What would you like to see in Dragon Age?

Remove all ads!

At this point, they probably already have a couple of such threads in BioWare boards, when they have an actual chance of having some effect on the devs, but hey, why shouldn't SP speculate a little bit?

My primary concern is the effect of race, class, alignment stats etc on gameplay and storyline. The old trick is dialogue checks, and it really works. They could add some quests - they existed in BG2 and some were pretty good.

Nearly as important is interaction with the environment. By this I mean more interactivity, especially with the people. It's ridiculous when in BG2 you have heroic reputation of 20 only because that is the limit, you have some nearly godly level, you wear hundreds of thousands of XP worth in gear, and they talk to you like to a peasant. For good or for bad, they should recognise your status. One of my main problems with BG2 was that you were a god's son, a great wizard and harper's adoptive son, and a demigodly hero, and you still weren't able to get your warrior charname knighted while every other person in Athkatla was sir or lady It was not realistic - in any kingdom such a warrior would already have got knighted, made the lord of some reasonable estate and so on. Half your party were aristocrats, not even petty nobles, and their status was also prod fodder, while even petty nobles without a name were treated almost like gods by the game

Real consequences of your words and actions. Not just slight adjustments to your journal notes. A real difference depending on the choices you've made throughout the whole game. If they can't make it less linear, making it look less linear still helps a lot (like BG2).

Next, 3D is fun, but it wouldn't hurt to have all little icons cute as well (unlike IWD2 or ToEE).

Sounds. Music, lots of music. Ambient doesn't make it (see ToEE). BG2 ruled. IWD1 ruled.

Romances. Lots of them. Less obvious clues. Less obvious dialogue options. More check points. No glitches. When I say less obvious, I don't mean having to find the only one way to progress to the next stage - that would be unrealistic. For good or bad, it should take into account your overall standing with the character and answers that indicate your attitude, reveal your motives, talk volumes about your personality and so on. Not just one wondrous dialogue option that fills your bed with an elven priestess. I'm not criticising BG2 romances - they were something new, an experiment and one that worked. Some improvements could be made, though, and from what I've heard about NWN (I don't have it), NWN ones are a step back.

Romance isn't just a quest. It should last till the end with options to choose along all the way. KotOR Bastila romance was good in this regard and FWP Flirtpack mod was great as well.

Banters. Banters were great in BG2 and KotOR. Give more.

Give player-initiated banters. FWP's flirtpack mod was great.

If a new ruleset is designed specifically for DA, it would do no harm to left some of D&D's flaws behind. More customisation, less class rigidness. Better alignment concepts. Better reputation concepts. Various aspects of reputation, not only morals. There are many things you can be (in)famous for, and it differs among the parts of the game world. I mean, it should...

If we are at it, customisation in character creation can do wonders. Different height, weight, hair length, colour and style, different skin complexion, eye colour, musculature (your 8 STR 8 CON wizard doesn't really fill your barbarian's T-shirt), whatever. Just lots of it. It matters a lot especially to roleplayers. Stats don't say everything! And more portraits, please (hint: they could be rendered at the end of character creation using data input from the player)

Hideouts, strongholds etc. Nice if the campaign warrants it, superfluous if it doesn't. Here I agree with the devs.

The ability to have your stuff enchanted by a professional the way you do it with Craft feats.

Finding artifacts is fun, but what about being able to get your paladin go to the best blacksmith/armourer in the whole kingdom and place an order?

More talking? More Hacken Slash... er.. hack & slash? Yeah, more of both. Just let me choose.

If we're at talking, talking perks were great in Fallout 2. Good example to follow.

Arena. Give me a place where I can get money, get XP and hone my uber skills. Random quests (from simple bounty hunts to more complex tasks like winning some game championships in all cities (Might and Magic classic)) would be a bonus as well.

More business and business contracts. More trade. Advanced trade, custom options and the like. You know, Adventuring Capitalism Politics wouldn't hurt either. Don't forget about temples and their agenda. Perhaps a war or two and a taste of military life?

The ability to play after the end, and it making sense to do. What about tiny quest add-ons to give you something to do when you're done with your main quest? You could be the hero and saviour who has nothing much left to do but still has something from time to time.

Call me nerd, but I want learning. Teaching wouldn't hurt either.

Experiment: academy, university, college life? It did work in some past games...

 

Flight not just levitation, I mean it is called dragon age (hopefully) for a reason. I presume the game is fully 3d.

Depending on the amount of towns, Town portal.

Weapon discriptions, long epic weapon discriptions.

Balanced amount of weapons, have as many magical clubs as long swords. That way you can actually choose your weapon before hand without the fear of no good magical weapon in that class.

Components or reagents to cast arcane spells. Very few RPG I know of use this system but I think it is way better than memorizing and/or spellpoints.

Huge outside adventuring areas as seen in Baldur's gate I. Many of them, maybe even to much where you don't have to do them but if you do, it takes forever.

I may add some ideas later on.

 

Well, your post has made me think about holy swords for paladins. When they're ancient artifacts, it's understandable that they aren't being adjusted to the player's proficiency level or preference in sword type. However, sometimes such swords are commissioned with a specific paladin in mind. In such case, the player should be given choice, I think.

Anyway, it's not sure if DA will have paladins. And even more so if they will include holy swords or not, anyway.

 

Only one thing to say about that....right on!

Only one thing to say about that....word!

What about special moves, now nothing super karata ninja fighting special, but when I look at NWN the fighting was exactly the same the whole game. Sure thare is cleave and improved power attack, but KOTOR IMO had some cool moves. Of course those were force initiated but still. I want to see different parry moves like drizzt's double cut low.

Maybe that's to special but there should be some abilities to initiate different moves, perhaps even ones you invented and have you signature. Perhaps roundabout kicks for monks, elbow hits, eyepoking, feints for fighters, real looking backstabs from thiefs. Perhaps I'm over doing it now but some kind of special move would be really great. Just keep it clean and SUBTLE, no stupid moves like you seen on console games.

I'm thinking Secret of Mana here as a very very crude example.

Now the more I think about it, the more I want Reagent arcane spell casting. In my opinion it would add so much more depth into the spellcasting ability. NWN had many components and was on the right track but they hadn't anything to do with the actual casting of a spell. Of course only reagents to cast a spell is ridicoulos because any peasant would be wizard in no time.

To me it always has been a mystery were magic came from when casted. My mind has a problem that it just comes out of thin air when a certain line has been spoken. Why not combine a reagent and of course more reagents for the difficult spells. A combination of one or more reagents, a scroll with the desired arcane line to say and the ability to learn the spell after you've casted it an x number of times. Practice makes perfect is my motto on this.

More on this and more subjects later. I'm full of ideas

 

I say hire good voice actors, and cut them loose. Bioware and Black Isle has hit nearly 100%, and Lucas Arts has hired some good ones. Just stuff them in a sound booth, wire them together, and tell them to "get froggy".

Literally. Tell them that. Get Froggy.

Seriously. When Bioware goes all out, and lets the developers put in all the personality of the voice actors, it really works. They program in the physical characteristics and inflections and accents, and it gives so much life to the game. That's what has made them so successful; that's what continues to make them successful.

Let the developers do their job. Let the voice actors do their job. Try to integrate the two, as best you can.

In short, do everything that George Lucas didn't do in Episode1/2.

 

Freedom to wander where ever you damn well please (within reason. Not walking through locked doors or anything...), preferably whenever you please. Story driven games are quite good, but I feel like something Fallouty (I'm playing it at the moment). Have a story, but have the story there in such a way that it can be ignored and you can still do things where ever you want.

Less pointless monsters. Lots of fighting isn't really necessary. And don't just have the monsters attack you for seemingly no reason at all.

Trading is an interesting idea. Could open some interesting things.

 

You know, Tal, those first two things on your list are right next to impossible on a console. I agree with you, but if it's announced they're making the game for the console and the PC, those first two come at the expense of the graphics.

*sigh*

I know of some other games that have had that particular issue, as of late...

 

More:

No illegitimate characters, especially enemies. This doesn't mean everything should add up to pointbuy scheme, but some things are downright wrong, like special versions of spells for your enemies, the enemies "knowing" what protections you have on yourself etc. I'm not sure about the latter - it might have been accidents. Still, I insist that scripts are not the way and characters should be legitimate. Powerful, maybe. Special, granted. Not illegitimate, though. Kills the fun.

No encounters where the difficulty lies in finding the only one way that works. No cheese like the enemies being resistant to everything for the first couple of minutes of the battle.

No skills, spells or anything that are crucial for the finishing of the game. It's OK if a character can't make it because he's too weak. It isn't OK if a character can't finish the game because he doesn't have some skill - or means of getting around the skill requirement by having someone else do that or using a device. Here's the catch: players can't feel like their skill are being neglected because you can always hire someone or buy a device. It needs to be solved in some cunning fashion

8 INT barbarian soloers aren't supposed to solve puzzles. It's completely unrealistic when they do.

Characters without skills like Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, Sense Motive and similar are NOT supposed to be given the same benefits in dialogues that happen to be crucial for the storyline

I want to see the effects of my maxed out Diplomacy and Sense Motive. And, yeah, my skyhigh willsaves as well. Raw charisma stat could make some difference as well. Look: my 16 INT 17 WIS 18 CHA paladin doesn't really use the same pick-up lines as some mentally handicapped barbarian whose closest thing to a talking skill is Intimidate (Str). Yeah, I know it won't be D&D, but they'll have to have some kind of stats and probably skills as well.

Next, if we are at romances, let the plot be convincing. Storyline-driven, or rather main-quest-storyline-driven romances are great if handled properly (give me Bastila romance IRL and I'm out of the pool ), but they need to be at least a bit less uniform and stress some of each Charname's undividual characteristics. Just to avoid the feeling that everyone could do that in the same shoes.

Side-quest-driven romances, or critter romances should be way more convincing than they are in games that have been made.

Well, and they really should be more discriminative, those romance NPCs. People have some turn-ons and turn-offs, you know... Give them some. Perhaps varying difficulty of the romance, and some romance plot adjustments depending on those?

Ah, and I liked those special reward titles and perks in Fallout. They could make some. For example: "Expert Saviour of Damsels in Distress", "Irredeemable Evil", "Lawhound", "Grammatical Moron of the Week"

 

Even if it may be a contradiction: "realistic magic".

If spell casting is memory-based, like in the Forgotten Realms, to have the ability to cast spells by reading them directly from your spelbook if the need arises, as seen in some Forgotten Realms books. After all, isn't your spellbook a big collection of magic scrolls? You should be able to use them if you wanted too, even if that meant the spell to be deleted from the book (scroll destroyed in the process). You could delete spells in Tob, why not giving them a use instead?

Alternatively, the ability to learn spells and witout having to rest a whole night to be able to use them. You could rest for 4 hours and learn half of your load of spells, for example, or re-learn spells while another party member is scouting ahead or something like that.

The ability to write scrolls of the spells that you know, please. What genius thought that it would be cool if THIEVES could write scrolls (even without knowing the spells) but MAGES, who are supposed to do this every time they copy a spell in their spellbooks, couldn't?

 

Well, there's no need for any connection of magic with sleeping. Except, perhaps, regenerating mana or some such. KotOR's Force system was great, btw. Maybe they could copy it for DA...

 

Kotor's force system is the very basic mana pool, it's even blue. Nothing special about that in my opinion. I prefer memorizing spells over that system any day.

 

Eh - mana sucks. Sleeping kinda sucks too. How about more of an exhaustion meter, and when your mental and physical stamina is running out due to casting, you can't cast any more spells and feel nagative physical effects, as well as changing dialouge options

 

Well, considering the name: Some Dragons?

 

To tell ye the truth, I think that to be realistic, there must be a fairly large party, not the two-man show as that in NWN but those that are in Dungeon Siege and BG2.
Think about it, when did it ever take a single man to bring down an entire cult of fanatical demon worshipers?

Next, I think the Elves (if there are any), should be at least as tall as a human right? I mean, when was there a time when Drow would have to look UP at a human? Or a Sun Elf looking UP to a Man?
Yeah yeah, it is against the D&D stuff, elves being short and stuff, whatever...

I want to see detailed armour, and weapons. I mean, there must be different makers of weapons out there right? And at least, make the combat nicer than the usual hero standing on the spot and dodging by siftig from right to left...yawn. Boring!
Want a good example of a fighting stance? Look at those of the Dark Elves in Lineage 2!!!

 

In contrast - I say a small party, maybe with the ability to give limited orders to large numbers of people if the situation ever arrises. If it was true turn based combat I would say only control the PC - but with the tactical real-time, I imagine that style would be rather boring if combat was plentiful.

(edit: Hmm, I just read that your idea of large party is 6 ... I was thinking 15 - 20 ish being large)

 

Better enemy AI. For example, you blast a whole room clean with a fireball, then you hack the standing enemies to pieces in melee. But the enemies next door don't even notice the noise of the fight and will just wait for you to open the door. Or the cheesy "Open door - Cast Area Spell - Close Door - Wait for foes to die". How about giving the enemies the ability to call for reinforcements, or at least, to hear what happens in nearby rooms and to know how to open doors?

 

Bioware already mentioned they wanted a basic party of 5 or six for dragon age. Which in my opinion is great, but there must be unique NPC's (minsc and edwin).

Reagents is still my #1 choice for the magic system.

 

I like it when you "roll up 6 random yahoos". Baldur's Gate (with a protagonist) was fun, and even KotOR was fun. But I'm ready to role play a party, again. Pre-generated characters (known as NPC's) are fun, especially when there's party banter going on. But I'd like the option to play with a full party of my own choosing, and even "dropping" one of my people off in the pub while I carouse with some nasty little drow chick for a little while.