82 réponses à ce sujet

[Astatine]

As a long time Dungeon Master, I can confidently say that Vancian spellcasting is a ghastly piece of game design. It makes it impossible to know how many spells your players' characters have available (and therefore how powerful the party is) at any one time, unless you've designed your dungeon with fixed rest points. It also means that either:

- You design every dungeon so that the players can discover/divine enough about it in advance to load their spell lists properly, therefore foregoing the possibility of any substantial plot surprise, or

- You design every dungeon so that it doesn't matter which spells the players have loaded, causing wild difficulty spikes depending on whether they accidentally loaded the right ones for the encounters or not, and generally making it almost impossible to challenge the players without repeatedly killing their characters.



My group have been playing with the D&D 3rd edition rules since they were released and we're still quite happy with the system, but our house ruleset is now so extensive that the rules we play differ about as much from 3E as 4E does We switched to using Recharge Magic (an official variant rule published in "Unearthed Arcana"), with a few tweaks, some years ago and haven't looked back.

[Haexpane]

Gliese wrote...

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.

There is no doubt the BG2 system was far more challenging and deeper.  In DAO you can play like a MMO.  Buff up, press X and watch.  One time I forgot to buff and my mages/rogues got wiped out.. i was like, how did they die? Then realized I did not buff because I just came out of vigil and forgot.

Offensive spells are not even needed when you can spam range staff attacks.

You can't do any of that in BG2, well you can and should BUFF but when you buff matters, when you summon matters, when you nuke matters, when you heal matters etc...

[Zenon]

I think the decision of using a Vancian Magic approach is a design decision. Maybe it is fun for some players, because it forces the mage to think in advance by limiting the spell-casting abilities of the mages. It may at the same time be used for game-balance. Hence the mana mages with being able to choose spells on the fly seem overpowered in DA:O. But seeing how quickly my mage, especially when fighting as AW or a SH can run out of mana without potions it is not overpowered. Perhaps the easy and plentiful availability of potions makes it appear so.

In fact, I needed to look up the actual term. My source: (http://tvtropes.org/...in/VancianMagic) Quote:

"Vancian Magic is a specific form of "rule magic" that conforms to these functional rules (along with whatever other metaphysics the writer chooses):

1. Magical effects are packaged into distinct spells; each spell has one fixed purpose. A spell that throws a ball of fire at an enemy just throws balls of fire, and generally cannot be "turned down" to light a cigarette, for instance.

2. Spells represent a kind of "magic-bomb" which must be prepared in advance of actual use, and each prepared spell can be used only once before needing to be prepared again. That's why it is also known as "Fire & Forget magic".

3. Magicians have a finite capacity of prepared spells which is the de facto measure of their skill and/or power as magicians. A wizard using magic for combat is thus something like a living gun: he must be "loaded" with spells beforehand and can run out of magical "ammunition"."

Ok, perhaps the idea, that spells need careful preparation has it's merits. But then the perpetual "memorizing" idea still appears silly to me. I'd consider a limitation and strategic preparation approach in terms of needed components making much more sense than needing to memorize "known" spells over and over again. A mana based system makes also more sense in terms of controlling the spell and the ability to use fire magic to either light a candle or throw a big exploding fireball. Most powerful spells requiring a certain ritual also serves well to "limit" a mage's power.

When it comes to divine "magic" this idea of preparing spells in advance is even more ridiculous to me, since supposedly the divine spells are granted from a deity. So perhaps it would make more sense, if the deity chose the spells in advance rather than the cleric. But if the DM -- representing the deity -- chooses the spells this strategic approach would be down the drain.

To make the long story short: I tried to avoid DnD vancian magic, actually didn't play it at all with very few exceptions before V3 with the sorcerer. I preferred systems like MERP, RoleMaster, The Dark Eye, RuneQuest, and Ars Magica. Concerning the rules and (game)philosophy about magic (or PSI powers) these all were much more logical and mana as limitation was good enough. It also made more sense to boost a spell with more mana, rather than memorizing the same spell in a higher spell slot. So, I rejoiced when the sorcerer was introduced. Although in NWN it hardly makes a difference, because you can rest often and so running out of needed spells was rarely a problem.

My personal opinion is, that the best possible magic system should be something like a joint-venture of RoleMaster and Ars Magica. In fact Dragon Age comes pretty close, even though scaling a spell by voluntarily pumping more mana into it would be my suggestion to the developers for future updates.

The strategic approach is more long term then, since the mage usually can't learn all spells in his/her life. So the mage needs to specialize in a certain field of magic in order to reach the highest powers. But there is also the possibility to become a jack of all trades with hardly any highly powerful spells.

Just my view on this topic in a nutshell. Thanks for reading. Feedback is appreciated.

Modifié par Zenon, 24 mars 2010 - 09:40 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Itkovian wrote...

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.

That's like people trying to win while playing the stock market.  You can't choose exactly the right moment to sell your stocks because you don't know what's going to happen in the future, so all you can do is come out ahead and call that successful.

That you finish the day with spells left over means that you played conservatively.  If you run out of spells before the day is over you played aggressively (these labels are relative to what your GM expected).  Ideally, a Mage will use as few spells as he can in each and every battle.  This is most of what balanced mages in D&D - otherwise they were grossly overpowered compared to other classes, especially at high levels.  But the other classes all had some combat-relevant abilities that were available on demand and in infinite quantities, so they could go hard all the time.  The Mage was a much more thoughtful and reserved class, and I really enjoyed it.

Being able to throw a Fireball at every group of Genlocks in DAO makes the game repetitive.  But if I had to save those Fireballs in case we needed them later, and instead had to use my environment and other abilities more creatively allows for more variety in gameplay.  And variety isn't boring.

Astatine wrote...

- You design every dungeon so that it doesn't matter which spells the players have loaded, causing wild difficulty spikes depending on whether they accidentally loaded the right ones for the encounters or not, and generally making it almost impossible to challenge the players without repeatedly killing their characters.

I see that as a good feature.  Wild difficulty spikes create excitement, and further encourages the party to have some sort of plan in place to run away from an encounter should the need arise.

I would love to see more of that in CRPGs.

[dragon_83]

I've never played a PnP D&D RPG, but I've played every BG, IWD, and NWN. While I enjoyed DAO very much, I still like the old school magic system more. The one thing I don't like in the new system is the MMO-like spell spamming. I know that this is more accessible to the players, and mages can take a more active role in battles this way. Since they can use whatever spells they would like, whenever they want (except the very powerful ones, with long cooldowns).

In D&D games, a mage has to use its powers carefully, that's why I only used them, when their spells made a difference. There were a lot of fights in BG, when I didn't use any magic at all, so I don't use up my spells early. This way, I didn't have to rest constantly. Of course, this also meant that my mage character hasn't been as active as my warriors, and sometimes, there were spells, that I memorized, but I didn't use them at all. But I don't see this as big of a problem. The modern magic system makes the mage battles too action oriented for my taste.

Modifié par dragon_83, 24 mars 2010 - 10:22 .

[Astatine]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Astatine wrote...

- You design every dungeon so that it doesn't matter which spells the players have loaded, causing wild difficulty spikes depending on whether they accidentally loaded the right ones for the encounters or not, and generally making it almost impossible to challenge the players without repeatedly killing their characters.

I see that as a good feature.  Wild difficulty spikes create excitement, and further encourages the party to have some sort of plan in place to run away from an encounter should the need arise.

I would love to see more of that in CRPGs.

YMMV, I guess.  I'm too much of a control freak.  I want the difficulty spike to be on the huge evil god's avatar, and not on the pack of straggler cultists the party run into after the avatar's been slain...

Besides, my pen and paper players get cranky if they *can't* fireball every group -- we play a fairly hack and slash game and they enjoy big flashy magic effects.  And I make up for it by frequently including things like magic resistant monsters that are better beaten down than incinerated, so the non-magic users don't feel overshadowed.

Being able to plan to run away is interesting in a CRPG context since it's not usually "supported" because of aggro mechanics...  The design challenge is that it (and Vancian spellcasting) seems to conflict with quicksaves.  It encourages a playstyle of trying out each successive encounter with intention to reload and change spell lists to fit, which strikes me as immersion breaking, since your characters are spending much of their time not fighting to win (or survive) in any plausible kind of way.

Modifié par Astatine, 24 mars 2010 - 10:36 .

[Gliese]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Being able to throw a Fireball at every group of Genlocks in DAO makes the game repetitive.  But if I had to save those Fireballs in case we needed them later, and instead had to use my environment and other abilities more creatively allows for more variety in gameplay.  And variety isn't boring.

The problem here as I see it is that you have certain spells that are good in almost every situation. Fireball will do it's thing against most stuff, cone of cold will CC anything even enemies immune to cold etc.
You don't need to think all that much about it. Now imagine some creatures moved too fast for a fireball or mages that could reflect your fire back on you or block it.
The magic system could be way more intricate imo than what it currently is.

[SphereofSilence]

Gliese wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Being able to throw a Fireball at every group of Genlocks in DAO makes the game repetitive.  But if I had to save those Fireballs in case we needed them later, and instead had to use my environment and other abilities more creatively allows for more variety in gameplay.  And variety isn't boring.

The problem here as I see it is that you have certain spells that are good in almost every situation. Fireball will do it's thing against most stuff, cone of cold will CC anything even enemies immune to cold etc.
You don't need to think all that much about it. Now imagine some creatures moved too fast for a fireball or mages that could reflect your fire back on you or block it.
The magic system could be way more intricate imo than what it currently is.

I actually agree with Sylvius and you both. 

To me, DA's magic system was partly one of the reasons the game wasn't nearly as fun as the likes of BG and NWN series. The layer of spells usage management found in BG2 for example adds to the game, because now you don't go casting Time Stop at every lowly ghoul you encountered, but had to use new combinations of lowly spells to get the job done. And because there were varying difficulties and quantities of enemies encountered, new combinations/tactics will have to be thought of, which ultimately adds variety. 

Also, there were too many 'I win' spells around in DA. They work well in most situations. And since mana reserve can be supplemented by potions, coupled with relatively low cooldowns, you get easily spammable 'I win' spells. What's worse is that, everyone have easy and quick access early in the game. There was rarely a need to think, you just fire away. DA's combat, for the most part, almost degenerated into a grindfest.  

So I don't necessarily agree with the OP that taking away 'hindering' elements will make a game more fun to play. Different strokes for different folks. I'm all for limits.

[Edelwolf]

DA magic is a bit simple and unbalanced, but I sure prefer this to vancian magic.



BG2 magic wasn't all that really.

All you needed to remember is which spells counter a mage defense (usually breach or true seeing) and a couple of combos (like improved invis + spell immunity divination or timestop + shapechange mindflayer). If you knew the usual tricks everything bacame very simple and a mage would overshadow everyone else.

[Chastain]

I was a late-comer to BG2, and I played D&D years and years before that.



What drove me away from BG was that it became more a strategy game about making save points and resting than anything else. There was so little spontenaity because not having the right spells or doing something slightly wrong the first time you went through a door made you wipe, or reload to do it the "correct" way.



Of course this is a bit of an exaggeration. But having to plot out saves and reloads and resting all the time took me out of the story, and out of the fun.

[Gipp3r]

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. 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

I could not agree with you more, on all points.
Goos writing OP

[Gill Kaiser]

I prefer the spell mechanics in DA, but I certainly agree that spellcasting and mage-to-mage battles could definately use more depth. More spell protections, more varied immunities, etc.

I think this is something Bioware should definately work on for DA2. The more spells the better, and the more the mage has to think about which to deploy, the better.

[JaegerBane]

I've always hated Vancian casting. It just doesn't work in a computer games setting. Hell, I've never touched PnP, but players of PnP I know would argue it doesn't even work in a *PnP* setting all that well.

The whole point behind playing a mage in these kind of RPGs is to be a spellcaster. Too many times where I played Vancian cRPGs like BG and NWN I found myself having to lie down after every battle or fanatically hoarding my spells and ended up using a crossbow. The reason I ended up playing Gishes in the first place was because I got sick of having to decide whether to use a spell *in every single situation*. I don't mind some limits on spellcasters (I personally thought the Fatigue/Sustainable/Activated/Mana system that DAO used was my preference for balancing) but a system that basically forbids spellcasters from casting spells is awful by definition.

Sorcererors were my bread and butter in those games, and I'm glad they were included. I think I would have stopped playing altogether if they weren't.

[empetus]

Its funny, I never heard the term vancian before and I grew up in the early 80's playing D&D in junior high. Anyway, I prefer the Baldurs Gate style in terms of all the variety of spells, it was vast and interesting. The spells in Dragon Age aren't as broad in scope and fun to play with. But I agree that being able to only cast once a day is too limiting in a crpg, so I think they should have longer cool downs on the spells, and the more powerful spells should have increasingly longer cooldowns so they effectively can only be cast once in every battle.. Otherwise like it is now in Dragon Age, you can keep casting the same powerful spell over and over and it gets really boring to win the battles that way.

[El Jueta]

I played a sorcerer on BG2 and NWN *hides*



I liked the Vancian (I believe that's the term) spellcasting, but take the sorcerer for example, it was overpowered because it had a lot of iterations for each spell. That being said, I do not think that the sorcerer was overpowered as much as it was the mage who was underpowered. I think it was a bit limiting in terms of quantity. But then again, my only DnD experience is BG2 and NWN, so I'm no expert on the matter. I must say though, the sorcerers from those games are what compels me to play a 'mage' class on every RPG I played since. So I think yes, I enjoyed the system.

[Damar Stiehl]

"Old School" is not about spellcasting or tactics.

"Old School" is about attention to detail and immersion.Of which Dragon Age has none.

Handwaved passing of time, constant immersion breakers ("EPIC FAIL!"... nice, thank you, I missed WoW), shortcuts in gameplay design, faux "dark fantasy" (more like "diet coke of dark")... Dragon Age will NEVER be "old school". It will be fun for a while and then it will get glossed over and forgotten.

You want old school, go play Drakensang. Now THAT felt like playing a good, solid AD&D (well, Schwartze Auge) module. Sure, the Dark Eye rule system is two steps away from downright asinine, but therein lies part of its beauty. And it doesn't pretend to be anything that it isn't. It's an adventure that goes from point A to point B to point C, with some free roaming around A, B and C locations. None of the "the enemy hordes are knocking at my door, but I strangely have the time to go prancing off across the whole country to retrieve a magic ring over the course of several months, which don't really pass because the time stands still in Ferelden". Bye-bye believability and immersion.

You can make a million expansions and nerf the mages a trillion times, but Dragon Age will never be "old school". Not when it was terminally flawed to begin with.

[Gipp3r]

Damar Stiehl wrote...

"Old School" is about attention to detail and immersion.Of which Dragon Age has none.

I'm sorry, if Dragon Age does anything good it's detention to detail and immersion, accordning to me, Dragon Age is second only to BG2, IMHODragon Age has many classical RPG elements, wraped in a new shiy package.

But, it's a very subjective matter, so opinions on howthe game plays and feels will differ

[Angband21]

I prefer, for difficulty sake, the spellcasting design that was used in ROA. It forced you to conserve your heavy duty spells, and there was a limit number of combat spells. It also had a very little in the "boom all enemies dead" type spells. I find that the "open a door, fire off Blizzard and Tempest, close the door and wait" method of playing a mage to be boring and unbalanced. Right now, I am running a team and only using a few spells, mainly paralyze and other single person debilitating type spells in order to provide a semblance of challenge.

[soteria]

Downtime is only important inasmuch as it punishes you for playing inefficiently. I also think it's relevant only in online games; it's a stupid mechanic for any single-player game. I agree with the below quote:

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.

[Elvhen Veluthil]

I like the Vancian system also, loved my mage in BG. I don't know why, but I like resting too. Especially if the time change. Magic felt superior in BG, more divine and mysterious. The spells where given to you gradually, you explored and your character grew with time. Priest spells felt better, druid spells felt better, the thief class felt better. Maybe the warrior class is better in DA because of the cool animations, but I think here too players gets quickly into a routine, pressing skills in a sequence, waiting cool down, running out of stamina...

[JaegerBane]

Damar Stiehl wrote...

"Old School" is not about spellcasting or tactics.
"Old School" is about attention to detail and immersion.Of which Dragon Age has none.

There is a certain level of subjectivity regarding things like immersion and attention to detail, but to claim DAO has none at all implies you've either got standards so high that it isn't actually possible to produce a cRPG you like, or you're one of these nuts who are still whinging that DAO isn't Baldur's Gate.

In either case, it isn't really conducive to discussion.

[JaegerBane]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I see that as a good feature.  Wild difficulty spikes create excitement, and further encourages the party to have some sort of plan in place to run away from an encounter should the need arise.

I would love to see more of that in CRPGs.

Sylvius, anything that the rest of us find awful is normally something you like.

Leading players down into situations where it is random whether or not they survive irrespective of their skillsets might be something that'll work in pnp... presumably from some egocentric DM trying to prove a point, for instance - but it's the kind of thing that just generates frustration in computer games. 

[Dallo]

Gill Kaiser wrote...

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.

Yep...

[Damar Stiehl]

JaegerBane wrote...

There is a certain level of subjectivity regarding things like immersion and attention to detail, but to claim DAO has none at all implies you've either got standards so high that it isn't actually possible to produce a cRPG you like, or you're one of these nuts who are still whinging that DAO isn't Baldur's Gate.

In either case, it isn't really conducive to discussion.

Do me a favor and don't backseat moderate. OK lill buddy?

The thread title is "DA vs. Old School". To say that "old school" is defined merely by a clumsy and unwieldy magic system (Vandian spellcasting) which made playing casters in tabletop a boring chore is an incredibly narrow view. There are already "Old School" cRPGs that outclass DA in every department except for graphics, and they make DA look like Diablo with a facelift. So no, my standards are NOT unattainable.

Now kindly sit down and shut up until you can come up with something more intelligent to say.