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[Virtz]

Not even the Deep Roads felt this repetetive. At least once I cleared out an area there, I didn't have another wave pop in from nothingness.

Weren't a lot of the battles in the Deep Roads done in waves? The deepstalker "kill a dozen, then another dozen spawn" were definitely the most blatant, but there was another at a bridge in... Caridin's Cross? That had the initial darkspawn on the first side, with more spawning behind you when you're on the bridge, and then several waves on the other side, including shrieks and an ogre.

Huh. Possibly. I just remember it as the most boring and repetetive part of the game with the worst encounters. It didn't help that it was the last area I decided to visit among the 4 available and I was tired of DA's 3-4 classes for everything policy. So I dunno, guess I remember it wrong. Can't remember anything with waves. The popping up behind the party I do remember, though.

[Ampersand]

I don't get why everyone's complaining about Right Click being used for practically everything. It was more or less the same in Origins. Upon that, it's not as if Origins wall that complex or deep or well written either. I'd much rather them put together a long, coherent, well written linear storyline than make a sprawling 'non-linear' story that feels like a disorganized and deeply flawed attempt at world building.

There were no tactics deeper than 'I hit it with my sword' in Origins. The storyline wasn't deep and interesting. Stop pretending that Dragon Age 2 is going to be dumbed down in comparison. I don't care if it's not going to have the same or better RPG Mechanics. I care whether or not it will be a better game. I care whether or not it will be fun and and story good.

[Zangi]

The battles in the 1st was boring and repetitive.... Boring like FF12.

Too many fights that you can sleep through...

[Virtz]

I don't get why everyone's complaining about Right Click being used for practically everything. It was more or less the same in Origins. Upon that, it's not as if Origins wall that complex or deep or well written either. I'd much rather them put together a long, coherent, well written linear storyline than make a sprawling 'non-linear' story that feels like a disorganized and deeply flawed attempt at world building.

I don't see how linearity and good storyline or writing are directly proportional. You're not going to get a long, coherent, well-written storyline as long as a generic evil force like darkspawn is involved. Incidentally the side stories (dwarven succession, elves and werewolves, mages, daemonic possessions) were much more interesting than the main storyline.

There were no tactics deeper than 'I hit it with my sword' in Origins. The storyline wasn't deep and interesting. Stop pretending that Dragon Age 2 is going to be dumbed down in comparison. I don't care if it's not going to have the same or better RPG Mechanics. I care whether or not it will be a better game. I care whether or not it will be fun and and story good.

Friendly fire. It's what gave positioning in combat meaning. Now it's gone, you just throw area effects carelessly. It is greatly dumbed down by this alone. And from what I recall, there were effect-attack combos like shattering frozen enemies, I'm not sure if that's still in. I once attacked a (semi?) frozen enemy and nothing special happened.

[Shadowlord]

There were no tactics deeper than 'I hit it with my sword' in Origins.

I don't know about you, but my character was a mage, and had Wynne along as well. And not just a mage, a mage with ridiculously heavy armor (massive, was it? Or whatever the highest weight level was) who could hit things with a sword while still using magic. Overpowered much? Probably. But just the same, the ability to immobilize the most powerful enemy and deal damage over time while they could do nothing (crushing prison or whatever it's called), plus various other damage-over-time spells, being able to stun enemies when there are a ton around the character, or just cast death cloud to kill them all fairly quickly, all add up to tactics, although these tactics tended to be identical for every encounter... Incapacitate strongest enemy or enemies, kill as many others as possible before they recover, and then return to the strongest enemy while the other party members continue killing the little guys. Depending on that enemy's strength, possibly have the warrior also attack them. (If they're just a mage, it's probably unnecessary)

(Annoying enemy mages that cast fireball tended to occasionally kill the rest of the party; I used some kind of spell immunity spell for protection - I don't remember its name)

[Burnt Pies]

Perfect tactics in DA:O was "Run Alistair in, Taunt, cast that spell that immobilizes and completely protects a friend/foe, then Nuke the hell out of everything nearby.". It's going to be hard to dumb that down, given that it was all generic MMO fighting, and there are very few RPG players who haven't at least heard of how it's done.

[Jreengus]

That wasn't the perfect tactic, the perfect tactic went:

1.PC casts Blood Wound.
2.Morrigan casts Blood Wound.
3.Wynne casts Blood Wound.

Blood Wound was so broken.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I looked at origins as what I believe it was: Bioware's own adaptation of D&D mechanics packaged in an upgraded form of NWN (for two obvious reasons: no licensing costs for the source material and mechanics, and a system that makes more sense when you consider you're running it on a computer). In that light, it was a huge upgrade, though melee fighters still remained pretty simplistic. I ran (or am running, rather, as I picked it up again recently) a party with three mages (my blood mage, Morrigan, and Wynne) and Skippy the Paladin as a tank. Blood Wound is possibly the most singularly overpowered spell in the game, causing minor damage over time (well, something like 13 spirit damage every second, for close to ten seconds), but freezing every single enemy in a large area, ignoring friendlies, while being extremely cheap and having a recharge time of only 20 seconds. Blood magic in general is a severely broken "I win" button, allowing obscenely expensive alpha strikes, at which point it gets shut off, and a simple, twenty mana healing spell completely replenishes your health, if you don't just you Blood Sacrifice on the tank, who's still in the process of running towards the enemies you just beat down.

My strategy went:
1) Disable party movement.
2) Fireball to draw aggro on my mage.
3) Run away from party, towards enemies, drawing them all into one cluster.
4) Blood Wound over self.
5) Run back to party, Morrigan casts Affliction Hex on clump of enemies, I cast Fireball.
6) Everything is dead or dying, Skippy the Paladin mops everyone up, if the three mages don't bring everything down with their damage spells first.

Dammit, semi-ninja'd.

That wasn't the perfect tactic, the perfect tactic went:

1.PC casts Blood Wound.
2.Morrigan casts Blood Wound.
3.Wynne casts Blood Wound.

Blood Wound was so broken.

[squeakyReaper]

My perfect strategy was I AM A DWARVEN BESERKER HEAR ME ROAR.  Lots of it.  The battles were mostly just...  turn on beserk, turn on no-knock downs, roar, hit stuff, roar again...  repeatedly.  Every now and then I got to also take control of Zevran, who thought "Use Assassin's Mark" meant run through the horde of enemies and use it in the opponent archer's face.

[umiman]

Haha, yeah. DA:O's combat was really silly. Very tedious too.

I'm not sure the sequel addresses the tediousness part. I mean, sure everything is flashier... but everything has so much hp! The characters look like morons twiddling at each others moustaches for 5 minutes until someone dies.

Except the first part of the demo. The legend part. That was freaking awesome. Everything died so fast.

[HLBeta]

-snip-
The side stories (dwarven succession, elves and werewolves, mages, daemonic possessions) were much more interesting than the main storyline.

Yeah, the main plot of origins was pretty obviously an exploratory story aimed at sampling the setting's major cultures and suffers for it. This is one of the major reasons why I liked Awakening better than Origins, it finally had the chance to break down some of the broad concepts of the base game in order to start exploring oddities and obscure corners of the lore. The Blackmarsh in particular seems to absolutely clobber Origins' treatment of the Fade in comparison.

Friendly fire. It's what gave positioning in combat meaning. Now it's gone, you just throw area effects carelessly. It is greatly dumbed down by this alone.

For me, friendly fire meant that I simply didn't use a great many of the game's spells because I wasn't willing to micromanage the entire party and couldn't trust the game's combat AI to avoid setting my party on fire. I tend to end up with a single mage in the party who is dedicated to healing with a skillset entirely devoted to neutralizing targets with spells like mana clash and paralysis. Being able to cut loose with combat magic in DA2 is a welcome change for me, since I can take greater advantage of the game's content without having to significantly alter my playstyle.

This may be best handled as a simple toggle in the gameplay options, but I suppose there'll mods for it if you're dedicated.

And from what I recall, there were effect-attack combos like shattering frozen enemies, I'm not sure if that's still in. I once attacked a (semi?) frozen enemy and nothing special happened.

There are still some spell combo-esque elements to the game, which appear to come in the form of upgraded active abilities that can hit a foe under the effects of a particular status ailment for massive damage. It's just that alot of them are designed to work by combining the strengths of two different classes instead of granting yet more power to mages.

[Hiiri]

I'd much rather them put together a long, coherent, well written linear storyline than make a sprawling 'non-linear' story that feels like a disorganized and deeply flawed attempt at world building.

I don't know about you, but having a nonlinear story where decisions matter (even if just cosmetic) is a huge immersion factor.

[Ampersand]

I don't get why everyone's complaining about Right Click being used for practically everything. It was more or less the same in Origins. Upon that, it's not as if Origins wall that complex or deep or well written either. I'd much rather them put together a long, coherent, well written linear storyline than make a sprawling 'non-linear' story that feels like a disorganized and deeply flawed attempt at world building.

I don't see how linearity and good storyline or writing are directly proportional. You're not going to get a long, coherent, well-written storyline as long as a generic evil force like darkspawn is involved. Incidentally the side stories (dwarven succession, elves and werewolves, mages, daemonic possessions) were much more interesting than the main storyline.

They're not directly proportional. All I am saying is, since they are going in a more linear pre-set direction, I'd rather them do this and do it well, then do a game exactly like origins with the same quality of script writing and direction.

[Virtz]

Friendly fire. It's what gave positioning in combat meaning. Now it's gone, you just throw area effects carelessly. It is greatly dumbed down by this alone.

For me, friendly fire meant that I simply didn't use a great many of the game's spells because I wasn't willing to micromanage the entire party and couldn't trust the game's combat AI to avoid setting my party on fire. I tend to end up with a single mage in the party who is dedicated to healing with a skillset entirely devoted to neutralizing targets with spells like mana clash and paralysis. Being able to cut loose with combat magic in DA2 is a welcome change for me, since I can take greater advantage of the game's content without having to significantly alter my playstyle.

This may be best handled as a simple toggle in the gameplay options, but I suppose there'll mods for it if you're dedicated.

But that's exactly what tactics are about - micromanagement. Myth or Dark Omen would be boring and simplistic if you could just throw the most powerful attacks right at your melee units without penalty.

And the problem with modding friendly fire back in is that the AI would probably be oblivious to this and you probably couldn't stop it from doing stupid shit.

I don't get why everyone's complaining about Right Click being used for practically everything. It was more or less the same in Origins. Upon that, it's not as if Origins wall that complex or deep or well written either. I'd much rather them put together a long, coherent, well written linear storyline than make a sprawling 'non-linear' story that feels like a disorganized and deeply flawed attempt at world building.

I don't see how linearity and good storyline or writing are directly proportional. You're not going to get a long, coherent, well-written storyline as long as a generic evil force like darkspawn is involved. Incidentally the side stories (dwarven succession, elves and werewolves, mages, daemonic possessions) were much more interesting than the main storyline.

They're not directly proportional. All I am saying is, since they are going in a more linear pre-set direction, I'd rather them do this and do it well, then do a game exactly like origins with the same quality of script writing and direction.

But what makes you think they will provided it's linear? The part of Jade Empire I played through was completely linear (maybe it gets less linear after the swamp?), and I thought it was the worst Bioware story, script and gameplay I've ever seen.

[Ampersand]

I don't get why everyone's complaining about Right Click being used for practically everything. It was more or less the same in Origins. Upon that, it's not as if Origins wall that complex or deep or well written either. I'd much rather them put together a long, coherent, well written linear storyline than make a sprawling 'non-linear' story that feels like a disorganized and deeply flawed attempt at world building.

I don't see how linearity and good storyline or writing are directly proportional. You're not going to get a long, coherent, well-written storyline as long as a generic evil force like darkspawn is involved. Incidentally the side stories (dwarven succession, elves and werewolves, mages, daemonic possessions) were much more interesting than the main storyline.

They're not directly proportional. All I am saying is, since they are going in a more linear pre-set direction, I'd rather them do this and do it well, then do a game exactly like origins with the same quality of script writing and direction.

But what makes you think they will provided it's linear? The part of Jade Empire I played through was completely linear (maybe it gets less linear after the swamp?), and I thought it was the worst Bioware story, script and gameplay I've ever seen.

I didn't say it would be a straight through linear thing, only that that is the direction they are going, what with making the player character a pre-defined character (Hawke) and are apparently tossing out the various origins that were available in well, Origins. It seems a far more Mass Effect style affair, and while Mass Effect 2 wasn't exactly linear, by any means, your options are far more limited than they are in say, Dragon Age Origins.

You're still missing my point though. I'm not saying a linear story is better. I'm not saying that a Linear game progression is better. I'm saying I'd rather them put together a quality product that is FOCUSED, rather than the mess Origins was that to me felt like so little butter spread across two miles of toast bread.