Since Larian is looking into new combat modes, here are some ideas that hopefully can make the combat for DD more challenging but not frustrating.
o Combat Modes for party members
Some 'AI' modes which make party members more useful. For example, the current aggresive mode can be used to make party members to attack enemies on sight. A 'support' mode can make them avoid enemy and use spells or missile fire to help you. A few commands can be added, such as "Help me" or "Heal me" or "Stay away", so that it is possible to give general order to the other party member without having to micromanage every movement.
The greatest advantage of this is there will be less babysitting for the 'weaker' character. A character can be weak in many context. What happens in BD is that we have to pause the game, move the threaten character out of danger, resume the game. Now, if a mage character can take care of itself, for example, we set it to "Distance to keep away from enemy: EXTREMELY FAR!", we don't have to worry about the mage standing there dumbly when attacked.
o Quick switching between characters
The current system is too awkward. Here's why. If I am the DK, I have to remember that I have the DK, and that the Hero is F1, and then I have to press the F1, but I have to press F2 if I want to switch from the Hero to the DK. Better to have a single key to cycle through.
o Formations
Make party management much more easier! At least set a minuimum distance between each character and make it such that the distance is maintained.
If this is like a simple plea, then please heed me, no, it is not!. This can elminate some of the babysitting issues that we have. For example, let say the Hero is a mage and armed with a bow, and that the DK is a warrior. If I move the two together, both of them will end up close to each other. If there's an enemy, it may attack the mage, forcing me to pause the game, or to frantically select the mage and make him run away, while moving my DK to engage the enemy. The DK now can engage the enemy on his own, but what if there are two enemies?
But let say there's formation. The Hero ends up some distance behind the DK. The two enemies see the DK and attack him as he is closer. The Hero is at the back and hence attracts less attention, so he can safely pick them off with magic or with his bow, and he does so automatically with his bow if we are focusing on the DK. Less babysitting. And if there's a simple ZOC implemented, it's make us feel smart.
o ZOC!!
It is simply not fun to have every enemy ignoring the tanker to chase after the mage. I hope something like this will be implemented in the 'tactical combat mode'. I have seem enemies running through the DK which is really annoying.
o Do something, anything, when threaten
At least attack back, or just run away if a character is attacked for some reason but at the time is not under control by the player, and is instructed not to attack back.
o Solo mode
This may sounds strange...or maybe even blashempous to the ears of the developers, but hear me out! Make it such that there are still two characters - the DK and the Hero, but allow it that one could be controlled fully by the AI, and allow some form of respawning so that the game will not be a tedious job of baby-sitting another character. The dev could make it so that we can choose to mircomanage both characters, or delegate one to the AI. Of course, we could still customise skills, equipment and etc, but by leaving one character to the PC, one can spend more time playing the game than babysitting.
Just think of D2's mercenary. You can give him items (at least after LoD). Well, BD can go even better - we can customise his skills and even take control of him if we wants to. The key issue, however, is if controlling 2 characters it too hard, it more of a chore than fun.
o No death penalty if one companion is down
This is one of the thing that sounds good but actually plays out bad. It enhances the problem of 'baby-sitting' another character. I would suggest either a respawn point, a time limit to ressurect the fallen character before a time limit, or just halve the HP of the remaining player and restore the fallen character's HP to halve. Or an 'auto-revive' items or expensive 'raise dead contract'. The thing is - the duo party system is cool and a sound idea, but if it is hard to control the other half, we may be tempted just to ditch one halve behind!
o Default skill/spells auto-cast
Gotten this idea from WarCraft III. Allow the player to set certain skills to auto-use in some context. For example, offensive spells when encountering enemies, healing when badly injuried and so on. A system like Tales of Phantasia could be implemented, whereby when the spell-caster reaches a percentage of mana he will stop using spells and switch to some other attacks.
Even better, we can have 'cross companion' skills assigned to hotkeys. For example, say that the Hero is a spellcaster. On the DK, we bind the 'H' key to the Magic -> Body -> Heal skill, so when we are using the DK, we can just press the H key to get the Hero to heal the DK, without having to switch to the Hero and pressing the hotkey for the skill, target the DK and right click.
o Modifiable Combat Speed
Some thinks the game is just right, some thing it is too slow, some wants it faster. Why not let us have the control? Give us a combat timing slider, and we can choose whether we want Matrix style gameplay or the crouching tiger/hidden dragon way.
Well, that's my two copper coin worth of ideas.
