Aaryn Flynn says: We Have Learned From The Mistakes of Inquistion....

How private is it, if it's on a million screens? 

Frankly, I'd rather Bioware made nude scenes completely optional (I seem to recall threads on this back on the old forum)

After all, what if I don't want my character to have that kind of relationship with suchandsuch character?  Or what if I do but want them to wait to have sex?


 Or heck what if I simply don't want to "see the sausage being made" winkwinknudgenudge 

I put nothing past Bioware at this point.  They seem to have become experts at missing the point.

And the one time I played TW1, I had Geralt not trust Triss at all...

I also said Bioware has become an expert at only looking at the surface and missing deeper points.



Agreed



Romance Cassandra and see if you can skip the nudity. A whole Triss-like conversation is going on!



He is not for me. I can appreciate the Witcher games are well-crafted. But no, he, and the setting, are not for me. And I'd hate to see other settings and characters become more like it.

Ideally, yes. But that has not always been the case.


I figured that out around ME3. But a game that wants "Call of Duty" sized audiences is going to have to make allowances.

Many reasons. For example, someone telling you about the game and the character.

It is the former, actually. But way to go trying to discredit someone else's viewpoint. 
They wanted to establish that Geralt and Triss were really close with each other, and him simply having sex with her does not show that regardless what CDPR think. Especially when he can have sex with multiple women throughout the story thus making the whole "They had sex because they are special to each other" lose any impact since then its not any different than some random woman. 

Geralt can have sex with virtually every named female character in the first game.  Including a woman trying to teach him elvish.  Heck he came off as rude and dismissive if he turned down offers of sex

Clearly, Geralt is in a LOT of very close relationships  

Ah, I see. I don't think that will be the case here however, since this is the first game so no previous game variables to worry about. 

It's going to depend on what difficulty you play on, as I imagine on the lower ones it's a lot easier to get by without consumables.

Something like the fight against Flemith in Origins is going to be virtually impossible to get by without your party taking damage because she does an AoE attack on a regular basis.

Against anything that can't just be CC spammed into submission is going to hurt your tanks on the higher difficulties and you're just expected to heal through it, unless you're running Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage as your tank which was a ridiculously overpowered build. Even then, many enemies had AoE attacks(especially dragons which did the wing flap AoE).



From what I remember, Mana doesn't actually regenerate all that quickly in combat and Stamina is even worse.

It's certainly nowhere near the level of Inquisition's regeneration.



The problem is that with DAI being so much easier, there's no real encouragement for me to manage my resources properly because I'm not going to suffer any big negatives for not doing so. That's been my main point.

There's nothing inherently wrong with tanks being a thing, BioWare just historically overtunes their balance and makes them way too unkillable while still being able to dish out heavy damage.

The only problem with DAO was that each potion was on its own separate cooldown. If they shared one, it wouldn't matter how many you were carrying.

Even games like WoW have moved to a design where tanks are capable of putting out some damage. Not as much as a pure DPS spec can, but enough that solo questing in the world isn't a complete pain in the ass to do. Blizzard has said tank damage should be ~75% that of what a fully DPS specced character does.

Though when your tanks have crazy durability you have to decide what enemy damage output is going to be balanced around. Balance it around the average character and the tanks wont ever die. Balance it around the tank and tanks will be mandatory, because nothing else can take a hit and survive.

MMOs have largely decided to force the holy trinity on players and just balance dungeons/raids around tanks being the ones taking most of the damage while having a dedicated healer to keep everybody alive through AoE damage. It's not a design I personally mind, but I know a lot of single player RPG fans hate the holy trinity being mandatory in a game.

The other option would be to not go quite so crazy on giving tanks durability and make them more of a "tanky DPS" than a walking wall of impenetrable metal.

Yeah, for WoW it has a lot to do with how they handle damage output which, to be fair DAI does the same thing. It was one of the first RPG/Games I can think of where they decided 'yeah, you should be hit 99% of the time'. DAI throws out any concept of chance to hit (which I'm ok with, even like it). Pillars of Eternity took a middle of the ground approach with the whole hit, glancing, miss sliding percentages and all that.

Personally I'm a fan of damage mitigation and all that so I tend to like those systems. Though looking at DnD again (really like what they did with 5th edition) I've always been a big fan of the whole rogues are damage power houses 'in the right situation'. It's not so much Warriors doing the whole WoW 75% dmg of pure DPS non-sense. It's more like Warriors are 100%, and Rogues are 80% until they hit that sweet spot then it's cranked to 11 and shit gets real lol.

I dunno, always liked that more. It's a layer of tactics and thought that tends to be missing from MMO-esk systems. Positioning aside it tends to be more based off not screwing up timings and 'getting things down just right'. Which I enjoy too, just don't think it makes for the compelling single player stuff like ya mentioned.

Meh I think more options is better either way. If someone 'wants' to make a pure impenetrable wall that should definitely be an option but much like DnD that should very much be a full defense thing where your not attacking at that point. It's a tactic, and it can definitely change the tide when used right. aaand I dunno where I'm going with this anymore.

Kinda wish BioWare would make another DnD game though, using 5th edition. I miss those days.

I completely agree about the Fade Rifts, they were a huge case of wasted potential - a phrase I find myself using much too frequently around Bioware games. They have lots of good ideas, but sometimes the execution falls a bit flat. Fade Rifts should have been fewer, scarier, harder, and more impactful, like you said. Even something simple like having demons attack nearby villages (in appropriate areas) and stopping once you closed the rifts, similarly to Skyrim's dragons (hey, they said they took inspiration from it) would have added much-needed urgency to the task of closing them. Instead, they're everywhere, not overly dangerous, and don't affect almost anything. I also agree that DA:I could have gotten the "It's the end of the world!" vibe across much better. A lot of people talk about it, but show us, don't tell.

It's hard to say exactly what the cam distance is in ME:A, but I really hope it's adjustable this time around. I found it a bit too close in ME3, and in MP if my character was large, they blocked half the screen, which sort of defeats the advantage of the 3rd person perspective.

That point has definitely been made, and while I'm not entirely convinced by it, it makes some sense. But that only applies at the beginning/to the Hinterlands. Why should The Inquisitor continue to do menial tasks? Especially when you're the only person who can close rifts (which is why I think it still applies to the Herald).

I don't think that comment was really about pacing, but rather about the classic quality versus quantity debate regarding quests.

I think it's less about players not being able to control themselves and more about hoping that the next quest they pick up won't be as boring/unimpactful as the last. "Maybe this one will be interesting!" At least on a first playthrough, when you have no idea what will be boring and what won't until you finish them, nor which will affect the story/companions.

I don't know, usually I find you can plow ahead mindlessly in Inquisition...

Agreed, I've seen way too many over-corrections not to be worried  I'll only be able to make an opinion about this when the game is out.

Well... don't get too excited. That could literally mean "Yes, there is a relationship that has that option" not that it would apply to most. And then it has to be one you like. It's hard to know from a "yep". For what it's worth, I'd like the option of delaying/skipping sex in romances, for various reasons. I mean, it's just bad roleplay otherwise, for one. I don't like having my characters railroaded into when they want to do it.