That seems to be a response to people's complaints that you had to take a mage along, yet the actual issue wasn't that people wanted classes to do everything but that mages were considered necessary while only having the two NPC mages to choose from while being dumped with about four or five warrior companions, most of whom you wouldn't bother taking out with you. The answer should have been to add more NPC mages, give a healing ability to other classes (since it was the healing ability that made them so necessary), or to increase the party size (so that you could mix and match more, currently with a max of four you have three slots that HAVE to be assigned to specific character types to have a balanced party, with only one left that can be used to lean your party focus in the direction you want). Was one of the real flaws I had wanted to see fixed properly in the sequel, ho hum.

Like I said earlier I died in that battle twice in a row, mostly due to not having healing potions. It certainly makes me consider playing on normal, when I was originally going to play on hard.

Yeah, but I'm definitely not catering to them and expect me to like their boring, yawn inducing gameplay. Definitely the case with many other players and hence the complaining and boycotting of games will never stop.
No, I meant in my post that players nowadays complain in forums when they can't be bothered about finding other tactics and strategy to counter the enemy. And then the devs keep dumbing down games to cater to those ppl. And I had enough of that because they're making the games I really wanna play too simple and easy and hence exceedingly boring.

That second Ogre wasn't that tough even with a mage, as long as you picked up stuff off the ground on the earlier sections you had plenty of health potions to make it through. I used the Heal ability maybe twice.

With a warrior the ogre was cake, didn't try a rogue run though.

No I get ya. I actually just posted in that Bioware thread that I thought the challenge in that fight was a good thing. I'm just saying if there will be challenging battles like that on normal then I might use normal for my first playthrough... I thought normal would be a cake-walk.

I died a few times on the second ogre as well. I finally got to fully complete the demo yesterday thanks to no crashing and I did a much better job on the ogre when I actually put my tactics hat on and didn't let the party members do their own thing as much. :P

Hehe yeah, tactics is the key. :)
Thats why so many people bash the demo, they don't use any tactics but leaving the NPCs to fight on their own.
If the devs made the demo harder, people would whine about being impossible to beat, now they made it easy and people bash them, because the game is too easy and no tactics involved.

About the simplification of the games lately, I am not sure if it is cause of people getting dumber but because of a lack of time. Very few of us have plenty of spare time to read manuals, learning strategies and die 100 times in a row before they find how to beat a mob.
Lately I expect from games to let me learn the basics easy and to relax me after a hard day at work.
Dying 100 times and finally winning gives me nothing but frustration.
This is just me after all. :)

I can say I am no longer looking forward to the game. While I haven't played the demo every thing I hear about it suggests that Bioware are turning Dragon Age into a fantasy Mass Effect, which is a shame. I really liked the different races and opening sequences from Origins and how your characters background had an effect on how the game played out. Taking that away and telling the player that they have to play a predefined character seems like a major step backwards.

I have to say the removal of the main defining feature of the original game is disheartening. I'm sure Bioware has a good story for two, but the removal of one of the major roleplaying decisions in the game has turned me off completely from it.

Don't listen to opinions, play the demo.

My main turn off is a stated feature of the game. The part about the first game that I enjoyed the most was the different backgrounds or origins your character could have. Being able to be a Daelish Elf or dwarf instead of a human and roleplay that character were a great deal of fun for me. Dragon Age 2 removes that feature by saying you play as Hawke, a human. That kills any interest I had in the game.

When the game was first announced I was bothered that I could only be human since I mostly always play elves from my D&D days. Over the time since the initial announcement I warmed up to the thought because DA2 isn't about the Warden, it's about Hawke. I know people tend to use the DA2\ME similarities as ammo for bashing but really, Hawke has the be human in the same way Commander Shepard can't be a krogan, asari, quarian (you get where I'm going...). I mostly play WRPGs over JRPGs because I like creating my own character and feeling like I can fill in their backstory (instead of having a predefined one in most JRPGs where you're forced to be a certain character).

While ME and DA2 make you play as both Commander Shepard and Hawke, you can still define the character as you see fit. With ME1\2 I have three Shepards (well kind of two and a half, my first Renegade I skipped a ton of the side quests so I made another one to have a more complete character to bring into 2), and each of them are different for me.

I don't want to play a game that is impossibly hard like many were in the old days, and I don't have much time myself what with work and everything, but neither do I want to play a game that just lets me switch my brain off. If I want to do that then why not just watch TV instead? That's a serious question, not a piss take, because if the game does not require input from me then it might as well be a film imo.

People do challenging crossword puzzles to help them relax, others play challenging games. Unfortunately the drive to make all games appealable to the same market sector has led to those who don't apply to that market sector being left out in the cold.

Side not: I'm talking about gaming in general here, not DA2.

FlintlockJazz
Yes I understand you. Most games are piece of .... lately.
Just I don't find DA2 to be one of them. At least from the demo it looks like more polished in every aspect, exactly polished.
I prefer it this way, let the game play on its own and if you want, you can always put commands tactics etc.

If folks are not deliberately gimping their party for greater challenge, which i assume they aren't otherwise they wouldn't be complaining about the difficulty of the Ogre fight, the only thing than can possibly be giving people a hard time is that with all the hectic stuff on screen folks don't even realize there's two very different kinds of hurlocks on the field and that the 3 Grunts have to be taken out ASAP because they can take and deal plenty of damage.

Jesus, a lvl3 Mage has Mind Blast, Healing and Fireball. Fireball can be used both to pull crowds from the Warriors and (courtesy of no FF) to get the Mage out of trouble if he/she is swarmed and Mind Blast doesn't do the trick. Plus, i think that along the way there's always at least 2 or 3 healing potions to pick up.

Warrior and Rogue, there's not much point adressing those. If anyone is having problem with them, well...

Comparing the difficulty of this fight with the one at the Tower of Ishal is quite frankly ludicrous.

And bloody hell, Archers may have become one of the most powerfull builds pick. Still no strings though, which probably will put me off from playing one as it looks...well...silly. Would not have guessed in a million years that strings posed such a difficult tech problem to tackle but there it is. Funny.

Yeah me too. I tend to float towards the Elves instead of Human in most fantasy games though my first DAO character was human.
Well people complained about the main character not having a voice in DAO. And so they implemented the voiceacting in DA2. But they probably didn't want to have to voice over for multiple main characters and so they reduced the choices to being only human male and female like Ass Effect.
I was one of those who didn't care about my character not having a voice in DAO. In fact they could remove all the VOs and keep the ones that are important and have me read the text all the time. I would've preferred that then them removing the choices for races.
But again the devs have to cater to the whiny new age gamers.