Honestly, and I'm probably going to catch flack for this, Dragon Age: Origin's gameplay is, in general, equal, if not superior, to Baldur's Gate. Skills require a bit more thought to use than average spells (due to encounter design, you could hit some nasty moments if you didn't utilize stuns properly, for example), you relied less on hoping enemy X would fail a save vs a spell (meaning save scumming was often your best bet in a fight), all characters have reasonably dynamic gameplay (more than casters have skills), protecting fragile characters required a little more than finding the nearest door and parking tanks in front of it (despite people criticizing the taunt mechanic, I didn't find it to be such a solid fail safe, especially in larger encounters)...
Preferring Vancian casting is fine, of course, but, in general, cooldown systems tend to lead to more interactive and dynamic gameplay since you are always doing things with different characters and chaining abilities.
The place where Dragon Age fell apart is in the world building and character plots. Kind of a consequence of the shift to 3D and full VA (part of why I'd like to see another 2D RPG), but the world, in general, was much, much smaller. Individual towns in BG/2 had more content (both real and small) then pretty much any region in DA:O. Amn itself pretty much put the entirety of the game to shame for feeling alive. Many plot ends and encounters wrapped up very quickly without suitable introduction, build, or climax. Ironically, the game also tended to crawl in segments because it lacked the (shoddy) fix that was Haste in BG/2.
So yeah. There are my opinions on that.
Keep in mind, before you tear me apart, that BG2 is one of my top games of all time and ranks significantly higher than Dragon Age. But DA's core mechanics are pretty damn sound.
@AndrewRogue I tend to agree. Based purely on combat mechanics DAO is better than BG2. The focus of the Baldur's Gate series was different though, and as you said its one of the top games of all time for what it does.
It is true DA took some things from modern rpgs, MMO or not doesnt matter. DAO is good but in terms of story it does not touch BG, not even close. One of the details that I don't like is how I keep seeing the witchers in the grey wardens, almost as if they come from the same book. Ignoring that its a good game with some modern things like skill/spell trees that i dont adore but dont bother me either. Anyway I understand the OP even though I liked DAO.
I very much agree with AndrewRogue and Lediath concerning combat. I fail to see where the BG series was anymore complex than DAO. Neither did DAO force the holy-trinity of tank-healer-damage on people - the choice is yours to play as you like.
I may be the minority here, but DAO reminded me alot of BG2. Epic, immersive story, extensive dialogue, how the party NPCs were written, combat with ye olde combat pause and the optional zoom-out to isometric perspective, and last but not least the modding support... all these things make it a spiritual successor for me, to BG2 that is. BG2 had quite some differences compared to BG as well, and in the same way: Less freedom, more focus on the story and NPCs, which is a trend that DAO simply continued.
I do think that co-development for consoles hurt DAO in the end, the interface is a mess, the world areas are small and the load times are gigantic. Going 3D was not the problem here, developing for gaming consoles with only 512MB RAM was.
The things I loved in DAO were the varied Origin stories and the political maneuvering during the Landsmeet and in Orzammar, this is something BG did not offer. I also prefer DAO's party NPCs over most of their BG2 counterparts, and Loghain makes Sarevok and Irenicus look like bland movie villains in comparison.
I very much agree with AndrewRogue and Lediath concerning combat. I fail to see where the BG series was anymore complex than DAO. Neither did DAO force the holy-trinity of tank-healer-damage on people - the choice is yours to play as you like.
hehe actually, I didn't say that DAO was more complex than BG2, I merely stated that I believe that the mehcanics of DAO are better than BG2. Overall complexity, I believe its class dependent, I'll spare everyone the details...
Also I loved Irenicus as a villian =D He isn't very physically intimidating, but extremely devious, much like Kefka from FF6.
@AndrewRogue I tend to agree. Based purely on combat mechanics DAO is better than BG2. The focus of the Baldur's Gate series was different though, and as you said its one of the top games of all time for what it does.
I disagree. BG is in my mind clearly an action RPG with focus on combat and fighting. You hardly ever do anything other than fight, and almost every quest is either resolved through combat or has a combat encounter at the end of it.
Dragon Age uses an action combat system based on cooldowns, like Warcraft is doing, but with less spells available.
The spells available are select few.
You are implying that D&D systems with over 300 spells are less complex than this? I never even had to see what spells my companions were using to beat Dragon Age.
Complex means a more difficult system to master, with more possibilities available and more tactics required. In Dragon Age the only thing i had to do to survive was chug potions that didn't even take an action while shieldwalling.
Jesus, it even had 3 base classes, but wait, there were specializations...
Spiritual successor to BG my ass.
As for the mmo thing, not it's not an mmo, it uses a combat system similar to some mmorpgs, the last are rpgs as well, it's bound to remind you of them.
Some tactics might be required in certain fights of Dragon Age, but complexity? Give me a break. It was as console and new player friendly as possible.
@Worg I believe the person that you were trying to debate against may not have been that far off. However, I will admit that there are certain traits found in Dragon Age that can be found in an MMORPG as well. This could very well be the fact that they both fall into the RPG genre. Role-Playing Games have a VERY distinct and strict order of rules to follow by. They haven’t changed much even after all these years.
>.< The way you decided to back your claim is a bit flawed. All you did was point out all the general traits that can be found in nearly any other game as well.
For example: Following your terms as a guideline, you could say that Devil May Cry is just like an RTS, if compared to Command & Conquer. - In both games, you must control a unit of sort. - The objective is to complete/beat the level/mission. - An arsenal of weapons can be used to accomplish your goal. - Both are played in Real Time, not turn based. - There’s a story in both games. And so forth…
Anywho, rather than saying Dragon Age is just like an MMO, it should really be said that MMORPGs are just like regular RPGs that follow the rules of D&D to an extent. DA:O/DA2 were no exceptions to this.
DA:O didn’t really seem like they were focusing on MMO players either, it was more like they were just trying to get players to submerge themselves in the old style of cRPG that BG, IW, NWN and so many others followed.
IMO, I felt like DA:O was designed to be as close to IE games as possible, but without all the complexity that it’s known for. They had to dumb down a lot of things for the new generation of players to take a liking towards it. DA2, unfortunately, was the end result of this. Apparently, DA:O wasn’t stupefied enough for this generation. So, they turned its successor into a Hack ‘n’ Slash with fewer options than ever.
The things I loved in DAO were the varied Origin stories and the political maneuvering during the Landsmeet and in Orzammar, this is something BG did not offer. I also prefer DAO's party NPCs over most of their BG2 counterparts, and Loghain makes Sarevok and Irenicus look like bland movie villains in comparison.
Mild sidetopicwith DA:O spoilers:
I found Loghain to be incredibly boring. He betrayed the king because he believed he'd hand Ferelden over to the Orlaisians and then...nothing. He sat in his throne room being grumpy, bitter over people actually not liking him betraying the king. The overall impression I got was that his Master Plan was on the level of the Underpants Gnomes: 1) Leave King to die 2) ???? 3) Profit!
Then again, I didn't get him into the group at the Landsmeet, maybe I'm missing much of his backstory and motivations and grand master plan. But I never cared for Loghain as a villain. I always just saw him as a general who didn't agree with his king so he seized power, like a thousand generals in fiction and non-fiction before him. That's not the same level as bad-assery as starting a giant war just to create a major blood sacrifice to a dead god, or sucking out a demi-god's soul to be able to wipe out an elven city and ascend to full godhood.
IRT Topic
No it's not. And this is the wrong forum for this 'discussion'.
@Drugar I can understand where you came from, it's true the game don,t go much into Loghain character and it's definatelly the game fault. Much of his characterisation is found in the first Dragon age novel. it help thouse like me who have read it but leave everyone else in the dark
I was going to write a long post on why "complexity" in the form of 300 (largely categorically similar and otherwise worthless) spells isn't really good design and not actually that complex, since it is more a matter of memorization then anything. Worse, most of the spells fall into fairly broad categories that mean large swaths of them are similar (buffs, debuffs, direct damage, save or die) meaning that, tactically speaking, it is the same spell different slot. Worse then that, a lot of the difficulty from Baldur's Gate stems from "checklist" style difficulty (can you resist energy drain, can you resist psionic blasts, can you resist Imprison) instead of actual, dynamic, in-battle decisions... but I have a far better idea.
Send me a video of you getting through the entirety of Dragon Age: Origins on a normal (or higher, if you want, since the game requires no tactical thought) difficulty doing nothing but using Shieldwall and chugging potions. Auto-level your companions and don't bother setting AI for them (since you don't need to know their spells!).
I'll wait.
(Also, being new player friendly is a good thing, you silly goose. The best games with the most depth, in fact, tend to be fairly be fairly new player friendly. Scaring away new players because the basic mechanics are horrifically arcane is silly. What do you actually gain from having impenetrable rules? A warm fuzzy sense of accomplishment once you plow through the rulebook?
Not that it was necessary. Honestly, even after a dozen plays of BG2, I'm still fuzzy on how exactly THAC0 and saves work, because I don't need to know exactly how they work! I just need to know the bigger... well... smaller... number is better.)
Honestly, I wish people would quit making me have to sound like I don't actually like BG/2 or think they are phenomenal games. I love them. I love BG2 with a passion that concerns my girlfriend. I would have plushes of the entire cast (especially Nalia) if I could. Similarly, I don't want to make people think I believe that DA:O is the end-all, be-all game either. It failed in a lot of substantial ways to recapture the magic of BG2 for me.
People just need to get out of the mindset that certain modern affectations are "bad." They are just different and lead to a very different style of game. If you don't like that kind of game? I can respect that. What I can't respect is people saying they are inherently bad.
Honestly, the same complaints you level about not having to think in DA:O, I could level right back. Most encounters in BG/2 could be cleared by taking two-three casters, tossing every buff you had available out, then just wading in and throwing around direct damage. It is fully possible to play BG/2 in a clever manner, but, really, the game was pretty easy to brute force. The only real spell interactions you NEEDED to know as an "average" player were the various protections and the spells to remove them, since, otherwise, the game stonewalled you hard.
@AndrewRogue Don't agree completely, but I do like the post and it makes a lot of sense. Also, if you have an inquisitor in your party, you can pretty much brute for all the magic protections too, Dispel Magic strips them all.
I appreciate the fact that Loghain's motivations can be analyzed and debated. Was Ostagar really a betrayal or was it a tactical retreat? I do not want to get into this discussion here, it is the wrong forum and should be done on the Bioware boards, but the mere fact that a discussion is possible is a plus for me. The choice after the Landsmeet is just icing on the cake. I see Loghain as an attempt to write a more realistic antagonist, versus the traditional villains of the BG series.
I never even had to see what spells my companions were using to beat Dragon Age. In Dragon Age the only thing i had to do to survive was chug potions that didn't even take an action while shieldwalling.
That you chose to play this way does not negate the existence of other playstyles in DAO, the possibilities are there. I will concede that DAO lacked well-tuned difficulty levels, but the basic combat design is solid. Personally I play with mods and at a much higher difficulty level than the normal game, and I have to fine-tune my tactics as much as in BG, if not more so.
My point was not that DAO is overly complex, my point is that neither DAO or BG are complex compared to Pen & Paper. BG still is only a real-time approximation and has lots of rule-bending to make it happen. If I want a complex RPG I'll boot up Temple of Elemental Evil.
The BG series and DAO have more to offer than the combat though: The story, the characters and the freedom of choice in dealing with both and working with the consequences. This is where it is a spiritual successor. I'm sorry if the lack of simplified AD&D rules is the only thing defining a game for you.
I appreciate the fact that Loghain's motivations can be analyzed and debated. Was Ostagar really a betrayal or was it a tactical retreat? I do not want to get into this discussion here, it is the wrong forum and should be done on the Bioware boards, but the mere fact that a discussion is possible is a plus for me. The choice after the Landsmeet is just icing on the cake. I see Loghain as an attempt to write a more realistic antagonist, versus the traditional villains of the BG series.
That's a point of difference between us then :-) While I like my quests and NPC's and gameworld morally ambiguous, I prefer my main antagonist to be a mustache twirling supervillain that pisses me off during the entire game so that when I do finally stab him in the eyes thirty or fourty times with a two handed sword, I can jump up from my chair and yell "Take that, you baby eating, hamster faced dookie-head!" (namecalling is not my forte). With Loghain...eh. I can see where he's coming from. Sort of. I guess. He made (imho) the wrong call, but he doesn't seem happy with it either. Guess he needs to be executed then. Meh. A shame it had to come to this.
I'm surprised DA:O is getting some love for its plot and villain.
The plot was absolutely awful. The entire thing was just a glorified fetch quest. "Sorry, Grey Warden, but our army is in another castle!" What was cool was the way they gave two different sides to every coin, but as far as story-telling goes? My goodness was it boring.
I was expecting it to be the game opening, kind of the equivalent to chapter 2 of BG2, and then once you've gathered all the armies the plot really starts to open up and things get interesting, but nope! Let's go fight the last boss!
And Loghain was a mediocre villain. If you need supplemental material to make him interesting, he's not interesting.
I'll not comment on the gameplay as I played DA:O on the console, where I daresay it would have been much less tactical.
Don't get me wrong, though, I love the game, but mostly for its party interactions and choices.
@AndrewRogue complexity means just that. Something complex, it doesn't mean it's interesting, or good, or fun. It's just complex, you talk about complexity, that's what you get.
Can you defeat a lich straight and without preparation? Brute force? Do it. But you're gonna get your ass handed to you if you don't understand how the D&D magic system works, and it is complex enough to take some time to understand, same with everything else. It's a more complex designed system, all those spells your mentioned that "practically do the same thing", well no, they don't, they do similar things, and the fact that you need to distinguish the difference means it has somewhat more complexity than the Dragon Age system.
That was the argument i was disagreeing with. Dragon age combat system being more complex than Baldur's Gate. More fun maybe, more active yes, but more complex? Why exactly was it complex? What made it complex compared to a whole set of AD&D rules you have to know to understand what's happening?
Yeah of course it's gonna be better if it caters to the new player, but it proves it must be less complex as well.
Also i never said Dragon Age was bad. I said i didn't like it and i don't consider it a SS to Baldur's Gate, since it gradually lost the isometric view (present in Origins) and the more tactical combat, which means just that, tactical combat, not better or worse.
And no, you don't have to think that hard in DA:O, you don't have a ton of spells to choose from, you don't have to prepare for anything, since you are always capable of using your present abilities to defeat something.
Can you tell me which of the following effects were present at DA when battling enemies, that you had to protect yourself against? Because my memory is fuzzy and i can't remember : Fear, Stun, Maze, Imprisonment, Death Spells, Hold Spells, damage immunities (i hate mages) and so on. I remember for example being able to cause fear but never having to defend against even when facing a dragon. Dragons without fear?
You can say that shielwalling and chuggin potions is an exaggeration, but it is the truth i had a much harder time beating enemies of importance in Baldur's Gate than in Dragon Age, exactly because i had to take more factors and abilities into account, which is a form of complex battle system. Also i still wait for those party fights that could decimate your party in DA. Party fights were actually pretty complex in BG, and without preparation and pre-buffing, it was pretty hard to react to contingencies and spell triggers.
Now lastly, do you really want to go there? You want me to send you a video with Dragon Age faceroll, if i understand correctly? So you can also send me a video of you defeating Baldur's Gate through Brute Force? And we can measure our e-peens in terms of facerolling or argumentative speech? Seriously? Maybe if i lived and breathed for people to accept my opinions through the internet, but doing so, pretty much proves i would be an insecure person that desperately needs to be right. No, i'm not always right and i don't mind being wrong at all. And yes, it was an exaggeration, Dragon Age is actually harder than "chugging potions and shieldwalling", however, i didn't find it harder than Baldur's Gate, not by a long shot.
It is possible to do anything in both games, i hope you realize that, and there are exploits that could make you faceroll the games, but without them, can you honestly say Dragon Age is more complex than Baldur's Gate in terms of combat? The mere fact that you need to know the system better to understand some things even about Thac0 but mostly of the magic system is proof of complexity, although in all honesty, ballbusting complexity sometimes.
@ while trying to figure out some things combat wise, then of course it's gonna seem much easier.
D&D systems have more complex battles than other CRPG games because you take into account more information. More rules to follow, more options. That's it. Even if something is similar, you need to know the difference, and when you can't be ready for anything, things are going to be harder.
I respect your liking to Dragon Age, but i seriously cannot understand how you can say that a system that was created with sooo many rules and regulations in mind, developed through years snd with tactical combat as a target, could be less complex than a game and a combat system created by Bioware in 3 years or so for consoles and PCs, which allowed you to just play your character and not bother with other chars abilities, and it was a perfectly viable way of playing. Many people liked just that about Dragon Age, the fact you didn't have to micromanage 6 people at the same time.
@MississippiGhost Baldur's Gate is not exactly like a pen and paper D&D game indeed, but it is close enough. Yes numbers are not everything, but complexity covers that as well, it doesn't mean i want 300 abilities, but more combinations will be available through a system with more spells, more party members available in your team and enemies that use the same spells against you, which as said are a lot, forcing you to be prepared or be decimated. I agree that it is not that convenient to have to prepare like that each time, but complexity as far as i know is not something people love anyway.
Abbreviating your quotes because this would be really long otherwise.
If complexity is nothing more than complexity, then it is kind of a terrible idea. If the complexity adds nothing but being complex, then why bother having it? Complexity should be used to add something to the game, not to include 300 redundant/pointless spells. My argument is that this style of complexity is a bad design choice.
That aside, no. The magic system isn't really that complex. It has a lot of information in it, but there isn't anything actually complex in there. Oh sure, memorizing every spell is a bit difficult (lots of information to consume), but I understood it pretty reasonably well back in ~'99 (or whenever I actually first picked it up) when my only actual DnD knowledge was an issue or two of Dragon Magazine. Keep in mind, I didn't really read the manual either.
The fact is that BG automates most things. The knowledge you need of spells/mechanics you actually need to play BG at a competent level is pretty minimal.
And I'd appreciate if you quoted me accurately. I did not say the spells "practically do the same thing." I said "...most of the spells fall into fairly broad categories that mean large swaths of them are similar (buffs, debuffs, direct damage, save or die) meaning that, tactically speaking, it is the same spell different slot." This is quite different and I will ascertain that it remains true.
Yes, Acid Arrow and Magic Missile are very different spells. They still both deal damage and, if I need damage spells, I'm going to hurl them both until I'm out. Bless, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Resistance From Elements do drastically different things, but I'm still going to throw all of them out before a big encounter because they are buffs.
There are some small nuances, but they have about as much variation as cone shaped AoE vs caster centered AoE. For the vast majority of the game, you can pretty much cherry pick spell information and not be any worse for it (this deals force damage, this deals acid damage or this reduces damage, this prevents me from taking damage). Oh sure, it gets more tedious once you start wondering "how many Stoneskin charges do I have" or "what are my odds of hitting with Acid Arrow" but, functionally, you never have to ask those questions because you never need to.
In practice, I don't really see the decision making as any more complicated than, say, when to use certain spells a DA:O caster has.
Are there spells that are more complicated? Yeah, of course. Elemental summons were weird, if I recall right. So, you just ignore them and continue laying down the Magic Missile spam. This is why I'm being critical of complexity. Because complexity for the sake of complexity adds nothing and, in fact, detracts from the experience.
Also i never said Dragon Age was bad...
The tone of your post disagrees quite heavily, but okay. My main issue is your assertion that the game is more tactical is inaccurate. It is, at best, equal. You have a little more grounding with DA2 (which does veer more towards action, although I still play it very similarly to BG).
And no, you don't have to think that hard in DA:O, you don't have a ton of spells to choose from, you don't have to prepare for anything, since you are always capable of using your present abilities to defeat something...
Combats in DA can be won and lost on when you choose to use certain skills, as well as how and when you choose to engage.
Can you tell me which of the following effects were present at DA when battling enemies, that you had to protect yourself against? Because my memory is fuzzy and i can't remember : Fear, Stun, Maze, Imprisonment, Death Spells, Hold Spells and so on...
I'm actually a bit rusty on DA status in general, so I can't tackle this question. But this returns to my previous point about "checklist" difficulty. Several of the statuses you list don't require any particularly clever tactical decisions. You just don't enter fights with certain enemy types without certain defenses active or the fight becomes an incredible mess.
Thinking on it, I... guess this is technically a point in the BG casting is complex, but at the same time, I'm not sure I consider going "Enemy X has Y attack that is mitigated by spell Z" is complexity. I just consider it part of the pre-encounter buff parade that requires a passing knowledge of the game.
Also, that list is a little disingenuous at a level, since, debatably, several of those spells are the same effect with a slightly different flavor. About the same level of Acid vs Ice damage.
You can say that shielwalling and chuggin potions is an exaggeration, but it is the truth i had a much harder time beating enemies of importance in Baldur's Gate than in Dragon Age, exactly because i had to take more factors and abilities into account, which is a form of complex battle system. Also i still wait for those party fights that could decimate your party in DA...
Dunno how patches have adjusted DA scaling, but the early wolf pack is a very brutal encounter. The... third? back alley fight in Denerim is a monster. Most bosses were fairly rough. Honestly, though, most encounters in DA had a pretty good chance of being fatal if you got caught out of position.
Now lastly, do you really want to go there? You want me to send you a video with Dragon Age faceroll, if i understand correctly? So you can also send me a video of you defeating Baldur's Gate through Brute Force? And we can measure our e-peens in terms of facerolling or argumentative speech? Seriously...
I'm not the one who was saying that Dragon Age: Origins requires absolutely 0 tactics. I've just been asserting that BG is far less complicated then you make it out to be and that DA is somewhat more difficult then you make it out to be. If you don't want to get called out on that stuff, don't exaggerate regarding the entire basis of the argument.
It is possible to do anything in both games, i hope you realize that, and there are exploits that could make you faceroll the games, but without them, can you honestly say Dragon Age is more complex than Baldur's Gate in terms of combat...
Honestly, the more I think about it? No, Dragon Age is not more complex. They're equally complex.
The thing is complexity comes in a multitude of different forms. Yes, there are more rules in BG, but the simple fact is that, for the purposes of the game, you don't even need to know a fraction of them. Like I said at some point previous, to be strictly honest? I've played BG2 full through a few times and partly through more times then I'd care to count and I honestly cannot tell you exactly how THAC0 works, how Saving Throws work, how class growth rates work, dual/multiclassing specifics, etc.
I'd need to actually double check, but I think you can pretty easily get through BG knowing about as many skills as you'd know in DA:O. All you REALLY need to know are some specific abilities and their counters.
This kind of D&D complexity was based on the idea that, if you have more options to choose from, and more dangers to face, then you would have a better tactical experience.
I agree with you that complexity by itself does not mean much, for example in BG some high level mage battles were always a pain because you needed to dispell their weapon immunities first, then after their second spell trigger again and... bleh. It was becoming kind of tedious after a point, but the same thing happens in every game i played, depending on the abilities presented to you.
The complexity of the magic system was not because of the difference of magic missile and mefl's acid arrow, although, to fight a troll for example, you needed acid damage, presented through melfs acid arrow, or it wouldn't die (or fire damage anyway). The complexity was mostly about what spells to use to fight conditions like fear, level drain, death spells, hold etc, things that could break your party apart and would end the battle in your loss.
Apologies for not quoting you directly in the " spells are similar" part. The thing is, yes there are broad categories, but what does this mean? You need free action for certain occasions, and for others you need negative plane protection for example. Since the rolls are actually made by the PC, the system of the actual attacking seems not complex at all, i guess it will always be more fun rolling the dice yourself, but anyway.
Yeah, complexity comes in many ways. In Dragon Age, playing a fighter was more rewarding than in Baldur's Gate, there are some things a more active combat system can do better. And Baldur's Gate was unable to integrate all the pen and paper abilities that fighters could do so that they were not just, attack after attack.
This buff parade is actually what gives complexity, choosing what to buff, and in the end of course, you end up buffing everything, which works, but if resting was patched and working as it should be, you wouldn't be able to. If you had to carefully select your spells for the whole dungeon. However there are places in BG you can't rest, and if you can't rest, no spells. Things are more convenient in DA.
It might not seem as complexity, but then again what is complexity? Advanced mathematics?
Lastly, i may have exaggerated, but i did defeat DA with not much trouble. And even if i made a video of facerolling it, what would it prove? That if one person can faceroll everything, it's made of faceroll material? No, it could just as well mean i have learned it very well.
Anyway, i have to stop here, might write more later :P but anyway i think we don't need to argue just for the same of DA or BG complexity ;/
Honestly, a lot of my post comes from a few specific places of frustration that I see misconstrued a lot, so I tend to get my hackles up a little. Complexity, in particular, is a hot button topic for me lately.
On the whole, although it has been a little wordy and roundabout, I think we both understand where the other is coming from and I can certainly respect your opinion, as well as liking the style of gameplay that Vancian casting lends itself to. It was a fun discussion, so thanks for participating. ^_^
My BG tactics were kick in the door, kill the Mage then let the rest of the fight sort it self out. I beat both games like that. My mage was used like artillery. If it didn't go boom it wasn't likely to be in my spell book. The game is as hard or simple as you want to make it. Because I couldn't see the entire battlefield in DA:O I had to sit back more and really pay attention to where all my enemies were.
Honestly, a lot of my post comes from a few specific places of frustration that I see misconstrued a lot, so I tend to get my hackles up a little. Complexity, in particular, is a hot button topic for me lately.
On the whole, although it has been a little wordy and roundabout, I think we both understand where the other is coming from and I can certainly respect your opinion, as well as liking the style of gameplay that Vancian casting lends itself to. It was a fun discussion, so thanks for participating. ^_^
@AndrewRogue yeah it was fun, although being sunburned and burning all over while trying to write is making the situation more complex(ohoho) than it should be for me
Indeed i understand your point and i don't disagree completely, i respect your opinion and will leave it that, since it was me after all, that perceived BG as more complex with the definition of complexity that i understand, so to each his own i guess
See you in the next hot topic about Dragon Age vs Baldur's Gate : Romances o/
I had a lot of trouble with many enemys in the BG games and always ended up improving my own tactics. And what worked for one enemy didnt turn out very well for another then so it´s very tactical to me. But I never play like a gamer on roids...
Comments
Preferring Vancian casting is fine, of course, but, in general, cooldown systems tend to lead to more interactive and dynamic gameplay since you are always doing things with different characters and chaining abilities.
The place where Dragon Age fell apart is in the world building and character plots. Kind of a consequence of the shift to 3D and full VA (part of why I'd like to see another 2D RPG), but the world, in general, was much, much smaller. Individual towns in BG/2 had more content (both real and small) then pretty much any region in DA:O. Amn itself pretty much put the entirety of the game to shame for feeling alive. Many plot ends and encounters wrapped up very quickly without suitable introduction, build, or climax. Ironically, the game also tended to crawl in segments because it lacked the (shoddy) fix that was Haste in BG/2.
So yeah. There are my opinions on that.
Keep in mind, before you tear me apart, that BG2 is one of my top games of all time and ranks significantly higher than Dragon Age. But DA's core mechanics are pretty damn sound.
I tend to agree. Based purely on combat mechanics DAO is better than BG2. The focus of the Baldur's Gate series was different though, and as you said its one of the top games of all time for what it does.
MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online
"Dragon Age: Origins" is:
Massive
Not multiplayer
Not online.
Case closed.
Ignoring that its a good game with some modern things like skill/spell trees that i dont adore but dont bother me either.
Anyway I understand the OP even though I liked DAO.
I may be the minority here, but DAO reminded me alot of BG2. Epic, immersive story, extensive dialogue, how the party NPCs were written, combat with ye olde combat pause and the optional zoom-out to isometric perspective, and last but not least the modding support... all these things make it a spiritual successor for me, to BG2 that is. BG2 had quite some differences compared to BG as well, and in the same way: Less freedom, more focus on the story and NPCs, which is a trend that DAO simply continued.
I do think that co-development for consoles hurt DAO in the end, the interface is a mess, the world areas are small and the load times are gigantic. Going 3D was not the problem here, developing for gaming consoles with only 512MB RAM was.
The things I loved in DAO were the varied Origin stories and the political maneuvering during the Landsmeet and in Orzammar, this is something BG did not offer. I also prefer DAO's party NPCs over most of their BG2 counterparts, and Loghain makes Sarevok and Irenicus look like bland movie villains in comparison.
Also I loved Irenicus as a villian =D
He isn't very physically intimidating, but extremely devious, much like Kefka from FF6.
The spells available are select few.
You are implying that D&D systems with over 300 spells are less complex than this? I never even had to see what spells my companions were using to beat Dragon Age.
Complex means a more difficult system to master, with more possibilities available and more tactics required. In Dragon Age the only thing i had to do to survive was chug potions that didn't even take an action while shieldwalling.
Jesus, it even had 3 base classes, but wait, there were specializations...
Spiritual successor to BG my ass.
As for the mmo thing, not it's not an mmo, it uses a combat system similar to some mmorpgs, the last are rpgs as well, it's bound to remind you of them.
Some tactics might be required in certain fights of Dragon Age, but complexity? Give me a break. It was as console and new player friendly as possible.
>.< The way you decided to back your claim is a bit flawed. All you did was point out all the general traits that can be found in nearly any other game as well.
For example: Following your terms as a guideline, you could say that Devil May Cry is just like an RTS, if compared to Command & Conquer.
- In both games, you must control a unit of sort.
- The objective is to complete/beat the level/mission.
- An arsenal of weapons can be used to accomplish your goal.
- Both are played in Real Time, not turn based.
- There’s a story in both games.
And so forth…
Anywho, rather than saying Dragon Age is just like an MMO, it should really be said that MMORPGs are just like regular RPGs that follow the rules of D&D to an extent. DA:O/DA2 were no exceptions to this.
DA:O didn’t really seem like they were focusing on MMO players either, it was more like they were just trying to get players to submerge themselves in the old style of cRPG that BG, IW, NWN and so many others followed.
IMO, I felt like DA:O was designed to be as close to IE games as possible, but without all the complexity that it’s known for. They had to dumb down a lot of things for the new generation of players to take a liking towards it. DA2, unfortunately, was the end result of this. Apparently, DA:O wasn’t stupefied enough for this generation. So, they turned its successor into a Hack ‘n’ Slash with fewer options than ever.
I found Loghain to be incredibly boring. He betrayed the king because he believed he'd hand Ferelden over to the Orlaisians and then...nothing. He sat in his throne room being grumpy, bitter over people actually not liking him betraying the king. The overall impression I got was that his Master Plan was on the level of the Underpants Gnomes:
1) Leave King to die
2) ????
3) Profit!
Then again, I didn't get him into the group at the Landsmeet, maybe I'm missing much of his backstory and motivations and grand master plan. But I never cared for Loghain as a villain. I always just saw him as a general who didn't agree with his king so he seized power, like a thousand generals in fiction and non-fiction before him. That's not the same level as bad-assery as starting a giant war just to create a major blood sacrifice to a dead god, or sucking out a demi-god's soul to be able to wipe out an elven city and ascend to full godhood.
IRT Topic
No it's not. And this is the wrong forum for this 'discussion'.
I was going to write a long post on why "complexity" in the form of 300 (largely categorically similar and otherwise worthless) spells isn't really good design and not actually that complex, since it is more a matter of memorization then anything. Worse, most of the spells fall into fairly broad categories that mean large swaths of them are similar (buffs, debuffs, direct damage, save or die) meaning that, tactically speaking, it is the same spell different slot. Worse then that, a lot of the difficulty from Baldur's Gate stems from "checklist" style difficulty (can you resist energy drain, can you resist psionic blasts, can you resist Imprison) instead of actual, dynamic, in-battle decisions... but I have a far better idea.
Send me a video of you getting through the entirety of Dragon Age: Origins on a normal (or higher, if you want, since the game requires no tactical thought) difficulty doing nothing but using Shieldwall and chugging potions. Auto-level your companions and don't bother setting AI for them (since you don't need to know their spells!).
I'll wait.
(Also, being new player friendly is a good thing, you silly goose. The best games with the most depth, in fact, tend to be fairly be fairly new player friendly. Scaring away new players because the basic mechanics are horrifically arcane is silly. What do you actually gain from having impenetrable rules? A warm fuzzy sense of accomplishment once you plow through the rulebook?
Not that it was necessary. Honestly, even after a dozen plays of BG2, I'm still fuzzy on how exactly THAC0 and saves work, because I don't need to know exactly how they work! I just need to know the bigger... well... smaller... number is better.)
Honestly, I wish people would quit making me have to sound like I don't actually like BG/2 or think they are phenomenal games. I love them. I love BG2 with a passion that concerns my girlfriend. I would have plushes of the entire cast (especially Nalia) if I could. Similarly, I don't want to make people think I believe that DA:O is the end-all, be-all game either. It failed in a lot of substantial ways to recapture the magic of BG2 for me.
People just need to get out of the mindset that certain modern affectations are "bad." They are just different and lead to a very different style of game. If you don't like that kind of game? I can respect that. What I can't respect is people saying they are inherently bad.
Honestly, the same complaints you level about not having to think in DA:O, I could level right back. Most encounters in BG/2 could be cleared by taking two-three casters, tossing every buff you had available out, then just wading in and throwing around direct damage. It is fully possible to play BG/2 in a clever manner, but, really, the game was pretty easy to brute force. The only real spell interactions you NEEDED to know as an "average" player were the various protections and the spells to remove them, since, otherwise, the game stonewalled you hard.
Don't agree completely, but I do like the post and it makes a lot of sense.
Also, if you have an inquisitor in your party, you can pretty much brute for all the magic protections too, Dispel Magic strips them all.
My point was not that DAO is overly complex, my point is that neither DAO or BG are complex compared to Pen & Paper. BG still is only a real-time approximation and has lots of rule-bending to make it happen. If I want a complex RPG I'll boot up Temple of Elemental Evil.
The BG series and DAO have more to offer than the combat though: The story, the characters and the freedom of choice in dealing with both and working with the consequences. This is where it is a spiritual successor. I'm sorry if the lack of simplified AD&D rules is the only thing defining a game for you.
While I like my quests and NPC's and gameworld morally ambiguous, I prefer my main antagonist to be a mustache twirling supervillain that pisses me off during the entire game so that when I do finally stab him in the eyes thirty or fourty times with a two handed sword, I can jump up from my chair and yell "Take that, you baby eating, hamster faced dookie-head!" (namecalling is not my forte).
With Loghain...eh. I can see where he's coming from. Sort of. I guess. He made (imho) the wrong call, but he doesn't seem happy with it either. Guess he needs to be executed then. Meh. A shame it had to come to this.
The plot was absolutely awful. The entire thing was just a glorified fetch quest. "Sorry, Grey Warden, but our army is in another castle!" What was cool was the way they gave two different sides to every coin, but as far as story-telling goes? My goodness was it boring.
I was expecting it to be the game opening, kind of the equivalent to chapter 2 of BG2, and then once you've gathered all the armies the plot really starts to open up and things get interesting, but nope! Let's go fight the last boss!
And Loghain was a mediocre villain. If you need supplemental material to make him interesting, he's not interesting.
I'll not comment on the gameplay as I played DA:O on the console, where I daresay it would have been much less tactical.
Don't get me wrong, though, I love the game, but mostly for its party interactions and choices.
Can you defeat a lich straight and without preparation? Brute force? Do it. But you're gonna get your ass handed to you if you don't understand how the D&D magic system works, and it is complex enough to take some time to understand, same with everything else. It's a more complex designed system, all those spells your mentioned that "practically do the same thing", well no, they don't, they do similar things, and the fact that you need to distinguish the difference means it has somewhat more complexity than the Dragon Age system.
That was the argument i was disagreeing with. Dragon age combat system being more complex than Baldur's Gate. More fun maybe, more active yes, but more complex? Why exactly was it complex? What made it complex compared to a whole set of AD&D rules you have to know to understand what's happening?
Yeah of course it's gonna be better if it caters to the new player, but it proves it must be less complex as well.
Also i never said Dragon Age was bad. I said i didn't like it and i don't consider it a SS to Baldur's Gate, since it gradually lost the isometric view (present in Origins) and the more tactical combat, which means just that, tactical combat, not better or worse.
And no, you don't have to think that hard in DA:O, you don't have a ton of spells to choose from, you don't have to prepare for anything, since you are always capable of using your present abilities to defeat something.
Can you tell me which of the following effects were present at DA when battling enemies, that you had to protect yourself against? Because my memory is fuzzy and i can't remember : Fear, Stun, Maze, Imprisonment, Death Spells, Hold Spells, damage immunities (i hate mages) and so on. I remember for example being able to cause fear but never having to defend against even when facing a dragon. Dragons without fear?
You can say that shielwalling and chuggin potions is an exaggeration, but it is the truth i had a much harder time beating enemies of importance in Baldur's Gate than in Dragon Age, exactly because i had to take more factors and abilities into account, which is a form of complex battle system. Also i still wait for those party fights that could decimate your party in DA. Party fights were actually pretty complex in BG, and without preparation and pre-buffing, it was pretty hard to react to contingencies and spell triggers.
Now lastly, do you really want to go there? You want me to send you a video with Dragon Age faceroll, if i understand correctly? So you can also send me a video of you defeating Baldur's Gate through Brute Force? And we can measure our e-peens in terms of facerolling or argumentative speech? Seriously? Maybe if i lived and breathed for people to accept my opinions through the internet, but doing so, pretty much proves i would be an insecure person that desperately needs to be right. No, i'm not always right and i don't mind being wrong at all. And yes, it was an exaggeration, Dragon Age is actually harder than "chugging potions and shieldwalling", however, i didn't find it harder than Baldur's Gate, not by a long shot.
It is possible to do anything in both games, i hope you realize that, and there are exploits that could make you faceroll the games, but without them, can you honestly say Dragon Age is more complex than Baldur's Gate in terms of combat? The mere fact that you need to know the system better to understand some things even about Thac0 but mostly of the magic system is proof of complexity, although in all honesty, ballbusting complexity sometimes.
@ while trying to figure out some things combat wise, then of course it's gonna seem much easier.
D&D systems have more complex battles than other CRPG games because you take into account more information. More rules to follow, more options. That's it. Even if something is similar, you need to know the difference, and when you can't be ready for anything, things are going to be harder.
I respect your liking to Dragon Age, but i seriously cannot understand how you can say that a system that was created with sooo many rules and regulations in mind, developed through years snd with tactical combat as a target, could be less complex than a game and a combat system created by Bioware in 3 years or so for consoles and PCs, which allowed you to just play your character and not bother with other chars abilities, and it was a perfectly viable way of playing. Many people liked just that about Dragon Age, the fact you didn't have to micromanage 6 people at the same time.
@MississippiGhost Baldur's Gate is not exactly like a pen and paper D&D game indeed, but it is close enough. Yes numbers are not everything, but complexity covers that as well, it doesn't mean i want 300 abilities, but more combinations will be available through a system with more spells, more party members available in your team and enemies that use the same spells against you, which as said are a lot, forcing you to be prepared or be decimated. I agree that it is not that convenient to have to prepare like that each time, but complexity as far as i know is not something people love anyway.
If complexity is nothing more than complexity, then it is kind of a terrible idea. If the complexity adds nothing but being complex, then why bother having it? Complexity should be used to add something to the game, not to include 300 redundant/pointless spells. My argument is that this style of complexity is a bad design choice.
That aside, no. The magic system isn't really that complex. It has a lot of information in it, but there isn't anything actually complex in there. Oh sure, memorizing every spell is a bit difficult (lots of information to consume), but I understood it pretty reasonably well back in ~'99 (or whenever I actually first picked it up) when my only actual DnD knowledge was an issue or two of Dragon Magazine. Keep in mind, I didn't really read the manual either.
The fact is that BG automates most things. The knowledge you need of spells/mechanics you actually need to play BG at a competent level is pretty minimal.
And I'd appreciate if you quoted me accurately. I did not say the spells "practically do the same thing." I said "...most of the spells fall into fairly broad categories that mean large swaths of them are similar (buffs, debuffs, direct damage, save or die) meaning that, tactically speaking, it is the same spell different slot." This is quite different and I will ascertain that it remains true.
Yes, Acid Arrow and Magic Missile are very different spells. They still both deal damage and, if I need damage spells, I'm going to hurl them both until I'm out. Bless, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Resistance From Elements do drastically different things, but I'm still going to throw all of them out before a big encounter because they are buffs.
There are some small nuances, but they have about as much variation as cone shaped AoE vs caster centered AoE. For the vast majority of the game, you can pretty much cherry pick spell information and not be any worse for it (this deals force damage, this deals acid damage or this reduces damage, this prevents me from taking damage). Oh sure, it gets more tedious once you start wondering "how many Stoneskin charges do I have" or "what are my odds of hitting with Acid Arrow" but, functionally, you never have to ask those questions because you never need to.
In practice, I don't really see the decision making as any more complicated than, say, when to use certain spells a DA:O caster has.
Are there spells that are more complicated? Yeah, of course. Elemental summons were weird, if I recall right. So, you just ignore them and continue laying down the Magic Missile spam. This is why I'm being critical of complexity. Because complexity for the sake of complexity adds nothing and, in fact, detracts from the experience. The tone of your post disagrees quite heavily, but okay. My main issue is your assertion that the game is more tactical is inaccurate. It is, at best, equal. You have a little more grounding with DA2 (which does veer more towards action, although I still play it very similarly to BG). Combats in DA can be won and lost on when you choose to use certain skills, as well as how and when you choose to engage.
Can you tell me which of the following effects were present at DA when battling enemies, that you had to protect yourself against? Because my memory is fuzzy and i can't remember : Fear, Stun, Maze, Imprisonment, Death Spells, Hold Spells and so on...
I'm actually a bit rusty on DA status in general, so I can't tackle this question. But this returns to my previous point about "checklist" difficulty. Several of the statuses you list don't require any particularly clever tactical decisions. You just don't enter fights with certain enemy types without certain defenses active or the fight becomes an incredible mess.
Thinking on it, I... guess this is technically a point in the BG casting is complex, but at the same time, I'm not sure I consider going "Enemy X has Y attack that is mitigated by spell Z" is complexity. I just consider it part of the pre-encounter buff parade that requires a passing knowledge of the game.
Also, that list is a little disingenuous at a level, since, debatably, several of those spells are the same effect with a slightly different flavor. About the same level of Acid vs Ice damage. Dunno how patches have adjusted DA scaling, but the early wolf pack is a very brutal encounter. The... third? back alley fight in Denerim is a monster. Most bosses were fairly rough. Honestly, though, most encounters in DA had a pretty good chance of being fatal if you got caught out of position. I'm not the one who was saying that Dragon Age: Origins requires absolutely 0 tactics. I've just been asserting that BG is far less complicated then you make it out to be and that DA is somewhat more difficult then you make it out to be. If you don't want to get called out on that stuff, don't exaggerate regarding the entire basis of the argument. Honestly, the more I think about it? No, Dragon Age is not more complex. They're equally complex.
The thing is complexity comes in a multitude of different forms. Yes, there are more rules in BG, but the simple fact is that, for the purposes of the game, you don't even need to know a fraction of them. Like I said at some point previous, to be strictly honest? I've played BG2 full through a few times and partly through more times then I'd care to count and I honestly cannot tell you exactly how THAC0 works, how Saving Throws work, how class growth rates work, dual/multiclassing specifics, etc.
I'd need to actually double check, but I think you can pretty easily get through BG knowing about as many skills as you'd know in DA:O. All you REALLY need to know are some specific abilities and their counters.
I agree with you that complexity by itself does not mean much, for example in BG some high level mage battles were always a pain because you needed to dispell their weapon immunities first, then after their second spell trigger again and... bleh. It was becoming kind of tedious after a point, but the same thing happens in every game i played, depending on the abilities presented to you.
The complexity of the magic system was not because of the difference of magic missile and mefl's acid arrow, although, to fight a troll for example, you needed acid damage, presented through melfs acid arrow, or it wouldn't die (or fire damage anyway). The complexity was mostly about what spells to use to fight conditions like fear, level drain, death spells, hold etc, things that could break your party apart and would end the battle in your loss.
Apologies for not quoting you directly in the " spells are similar" part. The thing is, yes there are broad categories, but what does this mean? You need free action for certain occasions, and for others you need negative plane protection for example. Since the rolls are actually made by the PC, the system of the actual attacking seems not complex at all, i guess it will always be more fun rolling the dice yourself, but anyway.
Yeah, complexity comes in many ways. In Dragon Age, playing a fighter was more rewarding than in Baldur's Gate, there are some things a more active combat system can do better. And Baldur's Gate was unable to integrate all the pen and paper abilities that fighters could do so that they were not just, attack after attack.
This buff parade is actually what gives complexity, choosing what to buff, and in the end of course, you end up buffing everything, which works, but if resting was patched and working as it should be, you wouldn't be able to. If you had to carefully select your spells for the whole dungeon. However there are places in BG you can't rest, and if you can't rest, no spells. Things are more convenient in DA.
It might not seem as complexity, but then again what is complexity? Advanced mathematics?
Lastly, i may have exaggerated, but i did defeat DA with not much trouble. And even if i made a video of facerolling it, what would it prove? That if one person can faceroll everything, it's made of faceroll material? No, it could just as well mean i have learned it very well.
Anyway, i have to stop here, might write more later :P but anyway i think we don't need to argue just for the same of DA or BG complexity ;/
We probably don't need to, no.
Honestly, a lot of my post comes from a few specific places of frustration that I see misconstrued a lot, so I tend to get my hackles up a little. Complexity, in particular, is a hot button topic for me lately.
On the whole, although it has been a little wordy and roundabout, I think we both understand where the other is coming from and I can certainly respect your opinion, as well as liking the style of gameplay that Vancian casting lends itself to. It was a fun discussion, so thanks for participating. ^_^
Indeed i understand your point and i don't disagree completely, i respect your opinion and will leave it that, since it was me after all, that perceived BG as more complex with the definition of complexity that i understand, so to each his own i guess
See you in the next hot topic about Dragon Age vs Baldur's Gate : Romances o/