Mehow_pwn wrote...
Burn the Hertic!!!!!
I refuse to
have another God of war/ Halo/CoD or any FPS with some tiny RPG and
story.. BECAUSE that's execly what you are calling an RPG
If it's got all the good elements of an RPG such as a compeling story with well-develloped characters, a fun but (fairly) deep combat system, different classes with varying playing styles... that's pretty much the basis of a good RPG, and the rest are just ramifications on the goodness.
And you have to love how basic these "true RPG fans" are: give them a boring and repetitive combat system with some swords and spells and they're happy. But just replace said swords with guns and suddenly "oh no, it's the Hal0z, burn the witch!", regardless of everything else the game has to offer.

Torhagen wrote...
May i ask you what part of the DA Combat is shallow ?
Oh boy, where do I begin? Let's see:
How about the fact that there are absolutely no tactics or strategy involved at all in this "tactical RPG"? How about that all you ever need to do is use the most basic of party-based tactics, that is known even to those who never played this kind of games: the Fighter tanks and draws aggro, the DPS guy stabs people while avoiding damage and the mages/supporters use spells to buff, nerf and deal more DPS.
Because that's all I do in this game. Over and over again, regardless of who I'm facing. Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Darkspawn, it doesn't matter, that's all I need to do to beat
every - single - fight in this game. Hell,
even the Bosses fall to this. And most of the time, I don't even need to participate in the fight. I just send in the fighters and stay in the back spamming the same spells I've been using
since the beggining of the game over and over until everything is dead. Lather, rinse, repeat
over 9000 times during the game and bum! it's won, congratulations, hope that didn't numb your brain too much.
Oh, and to all those of you who complaining about "dumbing down" when the number of skills/spells/whatever are reduced in a sequel (Mass Effect 2, Oblivion, etc) let me give you an old cliché: it's not the size of your skill list that matters, it's what you do with it. At level 12 I already had all the spells I needed to face pretty much anything and since then... I've just been adding more to my collection. I don't really use them all that much, but they look real pretty on my character spells sheet. And when I'm fighting, I basically just spam a combination of Lightning/Winter's Grasp/StoneFist/Arcane Bolt with the odd Heal thrown here and there.
And that's it, that's your "depth": spam the same kind of spells over and over until the beasties go down. Since each spell has its own cooldown, you just need to keep casting other spells while waiting for the others to recharge in a vicious cycle of continuous magical fury. Makes you wish there was some kind of limitation. Something that encouraged you to use other abilities or use them more sparingly so they would be more vital and actually felt like a decisive move against one's opponent, instead of just another hit in a never-ending barrage of attacks that use magic like a blunt object.
I don't know, maybe
a universal cooldown and a
more focused use of your abilities, so that each one of them was more unique and important, instead of just another hit in a never-ending rain of brute force with pretty lights. And enemies with
different strengths and weaknesses that encourages you to use different party members, abilities and approaches to combat depending on who you're facing.
We can only hope that a game with a system like that can
one day be made. It will no doubt be universally panned by all the people who mistake "quantity" with "depth", but it would be really nice to see it happen. But of course that it couldn't be in a game with
guns in it, much less if it's gameplay resembles some sort of console shooter. After all, we all know that depth is all about swords and axes and fairies, there's no way that a game with a space marine in it would ever be able to pull that off! I mean, come on...

Torhagen wrote...
I give you the advice to raise the difficulty if it is too easy for you.
Sorry, I can't. You know why?
Because it's already on freaking Nightmare! :alien:Can't really raise the bar beyond that, now can I?
I had already set it on Hard because I was so incredibly bored that I just figured "you know what? I'm not expecting the game to suddenly get mentally stimulating in the slightest (not really hoping for a complete overhaul and
finally get enemies that would actually force me to adapt to new tactics), but at least with tougher enemies it should keep me on my toes and I will finally have to stay
awake during a fight."
Aaaand... it didn't.

Apart from the fact that enemies just got some extra resistance to spells and now they seemed to be a bit more focused on targeting my mage before anything else, it still wasn't enough to make the game any less boring. The solution was, again,
more brute force: if the enemy resists to spells, then just throw
more at them and the mage remains protected with
more aggro-drawing from the Tank.
And that was it, so nothing changed in the end. And after defeating the Brood Mother without breaking a sweat and killing Flemeth
in less than nothing (seriously, when I actually paid attention to her health bar, I was shocked to see it was already down to 1/5 of its total

) I just decided to break the final frontier and push it to Nightmare.
And, once again,
nothing changed! 
I'm sure there have been some buffs and nerfs somewhere, but I honestly can't notice them. I kept butchering everything in my way, the High Dragon also lasted just a few moments more than Flemeth and even the Archdemon would have died as quickly if he didn't pull one of those stupid "back-off-and-summon-my-minions-to-drag-on-the-fight" moments (and if the Circle Mages didn't keep blasting my party with Fireballs, but that's a a different story).
Even today, when I started Awakening, I was finding the game so painfully easy, I even wondered if the dificulty had reset back to Normal. I even thought "it's an expansion, it's meant to be played by people who are already experienced with the game, so it's supposed to be harder, right? But maybe when you start a new game, you have to specify that you want in another difficulty level other than Normal. Let me check the options menu and...

... nope, it's still on so-called "Nightmare". The mode for the "tactical geniuses that found Hard to be too easy", accoring to the in-game description."
Believe me, I would love to be able to brag and say that I belong to that first part of the description, but I just can't. I'm not a "tactical genius", I don't even think I'm really especially good at the game. I just use the most basic of tactics and that's apparently enough for it.
Now here's to hoping that Dragon Age 2 can actually deliver on that promise of "Think like a general and fight like a Spartan", because its predecessor surely failed on both accounts.
Mike2640 wrote...
I'd take a game like Dragon Age or
Fallout over another Gears of War immitator like Mass Effect 2
was.
And I'll take a game with actual
depth and fun over some game with pretentions of depth just because it has an overhead view, like Dragon age was, regardless of its gameplay.
Seriously, you can give me a game that consists on dancing the cancan, and I'll most likely enjoy it as long as you make it fun and/or mentally challenging. And that's where DA failed completely.
Modifié par Lusitanum, 30 août 2010 - 12:27 .