Dragon Age: Origins combat is better than Baldur's Gate 2

[rusty_shackleford]

With cooldowns, your "best" spell or ability is available for you in every fight, with (usually) the only limitation on its use being an arbitrary timer.

If anything, this is far, far worse in BG2 with rest spam.

 

[croitav]

Cooldowns is trash design for imbeciles who don't actually play RPGs.

 

[Cryomancer]

If anything, this is far, far worse in BG2 with rest spam.

Pathfinder Kingmaker solved the problem by making time matters and camping supplies taking a lot of weight

 

[Sharpedge]

The argument can be made that cooldowns are an abstraction of reload time.

It'd be a terrible argument. Reloading is an action that takes a certain amount of time. While reloading, you cannot fire your weapon or cast a spell, possibly not even move, which makes you vulnerable in combat. You can, however, choose not to reload your weapon and instead switch to another gun, but you can't use the previous gun until you reload it. With cooldowns one of your abilities is simply put on ice for a while, and you can still do everything else that you otherwise could do while waiting for the cooldown timer to run out.

It was the first example that came to mind. It could be a weapon which is reloaded mechanically and not by a human, in which case you could perform other actions while waiting. In any case, it was not the only analogy which was given in this thread and the other 2 deal with that issue just fine (weapons that need time to "cool down" in order to not take strain, or the reverse vancian system).

The argument can be made that cooldowns are an abstraction of reload time.

Apart from generally not making sense, cooldowns are a lazy design decision and tend to result in repetitive gameplay. It's like the developers just threw their hands in the air and said "fuck it, I don't know how to balance this". With cooldowns, your "best" spell or ability is available for you in every fight, with (usually) the only limitation on its use being an arbitrary timer. In DA:O this creates dull gameplay loops where you cast the same sequence of spells/ablities over and over again, always restarting the cycle when the cooldown timers run out. Vancian magic has its issues, especially when you take rest spam and other abuse into account, but one inherent advantage it has is that you have to play around with limitations. You can't cast Time Stop at the start of every fight, so you need to plan ahead and preserve the big stuff until you need it.

1. As has been covered adequately in this thread, cooldowns not making sense is a failure on the part of the developer and not a failure on the part of the system itself.
2. Repetitive gameplay is not directly a result of using cooldowns as a balancing mechanic, although using cooldowns as a balancing mechanic means that if other issues are present, it will be the natural outcome. For example, if 1 power fits all scenarios, then in a cooldown system where its cooldown is not sufficiently long (because you could actually make a cooldown 24h long if you wanted to) it will get used in every scenario. The problem here wasn't that cooldowns were used, the problem was firstly that there was a power which was a universal solvent, as opposed to being a power with situational use and that secondly this universal solvent was not given a long enough cooldown so that it cannot be used in every fight.
3. As you have pointed out, the Vancian system has its own problems.
4. Personally, I am a fan of a modified mana system where mana does not regenerate (and actually degenerates) and is a resource which is acquired sparingly in world, as my preferred system of magic, but that is neither here nor there. Sadly I don't know any games that use this system.

The argument can be made that cooldowns are an abstraction of reload time.

Comparing BG2 and DA:O, the former also offers a lot more in the way of enemy buffs, resistances and immunities, as well as particularly nasty spells used by enemies, forcing you to use a wider array of spells to break down enemy defenses and protect your party members, even though it should be the other way around — the Vancian limitations already prevent you from using the same spell over and over again, whereas a cooldown system allows you to spam the few most effective ones forever unless there's a good reason to use something else. DA:O, even with its cooldown system and unlimited spells, doesn't do a whole lot to force you out of your usual patterns.

Anyway, this discussion has undoubtedly already been done to death in numerous previous threads.

There are 2 main criticisms here, the first is that the variety of choice which exists in BG is greater than in DAO (which I will undoubtedly agree with and say that is 1 of the aspects I liked about BG). The second is that there is less gameplay variety in DA:O due to the cooldown system not forcing you to break patterns. To this I would say, this is the fault of this specific implementation of a cooldown system and not a fault of cooldown systems in general. There is nothing preventing a game designer making powers more niche or making the cooldowns much longer to combat this.

Also, to clarify, I am not taking the stance of the OP of this thread. I like both games, for different reasons.

If anything, this is far, far worse in BG2 with rest spam.

Pathfinder Kingmaker solved the problem by making time matters and camping supplies taking a lot of weight

It did not solve the problem. I soloed Pathfinder Kingmaker 4 times on Unfair, once with a Cleric, once with a Sorcerer, once with a Wizard and once with a druid. In one of those playthroughs, I challenged myself to try and be as efficient as possible at time management. At the end of the game before the House at the End of Time, I had to skip through close to 600 days of time where I had nothing to do. There was a brief break in the middle where there was a curse and some new events, but otherwise it was just skip, skip, skip all the way through. I had built every single one of the kingdom upgrades, it was just skipping through time. If you want to rest spam, there is plenty of time in which to do it. Time constraints could solve the problem, but the limitations in Pathfinder are far too lenient to matter at all.

 

[Cryomancer]

I soloed Pathfinder Kingmaker 4 times on Unfair, once with a Cleric, once with a Sorcerer, once with a Wizard and once with a druid. In one of those playthroughs, I challenged myself to try and be as efficient as possible at time management

Most people can't even pass wild hunt on normal. IF you can solo on unfair mainly without the "cheese" builds, you are the exception, not the norm. Note that less than 0.2% of the players completed the game on unfair according to steam achievements.

That said, top 101 RPG of all time on RPG codex ( https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=11193 )

The top 30 has no cooldown. Divinity is the top ratted game with cooldowns and appears on 31th position.

That said, cooldowns only got popularized thanks to WoW

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The top 30 has no cooldown

This isn't true. There's even at least one in the top 10.
Underrail is considered to have great combat and it has cooldowns, I'm not sure where this "cooldowns bad" obsession came from.

 

[visions]

That said, top 101 RPG of all time on RPG codex ( https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=11193 )

The top 30 has no cooldown. Divinity is the top ratted game with cooldowns and appears on 31th position.

Underrail is number 16 and has cooldowns.

Just saying, cba with the wider argument here because fuck this shit, life is too short as it is.

 

[Sharpedge]

I soloed Pathfinder Kingmaker 4 times on Unfair, once with a Cleric, once with a Sorcerer, once with a Wizard and once with a druid. In one of those playthroughs, I challenged myself to try and be as efficient as possible at time management

Most people can't even pass wild hunt on normal. IF you can solo on unfair mainly without the "cheese" builds, you are the exception, not the norm. Note that less than 0.2% of the players completed the game on unfair according to steam achievements.

That said, top 101 RPG of all time on RPG codex ( https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=11193 )

The top 30 has no cooldown. Divinity is the top ratted game with cooldowns and appears on 31th position.

That said, cooldowns only got popularized thanks to WoW

Spoiler

Not going to replay the game and record then upload 80+ hours of gameplay just to prove a point. You can take it on faith it was done solo. I never managed to finish a solo unfair last Azlanti run though, but I did try it a few times.

As for the rest of your comment, it isn't really relevant to my argument. My argument is that just because a game does or does not use cooldowns doesn't automatically make a game bad or good. A ranking of games doesn't change that.

 

[Absinthe]

Cooldown design, rogue design, and aggro system all come off as a shitty attempt to clone WoW in a single-player RPG, and WoW had pretty shitty gameplay in the first place. Then there's the bugs and incorrect tooltips to make matters even more shit. In DAO all the fun abilities go to the Mage class while the Warrior and Rogue classes have no real interesting abilities outside of specializations. It's all minute variations on how to hit shit for damage, and thanks to animation speed issues a number of these are worse than just auto-attacking. DAO is blatantly copying WoW and WoW did combat better. This is how badly BioWare handled it. DAO also lacks immobilize effects and decided to make all immobilizes into stuns with absurd consequences (Small Claw Traps are crazy powerful, as is Cone of Cold). Cooldown design is also a general band-aid for a lack of decent ideas for abilities so you want to create multiple abilities that basically do the same shit and not have players just spam the good one, but hit a variety of different buttons.

On top of that it is marred by significant issues like the dex-to-damage patch (1.02?) making dual-wielding heavy one-handers worthless, Lethality talent much less valuable, and making dex-maximizing builds (which have absurd defense making them impossible to get hit by non-mages - but you can accumulate 100% spell resistance with gear as a Dwarf or using DLC items - or the extremely rare enemy that uses Perfect Striking, ie. Ser Cauthrien) into strong damage dealers. Mages also suffer from One Stat To Rule Them All syndrome where all they need is the magic stat which boosts their spell damage, heals, magic defenses, health potions, mana potions, and so forth. No reason to ever invest stats into anything other than magic. Then you get Wynne, a Mage which has a special unique ability that is completely overpowered and gives her a ginormous boost to spellpower (+70 towards the end).

And on top of that you throw in a shit system where you regen to full outside of every fight, a potion system where you can rotate potion types (small, medium, etc.) to circumvent the 5 second cooldown on your instant heal, and underwhelming encounter design that seems to believe loads of trash mobs without interesting abilities or good tactics are the way to go. Sure, the gameplay gets a bit better if you add combat rules fixpack, improved tooltips, two specializations sten (because Bioware forgot to give him a companion spec or a spec point at 7), and improved tactics (if you use tactics) mods, deliberately avoid using health/mana potions, avoid using DLC items, avoid using Wynne's special ability, avoid pure dex builds, avoid doing pure cunning Captivating Song Bard stunlock, avoid using Mana Clash, avoid using Glyph of Neutralization, avoid using Force Field, avoid using Entropic Death, probably avoid Blood Mage specialization, Cone of Cold, and Confusion too, and throw in Slinks S3 Ravage mod to spice up encounter design, but by default DAO's combat is mind-numbingly boring and even with all that it's still too easily cheesed if you know what you're doing.

 

[Anonona]

I soloed Pathfinder Kingmaker 4 times on Unfair, once with a Cleric, once with a Sorcerer, once with a Wizard and once with a druid. In one of those playthroughs, I challenged myself to try and be as efficient as possible at time management

Most people can't even pass wild hunt on normal. IF you can solo on unfair mainly without the "cheese" builds, you are the exception, not the norm. Note that less than 0.2% of the players completed the game on unfair according to steam achievements.

That said, top 101 RPG of all time on RPG codex ( https://rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=11193 )

The top 30 has no cooldown. Divinity is the top ratted game with cooldowns and appears on 31th position.

That said, cooldowns only got popularized thanks to WoW

And the top ranked game is considered to have awful combat and encounters, yet amazing writing and dialogue. You citing the ranking is useless because it tells us very little of why they were considered the best, just that they were. And you will see many of the top ranked games are so because of reasons not related to their combat system. Also using popularity rankings to surmise the quality of anything is a poor argument, regardless if it is the Codex, RPGWatch or fucking facebook.

Cooldown design, rogue design, and aggro system all come off as a shitty attempt to clone WoW in a single-player RPG

Not enterely true, cooldown systems were first introduced in the text based Avalon: The legend lives, and has be present in different forms, like casting delay on Diablo II (which of course, were pretty short and only on some skills, but I said it is still worth noting). Not saying that modern developers aren't copying WoW, but is worth remembering that WoW had hardly any original idea on its design, instead being a mix of ideas that worked on other games.

 

[Cryomancer]

Cooldown design, rogue design, and aggro system all come off as a shitty attempt to clone WoW in a single-player RPG, and WoW had pretty shitty gameplay in the first place.

Well said. Also, before WoW, we had good mmorpg's that was just a MP version of their SP counterparts, for eg - Ultima Online, Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands(thanks AT&T for killing it), now every mmo is a wow clone and SP games are trying to copy wow very hard. It is good for those who wanna games as ""work"", micromanaging rotations and endless farming gear, but for those who wanna games as escapist immersive alternative worlds, it ****

doesn't automatically make a game bad or good. A ranking of games doesn't change that.

All games with that mechanic turned into "same rotation spam", and DA:O is not a exception. I was using the same set of skills in like 75%+ fights. ToEE in other hands, i rarely used the same spell 3 times in a row. The exception is the will'o wisps who apparently only take damage from magic missile and has high AC, so my warriors are missing a lot then and people complain about then on pfkm where they are far easier.

 

[DalekFlay]

Outside of the Deep Roads trash mobs I think DA:O's combat is pretty underrated. I get why some people hate cooldowns, but I like them well enough when done well and I think they are in DA:O. They're balanced enough you can't spam, and abilities are varied enough you're not just waiting. The tactical placement stuff is pretty good because of the AoE focus, and the harder modes are properly difficult at times. There's a lot of trash fights but there's also a lot of well designed fights. Solo and other weird challenges are fun to watch on Youtube. I am a fan, don't care who knows it.

I can't really compare it well to BG2 though because in all honestly I haven't played that game in more than a decade.

 

[Sykar]

Cooldown design, rogue design, and aggro system all come off as a shitty attempt to clone WoW in a single-player RPG, and WoW had pretty shitty gameplay in the first place.

Well said. Also, before WoW, we had good mmorpg's that was just a MP version of their SP counterparts, for eg - Ultima Online, Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands(thanks AT&T for killing it), now every mmo is a wow clone and SP games are trying to copy wow very hard. It is good for those who wanna games as ""work"", micromanaging rotations and endless farming gear, but for those who wanna games as escapist immersive alternative worlds, it ****

doesn't automatically make a game bad or good. A ranking of games doesn't change that.

All games with that mechanic turned into "same rotation spam", and DA:O is not a exception. I was using the same set of skills in like 75%+ fights. ToEE in other hands, i rarely used the same spell 3 times in a row. The exception is the will'o wisps who apparently only take damage from magic missile and has high AC, so my warriors are missing a lot then and people complain about then on pfkm where they are far easier.

Well CDs originally at least on mana classes were few, not sure about rogues or warriors. As a main mage player from Classic to WotLK, mage had only about a handful of CDs, most spells were 1.5 seconds to 3.5 seconds casts without CD and mana management was far more important. That changed though over the course of the years with more and more powerful CDs being implemented, many of the 1, 3 or 5 minute variety.
Biggest problem was that Blizzard was too stupid to make intricate interactions between your spells. As mage you only really got shatter mechanic and that one never worked on bosses stupidly enough, so frost mages spammed Frostbolt all day long during Classic, most boring PvE specc by far, with the occasional Fireblast during movement. Fire mage at least had to weave in Scorch for the debuff whose name I forgot atm. Arcane was not really a thing outside of PvP sadly.
Of course that they had to balance PvP and PvE differently from the get go was retarded. They should have balanced solely around PvP and build PvE around that and companies really need to stop making and bog standard boss immune to all CC. It is boring and lazy design which undercuts non-DPS classes, either making them undesirable for PvE or force them with tacked on special interactions like Deep Freeze from WitLK instead of freezing just plain damaging the boss.

 

[Absinthe]

Like I said, it's a shitty attempt to clone WoW, in ways that actually manage to be inferior to WoW.

 

[Vorark]

Something DAO pulled off really well was the tactics system. Being able to automatically setup small buffs or drink potions if health was lower than a set value lessened the need to micro every single detail during the encounters.

 

[Cryomancer]

I finished DA:O two times. BG, i did many runs, with many chars, soloed the game, why? Because on BG, each new spell, each new enemy, each new weapon, each new enemy "formation", each new dungeon(...) changes things on combat. DA:O felt very "the same" from most part of the game

One thing that Origins did amazingly like Vorark said is the tactical system which reduces the worst RtWP problem. Micromanaging. You don't need to constant pause to see if someone needs healing. You can create rules to "heal on condition X". Dragon Age Inquisition in other hands, i never finished. I completed a couple of quests and could't play more a single second of the piece of trash that inquisition is.

a rant about inquisition

• I hate that the game has wow style fetch quests everywhere
• I hate that i can't allocate more attributes
• I hate that spells scale with your weapon DESPITE the option to say that you don't need weapons to be deadly and previous lore
• I hate cooldowns
• I hate the romanceable companions
• I hate that enemies are bullet sponge
• I hate that dialog wheels
• I hate htat they got rid of blood magic to put the """""necromancy"""""
• I hate that necromancy is the WORST iteration ever with no redeeming quality
• I hate the region lock without any advice and the poor translation with therms that nobody uses at least in my cty
• (...)
• And hate that my refund request """failed"""" some years ago.

Origins is not a complete wow clone, has good story, good companions, good decision making, but inquisition is completely trash. You can't make necromancers worst than on inquisition unless you try really hard. IS the Origins spirit specialization without animate dead.

 

[Nano]

2 and Inquisition both increasingly butchered Dragon Age's established combat lore. Trying to keep things fresh with every new installment is probably BioWare's justification.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

2 and Inquisition both increasingly butchered Dragon Age's established combat lore. Trying to keep things fresh with every new installment is probably BioWare's justification.

Oh boy, I can't wait to see what BioWare has in store for us with DA4!

Spoiler

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

DA:O mages were powerful, but to say they were more powerful than BG2 is absurd. Cycling your blood mage powers with entropy could do tremendous CC and damage, along with certain combos mentioned like walking bomb, mana clash, or imploding a force cage. That's still nothing compared to BG2 mages. Time stops, illusions (mislead, project image, simulacrum, improved invisibility, etc), sequencers, contingencies, various immunities, spell traps, death spells, summons, debuffs. It was all so glorious. The options. The raw power. The two are nowhere near comparable.

 

[MpuMngwana]

probably avoid Blood Mage specialization, Cone of Cold, and Confusion too

No no no, the way to make the combat harder is to teach Morrigan Cone of Cold, set up proper tactics and let the AI control her. She crowd controls your party much more efficiently than any enemy.

 

[passerby]

I'm not sure where this "cooldowns bad" obsession came from.

From expecting a minimum of versimilitude in a ruleset.

 

[Falksi]

Outside of the Deep Roads trash mobs I think DA:O's combat is pretty underrated. I get why some people hate cooldowns, but I like them well enough when done well and I think they are in DA:O. They're balanced enough you can't spam, and abilities are varied enough you're not just waiting. The tactical placement stuff is pretty good because of the AoE focus, and the harder modes are properly difficult at times. There's a lot of trash fights but there's also a lot of well designed fights. Solo and other weird challenges are fun to watch on Youtube. I am a fan, don't care who knows it.

Pretty much my thoughts too.

However I recently played BG2 again, and I'll be totally honest I found the cooldowns & energy + mana pools resetting after each battle in DA:O FAR more conducive to having a fun time than BG's limits + resting. Playing PoE recently too and I thought the same, the most fun I had there by far was with per-battle abilities rather than per rest.

The fun lies within how you manage these talents & spells during combat, not having to constantly manage them outside of combat too. That's just busywork.

 

[Cryomancer]

I'm not sure where this "cooldowns bad" obsession came from.

• After seeing entire (SUB) genres dying from cooldowns, look to 90s mmos like Ultima Online/Dark Sun Online crimson sands and look to modern mmos which are all wow clones.
• After seeing good franchises being ruined and one reason being cooldowns(Diablo 3 is trash, ArcaniA G4 is trash)
• All post nwn2 D&D adaptations being trash due this mechanic. Including sword coast legends.
• It is a mechanic that leaded to the ludicrous amount of ludonarrative dissonance that we see on modern games.
• And turn combat into "same rotation spam", which is spamming the same rotation of skills over and over and BTW it is extremely annoying
• And the modern games who doesn't use this BS having the best combat. See Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma.

Contrary to other mechanics that makes no sense, like a plate armor having the same AC vs a sword and vs a warhammer on 3.5e, cooldowns constantly take out the control from the player and forces the player to constant pay attention not to the game itself, but to a artificial action bar and artificial timers. In other words, they break the immersion and game flow far more than any other arbitrary nonsensical mechanic.

------------------------------

As for Baldur's Gate mages VS Dragon Age Origins mages, IMO we should compare DA:O with BG1 mages. Since DA:O is clearly not a high level/epic level adventure. And BTW, BG1 archers are amazing. BG2 in other hands, enemy has too much resistances vs it.

 

[Anonona]

All post nwn2 D&D adaptations being trash due this mechanic. Including sword coast legends.

How many of those have been that aren't MMOs, besides Sword Coast Legends? And arguably that was the lesser of that piece of trash problems.

After seeing good franchises being ruined and one reason being cooldowns(Diablo 3 is trash, ArcaniA G4 is trash)

Again, those are trash for many more reasons that just the introduction of cooldowns.

And turn combat into "same rotation spam", which is spamming the same rotation of skills over and over and BTW it is extremely annoying

Over generalization, the "rotation spam" comes from poor design when it comes to skills and enemies. If enemies have varied resistances and all skill are balance enough to be useful and have synergy between them, you end up having to change and alter how you approach each combat. We could say the same of the Vanecian system of having the issues of just spamming your best spell and winning, but we both know if the encounters are good designed, the same strategy won't work on everything.

After seeing entire (SUB) genres dying from cooldowns, look to 90s mmos like Ultima Online/Dark Sun Online crimson sands and look to modern mmos which are all wow clones.

Again, many of these games have far more issues that just having cool downs. In fact, over balancing, casualization and poor design of content are the main reasons many MMOs dies. Because if cooldowns were the only reason those failed, then action MMO like Tera, Black Desert and the like should be doing better than they are.

Contrary to other mechanics that makes no sense, like a plate armor having the same AC vs a sword and vs a warhammer on 3.5e, cooldowns constantly take out the control from the player and forces the player to constant pay attention not to the game itself, but to a artificial action bar and artificial timers. In other words, they break the immersion and game flow far more than any other arbitrary nonsensical mechanic.

How about turn based games? You have to plan turn ahead to when your skills recover. Also, you are overstating how much it "forces" the player attention away. I am surprised this is even a concern, is not hard to keep track of your skills coming up again, and you can even learn the timing, just as you would do in any real time game. You constantly spew the same poor arguments, which are usually useless, as you cannot apply them to every single game that uses cooldowns. Sure 90% of MMOs with cooldowns are trash, but that is because 90% of MMOs are trash, point. The same can be said about many games, RPGs included. The only point that you have made that holds any true, is that they are poorly justified and unrealistic, and that says nothing about them mechanically.

 

[Cryomancer]

How many of those have been that aren't MMOs, besides Sword Coast Legends?

A lot of mobile cash grabs. like Warriors of Waterdeep

then action MMO like Tera, Black Desert and the like should be doing better than they are.

You are right. But on mmo genre, even when they try to make a Ultima Online clone, they end up with a WoW clone. See Legend of Aria. They added cooldown to even meditation. And had a wow itemization too. My first RPG was M&M VII. In that time, i was thinking that on future RPG's would have 100% scenario destruction, far more weapons, projectile and spell effects, in depth physics, far more detailed dialog with a AI that can process natural language and .... We got a lot of boring "press A for awesome" games with dialog wheels everywhere...