Dragon Age impressions

[AlaCarcuss]

You might be able to use the lever that opens the gatehouse to let the knights in or it might only be usable after combat.

Yup Satori, you can use the lever in combat. I got into the courtyard from a side-entrance in the cellars, so the undead don't spot you at first. They notice you as you're running for the lever, but you can hit it before they get to you.

Goddamit! - I never thought of that lol :D

The level scaling is utter shit. Level 15 and there is no sense of progression whatsoever. The most powerful encounter so far has been wolves, which is really retarded.

You do know the levels get fixed as soon as you enter them right? So you can do like I'm doing in regards to that revanent and come back later when you're more powerful and he'll still be at the same level as when you first met him.

Though now I know the gate lever trick - I'm going back for him right now

 

[Saxon1974]

Character sheet and then "Heroic achievements" or some shit.

Thanks mr Gaider.

Only 12% played so far in 17 hours, but I usually explore every area in a game.

 

[Tycn]

You do know the levels get fixed as soon as you enter them right? So you can do like I'm doing in regards to that revanent and come back later when you're more powerful and he'll still be at the same level as when you first met him.

I've done that at one point (the elven ruins - was underlevelled and got stuck at the part with the gazillion skeletons). It's still horrible justification for a horrible feature. I'm sure it's not necessary to explain why level scaling is shit, even though it's a bit puzzling to see people defending it on the Codex.

 

[BLOBERT]

Maybe it's less level scaling and more high levels aren't ridiculously powerful unlike in D&D.

BRO MAYBE THE BRIANLESS SHEEPLE ARE TOTAL WHORES

 

[AlaCarcuss]

You do know the levels get fixed as soon as you enter them right? So you can do like I'm doing in regards to that revanent and come back later when you're more powerful and he'll still be at the same level as when you first met him.

I've done that at one point (the elven ruins - was underlevelled and got stuck at the part with the gazillion skeletons). It's still horrible justification for a horrible feature. I'm sure it's not necessary to explain why level scaling is shit, even though it's a bit puzzling to see people defending it on the Codex.

I wasn't defending it, I'd definately prefer it didn't have it. Though with the game's structure, where you can tackle the main areas in any order I don't know how they could do it any other way and keep it challenging and/or force you down a particualr path.

It's still not level scaling in the way we know it from Bethesda.

 

[BLOBERT]

WHATEVER BRO YOU ARE STILL DEFENDING SHIT HOW ABOUT YOU SUCK IT DOWN LIKE THE REST OF THE SHEEPLE

 

[GarfunkeL]

I wasn't defending it, I'd definately prefer it didn't have it. Though with the game's structure, where you can tackle the main areas in any order I don't know how they could do it any other way and keep it challenging and/or force you down a particualr path.

Wait, wait. Is it like in KoTOR, ME or NWN that you have the "freedom" of collecting various MacGuffins and you can choose in which order you do 3-4 areas/planets/whatever or is completely open like in Fallout?

I'd be really surprised if it's the latter. Anyway, the problem can be solved in both without level scaling.

 

[BLOBERT]

[quote="AlaCarc
I wasn't defending it, I'd definately prefer it didn't have it. Though with the game's structure, where you can tackle the main areas in any order I don't know how they could do it any other way and keep it challenging and/or force you down a particualr path.

Wait, wait. Is it like in KoTOR, ME or NWN that you have the "freedom" of collecting various MacGuffins and you can choose in which order you do 3-4 areas/planets/whatevly open like in Fallout?

I'd be really surprised if it's the latter. Anyway, the problem can be solved in both without level scalinuote]

TRUE THAT BRO BUT THE SHEEPLE WILL SUCK DOWN ANYTHING

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Wait, wait. Is it like in KoTOR, ME or NWN that you have the "freedom" of collecting various MacGuffins and you can choose in which order you do 3-4 areas/planets/whatever or is completely open like in Fallout?

Not sure anyone knows yet if there's a speedy way of ending it, but it's looking KotOR/ME-like. The macguffins in this case are soldiers/armies though I gather, which makes gathering them seem a bit less... Macguffiny. Of course, the problem is to GET your soldier-macguffins you seem to have to collect item-macguffins which is a bit of a kick in the nuts but what the hell.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO TELL YOURSELVE TO PRETEND YOU ARE PLAYING A GOOD GAME HEY GAMEFAGS IS LOOKINGH FOR MORE RETARDS TO POST THEIR

 

[Gay-Lussac]

[quote="AlaCarc
I wasn't defending it, I'd definately prefer it didn't have it. Though with the game's structure, where you can tackle the main areas in any order I don't know how they could do it any other way and keep it challenging and/or force you down a particualr path.

Wait, wait. Is it like in KoTOR, ME or NWN that you have the "freedom" of collecting various MacGuffins and you can choose in which order you do 3-4 areas/planets/whatevly open like in Fallout?

I'd be really surprised if it's the latter. Anyway, the problem can be solved in both without level scalinuote]

WHAT THE

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

OH GOD LEGOLAS YES YOUR ASS FEELS LIKE HEAVAN

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Oh yeah and I just pulled an all nighter playing this shit (to think I didn't go out with my friends to study and ended up on the PC all night ). So yeah it's pretty damn fun, combat is the right amount of challenging (playing on nightmare) and everything else the people who actually played it already said

 

[Gay-Lussac]

OH GOD LEGOLAS YES YOUR ASS FEELS LIKE HEAVAN
http://hamand.eggman.us./crap/egad.jpg[/img[/quote]

:lol: :lol:

pure win

 

[GarfunkeL]

WHAT THE :ra ge: :ra ge:

BLOBERT messed up the quotes there.

Anyway, my point was that in NWN, ME and KOTOR you have part of the game where you are under the illusion of freedom - you collect MacGuffins from various places and you can choose the order yourself. It is actually repeated throughout NWN OC, in first three acts atleast, iirc fourth act was a tube run. Pretty much same thing in KoTOR and ME. So they justified level-scaling by the fact they could not predict which route you took. This is of course silly - since the "freedom" offered is in such a small scale, devs can make all three or four of them roughly similar in difficulty, with small variations. This ends up meaning that player will have rough time in one, "normal" time in second and easy time in the third - also creating a sense of progression (Hell yeah, I'm stronger, this is much easier than that previous zone/area/planet!). That sorta happened in NWN because the level-scaling there was very 'light', ie the encounter just spawned few more mobs of the same sort if you were powerful enough and since 'bosses' were hand-crafted, it didn't really matter. KoTOR was pretty much run-through all the game as was ME where the scaling was especially stupid - nothing seemed to matter anything, anywhere.

And I strongly suspect that this is the style they have gone down in DA:O too. by which I mean they use level-scaling, instead of being clever about it.

 

[Tycn]

Unlike Witcher, Dragon Age actually delivers on dwarf cock.

 

[HanoverF]

You are told to use vouchers to amass an army, and you need to heal some lord dude also. You can tackle these in 'any order' but some are more challenging than others so it's much less freedom than it seems. After you do those you hop on the express train to the ending. As I said in another thread there are really no choices and consequences up to here, they're just binary either or propositions affecting little more than text and final battle summons. Near the end you can make two choices that I guess may affect the ending more than just wrap up text (which isn't even narrated). Anyone else who has passed the game, are you always given an indecent proposal right at the end?

 

[Freelance Henchman]

OH GOD LEGOLAS YES YOUR ASS FEELS LIKE HEAVAN

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

 

[relootz]

YES, i finally killed the Ogre on hard. Only took me 7 tries.

Great succes!

 

[AlaCarcuss]

YES, i finally killed the Ogre on hard. Only took me 7 tries.

Great succes!

That's definately one of the things I'm really enjoying, employing different tactics to eventually win really tough battles and the satisfaction that comes with it. As I said, some of the fights on hard are really brutal so I can't imagine what nightmare is like.

 

[Worm]

For people who enjoy employing tactics on higher levels. Just how micro do you get? I think a lot of my issue is that I haven't explored the tactics windows (because it's a fucking mess) but even with that I think you'd still need to micromanage your guys pretty specifically. The more I like certain things about the game, the more I want to invalidate my own explanation of the game as MMORPG multi-boxing. However, I just can't.

Maybe it's less level scaling and more high levels aren't ridiculously powerful unlike in D&D.

I'd go a little further and say that levels do very little at all. You get more stats, but since your stats aren't capped, it really doesn't make a huge impact when a warrior has 40 strength other than equipping stuff. It does let you get new skills, which depending on your class may or may not be powerful. Since there is so little room for error putting a few points into lock picking or something to try it out, is a massive mistake which you get smacked down for.

While I can agree that level 10 to 20 makes a D&D character pretty insanely powerful, Dragon Age doesn't ever make your guy much stronger than he was at the very start of the game. Equipment seems pretty negligible too. All it takes are a few wolves and bad positioning and it's game over.

 

[coldcrow]

This is easy to answer. Set tactics for the mop-up actions and leave the AoE or key stunning stuff to your manual control. If you don't want to micro to much some very specific rules aren't too bad either (target mage, condition health, and so on). But try to avoid assigning AoE spells because the AI will relentlessly fry your own dudes with them.

 

[Worm]

Yeah I guess I just need to dig into that stupid window. However it still seems like a stun or knockback breaks my character's AI, I noticed this mainly in the fights against dragons.

EDIT: I mean I'd really rather there was a "attack who I told you to attack and blow your fucking cooldowns".

 

[Azrael the cat]

YES, i finally killed the Ogre on hard. Only took me 7 tries.

Great succes!

I'm also playing on hard, and no offence, but...

... the Ogre has almost all melee attacks, except for 1 quite unthreatening rock-throw that he uses rarely. He moves at normal pace and has no helpers. How did you not just kite him to death (you know, have whichever character he's attacking run in circles while the others pwn him) on the first try? It's a pretty obvious means of easily defeating any solo melee opponent of normal speed. I presume that they excpect players to do that, and that's why he's the game's first miniboss.

If they gave him a root/snare attack, or a charge attack to let him close the distance on a kiting player, then it would be a hard fight.

 

[Worm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al61HGGr ... r_embedded