73 réponses à ce sujet

[ckriley]

Seriously.  I found Awakening to be their weakest effort.  By far.  I mean, I truly, truly, truly hate to say this because you probably won't find a bigger fan of BioWare than me, but, I found Awakening to be absolutely terrible.  The only reason I finished Awakening was because I've played through all their games so to me, playing through a BW game is a time honored tradition for me

First of all, the combat is still just atrocious.  I don't know what happened between Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but apparently BW has developed the idea that challenging combat is simply to knockdown, stun and otherwise immobilize the PC as much as possible.

I don't think I'm exaggerating too much when I say that the battle through Mother's Lair saw me in control of my own character about 40% of the time.  The other 60% was spent either on my back or stunned in place.  It was absurd.  The only reason I survived these encounters was because a) my character is like level 24 or 25 or something and is night unkillable, and  I was rolling with two mages that had a lot of CC themselves.

Please forgive me for sounding like a broken record here but if you like at my post history (I think you can do that here) the number one thing I've been complaining about since I played through DAO the first time was...you guessed it...WAY TOO MUCH CC.  Nearly every fight in the original campaign of DAO camed down to who could get their CC off first.  Then, for some truly odd reason, the devs decided to nerf player CC but leave mob CC the same.  They said it was so players couldn't just lock down a boss or a mob, even though that's exactly what was happening to us.

Soooooo, to answer these concerns and complaints, BioWare responded by adding even MORE CC to the expansion.  Okie doke.  Makes perfect sense, I guess.

Then there's just the overall flow of combat itself.  Whenever you get knocked down or back, you drop combat.  Don't know the reason for that but okay, let's just roll with it.  Then you have these maddening pathing problems where you tiptoe around a target for a few seconds before attacking, or worse, you do the moonwalk in place for several second until you just stop trying to attack and take control of the character and move them yourself.

The party AI can be stunningly retarded.  Mages and/or rogues, (or both) running head first into a pack of 10 or so mobs.  Fortunately I play on the PC, so I could just take control of the character and tell them where to go, but I remember playing DAO once on my 360 and pulling my hair out at how stupid and difficult the party AI could be.  I cannot imagine playing this game on a console anymore.  I really can't.

***SPOILERS***

The story.  Just really shallow and uninteresting.  The whole concept of the Architect being the one responsible for the Blight and awakening the Old God was mildly intriguing.  Until you got to the last battle and talked to the Mother.  Then, with the three of you in the room, it was just like, "You did what?"  "Yeah, I caused the Blight, My bad, but I'm trying to stop new ones."  "Oh, okay.  That's cool."  NOTE: That's how I chose to play the story.  I know you can kill the Architect as an option.   But all in all, there was just no depth, and nothing really that expanded on the original campaigns.

Characters.  Aside from Justice, I was thoroughly disinterested in all of my party members.  Velanna, she of the rack, was somewhat interesting with her search for her sister.  But Morrigan she was not.  And I know that was intentional (a lot of people hated Morrigan anyway) but I wasn't really compelled to know anything about her or the others.

Which was a good thing considering each character, aside from some brief cutscenes in the Keep, have absolutely nothing to say to you anyway.  You get, like, one conversation with each character.  And that's...about...it.  And the fact that I thought the dead guy, Justice, was more interesting than the living characters should tell you all you need to know about them.

What happened to the writing and the effort that went into expansions like Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark?  I remember greatly enjoying those.  In fact, here's a little background on my gaming history.  The half-elf cleric I rolled in SoU and played through on HotU was a driect precursor to all of my WoW and other MMO characters and remains the high watermark RPG character for me to this day.

By contrast, I could honestly care less what happens to my character in Dragon Age because I no longer care about the universe and the characters, at least in the expansion, were just so shallow.  I mean, it really did feel rushed and slapped together.

So, I have to wonder, is BioWare losing its touch?

Modifié par ckriley, 29 mars 2010 - 04:30 .

[StingingVelvet]

Man, all this negativity makes me not want to play Awakening, which I am just now able to do.



As for Bioware losing its touch, outside of Awakening I found Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 to both be genius products and better than the Bioware games that came before them for years, so... no.

[Efesell]

My answer is no, I loved the game.

And even if I accepted that this was an overall subpar product.. well then I would remember that hey, they can't all be winners.

[Vox the devil_]

honestly i highly enjoyed it. Its a much smaller scale then the original so the story does not have as much of an epic feel to it. and while i dislike the conversation system it didn't stop me from liking the characters. i found that giving them the right gifts and finding the conversation starters out in the world  and the banter got me to know the characters just enough for me to get really attached to them.  i still dont like the system though. so i hope they go back to the old one for any future DA stuff.

the combat system is exactly the same as in Origins except its crazy easy in comparison so i dont know what you are talking about there. played a rogue and after i respeced my self and anders not a single party member died. i was playing on a ps3 and you can take control of the other party members.

after reading all the people crying about it on this board, i was surprised with just how much i enjoyed it. its flawed, but i dont think so much that it ruins it for me. it added 15 new hours of content to a game with an insane amount of replay value. the only thing i wish is that it had registered my morrigan love story for the end of awakening.

Modifié par Vox the devil , 29 mars 2010 - 04:45 .

[Ex-Paladin]

I greatly loved Awakening; I can understand a character pretty well with a few things they say or how they act...or how I get approval/disapproval from someone and realize, "oops! They don't like that!"



I loved the story and the characters, but I guess I'm easy to please with games

[Epona222]

What are you moaning about, seriously, I don't get your point. The AI and tactics system is far superior to the computer RPGs of old where you *had* to micromanage every round of combat, or most of your party would stand around staring into space because you hadn't told them what to do.



If anything, I found combat slightly too easy, simply set my party mage's tactics to cast paralyse/crushing prison on anything of elite level or higher, the only party member I had to worry about really was getting the rogue into a suitable backstab position (and with Awakening and the Heartseeker talent my DW rogue once managed over 4000 damage in one round).



If anything, the new talents and spells made my party too overpowered, I certainly didn't spend most of combat incapacitated.



To use a quote, "you're doing it wrong".

[Meltemph]

Good game and a good Expansion. Nothing to serious and is more of a side story then a full on game. Just lets you see more of what you previously went through with the darkspawn and gave you a little taste of the politics of the area. I don't think the characters were really meant to be very consequential, just part of the engine that drove this nice little story. I'll just assume that the canon was killing the architect and that this story was just a wrap of of the blight with some fluff thrown in.



One thing I will admit though. Bioware soon needs to make a clear line, stating if DA will be a setting to the scope of a Forgotten Realms or will it simply be the engine that drives characters(ala Mass Effect).

[PatT2]

I'm afraid I did not have the same negative experience. For being constantly stunned and rooted by the enemy, suggests you're not paying attention to your physical and mental defenses.



MY char just fought the Inferno Golem, and while a couple of the party members had trouble, she just popped a lesser heat balm, was wearing a pendant for 10%fire protection and some physical resistance and the armor I was wearing had an additional 30%. So...the moral of the story is that: I never was knocked down, nor did the fire do much to endanger my life, even though it was a grease fire.



One has to focus on their defensive talents and skills, not just offensive ones, to avoid such nonsense. Your character's skills plus their equipment, and a salve or potion here or there, should make you immune to most knockdowns, and some well-created warriors can't be knocked down unless you kill them. Same with getting stunned.



If you're trying to run and gun (so to speak) without a care as to the right equipment for the fight, the right team for the fight, the right additional resources, you're going to spend your time knocked down or stunned, but that really suggests user error more than game error. I've had fights with high dragons where I did not get knocked down (but I did get tossed).



I read about all the min-maxing, and maybe that works well...sounds a bit like the specialist that doesn't know jack in general...but those characters have no stamina or mana because well...drink a potion...so they don't invest any in will, and sadly, if you run out of the potions, you don't even a normal amount of stamina because all those points went into strength. Great so long as you can still swing your sword.



I prefer to spread a few points around to other areas that would be valuable in the event all your armor or weapons are stripped from you for some reason. Hah. Like that ever happens.



I thought the ideas were good, the situations fun and surprising and you got to see how well you built a character when you have no equipment to rely on.



There are always issues and opinions. But I must say I have found it enjoyable.

[Rake21]

Is it the best thing Bioware has ever made?

No.  But is that saying much?  No

It's not perfect.  It feels rushed in a few spots, and there are a few things I'm dissapointed in.

But if you look at it all together, it's a damn solid package.  The new party members are great.  The bosses are epic.  The big moral choice at the end really does make you stop and think.  And it's a pretty good story.

Bioware's best?  No.  But it's not even close to a failure.

[Meltemph]

This exp, imo, didn't really feel like it wanted to be a tie in to Origins and that it just wanted to be a separate thing. I think that is what hurt it more then anything, imo. I still however enjoyed it both ways(import and non) but found the non import more acceptable, in terms of lore/story consistency.

[Beaker_1]

The way I'm looking at it... its an expansion, it cost me £15. I'm getting my couple day playthough out of it, even if parts are lacking, its an extension to the first one. If you want the full experience, get the complete package.

[Nioxide]

The fact that there is a love thread about Zevran thats 511 pages long on these forums...well all I have to say is I don't think Bioware is loosing its touch. The one element that always makes or breaks a Bioware game is if people become emotionally invested in said game, and from what I've seen, it seems they certainly are.

[AuraofMana]

I don't know what happened between Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but
apparently BW has developed the idea that challenging combat is simply
to knockdown, stun and otherwise immobilize the PC as much as possible.

Sounds like every RPG Bioware has ever made.  That's what happened in IWD, BG, and NWN.  CC is what most monsters heavily use, and bosses are more difficult because they do that a lot.  So no, Dragon Age isn't the first one that does this.  In fact, Dragon Age had less CC than other Bioware games.

I don't think I'm exaggerating too much when I say that the battle
through Mother's Lair saw me in control of my own character about 40% of
the time.  The other 60% was spent either on my back or stunned in
place.  It was absurd.  The only reason I survived these encounters was
because a) my character is like level 24 or 25 or something and is night
unkillable, and  I was rolling with two mages that had a lot of CC
themselves.

Yes you are exaggerating a lot.  Everyone except you have no issues of being CC'd.  Even with a fail build, she does not CC much.

Please forgive me for sounding like a broken record here but if you like
at my post history (I think you can do that here) the number one thing
I've been complaining about since I played through DAO the first time
was...you guessed it...WAY TOO MUCH CC.

Again, no one agrees with you.

Nearly every fight in the original campaign of DAO camed down to who
could get their CC off first.

Sounds like how every RPG works...

Then, for some truly odd reason, the devs decided to nerf player CC but
leave mob CC the same.

Uhh... where did you see that?  CC got even more ridiculous in Awakening, so I don't know what you are talking about.

They said it was so players couldn't just lock down a boss or a mob,
even though that's exactly what was happening to us.

You can completely lock down a boss, and no, I've never seen a boss completely locking down you.

Soooooo, to answer these concerns and complaints, BioWare responded
by adding even MORE CC to the expansion.  Okie doke.  Makes perfect
sense, I guess.

So if what you say are true, CC makes the game difficult.  Are you trying to complain that Dragon Age is difficult?

Then there's just the overall flow of combat itself.  Whenever you get
knocked down or back, you drop combat.  Don't know the reason for that
but okay, let's just roll with it.  Then you have these maddening
pathing problems where you tiptoe around a target for a few seconds
before attacking, or worse, you do the moonwalk in place for several
second until you just stop trying to attack and take control of the
character and move them yourself.

What?  Are we playing the same game?

The party AI can be stunningly retarded.  Mages and/or rogues, (or both)
running head first into a pack of 10 or so mobs.

Learn to set your tactics...  it's as retarded as you make it.

The half-elf cleric I rolled in SoU and played through on HotU was a
driect precursor to all of my WoW and other MMO characters and remains
the high watermark RPG character for me to this day.

You play WoW and you are complaining about CC in Dragon Age?  Ever rolled a Rogue?  That's all Rogues do, yet they are not the faceroll class.

Modifié par AuraofMana, 29 mars 2010 - 05:56 .

[Axekix]

Nioxide wrote...

The fact that there is a love thread about Zevran thats 511 pages long on these forums...well all I have to say is I don't think Bioware is loosing its touch. The one element that always makes or breaks a Bioware game is if people become emotionally invested in said game, and from what I've seen, it seems they certainly are.

This.  Awakenings wasn't their best effort, but it was a small budget project with a relatively short dev cycle.  A bit overpriced for what it delivered imo (if I knew then what I know now I wouldn't have paid 40 dollars for it tbh). 

Still, I have no doubt Bioware can/will bring their A game with DA2.  DAO is my favorite RPG of all time.

Edit: Actually I'm kind of surprised to see you complaining about CC.  It wasn't something that stood out at all to me.  In fact with the new broken skills your party can pick up, most of the encounters are a breeze.

Modifié par Axekix, 29 mars 2010 - 06:13 .

[MOTpoetryION]

OMG are you guys really this Dumb. BIOWARE no longer exists the name is just used as a puppet to keep all the loyal fans thinking that nothings changed. its all EA now . you want proof ? look and see whos TOS this so called " bioware social site" belongs to. And IMO i think bioware is going to be the next dev that they destroy. i just have a bad feeling about this .

[Taritu]

Weird. Even with cc: it's ridiculously easy, that's the main problem. I deliberately hardly use mage CC on most of my characters, in both campaigns, because if I do the game is even easier. And that's after the so-called CC nerf.



Awakenings is a yawn fest in terms of difficulty, and once you know what you're doing, Origins requires avoidance of cheese tactics as well, if you want it to be even slightly challenging.



While I agree, in general, that cc: is boring, this cc: is actually less powerful than Baldur's Gate II cc. Now that stuff was OP. Get the wrong people in your party held, and you might as well bend over and kiss your butt goodbye.

[Shady314]

ckriley wrote...
 You get, like, one conversation with each character.  And that's...about...it. 

 
..............
Ok you know they talk way more than one time right? Even outside the keep?

Sure it's not Dragon Age Origins but I was surprised by how much they had to say. Especially party banter.

[Rannah]

Rake21 wrote...

Is it the best thing Bioware has ever made?

No.  But is that saying much?  No

It's not perfect.  It feels rushed in a few spots, and there are a few things I'm dissapointed in.

But if you look at it all together, it's a damn solid package.  The new party members are great.  The bosses are epic.  The big moral choice at the end really does make you stop and think.  And it's a pretty good story.

Bioware's best?  No.  But it's not even close to a failure.

This. I completely agree with you, Rake21.

It is a fine addition to the base story. It is true, that it still needs a little polish - like bug fix, but apart from that it is really enjoyable and repeatable (oh, yes, just started a new origin to play again the game as a "new" whole story )

[MOTpoetryION]

well to tell you the truth DAO was my first game from this dev . Then i got ME2 and was very disappointed by the lack of talking with everyone . and being told no go away im busy all the time diddnt sit to well with me after DAO . IMO i think DAO was better then ME2

[Varenus Luckmann]

ckriley wrote...

[...]

So, I have to wonder, is BioWare losing its touch?

Yes.

No matter what people say, I can see a sharp difference between pre-EA and post-EA. Not saying it's because of EA, just that they have changed tremendously in just about every aspect during that timeframe.

And not for the better.

[MOTpoetryION]

yep varenus ive been trying to get this through their skulls . but they refuse to believe me . And i will say its EA i have seen them kill great devs before . And i know it was EA that made the choice to put that npc in camp to sell DLC. They are a corporation, only one thing drives them its $$$ and how to get more . I just wish they would stop buying up all these devs. i thank them for buying the ones that are going under, because they finance the finishing of games that are in the works . And we might never see them at all otherwise . But when they buy the really good devs i cringe every time. Its like they are trying to buy the #1 spot. Sorry EA that spot you have to earn

[magnuskn]

I really liked Anders and Nathaniel, the others were... "meh" is the best word. As for the story, it was good enough for an expansion which had a quarters length of the original game. I would have liked more confrontation of the architect and more possibilities to see his real motivations. That I had to learn a lot about them on the forums, due to never having heard of "The Calling" before, is a bit of a shame.



Oh, well. Let's see how long we have to wait until we get the next full game, that is what is really concerning me right now. I hate having to wait a year or so.

[jsachun]

Archdemon vs Intelligent Broodmother just does not compare. It's more like a Bann feud over a farmland than a great war.

Epic expansion = Old god in Arcane Warrior form. Spell Immunity, Physical Immunity & Mental Immunity. Misama, Swift, & DW with two great swords.

Modifié par jsachun, 29 mars 2010 - 09:48 .

[wwwwowwww]

The only thing that I have to complain about with this game is the amount of fricken bugs

[GOINxPOSTAl]

And about your "First of all, the combat is still just atrocious. I don't know what happened between Mass Effect and Dragon Age, but apparently BW has developed the idea that challenging combat is simply to knockdown, stun and otherwise immobilize the PC as much as possible." part just think about the sacred ashes quest I'm pretty much I spent most of the freaken time getting stunned, knocked down, and freezed.