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[kamspy]

If I ever meet Mike Laidlaw I'm going to punch him in the stomach.

 

[MuddyDonut]

It still shocks me that they took things out of the first game, even though the first game sold well enough to NOT warrant anything being taken out in a sequel. If anything they should, y'know add more...

 

[Totobeni]

After Seeing Legacy I kinda can't trust anything they say anymore.

Just hire Obsidian for DA3 please.

 

[spirity]

I still have trouble understanding how a succesful and very professional outfit like Bioware could ever think that something like the Wave attacks of completely repetitive enemies was a good idea.

Did no one in development have the courage to stand up and say: "Yeah this isn't working at all - its boring and frustrating to play" ?

I'm sure they all thought that. But if there's no time for iteration, things end up sucking. I imagine they weren't meeting milestone goals, and with the deadline approaching compromises were made. Making the best of what they had, probably.

 

[inky]

I think they knew DAII was going to be worse. Mike is talking like the studio made mistakes unintentionally.

This has always rubbed me the wrong way. They knew all of this shit before the game launched, hell, they even pushed pre-orders so much harder due to that, like the signature edition promotion fiasco. One thing is saving face after the "mixed response" and another completely is the "we tried to innovate and failed guys, but will get it right next time" attitude which seems rather insulting.

snip

From what I've heard, they never had much hopes for DA:O selling well, it was more of a: 'we have had this project in the burner for 6 years now so let's release it and will fix stuff in DA2.' Then of course, DA2 was rushed to meet the end of the FY cus SWTOR and ME 3 are coming out.

Meh, I'm getting too emotional and Nirolak said no bitching so I'm out.

 

[Xater]

After Seeing Legacy I kinda can't trust anything they say anymore.

Just hire Obsidian for DA3 please.

Then we get an unpolished mess. That is not a good option.

 

[Servizio]

Then we get an unpolished mess. That is not a good option.

I wouldn't count on that actually, I think EA has their own quality assurance team go over titles before they publish them. An Obsidian/EA team up might actually be pretty spiffy in that regard.

 

[Infamous Chris]

You know what's the BEST thing that can happen to DA3?

Bioware telling EA to go fuck themselves and signing with Bethesda or something.

Seriously.

 

[Xater]

You know what's the BEST thing that can happen to DA3?

Bioware telling EA to go fuck themselves and signing with Bethesda or something.

Seriously.

Impossible because EA owns them.

 

[lastplayed]

No Hawke or Warden I can live with, just give us race options again!

 

[Infamous Chris]

Impossible because EA owns them.

It's very possible...

Spoiler

in my dreams.

 

[Grisby]

Then we get an unpolished mess. That is not a good option.

Dungeon Siege 3 was pretty good. Had hardly any bugs with that one. Yet, I know what you mean.

 

[bhlaab]

Everyone hates enemies spawning in, so what we're doing is making enemies spawn in where you won't see it happening, thus fixing the issue.

 

[Vamphuntr]

At least he acknowledges the many shortcomings of the game. Still, I can't really trust them. Some of his answers are ridiculous. They knew all these changes were horrible but still went ahead with DA II? He basically admitted that the reusing of assets was a terrible idea and how the wave system was poorly implemented. Moreover they seem dead on serious on still having a wave system for III.

I think it's quite easy to find the answer to that problem. Encounters with a limited number of enemies with precise stats require tweaking so that the fight is challenging and that you need to carefully position your party members and use their skills to win. It takes a lot of time to tweak those while simply sending waves of thrash mobs is much easier to do. Same with choices that have a meaning.

With the EA dev cycle, they will probably have to release the game early 2013 so it will be another mess.

As for the series itself maybe they should try to have the titles much more connected to each others. If I am to play a random stranger in III I sure hope I will get to know what happened to Morrigan, Flemeth, Hawker my Warden and all the other characters. On that front, the ME series is definitely superior.

 

[MYE]

Cool beans. I like the idea of a new character for each major installment.

Me too.
I like the idea of the world being the character.

That and having the same dudes be part of all major events on multiple sequels just seems very Forest Gumpy to me.

 

[DTKT]

Everyone hates enemies spawning in, so what we're doing is making enemies spawn in where you won't see it happening, thus fixing the issue.

Most games actually do that.

The issue with DAII was that mobs would spawn all around you. That way, you could never place party member since they would randomly spawn around you.

That issue was aggravated by the frequency of the spawns.

 

[MYE]

New character for DA3? Blergh.

I want to know what happened with Morrigan and the

Spoiler

baby

, playing as my Warden.

WHY DID I HIGHLIGHT THAT SPOILER FUCK ME

 

[Loxley]

This may just be the cynic in me, but I interpreted this as:

"After DAO we saw the explosive praise Mass Effect 2 got, and decided that DA2 needed it's "Shepard". A character where all you customize is the face, but has an identity. Turns out, DAO fans don't want that at all, so....uh...we're going back to race changes in DA3. But yeah, it was totally our plan all along for you to inhabit different characters in every entry in the franchise, never mind that people didn't like Hawke."

 

[truly101]

didn't read all those posts but


more like DA1, less like DA2 please.

There you go. I still think the Hawke storyline would have been a great DA offshoot, but there wasn't enough there to carry a full fledged sequel, and it showed in pretty much every facet.

 

[Confidence Man]

Unless they come right out and say "We're making the sequel to Origins that you thought you'd be getting in Dragon Age 2, we're going back to Awakening and using that as a baseline from which we'll build a classic hardcore PC-focused RPG" they can all fuck off and disappear.

 

[Nirolak]

While I'll do a more comprehensive update tomorrow (to give enough time for a worthy update), they are still planning on adding more activities to the world besides combat/craft/chat.

What those are, we still don't know.

 

[vaelic]

sorry Bioware, you lost me. DA series is crap

 

[FieryBalrog]

I really wonder what happened to Bioware.

Just look at their history, each game was a bit less rpg and bit less hardcore than the previous.

Cinematic. Cinematic happened to bioware.

I also like how they seem to think the best part of BG2 was the romances.

With that said, Dragon Age should have been their core, old school RPG franchise.

It was always supposed to be

 

[inky]

What those are, we still don't know.

Dating minigames of course, which include interactions such as *hugging* and *kissing* your LIs*. What else could it be?




*LIs stands for Love Interests. Taken from Bioware forums.

 

[MYE]

sorry Bioware, you lost me. DA series is crap

I'm playing Origins and i'm LOVING it

 

[FieryBalrog]

Dating minigames of course, which include interactions such as *hugging* and *kissing* your LIs*. What else could it be?

*LIs stands for Love Interests. Taken from Bioware forums.

*smashes fist into wall*

 

[hateradio]

I'm playing Origins and i'm LOVING it

But DA2 destroys the series. Although, it's awful to think that such an incomplete game could ruin it. :/

DA:O is still amazing, but how can there be a series when the sequel was a failure to those who loved the original.

 

[CrankyKong]

Put isometric view back into the PC version!

 

[Aeana]

After Seeing Legacy I kinda can't trust anything they say anymore.

Just hire Obsidian for DA3 please.

After playing Legacy, I have much more faith in them.
It has no reused areas, and a story that does a good job of building the world further. Also they toned down the wave combat considerably. Basically much of what was promised was delivered.

 

[Jerykk]

What a load of crap. Legacy didn't fix any of DA2's problems. Environments still look bland and repetitious and waves of enemies still spawn in the middle of combat.

The wave-based combat is what I hated the most about DA2. DA is supposed to be a tactical RPG. It's kind of hard to be tactical and plan ahead when you have no idea how many or what types of enemies you'll be facing. I have no idea why they went with such a retarded design choice. They should go back to DAO-style combat encounters where in 99% of fights, you'd see every enemy you'd be fighting at the start of the fight.

 

[Aeana]

What a load of crap. Legacy didn't fix any of DA2's problems. Environments still look bland and repetitious and waves of enemies still spawn in the middle of combat.

The wave-based combat is what I hated the most about DA2. DA is supposed to be a tactical RPG. It's kind of hard to be tactical and plan ahead when you have no idea how many or what types of enemies you'll be facing. I have no idea why they went with such a retarded design choice. They should go back to DAO-style combat encounters where in 99% of fights, you'd see every enemy you'd be fighting at the start of the fight.

The waves are definitely not the same as the main game. The encounters have many, many, many more simultaneous enemies in Legacy than anything in the main game. Sometimes new enemies do spawn, but it's not in every single encounter like before. More commonly, they do just spawn every enemy at once. I was actually irritated by this at first because I built my group specifically around the wave idea, and had to change some stuff in order to play Legacy more effectively. Of course, it was a good change; my group just wasn't prepared for it.

 

[Jerykk]

Then we get an unpolished mess. That is not a good option.

I'll take a rough gem over a polished turd any day. Fallout: New Vegas was easily the best RPG since Arcanum and about a million times better than the more-polished DA2.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

I don't know that I would call DA2 polished.

 

[Jerykk]

I don't know that I would call DA2 polished.

Compared to FNV, it was.

 

[NBtoaster]

I agree with him that rpgs (and all games really) should be easy to get into.

 

[Reuenthal]

The posts from the developer sound encouraging but words alone are not sufficient to get my faith back. At least I guess I expect DA3 to be better than DA2. But just being better than DA2 is not that hard to accomplish, I don't necessarilly expect it to be better than the first game.

 

[Totobeni]

While I'll do a more comprehensive update tomorrow (to give enough time for a worthy update), they are still planning on adding more activities to the world besides combat/craft/chat.

What those are, we still don't know.

Bar Dancing minigame: like ME2 infamous cutscene but with wooden Grey Warden dancer.

Cave Mining minigame: No need to go in the same cave over and over, use magic to search 3D model of the cave for material and resources,you can upgrade for faster mining.

AutoLog (DragonLog)an innovative new social interaction system, beat your Xbox live friend time on killing Dragons and completing quests,on the Dragonlog feed see which character your friend is romancing and achievements he got int the DragonLog feed all fun and accessible((OMGBBQ hire me EA)).

 

[Treemonkeys]

I basically ignored everything he said after saying area re-use wasn't intentional or by design.

What did it just accidentally get on the disc?

You can't get more intentional than that, just a bunch of PR bullshit which probably means DA3 will be another step away from what made the original good.

 

[Reuenthal]

I basically ignored everything he said after saying area re-use wasn't intentional or by design.

What did it just accidentally get on the disc?

You can't get more intentional than that, just a bunch of PR bullshit which probably means DA3 will be another step away from what made the original good.

Not intentional or by design.

It means that he claims that if they were not as time constraint as they were, they wouldn't have done so. It seems they created or more precisely reused more content than they should for their one year development time instead of creating a shorter but better game with less reuse of environments.

 

[Pranay]

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

No thanks, Dragon Age is added to the Fable series, of which I don't give a fuck about anymore.

Yeah, this unfortunately.

 

[Trick_GSF]

That is commendable, I suppose.

Either way I feel like I've heard all this before from Mike, though to be fair this was before DA2 came out, so I don't expect him to shit on his game before release. However, to be completely honest, I don't really trust the guy.

I'm not giving up on the Dragon Age series just yet, Bioware/Mike. Feel free to prove me wrong.

 

[Stallion Free]

Have they admitted that the repeated areas were because EA has been rushing their projects out the door ever since they allowed themselves to be purchased?

 

[Snuggles]

Have they admitted that the repeated areas were because EA has been rushing their projects out the door ever since they allowed themselves to be purchased?

they have admitted that you felt it was rushed and there were repeated areas

 

[ethic]

The generation of trilogies.

 

[Stallion Free]

they have admitted that you felt it was rushed and there were repeated areas

I wish they would use that sort of wording to slam EA. It honestly felt like there was a year between DA1/2. It's a miracle they got an extension for ME3.

 

[Ellis Kim]

What!

But I want to play as the Warden, dammit! I want to see what happens after

Spoiler

I went w/ Morrigan into portal as a loving couple

in Witch Hunt :x

 

[vaelic]

they have admitted that you felt it was rushed and there were repeated areas

it WAS rushed

 

[Stallion Free]

it WAS rushed

His point was that that is the best they can do for acknowledging it since they have no balls/aren't allowed to straight up say it.

 

[Snuggles]

it WAS rushed

In your opinion it was rushed, but you probably don't appreciate the innovation they brought to the series.