30 réponses à ce sujet

[GODzilla]

Now whoever designed the northern part of the map: I double dare you to play this without pulling your hair out, literally!

 

Here is a list of design choices made for that part of the map:

 

- Giants - respawning

- Brontos - respawning

- the general design decision for your AI companions to attack targets they were not assigned to

- no camp there to replenish your potions

 

So...what happened? I had the longest fight I ever had in DAI. In fact it's still going on as I am typing this. You attack a giant, kill it, it respawns (even in line of sight). Or you attack a giant and your companions attack Brontos nearby. There is even a herd. Let's fight a giant of your own character level (19) and a herd of Brontos, 4 to 6 at once (all level 19), it's a pain. When you finally manage it and it all respawns as you roam the nothern part you want to throw your keyboard out the window!

 

I just wanted to go to a rift. Now I'm there and I have one healing potion left. I can go back to the camp but enemies will respawn. It's a neverending circle of stupid!

 

It's like the designer said to himself "here, have 1.000.000 worth of HP, let's see if you survive this, muhahaha" and then "oh, you really did? Good, now do it again, ******!"

 

I'd bet that no beta tester made it this far, ever. Or otherwise his hair would've turned grey and he had melted away like the guy at the end of Indiana Jones 3.

 

This is bad and you should be ashamed. Things like this take the immersion and then grind it up into a fine, pink powder! Well...at least this has a million uses...

 

[Elhanan]

I still have my hair currently, so something must be different for me. The giants do not respawn in place in my game, though they do frequent the area, and Bronto casualties are seemingly inevitable with so many AoE's in the game. Critter casualties have been a nuisance since the Exalted Plains, as some special beast injuries seem to annoy ancient divine spirits which delay rest stops.

My solution was to use some SWTOR experience, and avoid encounters as much as possible; using terrain and cover as a way of slipping past many of the gigantic herders. I still had a few fights, but managed to avoid anything as lengthy as described in the OP.

[GODzilla]

"Bronto Casualties" is a funny term, because when more than two attack me at once, especially while fighting a giant, I'm done for. I'm the casualty lol. Granted, I play on the highest difficulty setting, but even boss battles were managable...and not going on for so long. Being in the area of the Emerald Graves where the many landmarks are it basically can become a neverending fight. You kill giants, then you kill Brontos, then you kill the respawned giant, then you kill the respawned Bronto, then...

 

I really thought it would end because as of yet the game didn't seem to have endless respawn. Even the zombies at the keep in the Exalted Plains stopped emerging at some point. But with the Giant and Bronto respawn there seems to be no end. Endless respawn is widely considered the worst of the worst of game designs and here it seems there isn't even a trigger to make it stop (in CoD games it usually ceases when you move forward or fullfill a certain objective).

 

Best part: Everytime I wanna go north I have to go through there. Wanna tackle the Dragon? Cool, but work your way through these couple of hundreds of thousand HP, first.

 

And another word about the AI: When I tell someone to attack a Giant, he should just do that. But very often I see the companion AI turn around and attack a random, non-hostile (!!!) enemy in the vicinity. HOW STUPID IS THAT?

[Arkwright99]

I came across the same thing in the same area during my first PT; for my second, when I want to go grab the landmarks, I'm going to solo the area and use stealth tactics (not actually the Stealth skill, since I'm a warrior) to evade the giants as much as possible. Not sure how feasible this plan is but it's got to be easier than constantly telling my party not to engage monsters automatically just 'cos they're in line of sight all of a sudden.

[Elhanan]

Check the Follow commands in Behavior; recommend setting to Follow themselves. And commands seem to have more longevity when given in Tac-Cam mode.

[GODzilla]

I came across the same thing in the same area during my first PT; for my second, when I want to go grab the landmarks, I'm going to solo the area and use stealth tactics (not actually the Stealth skill, since I'm a warrior) to evade the giants as much as possible. Not sure how feasible this plan is but it's got to be easier than constantly telling my party not to engage monsters automatically just 'cos they're in line of sight all of a sudden.

 

Well this works, but of course only if your inquisitor is a rogue. Plus it shouldn't really be necessary in the first place, since this is Dragon Age and not Call of Duty.

 

Check the Follow commands in Behavior; recommend setting to Follow themselves. And commands seem to have more longevity when given in Tac-Cam mode.

 

I've done this for the warriors / tanks, but not for the mages. I guess it's worth a try, thank you.

[Elhanan]

Well this works, but of course only if your inquisitor is a rogue. Plus it shouldn't really be necessary in the first place, since this is Dragon Age and not Call of Duty.  
 
I've done this for the warriors / tanks, but not for the mages. I guess it's worth a try, thank you.

NP. If this does not work as well as you desire, try Following the Warrior of choice.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Well this works, but of course only if your inquisitor is a rogue.

Any party member can claim landmarks. I have Sera do it all the time.

[GODzilla]

Any party member can claim landmarks. I have Sera do it all the time.

 

Wait...so you set everyone else to "hold position" then go alone with any rogue, invisible? This could work, provided that they follow this command at all times, which they don't. Get too far away and they will follow again. And sometimes they ignore it just because...I dunno. Plus when you aquire the landmark you uncloak. If spotted by an enemy, the fighting state is set for you and your party will instantly teleport to you.

 

All in all, it's a stupid situation which shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

 

Just to be clear here: I'm not trying to get through the game avoiding fights. Or because the enemies are generally too strong in that area. They are not, they are on the same level as I am. But they respawn. I can understand when a deer respawns or even some demons...but Giants? Really? (I'm pretty sure according to lore they are said to be quite rare, so there's another thing that's not fitting in.) Plus they respawn in line of sight. I can clearly see them teleport in, materialize in front of my party, hardly out of attacking range.

 

So excuse me - and thanks for trying to find some workarounds - but I still think it's bad game design. And I'm saying this while I really do like most parts of the game.

[Jeffry]

Because of the stupid respawn system in the whole game I was glad I was playing Tempest. Flask of Fire + Thousand Cuts works wonders. But the worst respawns I saw were in Hinterlands - bears and templars. They weren't just spawning in the visible distance, oh no, they were spawning right into my face when I was literally just looting the group before them.

[Emho]

My first play through, I had this same issue.  Giants were a challenge and I'd inevitably get a herd of Bronto adds and I'd wipe.  My second and beyond playthroughs I never had any problems.

 

It's not that the AI is telling your party members to directly attack the Brontos, its just that every party member is blasting away with area affect damage.  The brontos are just in the way and get hit with AoE damage and then become hostile.

 

What I do is not fight those giants where they wander, I aggro them and pull them back to a "safe" spot where the brontos wont mess with me, and then I kill the giant by itself.  The giants never respawned on any of my playthroughs that I noticed, at least not immediately after I killed them.  Once I cleared that area and the dragon I never went back so I dont know if they respawn over time or not.

 

Anyway, if you are an old school Everquest player, this is the art of "pulling"

[GODzilla]

Because of the stupid respawn system in the whole game I was glad I was playing Tempest. Flask of Fire + Thousand Cuts works wonders. But the worst respawns I saw were in Hinterlands - bears and templars. They weren't just spawning in the visible distance, oh no, they were spawning right into my face when I was literally just looting the group before them.

 

True. But at least you can usually make short work of them. Working one giant after the other is...well...work, not gaming.

[Jeffry]

True. But at least you can usually make short work of them. Working one giant after the other is...well...work, not gaming.

 

You could not really make short work of those bloody bears when you were like lvl 7-8 I was just about to establish a camp, when a bear attacked me, killed him, another one aggroed on me immediately, killed him too, suddenly 2 red templar smugglers appeared out of nowhere and 3rd bear with them When I finally established that camp a group of mabari attacked me right away.

 

I remember those giants well, but they were pretty much avoidable or maybe I was just lucky with their spawns. Also I got to that location pretty late and nothing was a huge problem for late-game Vivienne.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Wait...so you set everyone else to "hold position" then go alone with any rogue, invisible? This could work, provided that they follow this command at all times, which they don't.

Just let the rest of the party die. As long as rhe Rogue is safe, you can always just walk away when you're done and the fallen party members will rubberband to you and revive.

Running away is totally viable, because you only need to get one character out (and the one who can restealth soon is the easiest to save).

It's not a good design (intentionally letting people die shouldn't be a viable tactic), but it's easy to use.

[luism]

Now whoever designed the northern part of the map: I double dare you to play this without pulling your hair out, literally!
 
Here is a list of design choices made for that part of the map:
 
- Giants - respawning
- Brontos - respawning
- the general design decision for your AI companions to attack targets they were not assigned to
- no camp there to replenish your potions
 
So...what happened? I had the longest fight I ever had in DAI. In fact it's still going on as I am typing this. You attack a giant, kill it, it respawns (even in line of sight). Or you attack a giant and your companions attack Brontos nearby. There is even a herd. Let's fight a giant of your own character level (19) and a herd of Brontos, 4 to 6 at once (all level 19), it's a pain. When you finally manage it and it all respawns as you roam the nothern part you want to throw your keyboard out the window!
 
I just wanted to go to a rift. Now I'm there and I have one healing potion left. I can go back to the camp but enemies will respawn. It's a neverending circle of stupid!
 
It's like the designer said to himself "here, have 1.000.000 worth of HP, let's see if you survive this, muhahaha" and then "oh, you really did? Good, now do it again, ******!"
 
I'd bet that no beta tester made it this far, ever. Or otherwise his hair would've turned grey and he had melted away like the guy at the end of Indiana Jones 3.
 
This is bad and you should be ashamed. Things like this take the immersion and then grind it up into a fine, pink powder! Well...at least this has a million uses...
 

I've had this happen to me playing on nightmare it's rough

[GODzilla]

You could not really make short work of those bloody bears when you were like lvl 7-8 I was just about to establish a camp, when a bear attacked me, killed him, another one aggroed on me immediately, killed him too, suddenly 2 red templar smugglers appeared out of nowhere and 3rd bear with them When I finally established that camp a group of mabari attacked me right away.

 

I remember those giants well, but they were pretty much avoidable or maybe I was just lucky with their spawns. Also I got to that location pretty late and nothing was a huge problem for late-game Vivienne.

 

That's this one region in the Hinterlands where you supposed to get special bear paws. Yeah I remember that, what a struggle that was. ^^

 

 

 

Just let the rest of the party die. As long as rhe Rogue is safe, you can always just walk away when you're done and the fallen party members will rubberband to you and revive.

Running away is totally viable, because you only need to get one character out (and the one who can restealth soon is the easiest to save).

It's not a good design (intentionally letting people die shouldn't be a viable tactic), but it's easy to use.

 

True enough. ^^

[catabuca]

I didn't have a massive problem with this area (playing on hard, not nightmare). I'm a rogue archer, I don't use stealth. As far as I'm aware, these giants always scale to your level.

 

First and foremost, go into tactics and turn off your party's AoE attacks. You're far less likely to draw aggro from the brontos and save yourself a heap of trouble. If it means you have to spend a couple of minutes rethinking your combat strategy and who to bring, then so be it. I mean, we want more strategy, right? We're asking for more? We get pissed off when they take it away? Well here's a situation where we need to think ahead. Turn off AoEs. 

 

I don't really understand the various follow/protect/whatever behaviours so I haven't changed them at all. I'm sure there's some combination that would make things easier though.

 

Stand still. Watch. Make a note of where you want to get to, see which giants are in that area, and watch their pathing. Don't expect to be able to run from landmark to landmark without repeating this process of stopping, watching, and planning. Use trees and stone arches etc to skirt around behind giants when they are at their farthest point in their pathing pattern from you.

 

Always be aware of your surroundings. Make a note of other giants in the vicinity, and how far you can venture before picking up aggro from them. If needs be and if possible, pull any giant you're fighting to a safer area away from the path of other giants that might wander into the fight.

 

I've done this part of the game once so far. I only had to kill two giants. I would have only had to kill one, but I used leaping shot and it catapulted me through the map and deposited me directly in the path of another giant, who then followed me all the way back to my party who were still killing the first. I made good use of the stone arches we were near, to kite around the giants and block their rock throwing, and force them to slow down as they stooped to clamber through the arches.

[GODzilla]

AoE-effects are part of the problem, admitedly. For instance Dorian casts Fear and near animals are effects. But...these moments where he turns around and uses a normal attack of a deer or Bronto that just happens to be in the vicinity, that's when I'd like to throttle the guy who programmed the AI lol.

 

 

 

[...]

Stand still. Watch. Make a note of where you want to get to, see which giants are in that area, and watch their pathing. Don't expect to be able to run from landmark to landmark without repeating this process of stopping, watching, and planning. Use trees and stone arches etc to skirt around behind giants when they are at their farthest point in their pathing pattern from you.

 

Always be aware of your surroundings. Make a note of other giants in the vicinity, and how far you can venture before picking up aggro from them. If needs be and if possible, pull any giant you're fighting to a safer area away from the path of other giants that might wander into the fight.

[...]

 

Pretty much what I'm doing to minimize the frustration. But still...best part is when the Giant finally falls to his knees, dead...and in that very moment my companions attack a Bronto that was of yet totally oblivious. Those are the "AAAAAARGGHHHH!!!" moments, especially when you were fighting for like 15 minutes and looked forward to an end. If my hair was longer I'd probably pull some of it out when this happens. xD

[Mes]

Man I know exactly which area you're talking about. Normally I just kill a few things for XP or loot or whatever, then RUN THE HELL OUT OF THERE. Of course I run SLOWLY because being in combat turns you into a snail but eventually the companions follow me and we turtle our way out.

[b10d1v]

That is a fun  area to hunt bugs and most are here, there were plenty more - I'm pretty sure a bug hunt was not the focus of the design.  But there you have it QA not on the job again -see a pattern here?  Dragons that don't die. Bear quest and the bears were stuck in the rocks, had an enemy stuck in the boundary so a rift would not close, had everything aggravated at me for no XXX reason.  Well an open ended quest probably triggered it, by introducing an instability.  To be honest, Bioware has tried to block many of these bugs with some success.  Thing is they need to address how these instabilities develop and how they translate from a saved game!

 

Caoimhe it is possible to walk up and get Samson's notes and walk out unscathed -it's just inconsistently rare with random outcomes.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I had trouble when doing the Samson quest. Where I found the papers, a giant came at my group. I was knocked to the edge of a cliff and hung off it. Everyone was dead but me and the giant couldn't reach me. I killed it then she just... fell off the cliff and off the world and the giant came back to life! Happened in the final battle too with the dragon. I fell off the world and was killing him from below the map. Then I jumped and was on the world again and right in front of the dragon. Took 4 hours to beat him because I kept falling off the world, but he obviously didn't come back to life like the giant did thankfully.

I had the same thing happen with a giant in the Western Approach.  I killed it, and then suddenly it was standing there again.  But now it wasn't targetable.

[Sidney]

The AOE spells have to be disabled in that region or you will fight a cascading set of brontos. The other problem is that nothing fears combat so you have brontos walking between you and your target, or your party's, and they get caught in the crossfire turn hostile and things go sideways.

Dislike that map in general but there should be a camp on the north side of the river somewhere.

[Vader20]

Now whoever designed the northern part of the map: I double dare you to play this without pulling your hair out, literally!

 

Here is a list of design choices made for that part of the map:

 

- Giants - respawning

- Brontos - respawning

- the general design decision for your AI companions to attack targets they were not assigned to

- no camp there to replenish your potions

 

 

 

What's the problem with the giants ? Giant respawns are good because they drop good loot that you can sell for some decent gold. I always farm them for a while before I move on.You just have to be clever and attack them when there are little to brontos in sight. Also, if you don't want longer fights, you should level be around level 15 and you'll be done with them quickly.

 

I've never had my companions attack a bronto just like that unless the bronto got involved in the fighting with the giant....

[GODzilla]

When I drop one and seconds after he's dead a new one spawns in my way and it all starts over. Repeat.