Dragon Age - $7 Storage Fee and More @ Fidgit
 

We've missed a couple of Tom Chick's Dragon Age game diaries over the last couple of days.
First, and most interesting, Tom tackles the issue of player storage being offered through DLC. He's not happy with the limited inventory and the $7 solution:
BioWare's Georg Zoeller responds in this letter - here's a partial snip:
…although Tom observes that Derek French has a different explanation.
Moving on, the next two are Seven Things I Wish I'd Known Earlier and Do I Have Something in my Teeth?
More information.

In "Seven Things I Wish I'd Known Earlier" he wishes he knew there would be locked chests, use of dialog skills, companions with skillsets that can overlap yours, situations where you won't have a full party etc…

Is this a joke? Has he never played an rpg before?

The storage issue is a non-issue since you have plenty of inventory space and it can be expanded with backpacks. I got Warden's Keep but likely won't use the storage much. (if at all)

I keep restarting the game so I've only seen till just past the battle at Ostagar.

But the Quartermaster in Ostagar sells a backpack upgrade for 55ish silver for a 10 slot inventory increase. You can buy this upgrade once before going into the Korcari Wilds and then another time when you return from the Wilds before doing the battle. So that's 20 extra slots right at the beginning of the game. Also, every single item in the game stacks with other identical items…including weapons and armor. So I just can't imagine this being that big of a deal if you keep buying the upgrades…even when you start finding more unique/non-stackable items.

I bought the Warden's Keep thingy just for the extra story and couple hours of gameplay, the storage is just icing to me.

In a thread at the Bioware forums a dev. said that the followers at camp can store items for you as well. Sometimes, like when you're in dungeon, you can't switch the people at camp in and out of your party, though.

why even mention that the smallest reason they limited inventory was to limit saved game size? if you have an item in your inventory, that must be what, a tiny amount of bytes of storage space for the game to recognise this. and that item has to be somewhere in the game world, so it's still got to be in the game file. hilarious.

To limit save game space? OH GIVE ME A BREAK. WHEN has that EVER be the concern of game companies? Or who has harddisc space issues in days where HD is measured in TB? Bollocks.

In Gothic and its followers I could carry the entire loot of the WORLD, and the game never had any issues.

It's not even exactly $7 though, I had to pay tax also, which I thought was ridiculous. :-/

So now virtual currency is a taxable product?!?

I thought the same thing … but I was disappointed the supposed rogue in my party couldn't open any of the stuff I hit early on.

As for persistent storage - this isn't Diablo, so I only expected 'party inventory' which I thought was decent sized.

However, the Gothic games were PC only. The save game size of console games are MUCH smaller than PC games. So there …

Yes, it is.

Luckily, all sales in Denmark and in the EU have the added salex tax to them, before you buy the product, be it virtual or retail. A virtual product is still a product - at least in the eyes of the (tax) law.

It is still a commercial transaction, whether Digital Download or DLC matters not … at least when the universally greedy hands of the government are involved.

So you didn't grab the CE?

That may be so, but I can't believe a knowledgable company like Bioware, having made SO MANY RPGs does not realize PC RPG gamers are pack rats!? Just another fuel to my console hate. Everything is dumbed down when it comes to consoles.

Well… the huge Dragon Age myth of the perfect game was prolly too good to be true. Apparently everything humans do is flawed somehow. *sigh*

Haven't got the game yet, but in general I don't think a small inventory is a bad thing. It's certainly more realistic, and I would say it adds to the RP aspects by forcing you to decide what to bring along on your adventures.

Thus I can't see this as "dumbing down" the game.

In Norway there's no tax on items downloaded from abroad. I guess the authorities found it would be very difficult to keep track of it.

I actually like limited inventory, it's more realistic. But I would have preferred limitless inventory slots… with weight. That way, you can carry 3000 different seeds, but only 1 or 2 full plates in a backpack. Of course, you would then have pack horses and carts and such.

You mean, unfortunately, because you neer really know if you are taxed or not?

A question : How does the inventory look like, actually ? Like in action RPGs and in POR2 or different ?

The inventory is just a list with an icon representing the item(s) on the left. You can sort it using tabs at the top of the screen. There are sort tabs for All, Weapons, Armor, Accessories (other wearable items like rings,etc), Other (like health poultices, potions, throwables, etc), Crafting related items, and Quest items.

Items have no weight or mass/size. Everything stacks with identical items. So if you have 6 pieces of chain chest armor that are identical they take 1 slot…the same as 10 healing poultices or whatever. Not realistic but it works.

Here's a inventory screenshot: http://ie.pc.ign.com/dor/objects/682…035049507.html

Yeeeeees … I imagine that really was the "least" of the reasons, rated somewhere below: "storing too many items on disk will only tempt magic cyber pixies to break in and steal them". What would they need to record an inventory item? An item code, the position in the inventory, and a stacked count. Yeah, those bits really add up.

Limited inventory isn't really the issue though. It's lack of persistent storage (someplace to dump all those crafting components), and I suspect that was a design oversight rather than a planned money grab.

Yes, I have the CE. The retail CE doesn't include Warden's Keep.

In Denmark, sales or value tax are added to a product before its sold i.e. a game that costs 400 DKK have 100 DKK as (added) value tax. The store collects this money and send it back to the tax man (the government). Other countries add the tax, after the sale.

Even better!

Thereby proving that all of this conditional inclusion crap STILL has me confused!

If people don't know persistent storage was actually a "dumbing down" and not limiting storage. In the past only simplified rpgs had unlimited storage or extra storage space beyond your inventory. You had to choose what to keep and what to get rid of and in some games you didn't have easy access (or access at all) to merchants so you would have to drop items. Anymore having the ability to drop items on the ground is useless since you have easy access to merchants and storage.

Don't feel alone. This has me confused as well. I'm picking up the collectors edition today and I have NO IDEA on which one it will be(Taiwan sometimes grabs the UK version and sometimes they get the American version of games). Why not just make one collectors edition and be done with it. I suppose it's a way to make an extra buck, but for god sakes don't nickle and dime the customer to death.

Make it simple. They should just say this, "Here this is what you get for buying the CE no matter where you are and this is the DLC we have available if you want it." When they start making it confusing is when people start getting pissed.

A question about bag extensions - I didn't notice the bags that the merchant had at Ostagar.. and now it's kinda too late :)

Should I go back to an early save and replay that section (I would rather not) or are bag extensions easily available elsewhere throughout the game? Is there a limit to how many bag extensions one can apply to the inventory.. like a final "max inventory size"?

Thanks!

I agree that this DLC scheme for DA: Origins has ben (IS!) very confusing. DLC needs to be simple and elegant; people understand how this concept work. Not this pre-order this game from Game and get XX items, preorder from Steam and get XXX items. Very confusing this is. I agree that WK should have been free for all CE versions of the game.

When taking about the CE version:


Apparantly, on the making of DA: Origins DVD (comes with the CE Version), Mike Laidlaw, talk about how the game was made, how to do combat; he also gives out good strategy advice on how to build a party etc.

Let me just say that wasn't a mistake I made on either of my OTHER characters after doing the same with the first ;)

Bags are available elsewhere, such as your camp.

Yep, I keep posting this, but it seems important.

You can get 2 from Ostagar Quartermaster. One before going into the Wilds, one after. 55silver each. The one from your camp which you can buy right after the Ostagar battle is over 7 gold. So thats a huge price increase. You want to get those first 2 bags.

Cool … have to check into it tonight!

Bah, I missed them. Too late now…