Drakensang - first impressions

Regarding those question marks...

JonNik said:

Yep,that's about the most disappointing thing I've heard so far... together with the oversimplified quests and total lack of choices that is...

And also it seems that switching the Map off doesn't do the trick, since the quest
givers dont give you enough directions to find the location yourself... (or did I get
that wrong ?)

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I like the way it's done, actually. Most of the time, people give you relatively exact directions or locations. In that case there's a question mark on your minimap. One of them even said "let me mark that spot on your map". In some cases though, you'll only know you have to find something in, say, a whole district: no question marks then, you'll have to search on your own.

It also helps to have a character in your party who's street-smart, you'll then be able to see names and locations of traders on your mini-map too. So, no, I don't think turning of the map is an option, but you're really only spoon-fed with ?'s when it makes sense.

Sounds reasonable the way you put it. I would still like the option to turn them off
completely, but it doesn't sound as bad as Oblivion's handholding...

Anyway I think I'll give it a shot without the map first... Seems viable actually, even in the cases you have to search the whole map now that I think about it (The Maps
are generally not too big if I am not mistaken).

JonNik said:

And also it seems that switching the Map off doesn't do the trick, since the quest givers dont give you enough directions to find the location yourself... (or did I get that wrong ?)

Click to expand...

The quest givers give out only very vague directions.

In the forum, someone even made a mod that changes the maps ... The question marks are made transparent by him, so that they cannot be seen on the maps. They are still active, however.

The Mod can be found here : http://www.anaconda-games.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10185


Today I learned something important about m self :

I discovered that my behaviour here, there and everywhere ( ) regarding DRASA shows the symptoms of a "fanboi", who "knows better, what's good for the game", so to say.

This is an important discovery for me to realize that my behaviour is tending towards the behaviour of the group of people I don't like much.

Now I'm analysing how I went to that point. I think it has to do with my love for the NLT with at the same time disdain for ... well, you know how I am, I guess.

Arhu said:

One of them even said "let me mark that spot on your map".

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Yes, I remember, that's true.

Rohal said:

Another thing, I'm really not a big fan of abbreviations as you may have noticed... I can live with imho and so on, but since DRASA is catching on, I'd like to ask: Is it really necessary to shorten a word of 10 letters to an abbreviation of 5? Aren't we all fast typers enough for 5 more keystrokes? I'm sorry. I don't want to start a big discussion. But it is sometimes hard to guess what is meant. I understand when someone doesn't want to write The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy, but THHGTTG is really hard to guess. And sometimes jfgi does not work... It also took me a while to guess NLT.

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One new P&P campaign in the Dark Eye setting is actually called TNBT by the P&P players - it's kind of a code-word meaning simply "The Next Big Thing". It is planned for the time after Drakensang - and rumors say that Drakensang is just kind of an early prelude to it. But no-one knows for sure what TNBT actually is, only, that it has to do with Dragons.

No, DRASA kind of evolved and is already relatively common among the players.
Everyone in the community knows what's meant.

Similar to NLT.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

In the forum, someone even made a mod that changes the maps ... The question marks are made transparent by him, so that they cannot be seen on the maps. They are still active, however.

The Mod can be found here : http://www.anaconda-games.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10185

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Perfect, thanks. So the game is modable, eh... very interesting...

Yes it is - and there are even a few threads there in the English-language part about a user-made translation !

What I can't say, however, is the extend to which it is modable.

Exactly. It´s clear Drakensang uses Radon Labs' own open source engine (Nebula). It´s also clear the data format is also a standard stuff (SQLite). There won´t be a mod kit though. It´s also very unlikely Radon Labs will release their Maja plugin because it´s a commercial product.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Today I learned something important about m self :

I discovered that my behaviour here, there and everywhere ( ) regarding DRASA shows the symptoms of a "fanboi", who "knows better, what's good for the game", so to say.

This is an important discovery for me to realize that my behaviour is tending towards the behaviour of the group of people I don't like much.

Now I'm analysing how I went to that point. I think it has to do with my love for the NLT with at the same time disdain for ... well, you know how I am, I guess.

Click to expand...

True. More precisely you are a NLT and DSA fan who knows better what´s good for Drakensang.
See it positive. Discovering it makes you better than 95% of the other fan bois.

LOL !

At least I can say that I'm self-critical.

Right now I've decided to put a break to the game.

I think I'll try something different meanwhile. At least until I can forget the battles ...

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Yes it is - and there are even a few threads there in the English-language part about a user-made translation !

Click to expand...

Heh, I'll be really tempted not to wait for the English version if this effort reaches
levels of completeness equal to, say the english speaking mod for NOTR (Never
bought an English version there and I am actually replaying G2 only with the
German Gold edition that I bought when the Mod went up)

Heres the thread if anyone else wants to keep tabs :
http://www.anaconda-games.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10254

I read more and more often that the rest of the game consists of almost nothing but combat.

And that mostly within dungeons and tunnels.

The plot-line seems to still be excellent, though, several people write.

That last little bit scared me, Alrik! Anybody remember Lionheart? It was a great game for the first few areas and then the bottom dropped out of the game after that and it was a complete clunker. I truly hope that Drakensang isn't like that.

The basis material of Drakensang is:

a) character development
b) tactical combat
c) humor
d) crafting & alchemy

For people like me (I love dungeon crawling and combat heavy games) this is perfect.

I read more and more often that the rest of the game consists of almost nothing but combat.

And that mostly within dungeons and tunnels.

Click to expand...

This is simply not true, there's one bigger (nicely done) dungeon in the dwarven territory -> dwarves live in mountain dungeons, don't they ?
In comparison with the old dungeons of Daggerfall or Dungeon Master the Drakensang dungeons are very easy to solve.
If you compare them with the small "earth-holes" of Oblivion there are difficult

Me, as a fanboi ( ), I sometimes just don't get it.

Someone at the forum had invented a tool called "DrakenSpeed 1.0", which changes the speed values so that the characters run faster.

Some people even complained about the running speed and say it should be much faster - at least one even asked whether the developers willingly slowed down the characters to lengthen the gameplay.

I fear that this is the "generation Action-RPG" at work.


I just don't get it. To me, the running speed was very good, but I'm a fanboi ( ) anyway.

I'm currently playing the demo (not so much these days as my desktop is in for repairs); I have no problem with the running or walking speed. It feels a lot faster than say the Baldur's Gate games.

The story so far is excellent. And my little dwarf just looks great as he runs around...

Latest sales numbers are in: 62.000 units sell through in 16 days. This would equal ca. 250k in the same period in North America.

The add-on is confirmed. Drakensang 2 more or less too.

Radon Labs said they will release a couple of patches more, primarily small improvements, new content and rebalancing. Of course also bug fixes as they become necessary.

I hope that comparison isn't valid crpgnut - Lionheart was excellent the first 1/3 (Barcelona part), but then turned into a poor hack'n slash. A real shame, since it had tons of potential.

Well, I´m quite sure at least one reviewer would have noticed it during the last four weeks. But surprisingly none did.

I wonder what some players expected. The publisher said it´s Baldur´s Gate with DSA rules. Didn´t Baldur´s Gate also have a lot of combat?

Gorath said:

Didn´t Baldur´s Gate also have a lot of combat?

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But of course !

That's why I was constantly fearing it might go into that direction - and the game proved me right.

I discussed once over 1 hour with a then dtp member (known at the dtp forums as "dtp Olli", then, who was at this point responsible at dtp for press releases and such) at the FeenCon about it, trying to point out that people would perhaps tend to rather like what the NLT was about - and contained, in terms of mechanics.

Even at this early point - I think it was 2006 - I got the impression from him that it would be combat-heavy. Which was more hinted to at the forum discussions, around that time.

I most certainly didn't want top have that much combat, and to me it was as if my "inner alarm bells rang". I stated throughout these discussions that I didn't want to have that much combat, because the NLT didn't have as much either - at least it didn't leave this impression to me.

Through the above mentioned discussion at the FeenCon, he said that in fact the amount of combat in the NLT was not small. And - as far as I remember it - it had been in fact much more than I - and probably players of the NLT in general - would remember (he was mention percentages I forgot).

With BG as the "big inspiration" - Dungeon Master as a second one was mentioned only during the last few days - it became obvious that it would be combat-heavy.

In my opinion, BG is still overrated, because it was the flask of water given to the thirsty in the desert. The desert was the "drought" of good RPGs - and BG was there.

I still believe that most memories are influenced by this fact.
Which imho leads to giving BG a greater account that it imho deserves.

This is my story.

Baldurs Gate isnt particularly extreme as far as the amount of combat goes. Combat is the meat of most PC rpgs, including the previous DSA titles...