Review Vault Dweller Does Dragon Age II

[Roguey]

The reason I think the glancing blows system is worse:
With this system, it doesn't matter how good your character is. If you have enough potions and a healer, you can defeat any foe with even a low level character. Since you do damage everytime, it just takes longer. With a %miss system, you cannot even damage the enemy, if your character sucks.

The Gothic series doesn't have a %miss system, and it doesn't look like Divinity 2 has one either (though the latter is a good example of how not-missing plus less emphasis on active defense equals health bloat). Would you say in those games it's just a case of infinitely healing yourself to win against anything?

 

[Naked Ninja]

J_C, that is an exaggeration. If you're doing 1 point of damage per shot and your opponent is doing 100, you won't win unless you have 100x the HP or your healer is godlike. In which case the flaw is with the healing mechanics, not the glancing blows. And the same flaw would apply in a to hit system.

 

[Lord Rocket]

Consider this incredibly simplistic example:
Miss system: 20% chance to hit, 10 damage/successful strike.
Glancing blow system: 20% of full damage, 6HP full damage, 1HP glancing blow

These examples are equivalent as you can reasonably expect to do 10HP/5 rounds.

The progression is, from 0 hits > 5 hits over the course of five rounds:
0/5 (32.77%) | 10/10 (40.96%) | 20/15 (20.48%) | 30/20 (5.12%) | 40/25 (0.64%) | 50/30 (0.03%)

I used AnyDice to get those percentages (super useful resource!), by the way, although I did in in an exceptionally cheap way. People who are good at maths, please tell me if I got that wrong.

Average damage over 10000 rounds, assuming I'm right:
0/16385 + 40960/40960 + 40960/30720 + 15360/10240 + 2560/1600 + 150/90 = 99990/99995

Alright so we can conclude: short term, yeah, glancing blow system might outstrip it's older brother. Not so much overall, though, and the first system is far more open to save/reload abuse (ie. reload a bunch of times until you're hitting every round is more useful under the miss system). Mathematically, however, the two systems can be equivalent and there's no inherent reason for either to result in HP bloat or other dumb shit like that.

Now before anyone says anything like but dice roll randomly ololololololol remember that the more dice you roll, the closer to the mean you're going to get. Check it out.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The reason I think the glancing blows system is worse:
With this system, it doesn't matter how good your character is. If you have enough potions and a healer, you can defeat any foe with even a low level character. Since you do damage everytime, it just takes longer. With a %miss system, you cannot even damage the enemy, if your character sucks.

The Gothic series doesn't have a %miss system, and it doesn't look like Divinity 2 has one either (though the latter is a good example of how not-missing plus less emphasis on active defense equals health bloat). Would you say in those games it's just a case of infinitely healing yourself to win against anything?

A better question is "Was it a good system?" Was the Gothic series ever praised for the character and combat systems?

For the record, Gothic kept the always hitting thing in check with armor DR, which was an impassable barrier until you get a weapon that was actually capable causing some damage.

With this system, it doesn't matter how good your character is. If you have enough potions and a healer, you can defeat any foe with even a low level character. Since you do damage everytime, it just takes longer. With a %miss system, you cannot even damage the enemy, if your character sucks.

So why is this a bad thing?

Why is what a bad thing? Why a low level character with enough healing potions defeating any foe is a bad thing? Seriously? Does it really have to be explained?

What you're saying is that, with proper preparation, strategy and support, a weaker opponent can overcome a stronger one.

Not the same. Carrying 10 potions is hardly an equivalent of proper "preparation and strategy", is it now?

HP bloat is a design choice of itself, and I don't see any reason why less random damagedealing calculations would inevitably lead to it.

It's not a choice, it's a direct result of the glancing system. When damage is delivered per second, no matter how small, then you must have enough HP to be able to absorb it long enough to have a chance to win.

You have 4 party members who, let's say, do 40 dps each avg. The glancing blows reduce damage: on casual it's 3/4, normal 1/2, hard 1/4, nightmare 1/10. So, on casual glancing blows of my party members do 4x30 dps =120 dps. In 10 sec that's 1,200 hp. In a full minute it's 12,000 HP if they only do glancing blows, but they do a lot more, they do special attacks which always hit and are hundreds of points. So, an enemy that's expected to last a minute against all party members should have 20,000 HPs.

But that's on casual, right? Well, do the enemies on Hard have less HP? No. They often have more. Even if they don't and the HP remain the same, you do a lot less damage, the enemies resistance is higher, but it takes you a lot longer to go through the HP bar.

I don't think you can easily just put a dividing line between %miss and %glancing systems. It's not binary. The effect of a %glancing system depends really on the relative damage a glancing blow does. What if a glancing blow did 0.01% damage? Then is it really different from a %miss system?

Then it's not. Then it's a miss system disguised as a glancing system because the designers were too lazy/didn't have time to do dodging/blocking animations.

The point is that the glancing system IS different. If we manipulate it so that it looks and plays exactly like a miss system, well, what the fuck is the point then?

 

[Johannes]

HP bloat is a design choice of itself, and I don't see any reason why less random damagedealing calculations would inevitably lead to it.

It's not a choice, it's a direct result of the glancing system. When damage is delivered per second, no matter how small, then you must have enough HP to be able to absorb it long enough to have a chance to win.

You have 4 party members who, let's say, do 40 dps each avg. The glancing blows reduce damage: on casual it's 3/4, normal 1/2, hard 1/4, nightmare 1/10. So, on casual glancing blows of my party members do 4x30 dps =120 dps. In 10 sec that's 1,200 hp. In a full minute it's 12,000 HP if they only do glancing blows, but they do a lot more, they do special attacks which always hit and are hundreds of points. So, an enemy that's expected to last a minute against all party members should have 20,000 HPs.

But that's on casual, right? Well, do the enemies on Hard have less HP? No. They often have more. Even if they don't and the HP remain the same, you do a lot less damage, the enemies resistance is higher, but it takes you a lot longer to go through the HP bar.

And if you take a hit/miss system, same dps's, what exactly is supposed to change?

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Hmm. VD spends hours playing this rubbish, then writing a (admittedly witty) review proving what is already widely known, while I am forced to wait for AoD. I am not amused.

 

[Drakron]

And if you take a hit/miss system, same dps's, what exactly is supposed to change?

Two things.

Enemies HP are no longer required inflated to the stratosphere.
Requires players to create effective characters in combat in order to be effective in combat.

Of course there is more, with a hit/miss system armor becomes a more central point since its whats there to reduce/nullify damage.

Also you can not have the same DPS in a system that ALWAYS do damage and one that have a chance to miss, the more I think about what changes the more I realize the main difference is that you can be lazy and have a shit system with a always hit since in the end it does not matter as a Hit/Miss system requires someone to actually TEST the damn thing or it would be horrible broken to the point of unplayability.

 

[Vault Dweller]

HP bloat is a design choice of itself, and I don't see any reason why less random damagedealing calculations would inevitably lead to it.

It's not a choice, it's a direct result of the glancing system. When damage is delivered per second, no matter how small, then you must have enough HP to be able to absorb it long enough to have a chance to win.

You have 4 party members who, let's say, do 40 dps each avg. The glancing blows reduce damage: on casual it's 3/4, normal 1/2, hard 1/4, nightmare 1/10. So, on casual glancing blows of my party members do 4x30 dps =120 dps. In 10 sec that's 1,200 hp. In a full minute it's 12,000 HP if they only do glancing blows, but they do a lot more, they do special attacks which always hit and are hundreds of points. So, an enemy that's expected to last a minute against all party members should have 20,000 HPs.

But that's on casual, right? Well, do the enemies on Hard have less HP? No. They often have more. Even if they don't and the HP remain the same, you do a lot less damage, the enemies resistance is higher, but it takes you a lot longer to go through the HP bar.

And if you take a hit/miss system, same dps's, what exactly is supposed to change?

If you miss 3 times in a row, what dps are we talking about?

Let's rephrase your question as "how does a proper "miss" system affect hp?"

Diablo 2 Act 2 monsters on Normal: Sand Leaper 32-93, Scarab 40-67, Embalmed 44-99, Tomb Viper 24-39, Serpent Magus 61-100, Mauler 160-200.

Icewind Dale (a game designed for a party of 6) - Yeti 30-33, Yuan-ti Elite 46-52, Zombie 14, Ettin 65-78, Tough Lizzardman 32-34, Neo Orog General 59-70.

PS. What Drakron said.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

First, you missed my point. The player is usually much better at coordinating his characters and healing than the AI, so the player can easily keep his character(s) alive. In %miss systems staying alive doesn't mean much by itself, but in %glancing the enemy's health goes down with every second and staying alive for 2 min means a shitload of points of damage. I don't think you can easily just put a dividing line between %miss and %glancing systems. It's not binary. The effect of a %glancing system depends really on the relative damage a glancing blow does. What if a glancing blow did 0.01% damage? Then is it really different from a %miss system? Couldn't a miss system be considered a %glancing system with glancing blows that do 0 damage?

I'm no programmer but isn't that needlessly complex to implement. Wouldn't you want a miss to be a constant so you can build off of it? If everything is based on damage and damage is ever changing wouldn't that lead to coding errors. I would rather build off of something like.

Dodge -miss
miss - possibility of counter
miss - enemy loses stamina.

In boxing you would rather make someone miss entirely than block or roll with a punch. It easier to counter and it waste your opponents energy.

If you wanted a deeper and more realistic combat system that calculates something like that then wouldn't you want to define a miss? Its also a real eyesore in weapon based combat. In movies like Troy the fights are 90 percent blocking and dodging. Its not just realistic its more suspenseful and fun to watch. I'm looking forward to AoD. I appreciate how you have to be nearly unhitable to really fight at an elite level. It doesn't degenerate into a battle of potion spam and an hp bar.

 

[Lgrayman]

VD, I couldn't agree more with this review. We even stopped playing at the exact same time. My only problem is with this paragraph:

Vault Dweller wrote: Overall, you have a lot more supportive abilities to choose from but they are poorly balanced and some abilities are superior to others. For example, Blood Frenzy – a PASSIVE ability that increases the damage as your health goes down, up to 200% is clearly a must have skill for warriors, especially since it has no skill requirements and you don’t have to invest a lot of points to get it, whereas Berserk – a SUSTAINED (can have only one sustained ability active) ability that adds 10% of the remaining stamina damage (a warrior will run out of stamina FAST) is all but useless.

I'm pretty sure you can have more than one sustained ability active at a time, and indeed I did with my warrior... this particular ability may have had that restriction though. Secondly, yes, warriors do run out of stamina very quickly especially with sustained abilities active, but this can be fixed for the most part by putting points into willpower, which detracts a bit from you saying that it's only necessary to put points into 2 stats. Not a big deal obviously - great job with this review.

 

[Volourn]

OMG OMG OMG

Finally someone actually disucvsses the fukkin' review instead of bullshit.

 

[Yeesh]

No, the fact that somebody is able to calculate which weapon is better comes from a poorly designed, simple system. If there's one parameter that influence weapon effectiveness, you can clearly tell which weapon is better. If there are two, you can calculate that. But when many more are to be taken in consideration, it becomes impossible to give a definite answer.

Take JA2 for example...

Sure we can take JA2 for an example. Let's talk about the vanilla game as released. A scoped, rod&spring'd G11 or even C7 would actually handle your every battle need. And in fact, if there had been weapon skills in JA2 divided into, say, pistols, shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles, then why don't you think about how many mercs (forced as they would be by the nature of JA2 to come pre-specialized in one or more weapon skills) would be more or less useless. Pistols? Are you kidding? Shotguns? SMGs? In the real world we can see different uses for these weapons, but in the world of JA2, entire weapon classes are rendered obsolete as soon as you start finding assault rifles.

Sure they've tried and are trying to balance things in v1.13, but if you want to think of JA2 and v1.13 as a single game, you're talking about how long a development schedule to get everything right (which some here don't think they have anyway)?

So yeah, I can tell you exactly which weapons are best in JA2. Are you saying that means the game is poorly designed? Also, I just mentioned weapon skills, but note that there AREN'T ANY in JA2. Just Marksmanship. Does that mean the game's streamlined? Dumbed down?

And I'll tell you what else. I can hop on the internet and find out for you which weapons are best in just about every single fucking revered classic CRPG. I can probably do it with spell schools or skills too. By your logic, they're all poorly designed.

Anyway there are really, really, seriously and sincerely TWO options. I don't see how anybody can deny this, but I'm all ears:

1) All weapon types are balanced and equally powerful (WoW weapon design being the ultimate example, right?)

2) All weapon types are not balanced and some are more powerful than others.

Yes, you can imagine a super-detailed system that embraces a third option where different weapons are actually better depending on whether you're fighting in a small room or balancing on a precipice, but seriously what CRPGs do that? Can you name any? And are all the rest poorly designed?

 

[Drakron]

There are many ways of "balance" Yeesh.

I do not subscribe the notion that a 12 cm rock should have the same opportunity to be as useful as a Steyr AUG, it really depends on what you are trying to do.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I'm pretty sure you can have more than one sustained ability active at a time, and indeed I did with my warrior... this particular ability may have had that restriction though. Secondly, yes, warriors do run out of stamina very quickly especially with sustained abilities active, but this can be fixed for the most part by putting points into willpower, which detracts a bit from you saying that it's only necessary to put points into 2 stats. Not a big deal obviously - great job with this review.

Sustained abilities use percentages so you don't gain much from raising willpower. More important are passive abilities that let warriors/rogues recover stamina from each kill. Hence there wasn't much of a problem stamina-wise in DA2. Plus there are potions for stamina, so imo putting points into Willpower did even less for a warrior than in DAO.

 

[Mangoose]

First, you missed my point. The player is usually much better at coordinating his characters and healing than the AI, so the player can easily keep his character(s) alive. In %miss systems staying alive doesn't mean much by itself, but in %glancing the enemy's health goes down with every second and staying alive for 2 min means a shitload of points of damage. I don't think you can easily just put a dividing line between %miss and %glancing systems. It's not binary. The effect of a %glancing system depends really on the relative damage a glancing blow does. What if a glancing blow did 0.01% damage? Then is it really different from a %miss system? Couldn't a miss system be considered a %glancing system with glancing blows that do 0 damage?

I'm no programmer

Well, obviously, because somehow you put my quote and VD's quote into one big quote that I seemingly wrote. :D

snip

I've been thinking about a more radical departure from the typical whittling-down-hp model. It's slightly inspired by what I remember from the Riddle of Steel system. In my hypothetical system, the attrition aspect would be represented by whittling down a different value, called 'initiative' or 'stamina' or 'energy' or whatever. If you get "hit," you don't actually lose HP but you lose a bit of initiative. Thus, the system seems a bit more realistic in implementation.

Of course I'm not just changing 'hp' to 'initiative' and calling it a day. That's dumb. I would put hp/wounds/health on another abstract layer that is affected by the 'initiative' stat. How? I dunno. Maybe initiative is a protective layer that, depending on your current amount, reduces or avoids damage (e.g. if your initiative is at 50%, you have a 50% chance to dodge or something). Something like that. It's really just an abstract idea in my head at the moment.

The advantage of having such a multi-layered system (which, on a side note, I might have unconsciously drawn from my Operating System design class this semester) is that it's less straightforward than just having a single-layered HP defense and thus allows you to "metagame" a bit more. The player has the choice of whether to focus on decreasing the opponent's initiative, or trying to directly get at the opponent's hp, and as long as the two elements 'initiative' and 'hp' work differently mechanically (as in, not just two identical pools of energy), then there is some tactical variety involved.

Edit: I half wanted to post this in the Workshop but I don't think the idea has been fleshed out enough yet. Though if anyone thinks that this is worth a separate discussion I can copypasta over there.

 

[Johannes]

Let's rephrase your question as "how does a proper "miss" system affect hp?"

Diablo 2 Act 2 monsters on Normal: Sand Leaper 32-93, Scarab 40-67, Embalmed 44-99, Tomb Viper 24-39, Serpent Magus 61-100, Mauler 160-200.

Icewind Dale (a game designed for a party of 6) - Yeti 30-33, Yuan-ti Elite 46-52, Zombie 14, Ettin 65-78, Tough Lizzardman 32-34, Neo Orog General 59-70.

PS. What Drakron said.

By dps, I meant expected value of damage dealt. And then compare that to the hps in the game. Yes, if you do damage more constantly you probably want the numbers to be bigger, both the damages and healths, but if the ratio between the two (ie. time it takes to kill stuff) is roughly similar, why does that matter? It might look nicer but that's about it.

Yes, it does add an extra element to character creation, even might lead to having several good ways to build a character. But once you've optimized that, and are in the combat, it's still the same shit regardless if you do 10 damage on every hit or 20 with a 50% hit chance.



"Balance" mostly means to me that there is something non-trivial for the player to do. Even if I should always pick assault rifle over shotgun (or pick a +2 sword over a +1 one), doesn't necessarily mean the game is badly balanced, if the assault rifle battles aren't just about going through the motions.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

So, basically, the new games don't have miss animations which Fallout had in 1998?

 

[Lgrayman]

I'm pretty sure you can have more than one sustained ability active at a time, and indeed I did with my warrior... this particular ability may have had that restriction though. Secondly, yes, warriors do run out of stamina very quickly especially with sustained abilities active, but this can be fixed for the most part by putting points into willpower, which detracts a bit from you saying that it's only necessary to put points into 2 stats. Not a big deal obviously - great job with this review.

Sustained abilities use percentages so you don't gain much from raising willpower. More important are passive abilities that let warriors/rogues recover stamina from each kill. Hence there wasn't much of a problem stamina-wise in DA2. Plus there are potions for stamina, so imo putting points into Willpower did even less for a warrior than in DAO.

So let's say a character has 100 stamina. A sustained ability uses 20% of it, leaving 80 for abilities like mighty blow, taunt, etc. If you didn't put any points in willpower maybe you'd have 60 stamina and only 48 left for those unsustained abilities. I'd say putting points into willpower was pretty helpful for me and meant I could use two sustained modes whilst still having enough left over to use other abilities, only having to use stamina potions sparingly instead of constantly and not being able to taunt at crucial times and whatnot when I just pumped it all into strength and constitution (I respecced multiple times to see what i liked best, ended up liking a build with willpower). But yes, the ability that regained some stamina every kill was also useful.

 

[J1M]

How many pages of this stupid miss vs. glancing blows argument are we going to have?

A miss system is exactly the same as a glancing blow system where the glance does 0% damage. The lower the damage percent of the glance, the spikier the damage output will be. The 0% of D&D or 50% of DA2 is merely personal preference. This has already been covered by posters like Johannes.

If a combat system implements BOTH glancing blows and something else, like dodge, parry, block, etc. There is the potential for additional depth, but ONLY if there are abilities that interact and distinguish between the different types of hits.

DISCUSSION OVER.

 

[J1M]

So let's say a character has 100 stamina. A sustained ability uses 20% of it, leaving 80 for abilities like mighty blow, taunt, etc. If you didn't put any points in willpower maybe you'd have 60 stamina and only 48 left for those unsustained abilities. I'd say putting points into willpower was pretty helpful for me and meant I could use two sustained modes whilst still having enough left over to use other abilities, only having to use stamina potions sparingly instead of constantly and not being able to taunt at crucial times and whatnot when I just pumped it all into strength and constitution (I respecced multiple times to see what i liked best, ended up liking a build with willpower). But yes, the ability that regained some stamina every kill was also useful.

Interestingly, the more sustained modes you are using, the less each point of willpower is worth to you since sustained modes are percentage based. Granted, there are breakpoints where you will be able to use an additional active ability before waiting for regen at certain levels of willpower so it can still be worthwhile.

 

[Drakron]

If a combat system implements BOTH glancing blows and something else, like dodge, parry, block, etc. There is the potential for additional depth.

No.

You are adding needless complexity, you either hit or you dont ... a "glancing blow" its still a hit and we already have a variable damage model in place for hits.

A glancing blow that does half-damage is the same as a hit that does 12 out of its maximum of 24 damage.

 

[Roguey]

A better question is "Was it a good system?" Was the Gothic series ever praised for the character and combat systems?

Character systems, no, but I have seen a lot of people here praise Gothic 2's combat. You and Shannow in particular should argue about it.

 

[Zdzisiu]

I propose even better thing. Every hit dealt by the player is a killing hit, no matter the hp of enemy.

When you hit something awesome happens.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Yes, you can imagine a super-detailed system that embraces a third option where different weapons are actually better depending on whether you're fighting in a small room or balancing on a precipice, but seriously what CRPGs do that? Can you name any? And are all the rest poorly designed?

On that point, plenty of crpgs have a distinction between 'best for bosses v best for groups'. Not to mention damage resistance and need for specific/magic weapons being a staple of D&D games and even FO1-2 (not the magic weapons, obviously, but there is the DR/DT distinction that makes different weapons good against different enemies - isn't as strictly divided as the infinity engine games, but it's definitely there and significant).

Just to take BG2 as an example. In the latter parts of the game, it admittedly starts to match your description, as all your melee party members get weapons that are sufficiently magical to be effective even when non-optimum. But before that, the weapons that are best against ordinary enemies can be ineffective against golems, you sometimes need to switch to non-magical crappy weaponry to get around 'protection from magic weapons', ranged weapons may or may not be effective depending on protection from arrows, for some enemies vorpal is best, for some max damage is best and others just require a really high-magic weapon even if it isn't the highest damage.

Similarly, with spell schools. Varies massively with the build of the party and the kind of enemy. Some fights it helps to stack anti-shielding spells to get through multiple protections. Summons are ultra-effective sometimes, but get pwned others. Sometimes direct damage is best, and obviously the nature of the fight will dictate whether AoE is better than a targeted spell like finger of death. For some party builds you might want an excess of healing and buffs like stoneskin.

So yes, you can still identify the 'best' weapons (spell schools is harder), but only a fair way in when the weapons start to outstrip the game's resistance and immunity mechanics. Even then, whilst there are clearly some standout weapons, when listing the best weapons you're taking an average of the fights over the game, rather than it being the best every fight. It might be determined by the type of enemy and party, rather than the environmental features, but you do get the kind of variation that you were referring to.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

snip snap

Interesting. It really remindes of a system that I have for a fighting game. The animation adjust so every successful attack looks like a nick or a glancing shot. The more that land the easier it is to land a more lethal blow.