Dragon Age

[ackblom12]

I'll toss my hat in on that complaint.

I definitely don't understand the complaints about warriors. I've had a blast with my 2 Hander warrior thus far and outside of one or two fights, the only ones I've gotten my ass beat in have been ones where I didn't' think things through beforehand.

[maxusy3k]

I've started (another) playthrough - I seem to get the urge to start a new character right after Redcliffe - and am min-maxing a bit more than I was previously, setting characters their individual targets and stuff, and damn is it making things so much easier.

I haven't played around with the combat tactics that much, but then I am only playing on Normal. I only really think about it when during a combat situation I think "It would have really helped if X had done Y at that point." so I go in and set a tactic for it.

So far my only real issues are, as above, the tactics slots being so limited, and an annoying habit for my ranged characters to forget to switch back to ranged weapons if they get dragged into melee combat. Also a minor gripe is that the Dwarven origin stories seem to be way, way more detailed and interesting than the other races, but that's seriously not like, a legitimate complaint I'm throwing in at this point.

Out of interest, does anybody know if the romances actually have a gender attached? I assumed - as is the way with most RPGs - that same-sex pairings would be limited to certain characters if represented at all, but after experimenting a bit with the Human Noble origin story, I'm not so sure. Of course, it could well be that the options within that section aren't gender specific and everything else is.

[KvP]

There are three romance options for either gender. There are two bisexual characters (they announce themselves as such fairly early on - it's in Zevran's first conversation) and one straight character for each gender. I don't know if dwarves have a romance option.

[Caleb]

I eventually considered strength to be my rogue's primary stat, same as any warrior.

So wait doesn't this game use Dex for daggers and stuff?  There is no "Finesse" skill you can get to make all your damage throws go to Dex?

[Professor Snuggles]

There's a skill for rogues that makes cunning the primary skill for damage instead of strength. I just got it an I'm pretty stoked!

[Caleb]

But do you have to go through half of the game being a wimp to get that skill?

I dunno.

I think i might just go full on Assassin and have my character be really really good at stabbing and poisoning things and little else.

[ackblom12]

My Dwarven lady is definitely gettin it on with Liliana. Maybe Alistair, they're both on my to-do list this play through.

[Alex C]

I eventually considered strength to be my rogue's primary stat, same as any warrior.

So wait doesn't this game use Dex for daggers and stuff?  There is no "Finesse" skill you can get to make all your damage throws go to Dex?

I again want to stress that there's a difference between a rogue who wants to be able to stealth and lockpick and all that good stuff and a rogue that wants maximum ass-kicking. Mine is firmly in the latter category; doesn't mean that the former can't contribute in a fight, they just won't contribute quite as much. It's a sacrifice either way; my rogue couldn't pick a decent lock if his life depended on it.

To answer your question, no, there isn't a finesse skill. Daggers use half of your strength (or Cunning with the right talent) and half of your dexterity and then multiplies by .85 to determine your attribute damage bonuses. By contrast, longswords use your full strength/cunning total which is then multiplied by 1. Axes use full strength/cunning and then multiplies by 1.1, making them excellent for burly characters like my high level rogue. In the long run, all the weapons out there have better attribute scaling and better base damage than daggers since you can concentrate on just one attribute for damage and get a higher modifier to boot. Daggers are still actually quite competitive for much of the game since you'll have no choice but to pump dex anyway and because they have some of the best Armor Penetration going. But eventually pumping strength/cunning and wielding two bigger weapons via Dual Wield Mastery will be the fastest way to increase your overall damage potential. The problem is that Cunning just substitutes for Strength while calculating damage; it doesn't boost your attack bonus and it doesn't let you qualify for weapons that that have a minimum strength score to equip in the first place. So while Cunning might theoretically have great scaling with a kick ass dragonbone hand axe, it won't matter if you don't have the strength needed to equip it. You'll also miss more often since like I said, cunning doesn't increase your attack bonus.

Anyway, go ahead and make a Cunning/Dexterity rogue if you want; he'll pitch in good damage on backstabs and open locks and stuff. He'll just miss more often won't be able to stay in an enemies face after they turn around after a few backstabs like my blood dragon plate wearing, axe wielding monstrosity of a "rogue" can. On the upside, he should dodge more as long as you keep stacking Dex. You can beat the game either way, and if you're a completist you'll probably appreciate the lockpicking and maxed Coercion more than I do.

[ackblom12]

Man, the uh... the ending to this game is incredibly bittersweet. Spoilers obviously.


This is especially true of the fate of Orzimarr. The game also feels like the ending is a lot more tragic and hopeless if you sacrifice yourself rather than letting Alistair make the final blow. On the other hand, my mage playthrough is going to take Morrigan up on her dark ritual offer so lets see what kind of foreshadowing that gives.

[Jeans]

So holy shit, mages are ridiculously powerful. The crazy amount of smackdown provided by Fireball-Tempest-Mind Blast-Fireball (on the two lower difficulty levels so you can just nuke the whole place) is absolutely ridiculous.

[Be My Head]

I've always played a mage because it's more interesting than "hack n' slash", but with DA: O there's less variety of spells, which makes me bored.

Of course I'm happy mages are finally getting their rightful dues.

[maxusy3k]

Grease and Fireball is also hilariously effective, particularly since it helps to snare and gather enemies as they charge.

[Jeans]

What party-based RPG's have you played where melee classes are only hack-and-slash? Because either you are playing the wrong games or you are playing the right games wrong.

[Alex C]

I'm just freaked out by the implication that there's games where mages didn't get their rightful dues. They were dominant in anything D&D based.

[Alex C]

(on the two lower difficulty levels so you can just nuke the whole place)

This is a key phrase.


It's also why I have never played on lower than hard.

[KvP]

On hard the tank business becomes a little more pronounced, as you draw all the enemies to a certain spot, cast stasis on him, and then throw as many per-second AoE damage effects as you can at him.

[Jeans]

(on the two lower difficulty levels so you can just nuke the whole place)

This is a key phrase.


It's also why I have never played on lower than hard.

More often than not I play RPG's to roleplay and advance the story, so I tend to rip through RPG's at least once on low difficulty settings.

Also I suck at them.

[Spluff]

I'm just freaked out by the implication that there's games where mages didn't get their rightful dues. They were dominant in anything D&D based.

Anything D&D based that went through high levels. Anything with low levels and a limit on resting, and mages were practically the most useless class.

[Alex C]

Except when they were using charm/sleep to wipe out whole groups through the magic of save or be good as dead spells. The "Oh noes, we're out of spells" issue was easily fixed by having a higher percentage of mages in the party so nobody's resources were taxed too heavily in any given encounter. And honestly, I've found that no problem can't be fixed by throwing enough scrolls at it. I've soloed BG1 as a Mage before. It's not particularly hard, you just need to have to burn a ton of resources that oddly enough are really only available to mages.

[Professor Snuggles]

Being mages always seems stupid to me. Like, they're just fuckin squishy ass damage machines. And the NPC mages are usually the most interesting, so why would I want to overstack the party with them?

I like character interaction and stuff more than I like being good at RPGs.

[Professor Snuggles]

Being mages always seems stupid to me. Like, they're just fuckin squishy ass damage machines. And the NPC mages are usually the most interesting, so why would I want to overstack the party with them?

I like character interaction and stuff more than I like being good at RPGs.

[Alex C]

Mages are often squishy damage machines in JRPGs, but in D&D it was never really the case accept at the very lowest levels. Hell, one of the bigger problems with high end AD&D was the fact that Mages became better tanks against the truly tough critters than the warriors. For example, in BG2, golems were such good fighters that you rather had to accept that they could and would connect with the majority of their attacks even against an agile warrior in full plate. So your best bet was to cast Stoneskin and Mirror Image and mage tank them while everyone else hacked the golem to pieces. The golem would still connect with their attacks that way, but they wouldn't be able to chew through your defenses fast enough for it to make a difference. There really was little reason to be anything but a cleric or a mage back then, which is a damned shame, since you'd think warriors would have been worth a damn in an rpg genre commonly referred to as "hack 'n' slash."

[Felrender]

Magic is for pansies.

[Surgoshan]

So is your mom.

BURN!

[Johnny C]

The thing about the combat tactics was that they were touting it as a DEEPER LEVEL OF GAMEPLAY in the promo material and making it sound like it came down to whether you wanted to use it as an option or not. That's what drives me crazy - it's a bait-and-switch.

[Johnny C]

But on the other hand -

[Boro_Bandito]

Okay so I honestly wasn't excited about this game at all and thought I was going to skip it... but I've heard such good things about it and... okay so I've been playing like 10 hours straight its four in the morning oh god I think I have a problem.

[Dimmukane]

Yeah, I definitely played for at least 15 hours this weekend.

[maxusy3k]

I played it for roughly 27 hours (with breaks to keep my mortal body functioning) straight when I had the day off on Friday, which was kinda nice because usually when I get that kind of insomnia I can't concentrate on anything at all.

Tonight I think I will give it a break.

[jeph]

First playthrough was with a 2-hander human warrior and holy god did I ever die a lot

Second playthrough I'm doing a dual-wielding elf warrior (shut up I like warriors) and JESUS SHIT the game is so much easier

[ackblom12]

It sounds like my weekend. It's amazing how much gaming you can get in when you're on the couch for 4 days due to being glass eyed and feverish.

Comparing them is kid of pointless, they're 2 games going for entirely different things, but I think DA has officially surpassed BGII in my mental hierarchy of Fantasy RPGs.

[maxusy3k]

I think I can safely say, even at this stage - I'm not sure how far I'm through, I've explored less than 50% of the world even on my furthest playthrough, I think - that this is the best RPG I've played - again, short praise since I haven't played all that many - it has depth, it's engaging and even the niggling interface failures are something I can work with and adapt to. The fact Bioware have managed to conjure up an entirely fresh fantasy landscape and setting with minimal derision, while keeping it easy to access and follow, is pretty fantastic. Even Mass Effect came from a scenario where the core concept was pretty familiar to anybody coming in from the outside at all - humans are humans, we go into space and surprisingly we are kinds of jerks about the aliens, and vice versa.

I must say though, I'm finding it a lot harder to try and play a jerky asshole character. In ME it was pretty easy to knock through two straight playthroughs as Paragon and Renegade respectively, but in DA there seems to be a lot of times where the choices are only between two evils anyway, lesser or no. This feels more realistic, I guess... games where you can clearly choose saint or sinner through incredibly obvious dialogue choices or actions tend to make your character come off as a pretty heavy archetype of whatever alignment you're going for, or perhaps even stretching it to somewhat overblown levels. Also in that I guess in the real world there isn't always a right and wrong, sometimes you're just playing for damage control, and many of the crunch decisions I've seen in DA have come off as such.

In DA there are 'bad' choices that I can even see a saintly character pursuing, and - while some might not appreciate it - the fact you can't negotiate your way through the game beating on every character to disagree with you is pretty refreshing.

It also makes me even more eager for ME2, to see if they can at least release product with the level of quality and polish on display here.

[FIXDIX]

I've put in 24 hours since I got it on saturday.

Oh goddamn I hate finishing an intense fight and not saving my progress directly afterwards, only to die when moving across the map by some flashmob of bandits or wolves. Granted that it is my fault for not saving, but still, ARRHHH.

I'm having a real hard time using my DLC too, for some reason whenever I put in the Shale DLC code which I got with the game it says the code is invalid. Same thing with the BDA, only I registered that code on the EA site and it said it was fine, but still nothing on my Downloadable Content menu.

[maxusy3k]

How are you inputting the code? I had some trouble on the Xbox version until I realised I had to press Y on the DLC menu directly for the code, rather than moving to buy the item and going with 'redeem code'.

[ackblom12]

Yeah, it's kind of a dumb system to be honest. Took me a coupe of minutes to realize what I was doing wrong.

[Boro_Bandito]

Yeah, it took me a while to realize that the only way to download the content was if you sat there and watched it download from the in-game EA menu, no out of game active downloading for them, oh no.

So I keep getting my ass handed to me as a dwarf warrior specializing in shield and mace. Despite the fact that its supposed to be the setup where you can take any hit thrown at you I feel like I have zero survivability. Also its annoying how high a percentage of available party members, at least as far as I've gotten, are freaking warriors. To say I have them up the wazoo would be an understatement, but right now the guys available to me are 2 mages, Wynne and Morrigan, one rogue in Leliana, and then a golem, war dog, sten, alistair and myself all being warriors. On this playthrough I just decided to have me, Alistair and Shale, and then Morrigan, so a 3 warrior/1 mage setup, and purposefully skipping all that fun rogue stuff for another playthrough.

[ackblom12]

I think in the end there are.... 5 warriors if you count Dog, with a pretty wide variety of specialization between them, 2 rogues and 2 wizards not including yourself.

Spoiler:

I think it would be 6 warriors if you count Loghain, is that right?

You should seriously take Alex's post to heart when it comes to survivability. Tanking is very different in this game than it is in a lot of other games. It's practically impossible to do traditional tanking, though the Sword and Shield build is definitely the easiest to do so with.

[Johnny C]

i love that when you select your dog to be in your party it plays a happy little Dog's Theme

[ViolentDove]

My dog brought me soiled pantaloons as a gift. This game is awesome.

Also it's going to ruin my life a little bit.

[Darke]

I really want to have my dog in the party, but there's no room. Shale is too awesome to leave out, I'm trying to bang Leliana, and I need a mage.

[Boro_Bandito]

Yeah if nothing else I'm going to have to play through the game again just so I can have the dog in my party, I'll probably have him on my mage or something.

[Caleb]

Guys I GOT THE GAME!  I have been playing this weekend!  Best Buy price matched an Amazon deal.  I am glad my computer can run this.  I get no slowdown at all during the game but sometimes the movies skip a bit.  It took a really long time to download all the extra crap from beating the flash game and stuff but it was worth it!  I love starting out a new game with a lot of different crap to play around with!

My first game and I choose to be a human rouge.  So it looks like I am a noble with a cool doggy.  Wow I was expecting something horrible to happen to my character in the first act, I guess I just lucked out.



Tim Curry - "Hello..."

Crap.

I have named my dog Shanks.  (I guess my character taught him to fetch old soiled pairs of undergarments sometime in the past?  This leads to some unsettling questions.)

So I am going for a bit more of a robust rouge this time and I am pretty happy.  My guy can kick ass right along with the warriors and I LOVE the poison system.  It sucks not getting some of the chests to open but honestly it doesn't seem like I am missing much.  I don't have any stealth yet and I am not missing it.  Duel wielding with enchantments and poisons is so awesome, you get a rainbow of damage numbers.

[Alex C]

Rogue.


I play one in warcraft so this has become a thing.

[Caleb]

Can't we pretend I misspelled it on purpose as a joke?  "Robust Rouge"  That funny right?

3 hours of sleep man.  Cut me some slack.

[Dimmukane]

You're right about chests for the most part, but there have been a couple here and there with really awesome surprises.  I found a few bitchin' hammers and some rad armor on my 10-hour trek through the Deep Roads that way. 

[Caleb]

Yeah but nothing truly special right?  I mean you aren't going to find many unique items in high level locked chests are you?  So maybe spending points on lockpicking isn't the way to go...

So I have been considering the whole daggers and cunning thing VS Str and Dex for axes and swords.  Some people have been claiming that pure dagger characters actually do a lot more damage with backstabs and high rate of attacks with poisons and runes.

I dunno.  I have been spending most of my points in Str and Dex and have been working up to get the dual swords thing.

Maybe it's best just to have fun on my first run through and not worry about it.

My character seems to be kicking ass pretty well.  Perhaps I made him a bit of Jack of all trades but that's not too bad.

[Alex C]

Lethality rogues may very well beat out strength-dex in raw backstab damage output once you factor in the armor penetration but the runes and poison argument is misleading. Remember, there is nothing stopping you from using daggers with a dex-strength build and thus getting just as much benefit from poisons and runes if such a combination does indeed outpace your current axe/sword options. Taking more Cunning at the expense of Strength is simply just exchanging attack rating and heavier armor /weapons for lockpicking/stealth and superior armor penetration. I kind of prefer the former, personally, since on hard mode at least I've found that misses can be an issue at times when you're fighting an enemy that refuses to be flanked. I suppose you could also grab just enough strength to use your preferred armor type and then concentrate on cunning and dexterity, but I'm skeptical that it is really a good idea, since cunning replaces strength rather than stacking with it when determining damage, so all you'd really be getting out of Strength then would be attack rating, physical resistance and whatever new gear it qualified you for. In the end, I'm sure Cunning and Strength builds both work out fine, but the latter can be more heavily armored, which should count for something.

As for whether lockpicking is worth it or not, it probably all evens out in the wash. On the one hand, most of the chests have a lot of junk in them, but some do not. On the other hand, the fact that you won't have Item X is will be somewhat offset by the fact that you won't have to spend points on cunning and deft hands just to acquire said item. Granted, it's less of a sacrifice for rogues with Lethality, but even then it's still a sacrifice. You won't get extra damage from cunning until you have Lethality, and between that and sinking points into deft hands you'll have less points to spend on grabbing other combat talents.

[Caleb]

I am sick of missing in combat in RPGs like this.  I am going to concentrate on making my character as bad ass and armored as possible.

Thanks for all the advice Alex C!

[Darke]

I don't think I would ever stop playing this game if it weren't for the fact that I become terrible at the combat when I'm tired. I don't know what it is; I can play the most fast-paced first person shooters no problem while my eyes are closing over, but I just can't think at all tactically when I get drowsy. It's probably good for my health though, so I suppose it's a win. Sort of.

[pilsner]

It's unfortunate that on Hard, at about 25% progression more than 9/10 of the fights become trivial using one of the three tactics.  To anyone starting new play throughs who doesn't want to spend 40+ facerolling same-ish fights, I strongly recommend Nightmare.  Like, really strongly.