31 réponses à ce sujet

[z8472]

I think a lot of us felt like the game just fell apart with this expansion every class became so overpowered it broke the game honestly.  What I am wondering now is what did it?  I have two lines of thinking it was either the gear, my AW was spell immune and I think almost at 100% dodge with arcane field and combat magic meanwhile I still had just rediculur amounts of spellpower mana regen.  Or it was the levels and spells by the time my mage got to 30 or so I basically had all the spells I was interested in didn't matter what I picked which was disappointing and every class got so many AOEs for instance that it made so many of the encounters trivial.

Now I just want to clear one thing up I actually enjoyed the expansion not sure it was worth the price and now that I've seen the story it has almost no replay value for me because it was just so easy to beat, I felt like I was playing an interactive movie rather than a game.  

[gskurski]

I only have maybe 10 hours played but I will say that it has been very easy so far. I rarely even need to pause and when I do it's just out of habit. I'm playing on hard because that's what I finished Origins in, but I might have to kick it up to nightmare. I think what did it was importing my level 24 character. This I think caused all the new companions to also be level 24ish right off the bat. So basically I just got a bunch of stat/skill/talent points to spend on all the new things. Because starting a char from scratch puts you at level 18, I'm guessing that is around where the difficulty is based on, at least for the beginning parts. I could be wrong and the difficulty is supposed to tier with your level, but it just seems like it hasn't.



I have enjoyed all the story and the quests so far though, which is usually the big element for me anyway.

[stuka1000]

To be honest the expansion seemed a little rushed out the door to me. It just wasn't anywhere near as polished as the original game with much of what made DA great to start with missing. The story was okay I guess but too short for the money with very little interaction with your party members and some quests that gave little or no indication that you had actually completed them.



Anders could use some work as well as he is pretty much Alistair Mk2; Put those two in a room together and they could amuse each other for hours. In answer to your post I agree, at higher level the party never needs a single healing potion.

[Stonetwister]

Personally, a little bit of an easier ride would be fine with me. I haven't bought the expansion yet, but in the original run through I was pausing after every individual round of actions so that I could micro manage every little things my NPCs did. Even with general tactics set up, it just seemed like I had to manage their actions very closely. I wouldn't cry if that was turned down a bit.

[Jamie7791]

***SPOILER ALERT***

Rob_R wrote...

Sorry, maybe I missed something -- but did you all do the electric dragon and broodmother with no pause AND no poultices (on the PC, first time round, on hard or above)? WOW, I mean ... wow! But yeah, DA:OA was handing out the levels and gold like a drunken sailor, so the hardest part was selecting which part of my OP arsenal to use. A bit of a shame when you level up and there is nothing left on the menu that you want, so you just pick at random.

For me it did feel rushed. It was a last hurrah; if you wanted more darkspawn in newer scenery, you got it. But plot continuity and shallow party interaction did it for me. 5 second cameos for Alastair and Wynne that left you wondering where the old magic had gone.

And the trade vs food vs city was plain stupid (not enough info to make that call) and it was so pivotal to the game.

I have to agree here.  Try playing on a higher difficulty level.  I can't imagine playing on hard or above and not using the pause button and poultices for those encounters.

I thought the premise of the story was actually very good and keeping in mind that this is an expansion and not a standalone game, I'm very happy with it.  I finished my first playthrough and I'm going to play it again with a different character to gauge the results.

I played a HNF married to Alistair at the end of Origins.  I thought seeing Alistair at the start of the game was a nice touch.  But as a personal preference, I would have liked to have seen more references to my old companions.  I mean -- what the heck happened to Leliana?  She's not even mentioned. 

And what about Zevran?  I kept hoping that the "Dark Wolf" was really Zevran in disguise.  I kept hoping he would take off his helmet and SURPRISE! 

Wynne seemed less than thrilled to see me, which was surprising since the woman couldn't stop "mentoring" me throughout DA:O.  I didn't expect to see Morrigan in the expansion (I'm still holding out hope that we'll learn more about her in the next game).

I have some mixed feelings about the new conversation system that the expansion implemented.  Although it was nice to have landmark points to initate dialogues, I kept wondering if I was missing something.  I found myself returning to Vigil's Keep over and over again just to see if there was a little arrow above anyone's head.

No arrow above anyone's head?  Darn!  Time to try to give out random gifts again.  Unfortunately, I never got enough of a feel for the characters to know what sort of gifts they would like -- with few exceptions.  

Although I really enjoyed some of the characters (Anders and Nathaniel in particular) I didn't feel as though I really had an opportunity to get to know them as well as I would have liked.  I had a difficult time developing a strong emotional attachment to them in the same way that I did in DA:O. 

In addition, did anyone else notice that a lot of the random banter between your party members was repeated?  This wasn't the case in DA:O as far as my experiments went.

But overall, for an expansion, I'm happy with it.  I think Bioware did an amazing job catering to such a large fan base and releasing an expansion that continued an already amazing story. 

I'm sure our talented modders will help to make the expansion even more colorful. 

[gskurski]

Jamie7791 wrote...



In addition, did anyone else notice that a lot of the random banter between your party members was repeated?  This wasn't the case in DA:O as far as my experiments went.

I had Morrigan and Sten repeat the dialogue where he tells her he was thinking about them together and telling her all the things she needs to do to prepare like 100 times. It was like their default after they ran out of new dialogues.

[KentGoldings]

During the last quest you get ambushed by a high-dragon. No time for tactics, just jump into the fray. I was astonished how quickly the High Dragon fell. Maybe I'm just remembering how difficult the high dragon is in Origins when you are less than half the level.





One of the difficulties with repeat references to original companions in continuity. Alistair is easy, either he or Anora is the Monarch. All the other companions sans Ohgren has a crisis that might result in them either leaving the party or not being recruited.

[z8472]

I am playing on nightmare and I only died on mother and the dragon the in black marsh did take a while to kill because I lost a member of my party right off the bat to her breath attack. Like I said I was playing a DPS class and yet I was able to achieve very high amounts of health and become nearly unhitable and spell immune at minimal cost to pure power thus I was able to just stomp through the entire game. When I say I tanked most of the game I really mean it, the high dragon outside mothers den the inferno golem, the armoured ogre etc. and I did this taking very little damage. Infact the reason for my death against mother was due to the glyph of neutralization she cast every once in a while, I was killing the children with my arcane warrior while the rest DPS'd using the sustained AOEs and I couldn't get outside the glyph because I kept getting overwhelmed.

[ComTrav]

Repeating random banter is probably a bug, I had no problem with it.



And on Nightmare I trucked almost everything--High Dragon got one kill in because I wasn't expecting it. 2-handed warriors got SOO MUCH BETTER. There were a few fights when everyone else would die but the main character would pull it out, which made him feel more heroic.



Didn't need to make any new poultices other then what was dropped, but I was still well-stocked from the DAO endgame. (If I were smart, I would've brought over a bunch of Deep Mushrooms.)



TBCH, even in DAO vanilla the game was towards at the end because the characters were so much more powerful (even before the endgame makes all these white darkspawn one-shottable.) Try doing Orzammer right away, and even that first pull on the mountain pass is a pain. A problem with RPG scaling is always that the characters vastly out-strip the monsters eventually.



I would've liked one or two more very difficult, optional encounters. (Queen of the Blackmarsh went down on first try, but was a good fight; in DAO Gaxkang beat me a couple of times before I figured him out.)

[Dan_cw]

I'm a ways into the game now, just finishing up Kar'hirol or whatever its name is. I've done Wending Woods and Black Marsh.

I think part of the problem is that when I look at mini-map in the corner of the screen and mouse over the enemies, a lot are like level 14 - 15, due to fighting a lot of hurlocks and genlocks. The children enemies (easiest ones) seem capped around level 24 as well? So, from what I can make out with the exception of the Black Marsh due to going there first and the human enemies, it's only the elite/boss monsters at your level. I mean, even the demons faced in the game seem to be capped at level 15 or so for the most part unless they're elite. It does gel with what Bioware always said about mobs having a ceiling that they can't level past.

In a way though, it does make sense as your character is quite experienced now. I also think part of it is due to the world that's been designed. It doesn't feel like the sort of game world where there's millions of different types of creatures ala Dungeons and Dragons.

Anyway, just my thoughts. It doesn't address the dragon issue people are reporting though. I can only say that I had to use resist gear and heal up to kill it. Plus yes, it took me a while.

Modifié par Dan_cw, 19 mars 2010 - 11:42 .

[Group Theory]

I played on Nightmare, and I don't think I used potions at all during the Lightning Dragon or final boss.

I think what made the characters overpowered is a combination of the new talents and better gear. Basically with my mage, I got huge boosts to my mana. One of the talents gave +50, one of my staffs gave +75, and I also had misc. gear that gave me a large bonus as well. By the end of the game I had over 700 mana. I could basically start and end almost every fight with One with Nature + Hand of Winter + 2nd talent from the Keeper Tree + 3rd Talent from the Keeper tree. That dealt so much damage, most battles were over before my warriors could deal any appreciable damage. I could also just waltz in with Elemental Chaos (last battlemage talent) and watch everything die.

Something else that really overpowered constitution tanks (which were really weak before) was Gaurdian. The first talent basically makes a party member immune to all damage, and the second talent gives +15 to armor (huge boost!). The great thing is, those talents cool down were about the same length as the talent duration, so you could just cast them the second they wore off. Second Wind also negated the huge stamina pool required to use these abilities.

By the end of the game, my Constitution tank had over 1000 health and was taking single digit damage from most enemies. Not only that, but when I got into a fight with a boss I could just throw on Carpace and basically be immune to all damage fro 20 seconds. After that time was up I could just use the Guardian Armor boost to help out until Carpace cooled down.

Also Accuracy for archers was way too good. Nate had nearly an 80% critical chance, and his damage was over 100 with each hit. Basically I could just use Hand of Winter and Nate would shatter everyone.

tl;dr
The game was way too easy, even on Nightmare, because the gear and new talents were way overpowered (at least compared to the enemies we had to face).

Modifié par Group Theory, 20 mars 2010 - 02:41 .

[SSH83]

I played it on nightmare with arcane warrior, ogren, sigrun, and natheriel (the martial classes kick so much arse now).  most battles were easy and the boss fight were challenging but never died.

However, I think the difficulty level in Awakening is more in line with what is expected of a normal RPG.  Considering that most players of the expansions are expert of the game mechanics, it is logical that the expansion would be a little on the easy side for us.  However, most of the themed combat are A LOT MORE entertaining in Awakening than in the original.  Spectral dragon was pretty fun.

If you notice, PC damage and HP sky rocketted, but monster damage didn't raise the same way.  It is better this way IMO.   Mabye a tad harder for nightmare for those who desire a nightmare  (similar to the insanity difficulty in Mass Effect 2), though i like the challenge level of awakening.   Maybe on Nightmare, PC do 75% damage to the monsters.  That would make things a lot more challenging.  Someone make a mod? haha

[stuka1000]

It isn't how easy awakenings is that really bothers me that much, but more the fact that it isn't an expansion, it's a simple addon and there is a difference. Expansions expand the original game with new gear, classes etc. and in doing so make the entire game experience richer. An addon in comparison is just that, extra stuff tacked onto the end. A true expansion would allow the use of the extra specialist classes and abilities to be used in the original game, awakenings does not.



I feel like others have said that Awakenings should have been DLC at about half the price but we shouldn't expect more than what we got from EA I suppose.

[Spyndel]

The game just didnt seem designed with the awareness that the party in it would in all likelihood be high level with maxed out abilities and high end gear. It seemed more like it was designed for low level characters, not an "epic" campaign. Very little need for tactical behavior in the game.



I've not played it with the default Orleasian warden. Perhaps it simply wasnt designed to compensate for the potency of imported characters.

[Spyndel]

Rob_R wrote...

I doubt it's jsut about the potency of imports - the gear the game drops is waaay better than Origins and it hands out a new level just about every time you down a hurlock.

This is Bioware's problem with creating so many hugely powerful talents and spells. And giving people the excitment of levelling often despite the short game. Some people will therefore quickly identify all the right combos, respec and be invincible, others won't. Bioware have to make a game that works for both types of player.

I wonder what this means for DA 2... Will the devs give us the same trees as DA:O/A, knowing that a large minority of players will min/max them out to make the game a total cakewalk? Or will they invent new less awesomely powerful tools, so they can control how unbalanced it can become??

Well, its not only a matter of the powers...the encounters just dont seemed scaled for epic level characters.  I was expecting rooms full of all yellow names with an orange at the end.  Minions in the game , even in droves, are no longer any real threat to characters of this level.   In Throne of Bhaal, you were fighting roomfuls of Fire Giants.

Also, Dexterity becomes an issue.  Once players realize that pumping Dexterity is the "easy" button for the game, its all over. It wasnt an issue in Origins so much, because there wasnt enough points to max your characters "effective" stats, and still have enough left over to become unhittable for *most* classes.  In Awakening, there are plenty of points to do effective damage, and still pump defense into near infallible range, even for non rogues. So you end up with most member of your party being effectively immune to the majority of threat in the game, even on Nightmare.

Enemy hit rates really need to scale more on the higher difficulties.

Modifié par Spyndel, 20 mars 2010 - 08:46 .

[ComTrav]

Spyndel wrote...



Well, its not only a matter of the powers...the encounters just dont seemed scaled for epic level characters.  I was expecting rooms full of all yellow names with an orange at the end.  Minions in the game , even in droves, are no longer any real threat to characters of this level.   In Throne of Bhaal, you were fighting roomfuls of Fire Giants.

This is the problem IMO.

Massacre inst-gibs all white enemies and mages have enough close-range AoE damage to basically do the same thing (before Mage AoE seemed to be balanced around the fact you couldn't use it very well close in.)

[dwanedibbley]

Betatesting failed big time there. New spells/abilities r op and gamebreaking. Accuracy is nice example, it scales too much with dex and worse is it scales lineary. I had over 100% crit at lvl34 with just accuracy turned on (can go over 200% with bards song but why should i do it), so criting for 300-400 each shot without any other dmg amplifiing buff/debuff is just silly mistake (1800 arrow of slaying crits). Some quests and NPCs r bugged aswell (for example Lilith), trap detection doesnt seems to work either. But i also found one realy positive thing- fixed increasing loading time.

Modifié par dwanedibbley, 20 mars 2010 - 10:12 .

[Spyndel]

dwanedibbley wrote...

Betatesting failed big time there. New spells/abilities r op and gamebreaking. Accuracy is nice example, it scales too much with dex and worse is it scales lineary. I had over 100% crit at lvl34 with just accuracy turned on (can go over 200% with bards song but why should i do it), so criting for 300-400 each shot without any other dmg amplifiing buff/debuff is just silly mistake (1800 arrow of slaying crits). Some quests and NPCs r bugged aswell (for example Lilith), trap detection doesnt seems to work either. But i also found one realy positive thing- fixed increasing loading time.

I'm not one to blame beta testers.  It assumes that developers are willing, or free to act upon all the feedback they get, and we *know* this isnt the case.

The game simply seems like it was pushed out the door as fast as possible, while EA still thought they could command the somewhat dubious pricetag on Awakenings.

[dwanedibbley]

I dont blame betatesters, i blame betatesting as process cuz i dont know where exactly it failed. Atleast some of testers must seen this (more like all of them), unless they dodnt hired some low-age kids enjoying being untouchable demigods.

Modifié par dwanedibbley, 20 mars 2010 - 05:47 .

[SolaFide03]

I would agree that it seems easier, but how much of that is due to those playing the game just getting better at playing the game?  I personally am much better at using the tactics and better at understanding the classes strengths and weaknesses than I was in the base game.

The gear and skills are pretty uber, and don't have much trouble with yellow - named mobs but I wonder if we are just getting to be better players.  Orange still gives me fits, but it's a good challenge even now.

As an aside, totally by accident grouped Velanna, Anders and Justice with my level 30 mage running through the new Taig, and thought I'd see what would happen.  Fire, Frost, and Electricity specializations on the mages, two can group heal, and two with Stonefist.  Along with Justice in the black armor that I can not name right now, with good runestones and it's a blast ripping through stuff!  I don't think I've used a single poultice yet (although still need to take on the boss down there).

Modifié par SolaFide03, 20 mars 2010 - 05:59 .

[Basileus777]

Poorly implemented level scaling is a big issue here. The enemies simply don't scale high enough. When you are level 31 you shouldn't be fighting level 28 elites and normal enemies with levels in the teens. The original had the same problem, but the issue is exacerbated by the higher levels Awakening deals with. Or maybe Bioware just toned down the difficulty because everyone complained that Origins was too hard.

The new abilities don't help either, as many of them are overpowered.

Modifié par Basileus777, 20 mars 2010 - 06:43 .

[dwanedibbley]

Check http://social.biowar...6/index/1818850, cba to repeat it there.

Modifié par dwanedibbley, 20 mars 2010 - 06:37 .