The three largest beefs (and they're not "issues" so much as annoyances) I have with the game as I see it right now are (and these are pretty small):
* Inquisition power is ridiculous. I've unlocked every zone and still have over 200 power. At the point I hit Skyhold I had enough power to unlock every zone in the game. The Power -> Expenditure rate is so far off, the entire mechanic really has no need to exist in the game at all. I understand stopping people from burning through the main campaign bing, bang, boom, but you already have a mechanic that stops that: Level. Conversely, you could put 20 - 50 new 10 cost missions on the War Map and the game would still support eventually spending your power on ALL of them. That's a metric crapton of waste and it trivializes the effort of obtaining power. It's no longer a "reward" mechanic...it's just something that slows down the next quest from popping up on my screen. Power stops meaning anything after about one zone after skyhold...that's REALLY early to burn that mechanic out.
NOTE: Inquisition Influence is slightly short: For having that much inquisition power, I still struggle to obtain enough influence to get perks I feel are pertinent to my character. While this probably is actually working properly, the overabundance of the "power" mechanic, highlights the limitation of the "influence" mechanic and makes it feel like you are slogging through the influence game.
* Crafting has a huge bottleneck to it: Leather. I seem to get as much cloth as I need from the mobs that I kill and the loot sacks I open, Herbs and Metals are out in the open to farm/collect (which is AWESOME), but every time I go to try to make something I'm short Leather. There just is NOT ENOUGH of it dropping in the game. I realize there are a fair number of random wildlife animals out there that periodically drop leather, but their ratio is ridiculously off from even cloth drops, let alone Metal/herbs. To wit: In my entire run through Empres Du Lion, I killed 3 total great bears and looted over 80 silverite. So 8 bear skins = 80 silverite. That's a HORRIBLE ratio. Surprisingly enough Snoffler skin is the ONLY easily obtainable leather in the game, which is also pretty ridiculous. Half the problem is hunting leather is a time expenditure while hunting stone/herb/cloth happens through normal game play. Here again, 2 legged mobs drop cloth, and every zone has hundreds of these enemies. Conversely, there are only 2 animal enemies in the vast majority of the game: Bears and Wolves (this discounts Western Approach with Quillbacks and Phoenixes which was actually pretty helpful). The other huge problem is there is no alternative way to obtain leather either: You can get missions on the War Table to farm Herbs and Metals, but there is no way (other than one specific mission which you have to unlock via Empres Du Lion, the second highest readily available zone in the game) to farm leather. The fact all leather droppers run away from you and are FASTER than you are doesn't help the situation.
* War Table missions are entirely static. The same adviser sent to the same gather mission will always return the same materials...or near enough so that anything else is an aberration. While I appreciate limiting the selection of Metals / Herbs by zone, it exacerbates the crafting/bottleneck problem above.
* Leliana is a bottleneck to the game. We all love Leliana, but the fact that she's needed in almost the same number of missions as both other advisers combined lends a feeling of frustration. Specifically the gathering missions (what I term the "black market" missions - Gather Leather, Gather Herbs, Gather Cloth and Gather Metal)...Leliana is the only useful adviser to use on these missions....unless you're looking for tier 1 items at level 20. That entire mechanic (Leliana gets the best while Cullen gets the worst) is broken.
Recommended Changes:
* Randomize Drop Amounts and expand the selection of gathering materials at each War Zone Gathering mission. If a material appears in the zone, there should be a percentage based chance to obtain a randomized amount of it per gathering. Cap the max return at a certain number (say 10 materials) and then randomize the gathering such that there's a high even (60/70%) chance of obtaining the common materials, and low/mid chance of obtaining the mid-difficulty materials (15-20%), and a low chance of obtaining the rare stuff (10-15%).
* Allow Leather to be Gathered via zone gathering missions. While I appreciate the "Liliana Gathers Herbs, Cullen Gathers Metals and Josephine Gathers smaller amounts of both", we really need a leather gatherer. After all you have 3 Advisers, let the three of them gather a resource each...perhaps Josephine issues hunting contracts to the locals for a small portion of the gathered skins.
* The "Gather" missions need to be fixed. Instead of the current "Leliana will return great stuff, Cullen returns crap and Josephine returns mostly crap" methodology, remove the separated gather missions and instead create one that bases the returns off the number of keeps held. For instance: Each keep provides you a "Gather Resources" mission...own 3 keeps, you can gather all three resources at one time. Leliana specializes in Leather, Josephine in Cloth, Cullen in Metals, and all three advisers have a chance to return herbs. With one keep, you get only tier 1 materials, and obviously only 1 adviser can be on that mission at one time. With a second keep, all advisers return Tier 2 materials, and obviously 2 of the three advisers can be allocated to a gather mission at one time. Finally with all three keeps controlled, Tier 3 materials are gathered and each adviser can be put on a gather mission. The selection of what is returned is also randomzied...any T3 material can be returned by the given adviser specialist sent out. The first time Liliana is sent to gather Leather she may return Snoffler skin, the next time it may be Great Bear Hide...or maybe a combination of both. In this way you use the "Gather" missions when you are generally low on materials and you use the specific zone "gather" mission where you need SPECIFIC materials. If you don't want to wait you always have the option of farming exactly what you want. This is COMPLETELY a win/win and it fixes several issues with the crafting system.
* Reduce the available power or grant additional influence/perks for reaching specific power ranks (every 10 power = a bonus 1000 influence or every 25-50 power gain +1 Inquisition Perks). Make power mean something beyond your entrance to Skyhold. A player who isn't completing zones should not have the ability to land every War Table operation...their Inquisition is flying under the radar trying to stop the bad guy as quick as possible, but is not well known around the world. Conversely, the inquisition that is going broad and wide to help everyone everywhere should have the ability to be everywhere at one time...and take on all the various missions at the War Table. Perhaps the easiest way to address this is 3 - 5 50+ power mini-zones that could be completed for enhanced drop rates of T3 patterns, upper end crafting materials and purple loot. Additional zones like Cradle of Sulevin comes to mind...bonus points for an entire sub-story completed out of high-power mini-zones.
You have a great game, but there are several (dare I use the term "****-blocking") mechanics that are quickly showing the "grind" of the game...a great way to lose players.
Oh, and I know it's open world...but drop the platforming next time...it's basically nothing more than an annoyance and a time waster. RPG's aren't about having to jump from this undefined form that would be a block but the graphics don't quite fit the clipping area to that undefined boulder which is really mostly squared off, but for which that little outcropping I aimed for isn't part of the programmed sub-structure...it's just graphics. If you want to include "jump to get to the top of the building", the difficulty should be in determining the PATH to get there, not following the path along a quarter inch wide rounded "branch" for which a twitch left or right causes you to fall off of.
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