575 réponses à ce sujet

[dragon_83]

Upper_Krust wrote...


To me it seems that some degree of challenge is at least 50% of what makes it interesting.

Very true. When you defeat a hard enemy, you have a feel of accomplishment. Simple example: I rushed through Awakening, and I didn't have to reload because of dying(not once). I thought, OK it was fun, but it's missing something. Than my brother rushed into the room, totally excited. He told me he had a brutal battle with a boss in Final Fantasy XIII, defeting it was such a great feeling. Now it's not about Final Fantasy, I know most of you don't like it. It's about difficulty, if it is done right, it adds to the fun factor.

Modifié par dragon_83, 28 mars 2010 - 12:53 .

[Upper_Krust]

dragon_83 wrote...

I kind of agree with this type of scaling. But I wouldn't downshift the lower tier enemies at lvl 6, 11 (as in your example).  It would be enough to set a fix level for them (so they only auto level until level 6). With time, my character would outlevel them, and this would give a sense of progression. And to keep the game challanging, it would introduce higher ranked enemies in the battles.

Not sure what you mean by Auto-level until Level 6?

If you are Levels 1-5 and you battle a Hurlock its a Level 3 Lieutenant
If you are Levels 6-10 and you battle a Hurlock its a Level 8 Normal
If you are Levels 11-15 and you battle a Hurlock its a Level 13 Weak Normal
If you are Levels 16-20 and you battle a Hurlock its a Level 18 Critter

the idea is to always keep the Level Difference between +/-2 so that the math doesn't make the enemy too tough to hit or too easy to hit. The way to do that is make each enemy Level 3, 8, 13 or 18.

There would be a sweet spot in the math. But only Bioware could work that out. I imagine my guesstimate is fairly close though.

[Upper_Krust]

dragon_83 wrote...

Very true. When you defeat a hard enemy, you have a feel of accomplishment. Simple example: I rushed through Awakening, and I didn't have to reload because of dying(not once). I thought, OK it was fun, but it's missing something. Than my brother rushed into the room, totally excited. He told me he had a brutal battle with a boss in Final Fantasy XII, defeting it was such a great feeling. Now it's not about Final Fantasy, I know most of you don't like it. It's about difficulty, if it is done right, it adds to the fun factor.

This.

The most memorable moments in DAO for me were the times I got beaten and had to reload.

A great fantasy writer once replied to a question I asked about the ease with which one of his characters dispatched an army of foes. "Very hard. Almost everything worth doing is."

[Alexander1136]

I agree i never like the level scaling idea. ik they made ozammar harder then the other areas but thats it. i think that they should place a set hp on certain enemies. hurlock have 400 health for example. so when your character dishes out 100 damage it actually like he's strong

[tmp7704]

Upper_Krust wrote...

Why did it have a tight schedule?

It is a question for the devs and the publisher. Only they know the reasons why the release was given such short development time.

To me it seems that some degree of challenge is at least 50% of what makes it interesting.

And that's individual preference, which is fine. To someone else that '50%' can be things like interesting characters, the plot, the settings or whatever. I suppose the devs may be less inclined to pander to your personal preference though --or at least to refrain from pandering to it at expense of other parts of the game-- since as pointed out earlier their typical customers don't appear to mind if the game they get to play isn't challenging.

As opposed to the greater number of complaints they have now about the lack of challenge.

If they view these complaints as significant enough, you can probably expect they'll take it into account and react accordingly, just like they reacted to complaints about the game being too hard.

Its just math so of course it could be changed.

I'm not sure if you understood. Yes it is math and yes it can be changed, but the question is, if this math is defined just in single place and then universally applied to all campaigns installed for the game, or if it's defined individually for each respective campaign. If it's the former, then changing the numbers to make the 'harder' modes of the expansion "hard enough" could result in these same modes getting too hard in the core game, as they'd be also affected by these changes. In any case this is pure speculation so quite pointless.

[ladydesire]

Upper_Krust wrote...

tmp7704 wrote...

I can't think of single BioWare game since KotOR (and including it) which would be actually challenging (and i simply didn't bother to play earlier games fully, up to the point i saw they weren't exactly challenging either). Considering this lack of difficulty did not affect overall opinion on their games in negative way, i'd say "illogical and idiotic" is a strong opinion but not exactly supported by facts.

I don't have any history of playing Bioware games before DAO.

But it seems to me that you don't create multiple difficulty settings and make them all easy for a vast percentage of gamers.

They aren't all easy; it's your choice to build the character by putting all your Attribute points into one or two Attributes that makes the difference. If Bioware meant for us to do that, wouldn't they only make certain Attributes available to each class?

I think it can be equally well if not better explained by tight schedule for the expansion

Why did it have a tight schedule?

If working on the expansion for at least one year before release is a tight schedule, you might be right.

-- setting up the base difficulty and then tweaking the individual levels afterwards takes more time and effort than just setting up the base difficulty, and that extra time and effort can be instead allocated to development of another aspect of the game which would otherwise had to be cut or reduced.

To me it seems that some degree of challenge is at least 50% of what makes it interesting.

Again, for those that don't min/max, the game is plenty challenging on all difficulty levels, just as Bioware designed it to be.

Also, changing the difficulty of individual modes might irk the players who would expect some sort of consistency in this regard between base game and the expansion (why does 'hard' in base game makes mob hit 10% harder but 100% harder in expansion?")

 
As opposed to the greater number of complaints they have now about the lack of challenge.

Well, Bioware has the data on how some people build there characters, so they know why those people are complaining, and have to decide if upsetting those that like the difficulty as it is is worth the time to "fix" it.

and finally i don't know if it's even possible to have difficulty levels set up in different manner in separate modules, or if it's some universal mechanics.

Its just math so of course it could be changed. Not that I actually think tweaking the math in this way would have made the game necessarily better. We actually seem to have went off at a tangent in that regards.

Modules (like Awakening) use the base game mechanics for the most part; it might be possible to adjust things on a per module basis if the difficulty is scripted like the AI is.

Modifié par ladydesire, 28 mars 2010 - 02:26 .

[Paromlin]

ladydesire wrote...


They aren't all easy; it's your choice to build the character by putting all your Attribute points into one or two Attributes that makes the difference. If Bioware meant for us to do that, wouldn't they only make certain Attributes available to each class?

Oh, certainly - they have left you the option to cripple yourself by putting stats in dumb places.
If Bioware meant for us to always use armor, weapons and potions in combat, they wouldn't let us enter combat naked and without healing potions! *roll eyes* Stop being ridiculous.

Again, for those that don't min/max, the game is plenty challenging on all difficulty levels, just as Bioware designed it to be.

And also for those who enter combat without weapons, armor and potions.

[Akka le Vil]

tmp7704 wrote...

Yes, let's presume i can't. Please, explain what is so much different in practice between everyone gaining power at the same rate which keeps them equally strong, and characters becoming minimally stronger per level, which still keeps the characters pretty much equally strong no matter what level they are?

I'm afraid that then I can't explain to you. You describe the difference yourself, and they are completely and fundamentally differents, yet you pretend they ends up the same. I'm just at a loss for words.

I suppose that I can say I don't see the difference between taking a shower and swimming, after all in both cases you're somehow wet.

You keep saying the level scaling is "fundamentally flawed" but the thing is, the examples of why it's so flawed don't have much to do with actual level scaling, but the way the game story is arranged. It's just not making your point -- if the fix in this situation should be "let's let player start at high level" then you don't actually need to remove level scaling, nor again, it is to blame.

Level scaling is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't refer to anything that has any sense. Even the fantastic/unrealist part of a game have somehow a link to some mechanism/concept/principle that make sense. It's the reason they exists. In fact, when there is no link to some meaning/sense/logic, people usually end up in "WTF ?!". A bad character is a character that have unrealistic reactions. Immersion is usually reached by making the player feel like he's actually "in" the game-world, which require building the illusion of realism, logic and the like.
In fact, games that are praised for their believable game worlds, like precisely DAO or ME, have gone to great length to ensure that the world make sense and is full of logical details.

And then you drop a concept that is 100 % meta-gaming and have absolutely zero link to anything that exists (nor any link to any in-game-world explanation). It shows.

I'm talking about he original Fallout. Which had 12 places total including your starting vault and the only thing south-west in that game was ocean. If you were talking about Fallout 3 then my apologies, but i really didn't think this would be the case given F3 uses level scaling itself so to use it as example how fixed levels are better would be rather absurd.

Nah, I was talking about Fallout 1, the one from the nineties. And yes you have the Pacific in the extreme south-west, but you have the supermutant base on the western part of the map. Anyway, you can finish the whole game without firing a shot, so if you play well, you can even go there peacefully, so the level scaling argument about non-linearity stays bogus.

Uhmm no. Let's backtrack a bit? You were complaining how all fights in DA feel absolutely the same, and claimed this is due to level scaling and the fix would be to use fixed levels, then cited Fallout as example of game where it worked. My counter-point was the fights in Fallout also feel absolutely the same, hence i couldn't see how that game would show in any way that fixed levels address your complaint (fights feeling always the same) in any way.

Did you even sincerelly tried to get the point ?
On one hand the blandness of the fight comes from the fact that enemies are always leveled according to your char, so you dispatch them easily at level 1, and then ten levels later they are just exactly as strong, which is just nonsensical.
On the other hand, you say that Fallout's fights are bland because you find the combat system is not fun.
Why in hell are you even comparing these ? The problems are completely unrelated and stems from completely different parts.... Seriously...

[Akka le Vil]

Casper wrote...

I haven't read all the replies so it might be that somebody else already mentioned what I am about to say.

I think they have done this to help people play the DLCs at any time during the course of the original campaign...but I understand the cons also.

Considering how worthless the DLC are, it's really sacrificing a lot to gain nothing in return...

[CoS Sarah Jinstar]

[quote]ladydesire wrote...

[quote]Upper_Krust wrote...

[quote]tmp7704 wrote...

I can't think of single BioWare game since KotOR (and including it) which would be actually challenging (and i simply didn't bother to play earlier games fully, up to the point i saw they weren't exactly challenging either). Considering this lack of difficulty did not affect overall opinion on their games in negative way, i'd say "illogical and idiotic" is a strong opinion but not exactly supported by facts.[/quote]

I don't have any history of playing Bioware games before DAO.

But it seems to me that you don't create multiple difficulty settings and make them all easy for a vast percentage of gamers.[/quote]

They aren't all easy; it's your choice to build the character by putting all your Attribute points into one or two Attributes that makes the difference. If Bioware meant for us to do that, wouldn't they only make certain Attributes available to each class?

[quote]


[quote]I think it can be equally well if not better explained by tight schedule for the expansion [/quote]

Why did it have a tight schedule?[/quote]

If working on the expansion for at least one year before release is a tight schedule, you might be right.

[quote]

[quote]-- setting up the base difficulty and then tweaking the individual levels afterwards takes more time and effort than just setting up the base difficulty, and that extra time and effort can be instead allocated to development of another aspect of the game which would otherwise had to be cut or reduced. [/quote]

To me it seems that some degree of challenge is at least 50% of what makes it interesting.[/quote]

Again, for those that don't min/max, the game is plenty challenging on all difficulty levels, just as Bioware designed it to be.

[quote]


[quote]Also, changing the difficulty of individual modes might irk the players who would expect some sort of consistency in this regard between base game and the expansion (why does 'hard' in base game makes mob hit 10% harder but 100% harder in expansion?")[/quote]
 
As opposed to the greater number of complaints they have now about the lack of challenge.[/quote]

Well, Bioware has the data on how some people build there characters, so they know why those people are complaining, and have to decide if upsetting those that like the difficulty as it is is worth the time to "fix" it.

[quote]

[quote]and finally i don't know if it's even possible to have difficulty levels set up in different manner in separate modules, or if it's some universal mechanics.[/quote]

Its just math so of course it could be changed. Not that I actually think tweaking the math in this way would have made the game necessarily better. We actually seem to have went off at a tangent in that regards.[/quote]

Modules (like Awakening) use the base game mechanics for the most part; it might be possible to adjust things on a per module basis if the difficulty is scripted like the AI is.

[/quote]

I'm sorry desire, but the min/max arguement doesn't really work with DA:O, and it especially doesn't work with awakening unless you're purposely tossing points with say a rogue for example into magic  or points into str with a mage, just to cite "its roleplaying!11eleventy1!"

Awakening was easy to the extreme, poorly balanced, and obviously rushed out the door to meet some quarterly requirement by EA. I highly doubt they had a full expansion team work on the expansion for a year, unless the initial delay to the pc version citing that the "game isn't finished and needs polishing" or that they supposidly added 50 more quests from the delay to ship is pretty much bogus. Certain things just aren't adding up these days when it comes to quotes from various Biowarians and what actually ends up happening in design and QA cases, and I'm really not digging it. Once in a while hey, its forgivable, people are human and mistakes happen, but when it starts happening on a regular basis and steps aren't taken to keep it from happening, well you start to wonder just what the hell is going on.

[Paromlin]

It doesn't matter, they could've made it so that only DLC areas level scale if they wanted to. But they obviously thought that this kind of level scaling (which in practice turns out to be exactly as Oblivion's) is something very cool and therefore they stuffed it into every pore of DA.

A lot of people don't accept level scaling in any shape or form as a sensible gameplay mechanic and I'm one of them.

There's aslo a lot of talk about the lacking combat system. One of the problems about it is that it's just.. how do I put it.. not sophisticated. You don't have to combine, you don't have to think what to pick. All you have to do is spend the +3 stats on a single attribute and pick talents in a straight line until you have 'em all.
Not to mention how every encounter feels the same because the same tactic works every time - combine that with level scaling and hordes of enemies and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

In D&D battles are a lot more varied and I find myself pondering what to pick next (feats, skills, attributes) on level-up if I want to optimize my character.

Not to mention it feels more MMO.. than any MMO. I hate the permanent health and mana/stamina regeneration outside combat and find it silly that mana/stamina regenerate even in combat. Also, is it needed to start with 100 or 150 HP? I know it's arbitrary and that it can work, altough I'd enjoy reaching 100 HP instead of having it at level 1, but I digress..


 

tmp7704 wrote...
since as pointed out earlier their typical customers don't appear to mind if the game they get to play isn't challenging.

And.. how did you come to this conclusion?  If by "typical customer" you mean typical Biofanperson who'd sacrifice everything for a video game romance, then you have a point. Although, I hope they're not so typical after all.

[dragon_83]

There's aslo a lot of talk about the lacking combat system. One of the problems about it is that it's just.. how do I put it.. not sophisticated. You don't have to combine, you don't have to think what to pick. All you have to do is spend the +3 stats on a single attribute and pick talents in a straight line until you have 'em all.
Not to mention how every encounter feels the same because the same tactic works every time - combine that with level scaling and hordes of enemies and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

In D&D battles are a lot more varied and I find myself pondering what to pick next (feats, skills, attributes) on level-up if I want to optimize my character.

Not to mention it feels more MMO.. than any MMO. I hate the permanent health and mana/stamina regeneration outside combat and find it silly that mana/stamina regenerate even in combat. Also, is it needed to start with 100 or 150 HP? I know it's arbitrary and that it can work, altough I'd enjoy reaching 100 HP instead of having it at level 1, but I digress..

I totally agree with you, but I fear that most of the gamers are happy, that the combat is not like D&D anymore, and it is similar to the MMO-s. Now I'm not saying, that D&D is the only good combat system, and any other is garbage, but I don't like the MMO systems at all, and I hate that it had been implemented into a hardcore single player RPG.

[tmp7704]

Paromlin wrote...
And.. how did you come to this conclusion?  If by "typical customer" you mean typical Biofanperson who'd sacrifice everything for a video game romance, then you have a point. Although, I hope they're not so typical after all.

Well, the reasoning was provided earlier but it goes like:

* BioWare games aren't challenging
* BioWare games are arguably succesful
* ergo, lack of challenge in these games in the worst case isn't something the customers who do buy them find detrimental, or in best (for the company) case, it's something that actually makes these games more appealing to these customers.

[Paromlin]

dragon_83 wrote...

I totally agree with you, but I fear that most of the gamers are happy, that the combat is not like D&D anymore, and it is similar to the MMO-s. Now I'm not saying, that D&D is the only good combat system, and any other is garbage, but I don't like the MMO systems at all, and I hate that it had been implemented into a hardcore single player RPG.

I forgot to mention how you're forced to pick a gazillion active talents and you end up using the same 1 or at most 2 all the time. That's what happened with my rogue anyway.

[Paromlin]

tmp7704 wrote...

Well, the reasoning was provided earlier but it goes like:

* BioWare games aren't challenging
* BioWare games are arguably succesful
* ergo, lack of challenge in these games in the worst case isn't something the customers who do buy them find detrimental, or in best (for the company) case, it's something that actually makes these games more appealing to these customers.

*Some were.
*Arguably.
*And this reasoning doesn't hold water because people can find some elements of a game off-putting, but still buy it. Imagine how much more succesful would they be if they improved the lacking parts.

[tmp7704]

Akka le Vil wrote...

I'm afraid that then I can't explain to you. You describe the difference yourself, and they are completely and fundamentally differents, yet you pretend they ends up the same. I'm just at a loss for words.

I suppose that I can say I don't see the difference between taking a shower and swimming, after all in both cases you're somehow wet.

No, to use an analogy it's situation akin to having two pairs of people in front of you. One pair has both guys 1.8 m tall, the other pair has one of the guys 1.8 m tall and the other 1.79 m tall. And then you insist these two are "fundamentally different" because one of the pairs has one of the guys minimally taller than the other. While technically correct, i simply question the practical effects of such difference.

Level scaling is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't refer to anything that has any sense. (..) And then you drop a concept that is 100 % meta-gaming and have absolutely zero link to anything that exists (nor any link to any in-game-world explanation). It shows.

Discrete levels don't really make sense to begin with. Again, preaching sense in fantasy rpg is lost cause.

But yes, the level scaling is a "meta-gaming" mechanics, to ensure the player faces certain fixed level of challenge (or lack thereof) throughout the game. Just like the alternative of carefully placing fixed level enemies around the game world and arranging them to form similar, linear challenge that hopefully matches the player character's "growth" as they proceed through the game. Or the mixed systems like what DA uses. However if the only thing you can have against is "it breaks my immersion because it doesn't make sense" then i think the only response to it can be "well that's too bad" because the same argument can be used against every system like that tried by rpg games so far.

Did you even sincerelly tried to get the point ?

Yes, but it seems you aren't trying to get mine. I said the encounters in Fallout felt the same, just like you claim every fight in the DA feels the same. You are focusing on the "whys" rather than on actual player's experience with the game, and i believe it's a mistake especially since blaming "dull combat system" is questionable -- Fallout and DA combat aren't that different mechanically.

Or to put it differently, we have situation like this: a game with fixed levels and simple combat system that feels all the same throughout. And a game with level scaling and equally simple combat system that feels all the same throughout. And yet, you choose to in one case blame the blandness entirely on level scaling but in the other case it's entirely the fault of the combat system. If that doesn't imply a bias towards certain factor, i don't know what does.

[tmp7704]

Paromlin wrote...

*Some were.
*Arguably.
*And this reasoning doesn't hold water because people can find some elements of a game off-putting, but still buy it. Imagine how much more succesful would they be if they improved the lacking parts.

* Oh? Which ones?
* in the sense of "as can be proven by evidence". The sales and ratings of the games in question speak for themselves, i believe.
* very well. Can you provide a few examples of very challenging rpg games which managed to not only reach the level of BioWare sales, but actually surpass it by wide margin on the western markets? Surely, if the idea is people crave challenge in their games they should be voting for it with their wallets since as you say, it makes more sense to buy something which does provide what you're after, rather than buy something despite its failure to cater to your tastes.

Modifié par tmp7704, 28 mars 2010 - 12:44 .

[Akka le Vil]

tmp7704 wrote...

No, to use an analogy it's situation akin to having two pairs of people in front of you. One pair has both guys 1.8 m tall, the other pair has one of the guys 1.8 m tall and the other 1.79 m tall. And then you insist these two are "fundamentally different" because one of the pairs has one of the guys minimally taller than the other. While technically correct, i simply question the practical effects of such difference.

No. Just... no.
Nullifying progression is completely different of having a very slow progression. The feeling is totally different, and the results are also.
Seriously, I can't even begin to understand how you can fail to see the difference. Honestly.
It's a bit like someone saying that murder and self-defense are the same because at some point there is someone dead (though this is a very weird example, I know).

Discrete levels don't really make sense to begin with. Again, preaching sense in fantasy rpg is lost cause.

Yes they do, because, as said in the very quote you answer to, they are based on a somewhat logical underlying concept ("if I train, I become better"). Level scaling isn't, it's purely, entirely, completely a meta-gaming invention, that flies in the face of the very reason many mechanisms were invented and what underlying concept they represent.
Just as above, there is a moment where discussion fails if you refuse to see the very basis of the argument. I can't explain that the red tile is not the same as the white tile when the person try to hear a different sound rather than look at a different colour.

And the overused "there is magic so there is no logic" is one of the worst pile of crap that has ever been used as an excuse for an argument. You're better than that, so please stop using it.

When a character have a nonsensical reaction, you don't say "it doesn't make sense, but hey there is magic in the world, so the characters don't have to make sense".
When there is a plot hole, you don't say "it doesn't make sense, but hey there is magic in the world, so plot doesn't have to make sense".
When there is a well thought-out explanation for things, an attention to details and the like, you don't say "it's useless, there is magic, so we don't need to have anything to make sense".

No, making sense is ALWAYS good. It's even the trademark of GOOD storyline, GOOD world-making and GOOD characters. They make sense. Acceptable breaks from realities for gameplay or story consideration don't mean "you can throw away logic and do whatever nonsensical crap you want, there is magic so it's not the real world so everything is good !". No. They mean that you can take some different premices than the real world ("magic works") in order to make something, and you can tweak and twists some realities in order to improve the game. Level scaling is not a tweaking, it's a purely meta-gaming absurdity that simply allow lazier design.

Yes, but it seems you aren't trying to get mine. I said the encounters in Fallout felt the same, just like you claim every fight in the DA feels the same. You are focusing on the "whys" rather than on actual player's experience with the game, and i believe it's a mistake especially since blaming "dull combat system" is questionable -- Fallout and DA combat aren't that different mechanically.

I certainly did not felt that the random spear-wielding tribal was the same fight at level 1 and at level 10 in Fallout, and if I ever encountered a Deathclaw, the fight was VERY different if I was level 5 or level 15, so no, I just can't buy your affirmation that all fights in Fallout felt the same regardless of levels.
Now, if you wanted to say that you always did the same actions in Fallout, yes it may be so, but then again, that's exactly what I said : it's lack of variety in the combat gameplay, not a lack of difference in the progression part.

Again, they are completely unrelated. A car lacking an engine can no more move than a car lacking wheels, doesn't mean that both are the same kind of problem.

Modifié par Akka le Vil, 28 mars 2010 - 01:32 .

[AlanC9]

tmp7704 wrote...

* very well. Can you provide a few examples of very challenging rpg games which managed to not only reach the level of BioWare sales, but actually surpass it by wide margin on the western markets? Surely, if the idea is people crave challenge in their games they should be voting for it with their wallets since as you say, it makes more sense to buy something which does provide what you're after, rather than buy something despite its failure to cater to your tastes.

Hell, I'll go further. Expand that to any genre. Games in general are easier than they used to be, across the board. The trend seems to have started around 15 years ago. No game company has seen any reason to buck this trend.

Either they're all wrong together, or new gamers don't have the tolerance for difficulty that us old-school types did, or most customers never really wanted difficult games in the first place. 

[Blessed Silence]

I have not made it to my second play through yet, though I do see the OP's points.



Personally, I would like to have more enemies appear in an area when I level up and come back later, but I normally don't visit an area more than once (unless it is story related)



So I am not sure what to add here.

[tmp7704]

Akka le Vil wrote...

Seriously, I can't even begin to understand how you can fail to see the difference. Honestly.
It's a bit like someone saying that murder and self-defense are the same because at some point there is someone dead (though this is a very weird example, I know).

Considering you can be charged with murder if you fail to justify how your actions were actually self-defense, there's perhaps more of common ground between these two than you'd think, and the actual difference is in the context rather than practical outcome. This is actually a good example; would you at least consider you might be focusing on the perceived differences so much it prevents you from seeing actual similarities which are also present?

Yes they do, because, as said in the very quote you answer to, they are based on a somewhat logical underlying concept ("if I train, I become better").

The idea of growth due to training is logical, yes. The concept of that growth happening at fixed intervals, by fixed amounts, and in the manner it's typically done in rpgs ("i spent x hours bashing rats with a stick so i can now choose if that made me better in shooting my bow, or hurling magic fireballs) is pure nonsense. 

In the same manner level scaling can be considered nonsensical implementation of otherwise logical idea that while you keep improving, there's always going to be other people out there who are as good at these things as you are. After all, they also train and improve.

And the overused "there is magic so there is no logic" is one of the worst pile of crap that has ever been used as an excuse for an argument. You're better than that, so please stop using it.

It's good i didn't claim it's magic that isn't the logical part, then..? "The wizard did it" can be often utilized as excuse for the presence of illogical things, but the things themselves are actually different beasts -- like the afforementioned levels, the idea of characters surviving multiple stabs in the vital organs without magic etc.

I certainly did not felt that the random spear-wielding tribal was the same fight at level 1 and at level 10 in Fallout, and if I ever encountered a Deathclaw, the fight was VERY different if I was level 5 or level 15, so no, I just can't buy your affirmation that all fights in Fallout felt the same regardless of levels.

It's been really long while since i played the game, but i'm under vague impression by the time i got to level 10 i didn't really meet many enemies who were designed to provide me a challenge when i was at level 1.

In the same manner though, i'd question if you really got absolutely no different experience fighting enemies at level 5 and 15 in DA. If just because in 10 levels your toolset --as well as the tools of your enemies-- can expand quite dramatically giving you completely new ways to tackle the encounters.

[Upper_Krust]

tmp7704 wrote...

And that's individual preference, which is fine. To someone else that '50%' can be things like interesting characters, the plot, the settings or whatever.

Of course but combat is a massive part of the game. To basically make that irrelevant (which is virtually what they have done) seems a massive error of judgement.

I suppose the devs may be less inclined to pander to your personal preference though --or at least to refrain from pandering to it at expense of other parts of the game-- since as pointed out earlier their typical customers don't appear to mind if the game they get to play isn't challenging.

I don't think thats the case at all. I think Casual Gamers may not care if the games challenging or not, but I can't imagine they make up the majority of players.

If they view these complaints as significant enough, you can probably expect they'll take it into account and react accordingly, just like they reacted to complaints about the game being too hard.

Or, as with Awakening, overreact and push the game too far in one direction rather than just making each difficulty appropriate for what its called.

I'm not sure if you understood. Yes it is math and yes it can be changed, but the question is, if this math is defined just in single place and then universally applied to all campaigns installed for the game, or if it's defined individually for each respective campaign. If it's the former, then changing the numbers to make the 'harder' modes of the expansion "hard enough" could result in these same modes getting too hard in the core game, as they'd be also affected by these changes. In any case this is pure speculation so quite pointless.

True, we are speculating with the math too much. Only Bioware can really know how much time it would take to properly balance.

[Paromlin]

tmp7704 wrote...

* Oh? Which ones?

Baldur's Gate.

There's no need to play this asterisk game - I'll just point out to you (and this guy who "expanded it even further") that there are 4 (in letters: four) difficulty levels in DA. Ranging from "easy" to "nightmare".
Now, if Bioware invested in the creation of 4 (four) difficulty levels it means they care a lot about having various challenge levels. Don't forget how they kept advising not to play DA on nightmare on the first playthrough because it'll be just a "very frustrating experience with lots of reloading", implying that it's meant to be very difficult.

Implications of (the existence of) difficulty levels need not be explained any further? I think it's pretty clear, right?

Let's get back on level scaling.

[Upper_Krust]

ladydesire wrote...

They aren't all easy;

Nightmare on Awakening = Normal on DAO.

it's your choice to build the character by putting all your Attribute points into one or two Attributes that makes the difference. If Bioware meant for us to do that, wouldn't they only make certain Attributes available to each class?

Not necessarily. Bioware may not have known what effect boosting certain attributes over others would have in the game. Constitution is widely regarded as a dump stat for warriors. Primarily because characters are at full hit points for each battle.

If working on the expansion for at least one year before release is a tight schedule, you might be right.

Well they released the game 6 months after DAO, so if it was the same team working on it they couldn't have been working on it for a year. Part of the team may have prepped the art, story and level design initially, while the programmers were finishing DAO. So there could be some overlap I guess.

[Upper_Krust]

AlanC9 wrote...

Hell, I'll go further. Expand that to any genre. Games in general are easier than they used to be, across the board. The trend seems to have started around 15 years ago. No game company has seen any reason to buck this trend.

Either they're all wrong together, or new gamers don't have the tolerance for difficulty that us old-school types did, or most customers never really wanted difficult games in the first place. 

Unfortunately your argument gets obliterated by a little something called multiple Difficulty Levels. This way you can make games simultaneously easier AND harder. You can cater for both the casual gamer AND the hardcore gamer and anywhere in between.