Dragon Age I just finished Dragon Age Origins and some parts of it werent awfull

[Absinthe]

I just wish more RPGs had some equivalent to the Arcane Warrior. Using a magic stat to satisfy the equip requirements of non-magic equipment is neato.

Damn shame that Arcane Warriors don't actually get anything useful for attacking though. The only thing it's good at is being an unkillable mage in armor. They completely forgot to give it any offensive abilities. All the Arcane Warrior NPCs actually have access to Warrior talents, unlike the player characters.

I always figured tanking was kind of the point, what with the extra buff spells and all. Useful for when you want to play a mage but get tired of constant game overs every time the PC keels over. I always used blood magic and normal spells for the big damage numbers.

Nah, the point was to be some kind of warrior mage, as the name indicates, but they never got around to properly implementing that when they slapped a "finished" label on the game.

 

[Cael]

There's some kind of memory handling problem. Once you reach the bigger more open areas (like Denerim), you will probably need to lower the setting even more.

Using both resolutions above 1080p and highest quality textures will ensure that DAO will crash reliably. Lowering either is simply unacceptable for such an old game, so the only option is unofficial patches. 1080p seems to be the critical limit, at least on Windows 10. I never had so many crashes with 1080p and best texture quality on Windows XP.

"...Windows 10..."

I see your problem.

 

[Nano]

So I installed the mod that fixes the bug on Cone of Cold which made it absurdly OP, and... damn. Things are a bit harder than I thought they would be.

 

[Semiurge]

Damn shame that Arcane Warriors don't actually get anything useful for attacking though. The only thing it's good at is being an unkillable mage in armor. They completely forgot to give it any offensive abilities. All the Arcane Warrior NPCs actually have access to Warrior talents, unlike the player characters.

As if mages aren't already OP.

 

[Absinthe]

So I installed the mod that fixes the bug on Cone of Cold which made it absurdly OP, and... damn. Things are a bit harder than I thought they would be.

Really if you max spellpower/Magic stat on a Mage (which is pretty much the only stat Mages should bother with), it will end up being a very difficult check to resist anyway.

Damn shame that Arcane Warriors don't actually get anything useful for attacking though. The only thing it's good at is being an unkillable mage in armor. They completely forgot to give it any offensive abilities. All the Arcane Warrior NPCs actually have access to Warrior talents, unlike the player characters.

As if mages aren't already OP.

Honestly it's more OP to make Mages go from glass cannons into impregnable fortresses with the highest resists, defenses, and armor scores of everyone than to make Mages act a bit like Warriors. Going from glass cannon into unkillable cannon is kinda ridiculous.

Also Warriors and Rogues need buffs so they can be more interesting classes, but that's another topic.

 

[Nano]

Really if you max spellpower/Magic stat on a Mage (which is pretty much the only stat Mages should bother with), it will end up being a very difficult check to resist anyway.

Yeah I'm still in the early game, I'll be back to curbstomping everything in a bit.

 

[Lagole Gon]

So I installed the mod that fixes the bug on Cone of Cold which made it absurdly OP, and... damn. Things are a bit harder than I thought they would be.

There was a bug on CoC? All I know is that they kept nerfing it bit by bit every major patch.
Well, you can still just get 3 mages and use other stun spells

 

[Doktor Best]

DAO with all DLC, expansion and mods is one of the best videogames related experiences I ever had in my life.

I am so sorry.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I like this game. The only issues I had with it were that the enemies had scaling and they were pretty spongy. Also, the fetch quests. But otherwise it was good.
Someone mentioned no enemy variety. Lol, GTFO, play the game first. You have human enemies with swords, bows, magic and their darkspawn versions. Different races and their darkspawn versions. Unique darkspawn, revenants, unique NPCs (ex: lady of the forest which can be fought), bears, wolves, spiders, undead, werewolves, Broodmothers, Architect, dragons, wisps, demons of various kinds and others I can't remember now.
"No enemy variety". Piss off.

 

[JarlFrank]

Someone mentioned no enemy variety. Lol, GTFO, play the game first. You have human enemies with swords, bows, magic and their darkspawn versions. Different races and their darkspawn versions.

Ok so how do a human archer, a darkspawn archer, and an elven archer differ in function? They're all the same just with a different skin.

I haven't played this game since 2009 but I still remember how repetitive its encounter design was. 90% of encounters were the same copypasted mob over and over again.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I’m almost done with Ostagar. My memory is that the game picks up significantly after that, but man this part is just a total slog, and I can confirm that the encounter design is extremely lacking.

 

[Ravielsk]

I tried to replay Origins last year(with some mods) and despite my mostly pleasant memories of the game I could not shake the feeling that I was just playing some elongated prologue to an actually interesting story. The game tosses out there so many interesting concepts and ideas but does absolutely anything with them. Throughout the whole game I was expecting some sort of a twist to reveal that there is something more going on than just "yet another or... *cough* *cough* I mean darkspawn invasion" but nothing really happened. Even when the game sets up a interesting plot hook like blood magic and the role of mages in society nothing is done with it. Even the darkspawn, despite being the main antagonists of the game, are given relatively little exposure. In retrospect the most I remember of the game are the forest lady and some of the utterly retarded conditions to unlock certain sub-classes(like the Reaver or Blood Mage).

Its not until awakening that I got the impression that something is happening that I should care about.

Gameplay wise it felt like a Baldurs Gate remake with QoL changes but no actual improvements or innovations to the formula. It worked fine but felt really dated in all the bad ways.

 

[Absinthe]

If you want enemy variety, you install Slinks S3 Ravage (Fixpack). Base game's enemy variety is horrible.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Someone mentioned no enemy variety. Lol, GTFO, play the game first. You have human enemies with swords, bows, magic and their darkspawn versions. Different races and their darkspawn versions.

Ok so how do a human archer, a darkspawn archer, and an elven archer differ in function? They're all the same just with a different skin.

I haven't played this game since 2009 but I still remember how repetitive its encounter design was. 90% of encounters were the same copypasted mob over and over again.

Elves become shrieks, quonari become ogres, out humans and dwarves maintain their ranged affinities in this case IIRC.
So it's the same thing in every game. You have melee, ranged and magic options. Ranged and magic could be grouped together since they have the same function, right? Warriors, rogues etc. could also get grouped in the melee category since they have the same function. Great logic. On the NPC side, there's isn't any difference since the devs didn't give them enough abilities or made better AI for them. Whatever, it is what it is. The same thing (having the same function) is applicable to every game game in existence. Fallout 1 and 2 had melee enemies and ranged enemies. Poor variety. Oh but there were also mutants and ghouls and Boss and shit. Yeah, they looked differently, but ultimately they could be grouped into one category or another and having the same function. See how that works? Every game in existence.
At least in DAO they made different models and went the extra mile for it or maybe you prefer the enemy variety in DA2 or Thief 4 perhaps. At least there, they look the same, as to not confuse players about which having what function.
Also, cherry picking one enemy type out of all the others. But meh, whatever, they probably have the same function as well. Fucking lol.

 

[JarlFrank]

retarded wall of text with no paragraphs

The difference between DA:O and Fallout is that Fallout doesn't force you to go through the same encounter 1000 times.
You CAN have a great game even with low enemy variety, of which JA2 is perfect proof.
The problem with DA:O is that it barely varies its encounter design. It's been over a decade since I played it but if my memory doesn't fool me, the majority of encounters looked like this:

- You enter a room.
- The room contains a gang of 3 melee fighters, 2 archers, 1 caster.
- You enter another room.
- The room contains the same gang of enemies.
- You enter another room...

And so on, and so forth. Little variation in enemy constellation: it's always a similar ratio of melee to ranged to caster. No environmental variety: just the group of enemies in a square room, or an open field in case of outdoors areas.
There's nothing like what some Baldur's Gate 2 encounters did: the first encounter in Firkraag's dungeon had a bunch of melee orcs attack your party while archer orcs shot from behind elevated parapets. To reach the archers you first had to get past the melee fighters and open a door.
DA's encounters don't do anything like that. They don't vary the environment for more interesting combat situations. It's always the same copypasted encounter in the same copypasted environment.

If you saved before the first encounter of any given DA dungeon, fought it out, reloaded, and repeated that process a dozen times, it would give you the same experience as actually fighting through the entire dungeon. Because the dungeon consists of fighting the same encounter a dozen times. Yawn.

 

[Child of Malkav]

retarded wall of text with no paragraphs

Retarded wall of text with paragraphs but still retarded.

Your memory does fail you, yes. Not surprising. So your main gripe is the group composition and placement. Got it. Still retarded. And I wasn't making a comparison between DAO and Fallout 1 and 2. I simply gave them as examples. You can replace those 2 games with any other (since apparently I hit a nerve) and what I said is still valid. Positioning matters very little and there are situations like you described, in DAO. Few, but they're there and the game isn't that much better because of them. If you want good encounters even with one, single type of enemy, the game needs to have very good and adaptive AI which no game has because no one invests or bothers with developing AI. I mean, they do develop AIs for missiles so that they can kill some kids, but not for video games. So we're stuck with what we have. At least I give credit where credit is due instead of saying "everything is shit" like every other denizen of this shit hole, somehow still legal website. Not paraphrasing, just to make you mad.

 

[Nano]

whatever

You haven't played this game since the 2000s, why do you think you're an expert on it?

 

[JarlFrank]

whatever

You haven't played this game since the 2000s, why do you think you're an expert on it?

Because I still have PTSD from how terribly repetitive its encounter design was. Its encounter design was so copypasta, it stuck in my mind for a decade. No other game managed to do that. It throws so many copypasted trash encounters at you, at the end I felt fucking drained.

Only DA2 is worse, but I only played that for an hour on a pirated copy before giving up.

 

[Delterius]

Damn shame that Arcane Warriors don't actually get anything useful for attacking though.

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Arcane_Warrior_spellcasting

You're still a mage, man. Every spell with an S can be used as part of an opener, before you unSheathe your weapon. Every spell with a D can be cast with normal weapons drawn. Death Cloud, Inferno, the Crushing Prison / Force Field combo, Glyph combos and such are all cool options that don't break the game too badly.

The thing about Dragon Age combat is that it was never good. Origins lacked the encounter design, the minimal balance second pass and the bug fixing needed to make it work. DA2 put the series in a limbo, where it doesn't know what genre it is so it doesn't do Action or Strategy very well at all. DAI refined DA2's combat without fixing its fundamental issues, adding a lot of ideas poached from different Action RPG subgenres without making any of them work in concert with each other. But at least when I go back to Origins I see the beta of something that could be interesting. When I go to DA2 I see the beta or something that is just bad. When I go to DAI I see that badness is now feature complete and very well polished, revealing thus that the problem is how, again, it is a game that does a lot of things and none of them particularly well.

BioWare is dead, really. The part of the studio that still exists is BioWare Austin, ie the mmo people. But I'm sure the only thing they lack is a good systems designer who can just sit down and say 'We are literally going to make Dragon's Dogma, OR Dark Souls, OR Baldur's Gate, OR The Witcher 3, OR World of Warcraft. Not everything at the same time. We have a fanbase. They like us for our cutscenes. We need to cultivate that and build a game with a clear subgenre around it. That's all. No stupid tacked on features like Multiplayer. No ephemeral chimeras of whatever is popular at the moment'. If that was even possible within an EA managed brand they could easily sell 10 million copies or more one day.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Your memory does fail you, yes.

As someone who is currently playing through DA:O, you are full of shit. The game lacks enemy variety and the encounter design is ctrl+c + ctrl+p over and over.

And I wasn't making a comparison between DAO and Fallout 1 and 2. I simply gave them as examples.

That's called making a comparison dumbass. Regardless, FO1 and FO2 don't have good encounter design either.

At least I give credit where credit is due instead of saying "everything is shit" like every other denizen of this shit hole, somehow still legal website. Not paraphrasing, just to make you mad.

I'm getting the sense that JF is not the mad one here, in multiple senses of the word.

 

[Child of Malkav]

bla bla I'm retarded, slow and dumb bla bla

Spoiler

So which is it? Enemy variety or encounter design? I mentioned above enemy variety and gave examples. You can read, right? Or is someone else writing these posts for you?

 

[Doktor Best]

whatever

You haven't played this game since the 2000s, why do you think you're an expert on it?

Because I still have PTSD from how terribly repetitive its encounter design was. Its encounter design was so copypasta, it stuck in my mind for a decade. No other game managed to do that. It throws so many copypasted trash encounters at you, at the end I felt fucking drained.

Only DA2 is worse, but I only played that for an hour on a pirated copy before giving up.

The second big offender in DAO's gamedesign is the uninteractive combat system. You go through your OP skills like cone of cold, you heal your melees who bind enemies, you kill the squishies. There is not much depth to the skill system or the combat system, so encounter design would have had to be more varied and more thought out in order to remedy this design flaw. Neither combat system nor encounter design is exactly bad, its just not good enough to warrant so many trash fights. DAO is not the only game that does this by any means, but it just adds its mediocrity the mediocre writing, worldbuilding, exploration.

It wooed me a lot back then as i was younger and in-game cutscenes that did not look absolutely ridiculous were something new and flashy in an RPG. Style over substance is much more forgivable when it seems to represent technical progress or deviation from the known genre boundaries, but flashiness in the videogame industry dwindles fast and time uncovers the shallowness behind.

 

[JarlFrank]

bla bla I'm retarded, slow and dumb bla bla

Spoiler

So which is it? Enemy variety or encounter design? I mentioned above enemy variety and gave examples. You can read, right? Or is someone else writing these posts for you?

How about "both play a role"? It's not just one singular element that drags the game down but a combination of really bad game design decisions that turn a game with a solid premise and, yes, some genuinely good parts into a tedious slog.

 

[Cael]

whatever

You haven't played this game since the 2000s, why do you think you're an expert on it?

Because I still have PTSD from how terribly repetitive its encounter design was. Its encounter design was so copypasta, it stuck in my mind for a decade. No other game managed to do that. It throws so many copypasted trash encounters at you, at the end I felt fucking drained.

Only DA2 is worse, but I only played that for an hour on a pirated copy before giving up.

The second big offender in DAO's gamedesign is the uninteractive combat system. You go through your OP skills like cone of cold, you heal your melees who bind enemies, you kill the squishies.

That is the tactic for just about every game combat ever, even in RTS games like Red Alert (tie up the tanks, and take out the V2 first).

 

[DaveO]

Congratulations on finishing the game. I won't any time soon.