Active abilities in ME:A (Updated)

I think a large part of the reason for some people's preference for DAI combat is the Goldilocks effect on speed (DAO was too slow, DA2 too fast).

Can you explain the posts you reference here (Fade's)? I guess I missed them, and am curious. One thing I will say about balance in DA combat design is that they are apparently very committed to push players to select balanced teams (at least one of each class). Rogues have been required to open locks since DAO, warriors lost the ability to dual-wield or use bows/crossbows and rogues could no longer equip swords or shields in DA2 (presumably to make rogues and warriors more distinct), and by DAI they were building barriers that require a specific class's talents to overcome.

Encounter design is just that. I mean, obviously having more individual enemies can give priority to crowd control / aoe skills, but ultimately it's some number of hit points distributed across some number of individual enemies (with the ability to inflict some amount of damage and de-buffs) that enter the combat zone at some rate. I guess what I'm getting at here is that your 'meat shields of Origin' and 'waves of enemies everywhere' in DA2 were products of encounter design that could have been changed even if the other mechanics of those games were untouched.

True, maybe i read too much into it. My mind wants more than 3 active powers in combat at the same time too much.

Ehh, great, now i'm skeptical again, i became happy too soon.

Right? People need to be more specific with their questions, and BioWare should be more specific with their responses.

Everything they've said recently about this, including the answer to that question, leaves it open to several interpretations.

1. You can access more than three abilities, but not while in combat.
2. You can access more than three abilities, even while in combat.
3. You can access more than three abilities, but they're counting "alternate modes" as additional abilities.

Hopefully it's number 2. Number 3 would be really lame, and some bullshit marketing double-talk.

Sorry for the poor question skills but I realized, way too late, that I should have mentioned something about combat. 

I understand that they don't want to show gameplay yet. But it's really just plain annoying that they won't say how this works. That wouldn't "reveal" anything or spoil it.

The only reasons I can think of why they wouldn't release this is (not in order of most likely, but it wouldn't surprise me):
- they get a sadistical pleasure of watching us beg for information
- it isn't as impressive as some of us want it to be and they're afraid of how it will be received
- it isn't 100% decided how it's going to work yet. Which is really the most disconcerting of all. So close to release and you have to finish up stuff like this?
- they want to wow you with the gameplay trailer. Bah, I personally hate this option because this is probably it, and it means I have to wait for info

I don't know about 'wow', But I think they want to explain it by showing it, and not just by text.

I never said it can't be explained in words. I said they WANT to explain by showing it.

Yeah, I just meant I was agreeing with your, but I don't know if they want to show it for some wow factor

Or maybe the real reasons have more to do with:

- everyone is working ~ 100 hour weeks and have been for a few months. It's crunch time, and they're polishing as much as they can as fast as they can to get it to gold.
- even after it's declared gold, there are still some niggling bugs to fix, and they want to have the first patch ready to go on release day.
- they're actively searching social media to find out what people are talking about, so they can address the biggest areas of concern when they do release more info.

Just a thought.

It was almost sure we couldn't map more then 3 powers but dependent on profile switch, which is confirmed:


I'm sorry for you though, spacebeetle