103 réponses à ce sujet

[Nokturnal Lex]

Balek-Vriege wrote...

Things like character development, class variation etc. are all secondary and were never the main focus of RPGs until games like Oblivion and MMORPGs. I find the criticism of character developments and "useless" skills to be incorrect. If anything, DAs skills/talents work much like and are most similar to Guildwars skills.

Are there some talent lines which are better based on what character you wish to build? Of course. Are a lot of lines useless? No, they just have different fuctions some more situational than others. Do some builds become much less optimal than others on harder difficulties? Of course, but Dragon Age like many others were designed to be played on normal mode and hard or higher is meant to give challenge. If you could go through nightmare mode easily with any build it wouldn't be a nightmare mode would it?

It's the same thing as someone saying the game is way too easy, characters are overpowered and no tactics are needed, but then we find out the person was playing on the easiest mode. Duh. Also as long as a type of play is playable and functions well it's fine. This isn't a multiplayer game where balance is actually needed between classes and sometimes I think there shouldn't be for singleplayer games. Lets face it if magic were a reality, a guy with a gun would be much less powerful than a guy who could use magical shields and fling fireballs at will.

What I think a lot of the complaints about DA seem to miss is the quality of the storyline, dialogue options and the writing which to me makes a true RPG and was a big focus for this game. It's definately been a while since I have seen dialogue options and story arcs in a game that plan for just about every eventuality, origin, class and train of thought.

How many times did people play a class (Druids ) in the NWN series or try to be evil but then found out there was no course of action to express your character? Or worse yet the RPG's writing would force you to play counter to your class/playstyle and totally break immersion? Well not only does DA give great options, but the varying choices actually change the circumstances of the storyline and NPC reaction in fairly substantial ways.

What would have made this all better was voice acting for the PC, but I think we would have a third of the dialogue options and the game would most likely not be out right now. So I personally can give up voice acting and leave it to that other awsome Bioware RPG Mass Effect where two voice actors are needed for Male/Female Shepard and only three or so "scripts" to voice.

Did you seriously just compare this game's combat abilities to Guild Wars? Guild Wars in my opinion had a very unique combat system where you were only able to bring a certain number of skills into combat and also combine a big number of classes together to form any combo you want. A lot of customization and the ability to be somewhat unique in your choices. The only way to be really unique in DA:O is to make a mage and try some crazy combo of spells noone would ever use.

(I remember being one of the few Mesmer Monks on my server when GW first came out, good god was it fun. Instead of direct dmg, you use your foe's attacks against them and heal yourself, was awesome)

And your referrence to people trying to be evil druids. It's called Role Playing Game for a reason, but even still I managed to make a Paladin/Druid without using any sort of cheat in NWN2. i used in-game actions to allow myself to combine Plate Protection with Druid spells. But still i didn't really like NWN2, still think BG2 was best game bioware ever made.

Modifié par Nokturnal Lex, 20 décembre 2009 - 06:11 .

[Pocketgb]

Balek-Vriege wrote...

Are there some talent lines which are better based on what character you wish to build? Of course. Are a lot of lines useless? No, they just have different fuctions some more situational than others. Do some builds become much less optimal than others on harder difficulties? Of course, but Dragon Age like many others were designed to be played on normal mode and hard or higher is meant to give challenge. If you could go through nightmare mode easily with any build it wouldn't be a nightmare mode would it?

It's hard to compare Dragon Age to Guild Wars since Rogues and Wars in DA have no way near the amount of flexibility a mage can choose to build for.

Not only that, but DA's "problems" are largely through it being a completely new system. GW's problems are all deliberate acts of dumbing down the game and going completely against what made it unique in the first place.

[SleeplessInSigil]

whtnyte-raernst wrote...

I don't recall any hating until Sleepless came in.
I thought we were having a very reasonable discussion on various skill aspects of Dragon Age as compared to other general RPG type games.

There are not many TACTICAL RPG's to compare to, so the discussion wound around to a few ACTION RPGs. There's no hate.
I enjoy Dragon Age, and I've played through it several times.

It's just all these threads going on and on about how this and that is "wrong" with Dragon Age as if there was anything better available! Not even the people who start those overly negative threads could come up with any ideas that will please all the posters on this forum alone, nevermind seeing those ideas to production and satisfying the entire player base.

DA's the best fantasy CRPG we currently have, and the only other games that could match or surpass it (in scope, quality, budget, etc) would be if you scratched "fantasy" and included sci-fi such as Fallout 3, Mass Effect [2] and Final Fantasy XIII, or broadened the time range to count Oblivion and The Witcher as well.

So instead of going on about what's "wrong" as if there was a choice (except between paying for it or pirating it, because we all know everyone will play it) why don't we worry about what can be fixed, for patches, Expansions and sequels? 

[rubels1986]

Balek-Vriege wrote...

Things like character development, class variation etc. are all secondary and were never the main focus of RPGs until games like Oblivion and MMORPGs. I find the criticism of character developments and "useless" skills to be incorrect. If anything, DAs skills/talents work much like and are most similar to Guildwars skills.

Are there some talent lines which are better based on what character you wish to build? Of course. Are a lot of lines useless? No, they just have different fuctions some more situational than others. Do some builds become much less optimal than others on harder difficulties? Of course, but Dragon Age like many others were designed to be played on normal mode and hard or higher is meant to give challenge. If you could go through nightmare mode easily with any build it wouldn't be a nightmare mode would it?

It's the same thing as someone saying the game is way too easy, characters are overpowered and no tactics are needed, but then we find out the person was playing on the easiest mode. Duh. Also as long as a type of play is playable and functions well it's fine. This isn't a multiplayer game where balance is actually needed between classes and sometimes I think there shouldn't be for singleplayer games. Lets face it if magic were a reality, a guy with a gun would be much less powerful than a guy who could use magical shields and fling fireballs at will.

What I think a lot of the complaints about DA seem to miss is the quality of the storyline, dialogue options and the writing which to me makes a true RPG and was a big focus for this game. It's definately been a while since I have seen dialogue options and story arcs in a game that plan for just about every eventuality, origin, class and train of thought.

How many times did people play a class (Druids ) in the NWN series or try to be evil but then found out there was no course of action to express your character? Or worse yet the RPG's writing would force you to play counter to your class/playstyle and totally break immersion? Well not only does DA give great options, but the varying choices actually change the circumstances of the storyline and NPC reaction in fairly substantial ways.

What would have made this all better was voice acting for the PC, but I think we would have a third of the dialogue options and the game would most likely not be out right now. So I personally can give up voice acting and leave it to that other awsome Bioware RPG Mass Effect where two voice actors are needed for Male/Female Shepard and only three or so "scripts" to voice.

Balance is important in singleplayer to a lot of people especially when using this combat system.
BG series ( the second one mostly) had very good variation in races/classes/weapons and so forth,
that´s why i expected a lot more from bioware, whom had more to work with than when doing BG series.
The issue lies that the trees are so unbalanced the 4 "building stones" this system uses
DPS/tank/healing/disabling has huge differences in between talent trees that are supposed to fill the same shoe.
Some talents are useless or so close to it while others are way to good
but i don´t want to give away spoilers, nothing to argue against.
If you´re using the "best" tactics in every given moment the game
becomes easy but getting there is the though part.
So getting there means you find out how the talent trees are hugely
imbalanced so that some trees are just not fun at all to me.
Not just imbalanced but often very illogical.
Character creation and talent/skill/spell advancement is very important when
talking about RPG´s, it´s one of the building stones,
Do you think most people that play WoW or diablo play those games for the story?
DA tries to attract many of those people but in my opinion fails to deliever.

Modifié par rubels1986, 20 décembre 2009 - 06:39 .

[VanDraegon]

Nokturnal Lex wrote...

Hell I can think up off the top of my head tons of ways to make this game better, but it seems Bioware definitely hasn'tevolved since BG2. BG2 was an awesome game and it seems that even though the graphics have gotten better the gameplay hasn't. The story was decent I'll give them that, but judging it on combat alone it was horrible.

Thankfully Bioware gave you a Toolset to use. Have at it and let us judge your work if you have all the answers on making the best game.

[rubels1986]

.

Modifié par rubels1986, 20 décembre 2009 - 06:38 .

[Balek-Vriege]

Nokturnal Lex wrote...

Did you seriously just compare this game's combat abilities to Guild Wars? Guild Wars in my opinion had a very unique combat system where you were only able to bring a certain number of skills into combat and also combine a big number of classes together to form any combo you want. A lot of customization and the ability to be somewhat unique in your choices. The only way to be really unique in DA:O is to make a mage and try some crazy combo of spells noone would ever use.

(I remember being one of the few Mesmer Monks on my server when GW first came out, good god was it fun. Instead of direct dmg, you use your foe's attacks against them and heal yourself, was awesome)

And your referrence to people trying to be evil druids. It's called Role Playing Game for a reason, but even still I managed to make a Paladin/Druid without using any sort of cheat in NWN2. i used in-game actions to allow myself to combine Plate Protection with Druid spells. But still i didn't really like NWN2, still think BG2 was best game bioware ever made.

I did seriously compare DA talents/spells to GW skills, not DA combat and gameplay mechanics to GW' combat and gameplay mechanics. If you look at a lot of the DA talents and spells, you will notice they have similar functions in DA as they do in GW, although their similarities end at function. My point was that DA talents/spells are closest to GWs in my experience, but not the same.  I do wish Arcane Echo, Empathy and Spiteful Spirit type skills were in DA. 

As for my second point (I didn't mean specifically evil druids, but mainly some classes, alignments and playtyles). There's a difference between role playing (For example pen & paper RPGs with human interaction and your character being catered to is limited only by human imagination) and a CRPG (where your playing in a virtual enviroment where your character's class etc is catered to by what is programmed within). Of course I could imagine that NPCs are catering to my character and know my character is an "evil druid" regardless of them refering to him/her like a Paladin of noble blood, but if it didn't happen in the game, it didn't happen and has no effect on what I just experienced.

If I had my way, RPG dialogue would constantly have class, alignment, influence, NPC interaction, plot, background and stat/skill checks to offer as many dialogue choices that relate to the character being played. Fortunately Dragon Age does this better than even the BG series, but I still think there's a long ways to go.
　

rubels1986 wrote...

Balance is important in singleplayer to a lot of people especially when using this combat system.
BG series ( the second one mostly) had very good variation in races/classes/weapons and so forth,
that´s why i expected a lot more from bioware, whom had more to work with than when doing BG series.
The issue lies that the trees are so unbalanced the 4 "building stones" this system uses
DPS/tank/healing/disabling has huge differences in between talent trees that are supposed to fill the same shoe.
Some talents are useless or so close to it while others are way to good
but i don´t want to give away spoilers, nothing to argue against.
If you´re using the "best" tactics in every given moment the game
becomes easy but getting there is the though part.
So getting there means you find out how the talent trees are hugely
imbalanced so that some trees are just not fun at all to me.
Not just imbalanced but often very illogical.
Character creation and talent/skill/spell advancement is very important when
talking about RPG´s, it´s one of the building stones,
Do you think most people that play WoW or diablo play those games for the story?
DA tries to attract many of those people but in my opinion fails to deliever.

Remember even though DA does try to attract Diablo/WoW players, Bioware's main focus is obviously storyline just as Mass Effect is storyline driven but in a different fashion.  Dragon Age is more akin to Baldur's Gate and Fallout than Diablo which has always been an Action-RPG/Dungeon Crawler and WoW being an MMO which isn't actually an RPG like many other MMORPGs aren't. To disregard the storyline, dialogue options or simply put, the great role playing aspects of Dragon Age and instead judge the game based off of elements shared in many genres is not judging Dragon Age appropriately for what it is. Diablo and expecially MMOs do not offer the type of in-depth roleplaying and character interaction as Baldur's Gate 1&2, Fallout 1&2 and Planescape did and which now DA offers. The great thing about the Diablo series is the epic, well written plot combined with great action. An RPG in its truest form? Not really.

MMOs are not RPGs, they're just glorified chat rooms with a perpetual, repetitative and endless mini games inside of it simulating singleplayer games in some fashion. *ducks*
As for talents, I do agree about "getting" there and the talent system requiring you to take trees towards getting that great sounding spell/talent at first, then finding it to be lackluster in practice when gained. Unfortunately descriptions are so general they mislead people to an extent (Earthquake is a good example) leading to character frustration and rerolling.

Other than that as long as a build in a singleplayer game can be successful at completing all aspects of the game and fullfill its intended function on any difficulty, further balancing doesn't matter. If Dragon Age had multiplayer or was an MMO it would matter because real people are picky about who they adventure with.  If it's really an issue, we have the toolset to fix old skills and add new ones if developers don't.

Modifié par Balek-Vriege, 20 décembre 2009 - 07:53 .

[Rainen89]

"I like how you said that she's changing everything! And how she's so lazy she's doing nothing!"

[rubels1986]

Balek-Vriege wrote...

Nokturnal Lex wrote...

Did you seriously just compare this game's combat abilities to Guild Wars? Guild Wars in my opinion had a very unique combat system where you were only able to bring a certain number of skills into combat and also combine a big number of classes together to form any combo you want. A lot of customization and the ability to be somewhat unique in your choices. The only way to be really unique in DA:O is to make a mage and try some crazy combo of spells noone would ever use.

(I remember being one of the few Mesmer Monks on my server when GW first came out, good god was it fun. Instead of direct dmg, you use your foe's attacks against them and heal yourself, was awesome)

And your referrence to people trying to be evil druids. It's called Role Playing Game for a reason, but even still I managed to make a Paladin/Druid without using any sort of cheat in NWN2. i used in-game actions to allow myself to combine Plate Protection with Druid spells. But still i didn't really like NWN2, still think BG2 was best game bioware ever made.

I did seriously compare DA talents/spells to GW skills, not DA combat and gameplay mechanics to GW' combat and gameplay mechanics. If you look at a lot of the DA talents and spells, you will notice they have similar functions in DA as they do in GW, although their similarities end at function. My point was that DA talents/spells are closest to GWs in my experience, but not the same.  I do wish Arcane Echo, Empathy and Spiteful Spirit type skills were in DA. 

As for my second point (I didn't mean specifically evil druids, but mainly some classes, alignments and playtyles). There's a difference between role playing (For example pen & paper RPGs with human interaction and your character being catered to is limited only by human imagination) and a CRPG (where your playing in a virtual enviroment where your character's class etc is catered to by what is programmed within). Of course I could imagine that NPCs are catering to my character and know my character is an "evil druid" regardless of them refering to him/her like a Paladin of noble blood, but if it didn't happen in the game, it didn't happen and has no effect on what I just experienced.

If I had my way, RPG dialogue would constantly have class, alignment, influence, NPC interaction, plot, background and stat/skill checks to offer as many dialogue choices that relate to the character being played. Fortunately Dragon Age does this better than even the BG series, but I still think there's a long ways to go.
　

rubels1986 wrote...

Balance is important in singleplayer to a lot of people especially when using this combat system.
BG series ( the second one mostly) had very good variation in races/classes/weapons and so forth,
that´s why i expected a lot more from bioware, whom had more to work with than when doing BG series.
The issue lies that the trees are so unbalanced the 4 "building stones" this system uses
DPS/tank/healing/disabling has huge differences in between talent trees that are supposed to fill the same shoe.
Some talents are useless or so close to it while others are way to good
but i don´t want to give away spoilers, nothing to argue against.
If you´re using the "best" tactics in every given moment the game
becomes easy but getting there is the though part.
So getting there means you find out how the talent trees are hugely
imbalanced so that some trees are just not fun at all to me.
Not just imbalanced but often very illogical.
Character creation and talent/skill/spell advancement is very important when
talking about RPG´s, it´s one of the building stones,
Do you think most people that play WoW or diablo play those games for the story?
DA tries to attract many of those people but in my opinion fails to deliever.

Remember even though DA does try to attract Diablo/WoW players, Bioware's main focus is obviously storyline just as Mass Effect is storyline driven but in a different fashion.  Dragon Age is more akin to Baldur's Gate and Fallout than Diablo which has always been an Action-RPG/Dungeon Crawler and WoW being an MMO which isn't actually an RPG like many other MMORPGs aren't. To disregard the storyline, dialogue options or simply put, the great role playing aspects of Dragon Age and instead judge the game based off of elements shared in many genres is not judging Dragon Age appropriately for what it is. Diablo and expecially MMOs do not offer the type of in-depth roleplaying and character interaction as Baldur's Gate 1&2, Fallout 1&2 and Planescape did and which now DA offers. The great thing about the Diablo series is the epic, well written plot combined with great action. An RPG in its truest form? Not really.

MMOs are not RPGs, they're just glorified chat rooms with a perpetual, repetitative and endless mini games inside of it simulating singleplayer games in some fashion. *ducks*
As for talents, I do agree about "getting" there and the talent system requiring you to take trees towards getting that great sounding spell/talent at first, then finding it to be lackluster in practice when gained. Unfortunately descriptions are so general they mislead people to an extent (Earthquake is a good example) leading to character frustration and rerolling.

Other than that as long as a build in a singleplayer game can be successful at completing all aspects of the game and fullfill its intended function on any difficulty, further balancing doesn't matter. If Dragon Age had multiplayer or was an MMO it would matter because real people are picky about who they adventure with.  If it's really an issue, we have the toolset to fix old skills and add new ones if developers don't.

I know WoW and diablo series are mmorpg / action rpg but the reason
why those two games been so successfull is the very strong combat system / talents / skills etc.
I think DA is sending a double message by having a very action orianted game
one would think they had developed better trees for talents/skills.
Balance matters less in games without the dps/healing/tank/disabling system but with this
system characters "need" on of those shoes to fill,
otherwise being very suboptimal, close to not needed.
It´s not a small difference either between classes supposed to fill the same slot.
That´s why mages are strong in this game because they can fill all of those slots
except for maybe tanking which makes for better varation / replayability.
While archers can´t fill any of those slots and dual wield is just better
cleary better than two hander,
You can´t say that well just because the story is good the combat will be suffering,
obviously they had done a system for this it´s just the talent trees, specializations, skills
and attribute system that´s poorly executed.
Like a dual wield character is a type of play so is archery or two handed.
To me the story is far from that good to let the other parts becomes suffering,
as you said it is has a lot of similarities to the BG series.
DA has not learned from the BG series flaws and the
talent system is not what it could have been.

Modifié par rubels1986, 20 décembre 2009 - 08:33 .

[rubels1986]

double post, sorry.

Modifié par rubels1986, 20 décembre 2009 - 08:24 .

[blazin130791]

i would like to see a wider choice of speciliations, more classes and more talents, it would definlty make the game more re-playable. maybe someone will make a mod.

[Impresario]

After you've put in enough time w/ this game it becomes obvious what's wrong w/ it. Mainstreaming--they played it safe and the result is a generic, flaccid RPG that will appeal to the masses. It has no soul, but it will sell well. Welcome to the world of the bottom line where the pencil pushers either expressly or implicitly dictate the final product. I venture that there are members on the development team that aren't thrilled w/ the resulting game but I imagine that there was a lot of pressure placed on them which co-opted their judgment. The sad thing is that instead of raising the bar for RPG's they've lowered it.

[Arcaia]

I'm probably going to get shot for this, but somehow I think that due to the lack of diversity of talents/spells gives the game a certain amount of simplicity. I don't have to spend hours and hours searching through every skill tree, seeing exactly what does what and how I can use it. In fact, considering the 20 levels your character can get, I'm currently struggling to get every talent I want for my rogue (and that means giving up entirely on the Whirlwind line) since I took the duelist specialisation.

Sure, it would have been nice to see the archers have a better skill tree, and it's true that certain spells are better than others (Cone of Cold, for example-though you have to use it correctly). But those are problems that don't bother me, I'm too busy having fun.

Maybe people who criticise games as if all the qualities of the game are non-existent are, in fact, asking too much of the game in the first place. I've never played BG, but from what I have played in the past, I know it's best not to let your gaming experience to colour your vision. And I think that though DA has many flaws, it is something that can be built upon, that there are basics there that are solid.

[ZeroMystic]

I briefly skimmed through this topic and I am disgusted with people's replies.

Why can't you people ever just leave something that someone says be even if you disagree with it. and just stay on topic.

Seriously every time someone says something negative about dragon age origins, all of a sudden everyone swarms into the topic to flood it with un-neccessary crap and pointless comparisons that have absolutely nothing to do with anything or the topic.

For example The topic creator made a point on his views about Dragon Age Origins
Therefore that means there should be no reply in this thread at all bringing up FRIGGING BALDUR'S GATE or any other game.

The only replies that need to be in here are Dragon age origins and things that have to do with dragon age origins.

Baldur's Gate is not frigging dragon age and people need to stop throwing BG in people's faces everytime someone brings up a problem about Dragon Age Origins as a comparison.

Another classic thing people are doing is start saying how long have you played and bringing that up which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what someone says they dislike about Dragon Age Origins.

You people are pathetic!

Modifié par ZeroMystic, 20 décembre 2009 - 09:42 .

[Rainen89]

ZeroMystic wrote...
You people are pathetic!

What do you mean, YOU people?

[ZeroMystic]

What do you mean, YOU people?

Stop being stupid because you full well know what that statement means and who it's being applied to

Constantly butching and rewording what people say is the root of all the mis-information and massive comprehension problems on this forum. If people cannot quote everything fully, don't quote any part of it. Because all that does is create trouble and everyone knows that.

Modifié par ZeroMystic, 20 décembre 2009 - 09:55 .

[Rainen89]

Okay, then allow me to be serious. The OP comes on a forum about a game for Dragon age origins and makes a statement that easy 90% of the population (on this forum.) disagree with. Therefore they're vocalizing their opinion. People bringing up other games DOES have a correlation to the initial post and discussion, especially when the OP makes claims that DAO is ripped from Nwn2 and various other games. Not to mention relating something is a manner of putting something in perspective. The final point being that expecting everyone to rally/agree with everything someone posted about how horrible/bad/fail/you this game is, is just silly when we're on a forum spending time/energy reading/reminiscing about this game and how much we liked it. It's like going to a concert then yelling as loud as you can, "YOU GUYS SUCK!, Lawl" You really think everyone's going to immediately agree with you?

[Bryy_Miller]

Creature 1 wrote...

Majonese wrote...
The most important aspect of role playing game is character development. This game has none of that. You can put few silly points to strength or even get some amazingly useless skills like poison making or some useless combat skill.

That is "character developement"?  I do not think it means what you think it means. 

DA:O has lots of character developement, thus the love/hate relationship between many players and several different characters.  

Seriously, DA is the first RPG where I actually role-played.

[ZeroMystic]

Rainen89,



Let me bring you up to par on some things here you are either ignoring or do not know, every single thing you just typed up means nothing and has nothing to do with anything.

So far every single person on this site does not seem to think there is anything wrong with coming into every topic I make, and pisses and moans about how I should shut up and no one agrees with me blah blah blah.....



Now that I come into this and do what they did to me because I have an opionon I get someoen like you trying to say that's not ok for me to have my own opinion and say the exact same things to them as they do to me.



Everyone says it's perfecly fine for people to do that in my topics, so I have the same liberties as them. I am doing nothing different than everyone else on this forum so what's the problem?



So you cannot get on me and no one else for me doing the same things as everyone else.



Sorry doesn't work like that.

[arcshine7]

Well, I can appreciate the game for what it's delivered and what it promises to deliver in the future with possible sequels/DLC, and be totally fine with that. I've played this game with as much fervor as I did WoW, before I quit it two years ago. This game doesn't need to have 12 character classes with 30 skills to choose from. Yes, that may make it more basic that what some gamers want, but sometimes taking out all the complication and tedium with trying to derive the exact, perfect build and worrying about stats allows you to enjoy something like a compelling storyline, which most newer games are sadly lacking. I'd trade having "useless combat skills" to having a useless story arc with characters I could give a crap less about anyday.

[Amioran]

OMG, this forum is so full of idiots.



Starting from people that whine because Rogue are weak when they are one of the most powerful classes, continuing with people whining about Mage being overpowered when they only choose the best combination of spells possible to be exactly that, overpowered, passing from people that cry because either easy is difficult because they don't either know how to play and finishing with those that say half the talents/spells are useless only because they don't have neither an idead on how to use them and just repeat what they hear from others.



Then there's the story of the Arcane Warrior that can win the game solo with people that just chunk one potion after the other or people that play nightmare solo stealthing all the times and whining because they do stupid things and they blame the game for their own stupidity.



Mon Dieu, what a plague is idiocy, it spreads more than the worser malady and keep making children.

[kingthrall]

its funny how myth 2 is 11 years old and still is a better game. Try it out and i guarantee with the patches and the textures patch that has been introduced it is the best game made

[VanDraegon]

kingthrall wrote...

its funny how myth 2 is 11 years old and still is a better game.

In your opinion of course. Good luck getting any concensus though.

[orpheus333]

When it comes to a direct comparison like with BG2 the majority of peoples points i count as nostalgia. BG2 had significantly less choice throughout the game when it came to character progression other than arcane/divine spell selection. Like DA you had your basic classes. Then you had a significant amount of kits at character creation after this you had nothing. No variety in character progression and indeed no choice. Levels were simply about watching HP and THAC0 increase (or decrease). This is just a flaw in the AD&D game mechanics. When it comes to the variety of equipment i don;t particularly see any difference. You have a large number of named items available, and all have a great deal of usability. The models could be more varied for a game of late 2009.



In comparisons of character development, in mechanics terms anyway, BG2 doesn;t hold a candle to NWN2 let alone DA.



PC development on the story front is lacking alot. In BG2 especially you felt a significant change in your PC at various points the story was personal as well as world shattering and thats what made BG2 so good. DA has elements of this but the Origins while setting the stage for a character. (I often react when playing DA according to elements within my origin) There is no significant personal conflict there and while the party members are the best i have talked to in any RPG upto now. Without an emotional investment and progression in my own character I can't be expected to care to much about others within the game.

[Sidney]

Arcaia wrote...

Sure, it would have been nice to see the archers have a better skill tree, and it's true that certain spells are better than others (Cone of Cold, for example-though you have to use it correctly). But those are problems that don't bother me, I'm too busy having fun.

There are always better and worse skills and spells. I mean anyone want to make a big stand for "Ghoul Touch" in BG2 - "Hey great  a mage spells that requires melee combat success! Sign me up! and I'm not sure I ever cast Clairvoyance either. Yes Cone of Cold rocks but, good. I need something that works, should all mage spells be ineffective?

As for classes, you have 3 basic classes but out of those classes you can make Assasins, Bards, Rangers, Clerics, Wizards, Thieves, Warriors, Paladins (call them Templars if you want), Berserkers and so on. You can't multi-class per se but I can be a stealing mage or a potion making warrior. There are limits but there are always limits in any "system" because the system has some rules. I'm not sure it makes the game a lot less of a roleplaying game that you can't be a fighter/mage/thief in name and it seems rather juvenile to reject something because you can't just do anything you want to do.