1216 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

IIRC the only reason NWN1 had any kind of companions was because of heavy adverse reaction on the old forums late in development, which is why the NWN1 OC implementation is so clunky. Apparently the devs thought that people would be OK with soloing or playing MP.

Modifié par AlanC9, 06 mars 2011 - 09:35 .

[AkiKishi]

In Exile wrote...
I'm not sure I see the problem. Before, games were designed based on intuitions about features. Developers had to ask themselves if consumers liked "X" or "Y" before going forward based only on personal conjecture, and hope for the best. Now, developers have more detailed statistics on what players did and coul ask themselves "based on what we saw, X or Y?". They still have to go foward blind and hope for the best, but they are reasonably closer to an idea of what the user base does.

So long as you believe Bioware was a profit-oriented business, then there is no reason to believe it is trying to do anything different than it ever was.

That being said, there is also 3: You want to desig a new type of product.

Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested.
That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

People put Bioware on the pedestal in the first place because they went above and beyond just good enough.

I never left off 3. I was only talking about existing products if DA2 was not DA2 and rather a new IP I'd have no reason to complain and that probably applies to a lot of other people as well.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

IIRC the only reason NWN1 had any kind of companions was because of heavy adverse reaction on the old forums late in development, which is why the NWN1 OC implementation is so clunky. Apparently the devs thought that people would be OK with soloing or playing MP.

I really liked how NWN did that.  They weren't companions or party members at all - they were hirelings.  Hirelings should absolutely behave like that.

[In Exile]

AlanC9 wrote...
IIRC the only reason NWN1 had any kind of companions was because of heavy adverse reaction on the old forums late in development, which is why the NWN1 OC implementation is so clunky. Apparently the devs thought that people would be OK with soloing or playing MP.

Is that how it went? To be fair, I'm not surprised as that seems consistent with their idea of NWN as an MP client versus an SP game.

[Grunk]

BobSmith101 wrote...

In Exile wrote...
I'm not sure I see the problem. Before, games were designed based on intuitions about features. Developers had to ask themselves if consumers liked "X" or "Y" before going forward based only on personal conjecture, and hope for the best. Now, developers have more detailed statistics on what players did and coul ask themselves "based on what we saw, X or Y?". They still have to go foward blind and hope for the best, but they are reasonably closer to an idea of what the user base does.

So long as you believe Bioware was a profit-oriented business, then there is no reason to believe it is trying to do anything different than it ever was.

That being said, there is also 3: You want to desig a new type of product.

Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested.
That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

People put Bioware on the pedestal in the first place because they went above and beyond just good enough.

I never left off 3. I was only talking about existing products if DA2 was not DA2 and rather a new IP I'd have no reason to complain and that probably applies to a lot of other people as well.

I'm disagreeing with this. Maybe that was the case before genres were as hard set as they are now (like when the NES/SNES was first released), but the intention has always been to make money ultimately. I doubt that making things they personally imagined was as important as making a living. And who's to say the Bioware devs don't like or didn't want to make DA2?

[upsettingshorts]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested.
That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

Uh huh.  I'm sold. 

DA2 is risky and ambitious, that's why so many people are fretting over it here and elsewhere.  It isn't a copy of DAO, which would be the safest path of all.

[moilami]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lusitanum wrote...

Oh, so you mean it's just like Dragon Age: Origins? The game that already had a boring, repetitive and incredibly shallow fighting system, and where raising its difficulty level just made fights even longer without actually making them the least bit challenging?

Granted, I'm not a big fan of the "hamsters-on-caffeine" style of animations and it looks like DA2 will continue on the route of its predecessor of not actually being the least bit tactical, but if it will at least actually require some kind of input on my part, then maybe I won't keep falling asleep while I pay it.

While I'll agree that DAO didn't offer much in the way of tactical challenge, I would argue that the reasons for this were twofold.

First, the encounters scaled to suit you, so you didn't face an unpredictable difficulty curve.  As such, you could enter each encounter confident that you had the ability to defeat it (as such, perhaps my favourite encounter my first time through DAO was those wolves and traps that ambushed you while travelling).

Second, the game completely eschewed strategic gameplay in favour of tactical gameplay.  At least, that's what they said they were trying to do by having everything regenerate between encounters.  But, again, what that did was ensure that you would always have the tools available to defeat any encounter, and let you know that you could safely use all of your tools (DA2's encounter waves might help somewhat with that last problem).

I think DAO would have offered a far more tactical experience if it had required more strategic planning (thus allowing you to face encounters both without all of your resources handy, and without you feeling comfortable exploiting all of your now limited resources), and by offering a less predictable difficulty curve (so at the start of any encounter you might not know whether it would be a complete walk in the park or something from which you should immediately flee).  These two things together would require much more tactical gameplay from the player, as you would need to enact flexible tactical plans using a minimum of resources.

But DAO didn't do that.

Good posting and I agree on everything. I want to add a few more points.

In DA your companions never died as opposed to BG. That makes a difference in immersion to me. Companions were kind of disposables and I had no reason to play tactics trying to save their lives. If someone died, so what? After the fight ends he will be standing good because else masses would go berserk and blame BW of wasting their time (lol talk about oxymoron).

In BG it was possible that your team members became charmed. You could avoid that by being prepared to counter it or using some gear to be immune to it or by using tactics that would nullify the charm. In DA even though there is charm spells none of your team can become charmed. WTF! Masses say I hate "overwhelm".

In BG you could suddenly die by a forest druid monster (don't remember the right name) kissing you. PONG surprise enjoy the game over death screen. Where are surprises in DA? Masses hate "if you can't do anything to avoid death"



Not dumbed down. Just "evolved" in planet of apes, like someone brilliantly concluded here.

[In Exile]

BobSmith101 wrote...
Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested.

That's ridiculous. Developers made what they thought would sell. BG used the AD&D license (as AlanC9 likes to point out, that's selling out to the mainstream PnP) and design a partial MP title in a relatively booming period for cRPGs.

That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

Given how many rants we've had about the dramatic departure from DA:O (sold 3 million units+ btw), that move is anything but "small" or "safe".

People put Bioware on the pedestal in the first place because they went above and beyond just good enough.

I never left off 3. I was only talking about existing products if DA2 was not DA2 and rather a new IP I'd have no reason to complain and that probably applies to a lot of other people as well.

DA:O was an old IP. Or rather, the design philosophy had evolved at Bioware dramatically in the 5 years DA:O developed. JE, ME1 and ME2 were all produced in the interim. Bioware pushed the envelope on the features they showed they thought mattered since they entered the RPG market (just contrast BG2 to BG or BG to IWD).

[upsettingshorts]

My evolution comments in particular have only always been about the storytelling, presentation, and atmosphere. I have never played cRPG for the challenge of the gameplay - because it's never offered me one. I leave that argument for people who care deeply about it, because I do not. Difficulty in cRPGs ranges, to me, from "stupidly easy" to "simple" to "mostly tedious." It's not why I play the genre.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 06 mars 2011 - 09:37 .

[AkiKishi]

Grunk wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

In Exile wrote...
I'm not sure I see the problem. Before, games were designed based on intuitions about features. Developers had to ask themselves if consumers liked "X" or "Y" before going forward based only on personal conjecture, and hope for the best. Now, developers have more detailed statistics on what players did and coul ask themselves "based on what we saw, X or Y?". They still have to go foward blind and hope for the best, but they are reasonably closer to an idea of what the user base does.

So long as you believe Bioware was a profit-oriented business, then there is no reason to believe it is trying to do anything different than it ever was.

That being said, there is also 3: You want to desig a new type of product.

Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested.
That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

People put Bioware on the pedestal in the first place because they went above and beyond just good enough.

I never left off 3. I was only talking about existing products if DA2 was not DA2 and rather a new IP I'd have no reason to complain and that probably applies to a lot of other people as well.

I'm disagreeing with this. Maybe that was the case before genres were as hard set as they are now (like when the NES/SNES was first released), but the intention has always been to make money ultimately. I doubt that making things they personally imagined was as important as making a living. And who's to say the Bioware devs don't like or didn't want to make DA2?

I don't think you got the point. BG2 was potentially 200+ hours of gameplay. They did not have to do that, they could have easily made it 50 hours and "got away with it". They did it because they WANTED to make something incredible. And Interplay was a publisher that shared that goal. EA just wants to make money.
DA2 is like I said "just good enough" it takes no risks, the VA is B class rather than A class, the area is small, the story is small. The problem is that now other developers are catching up with Bioware.

[upsettingshorts]

BobSmith101 wrote...

I don't think you got the point. BG2 was potentially 200+ hours of gameplay.

Why are you equating hours of gameplay with ambition and design priorities? 

That's like saying Days of our Lives was more ambitious and creatively driven than The Wire because there's more of it.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 06 mars 2011 - 09:39 .

[In Exile]

moilami wrote...
In DA your companions never died as opposed to BG. That makes a difference in immersion to me. Companions were kind of disposables and I had no reason to play tactics trying to save their lives. If someone died, so what? After the fight ends he will be standing good because else masses would go berserk and blame BW of wasting their time (lol talk about oxymoron).

In BG it was possible that your team members became charmed. You could avoid that by being prepared to counter it or using some gear to be immune to it or by using tactics that would nullify the charm. In DA even though there is charm spells none of your team can become charmed. WTF! Masses say I hate "overwhelm".

It isn't an issue of difficulty. It's an issue of cinematic investment. You also can't kill random NPCs in DA:O as opposed to BG (no Biff the Understudy). That's because the dramatic plot takes precedent for Bioware at this point.

In BG, with the buff system, the majority of combat was reduced to rote learning encounters and preparing for them. 

In BG you could suddenly die by a forest druid monster (don't remember the right name) kissing you. PONG surprise enjoy the game over death screen. Where are surprises in DA? Masses hate "if you can't do anything to avoid death" 

"Gotcha!" moments are not particular good design.

Not dumbed down. Just "evolved" in planet of apes, like someone brilliantly concluded here.

Random, unavoidable and unpredictable death is complex and intelligent?

[moilami]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

IIRC the only reason NWN1 had any kind of companions was because of heavy adverse reaction on the old forums late in development, which is why the NWN1 OC implementation is so clunky. Apparently the devs thought that people would be OK with soloing or playing MP.

I really liked how NWN did that.  They weren't companions or party members at all - they were hirelings.  Hirelings should absolutely behave like that.

Rofl makes sense. Now I understand better the bard in NWN who in HotU buffed herself fully and then stood still being invisible if I remember correctly. The same goes with the Drow in HotU who very rarely did anything in combat.

[AkiKishi]

In Exile wrote...
Given how many rants we've had about the dramatic departure from DA:O (sold 3 million units+ btw), that move is anything but "small" or "safe".

It's small and safe because it's gone back to being Mass Effect in fantasy land. Take all the bits from ME2 that worked and apply them to DA2. it's a small game, half the lines of DA, takes place in a very small area which means you don't need to create too many areas, just change the city each time skip.

[AlanC9]

BobSmith101 wrote...
Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested. 
That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

Anyone else getting whiplash? I keep reading that it doesn't make any sense for Bio to change the winning DAO formula, only to see a few minutes later that Bio's actually playing it safe.

Edit: oh, I get it. ME is so much better than DAO that making games like that is the safe choice.Well, if you say so.

The new art style is playing it safe? Switching to a VOd protagonist is playing it safe? The ten-year framed narrative is playing it safe?

Modifié par AlanC9, 06 mars 2011 - 09:47 .

[upsettingshorts]

BobSmith101 wrote...

It's small and safe because it's gone back to being Mass Effect in fantasy land. Take all the bits from ME2 that worked and apply them to DA2. it's a small game, half the lines of DA, takes place in a very small area which means you don't need to create too many areas, just change the city each time skip.

None of that describes ME2.  Except maybe length. 

AlanC9 wrote...
The new art style is playing it safe?
Switching to a VOd protagonist is playing it safe? The ten-year framed
narrative is playing it safe?

Bob likes moving the goalposts.  It's a hobby of his.  Sylvius to his credit is consistent with his message.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 06 mars 2011 - 09:43 .

[AkiKishi]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

I don't think you got the point. BG2 was potentially 200+ hours of gameplay.

Why are you equating hours of gameplay with ambition and design priorities? 

That's like saying Days of our Lives was more ambitious and creatively driven than The Wire because there's more of it.

Because it represents content.

Quality of content is a whole different issue

[upsettingshorts]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Because it represents content.

No, it represents time potentially required to experience the content.  Which isn't the same thing.

BobSmith101 wrote...

Quality of content is a whole different issue

Yes, it's the important issue.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 06 mars 2011 - 09:44 .

[AkiKishi]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

It's small and safe because it's gone back to being Mass Effect in fantasy land. Take all the bits from ME2 that worked and apply them to DA2. it's a small game, half the lines of DA, takes place in a very small area which means you don't need to create too many areas, just change the city each time skip.

None of that describes ME2.  Except maybe length. 

AlanC9 wrote...
The new art style is playing it safe?
Switching to a VOd protagonist is playing it safe? The ten-year framed
narrative is playing it safe?

Bob likes moving the goalposts.  It's a hobby of his.  Sylvius to his credit is consistent with his message.

I'm not moving the goal posts, your just not looking at the design changes the same way I am.

For example - voiced character means you only need to write a story for one character, not a variable story for 6. That's playing it safe.
10 year narative in the same place. No need to make new areas, just rehash the old ones.

See that's safe and small.

Upsettingshorts wrote...

No, it represents time potentially required to experience the content.  Which isn't the same thing.

Ok squeeze 200 hours out of DA2's content and I might be inclined to listen

Modifié par BobSmith101, 06 mars 2011 - 09:48 .

[upsettingshorts]

BobSmith101 wrote...

For example - voiced character means you only need to write a story for one character, not a variable story for 6. That's playing it safe.

No it isn't.  It means you have to write a different story in which decisions matter, as opposed to going out of your way to ensure they don't matter.  If your story is variable based upon six potential player roles, those player choices ultimately cannot be reflected in the game because it creates far too many variables to keep track of.  Which is why we get epilogue cards in DAO and scant few mentions of the Warden's origins inbetween Ostagar and the Epilogue.

BobSmith101 wrote...

10 year narative in the same place. No need to make new areas, just rehash the old ones.

See that's safe and small.

Why is it safer?  Small I can buy, but that isn't a problem.  It can also be described as focus.  You know, so you can see the results of your actions on the region you're making decisions about.  I'd rather have that than say, Orzammar or the Dalish where after completing them you can go back much later and witness that nothing at all has changed whatsoever from when you left it.  

BobSmith101 wrote...

Ok squeeze 200 hours out of DA2's content and I might be inclined to listen

I've got over 400 hours in DAO.  Not in one playthrough, but that doesn't matter.  I played BG2 once, never had the interest in playing it again.  Replayability adds to hours.  Which is why I think "hours per playthrough" is, at least for me, a stupid metric.  If I have a choice between a 100 hour game I'll want to play once and a 30 hour game I'll want to play four times, I'll pick the latter every time.

Because quality of content is much more important than quantity.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 06 mars 2011 - 09:52 .

[moilami]

In Exile wrote...

moilami wrote...
In DA your companions never died as opposed to BG. That makes a difference in immersion to me. Companions were kind of disposables and I had no reason to play tactics trying to save their lives. If someone died, so what? After the fight ends he will be standing good because else masses would go berserk and blame BW of wasting their time (lol talk about oxymoron).

In BG it was possible that your team members became charmed. You could avoid that by being prepared to counter it or using some gear to be immune to it or by using tactics that would nullify the charm. In DA even though there is charm spells none of your team can become charmed. WTF! Masses say I hate "overwhelm".

It isn't an issue of difficulty. It's an issue of cinematic investment. You also can't kill random NPCs in DA:O as opposed to BG (no Biff the Understudy). That's because the dramatic plot takes precedent for Bioware at this point.

In BG, with the buff system, the majority of combat was reduced to rote learning encounters and preparing for them. 

In BG you could suddenly die by a forest druid monster (don't remember the right name) kissing you. PONG surprise enjoy the game over death screen. Where are surprises in DA? Masses hate "if you can't do anything to avoid death" 

"Gotcha!" moments are not particular good design.

Not dumbed down. Just "evolved" in planet of apes, like someone brilliantly concluded here.

Random, unavoidable and unpredictable death is complex and intelligent?

You don't seem to understand that I like "evil" games like Nethack. I don't want to be in fantasy world protected by some virtual nanny holding my hand and making sure nothing nasty can happen to me. It is supposed to be deadly world there. And I want to live on the edge!

Also you seem to behave like I would be designing a game for masses, which I am not doing. Masses would totally hate an RPG I design.

I toss your "dramatical" cheesy plots to the bin and say was this not an RPG where I can chose a role to play?

Modifié par moilami, 06 mars 2011 - 09:51 .

[AlanC9]

BobSmith101 wrote...
For example - voiced character means you only need to write a story for one character, not a variable story for 6. That's playing it safe.

You're serious? The changes post-origin in DAO were trivial.

As for length, I think it's pretty clear that Bio doesn't consider this to be a useful way to measure quality. The ME2 changes, and maybe DA2's as well, seem to pretty much be aimed at removing the elements that gave lots of gameplay hours for little development cost. Collection quests, Mako driving, probes and whatnot on procedurally-generated planets, inventory fiddling.... these things come cheap. ME2 had more and better individual areas than ME1 did.

[Grunk]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Grunk wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

In Exile wrote...
I'm not sure I see the problem. Before, games were designed based on intuitions about features. Developers had to ask themselves if consumers liked "X" or "Y" before going forward based only on personal conjecture, and hope for the best. Now, developers have more detailed statistics on what players did and coul ask themselves "based on what we saw, X or Y?". They still have to go foward blind and hope for the best, but they are reasonably closer to an idea of what the user base does.

So long as you believe Bioware was a profit-oriented business, then there is no reason to believe it is trying to do anything different than it ever was.

That being said, there is also 3: You want to desig a new type of product.

Generally because developers made things they liked and wanted to make rather than following trends. This plays into the original article that we are seeing the end of the "classic" Crpg because now they are being made to order with only the minium invested.
That's pretty clear if you compre DA to DA2 everything about DA2 is "small" and "safe".

People put Bioware on the pedestal in the first place because they went above and beyond just good enough.

I never left off 3. I was only talking about existing products if DA2 was not DA2 and rather a new IP I'd have no reason to complain and that probably applies to a lot of other people as well.

I'm disagreeing with this. Maybe that was the case before genres were as hard set as they are now (like when the NES/SNES was first released), but the intention has always been to make money ultimately. I doubt that making things they personally imagined was as important as making a living. And who's to say the Bioware devs don't like or didn't want to make DA2?

I don't think you got the point. BG2 was potentially 200+ hours of gameplay. They did not have to do that, they could have easily made it 50 hours and "got away with it". They did it because they WANTED to make something incredible. And Interplay was a publisher that shared that goal. EA just wants to make money.
DA2 is like I said "just good enough" it takes no risks, the VA is B class rather than A class, the area is small, the story is small. The problem is that now other developers are catching up with Bioware.

I'm disagreeing in that I don't see how you're concluding from the assumption that they wanted BG2 to be amazing, they don't want DA2 to be amazing. Making DA2 very similar to BG2 (which isn't what I think you're saying here) wouldn't make it incredible, it would make it a clone.

I don't find the length of BG2 to mean it's incredible, but I also really hated the BG games, so I'm probably not the person to talk to about that. I preferred Fallout and, although I had beefs with it, Icewind Dale 2. I guess the main thing here is that they were always doing stuff for the money, and the length of BG2 doesn't make it more of a lovechild than DA2. And the really major difference is that I don't think another BG2-style game could be made in the current market environment by a major developer house; costs have skyrocketed tremendously since the days of BG2. It's possible that BG2 was large precisely because it was so much cheaper to make it large than it would be today and still have it be a AAA title.

[AkiKishi]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Why is it safer?  Small I can buy, but that isn't a problem.  It can also be described as focus.  You know, so you can see the results of your actions on the region you're making decisions about.  I'd rather have that than say, Orzammar or the Dalish where after completing them you can go back much later and witness that nothing at all has changed whatsoever from when you left it.  

Because it's cheaper to do.

What you call focused I call cheap, we won't agree and you can't you can't show anything that will change my mind.
I just read over the VA list and it just re-inforced what I already thought.

[AlanC9]

In Exile wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
IIRC the only reason NWN1 had any kind of companions was because of heavy adverse reaction on the old forums late in development, which is why the NWN1 OC implementation is so clunky. Apparently the devs thought that people would be OK with soloing or playing MP.

Is that how it went? To be fair, I'm not surprised as that seems consistent with their idea of NWN as an MP client versus an SP game.

Yeah -- the companions are just NPCs with a special script that makes them of the same faction as the PC and sets them to follow him around. You couldn't access their inventories in the original game, so their stuff levelled up as they did. Modders added configuration and inventory access later, and Bio picked that up in the expansions

And I think there wasn't going to be any player-controlled pausing at all, originally. In MP only the DM could pause because there's only one clock for the entire module.