BioWare Dev Explains Why Dragon Age II Is Easier Than Origins

[blackdwarf]

i started dragon age origins on normal. in th begining it was ok, but sometimes it was just too hard for me. i switched the diffuculty, but eventualy choose easy. this kind of gameplay was new for me and i still wasn't used to the way of using the abilities. when i restarded i did normal. and its doable now. its still sometimes hard, but i like that. i guess i will DAII on hard, but i will see.

 

[SwimmingRock]

The problem with Origins and every other BioWare/Black Isle/Obsidian (I lump them all together because they're obscenely similar) was the negative difficulty curve. At the very beginning, the small encounters are just as challenging as the stuff in the middle or end of the game, but you have less gear/items/abilities to deal with it. As you get more gear/items/abilities, stuff gets ridiculously easy, to the point where, on normal difficulty, the only fights I actually had to control beyond casting Cone of Cold or pre-casting Blizzard through the wall were Revanents and bosses (god fucking damn those Revanents).

This is actually why I didn't finish the first game. It got to the point that my party was so well put together, stocked on items and auto-managed with Tactics that I didn't even have to participate in fights anymore. I would just loot the corpses while my 3 AI characters won every fight effortlessly on Normal.

I did find the combat system for Rogue much more entertaining in the DA2 demo (at least, the 360 version. Hope they allow 360 controller on pc), so maybe I won't get bored with the fights this time around. Although the lack of difficulty in the demo did bother me a little. Maybe I'll start on normal and switch to hard when I get tired of mercilessly butchering everything.

 

[veloper]

Biggest concearn here is that when normal becomes casual and that's the standard the game gets designed around, then the harder difficulty settings won't be balanced to give a more celebral challenge.
Rather it'll prolly become a long slog against the same mobs, just with more hitpoints and higher saves, that you'll be beating with the same optimal combination of abilities and spells.

 

[Catalyst6]

I have to say, this doesn't sadden me. Origins was grand and all, but I found myself detesting battle scenes because they felt like they were far too luck-based. While I guess that's pretty much par for the course for RPGs, praying for dice rolls doesn't work in a game where one hit can kill you.

 

[Incoan]

Dudes, there is a demo unlock mod that lets you taste "Nightmare" difficulty. The game is fine.

 

[Cousin_IT]

no one wants to set their game to 'casual' unless they're comfortable being here just for the story

But the story/character interactions were the only thing that made the tedious gameplay worth slogging through.

 

[millertime059]

I didn't find difficulty to be a problem usually. My problem is there were just way too many enemies. I wasn't playing this game to fight wave after wave of speedbumps, I wanted to invest in the story and world. That was hard to do where every encounter would take 10 minutes. To top it off there were some flat out ridiculous events, Ser Cathurien being one. Hmm walking into an ambush, no prep time, and outnumbered 4-1. Oh to top it off, big boss, can one hit my mages, and shrugs off all status effects instantly.That's not tactical, that's ridiculous.

The Deep Roads were a dull slog through endless waves of enemies. As it stands on normal it was an 80 hour game (I did alot of side quests) that would have been better if it had taken me 50-60 hours. The world and it's factions aren't bad, but there just isn't enough interesting decisions to make it worth that much time. Forget doing multiple playthroughs. I've started a second game, but did so on easy. I want to enjoy the story at a faster pace. I liked having to be careful with combat, but it simply takes too long.

For a game that seems to encourage multiple playthroughs the combat takes too long. I don't want easier combat, just less pointless filler fights.

 

[veloper]

I have to say, this doesn't sadden me. Origins was grand and all, but I found myself detesting battle scenes because they felt like they were far too luck-based. While I guess that's pretty much par for the course for RPGs, praying for dice rolls doesn't work in a game where one hit can kill you.

There was very little luck involved. On hard it was mostly memorizing some ability combos, minimal tactical positioning and setting some basic tactics preferences to reduce the micromanaging, to win most battles consistently.

 

[Bobzer77]

So basically.... it's easier because they made it easier?

 

[OniaPL]

I completed Origins on Nightmare without the Warden ever getting knocked out. Warrior Warden, Alistair, Morrigan and Leliana as an archer (I know she sucked, but she was cool xD). What I mean to say is, it wasn't THAT hard. Although yes, I played on PC.

 

[Baneat]

Mage-Mage-FuryWarr-Tank

I didn't find it any more difficult on normal than other games

 

[phoenix352]

i dont know why so many people are crying over this ...
so they made the easy difficulty easy , so use the hard difficultly for a challenge ....

as for the Demo i loved the changes except iam a little bit on the fence about the combat ..
its much faster paced then Origins which is good but seems a little bit button mashy until you get the good skills.

new dialog tree is awesome , the picture that tells you what kind of emotion the character will express helps a lot.

but as for the demos classes they seems to overhauled the classes completely,
Warriors are horrible ... it took me literally minutes to kill the grunt type dark spawn while having very little means for defense , the shield type warrior was the worst one of the 2 the demo had as he had almost no damage while having little defense.

Rogues are now one man armies with skills that both let them stun big groups of enemies , skills that let them vanish to avoid attacks or dodge to skills that take out enemies in 1-2 hits.

mages , well i dont really know if mages are too overpowered but damage wise the elemental fire mage can cook up a huge group in seconds.

 

[Captain Booyah]

You know, I thought Origins was pretty darn easy on the Normal setting, and I wasn't particularly experienced at all with RPGs when I started; most of it was just logic. A teensy bit pissed here that they're making it even easier. I mean, if some people found it too hard on Normal, then maybe they should just swallow their pride and downgrade the difficulty level themselves...? I dunno.

 

[Stevepinto3]

As long as they don't do to this what they did to Mass Effect 2. With the exception of the one Asari boss in the Shadowbroker DLC, I pretty much breezed past the entire game on the highest difficulty. It was fun, but just stupid easy. Didn't stop Harbinger from being one of the most annoy-ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Based on the DA 2 demo (whatever level that's set to), it's definitely NOT easier than Origins on Normal

Warrior and Mage I can't beat the big Ogre guy (which I've since heard is nowhere near the end of the demo), and Rogue is so underpowered I couldn't even get close to that far.

If you still want to beat it I can tell you what I did, and just to be clear I'm not condescending, I can't beat origins on normal :/ The key is to completely ignore the ogre and take out the little dudes first. The templar's wife can take a surprising amount of punishment so try to get the ogre and most of the dudes to attack her. Then take out the weaker darkspawn first, then have everybody attack one of the shielded ones at a time until just the ogre is left. You'll see he doesn't actually do much damage on his own, but all that knockdown stuff he does lets the little jerks get you. And rogue is good, backstab does a lot of damage, and the stun flask move is good too, I think it even stuns the ogre

Oh and you are rewarded with sexy pirate boobs for your perseverance

 

[moretimethansense]

It wasn't that DA:O was hard, it was that the friendly AI was bad.

Unless, say, I issued a command to my mage to cast a spell every second or two, he would charge into the thick of things and melée with his daggar. If they wanted to make the game turn-based I'd say fine but this particular mix of turn based and real time just wasn't working for me.

If I otherwise had liked the game and the story, I would have switched it to casual to compensate for my retarded party members, but I didn't, so I just quit instead.

Don't take this the wrong way but if your mage had a dagger in Origins, you were playing it wrong, besides you could tweak their behavior.

My main problems so far with DA2 are:
1. Mages keep running in to melee.
2. the demo didn't demonstraight any non combat situation, so I wonder if this'l be a constant fight to fight thing like ME2.
3. Smaller enimies keep swarming in during the boss battles, I can sort of understand with the darkspawn but with that human it made no real sense, it also ruins my standard anti boss tactic of quickly killing minions then shredding the boss with sustained damage.

Also the demo was far too easy, I'll be playing on hard.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Played DAO on normal for a bit first but quickly upped it to hard and played at Nightmare level (or Nightmare+, a fan mod) in subsequent plays.

I do agree with Mike, in the context of the games that are put out nowadays normal in DAO was actually pretty hard as there were several fights where your party could get absolutely destroyed several times if you weren't actively microing your party members.

I guess I'll be playing DA2 on Nightmare from the get-go, I actually really like high difficulty in party based RPG's.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Ironically, I found the DA2 demo harder. Maybe that was because I was expecting some competency from my party, and every damn battle the brother would get fight two darkspawn and insta-die while I was busy with around 5, and Aveline was busy with three, neither of us taking terrible damage. I'm not even kidding, he died every freaking time he was in the demo. The sister is useful, and I could easily rely on her, though with no AOE spells off the bat, swarming seems like it's going to be tedious.