Monte Carlo

Can the guys who've played rogues give us a lowdown of their builds please? Am slightly baffled over the DEX versus STR versus CUNNING issue. I'm going to buy every freaking upgrade book I can find, I want a two-weapon (each will be studded with paralysis / stun runes) stealth-meister who can open locks. Or is there a compelling reason to take archery? Also, traps or poisons initially? Can't do both. Cheers MC

^ In the last XP Brits get the Kangaroo APC, basically a Sherman tank with the turret taken off. You can fit two squads of infantry and an officer in it. It has very high armour and moves fast. If you pack it with engineers with PIATs or commando AT infantry then it becomes a cheesy, over-powered unit that can zip through enemy lines and cause havoc. You see a lot of kanga-spam in CoH, and the thing is the Brits can get them relatively low down the tech tree whilst the Germans are still racing up there to get Panthers or (gasp) the Tiger.

Di, whilst in the city the little 'Change Party' icon should glow gold at the top of the GUI, you can just access the 'Cast 'O NPCs' screen automatically. It doesn't work in other areas, you need to access camp.

CTRL + F has just changed my life and you, sir, are a genius. I forgive every moment of bone-headedness you have hitherto displayed

^ I put this to the forum... Fully voiced dialogue is a waste of money. I do not, for a moment, want to rob my fellow Briton, the inimitiable Tim Curry, of a penny. However, how much does a fully voiced game cost for chrissakes? I'm hitting Esc through lots of dialogue... some werewolf wants to threaten me? OK, the first taunt voiced is cool... but every single time? Ditto merchants. And peasants. And the guy who sells mushrooms. This money would be better spent elsewhere. Just VO the really important stuff Bioware. Spend the rest on crunchy stuff like a 10 hour XP with a new NPC and skills and stuff. Please. I don't know much about game development, but do (vicariously) about voice talent... the top end pays pretty good and DA:O has some top end VO. Cheers MC

Sure, you can still play with me but I have the two XPs (which should be pennies on Steam etc), which means you won't get Kangaroo APCs. But it's no biggie. That's the only difference I've mentioned thusfar you still get the same support companies (etc).

Let's do Lyon as a sort of gentle introduction to brutal, savage house-to-house fighting. We can use the in-game chat to ensure that there's no spam and it'll be fun. Will open a decent bottle of claret and await your PM, mon ami. The arty units, IIRC, are Canadian in CoH if that helps you get in the mood. Cheers MC Edit: In MP you can use your manpower to just respawn lots of rangers into a tank-slaying horde that cannot be supressed by MG fire. The CPU does it occasionally, just not as egregriously as human players can. CoH is chock full of spam-tastic design loopholes like this, it's still fun but I now pick and choose who I play. Hint: Kangaroos and Brits with Royal Commando PIAT infantry on board = win button.

^ I'm probably more like Volourn (gasp), I sort of chill out, sometimes re-play a particularly interesting battle for fun, travel around buying stuff and doing side quests... just like BG2 in fact. I did one character to level 11, then did a restart (currently level 20) and another origin out of curiosity. This is generally how I play CRPGs, DA is well set up for my meandering style. I don't really like getting to the end. In fact, I'd love a "re-spawn tougher monsters" mod so I could have some more combat. So, with that in mind I'm at about 70 hours and have enjoyed almost all of it, I have both DLC quests (which adds about 2.5 hours including travelling to Soldier's Peak for the merchants there after I've finished that quest). On my next run-through I'm going to do everything. Why? because I'll be a rogue and I want to be the highest level possible before the end... and no chest unlocked! Cheers MC

^ Thanks for entering into the spirit of friendly assistance for your fellow gamers this thread was meant to encourage.

^ I said dungeon areas. I sort of do recce in depth with the warrior then retreat when it all gets a bit hairy, that's when the mage steps in and finishes it off. I made Morrigan an arcane warrior with sword and shield and elemental / death magic. Her + undead archer = teh win.

If I suspect the enemy are going ranger spam I always choose luftwaffe support + snipers. Luftwaffe mooks can knock up barbed wire and obstacles that they have to run around whilst my flakpanzers and snipers eviscerate them. Whilst they are negotiating the obstacles I then drop werfers on them. Also, a well-placed Goliath (150 points) can take out a whole blob (600+ points). Of course, as soon as you've made the blob go away you have to shout "Panzers, March!" and go on the offensive. Ranger spam, like all the infantry spam in CoH, is supremely annoying and I tend to avoid people who rely on it (ditto engineer and sniper spam, fought a guy who just kept storming with engineers and snipers... boring).

I'm not a MMO player, so I'm not really best qualified to comment on the comparison. However, in a single player game, with only three classes, where you can only have four party members at a given time... I expect all three classes to be as viable as the other (note - I said viable, not the same). I have been playing, obviously, all of the classes because I control the party. It is fairly easy to solo dungeon areas on normal with the mage. It's also perfectly manageable with the warrior (mine was a walking tank division towards the end). It's really tricky and fiddly with the rogue - lot's of little, itty-bitty skills that you have to join together to get right. Before Volourn says it, Rogue shouldn't necessarily be the support character - none of us play as the protagonist in a CRPG to be the caddy for the more powerful NPCs. Of course, maybe i'm just not playing my rogue right but I've been playing these sorts of games for a while and should be able to pick it up faster than I have. Rogues have traditionally been my favourite class in CRPGs... so a rather damning indictment of DA is that for the final battle I've left a rogue out of the final four lineup for three warriors and a mage. Why? Because even I, lover of tactics and micromanagement, am getting eyebleed / migraine from getting my rogue to work optimally. Not overly complaining, just a bit miffed that the DA rogue didn't work out for me. Am still going to play one next time to try to properly get the hang of it. Cheers MC

OK, I've not quite finished but I'm near the end engaged in one of the sub-final-but-not-quite battles. It's a complete homage to LotR (Peter Jackson's vision, naturally) but I say that in a "and that's OK" sort of way. All in all it's been a blast, am looking forward to the end, and playing it again. There's stuff I didn't really get into but should have (er, enchanting weapons properly) but the game mechanics are like a roadkill pizza - hey it's pizza (yum!) but there's bits of roadkill in it (eeeew!). Well done Bio, I stand by my 8/10. Sort out the (currently dodgy) looking expansion DLC strategy and support the modding community - it could easily rise to a 9/10. Cheers MC

Of course, Rangers are very vulnerable to nebelwerfer and walking stuka spam, which are personal faves of mine.

I've been experimenting with the summon undead spell quite a lot. It's useful as in the skeleton you summon has a few skills linked to what it was prior to it's death. For me, the most useful have been archers - specifically crossbowmen, who make extremely useful 5th party members (they level up to only a couple of levels below your mage - at mid-high levels this is very useful) for a small mana tradeoff. My undead archer is a great mage disrupter and trigger-man for my virulent walking bomb trick (oh how I love it when that rank of pesky archers, already injured by other AoE spells, blow up in a shower of gore when I trigger one of those). Then I wander over and trigger my healing / mana spells that work off of dead people and voila! back in the game for more fighting if it's one of those scenarios where your party can't go into 'rest' mode because there are enemies nearby.

^ Yeah, it's like a clean NWN2 install, then an hour or so of historic auto-updates. Alan, if you want to catch up over the weekend we can have an extremely inept, attrition-heavy battle together. My current fave MP map is Lyon, which is urban warfare over three key bridges... lots of fun. You can be the plucky Bio Allies and I will be Ze Vermacht. PM me your account name and I'll do likewise.

My own tactic versus Ranger blobs is Propaganda War from the Terror support tree - it costs 100 ammo but it makes them wet their fatigues and run away.

My main concern is in my post a page back about where does the DLC fit into your original game? I would like to see a substantial expansion, doesn't matter if it's DLC or not. Then I can take or leave the smaller pieces of DLC. A XP gives you something substantial - this cup cake DLC can only really give you a semi-detached bit of a game.

^ Fail Alan, I've been measured, fair and open minded on the whole DLC issue.

^ Use your imagination. You storm a Qunnari citadel. You overthrow the Tevinter Imperium. You smash the demonic invasion of the Deep Roads. Yadda yadda.

Another glaring problem with what I shall christen the Cup-Cake DLC model (small, sweet but not very substantial) is the narrative issue. I finish DA:O with my 25th level character. Not unreasonably, I hope for an epic expansion that allows me, MotB like, to carry on a related story with my uber-powerful allies of yore. Then maybe another that allows me to play another origin in a different Ferelden adventure, maybe not as a Grey Warden. This obviates the issue of what and where I did in my original playthrough. Cup-Cake model? Er, where does that fit? My next playthrough? Squeeze it in when in fact i'm swept up in the final part of the story arc? (Can't save Ferelden right now, I've got an old battlefield to poke about), be compelled to keep save-games at different points to check out the new DLC? Seriously, this seems to me to be the biggest weakness - it actually puts me off more than cost. Cheers MC

^ I thought that the opening salvo of DLC would be priced to reflect release hysteria rather than be representative of everything they do... like a $5 an hour taxi ride. I'm still fairly neutral about it, but... ...It looks like that an XP (i.e. new NPC, skills, 10-15 hours gameplay etc) is on the way out in faovur of these smaller transactions. As I declared, serenely and sage-like, a few weeks back, we are seeing a new single player game that works like a MMO being born. It might well be a very ugly baby. If Bio releases a proper XP with a nice, big shiny adventure in it, something of the scale of MotB or SoZ then the Horde will be happy and have the choice to ignore these tiny cup-cake bites of DLC. If not and this model is it then I'm going to be a bit disappointed. Cheers MC

^ scratched record.

Oh dear.

^ The villagers are stirring, pitchforks and flaming torches at the ready. A few die-hard loyalist Bio shock-troops are fixing bayonets. It's getting ugly over there. I think some Bio fans are struggling with the realisation that XPs are going the way of pop-tarts, MC Hammer's trousers and neo-conservative foreign policy. Personally, I'll be interested to see how big this one is, just to see if Bio intend to knock out very short, relatively expensive content every couple of months. Because it won't work for long.