9 réponses à ce sujet

[TRfore]

http://www.pcgamer.c...-it-was-busted/

I'm curious to know what the DA2 team found busted in DA:O.

I'm guessing:
Intelligent story
Good UI
Replayability
Mobs not exploding when hit
Swords are too small
Too many words to read on the screen

[Stanley Woo]

Davasar wrote...
“If I’m going to ****** you guys off, it’s going to be because I still firmly believe that RPGs do need to be more accessible to new players,” Laidlaw adds.

So that means making an RPG for people who don't like RPGs (FPS/action game crowd who do not like reading and have the attention span of a gnat) and alienating and purposefully pissing on your original fan base.

No, it means giving people who don't identify as RPG fans the credit they deserve for liking something different than what you like, and letting them know that some of the things they like about their favoured game genre also exist in RPGs. Yes, we decided to let some new people into your exclusive club.

Working out great, just look at how the sales went....

Oh...wait...

Now look at how and what we're communicating about how DA2 went and what we hope to improve on in the future. Perhaps you don't make mistakes and have to learn to improve for the future, but we certainly do. What we would like to do--and what we've been trying to encourage since DA2's release--is to get constructive feedback from our community, which contain some of our closest, most passionate, and most articulate fans. The key word here is "constructive." It's so easy to pile on the hate and pout and whinge and grump about what we did wrong, but those who are truly interested in the future of Dragon Age are also talking about stuff they liked and didn't like, stuff they missed from DAO and stuff they hope we never do again. Sure, they're blaming us for making mistakes, but then they're moving past that and helping us talk about the future.

Looks like broken promises, appeasement to people who don't like RPGs, lies and bait and switching didn't do so well for you EAware.

Name-calling, ranting, and flaming don't help anyone. If that's what you want to do, then fine, do it within the rules and you can keep doing it. But we're past that. We've got big ideas and we're hoping that improved communication between developers and our community will help us make better games and help you better understand some of what we do and why we do it--why we have to make the hard decisions, why we can't please everyone all the time, how this business works, what we expect from the fans and what they can expect from us.

I'll never believe anything you say again in regards to making a game the likes of DAO (which you've pointedly said you will not be doing EVER again).  Making crappy, short term profits grabbing games?  Sure...I can believe you'll go all out for that.

If you choose not to believe us, then there's not much more we can say. Hope you find our future products more to your liking, but you'll have to take an even bigger risk now that you've closed yourself off from us. We'll continue to talk to everyone else, if it's all the same to you.

As I have said before:

We will at least respect you if you come out and say flat out:  "We hate you people who liked DOA.  We aren't making games for you anymore.  Get lost."

That's not what we've said, that's not what we're saying, and that's not what we'll ever say. But you're not looking for a response, so this is for everyone else who haven't closed their minds completely and still want to feel hope for what's coming down the pipe in future Dragon Age projects.

We. Are. Listening.

[Stanley Woo]

Zeevico wrote...

I'm just going to throw this out there.

Call of Duty is an RPG.

- Weapons deal set amounts of damage. Sure, it varies where you hit, but this just adds a new dimension to the role playing experience.

- Characters have set amounts of health.

- There are maps.

- You play as a fictional character.

- You kill fake people.

- The environment is fictional and grounded in a story.

This is probably what the developers are thinking when they say "we want to market this to CoD players"--look at all those glamourous similarities. Of course the differences are also a mile wide--but if only we bridge them we get a glorious action RPG game and a "welcoming" experience.

Booya. 

[Stanley Woo]

I Pop Tarts wrote...

Mr Woo, your tone comes across as quite confrontational. While there is a bunch of sarcasm in the posts you quoted, they also contain a lot of thruth. Responding to that in a confrontational manner just furthers the impression that Bioware is merely throwing around PR speak when they say they're listening and will continue to go down the same path and make the same mistakes they did with DA2 with a "Deal with it" sort of attitude.

Confrontational? I can understand emphatic, impassioned and blunt, but I don't think I was confrontational. The user I quoted had already decided to close himself off to further communication so there really isn't anything to confront him on.

"Truth" is subjective. You the community/fans/consumer have one, and we the company/business/developer have another. It's as simple as the consumers accusing us of making games solely for the money, making it sound like something bad or abnormal, when we as a company are out to do just that by making the best games we can, business as usual.

But you've got to decide how you want to be talked to, I Pop Tarts. Do you want us to "throw around PR speak when we say we're listening" or do you want us to talk to you openly and honestly, like people do with each other? If the former, then yes, absolutely, you can call me out as sounding confrontational and suggest/demand/insist that I speak with more decorum and professionalism. If, on the other hand, you wish the latter, then I'm going to speak the way I would speak to your face, and sometimes, I'm going to say something that doesn't agree with you. And that's cool, since we're having a discussion, not necessarily a debate or a subcommittee hearing or anything like that.

I can promise to try and not insult you or call you names, but I can't promise to refrain from speaking honestly and openly with a community I love.

[Stanley Woo]

Filament wrote...

I'm pretty sure Stanley Woo misinterpreted that post by Zeevico and thought it was honestly supportive of BioWare as opposed to sarcastic.

Indeed. I thought someone had finally started to get what that whole misunderstood and oft-cited "trying to steal CoD's audience" concept was about.

[John Epler]

If we start down the 'people who enjoy X game are idiots' path, I will start banning.

It's one of the most ridiculous myths that some people on these forums seem to perpetuate, and I can't help but feel that it survives based on the idea that it puts those who -don't- like those sorts of games on some sort of pedestal.

Either way, we're not doing it.

[Stanley Woo]

Night Prowler76 wrote...

The thing is Stanley, when you guys made all the changes to DA2, there was alot of of people on this forum giving you opinions on how watered down they would make the game, did you guys listen then? No, in fact we got brushed aside so you guys could make the game more appealing to a wider audience (which judging by sales, this didnt happen).

You're right... this time. But the community isn't always right, and there are so many people making so many contradictory "predictions," suggestions and demands that, no matter how the game turns out, there will be a portion of the audience who say "see? I told you so." A thousand people making a thousand predictions isn't "making good predictions," it's "guessing." And that's fine. Pre-release, it's all you can do is guess about how the game is going to turn out.

You might be surprised that, no matter how awesome we are, we're ultimately just guessing too. We certainly have opinions on wht might work in the game, what should work in the game, and believe in what will work in the game. All that doesn't mean a whit to players once it's released. Look at what Mike's said about the reused maps. He made a choice that he thought was best at the time. And the rest of the team, well, they believe in Mike and they believe in what the game was going to be. The backlash from the community doesn't necessarily mean that "they told us so," it means that, this time, this particular guess didn't work out.

The community often feels that they are "brushed aside" when they make a whole bunch of suggestions and comments that go unheeded. This is nothing new, though, folks. but the reason is quite simple: no matter how great you think your ideas are, no matter how good they might be in fact, no matter how many suggestions you make, BioWare is the one that has to do all the work and we have loads of ideas too. I got slagged for saying this before but, ultimately, game development is not a democracy with the community. Game development is a collaboration between dozens of developers across multiple disciplines, who have to adhere to a specific vision and make the best game they can with the zots they have. Fewer people, fewer zots. More time, more zots. And so on.

No one sets out to make a bad game. But there's very little you can do about the community and fan reaction once people start playing the game. No matter how much marketing you do, the player is going to feel as the player feels about the game. no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise, if they don't like something, they don't like something. And they're going to let you know about it.

So if you you did not bother listening to the forums then, why would anyone believe you would listen for the next installment? Im asking you to answer honestly, because nothing I have seen would lead me to think that DA3 will be much different than DA2 other than less re use of environments and better enemy spawning.

We listened to the community. We took their feedback into consideration when developing the game. We not (and can not) listen to everything that everyone in every community says. We did not take all the feedback from every individual into account when developing each system and feature in the game. We are professional game developers, we have some ideas too about the way we want the game to work and where we want the franchise to go in the future. Some of that has to make it in too, after all.

Not that I'm necessarily "blaming" anyone. Some folks liked the way we went with DA2, some didn't. the same will happen with any future projects we do--some will like them, some will not. And that's fine. only by engaging with our audience and soliciting feedback can we get an idea of what we can work on for the next project and the next project and so on.

I wish you good luck with DA, but I have to agree with the previous poster, Origins made this series, not DA2, if you continue to make the games like DA2, there will be no series, going from 4.5 millon in sales to 2 million in sales would be the first indicator that you made a huge mistake, I know if I was selling a product that sold twice as much as another, I would continue to sell that product, not change to the other one and tell your customers they are insignificant and afraid of change.

Hopefully, you'll find yourself interested in checking out some of our future products, and then you can decide for yourself whether we've made the right choices.

thank you for your comments.

[Stanley Woo]

fchopin wrote...
Sorry but i can not agree with this.
 
Saying that you listened to all feedback means nothing if you already had fixed ideas on how you was going to make the game.
 
It's easy to say that you are listening and taking notes but how can we believe that when the results have no baring on the final product.

I always say that, at some point, you either believe what we're telling you or believe that we're lying. If you believe what we tell you, then great, we can continue the discussion and get into the details. If you don't believe us, then there's not a whole lot more to talk about, is there? We'll just have to prove ourselves with the next project, and then you can decide for yourself whether we "listened."

We're not here to promise or ensure that you'll never be disappointed. That's not our job. We're here to make the best game we think we can, and leave it to you to decide whether we've succeeded. Along the way, we'd like to get a bunch of feedback so we can determine where we can improve. We are listening and taking notes, but we're not promising that all (or any) of your specific feedback will make it into the next project. We do have to juggle all of your feedback with our own, after all.

[Stanley Woo]

Yrkoon wrote...

You're acting as if every game you've ever made has received the same level  of polarized reception that DA2 has received,     That this is somehow  "nothing new".  Dishonest.

Were you around during NWN? How about KotOR?

No, a polarized reception is nothing new. We've been getting a "polarized reception" on our games since NWN was revealed to be using the new D&D Third Edition rule set and not the familiar 2nd Edition AD&D rules. Or KotOR was revealed to be a more action RPG than anything we ever did. Or Jade Empire was being set in an Asian-inspired world.

Even your Boss disagrees with you.  Even HE has  publically noted the  extreme uniqueness of what went down with the community since DA2 came out.

"Extreme uniqueness?" I have my doubts that Mike would use that type of redundancy, but even if he did, what of it? Yes, people were pushed to the extremes of opinion, but no, that's nothing new for internet fandom. Yes, no other BioWare game has sparked this much controversy, but no, BioWare has weathered post-release controversy before.

We will get through this as we have our other periods of controversy, by talking more, listening more and letting you guys talk more.

[John Epler]

And I think we've hit the limits of this thread's useful discussion.

Lots of circular arguments and 'your opinion is wrong' by both sides.