DA2 Da2 and rpg's in general

sakichop said:

I guess I just kept waiting for the ai to force me to change my tactics. I guess I could have went without a tank, or tried to solo, or only use thieves, but why leave companions behind that I enjoy or try to find ways to gimp my party so I have to use tactics. The use of tactics should be required by simply playing the game the way it was made.

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It seems you used the same tactic from begin to end, this let a long time to stop orientate a companion as a tank. And well you stick with first 3 characters you met? You met quite more than just 3 characters and being attached only to the first 3 is a bit special.

If really your tank was able to sustain all fights it's because you optimized it as a tank quite a lot during all the game. I mean you had many chances to change if it was that boring. Also I don't think it's been that simple in all fights, too many but not all.

Ha well, ok I do agree there was big holes, some other with rogues, some with mages, and so on, I even remember a player claiming he beat the whole game at Nightmare difficulty with a mage alone and totally nude. Well for any party RPG there's at least one guy doing that, and explaining you party is crap... so.

But with some curiosity DAO1 fights was quite interesting and I see no classical modern RPG not even close and since a long time.

DeepO said:

Insanely? PC Gamer´s the only one above 90% so far.
And ratings were irrelevant to my point anyway, the content connotations were.

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So who was below 90??

Dasale said:

It seems you used the same tactic from begin to end, this let a long time to stop orientate a companion as a tank. And well you stick with first 3 characters you met? You met quite more than just 3 characters and being attached only to the first 3 is a bit special.

If really your tank was able to sustain all fights it's because you optimized it as a tank quite a lot during all the game. I mean you had many chances to change if it was that boring. Also I don't think it's been that simple in all fights, too many but not all.

Ha well, ok I do agree there was big holes, some other with rogues, some with mages, and so on, I even remember a player claiming he beat the whole game at Nightmare difficulty with a mage alone and totally nude. Well for any party RPG there's at least one guy doing that, and explaining you party is crap… so.

But with some curiosity DAO1 fights was quite interesting and I see no classical modern RPG not even close and since a long time.

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Well actually I loved shale so she was a main stay. I was a thief so really no use for leliana or zevran. perfered morrigan over wynne. didn't like sten. dog was ok but boring. alistar just seemed like he should be with me as a fellow gray warden and such an important part to many plot points. After what loghain did to us at ostegar the only option for him was death. I picked my companions by roleplaying not by thinking what would be the best party so i would need to use tactics. I had personal reasons for each companion I decided to bring with me.

Also I didn't just go through the game with the same people. I had wynne with me in the mage tower, oghren in the deep roads, dog in the begining, I don't have to tell you where I took zevran and leliana. I brought everyone along long enough to do their personal quests.

My point is no matter who I brought my tactics never needed to change. if I didn't bring a fighter my thief would be the tank by default because he would draw the most threat.

Me (thief),shale, alistar and morrigan- shale and alistar tank, i backstab throw potions ect. and morrigan heals and supports.

me, zevran, leliana and morrigan (or wynne if you wish). Zevran and i tank, leliana shoots arrows, morrigan heals and supports.

It's not like there were 15 different classes each with unique strength and weaknesses. you have:

thief-melee or ranged
fighter-melee
mage ranged

I think you misunderstand I didn't find dao boring I played it 3 times and spent over 300 hours in it, but I just didn't find it to be a very tactical or hard game at all and i'm not willing to comprimise the way I roleplay the game so I can find a few situations were I may need to use some tactics.

rune_74 said:

So who was below 90??

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From what I know of, Swedish PC Gamer - 85, PC Games - 88 and Gamestar - 87 (both German).
High, but not insanely, especially given current scales for AAA titles.
And yeah, all European .
For what it´s worth, DA:O received 95, 92, 91 from these three.

Note that personally I don´t give a rat´s ass about ratings, though I suspect for some people there may be quite significant psychological difference between 90-100 and 80-89 scores.

I don't care about ratings either, I was simply talking about the game's sales potential. High reviews mean high sales, sadly.

sakichop said:

Well actually I loved shale so she was a main stay.

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Yes it's an interesting one, but I felt it the stronger for fights. It didn't help if you found the game too easy. But well if everything is less important than what you name roleplaying, what to say?

sakichop said:

It's not like there were 15 different classes each with unique strength and weaknesses. you have:

thief-melee or ranged
fighter-melee
mage ranged

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• That is very very short. Fighter melee has at least:
  • 2H
  • S+S
  • But specialization could change significantly a class for the fights tactics. Reaver and Berkerker are quite significant for example.
• For mage there's so many spells that store that under one class is very very short.
• Mage had also the very special Arcane Warrior or Shape Shifter.
• And more.

sakichop said:

I think you misunderstand I didn't find dao boring I played it 3 times and spent over 300 hours in it, but I just didn't find it to be a very tactical or hard game at all and i'm not willing to comprimise the way I roleplay the game so I can find a few situations were I may need to use some tactics.

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For the difficulty I agree, once you master the fights. For Awakening this isn't as right I think.

Even with the setup you described I am a bit surprised it constantly ends in just managing a tank. But it's pointless to go further, ok it's how you played it, and big holes like that, as there was in DAO fights, always end for many players in issues like you described. In my opinion it's lack of curiosity but that's just my opinion.

From start I gave up using a tank and it helped have team tactics possibly more diversified. I also changed a lot my team during the 2.5 plays (and about 400 hours including Awakening and some DLC).

So not tactical for you, there are dedicated JRPG but appart that I wonder what RPG you find more tactical? And please not KBtL it's something else. Apart possibly Drakensang I don't see any, and for me if Drakensang has quite good features for fights and less holes overall I found it has less tactical depth or possibilities than in DAO.

I haven't even bothered following all this hoopla revolving around DA2. Bioware games have gotten to the point that you're just replaying the same game over and over again. I played through DA1 once and once only; trying to do so a second time bored the heck out of me.

Are there any publishers out there that support developers of games that don't cost 50 million dollars? For example, publishers that would support Obsidian if hey decided they wanted to spend a couple million on a 2D isometric game?

Drithius said:

I haven't even bothered following all this hoopla revolving around DA2. Bioware games have gotten to the point that you're just replaying the same game over and over again. I played through DA1 once and once only; trying to do so a second time bored the heck out of me.

Are there any publishers out there that support developers of games that don't cost 50 million dollars? For example, publishers that would support Obsidian if hey decided they wanted to spend a couple million on a 2D isometric game?

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Just so you know obsidion did decide to do KOTOR 2 and NWN 2...which were bioware games. Obsidion and Bioware have a very good relationship in fact.

I was a DA2 hater…till I played the demo today. I was surprised that the changed graphic look worked as well as it did. The stills they had shone us last year looked like crap…but in motion, it really comes alive quite well.

Yes the game mechanics are different. The game fights do move quite a bit faster…I played a Warrior but was still pausing quite a bit and moving various toons here and there and assigning actions and such.

I do hope they either allow or it's modded in, the ability to scroll out higher for the strategy view.

I was the exact same as the poster who said "why mess with it if it's not broken?"

I guess they have stats /metrics collected based on player info that is sent back that showed that a lot of people who bought the game didn't finish or actually quit quite early on like in Act 1. And based on what a lot of posters were saying on the forums, they felt the fighting and general actions/animation was clunky and not as responsive as they wanted.

So by changing the graphics and tightening up the controls they were able to speed it up.

What has helped me is not thinking of it as a "sequel" but rather just another game set in the DA world. A whole new take on it. And that seems to be working. I'm actually excited to play the full game now.

And that's a nice surprise

Pre-Ordered at Gamestop.

dasale.. We will have to agree to disagree I guess. You feel dao had great tactics. I feel it was tactics lite. you say I should nerf my party by picking weaker characters. I think it's the games responsibility to balance for any party I choose. The fact that we debate it and have plenty of people that agree with us on both sides tells me they could've done much better.

As far as better party based tactics. I haven't played rivers of time yet , but other then that I'd say there aren't any and thats the problem. That's why I wrote this thread in the first place. It's 2011 and the tactic of the party based rpg are as stagnent and unchanged as ever. Now with the move to mainstream the genre I only see it getting worse.

As I said in my first post when i play fear or fear 2 the ai is so much better. when I throw a grenade enemy's will scatter and warn thier friends. When I throw an acid flask in dao enemy's will just stand there. When I shoot at guy in fear 1 or 2 they will take cover behind objects, jump through windows and turn tables over to get out of the way. In dao if I shoot a guy he will either blindly charge or stand there and shoot back till he's dead. In farcry 2 I can set fields on fire to kill and move enemy's to where i want them. In dark mesiah of m&m I can kick enemies of cliffs, kick them into spikes, push them into fire catching them on fire, throw oil at them to set them on fire. knock stuff above them on to them to kill them. Dao has none of that.

So while other genre's push the envelope and innovate party based rpg's stick to the status quo and then take a step back by mainstreaming it. I think even mainstream or causal gamers would like any of the things I listed above. I enjoy playing the other genre's but party based games are my first love. It would be nice to see aaa devs bring some innovation to the genre instead of mainstream the genre.

sakichop said:

dasale.. We will have to agree to disagree I guess. You feel dao had great tactics. I feel it was tactics lite. you say I should nerf my party by picking weaker characters. I think it's the games responsibility to balance for any party I choose. The fact that we debate it and have plenty of people that agree with us on both sides tells me they could've done much better.

As far as better party based tactics. I haven't played rivers of time yet , but other then that I'd say there aren't any and thats the problem. That's why I wrote this thread in the first place. It's 2011 and the tactic of the party based rpg are as stagnent and unchanged as ever. Now with the move to mainstream the genre I only see it getting worse.

As I said in my first post when i play fear or fear 2 the ai is so much better. when I throw a grenade enemy's will scatter and warn thier friends. When I throw an acid flask in dao enemy's will just stand there. When I shoot at guy in fear 1 or 2 they will take cover behind objects, jump through windows and turn tables over to get out of the way. In dao if I shoot a guy he will either blindly charge or stand there and shoot back till he's dead. In farcry 2 I can set fields on fire to kill and move enemy's to where i want them. In dark mesiah of m&m I can kick enemies of cliffs, kick them into spikes, push them into fire catching them on fire, throw oil at them to set them on fire. knock stuff above them on to them to kill them. Dao has none of that.

So while other genre's push the envelope and innovate party based rpg's stick to the status quo and then take a step back by mainstreaming it. I think even mainstream or causal gamers would like any of the things I listed above. I enjoy playing the other genre's but party based games are my first love. It would be nice to see aaa devs bring some innovation to the genre instead of mainstream the genre.

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To be fair, no rpg has all of that. However, rpg's don't really compare well to first person shooters. In a perfect world the game would not have to be released until it was "done". This would give devs the thousands of hours it would take to male a game with quests and all the jazz of an rpg as well as have a great AI that allows us to do what we want. I could not even imagine how hard it would be to code a enemy ai to react well to everything you can do in an rpg. The variables are basically endless.

sakichop said:

dasale.. We will have to agree to disagree I guess. You feel dao had great tactics. I feel it was tactics lite. you say I should nerf my party by picking weaker characters. I think it's the games responsibility to balance for any party I choose. The fact that we debate it and have plenty of people that agree with us on both sides tells me they could've done much better.

As far as better party based tactics. I haven't played rivers of time yet , but other then that I'd say there aren't any and thats the problem. That's why I wrote this thread in the first place. It's 2011 and the tactic of the party based rpg are as stagnent and unchanged as ever. Now with the move to mainstream the genre I only see it getting worse.

As I said in my first post when i play fear or fear 2 the ai is so much better. when I throw a grenade enemy's will scatter and warn thier friends. When I throw an acid flask in dao enemy's will just stand there. When I shoot at guy in fear 1 or 2 they will take cover behind objects, jump through windows and turn tables over to get out of the way. In dao if I shoot a guy he will either blindly charge or stand there and shoot back till he's dead. In farcry 2 I can set fields on fire to kill and move enemy's to where i want them. In dark mesiah of m&m I can kick enemies of cliffs, kick them into spikes, push them into fire catching them on fire, throw oil at them to set them on fire. knock stuff above them on to them to kill them. Dao has none of that.

So while other genre's push the envelope and innovate party based rpg's stick to the status quo and then take a step back by mainstreaming it. I think even mainstream or causal gamers would like any of the things I listed above. I enjoy playing the other genre's but party based games are my first love. It would be nice to see aaa devs bring some innovation to the genre instead of mainstream the genre.

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To be fair Biowares RPG's and most RPG's are designed to exhaust your party in a single group fight if they ran and told others it would be too difficult. The tactics got bsurd as you reach higher levels as there were so many different combinations of tactics you can use. Dark Messiah is awesome but hard to compare with party based RPGs. What difficulty did you play DAO at?

rune_74 said:

Just so you know obsidion did decide to do KOTOR 2 and NWN 2…which were bioware games. Obsidion and Bioware have a very good relationship in fact.

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I'm quite aware of that; don't really see the relevance to my comment. And it's Obsidian, like the rock.

Damian Mahadevan said:

To be fair Biowares RPG's and most RPG's are designed to exhaust your party in a single group fight if they ran and told others it would be too difficult. The tactics got bsurd as you reach higher levels as there were so many different combinations of tactics you can use. Dark Messiah is awesome but hard to compare with party based RPGs. What difficulty did you play DAO at?

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To be fair, in a lot of FPS in max difficulty, if you don't disable the runner before he got to other groups, you have either to 1) play flawlessly for a few seconds (minutes ?) 2) run away 3) die and reload.

Granted, in a FPS, it take one head shot to stop the guy calling the others, where as in a lot of RPG's, you have to hit a few times to put anyone down. So what ? It would just take a few adjustment into the gameplay (and who wouldn't love the ability to shoot an arrow through someone's knee, to stop him from running ?) and make a game where the player could actually, you know, loose if he didn't play smart. But it absolutely doesn't mean it would be impossible to do it.

It would, however, probably make the game mechanics more complex, and the game would, if you don't play cleverly, be hard. I can hear from there players and reviewers raging because the combat isn't intuitive, and "I can't do what I want", "I have to use the pause to give orders, it breaks my immersion" ...

Jogurt said:

To be fair, in a lot of FPS in max difficulty, if you don't disable the runner before he got to other groups, you have either to 1) play flawlessly for a few seconds (minutes ?) 2) run away 3) die and reload.

Granted, in a FPS, it take one head shot to stop the guy calling the others, where as in a lot of RPG's, you have to hit a few times to put anyone down. So what ? It would just take a few adjustment into the gameplay (and who wouldn't love the ability to shoot an arrow through someone's knee, to stop him from running ?) and make a game where the player could actually, you know, loose if he didn't play smart. But it absolutely doesn't mean it would be impossible to do it.

It would, however, probably make the game mechanics more complex, and the game would, if you don't play cleverly, be hard. I can hear from there players and reviewers raging because the combat isn't intuitive, and "I can't do what I want", "I have to use the pause to give orders, it breaks my immersion" …

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You also have to consider that pinning shot and the like are specific to classes of the game so what happens if your party doesnt have one of those skills?

Damian Mahadevan said:

You also have to consider that pinning shot and the like are specific to classes of the game so what happens if your party doesnt have one of those skills?

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Well, you simply do it another way (set traps on his most likely escape way, send a thief hiding in shadow, or under the effect of an invisibility potion, to backstab him, dispatch the other group he was going to warn, use a spell to put him to sleep, charm him, stone him, set him on fire so he takes damage while he runs and die before getting to his goal,), or you die, reload and try but this time with someone who got the correct skill set. Or reload and avoid that area. But remember, I'm speaking of a theoretical game that would actually use a decent ennemy AI and give you the mean to deal with it.

In every good cRPG I've played, I often met ennemies that I wasn't supposed to deal with yet because I didn't have the stat and the good gear (I'm thinking, for example, of the Dragons in Baldur's 2), but, I guess as pretty much every other player out there, I gave it a go. And got trashed. And tried with different party members, skills, spell … the first time you kick his shiny scally ass, even if you are down to your last hitpoint with your last character, you feel like you're the goddam Napoleon of cRPGs.

I'm followimng this discussion, but I'm not decided whether I'Ll drop in or not - but so far I won't.

My reason is simple : I'm far too far away from the "main stream" - even here, because I *want* more of what I call "social role-playing" in RPGs.
And I realize that I'm in the minority with that, even here.
I just guess that "socil role-playing" doesn't sell or what ... ?

I once read about someone actually doing rules for pen & paper social role-playing as complex as combut-related role-playing rules currently are. Unfortunately I've forgot who or whre this was ...

But the lesson from this I learned is this : It seems actually to be possible to do "social role playing" in a very complex way - it's just so that no-one has focused on it. The focus lies rather on combat. No-one would disagree if I'd call IWD an role-playing game - but in fact it is so much focused on combat role playing, that it totally lacks in other areas - the by me preferred "social interaction", for example.

And this is something like a "red line" that connects the majority of all other role-playing games. Jade Empire had (as far as I played it) surprisingly lot of dialogs, but no skills at all to pursue the social interaction. Everything was more or less focused on ... other parts. PS:T has extensive dialogs, is one of the best RPGs in that field - but since it is based on (A)D&D, it still has no other social skills other than Charisma. At least I don't remember any. Wisdom is one of the only ways to get social interaction going on - much like in Arcanum.

The thing that bothers me - and again ! : please keep in mind that I'm the alien here, most likely demanding thangs that no-one else wants - is that the most spread and well-known role-playing systems I see in C-RPGS have no dedicated skills for social interaction at all. They might have vrious combat-related skills, but almost none regarding social interaction.

Or maybe I'm biased. Full of prejudices regarding some RPGs. This is another possible explanation.

I'm not going to pretend that I know how hard it would be to impliment the ai I was talking about above because I don't. I would guess that coding for a party based rpg would be more difficult than for a fps. When I look at the changes from the orginal doom's ai to fear 2 it's night and day though. When I look at the changes from baulder's gate to dao it's pretty nill.

One might even say bauldur's gate 1 & 2 had better ai just based on the sheer number of monsters that required different tactics. In dao I used swords the entire game I didn't need blunt weapons to hurt certain monsters as I did in bg. also In bg sometimes you needed magical weapons just to hurt the enemy (my weapon has no effect). In dao it didn't seem to matter what weapon I used I know that they have armour penetration but I never noticed it make any difference. Anyone play toee, equiping your party with long reach melee weapons made a huge difference in combat.

I didn't run any numbers but I would guess that humans,darkspawn and undead made up at least 80% of the monsters in dao and they all fought the same even though you would expect humans to be smarter than the other 2.You never had to approach them any differently. Trust me I tried many different methods to fight and used all the different talents.

Maybe I shouldn't say dao had very lite tactics, maybe I should say they just didn't matter.Sure when you got to higher levels you had a ton of different talents to use and I used them they were fun to watch. At the end of the day though I didn't need to use them which to me just makes them extra fluff.

Alrik, well there's the Fallout franchise and [speech] checks - is that an example of what you're referring to?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

PS:T has extensive dialogs, is one of the best RPGs in that field - but since it is based on (A)D&D, it still has no other social skills other than Charisma. At least I don't remember any.

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PS:T uses intelligence, wisdom and charisma quite extensively in dialogues, I think intelligence the most. You get some dexterity and strength checks as well.

From more recent examples, there´s quite a lot of use for social skills (bluff, diplomacy, appraise) in Mask of the Betrayer, especially if you play some of the diplomatic classes, like bard. Some other skills are used as well (taunt, lore).

Fallout: New Vegas makes good use of skill checks in conversations as well, be it social ones (speech, barter) or other ones (medicine, science and some others).

And, as you know, Drakensang´s system contains a lot of social talents, they´re just unfortunately not used extensively enough in the first game. The River of Time is a lot better in this regard, though there are still some glaring holes (like use for etiquette, for example).

Dragon Age had coercion and few times some other skills were used in dialogues (like survival), which I really welcomed and hoped it´ll be expanded upon in DA2, but unfortunately the opposite happened.