127 réponses à ce sujet

[Dracotamer]

Seeing the interview in the Gameinformer May issue with Mike Laidlaw
saddened me greatly. After reading it in it's entirity it looks like he isn't even paying attention to the forums or
player reviews. He denies the game was dumbed down, or "streamlined" as they call it in the industry and in a manner of speaking tells us, the fans and consumers that we are wrong.

Denying waves of creeps was the wrong way to go is just silly. That is by far one of the most complained about things next to recycled resources and the lack of companion armor/customization. It is not a minority of the fan base that says rogues were dumbed down and no longer play the same role both in and out of combat that they did in DA2. No longer can we position ourselves pefecttly to disable that pesky mage or quickly strike down that archer before our warrior and party engage, no more pick pocketing our scouting ahead in dungeons to form a strategy to defeat our foes. Saying that we simply need to turn it on Hard or Insane is a slap in the face. Do you honestly think most of us don't play it this way? Waves of creeps still destroy the combat strategies and makes it more of a survival game when it comes to combat rather then a tactical situation.

Now don't get me wrong, waves can be useful in certain situations, but those are rare instances. You also have mobs all doing pretty much the same thing. In DA:O we actually had to think each fight and decide who to kill first based on their abilities, now it's simply kill everything in sight as they show up. Sure there are mages and assasins, but for the most part they can be singled out by one party member and quickly dispatched.

I was greatly dissapointed by his responses and what felt to me to be a complete lack of respect for us, the fans and consumers that keep Bioware in business. You guys can keep "streamlining" your games and ignoring your fans comments thinking we will blindly buy all your games, but I for one, and I am sure I am not alone in this, will NEVER buy another Bioware game without thouroughly researching it first and possibly renting it. You lost my faith Bioware.

For more in depth reasoning in regards to what was done wrong and right with DA2 please see my other thread...

http://social.biowar...62832/6#7063249

[Everwarden]

Seconded. I'd add that Laidlaw should be fired, DA2 had limited resources and they spent far too long wasting time on things as stupid as changing the elves and darkspawn (making both worse).

[Ksandor]

You forget that Laidlaw perfectly knows that you are absolutely right. He deliberately ignores you. Because giving an interview is a PR issue. They always do what their PR company tells them to do. I don't think he even has the freedom to say what he really thinks. "EA dictates".

Laidlaw just tries to secure the new Dragon Age II sells. He will never admit to a magazine that they made a mistake. Their concern is to fool more people to buy this inferior game.

They WILL never play your ball unless Dragon Age II sales will be so low that they won't make any profit. Do you see it happening?

I don't think that Bioware has fredoom to be more creative in game design either. I think Bioware CEOs or EA people dictate Bioware what to do when it comes to major game decisions like streamlining the combat and yes, dumbing the game down. If you work at a company you will understand.

They are out there to make money not to develop quality products or satisfy the customer. We are an ignored tangent. Once Bioware cared about fans. That is because they were not rich enough to rely on mass PR marketing to sell mediocre products good. So they cared fans in order to make quality niche products to compete with all the other stupid games which are crap but have more marketing budget.

Now EA backs Bioware and they know that if you do good marketing your mediocre games will sell more to general audience than the high quality games you spend more time and money.

This trend will not improve in the future. It will get worse. Because wether you like it or not crowds usually buy mediocre products. Not every customer takes the game they buy seriously as we do. Don't you read the posts here? People are cool man! They say us "Sheesh! It is just a game! Calm down!". Like we do not pay the game.... They are shocked to read why we bother to ciriticize the game and fanboys maul us here but they are not banned. Because they are used by EA to police the boards to scare away the negative criticism. Voluntary bodyguards for free...

Modifié par Ksandor, 14 avril 2011 - 09:12 .

[M8DMAN]

Mike's excuse for the "recycled" level design's was just plain retarded.  He just blew off the question like it was nothing.

The bad environments in DA2 have to be my biggest complaint.

Modifié par M8DMAN, 14 avril 2011 - 09:40 .

[TobiTobsen]

Sareth Cousland wrote...

Laidlaw says the game is now open to a much wider audience. May be true, but the narrow audience bought more copies - at least in Germany, DA2 sales are experiencing a nosedive. In the end, it all comes down to revenue, and it appears that DA2 will perform a lot worse than DA:O, despite being based on a hugely successful and established IP.

Btw, this thread should be in the general discussion forum.

Maybe they fail in germany, but from the statements I saw DA2 sold even better and faster then DAO. At least thats what Boware claims.

Thanks to gamers like you, Dragon Age II is off to a great start – breaking the 1 million mark in less than two weeks and faster than Dragon Age: Origins. We appreciate your support.

So even with all the hate the game gets in forums and on sites like metascore, they make good money with it. No reason to change anything for DA3

Modifié par TobiTobsen, 14 avril 2011 - 09:38 .

[Wulfram]

You don't start dissing your product until you're trying to sell the sequel.

[Aldandil]

Wulfram wrote...

You don't start dissing your product until you're trying to sell the sequel.

My thought exactly .

I wouldn't say that the interview is proof of Bioware not listening. Considering that all the complaints above are part of Bioware's reaction to criticism of DA:O, it's probably the other way around. They aren't going to say bad stuff about a product they are selling though, and few companies in any business does. Look at actors and directors commenting on movies they've just released. They need about five years before they can admit a movie stinks. Now, I don't think DA2 stinks, quite the opposite, but if you're disappointed that Mike doesn't bash the game, I'd blame that on your own naivite.

[Everwarden]

TobiTobsen wrote...

Maybe they fail in germany, but from the statements I saw DA2 sold even better and faster then DAO. At least thats what Boware claims.

It sold more in the first week, due to a mass of pre-orders from fans of the first game. It nosedived from bad word of mouth after that. It broke 1 million, and might break 2 over the lifetime of the game. That's very, very short of the 4.5-5 million goal they set for themselves. 

Which is good. Not everyone was a sucker (like me) and bought it on release. 

[SphereofSilence]

Dracotamer wrote...

Denying waves of creeps was the wrong way to go is just silly. That is by far one of the most complained about things next to recycled resources and the lack of companion armor/customization. It is not a minority of the fan base that says rogues were dumbed down and no longer play the same role both in and out of combat that they did in DA2. No longer can we position ourselves pefecttly to disable that pesky mage or quickly strike down that archer before our warrior and party engage, no more pick pocketing our scouting ahead in dungeons to form a strategy to defeat our foes. Saying that we simply need to turn it on Hard or Insane is a slap in the face. Do you honestly think most of us don't play it this way? Waves of creeps still destroy the combat strategies and makes it more of a survival game when it comes to combat rather then a tactical situation.

Now don't get me wrong, waves can be useful in certain situations, but those are rare instances. You also have mobs all doing pretty much the same thing. In DA:O we actually had to think each fight and decide who to kill first based on their abilities, now it's simply kill everything in sight as they show up. Sure there are mages and assasins, but for the most part they can be singled out by one party member and quickly dispatched.

Agree.

I think lots of gamers play on Hard or Nightmare. I play on Nightmare myself. Combat is at its best at level 1-15 because each new skill learned makes a difference in the battlefield. However, the difficulty of the game doesn't come from variety or intelligence of enemies. It comes from huge numbers of enemies zerging your party from all sides, reinforcements popping out of thin air. I quickly became bored with the simplistic two wave pattern encounters, after having tediously fighting essentially the same few types of opponents (standard melee grunt, standard archer, standard assassin, standard lieutenant, standard mage, and the occasional bosses) for the millionth time.

So, perhaps it's a good decision on Mike and team's part to use this combat design due to having extremely short development time, perhaps this is the only way they could have given us this much content under the tight circumstance. But from a pure gameplay and experience of DA2 point of view, this is indeed a very big disappointment. I think I speak for lots of gamers out there, that we're sickened by this. I've said this many times and will say this again - here's hoping for much more variety and intelligence from enemies, much more interesting and tactical encounters. If you're given a short dev time again, insist for a longer one, because the quality of DA should not be compromised any further. DA deserves much better than this.

[Corto81]

TobiTobsen wrote...



Maybe they fail in germany, but from the statements I saw DA2 sold even better and faster then DAO. At least thats what Boware claims.

Thanks to gamers like you, Dragon Age II is off to a great start – breaking the 1 million mark in less than two weeks and faster than Dragon Age: Origins. We appreciate your support.

That's borderline insulting to me as a customer coming from Laidlaw.

It doesn't take variables into account.
It doesn't take into account that DA:O was one of the very few games that had immensely strong sales for a LONG time due to great critiques and word-of-mouth.
It doesn't take into account that DA II had a strong fan base BECAUSE of DA:O.

Bottom line, in the end, I don't think they'll sell nearly as many copies as DA:O did.
In fact, I don't think they reach 2 million - game is getting thrashed as a lazy, rushed product all over the place - while DA:O is STILL doing decent after all this time.

[Ksandor]

TobiTobsen wrote...

Sareth Cousland wrote...

Laidlaw says the game is now open to a much wider audience. May be true, but the narrow audience bought more copies - at least in Germany, DA2 sales are experiencing a nosedive. In the end, it all comes down to revenue, and it appears that DA2 will perform a lot worse than DA:O, despite being based on a hugely successful and established IP.

Btw, this thread should be in the general discussion forum.

Maybe they fail in germany, but from the statements I saw DA2 sold even better and faster then DAO. At least thats what Boware claims.

Thanks to gamers like you, Dragon Age II is off to a great start – breaking the 1 million mark in less than two weeks and faster than Dragon Age: Origins. We appreciate your support.

So even with all the hate the game gets in forums and on sites like metascore, they make good money with it. No reason to change anything for DA3

I think they sell better. But even if DA II would sell less than DAO, EA or Bioware would never admit it, at least not at this stage. EA is a company. They are only concerned about the sales. Quality, in depth game experience, sophisticated players, visual art (don't you see how the game art looks industrial, plain, blocky with repeating tiles and with no soul?), good choreographed cinematics... they are all means to an end > to earn money. If this game will sell more they won't bother to make a complex game like DAO anymore.

As for reviews and interwievs. Magazines or web sites or portals usually get interviews thru PR channels and they tend to be politically correct or they would not get news from EA anymore. I don't blame them. IGN and other sites are also companies and they naturally think profit first. 

Modifié par Ksandor, 14 avril 2011 - 10:06 .

[Miashi]

Statisticians can make numbers say anything they want. Even if sales did good, people will find ways to show that they're not doing as good as they should, and vice versa.

RPG players is a broad player segment by itself. Within it, there's the purist tabletop players, players that enjoy a little bit of RPG aspects while valuating more the entertainment value, story-driven people, etc. Some people belong to more than a group.

When you make a game like Baldur's Gate, you know that your audience will be concentrated more towards the tabletop purists, or at least hardcore RPGers. It's a rather small target in the market. For a big business like EA, a game like that is not very profitable.

Dragon Age was to be the spiritual successor of Baldur's Gate. DA:O tried to achieve this, but it didn't succeeded completely. Logically you'd think that being a spiritual successor, you also wish to maintain the same market segment.

This is where I am a bit confused with Dragon Age 2. Well, the 2 in Dragon Age 2 is what confuses me. It wants to be a sequel, yet it is not. When you brand a game with a number, you implicitly say: "this is the continuation of what was before"; well what was before is Dragon Age : Origins. Dragon Age 2 wants to appeal to a broader audience; as a matter of fact, it tries to reach new players at the detriment of the previous player-base. If done well, sometimes this sacrifice can be worth it. But it's a double-edged sword too. For some reason, I keep thinking of vanilla coke and crystal pepsi. Products that are great on their own, but were branded incorrectly and targeted to the wrong people.

What I want to say in the end is that albeit Bioware wanting to expand their player base by: making games that have oversimplistic mechanics, appeal to a younger audience, there will always be other companies out there that will pick up the market that companies like Bioware leaves behind. There are other great games out there that will be released this year and further. Let this be a lesson to all of us; if Dragon Age games want to appeal the public at large, then let the public have their game, and let's go spend our money elsewhere.

[Sylvianus]

It's political. Everyone does it. Mike simply sells its game, it's normal. Poor things, they are working, we do not review them. In interviews, we talk about good things.

But I think there were enough signs on this forum that Bioware is paying attention to feedback.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 14 avril 2011 - 11:21 .

[Perles75]

Sylvianus wrote...

It's political. Everyone does it. Mike simply sells its game, it's normal. Poor things, they are working, we do not review them. In interviews, we talk about good things.

But I think there were enough signs on this forum that Bioware is paying attention to feedback.

I agree. They cannot undo DA2 so they defend the choices they made, and they will consider the feedback from the players for DA3.

By the way, not that the community helps much: DA2 has been subject to all sorts of cricitism, 90% of which is pure desire of being polemic and has no real ground. Not to mention the hate campaigns that definitely not help anybody. So, to get the occasional interesting and reasonable criticisms, they have to filter out a lot of crap.

[Sabriana]

It wouldn't be realistic for anyone to expect the PR dept of bioware/ea to trash their product. Its understandable that they are trying to sell as many copies as possible. They're business people after all. I just wish they would do it in a way that was bit more classy.

Like, I don't know, don't trash your own game, you know, the game that piggy-backed DA 2 into a seemingly short lived high.

Or perhaps, don't act like all your concerned customers are bleeding idiots.

Just sayin.....

Editd for clarity.

Modifié par Sabriana, 14 avril 2011 - 12:31 .

[AlexXIV]

Well after the release marketing continues just like before. They still want to sell the game, so what do you expect? I honestly think no one is ignoring anything. They know what they did, right and wrong. And they probably know how people on this forum exaggerate, in the positive and negative direction. But don't expect them to go around telling everyone how DA2 isn't what they wished it to be. I mean seriously people, it is a business. Why would they make their own product look bad. Especially if it is still a 7/10 or 8/10 to the majority of people. Yes, we are used to and we expected better. But compared to all the crap games out there it is not so bad.

Modifié par AlexXIV, 14 avril 2011 - 12:21 .

[Plaintiff]

Right, because he's totally gonna badmouth a game he helped produce in a widespread publication. "Hey guys, don't buy my product, it's junk. I don't need to pay off my mortgage this month".

Contrary to popular belief, the customer is NOT always right, and there's no such thing as "right" when it comes to videogames anyway. In my opinion, DA2 did almost eveything better than Origins, with the exceptions of party member interaction, which I felt could've been expanded, and the dialogue wheel which was at times innaccurate and I felt didn't offer enough variety in responses. The issues you mention don't bug me in the least.

Besides, who's to say Laidlaw doesn't genuinely feel this way? He's just as entitled to his view as you are to yours. When people say being disagreed with is a 'slap in the face', I roll my eyes. Being unable to handle dissenting opinions is a sign of immaturity to me.

[Danjaru]

It's understandable that he isn't talking bad about the product so early after release. They still want to sell as many copies of the game as possible. Even though most people who read gameinformer probably also read reviews and know the lackluster game DA2 ended up being.

The earliest we're going to see the designers admitting to their shortcomings of DA2 will be after the announcement of DA3 where they're going to use it in a way close to "we know this and this wasn't as good we'd want it to be. But DA3 will be better!".

[Keladis]

It's not just Mike Laidlaw its everyone who has been interviewed from BioWare is down playing the number of people that disliked the game and defending their choices on the game. They are try to keep people buying the game.

Game Informer: Looking back at Dragon Age II, there was some fan disappointment with certain aspects of the game. Is there anything behind the scenes that you think contributed to that and are there any big changes in store for the next installment?

Muzyka: It’s been polarizing to see the feedback, frankly. There’s been a lot of people that have been really delighted about what we’ve provided in Dragon Age II. People rating it 90 to 100 and really being happy with all the features and the focus on action intensity and the voiced protagonist and the way the story unfolds with the framed narrative and a lot of the things that are quite innovative and different.

There are other people that were expecting more Dragon Age Origins and more of the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate. Some of them have expressed disappointment. It’s something we really take seriously. We’re taking that feedback to heart and we’re seeing what we can do to continue to surprise and delight our fans in the future.

We’ve actually attracted a lot of new people to the franchise. Dragon Age II is selling faster than Dragon Age Origins. It’s probably part because it’s drawing a lot of new fans in. And that’s exciting to us. But our core fans are really important to us. I can’t emphasize that enough. They helped get us to where we are today. They’re the core of what we do, and we want to make sure we’re making games that satisfy them.


I personally love how he comment about there is a lot of people rating it 90 to 100, and only some of "The Other People" that wanted more of a Dragon Age Origins game expressing disappointment because from what I have seen across the web is a lot more people that was disappointed in Dragon Age 2 then those that liked it.

No company is going to be honest and come out and say, "Yeah our game is sub par to what we normally make. We made some changes and they bombed and in the end we just did not have time to put our all into it, so there are reused maps." its just not going to happen.

First rule of a business is making money, so they are going to market it like its the greatest game of all time.

[Plaintiff]

Keladis wrote...
I personally love how he comment about there is a lot of people rating it 90 to 100, and only some of "The Other People" that wanted more of a Dragon Age Origins game expressing disappointment because from what I have seen across the web is a lot more people that was disappointed in Dragon Age 2 then those that liked it.

I wouldn't presume that the internet is an accurate representation of the Dragon Age fanbase.Or any group, for that matter. In my experience, most people who are satisfied with a product (any product, not just videogames) are much less likely to voice their opinion at all, because they feel no need to.

Meanwhile, dissatisfied customers are more likely to voice their opinion, and the ones that do are likely to do it in a highly exaggerated and obnoxious way. It's a phenomenon known as the "vocal minority". And then you factor in the anonymity of the internet, which amps up the douchebag factor to the nth degree.

[Beerfish]

The mobs were a minus, the recycled environs were a minus, more bugs than normal for BioWare. The rest of the game was terrific, since I buy BioWare games for the stuff other than weak parts I mentioned I still feel I got good value for the product. However it doesn't mean they can't improve. I think the reused envrions the mobs and bugs were due to short development time. When you make a lot of changes to combat and such and don't have enough time to balance encounters you end up having to just throw more creatures at the player to up the challenge.

[Nerevar-as]

Plaintiff wrote...
I wouldn't presume that the internet is an accurate representation of the Dragon Age fanbase.Or any group, for that matter. In my experience, most people who are satisfied with a product (any product, not just videogames) are much less likely to voice their opinion at all, because they feel no need to.

Meanwhile, dissatisfied customers are more likely to voice their opinion, and the ones that do are likely to do it in a highly exaggerated and obnoxious way. It's a phenomenon known as the "vocal minority". And then you factor in the anonymity of the internet, which amps up the douchebag factor to the nth degree.

On the other side, people tend to respond when something they like is attacked. There should be more defending posts for DA2. The situation here feels very different from ME2 for example.

[Danjaru]

Plaintiff wrote...

I wouldn't presume that the internet is an accurate representation of the Dragon Age fanbase.Or any group, for that matter. In my experience, most people who are satisfied with a product (any product, not just videogames) are much less likely to voice their opinion at all, because they feel no need to.

Meanwhile, dissatisfied customers are more likely to voice their opinion, and the ones that do are likely to do it in a highly exaggerated and obnoxious way. It's a phenomenon known as the "vocal minority". And then you factor in the anonymity of the internet, which amps up the douchebag factor to the nth degree.

Why would internet anonymity change wether you like a game or not?

You can dismiss it all as "only trolls don't like DA2" as much as you'd like. But fact remains that even most professional reviewers seem to have one thing in common "it's not as good as the original".

Go over to Metacritic and check out DA2's user reviews and then look at other popular games, you'll see a huge differense.

People were dissatisfied, a huge number of people (and if we're to believe the user reviews fully, the majority of people) didn't like the game, at least not as much as the original. And to dismiss them as being "wrong" is simply stupid.