40 réponses à ce sujet

[TiaraBlade]

"You get a belt, mace and amulet."



I'll have to check but I don't remember any particular neckware of note. What was it and wher do you get it?



Thanks.

[Frumyfrenzy]

Yeah, it sure is not a guarantee for a successful DLC, but those are some (still neglected) options you have, if you want to do something about the concerns that keep coming up: short story, shallow (not memorable) characters. You give the characters or the story more time by lengthening the DLC or dedicating several DLC to the same characters/story.

Modifié par Frumyfrenzy, 11 août 2010 - 09:01 .

[TiaraBlade]

I thought it was decent. I'd rather drop 10 dollars for something much longer and deeper. I was also a bit disspointed that I didn't get to make a big decision like I thought I would.



Still, 2 hours of gameplay or 2.50/hour- not a bad deal. Glad I bought it and I would buy the next DLC as well.

[taine]

TiaraBlade wrote...

"You get a belt, mace and amulet."

I'll have to check but I don't remember any particular neckware of note. What was it and wher do you get it?

Thanks.

It is the "High Regard of House Dace" item, which is a very good Rogue amulet. The items you get in the DLC do not transfer back, as I mentioned. 

[Haexpane]

Frumyfrenzy wrote...
 
Who said that there has to be more content for the same price? 

As for the difficulty, there are good hard fights. The only hard fights (which caused me to shake my head in disbelief) I would complain involved several golems and a party-teleport. Basically, your group is teleported to the same spot (for no obvious reason), 1-2 golems instantly hurl, 3 other approach and slam or earthquake. This results in dead companions, no matter what, because you are chain-stunned to death. Thanks to the teleport into ne spot you cannot prepare. The other hard fights (several revenants, endboss) were good.  

90% of the "I hate DLC" crowd here are constantly complaining about price.  Don't you remember Awakenings?  People threw hissy fits because it was $40 for 20 hours.   I thought the price was reasonable, I paid $36 new.

The teleport fight sounds exactly like an MMO fight, which is exactly what people wanted, challenge.

[Haexpane]

getting heavy on the spoilers in here

[Mark Barazzuol - Designer]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I was one of the core designers on the DLC and we definitely listen to the feedback and try to incorporate the general themes for the next round.



A few notes. We do DLC between projects so we only have a fraction of the resources we have for the full projects. That said we don't embark on making something unless we are certain we can deliver value with it. This DLC was meant to be lighter on story and heavier on combat. It was geared more for those players played DA and didn't find they had enough of a challenge.



We knew this wouldn't appeal the same to everyone, but this is partly what DLC allows us to do, fill niches for certain groups of fans. For those who like hardcore and nightmare, as well as many others It sounds like for the most part we've done that. And we still want to do better.



We do appreciate the support and definitely appreciate the feedback. Please keep it up!

[Sappy69]

Mark Barazzuol - Designer wrote...

Thanks for the feedback guys. I was one of the core designers on the DLC and we definitely listen to the feedback and try to incorporate the general themes for the next round.

A few notes. We do DLC between projects so we only have a fraction of the resources we have for the full projects. That said we don't embark on making something unless we are certain we can deliver value with it. This DLC was meant to be lighter on story and heavier on combat. It was geared more for those players played DA and didn't find they had enough of a challenge.

We knew this wouldn't appeal the same to everyone, but this is partly what DLC allows us to do, fill niches for certain groups of fans. For those who like hardcore and nightmare, as well as many others It sounds like for the most part we've done that. And we still want to do better.

We do appreciate the support and definitely appreciate the feedback. Please keep it up!

I greatly enjoyed the higher difficulty and challenge of this DLC.  My question going forward: is this higher difficulty (at least on hard and/or nightmare) something we can expect in upcoming projects, DLC or major ones?  While my issues with Awakening are many, one of them is the fact that the combat was so trivially easy, even on nightmare.  I ran around with a very un-optimized, goofball party and still found myself auto-attacking and sleepwalking through all the fights.  While we all want good story and party interaction in our RPG's, I think it's also important to have interesting (and challenging) combat.  Otherwise, the combat parts of the game become merely "those annoying parts" you slog through in between story elements.

Also, has Bioware considered releasing DLC that's a bit more ambitious in scope?  Thus far, they've generally been of the $5-$7 variety and are short, self-contained adventures.  How about something more along the lines of what Bethesda did with Fallout 3, where their DLC's were more in the $10 range but more expansive?  The Pitt, for example, was a fun self-contained adventure that had an entirely new city, new armor, weapons, NPC's, multiple ways to progress the story, multiple factions to support, and moral choices.  I feel bigger, longer DLC episodes may give Bioware more room to grow their NPC's, tell a more involving story, etc.  Or are Bioware DLC's strictly a niche thing and don't warrant a greater investment in resources? (I know that sounds like a leading question, but it's not meant to be)

[Mark Barazzuol - Designer]

Sappy69 wrote...

I greatly enjoyed the higher difficulty and challenge of this DLC.  My question going forward: is this higher difficulty (at least on hard and/or nightmare) something we can expect in upcoming projects, DLC or major ones?  While my issues with Awakening are many, one of them is the fact that the combat was so trivially easy, even on nightmare.  I ran around with a very un-optimized, goofball party and still found myself auto-attacking and sleepwalking through all the fights.  While we all want good story and party interaction in our RPG's, I think it's also important to have interesting (and challenging) combat.  Otherwise, the combat parts of the game become merely "those annoying parts" you slog through in between story elements.

Also, has Bioware considered releasing DLC that's a bit more ambitious in scope?  Thus far, they've generally been of the $5-$7 variety and are short, self-contained adventures.  How about something more along the lines of what Bethesda did with Fallout 3, where their DLC's were more in the $10 range but more expansive?  The Pitt, for example, was a fun self-contained adventure that had an entirely new city, new armor, weapons, NPC's, multiple ways to progress the story, multiple factions to support, and moral choices.  I feel bigger, longer DLC episodes may give Bioware more room to grow their NPC's, tell a more involving story, etc.  Or are Bioware DLC's strictly a niche thing and don't warrant a greater investment in resources? (I know that sounds like a leading question, but it's not meant to be)

For combat difficulty we have to reach a fine balance of allowing people to play and have fun and keeping it challenging for those who want that.  Even with different difficulty levels its amazing what the difference is in players skill.  We may have to look at and increase nightmare difficulty levels though.  We'll see how things work out.

For DLC size that isn't my call.  Given the tendencies of things that are successful to get bigger and better though I'd suspect that may happen.   We look to see what works, what sells well and what doesn't.  If people don't like something they don't buy it.  If they like it a lot they buy a lot of it.  We look at what is successful and do our best to keep what worked with it, improve on it, and change or update what didn't work as well.

DLC strictly speaking is something that is smaller and CAN be more risky, it isn't that we make them some sort of experiment.  It's just the smaller the project the more we can try something we feel might work.   It's definitely not a absolute formula.

[Elhanan]

As one that continually battles his anxieties, is there any move in the industry to place bundled DLC on DVD's? Having a constant ISP is not a sure thing for everyone.

[Frumyfrenzy]

Mark Barazzuol - Designer wrote...
For DLC size that isn't my call.  Given the tendencies of things that are successful to get bigger and better though I'd suspect that may happen.   We look to see what works, what sells well and what doesn't.  If people don't like something they don't buy it.  If they like it a lot they buy a lot of it.  We look at what is successful and do our best to keep what worked with it, improve on it, and change or update what didn't work as well.

DLC strictly speaking is something that is smaller and CAN be more risky, it isn't that we make them some sort of experiment.  It's just the smaller the project the more we can try something we feel might work.   It's definitely not a absolute formula.

If you want to look to see what works, what sells well and what doesn't, you need to release bigger DLC at some point to have a basis for a comparison! 
Did you ever consider releasing DLC as chapters of a greater connected story, so you can keep releasing DLC at the current rate with the current size, but at the same time you end up with something of comparable depth of a DA storyline (Brecillian Forrest, Orzammar, Magi's Tower, Redcliffe Village)? 

[Sappy69]

Mark Barazzuol - Designer wrote...

For combat difficulty we have to reach a fine balance of allowing people to play and have fun and keeping it challenging for those who want that.  Even with different difficulty levels its amazing what the difference is in players skill.  We may have to look at and increase nightmare difficulty levels though.  We'll see how things work out.

For DLC size that isn't my call.  Given the tendencies of things that are successful to get bigger and better though I'd suspect that may happen.   We look to see what works, what sells well and what doesn't.  If people don't like something they don't buy it.  If they like it a lot they buy a lot of it.  We look at what is successful and do our best to keep what worked with it, improve on it, and change or update what didn't work as well.

DLC strictly speaking is something that is smaller and CAN be more risky, it isn't that we make them some sort of experiment.  It's just the smaller the project the more we can try something we feel might work.   It's definitely not a absolute formula.

Interesting...thanks for the enlightening response.  I can certainly understand a designer having to balance combat difficulty - after all, making an encounter too hard and frustrating can end up making combat *not* fun.  However, my position on difficulty is that it's ok to be a bit sadistic on the highest difficulty level.  It is, after all, advertised as "nightmare"...players can't say you didn't warn them.   And they always have the option of turning the difficulty down.

Not having access to Bioware's DLC sales numbers, it's hard to say what's been selling well up to this point.  So I guess we'll have to wait a little while to see what worked and didn't work on that end.  I look forward to seeing how Bioware's DLC evolves, assuming they stick to their plan of 2 years of Origins DLC.

[night0205]

I would just like a confirmation on whether Bioware is planning another expansion for Dragon Age Origins, because from what I can tell, it's very unlikely, considering the coming of Dragon Age 2. But the fact that people are not confirming that it wont happen makes it seems like they are hiding what will happen, because if it's not happening, their would be no reason not to confirm it. So, is an expansion completely out of the question this close to Dragon Age 2, and should fans of never expected another expansion for Origins, and just look forward to DLC and the sequel?

Especially when we know the Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition is coming out for around $60 dollars... which makes it seem very unlikely an expansion would be added to that and all the DLC. So, why don't we just confirm it, so that people's expectations aren't...well expecting to much... Unless it's a big secret about something Bioware is not doing... why would that be a secret?

Modifié par night0205, 18 août 2010 - 12:20 .

[searanox]

Sounds about right to me, but frankly, considering how a dungeon crawl takes even fewer resources to make than a story-heavy add-on, it's disappointing how short this turned out.  Regarding difficulty: I found Origins on Nightmare almost perfectly balanced if you know what you're doing, so I imagine it's simply a matter of tweaking and play-testing that DLC doesn't get.

Modifié par searanox, 18 août 2010 - 12:36 .

[Poleaxe]

I found this dlc to be quite fun. I played on an xbox with a level 29 arcane warrior/battlemage on normal.



Perhaps I hit the sweet spot for challenge vs frustration, but I died only once while being taken to the limit on several locations. It took me about 3 hours, but I tend to play slowly.



For the record, I like story also and this was fine. Not everything can be epic. Also, my warden went down in the golem room but I finished the fight with the S&B dwarf- so the companions couldn't be that weak.

[Kacynski]

I actually liked the DLC, finished it yesterday evening. While I'm also more intrigued by a nice story, I do think a solid dungeon crawl with good fights (and no remarkable story) can be a good experience as well. At least I was very well entertained, but then I also liked the deep road parts of the original game most.
I do think if BioWare goes on with the pattern of combat-DLC (Darkspawn Chronicles) -> non combat-DLC (Leliana) -> combat DLC (Golems), would be fine for me.

Some thoughts to the DLC itself:
I would have liked if they made a new location rather then recycling Kal Hirol and Orthan Thaig, but I can understand the term "limited ressources"
I did like the colour puzzle, wasn't too difficult to figure out and gave me a nice surprise the first time I backtracked to an allready explored area.
I played with an imported lvl35 SnS warrior and got very frustrated in the Golem room. I did play on nightmare as allways and turned down to normal just to finish the story. The fact, that I gave up on Nightmare was nagging me, so I returned with a better prepared Char (I took 2 sets of armour for my two dwarven companions, two weapon sets and 4 respecc tomes). With the respecced and properly armed and armored companions I had no trouble to do the whole trip on Nightmare (I kept the rogue close to its original specc, but specced the warrior to 2H, as I am SnS myself).
But in the end, this gave me the impression that most of the difficulty came from the fact that you do have no control about the party setup. As it was for me, I ended up with two SnS warriors in the party first, and while there is one respecc tome available, without bringing a good armor and weapons it doesn't help respeccing and then not having the right equipment at hand.
For the next (combat orientated) DLC, I would like to have a merchant where you can outfit and specc your party with decent gear before the real adventure starts.