428 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

I'd also like to point out that Jennifer used to post to the old BioBoards during DAO's development, but then she stopped. I wonder if she retreated because people attacked her for things she said earnestly.

[Eudaemonium]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I'd also like to point out that Jennifer used to post to the old BioBoards during DAO's development, but then she stopped. I wonder if she retreated because people attacked her for things she said earnestly.

What do you mean, Sylvius. Nobody around here does anything like that.


Seriously, though, back on topic: Like many have said, Jennifer Hepler is a writer. She has nothing to do with gameplay, let alone the combat portion of it. This thread is like a castle built on sand.

[Quething]

Relix28 wrote...
You pay $60 for a new videogame, just so you can watch an hour of cutscenes. lolwut

Well, you pay $60 for a game just so you can have fun. If part of the game isn't fun for you, and you're still forced to get through it in order to get to the part that is, that's a bigger waste of your $60 than a feature that allows you to skip it, and end up with a shorter game and a better experience.

It's still not comparable to a movie, because a movie's not interactive; a movie can't respond to your choices, and resolve itself differently based on how you react to the events of the plot. (Admittedly DA2 can't either, but that's beside the point here.)

This is part of the reason I always play a game on PC, if it's available for PC. Unskippable cutscenes and dialog? Screw that: mod the .ini file. Tedious, poorly-designed fight? Screw that: runscript killallhostiles. Ugly, badly designed level that misses the entire point of the game? Screw that: download the Skip the Fade mod. If there's a cutscene right before a difficult combat that you may have to play a few times, there is no gamer in the world who will not scream bloody murder if it can't be skipped, and well they should, that's inexcusable game design. But by the same token, if there's a long fight before a complicated dialog during which you might miss an interrupt you wanted to take or say something your character would never say due to crappy paraphrasing, why shouldn't you be able to skip that fight after the first go-round if you don't want to do it again?

I take no issue with Hepler's suggestion to include a combat-skip option. I do take issue with her sweeping generalizations about what women want from video games, which bear pretty much no resemblance whatsoever to what I, a woman, want from video games. (Some of us, it turns out, do enjoy the violence! Quite a bit, in fact, when it's well-designed!)

[Cutlass Jack]

I wonder if the same people complaining about this are the same ones who love their 'Skip The Fade' mod for Origins...


Sometimes certain aspects of gameplay are tedious to some people. Jennifer makes a fair point. There might be many potential players of an RPG who love the non-combat aspect parts Mass Effect, but can't stand the shooter aspect. People who only like the shooter aspect can skip much of the other parts. So such an option would be fair. Not every aspect of 'gameplay' involves the killing part.

There were many games that I would have enjoyed if I could have skipped certain gameplay parts. Catherine is a recent example. Beautiful game, and would have loved to see how the story unfolded. But pulling blocks just to get to the good parts was just too uninteresting for me to deal with. Likewise, I'd have enjoyed the Alice and Tomb Raider franchises alot more if it weren't for the platforming segments.

[Cutlasskiwi]

Relix28 wrote...

Wft is this? Why include a feature to skip past the very thing that makes videogame a videogame? It's idiotic. People that don't like the idea of gameplay in videogames shouldn't be playing videogames in the first place. They should buy themselves a blu-ray player and not an Xbox. If you are just in for the cutscenes in videogmes, it's also a huge waste of money. Think about it. You pay $60 for a new videogame, just so you can watch an hour of cutscenes. lolwut
How about you buy a $20 blu-ray movie of your choice and enjoy a much more compeling and better storytelling. And it's not like videogames are exactly known for their storytelling. Even BioWare games have very average stories compared to some of the movies out there.

 

You can fly through dialogue and skip most of it, why is it so horrible that some people would like to skip that part? Both are part of the same game. People like and dislike different parts of games and telling them to buy a movie instead is pretty insulting.  

[xkg]

ehhh i will never understand complaints about something that is an "optional feature" - something you can use but you don't have to.

Unless you are forced to do something why complain about it.

[Rahelron]

http://penny-arcade....isode/cutscenes

Quote from this episode: "Game writers are often frustrated people who wish they worked in the movie industry".

[Vanni127]

Dhiro wrote...

...so? She's a writer, and a very good writer while we're at it, she doesn't need to like the combat. Besides, her point (that it is unfair that people can skip the dialogues she and the other people in the writing team worked hard to do and not the fighting bits) makes sense, at least for me.

Vanni127 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I happen to agree entirely with Jennifer's remarks, and I'd like to see BioWare implement them.

However, they appear to be moving in the opposite direction.

Why am I not surprised you agree with something that's against the very nature of videogames and fun? 

Seriously Sylvius...I know I'm feeding the immortal troll of these boards...but why are you even here anymore?

Combat isn't the only way to have fun in a video-game. Sylvius happens to like the other ways better, and there's nothing wrong about it. You're just  making yourself look mean, you know. :|

Funny enough, I wasn't trying to be 'mean'. It's just something of a thing I've noticed in all of his responses to threads. And I don't think combat is the only way to have fun in a game either...just that without the combat aspects of Dragon age it wouldn't be a game. It'd be an interactive movie. 

People who don't like games and gameplay shouldn't write for them or try to change games to fit what they want. Video games are for playing...not watching. And this is coming from someone who LOVES the dialog/cutscene portions of ME and Dragon Age. 

[Skadi_the_Evil_Elf]

Quething wrote...

I take no issue with Hepler's suggestion to include a combat-skip option. I do take issue with her sweeping generalizations about what women want from video games, which bear pretty much no resemblance whatsoever to what I, a woman, want from video games. (Some of us, it turns out, do enjoy the violence! Quite a bit, in fact, when it's well-designed!)

QFT. That was the only part of the article that bothered me. I'm married, in my 30's, and I LOVE COMBAT AND VIOLENCE. Imagine that. Even funnier, I've been playing violent video games for decades. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. The stereotype of women not liking violence is more insulting than anything, as it implies I'm somehow squeamish. Puleeze.

As far as the option to skip combat, I really wouldn't care, because i wouldn't use it. Combat+Story+Characters/Dialogue are all important parts of a game.

[WhiteKnyght]

If Hepler's opinions on games are this, why the hell is she writing for games? Why not just become a novelist or a TV writer?

If you add a skip button through the combat, you negate the entire point of a game. I could understand settings or cheats to make the game easier to finish, but games are meant to be PLAYED.

[Cutlass Jack]

Vanni127 wrote...

People who don't like games and gameplay shouldn't write for them or try to change games to fit what they want. Video games are for playing...not watching. And this is coming from someone who LOVES the dialog/cutscene portions of ME and Dragon Age.

The flaw here is assuming that having the ability to skip a gameplay segment means someone would skip all gameplay segments. Instead of just bad/tedious bits. The simplest perusal of these forums will point you to many things people would love to skip:

-Mako in ME1
-Planet Scanning in ME2
-Boss battles in games that allow stealthy non-combat builds. Like Deus Ex or Alpha Protocol.
-Boss Battles that require you to fight in a way different than the rest of the game (DA2-Legacy)
-Minigames that have nothing to do with how the bulk of the game is played (too many to list)

Going back to Alpha Protocol, my wife loved the game, the fighting, the sneaking, even the boss fights. But the hacking minigame made her physically ill. That one small segment nearly made the an otherwise enjoyable game unplayable to her. It would not have been a tragic affront to the Gods of Gameplay if she could have skipped it.

Not every player loves every type of gameplay and a frequent flaw in many games is adding in gameplay bits that are not consistent with the rest of the game (usually mingames)

[maxernst]

Cutlass Jack wrote...

Vanni127 wrote...

People who don't like games and gameplay shouldn't write for them or try to change games to fit what they want. Video games are for playing...not watching. And this is coming from someone who LOVES the dialog/cutscene portions of ME and Dragon Age.

The flaw here is assuming that having the ability to skip a gameplay segment means someone would skip all gameplay segments. Instead of just bad/tedious bits. The simplest perusal of these forums will point you to many things people would love to skip:

-Mako in ME1
-Planet Scanning in ME2
-Boss battles in games that allow stealthy non-combat builds. Like Deus Ex or Alpha Protocol.
-Boss Battles that require you to fight in a way different than the rest of the game (DA2-Legacy)
-Minigames that have nothing to do with how the bulk of the game is played (too many to list)

Going back to Alpha Protocol, my wife loved the game, the fighting, the sneaking, even the boss fights. But the hacking minigame made her physically ill. That one small segment nearly made the an otherwise enjoyable game unplayable to her. It would not have been a tragic affront to the Gods of Gameplay if she could have skipped it.

Not every player loves every type of gameplay and a frequent flaw in many games is adding in gameplay bits that are not consistent with the rest of the game (usually mingames)

Many strategy games actually do have a skip combat option.  In both Heroes of Might & Magic and the Total War series, for example, you can choose to simply have the A.I. calculate the battle results rather than play through them.  It's not usually used because players don't like combat, but because some combats are so trivial that you know you'll win with minimal losses.  The issue that arises for Bioware games is that the gameplay of DA2 really is all combat...puzzles have vanished, there's little exploration, other means of approaching problems are almost nonexistent.  Even quests whose objectives have no relation to fighting at all, like getting Donnic and Avelline hooked up, are "spiced up" with a bunch of trivial, meaningless combats.  While one can argue that there's no challenge in the game without combat, you would still have to build your characters (and perhaps your tactics) in such a way that they would win the combats when the A.I. crunched the numbers.  But it would be frustrating to press skip combat and find you lost...but that's because the game doesn't allow you to retreat from combats that you're losing, or surrender...all combats are to the death and game ending if you lose.

While the OP has a point that a skip combat button would in essence reduce DA2 to a series of cut scenes, that's because of the lack of variety in DA2's gameplay, not an inherent problem with the concept. 

[clennon8]

I wish there was "auto Hawke" feature, so that you could just rely on your Tactics and watch the combats without having to press any buttons.

[DarthCaine]

I sure as hell wish I could've skip through DA2's idiotic battle waves

Modifié par DarthCaine, 26 septembre 2011 - 10:18 .

[Huntress]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Just a reminder that I take insults against our developers very seriously, so let's please keep this civil and constructive. If Jennifer is good at what she does, does it really matter if she prefers different things in her games than you do?

No, but come on, people have to complain about something.. do you realize how far is until new dlc comes out? lol

And no am against insults towards players/writers or anyone, no reason for it, if anyone think their views/ideas/thoughts are important, should write them down and publish them.. and then lets see what other people say and think about it.

[Mike_Neel]

She's a writer first and foremost. The reason she's in games is because it was probably an easier entry point to get her writing out there. If she did it the traditional way she'd probably spend 5 or 6 years writing two or three novels (maybe 4 if she doesn't bother rewriting). Most of them would probably get rejected. The only other thing to do would be submit short stories and only get one out of every ten published in a magazine. After a few years of that she might get one out of five before someone shows interest in a full novel.

By getting experience in games first, in a few years she might be able to have an easier time of finding a way to get a non game related novel published. Same thing happens on tv shows. Tons of writers trudge their way through a few sitcoms before someone finally says 'hey you're the guy who wrote some episodes on that one show. Sure, we'd like to take a look over your novel'.

I'm not trying to speak for her or against her, but I doubt games are her passion and she plans on working for bioware or game studios for ever. She's just using bioware as a doorway into the world of writing and publishing.

[DreGregoire]

Wow thanks for sharing that, I would have missed a very interesting piece of information. I can definately relate to being able to skip through the combat especially when I'm on my 10th playthrough of something and I just don't feel like fighting a certain fight. One of the mods I used for DAO allowed me to skip a good portion of one of the main quests, it (the quest) was extremely long and repetitive with multiple combat and non-combat. I can definately see a use for a skip battle and/or cutscene ability and a pause ability during cutscenes would be great to; I cannot even count the number of times I've been in the midst of a cutscene and have had to leave it or ignore my reallife. When I had to leave it playing I would come back and I would have to answer blind to what had happened which meant essentially I would have to replay the whole cutscene if I wanted to know what was going on.

Modifié par DreGregoire, 26 septembre 2011 - 10:35 .

[IRMcGhee]

It's worth looking at the rest of this 5-year old article that the OP didn't post for some context.

www.killerbetties.com/killer-women-jennifer-hepler/

Modifié par IRMcGhee, 26 septembre 2011 - 10:49 .

[happy_daiz]

IRMcGhee wrote...

It's worth looking at the rest of this 5-year old article that the OP didn't post for some context.

www.killerbetties.com/killer-women-jennifer-hepler/

This is from 5 years ago? Wow. I should know better than to even care about something without a source. /facepalm

[DreGregoire]

IRMcGhee wrote...

It's worth looking at the rest of this 5-year old article that the OP didn't post for some context.

www.killerbetties.com/killer-women-jennifer-hepler/

Thanks that was a great read!

Edit: Thank you, Wulfram!

Modifié par DreGregoire, 26 septembre 2011 - 11:28 .

[IRMcGhee]

You're welcome. Wulfram linked to it on the first page, but it was easy to miss.

[Weskerr]

[image containing inappropriate language removed]

It's a nonsensical (and I would argue even stupid) thing to say, but who cares? Like Woo said, the only thing that matters is that she do her job well.

Modifié par Stanley Woo, 26 septembre 2011 - 11:42 .

[addiction21]

Rahelron wrote...

http://penny-arcade....isode/cutscenes

Quote from this episode: "Game writers are often frustrated people who wish they worked in the movie industry".

Your qoute is wrong.

Creative Director is by far different then a writer... did you have a point or were you just hoping that link would do it for you?

[Miashi]

Boohoo, call the presses, a storywriter that doesn't like combat.

So what? She's honest and she doesn't like combat. I don't like combat either but I still enjoy games. How can you conclude that disliking combat equals disliking video games?

I wouldn't go as far as to want a fast forward button, but there are games out there that cater for that kind of players with dialog options that allow you to lure your way out of combat. *coughplanescapecough*

It'd be a big deal if she was a combat mechanics designer, but she isn't.

Modifié par Miashi, 26 septembre 2011 - 11:30 .

[tmp7704]

House_Hlaalu wrote...

If you don't like playing through all that combat and action (the stuff that makes a videogame a videogame)

There's plenty videogames which don't have either of these. They don't stop being videogames.

And you know, considering how much of the "combat" tends to be just pointless filler that doesn't add anything to the story... i can definitely see where she's coming from. I'd probably make use of such skip button myself occasionally, just like i do use killallhostiles script sometimes.