Dragon Age: Inquisition (Plot Details in Spoilers!)

You're jumping several steps to a conclusion

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No, I'm not. Its written right fucking there. They think people want dumbed down RPG gameplay where you "put points into things" and so they tried appealing to that demographic and guess what happened?

The game sold significantly less than its supposedly "too unapproachable" precursor.

Derp.

Didn't. Reflect on the word literally for the class.

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Did. I quoted it.

We have data that shows there are a lot of people that enjoy playing RPGs although they won't necessarily call them RPGs. They'll play Fallout, Assassin's Creed and even Call Of Duty, which have these progression elements - you're putting points into things - but they don't necessarily associate that as an RPG. So we think that if we expand that out we'll attract a much bigger audience."

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This is literally saying that they think if they appeal to the Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed and Fallout audiences, they can attract them. This is literally saying they want to appeal to the Call of Duty gamers.

\I don't see that, and I don't think that it either happened or was intended to happen. The action combat was more fun to me, and it was still an RPG.

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Again, I've said, if you enjoyed it, that's fine.You're in the extreme minority.

Well tactical party based RPGs are my favorite thing.

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Tactics and strategy are pretty much the same thing. One is the science of strategic thought, and the other is implementation.

Both were lacking from Dragon Age 2's gameplay entirely.

Nope, you are though

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Citation required. Find us a quote by Bioware from before DA2's release or later where they claim that they want to appeal to the core demographic that made their company what it was before EA destroyed it. Go ahead. I'll be waiting.

You are arguing that their unfocused appeal to every demographic had NO EFFECT on the results of the games they're putting out. I've proven that it did, demonstrably, with sales figures, player reviews, and their own quotes. You have a completely unsourced assertion that these had NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the final product. Prove it.

You can't because the final outcome of every game IS a result of the design focus during its production, and when your design is so unfocused because you think you need the female gamers and the call of duty gamers and the LGBTQ:LHJASD:JZAS gamers and the housewives and the people who own ferrets and think that ferrets are an underrepresented demographic in gaming and all this other tripe over delivering a core gameplay experience that is rock solid the only possible outcome is shit.

I'm telling you that I think your claim that the romance options are part of the problem is silly

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And I'm telling you that you're focused on one statement while ignoring my greater point. It isn't JUST the romance part. Its the focus on EVERYTHING BUT THE GAMEPLAY. This isn't even remotely hard to comprehend. So let me say it again: The focus on romances is a good EXAMPLE to demonstrate how Bioware is focused on everything BUT THE GAMEPLAY, the...most important part....of a game.

Yea, I don't think I'd like that, but it wouldn't affect me beyond the dev time they put into adding the skip button

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Why even have a game if you can skip all the game? That's a movie. Why do you want the gaming industry to become the movie industry? We already a movie industry, we don't need a second one just to make fat lazy entitled people who never gamed until it became trendy in the past 5 years or so happy that they don't have to move their fingers a tiny bit more and burn a few more calories than they would on a normal day.

Let me ask you something, do you prefer the map on the left, or the map on the right in this picture?



Because this is the perfect visualization of the problem. Reducing complexity in order to plush up graphics and storyline at the expense of gameplay. Turning games into movies and in the process appealing to the lowest common denominator.

How's about this: You have a better theory on why Bioware has churned out 3 total turds, including a 300 million some odd dollar turd, since 2007 when EA took them over, you tell me what it is, and you support it with some evidence.

Otherwise we're at the point where you have an unsourced and uncited assertion (Bioware didn't ruin 3 games totalling several hundred millions of dollars in investment by losing focus on what makes a good game in pursuit of expanding their player base by appealing to every demographic they could jam into a video game) that you can't back up versus my well sourced and cited theory including sales numbers, statements by the company and user reviews, all demonstrating that my hypothesis is at least a valid one.

Cite the strawman.

The discussion is over because I've demonstrably proven my point of view and your only rebuttal is "Well I liked it and so you're wrong".

Feel free to like it. I don't care. But no one is going to sell me a shit sandwich and then convince me after that I actually really enjoyed it, that, in fact, it tasted like chicken.

No, it tasted like shit and I hated it and nothing will ever change my mind on the issue.

Yes, actually, you did. Right here

You're jumping several steps to a conclusion. And again, romance options are available in BOTH games. It doesn't distinguish one from the other.

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Claiming that I'm "jumping to a conclusion" when my assertion is that their focus on pandering to broader demographics has nothing do with why their games have turned to shit is, in fact, arguing that their that their unfocused appeal to every demographic has nothing to do with why their games have turned to turds.

There are no leaps to conclusions. They flat out stated it. Not once, but for months. They got to the point they were flat out CENSORING opinions on their forums and outright banning people for complaining about these issues.

Heres you making the same argument again

I'm not trying to convince you to like anything. I don't think Tuco is either. You're trying to assign causes to effects like a jihadist trying to shoot an AK. It's just silly.

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You claim that I'm trying to assign causes to effects as if unfocused development cycles have nothing to do with shitty games being produced is laughable, and nothing I've said is a strawman. You can't even keep up with your own arguments is the problem.

I didn't argue that it had no effect, I have continually confined my argument to your ascribing romance options to any part of the disparity in the game's success.

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You can't have this both ways. Either the relationship shit is part of the problem, or it has no effect. You are literally contradicting yourself in this sentence. On the one hand you say you aren't arguing that it had no effect, then on the other hand you assert that the romance options had no part in the disparity in the game's success.

It is part of the problem, and a good example to use to demonstrate where the problem lies: Pandering to get as much of the broadest demographic by sexing up and styling up the game at the expense of depth and substance.

There were many changes from DAO to DA2, and many things I didn't like. The combat, the part you disliked the most (it seems), is the part I liked the best of the changes. The romance stuff was pretty much status quo and should be irrelevant to a comparison of their merits.

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Its all part of one big package. The reason the combat took a hit is because the game systems took a hit. They were dumbed down to appeal to a broader demographic. Just like the romance stuff was sexed up and overblown for the same reasons. They were. The tactical depth was removed and replaced with an action rpg type combat, honestly very similar to the Xcom game that just got MASSACRED by the community and the press. Except that gameplay actually works somewhat when you have a sci fi setting and guns. It does not work for fantasy style rpgs with swords and boards and mages and rogues and shit. MMO style holy trinity and isometric view points work best for those types of games.

Agraza_sl said:

Except from my perspective combat didn't take a hit

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And that's fine. But you're in the extreme minority of people. And that's fine. Its your OPINION and that's acceptable. But for the majority of people who bought DA:O and all its DLC and played it multiple times and preordered it and DA2 and were met with outright frustration and disappointment because they had been outright abandoned by the company they had been near religious followers of for a decade, the OPINION is that the game was trash and an insult to the core demographic.

; furthermore, I can very much say that the presence of similar romance options in both means it did have a net zero effect, but I didn't say that

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No, you can't say that. You can say its your OPINION that it had no effect. But my OPINION based on analysis of the gamer response, the sales, and the statements of Bioware execs at the time the game was released is that you're demonstrably wrong

I was responding to the previous statement about "NO EFFECT".I have not made this argument. I have not begun to make this argument. I don't even accept the premise that they have an unfocused appeal to every demographic. You keep trying to use a strawman to ilustrate how you're not using a strawman.

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You can not accept the sky is blue because I was the one telling you that it was, that doesn't change the fact that the sky is blue. There is no strawman here.

Agraza's argument is now "We're not arguing over whether DA2 sucked because Bioware was unfocused or not, we're arguing over whether Hodj's opinion of DA2 is unfocused or not"

Its like he's morphed this whole thing in his head into a giant tu quo que argument against me "No Bioware aren't unfocused in their development of their game, YOURE unfocused in your criticism of a game you played for 10 minutes and never touched again you hated it so much!"

Dude. I'm arguing why I think Bioware has gone off the rails and shit out multiple multi million dollar turds. You're arguing that my opinions aren't correct because you enjoyed DA2.

Its like we're on entirely different planets here.

You have a survey of their customers relating which aspects they felt were positive and negative changes?

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Yeah I posted it up earlier, its called Metacritic.

I don't accept that it was significantly due to the change to how battles were fought.

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Well let's see here

Read User Reviews and Submit your own for Dragon Age II on PC - Metacritic

While I would like to create a long, fully elaborated review on the game to explain the core features and everything in depth, I honestly cannot, as the game is without much merit whatsoever.
The combat took a system which felt unrefined in DA:O and rather that improving it and making it better, just completely ruined it to make a system without thought or challenge. Unless you're on hard mode, there is nothing to discuss as far as combat goes, you may as well be watching a film.
For which matter, the story is far, far below Bioware's standards. Ploddingly written with a conversation wheel that not only dumbs down decisions to their smallest parts with "GOOD BAD SILLY"~esque replies, but are poorly written as they are. Voice acting is a nice touch, however, though it's frequently done without emotion. I'd like to write more on the game, but after a mere few hours with it I honestly have no drive to play it any more. That didn't happen until Orzammar with DA:O.
Graphics are an utter trainwreck. I'm not even going to go into this. Game outright bugs out, runs horribly or doesn't run at all, despite looking awful WITH an optional HD fix. Utterly pathetic showing on PC.
If you want the game, do not buy it now. Wait for a sale or a GOTY version with a reduced pricetag. Putting out a game that's blatantly this unfinished and rushed in a year that has many, many blockbuster titles that look stellar is quite frankly a ludicrious move, and Bioware have proven in the past that they are better than this tripe.

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Rating 4/10

Designed by focus group. By trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, Bioware has created game that never really develops it's own personality. Utterly forgettable, DA2 tries in vain to be darker, edgier and sexier, but only succeeds in trying too hard. The violence is bloody, the "sexiness" is a bit blatant and ham-handed, all the while giving the impression that behind the scenes is a 40-something game director saying "this is what the kids want, right?" Rather than focus on making a solid, entertaining game, Bioware tried to include all things for all gamers. They have created a game with something for everyone, but not enough for any one group to enjoy the experience.

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Rating 1/10

So far it's been terrible. Clunky controls, terrible graphics. The characters are shallow and have exceptionally little dialogue. 27 pieces of DLC. Not much else has to be said. They've sold out and now cater to the lowest common denominator instead of providing high quality RPGs like they used to. Terrible.

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1/10

Dragon Age was an above average game with many decent elements that should have been improved upon. The biggest flaw of Dragon Age was the uninspired encounter design, where they tried to replace the lacking quality of encounters with the quantity of copy-pasted trash encounters. Instead of improving / enriching the character system and reactivity of the story and the game world and providing challenging tactical combat, with proper encounter dosing and design, the designers decided to cut the gameplay out of the game in order to replace their former target audience with intellectually impaired people who are unable of performing tasks like basic arithmetic and basic reading comprehension. Character customization and development and character stat based gameplay, which is the staple of RPG genre, is gone, tactical elements of combat are gone in favour of button mashing, text responses are gone, replaced by dialogue wheel for the illiterate attention deficit disorder crowd. God forbid that there are proper multiple dialogue choices consisting of complete sentences in the game, it would hurt the feelings of the target audience. Sticks and stones may break their bones, but big words hurt their tiny brains. Instead there is the game that has done away with numbers and reading, and replaced it with "cinematics" and button mashing. Of course, numerous trash encounters have only increased in number and frequency. Without a proper character system and considering the way story is presented, Dragon Age 2 is more of a homosexual porn movie than it is an RPG.

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1/10

How the mighty have fallen. Bioworse does it again. Making a really great game, then completely destroying the sequel. Where do we even start with this? Dragon Effect II stars Hawke, a faceless human only hero. (Why did I even play a dwarf in the orginal?) That is destined to lead his friends to greatness. The first thing you will notice is the completely lack luster character creator, that they literally cut&pasted from the first game, give or take a few UI changes. It sports less choices, less variety, and terrible lighting. Don't even get me started on the EXACT same hair styles from the first game. The dialog wheel is a step back from origins and makes the game feel more and more like Dragon Effect II. The combat, while being faster, and incredibly flashier then Origins leaves little room for any real tactics, and thinking before engaging in battle. This too feels like a step backwards. After an hour or two you might grow incredibly bored with the combat, seeing as how even origins has decent blocking/parrying animations.
Rogues lacking backstabbing bonuses, and mages lacking tons of skills that I enjoying using from the first one is a disappointment. It all seems very watered down for a younger/mass audience. The graphics are absolutely sub-par, at best. Some how Bioware managed to make the second game look worse than the original. WAIT THOUGH, if you want to, you can visit their site, and download a high-res pack that was mysteriously not even included in the game itself? They could have made the High-res pack DLC, for 15 $ and most likely gotten away with it.

The writing is absolutely atrocious on all accounts, and steals from the games immersion.

Lots of things in the game they have you doing feel incredibly similar to the things they had you doing in origins. Being a jerk to merchants that make to much money, being forced to help bumbling fools.

The companions are now spineless, brainless drones. Blindly following hawke for any reason "I guess I have no choice". It all feels very forced, and not thought out very well..

I want to like this game, but I just can't bring myself to do so. For every improvement, there is easily 5 other disappointments on the screen. From the horrid looking UI, to the incredibly low detailed environment of Kirkwall. Having loved Dragon Age: Origins, this game has left me feeling empty, and pain stricken.

If this is the price we have to pay in a bioware game when the main character gets a voice actor, I'd rather they left him a mute, and focused on other areas.
This game has left me nothing but upset at bioware, for even releasing this game its very obvious the entire game was rushed, and kicked out the door, though with their recent habits I'm sure they don't even care. You can always just add the rest of the game as DLC, so you never have to release a finished product these days.

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0/10

These are pretty well thought out criticisms of the game on metacritic that all point to flaws in combat and encounter design and appealing to the broadest demographic to cash in quick on the franchise as possible.

Should I continue?

The romance options are not a factor in the disparity in their commercial or critical successes.

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Strawman. Not one time have I ever said that Romance is the SOLE REASON the game failed. I said it is an EXAMPLE. A SYMPTOM of the disease.

It is YOU who have conflated the one, into the other. You and Tuco and several others reading this thread simply cannot grasp that one can point to the romance portions as a symptom of the disease, rather than the disease itself. So you continue trotting out this trope and arguing it, while decrying I'm all over the map and fighting strawmen. Look in the mirror bro.

I never stated that DA2 was a magnificent product. This is not a change in position. You likely assumed things about my opinion of the game like you assumed many things from Bioware developers about the game.

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Again, the ONLY assumption being made here is that my argument was that the romance portions SOLELY are the cause of a bad game. I'm not making assumptions about Bioware's developers. I'mciting their own words. No assumptions needed.

Thank you.

That's what I've been stating for a bit. You're not being rational. I'm on planet reality.

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This is just an attempt to taint the debate by portraying me as crazy for having passion about a game. This isn't an argument. This is you looking for ways to discredit me because I'm saying things you find inconvenient for some reason.

Also I never commented on how long you played the game or in fact the depth of your experience of it at all. I assume you completed the majority of it, but I'm not familiar with the facts on that.

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I've stated multiple multiples of times that I was so turned off by the drastic and profound changes between DAO and DA2 that I outright turned it off after the tutorial when you reach the first (probably only) town. Why is that? Why, Agraza, would someone who played DA:O all the way through from beginning to end including all the DLC and recruited every character would barely even touch DA2, when it was one of their more anticipated titles considering how much they enjoyed DA:O?

Why would someone spend 60 dollars to preorder a game, and then play it less than an hour and hate it as much as I do? Couldn't be because the disparity between what was promised before DA:O about the series and franchise and the product delivered for DA2 was so vast as to be unscalable could it? Oh, no, it must be all those 4000 user reviews on Metacritic all haranguing the game as a terrible watered down abortion of a sequel are wrong, and crazy, and Agraza is rational and living in "reality", right?

But all of us, the core fans of isometric tactically deep rpgs are just CRAZY. We're eating our own feces MAD MAD I SAY because we don't have a RIGHT TO OUR OWN POINT OF VIEW, right?

Our point of view is just MADNESS.

Tuco_sl said:

Hodj, the 'games used to be good before they started making them for dirty casuals' argument is pretty easy to make, especially on this forum but you're screwing it up. Also brevity is the soul of wit.

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That is part of the problem but with Bioware the problem is more related to EA wanting to milk their IPs for as much profit as possible before they close the division down entirely. I have made partially an argument that modern streamlining of games hurts them, because in many cases it does, but do not mistake that for the crux of my argument here, as you have with my example of the romances. The crux of my argument is that Bioware, forced by EA to try and expand their market share and increase sales, chose the path of pandering to expand market share at the expense of their core fan community and it bit them in the ass.

And also one more thing: Don't forget that the POINT of the Dragon Age franchise was SUPPOSED TO BE that it was made specifically for the core gamer demographic who had been begging for a new Baldur's Gate 2 type game for a decade. So its not that all franchises being modernized and targeted towards casuals is an issue, but rather that the franchise specifically MARKETED to those people as a game for them, by them, is being watered down and casualized.

I don't give a shit if Cooking Mama gets casualized. Even Mass Effect it doesn't bother me so much. But Dragon Age was supposed to be different. It was specifically MARKETED AS SUCH. That marketing is what made it popular in the first place, got it to sale well and established it as a franchise. Then they abandoned that demographic of gamer entirely.

Agraza_sl said:

I'd love to hit with you bandwagon fallacy, but I invited this. Still, statistically insignificant and cherry picking both apply. This is essentially anecdotal. I'd like a survey.

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We're talking about opinions here, so there is no bandwagoning fallacy. People have a right to either like or dislike a form of entertainment. As entertainment as an industry is driven by sales and popularity, when the majority of people dislike a product, there is no "bandwagoning fallacy. People are free to disagree, but the lack of popularity speaks volumes as to whether the product is crap or not. That's the entire point of the market: You're voting with your dollar.