DA2 Dragon Age 2 Play thread

Dasale said:

I wonder what's so "undumb" in games like NWN1, Jade Empire, ME1, and even Kotor?

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Nothing… they were pretty dumbed down as well.

I think there was a Tower of Hanoi in every single one of them except ME1.

Zloth said:

I think there was a Tower of Hanoi in every single one of them except ME1.

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In ME2 too it seems there's no Tower of Hanoi… But there's no puzzle at all in fact! Ha no I noticed one puzzle, and got so surprised that it was difficult to solve it!

I finished recently ME2 and enjoyed a lot, I tried a little bit ME1 for the nth time and I realized I enjoyed a lot ME2 and not ME1 because ME2 has been dumbed down a lot when compared to ME1. In fact dumbed down isn't really the right word, it's not about think more or less. In both you don't think much on tough problems, in both there isn't much pure puzzles, in both fights have a fairly good tactical level but it's not tactical games, in both the exploration doesn't involve that much problems.

But in ME2 controls are quite more simple, for example one key is used for use/crouch/jump/healing, controlling a bit the companions is quite more simple, the inventory has disappeared, collecting loot is limited to find money/resurrect item/blueprints/codex/new weapons, healing system is simplified, and more.

But is more complex controls for smarter people? Is collecting ton of pointless crap is for smarter people? Is collecting 12 Uzi is for smarter people? Is sorting constantly an inventory with ton of junk, ton of duplicate weapons and armors, ton of stuff you'll never use, is all of that really for smarter people?

Smart people don't like lost time in pointless repetitive tasks and many of the dumbed down elements are related to minimize such kids stuff. But yes the lack of puzzles in both games is an example of pure dumbed down, the simplified exploration (in both games) is a dumb down element, the simplified classes is dumb down (in both games), and more.

DA2 is a fanatic hardcore game when compared to both ME but on another way it's so clear DA2 has been made by trying steal as many elements from ME2 than possible. For example the clear but cold interface look is coming from ME2 alas don't fit as well than in ME2 the game mood, the simplified loot with no special graphics and a garbage section is from quoting no more such loot in ME2, the special craft and resources system is coming directly from ME2 blueprint system, the graphics made with a more stylistic approach is clearly inspired from ME2 but when in ME2 it's very successful alas in DA2 it's not at same level, and plenty more.

Zloth said:

I think there was a Tower of Hanoi in every single one of them except ME1.

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What?

What!? There was one in ME1?? Oh man. Well, they put a tombstone in DA1 for the Towers so I don't expect to see them again anytime soon. (Thank goodness. It was a fun puzzle a couple of times but jeez....)

Dasale said:

But in ME2 controls are quite more simple, for example one key is used for use/crouch/jump/healing, controlling a bit the companions is quite more simple, the inventory has disappeared, collecting loot is limited to find money/resurrect item/blueprints/codex/new weapons, healing system is simplified, and more.

But is more complex controls for smarter people? Is collecting ton of pointless crap is for smarter people? Is collecting 12 Uzi is for smarter people? Is sorting constantly an inventory with ton of junk, ton of duplicate weapons and armors, ton of stuff you'll never use, is all of that really for smarter people?

Smart people don't like lost time in pointless repetitive tasks and many of the dumbed down elements are related to minimize such kids stuff. But yes the lack of puzzles in both games is an example of pure dumbed down, the simplified exploration (in both games) is a dumb down element, the simplified classes is dumb down (in both games), and more.

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Both ME2 and DA:O are full of routines. For example, the prevailing routine for a soldier in ME2 in combat (the most of the game)is: duck, slow time ability, take down enemies.

A three elements routine. Which is the number of elements in a routine that humans averagely handled well ( errors start to appear significantly at seven elements)

Options associated to the routine elements are low: choosing cover (information already interpretated by the level designer), choosing weapon (for soldier, 60pc time AR, 30pc sniper rifle), chosing target a bit more complex, wait time behind cover.

The complexity level of the routine involved elements is itself low.
All in all, simple routines.

The capacity of navigating fast, reliably and efficiently in complex routines is associated with smartness. Routine itself does not exclude smartness. Simple routine does.

Bioware broke down the complexity of the involved routines and by such, have decreased the required level of smartness.

Pfff if I take you approach, mirror image, anybody harass enemy mages up to kill them, destroy other stuff two fingers in the nose and you get your Baldur's Gate 2 routine.

I don't think you understood anything to M2 fights, in ME2 moving, positioning and progressing through the map can make a huge difference. Go on describe this in a simplistic routine. That said I didn't even notice any slow time ability!

For me DA2 fights are better than those of DAO fights that are better than those of ME2. But still your description is simplistic and doesn't reflect anything. Also I think there's a polishing level of fights in ME2 that is better than in DA2 and DAO. So despite a base offering less possibilities, the fights quality ends quite close to the two DA despite they offer much more possibilities.

Dasale said:

Pfff if I take you approach, mirror image, anybody harass enemy mages up to kill them, destroy other stuff two fingers in the nose and you get your Baldur's Gate 2 routine.

I don't think you understood anything to M2 fights, in ME2 moving, positioning and progressing through the map can make a huge difference. Go on describe this in a simplistic routine. That said I didn't even notice any slow time ability!

For me DA2 fights are better than those of DAO fights that are better than those of ME2. But still your description is simplistic and doesn't reflect anything. Also I think there's a polishing level of fights in ME2 that is better than in DA2 and DAO. So despite a base offering less possibilities, the fights quality ends quite close to the two DA despite they offer much more possibilities.

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So out of those games da2 has the best fights. That's sad.

Dasale said:

Pfff if I take you approach, mirror image, anybody harass enemy mages up to kill them, destroy other stuff two fingers in the nose and you get your Baldur's Gate 2 routine.

I don't think you understood anything to M2 fights, in ME2 moving, positioning and progressing through the map can make a huge difference. Go on describe this in a simplistic routine. That said I didn't even notice any slow time ability!

For me DA2 fights are better than those of DAO fights that are better than those of ME2. But still your description is simplistic and doesn't reflect anything. Also I think there's a polishing level of fights in ME2 that is better than in DA2 and DAO. So despite a base offering less possibilities, the fights quality ends quite close to the two DA despite they offer much more possibilities.

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I'm having a hard time deciding which of your statements I disagree with more, admittedly because I don't think I quite understand what you're saying in the second and third paragraphs, so I'll limit myself to the first one.

The fights in Baldur's Gate 2 offered a great deal more than the "routine" you just mentioned, and were a great deal more tactical, I think, than what you give them credit for. Trolls' fire and acid vulnerability, dragons' resistance to magic, golem special resistances, undead level drain traits, basilisk stone gaze ability, (do I need to even mention illithids?) along with better crowd control spells, more dangerous single target mage spells, varying levels of dispel and dispel-like abilities - all of these things, and plenty more, made fights in BG and BG2 more tactically challenging than what you just described.

As far as dumbing down gameplay options like loot and companion equipment, where does it all end? Dragon Age 2 had tons of loot laying around, but nearly all of it was absolute trash. So trashy that they actually created an icon for it, and pre-sorted it for you. Why even have it in the game? Why not just put the coin value in the container instead? While you're at it, just get rid of all the loot entirely, and make the swords and armor level up with the...oh wait, you DID start doing that! Next step, just get rid of the leveling up of the player entirely! Only 2 attributes are necessary for any one character class anyway, so the game will just automatically assign those points for you. Forget about picking special abilities, because the fighting is going to be too frenetic for you to pay attention to what ability has cooled down and when. You'll be thankful to the heavens that you have any special abilities to use! Just mash the keyboard number keys and pray!

Don't you ever think that part of the motivation for exploration was the chance that that barrel might have something I could use? Even if it's crossbow bolts +3, that's better than what I had before, and it's not some lame, moth-eaten scarf. Maybe that chest will have some sweet armor that I can actually utilize or, if not, it will be worth something to a vendor that has something I really want.

I don't think there's any way to spin the notion that Dragon Age 2 is a sub-par offering with flashes of potential that were crushed because of a horribly rushed development cycle.

Buzzkill:
I won't lost time explain you that against Troll or Golem it's also a very simple routine in BG2. We are talking about fights and your long answer is about something else. You are like a marketing robot in charge of promoting BG series, you are blocked on a loop and forget what is debate. Sorry for this rudeness but you are very boring on that, change your disc please.

about 3.5 hours in, yeah - I keep hoping to find good loot and I'm finding tons of junk. I've been a little bummed that I cant open some chests yet (just like in DA:O) because I tend to concentrate on pure combat for the first 5 levels, but I have this sinking feeling that (again just like DAO) there's nothing in those locked chests that would be all that great. The "junk" filter on the inventory is indeed something else....

Big patch out - check!
Some mods ready - check!
NVIDIA drivers updated - check!
And it's even currently on sale at Amazon USA. (Eeesh, a bigger sale than when I bought the game yesterday. Ah well.)

First impressions…

The oger battle was awesome on hard difficulty! The person that got killed before the battle wasn't the same person that died in the demo and I suddenly found my party without some critical powers. I won with just my mage standing in the end, and with only a few hit points.

The battles on 'hard' difficulty have been plenty hard, though they seem to be getting easier. There's a mod to turn on friendly fire in hard difficult but I think I'll wait and see how this goes.

High rez textures look pretty sweet when they aren't screwing up, which is about half the time. I'm seeing an awful lot of doubled textures and textures that aren't lined up correctly the other half of the time. Sad.

Sound is a problem for me - specifically dialog sound. I've had to turn down the music and effects then crank my stereo up to hear people talking.

further on the subject of loot..

I do like the simplification of the enchanting system. Basically, all runes appear to be different only in their base type, the amount of resulting bonus is dependent solely on the quality of the item that's being enchanted. Put a fire rune in a crappy dagger, you get a small bonus barely worth it and waste the rune. Put it in a good weapon and you get a decent bonus. So all runes are good, I'm not lugging around or storing a bunch of different types of runes of varying strengths, and only really concerned w/ obtaining better gear.

If anyone with an Nvidia card(s) is having performance issues with DA2 at high resolutions, it seems that upgrading to the new v270.61 Forceware drivers might give you a HUGE increase.

GeForce GTX 580:
Up to 516% in Dragon Age 2 (SLI 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF Very High, SSAO on)
Up to 326% in Dragon Age 2 (1920x1200 8xAA/16xAF Very High, SSAO on) Up to 11% in Just Cause 2 (1920x1200 8xAA/16xAF, Concrete Jungle)
Up to 11% in Just Cause 2 (SLI 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF, Concrete Jungle)
Up to 7% in Civilization V (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF, Max settings)
Up to 6% in Far Cry 2 (SLI 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF, Max settings)
Up to 5% in Civilization V (SLI 1920x1200 8xAA/16xAF, Max settings)
Up to 5% in Left 4 Dead 2 (1920x1200 noAA/AF, Outdoor)
Up to 5% in Left 4 Dead 2 (SLI 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF, Outdoor)
Up to 4% in H.A.W.X. 2 (SLI 1920x1200 8xAA/16xAF, Max settings)
Up to 4% in Mafia 2 (SLI 2560x1600 AA on/16xAF, PhysX = High)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti:
Up to 461% in Dragon Age 2 (SLI 1920x1200 8xAA/16xAF, Very High)
Up to 241% in Dragon Age 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF, Very High) Up to 19% in Just Cause 2 (SLI 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF, Concrete Jungle)
Up to 13% in Just Cause 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF, Concrete Jungle)
Up to 6% in Far Cry 2 (SLI 2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF, Max settings)
Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Black Ops (1920x1200 noAA/AF, Jungle Map)
Up to 5% in H.A.W.X. 2 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF, Max settings)
Up to 4% in Call of Duty: Black Ops (SLI 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF, Jungle Map)
Up to 4% in Civilization V (1920x1200 noAA/AF, Max settings)
Up to 4% in Left 4 Dead 2 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF, Outdoor)
Up to 4% in Metro 2033 (SLI 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF, PhysX on)

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http://www.ggmania.com/?smsid=30807

xSamhainx said:

further on the subject of loot..

I do like the simplification of the enchanting system. Basically, all runes appear to be different only in their base type, the amount of resulting bonus is dependent solely on the quality of the item that's being enchanted. Put a fire rune in a crappy dagger, you get a small bonus barely worth it and waste the rune. Put it in a good weapon and you get a decent bonus. So all runes are good, I'm not lugging around or storing a bunch of different types of runes of varying strengths, and only really concerned w/ obtaining better gear.

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Runes are very cheap in DA2, on companion armors the effect is huge and depends of companion level because armor quality depends of companion level.

Not sure but from I read it seems possible to set a rune on a slot where there's already a rune this destroying the current rune. If that's true, with cheap runes and a simple system (the system in DAA was awful) then overall it's a great system. But myself I never quoted there was a trick to remove a rune and without this trick I feel the system average.

Dasale said:

Buzzkill:
I won't lost time explain you that against Troll or Golem it's also a very simple routine in BG2. We are talking about fights and your long answer is about something else. You are like a marketing robot in charge of promoting BG series, you are blocked on a loop and forget what is debate. Sorry for this rudeness but you are very boring on that, change your disc please.

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No.

I use the example of BG2 because it was a good game. That was made over a decade ago. It was a 2D isometric game that tactically beats the pants off of this one. That's the point. You go ahead and keep coming up with ways to convince yourself that the combat in DA2 was anything other than flashy crap. I say this having played the entire campaign: Hard and nightmare mode do nothing to change enemy tactics or AI, doesn't ramp up their skill selection, doesn't utilize different spells, it just dumps a ton of hitpoints and resistances on enemies and calls it a day. There's nothing "tactical" about this game. Every spellcaster is the same, every warrior is the same, every rogue is the same. Kill the mages first, kill the archers and rogues second, kite the warriors until you can focus fire on them. Manage aggro. Lather, rinse, repeat. The boss fights are nothing more than battles of attrition that can be won if you simply remembered to buy enough health potions. The only thing that DA2 does to "excite" in combat is the teleportation of waves of enemies that you have no way to plan for. Furthermore, it's so goddamned boring after ten hours of the same kind of combat in the same locations, you turn the difficulty down to casual, just so you can get through the campaign, just to see the stupid ending, so you can get to a decent game.

Sorry for the "rudeness" but your constant insistence that this game is something other than Tactics For Dummies marks you as lame.

Yes, there are tactics in this game. Very much so. Trying to get those combos to work isn't trivial at all. As you gain new spells and abilities, the ways you can get these combos to work keep changing, too.

I'm less happy with the unknown waves but that does mean that you always have to hold something back just in case.

But then, I guess I'm totally lame. You can tell by how much fun I'm having. Maybe I should go get less lame so's as I can have less fun.

On Nightmare I thought there was some tactics to it. You cannot allow area effect abilities like fireball or firestorm into the melee. I found I did have to balance when to use abilities and who to target first but only for specific fights. The waves were annoying but did provide some challenge since if I used my Assassinate ability early I might be regretting not having it when the assassins pop-in and I need it to defend my mages. Combos were useful and I took out quite a few Elite+ enemies with rogue moves on stunned or frozen enemies.

Yeah it is dumbed down from BG2 or JA2 in my opinion but still better than much of whats available today. I'm tempted to look into modding it to see if the AI can be improved but not sure if its worth the effort now that I'm done with it.

Maybe the fact that I dont min/max everything helps w/ games like this. I just dont take it too seriously, think about it too much, and just for fun I DONT always do the smartest thing. That's either blown the game for me in the past because I'm gimped-out and it's impossible, or given the game just enough challenge to make it fun. But I did it my way, adding a little creative chaos into the mix. I'm playing to have fun, I already have a full time job where I have to think too hard and figure out whether people want fries or not w/ their order.

I often blow all my abilities in the first round of the fight, so I have to struggle and really strategize on the fly to survive the second wave. I dont really think about the ability choices too much, I use some roleplaying to determine what my characters would pick. I have skills that sit idle because I either forget to use them, dont like them, or I just dont get around to it. I dont always take the best companion for the job, I take what characters I like personally like or even who I just like watching fight. I piss off NPCs left and right.

I'm actually finding the game quite challenging at times on normal difficulty, and the more that I play it the more I enjoy it. It's an action-rpg plain and simple, I just dont take it too seriously.

Spells just aren't very interesting in DA2. The few enemy mages I encounter seem to blast me with some effect. I can't tell what the effect is. I've never been put to sleep, or had any other interesting effect hit my party. The spells that your own party gets are either damage dealing or stun/sleep type effects.

It's ridiculous to compare this to BG 1 or 2, as that used and attempted to simulate the well-established D&D rules. The spell system there was immensely more complex than DA 1 or 2.