Dragon Age: Inquisition is a better game than Pillars of Eternity

[Ninjerk]

 

[Roguey]

Darklands, Serpent in the Staglands, the Freedom Forces, and Aarklash Legacy are also roundless.

 

[Sensuki]

They also have less complicated combat systems than an Infinity Engine style game. The units in Aarklash have the same setup as a MOBA Hero minus item use (they can only move, or perform an attack or ability).

The issue is not rounds vs roundless as both are simply different measurements of real time in a real-time game. What I am saying is that for a complicated system like Pillars of Eternity (or the IE's AD&D implementation) a more uniform system like the IE round implementation goes a long way into making combat flow better and be more easily read by players.

SitS also calculates the actual length of actions and recovery, something which was not done for Pillars of Eternity because apparently it would be "too expensive" to implement (more like no one thought of it in the first place because none of the devs play these types of games).

 

[Roguey]

It will always be funny how Obsidian pitched a game no actual designer in the company gave a damn about. Quite the Faustian bargain.

 

[Waterd]

I still after reading this thread didn´t see a decent argument on how PoE is worse than BG i saw something like character creation is worse, if so in what way? and even if POE had NO character creation, is just so small part of what makes a game, that really its irrelevant. use premade characters, who care.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You haven't played it yet. It's not.

Roguey , I had forgotten you hadn't played it actually Very curious to see your impressions once you get into it.

As far as the UI goes - I can see why they used an action bar in Pillars of Eternity because of the non-uniformity of attack times, but until you see the speed of an action on the screen, you'll never know how long it's going to take. and never the exact amount unless you do some additive multiplication first. At best you'll get a "Slow", "Average" or "Fast" in the item description, and that's it.

True. That was the subject of my first suggestion post in the obisidan forums. I don't remember the devs making any comment. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69205-a-proposition-for-improving-combat-interface-feedback/

Looking back I think "we don't need rounds" was actually a very naive thing to say even though I liked the idea at the time.

Josh's "I'll fix the mistakes of my predecessors" approach to rules system design screamed naivete. It was too easy to predict that he'd fail.

Very much my throughts. I ascribe the mess we have to Josh's ego though, maybe unjustly, I can't really know. My impression is that many of his "fixes" which turned out to work worse than the solutions in the IE games were the result of him overestimating the team's capacity to implement and test features in the time & tech constraints they were working under. This is evidenced by the fact that in the end the quasion of producing a game within the development time and budget simply didn't work out.

That in the end the game was a critical and a commercial success, I think is due mostly to the fact that it's oriented towards 2000s casuals, whereas the 1990s casuals (myself included) who now seem to be Josh's favorite "grognards" consider the game easier than average, although they hailed the IE games, which in their turn were seen as dumbed down at the time, by the 1980s casuals. How times pass, huh?

Anyway. Besides ego, I can't come up with any explanation why did they need to mess around with the combat system when the IE games already had, if not the best, at least one of the best (as in easy for the player to understand) implementations of RTwP, plus - it would have contributed to achieving "IE games' feels" more than anything else.

How it plays > how it looks

As evidenced by the aforementioned DA:O. This argument of Roguey's was so absurd I just decided not to comment on it.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

SitS also calculates the actual length of actions and recovery, something which was not done for Pillars of Eternity because apparently it would be "too expensive" to implement (more like no one thought of it in the first place because none of the devs play these types of games).

This very baffling to me too ,as a whole in-game documentation and UI is very poor,though improved a lot after release attack speed,recovery and reload values are still missing.Makes you wander if there is something that they don't want to show or explain about beyond time and resources.

 

[Raghar]

That's right, you heard what I said.

DA:I is better than PoE for the following reasons:

1. I don't give a shit about PoE characters more than I don't give a shit about DA:I characters

2. At least there's a reason to find better loot in DA:I

3. The combat in DA:I, while somewhat derpy in its MMO-ishness, is fairly entertaining

4. Larger world to explore and more incentive to send your underlings on missions

5. Believe it or not, a more intriguing world and history and story in DA:I

Search your feelings, for you know these things to be true.

I don't know, I seen word Denuvo, and decided to not install that crap from manufacturers of copy protection that destroyed several DVDs in burning before I used removal program, powered down PC and waited 2 minutes before starting it again. Yes it was THAT bad.

 

[King Crispy]

JarlFrank Infinitron VentilatorOfDoom Jaesun

One of you morons moved this thread again. I'm not sure where the disconnect is. Look at the title of the thread. Look at my post. See something? The fact that the thread is both PoE and DA:I related?

I don't care if that idiot Roguey tried to hijack it and turn it into a PoE-exclusive thread; you should know better than to be swayed by such a psychotic individual.

Move it back. Again.

 

[Immortal]

JarlFrank Infinitron VentilatorOfDoom Jaesun

One of you morons moved this thread again. I'm not sure where the disconnect is. Look at the title of the thread. Look at my post. See something? The fact that the thread is both PoE and DA:I related?

I don't care if that idiot Roguey tried to hijack it and turn it into a PoE-exclusive thread; you should know better than to be swayed by such a psychotic individual.

Move it back. Again.

It was nice of you to list 4 mods in order to not single anyone out.. but we all know who moved it..

 

[Ulminati]

Since Dragon Age: Inquisition is apparently an Obsidian game now, it has 2 strong points in its favour
1) It's the least buggy Obsidian game to date
2) It has the least awful combat in an obsidian game ever

 

[Delterius]

PoE can't make vacuum cleaning fun is all I'd say.

 

[King Crispy]

Since Dragon Age: Inquisition is apparently an Obsidian game now

wut

 

[Ulminati]

It's in the obsidian forum, no? Must be an obsidian game then.

 

[Roguey]

It's the least buggy Obsidian game to date

Eh, it seems to me that DS3 and South Park were far more solid.

It has the least awful combat in an obsidian game ever

I'll be quite shocked if I end up liking DAI's combat over DS3's.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Eh, it seems to me that DS3 and South Park were far more solid.

Far less complicated systems, so kind of pointless comparison. Launch-state Pillars was pretty much the most polished game I've seen in the genre to date.

The fact that people were still whining about some miniscule bugs only goes to show just how entitled gaming community can be. Something you wouldn't think was even possible, can become expected standard in over a week. I remember Eurogamer (I think) running a story about a bug in Pillars. One bug, I shit you not. That's newsworthy now.

People should be forced to play release Fallout without 10 years worth of community patches, at least once a year. Just to keep them grounded in just how much things have actually improved.

 

[Sensuki]

It was quite polished on release during the press patch, which is why it averaged 90 - even I said it was worth 90 polished turds at the time, because of how polished it was.

 

[roshan]

Serpent in the Staglands

Serpent in the Staglands is not round based but fortunately it is not designed by an autistic weirdo with an oversized ego trying to be hip on Something Awful. Characters in SITS use abstract, tactical movement similar to pieces sliding on a chessboard, and attacks and spells have exact casting and proc times. So you could be casting a spell that takes 6 seconds to cast and then procs every 4 seconds, or wielding a weapon that attacks every 3.2 seconds. Furthermore modifiers to these values are numbers, not percentages. The net effect is that you can predict how long it will take for your character to move to a certain location, how long before the next attack or proc, etc. It's simple and intuitive. The combat in SITS actually flows very well, and it's easily the best RTWP since the IE games.

 

[Gladius]

Serpent in the Staglands is not round based but fortunately it is not designed by an autistic weirdo with an oversized ego trying to be hip on Something Awful. Characters in SITS use abstract, tactical movement similar to pieces sliding on a chessboard, and attacks and spells have exact casting and proc times. So you could be casting a spell that takes 6 seconds to cast and then procs every 4 seconds, or wielding a weapon that attacks every 3.2 seconds. Furthermore modifiers to these values are numbers, not percentages. The net effect is that you can predict how long it will take for your character to move to a certain location, how long before the next attack or proc, etc. It's simple and intuitive. The combat in SITS actually flows very well, and it's easily the best RTWP since the IE games.

Too bad it has pretty much no end game, ends too abruptly and is disappointing when it comes to the story conclusion. Riddles are great though - I loved the wandering lady caves (best location in the game probably). Still - it was too buggy and too disappointing for me to recommend it to anyone, sadly. Maybe the expansion will bring out the best of it.

 

[roshan]

Too bad it has pretty much no end game, ends too abruptly and is disappointing when it comes to the story conclusion. Riddles are great though - I loved the wandering lady caves (best location in the game probably). Still - it was too buggy and too disappointing for me to recommend it to anyone, sadly. Maybe the expansion will bring out the best of it.

I actually really liked the ending. Some fantastic CNC there. It was the kind of ending that made me take a nice long walk to think things through, the kind of weight and impact delivered only by the best games and shows.

What was buggy about SITS? When I played through (that was still during the later end of the patching phase - patch 9 to 12, I think) I encountered mostly minor bugs, such as an NPC appearing in two places, or perhaps an item's stats not matching the description. I reported most of these to Joe and Hannah, and they were very quick to fix them. I'm guessing that by now the game is likely mostly bug free.

 

[Mastermind]

and even if POE had NO character creation, is just so small part of what makes a game

lol wtf are you smoking, character creation is half of what makes an RPG an RPG.

 

[gestalt11]

Clearly this thread needs it own forum for threads about both Obsidian and Bioware simultaneously as the mods are stuck in some sort of logic trap that is short circuiting their brains similar to when Kirk and Spock were on that planet full of androids with Harry Mudd.

Kind of like this:

 

[DalekFlay]

Since these two games are literally the only games I have played in the last two years I thought I would necro this shit to say it's amazing how similar their problems are. They're both bland as shit, they both have theoretically interesting lore and settings that they both completely fail to capitalize on, they both have theoretically fun combat that they drive into the ground with endless, boring encounters with no design or challenge, they both have the illusion of choice and factions without any real consequences or a feeling of impacting the world. They're literally the same game, just separated by millions of ameribucks in development costs.

 

[Lhynn]

Current rpg design sensibilities show in both games, yes, and they are retarded shit born from people that think they are smarter than they actually are.

 

[Rake]

It's funny because for all his apparent dislike of Bioware's design, Sawyer when given the opportunity, he just made a Dragon Age game, just in a pretier package