Future of the Dragon Age franchise

[meomao]

 

Wasn't (just) the bio boards. In fact, along with the complaints directed at ME2's experience model it was one of those things that showed me that most "crpg fans" don't know **** about RPGs in general and believe that any departure from a list of tired clich

[Drowsy Emperor]

DAO's item system never gave me the feeling of the unique loot of BGII. The sketches combined with descriptions and unique pictures for each item made them feel really special.

[lobotomy42]

The experience of Dragon Age 2 for me was this:

 

I would walk into an area, and accept a few quests. Then I would exit to the "world map" and see a whole host of locations, each with indications of quest names underneath them. So I would pick one and walk around and suddenly people would start talking to me. Sometimes these were new quests, sometimes these were continuations of old quests, but most of the time I couldn't even tell. Every quest was so samey, in both dialogue and what you had to do ("Go to this location and kill some dudes") that I quickly lost track of what I was supposed to be doing and where. I didn't even feel like I had any control over what was happening or where I was going -- the experience was that of being shuttled around from location to location so that the game could show me its AWESOME BADASS cutscenes. All that business with "walking" and "combat" and "figuring out what to do next" streamlined away for my convenience! About halfway through, I simply realized I that had stopped following the plot and, more the point, didn't even care enough to try to pick it back up again.

 

And the side characters were....interesting? They were original, I'll give them that, but they were not particularly *fun* to be around. The worst felt like blatant fan-service (boob pirate, angry elf that likes TO KILL, under-aged elf who goes *squee*) and the rest just felt like...boring people. I accept that the Origins NPCs were clich

[Monte Carlo]

Custom skins and items are a massive part of PC games - look at the amount of mods and paid-for DLC that provides it from RTS games to RPGs.

 

Games are obviously very visual - being able to customise how different / cool / whatever that part of it is unsurpisingly going to be important to a lot of players. That's a part of it, add to it a meaningful gameplay mechanic (i.e. different stuff does different things) then it's a win-win. I'm actually amazed that this even comes up as an issue - it's a given to me.

 

Bio wants to railroad you in every way, remember the writer who wanted the player to be able to skip combat so you could enjoy her next beautifully scripted cut-scene? The control freakery they display is funny really. And another reason why I haven't bought anything they've done since DA:O (and before that NWN).

[entrerix]

the experience was that of being shuttled around from location to location so that the game could show me its AWESOME BADASS cutscenes. All that business with "walking" and "combat" and "figuring out what to do next" streamlined away for my convenience!

 

this sums up the experience of DA2 pretty well, except the combat part (for me) was pretty fun, the first few times, before i realized that almost every fight would play out the exact same way.

[Zoraptor]

Wasn't (just) the bio boards. In fact, along with the complaints directed at ME2's experience model it was one of those things that showed me that most "crpg fans" don't know **** about RPGs in general and believe that any departure from a list of tired clich

[GhostofAnakin]

Bio wants to railroad you in every way, remember the writer who wanted the player to be able to skip combat so you could enjoy her next beautifully scripted cut-scene? The control freakery they display is funny really. And another reason why I haven't bought anything they've done since DA:O (and before that NWN).

 

That was one of those "Wtf? Is she in the right business?" moments for me when I first read what she'd said.

[Oerwinde]

Bio wants to railroad you in every way, remember the writer who wanted the player to be able to skip combat so you could enjoy her next beautifully scripted cut-scene? The control freakery they display is funny really. And another reason why I haven't bought anything they've done since DA:O (and before that NWN).

 

That was one of those "Wtf? Is she in the right business?" moments for me when I first read what she'd said.

 

I generally either cheat or play on easy because I find combat to be the least enjoyable part of any of the RPGs I play and try to get through it as fast as possible to get on with the story.

[greylord]

Bio wants to railroad you in every way, remember the writer who wanted the player to be able to skip combat so you could enjoy her next beautifully scripted cut-scene? The control freakery they display is funny really. And another reason why I haven't bought anything they've done since DA:O (and before that NWN).

 

That was one of those "Wtf? Is she in the right business?" moments for me when I first read what she'd said.

 

I generally either cheat or play on easy because I find combat to be the least enjoyable part of any of the RPGs I play and try to get through it as fast as possible to get on with the story.

 

Thanks for the honesty.

[entrerix]

lots of rpg's have bad combat systems. but if you don't want to play the game, read a book, i promise the story will be better (insert twilight joke here)

[GhostofAnakin]

 

I generally either cheat or play on easy because I find combat to be the least enjoyable part of any of the RPGs I play and try to get through it as fast as possible to get on with the story.

 

Pardon if this sounds retarded but ... what's the point in playing a video game if you don't like playing the combat portions? Wouldn't the video game become nothing more than like watching a movie?

 

While combat is one of my least favorite aspects of RPGs, I still enjoy it. It gives me the satisfaction of seeing how powerful my character is that I've spent all this time leveling up, and allows me to take part in the "conflict" in the game. Bad guy loses because I beat the snot out of him. It's the sense of achievement portion of my game.

[Serrano]

I generally either cheat or play on easy because I find combat to be the least enjoyable part of any of the RPGs I play and try to get through it as fast as possible to get on with the story.

 

Pardon if this sounds retarded but ... what's the point in playing a video game if you don't like playing the combat portions? Wouldn't the video game become nothing more than like watching a movie?

 

While combat is one of my least favorite aspects of RPGs, I still enjoy it. It gives me the satisfaction of seeing how powerful my character is that I've spent all this time leveling up, and allows me to take part in the "conflict" in the game. Bad guy loses because I beat the snot out of him. It's the sense of achievement portion of my game.

 

I think you might be getting hung up on a label. Even if it ceases to be a "game" at that point a lot of people really like the interactive stories and judging from Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain's success it seems like there might be enough people to support such a product financially. It's really just a progression of choose your own adventure books.

[meomao]

I think you might be getting hung up on a label. Even if it ceases to be a "game" at that point a lot of people really like the interactive stories and judging from Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain's success it seems like there might be enough people to support such a product financially. It's really just a progression of choose your own adventure books.

 

You must have never played Lone Wolf. Most famous "choose your own adventure" book and it has combat encounters, levels, items, skills, HP and all that jazz too . We all cheated the encounters but that's beside the point .

 

Btw, I believe that there would be a good market for an adventure/rpg hybrid game with dialogue options and branching storylines and where combat is a failure state like Amnesia The Dark Descent. It would just not be the right game for DA since a classical fantasy setting would be terrible for such gameplay. Traditional high fantasy/sword and sorcery needs lot of combat and an epic storyline to work out.

Edited April 13, 2012 by meomao

[Nepenthe]

Bah, you're still controlling the story (well, as much as they give you the option to) if you do combat on easy, so the differences between gaming and movies are important. For example, I've beat the first two Mass Effects on Insanity, but didn't particularly consider it to be an enjoyable experience. Generally play them on normal/the one right above it, where I generally waltz through the game without dying as long as I follow some basic tactics. Never have found uber-challenging combat where I have to micro incessantly enjoyable at all.

Wasn't (just) the bio boards. In fact, along with the complaints directed at ME2's experience model it was one of those things that showed me that most "crpg fans" don't know **** about RPGs in general and believe that any departure from a list of tired clich

Edited April 13, 2012 by Nepenthe

[WorstUsernameEver]

That complaint was kinda weird. I honestly found the finished mission slide really weird, but not bothersome.. they just didn't seem to fit, that's all. I guess it goes to show how people are attached to vestigial/cosmetic elements.

[Gorth]

lots of rpg's have bad combat systems. but if you don't want to play the game, read a book, i promise the story will be better (insert twilight joke here)

Well, combat was what turned me off in the DA2 demo and since I already disliked the setting from DA:O, I was a lost cause. It's possible that there was an interesting story in there, but the packaging obscured it.

[Nepenthe]

Oh yeah, let's not forget the third-most common complaint on DA2.

 

"It wasn't epic enough."

 

[Gorth]

Oh yeah, let's not forget the third-most common complaint on DA2.

 

"It wasn't epic enough."

 

 

 

There are days where I actually feel sorry for Bioware.

[Humanoid]

I support "story mode" 100% - provided the non-combat bits of the game are strong enough to support that style of gameplay. The issue then with that original developer suggestion was because in the context of Mass Effect, it would lead to long stretches of non-interactive or minimally interactive cutscenes. And this is the image I think people are getting in the various criticisms in the last dozen or so posts with regards to that proposal. I maintain it would be a tremendous boon provided the game was developed from the ground up with that idea in mind, it just requires a broadening of scope in what people believe an RPG to be.

 

And for context, my favourite CRPG of all time is still Ultima 7. How did I play the combat? I hit the 'C' button, all my companions would run off and squish any nearby hostiles, and I'd collect the loot. And I had a blast playing like that. On the flipside, I don't enjoy dungeon crawlers at all, hence my disillusionment at Skyrim and complete non-interest in the recent talk about Grimrock. "Legends" like Eye of the Beholder do absolutely nothing for me.

 

 

My dream remains a CRPG set in a generally non-hostile world where non-combat solutions are the norm, and the combat is generally considered the side-option.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Humanoid

[meomao]

Oh yeah, let's not forget the third-most common complaint on DA2.

 

"It wasn't epic enough."

 

 

I understand your point.

 

But... we should admit that a D&Dish setting is not the best place to set-up a personal tragedy tied with political insights on the nature of control. It just causes a sense of... disconnect between what you see in the gameplay and what you experience in the story.

 

You cannot give me pirate ninjas kicking flasks during combat and then mature reflections on the nature of religion tolerance in the following dialogue and expect me to take it seriously.

 

I appreciated the effort of the writers in DA2 to offer us something new from tried cliches (even if failing completely to give us something interactive): I simply think that high fantasy is a very silly dress for the story they wanted to told in DA2 and that sword and sorcery does not mix well with personal tales.

 

High fantasy works best with epic stories. The main protagonist of every good fantasy story is the setting. The better bet is to mix the personal with the epic just like BG or MoTB did imho.

Edited April 13, 2012 by meomao

[Gorgon]

There was something besides tired cliches ?. Must have missed it.

[Nepenthe]

For the record, the different type of story was probably THE principal reason why I liked the game and felt it fit the setting very well. Now we're going to be seeing Blight-type scenarios in the world from now on due to that bs - hell, the even the canceled DA2 expansion was called "exalted march"...

[Aedelric]

I would agree with the `not epic enough

[meomao]

There was something besides tired cliches ?. Must have missed it.

 

I'm talking about Bioware's tried cliches about the "chosen one". And yes, there were many elements in the story that felt fresh from standard fantasy games, especially during act. 2 (I'm thinking about the whole story of the Mage Qunari and the confrontation with the Arishok).

Edited April 13, 2012 by meomao

[WorstUsernameEver]

Rags to riches stories with political intrigue can be pretty grand and DAII, at least in theory, had some pretty hefty weight to its conclusion from what I remember. They botched the execution completely thought, and of course, in the mix of people asking for a more classic story and people simply criticizing the story for the fact that it's bad, BioWare is just probably gonna back out on trying and go back to 'reapers/blight/etc.'

 

Pretty weird, considering they actually managed to do a story that both fit the setting, offered a very personal hook and was grand in scale with the Baldur's Gate franchise (not that it didn't have its problems story-wise, but compared to ME and Dragon Age...). I honestly wonder what the hell happened?