Whoever set Dragon Age's pacing and gating locks got it all wrong.
In RPGs, especially Bioware ones, we are used to certain areas being locked out and inaccessible if you're not a certain level. Often, there are story-based 'keys' to fetch on item-errand quests or unclimbable invisible walls and other such tropes. Take things to a crazy extreme, and you get the oft-laughed at situation in Neverwinter Nights where all you really want is to get past a goddamn city gate, and the game essentially sends you on the equivalent of Hercules' 12 Trials (or 4 special zones) in order to prove to the gatekeeper that you're plague-free...or a demi-god or something.
In Dragon Age, the designer was a bit too super-sensitive about such story locks, and instead decided to take a page from MMOs. (Again.) In MMOs, ostensibly, we are locked out via certain zones having monsters far above your level, which suggest, after a few deaths, that you better not be in there yet.
However, they forgot to look at the REST of the design factors that make this viable in MMOs, as opposed to Dragon Age.
MMOs are already broken up into such level-based zones, which are often clearly demarcated from the get-go. Such and such is level 35-50. This place is level 5-10, etc. Even if you cannot tell, wandering in the vincinity will let you 'con' a mob, and see exactly what numerical value it is. Mobs are also all generally color coded for difficulty, so if you wander into a region full of a sea of red names, the tendency is to meander back out in a hurry... without engaging any of these monsters in battle and subsequent horrific death.
Quests in MMOs are also broken up by these level-based zones, so you have to go to the area to get your full money's worth of fetch and kill 'em quests. Furthermore, the quests that point you to the zones in MMOs are very often set for your level - once you hit level 5, a quest will point you to the level 5 zone, ditto when you hit level 20 and are ready to 'graduate' onto the next zone.
Conversely in Dragon Age, the STORY is everything. After a decently paced linear tutorial and introduction on railroads, the game ostensibly opens up and lets you go anywhere you want. Your choice. You gotta rally the three races and the mages to your banner (each conveniently in a separate zone), you can go to two main cities, or one of your party mates -strongly- suggest you stop over by a dinky little village before heading elsewhere.
EXCEPT, as you later find out through nasty trial-and-error and some third party website reading, the two main cities have encounters with a challenge level set for level 10s, the mage and human places are for level 6+, the elf place is for level 7+, and the dinky little village is supposedly set for level 5+. I forgot what level the dwarves are, probably 6-8+.
Your party meanwhile at this point is about level 4-5 if you're lucky. Level scaling is supposed to bring down the levels, but as you'll soon discover, set piece battles are less about slight differences in numerical value and more about how much fucking crowd control and other utility options you have to stop 15 skeletons eating your face.
Of course, your NPC options at this point are a) a warrior, b) a mage with no heals and limited crowd control. If you go to the dinky little village, you may get a) a warrior, b) a rogue. That's some tanks or DPS depending on how you spec them, but where are the heals and support? I guess if you didn't pick the right PC from the start, you're kinda screwed.
According to the forums, you are thus best advised to head straight for the mage tower to pick up your friendly healing NPC, or was that the human place?
For sure, if you try roleplaying as I did, and figure that a city elf might want to check out how her country cousins live as her first stop, you will promptly be plonked down into an intended for level 7+ zone and funneled through a dungeon crawl with a DRAGON (mini, though it is) and should you sneak past that after dying 7 times, be confronted with a set piece ambush encounter of 12+ skeletons intent on eating face who will CHASE you down with no aggro wearing off, only to find out that you cannot change zones while in combat.
This, say the designers, is intended to let me know that I might not be skilled enough for this encounter yet and that I should come back later.
So hang on, let me get this straight, after dying and reloading my game several bazillion times to try out a few dozen strategies that don't work, you want me to reload again to retrace my steps out of 3 dungeon crawl maps to go back to the elves and say, hang on guys, all your quests are on hold until I gain a few levels?
(Suspend some story disbelief here, in RP terms I'm saying: the werewolves can keep eating you guys for a while longer, I'm going out to the humans and the mages for some more adventure levels and pick up the healer NPC before I can fight the dragon and the skeletons blocking the way to the werewolves' lair in order to free you guys from the curse)
Ok, I lied a little. I probably won't -need- the healer NPC because my damage mage picked up a heal when she leveled. I'd probably have a much easier time of it with an NPC specced for it though, regardless of how annoying her personality might be.
But I'm kinda miffed to find out that there are ways I'm -supposed- to be playing this game. Cookie cutter ones. And yet, with no better design to encourage this cookie cutter-ness except by dying horrendously on 'normal' difficulty setting.
Speaking of which, the default settings of Dragon Age are all wrong. A couple nights ago, I tweaked my mad characters again and got them to hold in place by toggling the option. They no longer attack -anything- unless told to, but at least they stay still and don't squirm all over the place. I tweaked my mage's tactics once again and actually got her casting heal and damage spells on a regular basis, while staying at range intelligently, and she's quite a sight now - but seriously, why do I have to programme individual NPCs for this? I didn't have to do this crap for Baldur's Gate, KOTOR or Mass Effect, the default worked decently, what's changed?
Sometimes, I'm tempted to just quit my city elf rogue roleplaying game, roll up a PC mage, run straight to pick up the damage mage NPC and the healer mage NPC, run to pick up the Stone Golem 'premium content' NPC tank, and then mow through the rest of the game that way.
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