Fuck Dragon Age 3, this thread is now about RPG stat systems

[Grunker]

For the Codex, or at least for some Codexers, DA:O is the symbol of the decline. I know I'm using a strawman argument here, but it seems to me for some, even honest posters, seeing the meris of DA:O is impossible. Look at the reaction to VD's review.

I'm not trying to invalidate good arguments with this strawman, I'm just saying I have long stopped arguing in favor for DA:O because I find it kind of futile here.

I think our community should cease to indulge in dream fantasies of RPGs that have never existed. Sure DA:O doesn't have the story of Planescape, the size of the world of Morrowind, the combat system of Knights of the Chalice, the monster variety of BG2, the number of classes of NWN2 etc, etc. However, unlike all of those classics it manages to be at least competent in each aspect, as opposed to a single area, which creates a seamless experience - a cornerstone of every RPG. I happen to value products with clear vision at least as much as bold experiments that make a critical statement in one area but otherwise they are failures.

I agree - that much is a given based on what I said in the quoted post. I'm pretty convinced, however, that it would be an uphill battle

 

[Mrowak]

For the Codex, or at least for some Codexers, DA:O is the symbol of the decline. I know I'm using a strawman argument here, but it seems to me for some, even honest posters, seeing the meris of DA:O is impossible. Look at the reaction to VD's review.

I'm not trying to invalidate good arguments with this strawman, I'm just saying I have long stopped arguing in favor for DA:O because I find it kind of futile here.

I think our community should cease to indulge in dream fantasies of RPGs that have never existed. Sure DA:O doesn't have the story of Planescape, the size of the world of Morrowind, the combat system of Knights of the Chalice, the monster variety of BG2, the number of classes of NWN2 etc, etc. However, unlike all of those classics it manages to be at least competent in each aspect, as opposed to a single area, which creates a seamless experience - a cornerstone of every RPG. I happen to value products with clear vision at least as much as bold experiments that make a critical statement in one area but otherwise they are failures.

I agree - that much is a given based on what I said in the quoted post. I'm pretty convinced, however, that it would be an uphill battle

We are the Codex. If the battle is not uphill it is beneath our concern.

 

[Grunker]

I guess

 

[Captain Shrek]

Mrowak
DA:O was decent at low levels. Then as you grew more powerful you realized how shallow the systems were. There just wasn't enough true variability - you just got more and more samey cooldown abilities to click.

That sounds a lot like DnD based games, doesn't it?

 

[Infinitron]

Mrowak
DA:O was decent at low levels. Then as you grew more powerful you realized how shallow the systems were. There just wasn't enough true variability - you just got more and more samey cooldown abilities to click.

That sounds a lot like DnD based games, doesn't it?

Hardly.

D&D's systems were flexible enough to allow wacky builds like this:

 

[Captain Shrek]

And that proves what? That you can gimp your character / create a large array of characters that are not powerful?

All it shows is that you ca play the game to not cheese it. Something ALSO perfectly viable in DA:O. Just invest in BOTH bows and sword skill as a warrior and see what happens. Or alternatively invest in the wrong spells.

 

[Infinitron]

And that proves what? That you can gimp your character / create a large array of characters that are not powerful?

Uh, no. They ARE powerful. That's the point. Zal can kick your party's ass.

 

[Mrowak]

And that proves what? That you can gimp your character / create a large array of characters that are not powerful?

Uh, no. They ARE powerful. That's the point. Zal can kick your party's ass.

I'd like to point out that the built shown there boils down to giving all points into dexterity and then every skill point into darts. Essentially this built only proves that if you focus on one skill you are going to be very good at that skill and nothing more. I would dare say in case of BG there are actually nor builds at all, because there's no real thinking involved on any level. You do the non-brainer stuff and that's it. Aside from throwing those darts and maybe using secondary weapon the character can do nothing. Please contrast that with DA:O which gives you shitloads of options, all of which have uses.

Zal "cheats".

Also this. He has higher dexterity and lower THAC0 than any other character in the game.

 

[Infinitron]

The point is, you don't see this kind of variability in modern games. It's all copy-paste, formulaic MMO saminess.

And that's not even going into Third Edition D&D. How can you even argue that it's not a much deeper system than DA:O's?

 

[Infinitron]

My post from the Obsidian forums: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61...shift-from-trash-mobs-to-elite-enemy-parties/

One of things I loved about BG1 is how there was a very pronounced shift midgame, from fighting "trash mobs" like kobolds and hobgoblins in the first half, towards fighting parties of enemy NPCs in the second half.

Not only did this give the player a great sense of progress from a narrative perspective ("I'm going up in the world! Real people are starting to actually notice what I've been doing!"), but it was also quite challenging mechanically. Fighting small parties of NPCs in Baldur's Gate was qualitatively a very different experience from fighting hordes of low-HP humanoid mooks. You had to completely rethink your approach, devise new tactics - it was almost like learning to play an entirely new game.

It added a lot of depth to the game that is strikingly absent from today's RPGs, where the enemies you encounter at the end of the game are so often just HP-bloated versions of the exact same enemies you encounter at the beginning of the game. I hope Obsidian consider having this kind of progression in Project Eternity, both narratively and mechanically.

 

[Mrowak]

The point is, you don't see this kind of variability in modern games. It's all copy-paste, formulaic MMO saminess.

I see no variability there.

And that's not even going into Third Edition D&D. How can you even argue that it's not a much deeper system than DA:O's?

I am not saying that DA:O is deeper. However DA:O had system tailored for cRPG format which worked with its interface, control scheme. For example, NWN2 did not. It simply copy-pasted the ruleset with no regard to the environment it is going to be used in. In NWN2 all your mage has to do is spam Black Tentacles and Missile Storms. You can win every fight with that. Sure it has many builds and options - it wins over DA:O in this regard. Too bad 90% of them are meaningless - you don't have to use them. In other words they are badly implemented. And here's where DA:O shines.

 

[Carrion]

I think you are being a little bit unfair here. You mean those spells and trashmobs did not make combat repetetive in BG2? You could use exact same spell combinations to win nearly every fight. True, there was no aggro mechanic, but it means your enemies were even dumber - they attacked this first character they targeted upon - whether it was the weakest or the strongest, and it was easy to kite them (in comparison in DA:O there's always at least one enemy engaging each of your characters).

BG2's fights were shorter and there was a huge amount of variety in every dungeon. DA:O has very few enemy types that can be fought in a similar way. Most of the time you're fighting generic melee units, ranged units and mages, and it doesn't make that big a difference whether the melee unit is a darkspawn or a werewolf, or whether the mage is a darkspawn or a blood mage.

BG2's AI wasn't great, but the encounter design was miles ahead of DA:O, different enemies had different spell resistances and saving throws as well as special abilities, there were mages with protective spells, there was a big difference between fighting an illusion mage and a destruction mage and so on. Unless you rested after every fight (which was unfortunately possible), you'd run out of your best spells really fast whereas in DA:O you can spam them over and over again in every fight thanks to cooldowns. DA:O's AI may be better, but there's just nothing that would make the fights interesting. Pretty much all of the darkspawn fights feel the same and there's like 50 hours of that in the game. Dragon fights should be the highlights of the game, but in practice you're just doing the same thing for fifteen minutes until the damn thing dies. Same thing with revenants and pretty much every other tougher enemy in the game. Save for a few good fights, it's either trash mobs or a ridiculous HP bloat. Both are boring and repetitive.

Tank-healer-mage? That's BG2 in a nuttshell. Actually DA:O gave warriors something to do on the battlefield other then being there and tanking.

BG2 had a party of six and the healer could actually be the tank. I don't see how tank-healer-mage could possibly be used to describe BG2. On the other hand DA:O has only a party of four which leaves a lot less room for different party compositions, especially since there's no multiclassing and there are only, what, two mages in the entire game? I played a rogue, so basically the only party composition that made sense for me was rogue-warrior-mage plus an additional warrior or mage, and the latter was always clearly the superior choice.

Also, what exactly can DA:O's warriors do aside from tanking? Based on their talents, the warriors' role is clearly to draw enemies into attacking them, i.e. being tanks. The talents mostly include minor buffs and special attacks, and there's a bunch of talents that are built specifically around the aggro mechanic (Taunt, Grievous Insult, Disengage, Threaten). Many fights become just battles of attrition when you watch those health bars slowly drain away while Wynne casts another healing spell on your tank every time she has one available. Since the system is based on cooldowns, it's easy to just repeat the same pattern over and over again in every fight until you win. BG2 was nowhere near being that formulaic.

The only advantage BG2 had was that it had more monsters and spells, but there were two reasons for that:

a) BG2 could take advantage of huge amount of AD&D source materials
b) BG2 came after BG1 which didn't have very great monster variety. At the end of the day Ogres were just Ogrlins with better stats and a different character model. That's not much of a difference, gameplaywise. Now Ogres in DA:O had their different sets of abilities - they weren't just biffed Hurloks, so fighting them was at least a little bit different. In other words, DA:O could have expanded in the sequel. But it didn't.

I agree that comparing DA:O to the first Baldur's Gate would be more reasonable. It's obvious that DA:O couldn't have the same amount of spells and monsters as BG2, and it would be unfair to expect that. However, I still think that DA:O's core mechanics are deeply flawed and even major tweaking wouldn't fix them.

 

[Captain Shrek]

The point is, you don't see this kind of variability in modern games. It's all copy-paste, formulaic MMO saminess.

And that's not even going into Third Edition D&D. How can you even argue that it's not a much deeper system than DA:O's?

That's backpedalling. The original point was: YES DA:O does not do any one thing great but it does all things well enough. Also secondly OUR (you and me) argument was about Crap builds. Zal's real build would have been easily taken down by a John Doe.

 

[Mrowak]

My post from the Obsidian forums: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61...shift-from-trash-mobs-to-elite-enemy-parties/

One of things I loved about BG1 is how there was a very pronounced shift midgame, from fighting "trash mobs" like kobolds and hobgoblins in the first half, towards fighting parties of enemy NPCs in the second half.

Not only did this give the player a great sense of progress from a narrative perspective ("I'm going up in the world! Real people are starting to actually notice what I've been doing!"), but it was also quite challenging mechanically. Fighting small parties of NPCs in Baldur's Gate was qualitatively a very different experience from fighting hordes of low-HP humanoid mooks. You had to completely rethink your approach, devise new tactics - it was almost like learning to play an entirely new game.

It added a lot of depth to the game that is strikingly absent from today's RPGs, where the enemies you encounter at the end of the game are so often just HP-bloated versions of the exact same enemies you encounter at the beginning of the game. I hope Obsidian consider having this kind of progression in Project Eternity, both narratively and mechanically.

Yes, DA:O clearly had problems with that. So did BG1 where and Ogre was HP-bloated version of Ogrlin, there was no real difference between Gnolls and Orcs aside from character model, and practically all end-bosses were damage sponges? Your point? That what you are asking for has not been created yet, unless someone used ready licensed assets?

It's cool that Obsidian sees the problem (which themselve kept repeating - Epic Gnolls and Epic-level students in a wizards' school in Mask of the Betrayer, anyone?), but I wonder how they will solve it.

 

[Infinitron]

I am not saying that DA:O is deeper. However DA:O had system tailored for cRPG format which worked with its interface, control scheme. For example, NWN2 did not. It simply copy-pasted the ruleset with no regard to the environment it is going to be used in. In NWN2 all your mage has to do is spam Black Tentacles and Missile Storms. You can win every fight with that. Sure it has many builds and options - it wins over DA:O in this regard. Too bad 90% of them are meaningless - you don't have to use them. In other words they are badly implemented. And here's where DA:O shines.

Abilities in DA:O become meaningless too once you become powerful enough to auto-attack anything to death. Seriously, reach a high level. Play the expansion pack. EVERY COMBAT IS THE SAME.

 

[Captain Shrek]

My post from the Obsidian forums: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61...shift-from-trash-mobs-to-elite-enemy-parties/

One of things I loved about BG1 is how there was a very pronounced shift midgame, from fighting "trash mobs" like kobolds and hobgoblins in the first half, towards fighting parties of enemy NPCs in the second half.

Not only did this give the player a great sense of progress from a narrative perspective ("I'm going up in the world! Real people are starting to actually notice what I've been doing!"), but it was also quite challenging mechanically. Fighting small parties of NPCs in Baldur's Gate was qualitatively a very different experience from fighting hordes of low-HP humanoid mooks. You had to completely rethink your approach, devise new tactics - it was almost like learning to play an entirely new game.

It added a lot of depth to the game that is strikingly absent from today's RPGs, where the enemies you encounter at the end of the game are so often just HP-bloated versions of the exact same enemies you encounter at the beginning of the game. I hope Obsidian consider having this kind of progression in Project Eternity, both narratively and mechanically.

Yes, DA:O clearly had problems with that. So did BG1 where and Ogre was HP-bloated version of Ogrlin, there was no real difference between Gnolls and Orcs aside from character model, and practically all end-bosses were damage sponges? Your point? That what you are asking for has not been created yet, unless someone used ready licensed assets?

It's cool that Obsidian sees the problem (which themselve kept repeating - Epic Gnolls and Epic-level students in a wizards' school in Mask of the Betrayer, anyone), but I wonder how they will solve it.

The HP bloat problem is A STAPLE of Melee oriented bossed in DnD games. That or DR+SR. The worst thing ever.

 

[Captain Shrek]

I am not saying that DA:O is deeper. However DA:O had system tailored for cRPG format which worked with its interface, control scheme. For example, NWN2 did not. It simply copy-pasted the ruleset with no regard to the environment it is going to be used in. In NWN2 all your mage has to do is spam Black Tentacles and Missile Storms. You can win every fight with that. Sure it has many builds and options - it wins over DA:O in this regard. Too bad 90% of them are meaningless - you don't have to use them. In other words they are badly implemented. And here's where DA:O shines.

Abilities in DA:O become meaningless too once you become powerful enough to auto-attack anything to death. Seriously, reach a high level. Play the expansion pack.

You mean like casting high level spells? But yes, granted that melee builds in DnD are shit at high levels. DA:O in fact does not allow them to be shit but that is hardly a merit.

 

[Mrowak]

I am not saying that DA:O is deeper. However DA:O had system tailored for cRPG format which worked with its interface, control scheme. For example, NWN2 did not. It simply copy-pasted the ruleset with no regard to the environment it is going to be used in. In NWN2 all your mage has to do is spam Black Tentacles and Missile Storms. You can win every fight with that. Sure it has many builds and options - it wins over DA:O in this regard. Too bad 90% of them are meaningless - you don't have to use them. In other words they are badly implemented. And here's where DA:O shines.

Abilities in DA:O become meaningless too once you become powerful enough to auto-attack anything to death. Seriously, reach a high level. Play the expansion pack.

I haven't played the expansion pack, but having finished the base game on Nightmare I don't really see what you are describing. In fact I keep tactical AI turned off and issue commands manually because all too often AI committs a major dumbfuckery that can murder my character in seconds. So yeah, how you use abilities remain important. To be honest, what you described sounds a lot like NWN2.

 

[Bulba]

The castle in the pic looks real tiny... just compare it's size to two people walking there on the bridge. It's more like a stone house than a castle.

And that proves what? That you can gimp your character / create a large array of characters that are not powerful?

Uh, no. They ARE powerful. That's the point. Zal can kick your party's ass.

Zal "cheats".

don't think so. with darts you get 3 att per round plus with top dif you get double damage - quite deadly at the start.

don't even compare that shitfest origin to bg, as bg beats it hands down on every aspect.
The camera controls from origin still bring me nightmares.... oh it was sooooo terrible.

 

[Infinitron]

To be honest, what you described sounds a lot like NWN2.

Fuck NWN2 - stop comparing shit to it. Icewind Dale 2 and the other Infinity Engine games are what's one my mind. You know, what DA:O was supposed to be a spiritual successor to? (lol)

 

[Mrowak]

To be honest, what you described sounds a lot like NWN2.

Fuck NWN2 - stop comparing shit to it. Icewind Dale 2 and the other Infinity Engine games are what's one my mind. You know, what DA:O was supposed to be a spiritual successor to? (lol)

And it certain areas it was better than them. In certain worse. I cannot say if it's really a overall a better game than IE originals. But it's good, it's focused, it has some fun ideas, along with a few stupid ones. My point was that DA:O was a solid foundation. Remove the idiotic concepts, tailor a few numbers stats, add square shittones of abilities, balance everything, and you get what BG2 was to BG1. Alas, they had to go full retard. It's a shame.

 

[kris]

The castle in the pic looks real tiny... just compare it's size to two people walking there on the bridge. It's more like a stone house than a castle.

I would be even more worried if it would have been big. Apart from fantasy staple or a mine full of GOLD there is no discernable reason to build a castle high up in a mountainchain. What exactly does this place defend? Is it so important as to go through the cost and logistical nightmare of carrying up supplies and fuel there? the only example of something like this in our world is a few small fortresses in the himalaya, but they sit on ridges down in valleys, which don't seem to mirror this one.

 

[Infinitron]

In what way OTHER THAN THE CAMERA (stop fucking complaining about it) is NWN2 inferior to the IE games?

I'm personally not a hardcore NWN2 hater, but overall it seems that in many ways the engine was not appropriate for providing challenging tactical combat + the actual campaigns didn't even try to provide it, for the most part

But I think there are some fan-made modules that do a better job in this department.

 

[Infinitron]

I cannot say if it's really a overall a better game than IE originals

Ookay. How long has it been since you've played them?

 

[Mrowak]

To be honest, what you described sounds a lot like NWN2.

Fuck NWN2 - stop comparing shit to it. Icewind Dale 2 and the other Infinity Engine games are what's one my mind. You know, what DA:O was supposed to be a spiritual successor to? (lol)

I have a question for you:

In what way OTHER THAN THE CAMERA (stop fucking complaining about it) is NWN2 inferior to the IE games?

Encounter design for one thing. NWN2 has abysmal encounter design.