She's got sort of a swarthy Spaniard look to her...though Antivans are fantasy Spaniards, right? I'm not sure what the Rivains are...my first thought was that it was a joke reference to the Witcher.
"Yes, sir I've seen them. Yes, sir I was aware that they are all white. They are not from Portugal; they're from Spain and at birth, they're not white; they're black. Sir."
I can't play the game unless every NPC's appearances adheres to my preferences. Especially my party members. Aveline is hideous so I beat the game without a real tank twice before I found those mods that make her pretty.
I can't play the game unless every NPC's appearances adheres to my preferences. Especially my party members. Aveline is hideous so I beat the game without a real tank twice before I found those mods that make her pretty.
Thank god for those.
You need my mod that makes the entire party look like Jason Statham.
For the most part though... the DA2 dungeons don't even look all that time consuming to create. I mean, you've got the sewer dungeons... which are just a collection of dull brown rooms, with a few piles of rubble copy and pasted around. You've got some really small dungeons in the buildings, which are big open rooms with a second floor that contains two smaller rooms. Also really dull brown. You've got the two kinds of natural caves, which are a little less boxy and have stalactites and stalagmites copy and pasted everywhere. And then you've got the cave dungeon that looks like the Deep Roads, which is just a bunch of rectangular corridors with some streams of lava on both sides.
It's not like they were crafting the inside of the alien mothership in Crysis or anything. Now that level took some major resources. I can understand not being able to create more of those. These levels for the most part are simple, I think I've seen greater complexity from levels in Quake 1 mods.
Yeah, nice to see I'm not the only one overly impressed by the new, now 100% more brown blocky and linear art style. Say what you will about the reused areas in witch hunt, but Cadash thaig was pretty, and it's a crime they didn't spend more time in the dragonbone wastes.
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
I loved DA:O, but I think I like DAII more.
That said, the dungeons in both games were bad, but for different reasons. In DAO, they were too long (IMHO) and unless you played a mage, you shuffled around the map killing things. OTOH, at least they were thematically appropriate.
In DAII, the dungeons are short (plus) and the combat better, but the fact they reused them over and over again is very jarring.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
That Fenris mod is so awful. They even went ahead and removed the lyrium marks. They just want to romance their little custom made elf set to Fenris' voice, regardless if it matches the character.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
The combat in general and the waves aren't difficult. They're just not fun and break any sense of realism when a squad of people magically appear out of nowhere. Theres no point to using positioning. And "don't blow your load" is pretty meaningless given that most abilities cooldown in less than 15 seconds anyway, you might as well keep spamming them.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
I think it's two things:
1 - You're at the front, tanking away on the mobs, holding their attention while all your ranged DPS are safely at the back. The next wave spawns in a 360 degree circle around your companions and start attacking them, while you're out of position. It's annoying, because you had no chance to intercept them before they got to them. They just spawned in a really advantageous position, so it feels cheap.
2 - They spawn out of nowhere. They don't come running out of a room, they just either appear out of thin air, or crawl out of what appears to be solid concrete floor. This looks bad and makes no sense. Dragonlings shouldn't just warp into existence in the blink of an eye. Sometimes the waves appear and they make sense, like when thieves jump down from the buildings in Kirkwall's neighborhoods, or when spiders dangle down from the ceiling of a cave. But all too often, they appear out of nowhere and it looks stupid.
I think the waves are kinda lame and cheap, but I have to admit, they do provide more of a challenge, and help keep me on my toes. So I guess BioWare achieved what they set out to do.
Ooo, the examine points in your mansion seem to vary from game to game.
Re. waves, I imagine on nightmare difficulty, you'd want to micromanage your team together at all times. On normal difficulty, it hardly really matters.
The waves appearing magically is a little silly, but saying there's no point to positioning is a little silly. You just have to re-position frequently. Also, realism in fantasy game combat... you made me laugh.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
And/or stunlock them. And the whole don't blow your load thing just makes you never use the slower cooldown powers since sometimes there's no waves, and sometimes there's 3-4!
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
The combat in general and the waves aren't difficult. They're just not fun and break any sense of realism when a squad of people magically appear out of nowhere. Theres no point to using positioning. And "don't blow your load" is pretty meaningless given that most abilities cooldown in less than 15 seconds anyway, you might as well keep spamming them.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
These quotes go well together. Anyways MOST abilities have longer than 15 second cooldown, espcially AoE and crowd control abilities. I really don't have a problem with the waves, they are fun but I wish they came in a little more realistically somehow. Really not that bad though.
I mean if you are having your mages/range guys get one shot you aren't paying attention, always be looking around and at the minimap, pausing to check the fight. I have never had a problem with this.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
And/or stunlock them. And the whole don't blow your load thing just makes you never use the slower cooldown powers since sometimes there's no waves, and sometimes there's 3-4!
The spawns don't immediately attack. There's a long fight entry animation. Just glance at your mini-map frequently, or keep your camera turned towards your ranged characters, and you'll never have problems.
Yea, the waves are the reason I want to punch whoever created the "Use Tactical Position to your advantage" loading screen tip.
It still works you just have to think about, what is a tactical position? Does this change with the way enemies spawn? Where is the tactical position going to be then? It is quite obvious if you think about it, if you need to back up and make them come to you, they will, they always spawn in the same spot they aren't going to spawn in a new spot, always the same one.
The waves appearing magically is a little silly, but saying there's no point to positioning is a little silly. You just have to re-position frequently. Also, realism in fantasy game combat... you made me laugh.
Theres always the idiot who doesn't understand that internal consistency can exist in a fantasy game.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
And/or stunlock them. And the whole don't blow your load thing just makes you never use the slower cooldown powers since sometimes there's no waves, and sometimes there's 3-4!
The spawns don't immediately attack. There's a long fight entry animation. Just glance at your mini-map frequently, or keep your camera turned towards your ranged characters, and you'll never have problems.
Considering how much trouble it is to wrangle the camera even when paused...
The waves appearing magically is a little silly, but saying there's no point to positioning is a little silly. You just have to re-position frequently. Also, realism in fantasy game combat... you made me laugh.
Theres always the idiot who doesn't understand that internal consistency can exist in a fantasy game.
I actually agree with you. I just thought the wording was funny. No need to be a goose. :P
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
And/or stunlock them. And the whole don't blow your load thing just makes you never use the slower cooldown powers since sometimes there's no waves, and sometimes there's 3-4!
The spawns don't immediately attack. There's a long fight entry animation. Just glance at your mini-map frequently, or keep your camera turned towards your ranged characters, and you'll never have problems.
Considering how much trouble it is to wrangle the camera even when paused...
Saw that coming. Don't you think 'wrangling' is a little dramatic?
The waves appearing magically is a little silly, but saying there's no point to positioning is a little silly. You just have to re-position frequently. Also, realism in fantasy game combat... you made me laugh.
Theres always the idiot who doesn't understand that internal consistency can exist in a fantasy game.
I actually agree with you. I just thought the wording was funny. No need to be a goose. :P
It just always annoys me when I see that argument. Sorry
Yea, the waves are the reason I want to punch whoever created the "Use Tactical Position to your advantage" loading screen tip.
It still works you just have to think about, what is a tactical position? Does this change with the way enemies spawn? Where is the tactical position going to be then? It is quite obvious if you think about it, if you need to back up and make them come to you, they will, they always spawn in the same spot they aren't going to spawn in a new spot, always the same one.
Yes, once I've fought a fight I typically have a easier time knowing how to fight it.
The magical spawn location being valuable tactical knowledge is just another reason it should be fucking represented graphically.
The spawning is a horrible decision. It doesn't kill the game but it makes a spirited go at it.
What do people not like about the waves? They aren't at all difficult, you just have to play differently, don't blow your load all over the first wave and then have nothing for the next wave.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
And/or stunlock them. And the whole don't blow your load thing just makes you never use the slower cooldown powers since sometimes there's no waves, and sometimes there's 3-4!
The spawns don't immediately attack. There's a long fight entry animation. Just glance at your mini-map frequently, or keep your camera turned towards your ranged characters, and you'll never have problems.
Considering how much trouble it is to wrangle the camera even when paused...
Uh what? f1, f2, f3, f4, f5 or click the unit portrait...its really simple. I am guessing you don't play fast paced games too much, and you probably click all the abilities in wow and turn the camera with left and right arrow.
Are you guys playing on consoles? On a PC, moving the camera around and managing your party is hardly trouble at all.
And again, on normal difficulty, you don't hardly need to do it. Or use the available powers to deal with it - rogues and Merill get a "teleport to an ally" power. And on nightmare, I can't imagine you wouldn't want to group your entire party together at almost all times anyways to deal with aggro. It was stated that for Nightmare difficulty, the expectation is that you'll basically be playing all four characters, that all four characters will be played optimally. To complain that a higher difficulty is harder, when there's something really simple you can do to avoid the problem seems silly.
Edit: I have no idea what Fizban140 is talking about. On a PC, F5 is quick-save and camera rotation is just RMB?
I think I have some bug.
I have two quests to talk to Isabella at the pub,
- A Rivaini Talisman
- Questioning Beliefs
But whether I go there night or day, she just stands by the bar drinking, no quest interaction.
Anyone else run into this?
Figured it out (after doing dozens of other quests). Apparently she has to be in my party, otherwise I can't turn in the quest, contrary to every other party member quest so far.
Also, screw those 3 guys on Sundermount and screw the big Pride demon they lead to. I thought WoW anti-melee bosses sucked, these guys take the cake. Especially since I didn't have a bow on my dual wield rogue for the Pride demon part (gave to Sebastian in between the two places) so all he got to do was sit on his thumbs in between demon wave spawns and assassinating the Pride demon once every whatever the cooldown is. Had to reload both of these a dozen times.
By comparison, the High Dragon was a chump. Tank and spank, watch the tail, spread out and mop up adds, repeat.
Ugh, I tried the console demo. For as bad as the PC camera is, the console is way worse. Unless you like wasting the entire center of the screen on your character's back.
The problem isn't that the higher difficult is too hard, it's that the entire difficulty comes from throwing more bullshit and seeing what sticks, rather than actually doing things to make it more tactical. As many problems as I have with ME2, that game really nailed down increasing difficulties adding additional layers to the gameplay.
And kiting is still incredible BS, and I refuse to do it more than necessary.
Ugh, I tried the console demo. For as bad as the PC camera is, the console is way worse. Unless you like wasting the entire center of the screen on your character's back.
The problem isn't that the higher difficult is too hard, it's that the entire difficulty comes from throwing more bullshit and seeing what sticks, rather than actually doing things to make it more tactical. As many problems as I have with ME2, that game really nailed down increasing difficulties adding additional layers to the gameplay.
And kiting is still incredible BS, and I refuse to do it more than necessary.
What do you mean by this? What would you change that would make DA2 more tactical exactly? It seems plenty tactical to me.
The biggest problem with the waves, which I rarely ever seen mentioned, is how the game is designed to not deal with them. Ignoring their nature (the fact that they pop into existence all around you, the fact that you face groups in sequential order as if someone was in the back organizing trash mobs to their death in which one group watches another die then jumps to their own death, etc...) the problem is to deal with them in any efficient/coordinated manner you need your party to stay together. Except, what happens when the AI picks a target? If they immediately rush to attack rather than waiting for them to get within some pre-defined range where they won't be horribly unsupported/out of position. And if you turn on the hold function, then you get situations where your melee won't even engage a target a few steps away or ranged units won't move an inch over to get line of sight on a target. What you end up with is a ideal example of the difference between tedious/useless micromanagement and tactical gameplay/decision making.
In short, the waves would be perfectly fine if the game didn't actively make it harder for you to manage your people with them.
Posts
Heeeey, jailed people can't edit! (I think)
Well I can edit, but that was a fake edit anyways.
This whole argument is stupid anyways, we need to talk about mods more.
http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2328
lololol
Give me dreamy fenris.
He looks like a 6 year old
Thank god for those.
You need my mod that makes the entire party look like Jason Statham.
Well, considering that most of the vocal people on these forums hated DAO...
Yeah, nice to see I'm not the only one overly impressed by the new, now 100% more brown blocky and linear art style. Say what you will about the reused areas in witch hunt, but Cadash thaig was pretty, and it's a crime they didn't spend more time in the dragonbone wastes.
That said, the dungeons in both games were bad, but for different reasons. In DAO, they were too long (IMHO) and unless you played a mage, you shuffled around the map killing things. OTOH, at least they were thematically appropriate.
In DAII, the dungeons are short (plus) and the combat better, but the fact they reused them over and over again is very jarring.
Perhaps DAIII will take the best of both games.
I'm still not sure who you're talking about, three or four threads later.
The combat is not as enjoyable due to a few silly decisions (waves, closer camera, not being able to move the camera around).
The environments in general are a lot more repetitive and have fewer little touches. Storyline is about the same.
On Hard and above they have the tendency to drop directly behind mages and one-shot them.
The combat in general and the waves aren't difficult. They're just not fun and break any sense of realism when a squad of people magically appear out of nowhere. Theres no point to using positioning. And "don't blow your load" is pretty meaningless given that most abilities cooldown in less than 15 seconds anyway, you might as well keep spamming them.
I think it's two things:
1 - You're at the front, tanking away on the mobs, holding their attention while all your ranged DPS are safely at the back. The next wave spawns in a 360 degree circle around your companions and start attacking them, while you're out of position. It's annoying, because you had no chance to intercept them before they got to them. They just spawned in a really advantageous position, so it feels cheap.
2 - They spawn out of nowhere. They don't come running out of a room, they just either appear out of thin air, or crawl out of what appears to be solid concrete floor. This looks bad and makes no sense. Dragonlings shouldn't just warp into existence in the blink of an eye. Sometimes the waves appear and they make sense, like when thieves jump down from the buildings in Kirkwall's neighborhoods, or when spiders dangle down from the ceiling of a cave. But all too often, they appear out of nowhere and it looks stupid.
I think the waves are kinda lame and cheap, but I have to admit, they do provide more of a challenge, and help keep me on my toes. So I guess BioWare achieved what they set out to do.
Re. waves, I imagine on nightmare difficulty, you'd want to micromanage your team together at all times. On normal difficulty, it hardly really matters.
And/or stunlock them. And the whole don't blow your load thing just makes you never use the slower cooldown powers since sometimes there's no waves, and sometimes there's 3-4!
These quotes go well together. Anyways MOST abilities have longer than 15 second cooldown, espcially AoE and crowd control abilities. I really don't have a problem with the waves, they are fun but I wish they came in a little more realistically somehow. Really not that bad though.
I mean if you are having your mages/range guys get one shot you aren't paying attention, always be looking around and at the minimap, pausing to check the fight. I have never had a problem with this.
The spawns don't immediately attack. There's a long fight entry animation. Just glance at your mini-map frequently, or keep your camera turned towards your ranged characters, and you'll never have problems.
It still works you just have to think about, what is a tactical position? Does this change with the way enemies spawn? Where is the tactical position going to be then? It is quite obvious if you think about it, if you need to back up and make them come to you, they will, they always spawn in the same spot they aren't going to spawn in a new spot, always the same one.
Theres always the idiot who doesn't understand that internal consistency can exist in a fantasy game.
Considering how much trouble it is to wrangle the camera even when paused...
I actually agree with you. I just thought the wording was funny. No need to be a goose. :P
Saw that coming. Don't you think 'wrangling' is a little dramatic?
It just always annoys me when I see that argument. Sorry
Yes, once I've fought a fight I typically have a easier time knowing how to fight it.
The magical spawn location being valuable tactical knowledge is just another reason it should be fucking represented graphically.
The spawning is a horrible decision. It doesn't kill the game but it makes a spirited go at it.
And again, on normal difficulty, you don't hardly need to do it. Or use the available powers to deal with it - rogues and Merill get a "teleport to an ally" power. And on nightmare, I can't imagine you wouldn't want to group your entire party together at almost all times anyways to deal with aggro. It was stated that for Nightmare difficulty, the expectation is that you'll basically be playing all four characters, that all four characters will be played optimally. To complain that a higher difficulty is harder, when there's something really simple you can do to avoid the problem seems silly.
Edit: I have no idea what Fizban140 is talking about. On a PC, F5 is quick-save and camera rotation is just RMB?
Figured it out (after doing dozens of other quests). Apparently she has to be in my party, otherwise I can't turn in the quest, contrary to every other party member quest so far.
Also, screw those 3 guys on Sundermount and screw the big Pride demon they lead to. I thought WoW anti-melee bosses sucked, these guys take the cake. Especially since I didn't have a bow on my dual wield rogue for the Pride demon part (gave to Sebastian in between the two places) so all he got to do was sit on his thumbs in between demon wave spawns and assassinating the Pride demon once every whatever the cooldown is. Had to reload both of these a dozen times.
By comparison, the High Dragon was a chump. Tank and spank, watch the tail, spread out and mop up adds, repeat.
This is all on Normal, btw.
The problem isn't that the higher difficult is too hard, it's that the entire difficulty comes from throwing more bullshit and seeing what sticks, rather than actually doing things to make it more tactical. As many problems as I have with ME2, that game really nailed down increasing difficulties adding additional layers to the gameplay.
And kiting is still incredible BS, and I refuse to do it more than necessary.
What do you mean by this? What would you change that would make DA2 more tactical exactly? It seems plenty tactical to me.
In short, the waves would be perfectly fine if the game didn't actively make it harder for you to manage your people with them.