It's probably been posted somewhere else, but not all of these I saw in the PC concerns megathread (and not all of these concern just the PC). So here is something:
Usability improvements
- Allow full mouse look option (without holding RMB all the time, something like a toggle), not "A & D" camera.
- Area loot (repost).
- Please lock mouse cursor to the window. I am tired of constantly clicking on the second screen.
- Hard-locking toggle on enemy (i.e. make locked characters actually always face the enemy they are hard-locked on with tab, since we don't have Smite-like aiming in "Action" mode for whatever reason it's a pain to position shield-bearing or blocking characters towards the enemy they need to block and KEEP them facing that enemy).
- Pretty much all the posted posted feedback on the tactical mode is objectively good (zoom out more, mouse panning, more tactical behaviour options).
- Menu UI on my non-standard resolution (21:9; 2560x1080) sometimes cuts off, especially in "tactical" behaviour editing screen, some improvement would be nice.
- Fast travel to points of interest. No your world isn't Skyrim or anything like that, there are no dynamic events going on, it is rather empty and just filled with some random enemy patrols. Don't make us waste time by only allowing fast travel to camps. Look at how Kingdoms of Amaleur did it. It also was a "Single Player MMO", like DAI, and this kind of fast travel is an essential usability improvement for those kind of games, involving constant fetch quests and legwork.
- Sort inventory items by level.
- Allow key combo binding. This was a problem in all previous games. Not all of us have hands the size of a Qunari and with a game that makes such heavy use of key range 6 to =, I would think binding them to Alt+1-5 would work a lot better for someone like me.
- Streamline resource gathering: Press V to survey the area and all resources in vicinity should automatically be "gathered". It makes no sense for anything other than wasting time to have to walk up to every chunk of ore within 3 meters of each other and "bow" your head to each contemplating the amazing find of "Iron x5". Next step: monster box farming for rare drops. Come on.
- Please increase the size of the hotbar on PC. Or better yet just make it adjustable. I have a 29" monitor, I can fit WAAAAAAY more than 8 abilities. And considering that at levels 10+ I already start to have more than 8 items, that size is just not enough for some of the more tactics-heavy encounters.
Gameplay improvements
These are more subjective, though I still mostly just stick to the standards of the industry (weird, huh, that BioWare didn't follow them, though it's not the first time they suffer from trying to be "different"). This concerns things like having intuitive controls for action mode so they actually make sense within the context of "action". Tactical mode gameplay works fine except for the camera controls and the gutted behaviours screen, so I don't focus on that.
The "Action" mode is like I feared, a complete waste of time (quite literally). The way it's balanced and controlled makes it nothing more than the old "exploration camera" mode, with an added "bonus" of having to manually walk up to every bloody enemy and object to interact with them.
Considering that the usability of tactical mode, as well as behaviour editing are at a low point too, it seems like they chased 2 hares and didn't catch either. Nevertheless there are some obvious usability problems with the way control scheme works right now, that could be patched to make the experience much better:
- Every class has "escape" or "block" abilities that could easily be separated out, reduced CD and bound to a button to make damage mitigation more skillful in this "Action mode".
- Every attack appears to be collision-based, so why do you not implement proper action control and aiming or at least soft auto-lock like Kingdoms of Amaleur? You have 2 ways here, either contextual action - attacking/pressing F automatically turns the controlled character in the correct direction or (I'd prefer this), make it like in Smite: character in action mode simply always faces the direction you are aiming at.
- I will repeat myself again and say: mouse-controlled camera without holding RMB all the time. See this? Mouse. Controlled. Camera. Like in 99.9% of all games with action camera. WASD is for character control. Mouse is for camera control.
What's interesting about this is that they did about 90% of all the work required to make both action and tactical modes work well. Extensive modding support or a few tweaks to control scheme would fix most of the issues. There is literally all the components required for a proper action mode: collision attacks? Check. Body, shield, weapon hitboxes? Check. Blocking? Check. Parry? Check. Dodging? Check again. Abilities even have various modifiers for combos like "If it hits next basic attack will knock enemy down" or "Detonator abilities".
One could literally make this "exploration camera" into a relatively satisfying action mode with a revamp of control scheme and some balance tweaking (mostly CD reduction and power nerf of select abilities for scaling). I have to wonder if the designers actually play their own game not as devs seeking technical issues, but as players who would surely notice that something isn't right here. Yeah all these issues are patchable, though I doubt they will actually be patched.
The gameplay is a massive disappointment in it's current state, failing in both action mode and tactical mode, due to absence of tactical rules tweaking and usability issues in both. If the tactical rules are too hard to do with Frostbyte (then why did you switch to it?), the issues with Action mode as well as the usability problems are definitely patchable, and if EA (and BioWare, assuming they have any choice over what to work on at this point) cares at all about the integrity of this franchise, they should really patch it thoroughly and extensively, not just fix gamebreaking bugs. But then... the game sold well, didn't it? So, who am I kidding...
Sorry for coming up rather pessimistic here, but it's always very disappointing to see a game you looked forward to play for long time, failing to deliver in so many areas, considering all the hype surrounding it. It's even worse still that the boundary which separates the proper implementation of gameplay from a crappy one it is now, is so thin and obvious. It's like they followed a clear vision and did the right things until the last month or so when they suddenly decided "Huh. Let's do something 'different'!". And screwed up the actual implementation of the content and systems they created.
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