474 réponses à ce sujet

[ElitePinecone]

Ostagar2011 wrote...

But the Origins 2 reason is given over and over again and this is blinding BioWare from seeing any faults in DA2 itself. Here is one from Fernando Melo:

Fernando Melo wrote...
“For sure there are certain people who probably wanted Origins 2 with Dragon Age 2; we did not go in that direction,” Melo adds.

If it's only "certain people" why does he even bring it up? And wait! What a co-incidence! I've just found this from BioWare's CEO:

Ray Muzyka wrote...
"Maybe some of that [negativity] can be attributed to some of the fans of Dragon Age:
Origins who were maybe expecting a similar experience. But we actually
innovated, we took a lot of risk, we were pushing the envelope on how we
told the story, the gameplay, the action moments, the graphics - a lot
of things were changed. And, actually, I really believe it was the right
direction."

Again only "some of the fans" so you're right, the argument collapses. Damn you Ray! Next time please say "all" so that we can win the strawman argument!!

I guess deflecting criticism to "well, there was a 'misalignment of expectations' and they all expected Origins 2" means some people never actually have to acknowledge that the game itself was rather poory executed, even for people that didn't mind the changes.

In a way that's quite concerning, because it completely overlooks the problems with the game itself, even the ones that don't stem from people expecting Origins 2. 

[Giubba]

Mike_Neel wrote...

I'm kind of tired of people assuming anyone who has anything to say against DA2, be it constructive or not, automatically wants another Origins or was mad it wasn't DA Origins 2.

 
When for the first 3-4 months the 95% of the butthurts comments were "THIS IS NOT ORIGINS 2 !111!!!" ?
People were kinda indoctrinate to associate the two things.

I try my best to remain non biased towards both games and see things in both games that went well and bad.
I don't want another Origins. I like a lot of the changes DA2 made, but it was by no means the great game Bioware claims it to be. I'm sorry but it's not. I'm not saying I expect them to hang their heads in shame and agree with me. I just wish they didn't herald DA2 as the "messiah" of RPG gaming if you will. Yes the game does some things well. Yes it improved on several things Origins did, but no this is definitely not the best product and I honestly hope this isn't the bar they're setting for themselves.

And while I think it's perfectly fine to want to widen your audience, I really wish they'd stop targeting the shooter audience by taking out RPG elements in favor of a more linear experience and easier accessibility.
I'm not saying the game has to be near impossible for it to be good nor be buried in endless stats and virtual dice rolls. I'm just tired of devs taking stuff out entirely to ship a simpler game instead of working on improving the mechanic and explaining the learning curve better to newer players. Bioware is pretty bad about this across all games though. They see something that doesn't work well or isn't well received and instead of performing some precision surgery on it they just amputate from the core game all together.

I will say I am very optimistic about the future of the franchise both in seeing all the feedback that's going into the DLC as well as all the commentary and talks that have been given about DA in general. It really does sound like they might actually pull of this "best of both worlds" as they're saying.

Sorry but are you not able to split commercial exageration with facts?

[Morroian]

xkg wrote...

Morroian wrote...

Mike_Neel wrote...

I'm kind of tired of people assuming anyone who has anything to say against DA2, be it constructive or not, automatically wants another Origins or was mad it wasn't DA Origins 2.

No-one is saying that apart from trolls not even Zeschuk and Muzyka despite the claims that they are.

You love to be wrong don't you ?
How about Lead Designer ?

[i]"Well it's hard to know exactly what's going on with scores that are really, really negative. One possible culprit could just be a change backlash, i.e. this isn't Origins and I wanted Origins 2"

You need to brush up on your english comprehension.

[Gotholhorakh]

Monica83 wrote...

And what new fan? the action crew?

Well im also an action game player and i must say that DA2 fails also in this...There are better action Rpg around than da2..

Just a suggestion bioware at this point return at your roots and take your fan's back... If you are interested in the action game market well you feel free to try it but not with this franchise that is started as RPG but with a new brand title

Yes, I too am one of these subhuman swine (hehe) we hear so much about, that play action games and FPS like CoD (although actually not CoD so much) and I honestly think the notion that DA2 has grabbed lots of adrenaline-junkies from the FPS/action "world" is laughable. 

I just don't see where DA2 would fit in a catalogue of great action games, as an action game it's.. sorry, but pretty lame - CoD, Battlefield, TF2, Counter-strike, and the Enemy Territory/Quake series all have more action in their loading screen than you can find in all of DA2. 



I'm not surprised at the PR output any more really, it's obviously bunk as it always is. The only signal I can read loud and clear is that things are not going to do a 180 degree turn and return to the path BG walked, and a lot of people find this hard to reconcile themselves with. I was thinking about this the other day after an interesting conversation about dumbing down of RPGs - with particular reference to BioWare and buying DA3 (amusingly given this context, it was on a clan forum with some people I play FPS with).

One of the things that kept coming up was that now geekism is just soo globally fashionable, and those of us blessed with intelligence and focus can finally show our faces in polite society and be cool, BioWare is really missing a trick trying to "glitz RPGs up" to attract the dumbos. This phrase from a group of the FPS players some areso quick to treat like gaming untermenschen, by the way, a number of whom are avid RPG fans like me. Abandoning geeks might seem like a silly thing to do, but it is ultimately their decision. If that's what they feel they must do, we can only resign ourselves to forgetting about it and finding other games.

That wasn't the main point though, which was this: this kind of game from BioWare might just be a thing of the past. If you look at BioWare's overall stable it's fair to say that the tactical party-based roleplaying strain of games that ends (for SP) abruptly at Dragon Age: Origins, is but one creature in their ecosystem (If you look at SS, MDK, Sonic Chronicles, Mass Effect/DA2, Jade Empire and so on). They make different kinds of games, and more often than not, it isn't the kind of game DA:O is.

That strain of game from BioWare can die, and in the face of unnovation I think it might. Modern decision-makers exist in a culture of defending everything done as a positive thing or going south, so don't expect any climbdowns, ever, until a company is actually in trouble. This is not an indictment of those defenders' character or what they think, but a reality of big business, and games are big business. What we have to do in the context of a producer/consumer relationship is say "Never mind" and let our money talk.

In short, if DA3 is a work of genius that mitigates this whole debacle a little through the kind of bore-people-for-years-about-it excellence that BG2 had, then we buy it, love it, play it and quietly dub it "REAL Dragon Age 2".

HOWEVER, if DA3 is another rush-job or it continues to have all of the problems DA2 so definitely has for us, we really shouldn't buy it.

The people who thought DA2 was just marvellous should let their money talk, too, obviously! If there are enough of them to support the "new way of things", then they will get their product, BioWare will be richly remunerated and everyone will be happy, which is the right thing to happen. I suspect there aren't but that's for reality to decide, isn't it?

I just think people should be aware that if future software is DA2ish or rushed and you buy it, your purchase will be counted as support and vindication for that to continue, and rubbed in your face if you complain.

Money talks, the "new fanbase" theory walks.

Modifié par Gotholhorakh, 01 octobre 2011 - 09:11 .

[Morroian]

Ostagar2011 wrote...

Strawman alert. Yes no one ever said that all people who disliked DA2 wanted Origins 2. 

Er yeah thats exactly what I was saying originally, yet apparently I'm wrong..

Ostagar2011 wrote...

But the Origins 2 reason is given over and over again and this is blinding BioWare from seeing any faults in DA2 itself.

The quality of Legacy shows that Bioware know exactly what the faults of DA2 are as do the responses from the devs on here, the problem is what they consider a fault may not be what you consider a fault.

[Gotholhorakh]

Morroian wrote...

Ostagar2011 wrote...

Strawman alert. Yes no one ever said that all people who disliked DA2 wanted Origins 2. 

Er yeah thats exactly what I was saying originally, yet apparently I'm wrong..

Ostagar2011 wrote...

But the Origins 2 reason is given over and over again and this is blinding BioWare from seeing any faults in DA2 itself.

The quality of Legacy shows that Bioware know exactly what the faults of DA2 are as do the responses from the devs on here, the problem is what they consider a fault may not be what you consider a fault.

Indeed. One the one hand you have a developer set on what they see as improvement which means abandoning their fanbase or at least the gameplay elements they came for.

On the other hand you have fans, also set on what they see as improvement sort of.. irritated or upset because they're unable to reconcile themselves with what seems like complete madness, and even antipathy to paying customers.

It's a messy divorce, or it's biting the hand that feeds you, or it's bemusedly trying to argue with someone who is proudly and happily building their own funeral pyre.

It depends on the viewpoint. I think mellowing out about it and letting our money talk is probably the answer.

Modifié par Gotholhorakh, 01 octobre 2011 - 09:23 .

[Jerrybnsn]

One game reviewer carries the weight of a hundred forum sites such as this as far as Bioware is concerned. Recycled maps were a major criticism of all the Origins dlc. You can look back just on this site alone and see how many people were dissappointed by this, and yet the DA devs ignored it because recycled maps were brought forward to DAII anyway. Bioware wasn't caught off guard by the negative feedback of this forum or any other forum web site, they were caught off guard by the negative feedback of paid game reviewers and the lower sales number that validated their criticism. We who criticize DAII on the forum sites are the ones labled as just wanting another Origins game.

[Maria Caliban]

PresidentCowboy wrote...

People, Bioware make video games, you're acting like they turned their back on curing cancer or something.

THOSE MONSTERS MADE A GAME THAT WASN'T EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED!

Gamers are a terribly overprivilaged lot. Especially the 'true' or 'old-school' fans.

[Giltspur]

Arthur Cousland wrote...
I'm mainly surprised that they knew the game was rushed, but somehow kept talking about the game pre-release as if it was the next best thing.

I think part of that could be Bioware's history.  They've probably never been able to "finish a game".  Baldur's Gate II for example had a lot of content cut out prior to release.  And there were Bioware guys that were pensive over parts of BGII that got cut due to time constraints.

But the critical reaction was very positive for BGII, and it's now seen as a paragon exemplar of RPG's.   (And thinking of BGII as limited in anyway may seem odd these days, but the reality is that it had compromises too.)  So if  they  are "[their] own harshest critic"s (as many at Bioware probably are) and have had products released that didn't meet all of their expectations, they might start to realize that not all of their paranoid fears will come true andi and that a "rushed" product might actually be loved for all the good that has been put in it as opposed to being hated for what's missing.  So if you're critical about everything and are used to the fact that not everything you want to do can be done, it might be difficult to tell which kinds of cut (parts of Act III, I assume, and perhaps envioronments) or premature (not as iterated as it should be like combat encounter design) content will really cause the community to go negative.  And that could lead to someone managing to get caught off-guard when the backlash happens.

[Jerrybnsn]

Giltspur wrote...


I think part of that could be Bioware's history.  They've probably never been able to "finish a game".  Baldur's Gate II for example had a lot of content cut out prior to release.  And there were Bioware guys that were pensive over parts of BGII that got cut due to time constraints.

Cut out content?  I thought that game developement didn't work that way.  Did you ever read Game Informer's "Can a Video Game Over-Deliver?"   I've been looking for the year old article to post here but haven't found it.  Basically it explains why so many games, like Red Dead Redemption, are heavy on extra content that is weak or have no context.  Game developers put so much money and time into coming up with the content, that even though it doesn't fit or is unnecessary, it goes in anyway.  They called it the 'Second Refrigerator" syndrome.  Your house might not need it, but you've already paid for it so you might as well get some use out of it.

I think that Bioware does a better job than most developers in implementing a storyline and gameplan.  That is until DAII was released. It all falls on the lead designer's shoulders for that.

Modifié par Jerrybnsn, 01 octobre 2011 - 11:44 .

[Beerfish]

Great, another thread to give voice to the usual suspects on these boards that we must listen to the neverending whine.

[xkg]

Beerfish wrote...

Great, another thread to give voice to the usual suspects on these boards that we must listen to the neverending whine.

Do you really "must" ? No one's forcing you. Just ignore the thread, simple as that.

[Persephone]

Joy Divison wrote...

Morroian wrote...

It added to the lore, it added to Hawke's background, the encounter design was better than any fight in DA2.

Does Bioware pay you to defend DA2?

So this is STILL going on? Seriously, the whole "Bioware is paying you to defend DAII!" is getting old. <_<

[tmp7704]

Filament wrote...

It's blinding them from seeing any faults in DA2 itself? I see no basis for this assumption, though I do see basis for the opposite considering all the things they did in Legacy and possibly MotA, and what they plan on doing re:companion armor to address faults and complaints people had with DA2 itself.

And they keep bringing it up because it is a particularly common complaint, whether you like it or not. Maybe the people so offended by this wording would be willing to go halfway if the devs would just acknowledge that while many would have preferred more Origins, that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been willing to try something different, if it were different in a good way, which they didn't feel DA2 was.

Maybe the people so offended by this wording would be willing to overlook it if the devs would just acknowledged that DA2 had numerous quality problems of its own, ones which, as you point out yourself, they have recognized and sought to address in the DLC that followed.

[Joy Divison]

Persephone wrote...

Joy Divison wrote...

Morroian wrote...

It added to the lore, it added to Hawke's background, the encounter design was better than any fight in DA2.

Does Bioware pay you to defend DA2?

So this is STILL going on? Seriously, the whole "Bioware is paying you to defend DAII!" is getting old. <_<

The quote has nothing to do with another poster liking DA2.

It has everything to do with a continuous posting history and multiple unsustainable assertions that because of their OPINION of Legacy, Legacy does X, proves Y, and means the developers are Z. 

[Ostagar2011]

Just for disclosure, I'd like to admit to receiving money from Activision for every post I make here that's critical of DA2. Not something I'm proud of, but hey, economic times are tough in case you haven't noticed.

Regarding listening to reaction - Bio obviously listen to something. Legacy changed, and MotA will have stealth back. The question is what is it that they're listening to? Silverman's the marketing man, so he should have the 'pulse' of the market, but judging by 'button-awesome', he might not be all that he's cracked up to be. Epler did mention that there were some statisticians in the background crunching something on the basis of BSN, but evidently it isn't much, since these forums widely predicted the reaction to DA2. Look at threads from July-ish 2010 where devs released little bits of DA2 info, and see the fan feedback. How could anyone be caught 'off guard' if they were reading these boards...

[RagingCyclone]

Gotholhorakh wrote...

Monica83 wrote...

And what new fan? the action crew?

Well im also an action game player and i must say that DA2 fails also in this...There are better action Rpg around than da2..

Just a suggestion bioware at this point return at your roots and take your fan's back... If you are interested in the action game market well you feel free to try it but not with this franchise that is started as RPG but with a new brand title

Yes, I too am one of these subhuman swine (hehe) we hear so much about, that play action games and FPS like CoD (although actually not CoD so much) and I honestly think the notion that DA2 has grabbed lots of adrenaline-junkies from the FPS/action "world" is laughable. 

I just don't see where DA2 would fit in a catalogue of great action games, as an action game it's.. sorry, but pretty lame - CoD, Battlefield, TF2, Counter-strike, and the Enemy Territory/Quake series all have more action in their loading screen than you can find in all of DA2. 



I'm not surprised at the PR output any more really, it's obviously bunk as it always is. The only signal I can read loud and clear is that things are not going to do a 180 degree turn and return to the path BG walked, and a lot of people find this hard to reconcile themselves with. I was thinking about this the other day after an interesting conversation about dumbing down of RPGs - with particular reference to BioWare and buying DA3 (amusingly given this context, it was on a clan forum with some people I play FPS with).

One of the things that kept coming up was that now geekism is just soo globally fashionable, and those of us blessed with intelligence and focus can finally show our faces in polite society and be cool, BioWare is really missing a trick trying to "glitz RPGs up" to attract the dumbos. This phrase from a group of the FPS players some areso quick to treat like gaming untermenschen, by the way, a number of whom are avid RPG fans like me. Abandoning geeks might seem like a silly thing to do, but it is ultimately their decision. If that's what they feel they must do, we can only resign ourselves to forgetting about it and finding other games.

That wasn't the main point though, which was this: this kind of game from BioWare might just be a thing of the past. If you look at BioWare's overall stable it's fair to say that the tactical party-based roleplaying strain of games that ends (for SP) abruptly at Dragon Age: Origins, is but one creature in their ecosystem (If you look at SS, MDK, Sonic Chronicles, Mass Effect/DA2, Jade Empire and so on). They make different kinds of games, and more often than not, it isn't the kind of game DA:O is.

That strain of game from BioWare can die, and in the face of unnovation I think it might. Modern decision-makers exist in a culture of defending everything done as a positive thing or going south, so don't expect any climbdowns, ever, until a company is actually in trouble. This is not an indictment of those defenders' character or what they think, but a reality of big business, and games are big business. What we have to do in the context of a producer/consumer relationship is say "Never mind" and let our money talk.

In short, if DA3 is a work of genius that mitigates this whole debacle a little through the kind of bore-people-for-years-about-it excellence that BG2 had, then we buy it, love it, play it and quietly dub it "REAL Dragon Age 2".

HOWEVER, if DA3 is another rush-job or it continues to have all of the problems DA2 so definitely has for us, we really shouldn't buy it.

The people who thought DA2 was just marvellous should let their money talk, too, obviously! If there are enough of them to support the "new way of things", then they will get their product, BioWare will be richly remunerated and everyone will be happy, which is the right thing to happen. I suspect there aren't but that's for reality to decide, isn't it?

I just think people should be aware that if future software is DA2ish or rushed and you buy it, your purchase will be counted as support and vindication for that to continue, and rubbed in your face if you complain.

Money talks, the "new fanbase" theory walks.

Well said. I am guessing I am one of the few who left the action games for the rpg's (my first was KOTOR) because I was tired of the action genre. While my favorite games are the Half Life series, I thuroughly enjoyed DAO (it's #2 on my all time fav list) because it was a large departure from the action games, story driven, and very well polished. My main problem with DA2 was the lack of polish (details devs, more attention to the details) and story cohesiveness to the previous title. There was a lot of handwaving on certain npc's that made the jump from one game to the next jarring especially int he case of the timeline.  For Origins the timline was given as one to two years, six months to Awakening, then six months for Awakening. And then when DA2 comes out that entire timeline (almost three years) is magically shrunk down to one year...that lack of detail in the storyline is another detail the devs need to focus on...story cohesiveness would have helped in fan reaction...things need to make sense from game to game in a series.

[ElitePinecone]

Ostagar2011 wrote...
How could anyone be caught 'off guard' if they were reading these boards...

It's possible that they never anticipated that the reaction would be so intense or widespread. 

It's one thing when (relatively) hard-core RPG fans (or, at least the ones who invest enough in a game to post on its forums) get anxious about changes and the way a game is shaping up in development; it's completely another when 'official' reviews show very mixed feelings and sales pretty much tank after the first couple of weeks. Not to mention that even outside of the BSN the general reaction to the game is bewilderment, often disappointment.  

But I agree: I'm staggered that anyone could be surprised with the mixed reaction to DA2. I'm not sure what's worse (or more believable) that the development team really were naive enough to release an unpolished, substantially shorter game so soon in the shadow of its predecessor expecting brilliant reviews, or that they anticipated the negative reaction and released it anyway. If it's the former - how on earth was this not picked up in development? If it's the latter, then I'd start to wonder whether releasing a game on time is more important than releasing it with adequate content and polish.  

[UrkOfGreyhawk]

nerdage wrote...
Of course everyone who likes RPGs is already playing them, they wouldn't like them otherwise, but more people might like them if given the chance. If everybody likes story, why would they not like a game with a deeper, more interactive story, where they had more control over who their character was? Because the gameplay itself is deliberately exclusive? How is that a good thing?

Deliberately exclusive? What the heck are you talking about? The Bio fanbase evolved over years and was wholly satisfied with the product. It was the largest in the business and still growing.

It's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It's just the way it is.

Man I HATE repeating myself, so please, even if you don't AGREE with it try to at least register it this time: MOST PEOPLE DON'T LIKE RPGs.

nerdage wrote...
The idea of bringing the roleplaying element (character, story, the RP in RPG) to more kinds of gameplay is one I support fully, and just because you call yourself an RPG fan doesn't give you the right to chastise Bioware for making an RPG whose gameplay isn't to your specific liking. For the record, I'm talking generally, not about DA2 specifically.

Again... what are you talking about? Gameplay elements origionally developed for RPG s have been getting adopted by other genres for YEARS and they're being enthusiastically adopted by their players. What does that have to do with anything? Just because people like training skills for their GTA avatar doesn't mean they want to play an RPG.

Look, I'd agree with you if I thought EA had a chance in hell of succeeding. But I don't. Most people don't WANT to have to read pages of exposition to understand what they're doing. Most people don't want to have to worry about the consequences of their actions. RPG's are for thinkers, and there really aren't that many thinkers out there. Most people want to be able too blast away and see lot's of pretty splats and explosions.

And as for DA2... I'm mad specifically about DA2 because it sucked. If EA was sincere in attempting to mainstream RPGs then why not do that? Why not design an IP specifically to mass appeal? Why derail a successful existing franchise with an established fanbase?

I stand by my blog post. EA isn't intereseted in keeping Bio's fan base. Proper RPGs cost too much and take to long to develop. EA has fallen victim to it's own groupthink, and in the end it's going to leave Bio padlocked like so many great studios before them that were assimilated by EA. EA has convinced themselves that they can open up a whole new audience for RPGs that will let them stick to their business model. They want to build cheap stupid games. They don't want to develop or innovate. They just want to be able to upgrade the graphics or update some stats and then repackage the same games over and over as "new". The mainstream doesn't want RPGs, and if EA dumbs down the games enough to appeal to them they won't be RPGs any more.

The people who DO want RPGs won't buy the crap that the mainstream would accpet.

In the end EA will realize this. They go through this every time they buy a new studio. They'll keep interfering in the studios development process until they've either turned it into a standard issue EA game mill cranking out thinly disguised "grey and gritty" shooters (ME6, ME7, ME8, ME: Revolution, ME: Apocalypse, ME: Resurrection, etc, etc, etc...) or just plain padlock the doors.

In the meantime I for one won't be eat cow patties because some EA fat cat called it steak. 

Modifié par UrkOfGreyhawk, 01 octobre 2011 - 05:01 .

[BroBear Berbil]

Origins was already a "marriage" between the old school RPG with PnP rulesets and modern games. They wanted new fans? They got one in me when Origins came out.

Things like BG, NWN, and even KOTOR were kind of before my time and drew mechanically from something I could not relate to - the tabletop dice gameplay. I came from a MMO background where numbers are there but everything just works in the background and it doesn't feel so much like dice rolls. I played (and finished) KOTOR and tried to play NWN2 after Origins and for both games the combat was not my taste. I can't play Drakensang for the same reason. Compared to these games Origins feels a lot faster.

[Alicia Keys]

Well we have Mass Effect 3 now. You know that game is going to be awesome!!!

[xkg]

Alicia Keys wrote...

Well we have Mass Effect 3 now. You know that game is going to be awesome!!!

Well it depends on what kind of "awesomeness" you have in mind. If DA2's type - then I hope it won't be. lol 

Modifié par xkg, 01 octobre 2011 - 06:41 .

[The Executioner]

Dragon age 2 is very good and could have been great if i could choose my own race and change armor on my party. Hopefully these problems along with reused maps and some other things will be fixed in DA3.