Gameplay Hot Tips from Dev

I'll see if I can answer these with specifics when I'm next back at my work machine. A lot of them I could probably answer off the top of my head but I'd like to confirm as they get into the nitty gritty of the damagecalc

I played as warrior on nightmare. I was so excited to finally be able to parry in a game! I felt that the parry window was generous and the enemy attacks readable. I always failed at parrying in later souls games and elden ring, because of how fast, wierd and inconsistent the enemies move.

However... As the game went on most enemies got unblockable attacks, which they used a bit too often, but that's fine. The problem was I just couldn't see what anyone was doing. The visual effects for abilities and detonations were just overwhelming.

So at lvl 20 I swiched to a shield toss build and... it felt like I suddenly changed the difficulty to easy. I played the rest of the game like that and I don't think I died once. At first fighting still felt scrappy, but by lvl 30 I was just mowing everything down without feeling any threat or challenge. At lvl 28 I defeated my fist dragon in the game, which was lvl 45 Mythal.

I actually don't mind op builds, it was fine for a first playthrough. I don't like how messy combat looks. And I should mention that before I even started the game, I turned off everything in interface except abilities and healthbar. I think it cheapens the game to have to make enemies flash red on unblockable attacks or see warnings for enemy aoe on the ground, with no option to turn them off and still be able to read these attacks from movement/projectiles.

But honestly, those are minor things to me. I wish warriors and rogues had only one magical spec, and the rest looked more clean. Instead they all look like mages when they use abilities.

And most importantly, I wish companions could be incapacitated in combat. Gameplay itself tells a story and in this case it tells me companions aren't people and I should't worry about them.

Luke, I had two questions for you:

1) A couple weeks back, I believe before launch, I had asked about what went into the decision regarding global cooldowns. You mentioned that you had another system in mind, but couldn't answer at the time due to the game not having launched. Since we're nearly a year removed now, do you feel open to discussing what you had in mind with cooldowns?

2) A lot of people who like having the ability to use a large number of active abilities weren't too thrilled about Veilguard. At the same time, I've found that most people who fall into this group tend to be mostly concerned about what fewer active abilities means for mages. Since we now have two types of mage-based weapons, could one possible solution be to have the 3 active skills for the Orb & Dagger combo, but the Staff allows you 6+ abilities by sacrificing block or the ranged attack option?

Maybe I should be more general here. Is it feasible for one class of weapon to allow for more active abilities than other weapons?

Hey, sorry been on vacation. This will be long but I'll try to be as succinct as possible.
To the first one, we actually tried a bunch of different options but ones that felt better for gameplay ended up being even more overhead on the HUD as far as bars and things (which we were already bloated on).
I actually did a bunch of gameplay analysis stuff back at the start of Joplin, basically just modding DAI (internally) and assessing feedback. And this will sound obvious when it's spelled out but basically for any ability system it's good to use both a resource and a time based gating system. When you only have cooldowns you typically just spam abilities off cooldown (which is why followers went Global specifically) and when you have resource only you basically just spray your most effective ability over and over. Now, you can design your abilities around these problems, for example if you make all of them situational and only having a "correct" time to use them it will mitigate the issues. But, that assumes your game is complex enough to have that many different scenarios to help the abilities have unique identities. Additionally, and we ran into this early, having a correct way to use things also means there is an incorrect way so a lot of players who didn't quite get it just felt the abilities were flat and useless (I see this constantly about the uniques when people don't understand the synergy intent).

As for abilities, yes one could probably mod that in - the hardest part would be the UI for mapping them but still doable with a mod. One big concern about us officially doing it, which we did talk about, is that all those abilities are loaded into memory when you have both sets. So for our minspec systems it would have been too costly on performance. We also had a gameplay guideline that we intentionally never wanted to promote weapon swapping mid combat and that went against it.
When I was in charge of that kind of stuff on Joplin waaaay back we had 6 abilities mapped (2 were controlled by your equipped items) and I preferred that but it was a different game and different target markets.

Thanks for the responses. So memory is a concern, that I understand. I take it wanting to have 8+ abilities to use would probably necessitate a much slower and less dynamic encounter experience I take it? Sounds like ability damage would also have to be sacrificed for the same payoff we get now. Would you say this is why other RPG contemporaries, such as Baldurs Gate 3, opt for turn-based approaches (which makes it far easier to have such a deep pool of abilities to use)? 

Maybe where I'm ultimately leading with this is, is it even possible to have an 6-8+ active ability system in Dragon Age at this point?

I don’t think there is any issue having 6 to 8+ active abilities for an action game in general. I had no problem at all cycling through 6 abilities in FF16. 8 would have worked even better. All felt impactful. Of course, MMOs have many more.

I think turn-based is ideal for playing other party members in party-based games. It helps you slow down and consider each character’s options.

I ended up pausing a lot in Veilguard because I wanted to have Davrin taunt a specific enemy, for example, or see about resistances, which is harder for me to do in real time. I don’t mind pausing, though, so that was okay with me.

I actually have to say that I am a big fan of the revamped mage gameplay - case in point, this is my first ever mage main in any DA game.

Before DAV, whenever I switched to my mage(s), I did exactly that caster thing - just fire everything not on cooldown, run around, spam some basic attack bolts to little use until I'm back to the identical palette of fireworks. Rinse and repeat.

With this system, I can "do" something constantly. It feels the mage has so many literal tricks up their sleeve to adapt to any situation - sometimes you gotta use the close range shotgun ("heavy"), sometimes you need to accurately hit someone using the beam, defend yourself with the barrier, mindblast them, etc.
The abilities feel more like finishers/actual big explosions. I find myself using them very decidedly and usually to big effect.

I think if y'all gave it more of a chance to work as intended, it wouldn't feel like "I have less buttons to click", but I admit since I had no favoured routine as a mage in an RPG (quite the opposite in fact), it was easier for me to "embrace" all the changes.

I have some gameplay questions

Controller Xbox

I’m in combat and I have Bellara with me. I
Open up the special menu and ask her to use her bolts attack. Can I have her target a particular enemy if there’s say a boss plus minions? If so how

How do I get my ultimate ability to charge? What kind of weapons etc speed up the process and before re the ultimate attack charges does the icon that’s already there mean anything? It’s always lightly glowing

2 handed warrior whirlwind which has 2 yellow dots next to it-I can’t get the ability to trigger? Only my level 1 is powering up?

Sorry it isn’t glowing not an actual controller issue

I would say FF16 is a good example of what that feels like in an action forward game. I couldn't speak to the future for DA specifically, afterall we change the combat literally every game  . Theoretically yes you could but you'd like have some abilities on very low cooldowns that are essentially just special attacks - if you look at all the traits for each class there is actually quite a lot baked into the core attacks. In a previous DA game things like Shield Toss, some of the charged follow ups, dash attacks...etc. would be their own abilities and your core attacks would be a lot more basic.

Turn-based allows for a lot more deliberation, it's also just smoother for having a wide bar of options because you have the time to ponder what to do for each moment. Using BG3 as an example I have a TON of spells on my Light Cleric but I use like 2 of them 80% of the time. It's sort of an argument for choice, even if you never use it, just to support that feeling of expression.

For what it's worth, I would love it if you DIDN'T have to reinvent the whole thing from scratch for DA5. I didn't think that the action game would have my favourite combat in the series, but it's incredibly fun. About to finish my sword-and-board Champion run and it's the most fun I've ever had with a Warrior. Can't wait to try Rogue next!