Dragon age discussion

[Monte Carlo]

^ I will admit to making a special "Escape" save where I tried out every NPC combo to spring me from prison. All of them are amusing, but being rescued by a dog is especially funny. In the end I finished it with Morrigan and Zevran, they were funny too (especially Zev charming the pants off the female guard).

[jaguars4ever]

Dragon Age 1.02 patch has been released.

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it!

[Volourn]

Neato patch.

 

PROTIP: Do not dare suggest the removal of the rogue class for DA2 on the BIO forums, you will by gang raped... Trust me on this, lolz.

 

Funny how her eon Obsidian almsot everyone (including me) thinks it be a good idea. LMAO

[Enoch]

Dragon Age 1.02 patch has been released.

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it!

Condolences.

 

The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

Edited December 7, 2009 by Enoch

[Gromnir]

Dragon Age 1.02 patch has been released.

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it!

 

if you don't want it, then you probably should have it. is a game, so people wanna be powerful so they can beat the game. unfortunately, bad balance robs the player of challenge and ultimately makes game something less than the developers intended.

 

on an unrelated side note, Gromnir wants to visit Kal Sharok for da2... maybe find out that the denziens o' the other remaining dwarven enclave were forced to make some hard/terrible choices to survive the last blight.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 7, 2009 by Gromnir

[jaguars4ever]

Dragon Age 1.02 patch has been released.

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it!

Condolences.

 

The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

DO NOT WANT!

 

It's like my Morrowind Robe of St. Roris all over again.

[Enoch]

Dragon Age 1.02 patch has been released.

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it!

Condolences.

 

The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

DO NOT WANT!

 

It's like my Morrowind Robe of St. Roris all over again.

Or the BG2 Cloak of Reflection.

[Aristes]

I have to admit that Hard has been pretty hard. Not beating my head against the wall hard, but it's not been a cakewalk. Certain battles are tougher than others. Now that I'm level... 12? I think, I'm going to go back to the Brecilian forest and try to do those

tombstone

battles. First, though, I'm going to finish off the non-crit things in the mage tower. Of course, that can only happen when I get a chance to play the game again, which won't be for a while. It's now as addicting to me as Fallout 3, only the odds and ends in the story and the NPC interaction are far superior in Dragon Age, which means that I'm set to enjoy it more than Fallout 3 when all is said and done. At this point in Fallout 3, my interest was starting to cool, so it looks like Dragon Age is a much better finisher.

[jaguars4ever]

Dragon Age 1.02 patch has been released.

If it nerfs my Shimmering Shield, I don't want it!

Condolences.

 

The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

DO NOT WANT!

 

It's like my Morrowind Robe of St. Roris all over again.

Or the BG2 Cloak of Reflection.

Ah, the Cloak of Reflection...

 

After donning that a beholder never looked at me in the same way.

[Gromnir]

so it looks like Dragon Age is a much better finisher.

 

sadly, as a finisher da is not bioware's best game. the last hour of the game... drags, and the final battle made us say, "that's it?" the epilogues (when not bugged) is nice enough. not a great finisher, but very solid all the way through.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[jaguars4ever]

so it looks like Dragon Age is a much better finisher.

 

sadly, as a finisher da is not bioware's best game. the last hour of the game... drags, and the final battle made us say, "that's it?" the epilogues (when not bugged) is nice enough. not a great finisher, but very solid all the way through.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Grom, what would you say is Bio's best finisher?

[Aristes]

"...da is not bioware's best game."

 

That might be true, but it doesn't take much to outdo the ending in Fallout 3. I've avoided reading about the ending, but I have noticed the complaints about it from a lot of folks. You, ~Di, and others.

 

On a different note, and I'll probably go Monte's tactics thread for more on this, but I've been avoiding reading much of the tactical discussion. I've seen a couple of things at a glance, like Enoch's views on sleep and the like. A few of you swear by crushing prison, which I agree is damned good, but I notice that bosses will drop aggro on the tank and go after the person who casts the damned thing. It's funny. It's like instant aggro. The other thing I notice is that fireball tends to be most effective at the start of battle, especially since the baddies haven't scattered yet. The unfortunate thing is that my caster gets aggro and doesn't let it go. That's where the force field thing comes in handy. Either that or I run around madly casting crowd control on folks who won't drop aggro on me. Overall, the battles are fun. Some are hard, but most are just fun, which is all I ask. I imagine that Nightmare level will probably be pretty damned tough. Of course, I haven't put in any mods. If I switched some of the skills, I think it could actually be much easier.

[Enoch]

So, anybody care to guess which encounters that "were not scaling properly" were fixed by the patch?

 

Alley thugs in Denerim have to be on that list, no?

 

 

Edit: I also wonder what dropping poultices and $ "more appropriately" means. (Guess: Minor resistance balms have essentially been cut from the game for reason of uselessness, unless the player is dim enough to buy or make them.)

Edited December 7, 2009 by Enoch

[Gromnir]

so it looks like Dragon Age is a much better finisher.

 

sadly, as a finisher da is not bioware's best game. the last hour of the game... drags, and the final battle made us say, "that's it?" the epilogues (when not bugged) is nice enough. not a great finisher, but very solid all the way through.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Grom, what would you say is Bio's best finisher?

 

mdk2

 

otherwise, am gonna probable say that mass effect were at or near the top o' bio's catalog... am not a huge fan o' the game, but the end were appropriate and fitting. am always averse to resurrecting bad guys, but at 'least the robo-saren were different than version 1.0... weren't like crappy star forge and the jawless freak we killed a half-dozen times. bg (a game we do not like one bit) actually had a satisfying ending, and in bg2 the going to hell (as it were) to finish off irenicus weren't bad as it weren't simply a big battle but there were additional story development as well... though we still thinks that the biowarians handled irenicus wrong. tob had a nice end battle and the epilogues were satisfactory. as an expansion it were good, but is hard to compare to full games.

 

da has nice epilogues, but there is pretty much zero story development after the landsmeet... were just repetitive fodder battles leading up to a confrontation with a taciturn UBG. that's it?

 

enoch

 

"Alley thugs in Denerim have to be on that list, no?"

 

am wondering 'bout that. as we has mentioned before, Gromnir wonders why fereldan needed gray wardens... or even an army. collect a few hundred thugs from denerim and you could quell the blight in an afternoon... have time left over to maybe throw a nice barbecue afterward.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 7, 2009 by Gromnir

[Volourn]

Denerim thugs were rather easy. Only wussies have problems with them. One mass paraylsis or good 'ol fahsion fireball and GAME OVER for them.

 

 

"tob had a nice end battle"

 

You meant nice 'cheesy' end battle? L0LZ

 

BIO ENDINGS OF GAMES I PLAYED

----------------------------------------

 

1. HOTU

2. DA

3. BG2

4. BG1

5. JE

6. ME

7. NWN1 OC

8. TOB

9. KOTOR

10. SOU

 

 

"but there is pretty much zero story development after the landsmeet... "

 

Huh? Wasn't it after the landsmeet where SPOILER occured, and then you had the before the last rush SPOILERS, then the EPIC SPOILER battle, then the EPIC EPILOGUE SPOILERS (sans bugs of course)?

 

Sure, beats the lame ass cheesy TOB end boss. Not to mention, one of BIo's worst 'bad guys' ever which was obvious from step 1 (in not in the same way as ME or D's end bosses were purposefully shown by by BIO).

 

 

DA> BG2

Edited December 7, 2009 by Volourn

[entrerix]

i loved the finale of the original bg. mass effect's was pretty decent too actually. da's was very meh though da is overall a fantastic game imo.

 

i liked the ending cutscene stuff in da where it does the fallout recap.

 

fallout 3's ending/finale was one of the worst endings i've ever had the misfortune of playing

 

zelda ocarina of time had one of the best. that last fight in the rain... omg epic

[jaguars4ever]

Volo's list looks about right to me, except I'd swap KotOR with NwN:OC.

 

More surprisingly, though, Volo hasn't played ME?!

[Monte Carlo]

Hmmm, taking out revenants at low-level just went out of the window, they nerfed rebalanced the duration of frost spells. Yikes!

[Gromnir]

there weren't nothing epic 'bout the da battles post landsmeet. however, there is a couple o' conversations post landsmeet that is significant. Gromnir tends to lump that altogether with the whole landsmeet portion o' game, but to be fair you does have 'bout 10 minutes o' fodder battles post landsmeet and before your big Resolution dialogues with party mates. the problem is they all occur in a relative small window before your final assault ... and the final assault is tedious and anti-climactic... the final battle itself is probable bio's second worst designed... next to kotor that is.

 

da is indeed better than bg2 in many ways... but the final da battles were nothing more than tedious and repetitive exp grinds. the story development stopped hours before you reach the end o' the last battle, and the last battle itself doesn't result in any intriguing or compelling additions to story. you learn nothing new. on subsequent playthroughs Gromnir is gonna be forcing himself to endure a couple dull hours o' rinse & repeat battles just to get to the epilogues, which we already concede is nice... when not bugged.

 

fact that the last couple hours o' da is dull and bloated not make da a bad game, but that not make last hours less bloated or more compelling neither. am betting more than a few people here were surprised that the da conclusion were so obvious and mundane.

 

 

"that's it?"

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Monte Carlo]

^ I see what you're getting at, but personally I wasn't expecting much more than EPIC DRAGON BATTLE followed by cutscene.

 

So the epilogue thing was for me a really cool bonus, I loved it to bits. But, yeah, the combat was a grind... I mean Dave Gaider is the man who wrote the end battles for BG2, right? Those were The Business. DA isn't a patch on those. Not by a long chalk.

 

Hey, Dave, you gonna write an alt.ending mod like you did for BG2?

[Gromnir]

Volo's list looks about right to me, except I'd swap KotOR with NwN:OC.

 

More surprisingly, though, Volo hasn't played ME?!

 

the nwn:oc ending was... horrible. you fight some mage, whose name nobody recalls, and then you confront the scary lizard queen from some kinda 1950s b-movie sci-fi thriller. lizards have awakened from their eons long slumber intent on conquering the world. we know it is true because that is what we is told. is no genuine character development o' the main villains, and aribeth, who coulda' been important, essentially becomes a footnote. it were just kinda a mess.

 

never finished hotu... too much drow. too much epic. too much... and yet, ironically too little and too late for Gromnir. we were simply exhausted by bio's nwn attempts by the time they released hotu.

 

btw, the denerim thugs were tougher than any equal number o' darkspawn we ever faced. mas paralysis maybe works better on the easy difficulty vol maybe played... or the patched version that adjusts normal to something easier. dunno. scattershot archers makes the pre-casting of mass paralysis problematic, and on hard you gets lots of enemies making their resistance checks. sleep is a better crowd controller, coupled with cone o' cold and judicious use o' force field on the archers.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Killian Kalthorne]

Neato patch.

 

PROTIP: Do not dare suggest the removal of the rogue class for DA2 on the BIO forums, you will by gang raped... Trust me on this, lolz.

 

Funny how her eon Obsidian almsot everyone (including me) thinks it be a good idea. LMAO

 

Hey, some people might enjoy it.

 

Besides, what is wrong with the Rogue class? How else would you steal, go stealthy, and pick locks if you don't have a rogue?

[Tigranes]

The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.

 

Sounds like I need that patch, but I'll wait until I finish this playthrough. No way I'm risking Bio breaking my game again.

[HoonDing]

DO NOT WANT!

 

It's like my Morrowind Robe of St. Roris all over again.

Who's to say this new patch doesn't install itself automatically without you knowing? Just like with the Edge?

 

I don't want it either. They even have the audacity to nerf Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold & Force Field. Bah.

 

And those Denerim bandit encounters are awesome. Maybe for Nightmare difficulty they should've replaced all those 'generic' thugs with Ser Cauthrien duplicates.

Edited December 7, 2009 by virumor

[~Di]

So, what happens if

you surrender/lose to Cauthrien

?

 

There's a prison section similar to the Leviathan from KOTOR.

 

Yup, and it's my favorite part of the game. Watching the comedy antics of your

two rescuers

is PURE GOLD (I went with Leliana & Dog on my first playthrough);

 

Mine too! Talk about comedy gold, I went with

Morrigan and Sten!

Totally priceless!