Dragon Age

[Khaldun]

Ah, yes, that's it. Fucking excellent line, great moment in gaming. Of course, I have a bad feeling that somewhere in my Codex is probably just such a pithy summary of the qunari.

[Tarami]

Hah. Sten was the only one I kind of liked. I appriciated his sparse ways and how he didn't spill every fucking detail of his life at slightest suggestion.

[Nonentity]

Too much talking, not enough loots. I've got Shale with me, just because he doesn't constantly bicker with the other toons.

I dunno, I use Shale/Leliana/Wynne, and some of the shale + one of them dialog are pretty good.

Apparently the Ogrhen + Wynne dialog is good though, since Ogrhen constantly flirts with Wynne.

[Draegan]

Where does Shale come from?  I havn't seen him yet.

[caladein]

"The Stone Prisoner" DLC

[Draegan]

Oh you mean the one I can't seem to find? :/  I'm going to attempt to download Microsoft Live or whatever again.

[Slyfeind]

Too much talking, not enough loots. I've got Shale with me, just because he doesn't constantly bicker with the other toons.

And yes, I played Icewind Dale and the BG games, those were more fun to me. This one just seems... disjointed.

I think it's because the maps are much smaller. You go through huge loading sequences and long dialogs and cut scenes, then you have maybe a room or two connected by a hallway. Take two steps, then you get more dialog. It's to the point where you're not a part of the world really, but you're just reading about it.

[Rasix]

For like the first hour of the game.   

[tmp]

I've been playing on hard, and one of the things I like about the game is that the difficulty is high enough that I don't feel guilty about using cheesy tactics to beat encounters.

The game itself seems to be pretty laid back about it. One of the loading screen tips was "Try to flank your enemies whenever possible, history won't remember how dramatic your failed frontal assault looked."

[gryeyes]

Sounds more like anytime you came across something challenging you quickly jacked the game's difficulty down, rather than try to figure out a way to beat the encounter because you were too impatient.

What an awesome "l2p" post! Yeah the guy who solo'd half the game on hard and is replaying as a warrior on nighmare was just overwhelmed by the tactics and "very careful balancing". More importantly what the fuck does my personal level of skill have to do with the difficulty being fucked? You do know the difficulty was fixed with a band aid for the very same fucking reasons I observed right? But yes im way too lazy to spend 20 minutes of abusing mechanics to defeat a completely random and unrewarding encounter.

Someone previously mentioned that there is no way to "one up" the difficulty curve, that is incorrect the DLC added items accomplish this. Wardens Keep is 5-6 insanely imbalanced items and a chest wrapped around 25 minutes of seemingly unfinished of content. The rest of the added items are likewise way way out of line with the rest of the sparse selection of gear. Stacking them is damn near tantamount to using a cheat code. The lack of "unique" weapon and armor models is puzzling as well. I believe ive seen 2-3 truly unique models that aren't recolored mundane gear.

[Slyfeind]

For like the first hour of the game.   

12 hours in and it's still like that. Maybe I got a different version!

[rattran]

Yep, just did the mage tower, and it was like that. I did like meeting a prospective party member again and

[Velorath]

Sounds more like anytime you came across something challenging you quickly jacked the game's difficulty down, rather than try to figure out a way to beat the encounter because you were too impatient.

What an awesome "l2p" post! Yeah the guy who solo'd half the game on hard and is replaying as a warrior on nighmare was just overwhelmed by the tactics and "very careful balancing".

By your own admission, you started soloing the game because you found a build that made you more or less "invincible".  It's not that you're such an awesome player.  Before that, your complaint was:

You must adjust difficulty to get passed that one random room and then everything scales back to normal. Strangely its not even the boss fights. Its a random door that triggers 20 guys in every direction that pretty much instantly nullifies any strategy.

To which I say, yeah l2p.

[Sky]

[gryeyes]

By your own admission, you started soloing the game because you found a build that made you more or less "invincible".  It's not that you're such an awesome player.  Before that, your complaint was:

By my own admission I started to solo because  playing a class as the skills dictate breaks the fucking game, I didn't "find a build" I put armor on my fucking mage like the spec says to and became immortal. Immortal or not its completely fucking irrelevant to why to the difficulty is broken. Saying "l2p" when the developer itself saw fit apply a band aid to a widely recognized problems seems a bit moronic. Course you are playing on easy with DLC items talking about difficulty is vaguely amusing.

[Velorath]

Saying "l2p" when the developer itself saw fit apply a band aid to a widely recognized problems seems a bit moronic.

The patch had nothing to do with the auto-scaling which was your complaint (just in case you don't remember what you were complaining about, which is what it seems like).  It made easy difficulty easier, and increased attack, defense and damage scores on normal.  That doesn't support your complaint that auto-scaling is broken and creates peaks and valleys in difficulty.

[gryeyes]

Well no, what i said specifically is auto-scaling has the goal of creating consistent difficulty. There is no consistent level of difficulty in the game regardless of "setting", therefore something is not working correctly. How the fuck would auto-scaling create vast disparities of difficulty inside a scaled segment?  Its there to prevent that, thats its entire purpose, to avoid level based cockblocks. And perhaps to save some time actually balancing the game. The patch addresses "easy" cockblocking shittier players with no rhyme or reason. If hard is challenging to you, at some point you will have to go down to normal to bypass a road block (or spend 15-20 minutes cheesing a shoddy system, for a random fight with no reward), easy players were just fucked and could not proceed. Cockblockery in a scaled single player RPG...to such an extent it had to be patched around.


The complete lack of documentation exacerbates the problem, how the fuck can you create anything but the most simplistic strategy if the mechanics for just about EVERYTHING are completely unknown? If most the the "spikes" involve swarms of mobs instantly set upon you from all sides? This is true whether its on easy or nightmare (nightmare isn't much different than "hard" pre-patch, just need to use more consumables, same tactics). This is true if you destroy everything with a glance or are trudging along on normal. How good of a player does one have to be to change a broken mechanic? You can use skill to overcome the broken shit, but its still fucking broken. After patching I haven't gone below "hard" to really determine the difference but it is still a band aid fix, addressing the issue being discussed. At least in BG documentation existed in game to determine exactly what was going on and how to adapt around it.

[Riggswolfe]

I just finished the game with my bugged Morrigan/Leilana dual romance character. Quite fun. I'm already replaying with my female elf rogue and quite a few things are different. I tend to get talked down to more than I did as my male human noble. About the ending of my previous game:

[Ingmar]

I've only come across one fight so far that is  difficulty-wise; it was probably exacerbated by the fact that I ended up (for more or less dumb reasons) doing the entire Circle section with 3 mages and a fairly weak rogue (combat-wise). The thing is, I didn't *have* to take that fight on; it had conversation exits to avoid it. I have had occasional "oops better reload" moments, but if we're using that sort of thing as a stick to measure with then this whole conversation is silly anyway. (It probably is even so.)

In any case, having hard fights around is ok. Even if they aren't the actual end 'bosses' of story sections. Optional  fights are right in tune with the BG2-style game philosophy (Kangaxx et al.)

[Draegan]

I got my DLC to work.

Finally.

This thread helped alot.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/81613

[Velorath]

Well no, what i said specifically is auto-scaling has the goal of creating consistent difficulty.

Does it?  As far as I can tell, it has the goal of making sure the enemies are around the same level as you and that's about it (well, it probably effects loot to an extent also).  I'm not 100% sure, but I'd imagine that the kinds and numbers of enemies you find in each "room" are predetermined.

[Montague]

In any case, having hard fights around is ok. Even if they aren't the actual end 'bosses' of story sections. Optional  fights are right in tune with the BG2-style game philosophy (Kangaxx et al.)

Hell BGI even. I remember those fucking Kobold Commandos on the Firewine Bridge and the dungeons after made me ragequit for a couple of days.

[Ingmar]

Firewine Bridge cheated with infinite respawns too, stupid place.

[gryeyes]

Does it?  As far as I can tell, it has the goal of making sure the enemies are around the same level as you and that's about it (well, it probably effects loot to an extent also).

Green?  

Hard fights isn't the issue, randomly hard fights far beyond the "par" for no reason, with no warning, with no option with no plot relevance is. Three mages is probably one of the strongest groups in the game, you can essentially CC an army of mobs on any difficulty setting indefinitely, use CoC as often as possible its horribly broken. And the room of templars is not an example of a  fight. Its entirely optional,telegraphed AND is based on a gimmick that you can easily discern and counter (at least if you have a templar). Beyond the gimmick of lots of dispel/scroll use its not even particularly difficult. Its actually a good example of how a "beyond the pale" encounter should be presented. In a rational telegraphed way whose mechanics you can observe and adapt to if you fail. Not 15 backstabbing (I think) werewolves "appearing" on top of your entire party while 5-10 "tank" werewolves appear 5 feet away.

You cant even tell WHAT they are doing to your party beyond being ripped apart in moments. I dont know what abilities they are using, their relative strength/buffs (or how those buffs "work") most of the tooltips are extraordinarily vague. Or discern much of anything beyond they eat me and do insane amounts of damage the previous 500 werewolves of the same type did not do. Adapting amounts to having more kits to spam while you wittle them away and use any available CC (or something else broken like LoS,AoE,CoC) or turning down the difficulty. They all got themselves perished on nightmare but it has absolutely nothing to do with "strategy" beyond spamming vastly overpowered spells and endless kits. The game isnt balanced or documented enough for any meaningful strategy(once you understand how to exploit broken shit to overcome the other broken shit difficulty of any sort is nullified). If you could "think around" the spikes it wouldn't be a problem, but you are given no information to do so. This is the complete anti-thesis of BG, and even you are a deity of RPG playing the problem still exists.  It just wont uppercut your crotch as badly.

[Tarami]

For fuck's sake.

Does it?  As far as I can tell, it has the goal of making sure the enemies are around the same level as you and that's about it (well, it probably effects loot to an extent also).  I'm not 100% sure, but I'd imagine that the kinds and numbers of enemies you find in each "room" are predetermined.

Yes, yes and yes. In my, albeit highly unscientific, experiments, I've seen no difference in the types, numbers or placements of mobs. And yes, loot scales - the higher level you are, the better are the drops (better materials and higher tier on potions.) The scaling only tweaks statistics, it generally doesn't change any mechanics. Mass paralyze is overpowered on all difficulty settings.

[UnSub]

If you complain about DA:O's story, BioWare might get angry about it.

[Rasix]

Does it?  As far as I can tell, it has the goal of making sure the enemies are around the same level as you and that's about it (well, it probably effects loot to an extent also).

Green?  

Hard fights isn't the issue, randomly hard fights far beyond the "par" for no reason, with no warning, with no option with no plot relevance is. Three mages is probably one of the strongest groups in the game, you can essentially CC an army of mobs on any difficulty setting indefinitely, use CoC as often as possible its horribly broken. And the room of templars is not an example of a  fight. Its entirely optional,telegraphed AND is based on a gimmick that you can easily discern and counter (at least if you have a templar). Beyond the gimmick of lots of dispel/scroll use its not even particularly difficult. Its actually a good example of how a "beyond the pale" encounter should be presented. In a rational telegraphed way whose mechanics you can observe and adapt to if you fail. Not 15 backstabbing (I think) werewolves "appearing" on top of your entire party while 5-10 "tank" werewolves appear 5 feet away.

You cant even tell WHAT they are doing to your party beyond being ripped apart in moments. I dont know what abilities they are using, their relative strength/buffs (or how those buffs "work") most of the tooltips are extraordinarily vague. Or discern much of anything beyond they eat me and do insane amounts of damage the previous 500 werewolves of the same type did not do. Adapting amounts to having more kits to spam while you wittle them away and use any available CC (or something else broken like LoS,AoE,CoC) or turning down the difficulty. They all got themselves perished on nightmare but it has absolutely nothing to do with "strategy" beyond spamming vastly overpowered spells and endless kits. The game isnt balanced or documented enough for any meaningful strategy(once you understand how to exploit broken shit to overcome the other broken shit difficulty of any sort is nullified). If you could "think around" the spikes it wouldn't be a problem, but you are given no information to do so. This is the complete anti-thesis of BG, and even you are a deity of RPG playing the problem still exists.  It just wont uppercut your crotch as badly.

I disagree with what you said.

The horse is beaten.  Move along.

[lamaros]

If you complain about DA:O's story, BioWare might get angry about it.

lol.

[Kovacs]

If you complain about DA:O's story, BioWare might get angry about it.

Lovely cop out answer by a hack.  Playing against type has a certain appeal and is still 'suit safe'.  Maybe try that once??  Or FFS deviate even one iota from the tried and true-predictable is an understatement-preprocessed-prepackaged-underwhelming-oh-you-gotta be-kidding me-seriously-again with that???, as perfected under the supervision of Lucasarts of all fucking places- plot devices.  

Seriously, for the supposedly "Dark and Mature" title from Random Corporation #Whatever you'd think that maybe just maybe.. but eh.. not so much.  Almost lost me at the cut and paste Elder Scrolls 'Main Quest Line' but the 'Tactical Combat' kept me.   That is until I realized that the tactics I was so hot about generally involved simply running to the nearest choke point and burning/icing/exploiting the fuck out of the "Random Mob of Bad Guys."  Believe it or not I'm finishing because I missed adding the ranger in my first play through and I wanna find a way to fuck Wynne.

..or not.

[Prospero]

 

[Big Gulp]

Believe it or not I'm finishing because I missed adding the ranger in my first play through and I wanna find a way to fuck Wynne.

..or not.

Hey, I just had gay butt sex with a male elf for the sole purpose of getting some stat increases for him.  Can't say I regret it, though.  Combine the cheesiness of that cutscene with the faux Enya background music and you've got comedy gold.   

[lamaros]

If you complain about DA:O's story, BioWare might get angry about it.

Lovely cop out answer by a hack.  Playing against type has a certain appeal and is still 'suit safe'.  Maybe try that once??  Or FFS deviate even one iota from the tried and true-predictable is an understatement-preprocessed-prepackaged-underwhelming-oh-you-gotta be-kidding me-seriously-again with that???, as perfected under the supervision of Lucasarts of all fucking places- plot devices.  

Seriously, for the supposedly "Dark and Mature" title from Random Corporation #Whatever you'd think that maybe just maybe.. but eh.. not so much.  Almost lost me at the cut and paste Elder Scrolls 'Main Quest Line' but the 'Tactical Combat' kept me.   That is until I realized that the tactics I was so hot about generally involved simply running to the nearest choke point and burning/icing/exploiting the fuck out of the "Random Mob of Bad Guys."  Believe it or not I'm finishing because I missed adding the ranger in my first play through and I wanna find a way to fuck Wynne.

..or not.

Psycho.

[schild]

The answer is lovely to hack the police. Safe, to appeal against a specific type still 'suit' is. Maybe try once? ? Or from the FFS, in fact, again, I am a true conservative forecast - the - - from the cold in Ohio owned or package must also have deviated little joke? ? All done under the supervision of shit Rukasuatsu plot device.

Ltd. "from a joke, this random .. #" is the title that might be presumed, I think deep .. But, if you do not. Most Erudasukuroru cut and paste 'I lose Meinkuesutorain', 'war tactic'.  Until I was in my general tactic is simply the nearest point of combustion and / icing / Bad Guys of "running the relationship between the sex abuse Randamumobu choke, I realized it hot."So, I have you I failed to add that I believe we can not find a way to fuck you want to complete the victory after the first play of the Rangers.

Whether ...

[Draegan]

Strange turn this thread took.

Fuck it's late, I'm tired, going into NYC tomorrow and I hate the bridge in the Gauntlet.

Meh.

[Tebonas]

Firstly, it's "easy" in the sense of QA, as areas can be culled if they're not ready in time for launch with minimal impact on the final product.

That quote actually frightens me. First, it shows they already have to plan for "Bring it out now" executive meddling, that or they have to account for their own sucky project management. Second, if areas can be culled that easily they can't craft a compelling story from start to finish. Or parts of the story might be missing from the final product. So they take pages out of Obsidians playbook now?