Atraiyu Wrynn wrote...
We are now 7 months out from release of the toolset and the lack of any real PLAYABLE modules demonstrates this better than anything else. In the long run the toolset will be considered a failure. A decade after it's release, more people will still be using the NWN toolset over the DA toolset because it enables them to get there ideas into a game quickly, despite the fact that looking at the graphics has become painful.
Show me the modules that were released 7 months after the NWN toolset was released. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they were pretty horrible. That isn't much of a limb, because I remember trying several, and no offense to the modders that did them - but all the ones I played were dull, lifeless, and filled with bugs, spelling/grammar errors and plot inconsistencies.
Mengtzu isn't the only person to release playable modules for DAO so far, so I don't see how there's no "real PLAYABLE modules". Not to mention that there are a number of others in the works.
The problem is that quality bar is a lot higher now. In NWN days, modders could churn out any old garbage because people were grateful to get anything for free. Plus creating a level in NWN1 was a simple as slapping together a few tiles. If you did something like that for DAO, people would complain how terrible your areas look if they even bothered to download it, and as a modder you'd endure endless criticism over how bad your area design is.
Players are
not kind when reviewing mods, simply because they've come to expect quality. Dragon Age is a highly polished game, and when players experience something that is of a lot lower quality in the same engine, they're going to see the flaws very quickly. I personally would prefer to release a small 30-60 minute module/add-in that is highly polished rather than releasing an adventure lasting several hours that is of lower quality. Why?
For one, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I'd love to work in the game industry professionally. As a result, I consider that everything I release should be as close as possible to a professional work as I can make it. I'll make sure characters are fully animated when talking (facial expression, hand/arm gestures and posture), I'll try to test all the choices I've put in, I'll proofread everything (multiple times), I'll do post-processing on the VO recordings I receive to get a consistent volume and remove noise/pops... etc, etc.
Secondly, if I
don't do those things, then players are going to pull me up on it. Players are going to take issue with difficult combat, spelling errors, plot inconsistencies, and so on. Heck, even with the days/weeks of effort I go to in order to polish up a mod by fixing those little things, people still find issues and things to complain about: This fight is too hard/easy, there's no new loot items, why can't I make this decision, the voice acting isn't good enough, it was too short, etc, etc. This is not to say that I don't appreciate the constructive criticism - it lets me know what to work on for future modules. Criticism can be hard for a modder to take, but ultimately it tells them what the players want and allows them to improve their work.
Atraiyu Wrynn wrote...
Nothing being done that requires the fabled awesome power of the toolset. And it's more or less an exercise in taking the same areas from the OC, and filling them with monsters.
I'd like to think that my module
Alley of Murders is a little more than that, and I'm sure other modders consider their work more than that too (I'd agree - a significant amount of effort has gone into every mod I've played so far). A big part of RPGs is the plot and the characters, so reusing areas from the main campaign is no big deal for the projects that have been released so far. That said, people are working on larger scale projects that will involve new area layouts - I'm one of these people and have
screenshots of areas I'm working on in my blog, and also more shots
here and
here.I'd like to think that I achieved my goal of creating something that almost feels like a part of the main campaign with Alley of Murders. Would I have like to have created my own areas for it? Certainly, but as a solo modder I made the decision to use existing layouts in order to release something to the gaming public more quickly.
Level design is a big part of games nowadays, and it is time consuming process to make something that players can appreciate. Thus, so far most (all?) modders have chosen to reuse existing area layouts in order to tell their stories. However, that's not to say that it's the only thing that requires the "fabled awesome power of the toolset". There's a lot more power in DAO's toolset outside of the level editor when compared to NWN's and it is still being explored. If you were going to make an emotion provoking cutscene, I guarantee it would be far more effective in DAO than NWN. DAO's toolset is more powerful, but because of that is also more complex and more time consuming.
NWN1's proponents always talk about how the game is still going strong after 10 years... perhaps, for a small group of people, but they overlook the fact that the modding scene has had those 10 years to develop. Compare DAO's modding scene to NWN's at the same time and I imagine the comparison would be far more favourable for DAO. I have nothing against NWN, but the proponents declaring that it is still the best game for modding ever don't appear to recognise that most players have moved on. There are staunch communities for many small games that released many many years ago... but some of us are trying to use the latest tools to produce mods for the biggest audience we can. That typically means keeping up with the latest and best games and technology - and in RPG modding that currently means DAO.
NWN1 modders declared NWN2 and its toolset sucked several years ago. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now about DAO and its toolset. "I can't use the toolset to produce a module as quickly as NWN1's toolset"
does not mean that the toolset sucks. If you enjoy NWN1, fine. But please don't try and declare that everyone who loves DAO and its toolset are ignoring how "NWN1 is so much better". It isn't. (At least not in the opinion of lots of people, me included.)
Modifié par AmstradHero, 21 mai 2010 - 03:30 .
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