3 réponses à ce sujet

[Herbie_Hind]

You know you've self sabotaged any hope this series or any other game you make has of being purchased.
I mean, just look at it this way.

You
create a game where your characters backstory is even selected by the
player, with a good long story and a clear motivation. You had the best
combat of any PC game released that year, and the only characters I've
cared about in a long time.

Then you say the dreaded word streamlined which, basically means "We're removing the good parts in favour of dumber versions of them." that was not shagadellic.
THEN you go on to say, we're making the main character voiced, removing
the epic journey, and removing the ability to chose your race.
You removed all the things that made me and the people I've recommended it to love Origins.

I
mean, every part of Origins sucked you in, i only realised i should
have stopped playing hours ago when i got up to go to the toilet and
realised it was 5 in the morning. But with DA 2 i always stopped playing
early.

When you have a game that someone can play till 5AM and not realise ti, you know you've made a good game.

You removed so much and added so little, how didn't you think this would bomb?

[Stanley Woo]

Stegoceras wrote...
Why was Jade Empire a slap in the face?

Jade Empire was seen as a "slap in the face" to "all the loyal fans" who "paid our salaries" and "made us famous" because it was considered "RPG lite," a "dumbing down" of the classic RPG formula into "action RPG," a pejorative thrown around in our forums around that time. It also was neither D&D, traditional European-derived fantasy, nor science-fiction. We learned a lot about our own capabilities and how to create better games from this project.

Why was Kotor a slap in the face?

KotOR, despite being a game int he very popular Star Wars franchise, was seen as a "betrayal of our fans" because we were no longer paying homage to our fantasy RPG and Dungeons and Dragons roots. It was considered, often and vociferously on our forums at the time, a "slap in the face" to "all the loyal fans" who "paid our salaries" and "made us famous." We learned a lot about pacing and making our games faster and more exciting with KotOR.

Why BG/BG?

I don't know about this one, since we didn't have our very own online community back then. i would assume that "all the loyal fans" who "paid our salaries" wanted more Shattered Steel and/or MDK2, either a giant robot action game or a quirky, well-written adventure game. I believe this is the series which made people stand up and take notice of BioWare and begin its reputation as one of the best story-driven-game developers in the world.

Why Mass Effect?

Mass Effect was an original property. Like with Dragon Age Origins, there was a chunk of our comunity who didn't want to risk exposure to something new (what if they didn't like it?) and wanted BioWare to continue making awesome games with licensed properties. And now, we have a section of our community who wouldn't trade them for the world, even for their respective sequels!

I just don't quite get what your aiming at, I'm sorry if that's because I misunderstood the purpose of your post.

The point was mainly that fans prefer the safe and known quantities, and, like humans in general, fear the unknown because they have no control over the advertising that surrounds it or their own reactions to it. Change is generally bad unless there is a lot of reassurance and continual communication, which we can't always provide but we do try. We communicated the changes between DAO and DA2 much better than we communicated the cahnges between ME2 and ME, but it still wasn't enough for some people, and that's understandable.

Anytime there is a change in the basic formula, we will gain some new fans and lose some old fans, the same as with any media like books, movies, comics, etc. With original properties like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, we have the opportunity to try all sorts of new things and respond more quickly and easily to gamer concerns and feedback. Sure, not everyone is goign to agree with us all the time, but without change, without the ability to try new things, without new eyes experiencing BioWare and its games for the very first time, we're not going to be able to see what works and what doesn't, and for whom.

And before this explodes into "who do we listen to?": we can take or leave any feedback we get. There is no obligation for us to only listen to one side or another, or to act upon anything we hear or read. We take everything into account--including info and feedback from other communities, people who come to our demo booths, professional media, other developers, blogs, social media, industry trends, our own opinions, and super-secret internal EA wizardry--when developing the next product. When we lock threads in this community, or try to steer the discussion a certain way, it doesn't mean we're no longer listening to a certain side. It usually means we'd like to hear more from an underrepresented viewpoint or group, or one side is no longer giving us anything new and we wantt o advance the discussion to the next point.

Believe me, we have had an online community for a long time now, and we are pretty sure we know how it works. Despite the sometimes heated discussions, despite the arguments you have with each other or with us, despite all of our disagreements, we are very grateful to our community members who engage with us and our games and provide their sincere, passionate feedback here and elsewhere online. Yes, even the so-called "trolls" and "fanboys."

Just try to keep the discussions healthy and constructive, please. Thank you for your participation, everyone.

[Stanley Woo]

DA2 is Awsum wrote...
So stan, how many people who have disagreed with you or pointed out your terrible logic have been banned so far?

Eurypterid is correct. We do not have a posted rule which forces people to agree with BioWare or EA, or to necessarily like BioWare or EA at all. If you'd like to scan through the first few pages of both this and the DA2 Registered Owners forum, you'll see many who are regular posters of, shall we say, less than complimentary opinions about BioWare, EA, Dragon Age II, and our developers.

But as this is not Dragon Age II related, I would be happy to discuss this in a more appropriate thread in a more appropriate forum, if there is still something you need clarified when it comes to Moderation or forum policy. Thank you.

[Stanley Woo]

scpulley wrote...
While I understand logic that yes, it's your IP and yes, you can take it any direction you like, do you guys really need to make it sound like we, as the fans, if we don't like something, it's just chalked up to 'you don't get it, move along'? I mean, that is how a lot of these comments coming from the DA 2 development team are coming off. Deffensive rather than really productive.

Well, we have a lot of passionate developers who feel very strongly about our product, so yes, sometimes when we defend something we rather like against those who don't like it, we can certainly come across as sounding defensive. Just as those disliking the game can sometimes come across as whiny or accusatory. One of the limitations of this text-only communications medium is that the tone of a message can easily be misconstrued. i consider it more an issue of the medium in which we're having this discussion rather than the fault of those doing the discussing.

but i'm not sure I understand what you mean by "productive"? in my brain, it seems a simple matter of we decide to do things one way, people disagree and tell us so, we try to clarify or explain, problem solved even if you continue to disagree. I certainly can't expect the community and BioWare to reach a consensus on every issue. What, to your mind, would make these discussions more "productive?" What would you like to accomplish with us?

Do you have to listen to us? No. But do you really need to not just change things to earn new fans in trade off with loosing old ones, but then come off as putting down what you did do and was actually better recieved? I do hope this comes back to bite you guys in the ass in that case, maybe then you won't be so quick to scrap everything even if all it needs it tweeking just to appease new fans. Change is good, but in this case I think it clearly wasn't worth the cost of fans you lost for this series.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and subjective. Any "conclusion" we reach from DA2 feedback likely won't be evident until the next project this team does. You'll have to wait until the next project to tell us whether we've "scrapped everything" or "tweaked it" or both or neither. I'm willing to accept that sometimes, change is good, and sometimes, change is not so good. But I would never know until I experience those changes.

FYI, the other media you mentioned actually follows a story from beginning middle and end. DA 2 did not do this well at all, which is why it has had more negative reception. Don't generallize the changes to changes made in media when it wasn't the changes at fault, it was poor story execution so people could look past changes in game mechanics.

Your "main complaint" here seems different than another already posted in this discussion. Why do you think that is?