Eversince Mass Effect 2, there's this very loud minority complaining about developers 'Dumbing Down' their games in general and Bioware doing so to their RPGs specifically.

RPG happens in the dialogs. RPG happens in your combat playstyle. RPG doesn't happen in the inventory screen or the character sheet.

I actually think that the strategic play of Mass Effect 2 was much better for having more abilities and weapons available than in Mass Effect 1.  Even as a soldier, having all the guns available (which makes sense, I mean why in the hell would an N7 soldier not know how to use a shotgun or pistol or something) makes for much more varied gameplay.  I never felt like the combat of Mass Effect revolved around selecting abilities anway; it was all about using yours and your squadmates powers in unique combinations to tackle combat situations.  

I can agree to an extent. But I consider inventory management to be RPG as well since it gives you control to customize what your character and your companions wear.  I never did like the loss of giving armors to companions in ME2 and DA2. It added a dimension where I could match my companion's armors to my main character's. So yes. RPG does indeed happen in inventory management in my book.  

Oh the other hand I have the biggest respect for Bioware for their decision to not do it that way. Because it limited their abilities to create different body types. For the armors to fit without major optimization and texture changes they had to have ONE body type for each gender. 
So even if I don't like it doesn't mean I hold it against them.
 
I also think RPG happens in character sheets but I never felt the changes they made to ME2 and DA2 to be bad. It was streamlined and to me improved without loosing the point that you're molding your character into what you want it to be.

Dragon Age 2 is not dumbed down. The combat is just faster. Decisions need to be made quickly or your squad will die. 
I'm glad there is no need to constantly equip new armor to all your companions. After a while all that menu shuffling just becomes a bore. 
I agree with everything you're saying. All that overblown inventory management like in DAO and Mass Effect 1 were arcane time wasters that should be left in the past.

There's a lot more to it than that. How many different possible builds and combinations are there in the game? How distinct are the classes? How varied are the encounters and enemy types? How strategic is the combat? Are there skill checks or even skills? Crafting? Feats? Are there rules for combat engagement such as zones of control (ie. attacks of opportunity)? What kinds of spells are there? Are there factions that respond to you differently based on the choices you make? Does the game prioritise player skill or character skill? 
 
The point is Dragon Age has, by the standards of earlier CRPGs from the 80s and 90s, extremely simplistic character-building and combat. While one needn't be obliged to copy all the aspects of DnD or any other pen and paper ruleset,  Bioware simply got rid of the stuff they used to have in older games in favour of, as you say, streamlining. But you can't have it both ways, a game might be better if it removes shit elements, but it will still be simplified. Therefore it will be dumbed-down. Just comparing DA2 to the first is misleading, because it had a mixed reception in CRPG circles as well.
 
Tl;dr There's no arguing against someone's perspective: some people will be happy with less RPG elements, RPG players will certainly not be, and they've begun crucifying the game already. It doesn't help that according to reviews Bioware lied about the PC game being unchanged from the first.

You state all of your opinions on what makes a better game as fact, and don't even acknowledge that some players want different things from their games. This makes me not even want to respond.

"Ever since Mass Effect 2"
Stopped reading right there. People have been complaining about dumbing down of gaming for the past few years now.

" "Ever since Mass Effect 2" Stopped reading right there. People have been complaining about dumbing down of gaming for the past few years now. "

" You state all of your opinions on what makes a better game as fact, and don't even acknowledge that some players want different things from their games. This makes me not even want to respond. "

Say what you want but if you can't look at the PC version of Dragon Age II and tell it has been dumbed down compared to the first, with console style menus then you're either blind or totally biased.

" Say what you want but if you can't look at the PC version of Dragon Age II and tell it has been dumbed down compared to the first, with console style menus then you're either blind or totally biased. "

• Do you play with Friendly Fire on?
• Do you control the enemies with crowd control?
• Do you chain up abilities for maximum effect?
• Do you mind your movement?
• Do you place your characters smartly and try to control the flow of battle?
• Do you build your characters and your allies to fill certain roles?
• Do you build Tanks and Damage Dealers and Healers?
• Do you have meaningful conversations with impactful consequences?
  

NO.

"  the strategic play of Mass Effect 2    "

I feel like the only person who is perfectly happy navigating menus, digging through giant inventory screens, and leveling up character skills one tedious point at a time.  I want customization out of a WRPG.  Ridiculous amounts of it.  As much as they can fit into the game.

You know what bothers me?
I got tons and tons of DLC items for doing whatever, but there's obvious strength differences in them and some are plain unusable since you're a rogue/warrior/mage.
Now my party would have made good use of that but that's locked too.
 
I mean, why do we even have vendors that sell robes and staves then if I'm a Rogue anyway? 
Do it 100% or don't do it, making me see powerfull stuff available to buy (retrieve from my chest) but being unable to use it is even more crap.
 
I want to spend time in inventories damnit :P

The omission of the tactical overhead view is the one gripe I do understand completely.
 
I don't understand how the lack of the tactical view does reduced gameplay depth though.
 
Micromanagement got more finicky - thus I don't understand its omission. The depth though is still there. All of it.

I like to be forced to use my brain in a game in order to progress.
 
I don't like it that I belong to 1% of all people in the world who have ever played one electronic game or more, because I like to have to use my brain in games.
 
I consider this and the Mass Effects to be action-adventures, which is also a genre I put FF13 in, because that's what it was. Mindless railroading, still some fine-ass games.
 
DA2 and ME2 compared to their prequels though? Dumbed the f down. Crysis 2 to Crysis 1, Oblivion to Morrowind, Skyrim to Oblivion, Generation to generation, Professor to teacher to child.
 
Still fine games.

My biggest complaint is the dialogue wheel. Thats where i see the largest amount of dumbing down. So far i can't just talk to my party members, which is something i loved in Origins. The dialogue wheel makes me hate Hawke a little more pretty much everytime i say something. It's much more shallow in terms of making it seem like an actual conversation i like.
The combat has quite a bit taken out such as some of the class specializations and the fact that party members can only be what they are set to be. Merrill will never be able to learn from the healing tree, Varric will never carry daggers. I can't make any rouge wield 2 swords, and warriors can't dual wield period. 
I don't see how what they did to the parties inventory could be good at all unless your that concerned with the apearance of your characters. I'm a mage, now my blood dragon armor and Ser isaac Clarke armor is completly useless until my next playthrough. Picking armor isn't dumb it can be interesting, it's a part of progression. 

People can argue about whether or not DA2 is as deep as the classic CRPGs (it isn't) but it's pointless. Just recognize that there's a group of people who want things out of an RPG that DA2 doesn't offer. There's another group of people who either don't care or actively don't want those things, and by Bioware's own admission DA2 has been designed for that group.

" @Brendan said:

"  the strategic play of Mass Effect 2    "

The what? I pointed my gun at enemies and pulled the trigger, never-ever using any of the bonus abilities because I never needed to, because shooting them always did the job very well. (Playing on normal)  Couldn't do that in Mass Effect 1 "

" RPG happens when I run into someone's house, jump on the kitchen table, steal all their spoons and make a hasty retreat across open ground to my mountainside cutlery cavern. "

The thing about Mass Effect 2 is that it just feels like BioWare decided to dumb down their games in general.
 
The company that was once know for making the deepest, most complex RPG's making 3rd person shooters.
 
Doesn't feel right.

" @Brendan said:

"  the strategic play of Mass Effect 2    "

The what? I pointed my gun at enemies and pulled the trigger, never-ever using any of the bonus abilities because I never needed to, because shooting them always did the job very well. (Playing on normal)  Couldn't do that in Mass Effect 1 "

 
I honestly think the most fun my friends and I have had dealing with RPGs is just designing characters for D&D. We've never even really played the game because we suck at it (and no one wants to be DM, which is why co-op RPG video games are awesome), but just a month ago we took out all of my rulebooks and sat down and designed a fresh batch of characters that we'll never use. 
 
Just because the OP, and indeed mainstream video gamers in general, don't enjoy the art of crafting characters doesn't mean there aren't those of us out there who do. And I personally loved managing everyone's armor sets and skill trees in DA:O, and spent a fair amount of time just dealing with menus and reading through wikis to make sure I picked up and outfitted everyone with all the best loot. 
 
Streamlining and dumbing down are the same thing, because they both lead to a game that requires less mental effort to play. And no one can factually argue this, because the fact that you don't have to think about inventory management means that you're overall thinking less. And less thought is the definition of dumbing down. 
 
 
 
At this point you can skip to the bottom if you just want the summary of the rest.
 
 
 
I also had a similar bone to pick in DA:O, because the skill trees were ridiculously bad. For Warriors, it was basically just pick your archetype (high dps, dps/tank hybrid, tank), because if you did all the sidequests and purchased all the skill upgrades, by the end of the game you'd have every single useful skill filled out for your weapon type. Hell, I actually had to wait until I imported my character to Awakening to level up, because I leveled, but had no useful place to put that last skill point (as in I would've had to put it in a different weapon tree). 
 
I also didn't like how in Origins there were certain ability types only available to certain weapon types. I mean, I understand the shield stances thing, but the fact that both sword/board and 2h weapon types had a knock-down immunity that was unusable without that weapon type was ridiculous, because it gave automatic, crippling disadvantage to a dual-weapon Warrior in tough battles (read: High Dragons). 
 
The mage "tree" was even worse. Because of how the domains were divided up, there was some ridiculous bullshit where about half of 3 domains were just copy/paste damage spells with the damage type changed (i.e. from fire to spirit). It basically created a situation where if you wanted the full benefits of mage classes, you'd have to have 2 mages in your party: one for support spells, and one for damage spells. And if you wanted a pure healer, that meant 2-3 mages, because there was no reasonable way to make a hybrid mage with any kind of serious effectiveness in either area. So putting mage as a main character was stupid, unless you wanted your character to be support, because the game wasn't designed for a mage to be the main DPS of the party. 
 
 
 
In summation, the spell'skill trees sucked (and still do), there was no customization outside of weapon type for warriors, and the only reason rogues were more complex was because they had more ancillary (but fairly useless overall) skills.

" @Ventilaator said:

" @Brendan said:

"  the strategic play of Mass Effect 2    "

The what? I pointed my gun at enemies and pulled the trigger, never-ever using any of the bonus abilities because I never needed to, because shooting them always did the job very well. (Playing on normal)  Couldn't do that in Mass Effect 1 "

What are you trying to say here? You probably played either a soldier or an infiltrator on normal and had your teammembers use their abilities automatically. Apparently you wanted to play it as a shooter, and then you complain it's not strategic? I think Bioware did a good job on letting people play this way if they want to, but don't claim this game is not strategic. Play on higher difficulties if you think it's too easy. "

The biggest problem I have with the game so far is the encounter design (PC) compared to Origins. 
 
The fights have waves of spawning enemies.  How am I supposed to properly prepare and outfit my characters for enemies that I didn't know were going to appear 3 seconds ago?  In DA:O, all the enemies in an encounter were in place when you got there.  You could pause and plan your skill usage properly.  Now if you see a group of enemies, you can't use everything you have because, "what if there is another wave of these guys? How will I beat them?" And then when that wave doesn't spawn, you just ended up making things harder on yourself pointlessly.  Additionally, it makes spells like Damage over Time/Curses/area spells much weaker because you don't know where or when more/stronger enemies might show up.  So should I Curse this strong guy?  What if another one comes in the next wave?  It is stuff like that which makes this game LESS tactical than the first one.
 
That is the biggest problem I have with the game.  

Not sure what people mean by "I didn't need to use ANY abilities in ME2 but I used them all the time in ME1" in terms of dumbing it down; For one thing that's not dumbing it down that's just the game being altered to suit different playstyles, and for another thing it's just not true; I went most of ME1 without using any of my little ammo powers, but ME2 I had to get my powers on. Now maybe this isn't true for you, but what it does show is that whole thing is a subjective experience.
 
Also I really didn't like how Bioware removed half of the squadpoints options.

" The biggest problem I have with the game so far is the encounter design (PC) compared to Origins.  The fights have waves of spawning enemies.  How am I supposed to properly prepare and outfit my characters for enemies that I didn't know were going to appear 3 seconds ago?  In DA:O, all the enemies in an encounter were in place when you got there.  You could pause and plan your skill usage properly.  Now if you see a group of enemies, you can't use everything you have because, "what if there is another wave of these guys? How will I beat them?" And then when that wave doesn't spawn, you just ended up making things harder on yourself pointlessly.  Additionally, it makes spells like Damage over Time/Curses/area spells much weaker because you don't know where or when more/stronger enemies might show up.  So should I Curse this strong guy?  What if another one comes in the next wave?  It is stuff like that which makes this game LESS tactical than the first one. That is the biggest problem I have with the game.   "

"

NO.

 
I want my games needless complex and demanding, otherwise I don't know that I'm alive. 
 
I'm going to escort this worthless blind girl around an island to collect firewood and nuts because that is the only way I canfeel anything. 
 

"

The abilities in ME argument comes down to the Dead Space 2 thing, where Brad kept using stasis to slow necromorphs down and Jeff was like "Instead of shooting them with the thing that slows them down, shoot them with the thing that makes them dead"
 
Sure, I COULD slow the enemies down and then lift them up and then switch my ammo type to something that pierces shields better, but if just pointing at the guy and shooting works completely fine as well, why would I do that?
 
A game like that needs to be difficult enough for you to be unable to get past certain sections without using your special abilities.

I, personally, believe that there is an additional level of complexity in many respects. 
 
If you pay attention to the different skills in the game, there is FAR more variety. No longer do we have 3 variations on elemental weapons, or a wealth different sustainable buffs that all inherently do the same thing. BioWare has essentially carved a purposeful niche for each and every ability. If you're looking for a strong Mage AoE spell, there are several to choose from--but unlike Dragon Age: Origins, you need to look at far more than simply the effect (or associated element). 
 
All those layers of complexity and strategy are still there. If you disagree, I would recommend that you invest more time (and less cynicism) into this title.

" People can argue about whether or not DA2 is as deep as the classic CRPGs (it isn't) but it's pointless. Just recognize that there's a group of people who want things out of an RPG that DA2 doesn't offer. There's another group of people who either don't care or actively don't want those things, and by Bioware's own admission DA2 has been designed for that group. "

" @jozzy said:

" @Ventilaator said:

" @Brendan said:

"  the strategic play of Mass Effect 2    "

The what? I pointed my gun at enemies and pulled the trigger, never-ever using any of the bonus abilities because I never needed to, because shooting them always did the job very well. (Playing on normal)  Couldn't do that in Mass Effect 1 "

What are you trying to say here? You probably played either a soldier or an infiltrator on normal and had your teammembers use their abilities automatically. Apparently you wanted to play it as a shooter, and then you complain it's not strategic? I think Bioware did a good job on letting people play this way if they want to, but don't claim this game is not strategic. Play on higher difficulties if you think it's too easy. "

I did play as a soldier, but I did so in Mass Effect 1 as well and couldn't complete the game without using the special abilities.  I wanted to play it as a shooter and then complained it's not strategic? A strategic game should not even have the option to play it without strategy.The RPG elements and special abilities in Mass Effect 2 are there JUST BECAUSE Bioware figured that since the first game was an RPG the second one should act like one as well.  I played Dragon Age 1 on normal and couldn't complete the game without pausing and minding my tactics. I've been quite sucessful at Dragon Age II on normal so far by mashing the attack button.   THAT IS CALLED DUMBING THE GAME DOWN. Sure, I can still pause and issue orders, but why would I do that? In the first game you had to do that to get through that strategic game, in the second you have to do that to pretend you're still playing a strategic game.  Saying "Play it on the MOST INSANIEST you dumb fuck" is a bullshit excuse. You're telling me the hard difficulty is hard? No shit. "

" My biggest complaint is the dialogue wheel. Thats where i see the largest amount of dumbing down. So far i can't just talk to my party members, which is something i loved in Origins. The dialogue wheel makes me hate Hawke a little more pretty much everytime i say something. It's much more shallow in terms of making it seem like an actual conversation  "

I can deal with not babysitting the specs (or armor/weapon at least) of my companions because let's face it; they appear by fiction to be self-sufficient enough to handle those things themselves. However, the more 'customization' the experience takes away, the less I feel I'm actually role-playing and more just taking part of someone elses adventure.

I, personally, love customization in RPGs.

I agree with you. 
 
I like your statement on the quantity of weapons in Mass Effect 2. I don't need to waste hours looking for a special weapon in the butt-fuck nebula; that shit slows the pace.

" @project343: I'll have to look through the spell trees and judge for myself (don't own the game yet) but if what you said is true, I'll be a bit less pissed off about BioWare's handling of spells. "

DA2 isn't especially more dumb than DAO, and DAO wasn't that complex to begin with. There were like 10 enemies in the whole game. Take off the rose tinted glasses, fellas.

" @Brendan said:

"  the strategic play of Mass Effect 2    "

The what? I pointed my gun at enemies and pulled the trigger, never-ever using any of the bonus abilities because I never needed to, because shooting them always did the job very well. (Playing on normal)  Couldn't do that in Mass Effect 1 "

all the encounters basically boil down to fighting a group of enemies only to have another group teleport on top of you, basically making any sort of positioning utterly pointless. the combat's faster pace dictates a quantity over quality approach with regards to the enemies. and, speaking of enemies, there are only like three different types. even the giant spiders don't shoot webs or poison you or basically do anything other than require you to mash the attack button to see your wicked sick anime attack animations. and, even on hard, you can just kite your way to victory and have bethany just plink away everyone's heath.
 
i donno, sounds pretty dumb to me.

Um the giant spiders lay web traps and there are poisonous spiders. So you're just guessing what the game is now, huh retard. What is this intellectual WRPG you're comparing DA2 to? Seriously, every game is you doing about 3 or 4 things. Its suddenly a problem now? It wasn't a problem in the first game. 

I feel as though someone ought to just link Dave's post about ME2 here, in many ways that covers my concerns about the direction bioware is heading. 

"  It's no longer simply 'what do I say,' and is more appropriately 'what do I say -- about what -- to whom -- and in front of who?' Which, I am aware that there are occasions in Origins where this second concern was important. Point being: it is 'far' more prevalent in this game. "

1. There is work and there is play. Inventory managment is work. Combat is play.
2. Combat has been much improved. Inventory management has been reduced.
3. More play. Less work.