84 réponses à ce sujet

[Sam -stone- serious]

Razh2211 wrote...

blazin130791 wrote...

I miss Minsc and Edwin

I miss Boo, the giant space hamster.

This list is not complete without Lilarcor.

"You know?....a long time ago.....yeah....i was like a......a MOON blade.....hehehehehehe"

[Zenon]

Interesting post, but I mostly disagree. Getting long, thanks for your patience. Here goes:

StrangeCat Productions wrote...

Ok I am loving DA and I try and play once a week at most but there are some things I am wondering about...

Heck, I try not to play it every day, so I still have some time for my family.

First in Ultima 7 you could interact with everything it made the world that much more alive, I could grab a paint brush and paint a picture if I wanted in some ones house as the person went about there chores.  In fact the whole town went about there daily routine during the day and night.

I don't care about making own paintings, unless I could sell them for a high price. But I guess a Darkspawn won't hold still for 6 hours until the painting is finished. Besides there is probably not much time to indulge in fine arts while the Darkspawn are overwhelming the country and each day counts?

Didn't play Ultima VII more than a short glance (lack of time and motivation), but that was also because when I finally got it in a discount version the graphics and gameplay were outdated and not my taste anymore. Loved Ultima IV to no end in the 80s, but somehow that was it of Ultima mostly. U0-2 were too simple, U3 uninteresting after playing U IV, U V was ok, but not finished it, later games didn't like the graphics and interface as much anymore, in spite of it being a huge jump ahead... funny, isn't it? To sum it up: I preferred Bard's Tale to Ultima series.

I can understand fast travel but wouldn't it be cool to include an area as a large area with out the path?

I guess with such a 3D world as in DA:O it would be no problem, once each household has a computer with 20GB RAM, a neat 16-core 4GHz CPU, 80TB HDD, Quad-SLI 4GB Graphics...

Ok, ok, ok, the solution of incremental loading might be theoretically possible with today's hardware, but probably for that the game would need a different engine. Then again, I prefer DA:O type of combat to WoW type of combat.

For instance, roaming in a town, then oustide the town there is a field, forest, whatever, but your still your in the area that is still a town.  This town happens to have two villages that connect or something but it's still the box on the world map that you can fast travel to as Town X.

If I want a walk in the park, I open my apartment's door and go out. In games I actually appreciate not to be forced to walk for hours for the sake of going from a to b. In Ultima series up to U VII travelling on foot was much faster than it would be in any full 3D environment.

Creatures.  Great Creatures yea but every battle that pops up just seems like your going from a to b and over again.    Creatures will actually just stand there doing nothing if they don't see you, don't they do something other then stand around.  

Well, if you get close enough for the enemies to notice you, they will charge at you. If they set an ambush or are simply in a room you enter, why should they move before they see you? Still, AI creatures, that actively search for heroes with the purpose of ambushing them will probably be included one day in games. Alas, I can already imagine the flood of "too difficult" posts then.

Also some NPCs are not totally inactive during your quest. Often enough some things changed during your quest due to NPC actions. I just point out as example the tower during the Mage origin and after arriving at the Circle later again...

Do you really have to have everything that you can grab highlighted in Glitter?  I remember back in Ultima series you had to check everything.  Clues were very subtle (like The Witcher)  you had to read a book in a library on the other side of the world to figure out a clue or answer for something some where else.  The Witcher had this and so did Dagger Fall. 

You can switch the "glitter" off in the options. Just a hint!

I think the interaction with the world is a little on the lacking side.  The story is fantastic but the world interection with the characters is little low.  Would have been cool to create a script that makes NPC's do there daily routine like the place is a live.

While some daily routines may be "nice to see" without slowing down gameplay too much, because the smith is out again, the priests hold a sermon, etc... I'd consider the priority of such things rather low. With limited resources this will most likely not be a standard part in modern games. The higher the graphics quality, the more will be expected in comparison to what we'd call real life. Compared to real life any graphics will be limited in detail, will always be a trade-off between beauty and cost. Even the holodeck in Star Trek wasn't perfect. Wish my laptop had a performance anywhere near that...

Dont' get me wrong it's great game, great story, the combat is fantastic!  Playing on hard after the new patch has been quite challenging too.

It's not that I am being nit picky it's just I am comparing games that were over 10 years ago to the major games released now and seeing a sort of backwards game desing in some things.

I think modern games have a stronger focus on graphics and effects. Also physics and other things play a big role. At the same time also modern computers have a quite limited memory and calculation power when it comes to simulate a world with hundreds of intelligent AI NPCs, each with a daily routine, plus handling combat in real-time simultaneously.

Considering also how much effort Origin put in Ultima IX as the first full 3D Ultima, with the ambition to be the best Ultima ever, and the actual result in terms of (at it's time huge) needed hardware resources, gameplay, bugs, etc. I don't see backward design here.

Traveling on a map doesn't break my immersion. Such was also done in movies like Indiana Jones before. Also the modular design solves many problems of a game, which is open for the community to develop own modules. I have Morrowind at home, too. Like a previous poster I basically played only a few hours after character generation. Created a new character. Tried it out a bit. Somehow didn't get far into the game, in spite of liking many of its ideas. Also I have not seen any community adventure modules of any sort for Morrowind. Ok, after a while I stopped looking, but it's surely nothing compared to NWN with a modular design.

It will be interesting to see what an Ultima VII redux in the DA:O engine eventually looks like. I don't mean to disappoint you, but my guess is, that it will never be completely finished in the end.

My summary is: The focus of games in the past was different. Doesn't make them necessarily better games. One day some ideas of older games may become modern again. The good part is, that now the toolset and setting of DA is already designed, Bioware can focus on a bigger world with more items and more creatures for the sequel. I'm looking forward to it! Go, Bioware!

P.S.: DA:O has "Enchantment!"

[Zenon]

Before you ask: When I played my favourite game of Bard's Tale "The Bard's Tale III - The Thief of Fate" it was on my C64 a little after my 18th birthday in 1988...

[Legion-001]

Statisfaction wrote...

Ultima VII was the shizzle, and it's a pretty accurate statement to say that almost every single RPG made after it has been "going backwards". Dragon Age 2 could definately take pointers from Ultima 7 if they're interested in making a cool living world (Oblivion should've taken a couple pointers too... it was a good start, but barely noticable except for the fact that I had to wait 8 hours for my store to open)

If you go into a pub in Oblivion, everyone shows up at the same time, sits down and drinks ale all night. In Ultima 7, everyone has a slightly different schedule, they shout orders at the waitress, she comes around and drops random food, people eat their random food, order more, and it feels alive. Mages didn't just sit in their houses, they bustled around rambling, picking up ingredients, tossing them in their cauldron, then started filling potions up and replacing them on the table. In clothing stores, shopkeeps would pick up a bale of wool, spin it into thread, then use the loom to turn it into cloth, then use shears on it to make clothing or bandages. It was pretty simple loop, but what a friggen rush to be able to cut your own bandages and bake your own bread!

If DA2 can keep their high quality story and characters, but beef up the world so it doesn't feel so dead, it'd be a perfect 10/10. I mean the ability to break into every single house in Denerim to find rough leather gloves and elfroot is excessive and a bit of a waste of time, but NPCs having schedules and interacting with the environment adds so much to a world.

P.S. I want to have Richard Garriot's baby, even if it's not quite right in the head (genetic?)

Ironically it's actually surprisingly easy to create the appearance of a living world in oblivion, so easy in fact that it could have been done by a simple automated system that each NPC could be given to determine their needs at a given time... I don't understand why they DIDN'T do it at most it might've added maybe a month to production time.

[Sibelius1]

MerinTB wrote...

1) It's not really backwards. I personally find this kind of argument, the "games 10 years ago did this, we should move forward" to be kind of wrong-headed.

2) D&D more or less created the idea of stats for characters in a game over 30 years ago, should we no longer have stats for characters?

Preamble to post. I love DA:O and think the devs have done a great job for the most part, however:

1) I would venture that progress in a game genre is a completely subjective thing. Implementing or cutting certain features will represent moving backwards for some or forwards for others. Personally I agree with the OP that the lack of a day/night cycle and autonomous NPCs is a step backwards, they just make the world seem much more real in my opinion.

2) Ironically this is another way I feel Bioware have taken a step back. Sure D&D introdiced numbers and attributes for characters. In this game though, Bioware have unwillingly left them out, decided against fixing them, then let the community mod them back in! Now thats a step backwards for RPGs and game design in general.

Modifié par Sibelius1, 16 décembre 2009 - 05:35 .

[Sibelius1]

Crawling_Chaos wrote...

Yeah, it would be great to have the ultimate super fantastic bombastic orgasmic epic uber romantic ultra game that has thousands of square miles of explorable land with super-interactive world and ultra realistic hyper AI simulating real life routines, and a grand epic tale like none ever told, and super fluid animations and awesome combat and a huge in depth character progression system.

However, it just isn't financially or physically feasible at his point in time.

It absolutely is physically feasable, just no one has taken the chance of spending a lot of money and having their game falling between two stools. It is safer (cheaper) to make a specialist product that will definitely have a market than risk mixing 2 sub genres. The irony is, that if DA: O had Oblivion's sandbox features, and Oblivion had DA: O's characters and story, they would both be very much improved and by pleasing fans of both, probably sell many, many more copies.

Same goes for MMO design, Themepark or Sanbox. Why not design a Themebox or a Sandpark?

[Niten Ryu]

You can't design AAA quality games for mid 90's CRPG niche. That's just how it goes and nothing can change that. These days we can be happy if developers let us jump or kill some pesky NPC.

[Damar Stiehl]

Almost all modern games regressed because of the emphasis placed on the "lowest common denominator" gamers, and eye candy. Compare the original X-Com to any modern turn based strategy game. The amount of detail, amount of control, amount of open possibilities "then" is mind-boggling compared to "now". Of course, your characters looked like pixelated walking turds, and you can get better graphics on iCrapPhone these days than what you could get on the PC back then... but the gameplay didn't just rule, it was PARAMOUNT.



Oblivion? Ha ha ha. Try Daggerfall. If Daggerfall was a mad genius, Oblivion is its inbred, mentally challenged and physically stunted grandson. Sure, Oblivion is pretty and Daggerfall was buggier than a roach motel, but character designer alone in Daggerfall was more sophisticated than the entire Imperial City.



The regression will continue unabated... aging gamer population is a myth and a lie. For every "aging" gamer interested in a level of sophistication there are twenty-five kids who missed their daily dose of Ritalin, are bouncing off the walls with boredom, can't be bothered to slow down, want pretty graphics and instant gratification, and they want it NOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!!!! They (or, rather, their mommies and daddies) are the ones with the loose purse strings, their purchases ultimately pay the developers' salaries, and therefore they will always be the target audience. Hardcore CRPGs have died long ago, what we are witnessing right now is the death of CASUAL CRPGs, and the rise of CRPG Lite. Give it a few years, and Western CRPGs will be indistinguishable from JRPGs, where "story" means a cinematically propelled trip from point A to point B (no point C allowed), swords are bigger than guys that wield them, and the success of your attack depends not on the dice rolls, but on how quickly you can tap out a button combo.



Enjoy things the way they are while they last. Considering what a stillborn piece of crap Oblivion was, you can be almost certain that Morrowind was the last major open-world single-player CRPG. (And for the love of baby jesus, don't bring up Fallout 3. As far as I'm concerned, Fallout 3 was a reskin of Oblivion, with guns. Yes, I played it end to end. It is what it is).