764 réponses à ce sujet

[Fredward]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
EDIT: Was this too over the top? I can never tell.

Yes. But I liked it.

I forget what this thread is supposed to be about. Hum... well lets do with the title. I think trying to appeal to a greater audience is a bad idea because look at something like Skyrim, they've pretty much sticked to their guns this whole time nothing had been "dumbed" down to make it more accessible, and they seem to have no problem selling. DA just needs to find an identity and stick to it, Origins or DA2 or a mixture of both, which I think would be best.

[batlin]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...
EDIT: Was this too over the top? I can never tell.

Yes. But I liked it.

I forget what this thread is supposed to be about. Hum... well lets do with the title. I think trying to appeal to a greater audience is a bad idea because look at something like Skyrim, they've pretty much sticked to their guns this whole time nothing had been "dumbed" down to make it more accessible, and they seem to have no problem selling. DA just needs to find an identity and stick to it, Origins or DA2 or a mixture of both, which I think would be best.

As the OP I really hope I still remember

I'm pretty sure my original point was exactly yours. In attempting to draw in the CoD crowd, they wound up alienating the fans they had and attracted no significant amount of new fans. DA:O proved that there is still a huge market for classic RPGs, and making the franchise less like a cRPG was the exact opposite of what they should have done as a response.

Really, had they made DA2 more like Baldur's Gate and less like Mass Effect I wouldn't be surprised if it outsold DA:O by now

Modifié par batlin, 06 juillet 2012 - 12:16 .

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Ya'll are haters.

CoD 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. Certainly better than Dragon Age 2 and all of the Mass Effect games put together. Not even joking.

The thing is, a game like CoD is so fundamentally different to a game like Dragon Age (either Origins or 2), or even Mass Effect, that I'd struggle to believe that anyone with their head screwed on straight would really think you could convert CoD lovers to DA because it's "supposedly" moved in that direction ("awesome button").

The appeal and source of attraction is so different that you just can't work it from that angle.

It also means that making the argument "draw in the CoD crowd" is incorrect and untrue as a result. Sure, it's catchy, but it doesn't hold water. Unless you assume that the folks at BioWare are braindead, of course.

As for sequels and drawing in a wider audience, it depends on the game itself really. Sometimes you get the Assassin's Creed 2 type of success which is an honest-to-God AC sequel but with MOAR STUFFZ TO DO (think: Fallout 2 type of sequel). Game is functionally identical, but has more content that builds upon the gameplay elements of the original.

Then you get the Warcraft 3 type of success where the fundamental aspects of the game is vastly different, but it still works because it's supremely well executed and meets whatever goals it sets for itself.

I guess, at the end of the day, regardless of what else is done, know your audience, play to that audience, have a vision that is articulated well through PR and execute it well. The rest will hopefully fall into place. Dragon Age 2, for a variety of reasons (rushed development, poor marketing etc), fails on several fronts.

Whether the next game is cinematic heavy with a voiced protagonist, etc or returns to a more Origins feel, you'd hope that BioWare articulates what they want for the game to a captive audience, then delivers on that vision.

Modifié par CrustyBot, 06 juillet 2012 - 03:32 .

[Pasquale1234]

Xewaka wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...
Then why has EA Bioware turned it's back on a more profitable venture ? Something obviously put them onto the change of direction.

Development time. DA:O development time was absolutely ludicruous for current industry standards, and the most expensive commodity in game development is programmer time. Hence they switched model for a faster turnaround.
There's a reason DA2 feels hurried. It was. To recoup from the losses of the abnormally long development of DA:O and make the IP profitable. So yes, DA:O sold more, still sells more than DA 2. That does not mean DA:O is more profitable; taking costs into account, DA2 has been the most successful to them.

A lot of the work done during the lengthy development period for DAO was creating the game world and lore, and building the engine.  That is what laid the foundation for the entire franchise - including not only the games, but novels, comic books, movies, and whatever else might become part of the franchise.  Typically, the costs of creating the IP are capitalized and treated as income-producing assets instead of expensed to a specific product.  Moreover, when you're laying the groundwork, you are not in fully-staffed, full-on production mode, and while the timeframes may be lengthy, the costs are relatively lower because the number of people working on it is much smaller.

Let's not forget that in today's business climate, production costs are only part of the picture.  Marketing is also a huge factor, and I'd guess that DA2's marketing cost was through the roof relative to DAO's.

That said, I don't think any of us really know which of the two games were the most profitable in the short run.  They are both still available for purchase, DAO at a higher price.  Longer-term, DA2 spent a lot of the goodwill and franchise reputation that DAO had established - and that is pretty costly, too.

[brushyourteeth]

CrustyBot wrote...
....

So now that you've changed your avatar pic, you don't make any sense to me anymore.

[withneelandi]

What I think Bioware and EA should have realised in their attempts to expand the audience for da2 was that the best way to expand the audience of a game is not to try to make it a sort of "jack of all trades master of none" game and diltuting the RPG elements to make it more interesting to people that don't usually play RPG's but instead to make such a good RPG that people who don't usually play RPG's but love games think "I hear that game is amazing, I need to get me some of that". Thats what Skyrim did and it sold well.

In the music world, you can make money buy making an album so good that it sells well, and continues to sell well for years to come, it is a significant piece of music. It might not top the charts in week one of release but it will sell well for years to come because it has real substance.

I feel that in da2 Bioware did the opposite, they did the gaming equivilent of rushing out an album filled with pseudo dubstep tracks because thats the in thing at the time. Sure it'll selll well for two weeks and possibly be a number one record but in 5 years time no one will care because it has no actual substance.

The latter might look better on the balance sheets in short term, but in the long term its the band that made the first record will still be touring, selling albums and gig tickets and t-shirts while the first band have gone back to the day jobs.

[withneelandi]

Actually, just to clarify that might sound overly harsh, i'm not saying da2 had no substance but the ratio of style to substance was certainly not as it should have been.

[batlin]

withneelandi wrote...

Actually, just to clarify that might sound overly harsh, i'm not saying da2 had no substance but the ratio of style to substance was certainly not as it should have been.

Well, even the style was pretty meh. Everything looked washed-out and the characters looked plastic.

And the hands....oh god the hands

Modifié par batlin, 18 juillet 2012 - 02:03 .

[Sarcastic]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
(and I'm a huge fan of New Vegas... I need to pick up the DLCs for those and play Sawyer's mod...)

The DLC's for the game were far better then the base game ever hoped to be. I have 1000+ hours of play time in New Vegas far more than any other single title I have played and enjoyed.

[Megakoresh]

 It's on this thread and many others that I am beginning to see exactly why Mass Effect 3 followed the steps of DA2 in being vastly inferior to it's predecessor.

When people say "I replayed this game 20 times, but this I never replayed", I would ask "Ok, and why did you do that then?", were I a developer. Elaborating on him being a "typical" or "atypical" gamer and dragging the discussion to another realm is what the community is good at. As a developer the primary concern should be to gather as much information as to why this was preferred and why that was not, and use it to construct a better product.

For example when Witcher 2 came out there was an outcry (orders of magnitude smaller, than ME3 ending outcry, btw) about the final chapter and the ending being really short and confusing. CDPRed asked community members on their temporary forums (at the time they used GOG forums, because or server issues), what questions did players have, how long would they expect it all to be, etc.

After that they sat down and throughout an entire year they expanded the final chapter with quests, the biggest of which arrived with the Extended Edition, so that now the final chapter with all of it's quests is actually longer than the first with all of it's quests (at, least if you go with Roche, his conspiracy quest is longer). They added hours upon hours of gameplay, all free of charge.

With Mass Effect 3 it shows clearly that past mistakes were not learned from DA2. And judging by how BioWare staff has reacted to critique over the course of the last few months, it scares me to see that maybe those mistakes are not even being acknowledged. Mass Effect 3 had lots of auto-dialogue, a lot less involvement with characters, and even in the end that crap with all of this being a bedtime story. It also has a lot less location, no exploration and a LOT less dialogue. Of course DA2 is much much better in comarison to ME3, but I am not sure if it is not just because ME2 was one of the best games in history, while DA: Origins was "merely" brilliant.

I am still hoping that DA3 will be good, but the only way it can be made good is if BioWare understands what they did right about DA2 (voiced protagonist, character/levels visual design, personality mapping) and what they did wrong (copy/paste everywhere, very little character interactions, little depth, same as in Origins annying autoattack combat, rushed release). It only with the community feedback (howevery annoying and unreasonable it may seem) that these things can be understood. And not all people will see that it's because of lack of interaction with characters that their personality mapping/design/whatever seems lacking, rather than those character just being boring.

Modifié par Megakoresh, 05 août 2012 - 05:25 .

[zyntifox]

Megakoresh wrote...

 It's on this thread and many others that I am beginning to see exactly why Mass Effect 3 followed the steps of DA2 in being vastly inferior to it's predecessor.

When people say "I replayed this game 20 times, but this I never replayed", I would ask "Ok, and why did you do that then?", were I a developer. Elaborating on him being a "typical" or "atypical" gamer and dragging the discussion to another realm is what the community is good at. As a developer the primary concern should be to gather as much information as to why this was preferred and why that was not, and use it to construct a better product.

For example when Witcher 2 came out there was an outcry (orders of magnitude smaller, than ME3 ending outcry, btw) about the final chapter and the ending being really short and confusing. CDPRed asked community members on their temporary forums (at the time they used GOG forums, because or server issues), what questions did players have, how long would they expect it all to be, etc.

After that they sat down and throughout an entire year they expanded the final chapter with quests, the biggest of which arrived with the Extended Edition, so that now the final chapter with all of it's quests is actually longer than the first with all of it's quests (at, least if you go with Roche, his conspiracy quest is longer). They added hours upon hours of gameplay, all free of charge.

With Mass Effect 3 it shows clearly that past mistakes were not learned from DA2. And judging by how BioWare staff has reacted to critique over the course of the last few months, it scares me to see that maybe those mistakes are not even being acknowledged. Mass Effect 3 had lots of auto-dialogue, a lot less involvement with characters, and even in the end that crap with all of this being a bedtime story. It also has a lot less location, no exploration and a LOT less dialogue. Of course DA2 is much much better in comarison to ME3, but I am not sure if it is not just because ME2 was one of the best games in history, while DA: Origins was "merely" brilliant.

I am still hoping that DA3 will be good, but the only way it can be made good is if BioWare understands what they did right about DA2 (voiced protagonist, character/levels visual design, personality mapping) and what they did wrong (copy/paste everywhere, very little character interactions, little depth, same as in Origins annying autoattack combat, rushed release). It only with the community feedback (howevery annoying and unreasonable it may seem) that these things can be understood. And not all people will see that it's because of lack of interaction with characters that their personality mapping/design/whatever seems lacking, rather than those character just being boring.

Well i don't agree with your opinion regarding what they did right and wrong in DA2. The only thing i found in DA2 that was a step forward was the move button. I play on the PS3 and that was something that was very annoying in DA:O that you couldn't order your companions to move. I want Bioware to understand that just because Mass effect is a successful interactive action/adventure franschise dosen't mean you need to turn the Dragon age franschise into one. I want them to create DA3 in the same image as DA:O, that is, the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.

But i know this will not happend and i am fine with that. With still having my DA:O firmly in my PS3 and the release of
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 enhanced edition im going to get my role-playing game fix for years to come.

[Megakoresh]

You don't agree, some other people might. Most people do seem to agree, because my opinion is in line with majority, last i checked. Whatever the case, their job is to look at all these opinions and figure out why one game was good and the other one... not so good.

I definitely agree that Dragon Age: Origins was better because it wasn't an action adventure, but all the same, I did feel like voiced protagonist was needed. I also feel like having important characters decide their clothing is a smart game design decision, because it adds to their character a lot and helps distinguish them from other characters better. Having Sten in the same armour as Alistair just didn't feel right. Same as having Morrigan with Circle Enchanter robes.

I think it's also worth mentioning that I play on PC. With mods (mostly those that make the game more action-oriented and enhance the looks, nothing more).

Modifié par Megakoresh, 06 août 2012 - 08:06 .

[zyntifox]

Megakoresh wrote...

You don't agree, some other people might. Most people do seem to agree, because my opinion is in line with majority, last i checked. Whatever the case, their job is to look at all these opinions and figure out why one game was good and the other one... not so good.

I definitely agree that Dragon Age: Origins was better because it wasn't an action adventure, but all the same, I did feel like voiced protagonist was needed. I also feel like having important characters decide their clothing is a smart game design decision, because it adds to their character a lot and helps distinguish them from other characters better. Having Sten in the same armour as Alistair just didn't feel right. Same as having Morrigan with Circle Enchanter robes.

I think it's also worth mentioning that I play on PC. With mods (mostly those that make the game more action-oriented and enhance the looks, nothing more).

Wrong. There is pretty much a 50/50 split when it comes to voiced protagonist according to the polls i've seen on BSN. If you consider the polls to have problems with bias i would like to see how go about assuming that you are in the majority. The same can be said about the uniqe looks. If you did not like that Sten looks like Alistair when they wear the same armor just don't use that armor. Use the armor you feel looks best and/or fits best with the lore off your character, not what gives the best stats, i do this all the time in DA:O.

I play on the PS3 and there is already a gazillion action games such as DA2 on that platform, Therefore i can't download mods that actually makes DA2 a RPG game.

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Megakoresh wrote...
With Mass Effect 3 it shows clearly that past mistakes were not learned from DA2. And judging by how BioWare staff has reacted to critique over the course of the last few months, it scares me to see that maybe those mistakes are not even being acknowledged. Mass Effect 3 had lots of auto-dialogue, a lot less involvement with characters, and even in the end that crap with all of this being a bedtime story. It also has a lot less location, no exploration and a LOT less dialogue. Of course DA2 is much much better in comarison to ME3, but I am not sure if it is not just because ME2 was one of the best games in history, while DA: Origins was "merely" brilliant.

BioWare didn't learn that past mistakes because they're hoping to revive Final Fantasy 7's phenomenom in 1997 with the same formula. Interactive cinematic game. ME 2 proved it can be done. So they adopt it with DA 2 and SWTOR. It faster to develop and easier since cinematic action game doesn't require much input from users and/or variances. The players only need to watch linear story ( like JRPG ). The problem is they went too far by taking too much control from players in order to tell their story or to show their cinematic cutscenes. Hence, we get all kind of restrictions and railroaded meaningless choices. Instead of allowing us to play, they let us to watch most of the time  their so called player character, which is actually a preset character,and left us hanging with  vague cliff-hanger endings, hoping to keep the game alive and to sell DLC as long as possible without any intention for any closure.

It worked well  with ME 2. It didn't work with DA 2 and SWTOR. It will not work with DA 3 and all future Bioware's games either.

Megakoresh wrote...
I am still hoping that DA3 will be good, but the only way it can be made good is if BioWare understands what they did right about DA2 (voiced protagonist, character/levels visual design, personality mapping) and what they did wrong (copy/paste everywhere, very little character interactions, little depth, same as in Origins annying autoattack combat, rushed release). It only with the community feedback (howevery annoying and unreasonable it may seem) that these things can be understood. And not all people will see that it's because of lack of interaction with characters that their personality mapping/design/whatever seems lacking, rather than those character just being boring.

The only thing they understand is how to make quick bucks no matter what it will cost them in the future. A real RPG take long time to develop and costly. DAO and Skyrim took too much time and resources due to customization, story varieties, details etc... ME 2, ME 3 and DA 2 only require short development because they're linear story with less varieties. Just pump in lots of cinematic cutscenes to hide lack of gameplay and expect people to be happy with it. This they can understand very well. And this is what they want to archieve.

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 06 août 2012 - 02:07 .