Not sure why they decided to take out companion AI scripting in DA:I. I literally played 4-5 battles fighting terrible AI that I couldn't customize before I shelved the title out of disgust.
What was the point? It was an option that never HAD to be used in the older titles (if you chose not to). Why the hell take the option away from fans of the series? What possible good (besides saving a relatively tiny portion of development time) did that do the title?
Ugh, I'm still incredibly annoyed about that title.
Well I sort of feel a game is designed wrong if you reach the point where you really want to script AI just to succeed at combat challenges.
It's the Baldur's Gate inspired one-foot-in-oldschool approach that seems to be the cause of DA:I's combat problems. Each individual character doesn't quite have enough decisions to be interesting, but micromanaging the entire party (including their movement and pathfinding in a 3D environemnt) adds up to be way too much micromanagement without many meaningful decisions.
A lot of better options existed for the game:
Turn-based gameplay. Disgaea and Final Fantasy Tactics give you full control over all party members, but it's not a pain because the only mode of play is turn-based. While you might play DA:I in a pseudo-turn-based way by pausing a lot, it doesn't flow well at all.
Limit options per character. Eye of the Beholder and Final Fantasy 6 are examples of games with real-time combat, but where each character's decision set was fairly narrow, so combat flowed better than DA:I largely because you didn't have to deal with micromanaging each character's physical location, and also because the majority of those decisions were right in front of you with a convenient interface (it's all onscreen, as opposed to having to hop between characters to control them in DA:I.)
Full options for main char, very limited for others. Mass Effect's companions mostly just did their own thing, and their main benefit was 1-2 key abilities that were effortlessly part of your main character's spell menu, so it flowed a lot better. It's not quite a fair comparison as Mass Effect characters can just fire off shots from behind cover and feel like useful party members, whereas in DA:I you have a lot more melee and a tank character who needs to grab aggro, which puts a lot more pressure on the AI programmer to make the characters considerably smarter.
So it's really just the marriage between the 3rd person camera and BG's full party control combat system that causes DA:I's combat to play out poorly, and rather than give players the ability to script the AI to improve it I think they just should've chosen a better overall combat direction from the start.
I was a huge fan of being able to customize my companions' battle AI, though.
I could specialize two members of the same class to perform different functions that way. I could have a melee Rogue assisting my MT and another, ranged Rogue who stayed in the back line using CC abilities on any enemies who managed to make it to the back line. Most importantly, since their AI was set beforehand, they generally fulfilled those roles with little to no input from me once the dust started flying. I simply had to maintain situational awareness of my party during the fight and respond when needed.
It was a pre-battle prep that allowed me to customize my whole-party-tactic without having to micranage EVERY action in battle.
In the attempt to make a DA that was more "action-oriented" I feel the need for pausing the action so often and micromanaging awful AI had the opposite effect. I spent more time playing my created character and watching him do cool stuff in the older games.
I agree with your sentiment: they attempted to do a sort of Half&Half that ended up just seeming half-assed instead.
The problem is it's a party based game.
Often times it's enough to switch between players and give them orders.
Doing so with the controller is a bit cumbersome.
I played the game last night and it was kind of fun with a controller as a warrior. I was able to block with shield wall and attack afterwards. On the flip side it sucked being a warrior and having to close the rifts. It also felt like I was playing alone. I let the computer control the companions and half the time I couldn't see what they were doing because I was zoomed in on my character.
The main problem is the tactical camera is a bit slow. It's workable, but not nearly as good as games like DA Origins, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, etc.
I feel like something is lost in party games when playing first person. Part of the fun of these types of games is controlling all your party members. To do that it's almost always easier with an overhead view, but you also need a system that works well and the one that seems best on PC is the strategy view similar to games like World of Warcraft.
Divinity Original Sin did a pretty good job of splitting up the controller and PC interfaces in the enhanced edition.
Bouncing between EQ2, GW2 and ED:H. I have to keep a balance between Fantasy and SciFi. I was hoping that FFXIV would have been my goto for the Fantasy side, but that game struck out as a three times.
Often times it's enough to switch between players and give them orders.
Doing so with the controller is a bit cumbersome.
I played the game last night and it was kind of fun with a controller as a warrior. I was able to block with shield wall and attack afterwards. On the flip side it sucked being a warrior and having to close the rifts. It also felt like I was playing alone. I let the computer control the companions and half the time I couldn't see what they were doing because I was zoomed in on my character.
The main problem is the tactical camera is a bit slow. It's workable, but not nearly as good as games like DA Origins, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, etc.
I feel like something is lost in party games when playing first person. Part of the fun of these types of games is controlling all your party members. To do that it's almost always easier with an overhead view, but you also need a system that works well and the one that seems best on PC is the strategy view similar to games like World of Warcraft.
Divinity Original Sin did a pretty good job of splitting up the controller and PC interfaces in the enhanced edition.
Yeah the third-person cam is definitely the root of how difficult it is to control your party's capabilities in DA:I.
Personally I feel DA:O and BG had even worse combat systems.
DA:O's pacing was painfully slow and put me to sleep each time I played it (which was painful since I actually wanted to experience the story -- just like it's painful that DA:I is so tedious.)
BG was AD&D 2E, which wasn't a good combat system. It was optimized for tabletop play (and arguably not great even for that, due to lack of interesting tactics) and was really boring in all the videogames it was part of (Eye of the Beholder sort of made it fun by giving it a lot of time pressure, but even then it still had 2E's characteristic lack of tactical depth.)
Keep in mind most early RPG combat systems were pretty shallow in terms of tactical depth, so I don't mean to seem overly harsh on these two games since even FF6 (probably my all-time favorite RPG) really wasn't interesting from a depth standpoint.
And yeah it was a definite oversight that you can be interrupted by damage when closing rifts in DA:I, since it means tank main characters basically aren't able to use the rift as a giant AOE stun.
I view single character RPGs and party-based RPGs as just different styles. I can enjoy either, as long as gameplay is deep and interesting and (in party-based games) not a pain to interact with. In any RPG you should have a set of interesting tactical options available to you, and whether that takes the form of one character with lots of choices (WOW) or multiple characters with fewer individual choices (Darkest Dungeon) really doesn't matter in the end, so long as the overall combat puzzle is an interesting challenge.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Mostly the Crew and that is mostly for my Let´s play / coverage of the Summit events. I set my self a test to see if i could cover all of them during a year.
Often times it's enough to switch between players and give them orders.
Doing so with the controller is a bit cumbersome.
I played the game last night and it was kind of fun with a controller as a warrior. I was able to block with shield wall and attack afterwards. On the flip side it sucked being a warrior and having to close the rifts. It also felt like I was playing alone. I let the computer control the companions and half the time I couldn't see what they were doing because I was zoomed in on my character.
The main problem is the tactical camera is a bit slow. It's workable, but not nearly as good as games like DA Origins, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, etc.
I feel like something is lost in party games when playing first person. Part of the fun of these types of games is controlling all your party members. To do that it's almost always easier with an overhead view, but you also need a system that works well and the one that seems best on PC is the strategy view similar to games like World of Warcraft.
Divinity Original Sin did a pretty good job of splitting up the controller and PC interfaces in the enhanced edition.
Yeah the third-person cam is definitely the root of how difficult it is to control your party's capabilities in DA:I.
Personally I feel DA:O and BG had even worse combat systems.
DA:O's pacing was painfully slow and put me to sleep each time I played it (which was painful since I actually wanted to experience the story -- just like it's painful that DA:I is so tedious.)
BG was AD&D 2E, which wasn't a good combat system. It was optimized for tabletop play (and arguably not great even for that, due to lack of interesting tactics) and was really boring in all the videogames it was part of (Eye of the Beholder sort of made it fun by giving it a lot of time pressure, but even then it still had 2E's characteristic lack of tactical depth.)
Keep in mind most early RPG combat systems were pretty shallow in terms of tactical depth, so I don't mean to seem overly harsh on these two games since even FF6 (probably my all-time favorite RPG) really wasn't interesting from a depth standpoint.
And yeah it was a definite oversight that you can be interrupted by damage when closing rifts in DA:I, since it means tank main characters basically aren't able to use the rift as a giant AOE stun.
I view single character RPGs and party-based RPGs as just different styles. I can enjoy either, as long as gameplay is deep and interesting and (in party-based games) not a pain to interact with. In any RPG you should have a set of interesting tactical options available to you, and whether that takes the form of one character with lots of choices (WOW) or multiple characters with fewer individual choices (Darkest Dungeon) really doesn't matter in the end, so long as the overall combat puzzle is an interesting challenge.
I had a different feel for BG especially. DA Origins I felt wasn't as good in terms of story, but it was decent.
In terms of the combat the 2nd edition rules were actually really good for this type of system. Your tanks really didn't need much guidance as they were almost all auto attacks. That meant you just had to point them to the right mobs. There was actually a limited amount of abilities for everything except mages. This allowed for easy point and click style positioning. In a game like DA I you have to click certain abilities at certain times constantly in combat. That makes for difficult micromanagement of multiple characters.
I think the more complex the combat system is the harder it is to manage multiple teammates at one time unless it is turn based combat.
FF4 is probably my favorite final fantasy and it really had limited choices available in terms of customizing classes. I enjoyed the story a great deal. FF6 had a lot of options in terms of giving each character different items that gave them different abilities. I like the variety, but not the idea of giving your character abilities from an item.
The Final Fantasy games are a bit different beasts because the combat takes place completely separately from the world map you are traveling around. There is little in the way of positioning. It's all just picking the right abilities to win.
I do like puzzles in games. I started with games like Legend of Zelda which had many little puzzles to solve.
Good point on Eye of the Beholder. I didn't play the game much, but having some time pressure definitely makes things more intense.
Crusader Kings 2 w/ GoT mod, Darkest Dungeon, Pillars of Eternity (I just got this over the holidays, pretty cool so far.) and I've been itching to get back into Skyrim after a yearlong break So I just made a new character there.
I don't currently have any MMO's on my PC. Still, I am keeping an eye on a few for the future though.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
I think the more complex the combat system is the harder it is to manage multiple teammates at one time unless it is turn based combat.
Again here, I feel that, to a certain point, complexity can be handled in a real-time combat game.. You just have to front-load the micromanagement before the battle actually starts.
The more options each party member has, the more preferences you should be able to set before battle. DA2 did this by giving each character additional "lines" of scripting every so often as they leveled up; when you looked at it as an AI check in levels of priority, you could even create an extremely effective healer that focused on assisting the tank, saved massive or AoE heals for very specific situations, drank potions at the point in which it would most efficiently use the pot, and even defend himself with CC whenever surrounded by enemies.
When you took the time to set your companions up, save for a few unexpected enemy tactics, they managed battle like a well-oiled machine, leaving me to focus on playing my created character and just monitor the battle situation for the most part. It was a lot of fun to see them using the right abilities for the right situation on their own because I sat down with them beforehand and hashed out their ability and targeting priority. I'm not sure why they would've taken such a system out, as it wasn't something required to play through the game.. You could micromanage mid-battle if you liked.
But I generally agree with your sentiment here. Many party-based games work better with turn-based systems (XCOM, Wasteland 2, Divinity, etc.). Specifically in games like Wasteland, where your party can contain up to 7 characters (though I would argue that, even here, DA2s scripting system could make a real-time combat system work, though it would be so deep as to be off-putting for many players).
I think the more complex the combat system is the harder it is to manage multiple teammates at one time unless it is turn based combat.
Again here, I feel that, to a certain point, complexity can be handled in a real-time combat game.. You just have to front-load the micromanagement before the battle actually starts.
The more options each party member has, the more preferences you should be able to set before battle. DA2 did this by giving each character additional "lines" of scripting every so often as they leveled up; when you looked at it as an AI check in levels of priority, you could even create an extremely effective healer that focused on assisting the tank, saved massive or AoE heals for very specific situations, drank potions at the point in which it would most efficiently use the pot, and even defend himself with CC whenever surrounded by enemies.
When you took the time to set your companions up, save for a few unexpected enemy tactics, they managed battle like a well-oiled machine, leaving me to focus on playing my created character and just monitor the battle situation for the most part. It was a lot of fun to see them using the right abilities for the right situation on their own because I sat down with them beforehand and hashed out their ability and targeting priority. I'm not sure why they would've taken such a system out, as it wasn't something required to play through the game.. You could micromanage mid-battle if you liked.
But I generally agree with your sentiment here. Many party-based games work better with turn-based systems (XCOM, Wasteland 2, Divinity, etc.). Specifically in games like Wasteland, where your party can contain up to 7 characters (though I would argue that, even here, DA2s scripting system could make a real-time combat system work, though it would be so deep as to be off-putting for many players).
I enjoyed that type of companion AI management a lot as well. But then again, I also enjoyed some early games in the 80s and 90s that were all about programming a tank using a game-specific logic tree language to tell it what to do and then just let it do its thing when the match started while you watched. There were even tournaments and I won one of those by sending my code to Computer Gaming World (the print pre-cursor of Gamespot)
But I'm not sure we were mainstream from the way RPGs flirted with complex user AI programming and then discarded it for the most part in subsequent games. Turn based pausing and micromanaging isn't quite the same as the satisfaction you get from pre-programming and watching the results of your efforts.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Online: Smite few hours/day, unninstalled GW recently got bored of its pvp and well, most other stuff, and not into the mood for another eastern grinder like B&S ,gonna wait for something more concrete to invest months in.Will install Path of Exile to play occasionally depends on the league.
Single Play: Sid Meier's Pirates , Rome Total War, pushing story in Witcher 2 before i get to bite Witcher 3
Wants to play a game, spends half the time checking news on forums and youtube instead actually playing games ,thats me
It is the era of an Old Horde, forged with steel rather than fel blood. A union of great orc clans, the Iron Horde, tramples the planet Draenor beneath terrifying war machines. Azeroth falls next. Worlds uncounted will follow.
You must mount a desperate charge on Draenor – savage home of orcs and adopted bastion of stoic draenei – at this pivotal moment. Your allies are legends from across time; your fortress a foothold in an alien land. Lead the armies of one world against another…before the future itself is unmade.[8]
Following the events of Siege of Orgrimmar, Garrosh Hellscream was imprisoned to be tried in Pandaria. Before the trial can conclude, aided by an ally who can manipulate the timelines, Garrosh escapes to Draenor of the past, and prevents the orcs from ever drinking the blood of Mannoroth, creating an untainted Iron Horde under the leadership of Grommash Hellscream.
Return to the Dark Portal
For both Horde and Alliance players, the campaign starts behind enemy lines in the Tanaan Jungle on Draenor. It’s up to the player and their allies on preventing the seemingly impossible Iron Horde from wreaking havoc in Draenor and eventually to Azeroth.
Once on Draenor, adventurers will face the might of great orc warlords such as Grommash Hellscream and Kilrogg Deadeye, legends who command a legion of 10,000 orcs from Draenor’s united clans—but you won’t have to take on this desperate mission alone. The ancient draenei champion Vindicator Maraad from Wrath of the Lich King will accompany the Alliance's expedition through the portal, while the Horde's faction rallies behind by Thrall. Your strike on Draenor is practically a suicide mission, but if you can destroy the portal from the other side, you’ll buy your faction—and Azeroth—some much-needed time. . . .
All level-90 players will begin in the Tanaan Jungle (pre-Hellfire Peninsula), and for newly boosted level-90 characters, the quest line will be edited to help you get up to speed and ready for taking on the challenges to come. Also for boosted 90s, insead of gaining all of your skills and abilities right away, you’ll be able to unlock them as you progress and learn your way around your more powerful character—and you’ll need every ounce of your ability to stop the Iron Horde and continue your campaign on Draenor.
Once the threat at the Dark Portal has been (temporarily) dealt with, Alliance and Horde players will go their divergent paths. Each will answer the call of their new allies to engage the native threats of the world and mount a long-term defense against the Iron Horde.
Alliance: Karabor, Shadowmoon Valley
In the aftermath of the Dark Portal strike, Alliance players will be led to the pre-Black Temple, otherwise known as Karabor in search of allies to face the Iron Horde. Once there, you and other travelers will work together to save the draenei holy temple and turn it into a capital city for your faction. Stay alert though, while the Iron Horde lays siege to the temple, Ner’zhul and his nefarious Shadowmoon Orc clan pursue another line of attack that could put the entire world in mortal danger.
Horde: Bladespire Fortress, Frostfire Ridge
Following the assault on the Dark Portal, Horde players will be led to Frostfire Ridge and the aid of the Frostwolf Clan. Once there, you will battle the ogres of Bladespire Fortress to secure a new base of operations in this harsh land. Don’t be fooled by your progress, though—the Thunderlord Clan will be right on their heels to reclaim their lands.
Altering the past
"We will never be slaves... but we will be conquerors!" - Grommash Hellscream
After arriving on Draenor, Garrosh encounters the timeline's orc clans, and apparently shares with them some knowledge of the course of future events, as well as technology from the original timeline, far outstripping the orcs' relatively primitive technology. After encountering Gul'danduring his transformation, Garrosh is able to persuade his father Grommash Hellscream not to drink Mannoroth's blood, but instead to prepare a technologically empowered army in order to ambush the pit lord Mannoroth, and overthrow the Burning Legion's efforts to enslave the orcs.
Garrosh goes with Grommash to the gathering of the orc clans, in response to Gul'dan's summons to imbibe the demon's blood. Grommash accepts the drinking horn from the warlock, but at the last moment refuses to drink from it, pouring the glowing blood onto the floor and incurring the wrath of Mannoroth. With the pit lord revealed, at Garrosh's signal the hidden Iron Horde bursts forth, firing ballistae and chains at Mannoroth. The orcs prepare to launch an iron star to destroy Mannoroth, but the mighty demon quickly overcomes their attempts to trap him and begins to lay waste to the orc army.
Grommash, seeing his chance to defeat the pit lord, seizes the now unmanned iron star and single-handedly launches it at the demon, but the projectile falls short, its explosion serving only to rebuff and anger the pit lord. As Mannoroth prepares to strike afresh at the orcs, Grommash soars out of the fire and smoke, leaping through the explosion to drive Gorehowl directly into the pit lord's forehead.
As the pit lord's death howl begins to build for a devastating explosion, a stunned Garrosh picks himself up off the ground and dives for his father, pulling him out of harm's way before the demon can destroy him, again altering the path of history.
With the Legion's plot foiled, Gul'dan is imprisoned, and the Iron Horde revealed. Grommash proclaims a glorious future for their people, with Gul'dan's original plans to invade Azeroth repurposed to suit the new Iron Horde.
Spent the past few months playing Civ 5 and modding the AI. But at the end, when everyone in the game is competent tactically, it just turns into a big old game of Risk and that's not too interesting to me.
I have been trying to get back into online games. SWTOR... too many cooldowns, I'm not sure completing another storyline is worth that bad gameplay. Marvel Heroes... I would be leveling heroes I don't care about and collecting eternity splinters to unlock even more heroes that bore me. Neverwinter... I've read that Mod 8 is even worse than Mod 7, which broke the game for me.
Put about three or four hours into Blade & Soul (nice production, but meh). It actually made me want to play ESO again for some reason. Darkest Dungeon. Final Fantasy and Metroid (NES) for nostalgia's sake. Heroes of the Storm. Minecraft (single and server play). I also enjoyed a few hours on some Banished. We'll see where the weekend takes me.
I had a different feel for BG especially. DA Origins I felt wasn't as good in terms of story, but it was decent.
In terms of the combat the 2nd edition rules were actually really good for this type of system. Your tanks really didn't need much guidance as they were almost all auto attacks. That meant you just had to point them to the right mobs. There was actually a limited amount of abilities for everything except mages. This allowed for easy point and click style positioning. In a game like DA I you have to click certain abilities at certain times constantly in combat. That makes for difficult micromanagement of multiple characters.
I think the more complex the combat system is the harder it is to manage multiple teammates at one time unless it is turn based combat.
FF4 is probably my favorite final fantasy and it really had limited choices available in terms of customizing classes. I enjoyed the story a great deal. FF6 had a lot of options in terms of giving each character different items that gave them different abilities. I like the variety, but not the idea of giving your character abilities from an item.
The Final Fantasy games are a bit different beasts because the combat takes place completely separately from the world map you are traveling around. There is little in the way of positioning. It's all just picking the right abilities to win.
I do like puzzles in games. I started with games like Legend of Zelda which had many little puzzles to solve.
Good point on Eye of the Beholder. I didn't play the game much, but having some time pressure definitely makes things more intense.
"Tanks" in 2E were the root of its problems. Fighters were some of your most durable characters and your highest sustained damage characters and equipped with the least tactical decisions. That's a pretty awful combination.
I agree a real-time combat system has to optimize for not having too many decisions to make, but "right click to send your fighters to attack" wasn't exactly an interesting decision to include in the mix (nor was positioning because this was 2E after all and very few positional considerations existed.)
And yeah, complexity is bad, but you still want to achieve depth. "Simple yet deep" is the design ideal.
Combat taking place separate from the world immediately eliminates the "positioning" decision. While a simple decision itself, it's also needless complexity in most RPGs (except tactical RPGs which take significant strides to ensure positioning matters a lot.)
I wasn't talking about puzzle-puzzles. I was talking about combat-puzzles. The best combat in games is like a puzzle where the correct decisions are tricky to figure out (and typically dynamic and changing so that the correct solution isn't as predictable.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Often times it's enough to switch between players and give them orders.
Doing so with the controller is a bit cumbersome.
I played the game last night and it was kind of fun with a controller as a warrior. I was able to block with shield wall and attack afterwards. On the flip side it sucked being a warrior and having to close the rifts. It also felt like I was playing alone. I let the computer control the companions and half the time I couldn't see what they were doing because I was zoomed in on my character.
The main problem is the tactical camera is a bit slow. It's workable, but not nearly as good as games like DA Origins, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, etc.
I feel like something is lost in party games when playing first person. Part of the fun of these types of games is controlling all your party members. To do that it's almost always easier with an overhead view, but you also need a system that works well and the one that seems best on PC is the strategy view similar to games like World of Warcraft.
Divinity Original Sin did a pretty good job of splitting up the controller and PC interfaces in the enhanced edition.
Personally I feel DA:O and BG had even worse combat systems.
- DA:O's pacing was painfully slow and put me to sleep each time I played it (which was painful since I actually wanted to experience the story -- just like it's painful that DA:I is so tedious.)
- BG was AD&D 2E, which wasn't a good combat system. It was optimized for tabletop play (and arguably not great even for that, due to lack of interesting tactics) and was really boring in all the videogames it was part of (Eye of the Beholder sort of made it fun by giving it a lot of time pressure, but even then it still had 2E's characteristic lack of tactical depth.)
Keep in mind most early RPG combat systems were pretty shallow in terms of tactical depth, so I don't mean to seem overly harsh on these two games since even FF6 (probably my all-time favorite RPG) really wasn't interesting from a depth standpoint.And yeah it was a definite oversight that you can be interrupted by damage when closing rifts in DA:I, since it means tank main characters basically aren't able to use the rift as a giant AOE stun.
I view single character RPGs and party-based RPGs as just different styles. I can enjoy either, as long as gameplay is deep and interesting and (in party-based games) not a pain to interact with. In any RPG you should have a set of interesting tactical options available to you, and whether that takes the form of one character with lots of choices (WOW) or multiple characters with fewer individual choices (Darkest Dungeon) really doesn't matter in the end, so long as the overall combat puzzle is an interesting challenge.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So far so good.
This have been a good conversation
In terms of the combat the 2nd edition rules were actually really good for this type of system. Your tanks really didn't need much guidance as they were almost all auto attacks. That meant you just had to point them to the right mobs. There was actually a limited amount of abilities for everything except mages. This allowed for easy point and click style positioning. In a game like DA I you have to click certain abilities at certain times constantly in combat. That makes for difficult micromanagement of multiple characters.
I think the more complex the combat system is the harder it is to manage multiple teammates at one time unless it is turn based combat.
FF4 is probably my favorite final fantasy and it really had limited choices available in terms of customizing classes. I enjoyed the story a great deal. FF6 had a lot of options in terms of giving each character different items that gave them different abilities. I like the variety, but not the idea of giving your character abilities from an item.
The Final Fantasy games are a bit different beasts because the combat takes place completely separately from the world map you are traveling around. There is little in the way of positioning. It's all just picking the right abilities to win.
I do like puzzles in games. I started with games like Legend of Zelda which had many little puzzles to solve.
Good point on Eye of the Beholder. I didn't play the game much, but having some time pressure definitely makes things more intense.
I don't currently have any MMO's on my PC. Still, I am keeping an eye on a few for the future though.
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
Watching Youtube.
Might play some PoE maybe.. I haven't decided yet.
Valkyria Chronicles, Suikoden Tactics, and FFXIV
The more options each party member has, the more preferences you should be able to set before battle. DA2 did this by giving each character additional "lines" of scripting every so often as they leveled up; when you looked at it as an AI check in levels of priority, you could even create an extremely effective healer that focused on assisting the tank, saved massive or AoE heals for very specific situations, drank potions at the point in which it would most efficiently use the pot, and even defend himself with CC whenever surrounded by enemies.
When you took the time to set your companions up, save for a few unexpected enemy tactics, they managed battle like a well-oiled machine, leaving me to focus on playing my created character and just monitor the battle situation for the most part. It was a lot of fun to see them using the right abilities for the right situation on their own because I sat down with them beforehand and hashed out their ability and targeting priority. I'm not sure why they would've taken such a system out, as it wasn't something required to play through the game.. You could micromanage mid-battle if you liked.
But I generally agree with your sentiment here. Many party-based games work better with turn-based systems (XCOM, Wasteland 2, Divinity, etc.). Specifically in games like Wasteland, where your party can contain up to 7 characters (though I would argue that, even here, DA2s scripting system could make a real-time combat system work, though it would be so deep as to be off-putting for many players).
Champions online
But I'm not sure we were mainstream from the way RPGs flirted with complex user AI programming and then discarded it for the most part in subsequent games. Turn based pausing and micromanaging isn't quite the same as the satisfaction you get from pre-programming and watching the results of your efforts.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Single Play: Sid Meier's Pirates , Rome Total War, pushing story in Witcher 2 before i get to bite Witcher 3
Wants to play a game, spends half the time checking news on forums and youtube instead actually playing games ,thats me
Return to the Dark Portal
Alliance: Karabor, Shadowmoon Valley
Horde: Bladespire Fortress, Frostfire Ridge
Altering the past
After arriving on Draenor, Garrosh encounters the timeline's orc clans, and apparently shares with them some knowledge of the course of future events, as well as technology from the original timeline, far outstripping the orcs' relatively primitive technology. After encountering Gul'dan during his transformation, Garrosh is able to persuade his father Grommash Hellscream not to drink Mannoroth's blood, but instead to prepare a technologically empowered army in order to ambush the pit lord Mannoroth, and overthrow the Burning Legion's efforts to enslave the orcs.
Garrosh goes with Grommash to the gathering of the orc clans, in response to Gul'dan's summons to imbibe the demon's blood. Grommash accepts the drinking horn from the warlock, but at the last moment refuses to drink from it, pouring the glowing blood onto the floor and incurring the wrath of Mannoroth. With the pit lord revealed, at Garrosh's signal the hidden Iron Horde bursts forth, firing ballistae and chains at Mannoroth. The orcs prepare to launch an iron star to destroy Mannoroth, but the mighty demon quickly overcomes their attempts to trap him and begins to lay waste to the orc army.
Grommash, seeing his chance to defeat the pit lord, seizes the now unmanned iron star and single-handedly launches it at the demon, but the projectile falls short, its explosion serving only to rebuff and anger the pit lord. As Mannoroth prepares to strike afresh at the orcs, Grommash soars out of the fire and smoke, leaping through the explosion to drive Gorehowl directly into the pit lord's forehead.
As the pit lord's death howl begins to build for a devastating explosion, a stunned Garrosh picks himself up off the ground and dives for his father, pulling him out of harm's way before the demon can destroy him, again altering the path of history.
With the Legion's plot foiled, Gul'dan is imprisoned, and the Iron Horde revealed. Grommash proclaims a glorious future for their people, with Gul'dan's original plans to invade Azeroth repurposed to suit the new Iron Horde.
I have been trying to get back into online games. SWTOR... too many cooldowns, I'm not sure completing another storyline is worth that bad gameplay. Marvel Heroes... I would be leveling heroes I don't care about and collecting eternity splinters to unlock even more heroes that bore me. Neverwinter... I've read that Mod 8 is even worse than Mod 7, which broke the game for me.
So maybe it's time for something new.Gaming since 1985; Online gaming since 1995; No End in Sight! My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8POVoJ8fdOseuJ4U1ZX-oA
I agree a real-time combat system has to optimize for not having too many decisions to make, but "right click to send your fighters to attack" wasn't exactly an interesting decision to include in the mix (nor was positioning because this was 2E after all and very few positional considerations existed.)
And yeah, complexity is bad, but you still want to achieve depth. "Simple yet deep" is the design ideal.
Combat taking place separate from the world immediately eliminates the "positioning" decision. While a simple decision itself, it's also needless complexity in most RPGs (except tactical RPGs which take significant strides to ensure positioning matters a lot.)
I wasn't talking about puzzle-puzzles. I was talking about combat-puzzles. The best combat in games is like a puzzle where the correct decisions are tricky to figure out (and typically dynamic and changing so that the correct solution isn't as predictable.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver