2797 réponses à ce sujet

[Razith]

I really loved the game though there were a few things that really bothered me.

Some of the female model hands look straight out awkward for they're age. I didn't see this with the male model hands and some female hands do look proper. The easiest case to show this is Bethany/Leandra. They look like they have they're hands switched for they're proper age. It is one of those unnerving things. I also saw it with my Lady Hawke's romance with Merrill both the hands that seemed to belong to a different person.

It honestly ruined the moment for me when I sat there and had to ask myself 'What is wrong with Hawke's hands....' (I would love to see this patched if possible, otherwise I'll wait to see if a mod fixes it similar to whitening teeth in DA:O)

I haven't seen this in my male Hawke games or any male characters.

It was a little disappointing to have not as much romance dialogue with your love interests after the conquest. It would have been nice to have a break away similar to how you could talk to your companions in DA:O for your LI after they moved in.

Random events when coming to your home would have been nice beyond talking with the dog and the companion quests. They're small pleasures that made a great pace from all the chaos outside and gave the sense of "Hawke's home...time to kick back."

Varric discussing his books, Anders trying to push his manifesto. Orana (I think I butchered her name) teaching Merrill how to play the lute, and you did a excellent job with Sandel's moments. Those are the type of interactions that are nice to have in that part of the game.

The combat changes are great honestly. Cross class combos feel a lot better for teamwork than the mage only combos in Origins. The addition of defender as it's own tree is a welcomed change as it opened up more options than 'Aveline's the tank. Deal with it.' The companion trees make for a great divider for what each character can do that is different than Hawke. This allows you to put a lot more thought into who fits your party make-up.

Sorry for the very long post on small things, but these were some of the only things that bothered me about the game. Reusing maps wasn't as bad as it could have been. The exception for me being when the caves all used a similar map to Sundermount's cave. It was a bit hard to take the layout as only slightly different for pathway under Kirkwall.

Anyway That's my overall feedback.

[hawat333]

Good to have a constructive criticism topic around here, I'll drop my two cents here so we won't abuse the New Topic button.
Let's see.

The voiced protagonist.
I am an outspoken critic of voiced heroes in any RPG, mostly becasue of two reasons: 1. It denies customization on the level of choosing race, choosing the tone of your character ("Thank you" can be said in about two dozen different tones). 2. A given character have the possibility of being boring.
While the first statement stands, the second one is not true with Dragon Age 2, and hell, I'm glad for it. Hawke is a good guy to have around, have great lines and delivers emotion when it's necessary. Thanks to the writers and the voice actors for this.
While I'm happy with Hawke, I still prefer a mute hero, but of course it's just my taste.
The dominant personality and the icons on the dialogue wheel are the two main features that make the system working.

Graphics, sounds, musics, voice acting and graphic design; presentation in other words: The game looks absolutely nice even with DX9 renderer (I've had some nasty glitches and two freezes with the DX11 renderer, don't know the exact cause), maintains a solid framerate. The sounds and the music is as good as always. The voice acting is a definite step up from DA:O
Some redesigned elements was really strange to see, I still haven't made my peace with the new darkspawn. Same goes for the animations, while some of them (like the mage melee moves) are incredibly great and fluent, some others are reminding me too much to cartoons. Of course that's a matter of personal taste. Playing DA2 after finishing another DA:O/A runthrough, it just felt like breaking cohesion, I've spent a good three hours to get used to it.

Gameplay and level design:
The combat is faster and more responsive. Nowhere near as tactical as it was in the first game, but I can live with that. While I've enjoyed the fights, there were several points that stood out.
Spawning-out-of-nowhere enemies.
In Lowtown, they jump off the roof, In the cave, they came from a tunnel, ok. But spawning enemies out of nowhere, or sometimes on top of my mage, that's just not good. It's not fun at any rate, much more an annoyance. Want to make a fight harder? Give enemies more HP. Want to bring in reinforcements? Give the a way to come in from.
But do not spawn them behind the perfectly clear room wich has no other entry points.
Not only it breaks immersion, it also messes up the tactical locations of the characters and on top of that it's plain annoying. That was the main issue with the combat. It simply got tiresome.
If there will be any sequels, I'd also like to see the combat dealing with distances. I know "shuffling" was removed for a reason, but whenever you fought in DA:O, you've had to think and count with the distances. "How will I get my templar to the enemy mage? How will I disable it while he gets there? How to get rid of the opposition who delay him?" And so on, you get the picture. It was appealing in the first game - at least for me. It should be remedied in a way, I think.
As for the level design: Stepping in the very same cavern for the eleventh time feels like stepping in for the 1651173415th time. I know there were time restraints, but if you felt there's not enough time to make new areas, you could've asked for more time, I'm sure EA would be willing to negotiate for higher ratings and possibly more subsequent sales in the future. Or maybe not, I don't know.
I would've been grateful for at least seasonal changes in Kirkwall. Or something like this. A new building, a new pub, anything, really.

Questing
The main quests were fine enough, there were some really entertaining secondary quests, enjoyed them all.
The side quests however, especially the "deliver this or that for 1 sovereign" types was tiresome. At least we should have had a unique line for delivering the quest items. Upon bringing back a corpse (or a body part, I don't remember), hearing "Check your purse" and "I'm so glad, I thought I never see it again" is not only dull, but doesn't make sense. Don't create side quests or create them right. But breaking immersion with a nonsense line just to have a delivery is not appealing. One unique line for each could remedy the sitation.

The junk portion of the inventory does only make sense for putting items in it. Otherwise (as we can't even read a small description), the items are... well, what the title says: Junk. I get the idea, but it seems to be pointless if we consider that you could simply give us more coins.

Dialogues with companions
On one hand, I'm terribly happy they participate in a lot of conversations, that's a great way to express their personalities.
But we didn't have opportunity to have much convos with them, I was most interested to hear their pasts (especially discovering Hawke's roots through the siblings, Carver on my first playthrough), which I found sad.

Taking note of the prequel.
We were told the Grey Wardens are still an important faction. We were told that countless decisions carry over. We were told that the Blight is noted in the world of DA2. I just doesn't seem it to be the case. Mostly we get small notes or one minute cameos. Even the most important decision (considering the game's main conflict), the Circle of Magi in Ferelden got two little mentions I noticed. It just doesn't feel right somehow.
The Warden, and now Hawke shaped the world, we shall be able to meet more consequences.
On top of that, the Save Transfer system is buggy, not a bit, totally, it gets results I haven't have on my playthroughs in the prequel. Nathaniel notes the Architect was spared (while he rots underground), Loghain dead (where he lives), and so on.

I guess there is a golden midway between DA2 and DA:O, because both games have aspects that are utterly better than the other.
On other accounts, I've loved the game. Especially the fact that two of our three favourite dwarfs got a bigger role.

Modifié par hawat333, 15 mars 2011 - 09:29 .

[Darker_than_black]

- I want to be able to initate conversation with my companions when I choose to, not only when they feel like it and a quest pops up in my journal.

- The story is good and has a lot of great characters, but it sometimes feel...weak, or loose somehow. There just keeps popping up problem after problem but I don't get to know anything until the very end. 

- Quests have generally become much more fun in DA2 than in DAO, sidequests in particular, but it feels like the game consists of hundreds of short quests but few long, well developed ones. It sort of ruins the flow of the game. Its like you spend more time going back and forth between places than you actually spend at the places.

- The friendship-rivarly system, while being a good idea, drives me insane. Half the time I didn't understand why I got rivarly/friendship points with a character. The only way to know what the companions like/don't like seems to be playing the game a dozen times over until you know it all by heart. Don't get me wrong, when you converse with them at their "homes" it's not that hard to tell what answer gives which points, but in conversations with other people during quests the companions rivarly/friendship gains just get irregular and illogical.

- And ofc using the same areas over and over again, did anyone mention that? Oh right, everybody did.

Edit: Forgot to mention; Where the heck have the consequences of my DAO playthroughs gone and hidden themselves Bioware?!! Because they sure aren't in Dragon Age 2.

Modifié par Darker_than_black, 15 mars 2011 - 09:30 .

[Wearing Sunglasses at Night]

Really good critiques here.  My 2 cents:

* Love the dialog wheel and the icons. And the friendship/rivalry meter.  And the fact that I can do an aggressive conversation, because the situation dictates it, without feeling like I'm going to have my character marked as "evil" or "renegade" (as in ME).

* Didn't like the fact that I don't know why I was getting a rivalry +5 or friendship +5  on some conversations that didn't even relate to the companion.  An earlier poster had a great idea about putting it into a journal as to WHY  this happened.

* I liked the realistic combat in DA:O better.  It should take longer to swing a two-handed sword than a one-handed one and even less time for two-handed dagger combat.  I would like to see the cmbat stay as fuid as it is now (I don't pause in combat nearly as much as I did in DA:O) but make the weapons more realitic in amount of time it takes to land a blow.

* That being said, the relationship between the classes in combat is awesome!  Any ambivalence I feel towards the super-fast combat animations is outweighed by this new system of staggering an opponent and having another class complete the sequence with an appropriate attack.  A great addition to combat.

* Artwork took some getting used to, but I like it a lot now. 

* Agree with all other about the re-use of maps.  Took away from the immersion aspect for me.

*  Junk - the OP is spot on about having some of the junk possibly get used for backstories or constructing new weapons.  This really does have some good potential.

*  Enemy deaths - agree with the majority about the death explosions.  Maybe a little less exploding?  When the enemies fall they are cut in half on the ground, so I can see *some* blood after a kill.  Just not that much.

*  LI's = very good cutscenes and dialog from what I've seen so far.  Just not enough interaction.  This can apply to platonic relationships too - would like more of an opportunity to get to know my companions.

*  Quests - though they seemed a bit short (see below), I loved the various stories being told.  I laughed out loud many times - Varric is one of the best characters that Bioware has come up with. 

What I would like to see in the next DA:

* All those bonus items were nice, but became 1 stars before too long.  Personally, and I may be in the minority here, I would like to see LESS bonus items but when I do get one, make it an Uber-Item that I can't even use unitl the last 1/2 or last 1/3 or the game.  The Blood Dragon armor in DA:O was great for this - I couldn't even put it on until my level was getting close to 20.  The Blood Dragon armor in this game and the bonus weapons were outgrown before act 2.

*  Longer quests/stories.  Granted, there were multiple areas to go to to complete some quests, but I miss the epic quests from DA:O.  I thought Orzaammar took a bit too long, but for the most part, I liked the longer single area quests of DA:O instead of multiple-area short ones in DA:2.

* Touched upon it previously, but more interaction with companions would make this seem even better.

All in all I love the game.  I'm more about the story than the gameplay - I can always adopt to new styles of play and art and what not, but the story is what keeps me playing.

[durasteel]

My biggest peeve in DA2 (which is a great game, overall) is the spawning of waves of enemies for almost every fight. It is reminding me of the advertisements on television for products "not available in stores." You know, if you order now, we'll throw in four additional lieutenants at no additional charge... but that's not all! If you call within the next 5 minutes, you'll receive an extra three dozen minions that die screaming in any kind of AoE and drop no loot. Warning, may explode.

The fights just seem to go on, and on, and on...

[Lumikki]

Okey, I hit one dialog problem in DA2, so I write it here while it's in memory.

When I play Hawke, I don't take sides, I act as if someone does crime, I deal with it, but they first has to make the crime. Point here is that I was just in DA2 in situation. Where crime has not been maked yet. But dialogs forced me to deside who dies, when there is no need to make choise. I tryed both choises and they both leaded same result, just different words was sayed. Meaning both cases same people dies.

I may have arrest person who cause the problem and if resist then battle. Dialog how ever, doesn't give any reasonable choise. In this case dialogs text was misleading.

Modifié par Lumikki, 16 mars 2011 - 12:28 .

[thebatmanreborn]

acidproof wrote...


-Kirkwall. I don't mind that the game is largely set in a single location. But Kirkwall seemed awfully empty for a city that is supposedly teeming with refugees. The city should feel like a character, virtually alive itself. It seems so sterile.

Excellent point.  Atmosphere is a character in and of itself.  Think Bioshock.  The atmosphere was a character all its own and aided in the telling of the story.  It created a connection with the player on its own.  And because of that, Rapture is a place I'll never forget

[Bone-Dragon]

Good:
+Offensive Combo Bonus system (Brittle/Confused/etc) between classes.
+Improved Level/Ability System (And Removal of the "Skills": Tactics, Combat Mastery, Herbalism, etc.)
+Companion Armor Upgrades (Could have been better; such as multiple upgrades per slot, newer upgrades replace old ones, not stack, in order to not punish the player for missing ones in a previous act)
+Improved Runes/Enchantments (No more Minor/Normal/Greater Micromanagement)

Bad:
-No more Tabletop Control / Tactical Zoom Out
-The game has shifted from a Tactics game to an action game. Ex. Players can avoid directed melee attacks by moving slightly. Note:TSR (which stood for Tactical Studies Rules) originally made the Tabletop D&D RPGs tactics based, not action based. The word RPG can be referenced to any game with players choices affecting the storyline, but many players associate Tactics with RPG usually in their arguements without realizing that the tactics element of their game was removed, not the RPG bit.
-Horrible Zoom range in comparison to the zoom range of DA:O (This is for non-Tactics view)
-Enemies lack offensive tactics outside swarming to encourage varied defensive tactics - for example: Enemies no longer "Overwhelm" party members, requiring assistance (Like the Hunter/Smoker/Charger/Jockey of L4D2). Game was easily beaten using 1,2,3,4 AoE repeats without a second thought.
-Reusing every area to lengthen the game a 100-fold.
-Over-Exaggeration of common attacks make combat hard to observe and know whats going on. Trying to make Common attacks Awesome was really a stupid move. Finishing moves in DA:O were much better for the flashy common bits. Note: Supposedly the "sync" kills were removed to improve responsiveness, but in DA2 you can not break out of an attack animation while in DA:O you can. In a sense, DA2 has many more interruptions then DA:O.
-Pandering to Pre-Orders by denying content (Sebastian). This is different from the collectors edition of DA:O which included the Warden's Keep. Everyone got Shale when they bought DA:O.
-Inventory is full of Items which need constant reorganizing. Hard to keep track of new items when they all have the same name but different properties (i.e. Seeing 10 items labeled Ring, 10 Belt, 10 Gloves, etc., but each having different strengths)
-De-centralized party. Having to travel to different corners of the city to visit each companion instead of having them all centered around a campfire is annoying. Also, you can no longer randomly talk to your companions on the field.
-Incoherent Plot with plot holes. Act1, 2, and 3 seem to be all mini-stories in a patchwork story.
-Act 1 is a massive Delivery Boy Act, where your sole goal is to gather 50 gold by completing every single side quest available, picking up 50 silver with every dilvery until you get your 50 gold. Your reasons for wanting 50 gold change for no particular reason.
-Half of the art revisualization is silly, especially the darkspawns.

Ugly (Things that stayed from DA:O in DA2)
*Carry Limit / bag system (This is an MMO tactic to prevent hoarding, DA is a single player game)
*Traps Implementation needs an improvement: Detection/Evasion/Disarm (How about implementing a tactic where rogues will disarm traps in combat [depending on priority] automatically instead of having to select them to do it).
*Lack of Advanced Tactics Conditions (AND/OR and COMPLEMENTS implementations would be nice)
*Display what abilities do while highlighting them in the Tactics Screen
*When Comparing Equipment, it would be nice if you could also show your current companions equipment as well instead of having to select them individual and check all over again.

I could add more in the negative bit.

Modifié par Bone-Dragon, 15 mars 2011 - 09:40 .

[Dan UK]

Pls dont feed the troll simfamsp, just ignore, report spam and move on!


I also wanted to second the opinion here that a (IMO) a Mute hero is prefered. I always read dialogue options in my head first, so then when I hear some guy say stuff in a totaly different voice or tone than I imagined it it is very detatching!

Modifié par Dan UK, 15 mars 2011 - 09:40 .

[mangiraffe-dog]

simfamSP wrote...

forceofnature34 wrote...

here's a picture of mangiraffedog

Someone ban him?
Anyway where the hell is the man in this giraffe dog? A failure in your own spam.

OK, there seems to be some confusion about Man-Giraffe-Dog on the forums, notably that it just looks like a Giraffe-Dog. Well... that's the POINT. Why do you think I'm the only one warning you. It's disguised as a Giraffe-Dog until it's ready to take over the world.
OK this is how Man-Giraffe-Dog came to be:


While growing up it was spotted in the wild (but the team was all killed by it and the photos were recovered afterwards)


After which it began its infiltration of humanity, disguised as Giraffe-Dog:


Which leaves us here. Man-Giraffe-Dog is poised to attack and destroy humanity and I'm trying to warn everyone before it's too late. This is totally serial guys. You need to prepare.

Excelsior!

[deathlycold]

1. I did not like the dialogue wheel and conversation icons. In Dragon Age Origins many times I would carefully think about my answers and the consequences. the Icons and not having the full text really make it just pick nice or mad or funny instead of thinking about the consequences of what you are saying or asking. (It just doesn't feel like Dragon Age with this dialogue system)


2. I did not like the lack of customization for party members. Half the fun of DAO was customizing your party for different tactics as well as checking out how different armors look on your party.

3. Missing the overhead head camera view makes you constantly fight the camera when playing on nightmare.

4. Having your brother or sister die based on the class you play. This should have been based on dialouge choices or something else but not character creation. 

How fast the characters react when using skills would have made combat better if not for 2 and 3

Modifié par deathlycold, 15 mars 2011 - 09:48 .

[deathlycold]

Dan UK wrote...

Pls dont feed the troll simfamsp, just ignore, report spam and move on!


I also wanted to second the opinion here that a (IMO) a Mute hero is prefered. I always read dialogue options in my head first, so then when I hear some guy say stuff in a totaly different voice or tone than I imagined it it is very detatching!

I agree reading the lines myself and choosing like in DA:O felt much more immersive. 

[durasteel]

JL81 wrote...

6) THE SEX SCENES
Please make them more mature, and don't shy away from showing a bit of skin. I'd take the medieval undies any day over fully dressed ''rutting'', dixit Isabella.

That's it for now.

To me, it is kind of obvious that BioWare is trying to troll the people who mocked the ugly full-coverage DA:O women's undergarments by going totally ridiculous in DA2.  The male Hawke wears full length pajama bottoms, and Merril strips down to a one-piece bathing suit.  I haven't seen the rest yet, but I am expecting something equally stupid.  I mean, Merrill is such a hippie that she doesn't wear shoes, but... ah, whatever.

Here is a hint for the DA team: in a game where you spend a lot of time caked in gore and enemies have a tendency to litterally explode in a shower of body parts and blood, if a character takes his or her clothes off then your audience will generally be laughing at the scene if they don't actually take their clothes off.  No, I don't need anything raunchy, but a couple of butt shots and maybe some side-boob might actually communicate intimacy.  You know, that's what nudity is often used for in movies: one person naked while the other is not communicates vulnerability and being defenseless.  Two people naked together communicates intimacy and openness between the two characters.  This is basic stuff, and you ought to know it.

Modifié par durasteel, 15 mars 2011 - 09:48 .

[MasterSamson88]

Just wanted to say that I really do like the game, but I felt that perhaps more time could have been put into it's construction and testing. It seems like a few major bugs made it into release that I'm surprised weren't caught. The main thing that I've run into was the Merrill Act III bug.

Okay, constructive critisism! hmm

Well I think you guys once again handled companions very well, much like you do in other games. However I felt like in some cases I didn't receive a lot of back story and a lot of it seemed thrown into the codex. For instance when I was romancing Merrill I was kind of surprised she mentioned nothing about her childhood, which would have probably helped people understand why she's slightly naive, there is a mention however in the codex.

Basically I suppose there's a balance. In Origins you guys had a lots of small talk with characters about various stories and such, but barely any companion quests that lasted more than 5 minutes. Now we see in DA2 that you tried kind of going the other way with having more meaningful quests for companions with less overall small talk.

Honestly I have trouble deciding WHICH I like more. So I'll mention Merrill I guess, I really enjoyed her quests overall and I thought it provided a lot of insight into her character, especially the conclusion. However it seems that for all companions when something very big happens and you go to have a conversation with them the talk usually seems to last only a few lines. While the end of Merrill's mirror quest is bugged to happen at the beginning of act III I can still see it there. And it does seem a little short to me, she seems to get over it somewhat quickly, though this is not inherently a bad thing I suppose. You can only give so much time to various characters. Still though, it would have been nice to have a longer more detailed conversation with your companions, especially after something extreme happened.

Romance was great, you guys nailed the romances this time pretty well I thought, much better than the awkward rubbing in underwear that I saw in Origins. This time they seemed very tasteful and really DID reflect the characters you romanced.

Whereas Merrill's is all sweet and loving, Isabella's is like, crazy and fun. xD It just reflects the characters better overall.

One criticism I do have when it comes to romances though is while I appreciated the work put into the romance after the fact that you had had sex with your partner, it does seem to really kind of drop off from there. Not that it doesn't get bad plot-wise, I thought some of the drama that occurred while your partner moved in was pretty good, such as Merrill always taking off to go to her mirror.

What I mean is that interaction seems to be extremely limited for someone you're supposed to feel close to. You can't really hug/kiss or anything. So some kind of small talk options even if they repeat sometimes would be welcome I think. It could be a good place to fit things like back story you haven't heard yet or stories that your partner hasn't told because they've never trusted someone enough.

That said, if Hawke comes back in DA3, I really hope we have the option of actually continuing our romance in a more intimate way, rather than the way that Mass Effect 2 provided us. Though I will admit the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC for ME2 is a great example of how continuing romance can be done. I'm hoping that if Hawke comes back that Merrill comes back with him, but that's just the intense fanboy in my wailing away.

Obviously a great deal of what I care about is character development, so I tend to get very absorbed in such things.

Things I noticed though were animations, at least walking animations, were a little awkward. Hawke tends to walk sort of strange and unnatural like, and female Hawke's default standing position tends to have a very SNAP feel to it. As you'll be walking with her, then you'll stop and she'll suddenly snap into her drastically different standing position. The walking animations however are not nearly as frustrating as the crazy limp from ME2.

Reused environments? Yeah I noticed that a lot, however I do realize that a balance must be made, and that is a hard one to do. While a lot of the side quests took place in same same environments I found that a large majority did lead to some very interesting plot elements which did show up later in the game to my surprise. I feel like in many ways the complaints of same same environments comes up because it wasn't easily noticed in DA Origins due to the fact that Origins didn't have many big side quests at all, and that most of them took place within one of the three larger quests which all had different environments obviously. More varied environments would be welcome though, but at the same time I fear for in favor of that good story or dialog maybe lost in the process. I really really did LIKE that the side quests in DA2 mattered quite a bit.

Loot while it was in the game here felt really useless in many cases. Junk incredibly useless. And most items/junk you sold was worth next to nothing unlike in Origins where you could at least get 3 gold off good level equipment.

On the topic of equipment, I was a little sad at the amount of armor available. It seemed like there was a lot, but then a lot of it was that same silver breastplate with the dragon on it that was taken from King Cailen's armor in DA Origins. I also had a very hard time piecing some equipment together that had a very good possibility of being unique sets. The only unique set I ever managed to find in game was the Armor of the Fallen. Well, and the Champion set.

There's been controversy over the combat, but overall I like all the changes. It faster, more fun.

As for a sequel to this game. I think what I'd really like to see is the original party members for DA2 coming back and fighting with Hawke a second time. I know a lot of the time developers tend to make entirely new characters to be party members for a sequel but if Hawke returns I think it would be very cool to see folks like Varric, Merrill, Isabella, ect show up again and fight with him, especially if they're a love interest or a really good friend. Of course then other things need to be considered too, like who might have died in DA2 and who's left you through the course of time due to disagreements.

But I've just never really seen a game bring characters back like a book brings characters back for a sequel. I feel that it is possible to bring the characters back for a second game and develop them even further. Have them grow with Hawke, their personalities change a little, their ideals change slightly depending on what Hawke did with them in DA2 and for them to remain by him rather than be sort of shoved in for a quick cameo.

I liked Hawke having a voice. Gave it a much more cinimatic edge I think. I also think you guys handled the conversation wheel better than how it is in Mass Effect, and that's saying something. So many of the choices basically had the ability to go anywhere, and I liked it. None of them were specifically evil, nor were any of the regular interaction choices. Really well done.

Those are my opinions I guess. I'm also kind of with everyone else in that I think you guys should really give yourself more time. I loved DA2 but it is obviously not without its faults. Nothing is really, but I think what's been pointed out a lot is that it's biggest fault is really just the fact that it wasn't given enough time to rise. So I hope for the next game you give yourself at least 2 years or so, or really whatever amount of time you feel you need even if that's less than 2 years, as long as you guys are confident you can do it.

Modifié par MasterSamson88, 15 mars 2011 - 09:50 .

[Guitarjoe91]

I felt too many armors and objects were flat looking. The textures had black outlines that show were the edges should be, but relatively non-existent normalmaps/bumpmaps. Templar armor (especially the pauldrons) are especially bad about this.

[Loup Blanc]

mangiraffe-dog wrote...

simfamSP wrote...

forceofnature34 wrote...

here's a picture of mangiraffedog

Someone ban him?
Anyway where the hell is the man in this giraffe dog? A failure in your own spam.

OK, there seems to be some confusion about Man-Giraffe-Dog on the forums, notably that it just looks like a Giraffe-Dog. Well... that's the POINT. Why do you think I'm the only one warning you. It's disguised as a Giraffe-Dog until it's ready to take over the world.
OK this is how Man-Giraffe-Dog came to be:


While growing up it was spotted in the wild (but the team was all killed by it and the photos were recovered afterwards)


After which it began its infiltration of humanity, disguised as Giraffe-Dog:


Which leaves us here. Man-Giraffe-Dog is poised to attack and destroy humanity and I'm trying to warn everyone before it's too late. This is totally serial guys. You need to prepare.

Excelsior!

LMFAO. So that's what it is.

Modifié par JL81, 15 mars 2011 - 09:59 .

[Katarian]

Firstly the removal if the tactical camera hasn't worked. I've tried to be tactical in several fights, mainly pulling enemies into small corridors or rooms, using a warrior to block a doorway (which has worked maybe twice in the whole game) and then using my AoE attacks with full efficiency. The camera can't cope with this approach, most small rooms or corridors have low ceilings which really limits the view of the fight. Once the enemies get past the warrior and force my mages and rogues back until they are next to the walls all I can see is the back of the character I am controlling and the floor, wall or ceiling. Your artist might of enjoyed creating some the ceilings but I certainly haven't enjoyed looking at them when I am trying to target some AoE spells or Crowd Control in the middle of a hard fight.

I've been playing the game on Hard, and I really miss the friendly fire of Origins. With the way the spawning enemies work the best way to target AoE spells is just right on top of your party. As that is where most of the current enemies are and you can normally guarantee that where you are standing some more enemies will spawn in a little while. I miss being able to Force Field my tank and then unloading AoE attacks on the enemies clustered around him.

The cross class combos work pretty well, but I think Disorientate is massively underused. I can get Brittle and Staggered effects with only 2 ability points, and with a few more points I can have AoE abilities that apply them and see Brittle and Staggered a lot in fights. Now I have seen Pinning Shot apply Disorient once, and the only other ability I can see in the tree is Chaos (or something) that requires a lot of points in a tree and level 13-14.

There is a lack of info and feedback. Just as an example the buffs in the lower right of the screen don't have any tooltips when I mouse over them. I have to select the character who cast the buff to find out what it actually does. Something like Arcane Weapons is a major pain to find out what it actually doing on each character. It also took me ages to work out what both numbers on Cunning meant, the percentage was fairly obvious but I initially thought the other number was something completely different. I also thought abilties that gave +20% defence would be poor choices for my mage but it doesn't increase my rubbish defence value by 20% it adds 20% directly to my defence percentage, i.e. it doesn't increase my 100 defence to 120 defence it increases the percentage from 10% to 30%. Which is a massive bonus but I didn't find that out until I had taken the abilites. I also didn't realise that Shield Defense meant I couldn't close with enemies as it was casually thrown in at the end of the description of the ability.

Back to combat. I have found that the only fights I actually find hard on the Hard settings are ones on small maps. If the fight is on a large map where I can run a long way from the initial starting point of the fight the combats become trival. Having trouble in the Deep Roads with a boss and loads of adds, run away and you don't have to deal with any new enemies spawning while you deal with the boss.

Abilities mainly tell the player what effect they will have on normal enemies, when normal enemies aren't that common and extremely easy to kill. I don't need to know that a crowd control ability will effect normal enemies 100% of the time as I will never ever use it on a normal enemy.

There could still be more tactics options. Taking Anders I would like to see the mulitple party members at 75% or less health, 50% is normally too late to turn on Pancea and start casting spells. I'd also like a multiple party members at X% or more health so i could use it to turn off Pancea. It would be nice if party members also didn't try to cast spells or use abilites they can actually use. As an example Anders will try to cast attacking spells on his tactics list whilst in Pancea, it wastes a few seconds which can be crucial in hard fights.

That's all I can think of right now. I've rambled on quite a bit haven't I .

[edit] Also multiple waves of enemies in every fight is bad. Reusing dungeons is bad.

Modifié par Katarian, 15 mars 2011 - 09:53 .

[Gilmadel]

Over all, I loved the game. While there are some valid criticisms, the game as a whole worked for me. Here are a couple of major additions/changes I would love to see.

1. Talking my way out of situations
Personally, I love the dialog in the game, but I missed being able to persuade/intimidate very often. This was one of the strengths to DA:O, lots of options to solve things non-violently, or at least talk your way to better odds. There were a lot of situations in DA2 where I felt that, had I been given the option, I could have cleared a situation just through diplomacy, but sadly those particular options never presented themselves. Don't get me wrong, I actually really like the conversation wheel, and I love how the tone of your character changes as the game progresses. I just want the things I say to have the potential to matter in the grand scheme of things, rather than just changing in tone.

2. Influencing the city over time
I actually enjoyed being locked to a small location. The idea that you don't have to go on a massive quest to be a hero, that you can do it from where you are is great. But, the city doesn't change over time. Buildings aren't built, decorations don't change, the seasons never change, merchants don't move around or bring their kids to apprentice with them or expand their shops. It is just a bit static. And it seems like there are some great opportunities to really impact the way you interact with the world given the structure of this story. Which brings me to:

3. Non-combat quests
Almost all of the questing in the game involves fighting, at some point. There are very few diplomacy quests, and I think this would have been a great point to really impact your influence on the city over time. I would have loved some side quests that involved building a trade empire (it seems there were several points where this would have been a great fit with Varric's storyline), or really becoming involved in the city politics (not just the big story, but why not actually a quest chain that really brings you into the nobility of Kirkwall). There was a point after getting out of the deep roads where Varric asks what you are planning to do, and ALL of the options sounded really interesting. This would have been a great point to create some quest chains that really made it feel like you were impacting the city around you based on your decision in talking with Varric.

4. Companion armor
I actually love that there is a set armor for the companions. In DA:O, it seemed so unnatural to put mage robes and silly looking hats on Morrigan, for instance. And yet you needed to if you wanted to keep her playable. But in DA2, the system doesn't feel quite developed enough. Perhaps, as someone earlier in this thread mentioned, a special skill tree for each companions armor would work well. As it stands, I can't count the number of times I was looting and clicked Loot All only to hear the armor level up sound, but have no idea what had just been upgraded. Another option might be a special crafting skill where, when you find upgrades, they act like the resource nodes do, letting you choose how to upgrade armor.

Those are my big thoughts for the game. I was good with combat and locations over all (maybe tweaking the reinforcement concept to reserve it for special circumstances would help a bit, and I wouldn't complain if they added more dung diversity, but neither of these things were major issues for me). I love the new character designs and art style. I thought the cinematic quality of the storytelling was fantastic, reaching a new height for the series and significantly better than DA:O.

I guess the only other thing I can ask for is more Sandal!

Keep up the great work Bioware, I look forward to whatever is next!

[dogonthetrack]

Overall i enjoyed the first playthrough as a warrior. I would have like to see some more reason for me to do some of the quests I was on. I felt at times I was doing quests just to do them because thats what you do in a game. I'd prefer to have some reason. The skipping over the whole first year I believe wastes an opportunity to introduce the city and its factions, while giving some reason why I care about what is going on after that. That said, my biggest issue has been touched on already. Namely the lack of change in quests and npc's while i play a mage. I have started playing through the second time as a mage and was extremely disappointed as to the utter lack of recognition of what my character was on a few of the missions. After playing through once, I can't see any reason to continue the second time knowing this. Thanks for the thread, and I did like the game overall, but ......

[Bizantura]

Why was the signature edition limited to a few countries in europe? (germany and uk) I preordered mine in the uk and it took an aditional 5 days per post to receeve it. Patience may be a virtue, but still not funny when you are eager to play. I like both DOA and DA2. My only complaint are the relationships, these may be satisfying for a ten year old. This is supposed to be an adult game is it not?

I now have played the whole game as a roque and on my second playthru as a mage (starting just after act 3).  I would rate this game a 7/10.  It is not great but not totally bad, just not what I expected from bioware.  They can do much better.  A lot of my complaints are allready stated like reuse of same maps, dead city where you stuck in for 90% of the time.  The thing what bugged me most is that DAO emotionaly took me by surprise and ursurped me in a powerfull world worth exploring, I was a part of it and this game is totally emotionaly a flatliner. I was behind a computer screen playing a game nothing more nothing less.  Even the compagnions are just that, help in battles but hardly anything more.  The relationships?  What relationships?  Each compagnion has a quest you can do, but relationships?  I hardly cared for them or my family, hardly cared for myself for that matter.  The relationships get worse every game on it seems.  In ME it was done with very fine taste.  In DAO I cared very much for all my compagnions and sexscenes where there an if you wanted moddeble.  In ME2 lots of innuendo but nothing more and in DA2 it is degressed further to nothing really and therefore not even moddeble.  I don't see the point of this game rated as adult stuff.

I got my mony's worth because I only payed half the price than I did for DAO, but I rather pay 70€ for a decent adult bioware game than this.  And this is so because I am willing to import it otherwise I had to pay 50€ for a normal edition and pay extra for de dlc because europeans get shafted big time by ea.  Last to get activated and no signature editions available in most countries.

Modifié par Bizantura, 25 mars 2011 - 10:01 .

[Bellatar]

Original list...

I liked the first to Dragon age games.

This one is ok. A few things that annoy me...

Who puts a door frame on a solid stone wall... O, I see, they re-use areas for other story lines... boo

Crud it locked up again.... I hope I remembered to save before all that....

What do you mean I can't use my lvl 34 rouge I spent forever lvling and grearing in the first 2 games...

Story line, character interaction, dialog not as involved as the first two...

These are all small annoyances....

What REALLY peaves me is being FORCED to play the way developers think I should play...

I want to play a mage and have Bethany not Carter. I don't care if you think it is unbalanced or not...

I play games to have fun, just fun and I like to play my way...

Carter is a whiny punk who needs to die...

Go Hawk sisters,
Bella

Please add...

Annoyance...
I also don't like not picking armor for companions...

Real peaves...
My fav character to play is a rouge... Bought the special edition...
It came with: 2 - two handed swords, a shield and a staff...

Why do you hate me???

Bella

[Creslin1]

Overall, I think DA2 is a great game and I am really enjoying it.  The story is awesome, combat is fast and visceral, and the conversation wheel gives it a very immersive feel.

That said, I do have one major gripe with DA2 (and DA1 as well), and that is the general rule system of the game.  By this I mean the RULES (not appearance) of how combat works, how you gain levels/power, etc. etc.  In other words, everything the game would be if it were pen and paper and not a video game.

You see, the Dragon Age series is the spiritual successor of the old D&D games like NWN and Baldur's Gate.  I really loved the system in those games, it provided SO much flexibility and customization.  In NWN2, you could almost ANY kind of character you wanted.  You could mix and match levels of classes, and there were so many prestige class options that it felt like the possibilities were endless.  In addition, there were so many spells and abilities in the old D&D games that you could spend hours plotting out how you were going to use them to your best advantage in a fight, or figuring out the perfect build.  Note that this wasn't a necessity, you could easily play through as a fighter only if you wanted.

Fast forward to Dragon Age, and Bioware decided to stop using the D&D system, which is fine in and of itself, but the system they used in Dragon Age just felt anemic compared to the D&D system of NWN2.  You could only pick one class, and the ability trees made it so you really needed to specialize in something to get any good at it, limiting your choice.  I had hoped that DA2 would have some more customization options, but it doesn't, it's around the same as DA1.

I feel like once Bioware stopped using the D&D system they really lost a great business partner.  Now they need to develop the system as well as the game, and I just don't think it gets the attention it deserves.  I'm sure some will disagree with me, but the great degree of customizability was what I loved most about the old D&D games, and I see it sorely lacking in the Dragon Age series.

[Marn_Cherone]

I hope this is not considered as spam or anything, but it realy bothers me that dragon Age II turned so much into some kind of ME2. ME2 is fine and all, but I liked Dragon Age Origins for being how it was. The Lack of "classic RPG" really is a critic point to me. As an Action-Game however, it does its job quite solidly. 

Modifié par Marn_Cherone, 15 mars 2011 - 10:00 .

[bEVEsthda]

The most constructive thing I can think of saying here:

Put the stick of the DA franchise in reverse.
Make sure you pass both 'Awakening' and 'Witch Hunt', before stopping and looking for a new way forward.