Or you could go play God of War if you want a hack and slash.
Ideas For Dragon Age 3
Débuté par
SMURFTASTIC
, avril 18 2011 04:12
Retour en haut
#28
Posté 21 avril 2011 - 10:41
Temtimtom
-
- Members
- 45 messages
SMURFTASTIC wrote...
Temtimtom wrote...
You sounded interesting up until the word "multiplayer". You've lost all of my respect.
Just curious, why does the idea of multiplayer put you off the game? I wouldnt mind hearing your opinion on the topic. Personally I think that it might bring a little something extra to the game. The idea of being able to join in with a friend accross steam or xbl or the psn seems quite inviting to me.
I'm glad you wish to elaborate further on this matter. My point with multiplayer added to primarly singleplayer-based games is the classic one: no 100% focus on the singleplayer. Much of Dragon Age's storytelling prowess comes from the fact BioWare had an exclusive focus on how characters, worlds and events interact with eachother. A plain multiplayer mode would most obviously base itself on the singleplayer campaign and would weaken or completely omit powers and talents you have in the main singleplayer game.
I am not put off by co-op, this might work. But I fear for the enjoyability of constantly doing missions or dungeons. Might be a bit boring.
#29
Posté 21 avril 2011 - 10:48
Amagoi
-
- Members
- 1 164 messages
Tem almost perfectly described how I feel about multiplayer being shoe-horned into a single player game. Co-op is fine in some areas, but not every game needs multiplayer. I personally like playing singleplayer more.
I'd prefer origins to come back. Or at least being able to play as different races. And a much more focused story, like the Orlesian-Ferelden conflict. Have your choices really make a difference in the fate of two nations. I don't think DA2 had the time to give each of it's topics the attention they really deserved. I'd rather have less story threads if it meant more of an impact on a specific one.
I'd prefer origins to come back. Or at least being able to play as different races. And a much more focused story, like the Orlesian-Ferelden conflict. Have your choices really make a difference in the fate of two nations. I don't think DA2 had the time to give each of it's topics the attention they really deserved. I'd rather have less story threads if it meant more of an impact on a specific one.
#30
Posté 21 avril 2011 - 11:53
Temtimtom
-
- Members
- 45 messages
Amagoi wrote...
Tem almost perfectly described how I feel about multiplayer being shoe-horned into a single player game. Co-op is fine in some areas, but not every game needs multiplayer. I personally like playing singleplayer more.
I'd prefer origins to come back. Or at least being able to play as different races. And a much more focused story, like the Orlesian-Ferelden conflict. Have your choices really make a difference in the fate of two nations. I don't think DA2 had the time to give each of it's topics the attention they really deserved. I'd rather have less story threads if it meant more of an impact on a specific one.
Indeed, games like Valve's Portal 2 have the basic playground which enables both a nice singleplayer or co-op game. Dragon Age does not have this. You just fight on and on, and that's it. There is simply no real fun value to it.
#31
Posté 22 avril 2011 - 12:20
BeefoTheBold
-
- Members
- 957 messages
Vicious wrote...
Trash the framed narrative, we all hated not being able to make a difference.
Get rid of those JRPG influence. You know what i'm talking about.
No more Waves.
Slow down the combat. Slower hits, with more damage. Also some semblance of realism would be nice. It's the same engine, I know you guys can do it.
No more chunky giblets. Bring back deathblows. Give Mages deathblows. You promised it and then screwed us over. Don't do it again.
Voiced protagonist is fine.
But if you are going to give us a preset character, you may as well give him a preset personality.I know a lot of people don't like that, but if you are going to throw our imaginations out the window, you may as well do it while exercising your [still good] writing chops. Notice most everyone still loves Shepard despite the fact he is a marine and acts like one, good or bad?
Items. Let us play barbie dress up with our companions. We like it. A lot.
If you really want our companions to wear xxx outfit, then keep standard outfit as something we can upgrade over time and eventually be as good as/better than the crap we loot.
I like this guy's ideas.
#32
Posté 22 avril 2011 - 12:23
BeefoTheBold
-
- Members
- 957 messages
Temtimtom wrote...
SMURFTASTIC wrote...
Temtimtom wrote...
You sounded interesting up until the word "multiplayer". You've lost all of my respect.
Just curious, why does the idea of multiplayer put you off the game? I wouldnt mind hearing your opinion on the topic. Personally I think that it might bring a little something extra to the game. The idea of being able to join in with a friend accross steam or xbl or the psn seems quite inviting to me.
I'm glad you wish to elaborate further on this matter. My point with multiplayer added to primarly singleplayer-based games is the classic one: no 100% focus on the singleplayer. Much of Dragon Age's storytelling prowess comes from the fact BioWare had an exclusive focus on how characters, worlds and events interact with eachother. A plain multiplayer mode would most obviously base itself on the singleplayer campaign and would weaken or completely omit powers and talents you have in the main singleplayer game.
I am not put off by co-op, this might work. But I fear for the enjoyability of constantly doing missions or dungeons. Might be a bit boring.
Yes to most of this. Adding multiplayer almost always means a less polished and less lengthy single player.
I'd also add that some things are not a good natural fit for either MP or coop. Bioware's strength is on it's story telling and character development. (Or at least it used to be.) Basically, playing a Bioware game allowed players to imagine themselves as being the character they were playing down to the freedom to make choices, romances, etc.
A large part of this atmosphere is ruined by adding other people in. You don't coop read a good book with other people. There's a reason why people don't generally talk in movie theaters.
#33
Posté 22 avril 2011 - 02:56
2Hard2C
-
- Members
- 97 messages
Vicious wrote...
Trash the framed narrative, we all hated not being able to make a difference.
Get rid of those JRPG influence. You know what i'm talking about.
No more Waves.
Slow down the combat. Slower hits, with more damage. Also some semblance of realism would be nice. It's the same engine, I know you guys can do it.
No more chunky giblets. Bring back deathblows. Give Mages deathblows. You promised it and then screwed us over. Don't do it again.
Voiced protagonist is fine.
But if you are going to give us a preset character, you may as well give him a preset personality.I know a lot of people don't like that, but if you are going to throw our imaginations out the window, you may as well do it while exercising your [still good] writing chops. Notice most everyone still loves Shepard despite the fact he is a marine and acts like one, good or bad?
Items. Let us play barbie dress up with our companions. We like it. A lot.
If you really want our companions to wear xxx outfit, then keep standard outfit as something we can upgrade over time and eventually be as good as/better than the crap we loot.
This. And, I think I said this somewhere else but Bioware should base most of their fixes on Origins, not DA2. Even console players like myself could manage Origins, just simply adapt the next a bit better than what Origins did, NOT go down the DA2 rout and not complete game and make it less playable for both PC and consoles.
#34
Posté 22 avril 2011 - 03:28
Sussurus
-
- Members
- 520 messages
I have a few ideas of what it's going to be about, but any imput about story content from me or anyone else would be bad.
Gameplay, I'd like.
Character creation needs more work, mix it up a little.
Take those changes to warriors and rogues keep them, add in the party based talents and support talents from DA:O.
Put the mage class back to DA:O, less upgrades for no need and more versatility.
Allow healers, buffers, debilitators.. etc all to be as useful as each other, rather than generic or underwhelming mages.
Pretty much keep certain changes that work, go back to the creative talents of DA:O.
Bring back the party / group based tricks, talents and tactics, and specializations.
Gameplay, I'd like.
Character creation needs more work, mix it up a little.
Take those changes to warriors and rogues keep them, add in the party based talents and support talents from DA:O.
Put the mage class back to DA:O, less upgrades for no need and more versatility.
Allow healers, buffers, debilitators.. etc all to be as useful as each other, rather than generic or underwhelming mages.
Pretty much keep certain changes that work, go back to the creative talents of DA:O.
Bring back the party / group based tricks, talents and tactics, and specializations.
Modifié par Sussurus, 22 avril 2011 - 03:29 .
#35
Posté 22 avril 2011 - 04:03
MassEffect762
-
- Members
- 2 193 messages
A solid story and depth to everything.(characters/pc/immersion/mood/quality/level design)
I could ignore the combat of both DA:0 and DA2 because I really don't care about it.
The mood and character/story development along with all the "choices/consequences" is what I find interesting.
I'm not the biggest DA fan I'll admit but please develop the series past cliff-hanger endings and brief character references/cameos.
I could ignore the combat of both DA:0 and DA2 because I really don't care about it.
The mood and character/story development along with all the "choices/consequences" is what I find interesting.
I'm not the biggest DA fan I'll admit but please develop the series past cliff-hanger endings and brief character references/cameos.
#36
Posté 22 avril 2011 - 08:06
Vilegrim
-
- Members
- 2 403 messages
Pretend DA2 never happened, ditch VO, make a proper DA:O sequel.
#37
Posté 13 juin 2011 - 04:58
Mark of the Dragon
-
- Members
- 702 messages
They need to allow you to be the Warden, Hawke, or make a new character thst way everyones happy. The new character should have new race options as well. It need to tell us whats going on and stop leaving things open ended. Where did Morrigan go when she entered the Eluvian? What happened to the new breed of Darkspawn? Mage/Templar war? Where are the warden and Hawke.
I would like to see the black city a know what Flemeth is up to. I think that the Mages got to the Black City through the Eluvian.
What is Flemeth?
No framed narrative
Don't streamline it (it doesnt make the game more fans it takes fans away)
Let us explore more then one city.
Bring back old characters as companions
Better graphics
Make are choices mean something cause none of the choices we made in DA2 really changed anything
Keep dialogue wheel
Female Tal-vahoth companion
a Architect breed Darkspwan companion
I'm really willing to wait as long as I have to for a good game like the original. Just PLEASE Bioware dont rush it. Make the fans you have happy!!!.
I would like to see the black city a know what Flemeth is up to. I think that the Mages got to the Black City through the Eluvian.
What is Flemeth?
No framed narrative
Don't streamline it (it doesnt make the game more fans it takes fans away)
Let us explore more then one city.
Bring back old characters as companions
Better graphics
Make are choices mean something cause none of the choices we made in DA2 really changed anything
Keep dialogue wheel
Female Tal-vahoth companion
a Architect breed Darkspwan companion
I'm really willing to wait as long as I have to for a good game like the original. Just PLEASE Bioware dont rush it. Make the fans you have happy!!!.
#38
Posté 13 juin 2011 - 05:01
Mark of the Dragon
-
- Members
- 702 messages
NO MORE WAVES
MORE THEN ONE REPEATED ENVIRONMENT
MORE THEN ONE REPEATED ENVIRONMENT
#39
Posté 13 juin 2011 - 05:41
Mark of the Dragon
-
- Members
- 702 messages
More attention to who you romance and no class for the main character would be nice as well
#40
Posté 14 juin 2011 - 02:51
john-in-france
-
- Members
- 2 091 messages
Personally I don't have a problem with voices vs screen script, maybe make the voices optional for those who do.
Companions who have real armour slots in the inventory.
Companions with full skill trees for their class, not suggested character trees which suck in some cases. For instance, Merril played using Nature magic and Blood magic is much better than the character tree Merrill (I have a blood mage mod for Merrill).
Keep magic the way it is in DA2, my wife said if I didn't mention this she might make me eat frogs legs tonight
. She says it is easier to survive as a mage in DA2 than it was in Origins, she's also on her 5th run through at the moment and her mage Hawke is vicious.
Strong plotline is needed.
No online multiplayer, this normally degrades the attention given to the single player game.
Keep the great music! DAO and DA2 both had excellent music.
Revert to RPG style.
Fully open skills list for main character, so we can chose to multi-class for ourselves.
The truth about Flemeth? Now that would be of interest. From DA2 we get the information that Flemeth is neither Abomination nor Spirit, and she does say that she might be a dragon, but is also an old, old woman. The Mage vs Chantry war with a strong storyline.
Did I say good storyline, I don't think that can be stressed enough.
Companions who have real armour slots in the inventory.
Companions with full skill trees for their class, not suggested character trees which suck in some cases. For instance, Merril played using Nature magic and Blood magic is much better than the character tree Merrill (I have a blood mage mod for Merrill).
Keep magic the way it is in DA2, my wife said if I didn't mention this she might make me eat frogs legs tonight
. She says it is easier to survive as a mage in DA2 than it was in Origins, she's also on her 5th run through at the moment and her mage Hawke is vicious.Strong plotline is needed.
No online multiplayer, this normally degrades the attention given to the single player game.
Keep the great music! DAO and DA2 both had excellent music.
Revert to RPG style.
Fully open skills list for main character, so we can chose to multi-class for ourselves.
The truth about Flemeth? Now that would be of interest. From DA2 we get the information that Flemeth is neither Abomination nor Spirit, and she does say that she might be a dragon, but is also an old, old woman. The Mage vs Chantry war with a strong storyline.
Did I say good storyline, I don't think that can be stressed enough.
Modifié par john-in-france, 14 juin 2011 - 02:54 .
#41
Posté 14 juin 2011 - 03:08
P1NG
-
- Members
- 47 messages
A few things that are needed/not needed in my opinion.
+ Tactical overhead view (hell re-add this to DA2 as DLC if you want lol)
+ Slightly slow down melee combat animations, DA:O was waaay to slow, but there is no way in hell any human being swings a two handed sword as fast as hawke.
+ Origins style character creation. This added for an unprecedented replay ability value, I'd still love VO, but not at the cost of gameplay.
+ Exploration, DA2 used recycled dungeons over and over. None of the areas in DA:O outside of travel used recycled areas. Freedom is something really key in RPGs, and it didn't exist in DA2.
- Story hand holding... Do we really need a big symbol telling us which dialogue is bad and which is good? Seriously give us the text and let us judge for ourselves (see Witcher 2).
- Wave style combat. This was easily the biggest blunder you all added. More than any other feature it destroys tactical gameplay (you can't plan if you don't know how many bandits are on the roof lol) This isn't CoD, Larger dungeons w/more enemy combinations is much more fun.
- Do not continue DA2 story. It literally went no where (rags to riches) and was sub-par comparing it to its predecessor.
+ Tactical overhead view (hell re-add this to DA2 as DLC if you want lol)
+ Slightly slow down melee combat animations, DA:O was waaay to slow, but there is no way in hell any human being swings a two handed sword as fast as hawke.
+ Origins style character creation. This added for an unprecedented replay ability value, I'd still love VO, but not at the cost of gameplay.
+ Exploration, DA2 used recycled dungeons over and over. None of the areas in DA:O outside of travel used recycled areas. Freedom is something really key in RPGs, and it didn't exist in DA2.
- Story hand holding... Do we really need a big symbol telling us which dialogue is bad and which is good? Seriously give us the text and let us judge for ourselves (see Witcher 2).
- Wave style combat. This was easily the biggest blunder you all added. More than any other feature it destroys tactical gameplay (you can't plan if you don't know how many bandits are on the roof lol) This isn't CoD, Larger dungeons w/more enemy combinations is much more fun.
- Do not continue DA2 story. It literally went no where (rags to riches) and was sub-par comparing it to its predecessor.
#42
Posté 14 juin 2011 - 03:26
L6-636536
-
- Members
- 21 messages
Multiplayer is a terrible terrible idea for Dragon Age or any RPG in general just because of how the storyline gets crushed by it or gameplay suffers for it. (Fable 2/3)
Main Character VO was amazing the biggest problem I had with it was the lack of a personality after a while.
I can understand the 'recycling' because it became obvious the game was rushed off a bit towards the end not to mention having to painstakingly make new areas for a one area game but please add so much more and create a country rather then a area next time thx.
Add a world populace FFS, how is it that we kill atleast 100 to 50 enemies per area and only find that the world has maybe 3 people we can talk to and only 3 more NPC's walking around. They don't need to all have interesting dialogue they just need to be clutter like in ME2.
Please if your going to make a serious topic again like in DA2 at least play the game through as the subject or make it so that the subject effecting the topic makes a bit more sense.
(Playing as a Mage MADE NO GOD DAMN SENSE)
Refrain from removing the legos and building blocks from the sandbox we oh so much enjoy with our dialogue choices. A streamlined story is indeed stable but it becomes infuriating if it attempts to eat itself and damages the game as a whole as mentioned in the last line. This includes everything that involves the sandbox like companion equipment, world impact and the such.
Main Character VO was amazing the biggest problem I had with it was the lack of a personality after a while.
I can understand the 'recycling' because it became obvious the game was rushed off a bit towards the end not to mention having to painstakingly make new areas for a one area game but please add so much more and create a country rather then a area next time thx.
Add a world populace FFS, how is it that we kill atleast 100 to 50 enemies per area and only find that the world has maybe 3 people we can talk to and only 3 more NPC's walking around. They don't need to all have interesting dialogue they just need to be clutter like in ME2.
Please if your going to make a serious topic again like in DA2 at least play the game through as the subject or make it so that the subject effecting the topic makes a bit more sense.
(Playing as a Mage MADE NO GOD DAMN SENSE)
Refrain from removing the legos and building blocks from the sandbox we oh so much enjoy with our dialogue choices. A streamlined story is indeed stable but it becomes infuriating if it attempts to eat itself and damages the game as a whole as mentioned in the last line. This includes everything that involves the sandbox like companion equipment, world impact and the such.
#43
Posté 14 juin 2011 - 03:32
MacNille
-
- Members
- 160 messages
A better story, Want the art desgin from DA:O and NOT Dragon Age 2. Spent more then a year on it. A better combat system then the seconde one. Make more then 3 caves.
#44
Guest_simfamUP_*
Posté 14 juin 2011 - 03:32
Guest_simfamUP_*
Guest_simfamUP_*
-
- Guests
Alex109222 wrote...
Wipe the slate clean (as Merc said) and get a new writing team.
Get rid of the guys who brought us Baldur's gate? KOTOR? NWN? David Gaider is one of the best writers out there, and the Dragon age team he leads are no exception. I wish they could show us all they had to cut out because of the stupid EA dev cycle.
#45
Guest_simfamUP_*
Posté 14 juin 2011 - 03:34
Guest_simfamUP_*
Guest_simfamUP_*
-
- Guests
I think multiplayer is the next step. Look how many people still play NWN on multiplayer. I don't care how anti-social you are, as long as you have an option to play multiplayer it is no problem. And this is coming from someone who doesn't play multiplayer in single player games.
#46
Posté 19 juin 2011 - 03:47
The_11thDoctor
-
- Members
- 1 000 messages
My ideas on DA3
Make the game on par with the books and Im sold.
Custom full face/hair/ body of characters
customize party gear
expansive world 5x size of DAO
horses/ horse battles
choices matter and have effect on world and quest
weather that changes
cloaks
DA2 combat without pop in ememies so you can strategize again
no glitches
no loading once game starts like Uncharted/ Dead Space/ FF13 or any game in 2011 made right
no rehashing of levels to DA2 degree EVER
All Females that are major or minor romancable
nudity in "sex scenes" or leave them out. If the game is Rated M, you can have nudity(grow a quad and stop being scared of fox)
Finishers
all mages able to heal again and have blizzard spell
Co-op for missions as a option
weather dangers during fights(Blizzard, fog, monsoon, rain, snow, tornado, volcanoes errupting etc)
Season changing(10 years somewhere in the game Im told, but no seasons change, no one ages, everyone weres same things and stands in same spot, no new people etc)
populate the world on the level of Infamous 2, RDR, witcher 2, etc
get hair right(hairs been done well for a while now, but BW...)
great story
same composer
Female dwarfs and Qunari women
Keep David Gaider on writing
From DA2
- Friendship/Rivalry system
- Crafting system overhaul
- Dialogue Wheel with personality type
- Day/Night areas
The Skill Tree, but easier to nav.
Hawke (Loved the male and female Hawke characters/ V.A., Loved the way the female Hawke delivered some of the lines even more so. First time I played the female ver of a character in a BW game. I either romanced no one since I would have to romance a guy or I just romanced a girl anyway to see the reactions)
Make the game on par with the books and Im sold.
Custom full face/hair/ body of characters
customize party gear
expansive world 5x size of DAO
horses/ horse battles
choices matter and have effect on world and quest
weather that changes
cloaks
DA2 combat without pop in ememies so you can strategize again
no glitches
no loading once game starts like Uncharted/ Dead Space/ FF13 or any game in 2011 made right
no rehashing of levels to DA2 degree EVER
All Females that are major or minor romancable
nudity in "sex scenes" or leave them out. If the game is Rated M, you can have nudity(grow a quad and stop being scared of fox)
Finishers
all mages able to heal again and have blizzard spell
Co-op for missions as a option
weather dangers during fights(Blizzard, fog, monsoon, rain, snow, tornado, volcanoes errupting etc)
Season changing(10 years somewhere in the game Im told, but no seasons change, no one ages, everyone weres same things and stands in same spot, no new people etc)
populate the world on the level of Infamous 2, RDR, witcher 2, etc
get hair right(hairs been done well for a while now, but BW...)
great story
same composer
Female dwarfs and Qunari women
Keep David Gaider on writing
From DA2
- Friendship/Rivalry system
- Crafting system overhaul
- Dialogue Wheel with personality type
- Day/Night areas
The Skill Tree, but easier to nav.
Hawke (Loved the male and female Hawke characters/ V.A., Loved the way the female Hawke delivered some of the lines even more so. First time I played the female ver of a character in a BW game. I either romanced no one since I would have to romance a guy or I just romanced a girl anyway to see the reactions)
Modifié par aang001, 19 juin 2011 - 04:07 .
#47
Posté 19 juin 2011 - 05:10
Uccio
-
- Members
- 4 696 messages
Mages should really be the "heavy artillery" of the game. At times it seemed that my mage was trying to slap enemies to death with a wet newspaper roll, without companions he would have been cut down in no time. Magic should be more powerfull.
#48
Posté 19 juin 2011 - 11:29
Wizard_in_the_Forest
-
- Members
- 1 messages
My Ideas:
Attributes and Skills
---------------------
A character with higher Cunning should be able to persuade, coerce, and deduce more approaches to a situation than one with little cunning.
A Character with higher Dexterity should be able to pull of tricks and sleight of hand, pick pockets better, and perform skills that require nimbleness and fine motor skills.
A character with higher Strength should have greater physical force and physical resistance. Feats of strength, like say for example, breaking down doors or smashing (rather than picking locks) makes more sense than a warrior who is completely incapable of breaking open the locked wooden chests or a plaster locked door.
Willpower is an attribute that seems to stand opposed to Cunning and should be used to determine an opposed check against trances induced by blood magic, and other mind inducing effects. It should also be used to measure an opposed check of cunning against another character when trying to intimidate or persuade them to do something.
Having a higher Constitution makes a character possess greater health and physical resistance so why is this never reflected in the gameplay and why not let our healthy strong characters with high constitution demonstrate their prowess by actually performing feats reflecting their ability to actually take damage?
This would make the attributes more consequential and it can reflect of a character's abilities and characters can approach situations differently rather than solely determining armors, robes, or Health and Magic bars. It makes attribute based input count.
---------------
class Adjustments
---------------
Suggested talents to improve Ranger class:
Charm Beast: Give the ranger the opportunity to take control of non-summoned hostile or neutral creatures with Cunning determining success/failure.
Forest footed: improved stealth success the effect of haste in stealth mode
Suggestion to improve Shape Shifter: If a shape shifter becomes a creature, hostile creatures of the same type cease attacking them.
Suggested Shapeshifter talents
Doppelganger: The Shapeshifter takes the form of the attacking creature (Nonhumanoid only) and the success of beguiling the creature attacking depends on willpower stat and on spell success the creature will cease attacking the mage and with a veeery high willpower stat then the creature will attack other hostile targets instead. (Note: The Doppelganger talent may protect the mage, but unlike the Charm beast ability of the ranger, the other party members are fair game)
Rebalancing the Arcane Warrior:
Combat Magic shall have the effect of the Spirit Healer's Panacea spell and while an Arcane Warrior has combat magic mode on, they can attack with magic stat and wear armor with the magic stat. However they can only cast non offensive spells and buffs in Combat magic mode. The other mode of Combat magic is combat casting, this mode will switch out and encumber a mage on the spot not allowing them to move (because the armor and weapons are no longer being held up by the magic stat, but it allows normal attack spellcasting for an arcane warrior mage
--------------------------------------
Making the environment more realistic
----------------------------------------
Immersion is about taking our ability to suspend our disbelief and consider that Thedas is a real place, but it's rather difficult with what we've been given. In Dragon Age II they tried to fix that by allowing things to be done in the morning and night, and you might notice the time of day, but there's no real sense of urgency or sense of a "world". This is because the world is all closed off, and rather than going anywhere, it's all fast-travel from point A to B. If we were transported into either Fereldan or the Free Marches, would we be able to figure out where anything is? Probably not. Why? Because we don't travel through it. We can't even get lost. It takes away from the feeling of vasteness that there should be in a world. It clashes with immersion in Dragon Age for both Origins and Dragon Age II. There is also no reflection for the passage of time other than what is told to you. No sense of urgency. This can be remedied by having some quests that actually are timed. Everyone will hate them because it actually pushes the anxiety buttons, but heck, they'll actually give a thrill and a sense of urgency.
Also take into account the environment in which we are questing through. Is it hot or cold? are we going through a city, a rural farmland, a forest, a seaside, a cave etc? Are there also weather changes, or seasons? It could be anything. For example: In the book "A Song of Ice and Fire" the seasons are irregular, but in real life different climates mean different seasons, however Thedas seasons and climate are a total mystery even if we've been through much of Fereldan and the city state of Kirkwall. Why also can the Warden and the Champion not swim? Change that, we need water levels and river or stream creatures and haunted bogs where there is a risk of getting bit by a leech. That makes more sense than a warden that cannot wade in knee deep water or swim in surpass-able areas (not a fast flowing stream for example).
-------------------------------
Jobs
-------------------------------
There seems to be little ways of making money in the Dragon Age universe other than fighting, reading the Chanter's Board which often sends you on a mission which consists of picking up a blade and hitting things with it some more (How did all these monsters get a magic fire ring and several gold coins?!), and gathering objects in a limited fashion (gather X number of corpse gall, potions etc) and I think that's an annoyance. It gets even more egregious in Dragon Age II where all elements of crafting and skill is taken away from all the player characters. This makes the only way to make money to be a gofer for someone by delivering found object to person X (as a person above has mentioned, Hawke became FedEx) or by stabbing things until they don't move anymore (All the time in both Origins and Dragon Age II). It would be even more ridiculous if it weren't for the Junk system, but to me, that just seems odd and it clutters the inventory which is just what taking the crafting away from the player character was trying to prevent.
In Dragon Age Origins (including awakening) you could craft traps, runes, potions, and poisons but in order to do them well you also had to horde things in your inventory which cluttered it and didn't feel realistic. And aside from the rare Potent Lyrium potion, none of the crafting elements could actually rake any profit monetarily. This makes learning these skills hampering and I didn't end up using them as much as I could and that has potential to be quite exploitable. Also you could craft these items in mid combat which was jarring, so I have a few suggestions perhaps.
I liked the idea in Dragon Age 2 of searching for crafting components which minimized craft hoarding and didn't clutter the inventory, but I hated sacrificing the skill tiers for poison, potions, trap-making, and rune-crafting just to have to PAY for the potions, runes, etc. I think there should be a way to refine it the same way without taking away crafting from the player characters. So perhaps with level one skill in crafting you set up a lab or apothecary in your home base or camp where you can craft your poisons, potions, runes, or traps where they can be used or sold for actual profit in the game? It creates less gofer nonsense and it pays to become a master in a tier of skills that way. So crafting component searches like in Dragon Age 2, but done by the player character.
----------
Story
-----------
I will leave the story telling up to the developers, and the world is theirs to expand the lore and create the drama within the universe of their making, but I would prefer if I, the player character, had some actual influence and my choices made any sort of difference.
There are several mediums for Dragon Age materials, movies, books, and then there are video games. With a game, I expect it NOT to be a movie, so that means some degree of choice, skill, and open endedness should be expected otherwise it's just a movie. Railroading a character is just a way of making them feel like they're watching a movie rather than playing a game, and it kills replay-ability. (We know the story now, no more of that.)
------------
Character interaction
-------------
Banter is awesome, never get rid of banter between the controllable characters and nonplayable characters. It gives it an immersive feel and brings the world to life and suspends disbelief.
Now specifically with the HOW in the aspect of interaction: The problem is restrictions. In Dragon Age Origins there was no restrictions with which to interact with your companions, so that meant that in the middle of a battle or questing should I have the misfortune of tapping on my poor Zevran's shoulder, we'd end up having a conversation covered in blood and chunks which was very jarring, they 180ed it for Awakening and shut out ALL interaction except for tiny conversation points which made it almost impossible to get to know the characters really or warm up to them without saying specific things. This required metagaming knowledge, or a load of bleeding risk. It pulled away from interaction, and it was forced. Dragon Age II was better in which conversation areas were in designated spots, there was interjections within dialogue by the other nonplayer characters, and interruptions which made the characters actually express their preferences and opinions but at times it felt forced.
So how about whole areas in non combat zones can be free conversation points where there can be open convos between the player character and his mates, or maybe a more ambitious idea of not only eavesdropping on the banter, but even allowing expansions of commentary from what was eavesdropped? Also exploring the inter-party relationships. This means that if, for example, Anders and Fenris are put in the same group, and you have a conversation with Anders and you make a comment that is Pro-Mage Etc, it'll be overheard by Fenris like for example the classic:
That was a pleasant surprise.
Then the What: When you talk to characters, meet them etc, they are strangers to begin with. We player characters do not know them. In order to have the story develop naturally the games help us get to know them in a more realistic way than books or a movie because a game forces us to interact with them. Interactions would make sense to progress in a normal way beginning with normal polite distal talk from strangers, developing greater rapport, to friendships/rivalry and then if we're going for a great story then a more intimate friendship/rivalry which can either grow to a family type friendly friendship a close rivalry frienemy who are vitriolic best buds or a romantic love interest of either. Bioware has never had a problem with giving us lovable and quirky characters full of personality, but as the player character I want to be able to imagine sitting down and having a chat with them and not command a complete stranger into life or death battles or even bed them without feeling like I would know about them decently.
---------------
Technical requests
----------------
Camera:
A fixed camera is a nightmare for most gamers, but to not have a good air camera is a nightmare to me as a gamer. I must admit, not having a higher bird's eye view made me get kind of seasick from long bouts in Dragon Age II. It was not as bad in Origins because the camera gave me space enough, but it was sacrificed to be able to put an up close and personal camera view in Dragon Age II. I liked it, but I couldn't play it for too long without getting motion sickness, so give us the full view air camera back please.
Dialogue setup:
Dialogue trees are preferable to a dialogue wheel but that is because it is skill determined rather than merely personality determined. There's no reason a player character with a ridiculously high cunning attribute score can't convince people to do as directed regardless of personality progression. If a dialogue wheel is meant to measure or determine a character personality, fair enough, but what about actual skills? And why does the wheel's wording have problematic ambiguity in which what is written doesn't seem to at all convey what you actually say? So my recommendation is to have a Dialogue wheel with programmed adjustments for stat based options.
AI:
Waves of enemies must not spawn from hyperspace, they CAN if they are coming from around a corner as to be convincing, from behind a closed door (but there's gotta be a realistic number enough that can realistically fit in that room. AI can and should be able to open a door, or follow a hostile or player character on the map. NPCs should be able to respond appropriately to their surroundings lest it be rather jarring by their results. If a player character is picking a locked box in someone's house and they can see you, why aren't they kicking his face in or calling the guards? If a player is visibly casting magic and killing folks in the open, why haven't they summoned the guards or the templars? This is lampshaded in many comics because it is particularly jarring for the player character, and no one feels the urgency in Kirkwall for the mages, because the Templars don't seem to recognize or even threaten underhandedly the mages in the party.
http://virtualshackl...templar_da2.jpg
http://media.kotaku....DragonMage2.jpg
Now with great numbers a fight can be either one of 2 things, either A: a greater challenge or B: incredibly tedious so in order to push that feeling of impressive numbers without breaking the game difficulty or making it too tedious is to mix up the types of groups you're fighting. Give them a similar group dynamic to the player character's group AI and similar stats, and boy that would be incredibly interesting as opposed to fighting hordes of boring mooks.
Last technical suggestion is to platform it. The Warden/Champion/player character can and should be able to climb.
-------------
Monster Expansion overhaul
-------------
Aside from wolves, spiders and bears there doesn't seem to be any living beasts in the forests that can attack the party. How strange! I have a lot of suggestions:
Immediately Aggressive creatures that attack on sight: A type
Cave Bats
Wild Boars
Snakes
Crocodile or Amphibious lizards
Mountain Lion
Territorial creatures that attack once a player character trespasses too close to them or adopts an attacking stance, but will cease attacking when a comfortable distance is reached B type:
Mountain Ram
Poisonous Lizards
Bees
Buzzard
cockatrice
Sylvan Shrubbery
Troll
Giant Toad
Rare Encounters:
Phoenix Type A
Bassilisk (heh heh) Type A
Griffons (...yeeeesss Griffons. I demand Griffons) Type B
Sahuagin Type B
I can think of more stuff later, but I think that's got it covered for now.
Attributes and Skills
---------------------
A character with higher Cunning should be able to persuade, coerce, and deduce more approaches to a situation than one with little cunning.
A Character with higher Dexterity should be able to pull of tricks and sleight of hand, pick pockets better, and perform skills that require nimbleness and fine motor skills.
A character with higher Strength should have greater physical force and physical resistance. Feats of strength, like say for example, breaking down doors or smashing (rather than picking locks) makes more sense than a warrior who is completely incapable of breaking open the locked wooden chests or a plaster locked door.
Willpower is an attribute that seems to stand opposed to Cunning and should be used to determine an opposed check against trances induced by blood magic, and other mind inducing effects. It should also be used to measure an opposed check of cunning against another character when trying to intimidate or persuade them to do something.
Having a higher Constitution makes a character possess greater health and physical resistance so why is this never reflected in the gameplay and why not let our healthy strong characters with high constitution demonstrate their prowess by actually performing feats reflecting their ability to actually take damage?
This would make the attributes more consequential and it can reflect of a character's abilities and characters can approach situations differently rather than solely determining armors, robes, or Health and Magic bars. It makes attribute based input count.
---------------
class Adjustments
---------------
Suggested talents to improve Ranger class:
Charm Beast: Give the ranger the opportunity to take control of non-summoned hostile or neutral creatures with Cunning determining success/failure.
Forest footed: improved stealth success the effect of haste in stealth mode
Suggestion to improve Shape Shifter: If a shape shifter becomes a creature, hostile creatures of the same type cease attacking them.
Suggested Shapeshifter talents
Doppelganger: The Shapeshifter takes the form of the attacking creature (Nonhumanoid only) and the success of beguiling the creature attacking depends on willpower stat and on spell success the creature will cease attacking the mage and with a veeery high willpower stat then the creature will attack other hostile targets instead. (Note: The Doppelganger talent may protect the mage, but unlike the Charm beast ability of the ranger, the other party members are fair game)
Rebalancing the Arcane Warrior:
Combat Magic shall have the effect of the Spirit Healer's Panacea spell and while an Arcane Warrior has combat magic mode on, they can attack with magic stat and wear armor with the magic stat. However they can only cast non offensive spells and buffs in Combat magic mode. The other mode of Combat magic is combat casting, this mode will switch out and encumber a mage on the spot not allowing them to move (because the armor and weapons are no longer being held up by the magic stat, but it allows normal attack spellcasting for an arcane warrior mage
--------------------------------------
Making the environment more realistic
----------------------------------------
Immersion is about taking our ability to suspend our disbelief and consider that Thedas is a real place, but it's rather difficult with what we've been given. In Dragon Age II they tried to fix that by allowing things to be done in the morning and night, and you might notice the time of day, but there's no real sense of urgency or sense of a "world". This is because the world is all closed off, and rather than going anywhere, it's all fast-travel from point A to B. If we were transported into either Fereldan or the Free Marches, would we be able to figure out where anything is? Probably not. Why? Because we don't travel through it. We can't even get lost. It takes away from the feeling of vasteness that there should be in a world. It clashes with immersion in Dragon Age for both Origins and Dragon Age II. There is also no reflection for the passage of time other than what is told to you. No sense of urgency. This can be remedied by having some quests that actually are timed. Everyone will hate them because it actually pushes the anxiety buttons, but heck, they'll actually give a thrill and a sense of urgency.
Also take into account the environment in which we are questing through. Is it hot or cold? are we going through a city, a rural farmland, a forest, a seaside, a cave etc? Are there also weather changes, or seasons? It could be anything. For example: In the book "A Song of Ice and Fire" the seasons are irregular, but in real life different climates mean different seasons, however Thedas seasons and climate are a total mystery even if we've been through much of Fereldan and the city state of Kirkwall. Why also can the Warden and the Champion not swim? Change that, we need water levels and river or stream creatures and haunted bogs where there is a risk of getting bit by a leech. That makes more sense than a warden that cannot wade in knee deep water or swim in surpass-able areas (not a fast flowing stream for example).
-------------------------------
Jobs
-------------------------------
There seems to be little ways of making money in the Dragon Age universe other than fighting, reading the Chanter's Board which often sends you on a mission which consists of picking up a blade and hitting things with it some more (How did all these monsters get a magic fire ring and several gold coins?!), and gathering objects in a limited fashion (gather X number of corpse gall, potions etc) and I think that's an annoyance. It gets even more egregious in Dragon Age II where all elements of crafting and skill is taken away from all the player characters. This makes the only way to make money to be a gofer for someone by delivering found object to person X (as a person above has mentioned, Hawke became FedEx) or by stabbing things until they don't move anymore (All the time in both Origins and Dragon Age II). It would be even more ridiculous if it weren't for the Junk system, but to me, that just seems odd and it clutters the inventory which is just what taking the crafting away from the player character was trying to prevent.
In Dragon Age Origins (including awakening) you could craft traps, runes, potions, and poisons but in order to do them well you also had to horde things in your inventory which cluttered it and didn't feel realistic. And aside from the rare Potent Lyrium potion, none of the crafting elements could actually rake any profit monetarily. This makes learning these skills hampering and I didn't end up using them as much as I could and that has potential to be quite exploitable. Also you could craft these items in mid combat which was jarring, so I have a few suggestions perhaps.
I liked the idea in Dragon Age 2 of searching for crafting components which minimized craft hoarding and didn't clutter the inventory, but I hated sacrificing the skill tiers for poison, potions, trap-making, and rune-crafting just to have to PAY for the potions, runes, etc. I think there should be a way to refine it the same way without taking away crafting from the player characters. So perhaps with level one skill in crafting you set up a lab or apothecary in your home base or camp where you can craft your poisons, potions, runes, or traps where they can be used or sold for actual profit in the game? It creates less gofer nonsense and it pays to become a master in a tier of skills that way. So crafting component searches like in Dragon Age 2, but done by the player character.
----------
Story
-----------
I will leave the story telling up to the developers, and the world is theirs to expand the lore and create the drama within the universe of their making, but I would prefer if I, the player character, had some actual influence and my choices made any sort of difference.
There are several mediums for Dragon Age materials, movies, books, and then there are video games. With a game, I expect it NOT to be a movie, so that means some degree of choice, skill, and open endedness should be expected otherwise it's just a movie. Railroading a character is just a way of making them feel like they're watching a movie rather than playing a game, and it kills replay-ability. (We know the story now, no more of that.)
------------
Character interaction
-------------
Banter is awesome, never get rid of banter between the controllable characters and nonplayable characters. It gives it an immersive feel and brings the world to life and suspends disbelief.
Now specifically with the HOW in the aspect of interaction: The problem is restrictions. In Dragon Age Origins there was no restrictions with which to interact with your companions, so that meant that in the middle of a battle or questing should I have the misfortune of tapping on my poor Zevran's shoulder, we'd end up having a conversation covered in blood and chunks which was very jarring, they 180ed it for Awakening and shut out ALL interaction except for tiny conversation points which made it almost impossible to get to know the characters really or warm up to them without saying specific things. This required metagaming knowledge, or a load of bleeding risk. It pulled away from interaction, and it was forced. Dragon Age II was better in which conversation areas were in designated spots, there was interjections within dialogue by the other nonplayer characters, and interruptions which made the characters actually express their preferences and opinions but at times it felt forced.
So how about whole areas in non combat zones can be free conversation points where there can be open convos between the player character and his mates, or maybe a more ambitious idea of not only eavesdropping on the banter, but even allowing expansions of commentary from what was eavesdropped? Also exploring the inter-party relationships. This means that if, for example, Anders and Fenris are put in the same group, and you have a conversation with Anders and you make a comment that is Pro-Mage Etc, it'll be overheard by Fenris like for example the classic:
That was a pleasant surprise.
Then the What: When you talk to characters, meet them etc, they are strangers to begin with. We player characters do not know them. In order to have the story develop naturally the games help us get to know them in a more realistic way than books or a movie because a game forces us to interact with them. Interactions would make sense to progress in a normal way beginning with normal polite distal talk from strangers, developing greater rapport, to friendships/rivalry and then if we're going for a great story then a more intimate friendship/rivalry which can either grow to a family type friendly friendship a close rivalry frienemy who are vitriolic best buds or a romantic love interest of either. Bioware has never had a problem with giving us lovable and quirky characters full of personality, but as the player character I want to be able to imagine sitting down and having a chat with them and not command a complete stranger into life or death battles or even bed them without feeling like I would know about them decently.
---------------
Technical requests
----------------
Camera:
A fixed camera is a nightmare for most gamers, but to not have a good air camera is a nightmare to me as a gamer. I must admit, not having a higher bird's eye view made me get kind of seasick from long bouts in Dragon Age II. It was not as bad in Origins because the camera gave me space enough, but it was sacrificed to be able to put an up close and personal camera view in Dragon Age II. I liked it, but I couldn't play it for too long without getting motion sickness, so give us the full view air camera back please.
Dialogue setup:
Dialogue trees are preferable to a dialogue wheel but that is because it is skill determined rather than merely personality determined. There's no reason a player character with a ridiculously high cunning attribute score can't convince people to do as directed regardless of personality progression. If a dialogue wheel is meant to measure or determine a character personality, fair enough, but what about actual skills? And why does the wheel's wording have problematic ambiguity in which what is written doesn't seem to at all convey what you actually say? So my recommendation is to have a Dialogue wheel with programmed adjustments for stat based options.
AI:
Waves of enemies must not spawn from hyperspace, they CAN if they are coming from around a corner as to be convincing, from behind a closed door (but there's gotta be a realistic number enough that can realistically fit in that room. AI can and should be able to open a door, or follow a hostile or player character on the map. NPCs should be able to respond appropriately to their surroundings lest it be rather jarring by their results. If a player character is picking a locked box in someone's house and they can see you, why aren't they kicking his face in or calling the guards? If a player is visibly casting magic and killing folks in the open, why haven't they summoned the guards or the templars? This is lampshaded in many comics because it is particularly jarring for the player character, and no one feels the urgency in Kirkwall for the mages, because the Templars don't seem to recognize or even threaten underhandedly the mages in the party.
http://virtualshackl...templar_da2.jpg
http://media.kotaku....DragonMage2.jpg
Now with great numbers a fight can be either one of 2 things, either A: a greater challenge or B: incredibly tedious so in order to push that feeling of impressive numbers without breaking the game difficulty or making it too tedious is to mix up the types of groups you're fighting. Give them a similar group dynamic to the player character's group AI and similar stats, and boy that would be incredibly interesting as opposed to fighting hordes of boring mooks.
Last technical suggestion is to platform it. The Warden/Champion/player character can and should be able to climb.
-------------
Monster Expansion overhaul
-------------
Aside from wolves, spiders and bears there doesn't seem to be any living beasts in the forests that can attack the party. How strange! I have a lot of suggestions:
Immediately Aggressive creatures that attack on sight: A type
Cave Bats
Wild Boars
Snakes
Crocodile or Amphibious lizards
Mountain Lion
Territorial creatures that attack once a player character trespasses too close to them or adopts an attacking stance, but will cease attacking when a comfortable distance is reached B type:
Mountain Ram
Poisonous Lizards
Bees
Buzzard
cockatrice
Sylvan Shrubbery
Troll
Giant Toad
Rare Encounters:
Phoenix Type A
Bassilisk (heh heh) Type A
Griffons (...yeeeesss Griffons. I demand Griffons) Type B
Sahuagin Type B
I can think of more stuff later, but I think that's got it covered for now.
#49
Posté 20 juin 2011 - 01:21
stoicsentry2
-
- Members
- 134 messages
1. Choices
2. A new map or two every once in awhile wouldn't kill you.
2. A new map or two every once in awhile wouldn't kill you.
#50
Posté 20 juin 2011 - 01:40
MinotaurWarrior
-
- Members
- 214 messages
Why are there, like, seven threads for this? Can a moderator sort this out?
Anyway, just in case this is the only thread to survive for posterity, I shall now engage in some copying and pasting! Yay!
----
This is a very disorganized, largely thoughtless list.
1) More Qunari
2) A different side to the Qunari. Perhaps a female merchant? (I believe Sten says that's one of the role women fill in the Qun)
3) More non-combatant party memebers.
3a. A cook
3b. A scout
3c. A translator
3d. A scholar / researcher
3e. An archaeologist
3f. A cartographer
3g. An occultist
3h. A carpenter / crafter of some sort, responsible for creating barrels, crates, shelters, and misclelanious goods
3i. A man in charge of the draft teams that pull the carts laden with the barrels full of your loot
3j. A trader (such as Bodhan, but with more interaction) who trades with all the cities you visit.
3jI - After every dungeon, he acquires some useless (for you) junk, such as giant spider silk and Elvhan relics from a spider-infested ancient Elvhan ruin
3jII - Whenever you visit a city, he can sell his goods to various organizations in the city. You can unlock more by earring their trust in quests (ie, do a favor for an underground group of mages? They'll buy lyrium junk from you)
3jIII - You can also buy trade goods from cities, and sell them to other cities. Prices on these things fluctuate. You earn a share of the profits
4) A sense of legend, both for the current, and past PCs. I'd love if I heard some random NPC telling their children about the legendary adventures of The Warden Commander of Ferelden or Hawke, and an Alpha-Protocol like system where people comment on how you handled earlier missions would be great
5) More variety in the encounter type. I really liked the waves, because they were (to me) a fresh change of pace. I think Bioware can do more in this regard, and mix up
5a. Traditional. You see a group of enemies. You fight them.
5b. Waves. You see a group of enemies. You fight them. More show up.
5c. Ambushes. You don't see anything. You fight one or more waves of enemies.
5d. Adventurer vs Adventurer. The last time I saw this was in BG, and I loved it. You come across a group of other adventurers, have a conversation, and you duke it out. They have the same range of abilities (including healing and crowd control) and statistics that you do, and have tactics custom-crafted for that encounter.
5e. Horde. You see a seemingly unending horde of enemies, and wade through it. Think of how the deep roads could have gone. Obviously, this is only really practical under certain circumstances (you'd need to be careful with the level design and creature types to not overwhelm the player, or their system), but in, say, a narrow corridor, with a type of enemy like spirits that don't need a lot of detail, it could be awesome.
5f. Pestering. Enemies use hit and run tactics, attack (with weak attacks) from unreachable locations, or something else like that, adding in another tactical element, but not posing any serious threat. Obviously, this would have to be used very sparingly (like, once or twice in the whole game).
6) Another fresh art style. I liked the highly-stylized look of DAII, because it made sense. Varric is narrating all the cool stuff he and his buddies did, so he exaggerates the number of backflips. It was already established that the DA world didn't really look like that, so it was cool. But some people got sick of it right away, and I think one game is enough, but I liked that DAII didn't just try to make the most 'realistic' elves and dragons it could, and instead really tried to make an artistic statement. I don't know what sort of style I'd like best, but I'd definitely like another sort of out-there style.
7) This is one of my big ones. Don't just reward us for taking the extreme. If I support NPC Alpha on issue 1, but not on issue 2, my nuanced approach shouldn't be punished. Perhaps the game could record the absolute value of each friendship/rivalry change, add them together, and use that value to determine when you get a gameplay bonus / can continue their romance / whatever.
8) More loose threads. I think the reason we were able to decide who got the crown in Orzammar, what happened to the werewolves, et cetera, in DA:O, and were railroaded so much in DAII is because once you made those decisions in DA:O, you were done with those areas (so they didn't need to do twice the work to reflect your choices in a later area). I think they should do this stuff more often. Have a bunch of NPCs you only meet once, and decide their fate. Determine the economic policy of the tevinter imperium, with regards to the manufacture of lumber, and then never have lumber actually be important ever again. I love having these sorts of choices, and I understand that you can't reflect all of them in your game (it'd be like making 2+ games), so... just let us make a lot of them, and plan it ahead of time so they don't need to be reflected upon in any huge way.
9) More text. Personally, if Bioware made another game like BGII, with 2d graphics so bad you can barely tell your character's head from their ass, and almost no voiced dialog, I'd buy it. But you won't do that, and that makes a lot of stuff more expensive. So, to get around that, give my PC a bunch of penpals.
9a. Reflect those loose threads in text. Have the elderly couple we met on the road go over to tevinter, and write us a letter about the lumber market over there. Despite what I said in 8, I love seeing my choices have consequences, and I think this is a great way for you to do that.
9b. Another good use would be for dialog considered not important enough to get voiced. If one of your writers has a great idea for a conversation between the PC and the Archduke of Adventuretown about how duck beaks look like dog faces, have him write a letter about it!
10) Create excuses for their to be a limit to the number of characters in our party, and use this to expand the story. Say we're on a mission to assassinate the Archduke of Adventuretown, because the Tevinter Lumberbarons want him dead. We have six companions, but for gameplay reasons we can only bring three. Well, we need to send one guy to create a distraction, another to serve as a lookout, and a third to serve as hostage to the Tevinter Lumberbaron, to ensure we don't double cross them. Now, we never actually need to see any of this other action, but you've just instantly multiplied the depth of this story, and our immersion, for next to no time/resource cost.
11) More important prestige classes. I'm not sure how feasible it is to try and balance this, but I'd love it if every prestige class really drastically changed how you played that class, irreversibly, and was focused more on passive abilities. DAII was a step in the right direction here. Ideas (not guaranteed to be even close to sane) follow
11a. Blood mage: you always cast from hit points (changing which stats are important), you can't be healed by normal means during combat. Maybe another talent gives you the ability to regain health based on a miniscule fraction of all damage dealt to blooded creatures around you (including team mates).
11b. Berserker. When in combat, every second away from enemies is somehow harmful (some sort of debuff), every time you inflict or suffer damage, your dps increases, but you suffer a slight decrease in defense. Maybe another talent allows you to do a deathless frenzy type thing for a bit, where you can ignore falling to 0 hit points for the next 10s.
11c. Duelists gain a substantial bonus to attack and defense, but every additional enemy targeting them subtracts from their defense, and they can't perform AOE attacks. They maybe gain a talent that severely lowers resistance to attacks from the pc, but increases resistance to all other sources of damage.
12) A middle ground on NPC customization. I never liked it when I reached a point in DA:O where team members ended up wearing the same thing, but I also didn't like being locked out of my companion's inventory. I think there's a middle ground. For every companion, give them something unique. If you recruit the Archduke of Adventuretown, he has a cape. The Tevinter Lumberbaron has a cowl. Merril never wears shoes. Asym the Nonconformist Duelist never wears a left pauldron. When you construct armor models, construct them in segments, then have them dissapear / be replaced by the companion's bits as fits. I hope that's doable.
13) Give us a sense of how the whole world works. A game that did this (and only a few other things) quite well was the NWN2 base campaign, where you started off in a village, moved to a garrison, then a port town, a city, recruited a merchant / lawyer, met interestingish characters from all walks of life, became a lord, and had a close relationship with the king. I'm not saying bioware needs to do all of this, but NWN2 managed to make Faerun seem like a real place in a way no other game (and there are a lot of games set there) ever did, and a little imitation is in order.
14) Abandon the kill xp system. I vastly prefer objective based xp.
15) Let us get involved in stuff completely unrelated to killing monsters. The mine was a step in the right direction, except in that your involvement was completely limited to the times when monster killing was called for.
16) More transparent game mechanics. I'm a number cruncher, and I like to be able to crunch numbers without going to the wiki / reading the game files on my computer.
17) Up front merchants. In DAII, I almost never spent any gold, because I was always afraid that later on there would be an even better item available. When I meet a merchant, I should be able to see all of his wares, including the ones I won't be able to use / purchase until the further on in the game, so that I can decide whether or not it's worth it to buy this item that will make this part of the game this much easier.
18) Greatly relaxed equipment requirements. The statistical requirements on armor in DAII and other games just impairs my freedom of choice in character building.
19) More (or all) items should improve with level up, or have stats that stay useful at every level (% stat boosts instead of integer bonuses, for example). I would just like this a great deal.
Anyway, just in case this is the only thread to survive for posterity, I shall now engage in some copying and pasting! Yay!
----
This is a very disorganized, largely thoughtless list.
1) More Qunari
2) A different side to the Qunari. Perhaps a female merchant? (I believe Sten says that's one of the role women fill in the Qun)
3) More non-combatant party memebers.
3a. A cook
3b. A scout
3c. A translator
3d. A scholar / researcher
3e. An archaeologist
3f. A cartographer
3g. An occultist
3h. A carpenter / crafter of some sort, responsible for creating barrels, crates, shelters, and misclelanious goods
3i. A man in charge of the draft teams that pull the carts laden with the barrels full of your loot
3j. A trader (such as Bodhan, but with more interaction) who trades with all the cities you visit.
3jI - After every dungeon, he acquires some useless (for you) junk, such as giant spider silk and Elvhan relics from a spider-infested ancient Elvhan ruin
3jII - Whenever you visit a city, he can sell his goods to various organizations in the city. You can unlock more by earring their trust in quests (ie, do a favor for an underground group of mages? They'll buy lyrium junk from you)
3jIII - You can also buy trade goods from cities, and sell them to other cities. Prices on these things fluctuate. You earn a share of the profits
4) A sense of legend, both for the current, and past PCs. I'd love if I heard some random NPC telling their children about the legendary adventures of The Warden Commander of Ferelden or Hawke, and an Alpha-Protocol like system where people comment on how you handled earlier missions would be great
5) More variety in the encounter type. I really liked the waves, because they were (to me) a fresh change of pace. I think Bioware can do more in this regard, and mix up
5a. Traditional. You see a group of enemies. You fight them.
5b. Waves. You see a group of enemies. You fight them. More show up.
5c. Ambushes. You don't see anything. You fight one or more waves of enemies.
5d. Adventurer vs Adventurer. The last time I saw this was in BG, and I loved it. You come across a group of other adventurers, have a conversation, and you duke it out. They have the same range of abilities (including healing and crowd control) and statistics that you do, and have tactics custom-crafted for that encounter.
5e. Horde. You see a seemingly unending horde of enemies, and wade through it. Think of how the deep roads could have gone. Obviously, this is only really practical under certain circumstances (you'd need to be careful with the level design and creature types to not overwhelm the player, or their system), but in, say, a narrow corridor, with a type of enemy like spirits that don't need a lot of detail, it could be awesome.
5f. Pestering. Enemies use hit and run tactics, attack (with weak attacks) from unreachable locations, or something else like that, adding in another tactical element, but not posing any serious threat. Obviously, this would have to be used very sparingly (like, once or twice in the whole game).
6) Another fresh art style. I liked the highly-stylized look of DAII, because it made sense. Varric is narrating all the cool stuff he and his buddies did, so he exaggerates the number of backflips. It was already established that the DA world didn't really look like that, so it was cool. But some people got sick of it right away, and I think one game is enough, but I liked that DAII didn't just try to make the most 'realistic' elves and dragons it could, and instead really tried to make an artistic statement. I don't know what sort of style I'd like best, but I'd definitely like another sort of out-there style.
7) This is one of my big ones. Don't just reward us for taking the extreme. If I support NPC Alpha on issue 1, but not on issue 2, my nuanced approach shouldn't be punished. Perhaps the game could record the absolute value of each friendship/rivalry change, add them together, and use that value to determine when you get a gameplay bonus / can continue their romance / whatever.
8) More loose threads. I think the reason we were able to decide who got the crown in Orzammar, what happened to the werewolves, et cetera, in DA:O, and were railroaded so much in DAII is because once you made those decisions in DA:O, you were done with those areas (so they didn't need to do twice the work to reflect your choices in a later area). I think they should do this stuff more often. Have a bunch of NPCs you only meet once, and decide their fate. Determine the economic policy of the tevinter imperium, with regards to the manufacture of lumber, and then never have lumber actually be important ever again. I love having these sorts of choices, and I understand that you can't reflect all of them in your game (it'd be like making 2+ games), so... just let us make a lot of them, and plan it ahead of time so they don't need to be reflected upon in any huge way.
9) More text. Personally, if Bioware made another game like BGII, with 2d graphics so bad you can barely tell your character's head from their ass, and almost no voiced dialog, I'd buy it. But you won't do that, and that makes a lot of stuff more expensive. So, to get around that, give my PC a bunch of penpals.
9a. Reflect those loose threads in text. Have the elderly couple we met on the road go over to tevinter, and write us a letter about the lumber market over there. Despite what I said in 8, I love seeing my choices have consequences, and I think this is a great way for you to do that.
9b. Another good use would be for dialog considered not important enough to get voiced. If one of your writers has a great idea for a conversation between the PC and the Archduke of Adventuretown about how duck beaks look like dog faces, have him write a letter about it!
10) Create excuses for their to be a limit to the number of characters in our party, and use this to expand the story. Say we're on a mission to assassinate the Archduke of Adventuretown, because the Tevinter Lumberbarons want him dead. We have six companions, but for gameplay reasons we can only bring three. Well, we need to send one guy to create a distraction, another to serve as a lookout, and a third to serve as hostage to the Tevinter Lumberbaron, to ensure we don't double cross them. Now, we never actually need to see any of this other action, but you've just instantly multiplied the depth of this story, and our immersion, for next to no time/resource cost.
11) More important prestige classes. I'm not sure how feasible it is to try and balance this, but I'd love it if every prestige class really drastically changed how you played that class, irreversibly, and was focused more on passive abilities. DAII was a step in the right direction here. Ideas (not guaranteed to be even close to sane) follow
11a. Blood mage: you always cast from hit points (changing which stats are important), you can't be healed by normal means during combat. Maybe another talent gives you the ability to regain health based on a miniscule fraction of all damage dealt to blooded creatures around you (including team mates).
11b. Berserker. When in combat, every second away from enemies is somehow harmful (some sort of debuff), every time you inflict or suffer damage, your dps increases, but you suffer a slight decrease in defense. Maybe another talent allows you to do a deathless frenzy type thing for a bit, where you can ignore falling to 0 hit points for the next 10s.
11c. Duelists gain a substantial bonus to attack and defense, but every additional enemy targeting them subtracts from their defense, and they can't perform AOE attacks. They maybe gain a talent that severely lowers resistance to attacks from the pc, but increases resistance to all other sources of damage.
12) A middle ground on NPC customization. I never liked it when I reached a point in DA:O where team members ended up wearing the same thing, but I also didn't like being locked out of my companion's inventory. I think there's a middle ground. For every companion, give them something unique. If you recruit the Archduke of Adventuretown, he has a cape. The Tevinter Lumberbaron has a cowl. Merril never wears shoes. Asym the Nonconformist Duelist never wears a left pauldron. When you construct armor models, construct them in segments, then have them dissapear / be replaced by the companion's bits as fits. I hope that's doable.
13) Give us a sense of how the whole world works. A game that did this (and only a few other things) quite well was the NWN2 base campaign, where you started off in a village, moved to a garrison, then a port town, a city, recruited a merchant / lawyer, met interestingish characters from all walks of life, became a lord, and had a close relationship with the king. I'm not saying bioware needs to do all of this, but NWN2 managed to make Faerun seem like a real place in a way no other game (and there are a lot of games set there) ever did, and a little imitation is in order.
14) Abandon the kill xp system. I vastly prefer objective based xp.
15) Let us get involved in stuff completely unrelated to killing monsters. The mine was a step in the right direction, except in that your involvement was completely limited to the times when monster killing was called for.
16) More transparent game mechanics. I'm a number cruncher, and I like to be able to crunch numbers without going to the wiki / reading the game files on my computer.
17) Up front merchants. In DAII, I almost never spent any gold, because I was always afraid that later on there would be an even better item available. When I meet a merchant, I should be able to see all of his wares, including the ones I won't be able to use / purchase until the further on in the game, so that I can decide whether or not it's worth it to buy this item that will make this part of the game this much easier.
18) Greatly relaxed equipment requirements. The statistical requirements on armor in DAII and other games just impairs my freedom of choice in character building.
19) More (or all) items should improve with level up, or have stats that stay useful at every level (% stat boosts instead of integer bonuses, for example). I would just like this a great deal.
