What would you like to see in Dragon Age?

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Well, if you're going to still have "divine" magic of a sort, have that type of characters' skill in that magic based on actions and how they relate to their deity. For example, Paladin (for lack of a better term) must perform X good deeds for the day or make Z choices in the encounters presented for their deity to be pleased enough to answer their prayers or look on them with more favor. Complex, yes, highly rewarding for a roleplayer, yes.

Next, have monsters or adversaries placed logically. For example, Hero A needs to save the town of B from ogre's. Well, don't just have random encounters of ogre's in the streets or in the woods - instead put a camp of ogre's out in the woods somewhere, give 'em a picket line (depending on the size and nature of their force), but have the rest setting up a tent, or making weapons. This actually aides in having meaning - you're not just killin' to soak up the xp - you're becoming somebody in a logical manner. Example "Here's Hero A, savior of Town X for fighting off the goblin horde, cleansing the local church of goblin excrement, and booting out the town bully."

I like plenty of Mary Poppins - esque containers - (Bags of Holding). Either that or give us a domicile for storing stuff in. Just figure out cool ways to let us carry stuff.

Knock off the cheese. I don't want the enemies to know what kind of stuff I'm defending myself with or can throw at 'em. Let them figure things out the same way I have to.

Tolkein's elves were as tall as humans if not taller - go with it.

Have people learn certain skills by doing - if you use that dagger a lot your skill in its use should go up, while that bow and arrow you've been neglecting....

Give characters the option to either dress their part (look like a paladin) or dress down (look like a commoner because your chainmail is concealed underneath a cloak).

Bah, that's enough for now.

 

I really enjoyed the ability to join guilds or factions in games like Planescape, or Morrowind. Something like that would really make the game more worthwhile in my opinion.

I also liked the open ended plot of Morrowind. If they can implement this (with a good main plot in the mix that you don't want to abandon for too long as in Morrowind) it would be great. (this may have been mentioned already...)

I agree with makeing magical abilities and powers more epic in this game. Maybe a fireball could hurl a goblin across a room or something? Could be fun.

 

Very important...the arcane casting classes should not be so insanely overpowered at higher levels, as they are in Baldur's Gate.

NWN was nice in the way how it made arcane casters mortal.

Some of the stuff I've been reading here is a bit too much of wishful thinking...kinda like people want an MMORPG, FPS, Adventure AND RPG game all mixed up in one utopian offering, and unfortunately, that would'nt be very practical in the long run.

What I would personally like to see in Dragon Age, is realism...in the world, such that you are drawn into it. Immersion is the name of the game, I would say.

 

I noticed that lots of you are talking about Dragon Age like it's going to be in AD&D, and in the same world as BG and IWD. Well, it's not. Bioware's making it's own world and rule system, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Yeah, and IIRC, that has nothing to do with how the game is.

Ever play Fallout?

 

Just a little thingy that popped up in my mind when Faraaz mentionned Fallout. How about Fallout-style character sheets you can save to an intelligible file or print out whenever you wish?

 

Focusing on movement:
Terrain should have a big effect on how you move. If you're going uphill, you should be slower. If you're travelling over a scree slope, there should be the possibility of you slipping (almost like the lich cave in Amkethran with the ladders). Dark Alliance 2's plane of air was great, you get terrified the whole way that you're going to be blown off. If you're walking into the wind, you slow, if you're walking with it, you speed.
If you go through a swamp, expect your feet to stick occasionally. Footsteps! You should see your footsteps in the moss or the knee-deep snow, at least until time comes along and fills them up with dirt and water or a fresh drift of snow. If you bear 300 pounds in your pack, no matter how strong you are, you're going to sink down into the ground and slow your movement. If you across rocks, then no footprints, but be careful you don't fall off any boulders.
Speaking of pack weights and sizes, you should not be able to carry large amounts of items. You could have a size limit to your pack instead of weight (or in addition to). If you have a lot of stuff, you're going to be puffing a little and your face will turn red. Or in the cold, you should see the frost on your facial hair (if any) and the breath rising in front of your blue face.
As for magic, take all the systems. You need mana, you need a scroll/spellbook, you need the components, the words, and the gestures (hard if you have a sword in your hand, eh? should have to put it away first). After a while, your mind won't be able to take the strain. Your lips might even get numb from the jarring words, and you can't cast verbally for a while, no matter how ready you are to cast. If you aren't strong enough, waving your hands about will wear you down and you won't be able to cast somatic spells.
On strength and such stats, the more you use these things, the better you should get. Starting out at 15 str in BG and ending with 15 str (without tomes or other magic aid) seems somewhat unrealistic.
Well, all for now. Food awaits. (Put some food into the game! Or at least chocolate Easter Eggs, he he)

 

Just fished this from the bioware boards. Sorry if this has been covered in one of your threads Chev. I don't know if you've read A song of Fire and Ice but if Dragon Age has but 10% of it's intrigue and/or atmosphere it will be one of the best stories ever created for a CRPG!

This may also mean a Mature rating which would be great. Imagine a story like Fire and Ice with the maturity of Fallout.

 

Has this been confirmed by Bioware already? Sure they haven't made a mature rated game yet. I'm not asking for blood and gore here more for a realistic and gritty (which is confirmed) atmosphere. In such atmosphere certainly belongs profanity and that would make it Mature rated.

Blackisle made a 2 mature games and I'm sure Fallout 2 was a financial succes for them, they had a family reputation also with Baldurs gate. And in my opinion the people who play PCRPG's are pretty much fed up with the always nice playing prancing little elves and other fairy creatures and I hope (and think) Bioware realizes that.

 

Classes:
Bards: Bards should be Jacks of All Trades, and decent jacks, too. Not those damn half dead jacks that are mute wizards, clumsy thieves and little else. I loved the insane lore that BG2 gave bards, it actually made them useful, but bards should be able to fight. If you actually look at history, bards or the like associated with an army used some lethal tricks like throwing longswords, playing insturments so loud and bad as to actually cause physical pain to the enemy, etc.
Paladins: Paladins should get a lot of bonuses in conversation. All goodly folk look up to them and all evil folk cower in their wake. Almost as good as fighters in combat, plus effective, but not to powerful, combat healers, blessers, etc.
Rangers: Rangers should be more like the combat rogue, snipe the enemy from a distance or hit hard and fast and get out. Spells or spell-like abilities are optional.
Mages: I would love to see an effective battle mage. Someone who could charge into battle with a (recently ignited) longsword, cleave an orc or two in half, let out a quick volley of magic attacks, and raise a mana shield just in time to block an attack. Magic in Fable often ended up being like this, and well so, but players should also be able to blast the enemy with epic levels of raw destructive force if they want to go that way.
Magic: I'm not even sure they should differentiate between divine and arcane. I'm not sure they shouldn't, but I'm not sure they should. Assume they do for the moment.
Divine: Divine magic should be the blessings from above type thing. The priest can call on their deity for aid whenever they want, but if the deity doesn't like what the priest is doing or thinks the priest is abusing the privelidge, (s)he should deny the spell. Maybe an increased chance of spell failure each time a spell is cast per day, but no other limitations.
Arcane: I've always thought arcane magic should be the raw manifestaion of will upon the physical universe, no incantations, no components, maybe scrolls describing the process, but those you could only learn from, not cast from. Magic should be fueled in this system by the caster's energy and thus drain and exhaust them, but a caster should only collapse after a spell as a last ditch effort to save lives or something.
Gameplay: Make decisions in the game have real, major, and obvious differences. No 'blue clothing instead of red means a particular town is destroyed' or anything, but if you cuss someone out, they probably won't sell you much any more and if you decide to sacrifice an innocent girl, her family may be a litte peeved. Same idea in romances. I like the idea of player initiated dialogue, but id you're trying to fondle the girl every 5 seconds, she may not like you so much anymore. On the otherhand, if you're always weeping about how hard the world is, another girl may not think you're particularly manly. Same kind of things for female players. Chevalier, you have the right idea. Custamizable equipment is a must. It's ok if there aren't many enchanted guisarmes in the game, but if you also can't get your own, that's a problem. Lots of effects on them, too. I want way more than +x and bonus fire damage. And not all should necesarily be practical. What if I want my holy paladin to glow in the dark? Or my evil necromancer to drip blood? And the cloak of displacement plus flametongue just look sooooooooooooooo cool on Minsc! Not just weapons and armor, either. Put those random bracers and rings and boots that you find to good use. And enchanted clothes. Nobody said mages HAD to wear robes, right.
Arenas and side games are a great idea as well. Actually, take a page from Final Fantasy here, especially FF VI and VII. Be able to bid on rare items, challenge reigning champions to duels, etc. BG2 started on this, but not nearly enough. While your at it, make animals hard. There's a reason people use huge traps and holes in the grount to hunt bears. If a professional soldier with a big game rifle risks his life going after a bear, your fighter with a scimitar and wooden shield doesn't stand a chance. Animals that are summoned should be useful, not just cannon-fodder.
Large prologues and epilogues are rarely a bad idea, especially if they are well done and don't become repeditive. Don't just let the game tell you what happens to a town, go there and find out. Resolve a few new problems, etc.
PC/NPC/Party: Character avatars and paper dolls (if applicable) should be highly customizable, and forget the anime style or the half-starved look BG2 gave all the elves. I want a fat elf with a cleft chin! Give my dwarven raider a few scars! Actually, Fable had a great system for this, if it had been applied to a real game not a proof-of-concept model. I don't know how applicable that would be, but customization is key. I also like what ToEE did for the party. you can start out with 1-5 players and pick up npcs to fill it up to 8. I don't like that npcs looted and refused to give you anything, and sold everything you gave them, and generally acted like jerks (that's why I killed them all), but being able to make a variable number of pcs and fill in npcs as desired is a good idea. Ofcourse, no romances or side-quests with pcs only, but the option of playing a 1 person party should be there, as should being able to make several characters.
Dragons should be HUGE, and powerful. Forget what D&D says, read Anne McCaffrey's PERN series, the largest gold dragon has a 1/2 mile (I think) wingspan! Admitadly, that's the largest dragon in the entire history of PERN, but still. Or even better, read Tolkein's Silmarillion. THe first and largest dragon crushes an entire mountain range when he dies! Think a dragon the size of the Appalacians! Ok, so maybe you'll never fight one that big, but no one said all dragons had to be the same size, there can be a wide variety of sizes. Demons should be seriously powerful as well. And liches should be nigh-immortal.
Pull lots of enemies and monsters from mythology and folk lore (accurately, D&D basilisks seriously piss me off) but also throw in lots of your own. The first gives a grand and epic feel while the second keeps players on their toes. In the end, just be creative, and I don't mean throw a whole bunch of random stuff together and call it a monster, but I loved the aliens in Fallout 2 in the well/mine. Those things were sweet! And remember, a random vampiric teifling flying squirrel that wanders the wilderness attacking everything in sight isn't out of place, just don't do stuff like this too much.
Have availability, but not necessity, for rogues to do lots more, too. I mean real assassin stuff. Hire yourself out to your target as an innocent clothes washer and then line all his/her clothes with traces of mercury for a few months, when his hair starts falling out and he rambles to himself in the halls at night, call in your good 'doctor' friend to treat him with tinctures. If it only gets worse, blame it on a random crone cursing him. Have her burnt at the stake. Secretly dance on their graves in the moonlight. Sorry, got a little carried away there.
I really did love the epic stories and random hits in the item descriptions in BG1&2. I especially loved the flametongue at the bottom of Durlag's tower, the one that 'doesn't quit fit your hand right' and 'seems like it wasn't made for you, or any humanoid...' Forget backing it up with more, just some random hints at ancient and alien races that once walked the earth as gods.
Grand vistas are important, too. I mean, there's the random cliff in the mountains and then there's the random cliff overlooking a fog-clouded valley with a waterfall falling into the mists. Its the little things that really make you fall in love with a game. Lots of easter eggs, too. Not game-changing things, but like skynet in Fallout 2. Montages to great fantasy writers, artists, thinkers of the past and such.

[ July 26, 2005, 07:47: Message edited by: CLSVABCH ]

 

NPCs.

There need not be thousands, but a few well developed NPCs that I can both relate to as well as like. NPCs that I remember years after playing the game: Minsc, Jahera, Dogmeat...Bioware is great at character and story development and total emersion in the game.

This little thing is what I want.

 

The problem with that is that the few NPCs may not be classes that you want, especially if you want a rather obscure group. The problem I had with BG2 was that the good characters weren't the classes I wanted. I wanted a good pure mage and a good pure thief. They just didn't exist.

 

I would like to see a distinct lack of suck-itude. You hear that Bioware?

Don't make the interface part of the challenge...

&

Don't ruin the plot so some frequent masturbator can realize his impotent dreams of being "evil"...

&

Less space-hamsters, please... I would like my girlfriend to respect me, at least somewhat... Boo is not helping me win arguements...

(on second thought...keep Boo...he's such a fuzzy-wuzzy-wuzzy)

 

I agree 100% with the first comment!

 

How about a game and storyline that doesn't REQUIRE that you have a thief on your team, but at the same time, thieves come in handy. No unavoidable hoasts of traps, not unless you're charging into a thieve's guild. No 'all powerful items are in locked and trapped chests', most uber-powerful items should be taken from corpses, either those you recently slew or those the dragon you just slew killed centuries ago. Who in their right minds puts the second most powerful sword they've ever seen in a locked and trapped box in the middle of a random cave? On the other hand, that thief would come in awefully handy to nick the map to the dragon's cave, or to sneak into the uber-rich collector's house and clean him out.

I would also like to see equal effort put into an 'evil' development and conclusion of the plot as is put into the 'good' one. Don't just side with the vampires and perform morally questionable/murky actions like murdering a bunch of murdering thugs. I want the option to burn down a town, and if I do, I want people after me, hunting me down. If people know it was me, ordinary people will shun me and refuse to deal with me, while certain darker persons may feel more at ease with me. If I save the town from being burnt down, I can hunt down the culpret, track their footprints in the snow if I get there soon enough and don't linger.

That's another issue. There should be time for exploration and just doing stuff, but if you're trying to save the world from an asteroid plumeting to a catestrophic impact (a little FF VII there), you aren't going on vacation in the tropics in the middle of it, and you aren't going to care if little miss whiner wants you to listen to her more. There are few things that annoy me more in BG II than when one of the romancers, IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE OR SIMILARLY DRAMATIC MOMENT, wants to talk.

 

LOL. I've only heard Texans use this phrase, and I thought it meant to get riled up and angry. Hmm...

I'll echo chev's bit about the PC's reputation. NPCs need to have memories. They need to hear gossip about the PC's actions; they need to remember things the PC has done, both good and bad. "Say, aren't you the bastard that robbed my neighbor?! Get the heck out of my store!" "Ah, you're the hero that saved the village, aren't you? In that case, I'm giving you a discount." Those sorts of comments are great. Not just lower prices because your reputation is higher.

They also should recognize equipment the PC is wearing or the PC's companions. "What are you doing with that bloke? He's a known thief and scoundrel! Get out of my store!" "Say, that's quite a staff you're carrying! Wait! I recognize that staff! It was the mage guild master's! You must be the guy who killed him and stole it! Guards!"

 

What would I like to see in Dragon Age?

The absence of bugs. Not the creepy-crawly kind, but the gamey-crashy kind.

 

DR, you hold the world to high standards. Patches aren't just released because game companies are too lazy/impatient to properly debug the games themselves. The other reason is that players, like you and me, ask for all kinds of crappy bonuses like ridable horses, NPCs that remember what you did, and the ability to actually be good or evil in the game. This means the game has to be so big and complex that it would take several years to properly debug it. Instead of making us hold our breaths for several years, the game companies decided to release versions of the game that are REASONABLY bug free and let the gamers playing it find any remaining bugs. Periodically, when enough bugs have been found and fixed, the company will release a patch to 'update' the game. After a few years, someone has probably tried every single thing possible in the game, and more than a few things not possible in the game, and reported any problems they have encountered. At this point, and ONLY this point, is the game considered to be truely bug free.

On the other hand, I would like it if my character didn't spontaneously explode all over the 'camera' the first time he talked to anyone.