608 réponses à ce sujet

[StingingVelvet]

AlanC9 wrote...

The question isn't ME2's feelings; that's just silly. The question is whether it's rational to compare a two-platform game to a three-platform game, discover that the three-platform game sold more than the two-platform game, and think you've proved something.

If that is the reason then that just means "make it on three platforms next time," rather than "make it more mainstream."

[StingingVelvet]

Realmjumper wrote...

Let me make one thing clear. Fallout New Vegas was a rushed garbage product that have severely crippling bugs at release.

Anyone who tells you otherwise either A) got lucky and didn't experience them or was payed to review the game positively.

I hear the 360 version is pretty bad but the PC version works great for a lot of people.  I personally had a 65 hour NCR playthrough and am at 23 hours on a Legion playthrough and in that combined 88 hours I have seen ONE bug.  ONE.  I have seen most PC gamers say the same kind of thing on my normal forums.  I would go as far as to say New Vegas is less buggy than Fallout 3 was.

I do hear the 360 version was broken at launch though.  Doesn't help that it's a lot harder to patch games on that platform, the PC had a release-day patch and another two quickly after that.

Anyway, this is all not really relevent.

Modifié par StingingVelvet, 17 novembre 2010 - 11:47 .

[Realmjumper]

Which proves my point. The console releases should of been delayed, but they weren't. All because they want to cash in instead of properly delaying the product. I sincerely hope this never happens to Dragonage 2.

[StingingVelvet]

Realmjumper wrote...

Which proves my point. The console releases should of been delayed, but they weren't. All because they want to cash in instead of properly delaying the product. I sincerely hope this never happens to Dragonage 2.

Well they would have just delayed all three until all three were ready to go, but that would cost a lot of money.  Companies like money.

[Bobad]

StingingVelvet wrote...

Realmjumper wrote...

Let me make one thing clear. Fallout New Vegas was a rushed garbage product that have severely crippling bugs at release.

Anyone who tells you otherwise either A) got lucky and didn't experience them or was payed to review the game positively.

I hear the 360 version is pretty bad but the PC version works great for a lot of people.  I personally had a 65 hour NCR playthrough and am at 23 hours on a Legion playthrough and in that combined 88 hours I have seen ONE bug.  ONE.  I have seen most PC gamers say the same kind of thing on my normal forums.  I would go as far as to say New Vegas is less buggy than Fallout 3 was.

I do hear the 360 version was broken at launch though.  Doesn't help that it's a lot harder to patch games on that platform, the PC had a release-day patch and another two quickly after that.

Anyway, this is all not really relevent.

Aye 360 players should stay clear of it until it's patched, I wasted 60 hours of my life to be confronted by a save game corruption ruining 2 playthroughs, it is a great game, but to be honest the one thing BioWare can definitely learn from FO:NV is to not release a game on any given format until it's ready and tested properly.  There have been some minor niggles with Origins such as Morrigan's lack of recall in Witch Hunt, but nothing that ever completely negated 30 hours plus of gaming.

When it does work though New Vegas is fantastic. 

Modifié par Bobad, 18 novembre 2010 - 12:08 .

[In Exile]

Vylan Antagonist wrote...
Again, you are attributing to me a very overblown position, which I guess plays well for hyperbole's sake, but remains wildly inaccurate. As I said, it's a spectrum, not a binary value. Obsidian chose NOT to remake the wheel to pursue sales and instead focused their dev time on overwhelming amounts of content and a couple bones for the niche audiences. This was well received, even by the likes of Ice T. This is also precisely the opposite of what was supposedly merited by Bioware's stated metrics about what percentages of players see all of that content.

No, I'm not attributing an overblown to you. You continue to insist that Obsidian had pure and creative motives in creating New Vegas; you are adamnt that Bioware is not doing the same. Let me quote some posts from this thread.

So why was it released?

1. To cash in on the
holiday rush 2. To avoid Call of Duty: Black Ops rush 3. Because
Bethesda knew they could get away with it.

It's
unacceptable to release a product in such a state. If I bought a gallon
of milk and only 70% of it was useful while the other 30% might cause me
bodily harm I don't think that company would be in business for long.

Well they would have just delayed all three until all three were
ready to go, but that would cost a lot of money.  Companies like money.

Right here in this thread, we have people talk about how Obsidian released a broken and buggy game on the 360 for the sake of maximizing profits.

So the fact that you insist[/i] on the bold portion, that Obsidian is not pursuing sales, is just some invention of yours.

You are so intent on twisting my argument into your strawman (Noble developer versus iniquitous one) that you make my own points for me unwittingly. No, Obsidian did not attempt to reinvent a successful franchise (again) by shoehorning Gamebryo and FO3 into an isometric game. That would be a foolish waste of time. Instead, they followed up a successful entry with another successful entry that not only didn't go out of its way to attempt to cater to the MW2 players but even went so far as to write little love letters to the niche (I count at least 2 Somethingawful references).

You continue to refuse to address the points I raised. Obsidian took over a franchise that moved 4.7 million copies in the first week. They chose not to change anything about the game, despite the fact that Fallout 3 was panned as a dumbed down betrayal of the isometric Fallout 1/2.

Why did Obsidian do this? They kept Fallout 3 the same because they like money. You say they didn't change anything out of some kind of developer integrity. But we can't know that. This is your supposition. This is the point.

Bioware is following up a successful game by revamping it. You are arguing that their scale (3.2 million vs. 5, I guess) constitutes a monumental difference, I don't feel that it is. Both games sold very well by game standards, far above the usual rates. Both games are successes. But only one felt the need to reinvent the core gameplay and art assets.

Dragon Age was an RPG. Fallout 3was already a mass marketed phenomenon. Accusing Bioware of trying to make Dragon Age more mass market compared to Fallout 3 is just plain incoherent, because Bioware was never the sort of game Fallout 3 was.

Let's turn this into a numbers issue. 5 million - 3.2 million is 1.8 million. Let's say each game cost $40. That is 72,000,000 dollars. Let me repeat that: 72 MILLION dollars.

I envy your life if that amount is minor to you.

Obsidian took over a game more popular than anythin Bioware produced, a game that was already mainstream compared to niche, and you want to praise them for... what, exactly?

That's a good bit of tremendously valuable development time that could have been spent elsewhere, particularly critical when you have a tight time table. The argument I was seeing justifying that decision was that if they hadn't pitched DA2 that way, it wouldn't have gotten made. Now, that decision might not have been the developers' to make, but someone in the organization made that call. And it doesn't seem like it was necessary, given that New Vegas moved (substantially or not) away from the 'mass market' and found tremendous success by focusing on massive amounts of content.

That's patently false. New Vegas, by your admission, changed almost nothing from Fallout 3. Hardcore mode is optional. VATS has tweaks, at most. Everything is still FPS. The writing and quests are different, but to the mass market, this isn't even a feature of interest.

So what is this dramatic artistic change that Obsidian did? They took a game that appealed to the mass market, and changed almost nothing. They deserve a medal for this?

It all comes right back to you wanting to praise their motives.

Some of that was mutually exclusive (although they took pains to minimize that). But in spite of your statements to the contrary, much of DO:A's content was mutually exclusive too. Obviously. Look at the origins alone, let alone follow-up plot threads in-game. If content isn't to some extent mutually exclusive, then choice is illusory. I know I've played games like that and they haven't been satisfying to me. Mutually exclusive content encourages replaying a game, because it suggests that the playthrough can feel substantially different.

The post-Ostagar content is identical. Each origin takes 30min-1hr and you can play all of them from the start. The differences of each Origin is almost entirely cosmetic. Not seeing the exclusivity.

You also attempted to imply I have an anti-console bias, because apparently you like ascribing qualities to people as much as you claim I like to do to developers. My only bias regarding consoles versus PCs is which plays better for me.

I'm calling you out for insulting the mainstream, not for any platforming preference. If you're going to claim mainstream = stupid, yeah, I'm going to call you out on it.

I know you are intent on pursuing your own narrative of how you think my argument should read, but please follow closely-

1) Dragon Age: Origins was Bioware's best selling game ever.
2) We were told that it wasn't as profitable as it needed to be and that the sequel had to be pitched differently in order to get made.
3) With a tighter time table, valuable development time was spent re-doing artwork and refocusing gameplay to be more action oriented.
4) There seems to be a pretty clear linkage between these decisions, even if you refuse to stipulate to it.

To parallel:
1) Fallout 3 was very successful for Bethesda.
2) In developing a 'follow-up', Obsidian did not choose to redesign art assets or make radical departures in gameplay
3) They chose to focus on delivering massive amounts of content and still had time to devote dev cycles to features that appeal to a minority of their market
4) The game still sold well.

Let's parallel this in a way you will understand:

1) Fallout 3 was very succesful; it moved 1.8 million units more than Dragon Age and made 72 million dollars more (at least).
2) Fallout 3 was a mass market game - it was panned by hardcore RPG circles for betraying Fallout for the (among other) the following features:
   i) NO isometric camera
  ii) FPS mechanics
 iIi) OPTIONAL vats combat
3) Obsidian changed none of the features that Bestheda changed to appeal to the mainstream
4) Obsidian added content in whatever fashion they chose, and made an optional hardcore mode
5) The game sold as well as Fallout 3.

What you insist on ignoring is that Fallout 3 was already a mass marketed game, which by your admission, was changed very little. You keep wanting to insist that Obsidian didn't sell out by keeping the game the same; but Bestheda sold out. Obsidian kept everything they did the same.

They were, in this thread panned for releasing a bugged game for the sake of finances. That you want to keep praising them, that's what I'm calling you out on.

Does it mean that it was possible to have done so? I certainly think so. I think it's a pretty clear argument in its favor. I think it validates their choice of focus (content versus graphical and gameplay overhauls).

No, there is no argument in their favour. For you to even be able to [i]make this argument means that you'd need to know what features are responsible for the success of DA:O. Well, what are they? Do you have any data to back this up beside your injustified pressuposition?

Modifié par In Exile, 18 novembre 2010 - 01:44 .

[Vylan Antagonist]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

[quote]Vylan Antagonist wrote...
Again, you are attributing to me a very overblown position, which I guess plays well for hyperbole's sake, but remains wildly inaccurate. As I said, it's a spectrum, not a binary value. Obsidian chose NOT to remake the wheel to pursue sales and instead focused their dev time on overwhelming amounts of content and a couple bones for the niche audiences. This was well received, even by the likes of Ice T. This is also precisely the opposite of what was supposedly merited by Bioware's stated metrics about what percentages of players see all of that content. [/quote]

No, I'm not attributing an overblown to you. You continue to insist that Obsidian had pure and creative motives in creating New Vegas; you are adamnt that Bioware is not doing the same. Let me quote some posts from this thread.
[/quote]

LOL. I didn't even once insist that Obsidian had 'pure' motives in creating New Vegas, so how can I continue to insist something if I never did so in the first place? You are rapidly becoming a caricature. There are more gradations in life than black and white, than pure and demonic, than virtuous and base. Both companies want to stay solvent. Both also love gaming or they wouldn't be in this thankless business. Just because I'm saying that Obsidian did not go out of their way to broaden their audience doesn't mean they deserve to be canonized. Be reasonable, assuming you have the capacity for it.

And I love this part: 'No, I'm not attributing an overblown [sic] to you. You keep saying [thing I never said]' For all that you seem to enjoy peppering your arguments with lawyer parlance, you'd make a pretty lousy one. They can argue clearly and cogently.

[quote]Right here in this thread, we have people talk about how Obsidian released a broken and buggy game on the 360 for the sake of maximizing profits.

So the fact that you insist[/i] on the bold portion, that Obsidian is not pursuing sales, is just some invention of yours.[/quote]

Again, you are getting wildly off-base. 'Right here in this thread, some people made allegations that new Vegas was a cash-in to maximize profits, but you insist that it isnt, and that's, like, an invention or something'. How on earth do you draw that conclusion from that laughably flimsy premise? Facts not in evidence.

And again, you seem to be incapable of understanding nuance. I didn't say [needless and bad html tagging]Obsidian is NOT pursuing sales at all ever, they are holy and sacrosanct[/tag/tag/tag]. That was purely your attribution. Cut it out.

Once again, nice and slow for you- It's...an...issue... of.... focus. Bioware has out and out stated, on record, that they want to sell more games. They are making changes with an eye towards achieving that end. They've out and out stated that they want to draw in Fable players and Borderlands players. The changes being made (and on occasion amusingly whinged about here) are in accordance with that goal. In contrast, Obsidian did NOT focus on trying to make their Fallout iteration more appealing to the Fable and Borderlands crowd. Instead, they seem to have simply made the game they wanted to make. Yes, that's an assumption, but it's a reasonable one. It doesn't require an expert witness to draw that conclusion, yer honor. Why else would they have made the changes they did? They borrowed a bit in areas from their original Van Buren bible, despite the complexity that the overwhelming majority will never pick up on (really, outside of NMA, how many people know that the Burning Man is not a wild desert party). They invested their time into a lot of details that will be absolutely wasted on most players (the skybox was less exciting than the ones available in mods because it actually matches the weather patterns in Nevada, for example!). These flourishes were clearly not made with any rational expectation of greater sales. It's only logical to deduce that they did these things because they wanted to. That's not some grand assumption. It's just common sense. They didn't sell a single extra box because they happened to model Goodsprings painstakingly on the real town. But the game sold anyways.

That doesn't mean JE and Chris are hallowed gaming gods on the fast track to sainthood. Obviously they had to have an awareness of what content had to be cut, what cost compromises had to be made, and what pragmatic decisions had to be made about delivering the project on time. They just didn't bend over backwards to pander to a larger audience than FO3.

[quote]
You continue to refuse to address the points I raised. Obsidian took over a franchise that moved 4.7 million copies in the first week. They chose not to change anything about the game, despite the fact that Fallout 3 was panned as a dumbed down betrayal of the isometric Fallout 1/2.

Why did Obsidian do this? They kept Fallout 3 the same because they like money. You say they didn't change anything out of some kind of developer integrity. But we can't know that. This is your supposition. This is the point.
[/quote]

Make a point and I'll address it. You are having an argument with yourself. You've created your thesis and supplied your own antithesis. It has nothing to do with what I'm saying. FO3 sold well, yes. Now pay attention to this part. So...did... DA:O. So both DA2 and FO:NV were coming on the heels of successful prior entries.

Here's what Obsidian *didn't* do- Add to the blood spatter effects. Hot rod the art. Remove VATS completely. Remove the Open World in place of set vignettes. Add a cover system, along with conveniently placed cattle chutes right before scripted gunfights.

Those changes, yes, absolutely would have taken away from their dev time for other stuff. And they didn't do them. Yay! The game sold anyways.

DA2 seems to be spending dev cycles on reinventing the wheel specifically to reach out to the Fable 3 crowd. That doesn't make them evil or whatever other ludicrous and overblown value judgments you choose to attach to that observation. It's just a choice, albeit one I'm feeling trepidatious about.


[quote]
Dragon Age was an RPG. Fallout 3was already a mass marketed phenomenon. Accusing Bioware of trying to make Dragon Age more mass market compared to Fallout 3 is just plain incoherent, because Bioware was never the sort of game Fallout 3 was.[/quote]

Hurp, derp. Calling Bioware a game is incoherent. And what on earth are you on about, mumbling something about me accusing Dragon Age of being mass market compared to FO3? Even if that made any sense, I never said it and it's irrelevant. FO3 and DA:O are the baselines. DA2 and FO:NV are the deltas here.

[quote]
Let's turn this into a numbers issue. 5 million - 3.2 million is 1.8 million. Let's say each game cost $40. That is 72,000,000 dollars. Let me repeat that: 72 MILLION dollars. [/quote]

When the goal Bioware is shooting for is ten million units, then yeah, the difference between moving 3.2 million and 5 million games is pretty trivial in comparison. No matter how you try to rearrange the numbers, it doesn't change the fact that DA:O sold a tremendous number of units. Did it take too long to develop? Probably. But that's not relevant to DA2 and FO:NV. If you have 24 months, you have 24 months, regardless of how much time was sunk into the prior game. If anything, that sunk time (spent on developing an engine and assets!) becomes more important to leverage in the sequel. Which is why I'm saying they shouldn't have wasted precious dev time developing new art assets and re-inventing the way combat works when that requires MORE time for a less certain return.






[quote]That's patently false. New Vegas, by your admission, changed almost nothing from Fallout 3. Hardcore mode is optional. VATS has tweaks, at most. Everything is still FPS. The writing and quests are different, but to the mass market, this isn't even a feature of interest. [/quote]

Whether it's optional or not, Hardcore mode took dev time. They invested zots in it. They invested zots in getting the ammos right, in changing the way guns are held, in new reloading animations and different pronunciations and clever nods to history and real world events. And yeah, like you said, to the mass market, these aren't even  features of interest. Bingo. QED. The game still sold. They lost no audience. They didn't NEED to hot rod old art. And I don't think Bioware needs to either, although it's obviously WAY past a done deal at this point.

[quote]






[quote]Some of that was mutually exclusive (although they took pains to minimize that). But in spite of your statements to the contrary, much of DO:A's content was mutually exclusive too. Obviously. Look at the origins alone, let alone follow-up plot threads in-game. If content isn't to some extent mutually exclusive, then choice is illusory. I know I've played games like that and they haven't been satisfying to me. Mutually exclusive content encourages replaying a game, because it suggests that the playthrough can feel substantially different. [/quote]

The post-Ostagar content is identical. Each origin takes 30min-1hr and you can play all of them from the start. The differences of each Origin is almost entirely cosmetic. Not seeing the exclusivity.[/quote]

This is where you concede you were wrong instead of trying to wriggle out from under your false statements. You said there was no mutually exclusive content. Differing origin stories are mutually exclusive. Period. You were wrong. Acknowledge it gracefully and move on.

[quote]
I'm calling you out for insulting the mainstream, not for any platforming preference. If you're going to claim mainstream = stupid, yeah, I'm going to call you out on it.[/quote]

Have you stopped beating your wife? If not, I'm going to call you out on it.

I didn't insult the mainstream or call them stupid. That's just your imagination getting you all worked up again.

[quote][quote]

[quote]Does it mean that it was possible to have done so? I certainly think so. I think it's a pretty clear argument in its favor. I think it validates their choice of focus (content versus graphical and gameplay overhauls).

[/quote]

No, there is no argument in their favour. For you to even be able to [i]make this argument means that you'd need to know what features are responsible for the success of DA:O. Well, what are they? Do you have any data to back this up beside your injustified pressuposition?
[/quote]
[/quote]Notice how you shifted my gender neutral pronoun (its, the antecedent being 'the argument that it isn't necessary to change a game to be MORE mainstream than a predecessor in order to get equal or better sales') into 'their', presumably because of whatever argument is taking place in your fevered imagination? You just can't seem to break from the argument you desperately WANT to be having long enough to realize what argument you are actually in. My 'injustified' presupposition need know nothing about whatever qualities helped DA:O to sell well, although it should be pretty obvious from reading the various reviews. You are clearly intentionally being obtuse, but I don't care, really. It still isn't relevant, so if you want to pretend that DA:O wasn't viewed as a return to the days of BG2, go right ahead. It doesn't matter because we are talking about 2 successful games and 2 different approaches to following them up.

Obsidian didn't shoot for 10 million units, which is handy, because theu aren't hitting that target. Bioware seems to think they can and are playing more aggressively with DA2. Maybe it'll pay off. Fortune favors the bold and all that. But it clearly is not inevitable. There's room on the market for games with mutually exclusive content. There's room for games with dev time invested into depth. It might not be 10 million units of room, but hey, I don't think 3.4 million units X $40 is anything to sneeze at, unlike you.

Modifié par Vylan Antagonist, 18 novembre 2010 - 03:08 .

[Hollingdale]

''Here's what Obsidian *didn't* do- Add to the blood spatter effects. Hot rod the art. Remove VATS completely. Remove the Open World in place of set vignettes. ''

Lol, is this for real? They didn't make any of those changes because they all obviously suck even from a strict commercial perspective. The Fallout 3 was allready packed with blood (oh and btw, quoting kotakus preview of DA2 ''Blood will splatter on characters a little less in this sequel, which I hope no one minds.''), had a distinct art style and the cinematic VATS system was well recieved by mainstream gamers. Regarding removing the open world, did you even think two seconds before you wrote that? Well made open world games can be extremely successfull and removing the open world would force them to make tons of scripted content instead to keep the interesting. The equivalent would be if Bioware decided to make Dragon Age 2 an open world game with little focus on mainstory. Now there's a case were the word alienated actually is actually justified in being used to describe probable feelings of those who played the former games.

''Obsidian didn't shoot for 10 million units, which is handy, because theu aren't hitting that target. Bioware seems to think they can and are playing more aggressively with DA2.''

Different commercial strategies. You may like the direction Obsidian took with New Vegas but is it so hard to admit that their motivation for doing so is sales? Anything naive beyond belief. Admittedly Hardcore mode is a treat which they added for a very small minority, but likely at an equally small cost.

Modifié par Hollingdale, 18 novembre 2010 - 03:18 .

[ErichHartmann]

Every developer/publisher would love to reach 10 million copies sold. Naive to believe otherwise.

[AlanC9]

StingingVelvet wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

The question isn't ME2's feelings; that's just silly. The question is whether it's rational to compare a two-platform game to a three-platform game, discover that the three-platform game sold more than the two-platform game, and think you've proved something.

If that is the reason then that just means "make it on three platforms next time," rather than "make it more mainstream."

Sure. Those figures don't show that ME2's approach generates more sales, not at all.

Whether ME2 is more profitable is a separate question, one that I don't have enough data to form an opinion on.

[AlanC9]

Vylan Antagonist wrote...
Again, if that's the question, who is asking it and why? Clearly it must be a matter of someone's feelings getting injured the moment they see the comparison. To reiterate-

1) Someone claimed that it wasn't reasonable to compare Fallout New Vegas to DA2 because Fallout 3 sold really well.

2) I replied that, if anything, FO3's excellent sales only made the comparison MORE relevant, because Dragon Age Origins sold very well too, in fact more than any other Bioware game to date.

That's it. That's the context.

So please, tell me how explaining away that fact with some sort of arbitrary footnote about Mass Effect 2 selling on fewer platforms has anything to do with the context?

So when Estel78 brought up ME2, it was a complete non sequitur? Fair enough. I still don't know why you brought up that "feelings" line, but since it's all irrelevant who the hell cares.

[Vylan Antagonist]

Hollingdale wrote...



''Here's what Obsidian *didn't* do- Add to the blood spatter effects. Hot rod the art. Remove VATS completely. Remove the Open World in place of set vignettes. ''

Lol, is this for real? They didn't make any of those changes because they all obviously suck even from a strict commercial perspective. The Fallout 3 was allready packed with blood (oh and btw, quoting kotakus preview of DA2 ''Blood will splatter on characters a little less in this sequel, which I hope no one minds.''), had a distinct art style and the cinematic VATS system was well recieved by mainstream gamers.

Obviously, no, it's not 'for real' in that I don't think those would have been good changes personally, but removing VATS and adding a cover system would absolutely have been steps towards mainstreaming the title. Heck, maybe punching up the shooting would have been a good choice, I don't know. The iron sights made a hell of a difference for me. I don't use VATS in NV unless something's right on top of me and I'm otherwise boned. I used it constantly in FO3.

How is Fallout 3's art style particularly distinct from Oblivion's? It's still Gamebryo. Heck, you can even load Oblivion .esms in FO:NV! That should blow your mind. So yeah, it's graphically stuck in 2006. There have been ample complaints about the game's appearance.

''Obsidian didn't shoot for 10 million units, which is handy, because they aren't hitting that target. Bioware seems to think they can and are playing more aggressively with DA2.''

Different commercial strategies. You may like the direction Obsidian took with New Vegas but is it so hard to admit that their motivation for doing so is sales? Anything naive beyond belief. Admittedly Hardcore mode is a treat which they added for a very small minority, but likely at an equally small cost.

Yes, they are different commercial strategies, which is why I was contrasting them. Obsidian did not decide 'We need to move 10 million units, what changes can we make to our product to hit that exorbitant number'. They made a game where many of their decisions were clearly not impacted by the notion of moving a single additional unit. And the game succeeded anyways. There's room on the market for very successful titles that don't need to try to be all things for all people.

WoW's success has done some pretty terrible things to corporate expectations for video game performance. Not every game is going to be WoW. It's senseless to withdraw funding from profitable releases to keep chasing mega franchises. That's not how mega franchises develop in the first place.

[In Exile]

[quote]Vylan Antagonist wrote...

LOL. I didn't even once insist that Obsidian had 'pure' motives in creating New Vegas, so how can I continue to insist something if I never did so in the first place?You are rapidly becoming a caricature. There are more gradations in life than black and white, than pure and demonic, than virtuous and base. Both companies want to stay solvent. Both also love gaming or they wouldn't be in this thankless business. Just because I'm saying that Obsidian did not go out of their way to broaden their audience doesn't mean they deserve to be canonized. Be reasonable, assuming you have the capacity for it. [/quote]

Let's have you speak your yourself, then. Everything in italic is the black, the commercial driven nonsense; everything bold is the white, the heroic sacrifice for their art:

[quote]Instead of relying on focus groups and consumer soothsaying, reading
gamer entrails to determine how they should place and market their next
game, they took the engine and assets available and decided to make the
best story that they could with them.

And the beautiful thing about it? It worked out. It worked out
beautifully and it sold. They made the game they wanted to make. They
built it, in a regular Field of Dreams moment, and the people came.

Well, NV clearly wasn't designed that way. 'Hardcore mode' was not
on any marketing team's list of bullet points for matching the
mega-sellers. 100 hours of content is absolutely antithetical to the
investment vs return scenarios that were being bandied around here. NV
was not conceptualized around moving the most units possible. Instead,
the team just tried to make a really good Fallout game, one truer to the
franchise that spawned it.

What matters is that Obsidian built with the game foremost and the
market secondary; They had tight timetables and limited resources just
like everyone but Blizzard does and they invested their time and
energies not in pursuit of what they thought would sell the most units,
but in making the best game they felt they could realistically using the
tools they had, even though some of those tools were doddering and
wheezing pensioners [/quote]

You try to be so poetic as to use a field of dreams reference. Then you turn around and claim you aren't venerating their approach, that you do not want to praise them as some paragon of virtue in contrast to Bioware. But you quite clearly are. In your own words.

[quote]And I love this part: 'No, I'm not attributing an overblown [sic] to you. You keep saying [thing I never said]' For all that you seem to enjoy peppering your arguments with lawyer parlance, you'd make a pretty lousy one. They can argue clearly and cogently. [/quote]

Ah, insults. Well, I stand defeated.

[quote]Again, you are getting wildly off-base. 'Right here in this thread, some people made allegations that new Vegas was a cash-in to maximize profits, but you insist that it isnt, and that's, like, an invention or something'. How on earth do you draw that conclusion from that laughably flimsy premise? Facts not in evidence.

And again, you seem to be incapable of understanding nuance. I didn't say [needless and bad html tagging]Obsidian is NOT pursuing sales at all ever, they are holy and sacrosanct[/tag/tag/tag]. That was purely your attribution. Cut it out.  [/quote]

You said that Obsidian made the game they wanted. I am telling you that Obsidian took over a franchise that was dumbed down, that targeted the mass market, that what most fans of the RPG genre consider their a brilliant game and violated it.

This was what how Fallout 3 was portrayed on forums. And what did Obsidian do with this mass market succes? They changed nothing. 

You want to say they didn't look at the sales figures, they build the game they wanted. I am telling you the mere fact they took over Fallout 3 and produced a near identical game shows they were appealing to the mass market.

I'm denying your premise at its core. You want to focus on whatever minor design decisiosn they made, and praise them. You want to punish Bioware for the same.

[quote]Once again, nice and slow for you- It's...an...issue... of.... focus. Bioware has out and out stated, on record, that they want to sell more games. They are making changes with an eye towards achieving that end. They've out and out stated that they want to draw in Fable players and Borderlands players. The changes being made (and on occasion amusingly whinged about here) are in accordance with that goal.In contrast, Obsidian did NOT focus on trying to make their Fallout iteration more appealing to the Fable and Borderlands crowd. Instead, they seem to have simply made the game they wanted to make.  [/quote]

This is what I'm challenging! How hard can it be for you to get this? Fallout 3 was the game that already took reached out to these crowds. Obsidian didn't need to change anything because they had this audience.

And what did they do, by your own admission?
[quote]Was Fallout:NV a remake of Fallout 3? I
don't think so. I think it was an
incremental change, really. It was like an incredibly large
expansion pack. They clearly devoted their development time to content,
content, content. Models are very similar. The engine has only marginal tweaks. They worked
with Gamebryo as best as they could to flesh out companions a bit, but
not even remotely to the extent that Bioware does (nobody does
companions like Bioware). [/quote]
They kept this game, this mass market game, almost the same. In your own words, it was an expansion pack. You want to say that Bioware is changing their game to appeal to the mass market? Obsidian, who worked on Fallout 1/2 (in spirit, let's say) sat up and accepted a bastardized version of everything that Fallout was designed from the start to appeal to the mass market, and changed nothing.

They didn't talk about reaching out, they didn't talk about increasing sales - but who cares? What matters are their actions, and their actions were sales.

[quote]Yes, that's an assumption, but it's a reasonable one. It doesn't require an expert witness to draw that conclusion, yer honor. Why else would they have made the changes they did? They borrowed a bit in areas from their original Van Buren bible, despite the complexity that the overwhelming majority will never pick up on (really, outside of NMA, how many people know that the Burning Man is not a wild desert party). They invested their time into a lot of details that will be absolutely wasted on most players (the skybox was less exciting than the ones available in mods because it actually matches the weather patterns in Nevada, for example!). These flourishes were clearly not made with any rational expectation of greater sales. It's only logical to deduce that they did these things because they wanted to. That's not some grand assumption. It's just common sense. They didn't sell a single extra box because they happened to model Goodsprings painstakingly on the real town. But the game sold anyways. [/quote]

They created a re-tread of Fallout 3. They added minor bones to their RPG audience, just like Bioware is doing with DA2 on the PC. Some bastardized version of the isometric camera. A hybrid inventory, where companion apperance is fixed but you can add "rings" and "belts".

Bioware is adding these features to Dragon Age 2 so it can sell 5 million units. Fallout 3 already met that goal, and all Obsidian is doing is ridding the brand while not rocking the boat. But they're not concerned about sales? Please. 

[quote]Make a point and I'll address it. You are having an argument with yourself. You've created your thesis and supplied your own antithesis. It has nothing to do with what I'm saying. FO3 sold well, yes. Now pay attention to this part. So...did... DA:O. So both DA2 and FO:NV were coming on the heels of successful prior entries. [/quote]

Excellent. So you grant this. And what was Dragon Age? The spiritual succesor of Baldur's Gate? What was Fallout 3? A mass market, downed down game by Bestheda, to use your language.

[quote]Here's what Obsidian *didn't* do- Add to the blood spatter effects. Hot rod the art. Remove VATS completely. Remove the Open World in place of set vignettes. Add a cover system, along with conveniently placed cattle chutes right before scripted gunfights.

Those changes, yes, absolutely would have taken away from their dev time for other stuff. And they didn't do them. Yay! The game sold anyways. [/quote]

Yeah, the almost identical game, sold as much as the original. They changed nothing of substance. And you're trying to tell me that taking over this incredibly succesful brand and changing nothing about it shows how Obsidian didn't focus on sales first? Please.

[quote]DA2 seems to be spending dev cycles on reinventing the wheel specifically to reach out to the Fable 3 crowd. That doesn't make them evil or whatever other ludicrous and overblown value judgments you choose to attach to that observation. It's just a choice, albeit one I'm feeling trepidatious about. [/quote]

Fallout 3 already reached out to the Fable 3 crowd. And what did Obsidian do? Thank Bestheda kindly and cash in on their expansion pack.

[quote]Hurp, derp. Calling Bioware a game is incoherent. And what on earth are you on about, mumbling something about me accusing Dragon Age of being mass market compared to FO3? Even if that made any sense, I never said it and it's irrelevant. FO3 and DA:O are the baselines. DA2 and FO:NV are the deltas here.[/quote]

Aww, catching me in a typo. Aren't you cute?

Way to ignore the point, but then, you do that a lot (while shuffling insults) so why am I surprised?

Fallout 3 was everything that you're accusing DA2 of being and worse. It was the game that reached out for the FPS crowd, that wasn't into the talking and wanted the action, that didn't want turn-based dice-roll combat but action-FPS combat.

And what did Obsidian do? Keep the same game. So before you praise them for not looking at the sales figure - look at the game they took over [/b]and made an expansion for.

[quote]When the goal Bioware is shooting for is ten million units, then yeah, the difference between moving 3.2 million and 5 million games is pretty trivial in comparison [/quote]

20% is trivial to you? You're insulting my motives, and then you claim 56% of the sales of Dragon Age Origins extra is trivial?

This isn't even to mention the 10 million unit BS you insist on troting about, let's quote Bioware on it:

[quote]"Well, we need to sell 10 million units," said Zeschuk. "That's
actually the new target, right? We do Top 10 games, our stuff is quite
successful. I know Mass [Effect 2] is number eight so far this year, in
North America."Sometimes I'm facetious when I say some of those
things, knowing that we can sell a few million but seeing that someone
else can sell 25 [million]. You're kinda like, 'Well, that's a hit!' We
always joke that if we only do half as well as Blizzard on Star Wars:
The Old Republic, we'll be quite satisfied."We've been very
fortunate. I always joke about that, but..." [/quote]

Yeah, so this is a real business target and not some an out-of-context statement that you're trotting out to prove your point? Please.
[quote]No matter how you try to rearrange the numbers, it doesn't change the fact that DA:O sold a tremendous number of units. Did it take too long to develop? Probably. But that's not relevant to DA2 and FO:NV. If you have 24 months, you have 24 months, regardless of how much time was sunk into the prior game. If anything, that sunk time (spent on developing an engine and assets!) becomes more important to leverage in the sequel. Which is why I'm saying they shouldn't have wasted precious dev time developing new art assets and re-inventing the way combat works when that requires MORE time for a less certain return. [/quote]

There are lots of problems with the nonsense you're bringing up, but let's get to the main one: you have no idea what features made Dragon Age Origins a success.

Right now, we can say that Fallout New Vegas retained 90% of Fallout 3, because it is an expansion almost, as you said, and it sold about as well. How do we know that Dragon Age Origins can sell 3.2 mllion units again, if a re-tread is released?

[quote]Whether it's optional or not, Hardcore mode took dev time. They invested zots in it. They invested zots in getting the ammos right, in changing the way guns are held, in new reloading animations and different pronunciations and clever nods to history and real world events. And yeah, like you said, to the mass market, these aren't even  features of interest. Bingo. QED. The game still sold. They lost no audience. They didn't NEED to hot rod old art. And I don't think Bioware needs to either, although it's obviously WAY past a done deal at this point.[/quote]

So you're admiting that Fallout 3 was the mass market game? That Obsidian took over as a brand and changed nothing? But somehow they're not chasing sales figures? Lol.


[quote]This is where you concede you were wrong instead of trying to wriggle out from under your false statements. You said there was no mutually exclusive content. Differing origin stories are mutually exclusive. Period. You were wrong. Acknowledge it gracefully and move on.[/quote]

Bioware has never made mutually exclusive content any centerpiece of any of their games. I should have been clear, but what I wrote is what I wrote. If you want to gloat over this, go for it.

[quote]
I'm calling you out for insulting the mainstream, not for any platforming preference. If you're going to claim mainstream = stupid, yeah, I'm going to call you out on it.[/quote]

Have you stopped beating your wife? If not, I'm going to call you out on it. [/quote]

Alright, let's quote you:

That it isn't inevitable and inescapable that a successful game be
structured around the lowest common denominator

So, have you stopped beating your wife? Because her black eye seems to suggest no.

[quote]I didn't insult the mainstream or call them stupid. That's just your imagination getting you all worked up again.[/quote]

Really? So the lowest common denominator is just the height of praise?

[quote]Does it mean that it was possible to have done so? I certainly think so. I think it's a pretty clear argument in its favor. I think it validates their choice of focus (content versus graphical and gameplay overhauls).

[quote]Notice how you shifted my gender neutral pronoun (its, the antecedent being 'the argument that it isn't necessary to change a game to be MORE mainstream than a predecessor in order to get equal or better sales') into 'their', presumably because of whatever argument is taking place in your fevered imagination?[/quote][/quote]

No - I used their because you used their, to talk about Obsidian. Seriously.

[quote]You just can't seem to break from the argument you desperately WANT to be having long enough to realize what argument you are actually in. My 'injustified' presupposition need know nothing about whatever qualities helped DA:O to sell well, although it should be pretty obvious from reading the various reviews. You are clearly intentionally being obtuse, but I don't care, really. It still isn't relevant, so if you want to pretend that DA:O wasn't viewed as a return to the days of BG2, go right ahead. It doesn't matter because we are talking about 2 successful games and 2 different approaches to following them up. [/quote]

It matters a lot. You want to say that Bioware is changing DA2 to increase sales. To do that, you need to rule out that changing DA2 is neccesary to maintain sales. DAO was not well received on the console. It had many flaws. You seem to believe a re-tread will be succesful. You seem to believe Obsidian choose Fallout 3 and build an expansion out of creative purity, like the field of dreams.

Seriousy, you open with the most BS filled flowery language possible, and then get upset I call you out on it? Please.

[quote]Obsidian didn't shoot for 10 million units, which is handy, because theu aren't hitting that target. Bioware seems to think they can and are playing more aggressively with DA2. Maybe it'll pay off. Fortune favors the bold and all that. But it clearly is not inevitable. There's room on the market for games with mutually exclusive content. There's room for games with dev time invested into depth. It might not be 10 million units of room, but hey, [b]I don't think 3.4 million units X $40 is anything to sneeze at, unlike you.[/quote]

LOL! Talk about being full of it. You want to argue Obsidian is driven primarily by sales, and Bioware is. Beside the fact that the 10 million BS you're trotting around is clearly an off-the-cuff joke, you keep ignoring the absolute primary proof that Obsidian did this for the $$: they chose a franchise that was a massive mass market game, that was designed for the "lowest common denominator," and changed almost nothing, by your standard.

I'm done with this. Have the last word if you want it. I'm sure you won't be able to resist

Modifié par In Exile, 18 novembre 2010 - 04:06 .

[Vylan Antagonist]

ErichHartmann wrote...

Every developer/publisher would love to reach 10 million copies sold. Naive to believe otherwise.

Yeah. And I'd like to win the lottery too, but I don't invest my time and energy into buying tickets all day predicated on the assumption that I'll succeed that way. It would be naive to do so.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl didn't move 10 million units. Halo 3 did, just barely. That doesn't make them reasonable expectations. There's plenty of room for profit with sales figures well short of those kind of numbers.

Taking a successful RPG like DA:O and re-engineering it with an eye towards hitting 10 million units just doesn't seem reasonable, any more than it would have seemed reasonable for Obsidian to try to emulate Halo 3's numbers by changing Fallout to be more like it. And they don't need to in order to generate a profit. Whenever pressure is being applied on a developer to make a game like DA2 suddenly triple the sales of its predecessor, that just doesn't seem sensible, particularly when those changes run the risk of ruining whatever made the original a triple platinum game.

[AlanC9]

Guys, can we ease off the nested quotes a little?

[AlanC9]

Where'd this "10 million" figure come from, anyway?

[Vylan Antagonist]

AlanC9 wrote...

Guys, can we ease off the nested quotes a little?

Yes, please.

[Merci357]

AlanC9 wrote...

Where'd this "10 million" figure come from, anyway?

From an Greg Zeschuk interview I guess - here

[Vylan Antagonist]

AlanC9 wrote...

Where'd this "10 million" figure come from, anyway?

He tracked down the quote, although admittedly it's hard to see in that mess. Here it is in context:

Videogamer.com interview contained:

Q: I enjoyed your keynote speech this morning. You mentioned that BioWare had been lucky to have a few 'minor hits'...
Greg Zeschuk: Well, not minor!
Q: I was going to say. If Mass Effect 2 is a 'minor hit', I can't wait to see a major one.
GZ: Well, we need to sell 10 million units. That's actually the new target, right? We do Top 10 games, our stuff is quite successful. I know Mass [Effect 2] is number eight so far this year, in North America. Sometimes I'm facetious when I say some of those things, knowing that we can sell a few million but seeing that someone else can sell 25. You're kinda like, 'Well, that's a hit!' We always joke that if we only do half as well as Blizzard on Star Wars: The Old Republic, we'll be quite satisfied. We've been very fortunate.

And from the same interview, regarding DA2:

Greg Zeschuk said:
It's funny. On the one hand people don't like change, on the other hand they'll complain if it's all the same. There will be people who say, "Oh, I like Dragon Age just the way it is! I want more of just that!" And then when you give them that they'll say, "Why didn't you make the graphics better?" It's this funny Catch-22, so we in a sense pre-empt them and push it in an innocent direction...

 Like I say, we like to challenge players a bit. We don't want to do the same old, same old, same old, and I think we'd be doing our fans a disservice if we did that.

Well, NV was more of the same old, same old. I didn't feel it was a disservice.

Modifié par Vylan Antagonist, 18 novembre 2010 - 04:13 .

[Grand_Commander13]

In Exile wrote...

That's patently false. New Vegas, by your admission, changed almost nothing from Fallout 3. Hardcore mode is optional. VATS has tweaks, at most. Everything is still FPS. The writing and quests are different, but to the mass market, this isn't even a feature of interest.

I don't care what you think he said, the "almost nothing" changed from Fallout 3 makes the difference between a mediocre game, not as fun as either Oblivion or Fallout, and a great game which combines years of advancement in hardware/software and the writing and design skills to make something fun out of it.

[sanadawarrior]

Vylan Antagonist wrote...
Well, NV was more of the same old, same old. I didn't feel it was a disservice.

Because you are the only person to whom he was refering to in that quote amirite?

[AlanC9]

Vylan Antagonist wrote...


He tracked down the quote, although admittedly it's hard to see in that mess. Here it is in context:

Videogamer.com interview contained:

Q: I enjoyed your keynote speech this morning. You mentioned that BioWare had been lucky to have a few 'minor hits'...
Greg Zeschuk: Well, not minor!
Q: I was going to say. If Mass Effect 2 is a 'minor hit', I can't wait to see a major one.
GZ: Well, we need to sell 10 million units. That's actually the new target, right? We do Top 10 games, our stuff is quite successful. I know Mass [Effect 2] is number eight so far this year, in North America. Sometimes I'm facetious when I say some of those things, knowing that we can sell a few million but seeing that someone else can sell 25. You're kinda like, 'Well, that's a hit!' We always joke that if we only do half as well as Blizzard on Star Wars: The Old Republic, we'll be quite satisfied. We've been very fortunate.

Maybe print interviews need intent icons like dialog does. I don't get the sense that he was being very serious there. If anything, he seems to be saying that the numbers they've been getting are fine, but that he'd like more.

[DPB]

It looks to me that the 10 million figure there is for TOR, not DA2, seeing as he only mentions TOR in that reply. Either way, it seems pointless using it as a stick to beat Bioware with when it's unclear as what he was actually referring to.

[wowpwnslol]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Complexity is for work. Fun stories are for games.

BioWare will continue to streamline the banal aspects of RPGs (loot, useless items, complexity for no reason). This will continues to annoy the "Old Skool" (I call them Excel gamers) because they love to see how the numbers "move" in the equations and impact the mechanics, but most people won't care. Most people want the character and plot choices and the fun story to look back on. Dragon Age 2 looks (we don't *know*) like it is going to offer a play style that takes a solid step toward the storytelling they did with Mass Effect 2... The games is going to rock so much ass. :-)



Another rehash thread, really. No time for it. :-)

Agreed, Bioware understand that most gamers these days are brainless console drones, so dumbing down the game, removing isometric view and having flashy graphics and fast paced combat was a wise business decision. Focusing on consoles is the best thing Bioware has done. So glad they are with EA now. Best company ever IMO. :innocent::happy:

[Vylan Antagonist]

Maybe he was completely facetious. I'll freely admit to bringing in my own set of experiences with executives and their 'jokes' about sales targets to the table. But here's my take on it anyways.



AAA game releases now represent huge investments. Publicly traded companies have executive incentives to maximize profits NOW, because that directly affects their bonuses in the short term. There aren't really any long term incentives for those executives. Bobby Kotick is a perfect example of this. He's collapsing the number of releases at Activision to put all of his company's money into existing franchises. Fewer releases, bigger returns- That's the idea. And in the short term, it works- Flog your racehorses until they are completely knackered, then put them down. The problem is, where do your NEW IPs come from? Well, you buy them, of course. But you keep chasing the biggest possible returns to maximize your bonuses.



To me, Zeschuk really sounds like he's pining for the big money. Old Republic is a grab at the WoW ring. He'd be happy with half of Blizzard's numbers, and why not? It and Modern Warfare are the only feathers left in Kotick's cap at this point, but they are some pretty massive feathers.



Bioware has limited capital. When it comes time to choose to invest in a sequel to a ;mild success' like DA:O, money spent there can be construed as being NOT spent on Old Republic, which promises crazy MMO returns that beggar everything else, even with decent DLC attach rates. I think there's a burgeoning feeling that money not invested into MMOs is money that isn't generating the best possible returns.



And I really wouldn't be surprised to discover that the teased Bioware game is actually a multiplayer shooter spin-off of Mass Effect, a la Halo/Modern Warfare. In fact, I'd be surprised if it isn't. Because, again, that's the only way Greg is going to hit those new targets he's talking about, 10 million and above.



And when the market is collapsing like that, and publishers are putting all of their resources behind fewer releases and swinging for the fences with each one, those 'mild successes' start to fall by the way side.



So yeah, it's conjecture, but it feels like DA2 has taken the form it has precisely to avoid getting set aside as just not rewarding enough, to keep the team from getting reallocated to the projects they think will earn the REAL money.



And that's a shame to me, because it doesn't leave much room for steadily growing smaller franchises. It doesn't leave room for surprise hits. Now they all have to emerge from the really hungry studios, from the small developers who are out there on their own, the Markus Perssons and the Jonathan Blows. And I guess that's just where the winds are blowing.



But at least when a game like FO:NV hits, a 'mild success' that still has the kind of attention to detail and niche appeal that reminds me of why I spent hours playing the original BG, posting in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg with Pete Seebach, or posting on the original BG forums with Lanfear (and drawing her a portrait of her beloved Coran)... Well, it's heartening. It's rewarding. It reminds me that, for now at least, there is still room for a couple more of those 'mild successes'.