What is a 'Melee Mage'?

Haha, I've been told before I have a habit of sounding a lot more hostile than intented when I type in English.

My mention of clerics comes solely from the party/ally buff skills mages had in DAO and the fact that Knight-Enchanter was a sort of a tanky support spec with a mass heal/rez. I think those would enable the cleric archetype to exist in DA in combination of Spirit Healing stuff being it's own tree entirely. This is ofc assuming we get our damn healers back. I don't mean the tankiness to be a means of acctually tanking, I feel like that is a job that should mainly remain reserved to warriors.

What I mean with the improved grenades and traps was basically what Arvaarad was talking about with the rogue pre-planting stuff in stealth. I personally wasn't a fan of the rogue specs in DAI, I'm more of an assassin/duelist/bard person. My dislike isn't so much to the playstyles but the concepts. I didn't like the idea of traps being just a specialization instead of something everyone can do. We didn't even get to craft traps! And tempests were idd the only ones getting fun potions. Improving these things for everyone wouldn't necessarily mean that Tempest and Artificer would go away. They'd just merge into something that gave some passive bonuses to the basic stuff and maybe enabled you to craft some more advanced stuff while making room for bard and duelist specs to return.

I think mage weapon skills differing slightly depending on weapon wielded would be great. Continuing with the tesla coil dagger stab skill, the GS version could be a spin-to-win sending lightning bolts around, a staff version could create a field of lightning on the ground around you and the shield version could create a barrier striking enemies who hit you with electricity. Ofc the staff/bow versions would also offer more ranged style as not to leave the traditional mages feeling like the archetype has gone full on melee.

That's all very appealing from a classicist, purity of roles perspective, but the upshot is that no one would ever put a rogue in their party. Not for as long at the game is combat and DPS-centric. Not when min/maxing DPS has such a satisfying payoff in terms of gameplay.

Now, if party challenges were more diversified, with realistic alternatives to toe-to-toe combat to solve problems, and cunning and dexterity could hold their own in terms of value to the party, that would be great. But that would have to come first. I'd like to see major side quests where a Pacifist achievement is a possibility (meaning, no enemies killed, only knocked out or avoided altogether). That's where a rogue could really shine.

I like setting up traps and utilizing the environment (chokepoints, altitude, cover, destructibles, etc.) to plan out a battle as much as anyone, but again, if it's a choice between carefully setting up a battlefield to your advantage and just run-and-gunning with your high DPS characters that can AoE the shit out of any enemies, it's hard to justify having a rogue in the party for the sake of the former. And that's even assuming the game gives you time to set up the battlefield, instead of just aggroing all the enemies as soon as they have line of sight on you.

That said, Horizon Zero Dawn does have a few set piece battles where you are explicitly given time to set up traps and work the environment to your advantage. One of the NPCs even says, "Now would be a good time to set up some traps." So, kudos to GG for encouraging some diversity in gameplay, but I also note that there's no cost to having traps and high DPS weapons equipped, so there's no trade-off. You are equipped for all situations without having to sacrifice anything. The same wouldn't be true for having a rogue in the party. You're giving up whatever other role you could put in that slot.

Personally I see melee magic as one of two things.

Either it is a focus on close range spells that tend to be area of effect (a lot like how you could build Merrill in DA2 in her Keepers First Specialization) or a "monk" style class, where you are using magic as you strike. Think bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender, or just the classic DnD Monk.

That and just letting me hit people with my stick.

I mean christ, Dorian does it in a cutscene, why cant I? If you want to know how effective a staff is in combat, take a look at some HEMA videos of trained quarterstaff fighters holding off trained sworders. Or what a staff hit can do to an unprotected skull, or throat.

Worth considering though, that from DA2 onwards, we've seen many staves with blade attachments, effectively turning the traditional mage "wooden staff" into a type of polearm/glaive instead.

(The Destiny trailer even shows Hawke using their staff like a polearm a few times, in order to attack from range).

Still not the best weapon to use against a sword, but does give mages more reach  and flexibility  when forced to fight in melee.

I would like to see a mix of Arkaner Warrior and the Battle Mage from Sacred.
In Sacred the Battle Mage has Attributes and Skills to improve fight with Mage Rods and one hand weapons with shield. The player can train him riding with horses, means fighting with spells and weapons (rods and swords) on horses. His active combat arts are all offensive, defensive and passive spells.
In Dragon Age I would like to give my Melee Mage additional heavy armor like in DAO. But the heavy armor in DAI was not very useful for the mage compared to the suits in DAO. In general I want back the Stats behavior of DAO back not this simplified one from DAI.

Whole lot of terms being used here so Ill try to differentiate based on your usage:

- Active Ability: An ability that is placed on your hotbar/battlemenu that has a combat effect when used
- Passive Ability: Any indirect change to the Player that is always running and requires no direct input (some passives might be in the form of do X to get Y but the listener for that condition is always running)
- Sustained Ability: Also known as a modal, this is an effect that turns on/off when used - it is activated like an Active Ability but the effects are usually more like a Passive
- Skill: A gating mechanism for in-world events. For example, you need the 'Lockpick' skill to open locked doors.
- Stat: Also known as an Attribute, these make up various factors on a Player and typically increase through progression, adding to some power axis (be it damage, health, speed...etc.)

If that's agreed upon I can probably speak to your comment (generally), I just wanted to be clear what specifically you mean with those things

Couple of gamedev points about this, keep in mind these are general statements, not to be confused with direction for anything we are currently making:

- Skills are usually not in more modern games because they just represent 'lock-and-key' gameplay which is to say activity X needs skill Y, once you have Y X just works. The trend more recently is to just give the Player tools/systems and hope they figure it out how to get through obstacles. Instead of 'door locked: requires Lockpick 3' you now see things like 'Steel Door' which you can do things like: Convince a guard to open it; steal the specific key; blow up the wall beside it with a depth charge...etc.
Skills are more important in a game which focuses on character progression and choice/consequence. I recently played through the first chapter of The Council and their skill system is designed to give your character flavor and make it so you can only do a % of all the activities.

- Sustained abilities are great when they have a cost (reserves X% of your mana bar) AND when you don't have a limited number of active abilities on your bar. DA2 on console suffered from this - I remember playing as a Berserker on console and it was so painful compared to PC because the character was built requiring you to have more abilities on your bar than were allowed.
For a game with a finite amount of ability slots on your bar, sustains essentially limit the number of active skills on your bar in exchange for a passive bonus - this would be fine if your number was 10 dropping down to 9 but if you're somewhere in the 4-8 range you could be losing 20% or more of your bar to what are essentially toggle-able passives.

- Stats are also one of the first things to get streamlined when a game tries to hit a bigger market because the average Player doesn't want the mental fatigue of trying to understand a stat progression system and figure out what they should be putting points in.
Personally, I think anything with 'RPG' in its title should allow for lots of min/max progression avenues and then simply add an option for people who don't want to engage with them to 'auto-level'. In DAI a large percentage of Players didn't couldn't even be bothered with pressing the Autolevel button on their followers so I think it would need to be a much more aggressive system such that at the start of any game it says: 'Do you care about min/max progression?' and if you select 'NO' it just automatically does all that stuff for you behind the scenes.


All that said, it usually comes down to what type of game you're trying to make and what market you're trying to hit. Certain types of systems are anathema to some high-level game goals

I cannot agree but have to admit that I liked the PS3 GUI from Origins more than this one from DA2. The DA2 GUI was bulky, because you cannot switch between menus like in Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect Andromeda. This both were great. DAI was a little nightmare.
Nevertheless, even with the GUI of DA2 you could use every ability you have learned without pick everything in the short cut menu in the right corner.

Are boring. I also find them frustrating for certain types of builds, like tank. I'm in the middle of a DAO run and playing a tank. I have to have threaten on as a sustained ability, but it sometimes feels like all it's doing is taking a chunk of my stamina reserve. I much prefer active abilities as I then feel more involved in what my character is doing.

I don't mind passive abilities, though, because those feel like bonuses that my character gets for training.

[edit] I guess it depends on what the actual sustained ability is. I think the DAO one, death syphon, is fun because you can see it working. Something like threaten seems like it might instead be better as a passive gained as a reward for going so many levels deep into the tanking tree.


I know you guys have access to a lot of player behavior data and I hope you can elaborate on this one to answer how you parse it. Do you know that these players aren't using it for any/all of their followers? So they're just going around with the same abilities that they had when recruited? In all of my games, I tend to have a crew that I just take everywhere (and level appropriately), leaving the rest to languish. Can you distinguish that type of behavior from someone who "can't be bothered"?


I know you're being humorous here, but an auto-level button is not a toggle and all of the games have had that option. Having the option to auto-level is not the same as turning something on or off.

I always picking abilities for the companions these are fit to them, in my opinion. Vivienne is called Madame DE Fer and uses a frost spell in her introduction, this is why I give her Frostspells mainly. Anders I always give fire spells because of his introduction and character.

Same way I picked Spells for my Amells. Thoughs who are more selfish learning to drain health for themself and not learning the healing spell to heal others.
At this point I want to say I prefering the spellbook of Dragon Age Origins /Awakening, because with this Mass of abilities you can shape the character of the protagonist, too.
For story progression I prefer a hybrid of Stats and Abilities. A closed door should opened by a handy Rogue or by a Warrior that have learned shield dash or something similar.