Origins and DA2, which is true and this was also a problem in their design, but at least then I had many spells to choose from (heal, regenerate, group heal, group regenerate, healing aura, revive + buffs etc.)

 

What we need is some rebalanced healing spells back in Dragon Age, pref. of limited use (just not as limited as focus!)

[saladinbob]

Mass Effect 3 is much more punishing than Inquisition to players who do not properly manage their long-term healing. In Inquisition, the player can almost always teleport to camp; the game provides very plentiful fast travel beacons so that the player usually does not have to travel far to get back to wherever they came from. Considering that the target audience of Inquisition should enjoy poking the game world, and considering that a player will usually not see everything along a path on their first run-through, backtracking is a very solid design choice. In ME3, if a player runs out of medigel midway through a level and no restocks are forthcoming, she may well be forced to either reload to an earlier save. The alternative in both games, of course, is to reduce the difficulty level.

 

The primary difference is that ME3 is a very linear game where Bioware can predict with fair accuracy when the player is likely to run out of medigel, and to balance medigel dispensers accordingly. Inquisition is an open-world game with many more permutations in player power and resources, and no sane developer would even attempt to provide static in-world healing supplies and pretend that the results are in any way balanced.

 

Anyways. Bioware has been allowing players to adjust the difficulty to their liking in every game since at least Origins. Folk who prefer to explore the game without worrying about combat can do so under existing game mechanics. However, trivial combat is generally a much bigger issue, since the vast majority of players want some sort of challenge, or at least an illusion of challenge. The current health system provides a good mix of long-term and short-term resource management for players who want a challenge, and can be adjusted as necessary by players who desire more or less challenge from combat.

 

 

 

 

I don't disagree but it is manageable with care because there's plenty of Medical stations around. Most map areas have at least one. The same cannot be said for Inquisition. with some having loads and others having none. Using the Hinterlands as an example, you have guards stood around over chests which sometimes contain minor loot, so why can't you have guards stood around over pot caches? Infinitely more useful than the crappy loot you get and makes more sense from an immersion perspective as well.

 

As for the challenge, the challenge comes from intelligent AI, not from lack of healing which is just an excuse for poor coding. If the AI is up to scratch to provide more intelligent tactics and the NPCs are tougher to kill and hit harder than on normal, Nightmare is a challenge irrespective of healing or lack thereof. There is no acceptable reason you can give to discount the need for better pot cache placement. None at all.