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#469062 09/07/13 08:03 PM
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I gave one of these after 5 hours, figured I'd go ahead and add another one at 20.

I still have not played online, I tried but the "nat punch through failed" as it put it. It would be nice if a game just told me what port it wanted open without making me look around the internet for it (hey it could happen). Hopefully this is a temporary beta thing and a more reliable solution will be used for retail.

I played yesterday (7/8/2013) with 3 insane AI allied together against me. I was winning until it crashed (computers are sore losers).

I feel like the RTS part supersedes anything you can accomplish on the strategy map. I won fights against 3 insane AI allied against me where the odds of me winning at the beginning were less than 10%. The strategy map needs to hold more sway, even in shogun I wouldn't commonly win against the AI with a pre-battle 10% chance. I feel like I can win any fight against the AI in RTS mode, even with them all playing at maximum difficulty and teaming up against me and the odds completely stacked against me. I like a game to at least make the threat of beating me at some point or another.

Dragon form against non-dragon form using AI is fairly powerful, and I recognize that, but that just simply means the AI is incompetent against dragons (which is bad in a "dragon commander" game) or dragons are too powerful.

I think dragon form needs restrictions. You shouldn't be able to spawn it directly over your army 2 seconds after it died for the discount price of 20 followers. There needs to be a "recovery period" and an actual cost to represent the force it brings to the field.

Minimum of 20 seconds respawn delay after your dragon is killed. Then the cost to spawn it starts high and scales down the longer you wait to respawn it. EXAMPLE: If you wait 21 seconds it costs 100 followers. 30 seconds reduces it to 80 followers. 40 seconds reduces it further. Possibility: the more abilities it uses the more costly it is to respawn. Additional note: could use the level of abilities to determine cost.
Initial spawn would still be cheap. You could have dragon towers reduce the respawn penalties and/or initial spawn time

You should only be able to despawn your dragon after you have not taken damage for 10~ seconds. I think its entirely too easy to avoid damage by simply despawning and reappearing a few seconds later. "Evade" (right mouse button) should be easier to control. If you aren't holding a direction it should barely move or be easier to maintain your current position.

There should be a button you can assign for the fastest possible "Rapid fire" you feel is acceptable to game balance. Remove the "clicky" mechanic for rapid fire. Leave LMB as a "maintain" fire.
REASON: Mice are not Xbox360 controllers. Mine, for example, is more expensive than a 360 controller and I do not like "clicky" games because they wear out my LMB faster than I'd like. I grew up on Nintendo games, I can spam with the best of them, but its best if its normalized on a PC - otherwise you have assholes like me with their fancy mice that just hold down a button to repeat anyway.
Then on a console you have OTHER assholes with Turbo on their controllers which will also subvert the clicky mechanic.

Finally- I think you should only be able to pick one fight your dragon can attend per turn. You can then add strategy cards that say "dragon can attack more than once this turn, dragon can attack twice this turn, enemy dragon may only defend this turn, enemy dragon may only attack, you may attack as many times as you like but not defend this turn" etc
REASON: Game time in multiplayer (against other people) will take forever if they can select every fight to be a RTS fight AND each time the dragon is involved you nullify a lot of what happens on the strategy map. Additionally you should be able to use the dragon as a force modifier in auto calc if you wish to bypass a 30ish minute RTS stomp - but that should still use up your one place the dragon can be per turn.

Other notes: The game is really choppy with 3 AI on insane. They like to spam light units and sit on them (7/8/2013)
They rushed me in unison initially, but afterwards would sit on their forces and wait for me to eliminate them one by one (RTS mode)

The game eventually crashed as I controlled over half the strategy map, knocked one player out and was ready to push a second off. It crashed at the beginning of the AI turn on the strategy map.

The AI won no fights except those that autocalc gave them against the odds.


Joined: Jun 2013
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Originally Posted by Pizlenut


Minimum of 20 seconds respawn delay after your dragon is killed. Then the cost to spawn it starts high and scales down the longer you wait to respawn it. EXAMPLE: If you wait 21 seconds it costs 100 followers. 30 seconds reduces it to 80 followers. 40 seconds reduces it further. Possibility: the more abilities it uses the more costly it is to respawn. Additional note: could use the level of abilities to determine cost.
Initial spawn would still be cheap. You could have dragon towers reduce the respawn penalties and/or initial spawn time


I like this, but I would add to that those follower numbers should scale with difficulty.


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Originally Posted by Pizlenut
Minimum of 20 seconds respawn delay after your dragon is killed. Then the cost to spawn it starts high and scales down the longer you wait to respawn it. EXAMPLE: If you wait 21 seconds it costs 100 followers. 30 seconds reduces it to 80 followers. 40 seconds reduces it further.


I agree that the Dragon needs a respawn timer if it's killed, something like 10-15 seconds. It doesn't punish you enough for dying as a Dragon, or reward you for killing the enemy Dragon. I do think that 20 seconds and 100 recruits is way, way too much. It will basically kill the use of the Dragon entirely, because that's a lot of recruits that you won't be able to spend on units.

The Dragon is powerful, but not powerful enough to make that cost worth using it.


Originally Posted by Pizlenut
You should only be able to despawn your dragon after you have not taken damage for 10~ seconds.


After watching the Octaaf/Lorean match, I agree in part. It was really easy to shift safely out of Dragon form in the middle of combat as long as friendly units were around.

10 seocnds seems too high, 5 seconds max, maybe even lower. I'm not sure what the time should be, though.

Originally Posted by Pizlenut
There should be a button you can assign for the fastest possible "Rapid fire" you feel is acceptable to game balance. Remove the "clicky" mechanic for rapid fire. Leave LMB as a "maintain" fire.


I totally agree about not wanting to rapidly click my mouse to fire. The fire rate from holding the left-mouse button down should be increased to match the rate from rapidly clicking it. I don't think that any further balancing tweaks are needed to bring holding into line with rapid clicking, but if Larian thinks that letting you hold for continuous fire is really, really too powerful for some reason, they could increase the rate at which the hold-button firing over heats.

Originally Posted by Pizlenut
Finally- I think you should only be able to pick one fight your dragon can attend per turn.


The one-dragon fight/turn limit is in single-player already, but it cannot be changed in multiplayer. The reason is that you can't have some players enter RTS mode to fight as a Dragon and others sit around doing nothing - it doesn't work. If anyone wants to fight as a Dragon, then the game has no choice but to force all players to fight in RTS mode as a Dragon.

Last edited by Stabbey; 09/07/13 09:59 PM. Reason: more stuff
Joined: Mar 2003
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Originally Posted by Stabbey
Originally Posted by Pizlenut
You should only be able to despawn your dragon after you have not taken damage for 10~ seconds.


After watching the Octaaf/Lorean match, I agree in part. It was really easy to shift safely out of Dragon form in the middle of combat as long as friendly units were around.

Rather than prevent despawning, there could be a time penalty for healing when transforming at low health, or a respawn timer based on your health.


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