Dragon Age Origins & 4E

[alhoon]

The feeling I get from this computer game (and it is a good game) it similar with 4E.
Points of light, fast paced combat with easy to master abilities and monsters with a few abilities. There are also elite and solo monsters.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, it's a single-player game so not really elites and solos, just mini-bosses and big-bosses, which are standard video game tropes.
It's made by the people who did Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate, so it's not unlikely they were inspired by D&D, but they started work on it many, many years ago so they likely just went in the same direction D&D ended-up going.

[HuManBing]

My brother played this game. There was a certain number of dragons in it.

He said the number of dragons in it was greater than zero, but less than the number he had in mind.

He said it was a good game but it could use more dragons.

Apparently, he's spent 90 hours playing the game in the past two weeks. He is also full-time employed so I'm not sure how he finds the time.

[alhoon]

Well, it's a single-player game so not really elites and solos, just mini-bosses and big-bosses, which are standard video game tropes.
It's made by the people who did Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate, so it's not unlikely they were inspired by D&D, but they started work on it many, many years ago so they likely just went in the same direction D&D ended-up going.

Actually, your companions are as powerful as the main character. So some monsters are considered "tougher" than normal and others "challenge for a full party" That's why I mentioned Solos and elites.

As a note, I agree that they weren't inspired by 4th edition as much as of the generic computer game theme.
I just noticed that the kind of enjoyment I get from this computer game is 1. much 2. the same kind I get from 4E.

I.e. 4E plays much like a computer game. Which is not bad, it's just different than what I'm used to.

[alhoon]

I stumbled upon a weird bug today. It's called "The windows decide to restart without asking you" bug.

I was playing a tough battle. I had tried to win this for almost an hour. Then finally after the 5-6th retry I have formulated a plan, finally managed to put it in motion and I was getting the upper hand. I was a minute away from FINALLY defeating the foes of this sidequest when...


Computer restarted.
I slapped my head in frustration and as I was taking down my hand, I managed to add injury to insult. I hit my sensitive parts with my hand.

I was tempted to turn the updates to "NEVER update" but I opted for "do not instal without asking me" option.

[HuManBing]

Ack, I feel your pain. Nothing more debilitating than a carefully-planned-out assault lost because of some Windows hiccup.

[...]

Depending on your gender, you *should* be able to hit yourself in the "lower" regions and retain the right sex. Not all genders do this, but I know the latest version of Female does.

[...]

[alhoon]

HMB... just LoL.

[Scipion_Emilien]

The feeling I get from this computer game (and it is a good game) it similar with 4E.

Well yes and no.

Points of light

I think the whole point of light thing of 4e is overrated. The point of light approach was part from D&D from the start. 3e only forgot it a little, but they were still a lot of options to do PoL in 3e. Ravenloft is one example (and one of the reason why I fell in the Ravenloft setting in the first place is because it is PoL). And when you do a dark fantasy tale, PoL is more or less a per-requisite. Be it 1e, 3e, 4e or a video game.

In fact, I see a resurgence of Dark Fantasy in the lasts years, and can't help but ask: why? Was there a change in pop culture that made a shift from High to dark fantasy?

fast paced combat with easy to master abilities and monsters with a few abilities.

For some reason I found that the abilities remind me more of those of WoW or other online MMO than 4e. I think it is the fact that you have few abilities with cooldown. So you are always waiting for a cooldown to end so you can place your shiny abilities. Personnally, I play at the default lvl (hard), and healing is so sloooowwwwww. I am always pausing to be sure to not miss my healing spell when it's ready so I can minimize the time of the cooldown.

The combat seem to have the same problem as 4e: when you get the hang on a good selection of power for your party, you always use that combination. I agree that this is not too much trouble in a videogame were you often have repetitive fight were you just want to not think that often about your tactic and go to the next one, and were you can reload a savegame if this lack of imagination lead you to your death.

There are also elite and solo monsters.

Well, I must side with Jester on this one, I have more a feeling of videogame boss and mini-boss than elite and solo. After all the trope of elite and solo come from videogames. So it's hard to tell who has the right approach to this.


As for the game in general, it rock. The pacing great, the story great, the characters greats, and the gameplay is not that complex and you have a loooonng game (80+ hours) for a decent price. My only negative critic is that you must buy a DLC to have a permanent stash, which is much needed since you accumulate the loot rapidly and your inventory have limited space. (I'm pretty sure EA is to thanks for this...)

I would go as far as saying that this is the best CRPG game since BG. And you don't have the hard interface like the BG, so I recommend it to anyone!

This game really make me wonder if it's that a bad thing that Bioware has dropped the D&D and SW franchise for their own settings like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. And i'm really curious about the upcoming Dragon Age P&P RPG.

[alhoon]

I'm also curious about the P&P. I'm mostly fascinated about the 3d6 system, something that I've been trying to implement in D&D since 2nd edition.

As for mass effect: Nice game, but I prefered the SWars games.
Dragon Origins: Very good game, but I prefered NWN2.

[Scipion_Emilien]

As for mass effect: Nice game, but I prefered the SWars games.

For the SW games I agree. I was raised on SW games and the Kotor series was really that good. The two games are in my top5 of CRPG games.

Dragon Origins: Very good game, but I prefered NWN2.

On this, I am little less convinced. This is perhaps because I played a lot online on Permanent world servers, but I always had that feeling that the CRPG of D&D was increasing the imbalance already present in the ruleset. The sleep everywhere option, while making sense for the pace of the game, was really helping the casters to overshine the melee class. And many already powerfuls spell were even more power up for the videogame version. It was at the point were your choice of class was directly influencing your firepower. You didn't really had that feeling of trade off.

Heck, most PW had permanent religious war because everybody was making clerics...

As for the storylines, I played NWN1 and expansions and NWN2 the original campaign, and well, my opinion is that while the storylines were good, they hadn't the depth and excitement of the Dragon Age storyline.

In my opinion, the great strenght of NWN vs Dragon Age was it's multiplayer aspect. Which had replayability value. And well, let's face it, it's fun to share a story with yours friend. It's after all what is great from P&P too. And you have a wealth of modules that you can just go download and play with your friends.

[Jester of the FoS]

It's fun but my brain doesn't do tactics well.
I'm getting raped at the first level of the tower each and every time. It's probably heavily the result of party make-up (I went archery rogue) and a lack of front-line fighters who can take being pounded by archers and spells.
And once I start losing I get cranky which prevents me from thinking of other options...

As for Dark Fantasy having a resurgence... it's probably just backswing from the popularity of Lord of the Rings which put high fantasy back in the forefront while reminding people how scary fantasy can be. BioWare has always had a touch of darkness and pushing the line of adult content, it's a good niche for them to work in.

[alhoon]

Some encounters are very difficult. Decrease the difficulty level. And I would agree. Having to replay the same battle 10 times till you get the right plan AND be lucky enough to implement it, detracts from the SLine. But playing on easy feels kinda ... lame. Like you're a bad player.

Scipion: Hordes of the Underdark had very captivating NPCs as did NWN2.

As for melee vs casters, in NWN2 as we played it, barbarian/frenzied berseker were actually quite easier than casters.

[Scipion_Emilien]

Some encounters are very difficult. Decrease the difficulty level. And I would agree. Having to replay the same battle 10 times till you get the right plan AND be lucky enough to implement it, detracts from the SLine. But playing on easy feels kinda ... lame. Like you're a bad player.

Ya I'm thinking about dropping the difficlty a little. My ego have difficulties to manage playing at a difficulty inferior to the default one, nbut I guess I'll eventually no longer have a choice.

Scipion: Hordes of the Underdark had very captivating NPCs as did NWN2.

I agree they both have captivating stories. I prefer HoU more than the original campaign of NWN2. But then this is partially because of my wish to play a Planescape campaign that the only time it come to live, fall apart because of the crzziness of the PC and the fact that as a DM I didn't knew the setting well enough to say no (or yes but) to my players.

But I simply feel that the one of dragon age is better.

As for melee vs casters, in NWN2 as we played it, barbarian/frenzied berseker were actually quite easier than casters.

Well if you go for ease of play, melee are still a good choice (heck I do single players campaign with melee character since you usually don't need the extra firepower and it simply simpler to play), but if you go for firepower, casters beat melee everytimes (at the dubious exception of paladins).

And I see the keyword of "as we played it" in your statement.

Personnally, I played the game on 64 peoples at a time on story base servers. The main plot was more or less created by the organisation of players into guilds and then by the ensuing struggle between guilds to control their territory (be it literal territory or trade newtork, etc...), and sometime, even more. The DM were here to do special events and as referees of the diverses conflicts in the story. (At 100+ more people, you need referees).

And with this experience I did some observations:

- The "five-minute workday" problem is even worst than in the P&P game. In NWN you have the "multiple 5 min casters go nova a day". From what I saw on the servers, it was an acceptable train of thought to blow all yours spells in the next fight since you could rest between fight.

- The AC vs BAB ration was to much in favor of AC during lvl 16-20 for fighters characters. If I remember right, you had like 50 AC for +28-29 on attack. The main strategy of fighters was to go fully on power attack and let the number of attack give them 20s on the die roll. This factor was aggravate by the fact that they hadn't stickiness and were relatively poor at soaking damages. (Protectives spells do it better than a d10 hp). Their lack of will save was making it easy to neutralize them at the start of the fight with an hold person spell.

-Most servers had a plot revolving around a religious war between good and evil, For two main reasons:

1- Religious conflict are easy to justify, particularly when they are between Manichean ideologies which make that even the dumbest players could catch what was going on.
2- The most played class was cleric because they were non-squishy full casters. From My experience point 2 was more important than point 1.

On all the servers I have played but one. Around 10. The most popular class were:

1- Cleric
2- Paladin and sorcerers or mage
3- Rogue
4- Druids
Then you had an hodge podge of class, particularly played by players who like originality and didn't want to be the main actors in the religious wars (they were like the supporting cast that you had to protect and save), like monks, rangers and bards.
And then you had the fighters. Most players who were coming on the server with a fighter character were eventually rerolling a new character in the classes above. Particularly because when they did a fighter, they were expecting to be soldiers and not a liability that need to be protect at all time.

[HuManBing]

I'm getting raped at the first level of the tower each and every time. It's probably heavily the result of party make-up (I went archery rogue) and a lack of front-line fighters who can take being pounded by archers and spells.

>__<

It sounds just like the inflexible, hidebound game design that I hated in BG1.

I was on the fence about buying this game. Now I'll see if I can borrow it first.

[alhoon]

I'm getting raped at the first level of the tower each and every time. It's probably heavily the result of party make-up (I went archery rogue) and a lack of front-line fighters who can take being pounded by archers and spell

I went for mage. And yet... I was raped too. I couldn't believe the encounter so early would be so hard.