384 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

spiritofretribution wrote...
A game with a compact and interresting storyline will have good sales (e.g. DA:O)

A game with interresting side-quests as filler will sell well (if it has good gameplay/graphics) (e.g. ME2)

DA:O didn't have a compact story. It had a 60 hour long filler sidequest plot, which is the same design Bioware's been throwing out since KoTOR, with JE being the only exception. 

DA2's plot was bad. It didn't deviate from the formula otherwise. Act 3 was just badly done, and Bioware intentionally cut out it's unifying antagonist that seems to make most people forget about the filler side quest main plot and instead file it under "epic". 

Set character without any means to customize, e.g. "The Witcher".
A lot of customizations on the PC (race, physical appeareance, gender), e.g. "The Elder Scrolls".

DA2 was a mix of both, it was mediocre in both ways, it had a set character with some customizations available, imo Bioware should had made it like "The Witcher 2" and leave any customization out, your Hawke should be male and have a predefined appeareance. (EDIT: little joke, just to see if someone would believe that I could believe such a thing)

Shepard in ME2 isn't Geralt and is somewhat more defined than Hawke and that worked just fine for Bioware. 

[Lux]

Why it was mediocre?

- A seven-year story arc done mostly in a static city.
- Your character being a tragic pawn of circumstance without any real choice to change course or heading.
- Framed narrative making for an utterly linear game progression.
- Small development cycle + radical changes to what had been a successful first game + not enough time to carry out an ambitious new vision properly + having to rush the game out the door = the worst RPG BioWare has produced thus far.

[PaulSX]

Merkar wrote...

Why it was mediocre?

- A seven-year story arc done mostly in a static city.
- Your character being a tragic pawn of circumstance without any real choice to change course or heading.
- Framed narrative making for an utterly linear game progression.
- Small development cycle + radical changes to what had been a successful first game + not enough time to carry out an ambitious new vision properly + having to rush the game out the door = the worst RPG BioWare has produced thus far.

these makes it an mediocre RPG but not nessesarily a mediocre game. although I dont think dragon age II is good, it's still above average.

[astreqwerty]

again with this thread...?

[Reno_Tarshil]

You should edit the title and add in my opinion to the end, because I don't agree with you at all for it being a mediocre game. Secondly, everything you've listed has been talked to death already /sigh.

[Feanor_II]

imo DA2 should have animations where, for example, an archer jumps 12
feet high, stays 10 seconds in the climax of his jump and pumps an enemy
with 500 arrow in the meantime, or maybe a rogue that zips around the
battlefield in 100 feet jumps with a speed that he is just a blur. That
would be AWESOME.

1000 Times NO!!!!! Go back to a more realistic style.

[jlb524]

I didn't like DA:O that much.

[billy the squid]

Fiddles_stix wrote...

I think OP's into absolutes in a very absolute way...

Absolutely.

[dheer]

The reasons why Dragon Age 2 was mediocre.

1. Loss of key talent to other games or interests.
2. Some poor design decisions.
3. Not enough development time / large enough budget.

[Gibb_Shepard]

PresidentCowboy wrote...

jlb524 wrote...

I didn't like DA:O that much.

I liked my first two playthroughs. Everything after that though, zzz...

Playing a game more than 3 times will tend to have that effect, believe it or not.

OP, honestly, DA2's mediocrity can be summed up in "trying to appeal to everyone". Because it didn't get to in depth with any of it's mechanics due to a fear of alienating a certain crowd, the game was just mediocre.

The worst thing any game company can do is attempt to draw everyone in, as it never works.

You mix ketchup and chocolate together, you can be sure no one will want a bite.

@dheer: Not a large enough budget? I don't have the numbers, but surely a company backed by EA would have a larger budget than a small independant Polish company? Yet the small Polish company clearly has more of everything, as demonstrated by TW2.

Modifié par Gibb_Shepard, 09 octobre 2011 - 02:15 .

[Nashiktal]

It's also funny how women can't read. seriously read right after that part, he said he was joking.

In any case I always wondered why people still want to play the warden, he wasn't much of a character and his tale is done.

[Nashiktal]

Hmm sorry my post is out Of context, I can't quote or edit since the forums hate phone users.

[rak72]

Nashiktal wrote...

It's also funny how women can't read. seriously read right after that part, he said he was joking.

In any case I always wondered why people still want to play the warden, he wasn't much of a character and his tale is done.

It's also funny how guys like to spout off without knowing the facts.  The OP was vastly edited since first going up.  There was absolutly nothing to indicate that was a joke.

[Wozearly]

Interesting views, OP - some I agree with, but I also think you've missed some key connectors between them.

How you present the story (compact, side-quest driven, starting place; four locations; ending place, open world) doesn't actually make a great deal of difference. Bioware's past games and the Fallout, Deus Ex and Thief series all sold well despite presenting the story in very different ways.

Where the story was important (it wasn't in all of the above) what mattered was that it engaged you. You wanted to get revenge on a git who betrayed you, or find out what was going on, or decide how it would all end.


...but backing that up, graphics, gameplay and style all need to mesh together and be consistent with the story. As an example, the Dark engine used for Thief was built to handle light and shadow very well (for its time), because these were critical concepts to the gameplay. The gameplay itself had you moving slowly, cautiously, stealthily...because you're a thief, and not a fighter. And the medieval magic-meets-steakpunk style was carried off well. On paper it should have been a disaster, but everything was presented from a realistic standpoint. The unusual and unexpected magical or technological bits worked realistically within the world and didn't disrupt an otherwise fairly gritty setting.

Things like character customisation, good crafting systems, pre-rendered cinematics - they're all more like icing on the cake. The core of an RPG-style game is building a setting you can lose yourself in, characters that you engage with, a story / plot that draws you in, that's fun to play (easier said than done) a world that handles suspension of disbelief consistently, that gives you a clear and consistent relationship with your own player character...oh, and if it has pretty graphics and all that other jazz then great.

Just to expand on the suspension of disbelief, as an example - rogues teleporting and their backstabs causing bodies to explode requires quite a bit of it. That doesn't mean its not awesome (at least to some people), or a bad move, but its the type of shift people feel very strongly about if it happens mid-series - and worse when it happens out of the blue.

And for consistent relationships with your own player character, what I'm getting at is that if you're able to make them 'your' character, then it jars horribly when the game takes control of them and makes them do something for plot purposes that goes completely against what you thought your character was. And it doesn't feel all that much better if you have to mutely watch as your companions do something similar. Or when what you thought you were going to say is absolutely nothing like what the voice actor goes on to say.

Modifié par Wozearly, 09 octobre 2011 - 04:27 .

[Sutekh]

@Wozearly

Amazing post.

[Killer3000ad]

Just to remind everyone, DA2 had a different lead designer from DA:O.

[TEWR]

Killer3000ad wrote...

Just to remind everyone, DA2 had a different lead designer from DA:O.

That doesn't mean much of anything.

Mike Laidlaw is not some supreme overlord ruling from on high and commanding his vassals/serfs to carry out his will, lest he break out the sword, whip, tar, feathers, vuvuzelas, and all other manner of torture devices both painful and silly.

[Sinuphro]

spiritofretribution wrote...

First of all, this isn't just another troll/hate/spam/bash/rage thread. And, actually I even enjoyed playing DA2.


Story:

A game with a compact and interresting storyline will have good sales (e.g. DA:O)

A game with interresting side-quests as filler will sell well (if it has good gameplay/graphics) (e.g. ME2)

DA2 unfortunally tried to built a compact storyline by taking a lot of side-quests and dividing them into 3 Acts, without connection between the acts... I guess it was not only the auto-attack that was lost in the mastering process...

Animations:

To be succesful you should either have:

High realism, e.g. "Total War".

Low realism, e.g. "Final Fantasy".

Again DA2 was a mixture of both, the animations were to over-the-top to be reallistic and in the same time to realistic to appease the FF group. imo DA2 should have animations where, for example, an archer jumps 12 feet high, stays 10 seconds in the climax of his jump and pumps an enemy with 500 arrow in the meantime, or maybe a rogue that zips around the battlefield in 100 feet jumps with a speed that he is just a blur. That would be AWESOME.

Graphics:

There are games that live of their awesome graphic quality, e.g. Crysis, GoW, CoD, those games are short living, but sell well. And there are games that don't need good graphics due to their awesome gameplay, e.g. Tetris, Diablo II, those games are long living.

Now guess how long a game lives that mixes the graphic quality of Tetris with the gameplay of CoD? Right, stillbirth (well, actually the DA:O machine artificially kept it alive for a week). I wished DA2 had used the Frostbite 2 Engine or the CryEngine.

Cinematics:

If you make a game based only on lots of pre-rendered cinematics it will sell well (look at Final Fantasy or check "interactive movie" on wikipedia).

If you make a game concentrating solely on a good story/gameplay it will sell well too (e.g. Deus Ex: HR).

If you make a game with mediocre cinematics without having a good story or gameplay to pull it out it will be, well, mediocre (e.g. DA 2).

Player Character Customization:

You can have 2 ways to do this succesfuly:

Set character without any means to customize, e.g. "The Witcher".
A lot of customizations on the PC (race, physical appeareance, gender), e.g. "The Elder Scrolls".

DA2 was a mix of both, it was mediocre in both ways, it had a set character with some customizations available, imo Bioware should had made it like "The Witcher 2" and leave any customization out, your Hawke should be male and have a predefined appeareance. (EDIT: little joke, just to see if someone would believe that I could believe such a thing)

Toolset:

A toolset can be a great thing for a game, Warcraft 3 is still played only due to custom maps (e.g. DotA), but then again Warcraft 3 was (and still is) an AAA title, a toolset on a mediocre game won't make it any better, so kudos for BioWare for not releasing a toolset, it would just be wasted ressources.

EDIT: changed the color to yellow and changed the order of my points.

sorry but... it seems to me you understand nothing...check out the reviews of Dragon Age Origins. It had waaay more applauds than boos. i guarantee you that 80% of rpg players thought of DAO as the best and thoughtful rpg they've played. Final Fantasy series does not even stand a chance against DAO. The only game that is on the same level as DAO or higher was Oblivion 4. DA2 was mostly trash. How could the developers afford to replace the majority of things that made the game most epic?? Look, one of the things that drew ppl to Bioware was DAO. And the major reason why ppl liked DAO was because of the thoughtful story and you had several options to alter the course of the game; you could choose to kill certain ppl or save certain ppl in certain scenarios and the consequences of ur actions matter to the player making the decision.

Also, the graphics in DAO and the character and monster designs were a 1000 times better than DA2. DAO had a fabuluous and exhilating story. Instead on following on with that they choose to make the crap known as DA2 that was inferior in every way to its predecessor. The only improvement DA2 had over DAO was the sfast combat but even there they still messed up. They removed the finishing moves that made DAO really fun and if that was not bad enough they took off the option to customize the other characters' appearance in your party.

Even now there are ppl that still have their CD of Dragon Age Origins or have it saved in their PC. DA2 was sooo horrible there are ppl who still haven't past Act 1! Playing DAO was fun and every once in a while i still replay it. On the otherhand playing DA2 is like doing chores! When a game becomes tedious instead of being fun that's a very SERIOUS problem.

[Sinuphro]

FemaleMageFan wrote...

jlb524 wrote...

I didn't like DA:O that much.

playthroughs 
dragon age origins : 2
Dragon age 2 : 12

your preference? fine. however, if u go to all gaming websites and read the reviews or watch video reviews u will see that almost 90% of them say DA2 was crap. Even look at the polls here on BSN comparing DA2 to DAO. It is crystal clear that DA2 was crap compared to DAO

[Sinuphro]

PresidentCowboy wrote...

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

PresidentCowboy wrote...

jlb524 wrote...

I didn't like DA:O that much.

I liked my first two playthroughs. Everything after that though, zzz...

Playing a game more than 3 times will tend to have that effect, believe it or not.

Ooh snarky, guess what though, I'm on my eighth DA2 playthrough and still enjoying it.

Sinuphro wrote...

FemaleMageFan wrote...

jlb524 wrote...

I didn't like DA:O that much.

playthroughs 
dragon age origins : 2
Dragon age 2 : 12

your
preference? fine. however, if u go to all gaming websites and read the
reviews or watch video reviews u will see that almost 90% of them say
DA2 was crap. Even look at the polls here on BSN comparing DA2 to DAO.
It is crystal clear that DA2 was crap compared to DAO

All I got out of that post was "STOP HAVING FUN"...

i can see u like arguing...fine. However....PPL hate senseless arguments. my arguments were valid and have facts backing them up...YOURS DO NOT.