Am I the only one that hate this so called "open world"? NO SPOILERS

[Vaalyah]

So, the fact that this game is 4 years old, that also the other threads in this subforum are generally ignored by the folks, that, except for "professional" reviews (see scandal of professional reviews some years ago), it received bad public reactions are not taken into account, no.There wasn't hundreds of forum users in this specific thread, saying the game is bad for many aspects, so, of course, it must be good. So, in your optic, if a "friend" of yours is not backstabbing you with a knife, it is perfectly ok if he's not behaving at all as a friend, as long as there's not physical injury in your spine.

An interesting point of view.

 

Unfortunately, I am more on line with this way of thinking:

 

<To anyone who repeats the notion that this game is "evolution!" and that "RPGs aren't like Baldur's Gate anymore, you stupid old people!" I ask you this: how can removing RPG mechanics, causing the gameplay to approach that of countless other games, be considered "evolution?" "Evolution" would imply adding features that weren't there before, such as how the Ultima series brought us in-depth story and dialogue, how Fallout brought us choice and consequence, or how Baldur's Gate brought us party members with their own personalities. But changing the gameplay to that of another genre isn't evolution, it's simple money-grubbing; an attempt at selling an RPG to people who hate RPGs.>

 

from here http://mygodwhathassciencedone.blogspot.com/2013/04/dragon-age-ii-is-horrible-game-and-you.html

As soon as I've discovered that I am unable to even assign the points (strength, dexterity, stamina, magic, ...) when I level up, because they are done automatically...

But, hey, ok, I am happy for you that you can enjoy games that aren't RPG. I can't simply understand why software houses pretend they are.

[PoeticAnt44]

This forum and site is more about modding than actually discussing a game. But, I'm curious, if you hate the game, then why play it? And, FYI, I don't consider DAI to be really an RPG in the true sense, but I enjoy it and it doesn't make me like it any less. Some people feel it's RPG enough to call it one. Some people don't call it one, but call it more of an adventure game with a good story line. You want a Dragon Age game with real RPG and choices, try Dragon Age Origins. It's old, but maybe it will be more to your liking. I think some people over analyze games so much so that they will have something to complain about in every game. I have yet to find a game that is perfect. But, again, if you hate it so much, no one said you had to play it. Or are you trying to convince people in here who love the game and are mostly modders that we shouldn't like it?

[Vaalyah]

How am I exactly supposed to know if I would like or not a game, if I don't play it? :huh:

OF COURSE I have to play it, to discover if I like it, or not. I can ask to friends (as I did), I can hear their opinions (everyone screaming the game is one of the worst they ever seen. And a couple for my friends are working for big gaming site in my Country, so, well, they see tons of games), but still, you can't develop an opinion if you don't try by yourself. I thought this was obvious, wasn't it?

 

Then, of course, since I've started it, I finish it, as I finish also books or movies I don't appreciate. Because 1) you cannot give an opinion if you haven't finish it completely and 2) I always hope for a miracle. Till now, the only interesting quest has been the final part of here Lies The Abyss, where you "travel" in the other place (no spoilers).

But still, too few interactions with companions and too few options to deal with the plot.

 

I've finished DAO many years ago, bought it at first release in my Country. And somewhere here around (or maybe old threads have been deleted, since I remember I had a quite higher number of posts, years ago), there should still be a long rant about how stupid it was that, no matter what you did, you will end the game with 15 warriors from elves/wolves, dwarf clan 1/dwarf clan 2, mages/templar, whatever 1/whatever 2. Or that, no matter how long for saving the mages, the Earle's son would still have been there, waiting for your return (the fact that *I* was a mage was not even noticed by the game itself, it seems). Or, who cares about supporting the crazy dwarf clan 2, rest of Thedas couldn't care less if a criminal is on the throne and your part in it...

I could continue.

 

At least, there, companions were a bit more developed, not just 5 dialogues in the whole game. In the following games, I always have the impression that I have to further advance with the main quests just to see something happening within my entourage!

 

I am not paid to change anyone else opinion. My only concern is that, if the few software houses that WERE creating RPG are just, as quoted before "selling an RPG to people who hate RPGs", not only the quality of the actual """RPGs""" will going downhill soon, but in a couple of years, there would be no RPG at all.

That's my concern and that's why I'd like for others to realize this.

 

But, as seen in a gaming forum of my Country, when someone states that "Setting AI and then not even touching the mouse during combat means the game is great!", instead of realizing that simply enemies are dumb and the game requires no strategy or brain cells to be finished, so that it has been incredibly noobified, you understand that, maybe, it's simply to late to fight for good gaming. Maybe because younger players don't know any better (sort of quotation from Fenris :-D )

 

I, instead, suggest you to try with old great BG series and also Torment Planescape. There's a reason if they are still considered the best of the genre.

[ThingTheWiz]

Obviously nostalgia isn't what it used to be :-)

 

BG, BG2 NW were all excellent games in their own way, but on many, many, many occasions they required - nay demanded - that the player indulge very strongly in the "willing suspension of disbelief" to be able to ignore things that were not internally consistent with storylines (romnacing a particular female druid comes to mind....) I don't think DAI is any more or less unbelievable or immersive (I didn't say better/worse) than these games. That's my personal viewpoint, and it obviously isn't yours because the mechanics seem to present you with some problems

 

Can respect that you seem to have seen a light on your particular road to Damascus that not many others see, but maybe, others don't share your view or position? Unlike you I found Planescape Torment something of a drag, but that dosn't prevent you from enjoying it.

 

PS - what did you think of Zork when it first came out, and how do you compare it to these games?

[Vaalyah]

EDIT

Sorry, it became a wall of text, I had to format it again.

 

 

Said that, playing as a female, I never romanced Jaheeira, so I don't know what are you speaking about, I'd like to point out that:

 

1) enemies climbing up from floor or down from the ceiling

2) teleporting enemies, why lore clearly states that "the only time it worked, required half of the slaves in tevinter"

3) in this volume 3 of the game, you can even pick a spell to teleport, even if the lore STILL says it's impossible for how magic is in Thedas

4) the mosaic pieces... I walk near it, I press search and I can't see it. But if I go upstairs, watch in the skull and focus it, then it magically appears. The funny part is not this... the funny part is that people and enemies are walking in those same areas since centuries and no one ever had the idea to put the eye in the skull :-/

 

What old games had is not a matter of suspension of disbelief (we're speaking about Dragons and Magic, of course you need suspension of disbelief).

What they had were:

1) choices. Tons of choices and each one of them would lead to different path. You wait too much to complete quest X? Companions will leave/enemies will gain access to resource Y/allies will die/... Choices are not good/evil. At the end of DA2 I was almost CRYING when Alistair showed up to say "Meredith is the problem of this city". I was almost expecting some bioware employee to call me at home and say "in case you hadn't already understood, you should support the mages". I hadn't had a single choice I had to evaluate in the 3 games. Or better, not yet completed DAI, but it wouldn't take long and till now...

2) Your pg doesn't matter. If my Intelligence is 80, I want different choices than if I play with a 20 IQ pc. More dialogue options, different ways to complete a quest... As the one in the blog said, no matter what you do, SPOILERS OF DA2, Qunari will go on rampage, your sibling and your mother would die, Anders will blow up the chantry END SPOILERS Why I can't try to solve the situation with diplomacy? Why I can't break the Eluvian, but even if I get 5000 rivalry point, Merril will still do a mess? This is not RPG, this is a movie where, every now and then (too few) you can choose to say a kind/witty/angry thing, the meaning of which is still the same.

Look at this https://www.deviantart.com/epantiras/art/Mess-Perfect-077-199045599 Dialogue wheel is bad. Dialogue wheel is not RPG. How many times I had to reload, because the 2 words indicated gave a totally wrong idea of what your pc was going to say? Countless.

3) companions. I personally play for companions, because I love how they can come alive in a game well done. My favorite companion-development is in NWN2 and KotOR2. They both have some cutscene where your pc was just passing by and watching the others quarreling or playing pazaak. This gives you the idea that your companions are real. This makes you become fond of them and be actually WORRIED for them. This is what makes you involved in the plot, in their personal quest, etc, etc, etc. DAO wasn't "brilliant", from this point of view, but it was able to gain a 6+. DA2 was dreadful and DAI is on the same level. And I am sad for this, because I am personally fond of some of those companions. It is stupid I can't speak to them during a quest or in a location (ie: you could ask Alistair his thought on "location X" or "situation Y" and some cutscenes were triggered no matter what). The "travel to each companion's home location just to comment a thing happened 3 real life days before" is STUPID. It sounds more of forced pilgrimage than normal friend hanging-out. Speak again and again, just to check if there's something new triggered by the game. Most of times there's not. They are not feeling alive.

Fenris left you at the end of act 2. Then he's brooding for 3 years, 3 DAMN YEARS before having a chance to speak to him again (a long rant about the idiocy of the 3 yeas stasis among acts. Why not 6 months? 3 years is simply retarded). And in the meanwhile... no idea on why you are still bringing him to missions, if it's awkward to have him around, why Anders is making up jealousy scenes that would have ashamed a 3yo... nothing, you have no idea.

You can let Danarius pick him back and your companions would not even dare to send you to hell and try to save him, or simply leaving you, even if they strongly disagree and think s*** of you. This is non sense.

Romances? Old DAO: if you have ie: 50 points with companion, you can flirt with him/her. If you reach ie: 75 points, the companion will flirt autonomously with you. Here companions simply don't flirt at all, so, you can do it all yourself, or you can wave goodbye to romances. And no, I don't think it does make sense saying to Anders he's hot (PS: he's not) the second after he had to kill his long time friend made tranquil. If I were Anders, I would have sent Hawke to hell in that moment.

 

Why I am angry? Because I know what Bioware can do, I know that they did great games and I am frustrated that they are creating these kind of "things" that are 100% aimed to make you walk around for 1 hour like a moron, just to find a way up to climb the rock with the mosaic piece on it, instead of focusing on actual game play. I am 75 hours in this game. 2 of game, 3 of "what the hell is this, how am I supposed to do that, where is the tutorial?" and 70 of moron-walking. And I am angry because if there are people still saying "Yeah, ok, it's not a great game, but it's nice", instead of going 100% rage, the next game will be even worse (as Andromeda has already proven to be, from what I've read around).

 

I never played Zork. At that time, I had no internet connection and my English was not good enough for it. At that time, my P&P RPG group was not scattered in the whole world, so we actually were able to play in person. No need for internet.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Vaalyah

[ThingTheWiz]

Zork was a text-based personal computer game, first circulated in 1977 and was popularised in the early 1980 on DEC and IBM pcs - often running (discretely) from a 5 and a half inch floppy disc (or even terminals if you talked nicely to the IT team) , so it wouldn't have been "on the internet" (but you can find it there easily now). As you say, gaming goes back a long way..... even before the internet :-)

 

Zork required the player to project themself into the game (no visuals/graphics/sounds - just text) - calling for people to build their own worlds in their own minds. From this postulate I could argue that since the 1980s adding visuals and sound has dumbed-down "real game playing" to the point that the player needs no imaginative abilities - but I won't, because that would be reducing the definition to "what is good" to "what I like", and rejecting the idea that others might find a game enjoyable for whatever reasons they see fit. I can appreciate that you are making a statement of how you feel about DAI, but I don't personally share your perception - on the other hand I don't want to impose my perception on you or others

 

On a friendly level, if you want to develop full exchanges I'd like to suggest you consider toning down the way you express your dislike of a product. What you feel is clearly important to you, but the way you express this and the frequent use of hyperbole can easily be read as a over-strong rejection - which is likely to discourage people from engaging in an interesting exchange.

 

PS I'd understood you to say that you were a mature/older player, hence my Zork question - sorry, my mistake

Edited August 29, 2018 by ThingTheWiz

[Thandal]

Highlighting something PoeticAnt44 said above, the Nexus is all about for mods for games, not reviews of them.

 

Sure we have discussions about the games themselves separate from the mods, but mostly how-to-play, or "How do you play?" kinds of topics. The folk looking for and using mods for their games are, (for the most part) self-selected fans of those games in the first place.

 

More general discussions of the games *as* games can be found lots of places, including vendors' sites like this one: DA Inquisition, although the now shuttered "BioWare Social Network", (and the "BioWare Boards" before that) had lots more back-n-forth about the games, characters, lore, etc.

[ThingTheWiz]

@Thandal. Thanks for the timely reminder. Discussion closed for me

Edited August 30, 2018 by ThingTheWiz

[Vaalyah]

Zork required the player to project themself into the game (no visuals/graphics/sounds - just text) - calling for people to build their own worlds in their own minds.

In my Country, so called play-by-chat rpg sites are still in use. There are many, you can even find related portals where all the available lands are listed according to genre, subgenre, type of games (ie: D&D, Star Trek, Girsa, Vampire...). So, in some way, we still play that.

 

I am not a native speaker, and I'd add that my opinion on the topic IS quite strong, considering this is the n-th time Bioware failed in creating a great game like a decade of years ago. Dialogue wheel is a blasphemy for §RPG and the fact that community has not voiced its outrage higher is probably the reason why it is still there, getting worse every time, game after game. But you can read the reason why wheel is so bad in the formerly linked blog review.

 

As said, my problem is not the game itself: I still haven't understood the sense of creating a FIFA game (people who enjoy soccer can simply go out and actually play soccer, can't they?), but the fact it is not my cup of tea doesn't mean others should not be able to play what they like. My problem (since long, I think since ME!) is when they create something that has almost nothing to do with ROLE play game and attach to it a label saying "ROLE play game". THIS is a problem (I repeat "selling an RPG to people who hate RPGs": the problem is that they are selling it also to ME, who rightly wants an RPG when buying something sold as an RPG). You are selling me a boat, pretending it's a car. So, the new model would probably don't even have an engine, but just oars! And if we (car enthusiasts) never raise our voices, then cars would simply disappear from the market.

 

Yes, I am an older player. But not SO old. In 1980 I wasn't even born yet!

 

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Thandal, from what I've read, when DA2 rage exploded on official forum, that part of the forum has been closed and many users banned for no reason except "disagreement" (and yes, I've read the incriminated threads).

However, if you can link to me the correct section to continue the discussion, I would be more than happy to join, thanks.

[Thandal]

 

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Thandal, from what I've read, when DA2 rage exploded on official forum, that part of the forum has been closed and many users banned for no reason except "disagreement" (and yes, I've read the incriminated threads).

However, if you can link to me the correct section to continue the discussion, I would be more than happy to join, thanks.

 

 

The link I provided is now the only "official" site. All the other have been shut down as EA consolidates all of its game-related sites under the "Answers HQ" (AHQ) umbrella.

 

For games released since the consolidation (e.g. "Mass Effect: Andromeda", "StarWars Battlefront II", "A Way Out", etc.) that means there are separate sub-forums for "General Information/Discussions" and "Technical Issues". For all the older BioWare games, there's only a single forum for both types of topics.