126 réponses à ce sujet

[AkiKishi]

Filler varies. If you take Blitzball in FFX , that's filler. It's also worthy of being a game in it's own right. That's filler done the right way

I borrowed this from the ME3 boards.



That pale blue area there, that's filler done the wrong way.

[PsychoBlonde]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
I agree that the Deep Roads carried on longer than I would have liked.  I didn't mind The Fade as much due to the puzzle nature, but I know a lot of people that don't care for it.  As far as I know though, those are plot paths that you must finish before returning to the open world (been a while since I played others and I'm not a content tester

The Fade would have been better if it wasn't a long section glued on to the end of ANOTHER long section (the Circle Tower).  I always wound up playing it at 2am because I'd hack my way to the top of the Circle Tower, then remember OMG that's right this isn't the end I gotta do the damn Fade TOO frick just get it over with the brown swirly colors look better when you're half out of your mind with exhaustion anyway . . .

Deep Roads was kinda the same.  Orzammar was fairly big and had quite a few things you wanted to accomplish.  Then, after ALL THAT RUNNING AROUND, HERE'S ANOTHER BIG SECTION YOU GOTTA DO.

By comparison, the elven forest bit felt TINY, and you could walk off and do something else pretty much AT ANY TIME.

If Orzammar/Deep Roads and Circle Tower/Fade were structured in such a way as to have natural breaks between them, they wouldn't have felt nearly so interminable.  It might actually have made the game feel bigger and more open if they'd been more distinctly separate. 

A section-to-section path like that also feels best (to me) at the end of the game, not (potentially) just after you're getting started or right in the middle.  I think the best structure for a game is to follow how the player learns to play.  When you start out, you're not really sure what you're doing, so having lots of short, relatively simple threads that you can pretty much follow up on in any order feels right.  As you start to grasp what's going on, I'd prefer the threads to begin to interweave into a longer but more direct rope leading you onwards.

A lot of games take the opposite approach, though.  They start you off in an almost choiceless scenario, leading you by the nose while they info-dump plot onto you.  Then, they cut you loose to run around doing random stuff for a long time.  Finally, after you've decided that you've run back and forth as many times as you plan to and you've tied off every loose end that you intend to tie, the nose-ring reappears and yanks you through a few scenes to the end.

I think I would have liked DA2 better if the nonsense "quests" (clearing out gangs, returning people's belongings, finding special alchemist's ingredients, etc.) had ALL been in the first act, and ALL the main plot quests aside from the Deep Roads Expedition (First Sacrifice, Shepherding Wolves, etc.) had STARTED no earlier than Act 2.  The game certainly wouldn't have felt as repetitive if there'd been no reason to "re-explore" every area just to pick up all the new crap that respawns between acts.  If ALL that stuff had been in the first act, too, the world would have felt more full of "stuff", and by Act 2 you wouldn't notice any more because you'd go from one area to another just by map-teleporting straight there.  The developing urgency and complexity of the plot would hold your attention.

This sort of thing works fantastically well in games like Gothic (and Risen, although I hold Gothic to still be the superior game due to Risen's excruciatingly drawn-out ending).  Gothic is practically unique among open-world RPG's in that when you first start out, you don't even have a MAP.  There's NO fast-travel until almost the very end of the game.  What you can do is ask several NPC's to show you how to get somewhere--and they do.  Physically.  You have to follow them.  They also do you a huge service by helping you kill the many wandering monsters that are probably too tough for you alone early on in the game.  The roads aren't just scenery, they're there so you can USE THEM.  Going off of them early in the game is DANGEROUS and probably FATAL.  And when it gets dark at night, you hurry home because you really CAN'T see in the dark without a torch, and wandering off a cliff = not so good.

By the middle of the game, you've acquired a map.  You've explored *most* of the game world, apart from a few tantalizing nooks and crannies surrounded by monsters you just cannot beat, even by cheating.  You have a light spell (or scrolls at least), so you can explore in the dark AND fight at the same time.

At the END of the game, you now can teleport between several locations that are a very short run from *everywhere* you need to be.  And you go clear out the Mysterious Crannies of Doom one after the other.

It's a VERY effective structure.  I'm not saying ALL games should be EXACTLY like this, but there are lessons to be learned from all effective structures.  DA2 did not have the best of structures.  Main plot and side plot and side quests all intermingled in a messy hash.  This, if anything else, could use radical improvement.

Modifié par PsychoBlonde, 14 avril 2012 - 04:37 .

[LegendaryBlade]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
I agree that the Deep Roads carried on longer than I would have liked.  I didn't mind The Fade as much due to the puzzle nature, but I know a lot of people that don't care for it.  As far as I know though, those are plot paths that you must finish before returning to the open world (been a while since I played others and I'm not a content tester

The Fade would have been better if it wasn't a long section glued on to the end of ANOTHER long section (the Circle Tower).  I always wound up playing it at 2am because I'd hack my way to the top of the Circle Tower, then remember OMG that's right this isn't the end I gotta do the damn Fade TOO frick just get it over with the brown swirly colors look better when you're half out of your mind with exhaustion anyway . . .

Deep Roads was kinda the same.  Orzammar was fairly big and had quite a few things you wanted to accomplish.  Then, after ALL THAT RUNNING AROUND, HERE'S ANOTHER BIG SECTION YOU GOTTA DO.

By comparison, the elven forest bit felt TINY, and you could walk off and do something else pretty much AT ANY TIME.

If Orzammar/Deep Roads and Circle Tower/Fade were structured in such a way as to have natural breaks between them, they wouldn't have felt nearly so interminable.  It might actually have made the game feel bigger and more open if they'd been more distinctly separate. 

This is why I always, always, ALWAYS use the Skip the Fade mod. It keeps the important parts of the Fade (The companions dreams and the boss fight) but removes the long, drawn out section while still giving you all the exp and codexs. Playing through the Fade once was enough; I didn't hate it but I have no intention of doing it on any future playthrus.

Deep Roads hardly registers to me as something too long though, maybe it's because it was very well paced and didn't feel disjointed like the circle-fade transition.

You know what though? I would take an entire game of these long, drawn out sections over the weird cutting and pacing of DA2. Everything felt so disconnected in that game, it was jarring.

[PsychoBlonde]

LegendaryBlade wrote...

You know what though? I would take an entire game of these long, drawn out sections over the weird cutting and pacing of DA2. Everything felt so disconnected in that game, it was jarring.

It didn't help that I preferred to clear EVERY SINGLE ONE of my in-town quest flags before I'd visit the "wilderness" areas, so by the time I got out there I'd have 4-5 unrelated quests to do.  It was less like adventuring and more like running errands.

[LegendaryBlade]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

LegendaryBlade wrote...

You know what though? I would take an entire game of these long, drawn out sections over the weird cutting and pacing of DA2. Everything felt so disconnected in that game, it was jarring.

It didn't help that I preferred to clear EVERY SINGLE ONE of my in-town quest flags before I'd visit the "wilderness" areas, so by the time I got out there I'd have 4-5 unrelated quests to do.  It was less like adventuring and more like running errands.

I generally do the same thing in RPGs, i'm a completionist and I try to get all the in-town stuff out of the way before I head out. Felt like there was a lot of 'get me this thing and I will say a one liner and give you gold' in DA2. I don't recall running in to as much of that in DA:O

Not to mention the infamous "You dropped this" "I've been looking every for this!" exchange when you give this guy a SKELETON.

[Rez275]

Longer would be better, but that isn't all it needs in my opinion. Mass Effect 3 considered, they at least know how to make some nice, presentable scenes...but there needs to be more than that as well, as I found myself eventually cursing at all the unskippable scenes and dialogues(but that's kind of off-topic).

What I really want, is a call back to the infinity engine games in combat scale, and plot movement. DA2 bored me, because Kirkwall and its events...were largely very mundane, and in my opinion, Dragon Age 3 needs to really "go big, or go home."

I miss how, in many other Bioware titles, you usually make trips to these varied, amazing sometimes entirely different locales, not just for random field trips, but as exposition, and plot importance.

I miss the ancient plots, demonic controlled puppet rulers, and conspiring gods, the sense of dread and peril of the old games. The incredibly nervewracking battles on nightmare, where everything could go wrong within the first few seconds of combat, the customization of your party member's equipment, and the rare, and epic loot, including those pesky pieces that had to be reforged or re-powered after finding all the components of the broken weapon.

Dragon Age's universe has quite a few things, that could be expanded on, many only barely hinted at plots that could be used. It's not always a bad thing to reveal things to the players, but its is bad if it is not well thought out, presented badly, or poorly explained.

The biggest things I personally would hope to see further explored/touched upon, or at least explained more would be:

1. Morrigan/god child
2. Flemeth. what she really is, what is her goal if any
3. Sandal
4. The black/gold city, and the connected events to it
5. The old gods, and elven gods, what they really are/ truth regarding them
6. Urthemiel/Dumat, and why both of them seem to be of such importance beyond simply being Archdemons
7. The maker. What is it, is it a god? An elven god? An old god who betrayed the others? A demon? Does it even really exist?
8. Possibly more variations, versions of the fade? I know they are meant to be imperfect reflections of the waking world, but what if a portion of the fade were reflected through a broken mirror so to speak?

[Uccio]

People, if you go already as low as 20h of gameplay and complain that "60h cannot be good one" yyou are already accepting mediocre standards. There is no heaven written rule that 20h is somehow more "amazing" and 60h is not. It all boils down how much us as customers demand, nothing more. Yes, I believe Bioware is capable of making 60h outstanding game, heck even 100h one. But, they will do not do it unless customers call for it and are ready to pay for it. I know I am. 100h or bust!

Modifié par Ukki, 14 avril 2012 - 07:27 .

[Dakota Strider]

If we are talking RPG's, a short game, is a bad game.  Don't know where EA gets their data from, but I am guessing even their Madden players, want games that last longer than 20 hours.

For DA3 to tie together all the different threads that are hanging loose out there, or even to make a good start at it, the game would have to be a long game.  That is assuming, that the protagonist needs to go to different regions around the known world, and deal with these different situations.  Each region will have its own problems and situations to be solved.  The player choosing to take one route, may cause another roleplay path to be closed to him/her altogether, which would contribute to the different possible endings.  It would also lead to more gameplay, by making the second, third, fourth playthroughs of the game more meaningful, as there are more things to discover.

Also, while romances are not "necessary", I have yet to see a game they have not enhanced to various degrees.  Having multiple options in this regard, also leads to more unique playthroughs, especially if these choices lead to consequences that affect overall gameplay, in the development of the character.

For me, a game that I love playing, is too short if it stops before 100 hours.   A game that lasts less than 50 hours would definitely feel like I was being ripped off.  If Bioware wishes to recapture their reputation, and trust with their fans, they need to make a truly epic DA3, that goes far beyond the standard time it takes to play the average, modern crpg.

[deuce985]

60 hour experience? I think that will drag on personally. They had several parts in DA:O that were completely unnecessary in the main story.

I thought the pacing was better in DA2 but where it suffered was the fact everything was over too quickly. Conversations with Arishok builds up into a big conflict...stuff happens and it's over before it began. That's how everything happened in DA2. That left me with a sad face because the Arishok was a really interesting character...as was the Quanari.

About a 20-25 hour main story experience with another 15-20 added with side-quests. That's the sweet spot.  About a 40 hour experience with 20 being optional, IMO.

Modifié par deuce985, 15 avril 2012 - 06:14 .

[Dakota Strider]

What's the rush? Nobody is saying you need to play the game straight through, or try to finish it in a couple nights. Back in the day, when I played AD&D campaigns with live people, we had games that went on for months, or even over a year. Actual game play (realizing that not every moment was strictly gaming) was easily in the hundreds of hours, per campaign.

The object of a CRPG should not be to reach the ending. The fun is the path it takes to reach it. And I for one, would appreciate a long, twisty path, with lots of detours, back-tracks, and site seeing along the way. It is not a race to see who can finish first to post on the forums to prove what a great player you are.

Modifié par Dakota Strider, 15 avril 2012 - 07:17 .

[Uncleansed]

Bioware can create fantastic games if they are given enough time. I wish they were independent, and not owned by EA.

[Uccio]

Dakota Strider wrote...

What's the rush? Nobody is saying you need to play the game straight through, or try to finish it in a couple nights. Back in the day, when I played AD&D campaigns with live people, we had games that went on for months, or even over a year. Actual game play (realizing that not every moment was strictly gaming) was easily in the hundreds of hours, per campaign.

The object of a CRPG should not be to reach the ending. The fun is the path it takes to reach it. And I for one, would appreciate a long, twisty path, with lots of detours, back-tracks, and site seeing along the way. It is not a race to see who can finish first to post on the forums to prove what a great player you are.

x 2, exactly, for this and your previous post.

[Satyricon331]

Dakota Strider wrote...

If we are talking RPG's, a short game, is a bad game.  Don't know where EA gets their data from, but I am guessing even their Madden players, want games that last longer than 20 hours.

For DA3 to tie together all the different threads that are hanging loose out there, or even to make a good start at it, the game would have to be a long game.  That is assuming, that the protagonist needs to go to different regions around the known world, and deal with these different situations.  Each region will have its own problems and situations to be solved.  The player choosing to take one route, may cause another roleplay path to be closed to him/her altogether, which would contribute to the different possible endings.  It would also lead to more gameplay, by making the second, third, fourth playthroughs of the game more meaningful, as there are more things to discover.

Also, while romances are not "necessary", I have yet to see a game they have not enhanced to various degrees.  Having multiple options in this regard, also leads to more unique playthroughs, especially if these choices lead to consequences that affect overall gameplay, in the development of the character.

For me, a game that I love playing, is too short if it stops before 100 hours.   A game that lasts less than 50 hours would definitely feel like I was being ripped off.  If Bioware wishes to recapture their reputation, and trust with their fans, they need to make a truly epic DA3, that goes far beyond the standard time it takes to play the average, modern crpg.

I agree.  I think a long game with an involved, intricate plot is better than a flash-in-the-pan game, and is a must for DA3 if it's to do justice to the huge swath of Thedas they said we'll cover.  I generally prefer novels to short stories.

I'm pretty pessimistic Bioware will deliver, though.

[Wozearly]

BobSmith101 wrote...

That pale blue area there, that's filler done the wrong way.

...and that purple section is a brave new step into uncharted, uncomfortable territory. MP features are technically optional, but have SP consequences if you ignore them, as you need the points from them (or a paid-for app) in order to get the 'best' outcome for the ending of the SP storyling...

The growth of the fetch / FedEx quests annoy me, because the damn things are so lazy. Its not a huge problem to have a few that result in some small-scale additional rewards on returning to the nearby Hub and handing them in, but its irritating when you find yourself having to go out of your way to hand them in for that small-scale reward and generic thanks dialogue. Or when there are tons of them (Mass Effect 1 felt like it had the balance right).

Much more worrying to me is the growth of the "we put in some new features, but are worried people won't use them of their own accord / we won't generate enough money from them, so we have to shove it in their faces and/or interfere with their passage through the game if they don't."

Having multiplayer options? Fine by me. Forcing people to use them or give money to prop up EA2D's mediocre efforts in spin-off games in order to fully complete the SP campaign? Wrong on so many levels.

Paid for story DLC? Again, fine by me. Advertising them using in-game characters like Levi Dryden on top of the adverts on the launcher? No, just plain wrong.

Paid for epic item DLC? Well, it doesn't float my boat to pay money to get EZ mode, as I'd naively assumed that was what the difficulty slider was for. I wouldn't mind, but the rise of item DLC also conveniently co-incided with the demise of Toolsets (presumably on the basis it would undermine the item DLC if players can create equivalent things and upload them as well as other forms of modding). So I'm not a happy bunny.

Day 1 DLC? Stone Prisoner being free to new sales as a method of (hopefully) getting some money from the resales market, absolutely fine by me. From Ashes? It was clear that the full game at launch was...erm...not actually the full game, as it had a character hacked out of it. Not asking people who'd bought Deluxe / Collectors Editions to pay for this on top was sensible, because they'd have hit the roof. But then asking the majority of people who bought the 'normal' editions to shell out extra was...well, they hit the roof too. Again, wrong, wrong wrong.

Can we not be trusted to be aware of in-game features and DLC and make decisions to use / buy them based on whether we want to, given what we want from the game and how much we enjoy it?

Is that really such a big ask?

Modifié par Wozearly, 15 avril 2012 - 11:55 .

[freche]

I think a 20-30 hour game is good enough (I wouldn't mind longer if it didn't effect the quality of the majority content). Spend the dev. time in doing these hours really good instead of using copy -> paste content just to get the play time up to ~60h.

And I agree with Wozearly about DLCs.
I understand the need for Day-1 DLCs, they promote people to buy new copies of the game and it also allow the companies to release the game in time and add some final touch.

As for DLC items I think that is crap. First of all I want them but normally they just get delivered to me and I don't have to "work" to get them.
And exclusive DLC items to promote the release should just be avoided all together. And I think these kinds of items just promotes piracy, if I'd want all the items I wouldn't go and buy a legal copy of the game and then use some dirty hack to get items (at least not now when about every game is tied to some account that could get banned.)
ONE way they could do promo-items would be to let pre-orders have access to them at launch but after a month make them available for everyone (for free). I still wouldn't like this way but it would at least be acceptable.

Paid-DLC should be in the quality of the Stone Prisoner, LotSB or Legacy.

And PLEASE bring back real expansions

[The_11thDoctor]

Your talking like Flimmeth and Morrigan arent the same person... thats another topic. 60 is what your willing to settle for? How about we have DAO level of hrs in the game. Thats what I want. If that means I take a few months to beat it if I get busy, So what? I want my 100+ hrs story to return.

[Uccio]

^ hear hear!

[deuce985]

What I wouldn't mind Bioware doing is making about a 40 hour experience but removing more side-quests and just add more main plot. Instead of a 20 hour experience for the main story...30.

I doubt they'd do that though. Not with gamers today with attention span problems. I think anything over 40 hours for a story based game is really pushing it, IMO. You can get plenty of character development and story in a game that size. DA:O had waaaaaaaaaay too many filler moments, even in the main story. The pacing was bad. Like going to the alienage or the fade sequence. If Bioware can make a 60 hour experience where most of the content doesn't feel filler...have at it. I think I've yet to play a long story based game like that who didn't have major filler moments all through the game...

[Atakuma]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Filler varies. If you take Blitzball in FFX , that's filler. It's also worthy of being a game in it's own right. That's filler done the right way

I borrowed this from the ME3 boards.



That pale blue area there, that's filler done the wrong way.

That chart doesn't mention that while both me1 and me2 had more side quests than me3 most of them were considerably shorter. Also making a seperate color for "multiplayer quests" is just cheating. /rant

[Wozearly]

Atakuma wrote...

That chart doesn't mention that while both me1 and me2 had more side quests than me3 most of them were considerably shorter. Also making a seperate color for "multiplayer quests" is just cheating. /rant

Oh, there's no doubt that the chart is written from a biased perspective.

It does, however, make a valid point. ME3 had a larger number of Fetch quests, just as DA2 did compared to DA:O, to the point where it was noticeable. And it added in multiplayer elements affecting SP outcomes.

A fair chunk of people, judging by the forums, are not happy with those decisions.

[Dakota Strider]

ME3 fetch quests were the stupidest quests you could imagine. "Ping" a planet with your scanner, when you got answer, with the skill a 4 year old could master, you target the spot with your probe. Fetch completed. Then race to the nearest Mass Relay ahead of the Reapers. While I generally like quests of all sorts, that game device was an insult to the players. It would be nice if all fetch quests had something to do with the overall objective of the game, but that is not realistic...except....everything your character does, in some way or another, tests and strengthens him/her to prepare for the next step on the journey. Sometimes it is hard to see that, but even the acquisition of a few coins here and there can add up to make a difference in the end.

[Khayness]

Measuring in hours can be deceiving. I clocked 72 hours on my first DA2 run. Was it because it is a magnificent epic bulging with content?

No, I played on Nightmare and the combat is nothing but an annoying, repetitive and boring filler.