What did you hate about Dragon Age: Origins?

[commie]

Probably too tedious to bother with, fixing all the encounters in the game. Plus just randomly deleting stuff might break scripts to advance the plot.

Maybe one day I'll learn enough to test out my theory using the editor. Strangely, everything is still 'read only' from the main modules though.

You need to check resources out so they're not read only - or make sure art assets don't have the read-only file flag on them.

haven't figured out how to kill off the mobs, which are pretty much hand placed and not spawned, making it even more criminal that they exist in the first place: hand placed should ALWAYS trump random, spawned encounters!

Change the script associated with the area in the property inspector. The random encounter areas are reused, so you can't just handplace monsters unless you want a "random" encounter with already defeated monsters.

Could possibly even still have stuff added by others through a PRCSCR - which would be harder to get rid of since you have no real control over that.

Thanks man. While changing encounters does indeed seem too much trouble, I think it's possible enough to kill off enough filler to make the game not only playable but even replayable(if you wanted to). That would be my first focus, and see what can happen from there. To have a trash mob killing mod gleefully grabbed by suffering players would be quite an achievement for me

 

[Felix]

UI
Graphics
Stupid amount of blood
Filler
Combat
Npc
Shameless DLC dialogues
VA
Sound
Ape hands

 

[Crooked Bee]

1. Encounter design = boring
2. Loot = boring
3. Too much filler combat

I didn't really mind anything else. Some quests were nice. NPCs, writing, dialogues, and whatever else would be okay by me if not for points 1-3. Point 3 made the game too boring for me to replay it even once, unfortunately.

 

[Topher]

My friend bought the game. I installed his copy got board and quit playing. Then I torrented my own copy just to try it out again and guess what, I got board and stopped playing. On of these days I'm going to give it another go just to play the origin stories.

 

[Jaesun]

My friend bought the game. I installed his copy got board and quit playing. Then I torrented my own copy just to try it out again and guess what, I got board and stopped playing. On of these days I'm going to give it another go just to play the origin stories.

To be honest, just read an LP. The LP is far more entertaining that actually playing it.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Too much filler combat, all with a bajillion darkspawn and very little else.

Being attacked by said darkspawn every time you go anywhere.

Brown and grey everywhere, like a "next-generation" TV game.

And as with almost all new games, taking some content out of the game and then selling it back to us as DLC for extra moneys

 

[Clockwork Knight]

My friend bought the game. I installed his copy got board and quit playing. Then I torrented my own copy just to try it out again and guess what, I got board and stopped playing. On of these days I'm going to give it another go just to play the origin stories.

The board game looks p. sweet, dunno why you'd get board with it so fast

/nazi

 

[DarthBehemoth]

I liked
- The Landsmeet (actually felt like I was playing an RPG)
- The Origins (The only time the writing was good)
- The companions (Yes even Alistair!)

I Disliked
- The long conversations
- The combat (Conversation > Combat > Conversation > Combat....)
- The Darkspawn

 

[racofer]

That's it guise I'm uninstalling this turd.

Tried playing it once again but it's downright impossible to get any sort of enjoyment out of it. Time to play some more Civ4 to fill in my free time.

 

[cremo]

Worst 3 things for me:

1. bad camera and control of party, weak combat system.
The isometric camera is too near to the player to be usefull.. you simply can't see enough map.. also moving characters this way is only viable with pause combat - still being clumsy - while when wondering around the maps you are sticked to play like tomb rider with 3 bots in following mode.
Combat system is too similar to a bad mmorpg with no strategical tactic aside using the same combos you are provided over and over: you can't even try to block a doorway with your characters since enemies will simply "push them away".


2. graphic style and itemization too much manga-influenced, with flashing swords and final fantasy like armors/weapons all'over the place.. I was so much more in love with old western rpgs graphics like those you could find in ad&d publishings and in games like baldur's gate or, more recently, TOEE. I like magic equipment to be rare & special (kinda like in bg1), not it to be a diablo clone where you get flaming ninja swords from lvl 1.

3. Simplicity of areas: for me, it would have been better to have 20% of the actual areas but with a more complex design; a small town like beregost looks like a metropolis in comparison to ferelden's capital, which is more like tristram from diablo 1. I want to ahve maps that, sometime, have like 90% of locations that are totally secondary (with, for example, townsfolk houses where you can robb stuff and get minor quests) and also have the sense of "freedom of movement" i had in a game like bg1 where there were plenty of maps you didn't need to explore to finish the game.. it was just a wilderness you could explore, maybe in order to complete a sidequest.. instead in DAOO sidequests are usually done alongside mainquests, often in the exact same location of the same area.


Those are the main issues.. list could go on and on (with things like disappearing corpses, immature dialogues and uninteresting npcs) since the only things i liked were origins (a sort of development of TOEE opening vignettes imho) and the lore (i liked the approach they used with the 3 different races, still mantaining the main cliches while introducing a setting that made interesting the interactions between races imho).

 

[genci88]

Are there any mods to remove the filler combat?

For example, in System Shock 2 you could modify an ini file in order to remove the enemy respawns (really hate it when an enemy reappears a few minutes after I killed him). Also, in Fallout 1/2 you could max out the Outdoorsman skill (with the Fallout Character Editor)l in order to avoid random encounters.

Can you do something similar in DA? I know it would be cheating, but who gives a shit if it makes the game more bearable?

 

[aweigh]

seconding genci88 s question!

are there any mods to remove the filler combat or are there any other mods that one could say legitimately improve the game/

 

[Roguey]

are there any mods to remove the filler combat or are there any other mods that one could say legitimately improve the game/

The killallhostiles command.

The mods I used were the madd gift guide (tells you which gifts go to which companions), two spec Sten (without this he only gets one specialization instead of two like everyone else), the shaperate reward fix, the unobtainable item fix, and the Zevran dialogue fix.

 

[Ventidius]

seconding genci88 s question!

are there any mods to remove the filler combat or are there any other mods that one could say legitimately improve the game/

Slinks s3 RAVAge is kind of the SCS of DAO, and makes fights generally less trash-y and more tactical, which overall also makes the game better: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/1406/

Origins Faster Combat also helps by speeding things up: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/2577/

If you just want to skip fights either do what Roguey says or get this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/2672/

Also, s3 RAVAge is highly customizable:

This mod makes the game anywhere from marginally to significantly more difficult, depending on the settings you choose. Almost all aspects of RAVAge are customizable through the DragonAge.ini settings, allowing you to tailor the mod to your preferences.

The default settings should be quite a bit more difficult than a vanilla playthrough, with occasional encounters of exceptional difficulty, and it should offer a fair amount of custom items on par with and often better than those already available throughout the course of a standard game.
This increased difficulty is recommended to achieve an overall feeling of a more "advanced" playthrough. When combined with the extra experience gained from additional enemy encounters, as well as the better items you will find, the game will be harder but offer commensurately better rewards.

 

[aweigh]

I dont think Ill be resuming DAO. There just isnt enough meat on the game mechanics and systems for me.

 

[aweigh]

i tried playing Dragon Age Origins to tide me over until April 8th but - and i cant believe im about to say this - PoEs systems have spoiled me. I couldnt get into DAOs incredibly simple game play specifically because I had PoE on the brain.

well that plus the simple fact that DAO barely has shit to configure: only 3 classes and each class has class-specific skill trees that amount only towards whether the warrior will kill bosses/mages or whether he will draw aggro; whether the rougue will deal crits via dual-wielding or whether the rogue will deal crits via bows.

only the mage class offers a semblance of versatility making the optimal party 1 tank (because of the aggro system) and 3 mages (and I type that without a hint of hyperbole). i suppose one can simply argue that its not that PoE features a deep and complicated system (some could argue that it does) but that in comparison to DAO it becomes considerably heightened.

some peeps recommended DAO in the New Dragon Age Game thread and i have to say: what the fuck.

I suppose if I were to have played it during the time frame it came out (2009-2010) I might have enjoyed it but then again unlike a lot of posters here I am rarely starved for RPGs because I play any RPG that is good/any RPG that I find enjoyable which means that during that supposed Great Depression (2004-2011) I had twice the amount of options available to me (JRPGs + CRPGS).

:humblebrag:

Anyway I want to conclude by saying that Final Fantasy 12 - a RTwP JRPG that came out same year as DAO and coincidentally featured options for scripting companions during combat - not only did the companion scripts well enough but it did everything else better: better combat with a wider array of choices that stem from FF12s increased cast of available classes via its original license board system.

It also had much better encounter design and much better itemization.

Why do I bring up FF12 well because DA: Origins is a sub-par RPG that received praise it did not merit from posters here specifically because those posters were too bigoted to play non-Western games.

Also the entire DAO story can be summed up with FIGHT THE MONSTERS!

TLDR: DAO is a mediocre (I might go as far as to call it below-average) game and its main purpose is highlighting how NOT to do a RTwP game. (It also makes PoE look like a masterpiece of game design).

 

[Master]

No combat log.
Inventory limit, having to "destroy" items.
Trading; forest elves trading, selling and buying in a forest. My clan brothers and sisters charging me money for items - a disgrace.
Alistairs voice acting (english).
You cant cue actions like in Nwn and Kotor.

 

[mbv123]

It's so bland and generic. The story is just your boring garbage "Ancient Evil awakens" that Bioware always do, enemies look like LOTR rejects, companions are insufferable cunts (you know they're shit when the dog is the best character). All locations are boring shit and the game loves throwing trash mobs at you. Ugly armor and weapon designs. Lore is so forgettable that you just don't give a shit about any of it. Only good part were the origin stories in prologue but the rest of the game (90% of it) is just bad and dull.

 

[Tehdagah]

Anyway I want to conclude by saying that Final Fantasy 12 - a RTwP JRPG that came out same year as DAO and coincidentally featured options for scripting companions during combat - not only did the companion scripts well enough but it did everything else better: better combat with a wider array of choices that stem from FF12s increased cast of available classes via its original license board system.

It also had much better encounter design and much better itemization.

Why do I bring up FF12 well because DA: Origins is a sub-par RPG that received praise it did not merit from posters here specifically because those posters were too bigoted to play non-Western games.

I feel like I'm living in a different world when I see people praising FF12.

Combat, encounter design, itemization... Final Fantasy 12? These things don't match.

 

[aweigh]

mostly in comparison to DAO. i merely wanted to point out that there are DAO defenders who out of bigotry refuse to play a superior and similar game from the same year.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I'll show you the good things about Dragon Age: Origins. Would you like to take a look? My wares are in a house nearby

 

[Lhynn]

 

[Roguey]

mostly in comparison to DAO. i merely wanted to point out that there are DAO defenders who out of bigotry refuse to play a superior and similar game from the same year.

DA:O has C&C and far less of FF's dandy nonsense (admittedly it does have some).

 

[aweigh]

c&c whats that

EDIT: the problem with c&C (aside from the fact that the term is essentially meaningless) is that I have to care about the game world and the game mechanics in order for it to matter.

- it is impossible to care about mutually story states in DAO because the story is offensively mediocre
- it is impossible to care about different builds or ways in which you can utilize the mechanical systems (spells skills etc) for conflict resolution since there is none of that

an example of the first type of c&c (and the most common one) done well: Age of Decadence.

an example of the second type of c&c (most codexers dont even realize this is what theyre referring to) done well: Arcanum and how you could exploit things like game world schedueles by breaking into an NPCs house and stealing an item in order to complete an objective alternatively (or because couldnt) do it via combat or by talking; or good ole Fallout (1 or 2) and instances where you could do thins like poison that mafia don or kill Cassidey with heart pills.

the first type of C and C is just adventure gaming while the 2nd type is the RPG part.

 

[Delterius]

Anyway I want to conclude by saying that Final Fantasy 12 - a RTwP JRPG that came out same year as DAO and coincidentally featured options for scripting companions during combat - not only did the companion scripts well enough but it did everything else better: better combat with a wider array of choices that stem from FF12s increased cast of available classes via its original license board system.

love ff12 for its story but it had no party positioning, no classes (everyone could unlock everything in the license board and they did) and 3 member parties

so yeaahhh not really aweigh