110 réponses à ce sujet

[Phaedon]

Dragoonlordz wrote...
How vague is irrelevant. It is something that I haven't seen, it's something that might, could or should be in game but no actual evidence it is.

Yes, next time you are going to complain about the gameplay lead designer not giving you enough evidence about choices and consequences in the STORY, at least try not to dig yourself deeper by saying that you "understand why they won't show you spoilerific stuff" and still try to maintain that direct quotes out of developers of a game in it's final production phase are rumours.

Go back read what I said, I said those things are not the things I care about most and not as interested in.

Here is a hint: This thread is not called "Has BioWare kept up with Casey's Goals?".

The "things you are interested in" have already been revealed partially, and too early at that. You will get ALL of the major characters back, all but one of which are killable, as well as many killable NPCs, there are multiple ways to retake Earth, you can lose entire species, the geth will listen to you based on what you did in ME2, Wreav replaces Wrex, Mordin, Tali, Legion and the salarian councilor have entire parts of missions dedicated to them, etc, and these are just off the top of my head.

[Phaedon]

Gatt9 wrote...
You seem to be really confused about how things work at EA...
[*]
http://www.gamespot....ed-spouse-outed

The relevant quote...

A few months later, a second lawsuit against EA came to light representing EA's engineers and programmers, also seeking unpaid overtime wages. The lawsuit was brought on by Leander Hasty, an engineer from EALA who claimed that he and fellow workers "do not perform work that is original or creative and have no management responsibilities and are seldom allowed to use their own judgment." In short, Hasty claimed he and others were simply part of an assembly line.

Personally,  I'll take an EA employee's word over yours.

Amusement came out of reading your posts as always. 

• You post a lawsuit -which we don't how it ended anyway- from a person who seeked money for a different cause, as evidence.
• That lawsuit is 5 years old,
• Hasty was an ENGINEER. Not a game designer.
• You state that the Lead Gameplay Designer doesn't have any control of how the feature will be, and their goals don't matter.
• You are capable of imagining Ricitello and Silverman working on the game design of all BioWare games instead of the designers, because you are desperate to post your point and prove that EA is "teh evil~".

You know,  we could level similiar criticism at you.  Because Tommy didn't post how great Mass Effect is,  he must be a stupid-head who doesn't know anything.

No, that's what you wish were my reasons, when in fact I openly declared them:

Good for you.

I consider the aforementioned post stupid for two reasons:
a) Unconstructive criticism of work/art, which leads me to believe that Tommy is a major jerk or has never created a single art project in his life.

The supposed "reasoning" behind this is so self-contradicted that it is not even funny.

But, no, hurr durr kool aid~.

Except,  I can,  and just did,  link to press pieces that contradict your assertions on "Work of art".

You are not much different than the genius who would suggest that games are not art because they are made by programmers.

It's not "art", because you didn't like it. You are still probably trying to convince yourself that EA games are not art because they don't allow engineers and programmers to be designers, and I hope that that makes you sleep better at night.

Further,  your reasoning for why he's a stupid-head is faulty.  They made the same promises about choices and consequences for ME2,  which turned out to be E-mails and 30 second meaningless dialogues once or twice.  You're assertion that they can't talk about things yet is directly disproven by Blizzard with Diablo 3,  which released vast amounts of information years before release,  and they'll absolutely sell an order of magnitude more units than Bioware will.

Yeah, he's a stupid-head for the same reason you are being a massive one right now:

That presentation wasn't very good to be honest and I seriously get the feeling that Christina should work for Activision and or stick ith action games. The presentation even got the squad count wrong for ME1.

This is what I would like to see; RPG elements and more to be added back into ME3 that were in ME1. Real character interactions and choices that have an impact on the plots and story.  Combat is combat and they can do what they want with that, but RP has to have some meaningful reason to be part of the game outside of what seems to be turning into an even more action type game.

You both think that a gameplay designer has any control over non-statistical roleplay and choices and consequences, but no, that's not the worst part. "Combat is combat and they can do what they want with that" but pleeeease don't let the lead gameplay designer only set goals her team has any juristriction over.

[sp0ck 06]

Why does Gatt9 even post on these forums? Literally every post he makes is the same thing.

-Only I know what an RPG is
-EA is the epitome of evil
-Gaming was better when it was a tiny niche of entertainment
-ME2 is a Shooter

Seriously Gatt, have you ever made a single positive post on these forums?

[sp0ck 06]

Tommy6860 wrote...
It's obvious that ME3 is going to focus on combat even more, and that's disappointing, they did enough already with ME2. Anyway, I'd like to know how you extrapolate what you did for this one particular category; was there info in that presentation that gave a gist to these elements you added (I didn't see them)?

That presentation wasn't very good to be honest and I seriously get the feeling that Christina should work for Activision and or stick ith action games. The presentation even got the squad count wrong for ME1.

This is what I would like to see; RPG elements and more to be added back into ME3 that were in ME1. Real character interactions and choices that have an impact on the plots and story.  Combat is combat and they can do what they want with that, but RP has to have some meaningful reason to be part of the game outside of what seems to be turning into an even more action type game.

Real character interactions and choices that have an impact?  Thats in ME2, way more character development and exposition than ME1.  Most ME1 characters were pretty standard compared to ME2

ME1 had more combat than ME2.  ME2 has entire missions that involve zero combat.

[Ahglock]

It sounds like they are trying, but on the richer RPG features part I think it is key to understand that they mean superficial RPG features traditionally associated with RPGs. Things like weapon modding, and more steps to evolve your powers are character customization tools and are seen frequently in RPGs but are not really core RPG features. IMO for a pure RPG the core thing is the mechanic of resolutions of actions. RPGs the resolution is determined by the character not the player. The players role is to decide what to do, how well it is done is soley determined by the character and situation given in the game world. That is what is meant by playing a role in the role playing game.

Now as a hybrid shooter/RPg I understand that the to hit side of the equation is done by the player and not by THAC0 calculations. But IMO to truly have stronger RPG features the results of the hit should be influenced more by the character. And I don't really think that is happening much, except for maybe on a small scale with weapon mods. For example every class except for maybe the adept sahould have passives or abilities that greatly increase the damage they do when they hit with their guns. The more caster focused classes have this down fairly well already. I have to aim my throw, but what the throw does once it hits is entirely dependent on how I leveled it and the situation(mass of enemy, environment, defenses up or down). While there are more options for evolving powers it seems mostly the same in effect in ME3, so a bit better but not much of a change mechanically. The combat classes well it remains to be seen. In ME2 ammo powers were almost irrelevant to the damage you did, if the damage boosts are as pointless as they were but just this time with 3 evolutions then the combat classes still are a bit behind on the RPG features IMO. Though hey at least they provided some funny to useful cc.

By the way I am in no way stating a qualitative nature to RPG vs non-RPG features. I don't think one thing is better than the other on some inherent level. Just stating what I think they are.

[Dragoonlordz]

Phaedon wrote...
Yes, next time you are going to complain about the gameplay lead designer not giving you enough evidence about choices and consequences in the STORY, at least try not to dig yourself deeper by saying that you "understand why they won't show you spoilerific stuff" and still try to maintain that direct quotes out of developers of a game in it's final production phase are rumours.

Stop making things up in your little fantasy world and go find where I complained about her at all in this entire thread. Are you on drugs or something because your apparently in this magical world of your own here...

I would like to know more relating to story, the people, the worlds, the "gameplay mechanics" outside of combat such as is there exploration, is the ship customisable again, what dialogue system are we going to have is it P+R etc again or things like are there alternative ways to go about progressing the game both in combat and story etc. Not just weapons, classes and skills. Will Niftu Cal be in game, will I have to rebuild my face again for any reason at start and why is someone going to shoot me in it for no reason or just edited outside of any story reason, will the Mako or Hammerhead or any other vehicle be in the ships hold, will there be more timed reaction events such as ME2's finish up fast or suffer if don't head to Omega 4 asap. Things like that.

I said I would like to see these things, rather then just be told they might, could, would or should be in game. The keyword is see through medium of videos etc. Much like how you get to see a new weapon or see a new squad member in a combat demo, I would like to see more aspects outside combat. such as walking around a world when not being chased and shot at, interaction with some characters at some places and so on just simple out of combat gameplay sort of things mentioned above.

We get shown these things all the time with SWTOR (non combat story and other out of combat features) and other titles from other developers do the same. It is rumour until becomes seen, developers sometimes say things in jest like Bioware did before regarding Matriarch side missions having affect on ME3 then coming back later saying was joke. Sometimes developers simply make promises and then those don't happen and especially the case with Fable series and the DA section of BW when creating DA2. Someone could swear on life that they saw little grey aliens in spaceship doesn't mean they did, word of mouth works like that. Which is why I would rather see.

I said I understand some of the things I want to know can be classed as spoilers specifically the things that may involve the storyline itself, but believe it or not lad even weapons, classes and skills knowledge and information given to you is STILL spoilers just different variety. I said I can understand why I'm not going to get answers on some things (relating to stories).

Here is a hint: This thread is not called "Has BioWare kept up with Casey's Goals?".

And you know full well Christina did not just deal with combat alone. She just spent more time on that aspect but her role covered more than just the running and shooting etc on it's own. Even her own goals were not just limited to combat and you know this or you should unless about to claim ignorance in retaliation.

Modifié par Dragoonlordz, 07 septembre 2011 - 11:23 .

[Bluko]

Phaedon wrote...

 You may remember this presentantion Chrstina Norman, the lead gameplay designer for ME2 uploaded a while ago. It was called "Where did my Inventory Go?"

Yeah I remember it... and I also remember how it actually did more to infuriate most people rather then ablate concerns.

Look this is a great presentation to show to your boss who has no idea what a Mass Relay is cause you know it's a very simple and easy to follow presentation. However to show to your fans who likely have as much if not more knowledge on some more intricate aspects of the games... well it's a bit precarious.

While I appreciate the effort that was made to extend a branch to the community this whole presentation revealed to me a number of questionable development decisions.

First being the title "Shooter RPG". Erm what? How is a Shooter RPG any different from the standard Action RPG?To me the very use of such label seems to show a great amount of disregard to RPG mechanics when you start labeling your game as a Shooter first and foremost. The line "We must learn from great shooters" is really telling for why ME2 and now ME3 share so many gameplay features with Gears of War series.

Problem is that is not learning from, that is copying from. Rather then looking at other games and seeing what they do right and wrong, Bioware decided to take the "good" features from other games rather then attempt to fix ME1's combat mechanics. Problem is by doing so your game loses merit as its own IP. Afterall a Chess Board with Mass Effect Pieces is still Chess. Generally speaking the best way to fix things is to find a better way to make what you have work before you start adding and removing stuff. Something that was not taken to heart with ME2 as they literally "turned the RPG off".

Perhaps I missed something, but I never thought the intention of Mass Effect was to deliver a hardcore TPS experience. I thought it was suppose to be an RPG that let's you shoot things yourself. Apparently I was wrong as Mass Effect I guess was intened to be a straight-up TPS with some RPG Customization. Could have fooled me.

Look I'm not an RPG nut like some may believe. I hate turn-based RPGs and have only played a select few RPGs myself. (Back in the day I played namely Flight/Mech Simulator games as those were more to my liking with the arcade games of the past I grew up playing.) In fact many of the games I play are more or less straight up shooters. So I am by no means a Shooter-Hater. I do however grow weary of how uninspired most Shooters are, and how prevalent it still is 15 years later for games to simply copy what is successful. I loved the original Mass Effect because it was different.

I certainly didn't want or expect a Gears of War knock off with Super Powers.

And this whole thing never explained why Inventory was made non-existent other then the fact it was stuffy old fashioned RPG thing of the past. The problems with ME1's Inventory were...

-Too many junk items, yes that is certainly true. (This should have been a causation for tweaking drop rates.)
-You could not to choose to leave items behind.
-The item capacity was to big. (75 items or less should have been sufficient.)
-The scroll speed was horrendously slow and items were poorly displayed.

Also I find this rather problematic and a bit of an over-simplification.



For starters I can't help but feel the Mako was removed due to negative feedback. Okay so people don't like the Mako. But WHY don't the like the Mako is what you need to find out. If it's because they feel a Rover Tank doesn't belong in Mass Effect, then by all means remove it. But if it's because it's too bouncy or hard to control maybe you should try fixing those things first?

Also I find it odd that you guys felt the need to redesign ME's combat? Really? From the reviews it seems that the combat itself is the 3rd best aspect of the game following audio and writing. So err what did you guys feel the combat need to be the #1 most liked aspect of the game. Actually that would explain a lot...


Anyways while I don't disaprove of Christina's goals for ME3, they are not entirely  reflective of my own wishes. The two things I agree with the most there are...

-We should listen to reviews and fans
Yes this is good! Communication is vital and the most important aspect of any project. If you do not understand the wants of your targeted demographic of consumers you are bound to failure. However you must be very discerning when going through feedback. You should the heed criticism that is well supported and explained and ignore those that aren't.
-More complex enemies (A.I. in general)
If there's anything that would help the Mass Effect games universally be better, it would be improving the A.I. I haven't seen enough of ME3 to reach a conclusion whether this has really improved. Both ME1 and ME2 have lackluster A.I.

[Gatt9]

sp0ck 06 wrote...

Why does Gatt9 even post on these forums? Literally every post he makes is the same thing.

-Only I know what an RPG is
-EA is the epitome of evil
-Gaming was better when it was a tiny niche of entertainment
-ME2 is a Shooter

Seriously Gatt, have you ever made a single positive post on these forums?

1.  Go read the IGN/storytelling thread.

2.  Do try and realize that when the topic of the thread is about RPG's,  it's kind of expected for people to post about RPG's.  Or do you think I should post about Baskin Robin's Ice Cream in RPG threads?

3.  Perhaps you should go read the article I linked to?  It might help alot if you actually understood what we're talking about.

4.  Alot of people know what an RPG is,  just happens to be a bunch of people who think anything with a story longer than a paragraph is an RPG are posting here.  Some of them even spend weeks insisting D&D was a board game because they have so little idea what an RPG is.

5.  I'm going to tell you a big secret.  Gaming hasn't been a niche in around 25 years.  The transition from C64 to NES era ended the niche era.  Perhaps you should know your history prior to making claims?  In fact,  while you're learning your history,  do take time to note how just a few short years ago we had more than 3 types of games.  Once you realize that,  you'll understand why gaming's dropping double-digit percentages almost every month for what?  21 months now? 

6.  If you want to include Arcades,  gaming hasn't been a niche for nearly 30 years.  Space Invaders and Pac Man were so monumentally huge that they both caused shortages of coins in some countries.  Once again,  knowing history would help you enourmously.

I've got history and numbers on my side.  What do you have?

Real character interactions and choices that have an impact? Thats in ME2, way more character development and exposition than ME1. Most ME1 characters were pretty standard compared to ME2

ME1 had more combat than ME2. ME2 has entire missions that involve zero combat.

Ah....I see what you have...falsehoods. 

Lets see...ME2 has more character development and exposition? 

-No one blinks that Shepherd was resurrected.
-Nor do they ask how.
-No one blinks when shepherd acts contrary to their personality,  you can murder in cold blood and the Justicar,  the embodiment of Justice,  doesn't care.  Despite everyone going on and on about how she'll hand down justice for the smallest of infractions.
-Nor does Wrex mind if you're nice to everyone,  he's perfectly ok with you being spineless.

ME2's characters are completely standard,  devoid of personality or interaction.  No matter what you do,  no matter how contrary to who they are,  they all love you the same.

ME1 had more combat?  I could track down an insane computer without ever firing a shot,  I could talk a hostage crisis down,  I could solve disagreements verbally.

But in ME2,  you can't ever take a fighting situation and talk your way out of it,  the verbal-only missions are "I want a fish!" and "The mean man won't let me leave the citadel!".

I swear,  you and Phaedon must've had completely different copies of these games,  because what you two claim isn't at all related to what was actually on my disc.

[sp0ck 06]

Gatt9 wrote...

Real character interactions and choices that have an impact? Thats in ME2, way more character development and exposition than ME1. Most ME1 characters were pretty standard compared to ME2

ME1 had more combat than ME2. ME2 has entire missions that involve zero combat.

Ah....I see what you have...falsehoods. 

Lets see...ME2 has more character development and exposition? 

-No one blinks that Shepherd was resurrected.
-Nor do they ask how.
-No one blinks when shepherd acts contrary to their personality,  you can murder in cold blood and the Justicar,  the embodiment of Justice,  doesn't care.  Despite everyone going on and on about how she'll hand down justice for the smallest of infractions.
-Nor does Wrex mind if you're nice to everyone,  he's perfectly ok with you being spineless.

ME2's characters are completely standard,  devoid of personality or interaction.  No matter what you do,  no matter how contrary to who they are,  they all love you the same.

ME1 had more combat?  I could track down an insane computer without ever firing a shot,  I could talk a hostage crisis down,  I could solve disagreements verbally.

But in ME2,  you can't ever take a fighting situation and talk your way out of it,  the verbal-only missions are "I want a fish!" and "The mean man won't let me leave the citadel!".

I swear,  you and Phaedon must've had completely different copies of these games,  because what you two claim isn't at all related to what was actually on my disc.

What are you talking about Gatt?

-All your old teammates express varying degrees of shock at Shepard being alive...

-Ah yes, the old "My paragon Shepard threw a merc off a building and no one cared argument."  How many times have you brought that up.  We have dismissed that claim.  Deal with it in your imagination.  If "you" cause your Shepard to act contrary to his/her character to see if the game will respond, that's your problem.  You seriously think its feasible for BW to include reactions from every character for every action dependent upon your Ren/Para meter?  You don't know much about production if you think thats realistic.

-The characters do not "love you the same" no matter what (although this was mostly true in ME1).  If you screw up loyalty missions or take sides with certain characters, they will not treat you the same

-I guess you haven't played Samara or Thane's loyalty missions.  I haven't done the math, but I strongly suspect if you include all the uncharted worlds in ME1, you spent more time in combat than in ME2.  How many times in ME1 could you really talk your way out of combat.  Only a very few, select instances.  It's not like Fallout where you could talk your way out of ANY situation.  Mass Effect are action heavy games.  I'm not sure why you make the same points over and over again when you don't seem to like the type of games they are.

[Phaedon]

@sp0ck Just ignore him just like he will, once you prove him wrong.

[Phaedon]

Dragoonlordz wrote...
Stop making things up in your little fantasy world and go find where I complained about her at all in this entire thread. Are you on drugs or something because your apparently in this magical world of your own here...

I have yet to see how the RPG elements have had any more focus and improvement than ME2 for one siimple reason the only demos and dialogue people and devs spend all their time talking about is mere combat, skills, weapons and classes. 

That isn't for me RPG elements and the only clues we have is heresay and rumours about what RPG'esque elements are back in game or improved upon. While RPG means different things to different people, to me it has little to do with combat and guns and skills and more to do with narrative, plot, choices; depth of customisation and such like skills too is part of it but not the big part to me and as it stands right now the only footage and such has been about the latter aspects. 

That's not even a response to anything, btw. It's your first reply to the thread.

But if you think that becoming progressively aggressive while the other poster remains relatively neutral to your rebuttals is a good idea, go ahead, it's your choice.

I would like to know more relating to story, the people, the worlds, the "gameplay mechanics" outside of combat such as is there exploration, is the ship customisable again, what dialogue system are we going to have is it P+R etc again or things like are there alternative ways to go about progressing the game both in combat and story etc. Not just weapons, classes and skills. Will Niftu Cal be in game, will I have to rebuild my face again for any reason at start and why is someone going to shoot me in it for no reason or just edited outside of any story reason, will the Mako or Hammerhead or any other vehicle be in the ships hold, will there be more timed reaction events such as ME2's finish up fast or suffer if don't head to Omega 4 asap. Things like that.

I said I would like to see these things, rather then just be told they might, could, would or should be in game. The keyword is see through medium of videos etc. Much like how you get to see a new weapon or see a new squad member in a combat demo, I would like to see more aspects outside combat. such as walking around a world when not being chased and shot at, interaction with some characters at some places and so on just simple out of combat gameplay sort of things mentioned above. 

We get shown these things all the time with SWTOR (non combat story and other out of combat features) and other titles from other developers do the same. Sometimes developers simply make promises and then those don't happen and especially the case with Fable series and the DA section of BW when creating DA2. Someone could swear on life that they saw little grey aliens in spaceship doesn't mean they did, word of mouth works like that. Which is why I would rather see.

I said I understand some of the things I want to know can be classed as spoilers specifically the things that may involve the storyline itself, but believe it or not lad even weapons, classes and skills knowledge and information given to you is STILL spoilers just different variety. I said I can understand why I'm not going to get answers on some things (relating to stories). 

1) The dialogue system will have P+R ala ME2, but it will also allow for customization of the umm...morality point receiver...err, modifier through statistical progression. 

2) Yes, you can change your appearance. There are also new hairstyles.

3) Yes, there will be more timed reaction events, but they will be "more dramatic" than ME2's.

4) Vehicular exploration may return, BioWare was testing various exploration models by Gamescom.

The rest of what you want, well, let's just say that you are not the only one. Except for more story details. A lot of people don't want even more spoilers.

And you know full well Christina did not just deal with combat alone. She just spent more time on that aspect but her role covered more than just the running and shooting etc on it's own.

I know full w-

I know full what?

That the lead gameplay designer who is supervised by the lead designer abducted Preston Watamuniak and decided how you will roleplay in-game, abducted Drew Karpyshyn back when he was lead to decide how choices and consequences will work, and finally brutally murdered Casey Hudson in order to establish a different direction for the series in general?

Um, cool I guess. Otherwise, no, just no.

Even her own goals were not just limited to combat and you know this or you should unless about to claim ignorance in retaliation.

What.

It is rumour until becomes seen, developers sometimes say things in jest like Bioware did before regarding Matriarch side missions having affect on ME3 then coming back later saying was joke. 

Are you actually serious?
Is that what your big idea of an argument is? That the community is too-- nevermind-- to realize an obvious joke?
The game has been in final production for almost -at least- a month. It's time you learn to separate rumours from promises.

Modifié par Phaedon, 08 septembre 2011 - 08:26 .