Gromnir

Nope. PC warriors get two-handed and sword and board while rogues get dual wield and archery. Moreover, companions get one weapon tree. Isabela dual wields. You can't give her a bow or crossbow. makes perfect sense. if bio resorts to removal o' features to promote uniqueness of classes, then why not do the same with the jnpcs? at least they is being consistent with their silliness. am all in favor o' removing broken features, powhaz and classes, but that ain't what is happening in da2. developers is going with seemingly quickest and easiest approach to fixing da problems, and they shows very little concern for reason and logic. the paucity o' creativity and lack o' elegance these moves exhibit is disturbing. no doubt they will sell their changes as "innovative" much like they did with the dialogue wheel. a resource saving device that stretches vo resources and cuts down on need for writers to expand their dialogue trees becomes a praise-worthy feature? am genuine curious to see how bio will spin the changes they is making to da2? ... bio has been claiming "revolutionary" 'bout their games for many years, but the truth is that bio games does very little that is genuine new. am not a huge proponent for "new" just for the sake o' being different, so bioware's tendency to use familiar conventions (but with higher competence and production values) did not bother us overmuch... though the puffery endemic in their claims o' innovation felt unnecessary. well, finally bio is breaking new ground. the developers o' virtual every other sequel we care to name tries to ADD to their initial offering: makes bigger and better... more, More, MORE! but bio bucks the trend and is going with less, Less, LESS. bio will finally achieve genuine innovation? HA! Good Fun!

ps can somebody clarify our possible misconception re: dual-wield warriors. will warriors in da2 be able to acquire dw powhaz as they did in da:o? ... the irony o' such a silly "improvement" would render karzak apoplectic. "To be fair, my perspective is apparently a bit odd in the present marketplace-- I like a Pause-able Real-Time system that expects that every player will use the pause function liberally." when the bio developers first started in with their "spiritual successor" stuff regarding bg2 and da:o, a key attribute were 'sposed to be strategic combat... combat that would allow and encourage pause. am not certain what happened at bio or in the market to change the game's direction. da:o were seemingly commercial successful, so the shift away from traditional strategic elements is unfortunate. HA! Good Fun!

In almost every CRPG I've played (most goldbox games, based on AD&D and beyond had mages that were ridiculously powerful once they got past the earlier levels. The martial classes needed copious amounts of magical gear to keep up, whereas mages could fling their death while naked. Though I suppose I should restructure mages with "spellcasters" in general. am not sure what is the point o' the naked comparison... 'less there were a game forced you to play naked for a substantial period o' time. is very few rpgs/crpgs that ignore equipment. even so, the crux o' the debate remains in the portion quoted as you seem to recognize that mages became powerful "once they got past the earlier levels." dual-class characters in bg and bg2 were also disproportionately powerful, but they were necessarily gimped for a substantial portion o' the game. the gimp stage were no doubt why we never saw a dual-class character in pnp, but they were endemic in bg and bg2. is arguable that d&d mages in the crpgs you mentioned were "teh suck" if for no other reason than that they had a development period of many gaming hours. d&d mages were the result o' very poor design. made no sense whatsoever to build a class that were lame at lower levels, and strong at extreme levels... prohibitive levels save for in a crpg wherein the player actually played a party o' characters and could advance through levels relative quick. nevertheless, if soro wishes to suggest that d&d crpg mages never became powerful in early d&d crpgs, then we would take exception. in most crpgs, d&d mages eventual became quite powerful, after some considerable hours of "teh suck." btw, it is amazing that the biowarians, who started from scratch with their rules, built a mage with many o' the same flaws as d&d mages: weak at initial levels, but prohibitive powerful at high levels. am suspecting that the biowarians were more concerned with meeting gamer expectations than they were with building a better mage... which is understandable if a bit disappointing. HA! Good Fun!

am confused. maybe am reading the posts wrong, but has dw been removed from the warrior skillz/powhaz/whatever? that would be... odd. the rogue class were a mistake from the start and 'stead o' adding material to makes the class genuine unique the developers will now resort to taking away from the other classes? figures. sword and board warriors is powerful and simple to play. the 2-h warrior, if is not altered overmuch from the da:o variety, is a glass cannon that can be rewarding to play, but is not a particular effective tank. but what is the rationale for dw removal? *snort* no doubt the biowarians will claims that the essence o' warrior gameplay has been preserved with 2-h and sword and shield, just as removal of true strategic overhead did not kill essence o' strategic gameplay as long as free camera movement were retained. oh, and mages did suck in the original d&d... and in the d&d that immediately followed. is the reason why powergamers invariably played elves (original) or fighter/mages 'stead o' vanilla mage. am doubting that more than a couple o' folks here played the original whitebox edition o' d&d, and the next incarnation weren't much improved. to get to 5th level, the point at which your mage could finally cast a fireball spell, required Many hours o' dedicated gameplay... hours spent during which you were always an encounter away from death. at level 1 you could cast one friggn' spell, after which you were relegated to using your sling in support for much o' the remainder o' a typical adventure. at what level were a mage genuine fun to play? between 6 and 8 were our opinion, and we rare met somebody who had played such a character with the necessary loyalty and dedication. if folks is talking of original crpg incarnations o' the mage... well that is a different issue altogether. a weekend of gaming could gets a hardcore player well past the prolonged larval stage o' the d&d mage. that being said, da mages is NOT anything like old skool d&d mages... 'less bio has changed something else while we were not looking. am wondering how many other "improvements" will be made via removal o' da:o features. HA! Good Fun!

No, that's exactly what I'm saying, and what they do. If you alpha-strike them with your mage, they will move their aggro to the caster. I, and I believe other people, were talking about the way the enemies initially prioritise the heaviest armoured fighters, instead of directly going after the unarmed and -armored guy. am not recalling fighting peasants in da:o. please identify some o' those battles. we fought lots o' darkspawn, which is mindless but functionally programmed with appropriate battlefield tactics by some greater power or entity. am not recalling the militant peasants, save for arguably one battle in lothering. regardless, given the pervasive fear o' mages/magic that exists in the da world, am expecting that a person walking 'round with mage robes and an over-sized "walking stick" might as well be painting a bulls-eye on his chest. battle starts and there is an inexplicably unarmed person standing in back o' the warriors, raising his glowing walking stick and making obscure gestures? yeah, is real tough to wrap mind 'round notion that such a guy would be the prime target for every enemy on the battlefield. *snort* allowing the unarmed guy with the mage robes and walking stick to simply wander 'round the battlefied, untouched, makes complete sense. in nep's world o' endemic downs syndrome victims, is reasonable and right that during a battle any person not wearing heavy armour should be treated like a referee on a football field. no? HA! Good Fun!

... am gonna assume that da:o is NOT the first rpg orogun has played. if we is incorrect, then feel free to ignore the sarcasm we throws your direction, 'cause otherwise you would realize that you has described the realities o' virtual every pnp or crpg developed since the mid 1970's. our party o' 4-6 needs fight off a small army of goblins, orcs, darkspawn, sith, etc.? oh me, oh my. nevertheless, is da:o, and not rps as a whole, that needs to resort to an ai handicap to makes playable? *snort* am not doubting that the da gameplay needed tweaking based on game testing feedback, but the solution chosen were one of expediency rather than logic or elegance. crude. HA! Good Fun!

like it or not, figuring out who is the dragon age mages before they cast an offensive spell is not a matter o' metagame... is a simple matter o' observation. anybody reading this board ever have difficulty figuring out who were the magic tossers? target the tank first makes complete sense... in a world w/o mages, magic and scattershot archers. sorry, but nep logic is only logical if one ignores some very obvious realities 'bout da:o gameplay. again, the enemy ai were changed to make mages more playable. HA! Good Fun!

doesn't really matter. enoch's point is still valid. enemy ai works in reverse o' "intelligent player" tactics. at mid-to-high levels, we invariably target mages first, and archers second. mages and archers (with scattershot) can seemingly cripple our entire party in an instant... if we allow them to do so. enemy ai, 'cause o' armour focus, works in reverse o' the way you or enoch or Gromnir would play... which is damned stoopid. *shrug* am recalling that such ai silliness were a "fix" resulting from playtesting... folks who played through game with mage using original/non-retarded ai were killed easily and often at lower levels. game were not fun for mage players. so biowarians fix in a simple manner by tweaking ai to works reverse o' intelligent. were an easy fix that cured problem, but it made enemies seems universal moronic for anybody who were paying attention. HA! Good Fun!

"but for folks who start off every battle with a spam o' area effect spells by their mage" to clarify, the aforementioned were not meant as a criticism. it is an effective tactic to spam area effect spells at the start o' battle. makes enemies run through multiple layers o' area effect spells before they can get close enough to your party to attack? is smart. however, doing so largely obviates the salient ai stoopidity. HA! Good Fun!

am thinking you is both right/wrong. in our experience, enemies INITIALLY prioritize enemies based on armour. this means that when battle first begins your mage can wander 'bout the battlefield unimpeded almost as if he were invisible to foes. however, once your mage damages a foe, he sudden becomes recognizable as a threat. ... am suspecting that if your mage never utilized an area-effect spell (or focused solely on healing/buffing spells,) he or she coulds go through a majority of the game safe-from-harm and able to choose individual opponents on the battlefield. is indeed wacky ai, but for folks who start off every battle with a spam o' area effect spells by their mage, the wackiness is gonna be largely unrecognizable. if your mage attacks Every foe at the start o' battle, then the ai wackiness can be going unnoticed as hordes o' recently fireball'd darkspawn will run direct to the mage. HA! Good Fun!

the franchise is clear not heading in a direction Gromnir woulda' preferred, but one can see how all sorts stoopid accommodations and changes has been deemed necessary to "improve" da2. am imaging that w/o a genuine overhead tactical pov, friendly fire becomes much more difficult to avoid w/o some cumbersome micromanagement. 'course that brings up the question o' the removal o' tactical pov, which not make much sense unless it is a resource saving or performance improving change, no? these seeming counter-intuitive changes is not being contemplated independent, which is a good thing... sorta. the problem is the overall direction o' the franchise. am personally afraid that da is following a similar path as did mass effect. heck, is not as if mass effect had particularly complex gameplay mechanics, so the simplification and streamlining that occurred in mass effect 2 were hardly a positive from our perspective. nevertheless, bioware seems to believe that making mass effect character development mechanics relative meaningless were an improvement. combat in mass effect 1 were mindlessly repetitive, but games such as diablo has proven that such brain-numbing grinds can be addictive to a large % o' potential gamers. is da gonna adopt mass effect combat simplicity while removing character complexity in the name o' streamlining? yeah, bio will wants us to be able to make meaningful in-game choices, but am much concerned 'bout the streamlining o' tactical combat and character development choices. ... whenever a developer tells us what were REAL important in da, we begins to shudder... makes us fear for what is to come in da2. HA! Good Fun!

fo:nv were one o' those rare games that we spent many hours playing, but could not bring our self to finish... began to feel like work. were worth the money we spent, just too... pedestrian. there were nothing genuine intriguing 'bout fo:nv that could keep us playing past a vague and unidentifiable point. perhaps the "retro" nature o' fo:nv were the problem as the setting, and characters and quests had a "been there, done that" quality that we s'pose were 'posed to be nostalgic, or something. hated the legion stuff, but not enough to make us dislike the game. dunno. we spent loads o' hours playing, and we suspect that in six months or a year we may return to fo:nv and finish, but for now, playing fo:nv is a chore rather than fun and am kinda at a loss as to how/why. again, it were well worth the price o' admission, but we got to a "meh" point and could not progress. what now instead o' fo:nv? we will probably play some partial restored kotor2... up to malachor. obsidian game endings suck and we not wanna ruin the game experience by completing kotor 2. HA! Good Fun!

as we noted, we saw that in this thread that many o' those persons criticizing da2 graphics were individuals we recollected as defending or excusing aod graphics. such self-contradiction struck us as dishonest. HA! Good Fun!

IF that had been the argument made by the iron throne supporters, there never woulda' been any debate over expectations v. quality. HA! Good Fun!

"For me, Bioware has become like that chick who writes emo vampire fiction" we has used a very much similar descriptor for recent bio writing attempts. am not gonna comment on the quality o' their games as a whole, but their stories (particularly the characters in bio stories) is very reminiscent o' the hackneyed faux-angst teenage vampire piffle. have observed that bio should serious consider doing a teen vampire game so as to fully take advantage o' their writing talents. HA! Good Fun! ps am understanding how difficult it is to make a crpg joinable npc compelling; there just isn't enough lines o' text available to the writers to makes characters live and breathe. obsidian has taken a slightly different approach and gone with the Unique Concept angle on jnpcs. makes a color-blind angel paladin/priest with a crisis o' conscience and you is halfway to compelling already, no? no. bio has focused more on creating Drama in character backgrounds or quests. 'course, without necessary time/text to develop, the Drama seems forced. rushed, and juvenile. am getting the problem... am recognizing the difficulty.

*shrug* we've been down this road before. Different expectations and so forth about what developers can do with the resources they have. It may not be "fair", but success breeds expectations. but expectations do not in any way alter the quality of a game. ferrari decides to builds a four-door sedan. is a nice car with okie dokie gas mileage, but nothing special. underwhelming considering is ferrari who designed. costs $25,000. the national society for peoples with down syndrome builds a four-door sedan... have actual downs syndrome patients build the car. is 'bout 7 years behind the design curve... not as reliable or gas efficient as the ferrari, but is kinda an amazing accomplishment when you consider who built it. costs $25,000. no matter how impressed you is by the down syndrome car, you cannot objective say that their car is better... and we bet you wouldn't attempt to do so. claim that is more impressive that folks with so little did so much? sure, but you ain't gonna try and convince anybody that the 5-7 seven year out-of-date car is superior or better than the ferrari. ... the argument o' alan and others were ridiculous when it were made. fact that we has been down this road before not change how idiotic were the original path some chose to take. tell us you is underwhelmed by bio efforts is fine. but the expectations argument... bunk. HA! Good Fun!

"Firstly a better analogy might be - if ice cream was $30 a pop would you say there was no grounds for complaint, resistance, and/or people finding less than legal ways towards its procurement?" what? is there no grounds for theft o' ice cream simply 'cause it is overpriced? YES. %&$# YES. if little bobby hanson is some kinda mutant who cannot eat any food save for ice cream, THEN maybe you got the start o' an argument... for bobby. but we is talking 'bout ice cream. if is priced too high, then find an alternative for your sweet-tooth fix... or go without. *srtches noggin* complain all you want 'bout the pricing... is ok to complain. but to find some nefarious alternative simply 'cause Ice Cream is too expensive... what a bizarre question. HA! Good Fun!

1) there is no moral high-ground for pirates. bunch o' clowns. trying to rationalize your actions is ridiculous to watch... without it being funny in the least. not nearly as humorous as a dozen o' you spilling out of a car or shooting each other in the face with seltzer. go back to your traditional exploits as you is clearly getting tripped up by your big shoes. nevertheless, we does see some cultural loci for piracy advocates, so perhaps you were perverted by a twisted upbringing. it seems that the closer you gets to se asia (and russia) the more likely one is to see piracy being defended. for those o' you raised improperly, we may feel some sympathy for you and your bankrupt morality. 2) the only reason information piracy & copyright infringement is not equivalent to theft is 'cause o' the traditional common law definition o' thefts no carrying away o' an object with the intent to permanently deprive... so no, theft is not accurate. nevertheless, the reason for criminalizing piracy and common law thefts is the same: you is taking, without permission, something that don't belong to you.... and any o' you whack jobs who argue the semantics o' piracy now gets the Big Hypocrite label if you ever complain o' what you see as Gromnir-acting-likes-a-lawyer. HA! Good Fun!

crock. am gonna call bs. some o' the same folks complaining 'bout da art is the same folks who applaud or ignore age o' decadence art. is bs. is loads o' reasons to blast bio games, but art is kinda a weak option for vilifying... and it is more than a little hypocritical coming as it does from certain parties. keeps in mind that Gromnir is more than a little disappointed with the wacky dominatrix half-armour look for the da2 main character and for flemmeth, but da2 looks not noticeably worse than did da or many other crpgs we care to mention. take out tactical overhead view and streamline combat is enough to annoy Gromnir to the point where we will wait for a bargain-bin release, but the present focus 'pon art is mostly bs from hypocrites. HA! Good Fun!

eh? why not? sure, you can find loads o' examples o' giant weapons and ridiculous armour in western games and animation, but anime is so freaking replete with over-the-top visual stoopidity as to makes sarevok's bg armour look almost realistic. ... am personally convinced that watching the vast majority o' anime kills more brain cells than does drinking a fifth o' gin. is numerous examples from this thread, and others on this board that would tend to support our belief. HA! Good Fun!

not helping. is all mages secretly dying to be Diana Ross? am trying to figure out the mystical fashion sense, but robes, and boo's mardi gras reject is not our idea o' manly. HA! Good Fun!

robes and staves. some guy wearing a dress and leaning on a stick does not scream Manly. *$#@ tolkien... the notion that mages should be crotchety old men who wear robes beyond their bathroom door, AND while adventuring, is an unfortunate legacy o' the hack with the horrible prose style. don't blame the poof factor on game developers... blame on tolkien, and those who loves tolkien. Gromnir wants to play a mage that can find a freaking pair of pants.... altering geography would be nice, but gots 0 to do with power. HA! Good Fun!

It also contains THE defining Indy moment. The movie's superior to Last Crusade in every way. No supernatural bullcrap, just good old-fashioned arse-kicking. ... did you watch the first Indian Jones movie all the way to the end? am thinking you missed a few scenes. HA! Good Fun!

just as warriors cannot alter most 2d and 3d game environments, mages is limited to expressing violence 'pon the bodies o' creatures. am not seeing how anybody who has played a d&d crpg created in the last decade can feel an absence o' power. would it be sooper-groovey-keen to have fully malleable environments in games? perhaps.. am not sure o' the cost v. benefit on that, but regardless, mages is rarely relegated to being ambulatory pyrotechnic displays with questionable manhood. HA! Good Fun!

1) Gromnir understands the reference to castile, but what we didn't get were the specific notions o' art. reading in context is always helpful. 2) complain 'bout a name that sounds, possibly, vaguely like Castile is pretty much the definition o' nitpicking. congrats. 3) people (more than a few) complained 'bout the title o' Dragon Age as if such naming were exhibiting creative turpitude. tig comment is reminiscent o' such good times. 4) yeah, Gromnir is bio's white freaking knight... ride in to save their reputation anytime they gets criticized. *snort* tig gets more mileage with your castile observation. HA! Good Fun!