On May 10 2014 21:54 LaNague wrote: dragon age combat is fine as long as you play it like a tactical RPG. yeah, higher difficulties require you to have proper char builds and usage of crowd control. I dont see the problem, otherwise it would just be mindless diablo style combat.
And btw, the game has an armor piercing stat, if you rely on armor for tanking, there indeed are enemies that will rip you up if you dont CC them. mages are very dangerous in this game because of the setting, but there are multiple ways to handle them. Templars can handle them easily, your own mages can CC them without a save roll, your assassin can sneak and kill them in 2 secs during a stunlock etc
Just dont do the same silly mistake so many people make and make a tank with hitpoints as his main stat, its entirely useless and ofc he will die very easily. You need to actually avoid damage with armor/evarios/resistance ratings.
Even on the highest difficulty settings the combat gets pretty trivial after you finshed a few of the bigger quests. What always bugged me about DA:O was the camera. I prefer to do combat in a tactical way but the crappy camera doesnt let you zoom-out enough for that to be really enjoyable. The camera overall is just a pain in the ass and the reason why I never played the game for a second time.
The story was a 5/10 for me, it's pretty generic and the only interesting thing are the characters. They are very archetype-like but still enjoyable and written alright.
On May 10 2014 17:58 Kiernan wrote: KotOR and DAO are just the 2 best RPGs ever, I doubt there is anyone who does not love them.
Me :D
I tried to get into DAO, got it on sale last time for 7 bucks, just not my kind of RPG. Never tried KotOR, but linear, narrative driven RPG's just aren't for me.
On May 10 2014 17:58 Kiernan wrote: KotOR and DAO are just the 2 best RPGs ever, I doubt there is anyone who does not love them.
Me :D
I tried to get into DAO, got it on sale last time for 7 bucks, just not my kind of RPG. Never tried KotOR, but linear, narrative driven RPG's just aren't for me.
On May 09 2014 20:26 deth2munkies wrote: DA:O is incredibly long and slow. If you like Baldur's Gate style pacing, you'll like it, but if you're into more fast paced games, look elsewhere. Also, avoid Nightmare difficulty, it's just broken.
In what way is it broken? I played on it and didn't notice any problems?
Basically if you don't freeze lock certain guys you're gonna die. Even the best armored warrior (unless you're using the completely broken DLC armor) is going to evaporate in a few hits. Closing distance on ranged/mage enemies before one of your guys is at 1/2 health is impossible. There are also a couple of completely unfair fights (the thief groups in Denerim comes to mind) where you start off surrounded by traps with a billion archers that can 4 shot your MC. Nightmare mode turns all those mooks you usually ignore in favor of high value targets into monsters able to 3-4 shot anyone that's not a shield warrior.
Yeah, it's possible (yay, Cone of Cold!) but it's very frustrating.
EDIT: Maybe I'm less of a min-maxer than most, but unless you're min-maxing and using broken combos that make the combat less fun (I guess you're being "strategic" but you're using the same 4-5 spells and combos over and over and cheesing Line of Sight) you won't get past the intro on Nightmare.
So it's like a normal play-through in Baldur's Gate?
LOL. Only true if you don't have a clue what you're doing.
And you probably don't have a clue if you play it for the first time. So what? Things like "shreading through armor of melees" will also always be the case here, not because of the armor but because life pools are generally very low in Baldur's Gate (1 not 2) when compared to the damage output of the enemies. When I first played that game, I used 2 melees and even with AC -4 I couldn't really melee but only use them to exploit the KI range/line of sight. I felt that melee in BG1 was generally pretty useless. Icewind Dale 1 did a much much better job in that regard imho.
All I'm going to say is that the tutorials gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect in melee combat and spellcasting. Not so much for ranged combat, which is what owned me a for a short while.
On May 10 2014 17:58 Kiernan wrote: KotOR and DAO are just the 2 best RPGs ever, I doubt there is anyone who does not love them.
Me :D
I tried to get into DAO, got it on sale last time for 7 bucks, just not my kind of RPG. Never tried KotOR, but linear, narrative driven RPG's just aren't for me.
NWN is the one RPG to rule them all imo.
Linear, LINEAR??? You have so much choices in these Games...
If you go back to either game for multiple playthroughs it's actually quite apparent how they're actually chock-full with choices that aren't actually meaningful (you get an extra line of dialogue and +5 light/dark side points and otherwise no meaningful change in the narrative) and that the core game experience is fundamentally linear.
On May 09 2014 20:26 deth2munkies wrote: DA:O is incredibly long and slow. If you like Baldur's Gate style pacing, you'll like it, but if you're into more fast paced games, look elsewhere. Also, avoid Nightmare difficulty, it's just broken.
In what way is it broken? I played on it and didn't notice any problems?
Basically if you don't freeze lock certain guys you're gonna die. Even the best armored warrior (unless you're using the completely broken DLC armor) is going to evaporate in a few hits. Closing distance on ranged/mage enemies before one of your guys is at 1/2 health is impossible. There are also a couple of completely unfair fights (the thief groups in Denerim comes to mind) where you start off surrounded by traps with a billion archers that can 4 shot your MC. Nightmare mode turns all those mooks you usually ignore in favor of high value targets into monsters able to 3-4 shot anyone that's not a shield warrior.
Yeah, it's possible (yay, Cone of Cold!) but it's very frustrating.
EDIT: Maybe I'm less of a min-maxer than most, but unless you're min-maxing and using broken combos that make the combat less fun (I guess you're being "strategic" but you're using the same 4-5 spells and combos over and over and cheesing Line of Sight) you won't get past the intro on Nightmare.
So it's like a normal play-through in Baldur's Gate?
LOL. Only true if you don't have a clue what you're doing.
And you probably don't have a clue if you play it for the first time. So what? Things like "shreading through armor of melees" will also always be the case here, not because of the armor but because life pools are generally very low in Baldur's Gate (1 not 2) when compared to the damage output of the enemies. When I first played that game, I used 2 melees and even with AC -4 I couldn't really melee but only use them to exploit the KI range/line of sight. I felt that melee in BG1 was generally pretty useless. Icewind Dale 1 did a much much better job in that regard imho.
All I'm going to say is that the tutorials gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect in melee combat and spellcasting. Not so much for ranged combat, which is what owned me a for a short while.
Well ok, the "kill 10 rats" quest and the tutorial didn't teach me that my full armoured melee would die to 2-3 freeze arrows from the bandits and the like. And yes I used CC/Protection spells. But whatever, this is not the topic of the thread. The description above just remembered me a bit how I felt about BG1.
On May 11 2014 04:59 Kiernan wrote: Linear, LINEAR??? You have so much choices in these Games...
Not really though, at the end of the day you are limited by the author's choices. I'm just not really into the coolstorybro type of RPG and much prefer NWN improv roleplay and creativity complete with DM client. Probably because it always gives me an outlet for my wild imagination and crazy ideas lol. Always found the player made content to be better than the "professional" writing.
On May 11 2014 04:59 Kiernan wrote: Linear, LINEAR??? You have so much choices in these Games...
Not really though, at the end of the day you are limited by the author's choices. I'm just not really into the coolstorybro type of RPG and much prefer NWN improv roleplay and creativity complete with DM client. Probably because it always gives me an outlet for my wild imagination and crazy ideas lol. Always found the player made content to be better than the "professional" writing.
If you really want to have story freedom, you should consider going back to the roots and playing some Pen and Paper RPGs.
Also, EUIV good. Get it if you like grand strategy.
If you really want to have story freedom, you should consider going back to the roots and playing some Pen and Paper RPGs.
I've considered that, but it's hard for me to find a group and I have a hard time keeping a set schedule so NWN is there to pick up whenever (even if the community is much smaller these days). I always like taking part in creating the story and using some imagination and creativity, more than using someone else's I guess.
If you really want to have story freedom, you should consider going back to the roots and playing some Pen and Paper RPGs.
I've considered that, but it's hard for me to find a group and I have a hard time keeping a set schedule so NWN is there to pick up whenever (even if the community is much smaller these days). I always like taking part in creating the story and using some imagination and creativity, more than using someone else's I guess.
There are several online services for playing games using rule sets. Might help with finding a group, though problems with schedules might mess that up as well.
On May 11 2014 07:12 Yurie wrote: There are several online services for playing games using rule sets. Might help with finding a group, though problems with schedules might mess that up as well.
Any that you recommend in particular? I may give that a look sometime if I take a break from my new SotS 2 addiction. :D
Yes, i guess the selling point there is that they have a lot of game systems integrated into the thing, even though you have to buy them. On the other hand roll20 is free-ish (You can pay, but you don't need to if you don't want to), but doesn't have any of that. It has solid dice rolling, you can import any sort of image or token in there, or paint something on the fly, and they have a solid selection of tokens to start with. But you will need to buy the game system somewhere else, and not have it directly integrated in the program.
I haven't played with Fantasy Grounds at all, roll20 has always served my needs, but i can see the selling point of having the rules integrated into your online game desk.
I am personally more of a rules-light guy anyways, so having a lot of numbercrunching built into the engine doesn't help me a lot in my games.
$40 for a GM and $25 for each player is pretty steep considering you also have to buy scenarios.
Well it's on sale right now for $30 for the GM version, but you don't have to buy any scenarios. GM can create anything he wants, or copy any adventure that already exists in pen and paper form and recreate it. There are options to buy additional rule sets or adventures, but you don't need to. You can also find plenty of players and GM's on their forums. D&D 3.5 and 4e support is included, there are free rule sets for many other systems created by users, and there are the professional rule sets that they have licenses for that you can buy.
You can always download the free demo and mess around with it. It's limited in what you can do compared to the full version, but it can give you some idea of what it is capable of. It takes some work to learn if you want to GM, but for players it's pretty easy.
EPT
