Dragon Age Origins!!

[Sonixboom]

i DO NOT like mass effect though (it bored me)

Sorry but that's impossible. If you were talking about Mass Effect 1 of course. If you meant ME2, welcome to the club .

i enjoyed ME1 but i didnt love it. ME2 had some of the worst dialogue EVER *puts on antiflame suit* and just ruined the game for me

the conversations were like this

guy1: should we look for survivors or head to the escape pods
guy2: WEA!! should LOOOOK FOR sssurvivorsss
guy1: oh...ok
guy2: *various battle crys*
guy1: so how bout that ammo...

yea it was that bad

it was horrid. the voices themselves were good but the choices of dialogue between the charactor and the NPC's was awful!!!

-Sonix

[azuarc]

That's why we created rules when we were soloing. We never really had a list of all the rules, but here are some of them:
1) Kiting is not allowed.
2) If you encounter a group of enemies, you have to attack them head on. Luring them to you one by one is an exploit and not allowed (if you attack one enemy, he'll attack you but the other enemies will just ignore you, that makes it possible to easily get past fights that would otherwise be very difficult).
3) Don't use AoE spells on enemies while they are unable to reach you (for example, they're standing in the room next to you). This is, again, an exploit (A.I./pathfinding).

This would make certain characters unplayable, I would think. If you're playing an archer rogue, do you really expect to stand toe-to-toe while you plink with arrows? For that matter, does that mean a rogue is not allowed to be sneaky and use traps, since that would not be fighting head on? Pulling the enemies out isn't exploitation; it's good tactics. If they wanted the enemies to come together as an absolute rule, they would hard-link them. I mean, I know people used to say that Arcane Warrior was the only class that could really solo nightmare, but I would think that others would have a chance if you aren't being uppity about what's allowed and what isn't.

[The Raven]

Cosy, how the hell did you kill a group of darkspawn by attacking head on, ALONE!?

[Josjie]

Cosy, how the hell did you kill a group of darkspawn by attacking head on, ALONE!?

I pressed the rightmousebutton . Look, I'll start a new solo playthrough as a warrior or something, to prove that it's not that difficult (I'll make videos/screenies).

This would make certain characters unplayable, I would think. If you're playing an archer rogue, do you really expect to stand toe-to-toe while you plink with arrows? For that matter, does that mean a rogue is not allowed to be sneaky and use traps, since that would not be fighting head on? Pulling the enemies out isn't exploitation; it's good tactics. If they wanted the enemies to come together as an absolute rule, they would hard-link them. I mean, I know people used to say that Arcane Warrior was the only class that could really solo nightmare, but I would think that others would have a chance if you aren't being uppity about what's allowed and what isn't.

I don't call that 'good tactics'. It's bad A.I. and you exploit it.

Take Lothering, for example. You have to kill a bunch of wolves there. It's possible to stand near the mill, or on the farm, and attack one of them with your bow. He'll charge at you while the others won't even look up. It takes a while but eventually you can kill them all one by one.

This is just bad scripting by the developers. It has to do with agression. If two soldiers are standing next to each other, and one of them gets an arrow in his face, you would expect the other soldier to panic and/or look around for the archer.

[Nocturnal]

I find the fighting way too glitchy, I'm all for a challenge but even on normal for me the glitches make it well too hard even with three npcs and make me wanna scream. They need to improve the tatics in DA2 and make sure they actually work.

i find the enemies always go for me no even when alistair/sten have threathen active. the spells don't go off and acts like they have. sometimes the potions don't work which usually happens in the archdemon battle, my character randomly runs off when i select a target enemy...drives me insane

does anyone get these sort of glitches?

[Josjie]

I find the fighting way too glitchy, I'm all for a challenge but even on normal for me the glitches make it well too hard even with three npcs and make me wanna scream. They need to improve the tatics in DA2 and make sure they actually work.

i find the enemies always go for me no even when alistair/sten have threathen active. the spells don't go off and acts like they have. sometimes the potions don't work which usually happens in the archdemon battle, my character randomly runs off when i select a target enemy...drives me insane

does anyone get these sort of glitches?

What kind of glitches? I've completed Dragon Age six times and I've never experienced any glitches.

Note that Threaten increases the hostility of your enemies with every melee attack. So you won't notice the effect immediately.

If you combine Threaten with Taunt, you'll see that the enemies will target your tank. At times they might still target your mages or archers but otherwise the battles would've been really easy (they already are, cast Force Field on your tank and you're done).

[Generalno1]

I'll try soloing with an elven rogue. Good, since i don't want to miss story, I still have'nt played with an "evil" charector
I'll update on how it is. Once my comp gets fixed tomorrow that is

[Nocturnal]

I find the fighting way too glitchy, I'm all for a challenge but even on normal for me the glitches make it well too hard even with three npcs and make me wanna scream. They need to improve the tatics in DA2 and make sure they actually work.

i find the enemies always go for me no even when alistair/sten have threathen active. the spells don't go off and acts like they have. sometimes the potions don't work which usually happens in the archdemon battle, my character randomly runs off when i select a target enemy...drives me insane

does anyone get these sort of glitches?

What kind of glitches? I've completed Dragon Age six times and I've never experienced any glitches.

Note that Threaten increases the hostility of your enemies with every melee attack. So you won't notice the effect immediately.

If you combine Threaten with Taunt, you'll see that the enemies will target your tank. At times they might still target your mages or archers but otherwise the battles would've been really easy (they already are, cast Force Field on your tank and you're done).

It seems the more i play dragon age on the 360 the more it tends to break down with more glitches. The glitches i tend to get are ones involved with battling like i mentioned before like npcs ignoring my commands, spells not working/activating and the potion button not working. I use tatics that are recommended in the official guide but the npcs don't follow them like if i tell wynne to heal at 60% health i will be waiting and she won't do it so i then have to manually do it.
I think i might buy a new disc since its getting worse after 5 playthroughs

Lol i didn't think about threaten had to build up i will keep that in mind.

[Josjie]

I find the fighting way too glitchy, I'm all for a challenge but even on normal for me the glitches make it well too hard even with three npcs and make me wanna scream. They need to improve the tatics in DA2 and make sure they actually work.

i find the enemies always go for me no even when alistair/sten have threathen active. the spells don't go off and acts like they have. sometimes the potions don't work which usually happens in the archdemon battle, my character randomly runs off when i select a target enemy...drives me insane

does anyone get these sort of glitches?

What kind of glitches? I've completed Dragon Age six times and I've never experienced any glitches.

Note that Threaten increases the hostility of your enemies with every melee attack. So you won't notice the effect immediately.

If you combine Threaten with Taunt, you'll see that the enemies will target your tank. At times they might still target your mages or archers but otherwise the battles would've been really easy (they already are, cast Force Field on your tank and you're done).

It seems the more i play dragon age on the 360 the more it tends to break down with more glitches. The glitches i tend to get are ones involved with battling like i mentioned before like npcs ignoring my commands, spells not working/activating and the potion button not working. I use tatics that are recommended in the official guide but the npcs don't follow them like if i tell wynne to heal at 60% health i will be waiting and she won't do it so i then have to manually do it.
I think i might buy a new disc since its getting worse after 5 playthroughs

Lol i didn't think about threaten had to build up i will keep that in mind.

There were indeed some problems with the tactics menu, but most of them have been solved in patches. I'm playing on the PC though so it's possible that the Xbox version has more glitches/bugs.

[azuarc]

I've had a lot of technical issues with the gameplay. Nocturnal isn't alone.
* Characters refusing to accept actions from me. I know sometimes this is related to the character being debilitated, but it happens far more frequently than that.
* Extreme lag at times makes the game wholly unplayable until some of the actors are removed from the scene. (Since their corpses are still there, that doesn't really resolve itself.)
* Party member A.I. is as bad or worse than the enemy AI you describe as faulty earlier. Despite my best attempts with the tactics, there just isn't the capacity to set up a good set of "gambits," and my experience is that they tend to ignore their tactics frequently even if I could fill out a complete list of priorities. Characters are horrible about choosing targets, or when to move up or not move up as related to situation, which is partially AI/tactics, and partially my control on the reins, but I shouldn't have to pause every 2 seconds to manually redirect all 4 characters.

And there are others I've forgotten since I haven't played the game in 6 months. None of those are a constant concern, so the game isn't wholly broken, but it makes the game such that I would never try to beat it on anything above normal difficulty. Oh yeah, and that's excluding the graphical issues like the absolute need to turn off persistent blood effects.

[apploud]

I didn't like how a "Difficult" fight/boss consisted of an enemy with high hp/defense that did ridiculous amounts of damage (based on everything else in the game) and could consistently knock you back/down so you cant attack.

[Arch-Mage Matt]

I didn't like how a "Difficult" fight/boss consisted of an enemy with high hp/defense that did ridiculous amounts of damage (based on everything else in the game) and could consistently knock you back/down so you cant attack.

It's why you always need a ranged character!

[Generalno1]

Alright, my comp is going to come tomorrow shiney and fixed, I had started a ME 2 charector but i'll just delete him and start my Dragon age one. One question though, which difficulty should i choose?

[azuarc]

I didn't like how a "Difficult" fight/boss consisted of an enemy with high hp/defense that did ridiculous amounts of damage (based on everything else in the game) and could consistently knock you back/down so you cant attack.

How else would you make a fight difficult in this game?
Longevity? Check.
DPS? Check.
Debilitation? Check.
Anything else, boss? Nope, that's about it.

[apploud]

Spoiler:

Its the ridiculous difference from everything else to make the boss "Hard" that irritates me. They have seemingly endless stamina/mana and MOST of their moves give you a knockback/down that is nearly impossible to resist (Which leaves you unable to really add on the damage while they shred through your rather useless teammates). The damage they do is ridiculously higher than that of any other enemy, from 5-10 for any normal/yellow enemy to 80-100+ for orange ones (In addition to hundreds more HP and seemingly unlimited stamina and many many knockback skills). They don't exactly fit into the world. If 2 or 3 of the orange human bosses you fight would turn against the darkspawn there would never be threat from a blight, the darkspawn would be simply slaughtered (Much the same way you do it but they would do better seeing as they're orange to you). Granted the orange human enemies still weren't a problem cause they didn't resist every single stun or send you flying with every attack.

Its kinda rantish...ok REALLY rantish...read at your own peril.

[Josjie]

Spoiler:

Its the ridiculous difference from everything else to make the boss "Hard" that irritates me. They have seemingly endless stamina/mana and MOST of their moves give you a knockback/down that is nearly impossible to resist (Which leaves you unable to really add on the damage while they shred through your rather useless teammates). The damage they do is ridiculously higher than that of any other enemy, from 5-10 for any normal/yellow enemy to 80-100+ for orange ones (In addition to hundreds more HP and seemingly unlimited stamina and many many knockback skills). They don't exactly fit into the world. If 2 or 3 of the orange human bosses you fight would turn against the darkspawn there would never be threat from a blight, the darkspawn would be simply slaughtered (Much the same way you do it but they would do better seeing as they're orange to you). Granted the orange human enemies still weren't a problem cause they didn't resist every single stun or send you flying with every attack.

Its kinda rantish...ok REALLY rantish...read at your own peril.

I think the bosses are fine. I'd even call them too weak, especially the end boss.

On Nightmare, with a full team or while soloing, I've had more trouble with some of the ambushes (wolves! Denerim back alleys!) than with the bosses. The bosses require a special strategy, some buffs and you're done.

[azuarc]

Many of the bosses, yes. I wouldn't say that's true of all of them. Certain bosses just ripped me to shreds. Jarvia was incredibly difficult for me. The lich in the back alleys of Denerim was literally impossible and I had to give up on that sidequest -- my group just wasn't built to fight him, despite what I read from others on how to approach the battle. I will concede that I spent far more times reloading because of a screen of weenies, or simply a revenant, but some of those bosses are rather imba.

[Josjie]

Many of the bosses, yes. I wouldn't say that's true of all of them. Certain bosses just ripped me to shreds. Jarvia was incredibly difficult for me. The lich in the back alleys of Denerim was literally impossible and I had to give up on that sidequest -- my group just wasn't built to fight him, despite what I read from others on how to approach the battle. I will concede that I spent far more times reloading because of a screen of weenies, or simply a revenant, but some of those bosses are rather imba.

Jarvia was indeed very tough for my team on Nightmare difficulty. Took me a lot of reloads, especially those Golems were tough.

On my solo runs she was quite easy though. Especially my DW Warrior . I only raised Dexterity when I reached a new level, so my Dexterity was over 100. I right-clicked on Jarvia, went to the toilet, grabbed something to eat and returned to my computer to see that she was almost dead and that I still had 100% health .

[The Raven]

Heh, you make it sound like it's easier soloing than a "normal" playthrough.

[Josjie]

Heh, you make it sound like it's easier soloing than a "normal" playthrough.

Lol, I dunno. I mean, I wasn't trying to boast or anything.

For that DW Warrior playthrough, I only raised Dexterity. When your Dexterity reaches ~80, you can evade almost every normal attack. So that's why Jarvia wasn't able to hit me. That has nothing to do with skill.

So for a DW Warrior, the first half of the game is really difficult but the final part is a bit easier (you can't evade magic attacks though, so some enemies are still tough opponents).

Orzammar was my final mission, so that's why my Dexterity was so high when I faced Jarvia.

[Generalno1]

Like i said, i started my solo nightmare play through with a female elven rogue(never played a female character). just finished the origin. The first few fights were rather easy, i practically breezed through them, It started getting more difficult when i got a little careless. I didn't have a lot of trouble, fights were easy, though i had to restart a couple of times for the mabari and it's trainers. And with the final fight with Vaughan, it only took me 3 replays. overall, the fights took a little more strategy, but not really hellish, though i suppose I'll start the really difficult levels after Ostagar
on an unrelated note, the fellow i was supposed to marry sounded like a real moron

[azuarc]

Ah, the city elf origin. Yes, that was an interesting one. I should play it as a male and see what it's like, but the female version was definitely interesting enough.

[apploud]

Has anyone read the (I'm not sure what to call them...I suppose "Thedas novels"? Although I suppose "Dragon Age novels" works since they're supposed to be based in that age) and can give an opinion on how good they are? I'm wondering if they're well written and keep to the lore.

[Josjie]

For anyone who's interested:

I'm going to start a new solorun on Nightmare difficulty. I tried using the Nightmare Plus mod but I think this mod is more challenging:

Random Age. I run this mod at difficulty 5 and without the new random items.

That mod adds new random encounters and bosses.

For example: in the Human Origin story, you're attacked by two Guards in your room. With this mod, I was attacked by three guards and an "Enchanter" guard (a mage, his name was in yellow so he was a mini-boss).

I'm going to record all the tough battles and I'll come up with tips and suggestions. I'm not sure about my class though . Maybe a DW Warrior or a pure caster. A Warrior is a bit straightforward while as a Mage you have a lot of options to defeat your opponent. That way I can also post tips about the spells.

I'll upload the videos to YouTube and/or XFire, but I'll also post them here with those tips .