Actually, Dragon Age has me questioning the value of a party-based CRPG.
When I played a party of characters in the old days of CRPG gaming, extra characters were good. You had more attacks, inventory space, and diversity of character development. The complexity of tactical combat would occasionally mean that a party was more trouble to use; consider that by Ultima V, a common strategy was to play the game with only the Avatar alone.
The modern era of Internet games and massive-multiplayer has changed the dynamics. I think that's one reason MMO's are fun to play, but the majority of players are solo. They enjoy the option of playing with someone else, but they don't NEED it. And I think that's where the market is going to veer eventually... smaller private server systems or even self-hosted game servers with small player counts. Parties, in this case, become more like a SIM or a tactical turn-based battle game... which isn't quite the same thing as a classic CRPG.
Anyway, in DA:O, the party is such a trial to manage in combat, I just don't find it fun. Maybe it's just not my kind of "gaming fun time" to pause, set up a bunch of different attack options, unpause, watch, pause again... Or worse, sit down and design complicated scripts for my NPC's to follow in combat. This reminds me of deck design in trading card games... I don't like spending time PREPARING to game, I like to GAME!
What I'd have preferred is that the NPC's really act like real people with their own strategies and tactics. Stronger A.I., basically. It's odd, but in some ways, I get the feeling Dragon Age was built using a lot of pre-existing technology at Bioware, and they didn't feel inclined to spend more time in this area. Too bad, really.
Actually, Dragon Age has me questioning the value of a party-based CRPG.
When I played a party of characters in the old days of CRPG gaming, extra characters were good. You had more attacks, inventory space, and diversity of character development. The complexity of tactical combat would occasionally mean that a party was more trouble to use; consider that by Ultima V, a common strategy was to play the game with only the Avatar alone.
The modern era of Internet games and massive-multiplayer has changed the dynamics. I think that's one reason MMO's are fun to play, but the majority of players are solo. They enjoy the option of playing with someone else, but they don't NEED it. And I think that's where the market is going to veer eventually... smaller private server systems or even self-hosted game servers with small player counts. Parties, in this case, become more like a SIM or a tactical turn-based battle game... which isn't quite the same thing as a classic CRPG.
Anyway, in DA:O, the party is such a trial to manage in combat, I just don't find it fun. Maybe it's just not my kind of "gaming fun time" to pause, set up a bunch of different attack options, unpause, watch, pause again... Or worse, sit down and design complicated scripts for my NPC's to follow in combat. This reminds me of deck design in trading card games... I don't like spending time PREPARING to game, I like to GAME!
What I'd have preferred is that the NPC's really act like real people with their own strategies and tactics. Stronger A.I., basically. It's odd, but in some ways, I get the feeling Dragon Age was built using a lot of pre-existing technology at Bioware, and they didn't feel inclined to spend more time in this area. Too bad, really.