Hahah, no, you're really overexaggerating it.
I found it pretty enjoying in computer versions.
In computer versions? You mean, like defeating an ancient dragon by zapping a Feeblemind at it, and then just sticking it in the side with a dagger until it keels over?
...
No, I'm not exaggerating it. Seriously. Think about dual-classing for a moment.
A fighter/mage (or kensai/wizard, of you're doing kits) of levels 9/10 will have the SAME XP as a mage of level 11.
Now, have them duel.
Hell, send them to face *ANY* challenge by themselves.
If you can think of a worse example of unbalanced game design in RPG's, I would very much like to hear it.
(After we're done with that, we can deal with the Blade bard kit and his offensive and defensive spins. Then we can deal with the God-mode cheat that is the AD&D monk. And *then* we can deal with all the kits that are so underpowered as to be near-unplayable.)
At least you didn't have situations like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sd82o7rPB0
Go to 2:00 and look at the red numbers floating above the PC.
That's what I was talking about. If you thought I was making things up..
I don't think you're making things up. However, I think that unless you know something dramatically more than I do, you don't know what the context of the clip is, which rules are in play, whether it's actual gameplay footage or something set up for a demo, and so on and so forth.
I'm just more informed than you about dragon age so I know many things you don't.
I'm entirely willing to believe you. I don't know all that much about it, actually -- only what I've seen in these videos and read on the Net, and I clearly haven't spent as much time at that as you have.
Crits work on a percentage basis which is pretty low + a multiplayer of course. So there is no crit confirmation it seems, which is a thing I loved about d&d 3.x.
Magical attacks are not affected by armor. Because.. they're magical.
Pretty much all "feats" (talents and skills) are revealed and there's no aoo avoiding talent.
Those are in game footages.. you think they'd make a new engine to demonstrate combat?
No, but I think it's quite likely they might set up an unbalanced encounter to show something off, or use some cheat mode, or something else.
It LOOKS like I know more things about DA so I know more things I dislike about it as well.
If you say so. Thus far, though, I have a terribly hard time disentangling the facts from your inferences, and therefore figuring out how well grounded your inferences are in the facts.
Watch that youtube link first.
Bioware is a strange company.. I think they're ok in some departments and very bad in some others. The one constant is: they think they know best and rarely listen to advices. Which, if you only take a superficial glance, may not seem so.
I agree. I think they're very good at producing stuff that's stable, runs well on a wide variety of platforms, and is very rich in the amount of content -- quests, character development, and so on, and that has a consistent look and feel in terms of visuals, sound, and writing.
They're not so good at cutting-edge graphics, and they're downright bad at originality -- they rarely take any kind of creative risks, their games are chock-full of cliché and stock characters, and the writing is pretty ho-hum. They're at their best when they're handed a rich, big, pre-existing palette of cliché to work with: IMO their best writing was in Jade Empire and KOTOR, and their worst when they have to make up something from scratch, and therefore only end up reusing REALLY old clichés (Mass Effect, NWN OC).
They're also pretty good at balancing very complex game systems -- Neverwinter Nights and its expansions are a particularly good example; D&D 3.0 is fiendishly rich in terms of character build options, and therefore chock-full of possible exploits, yet they've managed to computerize it without obvious dominant strategies, making the game playable and enjoyable (as enjoyable as it is, anyway, which in the case of the OC and SoU is, not very) with a very broad range of character builds. And the fact that they managed to make playable games at all out of the sick nightmarish horror that is AD&D 2nd Edition is a huge testament to their mad game-balancing skillz.
What I'm sayin', is that I find it very unlikely that DA would be dramatically WORSE than their previous stuff in terms of game balance. I don't expect much originality, and I do expect writing that occasionally slides into unintentional farce, but I also expect a solid, rich game with meaningful character development choices and tactical gameplay. Having read DA: The Stolen Throne, I also expect a good deal of plain ol' *fun* -- Gaider is clearly thrilled pink with the setting and the darkspawn are genuinely creepy, which is very promising for the overall feel of the game.
IOW, I sort of expect a similar experience as Baldur's Gate 2, clichés, clingy (elf) girlfriends and all, only without the outrageous balance problems derived from the AD&D 2nd ed. ruleset, with a slicker, more usable UI, and without the incredibly bad early game design.
And... I simply do not believe that you can draw as broad inferences are you're drawing from a few seconds of demo footage, whatever it shows.
And yeah, if they do manage to screw up the balance, I will be disappointed.