Will Pillars of Eternity have better combat system than Dragon Age Origins?

[Malignacious]

It's always something of a novelty when we get to meet those extremely rare individuals who actually enjoy God of War button-mashing, QTE-fests and loud-and-lame animation and sound effects. Don't forget to take screenies!

Dungeon Siege 3 is nothing like that, you continue to show your ignorance. It's a very tactical and immersive combat system.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Malign: You're barking up the wrong tree with me, as I've actually played both games 70+ hours. And of course I know that DS3 is a different beast entirely.

I played Anjali as my main, in Archon form, through the entire game on hardcore, mind you, and while it was difficult and hectic at times, it was for the most part just annoying and bizarre. Already after that rather difficult witch early on in the game, I happened upon a technique that basically meant me pulsing through and around the enemies with an endless blink-ability, and then slowly scorching them to death with amped up fire power. So, in that sense, it was really, really bad. That said, I really love George Ziets' stories in DS3, and Amalur was in many respects a pretty decent game (and big!).

 

Sorry if my teasing has upset you, but I really do think those two games had bad combat systems. Like Forgottenlor mentioned; I love more tactical CRPGs, with entire parties to mess around with.

Edited April 23, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[anameforobsidian]

I thought the spell combinations in Dragon Age were quite nice, and would like to see something similar in Eternity or its successors.  I disliked the enemies autoleveling; fights with four party members are far less interesting; class selection wasn't great; the overuse of spell resistance; out of combat skills sucked; and I preferred the a la carte spell selection of D&D based games.  Overall thought I thought it stood head and shoulders above its competitors though.  How many other games were released that year with anything resembling tactical combat?

 

It didn't match Baldur's Gate in a lot of respects, but it was water to cRPG player dying of thirst at the time.

Edited April 23, 2014 by anameforobsidian

[Malekith]

 

It's always something of a novelty when we get to meet those extremely rare individuals who actually enjoy God of War button-mashing, QTE-fests and loud-and-lame animation and sound effects. Don't forget to take screenies!

 It's a very tactical and immersive combat system.

 

Nope. If you want that kind of gameplay, go play Tekken in campain mode .Infinitely better.

I agree DS3 wasn't similar to God of War or action RPGs at all, but the gameplay was something that shouldn't be in any game with RPG in the title.

Play Tekken or another fighting game in campain/adventure/whatever mode, and you will see the DS3 formula 10 times better.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Malekith

[Ffordesoon]

Sorry but Dungeon Siege 3 alongside Kingdoms of Amalur really do have the best combat systems ever created.

This is pretty obvious if you had bothered with either of them.

 

But as I said I don't expect such level of action based skill combat here, just as long as it is better than Dragon Age Origins.

I'm as big a fan as you're likely to find on this forum of "action-based skill combat," and I nearly laughed out loud at this.

 

I'm not going to call you a troll. You may or may not be one, but I'd rather treat those who hold differing opinions from my own with respect. But I can think of so many games in the same subgenre with better mechanics than either of those. Dark Souls trounces both of them handily, for example.

[Karkarov]

It's always something of a novelty when we get to meet those extremely rare individuals who actually enjoy God of War button-mashing, QTE-fests and loud-and-lame animation and sound effects. Don't forget to take screenies!

There is nothing wrong with that style of game.  It can be fun and easy to pick up and play.  That said, no, Amalaur is not a particularly deep combat system.  Will Eternity have better combat that Dragon Age: Origins though?  No idea.  It certainly will be a perfectly viable game even if it is only equal to DA:O though.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I know, I know, I got on that troll bandwagon, and failed to jump off in time.

[Stun]

It certainly will be a perfectly viable game even if it is only equal to DA:O though.

Viable? What does that even mean?

 

In any event, No way. No Way, with a capital N. I most definitely will *not* accept PoE having combat equal to DA:O. Not when Obsidian has all the inherent advantages on its side to make PoE's combat at least 5 times as good. ( It's a PC exclusive, which means it doesn't have to adhere to console limitations; It's an Isometric Top down view game, which means better natural tactical battlefield play; It has 11 diverse classes, which means more combat party variety; And it has Tim Cain, one of the elite industry masters at designing great combat mechanics) If after all of this they still give us something equal to DA:O, then they will deserve whatever shame and scorn that gets hurled their way.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Stun

[Sarex]

It's always something of a novelty when we get to meet those extremely rare individuals who actually enjoy God of War button-mashing, QTE-fests and loud-and-lame animation and sound effects. Don't forget to take screenies!

 

Have never played GoW but I immensely enjoyed DMC3,4,5, with the third being the best out of the bunch. Damn that game was hard as balls.

[Lephys]

Viable? What does that even mean?

I'm pretty sure it means "able to be vied." Have we tried vying it?

[Gromnir]

 

It certainly will be a perfectly viable game even if it is only equal to DA:O though.

Viable? What does that even mean?

 

In any event, No way. No Way, with a capital N. I most definitely will *not* accept PoE having combat equal to DA:O. Not when Obsidian has all the inherent advantages on its side to make PoE's combat at least 5 times as good. ( It's a PC exclusive, which means it doesn't have to adhere to console limitations; It's an Isometric Top down view game, which means better natural tactical battlefield play; It has 11 diverse classes, which means more combat party variety; And it has Tim Cain, one of the elite industry masters at designing great combat mechanics) If after all of this they still give us something equal to DA:O, then they will deserve whatever shame and scorn that gets hurled their way.

 

hmmm. you must be speaking o' his inspired work on the vampire game troika did. everybody holds that up as a model for great combat mechanics.

 

no?

 

toee did have excellent combat, but the thing is, that were d&d 3e. is not as if cain actual designed the mechanics. he did do probable the best job of adapting the d&d 3e turn-based rules to a crpg we can recall. 'course he screwed everything else up with toee, so he pretty much doomed even the possibility of there being another tb d&d game being made anytime soon. thanks.

 

well, how 'bout arcanum. sure, combat in arcanum were horribly unbalanced, but you could, you know, shoot guns n' stuff & use swords.

 

...

 

so, perhaps not arcanum.

 

fallout?  Gromnir is a fan of special, but am not gonna rave about the combat mechanics therein. "you chose energy weapons at the start of fallout? haha!" had similar balancing issues as arcanum... possibly worse.

 

*shrug*

 

cain gets loads o' deserved credit for his work on fallout, and if you wanna put special tunnel-vision goggles on to examine toee, you could say he did a fantastic job with the combat mechanics o' that game, but otherwise, we weep for the industry if he is one of the elite insofar as design o' combat mechanics is concerned.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Karkarov]

 

It certainly will be a perfectly viable game even if it is only equal to DA:O though.

Viable? What does that even mean?

 

In any event, No way. No Way, with a capital N. I most definitely will *not* accept PoE having combat equal to DA:O. Not when Obsidian has all the inherent advantages on its side to make PoE's combat at least 5 times as good. ( It's a PC exclusive, which means it doesn't have to adhere to console limitations; It's an Isometric Top down view game, which means better natural tactical battlefield play; It has 11 diverse classes, which means more combat party variety; And it has Tim Cain, one of the elite industry masters at designing great combat mechanics) If after all of this they still give us something equal to DA:O, then they will deserve whatever shame and scorn that gets hurled their way.

 

Viable means it would have potential for fun, be bug free, be reasonably well balanced/playable, and offer some strategic depth even if not a ton?

 

Also for a guy who thinks so little of DA:O's combat apparently you sure have an odd avatar choice.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Karkarov

[Gromnir]

aside: am gonna observe that adapting d&d, which ain't necessarily computer friendly, is in some ways more difficult than coming up with brand spanking new combat mechanics. so the feat of cain in toee is, on one level, more impressive than it would seem. still, adapting is not the same as creation, and the flaws o' d&d ain't gonna be blamed on cain as would flaws o' a genuine original set o' mechanics.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Stun]

Viable means it would have potential for fun, be bug free, be reasonably well balanced/playable, and

...have Ridiculous level scaling, a teeny-tiny bestiary, A Threat generation and cooldown mechanic ripped straight out of WoW, The warden shuffle, Molasses-speed 2-handed melee, the Breath-taking choice of three (3!) classes.... Yeah, I get what you're saying now. <gag>

 

Also for a guy who thinks so little of DA:O's combat apparently you sure have an odd avatar choice.

Well, DA:O has a decent character face generator. It also has 6 origin prologues, which was an amazing feature.

 

But we were discussing combat, remember? And if you'll notice, My avatar does not contain DA:O combat footage.

 

aside: am gonna observe that adapting d&d, which ain't necessarily computer friendly, is in some ways more difficult than coming up with brand spanking new combat mechanics. so the feat of cain in toee is, on one level, more impressive than it would seem.

Indeed. Cain even points that out in one of the earlier updates. Cooking is a hobby of his and he used cooking for an analogy about this.

 

He said something along the lines of: if you give him a picture of a cake, and tell him to "make one like the picture", he could do it, but that it's a lot harder than if you simply told him to make you the best tasting cake he can make.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Stun

[Bill Gates' Son]

I don't even care if it takes ideas from DA:O battle system, because I found it enjoyable and highly tactical. 

[Lephys]

The thing about something like DA:O is... it obviously has some good ideas, but most of them weren't executed as well as they could've been (and or finalized as concepts as well as they could've been).

 

Narry a game is just total crap, or it wouldn't even have functional buttons or readable dialogue or anything. Sure, the end result is sub-par, but that doesn't mean if any other game does anything at all that DA:O did, we should all hit the deck.

 

That's the thing about developers/artists, etc: You can easily take note of plenty of in-progress ideas/techniques/designs and still go "but I've got a much better use for that than they ended up with," or "but it should definitely be much more expanded upon," or "but this should be totally different or it'll end up kinda sucking, like it did in that game."

 

So, I find it's a true statement that I also don't mind if it takes ideas from DA:O's battle system. It really just depends on the ideas and a lot of other particulars.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

DAO had a bad combat system. I thought some of the ideas behind it were good, but I found the execution sorely lacking. From the info released so far PoE looks to have a far better combat system than both DAO and BG2.

 

Plus Paladins seem much cooler. Using your soul to ignite your sword with righteous flames breaks the badass-o-meter.

[Bryy]

DAO had a bad combat system.

Agreed.

 

Any system where you don't need to manage the battle and can just focus all four of your party on one dude is ridiculous. Although, there were a few random battles in Denerim where you had to split your party to take out the archers.

[Drowsy Emperor]

DAO's combat was obnoxious. There was too much of it, the abilities were boring, the loot was uninspired and there were too few enemies. I pushed through the game for story reasons and could have lived with a fast-forward button in almost every fight. I even went so far to gimp the system later on in the game by casting Storm of the Century behind every closed door to murder everything inside just to get past it. It was ****ing agony and if PoE's system is as bad as DAO's I'll probably never finish the game, because my tolerance for bad gameplay is zero nowadays.

[Haerski]

It might be everyone's just more or less trolling on this thread right now, but I still find it pointless to say things like "I want the combat to be better than DA:O", "I'm going to be disappointed if it's not at least five times better" or "it's ok if it's equal to DA:O." How do you define that kind of stuff? What does it even mean or is it just attempt to mask personal preference as some kind of fact?

 

All I can say on the subject is that I don't want PoE combat to be like DA:O. It was good system and I enjoyed playing with it a lot, but now I simply want something different more along the lines of IE-classics. Better or worse, that's matter of taste, but I'm pretty sure I can squeeze some fun out of it no matter what the outcome.

[Volourn]

Considering DAO combat was basically like IE combat without 6 second rounds, I expect PE to be like it. It won't be exactly the same of course but it won't be radically different gameplay wise. Rules wise, yet again, it will be different, but it will be similar since there's only so many different ways you can do this type of combat/gameplay no matter how 'different' you try to be.

 

. "There was too much of it,"

 

Compared to what? Every RPG ever created from BG to TOEE to  U to Fo has lots, and lots, and lots of combat.

 

 

"the abilities were boring,"

 

Yeah, way more more boring than the BG fighter ability of simply swinging their weapon.

 

"the loot was uninspired"

 

Much of it was but that's no different than any other RPG with +1, +2 or the equivelant line of weapons but it had its sahre of rather unique, interetsing, and cool loot.

 

"and there were too few enemies."

 

It basically had the same amount give or take a few enemies that BG had. *shrug*

 

The only thing I expect from PE combat is for it to be fun. Period.

[Ieo]

Huh. The OP is pretty much dead in the water without even looking through the rest of the thread.

 

"Better combat system" has absolutely nothing, zero, nada to do with "...particularly regarding the quality of animations and spell effects."

 

So OP is primarily talking about eye candy. He's not talking about actual combat system with mechanics, math, class/mob balance, degenerate gameplay, and all that jazz.

 

Meh, move along. Nothing to see here.

[Gromnir]

 

Indeed. Cain even points that out in one of the earlier updates. Cooking is a hobby of his and he used cooking for an analogy about this.

 

He said something along the lines of: if you give him a picture of a cake, and tell him to "make one like the picture", he could do it, but that it's a lot harder than if you simply told him to make you the best tasting cake he can make.

 

 

 

well, that is... horrible? that were his "analogy"? am wondering if he actually cooks. not that it matters, but first of all, cooking and baking is different. ever see a baker periodically tasting batter to make sure it is right? 'course not. baking, when done correct, is chemistry. learn to measure, mix and apply heat. 

 

and the thing is, if you show us a picture o' a german choclate cake, Gromnir can make you one without too much difficulty. red velvet? angel food? whatever. sure, might not be exact what you want, but chances are it is gonna be a whole lot closer to what you meant by "cake" than if you leave up to our imagination. you are allergic to strawberries? oops, we made a strawberry shortcake. our sister loved pineapple upside-down cake. pineapple upside-down cake? made the mistake o' making a chocolate truffle cake with alternating layers o' dark chocolate and white chocolate ganache for her birthday one year.  when she saw the thing you woulda' thought we had run over her dog or somesuch. a picture o' a cake is a damn sight better guide than is imagination.  

 

...

 

now, if you tell us that we should make a moist yellow cake with bittersweet chocolate frosting (d&d p&p rules,) but you tell us we is making for a strict vegan who is highly intolerant o' gluten and is diabetic.... and we only have access to a microwave oven, that would be a bit like trying do d&d p&p in a crpg.  Gromnir could gets something that might eventually look a bit like a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, but it would taste like... well, it wouldn't taste very good. tell us to make something delicious for the aforementioned person using a microwave oven and we coulds indeed come up with a meal plan, but yellow cake with chocolate frosting would not be on the menu. 'course we would complain 'bout idiotic vegans and their nonsense pov, but that is beside the point. 

 

can't make a cake from a picture? *snort*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[PrimeJunta]

DAO's combat was obnoxious. There was too much of it, the abilities were boring, the loot was uninspired and there were too few enemies. I pushed through the game for story reasons and could have lived with a fast-forward button in almost every fight. I even went so far to gimp the system later on in the game by casting Storm of the Century behind every closed door to murder everything inside just to get past it. It was ****ing agony and if PoE's system is as bad as DAO's I'll probably never finish the game, because my tolerance for bad gameplay is zero nowadays.

 

To be fair, some of the classics had lots of repetitive, filler combat too. I'm on an IWD2 playthrough, and it's starting to wear me down. IWD1 had much better variety; things were changing frequently enough to keep it interesting. It's really too bad they didn't have the time and budget to do that, and had to build length by throwing mob after mob of goblins/orcs/Aurilites/ice trolls etc. at you.

 

If there was a mod that removed 80% of the combat I'd apply it.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

DAO's combat was obnoxious. There was too much of it, the abilities were boring, the loot was uninspired and there were too few enemies. I pushed through the game for story reasons and could have lived with a fast-forward button in almost every fight. I even went so far to gimp the system later on in the game by casting Storm of the Century behind every closed door to murder everything inside just to get past it. It was ****ing agony and if PoE's system is as bad as DAO's I'll probably never finish the game, because my tolerance for bad gameplay is zero nowadays.

 

To be fair, some of the classics had lots of repetitive, filler combat too. I'm on an IWD2 playthrough, and it's starting to wear me down. IWD1 had much better variety; things were changing frequently enough to keep it interesting. It's really too bad they didn't have the time and budget to do that, and had to build length by throwing mob after mob of goblins/orcs/Aurilites/ice trolls etc. at you.

 

If there was a mod that removed 80% of the combat I'd apply it.

 

 

I never could finish IWD2 for the same reasons. The original IWD was far more playable but, being used to characters that speak and better stories I played it late and with great reluctance. I'm not sorry I did, although I would say that the best thing IWD had was art design. BG gets a free pass because its the first one in the series and I was weaned on it.

The thing is, in IE games you could storm through much of the filler combat with a good application of haste and fireball spells. Even without those, it was generally quick. 

 

While playing DAO I had this feeling that the combat dragged on forever and that encounters tended to go one right after the other with pauses that were too short.