each section to post in is pritty well defined already. the issue is some people just post anyware with out any thought or considration other than zomg !! You get that everywhare sadly,its like when some people see a don't feed the troll sign. some take it on borad others do the opsit just cause they can.
Constructive Criticism
Débuté par
HawXV2
, mars 15 2011 06:50
Retour en haut
#1477
Posté 30 mars 2011 - 11:17
Moirnelithe
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- Members
- 395 messages
GhostRed wrote...
My constructive criticism is for the COMPLAINERS and BIOWARE: Give themt their own forum and restrict complaints (that aren't simply questions/help requests related to an error or glitch) to that forum, much the same way spoilers are.
Complaints and the constant thread about "do you hate it a lot or just a little" are getting old.
A forum is supposed to be a place to DISCUSS a game you like, look for help with strategy, system problems and basic questions, and to [respectably] debate game-related topics.
Complaints fall into NONE of those categories. If you want to complain, fine. Misery loves company.
BIOWARE: GIVE THE COMPLAINERS THEIR OWN SECTION AND CUT THEM OUT OF THE REST OF THE FORUM.
That would be constructive.
Okay, going to state the obvious here:
First of all Bioware -asked- for constructive criticism, look a few posts back and notice the JohnEpler one?
Second, Bioware -did- make a forum for all the complainers...it's called "Dragon age II registered game owner general discussion. Guess why that is?
Third, you seem to have a complaint as well, you are complaining, in capitals I might add, that players are complaining. Isn't it ironic?
Edit: fixed JohnEpler's name
Modifié par Evainelithe, 30 mars 2011 - 11:20 .
#1478
Posté 30 mars 2011 - 11:24
FubarCFSnafu
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- Members
- 153 messages
I though the main plot idea was a good idea. However, the story seemd to be a bit hollow and full of holes which left your story and your companions a bit hollow. This is especially true after supposedly knowing them for 10 years.
Hawke's Family:
I am not sure what our history was or of my background. We are running from Ferelden (Lothering) but I am not sureif I was a farmer, merchant, etc. It may be possible that I missed this, but it is hard to pin down. This could have been done so much better then what we received. You do get some bits and drabs through some conversation though.
1. Finding out the business that the Hawkes used to do. This could have been tied to the Bone Pit whose owner isHubert. A sub-plot could be getting it back either civilly (buyng it out or partnering) or underhanded (killing himor forcing hm to sell.
2. Going into the basement of the Hawke Estate: This was a good start but there was not much else to be found, it would have been nice to find other things of the past other than a portrait. The slavers used it, then there could have been secret rooms built into it for the use of slaves, etc. This would allow further explorations or other quests to find out the family history since apparently they live in Kirkwall.
3. Leandra. As you are aware of what happens to her, there is not much to go on with your character's mother. This could have been explored alot more and opened new insight in regards to your family. After you come back, she is now in the Hawke estate, saying a few things, but not much else. How about a quest to find a a possible husband for your mom. Your companions could have even helped, by keeping any eye out for one during their travels and they could talk to you about in a conversation cut scene. Picture each of the personalities involved, Aveline, Fenris, Merill, it could ahve provided foe some humorous moments. Afterwards, a wedding could take place where it would allow thecompanions to talk to one another during the reception and have the character dance or flirt during this time. Again, it allows immersion and story telling. The plot could still be followed and allow what happens to her in the end, but it would have been even more of an impact because you could now connect with her.
The Bone Pit:
This could ahve been a good jumping off point to provide some solid quests and reasoning behind it. Clearing the area of bandits, establishing a supply route, clearing out the monsters. And guess what, you now have a meaningful reason to go there on quests because you now have a motive to do so. You can also receive income from it once this has been done. You could receive several letters from Hubert with money in it.
This could also be taken a step further, you get it from Hubert, you now have a say on the merchant's guild because this mine supplies Kirkwall (with what, I ahve no idea what they are mining though). Now oyu ahve a further stake in Kirkwall and some quests or interaction can be done in regards to this, you can hire the Ferelden's this was touched upon, but nothing else was really done with it, instead it was left flat and empty. I mean, you could have a mining town grow around it where you ahve to protect it from bandits/darkspawn in another act or year.
Character Growth:
There isn't any other than by saying you are a noble with an estate or champion after Act II. How about the character eanring his nobility and be knighted in a ceremony after doing important work, such as the following:
1. Mage: Creating a new magic item that helps the city somehow, you ahve to do quests and move up the ranks next to the First Enchanter and the city recognizes this. Or you help try yo keep the peace by rooting out Blood Mages and abominations, finding lost texts of magic in the undercity when it was part of Tevinter. Create a new office in the Circle called First Artificer or something. Once completed you could have Merill or Anders could assist you or be your second in command. Afterwards You are part of a cermeony where you are recognized for your efforts. Again, allows for more party interaction. After a few years the office becomes larger and more people work there. this would pit you against Meredith and the Templars.
2. Warrior: You do work for the guards and Aveline or purchase yourself a comission in the Guards (this was done in Medieval times) and you use your party to do this. Such sub-plots could be the clearing of bandits of supply routes to Kirkwall. Creating a fort to protect the cleared area, howrever, this would involve speaking to the Dalish, finding a suitable site, creating a supply route, exploring/mapping the area, fend it off from attack. You can rise through the ranks and be knighted in a ceremony attended by your friends. Fenris and Aveline could take over the command of the new fort. After a few years, it becomes bigger and better. Again, allows for more party interaction. This could pit you agianst the Seneschal.
3. Rogue: You can find out a note in your basement which leads to a slaver guild within the city, you can fight totake it over or destroy it, if you take it over, you can get added income from it, but now you have to contend with your companions who are against slavery. This would allow for interesting dialog or once it is destroyed you then have to ake out other rival gangs and become the spymater of Kirkwall. Isabella and Varric could take this over.
Companions:
There are some that are done well, but again, you are suppsoed to be friends for seven years and not much is actually known about them.
1. Aveline was done well enough, but it was not really tied to anything, by making her a part of you character growth, it could be taken to a new level.
2. Merill: Other than the mirror and some dialog not much else is found, you can romance her but if this si someone you cared about, how about embarking on another quest to find out more about her such as finding out about her family.
As you can see much could have been added to tie everything together but unformatuntely this was not done. These were just some ideas I ahd in my head for about an hour and decided to write them down. I am not saying this is the best but if I could ahve come up with these ideas, surely DA2 could ahve had something similar. In addition, it would allow a better flow of meaningful quests that make sense to do instead of the current ones.
Hawke's Family:
I am not sure what our history was or of my background. We are running from Ferelden (Lothering) but I am not sureif I was a farmer, merchant, etc. It may be possible that I missed this, but it is hard to pin down. This could have been done so much better then what we received. You do get some bits and drabs through some conversation though.
1. Finding out the business that the Hawkes used to do. This could have been tied to the Bone Pit whose owner isHubert. A sub-plot could be getting it back either civilly (buyng it out or partnering) or underhanded (killing himor forcing hm to sell.
2. Going into the basement of the Hawke Estate: This was a good start but there was not much else to be found, it would have been nice to find other things of the past other than a portrait. The slavers used it, then there could have been secret rooms built into it for the use of slaves, etc. This would allow further explorations or other quests to find out the family history since apparently they live in Kirkwall.
3. Leandra. As you are aware of what happens to her, there is not much to go on with your character's mother. This could have been explored alot more and opened new insight in regards to your family. After you come back, she is now in the Hawke estate, saying a few things, but not much else. How about a quest to find a a possible husband for your mom. Your companions could have even helped, by keeping any eye out for one during their travels and they could talk to you about in a conversation cut scene. Picture each of the personalities involved, Aveline, Fenris, Merill, it could ahve provided foe some humorous moments. Afterwards, a wedding could take place where it would allow thecompanions to talk to one another during the reception and have the character dance or flirt during this time. Again, it allows immersion and story telling. The plot could still be followed and allow what happens to her in the end, but it would have been even more of an impact because you could now connect with her.
The Bone Pit:
This could ahve been a good jumping off point to provide some solid quests and reasoning behind it. Clearing the area of bandits, establishing a supply route, clearing out the monsters. And guess what, you now have a meaningful reason to go there on quests because you now have a motive to do so. You can also receive income from it once this has been done. You could receive several letters from Hubert with money in it.
This could also be taken a step further, you get it from Hubert, you now have a say on the merchant's guild because this mine supplies Kirkwall (with what, I ahve no idea what they are mining though). Now oyu ahve a further stake in Kirkwall and some quests or interaction can be done in regards to this, you can hire the Ferelden's this was touched upon, but nothing else was really done with it, instead it was left flat and empty. I mean, you could have a mining town grow around it where you ahve to protect it from bandits/darkspawn in another act or year.
Character Growth:
There isn't any other than by saying you are a noble with an estate or champion after Act II. How about the character eanring his nobility and be knighted in a ceremony after doing important work, such as the following:
1. Mage: Creating a new magic item that helps the city somehow, you ahve to do quests and move up the ranks next to the First Enchanter and the city recognizes this. Or you help try yo keep the peace by rooting out Blood Mages and abominations, finding lost texts of magic in the undercity when it was part of Tevinter. Create a new office in the Circle called First Artificer or something. Once completed you could have Merill or Anders could assist you or be your second in command. Afterwards You are part of a cermeony where you are recognized for your efforts. Again, allows for more party interaction. After a few years the office becomes larger and more people work there. this would pit you against Meredith and the Templars.
2. Warrior: You do work for the guards and Aveline or purchase yourself a comission in the Guards (this was done in Medieval times) and you use your party to do this. Such sub-plots could be the clearing of bandits of supply routes to Kirkwall. Creating a fort to protect the cleared area, howrever, this would involve speaking to the Dalish, finding a suitable site, creating a supply route, exploring/mapping the area, fend it off from attack. You can rise through the ranks and be knighted in a ceremony attended by your friends. Fenris and Aveline could take over the command of the new fort. After a few years, it becomes bigger and better. Again, allows for more party interaction. This could pit you agianst the Seneschal.
3. Rogue: You can find out a note in your basement which leads to a slaver guild within the city, you can fight totake it over or destroy it, if you take it over, you can get added income from it, but now you have to contend with your companions who are against slavery. This would allow for interesting dialog or once it is destroyed you then have to ake out other rival gangs and become the spymater of Kirkwall. Isabella and Varric could take this over.
Companions:
There are some that are done well, but again, you are suppsoed to be friends for seven years and not much is actually known about them.
1. Aveline was done well enough, but it was not really tied to anything, by making her a part of you character growth, it could be taken to a new level.
2. Merill: Other than the mirror and some dialog not much else is found, you can romance her but if this si someone you cared about, how about embarking on another quest to find out more about her such as finding out about her family.
As you can see much could have been added to tie everything together but unformatuntely this was not done. These were just some ideas I ahd in my head for about an hour and decided to write them down. I am not saying this is the best but if I could ahve come up with these ideas, surely DA2 could ahve had something similar. In addition, it would allow a better flow of meaningful quests that make sense to do instead of the current ones.
#1479
Posté 30 mars 2011 - 11:24
Furtled
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- Members
- 426 messages
GhostRed wrote...
Its about duplicate posts about the same crap over and over when it could easily be consolidated.
Which is exactly what I thought this thread was (consolidated feedback - most of it constructive opposed to outright complaints and venting), I wouldn't have played through the game as many times as I have if I didn't want to nail down exactly why it felt a bit lacking for me; or taken the time to respond here with my thoughts. The more people who raise specific points the more helpful that is for the devs, if all they got was 'it's crap grrrr rage' that wouldn't help with identifying the exact cause of the unexpected response the game got.
Do I expect Bioware to address every point I raise? No - I'm not a game-maker and a lot of the things I see as issues could be down to personal preference or play style. What I do want to achieve is to help the devs get an outside perspective on things so they have an idea of issues that may need a rethink, I have no expectations beyond that.
Does that make sense?
#1481
Posté 30 mars 2011 - 11:30
John Epler
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- BioWare Employees
-
- 3 390 messages
If people have a duplicate concern, well, that's useful information too as it helps to tell us what the frequency of a particular concern is. If something comes up twice, it's still worth looking at but it needs to be viewed with the knowledge that most people didn't have much of an issue with it.
If it comes up multiple times, then it's obviously a more pressing issue and will be viewed with that mindset. Thus, duplicate concerns are just as useful as everyone posting individual concerns.
EDIT: Edited to be a little clearer.
If it comes up multiple times, then it's obviously a more pressing issue and will be viewed with that mindset. Thus, duplicate concerns are just as useful as everyone posting individual concerns.
EDIT: Edited to be a little clearer.
Modifié par JohnEpler, 30 mars 2011 - 11:35 .
#1482
Posté 30 mars 2011 - 11:42
The_FenixV
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- Members
- 349 messages
I replayed DA: Origins with a mage character so I could import a story of my own for a second playthrough of DAII. Now there is obviously some good sides to DAII and bad sides as well. There might be some spoilers I am sorry in advance, you can't keep everything spoiler free specially if you are going to give some criticism.
Now let's begin.
The good:
The good side of the game is that the 'Protagonist' is fully voiced. The thing I hated in Origins is that you had a voice to pick but he wouldn't talk he would remain voiceless unless you pressed on actions which was actually annoying, cause you couldn't imagine it with the voice you wanted I mean heck, my mage sounded like Jowan and at the same time he was a mute in conversations, party members would telepatically understand him. A voiced character in conversations gives us the emotion with the voice, and the voice actor for Hawke is in my opinion brilliant specially when acting like a smartarse.
The other good thing is that the companions have armors of their own, armors that represent them and their personality in a certain way, but the bad side of it was that, the armor's look should of changed when you upgrade them, am I to believe that Varric wears the same coat for three years, Aveline as well? What does she do in that armor does she even do her toilet inside that armor like that? I think there should of been some armors that are unique and restricted to certain companions because face it, I can't see Varric with a suit of armor but I can see him with his trademark coat.
Combat was faster which was good for the console versions of the game, though I do agree that sometimes my thump just hurts from pressing x all the time to fight and then the countless waves of enemies that come sometimes from logical places and sometimes out of no where.
I enjoyed the change on the look of the elves but I must admit that some of them look pretty bad like the keeper. Merril is obviously an improvement, I didn't like her look in Origins and Fenris looks pretty cool.
The Arishok was simply the most amazing part of the game, the duel was awesome and at the same time annoying because he kept using potions. I thought the Qunari would of been a bit like the Mandalorians, fight with honor, don't use a bloody potion that's for the weak.
The best sidequest in the history of gaming in my opinion is All that remains, it's better than all the sidequests that Origins had to offer. I felt that it was an emotional part of the game specially the voice of Hawke and how sad he is was done quite well.
Varric. At first when I played the demo I was like "What is that, that can't be a dwarf, no epic beard, what the... grrr damn you Bioware you made a sissy looking dwarf." Though when I played the full game I enjoyed Varric, the character was brilliant, the voice actor for Varric was also brilliant, eventually I didn't miss Oghren that much after that. I always used Varric and pretty much Aveline.
Mage and Rogue are way more interesting than they were in Origins.
The bad:
Every game has flaws which is normal, no game can be perfect, those who think a game is perfect and deserves a 10/10 obviously understand nothing about games are they are just blind and fanatics.
You did the same mistake that you did with Origins which angers me a lot, there is one quest that is bugged and that we console gamers can not complete in DAII it involves receiving a letter to save a certain woman in the wounded coast though not sure if it's a trick for a leader to come and kill us because we kill his lackeys, if it is, it is still bugged because the quest won't complete. In Origins it was a sidequest involving Jowan that the console members can't do, if you let him live and escape without asking for help that is, the chantry board gives you a quest for him but the consoles versions can't complete it. Pc users need to type in a code to do that side quest.
Re-used areas, at least they were a bit more detailed than the re-used planets in Mass Effect 1, a game that I'm harsh with by giving it a 7.5/10 (Because of the boring side quests and the re-used planets with different colors.) Though even if it has better details it is still annoying to see that the places are re-used even if it is understandable because we are in Kirkwall.
My favorite class in Origins was the warrior and in DAII well, the warrior feels limited, a warrior is an EXPERT
So that means that he should be able to use a bloody bow or dual wield(Albeit with some penalties for the dual wield like not enough constitution, weaker than a warrior with 2 handed and sword/shield.) They should still remain the class that can use the most weapons.
Limiting our companions to just one weapon annoys me a lot, I'd love Isabella to use a bow from time to time and then switch to melee when an enemy is closing in, I don't mind the fact that mage only uses staff, I can't accept an arcane warrior as a mage because of him being able to use plate armor, I prefer the typical mage, the one who wears a robe and looks vulnerable but in reality is quite deadly.
My other problem is the specialization, while playing mage in Origins I could easily heal my companions with the heal group thing, but now in DAII I have to activate the ability for healing, and sacrifice a large chunk of mana for it. I just don't get it. It's annoying and leaves us with less mana for the healings, I also don't like the fact that we are limited to only 3 specializations.
The thing I hate the most and find ridiculous is the enemies exploding for no bloody reason. Heck did Genghis Khan fire one arrow and caused a group of enemies to explode? It made no sense at all. I enjoyed the finisher moves we had in Origins which gave the game some realistic view to it when you are decapitating a dawkspawns' head. Or stabbing and hitting with the shield. I just find that the combat, the fact that the enemies explode for no reason is just a real joke.
In Origins we had different endings, in DAII we are forced to have one ending, it felt like DAII wasn't that important, it was just a bridge to set up the game for the third game, from what I got from the story is this *Spoiler: Flemeth is resurrected thanks to Hawke, in some of the dialogue she is really fishy when Carver mentions I hope we won't regret it, when she says in the future think about me and regret, or something close to that. Hawke started a war between mages and templars that is spreading all around Thedas. Warden and Hawke disappeared. There is also two ancient gods that haven't been awakened. To me it feels that, the third game will have Mage Vs Templar and a new blight coming. *End spoiler* I wanted the choices to matter, not force us to have the same story.
Another point that just got me mad, and angry, still wondering if I should buy it or not, eventually I guess I'll buy it, even though I think it is stupid. Releasing the game and a DLC at the same time, Signature edition gets it for free but others like me have to buy it. It's just one bloody DLC about one companion you get to recruit in act 2 apparently and it is also rumored to be bugged. Why release a DLC like that, when you could of implemented it in the game or, do like you did for Shale, put a code and everyone who purchases a new copy of the game will be able to get that DLC for free.
The other problem is that the game was rushed, if I picked the warrior I wanted to know how they escaped Ostagar, how they made it to Lothering and then the real escape.(I actually thought that's how the full game would of started, you in Ostagar) Also wanted to experience what happens once we get out of the deep roads instead of just hearing Varric talking about it.
The citizens of kirkwall are all... mutes, I expected to hear them talk or be able to talk to them, to hear them say something like in Origins, it would of been way better if we could do that, instead it felt like a lifeless city. I know we are supposed to feel like we are in prison since that's how the city was, but I expected kirkwall to be more interesting.
Zevran's look, what the hell? Is it truly Zevran or should we call him grandpa Zevran now? He looks way too old. I may not like tree huggers that much but changing Zevran's look like that? That was a bad move, he looks less cool than he did in Origins I also wish he could of kept the armor you give him in Origins (Ancient Elven armor) instead of being seen with that green armor.
Adding some Cameo appearances for some characters were nice but there was not much interaction with them, we see them, short dialogue and that's it, shouldn't they have more of an impact? Feel more important than they are in the game? It was just annoying. Leliana wearing a plate armor? That was the worst, she should of kept the armor she was wearing in Origins at the end of the game or perhaps a different kind of armor, not one that ressembles a plate armor.
Our choices in Awakening don't seem to matter, I mean if Anders dies in Awakening.. he is alive in DAII? Makes no bloody sense, replay your game and change the character in case he died for some, while others will be playing with Anders if Anders survived their playthrough that is. Otherwise it feels like we played Awakening for no reason.
Test your game, there was some bugs when I played it, I would look at the ground and I'd just see one part of the ground missing, instead it was showing me the sky I was like " O_o is this what Lyrium does to people?" Also test it to see if there is bugged quests, so you can fix those.
Put the option to toggle auto-attack in console versions in case some people don't like the hack and slash.
Also one complaint about Origins mostly, I think that even though there will be a lot of side quests, games like that, should have a time limit, can you imagine the Archdemon just going "Oh yeah Warden I'll wait for ya before starting my attack, go dilly dally and do side quests, feel relaxed I'll just attack later when you are ready." In DAIII we should feel stressed knowing that if we wander around to much we might either fail the mission or get some consequences like part of the land destroyed or something.
Also I want the screen selection to be back to the way Origin was, I hate pressing start to check my inventory when I was used to press the button and just go to the backpack in the wheel, same for the map. Rings should also have names, all the equipments should have names and descriptions, I loved reading about my weapon or even rings, armors etc.
Now let's begin.
The good:
The good side of the game is that the 'Protagonist' is fully voiced. The thing I hated in Origins is that you had a voice to pick but he wouldn't talk he would remain voiceless unless you pressed on actions which was actually annoying, cause you couldn't imagine it with the voice you wanted I mean heck, my mage sounded like Jowan and at the same time he was a mute in conversations, party members would telepatically understand him. A voiced character in conversations gives us the emotion with the voice, and the voice actor for Hawke is in my opinion brilliant specially when acting like a smartarse.
The other good thing is that the companions have armors of their own, armors that represent them and their personality in a certain way, but the bad side of it was that, the armor's look should of changed when you upgrade them, am I to believe that Varric wears the same coat for three years, Aveline as well? What does she do in that armor does she even do her toilet inside that armor like that? I think there should of been some armors that are unique and restricted to certain companions because face it, I can't see Varric with a suit of armor but I can see him with his trademark coat.
Combat was faster which was good for the console versions of the game, though I do agree that sometimes my thump just hurts from pressing x all the time to fight and then the countless waves of enemies that come sometimes from logical places and sometimes out of no where.
I enjoyed the change on the look of the elves but I must admit that some of them look pretty bad like the keeper. Merril is obviously an improvement, I didn't like her look in Origins and Fenris looks pretty cool.
The Arishok was simply the most amazing part of the game, the duel was awesome and at the same time annoying because he kept using potions. I thought the Qunari would of been a bit like the Mandalorians, fight with honor, don't use a bloody potion that's for the weak.
The best sidequest in the history of gaming in my opinion is All that remains, it's better than all the sidequests that Origins had to offer. I felt that it was an emotional part of the game specially the voice of Hawke and how sad he is was done quite well.
Varric. At first when I played the demo I was like "What is that, that can't be a dwarf, no epic beard, what the... grrr damn you Bioware you made a sissy looking dwarf." Though when I played the full game I enjoyed Varric, the character was brilliant, the voice actor for Varric was also brilliant, eventually I didn't miss Oghren that much after that. I always used Varric and pretty much Aveline.
Mage and Rogue are way more interesting than they were in Origins.
The bad:
Every game has flaws which is normal, no game can be perfect, those who think a game is perfect and deserves a 10/10 obviously understand nothing about games are they are just blind and fanatics.
You did the same mistake that you did with Origins which angers me a lot, there is one quest that is bugged and that we console gamers can not complete in DAII it involves receiving a letter to save a certain woman in the wounded coast though not sure if it's a trick for a leader to come and kill us because we kill his lackeys, if it is, it is still bugged because the quest won't complete. In Origins it was a sidequest involving Jowan that the console members can't do, if you let him live and escape without asking for help that is, the chantry board gives you a quest for him but the consoles versions can't complete it. Pc users need to type in a code to do that side quest.
Re-used areas, at least they were a bit more detailed than the re-used planets in Mass Effect 1, a game that I'm harsh with by giving it a 7.5/10 (Because of the boring side quests and the re-used planets with different colors.) Though even if it has better details it is still annoying to see that the places are re-used even if it is understandable because we are in Kirkwall.
My favorite class in Origins was the warrior and in DAII well, the warrior feels limited, a warrior is an EXPERT
So that means that he should be able to use a bloody bow or dual wield(Albeit with some penalties for the dual wield like not enough constitution, weaker than a warrior with 2 handed and sword/shield.) They should still remain the class that can use the most weapons.
Limiting our companions to just one weapon annoys me a lot, I'd love Isabella to use a bow from time to time and then switch to melee when an enemy is closing in, I don't mind the fact that mage only uses staff, I can't accept an arcane warrior as a mage because of him being able to use plate armor, I prefer the typical mage, the one who wears a robe and looks vulnerable but in reality is quite deadly.
My other problem is the specialization, while playing mage in Origins I could easily heal my companions with the heal group thing, but now in DAII I have to activate the ability for healing, and sacrifice a large chunk of mana for it. I just don't get it. It's annoying and leaves us with less mana for the healings, I also don't like the fact that we are limited to only 3 specializations.
The thing I hate the most and find ridiculous is the enemies exploding for no bloody reason. Heck did Genghis Khan fire one arrow and caused a group of enemies to explode? It made no sense at all. I enjoyed the finisher moves we had in Origins which gave the game some realistic view to it when you are decapitating a dawkspawns' head. Or stabbing and hitting with the shield. I just find that the combat, the fact that the enemies explode for no reason is just a real joke.
In Origins we had different endings, in DAII we are forced to have one ending, it felt like DAII wasn't that important, it was just a bridge to set up the game for the third game, from what I got from the story is this *Spoiler: Flemeth is resurrected thanks to Hawke, in some of the dialogue she is really fishy when Carver mentions I hope we won't regret it, when she says in the future think about me and regret, or something close to that. Hawke started a war between mages and templars that is spreading all around Thedas. Warden and Hawke disappeared. There is also two ancient gods that haven't been awakened. To me it feels that, the third game will have Mage Vs Templar and a new blight coming. *End spoiler* I wanted the choices to matter, not force us to have the same story.
Another point that just got me mad, and angry, still wondering if I should buy it or not, eventually I guess I'll buy it, even though I think it is stupid. Releasing the game and a DLC at the same time, Signature edition gets it for free but others like me have to buy it. It's just one bloody DLC about one companion you get to recruit in act 2 apparently and it is also rumored to be bugged. Why release a DLC like that, when you could of implemented it in the game or, do like you did for Shale, put a code and everyone who purchases a new copy of the game will be able to get that DLC for free.
The other problem is that the game was rushed, if I picked the warrior I wanted to know how they escaped Ostagar, how they made it to Lothering and then the real escape.(I actually thought that's how the full game would of started, you in Ostagar) Also wanted to experience what happens once we get out of the deep roads instead of just hearing Varric talking about it.
The citizens of kirkwall are all... mutes, I expected to hear them talk or be able to talk to them, to hear them say something like in Origins, it would of been way better if we could do that, instead it felt like a lifeless city. I know we are supposed to feel like we are in prison since that's how the city was, but I expected kirkwall to be more interesting.
Zevran's look, what the hell? Is it truly Zevran or should we call him grandpa Zevran now? He looks way too old. I may not like tree huggers that much but changing Zevran's look like that? That was a bad move, he looks less cool than he did in Origins I also wish he could of kept the armor you give him in Origins (Ancient Elven armor) instead of being seen with that green armor.
Adding some Cameo appearances for some characters were nice but there was not much interaction with them, we see them, short dialogue and that's it, shouldn't they have more of an impact? Feel more important than they are in the game? It was just annoying. Leliana wearing a plate armor? That was the worst, she should of kept the armor she was wearing in Origins at the end of the game or perhaps a different kind of armor, not one that ressembles a plate armor.
Our choices in Awakening don't seem to matter, I mean if Anders dies in Awakening.. he is alive in DAII? Makes no bloody sense, replay your game and change the character in case he died for some, while others will be playing with Anders if Anders survived their playthrough that is. Otherwise it feels like we played Awakening for no reason.
Test your game, there was some bugs when I played it, I would look at the ground and I'd just see one part of the ground missing, instead it was showing me the sky I was like " O_o is this what Lyrium does to people?" Also test it to see if there is bugged quests, so you can fix those.
Put the option to toggle auto-attack in console versions in case some people don't like the hack and slash.
Also one complaint about Origins mostly, I think that even though there will be a lot of side quests, games like that, should have a time limit, can you imagine the Archdemon just going "Oh yeah Warden I'll wait for ya before starting my attack, go dilly dally and do side quests, feel relaxed I'll just attack later when you are ready." In DAIII we should feel stressed knowing that if we wander around to much we might either fail the mission or get some consequences like part of the land destroyed or something.
Also I want the screen selection to be back to the way Origin was, I hate pressing start to check my inventory when I was used to press the button and just go to the backpack in the wheel, same for the map. Rings should also have names, all the equipments should have names and descriptions, I loved reading about my weapon or even rings, armors etc.
Modifié par The_FenixV, 30 mars 2011 - 11:57 .
#1483
Posté 30 mars 2011 - 11:42
Cybermortis
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Ghostred has already had one thread locked for complaining about negative comments. Ironically having failed to do what many of the people he is complaining about don't do - read the board and threads before commenting.
In this case complaining about a thread Bioware stickied so the Dev's could read to and get feedback from the people who played the game in regards what isn't/hasn't worked so well.
Anyway. Having just tried to play Neverwinter Nights again I think I can see what the intent behind the 'streamlining' was. I think the basic intention was to try and make an RPG that anyone can pick up and play without spending hours just trying to figure out what everything means.
I can understand this, and agree it is probably a worthwhile goal. However I think DA2 either went too far, or simply didn't have the time to expand the game enough.
A balance needs to be found between a more complex RPG system, and such a basic one you might as well be playing a FPS. DA2 is too far towards the latter. I'll have to think about ways the two extremes could be merged better - the only one I can think of right now is looking at giving games both a 'realistic' combat that is slower paced and requires careful tactics. And a much faster 'arcade' combat setting for those who just want to kill things quickly. I recall such options have been used in games before - and this might also help re-playability in future games since you can play the same game and have totally different experiences even if you make the same choices.
In this case complaining about a thread Bioware stickied so the Dev's could read to and get feedback from the people who played the game in regards what isn't/hasn't worked so well.
Anyway. Having just tried to play Neverwinter Nights again I think I can see what the intent behind the 'streamlining' was. I think the basic intention was to try and make an RPG that anyone can pick up and play without spending hours just trying to figure out what everything means.
I can understand this, and agree it is probably a worthwhile goal. However I think DA2 either went too far, or simply didn't have the time to expand the game enough.
A balance needs to be found between a more complex RPG system, and such a basic one you might as well be playing a FPS. DA2 is too far towards the latter. I'll have to think about ways the two extremes could be merged better - the only one I can think of right now is looking at giving games both a 'realistic' combat that is slower paced and requires careful tactics. And a much faster 'arcade' combat setting for those who just want to kill things quickly. I recall such options have been used in games before - and this might also help re-playability in future games since you can play the same game and have totally different experiences even if you make the same choices.
#1484
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 01:17
esigma444
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I have only beaten it once so far but here are my viewpoints on that playthrough.
I played as a Rogue FemHawke. I really liked how the rogue played, it was a lot of fun. My second playthrough i am trying a mage. There might be some spoilers, i will try an be careful.
Pros:
-I really enjoyed the combat. Like I said before it is a lot of fun.
-The companion dialogue was awesome.
-The second act of the game was incredible. Really enjoyed the Arishok, one of my favorite characters in the game.
-I liked the interaction between your family. Although I wish there was more especially after the second act.
-I hear people say the first act was slow but I enjoyed it. It made me actually feel like I was struggling to earn the money needed for the expedition.
-The ten year span was quite well narrated and I liked the growth of characters over that time.
- I loved the cameos. they were quite entertaining.
Cons:
-I have to agree with everyone on the recycled maps. After the first act it just got bland. Which is a shame because the game has some great scenery.
-Although I love the companion interaction. I wish there was more actually talking with your companion. One example is Merrill I really want to ask her about flemeth but you never get the chance.
-It was kind of hard to choose the mages side especially since every mage was either a blood mage or abomination. The only reason I sided with the mages was because i didnt know if it would kill Bethany if I sided with the templars. I feel the templars were more fleshed out then the mages.
-This is a comment my wife kept saying while watching me play. Why do people just stand there when a fight breaks out in a street. Especially whne mages start hurling fireballs.
-I wished the romances were more fleshed out. I romanced Isabella and only got a couple of scenes of dialogue. About the same I got from anyone else.
That is all I have for now. Despite my cons I really enjoyed the game. I planned on doing a bunch of playthroughs.
I played as a Rogue FemHawke. I really liked how the rogue played, it was a lot of fun. My second playthrough i am trying a mage. There might be some spoilers, i will try an be careful.
Pros:
-I really enjoyed the combat. Like I said before it is a lot of fun.
-The companion dialogue was awesome.
-The second act of the game was incredible. Really enjoyed the Arishok, one of my favorite characters in the game.
-I liked the interaction between your family. Although I wish there was more especially after the second act.
-I hear people say the first act was slow but I enjoyed it. It made me actually feel like I was struggling to earn the money needed for the expedition.
-The ten year span was quite well narrated and I liked the growth of characters over that time.
- I loved the cameos. they were quite entertaining.
Cons:
-I have to agree with everyone on the recycled maps. After the first act it just got bland. Which is a shame because the game has some great scenery.
-Although I love the companion interaction. I wish there was more actually talking with your companion. One example is Merrill I really want to ask her about flemeth but you never get the chance.
-It was kind of hard to choose the mages side especially since every mage was either a blood mage or abomination. The only reason I sided with the mages was because i didnt know if it would kill Bethany if I sided with the templars. I feel the templars were more fleshed out then the mages.
-This is a comment my wife kept saying while watching me play. Why do people just stand there when a fight breaks out in a street. Especially whne mages start hurling fireballs.
-I wished the romances were more fleshed out. I romanced Isabella and only got a couple of scenes of dialogue. About the same I got from anyone else.
That is all I have for now. Despite my cons I really enjoyed the game. I planned on doing a bunch of playthroughs.
#1485
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 03:00
axl99
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My giant list of suggestions for the time being that may or may not be feasible for DA2's game engine and time/memory constraints. But please, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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>> CHARACTER INTERACTION:
Hands down. Best squad banter of all time. You guys outdid yourselves.
And we want more, so much MOAR.
Some fans miss having all their teammates in the same place and interacting with them at once. Understandable, and since they're all in different places in Kirkwall, it's like they have lives outside of yours, although they occasionally stop by your place to say hello and play with the dog.
Instead of maybe actively inviting friends and LIs out for a walk or shopping trip around town, wouldn't it be nice to have them invite you to hang out with them? Sometimes alone with you or in a smaller group? Plenty of exploration and character interactive opportunities might be had in events that highlight a character's favourite area of the city and what they like to do in their spare time.
Or maybe it'd be cooler - and simpler -to invite the whole gang on a hunting trip and banter by the campfire while meat is roasting on a spit?
Then again the simplest solution to all that may as well be hanging out at the Hanged Man.
If feasible, I'd love to see more cinematics involving the other characters interacting with each other. Hawke doesn't have to be there with them to trigger them per se, but if the opportunity arose could join in on the conversation.
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>> INVENTORY:
As I've suggested in a different thread I wish there was a way to reuse the junk loot we recieve from fallen enemies instead of either throwing it away, stashing it in a box at home or selling it. Some of the materials present themselves as interesting crafting possibilties for weapons, accessories and gifts.
I mean with all the torn trousers and frayed string you could practically make a little bed for your dog.
Instead of hoarding a bajillion pieces of armor or swords in a box, why not have it all on display in an armory? Or if you're not the sentimental type, you could melt a few down into raw material and remake into stronger pieces of equipment. Something similar to Sandal's enchantment - or better - the synthesis shops in Final Fantasy 9.
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>> EXPLORATION:
I have a few suggestions for the exploration aside from adding more asset variations and different lighting for dungons.
For starters I'd love to run faster in town. Granted it might cause streaming issues but it just feels like it takes forever to get to an exit. Second, the 3/4 down shot on the camera makes me cry, I practically have to tilt my camera up and around to see all the nice pretty details in places like the Gallows and Hightown. The archways and staircases are the only visual cues that invite my eye to wander around the environment. Silk tarps, scaffoldings, balconies, even hanging laundry might make a difference.
On that note, I'd love to see more people wandering around town, it's great to walk by and hear them mutter [and hear a squaddie respond], but Kirkwall does get lonely without her people. Atually it's almost not enough to see them just walk around, having them do some manual labour or street performing or luring lonely nobles into a seedy bar might inject a little colour into the dreary social scene. Animals help too!
I love my dog, I really really do, but poor puppy needs cats to chase around instead of being cooped up at home all day.
Shops. There's a few strewn about here and there, which makes sense depending on their occasionally questionable merchandise, but the Lowtown bazzar feels like it needs a few more shops to really feel like the economic trade center of Kirkwall.
I enjoyed the tiny landmarks around Kirkwall like the giant doll outside of the Hanged man and the giant glowing tree in the middle of the elven alienage. On that note, The red light district totally needs more red lanterns. Darktown on the other hand is surprisingly bright even if we head down there at night. In the free Marches I'd love to see some more foliage to really get the sense I'm nowhere within a city anymore.
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>> COMBAT:
The first suggestion I'll make is to save the exploding body parts for the really heavy hitting attacks so that we don't become desensitized to it early on. Tons of blood spray on the other hand is fine with me.
The camera was a little constrained, but a greater range of zooming and panning might help players decide on their next few moves - and make awesome screenshots.
Enemies in DA2 love to swarm players, introducing them to crowd control techniques early on will be very helpful. The demo was an interesting way to introduce us to the basic controls, but going further from that for storytelling purposes it'd be great to see Hawke and his/her siblings practicing their skills between timeskips before the real main storyline starts - against their father for instance - or even sparring with their teammates in order to familiarize themselves with other skillsets. It might even change how we decide to utilize the tactics function with cross-class combos.
To add an extra element of strategy, I'd love to be able to use the environment to my advantage. For instance, direct manipulation of background assets like causing a stack of barrels to collapse, getting archers to shoot at a hanging crate of supplies to drop on a group of enemies, or loosening the ground near a mountain and cause land slides especially with repeated use of Rockfist and Wrath of the Elvehn.
During some of the longer fights, I found myself wishing the characters could run faster, especially the rogues - for all their dexterity they run about as fast as the other characters. The Back to Back skill was nice, in my case I'd prefer it to be a last resort as it takes up extra stamina. I'd also love to see archers and mages being able to increase their attack range and pick off the smaller enemies that jump into the field.
While I did sort of miss the secondary weapon function, I can see how it can get cumbersome with inventory management. The flasks and grenades you can purchase at stores was an easy workaround at best. Archer rogues by default have knives and melee attacks which is all fine. I wonder if it could be possible to implement a boomerang-like throwing function, something similar to the lightsaber throwing skill in KOTOR?
It'd also be nice to have significantly varying ground levels to help characters navigate around the battle field quicker, scripted weather effects to enhance or negate certain magic abilities, or even the ability to ambush enemies would be nice. There isn't much opportunity to set traps pre-emptively even in DAO. It'd be a refreshing change of pace to be fully on the offensive for once instead of being merely passive-aggressive.
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>> STORY:
Ok. This is a doozy trying not to go into spoiler territory but I will do my best. Personally I found that the narrative for the first two acts could be feasibly compressed into one, and the last one can stew around on its own in its own arc, and from there Varric can take the reins and blow the story up into epic proportions.
Given the framed narrative, there is ample opportunity for smaller breaks in between gameplay to further enhance the story and the characters in it instead of just reading a good chunk about it in the codex. Let's face it. We all love to look at pretty pictures as much as we love to read up on the lore.
One reason I suggest this is because a couple of the character arcs I found took way too long to resolve on their own despite their seemingly urgent nature. Another is to fully establish the feeling of accomplishment and emotional investment in the struggle Hawke goes through in his/her time in Kirkwall.
The sidequests in the first arc are daunting in the sense that there's just so many of them. Even after a small time skip just we still found ourselves practically penniless, even if it did make sense in the story. Personally I think it could be an issue with balancing out the rewards for the more affluent of Kirkwall's inhabitants. That by far would be the quick fix solution to all this.
There's a lot of seemingly ambiguous rhetoric that ultimately boils down to what a player values most. It could be toned down for the most part since we're faced with such conflict throughout the entire game. It loses its impact towards the end otherwise.
Modifié par axl99, 31 mars 2011 - 03:19 .
#1486
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 03:05
Brerwolf
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First, I'd like to add my voice to the chorus congratulating Bioware for what is, on the whole, a very solid RPG. That said, I do think there are a host of issues, most minor, some not, that detracted from the overall experience. I'm not a programmer or a gaming industry professional, and so I can't reliably assess the practicality and/or reasonableness of all my criticisms and suggestions, but I'm going to try my best to keep things sane. Even if some of my ideas aren't practical, hopefully they will provide more information about the underlying issues. Also, if some of my ideas aren't practical or I'm missing something important, I'd -love- to hear responses from any of the dev team on what I'm missing or getting wrong, because while I'm not a gaming industry professional, I -do- have an interest in the production process that goes well beyond consuming the end result.
[EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT CONTAINS SPOILERS] (side note to whoever runs this forum: a spoiler tag button would be a -great- feature to add if possible. I've seen it done elsewhere and it's incredibly handy for these sorts of forums),
Combat:
-I was often frustrated by uncertainty about when real-time commands matter and when they didn't. For example, during the Ancient Rock Wraith fight you need to hide your party behind pillars in order to dodge the AOE attack. Similarly, as a mage I found myself physically dodging the Arishok during his battle, hitting him with an ice spell to hopefully slow him down and give me time to fire off one or two more spells before putting more distance between us. That's fine if this is a game where hits and misses are adjudicated by real-time player movement and skill...but it's not. At least, it's not all the time. Sometimes you can physically dodge attacks, sometimes you can dodge entirely out of the way or even into another room and still take damage because the dice rolls indicate a hit. I understand the desire to streamline and speed up combat in DA2, and while I'm more given to the more deliberate pacing of an Infinity Engine or even turn-based RPG, I can roll with the changes. It's when there's an uncertainty and an apparent contradiction or inconsistency in the rules that I get frustrated and stop having fun. Make it clear what rules we're playing by, and stick with them.
-Reinforcing waves can be very fun and add tension to encounters. However, using them for the vast majority of encounters made me feel like much of my planning and strategy was pointless. Why bother trying to place your party members appropriately or planning to blitzkrieg the enemy with an optimized strategy when for all you know there are a bunch of harder enemies to save your abilities for coming in the next wave, which could spawn right on top of your carefully chosen positions? It also tends to break immersion and remind me that I'm playing a game, as reinforcements would appear even when there was no logical in-world explanation for them, and would visibly spawn out of nowhere. My two cents would be to use the wave design more sparingly, and make sure that there's always a good explanation for them as well as keeping spawn points even further back than you did in this game. It's fine for undead to burst from the ground and demons and spirits to be summoned from the ether. Mercenaries, not so much, and while the "jump down from the rooftop" animation was a good idea, its effectiveness was hamstrung by still being able to see that the jumpers are poofing into existence from nothing. Experiment with a wider variety of encounter designs, which leads me to...
-Boss battles. With the partial exception of the Arishok, all of the boss battles felt more like an exercise in tedious attrition than strategy. For all the emphasis on cross-class combos, most of the boss enemies have so much resistance that landing a status effect is almost impossible, and so much health that even landing a proper cross-class combo doesn't make a significant difference over the course of a fight. Dodging AOE attacks like the Rock Wraith's lightning/spirit damage barrage or the Pride Demon's life-draining aura (or whatever that spell effect is) doesn't improve things much, and in fact just forces the fights to last even -longer-. I'll be honest and admit that I'm not sure what to suggest here, but one step would be either varying up the possible types of status effects or making elemental or damage types much more important and distinctive.
-Finally, a tangential note that's partially related to combat and partially to the overall revamped skill system: The streamlining -mostly- worked, but I still found myself sinking at least one point in three into spells and abilities I didn't want and would never use in order to get to ones I did. I understand you tried to minimize that, but one side-effect of reducing the number of skills and points is that every one "wasted" is much more painful. If I've got 60 points to play wih by the end of a game, I don't mind wasting half a dozen. If I've got 24 or so, wasting even three or four hurts proportionally more. On a similar note, I found the number of brittle and stagger-causing powers relative to the disorientation-causing ones to be a bit unbalanced. This becomes worse for dual-wielding rogues, who are the only class who have no direct damage-dealing powers that have a status-causing element. Even something that traded a damage reduction for, say, a small cumulative % to disorient as the dual-wielding rogue delivers a bewildering flurry of light strikes from all angles would've been easy to justify in-game and I don't think it would have broken the balance.
Environmental Design:
-First off, let me again say that on the whole I quite liked the game, and that includes the environments. The skyboxes were neat, and I felt that the look and feel of Kirkwall did a good job of evoking its past. I also liked the way that Kirkwall's various regions were made to -feel- of a piece by making the other parts of the city visible. In future, I'd like to see that pushed as far as possible. In many towns there are buildings or surrounding terrain features that allow someone in the know to instantly orient themselves no matter where they are. I don't just mean knowing what neighborhood they're in, but seeing a certain mountain or tall spire and letting that visual landmark become the pole star of their movement around their environment. Castles, Chantries, structures like the Gallows all make good candidates for that sort of thing.
-With all that said, I have to admit that I found the overall lack of variety a bit wearing. I don't just mean the re-use of specific maps (I'll get to that in another bullet point), but that there's very little to visually distinguish the foothills of sundermount from the top of sundermount from the coastline of the free marches. I understand that Kirkwall was more or less the product of a monolithic imperial mind and so the blocky, spiky architecture is basically the fantasy version of the Stalinist ugliness that pervades soviet-era construction in the former USSR, but even then you'd think there would be more signs of centuries of change. New decorations, facades and false fronts to assert a new and different style, etc etc. There are ways to vary things visually while still keeping a tight and local focus. Failing that, any new DLC should absolutely work on adding new environmental assets, pretty please. This is probably more important to me than to some other players since I'm someone who gets a lot of their enjoyment in RPGs out of exploration and seeing what's on the other side of the next hill, but still.
-On the issue of re-used maps, I just have to add my voice to the chorus. In future, please at least throw a solid wall/rock/etc texture over closed off doors and put more effort into re-dressing the areas. A good example of success there would be the Blooming Rose, which doesn't feel much like the mansions because the central foyer is actually a crowded common room. Another possibility might be breaking up your areas into even smaller chunks, and playing legos with those (Short corridor, bendy corridor, T-junction, spiral staircase, straight staircase room, etc etc). It's still a shortcut, but might allow for greater variety while still saving some time. Finally, ensuring that unavailable areas are -not- still visible on the minimap would be a great help.
Loot, Inventory, and Equipment Management:
-The decision to avoid having fully-equippable NPCs was one thing, but constantly being bombarded with excellent armor I couldn't use became an exercise in constant frustration. I was repeatedly caught thinking "Ohhh, this armor would be perfect for Aveli...nevermind. Damn." In order to keep appearances more consistent, perhaps experimenting with a more full-featured upgrade/customization scheme where it's more about modifying existing outfits than collecting lots of all new ones? I don't know the right answer here. However, there's one thing I'm absolutely certain of: If you're going to limit NPC armor upgrades to a few special items for each party member, do NOT put them in quests that can be locked away from the player because of choices made in a previous game. Putting them in an optional, character-related quest makes perfect sense, since anyone not bothering to do a NPCs quests won't mind not getting that character's armor as they're probably ignoring that NPC in general, but putting them in a completely random sidequest that can be locked off by import data is simply not cool.
-I'm torn on junk items. On the one hand, I understand completely why they exist in the context of the revamped and streamlined ethos. On the other, it feels like a very artificial and "game-y" mechanic, as well as smacking of a type of game (MMOs) that I'm not fond of and come to Bioware specifically to get AWAY from. Frankly, if you're going to clutter my inventory with a bunch of completely nondescript items I can't look at, read about, or get anything from in any way except by selling them to a merchant...? Just replace them with equivalent amounts of money. Especially since even at the end game you were only making a couple dozen silver off an entire backpack full of them, it wouldn't really throw off the economic feel much.
-This is purely personal, but an inventory interface where items are actually visually distinct (and not just type icons) and have at least a little flavor text to place them in the world does wonders for making me feel like what I'm picking up exists for a reason that goes beyond "wierdly-shaped barter currency." The gold standard for this would be Betrayal At Krondor, and I'm not demanding that. Just something that allows the mouse-over popup or the "compare stats" page (I don't know how the consoles did it) to give me a look at the -look- of the item along with a little bit of context.
And finally, the biggest category...
Storytelling/Writing/Quest Design:
-I didn't care when Hawke's mother died. I knew that I was supposed to, and understood intellectually that it was supposed to be a moving and shocking moment, but frankly she's not "on screen" enough to form a very strong attachment to. I'm not saying that to make someone care you have to kill off a party member, though I'll concede that it's probably easiest to guarantee that a party member has enough "screen time" to increase the chance of making that emotional bond. However, I certainly needed to speak with her more and see the relationship develop between her and Hawke over the years beyond the occasional word when between missions. Having her take an active role in the city as "Lady Amell" either charitably or politically during Act 2 would've given a lot of chances to interact with her, using her as a resource, a foil or obstacle, or even as a potential rescuer. Or, to throw out another idea, making her the gateway through which Hawke meets and builds his relationship with Grand Cleric Ethlina in addition to (or in lieu of for players without the DLC) Vael. There are plenty of ways she could have been more central to the story.
-The cutscenes and dialogues suffered from some of the problems that Mass Effect 2 partially addressed: to whit, they tended to be slow, stiff, and stilted. I can count the number of dialogues with a lot of dynamism in them on one hand, and even those tended to move quickly away from movement and to "Standing around". I think that the whole "interrupt" idea from ME2 is too situational to address the basic problem, and honestly I can't think of a good solution beyond increased work from the people scripting and animating dialogues. I'll use one specific example because it's from the very end of the game and thus very clear in my mind. The face off between the templars and the mages on the steps of the chantry. Everything has come to a head...and for almost the entire sequence from the beginning to Anders' destruction of the Chantry, everyone simply stands there calmly. Contrast this with the sort of motion, from subtle to aggressive to actively violent, you see in this scene from The Wire or this one from The West Wing (SPOILERS in both for their respective shows, profanity in The Wire).
I could probably keep going, but I want more time to think, and this is already a fairly spammy post. Even given what I've just written, as I said I quite enjoyed DA2, and think it was a strong game overall.
[EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT CONTAINS SPOILERS] (side note to whoever runs this forum: a spoiler tag button would be a -great- feature to add if possible. I've seen it done elsewhere and it's incredibly handy for these sorts of forums),
Combat:
-I was often frustrated by uncertainty about when real-time commands matter and when they didn't. For example, during the Ancient Rock Wraith fight you need to hide your party behind pillars in order to dodge the AOE attack. Similarly, as a mage I found myself physically dodging the Arishok during his battle, hitting him with an ice spell to hopefully slow him down and give me time to fire off one or two more spells before putting more distance between us. That's fine if this is a game where hits and misses are adjudicated by real-time player movement and skill...but it's not. At least, it's not all the time. Sometimes you can physically dodge attacks, sometimes you can dodge entirely out of the way or even into another room and still take damage because the dice rolls indicate a hit. I understand the desire to streamline and speed up combat in DA2, and while I'm more given to the more deliberate pacing of an Infinity Engine or even turn-based RPG, I can roll with the changes. It's when there's an uncertainty and an apparent contradiction or inconsistency in the rules that I get frustrated and stop having fun. Make it clear what rules we're playing by, and stick with them.
-Reinforcing waves can be very fun and add tension to encounters. However, using them for the vast majority of encounters made me feel like much of my planning and strategy was pointless. Why bother trying to place your party members appropriately or planning to blitzkrieg the enemy with an optimized strategy when for all you know there are a bunch of harder enemies to save your abilities for coming in the next wave, which could spawn right on top of your carefully chosen positions? It also tends to break immersion and remind me that I'm playing a game, as reinforcements would appear even when there was no logical in-world explanation for them, and would visibly spawn out of nowhere. My two cents would be to use the wave design more sparingly, and make sure that there's always a good explanation for them as well as keeping spawn points even further back than you did in this game. It's fine for undead to burst from the ground and demons and spirits to be summoned from the ether. Mercenaries, not so much, and while the "jump down from the rooftop" animation was a good idea, its effectiveness was hamstrung by still being able to see that the jumpers are poofing into existence from nothing. Experiment with a wider variety of encounter designs, which leads me to...
-Boss battles. With the partial exception of the Arishok, all of the boss battles felt more like an exercise in tedious attrition than strategy. For all the emphasis on cross-class combos, most of the boss enemies have so much resistance that landing a status effect is almost impossible, and so much health that even landing a proper cross-class combo doesn't make a significant difference over the course of a fight. Dodging AOE attacks like the Rock Wraith's lightning/spirit damage barrage or the Pride Demon's life-draining aura (or whatever that spell effect is) doesn't improve things much, and in fact just forces the fights to last even -longer-. I'll be honest and admit that I'm not sure what to suggest here, but one step would be either varying up the possible types of status effects or making elemental or damage types much more important and distinctive.
-Finally, a tangential note that's partially related to combat and partially to the overall revamped skill system: The streamlining -mostly- worked, but I still found myself sinking at least one point in three into spells and abilities I didn't want and would never use in order to get to ones I did. I understand you tried to minimize that, but one side-effect of reducing the number of skills and points is that every one "wasted" is much more painful. If I've got 60 points to play wih by the end of a game, I don't mind wasting half a dozen. If I've got 24 or so, wasting even three or four hurts proportionally more. On a similar note, I found the number of brittle and stagger-causing powers relative to the disorientation-causing ones to be a bit unbalanced. This becomes worse for dual-wielding rogues, who are the only class who have no direct damage-dealing powers that have a status-causing element. Even something that traded a damage reduction for, say, a small cumulative % to disorient as the dual-wielding rogue delivers a bewildering flurry of light strikes from all angles would've been easy to justify in-game and I don't think it would have broken the balance.
Environmental Design:
-First off, let me again say that on the whole I quite liked the game, and that includes the environments. The skyboxes were neat, and I felt that the look and feel of Kirkwall did a good job of evoking its past. I also liked the way that Kirkwall's various regions were made to -feel- of a piece by making the other parts of the city visible. In future, I'd like to see that pushed as far as possible. In many towns there are buildings or surrounding terrain features that allow someone in the know to instantly orient themselves no matter where they are. I don't just mean knowing what neighborhood they're in, but seeing a certain mountain or tall spire and letting that visual landmark become the pole star of their movement around their environment. Castles, Chantries, structures like the Gallows all make good candidates for that sort of thing.
-With all that said, I have to admit that I found the overall lack of variety a bit wearing. I don't just mean the re-use of specific maps (I'll get to that in another bullet point), but that there's very little to visually distinguish the foothills of sundermount from the top of sundermount from the coastline of the free marches. I understand that Kirkwall was more or less the product of a monolithic imperial mind and so the blocky, spiky architecture is basically the fantasy version of the Stalinist ugliness that pervades soviet-era construction in the former USSR, but even then you'd think there would be more signs of centuries of change. New decorations, facades and false fronts to assert a new and different style, etc etc. There are ways to vary things visually while still keeping a tight and local focus. Failing that, any new DLC should absolutely work on adding new environmental assets, pretty please. This is probably more important to me than to some other players since I'm someone who gets a lot of their enjoyment in RPGs out of exploration and seeing what's on the other side of the next hill, but still.
-On the issue of re-used maps, I just have to add my voice to the chorus. In future, please at least throw a solid wall/rock/etc texture over closed off doors and put more effort into re-dressing the areas. A good example of success there would be the Blooming Rose, which doesn't feel much like the mansions because the central foyer is actually a crowded common room. Another possibility might be breaking up your areas into even smaller chunks, and playing legos with those (Short corridor, bendy corridor, T-junction, spiral staircase, straight staircase room, etc etc). It's still a shortcut, but might allow for greater variety while still saving some time. Finally, ensuring that unavailable areas are -not- still visible on the minimap would be a great help.
Loot, Inventory, and Equipment Management:
-The decision to avoid having fully-equippable NPCs was one thing, but constantly being bombarded with excellent armor I couldn't use became an exercise in constant frustration. I was repeatedly caught thinking "Ohhh, this armor would be perfect for Aveli...nevermind. Damn." In order to keep appearances more consistent, perhaps experimenting with a more full-featured upgrade/customization scheme where it's more about modifying existing outfits than collecting lots of all new ones? I don't know the right answer here. However, there's one thing I'm absolutely certain of: If you're going to limit NPC armor upgrades to a few special items for each party member, do NOT put them in quests that can be locked away from the player because of choices made in a previous game. Putting them in an optional, character-related quest makes perfect sense, since anyone not bothering to do a NPCs quests won't mind not getting that character's armor as they're probably ignoring that NPC in general, but putting them in a completely random sidequest that can be locked off by import data is simply not cool.
-I'm torn on junk items. On the one hand, I understand completely why they exist in the context of the revamped and streamlined ethos. On the other, it feels like a very artificial and "game-y" mechanic, as well as smacking of a type of game (MMOs) that I'm not fond of and come to Bioware specifically to get AWAY from. Frankly, if you're going to clutter my inventory with a bunch of completely nondescript items I can't look at, read about, or get anything from in any way except by selling them to a merchant...? Just replace them with equivalent amounts of money. Especially since even at the end game you were only making a couple dozen silver off an entire backpack full of them, it wouldn't really throw off the economic feel much.
-This is purely personal, but an inventory interface where items are actually visually distinct (and not just type icons) and have at least a little flavor text to place them in the world does wonders for making me feel like what I'm picking up exists for a reason that goes beyond "wierdly-shaped barter currency." The gold standard for this would be Betrayal At Krondor, and I'm not demanding that. Just something that allows the mouse-over popup or the "compare stats" page (I don't know how the consoles did it) to give me a look at the -look- of the item along with a little bit of context.
And finally, the biggest category...
Storytelling/Writing/Quest Design:
-I didn't care when Hawke's mother died. I knew that I was supposed to, and understood intellectually that it was supposed to be a moving and shocking moment, but frankly she's not "on screen" enough to form a very strong attachment to. I'm not saying that to make someone care you have to kill off a party member, though I'll concede that it's probably easiest to guarantee that a party member has enough "screen time" to increase the chance of making that emotional bond. However, I certainly needed to speak with her more and see the relationship develop between her and Hawke over the years beyond the occasional word when between missions. Having her take an active role in the city as "Lady Amell" either charitably or politically during Act 2 would've given a lot of chances to interact with her, using her as a resource, a foil or obstacle, or even as a potential rescuer. Or, to throw out another idea, making her the gateway through which Hawke meets and builds his relationship with Grand Cleric Ethlina in addition to (or in lieu of for players without the DLC) Vael. There are plenty of ways she could have been more central to the story.
-The cutscenes and dialogues suffered from some of the problems that Mass Effect 2 partially addressed: to whit, they tended to be slow, stiff, and stilted. I can count the number of dialogues with a lot of dynamism in them on one hand, and even those tended to move quickly away from movement and to "Standing around". I think that the whole "interrupt" idea from ME2 is too situational to address the basic problem, and honestly I can't think of a good solution beyond increased work from the people scripting and animating dialogues. I'll use one specific example because it's from the very end of the game and thus very clear in my mind. The face off between the templars and the mages on the steps of the chantry. Everything has come to a head...and for almost the entire sequence from the beginning to Anders' destruction of the Chantry, everyone simply stands there calmly. Contrast this with the sort of motion, from subtle to aggressive to actively violent, you see in this scene from The Wire or this one from The West Wing (SPOILERS in both for their respective shows, profanity in The Wire).
I could probably keep going, but I want more time to think, and this is already a fairly spammy post. Even given what I've just written, as I said I quite enjoyed DA2, and think it was a strong game overall.
#1487
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 03:51
Horus Blackheart
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I've already comented on some aspects of the combat system that just feel out of place. I do't think i need to go in to it again. However i'm curently playing as a dule welding rogue and I think 'ive finaly put my finger on somthing fundamental that really detracts from the over all exp for me. It comes down to how the stats are handled and utlised.
*warning old school rpg geek fest ahead*
first some examples if how stats are typcaly used in D&D for easyness:
you have str which determens how hard you can hit and how much damage you can do (also determans if critcal hits can happen).
then yiou have dex which is basicly how agile a person is (determans how likly you are to evade a trap or a hit ect.
then you have intelegence which determans how smart you are/ your dialogue options how
many skill points you get at level up and so on.
mana is self explanatory so is cunning and con
except it seems when DA2 is dealing with them,and here we come to the root of the issue.
first str is used to determan if you can be knocked back and your basic combat resilence (not damage) which aparently is now the domian of cunning. It would make more sense to have it determaned by con as con already determans your hit points what armour you can use (if your a warror atleast. I have to wonder at the logic behind having difffrent dual stat requirments for class armour use.
Someone with a high con is more likly to resist a stagering blow than somone that can hit hard bit has a really small fraime. looking at it it seems there was some confution about just what to do with stats, to much and you turn off the twitch game audence that is from the looks of curent development treinds the holy grail of game devlopment. To little and you risk the wrath of old school types that bemoan the lack of depth.
If i'm missing some core intent here perhaps a dev can enlighten me because at the moment i'm not seeing what thay aparently are.
As always this is not intended as an atack (athough i do have my flame redardent golden pantloons points for anyone that gets the ref.)
*warning old school rpg geek fest ahead*
first some examples if how stats are typcaly used in D&D for easyness:
you have str which determens how hard you can hit and how much damage you can do (also determans if critcal hits can happen).
then yiou have dex which is basicly how agile a person is (determans how likly you are to evade a trap or a hit ect.
then you have intelegence which determans how smart you are/ your dialogue options how
many skill points you get at level up and so on.
mana is self explanatory so is cunning and con
except it seems when DA2 is dealing with them,and here we come to the root of the issue.
first str is used to determan if you can be knocked back and your basic combat resilence (not damage) which aparently is now the domian of cunning. It would make more sense to have it determaned by con as con already determans your hit points what armour you can use (if your a warror atleast. I have to wonder at the logic behind having difffrent dual stat requirments for class armour use.
Someone with a high con is more likly to resist a stagering blow than somone that can hit hard bit has a really small fraime. looking at it it seems there was some confution about just what to do with stats, to much and you turn off the twitch game audence that is from the looks of curent development treinds the holy grail of game devlopment. To little and you risk the wrath of old school types that bemoan the lack of depth.
If i'm missing some core intent here perhaps a dev can enlighten me because at the moment i'm not seeing what thay aparently are.
As always this is not intended as an atack (athough i do have my flame redardent golden pantloons points for anyone that gets the ref.)
#1488
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 05:45
Shadowlit_Rogue
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Hawke:
Having a main character with his/her history already mapped so intensely, forward and backward, made the entire game very difficult for me to enjoy. Yeah, you had a name and sometimes had a family in DA:O, but after the initial Origin story, you could choose whether or not to really care or even refer back to them. In DA2, they really beat you over the head with Hawke's story, and practically forced you to care about this family you were traveling around with, even if you don't.
I loved choosing my origin in DA:O, experiencing a new beginning to the story, and roleplaying accordingly. It's the reason I'm still playing the game, especially since the story would change in little ways because of it. Conversely, the lack of that in DA2, and the lack of any real impact from my decisions, other than whether or not my sibling dies or just disappears, is the reason I haven't even attempted to finish my second playthrough DA2. I think it was a big mistake to rip out the origins, the element that made DA:O so endearing and set it apart from other RPGs. If I'm going to be playing as Hawke again in DA3 (meh), then I would at least like more control over his/her actions and how the story progresses. At this point, even Alpha Protocol had more variety than DA2.
Combat:
While I do think that combat in general was a big improvement, it was a little over the top for me. Those rare times when someone pulled off a finisher in DA:O were hugely satisfying to me. In DA2, everyone just... explodes. There was no feeling of natural progression from being a lowly rogue to an experienced assassin when Hawke kicks ass and takes names from day one. It took away that rewarding feeling of learning a new, powerful talent, when everything I've earned gets lost in flurry of rapid attacks and explosions.
Kirkwall:
Since nearly the entire game takes place there, I'd expected a bit more out of it. For a city-state, it feels empty, lifeless; there are more bandits than pedestrians. There are only a few merchants in each zone (if that), only so many places to explore, and making it so that the city is separated by maps and loading screens made everything feel very disjointed. I would've loved to be able to walk from Hightown to Darktown without hitting a loading screen; it would've made a world of difference to me. But as it stands, it's just a gray-stone blur. And even though a decade passes, nothing changes in the least bit. To make another comparison, Fable 2 made sure everything looked different after the time skips.
Story:
I was actually hoping that BioWare would move away from the darkspawn as a main threat, so that we'd see more of Thedas, learn more of what it has to offer. Even Middle Earth had more than one bad guy. I didn't mind the focus on politics, but it was executed very poorly here. Figuring out exactly what the Qunari are all about was very fun, but it didn't really have an impact on anything. Going into the Deep Roads to escape the templars was interesting, but it made no sense, since I'd already spent several in-game weeks doing random quests without incident. And it also required that I have a connection with Hawke's sibling, which I didn't. There was also the mage/templar conflict, which I thought was a great thing to focus on (it interested me in the last game), but the game clumsily forces you to have an opinion and take a side, even though it's sort of a pointless one to make.
Everything just felt very disjointed, unrelated, and forced. The story forces your character to care, even if the player does not. Hawke was asked several times if he wanted to go back to Ferelden, and every single time I answered somewhere along the lines of, "Yes! Please take me back!" but every time, the game feeds you some excuse for staying. And even when all the excuses had run out, it was telling that I really didn't want to have anything to do with Kirkwall.
Characters:
One of the big, big reasons I really loved DA:O was on account of the many memorable characters. Having them all around the campfire, seeing them interact, being able to really, really get to know them. In DA2, that's almost non-existent. My female mage and Fenris started romancing each other after one conversation; and seeing how you can only have a few conversation with each party member, this removes a sense of realism.
Alistair never had a father, and grew up in the Chantry with women who were less than motherly, which explains his subconcious attachment to father figures like Arl Eamon and especially Duncan. Leliana is a bard who can tell you half a dozen complete stories in-game. By comparison, Merrill wants to rebuild only the dangerous bits of elven history, the parts the require blood magic, because... just because. Varric knows and supposidly tells a lot of stories, but Hawke doesn't get to hear any of them. The lack of character depth in DA2 is very noticeable and disappointing.
If the lack of depth and interaction came at the cost of giving Hawke a voice, then I would rather future protagonists remain silent. It's no decision at all for me.
Other big things that don't require explanation:
-Not being able to change party member armor.
-Recycled dungeons (I can't believe anyone at BioWare thought that would be acceptable.)
-Taking out charisma-related stats.
-Party members talk about how they hang out all the time, but Hawke's never invited. =(
-Junk having absolutely no purpose. There was junk in DA:O, but it was usually lore-related, or something like the glamour charm, which was hilarious.
-Why design Qunari women if you're not going to implement them?
-The lack of a subtitle: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Awakening, Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, Dragon Age: The Calling, Dragon Age 2? And it's not even a direct sequel!
A great RPG, to me, is one that allows a player to have control over their character and, in some cases, the world he/she interacts with. DA:O wasn't perfect, but it really, really pulled off that immersion part with flying colors. I really don't understand why BioWare chose to rip out the origins, diminish the character interactions, and limit the scope of the adventure to one city: effectively removing everything that made DA:O great and unique from other RPGs, which just ended up making DA2 an okay game. My dream for DA3 is that BioWare moves back to what made DA:O such a hit, and keep the clear improvements they made in DA2 (specifically the combat and visuals). Allow players to forge their own roles in Thedas instead of shoehorning them into one. To me, that's the difference between making a Hawke Simulator or a true RPG; a real competitor for The Elder Scrolls, instead of just an alternative.
Having a main character with his/her history already mapped so intensely, forward and backward, made the entire game very difficult for me to enjoy. Yeah, you had a name and sometimes had a family in DA:O, but after the initial Origin story, you could choose whether or not to really care or even refer back to them. In DA2, they really beat you over the head with Hawke's story, and practically forced you to care about this family you were traveling around with, even if you don't.
I loved choosing my origin in DA:O, experiencing a new beginning to the story, and roleplaying accordingly. It's the reason I'm still playing the game, especially since the story would change in little ways because of it. Conversely, the lack of that in DA2, and the lack of any real impact from my decisions, other than whether or not my sibling dies or just disappears, is the reason I haven't even attempted to finish my second playthrough DA2. I think it was a big mistake to rip out the origins, the element that made DA:O so endearing and set it apart from other RPGs. If I'm going to be playing as Hawke again in DA3 (meh), then I would at least like more control over his/her actions and how the story progresses. At this point, even Alpha Protocol had more variety than DA2.
Combat:
While I do think that combat in general was a big improvement, it was a little over the top for me. Those rare times when someone pulled off a finisher in DA:O were hugely satisfying to me. In DA2, everyone just... explodes. There was no feeling of natural progression from being a lowly rogue to an experienced assassin when Hawke kicks ass and takes names from day one. It took away that rewarding feeling of learning a new, powerful talent, when everything I've earned gets lost in flurry of rapid attacks and explosions.
Kirkwall:
Since nearly the entire game takes place there, I'd expected a bit more out of it. For a city-state, it feels empty, lifeless; there are more bandits than pedestrians. There are only a few merchants in each zone (if that), only so many places to explore, and making it so that the city is separated by maps and loading screens made everything feel very disjointed. I would've loved to be able to walk from Hightown to Darktown without hitting a loading screen; it would've made a world of difference to me. But as it stands, it's just a gray-stone blur. And even though a decade passes, nothing changes in the least bit. To make another comparison, Fable 2 made sure everything looked different after the time skips.
Story:
I was actually hoping that BioWare would move away from the darkspawn as a main threat, so that we'd see more of Thedas, learn more of what it has to offer. Even Middle Earth had more than one bad guy. I didn't mind the focus on politics, but it was executed very poorly here. Figuring out exactly what the Qunari are all about was very fun, but it didn't really have an impact on anything. Going into the Deep Roads to escape the templars was interesting, but it made no sense, since I'd already spent several in-game weeks doing random quests without incident. And it also required that I have a connection with Hawke's sibling, which I didn't. There was also the mage/templar conflict, which I thought was a great thing to focus on (it interested me in the last game), but the game clumsily forces you to have an opinion and take a side, even though it's sort of a pointless one to make.
Everything just felt very disjointed, unrelated, and forced. The story forces your character to care, even if the player does not. Hawke was asked several times if he wanted to go back to Ferelden, and every single time I answered somewhere along the lines of, "Yes! Please take me back!" but every time, the game feeds you some excuse for staying. And even when all the excuses had run out, it was telling that I really didn't want to have anything to do with Kirkwall.
Characters:
One of the big, big reasons I really loved DA:O was on account of the many memorable characters. Having them all around the campfire, seeing them interact, being able to really, really get to know them. In DA2, that's almost non-existent. My female mage and Fenris started romancing each other after one conversation; and seeing how you can only have a few conversation with each party member, this removes a sense of realism.
Alistair never had a father, and grew up in the Chantry with women who were less than motherly, which explains his subconcious attachment to father figures like Arl Eamon and especially Duncan. Leliana is a bard who can tell you half a dozen complete stories in-game. By comparison, Merrill wants to rebuild only the dangerous bits of elven history, the parts the require blood magic, because... just because. Varric knows and supposidly tells a lot of stories, but Hawke doesn't get to hear any of them. The lack of character depth in DA2 is very noticeable and disappointing.
If the lack of depth and interaction came at the cost of giving Hawke a voice, then I would rather future protagonists remain silent. It's no decision at all for me.
Other big things that don't require explanation:
-Not being able to change party member armor.
-Recycled dungeons (I can't believe anyone at BioWare thought that would be acceptable.)
-Taking out charisma-related stats.
-Party members talk about how they hang out all the time, but Hawke's never invited. =(
-Junk having absolutely no purpose. There was junk in DA:O, but it was usually lore-related, or something like the glamour charm, which was hilarious.
-Why design Qunari women if you're not going to implement them?
-The lack of a subtitle: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Awakening, Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, Dragon Age: The Calling, Dragon Age 2? And it's not even a direct sequel!
A great RPG, to me, is one that allows a player to have control over their character and, in some cases, the world he/she interacts with. DA:O wasn't perfect, but it really, really pulled off that immersion part with flying colors. I really don't understand why BioWare chose to rip out the origins, diminish the character interactions, and limit the scope of the adventure to one city: effectively removing everything that made DA:O great and unique from other RPGs, which just ended up making DA2 an okay game. My dream for DA3 is that BioWare moves back to what made DA:O such a hit, and keep the clear improvements they made in DA2 (specifically the combat and visuals). Allow players to forge their own roles in Thedas instead of shoehorning them into one. To me, that's the difference between making a Hawke Simulator or a true RPG; a real competitor for The Elder Scrolls, instead of just an alternative.
Modifié par Shadowlit_Rogue, 31 mars 2011 - 05:45 .
#1489
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 05:54
Arhengard
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The reuse of game environments really becomes very monotonous. One of the things I look forward to playing these types of games is having a different environment, which sets a mood, upon entering a dungeon etc... Not only were the environments reused over and over there was little effort put into disguising them. I've modded dungeons in both morrowind and oblivion and its quite easy to use statics to drastically change the look of a place. It would not have taken much longer for the dev's to try to add some uniqueness to some of these areas.
Another thing I have an issue with is the types of enemies encountered. Why are there so many shades and abominations? Seems like everywhere I go, every battle indoors up pop the shades. This kills any chance for me to support the mages in this game, and it gets quite tedious. In dragon age 1 going to the deep roads was quite a long adventure. I don't recall seeing any shades or abominations there. I was so dissapointed when entering the deep roads here when all of sudden shades started popping up
. There were very few darkspawn, and the ones I encountered seemed quite whimpy. Hard to believe they were causing problems in Fereldan.
One more thing while I'm on about the critters..why did they remove the maul from the spiders? I loved the unpredictability of that. Having your pc being mauled and loosing control of him added a sense of danger for me. Now it's all just hack, hack, slash, slash.
Another thing I have an issue with is the types of enemies encountered. Why are there so many shades and abominations? Seems like everywhere I go, every battle indoors up pop the shades. This kills any chance for me to support the mages in this game, and it gets quite tedious. In dragon age 1 going to the deep roads was quite a long adventure. I don't recall seeing any shades or abominations there. I was so dissapointed when entering the deep roads here when all of sudden shades started popping up
. There were very few darkspawn, and the ones I encountered seemed quite whimpy. Hard to believe they were causing problems in Fereldan. One more thing while I'm on about the critters..why did they remove the maul from the spiders? I loved the unpredictability of that. Having your pc being mauled and loosing control of him added a sense of danger for me. Now it's all just hack, hack, slash, slash.
#1490
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 07:21
Paeyne
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Since there seems to be a great deal of controversy surrounding the various sexualities of the romances, I offer this as a compromise for your next game that should make any but the most unreasonable happy.
Character Screen:
Gender: Male Female
Gender Interest: Male Female Either
The player makes the sexuality choice of their character from the outset and the story progresses based on that choice.
Personally, I applaud Bioware at their attempt to be as inclusive as possible and I agree with their stance on the subject, however I can understand how some might not wish this type of content in their entertainment.
Putting the choice of this from the outset eliminates a lot of issues and might allow you to make gay characters that are a little less stereotypical. (Zevron and Anders always came accross as very stereotypical to me, whereas if it were someone like Alistair or Varric it would be far less obvious.)
Character Screen:
Gender: Male Female
Gender Interest: Male Female Either
The player makes the sexuality choice of their character from the outset and the story progresses based on that choice.
Personally, I applaud Bioware at their attempt to be as inclusive as possible and I agree with their stance on the subject, however I can understand how some might not wish this type of content in their entertainment.
Putting the choice of this from the outset eliminates a lot of issues and might allow you to make gay characters that are a little less stereotypical. (Zevron and Anders always came accross as very stereotypical to me, whereas if it were someone like Alistair or Varric it would be far less obvious.)
Modifié par Paeyne, 31 mars 2011 - 07:45 .
#1491
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 08:57
Fault Girl
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- I really enjoyed the plot, felt more real to me and was a nice change from saving the world.
- The new companions were wonderful, enjoyed each and one of them, I just wish we could talk to them more and and have deeper relationship's. Same with the romances, needed something else but not quite sure what.
-The overuse of dungeons, didn't mind so much but towards the end felt tired of them.
- The mage issue, felt ignore through the game being an apostate but can understand due to gameplay.
- Wish there were more to the time skips, like people moving or changing armour, making Kirkwall a tad different through each act but then again that is a lot to ask for so can understand.
- I really enjoyed the game one of my favourites.
- The new companions were wonderful, enjoyed each and one of them, I just wish we could talk to them more and and have deeper relationship's. Same with the romances, needed something else but not quite sure what.
-The overuse of dungeons, didn't mind so much but towards the end felt tired of them.
- The mage issue, felt ignore through the game being an apostate but can understand due to gameplay.
- Wish there were more to the time skips, like people moving or changing armour, making Kirkwall a tad different through each act but then again that is a lot to ask for so can understand.
- I really enjoyed the game one of my favourites.
#1492
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 09:20
Jenova65
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I think I love you..............JohnEpler wrote...
If people have a duplicate concern, well, that's useful information too as it helps to tell us what the frequency of a particular concern is. If something comes up twice, it's still worth looking at but it needs to be viewed with the knowledge that most people didn't have much of an issue with it.
If it comes up multiple times, then it's obviously a more pressing issue and will be viewed with that mindset. Thus, duplicate concerns are just as useful as everyone posting individual concerns.
EDIT: Edited to be a little clearer.
Sorry, sorry......... Don't know what came over me there.... normal service will be resumed shortly..
Thanks for coming back to this thread so regularly John, to let everyone know that their voices are being heard and that BioWare do appreciate the feedback.
I assume this means that BioWare know we want to talk to our companions more
#1493
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 09:45
SIx_Foot_Imp
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A small observation on some of the
complainrts about DA2. It seems that alot of people felt that DA2 was
dumbded down and restrictive because of changes that didnt actually make
the game more restrictive and simple. Before the resopnces , just let
me explain how this ties in with magicians. in a magic show the magician
actually controls all the tricks, he knows all the secrets and how
everything will end, but he needs to convince the audience that they are
in control, that they are really close to finding out how the magic
works. In an RPG the creators controll the
whole world and they know exactly how every plot works out, but they need
to convince us that we are in charge of the how the game progresses and
who are character is.
In DA:O after the first part, the origin
story you picked didnt matter so much but by picking a character we got
the feeling that we actually picked to play the character of the warden.
the champion was almost as customisable but because in the game all the
choices( his family, history and motivations) were already picked we
felt less involved.
realistically equipping your companions
didnt change alot about how customizable they were( armour still
progresses and we get to add bonus through sockets) but the lack of
choice to do so made it seem that way.
the champion always played a part in the conficts in the city
but his role wasnt as active as the wardens he mainly cleaned up or
reacted to messes instead of starting them. the world changed with our
actions but we mainly saw this through letters or indirect consequences
of our actions.
Ultimately both games had world impacting
choices and a main plot that you cant change to much ( you have to have
that for the sake of continuity) , but DA:O did a better job at
disguising the railroading and creating the illusion of control. Just like a magic show its all about misdirection and manipulation. [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/wizard.png[/smilie] Bioware you have all the tricks down pat, you need to work on showmanship.
Keep on making the Magic.
complainrts about DA2. It seems that alot of people felt that DA2 was
dumbded down and restrictive because of changes that didnt actually make
the game more restrictive and simple. Before the resopnces , just let
me explain how this ties in with magicians. in a magic show the magician
actually controls all the tricks, he knows all the secrets and how
everything will end, but he needs to convince the audience that they are
in control, that they are really close to finding out how the magic
works. In an RPG the creators controll the
whole world and they know exactly how every plot works out, but they need
to convince us that we are in charge of the how the game progresses and
who are character is.
In DA:O after the first part, the origin
story you picked didnt matter so much but by picking a character we got
the feeling that we actually picked to play the character of the warden.
the champion was almost as customisable but because in the game all the
choices( his family, history and motivations) were already picked we
felt less involved.
realistically equipping your companions
didnt change alot about how customizable they were( armour still
progresses and we get to add bonus through sockets) but the lack of
choice to do so made it seem that way.
the champion always played a part in the conficts in the city
but his role wasnt as active as the wardens he mainly cleaned up or
reacted to messes instead of starting them. the world changed with our
actions but we mainly saw this through letters or indirect consequences
of our actions.
Ultimately both games had world impacting
choices and a main plot that you cant change to much ( you have to have
that for the sake of continuity) , but DA:O did a better job at
disguising the railroading and creating the illusion of control. Just like a magic show its all about misdirection and manipulation. [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/wizard.png[/smilie] Bioware you have all the tricks down pat, you need to work on showmanship.
Keep on making the Magic.
#1494
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 09:46
Jenova65
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I suggested something similar to this on another thread, I think it is a great idea, doesn't need to break immersion and people who have a problem with it never have cause to moan. Though saying that, it would give rise to ''Why do I, a straight male gamer have to declare it'', cos it is all about the straight male gamer, you know...Paeyne wrote...
Since there seems to be a great deal of controversy surrounding the various sexualities of the romances, I offer this as a compromise for your next game that should make any but the most unreasonable happy.
Character Screen:
Gender: Male Female
Gender Interest: Male Female Either
The player makes the sexuality choice of their character from the outset and the story progresses based on that choice.
Personally, I applaud Bioware at their attempt to be as inclusive as possible and I agree with their stance on the subject, however I can understand how some might not wish this type of content in their entertainment.
Putting the choice of this from the outset eliminates a lot of issues and might allow you to make gay characters that are a little less stereotypical. (Zevron and Anders always came accross as very stereotypical to me, whereas if it were someone like Alistair or Varric it would be far less obvious.)
JK don't hunt me down (well sort of kidding.... lol)It doesn't really bother me, Isabela hitting on my female Hawke, you can ignore it but if it stops haters having a reason to whine then great
A love interest in a game should just be that, a male character shouldn't have to say 'I like men', if the gamer makes some indication that they like a character that should trigger romance dialogue and sexuality shouldn't have to enter into it. That would be *fair* that would simple too.... surely? Everyone should be treated the same.
With that in mind take those daft 'longjohns', off the male characters, it isn't 1940, BioWare
The thongs weren't pretty but longjohns...?^ Lighthearted post...........
#1495
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 10:01
Jenova65
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But seriously.. the longjohns... ¬_¬
#1496
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 10:10
Ileanos07
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Allright...
1) Boring sidequests
2) Recyclation of maps and enemies
3) Companions - I am sorry but I really did not like any of them (no dialogues, everyone is bisexual...)
4) Game was overall too short
5) No interesting choices in the story/or no choices at all
6) It is not an RPG. It is strange action game.
Now dont get me wrong... DA2 is good game but not for Bioware. It could get 7/10 from me but I dont want to spend money on mediocore or "quite good" games. I love bioware because they deliver great games with spirit and soul. DA2 just isnt this type of game. I hope that ME3 will be better.... Much better.
1) Boring sidequests
2) Recyclation of maps and enemies
3) Companions - I am sorry but I really did not like any of them (no dialogues, everyone is bisexual...)
4) Game was overall too short
5) No interesting choices in the story/or no choices at all
6) It is not an RPG. It is strange action game.
Now dont get me wrong... DA2 is good game but not for Bioware. It could get 7/10 from me but I dont want to spend money on mediocore or "quite good" games. I love bioware because they deliver great games with spirit and soul. DA2 just isnt this type of game. I hope that ME3 will be better.... Much better.
#1497
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 10:11
Moirnelithe
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Jenova65 wrote...
But seriously.. the longjohns... ¬_¬
What longjohns? Fenris and Anders never took off even a glove
Which is one thing I didn't mention in my posts, what's up with the fully clothed love scenes 
That's a major step back from DAO.
Modifié par Evainelithe, 31 mars 2011 - 10:13 .
#1498
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 10:22
der_sandmann
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Two things just came to my mind. They are pretty minor and both of them are more positive than negative
1. Inventory: I really like the system in DA:O and DA2. It's well organized and easy to handle. You can upgrade your space by buying backpacks which actually makes sense. So far so great. But there are two minor complaints specifically about the DA2-inventory. First, I miss the unfiltered list of all items in my inventory (perhaps without junk items). I like to have a general overview over my inventory. Second, and this has been said a lot times here, I would've liked to see more use for the junk, i.e. something MacGyver-style The idea of sorting out potentially useless things is great, however.
2. The tactics menu: I really like the extensions you did to it as well as bigger quantity of slots. But making every single slot that big (some would say console-like) makes is a bit confusing. At least for PC I would've like smaller slots for a better overview. This is really minor, again.
Additionally I just had an idea of how an inventory system might be both user-friendly and at least partly logical and realistic:
What I have in mind is the combination of the DA-system and a weight-based design. You have a general inventory for your whole party (as in DA) but the size is limited by the weight of the items, not by their quantity. The maximum weight the party can carry is determined by the sum of strength and/or constitution of all party members. You can increase the maximum weight by buying backpacks i.e. one for each member, maybe even more. These increase the maximum load of the party member which equipped the backpack by i.e. 50%. Or less realistic but more possibly more practical by an absolute value.
1. Inventory: I really like the system in DA:O and DA2. It's well organized and easy to handle. You can upgrade your space by buying backpacks which actually makes sense. So far so great. But there are two minor complaints specifically about the DA2-inventory. First, I miss the unfiltered list of all items in my inventory (perhaps without junk items). I like to have a general overview over my inventory. Second, and this has been said a lot times here, I would've liked to see more use for the junk, i.e. something MacGyver-style
The idea of sorting out potentially useless things is great, however.2. The tactics menu: I really like the extensions you did to it as well as bigger quantity of slots. But making every single slot that big (some would say console-like) makes is a bit confusing. At least for PC I would've like smaller slots for a better overview. This is really minor, again.
Additionally I just had an idea of how an inventory system might be both user-friendly and at least partly logical and realistic:
What I have in mind is the combination of the DA-system and a weight-based design. You have a general inventory for your whole party (as in DA) but the size is limited by the weight of the items, not by their quantity. The maximum weight the party can carry is determined by the sum of strength and/or constitution of all party members. You can increase the maximum weight by buying backpacks i.e. one for each member, maybe even more. These increase the maximum load of the party member which equipped the backpack by i.e. 50%. Or less realistic but more possibly more practical by an absolute value.
#1499
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 11:11
Jenova65
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Male Hawke wears longjohns, lol, femHawke is wearing a strapless bra and panties.....Evainelithe wrote...
Jenova65 wrote...
But seriously.. the longjohns... ¬_¬
What longjohns? Fenris and Anders never took off even a glove
I agree with you on Fen and Anders. I mean we didn't even get a cuddle like Merrill-mancers <_< Jeez, women are pervy too BioWare....
#1500
Posté 31 mars 2011 - 11:14
XOGHunter246
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Ileanos07 wrote...
Allright...
3) Companions - I am sorry but I really did not like any of them (no dialogues, everyone is bisexual...)
.
Not everyone Aveline isnt sorry back on topic
