Hey all, it has been quite some time since I last posted in the BSN. After playing countless hours of the Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, which I must say is potentially my favorite multiplayer experience I have had in my 22ish years of playing games in general. You could imagine my excitement to hear that Dragon Age Inquisition would be following suit with its own take on the co-op experience set in the land of Thedas. Though I have not played many hours of the DAMP since I purchased the game, I can say in the hours I have put into it since day 1 that the game is lack luster. This does not, under any circumstance, mean the game is bad. On the contrary, it has incredible potential, and I am confident that it will keep getting better. At the moment, however, I feel like there are some important features that could be added in or tweaked that would enhance the multiplayer significantly than just a DLC alone.
1) Loot should be exciting.
As it is today, as you might be well aware with entire threads dedicated to the not-so-great loot system, the loot is really disappointing and generally pointless. While I hate joining in with the broken record of comparing this game to ME3, but at least the gear received from chests in ME3 had purpose. You could make use of every last piece of gear, and while some pieces of gear were not always useful or as commonly used (stability mods, the shuriken SMG, certain mods) most weapons, mods, and consumables were valuable in any difficulty. In this game, I could not imagine taking something like a 50 DPS hunting bow into perilous, even with epic masterwork modifications. A lot of this loot might as well be automatically replaced with crafting material once it gets into my hands. Now just getting rid of these common soon-to-be crafting material loot from the rotation would create a problem as well as the loot curve is shifted to the good stuff, and simply giving us a total of 10 or so pieces of gear in each category with 10 upgrades each won't help either as that seems unrealistic and would not create an exciting game. So my suggestion is to try and push the game in the direction of crafting. Keep some of the gear as is (the rares, uniques, etc). Remove the common stuff from the rotation and replace it with purely units of crafting material to create upgrades. Perhaps adding in schematics for more powerful crafting upgrades could be an option. Still allow us to salvage duplicates or unwanted rares and uniques for more materials but keep the emphasis one accumulating this materials to upgrade the already useful gear the game provides. Common gear works great for SP in terms of character progression, but it does not translate well into a multiplayer where character's skills and abilities (and thus capability in a match) are directly related to randomly distributed gear. It is not fair to a player that understands how to progress his or her player for high difficulties and is at the recommended level for a higher difficulty only to perform poorly because of lack luster gear that they were unable to remove because nothing better is coming their way.
2) Am I really helping the team out?
Now I understand this is not a competitive multiplayer, and trust me- I never want it to be one. However, I think you should strongly consider tweaking the EXP UI. As it stands I have no idea whether I killed something, protected a team mate, etc. While there does seem to be EXP numbers that pop up, they are so hard to see and are easily lost in the chaos. Would it be possible to stick with a basic number pop up very clearly in the near middle of the screen saying " X EXP Kill/ Assist/ Savior Assist/ Taunt Assist/ Barrier Assist, etc" I love getting EXP prompts which indicate "Hey! You're Helping! Keep it up!"
3) Getting Aggressive about Aggro
Alright, yes, it makes sense that if you see a warrior wielding a sword and shield in front of you but spells and arrows are blotting out the sun behind said tank, logic follows; run past the sword and shield dude and beat the starch out of the archers and spell casters behind him. However, as a mechanic in game, you are forcing my tank you turn his (unusually) vulnerable backside to the enemy archers and spell casters to run back and protect my team mates with paper mâché armor and then I'm the one to die before getting a chance to save them. Despite sending out war cries, having a passive ability which should make enemies flock to me to be a pinata the enemies act like I'm not even there. Is there a way to tweak the aggro mechanic to help make tanks do their job more efficiently? Even if I target the archers, shield wall, and walk backwards (even with the speed boost) I will never make it to them in time and considering the tank is not designed to lay the DPS on the enemies, I cannot kill the archers faster than the swarm of sword brandishing warriors running my team mates through.
4) Sometimes all you need is an informative manual
Frankly, this goes for any game SP or MP... help out the new guys! I will quite literally give a standing ovation to games which give their games in both SP and MP a helpful little game mechanic guide codex (despite the odd looks I receive for applauding a TV screen covered in text). There are a lot of intricate details in this game; stats, status effects, terms, etc but very few are explained in a way that would make any sense to a new player- and many players are not going to snap their fingers after having an "Aha!" moment and head on over to the BSN to help them understand the game mechanics, as I doubt many newer players are aware of this site and the forums as a fantastic game guide research site. If you are worried you will lose traffic to your forums and networking sites by incorporating this intricate and well detailed game guide codex; fear no more! Simply include all forums and networking sites in that codex (which of course would probably be very obvious so that anyone could find it) as further reading.
5) Don't hide the numbers
Listen, I understand that a nightmare for any developer is giving away some "secrets" about gameplay mechanics- it would undoubtedly shorten the lifespan of your pride and joy if players started off with a vast amount of knowledge, right? Wrong. There are a lot of ways to make a game challenging without having to hide away the mechanics or the numbers. This comes from the not so well known enemy attacks, spawns, etc.
6) Am I playing bumper cars?
There is a reason why I play primarily the legionnaire or templar and avoid any other squishy character- I need to survive and the player collisions and sluggish handling of all characters makes movement as an evasion technique futile. I am well aware of the variety of abilities that allow for a near instant transmission away from danger, but does my only escape option rely on a cool down and has to take up one of my four precious slots? Those abilities are for when you get surrounded, what about simply trying to avoid enemy fire or pressing forward quickly? Player movement and player collision could use some serious retouching to allow for smoother gameplay.
7) Surely my spell book is longer than 4 pages?
I understand the idea of allowing only 4 hot keys to allow for more strategic gameplay, but let me propose this: I am fine with leaving the potions and grenades as an option, but what about allowing me to map powers as well? Frankly, I never use a single potion or grenade in MP... ever. I find many to be highly dependent and are simply taking up space. Could the other four slots (if not all 8) be a mix of potions, grenades, powers, etc? Some characters benefit greatly from a full arsenal of 8 powers, some only need 5 or 6 and some tonics, some may only need 3 and deck themselves with grenades. Personally, I don't see how and elementalist, or an Arcane warrior could be any more powerful than they already are with 4 powers if they were given 8. If the difficulty is a concern- make the enemies tougher. I mean- as is the player would have to juggle 8 different powers and cool downs efficiently
The above suggestions are but a few suggestions in the vast treasure trove of suggestions that could be used to really help the DAMP shine. If anyone else has some helpful suggestions that are in a "here is the not so optimized mechanic and here is a potential and realistic suggestion to streamline it" format and not the "this is broke" or "do this" or "just rewrite the whole game."
Also, remember, this is a suggestion thread not a bug reporting thread. There is indeed a lot of bugs in this game that should always take priority over DLCs, suggestions, weekend events, etc. A well polished game will mean nothing if no one can play it because a door won't open or the game forces your computer to implode from the inside. None-the-less, let's keep it to friendly and realistic suggestions to make this a better multiplayer for everyone.
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