82 réponses à ce sujet

[Mark Darrah]

This thread is great! I really like most of the feedback that I am seeing (though I'm definately not able to read everything anymore)
To set expectations:
We are gathering feedback right now.
We haven't announced anything so don't expect a lot of concrete answers from us for a while.
As I said earlier, I would rather have something to show you as opposed to just a bunch of yalking points.

Come see us at PAX East as well if you want to continue the discussion.

[David Gaider]

Cyr8 wrote...
I have a question: after you release your current Dragon Aae project ® that you aren't announcing, is there a possibility that you would go back and work on that expansion pack that you mentioned? I know I would like that.

Well, Mark already mentioned that elements of the expansion's story were being necessarily drawn into the rest of DA's arc. So once that's done, there's really no going back again. And that's even if we were willing to work on a DA2 expansion when "work on DA2 is now finished". So, sadly, I suspect the answer to that is "no". But nothing is ever impossible.

[Mark Darrah]

Rorschachinstein wrote...

Mark Darrah wrote...

This thread is great! I really like most of the feedback that I am seeing (though I'm definately not able to read everything anymore)
To set expectations:
We are gathering feedback right now.
We haven't announced anything so don't expect a lot of concrete answers from us for a while.
As I said earlier, I would rather have something to show you as opposed to just a bunch of yalking points.

Come see us at PAX East as well if you want to continue the discussion.

Who's going to be on the panel other than yourself?

Haven't actually locked that down yet. I'll let you know.

[Mark Darrah]

Melca36 wrote...

Make drops **count**. I got tired of getting 3X damage rings or 4X fire rings.

Or create a crazy and eccentric NPC character where we can exchange these trash items for something more valuable

So either:
* Make loot be consistently good
OR
* Let me juice bad loot to GET something good?

[Mark Darrah]

hhh89 wrote...

:huh:As far as I remember the controls in DAO and DA2 were the same. The only difference was the auto-attack, which wasn't present at DA2 release.

That was an unfortunate bug in the release of DA2. It should be there (and work) with the newer patches.

[Mark Darrah]

CrustyBot wrote...

Guess my dialog compass idea went unanswered/ignored. Pity, but I guess it won't hurt to keep posting it.

Compass idea is interesting.
We will be looking at additional options and posibilities in this space.
The compass (at least as you present it here) has some issues on the consoles where screen real estate is at a premium.
That is not to say they have to be the same.

[Mark Darrah]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Wait, what?  That's news.  BioWare's been very clear in recent years that they would not design a PC-specific UI.  Is that what you're suggesting?

DA2 has some PC specific GUIs (like the HUD)

[Mark Darrah]

Wulfram wrote...

Meris wrote...

Combat MUST NOT BE A COMPROMISE between different gaming niches. Rather a stat heavy preparation / ability heavy real time strategy rpg than a diablo-esque action-based rpg for the successor of Baldur's Gate, so please focus on the former. I should not be able to leave my party for the AI.

People created some pretty awesome AI scripts for Baldur's Gate I believe.  it was just a lot less user friendly than the DA tactics system.

Indeed. And I should know, I wrote that mess of a scripting language.

[Mark Darrah]

Melca36 wrote...

Please do something like the Black Emporium again.

I would also like to see perhaps some quests offered with rewards being armor or weapon upgrades.

Maybe its a franchise...

[Alain Baxter]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I honestly don't envy the guys at Bioware the job of making DA3. Its going to be an uphill battle all the way through Release Day and beyond. One group of fans spits on the ground anytime they hear the word "Dragon Age" because of how much they disliked 2, another group is torn up that the cliff hanger ending of DA2 won't be resolved while playing their Hawke. Still others like both games and are pleased by the word you do, while others have demands that no game in the history of man has met as of yet.

What I would suggest is not making a type of game, with certain features or characteristics, but rather create something that is FUN. That sucks the player in. I don't care if you have fast combat, slow combat or combat that is done through playing cards... if the end result is enjoyable and addictive, your game will be successful.

Don't be so tunnel-vision focused on completing X feature that you forget to realize that this feature is absoultely no fun in the context of the game at large. PLAY your game. And let others, not just professional testers, but people like those seen on these forums. The type of players you are looking to convince. Have them spend ten, twenty, forty hours tweaking with your game before it goes Gold and let them tell you what's right, what's wrong, what they were hoping to see, etc.

Otherwise, they'll blast your game on the internet, tell none of their friends to buy your game, and THEN tell you what you need to change here. Its just smarter business to put a semi-finished game in front of your most loyal but critical fans and build off of there, rather than send it for a few weeks with the testers, have it go gold for two months, then find a wealth of things that were, in retrospect, just badly thought out because you were so focused on objectives that you missed the fact that the overall experience was not what you had visioned at all.

Less project plans, more proactive participation. When a whole segment of your fanbase freaks out at a feature, idea or concept, then MAYBE its a good idea to either tweak it or scrap it, instead of just assuming it "won't be a big deal." I've yet to see Bioware make a move like this that didn't turn out to be a big deal.

Excellent point! With game development, getting the game to a functional state as quickly as possible is key. If you can do this by late pre-production, you have a great oppurtunity to iterate and improve of what you have for a long period of time. This is key. Once you have gameplay, you can then begin to understand and see the fun.

Great idea on sharing this with fans early in development. Noted.

[Alain Baxter]

BrianRB wrote...

Let's see...

Nov 2009 -- Dragon Age: Origins (excellent game) is released.

Mar 2010 (5 months later) -- "Awakenings" expansion pack (excellent game) is released.

____________________________

Mar 2011 (1 year after "Awakenings") -- DA2 (mediocre game) is released.

Mar 2012 (1 year later) -- it's announced that there won't be an expansion pack, and they're "working" on the new... thing.

_________________________

I think we're seeing a trend here, and it's not a good one. DA:O was a great game, with a lot of DLC -- and not just gadget packs, but playable games, with a terrific expansion pack.

But now the cycles are taking longer to get less, and what we do get isn't anywhere near as good.

This series seems to me to be going downhill.

With DA:O, we not only had the expansion pack, we had 5 other playable stories. DA2 we had 2, and no expansion pack.

I noted some early comments in which people mentioned the lack of resolution to Hawk's story. Well, what about the Warden from Origins? I wonder if ANY of these story lines are ever going to be resolved?

Now, I did read an article on Wikipedia that sounds promising:

http://en.wikipedia..../Dragon_Age_III

If they are going to be more "open world" and "new combat system" a la Skyrim, it could be a very good thing. The changes from DO:O to DA2 were pretty bad. A change in the direction of Skyrim could remedy that (I hope so).

Anyway, there's my $0.02.

Wow! Have I been living under a rock lately! I didn't know about the wiki article on DA3 and just read through it.
Um... yeah. Playable Dragons..<_<

This is one of the core reasons why we the dev team want to engage with the community and when we have something to show you, will do so. There's a lot of good & bad ideas out there (sometimes crazy... I'm not sure what we feed our designers), but until you see something from us, please take what you read within the web with a grain of salt (or lyrium).

Mind you, thinking about it, playing a dragon would be cool but the conversations... 

TwinkleToes (thief): Hey, Flamee! What do you think we should do?
Flamee (Dragon): KAAWWWW!
TwinkleToes:... but we always just eat them. Can't we sneak by them or something?
Flamee: KAAWWW!
TwinkleToes: Fine. But let me loot them first. I hate looting them after they've been though your digestive tract...
Flamee (annoyed): KAAAWWWWW!

[John Epler]

Alright, let's kill those quote pyramids, please. They're making the thread very difficult to read.

And as to a second point - please feel free to state your opinion, but do so respectfully. Belittling a group of people because they have different preferences than yourself is unnecessary and rude.

[John Epler]

Fenrir81 wrote...

I'm playing on Ps3, i would like if mod was not only available for pc, can you do something about it, like make them available for console?

This is really beyond the purview of what we can and can't enable - it's happened before, certainly (I think one of the Unreal games allowed for mods on the PS3? Though I may be remembering something else, which happens surprisingly often), but by and large consoles are a fairly closed environment when it comes to development. 

[John Epler]

Malakar1 wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Fenrir81 wrote...

I'm playing on Ps3, i would like if mod was not only available for pc, can you do something about it, like make them available for console?

This is really beyond the purview of what we can and can't enable - it's happened before, certainly (I think one of the Unreal games allowed for mods on the PS3? Though I may be remembering something else, which happens surprisingly often), but by and large consoles are a fairly closed environment when it comes to development. 

Infamous and Little big planet had a "tool kit" to create content (missions, characters, lvl designing etc). Maybe some other games too. Anyway people need to understand the difficulty of bringing those kind of features on console. After all, games are created with PC's 

You're right, of course. Though in both cases, they were done with tools designed specifically for consoles (and, in both cases, it was for PS3-exclusives, which I imagine gave them a bit of negotiating room). The Unreal reference was mostly to do with that title allowing you to actually create content on a PC and bring it to a PS3 - though, again, I may be imagining that it happened.

[Alain Baxter]

slashthedragon wrote...

Regarding the timeline for the making of the next game --can we have it somewhere in the middle of "rushed" and "take all the time you need"? It would be nice to have an incredible game due to years of work, but, some of us don't know how many years we have left due to illness, and I'd like to think I could see what happens with the next game before I go...

Understood. Like all artists (yes, developing games is an art form. Let's leave it at that...) we always want infinite time to create something and really never want to part with it. But in the end, we also want to share our work with everyone and have to let it go. I can't answer how long this will take, but once it just right, we'll send it off.

For now, we'll try to share as much as we can and show off what we can as it's being developed. I hope this will help.

[John Epler]

LPPrince wrote...

Malakar1 wrote...

LPPrince wrote...

While we're on the topic of creation-

How about being able to craft weapons and armor? Anything we can do to improve how that's done?

Would be nice to get some kind of skill that gives you the ability to forge/repair/improve your weapons actually. (a bit like skyrim) Would had depth and some hours in the game

I won't lie, I'd love to be able to forge my own weapons.

You know, so instead of equipping "The Legendary Blade of Ko'Hihre" I can equip a blade I made, modify it so that its the best sword in the game, give it a badass name, and make it legendary through MY story.

Instead of a blade being legendary for being used in a war in the past, lets make a blade legendary because WE used it ourselves.

Would be super cool if the game autogenerated a page in the journal for your weapon. Or alternatively, after you accomplish certain feats in the game, the journal dictates what weapon you used the most during that level or what weapon dealt the killing blow.

At the same time, that could lead to frustration. Eh, scratch everything I said past crafting your own weapon.

Actually, I'm curious - what frustrations do you foresee as a result of this sort of thing?

One of the neater things a game can do for me is allow me to take a 'run of the mill' weapon and turn it into something special. Particularly when it's staggered so that you aren't able to completely upgrade it right away, but instead have to invest in that weapon over the course of the game. Kind of a 'where do legendary weapons come from' sort of deal.

[John Epler]

LPPrince wrote...

If there's going to be a "Make a weapon legendary yourself" element to the game, I think it needs to be restrained to ONE weapon, and it should be a little side plot.

Lets play with the DAO story, say Human Noble.

Momma Cousland gives you a bow and arrows, claims the bow is nothing special, but its your job to make it special.

Then over the course of the game, you modify it. You purchase buffs for the bow, you put permanent bonuses on it, you can change its appearance at will, you can name it, and if you complete any big quests with it, its noted in its journal page.

Or the journal page for the weapon can just say that the main character had it with him/her on his/her travels, when the main character did this and that.

Well, there are ways to avoid the 'you can pick up a brand new weapon that is immediately better than your upgraded weapon'. Making sure to have a good way to 'track' the power of the weapon (generally, by making upgrades require certain resources that the player will have X of by any particular point in the game) means that you can at least make a guess that the weapon the player's toting around will be at least somewhat better than what they're picking up - with the caveat that, if they choose to upgrade their shiny new weapon, it can eventually become more powerful.

I don't know. It's a difficult system to balance, because you want to make sure that the player isn't forced into either the 'just keep using a new weapon' style, nor the 'keep your upgraded weapon because it's prohibitively expensive to bring a new weapon up to that level' style. But we're definitely keeping an eye on crafting and crafting-related customization.

[John Epler]

hunterxx1xx wrote...

Malakar1 wrote...

hunterxx1xx wrote...

LPPrince wrote...

Back to "making" a weapon legendary-

Lionhead mucked it up in Fable III.

They said in development that we were gonna "make weapons legendary", but in the end, all that happened was they gave us weapons that were already legendary, and we barely changed them as we used them.

If Bioware is to implement a way to make a basic weapon something greater both in power and in PLOT, they need to go into Fable III and do the complete OPPOSITE of that.

I'm not a fan of making my own weapons. One of my favorite parts about Origins was finding awesome weapons/armor through my travels. If it's similar to how it was in Awakening(collecting pieces for Wade to make it), I'd be all for it.

The ability to do it doesn't mean you absolutely have to do it. In some guess I had the ability too but never did for some reason.

If I can make a weapon better than any I could find within the game then I'd make it. Which is why I'd rather find one through a quest because it'd be like a reward. 

A question regarding that, then - what if making it better required you to spend resources that could instead be allocated elsewhere? I think the biggest reason why some titles succeed on this front is that they give consequences to improving your weapon. Sure, you may have an amazing weapon, but it's correspondingly difficult to take a hit, as you never really focused too much on your armour.

That's just an example, mind - there are other consequences that can come up, especially in a more narrative-focused RPG.

[John Epler]

LPPrince wrote...

John Epler wrote...

A question regarding that, then - what if making it better required you to spend resources that could instead be allocated elsewhere? I think the biggest reason why some titles succeed on this front is that they give consequences to improving your weapon. Sure, you may have an amazing weapon, but it's correspondingly difficult to take a hit, as you never really focused too much on your armour.

That's just an example, mind - there are other consequences that can come up, especially in a more narrative-focused RPG.

That, I would NOT like. I'd hate having to sacrifice something directly helpful to me just to make my weapon better.

Again, I bring up The Witcher 2's Dark Mode.

In it, there are armor sets and weapons that are "dark", which take a lot of coin and items to craft. You cannot acquire them any other way.

Thing is, if you use said items when the sets are not completed, or if you mix and match the items, then its DETRIMENTAL to your character, because the dark items are "cursed".

Alright, I'll ask the other question - what about making a tradeoff bugs you? I'm not asking facetiously, I'm genuinely curious why you wouldn't be okay with saying 'okay, well, I can either make my armour convey a regeneration bonus or I can give my sword the ability to drain life'. Or it might be we're discussing completely separate points, which I readily acknowledge is entirely possible - I'm drinking a lot of Neocitran.

[John Epler]

Hrungr wrote...

Rorschachinstein wrote...

I would prefer a quest for making an amazing sword over making an amazing sword.

argument: In Elder Scrolls, Way of the samurai and most other games where you make a sword it usually doesn't feel unique because I could make 5 or 6 swords just like it. while the creatable weapons in DA:O: Vigilance, Starfang, and the Heartwood shield each had a unique model and felt nice to have around because there is only one, and you made it.

Each way of handling it has it's merits, but I do agree with you that I had more attachment to *unique* weapons like Vigilance, et al.

I think there's an acceptable medium. One of the reasons why it works that way in Skyrim is because, well, you can build a lot of swords. And that's necessary, because the way their skill system works you have to have something that you're able to build a ton of if you want people to ever have a high enough skill to build the better equipment, using the better resources. It's a feature of the Elder Scrolls games, and it works for them - I sunk an absurd amount of time into finding iron ore so I could skill up.

But if you take away that particular skillup necessity, you get something closer to what happened with the Dragonscale armour in DA:O, although taken further. Instead of crafting a hundred samurai swords, your crafting becomes more 'unique' - you can have higher resource requirements and such. And it opens the door for truly 'unique' weapons - weapons that you can maybe only ever craft once, because it requires a component that you'll never find a second time. The best example I can think of is the Epic weapon quests from EverQuest, although not quite as rare nor time consuming.

[John Epler]

Maria Caliban wrote...

John Epler wrote...


A question regarding that, then - what if making it better required you to spend resources that could instead be allocated elsewhere? I think the biggest reason why some titles succeed on this front is that they give consequences to improving your weapon. Sure, you may have an amazing weapon, but it's correspondingly difficult to take a hit, as you never really focused too much on your armour.

That's just an example, mind - there are other consequences that can come up, especially in a more narrative-focused RPG.

Do you mean something like the classic DnD demon giving you a sword of Awesome +5, but only if you sacrifice your Paladin companion on the Alter of Evilness?

Well, that'd be a narrative consequence, yeah. I'm not sure if we'd take it quite that far (particularly if there's no way to see what's on offer before making that choice, although I admit that the more evil part of me thinks it would be delightful to sacrifice a companion only to have a demon give you a sword that is either comically large or ridiculously tiny and thus impossible to wield properly), but that's the gist of what I meant.

[John Epler]

Darji wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

John Epler wrote...


A question regarding that, then - what if making it better required you to spend resources that could instead be allocated elsewhere? I think the biggest reason why some titles succeed on this front is that they give consequences to improving your weapon. Sure, you may have an amazing weapon, but it's correspondingly difficult to take a hit, as you never really focused too much on your armour.

That's just an example, mind - there are other consequences that can come up, especially in a more narrative-focused RPG.

Do you mean something like the classic DnD demon giving you a sword of Awesome +5, but only if you sacrifice your Paladin companion on the Alter of Evilness?

Well, that'd be a narrative consequence, yeah. I'm not sure if we'd take it quite that far (particularly if there's no way to see what's on offer before making that choice, although I admit that the more evil part of me thinks it would be delightful to sacrifice a companion only to have a demon give you a sword that is either comically large or ridiculously tiny and thus impossible to wield properly), but that's the gist of what I meant.

But thats what it means to actually live with the consequences of your actions. For example some evil spirit promises you much more power or something to rule the world (A sword) but you dont even know thats it is a weapon) if you sacrafice someone of your party.

This would be a real choice and will lead to a real consequqnce and you dont even know what you will get. ITs taking a risk or be faithful to your people.  They did somehting similar in Skyrim but here your comapnions did not have much of a personality so it was not a hard choice but if you would do it with a Dragon age like companion that would be a great way of sheme of choices and consequences.

Also you guys need to udnerstand that its a bad design to actually know what the evil answer is and what not. Its even a bad design to only beeing able to decide between good, evil and sarcastic. Make it more grey like in Origins.

I'd argue that, if a consequence is getting an item immediately, there's really not much difference whether or not you know what you're going to get if you take the deal. If you don't like it, it's trivial to just hit the 'load' button and go with the other choice. Now, that's not suggesting that there can't also be unforeseen long-term consequences, but if I tell you 'IF YOU SACRIFICE THIS COMPANION, YOU'LL GET A GREAT WEAPON' and then you get a weapon that's really not all that great, most players are just going to say 'screw this' and reload their save game.

I'm not saying we should spell out the other things that will happen, of course, but if it's a tangible and immediate consequence, the only real difference between saying 'okay, here's at least an idea of what you'll get' versus 'NOPE YOU DON'T GET TO FIND OUT UNTIL YOU TAKE IT' is whether most players have to reload their game.

[John Epler]

Darji wrote...
yeah reloading is a huge issue here but there are also many people who actually dont realod decisions.  and so you can mostly satisfy both people. People who like to actually live with the consequences and people who will imidieatly reload. But atleast you personally tried it. It the player ruins the experience its their own fault. 

I really remmeber how I played Heavy Rain with no realoding at all. I messed events up, people died but I never reloaded and in the end I had one of the best expereiences in my life. I know you cant really transfer this to RPGs. But not knowing what the consequences  are would be a step into the right direction in my Opinion.

Trimming the quote tree:

What I'm hearing is that you want decisions with consequences that, even if they're negative, are negative in a narratively satisfying fashion. Am I right?

The issue with the aforementioned example is that, in the case of the weapon, the 'negative consequence' of the weapon not being very good isn't really satisfying. It's just a sword that kind of sucks. But in Heavy Rain, screwing up still have a good narrative beat - it wasn't 'positive', but it helped further the story in a different way and lead you down different paths.

I agree that you can't design around people who always reload. But I think that you can make a distinction between consequences that are just 'negative' and consequences that are 'negative', but which have some sort of narrative shift attached to them that makes them compelling.

[John Epler]

LPPrince wrote...

Perhaps the idea of sacrifice isn't such a good idea then.

I was mostly just working off of what Maria said - not specifically referencing sacrificing a companion, though.

And I think that there can be the idea of sacrifice - of choosing A instead of B. I don't think it needs to be as binary as 'choose X or Y, and forever lock out the other one!', but if you kill the Ancient Demon of Frost and harvest his essence, well, you only have one essence. You have to make the choice where you use that.

And maybe there's an Ancienter Demoness of Frost who also has a Frost Essence, but at the time you chose to use the Ancient Demon of Frost's essence you don't know she exists. So as far as you know, you are making a permanent choice, and even if you get to do the other thing later, well, you've had to deal with the consequence of your original choice for a while - at least until you get to the point where you fight the Demoness.

[John Epler]

You all are taking my example far too literally! I'm just using it as a 'here's an example of narrative consequence' sort of thing. But, yes, some consequences which don't reveal themselves until later are good. Though I think a healthy balance works well - some stuff that doesn't come up until down the road, and some stuff where there's an immediate and noticeable difference based on the choices you made. Alpha Protocol did the former quite well.