2741

That would be listed as “ambient occlusion” on that list of adjustable items. I don’t know if it’s supported in-game, but if not then it will appear greyed-out.

2742

There’s a really good talent in the scoundrel tree called Follow Through. It gives 1% stamina each time you attack and considering how fast attacks are, you’ll have a lot more stamina for activated abilities.

2743

Thanks, I’ll give that a look. I haven’t had a slowdown issue since switching to Dx9 mode, but I do miss the better graphics at Dx10/11.

Edit: I’m not seeing a power management mode show up in the options at all.

Also, am I missing something or are we stuck with just the 10 item quickbar? Doesn’t seem like enough room and I don’t see anything indicating multiple bars are available as was the case in DAO.

2744

Seriously?? A phantom page already? Stusser just rebuilt the server thread index yesterday!

2745

Companion switching in DA2 is handled the same way as ME2, which was the last Bioware game I played, so it didn’t jump out at me that you can’t swap on the fly anymore. The absence of gifts as an influence tool might be one reason the companion relationships feel more abstract to me this time. The gifts from DA:O forced me to think about the companions every time I got new loot, especially when an item would appeal to more than one companion. A good compromise might have been to keep the gifts, but reduce the impact of each one sufficiently that the gifts didn’t overshadow the impact of other factors, like their murderous hatred for one another.

2746

Oh, it won’t be in a menu within the game, just the nVidia control panel after you follow the above process, in alphabetical order right after the listing for “Multi-Display/mixed-GPU acceleration.”

To clarify - when you open the nVidia Control Panel, you will have a collapsable tree on the left. Look under (and expand if needed) the section marked “3D Settings.” You should see three subheadings, like this:

  • 3D Settings
    [INDENT]
    [ul]
    [li]Adjust image settings with preview
    [/li][li]Manage 3D settings
    [/li][li]Set PhysX configuration
    [/li][/ul]
    [/INDENT]- Display
    [INDENT]
    [ul]
    [li]blah,
    [/li][li]blah,
    [/li][li]blah
    [/li][/ul]
    [/INDENT]Now you want to click on “Manage 3D settings.” After this step, you will see a two-tabbed list appear on the right panel. “Global” will likely be the one that you’re looking at but that’s a little too large for our task. Instead, you want to click the “Program Settings” tab so you can individually manage a given game (DA2 in our case).

The first time you do this, your PC may take a little while to populate a list of installed programs, and it will almost never be complete (don’t worry). While you’re waiting, you’ll notice there are two areas with handy labels:

“1. Select a program to customize:”
[INDENT]and
[/INDENT]“2. Specify the settings for this program:”

After your PC is done failing at finding all of your games, you’ll see there’s now a drop-down list appear under “1.” and you can look for Dragon Age 2 on that. If it’s there, click on it and look underneath “2.” to find the Power management mode. It is likely on “Use global setting (Adaptive)” which should be fine for most people. However, if you’re experiencing the issues described above then you might want to change it to “Prefer Maximum Performance.” After doing this, click <Apply> at the bottom and you’re done.

If it isn’t there, uncheck the box next to “Show only programs found on this computer.” Find it on the now much longer drop down list and do the same as above.

FYI: “Prefer Maximum Performance” is essentially the “always on” approach to running your card. It will draw more power and I’d imagine would be likely to generate more consistent heat as a result, although a fully functional card in an even remotely decently ventilated case should have no issues dissappating it like normal.

2747

The fuck? The game just froze my PC for over a minute - as in keys locked, the lot, like a complete lockup - only to graciously restore control to me with a message: Server connection lost. Why would the game need an active connection? That’s not supposed to be part of the copy protection is it? I’m running it on Steam, BTW.

2748

If it is anything like the first one, i’d imagine it is trying to update your online profile with various game stats/achievements. Possibly also checking to make sure you have access to DLC, but i dont know on that one.

All recent bioware games have required an active connection on startup to verify DLC status though if i recall correctly.

2749

Synchronising stats makes sense (not that the lockup is forgivable), but this wasn’t on startup, it was during play.

2750

You probably did something that earned you an acheivement. Congrats ;)

Edit - these are done live, as I found out in DA:O. I was curious if I could essentially earn and then unearn an acheivement by exiting the game via ctrl-alt-delete. In short, you can’t.

2751

Just about every single fight plays out like this. Positioning your own party is pointless since the first wave of enemies dies so quickly and the next wave swarms in from every possible direction. It’s like playing chess with someone that swipes the pieces off the board every turn.

Yeah. :(

2752

The swarming enemy spawns certainly are annoying, but you can game them by assuming there will be a secondary rear attack and/or drop ins in the obvious main battle area, and running beyond the point of origin of the main foes. Of course it doesn’t always work, but it frequently lets your mage avoid an assassin or whatever materializing on top of him.

2753

I think the biggest problem DA2 has is that it doesn’t have the occasional overreach that justifies the blandness or problems with the rest of the game. If there were flaws because of the focus on a few great or interesting areas, it would be a lot easier to overlook all the glaring problems. Instead, it’s just a mix of bad and utterly mediocre.

2754

I just noticed that the DLC staff my mage is using has a full on sword as the lower half. What the fuck, Bioware?

2755

I haven’t played the game so I say this from a position of total ignorance, but what Miramon wrote above sounds like ass.

2756

Dragon Age 2, Metacritic, modern games journalism, and the 7-9 scale. Discuss!

(Critics: 1-100 scale, Users, 1-10 scale.)

Dragon Age 2
PC Critics: 84 PC Users: 4.0
PS3 Critics: 83 PSC Users: 3.6
Xbox Critics: 81 Xbox Users: 4.0

Dragon Age: Origins
PC Critics: 91 PC Users: 8.3
PS3 Critics: 87 PS3 Users: 7.6
Xbox Critics: 86 Xbox Users: 7.5

2757

Your sense of hearing is acute :)

The DA2 approach to combat is just plain silly. I mean, it could be worse, it could be a cover-based shooter with a million random chest-high obstacles all over the place… Anyhow, doing that silly running toward and past the enemy thing is largely unnecessary because the combat is (usually) so easy.

2758

I don’t know if anyone caught or posted this little bit, but I found it pretty funny:
http://cubeupload.com/im/pEAlr4.jpg

edit - that said, I thought the “I’m hungry” line is pretty humorous.

2759

Yes, I did all this and no, it doesn’t show up. The Power Management option, that is. Not sure what else to tell you.

That is the fairly common “freeze” bug. There is a thread dedicated to it over on the Bioware official boards and the Bioware rep has already stated that they think the “connection lost” thing is a symptom, not the cause. Current thinking is that it may simply be a driver issue as a number of people have had success modifying a different version of the latest beta drivers so that they can be installed on the more common cards. Other people, like myself, seem to have success simply telling the game to use Dx9 to render graphics rather then Dx11 (which covers Dx10 as well), though you do lose some graphical polish in that case.

2760

Man, lots of negativity in this thread.

Steam tells me I’m 9 hours into the game. My Hawke is a level 7 warrior, and I’m still mucking around trying to get enough money to buy my way onto that Deep Roads expedition. So far, I’m still having a blast. The writing and voice-acting are great, and while none of the companions so far are as interesting as Sten or Shale, they do have some personality to them.

I like that it’s not a traditional fantasy RPG story told in the traditional way. I like that, at the moment, I have no idea what I’m working “towards” and I’m just a guy trying to make my way in this city and do right by my family and friends. It’s something different, and that’s enough to hold my interest.

I don’t care about inventory management. Actually I take that back–I do. I like that I’m not constantly fussing with armor for my companions. They’re people that can dress themselves. It’s fun in games that have it (I liked collecting sets in Origins), but I can take it or leave it. Skill trees seem to have some interesting depth to them, and specialization is starting to get fun.

Combat, to me, is neither tedious nor too easy. I’m playing on Hard, and I think that’s just right. I have to manage and make full use of all of my companions abilities, pay attention to potion cooldowns, move people around, react to reinforcements, etc. It’s fun. I know a lot of people don’t like the “second wave” thing, but it never doesn’t make sense to me and I like the challenge.

10 Hours in, and DA2 is on par with Origins for me. I think what Mike Laidlaw said in that interview that was linked earlier is true: a lot of people wanted this to be Origins 2. That’s not the game Bioware made (or wanted to make), and they’re getting some flak for that. And that’s fair. I understand that disappointment, I just don’t share it at all. So far I think this is a fantastic game that I can’t wait to get get further into.

As an aside, I think the situation with hundreds of people flooding Metacritic with 0/10 user reviews and other people using that low score to try to make a point about the game is inane, but that’s another matter.