Monte Carlo

No, I mean bringing that MMO mindset to a single-player game. From my camouflaged bunker at the Bio site you can see that lots of hardcore MMO players are completely smitten with Dragon Age and want it to be a MP / MMO style game. Of course, they don't realise that the reason they are smitten with DA is because it isn't a MP / MMO style game. Oh the irony. Anyhow, with Morrigan and dopey Al there are already enough griefers in the game without the MMO crowd joining in

^ This is why I use my Zen method. The MMO crowd will destroy, like math-obsessed locusts, any game they get involved in. Competition does that - my Company of Heroes experience teaches me this too.

^ Good point from newc, for a game so rich in lore and so meticulously planned, those elements are a bit of an ambush and unexplained. As for Morrigan, hell she tells you enough times what she's like, what her agenda is and that she can't be trusted. She tells you. Bio are figuring, however that: 1. People will like her spiky personality and cool persona 2. She's a hot goth chick with a smokin' leather get-up 3. You can sleep with her 4. (MOST important) there are only two mages - unless you are playing one yourself Morrigan is the only viable offensive spellcaster. This is straight out of the BG2 school of NPC manipulation - of course you'll take Yoshimo, he's a smooth-talking high STR single classed thief you can dual to fighter! Imoen's just left, you need a thief... Cheers MC

I am finally winning. OK, it's a bit of a spam tactic but not half as spammy as some of the stuff out there that's been kicking my arse. This works on most maps, but relies on mobility and aggression (then again, CoH is a race that relies on mobility and aggression. I call it Tanks & Paras and basically I copied a guy (level 10) who bashed me up on the Lyon map where I was Wehrmacht and very smug, looking at sitting pretty until I could panzer rush across two bridges simultaneously. I've adapted it a bit, and here's how it works - assume for now a small 1 v 1 or 2 v 2 map. Airborne Company (USA) is very good. In fact, your first four command points give you AT guns and AT infantry you can drop anywhere on the map. So you don't need a motorpool and you don't need a barracks. This saves manpower that you can spend elsewhere. Command Point Spend Early / Mid Game * Para Inf. * Para AT * Scout Plane (open up map with scout in fog of war allows you to drop paras there, this is excellent for driving the enemy nuts by siezing behind the lines resource points or harrassing base raids) Build Order 4 x Engr (2 x flame) Weapons Support Centre --- 2 x snipers, 2 x MGs, 1 x mortar This team can dominate / capture resource points. Let the snipers perform recce / interdiction / suppression. MGs hold buildings / cover RPs, mortar seriously ruins day of any ealry Axis infantry probes and wipes out inf suppressed by MGs. --- By this time your para inf come online. Three squads with recoilless rifles are ample at this point, back them up with an AT gun if the enemy are playing the same game and jumping to AFVs early rather than climbing the vanilla tech tree. Keep assaulting forward, always flanking (the paras don't like frontal assaults... they are good at fire and manouver though). The enemy will be very jumpy by this point as the para inf with recoiless rifles are very effective against armour. This will keep them at bay for a bit while you build a supply centre and armour support. Whilst the Axis are busy fighting paras (who you can reinforce in the field, keep pumping your squads up with replacements) you are building three or four shermans, throw in a flamethrower for pesky enemy At inf. Hold a forming up / assault point and marshall your forces. By this stage you can use supply drops to cheaply buy HMGs and mortars - just crew them with para inf and top up the remainder by reinforcing. Leap frog forward and unleash your tanks. If you keep the tempo up (you really can do this tactic quickly) the enemy won't have panther or flak-cannon to shred your inf. They'll go (like some poor guy did last night when he saw the Shermans) WTF? Tanks already? Then it's game over. Cheers MC

^ Yes, it totally depends on your playing style. I'm not advocating making a character like mine unless you like wandering around levels unseen, more or less solo, whilst looting and figuring out how you are going to lay traps / ambushes. You can play DA that way if you like, it's kudos to an otherwise system that has lots of strange flaws.

Tier 4 Stealth doesn't work on top-end bosses, well I'm a Tier 4 with 40+ cunning and it still fails with a few. That includes dragons. However, I can still get backstab bonuses on them by flanking, unlike D&D where it is nerfed against undead, dragons etc. Traps are a bit ho-hum against dragons, they can help but I've not been able to use trap cheese on them. On mobs and lower-level bosses, yeah, I've set up a circuit of traps that has decimated dozens of mooks. EDIT: Yes, bomb use doesn't de-cloak you from stealth like attacking does. You can abuse it to hell.

If confronted by a heavily-armoured boss I - * Go Dirty Fighting - The only critters that seem immunne to this are demons and dragons. Heavily armoured bosses? STUNNED. * Shimmy into back stab - quick attack + dual-weapon sweep does about 100-odd damage * Stealth Up! OK, I might take the odd hit while I'm doing that but whilst stealthed I can use poultices. Also, in that time the rest of the party are with me to help out. Conclusion: Tier 4 Stealth is priceless.

I totally agree with developers on the point about horses - the benefit versus effort dividend in terms of gameplay is so negligible that it's not worth it. Horses? Are you gonna make a jousting minigame? A horse archery minigame? Honestly, will you spend mage skill points on Equestriasm so they can cast 'sleep' from horseback? If the RPG was 'Knights on horseback' I could dig it. Or an open-ended world where horses allowed you to move faster (and let's face it, most of those are twitchy Diablo type games that I love but many here don't). Horses = red herring. Equine / piscene comparison done.

^ well, Vol, that serves you right for posting over there in the first place. I mean, here it's lively but at least you are allowed to bash what you like when you like. Typical Bio board banter: Unsuspecting Poster: I'm a bit disappointed by the DLC. Bio Forum Regulars: TROLL! Heathen! BURN THE WITCH! I've just sent Bio details of my bank account - they can freely access it if they create three new eye tints for elves! --- Unsuspecting Poster: That puzzle in The Gauntlet is a bit tough, can anybody help please? Bio Forum Regulars: TROLL! Heathen! BURN THE WITCH! In my day we sat and suffered for hours with a pen and pencil to solve puzzles like that, and we were grateful! Bugger of back to WoW*! TROLL! --- Unsuspecting Poster: I'm finding the Rogue a bit gimpy. Bio Forum Regulars: TROLL! Heathen! BURN THE WITCH! I have solo'd the game on NIGHTMARE FIVE TIMES with all my skill points spent on survival and potion brewing! Bugger off back to WoW! TROLL! Then, so as to add some proper top cover, a (junior) Bio dev will pop in with a one-line post to tell The Inquisition how their unquestioning love makes them feel even fuzzier. Tell me it ain't so. I'm embedded there with a proper alt.account and it ain't pretty. Cheers MC

^ The left fear the truth: that the indigent will sit by and wait. Then, given weapons by the Communists (or socialists, whatever Red Fascists are calling themselves these days), they will take your land. A technical-political officer will note the Ayn Rand quote in your sig and recommend re-education, it will be a long train ride followed by a short stay somewhere the regime chooses. I know LotF is an expert troll, a skill I never wish to develop. But would you all sit an ignore any other stripe of totalitarian just because he's good at trolling? I won't.

Reductionism yaaaaaaay You don't know me very well. I like fighting in tunnels. A lot.

How can somebody, seriously, actually use the phrase 'Dictatorship' (albeit of the proletariat, whoever they are) then go on to talk about non-coercion? Because they have taken a potion of disingenuosness. That's how. Listen, sonny. I grew up in a piss-poor neighbourhood and went to a school that was like something out of Mad Max 3. The vast majority of the 'proletariat' with or without 'class consciousness' think middle class leftists (among which I strongly suspect you number) are misguided halfwits. I grew up in the 1970's and early 1980's. I remember living under a proper left-wing government, and I remember bodies un-buried, the three day week and bread shortages (that's right kids, freaking bread shortages. In England.). So, please, take your totalitarian fantasies elsewhere, because as far as I'm concerned your post could just have easily been called 'Ask me about Fascism.'

^ Yes, a warm fuzzy consensus has indeed been achieved.

Awesome. That looks like a lot of fighting. In tunnels.

^ Yeah, the human noble is a bit men in tights, but I enjoyed monstering the guards playing poker and bedding the elf servant wench. I felt suitably arrogant and to the manor born actually. Obviously, I would also liked to have had the option to cut pater's throat, the inheritance dontcha know? However, having cast myself as an amoral gentleman thief, I was upset that nobody in Castle Cousland, not even dear mama (who, in her leather get-up, gave me a bit of an Oedipus complex) mentioned my sechewing of the martial, soldierly career path in favour of lock-picking, murder and sneaking. Not even a little aside. Oh well.

My bad, I meant I've got -2.25% fatigue not +. Again, I'm kind of flying wearing poorp quality night vision here, but one thing I have noticed with my high cunning rogue is sick (I mean sick) stealth abilities. Again, I'm sure a tier 4 with high dex might have the same skill, I'm not sure but I can just hide in plain sight. It's a big part of the character build. There's one duel coming up where I'm more or less relying on it...

^ I'm assuming they're like the undead you can create, i.e. a controllable 5th party member with talents etc. That was something else - killing enemy archers then raising them as a 5th party member saved my bacon numerous times on my first playthrough - the undead get some talents of their former incarnations. At Wrath O Dagon: You get two specialisms, one at 7th level one at 14th so yeah, you can do both.

I think ranger / assassin is a solid archery build, extra dex plus a critter ain't bad... I presume the assassin skillz apply to ranged attacks too. Being able to mark of death somebody with an arrow then unleash your critter on them could be an interesting anti-mage gambit.

I really don't get the math, but high cunning lets me disarm traps without a single point in the skill (good XP fodder), I get some cunning based dialogue options and I win every coercion check (persuade). Perhaps not the best use of stat-dumping, my cunning is now in the high 30's un-adjusted with dex in low 40's, str mid-20's I use The Edge offhand and Ahod axe with the best runes I've got (paralyse / slow / +5 fire damage). My damage sits high 30's to low 50's and my defense rating is 100% (improved drakeskin armour). Most importantly of all my stamina adjustment, fully kitted out, is +2.25% or something, so with lethality and momentum switched on I'm a chainsaw. I am the single most effective melee character in my party, but I need the tanks a lot. I can still go solo commando around most missions, though. Boss fights are another matter entirely, though.

I agree with Enoch. I went the 'canon' story route and those two characters were as nice as pie (or as nice as Morrigan gets). I think it's fair to say that Bioware sort of want you to play the game a certain way, and like a lot of writers they want you to love their NPCs as much as they do. That's their style, I no longer bitch about it, and I like the ending but the game is still a bit too... rigid for my personal tastes. Let's be honest, in a better CRPG you'd be able to kill Morrigan. And push Alistair off a cliff. Etc. Morrigan and Alistair are foisted on you even more than certain key NPCs were in BG2... I've not played Mass Effect, nor am I likely too but apparently this is similar and has become the Bio house style. Cheers MC

^ As I posted earlier in this thread, having a good rogue with high Stealth skill (3+) and decent Cunning makes crowd control very different from the vanilla 'Tank & Mage' melee / fireball inferno route. You can manage the mobs using stealth, backstab and traps: lead smaller groups off into ambushes and weaken them gradually until your main party is ready to deal with them en masse. Even with no archery talents I was able to use a crossbow to finish off enemy mages I'd already back-stabbed to middling health, then re-stealthed and ran off. Brescillian Ruins and the Cultists up on the mountain were all dealt with this manner, and they are pretty big mobs. Archers are good for taking out mages... line up your archer to critical strike one whilst, simultaneously you backstab, with poison and follow up with dual-weapon sweep, then get your tank to draw on Aggro with his taunting. All the time your healer is just buffing / healing. Like I say, not everybody's cup of Earl Grey but very good fun and a different experience altogether.

In which case, if you want a proper challenge, play as a Rogue (archer) with a party of Wynne (no respeccing, just follow the heal / buff route - imagine she's a D&D cleric), Alistair and one of the other rogues (I'd suggest Zevran configured for the all out Tier 4 Stealth, DW god). It will play as a very different, more tactical game. Mage PCs own this game, so take them out of the equation. EDIT: Configure your archer as stealing / lock guy to maximise your income and concentrate of the AK47 critical hit archery route, pump DEX to the 40's. Configure Zevran as a high CUNNING melee rogue, by mid teen levels he'll easily have 100% defence with the right kit, let him also be trap / poison guy.

What will you call your secret police? How long will it take you to incarcerate journalists and non-party political activists? Where will you site your re-education camps? How long will it take before you develop a Robespierre or Beria type character and start eliminating your political opponents? Will senior members of the regime have special property rights, or their own freeway for their limousines? How many walls protected by dogs, barbed wire and machinegun nests will you need to keep people in your socialist nirvana?

With regards to Crushing Prison - It still does the same damage over a much shorter period (9 s). Which means that it's actually deadlier than it was before - it might not paralyse you for as long but it's just as likely to kill you and, for a player character, add some alacrity to the "chug poultices quicker than taking damage" racing mini-game.

Sounds great, but is there any fighting in tunnels? And I can't pay, like $10. That's just buying into the whole profit paradigm, man.