I had a couple hours free recently and decided to make a short jaunt into DA:O/DA:2 and it became quite apparent that in spite of it's clunky mechanics and incessant shuffling about, combat in DA:O was far more interesting (mind you I do enjoy the increased reactivity and pace of DA:2). So I had a wee think about it and decided to make a few suggestions that would hopefully find their way into DA:I.
The most interesting aspect of combat in DA:O lies in the symmetry your party shares with the mobs you encounter. For example, an enemy s&s hurlock behaves in a manner consistent with a tank character on your party, down to the skills it's able to use, as does a genlock archer or emissary etc etc. This is great for several reasons. Firstly, enemies have clear class distinctions and roles on the battlefield and the their recognizability gives the player an intuitive understanding of how to deal with enemy mobs based on their party configuration. You can expect that genlock archer to be more fragile whilst possessing more damage and thus order your rogue around to pick it off whilst your warrior ties up the s&s hurlock and so forth. Moreover, with such a large pool of talents, there's plenty of room to differentiate between enemy units that belong to the same class. Just off the top of my head, I distinctly recall fighting CC/damager emissaries, healing/buff mages and tanky arcane warriors and they all possess different priorities and possess different sets of tactics to defeat. For example I'd prioritize taking out a fireball throwing hurlock far above a healing mage (especially if I've got enough damage to get through those heals) and attempt to dispel/avoid an arcane warrior till the last rather than focus on him and soak up the mob's full dps etc. Ultimately, it keeps combat fresh and interesting by matching up different varieties of units in different scenarios.
In contrast, with the exception of bosses, DA:2 has a roughly a mere 4 enemy types (basic throw away grunts (particularly egregious as they have no purpose save to provide minuscule dps and be cut down like chaff, stealth rogues, buffing commanders and mages.) who are largely identical 1 trick ponies. Consider a raider rogue and the rage demon in DA:2, both fulfill the same role in their rosters by doing the exact same thing, stealth, backstab, rinse and repeat. It's a far cry from the differentiation between archery rogues, stealth based backstab rogues and fire based area denial and ability to spawn anywhere that made rage demons hell for an overextended party in DA:O. As a side note regarding enemy classes, i personally feel that enemy mages are horribly designed, they've got too much health, their constant teleporting seriously negates prioritizing and positioning and it feels really odd that every mage in kirkwall with the exception of Hawke and company knows the same four or five spells that your party, somehow, never gets access to.
That leaves me with set pieces. In DA:O, every other battle feels like some sort of well executed set piece or puzzle you have to figure out and the process of doing so is incredibly fun. I've had moments of oh sh*t, especially in my first playthrough when that emissary in the wilds fireballed my team and led me right into a line of traps. As an example of a puzzle piece, I remember pausing when I encountered a roomful of archers behind several grease slick to think 'alright I've got characters X with abilities Y, now how do I use what I have to deal with this situation'. Sadly these elements are largely lost in DA:2 where enemies spawn in throwaway deathballs from every single direction. On the subject of enemy spawns in the midst of battle, I think they should be reserved for certain set pieces, more often than not, tactics are much more important and viable when you have the ability to scout out the entirety of the opposition and their positioning and react accordingly. Also, an enemy spawn should enter the battlefield from a logical angle, like a side street or alleyway, not simply leap down from the rooftops. Whilst positionally defying spawns did occur in DA:O, they were a unique racial attribute of demons/spiders which made them interesting to fight, streamlining every faction into having the same attributes really detracts from the game.
Anyhow, that's just my two cents, I apologize for wall of text. Feel free to add anything.
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