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On March 10 2011 03:06 Frah wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 02:53 FireBearHero wrote:On March 10 2011 02:39 proxY_ wrote:
I'm about 14-18 hours in and I'd give it like a 7/10. It feels very rushed, I've redone the same dungeons like 4 or 5 times from different routes (different entrances but once inside they're identical). This is just really frustrating and frankly silly.
The combat is getting really redundant as well, now that I've pretty much set in place what my general strategy is (I'm going duel double wielding rogues with my main and isabella with avalene tanking and anders healing) most fights go exactly the same way. Make sure my buffs are on, cast haste when the fight starts and the rogues just kill so fast. This might not work so well on nightmare (haven't really messed with it) but it works just fine on hard. Does your house change if you walk in the back door instead of the front? If you're bored with your current line up try something else. Also upping the difficulty could be a favorable change if you find hard boring. That's dumb, pretty sure he means that they recycle interior locations which has already become obvious and I've only been in one. The very first cave you ever enter turns out to have a blocked door while the map continues significantly onwards past it, the way you are supposed to take to leave the cave doesn't even look like a proper exit, it's just a marker telling you that that is the exit in front of some stalagmites. The game just screams recycled laziness in all the mechanics, scenery, animations (which is very apparent when certain animation bugs from the DAO carried over, like with revenants), models and textures. That is my issue with DA2 (along all the ones mentioned in the long post above) and why I can't believe this is actually supposed to be a $60 game
Always saddens me that people rationalize recycled stuff down to laziness. Do you have even the faintest idea about the average number of hours a video game developer works? They recycle it because they don't have the time, money, manpower, resources, whatever to create a whole new map for each and every area, not because they don't care. It's an INCREDIBLY time-consuming and tedious process and as a result, level design is one of the two main methods of getting into the industry (the other being QA).
Remember when you'd run into the same cave in Baldur's Gate over and over again? That was during a period of video game history where making a map just required an artist to draw. These days, there are a thousand and one more things to consider. Since its 3D, you've got to be enormously concerned about scale, about what's visible behind what, about what is/isn't rendered at a given time, how the textures and objects line up, having modelers, texturers, concept artists and many others creating the objects you'll use to create the level with, awkward collision points, walls you can run through, LIGHTING (oh god the number of development hours the invention of lighting has consumed does not even bear thinking about), ambient sound effects and on and on and on.
Have you ever met a video game developer and asked them straight-up, "Do you just not care about the games you're making? Because you recycle levels ALL the time.". Then and there you would witness what it looks like when you break a person's heart.
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Now that I hear you say that you're probably right. However I don't find it dumb to read "I've redone the same dungeons like 4 or 5 times from different routes" as him doing the redoing a dungeon from different entrances. I just misinterpreted what he meant.
I haven't noticed recycled areas yet, but I agree with you guys about recycled areas. That does suck. The areas aren't even big enough to start off with and reusing them is lazy. Oh well, I've been enjoying it so far, but like I've said I'm reserving my final judgements on the game until I finish.
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DAO is hard until you realize that its a very mage centered game with a trick that can make you endless amounts of potions for a low cost. Crushing Prison, Mana Clash, Thunderstorm/Blizzard combo, Blood Wound all made this game pretty simple if you know what you do. Mass Effect 2 has much better difficulty scaling and is much more tactical in Insanity.
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I don't see why people claim DAO was much harder. The boss fights in DA2 are challenging even on normal difficulty. The only thing I miss in terms of difficulty (well, that's the wrong word perhaps) is that ultragib chain lightning deathray enemy mages used in the first game.
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On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more.
what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games?
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On March 10 2011 04:13 CROrens wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more. what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games?
Oh, but of course. Internet forums are the only avenue in which human-beings are able to interact with each other, now. How silly of me.
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On March 10 2011 04:15 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 04:13 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more. what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games? Oh, but of course. Internet forums are the only avenue in which human-beings are able to interact with each other, now. How silly of me.
no im just trying to say, how do you know all those negative critics came from PC gamers?
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On March 10 2011 04:17 CROrens wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 04:15 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:13 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more. what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games? Oh, but of course. Internet forums are the only avenue in which human-beings are able to interact with each other, now. How silly of me. no im just trying to say, how do you know all those negative critics came from PC gamers?
Because its on the Dragon Age 2: PC section of the review area. Then again, the console area isn't any better, but I'd be willing the stake its the same people making negative reviews on all three (PC, PS3 and X360).
Just reading the content of the posts is enough. There's a lot of mentions of missing the top-down view, about how badly it runs on graphics card X, complaints about it being an 'obvious console-port' and yammering on about BG1/2, Planescape and various other PC-only RPGs.
I'd also be willing to bet the same people who were on the Bioware forums, destroying DA:O on its release, about how it didn't live up to the BG series and blah-blah-blah, are now the same people complaining about DA2 not living up to the 'awesomeness' of DA:O.
People are stupid. They don't know what they want, they don't appreciate what they've been given but they complain a lot when things change.
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I only got to play for 30 minutes before RL distracted me away from the game. 
Tonight is the night!
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bibdy i dont really understand why you try so hard to defend the game.
claim the combat is harder/deeper then in DA1 which like evryone disagrees. claim its all just some conspiracy on metacritic from angry pc guys
tell us that recycling is totally ok and cool even in such totally cheap ways which makes no sense since its a 99% result of their new CoD style "lol k if so many buy it lets make another iteration and throw that out within a year, quality doesnt matter just get it done" attitude.
ofc i have no problem with you defending it, i just think its getting quite ridiculous how hard you try to do so.
they tried to get easy cash with DA2 and totally destroyed/changed the franchise and the original idea behind it. now evryone who expected a real RPG/a dragon age is rightfully up in arms.
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I've been playing for about two hours now, and it seems pretty fun. I've noticed a couple of bugs with your companions where they will just stand there and not follow you, but it's been outside of combat thankfully. Overall it's keeping me entertained.
On a sort of unrelated but related note, does anyone know where you can infuse weapons with runes?
Also, just read a couple of the posts above me. I thin EA did the same thing to Dragon Age as they did to Mass Effect (more action less rpg). I think it's fun still and it works, so I'll still play it.
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On March 10 2011 04:22 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 04:17 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 04:15 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:13 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more. Would you suggest to one of your friends to buy the game at full price? what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games? Oh, but of course. Internet forums are the only avenue in which human-beings are able to interact with each other, now. How silly of me. no im just trying to say, how do you know all those negative critics came from PC gamers? Because its on the Dragon Age 2: PC section of the review area. Then again, the console area isn't any better, but I'd be willing the stake its the same people making negative reviews on all three (PC, PS3 and X360). Just reading the content of the posts is enough. There's a lot of mentions of missing the top-down view, about how badly it runs on graphics card X, complaints about it being an 'obvious console-port' and yammering on about BG1/2, Planescape and various other PC-only RPGs. I'd also be willing to bet the same people who were on the Bioware forums, destroying DA:O on its release, about how it didn't live up to the BG series and blah-blah-blah, are now the same people complaining about DA2 not living up to the 'awesomeness' of DA:O. People are stupid. They don't know what they want, they don't appreciate what they've been given but they complain a lot when things change.
Would you suggest to one of your friends to buy this game at full price?
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On March 10 2011 04:40 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
bibdy i dont really understand why you try so hard to defend the game.
claim the combat is harder/deeper then in DA1 which like evryone disagrees. claim its all just some conspiracy on metacritic from angry pc guys
tell us that recycling is totally ok and cool even in such totally cheap ways which makes no sense since its a 99% result of their new CoD style "lol k if so many buy it lets make another iteration and throw that out within a year, quality doesnt matter just get it done" attitude.
ofc i have no problem with you defending it, i just think its getting quite ridiculous how hard you try to do so.
they tried to get easy cash with DA2 and totally destroyed/changed the franchise and the original idea behind it. now evryone who expected a real RPG/a dragon age is rightfully up in arms.
I'm not defending it haphazardly without good cause. I'm defending it on its merits. Its a good game, and I detest seeing people fall under the spell that it's somehow a bad game because of a handful of loud, obnoxious people (no one here, specifically, but in-part the ones posting the metacritic user reviews) screaming through all of the internet noise. That doesn't make it the prevailing opinion. Being 'rightfully' up-in-arms is a matter of opinion, in itself.
As for the recycling thing, think about it: Why do you think a single player FPS campaign has ~8 hours of gameplay, tops (that's about what it took me to get through Bulletstorm)? Because they don't recycle. How do you think an RPG game can muster up THIRTY PLUS hours of gameplay, even if you spam the Escape key and rampage through all the dialogue? Recycling - forcing the player to run through the same places again and again. Acting as though recycling doesn't go literally hand-in-hand with the genre is simply lying to yourself.
The alternative is take the Diablo-approach to dungeon design*, but that just leaves a very bland gaming experience if it doesn't have a lot of development time spent on the combat and action. However, proper RPGs don't put that effort in. They have story, characters, dialogue and so-on, which takes development time away from that. Being surprised by any kind of recycling and retracing in any kind of RPG is simply unfair expectations. Particularly with regard to character animation. That one just takes the cake. What, the animators should just throw away the various skeletal animations they made in DA:O because a sequel's come out? Do you want them to make more content, or not? Did these people even realize many of the skeletal animations from DA:O were re-used in Mass Effect 2?
* And if someone can come up with a random diablo-style dungeon generator, but with full-3D dungeons, with the appropriate level of quality and detail people expect in this day and age, before the turn of the decade, I would be royally impressed (P.S. Diablo 3 has an isometric viewpoint, and even with its 3D levels, its graphics detail isn't anywhere close to Dragon Age's).
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On March 10 2011 04:52 Tdelamay wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 04:22 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:17 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 04:15 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:13 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more. Would you suggest to one of your friends to buy the game at full price? what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games? Oh, but of course. Internet forums are the only avenue in which human-beings are able to interact with each other, now. How silly of me. no im just trying to say, how do you know all those negative critics came from PC gamers? Because its on the Dragon Age 2: PC section of the review area. Then again, the console area isn't any better, but I'd be willing the stake its the same people making negative reviews on all three (PC, PS3 and X360). Just reading the content of the posts is enough. There's a lot of mentions of missing the top-down view, about how badly it runs on graphics card X, complaints about it being an 'obvious console-port' and yammering on about BG1/2, Planescape and various other PC-only RPGs. I'd also be willing to bet the same people who were on the Bioware forums, destroying DA:O on its release, about how it didn't live up to the BG series and blah-blah-blah, are now the same people complaining about DA2 not living up to the 'awesomeness' of DA:O. People are stupid. They don't know what they want, they don't appreciate what they've been given but they complain a lot when things change. Would you suggest to one of your friends to buy this game at full price?
Yes. The method of storytelling is engaging, the combat is much more fun (requiring reflexes and thinking this time around, as opposed to almost neither in the original) and its improved on the first game in many areas. If you could acknowledge and appreciate the differences between ME1 and ME2 without exploding in a fit of hate-filled rage, then you should be able to manage it with DA2.
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On March 10 2011 04:52 Tdelamay wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 04:22 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:17 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 04:15 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:13 CROrens wrote:On March 10 2011 02:05 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 01:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:pretty sure there's some sort of 4chan attack or something on the game because there are just so many 0 ratings on that site with just silly comments I can understand people disliking it but I don't even think the most avid critics of the game would give it a 0, let alone it be a huge portion of the ratings just seems like the work of trolls to me, could be wrong, but w/e And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more. Would you suggest to one of your friends to buy the game at full price? what opinions? where do console gamers share their opinions on games? Oh, but of course. Internet forums are the only avenue in which human-beings are able to interact with each other, now. How silly of me. no im just trying to say, how do you know all those negative critics came from PC gamers? Because its on the Dragon Age 2: PC section of the review area. Then again, the console area isn't any better, but I'd be willing the stake its the same people making negative reviews on all three (PC, PS3 and X360). Just reading the content of the posts is enough. There's a lot of mentions of missing the top-down view, about how badly it runs on graphics card X, complaints about it being an 'obvious console-port' and yammering on about BG1/2, Planescape and various other PC-only RPGs. I'd also be willing to bet the same people who were on the Bioware forums, destroying DA:O on its release, about how it didn't live up to the BG series and blah-blah-blah, are now the same people complaining about DA2 not living up to the 'awesomeness' of DA:O. People are stupid. They don't know what they want, they don't appreciate what they've been given but they complain a lot when things change. Would you suggest to one of your friends to buy this game at full price?
If full price = $60, I would have bought it.
However, to get the full game, you'll have to buy probably like $40-50 worth of DLCs, which is why I will wait until the Ultimate Edition or whatever comes out to play this game.
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On March 10 2011 05:44 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 04:40 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
bibdy i dont really understand why you try so hard to defend the game.
claim the combat is harder/deeper then in DA1 which like evryone disagrees. claim its all just some conspiracy on metacritic from angry pc guys
tell us that recycling is totally ok and cool even in such totally cheap ways which makes no sense since its a 99% result of their new CoD style "lol k if so many buy it lets make another iteration and throw that out within a year, quality doesnt matter just get it done" attitude.
ofc i have no problem with you defending it, i just think its getting quite ridiculous how hard you try to do so.
they tried to get easy cash with DA2 and totally destroyed/changed the franchise and the original idea behind it. now evryone who expected a real RPG/a dragon age is rightfully up in arms.
I'm not defending it haphazardly without good cause. I'm defending it on its merits. Its a good game, and I detest seeing people fall under the spell that it's somehow a bad game because of a handful of loud, obnoxious people screaming through all of the internet noise. That doesn't make it the prevailing opinion. Being 'rightfully' up-in-arms is a matter of opinion, in itself. As for the recycling thing, think about it: Why do you think a single player FPS campaign has ~8 hours of gameplay, tops (that's about what it took me to get through Bulletstorm)? Because they don't recycle. How do you think an RPG game can muster up THIRTY PLUS hours of gameplay, even if you spam the Escape key and rampage through all the dialogue? Recycling - forcing the player to run through the same places again and again. Acting as though recycling doesn't go literally hand-in-hand with the genre is simply lying to yourself. The alternative is take the Diablo-approach to dungeon design, but that just leaves a very bland gaming experience if it doesn't have a lot of development time spent on the combat and action. However, proper RPGs don't put that effort in. They have story, characters, dialogue and so-on, which takes development time away from that. Being surprised by any kind of recycling and retracing in any kind of RPG is simply unfair expectations. Particularly with regard to character animation. That one just takes the cake. What, the animators should just throw away the various skeletal animations they made in DA:O because a sequel's come out? Do you want them to make more content, or not? Did these people even realize many of the skeletal animations from DA:O were re-used in Mass Effect 2?
no one says recycling is the evil and should never be done. but when full levels/areas get copy pasted 1:1 something is wrong. and when the game in question was released 12 months after its first part its not hard to see what the reason for it is.
also comparing fps to rpgs is very unfair since usually you speed thru fps levels where you usually spend alot more time in a area in a RPG. and if its a "unimportant" area then creating a standart cave/path whatever really isnt a huge deal with the devtools (esp not for a "blockbuster" game like DA2). there is no reason other then A) laziness or B) no enough time cause of greed.and its not even like the world is very big in dragon age anyways...
havent seen anyone complain about animations. and something like that is expected and normal
btw you can edit stuff too, no one says they need to scrap evrything and start from 0 again. its very easy to slightly tweak stuff so it doesnt look exactly the same. again its a matter of time and how much they care.
I'm not defending it haphazardly without good cause. I'm defending it on its merits. Its a good game, and I detest seeing people fall under the spell that it's somehow a bad game because of a handful of loud, obnoxious people screaming through all of the internet noise. That doesn't make it the prevailing opinion. Being 'rightfully' up-in-arms is a matter of opinion, in itself.
well ya. but imagine starcraft 3 would be a dumbed down squad based action RTS. it still could be a decent game but the shitstorm would break the internet cause its not what people want, what starcraft is.
that happened here. if that game wasnt called dragon age 2 but "fantasy effect" or whatever it just wouldve been a not so amazing bioware game and no one would go crazy over it.
but it is named dragon age 2. it is a rushed game. it has nothing to do with the other game, with the kind of game that was the idea behind dragon age and is a huge step down in tons of areas which simply isnt acceptable.
also for many dragon age was a hope that maybe there will be a good real RPG for the PC again. now we know they rather use it to milk the dumbed down console gamers instead of creating what couldve been a new era of bioware RPGs.
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On March 10 2011 06:21 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2011 05:44 Bibdy wrote:On March 10 2011 04:40 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
bibdy i dont really understand why you try so hard to defend the game.
claim the combat is harder/deeper then in DA1 which like evryone disagrees. claim its all just some conspiracy on metacritic from angry pc guys
tell us that recycling is totally ok and cool even in such totally cheap ways which makes no sense since its a 99% result of their new CoD style "lol k if so many buy it lets make another iteration and throw that out within a year, quality doesnt matter just get it done" attitude.
ofc i have no problem with you defending it, i just think its getting quite ridiculous how hard you try to do so.
they tried to get easy cash with DA2 and totally destroyed/changed the franchise and the original idea behind it. now evryone who expected a real RPG/a dragon age is rightfully up in arms.
I'm not defending it haphazardly without good cause. I'm defending it on its merits. Its a good game, and I detest seeing people fall under the spell that it's somehow a bad game because of a handful of loud, obnoxious people screaming through all of the internet noise. That doesn't make it the prevailing opinion. Being 'rightfully' up-in-arms is a matter of opinion, in itself. As for the recycling thing, think about it: Why do you think a single player FPS campaign has ~8 hours of gameplay, tops (that's about what it took me to get through Bulletstorm)? Because they don't recycle. How do you think an RPG game can muster up THIRTY PLUS hours of gameplay, even if you spam the Escape key and rampage through all the dialogue? Recycling - forcing the player to run through the same places again and again. Acting as though recycling doesn't go literally hand-in-hand with the genre is simply lying to yourself. The alternative is take the Diablo-approach to dungeon design, but that just leaves a very bland gaming experience if it doesn't have a lot of development time spent on the combat and action. However, proper RPGs don't put that effort in. They have story, characters, dialogue and so-on, which takes development time away from that. Being surprised by any kind of recycling and retracing in any kind of RPG is simply unfair expectations. Particularly with regard to character animation. That one just takes the cake. What, the animators should just throw away the various skeletal animations they made in DA:O because a sequel's come out? Do you want them to make more content, or not? Did these people even realize many of the skeletal animations from DA:O were re-used in Mass Effect 2? no one says recycling is the evil and should never be done. but when full levels/areas get copy pasted 1:1 something is wrong. and when the game in question was released 12 months after its first part its not hard to see what the reason for it is. also comparing fps to rpgs is very unfair since usually you speed thru fps levels where you usually spend alot more time in a area in a RPG. and if its a "unimportant" area then creating a standart cave/path whatever really isnt a huge deal with the devtools (esp not for a "blockbuster" game like DA2). there is no reason other then A) laziness or B) no enough time cause of greed.and its not even like the world is very big in dragon age anyways... havent seen anyone complain about animations. and something like that is expected and normal btw you can edit stuff too, no one says they need to scrap evrything and start from 0 again. its very easy to slightly tweak stuff so it doesnt look exactly the same. again its a matter of time and how much they care.Show nested quote +
I'm not defending it haphazardly without good cause. I'm defending it on its merits. Its a good game, and I detest seeing people fall under the spell that it's somehow a bad game because of a handful of loud, obnoxious people screaming through all of the internet noise. That doesn't make it the prevailing opinion. Being 'rightfully' up-in-arms is a matter of opinion, in itself.
well ya. but imagine starcraft 3 would be a dumbed down squad based action RTS. it still could be a decent game but the shitstorm would break the internet cause its not what people want, what starcraft is. that happened here. if that game wasnt called dragon age 2 but "fantasy effect" or whatever it just wouldve been a not so amazing bioware game and no one would go crazy over it. but it is named dragon age 2. it is a rushed game. it has nothing to do with the other game, with the kind of game that was the idea behind dragon age and is a huge step down in tons of areas which simply isnt acceptable.
The underlined is where we differ in opinion to an almost catastrophic level. It's easy to pretend like some big name, cigar-smoking, publishing company executive is the face behind the video game industry, but its far from the truth. Video game developers, even the ones in the triple-A industry, really do care about the things they create.
That kind of editting sounds easy until you try it. How much editting is necessary before dungeon B looks different enough to dungeon A through editting? The answer is a hell of a lot more than moving a few rocks and changing the colour palette of the lights. If that's all you had time to do, what would be the point?
I'm not sure what you were expecting from a sequel then. The tale of 'The Warden' ended with DA:O (and again in Awakening) and DA2 continues the story. It has a new hero, set in a different land. Did BG2 lose a lot of its sequelitude because it had absolutely nothing to do with the city of Baldur's Gate? Would it have been an interesting story to tell of The Warden's final days as he/she marches into the Deep Roads to meet their inevitable fate? Or are they already dead from killing the Arch-demon? The world continues and more stories of that world are given to you. Again, I don't know what you were expecting.
I just don't see where it stepped down, either. The combat is genuinely better. I actually have an incentive to spend attributes on something other than STR/DEX/MAG, because healing isn't stupidly overpowered and Warriors and Rogues are useful beyond auto-attacking . I'm no longer smacking down the door, launching fireballs and other AOE CC effects, instantly winning every encounter without a sweat due to enemy reinforcements and more complex enemies (rogues that disappear and focus your weaker guys, Mages that act like mini-bosses, Ogres that will fuck your shit up if you don't move everyone out of the way of their charge when their animation starts etc.).
It sounds like most of the complaints are cosmetic. You can't throw your blood dragon armour on Carver - correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't having all that crazy shit at the start of the game part of the reason it was so easy? You can't play a forest-prancing elf - did it even matter in the end? Do you even know why they removed the Origins stories? Because the players, the old-school players complained that it was bland. Its an RPG, and yet these choices had little to no consequence. They didn't affect the story enough. Hell, you could be a Dwarf Noble and not even get an opportunity to get your throne back? Laaaame. It was an experiment, and it didn't work. So, like good developers, they took the players' feedback and they decided to go the real old-school route to satisfy the old-school players - one solitary, barely customizable badass which the story revolves around. How many other RPGs have used that formula? Err...all of them? Baldur's Gate? Planescape: Torment? Final Fantasy? Ultima? People that want to play an elf and prance around the posies all day should probably wait for Skyrim.
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It's honestly miles better with this new format. The only thing I hope for is that Bioware takes more time with the third game and doesn't rush it out like this one.
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On March 10 2011 06:37 Bibdy wrote:
The underlined is where we differ in opinion to an almost catastrophic level. It's easy to pretend like some big name, cigar-smoking, publishing company executive is the face behind the video game industry, but its far from the truth. Video game developers, even the ones in the triple-A industry, really do care about the things they create.
i have no doubt that a guy that is porgramming/designing stuff 50 hours a week cares alot. i have HUGE doubts that the people that decide about all the things do care or even understand (see kotick as the prime example)
That kind of editting sounds easy until you try it. How much editting is necessary before dungeon B looks different enough to dungeon A through editting? The answer is a hell of a lot more than moving a few rocks and changing the colour palette of the lights. If that's all you had time to do, what would be the point?
i admit my knowledge is limited here. but i did some stuff for nwn, more recently alien swarm and others like unreal tournament models/skins/maps etc ages ago. but i doubt its such a huge deal if they have a somewhat decent editor. and just changing ANYTHING would have been better then copying something 1:1.
I'm not sure what you were expecting from a sequel then. The tale of 'The Warden' ended with DA:O (and again in Awakening) and DA2 continues the story. It has a new hero, set in a different land. Did BG2 lose a lot of its sequelitude because it had absolutely nothing to do with the city of Baldur's Gate? Would it have been an interesting story to tell of The Warden's final days as he/she marches into the Deep Roads to meet their inevitable fate? Or are they already dead from killing the Arch-demon? The world continues and more stories of that world are given to you. Again, I don't know what you were expecting.
people arent comlaining about a different story. people complain about a totally different gameplay that follows different goals and intentions.
if baldurs gate 2 was a diablo clone instead of keeping the gameplay the same and just improving it evrywhere/making it even deeper it wouldve been shit too. but it did what a sequel should do, pick up the strengths and soul of the game and enhance em.
dragon age 2 threw EVRYTHING from DA:o out of the window including the basic idea of "we want to make a deep rpg like back in the day!" .
I just don't see where it stepped down, either. The combat is genuinely better. I actually have an incentive to spend attributes on something other than STR/DEX/MAG, because healing isn't stupidly overpowered and Warriors and Rogues are useful beyond auto-attacking . I'm no longer smacking down the door, launching fireballs and other AOE CC effects, instantly winning every encounter without a sweat due to enemy reinforcements and more complex enemies (rogues that disappear and focus your weaker guys, Mages that act like mini-bosses, Ogres that will fuck your shit up if you don't move everyone out of the way of their charge when their animation starts etc.).
100% personal taste. but what you cant deny that it is very very different. so it shouldnt be surprising that tons of people are unhappy with it since it is not what they expect/want.
It sounds like most of the complaints are cosmetic. You can't throw your blood dragon armour on Carver - correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't having all that crazy shit at the start of the game part of the reason it was so easy? You can't play a forest-prancing elf - did it even matter in the end? Do you even know why they removed the Origins stories? Because the players, the old-school players complained that it was bland. Its an RPG, and yet these choices had little to no consequence. They didn't affect the story enough. Hell, you could be a Dwarf Noble and not even get an opportunity to get your throne back? Laaaame. It was an experiment, and it didn't work. So, like good developers, they took the players' feedback and they decided to go the real old-school route to satisfy the old-school players - one solitary, barely customizable badass which the story revolves around. How many other RPGs have used that formula? Err...all of them? Baldur's Gate? Planescape: Torment? Final Fantasy? Ultima? People that want to play an elf and prance around the posies all day should probably wait for Skyrim.
dont even know where to start. why do you keep saying DA:O was easier? evrybody will tell you its the other way round.
then you say choices and options got removed because they didnt have a huge enough effect. are you serious? how about increasing the effects instead of just deleting all choices/options? you say that didnt matter, how about making them matter instead of removing em?
thats not what good game devs do. thats what lazydevs or devs with too little time do.
and when people talk about the oldschool rpgs 95% people talk about the BG games(like the DA devs did too before) where you indeed had FULL customization. planescape torment is a differen story cause its 99% story/text based and evrything you wannabe and are just slowly evolves in dialogues and decisions. the few combat parts dont matter much.
the other games you list are basicly different genres.
no matter how you look at it. dragon age 2 is no dragon age. dragon age 2 is in ton of areas worse or atleast more limited. its a big step back and evryone inlcuding reviews agree on that.
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Always saddens me that people rationalize recycled stuff down to laziness. Do you have even the faintest idea about the average number of hours a video game developer works? They recycle it because they don't have the time, money, manpower, resources, whatever to create a whole new map for each and every area, not because they don't care. It's an INCREDIBLY time-consuming and tedious process and as a result, level design is one of the two main methods of getting into the industry (the other being QA).
Do you have any idea what the development cycle of Dragon Age 2 is? Slightly more then a year. The shit level design is just another result of accelerated development schedules made to regurgitate successively inferior sequels onto the market.
You're right, lazy isn't a good word, especially not applied to the Level designers. How about Cheap Corporate sellout Bastards, applied to the lead producers, CEO and design leads.
And people wonder why developers are moving to consoles in droves. PC gaming houses many of the most over-entitled morons the world has ever seen. Childish behaviour like what you're seeing on metacritic doesn't incentivize the developers to make the changes they want. It just makes them consider the opinions of console gamers more.
So in other words producers sell to consoles because the PC audience has higher expectations of quality. Why the fuck would you want PC games to even exist if it weren't for higher expectations of quality? If your suggestion to make PC gaming more popular is to buy shit and be happy with it, I'd rather it just die off altogether, what the fuck would be the point of 1000$ consoles?
And PC games are hardly dieing off.
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EPT
