73 réponses à ce sujet

[AH37]

Considering the lore; mages should be OP. However; mages in DA:I feel like dancing archers who can't move. They have few abilities that can be considered magical but; nothing quite justifies the chantry hold and Templars iron fists. Unlike mages in origins; ignoring attribute points which give more freedom [aka immortal AW/BM], I can play a mage however I want, perhaps I want to be a debuff and support mage, plate armour and s&s, or specialized in cc effects for others to kill.

 

Spell combinations on the other hand is utterly disappointing in inquisition, the only time I felt the environment reacting is when one dragon [lightning] electrocuted a pond stunning and damaging my party, other than that; I didn't see or feel any meaningful combinations like grease on fire, storm of the century ... etc.

 

I agree with adding balance to the game, but lore suggest that mages are devastatingly dangerous, so; mages should do more damage than archers otherwise chantry and Templars should free mages and apprehend all archers in the circle of arrows.

[MattH]

I just generally miss the variety of spells and talents. Not only did it add more to game play, it created more diverse builds, and also added to characterization. 

 

I'm replaying Origins at the moment, and being able to spec my bloodmage as a life draining, walking bomb casting, raiser of the dead specializing in entropy magic is an absolute joy. It's another aspect of character building that makes them more unique, specing characters to suit their personality and morality.

 I didn't see or feel any meaningful combinations like grease on fire, storm of the century ... etc.

I miss Paralysis Explosion so much. I discovered by accident and froze the whole battlefield, my party included. Beast of a combo

[Laughing_Man]

I agree with adding balance to the game,

 

Why? What's the point of balance in a single player game?

 

Certain Rogue classes are extremely overpowered when it comes to single target dmg, and that's fine.

 

Warrior classes can have an undying tank, or a rather brutal close range AoE dmg dealer with two-handers (Templar/Reaver).

 

Make every class awesome enough and strong enough at its peak, and no one would need to complain about balance.

[AH37]

Illusion of balance perhaps? Because mages in inquisition are seemingly weaker than any other class in both offense and defense [as they should be]. Excluding knight enchanter; it is fun early on; slow and spam but gets boring quickly to a point where there's no point of caring about anything other than spamming spirit blade.

 

Enemies; it seems like all they have is higher health pool the higher the difficulty is rather than variety. Shame.

 

But on topic, mages in inquisition are disappointing and don't feel like they have any real power.

 

If comparing mages gameplay-wise; Wynne would wipe the floor with all inquisition mages singlehandedly.

 

In origins, certain things had consequences; fatigue for AW - slower mana regen unless countered with the BM ring, battle mage in awakening drains mana like crazy specially if combined with AW. BM is another thing as well. Even though those are not fatal factors in normal difficulties unless PC is spamming spells with BM active while having low constitution. The penalties can be crippling which ultimately affect both damage and frequency of the spells.

 

I started playing a mage after I got my party wiped somewhere in the deep roads and Morrigan alone managed to survive, best decision ever!

[Alfa Kilo]

I really don't like the 'PC Master Race' card, but I honestly feel like that was the problem, every class lost depth and all sustainable abilities were cut. I loved dragon age the story driven game with real depth to character building, and while I still love the story, character depth has been lost. You don't even distribute your own ability points anymore, all our control over how our character plays has been bottle-necked into pick one of 3 roads.

Which is a trend that is very prominent in MMOs, so don't blame just the consoles here.

[Toasted Llama]

Which is a trend that is very prominent in MMOs, so don't blame just the consoles here.

??????????

MMOs usually have huge customizability when it comes to builds, stats, skills and weapons.

[Sunnie]

Which is a trend that is very prominent in MMOs, so don't blame just the consoles here.

Don't know what MMOs you have played, but every one I have or worked on had a huge range of customization.

[c0bra951]

Well, to be fair, I should have said "first and foremost for the (console) controller" instead of "for the consoles". The game would play exactly the same on a console that has a keyboard/mouse attached as it does on a PC. But I guess it comes full circle back to consoles again, and the general lack of control options on said consoles.

 

The only real limitation is the number of skills accessible at once.  Thing is, it didn't have to be a measly limit of 8.  It could easily have been 12.  Here's how.  There is one unused button--right on the D-pad (>).  The area map is currently assigned to D-pad left (<).  I would move that to '>'.  I would then move the selection wheel to '<', and that would free up LB.  Now both LT and LB can be used as shift keys for the 4 buttons used for skills.  That would add 4 skill slots to combat mode.

[andy6915]

I don't think magic is that weak, so I disagree with much of this thread. More limited, absolutely... But not weak. A shock prison or whatever it's called that has an enemy with walking bomb inside it, for example, can decimate an entire squad of enemies in seconds. And that's just one example. Mages are still walking artillery that can destroy large swathes of enemies in very short order, just as the lore says they are. The problem with DAI is that that is almost all they can do. It's the ability to buff and debuff and do more than just use elemental spells that they've lost, They haven't lost the ability to cause wide spread destruction.

 

Granted, we can't drop a tornado of ice and fire and lightning all at once that has a 300 foot killing radius anymore but... Eh.

[Hiemoth]

The spell combinations and schools are just total nonsense, and the spell selection is really underwhelming. Everything is glyph based, which is cool and all, but they're missing a lot of the clever spells they created with DA2 and largely have no AOE or CC abilities. 

 

I definitely agree with this.

 

It seems like the magic for Inquisition was designed to be used both for the tactical camera and for their offensive power and maneuverability. They stuck to the basics of offensive elements and creation, compensated for the loss of healing, and kind of put spells in every school without a thought to why. 

 

We may not need the schools, but they did give the world some character in the end. I loved the skill tree design in Dragon Age 2 a lot more, because we had a lot of spells that were also sustained abilities, which added to their use id say.

 

Frankly we should go back to the design from Dragon Age 2...

 

I also completely agree with both of these. I am less bothered by the removal of the schools than by the really weird structure of the trees and the lack of true complexity in character builds. Part I understand, the new encounter structure in DAI really wrecked havoc on previous CC approaches, but a lot was just kind of just taken away. The complete removal of sustained abilities was slightly odd after being a pretty integral part of both previous games. Of course the lack of true follow AI also made spell use by NPCs pretty much useless.

 

I agree completely on hoping to go back to DA2, but the direction they took continues to baffle me. Not because I don't think they didn't have a completely understandable reasoning for their design chocies with skill trees, it's just that I can't figure it out unlike with most of the design choices they made. For me, to compare to ME series, it felt like the shift from DA2 to DAI is like going from ME3 back to ME2. Which is really weird, as even in most of the criticism for DA2, I've always thought the skill trees and the amount of variation it allowed in character builds were generally well received.

 

As I always seem to write in these kinds of responses, it almost feels like DA teams approach to DAI was to just do everything differently than in DA2, no matter how well the stuff actually worked.

[Hiemoth]

I don't think magic is that weak, so I disagree with much of this thread. More limited, absolutely... But not weak. A shock prison or whatever it's called that has an enemy with walking bomb inside it, for example, can decimate an entire squad of enemies in seconds. And that's just one example. Mages are still walking artillery that can destroy large swathes of enemies in very short order, just as the lore says they are. The problem with DAI is that that is almost all they can do. It's the ability to buff and debuff and do more than just use elemental spells that they've lost, They haven't lost the ability to cause wide spread destruction.

 

Granted, we can't drop a tornado of ice and fire and lightning all at once that has a 300 foot killing radius anymore but... Eh.

 

I agree on this, it wasn't weak and mage is still in many ways pretty overpowered. Especially with the new UI, where mages and archers are the only ones who don't have to suffer from the awkward lack of moving with the target in the game and mage have pretty good area and single target skills.

 

Although I did feel the DAI approach supported just spamming the same attacks more than DA2, but at the same time I must admit I am not completely certain why I feel that way. I guess that is just one of those subjective things. One thing I did like in DA2, though, was that the stronger spells really felt strong from the animation point as well, for example when a mage calls down a firestorm.

[Aren]

I believe that this is the DA fashion, the more you progress into the future the more magic would be forgotten, so that we can maintain the trend and say that magic of old was better.

[AngryFrozenWater]

I really like DA:I. I have invested a silly amount of time in it. But I do see some problems. Not only mages have suffered from the way attributes are dealt with, the other classes have the same problems.

 

The idea of ability progression through selectable attributes and skills seems to be mostly damaged by the random number generator and the war table. Assignment of attributes is either done through properties of jewelry, armor and weapons or selecting skills. You only have one skill point per level and not all skills are passives that assign attribute bonuses. So most other attribute bonus opportunities and skill improvements are left to finding jewelry, armor, weapons and schematics in loot or stores or getting them as rewards through war table operations. Without farming those and the materials required to create custom armor and weapons you won't get very far. Farming is the correct term, because it is rare that you get the stuff you need through quests or operations. Instead most is ruled by the random number generator and wastes your time. If something is available through operations you may want to meta-game your way to get it.

 

Equipment seems to rule what previous games called derived stats. Unequip everything from your character and not much is left. That also has to do with the fact that a lot of enchantments are way better than the properties ruled by attributes. For an example: Magic determines attack and barrier damage bonus and willpower determines attack and magic defense, but the jewelry, armor and weapons with bonuses to attack are much more significant as attack determined through magic and willpower. The same goes for the barrier damage bonus, magic defense and any other similar derived stat. So it appears that attributes are less important than the items you equip. It is as if the game doesn't want attributes in it, but they are there to satisfy those who play the previous games and valued them.

 

What I would like to see in future games is that great items are never ruled by the remote chance of finding them. An example is the Superior Battlemage/Prowler/Battlemaster Armor schematic, which some consider the best in the game and the resulting armor assigns significant attribute values. The fact that you need the Short List perk to get one of those in a remote shop is undocumented. And even when you visit that shop chances are slim that it is available there. The random number generator rules its availability in that shop. Even if you know their existence from reading this forum or other game websites and google a way to farm those you probably won't get one. Such schematics should be connected to a specific quest or a store in the keep, so that it will be available when you need it. It shouldn't be a secret and it shouldn't be that hard to obtain it. Or, alternatively, restore attribute assignment the old fashioned way during level up.

[Uccio]

I once killed all of the soldiers in Redcliffe during the siege with inferno. Mages are over powered enough, but more so in Origins.

It is a shame that it was changed so drastically. But I felt mages balenced a little more with warrior and rouge.

 

It is not being over powered, it is being what the lore says you are.

[andy6915]

It is not being over powered, it is being what the lore says you are.

 

And they are. You'd notice a lot more if the game's somehow included environmental destruction, where a single large fire spell instantly lights a house on fire and causes a village-wide inferno or an ice spell instantly froze several trees solid at once. I'd say DAI does a better job showing how nasty magic is than Origins did thanks to how enemies are shown to be killed by magic. In DAO an enemy burned to death just falls over as a nice and clean corpse, in DAI their flesh and internal organs are instantly incinerated and leaves a broken and charred skeleton behind. One leaves a clean corpse, one does this-

 

 

...Except in-game. The difference is how enemies die make a big difference in how I perceive how destructive something is.

[earymir]

Not sure if this is true, but I've thought about this issue off and on (and posted in a couple places around BSN I think...).  I think it's potentially related more to the engine than anything else.  Compare the shooter origins of Frostbite to like half the mage spells.  There are just so few spells that are anything more than direct damage (or boosting of damage or applying a combo set-up) that it makes me think they just didn't have time to make the engine work for true RPG type gameplay.  

 

Just a thought.  Maybe it was an actual design choice.  In which case, bleck.  

[Hiemoth]

Not sure if this is true, but I've thought about this issue off and on (and posted in a couple places around BSN I think...).  I think it's potentially related more to the engine than anything else.  Compare the shooter origins of Frostbite to like half the mage spells.  There are just so few spells that are anything more than direct damage (or boosting of damage or applying a combo set-up) that it makes me think they just didn't have time to make the engine work for true RPG type gameplay.  

 

Just a thought.  Maybe it was an actual design choice.  In which case, bleck.  

 

Hadn't thought of it that way and it might true. Thanks for bringing that up.

[Gya]

I too was disappointed to find a lack of blood magic, and also a lack of spells in general. However, there are two 'rate limiting steps'.

Firstly, the inexplicable 8 skill limit. With only 8 slots, having awesome spells like crushing prison, mana clash, cone of cold, petrify, tenpest etc etc would be largely wasted. It might add some replay value, however. Seriously, DA2 worked fine on consoles, and a 12 skill limit, as mentioned above would surely have been ok here as well?

Secondly, the lack of customisable attribute points. Sure, you can craft some +con armour, but for the most part, a blood mage would likely be all glass, no cannon.

Still, I enjoyed my first mage playthrough. Just saddened by the seemingly arbitrary limitations. I'm sure the devs had their reasons.

[Jackums]

They dumbed it down into more basic, stereotypical fantasy spell types to appeal to a larger audience.

 

I doubt anyone behind the decision thought that Origins fans would really actually be happy they gave us three bland elemental trees at the expense of unique, flavorful spell schools. Hopefully the original schools are brought back in the next game.

[Laughing_Man]

I too was disappointed to find a lack of blood magic, and also a lack of spells in general. However, there are two 'rate limiting steps'.

Firstly, the inexplicable 8 skill limit. With only 8 slots, having awesome spells like crushing prison, mana clash, cone of cold, petrify, tenpest etc etc would be largely wasted. It might add some replay value, however. Seriously, DA2 worked fine on consoles, and a 12 skill limit, as mentioned above would surely have been ok here as well?

Secondly, the lack of customisable attribute points. Sure, you can craft some +con armour, but for the most part, a blood mage would likely be all glass, no cannon.

Still, I enjoyed my first mage playthrough. Just saddened by the seemingly arbitrary limitations. I'm sure the devs had their reasons.

 

And that's enough for you?

 

I agree with the rest, but I don't really care about the reasons, I care about the results.

 

And yeah, I had some fun doing one playthrough as a Knight Enchanter. Although this was my first PT, so even if I didn't particularly like the gameplay and felt that it was too bland and uninspired, I powered through to advance the story.

 

I played a bit as a Rift Mage, the gameplay was slightly more fun, do to stone-fist mainly (why the hell is stone fist a a specialized elite spell all of a sudden? Is this part of the war on fun?) but quickly got bored.

 

8 ability limit really did a number on your options, considering you had to waste points on unwanted crap just to get to the slightly less crappier spells.

 

Necromancer I didn't even try myself, just played through Dorian for a bit. Causing chain explosions is fun, but the SP does not really have the huge crowds for it to work well and be effective. I could kill the mobs faster if I don't wait for the bomb to activate. And when you go against a Dragon or any other boss? You really don't have anything effective to use.

 

Loot based gameplay is really annoying for a couple of reasons.

 

But the funny thing is, the Mage had an option to tell Cassandra at the start: "I don't need a staff to be dangerous."

Well sorry to burst your bubble, but yes you do my friend, yes you do, because all your spells are X% damage, and X% out of 0 is still nothing...

[Gervaise]

The most frustrating thing for me was the lack of spell slots and the fact that you couldn't go into the menu and activate a spell that wasn't on the quick bar.    As Inquisitor you've already lost one slot for Mark of the Rift (which actually was a really useful talent).    If you put your other focus ability on the quick bar, that limited you to 6 spaces.   Normally I wouldn't have a use for the other focus ability most of the time but if I did need it, it would have been helpful to still be able to use it without the quick bar.   To be honest, in view of this limitation, I left it off the quick bar for everyone bar the Knight Enchanter (just in case the battle went badly awry) and never needed the focus abilities at all. 

 

I was also disappointed that your specialism was limited to one of the same as your companions used, even though they were not actually required to teach you it.   Since this was the first time we played a Dalish mage, it would have been good to have the option of a specialism to do with our race.    Same goes for the Qunari mage.   Both have grown up outside the Circles so would presumably have developed different skills.     That was one thing I did like about DA2, that your specialism(s) was totally different to that of your companions.   

[Gya]

And that's enough for you?

It has to be. I'd love to see some results, but at this stage, it seems that DLC is what will be provided, not changes to core gameplay mechanics.

It's clear this 'design choice' of 8 skills only is not going to change. IIRC, early on, there was some talk of it being intended to make the game more tactical. That is clearly a huge load of the proverbial. It does nothing for tactics beyond arbitrarily limiting the player. Perhaps to try and hide the fact that there are so few spells? And yet for some reason, it's clear the game was designed and balanced to be played with FF off; it even defaults to this on nightmare. Lol, tactics. This rant could go on and on.

Tl;DR 8 skill limit is not going to change, and we're not going to be given a reason why.

[thats1evildude]

Bioware rightly recognizes that mages are lame and gave all the neat abilities to the melee classes.

[LinksOcarina]

It is not being over powered, it is being what the lore says you are.

 

Lore has no bearing on mechanics. When it does, it becomes a mess.

[andy6915]

Lore has no bearing on mechanics. When it does, it becomes a mess.

 

How so? Lore matches gameplay pretty well in Elder Scroll games that I've played, and I don't think lore or gameplay are a mess in that series.