Dragon Age II

I've noticed that when set to "Very High DX11", there is a nice Parallax effect on the stone tiles of the courtyard at the Kirkwall docks. The edges of the tiles almost look 3d on the ground. When set to "High DX11", this effect is gone. So, there is one difference between High and Very High.
 
Yeah I saw that. Seems kind of lame. Parallax mapping (which I assume they're doing) isn't something which should have to be reserved for "Very high". If they're doing actual geometry, that's even more stupid (as in, why don't they fake it at the lower settings). I dunno, it's just odd. There's no reason for the floor to look flat, ever.
 
I think I'm going to be pumping more con into my mages. I've been doing +2 magic, +1 willpower per level. But looking at it again I'd rather have more hp than mana at this point.
 
Dallows said:
Yeah it's the animations.
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Autoattacks constitute a far larger portion of your overall damage in this one. Warriors attacks all cleave and everybody hits very fast and quite hard. Abilities still hit much harder, but I find that the balance between them and normal attacks is more even. In my last playthrough of Origins, I just roflstomped everybody with blood wound spam off my mages. Mana clash enemy casters, stun lock big bosses, mage abilities were just overpowered. They had too much control, did too much damage, provided too good of buffs and really just made the game pathetically easy.

I'd say my favorite thing about DA2 is that I like playing classes other than mages. I hated virtually all of the rogue's mechanics in Origins and my warrior always played nothing more than the role of meat shield while my mages ripped shit up.
 
Johnked6 said:
I think I'm going to be pumping more con into my mages. I've been doing +2 magic, +1 willpower per level. But looking at it again I'd rather have more hp than mana at this point.
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Early on, I felt like willpower was a good investment, but once I got it to around 25, I found my mage never running out of mana even if I used all of my abilities all cooldown. At that point I started to focus more on magic and constitution. One thing to notice if you are using Anders is that most of his support abilities (haste, heal, panacea, shit like that) don't scale with magic at all. So it's not like in Origins where you just want to pump the magic stat through the roof because not everything scales with it. Keep it high enough so you can equip the best equipment, but keep in mind that many support spells are now percentage based and do not scale with magic.
 
Ok so I checked the map of Kirkwall (where I can switch between night and day etc), there is absolutely no Black Emporium there anywhere. It said I successfully redeemed it on Bioware's site. Obviously I must be missing something. Should it automatically download it for me or do I need to do it? I got the sword and shield fine without having to do anything...

Looking back at their page I am finding it extremely difficult to see anything that says I already redeemed them and how to access it...Ugh
 
You have to download it manually even after you redeem the code. Did you do that?
 
GriMReapeRAK said:
Yeah I tried High DX11, but I was still getting an average 30-40 fps, which I thought was odd. Are you using SSAO also, or no? I'll probably try a clean install of the latest beta drivers when I get home.
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I am using ambient occlusion, though I had to set my anisitropic filtering to 4 since in this title, if you've enabled high res textures, it has a big impact both visually and performance wise.

Rarely is anisitropy this effective. If you've got the high res texture pack enabled then in DX 11, on High, set your anisitropy to 0 and look at the ground tile in Kirkwall - pay attention to the tile in the distance. Now bump it up to 16. It's a noticeable difference. And it's also pretty demanding on your system.
 
Its well known that 4chan organized the raid on that site to generate the low review.
 
I really really hate the difficulty issue with this game. Pick a fucking difficulty level and keep with it! I shouldn't go from easy as hell mobs to bosses that are fucking hard! Ugh.
 
Derangel said:
I really really hate the difficulty issue with this game. Pick a fucking difficulty level and keep with it! I shouldn't go from easy as hell mobs to bosses that are fucking hard! Ugh.
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Maybe if you just stay on Hard then the boss battles will be easier?

I find that Hard forces you to find the most effective leveling path. I might have to restart (I'm only about two hours in, though I spent a lot of time re-playing up to the ogre battle with various party setups), because I have a feeling that my party has not been leveled well.

I like it that the game, on Hard, is forcing me to think, and learn all about it. What I need is for my game guide to arrive in the post. Damned Amazon sent it ground shipping. Ground shipping!
 
KenG10 said:
Its well known that 4chan organized the raid on that site to generate the low review.
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Which doesn't help gamers much.

I don't have much respect for people who do things like that. Gamers should help each other out, not attempt to provide misinformation like this.
 
WabeWalker said:
Maybe if you just stay on Hard then the boss battles will be easier?

I find that Hard forces you to find the most effective leveling path. I might have to restart (I'm only about two hours in, though I spent a lot of time re-playing up to the ogre battle with various party setups), because I have a feeling that my party has not been leveled well.

I like it that the game, on Hard, is forcing me to think, and learn all about it. What I need is for my game guide to arrive in the post. Damned Amazon sent it ground shipping. Ground shipping!
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Right now the boss battle I'm at is forcing me to use the worst mage in the game and I can't really sacrifice Varric or Aveline to use a mage that actually has a healing spell. The AI is also so damn stupid that they will just stand there and take hits instead of bloody moving unless I tell them too, yet when the character I'm controlling needs to be micromanaged I don't exactly have time to deal with moronic AI.
 
Stiffy said:
Ok so I checked the map of Kirkwall (where I can switch between night and day etc), there is absolutely no Black Emporium there anywhere. It said I successfully redeemed it on Bioware's site. Obviously I must be missing something. Should it automatically download it for me or do I need to do it? I got the sword and shield fine without having to do anything...

Looking back at their page I am finding it extremely difficult to see anything that says I already redeemed them and how to access it...Ugh
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Go to the Bioware social site:
http://social.bioware.com/user_home.php

Login with your account, then hover over "My profile" and click on "Your registered game promo's."

This takes you to all the game promos. You should see the Black emporium and other things in here. Click on "more info - pc (or mac if you are using that) and it will let you download it there.

Unlike Dragon age: Origins some of these things (Black emporium/exiled prince, etc) don't install automatically wehreas some are already installed with the game.
 
Derangel said:
I really really hate the difficulty issue with this game. Pick a fucking difficulty level and keep with it! I shouldn't go from easy as hell mobs to bosses that are fucking hard! Ugh.
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Mmmm. This actually makes me somewhat more interested in the game. I really enjoy running into extremely hard encounters randomly. I loved walking into the cathedral in Wiz 8 and getting overwhelmed by death knights, elementals, witches and that demon bitch. Especially after the easy grind that was the rest of the zone. Good times.
 
Ugh. The ancient rock wraith is wrecking my face. I'm playing on hard with a mage(with the heal spells), Varric (archer), Carver (2h warrior), and Aveline (tank). My problem is Carver is such a liability in this fight, and lucky for me he's my best dps. He's awesome for when the adds show up because he can mow them down easily, but when it's just the boss he's useless.

The best I've managed is to just suicide Carver at the start, then take 10 years to dps the boss down. Without Carver, pretty much only Aveline takes damage. I've got him to about 1/4 health, then that add phase overwhelmed my 3 characters. Any ideas?
 
I pumped some con into my mages and gave them Rock Armor for an addition 25% damage reduction. This seems to be helping them survive a bit more without being thrown around like a ragdoll. An additional plus is that rock armor looks great, they're encased in stone from the neck down.
 
WabeWalker said:
Which doesn't help gamers much.

I don't have much respect for people who do things like that. Gamers should help each other out, not attempt to provide misinformation like this.
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Misinformation as in providing what looks like real reviews? No one forced 4chan to do this, they are doing it because THEY honestly dislike the game. Which seems to be the opinion of many people out there.
 
Gotta say, I trusted you guys on here and bought the game. It's really fun and thankfully, much better than the demo.

I'm curious though, is SLI supported in DA2? I'm getting like 40fps with my GTX 580s in SLI.

Running high res texture pack and all.
 
CryingGod said:
Misinformation as in providing what looks like real reviews? No one forced 4chan to do this, they are doing it because THEY honestly dislike the game. Which seems to be the opinion of many people out there.
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You think 4Chan gives a shit one way or the other if the game is good? They're doing it be be douche bag trolls. The "opinion" is based on a rushed demo and whatever other BS is floating around. Most people that have actually played the game seem to like it.
 
Derangel said:
You think 4Chan gives a shit one way or the other if the game is good? They're doing it be be douche bag trolls. The "opinion" is based on a rushed demo and whatever other BS is floating around. Most people that have actually played the game seem to like it.
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My RL friend bought it and says it plays like a button masher, I said hey, I want to play a RPG, not Super Street Fighter 4.
 
Fail said:
My RL friend bought it and says it plays like a button masher, I said hey, I want to play a RPG, not Super Street Fighter 4.
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PC or console? If you're button mashing on the PC you're playing on easy.
 
I will just leave this here:

xkhUI.png


Complain too much about the game on the BiowarEA forums and lose it altogether.
 
TheNuker said:
I will just leave this here:

xkhUI.png


Complain too much about the game on the BiowarEA forums and lose it altogether.
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Ouch. Thats going to make some people pissed. I understand why they want to curb people spamming and abusing the report post button, but wow.
 
There's something else that I have found disappointing about DA2: there aren't any good puzzles. Every good Bioware RPG has a few good puzzles in it to break up the monotony of constant combat. Aside from a short stint in the fade where I had to laboriously stack barrels for attribute bonuses, there hasn't been a single puzzle in this game.

I might be the only person who misses those though.
 
Yeah, so you don't really own the game, and if you say something bad about the game on their forums, they can strip you of access to the game/DLC you've purchased.

Awesomeness, makes me want to buy their game and all the DLC.
 
krameriffic said:
There's something else that I have found disappointing about DA2: there aren't any good puzzles. Every good Bioware RPG has a few good puzzles in it to break up the monotony of constant combat. Aside from a short stint in the fade where I had to laboriously stack barrels for attribute bonuses, there hasn't been a single puzzle in this game.

I might be the only person who misses those though.
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I don't mind puzzles, though it doesn't bother me too much. I do kind of a miss running across a Tower of Hanoi puzzle.
 
Fail said:
Yeah, so you don't really own the game, and if you say something bad about the game on their forums, they can strip you of access to the game/DLC you've purchased.

Awesomeness, makes me want to buy their game and all the DLC.
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Umm what? It might help to read. It has zero to do with posting on the forums.
 
KenG10 said:
Its well known that 4chan organized the raid on that site to generate the low review.
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and g4 gave it a 3/5 mediocre at best. Thats them saying if you dont have anything really nagging for a buy..get this.

I cant believe people are defending this game even if you love the story, combat etc the game has as many bugs as most mmo's do at launch. It tirelessly recycles area's and has the pacing of a cat some one set fire to.

for such a big budget studio it feels like something an indi European developer would plop out.
 
Winwolf said:
and g4 gave it a 3/5 mediocre at best. Thats them saying if you dont have anything really nagging for a buy..get this.

I cant believe people are defending this game even if you love the story, combat etc the game has as many bugs as most mmo's do at launch. It tirelessly recycles area's and has the pacing of a cat some one set fire to.

for such a big budget studio it feels like something an indi European developer would plop out.
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Outside of issues with performance in some cut scenes I have exactly zero technical issues. The recycled areas are annoying and I really wish they didn't do it. Not a game killer for me, but its really poorly done. Pacing is fast, but its better than DAO's main plot and better than what passed for a main plot in ME2. However I play games to have fun and if I'm having fun I'm happy.
 
Nightmare is starting to get a littler easier now. I think I've passed the worst of it. Once you get enough abilities to flesh out your party things aren't as brutal. I'm only level 9 and haven't been to the deep roads yet though so there's still lots more to see.
 
Yeah I turned off the occlusion setting, left everything else maxed out and I'm back to over 60fps consistently. Really loving it. I like the new style but I also loved DA:O so....this is refreshing.
 
has anyone else noticed that Fenris is basically the Dragon Age version of Raiden (from Metal Gear Solid)

Seriously. Look at him and check out his backstory. It's a complete rip off.
 
quackduck said:
has anyone else noticed that Fenris is basically the Dragon Age version of Raiden (from Metal Gear Solid)

Seriously. Look at him and check out his backstory. It's a complete rip off.
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Raiden was a slave elf with lyrium burned into his skin? Seriously though, yeah I can see it. Though its not exactly an original story.

Hm. The game's composer Inon Zur just outright said the game was rushed. As much fun as I'm having with DA2 I can see it. It doesn't feel as poorly rushed as the demo was, but there are things that really would have done better if the game had had a real development cycle.
 
Winwolf said:
for such a big budget studio it feels like something an indi European developer would plop out.
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The guy who composed the music said EA rushed the game out. That it was to cash in on the first game's success, and they wanted the sequel released now.

http://au.music.ign.com/articles/115/1154594p1.html

I'll freely admit I've never played DA2. But it's apparent to me from reading the user comments about the game, that it is subpar. Really pathetic for a so called Bioware title. Oh how the mighty have fallen. But truthfully it's the same studio in name only to the powerhouse it used to be. I get a kick out of the passionate defenders.
 
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