Multiple ways the final scene is really bad -- not to mention on easiest setting either I
or the zepp (usually the zepp) dies.
1) Big error in game design. No way, anyone in their right mind would an escorted load get AHEAD
of it's main protection. Would never happen in a million years.
Absolutely correct. If you're not doing your thing well ahead of the zeppelin, you're doing it
wrong.
They'd hang way behind, and let their mobile forces(or force in this case) take out the front lines
BEFORE advancing. They don't even slow down when experiencing damage. They just keep plodding merrily
forward even if they are ahead of me --- like the designers gave them a 50 IQ. What's up with that.
The designers are assuming you'll figure out that you have to stay ahead. They're also assuming that
you'll eventually notice/discover in the forum a big clue that they leave (the line of arrows marking
the zepp's entire fligh path) I took several retries on Casual to do it the first time. Once I figured
out what
I was doing wrong, I was able to complete the escort on Normal with little to no damage
on the zeppelin.
2) Zandalor's been out of it, at the least, he's in no position to command or plan anything without my input
-- especially if I'm his only forward force. He should have let me give the say so when the ship should
launch -- because in any real world scenario -- again, you would have your forward forced clear the path
before the vital cargo even launches. This was a huge tactical mistake that would never have been made
by even the stupidest of commanders -- but the designers built it in, like it's the best they could come
up with. These are, completely, non-thought, out tactics -- sorta like there ARE no tactics -- but it's a
'last gasp' suicide mission! But...then why are we sending a zeppelin anyway???...
As Stabbey noted, this is a computer game, not reality. And you *do* have say on when the mission starts...
4) Then there's the structure of the whole 2nd part of the game. VERY poor design decision -- you spend the
entire game building up your character to the finest most polished piece you believe you can do -- all skills,
and stats honed to perfection, and then, for the final mission, you force the player to throw away ALL their work
You're saying that all that building was irrelevant in the final boss fight after the escort mission finishes?
4(b) The 2nd-part of this complete play dichotomy -- you force players
into an unfamiliar interface that's been unused for, AT least, the entire game, (minimally a few days for the fastest players, but more likely numbered in weeks to possibly months since they played the last game).
This is valid if you never played the ED part of the game. If your first exposure to combat in Dragon form
was the escort mission, it would likely take several attempts to get the hang of things before you could succeed.
5) There are a bunch of salt-in-the-wound items, (a) like ignoring skill bonuses of any of the armor items.
True, but since your dragon has far more powerful skills overall, this is at best a nit pick IMHO.
There is NO reason why a dragon should lose all ability to heal unless you have a skill for it.
The idea that a dragon is unable regenerate EVEN as WELL as a level 1 PLAYER, is absurd!
Unrealistic, true. But the game designers also give a couple of workarounds for that problem,
if you're willing to figure them out.
It really is more like the designers tried to make the final battle be one where the player was thrown into an unfamiliar situation
with no experience other than from the previous game -- which would be some time back --
Did it not occur to you that the game designers might have done that because they wanted the endgame
to have (at least the first time through) a bit more difficulty than the rest of the game? And one
way to do that is put you into a situation where your previous tactics weren't as effective?
My expectations were set for another Oblivion --
Er, um, you do know this is not a Bethesda game, right?
I keep hearing some people here talk about how hard it is to 'scale' difficult. Bovine excrement!
Scale regen(hits & mana) from 10x - .1x (slider adjustable, not 4 stops).
Scale monster damage from .01x to 100x. Scale player damage amounts (mag/rang/mel), 10x -> .1x.
It does sound simple. Do you write software for a living? I do, and I know from experienc (but
not in gaming) that it's amazing how often it is that things that are simple conceptually can be
nightmares to code.
As for puzzles -- those require more work,
but at the very least, you could have a press 'h' for hint - press again, more hint, press again,
more, press again give explicit answer --
and/or add a quest compass that points the direction to your next quest goal
(have 2 pointers, 1 for main quest, and add a 'selectable' side quest that would get 'primary' status,
just for compass purposes (and maybe hint purposes -- and select main quest as primary for hints on it).
Sorry, I have no sympathy for this whatsoever. To me, that's mere whining. One of the things I
loveabout this game is that you have to figure the puzzles/quests out
for yourself without having it spoon fed
to you. If you don't like thinking for yourself, you're playing the wrong game.
These are all low cost scalability additions. I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember another DnD
game, Oblivion, might have had a .001 -> 1000x on it's difficulty scale.
Oblivion scaled the monsters according to player level. I looked at
that as
a horrible design decision. Bethesda admitted as much by backing off of that concept
in both Fallout 3 and the upcoming Skyrim.
