92 réponses à ce sujet

[AkiKishi]

While players would want more of everything , to paraphrase Dave. It's not a reasonable expectation. The purpose of this is to see where the balance lies, between quality and quantity.

On the one extreme of the scale you have a fixed party. PC plus 3 characters covering classes.

Advantages

Very predictable when it comes to balance. The designers will know who is in your group at all times and have a good idea what skills they have.
If you only have a finite number of lines then you can spend more of them per companion.
Covers all the bases, you will never be left without an essential character because you left them at the camp.
Characters can be tied very closely to the story and not be forced into your group for events. Which tends to be a massive red flag something is about to occur.
Limits cheese of stacking certain OP classes.

Disadvantages

It's a small character pool, less chance of finding a character you like.
If you hate any of them, tough luck because thats all there is.
Limits creativity like having 3 mages in the party.
It's an odd number (throws up a number of things like LI's).

On the flip side. A large party.

Advantages

More chance of a character you like
A lot of choice both in social and gameplay
Allows for odd party mixes
Replaying means you can have a different combination of characters.

Disadvantages.

Hard to balance
Lines will be spread thin meaning shallower characters (remember 50% of the PC lines are already accounted for).
Easy to screw yourself by choosing the wrong party for a particular encounter. A bow heavy party and a rock golem come to mind..
Characters will have very little direct interaction with the plot or will have to be forced on you at specific points.
More work, in modeling and cutscenes which take a lot of time.

[whykikyouwhy]

 The PC + 3 equation works quite well, imo. 
And I've never had a problem finding a character that I liked.  

[Dakota Strider]

I reject the premise that we cannot have everything. Looking at some of Bioware's earliest works, the Baldur's Gate series, I think that the game delivered everything possible, that technology would allow. It did not have the graphics, animations and cinematics of today's games, but on every other aspect of the game, I believe that most thought that game delivered.   The Baldur's Gate games had at least 17 different companions you could choose from, all with varied stories and backgrounds.  I do not think it is too much to ask that the DA dev team to work with half of that.

Now, that game developers have far more advanced tools to work with, to make the game prettier, flashier, faster, why would they need to remove ingredients from their original formula that worked so well? What part of the old game, cannot fit in the Dragon Age world? Bioware has far more resources than it did back in the mid 1990's to make a game. They should be able to make an even better story, not just a better cinematic experience.

If adding cinematics means that Bioware has to tell a less satisfying story, than they did almost 15 years ago, then I believe that some of the new bells and whistles need to be reduced, or thrown out. Because it is the story, that makes me want to play each Bioware game, not the animations, or the cutscenes.

I expect Bioware to make a story as massive in scope, as they did when they first began making games in the rpg genre. They have done it before, and so for them to suggest they cannot do it anymore, is unacceptable.

Modifié par Dakota Strider, 26 avril 2012 - 03:12 .

[the_one_54321]

Dakota Strider wrote...
Bioware has far more resources than it did back in the mid 1990's to make a game. They should be able to make an even better story, not just a better cinematic experience.

The increase in resources has been linear. The increase in costs has been exponential. Your expectations or unfulfillable.

[Sacred_Fantasy]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Disadvantages

It's a small character pool, less chance of finding a character you like.
If you hate any of them, tough luck because thats all there is.
Limits creativity like having 3 mages in the party.
It's an odd number (throws up a number of things like LI's).

Plus:
1. It brings the question of  romancable male or female companions distribution. If there's only one romancable male, then female players will most likely complain about equality/lack of choice and vice versa 
2. Issue with party setup like what class/specialization for the 3 companions to cover all roles -> Healer, Tanker, Melee Damage Dealer ( dual sword or two-handed single blade, fighter or assasin ) or Long Range Damage Dealer ( Archer or Mage ) - which in turn bring the issue of it's effectiveness in term of gameplay.     

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 26 avril 2012 - 03:34 .

[Dakota Strider]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Dakota Strider wrote...
Bioware has far more resources than it did back in the mid 1990's to make a game. They should be able to make an even better story, not just a better cinematic experience.

The increase in resources has been linear. The increase in costs has been exponential. Your expectations or unfulfillable.

The reason costs are up so much, I would hazard to guess, is because of the different things that do not make a computer rpg great.  Namely, cinematics.  Bioware seems to be moving in the direction of making cinematic movies that allow players to make a few choices here and there, that has little consequences in the overall story, and then blaze through a few combats.  This is not only expensive, but hurts the rpg experience.  I think if you could remove much of what makes the games too expensive to produce, I believe that you would actually increase the quality of the game, at least in the RPG genre.  Save the cinematics for other genres.

Modifié par Dakota Strider, 26 avril 2012 - 03:36 .

[AkiKishi]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Disadvantages

It's a small character pool, less chance of finding a character you like.
If you hate any of them, tough luck because thats all there is.
Limits creativity like having 3 mages in the party.
It's an odd number (throws up a number of things like LI's).

Plus:
1. It brings the question of  romancable male or female companions distribution. If there's only one romancable male, then female players will most likely complain about equality/lack of choice and vice versa 
2. Issue with party setup like what class/specialization that could cover all roles -> Healer, Tanker, Melee Damage Dealer ( dual sword or two-handed single blade, fighter or assasin ) or Long Range Damage Dealer ( Archer or Mage ) - which in turn bring the issue of it's effectiveness in term of gameplay.     

1. Took care of that one. As much as I want a Harem I would have no real objection to making  the extra male and throwing the female players a bone.
2. They will already be aware of who is in your party when creating the combat encounters. As long as the set party is effective (no reason it should not be) it's easier than trying to balance a bunch of unknowns.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 26 avril 2012 - 03:47 .

[hoorayforicecream]

Dakota Strider wrote...

The reason costs are up so much, I would hazard to guess, is because of the different things that do not make a computer rpg great.  Namely, cinematics.  Bioware seems to be moving in the direction of making cinematic movies that allow plays to make a few choices here and there, and then blaze through a few combats.  This is not only expensive, but hurts the rpg experience.  I think if you could remove much of what makes the games too expensive to produce, I believe that you would actually increase the quality of the game, at least in the RPG genre.  Save the cinematics for other genres.

False. The reason the costs are up is because one modeler and one texture artist could create many characters easily when they were only 500 polygons each, but they cannot do so when characters are 5,000 or 50,000 polygons without the new ones looking like ass.

Tomb Raider 2 (1997):


Tomb Raider Underworld (2008):


This also extends to things like environments. Where you could get away with low definition and simple environments before, now you can't.

ES2 Daggerfall (1996):


ES5 Skyrim (2011):


As technical capability increases, the number of people needed to create suitable content for that technology increases. That increases cost. The size of a game's development team roughly doubles with each console generation. This is geometric growth (not exponential, but also not linear).

Basically, now that you can show fingers, toes, leaves, and sand, you need people to make fingers, toes, leaves and sand.

Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 26 avril 2012 - 03:44 .

[Sacred_Fantasy]

BobSmith101 wrote...

[/b]2. They will already be aware of who is in your party when creating the combat encounters. As long as the set party is effective (no reason it should not be) it's easier than trying to balance a bunch of unknowns.

Just for clarification:
1. Are you suggesting to leave party setup to developer's hand?
2. Effectiveness is subjective. Party setup meant exclusively for easy difficulty doesn't necessary effective for nightmare difficulty. Also there're are other factor to consider like will it suit preferred style of majority of players? How do I know developer setup is suitable for me? On easy difficulty I don't need healer. Healing potion is sufficient to replace the healer. I usually use full long range attackers ( Varric, Sebastian, Hawke and Bethany/Merril ) to finish off all enemies quicky from range. On nightmare difficulty however, I use different setup base on terran or level design, preferrable narrow pass to hold incoming enemies with tanker, etc...

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 26 avril 2012 - 04:00 .

[Dakota Strider]

@hoorayforicecream. Point taken. However, if the story suffers, what is the point of all the new technology. While there will always be those who will buy games based on how good they "look", for many of us, the most important thing about graphics, is that they depict things accurately, without crashing, so the story can progress.

Compare the original Star Wars trilogy, that came out in the mid-1970's, to the prequel trilogy that came out in the late 1990's. All the flash and technology that the latter effort had available, did not make them better movies than the original, that drew you into the story.

Also, while technology today, far surpasses what was available 15-20 years ago, it is not fair to say that the cost of the technology has gone up in proportion to their performance. My first computer back in the late 1980's cost about $2000, and today people probably own watches that have more computing power than that old machine. If you spent $2000 today (and remember that is an inflated/devalued currency), you could still get a very good game computer. I imagine the cost of tools to make the games, have similarly increased in performance, without costing too much more than the past.

Hiring more people, will obviously increase the costs. One fix for that, is quit hiring "big name" Hollywood types to voice act roles, when you can find professional "unknown" voice actors that will work for less. (Obviously Bioware needs to retain voice actors that have reoccuring roles.)

Another fix is marketing. I really do not think they get the return in investment that they pay for in this regard. I am not sure how many people buy the game based on a television commercial. And creating trailers from scenes that are not even found in the game, costs money to produce that seems like a waste. There should be cutscenes, gameplay within the game good enough to use for marketing purposes, without spending a lot of money to create trailers that are never in the game. And instead of wasting money on tv, just use Youtube, and other social media devices to spread it, that are much less expensive.

[the_one_54321]

Dakota Strider wrote...
Compare the original Star Wars trilogy, that came out in the mid-1970's, to the prequel trilogy that came out in the late 1990's. All the flash and technology that the latter effort had available, did not make them better movies than the original, that drew you into the story.

Lightsaber battles. That's all I have to say.

Oh, also, the sheer abundance of cheese and cliche in the original 3 movies leaves me convinced that most detractors of the new three movies are viewing the past with rose colored glasses.

[Kail Ashton]

Ahh great, armchair programmers thread, i'll just back out of this thread before the bull plop everyones spewing gets all over my shoes

[hoorayforicecream]

Dakota Strider wrote...

@hoorayforicecream. Point taken. However, if the story suffers, what is the point of all the new technology. While there will always be those who will buy games based on how good they "look", for many of us, the most important thing about graphics, is that they depict things accurately, without crashing, so the story can progress.

Compare the original Star Wars trilogy, that came out in the mid-1970's, to the prequel trilogy that came out in the late 1990's. All the flash and technology that the latter effort had available, did not make them better movies than the original, that drew you into the story.

Making new movies with old technology would not bring in the sort of money that movies with new tech would. Do you think the Lord of the Rings or Avatar would have done as well without the new technology? Avatar being acted by people in face paint wouldn't have had nearly the same effect as it did with the technology available.

Hiring more people, will obviously increase the costs. One fix for that, is quit hiring "big name" Hollywood types to voice act roles, when you can find professional "unknown" voice actors that will work for less. (Obviously Bioware needs to retain voice actors that have reoccuring roles.)

This is where you're wrong. The cost isn't from the technology. It isn't coming from hiring big name hollywood types. The cost comes from paying people to create content. Team sizes roughly double every console development cycle. When I started working in games back in 2002 (PS2 generation), the teams to put out a AAA PS2 game were roughly ~50 people each. My coworkers told me that it took about 25 people to make a AAA PS1 game back in the day. When I worked for the first time on a AAA PS3 title (2006), the team sizes had ballooned to around 100-125 people. Now that we're very late in the console lifespan and about to move on to the next generation, teams are approaching ~200 people.

If you were paying the average developer $50,000 annually to work on your game (design, art, programming, producing, etc.), you need more programmers, designers, artists and producers to make your game now than you did before. With a team of 25, you're looking at $1.25 million per year to keep your guys paid. With a team of 50, you're paying $2.5 million annually. With a team of 100, you're paying $5 million a year. And with a team of 200 (count the number of people in the Witcher 2 or Mass Effect 3's credits), you're paying $10 million annually. This is why the first thing EA or Activision does to appease stockholders when they have a bad quarter is lay people off. It's because they are cutting costs, and the vast majority of their costs (as well as practically any industry's costs) is paying the people who work in it.

Voice actors are a tiny, tiny fraction of this cost. Technology is a tiny fraction of this cost. The majority of the costs come from paying the people to make the game content itself.

Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 26 avril 2012 - 04:33 .

[the_one_54321]

Kail Ashton wrote...
Ahh great, armchair programmers thread, i'll just back out of this thread before the bull plop everyones spewing gets all over my shoes

Some of us are just regurgitating the stuff fed to us by the actual designers. They claim these cost concerns are a big reason behind the changes.

hoorayforicecream wrote...
Voice actors are a tiny, tiny fraction of this cost. Technology is a tiny fraction of this cost. The majority of the costs come from paying the people to make the game content itself.

On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Modifié par the_one_54321, 26 avril 2012 - 04:36 .

[hoorayforicecream]

the_one_54321 wrote...

On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Citation needed.

[the_one_54321]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...
On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Citation needed.

There's no way I could find that post, even if I tried. This was at least a year ago. Basically, one of the devs said that the reason there are no Origins in DAII is because then they'd have needed to pay an extra two voice actor for every extra race options and it was just too expensive.

[brushyourteeth]

the_one_54321 wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...
On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Citation needed.

There's no way I could find that post, even if I tried. This was at least a year ago. Basically, one of the devs said that the reason there are no Origins in DAII is because then they'd have needed to pay an extra two voice actor for every extra race options and it was just too expensive.

For what it's worth (probably not much) I remember this too.

[the_one_54321]

Avejajed wrote...
Quick, someone call one of the devs in. lol.

I doubt they would be allowed to comment on this right now, given that they have confirmed VA for the PC in DAIII.

[AkiKishi]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

[/b]2. They will already be aware of who is in your party when creating the combat encounters. As long as the set party is effective (no reason it should not be) it's easier than trying to balance a bunch of unknowns.

Just for clarification:
1. Are you suggesting to leave party setup to developer's hand?
2. Effectiveness is subjective. Party setup meant exclusively for easy difficulty doesn't necessary effective for nightmare difficulty. Also there're are other factor to consider like will it suit preferred style of majority of players? How do I know developer setup is suitable for me? On easy difficulty I don't need healer. Healing potion is sufficient to replace the healer. I usually use full long range attackers ( Varric, Sebastian, Hawke and Bethany/Merril ) to finish off all enemies quicky from range. On nightmare difficulty however, I use different setup base on terran or level design, preferrable narrow pass to hold incoming enemies with tanker, etc...

1.As the exteme of one option yes. A fixed party with strong ties to the plot.
If they know what characers you have access to it's much easier. Part of the balance problem is the number of variations possible. The only unknown is the class of the PC rather than 4 random factors.

[AkiKishi]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

[/b]2. They will already be aware of who is in your party when creating the combat encounters. As long as the set party is effective (no reason it should not be) it's easier than trying to balance a bunch of unknowns.

Just for clarification:
1. Are you suggesting to leave party setup to developer's hand?
2. Effectiveness is subjective. Party setup meant exclusively for easy difficulty doesn't necessary effective for nightmare difficulty. Also there're are other factor to consider like will it suit preferred style of majority of players? How do I know developer setup is suitable for me? On easy difficulty I don't need healer. Healing potion is sufficient to replace the healer. I usually use full long range attackers ( Varric, Sebastian, Hawke and Bethany/Merril ) to finish off all enemies quicky from range. On nightmare difficulty however, I use different setup base on terran or level design, preferrable narrow pass to hold incoming enemies with tanker, etc...

1.As the exteme of one option yes. A fixed party with strong ties to the plot.
If they know what characers you have access to it's much easier. Part of the balance problem is the number of variations possible. The only unknown is the class of the PC rather than 4 random factors.

It should allow for a smoother transition between difficulty levels as well.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 26 avril 2012 - 05:01 .

[hoorayforicecream]

the_one_54321 wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...
On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Citation needed.

There's no way I could find that post, even if I tried. This was at least a year ago. Basically, one of the devs said that the reason there are no Origins in DAII is because then they'd have needed to pay an extra two voice actor for every extra race options and it was just too expensive.

It wasn't the only reason. Several parts of the game would have to be rewritten because certain things just wouldn't make sense for an elf or a dwarf, as well as having to sextuple the amount of voice data for the player character on disc for a game that has to go to console. Not to mention how it would affect other key NPCs, like Carver, Bethany, Leandra, or core story elements like becoming Champion in Kirkwall. It's doable, but it's expensive.

[Atakuma]

What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.

[the_one_54321]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...
On the contrary, I recall being told that voicing the PC is so costly that it directly limits how much variation is available in the PC's spoken dialog.

Citation needed.

There's no way I could find that post, even if I tried. This was at least a year ago. Basically, one of the devs said that the reason there are no Origins in DAII is because then they'd have needed to pay an extra two voice actor for every extra race options and it was just too expensive.

It wasn't the only reason. Several parts of the game would have to be rewritten because certain things just wouldn't make sense for an elf or a dwarf, as well as having to sextuple the amount of voice data for the player character on disc for a game that has to go to console. Not to mention how it would affect other key NPCs, like Carver, Bethany, Leandra, or core story elements like becoming Champion in Kirkwall. It's doable, but it's expensive.

Well, I'm not making conjecture here. I'm just saying that this is what I remember being told.