11 réponses à ce sujet

[Beerfish]

All of this has been rehashed many times I would guess but I just finished my 2nd game this time with dlcs so I can make some comments about some game play issues.  Overall I enjoyed the game so I don't want this to come off as too negative but here are a few things that bugged me about the game.

 

- The fetch quests:  I'm not really against fetch quests in games as a rule, it's a way for the developers to control leveling to some degree and does have a purpose, however you need two things to avoid it being a total bane, #1 a proper payoff for the player (this happened sometimes in DAI)  #2 Don't set it up to aggravate the player.  This is where DAI utterly failed imo. 

 

Level designers got far too cute with their placement of fetch quest items to the point of being a non enjoyable pain in the rump.  The shards for example, you start up your game, look at your game map and say 'Okay, I go do this, this and this quest and along the way I can get these 4 shard pieces, the 1st one on your map is an inch from your camps.  But wait, you can't get to it, it is on top of  a mountain, you have to traverse all over the bloody world to get it from the back side.  Or, hey we put jump in the game, lets make the player jump 3/4 the way up a cliff side with steps but make the last jump just big enough to make it not possible.  Not clever or sneaky, just bloody annoying.

 

- Item level restrictions:  Just a bad idea in a game with a very robust crafting aspect.  I finish a quest get a nice new staff, oops you have to be level 17 to use it, I am level 13.  The staff is nice but hardly massively over powered, so you haul it around the world until you get to level 17 at which time you have crafted better staves or found better ones.  Item level restrictions in a gem with no crafting?  sure, but otherwise I don't like it.

[RedLens37]

I don't have a problem with the quests. I feel like they're there if I want to do them, but easily ignored if my character doesn't feel like participating. I've never done anything with the shards but I decided to give them a go in my current playthrough.

 

I love this game. I've taken quite a break from it, but just jumped back in for about my fifth playthrough now. However, Bioware does not know how to handle item development. You're right, it's stupid to hang on to that purple sword that can't be used until you reach level 17, only to get there and realize you can craft, or find another already superior weapon. And that doesn't even touch on the completely un-fun aspect of picking up piles and piles of other useless loot. I understand it adds to the economy of the game, but I would rather just pick up some gold or crafting material off a corpse. I don't need 15 templar shields and a bunch of raider longbows.

 

I think a level restriction on a weapon or piece of armor is fine, but give me a reason to still want to use it when I get to that level. DA needs to take a page from Dark Souls and make items unique in moveset, abilities and appearance, and give us the capability to upgrade them to be relevant and usable through end-game if desired.

[capn233]

Yeah.  Some of the items used to be worse though, like when you had to horse jump around the side of a mountain to get into some odd, might-as-well-be-inacessible place to get one of the mosaic tiles.

 

The Shards can get interesting, the ones in Forbidden Oasis are probably the pinnacle of trolling with level design and placement.  Of course they also placed the Warden banner halfway down the side of a cliff in this map, IIRC.

 

All in all, for me those things are fairly minor gripes since they are nearly completely optional.  I agree with the item level restrictions.  It basically railroads you into crafting all your gear.  Personally I wouldn't have been upset if crafting gear was not included in the game if it would have resulted in more sensible item restrictions.

 

My overall biggest complaint is that squad behaviors aren't as configurable as in DAO, and also that TacCam feels largely like an inferior version of the DAO interface.

 

A lesser complaint is that they might have ended up with too much overall map area to support the amount of story telling.  It might have been better to roll a couple areas together or cut a few outright and make some of the side missions a little more interesting and attempt to tie the areas more closely to the main plot.  This actually has nothing to do with the Hinterlands since overall I like that area, but more to do with areas like Western Approach, Hissing Wastes. Exalted Plains and Emerald Graves.  Outside of extremely brief stops with Hawk in Western Approach, there isn't hardly any reason to go to these areas.

[PapaCharlie9]

A lesser complaint is that they might have ended up with too much overall map area to support the amount of story telling.  It might have been better to roll a couple areas together or cut a few outright and make some of the side missions a little more interesting and attempt to tie the areas more closely to the main plot.  This actually has nothing to do with the Hinterlands since overall I like that area, but more to do with areas like Western Approach, Hissing Wastes. Exalted Plains and Emerald Graves.  Outside of extremely brief stops with Hawk in Western Approach, there isn't hardly any reason to go to these areas.

Hear, hear! I'd dropkick the Exalted Plains, or better yet, use the Exalted Plains as the location for What Pride Had Wrought: who needs the completely gratuitous, and non-replayable, introduction of the Arbor Wilds?

The Emerald Graves, the Hissing Waste and EdL are all beautiful, and EdL has a damn good gauntlet that I wouldn't want to lose, not to mention the dragons, so I'd want to keep all of them. Why not have a stage of the main quest be split amongst the three? You'd have to complete at least one of them to progress the main quest, so there's still some choice involved. You should be able to do all three if you want, none of this either/or crap for content -- drives completionists nutso.

Hell, even a very simple mechanic like the "galatic readiness" of ME3 would have helped. Doesn't even require a story tie-in for all the spare zones, just needs a certain number of keeps captured, renegades trounced, and ancient tombs defiled, in order to get the "Inquisition readiness" score up high enough to save off stage companions from being crushed by falling debris when Coryphish raises the ruins of Haven temple.

Sigh. Why must every sequel be an overreaction to the previous? Everyone complained that DA2 was too confined to Kirkwall and too limited in geographical scope. So what do we get? A bunch of extraneous zones.

[DarkAmaranth1966]

IMO, most of the quests are fine but, I will use CE to get shards, and, I don't do Astriums or the Mythal puzzles. I bought an RPG/Combat game, not a moutain goat simulator with puzzles and, I don't want them. I'm not good at jumping and, I detest visual puzzles. I can't picture them completed so, all I can do is randomly try different starting points and hope it works - the puzzels are beyond frustrating. If I attempt one, it invariably ends an hour later in a rage quit.

 

No puzzles that have any effect on quests or collections in DA4 - PLEASE.

[sjsharp2011]

I don't have a problem with the quests. I feel like they're there if I want to do them, but easily ignored if my character doesn't feel like participating. I've never done anything with the shards but I decided to give them a go in my current playthrough.

 

I love this game. I've taken quite a break from it, but just jumped back in for about my fifth playthrough now. However, Bioware does not know how to handle item development. You're right, it's stupid to hang on to that purple sword that can't be used until you reach level 17, only to get there and realize you can craft, or find another already superior weapon. And that doesn't even touch on the completely un-fun aspect of picking up piles and piles of other useless loot. I understand it adds to the economy of the game, but I would rather just pick up some gold or crafting material off a corpse. I don't need 15 templar shields and a bunch of raider longbows.

 

I think a level restriction on a weapon or piece of armor is fine, but give me a reason to still want to use it when I get to that level. DA needs to take a page from Dark Souls and make items unique in moveset, abilities and appearance, and give us the capability to upgrade them to be relevant and usable through end-game if desired.

yeah this pretty much sums me up as well.

[capn233]

Hear, hear! I'd dropkick the Exalted Plains, or better yet, use the Exalted Plains as the location for what Pride Had Wrought: who needs the completely gratuitous, and non-replayable, introduction of the Arbor Wilds?

The Emerald Graves, the Hissing Waste and EdL are all beautiful, and EdL has a damn good gauntlet that I wouldn't want to lose, not to mention the dragons, so I'd want to keep all of them. Why not have a stage of the main quest be split amongst the three? You'd have to complete at least one of them to progress the main quest, so there's still some choice involved. You should be able to do all three if you want, none of this either/or crap for content -- drives completionists nutso.

 

I agree that Hissing Wastes is beautiful, it is a night map which is a little bit different, and overall it is near the top of my list of favorite areas.  Exalted Plains is my least favorite area, and I would skip it if there weren't useful items there and various fetch quests for specialization or squadmembers.  I didn't mention Emprise since although it has little to do with the main plot, it has a fairly interesting side mission and gauntlet, as you say.

 

What I was wondering was if they couldn't combine some of these areas.  Like just move some of the Western Approach things into Hissing Wastes, and potentially Forbidden Oasis (it is sort of a small map anyway).  Or combine Exalted Plains with Emerald Graves for the Dales map, but with the terrain more like Graves.

 

I didn't mention it, but Crestwood before doing the undead quest is fairly similar to Fallow Mire.  Crestwood was sort of like Western Approach in that you randomly go there for 5 minutes to meet somebody, although the "map story mission" was somewhat interesting.  Those were two more areas that could have potentially been combined.

[Dabrikishaw]

I think some of the areas were originally one larger area that had to be split for last gen accommodation.

[PapaCharlie9]

I think some of the areas were originally one larger area that had to be split for last gen accommodation.

^This (is my guess as well). Load times are already horribly long. Bigger zones would mean longer load times.

[AlanC9]

Level designers got far too cute with their placement of fetch quest items to the point of being a non enjoyable pain in the rump.  The shards for example, you start up your game, look at your game map and say 'Okay, I go do this, this and this quest and along the way I can get these 4 shard pieces, the 1st one on your map is an inch from your camps.  But wait, you can't get to it, it is on top of  a mountain, you have to traverse all over the bloody world to get it from the back side.  Or, hey we put jump in the game, lets make the player jump 3/4 the way up a cliff side with steps but make the last jump just big enough to make it not possible.  Not clever or sneaky, just bloody annoying.

This strikes me as the ultimate extension of one of the design principles of the game. A lot of the maps seem to be about navigating challenging terrain. Even when you know where something is on the map, finding a route to get there can take a bunch of work.

[sjsharp2011]

I think some of the areas were originally one larger area that had to be split for last gen accommodation.

Possibly yeah I agree

[bEVEsthda]

Level designers got far too cute with their placement of fetch quest items to the point of being a non enjoyable pain in the rump.  The shards for example, you start up your game, look at your game map and say 'Okay, I go do this, this and this quest and along the way I can get these 4 shard pieces, the 1st one on your map is an inch from your camps.  But wait, you can't get to it, it is on top of  a mountain, you have to traverse all over the bloody world to get it from the back side.  Or, hey we put jump in the game, lets make the player jump 3/4 the way up a cliff side with steps but make the last jump just big enough to make it not possible.  Not clever or sneaky, just bloody annoying.

 

  I actually enjoyed that. I thought the shards were fun. A fun sub-element. I suppose I just like and enjoy anything labyrinth. I really liked the 3D environments. I also enjoyed the Deep Roads and the Fade in DA:O very much. I'm not annoyed by inconvenience. I'm not trying to make my game playthrough as streamlined as possible. On the contrary.

 

But I do not think it was a game element fitting the game. Nor fitting in any kind of believable rpg environment. So for those reasons I'd happily see them go.

However, EA & Bioware will likely continue to insist on symbolic, semi-platformer consolish paradigms. Because that's how EA is and how Bioware also are. These days. So what's the point in removing them then?