OMG! There is some intelligence at the Escapist!

[Emotional Vampire]

Luckily, I don't play games for the combat; play games for the stories I do.

And how's that working out for you? Must be pretty shitty, most games being about gameplay and all!

 

[Volourn]

After reading thiis thread, one can come up with only one final conclusion: DA > BG2

'Nough said.

 

[1eyedking]

Also r00fles. Lies. Youa re dumb. MoraN.

 

[GarfunkeL]

The first advice I got from a friend (and now a former workmate of mine) is that 'gp for the eyes',
-ehm- not - it was actually to go for the Wizards, the spellcasters, the sorcerers etc. This strategy works for every encounter in BG1 and BG2 as well as for other rpgs out there. Rinse, lather, repeat.

How's that work for you when there were NO spellcasters? Or even worse, they were ALL spellcasters? :wink:

 

[Melcar]

Bullshit.

What's this thread about?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

How's that work for you when there were NO spellcasters? Or even worse, they were ALL spellcasters? :wink:

Same idea, I usually go for the lowest hp guy, or the one that deals damage considerably higher than the rest

Second question: same, or healers first

edit: wow, two quotes bork the codex?

 

[DreadMessiah]

"Can't blame him, tho. Wynne is hot for her age."

What the bleeping bleep? The internet's a creepy place, nya.

Yes. Indeed.

 

[DraQ]

And then there's one thing that really disturbs me: that the game conceales everything, hides everything and you'll never know for certain what is going on. No combat log, nothing. Someone oneshot-kills your mage? Well you'll never know what it was because the game doesn't tell you. Fighting a revenant and suddenly everyone's at the brink of death? Did it cast a spell, if yes which one? All remains unknown. Alistair doesn't hit anything and sucks as damage dealer? I don't know why because there's no way to find out why. (like reading 12 + 8 vs AC 45 miss! - see that would show you why). All you can do is guessing. That sucks big time.

I haven't played DA, but you actually make a pretty good point.
Now, I personally find putting mechanics under the hood a valid approach and a promising avenue, however, this relies on other kinds of feedback being available to the player - with such concealment should come integration of presentation and underlying mechanics and resulting rich audiovisual cues coming from the gameworld itself, rather than interface.
Failing such integration, or at least feedback integrated into presentation, there should be some way to see the underlying mechanics - in other words, if you can't show, you'd better fucking tell.

 

[Mortmal]

Thats just nostalgia, you had as much filler fights in BG2 as well, and even more in icewind dales, certainly many more type of enemies altough. The da models have higher poly count and more animations wich explain theres so few.
But whatever who cares wich game is superior, the simple fact theres something to discuss and compare between BG2 and DA is already a wonder.
The important question is , if you think DA is mediocre , wich rpg are you waiting for now ? you will hate mass effect 2 i suppose. Age of decadence planned somewhere in 2011,sadly we still dont have the combat demo. And even once we getthe final game , i dont even know how long it will last, i remember fallout 1 taking me 5h to finish.
The zombie rpg? if its released one day.

 

[Twinkle]

It may sound strange but I have Doom 3 or CoD feeling from DA level design. Same cheap monster closet tactics. Open door - "sudden" monster attack, push important button - "sudden" monster attack, cross the trigger - "sudden" monster attack. Stupid boss fights taken straight from some crappy console slashers (tentacles included). WTF. "Hardkkore" RPG that feels like mediocre on-rails action game even if it can be played from isometric perspective.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Thats just nostalgia, you had as much filler fights in BG2 as well, and even more in icewind dales, certainly many more type of enemies altough. The da models have higher poly count and more animations wich explain theres so few

Oh wow. It's really going to ease my mind when I'm fighting the bazillionth darkspawn that they have such an high poly count and animations! Yeah, that's much better than having an actual bestiary.

And where's the filler? Nashkel Mines has around 20 kobolds before you reach Mulahey, with his slimes and skeletons.

The caves under Candlekeep? There's two basilisks, one assasin and then the group of mercenaries.

Thieves Guild Maze? Um, four skeletons? Maybe five if you retarded and go around and around.

Iron Throne? Or the Trading House? Very, very little combat with half a dozen doppelgangers. Sewers? Few spiders and a Ogre Mage.

None of the surface zones in BG1 have filler combat - they have wandering monsters which you can avoid by luck or scouting. Now, if you wanted to explore every pixel of every map without bothering to use a sneaky thief for it, then you had to fight quite a lot. But that's not filler combat - because the very definition of filler is that you can't bypass it.

Same idea, I usually go for the lowest hp guy, or the one that deals damage considerably higher than the rest. Second question: same, or healers first

I was asking Aries, CK but since you answered - care to tell me how you knew which enemy had lowest HP in IE-games? The fact is that BG combat wasn't "target spellcaster first, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum", even though aries202 wishes to claim otherwise.

 

[Volourn]

"The fact is that BG combat wasn't "target spellcaster first, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum"

Yes it was with few possible exceptions. Same as any RPG with magic.

Also: DA > BG2

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Same idea, I usually go for the lowest hp guy, or the one that deals damage considerably higher than the rest. Second question: same, or healers first

I was asking Aries, CK but since you answered - care to tell me how you knew which enemy had lowest HP in IE-games? The fact is that BG combat wasn't "target spellcaster first, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum", even though aries202 wishes to claim otherwise.

Well, like Volourn said, it's a general strategy for any game with spellcasters.

And I wasn't being literal about HP - I meant "guy likely to die faster". Sometimes, having lower hp does't mean you're going down faster.

 

[1eyedking]

"The fact is that BG combat wasn't "target spellcaster first, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum"

Yes it was with few possible exceptions. Same as any RPG with magic.

Also: DA > BG2

Also r00fles! Lies.

Also: Youa re dumb. MoraN.

 

[Melcar]

Bullshit

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Also: DA > BG2

I just fought Gaxkang, a joke, like the rest of the combat.

It's weird that an alledged DnD player such as you can take pleasure in such a sorry excuse for a spell system.

Gaxkang, rofl. Cone of cold, shoot with your staff,Cone of cold, shoot with your staff,Cone of cold, shoot with your staff and so on, meanwhile all you have to do is feeding Lyrium to Wynne and apply the occasional healing potion to win.This is the new challenging tactical combat! But he did emmanate funny waves of light and whatnot. What was it? Did it even damage me? And if not, why? We'll never know, DA is awesome like that.

BG2 > DA (refers to combat)

 

[Dnny]

Ok, I entered orzammar and have witnessed something I'd rather unsee.

It seems that the dwarves mine dungeons are so big they had to build a map for them.

 

[Lesifoere]

I just fought Gaxkang, a joke, like the rest of the combat.

It's weird that an alledged DnD player such as you can take pleasure in such a sorry excuse for a spell system.

Gaxkang, rofl. Cone of cold, shoot with your staff,Cone of cold, shoot with your staff,Cone of cold, shoot with your staff and so on, meanwhile all you have to do is feeding Lyrium to Wynne and apply the occasional healing potion to win.This is the new challenging tactical combat! But he did emmanate funny waves of light and whatnot. What was it? Did it even damage me? And if not, why? We'll never know, DA is awesome like that.

BG2 > DA (refers to combat)

And his name is so clever! Gaxkang. The wit of it.

All the stun effects make single-boss fights pretty much a one-sided fest. Even if it resists the first one, you always have at least five-six more off the cooldown and ready to fire and really, why does DA give you so many disabling spells that are functionally identical again?

 

[space odyssey]

For the tac tics

 

[Grifthin]

Meh - I enjoyed the games combat. Besides - It gets significantly harder if you don't use the Primal/force spells. I'm playing a all Warrior/Rogue party now and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

No winters grasp, Mindblast, Cone of cold, Force field, crushing prison = bastard hard in some battles. Multiples emmisaries can just walk over your party if your not careful. Opponents like revenants, gaxkang etc all do alot more damage then. Even groups of normal melee fighters can prove to be a problem. You have to rely on things like traps (slow, lure ones especially), a good archer to neutralize enemy mages, rogues to scout ahead and pick off straggelers, bombs, Poisons that stun, slow. etc. Makes the game hella fun. Alternatively - run a mage that specializes in Creation spells.

Overall - the combat isn't to challenging when using spell casters all speced with Magic maxed and crowd control. on the other hand - using 0-1 casters with some of the other spells (like haste, heroism etc) - is alot of fun with a warrior heavy party. Since I dislike playing multiple mages, crowd control mages - this works out well for me. Like any rpg choice makes the game fun - you find elements unfun or that make the game a cake walk, don't use them.

It's not the first time that magic has unbalanced a game - in any system that uses the dnd rules wizards/sorcerors will start to dominate at higher levels since their power doesn't scale linearly like warriors, in arcanum there was the harm spell (dear god the harm spell), in VTMB there was stealth, the gangrel abilties and virtually all the malkavian abilies.

So yeah - it's not really a train smash for me. It's enjoyable and will tide me over untill Mass Effect 2 comes out or Risen grabs my attention.

 

[Lesifoere]

Like any rpg choice makes the game fun - you find elements unfun or that make the game a cake walk, don't use them.

I'm not going to gimp myself just because the game is badly balanced. And technically, most classes/specs (if not in fact all) in DA can stun. Shale can quake. The sword-and-board warriors can shield pummel or bash, both on separate cooldowns. Rogues can dirty-fight. Archers can scatter shot. It just so happens that one mage alone can have access to three forms of stuns, if specced properly--and spec choice is limited given how few spells there are, and how useless a great many of them turn out in practice. (I used fireball far more than I used the big AOE like inferno/blizzard/tempest.)

Not to mention, controlling melee characters in DA is--to me anyway--quite dull, spec choices for melee characters are even more limited due to activated stances, so the only sliver of fun that can be squeezed out of this stone is spellcasting.

 

[Grifthin]

That's entirely up to you lesifoere - In arcanum I didn't use harm because it was so broken (you can kill the last boss in less than 5 secs with harm). You could pick harm when taking a mage but doing so isn't fun for me (no challenge). So I don't. if you feel that you are gimping yourself because the game is badly balanced then you are ofcourse free to play anyway you like. I'm just saying I enjoy a challenge don't see it as gimping at all. In Dragon age I find multi stun mages make the game to easy (removes challenge, which I dislike) so I don't use them.

 

[Volourn]

DA > BG2

 

[Lesifoere]

That's entirely up to you lesifoere - In arcanum I didn't use harm because it was so broken (you can kill the last boss in less than 5 secs with harm). You could pick harm when taking a mage but doing so isn't fun for me (no challenge). So I don't. if you feel that you are gimping yourself because the game is badly balanced then you are ofcourse free to play anyway you like. I'm just saying I enjoy a challenge don't see it as gimping at all. In Dragon age I find multi stun mages make the game to easy (removes challenge, which I dislike) so I don't use them.

"Don't use them" is not a valid excuse for an unbalanced combat system. No, really, it's quite that simple--if DA were balanced, then no matter your party make-up, it should still be more or less challenging, not "challenging" or "zzzz spamming cone of cold fire ball bye". Not that a mostly-melee party is super-challenging even so; if you take the dog, Shale, and whoever with a champion spec (Loghain, say) to take turns AOE-stunning while Alistair shield-pummels/bashes single targets, the net effect won't be quite the same but it's still plenty of crowd control going around.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

BG2 > DA

I didn't say DA combat is never hard or that you'll never have to reload.
I said there is not much of a challenge, because I don't see crafting potions and paying attention to the healthbars as a challenge.
So you say if I don't take a healing mage or another mage with useful spells the game will be more difficult and the tedious, endless, identical encounters will become even more tedious, endless and identical. Can't say that appeals to me.

btw funfact: There is a quest where you have to shoot a signal arrow in the brecilian forest. But of course none of your bow-wielding companions can do that, the main char has to do it (same as with survival skill and the sick deer early on) but my char is a mage and lacks the DEX to use Imoens bow. I tried to buy a bow, but since loot is levelscaled the cheapest bow for 2 gold requires 36 DEX, r00fles! I guess we can file that under C&C. I chose not to keep a shitty low DEX bow from early on in the game and the consequence is that I can't finish the quest. That's some serious case of C&C right there.

Dragon Age certainly excels in some areas, I mean I don't want to only criticize.
I think the quest of the main questlines are very good, the artdirection is very good (except the armors), I like the music, grafix are topnotch (for a 3D RPG, I still give ToEE the edge for spell effects and certain areas) and the background lore and the world in general are very well done. I also don't mind the companions but I only played with Wynne, Leliana,Alistair so far. And the dwarf. Something tells me in 10 years from now we won't talk about our adventures with Alistair and Leliana though, although I'm sure Jan Jansen, Minsc and Edwin will still be mentioned. Anyway, in 2 areas that I hold very dear - combat and magic in particular - Dragon age is a let-down. So unfortunately

BG2 > DA