Wondering about current state of DA mods

[ElricOfGrans]

I gave Dragon Age a pretty fair go when I got it, but found it pretty lacking. Awakenings did not interest me, so I have been playing Oblivion since. I feel like I need a break from Oblivion, so thought about giving Dragon Age another go. I was wondering if mods had yet resolved my major gripes with the game.

 

My first major issue was with balance. Sword/shield and dual-wielding Warriors were good, but two-handed Warriors were pretty lame. Dual-wield Rogues were effective, albeit a little boring, while archer Rogues were awful (and boring) --- normally, archer Rogues/Rangers are my favourite classes in RPGs. The Mage needed a massive rebalance, especially around Specialisations (did anyone ever use Shapeshifter and not quickly roll back to their last save?). I am sure something must have been done, but what has been the way of things?

 

My second complaint was armour. Warriors had it great, with a nice steady progression from light to medium to heady to massive armour. Rogues? Nah, you hit your best equipment at the very start of the game (just upgrade materials once in a while). Magi? Not a whole lot better (unless you played Arcane Warrior). This one I am pretty sure would be solved, but there is every chance modders have focused on massive armour.

 

My third complaint was, quite ironically, that the game was way to linear. A good/evil choice in most quests, and the side-quests in Denerim, nothing else. Have mods added more side-questing, across the whole game (not just late-game uber-dungeons)?

 

I am willing to bet there is a massive `no' on this last question, but one of my favourite mods from Baldur's Gate II was one that added huge amounts of extra banter between the party members. Has anyone done something like this for Dragon Age? I would pick the game up again for that alone!

[Thandal]

@Elric; The answers to all four (two similar ones in the third paragraph) are, in no particular order: "Yes". "No". "Maybe".

 

Folk have made great mods tha address every one of your issues. But whether or not you will think so, depends on you. Go to the "Files" section here on Nexus and use the "File Search" utility (at the far right edge of the page.) You can even narrow down the results using the "Category" option dropdown below the "Name" box. The "Armour" category alone brought back 96, "Weapons", 87, and "Weapons AND Armour", 60. (And not every mod is correctly or completely categorized.) Here's the link: "Dragon Age Nexus Home" on Nexus

 

Your last query is obviously the most challenging from the modder's perspective. Not the least challenging aspect being the huge amount of Party Banter already included. How do you top things like what you'll find here: "Favorite in-game Quotes" on Nexus DA Spoilers?!? :biggrin:

 

If you think DA is light in that area, you either aren't trying to interact with your Companions enough, aren't attempting to do the things that they care about, (positively or negatively) aren't switching your Party's composition enough, or haven't learnt to go "Bridge Running". :P

 

So there are indeed mods that change many (most?) aspects of the game's items, actions, and environment: "Improved Atmosphere" is a good example of this last. (But "Use With Caution"! It can have a significant unexpected impact on things if you later remove it.) Even ones that add NPCs as companions, including as romancable ones! ;D

 

So enjoy.

 

Happy Modded Gaming! :thumbsup:

[Selvec]

Two Handed Fighters are amazingly good in Awakening. Issue is, what made them good is not avaliable in the original campaign, not yet anyway. I've made the suggestion that whats added be avaliable in Origins via a mod, see what comes of it.

 

One thing that annoys me, though may not you, is that while there seems to be a lot of mods here, many of them are simply repeats of the same project, with slight variations. Go into the face sections for an example. There are so many bloody variations of face morphs for sacred ashes that it feels like a lot of effort is being put into something thats not really that much of an improvements. It feels like the effort is slightly misplaced and could really benefit from a different area of focus.

 

Course in saying that I guess that shows you how disappointed people where that DA:O wasn't what Sacred Ashes showed us. Eh.

[Thandal]

Two Handed Fighters are amazingly good in Awakening. Issue is, what made them good is not avaliable in the original campaign, not yet anyway. I've made the suggestion that whats added be avaliable in Origins via a mod, see what comes of it.

 

One thing that annoys me, though may not you, is that while there seems to be a lot of mods here, many of them are simply repeats of the same project, with slight variations. Go into the face sections for an example. There are so many bloody variations of face morphs for sacred ashes that it feels like a lot of effort is being put into something thats not really that much of an improvements. It feels like the effort is slightly misplaced and could really benefit from a different area of focus.

 

Course in saying that I guess that shows you how disappointed people where that DA:O wasn't what Sacred Ashes showed us. Eh.

One thing that annoys me is people complaining that OTHER people's mods annoy them. None are forced to use others' mods, and all are free to make one more suited to own tastes. And here on Nexus, even if one lacks the ability/knowledge/time to make one's own, there's an area to request a particular mod and see if someone else is willing to attempt it. Talk about "Community Friendly!"

 

Regarding the relative preponderance of custom faces among all mods: seems only natural to me. All players are people, and people are facinated by faces. Personally, I think that the huge number of SA facemorphs is a compliment to the the great work Blur did with the trailer, not a knock on BioWare's work in DA:O. I use a SA version of Leli, a non-SA, (very) slightly tweaked Morri, and vanilla all others. Been tempted to employ many of Dracomies' "DA-Redesigned" NPCs as well, just haven't gotten around to it.

 

But the OP's questions were, "What's available [in certain areas]?" not "How much of what's available isn't in those areas?" And the answers reamain... LOTS!