311 réponses à ce sujet

[nightscrawl]

BobSmith101 wrote...


http://t1.gstatic.co...8d61_Quc3K8olbp

I've never claimed that my anal retentive style of play made it boring . It's just how I play all games. If for example, I were going into an area with no merchant to sell my junk to I would periodically stop, throw out useless crap from my bags in a nice pile, and then continue on looting everything. I do this with Diablo 3 when I am running a map for the first time if I don't want to go back to town. With DA2 I occasionally threw out junk loots that were not in a stack of 2 or more.

I see on those maps that there are areas with narrow "paths" and such. Are those physical boundaries created by water/mountain, tunnels, or are they invisible walls where you see a field stretching off into the distance but can't go to it? Each type has its drawbacks: with the first you could start to feel constricted after a while, but the second can also be irksome since it's showing you an area you can never go to; and it's appeals: with the first you know the real boundaries of your world, with the second you can breathe a bit easier and get a larger sense of the world around you.

I've been to the southern most point on the continental US (this is in Key West, FL). Even though I saw 100mi of water stretching out before me, I knew Cuba was there. I've waved at Canada from Washington's Olympic Peninsula. So it's all relative I suppose.

Ultimately, I just do not want to go back to the DA2 style of outdoor map design. It was extremely constricted. DAO had good map design, but I never cared for the mode of travel via the map, and I absolutely loathe RANDOM ENCOUNTER! -- A Wild Templar Appears!" mechanics that were used for some quests. However, I do admit that using our map travel to throw in a cutscene for the goings on in Denerim was fantastic.

BobSmith101 wrote...

I hate large cities , it's fine the first time you are there, but when you have to travel multiple zones every time you want to sell something it's just a time sink. It's not like there is any risk like in wilderness exploration, just being overly large and repetative.

Yeeeeeessssss! Agree 100%. Large cities can be really great when you visit the first few times, but after that it's just tedious. In WoW I save my hearthstone (teleport device every 30 min) to an inn that is not as popular as the heavily trafficked areas and where there is a mailbox, bank, repair person within 20 feet. The first time I went to a large city in WoW it was awesome and new. After that, not so much fun trying to find the wandering reagent NPC for the 5th time. In DA2 I use map entrance/exit shortcuts to travel quickly through Kirkwall.

This is sort of branching off travel a bit, but I'll just add another thing about cities. MMOs of course are really different. Being social games there is usually one area where most of the people gather; whether it be to show off their new rare drop mount, their fancy gear, or just be social with other players. For an RPG where you are playing alone, I think the key is to make sure there is actually something interesting or engaging going on in various parts of the city.

While It was cute the first few times, the guy looking for the dog (which I think was a Frasier reference for some reason) or the servant trying to remember exactly what her mistress asked her to fetch (she did say she wanted pearl buttons, didn't she?) made me want to tear my hair out. Having the same NPCs doing the same things every time you go into an area was very timesome, not engaging at all, never made me want to stop and watch/listen, and never gave me the sense that life would go on there if I wasn't around. On the other hand, I really liked the chats between the patrolling guards and the salacious gossip in the Blooming Rose.

[nightscrawl]

dracuella wrote...

... and what the mountains I could make out beyond the water might entail for me, were I to venture there somehow.

Isn't that Ferelden? Of course part of it could be Orlais, I don't know who owns those huge islands.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 03 juin 2012 - 11:30 .

[Tirigon]

@ nightscrawl:

If you dont want NPCs having the same repeated conversations every time you should want a big city.

My dream would be, at some distant time in the future, to visit an actual megacity with millions of inhabitants, where you dont face such problems on account of never seeing the same guy twice, unless he's something prominent like mayor / lord of the city.


It is just disgusting if you see a "city" in games like Skyrim, and the thing has 5 houses and less inhabitants than the last cave I cleared of bandits.

[Dakota Strider]

Tirigon wrote...

@ nightscrawl:

If you dont want NPCs having the same repeated conversations every time you should want a big city.

My dream would be, at some distant time in the future, to visit an actual megacity with millions of inhabitants, where you dont face such problems on account of never seeing the same guy twice, unless he's something prominent like mayor / lord of the city.


It is just disgusting if you see a "city" in games like Skyrim, and the thing has 5 houses and less inhabitants than the last cave I cleared of bandits.

You would get the same results with a small town or village that was fully populated, rather than a huge city, that seems to have far less people than buildings.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

sjpelkessjpeler wrote...

I'm sorry OP, although your idea is great I think this is not something that I would like to see in the DA franchise. Games like TES are there for those who would want that excessive openness. I love TES too but DA for completely other reasons.

I'm on this page too.  I like TES game because they are very broad, big worlds.  The trade off is they border on painfully shallow.  If it wasn't for year and years of lore, they would be a lot less entertaining.  The Dragon Age gaames are much narrower, but deeper in terms of characters, quests, and story.  Leave the wide open wandering to TES.

For the DA world it could be done in the way they did in DAO; with opening the map at certain points in an area to fast travel, if that's what the player wants, and go to another (already available) area. But the area needs to be more accessible in a whole to give 'the open feel' effect. A more open feel for exploration in an area and maybe something like caves our houses to explore that are not necessarelly quest or plot related would be really great to see in DA3.

Everything should exist for a reason, even if it's nothing more than atmosphere.  I don't want any random events on the roadway, no random merchants, nothing that isn't realated to a quest or a character's story.  If I want random hijinx, I'll play TES.  I want story and character, that's why I pick up BioWare games.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Allow the player to explore around Kirkwall and Val Royeaux (assuming
the plot were to spend enough time around there).  That is, create
exploration content around the main plot points.  This
will result in the areas around those plot points being more fleshed
out, but you may lose the sense of scale about the travel.

This is best.  If the story is about what happens in Kirkwall and Val Royeaux, that's where I want to be.  I don't want to fight six spiders gather their Spider Testicles to turn it in to an old farmer I met no the road.  That's spreadsheet game play.  It's a tick box you can check off and it bores the crap out of me, yet it becomes necessary if there are level gated areas that I have to pass through to move the story forward.

Instead, I'd like to see one zone with quests inside the city, and one zone with quests right outside of it.  That way everything can be tied together in a big bundle...  Even if I'm doing a stupid side quest, that quest can tie into the story of what's happening in Val Royeaux and I can feel like the story is moving along.

Travel between citites should be by cutscene, played on the the first time you travel to the city.  Subsequent trips would then be teleports, or meandering lines on a map, because there's neither sizzle nor steak to a trip you take all the time.  The exception being an encounter like Leliana's quest where you meet assassins on the road.  That's ok.

[ashwind]

I just wish to say that, Open-World has nothing to do with Exploration. Fast Travelling from location to location also does not mean that there are no exploration.

As beautiful as Skyrim is, players of Skyrim will eventually find themselves using fast travel. So, there is nothing wrong with fast travel.

What DA need is areas that has nothing to do with the main story, the main quest. Areas that does not magically "show up" on the map. Areas that require you to do something special, heard some rumors, talk to some villager or found an ancient map before you can travel to those places; you know, like how DLC areas were made in DAO; just that the player has to actively seek them out - you know: Exploration.

It is the possibility of "finding something new out there" that gives me a sense of "exploration". If Bioware made a huge outdoor map simply for me to walk from point A to point B, fight more monsters and tons of shallow and meaningless dungeons (unless they are all hand drawn)... well, no thanks.

[ajbry]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

sjpelkessjpeler wrote...

I'm sorry OP, although your idea is great I think this is not something that I would like to see in the DA franchise. Games like TES are there for those who would want that excessive openness. I love TES too but DA for completely other reasons.

I'm on this page too.  I like TES game because they are very broad, big worlds.  The trade off is they border on painfully shallow.  If it wasn't for year and years of lore, they would be a lot less entertaining.  The Dragon Age gaames are much narrower, but deeper in terms of characters, quests, and story.  Leave the wide open wandering to TES.

Once again, I will make the distinction between my suggestion and how it's been interpreted by some of you. Outdoor exploration does not mean open-world exploration. I fully agree that DA does not need to emulate Skyrim in that regard.

The purpose is to re-establish that Thedas isn't just a few cities and urban areas that dot the landscape. Fast-travel is fine, but you should make the trek initially. And, this bears repeating, if you don't want to explore, then ideally you wouldn't have to deviate from the main path(s). For those of us who enjoy forests and the like, the branching paths and possible side quests would be a welcome addition and broaden the geographic (spatial) boundaries.

[AkiKishi]

Tirigon wrote...

@ nightscrawl:

If you dont want NPCs having the same repeated conversations every time you should want a big city.

My dream would be, at some distant time in the future, to visit an actual megacity with millions of inhabitants, where you dont face such problems on account of never seeing the same guy twice, unless he's something prominent like mayor / lord of the city.


It is just disgusting if you see a "city" in games like Skyrim, and the thing has 5 houses and less inhabitants than the last cave I cleared of bandits.

Not so sure about that. After all the fewer NPCs the more conversations you can get on each one. It's more of a factor when you are there a lot rather than just passing through.

I liked how it was handled Xenoblade. You had named people who were the quest givers and the generic "citizens" who gave you gameplay tips or told you about the area you were in/near. The conversations changed as the plot advanced and the named NPCs would change depending on how you solved the quests (you could save/break up marriages, get people involved with each other, choose who got a job by helping one side or another). This was then reflected on a sort of web like relationship map.

If the city is too big you just tune it out. It's like walking around London every day.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 03 juin 2012 - 04:19 .

[dracuella]

BobSmith101 wrote...

I like them the first time. But most of the time I just want to do what I came to do and get out (bit like shopping) not have to travel through 5 or 6 different "zones" to accomplish that. My ideal city is one with a market at the front gate so unless I have real business there, I don't even need to go in.

All this click on hightown, get a quest part,click on low town get another, click on the docks get another ,finally back to where you started from (with accompanying loading screens) I can do without too. DA2 made it worse because it was always Kirkwall, but I still don't like it in principle either.

For the most part the cities in WKC are all one zone (Greede I HATE you!) with no loading involved. Or all the important stuff is in one zone, with only the occasional NPC being in another.

While I do like easy access to merchants etc, I don't need to have everything that constitutes a city in one area. First off it would mean the area had to be huge to allow for many quest spawn points (doors, buildings, boards etc) and I would end up running far more than I do now. To me a city is just like any other area, I like them big (not immense), explorable, dynamic and with new things popping up every once in a while. I really like the layout of Kirkwall with its subsections, it makes the city managable if you want to go somewhere specific. And I love the fact that I don't have to wait 12 hrs for night to fall in order to visit the Hanged Man at night (best day/night cycle ever implemented. Ever).
I like realistic cities and layoutwise, I think Kirkwall is just that. 

[dracuella]

Begemotka wrote...

Gothic I and II.    <3      The game that made exploration not feel like a chore and collecting herbs ueberfun (at least for me).

 
Oh yes Gothic! Still allstars in my book<3 I loved the vastness of all three games (yes I eventually got my Gothic 3 ini file molded into something playable) and while I'm aware it won't fit well into all games, it was really well executed there (but I can do without the load times though )

 
In the next DA title,the area traversed between hubs need not be extremely vast,but you guys would then need to make sure the player has a reason to revisit the area,every now and again (there wasn`t much to do in the Brecilian Forest later in DAO,for example).

This very much so. I really loved the areas that comprised the Brecilian Forest but I rarely came back since there wasn't any reason to. I would have love to revisit them for random loot or even a handful of sidequests.

Modifié par dracuella, 03 juin 2012 - 05:26 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

This is best.  If the story is about what happens in Kirkwall and Val Royeaux, that's where I want to be.

The story is always about what your character does.  That can happen anywhere.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

This is best.  If the story is about what happens in Kirkwall and Val Royeaux, that's where I want to be.

The story is always about what your character does.  That can happen anywhere.

That's fair.  But a good story is life with all the boring parts left out.  I think it was Elmore Leonard who said that, or at least that's where I heard it.  The wandering around randomly and fighting 8 green slimes, that's teh borangs and should be left out.  I want to know what happens when my character get some place.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

ajbry wrote...

The purpose is to re-establish that Thedas isn't just a few cities and urban areas that dot the landscape. Fast-travel is fine, but you should make the trek initially. And, this bears repeating, if you don't want to explore, then ideally you wouldn't have to deviate from the main path(s). For those of us who enjoy forests and the like, the branching paths and possible side quests would be a welcome addition and broaden the geographic (spatial) boundaries.

I don't think Bioware should spend time on areas that are only going to be visited once and then discarded.  Unless those areas have plot points in them.  So since the big Brescillian forest or Deep Roads maps are little more than slog slog slog, storystory, I'd rather not see them again.  There should be no more than one slog per story point. 

With that said, I will admit that the Deep Roads wouldn't have felt as deep without the long ass journey to get to them.  They were effective in that regard... it's just a shame that the trip was filled with combat/loot/dress-ups gameplay.  I just think that there are better ways to communicate how deep in the earth the journey took them.  Cut scenes to the rescue!

[Tirigon]

Dakota Strider wrote...

You would get the same results with a small town or village that was fully populated, rather than a huge city, that seems to have far less people than buildings.

I dont know. In Skyrim and Oblivion the cities generally ARE fully populated. But with only 5 houses that's still only like 15 to 20 people.

[Sylvius the Mad]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

That's fair.  But a good story is life with all the boring parts left out.  I think it was Elmore Leonard who said that, or at least that's where I heard it.  The wandering around randomly and fighting 8 green slimes, that's teh borangs and should be left out.  I want to know what happens when my character get some place.

If you only ever play the parts of the game where the "interesting" things happen, then those events are going to seem really contrived.  I'd rather those "interesting" moments feel more natural than that.  Your proposal would only servie to draw attention to the fact that we're playing a game.  Making the game feel less game-y is good.  Making it feel more game-y is bad.

Moreover, by only modelling the "interesting" parts, you'll get situations like in DA2 where players wanted to know why their character had behaved a certain was off-screen when they didn't think that was in-character.

The amount of stuff the PC does off-screen should be minimised to avoid those situations.

I still want BG-style (not BG2-style, which is what they've used in almost everything since) travel and exploration.  BioWare hasn't improved on that yet, and until they do I'll keep asking them to go back to it.

[Midnightpain]

They could really draw from both games but they should have never removed the RPG elements that made DA origins amazing to fans.

The reason why a lot of people said DA2 was crap, is because they were mislead and deceived to believe DA2 was a sequel to DAO which was much more true to the RPG genre. DA2 is a purely Action game sprinkled with RPG elements.

The outcry is no doubt to the fact that there is a lacking genre of RPG where so called "modern RPG's" are actually like just action games. RPG's everywhere are turning to action and turning away from tactics, gripping story... Like it dumbfounds me how they could give up on a story as epic as DAO trash it, when there was sooo much hot speculation over the baby you made in DAO why didn't they make it a true sequel WTF the profits would have been enormous!!!

Nothing is left for fans such as myself and DAO fans when there is no genre we can turn to anymore without feeling empty or betrayed.

DA2 IMHO was great for an action game (one of my favorite) but its not the type of RPG game I'm looking for.

I want text dialogue choices, real story stem choices, tactical combat with some or little action based button mashing, advanced companion AI choices etc etc.

If Dragon Age Origins and Skyrim were to combine into like some sort of frankenstiened baby, or like morrigan's never seen baby all their best elements we would have the RPG genre back at the same time as pleasing action gaming fans. In dragon age origins you could be lazy with combat tactics if your more into action gaming or you could be overly obsessed putting it on the hardest setting without cheesing the forcefield and have a real battle.

Imagine open worlds, real tactics, lasting battles, choice of play, lovable non annoying companions that can be pushed out the way. A game that requires no modding and mods to make it awesome. HARD-MODE gameplay where its impossible to cheese things out and become invincible, but possible to win those big daunting battles on the edge of your seat with 1-10 health points left, and a few actually dead companions non resurrectable so have to cope with loss lol.

I say bring back the true RPG and make it even better more exciting don't forget us RPG fans and give in to mass marketing or make a game that actually pleases us.

I think Bret Knowles knew how to make a RPG game Mike Laidley doesn't and hasn't shown us he can... yet... DA3 echo echo echo

[Melca36]

How about this?

While traveling, a random event leads to an explorable area, it does not have to be huge but it could be a place for some side quests.

I would much rather have that option than 16 FedEx quests spread throughout the game.

Modifié par Melca36, 04 juin 2012 - 06:38 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Melca36 wrote...

How about this?

While traveling, a random event leads to an explorable area, it does not have to be huge but it could be a place for some side quests.

That again creates the circumstance where the area only exists once the PC has been told to go there.

I want to be able to visit an area for no reason of which the game is aware.