Dragon Age

[jakonovski]

It is good that mages are overpowered. It makes the setting credible, as who would bother forming entire knightly orders to chase wizards glowing staff knobs and maybe a parlor trick.

[Tebonas]

Granted, I just play my first playthrough on normal, but Wynne is my only mage and she is reduced to healing. Classic tank, DD, healer setup.

I'll try the nuking goodness for when I play a mage myself I wager.

[amiable]

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?

Bull#$%.  The problem is this game hides too much of the mechanics, and as a result it is impossible to make informed decisions about how to develop your character.  I've played tabletop RPG's since red box basic D&D and computer RPG's since Wizardry 1 and I can tell you that the one common characteristics of all (good) CPRG's is that they let you know, through good documentation, what the results of certain decisions involving character development are.  Hell, that's like half the fun of the game (at least for me)!  This game is just terribad at doing that.

If you pick the right spell combinations/group setup, the game is trivially easy (as my current nightmare run through attests).

[jakonovski]

 it is impossible to make informed decisions about hos to develop your character

Oh man, I thought the brothels were there just for show.

[amiable]

 it is impossible to make informed decisions about hos to develop your character

Oh man, I thought the brothels were there just for show.

Heh, I thought I got the edit in before anyone responded, of course knowing this board  .

Edit: by the time stamp I was 12 seconds too slow!

[Tebonas]

You are not correct, jakonovski.

The Wizardry 1 manual you quoted told you what attributes you needed for what class. And how much damage the spells did. Thats all the hard data you got.

There indeed is once section where they tell you how high which stats have to be to become a certain class. But so does Dragon Age tell you what attribute you need how high to get what skills. But you don't know how much attack you get for one point of strength.

Would I liked to have the ability to spreadsheet the shit out of my party before the game began? You betcha. But you can just play ONE character, you can't plan ahead that much anyway. I want the perfect party when I can create the whole party. Otherwise I go with the flow and play it like a roleplaying experience. The lockpicking situation is fucked up, but apart from that your choices just change the game from sleepwalkingly easy at nightmare to challenging at hard.

I agree that the game needs more and better tooltips, and/or an actual manual. But it isn't unplayable because of this, just harder to minmax.

[amiable]

The Wizardry 1 manual you quoted told you what attributes you needed for what class. And how much damage the spells did. Thats all the hard data you got.

Which is already MORE information than I have on the game mechanics in this game.  Also Wizardry 1 came with a large (ish) manual detailing the abilities of each class, what each attribute did, and what each spell did.  Dragon age came with a 6 page pamphlet focused primarily on starting the game. 

In the context of Wizardry 1 (a much, much simpler game) you had more than you needed to know about game mechanics to feel confident that you were not "gimping" your party by making a poor decision.  Here you do not.

[Tebonas]

Not in my version of Wizardry 1. It told me that Str "affects your skill in combat" and a couple of pages after that that I need 11 str to qualify for fighter.

And the detailing description of Fighter was that "The basic man-at-arms. Fighters have high hit points, can use any armor and weapon, and relish their role as shock-troops. They may be of any alignment."

I don't try to defend the bad manual here, but I don't think you can gimp your character to make the game unplayable in Dragon Age. Not as bad as in Arcanum at least. You conveniently forget some of the worst examples in CRPG history. Dragon Age is in the upper echolons of character durability for people who randomly choose skills and stats.

[Tinzen]

3. 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?) 

All you have to do is mouse over them in your character pane.

http://i36.tinypic.com/2d6w0hl.jpg

[lac]

Somebody creates an BioWare RPG Cliche Chart.

Which leads to this response from Patrick Weekes, Bioware writer.

So I'm supposed to believe someone is smart enough to do a big Excel spreadsheet with color coding and stuff but not smart enough to know about Campbellian archetypes?

Yeah, guys, every BioWare game has the same plot! See, things are kind of normal, and then things change and you have to go out and do stuff, and you go to crazy weird places! Aaaaaand so yeah, totally the same story.

That's asinine.

The core idea isn't that bad -- I sense that someone started out with a good concept, like "Hey, you go to four places a lot," and then they just decided to add some more filler rows to try to make a real zinger, except that when you actually read the cells, a lot of them are stretches.

In any event, the "intro, four planets, finale" structure is something we have used often for a few simple reasons:

1) It's easy. It's not as easy as making the player do everything in order, but you can generally just treat each area separately except for a few variables, which makes logic-testing and QA work a ton easier. What happens on Feros stays on Feros. BioWare knows how to make these games, make them solid and workable, and ship them -- and if need be, we can always cut areas, which sucks, but we can do it if need be. Some structures don't allow for that, which is why you end up with games where it's clear that the devs ran out of time or money at some point.

2) Players can understand it. In usability tests on one project, we learned that players with more than four things to do at a time in any given area will feel frustrated -- they get overwhelmed and have no idea what to do first and get the names mixed up. So you don't dump twenty small planets on the player all at once. You hit them with a few big things that they can understand: "Go to Feros." And then once they're there, they unlock several different things to do that don't compete with the rest of the universe, because right now you're on Feros. "Kill Varren." "Get Power Cells." "Turn on Water Valves." "Go to ExoGeni." (And we even cheat a bit by giving you missions, which are big and obvious, and assignments, which we tell you are less important.)

In testing out our missions for ME2, the single biggest lump of story feedback we've gotten has boiled down to Information Flow. When a mission feels clunky, nine times out of ten it's because we either told the player way too much all at once and expected the player to keep it all straight, or we didn't actually tell the player enough and so the player is kind of lost. Dividing up our game into four or five large worlds allows us to control information a bit better.

(And to be clear, that four-worlds-and-out thing is a simplification that ignores major critpath events and makes it sound like you only visit four big areas in KotOR, which flat-out isn't true.)

3) There's nothing wrong with it. It's a structure, like any other. Humorously snarking that our games have a beginning part that is streamlined and introduces you to the game, a middle that allows you the freedom to go to several places and have adventures, and then a tightly focused ending is like riffing on how romance novels generally start out with two people being attracted to each other but having emotional issues, then gradually building trust, then having a complication that splits them up, and then in the end they get together and are happy. People who create fiction in any form use a structure appropriate to that form. They do it because their audience understands and responds on an emotional level to that structure.

[Elerion]

The Wizardry 1 manual you quoted told you what attributes you needed for what class. And how much damage the spells did. Thats all the hard data you got.

Which is already MORE information than I have on the game mechanics in this game.  Also Wizardry 1 came with a large (ish) manual detailing the abilities of each class, what each attribute did, and what each spell did.  Dragon age came with a 6 page pamphlet focused primarily on starting the game. 

In the context of Wizardry 1 (a much, much simpler game) you had more than you needed to know about game mechanics to feel confident that you were not "gimping" your party by making a poor decision.  Here you do not.

You'd have to be a terrible player to manage to gimp your party in DA. Your wife that doesn't pick a single CC spell? Yeah, she's terrible.

Also, you might want to try holding your mouse cursor over some of these attributes that confound you. They have tooltips. We've had those for a few years now.

[Draegan]

I missing all this mage love, which is probably my fault.

I'm playing Me, Templar Tank, Morrigan, Wynne and Sten/Assassin Guy.

I set all my toons on auto level, and I don't tinker with the Tactics much.  I don't use crowd control other than earthquake, and my mages cast random spells.

I'm saving all the good stuff for when I make my own mage.

[amiable]

3. 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?)

All you have to do is mouse over them in your character pane.

http://i36.tinypic.com/2d6w0hl.jpg

Oh I know, I just would like to know how much of difference those things make.  If it extends durations, how much does it extend them?  (By the way spell durations would also be useful).  They had all this type of info readily available for mass effect, why couldn't they provide it here?

[amiable]

You'd have to be a terrible player to manage to gimp your party in DA. Your wife that doesn't pick a single CC spell? Yeah, she's terrible.

Also, you might want to try holding your mouse cursor over some of these attributes that confound you. They have tooltips. We've had those for a few years now.

Entering the game de novo it didn't exactly make it clear that it would be a CC fest.  Also the cc spells are of varying usefulness (see my points above).  If you are playing on normal you should be able to get through the game without having to invest in specific non-archetypical spell lines.

As I mentioned above the tooltips are give pretty sparse information in context of what the gameplay mechanics actually are.

Also: you are a big meanie and need to lighten up.

[Lucas]

A user on the BSN (reminds me of UO's BNN, but I digress) uploaded the first part of a series (or so he says, we'll see) of tutorials for the DAO Toolset. Main page:

http://social.bioware.com/project/527/

It lasts about 30 minutes (.mp4 file, about 50MB) and you can download it from filefront or megaupload (links are provided in the description).

It basically teaches how to set area transitions (and related doors), starting waypoints for characters and how to place a...placeable (and how to attach a sound to it) :P.

Well, useful for total dummies like me if I ever want to start messing around with that thing. Oh, and at the end he shows the result in-game (and it works!!  )

[stray]

Anyone getting errors on PS3/PSN? It says my online storage profile (or something) is bad. Not sure how if it has any effect on the game though.

[Prospero]

Their system doesn't seem complex enough to need much more than cursory explanations. Pick the items with the bigger numbers and away you go.

[tmp]

If you are playing on normal you should be able to get through the game without having to invest in specific non-archetypical spell lines.

I'm playing the game on normal, with rogue as main character. I left other characters on auto-level so my mages didn't pick up any new cc yet. But considering Morrigan came with built in point-blank aoe stun, single target freeze and horror, the dog came with his own aoe stun and that other characters come with at least one single target stun of their own... they seem to be doing quite fine. So i can't agree with your assessment here, at least at the moment -- the game itself seems to provide you with tools needed to get through it at least on normal difficulty, and anything you pick yourself is extras that make it even easier.

And yes, it does make you use heal potions when needed, poison coatings for the blades for extra damage when needed, these acid bombs that drop in loot and the other stuff. I'd figure that's why these drop from mobs in the first place.

[jakonovski]

B-b-bu-but I haven't quoted any Wizardry manuals...?

[jakonovski]

Heh, I thought I got the edit in before anyone responded, of course knowing this board  .

Edit: by the time stamp I was 12 seconds too slow!

Victoly!

[Lucas]

Da Hardcore mod! 

http://social.bioware.com/project/493/

[Elerion]

You'd have to be a terrible player to manage to gimp your party in DA. Your wife that doesn't pick a single CC spell? Yeah, she's terrible.

Also, you might want to try holding your mouse cursor over some of these attributes that confound you. They have tooltips. We've had those for a few years now.

Entering the game de novo it didn't exactly make it clear that it would be a CC fest.  Also the cc spells are of varying usefulness (see my points above).  If you are playing on normal you should be able to get through the game without having to invest in specific non-archetypical spell lines.

As I mentioned above the tooltips are give pretty sparse information in context of what the gameplay mechanics actually are.

Also: you are a big meanie and need to lighten up.

The very first party combat area you come across has a camp where you are forced to either pull carefully or face 6+ mobs at once. You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out having some form of CC might be helpful. With 7 out of the 21 spell lines providing some form of mass CC you almost have to try to avoid picking up at least one of them.

Besides, rogues and warriors provide ways to deal with crowds as well. Through stealth and bows, rogues can bring you 1-3 mobs at a time in almost every battle. Warriors have aoe taunt and higher innate threat from plate armor, which means mobs will usually stick to them if you're careful. Some of the rogue/warrior talents give you CC as well.

Tooltips don't give enough information? They don't give you every single detail, and I admit that some things like spell durations would be very nice to have, but in general they offer plenty of information to make intelligent decisions. Strength increases damage, attack and lets you wear heavier stuff. Cool, that's all I need to know to understand that my warrior should probably pick strength, while my mage probably shouldn't. You won't be able to min/max purely off the tooltips, but then that is not at all required in the game.

Sure, it would be nice to have a thick-ass manual that explained every mechanic down to the smallest detail. The codex should have been used for stuff like that. That way they could keep the tooltips descriptive and understandable like they are now, yet still allow the number crunchers among us to look up the details and formulas. But don't pretend it's preventing you (or your wife) from making decent characters, because you really have to try hard to avoid that. You get plenty of basic information, and every talent/spell line I've tried so far has been useful.

[Sky]

I'm still getting my ass kicked by big groups, though I'm working out some tactics after a few battles. My main character finally fell in battle, though. I had been using Alistair to taunt when I was low on health, but he was dying /too/ much or swigging all my health potions. I don't really have enough character selection to set up the party like I want to. I'm already tired of Morrigan (feeling is mutual), but need her CC abilities. Just picked up the bard chick, which is nice to finally get into some locked chests. Was a toss-up between Bartdog and Alistair, I kept Alistair for the storyline stuff. If it weren't for needing magery, I'd be running Alistair/Bartdog/bardchick from my current lineup. I didn't free Sten, because I'm playing as a good guy and I'm not going to go around freeing confessed murderers.

Probably going to turn off the scripting, I tried playing with it, but still not happy with the AI for the most part. More directly, it bugs me when I set up someone's attack and the minute I switch back to my guy they do something else. Is there queueing? I don't think I've seen any, it would be nice to pause, queue up a few actions for each character, then return to play my character in real time.

Also,

[Tmon]

No queuing.  I gave up on the scripting early on, I prefer to micro manage my party. 

[Nerf]

Playing on the PS3, I had no choice but to work with the AI, about halfway through the game I just set everyone to assist me, and the mages to do stuff to enemies using magic, it worked out fairly well.  My biggest gripe is that the ps3 should have had more of the 'tactic' AI slots, at least twice as many.  Not being able to pause and set your characters up is a pretty big hindrance, and even with the tactics skill to 4 there still weren't nearly enough slots to have the mages play 'right'

[Montague]

Same, I micromanage here too.

I'm on a second playthrough even though I havent finished the first one yet and it's a whole lot easier. It's a combination of knowing what's coming, better tactics, plus better stat distribution. One newb mistake I did was ignore Constitution in order to stack other attributes in order to unlock skills, armor etc. This time I piled on the Con early and things like the Wolf zerg and the Traps/Archer combos aren't nearly as painful.

I had some problems early on with difficulty spikes but in my case it seems to be a L2P thing.  

[Slyfeind]

I just finished the Ruined Temple, and have yet to do any intentional crowd control. I think there's some shield slamming and pinning shots going on somewhere, but I'm mostly just pulling enemies into ambushes and pounding on them. But then again, I'm playing on easy.

Regarding stats, they're not easy to understand, even with those new-fangled tool tips all the crazy kids are raving about. I don't know if +1 Defense increases armor or dodge (or both?), and I don't know what the hell Spell Power does at all. I don't feel the need to min-max anything, but I also don't know if it's worth it to upgrade anything much past starting gear. Since everything scales to my level...do I really need new stuff?

BTW, I think the Ruined Temple was awesome in every way. On to the forest!

[Sky]

Yeah, a respec option would be real nice. I stacked Str to open stuff for my warrior main, but with so few relevant skills, I still find I'm hoarding skill points to spend later rather than waste them on skills I don't want. Both my warrior and Alistair are hoarding at least one point because there's nothing relevant to spend it on right now.

That missing manual is a good start but needs a lot of work. Do I put my bard in leather and have her use a bow or put her in splint mail with sword and board or dual wield, it's a shame this game does not come with a thick manual. Almost tempted to check out the prima book, but I hate walkthroughs.

I'm playing on easy.

And to add to an earlier stat mention: 12 hours, 9% :)

[Slyfeind]

At least I can't complain about difficulty! Any problems I encounter are my own damn fault.

Where do you find that percent?

[March]

I'm more inclined to side with Amiable.  I don't think its a matter of min/max, but more of a feeling of making informed decisions.  For me, _the_ fun is completely in the party/character building; killing wolves .7 secs faster is meaningless (though picking a useful skill to avoid being ploughed under by swarms of wolves would be nice).

I guess I don't see why changing "The Character's fondness for massive two-handed weapons means that each attack offers a chance to stun the opponent due to the sheer weight behind the blow" to "The Character's fondness for massive two-handed weapons means that each attack offers a 5% chance to stun the opponent for 2 seconds due to the sheer weight behind the blow."

Sure, I appreciate the physics lesson on why the massive blow stuns the opponent, but hey throw me a bone with a ballpark on the frequency and duration of said massive blow... Aren't all my blows massive?  Massive is what I do.

Otherwise I am completely paralyzed over whether I should lessen the penalty to attacking by an amount I do not know for benefits I cannot fathom.

But hey, I can roleplay a bard, finally.

[Sky]

Where do you find that percent?

On the character sheet, at the bottom of the stat page, there's a button to see achievements (kill stats, etc). It's at the bottom of that page.

Actually I think it's % of world explored, not game completed, which is another stat.

Otherwise I am completely paralyzed over whether I should lessen the penalty to attacking by an amount I do not know for benefits I cannot fathom.

That's what got me on the topic. I was ok when it was just me, Alistair and the dog. Load up on armor and I go 2h and he's the sword'n'board guy. But seeing the bard allowed to equip so much stuff I'm all confused. Also, getting my first suit of heavy armor for my warrior, it mentions in the hints that it would hinder attack speed with a bow, and I was handing down my chainmail to the bard and thought twice because I want her to be ranged. Or do I? Even setting her script to ranged she keeps pulling out the sword and shield and rushing in.

Another gripe: the Codex being numbered entries. Such a great and interesting resource (I read it all), but to have such a shitty indexing? Blah.

[Kitsune]

Shale is fucking awesome.  I know I shouldn't've been surprised by the people who made HK-47, but I really wasn't expecting him to have a personality to speak of, and most definitely not a snarky British  personality.

And if anyone hasn't had conversations with Dogmeat in camp, yet, you need to do it.  There are some fantastic moments involved.

[Furiously]

I'm still giggling about Sten and the dog.

[jakonovski]

Fuck, my female character can't get any of the other women interested in her. I'll have to shag Alistair out of desperation if this keeps up. Please don't give me any tips, I don't want to be spoiled in any way.

[Draegan]

Hey, one of the devs said that apparently certain codex entries read differently depending on your background. 

I'm up to like 98/100 on Morrigan's love but I can't get any action.  Sonofa.