Nobody expects the Dragon Age Inquisition

[Dewar]

I've tried to get into it several times, but it's difficult to get decent equipment so I ended up either getting matched with a bunch of people like me still using the starter sword and dying around the 3rd area, or matched with one godlike guy who carried us through the game and then beat the end boss with the rest of us lying on the floor. If I could collect together 3 friends to play it so I didn't have to deal with crappy match making, I'd be willing to give it another shot.

[Twig]

Well I'll do it now if we get a full group. Might as well try it! My Origin name is Togglesworlh.

[itsamoose]

I've actually enjoyed the multiplayer more than the singleplayer campaign so far, mainly because I can play it in shorter bursts than the single player.  I think it's a great experience, but is heavily dependent on having a capable tank in the party whereas in mass effect most classes can be effective on their own.  Most of the bosses can one shot anyone, particularly on threatening or perilous difficulty, and even so many as 3-4 archers can wipe out your entire party in a few shots.  It also helps to have items that give a heal on kill effect, which the loot system makes it kind of difficult to do.  I really hate the trend of making rewards random in multiplayer games, particularly in ones where stats and not skill are the primary concern.

 

From my experience there are also a number of skills that are just simply better than others, for example legionnaires have a number of offensive skills but these all pale in comparison to rogue/mage damage skills and are more likely to get you killed because you aren't holding up the shield wall or you run out of stamina and can't defend.  On the other hand rogues and mages have a number of useful damage skills but certain ones are just way more effective.  For example the elementalist has Immolate, which when upgraded does 400% weapon damage in an area and adds burning of 150% weapon damage x 8 seconds (1200% total upgraded), or you can take Stonefist which does 500% weapon damage to a single target and weakens enemies in the area (upgraded).  You can focus your build on weakening enemies then exploiting that, but in general just killing the enemy is preferable to debuffing them, not to mention needing others in your party or a skill that can exploit those debuffs.  The end result being that 9 times out of ten the extra damage of immolate is a better choice and most of the time when you see a particular class they will be using the same 4 skills with maybe 1 or 2 swapped out for preference.  They seem to want people to really commit to class roles which tends to render some of the skills obsolete or measurably worse than others.

Related to this somewhat is the efficacy of skills in the wild.  The templar has a skill where she summons ghosts along side her ostensibly to block off a path, however in practice this rarely happens.  Sometimes you left just enough space for them to get through, some enemies can just teleport or jump over the obstacle, you can still be knocked back so enemies can run through the hole they just made, and if friendly characters stand near those ghosts they temporarily dissipate and enemies can squeak through.  There is a similar issue with the mage's mines, where you place one down and before it becomes effective the fight has moved elsewhere, so taking a direct damage spell instead is usually better, particularly when you consider that direct damage spells that don't hit an enemy don't trigger their full cooldown.

[Bjorn]

A lot of what you described sums up my worst concerns about the game, particularly how it its more stat than skill driven and that it appears most of the classes lack real diversity in builds (whereas in ME, I could literally throw together almost any combination of skills and make it through Gold). 

 

I'd still give it another shot with people from here.  Its on my lady's account, Zanasta-1.

[Twig]

I've long wanted a game that is basically MMO dungeons without the MMO fluff of having to level up to whatever blah blah. So what you're describing sounds appealing to me.

 

But I dunno if it's actually what I want or just what I think I want.

[Dewar]

The way that equipment trickles out at such a slow pace is what has caused problems for me so far. Where the ME3 card system seemed to work pretty well, DA:I definitely feels like they want you to pay money for cards.

[Griddlelol]

The start of the multiplayer feels so restricted. You essentially just hold down R2. I tried to do some crowd control with an archer, but it was inevitably broken the moment I set it up so I stopped.

I might have had more fun if I hadn't gone from being the arbiter of doom in single player to being a rookie in multiplayer.

[Dewar]

It's not just that because I played multi before I ever started single player.

[itsamoose]

Yeah that's another unfortunate product of modern multiplayer games.  You really aren't able to get off the ground until around level 10 or so when you finally are able to purchase whatever 4 abilities you want.  That and the starting equipment is so weak compared to what you find, as much as 4-5 times the damage of the starting items.  I'm kind of surprised I've gotten into the multiplayer as much as I have given how frustrating it is.

[Twig]

I've expressed a general discontent with the feel of the game in IRC and now here I am to repeat said discontent.

 

Why is everything in this game so slow? Accelerating from standing to top speed feels slower than any WRPG I've played in years. Looting a corpse or interacting with most things takes literal seconds every time (not even counting the time to run over there and then come to a full stop, which you have to manually do unlike BOTH PREVIOUS DRAGON AGE GAMES), and when you're doing that with dozens of things every hour, it really starts to grate. Everything about the game is so slow and clunky and I hate it. High fidelity animations are cool! The first few times. And then they become a torturous hell.

 

Story-wise, I can't believe how slow it is to jump into the cool stuff. In Origins and 2 you're immediately dropped into rad scenarios to hook you in. This is such a drag. I know I need to get out of the Hinterlands because that's what literally everyone says.

 

NOT IMPRESSED SO FAR.

[Dewar]

Definitely push the story until you beat the mission that is titled something like "Closing the breach." A lot changes then. I guess I've been playing a lot of older RPGs recently, but I haven't found the pace particularly slow myself. Also, besides the opening area, Dragon Age Origins had the most boring start to a game ever, which seems similar to this (cool opening area, then boring after that.)

[Twig]

But this doesn't have a cool opening area. Running around in the swamp shit in origins wasn't exciting but I had the cool dwarf noble starting shit that lasted like two hours before i even got there. Inquisition it's just like "here you are now go seal this thing with little to no story or character interaction or anything of value besides a pretty environment". Ugh I just don't like it man. I don't like it at all. DA2's opening was similar but it at least had the charming Varric and Cassandra conversation surrounding it. Blargh blorgh blurgh.

[Brannigan]

It does take a while to get going, but I'm really enjoying myself...the hinterlands were pretty boring though

[chummer]

Maybe I just haven't talked to her enough, but Vivienne would rate in the bottom half of characters in that game for me. I'm not sure why she doesn't click with me when so many others really seem to like her.

 

She feels like a sketch of a Jane Austen character. "Sketch" because she doesn't feel fully fleshed out yet and I'm not sure if she will be.

 

Nah, I'm there with you. Vivienne is fine but I have no particular love for her compared to, say, Iron Bull and Cassandra.

 

I can get the Iron Bull love, but I've no idea why people like Cassandra.

[Dewar]

But this doesn't have a cool opening area. Running around in the swamp shit in origins wasn't exciting but I had the cool dwarf noble starting shit that lasted like two hours before i even got there. Inquisition it's just like "here you are now go seal this thing with little to no story or character interaction or anything of value besides a pretty environment". Ugh I just don't like it man. I don't like it at all. DA2's opening was similar but it at least had the charming Varric and Cassandra conversation surrounding it. Blargh blorgh blurgh.

By opening area, I was talking about the first hour of the game, IE the first fight here Logain turns on you in DA:O and the initial attempt to close the rift in DA:I. This just goes to show you that I completely forgot about the actual origin stuff in DA:O. The mage opening was painfully boring.

[Brannigan]

Origins opening varied though...I enjoyed the city elf stuff a good amount

[Twig]

Yeah I only did the dorf noble and will probably never go back to do another. The stuff with Loghain takes a long while to get to, depending on how thorough you are for the duration of your origin story. My point is that not only is the origin [i played] awesome, so is the battle at Ostagar. Running through the swamp getting darkspawn blood isn't very exciting, but it's also relatively quick. Inquisition, on the other hand... Well I've played for three hours and have yet to have any, as far as I'm concerned, cool story beats or character interactions, besides a few Varric/Cassandra banter moments. I'm not even sure those would do much for me if I hadn't played DA2 and seen then talking a bunch already.

 

Anyway, I understand that I need to get out of the hinterlands. So whatever.

 

We've gotten really sidetracked though from what my main complaint was: everything's fuckin' slow and clunky as hell. When looting corpses (that is, simply opening up the loot window) takes upwards of three seconds (not including travel time), you need to rethink your shit, Bioware. Especially when it was near instant in both Origins AND DA2, as well as allowing you to do it from much farther away, and not making you have to stand next to the loot-container before clicking, as doing so would make you auto-run to the loot-container. In this game you have to actually stand right next to it before interacting, or you won't be able to interact. It's... really quite awful. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea. Slowing to a stop, too, can be cumbersome, and sometimes I overshoot the corpse and have to allow the turn-around animation to play, as well as the start-walking animation, then again the stop animation, then FINALLY the loot animation, and then the menu opens up and I can press the Take Everything button, and then stand back up, and then turn in the new direction, and then start walking again.

 

Obviously basically every game with corpse/chest/whatever-looting has this flow these days. But not every game takes as so incredibly LONG as Inquisition does, and most of them don't require you to be so precise in positioning.

 

I hope someone will now chime in to tell me there IS a way to auto-walk to the corpse. That'd be cool.

[Brannigan]

Wasn't that big a deal to me, also weirdly if you're a certain distance from a dude you killed the loot just appears at ypur feet...didn't notice until I switched to an archer

[Twig]

I'm sure it's something I will get used to, and I probably wouldn't notice if I hadn't just come off the super snappy DA2, but... it's still really bad. ):

 

anyway i've said my piece i'm done whinin like babbygammer

[Dewar]

I definitely concede that it's much slower than most modern RPGs, but I've been playing Oblivion, Elite, and Divine Divinity recently so everything seems fast paced after that I guess. Where I'm coming from is that I thought DA:O was crushingly boring for most of the game, and I've been having more fun with this, even before getting out of the hinterlands. It's not the comment that DA:I is slow, it's more the comment that DA:O was more interesting that confuses me.

[Twig]

I dunno, DA:O immediately dropped me into Something Different whereas DA:I immediately dropped me into Savior of the World. I don't find saviorhood interesting. I find it boring and typical. I knew DA:O was heading in that direction, but it didn't start there. And, hell, it didn't even really end there, you were just the only one willing. DA:I, you don't have a choice. You are the chosen one, with the mark.

[Brannigan]

There is interesting stuff with the chosen one business...it's a large part of conversation in the game

[Twig]

Sure I'm not denying potential. Only questioning the quality of the first few hours I've played.

[Brannigan]

You smell like butts

[Twig]

so's your face

 

EDIT: GOOD NEWS! It feels way better with the controller.