A revamped friendship/rivalry system for the next DA game

Some thoughts

Add Agree and Disagree to the meter, to take the edge off the players a bit and so getting or losing approval means more (instead of losing 10 approval for every small thing you said that they might disagree with).

Friendship and Rivalry being a Status Effect that lets you know where you stand with a follower when you click on their profile, as apposed to DA2.

I liked how DAI handled it actually. It recognized when people agreed or disagreed, but the meter was hidden. That's how it is in real life, it isn't a quantifiable statistic that we should be able to measure. Although, DAI can still improve on it. I do not want to see rivalry/friend meter. I find it ridiculous.

I thought the idea behind friendship/rivalry was good but the implementation, like every approval meter, sucked. Merrill's approval is literally just about what she does with the mirror. Sebastian's is about whether he picks the Chantry or serving as prince. Isabela's is about whether she decides to become more altruistic. Anders is about whether he accepts or rejects Justice's influence.

Aveline and Fenris' approval are the only ones that worked as advertised, and even then, I don't think the meter was necessary. They could have scrapped it, given every companion a "Merrill moment", and used that to determine the relationship.

I agree on that, the end result was not great, and the rewards at the max level lead to what you said.. Which is why I think a double scale system would work best.

One of the dragon age devs publicly said a while back (I think before DA:I released) that they had considered and rejected a multi-axis approval system because it would get too complicated, for both the devs and players.

Personally, I think they should scrap a unified, continuum-based approval system altogether. Instead, how companions feel about you or certain actions you take should be based on specific, discrete things you've done or said in the past. I think this would allow greater freedom for devs to choose how companions react to your in-game actions (instead of forcing everything to fall somewhere on a continuum of approval and disapproval) and have the potential to feel more natural less game-y. On the other hand, it would likely involve much more work for the devs to track and logically figure out how to deal with all the different possible branches, which is why it will probably never happen.

Only to "game" the system through prior knowledge.

The thing I enjoyed is how it allowed the player to role play and characters surrounding the player would react to it.

I can start anti mage and go pro templar, and if that changed perceptions of hawke by the other characters it was perfectly fine. Striving for rewards and crisis points going one way or another is just consequence of my actions.

I always thought the whole point of this was to let the player know whether they like you or not. With facial animation the way it is today, I don't think we need that sorta thing. It feels also very gamey. "Oh look here is a progress bar, go fill it up."

Just felt I had to point out that whilst she acts like an immature teenager, according to World of Thedas she must be at least in her mid-twenties during Inquisition because she was around during the 5th Blight. In fact she had already left the house of Lady Taraline, the woman who pissed her off over the cookies, and that person was said to have died "well before the Blight". Sera also confirms she was around during the Blight and, also from WoT2, it would seem she didn't leave Denerim for Val Royeaux until after it was over. Anyway, even if she was only in her early teens when the Blight struck, that would still make her in her twenties at the beginning of DAI.

With regard to this thread, the bit I didn't like about the friendship/rivalry in DA2 was the lock-in when you reached a certain point on the scale. This meant that even if your Hawke started to change their thinking about certain issues, companions still acted like you were the same as always. This was particularly noticeable with my first Hawke and Anders. I played it that this Hawke started off very pro-mage freedom, supportive of Anders and generally doing things that he approved of, meaning that by the end of Act 1 my rating on the friendship scale was so high that shortly after Act 2 began, I was locked in. However, Hawke started having second thoughts about some of the issues and being more moderate in their outlook but Anders still assumed I was a 100% on his side and nothing I did made any affect on this.

By contrast I started off heading for rivalry with Fenris, only prevented from getting to the point of no return by being supportive of him on some other issues. So when Hawke started to question her previous stance on some issues, it was noticeable that the meter started to swing to friendship with Fenris. It took almost to the end of Act 3 for it to reach the point where he declared his love for mage Hawke but that actually made sense.

I also felt that there should have been some issues where regardless of where you were on the scale, locked in or not, the companion should have walked out if you did something that was so contrary to their moral outlook that they couldn't stay. I've never given Fenris to Denarius but I know that not a single companion will leave you for doing so. Sebastian in particular should have drawn the line at that action but what about Isabella or Merrill? Making verbal complaints and then doing nothing is not the same.

Of course the other ridiculous thing was Hawke able to be a blood mage and it not affecting your relationship with Anders, Fenris or Sebastian.

I don't mind a visible approval bar. It's not like it being invisible stops people from gaming the system - there are whole charts on the wiki detailing exactly how much each companion approves/disapproves of your actions in DAI even though for the first time we don't have numbers floating up on the screen or a high/low bar, so obviously there's still a way to find out and people will do that. I like a visual representation of where I stand in each character's eyes.