399 réponses à ce sujet

[Maria Caliban]

Diablo gave you town teleport scrolls. Neverwinter Nights gave you the teleport stone. The majority of dungeons in Skyrim can be finished in under a half hour.

[the_one_54321]

I prefer the idea that initial exploration require the long route, and then fast travel options open up after you've finished Point A to Point B.

[Pzykozis]

In terms of the current discussion I really enjoyed what Dark souls did early game it sadly dimished as the game went on (possibly because of fast travel I guess), but the world was very interconnected and various side paths were shortcuts from later on in the game, It was nice being able to run through the aqueduct back to the Capra Demon, or being able to take the elevator up to ZEU-- I mean Andre and the Gargoyle area. Not sure if this sort of thing would work in DA but it was bloody marvelous. Skyrim does it a fair bit too in that there's usually a slightly faster way to backtrack a dungeon once you reach the end. I'd like to see optional exploration within a story dungeon though, I'd have loved to have been able to affect/interact with parts of the deep road beyond the plot stuff, being able to help the Legion in Bownammar or something.. ahh I just love the deep roads though, so bias is there.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Diablo gave you town teleport scrolls. Neverwinter Nights gave you the teleport stone.

And those were great features because they were optional.

I hated the idea of the teleport stone in NWN, so I never used it.

[Maria Caliban]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Diablo gave you town teleport scrolls. Neverwinter Nights gave you the teleport stone.

And those were great features because they were optional.

I hated the idea of the teleport stone in NWN, so I never used it.

Sadly, David has said that teleportation is impossible in Dragon Age. Like coming back from the dead.

[addiction21]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Sadly, David has said that teleportation is impossible in Dragon Age. Like coming back from the dead.

*runs for the fallout shelter*

[philippe willaume]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Diablo gave you town teleport scrolls. Neverwinter Nights gave you the teleport stone.

And those were great features because they were optional.

I hated the idea of the teleport stone in NWN, so I never used it.

Sadly, David has said that teleportation is impossible in Dragon Age. Like coming back from the dead.

Technically they were only mostly dead....

you can explore an area once and then quick transport to land mark/map marker when you need to go back. the time to travel does not really matter that much in DA quest.

Miracle Max

[Sutekh]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Sadly, David has said that teleportation is impossible in Dragon Age. Like coming back from the dead.

Wasn't there lots and lots of teleportation in DAO Fade?

Along with coming back from the dead?

[addiction21]

Sutekh wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Sadly, David has said that teleportation is impossible in Dragon Age. Like coming back from the dead.

Wasn't there lots and lots of teleportation in DAO Fade?

Along with coming back from the dead?

Well the fade is a seperate reality or at least that is how I look at that.

[the_one_54321]

The codex explains how distance and travel do not obey the same laws of physics as the real world. The only law that seems to hold true is that all points in the fade are the same distance from the black city.

[xScarecrowX]

I always kinda dread going into the fade. I love how it looks and the lore, but in DAO it takes SO LONG! It was a long quest within a long quest. The sort of quick travel using the pedestals was a nice touch and worked well with the lore, though. I did feel that they listened to that complant a bit too much in DA2. The way it looked was so nice, but you only spend a few minutes there, and the mission is a side quest. Would have been nice to see more.

[wowpwnslol]

Exploration is one of the main reasons Skyrim sucks. It's just an excuse to copy/paste an area and make you walk 15 minutes to an area you haven't explored.in order to do a quest. Fighting darkspawn in a long dungeon was infinitely more interesting than "exploring".

I'd rather they do it the way BG2 and DA:O was done. Fast travel to quest areas, but good and well made quests. miniquests etc.

[Sutekh]

@addiction & the_one 

You're both right, but...

some mage could reinvent the Eluvian mirrors, which, iirc, were used initially for long distance communication, or something based roughly on the same fadish principle (whatever this one is) to allow instant travel between fixed points, a bit like wormholes.

Which is not to say that on a game technical level, it's not simpler and more logical to have shortcut exits coupled with fast travel .

Modifié par Sutekh, 13 avril 2012 - 01:56 .

[astreqwerty]

helpspeth part was one of my finest moments as a gamer

Modifié par astreqwerty, 13 avril 2012 - 09:04 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

wowpwnslol wrote...

I'd rather they do it the way BG2 and DA:O was done. Fast travel to quest areas, but good and well made quests. miniquests etc.

That was, I think, the big thing BG2 did wrong.  BG's system of having all of the areas open to wander through, even if you don't have a quest-related reason to go there, was better.

[Feirefiz1972]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

wowpwnslol wrote...

I'd rather they do it the way BG2 and DA:O was done. Fast travel to quest areas, but good and well made quests. miniquests etc.

That was, I think, the big thing BG2 did wrong.  BG's system of having all of the areas open to wander through, even if you don't have a quest-related reason to go there, was better.

+ 1

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

For sure. Any bug that prevents the completion of content is a giant red flag and it sucks when that happens. There's never a situation when a bug like that is acceptable.

Hi, I was just reading your responses in this tread and thought I'd ask a similar question.


So, going way back to Dragon Age: Origins in the Awakening expansion, there was a bug where people going into the silverite mines would lose all their equipment.

Bioware devs said at the time it was due to people getting into the mine early by picking the lock, and there was nothing they could do to correct it.

However myself and others discovered that the bug was triggered by wearing certain DLC items that were imported from the original game, when entering the mine legitimately. 

My question is, how much does Bioware test the import features? Is it difficult to identify this sort of bug and the cause? Do you think this was a case of being unable to recreate the problem?

[Zexiv]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

As for what I consider a bug, I'm pretty liberal.  Design bugs are bugs that are inherent in the design, meaning that programmatically it cannot be accounted for but the system still behaves in a way that the designer didn't want.  This is what people would call exploits.  Iteration is the best way to resolve stuff like this, as well as thinking outside the box when playing through.  Progammatically the system behaves as expected, but the intention of the content creator was for something else to happen.

Cheers.

Allan

This might stray off the beaten path so I thought about sending it via PM but I'm currious from a QA standpoint if you have specs, design documents, etc to build test cases off and how the QA is boken down perse?  Do testers have a specific area of expertise being assigned (level area map testing, player skillsets/balance testing, Database/Inventory etc...)

Take it easy

[Maria Caliban]

You might want to make a new thread with that question.

[Zexiv]

I might but part of the reason I'd debated PMing it or not asking it at all was I've done V&V for the past 12 years so while I might find the structure of how it works in a different industry interesting I'm not sure others would enjoy the topic as much. I'd probably just PM it next time.

As for exploration one of the things I enjoyed in Turbines DDO a lot is the size of the dungeons and zones but because it's setup for an MMO I'm not sure if maps of the same size could be done in DA or not. In general DDO just seams much larger with maps and dungeons that provide multiple paths to get to the same point etc...

As for the teleporting point you brought up I'd say that selecting where to go from camp is basically that. It's not like you could choose to walk from camp to say redcliff to see what happened to be in between the two. Horses in DAOC and Mounts in Asheron's Call 2 were nice ways to travel quickly in the realm but still provided the user a bit of an ability to explore if they didn't want to travel by portal. Having the ability to choose how you travel would be a nice perk in DA if they would allow fast vs. slow travel.

Take it easy

[Wozearly]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Diablo gave you town teleport scrolls. Neverwinter Nights gave you the teleport stone.

And those were great features because they were optional.

Seconded.

I firmly believe that those types of items are a good thing to have in games with a large world, because I appreciate that a fair number of gamers really, really don't like the idea of spending time "doing nothing" travelling or exploring.

I don't mind the odd shortcut out from a particularly long dungeon (etc), and I do prefer knowing that I have the option to progress to my destination more swiftly should I choose to, but I tend not to use those features much because I enjoy the explorative / travelling elements. The journey is as important to me as the quest / reward at the end of it  - which is one of the reasons I've always had a huge soft spot for the Elder Scrolls series.

Cutting out the bits where nothing at all happens would definitely be a backwards step for me.

[Ramza_1]

simfamSP wrote...

AND NO! This is not a request for an ES clone. This is a request for larger zones in which to explore in (e.g Baldur's Gate One.) However, large zones are all well and good, but a small zone with a rich atmosphere is even better I suppose.

There are alot of things associated with creating a good atmosphere, and I think the general consensus is that a good atmosphere needs life.

Life involves more than just NPCs walking around. It means sound, music, colours... it means this:

www.youtube.com/watch

It means this:

www.youtube.com/watch (guys, please try this RPG gem out :-) it's not the best game in the world, but it's definetly a good game. Especially it's prequel)

THIS:

www.youtube.com/watch (ignore the players jumping up and down, if you watch the entire thing you'll notice how well done this village is.)

AND THIS! xD

www.youtube.com/watch


Granted, graphics don't have to be phenomenal, because you can do these things without them... ever played Gothic?

Now, I know the DA engine isn't built for these kind of things, but it's possible. Look at Lothering. That was one of my most favourite locations in DA:O, I just loved the whole feel of despiration and fear. Hell, even Armaranthine wasn't half bad!

All you need is time... and time is what EA seems to not want to give you <_<

I also loved Lothering.  Not the DAII one.

[Wulfram]

Exploration is an unfortunate blight on CRPGs. Well, it's OK in non-story based RPGs, though still pretty silly.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Wulfram wrote...

Exploration is an unfortunate blight on CRPGs. Well, it's OK in non-story based RPGs, though still pretty silly.

Exploration can be part of the story.  Ultima VII is a perfect example.  The plot opens with a murder mystery that needs to be solved, but the game offers no roadmap telling the player how to solve it.