140 réponses à ce sujet

[Anarya]

the_one_54321 wrote...

David Gaider wrote...
 If it's meant to be an action-focused game, we can't make provide an option to not make it action-focused. If they don't want RPG elements, we can't just turn those off. We have a vision for the game and we're not going to provide options to turn it into an entirely different game just because there's people who like options for the sake of options.

But what about those of us that don't want more options and just don't want it to be an action oriented game?

Hypothetical speaking to follow.

Speaking specifically of DA, I liked it because action was not a focus. Or if it was, it sure didn't seem like it. I've played Baldurs Gate: Dark Aliance I&II, and all the LotR movie games, and Devil May Cry, and so on and so forth. But I've also played DA:O and Baldurs Gate I&II and Valkyria Chronicles and KotOR. And I don't want DA][ to be another action game. So lets say, again hypothetically, that your focus on DA][ is action. By not providing that option you're designating a select group of potential buyers and saying "they're going to hate this and we're going to live without their sale." Is that such a common occurance in "the biz?" 

edit:
Just as a side note for my own personal input. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know darn well that I have zero interest in DA going down the route of action games. RPG or otherwise. Not a "he says it, be we know better what he'll spend his money on through sales statistics." No, there is no uncertainty or confusion or a lack of understanding of my own preferences here. There are a million action games out there from developers that have been doing them for years and from all indications (ME and ME2) do them better. I know that I like them, and I know that I like them bettter from the other developers. If you guys are going to action games, I'm leaving. I want RPGs from you. End of story.

It seems like you zeroed in on the first half of that statement, which seems like it was supposed to be a hypothetical, and ignored the second half, the part about not being able to turn off the RPG elements for the player who likes action games.

What you're talking about in your hypothetical is making a fundamental part of the game an option, namely "action elements" or "rpg elements". Either one of those things would be such an integral part of the game that making either one of them a toggle would be no different than making 2(or 4) entirely different games that happen to share the same setting and characters. It would be an enormous drain on resources and from a financial standpoint would be suicide as that small "select group of potential buyers" you mentioned would never be able to make up the deficit. Not to mention the whole idea of artistic vision and that making fundamental elements optional would be severely compromising the dev team's ability to have one.

But I don't think David was saying "this is an action game" in that post. He probably WAS saying "we're making the type of game we want to make, deal with it". It remains to be seen how action-y or not that game will be.

[the_one_54321]

Anarya wrote...
But I don't think David was saying "this is an action game" in that post. He probably WAS saying "we're making the type of game we want to make, deal with it". It remains to be seen how action-y or not that game will be.

Yeah, that's what I got from it. My post was of the vein "fine, but be careful of the lines you draw in the sand. There are people that are more than willing to cross them." 

There are a lot of game developers out there. Each of the big ones have their list of strengths. "Action" is not one of BioWares. They'd do well to keep that in mind.

[Erikjust]

I want a DLC system like Mass Effect 2 it works great you buy you download and install and its there pure and simple nothing more nothing less.



With the current DLC system DAO runs there´s far too much dependence on the downloading system in the game working and currently it isn´t.



So please use the Mass Effect 2 system for any DLC for DAO 2

[Sylvius the Mad]

David Gaider wrote...

We have to support and test those features

And here is where the crux of our disagreement lies.

I figure you can just design such that some features are disablable (like the encoding of dialogue in separate files by speaker to allow the replacement or removal of one character's audio files at a time) through a script change or file swap, and if we screw up the game that's our problem.

As you say, the number of people who would do this would be small, so it's not like you're going to alienate your customer base if it doesn't work.  And those of us inclined to do significant modification are likely to give you credit for trying.

Particularly with a new feature like the PC voice that you know will annoy a bunch of people, the option for experienced players to remove it would be wonderful.

I'd say this is a lot like disabling plot helpers in DAO.  That was a feature you ostensibly wanted in the game, but we could turn it off, and us doing so did break at least one quest (and significantly changed the gameplay of others).  But I'd rather play without it and have a broken quest than play with it just to make a quest work, and apparently there were enough of us to warrant the feature getting a toggle.

I'm not even asking for a proper toggle on most of these.  I just want to be able to turn things off without having to recompile your source code to do it.

[David Gaider]

the_one_54321 wrote...
Yeah, that's what I got from it. My post was of the vein "fine, but be careful of the lines you draw in the sand. There are people that are more than willing to cross them." 

There are a lot of game developers out there. Each of the big ones have their list of strengths. "Action" is not one of BioWares. They'd do well to keep that in mind.

My post was in reference to making optional features and how we cannot (or will not, if you prefer) make options that fundamentally change the game's vision as we intend to present it.

As for drawing a line in the sand-- yes, I understand that. If you want to talk about the vision for the game in general, sure, not everyone's going to be interested in that vision. That's a given. My point was that we can't include something that changes it as a toggle. If we did make an action-only game (and we're not, but if we were) then that's the type of game we want to put out there. At a fundamental level, you either want to play what we're creating or you don't. We can't change the entire experience of the game as an extra option.

[CoS Sarah Jinstar]

David Gaider wrote...

slimgrin wrote...
While I wouldn't disable vo's and floating damage numbers, I think making all the things Sylvius lists as optional makes perfect sense. Is it that hard to do? I've often wondered why more rpg's don't make these things optional. 

Because, as I've often said, the answer to every design issue is not a toggle.

Sure, it is on the forums where the answer to every disagreement on two features is to give everybody both. That way we all get along! But in reality that would still mean we'd not only have to do the work to implement both features but support both features as well-- if it's something that can officially be set, that means we have to test it and account for having that feature on/off works in every condition.

Is a toggle thus never the answer? Not at all-- sometimes features are worthwhile even if you must implement two versions of them. "Worthwhile" in this context must answer three basic questions:

1) Is there enough people who would use it to justify the work?

2) Does it actually make their game better?

3) Is the game still played the way we intend for it to be played?

If all three are "yes" then you get a toggle. Fair enough?

I seem to recall just about everyone and their grandmother asking for a helmet toggle for ME2 since drinking and kissing through a helmet just looked flat out stupid and I don't think that ever happened. Also I think if you ask around you'd get a surprising number of folks that don't feel the PC being voiced really adds anything more than it takes away from the game in the first place. Just as a couple examples.

You guys already have one straight up "action" RPG series in Mass Effect, not entirely sure why DA needs to follow suit so badly since both games (DAO and ME2) sold about the same amount of copies from what I can tell.

[David Gaider]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
And here is where the crux of our disagreement lies.

I figure you can just design such that some features are disablable (like the encoding of dialogue in separate files by speaker to allow the replacement or removal of one character's audio files at a time) through a script change or file swap, and if we screw up the game that's our problem.

No.

If we include a feature as something you can select, we have to support it. Do you honestly think we can say "oh we included it just for those who want it, sort of like a mod-- use it at your own risk?" and people would be understanding about it and give us "credit for trying"? Or do you think they might be upset at the bugs? Don't be naive. We already are dealing with a game that has so many variants and options it's difficult to keep it running smoothly as it is. We need to pick our battles.

Particularly with a new feature like the PC voice that you know will annoy a bunch of people, the option for experienced players to remove it would be wonderful.

A feature that is both part of our intent and the entire game is built to accommodate it? Just turn off the voice so your character mouths words he doesn't speak, and present that as a feature we intentionally included? Yeah, not going to happen.

I'd say this is a lot like disabling plot helpers in DAO.  That was a feature you ostensibly wanted in the game, but we could turn it off, and us doing so did break at least one quest (and significantly changed the gameplay of others).  But I'd rather play without it and have a broken quest than play with it just to make a quest work, and apparently there were enough of us to warrant the feature getting a toggle.

And as I said we do include toggles for things that we believe we can support and which don't harm the game. The plot helpers were a convenience feature-- we don't rely on them for you to finish a quest, and thus they're a good candidate for a toggle.

I'm not even asking for a proper toggle on most of these.  I just want to be able to turn things off without having to recompile your source code to do it.

No, you ask for options for the sake of options. Every time we bring up any feature, you immediately ask if it can be turned off-- because in some theoretical world you think you might want something different, and imagine that something different is something we should automatically want to provide you. Not the case. "I want" is not the only consideration.

I think I've explained our thought process behind it sufficiently, and if you want to continue to tilt at windmills-- be my guest.

Modifié par David Gaider, 02 octobre 2010 - 07:54 .

[nightcobra]

to keep going with this thread i'm going to put my two cents and say that i'm hoping to see an arena or tourney type quest. always loved the old tales of gladiators fighting in the coliseum and i love doing it in videogames as well. the announcers, the cheering, the honor, the fighting, i love it all

[Sylvius the Mad]

David Gaider wrote...

No.

If we include a feature as something you can select, we have to support it. Do you honestly think we can say "oh we included it just for those who want it, sort of like a mod-- use it at your own risk?"

But sometimes you do this very thing.  One of the technical designers (I forget which one - it wasn't Georg) released a mod for DAO right after release that allowed the player to select zero characters and have the AI run everybody all at once.  And we were warned with almost that exact caveat.

This is something BioWare already does from time to time.

I don't make a habit of asking you guys to do things that you've never done before, because I have no reason to believe you can do those things.

"I want" is not the only consideration.

I know this.

But that was expressly the point of this thread, after all.

And I will continue to ask for a combat log in every future BioWare game.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 02 octobre 2010 - 08:13 .

[Onyx Jaguar]

Well that is a mod, not in the stock game. You want the stock game to work out of the box. The fact htat it has become common place the last 20 years for Western developers to think otherwise has been damaging to its reputation.

[CoS Sarah Jinstar]

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

Well that is a mod, not in the stock game. You want the stock game to work out of the box. The fact htat it has become common place the last 20 years for Western developers to think otherwise has been damaging to its reputation.

Its not just Western Developers, hell I can't remember the last time I played a polished title that came out of Europe. The Witcher eventually got there or so I heard.

[FieryDove]

David Gaider wrote...

I'm not even asking for a proper toggle on most of these.  I just want to be able to turn things off without having to recompile your source code to do it.

No, you ask for options for the sake of options. Every time we bring up any feature, you immediately ask if it can be turned off--

Is that a bad thing? More options can be/generally is better?

Ask EA for some of ToR's budget and I'm sure you can add just a few toggles/click off options.

Tor:
Voices & Dialogue
Dialog selection via a Mass Effect Style Dialog wheel -yuck
Full Voice overs for all NPC, Companions and Player Characters -fine
Options to read text, instead of hearing, or even skip to it altogether - Yes, great!

To the subject matter of what I want...I'm not allowed to talk about it...yet. sigh

[Wyndham711]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

Well that is a mod, not in the stock game. You want the stock game to work out of the box. The fact htat it has become common place the last 20 years for Western developers to think otherwise has been damaging to its reputation.

Its not just Western Developers, hell I can't remember the last time I played a polished title that came out of Europe. The Witcher eventually got there or so I heard.

Don't you think European developers count as Western Developers? 

[blothulfur]

I want a bunny wabbit. I will hug him and love him and call him George.

[Hurrrr]

Heh Well I never cared about the PC voice etc, its just that in DA:O the lack of a combat log was noticeable at times, as I said they argued that it would cause alot of extra stress on the system req's so it was ditched.



Reading between the lines though from the blue posts I get a "its a different game and we don't consider it useful for the sequel due to gameplay changes!"

[Skellimancer]

Pink haired companion

[Xewaka]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

And I will continue to ask for a combat log in every future BioWare game.

This I agree with. Combat Logs are wonderful things. Every tabletop roleplayer has a small numbercrunching imp inside and combat logs allow to carry that to the Computer. More information about how the player's choices influence gameplay is always a good thing to have.

[0x30A88]

A simple multiplayer, not coop, but army against army. Let's say, 32v32. You level up as you slay opponents and win matches. While leveling up like in the SP, you get the attribute points, skill points, ... and a shop where you can buy items according to your level. Where you get money for winning matches and perhaps a 1 on 1 match with a bet.



Not that I am dissatisfied with the SP, in fact, DA:O's playtime counter has passed 200 hours last week. A multiplayer would add to the awesomeness, allthough I fear that it might end up like CoD 4 or 5, where it's expected that you're born as a pro and noobishness = instakick.

[Wulfram]

The ability to talk with my companions - particularly the LI - about major plot events. No one except Alistair seemed to care what happened at the landsmeet unless you got married.



And yes, a combat log would be very nice. It was frustratingly difficult to work out if the various sustains were doing any good, were a waste of stamina or even were actively making your character worse.

[IndigoWolfe]

I want a beard!... oh wait...

[AlanC9]

Wulfram wrote...

The ability to talk with my companions - particularly the LI - about major plot events. No one except Alistair seemed to care what happened at the landsmeet unless you got married.

Well, Morrigan, Oghren, and Shale probably wouldn't give a damn, and Sten would have found the whole business preposterous, except maybe for the duel part. But Wynne and Leliana, yeah.

Modifié par AlanC9, 02 octobre 2010 - 04:50 .

[schalafi]

If any of you played Oblivion, you may remember you could buy a house and furnish it. I thought it was fun for a little while, then I found myself just sitting there, wondering what else I could do with it, and it became really boring. I found the same thing with NWN2's Keep. I felt they both distracted me from the real main quests of the game. Yes I know the Keep played a part in a big battle, and it was a good place to put all your npcs, but it could have been done without all the decorating of the interior; that, in my estimation was just "fill in, not something that made a big difference in the game.

I still think the "resting at an inn" like in BG and BG2, to be fine for getting together with comrades, and maybe even using several of them as gathering places to meet new npcs, or converse with them... not someplace you have to furnish and decorate. IMO, that can be left to the Sims.

Modifié par schalafi, 02 octobre 2010 - 05:09 .

[bsbcaer]

Gisle Aune wrote...

A simple multiplayer, not coop, but army against army. Let's say, 32v32. You level up as you slay opponents and win matches. While leveling up like in the SP, you get the attribute points, skill points, ... and a shop where you can buy items according to your level. Where you get money for winning matches and perhaps a 1 on 1 match with a bet.

Not that I am dissatisfied with the SP, in fact, DA:O's playtime counter has passed 200 hours last week. A multiplayer would add to the awesomeness, allthough I fear that it might end up like CoD 4 or 5, where it's expected that you're born as a pro and noobishness = instakick.

Well, this is more a question on games in general rather than on DA2 in particular, but what is up with this current fascination by everyone and their mother to make every game into a multiplayer type game? 

[Basiritz]

I would like to see outfits for mages other than robes and those stupid hats. I would like decent equipment for mages that include pants, not dresses.