Dragon Hate

[AnjyBelle]

If I remember correctly, the first timeI had to fight against dragons was in Baldurs Gate 2.
 
After that a fight against dragons seems to be mandatory for almost every AD&D game (e.g NWN 2), was adopted by Dragon Age and many other games.
 
Mostly it goes like this:
 
I meet dragon first time. I get butchered, one hitted, slaughtered and ...how was this new word? ... gibbed.
 
I try again, same result. I read forum and learn about a cheap trick. I fight again and win.
 
In BG 2 it was the spell "feeblemind", in NWN 2 fire protection plus two mages (Sand and Qara) casting
"Isaac's Greater Missile Storm" after debuffing the dragon with "Mordekainen's Disjunction".
In DA:O it was a question of level, in DA II it was simply reflex based and finally in DA:I have a high enough level and Sera use her ultimate bow skill.
 
Try to fight all these dragons in a regular way and you'll enter a valley of tears and frustration OR figure out the cheap trick.
 
What a nonsense. It's like some ants fight a wolf and win, because there is an ant-mage and the wolf is too stupid to stomp them simply into the ground during the castingtime.
 
The only halfways acceptable dragonfights I have seen in "The Witcher II", where a ballista was needed to bring the beast down. If I remember correctly something similar happened in Dungeon Siege II, too.
 
Anything else is nonsense. Mass wins over class, no matter what spells the class knows or how fast the tiny being can use her bow.
 
The question:
 
Must we really have this again and again just because of some "I-solo-this-game-with-a-mage-at-ultra-hard"-gamers who need this kind of a ... uhm ... challenge because they can't afford the lady in leather with the whip?
 
I am aware that most of these fights are not necessary to progress in the games, they're (thankfully) just optional.
 
But then there is the old school gamer, who can''t leave a game before having completed everything...
 
Although I HATE minigames like the ballista shootings in TW 2 and DS 2, I'd prefer that over the tedious
(or cheap) battles we've had in the past.
 
Give us some other hard bosses like

Raedric in his second form,

but let the dragons rest in peace.

Cant EDIT: Dragons being in the game is common knowledge. I did spoiler tag a detail that's a giveaway, though.

Edited September 23, 2015 by AnjyBelle

[globalCooldown]

Going to have to agree to disagree. Games need to cater to more than just niche players; that's why games have things like, say, difficulty levels. So hardcore gamers have something to chew on, while normal folk can enjoy the story.

For fantasy games with dragons in general, making an encounter with a dragon is an easy way to deliver a spectacular, yet tough battle. If you go in on autopilot, mass WILL win over class, so it forces you to play smart! And your reward is a feeling of accomplishment and empowerment from outsmarting such a terrifying and colossal beast.

The strategic angle is vital. If bigger was always better, people would be playing with entire custom parties of aumaua. And that's boring.

In Pillars of Eternity in particular, you're able to talk your way out of every single dragon fight. So if the dragon fights really do give you trouble, and you don't want to cheese the fights via forum tricks, just try being a diplomat!

[AnjyBelle]

Look, it's not about tactics. Until now I won every fight against dragons in any game, even without cheap tricks.

 

Further, I have nothing against "....something to chew on...". As I wrote, give us more enemies like Raedric's

second form, make it even harder.

 

I admit, that my hate against fights like those against dragons comes form another point of view: I simply cannot

totally neglect logic and common sense. I know, I know"...this is a fantasy game, no logic must be involved..." etc.

 

But ok, we MUST have dragons for some "...hardcore gamers" as you call them.

Then make it like in Fallout 3 against these ultimate uber hyper mutants. For these guy a tactical nuclear weapon was

needed or at least strongly advised. That had some logic, but was a challenge, too.

Edited September 23, 2015 by AnjyBelle

[Doppelschwert]

So you're not against the associated difficulty, just against the concept of a dragon as an enemy in a high-fantasy game, because it breaks your immersion, if I may summarize it like that?

 

Good luck changing that. While you are at it, you might also ask for removal of elves and dwarves because I prefer my settings without them as well.

[AnjyBelle]

Bah.... spare me the sophism.

[FlintlockJazz]

I agree with AnjyBelle, the apparent 'requirement' to have a dragon to fight and kill has been done to both figurative and literal death.  Not only would it be refreshing to fight something else now but it's kinda lessened the power and mystique of the dragon and turned them into the cartoon villain that is constantly being defeated by the heroes every week.  I mean, look at Skyrim: dragons actually get turned into little more than farmable mini-bosses that you actually farm for their souls!  And people talk like you are awesome and done the impossible when you bring in yet another dragon head, when really it felt more like a case of Cecil the Lion...  Though at least they fly every now and again instead of just staying on the ground so you can kill them...

 

I don't like killing dragons.  When I heard you could be a dragonborn in Skyrim I was hoping you could team up with dragons!  I'll admit it now:  I want to ride a dragon!  I love the winged magical creatures!

[Doppelschwert]

I think someone implying that people who like this stuff are masochistic can deal with a little sarcasm.

 

Regardless, what do you hope to achieve with this thread?

 

This game was made to cater to nostalgia, and dragons are a part of that. Now that they are established in the lore, there will most likely be dragons in the possible sequels as well. In the most likely scenario, they can reuse the art assets they already did for this game, so they will most certainly reuse them. Even apart from flavour, it's just more budget effective to do that.

 

Are dragons cliche and overused? Yes. But so is every other fantasy trope. The content of cräghold could've been less cliched as well, but if I wanted to play a game where they reinvented the fantasy genre, I wouldn't have bought a game that brings me back to the IE games.

 

EDIT: Changed wording not to spoil anything.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Doppelschwert

[FlintlockJazz]

SPOILERS DUDE!!  This is the general forum, I haven't even started Craghold, but you just majorly spoiled it.

[Doppelschwert]

I apologize, although you probably understood my post wrong. I'll send a pm to clarify.

 

You might as well complain about the second fight against a certain enemy mentioned by the OP, however.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Doppelschwert

[FlintlockJazz]

I apologize, although you probably understood my post wrong. I'll send a pm to clarify.

 

You might as well complain about the second fight against a certain enemy mentioned by the OP, however.

Good point, I completely missed that.  Um, maybe this whole thread should be moved to one of the spoiler forums...

[Lord_Mord]

Thanks. I didn't try to kill Raedric on my first playthrough. This time I wanted to, but you spoilered that he has a "second form".

 

I want to kill a dragon. I am no hardcore gamer. In fact I am not very good. If I made the game I would have used such enemies more sparingly (especially dragons, I would have introduced them in PoE2 and therefore made them even harder), but I want enemies that hard. If you can't handle the dragons, just let them be. I have enough of people complaining about the few fights, that were actually interesting.

[Cottonmouth]

Feeblemind? How anticlimatic. My faovurite method was to cast lower resistance, then doom, then greater malison, then finger of death. There's just something about striking down a dragon with a single spell and seeing its soul disperse. Either Ascension or SCS fixed that though and made dragons challening again.

[AnjyBelle]

Feeblemind? How anticlimatic. My faovurite method was to cast lower resistance, then doom, then greater malison, then finger of death. There's just something about striking down a dragon with a single spell and seeing its soul disperse. Either Ascension or SCS fixed that though and made dragons challening again.

Read first post.

 

Of course there were several methods to win, but "feeblemind" was the cheapest.

 

@ others

 

To clarify this: I have nothing against (high fantasy) dragons. But as FlintLockJazz wrote, why must there be always a fight involved?

Why must they almost always be the "evil" ones?

 

And once more: Nothing against tough fights which require a lot of skill from the player in terms of knowing how the game mechanics work,

knowing the strength and weakness of the player-character(s) and using a clever tactic - not just cheap tricks.

 

But IMO there is a fine difference between a "tough fight" and a "fight against something totally op", winnable only by accident, with enough luck and / or a cheap trick.

Edited September 23, 2015 by AnjyBelle

[Gunnar.Maluf]

Thanks. I didn't try to kill Raedric on my first playthrough. This time I wanted to, but you spoilered that he has a "second form".

 

I want to kill a dragon. I am no hardcore gamer. In fact I am not very good. If I made the game I would have used such enemies more sparingly (especially dragons, I would have introduced them in PoE2 and therefore made them even harder), but I want enemies that hard. If you can't handle the dragons, just let them be. I have enough of people complaining about the few fights, that were actually interesting.

 

I've seen people complaining about the fights, not because they are hard but because you can't defeat the dragons without using cheesy tatics and all the other encounters you can just steam roll for the most part. That gap between the game encounters is the main complain. 

 

I would love to have encounters that work more like the BG games, lots of buffs and debuffs going around to one party gain an edge on the other party. 

The White March improved on this but still a long way to be optimum.

 

Take food and potions for instance, I can count in one hand all the times I needed them, and that's without using all my fingers. Even on Potd. 

[KDubya]

Why don't they make all the Dragons immune to CC such as petrify, paralyze, stun, charm, confuse and all the rest?

 

Then tune the encounter so that you can take a few hits and give that a try. Better than to have cheese be the winning move.

 

What is the point of making the Alpine Dragon (and most of its minions) immune to crush other than to punish melee classes and Monks in particular? Frost immune I could see, but crush? Casters can just use a different spell, what is  a weapon class supposed to do when they can't use their weapon?

[Gunnar.Maluf]

Why don't they make all the Dragons immune to CC such as petrify, paralyze, stun, charm, confuse and all the rest?

 

Then tune the encounter so that you can take a few hits and give that a try. Better than to have cheese be the winning move.

 

What is the point of making the Alpine Dragon (and most of its minions) immune to crush other than to punish melee classes and Monks in particular? Frost immune I could see, but crush? Casters can just use a different spell, what is  a weapon class supposed to do when they can't use their weapon?

 

I would rather like more if they gave us means to debuff the dragon to a point where you could hit him with melee and/or ranged.

[AnjyBelle]

 

Why don't they make all the Dragons immune to CC such as petrify, paralyze, stun, charm, confuse and all the rest?

 

Then tune the encounter so that you can take a few hits and give that a try. Better than to have cheese be the winning move.

 

What is the point of making the Alpine Dragon (and most of its minions) immune to crush other than to punish melee classes and Monks in particular? Frost immune I could see, but crush? Casters can just use a different spell, what is  a weapon class supposed to do when they can't use their weapon?

 

I would rather like more if they gave us means to debuff the dragon to a point where you could hit him with melee and/or ranged.

 

In one of my fights that worked well with a cipher's debuff "fractured volition" followed by "mind plague".

After this it was a cakewalk, spamming "paralyze" from scrolls, a ranger's shots and some hits from a sabre.

 

With another party, in which I had neither a cipher nor a ranger I got wiped, wiped, wiped.

 

Conclusion: Have the right party, have the right spells and you win, otherwise you have at least a hard time.

[gkathellar]

the Alpine Dragon (and most of its minions) immune to crush

 

Wait wait wait wait wait

 

That's ... look, I have words about that, but they'd get caught in the language filter. Lots of four-letter words.

 

But on a certain level, it's gratifying, because this is exactly the kind of stupidity that I knew was going to happen when they started talking about immunities.

[AnjyBelle]

 

the Alpine Dragon (and most of its minions) immune to crush

 

Wait wait wait wait wait

 

That's ... look, I have words about that, but they'd get caught in the language filter. Lots of four-letter words.

 

But on a certain level, it's gratifying, because this is exactly the kind of stupidity that I knew was going to happen when they started talking about immunities.

 

I'm not sure, if I understand what you want to tell us.

 

Could you explain a bit more specific?

[Oralaina]

Hmm.  I guess....  I'm happy enough with dragons because they fit the "internal logic" of this type of fantasy world (if that's not oxymoronish....)  I'm not sure what else would be "better" or preferable - the other couple of types of big bad guys in this game suffer from the same disconnect with logic - and also appear in other versions of high fantasy books and games.

 

By this time in game development, there's just not much "new, never before seen, never been done" bad guys....

[Teioh_White]

The only thing I really hate about dragons is they use directional based attacks as their main mechanic. Which is fine, but an IE engine isn't super well desigend for that, so sometimes the dragon will take a weird step when switching which dork up front it's engaged too, end up turning halfway, then attempting to correct its direction. But in the middle of that stutter step, it's breath comes up in the queue, and now i've got a cooked backline. Or some similar nonense when i''ve got folks melee'n on the side, it'll take a wide spin, face a direction no one's standing in, and Spike Flail them dead.

 

It's not like it happens every time, but it happens enough I can't trust a non cheese strategy on ToI, and just have to stun lock them dead.

[the_dog_days]

PoE2: Dragon Hate: Origins? An army of mindless Woedica worshipers attempts to taint all of Theda . . . er, Eora.

 

I'm sorry, the title was just asking for it.

[Cantousent]

I didn't check the whole thread, only a post that had a report. No biggie, just make sure you spoiler tag stuff. Look, guys, I know the game's been out for a while but try to be conscientious about spoilers. The report itself wasn't 'angry,' just an observation and so this is just a friendly reminder. :Cant's easy grin icon:

 

As for the original post, I generally agree. I don't mind fights with 'tricks' as long as there's some chance to learn them before-hand. Make the tricks of the fight part of the story rather than just trial and error things that require an internet check for most folks. Reward conscientious gamers who pay attention. Even then, you'll still have a lot of casual gamers who need someone to hold their hands.

 

It's the age old fight between the 'bragging rights' folks, other folks who genuinely just like a grueling challenge at every step, and folks who want mostly stiff challenges with a few 'sweat ops.' Take all those, and keep in mind that the devs probably want to include so called casual gamers for whom most fights will be a real challenge. For my part, I think a few grueling fights are good, mixed with a lot of tough fights, and a couple of fights that get to be fairly easy if you pay attention and do your homework.

 

Of course, I'm starting to loath end fights altogether... especially ten false end-fights before the 'real' end fight. I'd like to see the hardest fight a little before the very end and then have a bit of awesome role-playing and story-telling for the last ten minutes or so.

[Tennisgolfboll]

If I remember correctly, the first timeI had to fight against dragons was in Baldurs Gate 2.

 

After that a fight against dragons seems to be mandatory for almost every AD&D game (e.g NWN 2), was adopted by Dragon Age and many other games.

 

Mostly it goes like this:

 

I meet dragon first time. I get butchered, one hitted, slaughtered and ...how was this new word? ... gibbed.

 

I try again, same result. I read forum and learn about a cheap trick. I fight again and win.

 

In BG 2 it was the spell "feeblemind", in NWN 2 fire protection plus two mages (Sand and Qara) casting

"Isaac's Greater Missile Storm" after debuffing the dragon with "Mordekainen's Disjunction".

In DA:O it was a question of level, in DA II it was simply reflex based and finally in DA:I have a high enough level and Sera use her ultimate bow skill.

 

Try to fight all these dragons in a regular way and you'll enter a valley of tears and frustration OR figure out the cheap trick.

 

What a nonsense. It's like some ants fight a wolf and win, because there is an ant-mage and the wolf is too stupid to stomp them simply into the ground during the castingtime.

 

The only halfways acceptable dragonfights I have seen in "The Witcher II", where a ballista was needed to bring the beast down. If I remember correctly something similar happened in Dungeon Siege II, too.

 

Anything else is nonsense. Mass wins over class, no matter what spells the class knows or how fast the tiny being can use her bow.

 

The question:

 

Must we really have this again and again just because of some "I-solo-this-game-with-a-mage-at-ultra-hard"-gamers who need this kind of a ... uhm ... challenge because they can't afford the lady in leather with the whip?

 

I am aware that most of these fights are not necessary to progress in the games, they're (thankfully) just optional.

 

But then there is the old school gamer, who can''t leave a game before having completed everything...

 

Although I HATE minigames like the ballista shootings in TW 2 and DS 2, I'd prefer that over the tedious

(or cheap) battles we've had in the past.

 

Give us some other hard bosses like

 

Raedric in his second form,

but let the dragons rest in paece.

 

Cant EDIT: Dragons being in the game is common knowledge. I did spoiler tag a detail that's a giveaway, though.

You are right.

 

Rather than proper difficulty settings and balance we get these crap fights.

 

Debuff and cast petrify and insta gib dragon. Dont and die.

 

The same is true for easy or hard (which is a whole other level of absurd)

[AnjyBelle]

As for the original post, I generally agree. I don't mind fights with 'tricks' as long as there's some chance to learn them before-hand. Make the tricks of the fight part of the story rather than just trial and error things that require an internet check for most folks. Reward conscientious gamers who pay attention. Even then, you'll still have a lot of casual gamers who need someone to hold their hands.

 

I like the idea.

 

With my words:

 

Make a small quest around a dragon. The reward is a secret about a weakness and / or an item which would debuff

the beast for some seconds etc. 

 

Example:

Item debuffs Alpine Dragon's crush immunity and lowers it to "resistant"; secret reveals a weakness against

mind-spells, etc.

 

The "die hards" can run heads on into battle, nevertheless.

The cunning player would use the item / the secret and not have the feeling about a "cheap victory".