Monte Carlo

OK, death as a game mechanic (what a strange thing to be typing!). Death is there for a number of reasons = 1. Immersion. Death is a logical consequence of being battered, stabbed, fried, shot, immolated, skewered (etc). 2. Punishment. For not winning. 3. Learning / reward. "Hum, I died that last time, better try a new approach. If I don't die then I don't have to schlep back to a temple / use a precious scroll or spell." 4. Managing the problem. That is to say, "Bob The Barbarian is full of arrows... and he weighs 300 lbs without armour.... hmmmm." I like managing problems. Of all of these, 3. is easily the most important. How you manage death is a matter for the game designer. But it should be an option on the difficulty slider. Lose an NPC? Tough. Problem is, Bio is so attached to it's marvellous NPCs they're worried that we'll miss a nugget of dialogue. And herein lies the rub. You see, some of the developers would rather be novelists. They don't want you to miss any of the amazing plot, characters and dialogue they've created, even if you don't really want it. A game isn't a novel, you should be able to miss stuff, die, wander around, die again, dip in and out of plot A, Quest B and Story Arc C. At it's worst, a game like Dragon Age might turn into a PC gaming version of HAL. "You don't want to die in this quest, Dave." Or, "You really should take this NPC, Dave." It all comes back to the eternal issue on this forum - what I like you very well might not. Which is cool, it's the way of the world. The developer needs to try to please both without ruining the end product, and to that end I don't see why dynamic, custom difficulty sliders are too much of a problem. If one player wants a NO DEATH EVER! option, I couldn't care less. They should be able to play it that way, it's hardly a difficult piece of coding and heck most recent Bio games have it anyhow as a default. Cheers MC

^ Nah, that's for ligthweights. Instead, if you die, a piece of malware deletes your operating system and empties your bank account. Or something. As for Maria, it was inevitable that one day we would have something in common. It's worrying. What next?

I don't mean to dredge this up but it really caught my interest. I found this while I was looking for threads on New Vegas. I love COH. Its the only game I really play any more. I'd definitely be up for a game man, my username is: Testprofile001 Look forward to playing a game with ya. I'm on two or three evenings a week for an hour here and an hour there so I'll keep an eye out.

P.S. Why is the addition of a dynamic, meaningful difficulty slider so difficult for developers? There are a gazillion options for camera / gore / graphics / etc. Why not the same for difficulty as opposed to EASY / CORE / TOUGH / SILLY?

^ That's how they manage it in DA - if you get killed you suffer a passive penalty to a stat from a significant injury, a bit like a spell effect from D&D like disease (etc). I sort of mitigates against the crappy no-death system. Like the man said, Bioware combat for the past few games has been like it's cutscenes - a given. Having said that, if there's no resurrection or raise dead in DA it's the least worst solution - I'm expecting modders to rectify all the console twitch-boy compromises pretty soon, like they do with almost every other PC game out there. By early New Year there will be total conversions, perma-death patches, make-it-more-like-D&D mods and all the rest of it. This is one of the exciting things about the game. I've pre-ordered it, I'll be getting it a few days after the US forumites so I'll be going dark from release date Cheers MC

Sure, and hey, why not do away with hit points and armour and like... every combat mechanic? They just get in the way of my progression to the final cutscene. Just have a quick slot marked WIN. I just think it should be an option.

The combat, to me, looked like it had plenty of options and properly implemented pause and play. I take the point that the guys were playing like complete tools, but nonetheless it was a very early part of the game. I'm cranking up the difficulty slider anyway. I also liked the shield bash options, dirty fighting, hey even the combat magic looked like fun (friendly fire = ON). I strongly suspect that the patient, more experienced gamer will have a lot of fun solo-ing or PC +1 NPC'ing the game. Criticism seems to be too tactical, not tactical enough, too console-ish... like the three bears, to me it's the last bowl of porridge that feels just about right. Mana doesn't trouble me in the slightest, either, in fact the mages look like even at low-level they are bringing something to the party which is a common criticism of D&D. Lasty, the death-as-a-minor inconvenience style Bio has brought in is rubbish. I hate it in NWN2 and I hate it in DA. It should be a simple option to switch on perma-death until raised in a temple. Cheers MC

The two slackers narrating the video might be annoying, but they do come up with some gems... Slacker one: Whoah, traps. Evetyone's on fire. Slacker two: Hey, we've got Mordeicai the Mage. Slacker two (deadpan): Yeah, but he's on f*****g fire. I will happily concede from that video that the combat system is BG + Diablo x tactics = pretty cool.

The Giant Bomb video is the first time I've seen the party inventory system, which I have to say I like a lot. As for the big yellow circles at the feet of your party members, can you turn them off?

Actually, it was a turning point for poor Maria, who finally realised that quite a few of us are interested in stuff that she didn't dream that any normal, sentient human being might be interested in. Like nerdy AI / gaming mechanics around combat.

I don't have 'turning points', rather the game BENDS TO MY WILL. There will be a +5 Panzer in this game, mark my words.

Ah! The power of beer! I've been thinking about it. Presumably you can't post any old stats (i.e. I killed fifteen dragons... WITH A SPOON!). No, there will be a connection to some sort of little programme in your game that uploads these stats directly onto the site, I presume. You are allowing Bioware INTO YOUR COMPUTER. So it's a marketing / data harvesting opportunity with a five-dollar's worth of development flash game attached. Honestly, these games people are evil, twisted geniuses of the highest order. Cheers MC

:: sigh :: I'm not making any pun whatsoever. "When 'X' is at home" is an English (as in the country, not the language) colloquial expression for when you don't know what / who something / someone is. For example, "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Who's he when he's at home?" I apologise for using a colloquialism on an international forum, OTOH now you know a common English expression in case you ever visit. I don't know if you've noticed, but I've actually been extraordinarily enthusiastic about elements of DA recently. I do try to be fair (ish). None of this detracts from my genuine confusion as to what that website is all about and how it adds value to the game. It's a crappy beta site where you post stats about your game and endure what looks like the South Park version of Dragon Age. My question is, quite simply, why? Why is anyone interested in how many monsters Bob Smith from Little Rock, Arkansas (when he's at home) killed? Or who was in his party? Remain genuinely baffled. Really. Cheers MC

What, by Odin's Beard, is "Dragon Age Journeys" when it's at home? Am genuinely baffled and require enlightening.

I'm as sceptical as the next person with regards to DLC. But. The economic climate is changing. The way people buy and interact with digital media is changing. Technology changes faster than a formula one car dropped off a cliff. This is the future, a sort of a la carte gaming experience where you buy into and out of different portions of a core product depending on your tastes and preferences. I see DA as a sort of hub product with different adventure products (via DLC) radiating from it. Modding adds a different dimension (release of end-user tools is an act of not inconsiderable generosity, albeit self-interested in that it adds to the longevtiy of the game). So, although I'm not entirely unsympathetic with Ramza's POV, and certainly wouldn't criticze his opinion, I can't actually agree. Because (1) this is The Future and (2) I remember all the BG 1 & 2 fans wishing something similar for that franchise almost ten years ago (the IE engine being a hub product for various D&D games). Lastly, this ain't exactly new. When Baldur's Gate 1 went gold, Tales of the Sword Coast was locked down IIRC, if not actually ready to go. Cheers MC

Hmmm, have been playing a lot of online CoH. As a complete online gaming noob, something has occured to me. I have a pretty standard broadband connection, and my last online gaming was NWN1 (which I found to be of average stability and extremely laggy)... and CoH is incredibly stable for me. A little bit of lag now and then and not one crash. Relic's servers must be made out of some amazing piece of alien metal or something. What have other's found, who has the best online gaming servers / stability? P.S. What CoH has taught me is that online gaming can be fun, albeit a bit hit and miss. It's also taught me that online RTS / wargames are gonna be my thing, not online RPG / MMORPG. Phew! Cheers MC

With regards to the Red Dragon Armour and the 'synergy' between it and ME2. Oh dear. Blimey, this game is a literal roller-coaster ride between very cool, reasonably cool, meh and utter bollocks.

@ Maria, I've not been an ass with you previously, why would I start now? Of course that wasn't aimed at you.

^ One of the things that was brilliant about them was that they made games good enough to define what was or wasn't 'traditional.' BG being a classic example, even with NWN they were going places that others thought was crazy (even though I hated the end product I'll give them that). I want to see them return to that form. Cheers MC

The reasons I liked the trailer a lot are: 1. It was purdy, very purdy. 2. It felt epic. And polished. This makes me happy. 3. This will make Maria scream, but I got more of a feel for the characters in that clip than I do from the cringe-worthy fake interviews (etc). Crazy Imoen chick talks to herself whilst slotting people like a sniper; Morrigan is like a fighter who uses magic... the look on her face is like a sergeant in an old war moive enjoying the fact that he's pinned down by enemy machinegun fire; Stenn is a machine warrior, quietly professional and not making a fuss about the carnage. As for the PC - so what? It'll be your character, fleshing him out in the trailer is superfluous. 4. Obviously it ain't gameplay footage, but that trailer gives an excellent idea of what your combat options are - shapechanging, combat styles and moves, spells, archery (etc). 5. The LotR love is too much, though, that Darkspawn mage dude was Uruk Hai. Period. Maybe they'll release a really exciting trailer full of poorly animated boobs, love by the campfire and Fakespeare cutscenes to keep the knitting circle over at the Bioboards happy later on Cheers MC

^ Ha ha ha, I liked it you didn't, quel surprise! What didn't you like about it? Fantasy-game-as-war-movie? It does focus on the OTT superhero element of the genre. As for the bland hero, well as many have said before (a) it's gonna be your hero so the generic one needn't be remarkable and (b) hey, it's a Bioware game. Cheers MC

^ Actually, the trailer was great. Memes included Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, LotR (duh), X-Men and Band of Brothers - hey look at that steadicam, impactive .50 cal spell effect. Morrigan looking sneery was great, I liked Imoen chick's Legolas impression and Sten using his sword as an escalator in the side of the dragon was a nice touch. Shame the beast only had about 12 hp. Honestly, I've kicked ten tons of merde out of this game but I liked that a lot. Cheers MC

Dunno, ridiculously over-powered gaming rig might help, not that I've a clue how it works.

^ shouldn't it be virtually locked down and waiting to go gold by this point in the dev cycle?

Wals, I'll be taking you up on that I've taken my first foray into CoH online and it hasn't been too bad, although the grinders who lure noobs into their 'noob friendly' games only to ambush them and tear them up into tiny pieces of bog roll are a bit of a pain. I've found that there are some pretty cool people out there who, like me, just like co-op versus the CPU. I still get a childish thrill dropping gliders everywhere though There are terrifyingliy pro CoH gamers out there, they invariably play as Germans and are able to build swarms of panzers in the blink of an eye. Avoid. Maybe the community isn't too feverish because the game has been out awhile, but I've been pleasantly surprised and was up into the wee small hours typing ACHTUNG PANZER!!! into the chat function. Cheers MC