Comments on: I’m A Naughty Boy: Respecs In Dragon Age

By: beetleboy

beetleboy — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:42:08 +0000

How about playing a mage with a bit of healing yourself? This Wynne character seems both hard to access and rather boring to have along..

By: Mctock

Mctock — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:34:58 +0000

Believe it or not I was in the same boat. But I got through. Do you want to know how? I went back 1 and 1/2 missions so I could add Wynne to my party. I still haven’t finished the Circle, but I have enjoyed it immensly. Whether or not you’ve made it far enough in the game for it to be worth going back to the tower, or whether or not you had done the tower at all, I’m not sure though.

But admittedly, the only reason I did that at all was because I’m not computer savy enough to have successfully cheated. nif >sneaky<

By: panik

panik — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:42:26 +0000

So now the game is easier for you. You feel all powerful. You have erased the challenge and will soon finish the game. You can then get back to playing with your dollies in sims 3.
Well done you, you hardcore gamer.

By: Jarzi

Jarzi — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:56:57 +0000

When *you* play a game which sole purpose is for *you* to have fun, who cares if you give your character billion hitpoints and the holy hand grenade of Antioch if that makes you enjoy the game more.

As long as you don’t start bragging about your achievements without telling about your modifications of course :)

By: SanguineAngel

SanguineAngel — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:42:45 +0000

Anonymous Coward said:
This is a very fair point. We as gamers clamor for choices and consequence to those choices, but when there’s any chance to make permanent mistakes, the majority moans for a way to undo them.

The game is not impossible due to choices made. It’s just easier or harder. Just like real life – many times you are not aware of the implications, or ramifications, of your choices. You’re still stuck with them and have to make the best of them.

This is where the “gaming should be fun” argument kicks in. My answer is selfish: it is fun for me. Not every games has to, or should, be fun for everyone.

Amen

By: Lanster

Lanster — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:42:08 +0000

Exactly what I was thinking.

By: Ash

Ash — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:05:54 +0000

This is a very fair point. We as gamers clamor for choices and consequence to those choices, but when there’s any chance to make permanent mistakes, the majority moans for a way to undo them.

The game is not impossible due to choices made. It’s just easier or harder. Just like real life – many times you are not aware of the implications, or ramifications, of your choices. You’re still stuck with them and have to make the best of them.

This is where the “gaming should be fun” argument kicks in. My answer is selfish: it is fun for me. Not every games has to, or should, be fun for everyone.

By: Taillefer

Taillefer — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:47:25 +0000

This was intentional to make items which enhance stamina regeneration more powerful, and so that light armour has more benefits. But it’s rarely that useful outside of sustained battles, anyway. And hardly needs to be a consideration at all on lower difficulties.

It’s not balanced very well.

By: Earl_of_Josh

Earl_of_Josh — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:06:52 +0000

Deep mushrooms my friend. Though I never use them so I don’t know how much they give back.

By: Adam Bloom

Adam Bloom — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:36:55 +0000

KOTOR and Mass Effect are the games most people know. I hate to tell you, but us IE fans are the minority now.

By: Manley Pointer

Manley Pointer — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:25:38 +0000

I said Oblivion could be hard if you didn’t know what you were doing, because scaling monsters make the leveling system ridiculous. If you set all the skills you plan to use the most as your major skills — which the game encourages — you will level up very quickly and get tiny stat increases. Because all the monsters in the game scale, you can get massively screwed over; it is counter-intuitive because leveling fast in most other RPGs is a good thing. I know a few people who chose the wrong skills in Oblivion and just had to reroll. (On the other hand, the game could be massively broken by leveling slowly and maxing stat gains each level.)

I only mentioned it because a lot of comments complained that choices made while leveling in DA:O are poorly explained. I think you could say the same of the old IE games, NWN, Mass Effect, the Elder Scrolls games, and many other RPGs. If you go into an RPG with no outside knowledge of its systems (gleaned from friends or FAQs) and you happen to choose the wrong things (cause you think turning into a bear looks awesome) you can always screw yourself over. There is a legitimate complaint that DA:O doesn’t provide a lot of hidden stats, though.

But like you said, balance is always an issue in RPGs. The community for any RPG figures out a few builds that break the game, and dismisses a lot of skills as junk. I can’t think of any RPGs that struck me as “balanced,” where all classes/builds were viable and all the spells that looked good on paper were as good in practice.

A lot of the argument here seems to be between extreme cases who either messed up hard (“I made all the wrong choices so I’m fucked”) or knew exactly what to do (“I made all the right choices so fuck you”).

By: SheffieldSteel

SheffieldSteel — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:48:40 +0000

If you’d completed the Mage tower first, things might have been different for you. I suspect you will find that too easy…