832 réponses à ce sujet

[Haexpane]

Interview fail.

"Visceral" was brought up again

[Nozybidaj]

moilami wrote...

To say DA2 has evolved is to say I would evolve if I would lose one arm and one leg.

When people pull your finger does something awesome happen?  If not you haven't evolved like DA2 has.

[Haexpane]

10 years after final fantasy 10 and "iconic looks" of characters and Bioware is now jumping on that bandwagon as a design paradigm? Ugh.

Wakka was real distinctive too, just like Tidus. If you want toons that end up being bad internet memes, locking out companion armor is the way to go

[Meltemph]

moilami wrote...

cachx wrote...

So if he want for rpg games to evolve, Bioware should have created a new game...

Why? So all sequels must be carbon copies now? I thought that was frowned upon. I guess it ties to the whole " damned if you do, damned if you don't " thing discussed earlier in the thread.

So yeah, I pretty much agree with Mike on this one. The "old ways" are not better, they're just old.

To say DA2 has evolved is to say I would evolve if I would lose one arm and one leg.

Eh, it is all sibjective... Well I don't understand why he want's to or anyone else really, want to use the word evolve.  Words like that are just throwaway's imo.  By evolve he means change... But anyway, I liked DA2 a lot just as much if not more so then DAO(for diferent reasons, however, for why I liked DAO so much).  If they can strike a balance between DAO and DA2, imo, they will have a fantastic game that pales both DAO and DA2, because imo, they both could have used a lot of improvements in a bunch of different area's.  

[Mrbananagrabber]

I liked DA:O.

I like RPGs. DA2 isn't a RPG. It drove me away.

They tried something else, they drove the core away, and they got new fans. Hur dur Call of Duty fans.

They made their choice, now stop trying to pretend it wasn't money-related and just admit you went for the wider audiences, no need to play the ''savior of the RPG-genre'' card.

[Haexpane]

Moving the Dragon Age RPG mechanics closer to Final Fantasy X is not "evolving" it's 'devolving'.

[Meltemph]

They tried something else, they drove the core away, and they got new fans. Hur dur Call of Duty fans.

No, they didn't get those fans, they wish they did, but no. If anything they drove away some RPG fans for a different kind of RPG fan. I doubt they will do worse in sales, but I also doubt they will do much better as well.

[moilami]

Haexpane wrote...

Moving the Dragon Age RPG mechanics closer to Final Fantasy X is not "evolving" it's 'devolving'.

What happened was that DA:Origins mutated to DA2:Abdominations.

[cachx]

moilami wrote...
To say DA2 has evolved is to say I would evolve if I would lose one arm and one leg.

Are you aware how evolution works? If humans were to lose and arm and a leg due to evolution then it's because they were never needed in the first place to make us function. This is happening to games.

Maybe you need to rethink your rationale, or find a better analogy.

[Nozybidaj]

Haexpane wrote...

Moving the Dragon Age RPG mechanics closer to Final Fantasy X is not "evolving" it's 'devolving'.

I liked FF X.

[Mrbananagrabber]

cachx wrote...

moilami wrote...
To say DA2 has evolved is to say I would evolve if I would lose one arm and one leg.

Are you aware how evolution works? If humans were to lose and arm and a leg due to evolution then it's because they were never needed in the first place to make us function. This is happening to games.

Maybe you need to rethink your rationale, or find a better analogy.

Lemme find a new analogy.

Species evolve in order to stay alive, to keep reproducing. Imagine tomorrow the world is filled with toxic fumes. In response, with time we evolve into an ugly beast with a thick coat of mucus to protect us. Now imagine a gaming market saturated by **** like Call of Dutay kids. In order to get more money (the equivalent of air for EA), they morped the game into an ugly beast with a thick layer of fail to appeal to the new environment filled with crap.

DA2 is the king of the mountain in this new, ****ty world. All hail EA, the Creator!

[dzizass]

So basically Mr Laidlaw thinks that people are morons and won't be able to grasp the subtleties of what "STR" is. Well, considering how DA:O received praise for its idiotic "plot", he might be right..

However, millions of people who play such complicated games like e.g. Diablo or some other WoW are somehow able to understand what "STR" is and how it influences the vital statistics. Are they the world's intellectual elite or something? What's your "INT" score, Mr. Laidlaw?
What's more, maybe Mr. Laidlaw should make platform or FPS games, cause he obviously doesn't want to make RPGs. There has been and probably always will be a niche for RPG game, the only thing that can cause "genre death" of AAA RPG games is people like Mr. Laidlaw, who think that stupifying games makes them better. Well, look at the impact of this strategy on DA2 review scores - turns out that people were actually quite upset to see most of tactical challenge gone.

[Nozybidaj]

dzizass wrote...

So basically Mr Laidlaw thinks that people are morons and won't be able to grasp the subtleties of what "STR" is. Well, considering how DA:O received praise for its idiotic "plot", he might be right..

However, millions of people who play such complicated games like e.g. Diablo or some other WoW are somehow able to understand what "STR" is and how it influences the vital statistics. Are they the world's intellectual elite or something? What's your "INT" score, Mr. Laidlaw?
What's more, maybe Mr. Laidlaw should make platform or FPS games, cause he obviously doesn't want to make RPGs. There has been and probably always will be a niche for RPG game, the only thing that can cause "genre death" of AAA RPG games is people like Mr. Laidlaw, who think that stupifying games makes them better. Well, look at the impact of this strategy on DA2 review scores - turns out that people were actually quite upset to see most of tactical challenge gone.

LOL while I wouldn't use as excited terminology as you, I agree that gamers aren't near as dumb as BW and EA like to pretend they are.  It's just a way for them to rationalize the direction they are taking their games with a positive spin on what they say.

[MonkeyLungs]

Meltemph wrote...

I think you might kind of be missing my point, even though I agree with what you said.  My point is, unless they move away from what they do so well with games like DAO/DA2, they are going to have to deal with less sales.  So why not just reduce the cost of the game, take a bit more time and use DAO/DA2 to cater to the numbers the can reach.

Totally agree with you. I don't think I missed your point at all, I just redirected the central concept.

The barrier to' mass appeal' (didn't DA:O sell enough? ) might not be the game mechanics.

[Nathan Redgrave]

It's probably more "a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B."

Some people I've met have complained that the gameplay isn't their thing. Others complained about things like the way the dialogue was presented being boring, or similar issues. I would say that improving on both fronts is the way to go, but DA2 isn't really what I have in mind in most ways.

[Il Divo]

MonkeyLungs wrote...

Totally agree with you. I don't think I missed your point at all, I just redirected the central concept.

The barrier to' mass appeal' (didn't DA:O sell enough? ) might not be the game mechanics.

I think another question to ask is not simply: did Origins sell enough? But rather, how well did it sell given the time/money that went into it? That doesn't justify Dragon Age 2 completely, but regardless I think it would be difficult to think that Bioware was going to perform a 5 year development cycle for every Dragon Age game.

[Nozybidaj]

MonkeyLungs wrote...

Totally agree with you. I don't think I missed your point at all, I just redirected the central concept.

The barrier to' mass appeal' (didn't DA:O sell enough? ) might not be the game mechanics.

That is something to ponder though.  If mechanics aren't the barrier what is?  This is obviously the question BW is struggling with at the moment.  I suppose it depends on your definition of 'mass appeal' as well.  Apparently 3-4 million is not BW's definition any longer.  10 million seems to be their definition of 'mass appeal'.  So looking at a 10 mill seller like GoW what gives it the appeal to garner moving that many units that BW games don't have?

I think on the surface I see the same things maybe BW (or EA) saw, or rather another way to look at it, what do BW games have that GoW doesn't?  Complexity?  Okay so stream line the games.  Neither ME2 nor DA2 despite being streamlined are going to reach 10 million.  If ME3 reaches 10 million I'll shoot my dog (not gonna happen).  So what's the difference?

I dunno, that's a tough question to answer.

Modifié par Nozybidaj, 21 mars 2011 - 08:45 .

[Mrbananagrabber]

Il Divo wrote...

MonkeyLungs wrote...

Totally agree with you. I don't think I missed your point at all, I just redirected the central concept.

The barrier to' mass appeal' (didn't DA:O sell enough? ) might not be the game mechanics.

I think another question to ask is not simply: did Origins sell enough? But rather, how well did it sell given the time/money that went into it? That doesn't justify Dragon Age 2 completely, but regardless I think it would be difficult to think that Bioware was going to perform a 5 year development cycle for every Dragon Age game.

Granted, if this game oversells DA:O with a 15 months devleopment cycle, it's not the problem of the company but the problem of the retarded fanbase who likes being given **** and like mr Twist, asks for another please?

[TMZuk]

I think mr. Laidlaw is making assumptions based on nothing.

Bethesda and Obsidian made respectively Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, both outselling any recent Bioware title. That in spite of them having all the classic RPG features, with inventories and lots of different stuff for lots of different things. The ruleset is the old S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, the engine is the venerable Gamebryo engine, everything is utterly familiar.

So why do they sell, if what mr. Laidlaw states is true? In my opinion: Because they are great roleplaying games, that allows interaction with the world on multiple levels. Why did Dragon Age: Origins sell more than three million copies? Because people miss the RPGs of old, and DA:O gave a taste of that.

I think the game-industry or Bioware/EA at any rate suffers from the kind of fear that large entertainment companies are experts at inducing in themselves. The fear that people don't want the tried stuff anymore, even if sales proves them wrong. I found an interview that GameBanshee had done with Feargus Urquhart, the CEO of Obsidian Entertainment, in 2010. He has some intereting comments on why gameplay changes in RPGs.

GB: Why does nobody want to go for the zoomed-out
perspective anymore, or even chase the original Ultima Online format in
the MMO space? To me, that’s what the industry needs. Going after the
EverQuest/World of Warcraft format costs $150 million or whatever, but
if it's something like Ultima Online with a modernized graphical engine,
I'm betting that asset creation would be a lot cheaper.

Feargus:
Absolutely. It’s interesting, because even if you look at Dungeon Siege
III, the reason we have a close-up camera, not the super close-up
camera, but the more close-up camera is because people want a closer up
view. And, when we started working on Dungeon Siege III it was a *huge*
fight. Everyone wanted it far away, and were saying, "Why are we doing
that?" And I'd say we’re doing it because when we show the game it’s
going to look really cool in that mode And along with it looking good,
it will play really well as well. Now it did take a while to have that
actually happen, but it has and the game plays great with a closer view.


My main issue with that direction was that if we show a little
character on the screen, it’s going to look too much like a PC game –
and I’m not saying I hate PC games - but it’s going to look too much
like a last-gen game. And that means we’re screwed. We’re just screwed.
With modern games, you have to have people say how pretty the game is
and it is one a real expectation. That probably sounds bad to say, but
it's what even most of us expect.

GB:
See, as a PC gamer myself, a zoomed-out viewpoint is my first choice.
The Infinity Engine had about the perfect perspective for me.

Feargus:
Infinity Engine games, I love them. I didn’t play as many hours as Ray
did, but I put like 150 hours into Baldur’s Gate II. I loved it. The
games were awesome, and it's strange because it’s not like the sales on
them went like this [makes a downward slope with his hand]. We just
stopped making them. It wasn’t like, "Oh, no one’s buying them anymore,
let’s stop making them." It wasn’t that consumers weren’t interested, it
was the publishers that weren’t interested.

GB: That's a shame, it really is.

Feargus: Yeah.

So here we have a man who loves the Infinity engine perspective telling us that they just stopped making them, because noone wnated to publish them anymore, in spite of good sales. Now we have a DA2 that is fundamentally simplified (dumbed down, imo) in spite of the good sales of DA:O. That pretty much sums up the state of the gaming-industry.

[Il Divo]

Mrbananagrabber wrote...

Granted, if this game oversells DA:O with a 15 months devleopment cycle, it's not the problem of the company but the problem of the retarded fanbase who likes being given **** and like mr Twist, asks for another please?

Here's what it comes down to: CoD can have a year-long development cycle and break 7 million sales. Dragon Age had a 5 year development cycle and broke 3 million (but still an accomplishment). Can Bioware ever out-sell CoD without becoming CoD in the process? At which point, EA loses all marketing of Bioware as 'RPG developers'.

Modifié par Il Divo, 21 mars 2011 - 08:47 .

[billybobjones]

I completely agree with his statement. You may all take your heads out of the sand now. Dragon Age 2, while a good game, had some problems. However, they primarily were due to the game being rushed, NOT due to the direction they decided to take.

[MonkeyLungs]

I think that there is honestly too much story and talking and reading in Bioware games to ever make that huge appeal that the most popular shooters have. Also they never have multiplayer. GoW, CoD, Halo would not be neary as popular without the multiplayer.

If they really want to reach out and latch on to those big console numbers: Dragon Age 3 needs a multiplayer PvP component. It also needs a multiplayer cooperative component. It also needs a free roam component so people don't have to sit through the story to 'play the game' (I realize to most of US that the story is playing the game but this isn't the case for alot of gamers). To really appeal to the masses it has to become more 'pick up and play'.

[Nozybidaj]

MonkeyLungs wrote...

I think that there is honestly too much story and talking and reading in Bioware games to ever make that huge appeal that the most popular shooters have. Also they never have multiplayer. GoW, CoD, Halo would not be neary as popular without the multiplayer.

If they really want to reach out and latch on to those big console numbers: Dragon Age 3 needs a multiplayer PvP component. It also needs a multiplayer cooperative component. It also needs a free roam component so people don't have to sit through the story to 'play the game' (I realize to most of US that the story is playing the game but this isn't the case for alot of gamers). To really appeal to the masses it has to become more 'pick up and play'.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that ME3 and (if its made) DA3 have multi-player.  I think you are probably pretty spot on with the rest there, though at that point I wouldn't call it a BW game at all.  Guess it depends how badly they want that 10 million sales mark whether or not they will make the sacrifices necessary to reach it.  Even then I don't think it would be  guaranteed.

Modifié par Nozybidaj, 21 mars 2011 - 08:56 .

[Sandmanifest]

Metroidbum wrote...

I completely agree with his statement. You may all take your heads out of the sand now. Dragon Age 2, while a good game, had some problems. However, they primarily were due to the game being rushed, NOT due to the direction they decided to take.

Thats a matter of opinion, and I have to disagree. I didn't like the direction they took Dragon Age as far as combat and character building goes. Maybe if that sort of gameplay was presented to me in a different game franchise I would feel differently. But one of my favorite aspects of DA:O was the combat.