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Post by Gileadan on Nov 20, 2014 7:58:23 GMT
Things that took me a while to figure out:
- in Val Royeaux, the doors labeled "Fast Travel" move you to the upper level of the same map. Why no stairs or ladders... or maybe just a clearer tool tip? Meh. - "Taunt" in the description of warrior abilities apparently does not mean "make the enemy attack you", but "generate guard" from them.
Things I didn't figure out at all yet:
- how do I use focus abilities?
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Post by Aeryn on Nov 20, 2014 22:40:51 GMT
Yeah, the controls are really bad. I don't know why they took out the attack/loot button being shared like in DA2 - it was one of the things I thought they did right - and adding a Witcher-like search function was beyond stupid. And then they throw jumping into the mix. Just to be cruel. It's so needlessly complicated. Poor fingers aren't meant to do all that bending. I also don't like that it's hard to tell where your companions stand as far as approval goes. Maybe I'm just spoiled on approval bars, but I hate wondering if I'm missing dialogs or quests because I haven't pandered to a companion enough. I suppose the point is to encourage players NOT to pander. Eh. Change sucks. Other than that, I'm enjoying myself. The gameplay vids BioWare put up are a load of crap, though - they buried a LOT of spoilers with whatever build they were using because the stuff I played through last night had been shown for months, but was nothing like what I experienced. And I'm not talking personal character choices or anything. Just... I don't want to spoil anything, but they really did an amazing job of keeping things under wraps even while seeming like they were giving us a lot of insight into the game. And it's a lot prettier than it looked in those vids, too! The characters are so lovely, even on my poor old computer running on mid settings. BioWare still can't create decent hair, though.
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Post by melbella on Nov 21, 2014 1:13:01 GMT
How is your movement speed? My video card is so low-end power-wise, despite 2GB of memory, that I'm literally running in slow motion everywhere. It makes exploration a huge chore and combat is, um....interesting? However, I've read elsewhere that even folks with rigs that exceed the recommended specs are having slow frame rate issues, so now I don't even know if I want to upgrade or not. I don't want to spend a bunch of money only to have it not improve performance. Might wait for a patch and see if that helps.
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Post by Aeryn on Nov 21, 2014 2:14:57 GMT
My understanding is that the 30 FPS deal on high end machines can be easily fixed with the console. I read it was something BioWare set up intentionally, not a result of a problem with the game, though I really didn't look into the why of it since it doesn't really impact me. I definitely have moments of major stuttering, but most of the time I'm able to play at a decent speed. It's worst when I fast travel to a whole new (huge) region, but it seems to help if I save, shut the whole thing down and give it a moment before restarting the game and jumping back on. I'd kill to be able to play this on a new rig on crazy high settings, though.
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Post by Shades of Night on Nov 22, 2014 1:09:41 GMT
Sooo... My opinions of this game are... unflattering. Anyone who has been able to put up with the PC controls long enough to get used to them deserves a medal. I got a headache from the game after 2 hours of playing because of the way the PC controls work. Ugh. This rendered gameplay completely unfun, thus I just stopped. I hope that they'll do something to fix it up a bit in patches (yeah right) or modders will work their magic (apparently looking unlikely because of the unmodfriendly Frostbite engine). I only got to see a little of the game itself, but it is indeed very pretty, that's the best thing I can say about it. I haven't seen enough of the story to judge. Female NPCs look gorgeous, males look... Odd. I'd like to change Solas' eyes, and even Varric looks slightly strange, I'm not sure what it is. Lipsynching is bad, seems like they have less movement than previously? And my character keeps making these grimacing expressions that just look plain terrible. Because her mouth is moving in an odd way. Then there are the bits where you can join in with your partys banter... but I was given seconds to decide on a dialogue choice. The the character figured I was just being silent. And of course some ME3-style auto-dialogue has crept in. At the very start my character chose a stay silent option. Next thing she's saying 'I don't know how this happened' in a slightly worried/panicked voice! That is not in keeping with being silent and stubbornly refusing to answer questions. Bleh. Anyhow as mentioned I didn't play much so I haven't been able to see the better sides to it. And I've heard that it's great - on a console. I pottered around with the character creator after that. Their hair is awful, and the qunari hairstyles are disappointingly even worse/very lacking in variety. They have quite an odd assortment of eyebrows too... But I had fun seeing what a few of my Wardens would look like in the new engine
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Post by quickthorn on Nov 23, 2014 1:02:59 GMT
I hardly had the chance to play yet as my game only arrived Friday afternoon and I had to go away for the weekend Fri night - am currently on a laptop which can't play any modern game releases. So I've only played a little of the beginning. My PC hasn't been upgraded for a while and only fulfils minimum requirements. I had the dreaded shiny clingfilm hair look right at the beginning but turned up the mesh after the starting cutscenes, which cured it but I had a few slowdowns in combat.
I have spoilered myself horribly since the US release anyway which has already put me off at least one of my romance plans. Which is what happened with DA2 too, so I should really control myself a bit better.
I had really low expectations of the controls due to seeing so many complaints, but found them bearable until I accidentally got into tac cam which just got on my nerves until I figured out how to exit. They could be better though. I'll be back home tomorrow afternoon, so plan to get in a good few gameplay hours in the evening. Then I'll see what I really think.
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 25, 2014 13:18:15 GMT
Well, I figured out the focus abilities. You don't have them at the start of the game, they're given to your character at a certain point in the story.
What I actually really like is that this is one of the rare BioWare games where every companion is likeable in some way. I found something positive in everyone, and that really helps my enjoyment a lot.
Also, the Hinterlands are different from all other maps. It's here where all the mundane fetch quests happen. Very few Hinterland quests are really essential ("Master of Horse" or Redcliffe for example) - most are just easy ways to gain inquisition power and character XP. If you aren't specifically sent there for plot reasons and have enough to do elsewhere, just don't go to the Hinterlands. It's like the single player MMO part of the game. Literally everything is more relevant than the Hinterlands.
Also, another potential bug: at some point, a dialogue with Varric with offer you a "default" or "customize" choice. If you choose the latter, your character may randomly switch to the other voice set.
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Post by Aeryn on Nov 25, 2014 17:33:46 GMT
I really do love the companions. Some of the interactions blow me away.
Some of the bugs blow me away, too, in a less pleasant way. Be careful doing Sera's personal quest in Crestwood. Make sure to save beforehand just in case. If NPCs aren't showing up where they should be for quests (especially annoying when they are NECESSARY FOR CUTSCENES ~_~), it helped me to reload a previous save, travel to another region, then come back. A somewhat harmless but utterly irritating bug I'm experiencing has a certain former companion convinced that my Warden is her baby daddy when that's physically impossible and probably news to Alistair since he is my FEMALE Warden's lover. It's the second reference of my Warden as male - the other came from Bull. Bugs the crap outta me.
The Hinterlands is very MMO-ish, I agree. One thing that's a little disappointing is the lack of any kind of choice when it comes to side quests. Main quests and companion quests are HUGE! Big impact, major changes, major everything. But the many, many, many side quests are one sided: Do Good Stuff For Random Strangers. Which makes sense with the pious Andrastian human I'm playing right now, but will make less sense with the anti-everything Vashoth I'll be picking up next. It's a minor complaint compared to how much I'm enjoying the big-picture portions, but some opportunities to rob or rip people off on a small scale would feel more realistic.
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falka
Gibberling
Posts: 10
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Post by falka on Nov 26, 2014 18:25:53 GMT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LohPayE9-JwI'm just gonna leave this here. Thought I'd dislike Cassandra but now I want to be her best buddy. Same with Blackwall and Dorian. Turns out I can't stand Sera.
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Post by Shades of Night on Dec 9, 2014 7:52:57 GMT
Welp I remapped all the controls and am still playing this. Clocked up 90 hours now... I want to wait until I'm finished to voice my thoughts on everything. It's just that I also happen to like doing every single thing I come across in it But yes, I disliked Cassandra from what little we saw of her in DA2, but in DA3 she's great. I guess the best way I can think of to describe her is very human. Dorian is also awesome. I think in general Vivienne and Sera are the ones who polarize people a lot. Also, good news! People are making progress on the modding front! There's a reddit thread here which shows a couple of examples of what we might have in store in the top post. Namely coloured Skyhold pajamas and a dreadlock ponytail for Solas. There's also a thread here which details some progress being made. I know nothing about the technical aspects but it's interesting seeing the renders and models that they post I recall seeing some hair models that someone had made and wanted to put in somewhere too.
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falka
Gibberling
Posts: 10
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Post by falka on Dec 10, 2014 9:22:53 GMT
I am not a happy bunny. After the latest fix I have the shinny happy lego hair. Why on earth did they think locking out graphics at medium is a good idea? I was on ultra with no problems and now it all just looks so ugly. Apparently some people are unhappy with elven body models - I have no problem with my female elf. No, they don't just look like people with pointy ears and that makes me really happy. So not all races fit the human beauty cannon - elves are too scrawny, female qunari too manly ( according to forum rant). Maybe because they are Not human and don't have to fit human standards? Fix the issue with male elven arms melting into their bodies and give us some other (maybe race specific?) casual wear and I will be grand.
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Post by Shades of Night on Dec 10, 2014 18:22:40 GMT
Same here, was on Ultra, applied patch (had no choice since I had it online and it told me I couldn't run the game until I did) and poof! My character has been through a hair commercial. There is however a quick fix for it: forum.bioware.com/topic/532880-pc-graphics-workaround-from-bioware/Just note that (for me anyway) it looks complicated but is actually very simple. You just pop an extra line in the shortcut for it on your desktop. Actually I should be able to just copy paste from mine... Go to the Properties for the DAI shortcut and add to the end of the Target. Make sure you have I think it was the Mesh setting matching it in-game. Obviously that one is for changing it to Ultra, if you want a different setting just change the last word. The link above also tells you how to change the shortcut within Origin if you usually start it from there. And of course once they put out a new patch to fix their patch you'll have to just take that line back out. On the upside we can now see items on our little radar when we do a sweep and detect them... which means I'm just constantly looking at the small radar circle while playing now...
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 10, 2014 18:24:21 GMT
Yeah, they borked the shaders with their patch... hotfix is in the works. In the meanwhile, you can get rid of the shiny hair (and crappy vegetation) by adding the following parameter into "properties" in Origin:
-ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel <quality setting>
where <quality setting> = Ultra, High, Medium or Low.
You will have to remove this once the hotfix is out though.
EDIT: ninja'd by Shades
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falka
Gibberling
Posts: 10
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Post by falka on Dec 11, 2014 15:02:10 GMT
Another patch is out. Hair issue fixed and game seems to be more stable (had loads of crashes after applying last patch, not just direct error but sudden desktop deaths too).
To be fair, all those problems are really minor and I love the game. I've surprised myself by loving Iron Bull romance most of all, even if I don't find him all that attractive and thought he's gonna be a massive Gary Stu. Speaking of that, can bring myself to try romancing Solas on any playthroughs. He just looks like a lovechild of Stewie Griffin and clan Nosferatu to me. As amazing character as he might be I just can't. Won't be surprised if Brian pops up.
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Post by Aeryn on Dec 11, 2014 20:26:14 GMT
Heh, I haven't been able to romance Solas either. I think I need a mod that puts his eyes into a different place on his face first. I do like him as a character, though he doesn't always like my Inquisitors. I love Bull's romance, so many laughs! Cullen's was nice too, though I wish they'd played up the withdrawal angle more. I have an unfinished run with Blackwall, and I also really like him (his romance card makes my heart hurt in all the right ways), but just as with Cullen, I wish there were more... consequences. One or two more conversations or something. I'm greedy like that. In another partial run, I'm also romancing Cas - it's sweet so far, and I really adore her as a companion in general. Right now I'm romancing Dorian. At first, I didn't even like him as a character. He and my first Inquisitor were NOT friends, and I found him really shallow and selfish. That changed when I switched over to a pro-mage character and started taking him around with me. His banters with Bull are some of my favorites ("My footsies are freezing!"), and his romance has this edge of desperation to it that I don't get from the other romances.
We should start an actual spoiler thread, because I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the endgame events, then I read something that offered a slightly different perspective and now I'm all messed up! Maybe I'll start one later today, if I can get all this Christmas baking done. Stupid holidays, eating up my gaming time.
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