Dragon Age The Veilguard Criticism Thread (formerly Skepticism Thread) [Spoilers]

The uproar wouldn't be so loud but it would still be considered a mark against the game if Taash so much as hinted at it. Let's not pretend otherwise.

The culture war sucks. One side defends poor quality and calls criticism bigotry, and the others gotten so defensive that they call anything 'woke' at the drop of a hat. Just look at Ghosts of Yotei. We got one trailer and culture war descended like vultures. 

I've never visited 4Chan. I understand it's dreadful.
This thread runs to over 200 pages, on the whole it is indeed people expressing their personal opinions in a reasonable way.

We shouldn't pretend that this thread hasn't on occasion generated deeply offensive content.
Such content sits in a 'sin bin' in the moderators' area and many of the posters who produced it are no longer here.
I think it's fair to say that this thread generates more 'reports' than the rest of BSN put together (checks report data from the last month, 59% are this thread).

It's a shame that over the last 4 months a good deal of 'culture war bigotry' has drowned out both genuine praise and genuine criticism, making a civil discussion difficult to hold. Welcome to the modern internet, I guess.

So I'm to understand that the Antivan Crows, Thedas' elite assassin's guild, was ambushed by an Antaam patrol at a supply drop. I am supposed to believe that the hulking brutes that you can see from miles away ambushed trained assassins renowned for their stealth and recon abilities. Not the Ben-Hassrath, not lithe warriors of their own, but herculean brutes accomplished this.

They just write events to happen. They don't write factions or characters. That's what's wrong with this game.

I always go by these 8 points that were hammered into my head in English class in what could roughly constitute bad writing.Not my article but a good read regardless.

1. Lack of clarity

Bad writing tends to talk a lot, but without getting anywhere. This is why a bad piece of writing work is usually boring and confusing to read. You might find yourself rereading a sentence or a paragraph because you couldn’t make sense of it.



2. Pompous verbosity

Did you understand that? Neither can we understand much of bad writing! One common flaw of amateur writers is that they try to use difficult, flowery words, in the hopes of sounding smart. Instead, they end up becoming too wordy and complicated without getting anywhere near to communicating with their audience.



If you’re fond of using fancy words, that may be a warning bell. You can get around this by making a habit of choosing simpler synonyms. Better yet, run through your first draft at least one more time to see if you can simplify some of the terms you have used. Remember, the goal of writing is to communicate with your reader, so make sure your reader can understand you by using language that’s as simple as possible.



3. Wrong choice of words

A clear giveaway of a poor writer is when you choose the wrong word to use. This can be a common mistake for English homophones. For example, one pet peeve I have is when writers put “The cat chased it’s tail” instead of “The cat chased its tail,” or “Your lazy” instead of “You’re lazy.”
Other times, a writer might use words that mean almost the same thing, but not exactly, and instead give themselves away as not a native English speaker. For example, calling a park bench a chair, or not knowing the difference between a mug, a cup, or a drinking glass—the difference may be minute, but it can make or break a piece of writing.



4. Overuse of clichés

Metaphors make writing come alive in the readers’ imagination, but when they are used too often, they can become clichéd. Besides, re-using other people’s metaphors shows that you are lazy to think up of your own. Clichés can ruin good writing as one rotten apple can spoil a barrelful. (See what I mean?)



5. Incoherence

Another sign of bad writing is when the piece has awkward or obviously forced transitions. This can be caused by the writer himself not being clear from the get-go about where he’s going. Or it can be a paragraph or thought that’s left hanging or not explained well. Remember, your reader can’t read your mind, so you need to make sure you explicitly say what you mean to say.



6. Lots of filler words or padding

Amateur writers not only make mistakes choosing words, they may also make the error of adding too many unnecessary words. We call these words fillers or padding. For example, you might find yourself using the words “simply” and “interestingly” too often. One tactic is to try to strike off some of the words in your text: if the meaning remains the same, the word is redundant; get rid of it.



7. Use of weak words

Another way that a writer can fall into weak writing is by using weak words. These are words that can be expressed more clearly by using more descriptive alternatives.



For example, instead of saying that he “ran fast,” you might use a stronger verb, such as “sprinted” or “galloped.” Instead of saying she “walked away,” you might use a more descriptive verb, such as “traipsed,” “ambled away,” “skipped off,” or “sauntered.” This way, you create a clearer picture in your reader’s mind.



8. Lack of impact on the reader

Last but not the least, we believe that another important sign of bad writing is that it does not impact your reader in any way. Now, this is a bit more difficult to gauge, because you won’t be able to do it until you actually get someone else to read your work.



Hear me out. Granted, writing is not all about the reader, but at its very essence, we write because we want to communicate an idea. If we try to get our idea across without making any sort of impression on our audience, did we succeed? I dare say we have not. Truly great writing is one that sticks with the readers, and if possible, even drive them to action.



So why would any piece of writing not have any effect on another person? Possibly, it’s because it’s unrelatable. If you think about some of the novels that you count among your favourites, chances are, you could relate to the characters and feel what they felt.



This is an important key for writing memorable pieces: find a way to bring the reader into what you want them to experience. It could be by sharing your deepest heart and thoughts. It could be by describing a situation using all the senses. The most common writing adage “show, don’t tell” has ultimate wisdom: when you show, you invite your reader to respond to what you’re showing instead of telling them how they should feel.

I'm surprised the number isn't higher.

Just going to say here that this is not always the writer's fault but the way they have been educated. I don't know about the rest of the world but here in the U.K. when they revamped the English GCSE yet again a few years back, there seemed to be an emphasis on hitting certain types of grammar within your writing. So simple sentences were not sufficient to gain marks, you needed to use longer sentences broken up with commas, etc. Then they were also encouraging the use of longer, more bombastic terms rather than saying it in as straight forward language as possible. So you had these students writing really long, complex sentences, with loads of metaphors and descriptive words, that combined made absolutely no sense. Yet somehow the lecturers were giving them good marks for this. What was really ironic was that out in the wider world they had spent years encouraging firms to use plain English when dealing with the public so it was as easy to understand as possible. Anyway, if this was a trend across the English speaking world, I'm not surprised if young aspiring writers were left thinking they needed to overdo the pompous verbosity.

This whole game is like an incredibly rough, not well thought out first draft.

I agree with that, but to a certain extent, because if there was any users here with nazi avis I'd sure as fuck report them (but that is of course a very unusual case)

It's exactly as you say. No sources that we know can back up this claim. It seems to be mostly speculative clickbait to farm views. You can infer from the fact that BioWare and EA have said nothing about the sales good or bad that their numbers are middling at best. Low steam numbers and no mention of the console sales yet either. And I do find it strange that they haven't even given us another 'within expectations' spiel. You can't say emphatically that their numbers are poor, but the optics are god awful at the moment. 

I don't think sales are super low. The game had a lot of pre-orders and unless a lot of people refunded it on Steam, I don't think Veilguard is a dud financially. But I agree that is sales were strong EA would probably have announced that.
Don't know what good or poor sales are for EA though. Those publishers sometimes have whack expectations. Maybe one day we'll get numbers. I couldn't even begin to guess a number.