Dragon Age Cooldown Versus Vancian

[Infinitron]

>_> VoD at it again.

VoT?

Wait a minute, it wasn't him.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

>_> VoD at it again.

Wait a minute, it wasn't him.

Eh, this still fits.

 

[JarlFrank]

Sup guise

 

[WhiteGuts]

I think it's very okay to hate Infinitron.

 

[AMG]

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned, but cooldowns instead of cast times also imply nerfing powerful and cool abilities, because they frontload the effect and postpone delay rather than the other way around. An instakill spell, for example, can be perfectly viable and balanced with cast time, but with cooldown it becomes a gamebreaker, because it simply kills the target without giving it any opportunity to avoid it.

You can have both cooldowns and cast times. They have nothing to do with each other. Cooldowns are a substitute of a resource system (or a supplement) as in you cast this spell now and can't use it for x seconds from that point so you better use it wisely. Similarly to how you spend mana or casts or whatever.
Cast times are like an additional drawback for ability so that it can be interrupted or is difficult to aim or whatever.

Also why does the title imply that hating jews is contradictory with supporting homosexuals?

 

[Shadowfang]

On Underrail your psi abilities not only use up psy points they also have a cooldown.
You still have to manage a resource and you are unable to spam skills.
You can restore psi points with psi boosters but this action also has a cooldown (of 6 turns).
In the case of underrail, cooldowns play a beneficial role, although its a very different animal since its turn-based.

Now, having both cooldowns and real time combat sounds like the worst of two worlds.

 

[DraQ]

You can have both cooldowns and cast times.

You know a discussion has gone full

when you can reply just by quoting your own posts:

And all of these is possible to have together with a cooldown, too.

It's also possible to have a fine meal together with a shit sandwich - but would you want that?

Cooldowns are a substitute of a resource system

Good wording.
And I'd rather have the actual thing here.

Also why does the title imply that hating jews is contradictory with supporting homosexuals?

Codex is being post-, recursively- or possibly meta-ironic (I don't know which, but it's got to be one of those).
Nothing new under the Sun.

 

[Average Manatee]

I agree with what DraQ says and I'm glad he said it, but let me step in and say that Guild Wars 1 had one of the best combat systems of all time. Of all time.

Also Jews and Homos are alright if they aren't fags. All three are independent.

 

[Lilura]

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned, but cooldowns instead of cast times also imply nerfing powerful and cool abilities, because they frontload the effect and postpone delay rather than the other way around. An instakill spell, for example, can be perfectly viable and balanced with cast time, but with cooldown it becomes a gamebreaker, because it simply kills the target without giving it any opportunity to avoid it.

Cooldowns don't preclude cast times in Origins, the top-tier AoEs have cast times (called activation times, same thing) more or less equivalent to their IE counterparts, which are far more deadly.

And "thanks" for the links, but I already know the pros and cons of cooldowns. My arguments in this topic only pertain to the implementation of them in Origins, which would have been clear to you with reading comprehension.

 

[DraQ]

I already know the pros

Share some.

 

[Lilura]

Sorry, I'm not given to repeating myself. Read the topic.

 

[JarlFrank]

They work reasonably well in Divinity: OS *shrug*

 

[Volourn]

'Reasonably well'. WTF is that supposed to mean?

 

[Daemongar]

Sorry, I'm not given to repeating myself. Read the topic.

And you claim to be a woman...

 

[Norfleet]

Cooldowns have always been a stupid mechanic substituting for any kind of intelligent gameplay. Consider a typical attack of the Good Old Days:
Step 1: Charge your Lazor. While this step was being performed, power used to charge your lazor was not available for use with anything else. This step could be shortened by using more power, lengthened by using less power, or simply flat out skipped, perhaps unwisely...
Step 2: Firing Your Lazor. At this point, you got to fire your awesome lazor. Or, maybe not so awesome lazor, if you cut the first step a bit short. But you COULD.
Step 3: The cooling down of your lazor. Like the previous steps, this step could be shortened by flushing a supply of lazor coolant through it, or simply ignored, which would cause your lazor to overheat and eventually melt down, resulting in you no longer having a lazor. It could be done concurrently with step 1.

These things provided a sense of CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCES, a concept that Codexia holds dear: Do I overcharge my lazor at the expense of other things, like defenses? Do I allow the lazor to reach full charge before I fire it, or do I take the shot NOW? Do I allow the lazor to cool properly while I recharge it for the next attack? Do I charge my lazor at a rate which matches its cooling rate, thus allowing sustainable continuous firing, or do I fire faster, eventually causing the lazor to melt down, in hopes of killing my enemy before this happens? All these were choices, and they had often rather permanent consequences, if you got yourself killed as a result of some poor decision-making.

With the typical "cooldown" system, all these decisions are removed from me: I can no longer choose how much effort I wish to devote to charging mah lazor, firin' mah lazor, and not swallowing mah lazor. I am simply allowed to fire the lazor every N seconds, with absolutely nothing I can do to change this, nor any cost I have to pay for doing it. Is this manner of pop-a-molism really in line with Codexian values?

 

[Applypoison]

Both cooldowns and resource costs can be implemented together fairly well, not sure where the "black or white" arguments are coming from. (it wasn't done particularly well in DA:O, it was done a little better in its less-than-stellar sequel). Having to consider multiple, meaningful consequences before slinging a spell/skill is a good thing, provided encounter design makes a bit of room for player creativity (example of outstanding encounter design: Knights of the Chalice, although DA:O had speckles of quality here and there).

The thing with tuning & balancing all this geeky (and crucial) stuff is that it usually has to be done on a dev's own time, since many producers don't see the interest on spending additional development resources on something that has finished production. It takes a programmer, lead dev & QA staff (in some cases, multiples of each) who are actually passionate about games, not just "doing a job".

To have both in a game is ambitious, the only games who have pulled this off well (on top of having decent encounter, skill & item design) IIRC are jRPGs. PoE will come pretty close by virtue of having a dual-layer resource system, which is all the more reason to look forward to it.

 

[Mangoose]

My arguments in this topic only pertain to the implementation of them in Origins, which would have been clear to you with reading comprehension.

Which was off topic until a mod separated this from another thread.

 

[Spectacle]

This seems to be relevant to the topic at hand:

 

[Johannes]

Also why does the title imply that hating jews is contradictory with supporting homosexuals?

If you hate jews you shouldn't support homosexualism, which is a jewish ploy. Otherwise you're just contradicting yourself.

 

[DraQ]

Sorry, I'm not given to repeating myself. Read the topic.

Ok, I have read the topic or at least your posts in it thoroughly.
You were right:

My arguments in this topic only pertain to the implementation of them in Origins, which would have been clear to you with reading comprehension.

The problem is that the thread is titled "Lilura's Pro-Cooldown Thread", and yet you haven't written anything defending the actual cooldown mechanics, which I accuse of being shit when used in any, but highly specific manner (vehicle weapons that autoreload, or are reloaded by crewmembers, devices that actually need to cool down, exogenous spells/abilities that can logically require some outside factors to reset or recharge, very short delays that don't permit cycling as way to optimize spell output).

Combat mechanics contest between DA:O and IE, while amusing in its own right, it's more akin to two retarded kids beating each other over the head with plastic buckets in a sandbox, than any serious discussion of merits of cooldowns vs. whatever.

Note that I don't argue from pro-IE or even pro-Vancian PoV (if only because Vancian system and existence or absence of cooldowns are technically independent of one another). I argue from anti-cooldown PoV.
If anything, global cooldown of sort enforced on casters in IE because of it being crude TB emulator hastily bolted on top of an RT engine is also an argument against cooldowns, even if IE games didn't explicitly used cooldown mechanics.