Dragon Age

[tmp]

Yikes. I'd call that a copout of the highest order, if they really had opted to do this. No way. It's better, in my mind, to actually care enough to test your product enough to avoid massive imbalances in player options.

I rather like the idea different classes come with different difficulty factor to them, tbh. If just because it allows you --through adjusting the party composition-- to really finetune how hard you want to have your game. If i can replace the mage with a rogue or a warrior and the overall experience stays about the same... well, it quite reduces incentive to bother. The "balance" is surely helpful if it's the MMO since it can help you to get a spot in the group for foozle whacking session but in a single player game really not sure if that's something worth striving for.

[gryeyes]

Balance in a PARTY based RPG is important. Get a bit more slack with tuning if you have a single PC. All classes should bring something to the table, none should be vastly superior over the others. If you ignore balance you get a game with "random" difficulty, which I view as a problem.

[stray]

"Game difficulty is scaled to the warrior.  Mages are masters of a variety of arcane powers and will find the game easier.  Rogues prefer to avoid combat and will find the game more difficult"

Done.

Yikes. I'd call that a copout of the highest order, if they really had opted to do this. No way. It's better, in my mind, to actually care enough to test your product enough to avoid massive imbalances in player options.

One of the few games I got for the 360... I miss patches.

I'm pretty sure it'll make it's way to other platforms. All of my PS3 games patch occasionally at least.

[tmp]

Balance in a PARTY based RPG is important. Get a bit more slack with tuning if you have a single PC. All classes should bring something to the table, none should be vastly superior over the others. If you ignore balance you get a game with "random" difficulty, which I view as a problem.

How is it random if there's disclosure about strength of each class? (obviously theoretical since DA is lacking that)

And i'd think the class balance is actually less important in party based single player game since it's easier to cover weakness of one class with strength of another, and vice versa. Of course as long as that's the supposed goal of this whole balance business -- to get difficulty of certain level no matter what setup you choose to run with.

[Samprimary]

Why?  The point is that in a single-player game 'balance' doesn't mean anything.  All that matters is that players know what they're getting into, so they can make educated choices.

Really, think about this: balance means nothing in a single-player game? Nothing? That's a terrible point to predicate your ideas on, because it's completely untrue.

[apocrypha]

Dragon Age fails miserably in my book with the balance issue by giving you a party of 4... and then suddenly taking that entire party away from you for a large chunk of the game. Yes I'm still bitching about the bloody mages tower Fade 

[tmp]

Dragon Age fails miserably in my book with the balance issue by giving you a party of 4... and then suddenly taking that entire party away from you for a large chunk of the game. Yes I'm still bitching about the bloody mages tower Fade 

Ehh; ran the Fade twice by now and didn't have any issue with it really.

[stray]

The Fade is the one of the few "puzzly" parts of the game. There should be more areas that require you to think like that. So far, the boss was the trickiest one yet too, since he'd keep changing his dmg type/weaknesses.

Balance.. you guys are making it too complicated. No one should play Nightmare mode like it's easy. That is all. And worse, the stupid motherfuckers who intentionally build these classes come back and say the game is too easy. They should get what they want then.

[caladein]

Auto-updating on Steam now...

Balance

• Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and 0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended. This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.
• During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quickly when reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent or spell in the later stages of lengthy fights.
• When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at higher character levels. This reduces downtime between fights.
• The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.
• The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. This ensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.
• Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.
• Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately, resulting in less clutter in the player's inventory.

Gameplay

• In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot. This no longer occurs.
• Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior no longer stop attacking after using a spell or talent.
• In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether a character had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.
• The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active during certain conversations.
• The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.
• The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

PC Specific

• Controlling a summoned creature (like a ranger's pets) during certain special area transitions no longer results in odd behavior.
• Creating a character in a custom module did not create a folder for saves. This could result in corruption of main campaign saves. This no longer occurs.
• In some cases, the class icon was set incorrectly for characters imported from the downloadable Character Creator. This no longer occurs.
• The options menu now includes a setting to automatically download previously purchased content that is not currently installed.
• After installing new downloadable content, the game now always reminds the user to restart the game.
• The icons for some promotional downloadable content items were missing. They now appear correctly.
• The screenshot upload GUI would stop working from time to time on the client. There was a memory override that was fixed. It is a client fix. It doesn't affect the other problems we have seen on the server.

[Samprimary]

The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.

well that's okay, I can still break the game by ...

The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

ahh, fuck

[stray]

Shimmering Shield is overkill anyways.

[stray]

Anyways....

I'm curious what difficulty any of you mages play on? With certain builds, it's easy to the point of unfun. I would think you'd need the Hard setting at the very least. And... I really don't understand why you wouldn't welcome these nerfs. Honestly. The game should be squeezed for all it's worth - and easy-mode is not the way to do it.

My Templar/Champ is unbalanced if you ask me, and needs a little Hard and a little Nightmare both (depending), else it doesn't feel right. Or maybe it's because of my DLC gear + being a little experienced with the game now. With Normal, all I know is that I rip through shit. In the typical dungeon room, it's easy to just get surrounded, toss off a whirlwind, then a sweep, then a warcry, and have the rest of the team clean up. I don't even need Morrigan in the mix. So if it's the case with my poor little warrior ( ), then it's worse for mages. I know I won't even finish a mage character now, simply because it's that unfun.

[Yoru]

I play on Normal, and I find myself still F5ing before/after almost every fight. The most minute timing error on any intricate fight tends to lead to a full-party wipe.

I'm guessing a hybrid fire/ice/healing/telekinesis build was not the Most Optimal, but it's fun to play. The nerf hasn't hurt too much, as I've just shifted my focus more towards fire spells and more carefully maneuvering my warrior/rogue combo to avoid cone-type attacks.

Then again, I don't play RPGs primarily for the combat.

[Bunk]

I'm playing my mage on Normal, but I intentionally stayed away from the elemental lines. I felt like trying to run a necromancer type for my "bad" play through, so I focused on hexes and the virulent line. It's still somewhat easy mode with Morrigan in the party as well, but I am having fun, so who cares?

[Sky]

At the rate the conversation is being recycled in this thread, I'm going to have to start posting Vaders.

[ShenMolo]

I play a Mage on Hard (first toon) and a Rogue on Hard/Nightmare (second toon). The Mage Tower / Fade parts as a Rogue are much much more difficult than Mage. I basically have to turn it down to Casual/Easy to beat the normal mobs, not including the bosses. It was challenging and fun on Mage/Hard. As a Rogue it is annoying.

[Brogarn]

At the rate the conversation is being recycled in this thread, I'm going to have to start posting Vaders.

Ok, see you in a couple weeks.

Just sayin' you're bringing this on yourself. You could opt out, you know.

[Sky]

Love the game, currently playing it, bored at work. You know, f13.

[Brogarn]

Love the game, currently playing it, bored at work. You know, f13.

Fair enough.

[Lantyssa]

Mage balance is important, and players might have an over-reliance on those skills, Rogues and Warriors have to fight NPC mages as well.

[rattran]

Re: Mages

[tmp]

Re: Mages

[eldaec]

Short of disarming them, is there any way to stop these retards changing to melee weapon set every time some darkspawn fucker comes within 50 yards?

As far as I can tell I do not have tactics set to  'Enemy : Nearest Visible > Use ability : Act like a mouthbreathing fucktard. Switch to melee and run a 200 yard dash into enemy archer range, consume all the healer's mana, and then start whining because you died. Again.'.

[tmp]

Set behaviour to "ranged" in the dropdown box in the tactics window.

[Ingmar]

Short of disarming them, is there any way to stop these retards changing to melee weapon set every time some darkspawn fucker comes within 50 yards?

As far as I can tell I do not have tactics set to  'Enemy : Nearest Visible > Use ability : Act like a mouthbreathing fucktard. Switch to melee and run a 200 yard dash into enemy archer range, consume all the healer's mana, and then start whining because you died. Again.'.

Set them to a behavior other than default or aggressive.

[Brogarn]

When I had Leilana specced for range on my first play-through, I took her blades away, gave her the melee archer talent and called it a day. She couldn't swap in what she didn't have!

[Sky]

I use Lel as an archer set to ranged behaviour, I've maybe had her pull out the dagger a couple times. Nice thing is the rogue stuff she came with isn't weapon-based, like that one that's a kick in the junk or whatever (dirty fighting?). She just kicks while she's holding the bow.

[stray]

Btw, give her Ranger spec, and she really becomes helpful damage wise. The Bard/Ranger is the best autopilot rogue there is.

[ajax34i]

Playing through for the first time right now, and I have a question:  I see that each companion has a list of questions I can ask them, and they disappear once I ask them.  Should I build up their standings with gifts first before even talking to them, or do new topics appear for chatting as the game progresses?

[Reg]

They'll talk to you after certain special events occur in the game but mainly your conversational choices are determined by how much they like you.  If you want to experiment do a save before you talk to them so you can restore if you screw up.

[stray]

I say just talk to them and respond how you/your character feels. You don't need everyone to like you, do you?  


Seriously though, just talk until conversation options are exhausted. Use gifts during idle time.

[Merusk]

I play on Normal, and I find myself still F5ing before/after almost every fight. The most minute timing error on any intricate fight tends to lead to a full-party wipe.

I'm guessing a hybrid fire/ice/healing/telekinesis build was not the Most Optimal, but it's fun to play. The nerf hasn't hurt too much, as I've just shifted my focus more towards fire spells and more carefully maneuvering my warrior/rogue combo to avoid cone-type attacks.

Then again, I don't play RPGs primarily for the combat.

What he said.

My build is far, far from optimal.  "Balance" patches mean, to me "play this way because we're designing around the min/ maxers now, to make it challenging for THEM."   Fuck them. They're min/ maxing the system, not playing the game.  Now I feel forced to cheese the forcefield/ cone of cold/ multi-mage party.

I've hated balance patches in games since Master of Magic nerfed ranged attacks from two shots to one per round.  I knew not to cheese it if I wanted a challenge, but it sure helped when I just wanted to breeze through a foe I knew I'd crush anyway.

[Raguel]

In my second playthrough (both times on normal)  I didn't let Morrigan autolevel and it's like night and day. Before I'd have to reload often if I fought a Rev. Since getting misdirect I don't think I've lost a single person in combat.

Is it just me or is Dog >> Sten? I don't even bother grouping that guy. I'll pour all his points into strength to get him in juggy gear and see if I can keep him upright.

As far as Leilana goes, I like her in my group in terms of RP but I don't think she's doing a lot of damage ranged. I switched to her once and she missed like 4 times straight. 
She's around level 12, and has about 20 str and 30 dex.

[rk47]

In my second playthrough (both times on normal)  I didn't let Morrigan autolevel and it's like night and day. Before I'd have to reload often if I fought a Rev. Since getting misdirect I don't think I've lost a single person in combat.

Is it just me or is Dog >> Sten? I don't even bother grouping that guy. I'll pour all his points into strength to get him in juggy gear and see if I can keep him upright.

As far as Leilana goes, I like her in my group in terms of RP but I don't think she's doing a lot of damage ranged. I switched to her once and she missed like 4 times straight. 
She's around level 12, and has about 20 str and 30 dex.

Slight observation:
1. Sten needs lots of armor points to stay alive. Juggernaut gear is worth a try, but there are heavier armour out there. Also take schild's suggestion to have him drink Health Pot at 80% HP. 2 STR 1 CON is sufficient BUT IMO Oghren is more solid with two specs. Sten's best spec is probably Berserker/Champ. Hit berserk and let the boosted damage take care of the rest. Considering the equipment slots and talent points, I'd say Sten > Dog by a lot.

2. Leliana. Is a mixed bag. She's your best lockpicker though. I like melee rogues better but she's too deep in ranged spec. Grab Critical Shot maybe so you can shatter frozen mobs from range. And scatter shot for those pesky mages. I still like her more in melee though.

Overall I think the melee specs need a revamp.
Berserker needs more active skills than 3 tiers on passive and the 4th tier on a stamina finishing move.
Suggestion: Change the 4th tier into Pummeling Rage, so he'll jump on his opponent, knocking the victim on the floor and pummel repeatedly ala wolf 'pounces'

Templar 1st Tier passive is meh. You'll never burn opponents' mana completely. Suggest that every attack that drains mana = hp to the templar so he'll 'eat' mages for HP. Literally.

Champions are fucking weird. Come on. AoE party buff n debuff and the whole 4 tiers are dedicated to one active skill?! At least give him a Champion's Charge that'll allow him to rush a group of opponent at V.V Fast speed. Knock one dude down and then shout 'It's On MOTHAFUCKAS!' like a dorf on lyrium crack to stun the rest of his compadres.

[stray]

Fuck.. I just destroyed Howe in what seemed like 3 seconds. Not that he's an uber opponent, but that was satisfying.  

I have the Lifeline ring, and used the Keep skill Bloodthirst (bonus to dmg and attack at the expense of health), and my health still didn't go down even a quarter.

[edit] OK, you know that room after Howe,