“ What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.”
Sorry I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Alternate title for that article “We made the play experience on our sever more pleasant so people keep paying Amazon a monthly fee.”
Edit: well, egg on my face, new world has no monthly fee but, this will help keep players around and invested in the game.
inquisition is easily the most watered down aaa title of the series, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes it infinitely more approachable
you probably don't want to say that dragon age 2 take too loud around these parts, though
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
Most people seem to like Dragon Age 2 the best actually. But you don't need to play it to enjoy Inquisition, you'll just know a couple of the characters already.
What you do need to do to enjoy Inquisition is only do main story and party member related stuff and completely ignore all of the Ubisoft-style collectathon bullshit.
Brovid Hasselsmof on
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
You absolutely could, all of the prior story stuff is mostly dumb and bad anyway
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
“ What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.”
Sorry I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Alternate title for that article “We made the play experience on our sever more pleasant so people keep paying Amazon a monthly fee.”
So I attempted to play Dragon Age Origins twice, and both times ran out of steam because it was just dragging on and the world felt pretty bland and eh.
Dragon Age II is ostensibly not good. Could I jump into Inquisition without much prior knowledge and have a good time?
I think this forum has a pretty pro-DA2 bent actually
I've not played any of them past half of DA1 though
“ What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.”
Sorry I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Alternate title for that article “We made the play experience on our sever more pleasant so people keep paying Amazon a monthly fee.”
Hey if DA2 is good and fun (better than one?), I got no problem checking that out, it's just that the first one was critically acclaimed and I found it to be superbland, character interactions aside. The stuff I heard about two was that it had cookie cutter environments, the encounters weren't fun...and not much else besides that tbh
“ What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.”
Sorry I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Alternate title for that article “We made the play experience on our sever more pleasant so people keep paying Amazon a monthly fee.”
to be fair, there's no monthly fee
Yeah, my edit was too slow after I looked that up. But it still keeps players invested in the game.
I just can’t see “we are investing tons of time and effort into your game!!!” As some kind of “sticking to to the man”
I gotta say I am shocked that the company that loves pay as you go pricing and has a monthly subscription service for faster deliveries does NOT have a subscription fee for their MMO.
I gotta say I am shocked that the company that loves pay as you go pricing and has a monthly subscription service for faster deliveries does NOT have a subscription fee for their MMO.
that's generally not the standard practice for mmos nowadays, WoW and 14 notwithstanding
So I attempted to play Dragon Age Origins twice, and both times ran out of steam because it was just dragging on and the world felt pretty bland and eh.
Dragon Age II is ostensibly not good. Could I jump into Inquisition without much prior knowledge and have a good time?
Dragon Age II has the most enjoyable combat of the DA games IMO. It's also the shortest game to beat so
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
DA2 is mostly solid
I would say the main problems are that the game is very in love with wave based combat, and spawning waves of enemies on your back line which kind of fucks with the strategic structure in a way that makes me want to say just lower the difficulty
And the story absolutely falls into the toilet in the final act
There are other minor problems like "dungeon" areas all being samey tile based caves, but that stuff feels kind of quaint in comparison to the above issues
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
“ What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.”
Sorry I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Alternate title for that article “We made the play experience on our sever more pleasant so people keep paying Amazon a monthly fee.”
to be fair, there's no monthly fee
Yeah, my edit was too slow after I looked that up. But it still keeps players invested in the game.
I just can’t see “we are investing tons of time and effort into your game!!!” As some kind of “sticking to to the man”
Way too “gamers rise up” for me
yeah, I mean, I've spent more than 200 hours in New World, but a lot of that is either sunk cost fallacy or stockholm syndrome, I haven't decided.
but if it takes manipulating and/or ignoring game mechanics to let people get their 40$ worth of entertainment out of the game, I'm cool with it, even if you dress it up as some grand gesture.
I would say the main problems are that the game is very in love with wave based combat, and spawning waves of enemies on your back line which kind of fucks with the strategic structure in a way that makes me want to say just lower the difficulty
And the story absolutely falls into the toilet in the final act
There are other minor problems like "dungeon" areas all being samey tile based caves, but that stuff feels kind of quaint in comparison to the above issues
Right, that's what I half-remembered about the encounters being not great. Ehhh I'll see what happens. I got it on Origin, so why not
Hey if DA2 is good and fun (better than one?), I got no problem checking that out, it's just that the first one was critically acclaimed and I found it to be superbland, character interactions aside. The stuff I heard about two was that it had cookie cutter environments, the encounters weren't fun...and not much else besides that tbh
If DA2 had been given a few more months to create some more dungeon and enemy art it would probably have reviewed far, far better.
Everyone was so hung up on the repeated assets at the time.
Yeah in retrospect I like DA2 a lot more than I did at first. Mostly because my intitial bad reaction was all the ways it was not Origins. #1 being there's no careful combat planning because the game is gonna spawn enemies in throughout the fights in all kinds of weird places.
When I played back through it again pre-Inquisition I was able to enjoy it for what it was much more.
Hey if DA2 is good and fun (better than one?), I got no problem checking that out, it's just that the first one was critically acclaimed and I found it to be superbland, character interactions aside. The stuff I heard about two was that it had cookie cutter environments, the encounters weren't fun...and not much else besides that tbh
The encounters are...fine? Not as crunchy as DA:O, but still some strategy. Setting up and exploiting combos is fun. Lots of physics and ragdoll too. The environments get reused constantly. They built one cave and just block off different parts to make different locations. It's noticeable almost immediately.
The good stuff is:
Characters-It's Bioware so of course they're good. Noticeably better than Origins which basically had Alistair, Morrigan, and some other people. Avelline, Anders, Merril, Varric are are all top tier. Even Fenris is my favorite edgelord. The DLC archer guy is the only real dud. Hawke is also a real character unlike the Warden (and the Inquisitor in the next game). Voice acting, has actual family members that aren't dead, a sense of history.
Story-It's mostly the story of Hawke moving to and living in Kirkwall. No prophecies, chosen ones, apocalypses or evil empires. There are multi-year breaks between the 3 acts. So you and your companions actually live normal-ish lives. People get promoted, start movements, enter relationships, research forgotten magic, and other stuff over a reasonable time period. It's really neat and has yet to be replicated.
RPG stuff-It's right where I like it, complexity-wise. Each class has 5-6 mini skill trees, with some active and passive abilities. You can unlock some prestige classes too, like Origins. Gear is interesting without being a huge time sink. This is helped by the companions not having changable armor, just accessories and weapons, so there's less to track.
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Speaking of Varric it's taken me several dozen hours to realise that it's his VA who does all the tech discovery voiceovers in Surviving Mars, and now every time I research a new tech I get a mental image of Varric and his Too Much Chest
I enjoyed Morrigan in DA:O, Alistair was sometimes a liiiiittle too joke-y. The party dynamics were a neat idea, but mostly annoying and a little contrived. The banal stuff Morrigan would disapprove of really annoyed me, for example. It's five minutes, Morrigan, and yes, there is gain, look at this gold. Look at this item. Chill the fuck out.
These days, there are half a dozen decent or better party-based CRPGs every year. When DAO came out, that was basically it. It doesn't really hold up now, but that's a big reason it reviewed so well back then.
DA:I was at the end of that trend where every rpg had to give you a base with a bunch of shit to upgrade and I was already over it and didn't want to interact with it at all.
I enjoyed Morrigan in DA:O, Alistair was sometimes a liiiiittle too joke-y. The party dynamics were a neat idea, but mostly annoying and a little contrived. The banal stuff Morrigan would disapprove of really annoyed me, for example. It's five minutes, Morrigan, and yes, there is gain, look at this gold. Look at this item. Chill the fuck out.
I liked Morrigan. People on the internet were super misogynistic towards her because she was a woman with a differing opinion though.
My "favorite" part of DA:I was playing a rogue, where several rogue attacks hit horizontally which meant that it was possible to not be able to hit targets that are knocked prone on a slope because your character would aim horizontally over them. Good, good.
These days, there are half a dozen decent or better party-based CRPGs every year. When DAO came out, that was basically it. It doesn't really hold up now, but that's a big reason it reviewed so well back then.
DA:O stealing FF12's ai scripting is something that would have made Real Time with Pause games so much more playable but was completely ignored by the genre.
I will bravely dissent and say my memories of DA2 are not great. It wasn't terrible, but the attempt to do a single setting never really gelled for me and I found the combat frustrating and repetitive. Lots of fighting in the same brown house, the same beige street, the same patch of ugly landscape. I do remember the story beats being pretty fun and the party members are neat, so probably hust play it on easier combat settings so you can plow through to the interesting parts.
In an even more brave stance I liked DAI pretty dang well, it just absolutely needs a patch that removes 95% of the content that isn't directly related to an actual quest chain.
Inquisition I got to the part of the story where I got a castle, proceeded to explore the castle, proceeded to get lost in the castle, then logged out for the night and just never went back
My "favorite" part of DA:I was playing a rogue, where several rogue attacks hit horizontally which meant that it was possible to not be able to hit targets that are knocked prone on a slope because your character would aim horizontally over them. Good, good.
This immediately killed my playthrough of DA: I, since Rogues feel immeasurably worse to play than they did in DA2. I'd have to try to a completely different spec to try again and never managed to find the time to do so, so far. I also immediately noped out of ME: A, so that whole last generation completely killed my Bioware fandom that was super strong in the 360 era.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
My "favorite" part of DA:I was playing a rogue, where several rogue attacks hit horizontally which meant that it was possible to not be able to hit targets that are knocked prone on a slope because your character would aim horizontally over them. Good, good.
Ditto the fact that the Mage passives that required you to stand still would be broken by casting most spells since the spell animation would move your character model.
I feel like the Warrior path got a lot of love in DA:I and while most Mage paths were okay to good, Knight Enchanter was absolutely overpowered when controlled directly and pretty so-so when left up to the AI. Rogues for the short end of the stick for sure. AI controlled Rogues were bad enough that I specced them all into ranged and even then I basically only used Varric outside of companion missions.
Posts
“ What did we really expect? New World is a game about colonizing an island and destroying the inhabitants, after all. It’s also developed by Amazon Game Studios, a subsidiary of one the largest companies in the world, headed up by cowboy-hat-wearing space-jockey Jeff Bezos. Surprising absolutely no one, the economy in the game is awful and ripe for exploitation. Cheers, Jeff.”
Sorry I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head.
Alternate title for that article “We made the play experience on our sever more pleasant so people keep paying Amazon a monthly fee.”
Edit: well, egg on my face, new world has no monthly fee but, this will help keep players around and invested in the game.
you probably don't want to say that dragon age 2 take too loud around these parts, though
What you do need to do to enjoy Inquisition is only do main story and party member related stuff and completely ignore all of the Ubisoft-style collectathon bullshit.
to be fair, there's no monthly fee
I think this forum has a pretty pro-DA2 bent actually
I've not played any of them past half of DA1 though
New World does not have a monthly fee.
Yeah, my edit was too slow after I looked that up. But it still keeps players invested in the game.
I just can’t see “we are investing tons of time and effort into your game!!!” As some kind of “sticking to to the man”
Way too “gamers rise up” for me
that's generally not the standard practice for mmos nowadays, WoW and 14 notwithstanding
it's all microtransactions
Dragon Age II has the most enjoyable combat of the DA games IMO. It's also the shortest game to beat so
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I would say the main problems are that the game is very in love with wave based combat, and spawning waves of enemies on your back line which kind of fucks with the strategic structure in a way that makes me want to say just lower the difficulty
And the story absolutely falls into the toilet in the final act
There are other minor problems like "dungeon" areas all being samey tile based caves, but that stuff feels kind of quaint in comparison to the above issues
yeah, I mean, I've spent more than 200 hours in New World, but a lot of that is either sunk cost fallacy or stockholm syndrome, I haven't decided.
but if it takes manipulating and/or ignoring game mechanics to let people get their 40$ worth of entertainment out of the game, I'm cool with it, even if you dress it up as some grand gesture.
Right, that's what I half-remembered about the encounters being not great. Ehhh I'll see what happens. I got it on Origin, so why not
If DA2 had been given a few more months to create some more dungeon and enemy art it would probably have reviewed far, far better.
Everyone was so hung up on the repeated assets at the time.
When I played back through it again pre-Inquisition I was able to enjoy it for what it was much more.
Not enough fantasy games do this.
The encounters are...fine? Not as crunchy as DA:O, but still some strategy. Setting up and exploiting combos is fun. Lots of physics and ragdoll too. The environments get reused constantly. They built one cave and just block off different parts to make different locations. It's noticeable almost immediately.
The good stuff is:
Characters-It's Bioware so of course they're good. Noticeably better than Origins which basically had Alistair, Morrigan, and some other people. Avelline, Anders, Merril, Varric are are all top tier. Even Fenris is my favorite edgelord. The DLC archer guy is the only real dud. Hawke is also a real character unlike the Warden (and the Inquisitor in the next game). Voice acting, has actual family members that aren't dead, a sense of history.
Story-It's mostly the story of Hawke moving to and living in Kirkwall. No prophecies, chosen ones, apocalypses or evil empires. There are multi-year breaks between the 3 acts. So you and your companions actually live normal-ish lives. People get promoted, start movements, enter relationships, research forgotten magic, and other stuff over a reasonable time period. It's really neat and has yet to be replicated.
RPG stuff-It's right where I like it, complexity-wise. Each class has 5-6 mini skill trees, with some active and passive abilities. You can unlock some prestige classes too, like Origins. Gear is interesting without being a huge time sink. This is helped by the companions not having changable armor, just accessories and weapons, so there's less to track.
oh, neat. I guessed wrong: I had Control pegged as the EGS exclusive. In related news, I'm now downloading Control
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Yeah, I loved the demo, I was really excited for this announcement.
it's a 20 hour game with 100 hours of 'content'
I liked most of the character writing at least?
I liked Morrigan. People on the internet were super misogynistic towards her because she was a woman with a differing opinion though.
DA:O stealing FF12's ai scripting is something that would have made Real Time with Pause games so much more playable but was completely ignored by the genre.
In an even more brave stance I liked DAI pretty dang well, it just absolutely needs a patch that removes 95% of the content that isn't directly related to an actual quest chain.
Meatboy/Celeste/anything platformy
Or a top-down like Bastion/Hades
This immediately killed my playthrough of DA: I, since Rogues feel immeasurably worse to play than they did in DA2. I'd have to try to a completely different spec to try again and never managed to find the time to do so, so far. I also immediately noped out of ME: A, so that whole last generation completely killed my Bioware fandom that was super strong in the 360 era.
Ditto the fact that the Mage passives that required you to stand still would be broken by casting most spells since the spell animation would move your character model.