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:

The bottom line is this: the lack of inventory space is a problem given the way the game was designed. The solution to this problem will cost you seven dollars above and beyond the money you paid when you bought the game. Dragon Age, as sold, is slightly crippled by design. Once again, Electronic Arts pushes the limit for how to bilk you for more money. Here's a wonderful single-player RPG and the publisher is doing their level best to make you keep paying for it even after you've already bought it.
Shame on you, EA.

BioWare's Georg Zoeller responds in this letter - here's a partial snip:

Hey Tom,

For what it's worth, 'EA' has nothing to do with this (apart from being the parent company of BioWare).
The game was designed with limited inventory for a number of reasons, the least of which being to limit savegame size and therefore loadtimes.
Originally there was a small storage chest in the party camp, until we realized that due to the fact that there are several versions of the camp area (for reasons evident in the story) and that people were losing their items (as they were stored in the area).
By the time this problem was discovered, we had not enough time to fix the problem, plus, we decided that it was not really necessary anyway since the item limitation was rather generous compared to the initial designs at least.
The game was finalized tested without a storage chest. The item limit was never questioned or brought up during the QA phase, after all, it was part of the design.
The 'storage chest' in Warden's Keep DLC was added by the DLC team as part of their 'hey, what would be a cool feature for your own keep' brainstorming. […]

…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?!?

Originally Posted by KapitanUnterhosen
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?

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.

Originally Posted by elikal
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.

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

Originally Posted by JDR13
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?!?

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.

Originally Posted by JDR13
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?!?

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?

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
However, the Gothic games were PC only. The save game size of console games are MUCH smaller than PC games. So there …

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.

Originally Posted by aries100
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.

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.

Originally Posted by aries100
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.

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

The game was designed with limited inventory for a number of reasons, the least of which being to limit savegame size and therefore loadtimes.

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.