DA:I Facepalm

Morrandir · December 8, 2014

I'm ~10 hours in and I'm enjoying it.

But considering this game's budget and aspiration (at least) two "features" are ridiculous. I knew this before but only in experiencing it I've realized the facepalmness.

Companions disappear on mounting your horse.
No swimming, you're teleported back to the shore.

I mean… WTF?
This would be ok for an indie title with limited budget but for a AAA title I'm expecting more sophisticated solutions.

joxer · December 8, 2014

For swimming it was EA's decision not to go that direction generally (Sims 4 also didn't have it, but after public outcry EA added it for free with an update).

For horses:

purpleblob · December 9, 2014

I encountered companions/NPCs disappearing bug very early on. When I came back from Hinterlands, there was empty space where Cullen should be arguing with one of the chantry guys in Haven. Both of them weren't there, but they still occupy the space, so I had to walk around them. Not a biggie though, good old reloading fixed everything.

sakichop · December 9, 2014

I played about 6 hours but I'll be waiting for all patches now.

The game isn't in a terrible state or anything but it does have some issues and I'm tired of playing games on release only to see it turn into a superior version 6 months later.

Now I just have to stop buying games at release and save some money.

I'm still waiting for a patch so I can get through the last few hours of lord of the fallen.

I really should know better at this point. Even when a game is delayed as long as DA:I was it still releases with issues.

Morrandir · December 9, 2014

purpleblob said:
I encountered companions/NPCs disappearing bug very early on. When I came back from Hinterlands, there was empty space where Cullen should be arguing with one of the chantry guys in Haven. Both of them weren't there, but they still occupy the space, so I had to walk around them. Not a biggie though, good old reloading fixed everything.

To clarify: companions disappearing when mounting a house isn't a bug. It's a feature.

joxer · December 9, 2014

For those who want to wait till it's patched a few times... You don't need to. The game is definetly not a buggy mess. I was not joking when I said it had less bugs on release than fully patched Skyrim.

Some data caching problem definetly exists and purple experienced it, but is easily solved with reloading or area transition (not quicktravel but passing a loadscreen).
I didn't see any report on an unsolvable gamebreaking bug.
There is a possibility a scripted event breaks in the middle which is a gamebreak since you can't travel anywhere at that point, but it's solved by reloading. This usually happens to those who installed some 3rd party fix on FPS - just remove that thing if you experience cutscene breaks.
The final fight sometimes doesn't proceed automatically on the fight against a dragon but all you need to do is come close to the dragon (the game for whatever reason doesn't "teleport" you there).
Perhaps these issues will be addressed in the patch today.

Morrandir · December 9, 2014

Right, I haven't encountered any serious issues so far as well.

But again: In this thread I wanted to emphazise on what BEAware designed on purpose.

sakichop · December 9, 2014

joxer said:
For those who want to wait till it's patched a few times… You don't need to. The game is definetly not a buggy mess. I was not joking when I said it had less bugs on release than fully patched Skyrim.

Some data caching problem definetly exists and purple experienced it, but is easily solved with reloading or area transition (not quicktravel but passing a loadscreen).
I didn't see any report on an unsolvable gamebreaking bug.
There is a possibility a scripted event breaks in the middle which is a gamebreak since you can't travel anywhere at that point, but it's solved by reloading. This usually happens to those who installed some 3rd party fix on FPS - just remove that thing if you experience cutscene breaks.
The final fight sometimes doesn't proceed automatically on the fight against a dragon but all you need to do is come close to the dragon (the game for whatever reason doesn't "teleport" you there).
Perhaps these issues will be addressed in the patch today.

Thanks, but I'll still wait. I may not need to wait but there's no advantage to playing it now.

All playing games on release does nowadays is ensure that you get the worst possible experience that the game will offer.

There are other problems than just bugs that will hopefully be addressed.

joxer · December 9, 2014

Morrandir said:
Right, I haven't encountered any serious issues so far as well.

But again: In this thread I wanted to emphazise on what BEAware designed on purpose.

Maybe swimming and horses for the party get added as DLC? :evilgrin:

sakichop said:
Thanks, but I'll still wait. I may not need to wait but there's no advantage to playing it now.

All playing games on release does nowadays is ensure that you get the worst possible experience that the game will offer.

There are other problems than just bugs that will hopefully be addressed.

What other problems?

Performance? Outside of DX crashes I didn't see any and didn't have lockups/stutters anywhere. But to be honest I'm playing the game with nVidia and apparently there are some performance problems with AMD cards (some were addressed with the day1 patch, some should be today).
Some people say playing in offline mode improves performance, I believe this is affected by the quality of internet connection and I didn't have these problems. It's still possible the culprit is Origin client "behaving" on some machines, but since noone really knows what exactly that malware does, we can't prove anything.

If you however expect them enabling the game on duocore CPUs, don't hold your breath. Minimum requirement is quadcore CPU and that won't change.

sakichop · December 9, 2014

No, No performance issues. 5 GHZ quad core proc and dual titans see to that.

I'm waiting for M&K fix and to see if they do anything about the respawns but I doubt they will.

Morrandir · December 9, 2014

joxer said:
Maybe swimming and horses for the party get added as DLC?

I doubt it for swimming but wouldn't be surprised fit riding, especially after noticing that the companions can already ride. So the animations are already there.

joxer · December 9, 2014

Of course companions animations are already in!
Body models are completely same depending on your race. You can't "look" fat or anorexic by your choice nor will Cole ever have more muscles than Dorian and vice versa!

BrianOConnell · December 10, 2014

As someone who talks to all my companions to ensure I hear/see everything it is worth noting that for some people there is a bug where some of them will not appear in skyhold where they should be (in my case it happened with Cole/Blackwall/Cassandra). Quick saving and loading fixes that but it took me a while to realise it. Luckily I got a few cutscenes in a row once I got them to appear and talked to them so it did catch up but I think if people like to chat to their companions they should know about this so unlike me they don't think they are simply not there until you turn a story corner or something. As far as I am concerned this is a bug that could spoil the game for some if they don't know the fix.

joxer · December 10, 2014

That's a known bug. Seems it doesn't affect Solas, Lelianna, Dorian, Josephine and Varric* though, but apart from those you mentioned also Cullen, Sera and often Iron Bull are not spawned on places they should be. Not sure about Vivienne.

———————————-
* At certain point Varric won't be on his usual spot but in front of the wartable room - that is not a bug.

BrianOConnell · December 10, 2014

Yeah I think because certain characters won't be where they should be for intended (story) reasons when a player then can't find cassandra, for example, it would be perfectly understandable that they might think this is intentionally and play on for hours never speaking to her. This is what happened to me.

joxer · December 10, 2014

You're right. For example Cullen is spawned by the market for story reasons and should, after you talk to him there, despawn and respawn in his chambers with another chatty (giving a new quest). But it doesn't happen until you travel somewhere and return back to Skyhold.

Bugs, bugs, everywhere!

Okay, not really… What's most important, none of these are gamestoppers but are definetly annoying.

wolfing · December 10, 2014

Never buy a game on release. I know many say it, but hype gets to them and do it anyway. I know better by now, no matter the hype, I always wait at least a month (usually two or more). Not only do I save money, but I get to play a much better game, patched and with missing features added, and on top of that, it gives modders time to improve the experience (TES games specially benefit from this).

Morrandir · December 15, 2014

Some more facepalms for me:

lack of a party storage chest
restriction to 8 abilities in the hotbar

Imho these are amateurish design failures.

joxer · December 15, 2014

1. It's by design. Perks needed a sink. Inventory, already horrible, got another restriction. But I actually never took both inventory perks (did take just one and after I finished the game I can safely say that one isn't needed either, but you can't know that in your first run).

2. Another console pathetic hardware restriction got ported on PC. They can argue it by after you specialize you won't use some skills any more, but still. PC is PC. If we wanted a console game we'd buy a console.

Escapist said 10/10, these two crap decisions confirm Escapist journalist didn't play the game at all.

Morrandir · December 16, 2014

joxer said:
They can argue it by after you specialize you won't use some skills any more, but still.

They might, but this argument is crap. With my mage (going for Spirit and Inferno) I had:

Flashfire
Chain Lightning
Barrier
Immolate
Fire Mine
Mindblast
Revival
Dispel

None of these abilities is redunant and now I wanted to add Winter's Grasp for freezing enemies. I can't do this without doing a sacrifice. To make it worse, I now got the first of the 2 plot related abilities. So when I get the other one, I'll only have 6 slots for regular abilities, so it's not even possible to have all abilities from a singe school of magic!

DA:I Facepalm

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