Laidlaw Listens in to Dragon Age 2 Fan Feedback

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**Yak9UT**

Lead designer Mike Laidlaw of Bioware replies to Dragon Age 2 negative feedback and explains thier changes from Origins.

Heres the post from Mike Laidlaw

Hey guys and gals,

As some of you have noted, I have been absent from these forums for a time, and my apologies for going dark, but I did not feel prepared to deal with some of the more personal attacks in a professional manner. And as a rule if I don't feel like I'm going to be professional, I don't post. You guys deserve better than that.

Now, while I haven't been posting, we have been listening. Several folks have been active on the forums and moderating the more extreme discussions, and more of us have been collecting your feedback, concerns, criticisms and the parts you enjoyed of DA II. This feedback is invaluable to us, and so I wanted to take a moment and say thank you.

I’d like to take this opportunity to address some lingering concerns and clear the air somewhat.

Following the launch of DA II, I did some interviews and some of you interpreted my statements to mean I was blind to the concerns that have been voiced repeatedly on these forums. That was never my intent, nor the message I wanted to convey.

I am absolutely aware of the concerns voiced here. Issues like level re-use, the implementation of wave combat, concerns about the narrative and significance of choice and so on have all been not only noted, but examined,
inspected and even aided me (and many, many others on the team) in formulating future plans. Further, I'm not only aware of the concerns, but I agree that there are aspects of DA II that not only can but must be improved in future installments. And that is precisely our intent.

Finally, let me conclude by saying that while we are all aware of your concerns, I am very proud of what the team accomplished with Dragon Age II. I know many are advocating a "it wasn't broke, why did you try to fix it?" stance, and I absolutely understand why. From my perspective, as someone looking to the future and the DA franchise, I think that DA II moved us into a space that has more potential.

A larger potential audience? Sure, who wouldn’t want more players diving into the experience of playing an RPG? More importantly, though, I believe that there's also more potential for rich stories, for deeper RPG mechanics, for more choice, and for something even more epic to come. The story events of DA II have fundamentally altered the political and power landscape of Thedas, in a way that's open to intrigue, drama and sweeping conflict in the
future, and evolves a world that, while still very much involving the Grey Wardens and Darkspawn, is about more than just that one struggle.

Hawke's story was a departure from the usual tale, and in crafting it and the game around it we learned a lot. Some from what worked, but even more from what didn't. Such is always the way. I hope that in the future we'll be able to
discuss how we're addressing your concerns and even solicit feedback from you on future plans in the process, but for now, I hope a simple thank you will suffice.

In the mean time, though, I stumbled across a few images I thought I might share with you folks. After all, there’s been a lot of requests to explore areas outside of Kirkwall, and I agree that seeing some more of the
Free Marches would be cool.

Also, there seem to be rather a lot of….are those griffins?
I think they might be!

Heres the Link to the Bioware forum Post: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/315/index/7475089

**asimo77**

That seemed like a whole lot of nothing. The guy took like 10 paragraphs to say "I actually have been reading what you're posting"

**illuknisaa**

Cool when will they release Porn Age III: Mass Orgies.

**Lord Rogukiel**

illuknisaa wrote:Cool when will they release Porn Age III: Mass Orgies.

This made my day.

**Karon**

Meh, I thought Dragon Age II was much better than the first one. I know Bioware is a smart company, and I doubt they'll dissapoint on DA3 or ME3.

I just think people want too much, have too high expectations and get let down. I don't really care for all the idiots who say "OMG DA2 SO BAD DAO WAS SO MUCH BETTER"

**Strimen**

From a PC player's point of view DA:O was way better than DA2. But I guess they just wanted to make it more like the console versions of action RPGs (ME, etc.) and in doing so wrecking the game for PC players who enjoyed the original. Which is the opposite of what happened with the first game.

The first game suffered in sales on the console vewrsions because the iso view was so much more tactical and useful to the game mechanics of the first DA, but since the console's old hardware and gimped controler interface couldn't handle it people had to use a third person view behind a given character which was awkward as all hell. So to try and correct this problem for DA2 they removed what made the game good for PC users and shifted the mechanics towards a third person game play perspective and squad control like ME. Which of course upset the other half of their player base (PC users) and still under delivered for the console kids they were trying to appease.

Basically DA2 was just a dumb departure. They should have stuck with the DA:O setup and mechanics and just cut the console port. The game would have been better off for it in the end. Ah well, time for D3 to revitialize this genre in the next year anyways and remove the pretenders.

**asimo77**

DA2 plays just fine on the PC, in fact I think it's a whole lot better than the 1st.

The combat is just as tactical, just faster, and it's actually interesting and makes you want to advance in the game. The combat in DA1 was so boring to look at that despite its strategic depth it was a drag. In the sequel the combat is an effective vehicle to getting you through to the next story parts.

Also DA2 doesn't have horrible graphics like the first game (though the character models were good in DA1).

As for the camera angles, I don't think I ever played isometric in any of the Dragon Ages, isometric cameras seem very limiting to me in the 3D age.

**Chrysaor686**

The changes in the Mass Effect franchise made way more sense than the changes to Dragon Age, even though it felt as if they were trying to go in the same direction. Since they are two entirely different games, trying to apply the same sort of changes to both of them fell flat on it's face. Instead of making Dragon Age 2 more cinematic or engaging, they simply hamstrung some of the best elements and gave little back in return. Making a pseudo-third person shooter into an actual third-person shooter made sense. Making a tactical RPG into a pseudo action game made little sense. Having a set persona was nice from a certain perspective, but it cut out a lot of the player input that basically defined Origins.

asimo77 wrote:As for the camera angles, I don't think I ever played isometric in any of the Dragon Ages, isometric cameras seem very limiting to me in the 3D age.

While normally this is true, the isometric camera angle in Dragon Age Origins on the PC was actually less limiting, as it allowed you to view all of the action without being limited to viewing the third person perspective of a single character. This allowed you to utilize your party in a more effective way and tactics were much easier to execute.

If you are only controlling one character, a third-person perspective makes a lot of sense. In a party-based game like DA:O, a third person perspective is total gak.

**asimo77**

People always talk about "the changes" made in DA2 and how they all suck, but they never seem to elaborate on what exactly they mean. I won't say DA2 is better in every way but to get to the point: it was far more ambitious and entertaining.

I guess the camera angle just depends on the individual, I manually control all my characters but I've never play in isometric. Both games felt equally tactical just Origins was a lot slower and less exciting to watch.

**Strimen**

asimo77 wrote:People always take about "the changes" made in DA2 and how they all suck, but they never seem to elaborate on what exactly they mean. I won't say DA2 is better in every way but to get to the point: it was far more ambitious and entertaining.

I guess the camera angle just depends on the individual, I manually control all my characters but I've never play in isometric. Both games felt equally tactical just Origins was a lot slower and less exciting to watch.

Have you ever played any of the Diablo or Baldur's Gate series on PC? If you had you would understand better where we were coming from. Iso is a much better camera format for playing these games in. It allows you to see what is going on tactically and make informed decisions without the need for a slow down (i.e. drag the game out) mechanic like in Mass Effect/DA/etc. Just so you can pop to each of your characters and see what is going on with them at a given point in the battle. Its like trying to play an RTS in third or first person, which would just be stupid. Only one company I know of has ever tried to do that in an RTS and after two years they scraped the idea and the game. Instead they made Warcraft 3 (yeah thats right Blizzard went down that road and realised how bad it was no matter what they tried game mechanic wise in an RTS). Just because we are in the 3D era of games doesn't mean everything should be over the shoulder. In fact it doesn't mean anything. Certain camera styles are paramount to certain game genres for example.

As to going into detail on what made DA2 less of a game than DA:O I've gone into a lot of detail. The changing of the camera system from a tacticle iso view to a forced third person view was a major change that then caused them to have to redo the combat. Which they changed from a tactical party based combat system into a Action RPG system there by changing the very genre that their first game was in (at least on the PC). Then we have even worse setups and wave based combats that they put into DA2 that were not a feature of DA:O. For example spawning a wave of enemies behind the player when in a forced third person view is cheesy and gets tireing fast. Much like Dooms zombie closets. And the list goes on.

Basically the major issue for why DA2 failed me and DA:O succeded in my eyes is the fact that DA:O was what I wanted from a game in the RPG genre. But because the console kiddies couldn't play the DA:O properly due to being forced to use a third person perspective (iso wasn't supported due to gimped console hardware) which made the original game boring, clunky and generally frustrating to them and me when played on a console. So we end up with a great game on the PC but one that sucks on a console due to a bad port to an inferior system. To fix this issue and try to get more cash they decided to switch genres! And for DA2 they turned it into an Action RPG which would be accepted better as a whole by the console players, since they are more used to that genre and therefor get higher sales. Which obviously means DA2 is no longer what DA:O was and therefore should not be billed as a sequal and obivously would not appease the same crowed on the PC as DA:O did.

**asimo77**

I have played Diablo and Baldur's Gate (TBH I think only Diablo has withstood the test of time, going back to Baldur's Gate was rough). The reason isometric angles work in those games is because they are in 2D.

Also you can manually rotate the camera in DA2 anyway to whatever angle suits you best. I've always been able to see enough of the field to know what was going on.

How is the combat changed? They upped the ante in terms of speed and animations, but you can still pause and issue out orders, your characters still auto-attack, enemies have resistances, there is friendly fire, you build a character through talents, and so on.

The waves are pretty stupid, and I haven't played DA:O in a while so I'll take your word for it when you say they didn't do waves there. As for Doom the "monster in a closet" is just one of the tools horror games employ to scare you. But either way it shouldn't matter in the case of DA2 since the enemies appear on your radar and you can rotate the camera and pause. It's not like they are ambushing you, well I guess they are but it doesn't give them much of an advantage, especially since you know 9 out of 10 times there will be another wave. You say the list of faults goes on, but you don't elabortae which is what I was going on about before.

Honestly you seem very stuck to the isometric camera which I personally think is just a nostalgia thing. Other RPG's do fine without isometric like Fable, The Witcher, and The Elder Scrolls. Hell even JRPG's don't need them.