314 réponses à ce sujet

[Melca36]

Didn't they say that only like 5% or 10% of the players played dwarves in Origins?

[tmp7704]

Rorschachinstein wrote...

more developers need to come out and say "we need some ******** money to make what you want us to make". If that means making deals with the devil (Microsoft/EA) then by god let it be done.

That is, unfortunately not so simple -- for one, because people who provide the funding also generally acquire a say in how that money gets spent and what actually gets (and doesn't get) done.

[nightscrawl]

Melca36 wrote...

Didn't they say that only like 5% or 10% of the players played dwarves in Origins?

David did say that, BUT I strongly encourage you to read all of his posts on the subject. They basically boil down to a few salient points: 1) the numbers aren't that cut and dried; 2) the information doesn't tell them WHY someone would choose to make, not make, or finish a play with any given race; 3) just because a race isn't popular, doesn't mean they aren't going to make games with said race as an option, or make games without any unpopular options. He also specifically did NOT say that such information has led them to do/not do/add/not add anything in any upcoming DA game.

[LobselVith8]

Restraint wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

It could have been handled better in Origins. Simply because it wasn't doesn't mean it isn't possible.

We don't meet a thousand different characters, we meet only a handful of them. Also, if someone needs help and is desperate, I don't think the protagonist being an elf or a mage would be much of an issue. I certainly didn't see elves complaining when Hawke occassionally aided them.

I don't think there is some trick involved that Bioware just hadn't figured out for Origins. Either they add a ton of unique dialogue for NPCs and the protagonist and a significant amount of unique story and gameplay content, which would be impractical, or they handle it poorly like in origins.

I didn't say there has to be a thousand characters, but the vast majority of however many characters are in the next game would have to treat each race differently, as would the story itself if a story arc deals with issues between two races the player could potentially be playing. What if DA3 has an elf uprising in the game's major city? It requires either a ton of resources or a bad story to make both elf and human protagonists work for that arc.

As many times as you said Origins handled it poorly, it still managed to do a better job than Dragon Age II did. The fact that Hawke was the son of a known apostate was ignored and an apostate Hawke was ignored, even though the developers only had to focus on a human protagonist. We also have a game like Skyrim that has multiple characters address the potential race of the protagonist - who can be one of several different races. The race of the protagonist is addressed, with enemies having particular dialogue for those races, and some characters explicitly making reference to the race of your protagonist. In essence, I don't think it's impossible, or even impractical.

Restraint wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

I respectfully disagree. Meredith wasn't the daughter of a mage, and the noble was the scion of a prominent family. It isn't the same thing as being the progeny of a known apostate. In Andrastian society, the children of mages are taken away by the Chantry, unless the parents are Grey Warden mages, and we see two children of Malcolm Hawke walking around the city-state of Kirkwall. Why wouldn't people care that Hawke is the son of Malcolm? Why wouldn't people wonder if Hawke was an apostate like his (or her) father, even if Hawke was a warrior or a rogue (especially since Malcolm used his martial skills to pose as a mercenary throughout the Free Marches)?

Since when is Malcolm the most famous man in Thedas? You make me wonder how he managed to stay an apostate if every last person in the world knew the minutiae of his life and family tree. Besides as far as I can tell they take away the children of circle mages because the mages are prisoners, not because the children are tainted or anything. Wynne's kid for example was apparently taken to a chantry orphanage and later joined the templars.

Thedas lore isn't my hobby or anything, I mostly just play the games. Since they didn't give off a "Sins of the father" vibe I don't have any trouble believing there isn't a major stigma attached to being a mage's child.

Malcolm was a known apostate who was hunted by the templars, and Kirkwall is the center for templar power over eastern Thedas. Rather than ignoring the issue, I think it should have been addressed.

Restraint wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

I thought the scene with Bethany was poorly done. Hawke acted inhuman in that scene, simply standing idly by like a piece of furniture. Regardless, Hawke's status as the son of an apostate should have been incorporated into the story, rather than ignored. Even a warrior or a rogue Hawke should have faced discrimination from people for being the scion of an apostate.

I played femhawke and though it's been a while it felt to me more like she was forcing herself not to react because Bethany told her not to do anything. I felt like she was burning with rage and would have been more than willing to throw down with cullen and company if it wouldn't have endangered her family, and for the remaining four or so years of the story her main motivation was to free bethany from the templars.

The fact that Hawke didn't do anything is the issue, especially after Anders' quest "Tranquility." I couldn't complete a rogue Hawke when I saw that scene, and I really came to hate how inhuman Hawke was during that confrontation.

[Maria Caliban]

Get money to protect sister.
Get money, sister is taken by the Templars while you do nothing.

Yeah, Chapter 1 was a wash for me on my warrior playthrough.

[Reznore57]

I always play female human mage , but i can understand why people are bothered by the race thing.
If i can't have a female character in a game , i won't buy it.
The thing is if we get more races choices it had to reflect in the story somehow.
An elves might not be treated like a human etc..
In DAO , being a warden kinda solve this ,once you've joined the order ,what you were didn't matter much.(it also solves the being a mage problem^^)
So it depends on what kind of hero we 're gonna play , on how much backstory the character have (try picturing hawke being an elf and his/her life in kirkwall would have been totally different) etc..

[Restraint]

LobselVith8 wrote...

As many times as you said Origins handled it poorly, it still managed to do a better job than Dragon Age II did. The fact that Hawke was the son of a known apostate was ignored and an apostate Hawke was ignored, even though the developers only had to focus on a human protagonist. We also have a game like Skyrim that has multiple characters address the potential race of the protagonist - who can be one of several different races. The race of the protagonist is addressed, with enemies having particular dialogue for those races, and some characters explicitly making reference to the race of your protagonist. In essence, I don't think it's impossible, or even impractical.

I still don't agree that Hawke being Malcolm's child would be an issue, but even if it was I remain unconvinced by the "X was done badly so let's do Y just as badly" argument.

Also I doubt they're going to start taking cues from TES games on how to write a compelling narrative with strong characterization, since TES games don't have either of those things.

The entire reason I don't want to see a variable protagonist in the next DA game is because having nothing but a few shallow comments from NPCs ("Hello, you are an Elf!") takes away from the depth of that aspect of the story. And due to resource limitations I don't think Bioware would be able or willing to do more than that.

Modifié par Restraint, 30 mars 2012 - 08:24 .

[Unknown_Warrior]

LobselVith8 wrote...

Restraint wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

It could have been handled better in Origins. Simply because it wasn't doesn't mean it isn't possible.

We don't meet a thousand different characters, we meet only a handful of them. Also, if someone needs help and is desperate, I don't think the protagonist being an elf or a mage would be much of an issue. I certainly didn't see elves complaining when Hawke occassionally aided them.

I don't think there is some trick involved that Bioware just hadn't figured out for Origins. Either they add a ton of unique dialogue for NPCs and the protagonist and a significant amount of unique story and gameplay content, which would be impractical, or they handle it poorly like in origins.

I didn't say there has to be a thousand characters, but the vast majority of however many characters are in the next game would have to treat each race differently, as would the story itself if a story arc deals with issues between two races the player could potentially be playing. What if DA3 has an elf uprising in the game's major city? It requires either a ton of resources or a bad story to make both elf and human protagonists work for that arc.

As many times as you said Origins handled it poorly, it still managed to do a better job than Dragon Age II did. The fact that Hawke was the son of a known apostate was ignored and an apostate Hawke was ignored, even though the developers only had to focus on a human protagonist. We also have a game like Skyrim that has multiple characters address the potential race of the protagonist - who can be one of several different races. The race of the protagonist is addressed, with enemies having particular dialogue for those races, and some characters explicitly making reference to the race of your protagonist. In essence, I don't think it's impossible, or even impractical.

Criticism where criticism is due, but don't spout lies. Skyrim handles player race quite poorly. Aside from guard comments (which uses the same voice and line in all cities), infiltrating the embassy (which you probably don't even notice) and when joining the Stormcloaks, your race is not addressed. At best, some townfolk will make racist-undertoned remarks if you're not a Nord, and Argonians will have a slightly altered line if Argonian.

You know what? In Skyrim, Argonians and Khajit are NOT allowed to enter any city, but if the Dovahkiin is either they can walse into a city and NO ONE will even remark on it, even before they know you're Dovahkiin. Furthermore, even when interracial marriages is considered taboo, that is also not even slightly addressed. Neither is home ownership.

While I agree that mage Hawke shouldn't have been able to walk so freely without regard, don't use examples as Skyrim when it does even LESS to address a player's background than DA2 did.

[Always Alice]

These statistics are very interesting. Out of the 80% that played human, was it ever said how many nobles there were compared to mages, or vice versa? I always got the impression that human noble was FAR more popular than the mage, but I'm curious to see if the numbers might be closer than I thought.

Modifié par Always Alice, 31 mars 2012 - 04:50 .

[RonixisJK]

Well, if you got telemetry from 80% of customers, and it's split like that, we can certainly conclude that at least 64% played only human, and it's almost certainly higher. Even if the telemetry was from a lot less people, it could still be accurate if the sample is unbiased. I'm not really sure if this sample would be or not; one possibility that occurred to me is that the portion of players who chose human because it was the default would be much less likely to turn telemetry off (that being a rather non-default thing to do). If a future game does have racial choice, I propose an experiment (to determine what part of this is 'choose default' versus 'choose human'): have the initially selected default be random, and include in the telemetry whether they picked the randomly selected default or not. I don't really see any harm in it, and I for one would be interested to see what people do.

[FieryDove]

I guess some of us should have plugged in and let stats be collected. I know many of my wardens were dalish. I also had many dwarves. I didn't really care for the mage origin much.

I'm guessing I had about 55% Dalish
22% Dwarves
6% City Elves
4% Human Mage
1% Elf Mage
12% Human Noble

[Vovea]

The Dwarf Wardens in DAO were my favourite aspect of the game, mainly because I found their Origin's the most interesting (epically when going back to Orzammar). Though they were also a great race to play if you were new to the DA world as everything on the surface was new to them as well.

I liked being able to ask what the heck a Maker was, and when NPC's asked how could I know nothing about religion it was more fun to answer, "I'm a dwarf, duh," than, "I'm a stoopid human."

[ShadyKat]

Melca36 wrote...

Didn't they say that only like 5% or 10% of the players played dwarves in Origins?

It was around 3%.
Which to be honest is pretty sad since Drawf noble had the best Origin by far. A lot of people missed out.

[Huntress]

LobselVith8 wrote...

As many times as you said Origins handled it poorly, it still managed to do a better job than Dragon Age II did. The fact that Hawke was the son of a known apostate was ignored and an apostate Hawke was ignored, even though the developers only had to focus on a human protagonist. We also have a game like Skyrim that has multiple characters address the potential race of the protagonist - who can be one of several different races. The race of the protagonist is addressed, with enemies having particular dialogue for those races, and some characters explicitly making reference to the race of your protagonist. In essence, I don't think it's impossible, or even impractical.

I didn't know my Skyrim was so badly broken.. I created a Khajiit and able to go inside cities, the "other khajiit aren't allow"  in the cities yet mine can enter as a Khajiit and nothign happen. Let me clarify to the people who doesn't know that, you have to enter the city to be able to buy houses and to get quests from the jarl* ( ruler*).

I know that Cullen compleatly ignore that hawke is a mage in act1/act2/act3 even after the first encounter, fireballs raining from hawke fingerstip yet Cullen never react or try to put her in jail.. err circle, but Skyrim didn't do better either because My Khajiit is above the law.

Any way in DAO my preferid was dalish, I thought it was remarkable for a Dalish elf to be inside humans cities and see how the humans treat her kind .. second best was human noble. I don't like dwarves .. the way they walk and because of how stupid pants looks on female dwarf.

http://www.youtube.c...2eyjb1GI#t=858s

Modifié par Huntress, 18 avril 2012 - 03:03 .

[bEVEsthda]

Melca36 wrote...

Didn't they say that only like 5% or 10% of the players played dwarves in Origins?

One of the golden rules in marketing is never trust metrics unless you understand it in detail, and even if you're certain you understand it, don't bet the bank on it. The grand example is of course Hoover's famous fiasco, but EA/Bioware have in my opinion made a number of such mistakes too. And they seem to keep doing them. Of course we only know about those we've been told about, but: Spore's three installs, Origin's "only" 50% (?) finished the game, ...seem I've forgotten the third.

Anyway, only 5% - 10% played dwarves? The first thing to consider is not that itself, but how many are planning to play the dwarf Origin. It's not just that the availability of a choice is a quality in itself, one also have to understand that what people actually find time and occcasion to do, and what they hope to do, or plan to do, are two different thing. And the thing they want and consume for, is what they are planning to do.

What if women's shoe stores in Hollywood relied on metrics on how far women walked or how many different shoes they actually wear a year? They'd all have to close down, wouldn't they?

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 18 avril 2012 - 03:53 .