The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[Zeriel]

The answer is of course, "Yes, you're really that bad, Mr. Game Reviewer."

Designing games for casuals is the real dragon whose tail will be chased infinitely. The simpler you make games, the simpler people get, always just bad enough at your games to complain about that one time they died when they were feeding their baby or grabbing a drink or rubbing one out. At no point will the mass market ever say, "You know what? This game is too easy."

 

[Grunker]

One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

stopped reading right there

 

[Bleed the Man]

One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

stopped reading right there

But this is your typical reviewer stuff, people that has never played anything beyond the Action RPGs of today. I myself was kinda like that when I started playing "RPGs", which was fairly recently (2008), and when I played DAO for the first time I was terrible at it, so it doesn't surprise me seeing something like that. Retarded, yes, but unsurprising.

 

[Whiran]

"Reviewer":
"One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

Was it even possible to farm for three hours in Origins?

I don't remember ever doing anything remotely similar to that. Not even five minutes.

 

[RK47]

"Reviewer":
"One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

Was it even possible to farm for three hours in Origins?

I don't remember ever doing anything remotely similar to that. Not even five minutes.

Or he could just, y'know - turn down the difficulty.

 

[Zewp]

There was no way mini bosses would be brick walls unless you were monumentally stupid. If anything DA:O was a bit on the easy side if you started using your tactics effectively.

Oh, that's probably it. He probably didn't even know about the tactics. That's what growing up with Press A to Win games does to you.

 

[Ulrox]

So when Bioware comes out and says they are making a sequel that captures elements of Origins, is bringing back tactical combat and is making the game for PC players first and foremost, some people bought the hype instead of looking at what was actually being shown and talked about.

That's why.

Ahh... I haven't been following this at all - guess this is why I couldn't understand... Yeah ok, makes sense.

 

[AwesomeButton]

One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

stopped reading right there

But this is your typical reviewer stuff, people that has never played anything beyond the Action RPGs of today. I myself was kinda like that when I started playing "RPGs", which was fairly recently (2008), and when I played DAO for the first time I was terrible at it, so it doesn't surprise me seeing something like that. Retarded, yes, but unsurprising.

From the article:

I have so many party members I’m losing track of them all.

The author is apparently retarded. I bet he is incapable of counting his own fingers too. They are (hopefully) ten, and the companions are nine. How can he lose track of nine companions?

 

[set]

To be fair, it is way more supporting characters than what you'd find in a game like CoD.

 

[Raghar]

The answer is of course, "Yes, you're really that bad, Mr. Game Reviewer."

Designing games for casuals is the real dragon whose tail will be chased infinitely. The simpler you make games, the simpler people get, always just bad enough at your games to complain about that one time they died when they were feeding their baby or grabbing a drink or rubbing one out. At no point will the mass market ever say, "You know what? This game is too easy."

Actually at some point the marked would say, it's too easy, I played it as Farmvile for free.

And don't forget, when games would be streaming media, just as movies, a normal DVD/BD is for 5$ a normal game is for 30$. (I assumed price drop after initial money grabbing from these impatient/or fans who paid full price because they could and they viewed it as a kind of support.)

 

[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.

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.

Hispanic defines an ethnicity (EDIT: or rather I'd define them as a linguistic gropu), not race, last time I've checked, and Hispanic people can be white (Spain for example), so again, I fail to see your point. And it's a single case anyway, just as well you can quote stories of people being attacked because of their skin color. And in your case it was a black man, who was killed, so the important question would be, why was he attacked, and not how the killer was perceived by the media (even though, being Hispanic doesn't mean he can't be white).

 

[DalekFlay]

You know I kinda like you cause you defended my DA2 thread... But seriously, you are clutching at straws here. Enemies not respawning would be better than enemies not respawning after you kill leader.
As for "area changes after you complete a quest"...."good idea". You are kidding right? BG2 has that, as do the Persona games, FF6, DA2, DA:O, NWN and so on. Great idea my ass.

I actually think some respawns until you defeat a quest is a good idea. The problem with Inquisition is the respawns are too common and frequent. However if Skyrim had a quest in each area to remove bandits from the map I would like that.

As for geography changing after a quest, I didn't mean to imply it had never been done before. I just like that they did it on a rather grand scale in one area.

 

[DalekFlay]

Have you, like me, against all odds, actually found yourself enjoying DA:I?

I have found myself raging at the fucking lack of mouse-move and the fucked up combat gameplay as dual-wielding rogue. I wish I had played mage instead. I could restart, but the mere thought of having to go through all the tedium again makes me want to not start over.
If the game would be enjoyable, I guess starting over wouldn't be a big deal for me.

Switch to an archer, all you have to do is buy a respec potion. Ten times better gameplay.

 

[bozia2012]

"Reviewer":
"One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

Was it even possible to farm for three hours in Origins?

I don't remember ever doing anything remotely similar to that. Not even five minutes.

Or he could just, y'know - turn down the difficulty.

That vid needs some warning - the title alone isn't enough.

 

[Azarkon]

This isn't true

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Mark_Darrah
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Lukas_Kristjanson

Not to mention Gaider and Kristjanson have been responsible for the bulk of the #decline mentioned in this thread, while newer writers such as Weekes, albeit an establishment literati educated at Stanford, have produced a few genuinely decent pieces eg Mordin in ME.

 

[Slow James]

The answer is of course, "Yes, you're really that bad, Mr. Game Reviewer."

Designing games for casuals is the real dragon whose tail will be chased infinitely. The simpler you make games, the simpler people get, always just bad enough at your games to complain about that one time they died when they were feeding their baby or grabbing a drink or rubbing one out. At no point will the mass market ever say, "You know what? This game is too easy."

My thought on this is to work on making games better teachers. Instead of holding the player's hand in terms of difficulty, hold their hand in terms of walking them through the mechanics and strategies.

Make a game as cruelly hard as any Dark Souls fan would get off on, but make it so a casual can pick up the game and, by being taught by the system (instead of just losing over and over) can get a feel for how to do things like make a solid character build, analyze a battlefield, use terrain, grab aggro, utilize long distance units, assign party tactics, use non-combat skills to gain an advantage before a fight...


...instead, it's much easier to rip all of that out and just give dumb enemies with inflated HP bars and Casual difficulty settings. Pfeh.

 

[Space Satan]

It's funny how history repeats itself. Right after DA2 release - sky-high ratings, the greatest game to be released in the past three centuries. Then, after a while, after seing Metacritic reatings and players' reaction - "How could we be so blind!? Of course it's utter shit and mediocricy!"

 

[Slow James]

Not to mention Gaider and Kristjanson have been responsible for the bulk of the #decline mentioned in this thread, while newer writers such as Weekes, albeit an establishment literati educated at Stanford, have produced a few genuinely decent pieces eg Mordin in ME.

For DA:I, Lukas wrote Sera. Weekes wrote Iron Bull. Gaider wrote Solas.

 

[crawlkill]

One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

stopped reading right there

But this is your typical reviewer stuff, people that has never played anything beyond the Action RPGs of today. I myself was kinda like that when I started playing "RPGs", which was fairly recently (2008), and when I played DAO for the first time I was terrible at it, so it doesn't surprise me seeing something like that. Retarded, yes, but unsurprising.

From the article:

I have so many party members I’m losing track of them all.

The author is apparently retarded. I bet he is incapable of counting his own fingers too. They are (hopefully) ten, and the companions are nine. How can he lose track of nine companions?

Have you played it? The fact that the characters are largely disjointed and that interacting with them involved finding them in their ever-somewhat-shifting places in your fortress does make them hard to keep track of.

I recruited the Iron Bull late and wondered how that would be handled. Turns out he was present at all these events I'd completed before I got him. I just...didn't notice? It's not even written with abstract dialogue--he specifically mentioned having been there for the assault on the last keep I'd taken, and having been there for the dragon I'd killed before I'd recruited him.

It is -remarkably- difficult to keep track of nine companions when you can only have three of them with you at a time and when their dialogues only take place at a specific location where you have to seek them out. And when they rewrite history when you do chat them up. It's like if you had to keep going back to the Friendly Arm to check up on Jahiera and Khalid even though you were never making use of them, and they acted like they'd been coming with you all along. This isn't really that complicated a concept. I can only derive that you're not really that complicated a person.

Not to mention Gaider and Kristjanson have been responsible for the bulk of the #decline mentioned in this thread, while newer writers such as Weekes, albeit an establishment literati educated at Stanford, have produced a few genuinely decent pieces eg Mordin in ME.

For DA:I, Lukas wrote Sera. Weekes wrote Iron Bull. Gaider wrote Solas.

I like the Iron Bull -way- more than I thought I would. As Yahtzee before me, he's caused my PC to make sense. Clearly my Herald is a bottom bitch who's always anxious 'cause he's not been getting dick.

Sera falls flat, occasionally kind of fun but infinitely too much SO RANDOM zaniness to be worth suffering through.

Solas is interesting but boring. Ascetics ain't fun.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Just stumbled across this one, found it to be rather nice:
http://tay.kotaku.com/how-bioware-turned-dragon-age-from-a-dark-european-fant-1662330835

You're obviously not reading other people's posts, that has been talked about a few pages back. But, yeah, weird article.

In this thread: partly true. Too much, too lazy.

 

[Azarkon]

Not to mention Gaider and Kristjanson have been responsible for the bulk of the #decline mentioned in this thread, while newer writers such as Weekes, albeit an establishment literati educated at Stanford, have produced a few genuinely decent pieces eg Mordin in ME.

For DA:I, Lukas wrote Sera. Weekes wrote Iron Bull. Gaider wrote Solas.

Whilst the brodwarf nobody on Codex looks to have a problem with, Varric, was written by a womynz, Mary Kirby.

 

[Slow James]

Whilst the brodwarf nobody on Codex looks to have a problem with, Varric, was written by a womynz, Mary Kirby.

:O

 

[Space Satan]

Bioware always was slow to catch a trend. They decided to make their own Skyrim after Skyrim had a great success etc. They fail to see how people crave for complex, hard, yet satisfying games. Dark Souls should've give them a hint, being immensely successful even without any story just because the enjoyment after several hours of killing a single boss was nothing Bioware with their carebear "hardcore" RPGs could offer to the gamers. They tried to release their own moba/card/mobile game because some EA official said they saw some successful mobile and moba games. I bet they will try to try releasing an adventure or quest, because Telltale games revitalized the quest genre.
Essentialy, Dragon Age Inquisition is a Civilization: Beyond Earth of RPGs - a mediocricy, developed by people , with absolutely no understanding of RPG mechanics, UI, storytelling and other vital aspects games need to be great.

 

[Bleed the Man]

One of my complaints with the original Dragon Age: Origins was the weirdly off-putting difficulty curve that would sometimes lead me 90% of the way through a mission, only to hit a brick wall in the form of an overbuffed miniboss, and I would have to go farm quests for three hours before I could come back and face him.

stopped reading right there

But this is your typical reviewer stuff, people that has never played anything beyond the Action RPGs of today. I myself was kinda like that when I started playing "RPGs", which was fairly recently (2008), and when I played DAO for the first time I was terrible at it, so it doesn't surprise me seeing something like that. Retarded, yes, but unsurprising.

From the article:

I have so many party members I’m losing track of them all.

The author is apparently retarded. I bet he is incapable of counting his own fingers too. They are (hopefully) ten, and the companions are nine. How can he lose track of nine companions?

Have you played it? The fact that the characters are largely disjointed and that interacting with them involved finding them in their ever-somewhat-shifting places in your fortress does make them hard to keep track of.

I recruited the Iron Bull late and wondered how that would be handled. Turns out he was present at all these events I'd completed before I got him. I just...didn't notice? It's not even written with abstract dialogue--he specifically mentioned having been there for the assault on the last keep I'd taken, and having been there for the dragon I'd killed before I'd recruited him.

It is -remarkably- difficult to keep track of nine companions when you can only have three of them with you at a time and when their dialogues only take place at a specific location where you have to seek them out. And when they rewrite history when you do chat them up. It's like if you had to keep going back to the Friendly Arm to check up on Jahiera and Khalid even though you were never making use of them, and they acted like they'd been coming with you all along. This isn't really that complicated a concept. I can only derive that you're not really that complicated a person.

If you have trouble finding them, why don't you use the map? It tells you exactly where they are. And they don't change places, as far as I went with the game (someone will want to have the conversation elsewhere, but it starts at the determined spot for that character)

 

[Zeriel]

The complaint I was seeing there is not in recruiting them, but the fact the games narrative warps in really unconvincing ways.

It is VERY possible to recruit companions after certain points in the game (i.e you never met them before Templars/Mage setpiece, nor before Haven got sacked), but the companions speak as if they were there. I hadn't noticed that yet (still have a number of companions I haven't gotten around to recruiting), but it sounds like one of the laziest things Bioware has ever done.