Throughout the series, what have you found to be the biggest, lingering gameplay issue?

I also miss this.

Mostly design of skills being how similar so many are, but I will admit that could be just a mage issue for that is my class of choice. At the same time the menus aren't the greatest either with as an example the cycling through Inquisition.  It just felt outdated.

I didn't say anything about getting rid of the pause feature.

its a fair point though I think ME did a good job as did Ghost Recon even if the party weren't that good characters. I rarely switch to play anyone else so switching I could easily do without. But maybe the solution to this is to have more robust tactical or strategic options.

The class system isn't really immersive or fun. Something needs to change honestly.

AI running past fighters unpunished to get at mage in melee. Maybe it was BG where that was severely punished, dont member. It was a bit better in DA 4 when mages could use dodge but that was a slot gone. Overall it developed to more action - less tactic and that worked but isnt everyones music.

I'm having a fair bit o trouble imagining how the same game could provide both time sensitive action combat and party tactics management.

There are a lot of games that offer great action combat, and very few that have any semblance of managing party tactics. I prefer DA focus on the latter, and would love the programmable tactics restored. I can satisfy my desire for action combat with a lot of other games.




That aspect was a lot better in DAO. You could build a high-dex warrior to dual wield swords, and switch to a bow whenever you please. Rogues, too, could switch between melee and ranged weapons. Starting with DA2, they've curtailed that build flexibility and locked-in characters/classes to specific weapon/combat styles, apparently to make them more definitive.

For my part, all they ever needed to do was tweak and refine DAO's combat mechanics, and we'd have a winner.

Isn't it funny how the title is 'throughout the series" and "lingering gameplay issues" but most of the asks are to retread Origins? There's nothing necessarily wrong with that (though I plan on playing a little devil's advocate) but it seems strange that out of three games a good chunk of the discussion is about going back to one and doing it again. So, here's some thoughts.

Player programmable tactics scripts. Does anyone here have a reliable measurement for how many Players actually used these? I mean really utilized them extensively, much less tweaking and shifting with multiple battles? For me, it sounded great until I had to try to do anything and found out I wasn't as great a scripter as I thought I was. Mostly wound up just turning some things off in a default script. I really think this was an overly complex mechanic that wasn't used all that often and took the Player out of the game for too long to utilize well. I also think this ran afoul of balancing issues with those who utilized the expansive tactics scripts making it harder to balance encounter difficulty. Inquisition may have been too simplistic, but it was a step in the right direction in giving a one click way to keep your caster from hitting flaming demons with fire spells, for example. There has to be a better way to manage our party members than a menu of 250+ possibilities. (Yup, fired up an Origins game with a low level character and counted all the options for a blank slot). Surely someone's seen a better system between these two extremes.

Number of spells, talents, powers, whatever. I'll just be a voice of caution here. There are a number of powers in Origins that are either only marginally useful, busted, or unintentionally more powerful than higher level talents/spells because of the need to fill slots and the difficulty of testing the number of different powers and combinations across many different scenarios. Again, while Inquisition went too far, it would be much better for there to be a smaller set of well-tested, balanced, capabilities than to simply fill in a bunch of slots. My own take, expand the combinations beyond simply inflict a condition then allow a special with a follow up. For example, there's a passive spell in Inquisition that freezes opponents when the Barrier goes down. That was incredibly useful even if the opponents were cold resistant to slow down a mob and build other combo patterns. Including a few more active combos like that would be far better to me than more stand alone spells/powers.

Classes: witchcocktor, you can't drop a statement like that and not add at least some analysis or suggestions. Not that I disagree with you, but that's a pretty broad statement that begs for something more. in my own analysis, the current class structure pushes a couple of possible roles on each class with some spice added by specializations later. What is it you would prefer? Classes that start more as deepened specializations (i.e. start as a Templar with a bigger skill tree)? Or are you more in favor of a more classless system where many powers/abilities can be chosen to fit the role (for example a rogue that can pickup some particular spells that might be handy in stealth)? Or maybe something completely different? I care less about what weapons they can and cannot use and more about expanding the choices of roles so warrior types could slot into support, or mages could DPS, or rogues could tank, but all with a sensible build structure.

Player Skill: Yeah, no. I'm just not that kind of Player and never have been. I have no hate on for anyone who does want to see something more like that in a game but then there needs to be a way to 'opt out' of that and I don't know any good way to do that. Love to hear one though.

Melee attack animations: I thought Exodus did a better job with this unless you were a sword-and-board with Shield Defense engaged and that was a feedback mechanism. I did miss the shield attack routines from Origins and Exodus in Inquisition. I thought Inquisition did a fair job with its animations but if you would give some details, I would appreciate it. One thing to remember is animation as a feedback mechanism. If someone is fighting defensively (like a tank) then they shouldn't be too flashy on offense. Also, what's this about shields not blocking? I'm not sure I understand that as something DA has not done in the past.

kali: I'd like to hear more about the camera angles as well. I may not pay as close an attention to that as I should. Was it just in Inquisition or in the other games of the series as well?

Thanks all for the thoughts even (especially) those I don't agree with.

I'm curious. Would people be pissed if your character being magic inclined was just a character customization choice, as opposed to picking the mage class? I mean, to some degree we already have it whenever you pick a Dwarf character.