Dragon Age discussion

[Gorgon]

I was satisfied, not any kind of classic though. Mostly I thought the setting was generic and tedious and the premise a bit silly. Grapically it looked very old and not at all like what you would expect from something with those system rq.

 

I did play it through twice, almost. So yes, now there's nothing left to do but complain. What's so strang about that.

[ramza]

It's true that BG2's npcs weren't as developed as today's npcs but they were something new at the time and they were rather well done.

Actually, Bio's characters have starter getting winnier and bitchier ever since, the whole thing has been escalating.

The BG storyline was really epic. Ever since NWN, Bio games were all about fetch quests, gathering items, getting alliances, etc. Rather boring, uninspired and unmemorable.

 

Of all the IE games, BG2 had the less grind. Almost each battle had a purpose or a meaning. Moreover, there was strategy involved as I always making my characters change positions and tactics. Sometimes I even reloaded to see if the battle would evolve differently and it actually did. Enemy AI doesn't always respond the same way. It wasn't about just clicking and waiting (NWN and Kotor did have that problem). Finally, having a variety of enemies was a big advantage of the game. You never got bored of fighting waves and waves of similar enemies.

[Volourn]

"Honestly, the only thing that Imoen and she share personality wise is that they

Edited February 14, 2010 by Volourn

[HoonDing]

You can play as your dead Warden in Awakening. Your DEAD Warden. This is after years of telling us that they made the combat system the way they did because in Thedas, death was 'meaningful.'

I don't get it. Is the Warden going to be rebuilt revived by Cerberus the Mages Collective?

Edited February 14, 2010 by virumor

[Volourn]

When was that decided, btw? Last I heard is that if you bring in a dead PC, you'd be forced to play that new origin. Interesting. BIO choice is weak here. Buty, hey, they gotz to appease the crybabies who can't even live with the chocie THEY made to sacrifice their character. L A M E

[Gromnir]

am having a hard time with the "bg2 has less grind" stuff.

 

we already noted the extreme grind in irenicus dungeon and suldanessallar. how 'bout sahaughin city, or any of the three options for recovering a widget for the matron mother: mindflayer, kuo-toa, or beholder. heck, two o' those even recycled maps and added grind. no grind in escaping ust'natha and getting back to surface? rrrriiiiigghhhht. am sure that each o' those combat encounters you had with small groups o' drow were unique and differentiated... no doubt you can recall the details o' each such encounter all these years later 'cause the battles were sssssoooo unique. etc. boo is particular wacky on this topic... tells us is unfair to pick limited portions o' a 100 hour game, and then wants to limit to critical path... which ain't anywhere near 100 hours. why limit to critical path? the rest ain't part o' game? even so, once we look at critical path we still see grind.

 

let us look at dahlish v. werewolves. you got wolves, bears, werewolves, darkspawn, spiders, undead, arcane horrors, crazy hermits, cultists, mini-dragons and trees being repeated as grind? perhaps. on first forest map you encounter werewolves a couple times and one time you may talk way out of combat. you also got the multi-tree combat encounter near old talking tree and you got that weird shadow encounter. there IS loads o' combat, but that ain't different from bg2... and the combat is differentiated. in the ruins you got multiple strange trap rooms that present some unique combat challenges, and clearly you wouldn't call the final battle grindy. is grindy 'cause you cannot walk down a hallway or into a room w/o being attacked by... something? is that genuine different than bg2? heck, am still wondering why we saw lizardmen shows up outside the asylum to fight us... or why yuan-ti were in unseeing eye and asylum portions of the game... used yuan-ti as if they is simpleminded mook? some joker developer thoughts that we had traveled more than 10' in bg2 w/o a combat encounter and he hadn't yet had a chance to use lizardman or yuan-ti models yet?

 

am sorry folks, but some o' you got the rose-colored specs on with bg2. is a fine game, but try to tell us it ain't grindy?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[ramza]

am having a hard time with the "bg2 has less grind" stuff.

 

we already noted the extreme grind in irenicus dungeon and suldanessallar. how 'bout sahaughin city, or any of the three options for recovering a widget for the matron mother: mindflayer, kuo-toa, or beholder. heck, two o' those even recycled maps and added grind. no grind in escaping ust'natha and getting back to surface? rrrriiiiigghhhht. am sure that each o' those combat encounters you had with small groups o' drow were unique and differentiated... no doubt you can recall the details o' each such encounter all these years later 'cause the battles were sssssoooo unique. etc. boo is particular wacky on this topic... tells us is unfair to pick limited portions o' a 100 hour game, and then wants to limit to critical path... which ain't anywhere near 100 hours. why limit to critical path? the rest ain't part o' game? even so, once we look at critical path we still see grind.

 

let us look at dahlish v. werewolves. you got wolves, bears, werewolves, darkspawn, spiders, undead, arcane horrors, crazy hermits, cultists, mini-dragons and trees being repeated as grind? perhaps. on first forest map you encounter werewolves a couple times and one time you may talk way out of combat. you also got the multi-tree combat encounter near old talking tree and you got that weird shadow encounter. there IS loads o' combat, but that ain't different from bg2... and the combat is differentiated. in the ruins you got multiple strange trap rooms that present some unique combat challenges, and clearly you wouldn't call the final battle grindy. is grindy 'cause you cannot walk down a hallway or into a room w/o being attacked by... something? is that genuine different than bg2? heck, am still wondering why we saw lizardmen shows up outside the asylum to fight us... or why yuan-ti were in unseeing eye and asylum portions of the game... used yuan-ti as if they is simpleminded mook? some joker developer thoughts that we had traveled more than 10' in bg2 w/o a combat encounter and he hadn't yet had a chance to use lizardman or yuan-ti models yet?

 

am sorry folks, but some o' you got the rose-colored specs on with bg2. is a fine game, but try to tell us it ain't grindy?

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Well, contrary to any other game, BG2's battles never felt tedious (to me, at least).

[Niten_Ryu]

BG2 definately had grindy parts but game mechanics, different party options, different classes and lots of differents mobs made it more fun then in DA. BG had some really horrible places like Gnoll Fortress and Kobold Caves (with infinite spawns of course for the extra annoyance). Yeah and who can forget infinite Flaming Fist guards. Locations of the spawn zone triggers have probably been burnt permanately into my brain, because I was stupid enough to play evil party with low rep.

 

I'm not that interested of the DA expansion (might be buy it from bargain bin or Steam holiday sales) and I'll probably wait for DA2.

[Gromnir]

BG2 definately had grindy parts but game mechanics, different party options, different classes and lots of differents mobs made it more fun then in DA. BG had some really horrible places like Gnoll Fortress and Kobold Caves (with infinite spawns of course for the extra annoyance). Yeah and who can forget infinite Flaming Fist guards. Locations of the spawn zone triggers have probably been burnt permanately into my brain, because I was stupid enough to play evil party with low rep.

 

I'm not that interested of the DA expansion (might be buy it from bargain bin or Steam holiday sales) and I'll probably wait for DA2.

 

 

am not sure if bg2 player options made the game feels less grindy than da. after all, melee combatants in da actually gots a chance to choose useful combat abilities whereas bg2 were mostly point and click. 'course there were a much larger catalog o' spells available to bg2 players... have 3 casters in your party and chances are you got access to more than a hundred or so spells by end o' game. 'course a huge catalog o' spells caused other problems.

 

we will agree that the diversity o' the mobs maybe made bg2 feel less grindy. also, as bg2 were using hand-painted backgrounds the locations felt more differentiated.

 

dunno.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

edit

 

"Well, contrary to any other game, BG2's battles never felt tedious (to me, at least)."

 

bg2 battles typically didn't feels tedious to Gromnir (with a few exceptions). da battles, save for in the tunnels in dwarf portion o' the game, didn't feel particularly grindy to Gromnir. however, IF you feels that da combats is grindy, then we not see reason to contrast to bg2-- a game that were having a very goodly number o' combat encounters that were just as grindy as da combat encounters.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Gromnir

[Wrath of Dagon]

Who was that guy that used to argue KotOR was the greatest thing in the world while Mass Effect was the worst?

That would be I, except I didn't say ME was the worst thing in the world, just the worst Bio game I played by far.

 

Well, I've never said anything that "doesn't make sense" to Alistair after seeing his sister. In fact, I've never done the "hardening" line with either romance option. So I fail to see how it's "necessary" to avoid having Alistair act like a jerk in the end. Though I would note, that whether or not you like what Alistair does in the end, it makes perfect sense given his internal motivators. His actions are irrational, but entirely consistent. And since human beings aren't computers, what he does makes sense.

I didn't say what Alistair does doesn't make sense, I said unless you use a line which doesn't make sense Alistair acts like a boneheaded jerk.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Volourn]

Except ME is vastly superior to KOTOR in every single way. In fact, KOTOR is BIO's worst game BY FAR.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Volourn

[Wrath of Dagon]

There's no except there, as I'm stating a fact.

[Oner]

^^I could make a detailed list why that isn't true, but... no. Instead you get this:

R00fles!

[Monte Carlo]

am not sure if bg2 player options made the game feels less grindy than da.

 

I'm not so sure, Grom. Why?

 

Classes.

 

DA has three classes. OK, within those there is a bit of sub-specialisation. But, when all's said and done the fighter and rogue are fairly indivisible (the melee rogue is just a light-fighter variant of the warrior class) and the mage can take some interesting paths, including the twinky battle caster option.

 

Compare and contrast to BG2's take on the 2E AD&D system and kits. Love 'em or hate 'em (and I generally hate 'em in a P&P context) the multi-class and dual-class combos in BG2 add a hell of a lot of options. Grind? Hell yeah. Different ways to manage the grind? Hell yeah.

 

From the ridiculous Kensai mage to the bizarro bard kits there were dozens of ways to spam your way through the hordes, with a more diverse NPC roster (from a class / ability POV). I even played a 'unpopular NPC' gimped game with the dudes a lot of people didn't bother with (the shapechanger, Duran Duran haircut Tiefling, halfling paladin chick etc), with the main NPC as a CE half-orc (wait for it) Cleric / Thief.

 

Again, I'm not dissing DA --- I loved all the fighting. It's just that (as Ramza points out) BG2 manages to give you the feeling of scale, of different possibilities beyond the 'click on monster' nonsense Vol describes.

 

And this is before I factor in the awesome modding around BG2 which, strangely, still hasn't happened for DA yet. And the IE is probably tougher to mod. Go figure.

 

Cheers

MC

[Volourn]

"And this is before I factor in the awesome modding around BG2 which, strangely, still hasn't happened for DA yet. And the IE is probably tougher to mod. Go figure."

 

Not gonn waste more of time disucssing an anicent game like BG2. I'll jjust discuss DA and its joke of a toolset/modding scene. The answer is obvious. BIo doesn't care about DA's toolset so why should the player base? DA's toolset was a bust the moment BIO made it very clear that it was irrelevant and unimportant to them.

 

DA toolset was DOA.

[RPGmasterBoo]

bg2 battles typically didn't feels tedious to Gromnir (with a few exceptions). da battles, save for in the tunnels in dwarf portion o' the game, didn't feel particularly grindy to Gromnir. however, IF you feels that da combats is grindy, then we not see reason to contrast to bg2-- a game that were having a very goodly number o' combat encounters that were just as grindy as da combat encounters.

 

Correcton: its not grindy, its tedious. For several reasons:

1. the story is not captivating enough to provide motivation

2. too few different enemies

3. too little pause between encounters. Eg: from the moment you reveal the nature of the villagers of Haven to the point you get to the Dragon there is nothing but combat except for the hunt for a few keys and one or two conversations. Replay that portion of the game if you don't believe me, its around 2 hours of non stop combat. Btw that's practically the entire hub. After that you've got a boss battle and a tiny logic puzzle area.

While there was a lot of combat in BGII I don't remember slugging through enemies for two hours continuously at any moment.

4. as you noticed the hand painted graphics felt more unique. Tilesets produce deja vu.

Edited February 14, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Monte Carlo]

Vol, you argument is bunk. At least you are consistent.

 

With DA Bio released the toolset in it's entirety. They courted some of the leading lights in the NWN modding scene.

 

With BG2 the source code was never released. Modders were never encouraged (with the laudable exception of Dave Gaider, who released his own extremely good BG2 mod to finish off what he wanted to see in ToB).

 

It's a perfectly valid comparison. BG2 modding, incredibly, is still going on. DA, a very hot title, has a strange collection of dodgy romance stuff and new ways to make your character's hair mauve.

 

Cheers

MC

[Volourn]

"Vol, you argument is bunk. At least you are consistent."

 

Nope, it's true. the facts prove this.

 

 

"With DA Bio released the toolset in it's entirety. They courted some of the leading lights in the NWN modding scene. "

 

proves nothing except lip service. That's all the DA toolset is . Lips ervice to NWN fanboys. You wnat to know how to do a toolset right? Check out Neverwinter Nights. That's how you do it.

 

"

With BG2 the source code was never released. Modders were never encouraged (with the laudable exception of Dave Gaider, who released his own extremely good BG2 mod to finish off what he wanted to see in ToB)."

 

Big deal. It was a different time with different rules and stuff.

 

 

"It's a perfectly valid comparison. BG2 modding, incredibly, is still going on. DA, a very hot title, has a strange collection of dodgy romance stuff and new ways to make your character's hair mauve."

 

When you say 'BG2 modding is still going on' do you mean by what? A few dozen people? Come on now. You cna't be taken that stuff seriously, right?

 

 

Bottom line is when you treat your game's tooplset like a joke as BIO has with DA's, it's gonna be treated like a joke by the fanbase. DOA. That's what DATS should be called.

[Starwars]

It's a perfectly valid comparison. BG2 modding, incredibly, is still going on. DA, a very hot title, has a strange collection of dodgy romance stuff and new ways to make your character's hair mauve.

 

DA was also released months ago, which is not gonna be time enough to get modders to create something mindblowing. It may be news to you but the toolset, alas, does not feature a "make an awesome module" button. It takes a lot of work and time to create something substantial.

 

There's a crapload of mods being released for Oblivion, doesn't speak much as to whether the game is actually good or not.

 

Again, I'm not dissing DA --- I loved all the fighting. It's just that (as Ramza points out) BG2 manages to give you the feeling of scale, of different possibilities beyond the 'click on monster' nonsense Vol describes.

 

While the classes can be fun, sure, the fact still remains that if you play a melee-centric character a lot of your time is gonna be spent simply clicking on things. I'm not gonna argue whether DA's combat is better or not (because I feel the games are close to one another, featuring a crapload of uninteresting combat but with a few good encounters) but it did move in the right direction with melee classes. If I'm playing the game on hard, I'm busying myself making use of all kinds of various abilities that my character has learned.

BG2 does win out in the "different kinds of enemies" argument easily, which does ease the tedium a bit. But, there was still a *lot* of vanilla encounters and fairly few encounters that were truly interesting.

 

And again, a refreshing change in Dragon Age is that you can actually roleplay a character and affect things in the gameworld. Hell, Dragon Age, even while being a story-heavy game, does a lot better in this department than most sandboxy games which claim choice to be a big factor in them. It'd be interesting to see how many different permutations there are in the ending.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Starwars

[Monte Carlo]

^ Please Starwars, teach someone else's grandmother to suck eggs. I'm more than aware of the challenges of modding.

 

Which proves my point --- look at the DA project list. Work out a 75% attrition rate (generous) of announced projects and find me one or two that look genuinely interesting. Great mods are usually announced. Very few for DA are. I'm sure Adam Miller et. al will come up with something eventually.

 

Cheers

MC

[RPGmasterBoo]

Monty has a perfectly valid point, so far no one's too interested in modding DA. Whether that will change or not remains to be seen.

 

Its not an expression of quality but it is an expression of community interest in the game.

Edited February 14, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Volourn]

It won't.

[Starwars]

^ Please Starwars, teach someone else's grandmother to suck eggs. I'm more than aware of the challenges of modding.

 

Which proves my point --- look at the DA project list. Work out a 75% attrition rate (generous) of announced projects and find me one or two that look genuinely interesting. Great mods are usually announced. Very few for DA are. I'm sure Adam Miller et. al will come up with something eventually.

 

Cheers

 

If you think people will use the social site to announce their stuff (or even as a main platform for modding), then that's pretty hilarious. Now, to clarify, I don't think DA will be some grand modding platform that will kill everything else. I think it will turn out to be like NWN2. Some good mods here and there, but overall fairly lukewarm. But, if you have any sense of perspective at all, then that alone is quite superior to BG2. BG2 doesn't feature a huge modding scene. It has a few dedicated modders to it.

 

Monty has a perfectly valid point, so far no one's too interested in modding DA. Whether that will change or not remains to be seen.

 

People will have no idea as to whether people are interested in modding DA until more time has passed. To compare BG2 and DA modding and give a big thumbs up to BG2 and thumbs down to DA at this point is... beyond silly.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Starwars

[RPGmasterBoo]

As distasteful as it is, I'll probably have to agree with Volourn, not because I dislike the game but because in reality few games lift off as far as serious modding is concerned. And DA is not a toolkit sold as a game as NWN was, in fact its the reverse.

[Starwars]

I share that belief, but again, comparing BG2 favourably to DA in regards to modding is kinda hilarious.

 

*hammers the point home while kicking the dead horse*