617 réponses à ce sujet

[88mphSlayer]

G00N3R7883 wrote...

I strongly urge someone from Bioware to clarify what exactly is meant by this recent announcement. Which specific bits of ME1&2 did you think were "meaningless" and will be removed? Because I cannot think of anything.

Mass Effect is my favourite game series so I'm really hoping that ME3 is the epic conclusion that the trilogy deserves. But let's be honest, when compared to Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights, or even Dragon Age, Mass Effect is *already* a streamlined RPG. What is there left to cut out?

I hope ME3 will not become a purely combat focused Gears of Mass Effect game. I hope Bioware remember (as they did once know) that some people that play your games do not think of combat as the most important thing.

Ultimately I'm going to trust (or stick my head in the sand and hope) that ME3 will be good but at the very least, this has to be the most ill advised public relations comment ever, especially after all the critisism of DA2.

i'm going to guess they're going to expand on the system already in place in ME2 rather than create a more ME1-based loot/stat system

[Someone With Mass]

So, the second there are bullets involved in a game like Mass Effect, it's a mediocre shooter, but the swords, axes, bows and arrows almost every RPG in existence since the 1980's uses is okay? That's just a bafflingly retarded argument if you ask me.

[Drasill]

Chris Priestly wrote...

So directly saying that were enriching the role-playing mechanics and making stats meaningful in combat somehow also means we're making them worse?

I do not understand people sometimes.

Could you clarify how removing role-playing mechanics is enriching them?

Modifié par Drasill, 06 mai 2011 - 01:06 .

[ironman001]

After DA 2 many of as lost hope that Bioware can do some dissent RPG now we sure. Dont get me wrong i will buy ME 3 only to end Shepard trilogy not to play RPG which ME 3 most likely will be not. Bioware if ME 3 will be shooter this will be last of games that i buy and only to end Shepard history.
PS. Thanks God there are some great RPG coming like Witcher 2 and ES V: Skyrim.

[Terror_K]

Drasill wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

So directly saying that were enriching the role-playing mechanics and making stats meaningful in combat somehow also means we're making them worse?

I do not understand people sometimes.

Could you clarify how removing role-playing mechanics is enriching them?

Ah, see... this is where they get ya! Because they're not technically removing role-playing mechanics, they're repurposing them for a more narrow focus: namely combat.

It's a bit like before we had maybe four oranges, two bananas and four apples. What we're getting now is that the oranges and bananas are being taken away, but we're getting another six apples in their place. So as far as the devs are concerned, we shouldn't be complaining because we've still got ten pieces of fruit at the end of the day... even if they are all the same now.

[JKoopman]

So I guess I can kiss my dreams of a return to Persuasion stats and non-combat skills like Electronics and Decryption goodbye. Since, ya know, anything not directly pertaining to combat is "meaningless"...

*sigh*

I'm very close to not even giving a sh*t about ME3 anymore. My excitement spiked with the Game Informer article which seemed to indicate that BioWare was actually listening and returning Mass Effect to it's RPG roots, but everything released since then has been like a wet blanket on my enthusiasm. It's sounding more and more like ME3 is going to be even more shooter and even less RPG than ME2 was.

Modifié par JKoopman, 06 mai 2011 - 01:20 .

[Xsause]

JKoopman wrote...

So I guess I can kiss my dreams of a return to Persuasion stats goodbye. Since, ya know, anything not directly pertaining to combat is "meaningless"...

I think they were only talking about passive combat skills that didn't actually do anything in combat.. They removed these meaningless combat skills, so it actually means something when you level up.

Modifié par Xsause, 06 mai 2011 - 01:23 .

[Nathan Redgrave]

Terror_K wrote...

Deepening the shooter elements is one thing. Deepening them to the point where they drown out the (preferred) RPG aspects

...Speak for yourself, Serrah. I find slow-scrolling lists of incredibly redundant items incredibly annoying, myself. Which was the extent of ME1's sainted RPG-liness, apart from an arguably superior persuasion system. 

almost entirely and seem to near-on become the sole focus is another. And it's not so much the "shooter elements" increasing that's the issue as it is the RPG ones being made accessible and simple to the point of pointlessness. RPG elements thrive on their complexity and the fact that they're deep and involving. Make them too shallow, automated and simple and the very point of them is lost. ME2 was quite frankly so simple it was down right insulting to play, and I don't want to see ME3 the same way: I don't want to see everything labeled with big lettering, the sharp corners covered in padding in case the game mechanics hurt me and the game constantly holding my hand throughout.

I thought that was the point of having more complex combat skill trees and more in-depth shooter mechanics, a more interesting upgrades system, and whatever else they've got goin' on for ME3.

[Someone With Mass]

Could also mean that they're boosting the bonuses.

And I laugh at everyone that says "Waaah, Mass Effect is not an RPG anymore because I don't have these minor powers, I'm not going to buy it. T_T"

Good lord, that is sad. So sad.

Modifié par Someone With Mass, 06 mai 2011 - 01:32 .

[didymos1120]

JKoopman wrote...

So I guess I can kiss my dreams of a return to Persuasion stats and non-combat skills like Electronics and Decryption goodbye. Since, ya know, anything not directly pertaining to combat is "meaningless"...

In case you forgot, Electronics and Decryption were both primarily combat skills (yes even the passive stuff: shield boosts and vehicle repair were aimed at keeping you in or getting you back into combat).   It's just that every few points, you gained the ability to open more loot containers, and even that was secondary to the very-much-combat-oriented boosts to Sabotage/Overload. 

[Nathan Redgrave]

Terror_K wrote...

Not necessarily. There are plenty of people in the armed forces who have roles that aren't directly combat-oriented,

You know what I mean.  You don't have a role like Commander Shepard, who is constantly leading small strike teams into high-risk combat situations, and think: "I want to be a mailman. With diplomacy skillz." It just doesn't happen. Mailman Shep wouldn't have made it past the first squad of geth. So Shepard is combat-enabled, in a number of different but essentially "Shepard" ways.

[lazuli]

Terror_K wrote...
Ah, see... this is where they get ya! Because they're not technically removing role-playing mechanics, they're repurposing them for a more narrow focus: namely combat.

It's a bit like before we had maybe four oranges, two bananas and four apples. What we're getting now is that the oranges and bananas are being taken away, but we're getting another six apples in their place. So as far as the devs are concerned, we shouldn't be complaining because we've still got ten pieces of fruit at the end of the day... even if they are all the same now.

Your fruit analogy would be more accurate:

• if the gamers in question were starving and
• the oranges and bananas, the fruit representing out-of-combat skills, were made of wax.

There were only two non-combat skills in ME1 (Charm and Intimidate), and those even had the side bonus of making dealing with merchants easier.  And what do merchants sell?  Why, merchants sell combat equipment of course.

[Bail_Darilar]

Terror_K wrote...

A counter question: why does it have to be the other way around? Because that's how it went with ME2: almost all the RPG mechanics were sacrificed in the name of "improving" the shooter ones. The ME2 team were suddenly so concerned about making it "compete with the best shooters out there" that they seemed to just not give a rat's ass about the RPG elements beyond the narrative. Beyond that, ME2 simply overcompensated for ME1's issues, making everything so simple that it wasn't broken due to the simple fact that it didn't have enough moving parts or complexity to break any more. Instead of being a broken game it became a dull, shallow one in the RPG department, and was so simple, lacking and automated that it was just unsatisfactory as an RPG.

The thing is, in order to improve the combat and the TPS elements the RPG ones didn't need to go. Had the basic combat been altered from stat-based to skill based, the AI tweaked and the cover and basic shooter mechanics been refined then that's all it would have needed. Skills didn't need to be cut in half and reduced to offensive combat powers only now, the inventory system didn't need to be gutted, modding didn't need to go the way of the dodo, we didn't need to automate the entire upgrade system to the point of linear shallowness, etc. Simply put, the RPG stuff doesn't need to take a massive hit in order for the TPS elements to be strengthened. But the team chooses to do it because the RPG elements are "scary and boring" to most modern gamers who just want to get to the action.

I agree that the TPS elements need to be strengthened in ME3 if they really want the combat to be more than just basic TPS genericism. They need to look at the games that do TPS combat better like Gears of War and learn from them what works and what doesn't. But that doesn't mean the whole focus of the game has to be "Combat! Combat! Combat!" and that what tiny strands of RPG are left need to be pushed into the narrow focus of just being about combat and the TPS elements too. The combat and shooter stuff should serve the story and RPG elements, not the other way around.

What exactly are you referring to
when you mean RPG elements this confuses me when people talk about it.
You say that the combat needed to be altered to be more skill based
rather than stat based and that's what happened so instead of having the
bullets fire and hit somewhere in the reticule they actually hit where
you point. The AI and basic shooting mechanics were also refined.

I think where people are having problems with are the skill system and the allocation of points. Yes they stripped it down but if we look at what theyve done
it isn't the worst change ever. All the gun based stat trees were no
longer needed purely because it made no sense. For example for some of
the guns they increased the accuracy but with the new skill-based system
that was no longer necessary. Even then guns causing more damage
because your stats in that skill tree don't make any sense at all since
your profficiency to cause damage with a gun should be based on how
powerful your gun is. Remember all these stats and elements in an RPG
game are added so that they make sense in kind of a 'real world scenario.

The
only skills that have been
removed in my opinion and only should have had their mechanics changed
slightly were the decription and electronics
skills so that we weren't using them so much during missions to open
containers but were giving us the options to say pursue a mission in a
different manner like opening a door which would give us a different
room to snipe for example. which were only there basically to open and
close containers or
open doors. Anyway theres going to be alot more options in the skill trees in ME3 now so what is the reason why people are complaining?

Where
I do agree with you is the customisability of your weapons and armor
which is what I missed. But the looting system definately need to be
changed because there was just no reason to loot so many items in so
many missions because that was incredily tedious and the ME1 inventory
system wasn't exactly perfect. But theyve already said in ME3 we're
going to have much more customisability in our weapons and armor so
again why people are complaining I don't know.

On the article like I mentioned before they are just removing the behind-the-scenes
things that have little to no impact on the combat and gameplay and
enrichening those that do. We don't know exactly what it is that they're
removing but it's probably stuff that we didn't have control over in
ME2 anyway

[SNascimento]

This is how it must be done. One of the major problems in ME is how much useless stuff there was. 98% of itens were had no use and you would just sell them or convert in ommi-gel, (and by 1/3 of the game you would already have more money them you can spend). Even leveling up and spend points were most of the time a wate of time... you had to spent 10 points to start to feel something different. Why not make 10 points 1? That what I understanding from cutting out meaningless elements. Why instead of giving 30 almost equal weapons that you will throw out 29 of them give us 5 very different weapons that all have uses? Thats another thing that happend in ME2.
.
But I really don't know. I think some people really like those broken stuff, those things that need patience to work out because they don't work properly to begin with. And then call this mess 'depth', and think they are better than other players because they waste time with meaningless stuff.
.
To finish, I also think that people should realize the difference between depth (whick btw is a term very wrongly used) and accessibility. ME1 and ME2 have pretty much the same depth, but ME2 was much more accessible. Thanks for a better leveling system, a better way to manage itens and upgrades, better controls and a much more refined game machanics. Another good exemple is a game live Civ IV. It's a game with a very good depth, but at the same time is very accessible to anyone.

[didymos1120]

lazuli wrote...
There were only two non-combat skills in ME1 (Charm and Intimidate), and those even had the side bonus of making dealing with merchants easier.  And what do merchants sell?  Why, merchants sell combat equipment of course.

Plus, the morality meters both gave a variety of purely combat-oriented boosts at the 25%, 50%, and 75% marks. Hell, the achievements gave you a bunch of combat boosts.  And the Hacking/Bypass stuff that people like to cite as "non-combat skills" were largely there to allow you to open more containers....which contained guns, armor, and armor and weapon mods. Oh, and grenades, credits (only good for buying more combat-oriented stuff), medi-gel (for healing...in combat) and omni-gel (mostly useful for...opening loot containers even more easily! Also, repairing the Mako from damage received....during combat!) Secondarily, they let you hack terminals which got you new assignments which in turn led to more combat which in turn led to more loot and XP which ultimately were about...COMBAT.

Modifié par didymos1120, 06 mai 2011 - 01:51 .

[Icinix]

Nathan Redgrave wrote...

Icinix wrote...

I for one think it sounds like the shooter side of things is going to be vastly improved AND the RPG side of things is going to be deeper than ME2...I don't see how either of these things are a negative. That said though, thats going by my own interpretation because I've been in a semi good mood

To sum it up, people are on such a genre high that they see anything remotely non-RPG as beneath them. And if you disagree you're a mindless mainstream mook, period.

Not many would word it that way, but that's the undercurrent I'm picking up: that there can be no compromise, there can be no half-measures... there can be no peace.

People are so stuck-up about RPG elements that they can't seem to understand that pointing your gun in the general direction of an enemy and letting backstage dicerolls do the work is in absolutely no way superior to what ME2 does. Ergo, going all doomsayer at every hint or mention of deepening the shooter elements is just plain stupid.

That is all. (And God above was it satisfying to let that out.)

Sounds like a bingo to me!

Its like people have this hard time believing that the two genres CAN be merged...when games like System Shock, Deus Ex ...to a lesser extent BioShock...prove the two genres can work very well together.  I understand the apprehension about the shooter (I used to hate shooters) but since ME always had that shooter side...I don't get the issue with the desire to improve THAT part of the game.

If they came out and said we're killing off the choice, role playing etc...sure by all means, burn the internet down. But for improving something ALREADY in the series...just seems silly to me.

[Severyx]

This thread is the perfect example of people's assumption of 'My way is the right way'. All this talk about 'defining genres' and whatnot is subjective to say the least. Say you wrote a story that had action, adventure, intrigue and suspense with some romance thrown in to make it as fulfilling a story as possible and listed all those attributes on the back of the book. Wouldn't you think it stupid to hear people say 'This isn't a romance story because there's way more action!' or 'This story fails at action because there's suspense, which is slow and not action-y!', especially before they've even read it?

Look at Borderlands. Why is it more acceptable to label that an RPG/Shooter than Mass Effect (argue with me on this fact if you want, but it's true)? Because they have a random item generation system that spawns retarded numbers of different items? Where are the stats? Where are the precious S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (Hurr Fallout, I love that acronym) attributes? What's that you say? Reload time, accuracy, fire rate and mag size? Those sound like shooter elements to me! Oh, wait. It was a shooter AND an RPG? Don't you play the entire game AS a character from the very start?

Seriously, if Shepard had to rely on some background rolls to determine if his Int was high enough to know how to use a type of weapon, that'd be a poor set up for a character that already has background in military training. I much better like the idea that he doesn't use certain weapons because the class I chose specialized in different ones.

Also, watching Shepard tumble over an object he was suppose to hurdle because of a low stat is not my idea of an awesome, galaxy saving hero. If you want a clumsy Shepard, I'm sorry, but YOU (the player) might actually have to put forth an effort into screwing his life up. I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather determine that myself than some stat I didn't have enough leftover points to build in. That way I'm the one playing the role, not a character sheet.

Role playing games are edging away from straight up stat based systems because players would rather control the action themselves. The only people who need whine about what is going on with Mass Effect are the die hard old school fans. Personally, I think it's sad to see so many people can 'RPG' into stat-based systems. It's Shepard's story, as experienced by Shepard. This has always been the case, and will be for ME3. And as Bioware employees have already pointed out, how is enhancing something removing it? Silly people.

[Nathan Redgrave]

SNascimento wrote...

Thanks for a better leveling system,

 
Eh, not so much.

a better way to manage itens and upgrades,

 
Only insofar as ME1's were so unwieldy, but ME2 way, way overdid this particular rash of streamlining, in my humblest opinion.

[Terror_K]

Bail_Darilar wrote...

What exactly are you referring to when you mean RPG elements this confuses me when people talk about it. You say that the combat needed to be altered to be more skill based rather than stat based and that's what happened so instead of having the bullets fire and hit somewhere in the reticule they actually hit where you point. The AI and basic shooting mechanics were also refined.

That is exactly my point; those are the factors that strengthened the shooter mechanics and made them better from a combat standpoint. Skills getting cut in half and reduced to offensive combat powers only, the inventory system being gutted, modding going the way of the dodo, automating the entire upgrade system to the point of linear shallowness, etc. had nothing to do with improving combat at all, so why did they have to suffer in the name of improving combat?

I think where people are having problems with are the skill system and the allocation of points. Yes they stripped it down but if we look at what theyve done it isn't the worst change ever. All the gun based stat trees were no longer needed purely because it made no sense.

They only didn't make sense due to the story. Had Shepard been a private then they would have, but he/she is N7 so they don't. That's a moot point for me anyway since the change from stat-based to skill-based shooting is one of the few changes I actually approved of.

For example for some of the guns they increased the accuracy but with the new skill-based system that was no longer necessary. Even then guns causing more damage because your stats in that skill tree don't make any sense at all since your profficiency to cause damage with a gun should be based on how powerful your gun is. Remember all these stats and elements in an RPG game are added so that they make sense in kind of a 'real world scenario.

Yeah, but the weapons themselves don't even have (visible) stats any more. They're no more proper RPG items than the guns you collect in Doom or Quake are.

Anyway theres going to be alot more options in the skill trees in ME3 now so what is the reason why people are complaining?

Depends. Are the talents actually going to branch and be different and diverse, or is it just going to be more of this "more damage vs. more targets" and "more defense vs. more offense" stuff?

On the article like I mentioned before they are just removing the behind-the-scenes things that have little to no impact on the combat and gameplay and enrichening those that do. We don't know exactly what it is that they're removing but it's probably stuff that we didn't have control over in ME2 anyway

ME2's problem was that there was already too much relegated to merely "behind the scenes" and we lost too much control of things we should have had more control over. If this is what's going. they shouldn't be removing these things in ME3, they should be putting them back in the hands of the player. When I've constantly said that many of ME2's mechanics were so shallow and/or automated that they were completely pointless and may as well not be there at all, I didn't actually mean that the answer to that is to remove them entirely!

Modifié par Terror_K, 06 mai 2011 - 02:03 .

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

N7 Vanguard wrote...

that doesn't sound very rpg at all.

Hilarious.

So the game would sound more RPG with meaningless stats?  :P:P

No!  The story =makes= the role.  Bringing play time and story time closer together by removing the planning time is pure win.  That make ME3 more of an RPG.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Chris Priestly wrote...

So directly saying that were enriching the role-playing mechanics and making stats meaningful in combat somehow also means we're making them worse?

I do not understand people sometimes.

QFMFT.  It's not that you're making things better that bothers them.... It's that you're changing anything at all.  ME2 is damn near the ideal mechanic.  Much better than the old tick box button clicking festivals. 

[Bostur]

Chris Priestly wrote...

So directly saying that were enriching the role-playing mechanics and making stats meaningful in combat somehow also means we're making them worse?

I do not understand people sometimes.

Keep in mind that we interpret press releases with the assumption that 80% is meaningless or a direct lie. Because lets face it most marketing is.

We want to enrich the role-playing aspects of the game, while making sure that they're always meaningful in combat

Main word here is 'enrich' it means the same as 'awesome', 'cool', 'fabulous', 'amazing' - in this context that word means absolutely nothing because all marketing uses those words constantly. So it's natural to assume that sentence has nothing of value.


The other sentence that was mentioned:

We don't want to have any
meaningless behind-the-scenes stat games, where the output is very minor
in combat. Every single thing you do has a real impact in the battle.

I can see a few ways to interpret that:
- "We want to remove boring numbers so what is left reflects the shallow world model"
That wouldn't be popular among RPG fans, although personally I think its better than having stats that do nothing.

- "We want to make a deeper world model, so that we can have lots of stats that are meaningful".
That would really be awesome for the RPG fans, but considering the trends in gaming thats not a very likely development, it would be pretty cool though.

My own interpretation is that you might go for something in the middle of those two. Add some depth to the game world where possible, remove stats that are unneeded. It's just a guess, it could mean anything.



Somewhat unrelated I get worried seeing a sentence like

Every single thing you do has a real impact in the battle.

It seems too much like: "When you press a button, something awesome has to happen".

It's not possible to make everything have an impact unless its forced. And when it's forced disaster happens.


Just trying to explain why my Bull... meter starts going into the red when i see press releases.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Bostur wrote...

It's not possible to make everything have an impact unless its forced. And when it's forced disaster happens.

Which is of course why the action genre works so bloody well.

Incidentally, Mass Effect has always been a press-a-button-and-something-happens series, so what's this have to do with anything?

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Drasill wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

So directly saying that were enriching the role-playing mechanics and making stats meaningful in combat somehow also means we're making them worse?

I do not understand people sometimes.

Could you clarify how removing role-playing mechanics is enriching them?

Removing old mechanics enriches a game in the same way that taking out the garbage cleans up a room.

Stats that do not improve the game serve no purpose beyond slowing down the game play and increasing the amount of time it takes to play a game.  They actually slow the game down by forcing you to plan to play the game more than you're actually playing the game.

I'd rather have a 25 hour game where I make real choices than a 40 hour game where I make useless choices.

Granted, perfect world, I want a 80 hour sweeping epic... but I want that sweeping epic to use the 25 hour game mechnics... so I can get even more story and RPG squeezed in!

Modifié par RinpocheSchnozberry, 06 mai 2011 - 02:20 .

[AngryFrozenWater]

With the new ME3 marketing term for dumbing down ("enriching the role-playing aspects of the game") you can make any simplified game sound good. Even DA2. That must be a very rich game. Ghehe. I hope ME3 adds something new to the roleplaying experience instead of just removing stuff. If I want to play a shooter then I rather play a real one.