9 réponses à ce sujet

[Arius23]

This is a user mod that adds a wedding between the fem noble cousland and alistair when you leave the landsmeet chamber at the end of the game.  It was created by Dahlialynn and I think it's an excellent example of giving the players closure for their decisions.  Obviously a different cutscene would have to be made for each major decision, but I think a cutscene like this is far more emotionally satisfying than simple text endings like at the end of origins.

Here is the mod if any PC owners are interested in experiencing it with their fem cousland:

http://www.dragonage...ile.php?id=1839

[Mike Laidlaw]

We absolutely could do it.

We just chose not to, because we have X amount of time to make an entire game, and for everything you do, something else doesn't get done.

In an example like this, a scene that can only be viewed by human noble females who have successfully had a romance with alistair AND who chose the ritual represents a reasonably small portion of the audience. Therefore, the effort could be better spent on a scene that, say, 90% of people will see instead of 10%.

I really don't understand why people feel the need to imply we're incompetent because we don't do every possible thing we could do. Am I incompetent because I chose to go to a movie instead of skydiving one Saturday?

Modifié par Mike Laidlaw, 24 octobre 2010 - 12:23 .

[Mike Laidlaw]

Faz432 wrote...

I'm not suggesting you're incompetent, far from it, I think you (Bioware) are more than capable of achieving better results. I'm just repeating the general idea that comes back from staff whenever a community member asks why a modder can do something that Bioware apparently can not or are unwilling to.

It has nothing to do with can not. It has everything to do with unwilling to. Becuase in many cases, we are unwilling to cut something else to make this thing.

We are not in possession of infinite time, money or energy. Should you find a way to rectify that, please let us know.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Faz432 wrote...

Does it take infinite time, money and energy to create something like that?

You are missing my point. I suspect deliberately. Let's try another way, shall we?

Origins was made with a team of, let's call the average, 100 people. Over 6 years, or 72 months, there were 7200 man-months of effort put into Origins. (Not real numbers, but nice and round.)

Let's say half a million people have access to the DA toolset. The game
has been out for 10 months. Therefore 5 million man-months of effort
could have been generated by the community.

So why haven't the community generated 694 games in this time? HUH?

Perhaps because those half a million people have chosen to do other things! They have prioritized something else over making a video game. Just as we prioritize, say, Riordan's leap over a wedding scene that very few players would see.

As to making a custom ending for every possible outcome in Origins, we would have not been able to make a game. It would have been all ending, becuase by the logic being presented, we would have to have made multiple weddings for Bann Teagan, among hundreds of other possible outcomes.

[Mike Laidlaw]

Brockololly wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...
In an example like this, a scene that can only be viewed by human noble females who have successfully had a romance with alistair AND who chose the ritual represents a reasonably small portion of the audience. Therefore, the effort could be better spent on a scene that, say, 90% of people will see instead of 10%.

Ok, I understand that logic. Fair enough.

But, with the whole "no canon" approach, isn't this sort of thing going to be problematic as the series goes along if you're importing choices? In that, if my Warden did the DR and made the Old God Baby with Morrigan while some other Warden went the Ultimate Sacrifice route, those are 2 very disparate outcomes. So would the resources be bothered to be put into continuing the DR plot with OGB amounting to more than a cameo or codex entry, given that some percentage of people might not have that because they did the US?

Its scenes like that wedding one that should be the unique reward for those people that made those choices to get to that point. But you guys likely have a good idea going forward as to what choices were most commonly made,so I guess that would help in determining how many resources to allocate to things going forward with the whole "no canon" approach.

Yep, we do. We also know what kinds of things were memorable, and stuck with people. I suspect there will be things in DA II that you would never have expected to see us reference, and things that you'll wonder why we didn't reference them.

There are always ways to make something into a big deal, if we choose to. Not everything can be, for reasons we have outlined, but for something like Morrigan, of course we'd be prepared to account for differences. For other things we can only do references, and other things must fall by the wayside. Rest assured that these are artistic choices, usually made to support the themes of the game in development, though a few are there because they damn well make us chuckle.

[Mike Laidlaw]

TeenZombie wrote...
Mr. Laidlaw, please consider that mods like these add tons of replayability and depth to the game, and having an interactive, creative element like the toolset keeps fans coming back.

Well said, and absolutely considered!

[Seb Hanlon]

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

Mr. Laidlaw, could you kindly tell us why there wasn't a story-justified reason for allowing to import an Ultimate Sacrifice Warden into Awakening? I know the amount of players that actually went with the US path can be considered a minority, only being around 20% of the player base. But this group, minority or not, was the result of the making of a single large choice -quite possibly the largest- in the game, not some combination of multiple decisions such as a Human Noble Female marrying Alistair at the end.

I truly love the series so far, but this little fact has been irking for quite some time now.

I'm not a writer, but I suspect an Ultimate Sacrifice warden being deceased at the time the events of Awakening take place may play a large part in this.

edit: I think I misread your post initially and was a little quick on the Send button. You're asking why there wasn't a storyline justification for allowing players to import a deceased warden into Awakening. If I recall correctly, it was felt that allowing people to knowingly choose to play their warden was worth the continuity hitch. As for why we didn't come up with an in-story explanation for the continuity hitch -- I don't know.

Modifié par Seb Hanlon, 24 octobre 2010 - 02:07 .

[Seb Hanlon]

Faz432 wrote...

Seb Hanlon wrote...

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

Mr. Laidlaw, could you kindly tell us why there wasn't a story-justified reason for allowing to import an Ultimate Sacrifice Warden into Awakening? I know the amount of players that actually went with the US path can be considered a minority, only being around 20% of the player base. But this group, minority or not, was the result of the making of a single large choice -quite possibly the largest- in the game, not some combination of multiple decisions such as a Human Noble Female marrying Alistair at the end.

I truly love the series so far, but this little fact has been irking for quite some time now.

I'm not a writer, but I suspect an Ultimate Sacrifice warden being deceased at the time the events of Awakening take place may play a large part in this.

I think he's asking why you were allowed to import a dead warden into Awakenings and there not being a real reason explaining it.

e.g. Wynne did something to resurrect you.

Sorry, I was too quick on the Send earlier -- I've patched my earlier response. As I said in my edit, I suspect we just made the metagame decision of allowing people to continue playing with their Warden regardless of how they ended DAO. If the player wants to knowingly cheat the timeline, in this case, we chose to allow it. I wasn't in the meeting(s) where it was decided, though.

[Seb Hanlon]

Elanareon wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

Faz432 wrote...

Does it take infinite time, money and energy to create something like that?

You are missing my point. I suspect deliberately. Let's try another way, shall we?

Origins was made with a team of, let's call the average, 100 people. Over 6 years, or 72 months, there were 7200 man-months of effort put into Origins. (Not real numbers, but nice and round.)

Let's say half a million people have access to the DA toolset. The game
has been out for 10 months. Therefore 5 million man-months of effort
could have been generated by the community.

So why haven't the community generated 694 games in this time? HUH?

Perhaps because those half a million people have chosen to do other things! They have prioritized something else over making a video game. Just as we prioritize, say, Riordan's leap over a wedding scene that very few players would see.

As to making a custom ending for every possible outcome in Origins, we would have not been able to make a game. It would have been all ending, becuase by the logic being presented, we would have to have made multiple weddings for Bann Teagan, among hundreds of other possible outcomes.

Ok, how about this. You say that it is impossible to do everything with the time you have. But then you are not even sure if you will release the toolset yet, even though it lets the community do what you guys can't do... Like fixes, additional cutscenes and some other cool things... I hope, that you come to a realization that the toolset will be invaluable for your games.

Packaging the toolset for external use is a nontrivial amount of work. During the development cycle, the same people who would be responsible for testing and refining the toolset so it will work properly and reliably outside the controlled environment of studio development are the same people who support the toolset for the rest of the dev team. I'm sure you can see how supporting the dev team necessarily takes priority over supporting external modders. The one fortunate thing about an end-user toolset is that we have the option of releasing it post-ship.

At this point in the project, the best we can say is that we'd like to be able to release a toolset, and it's a matter of time and scheduling and priorities.

edit: missing "the"

Modifié par Seb Hanlon, 24 octobre 2010 - 04:19 .

[Mike Laidlaw]

The Hardest Thing In The World wrote...
I like that attitude of Mike's. He keep saying he'd love to do this and that. It's just too bad time is never on anyone's side.

In general, I absolutely love mods. Some people seemed to take my earlier comments as an attack on the modding community, when, in fact, I meant them as praise. People have lives, people have things to do, and yet some choose to prioritize adding content to Dragon Age. That is scary awesome.