934 réponses à ce sujet

[OMTING52601]

Lol! I like you! We should get together to go hunt DA2 lovers. I'm sure they'll block us in no time!

(Sarcasm)

I know; Inquiston is a blank slate (so is all the Progies of the Elder Scrolls; but I still play them. Their background doesn't matter to me, it be honest). But I still like it; even with its all its faults. It's an okay game in my eyes.

 

 

I think DA 2 is an okay game - but boy did I loathe it the first two times I played it (I thought I must have really mucked it up, with how the end played out, so played a second time only to discover -- Nope, I wasn't imagining the total lack of player agency. Man was I butt hurt...

 

That said, I pre-ordered that puppy. So instead of snapping it in half, I tried to figure out if there was a way I could approach it without all my resentment of what BW said the game would be and what it actually turned out to be - getting in the way. I did find a way and that was by taking it for what it was and NOT as an extension of Origins or a growth of Origins. In my mind, it isn't a sequel, it's an actiony diversion set in the world, but not a major player in the universe. I still think of it like that, and Inquisition (despite Cory) doesn't change how I feel about 2.

 

Inquisition is an okay game - totally not worth a hundred plus bucks (if one pre-ordered the super awesome original release and bought all the DLC). It was worth the thirty bucks I paid in total for all the content,though, and I do keep replaying it, though I'm not really sure why, lmao, since so many parts of it just burn my nuggets, but then again, much like DA 2, sometimes I just wanna turn on a game and kill some stuff and I SUCK at FPS, lolol!

 

Origins and the Witcher series, I can't ever just jump in randomly and slaughter and then shut off - I get hooked in and the next thing I know, it's three days later, I've been living on coffee and cigarettes, I haven't bathed, and I'm screaming at Alistair to get the hell outta the way so I can KILL THE ARCHDEMON! So, yeah, I may have a problem, lolol  

[AlanC9]

Well, from an RP perspective, it feels odd to not close every rift on the map.  I mean, that's what the green glowy hand is for, and what the Inquisitor is uniquely qualified for, amirite?

If you see a rift, or know you're right next to one, then sure, RP says close it. But it's not like there aren't plenty more rifts in the world. As big as the maps are, they're just a subset of southern Thedas. Being able to close all the rifts on a map is an artifact of the map boundaries, not a thing in the game-world.
 

As for the rest, I can resist doing the exceptionally boring or out of the way quests, but seeing quests just hanging in the journal can get my fingers itching to clear them off, even if I know it would serve no purpose.

Someone here -- bEVEthesda? -- said that this is a problem with the way other CRPGs have traned us.

[OMTING52601]

Something I didn't notice in the beginning, but it soon began to wear on me: The inquisitor doesn't seem to have much of a personality. I was trying to play a rowdy, boisterous, fight-loving, stereotypical dwarf, but that's impossible. The Hero of Ferelden obviously had more choice due to the lack of voiceover, but even Hawke had aggressive dialog options. The inquisitor is far too calm and calculated to me.

 

And the smart alecky one doesn't seem very sarcastic, either. And yeah, I really loathe the fact that what the dialogue wheel says may or may not be what I thought it was gonna come across as, you know? There were a couple of times where I chose what I thought was a diplomatic response and it ended up being shi**y or I chose what I thought was hard a**, but it ended up being more neutral. Kind of hard to RP a character when the dialogue shown isn't an actual reflection of what will come out of the characters mouth.

[GoldenGail3]

 
I think DA 2 is an okay game - but boy did I loathe it the first two times I played it (I thought I must have really mucked it up, with how the end played out, so played a second time only to discover -- Nope, I wasn't imagining the total lack of player agency. Man was I butt hurt...
 
That said, I pre-ordered that puppy. So instead of snapping it in half, I tried to figure out if there was a way I could approach it without all my resentment of what BW said the game would be and what it actually turned out to be - getting in the way. I did find a way and that was by taking it for what it was and NOT as an extension of Origins or a growth of Origins. In my mind, it isn't a sequel, it's an actiony diversion set in the world, but not a major player in the universe. I still think of it like that, and Inquisition (despite Cory) doesn't change how I feel about 2.
 
Inquisition is an okay game - totally not worth a hundred plus bucks (if one pre-ordered the super awesome original release and bought all the DLC). It was worth the thirty bucks I paid in total for all the content,though, and I do keep replaying it, though I'm not really sure why, lmao, since so many parts of it just burn my nuggets, but then again, much like DA 2, sometimes I just wanna turn on a game and kill some stuff and I SUCK at FPS, lolol!
 
Origins and the Witcher series, I can't ever just jump in randomly and slaughter and then shut off - I get hooked in and the next thing I know, it's three days later, I've been living on coffee and cigarettes, I haven't bathed, and I'm screaming at Alistair to get the hell outta the way so I can KILL THE ARCHDEMON! So, yeah, I may have a problem, lolol

Ummmm..... Okay? I don't really know how respond to this, to be honest.

[OMTING52601]

Er....actually, I was going to ask how you can keep playing something for ONE THOUSAND HOURS if you found it boring. Six playthroughs, right.? (Figuring the last run ran a little longer than the others.. otherwise it's 1200 hours.)
 

Yep. I believe you. But the question isn't if you did that. The question is, why did you? I doubt I'm going to put 300 hours into DAI, and I like the game.
 

 

LOLOL, you and my family both, dude! In all honesty -- I've played TW3 about a dozen times and I'm waiting for the final DLC to drop. I have the time. I have insomnia - well, that's what people call it. I don't need much sleep, legit. A couple hours a day, sometimes none at all. That is a lot of time and there is only so much laundry, dishes, housework, homework (I'm also a full time student, but I'm on break right now for the holidays). I have to do something or I'll go nuts, LOL. And it is boring, but it also has great music and (mostly) great scenery (the effing Wastes can just go right the frack where the sun don't shine) and thought banter does NOT work properly, when it does it's usually good. But I've been playing it, off and on, since like June, so seven months, about a playthrough a month, give or take. And yeah, you're probably close on the time. I don't have a single IQ less than a hundred hours, I don't think. Maybe my first, I did get pretty freaking irritated, lol.

 

Also, four different species, so had to play each (haven't gotten to the dwarf yet, had to play both sexes of elves lol) to see/hear differences. And again, I have the time.

[OMTING52601]

Ummmm..... Okay? I don't really know how respond to this, to be honest.

 

LOL, yeah, I get that. In fact, back when DA 2 was new, I got a lot of flack for this too. It's okay, I didn't mind (still don't). The second game is an awful sequel, but for a hack and slash playing out in a setting I really like, it works okay. Of course, it's years later now, so I don't need to fall back on that mind set to play the game.

 

Hmm, maybe it's like you buy a pair of shoes and they don't really fit right, but you don't have money to buy a new pair, and the shop won't let you return them. So what? Do you set them on fire and go barefoot or do you get out the horn and try to make them usable, at least til you can get another pair? And then, after you put the work in to get them to fit, and you wear them a bit, you find you don't mind them so much, that they're great for garden work, so they end up fulfilling a need, even if it wasn't what you initially planned.

 

I dunno, lol.

[GoldenGail3]

LOL, yeah, I get that. In fact, back when DA 2 was new, I got a lot of flack for this too. It's okay, I didn't mind (still don't). The second game is an awful sequel, but for a hack and slash playing out in a setting I really like, it works okay. Of course, it's years later now, so I don't need to fall back on that mind set to play the game.
 
Hmm, maybe it's like you buy a pair of shoes and they don't really fit right, but you don't have money to buy a new pair, and the shop won't let you return them. So what? Do you set them on fire and go barefoot or do you get out the horn and try to make them usable, at least til you can get another pair? And then, after you put the work in to get them to fit, and you wear them a bit, you find you don't mind them so much, that they're great for garden work, so they end up fulfilling a need, even if it wasn't what you initially planned.
 
I dunno, lol.

Your a very rare user to make me speechless (it takes a lot to make me speechless).

[OMTING52601]

LOL, that may not be a good thing...

 

Really, I learned to appreciate DA 2 without glossing over it's massive failures. Back when it came out, omg, was I hotheaded about how it wasn't what it was advertised to be, broken dialogue, broken quests, wave fights... But for me, knowledge is the best way to approach a debate as well as effecting change, so with only one playthrough (or even two, where I was ticked off) I was going off gut reaction and emotion and the best way to lose an argument is to devolve to slinging insults, you know? Plus, moolah was spent and I don't exactly have tons of discretionary income, so I was getting my money's worth, one way or another...

 

So I replayed and replayed until I could tear every part of DA 2 to shreds, point out flaws not only in mechanics, but in presentation, in lore, in every single point argued. In doing so, the game grew on me, at least to the point that while I still felt cheated, I also felt like BW hadn't gotten the better of me, I guess. I hadn't spent like eighty bucks on a POS. I spent 80 bucks on a POS that I knew inside and out, that I could solo on nightmare, that I conquered and totally got every dime of worth I could squeeze out of it. And so like I said - kudzu, or you know a wart- it grew on me...

[Addictress]

Spoiler

14 months out, a GOTY for the effort... And I do think DA:I is a letdown. The biggest reasons for that were covered in the first three months after release: too much filler, poor combat design/implemetation, a disjointed main quest where the final battle was less challenging (and less needed) than taking out the most difficult dragon in-game (at least I scored some sweet swag off that dragon ;D).

I didn't even pick up DA:I until after the last of the patches, the last of the DLC, the last of all SP-related interest was given on the part of BW to the game. And then, I only snagged it because it was hella cheap - less than twenty bucks. So bang for my buck (at 13.99, thank you GS for PowerUp Rewards, lol) yeah, I got that. The scenery is fabulous, no doubt, the music - OMG, I cannot be the only person who got choked up after escaping Haven - phenomenal, the game - ugh, slog, so freakin' boring...

I've played five, four, wait, I think six (but I deleted two of the saves because I needed space) PT. That's start to finish, all areas unlocked, all quests completed that I could (I keep forgetting not to talk to that Orlesian Professor dude in the Western Approach *facepalm*). My last playthrough, Qunari IQ, I tallied like 199 hours, I s**t you not. Finished every collection, shard, bottle, astrarium, mosaic, song (did I miss a listing?). Read every single codex card (still irks me I can't get all of those in one playthrough, seems I'm always missing like one or two parts of some tale or history or something, lolol). Literally left no stone unturned, no hill unconquered, even button mashed/screamed the physics engine into letting me plant all the flags on mountaintops.

Two hundred hours... And still can't believe how boring and utterly lacking in immersive qualities this game is - not to mention the hold over of what I considered the worst part of DA 2 - lack of player agency (wow, in like a massive and even less opaque fashion than we got in DA 2). I know, you're thinking, "huh, wait, that doesn't make any sense - how can you say it was boring and you felt no immersion if you played for TWO HUNDRED HOURS?!?"

Super simply. I can say it because I did play for two hundred hours (actually, ummm, a hella lot more than that - six PT). There is no connection whatsoever between the sidequestery and the main story. Like, nada. Go meet Dorian's pops, doesn't tie me into what Coryphyspit is doing or why or how or when. Help out the refugees in the Hinterlands - doesn't get me any more meat on when the Venatori showed up, how they managed to kick Arl Teagan (man, 'bout time, and thank god NO Isolde!!!) out of his own castle, considering the dude fought off the undead to hold the villiage with me, held the place together through the rest of the Blight, dealt with the fallout of Connor... I digress.

Find all the place markers get a bunch of lore and codex entries, but nothing that deepens the plot, immerses the player in the game, in being the Inquisitor. "Fight X megalomaniac baddie who wants all teh POWER/rule teh WORLD..." Really? Come on, all the players should expect better from BW. Loghain was a pr**k, he screwed the pooch (and Fereldan) but he had real, sympathetic REASONS for his betrayal. Were they ridiculous reasons, looked at from an unpoisoned perspective (like Cailan's or the Warden's) yeah, they were, but to him they were REAL. It made his character so much deeper, so much more real, so much harder to simply axe and move on without blinking or even taking a moment to lament how the mighty fell.

Cory didn't really have this in DA 2 - but the potential was there. He was an interesting character with the potential to be a gold mine of even more interesting historical information. For all the lore splashed throughout Inquisition, there really ain't much of value - like really getting to dig into Cory's mind and find out what he saw when he assaulted the so called 'Golden City'. How about instead of one-dimensional 'ultimate evil-dude' the story actually revealed those original magister's not to be (or not all to be) power hungry monsters, but super devout (maybe zealotous) worshippers who were really looking to be closer to their gods (like saints or something). How about instead of Ira Gardner's notes on poisons, our Inquisitor and crew discovered the Golden City was Black because once the Veil showed up, it locked ALL the gods away - not just the Enavuris. Now that would have been a hella plot twist I could have gotten behind.

If BW is gonna keep heading this way - and man, I don't think there a snowball's chance it won't - I don't know if I can play another game. I love the DA world, I mean holy moly, I've played a ridiculous amount of start-to-finishes in all three games. But I don't want to play an MMO, period. More than that, though, I don't want to play BW's version of Skywitcher of Dutycraft. I want to play Dragon Age. My shortest playthrough was about five hours - wasn't trying a speed record, just wanted to play only the main story and companion quests. No crap, could have done it in three hours, if not for the built-in slow down (which was absolutely intended to do exactly this) of accumulating the power to progress the main path (I watched the speed run, on like super FF, and that's basically what i did, plus companions).

Playing that, I can tell you, none of the main quest parts had any connection to the others. To clarify, in Origins the Brecelian(sp) Forest section wasn't intrinsically tied to any of the other parts - nor were the Deep Roads (not really), but they did so much for world building and for immersion AND had the added benefit of offering some interesting secondary content (DR is like a game in and of itself, back-door political intrigue, shady men in power, a power crazed wanna be demi-god (Branka, not Caridin, lolol)) that played into the overall purpose - which was to build a fracking army to kill a god-dragon. The mage tower and the fade were my least favorite sections, but in doing them, I had the opportunity to save a child, which tied those two pieces into one another (Redcliffe and Circle) and Denerim was just the capstone, the part that brought us to the climax and the big showdown.

In this game, I gotta resolve a war that's been brewing for a millenia - and which is over off-screen, with no further altercations and with no visible impact on the world. As in none. I've played both sides out - one or two word changes in dialogue does not an effect make. Hmm, oh, yeah, then I gotta drain a lake and pick up a Warden to go reveal the Wardens are corrupted (uh, duh, the second Cory showed up, I went - hmm, well, the Wardens are effed). KK, saved em/ejected em, again no changes. So what's next? Oh, hell yeah, lets get to politicking and backstabbing, it's Halamshiral!! Oh, wait, well, sort of, not really, kind of (if I take out the most openly offensive character I have ever encountered in a video game, aka Sera) but making everyone work together leaves the world in a crap state, so... Still, no effect. Alright, what's next, wait, what? I'm at the end? But, I don't feel like I've done anything. Yeah, I see the markers ticked off, the quests completed, but... Oh, wait, okay, right, Cory lost the Anchor, so he tried to get the Wardens. That didn't work, so next up Orlais. That didn't work out either, so some long lost Elvhen temple FTW, but... nope, again, TWHARTED MWAHAHAHAHAHA.... And... so...

Super lame final battle with a lot of villainous monologuing but no real battle, over and done and totally anti-climactic in less than five minutes (including cut scenes). Damn, that last dragon in EdL took me like twenty!

Look, this isn't a 'small minority talking really loud'. Read the reviews from AFTER the publicity blitz of the first month, they all say pretty much the same thing - too much filler, not enough meat, crappy interfaces and combat implementation, devs fixing stuff that doesn't really need to be fixed (FoF/TC exploit instead of the freaking banter glitch? Really? In a SP game, what the heck does it matter if the SP can 'cheat'? The exploit didn't work in the MP to begin with, so...) And more than a year out, go take a look at overall rated scores, they're like five to seven on a ten scale cause folks aren't getting paid (in one way or another) for their reviews.

In the end, though, (TL;DR) I think maybe the better question(s) to ask is not if one will continue to support BW/DA games or what expectations moving forward might be. I think the better question to ask is whether or not BW is interested in building their own game, in their own world, and probably filling a niche that won't sell tens of millions of copies, but rather a modest few million, but which honestly showcases what DA:O did so well: (and even DA 2, despite how awful the game played out - admit it, if there had actually been any player agency in the second game and if the companion characters were as easily engaged and as deftly written as the companions in Origins - the game play changes and the never-ending wave battles would have been minor irritations) Immerse players in a world and surround them with NPC's they give two bits about.

Yeah, we love the lore, we love the world, we love the fighty-fighty and the kissy-kissy... But what we really love is not playing BW's version of Skyrim or the Witcher (seriously, spam the search -- DUDES, Witcher Two) or WoW or whatever fracking game sold big and made tons of money. We came back for DA 2 because we wanted that closeness, that total immersive quality and the actual player agency (even if it was limited, and linear, and the only changes were mostly cosmetic, but we SAW those choices, man, we saw them when we called up our allies as we tried to save the world from the Blight). We wanted to lose ourselves in Thedas, that ambient atmosphere so well done, as we met interesting people and build friendships and a family all of our own. And that didn't work out so great in the second game, no, but the party banter? FTW and it made the lack of interaction almost bearable; it made those NPC's and even Hawke more REAL.

Inquisition, though? I could give two figs about Vivienne - heck, I don't even know what the point of her character IS - other than just an alternative Divine choice? It's not like she's the one that gets us in to Halamshiral, you know, with all her damn court connections?! :/ At least she'd have had a point besides 'first African-Marcher' character if she *had* been needed to get an invite to the ball. If the mechanics just needed a third mage, you know cause Solas, then well... FIONA would have been hella more interesting, added hella more depth, and like, I don't know, been freaking amazing! And she coulda done it either way - it wasn't really her in Val Royeux so that not-her coulda been in Redcliffe, and we could have rescued her or something... Okay, not digressing more down that road...

What's the point of Sera, for that matter? Need two rogues for depth mechanics, okay, don't make Cole optional - Sera is as well, FWIW - but he's got legs in the story, he's an established character of canon from the books/comics that some players might not have known about due to this - but stick him in, add some leading codex entries, next thing BW knows its a twofer!! Players are now super curious about this Cole guy so they go BUY OTHER MERCHANDISE and there are two alternate rogues for the PC to opt for while battling/exploring. I adore the Iron Bull, but he too is completely unnecessary and doesn't even really have much depth until Trespasser where he will turn on the Inquisitor if said Inquisitor decided to burn the Chargers, you know, alive. I'm sure it's another depth mechanic, but tbt considering all the returning faces pulled into this game, Fenris would have made a more interesting two-handed warrior and his freaking backstory actually could have been used to get hella more depth and information, considering Venatori/Coryphyllus/Ancient Elven magic/gods... Seriously, I cannot be the only person who thinks that might have been a better choice than the one-eyed Jam-er sorry Ben...Hassrath spy dude who has the least interactive dialogue and one of the shortest personal quest in the game (especially when taking into account how much crap has to be done beforehand, so that I (at least) have always been WAY OP by the time I get his quest).

So, if BW wants to go MMO for future DA - more power to them! Label appropriately and folks who aren't interested can move on, those who are opt in. Easy peasy. If BW wants to make ARPG's (cause really, Origins is an early ARPG) that focus on meaty plots, and meaty secondary plots, and side quests that overwhelmingly either build on those plots or build up the immersion and NPC characters - more power to them! Label appropriately etc, etc, etc. If it's the latter, I am all TAKE MY MONEY. If it's the former, well, it's been a great-to-middlin' run, but I got fantastic memories and DAO still plays like a champ (on PC and XBox, cause I got both lol).

Slowly claps

[Jedi Comedian]

I don't dislike DAI but I'd say DAO is the best game of the franchise. I also think that DAI's main competitor, TW3 is inferior to TW2 (way more dark).

[OMTING52601]

I think DAO is the best of the series as well. As to The Witcher... Look, I am one of those people who thinks comparing The Witcher series and Dragon Age is apples and oranging it - so when you say 'competitor', I automatically shake my head. There isn't any competition besides maybe in BW eyes or EA's or maybe people who think all RPG's are the same. If it was a competition... TW3 outperformed Inquisition in every way, but in the most important one as well - sales. Numbers talk in a capitalist world. 

 

As to 3 being inferior to 2... I don't find it inferior at all, though the tone isn't as dark - you're right there. I think it's more personal, less save the world (though of course there is that) more Geralt finally putting all the pieces together, and the saving (or not) the girl he took as his own. Which is what I expected - CDPR made it clear years ago this was the last installment of Geralt's story and TW world, it had to be a culmination. So, less dark, maybe, but there were plenty of morally questionable choices, plenty of 'jesus, what's the lesser evil' situations, despite the fact that Geralt didn't have to decide whether to slaughter entire species or not, you know? A lot of the things that happen in game were more 'how's this gonna affect Geralt or Siri' and not so much 'make world altering decisions' - and that made sense to me.

 

CDPR knows how beloved TW is, but they also (so far) seem to be good with a legit 'this is over' and moving on to new projects. They don't seem (again, so far) to believe they need to nickle and dime their properties until whatever they started out as is not anything like where they end up. FWIW, ymmv.

[AlanC9]

LOLOL, you and my family both, dude! In all honesty -- I've played TW3 about a dozen times and I'm waiting for the final DLC to drop. I have the time. I have insomnia - well, that's what people call it. I don't need much sleep, legit. A couple hours a day, sometimes none at all. That is a lot of time and there is only so much laundry, dishes, housework, homework (I'm also a full time student, but I'm on break right now for the holidays). I have to do something or I'll go nuts, LOL. And it is boring, but it also has great music and (mostly) great scenery (the effing Wastes can just go right the frack where the sun don't shine) and thought banter does NOT work properly, when it does it's usually good. But I've been playing it, off and on, since like June, so seven months, about a playthrough a month, give or take. And yeah, you're probably close on the time. I don't have a single IQ less than a hundred hours, I don't think. Maybe my first, I did get pretty freaking irritated, lol.
 
Also, four different species, so had to play each (haven't gotten to the dwarf yet, had to play both sexes of elves lol) to see/hear differences. And again, I have the time.

Thanks. The only question this leaves me with is, how much would you have played the game if you did like it?

[BSpud]

Lol, TW3

[OMTING52601]

If I really loved it, like I did Origins, I would have been on these boards months ago chatting up it fantastic-ness. I would have gotten super into what-might-happen-nexting the things and already had excitement building for the next installment. I'd be looking to pre-order the next game. I would buy a physical copy of the game for all the formats I have (PC, 360, PS4 (hard copy)). I would have been telling everyone I knew how awesome the game was and that they should totally play it.

 

I haven't done any of those things and really only popped over here sort of accidentally yesterday. I was trying to see if someone else had a better idea for grabbing the last of those containment apparati needed for the tempest specialization - beyond save and reload or hoping the unbelievably STUPID design choice to RNG quest necessary items coughed up what I need- before I got to the final battle. But as often happens, looking up one thing then leads the gaze to snag on something else, then something else, until I landed on this thread, lol.

 

eta: Oh, and I probably would have played the game at least three or four more times

[cJohnOne]

As a DAI hater I really question whether bioware can make the game part of the game that I enjoy anymore.  In DA4 I will expect to ignore the game and just go for the story which I expect to have something to do with beating Solas.

[Iakus]

If you see a rift, or know you're right next to one, then sure, RP says close it. But it's not like there aren't plenty more rifts in the world. As big as the maps are, they're just a subset of southern Thedas. Being able to close all the rifts on a map is an artifact of the map boundaries, not a thing in the game-world.
 

Right, and the Nite-Lite Hand is supposed to be what closes them.  It what makes you the Most Important Person In the World, right?

 

 

Someone here -- bEVEthesda? -- said that this is a problem with the way other CRPGs have traned us.

There may be something to that, yes.

[vbibbi]

This doesn't actually answer the question you're responding to: if completionism isn't working as an approach for you, why use that approach? The point of a playstyle is to make the game more enjoyable, not less enjoyable, right?

Because I am used to playing a completionist game in all of my previous Bioware games, and have come back to the games multiple times to replay them, albeit using different quest choices, but still to completion. So it was surprising for me to play the latest Bioware game and find being completionist was a chore. I don't think I should have to accommodate my playstyle that has worked in every other game from this company in order to work with the game's restrictions. Ideally, of course.

 

I don't understand the response to criticisms of some side quests as "so don't do them, they're optional." Yes, they're optional, but I bought the game with the intention of enjoying all of it, not just doing enough to get through the main plot and companion quests and ignore everything else. And I enjoyed other Bio games because I knew that the majority of content was high quality, not because I only did X% of quests in order to enjoy the game. I shouldn't have to metagame which quests to do to enjoy the game's pacing.

 

Well, from an RP perspective, it feels odd to not close every rift on the map.  I mean, that's what the green glowy hand is for, and what the Inquisitor is uniquely qualified for, amirite?

 

As for the rest, I can resist doing the exceptionally boring or out of the way quests, but seeing quests just hanging in the journal can get my fingers itching to clear them off, even if I know it would serve no purpose.

The incomplete quests (non-rifts) also feel annoying to me because we should be able to assign troops/resources to help if we feel the Inquisitor doesn't have time to attend to something personally. It would have been nice if the war table mechanic was tweaked and maybe had a field war table at each camp, so we could assign a certain number of resources to complete side quests. We could spend power points to assign people, and depending on our choices, either recover those power points upon successful completion, lose them if the quest fails, or get a material reward but lose the power point. That would help prevent us from having 200+ power by the end of the game.

 

If you see a rift, or know you're right next to one, then sure, RP says close it. But it's not like there aren't plenty more rifts in the world. As big as the maps are, they're just a subset of southern Thedas. Being able to close all the rifts on a map is an artifact of the map boundaries, not a thing in the game-world.
 

Someone here -- bEVEthesda? -- said that this is a problem with the way other CRPGs have traned us.

"It's not the game's fault, it's the gamers"? Let's be honest, Bioware didn't develop DAI as a counterculture experience to go against the standard of cRPG game play and "let" the player choose which quests to perform. They just overextended themselves and as a result had to fill a lot of large maps with thin content. As I said above, I recognize that it takes a lot of resources to create and fill such a large world, so it makes sense, but I'm not going to pretend it was intentional of Bioware as a revolutionary style of gaming.

[OMTING52601]

I don't understand the response to criticisms of some side quests as "so don't do them, they're optional." Yes, they're optional, but I bought the game with the intention of enjoying all of it, not just doing enough to get through the main plot and companion quests and ignore everything else. And I enjoyed other Bio games because I knew that the majority of content was high quality, not because I only did X% of quests in order to enjoy the game. I shouldn't have to metagame which quests to do to enjoy the game's pacing.

 

*snip*

 

"It's not the game's fault, it's the gamers"? Let's be honest, Bioware didn't develop DAI as a counterculture experience to go against the standard of cRPG game *snip*

 

Yep, yep to your first paragraph! Ditto, amen, and hallelujah, lol.

 

To the latter... no they dev'd it as an MMO (http://www.gamespot....y/1100-6423362/) but at some point they realized they might not be able to pull that off (or realized with WoW and GW and EVE, etc, etc, etc no one was looking for a DA MMO). So they took all the MMO design and content they'd already built and stuffed it into a SP campaign with an MP component. Then they built out a few central story arc points, held together literally with a 'cause Cory said so' linkage, in order to create an actual central story to follow. 

[OMTING52601]

vbibbi said:
 
The incomplete quests (non-rifts) also feel annoying to me because we should be able to assign troops/resources to help if we feel the Inquisitor doesn't have time to attend to something personally. It would have been nice if the war table mechanic was tweaked and maybe had a field war table at each camp, so we could assign a certain number of resources to complete side quests. We could spend power points to assign people, and depending on our choices, either recover those power points upon successful completion, lose them if the quest fails, or get a material reward but lose the power point. That would help prevent us from having 200+ power by the end of the game.

 

Yeah, I mean I feel like if the game had finished being dev'd as an MMO, this is a fairly likely mechanic. Since it didn't, we kind of got stuck with a lot of mechanics that get in the way of the game and a lot of content that becomes filler. Hindsight being what it is, BW should have implemented something like this - or exactly like this - in order to play into immersion and give all the superfluous content more weight. You're the IQ, you're the head of a fricking army, so you delegate the deploying of troops, sending out spies, getting your advisors to chime in and implement your orders. All this happens in the background while the IQ personally tracks down the big bad with his/her small group of trusted companions or whatever.

[Andrew Lucas]

I finished this game three times, really liked; today I began my fourth playthrough since Trespasser was out, did a few quests in the Hinterlands, and suddenly I lost the interest to finish the game.

The thought of doing those fetch quests all over again to gain power is unsettling.

So, yeah...idk.

[Elhanan]

I finished this game three times, really liked; today I began my fourth playthrough since Trespasser was out, did a few questions in the Hinterlands, and suddenly I lost the interest to finish the game.

The thought of doing those fetch quests all over again to gain power is unsettling.

So, yeah...idk.

One does not have to do side quests or requisitions to gain Power; almost all are optional. One can purchase Trade books in Skyhold, too. Select the methods which are fun, and skip the remainder.

[Seraphim24]

Sorry, but as one that embraces DAO, DA2, SWTOR, and DAI, this example appears to be somewhat flawed. And I do not approach the games from a Romantic priority viewpoint; tis a secondary feature for me.

 

Well you are very much in the minority then.

 

Like it or not, this company underwent somewhat of a substantial transformation in the past couple years. They basically made 3 full featured, super deep, intensely involved, classic Bioware games in SWTOR, Dragon Age 2, and while Mass Effect 3 is certainly it seems to me the weakest of the 3, still fundamentally ended the trilogy and all that.

 

Right up to that point, what you got wasn't so fundamentally different from NWN, etc.

 

Looking back, given the effort and polish they put into everything they expected it to all go well, and instead they got the complete opposite, well, arguably, I mean, the games still sold, but well for reasons entirely unknown to me for the most part they got a severe backlash in many different categories for many different reasons, possibly some of them justified but also pretty much completely unjustified in other respects. 

 

Even now I still play SWTOR and am kind of amazed at the effort they put into each of the individual class stories and such.

 

I'd compare it to the handling of FFXIV, even FF13, by critics/fans etc, there was some kind of revolt or something, but the end result is we have this fairly watered down geek/mainstream conglomeration known as the AAA gaming sphere, which is really more accurately an extension of like the comic sphere since most of the "games" are made based on their romantic or featured elements or stuff like that in many ways.

 

So, by the time of Dragon Age Inquisition, the more hardcore elements were essentially squished down to fit into this new "Geek/Gaming/Comic/Mainstream Hollywood" sphere, and what you got was ultimately somewhat indistinguishable from a Skyrim or even Diablo 3 or something, possibly even something like Arkham Asylum etc.

 

Anything that was on the fringes of that sphere was compressed to fit into it, and conversely on the other side, things that were only barely in it were ramped up to fit into it as well.

 

All of this was arguably capped off by the likes of TFA.

 

And like it or not Elhanan, that's probably how it is going to be at Bioware for some time going forward.

 

If you want a more classic Bioware game experience now, my reccomendation would be just to play NWN or even Baldur's Gate.

[Seraphim24]

Essentially, all the micro-differences between various franchises in between a silly meme on the internet and the harder questions of the right choice in a KOTOR game struggle were collapsed, compressed, and otherwise sandwiched into a big homogenous ball in order to be better leveraged as one giant "meet all geek needs" mass that you can either (pretty much) reject in the entirety and be accused of failing to understand that particular former sub-culture, which was curiously deprived of many of the essential elements that made it a sub-culture before being accelerated as a mass consumptive form. The capstone on that ball is arguably The Force Awakens.

 

Ironically of course, it's not as though people aren't leveraging those individual distinctions, even now, as we trade forum posts, the Legion expansion for Warcraft looks actually pretty unique for instance, and other gamesand ideas from various places...

 

...but for now, Bioware is committed to following that homogenous ball and is unwilling to exert their independent spirit onto their franchises, either because it no longer exists, or because they simply have no desire to do so.

[Seraphim24]

To be completely, ultimately fair, however, the notion of a AAA gaming sphere, or one that was pumped rich with graphics and cinematics, originated with Bioware. The 100 hour quest-a-thon? That concept originated with Baldur's Gate 1.

 

So when people seem disappointed by Dragon Age Inquisition, or whatever, it seems worthy to ask, what did satisfy you to begin with? As big as the gap is between modern and former Bioware, the style of game they've made isn't fundamentally at it's core so different from what it was before, they were always making a game to fit a huge number of diverse needs, Baldur's Gate 1 had character interactions, open worlds, a set story, tons of inventory and skill management.

[Elhanan]

Well you are very much in the minority then.
 
Like it or not, this company underwent a huge transformation in the past couple years. They basically made 3 full featured, super deep, intensely involved, classic Bioware games in SWTOR, Dragon Age 2, and while Mass Effect 3 is certainly it seems to me the weakest of the 3, still fundamentally ended the trilogy and all that.
 
Right up to that point, what you got wasn't so fundamentally different from NWN, etc.
 
Looking back, given the effort and polish they put into everything they expected it to all go well, and instead they got the complete opposite, well, arguably, I mean, the games still sold, but well for reasons entirely unknown to me for the most part they got a severe backlash in many different categories for many different reasons, possibly some of them justified but also pretty much completely unjustified in other respects. 
 
Even now I still play SWTOR and am kind of amazed at the effort they put into each of the individual class stories and such.
 
I'd compare it to the handling of FFXIV, even FF13, by critics/fans etc, there was some kind of revolt or something, but the end result is we have this fairly watered down geek/mainstream conglomeration known as the AAA gaming sphere, which is really more accurately an extension of like the comic sphere since most of the "games" are made based on their romantic or featured elements or stuff like that in many ways.
 
So, by the time of Dragon Age Inquisition, the more hardcore elements were essentially squished down to fit into this new "Geek/Gaming/Comic/Mainstream Hollywood" sphere, and what you got was ultimately somewhat indistinguishable from a Skyrim or even Diablo 3 or something, possibly even something like Arkham Asylum etc.
 
Anything that was on the fringes of that sphere was compressed to fit into it, and conversely on the other side, things that were only barely in it were ramped up to fit into it as well.
 
All of this was arguably capped off by the likes of TFA.
 
And like it or not Elhanan, that's probably how it is going to be at Bioware for some time going forward.
 
If you want a more classic Bioware game experience now, my reccomendation would be just to play NWN or even Baldur's Gate.

Considering that some other old time fans like DAI because they remind them of the past Bioware greatness seen in their older works, my POV is certainly not a unique one. Now, I have not played the BG or FF series, so I cannot personally compare it to them, but I have played NWN1 and most Bioware titles since then, and enjoy them quite a lot.