399 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Kingdoms of Amalur.

Exploration and open-world, but still small and focused enough that the main plot never falls by the wayside.

I wish I'd been able to see more of that game.  In the end, I couldn't get past the action combat and the shallowness of the destiny system.

And I should add that I don't see any need to keep the main pliot front and centre.  That DA2 didn't do that is the thing I like most about DA2.  It was the first time we've seen BioWare do that since Baldur's Gate, and I'd like them to keep doing it.

Exploration and free travel between areas allows the character to obey his own motives without being bound to the plot, particularly if (like in DA2) the plot isn't made known to the character.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 11 avril 2012 - 07:07 .

[Fraevar]

simfamSP wrote...

I think the Deep Roads didn't do the novels any justice. David Gaider makes them seem like the deepest, darkest hell hole since Moria.

I'll concede that the in-game implementation was a bit more...clean than the books had made them out to be. But in terms of technical implementation I'm sure it's not easy to come up with a look that symbolizes millenia of corruption without it becoming a uniform "bad" look. Ressource allocation would presumably be a problem.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The Deep Roads would have been better if they'd simply been longer. More trudging through the darkness. More poking around looking for things. Less frequent encounters.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Maria Caliban wrote...

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Less exploration, more story.

How can you have less exploration than Dragon Age II? I don't recall there being any.

No random exploration at all is too much.

John Epler wrote...

So you need to design exploration content appropriately - there should be goals, either explicit or implicit, and these goals should tie back into the main plot in some way.

I'm happy even when they're mini-stories, like in MotA, where you had the sky people and their little story connected to the world's dumbest scholar standing naked in the woods.  The worst exploration was some of the forest section of NWN, when the party moves a screen, fight 300 wolves, then goes another screen and fights six bears.  That's terrible and boring.

[LolaLei]

SeanMurphy2 wrote...

Also is there a practical way to improve the sense of exploration within an urban area like Hightown, Denerim or Redcliffe? Or do even Skyrim cities get boring after a while. And eventually you still get bored of looking at the architecture, dynamic npcs, vendors and quest content.



I always wondered how Bioware are so great at creating emotions and attachment to your companion characters and bring them to life. But not as effective in creating emotional feelngs towards a location.

Redcliffe was good. It felt like a functioning community, I cared about the people there and it was a beautiful setting next to the lake.

But also Alistair had his childhood there. So I suppose I could look out onto the lake and imagine him fishing or swimming there as a kid. Or a funny story of him interacting with one of the current townspeople. Or him hiding in the tree after an argument with the Arl's wife.

But it is not feasible to have companions tell endless stories about each location. Or lore dump using codex entries or books.

Things like dynamic weather would help a little with stuff like that. Seeing the towns/cities/forests/etc at different times of the day like dawn/dusk, seeing how it changes in the rain/snow/sun etc. But that would probably take a lot of resources... Would be nice to see that in a Dragon Age game though.

I love your idea about the characters telling a story about each location (kinda like how MotA and the Mass Effect games had view points during which one of the companions would tell a little story or make a comment about the location as you got a sweeping view of the area.)

Modifié par LolaLei, 11 avril 2012 - 07:28 .

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

John Epler wrote...

I don't know, I think that the Deep Roads envisioned a little more like the Mines of Moria in LOTRO would be neat. I think the Deep Roads in DA:O suffered from being in a sort of middle-ground - they were too big to serve as a straightforward plot area, but too small to truly feel 'epic'. Though I still did enjoy them - I love underground areas more than most, especially the 'forgotten architecture' feeling.

The forgotten thaig and that hunger spirit's realm were excellent for that kind of forgotten architecture feeling, but then they ended before they really began.  I felt like there was much more there, but we had to get out of the pool because a whale had peed in it or something.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Arthur Cousland wrote...

Even though the Deep Roads in Origins may have gone on a bit too long, I still enjoyed them.  Whenever I come across ruin-type areas, I can't help but want to explore, and wonder what the place was like when people still lived there.  My inner-archaeologist comes out.

I feel the same way... but given a choice between wandering around ten areas wondering what happened to them... and hearing a story that someone came up with regarding three areas... I'll take the three stories over the ten empty areas.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

PurebredCorn wrote...

I really enjoy underground areas as well. Blackreach in Skyrim was pretty amazing with the ruins still relatively intact and parts of machinery still working and the giant glow-y mushroom clusters were awesome. Something like that is probably too big for the next DA but stumbling onto something so unexpected was pretty spectacular.

Great example!  High point of Skyrim, for me.  Without the codex entries and the journal notes laying around to tell you about the frost elves and the dwemer there... Blackreach just becomes another empty cave with glowy stuff in it you can walk through.  Sure, it's pretty, but it's better because you get a sense of what happened there... the story of the city.

[AkiKishi]

LolaLei wrote...

I love your idea about the characters telling a story about each location (kinda like how MotA and the Mass Effect games had view points during which one of the companions would tell a little story or make a comment about the location as you got a sweeping view of the area.)

Final Fantasy X did that each time you entered a new area.

 from 5:30

That sort of thing every time you entered a new area would be quite informative. Works better when the character is equally clueless though. Otherwise it just comes across as insulting like ME3's "tutorial".

[LolaLei]

BobSmith101 wrote...

LolaLei wrote...

I love your idea about the characters telling a story about each location (kinda like how MotA and the Mass Effect games had view points during which one of the companions would tell a little story or make a comment about the location as you got a sweeping view of the area.)

Final Fantasy X did that each time you entered a new area.

 from 5:30

That sort of thing every time you entered a new area would be quite informative. Works better when the character is equally clueless though. Otherwise it just comes across as insulting like ME3's "tutorial".

Lol, yeah you don't want it to sound like a history lecture. But something like, one of the companions grew up in that area and tells you about the trouble he/she used to get into, or someone makes a smart arse comment or joke about a particularly ugly statue in the middle of a town or how awful the ale is here etc. Just silly little things that make you smile really.

[Pedrak]

Maria Caliban wrote...

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Less exploration, more story.

How can you have less exploration than Dragon Age II?

Mass Effect 3.

Sadly.

Modifié par Pedrak, 11 avril 2012 - 08:27 .

[Pedrak]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The Deep Roads would have been even more boring if they'd simply been longer. More trudging through the darkness. More poking around looking for things. Less frequent encounters.

Fixed for you.

Frankly, more dungeon crawling mucking about in dark, empty locations is exactly the kind of exploration DA3 doesn't need.

Incidentally, I think lack of exploration is the main reason Bio games tend to sell a lot less than Bethesda's even if they are better written.

Players enjoy exploration, just like they enjoy customization. They enjoy losing themselves in a vivid and believable fantasy world. And Bio is giving less and less exploration in its last games. Big mistake, even commercially.

That's why sandbox games sell like hotcakes, and a game like Fallout 3 is more successful than the ME games, even if those have better characters and stories.

Modifié par Pedrak, 11 avril 2012 - 08:35 .

[John Epler]

Pedrak wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The Deep Roads would have been even more boring if they'd simply been longer. More trudging through the darkness. More poking around looking for things. Less frequent encounters.

Fixed for you.

Frankly, more dungeon crawling mucking about in dark, empty locations is exactly the kind of exploration DA3 doesn't need.

The problem with the Deep Roads is that, if we did them the same way as we did in DA:O, making them longer wouldn't really solve anything. However, there's certainly room for unique spaces, just like out on the surface. I admit to bias, though - since I read the Ted the Caver stories a long time ago, the idea of 'what do we -really- know about what happens underground' has intrigued me. Particularly since the Deep Roads have been, in parts, lost for a lengthy period of time - if you keep it from being repetitive corridors and you make it narratively interesting (Skyrim does this very well in some of their 'non-plot' caves, as does STALKER), you can make it fun. And you can, of course, have opportunities to rest/recuperate or return to the surface, but done logically (something Fallout:NV does very well)

[Cutlasskiwi]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Every time I see a poster throw the term "we" around my eye starts twitching.

Right or left eye?


On topic: I would not mind a bit more exploring but it does not have to be bigger areas. Maybe move a few shops inside again so I can interact with a city more by entering some houses. Things like that.

[Takamori The Templar]

If you want exploration to be the key of Dragon Age 3, you need to do a real scale of Orlais for example and the region around it.
After getting the real scale it done, need a dungeon designer to add life to key points and content to the game.
Skyrim had flaws for being souless in terms of questing(No consequences at all), but the dungeons being handcrafted made it for it (in terms I'm still get grumpy with it)

Dear John Epler, I would prefer a focus in one area, so you can get a large realistic exploration instead of plenty areas of DA, getting the consequence of chopped content and kinda feel dizzy of where the hell am I now?!

[Takamori The Templar]

Sorry for double posting but I made a post on Map design concern too, how you guys plan to do it?
Dragon Age 2 felt like endless corridors and waves of mobs being throwed in my face.
Do you guys plan to go back to old school map design, hiring an evil Dungeon Master to get it done and putting the monsters carefully in each area making logic of which where they belong?

Modifié par Takamori The Templar, 11 avril 2012 - 08:48 .

[Dragoonlordz]

Pedrak wrote...

Incidentally, I think lack of exploration is the main reason Bio games tend to sell a lot less than Bethesda's even if they are better written.

Players enjoy exploration, just like they enjoy customization. They enjoy losing themselves in a vivid and believable fantasy world. And Bio is giving less and less exploration in its last games. Big mistake, even commercially.

That's why sandbox games sell like hotcakes, and a game like Fallout 3 is more successful than the ME games, even if those have better characters and stories.

I kind of agree with this, I can only speak for myself but the reason Skyrim was bought by me was the amount of things you could do, the living aspect of the world. Large areas free to explore, NPCs not static with own lives plus wildlife/weather/day and night passing instead of forced between on and off, large amount of customisation and such elements. I think of it this way, where Bioware wants to focus on certain people (companions and protaganist plus some NPC's) within their world in their stories over the years the world has taken a more and more backseat to this to their detriment. I feel it is the same for most people as to why Skyrim sold so much more.

The world in which the people live being as important if not more so than a select few people within it. Witcher 2 had the ideal blend of the two focuses with both character being important but also the world and even they added a living element. The more Bioware focuses on characters and less on the immersion within the world, not just minimising the world locations to specific companions and missions is not the best way to get people immersed in the world they created or the lore, all it does is get you more immersed in those few characters.

Until Bioware realises the world matters as much as those characters I think they will never reach Skyrim levels of sales, but don't get me wrong their games are good enough for me to gain some enjoyment just not as much as Skyrim or Witcher 2. Dragon Age Origins due to the amount of customisation races/origins, equipment and skills that made up for it including enough of the world and lore to help this and lastly characters so well built upon in foundation to put it on par with Skyrim and Witcher 2.

Dragon Age 2 lacked those elements and therefore had nothing to fall back on once removed even more immersion in the world replaced with yet more focus on characters which could not make up for it. The characters themselves were lacking too much, the locations were forced both through routing and repetition, uninteresting and too linear, removed all those interesting elements such as out of combat skills, customiation, crafting. In the end it failed at everything outside few of the characters it managed to do okay with. This does not make a great game.

I keep telling Bioware this but so far it's the one thing that seems to be ignored.

Modifié par Dragoonlordz, 11 avril 2012 - 09:23 .

[Chiramu]

Exploration in RPGs that led to rewards was nice , like running into little crevices on the map because there could be a treasure chest is a good incentive to explore. But too much exploration can be boring, especially if you're on foot :<. TES series is really too big of a world and you really have to be a nut for the series to enjoy it, it's not the type of game just anyone can sort of pick up and play because of all the running around (and horses are expensive).

I think Origins had a little too little exploration though, need to be able to find a happy medium in there somewhere :<.

[Darth Krytie]

Since DA isn't final fantasy, exploration can be tricky...there's no need for grinding and there's a smaller bestiary than in games with lots of places to kill things for the sake of killing things...So, there'd need to be a real reason for the exploration or you're just wasting time running from here to there for a sword that's likely not as good as the one you're already slaying things with...

I wouldn't mind if I chose to go to this optional location and there was a side quest...one that wouldn't penalize the game for lack of doing it, but enriches it if I did.

Modifié par Darth Krytie, 11 avril 2012 - 09:08 .

[Cat Fancy]

I enjoyed the Deep Roads, actually. I find ruins and lost history interesting, and I like caves. You also didn't have to go through all the dungeons in one go, did you? I usually picked up Oghren and messed around elsewhere.

On the other hand, exploration isn't really something that interests me too much. I burn out on open-world, sandbox RPGs (not that there's any reason to believe that the next Dragon Age will be one). Honestly, I didn't even mind the level re-use in DAII.

John Epler wrote...

I admit to bias, though - since I read the Ted the Caver stories a long time ago, the idea of 'what do we -really- know about what happens underground' has intrigued me.

That was great, but apparently it plagiarized some other short story. And that story had an amusingly mishandled ending: This, like, smoke monster or something manifested itself but didn't even kill anybody, then a redneck came out of nowhere and explained everything to death. I am probably misremembering or misrepresenting this. It was, like, anti-creepy, especially compared to Ted's caving page.

Modifié par umwhatyousay, 11 avril 2012 - 09:16 .

[the_one_54321]

Darth Krytie wrote...
So, there'd need to be a real reason for the exploration or you're just wasting time running from here to there for a sword that's likely not as good as the one you're already slaying things with...

Just put something there that's worth discovering. The Asunder quest comes to mind as an example.

[John Epler]

Darth Krytie wrote...

Since DA isn't final fantasy, exploration can be tricky...there's no need for grinding and there's a smaller bestiary than in games with lots of places to kill things for the sake of killing things...So, there'd need to be a real reason for the exploration or you're just wasting time running from here to there for a sword that's likely not as good as the one you're already slaying things with...

I wouldn't mind if I chose to go to this optional location and there was a side quest...one that wouldn't penalize the game for lack of doing it, but enriches it if I did.

Well, ideally, exploration should be its own reward. In FO3/FO:NV, I still found myself exploring long after I had no more need for any kind of resources (guns, ammo, caps, etc.), because I loved the little stories that I'd find in the various buildings, bunkers and caves. If you make exploration narratively interesting (even if it's no more than a few journal/codex entries and a couple of tableaus suggesting a story), then people will want to do it even if they may not need the experience.

And, of course, if you -do- want to do more exploration, you can certainly build systems that take that into consideration and provide appropriate, non-XP rewards for doing so. Not every cave or dungeon has to be the same level of content, either - Blackreach is an excellent example, as it was significantly more massive than most other caverns. Variety is good, and it helps keep the player engaged.

[Cultist]

I'm ok with both Fallout-style exploration and BG2, also, Arcanum comes to mind. both systems allows us to put huge number of events. Fallout is more stat and skill oriented, And should we see the return of Survival or similar skill I'll be more than happy.
The problem with "permanent exploration" a-la Skyrim is that developers have to create entire world, instead of concentrating their efforts on several main locations.
I prefer good and high-quality locations to huge and beautiful world.