Dragon Age

[schild]

Oh, so you can romance more than one at a time?

[Big Gulp]

Does anybody actually use Morrigan's shapeshifting?  I find her spells to be too useful to be in spider-form

Nope.  And I've found that playing as a mage, she's awesome to have in your party.  She's got ice, I've got fire, and we both have heal.  Make sure you've got a fairly tough rogue and a good tank and you're damned near unstoppable.

[schild]

I didn't until I mastered shapeshifting - the swarm is _awesome_ - I use it to destroy mages way in a back row since it moves so fast.

[Tarami]

The difficulty scaling in this game is worse than I thought. I wanted to see how much scaling there was, so I started a new character, levelled it to 25 through the console and went out to blow up darkspawn... only nothing has really changed. A "level 1" Genlock still survives my Lightning (with over 60 in Magic), it still takes Tempest the whole duration to kill a normal mob and they're still killing me with their melee attacks. Loot from vendors is still Whatever (Dragonwhatever) with extremely marginal improvements.

So, in short, the only thing that really affects your performance is found gear, and there's no way of getting gear that's significantly overlevelled (because that appears to scale aswell, it's just slightly better than your current level when found.) Ergo, nothing you can really do will affect your performance, sans concocting some kind of broken build.

I am sad.

[gryeyes]

It's a disappointment when dragon hoard holds less money than your average merchant seems to carry around with them

Or hearing vicious roars from an unseen beast for 10 minutes, enter a giant cathedral looking area with traps everywhere only to have a piddly little drake baby come rushing out and instantly die. Unless it spits out a real dragon at a higher level.

[Montague]

It's a disappointment when dragon hoard holds less money than your average merchant seems to carry around with them

Or hearing vicious roars from an unseen beast for 10 minutes, enter a giant cathedral looking area with traps everywhere only to have a piddly little drake baby come rushing out and instantly die. Unless it spits out a real dragon at a higher level.

Question about specializations: So when you unlock a specialization is it unlocked for all your characters from now on or is it just for that playthrough?

[sidereal]

Ergo, nothing you can really do will affect your performance, sans concocting some kind of broken build.

I am sad.

Always like this.  You never noticed that in WoW or LOTRO or whatever it takes as long to kill a white mob at 60th level as it does at 10th level?  The only difference is in the Bioware scaling engine there's really no 60th level mob or 10th level mob, there's just mobs over here and mobs over there and you pick the order you do them in.  They could really just get rid of levels completely, except dingratz is too much of an incentive.  So they have to pretend the ding did something profound.

[tmp]

The difficulty scaling in this game is worse than I thought. I wanted to see how much scaling there was, so I started a new character, levelled it to 25 through the console and went out to blow up darkspawn... only nothing has really changed.

Some more in-depth info on how scaling works from a dev. It sounds darkspawn and such are the sort of creatures that scale up to always be challenging unless you do something like enter area to unlock it and set the creature levels, then go out, level somewhere and come back x levels later. While rats, wolves and other critters are more likely to become roadkills as you gain power.

Think it's pretty fine this way; l.25 character still have a huge advantage over l.5 or whatever, with much broader skill set if nothing else.

[tmp]

Or hearing vicious roars from an unseen beast for 10 minutes

Based on the sounds (and storyline up to this point) i was expecting a Really Big, Bad Wolf actually


Montague: specializations are supposedly persist once unlocked.

[Tarami]

Always like this.  You never noticed that in WoW or LOTRO or whatever it takes as long to kill a white mob at 60th level as it does at 10th level?  The only difference is in the Bioware scaling engine there's really no 60th level mob or 10th level mob, there's just mobs over here and mobs over there and you pick the order you do them in.  They could really just get rid of levels completely, except dingratz is too much of an incentive.  So they have to pretend the ding did something profound.

The concept of levels is not to blame here. It has nothing to do with a level 60 mob taking as long at 60 as a 10 takes at 10.

Think it's pretty fine this way; l.25 character still have a huge advantage over l.5 or whatever, with much broader skill set if nothing else.

It's a good thing the first time through as a kind of hand-holding to make sure you don't ragequit, the second time I feel it deters greatly from the sense of achievement, mostly because you can't "one-up" the game and gain a worthwhile headstart by knowing the ins-and-outs of the game world. MMOs offer this through twinking in various forms. Perhaps there should be a "Veteran" option when starting a new game, which fixes the area levels into a linear but random progression (since it already scales this shouldn't be an issue), so a returning player can actually use his or her knowledge of static loot, mobs and similar things to his or her advantage.

[sidereal]

The concept of levels is not to blame here.

I wanted to see how much scaling there was, so I started a new character, levelled it to 25 through the console and went out to blow up darkspawn

Huh.

It sounds like you're disappointed that you can't metagame the mechanics to make the combat trivial.  I'm sure there's a cheat mode you can turn on if you find that satisfying.

The fact that traditionally RPGs are only challenging in a very narrow range of the advancement treadmill, because of the careful scaling of encounter difficulty against player abilities, and therefore have had completely railroaded plots to keep you in that range, is not something to be missed or encouraged.

Combat difficulty in Dragon Age is pretty erratic.  There's really no way to know without spoilers whether the next battle is going to be a short battle you can autopilot through or a tough challenge that involves a lot of pausing and managing resources.  But what they do promise is that you can go pretty much anywhere in the world any time you want to and the combat difficulty will be somewhere between really easy and 'I have to be very careful'.  Instead of telling you you have to go to the Forest of Whateveria right now because if you go to the Mountains of Badness instead you'll die in the first 30 seconds and if you go back to the Meadows of Weakness you'll mindlessly farm paper-thin goblins for hours.

[Morfiend]

I just wanted to add that the ambient / background sound is VERY well done in this game. During the Human Noble intro I kept thinking I was hearing people making noise outside my apartment and taking off my headphones. I didnt figure out it was the game for like 10 minutes. Great job there.

[Gorky]

Regarding unlocked specializations

[schild]

Anyone want to tell me how to unlock Arcane Warrior so I don't have to dig through other sites that could spoil stuff?

[Velorath]

Anyone want to tell me how to unlock Arcane Warrior so I don't have to dig through other sites that could spoil stuff?

Did a quick search online and got this:

When doing the Nature of the Beast questline you will eventually enter some werewolf infested ruins, in the lower part of these ruins look for a room to the right of the map, containing a broken altar and a phylactery. This small quest will unlock the Arcane Warrior. Also the Arcane Warrior manual can be found in a chest in the Circle Tower.

[schild]

I have to go back to Circle Tower?

[Riggswolfe]

Oh, so you can romance more than one at a time?

I don't think it's intended but it happened somehow. My guess is a variable got glitched in my game.

[Draegan]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=920668&topic=52119447

There's a list of all of them if you want a quick look.

[tmp]

It's a good thing the first time through as a kind of hand-holding to make sure you don't ragequit, the second time I feel it deters greatly from the sense of achievement, mostly because you can't "one-up" the game and gain a worthwhile headstart by knowing the ins-and-outs of the game world.

Well, i guess it will depend on your idea of worthwile headstart. I'd imagine just knowing the encounters you're about to face and having ready tactics to deal with them is a considerable advantage that speeds things alot. For anything beyond that, there's simply the "easy" mode which can be enabled at any moment and achieves the very thing it sounds you're seeking? Though of course one cannot then pretend it's not the game that's being trivialized, but they're just that good at playing it

edit: on scaling

[Gunzwei]

First playthrough was with an evil sword-n-board tank.  Seemed kind of weak in the early game but once I maxed out champ and shield he was pretty much unstoppable. Party was mostly me Sten, Zev, and Morg/Wynne. Lot of me pulling mobs into a doorway to get melee aoe'd to death and knockdown/stun galore for any stragglers.

Second playthrough now with a good mage. Mostly control spells so ice, kinetic, and w/e paralyze spells are under. Also gave my mage trap making which has turned out pretty fun. Nothing like watching the melee mobs zerg rush into grease, bear, and shrapnel traps just to have a mass paralyze and blizzard thrown on them .

[lamaros]

The concept of levels is not to blame here.

I wanted to see how much scaling there was, so I started a new character, levelled it to 25 through the console and went out to blow up darkspawn

Huh.

It sounds like you're disappointed that you can't metagame the mechanics to make the combat trivial.  I'm sure there's a cheat mode you can turn on if you find that satisfying.

The fact that traditionally RPGs are only challenging in a very narrow range of the advancement treadmill, because of the careful scaling of encounter difficulty against player abilities, and therefore have had completely railroaded plots to keep you in that range, is not something to be missed or encouraged.

Combat difficulty in Dragon Age is pretty erratic.  There's really no way to know without spoilers whether the next battle is going to be a short battle you can autopilot through or a tough challenge that involves a lot of pausing and managing resources.  But what they do promise is that you can go pretty much anywhere in the world any time you want to and the combat difficulty will be somewhere between really easy and 'I have to be very careful'.  Instead of telling you you have to go to the Forest of Whateveria right now because if you go to the Mountains of Badness instead you'll die in the first 30 seconds and if you go back to the Meadows of Weakness you'll mindlessly farm paper-thin goblins for hours.

Probably not the place to continue this tangent, but no, what yah talking about? Part of the fun of good RPGs is going places you're not meant to yet and managing to find a way through, then smashing down on some bits of the 'expected' path because you got crazy loot from doing it the hard way earlier. This doesn't mean things are rail-roaded, just linear in a way that makes some sort of narrative progression comprehensible.

Most fun I've had in games like BaK and BG2 (two of the better RPGs I've played) was from playing the game against the difficulty, doing hard things earlier and easier things later. Much more fun with that variation than everything staying the same.. to use your MMO comparison: Who the fuck finds it fun to have the same combat experience at level 10 as level 60? Where's the sense of character or world progression in that? Fuck.

[tmp]

Probably not the place to continue this tangent, but no, what yah talking about? Part of the fun of good RPGs is going places you're not meant to yet and managing to find a way through, then smashing down on some bits of the 'expected' path because you got crazy loot from doing it the hard way earlier. This doesn't mean things are rail-roaded, just linear in a way that makes some sort of narrative progression comprehensible.

Looks they just built this one differently then -- rather than require the player to go in specific order depending whether they want things to be harder or easier, the game auto-balances to certain level throughout no matter which route you take, and instead allows the player to finetune experience with difficulty slider exactly as they fancy it, at any given moment.

There's no really "places you're not meant to be" (though some can be still relatively harder than others) which i find refreshing. The alternative "you have to be this many levels tall to bash on these rats" approach takes away more from the experience than it adds, imo.

I suspect we just see these things differently, though. E.g. the idea of 'good fun' you bring that's visiting certain area while already equipped with stuff that's better than anything you could get out of it... to me seems more like a 'why bother' thing because such foozles no longer provide me with anything of interest. They become literally trash mobs, and trash mobs tend to be seen as nothing but annoyance put there to act as time sink, to bring back that MMO comparison.

[Ingmar]

Most fun I've had in games like BaK and BG2 (two of the better RPGs I've played) was from playing the game against the difficulty, doing hard things earlier and easier things later. Much more fun with that variation than everything staying the same.. to use your MMO comparison: Who the fuck finds it fun to have the same combat experience at level 10 as level 60? Where's the sense of character or world progression in that? Fuck.

I have news for you: BG2 scaled to your level too. Bioware has been doing this for years. Yes, there were some individual encounters that did not ("boss" type guys and optional encounters like the Twisted Rune, etc.) but just like DA, it didn't really matter what order you did the Chapter 2 adventures in, they scaled. You can test it easily with a save editor; put yourself up to some really high level and suddenly you'll start seeing iron and stone golems where you would have seen clay and flesh golems in a normal playthrough, etc. I can't figure out what BaK stands for so I can't speak to that.

It seems to me, too, that the "oh noes combat experience the same at level 10 as level 60" argument always seems to conveniently leave out the more complex interactions that typically exist in leveled systems at higher levels, as you gain new abilities/spells/combos/whatever. It is an oversimplification that I don't think serves the discussion very well.

Now can this sort of thing be overused? Absolutely, but in a story-focused RPG like Dragon Age it isn't really disruptive. It becomes much, much more annoying in an open world game like your typical Bethesda RPG, but in a game like Dragon Age you're always doing something in service of the story, you're not wandering over a hill or into a cave just to see what's there and always conveniently running into things that happen to be exactly your level. The different focus makes or breaks the practice IMO.

[Tarami]

Thanks lamaros, that's exactly what I mean.

tmp,

the thing is that in games that have more linear progressions but varied difficulty, you often don't have to do all that easy stuff. Going to X and getting Y early is a shortcut through the story, because it gating is largely controlled by the power level of your characters. Characters played really well or geared really well can leap through the story and skip a lot of bits you may not care for. In Dragon Age you have to play the entire game, from start to finish, completing all main quests, because it's story gated rather than difficulty gated. You can't kick down Loghain's door and rip his head off just because you've played it a bazillion times before. That, to me, is a disadvantage for DA.

I'm not strictly against scaling. Certainly not out of principle or something. In fact, in a game like Dragon Age I don't think it hurts at all to have it the first playthrough, because it makes for a smooth experience when you're really just playing an interactive story. Problem is, it's completely disenchanting that there's nothing I can do during my second or later playthrough to really improve my performance or shake things up. In a game that's more than 50% combat, that kind of hurts replayability. In my eyes, a whole lot.

Edit:
BaK is Betrayal at Krondor.

[gryeyes]

Difficulty varies so significantly and seemingly without purpose. The mechanics that dictate difficulty or pretty much anything else one needs to form real strategy is missing. You have unreadable mobs with shit documentation and completely random difficulty with non-intuitive auto scaling (LoS sucking doesn't help either). Creating the situation that regardless of difficulty setting the game will rat fuck you out of the blue. Why you are being rat fucked after you just slaughtered hundreds of the same mobs in the previous room will be a mystery. Unless the intention is to create an experience where the player feels the need to constantly mess with a slider to balance out the inconsistencies this seems like some fail. And shit players already on easy are screwed.

Which is why I assume they felt compelled to adjust difficulty across the board to compensate. The peaks and valleys are just too extreme, it also completely fucks the "mood". When the guys before the boss are many times more difficult than the end confrontation itself something isn't working right. When this happens a few dozen times the encounters themselves become pretty meh. Having certain areas completely out of your current league giving you a goal and some sense of your place in the world, is far superior to having random rooms being out of your league for no discernible reason, either mechanically or storywise. Auto-scaling is only a small part of the problem. Being unable to level beyond a cockpunching random gang bang isn't so neat of a feature when they abound on any level of difficulty.

[Ingmar]

Going to X and getting Y early is a shortcut through the story, because it gating is largely controlled by the power level of your characters.

I would argue that any story that can be shortcut in such a way barely deserves the name 'story'. In a game like Dragon Age the practical consequence of killing Loghain on your own without building any kind of coalition would be 'game over' as the entire power structure of the city lands on you like a hammer. Certainly that's the likely consequence in a well-constructed PnP game; we're not yet to the point where the game software can make that call like a live GM could, so you get story gating instead. It works and works well I think (obviously  ).

EDIT: Ahhh of course, Betrayal at Krondor. I managed to miss that one at the time (I was in college and poor, in the days when not everyone had their own computer... alas).

[Tarami]

Really, we're just back at the "amusement ride vs. sandbox" argument. A few years ago I didn't know I was in truth so big on sandbox gameplay. Damn you f13 and damn you modern gaming trends.

Ingmar,

admittedly most games I've played didn't offer some kind of reasonable consequence, but it wasn't really needed as you had already played it and you knew what to do and why things happened. It's kinda central to the argument that these skips could only realistically be done if you had rather extensive prior knowledge of the game, you didn't easily stumble into the final encounter because you had found a magic sword early. The spell of story integrity is largely broken the second time you play it anyway.

[tmp]

Having certain areas completely out of your current league giving you a goal and some sense of your place in the world, is far superior to having random rooms being out of your league for no discernible reason, either mechanically or storywise. Auto-scaling is only a small part of the problem. Being unable to level beyond a cockpunching random gang bang isn't so neat of a feature when they abound on any level of difficulty.

Would say if 'random rooms are out of your league for no discernible reason' then that's a failure of either mechanics or writing, depending which is exactly responsible. And if being able to level up on a side is supposed to be fix for that then i don't see how it's any more preferable than the difficulty slider -- levelling gives the same effect, but takes longer and unlike the slider is not possible to undo if you use it to get past that random gang bang only to find out the pimp boss that comes after is indeed a pushover with all these extra levels you acquired (or even without them)

Or maybe i'm reading it wrong and you're saying that having few separate but coherent areas with different level/difficulty requirements is better than having the said level/difficulty broken every now and then for no apparent reason. But that's pretty much a "duh" because it boils down to "a game that's not broken is better than broken one"..?

[Nerf]

I don't get the hate for the circle tower, I think it was quicker to beat than any of the other realms, and at no point was it "fuck, this is hard".  I think I died once, because I wanted to see if burning man was *really* necessary to get past some of the firewalls. (protip: it is)


The summoning sidequest in the library is fun, and theres a fourth summon that you can do after you finish the quest.

[schild]

Is the fourth summon the one that's in the first room or is it back in the library?

[gryeyes]

And if being able to level up on a side is supposed to be fix for that then i don't see how it's any more preferable than the difficulty slider -- levelling gives the same effect, but takes longer and unlike the slider is not possible to undo if you use it to get past that random gang bang only to find out the pimp boss that comes after is indeed a pushover with all these extra levels you acquired (or even without them)

Or maybe i'm reading it wrong and you're saying that having few separate but coherent areas with different level/difficulty requirements is better than having the said level/difficulty broken every now and then for no apparent reason. But that's pretty much a "duh" because it boils down to "a game that's not broken is better than broken one"..?

In one system the "reasons" of why and solutions to being curbed stomped are discernible and attainable by playing. If an enemy is obviously  beyond your ability, return once stronger. It makes sense, you know why you are unable to continue (Im not strong enough for this area), you leave, problem solved. In DA what makes certain areas out of whack with the rest of a given area is unknown. Is the auto-scaling fucking me because my group composition is weak for that level range? Am I able to leave and return without fucking some of my choices (several areas do this)? Is the difficulty on this encounter static and im "supposed" to be unable to complete it now? Or is it juts another example of shit randomly being 100 times more difficult than the room before it with no rhyme or reason and I need to "cheat" for a single room.

Its a matter of opinion if you consider a game with auto-scaling having a completely fucked consistency of difficulty as "broken". But the two things seem to heavily imply something is not working right. Whats the point of auto scaling if the difficulty by and large is something divorced from that system (Assuming each "level" scales upon entry and not as you play through it). I must have alternated from easy-hard a dozen times while playing the game. During the later part of the game largely due to being solo and knowing my victory entailed 15 minutes of my invincible mage whacking stuff.

[Velorath]

In DA what makes certain areas out of whack with the rest of a given area is unknown. Is the auto-scaling fucking me because my group composition is weak for that level range? Am I able to leave and return without fucking some of my choices (several areas do this)? Is the difficulty on this encounter static and im "supposed" to be unable to complete it now? Or is it juts another example of shit randomly being 100 times more difficult than the room before it with no rhyme or reason and I need to "cheat" for a single room.

I think I'm currently around the halfway point of the game, and I have yet to come across an encounter that I just have been completely unable to beat.  I'm not sure what your issue is, or what areas you're having problems with, but it might just be something as simple as you needing to change up your strategy a little.

[Nerf]

Is the fourth summon the one that's in the first room or is it back in the library?

First room? If you mean the entrance to the basement, thats an entirely different quest.  The fourth summon is through the library and then to the left, if you activate the summoning pedestal again after the third summon is complete and hit L2/tab, you'll see it through the wall - facing the pedestal it's almost exactly behind you, with a wall in between

On the difficulty scaling, the one thing I would have liked to see is XP/money/loot being better on the harder difficulty levels.  If I'm playing on hard, I want some kind of reward beyond "oh yeah, I'm money".

[Strazos]

You can sort items by newest.

Also, you may have been full on inventory.

[Tmon]

I think I'm currently around the halfway point of the game, and I have yet to come across an encounter that I just have been completely unable to beat.  I'm not sure what your issue is, or what areas you're having problems with, but it might just be something as simple as you needing to change up your strategy a little.

I'm probably close to half way and other than doing the first ogre on easy, I haven't run into an encounter I just can't beat although some of them have taken a few runs to get right.  I suspect that has to do with me not making Morrigan learn any healing spells so all healing is done via potions.  The party also doesn't have anyone who can pick locks.  I'll probably do my next run through with a Rogue just to see what's in all those chests I've been missing.