735 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

Meltemph wrote...

Yes, i get that's what you're saying. I'm just saying that perhaps numbers of units then sold by the retailers to the customers are also important to the publisher

But how would they know this? Retailers around the entire world would have to give sales data to individual publishers to have a proper assessment of amount sold by retailers. And why would they even care? I mean, that does not even affect their bottom line, unless they are inferring that means that the retailers are going to ordering more(but that does not really help investors at all).

Huh? You think the retailers are on the hook if they don't sell all those copies EA shipped them?

[David Gaider]

Meltemph wrote...
Yes, but that customer does not propose to the Chef, how to literally make the meal.

I think some people fail to discern the difference between feedback and instruction. We relish feedback, but we must take it in aggregate-- and even then it's only ever going to be part of the equation. The difference, after all, between a chef and a gaming company is that restaurant meals are individually prepared.

[the_one_54321]

Darth Gaider wrote...

Meltemph wrote...
Yes, but that customer does not propose to the Chef, how to literally make the meal.

I think some people fail to discern the difference between feedback and instruction. We relish feedback, but we must take it in aggregate-- and even then it's only ever going to be part of the equation. The difference, after all, between a chef and a gaming company is that restaurant meals are individually prepared.

What you do is more like catering.

[Lyssistr]

Meltemph wrote...

(high quality) restaurant they ask people how their food was and what they'd like to be done different, even if their clients are not chefs. After all you don't have to be an expect in cooking to know what you like to eat.

Yes, but that customer does not propose to the Chef, how to literally make the meal.

Here as well people don't talk about how Bioware will make stuff unless it is directly connected to the gameplay experience. E.g. nobody cares about the internals of their gfx engine but people do ask for supporting proper top-down view, you don't have to be a game dev to know if you like that view or not.

[Meltemph]

You think the retailers are on the hook if they don't sell all those copies EA shipped them?

Yes, what you think there is a 30 day return policy? Companies actually have to have orders for a publisher to fill. They can't just send the retailer as many copes as they want, that would be silly. You would be arguing that they are "renting space".



Brock actually posted a pretty good video that helps explains this.

[Sylvius the Mad]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Again, if it were, you could pont to it.

Here it is:

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The information is only available after the fact

You just choose to ignore it.

The reaction to the line is not the line's tone.  It happens after, and there's no necessary relationship between the two.

If I say something, the tone exists in my remarks.  Your reaction is a separate discrete event.  One is not the other.  Your complaint only makes sense, though, if you deny this and instead argue that the reaction is the tone.

And that's absurd.

Sylvius your typical manner of playing is out of the ordinary. I would hope that you can at least acknowledge that. The fact of the matter is that most players will redo a conversation if they didn't like the outcome and it's not too inconvenient. In your particular case, if the response of the NPC is outlandish you assume that there was a misscomunication instead of redoing the conversation to find an option that is more along the lines of how your character would respond with a proper reaction from the NPC. That is weird. Most of us don't do that.

By example, it is perfectly possible for you to, instead of forcing an alternate interpretation in your own mind, recognize that you missinterpreted and reassess the conversation right then and there. It is not necessary to record every single conversation and play the game a full secend time to have all the role playing options available to you.

If I don't know what all the options are, how can I know I've chosen the one that best suits my character?

And even if I were to record everything and replay the entire game, I still wouldn't have as much roleplaying freedom.  My way my character can deliver any lione however he wants (and even fiddle with the wording).  Your way your character is limited to delivering exactly the line written however you induce it was intended to be delivered after you hear the NPCs' reactions to it.

[David Gaider]

the_one_54321 wrote...
What you do is more like catering.

If there can be a caterer who needs to whip up three million meals and also be the one who decides what's on the menu-- then sure.

[upsettingshorts]

Caterers are contractors, so... not really.

They're closer - at least in the sense of scale and relationship with the end user - to a company like Aramark.

(Actually Aramark has 10x the revenue according to Wikipedia so maybe not in the sense of scale)

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:12 .

[tmp7704]

Meltemph wrote...

Yes, but large enough to get every brick and mortar store in a world release type of game, where you can get accurate numbers like that? Does not seem even plausible.

Every single one of them, of course not. Large retailer chains which make for bulk of the sales (both ways) on the other hand... plus if such practice was in fact present, i'd expect it to be subjected to usual statistics and sample groups shortcuts. i don't take these reported numbers as accurate down to single digit, no matter what possible source they're taken from.

[Meltemph]

Here as well people don't talk about how Bioware will make stuff unless it is directly connected to the gameplay experience. E.g. nobody cares about the internals of their gfx engine but people do ask for supporting proper top-down view, you don't have to be a game dev to know if you like that view or not.

But the hard-coding isn't the only job with making a game. I've seen plenty of people tell them the exact dialog system to use, combat system, what changes should and shouldn't be made due to design, what characters don't work in a story and what is getting old and what isn't. What is going to hurt sales and what isnt...

I mean, I never seen it to this extent in movies or TV.

Modifié par Meltemph, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:17 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I do not know the NPC's response to my character's words or actions before they are delivered, but I know they exist. I know they are already written, already decided, already determined. It is an inevitable and incontrovertible part of the genre that has always existed, in 1997 or 2007.

The reactions exist, sure.  But your character doesn't know what they're going to be.  Your character doesn't know how his companions will respond to his remarks.

Also, your assertion does not require that the tone be inherent within the PC's dialogue options.

Even if I can't predict the response reliably, the content of said response isn't as important to my point of view as the foreknowledge that it is there, waiting for me to choose the option that reveals it. Therefore I am incapable of viewing a CRPG as anything other than a collection of options that eventually reveals the story its writers imagined and coded. Which makes it fundamentally different from the tabletop RPGs they once sought to emulate.

You're playing it like a game.  I've made this distinction before - I don't think roleplaying games are games.  Games are an exercise for the player, and RPGs are simply environments in which the character lives and behaves.  If you're making gameplay desicions based on your knowledge of the game's limitations, then you're playing a game.

The consequences of my character's actions do already exist, waiting to be triggered by the appropriate set of circumstances.

Yes, but the tone of your remarks don't.

[the_one_54321]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The reaction to the line is not the line's tone.  It happens after, and there's no necessary relationship between the two.

If I say something, the tone exists in my remarks.  Your reaction is a separate discrete event.  One is not the other.  Your complaint only makes sense, though, if you deny this and instead argue that the reaction is the tone.

And that's absurd.

You're pretending that cause and effect does not exist and that's absurd. The reaction is not the tone itself but the reaction is a function of the tone. Getting to the tone from the reaction is similar to using an antifunction. The concept is well grounded in logical application.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
If I don't know what all the options are, how can I know I've chosen the one that best suits my character?

And even if I were to record everything and replay the entire game, I still wouldn't have as much roleplaying freedom.  My way my character can deliver any lione however he wants (and even fiddle with the wording).  Your way your character is limited to delivering exactly the line written however you induce it was intended to be delivered after you hear the NPCs' reactions to it.

There is no reason why you cannot allow yourself ot access all the available information and then still use your own interpretations. But that's not the point here. The point is that the information is there, you can access it, and it does not violate role playing.

[Meltemph]

Every single one of them, of course not. Large retailer chains which make for bulk of the sales (both ways) on the other hand... plus if such practice was in fact present, i'd expect it to be subjected to usual statistics and sample groups shortcuts. i don't take these reported numbers as accurate down to single digit, no matter what possible source they're taken from.

Alright, well then there is more to it then, I'm not going to keep arguing about it. Either you think that it is amount shipped or you think they are taking a set sample size and reporting the statistical average of the retail sales of the shipped product around the world and giving it out to the public, I guess.

[Lyssistr]

Meltemph wrote...

Here as well people don't talk about how Bioware will make stuff unless it is directly connected to the gameplay experience. E.g. nobody cares about the internals of their gfx engine but people do ask for supporting proper top-down view, you don't have to be a game dev to know if you like that view or not.

But the hard-coding isn't the only job with making a game. I've seen plenty of people tell them the exact dialog system to use, combat system, what changes should and shouldn't be made due to design, what characters don't work in a story and what is getting old and what isn't. What is going to hurt sales and what isnt...

I mean, I never see it to this extent in movies or TV.

I don't know about TV or movies, I've never joined the forum of a movie under production. However, I've seen in it software product forums, while not all clients are programmers, in web-services and other products I use & buy.

However, whatever relates to game experience can be commented, it's customer feedback. I consider this pretty normal, especially considering it was Bioware that said feedback is read and it even may affect the course of DA2.

[upsettingshorts]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The reactions exist, sure.  But your character doesn't know what they're going to be.  Your character doesn't know how his companions will respond to his remarks.

Also, your assertion does not require that the tone be inherent within the PC's dialogue options.

What my character knows or doesn't isn't relevant to this particular discussion.  The tone of my PC's dialogue is also not relevant.  Neither has much at all to do with the fact that the consequences of his/her actions exist before they are triggered and the impact this has on my view of what CRPGs are.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

You're playing it like a game.  I've made this distinction before - I don't think roleplaying games are games.  Games are an exercise for the player, and RPGs are simply environments in which the character lives and behaves.  If you're making gameplay desicions based on your knowledge of the game's limitations, then you're playing a game.

If I wanted to be clever, I'd say that you need to get rid of that assumption and you' have a lot more fun playing games like Mass Effect and leave it at that.

But that'd be disingenous and unrelated to my point.  Of course I play single player CRPGs like a game because thats what they are.  In my view, you're treating them not just as something they aren't, but as something they never were and are incapable of being. 

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Yes, but the tone of your remarks don't.

We've been over that.  And when someone else brought it up to you you made the point that - I think - that if the NPC's response to your imagined tone is unexpected or in error, than the error is the NPCs.  That is an assumption I can't make given all I've said above.  So what my imagined tone may or may not have been is... irrelevant.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:22 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

David Gaider wrote...

More, certainly. But we're not talking about an even split, here. It sold remarkably well on consoles, and this from a game that was often cited as a PC-centric game.

This is important.

That DAO sold so well on consoles despite being widely described in the gaming press as a PC-first game either means that the gaming press doesn't matter, or that the potential console sales of a DA-like game was actually much higher.

That higher potential is what I suspect DA2 is chasing, and why it's the console-friendly changes that are being highlighted by the early demos.  If that greater potential is realised, then the marginal harm that could potentially be done to PC sales by this marketing approach will have been well worth it from a business perspective.

[Ortaya Alevli]

Paying heed to the forumite's whim is a double-edged sword. The developer may disappoint one side by catering to other's wishes or simply mess up even though there is no visible rage. I suspect the feedback played a big part in reducing the animation speed of two handers and I wonder what else it will influence. My assumption may be wrong, but it's not without reason.

It's also important to distinguish what's a sincere suggestion coming from a player who wishes to see the improvement of a game they enjoyed, what's a poorly thought request from a fan who didn't even bother if the idea would even have a chance to work, and what's a piece of crap that comes from a bored kid trying to be funny or something.

Speaking of which, I think this thread is Burritos' greatest hit in a long while, though probably unintended.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Well, in some ways its like Schroedinger's cat.  He calls my knowledge of the cat actually being in the box an assumption, I call his ability to forget that someone stuffed it in there as suspending disbelief.  It's not really compatible.

(Yeah, I know that's not precisely what the paradox is about.  If I had a better example I'd use it)

That's a terrific analogy.

The cat is both in the box and not until we check.  As long as we don't check (and we can't on the first playthrough, and on subsequent playthroughs we can choose not to), then the cat's absence from the box remains possibly true.  And if the cat is possibly not in the box, then our behaviour based on the cat's absence can't be directly contradicted.

the_one_54321 wrote...

Actually, that example is simply awesome.

Yeah, what he said.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:25 .

[Meltemph]

I guess my idea on feedback and telling people how to make a game(from a design perspective) is different. I guess I don't look at it so intently on how I think a developer should be making the game I wana buy. Either I like the product and I'll buy it, or it isn't what I'm looking for and I won't. Sure I'll give customer feedback and what not, but I'm not going to argue the philosophy of a design choice with a developer/producer.

When it comes to entertainment there are so many creative and artistic viewpoints that assuming one gets taken over the other seems a bit far fetched to me. Now, features in a game, ya I can see, but telling a producer where the design philosophy of a product they are making, should go as a customer, just seems... presumptuous to me.

Modifié par Meltemph, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:38 .

[upsettingshorts]

Ortaya Alevli wrote...
Paying heed to the forumite's whim is a double-edged sword. .

Understanding is a three-edged sword.

Ortaya Alevli wrote...
Speaking of which, I think this thread is Burritos' greatest hit in a long while, though probably unintended.

Well, I personally led a 5-page sidetrack, and I take credit for those, not him!

(Edited out because later analysis of the Cat metaphor by the_one_54321 is better)

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:32 .

[Ortaya Alevli]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Ortaya Alevli wrote...
Speaking of which, I think this thread is Burritos' greatest hit in a long while, though probably unintended.

Well, I personally led a 5-page sidetrack, and I take credit for those, not him!

Credit where credit is due. I salute thee.

[Lyssistr]

David Gaider wrote...

Meltemph wrote...
Yes, but that customer does not propose to the Chef, how to literally make the meal.

I think some people fail to discern the difference between feedback and instruction. We relish feedback, but we must take it in aggregate-- and even then it's only ever going to be part of the equation. The difference, after all, between a chef and a gaming company is that restaurant meals are individually prepared.

Well not exactly, there is a standardized menu and customers leave opinion on what they ate and sometimes on what new things they'd like to see.

Meals are pretty standardized, and when customers leave feedback on how a meal is cooked, besides commenting on their specific meal "instance", they also comment on the meal outline (as described in the menu), that is the standardized form of the product.

[tmp7704]

Meltemph wrote...

Yes, but that customer does not propose to the Chef, how to literally make the meal.

I think part of that may be, when it comes to meals there's usually less discussion involved whether a fly in the soup is just a bug or actually an innovative and intended feature.

[the_one_54321]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...
Well, in some ways its like Schroedinger's cat.  He calls my knowledge of the cat actually being in the box an assumption, I call his ability to forget that someone stuffed it in there as suspending disbelief.  It's not really compatible.

(Yeah, I know that's not precisely what the paradox is about.  If I had a better example I'd use it)

That's a terrific analogy.

The cat is both in the box and not until we check.  As long as we don't check (and we can't on the first playthrough, and on subsequent playthroughs we can choose not to), then the cat's absence from the box remains possibly true.  And if the cat is possibly not in the box, then our behaviour based on the cat's absence can't be directly contradicted.

*facepalm*
No. The cat is in the box. It is whether the cat is alive or dead that we don't know until we open it. This is just you covering your eyes and plugging your ears and insisting that you don't know if the cat is in there or not despite the fact that outside of the expiriment itself it was made explicityly clear that the cat is in the box.

And that is why this is the perfect analogy. (though AngryPants didn't even realize he was making a perfect analogy while he was making it) The cat is the writing. The cat is explicitly known to be there, it just isn't information that is part of opening the box itself. But we don't know how the writing will turn out until we choose the dialog options. We don't know if the cat is dead or alive until we open the box. But the cat is explicityly known to be inside the box. The writing exists despite having not been read yet.

[Anarya]

It's kind of more like a regular live cat in a box that Sylvius has written "Schroedinger's Cat" on the side of. Because the information is actually there whether you are aware of it or not.

Modifié par Anarya, 10 octobre 2010 - 07:28 .