281 réponses à ce sujet

[SLPr0]

Wardawg1001 wrote...

I'm sorry to say I did read your entire post, and I have to say you are an idiot. You seemed intelligent to begin with, but it was clear by about half way through your essay, you are not entitled to rate this game (thats not to say you can't have an opinion, just dont try to pass it off as fact). Your review is based largely off design decisions that were intentional and well broadcasted in their portrayal of the game, and the fact that you would prefer other designs does not make this game worse in any way. Also, you really suck at the game and obviously didnt figure out how to use its features and systems properly, which again does not make the game bad, it just means you dont like it or suck at it.

Ignoring the rest of the trollish commentary I'll simply state that "well broadcasted" would mean to those of you that were following the development news for the title on a regular basis.

Watch the cinematic trailers and tell me this is an RTSRPG thats designed to be the "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate. I did not get that impression.

The rest of what you said isn't even worthy of comment or even explaining why its not worthy of comment.

[Dragon Age1103]

SLPr0 wrote...

Before any respondants instantly go into fanboi mode, please at least read the points of the post before flaming them, I will be presenting them in quite a reasonable and easy to understand fashion.

I should also, because I'm well aware how much work has gone into this and how onerous unconstructive forum posts can be for moderators and other players alike, I suppose, cover the things about the game that are absolutely uncontestably awesome.

So lets start with The Positives:

• Fantastic storyline that just drags you in and makes you want to play 10 hours a day til you're done.
• Absolutely stunning characters and personalities you really care about and want to interact with and get to know.
• Some of the most meaningful and engaging cinematic work done in any game not created by Hideo Kojima and probably far better in relation to presentation and overall drama than any done anywhere to this date.

And thats pretty much it, so lets get down to the negatives which is why a game which is being lauded as the greatest RPG of its generation is probably really the equivalent of a slightly above average student that got all the right breaks in regards to educational opportunities and connections.

The Negatives:

Micromanagement as a Game Dynamic. Headaches, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Sundry:

This is probably the largest are of concern for me in regards to this title. The gameplay is incredibly stunted by the absolutely contradictory elements being used in conjunction with each other.

• You have a hotbar, a hot bar means you have action rpg elements that are currently in vogue with online RPG titles allowing for action based play.
• You have 3 other idiots that you literally have to micro-manage to the point of frustration to ensure they play their roles specifically.
• The "Tactics" section for each character seems a great way to manage how your NPC companions deal with combat situations, letting you get down to the nitty gritty of enjoying the carnage but this is not the case, irregardless of HOW you set up your tactics for Leilana, the bow specialized bard, if you dare to give her a dagger or a sword she will immediately abandon ALL ranged attacks in favor of fighting on the front line, regardless of how you have her tactics set to bard and bow abilities...which is patently dumb and why she's probably brain dead from all the head trauma by the end and still thinks the story is going to go on.

Now I realize there are people that enjoy hitting pause every 10 seconds and telling each of the 4 characters EXACTLY what to do, but to me, that sort of precludes the need for a hotbar at all, BUT I also realize there are people that count every tile in a tile wall by nature and enjoy spending a day folding all their laundry very neatly and placing it in vacuum sealed plastic bags and then categorically marking each bag for the day and time of use then organizing it all in their dresser drawers in a fashion that most normal people might find a little creepy.

But to me, if you add a hotbar and click and toggle abilities you are quite obviously shooting for action and real time RPG play, which means that your stupid NPC companions should not require you to hold their hands every 10 to 20 seconds in an engagement to ensure they don't end up sucking down yet another Injury Kit.

Whats more, within all this micro management there is simply no way to toggle through a mass of targets and hit a key that says "attack what I currently have targetted", no..you have to MOUSE CLICK a target to attack it, which, in and of itself shouldn't be so bad except all your idiot companions and all the idiot enemies are all clustered up and you can't click on a target efficiently without moving into "tactical view" (archaic throwbacks for the win) or ah ha...hitting pause again.

This one area of the games combat system dynamic is probably its greatest and most obvious flaw which drags it down from potentially the greatest RPG game of our time to something only slightly better than The Witcher, simply because of the obvious amount of work that went into it. And to be frank the action element was far better in The Witcher, than it is in DA:O.

Tactics:

I'm not sure if this is just a lazy way for programmers to make up for bad NPC AI or simply a sham attempt at giving the player "total control" of what their NPCs do.

As a systems designer myself I know exactly what I'm looking at its a logarithmic rule based if/else if/on event script interface that attempts to allow the user to program the NPC AI via a GUI interface probably .lua based at that.

As stated and touched upon in the previous part of this post, it fails abyssmally at even the most basic control of the NPC AI, in regards to the games own stated warning "Be ready for anything, make sure all your characters are equipped with both ranged and melee weapons!".

Uh...no, don't equip ALL your characters with ranged and melee weapons unless you want to see Morrigan abandon her ranged based casting to fight like an idiot with a dagger, or watch Leilana constantly die using two rogue attacks and captivating song when she could be using Chorus of Valor and the OMGNICE bow I gave her and actually use her extremely well developed BOW talents...that she will absolutely ignore if you put a dagger/sword in her inventory regardless of what her tactics are set up to do. The only way she will remain in a ranged posture is if she does not have a melee weapon, this goes the same for both Morrigan and Wynne as well....its absolutely mind numbing.

Whats more, regardless of "tactics" even a PC human "tank" warrior with shield and sword has so much trouble keeping everything focused on him that your ranged characters, if you can get them to stay out of general melee range (NOT EASY AT ALL without telling them to hold positions in certain areas with ye olde pause button..which detracts heavily from the overall action enjoyment of the game heavily) get swarmed and overwhelmed quickly anyways...what to do about that? Taunt/Threaten doesn't seem to be enough wearing "heavy armor" is supposed to draw more threat than wearing light armor...largely from what I can tell Darkspawn and every other enemy in the game ignores these so called axioms of the games dynamic in favor of the more chaos theory based method of "attack anything attacking me regardless of what the variables involved are".

Difficulty Modes:

Easy - Expect to die still, invariably in many situations that you wouldn't even NORMALLY expect to die...why? Cause of dumb AI. Leilana goes "trap right ahead!" then runs right through it and sets everyone on fire just as you're trying to adjust to the information that theres a trap ahead while trying to come up with a plan to deal with the 8 archers at the other end of the hall firing on you while your twitty companions run TOWARDS the archers to attack them with a DAGGER regardless of the OMGNICE bow they have in their hotswap slot. Ugh.

Normal - Expect to die far more often, occasionally even to general area spawns simply because of the same reasons stated above. You will likely break a keyboards QuickSave/QuickLoad keys on this setting.

Hard - Are you kidding? You think I'd try this game on hard?

Nightmare - No thanks, I'm not this masochistic.

Crafting - Oh Joy!:

This part of the game was slightly underwhelming and I'll qualify that with several statements.

Coercion and Combat Training are a must, of course, at least for the PC, by the time you've leveled up enough to have gotten those maxed out the best you can do is a couple more tradeskill points into something else you might find helpful. Since both Wynne and Morrigan have Herbalism somewhat covered, I put the last few into Traps....and it was more or less useless. Why? ...well, since i'm a warrior I can hardly stealth around and place traps BEFORE an engagement and in almost 90% of combat scenarios combat was initiated before I'd have had the chance to do so (traps would have been nice at Redcliffe though, thats for sure).

Herbalism is useful but the components for it are in such short supply that its patently obvious the reason the gave Bodahn 99x vials that never go away was because they realized this, but, his 99x Elfroot DOESN'T reappear, and since the world isn't open to exploration, elfroot finds are relatively few and far between, and Deep Mushrooms are even worse in this regard. So which I could generally make all the Lesser Health Poultices I wanted, the elements needed for stuff better than that were always in very short supply and believe me I checked every box I could open and every vendor I could find for these items. Another complete annoyance about herbalism is tied in with the hotbar in a way and I'll explain;

As a warrior based PC character, shield specialized I ended up with like 5 primary shield centered "attacks" on my hotbar and a few toggle abilities that require sustained amounts of stamina, now me....as I said hotbar = action RPG...so I go in hurrah, throw my shield around, hit my 5 hotkeys and wait for the extremely long cooldowns, and get off maybe one more hotkeyed ability...and then I'm out of stamina, and guess what? Theres only four in combat ways to regain stamina:

• Eat a Deep Mushroom - Wasteful since theres not MUCH stamina gained from them and as stated there aren't that many of them available in the game.
• Leilana's Chorus of Valor - Extremely slow regeneration but its there, long as she doesn't get her pretty little head stoved in by a mace cause you forgot to take the damn sword out of her inventory again.
• Use a Lyrium vein - the overall gain is about as good as a Deep Mushroom (Except in the Fade) and whats more you can only do that in a certain area of the Deep Roads and thats it.
• Stop using all abilities entirely and just autoattack...which is still very slow to regain due to armor "fatigue" and whats worse is the warrior ability "Deathblow" is supposed to regenerate stamina on every killed enemy and appears to have no noticiable effect in that situation.

So I can make Healing Potions and Lyrium Potions all day long (well not all day long, and not really good ones at that but in theory I can make quite a few low end ones) but theres not a single "stamina potion" in the game? Why again, I ask, is there a hotbar, if my warrior, who literally requires the use of fatigue heavy armor to survive, can only throw like five to six "moves" then its down to waiting for the auto-attacks to finish the job? Even with 48 points invested in strength and 33 points invested in willpower(the stated statistic that increases stamina)? Bad crafting designer, you need to return all the donuts you ate during development.

Survival to me, seems useless in the face of anything but the Brecillian Forest quest with the nervous Halaa, stealing is interesting but half the time you never seem to be able to find what you stole "Item Gained" is not a very clear message in that regard....maybe I stole a Lesser Health Poultice..since I've got like 9 billion of those cause they're all I can make efficiently, its probably unnoticable is it not? Tactics seems a waste of space since Tactics in general perform shoddily at best so who cares how many lines you've got when your NPC companions are going to more or less ignore them anyways? Poisons are useful for rogues but area transitions completely wipe applied effects and eventually are just more trouble than they're worth.

So what exactly was the point of this crafting system then...other than to say "deep and rich crafting system" on the box?

Lockpicking - Oh you fickle b***h, you!

Anyone understand this? Leilana gets all four levels of the rogue mechanical abilities talent, has high dexterity and cunning and yet STILL fails to pick locks on a fairly high percentile basis? What is managing this? This must be especially frustrating for rogue based characters because the mouse over information is not clear what statistics really manage the lockpicking chance, I'd assume its cunning plus the mechanical abilities talents in the rogue talents but...again, it did not seem to produce anywhere near the results I expected...and no documentation I can find is very clear on what manages it either. So while Leilana with her high cunning and 4 talents in stealing can pretty much stand right in front of people and pick their pockets (to little use usually), she ends up getting confounded by around 40% of the chests in the game at various stages of leveling her up and that percentage stays around that confusing amount even towards the end game when you've developed her as conscientiously as you can to ensure she can open stuff.

Conclusion:

These are my major areas of gripe and what I feel makes DA:O a less stellar game than it could have been had the following been given more thought:

• Allowing the game to play comfortably between both action RPG and micromanagement RTSRPG style would have been a great achievement here, unfortunately for DA:O, in its release incarnation the dart has more or less completely missed the board entirely. If micromanagement is necesssary Tactics should work(they don't work), and if they're not going to work then your NPC AI should be smart enough to look at its own Talents development and go "oh I am obviously a bow specialized bard, I will sing my songs and use a bow", this is, again, not the case and it is a major short coming
• The crafting system has major holes in it and you could effectively rip 3 - 4 of the skills out of the system and barely anyone would notice, and the skills that are valuable lack much in the area of supplies and as stated there are recipies that are vitally needed that aren't even there.
• Stamina and Fatigue mechanics make an absolute mockery of having a hotbar at all. Warrior based characters are useless before even having killed the first of 8 - 12 enemies in a group of enemies.
• Having yet ANOTHER relatively good game go "oh you finished our main storyline your game is OVER" is a little annoying especially when you have CE DLC's that you figured weren't as critical to do as the actual "stopping the BLIGHT and saving the WORLD" thing was and you figured once it was all over you'd have more or less "free play" to go around and tidy up or maybe travel around with Leilana or some of your companions and go do to the DLC content then...but no, sorry, you won the game, you now get to start over, reload a save and go do it before you go to take care of the Archdemon or, even worse, if you're really annoyed by it...simply sit around and wait for the expansions/sequels the end of this storyline so blatantly teases you with, knowing you won't see hide nor hair of them til at the very least Xmas of 2010.

So overall, while this game ranks so highly on so many different scales and levels and its getting the virtual swedish massage with full release from every major gaming review site on the planet at this time (and hey who could be more credible to review video games than people who make money for running ads for video games on their mega-website networks? seriously, surely those of us that are long time veteran gamers since the Atari 2600/turned game designers don't know our arses from a hole in the ground compared to them hrrm?) it is my opinion that DA:O is, as stated, dragged down to "average" RPG status by the glaring issues with dynamics I've pointed out here in this rather long and circuituous post.

Now this is not to say, you suck BioWare you did a bad game, this is far from the case you did a spectactular game that unfortunately fell on its face in some key foundational areas and had it not been for the talent of you machinimists and writers, I'd have found this game frustratingly boring, repetitive and somewhat a gigantic waste of my time other than their work which kept me dragging through all the sloggy parts to see the story.

So...largely, 7 of 10, wish I could give it a higher rating than that but 7 is pretty high already given the rather obvious fractures and instabilities in the foundational dynamics of gameplay I've pointed out here.

[*]like i say to every1 if u feel the need to cry with a large list like this just don't play. Maybe the game is just too hard for you rather than the game is flawed. DOn't cry just don't play the game fi you're not good at it

[eastoreispos]

Fanbois should be banned from certain forums, so that we can have a real conversation about a game.



I agree completely with the OP. I had a lot of the same issues as him. The tactics system is laughable at best, as are the vast majority of abilities.



Survival is completely pointless, I dare anyone to argue that its not. Traps is mostly pointless as is poisons. Neither of those two add any noticeable amount of dps to your characters. Spider form and insect swarm is completely pointless.



Warriors can play the entire game with just sustained abilities on, hell they HAVE to play the game with just sustained abilities. What is the point of an action rpg if you can only use your abilities once or twice in the entire length of combat? If you want to use them more than that you have to spam potions, and everyone knows that potion spam is the surest mark of a great rpg, right?



Also the vast amount of abilities (mage excluded) do little more than normal damage. If it doesn't knockback or stun, it's a useless drain of stamina. A good chunk of the spells are also pointless.



Now you can argue that all spells and abilities are useful, but you can't argue with the fact that I beat the game on normal mode using only sustained abilities and an average of 2 abilities per character class. Aside from the mages, I beat the game with 95% of my damage being autoattacks, mostly because of the hideous stamina mechanic. So the simple truth is that there's a plethora of useless abilities, and beating the game with autoattacks and sustained abilities proves this.



The mage is the only exception to this, and even with a mage aoe spells are completely pointless. The damage they do is extremely neglible, and I only found 1 fight in the entire game where they were useful.



Crafting is ridicolous and completely pointless. You know how many resist potions I crafted on my first playthrough on normal mode? 0.



The 'item received' system is infuriating, having to hunt thru ur inventory and then guess to what you got is very annoying.



A personal pet peeve is the 2 handed animations. There's like 3 attack animations for 2 handers and all of them are staggering slow. It literally looks like the character is going to pass out from the strain of swinging the sword. Ofcourse I understand that 2 handers are supposed to be slower than 1 handers, but does that mean that every swing has to look like a 3 second wind-up to a swing?



To mirror the OP, i honestly love the game. It's one of the most engrossing rpgs I've ever played. But to be perfectly honest, combat and crafting just seemed like an annoying distraction you plow through to get to more story.

[Anwin]

SLPr0 wrote...

[*]The "Tactics" section for each character seems a great way to manage how your NPC companions deal with combat situations, letting you get down to the nitty gritty of enjoying the carnage but this is not the case, irregardless of HOW you set up your tactics for Leilana, the bow specialized bard, if you dare to give her a dagger or a sword she will immediately abandon ALL ranged attacks in favor of fighting on the front line, regardless of how you have her tactics set to bard and bow abilities...which is patently dumb and why she's probably brain dead from all the head trauma by the end and still thinks the story is going to go on.[/list]

[*]You know at the top of the tactics area you can set them from default to ranged.  Doing so will pretty much keep them from every pulling out a melee weapon.  I haven't had Leilana pull out her daggers once since I set that.  I also have a caster set up as an arcane warrior with sword and shield in one slot and her staff in the secondary but with her set to ranged she never switches to the sword and shield.  You can pretty much "program" your supporting characters to do anything you want if you take the time to organize their tactics properly.  The only qualm I've had with the game at all so far is no being able to change party members at the Wardens Keep.

[BucMan55]

I wonder if you would have felt differently had you created your party of 4 players from scratch, like Icewind Dale. You seem to think the NPCs should be autonomus entities that require little from you so that you the main player can run thru with them at your back taking care of things that you are unable to do at the same time(healing, archery, offtanking, lockpicking, etc).

[AngryChairR]

The hotbar is so you don't have to open the menu to use potions/spells. You're probably just terrible at this game and find that you're simply disappointed that you couldn't run in and hit things with a hammer 10 times till it dies.

[Shplane]

I honestly have no clue where you're getting most of this, as I had almost none of these problems, and even on the rare occurrence that one of them DID pop up, it was a small, insular event, and easily remedied.



My tactics work just fine. My teammates never get me killed on Normal (I started on Nightmare, but then cranked it down when what's-his-name's thugs kept killing me in his Evil Dwarven Mafia lair). Shale keeps enemies focused on him quite efficiently, Leliana uses her bow, and Wynne is an extremely effective healer. You either need to do a better job of setting your tactics, or change the combat type your characters are set to (Especially with Leliana. Just set her to Ranged. Jesus dude it's not that hard.).



The ability that lets you gain stamina whenever you kill someone works just fine for me. I guess you've got a bug. Sorry dawg.



I admit I never really bothered with Crafting, so I wouldn't know about all that. I happen to find plenty of potions on dead enemies, so it doesn't really matter.

[I HAS A FLAVOUR]

Best game I've ever played.

[SLPr0]

Shplane wrote...

I honestly have no clue where you're getting most of this, as I had almost none of these problems, and even on the rare occurrence that one of them DID pop up, it was a small, insular event, and easily remedied.

My tactics work just fine. My teammates never get me killed on Normal (I started on Nightmare, but then cranked it down when what's-his-name's thugs kept killing me in his Evil Dwarven Mafia lair). Shale keeps enemies focused on him quite efficiently, Leliana uses her bow, and Wynne is an extremely effective healer. You either need to do a better job of setting your tactics, or change the combat type your characters are set to (Especially with Leliana. Just set her to Ranged. Jesus dude it's not that hard.).

The ability that lets you gain stamina whenever you kill someone works just fine for me. I guess you've got a bug. Sorry dawg.

I admit I never really bothered with Crafting, so I wouldn't know about all that. I happen to find plenty of potions on dead enemies, so it doesn't really matter.

I was going to reply to this but I realized I'd be repeating myself from the various replies I've made in the previous 8 pages of the thread.

So I'll simply concede that many people just read the first post and hit "reply" and be done with trying to explain myself. If it matters, there are further explanations, deeper findings, concessions of things I identified that were fixable, and new problems revealed, but I realize that requires an attention span that allows a person to read an entire thread and having to get through the first post alone is enough to illicit hostility from most posters so I won't insist people read through the entire thread I'll just stop repeating myself and answer poignant and current responses that are aware of the rest of the discussion that has occurred.

No offense to any of you that clicked Reply on impulse without reading the entire thread, I realize people have better things to do of course.

[Wardawg1001]

SLPr0 wrote...

Shplane wrote...

I honestly have no clue where you're getting most of this, as I had almost none of these problems, and even on the rare occurrence that one of them DID pop up, it was a small, insular event, and easily remedied.

My tactics work just fine. My teammates never get me killed on Normal (I started on Nightmare, but then cranked it down when what's-his-name's thugs kept killing me in his Evil Dwarven Mafia lair). Shale keeps enemies focused on him quite efficiently, Leliana uses her bow, and Wynne is an extremely effective healer. You either need to do a better job of setting your tactics, or change the combat type your characters are set to (Especially with Leliana. Just set her to Ranged. Jesus dude it's not that hard.).

The ability that lets you gain stamina whenever you kill someone works just fine for me. I guess you've got a bug. Sorry dawg.

I admit I never really bothered with Crafting, so I wouldn't know about all that. I happen to find plenty of potions on dead enemies, so it doesn't really matter.

I was going to reply to this but I realized I'd be repeating myself from the various replies I've made in the previous 8 pages of the thread.

So I'll simply concede that many people just read the first post and hit "reply" and be done with trying to explain myself. If it matters, there are further explanations, deeper findings, concessions of things I identified that were fixable, and new problems revealed, but I realize that requires an attention span that allows a person to read an entire thread and having to get through the first post alone is enough to illicit hostility from most posters so I won't insist people read through the entire thread I'll just stop repeating myself and answer poignant and current responses that are aware of the rest of the discussion that has occurred.

No offense to any of you that clicked Reply on impulse without reading the entire thread, I realize people have better things to do of course.

Maybe you should have just spent some more time trying to understand the game instead of posting an essay about problems of your own making. When you come and rate a game 7/10 after spending at least twice as much time writing a bogus "review" than you spent on trying to figure out how to work the tactics page works, you really cant expect anyone to respect your opinion. Could have saved everyone (yourself included) some valuable time.

[aliandracy]

My favorite part of the post was when you mentioned "fanboi mode" then talked about how Hideo Kojima makes such brilliant cinematics. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find someone that is much of a fanboy as yourself.

Modifié par aliandracy, 08 novembre 2009 - 11:19 .

[Derengard]

So you think it's not as tactical as BG1/2 (or at least not intended for the same gamers) and therefore shouldn't be played in the same way, and if someone still does, and ignores your way of playing it with automated companion, he's on the wrong side and blinded to all objective criticism?

It's just natural when people who like the way they play it differently just ignore your points. Apart from that, I know many of your issues from professional reviews. They just didn't make an Action RPG/RTSRPG drama out of it, but rather pointed them out as individual points for improvement.

[Sinnamon Spyder]

Hmmm...



I read the OP's first post... in it's entirety. Maybe I read it differently to some people.



Being used to MMO's in general (Far to many years played in this genre ...I hesitate to say wasted - as I enjoyed the time spent ) I too INITIALLY agreed with many of the original points laid out.



I read it as constructive critiscism, then thought about it.



What I decided is that I am really looking forward to replaying the game on a harder difficuly level and actually adopting my gameplay style (curently much the same as the OP's, from what I can glean) to embrace the turn based style that this game seems to lend itself to.



It should take awhile to learn the ropes again, so to speak, and I really think I will revel in the micro management and complexities that I hope will be on offer when I change my style to complement an obviously deeper gameplay.



I think maybe the OP should, like myself, try and open up a bit more to the tactical style and give it a good whirl. I may may very well not enjoy it as much as I hope, but given the time spent developing this game, the sumptuous graphics, the great story arc and the many different stories to play through their entirety - I feel that this is more than enough justification to DEVELOPE my play styles.



Very much looking forward to the replay value.



Yours, Sin.

[brgillespie]

"The "Tactics" section for each character seems a great way to manage
how your NPC companions deal with combat situations, letting you get
down to the nitty gritty of enjoying the carnage but this is not the
case, irregardless of HOW you set up your tactics for Leilana, the bow
specialized bard, if you dare
to give her a dagger or a sword she will immediately abandon ALL ranged
attacks in favor of fighting on the front line, regardless of how you
have her tactics set to bard and bow abilities...which is patently dumb
and why she's probably brain dead from all the head trauma by the end
and still thinks the story is going to go on."

Are you positive that you understand the Tactics? In the Tactics screen while you're fiddling with Leilana, have you taken notice of the two drop-down menus available? The one on the left contains the tactics sets, 3 custom slots along with preconfigured options. On the right hand side there is another drop-down menu which contains behaviors. Choose the "Ranged" behavior. In that option, the character prefers ranged weaponry and attacks from a distance.

[Xalm Grey]

JEBesh wrote...

Xalm Grey wrote...

I am still suprised how the BG type vets are sloooooow to recognize that yes BG and BG2 were great but that Bioware also made alot of games since then. Those "other" obviously minor titles ( since they mean nothing here if they aren't BG and BG2 ) don't mean much i guess. It astounds me to see people pointing out this is fine and not even considering the other playerbase that this company obviously built but ignored when making this.

They aren't "ignoring" anyone. If they were ignoring people who don't like BG style gameplay, they wouldn't have ME2 coming out in 2 months. DA:O has always been marketed as "the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate." It's what it was meant to be, and they weren't coy about it. They're going back to their roots for one game that you don't have to play. If you want to go down this pointless road, let's say they were "ignoring" the BG fan base for years with ME, JE, and KotOR.

The marketing had this hyped up ALSO as a action rpg. No where did it say that the game came with sub-standard AI that only a certain bunch that had played 10+ year old titles would really care for. Then they go and make a whole bunch of more main-stream games and they plug this in with them on advertisements etc. No just no. There's no excuse. It seems almost lazy on their part. They could have had the same AI as in previous games and let all you micro managing fanatics turn tactics and AI off therefore appeasing everyone. But as i read these forums i realize that most everyone in here that is happy with the game doesn't really want others to be as such. Its either "L2p" or "noob". Unbelieveable when you consider the fact its a single player game we are talking about and yet there's such hostility.

[OctopusRush]

Dragon Age is NOT an action RPG. Most of the things you consider a flaw I consider a feautre. Aesthetics are subjective and there is no such thing as bad or good design - only design different people enjoy to a different degree.



Even if most people are like yourself, the immense number of DA players points that the product has achieved its intended purpose and reached its target audience - which you do not seem to be amongst.

[JEBesh]

Xalm Grey wrote...

The marketing had this hyped up ALSO as a action rpg. No where did it say that the game came with sub-standard AI that only a certain bunch that had played 10+ year old titles would really care for. Then they go and make a whole bunch of more main-stream games and they plug this in with them on advertisements etc. No just no. There's no excuse. It seems almost lazy on their part. They could have had the same AI as in previous games and let all you micro managing fanatics turn tactics and AI off therefore appeasing everyone. But as i read these forums i realize that most everyone in here that is happy with the game doesn't really want others to be as such. Its either "L2p" or "noob". Unbelieveable when you consider the fact its a single player game we are talking about and yet there's such hostility.

Hyped up as an action RPG? You're referring to the CGI trailers, I assume? I've no idea why anyone would take a promotional CGI trailer as a representation of gameplay, but honestly, if you don't have the ability to make an informed purchase, it's your fault. DA:O is not an action RPG in the vein of Demon's Souls or Diablo, it was never meant to be, and 10 minutes of research prior to spending your hard-earned cash would have told you that. There's no point in playing a game of a genre that you do not care for, and then complaining that it's that style of gameplay. If a SOCOM fan made a blind purchase of Call of Duty 4 and then considered the fact that it isn't a third-person shooter a flaw, I would have just as much sympathy for them as I do for you.

[GhoXen]

I read your points about the difficulty setting, laughed, and thought that you should play Hello Kitty: Origins.

[Xalm Grey]

You seem to assume that I'm sitting here saying DA:O sucks and I want my money back and the usual blather you get from the chronically unsatisfiable negative gamer/forum poster you get everywhere. While ignoring where I've said in multiple responses, that I think the game is fantastic on many levels.

And focusing on my explanation of my observation of difficulty levels as me saying the game is awful is dumb as well. I played it on easy because I prefer a more hands off hack and slash approach to games, thats EXACTLY what the mouse over information states for that mode I'll paraphrase here but it does state:

"This mode is for players newer to role playing games or for players who want a more hands off experience that does not require much management of party characters, friendly fire will not affect party members...." and a bit more but thats what it states.

And yes I died on Easy...thats not some kind of moral failing thats an indication that the game is challenging in whatever mode you decide to play it in.

My primary complaint is the lack of the games ability to adapt to the players preferred style of play, the constant "its the spiritual successor of Baldur's Gate" arguments really are like throwing cream pies at a castle as far as I'm concerned, this is the 21st century, games have moved on since Baldur's Gate and theres no reason why DA:O can't do Baldur's Gate for all the people that have been waiting for a game to replace it AND do action RPG style play as well and its my opinion that with the "easy" mode description and the ability to play in third person (in a fairly frustrating fashion but still play in it) indicates that they were trying to keep the door open for that style of player.

Thats my thoughts pretty much as well. Specially the part where they could have made it work for both types of players and yet they didn't. Yet you mention that possiblity on these forums and people that are over zealous about BG run to tar and feather you. Honestly all i wanted out of this was a good story to replay over and over on different toons without a huge amount of frustration. However no matter what i do with the combat its frustrating ( yes i played with tactics and on easy and no, they didn't help). I sensed this coming when i ran into 6 or 8 wolves that tore my party up good but we survived when i ran into the swamp. Followed quickly by 4 archers on a cliff and 4 melee tying my party members up while they try to get the archers. And to those that ask why i bought it? Because i'll say it again, its being advertised and marketed as a action RPG. "spiritual successor to Baulders Gate" doesn't equate to "Micro-manage hand hold party NPC's". Specially after ME/JE etc. No it could have been handled better.

[Zace Kalding]

Well I see what he means on most of these posts.. but I would add into it this....



CANT JUMP



CANT SWIM

[Xalm Grey]

JEBesh wrote...

Xalm Grey wrote...

The marketing had this hyped up ALSO as a action rpg. No where did it say that the game came with sub-standard AI that only a certain bunch that had played 10+ year old titles would really care for. Then they go and make a whole bunch of more main-stream games and they plug this in with them on advertisements etc. No just no. There's no excuse. It seems almost lazy on their part. They could have had the same AI as in previous games and let all you micro managing fanatics turn tactics and AI off therefore appeasing everyone. But as i read these forums i realize that most everyone in here that is happy with the game doesn't really want others to be as such. Its either "L2p" or "noob". Unbelieveable when you consider the fact its a single player game we are talking about and yet there's such hostility.

Hyped up as an action RPG? You're referring to the CGI trailers, I assume? I've no idea why anyone would take a promotional CGI trailer as a representation of gameplay, but honestly, if you don't have the ability to make an informed purchase, it's your fault. DA:O is not an action RPG in the vein of Demon's Souls or Diablo, it was never meant to be, and 10 minutes of research prior to spending your hard-earned cash would have told you that. There's no point in playing a game of a genre that you do not care for, and then complaining that it's that style of gameplay. If a SOCOM fan made a blind purchase of Call of Duty 4 and then considered the fact that it isn't a third-person shooter a flaw, I would have just as much sympathy for them as I do for you.

10 minutes of research on what site? Gamespot? Have you read their review? I missed the part where they mentioned the micro-management and tedium. And the part where its nothing like KOTOR or anything bioware has released in the last 10 years. And no your comparisons to shooters are not good. Why? Because the new playerbase didn't expect a 10 year old game wrapped up in shiny new colors to come out after Biowares making a mark with ME and so forth. Is it REALLY that hard a stretch for you people to see how their last few games could lead to this kind of accidental frustration? Everyone here is so hard on trying to defend an obvious flaw in their marketing campaign and obvious oversight of the players they have gained over the 10 years since BG. They could have made this easily accessable to both parties. Yet they market it as an apple and its really an orange.

[Gidzen]

Before you Hit Submit could you Please check you SPEELING hah..



For the verbose-ness of you rant you could have been one of the Beta testing WHO EVERYONE IGNORED..............

[JEBesh]

Xalm Grey wrote...

10 minutes of research on what site? Gamespot? Have you read their review? I missed the part where they mentioned the micro-management and tedium. And the part where its nothing like KOTOR or anything bioware has released in the last 10 years.

10 minutes of research on.. I don't know.. the games website? Maybe even a quick Youtube video of the gameplay? I'm sure one could conjure up some fantastical method of getting information through the internet. It's a stretch, I know.

Is it REALLY that hard a stretch for you people to see how their last few games could lead to this kind of accidental frustration?

Sure. Some people who are used to ME, KotOR and JE could certainly be put off by DA:O. What's the point here? Do you think it somehow justifies any of your reasoning? What of the transition from BG gameplay to the games you mentioned? Is the transition that moves away from the gameplay you prefer the only relevant one? You think there weren't long time BioWare fans who were put off by ME? Gee, that must be one of ME's flaws, since it didn't cater to everyone's taste. BioWare should have made it a tactical/action RPG/FPS/dance sim to truly warrant a perfect score. This was again the point of the "shooter comparison." If it's a style of gameplay you don't enjoy, then it simply isn't for you.

Everyone here is so hard on trying to defend an obvious flaw in their
marketing campaign and obvious oversight of the players they have
gained over the 10 years since BG. They could have made this easily
accessable to both parties. Yet they market it as an apple and its
really an orange.

I understand you're new to the forums, but it's a pretty universally shared opinion that the marketing campaign was botched. You should have been around back when the "Violence" trailer was released. Once again, when spending your money, you should be making an informed purchase. I would never recommend anyone to take marketing as anything more than hot air.

Modifié par JEBesh, 09 novembre 2009 - 01:18 .

[KingSarevok]

Agree with the OP in the sense that these points in fact ARE annoying.



However, they don't take away the love that I have for the game. It's still a solid 9/10 for me.

[Xalm Grey]

JEBesh wrote...

Xalm Grey wrote...

10 minutes of research on what site? Gamespot? Have you read their review? I missed the part where they mentioned the micro-management and tedium. And the part where its nothing like KOTOR or anything bioware has released in the last 10 years.

10 minutes of research on.. I don't know.. the games website? Maybe even a quick Youtube video of the gameplay? I'm sure one could conjure up some fantastical method of getting information through the internet. It's a stretch, I know.

Is it REALLY that hard a stretch for you people to see how their last few games could lead to this kind of accidental frustration?

Sure. Some people who are used to ME, KotOR and JE could certainly be put off by DA:O. What's the point here? Do you think it somehow justifies any of your reasoning? What of the transition from BG gameplay to the games you mentioned? Is the transition that moves away from the gameplay you prefer the only relevant one? You think there weren't long time BioWare fans who were put off by ME? Gee, that must be one of ME's flaws, since it didn't cater to everyone's taste. BioWare should have made it a tactical/action RPG/FPS/dance sim to truly warrant a perfect score. This was again the point of the "shooter comparison." If it's a style of gameplay you don't enjoy, then it simply isn't for you.

Everyone here is so hard on trying to defend an obvious flaw in their
marketing campaign and obvious oversight of the players they have
gained over the 10 years since BG. They could have made this easily
accessable to both parties. Yet they market it as an apple and its
really an orange.

I understand you're new to the forums, but it's a pretty universally shared opinion that the marketing campaign was botched. You should have been around back when the "Violence" trailer was released. Once again, when spending your money, you should be making an informed purchase. I would never recommend anyone to take marketing as anything more than hot air.

Sorry man but i couldn't take your post too serious when you couldn't even give me a good source of info that didn't have me diving through threads while this game was in development just to find out they are using 10 year old mechanics. Sorry man i'm like most other people out there that bought this, bought it by name ( Bioware ) and after reading misleading reviews ( Gamespot ) and seeing the trailers showcasing this game to be something it isn't. It stops being my fault after i did a reasonable amount of research that just ended up in this fiasco. Marketing is how ALOT of companies make their money. The companies that advertise one thing and hand out another like they've done here only stand to lose people in the future. I'm hardly a lone sole voice here. There are many many people that share my complaints. Some don't granted. To those that are having fun thats great. But they could still make this game fun for the people that expected what was advertised in a patch. Better AI. That doesn't affect any of you BG players. You still can turn tactics off and have your micro management. Why anyone is fighting this idea is beyond me. All they are doing is losing money.

If you disagree about that money loss comment, just look at WoW. While some of you vilify it and the people that play it, it has made more money in a year than Bioware stands to ever see from this game. Because Blizzard had the common sense to market to MAINSTREAM people. Not a niche.

Modifié par Xalm Grey, 09 novembre 2009 - 01:26 .