Ghandorian wrote...
yes thinking is scary.
And making observations based on graphical input and overall success or failure is far too much to expect from some people. A five year old can tell you 7 is bigger than 5. But paying attention to the overall outcome and analyzing strategies and tactics (without the aid of 7-5=+2 so its all good) takes much more thought and involvement.
The missing numbers from some descriptions being defended by claiming it is a good thing as it presents an additional challenge to the gamer is as flawed as the immersion and realism defences.
For one, as with the immersion and realism defences, it does not pay attention to the inconsistency in the absence or appearance of numbers in the game. If the idea was to make it harder than glancing at some values and force the player to playtest their choices and try to deduce the effectiveness of things, it would be applied to not just talent and spell descriptions - we'd also not be given the numbers in other equivalent descriptions, yet we are, so it can't logically be regarded as an effort to add a new type of gameplay any more than it can be regarded as being chosen for immersion or realism reasons. Appeals to realism, immersion, challenge, ease of use - all don't make sense in the context of the overall design which does, generally, provide numbers, and frequently. It's a case of "ah yes, no numbers in that spell description, that's great, more realistic" one minute, then pretending there aren't floaty numbers above heads and stats everywhere else the next. Doesn't hold up at all.
Secondly, as Dark83 a few posts above this points out, if the idea was that the player should deduce effects from visual feedback and outcomes, then that visual feedback would need to be more variable with the effects than it is.
Thirdly, the resulting 'challenge' would be one I'd consider an unnecessary and contrived one in the context of DAO and many CRPGs as a whole - it's fine to have some advanced mechanics stuff hidden from casual observation for players to dig up (perks for the hardcore going that extra mile are cool, I dig for them), but expecting in general for players to fight with an interface to know some basics rather than fighting with the enemies and genuine gameplay challenges is kind of like adding challenge by failing to inform the player what the controls are and thinking they'll be pleasantly challenged from pressing all the keys on their keyboard until they deduce which ones move their avatar in which direction - might be challenging, but it's a pointless, artificial, and contrived challenge.
Finally, regardless of whether a player feels pleasantly challenged by the absence of the numbers or disappointed and frustrated by it, attributing the absence to a wise design choice by appeals to realism, immersion, challenge, ease of use, etc. all overlook the point that the designers have provided their reason for it - they wanted to, but the descriptions were locked down for localization before they could put the numbers in. The appeals to realism, immersion, challenge, and/or ease of use also don't sit cohesively given that the absence of numbers is certainly not consistent across the game - numbers are more present than they are absent for the majority of the gameplay (so I can only assume that the spell/skill description part is seen by the challenge/realism/immersion/ease-of-use crowd as the best bit, and the rest isn't so hot because it has those meddling numbers in).
The scariest thinking I see on these forums is when consumers are so perturbed by the possibility of imperfection in something they love that they will abandon logic and reason to reframe those imperfections as strokes of genius with generally tenuous and self-conflicting reasoning, even after the creator admits to the imperfection and explains it isn't what was wanted and is an unfortunate consequence of scheduling. I like to think that I love DAO as much as its staunchest defenders, but I think it's good enough to not need its uglier aspects glossing over. If there's a spelling mistake on page 23 of the manual where Dragon Age is spelled Dargon Age, it's most likely a spelling mistake rather than a genius reference to the name of a fictional dragon in an obscure Russian folk story.*
*btw there isn't
Modifié par Statue, 01 décembre 2009 - 11:27 .
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