Great Start, just needs a few suggestions/discussions!

[deteego]

I guess I would introduce myself, I am an old RPG playing, have played all the different types of RPG's which include

- SNES JPRG's (chrono, star ocean, Tales of Phantasia etc etc)

- Bioware RPG's (BG, NW, NW2, DA)

- ARPG's (Diablo, Dungeon Siege, Titan Quest)

 

The thing that I love about this game is basically its gameplay, its not [*boring*], its quite active and I like the way that the skill, the combat just flows through the hands. However after playing the game, there are some qualms regarding gameplay/balance and so I guess this is kind of a post regarding suggestions and balance changes. Also note that I have played the game on hardcore, and so this discussion is for the hardest level of the game

 

Dodge Mechanic

As everyone knows, you can dodge indefinitely. Whether this is intended or not is another question, but the mechanic is ridiculously abusable. Especially when playing Reinhart (character I am playing), you can do stupid things like lay down a Geometry of Annihilation and continuously dodge while the enemies get themselves killed. This of course makes the game incredibly cheesy, allowing me to mow down through enemies in seconds at a ridiculously fast pace with this combo. It also made blocking completely useless (I haven't blocked once in the game, no need with dodge)

Suggestions

I guess the best suggestion is to make the dodge mechanic take a bit of focus, so you cant just dodge indefinitely. As a rebalance, the blocking mechanic can take less of a penalty to focus then it currently does, which allows a more dynamic dodge/block gameplay style

 

Chaos:Vamparic on AoE

Another gameplay suggestion is to put some penalty on AoE with Chaos:Vamparic. When I got heart of darkness on Reinhert, I literally could play the game with a hand tied behind my back. Again with Geometry of Annihilation + Lifesteal, I was lifstealing around 100HP a second, and with abusing the dodge mechanic I was basically invulnerable. I was able to abuse this with Whitefang incredibly easily, and was able to gain 2 levels just in the boss fight. Basically whenever he spawned the small spiders, I put a Circle of Geometry + lifesteal which fully healed me basically instantly, and rinse and repeat.

Suggestions

I think the best way to solve this is to put a penalty on lifesteal for each additional target taking damage (so first is 100% of original lifesteal value, next would be something like 80%, then 56% etc etc). Either that or tone down the formula so lifesteal isn't so strong (although melee characters like Lucas would cringe about this)

 

Way too much loot/gold

The game simply put drops way too much gold/loot, to the point where I could purchase the best items for my party everytime I could shop. In a lot of cases I also didn't need to shop at all. This of course dumbs down the whole looting aspect and removes a depth regarding choice. When people play DS III, they should be forced into making a choice about which epic items they should be getting (i.e. should I be getting the best defence, or best offence item, or should I go in between?). RPG's that give you so much gold where you can basically buy everything often have this problem

On another note, DS3 seems to have a similar issue that other RPG's have, and that is generally useless loot. Although its somewhat mitigated with transmute (it just basically turns into another form of gold).

Suggestions

This one is simply, just tone down the amount of gold/loot people get.

Regarding useless loot, Torchlight improved on this issue by basically allowing you to combine (or transmute, but with a different meaning then DS3) items together, forming stronger and more unique items. Something similar should be done with DS3, just basically give some sought of gameplay dynamic regarding useless loot. Obsidian could really improve on this mechanic to make DS3 truly unique compared to other RPG's

 

Bosses should follow indefintely

Bosses should follow the players indefinitely, as the current mechanic of them retreating is incredibly easy to abuse (especially with Reinhart). Certain bosses which I would have been ridiculously difficult to defeat (get to this later), such as the one from the quest "The Fishing Hole", I was only able to defeat using this mechanic, and later on with bosses that are slow moving melee (such as Azure Champion) it just becomes silly.

Suggestion

Well, just make the monsters follow you indefinitely, there are already plenty of native defence mechanics in the game (dodge and blocking) to deal with this

 

Reduce the Damage scaling on higher difficulties and make the game harder in different ways

This is one thing I dislike about RPG's, they make the game harder by just naively increasing the HP/Damage. This is kind of a bandaid approach, because it makes it incredibly difficult for some classes (historically has been summoners/melee type characters), it does very little for range/caster types of characters. For example, when playing Reinhert, the start of the game was ridiculously difficult, as I didn't really have many disables the enemies literally killed me in a second. Usually I played a endless game of hit and run, but if the enemies happened to be ones that were really fast (such as the ones in "The Fish Hole" quest I was talking about earlier), I finished using a querk in the game. On the other hand, once I reached midgame, it felt like the game difficulty was on easy, as melee enemies couldn't touch me and I could endlessly dodge enemy attacks with dodge (and do things like geometry of annihilation and just wait for them to kill themselves).

Suggestion

Make the enemies more difficult in another way, improve their AI massively, or make them more skillful (like allow them to dodge your spells better). Really tease the players mind in some ways. As an example I gave earlier, when I cast geometry of Annihilation on ranged enemies, they should start moving out to reduce the AoE damage (instead of just stupidly standing in there and getting themselves killed). This is done for example in DA:O, and it works really well. Doing such a change would also help making classes less extreme in effectiveness on hard setting, after all the goal should be to make the game overall harder and not just more extreme

 

Issues regarding scaling

Even on the hardest difficulty, on the end game at least with Reinhart, the damage (or general effectiveness) seems to skyrocket past level 15. Enemies where dying in 3 ticks of Geometry of Annilation, and with talents such as Eureka Moment, and fully levelled Entropic Mastery + Genius!, damage was getting ridiculous. The other talents such as Timely Escape made me basically untouchable. I am not exactly sure however where the issue lies, it might be with scaling on items, or scaling with talents, or maybe just Reinhert + combination of previous problems, but things scale way too hard. Another issue was that I was gaining levels every 15 minutes past level 20, which was also fairly stupid

Suggestion

This is just a basic scaling issue, and should be fixed with toning down of numbers in general (in one area or another)

[ShadowScythe]

Dodge Mechanic

As everyone knows, you can dodge indefinitely. Whether this is intended or not is another question, but the mechanic is ridiculously abusable. Especially when playing Reinhart (character I am playing), you can do stupid things like lay down a Geometry of Annihilation and continuously dodge while the enemies get themselves killed. This of course makes the game incredibly cheesy, allowing me to mow down through enemies in seconds at a ridiculously fast pace with this combo. It also made blocking completely useless (I haven't blocked once in the game, no need with dodge)

 

While it certainly makes blocking useless I disagree on dodge being too imba. Unlike most rpgs kiting around the map here won't achieve anything in the long term, you don't regain focus, you can't regain power spheres or anything- it's not like witcher 2 or DA2 where you could just run around the map until your vigor/mana regenerated and then jump back into the combat (witcher 2 is especially guilty of this imo). Dodging here is about placement and avoiding taking damage and it's perfectly fine the way it is- I'd argue that it's blocking that needs to be made more useful. What you are doing with geometry of annihilation is a tactic- besides GoA has a huge focus cost and it's mainly useful for taking out trash mobs (which means that after you kill all the trash mobs you won't be able to regen focus to use GoA again as easily since all that's left are the tough and more aggressive bosses) You won't find it as useful against boss encounters (at least in the mid-late game)

 

Chaos:Vamparic on AoE

Another gameplay suggestion is to put some penalty on AoE with Chaos:Vamparic. When I got heart of darkness on Reinhert, I literally could play the game with a hand tied behind my back. Again with Geometry of Annihilation + Lifesteal, I was lifstealing around 100HP a second, and with abusing the dodge mechanic I was basically invulnerable.

 

Chaos: Vampiric is certainly a badass combo with GoA for Reinhart, but I only found one or two pieces of loot that had that stat- how far in the game have you played? Cause after Raven's Rill I found loot that made the old stuff obsolete and meant I couldn't get the Vampiric stat after that (I'm guessing they give that stuff early on to make up for Reinhart's fragility).

 

Way too much loot/gold

The game simply put drops way too much gold/loot, to the point where I could purchase the best items for my party everytime I could shop. In a lot of cases I also didn't need to shop at all. This of course dumbs down the whole looting aspect and removes a depth regarding choice. When people play DS III, they should be forced into making a choice about which epic items they should be getting (i.e. should I be getting the best defence, or best offence item, or should I go in between?).

 

Don't know about this one either, I wasn't always able to buy everything in the shops- and there was certainly a lot of depth with loot, unlike other rpgs where loot at different tiers are just better than low tiers, there was certainly a lot of depth to the looting stats that meant that even low tier stuff was useful (I found myself dropping down to lower tiered stuff so I could get agility bonuses as I found that more useful than attack raises, and I kept that mobius with chaos vampiric for quite a while until it got completely obsolete because I needed that health stealing edge to compensate for Reinhart's low stamina.

 

Bosses should follow indefintely

Bosses should follow the players indefinitely, as the current mechanic of them retreating is incredibly easy to abuse (especially with Reinhart). Certain bosses which I would have been ridiculously difficult to defeat (get to this later), such as the one from the quest "The Fishing Hole", I was only able to defeat using this mechanic, and later on with bosses that are slow moving melee (such as Azure Champion) it just becomes silly.

 

Agreed

 

Reduce the Damage scaling on higher difficulties and make the game harder in different ways

This is one thing I dislike about RPG's, they make the game harder by just naively increasing the HP/Damage. This is kind of a bandaid approach, because it makes it incredibly difficult for some classes (historically has been summoners/melee type characters), it does very little for range/caster types of characters.

.

 

I'm not sure, compared to other games there was a pretty clear difference between hardcore and normal in terms of how aggressive the AI was- unless you mean the difficulty gradient of the game- in which case I agree except that I found the boss encounters made up for the trash mobs and filler combat (boss battles were tonnes of fun and pretty tactical cause of their combat patterns). I find it strange that you mention DA:Origins as an example of this done right as it's a completely different playstyle and wouldn't work in this setting (the combat is too passive)- also that game abused filler combat and just raising stats a lot as well.

 

And I agree with you on that last point too. But if it was that easy why not just raise the difficulty to hardcore? Unless you're claiming hardcore is easy too (c ocky )

Edited June 23, 2011 by ShadowScythe

[deteego]

Dodge Mechanic

As everyone knows, you can dodge indefinitely. Whether this is intended or not is another question, but the mechanic is ridiculously abusable. Especially when playing Reinhart (character I am playing), you can do stupid things like lay down a Geometry of Annihilation and continuously dodge while the enemies get themselves killed. This of course makes the game incredibly cheesy, allowing me to mow down through enemies in seconds at a ridiculously fast pace with this combo. It also made blocking completely useless (I haven't blocked once in the game, no need with dodge)

 

While it certainly makes blocking useless I disagree on dodge being too imba. Unlike most rpgs kiting around the map here won't achieve anything in the long term, you don't regain focus, you can't regain power spheres or anything- it's not like witcher 2 or DA2 where you could just run around the map until your vigor/mana regenerated and then jump back into the combat (witcher 2 is especially guilty of this imo). Dodging here is about placement and avoiding taking damage and it's perfectly fine the way it is- I'd argue that it's blocking that needs to be made more useful. What you are doing with geometry of annihilation is a tactic- besides GoA has a huge focus cost and it's mainly useful for taking out trash mobs (which means that after you kill all the trash mobs you won't be able to regen focus to use GoA again as easily since all that's left are the tough and more aggressive bosses) You won't find it as useful against boss encounters (at least in the mid-late game)

 

Well what is obvious that dodge does make blocking useless. Possibly the main cause of this issue is that characters such as Reinhert are so weak on early levels, that you are forced to dodge constantly while doing AoE. Probably some 'balance' is required so it doesn't become a massive dodgefest

 

Chaos:Vamparic on AoE

Another gameplay suggestion is to put some penalty on AoE with Chaos:Vamparic. When I got heart of darkness on Reinhert, I literally could play the game with a hand tied behind my back. Again with Geometry of Annihilation + Lifesteal, I was lifstealing around 100HP a second, and with abusing the dodge mechanic I was basically invulnerable.

 

Chaos: Vampiric is certainly a badass combo with GoA for Reinhart, but I only found one or two pieces of loot that had that stat- how far in the game have you played? Cause after Raven's Rill I found loot that made the old stuff obsolete and meant I couldn't get the Vampiric stat after that (I'm guessing they give that stuff early on to make up for Reinhart's fragility).

Well I found another 2 vamparic items in shops (I am currently like level 25, stopped playing due to the A/D bug). So its probably bad luck on your part in regards to not getting the lifesteal mechanic, because unless the developers made some exception, the Chaos:Vamparic is just a general mecanic

 

Way too much loot/gold

The game simply put drops way too much gold/loot, to the point where I could purchase the best items for my party everytime I could shop. In a lot of cases I also didn't need to shop at all. This of course dumbs down the whole looting aspect and removes a depth regarding choice. When people play DS III, they should be forced into making a choice about which epic items they should be getting (i.e. should I be getting the best defence, or best offence item, or should I go in between?).

 

Don't know about this one either, I wasn't always able to buy everything in the shops- and there was certainly a lot of depth with loot, unlike other rpgs where loot at different tiers are just better than low tiers, there was certainly a lot of depth to the looting stats that meant that even low tier stuff was useful (I found myself dropping down to lower tiered stuff so I could get agility bonuses as I found that more useful than attack raises, and I kept that mobius with chaos vampiric for quite a while until it got completely obsolete because I needed that health stealing edge to compensate for Reinhart's low stamina.

Well I basically was (it was also due to the combination of epic drops which means you didn't have to buy everything), however throughout the whole game I could just buy what I wanted/needed, there wasn't any decision making required. Even a review on DS3 picked up on this note

 

Reduce the Damage scaling on higher difficulties and make the game harder in different ways

This is one thing I dislike about RPG's, they make the game harder by just naively increasing the HP/Damage. This is kind of a bandaid approach, because it makes it incredibly difficult for some classes (historically has been summoners/melee type characters), it does very little for range/caster types of characters.

.

 

I'm not sure, compared to other games there was a pretty clear difference between hardcore and normal in terms of how aggressive the AI was- unless you mean the difficulty gradient of the game- in which case I agree except that I found the boss encounters made up for the trash mobs and filler combat (boss battles were tonnes of fun and pretty tactical cause of their combat patterns). I find it strange that you mention DA:Origins as an example of this done right as it's a completely different playstyle and wouldn't work in this setting (the combat is too passive)- also that game abused filler combat and just raising stats a lot as well.

 

And I agree with you on that last point too. But if it was that easy why not just raise the difficulty to hardcore? Unless you're claiming hardcore is easy too (c ocky )

I was more pointing out the fact of how extreme the gameplay style is in hardcore mode (and most RPG's suffer this fate). As you correctly claimed, at least as Reinhert, normal mobs are ridiculously easy and you can cream them without a effort, where as the boss bottles are incredibly hard. This sought of situation ends up hapenning when increasing difficulty just results in increasing damage/health, and every RPG that does this has had this problem (D2 had it with necromancers as well). If DS3 wants to stand out, increased difficulty should be increasing the difficulty generally, this means increasing AI (and other things) and not just HP/Damage

[Sabotin]

I think too to rather make blocking stronger. Perhaps a slight stagger efect, so you can actually get a few attacks in and don't get pummeled to death as soon as you let go of the button. Though sometimes blocking is more practical than dodging or even required, the game still leans more on rolling arround and not getting hit.

 

Vampiric - usually items with that have crap other stats (and I haven't seen almost any for Reinhart as is), can you say what are yours to compare?

 

Loot - I don't agree there's too much loot/money. Often I just had enough (if that) for one piece for me or my companion. And loot is actually an issue with multiplayer I heard, where most of it (qualitatively and quantitatively) is for the hosts character. I would in fact increase the number of items that drop off of bosses and make them higher quality. Or at least make shops hold better items in stock.

 

Boss following - don't get me started on the fish boss, I died there more than at the "boxed in" fight I think. But yeah, they should follow everywhere. Or maybe give them a mechanic to pull the player closer if he wants to run away that'd work even better.

 

Difficulty stuff - I'm not sure if that's all the game does acutally. Comparing the game with normal I think the mobs are using abilities more often. And that boss for example

at the Heart of Nagog

was summoning skeletons periodicaly, I can't remember him doing that on my first play. Could be just my immagination though. But yeah every game does the +hp/damage thing, so classes that use a don't-get-hit machanic instead of absorbing damage are at an advantage. By the way, did you have any issues with fast mobs? Like the assassins or what are they, common at

the Spire

areas. Those I found very hard to dodge and kill with Reinhart. Even putting a geometry up wasn't trivial.

Edited June 23, 2011 by Sabotin