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Game News The Dragon Age Awakening Must Have List

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age

IGN compiled a list with <a href="http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/106/1062883p1.html">10 very important features</a> the upcoming expansion pack for Dragon Age just has to have.
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<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;"><b>Tone down the mages' powers.</b>
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In Origins, players are constantly hearing that magic users wield too much power. Whether it's the paranoia of the templars or the seemingly unfounded fears of the peasantry, mages are portrayed as walking nuclear bombs– a situation that only gets worse toward the end of the game. You can understand why: mages always hit their targets with their staffs, and as they gain more levels, they cause lots more damage. Their area of effect spells are brutal against most enemies, so it's possible to weaken or destroy almost any threat against your party. Worst of all, these wizards can beat the Arch-demon in half the time that it takes other classes because of their ranged advantages and abilities.
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If these characters aren't controlled, they will become gods by the time they reach the expansion pack's level cap. They'll be able to smite anything in their path without actually needing the help of a party. I'm not saying they need to be totally nerfed to balance the three classes, but there has to be some kind of limitation placed on mages. Slow down the refresh rate on certain abilities or limit the times and locations in which a player can use some of the most powerful spells. A few reasonable restrictions will ensure these spell casters won't fly through the expansion's content in half the time it takes the Warrior and Rogue classes. <p>
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Nerf the Mages!! That's really nothing new, there's always a crowd that wants to nerf Mages, that's not exclusive to DA. Interestingly those guys often don't play Mages themselves - because if they do Mages seem to be all puny and fragile and die way too easily plus are utterly useless. No wonder with all that thinking and strategies and other scienmajistic stuffies involved. So really, I will counter the mage nerfing argument with a citation of Volourn the Wise : sorry, but youa re dumb.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/96571-igns-dragon-age-origins-awakening-must-have-list.html">I do not read the Gamebanshee site</A>
 

Admiral jimbob

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It's absolutely, hilariously broken? 75-100% resistance to everything, able to wear the best armour and deal as much damage as a warrior, and still throw out the most powerful spells in the game

mmmmm
 

dragonfk

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I don't know the exact percentages that you speak of. But since both sustainable skills give you about 55% fatigue, plus additional percentages from items you can't throw other spells since you'll need mana for Shimmering Shield that burns your mana while it's active. Of course you can down massive amounts of mana lyrium potions, but you'll run out of them in some point of the game. I played Arcane Warrior/Healer and I found my mage much more efficient when he wasn't using his Arcane Warrior skills and instead concentrating on throwing spells. Have you tried playing AW by yourself? Ofcourse I played the game on Nightmare difficulty so if you've played on some other difficulty your experience could vary. :smug:
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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POOPOO MCBUMFACE said:
It's absolutely, hilariously broken? 75-100% resistance to everything, able to wear the best armour and deal as much damage as a warrior, and still throw out the most powerful spells in the game
mmmmm
Did you play one? Or do you belong to the aforementioned crowd?
It's not very likely that you're still going to fling a lot of powerful spells while having AW activated, with all the sustained abilities you'll need. But it is a powerful spec, that's true.

Meanwhile I don't see anyone whining that Templars are overpowered and need nerfing.
gamebanshee poster as reaction to the article said:
I love gamebanshee, but this is just silly. Anybody with a decent amount of strategic sense who plays Dragon Age can figure out that a dual wielding dex based templar warrior is far stronger than any other character. They are completely immune to mages, other than their slow, low dam staff attacks. They are miles ahead of any mage in power. Calls to tone down mages make no sense. Arm-chair quarterbacks have an obligation not to be rediculously wrong.

What I also don't see is any whining about rogues being overpowered. Hide in FUCKING PLAIN SIGHT seems to be perfectly balanced. r00fleomatic! When you duel Loghain, just HIPS, movearound him and unleash a momentum sneak atack barrage into his back, then run a few metres HIPS again, repeat. Poor Loghain, he never had a chance.

Ridiculous.
 

Malakal

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Cone of cold. Force field. Crushing prison. In case you never used those spells: cone of cold has freezes target for 1/2 cooldown time of another cone of cold = 2 mages can freeze target forever (tested, also works on targets immune to cold damage), force field = either enemy gone from battle, works on bosses or time for cooldwon all spels and heal/drink mana potions, crushing prison = instantl death for enemy mages, massive damage on bosses.

And those are just 3 examples of tactics I used. There are more, including horribly powerful (esp against bosses) hexes and spell combos.

And AW can get 100% damage resistance.
 

dragonfk

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Malakal said:
Cone of cold. Force field. Crushing prison. In case you never used those spells: cone of cold has freezes target for 1/2 cooldown time of another cone of cold = 2 mages can freeze target forever (tested, also works on targets immune to cold damage), force field = either enemy gone from battle, works on bosses or time for cooldwon all spels and heal/drink mana potions, crushing prison = instantl death for enemy mages, massive damage on bosses.

And those are just 3 examples of tactics I used. There are more, including horribly powerful (esp against bosses) hexes and spell combos.

And AW can get 100% damage resistance.

Majority of enemy mages also throw crushing prison on your mages, massive damage on bosses? Bullshit, on what difficulty? Newb? Cone of Cold was nerfed(its cooldown set much higher) in one of the patches. Force fields, okey, so it gves you about 10 sec of respite, it sure doesn't make mages overpowered. Please give some more examples, I'd gladly prove you wrong. Also you mention hexes, okey they are powerful but I'd like to point out that they don't have 100% chance of working. As far as bosses are concerned of course.
 

Admiral jimbob

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dragonfk said:
I don't know the exact percentages that you speak of. But since both sustainable skills give you about 55% fatigue, plus additional percentages from items you can't throw other spells since you'll need mana for Shimmering Shield that burns your mana while it's active. Of course you can down massive amounts of mana lyrium potions, but you'll run out of them in some point of the game. I played Arcane Warrior/Healer and I found my mage much more efficient when he wasn't using his Arcane Warrior skills and instead concentrating on throwing spells. Have you tried playing AW by yourself? Ofcourse I played the game on Nightmare difficulty so if you've played on some other difficulty your experience could vary. :smug:

By mid-endgame none of this is a problem; Dragonscale armour has enough fatigue regen/reduction to allow you to toss out spells freely even with combat magic and shimmering shield up, and you should easily have enough gold to afford the ingredients to make 99 Lyrium potions anyway.
 

dragonfk

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I will repeat my question: Have actually played Arcane Warrior or are you theorizing?
 

dragonfk

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On the highest difficulty?

Edit:
About the armour
Fatigue: 27.3%
so that gives you about 80% of fatigue. 1 Stamina regeneration in combat is good but not enough I think to outweigth fatigue penalty. Also are you positively sure that stamina regeneration gives you mana regeneration when you wear this armour on an Arcane Warrior?
 

Admiral jimbob

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201-interrogation-lg.jpg


Partly, and on the rare occasion I had mana problems all it took was a Lyrium potion or Blood Magic - the latter being a particularly handy option, given that with Shimmering Shield nobody can hurt you anyway. I ended up playing on Hard for most of the game, since I couldn't be bothered with the combat anymore, but it was a cakewalk once I had AW on Nightmare as well.

Also are you positively sure that stamina regeneration gives you mana regeneration when you wear this armour on an Arcane Warrior?

Yeah, it does - stamina is equivalent to mana for a mage, so it definitely gives the same bonuses. Also, I had nowhere near 80% fatigue - can't remember the exact figures or why, maybe I had some other item which lowered it? I only tended to activate SS once I was done casting, though.
 
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The game should really just skip to final final boss fight immediately if you decided to take blood mage + arcane warrior specializations. Then after you whipped his ass, a hidden boss fight with god or something.
 
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VentilatorOfDoom said:
Did you play one? Or do you belong to the aforementioned crowd?
It's not very likely that you're still going to fling a lot of powerful spells while having AW activated, with all the sustained abilities you'll need. But it is a powerful spec, that's true.

A faq I read mentions other spells than buffs aren't even necessary so it doesn't even matter
 
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With AV you can cast all the spells you want at the beginning of battle, then put on your sustained's (since they cost no magic to cast, they just reduce your max mana) and clean up the rest. If its a hard battle, go in with your some/most of your sustaineds already on, cast as you like and chug one of the hundreds of potions you carry in your pocket. Blood mage makes it even more ridiculous, as you cast from your health which is even more plentiful. Also, the Blood Magic AoE paralyze spell pretty much wins the game on its own.

That said, casting in general is just to mess around. If you have all your sustained's on and you have maxed spellpower the whole way, you just don't die. Its a real failure of a system where spellpower is the god stat that solves everything for the class. The only other stat that even helps at all is dex for hitting things regularly, but you hardly need much of it.
 

Volourn

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"Enemies need more creative tactics "

Cop out. This is true form every single game ever made. *yawn*


"Improve party AI during battle and exploration. "

Same as above.


"We need more of the Fade, but with definite restrictions"

This is just idiocy.



"Tone down the mages' powers"

Ignorance.


"Bring back characters from your past "

*shrug* From the no shit pile we have this.


"Make non-party members impact the story"

What a bufoon.


"Let players explore outside of Amaranthine as well "

It be nice, but hello, this is expansion pack. Don't be expectinf a full run of Feralden. Dumbass.



"Raise the stakes. Make certain events more important or let the plot change dramatically based on character choices "

STFU


"Have the sex scenes or don't have them, but get rid of this awkward, "let's not offend anyone" approach."

I actually agree with this to a point, but the guy comea across as a punk in this demand, making it really hard to.




In conclusion, I could come up with a list of 10 things that DA can fix/have in the expansion. It's not hard but this guy fails in almost every way.


FFS
 

Norfleet

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Messages
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I really don't see why this is an issue. Mages are not going to get any more powerful with level, due to how DA works: Once you buy a power, that's it. You have it, and there is nothing that will really make a significant increase in how much more it can do. Buying more Magic helps, but this will not increase your firepower all that much compared to how quickly enemies will become tougher. By the endgame, you pretty much have everything you'd want, and even if you could have every other power you didn't buy, it wouldn't help you, because you can still only cast one spell at a time.

Warriors, on the other hand, continue their slow but steady gain in endurance and firepower: They gain better equipment, which enables them to do more damage, and more hitpoints, which allows them to sustain combat longer. Mages, on the other hand, gain relatively little benefit from additional equipment, because equipment will not make a significant increase in their firepower: A naked mage does about as much damage as a fully equipped one. Therefore, if anything, continued level gain will tilt the balance MORE towards warriors, as mages have basically plateaued out. A level 30 mage will not differ greatly from a level 20 mage.

Besides, there's absolutely no reason why an arbitrary balance should be forced between those who can reshape reality with a thought and those who cannot. Mages are supposed to be scary. Otherwise why does anyone bother with that "Tower of Magi" business if they are simply equal to any other class?
 

Gay-Lussac

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Volourn said:
"Have the sex scenes or don't have them, but get rid of this awkward, "let's not offend anyone" approach."

I actually agree with this to a point, but the guy comea across as a punk in this demand, making it really hard to.

Bitch ass punks dissin' on my favorite developer
 
In My Safe Space
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Codex 2012
I think that DAA will be worthless if it won't include an option of raping blonde peasant girls.
 

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