Dragon Age 2 - Here be spoilers.

[kildorn]

Fordel: running and stabbing isn't fixed, no. It seems more annoying it anything. "BACKSTAB! I hit him so hard he went flying!" ... character, why are you standing there like an idiot, go run after him and stab him now.

Can be way more irritating if it's you that's getting stabbed -- couple of times now i've been caught into a ridiculous loop of "get hit by rouge, get pushed a step back, spend a second on animation of wriggling on a spot, automatically step back forward, get stabbed again before animation of anything you're trying to do youself plays, rinse, repeat" ... all way to death. For all the supposed instant responsiveness the game is supposed to have now, welp. Never experienced this amount of being out of control in DAO.

In the higher difficulties fortitude or immunity to knockback are key stats, it seems. Abominations are the worst about stunlocking.

[Reg]

First thing I do when I load up a game off steam is download the manual pdf and keep it in a file.

Cause I'm a manual dork. 

Have you got a link to the manual? A .pdf didn't come with my digital edition and I can't see one on Google.

[caladein]

Have you got a link to the manual? A .pdf didn't come with my digital edition and I can't see one on Google.

Here's the link I have from EA: http://akamai.cdn.ea.com/eadownloads/u/f/manuals/GAME-DRAGONAGE2/Manuals.zip

[tmp]

In the higher difficulties fortitude or immunity to knockback are key stats, it seems. Abominations are the worst about stunlocking.

Yeah, playing it on hard so it can be part of that. You only seem to get like 1% fortitude per point in strength which for a mage makes even thinking about investment in that a total waste. On the other hand you can get 50% (100% with upgrade) always-on fortitude from a trait in force mage tree which... dunno, doesn't strike me very well thought out, either.

[Merusk]

I just want to take a moment to thank MMOs for inspiring RPG devs to create drawn-out, resource-heavy 20-minute-long dragon fights with multiple phases on "Normal" difficulty.

No wait.. not thank, yell at.   I wasn't ready for that and it wasn't very fun.  Yeah, it was apparently optional but dammit I'd forgotten to save before going there for at least 45 mins. (My own fault.)


*Reads manual*  Also, that is totally NOT what I thought the Star meant in the dialogue options.

[Morfiend]

Better be nice on their forums. (Warning Kotaku link.

a Bioware fan has been temporarily halted from playing his copy of Dragon Age II after copping a forum suspension. Which is weird since, you know, Dragon Age II is a singleplayer game.

According to a post on the Bioware forums, user v_ware had his account suspended for a period of 72 hours for allegedly saying "Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?".

But restricting access to a singleplayer, offline game, even in an incidental situation like this, is a problem. EA's consolidation of online accounts can be a good thing in some cases (I appreciate the convenience of EA Sports games knowing who I am because of my gamertag), but in cases like this, it's also a cause for concern.

I am not a fan of this. Really at all.

[Sjofn]

I turned down from hard because of that stunlock problem, because as a mage I have like no fortitude at all (yes! My second playthrough is a mage! I'm as surprised as anyone.) and I get caught in that feedback loop really easily.

I'm using Merril more this time as I barely let her out of her box the first time through. Practically every banter I've heard with her so far as been solid gold. I also really like Carver, possibly because he reminds me a little of one of my sisters ... she has the whole WAAAH MIDDLE CHILD thing, and he pretty much does too. She hasn't been forced to give a shit about templars and crap because I can kill people with my mind, at least.

[Ingmar]

Now that I actually read the manual I think, maybe I should have done that earlier. For people who are too lazy, here are the manual descriptions of the conversation icons:

Wings with halo: helpful or particularly nice
olive branch: agreeable/tactful
comedy mask: wry/humorous/witty
diamond: charming
fist: aggressive
judge's gavel: direct/rude
crossed swords: will actually attack/kill someone as part of the conversation
head: invite a companion to talk instead of you
heart: flirt/romance
heart with crack: permanently shut down romance
check: agree/consent (to a quest usually)
X: disagree/refuse (to a quest usually)
triple curly line thing: choosing one of multiple exclusive options (in my experience what you say when you choose one of these tends to depend on what your dominant 'voice' is)
star: special choice only available because of previous decisions
falling coins: actual money will change hands as a result of this
upside down hand with crossed fingers: lie
?: normal question that doesn't advance the conversation

[kildorn]

Better be nice on their forums. (Warning Kotaku link.

a Bioware fan has been temporarily halted from playing his copy of Dragon Age II after copping a forum suspension. Which is weird since, you know, Dragon Age II is a singleplayer game.

According to a post on the Bioware forums, user v_ware had his account suspended for a period of 72 hours for allegedly saying "Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?".

But restricting access to a singleplayer, offline game, even in an incidental situation like this, is a problem. EA's consolidation of online accounts can be a good thing in some cases (I appreciate the convenience of EA Sports games knowing who I am because of my gamertag), but in cases like this, it's also a cause for concern.

I am not a fan of this. Really at all.

I'm curious what he actually posted. Because multiple people talk about selling their souls to EA without mods batting an eye, but the post that got him suspended was moderated.

But overall, I'm not particularly against a company saying if you decide to break our rules, you get suspended from playing part of our game. The only really valid complaint I see is that he can't even play DLC-less because he bought direct from EA, and the account key he needs to unlock the game is tied to the suspended account.

If he'd cussed them out with a steam version, he'd be happily playing without DLC for three days (or access to DLC saves for obvious reasons)

I always figured there were consequences for being a ranting and raving lunatic customer if you do it in a store, why not if you do it on the company's forums?

[Merusk]

Because Target doesn't have the right to come to my house and take back my blinds, clothes or kid's toys when I bitch about them.  Software has managed to wedge itself into this nebulous place where they hold the rights to the goods you exchanged money for.  I'm also not a fan.

[Kitsune]

Because Target doesn't have the right to come to my house and take back my blinds, clothes or kid's toys when I bitch about them.  Software has managed to wedge itself into this nebulous place where they hold the rights to the goods you exchanged money for.  I'm also not a fan.

This.

[kildorn]

Target can discontinue any ongoing agreements if you break their rules. Be it their cards, any support contracts specifically with them, or whatnot.

You can also be assessed immediate financial penalties instead. I eagerly await instead of getting your software locked out, the cops issue you a $100 ticket for disorderly conduct on a message board :P

We license content. This means it's unwise to walk up to the licensor and be a douchebag. In this guy's case, it actually looks like the issue is EA's store not letting him download the single player game portion he cannot be locked out of (once installed), but I have no issues with suspension from your DLC for breaking the rules.

[Ingmar]

If I am reading this right what happened is not "he had the game installed, acted badly, then lost access to the game" but rather "he had not yet downloaded the game, acted badly, and lost access to his download for 3 days because it used the same account."

There's something of a gulf there in terms of intrusiveness, and while I don't think the second situation is great myself, the first would be much worse and that seems to be what people are (incorrectly?) claiming happened. It seems like a better system to avoid #2 would be to have your actual game account and forum accounts simply associated rather than identical, so one can pull from the other but you don't shut one down when the other one disappears necessarily.

On the other hand part of me is always pretty happy when some guy gets to suffer for being a douche on a message board.

[tmp]

I'm curious what he actually posted. Because multiple people talk about selling their souls to EA without mods batting an eye, but the post that got him suspended was moderated.

Part of the issue is that's what he posted and what got him banned. Selective and uneven treatment is going to be norm when human factor is involved -- in this case a forum moderator who may just have a crabby day or read one too many bitter posts before running into one that breaks his/her back.

Which is also why tying that to your ability to play games for which you paid for is pretty bad idea.

[kildorn]

I'm curious what he actually posted. Because multiple people talk about selling their souls to EA without mods batting an eye, but the post that got him suspended was moderated.

Part of the issue is that's what he posted and what got him banned. Selective and uneven treatment is going to be norm when human factor is involved -- in this case a forum moderator who may just have a crabby day or read one too many bitter posts before running into one that breaks his/her back.

Which is also why tying that to your ability to play games for which you paid for is pretty bad idea.

My personal issue is EA folks seem to be dancing around "no, that's not what he posted  ", which makes me wish someone in EA legal would just clear the air and post what he actually said, and defend it as "yes, saying this on our forums results in a 72 hour timeout, and as it turns out that also disables your direct download links"

Apparently the timeout he got was via the report post button, and is policed by people other than the forum mods. But judging by the content of his other posts in the same thread he got suspended for, calling out Bioware for selling their souls != bannable offense.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I suppose there's no real reason to believe this guy about what the content of the modded-out post was. Has anyone ever NOT lied about why they were banned from something? http://whywasibanned.com/ comes to mind.

[tgr]

I'm just going to go with "well, that's awesome."

[tmp]

Yeah I suppose there's no real reason to believe this guy about what the content of the modded-out post was. Has anyone ever NOT lied about why they were banned from something? http://whywasibanned.com/ comes to mind.

Does it make any actual difference what he said? Banning people from playing game (single player to boot) because they said something on intrawebs forums feels like clownshoes on the principle alone.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I suppose there's no real reason to believe this guy about what the content of the modded-out post was. Has anyone ever NOT lied about why they were banned from something? http://whywasibanned.com/ comes to mind.

Does it make any actual difference what he said? Banning people from playing game (single player to boot) because they said something on intrawebs forums feels like clownshoes on the principle alone.

Again, it sounds like that's not exactly what happened. If he had already had the game installed, he could have played it (albeit without the DLC that you have to authenticate for). What he couldn't do was *download* the game through the EA Installer because it apparently uses the same account as the forums. I don't think it is an intended consequence, and I would sort of expect them to change it if there's enough of a brouhaha over this for someone important to notice it.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but that's what it sounds like happened to me anyway. More reason to not use the EA Downloader POS thing anyway, as if anyone needed more reason.

[caladein]

The EADM is actually pretty good these days.  That said, they really do need to unlink EA Community actions from store access which is a silly policy.  I'm pretty sure Valve is able to ban people only on say, Community or VAC without affecting the rest of their services.

[Merusk]

Goddamn, Sjofn.. you're right.  That was a series of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make in an RPG. No clear path there. I let Anders live this play-through but I'll be returning to the save right before it.

[rk47]

Game was mediocre until midway. They try to set you up with all those tiny little issues that somehow piled up in mid game consequences, but I really lost track of it all due to the massive amount of combat content and side quests.

I had to often pause for a while to remember what / who certain people are talking about in latter chapters.
'I killed Mr X ? REALLY? Wait...Oh, yeah. I remember now! The one surrounded by 3 dozen templar outside of town right?'

[tmp]

Again, it sounds like that's not exactly what happened. If he had already had the game installed, he could have played it (albeit without the DLC that you have to authenticate for). What he couldn't do was *download* the game through the EA Installer because it apparently uses the same account as the forums. I don't think it is an intended consequence, and I would sort of expect them to change it if there's enough of a brouhaha over this for someone important to notice it.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but that's what it sounds like happened to me anyway. More reason to not use the EA Downloader POS thing anyway, as if anyone needed more reason.

As far as i understand it that's part of it; he also cannot continue his existing DAO playthroughs because these carry data from the DLC, and without being logged on the DLC is threated as unauthorized. Other games may also be affected, not sure since i was just skimming the reports.

On topic: observation from the game so far. How do you tell a fight is imminent in recent BioWare rpg?
answer: the disguised corridor you're in widens into a small opening.

It's like these covers from ME2 all over again, minus the covers...

[caladein]

I don't see why he wouldn't be able to use his saves with DLC.  Once it's been authorized it will still work even if you don't have any connection to the servers at all.

[kildorn]

I don't see why he wouldn't be able to use his saves with DLC.  Once it's been authorized it will still work even if you don't have any connection to the servers at all.

This was not true in DA:O, I'm not sure about DA2. In DA:O if you didn't log in, you couldn't load your DLC enabled saves.

fake-edit: just tried, if I log out of my account and restart DA2, I can play DLC enabled saves. It still says my game is linked to X EA account, which has it enabled.

Now, I don't know if a suspension stops that, but EA's prior statements (years ago) implied that you could still play your game if banned/suspended.

[kildorn]

So it's not up on Kotaku or anywhere else yet, but the official response is out.

The user WAS locked out of his entire EA account (so no enabling DLC, no downloading DA2 from EADM) because someone suspended the wrong account (not his DA2 access, but his entire EA account), and they switched the suspension to as intended (their stated policy: suspension doesn't disable your game)

[Kitsune]

Yeah, even though the moderator's first answer was basically 'you broke the rules, tough', now they're saying it was a glitch that he got banned.  But more to the point, other people have reported being unable to load saves for EA games when they were offline, so apparently if you're totally cut off from their server you can have some problems even playing your game.

[Furiously]

From reading the X-box live forums I would have figured he called them all rascist terms and threatened to kill them via a email...

[FatuousTwat]

So apparently after Bioware explicitly claiming that DA2 will not install SecuROM... It will install SecuROM.


Source site is down: http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/content.php?769-Evaluation-Report-Dragon-Age-2

But this site sums it up well: http://vividgamer.com/2011/03/10/ea-fails-to-disclose-securom-in-dragon-age-ii/

[tgr]

Shocking.

[Sjofn]

Goddamn, Sjofn.. you're right.  That was a series of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make in an RPG. No clear path there. I let Anders live this play-through but I'll be returning to the save right before it.

[caladein]

I don't see why he wouldn't be able to use his saves with DLC.  Once it's been authorized it will still work even if you don't have any connection to the servers at all.

This was not true in DA:O, I'm not sure about DA2. In DA:O if you didn't log in, you couldn't load your DLC enabled saves.

fake-edit: just tried, if I log out of my account and restart DA2, I can play DLC enabled saves. It still says my game is linked to X EA account, which has it enabled.

Now, I don't know if a suspension stops that, but EA's prior statements (years ago) implied that you could still play your game if banned/suspended.

It works the same way as in DA1/ME2: as long as you've authorized that DLC once before (which you must have to have had a save with it, unless you're transferring it from another install) you never have to log in again.  I've had the misfortune of testing out that feature with both games a number of times when my Internet was toast.

My initial qualification about that is that I have no idea if a suspended account actively blocks anything instead of just returning a "cannot sign-in"-type message.

E: Grammar.

[rk47]

OK game over. The End. That's it. I'm outta this game. Fuckit. Let's hope Mass Effect 3 is better.

[Paelos]

So apparently after Bioware explicitly claiming that DA2 will not install SecuROM... It will install SecuROM.


Source site is down: http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/content.php?769-Evaluation-Report-Dragon-Age-2

But this site sums it up well: http://vividgamer.com/2011/03/10/ea-fails-to-disclose-securom-in-dragon-age-ii/

Wow. That's a game-breaker for me. Does the Steam version have it? If not, I don't care as much.

[Sjofn]

DA:O I could play my DLC without being logged in. In fact, I got bugged in such a way that I had to play not logged in, as the servers wouldn't recognise my DLC as being mine.  

Not sure what the game did to make you hate it so much, rk47, but I hope ME3 is good too. :P


EDIT: Also, you know what sucks?