alanschu

I think there just might be nuances of the class that perhaps aren't as clear. The consensus at work was that the dual wield spec of choice was to go large weapons (swords, maces, etc), and not daggers. . Once Alistair got his taunt off, I would typically spam Dual Weapon Sweep (I used this ability all the time, even on a single target) and whirlwind and seemed to do good damage. Morrigan was definitely better in this regard, but she also had friendly fire concerns. For mob combat though, I think it's best to still have the tank soak everything, and not have your rogue go off and fight something else. Am I correct that a lot of the concerns is in the one-on-one fighting? Just to make sure this is clear, I cannot promise anything.

Magister has concerns about preserving the content locally regardless.

It's funny how these companies are so evil for doing layoffs, yet don't have that stigma removed when they hire and maintain some of the largest staffs throughout the world. The company lists large revenues, but I'll admit I am horrible at dissecting those things, and still don't really know if that means they made a profit.

I'd be emotional and not particularly in an appropriate state of mind to be in any way impartial. Though I have been laid off from a job before. I was laid off because the power plant manager ran one of the boilers 6 months over schedule, and the plant needed to cut costs as they were millions of dollars over budget. They fired and replaced the plant manager, and I was informed a week later that I was being laid off. I got over it. How would I like it if I were randomly given the lottery winnings? Pretty good! Those who wish to see what they want to see, will draw their own conclusions regardless of whether or not facts are actually released. Since you don't like EA, I hardly expect you to look at this in any way but negatively. I'll bet even if reasons were given, you'd dismiss them due to your bias. Laying off 1500 people while purchasing something for 300 million (and absorbing all the employees that come with that company) implies just as easily that the projects and departments those 1500 people were in, were not successful and were being carried by the other departments, and that the 300 million dollar buyout is one that is more in line for the direction that the company wishes to take (or one that they feel will garner significant returns on investment). The culture of the company could just as easily be one that doesn't feel that unsuccessful divisions that are money sinks should continue to be giant vacuums of money with no return on any investments.

This one is a bit obscure. How you will likely have to get it: It'll be on a book on a vendor. Keep and eye out for it. The most consistent way of getting it (I'm not sure where the book is), is unfortunately done much later in the game, towards the end game. The trainer is a person that you don't have access to until all the open world plots are done. It is (this could be a big spoiler. Read at own risk!!!! Once you unlock any specialization, they should be available for all subsequent characters though.

That is correct. While I did get to experience some of the "early" romance type stuff with Leliana (which I thought was interesting), I definitely don't know the details of it farther down its path.

Disagree. It seemed very apparent to me that the game follows more along the Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Neverwinter Nights 2 gameplay mechanics. If you want to just look at developer history, you can include KOTOR in there as well. All three of the games you described are decidedly solo games, built around the idea of first person perspective. Dragon Age most definitely is NOT a game like that, and given that virtually the entire game is a party based game where you're encouraged to take control of each of the characters in your party, the games of Bloodlines, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 begin to drastically drift away from Dragon Age. You'll have a much easier time making a list of similarities between other BioWare games and Dragon Age, then Dragon Age and games designed around a first person perspective.

IIRC, it was confirmed quite some time ago that the DRM was a traditional disc check. Having said that, it seems that it's not an applicable reason anymore. Hence why I mentioned it as your three reasons seemed to be the "current" reasons. It's unfortunate, because none of the reasons actually relate to the content of the game itself. It's unfortunate that the other concerns you have seemed to override it, but alas. Like you said, there's other games you can choose from. You may want to look into it, but I believe it is possible to backup your DLC. Regardless, Stone Prisoner is free so I'd still recommend picking that one up.

I specifically wasn't suggested a critical path, though after dying a few times during the opening encounter at Orzammar as my second plot, I did learn that Orzammar is typically considered one that should be done later. In my opinion, the best one to do first is the Broken Circle. The buffs there are very, very useful (and probably helped me not notice the rogue issues to the extent that others are). Though my playthrough was: Redcliffe, Broken Circle, Denerim-Urn, Brecilian Forest, Orzammar. In my opinion, the best type of "critical path" I would say would be to move Broken Circle to the front, and keep the rest the same. I didn't really have an issue with the scaling. The first fight in Orzammar gated me to do Broken Circle next. I did find Redcliffe castle fairly difficult in part because I was like "WTF I'm dying??" and there's rather large numbers of guys in that one. With no healer I was chewing through potions (and gave Morrigan a healing spell haha). I found some places easier, and some places harder, similar to my experiences in older RPGs. As for the rogue, I feel the complaints about the rogues are valid in so much as there's a fair bit of discussion about it. In my personal experience I didn't find my PC rogue to be a handicap. I did find Leliana to be not that effective, but I also feel that until end game talents, Archery isn't all that useful. As my rogue though, I rarely got hit. I set Alistair's tactics to attack whomever I was attacking, and with his threaten and taunt, I rarely pulled aggro and hence, didn't really feel as though my rogue was dying a lot. Damage is a subjective thing, and since it was my first time playing the game, I don't feel as though I could really say at the time if the damage was subpar. I didn't feel ineffective, though from the get go I went with a sword mainhand, dagger offhand, and went dual swords when it was available. I did make a mistake early, and picked up Dual Striking (not very useful) and took a bit too long to get Momentum. I didn't really focus on combat skills directly though (was "stuck" at dual weapon sweep for a long time), picking up level 2 stealth, keeping up on lockpicking. My combat abilities were fairly spread out, with a sort of focus on Lethality, as well as the passive dual weapon feats. At the start of the game, I did go into most fights stealthed, meaning that other characters typically received the default aggro (usually Alistair, which is what i wanted). As I said though, I will be bringing this up a bit more thoroughly tomorrow. I did briefly talk about it before a different meeting today, and there was some comments about the hotfix for the dexterity fix (though most were worried if it'd up the difficulty too much, since we did no play testing with that mechanic in the way that the hotfix is). I may disagree that the TWF rogue is gimped, but I'm not arrogant enough to assume that everyone else just needs to L2P

1) I have only played through enough to see Morrigan. She has some interesting stuff at the end of the game though. 2) I'm 99% sure you CAN switch. I know with other romances you can. It permanently cuts you off from the "first" one though. 3) If you do stuff to improve the approval, you'll be friends again.

Winter's Grasp probably is a better spell than lightning bolt. Though I think the later lightning spells are better than Blizzard (cone of cold is just so useful though).

I'm assuming that most people waiting outside my local future shop are waiting for this. Hahaha.

The thing I like is, I don't think you really can "screw yourself over" with respect to mage abilities (I'd argue you can with warrior/rogue abilities). I haven't tried _every_ spell though, and I will definitely concede that failing to put at least one point into Heal could easily cause problems. However, I don't actually own the game and when I'm at work I'm often working on other stuff now that fills up a fair bit of my day (or at least, my computer). What's the description of Crushing Prison, and how would you improve it?

IIRC there was a fair bit of tweaking (before I started work) with the threat mechanics, part of which is the AI setting its initial threat levels based on the armor rating of the game. I guess before this "tank" characters were very ineffective since their ability to keep the enemy focus paled in comparison to the damage and effects of the mages. As a result, the consequence led to ineffective mages because you couldn't really use them without them dying very quickly. Essentially, combat was deemed to not be very much fun from what I hear. It could probably use more tweaking. Feedback for stuff like this could be useful for other games as well as potential patches. Around the office, the most effective groups in terms of face stomping tended to be:

None of which I have, despite being level ~11. I think it's silly not to have the exact effects of spells and abilities available in-game (or in the manual) - you just have to read the description then guess at exactly how potent they are. i.e. I wasn't to know that crushing prison in fact deals quite a lot of damage, not 'token damage' while incapacitating. I guess it would depend. Based on a meeting we had today, we were explicitly told to refrain from explaining on the forums, the exact mechanics of how a lot of the attributes work in the mean time because apparently there's groups that are having a heck of a time figuring it out and sharing it. Not that I actually know the mechanics anyway haha. I'm not saying that the information couldn't have been better in descriptions, but at the same time it sounds like a lot of people are having fun learning. I was the same as you my first playthrough at first, and made many assumptions based on my experiences with other games (namely D&D games at that). After a while (and some comments from other people), I began to experiment with other spells as I went along in my playthrough. I think a lot of us made assumptions on the spells based on prior experience with similar spells, but that's not necessarily the fault of the game player though. It's not uncommon to fall back on what we're familiar with. What I basically gleaned is that pretty much any 4th tier spell is pretty effective. Resistances to CC effects go up with special guys (non-white names) so damage tends to work better against them. But placing a Force Field on a special character as I slaughter his lackeys is good times. A lot of spells that I typically would never use ended up being really useful through some experimentation. It was fun discovering it and realizing many of my assumptions were just wrong. Just to be clear, are you saying that you're getting an invincible character that doesn't attack you either, keeping you combat indefinitely?

I think the console version does have lightning instead of one of the spells, but I'm not sure which one. Morrigan's starting spells aren't that bad though. Disorient and Horror are pre-reqs for a very, very useful tree. Winter Grasp is a good spell in and of itself, and a useful pre-req to get Cone of Cold. Vulnerability Hex I didn't really use too much, though I suppose it'd be useful with other damaging spells, and especially with another mage nearby. Mind blast is a great spell IMO. and starts you off down a very useful tree as well. Some of the most effective spells IMO are Sleep, Waking Nightmare, Force Field, and Crushing Prison.

What crappy schools did you guys go to haha? My high school allowed more free thinking than what theslug described!

Why anybody would expect a game that was promoted as being the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate would have ducking, jumping, and first person perspectives is beyond me. EDIT: I have never seen Fallout: Tactics considered an RPG before.

It makes no sense for a business to continue employing people in money losing divisions though. Sure EA as a whole made money, but you don't know the finances of the divisions.

What are Morrigan's starting spells again?

I believe her voice actress is Parisian. It immediately seemed French to me.

I'm just curious, what are you doing that requires you to keep tabs open?

Well that sucks. You might have less reprieve at that institution. At the University of Alberta I could probably turn your professor into a full fledged scandal using just the Student's Union and campus newspaper haha. Though there is proper avenues for getting papers and whatnot regraded through more "diplomatic" type channels haha. Making an argument that your ability to critically assess the material is severely prejudiced by a professor's bias is exactly the type of thing the University of Alberta would prefer to avoid. I guess I just got lucky and never had crusaders as any of my professors.

What's different from when it worked and now, with respect to your computer?

The game comes with a disk check. You're free to omit purchasing DLC if you have concerns about it's future accessibility. Though The Stone Prisoner is free if you buy the game new.