Dragon Age 2

[Majek]

Well as expected the servers are taking a massive hit now. xD

[Tale]

They're only just now coming up enough to tell me that they're down. Which is progress of a sorts.

 

Should have had a demo on Steam. And any other number of file distribution sites to help spread it out.

[Majek]

They should have made an official torrent, 5 super seeds for starters and there would be a million downloads within an hour or 2.

[WorstUsernameEver]

They're only just now coming up enough to tell me that they're down. Which is progress of a sorts.

 

Should have had a demo on Steam. And any other number of file distribution sites to help spread it out.

 

But how can they track their one million downloads otherwise?

[Tale]

They're not counting one million downloads. They're counting one million EA account sign-ins.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Tale

[Majek]

All that trouble for 2 books, money and XP. <_>

[Tale]

Watch the XP turn out to be 1/20th of level 1's progress. Totally worth it.

[Majek]

In the end you'll your game start with 15 useless items, that you won't be able to sell for much or at all. xDD

[Tale]

Chris Priestly confirmed that they did share it with other sites. And the site seems to be running fine now.

 

Not as bad as I expected.

[sorophx]

I'm willing to bet no matter how many downloads Bio gets they will claim they've reached their goal and release the items anyway. cheap PR tricks, bleh

Edited February 22, 2011 by sorophx

[213374U]

Unless it is specifically allowed by the copyright holder, making copies constitutes a copyright violation. In this case, the permission to distribute hasn't been granted, yet. I'm sure we'll see today how they want it to be distributed.

Funny. Wouldn't that apply to the magazine as well? I have yet to see the anti-piracy corps even comment on that.

 

 

Sure, this is the equivalent of jaywalking in copyright crime, but even jaywalking is illegal - and I'm sure most people understand that part.

Yeah... the problem with IP is that it's so ****ty a concept that analogies using real-world things tend to be flimsy at best. There's a very real reason why jaywalking is illegal (potential property and/or personal damage, traffic disruptions...). What's the potential harm that downloading an illegal copy of a freely-distributed demo can do? Honest question.

 

 

They should have made an official torrent, 5 super seeds for starters and there would be a million downloads within an hour or 2.

That would be an intelligent, practical and even elegant way to go about it. EA is dogmatic, unlistening and treats customers like retards. But hey, the industry is being destroyed by pirates.

[Malcador]

Torrents were made for this kind of thing. Hm, then again will probably be up on them anyway.

[entrerix]

yeah.

 

but how is the demo?

[Spider]

Unless it is specifically allowed by the copyright holder, making copies constitutes a copyright violation. In this case, the permission to distribute hasn't been granted, yet. I'm sure we'll see today how they want it to be distributed.

Funny. Wouldn't that apply to the magazine as well? I have yet to see the anti-piracy corps even comment on that.

 

You mean wouldn't it be illegal for the magazine to distribute the demo in the first place? It would if they didn't have permission, but I'm assuming they do.

 

Sure, this is the equivalent of jaywalking in copyright crime, but even jaywalking is illegal - and I'm sure most people understand that part.

Yeah... the problem with IP is that it's so ****ty a concept that analogies using real-world things tend to be flimsy at best. There's a very real reason why jaywalking is illegal (potential property and/or personal damage, traffic disruptions...). What's the potential harm that downloading an illegal copy of a freely-distributed demo can do? Honest question.

 

Lower sales for the magazine counting on it as a draw in? That's about it I suppose. Note, I am not arguing the morality in this case. I think downloading the demo is harmless enough and shouldn't be considered a problem. I was just pointing out that it is illegal in most western countries. Now, if the law is right is a whole other issue.

[MrBrown]

Watch the XP turn out to be 1/20th of level 1's progress. Totally worth it.

 

 

Oooh, just like the ring in DAO that gave you +1% XP, but only worked when you got a reward of at least 100 XP?

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, played the demo, was nice enough. Only bug for me was at the tactics screen, where clicking on stuff brought up wrong drop-down menus and whatnot. I liked that battles were a bit more fast-paced now, and especially that swinging a two-handed weapon doesn't take 5 seconds anymore. Some of the abilities seem a bit funny though. The warrior's rush or whatever is nice, but kinda stupid when an enemy is on a different elevation and you ram into the wall. Also, Shield Defense seems to limit attacks to only a basic thrusting attack, which makes long battles really stupid looking. Harder monsters in general seem to have so many hit points that it looks like you're whacking them the whole day... But this might just be my limited experience playing a Warrior.

[Nepenthe]

I started out at around 300kBps, and was hitting 500 towards the end. Steam usually gives me above 1,5m, so I was getting a real drip.

 

Demo itself was kind of meh, endless combat with a lot of good stuff, like the inventory(!) disabled. The combat itself did feel pretty good, I think they might have hit the sweet spot between the button mashing console version combat and the point-and-click pc combat. Have to reserve the judgment on that, too, though, since the handful of combat talents didn't give the full deal yet.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Does anyone care to comment on the quality of plot development later in the demo? I mean the stuff with Isabella.

[Niten_Ryu]

I finished Napoleon Total War campaign earlier today and didn't want to start new one right away... so I DLed Dragon Age 2 demo. And found out that I don't like anything about it

 

Well, Flameth model was better but overall graphics were terribly plain and outdated. I don't understand why developers chose the pinkish landscape for the tutorial level. Most features like inventory and character model options were locked in demo. Including difficulty that was locked for "normal".

 

I truely disliked the combat. I supposed to be fluid, but at the same time it's jerky and unresponsive. Mobs spawn in waves, die relatively fast but there's no strategy or tactics needed or even supported by the game mechanics. After tutorial level I had same feeling after hours of Deep Roads. Yeah, I'd skip the battles (even if it'd mean losing expo) if I could. But of course I can't... that would be too advanced. Also it's annoying how you can't zoom out.

 

In the end of the tutorial level there's forced sacrifice. You lose your sibling (if i understood correctly, depends by your selected class). From bulidning drama and writing point of view it's amazing how bad Bioware fails in this. Moments later there's another death and you feel like there's team of writers all doing their own thing. You lost a loved one and now someone else lost too, but somehow Bioware manages to ignore that fact in dialogue. Dialogue comes out wooden and forced, like there's some odd lag between the characters lines.

 

A definate bargain bin or Steam holiday sale game. If you're extremely bored.

[MrBrown]

Does anyone care to comment on the quality of plot development later in the demo? I mean the stuff with Isabella.

 

 

That part was so short, that you can't really tell much. You can also see it on the latest developer video.

[Maria Caliban]

I started out at around 300kBps, and was hitting 500 towards the end. Steam usually gives me above 1,5m, so I was getting a real drip.

Damn, filthy Europeans. I always know that it's you bragging about your obscene download speeds because you put a comma in the middle of your numbers instead of a dot like ALL GOOD, GOD-LOVING PEOPLE DO.

 

*is getting 40kbps on average*

 

Should have had a demo on Steam. And any other number of file distribution sites to help spread it out.

They have a few mirrors up now and gamershell has a torrent.

 

But yes, they should have put it on Steam.

 

Chris came in and posted, "We didn't expect to get 1,000,000 hits per second!" It's amazing how time and time again, their servers are inundated with requests and they're always surprised it happens.

 

I'm willing to bet no matter how many downloads Bio gets they will claim they've reached their goal and release the items anyway. cheap PR tricks, bleh

I don't think there was any doubt that they'd get one million sign ins.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Maria Caliban

[Nepenthe]

Does anyone care to comment on the quality of plot development later in the demo? I mean the stuff with Isabella.

Yeah, it's nonexistent. As not in there, the plot development parts are mostly skipped (in the demo).

 

In the end of the tutorial level there's forced sacrifice. You lose your sibling (if i understood correctly, depends by your selected class). From bulidning drama and writing point of view it's amazing how bad Bioware fails in this. Moments later there's another death and you feel like there's team of writers all doing their own thing. You lost a loved one and now someone else lost too, but somehow Bioware manages to ignore that fact in dialogue. Dialogue comes out wooden and forced, like there's some odd lag between the characters lines.

 

Confirmed that the demo build has an issue where there's a strange lag between different people saying their lines. The dialogue cutscenes were kind of choppy for me too, but considering what I'm on, that could just be my gear.

 

Also agree on your point about the death of the sibling being handled rather... fast, in fact the other death gets a lot more air time. The jump does take place pretty soon after, so more dialogue might take place a bit later in a... less pink environment.

 

I started out at around 300kBps, and was hitting 500 towards the end. Steam usually gives me above 1,5m, so I was getting a real drip.

Damn, filthy Europeans. I always know that it's you bragging about your obscene download speeds because you put a comma in the middle of your numbers instead of a dot like ALL GOOD, GOD-LOVING PEOPLE DO.

 

1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1

[Tale]

Lag between people saying lines is reported to be a hardware specific issue by Mr. Laidlaw. He thinks it should be fixed on the release build.

[Majek]

That was a quite boring experience. Especially the combat ... didn't like the camera angles either. Oh well, i'm getting it cheap so i won't dwell on money spent at least.

[Maria Caliban]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/47900/

 

Demo on Steam.

[Tale]

HACHI MACHI