767 réponses à ce sujet

[hussey 92]

wsandista wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

Graphic detail in a crpg matters to many people. Eye candy matters. It may not matter to hardcore crpg grognards. If the competition is using photo realistic detail in their games many would (and have been) be asking Bioware why it is not possible in their games. The comparison in graphics between the Witcher 2, Skyrim and DA2 comes up on the forum. So many gamers do take into consideration the advancement in graphic detail whether it adds to the game or not. Many gamers want their games to look good and play well.

Absolutely. However, game mechanics matter more to some people. I think that many arguing against a heavy focus on improved graphics believe that too little time will be spent on gameplay.

Exactly, if the gameplay sucks, who cares how pretty the game looks

[Realmzmaster]

hussey 92 wrote...

wsandista wrote...

Realmzmaster wrote...

Graphic detail in a crpg matters to many people. Eye candy matters. It may not matter to hardcore crpg grognards. If the competition is using photo realistic detail in their games many would (and have been) be asking Bioware why it is not possible in their games. The comparison in graphics between the Witcher 2, Skyrim and DA2 comes up on the forum. So many gamers do take into consideration the advancement in graphic detail whether it adds to the game or not. Many gamers want their games to look good and play well.

Absolutely. However, game mechanics matter more to some people. I think that many arguing against a heavy focus on improved graphics believe that too little time will be spent on gameplay.

Exactly, if the gameplay sucks, who cares how pretty the game looks

How do you know the game play sucks? You do not know anything about the game play until you sit down to try it out either by playing a demo (if there is one), watching game trailers, experience with other games in the series, reputation of the company  or buying the game (which is what you had to do in Skyrim's case since there was no demo). What attracts gamers first is the eyecandy which is the graphics. Or you wait until others have bought the game and tell you of their experience which can be hit or miss.

[Xewaka]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Jozape wrote...
Have you considered adding a dialog rewind option? Like if we don't like how the dialog/whatever is going, just hit a button and go back a cinematic scene or two.

This is a brilliant idea.
This would solve the paraphrase problem completely without interfering at all with the reason the peraphrases are there in the first place.  People who like to be surprised can continue to be surprised, and those of us who loathe being surprised can avoid it in all cases.
I'm fully behind a rewind button.

Neatish idea. I disagree that it would solve the issue completely, but I can see how it would appeal.

TOR had this feature, sort of. Hitting Escape in a conversation would inmediately abandon it, allowing you to replay it from the beginning. While it was better than not having it (it allowed for a more accurate control over the character's dialogue at the cost of enduring the same dialogue several different times), it became tedious after a while.
It's still better than having the paraphrase be "Pissed on" and the dialogue be "I believe it's raining"; but I'd be hard pressed to find a more useless and actively misleading dialogue UI than the paraphrases.

Modifié par Xewaka, 25 juin 2012 - 06:55 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

Neatish idea. I disagree that it would solve the issue completely, but I can see how it would appeal.

It wouldn't solve any of the voice problems at all, but it would solve the paraphrase problem by letting us see exactly what PC behaviour each paraphrase triggered before making a final selection.

That's the sort of improvement the paraphrase needs: the player needs to know with certainty what it is he is selecting.

[Jozape]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Jozape wrote...

Have
you considered adding a dialog rewind option? Like if we don't like how
the dialog/whatever is going, just hit a button and go back a cinematic
scene or two.

This is a brilliant idea.

This
would solve the paraphrase problem completely without interfering at all
with the reason the peraphrases are there in the first place.  People
who like to be surprised can continue to be surprised, and those of us
who loathe being surprised can avoid it in all cases.

I'm fully behind a rewind button.

I think it would even make interrupts comfortable. Ideally we want to be able to pause during the interrupt, but if we miss that chance, rewind is the only way to try it again(or the slow process of reloading a previous save). It would also be useful if you forgot what happened a moment before, as you could go back in the scene and hear it/see it all acted out again. So a rewind option would be kind of like a short-term dialog log replacement.

Couple it with pause(and better paraphrases, CrustyBot's system would be a good start if at all improvable) and I think you would have the 'ideal' voiced dialog wheel that BioWare has been trying to achieve.

Xewaka wrote...

TOR had this feature, sort of. Hitting Escape in a conversation would inmediately abandon it, allowing you to replay it from the beginning. While it was better than not having it (it allowed for a more accurate control over the character's dialogue at the cost of enduring the same dialogue several different times), it became tedious after a while.

I thought I read that a while back but I couldn't find any writing that mentioned it. So BioWare has already done it before, and it's definitely possible. I'm sure it would be worth it to port this feature to DA3.

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

the player needs to know with certainty what it is he is selecting.

Well, I sympathise with this stance as I'd also like 100% clarity of what my PC is saying, but I have to disagree that it's a need.

The paraphrase system won't prevent me from playing the game no matter how much it detracts from my enjoyment of it, else I wouldn't have gotten through DA2 three times.

it would solve the paraphrase problem by letting us see exactly what PC behaviour each paraphrase triggered before making a final selection.

Generally I agree, except for the times where the PC has follower lines that come after the NPC's responses. Extrapolating from what David was saying, and despite previous dev comments that there will be less autotext* in DA3, it seems as though there will still be enough of it to render the alt-text proposal unsuitable, thus a rewind button would have similar flaws. You could rewind after the initial line, but that's the initial line. What if the PC goes on to say something (unprompted) after the NPC replies? Or after the next reply?

Sure, you could still rewind after all that, but the 'purist' RP experience would be spoiled due to knowing the NPC's reaction. At best, the rewind button would be a convenient alternative to quickloading and repeating the entire dialogue again.

*autotext - I had always equated this to unprompted PC lines, thus anything the PC said that wasn't immediately preceded by me clicking something. I'm guessing the devs think differently? It sounds like any time the player 'authorises' a dialogue choice then the PC can have a number of sentences to back-and-forth with the NPC so long as they're relevant to the conversation and tone. While nice for that realistic-style conversation, I have to hate it from my own RP preferences. :/

[Fallstar]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

Generally I agree, except for the times where the PC has follower lines that come after the NPC's responses. Extrapolating from what David was saying, and despite previous dev comments that there will be less autotext* in DA3, it seems as though there will still be enough of it to render the alt-text proposal unsuitable, thus a rewind button would have similar flaws. You could rewind after the initial line, but that's the initial line. What if the PC goes on to say something (unprompted) after the NPC replies? Or after the next reply?

Sure, you could still rewind after all that, but the 'purist' RP experience would be spoiled due to knowing the NPC's reaction. At best, the rewind button would be a convenient alternative to quickloading and repeating the entire dialogue again.

*autotext - I had always equated this to unprompted PC lines, thus anything the PC said that wasn't immediately preceded by me clicking something. I'm guessing the devs think differently? It sounds like any time the player 'authorises' a dialogue choice then the PC can have a number of sentences to back-and-forth with the NPC so long as they're relevant to the conversation and tone. While nice for that realistic-style conversation, I have to hate it from my own RP preferences. :/

You see, I still disagree that the alt text (I assume you mean pop up boxes or something similar showing the full dialogue of the PC's next line by that) wouldn't be useful even if there is auto dialogue. In situations where there is no auto dialogue, just the single line, it's still the ideal solution. And even in situations with auto dialogue going back and forth, just by knowing Hawke's first line, that'd at least give us a better indication of where the conversation's going than relying on the paraphrase. 

I mean, if the subject changes significantly enough that its now completely off topic from that first line which you do have control over, by that point its time to get the player involved again and pick another response surely? Either way, DG said they've explored the idea and decided against it, so I guess that's that and we'll have to make do.

Modifié par DuskWarden, 27 juin 2012 - 02:35 .

[AkiKishi]

I think rewinding/exiting conversations is a feature that just screams "Exploit this"

What happens to approval ? Does it reset too ? If not you could farm approval just by playing the same conversation over. What happens if the conversation has an outcome ? Can you still rewind it and avoid that happening?

[Jerrybnsn]

greengoron89 wrote...

Fun fact: Graham McTavish, who voiced Arl Eamon and Vartag Gavorn in DA:O, is playing Dwalin in The Hobbit movie.

Ha! I had no idea that those two characters were played by the same voice actor. This needs to be brought up in the "Is VO a must in DA3" post. Because it is possbile to have the VO protagonist be of different races yet have the same voice actor.

[Jozape]

BobSmith101 wrote...

I think rewinding/exiting conversations is a feature that just screams "Exploit this"

What happens to approval ? Does it reset too ? If not you could farm approval just by playing the same conversation over.

I think approval points are only added after a cinematic/dialog. That's the impression I got from the UI in both DA games. So if they only offer rewind during cinematics and they are careful with their scripting, it should be impossible to farm approval points.

What happens if the conversation has an outcome ? Can you still rewind it and avoid that happening?

That's up to BioWare. They could prevent the player from rewinding past certain points in a cinematic if they really wanted, or they could preferably allow us to rewind through the whole thing. If a player doesn't like an outcome to the point that they are willing to rewind the cinematic, then they will probably reload a saved game anyways(if they can't rewind). If that's the way they want to play, let them.

[AkiKishi]

Jozape wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

I think rewinding/exiting conversations is a feature that just screams "Exploit this"

What happens to approval ? Does it reset too ? If not you could farm approval just by playing the same conversation over.

I think approval points are only added after a cinematic/dialog. That's the impression I got from the UI in both DA games. So if they only offer rewind during cinematics and they are careful with their scripting, it should be impossible to farm approval points.

What happens if the conversation has an outcome ? Can you still rewind it and avoid that happening?

That's up to BioWare. They could prevent the player from rewinding past certain points in a cinematic if they really wanted, or they could preferably allow us to rewind through the whole thing. If a player doesn't like an outcome to the point that they are willing to rewind the cinematic, then they will probably reload a saved game anyways(if they can't rewind). If that's the way they want to play, let them.

There is a difference between changing the system to allow a rewind and reloading though. You can already reload if that is what you want to do. But a game system would be akin to Sands of Time ,which had a reason for you to be able to rewind , as well as requiring the collecting of sand to do so.
FFXIII-2 is another sort of example where you could lock time and replay a section with a different result. If the only reason is to to preview what a paraphrase will "say" then the save/reload function already does that anyway.

[Jozape]

BobSmith101 wrote...

There is a difference between changing the system to allow a rewind and reloading though. You can already reload if that is what you want to do.

Save and reload 'works', but it's also unnecessarily slow and unproductive. Cinematics that shouldn't take more than a few minutes can take half an hour or more to go through. I think that's way too slow.

If the only reason is to to preview what a paraphrase will "say"
then the save/reload function already does that anyway.

You might get distracted from the game and/or miss something.

You might forget a detail from a minute ago that you think is important.

Not relevant to DA(unless it's implemented in future DA games), but if you miss a ME2 style interrupt you can just rewind and try the interrupt to see if it's something your character would do(of which there is no guarantee). Rewind would have made Lair of the Shadow Broker so much smoother to play.

You might just think the cinematics look good, and want to see them again.

I think that getting perfect information in the fastest possible way is reason enough to have a rewind option though. You could have full text descriptions, but they don't tell you how your character says it. Neither do the tone icons.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

The paraphrase system won't prevent me from playing the game no matter how much it detracts from my enjoyment of it, else I wouldn't have gotten through DA2 three times.

I was unable to finish DA2 even once.

Generally I agree, except for the times where the PC has follower lines that come after the NPC's responses. Extrapolating from what David was saying, and despite previous dev comments that there will be less autotext* in DA3, it seems as though there will still be enough of it to render the alt-text proposal unsuitable, thus a rewind button would have similar flaws. You could rewind after the initial line, but that's the initial line. What if the PC goes on to say something (unprompted) after the NPC replies? Or after the next reply?

Rewind later.

Sure, you could still rewind after all that, but the 'purist' RP experience would be spoiled due to knowing the NPC's reaction.

Since it is possible to roleplay on subsequent playthroughs, the player's foreknowledge must not be relevant.

And even so, I'd happily accept knowing NPC responses if it meant I got to choose PC lines (as opposed to DA2's system of guessing randomly).  Furthermore, those NPC responses wouldn't be relevant anyway because the only NPC responses the player knew in advance would be the responses to the lines he wasn't selecting.  Once he gets the line he wants, he stops rewinding.  Even the purist RP experience you describe survives intact.

At best, the rewind button would be a convenient alternative to quickloading and repeating the entire dialogue again.

WIth an auto-save, yes.

The trouble with reloading manually now is that you can't load or save during conversations, and you can't always have a save handy from the start of a conversation.  Building in a rewind feature would ensure that the player could always undo a selection if it turned out he'd been tricked by the paraphrase.

BobSmith101 wrote...

I think rewinding/exiting conversations is a feature that just screams "Exploit this"

Not a problem.  It's not the game desingers' job to protect us from ourselves.

What happens to approval ? Does it reset too ?

Of course.  If you rewind a conversation, the things that have been rewound have no longer occurred.

What happens if the conversation has an outcome ? Can you still rewind it and avoid that happening?

For the rewind system to work, yes, that would have to be possible.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think approval points are only added after a cinematic/dialog. That's the impression I got from the UI in both DA games. So if they only offer rewind during cinematics and they are careful with their scripting, it should be impossible to farm approval points.

GUI updates occur after the conversation, but the scripts are still attached to particular dialogue lines.

I may be mistaken, but based on the nature of the scripting system I'm pretty sure that behind the scenes the approval changes are taken into account when the line is reached.

Having said that, within the context of a rewind feature, keeping track of what lines were spoken wouldn't actually be that difficult.

I'm not sure this feature would be worth the time however, and frankly it is one that I (as a member of QA) would speak out against because it'd create nightmares for ensuring valid game states don't end up broken. A feature like this is meaningless if plot decisions and other choices aren't properly reverted 100% of the time.  My two cents on the topic.

If this is often an issue for someone, my advice to that person would be to quick save often.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 juin 2012 - 07:07 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

If this is often an issue for someone...

This very issue is the main reason people complain about the paraphrase system.  The paraphrases are demonstrably obfuscatory.  Fixing that should be the primary thing BioWare is working on with regard to the dialogue in future games.

Don't make us guess at what line we're selecting.  Let us know.

In DA2, I can reach a dialogue wheel event knowing that my character is satisfied with the results of this conversation and bears the NPC no ill will, and yet have no idea which dialogue option is consistent with the PC's state-of-mind.  That's the problem with the paraphrase: we do not have enough information to choose any option from among those made available to us.

DA2's dialogue wheel is like those tests is school where they say "Choose the best answer", but the options all read like non sequiters.  DA2 gave us no basis at all for choosing among the paraphrases.  Fixing that is an absolute must for DA3.

...my advice to that person would be to quick save often.

Then let us save during conversations.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 25 juin 2012 - 09:19 .

[Fredward]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Then let us save during conversations.

Oooooh yes!  I like this idea. I really miss games where I could save during dialogue, mostly because I like to choose the "best" dialogue. And besides if I'm really not satisfied I'd just load an earlier save, same thing but this would make it way easier.

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I was unable to finish DA2 even once.

Then it is apparently a need for you, but not for everyone. A company like Bioware is as likely to cater to your need as a company like Bethesda is to cater to my need for games that don't give me intense motion sickness after half an hour of play.

Rewind later.

That's convenient for people who don't mind rewinding later.

Since it is possible to roleplay on subsequent playthroughs, the player's foreknowledge must not be relevant.

That's a narrow view. For some, it's quite relevant on the first playthrough.

And even so, I'd happily accept knowing NPC responses if it meant I got to choose PC lines (as opposed to DA2's system of guessing randomly).  Furthermore, those NPC responses wouldn't be relevant anyway because the only NPC responses the player knew in advance would be the responses to the lines he wasn't selecting.  Once he gets the line he wants, he stops rewinding.  Even the purist RP experience you describe survives intact.

I think you're underestimating the influence foreknowledge has on how some people play. I'm impressed that you can pick a line and stick to it no matter what you know of the NPC responses, but that's not so for everyone.

You can only speak for yourself, and I for myself.

A rewind button wouldn't work for me. Not that I'd be against it if I could simply not use it, but it's hardly the solution to all my paraphrase woes even if it is for yours.

Modifié par Shadow of Light Dragon, 25 juin 2012 - 09:54 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Oooooh yes! I like this idea. I really miss games where I could save during dialogue, mostly because I like to choose the "best" dialogue. And besides if I'm really not satisfied I'd just load an earlier save, same thing but this would make it way easier.

It all depends on whether or not the cost of adding saving functionality to conversations (which behind the scenes were actually cutscenes) would actually justify the cost. It's not as simple as just flipping a switch that lets you save unfortunately.

Unfortunately it's tough to accurately gauge how much value a feature like this can be when considering all users.

[Allan Schumacher]

Shadow of Light Dragon wrote...

That's a narrow view. For some, it's quite relevant on the first playthrough.

....

I think you're underestimating the influence foreknowledge has on how some people play. I'm impressed that you can pick a line and stick to it no matter what you know of the NPC responses, but that's not so for everyone.

You can only speak for yourself, and I for myself.

A rewind button wouldn't work for me. Not that I'd be against it if I could simply not use it, but it's hardly the solution to all my paraphrase woes even if it is for yours.

I agree strongly.  For myself, the first playthrough is always the most significant.  The fact that I couldn't side with UNATCO in Deus Ex was disappointing, but the fact that I strongly believed that I could made my first playthrough so memorable and entrenched the game among my favourites of all time.  Nothing can replace that.

I also know that many people (myself too) replay their characters with metaknowledge.  They go into games going "I'm going to go darkside this time and kill the Wookiees" or "I'm going to side with Caesar's Legion this playthrough"

I feel it's impossible to fully disassociate prior knowledge from subsequent playthroughs because the player will use that prior knowledge to understand what levels of choice he can make in the game.  It's why someone will replay Dragon Age Origins expecting to make different choices in the game, while someone replaying Final Fantasy 7 is not going to have that expectation.  It's an observer bias that can only be completely removed if you were able to literally delete everything relevant from your mind.  I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Replayability is awesome from the standpoint of "Cool this game reacts differently based on this choice and that's awesome!"

I never reload except due to death on my first playthrough of any RPG, because doing so I taint my experience and allow the knowledge of future events change alter my perspective.  Even if things all go to crap and the world is falling apart all around me, I deal with it and move on.  I find it so much more fun.  I can't get this on my subsequent playthrough because I already have an expectation of what the consequences are of my actions.  I make the different choices just to see how the game can play out differently because that's interesting and fun in a different, more metagaming sort of way.  Seeing if I can save person X, or seeing if I can avoid such and such.  Stuff like that.

[AngryFrozenWater]

@Allan Schumacher: It depends on the game. In games, in which choices are supposed to matter, I consider the dialogue in later runs just as important as in the first ones, because different choices should lead to another branch in the story or dialogue. And yes, you know what happened with the other choices made in a previous run, but I consider that not as bad, but as part of the fun. The ME franchise is a good example of that. I prepared many different imports of ME1 and ME2. Many people did the same. A lot of the fun was speculating, also on the forums, about those decisions. Too bad ME3 did a poor job in the implementation, though. You get the idea anyway, right?

Edit: My workaround is saving the game prior to the dialogue. If I make the wrong decision (like engaging in a romance which I didn't intend or my finger slipped) then I do reload.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 25 juin 2012 - 10:35 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I think that's just a value added of it being a good game. I'm not saying that replaying to make different decisions isn't fun. It is!

I think it still often comes back to the experience you had with the first playthrough though. You go into subsequent playthroughs thinking "Okay, I'm going to make a different choice at this plot point, and then another from that plot point. I am curious if the game will react well to it!"

At it's core though, I think people only set up ME1 and ME2 because they loved the game so much (part of it motivated by the choices that could be made. People didn't even care about the consequences of them especially in ME1, which didn't have many consequences). If people didn't like ME1 or ME2 on their first playthrough, my guess is that those people would be less inclined to replay the game.

A poor game with lots of different choices and consequences is still a poor game, is it not? Or does the replayability of it accent it in some way?

[Dave of Canada]

I've no love for Alpha Protocol's gameplay, yet I've played that more than once (three-four times, I think?). The different choices, friendships and manipulations you could pull off were awe inspiring and it caused me to wish to see the very different permutations of the game.

I've had to "drag" myself across certain areas of the game, as I find the mechanics (especially guns) weak and borderline broken. However, I'm a big fan of narrative and choices / consequences that I'd forgive a poor game for it's quality of writing.

Hell, I loved Game of Thrones (RPG) despite it's poor animation / voice acting / gameplay. There's little remaining of the actual game in the end, though I love gaming as an interactive medium to tell a story and how it impacts me emotionally.

Not saying that good gameplay can't compliment the story, however. I love going through a brutal segment and when everybody is like "i'm glad it's over", I find myself agreeing.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 25 juin 2012 - 10:46 .

[AngryFrozenWater]

@Allen Schumacher: A poor game is still a poor game, no matter how many options it has.

I am a kind of freak when it comes to choices. I keep a silly amount of saved games. For an example in DA:O the size of the all my saved games is larger than the game contents. I keep hundreds of them. It really annoys me when the number of saved games is limited.

What do I do with them? Often these games are large and sometimes I want to see what exactly happened in the past. So, I replay it. DA:O had also an excellent dialogue log, but it was limited in size. Too bad it was gone in DA2. I sometimes used a saved game to "fork" a character when the start of the game is not that interesting enough to replay.

About ME1: Woah! Sure we were interested in the consequences. Decisions like the rachni queen killing and the Anderson/Udina selection caused heavy debates on the forums. I was there on the old forums and participated in those. We knew from the start it would a trilogy. We knew that our saved games would be imported in the next title. Many people loved the idea right from the start.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 25 juin 2012 - 10:57 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think that's just a value added of it being a good game. I'm not saying that replaying to make different decisions isn't fun. It is!

I think it still often comes back to the experience you had with the first playthrough though. You go into subsequent playthroughs thinking "Okay, I'm going to make a different choice at this plot point, and then another from that plot point. I am curious if the game will react well to it!"

At it's core though, I think people only set up ME1 and ME2 because they loved the game so much (part of it motivated by the choices that could be made. People didn't even care about the consequences of them especially in ME1, which didn't have many consequences). If people didn't like ME1 or ME2 on their first playthrough, my guess is that those people would be less inclined to replay the game.

A poor game with lots of different choices and consequences is still a poor game, is it not? Or does the replayability of it accent it in some way?

I've yet to play a game with a lot of (real) choices that was a poor game, to be honest.

Notice - choices do not equate freedom. I have the freedom to slaughter entire villages in certain games, but it does nothing to the outcome of the game. That's not really a choice, that's just a mechanic for abuse and sadism, IMO.

A choice, where characters care what you do, and events are impacted (either in game or in the epilogue... or even in future games, for the DA/ME crowd) has never been bad for me. 

Fallout 1 and 2, as sacred as they are for me, are not the best games, combat wise. Nor does their sneak mechanism hold a candle to reality. Nor do their skills really correlate to logical points (Science of COURSE means you are both an expert hacker AND an expert in theoretical particle physics and bio-engineering, RIGHT?). Nor does the time mechanic have any real impact aside from Point A in the story and Point B.

But its choices... its wonderful, wonderful choices... THAT'S where the game shines! Dialogue can be a little clunky (although totally endearing to me, I can't really say that with a clear conscience) and Companions are little more than pack mules with animated heads (sometimes). And despite all the paths to get to the end, the entire game's set of choices boil down to squat in how you approach the end game.

But all those choices... they are like a siren's song for the RPG crowd. And then endings that reflect those choices, told through epilogue slides that postulate and surprise, that chill the bones or warm the heart... THAT'S never a bad game. Despite all the bad game aspects of the actual game, choices that are presented with care and reason (not just Red/Blue Paragon/Renegade) and that are acknowledged elsewhere and in the endings... I have yet to play a game like that I thought was bad.

Do these choices cover up bad games? Maybe. I don't know. All I know is that the more real choices and follow through on those choices you can give me, the greater chance I will love the game... and the greater chance it will be heralded as a great game, if history is any demonstration.