Overwhelming combat

[zaku_zelo]

So, this game. Liking most of it, characters and writing are great, story's nothing new but intriguing enough, style and graphics are top-notch, that's all good. But the combat...the combat, oh god, the combat!
I'm expected to play four fifths of a WoW party on my own? Impossible! This tactics system is a good idea, but not nearly strong enough fill in for actual people behind every character. And it's so bare-bones! Where's something to just make sure every enemy within a certain radius keeps attacking you? The option to set up a damage rotation of abilities after casting whatever spell on the tank's target? A side-directive to maintain this or that CC or debuff? Or CC abilities at all for that matter, that'd be nice.
How the hell am I supposed to manage all this? Help!

[AbedsBrother]

Pause the game, issue orders, unpause, the orders execute, pause the game again, issue new orders, rinse and repeat.

[zaku_zelo]

For every attack? That sounds awful.

[neil]

Sounds brilliant
Player control of what actually happens on the battlefield
Not some pale ineffective AI instead

The best bit of the game is deciding HOW to go about each combat
Picking the best options for each and every character in each battle. What order to execute them in
Which one will work on this enemy, and wont on the next

My Idea of a tactical battle game

[zaku_zelo]

I'm all for making tactical decisions, but not for making ALL tactical decisions. Things as basic and innocuous as casting the hurty spells at the bad guys and holding aggro on a group shouldn't have to be micro-managed every single step of the way. You're going to want your tank to tank every single fight; telling him to do so isn't making a choice, it's just busy work.

And it SEEMS you don't have too, but ♥♥♥♥ me if I can figure out this tactics system. So many holes! "Enemy: not targeting you." There! Is that so hard?

[2High2tell]

Originally posted by AbedsBrother:

Pause the game, issue orders, unpause, the orders execute, pause the game again, issue new orders, rinse and repeat.

This is they, the way it was meant to be done. You have just been doing it wrong. This is the reason the game pauses as combat starts. Pause pick attack from player 1, then player 2 and so on. I usually do my ranged toons forst, Mage and archer. This will help you control the fight for the rogue and tank.

Once you gte use to it, it is actually very fluent. also get used to mouse wheel scrolling in and out so you can get a top-down veiw of the battle. You will get use to it fast enough..

[2High2tell]

Originally posted by zaku_zelo:

For every attack? That sounds awful.

It is not that bad and most fights you onbly need to pause it 1 or 2xs, Once you get your guiys fighting you can settle with one of the ranged guy, I usually take archer and use that one to fight wheree needed and let my mele toons auto fight whom they will.

[talemore]

The AI is smart. You need to setup the AI and tell it what to do. If the AI is stupid is because you are because what the AI will do was your doing and the AI only did what you told it to do. It's not perfect but it's one of the better AI I've seen since secret of mana 2.
It has a bug with morrigans shapeshift where it knows how to turn into a spider while won't obey the command to disable the shape. You can play it turnbased or autopilot if you have a class who knows how to summon and take over the command of the summon. If you played mass effect you know you don't have to take command over every unit. All you need is a lot of tactic points to unlock tactic slots. Mages have perks who makes them or an ally immune to magic that you can focus on AoE and let the tank sit in a soup of magic or have as many mages in the group it's possible and you now have characters who are immune to magic, ability to heal and can become immune to melee as well if you focus on buffs and create AoE's freezing an entire group and critical kill every enemy. Mages and a rouge for cunning skills is all you ever need.

You can too create minefields with traps but that's only for role-playing because this is the only task the AI can't handle.

[zaku_zelo]

Pauses at the start of combat? No, it doesn't. Thankfully too, that sounds super jarring.

And alright, I gotta pause and directly control guys more often, that's fine, but not if it's for every single action. I'm fine with picking a target for the mage at the start, but then how do I get him to keep on said target until it's dead without pausing and directing every single spell? Or the tank. Gotta hold all these guys at once, pause, hit this guy once, unpause, guy gets hit once, pause, next guy, repeat? Holy ♥♥♥♥, no no NO, that's the worst thing.

The AI is smart if I let it be? Cool, glad to hear it. And how do I do that?

[AbedsBrother]

Originally posted by zaku_zelo:

Pauses at the start of combat? No, it doesn't. Thankfully too, that sounds super jarring.

And alright, I gotta pause and directly control guys more often, that's fine, but not if it's for every single action. I'm fine with picking a target for the mage at the start, but then how do I get him to keep on said target until it's dead without pausing and directing every single spell? Or the tank. Gotta hold all these guys at once, pause, hit this guy once, unpause, guy gets hit once, pause, next guy, repeat? Holy ♥♥♥♥, no no NO, that's the worst thing.

The AI is smart if I let it be? Cool, glad to hear it. And how do I do that?

Once you tell a character to attack by clicking on an enemy, they should continue attacking that enemy without interruption. The only reason they would stop would be death (of course) or if a condition you set in the Tactics menu was fulfilled. Like if you have set a condition for your mage to "switch to melee - if attacked by melee attack," your mage will stop firing spells and switch to any equipped melee weapon (or fists if there is no melee weapon equipped).

Tactics look a bit daunting, but if you're playing on Normal, the Tactics presets will work fine in most cases. Like choose the Archer preset for Leliana, the Defender preset for Alistair, and the Debilitator for Morrigan (as examples).

[halb]

I played the games with the hardest difficulty with very few pauses. Check out my controls mods.

[megaton238]

As others have pointed out, you can decide how much control you want over the NPCs and individually fine-tune their behavior. It's rare that you actually have to micromanage anything in a fight, particularly on normal.

That said, if your primary interest is playing through the story and not combat, you can set the difficulty down. On easy mode, combat is a secondary and you can just focus on advancing the plot however you'd like. If you're finding one particular fight to be difficult or annoying, you can also just temporarily adjust the difficulty down, and then restore it after the fight is done.

By the way, there is a setting where you can tell the game to auto-pause whenever combat starts (you know this is going to happen anyway when you all draw your weapons). I'd say that's really only something I'd use in the harder difficulty modes.

[Haalja]

setting tactics. use wynne as healer. be tank or make someone else tank (with tactics set). profit.
it's really rare i have to micromanage anyone else than my character. everyone behaves as i want them to behave. it's all easy once you spent some time for planning these tactics

[MegaMan]

If you actually got a lot of tactics slots instead of having to dump a skill point to unlock more PER CHARACTER, maybe it would be better. As it stands, I agree that the micromanging required for even the simplest battle is stupid and does a lot to take me out of the game.


Actually...BRB looking for a mod to give like 50 tactics slots. Because telling a wizard to heal someone on low hp is apparently too advanced for them to do without you explictly telling them.

[Yhwach]

I prefer to play in realtime, If It helps, you can place your buffs to the far right sidebar, and your attacks to the left so It's easier to fight.

[*•°*”˜˜”*°•.Ƹ Ӝ]

use a trainer and play the game like an action rpg.. its so much funner
boost your stats so you dont have to worry about pausing