Funny, I never noticed. Honestly. Not once. I was tossing potions back and forth during combat, and never once saw this happening.
Really? I do remember being unable to sometimes hand potions to other party members when I tactically spread them to avoid aoe damage for example. I guess you had them always on top of each other..
And... didn't you ever had your party member stunned, held, confused, charmed, go berserk etc? Because, you know, when that happens you can't access his inventory and swap potions or other items.
No matter how strong you are, you would not be able to carry six suits of full plate mail and a half-dozen two-handed swords, and then cheerfully wade into a fight. They're just too bulky. And in practice, the inventory limits in all these games are so big that they're really no limits at all -- their only effect is to be an inconvenience, requiring you to shunt stuff between people.
Hohoho.. we're talking about people who can withstand dozens of sword slashes to their body, killing monsters who are 100 times larger (dragons).. I guess they can drag along a few suits of full plate mail as well, then. I don't think copying reality here would be the best solution, but I do think there should be some limit - a weight limit.
I guess we should imagine they drag the items on something with wheels and not actually enter battles with those things on their heads.
"Unrealistic" is not necessarily the same as "bad." These are games. They have different styles of gameplay. Packrat gameplay is one such style. You may like it or not, but that's due to preference.
Saying something is bad, of course, is a subjective statement. I don't think I have to explain when I say something is bad that it's actually an opinion. It's pretty obvious.
My point is that this system is not substantively different from any BioWare cRPG: only the usability is more streamlined.
No, you forgot about being held, confused, stunned, charmed, destroyed etc. It's different.
Which are absurdly poorly balanced to start with, especially AD&D 2nd Ed, which they used for the BG's.
They were not "absurdly poorly balanced". 1st/2nd levels being very weak, yes, but later levels are a different thing.
Could you be more specific about what you've heard and read, and what, exactly, do you mean by "bad", "easy," and "weird combat mechanics?"
Alright, as I have not played Mass Effect, I don't intend to get into specifics about it, lets talk about the topic at hand; Dragon Age and its combat. Maybe you'll get some insight..
1) First, they're using armor as a source of damage reduction - in absolute numbers. Which is ok. But, you have to have a good understanding of how things work to make this system ok.
Now.. there are some suits of armor which give you very high damage reduction which coupled with some other items give you damage reduction of, for example, 30.
If you wear such a suit against enemies who use light weapons (cca 10 damage) such as short swords, maces, daggers.. they won't damage you at all. Armor penetration won't help either (I can explain how it works if you're interested).
I was watching a dragon age video where the party fought some werewolves.. and guess what. Werevolves were attacking a party member with heavy armor and were dealing exactly 1 damage (you also deal 1 damage when all your damage is absorbed by armor). The thing is characters have 250-300 hit points at later level and start with 100-150 hp.
Is that a balanced and interesting combat encounter with werewolves dealing 0,5% of your max hp in damage, due to armor?
In D&D this is not an issues because armor doesn't give damage reduction.
2) Another thing.. I see they haven't implemented attacks of opportunity for running away and moving outside of the combat radius. I won't start explaining why this is bad.
See this for reference:
http://daforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=690082&forum=135
I'm talking about situations like the one described in the link.
3) I like some strategy in resource menagement and I had that with resting (to replenish hp and spells) because at least I could limit myself with the number of restings I'm allowed to have. With automatic healing after combat this part of strategical gameplay goes down the toilet and I really dislike that.
And, you know.. is there any need to have the pc start with 150 hp.. while a dagger does 5 damage? That's like.. 30 stabs before an opponent with a dagger brings you down. 60, considering every 2nd one will miss.. and oh.. damage reduction... at least 120 attempts at stabbing.
That's it for now.