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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Jan 1, 2017 22:25:40 GMT
Let's assume that, no matter how big a budget DA4 gets, there's always extra lore and story stuff that's too much for the budget. Let's assume the War Table was an attempt in DAI to give that extra stuff a home without busting the budget. Whether you liked or disliked it in DAI is neither here nor there, the question this post poses is, can it be improved and still not break the budget?
If you have a War Table, what would you change? Remove the timer? Okay, does that mean the War Table just becomes a big table of links that you click on to complete missions and read the lore? Does the map itself add anything?
How about mission chains and progressions? You have to do A, then B and then either C or D to unlock E. Keep, toss, modify, replace with something else?
If you decide to do away with the War Table altogether, and just have the Map with fast travel and quest-start markers, where would all the extra story/lore stuff go?
These are not rhetorical questions. These questions are meant to provide a framework for thinking about how to improve the War Table.
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Post by lundajfs on Jan 1, 2017 22:57:51 GMT
Anything is better, even throwing yourself at a meatgrinder is better. Books, quests, a website, lore hidden in porn videos, an easter bunny reading lore for you while you walk, tetris like words falling on your screen while you play, Jesus taking you to heaven to lecture, anything really. DAI's wartable is one of the worst ideas ever. Obsidian as always fixed this by making an interesting "wartable" with the Conquest in Tyranny. They managed to do a "wartable-keeper" and made both infintitely better. But it is not Bioware's fault, Obsidian have better genes, it is biology. Bioware makes everything wrong (KOTOR, NWN, etc) and Obsidian fixes everything (KOTOR2, NWN2, etc)
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Post by sjsharp2010 on Jan 1, 2017 23:10:02 GMT
Let's assume that, no matter how big a budget DA4 gets, there's always extra lore and story stuff that's too much for the budget. Let's assume the War Table was an attempt in DAI to give that extra stuff a home without busting the budget. Whether you liked or disliked it in DAI is neither here nor there, the question this post poses is, can it be improved and still not break the budget? If you have a War Table, what would you change? Remove the timer? Okay, does that mean the War Table just becomes a big table of links that you click on to complete missions and read the lore? Does the map itself add anything? How about mission chains and progressions? You have to do A, then B and then either C or D to unlock E. Keep, toss, modify, replace with something else? If you decide to do away with the War Table altogether, and just have the Map with fast travel and quest-start markers, where would all the extra story/lore stuff go? These are not rhetorical questions. These questions are meant to provide a framework for thinking about how to improve the War Table. I'd probasbly keep the war table but have it done on a mission counter rather than a clock one to help speed things along
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Post by melbella on Jan 1, 2017 23:42:10 GMT
I liked the WT concept, but missions like those should never take hours of real time. Maybe 10 minutes tops? I also wouldn't want the timer mission based because then I'd have to go back to base even more often. Now, if a portable WT could be set up at every camp, then it might work. I liked the second one in Descent but didn't like how the quests were only available on one and not the other (except for the last one, which you could activate from either one).
Also, the PC should NEVER be able to kill off their entire family/clan/prior contacts in this way (looking at you, Lavellan). That is just total BS.
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Post by dragontartare on Jan 2, 2017 1:57:15 GMT
What about a "probability of success" meter rather than a timer? As you complete other tasks (side quests, collecting resources, making contact with allies, or even just killing things), the probability of success for various war table missions changes. When you activate one after its probability of success reaches high enough, then the probability of success for other missions goes down somewhat (because you just used some of your resources/troops/etc.). If the probabilities are still high enough that you opt to risk it, you could immediately do another war table mission, and another, and another, until the probabilities go down enough that you don't want to take the risk of failing. Otherwise, you go back to killing things or whatever you would have done anyway until the missions have a better chance of success.
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Post by Sanunes on Jan 2, 2017 6:28:33 GMT
Let's assume that, no matter how big a budget DA4 gets, there's always extra lore and story stuff that's too much for the budget. Let's assume the War Table was an attempt in DAI to give that extra stuff a home without busting the budget. Whether you liked or disliked it in DAI is neither here nor there, the question this post poses is, can it be improved and still not break the budget? If you have a War Table, what would you change? Remove the timer? Okay, does that mean the War Table just becomes a big table of links that you click on to complete missions and read the lore? Does the map itself add anything? How about mission chains and progressions? You have to do A, then B and then either C or D to unlock E. Keep, toss, modify, replace with something else? If you decide to do away with the War Table altogether, and just have the Map with fast travel and quest-start markers, where would all the extra story/lore stuff go? These are not rhetorical questions. These questions are meant to provide a framework for thinking about how to improve the War Table. I liked the basic idea for the War Table and for what I recall a first attempt at something like this it wasn't horrible, I think it was done much better then the Garrison system for World of Warcraft. I think efficiency of use would be my biggest problem with its implementation. Things I think would improve it in no particular order. 1) One map instead of two. I do think this was a hardware limit for the older systems, but it was a frustrating experience when looking for new missions or specific ones. 2) Instead of timers, have cool downs on the participating characters. I understand the need to prevent people being able to exploit the system, but I think a cool down system works better for a single player game that people might only play in small chunks. I am not sure if this would work, but to have two different rates of the timer decreasing, one if you are playing the game and another outside of the game. 3) Rewards match the time involved. Kinda like #2, the amount of time required for finding crafting materials on the War Table made it useless for that type of activity, compared to going into the game and finding it myself and I would get a lot more materials spending the time myself. 4) Questing. I wasn't a big fan of the chain questing in them for between the timers and how often I played I really didn't pay much attention to the quests I just burned through them to get the reward. For me a single stage quest works better and I pay more attention to the details of the quests then. 5) Going back to World of Warcraft, I think instead of having dedicated people for War Table missions use party members that you aren't using so they are more involved with the story and they don't seem they are doing nothing but hanging out at my base of operations. 6) I did like the idea of using the War Table to unlock quests in the world and it could even be better then just having quests that chain in the War Table. 7) Easy of access could be more improved as well, just have it closer to where you spawn into your base of operations to cut down travel time for at least with Inquisition it was generally the only reason why I returned as often as I did and it got boring taking that long run all the time.
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Post by javeart on Jan 2, 2017 10:04:50 GMT
Also, the PC should NEVER be able to kill off their entire family/clan/prior contacts in this way (looking at you, Lavellan). That is just total BS.
This, a lot. I reay disliked the WT, and I honesty dont' know what could be done to fix it I'd say I hope they just remove it, but well, if other people enjoys it, I can keep ignoring it as I do now (unless I'm doing a very long pt). I magine there will be no consecuences? They have already trouble to carry over between games the important decisions, so I assumed they are not going to bother at all with this? I'd really appreciate though if they don't make it mandatory to use it to start missions :/ But if I could be totally selfish, I'd say they could put it all in codex and books and forget about the WT completely.
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Don't knock the little winds. They're important - for morale.
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Post by correctamundo on Jan 2, 2017 10:47:13 GMT
I love the war table. How some quests actually come with a failure. Or better yet how some (like the Sutherland boy) evolve if you make the right decision. More of thst. I really don't understand why people are upset about the timers. Instant gratification thing?
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Post by Wulfram on Jan 2, 2017 16:41:09 GMT
Make the War table more easily accessible - say, having it be in camps - would help a lot in making it less of a chore.
The map was kinda annoying, though I wouldn't want to lose it completely. Maybe have a list to go with it, so you can quickly find the mission you want and zoom in to it.
It was too disconnected from the rest of the game. Missions that have no impact at all on the game outside of table feel hollow - or jarring if its a mission that seems like it should get acknowledgement.
Ditch the timer, and the limits on utilisation of advisors. Let the player simply choose the advisor they want, and then give the outcome either after an appropriate number of quests are completed.
It might be worth having some way to highlight the more high stakes quests. I felt part of the problem with the infamous Dalish clan thing was that the other missions lull you into a sense that there isn't much consequence to which advisor you pick, so the sudden Dead clan comes out of nowhere.
If they have crafting material quests again, then you should be able to queue up a bunch of them
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Post by Nightscrawl on Jan 2, 2017 17:10:59 GMT
Apologies for the lengthy post. Let's assume that, no matter how big a budget DA4 gets, there's always extra lore and story stuff that's too much for the budget. Let's assume the War Table was an attempt in DAI to give that extra stuff a home without busting the budget. Whether you liked or disliked it in DAI is neither here nor there, the question this post poses is, can it be improved and still not break the budget? If you have a War Table, what would you change? Remove the timer? Okay, does that mean the War Table just becomes a big table of links that you click on to complete missions and read the lore? Does the map itself add anything? How about mission chains and progressions? You have to do A, then B and then either C or D to unlock E. Keep, toss, modify, replace with something else? If you decide to do away with the War Table altogether, and just have the Map with fast travel and quest-start markers, where would all the extra story/lore stuff go? These are not rhetorical questions. These questions are meant to provide a framework for thinking about how to improve the War Table. I assumed that the purpose of the war table was to broaden the scope of the game to allow the player, as Inquisitor, to feel like they were truly the head of a large organization. Keep in mind that this is the first game in the series where the character is in such a position. In the previous two games, while everyone deferred to you because they decided that they would follow you and accept almost every decision you made, DAI is the first game where it was an official leadership position. The next closest was DAA, but that was an expansion with a much smaller scope. With the war table, you were provided with several choices. Although each of your advisors had an idea of how best to carry out the mission, the ultimate final choice was the Inquisitor's. Once you made that choice, then your orders were carried out by various people; things were delegated rather than the player having to do everything themselves, as in previous games, just like in a real-life situation of that type. I don't have a problem with this concept, and in fact do think it's pretty neat, except as it relates to one thing: crafting. We as the Inquisitor can delegate all sorts of things, but for the most part we need to find and farm all of our own crafting materials. While yes, we can use the war table to obtain some, the amount is negligible and the types and amount of materials aren't guaranteed compared to what we would get if we got it ourselves. In addition, for any player that is interested in the standard war table missions, taking the time (even if 30 minutes) to scavenge crafting materials seems like a waste. This is where that great concept breaks down for me. As for the method of using the war table itself, it seems to me that the war table was designed with a certain playstyle in mind, specifically that the player would hop on for a couple of hours, check the war table, set up new missions for that time of play and to be going after they turned it off, and repeat the process the next day. This method fails for a couple of reasons. The first is that the developer can't guarantee how a player is going to play the game, whether that is playing for an hour at a time over the course of weeks, or knocking the entire game out over a couple of days. Because the war table is based on real time, not game time (non-existent), the player is forced to play in the way the developer wants them to play. The second is that there is very little opportunity for role play and that the war table decisions don't seem important beyond whatever headcanon the player may choose to create. In the past, I've stated that you can base your decisions on roleplay ("What would the Inquisitor do?"), and I still believe that, but it's not worth much unless you can see the results of that in the game, even with a couple of dialogues. There were very few opportunities for this, notable examples being the whole adventure of Sutherland and his crew, and the Orlesian couple who can get married (the Inquisitor can bless their marriage in person). One of the worst examples of lack of response is for the Dalish Inquisitor who can inadvertently cause their entire clan to be wiped out. That Inquisitor has no opportunity to emote about this and no one express any concern over it. For a group of people who seem all up in each other's business, even their sex lives, this is a terrible oversight. I think an in-game chronometer would mitigate a lot of the problems these games have and also allow the developers to expand the variety of quests. Let's take Skyrim as an example. While that game does have a calendar and passage of time, it doesn't really mean anything in the grand scheme of things. If there are time dependent quests, then I'm not aware of them. So having this sort of mechanic doesn't automatically lock the developers into a rigid structure where the player MUST do everything in a set order. They can still have a free form style using this method. Even Skyrim's fast travel causes the advancement of time, so there is no escaping it. The benefits are manifold. Not only can they add (a few!) time sensitive quests, but they can also add some natural dialogue pertaining to the passage of time that has largely been left out of these games (aside from the DA2 time jumps). How long did it take for the whole group to actually find and settle into Skyhold? How long were they trekking across the mountain range? I'd like to know that. Even with non-linear events, such as the choice to pick Abyss OR WEWH, certain elements become unlocked after the completion of a single one of these, so you can still have mention of time. After both are done, the same applies. They can have varied and life-like environments where spawns change depending on the time of day; maybe a certain magical quest item requires moonlight and so the player needs to return after dark. How long does it take to travel from Skyhold to the Western Approach? We would know if they had in-game time keeping. I think the response to this would be, "But what if player A completes the game in (game time) six months, while player B completes it in three years?" If one player does more traveling than another, I can see this as a real possibility. If player A stuck to the main plot points and did little else, while player B went everywhere and did "all the things," I can definitely see this as the case. So what happens when something like Trespasser rolls around that they want to happen in a particular year (9:44)? Well the developers just have that be, which is essentially a compromise between the times. They've ignored other player-related things before, and this would be another such example. How does this relate to the war table? It would add more realism. However, there is a problem with this, too. Players who want realism in this would find it even more tedious and have to wait even longer. Let's consider the lengthy Grey Warden chain. These missions take a few hours of real time each. In reality, they would take days or weeks, not only for the messenger birds to fly wherever, but for the group to carry out whatever orders and send further response. With in-game time it might seem like this would initially be faster, but that is incorrect. Using Skyrim again, whose default game:real time is 20:1 -- for every 20 minutes that passes in the game, only 1 minute has passed for the player -- a real estimation of the time needed for such a mission might have the player waiting days in their own time, for weeks of game time. What timescale do they use? Too close to real time and things are too slow, too fast and you end up feeling like the Harvest Moon games where there is barely enough time to harvest your crops and feed your animals before you have to sleep again, to say nothing of various optional activities. I don't know what the solution would be. I don't think that completely removing time from the war table is wise, as it throws off the pacing. Perhaps it's just as simple as cutting everything in half.
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Post by Hrungr on Jan 2, 2017 19:36:16 GMT
As Nightscrawl pointed out, the War Table missions allowed you to feel like you were the head of a large organization as well as an avenue to feed you lore in manageable bites. The rewards are minor, but I can sorta understand that. In the end the only effort on your part were a couple of mouse-clicks between adventures to gain. They weren't meant to replace resource gathering on your own, just supplement it a little. That said, I hope they rethink resource gathering in general (which I've touched on in other threads). That aside, they've mentioned a couple of times now that in the next game we will not be the head of an organization, so there's really no reason to have one. At least as it was used in DAI. And as far as avenues to feed you lore, over the 3 games we've seen a number of ways they can give you that information outside of books, notes and such. Conversing with NPCs, spirits, spirit re-enactment of events, memory crystals, simply paying attention to the things in the environment, etc.. What I wouldn't mind seeing though is the lore presented in books, notes, hides, stones, and so on displayed to us visually as a well-worn tome, transcribed code, half-burned note, blood-stained monument, lyrium-scribed Memory, etc.. As for a potential "War Table" in DA4, missions-on-a-timer were the most contentious issue with them, so I don't expect to see them return. Maybe the map could be used similarly to what we had in DA:O with the Blight, monitoring the advance of Tevinter, Qunari, etc. forces, shifting borders, captured cities as well as acting as a traditional RPG travel map that you can nicely zoom in and out of. If we do get day/night/seasonal changes in DAI, it would be cool if the map "magically" reflected that. Perhaps if you could be the owner of mines/farms/employed hunters/etc. for your resource generation (or other investments), it would let you know when the next batch of resources/money was ready to pick up (and would just continue to accumulate until you did). I expect that without an organization around us, there won't be any "War Table Missions", and that we'll be handling things as we did in prior games. But I think they could do fun things with the map itself. I'd love it if when you clicked on a Fast-Travel-To-A-New-Region marker, it'd zoom you into the map and into a sweeping cinematic of your group making your way into the new region. Or an Indiana Jones style transition...
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Post by Nightscrawl on Jan 2, 2017 19:47:02 GMT
But I think they could do fun things with the map itself. I'd love it if when you clicked on a Fast-Travel-To-A-New-Region marker, it'd zoom you into the map and into a sweeping cinematic of your group making your way into the new region. Or an Indiana Jones style transition... This would be fun on the first visit, like those bits we got with Harding, not so much if I'm popping over to some Keep to see if a merchant has some item. As for day/night, I thought DA2 dealt with that in a fun way, but I'd like to see a more natural cycle rather than something player-controlled. (Or you can sleep/wait the time away, as in Skyrim.)
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Post by Hrungr on Jan 2, 2017 20:06:33 GMT
But I think they could do fun things with the map itself. I'd love it if when you clicked on a Fast-Travel-To-A-New-Region marker, it'd zoom you into the map and into a sweeping cinematic of your group making your way into the new region. Or an Indiana Jones style transition... This would be fun on the first visit, like those bits we got with Harding, not so much if I'm popping over to some Keep to see if a merchant has some item. In this case, I meant when you first unlock, then travel to a new region, not for every FT point. Like the Harding Cinematic, just... grander. As for Day/Night/Seasons, I'd definitely want a natural transition - a la Skyrim. I want to watch the sunrise/sunset, the changing of seasons...
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Jan 2, 2017 20:13:48 GMT
Thanks for all the great thoughts, some really good suggestions so far. What do you think about the apparent inversion of responsibility? That Cullen, Josephine and Leliana got to spearhead what could have been interesting quests, while your PC was off gathering flowers for a healer or ram meat for starving peasants. Seems backwards, yes? This also touches on something Hrungr has mentioned before, that there needs to be a mechanism for a leader to send minions off to gather resources. Need 120 blood lotus for some upgrades? Send a team of minions to the Hinterlands and Storm Coast. It's okay if the PC's role in DA4 is down-sized, all you really need is one minion to do your bidding. Bertie Wooster only had Jeeves and look what he was able to accomplish.
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Post by gervaise21 on Jan 2, 2017 20:17:30 GMT
The main problem with the War Table was the timing issue and consistency.
First run through I hadn't realised the trick of starting a really long one before I signed off for the night, or that it really didn't matter who you used for most missions, so I was getting a huge backlog of missions because I wanted to use a particular advisor for them. Then I started getting careless because I was running through the main quests faster than I was completely war table mission, so I started going with whoever was free, only to discover that for certain missions (Hunters Fell, Lavellan person quest, Wardens are 3 that immediately spring to mind) it really does matter who you choose. Also some quests had to be undertaken before you left Haven but there was no real indication that was the case until they disappeared off the board when you got to Skyhold.
So either make it that the choice of advisor only affects what material rewards you get from the quest or only have quests where it matters who you choose for the outcome but have less of them that only last for a set amount of time each in game.
I also agree that they should not have major things happen to you personally as a result of a war table mission, like losing your entire clan. At least allow you the opportunity to do this as a side quest, so you can see if things are going wrong and possibly do something about it. However, if they are going to include such things, then at least have people acknowledge your loss in the game. First run, owing to the reasons given above about backlog and not realising how badly it would impact on me, I made a wrong choice and lost my whole clan. Next conversation was with Josie and she was complaining about how tough life was for her family because they had to work for a living. I'd just lost my entire family! Yet no one seemed to care. At least in DA2, even if you couldn't prevent the death of your mother, your companions sympathised with you about it.
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Post by xerrai on Jan 2, 2017 21:30:47 GMT
My main problem with the war table was how self-contained it was. No one even so much commented on ANYTHING that happened in war table operations even if it was something like Clan Lavellan dying out. So if I would, I would have at least some ambient dialogue added into the main base depending on how the missions ended. Perhaps not a lot, but at least enough to cover the major operations that are expected to affect the people inside the main base.
But if I could have it my way, I would have every table operation voice acted. But I honestly have no idea how much that would cost so maybe not.
Maybe it would simply be easier if we tied the table operations to in-game captures and resources? That way the player is encouraged to go out and do stuff and the game simply has to wait until X and Y are completed before hashing out the operations instead of relying on a timer. And maybe tie actual quests at the end of certain quest chains (ex. saving Clan Lavellan) in order to give the PC a tangible reward for participating in war table ops.
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Hrungr
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Post by Hrungr on Jan 2, 2017 22:20:17 GMT
Thanks for all the great thoughts, some really good suggestions so far. What do you think about the apparent inversion of responsibility? That Cullen, Josephine and Leliana got to spearhead what could have been interesting quests, while your PC was off gathering flowers for a healer or ram meat for starving peasants. Seems backwards, yes? There were definitely some quests that appeared to be so important, that it seemed strange we wouldn't get directly involved. Saving Denerim, the Darkspawn threat, averting war between Nevarra and Tevinter, helping secure the safety of Clan Lavellen, etc.. I can imagine they wanted some of the WT missions to have higher stakes, and therefore be more interesting. And to establish your advisors (and by extension the Inquisition as a whole) as being professional enough to handle such high stakes situations without you. That said, we did have good primary reasons to venture to the regions we did (eg. Gaining Mother Jiselle as an ally, securing mounts for the Inquisition, dealing with the Mage/Templar war), even if we took on more menial tasks while we were there.
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Post by thats1evildude on Jan 3, 2017 1:18:10 GMT
I think that more WT operations should have had a Power cost rather than a time requirement. That would have helped address the Power glut in the main game. And if they had it so that the resource-gathering missions cost Power but brought in more resources, that would be even better.
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Post by Nightscrawl on Jan 3, 2017 8:05:57 GMT
... or that it really didn't matter who you used for most missions This isn't entirely accurate. While it may not matter for the result of the mission, the game does keep track. Depending on which advisor you use the most, the end of the game states what "type" of Inquisition you have, one that relies on it's military force, on diplomacy, or subterfuge, to get things done. This is shown in an epilogue slide and also in the Keep. This is a way for the Inquisition as a whole to reflect the personality and goals of the Inquisitor.
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Post by Nightscrawl on Jan 3, 2017 8:07:07 GMT
I think that more WT operations should have had a Power cost rather than a time requirement. That would have helped address the Power glut in the main game. And if they had it so that the resource-gathering missions cost power but brought in more resources, that would be even better. There is only a power glut if you do everything, which is not guaranteed. On my very first play I was struggling for power. As I said in my post, you can't control how people play the game.
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Post by javeart on Jan 3, 2017 9:18:46 GMT
I think that more WT operations should have had a Power cost rather than a time requirement. That would have helped address the Power glut in the main game. And if they had it so that the resource-gathering missions cost power but brought in more resources, that would be even better. There is only a power glut if you do everything, which is not guaranteed. On my very first play I was struggling for power. As I said in my post, you can't control how people play the game. I agree with that, most of my pt are a constant and tiresome struggle for power That said, I'd rather have power requiered for non-obligatory side missions that to unlock areas and main-missions
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correctamundo
N5
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Post by correctamundo on Jan 3, 2017 9:38:25 GMT
Thanks for all the great thoughts, some really good suggestions so far. What do you think about the apparent inversion of responsibility? That Cullen, Josephine and Leliana got to spearhead what could have been interesting quests, while your PC was off gathering flowers for a healer or ram meat for starving peasants. Seems backwards, yes? This also touches on something Hrungr has mentioned before, that there needs to be a mechanism for a leader to send minions off to gather resources. Need 120 blood lotus for some upgrades? Send a team of minions to the Hinterlands and Storm Coast. It's okay if the PC's role in DA4 is down-sized, all you really need is one minion to do your bidding. Bertie Wooster only had Jeeves and look what he was able to accomplish. Or you could have Josie, Leli and/or Cullen gather coin while you save your kidnapped Soldiers, take care of the Still Waters, go Dragon hunting, investigate the Knights tomb so on and so forth. There are several minions who have gathered unlimited supply of blood lotus and elfroot etc as well. They just want a small recompense for the trouble.
There are menial tasks in the open world as there are menial tasks on the war table AND there are interesting and meningful questlines in the open world as well as on the war table. I could go for more "real" quests but if the choice was between no more quests and war table I would defintely go for war table.
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Post by Croatsky on Jan 3, 2017 10:12:19 GMT
I'd like to access War Table like screen while outside home base. There's no reason not to use bird messengers to send war table orders. Like, give time delay penalty to balance things out and no access to items reward until you come back to home base.
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Post by Sanunes on Jan 3, 2017 13:15:36 GMT
I think that more WT operations should have had a Power cost rather than a time requirement. That would have helped address the Power glut in the main game. And if they had it so that the resource-gathering missions cost power but brought in more resources, that would be even better. There is only a power glut if you do everything, which is not guaranteed. On my very first play I was struggling for power. As I said in my post, you can't control how people play the game. It could always be an optional way to complete the missions as well, such as using the power of the Inquisition allows you to decrease the time it takes because you are using your influence to get it done.
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correctamundo
N5
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Post by correctamundo on Jan 3, 2017 13:31:44 GMT
There is only a power glut if you do everything, which is not guaranteed. On my very first play I was struggling for power. As I said in my post, you can't control how people play the game. It could always be an optional way to complete the missions as well, such as using the power of the Inquisition allows you to decrease the time it takes because you are using your influence to get it done. That would be nice. I would like it if you could use the power to "power up" the resource gathering missions as well. So I could get more in less time . I am after all a power glutton.
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