Let's start with a simple ground rule for developers making a 3rd (!!!) installment of the game:
If something was working in previous games, don't touch it.
And for the love of what is holy, don't cut it completely out.
Hearing this was the game "Bioware always wanted to make" feels kind of hilarious.
- Driver support
- Hitching and frame rate issues in cutscenes
- Feedback on keyboard and mouse controls
- General user interface optimizations for PC
1) UI and controls
- Where is click-to-move?
When you make a console-hyped game, this does not mean that PC controls have to get shafted completely.
Please, learn from Dark Souls 1 and never, never dumb down the PC controls. There is a reason people still play it on PC instead of the TV boxes, and mostly that is, exactly, more tunable graphics and CONTROLS.
- Inability to rebind most of controls
* Not able to re-bind LMB
* Not able to re-bind additional mouse buttons, including scroll (as submitted by Brogan)
In previous games pressing LMB while holding RMB would result in moving forward, so you could move with just your mouse while rotating camera around as needed. Not working anymore, and results in autoattack swing. Took quite some time to get used to.
- Where is click-to-loot?
Right clicking on "Loot" does not move character to pick it.
Really? I have to ask again, REALLY? I have to manually walk right next to it to interact every single time. This feels so clunky I cannot believe nobody at Bioware playtested this? And thought it is fine? In DAO you could have clicked on interactable item half map away and have your character conveniently walk up to it and use/loot it. Why this was taken out?
- Spammable "Search" button has to go away
Please. Whoever thought it was clever idea to bind a chore button for the player to keep pushing like a test lab hamster every cooldown is completely off the charts. Delete this in the very first patch and never, ever make it again. Most dumb feature ever implemented. Or at LEAST make it a TOGGLE button.
Even console players have voiced their grand rant in topics you can find right next to this one, that spamming "Search" button by clicking a thumb stick is a chore and extremely unpractical. Either way, please get rid of this feature or change it completely.
- Targeting enemies is a chore
Barely noticeable mouse cursor and small pimp on currently targeted enemy makes combat even more chaotic and less fun if that was even possible. What happened to selection circles under the enemy? They were working just fine. No, going for minimalistic UI does not make the game look better, it makes it more of a mess, when features like feedback locators get removed.
- Cannot walk on PC anymore? (submitted by MuerteLegend)
Where is the switchable control to Run/Walk? What bad has it done to being removed?
2) Character creation
- Hairstyles... seriously
Guys, it does not take rocket science to open up nexusmods and see, that the most downloaded and endorsed mods of all time is hairstyles. People like to tune their character's hair. It is normal. What is not normal, is having 7 out of 10 female hairstyles as bobcuts. It feels like someone in development team did not receive enough manhandling during his army days, and is now trying to atone for it. Please stop doing that, and hire a developer to code the hair support. It cannot be that hard.
- Face Presets..
I understand you guys are moving away from Barbie styled pretty faces. Still, this does not mean we have to play ugliest females possible in the world. Takes around 2 hours to make them less ugly, barely. And even then all Human females look like oversized Dwarves with locator ears. At least give us an OPTION to pick a pretty or ugly preset.
- Brow color?
For the virgins in design team, unaware how females look like, I will let you on a secret. No, not all blondes have white brows. Please let us choose hair color and brow color separately, this was working fine before, why remove it?
3) Combat
- NO MORE TACTICS??? You've got to freaking kidding me.
Far as I see this is the complaint nr.1 in the forums right next to the AI. This allowed us to tune the exact style of play for an uncontrolled party member. It was a popular, very well implemented and perfectly working feature. By whose bright decision was this cut out?
The problem of tactics would have felt less painful if not the next issue, which is
- Terrible companion combat AI
Warriors leave their party to fend off for themselves and go somewhere else to hit 1 creep, mages and archers running into melee range Rambo-style, every single possible stupid move your companions can do - they do it. Which basically makes a micromanagement of a party a requirement and a chore.
- "Tactical" overview needs to be more... tactical
So, how exactly is it different from a glorified zoom-out of DAO, and what actually makes it, you know, "tactical"?
Cannot queue actions there like in Neverwinter?
Cannot normally mouselook around there, locked into dumbed down top view, which is very limited?
Absense of normal mouselook in "tactical" overview results in most of the time not even able to see objects high up (like rifts) or distant ranged enemies standing bit away.
Fun fact, if you switch completely to tactical overview and disable most of your party members abilities, they start acting more intelligent.
- So, uh, auto-attacks are gone.. again?
I understand that you wanted console players to mash something on their joystick (pun intended), but please, for the love of what is holy, give us an OPTION to turn it on or off finally and just drop the issue.
So those of us with no joystick can, you know, focus on TACTICAL aspect of battle instead of having to mash the auto-attack button. Please.
- I cannot click to walk to an enemy?
Basically, with the absense of auto-attacks and click-to-move, playing a melee character turns out to be.. not fun at all.
You have to manually approach every enemy with movement keys and make sure you face it properly. If you did not hit "Tab" to target it...
Basically, this is resulting in half the time your warrior or rogue hitting empty air.
- Health management? No health regen, potion limit and healing magic??!
Having to abruptly stop your exploration and adventures and go to a camp to restock First Aid kits... errr... Health potions EVERY 5 fights is the most hilarious experience ever. Whoever thought this is a good idea in an OPEN WORLD EXPLORATION GAME.. it is not. It is borderline stupid limitation, sorry.
I mean, can you imagine Skyrim with 5 heal potions limit? How would that make an exploration feel? Bad? Yes, so why the hell did *you* guys do it?
And the problem of potions would not be so bad, if we did not have the completely crazy and immersion-breaking
4) Balance
- Respawns parachuting from the sky every 5 seconds
This is completely immersion-breaking. Since you have to go back to your camp to restock the potions, when you are trying to backtrack to those, you get previously defeated enemies respawn and drop on your head right out of thin air.
Overall balancing of forward camps is terrible, trying to tie player's legs to a console-like "restore point", which is a horrible experience immersion-wise.
This definitely needs balancing, as in, more time between respawns. Maybe on zone revisits in more of a bearable time, but parachuting respawns right on top of player is plain.. bad.
5) Story and characters
- So, 5 minutes after the Chosen One had closed the Rift she is immediately given Grand Inquisitor rank without anyone asking her or even commenting on her abilities?
- From sprawling dialogs in "Planescape: Torment" we essentially coming down to 2-3 responses supportable by any primate?
"Uhhuuh"
"Buuhuh"
"Naaaah"
I guess it was too much hope to ever see an experience of expanding dialogues by noticing hidden emotions, or things out of the initial glance.
6) Game world
I have to note an incredible work done by world/level developers and artists - the game world is simply breathtaking, and is done very very well.
That being said, their great work simply drowns under the glaring game problems listed above, as it is really hard to enjoy it with clunky controls and obscene respawns every 1 minute which forces you to run away from anything close to spawn points a.s.a.p.
Drawing a bottom line
Overall, it is hard to believe there is the same core Mass Effect and DAO team behind DA3: Inquisition.
The 3rd installment of DA feels very cut, dumbed down and unpolished.
For the crazy long development cycle you guys did not take into consideration most of the fan feedback and positive/negative experiences from previous games.
You keep reinventing the wheels which were not broken in the first place, and as a result keep doing more stupid mistakes and bad implementations over and over again.
The whole path of the games you made from Baldur's Gate to... this, shows you are trying to make a comic book story with some action combat, and it brings a question - just how limiting and restrictive you want your games to be?
While other developers struggle to give the player the most options and freedom possible (yes, I am looking at Skyrim, which you were using as a reference), you limit player on every step?
- No more stats distribution and planning your character
- Armors and weapons hard-limited to classes with no ability to experiment around whatsoever
- Even more limited ability trees with what, 4-6 spammable abilities in total? I can hear Skyrim 1st level mage spells list laughing at the background right there.
We are not making our own interesting characters anymore. We are playing something Bioware has loaned us to play with, and that character feels so shallow and limited.
How did we come to this??? This is not a progress, this is a complete jump backwards by all means.
All in all, I am really disappointed how the series turned out, and DA:I has seriously damaged Bioware reputation, and surely got me more guarded against any of upcoming Bioware releases. Seeing how the trend goes (ME3 had to be completely revamped with the DLC ending, not including it's general failures), and now DA3, I will look very carefully post-release before buying anything else of Bioware products in future.
Right now, this overhyped and quite expensive game is simply in unplayable state at least for me. Since you have promised to patch up the most blatant issues on release, which are crashes, bugs and PC controls, let's see it done.
And then maybe, hopefully, we can see the rest of the game bleeding wounds patched up, starting with tactics and respawning balance.
That is, in case Bioware actually still cares about making good games and not just money grabs with DLC robbery.
I really hope there is at least someone left in Bioware with the love for the actual GAME and not just the sales statistics, and will roll a patch so the game is actually at least playable.
And let me repeat again for the dense minds in development team, starting with the lead designer -
IF IT AIN'T BROKEN - DON'T FIX IT!
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