So the videos I've seen of this game make it look kind of ugly and clunky. Like, the character models look like they are from five or ten years ago and the environments looked kind of bland. How does it look in actual play? Is it distracting or easy to overlook?
I'm still obsessed by Borderlands but will obviously pick this up sooner or later (on 360 obv.).
The only times the visuals can be off-putting to me is when you get a close-up of a particularly bland texture (pretty much exclusively in dialogue sequences and even then not terribly frequent), other than that it looks pretty great on the 360.
Yep. Things look great on the 360. The only thing I don't like about the graphics: Ostagar.
During the battle, do NOT look down from the bridge. If you do, you'll see a bunch of shadowy stick-men dancing around, pretending to fight. Very weak.
Forgot to mention, if you have the game for the 360, INSTALL IT. It vastly improves performance. For example, when NPCs engage you in conversation, there is no longer that 5-second load time. And the pop-in is reduced, as are load times. The game is far better installed.
Anyone know if some if the really hardcore players have finished or come close to end game yet?
Don't see how anyone could've just yet - the Gametrailers review pegged a regular story run at 60 hours, tacking a few dozen more onto that for a more leisurely and meticulous quest-grabbing playthrough.
I thought mane a speedrunner might of or some really insane person who got a broken street date release.
How do I make my guys automatically attack? Everytime something dies they sit there and wait until assigned a target. Earlier in the game they would run off to kill everything in the immediate vicinity and now they sit there when there is a perfectly good enemy two steps away.
I'm right there with you guys. I got to play all of 5 minutes yesterday.
I am currently out of the country for my job, so am completely unable to play. Yet, I am still browsing the forums when I should be doing work stuff .
Luckily, when I do get home the wife will be out of the house so I'll be able to devote at least one night to playing this .
Reading this thread and watching various videos, I am so conflicted on what to play and which NPCs party members to focus on.
At the very least I can see myself playing all 6 Origin stories to see if I prefer one class to another. Or at least playing them until I find one I really like, in which case I won't make it to all six.
a group of highway men stopped me outside of a city and demanded 10 silver. I did a threaten (or coerce?) and was like, "I'm a Grey Warden bitch!" the highwaymen said, "oops, carry on!"
and then I did persuasion, and made them give ME 20 silver
and then I killed them
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
edited November 2009
I'm kinda curious what would happen is I went Entropic purist in my magic. Just fill up all 4 of those trees in that field. (Plus the default one you get to start with.)
a group of highway men stopped me outside of a city and demanded 10 silver. I did a threaten (or coerce?) and was like, "I'm a Grey Warden bitch!" the highwaymen said, "oops, carry on!"
and then I did persuasion, and made them give ME 20 silver
Just watched the gametrailers review and it sounded like they were bitching about the length of the game. Complaining about the length of an RPG... Fucking casuals can go suck a dick. RPGs that are long as fuck are awesome.
I watched that review, I actually found it pretty informative. I don't think they were bitching about the length so much as they were just noting it - it is pretty significant given the lack of similarly-deep and involving RPGs these days (on consoles at least).
Abandon all hope, ye casuals who enter here.
Finished the human noble origin last night...
and I wish the cutpurse (Daveth? I was tired, the name's escaping me) hadn't died. I thought he'd be interesting to have around.
Also, the combat system's a bit new to me. Any pro-tips beyond my own awareness that I should probably pause a lot more, stock up when I'm in town, and look for a more balanced party? (3 warriors and a rogue in the wilds probably didn't give me a good experience of a 'balanced' party :P) I'm getting the impression that I really should be treating most fights as life-and-death and not worry about conserving consumables and whatnot.
Yep. Things look great on the 360. The only thing I don't like about the graphics: Ostagar.
During the battle, do NOT look down from the bridge. If you do, you'll see a bunch of shadowy stick-men dancing around, pretending to fight. Very weak.
There's also an overlook at Ostagar that gives you a view into the valley below; the trees look pretty bad.
But overall the 360 version looks good. I occassionally see a bit of slow-down during cutscenes, but nothing terrible. It's also nice to be free of Mass Effect's awful texture-pop. Load times haven't been too bad, and I like that the loading screen displays a summary of what you're currently doing.
How big an install is it on the 360?
Iron Weasel on
Currently Playing:
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
I'm kinda curious what would happen is I went Entropic purist in my magic. Just fill up all 4 of those trees in that field. (Plus the default one you get to start with.)
The only spells I have gotten so far are entropy spells and the frost nukes from the primal tree. So far, it's working fine, and it'll work even better when I actually get the good crowd control spells like Sleep and Paralyze.
Yep. Things look great on the 360. The only thing I don't like about the graphics: Ostagar.
During the battle, do NOT look down from the bridge. If you do, you'll see a bunch of shadowy stick-men dancing around, pretending to fight. Very weak.
There's also an overlook at Ostagar that gives you a view into the valley below; the trees look pretty bad.
But overall the 360 version looks good. I occassionally see a bit of slow-down during cutscenes, but nothing terrible. It's also nice to be free of Mass Effect's awful texture-pop. Load times haven't been too bad, and I like that the loading screen displays a summary of what you're currently doing.
I also would not advise attempting to run off of overlooks in Ostagar 'just to see what happens.' It's a good way to get your character stuck and have to reload your save.
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited November 2009
Two things:
One, I am finding this game unrelentingly hard. I must have to change my strategy or something, because it is ridiculous.
Two, thank God I did not get this for the 360.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
So at the top of the tower in Ostagar...
...that fight right there, haha. I tried it four times this morning before I went to work, and every time was just a sliver away from victory. Tried several different strategies, but in the end it seemed best if I programmed good tactics for my melee fighters, and controlled my mage directly, pausing to give specific orders if I see a need arise.
The sad thing is, this is on normal. I think my real issue is that I got to the top with only four health pots, so by the end of the fight, I am just running dry of pots. Wish I could go back and buy some now :P I also wish I had taken taunt on my main dude, so I could keep the ogre on him, focusing the pots and keeping the thing away from my mage, who is my big damage dealer.
Running away seems to be a pretty valid tactic... I send my rogue in to engage the enemy, then I run back to my main forces, seems like I can usually grab 1 or 2 Darkspawn and break up the ambush they've created. But yeah, really freaking hard, I love it.
Turn their behavior to Aggresive. They will run after whatever.
I can have morrigan pick up tempest
That is an aggro magnet I've found. Truly to had to control unless you've already mass rooted a group of enemies far away from your party. I found spending points on Morrigans entropy tree (to weaken enemies) and then going into Bear form a much better use of her talents, leaving the primal damage to my main mage.
.
I did set them to aggressive. No dice. It's most likely the hold place thing that was mentioned earlier. I'll take a look when I get back in game.
Aggro so far it's been a non-issue for me as both the MC and Morrigan have several mass stuns and disables. And I can pick up aggro off her no problem. I'm perfectly all right with my mage MC basically pissing everyone off. I can always play "ring around the Alistair / dog."
I can just reserve her tempest use for when I want to unleash a SotC.
I like your idea of having her become a debuffer. That should help my arcane mage out when he wants to beat things down the old fashioned (but magically enhanced) way.
Now that I think about it I am sort of playing him the same way I played my Frost mage in WoW.
I think my rationale with Moriggan (if one was playing a mage) was that there would be too much overlap between the two damage dealing mages. I haven't been in a spot where I need that much AOE damage, but I have seen where having some crowd control and persistent debuffing (through the entropy tree) works to my advantage.
ED! on
"Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
Oddly enough the closest I've come to a full party wipe so far has been a fight with a pack of wolves - the damned things kept knocking me down and mauling me so I couldn't use a health pot (and I couldn't figure out how to pause combat and swap to one of my other characters to give me one). Killed everyone except
the mage chick who I promptly turned into a spider so she could kill the last two.
Ugh. Part of me wishes I were born a little later so I would still be attending school in this era and not have a "family" and "job" to attend to. All these awesome games and I can't devote my time to them. Being an adult sucks.
This. So much this.
In fact, right now I'm typing on this forum instead of attending to the 10 post-it stickies on my desk with tasks I need to complete. :^:
I'm right there with you guys. I got to play all of 5 minutes yesterday.
+1 more. 7.5 more hours left in my work day and all I can think about is how much I want to get home and play. It's going to be a long day.
itchyeyes on
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
So like, if I've already put a few points into 2 hander, am I better off starting over, or can I just go ahead and start shunting points into sword and board and still be able to max it out?
...that fight right there, haha. I tried it four times this morning before I went to work, and every time was just a sliver away from victory. Tried several different strategies, but in the end it seemed best if I programmed good tactics for my melee fighters, and controlled my mage directly, pausing to give specific orders if I see a need arise.
The sad thing is, this is on normal. I think my real issue is that I got to the top with only four health pots, so by the end of the fight, I am just running dry of pots. Wish I could go back and buy some now :P I also wish I had taken taunt on my main dude, so I could keep the ogre on him, focusing the pots and keeping the thing away from my mage, who is my big damage dealer.
I just equipped all my guys with ranged weapons, then ran whoever had aggro around in circles while everyone else shot him. Got away without too much damage.
Grr. Played last night for HOURS. Today, not so much luck. It's locked up my entire PC once, and just now crashed to desktop.
Grr, and again. This time was the same as the first time, both screens turned off, the sound started bouncing back and forth in a loop of about 2-3 seconds, and I had to hard shutdown the machine to get it back up. I checked the GPU fan, it's spinning and dust free. Not sure what's going on. Gonna update the drivers I guess. Win7 x64 Ultimate here.
I can already tell that my first playthrough is going to be over 100 hours. The codex is like lore porn. I've already found a few hidden sidequests and spawnable monsters from it.
How ddi the side quests come up? Like you read about it and it gets added to the log?
in the Wilds (early quest):
on the quest that sets up the Proving for the Grey Wardens, I found a dead body with a note and a little pouch of ash on him. near that area, there's a cliff that overlooks a sunken dome and a pile of rocks on that cliff. if you sprinkle the ashes on the pile of rocks, it summons a ghost or something that attacks you.
skippydumptruck on
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
Grr. Played last night for HOURS. Today, not so much luck. It's locked up my entire PC once, and just now crashed to desktop.
Grr, and again. This time was the same as the first time, both screens turned off, the sound started bouncing back and forth in a loop of about 2-3 seconds, and I had to hard shutdown the machine to get it back up. I checked the GPU fan, it's spinning and dust free. Not sure what's going on. Gonna update the drivers I guess. Win7 x64 Ultimate here.
Anyone else having this problem, or one like it?
I am running on Win7 x64 Pro, with no such issue. My recommendation is to grab RivaTuner and check your GPU temps before it crashes, as that will tell you if it's a heat related crash, though normally in a heat related situation you'll get artifacting before a crash.
...that fight right there, haha. I tried it four times this morning before I went to work, and every time was just a sliver away from victory. Tried several different strategies, but in the end it seemed best if I programmed good tactics for my melee fighters, and controlled my mage directly, pausing to give specific orders if I see a need arise.
The sad thing is, this is on normal. I think my real issue is that I got to the top with only four health pots, so by the end of the fight, I am just running dry of pots. Wish I could go back and buy some now :P I also wish I had taken taunt on my main dude, so I could keep the ogre on him, focusing the pots and keeping the thing away from my mage, who is my big damage dealer.
I just equipped all my guys with ranged weapons, then ran whoever had aggro around in circles while everyone else shot him. Got away without too much damage.
Interesting strategy, I'll try that when I get home later.
...that fight right there, haha. I tried it four times this morning before I went to work, and every time was just a sliver away from victory. Tried several different strategies, but in the end it seemed best if I programmed good tactics for my melee fighters, and controlled my mage directly, pausing to give specific orders if I see a need arise.
The sad thing is, this is on normal. I think my real issue is that I got to the top with only four health pots, so by the end of the fight, I am just running dry of pots. Wish I could go back and buy some now :P I also wish I had taken taunt on my main dude, so I could keep the ogre on him, focusing the pots and keeping the thing away from my mage, who is my big damage dealer.
Health pots and healing. Really the only option here. I managed to do it by relying on a Lesser Healing Pot tactic for health less than 50% for Alistair who was my main tank. I had another melee wailing on him, and a ranger DPS applying debuffs and random damage.
I can already tell that my first playthrough is going to be over 100 hours. The codex is like lore porn. I've already found a few hidden sidequests and spawnable monsters from it.
How ddi the side quests come up? Like you read about it and it gets added to the log?
in the Wilds (early quest):
on the quest that sets up the Proving for the Grey Wardens, I found a dead body with a note and a little pouch of ash on him. near that area, there's a cliff that overlooks a sunken dome and a pile of rocks on that cliff. if you sprinkle the ashes on the pile of rocks, it summons a ghost or something that attacks you.
That fucking ghost both scared the crap out of me because I thought it was going to be a helpful ghost due to the quest flavor text, and almost killed my entire party
Spawnbroker on
Steam: Spawnbroker
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited November 2009
Oh, speaking of DLC, here's a question:
For those of you who have the Warden's Keep DLC, when is a good time to go through it? Is it more tuned for low-level characters such that I should go through it now, or is it more an endgame thing that I can hold off on for a while? I haven't purchased it yet, so that's why I'm curious. I don't want to miss out on it if it's more geared for lower level parties.
Halfmex on
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
edited November 2009
Wow, I never had the problem you all did. But then again As the Mage I kept kiting the Ogre's attention away from Alister and crew.
After finding the L4D2 demo rather "meh" worthy, I find myself with $50 to spend on a different game and this one is looking like my first choice. Can't wait to give this a go this weekend!
Posts
Forgot to mention, if you have the game for the 360, INSTALL IT. It vastly improves performance. For example, when NPCs engage you in conversation, there is no longer that 5-second load time. And the pop-in is reduced, as are load times. The game is far better installed.
I thought mane a speedrunner might of or some really insane person who got a broken street date release.
Set your guys to aggressive.
I am currently out of the country for my job, so am completely unable to play. Yet, I am still browsing the forums when I should be doing work stuff
Luckily, when I do get home the wife will be out of the house so I'll be able to devote at least one night to playing this
Reading this thread and watching various videos, I am so conflicted on what to play and which NPCs party members to focus on.
At the very least I can see myself playing all 6 Origin stories to see if I prefer one class to another. Or at least playing them until I find one I really like, in which case I won't make it to all six.
Game actually looks a lot better in motion than the screens. I am very happy with it. Though my female elf rogue has man shoulders... hmmm.
I so came into work today. Too many people out with real cold/flus I just couldn't justify a day off for a game. Grrr... 7 more hours... sucks...
and then I did persuasion, and made them give ME 20 silver
and then I killed them
Finished the human noble origin last night...
Also, the combat system's a bit new to me. Any pro-tips beyond my own awareness that I should probably pause a lot more, stock up when I'm in town, and look for a more balanced party? (3 warriors and a rogue in the wilds probably didn't give me a good experience of a 'balanced' party :P) I'm getting the impression that I really should be treating most fights as life-and-death and not worry about conserving consumables and whatnot.
But overall the 360 version looks good. I occassionally see a bit of slow-down during cutscenes, but nothing terrible. It's also nice to be free of Mass Effect's awful texture-pop. Load times haven't been too bad, and I like that the loading screen displays a summary of what you're currently doing.
How big an install is it on the 360?
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
The only spells I have gotten so far are entropy spells and the frost nukes from the primal tree. So far, it's working fine, and it'll work even better when I actually get the good crowd control spells like Sleep and Paralyze.
Not really an annoyance to do it individually, but any shortcut is a good shortcut.
I also would not advise attempting to run off of overlooks in Ostagar 'just to see what happens.' It's a good way to get your character stuck and have to reload your save.
Not that I've done that or anything. >_>
Can we be friends?
One, I am finding this game unrelentingly hard. I must have to change my strategy or something, because it is ridiculous.
Two, thank God I did not get this for the 360.
The sad thing is, this is on normal. I think my real issue is that I got to the top with only four health pots, so by the end of the fight, I am just running dry of pots. Wish I could go back and buy some now :P I also wish I had taken taunt on my main dude, so I could keep the ogre on him, focusing the pots and keeping the thing away from my mage, who is my big damage dealer.
If you have an nVidia card you should be able to force it through the nVidia control panel.
I think my rationale with Moriggan (if one was playing a mage) was that there would be too much overlap between the two damage dealing mages. I haven't been in a spot where I need that much AOE damage, but I have seen where having some crowd control and persistent debuffing (through the entropy tree) works to my advantage.
Ya really? I'll be the Blood Mage. Speaking of which. Anyone find where you can unlock that speciality?
If there is ever a co-op version of this out I know who I'd be rolling with.
SniperGuyGaming on PSN / SniperGuy710 on Xbone Live
Grr, and again. This time was the same as the first time, both screens turned off, the sound started bouncing back and forth in a loop of about 2-3 seconds, and I had to hard shutdown the machine to get it back up. I checked the GPU fan, it's spinning and dust free. Not sure what's going on. Gonna update the drivers I guess. Win7 x64 Ultimate here.
Anyone else having this problem, or one like it?
in the Wilds (early quest):
Mage Party FTW.
This should probably be in the OP.
I am running on Win7 x64 Pro, with no such issue. My recommendation is to grab RivaTuner and check your GPU temps before it crashes, as that will tell you if it's a heat related crash, though normally in a heat related situation you'll get artifacting before a crash.
Interesting strategy, I'll try that when I get home later.
Health pots and healing. Really the only option here. I managed to do it by relying on a Lesser Healing Pot tactic for health less than 50% for Alistair who was my main tank. I had another melee wailing on him, and a ranger DPS applying debuffs and random damage.
For those of you who have the Warden's Keep DLC, when is a good time to go through it? Is it more tuned for low-level characters such that I should go through it now, or is it more an endgame thing that I can hold off on for a while? I haven't purchased it yet, so that's why I'm curious. I don't want to miss out on it if it's more geared for lower level parties.