Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[~RAGING BONER~]

Dragon Age Magic is not DnD magic, it's scope is far less even for the rare ancient magic users that have appeared throughout...

also, in DA mages are born with magic, everyone else is not. Just because the main character and a few elites in the martial classes have prodigious talent and years of training doesn't mean that every fighter in DA is a threat to even a mediocre mage. It does mean that those few elite exceptions can mow down all but the best of mages however.
(strong to elite mages being more common than elite fighters)

The entire templar order is a group of fighters that ironically have to use certain magic properties just to enslave young mages before they get too powerful.

 

[LivingOne]

I don't consider monsters like Dragons and Beholders to belong to any particular class. (Let's call it "Mage and Epic Monster Hunting Simulator 3000" )

How about Sarevok then?
In any event since dragons have been mentioned does Sawyer consider the BG2 to be enemies with hard counters?The defensive abilities they had were(IIRC) Stoneskin(wich could be dealt with an appropriate counter but also tearing it down manually,maybe with Haste to make things faster),Wing buffet(wich defended only against melee party members) and Dragon Fear(wich could be prevented/dispelled in a few ways) wich individually don't seem to be hard counters but maybe if put together he considers them to be so?I'm not sure how I'd feel about that since nerfing/removing them really hurt the fight against Icasaracht.
On the other hand it's funny but I'd say that among all the IE dragons the one that seem to me to be most in opposition to Sawyer's 'no hard counters' principle is IWD2' Chahopek with its + 4 weapon resistance(in BG2 it was only + 2 IIRC).
Imo would be intresting to ask him as it would let us understand where it is that he draws line in regard to what he finds acceptable or not.

 

[Infinitron]

LivingOne OK, I'll ask him that.

Can a moderator please split out this conversation? Crooked Bee SuicideBunny

 

[Roguey]

They weren't memorable as Mage vs Mage thought the way BG2 battles were.

Mages should be a danger as a part of a group, not by themselves and because you have to peel off the bullshit layers with special abilities before you can damage them.

Mages died like flies in IWD2, there was never a reason to go 'oh shit' when you came across one. If you found the mages battles in IWD challenging, I dare say you played poorly. When you met a mage in BG2 it was reversed.. especially with mods.

Nope. Hard counters = instant win. That's pretty much the definition. "Difficulty" comes from figuring out which hard counters to use. Boring.

 

[Delterius]

Bottom line, I think the BG2 mage duel nostalgists need to ask themselves what they want.

I'm pretty sure I know what I want, it just so happens that many people just know it better. Somehow.

But I find the comment 'mages that are just flat out more badass than every other class at the same level' a bit funny because it means the proeminence of a majority of the avaiable classes. Most everyone is capable of spellcasting in this game. That 'most' quickly turns into 'fucking everyone' when you factor in item usage.

 

[Dreaad]

Wouldn't that just make fighters = mages with different graphical effects.

You don't have to give them the exact same spells & abilites (something that 4th edition tried to do and failed). Most fighter skills are passive, so they don't require any attention on a RTwP game and playing them ends up boring. Had the game been turn-based and with a bit more active skills like power blow, bull rush, shield bash and all that, no one would complain.

See I never got that whole fighters are boring thing... in fact, in all the infinity game engines I have ever played the fighters in my party were always the ones with the highest percentage of exp out of the group and the toughest monster defeated usually belonged to them as well. For me, my mages were always used for dealing with specific situations which threatened the fighters effectiveness. The fighters themselves were the main damage dealers, which actually (well maybe I'm slow or something ) made them rather interesting to use, you had to pick which weapon to use on whom and in which order to make sure the fight didn't fall apart. Would I have liked my fighter to have special abilities to activate.... I don't know, while it would be nice to see some AHWESOME spinning back flips etc I felt that their ridiculous consistent damage output was the most reliable ability I had.

What's really interesting is that I know that some people used mages to deal with the threats and used fighters to simply draw agro (so basically the opposite of what I did), one of my friends went through the game as a sorcerer abusing similariclum or whatever it was called, defeating all the enemies he came accross with about 15 invisible stalkers or higher level summons if required, never actually letting the pc cast offensive spells. My point is that system of powerful mages was never really a problem that needed fixing and yet once again someone set's out to fix it. I can understand that Sawyer means well, which counts for something, I just have an uncomfortable feeling about where his design is going. I guess overall more activated abilities can't be a bad thing....

 

[Azarkon]

Actually, yes. For some players, it is.

Now, if you could keep what was great about BG2 mage battles, the exact same combat dynamics, the exact same cool abilities - but also give fighters extra powers for those players interested in using them, wouldn't that be something worth doing?

TANSTAAFL

When you offload that which is unique in one trope to another trope, you lose the uniqueness and thus the potency of that trope. In a world where mages and fighters are both capable of the same feats just in different ways, then the mage trope is by its very nature broken, because magehood is then no longer a proxy for the divine aspirant, but simply another way of whacking people. Just the same, when you give a fighter mage-esque abilities, you end up not with a fighter, but with a mage in armor, and when the entire world is filled with mages in armor, then not only is the mage trope lost, but the fighter trope, too, is lost.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing that fighters ought to be right-click simpletons. Tactical depth is a goal for every class design. However, in game universes where the mage trope is utilized, the subsequent striving for inter-class balance has a habit of becoming its undoing. The examples are too plentiful to cite, but the classic scenario that everyone ought to have encountered is the MMO, in which mages without fail become http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lightning-bolt

 

[Azarkon]

OK. But when's the last time you had to "rely on items or rare abilities" or "enlist the help of the rest of the party" to deal with a powerful fighter or rogue? What you're doing here is basically accepting the game's status quo of "mages are the most powerful, the primary challenge in this game is killing mages, deal with it". And you know, that's okay. You can make a fun game which basically boils down to "Mage Hunting Simulator 3000". But not every RPG needs to be that.

Sure, when you reject the Uber Mage trope, you also reject the gameplay that comes with it. But game designers are greedy creatures who want both: they want the Uber Mage trope, because that's just what's logical in the fantasy tradition, and at the same time they want to make fighters equally capable.

The end result is a dull, homogenized experience in which spells and combat abilities substitute for one another, which, to be fair, go hand in hand with generic class-irrelevant narratives where you play Joe Adventurer instead of a coherent character with believable motivations and interactions.

There's nothing criminal about making a generic game where the difference between playing a mage vs. a fighter is strictly stylistic. But developers ought to stop shoving the balance excuse down our throats - it's not balance that's holding you back. It's time / resources / lack of imagination / laziness.

 

[Infinitron]

The end result is a dull, homogenized experience in which spells and combat abilities substitute for one another, which, to be fair, go hand in hand with generic class-irrelevant narratives where you play Joe Adventurer instead of a coherent character with believable motivations and interactions.

Sounds like every D&D CRPG ever.

There's nothing criminal about making a generic game where the difference between playing a mage vs. a fighter is strictly stylistic.

There's a midway point between 4E-style "all classes are the same except with renamed abilities" and mage supremacy. Just because no class is all powerful doesn't mean they all have to be samey and generic.

 

[tuluse]

Sure, when you reject the Uber Mage trope, you also reject the gameplay that comes with it. But game designers are greedy creatures who want both: they want the Uber Mage trope, because that's just what's logical in the fantasy tradition, and at the same time they want to make fighters equally capable.

The end result is a dull, homogenized experience in which spells and combat abilities substitute for one another, which, to be fair, go hand in hand with generic class-irrelevant narratives where you play Joe Adventurer instead of a coherent character with believable motivations and interactions.

There's nothing criminal about making a generic game where the difference between playing a mage vs. a fighter is strictly stylistic. But developers ought to stop shoving the balance excuse down our throats - it's not balance that's holding you back. It's time / resources / lack of imagination / laziness.

Well remember there is a lore explanation. Everyone has the power of SOULS!

 

[Infinitron]

That too. But I'm not sure if we're talking strictly about Project Eternity here.

 

[Roguey]

DA2 classes were more homogenized but they certainly didn't play the same. See: warrior and mage frustration with one-on-one duel versus Arishok compared to the rogue's ease. See because the rogue is the single-target DPS class, whereas mages are the ranged-AOE DPS class and the warriors are melee-aoe DPS.

 

[Azarkon]

Sounds like every D&D RPG ever.

Sounds like every CRPG ever, but degrees wise, BG 2 was one of the less bad ones when it came to class diversity.

No, there's a midway point between 4E-style "all classes are the same except with renamed abilities" and mage supremacy. Just because no class is all powerful doesn't mean they all have to be samey and generic.

My personal opinion is that you lose the moment you start with the idea that classes have to be balanced in power.

What powers avail a class is - ought to be - a product of the roleplaying experience you want the class to provide. In saying that you want all classes to be around the same power level, you're effectively saying that you're dedicated to providing roleplaying experiences that are generic in, at the minimum, the dimension of personal power. But of course, it never stops there, because a mindset that begins with balance doesn't stray far from the pendulum. Thus every quest, every item, every race, every ability, every party member, and every interaction become subject to the same strictures.

It's all very counter productive, and it's ridiculous to me that developers keep using the balance dogma to excuse them building generic roleplaying experiences.

I don't want to hear about how you plan to balance the game's classes. I want to hear about how you plan to provide a variety of enjoyable, coherent, and immersive experiences. Balance has little to do with it.

 

[Infinitron]

What powers avail a class is - ought to be - a product of the roleplaying experience you want the class to provide. In saying that you want all classes to be around the same power level, you're effectively saying that you're dedicated to providing roleplaying experiences that are generic in, at the minimum, the dimension of personal power. But of course, it never stops there, because a mindset that begins with balance doesn't stray far from the pendulum. Thus every quest, every item, every race, every ability, every party member, and every interaction become subject to the same strictures.

Oh FFS. Where does this fear of the evil balance bogeyman come from? What single player CRPG has actually been ruined by the evil balance? Can you give me an example?

I can give you a list of unbalanced RPGs that fail handily to "provide a variety of enjoyable, coherent, and immersive experiences". Again, the first game in the series this thread is supposed to be about is one of them.

 

[Dreaad]

What powers avail a class is - ought to be - a product of the roleplaying experience you want the class to provide. In saying that you want all classes to be around the same power level, you're effectively saying that you're dedicated to providing roleplaying experiences that are generic in, at the minimum, the dimension of personal power. But of course, it never stops there, because a mindset that begins with balance doesn't stray far from the pendulum. Thus every quest, every item, every race, every ability, every party member, and every interaction become subject to the same strictures.

Oh FFS. Where does this fear of the evil balance bogeyman come from? What single player CRPG has actually been ruined by the evil balance? Can you give me an example?

I can give you a list of unbalanced RPGs that fail handily to "provide a variety of enjoyable, coherent, and immersive experiences". Again, the first game in the series this thread is supposed to be about is one of them.

The execution of balance isn't really what this conversation is about. DA: O for all the people that say it had overpowered mages... it would not be a better game if the mages were weaker. It would still be bad because then... mages would work exactly like rogues/fighters except with different graphical effects. Every class can stun, every class can knockdown and every class can aoe and single target burst. Some classes just have numerical bonuses to the exact same abilities (in DA: O case it was mages), and that is exactly what I/we are so scared of Infinitron. There is no inherent reason to balance classes against one another in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, especially one where you control a party.

 

[Azarkon]

Where does this fear of the evil balance bogeyman come from? What single player CRPG has actually been ruined by the evil balance? Can you give me an example?

All of them, but especially those games that start with the goal of balance. For example, 4th edition D&D.

It says a lot when the games people keep citing for memorable class mechanics are all games that notoriously fail at balance:

Baldur's Gate 2 / AD&D: mages and various optimized builds of other classes
Diablo 2: several game breaking specs being eons ahead of others
Final Fantasy Tactics: see Diablo 2

But that's not to say games that don't maintain balance are automatically great. That's not the argument. The argument is that balance normally comes at a cost, and that cost is too great when it comes to single-player RPGs.

 

[Roguey]

DA: O for all the people that say it had overpowered mages... it would not be a better game if the mages were weaker.

Actually it totally would because several mage abilities would outright trivialize combat encounters Bioware actually put effort into.

 

[Infinitron]

Dreaad As I've explained many times, the classes aren't balanced against "each other". This isn't an MMO, this isn't PvP. It's about all classes being useful and fun to play in various situations, so that the player isn't locked down to one "correct" party composition that he reads about on GameFAQs.

Azarkon I don't know what to tell you. Whatever I show you, you'll say "no, this is generic, all-powerful mages are more interesting". You've set yourself up in a subjective unfalsifiable position, so there's no point in arguing with you.

 

[Dreaad]

DA: O for all the people that say it had overpowered mages... it would not be a better game if the mages were weaker.

Actually it totally would because several mage abilities would outright trivialize combat encounters Bioware actually put effort into.

I'm assuming you've played through DA: O without a mage in your party, like me... so I have to ask, did you really find it that much more challenging? Mages provide a skip this fight option, aside from that they really didn't add or remove anything interesting to the gameplay.

 

[Azarkon]

Azarkon I don't know what to tell you. Whatever I show you, you'll say "no, this is generic, all-powerful mages are more interesting". You've set yourself up in a subjective unfalsifiable position, so there's no point in arguing with you.

There is nothing subjective about what I'm arguing, and it need not involve mages at all. For example, replace all-powerful mages with combat-limited thieves and you have the exact same argument. It's not an accident that the design of thieving classes have increasingly turned towards the warrior-in-leather archetype, whereby the thief/rogue is granted ever more hamfisted combat abilities that allow them to simulate being a fighter. This drive towards homogenization is sold on a red herring: that classes have to be equally capable in combat. Yet all balance concerns do is divert attention away from the bigger problem, which is that CRPGs aren't being built around roleplaying experiences, but around a one-size-fits-all combat experience - the proverbial poppamole. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are both perfect examples of this trend, and your 'all powerful mage' rant is nothing but a distraction.

The bottom line is that nobody cared all that greatly about mages being OP in BG 2 combat. To the degree that they did care, it was because the game offered no other roleplaying experiences besides combat. The solution to mages being OP / thieves being UP is not balance, it's separate narrative/gameplay paths. Playing a weak character is its own reward in well designed games.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

OK. But when's the last time you had to "rely on items or rare abilities" or "enlist the help of the rest of the party" to deal with a powerful fighter or rogue?

Well, given that equipment and spell scrolls are technically items...

What you're doing here is basically accepting the game's status quo of "mages are the most powerful, the primary challenge in this game is killing mages, deal with it".

Why does it matter how well the player classes are represented among enemies? Honest question. It's one thing to have a concern for how the different classes can interact with enemies and complete the content, but their representation among enemies, more specifically high-difficulty encounters seems a little unimportant.

Hypothetically a Fighter or Thief could be made very dangerous (as the player can easily do), but making them dangerous would really be a pain for a lot of reasons.

Making a Fighter dangerous would involve giving them loads of resistances/immunities via martial-class equipment a la player character Fighters (and be beneficiaries of buffs from any casters on their side). And Thieves would need to make excessive use of Traps or Backstabs (possibly with Invisibility; like the SCS2 mod has no problem doing) as well as lots of sneaky equipment (oh hello Cloak of Non-Detection how are you?).

Basically, this makes both of them huge pains in the ass to integrate into the game. Loading up enemy warriors with equipment equivalent to what a typical Fighter a few hours out of Chateau Irenicus could have would result in a huge monty haul campaign and even if you dodged that by making their items not drop it wouldn't be much fun because you can't use Knowledge: D&D to guess their capabilities as you would a typical monster out of the manual. How are you supposed to know that Lord Dingleberry is wearing Dragon Plate +5 that makes him immune to mind-effects and the elements or that Baron Crustybum the Itchy, through equipment munchkinizing, has stacked his immunities to all damage types into the high 90-percent area besides Acid because *gamey reasons*.

And with Thieves...geez. Most people would flip shit if Thieves did anything close to what something like SCS2 does (actually makes them play well) because their waifus would get chunked by hideous backstab damage. Plus, Traps are cheesy enough when used by the player; imagine enemies being able to randomly mine the battlefield with powerful snares. Imagine how difficult that would be to script.

It's not hard to see why Bioware just went, "Fuck it" as far as making dangerous high-level Fighters and Thieves and just went with casters and monsters as the primary high-level threats. It would have been far too cumbersome. Fighters and Thieves can be powerful in player's hands, but making them powerful in the "hands" of a CPU gets messy fast.

What do you think of the updates you've seen so far?

Eh, ambivalent really.

A lot of the mechanics sound like they could be excellent or terrible very easily depending on how the game-as-a-whole is. Theory-crafting is one thing, but there's no substitute for playtesting as far as understanding and evaluating a system goes. Plus, content is kind of an important thing as well and that's probably my biggest concern. I do really like the idea of scaling encounters based on difficulty level...though I have no illusions that it will be only applied in some encounters and likely applied systemically once they realize how much of an additional burden it will become (not only content creation, but testing each difficulty).

 

[DalekFlay]

"I enjoy playing overpowered mages don't fuck this up for me bro!"

 

[Spectacle]

There's a midway point between 4E-style "all classes are the same except with renamed abilities" and mage supremacy. Just because no class is all powerful doesn't mean they all have to be samey and generic.

That's pretty much where 4E actually is in reality, instead of in the minds of the haters. The classes in 4E play very differently even if they all have the same number of power uses per day.

 

[~RAGING BONER~]

meh, I always felt that, spec-ing aside, a nice [Fighter > Rogue > Wizard > Fighter] deadlock is the best way to go for commercial focus crpg like this one...

 

[Infinitron]

There is nothing subjective about what I'm arguing, and it need not involve mages at all. For example, replace all-powerful mages with combat-limited thieves and you have the exact same argument. It's not an accident that the design of thieving classes have increasingly turned towards the warrior-in-leather archetype, whereby the thief/rogue is granted ever more hamfisted combat abilities that allow them to simulate being a fighter. This drive towards homogenization is sold on a red herring: that classes have to be equally capable in combat. Yet all balance concerns do is divert attention away from the bigger problem, which is that CRPGs aren't being built around roleplaying experiences, but around a one-size-fits-all combat experience - the proverbial poppamole. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are both perfect examples of this trend, and your 'all powerful mage' rant is nothing but a distraction.

The bottom line is that nobody cared all that greatly about mages being OP in BG 2 combat. To the degree that they did care, it was because the game offered no other roleplaying experiences besides combat. The solution to mages being OP / thieves being UP is not balance, it's separate narrative/gameplay paths. Playing a weak character is its own reward in well designed games.

"CRPGs built around combat and not around 'roleplaying' are uninteresting and popamole!"

NOPE NOTHING SUBJECTIVE HERE BRO

What you're asking for here is essentially many separate games, each one tailored to a different class. I'm not sure you're playing the right genre of games, honestly.