Review Why DA: Awakening Is Not Terrible

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age

<p>Gameplay Monthly were reviewing <a href="http://www.gameplaymonthly.com/reviewed-dragon-age-origins-awakening/" target="_blank">Dragon Age: Awakening</a> and concluded that it's not (completely) terrible. They just found it not very good, hence the score of C-.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dragon Age: Origins could be easy as hell if you know what you were doing and how to min/max. But this was more a reward to mastering an otherwise very punishing game. It was surprisingly easy to get a party wipe even on normal if you simply didn&rsquo;t pay attention. Awakening? Not so much. Unless you really don&rsquo;t know how to play the game and use your now vast abilities, the game is pathetically easy, allowing you to solo on the highest difficulty without much trouble. The problem comes from many places. The new talents, spells, specializations and skills are needlessly broken, allowing any character, regardless of class, to very easily become an insta-death-dealing, nigh unhittable, damage resistant, spell resistant avatar of doom. The class separation has become pathetic. You can plug and play as you want, in large part. Simply put, balance went completely out the window when determining the new abilities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#15015">RPGWatch</a></p>

 

[M_I_C_K_E_Y_M_O_U_S_E]

A lot of RPGs can be difficult if you're just messing around and not really trying to do it right. Or in the case of DAO not playing it popamole with a solid shit ton full of cheap herbalism, a target dummy party member and three mages full of aoes like fireball and nightmare. It becomes hillariously easy long before Awakening.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Herp if you are unable to read descriptions the game can be hard derp

Crossing the street could be easy as hell if you know what you were doing and how to left/right. But this was more a reward to mastering an otherwise very punishing routine. It was surprisingly easy to get your whole family run down even on sundays if you simply didn’t pay attention. Monday mornings? Not so much. Unless you really don’t know how to cross the street and use your now vast abilities, the crossing is pathetically easy, allowing you to solo on rush hour without much trouble. The problem comes from many places. The new talents, spells, specializations and skills are needlessly broken, allowing any person, regardless of driver's permit, to very easily become an insta-death-dealing, nigh unhittable, damage resistant, spell resistant avatar of doom. The permit separation has become pathetic. You can sit and drive as you want, in large part. Simply put, balance went completely out the window when determining the new abilities.

 

[Donkey Balls]

DA:O is a relatively challenging game if you play with only one mage (or none at all). The mages are ridiculously overpowered.

 

[Mister Arkham]

God, the guy's talking about it like it's a fucking MMO.

 

[Monocause]

What? The review is quite decent and spot on.

 

[GarfunkeL]

God, the guy's talking about it like it's a fucking MMO.

What, it deserves it. Sign-posts handing out quests? CHECK. Quest-objects spawning only after you get handed the quest? CHECK. WoW-style combat? CHECK.

 

[Azarkon]

Bioware is getting the flak that it deserves for once. Awakening is a sorry excuse for an expansion and even manages to make the original game appear worse.

Now we just need this to be reflected in the sales and for the execs to say, "hmm, well we must've done something wrong here" and not "PC RPGs are a dead end. More console games PLZ"...

 

[Rhalle]

The instant they revealed the "Origins" subtitle it was crystal clear exactly what DA was going to be, and that EA had taken a pet project for PC and turned it into an experiment in which they tried to see how much crappy DLC they could get away with.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Normally I would laugh at the idea that DA had any kind of balance in the first place, but jesus fucking christ look at this:

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Battlemage
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Draining_Aura
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Stoic

This is the first specialization I looked at. Skill 1 creates an aura that drains health from enemies in exchange for mana. Skill 3 makes it so if an enemy damages you, you gain mana back. The rate of mana gain from the damage is less then the rate of mana lost from healing (which also deals damage), so all you have to do is activate those and then leave the computer while your invincible mage drains everyones health while regenning his own health and mana. The more enemies in the area the faster you regain health whenever they damage you.

The other specializations don't appear to be much weaker, though there is nothing else that is literally invulnerable straight out of the box.

 

[CraigCWB]

This has always been part of the Bioware formula. By the time the game is done the player and his/her cohorts have to be gods. Bioware used to blame it on the D&D rules. The problem happens sooner and is more egregious in DA than in their older D&D based games so I'm guessing that in actuality the D&D rules served to limit the degree to which they could supercharge the player during the course of the game.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe the Bioware folks think they actually make hard games. If you look at how the prefab companions are skilled up when you first acquire them, it's pretty obvious that the Bioware designers have no idea how their game system actually works.

 

[Donkey Balls]

Maybe the Bioware folks think they actually make hard games.

Yes.

The difficulty was intentionally increased simply because so many players found our games too easy. And they were right. This has certainly confused people who were expecting a BioWare game to be a cakewalk, but I think that, ultimately, the game provides a good challenge to both new and veteran gamers. They just have to ignore what they think a BioWare game is or should be, and concentrate on the game that is in front of them. Learn the game, use pause, use tactics, and don't get your man-feelings hurt when you have to dial it down to Easy once in a while. It took me some time to learn that if I'm reloading a fight a few times, which traditionally would have meant the game was too hard, that meant the game was just right.

 

[Black Cat]

"God, the guy's talking about it like it's a fucking MMO."
"What, it deserves it. Sign-posts handing out quests? CHECK. Quest-objects spawning only after you get handed the quest? CHECK. WoW-style combat? CHECK."

While the interface and some elements can be seen as taken straight out of a mumorpoger the gameplay in Dragon Age is nothing like those.

All MMO thingies i have played have combat that depends heavily on finding the one pattern that works best for the mob, dungeon, or boss and then executing it with perfect timing to both make it a non issue and maximize your gain in a given time, and balance this by overpowering everything and its aunt. Dragon Age has nothing of it. Most MMO stuffies i have played are highly dependant on agro control, agro ranges, and how are the mob packs defined. Dragon Age has nothing of it, other than maybe a little bit of agro control that's nothing, at all, like it works in a MMO. And there's no baiting, mobs do not redirect agro to healers, there are no stances, and mob packs aren't really made up of enemies with diferent behaviour patterns and resistances. Also, there's no openess, meaning you don't need to plan and time your battles to go through an area in such a way enemies with a big agro range do not respawn behind you while your pet is tanking that big ass spider and screw your high level character in two hits for all the exp she gained in the last three hours of grinding. And screwing up your build doesn't mean lossing all your friends, never getting invited to another raid, and being kicked out of your guild next time they reach the member limit.

The only thing Dragon Age, regardless of its relative quality, has in common with mumorpogers is that it has cooldowns and something kind of like agro that works in a totally different way.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Its a single player MMO that has to be dumbed down enough for you to control 4 separate characters in semi-realtime. Then it has to be dumbed down again so consoletards can beat the entire thing without dieing. lol, who am I kidding, they still didn't manage to dumb it down enough for that.

From what I have heard though, the Dragon Age aggro system is 90% the same thing as WoW has, and consequentially the other 90% of MMOs that want to be WoW have almost the same thing.

Also:

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, actually the combat is worse than WoWs because you have to control 4 characters, though the AI planning helps out there. The aggro is a simplified version of WoW's and the usage of timer-cooldowns is stolen straight from there. And yes, I know WoW didn't invent either concept.

Furthermore, on normal and hard you can defeat all enemies by spamming the same abilities over and over again. You go through a level clearing trash and then you have to face a boss which is the only place where you need to think at all. Positioning doesn't matter except for the few scripted locations where there are environmental issues.

Granted, I have only went through all the Origins, the linear part and the village&castle-mission before quitting deep in Herp Derp Roads so maybe it improved in later game though I didn't get that impression from other Codexers.

So calling DA:O mmorpg-lite is actually an insult to mmo's since its dumbed down in those aspects too

 

[Angthoron]

Dragon Age is far worse than WoW. Why? Well, let's see.

First of all, if we're talking WoW, there's a huge world with giant zones, a lot of exploration in the zones to do, and professions to support this exploration. In Dragon Age? Hm, well, I recall some Deus Ex locations being larger. That's what, ten years ago now?

Second, we have the quality of writing. Early WoW is shit writing quality. First expansion - mixed bag. Third expansion - fairly decent. Some quests are actually worth reading and following the events of. In Dragon Age, in all honesty, I felt like clicking through all the text. The story isn't interesting, there's no interesting side-quests, there's no characters that I can bother following, the writing is poor. Pretty much original WoW.

Thirdly is the issue of graphics. WoW is cartoony but relatively attractive, the designers used a bit of psychology in regards to colours and shapes to use for world and actors. It serves the purpose, it's updated, it looks alright. Sometimes even great. DA? Well. It's not photorealism, and it's not cartoonish. It's straight in the middle of Uncanny Valley. Those faces, what the hell is wrong with them? Seriously, there were more likeable 3D faces in the times of late 90ties. Yes, it's high-tech, you can see they worked on the polygon count and all that, but it doesn't help that it looks fucking ugly. If we take MMOs with realism slant, Lord of the Rings Online looks way better and the models are actually more towards likeable than towards revolting; if we take single-player, recently, Risen showed a beautiful game environment and even the models were manageable to look at.

And yet the mighty BioWare and its mighty overlord EA give us this? Whoa.

Oh, and regarding difficulty and tactics, WoW is miles ahead in that as well. It does seem to be made into a consoletard popamole though, but for an idiot mulling around it's utterly unforgiving.

On top of all that, there are actual people playing alongside unlike DA, and even utter retards still make it more entertaining than the incredible blandness of DA.


Amusing really. If someone told me that I'd be saying that an MMO is better than a single-player game from BioWare about a decade ago I'd probably think the person is a moron. At the time, BioWare formula was still new, and so it was pretty appealing, and accessable. Today, however, it's pretty much like looking at a shelf of Mexican soap opera - same damn thing in every one of those lil' boxes.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

All MMO thingies i have played have combat that depends heavily on finding the one pattern that works best for the mob, dungeon, or boss and then executing it with perfect timing to both make it a non issue and maximize your gain in a given time, and balance this by overpowering everything and its aunt. Dragon Age has nothing of it.

Did we play the same game? In the game I played, all enemies were pretty much handled with the same tactics, mainly because the mages had so few spells to choose among. All the enemies, except for some spidersl, were either archers, tanks or mages, no matter how they looked

Most MMO stuffies i have played are highly dependant on agro control, agro ranges, and how are the mob packs defined. Dragon Age has nothing of it, other than maybe a little bit of agro control that's nothing, at all, like it works in a MMO. And there's no baiting, mobs do not redirect agro to healers, there are no stances, and mob packs aren't really made up of enemies with diferent behaviour patterns and resistances. Also, there's no openess, meaning you don't need to plan and time your battles to go through an area in such a way enemies with a big agro range do not respawn behind you while your pet is tanking that big ass spider and screw your high level character in two hits for all the exp she gained in the last three hours of grinding.

So... What you are saying is that Dragon age is worse than an MMO? Because all those tactics you mentioned sounded like they needed a minimum of forethought and planning, and all would be adding tactical depth to DA if they were implemented.

So in short, DA is an offline MMO with the disadvantages of offline games and MMOs and the advantages of none?

 

[Black Cat]

"So... What you are saying is that Dragon age is worse than an MMO?"

Indeed. Both the quotes you, like, quoted were me defending MMOs and not me defending Dragon Age. I actually like mumorpogers, or at least some of them, and combat in Dragon Age is pretty simple when compared to how things can go in some MMO games, in particular if you take in consideration Dragon Age uses a full party and combat tactics, at times, are simpler than soloing an instance with a pet class in your run of the mill korean MMO.

"In the game I played, all enemies were pretty much handled with the same tactics, mainly because the mages had so few spells to choose among."

Yup. In most MMO games i have played you do that and you die, period. They have enemies that absorb or reflect certain kind of attacks back at the caster's party, enemies that go straight for the healer, healing spells that raise agro against the healer casting them, mobs that charge straight at the character with less armor or HP, etc. Some have mobs that can carry over their agro to another target, like when the healer does her thing to the tank and then all those enemies who were attacking the tank but whom the tank wasn't attacking back redirect their agro, as high as it was for the tank, now to the healer, or when a mob kills a summoner's pet and instead of reseting their agro to the next higher all the mobs who were attacking the now dead pet redirect agro straight to the owner, who now is kind of defenseless. And so on, and so on, and so on. Dragon Age does nothing of that.

In Dragon Age you open a door and the mobs either rush you or you rush them. In any MMO you fight a room full of monsters at the same time and you are dead, party or no party. MMO combat looks easy because every player is exploiting the AI by baiting, memorizing agro ranges and behaviour patterns, memorizing the skill cast order more effective against each monster type in each possible situation, learning how to time the skills to stun lock the mobs, reading really long and detailed wikis and forum guides, min/maxing equipment and point distribution, following step by step guides to maximise their chosen class potential, and bringing a bunch of level 80 friends to a level 20 dungeon. And even then many times someone screws up and is party wipe time.

Regardless of one liking or not Dragon Age, it must be said the combat on it is nothing like that. In the begining it actually seems to promise that kind of stuff, but then instead of keeping the complexity progressing further and further it hits a flat line around the first town you visit after the big battle thing and it never tries to do anything cool or challenging with the things it stole from MMOs and the fact you have absolute control, up to timing and positioning and everything else, over four diferent characters with potentially very diferent skillsets.

And let's not even mention games with open warfare between player made guilds and clans for territory and castles and stuff, with massive battles and sieges with pretty huge armies made of nothing but min/maxed powergamers with high tier equipment and lots of planning beforehand, siege engines, etc. There is nothing bad, in itself, with MMO combat. It allows for things much cooler than, say, the much praised here Infinity Engine games, as they are systems built from the ground up around the idea of continuous real time character based combat.

There is nothing in an out of itself casual about the idea, it can be as easily used for a casual single player game or a more casual friendly MMO like WoW or for much more involved games, both offline and online. Like, try to kill a noob bear in Mabinogi without understanding how to time the diferent attacks to stun lock it and cancel its attacks before they hit you and watch as a noob town mob uses an opening in your timing to stun lock you and mauls you to death.

"So in short, DA is an offline MMO with the disadvantages of offline games and MMOs and the advantages of none?"

Something like that, but add over-casualized to it. x3