473 réponses à ce sujet

[Maverick827]

I love the pretentiousness of those hiding under the mantle of the "old school," talking about "sticking to roots" when not only was BioWare's "roots" founded in co-op RPGs, but the RPG genre itself, with Dungeons and Dragons, existed solely to play with friends.

How sad are the lonely; nerds amongst nerds.

[AmstradHero]

Hundreds of people still play Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 as well. People also play retro games like Galaga and Space Invaders.

BioWare's best game is not NWN. It may be their game with the most modder support, but it wasn't their best game.

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

I'm curious, how would co-op proponents suggest it would work in a game like DA2 or |ME2 for that matter? We play as Shepard/Hawke, obviously having 20 Hawkes running around would be silly.



Previous games mentioned, like NWN, had unique characters with unique names, as far as I know.

[Gorthaur the Cruel]

Shinian2 wrote...

I'm curious, how would co-op proponents suggest it would work in a game like DA2 or |ME2 for that matter? We play as Shepard/Hawke, obviously having 20 Hawkes running around would be silly.

Previous games mentioned, like NWN, had unique characters with unique names, as far as I know.

Someone in another thread mentioned having another player take control of a companion.

[Glifik]

I'm more than happy about a single player campaign again But sometimes I wouldn't mind a online co-op version for 2-4 friends to beat the game together.. That could be fun..



But single player is great too

[Tooneyman]

Maybe they could give us a Mulitplayer in a DLC. Just to be nice. I highly doubt it, but it would be nice if Bioware had an open mind on this one. They could keep it separate from the campaign and the story. Just small fun modes we could play and have fun with. I don't know which game came out recently, but its about to get a mulitplayer DLC to it. Its originally a single player game, but the developers are putting a DLC mulitplayer pack to it and its going to be separate or so I was reading.

[rhautanen]

Try to do too many things and you'll do none of them well. IMHO they are smart to focus on single player and deliver that at high quality. I don't believe they have the resources to do more.



Also, thanks yet again to some select individuals for providing me another round of laughs. I must be old-fashioned, because when I socialize I like to do it in person (with real people). When I game, I prefer it single player. There is really nothing that makes the two mutually exclusive.

[Tooneyman]

rhautanen wrote...

Try to do too many things and you'll do none of them well. IMHO they are smart to focus on single player and deliver that at high quality. I don't believe they have the resources to do more.

Also, thanks yet again to some select individuals for providing me another round of laughs. I must be old-fashioned, because when I socialize I like to do it in person (with real people). When I game, I prefer it single player. There is really nothing that makes the two mutually exclusive.

The only thing I like about multiplayer is I can do it with a best friend who has the same interest and I like alittle competition. The problem is on most PVP games. COD to name a few. People are rude, crude and socially unacceptable. I'm not going to lie. I've done it myself and I don't think Bioware wants that kind of atmosphere on these forums. It brings the trolls like there is no tomorrow.

[JamieCOTC]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dragon Age 2 is a single player game.

Thank the Maker! 

[Minashi]

What's wrong with you guys? Both sides of the story - fail.

Everyone who wants single-player complain about multiplayer taking away from the story.
Everyone who wants multiplayer ask for NWN-style modules, toolsets, DM clients and the works.

Both sides are dimwits. Utter failures at comprehending the value of a video game.

Here's the truth for ya slowpokes out there: NWN-style modules, toolset, DM clients, etc = way too much work and yes, will limit resources and time that could be invested in tweaking a strong single-player game.

On the other hand: A simplistic, log-in to join your friend in the single-player game will not take nearly as long of work and thus, won't tear or rip apart your beloved single-player game.

No I don't make games and no I dunno how many man-hours it takes to work out even the most simplistic routine of joining a friend in playing a single-player game. But neither do any of you. Some of you may have an idea, or may boast knowledge of intricate networking and engine making, but at best, everyone one of us 'fans' can only go so far as assume.

None of you work at Bioware (unless and admin replies to this) so all you can do is assume.

There will be no guilds, no WoW (never played it), no mmo-style game. What are you all smoking? Other trolls? Fail on those people. Go back to your caves and smoka by yourselves.



WARNING: FOR SMART FELLAS-ONLY. Those who will deliberately misinterpret the following message...well, I'm sure you'll pass 3rd grade one day.

All I want, BIOWARE, all I want -- is to play Dragon Age 2 with a friend. Just a very simple "join someone on your friends list" in their campaign. That's it. I'm not even asking to be able to load up my own character, oh no. I just wanna tag along and play thru the single-player game with my friend. Nothin' fancy.

And if people fail to grasp why anyone would want that -- then I just feel sorry for you. So sorry. I can't even muster the will to insult someone as pitiful as that.

Modifié par Minashi, 13 juillet 2010 - 07:44 .

[BallaZs]

Oh, God NO!

DA definetly doesnt need to end up like WoW or some s**t.

Singleplayer ftw!

[AlanC9]

Minashi wrote...
And if people fail to grasp why anyone would want that -- then I just feel sorry for you. So sorry. I can't even muster the will to insult someone as pitiful as that.

Grasping why someone would want something doesn't mean that you think it's worth putting that something in the game.

[Ramza_1]

Dragon age 1 and 2 have the framework to be fantastic multiplayer rpgs. My friend and I were SO disappointed that DA1 had no multiplayer as the "spiritual successor to BG2". BG2 has great multiplayer, and it did not detract from the single player experience at all.

[Ramza_1]

Shinian2 wrote...

I'm curious, how would co-op proponents suggest it would work in a game like DA2 or |ME2 for that matter? We play as Shepard/Hawke, obviously having 20 Hawkes running around would be silly.

Previous games mentioned, like NWN, had unique characters with unique names, as far as I know.

The exact same way it worked in BG2.  One of the characters is just a nobody.  The character does not need to be worked into the story, just the ability to open shops and enter/exit areas, and kill things.

[Lord Gremlin]

I'm so glad that there will be no multiplayer... At least this thing is done right.

[Ramza_1]

The point about the combat being the only co-op element is not valid. That would NOT be the same as just playing WoW instead. WoW has a far inferior world, story, characters...everything that makes a great rpg. If this were co-op, I still get to experience the story even if I'm not the one doing the button clicks on the response. I can say to my friend, hey, click the angry response! My character still experiences the consequences of the choice, and it is as though I chose it myself.

[Estel78]

Ticladesign wrote...

Oh that comment again, taking away resources.

Just because you dont like one particulair feature, doesnt mean someone else wont,
NWN Bioware's worst game? Tell that to the thousands that play NWN1 and 2 to this day, to the many toolset users, the modders, the PW communities and custom content developers. If that was true, why is the game still alive after 9 years?

NWN was a modulair game based around the (user friendly) toolset. Because of that the game had it's restrictions which may showed in the singleplayer campaign, It's strange that the multiplayer option gets blamed for the Modulair structure of the game, But that's ignorance, I guess.

And when someone from a NWN background talks about multiplayer they dont mean WoW, or any other MMO out there. There is still Multiplayer in RPG's without immediately talking about a MMO. (unlike, what seems to be the industry's opinion these days)
So therefore, NWN is Bioware's best game. Because it's still alive after 9 years, and might as wll outlive Dragon Age2 as well.

(This post is not a request to add MP to Dragon Age2)

If you mean by alive a few hundred people playing it then yes, it's still alive.

It's the only game from Bioware i haven't finished so it's gotta be their worst. I'm only speaking for myself of course, your mileage may vary.

Modifié par Estel78, 14 juillet 2010 - 09:19 .

[Estel78]

Personally, i don't feel the need for co-op in games such as these where the main attraction is to immerse yourself in the world and live the story, a friend chatting with you would just detract from the experience.

[Games4ever]

Honestly,I couldn't give a stuff about Multi-player! in fact I'd rather remove my own testicles with 2 house bricks than get involved in that

[Minashi]

AlanC9 wrote...

Minashi wrote...
And if people
fail to grasp why anyone would want that -- then I just feel sorry for
you. So sorry. I can't even muster the will to insult someone as
pitiful as that.

Grasping why someone would want
something doesn't mean that you think it's worth putting that something
in the game.

At least you speak clearly.  That's the truth.  I was more leaning that statement to the flamers and trolls here.  Like this fella here:

BallaZs wrote...

Oh, God NO!
DA definetly doesnt need to end up like WoW or some s**t.
Singleplayer ftw!

You know what, no, I'm curious.  I'm really curious as to how some of you single-player guys think.  How 'bout this:  I'll ask you fellas a a few questions and I'll do my best to rectify your confusion and delusional mindset towards adding multiplayer to DA2.

1. How do you guys think adding multiplayer will detract from the game's single-player aspect?
2. Why do you think adding multiplayer support will turn this game into 'WoW', a mmo?
3. Those people who love to troll with 'Lol, noob, go back to WoW!' -- have you ever even played WoW or any other mmo for that matter?  If not, how can you assume DA2 multiplayer will be anything like that if you don't know what it's about and how its engine primarily works?
4. Those who are against NWN-style mutliplayer or say NWN doesn't sell well, have you even read BioWare's: About Bioware section?  In fact, lemme answer that for you.  You haven't.  If you had, you'd know the NWN series has "...sold close to 3 million copies worldwide so far."  You can read about the rest of its success and other series here:

www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

DA clearly has sold more units (3.2 million is the number I keep reading) but that's not the point.  The point is NWN has done well and is still being played, to the dismay of DA single-player fandom.

I hope you can stump me with your answers, I really do.  Clearly all of you know so much about making video games that you've got good ol' fashioned logic behind your rants.  Surely that's the case.


EXTRA:
And just for the record, I have played BG2, I have played NWN 1 and 2, I have played KOTOR, I have played  ME 1 and 2, I have played DA:O.  I liked them all.  I've beaten all of them at least once (some more than once) except for DA:O.  I'm not trying to say it's because there's no multiplayer -- in fact, I dunno the real reason at all.  I just grew bored of it near the end and moved onto another game.  That's not to say I didn't like it, I loved it.

Also, I haven't played WoW, I have played Korean MMOs and LotrO.  I've played LotrO for a little over 3 years now.  So yes -- I do know quite a bit about MMOs. 

Modifié par Minashi, 15 juillet 2010 - 05:07 .

[AlanC9]

Since I speak clearly (thanks), I'll give it a shot. Note that I'm speaking only for me, here.

Minashi wrote...
1. How do you guys think adding multiplayer will detract from the game's single-player aspect?'

Diversion of resources away from things I want into things I don't want and won't use. If multiplayer produced enough additional sales to pay for itself, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But that doesn't seem to be true.

Can't answer 2 and 3; I've got so little interest in MMOs that I don't really know what it would mean to be like WoW.

4. Those who are against NWN-style mutliplayer or say NWN doesn't sell well, have you even read BioWare's: About Bioware section?  In fact, lemme answer that for you.  You haven't.  If you had, you'd know the NWN series has "...sold close to 3 million copies worldwide so far."  You can read about the rest of its success and other series here:

Yep. Lots of copies. But according to Bio staff the vast majority of those copies were never used in multiplayer. Not once. Not ever. Bio has good data on this since they run the authentication server.

Also, the NWN OC was thought by many players to be disappointing. Perhaps unfairly, many of these players thought this was caused by Bio's supporting multiplayer in the campaign rather than concentrating on a good SP experience. Bio made this viewpoint look more credible when they dropped MP support for the expansion campaigns and those campaigns ended up being better received.

[soteria]

Diversion of resources away from things I want into things I don't want and won't use. If multiplayer produced enough additional sales to pay for itself, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But that doesn't seem to be true.

In the interest of adding something new to the discussion, I read an interesting (and long) article on video game piracy. It's well-worth reading, if you have the time, but only a small part of it relates to the discussion at hand. The author proposes that one reason MMO's and online games in general have become more and more popular, and single-player PC exclusives less and less common is that the nature of playing a game online makes piracy much less appealing.

If we agree that piracy is a serious issue, then it seems possible that adding a multiplayer component that requires online verification to play with people would give people another incentive to purchase the game legally. More game sales could help the feature pay for itself.

[Minashi]

AlanC9 wrote...

Since I speak clearly (thanks), I'll give it a shot. Note that I'm speaking only for me, here.

Minashi wrote...
1. How do you guys think adding multiplayer will detract from the game's single-player aspect?'

Diversion of resources away from things I want into things I don't want and won't use. If multiplayer produced enough additional sales to pay for itself, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But that doesn't seem to be true.

You're correct there.  Time spent working on making multiplayer work could be invested into other things like DLCs, single-player campaign, model details, etc.  But how much time, energy and resources is that really?  That's what it boils down to, doesn't it?  And since none of us work at Bioware we can't really be sure, but I'm of the thought that a chatbox (similar to when games have debugging boxes) and giving players the option to control one of the characters in the game wouldn't take too much trouble.  Probably the connection and networking controls would take a little extra time and definitely mapping the locations for the data to be able to interpret based on your movement and button pushing would be more work.  But overall I don't think something that simple would be game-breaking to the single-player campaign.

I do, however, agree wholeheartedly that including the vast multiplayer system that NWN incorporates would be very time-consuming, very deterring work and could possibly limit Bioware's resources they could spend on increasing the length of the single-player campaign and whatnot.  But a simple one like the aforementioned -- I'd hope it's a simple thing.  Of course neither of us will never know for sure.

Soteria brings up a good point as well:

soteria wrote...

In the interest of adding something new to the discussion, I read an interesting (and long) article on
video game piracy. It's well-worth reading, if you have the time, but only a small part of it relates to the discussion at hand. The author proposes that one reason MMO's and online games in general have become more and more popular, and single-player PC exclusives less and less common is that the nature of playing a game online makes piracy much less appealing.

If we agree that piracy is a serious issue, then it seems possible that adding a multiplayer component that requires online verification to play with people would give people another incentive to purchase the game legally. More game sales could help the feature pay for itself.

Online-only games are harder to crack.  That's why alot of single-player games are opting for constant connections for their security.  A prime example would be Assassin's Creed 2 and their DRM.  They had alot of issues with it but it's the direction gaming companies are taking for stronger anti-piracy protection.  While it's obvious BioWare will have that type of security anyways with DA2, you also gotta think back to the olden days of Starcraft and Neverwinter Nights and their online key-checking software.  I don't think anyone has ever permanently found a way to play Starcraft on Battle.net or Neverwinter Nights on Gamespy's Multiplayer Client with a generated key.

Ultimately even if piracy is not a problem for them, it's doubtless they'd get extra sales from the would-be pirates who wanted to play the game with their friends online.

AlanC9 wrote...

Minashi wrote...]
4. Those who are against NWN-style mutliplayer or say NWN doesn't sell well, have you even read BioWare's: About Bioware section?  In fact, lemme answer that for you.  You haven't.  If you had, you'd know the NWN series has "...sold close to 3 million copies worldwide so far."  You can read about the rest of its success and other series here:

Yep. Lots of copies. But according to Bio staff the vast majority of those copies were never used in multiplayer. Not once. Not ever. Bio has good data on this since they run the authentication server.

Also, the NWN OC was thought by many players to be disappointing. Perhaps unfairly, many of these players thought this was caused by Bio's supporting multiplayer in the campaign rather than concentrating on a good SP experience. Bio made this viewpoint look more credible when they dropped MP support for the expansion campaigns and those campaigns ended up being better received.

Could be true but I'm not seeing any links to back up those facts.  I did however read this at BioWare's Bio page:

"Thus far the BioWare Aurora Neverwinter toolset has been used by the BioWare Community of users (which has over 3.8 million registered user accounts as of January 2008) to create nearly 5000 Neverwinter Nights modules since its release - all available for download by the BioWare community."

Again, found at www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

While that doesn't state who plays multiplayer and who doesn't, it does point out the fact that modules and player-created campaigns with the toolsets were (still are) widely liked and used.  And as far as I know custom-created campaigns and modules are mostly used in the multiplayer client.


Good answers!  Does anyone else have anything to say about what I just said or the previous 4 questions?  If not -- here's some more Q's I've been wondering about:

This one's for Alan here but if any of you can answer it, by all means...

AlanC9 wrote...
....according to Bio staff the vast majority of those copies were never used
in multiplayer. Not once. Not ever. Bio has good data on this since
they run the authentication server.

1.   Where is/are your resource(s) to support that claim?  All I can assume is that came out of wishful thinking until I read proof.  I want to believe you, but I can't in good conscience change my views on Neverwinter Nights' multiplayer success (or failure) without knowing it came directly from BioWare.

2.  For you real video-game making/networking gurus out there (both mutliplayer fanatics and single-player fans), can any of you give a honest estimate on how many man-hours it would take to implement a very easy multiplayer mod (or built-in) to an otherwise single-player game similar to Dragon Age?  Not Dragon Age itself, but a game similar to it?  And if BioWare could step in and clear this issue up, I'd be very grateful.

Modifié par Minashi, 15 juillet 2010 - 07:34 .

[Venture]

Minashi, I'm a big fan of multiplayer, too (I played in both a NWN and NWN2 homemade multiplayer campaign with a small group of friends through neverwinterconnections.com, each one lasting almost 3 years), but the quote about the small number of NWN players using mutliplayer is, sadly, true. I don't have time to dig it up, but in discussions in the NWN forums about why Bioware wouldn't add this or that feature, the developers frequently talked about "zots" (a fictional term one of the devs came up with to represent a resource they could expend), and why they couldn't expend too many "zots" on mutliplayer. A few times, they cited that the percentage of people who ever used multiplayer was very very small. They could tell because with NWN you had to go through the authentication server to play multiplayer.

I'm not sure how you'd find those old posts. Maybe searching for "zots" and "multiplayer" would turn it up.  If I recall, they said that NWN sales were in the millions, and the numbers who played multiplayer were in the thousands.

Still, I'd love to see mutliplayer for purely selfish reasons.  Now, though, especially with Bioware being owned by EA, I'd be surprised to see those resources spent.

Modifié par Venture, 15 juillet 2010 - 01:56 .