war:head

So, because ~5 out of 80+ abilities have soft lock (for a proper reason) and this third person shooter has an unFirst Person Shooter cover system it is a bad shooter? You sure have thought that one through...

I don't recall ever locking targets in ME3 That's because it doesn't (on PC but who in their right mind would play a shooter on a console...). The only things that had a kind of soft lock on were, as you mentioned, some of the biotic projectiles like Throw and Warp which would allow you to arc them around and over obstacles which was pretty amazing in itself. Also, some weapons had a (very) limited homing ability like the GPS and homing grenades (obviously) and the Krysae had explosive proximity ammo. That's about it. --- Oh, and a general side note on the cover system in ME3: If you're regularly using hard cover in ME3 you're playing the game wrong.* * Unless you're going against a Prime or Atlas and are not hosting the game.

I didn't say it is the best 3PS, I said it has the best game mechanics of any 3PS. I'll make it easy for you - name a 3PS where you have as many (vastly different) abilities to chose from as in ME3. Hint: When you start reaching the 80 mark, you're getting close. And if you can manage that, we can start talking about character stats, unique enemy types, weapons, weapon mods 1, weapon mods 2, ammo types, armor mods, gear, combos, sync kills...you get the idea. And of course you don't have to like all this stuff but it is there and it objectively makes ME3 one of the most versatile 3P combat games around.

I'm sorry but that statement is nonsense on so many levels it makes me wonder if you've even actually played ME3. I mean sure, if you chose to ignore 90% of what the game offers in terms of mechanics, you could technically finish the game like that (on easy to medium difficulty I guess) but it's hardly the fault of the game if you deliberately chose the most boring play style possible. That's pretty much like saying PoE is abysmal because all you can do is hit enemies with a sword. (Not to mention the fact that you probably wouldn't be able to finish a single MP match like that on a reasonable difficulty but here we go into the skill territory again which you already chose to ignore the first time around...) edit: To make sure we're one the same level here (a disclaimer if you will) - I'm not saying ME3 was perfect, far from it. It was a piece-of-crap port, it had technical issues and some of the writing was questionable (not talking about the ending here - that deserves a special hell all for itself). But it also had great gameplay, some of the best story scenes in gaming history and an amazing art design.

You're kidding right? It's a popamole shooter that takes no skill. Older games such as Max Payne 2 eclipse it by infinite amounts. So do the Jedi Knight series (in Lightsaber mode), Rune, Bloodrayne ... etc Post a successful solo gold run to extraction and we can start talking about skill. Also, I played both the Jedi Knight series as well as Max Payne - neither of them come close the possibilities you have in ME3 with a single character. Put four of them together in an MP match and the possibilities are endless. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying either of these are bad - I had a ton of fun playing them - but comparing them to a game with about 50 different playable characters + tons of weapons, ammo, mods, equipment etc.? Yeah, not really.

It wasn't an amazing game, it had high production values and lots of voice acting - that's about it really. And pretty much the best game mechanics of any third-person shooter in existence, especially in multiplayer thanks to all the (free) DLC. If TPS aren't your cup of tea, that's perfectly fine but that's no fault of the game. there was a lot of design decisions I really didn't like and the only reason I played it is because I wanted to see if any of the decisions you made over the course of the game meant anything, turns out they didn't. Not a single thing. That was the promise of the series, and they blew it. Since I'd already given up on the rest of their product lines (such as the DA and Star Wars lines), I see no further reason to buy their products - I am not part of their target audience, I do not give a damn about their girly romances. That's not what boycotting means, though, and as such sounds way more reasonable than your first statement. You just don't like their games - fair enough. I do feel that you'd be missing out if you don't even give them a chance to impress (companies evolve over time) but there's probably enough games out there to keep you busy for a couple lifetimes even without them.

I agree that they should take a good look and try to match BioWare in that regard but I feel that this won't be feasible. Even with all the recent mistakes, BioWare still has an amazing (game) design team and a ton more money and thus man power than Obsidian. They've probably spent more time on designing and implementing the UI than Obsidian has spent on the entire combat system. Mass Effect 3 was an amazing game with a ****ty ending, I feel like boycotting an entire company because of this is a little extreme. But to each their own I guess.

That part in italics seems misguided, for a very simple reason: Disarming traps and picking locks is a Mechanics skill check. Therefore, reaping all XP rewards will require a Mechanics-focused character in your party. None of the other sources of XP require specific skill focus. Personally I couldn't care less about the fact that some XP sources require a certain skill but with adding XP for traps and locks, any justification for not giving XP for combat is out of the window. Using a tool to open a lock gets you experience, using a tool to kill an enemy does not? Yeah, right.

Great news - seriously. Been saying since day one that the game didn't feel like something to be released in just three months time. Glad Obsidian finally realized that, too. Also, in regards to all the people back then flaming anyone who dared mentioning the worrying state of the game in regards to the rather close deadline: "Today you get to say, "I told you so". "Today, I don't want to...but I did bloody tell you."

5) Give a Morale malus to characters who go down that wears off after some time. This would make sense in the game world (you'd probably be a bit shaky if you've just been almost killed) and create an incentive for players to heal. (RP-wise this should be a Resolve or maybe Might [soul is weakened] malus but that would favour some builds over others)

I agree to an extend. Especially Might is an attribute that is so universal it doesn't add anything to the role play. Powerful wizard with a strong soul -> Might Powerful wizard with a weak soul -> Might Hard-hitting meathead with lots of strength but weak soul -> Might Fast and agile rogue with a strong soul but small build -> Might You pretty much can't build a non-mighty character. The other attributes don't really add up roleplay-wise all the time either (low Intellect but high Perception? Weak soul (Might) but great Character Strength (Resolve)? You get the idea...) but I feel Might is the major problem.

As a German - it depends. We have pretty awesome voice actors over here since we've been localizing movies for a long time now. There are even quite a few movies where the German dub is far superior to the original (Spaceballs, Hot Shots, Fifth Element to name a few). Without this localization culture I can understand why you generally wouldn't want your movies localized. As for games, I agree though. Companies usually don't want to spend a lot of money on localization so the result is mediocre at best, with the occasional gem (the Baldur's Gate 2 localization was pretty spectacular - I actually prefer it to the original) in between. That being said - I still prefer the original most of the time. It's simply more genuine and generally provides a better atmosphere.

I'm all for combat XP but these polls are getting ridiculous. Yes, 50% of the players want it, 50% do not. No, it is not difficult to implement, Obsidian said so. It's crystal clear by now that there's no easy choice here, iterating this nonsense over and over won't change that, so stop making superfluous spam threads and let Obsidian decide how they'll react to the community preference (or lack thereof).

Been saying this since day one - there are core issues in this game that should be long gone at this stage of development. At this point it should be down to balancing and the occasional bug with abilities and quest timing etc. Not an incomplete HUD, broken menus, broken savegames, broken core game mechanics like pathfinding (which actually is pretty easy), characters clipping through each other, missing dialog options stalling quests etc. pp. I'm expecting the delay announcement any time now. Which wouldn't actually be a bad thing - I don't mind waiting a little longer. I just feel that with the deadline looming over the dev team, the results might be worse than just taking as long as is needed without any pressure.

You're probably thinking of those no-cursor console thingies we got in several games (f'ing Watch_Dogs...) - whoever brought those to PC deserves a special place in hell. I was talking about a proper menu with a cursor that just happens to be placed around the cursor for fast access, though. Basically a hot-key enabled fancy context menu.

I do like the idea of a kind of radial menu around the cursor when holding a certain key. Combined with hot keys to select characters this would greatly reduce mouse distance and click amounts.

I wasn't entirely serious in my post and I don't think the combat log should go or is a bad thing in itself. I was just playing on your questionable claim that anyone who doesn't care about min/max'ing their character is a casual who should go play DA instead of PoE. If this is a private fight, I don't want to intrude ( ), but I will point out that learning the game mechanics doesn't necessarily imply anything like min/maxing a character build. Quite the reverse, if you know the game well, you can beat it with a weaker character. Wasn't a private fight (not even a fight at all) and I fully agree. Stun was talking about min/max'ing, though, which isn't inherently bad but he also implied that it's the only way to play the game which is nonsense.

I agree because its such a hard stat to balance. It needs to be strong because its the only stat on that attribute. That leads to the problem that a very very high interrupt skill could let you cheese through the game permalocking enemies. A good way around that problem would probably be a kind of "Interrupt Threshold" based on armor to discourage such Interrupter builds by simply making them ineffective vs. certain enemies. Another way would be to use Concentration but that might feel weird on certain enemy types.

I wasn't entirely serious in my post and I don't think the combat log should go or is a bad thing in itself. I was just playing on your questionable claim that anyone who doesn't care about min/max'ing their character is a casual who should go play DA instead of PoE.

Wasn't directed at me but I'll add my 0.02$ anyway. General answer: Certainly no and yes, respectively. Two of my very favorite albums took years for me to 'recognize' their quality. I feel, however, that we're talking about two different pairs of shoes here. As long as the music is the primary focus, this is perfectly fine - if it takes five or even ten spins for an album to hook, so be it. For in-game music with the primary purpose to provide a sort of canvas for the player experience, I feel one of the core traits need to be easy accessibility. Doesn't need to be flat and boring but it should catch the listeners ear on the first way round. I think this is what Sensuki is pretty much onto with his references to the IE music. The melody in the foreground provides the accessibility and the 'easy emotions' while the backdrop is for the more inclined listener to explore, creating a reasonably complex score that is easily recognizable while still complex enough to not get boring. But anyway, the music's just about done so there isn't really that much use to further discussing it I guess. I'll make sure to give it time to sink in and if doesn't I'll just have some Zoë Keating or something running in the background.

So what you're saying is: Dragon Age is the better RPG? Cause the way I see it actual role playing forbids aids like damage numbers and combat logs since that is how the real world works. If you hit someone with a sword, you don't get damage numbers and if you miss there isn't some artificial number on why you missed. What you're doing is min/max'ing an Excel spreadsheet, using numbers to optimize your character. From an RP standpoint that is pretty casual.

Great. Maybe I should get an old 4:3 monitor somewhere to go with this game then...

While I do like yours better than the original, it is still not addressing the most obvious problem and that's having the a horizontal HUD in a world filled with 16:9 monitors. Why does the HUD have to occlude a large portion of the already limited vertical space when it would perfectly fit to the left of the screen while leaving plenty of room for the actual game content?

Hi war:head. I've been doing this a very long time, and the truth is that many many gamers play games with the game audio muted, and play their own music over things. Either that, or they are so focused on the actual game that they don't ever notice the audio. It doesn't matter if the audio is good or bad, they just do it because that's their preference or audio isn't on their radar. So when I say 33 percent don't care, what I really mean is, that the audio just isn't a priority for a good chunk of gamers out there. I respectfully disagree - exceptional music doesn't need to sink in to be memorable and even people who don't care a lot about it will notice. A good RPG (well, to some degree) example is probably the Mass Effect series. Some of the pieces from the games are exceptional to the point where you need to hear them once and it's in your head. Most prominent example would be the Uncharted Worlds theme. Whoever played ME even for just a couple of hours will recognize it in an instant (not necessarily knowing the actual name of course). Others are the Samara theme from ME2, the ME theme itself, Citadel and Presidium theme, Leaving Earth which even people who rarely played ME3 recognize when it's playing in a completely unrelated TV production, A Future for the Krogan...need I go on? Where PoE has background music, Mass Effect has a soundtrack. This is what I'm missing from PoE at the moment. Some defining pieces of music, songs I will forever associate with my PoE experience, something that stands out. Even something as simple as the menu music. Dragon Age as a series doesn't really have particularly memorable music, even with hundreds of hours logged. But you immediately recognize a DA game when you start it because of the amazing menu/loading song. And don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the music's bad but I do feel it's missing the certain something.