Dragon Age

[Raguel]

I know most of you are on your second walkthroughs but just in case:

[Rasix]

No.  So best enjoy it while it's there.

[Samprimary]

Well, Arcane Warrior turned out to be absurdly cheesy, though the mechanism through which this cheese is engaged upon is massively less time-consuming on PC.

I dunno. I like this game a lot, but the portion of the dev team's brains that concerns itself with, you know, class and skill balance? completely shut off. It's got the most wildly imbalanced classes of any otherwise good game I can think of in quite a while.

[Tebonas]

There never was class balance in Single Player RPGs. Thats a thing that grew out of the MMOG community backlash AFTER Everquest totally failed with it.

I can't remember a PnP system were the magic users don't wipe the floor with the Meleers after a certain level. They are flying rampaging gods of destruction while the Meleers can hit very hard with a stick while not being hurt all that much.

In old Computer RPGs you just didn't notice it all that much because you created the whole party, where you planned the characters to interlock with each other and cancel out their disadvantages.

[stray]

I would say though that a dual wielding warrior comes pretty close, so it's not that melee is without power. In a way, AW warrior isn't even that powerful. At least, not in an offensively minded way. It's invincible is what it is, with more control over a fight. And in the end, it's also boring. And not manly. 

[Tebonas]

My Resistance-Gear Sword+Board Dwarven Warrior was also pretty invincible. Lost almost no health from melee attacks and his resists shrugged off most of the annoying spells. Wynne was healing Alistair most of the time.

There will always be underpowered builds. I don't see that as a disadvantage of the system, if you have choice you will be able to gimp yourself. And if the game provides for the possibility and still makes it able to progress with less than ideal builds, some will be too strong for the game.

[stray]

I'm glad mages do have an edge though. It's only right. If it was up to me, there wouldn't be mages at all. :P That's how I wanted Age of Conan to be built. Howard wrote mages as people who did a fuckton of damage, and whom even Conan was scared of. I've not read LotR, but it seems to be the same way. D&D introduced this idea that the guy living next door to you - and the guy across the street as well - all could blow fireballs out of their asses. Fuck that. Something so unreal and supernatural shouldn't be portrayed as something pedestrian, and being on the equal lvl of swords and axes.

[Xilren's Twin]

There never was class balance in Single Player RPGs. Thats a thing that grew out of the MMOG community backlash AFTER Everquest totally failed with it.

I can't remember a PnP system were the magic users don't wipe the floor with the Meleers after a certain level. They are flying rampaging gods of destruction while the Meleers can hit very hard with a stick while not being hurt all that much.

In old Computer RPGs you just didn't notice it all that much because you created the whole party, where you planned the characters to interlock with each other and cancel out their disadvantages.

The biggest imbalance is just the AOE power of mages vs the generally single target other classes; yes rogues and warriors get some limited aoe stuff, but mages have more, and much better ones.

Not only that, but in a pnp rpg you could "balance" the power of mages in other ways that had nothing to do with combat (and really, when people talk about balance that's all they mean: combat power).  Even in DA, from a lore and gameworld perspective mages are a powerful but also not trusted because they are open to posession.  As a mage your either living stuck under the chantry's oppessive thumb, or your a criminal who has to live outside the law.  Unless you're a grey warden of course.

That one of the things i do like about the way they designed the lore.  They left plenty of opportunities to extend it and seeds for plots/modules.   The Templar's get their power to police mages from Lyricum,  which is an addictive drug.  Mages can become more powerful by embracing Blood Magic, which has it's own price. The darkspawn are sprung from the womb's of captured and corrupted humans, dwarves and elves.  Spirits of the fade keep trying to find ways into our world.  Ancient empires left ruins around (both on surface and the deep roads), etc.  Overall, nice job on fleshing our the lore of the gameworld.

[stray]

From what I can tell, the main reason why mages resort to Blood Magic isn't that it's more powerful. It's because it can't be controlled (by mana drains). Forgot which character hinted at that.

[Threash]

The "lore" reason was that it lets you completely take control of another person (with the lvl 4 power) so its immoral.

[Lantyssa]

I can't remember a PnP system were the magic users don't wipe the floor with the Meleers after a certain level. They are flying rampaging gods of destruction while the Meleers can hit very hard with a stick while not being hurt all that much.

Wizardry.  My Fighter/Ninjas could wipe the floor with my casters.  (Hide - Backstab - Ninjutsu -> Death)  They were both equally useful and thankfully on the same side.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Enchantment!

[Tebonas]

Oh, I loved me some Samurais, Monks and Ninjas in Wizardry! Pure casters could be better for short periods, but when they were out of power the melee character had to save their bacon.

Now that I think it that might be the problem with Dragon Age. Almost instant mana and stamina regeneration is nice, but it takes away the prime disadvantage casters traditionally have. If you have full mana in every fight, you don't have to preserve any of it and can blast away to your hearts desire.

[tmp]

Looks the first semi-complete nude mod is out. It's an equal opportunity edition too, if you wish to flap your lttle man/dwarf/elf parts in the wind.

[Raguel]

Loghain doesn't care about elf people. 


Part of me wants to start over without finishing. How would things play out if I kicked certain party members to the curb? What if I played a female instead of male?

[Ingmar]

Loghain doesn't care about elf people. 


Part of me wants to start over without finishing. How would things play out if I kicked certain party members to the curb? What if I played a female instead of male?

That's why I always play these games multiple times.

[sidereal]

Now that I think it that might be the problem with Dragon Age. Almost instant mana and stamina regeneration is nice, but it takes away the prime disadvantage casters traditionally have. If you have full mana in every fight, you don't have to preserve any of it and can blast away to your hearts desire.

But it would equally annoying to blow your magic wad in the first half of the battle and then be stuck with ineffective whacking with your staff for the rest of the fight (and this happens quite a bit in DA if you don't feel like burning your mana pots).  I think a good solution would be to rate-limit mages a bit, but spread it out over the battle.  Like make every spell twice as expensive in mana, but triple the recovery rate, so the mage experience is basically doing some early stuff, and then hovering with your finger on the button waiting to recover mana for the next spell.  Which brings up another problem with DA, which is that if you want to do this you have to completely shut off tactics.  There's nothing worse than having a mage waiting to load up mana for a Crushing Prison, then you switch control out to get your rogue to do something, and in the meantime your mage pops out a Winter's Touch and wastes your mana.

[stray]

I'm done with complaining about overpowered-ness. My dual wielding temp/champ doesn't do all the mega damage that a mage does, but there is really no type of enemy or buff that suppresses this character much. Mage npcs eat their shit, and if I was allowed to fight player controlled mages, they'd eat their shit too. Why should I talk about overpowered mages? What would be true is that some things are underpowered in a way. And not even by much. Archery is underpowered --- but OTOH, it's one of the only things you could literally solo the entire game with. So in the end, it's not underpowered either.

[Merusk]

The edge was a reward for buying the game before november 30th, thats why you got it Dec 1st.

I think you had to register the game before the 30th as well.  I registered yesterday after reading this thread and discovering what those damn codes were all about.  I'd had a profile and was uploading stuff from the game since about 2 weeks ago but hadn't registered it.  I didn't get the DL of the dagger.

[Samprimary]

I can't remember a PnP system were the magic users don't wipe the floor with the Meleers after a certain level. They are flying rampaging gods of destruction while the Meleers can hit very hard with a stick while not being hurt all that much.

DA does it a little differently, though. Mages ramp up to being the best class shortly after the very start of the game, a position that they remain in for most of the game's level progression. You have to get to the epic levels for the non-mages to more or less catch up.

It's an issue of ramping more than anything else. If you start playing the game as a warrior, you spend most of the game progression curve doing meh damage while being raped by magic and arrows. If you start playing the game as a mage, you're already way better than the other classes by the time you get out of the origin story, and you spend most of the game in that position until fighters and rogues get to claw their way up to you.

On the whole, it's something that can be fixed pretty easily, too. Ramp up single-target damage, tone down AoE of every sort (especially the disables!), fix Cone of Cold, add more casting times that can be disrupted, and really REALLY accentuate mage frailty, etc.

[tmp]

It's an issue of ramping more than anything else. If you start playing the game as a warrior, you spend most of the game progression curve doing meh damage while being raped by magic and arrows.

I think part of it is, at early levels the 'heavy armour' really isn't. It reduces something like 1-2 more points per hit than equal level leather, if that (arrows and magic have good armour penetration which definitely doesn't help) And the characters don't have their other defenses developed yet at that point. It's only once they can put on the massive armour (too some degree maybe the high end heavy ones, too) when the benefits become somewhat noticeable.

[sidereal]

if I was allowed to fight player controlled mages, they'd eat their shit too.

I don't think mage overpoweredness deserves much complaint (It's a single-player game, after all), but that's just not true.  Against any competent player controlled mage you would never move.  NPC mages are gimped, since they don't seem to do much in the way of force field, paralysis, shatter combos, etc.

[stray]

Not sure about Crushing prison, but the paralyzing spells can be negated by physical resistance. It wouldn't always work, I suppose.. Just like it doesn't always work against bosses.

I'm exaggerating on the "eating their shit" part, but if a fast swinging templar could survive an initial onslaught, then a mage would die, I think. Templars beat on them, on top of draining their mana. Too many things to recover from. Umm unless they're Blood Mages. Templars seemed designed to dispense everything else though. Big Bad Arcane Warriors ironically would drop the quickest.

[edit] This goes without mentioning there is no micromanaging pause for well timed potions in PvP.  

[caladein]

The edge was a reward for buying the game before november 30th, thats why you got it Dec 1st.

I think you had to register the game before the 30th as well.  I registered yesterday after reading this thread and discovering what those damn codes were all about.  I'd had a profile and was uploading stuff from the game since about 2 weeks ago but hadn't registered it.  I didn't get the DL of the dagger.

You should be able to grab the DAZIPs from somewhere (DAO_PRC_PROMO_XXX_1.0.dazip) and just install them manually with daupdater.exe like you would with mods.  There used to be a page on the BioWare forums that had all the pre-order DLC DAZIPs listed but I can't seem to find it.

[Fraeg]

What a difference a little difference makes.

had gotten a bit bored with the game, just got a new samsung 23" LED backlit monitor and  is all I can say.  This game is simply so beautiful now compared to what I was viewing on my CRT.

...Off to the mage tower!

[Venkman]

Yea, sorta forgot about the Mage Tower until I was sent their to find the guy who has a bead on the Urn. Now I'm stuck in it savings kids and kittens and shit. Eh, hopefully Arl Emon can hang on a bit longer. That'd be a real kick in the teeth if I come to find out the game has a global clock with hidden timers.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The one SINGLE cheesiest tactic in the game for boss fights is forcefield. Now, why forcefield? Because afaik it cant be resisted or at least it's a very high check. While you can't actually damage anything in a forcefield you can pretty much lock down any one mob for as long as you want. 

Boss on your caster? Forcefield.
All your good abilities on cooldown? Forcefield.
Need a moment to pot up for mana/health? Forcefield.
Boss came with a bunch of adds you want to kill first? Forcefield.

The cooldown on forcefield is such that you can pretty much chain it and unlike paralyze which has shorter durations on bosses, force field always goes the full duration.  I was in the forest and a revanent+adds was spawned by me. A pretty tough fight on it's own and nearby there was a boss level ogre as well that I had gotten aggro on. Normally this would mean quick death, not so with forecfield! Lock down the revanent, kill adds and paralyze the ogre, then ogre, then lich lite.

[rk47]

Yea, sorta forgot about the Mage Tower until I was sent their to find the guy who has a bead on the Urn. Now I'm stuck in it savings kids and kittens and shit. Eh, hopefully Arl Emon can hang on a bit longer. That'd be a real kick in the teeth if I come to find out the game has a global clock with hidden timers.

AFAIK, no such thing existed. Which is a slight disappointment to me. They hinted at the demon getting stronger if you take too long, but it never really mattered. Wish Bioware or any RPG Devs had the balls to implement a time limit mode for slightly extra challenge.

Time limit on Arl Eamon - Death of Arl Eamon = Made Landsmeet MUCH harder
Time limit on Dalish - All elves infected = No Elven allies - Werewolves threat ending
Time limit on Dwarves - Full blown civil war = No Dwarf allies - Dwarf civilization self-destructed ending
Time limit on Mage - Templars Purge = No Mage Allies - Complete destruction of Circle ending

/agree on the forcefield tactic. Arcane Warrior is basically a superb CC basic attack warrior with Cone of Cold + Force Field + Mindblast which no warrior spec can ever hope to achieve. Put one point on basic poisoning + cheap explosive flasks = AOE king.

[schild]

I'm not putting this in spoilers because I feel it deserves freedom from censorship.

2009 Was the Year of Completely Pitiful Fucking Endings For Games.

That is what the title of 2009 will be in the annals of history.

Fuck.

[Xurtan]

What were you expecting exactly? Considering DA hit pretty much every RPG cliche, the ending was basically what I assumed it would be.

[schild]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym9fh7ziiV8

Uploaded at 720p, not legible unless you blow it up. It's the last Sandal scene. Game should've ended there imo.

[Raguel]

I'm not putting this in spoilers because I feel it deserves freedom from censorship.

2009 Was the Year of Completely Pitiful Fucking Endings For Games.

That is what the title of 2009 will be in the annals of history.

Fuck.

So you're saying I can stop now and roll my elven warrior princess?   . I love the game and all but I just feel so annoyed by the fact that I made some bad decisions in the early part of the game.

[Reg]

I think Schild is just doing his hating anything the mainstream likes routine again. Dragon Age's ending wasn't perfect but certainly wasn't bad.

[apocrypha]

AFAIK, no such thing existed. Which is a slight disappointment to me. They hinted at the demon getting stronger if you take too long, but it never really mattered. Wish Bioware or any RPG Devs had the balls to implement a time limit mode for slightly extra challenge.

Time limit on Arl Eamon - Death of Arl Eamon = Made Landsmeet MUCH harder
Time limit on Dalish - All elves infected = No Elven allies - Werewolves threat ending
Time limit on Dwarves - Full blown civil war = No Dwarf allies - Dwarf civilization self-destructed ending
Time limit on Mage - Templars Purge = No Mage Allies - Complete destruction of Circle ending

Totally agree with this.

This is where I was coming from when I bitched about the side-quests. Yeah sure, go rescue kittens etc, but there should be a price for dicking about while the world burns.

[schild]

I think Schild is just doing his hating anything the mainstream likes routine again.

I just spent 70 hours between two characters. This is absolutely nothing like that.

Dragon Age's ending wasn't perfect but certainly wasn't bad.

It was AND your standards suck. I expect Bioware to raise the bar. Not meet up with and wave at games like Borderlands. Given how much theater went into the game's display, the ending wasn't only a total let down but exists purely to set up any game post-Origins. Not that it matters, the story was a cliche mess and I only stuck with it because I thought the characters were worth the time invested.

I want Bioware to stop dilly-dallying and just make a goddamn hentai game.