Dragon Age - Preview @ Eurogamer

Originally Posted by woges
Well, nobody is showing off much of their mechanics early on, not even Blizzard with a game like Diablo 3 so I'm guessing this is an advertising tactic.

Huh? Did you not see the 20min gameplay vid for D3? That showed off plenty of mechanics. Way more than they've shown for Dragon Age so far.

They showed a few skills in motion but no skill trees, stats, or leveling. What they showed I see as game-play.

To me, Bioware has been doing a great job in showing us (and yes, marketing to us) a game that harkens back to the days of Baldur's Gate. The devs. have said on numerous occasion as have the good doctors (Ray & Greg) that you can control all your characters, even in combat.

When we look at how combat is meant to be done in BG1+BG2 it is meant to be done by hitting the pause button, telling your charachers including your own, the pc, what to do - then you release the pause button and the action flows. Not in realtime, since every one is still on their individual rounds (that's last for 6 seconds in BG1+BG2 while a turn last for 60 seconds) that is based in the D&D ruleset.

To me, this action bar?, just shows me that the game will play similar to BG1+BG2 in combat. You pause the game, you can order your team mates what to do, then unpause, then they do it. In realtime (almost).

Have any of you though that (maybe) the 'offering up their own actions bars" could actually mean that NPCs, and you, have action points??

I do hope this does not mean that when we're not in combat we can't control our characters? It sounds like this since the controls (for the player's characters) are using the WSAD system. From the demo, I got the distinct impression that you could click on the ground and the party would play 'follow the leader'.

Bu maybe I got some messages crossed??

Originally Posted by woges
What they showed I see as game-play.

Oh. I thought that was what we were talking about: player interaction with the environment, tactics, monster AI, skill usage, etc. Even then, they did show some of what I think you mean by "mechanics" with the skill and item descriptions (granted, you have to freeze frame the video, but as you'd expect, folks have already posted full dissections of the info complete with screen shots) as well as the inventory screen.

I generally think of the underlining rules as the mechanics and using them the game play. So they are intrinsically linked, blurred even at times. We can take a fairly good guess at what a Diablo game and a party based game will generally play like. From what the producer said at E3 DA will have 1v1 battles and your party v many battles. How much of each? Who knows.

You can control all your characters in combat, just like in BG games. This time the combat is actual realtime, not turnbased simulated as realtime. The WASD moving is for exploration, but I guess you could use it in combat, if you wanted to for some reason. Also you can play pretty much the whole game from the bird's eye view if you don't want zoom close and move with the WASD.

Originally Posted by woges
Bioware have never even done what people call a turn-based game, they arrived with real-time with pause so I don't see how you can even expect one from them.

Baldurs gate was spiritual successor to turn based AD&D series that started with gold box and continued with dark sun. I guess one could complain like fallout fans are complaining that fallout3 is not turn based. But personally I never expected AD&D successor to be turn based (back then atleast) and I was okay with paused realtime.

Originally Posted by woges
Bioware have never even done what people call a turn-based game, they arrived with real-time with pause so I don't see how you can even expect one from them.

Well baldurs gate was round-based, just like the AD&D game it was trying to present. No point adding turn-based to a game that didn't need it either tactically or authentically.

From what I remember F1&2 were similarly round-based, but without BGs option to run the rounds together.

Originally Posted by kalniel
Well baldurs gate was round-based, just like the AD&D game it was trying to present. No point adding turn-based to a game that didn't need it either tactically or authentically.

From what I remember F1&2 were similarly round-based, but without BGs option to run the rounds together.

Couldn't really disagree more. These really aren't the same, as you essentially imply.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Couldn't really disagree more. These really aren't the same, as you essentially imply.

I agree with kalniel, and I also think they are very similar. Fallout and Baldur's Gate combat mechanics I mean. The difference is that while both are round/turn driven (action points in Fallout and rounds in BG), they're simultaneous turns that run continuously in BG(with the possibility of pausing) , and chess-like turn based in Fallout. But if you were to make them simultaneous in Fallout, and not pause after every player takes his turn, they would be pretty much the same.

No.

In a "true" turn-based system -- say ToEE, for example -- the combat queue is critical. If my puny mage is caught standing beside the giant ogre - and the queue is rogue -> ogre -> mage, then the rogue better do something creative because the ogre is going to smash my mage before he does anything at all. This creates tension, atmosphere and tactics that are different to running everyone on simultaneous, individual initiative rounds.

In BG, I'm simply going to move my mage away while getting everyone else to target the ogre…completely different scenario, I'm sorry.

It might only be a minor change in mechanics on paper but the effect is quite different. Now, that isn't to saw RT doesn't have its own appeal.

May I hazard a guess you aren't a real fan of sequential TB systems?

Originally Posted by Dhruin
May I hazard a guess you aren't a real fan of sequential TB systems?

It's not that I don't like sequential turn-based(I like how it is handled in Fallout), but I the way BG/IWD did it. Turn based combat like in ToEE tends to take a very long time. And I don't like spending a lot of time in one giant battle, and then lose right at the end. It's very discouraging.

That's fine, but I'd suggest that's why it's easy to dismiss RTwP and TB as practically the same. For those of us who really love sequential TB systems, there is quite a difference.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
No.

In a "true" turn-based system -- say ToEE, for example -- the combat queue is critical. If my puny mage is caught standing beside the giant ogre - and the queue is rogue -> ogre -> mage, then the rogue better do something creative because the ogre is going to smash my mage before he does anything at all. This creates tension, atmosphere and tactics that are different to running everyone on simultaneous, individual initiative rounds.

I don't quite get what you're saying. It's the same thing in a round based system like D&D - if the ogre acts faster than the mage (speed factor in BG I think) then the mage is dead, you need your rogue to do something creative if acting before the ogre.

In BG, I'm simply going to move my mage away while getting everyone else to target the ogre…completely different scenario, I'm sorry.

I think that's purely a rule base distinction then - if the turn based system let everyone take turns to move then act then the same thing would happen here. Conversely if you made baldur's game with the 3rd edition rules initiative would take care of this, but no-one has. IWD2 copped out.

May I hazard a guess you aren't a real fan of sequential TB systems?

If you're including me in that, then I don't mind at all - I'm enjoying Space Rangers 2 at the moment. It depends on the game - if they made a tactical D&D 3rd ed game then it'd be cool to have turn-based, something like D&D Tactics I guess. But equally if I want a game that allows me to immerse myself in the game world then running the rounds together, or even bigger changes, are fine with me. To me it's the difference between playing a game on the computer (eg, playing Dungeons and Dragons) and having an experience on the computer - there's no objective view that one is better than the other, but it's nice to have the choice of both.

In a game like Dragon Age where they are designing the whole ruleset to be exclusively experienced on a computer then I'm glad it's not round based at all. There is no Dragon Age tabletop game which I'm trying to emulate.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
and the queue is rogue -> ogre -> mage

I just had the spontaneous thought that even the order might develop a different kind of tactics and tension :

Your example from above is just one example of an "execution order" (double sense in here, too).

But just imagine an order of hero1 -> enemy1 -> hero2 -> enemy2 etc. . This would force the player to develop just another kind of tactics …

Ideal would be a game which is so "open" that one could change the execution order in the options menu … Not during a fight, of course.

Originally Posted by kalniel
if they made a tactical D&D 3rd ed game then it'd be cool to have turn-based, something like D&D Tactics I guess.

Doesn't that describe ToEE?

Originally Posted by kalniel
If you're including me in that, then I don't mind at all - I'm enjoying Space Rangers 2 at the moment. It depends on the game - if they made a tactical D&D 3rd ed game then it'd be cool to have turn-based, something like D&D Tactics I guess. But equally if I want a game that allows me to immerse myself in the game world then running the rounds together, or even bigger changes, are fine with me. To me it's the difference between playing a game on the computer (eg, playing Dungeons and Dragons) and having an experience on the computer - there's no objective view that one is better than the other, but it's nice to have the choice of both.

In a game like Dragon Age where they are designing the whole ruleset to be exclusively experienced on a computer then I'm glad it's not round based at all. There is no Dragon Age tabletop game which I'm trying to emulate.

Why would it be cool to have a tactical D&D 3rd ed game if there is "no point adding turn-based to a game that didn't need it either tactically or authentically", compared to BioWare's RTwP system?

Can't comment on the DA system, because I know nothing about it.

Originally Posted by chamr
Doesn't that describe ToEE?

I had the impression ToEE was still trying to be a computer game, rather than an emulation of the D&D tabletop game.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Why would it be cool to have a tactical D&D 3rd ed game if there is "no point adding turn-based to a game that didn't need it either tactically or authentically", compared to BioWare's RTwP system?

I thought I explained - Baldurs gate is a computer game using the AD&D rules and fully round-based system, but it's not trying to emulate the table top experience in the way that something like D&D Insider is now for.

It's not real time with pause because the entire mechanics are still based around a round and what you can do within that. Even NWN 1& 2 still have an internal (though asynchronous, unlike BG) round mechanic which you have to use custom heartbeats to get around. RTwP would be something like Dungeon Siege.

I'll just post this thread

http://dragonage.bioware.com/forums/…2635&forum=135

where Georg Zoeller, senior technical designer at Bioware, states that Bioware made the ruleset for DA from scratch; reason being they wanted to have absolute control over the creative proces. The ruleset for DA was made with the computer in mind. There's no D&D ruleset being used, but

Georg Zoeller wrote:

Characters in Dragon Age act on their own time, meaning there is no concept like a combat round.

This could mean that each character will have their own initiative, maybe based on their agility? and their speed?

Then the thread sort of made it it techie-land, but as it was 1:30 AM over here in Europe…I went to instead…

Originally Posted by kalniel
It's not real time with pause because the entire mechanics are still based around a round and what you can do within that.

Okay, then it's round-based with pause.

So what ?