Dragon Age

[Nerf]

Finished it tonight with my female elf rogue, really disappointed I couldn't bang morrigan, and I never picked up the other rogue.
For everyone saying that mage is the way to go, rogues are awful, etc - just give it time.  My rogue at level 21 was an unstoppable killing machine, I hit just as hard or harder than oghren/sten with nothing but strength pumped into both of them, even with oghren low on health and full berserker/reaver spec, but I hit about 10x faster.  The various 'grunts' on the final level all died in one hit, two at the most, and that was without poisons.  Dual daggers (fang and the 154g one from dwarf town), 2x +10damg to darkspawn runes and a GM paralyze in the main hand, master paralyze and 2x GM frost runes in the offhand.  Ogres and Ogre Alphas dropped in about 6 seconds (3-4 rounds) when I stacked all my poisons, and my defense was so high I evaded 90% of attacks anyways.  Curious to see if duelist would have given me damn near perfect evasion, or if the bard bonus' really do outclass em.  With morrigan casting mass paralyze and the talent that turns every hit into a crit when paralyzed on top of the paralyzing daggers, shit just got leveled.  Having a decent and varied stack of poisons for the bosses is a must though.  All poisons stack with eachother, as do the various levels of them from what I saw.  You could load up 10+ poisons and really lay down the pain if you so desired.

Something awesome about the ending - spoilering for the anal, but its not spoilerish at all, just something really great that I wish more games would put in:

[squirrel]

Yeah I've read elsewhere that rogues are easily the hardest single target DPS class in the game, it just takes a while. I'm still finishing with my mage, but I'm glad to hear this again as I will be playing through a second time at least.

[Morfiend]

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.

Your avatar makes that sentence so much more fantastic.

[Nerf]

I didn't really start feeling until maybe 14 or 15, and I'm still not sure I was doing it right re: dual wielding daggers.  The whole str/dex/cunning thing still confuses me.  One thing that I'll definitely do if I play another rogue though: stealing!

You can steal shit from just about everyone, and theres no negatives if you fail.  I got a nice necklace from the shaper in dwarf town, and you get a fair amount of coin as well.  Unfortunately, my stealing skill was on zev, and he was almost entirely dex with a low cunning, so I couldn't see if you could steal awesome stuff from the important characters like harrowmont.

I never found the 12th fucking love letter either, it bothers me. Or the last 2-3 backpacks, my inventory capped at 110, meh.

Tons of gold to be had if your lockpick+cunning skill is high enough too, one of the areas in Denerim had a locked door to a treasure vault just stuck in the middle of it, grabbed 20-40 gold out of there alone.

[Slyfeind]

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?

I'd be more frightened if they didn't design areas to be cut easily. 

[Lum]

You're broken. Alistair and Morrigan interactions are priceless as are Morrigan/Leilana.  I often find myself stopping and listening to the entire conversations.  The one where Leilana wants to make over Morrigan was hilarious.   Oghren's are pretty good so far as well.

Oghren REALLY likes Wynne. Wynne REALLY likes ale. This is going places!

Plus, Oghren's story is just too awesome.

[Ironwood]

Dunno, but it happens IRL more often than you'd think.

 

[Elerion]

It sounds like you got so used to exploiting certain abilities that you got all  when the game gave you a different kind of encounter. I haven't had a single encounter fuck me like that, probably because I have ways to deal with crowds, ways to deal with big baddies, ways to deal with casters, and ways to deal with melee. I don't decimate any of them, but I can deal with them all.

Stop crying.

[Tannhauser]

I'm really enjoying fiddling with the tactics for each character.  Last night I was playing Alistair and chuckling as my three comrades unloaded on the saps.  Now I know why people play tanks in MMO's.  It's damn nice to just swing your sword and let others keep you healed. 

As far as tactics, let's just say as soon as a mage shows up shit is coming AT him!

[GenVec]

The various 'grunts' on the final level all died in one hit, two at the most, and that was without poisons.

For reference, all the grunts in the last level have less than 20 hit points - a strong wind will finish them off. Or a single shot from a mage's staff. I suppose they did it to make you feel more epic by defeating wave after wave of enemy, but it just felt sort of cheap to me.

[stray]

Elves are a lithe pointy-eared people who excel at poverty.

The game was worth buying just to hear that line.

The Dalish come off as pretty cool though... 



I'm just too much into treehugger shit to not play elves, sorry. 

[Draegan]

The various 'grunts' on the final level all died in one hit, two at the most, and that was without poisons.

For reference, all the grunts in the last level have less than 20 hit points - a strong wind will finish them off. Or a single shot from a mage's staff. I suppose they did it to make you feel more epic by defeating wave after wave of enemy, but it just felt sort of cheap to me.

Don't be a douche and ruin his fun.

[Gorky]

Is there a negative to unlocking and looting chests near NPCs? Playing a mage atm and with no lockpickers in the party, but planning a rogue next.

[Sky]

Well, I lost about three hours the first night of Borderlands, but I don't even know how long I played DA last night. Played off and on from about 7pm and went to bed at 3am. So...yeah. Fucking awesome game. You can quibble over shit all day, but this is a great example of making a game.

Music, great quality, might be my favorite since HoMaM3. Has that great operatic vibe in the menus. The 2d intro parts gave me a Thief vibe. Then it's got strong BG feel in the UI and gameplay. Mass Effect conversation feel. The first Wilds where you do the Grey Warden test was very Witchery. All while incorporating some mmo UI elements to improve the old school rpg style.

Wow.

My only gripe is the dags. My cat don' like em.

[gryeyes]

Insert Quote
Is there a negative to unlocking and looting chests near NPCs?

Sometimes but usually not, elf area will have repercussion for doing it. No way to tell if it will have an impact without getting caught also. But I cant recall it mattering anywhere else. How can someone do the last level and not notice every mob with the name "Grunt" dies from a single hit of anything haha.

[Slyfeind]

Yeah looting people's homes feels weird. It's that way in every Bioware game I've played, there's just little containers everywhere, and you can take stuff from people's homes, and nobody really seems to care.

Well, most of the time anyway....

[Tmon]

"I'm trying to picture his little elf head squishing.  ...Ah there we go."  Has become my new favorite line in the game.

[Khaldun]

I dunno, I'm still waiting for the game where NPCs look at you with horror and disgust because you've been seen rifling through corpses of allies and friends. It makes sense in certain genres, (post-apocalypse, survival horror, dark fantasy, or just any situation where your characters are desperate and cut-off from some kind of home base) but imagine what LoTR would look like if the Fellowship was stopping every fourth second so they could rifle through orc corpses for a few gold pieces: in conventional high fantasy or adventure, heroes that loot corpses and dig up graves are pretty scarce.

[Nerf]

The various 'grunts' on the final level all died in one hit, two at the most, and that was without poisons.

For reference, all the grunts in the last level have less than 20 hit points - a strong wind will finish them off. Or a single shot from a mage's staff. I suppose they did it to make you feel more epic by defeating wave after wave of enemy, but it just felt sort of cheap to me.

Don't be a douche and ruin his fun.

Eh I dropped the ogre alpha in a stun+3-4 attacks, the grunts dying in a hit weren't what was causing the fun.  The high dragon in the ashes temple lasted about 20 seconds, if that.  Rogues are fucking tough at high levels.

The only thing that I disliked was really: (warning, final fight spoiler)

[Lantyssa]

Hey, I just had gay butt sex...

That's almost sig worthy when taken out of context.

[Sheepherder]

I dunno, I'm still waiting for the game where NPCs look at you with horror and disgust because you've been seen rifling through corpses of allies and friends. It makes sense in certain genres, (post-apocalypse, survival horror, dark fantasy, or just any situation where your characters are desperate and cut-off from some kind of home base) but imagine what LoTR would look like if the Fellowship was stopping every fourth second so they could rifle through orc corpses for a few gold pieces: in conventional high fantasy or adventure, heroes that loot corpses and dig up graves are pretty scarce.

I was thinking about modding this into Oblivion or Morrowind a while back.  However, it would be problematic to make it work universally, and integrate into mods well without breaking them.  Even worse, nothing in the game actually gives any gold except for vendored salvage, you would be one poor fucker.

[Threash]

Can you unlock specializations through the console? im not a multiple play throughs kinda guy.

[Lucas]

Mods are slowly starting to appear. I'm really not proficient enough to dabble with the toolset, but I often read that it's a total pain in the ass in its current state.

Anyways:

Camp Storage Chest (made by a Bioware employee):

http://social.bioware.com/project/463/

Character Respecialization:

http://social.bioware.com/project/469/

Better Textures: There is still no page in the Project section as I write this post, but keep an eye on this thread:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/8/index/154424

Since people are still heavily experimenting and like I said, toolset is a bit tricky to use, be sure to backup your saves and stuff before trying any of this stuff :P

[gryeyes]

How about a way to skip the Circle fade sequence while receiving the stats? Great the first time through not so much the second.

[Arrrgh]

imagine what LoTR would look like if the Fellowship was stopping every fourth second so they could rifle through orc corpses for a few gold pieces: in conventional high fantasy or adventure, heroes that loot corpses and dig up graves are pretty scarce.

They just don't mention such things. It's not like they note every time someone takes a dump either.

[Rasix]

How about a way to skip the Circle fade sequence while receiving the stats? Great the first time through not so much the second.

Yah, weakest part of the game so far by a long, long shot.  Gimmicks and dream sequences are fine, but that was really stretching it out. Otherwise, the Circle tower wasn't bad; just a bit easy (war, rogue, rogue, hag). 

[Riggswolfe]

The only thing that I disliked was really: (warning, final fight spoiler)

[gryeyes]

Second time through is killing me, first time wasn't bad I didn't mind the tower at all since you get so much good shit doing it (including tons of lore). The fade part itself was overly long but I wasn't miserable doing it. But doing it a second time and having no means to speed it up is about to make surrender. I also accidentally killed wynn and the previous save was WAY before that point. war,war,rogue,hag is going through it like butter (havent come remotely close to having to kickdown to hard).

Worthless rogue who cant even open fucking boxes.

[Velorath]

I think I'd have the biggest problem going through the deep roads a second time.  All the sections of the game are really long though.  I'll be taking a break between playthroughs at least with l4d2 and God of War collection.

[Gorky]

There's a major problem with the current version of the respec mod mentioned earlier, it will reset all your stats to 1, but it cuts off the stats made available at 100. So if the total of your stats is greater than 100 is will be the case with most chars at mid to high levels, you lose the extra stats.

[Elerion]

That page says:
"- The attribute counter seems to be capped at 100, but the attributes are counted properly. This is most probably a GUI bug not a problem with the mod itself. After spending some points, if you reopen the level up screen you can spend the rest of the attribute points."

Anyway, I need a mod like that that also allows me to change their class. It may mess up some interactions, but it would be handy for subsequent playthroughs. The game has too many melees and too few mages.

[Lucas]

Surprise surprise (:P), Dragon Age tabletop :

http://greenronin.com/dragon_age/

[amiable]

To be honest I'm not as enamored of this game as aI thought I would be  (althouhg both me and my wife have been playing it constantly).

My issues:

1.  level of difficulty is more dependent on your spec/party than the actual difficulty level.  Case in point:  my mage nightmare party with my main focused on crowd control/healing has pretty much breezed through the game so far whereas my wife is struggling with her rogue on normal difficulty.  I have actually played her character theough the exact same encounters and had a much more difficult time because none of her mages had proper crowd control abilities.  Why didn't she choose proper crown control abilities? well..

2.  The documentation for this game is maddeningly scarce.  What do the attributes do?  What is armor penetration?  How long do spells last?  What spells don't work or certain types of mobs?  What the heck do those bars over the different talent panels mean?  I lucked out by going up the glyph line right away which effectively made my mage immune to melee, gave me astounding crowd control, and let me completely shut down mages.  That was entirely luck, I could have easily chosen the "heroic" buff line which is pretty terrible.  the best example I can think of is the warrior shield line, which has 3 different shield modes but doesn't tell you in any meangful way how these modes differ in use.  The fact that they don't let offer a respec option is even more clownshoes.  (Can anyone tell me how to load the respec mod onto my steam version of the game?  I will love you forever....) 

3. Balance sucks.  You should have to do a cost benefit analysis when raising attributes, but certain classes (notably mages) only have to dump all their points into a single stat (magic) to become godly, where rogues/warriors are stuck with MAD syndrome.  Of course they don't really tell you what all the numbers on your character sheet really mean (Oh strength gives me 1.0 attack.  Huh, what heck does attack do?  What does spellpower do?)  Some level 1 or 2 spells are astoundingly powerful (hello heal and force field) while some level 4 spells are utterly useless (hi there mass rejuvenation).

4.  Crowd control is everything and it resides in a single class.  Warrior/rogue cc is nowhere near as effective.

5.  Skills are entirely useless except for rank 1 of herbalism, the coercion tree and the battle tree  (poison and traps would be a lot better if it was feasible to get mats for these skills at a reasonable cost).  Why even have a separate skill system?

5.  Ranged DPS works far far better than melee DPS, especially on bosses (all of whom seem to have a "I damage everyone next to me" ability). 

Story is great though and I really love the setting.  I would like to see what the modding community does to even out the gameplay.

[Tebonas]

The gist of this thread seems to be people have forgotten how to play group-based CRPGs.

Have we really become that dumb from playing easier and easier games all the time?

[Zetor]

Eh, mages (or more precisely, several mage spells) are overpowered no matter how you slice it. I really can't imagine going through the game without at least one mage.. I'm playing on Hard, and having Morrigan + my own mage in the party makes most encounters a breeze with sheer crowd control for most mobs and healing / buffs for bosses (I don't even use damage spells really, except for cone of cold and occasionally nuking through easy encounters). I started a second game on normal difficulty (with a dagger rogue), and I actually had to use potions and stuff in the tower during the ostagar tutorial along with plenty of LOS abuse to avoid getting wtfpwned by archers.

http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/ is a decent "behind the scenes" manual / documentation site, but it's far from complete.