82 réponses à ce sujet

[Itkovian]

Salutations.

I'm not sure how much of the old-school DnD style we old-school gamers actually cling to is because of nostalgia, or good game design (and yes, Old School I am, and have the SSI games to prove it *grin*).

Let's take vancian spellcasting for example. To me it is an inseparable part of the DnD (hence why I shun 4th ed, among other reasons), and I wouldn't want to play DnD without it... but is it actually better game design? I would argue not. It is tedious and it frequently creates situations where a player just doesn't have the spells needed for a given situation.

And when that latter situation happens, when a player is left with nothing but autoattack, as it were, then that is a failure of game design. A player is not getting to use his cool powers and feels like a dead weight. When PnP battles like 1 or 2 hours, that is definitely a problem, and it happens regularly in DnD. I still love DnD, but it is what it is: flawed in many ways, but we embrace it for its rich history and settings, and certainly some nostalgia as well.

But it remains flawed, and like it or not modern games (especially computer games that cost several millions to produce) must strive to maximize the "fun factor" and minimize that kind of poor game design. That's what they attempted with Dragon Age, and succeeded I think.

Take the good old "downtime". Back in everquest, or DAoC, and even WoW a little, downtime was deliberatly implemented as a game element. You fight a bunch of monsters, you need to rest up and recover afterwards. How is that fun? Having players sit around doing nothing hardly seems like a productive feature.

Of course, most games then and now have ways to reduce downtime. Bards and such in DAoC, drinks and meals in WoW, and so forth. But why have downtime at all? What makes it a useful feature in the game to have players sit around doing nothing?

The answer is nothing, of course. But downtime still exists, because we now expect it. From PnP RPGs and the CRPGs and MMOs that were spawned from it, downtime is just part of the package, even though it does not add enjoyment to the game (quite to contrary).

So does removing downtime and other "features" that reduce "fun" and exist only because they are now part of what we expect of RPGs a bad thing? Only if we hang on those expectations as "what makes a game a good RPG".

We have to look beyond our preconceptions of what an RPG is, and look at the underlying mechanics one by one and decide which detract from enjoyment of the game, and those parts should go. And I think this is clearly what Bioware is trying to do in its new games. Focus on what makes games fun, and strip away the RPG "features" that we now take for granted, but that really bring nothing to make the game more enjoyable.

Granted, Dragon Age is still pretty old school, but I think they are striking just the right balance. All classes are empowered and have various fun abilities (warriors aren't just auto-attack jockeys, for example), downtime is completely gone, inventory management isn't a chore anymore, and so on. And yet it maintains the feel of old school RPGs in its storyline and structure and concepts.

Now, I still prefer the Baldur's Gate saga over Dragon age, most likely due to nostalgia and its exceptional storyline and sheer density of content (of course they had basically 3 games to build that... plus BG had Boo *grin*), but I have no illusions as to which is actually the better game: Dragon Age is clearly the product of more than a decade of RPG experience.

Thank you.

Itkovian

[AlanC9]

Itkovian wrote...
Let's take vancian spellcasting for example. To me it is an inseparable part of the DnD (hence why I shun 4th ed, among other reasons), and I wouldn't want to play DnD without it... but is it actually better game design? I would argue not. It is tedious and it frequently creates situations where a player just doesn't have the spells needed for a given situation.

I think it's significant that other PnP RPGs and non-D&D CRPGs generally ran away from Vancian casting.

Take the good old "downtime". Back in everquest, or DAoC, and even WoW a little, downtime was deliberatly implemented as a game element. You fight a bunch of monsters, you need to rest up and recover afterwards. How is that fun? Having players sit around doing nothing hardly seems like a productive feature.

The argument in favor of downtime is that you then have an element of resource management in your strategy. DA:O could have had this with potions and poultices, but the costs don't make this really a concern. And if you can just hit a "rest" button like in NWN or the IE games it doesn't take any time.

The problem with this model is that it doesn't work for a lot of situations -- basically anything where the party couldn't control the tempo of action. Chateau Irenicus from BG2 and the Tower of Ishal from DAO are places where resting doesn't make any sense given the situation. But in BG2 you almost have to rest, and in DAO you don't.

[Itkovian]

Chateau Irenicus? Nice.

Well, for the potions I think the cooldown should have been much longer, purely for game difficulty purposes (in fact, difficulty level could have affected the cooldown), but outside of combat that's hardly relevant. A downtime simply for the sake of downtime is hardly a beneficial game feature. All it does is make players wait around doing nothing (or doing whatever it takes to reduce the downtime, which is exactly the same problem).

Itkovian

[Fluffykeith]

Interestingly (for me) the limitations on spellcasting in D&D games are why I never play casters in those systems...I hate the idea of preparing spells in advance because it's hard to know what your likely to run into, forcing you to generalise. I find it horribly restrictive and boring. I much prefer more freeform systems like "Witchcraft" for spellcasters. Generally though, those limitations are intended to help balance out the casters compared to the non caster types. Removing those limits in games with a mix of class types tends to make the casters seem overpowered.



This is something that came up when DA: O was released. A lot of people felt that the Mage class was too powerful in comparison to the other classes.

[Gegenlicht]

You'll notice that downtime is mostly an issue of MMOs. In fact, all of your examples are MMOs. Since you pay for these babies not once but over time, it's important that your 'game experience' be as long as possible. Most offline games don't have downtime, or if they do it's because of shoddy game design or because you really managed to run out of any and all health items.



I have nothing positive to say about any incarnation of the D&D rules, except maybe the very first inception for being the milestone it was. Then it didn't really evolve from that for 20 years, and then it went stupid. With regard to memorizing spells in particular, in a freeform game it's okay. Because you can counteract what spells you don't usually memorize by having scrolls or items to balance that. As such I actually find it a pretty decent way of handling things, albeit a very very clumsy one.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Itkovian wrote...

Salutations.

I'm not sure how much of the old-school DnD style we old-school gamers actually cling to is because of nostalgia, or good game design (and yes, Old School I am, and have the SSI games to prove it *grin*).

Let's take vancian spellcasting for example. To me it is an inseparable part of the DnD (hence why I shun 4th ed, among other reasons), and I wouldn't want to play DnD without it... but is it actually better game design? I would argue not. It is tedious and it frequently creates situations where a player just doesn't have the spells needed for a given situation.

And when that latter situation happens, when a player is left with nothing but autoattack, as it were, then that is a failure of game design.

No, that's a failure of player strategy.

What you've just done here is taken a game that requires strategy (mostly in the form of resource management) and evaluated it purely in terms of tactics.

That's probably why you think the following:

Granted, Dragon Age is still pretty old school, but I think they are striking just the right balance.

I think Dragon Age does what it strives to do very well, but what it strives to do has no balance in it at all.

Dragon Age was specifically designed to favour tactical gameplay over strategic gameplay.  As such, there is almost no strategic gameplay in DAO.  For every battle, you have your full complement of resources available.  All of your gear is accessible to every character in your party all of the time, regardless of who was just using it and how far apart everyone is.  There is never any incentive to ration your abilities; you can happily throw everything you have at every enemy.

I see this is a fairly large drawback associated with focusing on tactical gameplay alone.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 24 mars 2010 - 07:06 .

[Gill Kaiser]

I have to say, one change from DnD that I was never going to question was the move from vancian spellcasting to mana and cooldowns. The former was a relic of tabletop gaming, it had no place in video game mechanics.

[Volleyjeff]

First of all, excellent post to start the thread.



I agree with most of what Itkovian is saying, although I would suggest that one benefit that DOES come from a "resting" period is pacing. I have read in many gaming articles from developers that an often overlooked aspect of most games is pacing.



Like Gegenlicht says, most games with longer cooldowns are MMO's these days. I think the reason for that is because you are less likely to spend time in campfire sites, dialogue boxes, and NPC interaction in an MMO when you are grouped up than when you play a single player game, so the cooldown period after battles is a way for everyone to get their bearings, adjust inventory, chat a bit, before moving on to the next encounter.



In Dragon Age, the cooldown is next to nothing after battles. My party is ready to advance to the next encounter in seconds. But it's not necessary, because the dev team has creatively interspersed most encounter areas with cut scenes and dialogue actions that help pace the adventure and help build up suspense and allows the player to experience the world a bit more outside of combat alone.



There are some players out there who prefer to skip over dialogue actions, Codex entries, and other cutscenes, but I would wager that with DA:O these are a minority of players. For those looking for non-stop action, I think you will find that games can become pretty tedious if the pacing is not there, like it or not.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Gill Kaiser wrote...

I have to say, one change from DnD that I was never going to question was the move from vancian spellcasting to mana and cooldowns. The former was a relic of tabletop gaming, it had no place in video game mechanics.

Again, I like the strategic element Vancian casting brings.  I objected to the introduction of the Sorcerer class in 3E D&D because they no longer had to choose their spells in advance.

[Gill Kaiser]

Well, that's your perogative. Personally I thought the DnD strategic spellcasting was a bit too heavy-handed. You often had spells memorised that you didn't need, and not enough of the spell you did need... requiring lots of reloading and resting to change your spell lineup for no good gameplay reason.

I'll tell you one thing I miss about DnD magic, though... the Wild Mage kit. Such an amusing and whimsical class to play.

[Petsura]

I'm glad BioWare got rid of the D&D rules.



First of all it's confusing as **** if you never played a D&D game before and secondly it's tiring always depending on a virtual dice for EVERY ACTION you do ingame.

[Bullets McDeath]

I don't really want to argue the merits of Vancian casting in general (which I would put at 0) but in a videogame, it's a terrible idea. Even people I know who like the system metagame the **** out of it. Once you know the encounters in the game, you know what to memorize for what part (trolls up ahead, make sure to memorize Burning Hands and Fireball!) or if you don't you just go back and reload once you figure out what you're gonna need.

In videogames, Vancian casting is ultimately reduced to a mechanic that forces most players to either memorize the encounter placements or constantly reload and rejigger. Not fun, not interesting, not strategic, just dumb.

Modifié par outlaworacle, 24 mars 2010 - 07:31 .

[lordnoak]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Itkovian wrote...

Salutations.

I'm not sure how much of the old-school DnD style we old-school gamers actually cling to is because of nostalgia, or good game design (and yes, Old School I am, and have the SSI games to prove it *grin*).

Let's take vancian spellcasting for example. To me it is an inseparable part of the DnD (hence why I shun 4th ed, among other reasons), and I wouldn't want to play DnD without it... but is it actually better game design? I would argue not. It is tedious and it frequently creates situations where a player just doesn't have the spells needed for a given situation.

And when that latter situation happens, when a player is left with nothing but autoattack, as it were, then that is a failure of game design.

No, that's a failure of player strategy.

What you've just done here is taken a game that requires strategy (mostly in the form of resource management) and evaluated it purely in terms of tactics.

That's probably why you think the following:

Granted, Dragon Age is still pretty old school, but I think they are striking just the right balance.

I think Dragon Age does what it strives to do very well, but what it strives to do has no balance in it at all.

Dragon Age was specifically designed to favour tactical gameplay over strategic gameplay.  As such, there is almost no strategic gameplay in DAO.  For every battle, you have your full complement of resources available.  All of your gear is accessible to every character in your party all of the time, regardless of who was just using it and how far apart everyone is.  There is never any incentive to ration your abilities; you can happily throw everything you have at every enemy.

I see this is a fairly large drawback associated with focusing on tactical gameplay alone.

Speculative. You have no idea if Itkovians strategy was poor, right, wrong or
what his experience was when playing.

[Itkovian]

Well, he notion of strategy is rather vague. At the scale we're talking here, it's all tactics.

I guess you can view mages as wielders of a limited commodity that they need to carefully husband, but for most people that does not translate it as more fun. It means that you can't just use your powers when you want because you're worried it might be needed later (and it may not be), or that when you do need them you end up having used them already.

Is that poor gaming from the player's part? Sometimes, maybe. Like when you start a dungeon crawl and you immediately unload fireballs on a bunch of Kobolds, sure, that's the players fault. Nevertheless, there is a plethora of situations where it is not. Just two weeks about in a campaign I am GMing, a player mostly sat out a fight using only minor powers, in fear that we may have another random encounter, when he could have had tremendous impact with his higher level spells. Turns out he was wrong, as there were no further encounters.

Maybe what he did was wise, but from a pure gameplay perspective it is a bad idea to have players in that position in a game, because he was not having much fun in that particular fight (even if there had been a second one where he could have a bigger role).

Now I did not intend to argue the merits of Vancian spellcasting (I like it as part of DnD, call it tradition). My whole point is that proper game design should not "enforce" situations where players have nothing to do (of course, in PnP that's also the GM's job, ut sometimes these things are imposed by the system itself), or that are tedious.

Of course, that also depends what sort of games you're talking about. If the game is abstract enough, like DAO, there's no reason why tedious elements should be imposed on the players. Maximizing fun and minimizing tedium is the key. That's why there's no cooldown, no intense inventory management like BG, no food, no sleep.

PnP games usually can handle such things, because that's when we can do actual roleplaying with each other. We need to recuperate for a week? Fine, as a GM I can deal with that, and get PCs involved despite being "out of action", and they of course can do some RPing. That's not really an option in computer games, or even MMOs (because let's face it, MMOs sadly rarely involve actual roleplaying).

The only CRPGs where I really enjoy having such things are Oblivion and Fallout 3, where the appropriate mods can turn these RPGs almost into simulations. But that's not the niche DA tries to fill.

So ultimately, my point is that, unless we're expecting a simulator, we should not rail against the decisions to remove or streamline traditionally "Old School" RPG elements that objectively serve no functions except impede enjoyment of the game.

Perhaps that means the game is made more for the "mainstream", but when that means taking away things that we only enjoy for tradition's sake, I do not see it as much of a problem.

Thank you.

Itkovian

[Itkovian]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Itkovian wrote...

Salutations.

I'm not sure how much of the old-school DnD style we old-school gamers actually cling to is because of nostalgia, or good game design (and yes, Old School I am, and have the SSI games to prove it *grin*).

Let's take vancian spellcasting for example. To me it is an inseparable part of the DnD (hence why I shun 4th ed, among other reasons), and I wouldn't want to play DnD without it... but is it actually better game design? I would argue not. It is tedious and it frequently creates situations where a player just doesn't have the spells needed for a given situation.

And when that latter situation happens, when a player is left with nothing but autoattack, as it were, then that is a failure of game design.

No, that's a failure of player strategy.

What you've just done here is taken a game that requires strategy (mostly in the form of resource management) and evaluated it purely in terms of tactics.

That's probably why you think the following:

Granted, Dragon Age is still pretty old school, but I think they are striking just the right balance.

I think Dragon Age does what it strives to do very well, but what it strives to do has no balance in it at all.

Dragon Age was specifically designed to favour tactical gameplay over strategic gameplay.  As such, there is almost no strategic gameplay in DAO.  For every battle, you have your full complement of resources available.  All of your gear is accessible to every character in your party all of the time, regardless of who was just using it and how far apart everyone is.  There is never any incentive to ration your abilities; you can happily throw everything you have at every enemy.

I see this is a fairly large drawback associated with focusing on tactical gameplay alone.

Again, to call it strategy is a bit of a misnomer, it's all tactics at that scale. But I get what you're saying.

As for the balance, I'm afriad you misunderstand. I'm not talking about a balance between old school tactics and "mainstream" tactics... the balance is more with streamlining away the old school elements that made the game tedious to many, while retaining the "old school" feel for the game (through its story, its structure, the party-based gameplay, BG-style pseudo real-time gameplay, etc.).

Now clearly, a lot of people enjoy the careful ressource management, as you do (and I do, though not quite so much), but I think it is clear that Bioware concluded that more gamers prefer something more accessible and less "hindering", as it were, and have been moving in that direction ever since KOTOR and Jade Empire.

As for your original comment on "failure of player strategy", then it must be that every single player I've seen fails frequently. Unless the GM carefully informs his players on what will be happening in a given adventure, there is no avoiding that sometimes a player (mostly spellcasters) will end up holding back too much or not enough. Invariably this leads to fights where the player does not want to waste spells and so spends the fight letting the warriors do their thing, or else he ends up being forced to do that because he already spent his ressources. Having a system that essentially forces a player in that situation is poor game design, like it or not. But it's DnD, and we tolerate it because it's DnD.

Thank you.

Itkovian

Modifié par Itkovian, 24 mars 2010 - 07:55 .

[booke63]

Itkovian ...of Fener

[Itkovian]

booke63 wrote...

Itkovian ...of Fener

Shield Anvil of Fener's Reve, thank you.

Or maybe it should be The Redeemer, now?

How I miss the days when the series was obscure enough that no one got it.

Itkovian

Modifié par Itkovian, 24 mars 2010 - 07:59 .

[booke63]

Gill Kaiser wrote...

I have to say, one change from DnD that I was never going to question was the move from vancian spellcasting to mana and cooldowns. The former was a relic of tabletop gaming, it had no place in video game mechanics.

"vancian" as in Jack Vance.  I get it.  Yes I'm remembering that Gygax got ideas from Vance--whom I read recently last year or so.  Wonderful imagination in that guy.

[booke63]

Itkovian wrote...

booke63 wrote...

Itkovian ...of Fener

Shield Anvil of Fener's Reve, thank you.

Or maybe it should be The Redeemer, now?

How I miss the days when the series was obscure enough that no one got it.

Itkovian

Heh, yah sorry but I'm on board with Erikson's work now   He's not the easiest read, however, so some exclusivity will remain yours!  Just got through the new one, "Dust of Dreams." 

[I Valente I]

Your post makes a lot of sense Itkovian, but I'm going to have to agree with Sylvius on this one. Vancian spellcasting is something I sorely miss from the infinity engine games. And while the arguments against it makes too much sense for it to be kept around, in my opinion, it made Baldur's Gate as great as it was.



Imagine, how much easier the game would have been if you always had all your spells at your disposal (or in other words, a sorcerer..one of the most overpowered classes in the game). Part of the strategy of the game was planning ahead, not metagaming, but rationing exactly what spells I needed, and which ones I could do without for this section or that etc. I do concede, that this may be a taste thing, and that most gamers could care less about strategic planning and just want to nuke the next kobold they see to hell. Sadly, these days, vancian spellcasting is done. I wish it were not so, but although the mana/cooldown system is much simpler, easier and boring, it makes too much sense to ignore.



I think modern games will always be at war against our nostalgia. I mean, I loved what Dragon Age has done to the warrior class, and specifically the sword-shield warriors, making them much more fun and interesting. I (grudgingly) accepted that this was an improvement over the beloved DnD system of BG. The same can be said for rogues.



But mages, to me, seem way too "mmo-d" these days. The cooldowns help, but in the end, what Dragon Age turned out to be, what an archetype of mmo combat, in which the game was designed for the the use of a "tank", "dps", "healer", "crowd control" etc. This system is fine for MMO's, where the game is specifically made for the masses, and needs to be understandable and easy so people can work together. But for a tactically based single player game...it's far too simple. The "trinity" system is not the best system for tactical combat but simply the easiest. And for this, I say that Dragon Age has digressed since Baldur's Gate.



What's a bit silly, is that in 7-8 years, Dragon Age is going to be considered the "old school" rpg. I can't imagine what those new rpg's will be like. I hope they don't all go the way of Fable. We're already seeing that PC gaming is dying. RPG development is taking massive strides forward in regards to storytelling and fun; but perhaps it's losing(or has already lost) something special along the way.

[Itkovian]

That's a good point, Valente.



Dragon Age strikes balance wiht the Old School specifically because it still plays more like BG than other recent RPGs, like Fable.



That said, do take heart. Even a Dev posted that the DAO sales proved that there was still a viable market for "Old School" PC RPGs. Dragon Age is doing, and has done, its part in saving this genre.



That said, about "unlimited" BG spells... remember that this involves balancing spells as well. DA fireballs are nowhere near as powerful as AD&D ones precisely for this reason.



Itkovian

[Gill Kaiser]

I suppose having a system like Vancian spellcasting lets the developers make individual spells more powerful, but the whole system's a bit of a crapshoot IMO.

[booke63]

I come from the AD&D line originally and have not played all that many vidoe games. I quite like the go go go of DAO, but I loved BG and have plenty of room in me for vancian spellcasting--mainly due to the D&D nostalgia perhaps. I can go both ways happily. Oddly though I would be fine with DAO on the infinity engine, but I wouldn't want to see BG in the DAO style.



But it has always rankled that as a D&D style mage you would have to stand back and save spells for a potential "big" encounter, and that does limit gameplay for that character class. Or you sleep endlessly....

[Gliese]

I don't think DAO is missing the strategic resource managment part of spells specifically. Rather the problem is that the tactics are so basic, basically nuke him before he nukes you, which is reminiscent of the tactics for a FPS.
What makes BG spellcasting special in my eyes is the depth of spell battles, different layers of protection and so on. This is a much more advanced system that requires more thought, practice and patience. Things that the hardcore gamer have but that perhaps more casual gamers are not interested in.

Modifié par Gliese, 24 mars 2010 - 08:46 .

[Gill Kaiser]

I think you're being a little harsh on the tactics of DA:O, but I agree with you. One thing I missed as a mage was the different spell protections and counters. Being able to out-think an enemy mage rather than simply outgun them was fun.