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

yeah companion AI in Inquisition was downright terrible.. I don't remember if it was quite that bad in DA:O or DA2. But that's definitely one thing I'd LOVE to see improved in DA4/DAD.

Biggest lingering gameplay issue?

That's easy, too much combat with too little quality.

I find it absurd to have to kill THOUSANDS of enemies to end the story and finish the game, and most of them being annoying filler mooks or even suicidal animals. There were only a handful encounters in the entire Dragon Age franchise I did enjoy because they were genuinely challenging because enemies behaved intelligently and had interesting unique abilities and weren't just health point sponges or endlessly respawning bandits or low level demons. Combat in Dragon Age has always been a chore that needed to be done and 99% of the enemies have always been little more than bumps in the road to slow you down. 

That's probably my main gripe with the Dragon Age franchise, exhausting annoying and extremely repetitive combat. 

Reused assets. Either create new ones or don't do whatever you were planning on doing at all. If the production value isn't there, so is my emotional investment. Harsh but true.

^^^

Bring back Gems from ULTIMA.

GPS has no business in DA. Game should have a manual, manual should have a map.

Need more detail? Use magic! Peer at a gem, or have some Clairvoyance ability. If I can pinpoint some object I am supposed to be searching for, there needs to be a reasonable in-game explanation (I stuffed a charm in my target's rucksack/placed a magical sign/whatever). Otherwise, I will need to follow clues and get to the general area according to the map.

Cloth Map of Thedas would be cool.

...

Moongates would be pretty dope too.

Decreasing player choice in terms of build as well as tactics.

Decreasing the meaning of 'hold'.

I don't mind having separate classes, mage v. non-mage is central to Dragon Age. 

DAO didn't have enough tactics, imo, so I always play with the mod 'Even More Advanced Tactics'. My companions know what I want them to do, and I don't have to switch to a different companion all the time. Now when I play, I usually only switch to a different companion when I want to do an AoE ability.

I also don't buy the 'only 8 abilities at a time because of consoles' argument. I first played DAO on a console and guess what? I could still access everything I learned. Used the hotkeys for my favored abilities, and had no problems using the wheel to access all the others. If they didn't know how to code it in FB, just say so. Or allow you to go into the tactics menu in combat and switch out the 8 tactics available at one time. In DAI my mages never use staves that match their specialization and they all have 'energy barrage', and probably a fire spell and an ice spell. That way they can inflict at least some damage no matter who we meet.

One thing DAI did right regarding tactics is separating health potions from the combat tactics. In DAO and DA2, the minute you add 'use health potion at 10% health' your tactics are custom and have to be updated with leveling up. Not a big think, but if people prefer to use the game's AI for companions (which the presets basically are) then separating potion use makes it more viable.

Warriors can't use any sort of bow. Why? Just seems silly to me, and is another example of decreasing choice.

Gifts are another weird issue. I don't recall any non-romance related gifts in DAI (good), but I think they were awkward in both DAO and DA2. It was too easy to get companion approval in DAO by spamming with gifts rather than talking to them. At least you could also give them gifts to earn disapproval (Sten's butterfly sword comes to mind). You could sell them instead of using them, and they didn't become a quest in your journal. DA2 had fewer gifts, but they all became quests. Meh. I prefer companion quests to gifts (romance gifts are ok).

Earlier, somebody mentioned reuse of assets. I don't have a problem with that if it's intelligently done and not blatant. The number of scenes in DA2 with twins, triplets, and even quadruplets .... 

The female elves are alright, but I definitely would not play a male elf past DAO.

They actually looked okay in DA2. They weren't quite as skinny as DAI's and the body was proportional.

Now the male elves have giant heads and weird man tiddies.

I always prefer to have no classes at all. I actually prefer the Skyrim system of your character simply being a 'person' who can go on to either specialise in one field - becoming a 'pure mage', or 'pure fighter' etc. or go down a 'Jack of all trades' route, allowing all kinds of strange builds - stealth battlemages in full plate, archer conjurers.. whatever works for you. Sure some of these 'geek builds' are suboptimal and don't lend themselves to min/maxing, but I don't care about any of that as long as I'm having fun and stuff dies when I hit it.

But that's just me.

Of course the Dragon Age universe is not the Elder Scrolls universe. Just 'deciding to learn magic' on a whim obviously isn't going to fly, you're either a Mage or you aint - but regardless I'd still prefer a little more open-endedness.

Like the poster above I found it ludicrous that a warrior could not equip a bow in DA:2 and DA:I - why not? What compelling arguments exist to prevent my warrior from switching to a bow when long range attacks are required? (other than 'duh! Game mechanics!). Origins didn't have this problem, and I was able to experiment a great deal more, and use far more flexible/sensible strategies for certain encounters (as anyone who used the classic 'everyone switch to a bow now' gambit against the early-game Emissary in the Kokari Wilds will testify).

So yeah, I'm not asking for all classes to be cast aside in a Dragon Age game, but a bit more flexibility and options would be nice.

I'm not sure there is anything throughout the series, since gameplay has changed so much between DA:O and DA2 and especially between DA2 and DA:I. I actually personally had very few gameplay quibbles with DA:O, but with DA:I... lots.

But there has been a general trend towards less variability of build, less character-focused (/more "actiony") combat, and far too specialized roles. I know if anything the new game is likely to go more in that direction, but I'd much rather see a return to more Origins-style combat myself.



I'd agree that the inconsistent portrayal of elves (and Qunari) is a problem; it's odd how different both look from game to game. But I think the female elves were just as much of a problem.

Actually, I suppose I would say that the automatically strong-looking male character and atomatically weak-looking female character is a persistent general problem in DA, and either having both more in-between or having an option would be great. Less to no gender-locked character creation options in general would be better.

It's not a Tolkien thing. This is Christopher Tolkien talking about his father:
So my guess is Tolkien wouldn't have liked Orlando Bloom's twink Legolas either. He even had elves with beards.