Dragon Age 3: Inquisition announced

[zinfamous]

Most RPGs get around slot limitations by using multiple quick bars, or the dreaded radial menu. Anyway, for me it's not forgivable. You have all of these abilities, but can only use 8 of them at a time... As a consequence, my reaver never gets to use his focus abilities because of the stupid limitation..

That to me is bad game design.. And while many of them are redundant, it's still nice to have the choice..

multiple quickbars is worse than a single long ass skill bar. anything with more than 8 useful skills...screw it. terrible design. lazy and useless. horrible game design. learn to build characters, devs, make them fun and inventive. attract players that like to learn real rotations with some cleverly designed sets that make you think.

Just let them toss in every shitty skill you own? pfft. junk.

go home, sir. :awe:

seriously, look at Guild Wars 1. hundreds and hundreds of skills. multiple amazing builds per class, and you design them all around 8 skills out of that massive pool. Save build templates with different armor sets, attribute sets, and skill bars, play so many different ways, and very effectively.

There is no rational reason that a player should expect to use every skill they own--it's lazy and brainless design for lazy players, imo. ...unless all of those skills suck, anyway. Most of DAI skills are horribly redundant. honestly, if you can't toss out skills that are wasting space in DAI, then the fault is on the player.

 

[zinfamous]

Yep, like zinfamous said, it was already discussed many pages back. I agree with you though, for what it's worth.

Bioware undoubtedly panders to the LGBT community in their games, which isn't to say that I think that's a bad thing. Bioware can do whatever they like with their I.P, and if they want to make a fantasy world where 50% of the population is LGBT, then more power to them.

Personally though, I prefer more authenticity and realism in my Sci-Fi & Fantasy media, and so do a lot of people. That's why authors such as George R. R Martin etcetera have become so popular. Their worlds, characters etcetera are so life like that suspension of disbelief becomes appallingly easy.

The same goes for the Witcher series. The world of the Witcher is so authentic compared to Dragon Age's Thedas, that for me full immersion is easy to attain.

With Bioware, I get the opposite feeling most of the time. Dragon Age Inquisition is still a good game though, but the setting smacks of being contrived..

WItcher gives you booby cards when you bed a wench.

I found that to be very inauthentic, so I laughed too much playing that game, and eventually stopped.

honestly--I try so hard to like those games, but I just don't. Can't do it. I'll probably buy Witcher 3, play it for 20 hours, then hate it for some reason. No idea why, but it happens every time.

 

[Carfax83]

seriously, look at Guild Wars 1. hundreds and hundreds of skills. multiple amazing builds per class, and you design them all around 8 skills out of that massive pool. Save build templates with different armor sets, attribute sets, and skill bars, play so many different ways, and very effectively.

Never played Guild Wars, but I'm not even advocating full access to all skills at all times. Just more than a paltry 8!

I think 12 would have been a more solid and forgiving number.. With only 8 you have to be really careful about your choices, and if you're trying to optimize, build diversity will suffer.

 

[Carfax83]

WItcher gives you booby cards when you bed a wench.

I found that to be very inauthentic, so I laughed too much playing that game, and eventually stopped.

honestly--I try so hard to like those games, but I just don't. Can't do it. I'll probably buy Witcher 3, play it for 20 hours, then hate it for some reason. No idea why, but it happens every time.

The Witcher was CDPR's first game, so the booby card thing is forgivable; at least for me.. Though I must admit that I did try to collect them all ()

Witcher 2's storyline though was very dark and mature, and the Witcher 3 looks like it will be following down that same path which is a good thing.

 

[zinfamous]

The Witcher was CDPR's first game, so the booby card thing is forgivable; at least for me.. Though I must admit that I did try to collect them all ()

Witcher 2's storyline though was very dark and mature, and the Witcher 3 looks like it will be following down that same path which is a good thing.

I love CDPR--I basically just want to support those guys, even though I can't get into their Witcher as much as I want to; as much as my personal history says taht I should love these games.

 

[zinfamous]

Never played Guild Wars, but I'm not even advocating full access to all skills at all times. Just more than a paltry 8!

I think 12 would have been a more solid and forgiving number.. With only 8 you have to be really careful about your choices, and if you're trying to optimize, build diversity will suffer.

the problem is that that skill choice in DAI, and those actual skills...really aren't that great anyway.

I promise you that if that total skill number was doubled, the 8 skill thing would make mroe sense. It may sound counterintuitive, but it really isn't. The real meat of this skill system is in the passive, and the 2nd tier of your primary active skills.

...in a way, it's like GW2--a skill system that is OK, but I really don't like: you have about 2-4 functions crammed into one skill, to make up for the lack of skill choice. That being said, when you really examine the skills in DAI, most of them are doing more than you assume, maybe more than you are used to in the other DA games, and other RPGs.

Mages--each elemental tree basically has the same 3 active skills, same 3 functionality that you want to use. It really isn't more interesting than that. pick an element, grab and level your barrier, then your focus tree. done. that's probably one open skill slot to do whatever you want.

Warriors--2 entire trees where half of the active skills are guard/chant buffs. seriously? you only need ONE of those on your bar. ONE. the charge pretty much fucks things up with the battlefield, so probably best to drop that.

I dunno...I had zero problems blasting through hard difficulty on my my first playthrough with the shield warrior, and never felt that the skill system limited my ability to be effective. I still think skill design could be better, but it has nothing to do with the 8 slots for me.

:\

 

[escrow4]

WItcher gives you booby cards when you bed a wench.

I found that to be very inauthentic, so I laughed too much playing that game, and eventually stopped.

honestly--I try so hard to like those games, but I just don't. Can't do it. I'll probably buy Witcher 3, play it for 20 hours, then hate it for some reason. No idea why, but it happens every time.

The titties were one of the best bits of No 1, right up there with getting smashed and hunting monsters with the screen spinning. Both of which were removed from No 2. :'(

I'll be disappointed if 3 doesn't have all that. You have vicious racism, brutal violence and brothels but no sex cards. Eh?

 

[NoSoup4You]

Snowed in today so I decided to try out DAI multiplayer, it's suprisingly good! Has the feel of an MMO dungeon simulator minus all the stuff that sucks about MMO's. Also missing most of the stuff that makes MMO's great, obviously... but as a straight up dungeon simulator it's pretty fun. There's not really any boss mechanics from what I can tell but that's expected considering it's just DAI enemy ai afterall. Pretty cool that they brought over the gear and crafting from the campaign as well.

I was expecting it to just be endless horde mode like ME3's multiplayer but it's more of a dungeon crawl. I suspect the novelty will wear off before long but considering it's a free addition to a game I bought for the single player only... there's actually a lot to like here!

 

[zinfamous]

Snowed in today so I decided to try out DAI multiplayer, it's suprisingly good! Has the feel of an MMO dungeon simulator minus all the stuff that sucks about MMO's. Also missing most of the stuff that makes MMO's great, obviously... but as a straight up dungeon simulator it's pretty fun. There's not really any boss mechanics from what I can tell but that's expected considering it's just DAI enemy ai afterall. Pretty cool that they brought over the gear and crafting from the campaign as well.

I was expecting it to just be endless horde mode like ME3's multiplayer but it's more of a dungeon crawl. I suspect the novelty will wear off before long but considering it's a free addition to a game I bought for the single player only... there's actually a lot to like here!

hey man...are you going back to try GW2 when the new, real expansion stuff comes out? I'm sorta debating this with myself. :hmm:

 

[NoSoup4You]

hey man...are you going back to try GW2 when the new, real expansion stuff comes out? I'm sorta debating this with myself. :hmm:

Yep, I'll definitely be buying the xpac to check out the new content, but unless they dramatically rework the end game I don't see myself sticking around longer than it takes to level a Revenant and explore the new zones. I definitely won't be falling back into the "press 1 to beat the World Boss" meta ever again... and I don't see them changing that anytime soon...

DAI multi needs text party chat!

 

[Red Hawk]

So, back when I did my DAI benchmarks, I never investigated memory usage. Well, I just did a rough approximation of memory usage with MSI Afterburner. My system was what I have in my sig, and the settings were everything maxed out except MSAA was off (post process AA was on max), and I tested with textures set to "Ultra" and textures set to "Fade-touched" (the maximum). I tested by walking around the crossroads in the Hinterlands and walking around Haven.

With textures set to Ultra, I got between 1600-1800 MB used of VRAM. With textures set to Fade-Touched I got between 1700-1900 MB used of VRAM. VRAM never seemed to touch 2000, though, and the game itself seems to recognize 2027 MB of VRAM via an in-game console display.

So that's the data, and here's my interpretation: Maybe my thoughts that I was running into a VRAM bottleneck aren't so true? At least, the game is not constantly chomping at the bit for more than 2 GB of VRAM. The highest texture setting doesn't actually add detail to textures, from what I've read; it just expands addressable cache size to help reduce pop-in. I guess you could push VRAM usage over the 2 GB threshold by both using fade-touched textures and turning on MSAA, which I didn't try because my 270X doesn't have the horsepower for it anyways. But when you actually consider the assets of the game and what it takes to render then, my findings indicate that at 1080P, Dragon Age Inquisition does not require more than 2 GB to get the most image detail out if it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The game definitely stuttered with fade touched textures with my 670s and does not stutter with my 970s. So maybe the extra memory is making a difference.

I will do a few tests and see how much memory I am really using with my 970s. Although I don't know if it is in use or cached.

 

[Carfax83]

The game definitely stuttered with fade touched textures with my 670s and does not stutter with my 970s. So maybe the extra memory is making a difference.

Don't you have a 1440p monitor? That's probably why you got stuttering, because at 1440p, DAI will use up to 3GB of VRAM from my experience with fade touched textures..

Red Hawk uses a 1080p monitor so his VRAM usage is going to be lower than yours.. Also, some engines are much better at handling memory than others, which makes it less likely to experience VRAM related performance drops..

I know I've said it before though, but Frostbite 3's memory handling algorithm is superb. The way it handles both system memory and VRAM is so much better than Ubisoft's engines, as to be in a different league altogether.

Another engine with superb memory handling capabilities is CryEngine.

 

[Josh123]

We had some ice this weekend which caused schools to close on Friday so me and my wife went ahead and ventured out to pick up DA3:I. I hooked my PC up to our living room 51" plasma then we moved a mattress in and made a sweet little setup. I played almost all weekend while she watched and cleared the Hitherlands along with some other side missions.

This will probably be what I do during spring break.

 

[Red Hawk]

Patch 5 Notes (which, oddly enough, is called Dragon Age Inquisition 1.06):

Fixed the walk toggle to be framerate independent.
Fixed an issue that allowed characters to take damage while using the Counterstrike ability.
Updated abilities to function correctly with front armor rating.
Fixed the Charging Bull ability so that AI-controlled characters no longer overshoot their target.
Removed the initial barrier that spellbinders receive when spawned.
Added an option to control the font size of subtitles.
Improved archer AI so that they choose to enter melee combat less often.
Fixed the save game card image for elf mages.
Removed the connection between mesh quality and shader quality and added a Shader Quality setting to the Graphics options.
Fixed an issue that caused certain operations to disappear from the war table without direct player interaction.
Fixed a crash after use of a Tactician’s Renewal amulet in Skyhold.
Fixed a conversation where Leliana references being with the Warden to face the Archdemon when she was set to have died in the imported Dragon Age Keep world state.
Fixed a case where movement audio was muted after a level transition.
Fixed a case where music unintentionally played after a level transition.
Fixed a loot exploit.
Fixed a case where the Quarry Quandry quest could be prevented from being completed.
Added party storage to the Undercroft in Skyhold.
Added item tinter to the Undercroft in Skyhold.
Fixed terrain patches popping while moving on low and medium settings.
Prevented a change to the Gamepad control scheme if a compatible gamepad is not connected.
Allowed changing the control scheme to Mouse + Keyboard when a compatible gamepad is not connected.
Temporarily change to the Mouse + Keyboard control scheme when a compatible gamepad is not connected, but Gamepad is the selected control scheme.
Improved stability.
Fixed the True Grit perk to apply to all party members.
Fixed flickering terrain when using SLI/Crossfire.
Fixed the issue where Qunari Inquisitors were able to equip the Inquisition Battlemage armor.
Single-player only: implemented auto-attack with mouse and keyboard controls, with a new key binding created for this purpose.
Fixed an exploit where certain abilities could be used multiple times before the cooldown was started.
Fixed an exploit with Explosive Shot where indirect hits were not causing the ability to cool down and reduce stamina.
Fixed cases of the new-item icon appearing on old items after salvaging in multiplayer.
Added an Option to increase the maximum zoom level when using the Tactical Camera.

http://blog.bioware.com/2015/03/02/dragon-age-inquisition-patch-5-notes/

Some improvements here. Party storage and maximum zoom level are certainly welcome. I like to "collect" rare and unique items, swords, staves, etc., and it was very burdensome trying to do so without party storage. Still though, no increase to the 8 power slot limit? Tsk, tsk.

 

[Dahak]

Patch 5 Notes (which, oddly enough, is called Dragon Age Inquisition 1.06):

Wasn't there a day one patch, which would have been 1.1 and then the rest of the patches started from that point

Still though, no increase to the 8 power slot limit? Tsk, tsk.

I foresee that this will never change, may need to give this another go as I have not played since I finished it.

 

[zinfamous]

wow, party storage. You'd think that would be release stuff.

 

[Red Hawk]

Dragon Age Origins didn't have party storage in the main game, either. You had to get the "Warden's Keep" DLC to get party storage.

 

[zinfamous]

Dragon Age Origins didn't have party storage in the main game, either. You had to get the "Warden's Keep" DLC to get party storage.

and that was what, 5 years prior to DAI?

One would think that lessons were learned.

Granted, I don't recall Bioware commonly including storage in their RPGs (I never played the Baldur's Gate games, so I'm thinking KoToR and beyond)

ToR does, but that is required in an MMO.

 

[Red Hawk]

In KOTOR, you could repurpose any container you came across as party storage. They didn't just go away once you took items out. And KOTOR didn't have an inventory size limit, either.

 

[exar333]

Dragon Age Origins didn't have party storage in the main game, either. You had to get the "Warden's Keep" DLC to get party storage.

Didn't the Warden's Keep release alongside the original game though? I remember getting it free, with the PC Collector's Edition I got (with one or two other DLCs as well).

Just saying...

 

[Red Hawk]

Didn't the Warden's Keep release alongside the original game though? I remember getting it free, with the PC Collector's Edition I got (with one or two other DLCs as well).

Just saying...

Yeah, I remember it releasing simultaneously with the game, too. The point remains that party storage was never part of the base game in DAO, you could only get it by paying extra for DLC/Collector's Edition (a pretty good DLC with a good story, loot, and even new powers, but still).

 

[Carfax83]

Whatever they did in that patch, now makes the game run a tad slower for me.. Might be that fix they implemented for the flickering terrain in SLI/XFire..

 

[runzwithsizorz]

The point remains that party storage was never part of the base game in DAO, you could only get it by paying extra for DLC/Collector's Edition

I guess you could call it a cheat, but at Nexus Mods I installed a "Bag of Holding" and increased storage to 125 from 75 items. (Two mods). I also made "Dog" a permanent party member with an extra "dog slot."

The Wife

 

[Mem]

I found something with the Asus Xonar DX sound card that improves stability with some games,ie odd crashing,disable the GX mode in DSP mode option in Xonar control panel.

Since I disabled that stability has been great.