Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[Dreaad]

Spoiler

Decorative hearts with grim dark armor. Kinda sad that NPC's are trapped in retardo armor just to preserve their ability to appear in imursive cut scenes.

 

[Menckenstein]

Have they confirmed the return of the awesome button?

 

[Rake]

Have they confirmed the return of the awesome button?

It never went away. It's one of the pillars of the franchise

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Spoiler

Looked better in DA2.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Looked better in DA2.

That's not hard to achive

 

[skyst]

https://twitter.com/TheBoyChris/status/408805839068086272

"Why can I hear a horse whinny?" "Because that creature is immune to your damage." "Oh... Ok. (What the hell...?)"

I hope they decided to abandon DA2's Nightmare-only sometimes-excessively-abstract immunities. Some were a bit too random, turning it into trial-and-error unintuitive memorization. Plus Nightmare was awful.

I found nightmare difficulty quite entertaining in DA2. The game experience did very little for me overall as an RPG fan but I was able to redeem my purchase by getting some fun out of creating fairly elablorate AI behaviors (I forget what buzz word Bio used for it) for the NPCs. Plus, I played as a 2h weapon fighter who would one shot any of my companions foolish enough to get near, which still frequently happened and was hilarious - though I hear melee weapon friendly fire was patched out of nightmare at a later date, a shame, really. A shit game overall and I probably enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons.

 

[DalekFlay]

I found nightmare difficulty quite entertaining in DA2. The game experience did very little for me overall as an RPG fan but I was able to redeem my purchase by getting some fun out of creating fairly elablorate AI behaviors (I forget what buzz word Bio used for it) for the NPCs. Plus, I played as a 2h weapon fighter who would one shot any of my companions foolish enough to get near, which still frequently happened and was hilarious - though I hear melee weapon friendly fire was patched out of nightmare at a later date, a shame, really. A shit game overall and I probably enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons.

Playing any class other than mage is borderline broken in my opinion because Anders is the only healer.

 

[Kidd]

Have they confirmed the return of the awesome button?

If you mean an option to turn off auto-attack on consoles, then yes. The game is always running on auto-attack on PC, and always auto-attack while in tactical view on any platform.

Playing any class other than mage is borderline broken in my opinion because Anders is the only healer.

You don't really need a dedicated healer in DA2 if you play your cards right. Soaking damage and healing it back up with healing potions works even on nightmare difficulty. Personally I've always found Anders performs much better in Vengeance mode than in his healing mode, cause he outnukes even Mage!Hawke that way thanks to his casting speed reduction.

Basically, if you're running Anders in healing mode you're wasting a character slot who could have locked down the room, killed everything within it or done the perfect tank routine.

 

[DalekFlay]

You don't really need a dedicated healer in DA2 if you play your cards right. Soaking damage and healing it back up with healing potions works even on nightmare difficulty. Personally I've always found Anders performs much better in Vengeance mode than in his healing mode, cause he outnukes even Mage!Hawke that way thanks to his casting speed reduction.

Basically, if you're running Anders in healing mode you're wasting a character slot who could have locked down the room, killed everything within it or done the perfect tank routine.

That sounds good on a forum, but in practice when a character is getting gang-raped for whatever reason by DA2's endless spawning trash mobs you want a heal option beyond the potions which are on a very slow cooldown.

 

[Roguey]

Magical healing is completely unnecessary when you play on normal. Potions aren't even necessary in the majority of fights, I had them off most of the time. It's still a bandage for bad players.

 

[DalekFlay]

Magical healing is completely unnecessary when you play on normal. Potions aren't even necessary in the majority of fights, I had them off most of the time. It's still a bandage for bad players.

On hard, which is how people were told to play if they used tactics, you can have a weaker character get dropped extremely fast when a gang of assholes spawns out of nowhere near them. Let's remember one of DA2's main issues: you can't tactically plan and keep your mages/archers protected because enemies spawn behind them, all around them, from nowhere. So when 4 warriors and a one-shot-kill assassin spawn right next to my mage and start doing heavy HP damage it's going to take me some time to AOE freeze them or whatever and rearrange. In that time frame those enemies could easily do enough damage to need healing. Throw in the fact archers always target mages and it can quickly become an issue when potions are on a long cooldown.

But yeah sure, DA2 is a great game with lovely tactical balance and I just suck at games I guess.

 

[Space Satan]

DA2 strongly encourages solo rogue play. Crit the hell out of enemies because scaling turns gameplay for mages and fighters into most mercyless grinding. Arishok duel with mage is a great example of total and complete retardation of DA as a whole.

 

[Roguey]

On hard, which is how people were told to play if they used tactics, you can have a weaker character get dropped extremely fast when a gang of assholes spawns out of nowhere near them. Let's remember one of DA2's main issues: you can't tactically plan and keep your mages/archers protected because enemies spawn behind them, all around them, from nowhere. So when 4 warriors and a one-shot-kill assassin spawn right next to my mage and start doing heavy HP damage it's going to take me some time to AOE freeze them or whatever and rearrange. In that time frame those enemies could easily do enough damage to need healing. Throw in the fact archers always target mages and it can quickly become an issue when potions are on a long cooldown.

But yeah sure, DA2 is a great game with lovely tactical balance and I just suck at games I guess.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_settings_(Dragon_Age_II)
Shit scaling, would not play. They made it in 11 months, of course it'd only be "balanced" for one difficulty mode with the others being poor after-thoughts.

And yet it's still possible to break on the highest difficulty setting http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/305/index/7126577 http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/305/index/6890353

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

nubz

DA2 is a built like a single player MMO, with threat, aggro, DPS etc. You need to treat it as such. If the enemies are attacking your squishies have your rogue(s) redirect aggro with skills like Goad and Armistice. You can even set up tactics for that and then forget about it.

 

[Delterius]

You don't really need a dedicated healer in DA2 if you play your cards right. Soaking damage and healing it back up with healing potions works even on nightmare difficulty. Personally I've always found Anders performs much better in Vengeance mode than in his healing mode, cause he outnukes even Mage!Hawke that way thanks to his casting speed reduction.

Basically, if you're running Anders in healing mode you're wasting a character slot who could have locked down the room, killed everything within it or done the perfect tank routine.

That sounds good on a forum, but in practice when a character is getting gang-raped for whatever reason by DA2's endless spawning trash mobs you want a heal option beyond the potions which are on a very slow cooldown.

After the 50th encounter where enemies spawned from nowhere, you should have learned that enemies will spawn from nowhere and position yourself accordingly.

 

[DalekFlay]

After the 50th encounter where enemies spawned from nowhere, you should have learned that enemies will spawn from nowhere and position yourself accordingly.

I suppose, but it's pretty impossible to know where they will spawn from. And since they all target mages instantly, despite Avaline aggoing like mad, it was pretty frustrating.

As Roguey says I think the game was balanced for warriors and rogues ignoring party members entirely on normal mode, and if I ever do replay the game that is how I will do it, probably.

 

[Delterius]

After the 50th encounter where enemies spawned from nowhere, you should have learned that enemies will spawn from nowhere and position yourself accordingly.

I suppose, but it's pretty impossible to know where they will spawn from.

Indeed, but there's one funny little tactic that borders on exploiting the bad AI: you can let the enemy come for you. After all, the enemy doesn't actually surround the party, they surround a given engagement area -- just don't enter it.

Oh, this reminds me how Mike Laidlaw claimed that not all enemies would blindly charge at the party so that the above 'tactic' (if we can call it that) wouldn't work.

He's wrong.

 

[DalekFlay]

Indeed, but there's one funny little tactic that borders on exploiting the bad AI: you can let the enemy come for you. After all, the enemy doesn't actually surround the party, they surround a given engagement area -- just don't enter it.

Interesting. I did do a lot of kiting when I played through as a rogue, with Anders on heal mode. His heal mode had a nice stun AOE that was helpful as well. Funneling enemies seemed to be the key in that game on hard.

 

[Menckenstein]

Have they confirmed the return of the awesome button?

If you mean an option to turn off auto-attack on consoles, then yes. The game is always running on auto-attack on PC, and always auto-attack while in tactical view on any platform.

I want to know if I push a button, will something awesome happen. Also I need for a monstrous looking child to die in a hamfisted "emotionally charged" cutscene. This is what I expect from BioWare.

 

[Space Satan]

You should take target audience in account

 

[Space Satan]

We can't handle 5 platforms and consoletards, so we are shoving everything to the mooncloud.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

well it cant be worse than save imports in dragon age 2

 

[Cyberarmy]

well it cant be worse than save imports in dragon age 2

Weanwhile in BEAware HQ.

-CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

 

[Space Satan]

well it cant be worse than save imports in dragon age 2

 

[Roguey]

The cloud is pure DRM, I'm pretty sure that's the primary motivation in its creation.