68 réponses à ce sujet

[toronto13]

emontyj wrote...

they told me 100 hours of gameplay but it took me 69 hours to be very thorough.

You say that it took you 69 hours to finish the game..........................on the other hand my clock says 102 hours and there is more to come.

[GoldenusG]

Netherdemon wrote...

Well, now that everything has spoken audio instead of just text with a couple audio clips, the sound files take up a ton of space just by themselves.

If you balloon the whole game up, you'd need a Blu-Ray disc to fit everything on - which would mean a blu-ray ROM drive purchase.

Or (Here's a thought), two discs.



I think the game is lacking a fair old amount to do - In a single playthrough.  Considering it over multiple playthroughs, there is a decent enough amount of stuff to do, though its less diverse than I'd like.

I would have liked extra locations ala Baldur's Gate - Rather than the world map system we have now, actual locations enroute with not a whole lot in them, but opening  greater possibilities for sidequests, combat and player mods.

[Achelus]

Many players are getting ~55 hours out of their first run through, which is pretty good by today's standard.

If you can name 5 quality titles a year with more than 60 hours of gameplay, I'm going to be stunned. It's unusual to have that much content, even more so with a game that has a relatively good replay (at least once).

Morrowind and Oblivion took 8 years to develop? Creating sprawling locations is worth it, they should just hire more manpower.

First, despite your smart ass comment, Morrowind was 4+ years and Oblivion was 5. These games were continuations of an established franchise.



Now please, I hope I don't come across as an apologist for gaming companies, but you need an education on the industry. AAA titles, even ones that aren't 60 hours long, cost an incredible amount of money to produce. It's a huge gamble for producers to make them. If a game like this only sells 200,000 copies, it can put a massive hurt on them. Games continue to become more and more expensive to make, so the AAA titles become harder and harder to produce. They require more staff than ever before just to make it visually standard. If it was as simple as hiring more staff everyone would do it, but this is the real world and there are real costs.



There's another thing you all seem to be missing. I hate to break it to you, but the majority of the consumers out there are not looking for a 100+ hour game. They don't even want it. They want a game that they can finish. This brings us back to the unfortunate reality of game production costs. Companies can't make a game like Dragon Age and just sell it to a hardcore niche audience. They will never make a profit on it. So they have to cater to a wider audience to deliver you the quality of story you want.



All I'm asking is that before the next person starts spouting off about having more content, they actually consider the financial requirements to do that. I know, it's hard and this is the Internet, but I'll really appreciate it.

[marshalleck]

fro7k wrote...

Such a game would also take 8 years to develop and its tech would be horribly dated at release

There's a reason developers do it one way or the other, and not both

Morrowind and Oblivion took 8 years to develop?  Creating sprawling locations is worth it, they should just hire more manpower.

Sigh. Read the whole post.

Guy I was talking to said, essentially, "why don't they make a game as open as Oblivion with a story as tight as DAO?"

The reason they don't comes down to one word: BUDGET

The projects have to be delivered on time and within budget. This is a business, not an art house. It's easy to just say "well they should just make it better!!" if you completely ignore the realities that making a game requires designers, programmers, artists, etc. and all those people cost money. The more skilled they are, such as the talent that a AAA developer like Bioware can attract, cost more.

Making a game that basically combines both Oblivion's open sandbox style and DAO's story would be a project that would probably take the better part of a decade to finish, and by the time it was finished the tech would be outdated. if they kept restarting every 5 years to keep tech up to date, they'd never finish.

I'm only partially surprised that this has to be explained. Some gamers seem to live in a fantasy world where normal rules don't apply.

Modifié par marshalleck, 28 novembre 2009 - 05:11 .

[Deathstyk85]

another thing to keep in mind, aside from cost/risk factor

is that this was the first game in a new franchise that bioware is creating.

they were more "testing the waters" to see how things would pan out. there will be more dragon age, you can guarantee that. also i will restate, that the game has been out for a month, its a bit early to ask for a sequel dont you think ; )

look at it this way, they made the game, it was immensely successful, now they can work on future content/product without the "man will this work" type of worry. also now that they have an established world and game engine, they can spend more time on story/content for future titles, and less time on making a game from scratch.

[AntiGrav1ty]

BG2 is still way ahead in so many ways compared to other recent RPGs. I'm still waitin for a game to come even close to what BG2 had to offer

[MerinTB]

Personally, I hate wasting time endlessly wandering. I want to speed-travel to where I need to be, and as such love games where it goes to a world map and does the Indiana Jones travel line across the map to show you traveling.



I want a little exploration, but too much just running around gets tiresome for me. If there's people to meet, monsters to kill (that have at least a ancillary story reason for being important), treasure to find, puzzles to solve, etc., then give the area more size - but just having it be bigger to cause more travel time and maybe more random monster encounters (in effective, padding the game and your XP) is NOT what I want.



S'why I prefer Bioware to Bethesda. I especially hate MMO's for this, as I've often heard Warcraft titled "World of Walking."



For the story, for the gameplay, DAO is big.



Even BG and BG2 had areas that were, more or less, "travel" areas with maybe an item here or a very minor non-random encounter there - I disliked these parts of the game. Bigger - maybe - if you count the transitional areas.



DAO has a little of that, too - like the Deep Roads and the Dalish Elves forest. I don't hate it - it wasn't too much - but it was still there.



Different tastes, different desires, different definitions of "big" and "sprawling" I guess.



Though, come to think of it, I wouldn't call DAO sprawling. And gladly.

[marshalleck]

AntiGrav1ty wrote...

BG2 is still way ahead in so many ways compared to other recent RPGs. I'm still waitin for a game to come even close to what BG2 had to offer

I don't think anyone is interested in 2d sprite-based games anymore, outside of amateur developers (whom often come up with excellent ideas). The reason that game was so huge is because there was no development time spent on 3d graphics and advanced lighting, etc.

You may be waiting a long time.

Modifié par marshalleck, 28 novembre 2009 - 06:38 .

[WillyPete2171]

Deathstyk85 wrote...

another thing to keep in mind, aside from cost/risk factor
is that this was the first game in a new franchise that bioware is creating.
they were more "testing the waters" to see how things would pan out. there will be more dragon age, you can guarantee that. also i will restate, that the game has been out for a month, its a bit early to ask for a sequel dont you think ; )
look at it this way, they made the game, it was immensely successful, now they can work on future content/product without the "man will this work" type of worry. also now that they have an established world and game engine, they can spend more time on story/content for future titles, and less time on making a game from scratch.

well said.  since its been 10 years since Baldurs Gate, they have made a real come-back with Dragon Age.  Just like Baldurs Gate 2 was larger, im hoping that Bioware will either follow up with a massive DLC add-on, or simply make Dragon Age 2 bigger & better

[MissFruitypie]

I'm going through Orzammar now on my first playthrough (as the last portion of the main quest to get through before the Landsmeet) and utterly hating how big it is. I just started on the Deep Roads, I know it's going to be many maps long, and I'm really not looking forward to slogging through it all. I've been loving the game to pieces up until this leg. Honestly I wouldn't mind if the Orzammar/Deep Roads portion had been scaled back quite a lot.



Also it's pretty astonishing to see how many people are decrying the game for being "only" forty or fifty hours long. Honestly, many console games these days only feature 6-12 hours of gameplay. How are you being slighted by a game that has at minimum four times as much content?



I think I'm around 45 hours played now, but I am reading all the codex entries and stopping to eavesdrop on ambient NPC dialogue and things like that. AND planning at least one more playthrough, if not two. I really feel like I've gotten more than my money's worth, TBH.

[F-C]

as others have stated, i dont need huge areas to explore if the game keeps me involved and sucked into the game world for 40+ hours. it doesnt really matter if im funneled into the areas and led down the path or if i have these huge maps to explore, as long as im having fun and enjoying the time.



DAO is rather massive compared to many of the new releases these days. i mean CoD6 takes less than 10 hours to beat. borderlands is about 20 hours maybe. in comparison DAO is quite huge.

[AdrynBliss]

And seriously, 69 hours for the game for the price you paid. Are you implying you were somehow ripped off? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but your post seems to indicate you feel you were somehow misled or gypped.

At least 60 hours USED to be the norm for most rpgs, including most of bioware's back catalouge AND they were cheaper.
With that in mind I'm not suprised that many gamers feel some what short changed. Even playing all origins you may well still end up with roughly the same game time as NWN or (for a older non-bio example) wizardy 8.

When a modern RPG by the best in their field is shorter than a rpg from almost 10 years ago and doesn't look as good as one 2 years ago AND is more expensive then I think it's certainly acceptable to feel disappointed.

[Sylvius the Mad]

marshalleck wrote...

Comparing the size of the game to BG is futile as well, since BG was a sprite-based 2d game. Come on people, you're smarter than that. <_<

I think it's a fair comparison.

If the detailed 3D models of DAO force the game to be smaller, then that's a cost of the 3D models that needs to be openly discussed.

The compromise doesn't need to be "make smaller games".  It could just as easily be "use 2D sprites".

[Trajan60]

The linearity of the game was the only disappointment for me about DA:O. I hope in future installments of the franchise we get to experience Ferelden in more of a free roaming open world like Fallout 3.

[Aether99]

Its big, but its not "sprawling"

[CloudOfShadows]

Trajan60 wrote...

The linearity of the game was the only disappointment for me about DA:O. I hope in future installments of the franchise we get to experience Ferelden in more of a free roaming open world like Fallout 3.

I, on the other hand, do not hope so.

While I understand the wish for an open world, I rather have a content-filled world, then many, many, maaany leagues of 'playing area' with just the same filler stuff as everywhere. I think it was mentioned in the thread already, that combat was just a filler.

From that point of view, Oblivion was the hugest disappointment for me. It consisted almost entirely of filler things.

I love DAO for what it is, a story-content packed trip into a fantasy world.

[koshiee]

The game world is really small. Denerim is very uninspired as far as big cities. Orzammar was almost as bad and the deep roads were just the same dungeons/caves repeated over and over again. The level design in DAO was repetitive/ generic and small. But Baldur's Gate was a very small world as well.

[GoldenusG]

koshiee wrote...

The game world is really small. Denerim is very uninspired as far as big cities. Orzammar was almost as bad and the deep roads were just the same dungeons/caves repeated over and over again. The level design in DAO was repetitive/ generic and small. But Baldur's Gate was a very small world as well.

Denerim has the (pretty good) excuse that you are Public Enemy Number One, and would be arrested onsite in the majority of the city.  Its only the slums/foreign quarter (The market district.  I'd have called that part of the slums, except for the guests in the tavern late game) that you can visit freely, as the guard are so incompetant/pathetic (Or believe in you),  that they quite happily leave you be.