I think it maybe an issue with the number of them, and how it’s almost the only thing to do in most areas.
Although not entirely true, the game certainly FEELS like it has a story set of areas, and then a large (in size and number) of throwaway areas where nothing of any note ever happens.
Re: part 1: that’s part of the addiction/compulsion/completionist thing, as much a personality trait as anything else. There are 18 shards in this zone? Of course I have to collect all 18. It’s the same reason I kept playing Skyrim or any of half a dozen MMOs for dozens of hours more than I should have: the drive to fill in all those little markers on the map is its own thing, with its own satisfied brain response, albeit one that makes me feel crappy if I think about it too much. I don’t disagree that your point of view may be very valid for many/most gamers, but gaming OCD isn’t exactly uncommon either, and DA:I plays very specifically towards it with much of the design.
Point granted on DA:O fetch quests, though they also were less of a timesink due to the size of the world, movement system, and lesser loading times. Think of it more as a continuing criticism of BioWare not always getting what’s fun and what isn’t (see: Mako issues and planet scanning in the Mass Effect games).
Kinthalis: I’ve done a bunch of Normal and a bunch of Hard and they each have something to recommend them. Normal is easy to the point where you don’t even need healing potions for the most part, never mind other kinds of potions or tonics or grenades… but it’s kind of fun to just run around and swing at things. Hard is a good balance point for what you can do to manage combat without getting too frustrated with the camera.
I wanted to do all the sidequests and exploration not because I’m a completionist, but rather because I found the world to be really engaging and I wanted to make my companions happy by doing their respective quests. This is a strength of Bioware’s storytelling, and it’s unfortunate that it causes you to outlevel the main storyline so quickly.
Well I finished the game last night. I’m a completionist as well. Bioware said you could keep playing after the main quest is done, so I took them at their word and finished the story.
I won’t post anything about the story right now but let me say, sure you can keep playing, but they removed almost any reason for you to keep doing so. Once you finish, all the Skyhold improvements and crafting stuff are gone. This means:
Mosaic sets? nope, no point now
Shards? Sure, ok.
Crafting? nope
Improving Skyhold? Nope
Talking to companions? Nope. Even your LI doesn’t acknowledge you
I wanted to finish that tower by finding one more Quarry, but no point now. There’s no way to use it. All Skyhold improvements are gone. The place is empty.
Ah well, I guess I’ll do that all on my next playthrough.
I do agree with the content/level system. For instance, in my second play through I’m trying to build up Influence to eventually earn Deft Hands, Fine Tools but doing so means running a bunch of side quests which means gaining experience and leveling. But I also don’t want to level past the content I skipped last time. I am, at least, skipping the +XP Perks and stuff like that to try and slow it down a bit.
Ironically, I’m also using my knowledge gained from last time to game the system a little. Last night I blew most of my power at level 10 to unlock Emprise du Lion for the infinite Tier 3 leather supply and ample Bloodstone (and less ample but still available Dawnstone and Everite). Level 10 rogue running around with Dawnstone daggers and in an Armor: 175 coat! 
That’s disappointing and weird. I called it done soon after the post-victory banquet so never noticed but I can’t imagine why they did that.
Yeah at the war table before the final fight they warn you if you do this mission some stuff won’t be available later. I can understand if it was companion conversations, but the Skyhold stuff makes no sense.
Yeah, this. There’s a lot of stuff to do, but most of it is optional and if you set out to do every niggling little thing it’s going to get tedious. It’s really liberating to realize that if a quest is dull you can JUST WALK AWAY FROM IT.
Oh, did anyone who finished the game watch past the ending credits?
if you did… wow. lol. That was some ‘weird shit’ as Varric would say 
I was reminded of this comment last night when I came across this guide to combos in Dragon Age: Inquisition. All sorts of things to do with cross-class skill interaction, synergies and exploiting specific enemy weaknesses.
I’ve been playing and following along in the discussion, hearing everyone talk about the large amount of content, and I’ve been nodding, because yeah, it’s definitely a big game. I mean, not quite Skyrim-size, I thought, but I found the Skyrim world to be so bland and without character that the trade off seemed worth it. And there sure was a lot to do, which was great.
…and then I finished Act 1.
Holy shit. The way this game, which is already huge, opens up - like the entire massive-in-size-and-scope first act was just a really deep tutorial mission - is not like anything I’ve personally experienced in a video game.
I really like it. For the first time, the sheer number of things to do completely overwhelms my OCD/completionist side. It’s not really possible to do everything, so I find myself doing the things that (in my/my character’s opinion) actually matter, or are interesting or fun… you know, like in real life. It’s awesome, and the closest thing I’ve seen yet to a true role-playing experience in a video game. My character doesn’t care about some dude researching dragons, so she doesn’t waste her time helping him. It’s incredibly liberating!
But but. dragons! Heh actually that quest unlocks the dragon in that area so if you want to fight it you may want to do that one.
For those who miss the Origins banter, there’s some apparently unused audio where;
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6eLYvbATjs]Alistair or Loghain meet Morrigan and talk about her son.
Nah, I’ll save it for my second playthrough. Unlike life, when I’m all done I get to do it again and try different things 
I was wrong earlier. It was actually a bug. If you travel somewhere, or log out, and come back to Skyhold, all the stuff is there.
Beat it over the weekend.
I’m mostly disappointed with this game, even though there is a lot that they did right and that I enjoyed.
They nailed a lot of story moments, like finding skyhold, like the time spent in the fade, like Val Royeaux, like most of the companion sidequests. The main storyline quests were well written, well executed, enjoyable, and rewarding (as long as we’re not talking about loot).
It’s everything else in the game that suffered.
Combat was just dumbed down. It’s that simple. Couple it with an ABSURD attempt at a tactical interface (monkeys would have done a better job, provided at least ONE such simian had played a PC game before, a PC game like say, oh, BALDUR’S FUCKING GATE or the Original Dragon Age). The combat is very flashy and at times looks really good. But it’s just not engaging for me. I was expecting combat to be a number of tactical set pieces that I had to puzzle my way through… instead I got mostly dumb AI mobs rushing at me and a game that begged me to button mash my way through it all, and even fought me, if I dared attempt to engage it on a more strategic level.
Loot was terribad. I didn’t expect Diablo 3, but this was on another level of bad and boring. Bland and generic items, small number of models, specially when it came to armors, very little variety in terms of special abilities/powers. Add to that what is a frustratingly obtuse and inefficient inventory and crafting system, and the entire thing overall has got to be one of the most boring tasks this game forced me to suffer through.
Which brings me to the sprawling areas of Thedas we got to explore. The ones I saw were all beautiful. From the jungles and forests, to the jagged bluffs over looking the sea, to the sands of the desert.
Too bad there was never anything REMOTELY interesting to do in the vast majority of them. Nothing of interest ever happened in any of these massive places. They felt like generic MMO’s areas on an empty sever. The starting area, with the templar and mage fighting had the most potential, but the whole conflict was dumbed down to random NPC’s milling about.
There were numerous areas I just didn’t even bother visiting, although I believe I did most of my companion’s side quests (ignored Viviennes). There was just no motivation to do so.
I liked the twist at the (very) end though. I’m just not sure how enthused I am about a sequel or expansion.
Oh well, there’s still Pillars of Eternity and Numenera to look forward to. Also got to finish up Wasteland 
I thought the game was great and won’t bother trying to argue most specific points but I will say I’m confused whenever anyone says the crafting system was complicated or confusing. You pick materials and it says exactly what the results will be. It could not be any easier. It’s the best way to edit a characters attributes, you can make plate armor for your Knight Enchanter and with masterwork options (once you recruit the arcanist) you can add a bunch of extra abilities like weapons that proc Walking Fortress or armor that can Horn of Glory on a hit. The crafting system is awesome and one of the games high points.
The crafting system wasn’t difficult to comprehend. It was just tedious.
I would hold off usually until my inventory was mostly full, because of how much of a pain it is to do this.
First I would go through my inventory and see if I had picked up outright better weapons for anyone. This takes several minutes. Why the comparisons take two (spaced out!!!) button presses to enter and leave, and why it takes up half the friggin screen, I’ll never know.
Then I need to modify the items in order to extract the valuable slot enhancements of otherwise trash items. More tediousness. Why isn’t the weapon/armor of the current character always on top? Why is it sometimes on top, sometimes at the bottom of a 30 item list, and sometimes somewhere in the middle? Because Bioware is trolling me, that’s why.
Ok, so now I’m going to see if I can craft me some items. Over to the craft table, ooh this schematic looks good. Let’s see the sats are likely to be… uhm what DPS are my current weapons again? Oh, I can’t see that in her,e I have to back out, open the damn inventory again and go through all my characters, then WRITE DOWN the Armor and weapon DPS info so I have an inkling of whether to craft x item or not?
The system is just so damn time consuming. Imagine fi Diablo 3 was like this, with like 10 times the inventory and diversity of items. Jeebus.
The actual systems aren’t’ bad at all, with the exception of lack of variety in loot and meshes, and perhaps very few really bad ass special powers to play around with. It’s the interface that makes it trash.
Wow, I didn’t have one tenth that much trouble with it but… oh well, lucky me, I guess.
Are you playing on PC with M&K? I heard this is actually a place where M&K is better in this game. Supposedly you get tooltips with comparisons as you float the cursor over items (that alone will save tons of time!) you have keyboard shortcuts to various menus, drag and drop support, etc.
Of course this game won’t let you switch between the two interfaces on the fly :smack: