67 réponses à ce sujet

[Broganisity]

Booooooo! Epee or go home*

 

Them's fightin' words! En garde!

[AresKeith]

Given how ubiquitous spears were in real life armies as well as how easy to use and produce they were, it baffles me that the DA series doesn't have them.
That and my favourite boxing tricks were easy to adapt to spear fighting.

*My few experiences with foil fencing often involved being on the end of the flick.

 

Well they do exist in the world

[Duelist]

Well they do exist in the world

I honestly can't recall any scenes with spears in them although my memory is notoriously crap.

[AresKeith]

I honestly can't recall any scenes with spears in them although my memory is notoriously crap.

 

There haven't been any scenes with them but I recall them being mentioned a few times (Alistair was supposedly practicing with a halberd back in camp in DAO) plus some of the Qunari in DA2 used throwing spears 

[KaiserShep]

(Alistair was supposedly practicing with a halberd back in camp in DAO) 

 

Really? I don't recall ever seeing this. I only remember him occasionally stooping down next to the fire and that's it. 

[AresKeith]

Really? I don't recall ever seeing this. I only remember him occasionally stooping down next to the fire and that's it. 

 

I had to look it up, it's apparently with banter between Wynne and Oghren that hints at Alistair possessing a Pike

[Duelist]

I had to look it up, it's apparently with banter between Wynne and Oghren that hints at Alistair possessing a Pike

As I wasn't fond of either of them, it's no surprise I don't remember this banter lol.

[Broganisity]

As I wasn't fond of either of them, it's no surprise I don't remember this banter lol.

King Alistair in the book also fights- The Arishok -with a polearm in the comic Dragon Age: Those Who Speak, if the wiki is accurate.

[KaiserShep]

I completely disagree.  There should be one ruleset that everyone follows.  The PC, the companions, the enemies - everyone.

 

I want a setting that allows character development along a wide variety of paths, and I want those paths to be available equally.

 

I'd actually forgotten that DA2 was designed as you described, and it's one of the reasons I didn't like that game at all.

 

The problem is that the writers create highly specialized characters with rare or unique abilities, which totally clashes with a strict, universal ruleset. Fenris, for example, cannot part from his abilities endowed to him through his lyrium tattoos, and in fact embraces it every time he brutally kills a character by crushing their hearts with his bare hands. However else his character develops, this is the one thing that never changes with him, with the obvious exception being if he's given back to Danarius. 

 

Then we have Varric, or more specifically, Bianca. Bianca's a complicated piece of machinery. It's downright silly that a regular archer operates exactly the same as an archer with a repeating crossbow that's capable of firing arrows in rapid succession. Heck, he's not even allowed to take part in the archery competition. In this case, I basically work around this by ignoring certain abilities for him on the archery tree and putting more focus on sabotage, while Sera gets the full gamut of the archery tree (minus long shot) while focusing more on subterfuge. 

 

Of course, this is putting aside that our "greenhorn" PC is always teamed up with a hodgepodge of seasoned veterans that, for gameplay's sake, start off as scrubby as we do. 

[Patchwork]

I really liked how DA2 did companion specialisations and I wish it had carried over to DAI or even a simplified version where the pc's specialisations are tailored to the companion's personality and background with the bonuses and/or Focus ability.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The problem is that the writers create highly specialized characters with rare or unique abilities, which totally clashes with a strict, universal ruleset.

The rules should come first, and the writers should abide by them. A sufficiently robust ruleset would still allow for some wacky things.

Fenris, for example, cannot part from his abilities endowed to him through his lyrium tattoos, and in fact embraces it every time he brutally kills a character by crushing their hearts with his bare hands. However else his character develops, this is the one thing that never changes with him, with the obvious exception being if he's given back to Danarius.

I hated the uniqueness of the DA2 companions. Isabela's abilities should have been available to every Rogue (or everyone - I generally prefer classless systems).

The rules could accommodate lyrium tattoos. Perhaps there would be a range of abilities they offered. Perhaps we wouldn't see them all in one game. Perhaps the means to gain them wouldn't exist for the protagonist.

But the rules need to exist. I would like a tabletop-quality ruleset that is fully explained in the game's documentation.

Then we have Varric, or more specifically, Bianca. Bianca's a complicated piece of machinery. It's downright silly that a regular archer operates exactly the same as an archer with a repeating crossbow that's capable of firing arrows in rapid succession.

Bianca's mechanics are not adequately explained. One of the big reasons I like DAO is because it doesn't have Bianca in it.

But if Bianca offers different abilities, those should be in the rules, and those should be learnable by anyone, and Bianca should be usable by anyone if Varric were to die (all characters should be killable).

And having a separate set of rules for just one character would look incresibly silly, and hopefully it would encourage BioWare not to do that again.

I loathe Bianca.

Of course, this is putting aside that our "greenhorn" PC is always teamed up with a hodgepodge of seasoned veterans that, for gameplay's sake, start off as scrubby as we do.

We should complain about that every time. And the writers should stop doing it.

[AresKeith]

We should complain about that every time. And the writers should stop doing it.

Who's we? I support the uniqueness and specialized characters, it adds flavor to the world

[Sylvius the Mad]

Who's we? I support the uniqueness and specialized characters, it adds flavor to the world

There I was talking about the inconsistency of having supposedly experienced veteran characters be low level. It was raised as an issue, and I rebutted by saying we should object.

I was preemptively defending myself from claims of hypocrisy.

And no, it doesn't add flavour to the world. It harms the world's coherence. Adding flavour to the world would require building a ruleset that accommodates those character designs. Making the characters unique avoids that. It makes the world more gamey and less real.

[(Disgusted noise.)]

That did that in DA2. The companions had unique specializations and warriors and rogues had specific preferences in weapons that couldn't be changed along with specific armor designs, but people just bitched about it because it infringed their need to play Dragon Age like the Sims and call it roleplaying.

[Ariella]

And no, it doesn't add flavour to the world. It harms the world's coherence. Adding flavour to the world would require building a ruleset that accommodates those character designs. Making the characters unique avoids that. It makes the world more gamey and less real.

Rulesets are useful tools for telling the story, not holy writ. Dragon Age is not and should not be defined by the game rules. If certain 'rules' like non individualized skill trees hurts the ability to tell the story, then the 'rule' should be changed.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Rulesets are useful tools for telling the story, not holy writ. Dragon Age is not and should not be defined by the game rules. If certain 'rules' like non individualized skill trees hurts the ability to tell the story, then the 'rule' should be changed.

Incoherent rulesets hurt the story. The world in which these characters live needs to be governed by rules, and those rules need to make sense when viewed from inside the setting.

Otherwise the setting makes no sense, and thus the story makes no sense. As long as BioWare isn't trying to make an RPG adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, this will be important.

[Wulfram]

It's not incoherent for rulesets to have exceptions.  At least so long as the exceptions are genuinely exceptional.

 

It didn't make a great deal of sense that we couldn't pick up Aveline's specialisation, but it did make sense we couldn't duplicate Fenris, because we didn't have any lyrium tattoos, nor was it reasonably possible for us to get them.

 

Similarly, it would make sense that we couldn't learn to be a weird ex-Spirit type person, or that we can't spare a year to turn into a seeker.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It's not incoherent for rulesets to have exceptions.

Rules with exceptions aren't rules.

[Broganisity]

So. . .Sylvius wants Tabletop shenanigans?

 

Can't say I like the idea of such a thing. Honestly, I downright loath the idea of seeing the main series Dragon Age games being turned into something like Balder Gate or the pre-Bethesda Fallout games. . .or post-bethesda fallout, but that's a story for the fourteenth.

 

Rules, rules, rules. Gotta abide by the rules or the holy GM (praise be unto them?) gets antsy. If you put in too many rules, you leave yourself with less 'wiggle room' to create something unique.

 

Dragon Age:Origins urked me on this immensely as, apparently, I could just read a book to become a Templar? Or a Bard? 'Berserker 101: How to get mad' . . .alright, I can kind of understand that one (who reads to get mad unless they're going to tumblr?), but even then! Either you found a book on the subject or you became buddies with someone that was already one of those specializations, and they can just snap their fingers and say 'boom, you now a bard. You now know a bunch of songs that you can sing for us on the battlefield.' . . .I- I don't think that's how that works, Lelianna.

 

Dragon Age: Inquisition at least makes us work for specializations, sending us off to perform certain tasks. . .like traipsing around a battlefield, beating up a Chevalier, killing their friends, taking their flags, and then making them drown themselves. . .alright, that last one was just a product of circumstance, but still! Effort! You had to get a book still, but there was also the actual quest, then a craft mission. Then you talk to that person one more time and then you go train and boom! It is good to be Champion!

 

. . .but we already have a Champion in the team (well, spoilers aside anyways), and there's already a Templar. . .and a Reaver. . .really, only unique thing about the quizzie is the mark, which isn't an inherently bad thing I suppose, if it wasn't for the fact that those companions we call unique all fight the same way despite being trained in different ways over the course of their whole lives.

[KaiserShep]

The rules should come first, and the writers should abide by them. A sufficiently robust ruleset would still allow for some wacky things.
I hated the uniqueness of the DA2 companions. Isabela's abilities should have been available to every Rogue (or everyone - I generally prefer classless systems).

The rules could accommodate lyrium tattoos. Perhaps there would be a range of abilities they offered. Perhaps we wouldn't see them all in one game. Perhaps the means to gain them wouldn't exist for the protagonist.

But the rules need to exist. I would like a tabletop-quality ruleset that is fully explained in the game's documentation.
Bianca's mechanics are not adequately explained. One of the big reasons I like DAO is because it doesn't have Bianca in it.

But if Bianca offers different abilities, those should be in the rules, and those should be learnable by anyone, and Bianca should be usable by anyone if Varric were to die (all characters should be killable).

And having a separate set of rules for just one character would look incresibly silly, and hopefully it would encourage BioWare not to do that again.

I loathe Bianca.
We should complain about that every time. And the writers should stop doing it.

 

I guess my thing is that I'm fuzzy on what these rules actually are, and cannot determine exactly why they should be immutable laws of the game world for all time. 

 

The thing we have to come to terms with, and the thing that I've embraced for some time, is that the Dragon Age universe is not static. People advance. They learn new skills, develop new spells or discover forgotten ones, develop new technologies or encounter strange new enemies or anomalies. 

 

You argue for a tabletop-like set of rules, but I don't really see how this helps the story, because it seems like the argument is that new things should never be introduced to the game world. Ever. Like, I understand that you don't like Bianca, but beyond simply adhering to a fixed rulebook, why exactly should something like Bianca never exist? 

 

I admit to being intrigued by the idea of being able to utilize Bianca in the event of Varric's death, but I do not support perma-death in combat one iota so there's that.

 

I'm certainly not going to complain. In fact I intend to continue to embrace having new things rock the game world and turn it on its head until the series is finally kaput. 

[In Exile]

While I can relate to the idea from a lore perspective, it bothers me from a gameplay perspective. I think all abilities should be available to all players. 

[In Exile]

Rules with exceptions aren't rules.

 

That can't be true. An exception is just a way of phrasing a rule as a conditional. Conditionals can be rules, applying whenever the necessary condition is met. The exception is just a roundabout way of crafting it. 

 

I should add I generally agree with you on every point, apart from:

 

1. I think it''s not worth it to have NPCs that can die without meaningful story consequences, and then we run into the DA2-like resource problem vis-a-vis exclusive content on companions.

 

2. I wouldn't be so forceful about the relationship between the gameworld and the ruleset. I think the ruleset has to be internally coherent - that's important, and arbitrary distinctions across character for no justifiable purpose undermine that coherence. But I do not think we can go so far as to say that the rules for gameplay are the equivalent of the fundamental rules of reality in a game. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

That can't be true. An exception is just a way of phrasing a rule as a conditional. Conditionals can be rules, applying whenever the necessary condition is met. The exception is just a roundabout way of crafting it.

Then it's not an exception; it's a rule of limited scope. Those are fine, but they're not exceptions. Calling them exceptions just gets people used to the idea that rules are mutable.

And they're not.

1. I think it''s not worth it to have NPCs that can die without meaningful story consequences, and then we run into the DA2-like resource problem vis-a-vis exclusive content on companions.

You and I disagree about the source of meaningful story consequences. I think the player is the source.

2. I wouldn't be so forceful about the relationship between the gameworld and the ruleset. I think the ruleset has to be internally coherent - that's important, and arbitrary distinctions across character for no justifiable purpose undermine that coherence. But I do not think we can go so far as to say that the rules for gameplay are the equivalent of the fundamental rules of reality in a game.

I was under the impression that was the point of the ruleset. How else can the player make decisions on behalf of the character, if the player doesn't understand the world the character lives in as well as someone who lives in it does?

[Wulfram]

Then it's not an exception; it's a rule of limited scope. Those are fine, but they're not exceptions. Calling them exceptions just gets people used to the idea that rules are mutable.
 

 

So if Cole's specialisation were one that was conditional on being a spirit, that wouldn't be a problem, no?  Or if a Seeker specialisation held by Cassandra required a year of solitary prayer, which the protagonist can't do because stuff is happening now?