I didn't like Dragon Age's combat.

[Anathrax]

However I enjoyed the rest of the game. Part of my gripes with the combat is how unbalanced it was(I like playing rangers in medieval games and the fact that you needed mages to run away from every fight and cast blizzard or your other huge AoE spells to get anywhere) probably part of it, but most of it was how it plays. I've always hated how I just click on someone and watch as my character helplessly swing his sword with MISS MISS going off every 5 attacks or so. I much enjoyed Darksiders 2 combat for the first few quests even though it was really simple and almost every single person telegraph their attacks for 67 years. My point is I like dodging, blocking and attacking on my own terms instead of clicking and watching the fight. I guess I really noticed this when I starting playing Smite instead of Dota. Anyone else agree that dragon age would probably be better if it had combat like say Dark Souls or something similar?

Thanks for reading, and I'm glad to have joined the forums.

 

[SonicWaffle]

However I enjoyed the rest of the game.

For clarification, are we talking Origins/Awakening, or 2?

Part of my gripes with the combat is how unbalanced it was(I like playing rangers in medieval games and the fact that you needed mages to run away from every fight and cast blizzard or your other huge AoE spells to get anywhere) probably part of it, but most of it was how it plays. I've always hated how I just click on someone and watch as my character helplessly swing his sword with MISS MISS going off every 5 attacks or so. I much enjoyed Darksiders 2 combat for the first few quests even though it was really simple and almost every single person telegraph their attacks for 67 years. My point is I like dodging, blocking and attacking on my own terms instead of clicking and watching the fight. I guess I really noticed this when I starting playing Smite instead of Dota. Anyone else agree that dragon age would probably be better if it had combat like say Dark Souls or something similar?

Personally, no, I loved the combat system from Dragon Age. That said, I always rock a mage, which is far more interesting than playing warrior or rogue - instead of combat being an endless stream of hit-hit-miss-hit, you hang back and fry everyone with one of your huge variety of spells.

Though that isn't to say there weren't problems. One of my favourites was that you could cast youe AoE spells through a fucking wall, because the cast screen gave you outlines of who was on the other side. So if you saw a room full of enemies, you could walk up to a door without opening it, then cast your top-tier ice AoE (to freeze them in place) and then your top-tier fire AoE to burn the bastards up. Most of them would be dead by the time they got the door open and interacted with your melee guys :-D

Thanks for reading, and I'm glad to have joined the forums.

Welcome, friend. Glad to have you join us in our merry little band of devoted bickerers. As you will come to learn, we here at the Escapist can have loud, angry, drawn-out arguments over literally anything at all - it's great fun!

 

[Sixcess]

It's hard to see how a more active combat system would work when you have a group of three or four characters to control all at once. Unless it was more like Mass Effect where I generally just focused on Shepard and trusted my team mates not to do anything too stupid, except maybe in boss fights.

My biggest gripe with DA was that I'd put my heavy armor guys in the front row with the mages and healers at the back, but enemies would just run straight through my tanks and start bashing the clothies anyway.

 

[Anathrax]

However I enjoyed the rest of the game.

For clarification, are we talking Origins/Awakening, or 2?

Origins. I couldn't bother with 2 since I knew I my expectations were too huge for it to deliver.

But my point is, it feels somewhat odd that the supposed champion or chosen grey warden dies to a bunch of bandits because the game feels like my character's 50+ dexterity is not worthy to dodge or hit. I like to be close in the action, to be able to dodge things and block them. It's a good reason why I'll be getting Dark Souls next week after I played it on my friend's 360. I just hope the PC version fixes work...

 

[Zhukov]

I rather liked it, but it got nastily repetitive throughout the rather long duration.

Every fight starts to feel the same as every other before too long.

 

[Tdoodle]

I loved combat with a Rogue, went with the DW tree with Duelist and Assassin. Constant stuns and critical hits supplemented by Leliana's crippling arrows was really effective, and I'd only get hit by spells. Only time I had any trouble was when there were huge groups of ranged enemies, I'd actually have to pay attention then.

I quite liked the auto-attack, if it was different I'd have to focus on one character but knowing my Rogue and Alistair were in the thick of things I could pay more attention to my ranged characters and keep them out of melee fights.

 

[sanquin]

It's hard to see how a more active combat system would work when you have a group of three or four characters to control all at once. Unless it was more like Mass Effect where I generally just focused on Shepard and trusted my team mates not to do anything too stupid, except maybe in boss fights.

My biggest gripe with DA was that I'd put my heavy armor guys in the front row with the mages and healers at the back, but enemies would just run straight through my tanks and start bashing the clothies anyway.

This...so much this. I know that realistically this is how things should go. People/monsters would realistically not be so stupid as to bash on the low damage dealing and taking tank, while the ones that really hurt are left alone. But in an rpg like Dragon Age where the light armor classes really are squishy I would like the tanks to be able to do their job a little better. What use is all that health and armor if you don't get hit, after all?

 

[SonicWaffle]

However I enjoyed the rest of the game.

For clarification, are we talking Origins/Awakening, or 2?

Origins. I couldn't bother with 2 since I knew I my expectations were too huge for it to deliver.

It's OK. You might even have liked it pre-patch, as the combat was broken meaning you had to hit a button every time to attack

But my point is, it feels somewhat odd that the supposed champion or chosen grey warden dies to a bunch of bandits because the game feels like my character's 50+ dexterity is not worthy to dodge or hit. I like to be close in the action, to be able to dodge things and block them. It's a good reason why I'll be getting Dark Souls next week after I played it on my friend's 360. I just hope the PC version fixes work...

Me, I have shitty reflexes and I get overwhelmed easily, so I much prefer having an automated combat system I can maximise by boosting stats through items and buffs. All I need to worry about is basics like attacking, managing potions and shields and such, while the game takes all the dice rolles for me.

 

[alphamalet]

I personally loved the combat system of Dragon Age Origins. It wasn't as polished as say Final Fantasy XII's combat system, but still great nonetheless.

I disagree that Dragon Age needs a combat system like Dark Souls.

Dark Souls has a combat system based around reflexes and action
Dragon Age Origin's battle system is based around delegation, micromanagement, and strategy.

Both have their place, and it doesn't mean Dragon Age Origins' is inherently flawed because it isn't action-oriented. You might just prefer games with less strategy in them.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah it was pretty terrible. I still think it was a good game though.

 

[DementedSheep]

I like it. It can get boring at times though, especially if you always use the same party.
There are few party based tactical rpgs being released. I hope DA continues to be that rather than becoming an action game.

No I don't think it wouldn't better combat like Dark Souls. You don?t control your characters individual attacks because you have multiple characters to control and I don?t think more active combat would work with party members. Especially if its something like Dark Souls with the emphasis on dodging, blocking and riposte.

Were you mostly just sticking with your main and not directly controlling party members? Because I didn't spend much time doing nothing in combat but then I tend to use rogues and mages and they are less able to be left to their own devices than warriors. Especially if you want to use any AOE mage spells and have friendly fire on.

 

[Rawne1980]

I prefer more tactical combat like Dragon Age Origins and the older RPG's.

I get incredibly bored with hack and slash games, I just find them far too easy and the combat far too dull and repetitive.

If Origins had been like that I wouldn't have played it as much as I have. I detested the combat in Dragon Age 2, far too over simplified and needed no thought or planning. I could walk through that game mashing buttons with my nose while I scratched my balls and drank a beer.

I can't name one hack and slash i've found challenging besided the first hour or so of Demon's Souls and that was only because I thought it was another button masher. Once you stop doing stupid shit the Souls game became far too easy.

I just prefer a little bit of planning in fights beyond "dodge, block, slash and stab". Games like Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights going up to the simpler but still good Origins.

Easier to say I like to micro manage fights. Hack and slash just bore the ever living fuck out of me.

It's because of the road they took with the series, and other games recently, I won't be buying Dragon Age 3. It's going to be yet another hack and slash i'd play for probably 10 hours and then slap on a shelf to gather dust.

The focus on "ready" action and less on micro managing turned me off completely.

 

[Another]

I could only play as a mage on the 360 version. The combat was too dull otherwise.

However, I found the pc version much more palatable. Because you could zoom out to an isometric view it provided much greater awareness and tactical control. It allowed me to micromanage the whole team instead of one or two guys.

I realize you can do that in the 360 version, but the isometric camera makes all the difference in how the player thinks about the combat.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Personally, I played as a mage in Dragon Age. While undeniably powerful, the mage is as dangerous to your team as anyone else if left to the AI. By contrast, healers and warriors can easily be left on AI and they do fine. And rogues are really only useful for situations where there is a locked chest thus I generally just left Leliana in the back to shoot arrows at mages.

With a mage, you at least have a fair amount of active control over the outcome of a fight.

My biggest gripe with DA was that I'd put my heavy armor guys in the front row with the mages and healers at the back, but enemies would just run straight through my tanks and start bashing the clothies anyway.

Unfortunately, this is largely a problem in the early game. Warriors, by default, get most of their aggro drawing ability because they wear heavy armor - more armor gives more aggro points. Sadly, in the early game, their armor values tend to be rather low. Combine that with the fact that warriors do the least damage of any other class in the game (at least when played as a tank) and it becomes easy for the aggro gains of healers, archers and mages to draw fire. Then, when you consider that you don't actually get the good buffs that help ensure you maintain aggro until hours in and you end up a scenario where your basically forced to play your mage/healer/archer far more conservatively than they are capable of.

Later in the game my experience is that it was quite hard to draw aggro from a well equipped and smartly played warrior. The armor, regular recharge of the activated pull abilities, the high number of aggro drawing attacks and the inclusion of a few always on abilities all but ensured my tank absorbed most of the punishment.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

DA:O is a fairly hard game. It's also a throwback to old school CRPGs like Baldur's Gate. Those games predated the development of a "threat" system for party tanking (that came from MMOs), so you tanked more-or-less by luck. A lot of the strategy was actually about positioning your tanks so that the enemies were forced to attack them - sticking a tank in a doorway or a thin hallway was the best thing to do.

I really wish they'd make more games like that, but there's the mainstream appeal problem...these games have huge budgets and need to appeal to large numbers of people, and DA:O combat wasn't everyone's cup of tea. It's why I'm excited about the Project Eternity kickstarter.

 

[Smeggs]

I didn't like combat much, either. That's why I was a mage. Spells you can at least be tactical with, and you hit like a damned truck from range or close up.

I wanted to get on with the story.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

I prefer more tactical combat like Dragon Age Origins and the older RPG's.
Easier to say I like to micro manage fights. Hack and slash just bore the ever living fuck out of me.

And DA:O definitely gives you lots of options to do that. Personally i found it to be incredibly tedious to have to go through every character's equipment, check their given strategies under different circumstances and then equip the appropriate abilities to give my party maximum efficiency.

I actually only picked up Dragon Age and started playing it about, what? half a month ago maybe, and i got through the whole game to the final boss fight with the archdemon and i just can not win the final fight. At the moment i've put down the game and probably won't touch it for a very long time because i realized DA:O relies a lot on that micro management and planning before going into combat, and not only do i find that to be a dull system, i'm also incredibly crap at it so i've pretty much written it off as something that's just not for me. I'll leave it to more interested people.

OT: So no, i guess i didn't like the combat either. The dialogue was by far the most interesting thing in that game for me whereas the combat felt incredibly repetitive and lacking in flow.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I like hack and slash games like Bayonetta, I also like RPGs. I think mixing the two is a failed endeavor though since the fun of hack and slash games comes from using your moves to perform super epic combos and kill everything with style. RPGs on the other hand are about character progression, slowly getting more skills and gear and just sitting back and enjoying how awesome you are with your super strong character. If you have to actually manually do the blocks and each hit and whatnot it wouldn't really ADD anything, you'd still be stat-based so how much you hit or dodge would not change. If you mean physically dodge as a mean of dodging moves, well, that would require a whole rebalancing of the system to a point where it'd cease being as stat-reliant as it is, stealing some of the importance of the char development and replacing it with reflex demands on the player, which, although good too, is NOT why people should be playing RPGs for.


If you want a reflex-test game, play fantasy themed action games or fighters. RPGs are games where stat growth is half the fun and the more important your stats are to your success in battle the more fun building them becomes. From what I remember there's not much parrying happening in origins unless you have a shield user and you use your class abilities. If you're a ranger type you wouldn't even wanna ever be in mellee range anyways, max bowshot range is where you wanna stay...and I don't think you can even parry with bows equipped.

 

[Fat Hippo]

My biggest gripe with DA was that I'd put my heavy armor guys in the front row with the mages and healers at the back, but enemies would just run straight through my tanks and start bashing the clothies anyway.

This.

Everyone kept talking about a "spiritual sequel" to Baldur's Gate. What a load of bullshit. In BG, keeping your fighters protecting your mages was an important part of strategy. You could actually block off doorways, and keep enemies from passing through to your oh so squishy magic missle dispensers. No such luch in DA.

But then, the combat in DA felt more like it was from an MMO anyway. Everyone had a bajillion abilities which were on cooldown, making it just a matter of use ability, wait 2 seconds, use a different ability, wash, rinse and repeat. Then stop playing.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

No, the combat in DA:O was fine. It could do with some tweaking certainly, but it isn't meant to be a hack and slash game. There are die rolls going on behind the scenes that influence hit, crit, miss, damage, whatever effects. Positioning, teamwork, etc make a big difference. You aren't controlling one character to micro-manage their sword swings, shield position, you are managing 4 teammates each of whom brings something slightly different to the fight. Consider their abilities, match it to the particular fight at hand, deal with the unexpected, that's what it's cool. Pseudo-real time, not real-time.

I do wish they hadn't gone down the MMO route with cooldowns and shit like that (even worse in DA2), but it did kinda serve its purpose. And friendly fire sucks when you're a mage. But luckily there are mods for that