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If you have the expansions installed you can get access to pretty powerful armor early on in the game iirc. Get Alistair's strength up to 42 (I think is the min requirement to wear most of it?) and then give him that Blood Dragon armor. He'll be tanky as gently caress.
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Nov 11, 2020 23:20
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Wait, the blood dragon plate is actually good?
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Nov 11, 2020 23:33
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It is dumb looking and perfectly fine tank armor for the first half of the game. The bonuses are kinda crap compared to the other enhanted massive armor sets. The set from Return to Ostagar is good for the endgame or the entire game really, if you return as soon as possible.
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Nov 12, 2020 01:06
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Fruits of the sea posted:It is dumb looking and perfectly fine tank armor for the first half of the game. The bonuses are kinda crap compared to the other enhanted massive armor sets. The set from Return to Ostagar is good for the endgame or the entire game really, if you return as soon as possible. God the original DA:O DLC shenangians. I still remember the whole "hey, thanks for letting me stay in your camp, btw my old castle is haunted and I need help, do you have a credit card handy? It's only $10" Kind of wondering if there's a DA Legendary edition in the works. The games are all extremely different in a way ME wasn't so I can't really seen any work going in to updates or improvements other then "make run smooth on modern console"
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Nov 12, 2020 01:16
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pentyne posted:God the original DA:O DLC shenangians. I still remember the whole "hey, thanks for letting me stay in your camp, btw my old castle is haunted and I need help, do you have a credit card handy? It's only $10" Yuup, that and Mass Effect 2's dlcs were what convinced me to stop buying AAA games on release and just get the inevitable GOTY version a year or two later. Just fixing some of the bugs in DA:O would be brilliant. The unofficial patch notes are an endless list of abilities and item properties that just don't work. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 01:35
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Fruits of the sea posted:It is dumb looking and perfectly fine tank armor for the first half of the game. The bonuses are kinda crap compared to the other enhanted massive armor sets. The set from Return to Ostagar is good for the endgame or the entire game really, if you return as soon as possible. Yeah the Ostagar set is really good. But any of the DLC Massive armor is gonna be pretty damned solid early in the game. Iirc you start off with the Blood Dragon plate, right? Or you can buy it very cheap? Alistair will be very tanky in it.
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Nov 12, 2020 02:32
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The biggest thing stopping Legendary Edition for Dragon Age is Origins is awful to play on consoles. It has most of tactical control stripped out and is just bad as an action game. It needs much more work than Mass effect 1 for a big rerelease.
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Nov 12, 2020 03:30
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I always delete all pre-order items when playing any game.
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Nov 12, 2020 14:35
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The only good pre-order item was the halo armor for Fable 2 because it was the only armor in the game that looked good.
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Nov 12, 2020 15:11
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FoolyCharged posted:Wait, the blood dragon plate is actually good? Yep. Especially if you rush to be able to equip it early in the game.
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Nov 12, 2020 15:21
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Huh, I just always pumped a poo poo ton of dex with my strength early on and dodge tanked. Sword and board warriors: The one class in the entire game with more than one useful stat to invest in.
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Nov 12, 2020 15:50
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FoolyCharged posted:Huh, I just always pumped a poo poo ton of dex with my strength early on and dodge tanked. Sword and board warriors: The one class in the entire game with more than one useful stat to invest in. I always go for 42 str asap on my Warriors because the massive armor sets are so powerful. You don't have to pump it all the way to 42 though. You get a certain amount of + stat bonuses from the fade. I can't remember off the top of my head how much +str you get from that section but you can plan your stat allocation so that you get exactly how much of each stat you want/need.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:23
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I finished the Dalish Ruins, and man I can't beat that Ogre Alpha that spawns in the Brecilian forest to save my life. Currently playing through the Fade part of the Mage Tower, and I remember why I installed the skip the fade mod the last time.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:29
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This wasn't a preorder item but I loved that the obvious sole purpose of that mace you get in DAO from finishing that Deep Roads dungeon DLC was to sell it for 100 gold to the first vendor you meet and just not have money problems the rest of the game. This is especially funny with the dwarf commoner origin where you and your partner are super stressed about trying to get 1 gold from fencing the stolen lyrium to try and make ends meet.
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Nov 12, 2020 20:54
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It's super weird jumping into DA:O in 2020. Like I remember when this game came out how important it was. Like here was this modernized CRPG, with all the old Bioware charm, great characters and a lot of choice. I genuinely loved it, and went through multiple Origins. It was the swan song of a dying genre. Went back to play it recently and boy loving howdy. It's buggy as poo poo, crashes constantly, and has a lot of weird graphical issues. Extremely shallow, choices largely end up doing nothing or not mattering at all. Very few actually powerful choices. Characters are kinda one note in really depressing ways. Story has major plot holes I never noticed the first time I played through it. It's still really goddamn fun, but like man. Age hasn't been kind to it at all. And it's especially weird that it's now kind of a relic itself? Like it was made to be this modernization and love letter to the classic Baldur's Gate games, but none of it's modernizations took. Larian, Obsidian, Inxile and the rest all kind of went in different directions to where Dragon Age was pushing. Hell, even Bioware went in a different direction ultimately. Now it's the relic, and my brain is struggling to make that connection. As I said. Still love it despite everything I just said. It's just I loaded it back up remembering it as one of my favorite RPGs and a great swan song to the CRPG right before the renaissance. Only to kind of find it a very rough effort by Bioware even from the start, and far more old Bioware then I thought.
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Nov 13, 2020 02:17
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Origins had a pretty good selection of choices compared to most other RPGs. Each of the major sections gave you multiple choices: Redcliffe, the mages, the elves, the dwarves, the Landsmeet. Almost every companion can join/leave/betray depending on your actions. You could say that the choices don't really matter for importing into the sequels, but within the scope of the game itself I feel it does just fine.
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Nov 13, 2020 06:16
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Promethium posted:Origins had a pretty good selection of choices compared to most other RPGs. Each of the major sections gave you multiple choices: Redcliffe, the mages, the elves, the dwarves, the Landsmeet. Almost every companion can join/leave/betray depending on your actions. You could say that the choices don't really matter for importing into the sequels, but within the scope of the game itself I feel it does just fine. Yeah, I don't get this too. Very few RPGs approach DAO freedom of choice. In a lot of sidequests it's primitive, like you do all the same things and chose one of two options in the end giving slightly different reward and changing the fate of NPCs you're not gonna see anymore. But then you have all the Redcliffe sequence with organizing defenses and recruiting characters and getting a lot of quest hooks you can just skip. I can't think of any optional content in an RPG that would be as detailed and varied. Add to that all of the companion variety and the way each of them is unique in their personal quests.
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Nov 13, 2020 06:30
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Agreed. Origins has multiple choices for every major area and those choices not only have major impact on the story and ending slides, but at least some minor impact on future games. I just played through DA:O earlier this year and it still holds up really well. Granted, I’m still playing Baldurs Gate as well, so the groan is have never been an issue for me.
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Nov 13, 2020 06:35
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DAO definitely has the highest number of 'kill this important character on a whim and live with it' options, including like half your party? Its easily the most choice-heavy game in the series, possibly in Bioware's oeuvre in the last like two decades?
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Nov 13, 2020 09:14
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Wolfsheim posted:DAO definitely has the highest number of 'kill this important character on a whim and live with it' options, including like half your party? Its easily the most choice-heavy game in the series, possibly in Bioware's oeuvre in the last like two decades? Well, you can kill all your companions in ME2, to be fair..
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Nov 13, 2020 09:21
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i feel like origins has too many choices there's like 8 different endings with the redcliffe tavern depending on your casual decision choices for instances
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Nov 13, 2020 09:38
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Mass Effect Andromeda is really just all the bad ideas from ME1, the combat idea from ME2 (although not done as well), the galaxy readiness feature from ME3 and a fix other pick n mix ideas from open world RPG games in general without quite understanding how it should merge together. It's not bad, but its pretty aggressively okay, not good/great. It's exactly what you want from a open world explore RPG setting but its just a constant barrage of zero impact moments dressed up like gripping drama. I'm not even going to get into the story/plot, as the game is the king of "don't think to hard about it" for almost everything it throws at you. There's quite a noticeable amount of bugs and glitches. On a regular basis enemies will spawn/fall inside walls, so any mission to clear that area becomes impossible, and while I like the sheer amount of party dialogue its triggers are hosed so if you fast travel it seems to trigger mid dialogue as it loads. The dialogue triggers in general are a problem as normal/background dialogue is constantly cut off for whatever reason, other convos, quest based dialogue, etc and there's no way to focus. Constantly sarcastic Ryder is definitely not a direction I would've picked for the character and the lack of any real paragon/renegade choices so far makes everything seem fairly meaningless. Maybe it gets better but literally nothing I've seen would make that seem likely. I'm still enjoying the game as a whole, it has everything you want in general from a open world RPG, it's just like they finished 70% of the game you'd expect as a follow up from the ME trilogy, called it done, and then padded it out to make a "full" game. The design decision for certain conversations to zoom in so the characters face takes up 2/3rds of the screen makes no loving sense as the facial animations are pretty bad by most standards and that just makes it 10x more obvious they couldn't get it right.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:43
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In ME2 it was very systemic. You have companions screen with their loaylty and all. In DAO you can just murder at least 2 companions (Wynne and Zevran) without ever realizing they were potential companions. And those are just big important things you can do, there are a lot of smaller things. I also appreciate that a lot of it is integrated with gameplay systems and actually affects the game. As in when you meet a dick merchant in Lothering and help him disperse people demanding fair prices he gives you a discount. And this discount is something you might actually need at this point. In Inquisition plots like this are trolley problems that basically don't affect you, cause Destiny-like gameplay (which I don't dislike) is separated from CYOA part of the game. DA2 did this too with first chapter being all about gathering money. Obsidian and some other RPG games often give you interesting story problems but those are poorly integrated into gameplay. It's cool when ending slide tells you how you have defined the fate of a nation but when it doesn't have any in-game effect at all (like animancy debate in PoE1) I'm very sad about it.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:44
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pentyne posted:the combat idea from ME2 (although not done as well) Can you please expand on that? As an extremely tolerant person, I'm open to listening to objectively wrong insane opinions.
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Nov 13, 2020 09:48
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Given the stories about MEA's development it's amazing it's a functional video game at all Love for my entire progress on making a game being dependent on whether or not I can get DICE on the phone to explain their lovely tools to me
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Nov 13, 2020 09:55
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if youre playing andromeda on PC id recommend the fan unofficial patch cause that game basically got six months of patching before EA pulled the plug and pretended the game never existed https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectandromeda/mods/541
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Nov 13, 2020 09:55
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ilitarist posted:you meet a dick merchant in Lothering I know it’s been a long time since I played DAO, but I feel like I would have remembered a shop owner selling those.
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Nov 13, 2020 10:27
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ilitarist posted:Can you please expand on that? As an extremely tolerant person, I'm open to listening to objectively wrong insane opinions. Everything about the combat in the game was made worse by a insanely stupid system that vastly over complicated what worked for ME2. - Rather then a set weapon set you could pick and choose any, unlock 4 slots, but then deal with weight managment issues that increase cooldown times. So you want to be like a soldier in ME1 rocking a rifle, pistol, shotgun, and sniper rifle? Now all your cooldowns are 2x as long. In addition to that, you're going to need to be researching the next level for each specific weapon you're using every time a tier opens up, so hope you have both the materials and research points handy. Since research points are a thing you have to find (also a reward from playing multiplayer) you have a limit, so you cant research both armor and weapons in the same category and have enough to go around. Tying back into that, the N7 armor is a +% to biotic abilities but also milky way research. So if you want to craft all the N7 armor you're going to have to grind every MWR point you can if you also want to use milky way weapons much less 4 of them. The consumables are nice, but I haven't found them that useful. They're probably more higher difficulty equalizer things. Thankfully the inventory and crafting UI is amazing and completely hassle free, but really bad design decisions all around. Remnant Armor all require remnant cores, super rare and hard to find so if you were planning to craft and wear each tier of Remnant Armor you're going to have to spend hours scouring for the materials. I'm not even getting into the profiles/3 power slots only because whatever they were going for in the game they failed miserably when its seems like specialization is 10x better then trying some jack of all trades/swaps biotics to tech play style. Maybe I missed how to use it but the infiltrator style I'm doing is working perfectly fine on normal with almost 0 difficulty problems. In the end its pretty easy to just pick 1 weapon to research and main with, keep a secondary gun from the best of its kind you find in the field. The shooting/moving/dodge works well enough. There's just all these extra stuff tacked on to what was a perfectly working system that drags it down. It's weird, and I'd describe the combat as functional-good at best. The whole "swap classes on the fly" thing doesn't seem like it would work at all unless you were playing for fun and not for any difficulty/challenge. pentyne fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 11:06
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everything youre describing is cool and also at the same time right there was zero point to swapping loadouts
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Nov 13, 2020 12:03
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What Berke Negri said. Also you didn't say anything about the combat, it's all character development and economy. Which was basically non-existent in ME2 beyond which of your abilities you'll upgrade first (you basically had all your abilities by the end of the tutorial IIRC, at least if you've transferred character save from ME1). The fact that you never had to swap loadouts is the only big miss I can name. Even when playing on max difficulty in a completionist fashion I still had passive skills I could upgrade instead of looking for new active skills I can switch over to.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:19
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I actually really liked Inquisition and I just figured out why I cannot stop consuming these open world games. So there's an episode of malcom in the middle where a kid that's both feral(needs to wear oven mitts at all times or he will scratch you/chew his own fingers off) and ADHD to the max. Dewey invited him over for a sleepover for whatever reason, I think for babysitting money. Anyway the whole plot of that story is that Dewey can't do gently caress all to control this kid. Hal steps in and gives the kid an encyclopedia which is missing letters for some reason. Basically the kid has a hyper obsession with filling in these missing letters and it resolves the issue with the kid. Dewey asks "W-how did you know that owuld work?" and the camera pans up to reveal that Hal has hundreds of these filled in, implying that he's basically being held together by this hobby. Anyway, that's why I like open world games and I want the next Dragon Age to be closer to Asscreed Unity/Oddysey/Valhalla than DA: O. I don't even like the world, settting or characters, I just want more of these, I'm already at 60% completion for Valhalla.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:28
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I want the next Dragon Age to be closer to Asscreed Unity/Oddysey/Valhalla than DA: O. I don't even like the world, settting or characters, I just want more of these, I'm already at 60% completion for Valhalla. I do like the world, and feel no need to fill in missing letters, but otherwise: oh my god yes, I need a new AC: DAO every month.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:39
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Anyway, that's why I like open world games and I want the next Dragon Age to be closer to Asscreed Unity/Oddysey/Valhalla than DA: O. I don't even like the world, settting or characters, I just want more of these, I'm already at 60% completion for Valhalla. Totally get it. Those Destiny-style games (or maybe Diablo, or whatever) that don't have an actual MP component are like mobile mindless clickers but without the bullshit forcing you to buy lootboxes or whatever. You clear out icons with a basic but satisfying gameplay. Numbers go up. Everything you do is some sort of progress. Actual ur-examples of those kinds of games - Diablo and (arguably) Destiny - have rather simplistic gameplay. It's supposed to become complex when you go into multiplayer and then you need some special gear or something. In DAI or AC you have a simple tactical/immersive sim gameplay that doesn't feel like a grind but is never too hard. When you look for games like that it turns out Ubisoft model is not that widely used. Just Cause 2 is like that - but not its sequels for some reason, 3 and 4 use a different model of open world. Far Cry games are different too cause there's very little progression. Modern AC games do this kind of gameplay perfectly. People complain that Odyssey is too big - well that's for those people who actually like playing it to death.
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Nov 13, 2020 12:54
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Yeah, there's an argument to be made for Ubi-style games in that yes, they are open world collectathons but there isn't any FOMO bullshit with content locked behind time limited events or a cash store. I've never tried to get 100% in any game but its nice to know I could if I wanted. Every time I've tried a GaaS thing, I always wind up quitting barely a month in because X neat thing was unattainable for some reason or I was busy for a week and missed out on something.
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Nov 13, 2020 13:05
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Fruits of the sea posted:Yeah, there's an argument to be made for Ubi-style games in that yes, they are open world collectathons but there isn't any FOMO bullshit with content locked behind time limited events or a cash store. I've never tried to get 100% in any game but its nice to know I could if I wanted. Every time I've tried a GaaS thing, I always wind up quitting barely a month in because X neat thing was unattainable for some reason or I was busy for a week and missed out on something. Actually Origins totally did have FOMO limited event poo poo, where you could fight and kill cool gods but THIS WEEK ONLY!!!! I think Odyssey did that too. I don't know if they eventually fixed it so you can do that stuff or if it's forever gone lol
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Nov 13, 2020 13:10
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Simone Magus posted:Actually Origins totally did have FOMO limited event poo poo, where you could fight and kill cool gods but THIS WEEK ONLY!!!! Origins had this BS, yes, but it was later addition to the game and they rotated the gods so that you can see all of them quite quickly, didn't they? I never touched this content. In Odyssey you have a single shop selling some unique stuff for a currency you can farm or, you know, buy with real cache. I think I saw something like that in Origin too. In Odyssey I visited it from time to time when I finished all the major quests in the game and was doing repeating quests. Those give special currency. The point is, this stuff is added on top of the game. Turn off Ubisoft servers and you won't notice anything missing. If you try a similar game like recent Genshin Impact you'll see that on a surface the gameplay is similar. It's an open world with quests and activities that don't require that much effort. Something you play when you're too tired for anything substantial. But then you see that there are so many currencies in the game that you need a guide to know what's used for what. All the equipment has star rating and you can upgrade equipment by destroying dozens of other items, or upgrade its star rating by destroying exactly the same item. You craft items into other items and wait. All of it is there to obfuscate the mechanics and to further hide what exactly do you buy with your cache. Meanwhile there are timers crafting or cooking is going on. You use stamina to open boss chest which not only means that you can only play for so long to have "progress" but also that every day you're not doing bosses you're losing opportunities. My point is even if you spend all the money in the world on a F2P game you still have to deal with F2P mechanics. Ubisoft plays dirty but it still doesn't let loot box frenzy to define their games.
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Nov 13, 2020 13:22
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ilitarist posted:there are so many currencies in the game that you need a guide to know what's used for what There should be a filter on steam for these mechanics.
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Nov 13, 2020 13:26
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Berke Negri posted:i feel like origins has too many choices I'm still waiting to see how giving the prisoner food in Ostagar is gonna pay off, DA4 don't let me down 
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Nov 13, 2020 23:07
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Okay, but the funny thing about that specific example is that Genshin Impact is actually a really good game and to just do the story you literally never have to worry about spending money lol
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Nov 13, 2020 23:16
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So after the news regarding the Mass Effect remaster and new game, I’m replaying Andromeda. I had about 40 hours into my first play through and lost interest before beating it, so I’m starting fresh. I’m playing a female character this time and have made some observations: 1. The female Ryder has fantastic voice acting. 2. The combat is still super solid. 3. The first 5-10 hours are a really strong opening. I’ve always defended this game saying it was never a bad game, simply a mediocre one. I still stand by that, but now with some years behind it and my own expectations adjusted, I’m enjoying it quite a bit. Hopefully I keep enjoying it.
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Nov 14, 2020 08:41
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