402 réponses à ce sujet

[bald man in a boat]

ME1 had better hub worlds?

That should be changed to hub WORLD. Noveria is an empty train station with 1 empty shop and a hanar "This one is useless." clerk.  Lorrik in yonder hotel bar doesn't make up for that. And Feros? :|
The Citadel is the only thing left.

Illium>Feros+Noveria. Oh, then there's still Tuchanka, Omega, The Citadel and technically the SB base is a hub.

Modifié par bald man in a boat, 10 mai 2011 - 05:41 .

[AlanC9]

But I guess we need to admit that the ME1 Citadel was bigger than the ME2 Citadel. Which I guess makes it better.

Whether that means that one big hub world is better than several small ones is a different question.

[bald man in a boat]

^ No arguments there. It was bigger. Still, the hubs had more "life" to them in ME2 and there are more of them. I don't think the size of the Presidium trumps anything. Bigger=/=better.

Edit: I do hope we get to go back to the ME1 places of the Citadel as well as the ME2 ones.

Modifié par bald man in a boat, 10 mai 2011 - 06:11 .

[Savber100]

bald man in a boat wrote...

^ No arguments there. I wanted to have the ME1 Citadel back but I understand why we weren't "allowed".

Still, the hubs had more "life" to them in ME2 and there are more of them.

Bingo.

I find it hilarious that people were whining how the hubs in ME "were soo much larger" than ME2.

Besides the Citadel, name a single planet that could compare with the hubs from ME2. Noveria? Is this before or after you leave the half-deserted port with the 4-5 security guards?

Feros? Besides the tiny colony and the survivors, who else was there? Perhaps the endboss plant monster?

Therum? Now THAT was one big hub! Especially after you rescue poor Liara and meet that one Krogan battlemaster and his 4-5 geths.

[Skyweir]

Phaedon wrote...

@Ahglock

In both of your first two paragraphs, I think that you are forgetting a key point.

In WRPGs, the protagonist and the player are essentially the same thing. The protagonist is the role that the player plays as well as creates constantly until the end of the game. If the player can't act as a smooth talker, I don't see how her/his role could. Every game has a learning could, which the player adapts too.

Think of it.
Why can't a commando like Shepard shoot anything with a pistol. Because s/he isn't experienced with it. I find that a bit hard to believe, but anyway... Instead of practising more with the pistol, and eventually getting more experience and skill with it, what does he do? He can shoot with any other weapon, and still gain the same XP that can be assigned to the pistol skill. How does that make sense? Instead, the player will practice with the gun and learn how to use it. Anyway, I should go. Have a good night, I enjoyed debating with you.

If the player and the character is the same thing, how are you roleplaying? If you are basicly playing yourself, you are not roleplaying. That kind of thing is a huge blunder in all roleplaying games I have ever played, at least.

Which is why you do need stats to determine the success of a characters actions. The player makes the descision, but the skills of the player is not the skills of the character. It is Shepards abilities that should determine the results of her actions, not the player's.

Shepard is aiming a gun and fireing, so her abilites to do this should determine success.
Shepard is trying to intimidate this smuggler, so her reputation and charisma should determine the result.
Shepard is using biotics. Should her results be based on the players abilites to lift people with her mind? Or her inherit biotic abilites, as described by her various powers and stats?

The less the stats of the character you are playing are effecting the outcome of your actions, the less you are acctually playing the role of someone other than yourself. If your character can only do what you can do, only thinks like you do and speaks like you do, then clearly it is you. And not a role you are taking on.

[theSteeeeeels]

Savber100 wrote...

bald man in a boat wrote...

^ No arguments there. I wanted to have the ME1 Citadel back but I understand why we weren't "allowed".

Still, the hubs had more "life" to them in ME2 and there are more of them.

Bingo.

I find it hilarious that people were whining how the hubs in ME "were soo much larger" than ME2.

Besides the Citadel, name a single planet that could compare with the hubs from ME2. Noveria? Is this before or after you leave the half-deserted port with the 4-5 security guards?

Feros? Besides the tiny colony and the survivors, who else was there? Perhaps the endboss plant monster?

Therum? Now THAT was one big hub! Especially after you rescue poor Liara and meet that one Krogan battlemaster and his 4-5 geths.

i liked noveria and feros and virmire, because theyre massive environments with different people, interactions, cutscenes, and combat

omega was 3 corridors, steps and a bar. illium was 2 bars and 2 shops. tiny places with rubbish interaction

[bald man in a boat]

I'm sorry but does your


Feros- 1 shop
Virmire- not a hub
Noveria- 1 shop

[Chaos Gate]

theSteeeeeels wrote...

i liked noveria and feros and virmire, because theyre massive environments with different people, interactions, cutscenes, and combat

omega was 3 corridors, steps and a bar. illium was 2 bars and 2 shops. tiny places with rubbish interaction

Agreed. I was about to post the same thing myself.

Whether it was in actual fact, or whether it was just a well designed illusion, Mass Effect felt so much bigger than Mass Effect 2.

[the_one_54321]

Comments from Christina Norman on stats are starting to remind me of comments from Mike Laidlaw on tactical cameras. And we all know how that one turned out.

[Gatt9]

Walker White wrote...

Gatt9 wrote...

The other difference is,  in those games,  when you make a choice,  it has an irrevocable definite impact.  You can't just go overwrite it later,  unlike ME2 where you can just disregard your choices and redo them later in more than a few instances.

There was a fascinating GDC talk in 2009 by some of the leads at Bethesda.  The core message of the talk was "players say they want choices to matter, but they are liars."  

They were comparing some of the differences between Obsidian and Morrowind; extensive player testing and community feedback told them that they did not want player actions to close off quest lines unless absolutely necessary.  They saw a game where you can complete everything in a single playthrough as a plus and not a minus.

Um,  you've gotta be *really* carefull with Bethseda.  Bethseda has a bad habit of seeing only what they want to see,  and banning what they don't want to see.  They go way out of their way to get rid of anyone that dissents with their personal opinion of what games should be.

They banned the Morrowind fans who argued against Oblivion

They banned the people who criticised Oblivion,  and auto-censor their websites

They banned the people who criticised the Star Trek game,  banned the fan-site community leaders who criticised it,  and went back on their information agreement and tried to starve the site out of relevance.

They banned the community leaders for Fallout fansites for little reason,  and it appears that during their last E3 push,  seem to have banned all of the remaining Fallout fans for no reason.  I was banned for "Posting spam,  because your posts sound too similiar",  despite the fact that I only posted on a few specific topics,  and the positive people who were making similiar defenses weren't banned.  Another user was banned because his posts contained rhetorical questions.  Alot of the names who were regular posters disappeared overnight. 

Bethseda isn't a very honest studio.  I'm pretty confident their "Data" was pretty selectively obtained,  especially since they've such a habit of getting rid of people who dissent.

Do people realize the limits of what programmers and games can make. Sure they can give you free choice, a la Fallout, and you can kill anyone you want, but in the end sometimes your left with a game that you cant finish cause you killed everyone.

I've a degree in computers,  I'm aware.

Thing is though,  this isn't a programming limitation.  All you need are a series of flags,  there's plenty of memory today,  and it's not adding characters just removing them where appropriate.

The problem is,  it requires more voice acting.  It requires multiple different lines of dialogue to cover the ranges,  and that gets expensive quickly.

So really,  what the problem is,  it's another facet where voice-acting limits innvoation and design.  Because voice-acting is expensive,  they don't manage multiple paths and dialogue,  it's cheaper to just let the decisions be illusionary.

Eventually though we'll end up with decent voice-synthesis and this problem will solve itself,  though that's probably another 5-10 years away.

[Walker White]

Gatt9 wrote...

Thing is though,  this isn't a programming limitation.  All you need are a series of flags,  there's plenty of memory today,  and it's not adding characters just removing them where appropriate.

That's not accurate.  You can solve it with flags if it is an open world game with no story.  Integrating this level of free roam play with storytelling is very, very hard.  So hard that it is a current research topic with papers being published at major computer science conferences (Google "drama management in computer games").  This technology is in its infancy and very little of it has been made into commercial games.

[theelementslayer]

Gatt9 wrote...

elementslayer wrote...
Do people realize the limits of what programmers and games can make. Sure they can give you free choice, a la Fallout, and you can kill anyone you want, but in the end sometimes your left with a game that you cant finish cause you killed everyone.

I've a degree in computers,  I'm aware.

Thing is though,  this isn't a programming limitation.  All you need are a series of flags,  there's plenty of memory today,  and it's not adding characters just removing them where appropriate.

The problem is,  it requires more voice acting.  It requires multiple different lines of dialogue to cover the ranges,  and that gets expensive quickly.

So really,  what the problem is,  it's another facet where voice-acting limits innvoation and design.  Because voice-acting is expensive,  they don't manage multiple paths and dialogue,  it's cheaper to just let the decisions be illusionary.

Eventually though we'll end up with decent voice-synthesis and this problem will solve itself,  though that's probably another 5-10 years away.

I dont think you read the rest of my post. I said sure you can do it, its not a question of VA or anything like taht. Its a question of where does the writer of the story want to lead you. These games are one of the very few that allow imports into the next game. Therefore they will need to railroad you a bit. Because even with the railroading they are carrying over 1000+ variables. Thats a ton.

Lets say they let you have the freedom that FO does, well in FO I can kill everyone, hell I can do that right off the bat and get absolutley no where with the story. Mass Effect does not want to do this because they want to take you through a epic story with your own twist to it. Like how your shepard treats people, who will be by his side, his loyalties to other races ect.

[Gatt9]

Walker White wrote...

Gatt9 wrote...

Thing is though,  this isn't a programming limitation.  All you need are a series of flags,  there's plenty of memory today,  and it's not adding characters just removing them where appropriate.

That's not accurate.  You can solve it with flags if it is an open world game with no story.  Integrating this level of free roam play with storytelling is very, very hard.  So hard that it is a current research topic with papers being published at major computer science conferences (Google "drama management in computer games").  This technology is in its infancy and very little of it has been made into commercial games.

Inefficient but...

Boolean flag [] = new Boolean [100];

for (i = 0; i < 100; i++)
     flag[i] = false;

if(Council_saved)
   flag[0] = true;

if(!flag[0])
   Council_isAlien = false;

It's really not all that hard.  Story or no,  it's not complicated.  It's a series of flags,  generally true/false,  either the citadel was saved,  or it wasn't.  Either ashley is dead,  or she isn't.  Either you slept with Liara or you didn't.

Check your flag,  populate appropriately.  You're either showing an alien council, or a human one.  You're either having NPC's hate humans or you aren't.  Populate your flags,  switch your dialogue resource files.  Show one environment or the other.  It's not like any of these decisions have a middle ground,  you can't have kind of saved the council,  you can't have kind of slept with Liara,  or kind of killed Ashley.  There's no relationship between these decisions,  they're all isolated and have no effect on the others.  Maybe by ME3 you'd get slightly complex and have to do one of these...

if(!Council_saved && !base_destroyed)
        Council_isCerberus = true;

Honestly,  you can configure the whole game at creation and never have to check again for old decisions. 

I'd imagine that what you're talking about is a far more advanced issue,  one where there's grey areas and where decisions cascade.  That's a completely different animal as then you've got exponential branches and that's going to get ridiculously impossible fast.

But Bioware doesn't make games like that,  their decisions are all Black& White,  and they're all made in vacuum.  Sleeping with Liara has no interaction with the Council's composition,  nor does saving the Rachni have any reprocussions on either state,  unless you're going to get into mult-faceted personality simulation,  which is again something Bioware doesn't do.  Bioware's characters are perfectly fine with any action you take,  regardless of their supposed beliefs.

At most the interactions would be *maybe* two flag comparisons,  such as Rachni + Council = spectre standing.  That's still pretty trivial on a modern system.

[Terror_K]

bald man in a boat wrote...

I'm sorry but does your


Feros- 1 shop
Virmire- not a hub
Noveria- 1 shop

I have to say, this term "butthurt" that is becoming more commonplace here has to be one of the most juvenile and immature commonplace terms I've come across on the Internet. I'm going to add it to my list along with "haters" and "troll" as a flag that basically tells me anybody that uses these terms is just not worth discussing things with.

[bald man in a boat]

Yes Kenneth, you've proven what a beacon of maturity your are. Words such as "morons" "dumbed down""Casey hudson needs a punch in the face" really are a true testament to how everybody should be just like you.

Don't cry because the shoes fit.

[AlanC9]

Chaos Gate wrote...

theSteeeeeels wrote...

i liked noveria and feros and virmire, because theyre massive environments with different people, interactions, cutscenes, and combat

omega was 3 corridors, steps and a bar. illium was 2 bars and 2 shops. tiny places with rubbish interaction

Agreed. I was about to post the same thing myself.

Whether it was in actual fact, or whether it was just a well designed illusion, Mass Effect felt so much bigger than Mass Effect 2.

So this is just about bigness, and not whether the hubs are any good as hubs?

[Bozorgmehr]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Comments from Christina Norman on stats are starting to remind me of comments from Mike Laidlaw on tactical cameras. And we all know how that one turned out.

Can you explain what cameras have to do with stats?

The link is also inaccurate. Christina has only mentioned she wants stats to mean something. I dunno what your pont of view on this matter is, but maybe you like a couple dozen screens with all sorts of stats which have no effect on the things you (can) do in-game. Stuff that doesn't have a purpose is worhtless and a waste of time and space.

I read an exciting/interesting book before going to sleep. Maybe you like reading through the phonebook instead - lots of meaningless numbers and letters in there, might be fun

[Someone With Mass]

And I should care about the meaningless stats like the ones in ME1, while ME3 is pretty much making them obsolete, because...?

[Chaos Gate]

bald man in a boat wrote...

Yes Kenneth, you've proven what a beacon of maturity your are. Words such as "morons" "dumbed down""Casey hudson needs a punch in the face" really are a true testament to how everybody should be just like you.

Don't cry because the shoes fit.

Is this post a joke?

All of your posts read like they are written by a frustrated 12 year old troll, who wants to be like his hero Maddox, but never will.

Seriously, have you ever contributed anything of worth to this forum? Such is the bulk of your snide and immature remarks that I now automatically glide over your worthless posts.

And then you have the gall to have a go at Terror_k, who makes the best posts of this forum, always expressing his opinions diplomatically and backed up with evidence.

If anything, the "butthurt" term applies to you and your impotent rantings. Pot has well and truly met kettle.

[Chaos Gate]

AlanC9 wrote...

Chaos Gate wrote...

theSteeeeeels wrote...

i liked noveria and feros and virmire, because theyre massive environments with different people, interactions, cutscenes, and combat

omega was 3 corridors, steps and a bar. illium was 2 bars and 2 shops. tiny places with rubbish interaction

Agreed. I was about to post the same thing myself.

Whether it was in actual fact, or whether it was just a well designed illusion, Mass Effect felt so much bigger than Mass Effect 2.

So this is just about bigness, and not whether the hubs are any good as hubs?

Sorry, I guess I went abit off topic.

Modifié par Chaos Gate, 11 mai 2011 - 11:38 .

[bald man in a boat]

Chaos Gate wrote...
Is this post a joke?

No. 

All of your posts read like they are written by a frustrated 12 year old troll, who wants to be like his hero Maddox, but never will.

 

I'm hardly frustrated. Perhaps you should relax and things over. Again. From the top.

Seriously, have you ever contributed anything of worth to this forum? Such is the bulk of your snide and immature remarks that I now automatically glide over your worthless posts.

Again, you should read through. Unless people who don't agree with that fact ME1 was teh bestest evar have worthless posts, I've contributed. 

And then you have the gall to have a go at Terror_k, who makes the best posts of this forum, always expressing his opinions diplomatically and backed up with evidence.

I'm sorry but this part was so funny i actually laughed for a good minute. I appreciate a good joke though; there isn't enough laughter in the world.

If anything the term "butthurt" applies to you and your impotent rantings.

Well if anybody would know about butthurt and impotence it'd be you wouldn't it?

Modifié par bald man in a boat, 11 mai 2011 - 01:26 .

[bald man in a boat]

AlanC9 wrote...
So this is just about bigness, and not whether the hubs are any good as hubs?

Apparently bigger (or more accurately) bigger looking is better for some. Noveria really felt like a wasted opportunity. In terms of the missions it was fine and arguably one of the better ones in ME1, but Port Hanshan was pretty dull itself. Empty is a good word for it.

Actually on topic:

I'm wondering/hoping if the RPG elements that are in question will be focused on class specialization. ie- a possible return to the weapon/power stats of ME1. Instead of pouring points into a stat to actually be able to hit something (worst idea ever really) the player can advance how they use their weapons.

For instance if a player really likes sitting back with a smg and strip shields/barriers while hoping for a headshot, they can evolve their weapon skill for accuracy to reflect that as opposed to a player who wants increase the sheer rate of fire because they enjoy rushing in for cqc.

[theSteeeeeels]

AlanC9 wrote...

Chaos Gate wrote...

theSteeeeeels wrote...

i liked noveria and feros and virmire, because theyre massive environments with different people, interactions, cutscenes, and combat

omega was 3 corridors, steps and a bar. illium was 2 bars and 2 shops. tiny places with rubbish interaction

Agreed. I was about to post the same thing myself.

Whether it was in actual fact, or whether it was just a well designed illusion, Mass Effect felt so much bigger than Mass Effect 2.

So this is just about bigness, and not whether the hubs are any good as hubs?

no. the bigger the more things to do though.

illium i talked to liara. nothing else worth remembering

omega, i didnt mind talking to aria she was cool, going on the garrus mission was good (thats part of omega isnt it?). nothing else worth remebering

[Dave666]

theSteeeeeels wrote...
omega, i didnt mind talking to aria she was cool, going on the garrus mission was good (thats part of omega isnt it?). nothing else worth remebering

Off topic, but see what happens when you add load screens and just teleport Shepard?

[bald man in a boat]

Feros: 1 mission and 5 assignments. 1 shop.

Illium: 5 missions and 9 assignments, Rachni chick. 3 shops and 1 bar.

Noveria: 1 mission and 2 assignments. 1 shop.

Omega: 5 missions and 6 assignments. 3 shops and 1 bar (upper/lower Afterlife could count as 2)

Hmmm. Doesn't look like there was more things to do on those "bigger" hubs.