Dragon Age 2 - Demo Released

Originally Posted by rune_74
Unlike you, I didn't have a problem with the look and feel…I'm not looking for a drastic change of what I have seen…I just want on overland map like the original and character choices etc…don't think I need luck with that, thanks. This is nothing like Arcania, sad you think that…shows a bit about this site though.

What exactly does it show about this site? That not everyone has the same opinion?

I know that's hard for someone to accept once they've taken the fanboi stance on something.

Originally Posted by JDR13
What exactly does it show about this site? That not everyone has the same opinion.

I know that's hard for someone to accept once they've taken the fanboi stance on something.

Nice line, you work hard at that? Sad you had to go with a fanboi comment makes you look about 12 years old.

Originally Posted by rune_74
Nice line, you work hard at that? I have found it is usually the idiots that come in with fanboi comments, shocking eh?

No, it was just an observation, and now it seems you're going to start throwing direct personal insults as well. Which is exactly what fanbois do in this situation.


Aww.. what happened? Did I quote you before you had a chance to edit your post?

Originally Posted by JDR13
No, it was just an observation, and now it seems you're going to start throwing direct personal insults as well. Which is exactly what fanbois do in this situation.


Aww.. what happened? Did I quote you before you had a chance to edit your post?

You think your original statement wasn't a direct personal insult? . To be honest I thought I was being a bit mean, especailly to someone who was about 12, so I rethought and was giving you a nice out. I take it back now.

I love it, the old standby of fanboi if you like something. I can tell the future you know, the game is going to come out, get great reviews and sell well…many people will play it and have fun, many of you bashing it here, then you will say it was never any good even though you spent 40+ hours on it. Book it.

This will be my last response to you, because it's obvious you're becoming overly agitated at this point.

Go back and read my posts again, I didn't use any personal insults. I guess you thought "fanboi stance" was an insult, which usually only happens when the person realizes it's true.

I consider "fanboi" to be a state of mind, not something to be insulted about. I have no problem admitting that I'm a fanboi myself when it comes to certain games.

As far as DA2 is concerned, I have no problem with your opinion, as long as I get to voice my own. I honestly do hope you enjoy the game as much as you think you're going to.

Originally Posted by JDR13
This will be my last response to you, because it's obvious you're becoming overly agitated at this point.

Go back and read my posts again, I didn't use any personal insults. I guess you thought "fanboi stance" was an insult, which usually only happens when the person realizes it's true.

I consider "fanboi" to be a state of mind, not something to be insulted about. I have no problem admitting that I'm a fanboi myself when it comes to certain games.

As far as DA2 is concerned, I have no problem with your opinion, as long as I get to voice my own. I honestly do hope you enjoy the game as much as you think you're going to.

Ok I can agree with that, I am a fanboi of games I find fun I guess. I misstook what you originally wrote since many people do not use it that way. I have no prob with people voicing their opinion, just doesn't mean I will always agree.

For everyone saying your limited to middle graphics and DX9. Your wrong. If you have a card that uses dx10 you can use the dx11 setting to. The menu explains it.

Most pc's should be capable of DX10 gaming and its obsolete now.Something tells me dx11 will be just like dx10 underused and phased out in 2 years.

Just finished the demo, on both PC and PS3.
(yes, i bought a console in a futile attempt to bring my fiancee i to the world of gaming…)

DX11 crashed for me so PC was run on DX9 version, PS3 version looked good.

About the art, gritty, can work. Few locations in the demo but I have found most of biowares games to be visually pleasing.

On PC, warrior, fast action but I paused a lot more than I did on DA:O.
For me, combat as a warrior on PC felt OK, no major issues.

On PS3, Rouge. What a bizarre clickfest and weird teleportation. Looked good but I will never play games like these on a PS3, why shortchange yourself?

Will buy it but wait for finished package with dlc and so on.
have to finish witcher, Stalker, FC2, IWD2and replay ME2 first…, so maybe this autumn…


All in all, its hard to get a feel for a game from a demo that is very focused on combat, but so far I have enjoyed all games they have produced and they are good writers, which is what I want most out of a game.

Im kind of curious to how the storytelling will feel, how will immersion be affected by the way of retelling a legend

C

La-la-la

Not commenting!

Originally Posted by Zloth
Errr, that isn't how it's done. You pick the target THEN pick the skill. It worked the second time because you had the target selected at that point.

I remember having a tough time learning that in DA:O, which did the same thing. I think I even posted on these boards about it.

Actually, I'm talking about things like the fireball spell - first you select it, then click the ground for it to be cast (you can't cast AoE spells by selecting an enemy and then selecting the spell). In many cases it simply didn't trigger. Nothing happened at all. So I had to select fireball again and then click the same location once more.

Also, in both DA1 and 2 it is quite possible to select a spell (the mouse will change to a targeting symbol) and then click on an enemy to cast it, instead of selecting the enemy and then the spell. Most of the time I prefer to select the enemy though, mainly because I can go through all my characters in paused mode and trigger one ability each on that specific enemy without selecting the enemy every time.

In any case: Like I explained above, the hiccups I'm referring to in DA2 has nothing to do with any of this.

Originally Posted by rune_74
Sure, but to then say all it is is a combat fest is BS.

Well, the demo most certainly is.

And, we have to keep a few things in mind :

- what is a demo trying to achieve ?
- what kind of "image" or impression on the player is it designated to create ?
- what parts of the full game were actually chosen for the full game ?
- why did they chose THESE parts and not others ?
- there was another thing I wanted to add, but I suddenly forgot it

IF a demo is designated to make an impression on player who is trying out a demo (I'm explicitely *not* saying "this demo" !!!), THEn the question is, WHICH kind of impression should the player have ?

To just put an example into the discussion : It would imho be just nonsense to have an dialog-heavy game, and release combat-only sections of the game s a demo.

But on the other had, this could also be part of the what i call "Black Marketing" : Tricking people into believe that certain parts of a game were more important within the full game than they actually are …

This is an interesting thought. Could the maklers of the Dragon Age 2 demo do this kind of marketing as well ? Use combat-heavy portions of the game, but the game has much more dialog instead ? Kind of "luring" gamers who love combat into a game that has in fact not so much of it in it ?

We are just presented a demo. Full stop. We can only speculate on which approach was used by the "makers" of this demo :

- the "traditional approach" = the demo is actually meant to be typical for the full game
- the "Black Marketing" approach : what the demo presents will not be typical for the full game, or even rather the opposite

And this is quite a bunch of unsolved variables, imho.

Me, I don't think - trying to put the overall marketing regarding the game which I've seen this far into the context of the demo - that the people at BiowEAre use the so-called "Black Marketing" approach. Given what I've read and heard about this game so far, I'm rather leaning towards believing that the demo will be rather typical for the rest of the game.

Originally Posted by JDR13
What exactly does it show about this site? That not everyone has the same opinion?

I know that's hard for someone to accept once they've taken the fanboi stance on something.

I must agree - as a Drakensang fan.

For one who is serious, this is a very good learning lesson : Trying to accept different opinions …

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
I know certain DX10 features can actually be run on DX9 but there are also a ton of things that only DX10 and DX11 can do, it's not all marketing. Progress is a good thing.

I don't have nothing against this Direktx thing - I have something against limiting it to other OSses.

If the cards can do Direktx 11 - then why not implement the neccessary wrappers into Direktx 9, too ?

Originally Posted by rune_74
To be fair, he is looking at Drakensang 2 which was basically a copy of NWN engine(but inferior) which did not require as much horsepower. You are absolutely correct on why the DX 11 version has more bells and whistles.

And any gamer shouldn't be against things being there that their "current" machine can't handle. The worst thing ever is to limit it to the lowest power and not have a higher edge.

I don't have anything against this "higher edge" thing, as you call it.

I have something against excluding people.

I take this personally. This is my very personal crusade. And it has a background :
Unlike most of you here, Iwas heavily bullied at school. I call bullying as "social exclusion". Someone was trying to isolate me from the rest, a little bit like a pest that needed to be battled. Nobody helped me. They were all living in fear of the bullies. They all lived in fear of one day being bullied the same way they bullied me. And they were older than the rest, and reasonably stronger. And more aggressive.

I still don't know how I survived this, by from a psychological standpoint, I was a wreck. I've managed to heal myself quite a lot, but there are still parts in me that just detest exclusion from anything. And aggression, too.

I have lived to see what exclusion means. Social exclusion. Personal exclusion. Being excluded from the rest by force. (Psychological force, mostly. I was not physically beated.)

This is my background why I'm against excluding someone from something. I have madfe a very deep experience of it, and to me it is just a danger. Something I on't like at all.

This is why.

And regarding my machine : I'm playing rakensang 2 nowadays on my "gaming machine", and that is - according to Bioware's config program - a "Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3 GHz" with an "GeForce 9800 GT".

I think this should be enough for Drakensang 2.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I don't have anything against this "higher edge" thing, as you call it.

I have something against excluding people.

I take this personally. This is my very personal crusade. And it has a background :
Unlike most of you here, Iwas heavily bullied at school. I call bullying as "social exclusion". Someone was trying to isolate me from the rest, a little bit like a pest that needed to be battled. Nobody helped me. They were all living in fear of the bullies. They all lived in fear of one day being bullied the same way they bullied me. And they were older than the rest, and reasonably stronger. And more aggressive.

I still don't know how I survived this, by from a psychological standpoint, I was a wreck. I've managed to heal myself quite a lot, but there are still parts in me that just detest exclusion from anything. And aggression, too.

I have lived to see what exclusion means. Social exclusion. Personal exclusion. Being excluded from the rest by force. (Psychological force, mostly. I was not physically beated.)

This is my background why I'm against excluding someone from something. I have madfe a very deep experience of it, and to me it is just a danger. Something I on't like at all.

This is why.

And regarding my machine : I'm playing rakensang 2 nowadays on my "gaming machine", and that is - according to Bioware's config program - a "Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3 GHz" with an "GeForce 9800 GT".

I think this should be enough for Drakensang 2.

sorry to hear that mate, but this is an entirely different affair.
As a programmer i can say sometimes you just need more horespower to make your ideas work or you'll be limiting your work and possible profit.
Of course an argument can be made that better availability also equals more profit and that's what most big companies are going for - especially Blizzard.
But I really love when a game like Crysis comes out and sets the standard to a new level.
That's what those people are about and you can't blame them for making the most advanced engine they can build cause some guys now can't play it cause they need better hardware.
It's a purely financial thing and not be upset about on personal level.

What an odd debate. Seems a bit ill-timed as well, since we're now in the latter half of a console generation so most cross-platform titles are adapted to said hardware and thus can be run on pretty much anything. I don't have a gaming PC, I don't have the money, but I've not been forced to upgrade either because this 3-year old hunk of junk can still run anything. Thanks to consoles.

I don't get the source of your complaint anyway, Alrik. There is no "exclusing" type of "marketing" here. Your PC runs it fine, then great. If it's older, then it won't be able to run it at highest setting. That's not really excluding you from anything, it's just adding more for those that do have new computers. Sure, DX9/10/11 is always a bit of shoving around but it's not like programmers should adapt to DX9 computers forever. Got to move on eventually.

Eventually, yes. But not when I don't need to.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
La-la-la

Not commenting!

Oh go on! You know you want to ;-)

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I don't have nothing against this Direktx thing - I have something against limiting it to other OSses.

If the cards can do Direktx 11 - then why not implement the neccessary wrappers into Direktx 9, too ?

I've read real software engineers commenting that full DX10 and DX11 in XP is impossible, there is too much in the code of the OS built into Vista and 7 to do so. I get that you think it is a Microsoft conspiracy to make you upgrade, but I just don't think that's true (and you don't know enough to categorically say so).

In any event, progress requires you move on, that's just PC gaming.

DX10 onwards needed a new Windows driver framework - essentially some stuff has changed that needs deep changes to the way the OS maps virtual memory of the device (and other things no doubt). While you could patch the changes into XP, it'd require a massive re-write of the OS, which would only introduce far too many bugs and be a waste of development resources for the revenue such a re-write would bring (none).

Funny that people here are often claiming that graphics don't matter, then we hear complaints that consoles are holding back the graphics in games for PCs.

I am ecstatic that my aging PC can play DA2 and if it's because of the consoles, then Hooray for Consoles!

Originally Posted by Ovenall
Funny that people here are often claiming that graphics don't matter, then we hear complaints that consoles are holding back the graphics in games for PCs.

I am ecstatic that my aging PC can play DA2 and if it's because of the consoles, then Hooray for Consoles!

I can agree with you. It keeps me from having to spend more money on upgrading so its a good thing. Its a shame how dx10 was hyped as the next big thing but hardly used in games.

Originally Posted by Ovenall
Funny that people here are often claiming that graphics don't matter, then we hear complaints that consoles are holding back the graphics in games for PCs.

I am ecstatic that my aging PC can play DA2 and if it's because of the consoles, then Hooray for Consoles!

Which begs the question, why even have a gaming PC? As the line between PC and console gaming becomes indistinguishable(indies excluded) why not simply go console? I mean if development is almost entirely based in and around the limitations of consoles or the desires of console gamers why, as a consumer, go with the more expensive platform? What's the benefit?