FF was great in DA:O. It makes sense with fireballs and the sort of chaotic magic you are throwing around. It was available in the highest difficulty of DA2, but I didn't use it in that game. They added in FF for swords and that was plainly just dumb when you have moronic AIs controlling your other companions half the time.
There was one particular scenario where I had one last enemy left with just a sliver of health. He would have been easily been dispatched by the character he was engaged without any thought in just a few seconds. Carver comes over and smacks him with his big two handed sword, taking out 3 other party members in the process. Nope. FF and auto-attacking melee companions with AI not smart enough to recognize who they are going to hit with each stroke is definitely a bad mix.
So I hope FF for player-activated abilities is in, but not if it also applies to AI controlled attacks unless they somehow made the AI smart enough not to wholesale slaughter your own party.