Video Games: Thread Simulator 2016

[KiDisaster]

Just now, Pony Queen Jace said:

2 might be my favorite as far as cool ideas for a story go.

Anyways, glad to see I'm not the only DA lover about, I generally find Wert quite knowledgeable and felt half the fool by his dismissal. 

Anyways, the DLC was mentioned. I haven't played any of it. Is it worth paying the game'a weight in gold for?

I never played any of the DLC for Inquisition actually. I did absolutely everything there was to do on my first character and was kinda burnt out on it after that (SO. MANY. SHARDS.) so I never went back to it when the DLC came out. One of these days I'll reinstall it. 

[Jasta11]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Old Republic is pretty successful and has made both EA and BioWare an absolute ton of money (over $130 million in 2013 alone). TOR hasn't done very well if your point of comparison is World of WarCraft, but apart from that it's probably the most successful MMORPG of all time.

The sales figures for DA:I come from the retailers. Even if you allowed for massive margins of errors, it's hard to spin that the game was a massive-selling mega-success by AAA standards. BioWare games have never been in the CoD/GTA (and now Bethesda) bracket, of course, but as budgets go up they can't really afford to be satisfied with those kind of sales figures.

That said, I anticipate Mass Effect: Andromeda to do a lot better. And it'll be interesting to see what they do next with Dragon Age. Which reminds me that I do still need to play DA:I.

CDPR aren't a small studio any more, but they're nowhere remotely on the same level as EA. EA's marketing spend would have been much higher and the game budget certainly was a lot higher for DA:I. Being whomped by The Witcher III is certainly quite embarassing for BioWare (especially since they helped enable the franchise to exist in the first place).

Retailers aren't exactly the best source in this age of downloadable games, Amazon and so on. You can have a rough estimate, but few things more. More importantly, the important part is that EA is satisfied, which they seemed to be. We can't really wage a war of numbers based on rough estimates anyway.

You estimated that Inquisition had a budget of 60-80m, I couldn't find a number myself unfortunately, but I think it was a bit higher. Whatever the case, according to Eurogamer, who pull numbers from CDPR themselves, TW3 cost 306m zloty to make, which is fairly close to 100m USD. It wasn't the dark horse in this race by any means, as I doubt Inquisition had a higher budget, never mind much higher. Keeping in mind, of course, that CDPR is now also a relatively big publisher thanks to GoG. Not as much as EA by any means, but still.

@ Pony Queen: there's 3 DLCs. Jaws of Hakkon is basically a new high level zone with a good amount of content and an interesting story, but doesn't diverge much from the game's formula. The Descent is a dungeon crawl with a handful of nice characters, but is fairly short and doesn't have that much content unless you really like Dwarven lore. 

Trespasser is a must-have. It's basically a small expansion with a storyline set 2 years after the main game, with loads of returning characters, main game choices reflected, and all companions having lots of new stories and banter. It also continues the main storyline and takes it into (IMO) very interesting territories with several sub-plots. It's more linear than the main game, but it works to its advantage in the end.

I'd say you should absolutely buy Trespasser, get Jaws if you liked the exploration and questing aspects, and Descent if you liked the combat.

[Jace, Extat]

I thank you, Serah. Unfortunately I can't buy nothing for another week or so, but this is good knowledge to have.

Is the shards thing worth it? I never got them all last time.

[KiDisaster]

22 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I thank you, Serah. Unfortunately I can't buy nothing for another week or so, but this is good knowledge to have.

Is the shards thing worth it? I never got them all last time.

Depends on whether you care about completion I guess. The actual rewards probably aren't really worth it on their own. You get a bunch of gold and xp of course, plus permanent bonuses to your elemental resistances and some unique items I believe. 

[Jasta11]

50 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I thank you, Serah. Unfortunately I can't buy nothing for another week or so, but this is good knowledge to have.

Is the shards thing worth it? I never got them all last time.

Meh. You get some resistance bonuses and unique items/crafting plans, but that's about it. Not worth the hassle IMO.

Albeit the game's last patch introduced the Golden Nug, which allows you to transfer all your learned crafting plans to other characters, including brand newbies. It's nice to get some of the sweet-looking high end gear early on, such as the Helm of the Inquisitor or some of the weapons, and the fact that it's crafted means it doesn't break the game as you have inferior materials at the time.

[Melphis Amekia]

5 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

 

Anyways, the DLC was mentioned. I haven't played any of it. Is it worth paying the game'a weight in gold for?

Jaws of Hakkon is a nice DLC if you liked the regions and explorations in the base game with interesting lore bits to be gained through its story regarding the past at the start of the Second Blight(it gives the explanation why the Dales isolated themselves from it which is the main reason why an Exalted March on the Dales even happened). I like it cause I love the lore of the game and the more lore I get the better.

The Descent, as per Bioware's own words, was supposed to be a sort of a dungeon crawler type DLC - so no real region to explore but a literal descent into the earth while fighting tons of Darkspawn. There are also a lot of interesting lore implications from this DLC, and I mean A LOT... I don't think you'd appreaciate me spoiling it, though.

Both of these DLC's seem more like "here have some interesting lore, the implications will come up in future games at some point surely".

Trespasser is a must-buy DLC specificaly because it gives you the full ending to the game and is the most immediately impactful. In it, you will resolve a nefarious Qunari plot(which was so desperate to work the leader of it gave at least one of their mages lyrium! a Qunari GIVING a Qunari mage lyrium!), the fate of the Inquisition, and find out exactly who Solas is and what he wants(and depending on how friendly or not friendly you were with him(or if you were romanced), the outcome will be different).

Unfortunately, Trespasser is also the shortest DLC(Jaws and Descent are more-less 10 hours at least, while Trespasser is 4-7 hours given difficulty and how much of a completionist you are). I'd still say it's has the most worth to get, but I'd also get all of the DLC's anyway so take it how you want.

(I think it's pretty obvious I also love DA and honestly one of the main reasons I hope ME:A is succesful is so there's a higher chance of DA4. I mean, I do love ME, but still...)

[Jon AS]

Some colleagues at work roped me into getting Overwatch, and I find myself quite enjoying it. I'm slowly getting better, though competitive play appears to be serious business, so I'm guessing I'm not going to get a particularly high ranking.

 

I'm also currently replaying Inquisition, though since I've already created four different characters it's up in the air whether one of them will make it all the way through Trespasser. As others have said, that expansion is definitely a must-have. In addition to the storyline part of the expansion, it adds minor stuff throughout the game. A lot of War Table missions now give actual useful items instead of a bit of gold, for example, and there are additional unique items scattered throughout the various areas (especially in Astrarium caves, I think).

 

4 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Albeit the game's last patch introduced the Golden Nug, which allows you to transfer all your learned crafting plans to other characters, including brand newbies. It's nice to get some of the sweet-looking high end gear early on, such as the Helm of the Inquisitor or some of the weapons, and the fact that it's crafted means it doesn't break the game as you have inferior materials at the time.

I disagree: crafting was always game breaking. Having the ability to craft tier 4 equipment in Haven obviously makes it even more so. Luckily the introduction of Trials means you can compensate by upping the difficulty. Though Even Ground and Walk Softly can make the early ram hunting quest in the Hinterlands interesting. Nothing quite like trying to bring down a goat that has ridiculous amounts of hitpoints and is immune to two different elements.

[Werthead]

Interesting article that argues that the FPS genre has not made a meaningful step forward since Half-Life 2 twelve years ago. He's probably right. In fact, in many ways it's regressed badly.

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I didn't realize DA was so hated. I loved it and thought others did too.

I was talking about the sales of the games, not their quality. I think they're okay. They're nowhere near as good as the Baldur's Gate series, which they're supposed to be the spiritual sequel to but weirdly have inferior combat and less interesting characters than, and they have a bizarre habit of hiding the best worldbuilding in the codex and notes instead of showing it to players, but they're still fairly solid games. I really liked the ambition and experimentation of Dragon Age II, even if it was forced on them at gunpoint by EA.

But in terms of really interesting, original and atmospheric fantasy games with compelling characters and plots they really don't hold a candle to the Banner Saga titles, and Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity were both stronger games (although they also both had their issues). Also, whilst I found the gameplay pretty execrable (the first two, anyway), the Witcher games have certainly brought a new approach to fantasy RPGs that have left Dragon Age feeling a bit too old-fashioned.

You can really tell that Dragon Age was originally supposed to be one thing - a series of massive, epic, old-school RPGs - and the franchise was forced onto the path of streamlined, MMORPG-aping action titles by EA taking over and several of the lead designers quitting at the new direction.

[Jon AS]

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I really liked the ambition and experimentation of Dragon Age II, even if it was forced on them at gunpoint by EA.

The story and structure in DA2 don't seem to be what was forced on the development team by circumstances beyond their control, which is probably why the characters and storytelling are that game's greatest asset (even though there's a bit of a failure to properly pull everything together in act 3). The time constraints show in the re-use of areas on a scale that even surpasses what they did in the BG series.

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

But in terms of really interesting, original and atmospheric fantasy games with compelling characters and plots they really don't hold a candle to the Banner Saga titles, and Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity were both stronger games (although they also both had their issues).

Haven't played the first two, but I personally don't rate PoE higher than the DA games. It was certainly a good game, but not particularly memorable.

18 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Also, whilst I found the gameplay pretty execrable (the first two, anyway), the Witcher games have certainly brought a new approach to fantasy RPGs that have left Dragon Age feeling a bit too old-fashioned.

The Witcher games have been very action oriented from the beginning, partly because you only ever control one character at a time, so it makes sense to make player control more immediate. They are a lot more like Bethesda's output in that way.

I'd prefer combat in the DA series to be more like DAO (though in that game the mechanics were horribly broken), which was the closest to the BG/PoE style. DA2 and DAI are better balanced mechanically, but sort of pretend that they're action RPGs, with Inquisition going so far as to forcing you to manually trigger basic attacks. What none of the DA games do well is tactical positioning, relying on "threat" mechanics instead, which in turn makes features like friendly fire feel tacked-on, since combat was clearly not designed with it in mind.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Jon AS said:

I'd prefer combat in the DA series to be more like DAO (though in that game the mechanics were horribly broken), which was the closest to the BG/PoE style. DA2 and DAI are better balanced mechanically, but sort of pretend that they're action RPGs, with Inquisition going so far as to forcing you to manually trigger basic attacks. What none of the DA games do well is tactical positioning, relying on "threat" mechanics instead, which in turn makes features like friendly fire feel tacked-on, since combat was clearly not designed with it in mind.

The biggest problem with DA:O was that positioning was unimportant. If you found a great bottleneck in a cave or tunnel and positioned your melee fighters up front and ranged attackers behind, it was useless because the enemy would simply barge - or in a few places clip - right past you to attack the ranged attackers first. It was infuriating and massively unrealistic.

Combat in both Dragon Age and The Witcher (the first two for each, anyway) is so shit that I now play them on Easy, as the awful combat controls make playing them on anything more a labourious chore.

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The story and structure in DA2 don't seem to be what was forced on the development team by circumstances beyond their control, which is probably why the characters and storytelling are that game's greatest asset (even though there's a bit of a failure to properly pull everything together in act 3). The time constraints show in the re-use of areas on a scale that even surpasses what they did in the BG series.

What happened with DA:O is that the game went way over time and over budget (since they're the same thing in dev terms). It was a three-year project that turned into a six-year one. EA took over BioWare towards the end of that period and were horrified at what they'd spent on a single-player-focused, PC-only RPG. They thought they were insane. So they mandated both the console versions of DA:O on the cheap and quick, and a quickie, relatively low-budget sequel that they had to make in just nine months using some of the tech from Mass Effect 2, to help ameriolate the cost situation of DA:O. The original BioWare plan had been for a more traditional sequel, the same kind of game but bigger and better. Several of the DA:O project leads walked in protest at what had been mandated for DA2.

I agree that the story and characters in DA2 were its greatest asset. In fact, I think DA2 isn't given enough praise for ending up as solid as it was for the circumstances it was made under, which were exceptionally challenging.

[Jasta11]

I definitely like the combat in Dragon Age more than the Witcher games, but then again to me a fantasy RPG works best with a party of adventurers, not one dude. Origins's combat was a bit clunky, but I still like it a lot to ths day thanks to its potential variety. It's unbalanced as all hell, but hey, single-player game.

DA2's base combat ruleset was probably the best actually, but the execrable encounter design of the game dragged it down a lot. Wave based combat only works in small doses. Having a dozen bandits rain down from the rooftops is stupid.

Inquisition mostly cleaned up the clunkiness, but added some more (on PC at least) with the badly designed tactical camera, 8 ability limit and buggy melee hitboxes, especially on bigger enemies. I still enjoyed it a lot, and Trespasser adding more variety to all skills which was very welcome. The dragon fights in that game are some of my favorite combat moments in any RPG.

By contrast, The Witcher took 3 games to find a combat system that I didn't detest (the first game is damn near unplayable to me, god is its combat terrible), and even TW3's is not much more than a semi-competent third-person action game ala God of War or Batman Arkham series. What I hated most was the lack of progressiong; a level 1 Geralt plays almost exactly the same as a level 35 Geralt save potions and a small handful of spells. That's a pretty big sin for an RPG if you ask me. 

[matt b]

I still vastly prefer the combat from DA:O to any of the others. Just a huge variety of abilities to use, and I never lost track of where anybody in my party was at a given time, which happened constantly in DA:I.

6 minutes ago, Jasta11 said:

Inquisition mostly cleaned up the clunkiness, but added some more (on PC at least) with the badly designed tactical camera

Seriously, what was the deal with that? Why'd they have to create a whole new "tactical view" with different controls instead of just giving us the top-down angle like DA:O? Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

[Jasta11]

3 hours ago, matt b said:

I still vastly prefer the combat from DA:O to any of the others. Just a huge variety of abilities to use, and I never lost track of where anybody in my party was at a given time, which happened constantly in DA:I.

Seriously, what was the deal with that? Why'd they have to create a whole new "tactical view" with different controls instead of just giving us the top-down angle like DA:O? Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

If memory serves, the camera thing was an engine limitation. Frostbite apparently didn't allow them to really have a toggle-able overhead camera or something. The band-aid was to tie the tactical camera to a ''fifth'' character you can ''move'' around, with a matching interface and controls. It's very visible when you get the tac camera cursor stuck on rocks and such. 

I mean it's still better than DA2 and its lack of overhead camera, but it definitely isn't good enough to get a clear view of the battlefield, especially since areas in Inquisition are quite large. Hopefully by the time DA4 comes out they will have found a solution.

And now you guys have gone and make me play the Inquisition DLCs on my warrior character. She's a Qunari Reaver, and it's fun to have her mow down fools with Dragon Rage, which is best used by going into action camera and spamming the button for juicy combos. Currently frolicking in Frostback Basin hunting demons, yet the greatest threat are those damn Hakkonite bowmen. I swear they kill even my tank Iron Bull in two shots, thankfully I have Vivienne built as a crowd control machine and usually things work out.

[Jon AS]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

I agree that the story and characters in DA2 were its greatest asset. In fact, I think DA2 isn't given enough praise for ending up as solid as it was for the circumstances it was made under, which were exceptionally challenging.

Totally agreed, it could have easily ended up like KOTOR2, which became almost completely incoherent for the last quarter of the game.

2 minutes ago, Jasta11 said:

And now you guys have gone and make me play the Inquisition DLCs on my warrior character. She's a Qunari Reaver, and it's fun to have her mow down fools with Dragon Rage, which is best used by going into action camera and spamming the button for juicy combos. Currently frolicking in Frostback Basin hunting demons, yet the greatest threat are those damn Hakkonite bowmen. I swear they kill even my tank Iron Bull in two shots, thankfully I have Vivienne built as a crowd control machine and usually things work out.

Are you playing with Trials? Because those turn archers into some of the deadliest enemies in the game. I always target them first.

[Werthead]

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Totally agreed, it could have easily ended up like KOTOR2, which became almost completely incoherent for the last quarter of the game.

I wouldn't go that far (for me, KotOR2 is certainly a much better game than DA2, especially with that crazy late patch they released last year), but there were certainly dangers of the game being in a much worse state than was the case.

In fact, DA2 made a reasonable argument for limited-scope games with great graphics but a constrained scale that would allow them to be made in under 18 months (if we accept that the current 3-5 years per game cycle is unsustainable). If you had a few more layouts for caves and houses, or used a variation of that cave sculpting system from Bethesda, you'd already overcome a lot of the issues with DA2.

[Jon AS]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I wouldn't go that far (for me, KotOR2 is certainly a much better game than DA2, especially with that crazy late patch they released last year), but there were certainly dangers of the game being in a much worse state than was the case.

KOTOR2 was essentially unfinished upon release. There was no more proper flow to the story as you approached the endgame, just a sequence of scenes. You could still more or less piece together what was going on, but you needed to explore all optional dialogue with all party members, else there was just simply vital information missing. Even then the lack of proper transitions was extremely obvious.

Combat was also completely unbalanced, and enemies actually stopped scaling at level 20 whereas the player could go well beyond that in the game.

 

And no, DA2 clearly wasn't hit that badly, presumably because Bioware knew their release deadline from the start.

I'd definitely like to see more stories like DA2. Would be a cool way to explore other parts of Thedas.

[Werthead]

The patch - which incorporates some of the material they left out and makes integrating stuff from fan mods that assemble the rest more easily - does help a lot with the incompleteness. I believe they've even managed to restore the missing planet. I need to go back and see how they did with it.

[C.T. Phipps]

I recommend people check out Mafia III.

It's a game with a lot of problems ranging from lack of side content to bugs but the story is awesome.

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2016/10/mafia-iii-review.html

[KiDisaster]

54 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I recommend people check out Mafia III.

It's a game with a lot of problems ranging from lack of side content to bugs but the story is awesome.

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2016/10/mafia-iii-review.html

I was looking forward to it but the awful state of the port has put me off. Waiting to see how much they fix it with patches before I decide if I want to spend full price on it or wait for a sale. 

[Werthead]

I was thinking about it because the original Mafia was and still is absolutely brilliant. Mafia II had some good ideas but ended up being a really unsatisfying mess. It sounds like with Mafia III they've dropped the interesting things about the franchise that really worked and turned it into Tired Generic Open World Collect-'Em-Up 473. I've only just gotten over the apathy generated by Watch_Dogs for doing the same thing.