How could you create a setting where mages are walking...

Simply change a few things around so it's not Dragon Age.

Change it from boarding school to specialized prisons for a handful of people rather then several dozen, and instead of being used like spellcasters, have them be living batteries for super-weapons.

There, you kept the basic idea of what you want while changing so much that it's only vaguely resembles Dragon Age.

There's another reason I've thought up that is based on something the real life chuch has done

>Church bans it against other christians or whatever the fuck for whatever reason they can come up with but the real reason is that anyone can pick it up and wreck one of the church's holy champions pretty easily because magic is that good

Happened to crossbows.
One crossbow in the hands of a completely untrained peasant could bring down a fully armored knight with no problem because it was that good. So they forbid peasants from having them.
Of course, some still had it. Fuck the police.

Make sure you create a dashing freedom fighter who battles for the freedom of mages everywhere.

...

...

Really if you just wholesale ripped off how Dragon Age did it but removed the whole blood magic/demons part of it you'd be off to a good start.

It's not hard to make mages seem potentially dangerous without having everyone burst out into demons. Fuck, even if every mage was just a blasty wizard, that would be enough to want to keep them in check.

>anders
>dashing
>anders
>freedom fighter
>anders
>not seeing that Justice was always a bad demon and was just playing him in a long con
>anders
>more dashing than Sebastian
>anders
>a less likable character than Fenris
>anders
>

--Joke-->

Your head

it was a ruse

>the only way he could die is by getting stabbed in the back by the MC
>bioware thought that trying to murder him was cowardly
Nigga, I would've gutted him with my greatsword if I had the option, what the fuck.

Just make it not suck so much dick. But hey, you're probably much better than all bioware writers already.

40k has a good system.

>ruthless oppression of psykers
>Join the state's psyker academy, if you fail you get executed.
>Psykers that evade capture don't last to long on their own.

Just make the psykers rare like 1 in a million and reskin 40k

>Anders and human emotion turned Justice into Vengeance
Fuck Anders. I wanted to sto him as soon as he started that quest for what sounded awfully like the ingredients for gunpowder.

40k did it first.

>but removed the whole blood magic/demons part

But that's the best part.

Make it a warhammer ripoff.
Then you'll be on the same tier as Dragon Age.

How could a game series fall so low so fast?

Origins and Awakening and their runty DLC children were a good game, possibly a great game. Mostly generic as all fuck but fun to play despite that.

Then came 2.

What the fuck happened?

Then came Inquisition that fixed some of 2s problems but then created 2 more for each one.

By firing everyone that worked on the first one. By putting all the focus on gameplay, cut-scenes and the writer changing the world to fit his idea of a good villain istead of changing the villain to fit the world.
For example, how everyone was retarded in DA2, because they wanted to have the mage as a boss fight no matter what.

I did wonder about that.

You're cutting down Templars like swathes of grass, not one of your side have fallen, generally being a fucking boss and victory is assured.

Orsino: Oh noes we am loozin? Need become curps deemun! Also I sheltered the mage that killed Ur mum Bcoz raisins.

Hawke and Co.: Wat?!

And then there was Boss Fight 2: No Reason Boogaloo.

alternatively you could create an alternative timeline; Dragon never cleanses Saidin, but still wins Last Battle. There are thousands of slowly decaying Ashaman around, and the Aes Sedai have to take them all as Warders, as they hunt down the last trollocs down, desperatately search for cure to heal the Taint, and prepare for the coming Apocalyptic War against Seanchan Empire and possibly Sharan Empire that is pissed for having lost the battle of Merrilor.

to make things spicier, have Demandred survive as Imperator of Shara, who wants revenge against White Tower and all the friends of Al'Thor, with Moghy manipulating the Crystal Throne from the inside.

Seanchan have made thousands of copies of the Domination Band, which allows their sul'dam to control slowly decaying male channelers, but the rot passes through and it is becoming more important that the Great War for control of Randland must happen within 10 years before a New Breaking begins.

The Crystal Throne must fight both rebel warlords on their home continent, but due to border clashes there is open warfare in Almoth plain, with hundreds of channelers on both sides shaking the earth and making the skies rain fire.
A similar doomsday frontline stretches from Ghealdan to Altara, with Aes Sedai deploying all they have to stop the advance of the Ever Victorious Army. The Aiel are considering joining the skirmishes, meanwhile the Sea Folk raid Seanchan coastline as vengeance and the Sharans bid their time; maybe they will invade Seanchan continent from the west, or maybe Demandred will strike down the "Aes Sedai" of this age, and finish what he couldn't during Age of Legends; strike down the (t)Amyrlin.

Or you could play a warhammer game

>By putting all the focus on gameplay
Whaaat, the gameplay was at its best in Awakening and at its worst in Inquisition, how the fuck can they have focused on it? If anything they've focused on art direction for 2 (yes edgy, but less generic than Origins borefest) and changing the graphic engine while wrecking everything else for 3.

Give the story a class warfare angle. Magic is dangerous to use, but its also the great equalizer. Once you learn to throw fire, heal the sick and conjure food from nothing suddenly you might start to wonder why the hell you should be content giving 90% of your crop to your feudal lord or letting his Knights threaten you if you don't.

The Anti-Magic Religious Order is tasked with suppressing and controlling this. They see it as protecting the people from themselves even though in reality they're just tools of the cycle of oppression that keeps a feudal civilization functioning.

Isn't this the plot of all those shitty Terry Goodkind books. Wizards 1st rule etc.

You prefer tactical oriented games over action oriented?

user I prefer not being bound to three different skills that only deal damage of different types. There's nothing action-y about inquisition, it's just the same shit as the older games with less choice.
Give me back muh crowd control you fucking bioware niggers.

The ban was also against slings and bows as well, not just crossbows. Even then the ban only applied against using them on Christians. Everyone else was a fair target.

>mages are walking, talking weapons of mass destruction
Simple: magic only works on a wide scale. If you get a dozen mages together for a whole day, they can kill whole cities in various nasty ways, but none of them can shoot a fireball the size of a watermelon to kill one person in a few seconds.

Dragon age mages are not so powerful. Read The 5th season, it fits your description perfectly.

>"Do it like 40K!"

It's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, guys. It's already a game. I don't like how it does everything, but I really, really like how it does magic. The wizard can cast all day if he wants to! He just needs to roll every time he casts a spell to see if he fucks up and kills himself and everyone around him! Or gets possessed! And he better be carrying his college ID, because everyone knows what to do with witches! And they don't burn witches because they're superstitious peasants, they burn witches because witches are fucking dangerous and should be burned. It's a fun way to play.

>they burn witches because witches are fucking dangerous and should be burned
I agree with the peasant. Fucking witches.
But make it full 40k, because witches in space are better.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen series does that to an extent.

An army has a minor spellcaster that can perform some simple tricks in almost every squad and one or two that could, by themselves, eradicate an entire enemy army. During combat each side is trying to gain an advantage with the squad mages doing their best to shield their comrades while the real spellcasters battle it out.
Those mages are, in turn, held in check by rare, heavily regulated and expensive antimagic metal.

In short: let players have access to minor magic and let it be sufficiently strong against mundane foes, but make it clear that 'there is always somebody bigger and better'. Meaning that if they start burning shit down, someone much stronger will come by and swat them down.

Honestly what the fuck was up with the second game ? They turned a likable charecter from the first game into an over emotional edgy faggot failure whom goes ahead and ruins everything because of "what he believes is right".

>Honestly what the fuck was up with the second game ?
They made the basic storytelling mistake of bending everything around the plot rather than making the plot develop out of the characters.
Whoever was in charge had his own idea of what was going to happen, and everything else was adjusted to accomodate that vision, even if it broke characters and events.

Was there any indication in the 1st game that Anders was a faggot?

None that I noticed (well he was kind of a pussy and he liked cats, but that's hardly a smoking gun), but Awakenings doesn't have romances.
What I did notice however is that Anders was an aequitarian, and thought the libertarians were stupid extremists with no chance of succeeding (says so to Wynne in Amaranthine), which is 100% at odds with his DA2 character.

40k did it first and better than your faggot beta SJW nu-RPG, kindly kill yourself.