[One Wolf]

Anyone know what the budget was for DA?  How much did it cost?

[Vince]

http://dragonage.bioware.com/addon/

Return to Ostagar:

Your memories of the battle of Ostagar will haunt you for years to come. It laid waste to your order and claimed the lives of many great men and women.

Now, there are rumors that a fellow survivor of the battle has escaped from captivity and is seeking the Grey Wardens' help. The time has come for the Grey Wardens to make their return to Ostagar and exact their revenge upon the darkspawn.

    * A return to the battlefields of Ostagar, now thick with darkspawn encamped amidst the snow
    * An opportunity to reclaim the lost arms and armor of a king
    * A second chance to add Dog to your party

Going back to our discussion, what do you think, Gareth?

[Sovy Kurosei]

Oh, joy. More combat.

[Oscar]

Patch is out. Here are the patch notes:

Balance

    * Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and 0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended. This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.
    * During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quickly when reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent or spell in the later stages of lengthy fights.
    * When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at higher character levels. This reduces downtime between fights.
    * The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.
    * The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. This ensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.
    * Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.
    * Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately, resulting in less clutter in the player's inventory.

Gameplay

    * In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot. This no longer occurs.
    * Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior no longer stop attacking after using a spell or talent.
    * In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether a character had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.
    * The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active during certain conversations.
    * The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.
    * The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

Plot *Spoiler Warning*

    * Promotional downloadable content items now remain in the player's inventory when standard items are removed at the end of the dwarf noble origin.
    * Repeatedly talking to Duncan after gathering the vials in the Korcari Wilds but not the treaties no longer provides duplicate experience.
    * Leliana's personal plot can now be completed if the player substantially increased her approval (through gifts) before talking to her.
    * During the siege of Redcliffe, enemies are no longer able to spawn in locations that would break the plot.
    * Bann Teagan no longer disappears when he is supposed to be accessible during Urn of Sacred Ashes.

PC Specific

    * Controlling a summoned creature (like a ranger's pets) during certain special area transitions no longer results in odd behavior.
    * Creating a character in a custom module did not create a folder for saves. This could result in corruption of main campaign saves. This no longer occurs.
    * In some cases, the class icon was set incorrectly for characters imported from the downloadable Character Creator. This no longer occurs.
    * The options menu now includes a setting to automatically download previously purchased content that is not currently installed.
    * After installing new downloadable content, the game now always reminds the user to restart the game.
    * The icons for some promotional downloadable content items were missing. They now appear correctly.
    * The screenshot upload GUI would stop working from time to time on the client. There was a memory override that was fixed. It is a client fix. It doesn't affect the other problems we have seen on the server.

Looks interesting, especially the balance changes. They didn't apply the bow changes, though.

[Starwars]

Well, I'm gonna attempt a replay of the game. We'll see if I last through all the combat.

Decided to try a Noble Male this time around. I liked the Female City Elf origin better but the Noble is far better than Mage. I think they pulled off the feeling of a noble family pretty well (and you being a part of it), and it had some amusing flavour lines where you can roleplay a cock young noble. Pretty fun stuff.
Though, while I don't have any qualms of having to join the Wardens (and I don't want to go through that discussion again), I do think the writers could've handled the actual point where you're forced into the group better.

But, I'm also discovering just how much better I feel Biowares writing has been for the last two games, Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2. I think both of these games actually have really good characters overall, they've really improved in this area I feel. They're not all great but for the most part they are really interesting to interact with.

[Tuomas]

Finally summoned enough energy to finish the game. On the whole it was a pretty positive experience, but the endless filler combat encounters prevent me from recommending it to anyone. The game would've been much better if they'd cut 70% of all combat and made shorter dungeons. It's is like Icewind Dale 2 with more role-playing options. One Jeff Vogel is enough, we don't need Bioware emulating Spiderweb in every regard. Maker's balls, I'm still having PTSDs from all the mindless battling in Geneforge 5.  :O

Combat controls annoyed the hell out of me. My characters would continuosly forget to attack their targets in the midst of a battle, so I had to micromanage every swing separately. A huge pain in the ass in larger battles. The AI blows as well; the PCs would often do the exact opposite of what I told them.

But there are enough great moments in the game to make up for all the shortcomings. I was delighted when I was presented the option to handle the Redcliffe demon situation in a manner fitting to my character. I was REALLY tempted to sacrifice lady Isolde to exorcise the demon out of the boy but decided that it propably wouldn't be what my character would do.  

Other great moments include fighting the High Dragon, the Landsmeet, the battle in Ostagar, and getting to know the dwarven culture. Some really cool little twists, such as the caste system, were added to make the dwarven stereotype more interesting. BIO writers embraced the cliches and instead of renouncing them they examined them a bit further - with some good results. At first the setting didn't appeal to me at all. It tried too much to be The Best of Peter Jackson's and Weta workshop's LotR, but it kinda grew on me. Today I actually found myself skimming Gaider's DA:O novel in a bookstore.  

Orzammar is just an awesome location. High-budget 3D may often be redundant (I still prefer the BG2 graphics), but Bioware made some really good use of it in depicting dwarven architecture. I swear, Tolkien would've wet his pants if given an opportunity to look down into the depths of the city from the Diamond Quarter. Not to mention seeing the darkspawn army marching in the bottom of the Dead Trenches and the streets of Dust Town.    

[One Wolf]

My characters would continuosly forget to attack their targets in the midst of a battle, so I had to micromanage every swing separately.

This pissed me off constantly.  I tell a PC to attack a moving target, he runs for a bit then just quits and stands still.  What possible reason could there be for coding their actions that way?

[Volourn]

Never saw that happen. *shrugs*

[Starwars]

Me neither. Only time I could think of when my party would stop attacking was when I had pressed the H key to stop party AI when controlling some character and then forgot to re-toggle it. Other than that, I didn't have any problems.

[One Wolf]

Maybe it has something to do with having turned off all tactics.  Only happens with moving targets.

[Tuomas]

I had tactics on and it happened with moving targets and when the target was stunned or knocked down. Propably a bug.

[Voss]

Were your party members set to hold position (button right below the character selection, alternates between follow and hold position)? That's the only time where that has happened to me.

[micks]

I've had this happen regardless of whether tactics and the hold position button were activated.

On the other hand, I didn't really mind pausing the game every split second and issuing orders to all party members (it's also much more effective, especially when playing on hard), but I agree that cutting at least half of the combat encounters wouldn't hurt at all. I never quite got what was wrong with having a game of 20-30 hours that is fun to play from start to end as opposed to a 50-80 hours colossus that owes its size at least in part to filler.

[Oscar]

Yeah, I would really love a mod that cuts most of the filler combat. I would even PAY for it. Do you hear Bioware-EA?

[Gregorus Prime]

Hey now, filler combat is nice when it's FUN.

If Dragon Age's combat was fun I'd probably still be playing, with a legit copy even.