117 réponses à ce sujet

[AlleluiaElizabeth]

 

I assume they meant the Mako or Hammerhead. lol

 

 

A solution to this could be to have a mounted skill-tree independent of the others, and have it also level up independently based on mount use (like Skyrim skills). The skill-points earned with that tree could only be spent in that tree and vice versa.

This would still amount to riding by/at an enemy and pressing a skill button at them. If people complained about the supposedly MMO nature of the game before, this would not improve it, imo. Its exactly how mounted combat in, say Lord of the Rings Online works. I suppose the devs could compensate if they made the skill animations and results look cool enough. But it'd be a tall order.

[vbibbi]

I assume they meant the Mako or Hammerhead. lol

 

 

This would still amount to riding by/at an enemy and pressing a skill button at them. If people complained about the supposedly MMO nature of the game before, this would not improve it, imo. Its exactly how mounted combat in, say Lord of the Rings Online works. I suppose the devs could compensate if they made the skill animations and results look cool enough. But it'd be a tall order.

I'm not going to lie, I might actually enjoy a horse with a bubble over its head in MEA. I hope the Mako can live up to that high bar. (hey the trailer made it seem like a Western, anyway!)

 

Back on DA, I guess it depends on how open world they will make DA4. If it's the same as DAI, then mounted combat would have to be as you outline. But if it's a tighter world, there could be mini events using horseback for chases, combat (a one on one duel?), or just having them be present in cut scenes. I don't know if this would decrease the MMO feel.

 

Really, though, in an open world game with respawning enemies, the mounts were often near useless since they didn't run any faster than enemies and it was cumbersome to try and disengage from combat. Especially in areas like Storm Coast where there were a lot of hills and narrow paths to navigate. The Hissing Wastes is the only map that I feel is justified enough to need a mount.

[Sylvius the Mad]

A solution to this could be to have a mounted skill-tree independent of the others, and have it also level up independently based on mount use (like Skyrim skills). The skill-points earned with that tree could only be spent in that tree and vice versa

Never learn-by-doing. Never.

[Milan92]

I'm going to get flamed for this but so be it.

 

I think Bioware should do what CD Projekt did. And then improve upon that.

[thats1evildude]

I'm going to get flamed for this but so be it.

I think Bioware should do what CD Projekt did. And then improve upon that.

That's awfully vague. What are you referring to here?

[Cribbian]

Turn them into food for the mabari.

[roselavellan]

I think they should get rid of mounts in future, unless they are used in cinematics, as they really don't work in a party based system.
Smaller areas to be traversed by foot please, which would likely help with complaints of empty areas filled with fetch.

 

I agree.

 

I don't really see how mounts can work in an RPG, where there is a lot of exploration to be done, interspersed with (ideally) a lot of investigating, interacting and fighting. This means constantly getting on and off the mount. It's tedious.

 

Even in The Witcher, which had a somewhat decent mount system, I found it frequently better not to use one.

 

The only time I find it useful is when I'm in a vast area with very little of interest to investigate or fight - but then, that's not particularly fun to play either.

[AlleluiaElizabeth]

Back on DA, I guess it depends on how open world they will make DA4. If it's the same as DAI, then mounted combat would have to be as you outline. But if it's a tighter world, there could be mini events using horseback for chases, combat (a one on one duel?), or just having them be present in cut scenes. I don't know if this would decrease the MMO feel.

 

Mini-events could work. Specific sections of the game designed for a mounted conflict. Perhaps not even being a single story step or something, but a certain genre of mission you do. ie. a chase scene vs jousting "minigame" in the Grand Tourney/Proving Arena. That could work, potentially. It'd still have to have different combat mechanics than regular play, but if its sectioned off in its own part of the game then that kind of switch up works better. (OTOH, it could also end up feeling tagged on. That distinction will come down to whether its actually fun or not, really.)

 

I agree mounts should definitely be present in cutscenes as often as it makes sense.

[Milan92]

That's awfully vague. What are you referring to here?

 

Mounted combat. Better horse controls. More responsive. More speed.

[BansheeOwnage]

I assume they meant the Mako or Hammerhead. lol

 

 

This would still amount to riding by/at an enemy and pressing a skill button at them. If people complained about the supposedly MMO nature of the game before, this would not improve it, imo. Its exactly how mounted combat in, say Lord of the Rings Online works. I suppose the devs could compensate if they made the skill animations and results look cool enough. But it'd be a tall order.

Probably

 

I'm not even necessarily for mounts/mounted combat, I was just throwing an idea out there. But I don't think it has to be bad. I thought riding a caragor in Shadow of Mordor was pretty cool, and that the combat worked well.

 

Never learn-by-doing. Never.

I thought that was a good way to learn things

[Sylvius the Mad]

Probably

I'm not even necessarily for mounts/mounted combat, I was just throwing an idea out there. But I don't think it has to be bad. I thought riding a caragor in Shadow of Mordor was pretty cool, and that the combat worked well.

I thought that was a good way to learn things

It's too restrictive in a game setting. The advantage of a point system where we can buy skills as we like is that it moves a boring task - practicing a skill you're not yet good at - off-screen. It's just like how, in the D&D rules, it is assumed that you studied the skill in your (offscreen) downtime prior to buying the point on your character sheet.

Learn by doing forces is to engage in suboptimal (and often unfun) play to achieve our character development goals. That's not a good design.

Tabletop rulesets already solved this problem for us. Why recreate it?

[Hrungr]

... or just having them be present in cut scenes.

 

I agree mounts should definitely be present in cutscenes as often as it makes sense.

 

Also agree in principal, but I can imagine the Cinematic Designer's reaction...

 

[AlleluiaElizabeth]

Also agree in principal, but I can imagine the Cinematic Designer's reaction...

 

I dunno. lol Mounts could be a great equalizer as far as height differences of the PC goes. Might be able to adjust mount heights so that all of them work with the same camera angles.

[Hrungr]

I dunno. lol Mounts could be a great equalizer as far as height differences of the PC goes. Might be able to adjust mount heights so that all of them work with the same camera angles.

 

- That's true! I can see the Cin Designer's edict now... All Dwarves are now perma-pony-mounted if PC ≠ Dwarf.

 

But Maker help the poor Cin Designer who has to accommodate a cut-scene ranging from 2 dwarves taking on foot to a Nuggalope-riding Qunari taking to the same dwarf.

[vbibbi]

Also agree in principal, but I can imagine the Cinematic Designer's reaction...

 

Hey, the developers dine on fan tears. We'll just toast them back with cinematic designers' tears!

[PsychoBlonde]

Not have them. Free up those zots for other things.

 

This is always an option.  If they're just going to be like the horses in DAI I'd say go for it, they were a waste of time.

 

The trouble with improving the mounts is that you have to change a lot of the design of the game to MAKE it mount-friendly.  This can be done, but if the ONLY reason why you're doing it is to make mounts worthwhile, you are (literally) putting the cart before the horse.  So you kind of have to know "what are the design goals for the adventure areas in the next game?" before you even know whether mounts would make any dang sense in that context.

 

Now, if I had complete freedom and all the money in the world (but short of just saying "screw it, we're making an open game world") what I'd do is to make DA4 into a game where you're on the move a lot, as in, you're escorting a caravan or you're a small scouting force.  The point is, you have to cover a lot of terrain over the course of the adventure.  There would be two types of zones--adventure areas, which would be confined to an area where you'd made camp and set off to explore--and travel zones, which would be pretty to look at but fairly linear.  All the stuff where you'd be constantly wanting to get on and off your horse would be confined to the adventure areas.  You CAN explore them on horseback, but it's probably just more efficient to do it on foot.  The travel zones are the opposite--you probably won't want to dismount at all.

 

So now the question is, why even have travel zones instead of just fast-travel points?  Well, several reasons:

 

1.  They're a perfect venue for some big, dramatic, open-area set piece encounters and plot developments.

2.  They make the world feel really spacious.

3.  You can have broader exploration-based gameplay here, instead of stuff that's based around poking your nose in every nook and cranny.

4.  Having transitions like these makes it easier to control the pacing of the game (always good for story).

5.  It adds more of a sense of "time passing" in the game than instantly teleporting between zones where it's always the same time of day.

 

You could also have a resource management aspect to it if you wanted to.  Granted, I know that to some people this would be a bit Camping Simulator, but I'd enjoy it

 

I'd make it so that you could zoom way, way out, too, and REALLY enjoy the scenery.

 

Transition zones could also be used to make game flow decisions.  You only have to travel to an "undiscovered" area once, after that you can establish a fast-travel point and fast-travel there (not trying to be maliciously inconvenient).  But you have some choice over which zones you go to, it's not completely linear.  (And maybe you can find some secrets along the way.)

 

Basically, if you've ever played the now positively ancient original Pool of Radiance game, it'd be a bit like the "overland map" in that series of games.  You could wander around semi-freely between zones, find interesting stuff, things would happen . . . it was pretty cool.  And it made the game feel about 100 times as big as it would have if it had all been corridors.

[PsychoBlonde]

It's too restrictive in a game setting. The advantage of a point system where we can buy skills as we like is that it moves a boring task - practicing a skill you're not yet good at - off-screen. It's just like how, in the D&D rules, it is assumed that you studied the skill in your (offscreen) downtime prior to buying the point on your character sheet.

Learn by doing forces is to engage in suboptimal (and often unfun) play to achieve our character development goals. That's not a good design.

Tabletop rulesets already solved this problem for us. Why recreate it?

 

This is a funny conceit, Sylvius, considering that even if the PC's learning process occurs offscreen, the PLAYER still has to learn how to optimally use the new ability and work it into their gameplay.  And grinding XP to level up somehow ISN'T the equivalent of "practicing"?  True, you're nominally "practicing" something the PC is already "good at", but it's the same dang thing!  Use X so many times until it gets better!  SAME THING!

So by that logic why not have them occur *together* in dynamic synergy?  The PC's learning process will be dramatically reduced to account for the fact that the player's learning process (which consists of hitting a couple of buttons) is vastly simpler.  It's when the PC's learning process EXCEEDS that of the player that things get boring and grindy--as in, you've mastered killing things with fireball, but you still have to use it 300 more times to finish leveling up the fireball.  That's no good.  You want it to be that JUST when you've started to get a bit bored with the fireball, THEN you get an upgrade or another option that changes things up and makes you start learning again.  Likewise you don't want the game making you arbitrarily terrible at something and you have to fail tediously at it for a long time in order to make it useful.  That's also pretty silly.

 

The way to do it is to GIVE you the ability and have it be fully-functional, but it starts out in a form that you can only use so much.  You have a fireball.  It's a nice fireball.  But you can only throw it a few times before you're out of mana.  And the range isn't so great.  And the cooldown is kinda long.  And it's really easy to hit your friends with it.  But when it comes off timer, bam, them enemies know they've been fireballed!  Then you start getting things like better mana regen.  Better range.  Cooldown reduction.  Decreased friendly fire effect.  Knockdown.  Synergy with crowd control effects.  It charges another ability.  Your skill and the PC's skill grow together.

 

I generally quite enjoy this type of gameplay, as by the time I've gotten fully acquainted with the skill, it's time for an upgrade.  In most DA games I'm bored stiff with combat less than halfway through the game--I have all the unique abilities and upgrades I'm going to use, and I'll be using them in EXACTLY the same way for the remainder of the game over and over and over and over and over and okay time to turn the difficulty down and just roll over everything like a tank this is boring.  I COULD change it up, but then I'd have to go farm ingredients all over again to re-build the gear I've been slowly accumulating all game so I can accomplish the same thing (defeating enemies) in a marginally different way.  That's not interesting.  I'd give a lot to have more development happen ON screen, because they put that many ENEMIES on screen.  As it was, there was way too much bread and not enough butter.

[Sylvius the Mad]

This is a funny conceit, Sylvius, considering that even if the PC's learning process occurs offscreen, the PLAYER still has to learn how to optimally use the new ability and work it into their gameplay.

Again, tabletop already solved this problem.  If the abilities effects are sufficiently well documented, there's nothing to practice.  No one practices abilities in a tabletop game, because it isn't necessary and wouldn't help.

And grinding XP to level up somehow ISN'T the equivalent of "practicing"?

It's exactly the same thing, and I'd rather do neither.

 

I can't even remember the last time I bothered to grind XP.

True, you're nominally "practicing" something the PC is already "good at", but it's the same dang thing!  Use X so many times until it gets better!  SAME THING!

Except you could use those skill points on any ability.  You don't have to use the ability in order to improve it.

 

Really, there's no reason for experience points and skill points even to be different things.  Just have us earn XP, which we can then spend to learn abilities.

So by that logic why not have them occur *together* in dynamic synergy?  The PC's learning process will be dramatically reduced to account for the fact that the player's learning process (which consists of hitting a couple of buttons) is vastly simpler.  It's when the PC's learning process EXCEEDS that of the player that things get boring and grindy--as in, you've mastered killing things with fireball, but you still have to use it 300 more times to finish leveling up the fireball.  That's no good.  You want it to be that JUST when you've started to get a bit bored with the fireball, THEN you get an upgrade or another option that changes things up and makes you start learning again.  Likewise you don't want the game making you arbitrarily terrible at something and you have to fail tediously at it for a long time in order to make it useful.  That's also pretty silly.

Which is why I oppose learn by doing.  You don't need to fail at something to make it better.  You can make it better by spending points you earned doing something completely different.

 

Also, why would what you describe be boring?  I want to have the time to enjoy using the new ability I got.  Modern games level up way too fast.  If I keep gaining new abilities, I don't get to spend much time benefiting from the last one.  Each level becomes nothing more than a stepping stone to the next one.  That's what sounds boring to me.

The way to do it is to GIVE you the ability and have it be fully-functional, but it starts out in a form that you can only use so much.  You have a fireball.  It's a nice fireball.  But you can only throw it a few times before you're out of mana.  And the range isn't so great.  And the cooldown is kinda long.  And it's really easy to hit your friends with it.  But when it comes off timer, bam, them enemies know they've been fireballed!  Then you start getting things like better mana regen.  Better range.  Cooldown reduction.  Decreased friendly fire effect.  Knockdown.  Synergy with crowd control effects.  It charges another ability.  Your skill and the PC's skill grow together.

I despise cooldowns.

 

And again, there shouldn't be that much for the player to learn.  I should be able to learn pretty much all there is to know about the game's abilities and how to use them just by reading the game's documentation.

[BansheeOwnage]

 

The way to do it is to GIVE you the ability and have it be fully-functional, but it starts out in a form that you can only use so much.  You have a fireball.  It's a nice fireball.  But you can only throw it a few times before you're out of mana.  And the range isn't so great.  And the cooldown is kinda long.  And it's really easy to hit your friends with it.  But when it comes off timer, bam, them enemies know they've been fireballed!  Then you start getting things like better mana regen.  Better range.  Cooldown reduction.  Decreased friendly fire effect.  Knockdown.  Synergy with crowd control effects.  It charges another ability.  Your skill and the PC's skill grow together.

This sounds a lot like Mass Effect's skill trees. Well, ME3's which I thought were the best. You'd have three branching upgrades for each skill, like the ones Trespasser added, but x3. Each column's potential upgrades are mutually exclusive, but the amount of different combinations you could make in conjunction with other skills added a huge amount of versatility.

 

You could have the same three skills on two characters, but with the branching upgrades, their affects and synergies could vary quite a bit. It was awesome.

[Cyrus Amell]

My suggestions would be to integrate mounts into the game in a way that does not overburden the current engine. 

 

1. Weave them into cut-scenes. When we first enter an area I would like our mount of choice to be reflected simply because we will always have one.

2. More races with more prizes (as already mentioned). I mean, Witcher 3 already did this and it was, well, alright I guess. Other side activities would be nice.

3. Let our mount give us some kind of stat boost, perhaps to renown or carrying capacity. We can then level up the horse by using it in races or challenges. Bonus if we get to name it. 

4. Let our companions also have mounts. This may be the most difficult to properly integrate but it should be easier than mounted combat by far. They can control when and where we can summon our mount if it is too taxing in some areas. 

 

While I like the idea of mounted combat, I frankly think they should focus on general matters such as ridding us of the ear-clipping-helmet issue and the wooden hair. I want a good Dragon Age game and that unfortunately means lowering my expectations of what Bioware is capable of at this point. 

 

Oh, and for possible side activities I definitely think they should let us do chariot racing with our mounts because the Tevinter Empire has a lot of parallels with the Byzantine Empire where such activities had supplanted gladiatorial combat in a more christian society. But by all means, I would like some gladiatorial combat as well. Although the chariot racing may be a bit too much I suppose, just the wheels alone would rival mounted combat. 

[Heimdall]

You know what, I would be totally fine with mounts becoming nothing more than cutscene dressing.  I just really don't want them to vanish from the world completely.

[Dlokir]

That's awfully vague. What are you referring to here?

He means TW3 manages rather well horses (unlike Oblivion and DAI, I don't remind them in Skyrim). Only controls command are doubtful and should have been more handy. Other than that, it's just totally better:

- Better speeds,

- Much better controls (DAI gone too far) I don't mean the shortcuts design which is weak.

- Much better enemies management when riding a horse.

- The races are much better.

- Almost never penalized by using a horse.

 

BUT TW3 horse also work much better because TW3 area design is much more simple, and more arena like. On that matter DAI is a lot more complex, it has many climbing that make sense, equilibrist walking making sense, obstacles design much more complex....

[Beerfish]

JOUSTING!

 

[Baboontje]

You know what? I'm just going to say it, even though I know it will never happen. I want to breed my own mounts. There.

 

But having a sort of "tamagotchi"-style mount would be funny too. Feed it rare herbs and it gets faster or gains some other perks. Brush its coat and the enemy arrows just fly off its back for longer before you are thrown. Stuff like that.

And if there are different races to be had, give each race different traits. I also agree with others' ideas about having the mount bond with you. Pick one out of a herd and let them mean something to our characters. Although....perhaps best not. Knowing Bioware they will probably kill them off somewhere near the end of the game so they can feed on our tears.

 

To be honest, if they can't make it so that we can have banter whilst travelling per mount, then I'd rather they spend their resources elsewhere.

[sjsharp2011]

I rarely use mounts personally except for the Hissing wastes as I feel that's the only one in truth big enough to need one but I do use them on occasion but mostly because they'er there rather than the fact I really need them but I generally eithre buy or use one that fits the character I'm RP'ing for example my Topal had a hart/haslla mount to go with her Dalish heritage