Dragon Age - Rage of Mages

Corwin

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Gamespot has a detailed preview of the Mage class for DAO with an excellent outline of the various spell groups avaailable. Here's a taste:
The four additional talent trees for mages are primal (elemental damage spells); creation (healing and protective magics); spirit (which focuses on countermagics and controlling enchantments); and entropy (which focuses on hindering magics). Primal, for instance, includes four different talent lines for fire, ice, lightning, and earth, each of which has four levels of abilities, including the classic fireball, lightning bolt, and cone-of-cold spells you may remember from BioWare's previous Dungeons & Dragons-based games. However, the primal talent group also includes certain spell abilities with combinatorial effects. For instance, the most powerful talent in the earth line, petrify, briefly turns an enemy to stone and makes that enemy vulnerable to instant death by shattering if attacked with a concussive spell, such as the earth line's stonefist spell. As it turns out, certain spells from the ice talent line can also freeze enemies solid, rendering them similarly vulnerable to being shattered. The primal line also contains two different weapon enhancements for all characters in your party; the fire line causes weapons to deal fire-based damage; and the ice line causes weapons to deal cold-based damage. The remaining spells in the primal talent lines are generally powerful damage-dealers with large radii that can also damage your teammates if they get in the line of fire. Careful micromanagement (or combinatorial strategies, discussed later) is crucial in using these talents, lest you blast your own party to smithereens.
Thanks Leth for the headsup
More information.
 
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Reading these kinds of articles is what gets me salivating for this game. Finding all the spell combos should be great fun. I love the idea that sleep + horror = nightmares, and that frost spells cancel out fire spells etc. It almost seems emergent, at the very least it should give the combat a sort of simulationist feel. It's great that they've thought about you might reasonably expect different effects to interact, and implemented it. I do wonder how extensive the interactions are, hopefully it's not just a handful.

I wonder if it will be viable to have my main tank focus on 2 handers now. Maybe he can switch, use a 2 hander for trash and a sheild for bosses. Or maybe I can switch characters in and out, set up a boss fight team and a trash fight team.

If the combat is as fun and engrossing as it sounds, then I can see this game having huge replay value. Play a different type of character, different origin, try different choices, and use different strats. Fun fun fun.
 
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This sounds very interesting. I didn't read the article, because I don't want to spoil the fun of discovering it on my own.

I'm hoping it's not about linear specialisation - ala Dungeon Siege 2 - because that makes character building all too predictable.
 
all this comparison with bg, but why?
they try to develop something that's no longer tied to a well-designed complete world like that of d&d, but then every comment they make is a comparison with it?
that was poor, we make it better.
that other was cool, we make it similar.
the're still hanging from that branch, and cannot really take their own path.
it sounds like the guys who made lands of lore after getting tired of eye of the beholder.
eob still kind of beats the crap out of lol. (although both are enjoyable)
________
Jolite Vaporizer Manual
 
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There's some new screens with this article.
Flying vegetation for the win! Detached grass in the background.

Not the first DA screenshot I've seen that contains floating stuff. Coupled with weapons on te back clipping with some armors.. :/


Baron, that's totally true. On their forums, they kept repeating how bad D&D is in this and that and bla bla bla, especially this guy who worked on the ruleset (George Zoeller). And it's kinda super stupid to say things like that since they are what they are thanks to D&D... and now they spit on the plate they were eating from.
 
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D&D (4th edition not included) is one of the richest and most entertaining RPG systems in existence, and if I was responsible for Mass Effect, I'd be VERY careful criticising ANY RPG system, let alone the grandfather of them all.
 
I almost always play warrior-type characters in RPGs, but the possibilities here are tempting, very tempting!

@Tan: Why do you even care any more after having dissed the game in a hundred different ways?
 
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Is it me, or do mages sound very overpowered? I suspect they'll start out slow, and become increasingly more powerful near the end of the game (as usual).
 
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It's also very possible that backstabbing Rogues and two-hander swinging Warriors will put out a lot of hurt as well.
 
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@Tan, it is a bit curious. I find it hard to understand why someone would spend as much time and effort as you do on a game -- and a studio -- that you appear to dislike very strongly. Why *do* you bother?
 
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I think his favourite game of all time is probably BG or some such, and he is very dissapointed by the games Bioware are doing now, if this is indeed the case I could understnad it.... what he wants is they would make a game like his favourite again.... this is just my theory of course... to achieve this he complains as much as he could if they focus on other things...
 
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That would explain it, in which case I can only fault his poor taste... ;)
 
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@Tan, it is a bit curious. I find it hard to understand why someone would spend as much time and effort as you do on a game — and a studio — that you appear to dislike very strongly. Why *do* you bother?

Time and effort? Posting a few lines here and there? I'd call effort reading a 400-pages-long book you apparently disliked till the very end and then writing a few pages long review.

I like the concept of party based fantasy rpgs so this is the only rpg that I'm currently interested in. And since this is a site called RPGwatch - I'm discussing about an rpg that I want to discuss about… focusing on things I believe are flaws of said rpg. Was it that hard to grasp in the first place?

GothicGothicness, not exactly. I don't bash them for their recent games (which I have played none except NWN and BG which are not recent). I bash them because I dislike them as a company. Self-righteous, arrogant, obnoxious..
 
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So acctually you keep bashing the only game you are currently interested in? If everyone would bash the game they are so inetressed in with such a passion… I guess the game would never be finished :p
 
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Time and effort? Posting a few lines here and there? I'd call effort reading a 400-pages-long book you apparently disliked till the very end and then writing a few pages long review.

You do give the impression of being very au fait of what's going on with DA — the CV's of the people involved, the shenanigans at the BioWare forums, user interface details, details of game mechanics, and so on. You certainly know way more about all that than I do, and I am actually interested in playing the damn thing.

The book was quick reading; it took me about two or three sittings to read it — and, as I said in the review, it wasn't actually a chore. If I had hated reading it, I would've stopped.

I like the concept of party based fantasy rpgs so this is the only rpg that I'm currently interested in.

Okay, that would explain it. Thanks for the clarification. That must kinda suck, though.
 
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You do give the impression of being very au fait of what's going on with DA — the CV's of the people involved, the shenanigans at the BioWare forums, user interface details, details of game mechanics, and so on. You certainly know way more about all that than I do, and I am actually interested in playing the damn thing.

Yes, that's because I started following the game almost 3 years ago. And when you follow it you slowly get more informations so you see what's shit and what's not. Of course, shit bothers you more so you talk about it more.. if nothing else - to vent.

About the book - you ridiculed it though. ;) It was a funny and well written review, anyway.



Okay, that would explain it. Thanks for the clarification. That must kinda suck, though.

It does. I'd be more happy if for example Obsidian did a non-linear high-budget fantasy rpg, I think..
Who knows, maybe I'll enjoy DA more than I think if I will be able to disregard all the little flaws I see along the way.
 
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Yes, that's because I started following the game almost 3 years ago. And when you follow it you slowly get more informations so you see what's shit and what's not. Of course, shit bothers you more so you talk about it more.. if nothing else - to vent.

Or, alternatively, you lose interest and walk away. That's what happens to most people most of the time, anyway.

About the book - you ridiculed it though. ;) It was a funny and well written review, anyway.

Well, it was a somewhat ridiculous book, especially in the way it took itself so terribly seriously -- but that doesn't mean reading it was a chore. And I *am* interested in playing DA, and expect to rather like it, cliché and all.

It does. I'd be more happy if for example Obsidian did a non-linear high-budget fantasy rpg, I think..
Who knows, maybe I'll enjoy DA more than I think if I will be able to disregard all the little flaws I see along the way.

Ever consider exploring ways to expand your tastes? Might give you other things to look forward to.
 
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Prima Junta

It's about caring about the industry and what's wrong with it - from our perspective. It's not about some kind of hidden agenda against someone, and you can have a problem with something like this without having mental disorders or whatever it might seem like to those who shrug off this direction.

Though I've long since given up on the industry, I can still catch myself making an effort to lament what's wrong - and detail why.

I don't necessarily agree with Tan, but I can sympathise easily - and some os us aren't happy about the changes that's been happening - and maybe it's because we're more deeply invested in our hobby than others seem to be.

You don't simply "expand your tastes" if you've spent a lifetime investing in them, and discovering what you love to do and what your preferences are. It's not incidental or trivial to some of us, and we might even have a long history that makes us who we are, and makes us unable to "adapt" to the modern industry because we simply don't believe it's the best thing for it.
 
What was the old prayer again?

"Lord, give me the courage to change what I can, the strength to endure what I can't, and the wisdom to know which is which."

Gaming has become a mainstream hobby. The same thing happened to films. There won't be high-budget magnificently experimental stuff like Metropolis again — but there's a burgeoning art-house film industry going on underneath. If you miss the good old days of cRPGing, that's where you should be looking IMO — BioWare and big-budget houses have gone the way of Hollywood.

Thing is, IMO this is not a bad thing. The world needs both big-budget box-office mega-hits, and small-budget, artistically ambitious, challenging art-house films. The same goes for games. IMO it's a bit of a waste of effort to bitch at big, successful studios doing big, mass-market projects. It'd be sort of like ranting at Peter Jackson for not making Meet the Feebles or Forgotten Silver anymore, now that he's made it big with The Lord of the Rings.
 
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