The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[dryan]

and $60 basically means nothing to me.

I HAVE BEEN TRIGGERED!

Check your privilege shitlord.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've played a bit more than 60 hours now (maybe around 70 haven't checked) and the game is definitely growing on me. Before I would have said the game is ok, now I will say that the game is good. Bioware's best game since BG2. Possibly better than BG2 but I will hold that judgement until I have actually finished the game.

BGII stands for Baldur's Gate II. It's a computer game released in 2001. Make sure you play it.

One thing I found interesting is how when the game starts out the bad things with it are immediately highlighted. MMO style get 10 x quests and the horrible UI. The first area is the worst with those style quests and you are immediately hit with several of them as the only choices you have for quests. Once I got more used to the UI(it doesn't become good but as you become more proficient it is less frustrating/annoying) and had access to some other areas that are more interesting my enjoyment picked up a lot.

This game is a very different game than previous Bioware games so I could see someone with certain expectations being upset and the game is also definitely not for everyone(but which game is). The Area design that Bioware did with this game was fantastic. Full of beautiful and interesting areas. Bioware really improved with the environmental storytelling(which has traditionally been something they haven't done well) with the landscape and the props on it doing a good job of helping tell what the story of the area or subarea is. Also the dynamic nature of much of the maps. Opening up entirely new areas and changing the nature of the enemies found in it are very well done. One good example is the stormy coast(Will be putting in spoilers since it somewhat spoils events for the area).

Is this copypasta from "professional gaming journalist" reviews? Because it certainly sounds like it. You may have OD'ed on "journalism".

The quest design is also interesting. While there are lots of little filler low effort quests, they often combine with each other and the areas to have interesting effects

Troll attempt?

I quite like the way that map missions(The ones you do at the war table) and quests in areas interact with each other. You can unlock map missions from doing quests and exploring and doing map missions can unlock new quests and areas and these two things are often chained together. I found the quest chain for sutherland's adventuring company quite interesting. I'm not sure how the decisions effected how it played out (primarily the decision of how to equip them or if you choose to have him work as a servant instead of sending him out) but the combination of map missions, going to talk with Sutherland and/or his group at the tavern, and the quest on the map was very interesting. Some other quest chains are quite interesting as well. Even if they are made up of small diddly quests they combine into something quite interesting IMO.

I'll comment on that when I reach it. So far the only good quest I've found is investigating the mercenaries and Carta in Valammar.

 

[hell bovine]

Wynne (healbot)

I recently replayed DA:O and you definitely do not need Wynne or a dedicated healer at all, even on Nightmare. I gave Morrigan one healing spell and only had to use it once in a blue moon. CC is so much better, cone of frost, sleep etc, if you take no damage there is no need to heal.

The advantage of healers in Origins was that you could set them up with tactics and they'd do their job. Towards the end I changed my mage into a heal&haste spamming machine, and controled the rogue instead, because the AI couldn't deal with positioning in battles. Offensive spells were more powerful, but that way was simply much quicker.

 

[Immortal]

I'll comment on that when I reach it. So far the only good quest I've found is investigating the mercenaries and Carta in Valammar.

Oh is there actually a interesting quest there? I thought it would just be a cave filled with pissed off dwarves.. maybe I will go back and take a look.

 

[Turjan]

I must admit I was texting while "watching" this...

The rifts are more quickly dealt with than those stupid Oblivion gates, but at least you could skip most of the latter.

 

[AwesomeButton]

To reiterate, DAI has a lot of small piddly quest, but it often combines them to produce interesting effects.

Let's see. So far the only thing that's worse than the quests and script is the combat, I think. Can't really decide which is worse.

 

[DalekFlay]

Regarding the main quest, I skipped ahead and watched some of RK47's videos which go beyond my progress with the main quest. I am appalled. Just when I thought it couldn't get any more inconsistent, cheesy and make any less sense, it kept on getting worse and worse. I therefore intend to run away into the MMO areas, where I intend to live as a goat*. At least until I gather the mental strength to progress the main quest myself.

Not saying the story is good, just that the quest design and combat encounters in the main quest are much better. The story itself is typical Bioware cheese.

 

[Frozen]

To reiterate, DAI has a lot of small piddly quest, but it often combines them to produce interesting effects.

You must be a fucking genius with photographic memory if you can recall which of 1000 fetch quest relates to bigger picture.
That ONE collect 10 pork meatballs from hinterlands WAS the reason Corypheus truns gay.

 

[set]

I agree with the article, it's exactly what I've been thinking of late. They turned it from (attempted) dark fantasy (dark fantasy was even part of their DAO pitch) into something I have a different time classifying, but it's definetly less mature, to put it mildly.

I also agree. It's what I've never understood about SJW anyway.

Skin color is largely irrelevent - what makes a person different is their culture. If a black man has a white accent and attire, many would consider him "white" or at least embodying that culture; where as a black man who walks around with the beltline at his knees, he's derided (or praised?) as a "nigger". Culture is way more important than skin color - skin color is only a small part of the debate. BioWare butchered all serious attempts at culture in DA2 and DA3. The discourse of race and ethnicity is one that is steeped in the attitudes of economics, history and culture - yet BioWare is more than happy to keep economics and culture simple - and they frequently retcon their history.

 

[Slow James]

Why are they advertising it as rpg when their degenerate fans don't know the difference?

I think that's precisely the reason.

 

[DalekFlay]

This game is a very different game than previous Bioware games so I could see someone with certain expectations being upset and the game is also definitely not for everyone(but which game is?). The Area design that Bioware did with this game was fantastic. Full of beautiful and interesting areas. Bioware really improved their environmental storytelling(which has traditionally been something they haven't done well) with the landscape and the props on it doing a good job of helping tell what the story of the area or sub-area is. Also the dynamic nature of much of the maps helps a great deal with this. Opening up entirely new areas and changing the nature of the enemies found in it are very well done. One good example is the stormy coast(I will be putting it in spoilers since it somewhat spoils events for the area).

I do like that in one area finishing a quest literally changed the entire area's look and geography. I also like that killing leaders/finishing quests removes trash mobs from the map. These are good ideas.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'll comment on that when I reach it. So far the only good quest I've found is investigating the mercenaries and Carta in Valammar.

Oh is there actually a interesting quest there? I thought it would just be a cave filled with pissed off dwarves.. maybe I will go back and take a look.

I found it to be rather atmospheric, some backstory is revealed by reading notes, and there are two or three set-piece battles. Someone must have snuck back into the office at night and wrote a questline that actually keeps you curious, and then other people worked on the area design and enemies in secrecy. It breaks away from the bullshit MMO style so much that they might remove it with a patch, wouldn't surprise me.

 

[Hepler's Vagina]

Wynne (healbot)

I recently replayed DA:O and you definitely do not need Wynne or a dedicated healer at all, even on Nightmare. I gave Morrigan one healing spell and only had to use it once in a blue moon. CC is so much better, cone of frost, sleep etc, if you take no damage there is no need to heal.

Exactly. Two mages with overlapping (cooldown -wise) or complementing (combo) crowd control mean you really only need loose any health at all on the high dragon, archdemon and possibly Jarvia. Sleep + mass paralysis + force field + glyph and you shouldn't suffer a scratch. Wynne is for people who have trouble reading, unless they respeced her into cc.

 

[AwesomeButton]

darkpatriot , please tell me your real name isn't Erik Kain?
The guy who wrote this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...ition-review-part-two-the-hit-bioware-needed/

 

[dryan]

http://tay.kotaku.com/how-bioware-turned-dragon-age-from-a-dark-european-fant-1662330835

This is just delicious.
You can't win with these people, and it serves Bioware right for even trying.
Learn your lesson, faggots.

 

[Immortal]

http://tay.kotaku.com/how-bioware-turned-dragon-age-from-a-dark-european-fant-1662330835

This is just delicious.
You can't win with these people, and it serves Bioware right for even trying.
Learn your lesson, faggots.

SJW's don't care about equality or actually fixing issues in gaming.. They just want to bitch and be the center of attention. Once you give them what they want.. they need to fill their victim narrative with some other scapegoat.

 

[hell bovine]

I agree with the article, it's exactly what I've been thinking of late. They turned it from (attempted) dark fantasy (dark fantasy was even part of their DAO pitch) into something I have a different time classifying, but it's definetly less mature, to put it mildly.

I also agree. It's what I've never understood about SJW anyway.

Skin color is largely irrelevent - what makes a person different is their culture. If a black man has a white accent and attire, many would consider him "white" or at least embodying that culture; where as a black man who walks around with the beltline at his knees, he's derided (or praised?) as a "nigger". Culture is way more important than skin color - skin color is only a small part of the debate. BioWare butchered all serious attempts at culture in DA2 and DA3. The discourse of race and ethnicity is one that is steeped in the attitudes of economics, history and culture - yet BioWare is more than happy to keep economics and culture simple - and they frequently retcon their history.

What the hell is a "white accent"? Considering that even within the multitude of European countries you get various regions, some of which tend to be quite hermetic, and have separate languages, and tend to dislike each other, that doesn't even make sense. Take Eastern Europe as an example; racism is very popular over here and speaking the language even perfectly won't make you fit in. Skin color is what people see immediately when they look at you, which, when it comes to guys who hit firsat, and don't ask questions later, is very problematic.

 

[Malpercio]

BGII stands for Baldur's Gate II. It's a computer game released in 2001. Make sure you play it.

Maybe he meant this one!

 

[set]

I agree with the article, it's exactly what I've been thinking of late. They turned it from (attempted) dark fantasy (dark fantasy was even part of their DAO pitch) into something I have a different time classifying, but it's definetly less mature, to put it mildly.

I also agree. It's what I've never understood about SJW anyway.

Skin color is largely irrelevent - what makes a person different is their culture. If a black man has a white accent and attire, many would consider him "white" or at least embodying that culture; where as a black man who walks around with the beltline at his knees, he's derided (or praised?) as a "nigger". Culture is way more important than skin color - skin color is only a small part of the debate. BioWare butchered all serious attempts at culture in DA2 and DA3. The discourse of race and ethnicity is one that is steeped in the attitudes of economics, history and culture - yet BioWare is more than happy to keep economics and culture simple - and they frequently retcon their history.

What the hell is a "white accent"? Considering that even within the multitude of European countries you get various regions, some of which tend to be quite hermetic, and have separate languages, and tend to dislike each other, that doesn't even make sense. Take Eastern Europe as an example; racism is very popular over here and speaking the language even perfectly won't make you fit in. Skin color is what people see immediately when they look at you, which, when it comes to guys who hit firsat, and don't ask questions later, is very problematic.

I was writing like a moron would - the kind of SJW you'd read on reddit. Do you think they actually care about "white culture" whatever that entails?

I also wholeheartedly disagree. We had a hispanic man attacked by the media not too long ago in the US -- he's clearly hispanic, but he has a "white way of talking and dressing", or at least that was my interpretation. Yet many SJWs decryed the event for being a white killing a black (when it wasn't at all). His "perceived whiteness" had little to do with his obvious skin color.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=25091

Experienced Points: Dragon Age: Impositions

My column this week is about the multiplayer aspect of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Also, allow me to head off some nitpicking and address something that didn’t fit into this column. (The satirical “Advice of Screwtape” style kind of boxes you in sometimes.)

In the column I claimed that people weren’t asking for multiplayer in Dragon Age. I’m sure that in reality there are lots of people who found themselves thinking, “Man, I wish I could play this with my friends.” However, this is nothing like what we were given. What you probably want is an intimate and mechanically interesting experience with one or two friends. What you get is a shitty grindfest with rando internet strangers. (Unless you and three friends available at the same time on the same platform.) To be fair, some people really do like that. But that’s not what people had in mind when they dreamed of playing Dragon Age co-op.

This takes us right back to the very heart of the Bioware outrage: They turned their back on their original fans in order to court a larger demographic. That’s fine, but they keep pretending they’re Old Bioware. So when we gripe about all the innumerable ways in which they are failing to deliver on that we end up getting shouted down by the much larger crowd of New Bioware fans who care nothing for the pre-Mass Effect 2 games.

EA marketing makes this worse by framing every new annoyance as “giving in to public demand”. That’s slick, because I can’t prove there aren’t millions of people asking to pay for stuff that used to be free. And there will always be people ready to make the “you don’t have to play it” defense. Bioware is great at making characters we love, which makes some people difficult and defensive when you try to criticize the game those characters inhabit. People are always saying tedious crap like, “This game had Mordin Solus in it, so your argument is invalid.” Meanwhile EA is running an online store behind a Mordin mask and laughing at both of us.

It really does make me mad.

Let's make our world seem more vibrant and lived-in by having tons of NPCs around. And also let's completely ruin the effect by having them stand like statues in bowling-pin formation.

Here is my take: This business with bits of the single-player game feeling free-to-play is not an accident. EA is just trying to boil the frog a little more slowly this time[1]. In some future Dragon Age game we’ll have the same “power unlocks new game areas” mechanic, only you’ll need to grind a bit to get the power you need and you’ll be able to buy power directly. This is just the first phase of getting us used to free-to-play mechanics in a $60 AAA game.

Yeah, this sounds kind of conspiracy theory-ish. But it’s the only way these mechanics make sense to me.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...sition-Pushes-Potion-Purchases-in-Multiplayer

Why the Game's Title Should Have Been Dragon Age: Impositions
SHAMUS YOUNG | 25 NOVEMBER 2014 10:00 PM

So let's say you're EA, and you want to make more money. (Who doesn't?) But how can you do that? You're already paying your rank-and-file developers pretty far below the average for tech jobs, so you can't really cut costs much more. You could make games better so that more people will buy them, but no matter how long you keep your teams in crunch mode and how doggedly you chase popular trends, you can't seem to increase the quality of your product. You could invest in future IP by growing new titles that will someday turn into big money-makers, but that requires cash up front, it's risky, and even if it works out you won't see the payoff for years. Nobody has that kind of patience. Besides, you'd somehow need to know what games consumers would like ahead of time, and you're not Nostradamus. Maybe you could charge less and make it up in volume like the folks at Valve do with Steam, but ... nah.

Obviously the best plan is to charge more for games. However, consumers are pretty inflexible and they're not willing to pay more up front. Project 10 dollar was a good start. Even though consumers hated it, large numbers of people -- perhaps as many as 1 in 4 -- couldn't (or wouldn't) bother to log in to get their $10 content, and it didn't really make much from the second-hand market, it did manage to make some money. There's obviously more money to be captured as long as you don't care what the consumer thinks of you and you're not worried about the reputation of your IP or what your competition is doing.

The key here is microtransactions. There are a lot of different ways to handle microtransactions:

* Virtuous: Allow the player to buy purely cosmetic stuff for use in multiplayer. -- Those suckers at Valve do this, and what has it done for them?

* Neutral: Offer content for sale. -- Sure, the player will always have this nagging suspicion that maybe you've pulled something out of the core game and are making them pay full-price for an incomplete game, but they can't ever prove it!

* Sketchy: Sell power items. -- Let the player give you more money if they want to be more powerful. Since they're probably playing the game as a power fantasy, they're going to want all the power they can get. And if they complain, just tell them, "Hey, nobody is forcing you to play multiplayer / use the in-game store!"

* Scummy: Sell consumables. You know what's best? Selling a player a full-price game and then offering a microtransaction-driven multiplayer that behaves like a free-to-play title. Have a resource that's available for "free", but only by sacrificing character progression. Then just offer them the chance to pay money instead of making that sacrifice.

* Bastardly: Sell consumables, and create social pressure to consume them. -- Make a multiplayer game where health potions cost real money, and where all are punished for the failure of one. When a player runs out of potions, the rest of the team can get pissed at them and players will be shamed into giving you money.

You're going to want to add this to one of your flagship titles. Like Dragon Age: Inquisition. Sure, BioWare is famously a single-player developer and it's not something fans have been asking for, but you can shoehorn multiplayer into anything these days. You made Plants vs. Zombies into an online shooter, for crying out loud.

The first thing to do is make sure you enforce a fixed party size. Sure, lots of co-op games like Borderlands andDiablo can auto-adjust their combat to accommodate different party sizes on the fly, and even the primitive tabletop games of yesteryear contained the simple logic required to make encounters match the players, but small, intimate games between friends aren't going to create the kind of hostile alienation you're looking for.

What you do is make it so that players have a persistent collection of potions. Don't refill them between games. If the player wants more potions, then they can either sacrifice in-game money to buy them (thus delaying the upgrades they've been saving for) or they can pay you real money. Just think of it: You can sell virtual health potions for actual dollars. Charge $3 for a case of five, which is an awkward enough figure that players probably won't bother to do the math to realize they're paying 60 cents for each health potion.

Charging for potions isn't enough, though. You need to create social pressure to use them. So what you do is you punish the entire team when one player dies. I mean, technically it's already a punishment to be playing a four-person dungeon with only three people, but you need to twist the knife a little. So if one player dies, all the monsters will gain power. For no reason. You don't need to justify it. It's a video game. They just do.

This means that one player going down can easily lead to a party wipe. If anyone else drank any potions earlier, they will now be pissed off because they spent money (potions) on this venture without reaching the payoff at the end. So now when a player is low on health they have to make the snap judgement: Do they quickly drink one of their potions, or do they risk ruining the game for everyone?

Sure, this might make the environment sort of ugly and encourage anonymous internet players to blame each other instead of fostering an environment of fun cooperation, but on the other hand ... MONEY. I think you'll agree it's worth compromising on core design principles and sacrificing fun if it makes it easier to wring money out of players a little bit at a time.

The beautiful thing is, you now have an incentive to not bother balancing the game. Throw in random difficulty spikes, hide mechanics from the player, or make bosses unfair. It doesn't matter. It just makes the game more profitable. And if anyone complains, there will always be a healthy supply of swaggering loudmouths just waiting to shout those people down by telling them to "get good". Nobody will be able to challenge the system from a financial perspective without getting dragged into arguments over skill. You'll never be held accountable for this.

Do this for a few games. Let people get used to paying you for in-game supplies. Then in 2017, you can claim this feature was "so popular" that you're going to put something like it into the single-player game. Tell them some players have been demanding to have these microtransactions in single-player. Nobody can prove this is a lie!

Why bother making a game good, when making one poorly can be so profitable?

 

[Ulrox]

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=25091

I would agree with the whole conspiracy theory thing. Why should triple A gaming not be as profitable as phone games? Is likely a question many men in suits are asking right this moment.

 

[DalekFlay]

I can't even imagine caring about the multiplayer aspect.

 

[Tehdagah]

http://tay.kotaku.com/how-bioware-turned-dragon-age-from-a-dark-european-fant-1662330835

I love how Kotaku can generate clickbait complaining about the very changes they advocated for in the first place. "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth" indeed.

"Dragon Age, despite pretensions of becoming a political thriller in a dark and dangerous world, has been pacified at the hands of those who would call anything that shows one racial group racist, who would scream misogyny (as people do at Game of Thrones) when creators try and set their game in a brutal and violent world in which terrible things occur."




This part of the article is funny as well:

[As a male POC playing a white female, I never find that I can't relate because I'm not the same race or gender as my character- she is different to me, and we can empathise with all kinds of people]

But why did he chose a white female waifu character?

 

[mastroego]

What really piss me off is that bioware claim that they are "progressive" cause they cater to some overweight females and beta cuckold degenerates like anthony burch. SJWs are Cancerous creatures that feed on male tears and white male fetuses.

If you dont cater to their sick cuckold fantasies of black power and genderqueer pansexual Eldritch monsters , they will ask help from their goddess Anita Sarkisian to smite you down! cause you're a privileged cissy boy who needs cultural enrichment from Moshe Tyrone Steingoldsmith.

What pisses me even more is how they keep playing the victim part OVER and OVER again in our "civilized" world full of bored gamers when NO ONE is actually bothering them in any way.
Why don't they go sing their equality song in ISIS-occupied territory, or something.
I mean, fight some REAL freakin' opposition to your beliefs, if you have as much guts and motivation as you claim to have.
I'd really love to see how would THAT turn out...

 

[kris]

Someone, what British accent does Sera have?