188 réponses à ce sujet

[AkiKishi]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think a fan comes away more satisfied with a game they play until completion after 20 hours compared to a game that they play for 20 hours but don't complete.  I have no basis aside from my own musings for feeling this way though.

If my presumption is true though, a satisfied gamer does a better job of picking up future titles and self-promoting titles than an indifferent one.

If a game is unfinished because of other comitments theres always a good chance I'll go back to it later at some point.
I play a lot of different stuff, but I still like long games even if means builing up a bit of a backlog.

[Wulfram]

nightscrawl wrote...

No, you can't argue that. Completing companion quests is required in DA2 if you want to convince the person to stay with you if you pick a side that is against their base beliefs. If you choose templar and need Merrill, you must have either max friendship OR max rivalry, and have completed all of her quests.

But if you don't choose Templar, then all doing her quest achieves is dead *spoily person* or even *spoily people*

[AkiKishi]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Just a question Allan, do you ever see Bioware's philosophy changing where their games get much shorter and less focus on narrative/character development?

I personally would love for us to try something like that. Maybe a smaller scale project as an experiment? I say all that naively though as I'm not really privy to how decisions on what type of game is going to get made and how to justify it and so forth. I just know it's something I would be interested in.

First time I almost cried on this forum.

Bioware wouldn't be Bioware for me if it wasn't massive character focused stories anymore.

Aside from puzzles and boardgames I'd say all games are narrative and character focused. Even CoD has a narrative character structure in its campaign. The real difference is in how much control you get over those aspects.

[Il Divo]

I don't really have a universal rule for game length. A longer game won't necessarily increase my enjoyment, much like a longer film or novel doesn't always make for a better experience. It all comes down to what feels right. In DA:O's case, both the Deep Roads and the Circle Tower went on for far too long that I found myself getting bored.

Modifié par Il Divo, 06 juillet 2012 - 12:08 .

[TonberryFeye]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I wouldn't be surprised if DA2 may have been better received if it was not called "Dragon Age 2."  Although I think the most legitimate complaints probably still would have been called out and they would have been justified.  By the same token, I wonder if there were any players that probably wouldn't have picked up "A different name than Dragon Age 2" but picked it up because it was "Dragon Age 2" and actually ended up enjoying the game.

Tough to separate those numbers out I think.

Honestly, I'd say that DA2 as an entirely new IP (ie: in no way related to Origins) would have made a mediocre game; by being a sequel to Origins, it became a terrible game.

Sequels have to live up to what came before. If you can't do that, why are you making a sequel at all?

[monkeybiz]

TonberryFeye wrote...

Honestly, I'd say that DA2 as an entirely new IP (ie: in no way related to Origins) would have made a mediocre game; by being a sequel to Origins, it became a terrible game.

Sequels have to live up to what came before. If you can't do that, why are you making a sequel at all?

You're looking at it from a artistic perspective. Unfortunately Bioware/EA is a company and will always look at it from a $$$ perspective too. Bringing out sequels will mean more $$ for them as they hype up each game after game.

Don't get me wrong, I hated DA2 but in hindsight it did go someway in making it a dumbed down RPG and slightly more accessable to the more general casual/non-RPG gamer. I don't necessarily like or agree with the dumbing down of mechanics, but I can definately see why they would decide to do so.

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

nightscrawl wrote...

No, you can't argue that. Completing companion quests is required in DA2 if you want to convince the person to stay with you if you pick a side that is against their base beliefs. If you choose templar and need Merrill, you must have either max friendship OR max rivalry, and have completed all of her quests.

But if you don't choose Templar, then all doing her quest achieves is dead *spoily person* or even *spoily people*

Those dead spoily people, especially the dead spoily person in particular, chose their own paths, foolish as they were. 

Although, why you would do Merril's side quest and then side with the Templar's is a little out-of-character. But then again, I play a power hungry, but loveable, mage at least once in every RPG I come across. So to each their own.

[TonberryFeye]

monkeybiz wrote...

TonberryFeye wrote...

Honestly, I'd say that DA2 as an entirely new IP (ie: in no way related to Origins) would have made a mediocre game; by being a sequel to Origins, it became a terrible game.

Sequels have to live up to what came before. If you can't do that, why are you making a sequel at all?

You're looking at it from a artistic perspective. Unfortunately Bioware/EA is a company and will always look at it from a $$$ perspective too. Bringing out sequels will mean more $$ for them as they hype up each game after game.

Don't get me wrong, I hated DA2 but in hindsight it did go someway in making it a dumbed down RPG and slightly more accessable to the more general casual/non-RPG gamer. I don't necessarily like or agree with the dumbing down of mechanics, but I can definately see why they would decide to do so.

But from a business perspective, a franchise is only valuable if it has good PR. Think about it - the reason "Coka Cola" is so valuable as a brand is it is known for being a tasty beverage. If Coka Cola was known for spreading HIV then no company would touch it with a ten foot pole.

DA2 should, therefore, been a stand alone brand new franchise. Why? Because if it succeeds, you've got a new franchise to make games for (which means more money). If it fails, you can drop the IP and move on - you receive less negative press for a bad stand-alone game than you do a bad addition to a franchise.

[Ecf1]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Just a question Allan, do you ever see Bioware's philosophy changing where their games get much shorter and less focus on narrative/character development?

I personally would love for us to try something like that. Maybe a smaller scale project as an experiment? I say all that naively though as I'm not really privy to how decisions on what type of game is going to get made and how to justify it and so forth. I just know it's something I would be interested in.

If Bioware was to make something like The Walking Dead (indie game) that focuses on a great story, great illusion of choice and around 6 hours of playtime, I'd gladly pay full retail for that. In fact, that's something you guys already do well, just keep in an rpg with a simple combat system.

[monkeybiz]

TonberryFeye wrote...

But from a business perspective, a franchise is only valuable if it has good PR. Think about it - the reason "Coka Cola" is so valuable as a brand is it is known for being a tasty beverage. If Coka Cola was known for spreading HIV then no company would touch it with a ten foot pole.

DA2 should, therefore, been a stand alone brand new franchise. Why? Because if it succeeds, you've got a new franchise to make games for (which means more money). If it fails, you can drop the IP and move on - you receive less negative press for a bad stand-alone game than you do a bad addition to a franchise.

Well from the business perspective it is about making more sales. They do this by hitting the most common denominator and targetting the mainstream audience. Sure they might have pissed off a lot of the hardcore/traditional RPG fans (myself included) but they made more sales to the more mainstream gamers that normally wouldn't touch RPGs. In that way it made it more accessable to the mainstream audience. like I said earlier, I don't like it but I understand why they did it. With the mainstream gamers, sometimes less is more. Same approach with ME2 worked really well.

Sure DA2 might have sucked and was really bad for the franchise but you can't fault Bioware for wanting to get the game out ASAP so they sorta cheated and decided to re-use dungeons, etc. Most of the negative comments seemed to have come from players that played DA:O and was expecting DA2 to be somewhat similar. At the end of the day, they can't please everybody.

[Brockololly]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
I wouldn't be surprised if DA2 may have been better received if it was not called "Dragon Age 2."  Although I think the most legitimate complaints probably still would have been called out and they would have been justified.  By the same token, I wonder if there were any players that probably wouldn't have picked up "A different name than Dragon Age 2" but picked it up because it was "Dragon Age 2" and actually ended up enjoying the game.

Tough to separate those numbers out I think.

That's very true and its a criticism I've seen quite a bit- why not name it Dragon Age: Kirkwall or even what it was seemingly named before it was named Dragon Age 2:
http://desmond.image...png&res=landing

On one hand if you named it something besides DA2, then I think people would have been more willing to accept the different tone and gameplay mechanics, as you could view it as a side story type game. And then even if people were super critical of it, you could go back to a proper Dragon Age 2, letting people sort of think DA: Exodus or whatever was more of an experimental type game. 

I just think calling it DA2 seemed like a sort of cynical way to try and grab people into thinking it was a fully fledged sequel to Origins in terms of story, gameplay and scope. Obviously what people deem a sequel will differ from person to person, but if DA2 was marketed and sold as more of a side story, I think people may have been a little more forgiving and at the very least, it wouldn't have sapped people's enthusiasm for the franchise going forward if they didn't like DA2. But I guess that kind of gets to my  issue with all BioWare games feeling too similar in terms of presentation. I always thought DA would be the more old school approach with greater freedom in character creation and less emphasis on cinematics while ME would be the more cinematics heavy, streamlined action RPG. After DA2, it seems the identity Origins established was washed away and now DA is simply adopting the same player VO, fixed PC, cinematics heavy presentation style.

Allan Schumacher wrote...
I think a fan comes away more satisfied with a game they play until completion after 20 hours compared to a game that they play for 20 hours but don't complete.  I have no basis aside from my own musings for feeling this way though.

I think the exception there might be sandbox games. I think with Fallout 3, New Vegas, Oblivion and Skyrim there have been times where I played the hell out of all of those games when I first got them, putting in dozens of hours but left them for months on end never having finished the main storyline. But I had a good impression of them at that point. Or something like Just Cause 2- its incredibly fun and for the longest time I didn't bother to touch the story. Although, with sandbox games you can argue whether you can ever really complete them in some cases.

Allan Schumacher wrote...
If my presumption is true though, a satisfied gamer does a better job of picking up future titles and self-promoting titles than an indifferent one.

Absolutely.  And of course, an unsatisifed gamer will likely go around and discourage, spreading negative word of mouth.

monkeybiz wrote...
Sure DA2 might have sucked and was really bad for the franchise but you  can't fault Bioware for wanting to get the game out ASAP so they sorta  cheated and decided to re-use dungeons, etc. Most of the negative  comments seemed to have come from players that played DA:O and was  expecting DA2 to be somewhat similar. At the end of the day, they can't  please everybody.

Eh....I can totally fault them for rushing the game out such that they felt it was ok to blatantly recycle content. That's the sort of thing that DA2 would have been lambasted for regardless of whether it was named differently.

While some of the negative comments may have come from DAO players, people new to the franchise that I know also had negative reactions to things like the recyled areas and wave combat.

Sure, EA/BioWare wanted the game out ASAP to get in their fiscal Q4 before the end of March, but you have to question at what cost for the franchise? DA2 soured many people to Dragon Age as a franchise. And I think it makes for a much more difficult proposition in trying to sell a possible DA3.

Modifié par Brockololly, 06 juillet 2012 - 04:03 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Just a question Allan, do you ever see Bioware's philosophy changing where their games get much shorter and less focus on narrative/character development?

I personally would love for us to try something like that. Maybe a smaller scale project as an experiment? I say all that naively though as I'm not really privy to how decisions on what type of game is going to get made and how to justify it and so forth. I just know it's something I would be interested in.

First time I almost cried on this forum.

Bioware wouldn't be Bioware for me if it wasn't massive character focused stories anymore.

Err, rereading the question, I realize I misread it.  I was more focused on "shorter game."


The idea of having a game with more breadth/width in its content (rather than length) is something I find very interesting.

/EpicFacepalm I shouldn't post quickly while at work.... XD


I should go an edit my original post since I didn't actually mean less characterization.

/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk


Sorry...

[Seifer006]

remember - IGN are the same people who said EC will have several hours of content added to it.
funny, I can't find the article anymore

[deuce985]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I don't really want to see you guys get away from that strong narrative/character development because it's what I expect in a Bioware game. It's what separates your games from the rest of the industry for me personally. Not many games seem to put the care in character development/story like Bioware does anymore...

I think narrative and character development are still going to be the focus. In some capacity there's been thoughts that maybe we focus too much on story that it's a detriment to other aspects of the games, but my impression is that most of us at BioWare think that story is our biggest strength in our games.


Though I think you're referring to the "Action mode" for ME3, but by the same token there's also "story mode" that makes the non story elements trivial but still allows the player to make the choices that he wants to make. I don't know how expensive it was to offer these gameplay modes, but the underlying conversation system is still there and it's just picking the options for the player.

If it's low enough cost then I see no reason why both can't coexist with minimal sacrifice of content. Though to be perfectly frank at this point I don't know of any plans to do anything like that with Dragon Age at this time.

Thanks for answering my question Alan. And yes, I was talking about those two modes in ME3. I couldn't remember what they were called because it was late last night...<_<

I never felt the auto-dialogue, action/story mode took away resources from parts in the game I enjoyed most about the franchise. But I was worried it would do so. That's what I was trying to say. I've seen people say ME3 is shorter than ME2 but I've logged the exact same amount of hours in ME2 as ME3. I think one reason ME3 feels shorter is because it's much easier than previous games. I carve through ME3 on insanity. Content wise, I actually think the game has way more than ME1/ME2 when you factor in everything...

[deuce985]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Just a question Allan, do you ever see Bioware's philosophy changing where their games get much shorter and less focus on narrative/character development?

I personally would love for us to try something like that. Maybe a smaller scale project as an experiment? I say all that naively though as I'm not really privy to how decisions on what type of game is going to get made and how to justify it and so forth. I just know it's something I would be interested in.

First time I almost cried on this forum.

Bioware wouldn't be Bioware for me if it wasn't massive character focused stories anymore.

Err, rereading the question, I realize I misread it.  I was more focused on "shorter game."


The idea of having a game with more breadth/width in its content (rather than length) is something I find very interesting.

/EpicFacepalm I shouldn't post quickly while at work.... XD


I should go an edit my original post since I didn't actually mean less characterization.

/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk


Sorry...

Yes and this is what I was talking about earlier in the thread. I don't mind games going into shorter length if it's a more polished experience. I'd rather have replay value so it gives me more incentive to play the game again. ME3 does this very well and I think it does it much better than ME1/ME2. So, if it's proven ME3 is shorter in length than ME2, it has more replay value for me and more content. I've been through ME3 five times already and I only did three characters in ME2. I see new content in ME3 on each new character...I like that formula. ME2, I saw all the content in two characters. It doesn't matter how little the extra content I'm seeing in ME3 is, it's still more content. Multiplayer was also something I was very skeptical with but enjoy it because it's so simple for somebody like me. That adds even more value as a total package for me and I'm not a big MP player.

[lx_theo]

batlin wrote...

lx_theo wrote...

Difference is that if you're going to
design a game that people are going to only play for so long, are you
going to going to go into design with a focus on have lower quality and a
much longer time, or much better quality by getting around the time
people usually play for by focusing your efforts there? As a company
wanting to make the best game for the most people (yes, any business
strategy that doesn't do this is probably going to fail if they are not
already making things for a very niche market), they will pick the
latter almost every time.

I wonder how that strategy worked out for Kane & Lynch 2...

I love your proof of concept featuring one game as proof.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Brockololly wrote...

That's very true and its a criticism I've seen quite a bit- why not name it Dragon Age: Kirkwall or even what it was seemingly named before it was named Dragon Age 2:
http://desmond.image...png&res=landing

On one hand if you named it something besides DA2, then I think people would have been more willing to accept the different tone and gameplay mechanics, as you could view it as a side story type game. And then even if people were super critical of it, you could go back to a proper Dragon Age 2, letting people sort of think DA: Exodus or whatever was more of an experimental type game. 

This would have given them the freedom to make the third game Origins 2, or Exodus 2, or some other new format, based on how well the first two did and what sort of game they wanted to try.

Whole franchises have been born this way.  Freespace was originally a Descent sequel.

[Fallstar]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Brockololly wrote...

That's very true and its a criticism I've seen quite a bit- why not name it Dragon Age: Kirkwall or even what it was seemingly named before it was named Dragon Age 2:
http://desmond.image...png&res=landing

On one hand if you named it something besides DA2, then I think people would have been more willing to accept the different tone and gameplay mechanics, as you could view it as a side story type game. And then even if people were super critical of it, you could go back to a proper Dragon Age 2, letting people sort of think DA: Exodus or whatever was more of an experimental type game. 

This would have given them the freedom to make the third game Origins 2, or Exodus 2, or some other new format, based on how well the first two did and what sort of game they wanted to try.

Whole franchises have been born this way.  Freespace was originally a Descent sequel.

They still have this branching possibility, except with DAO2 and DA3 instead of Exodus 2 and DA2. I think calling DA2 DA: Exodus or DA:Kirkwall would have saved a lot of headaches though, and kinda wish they had done. It would have meant that a return to an Origins style game was still somewhat possible.

[Fredward]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
Err, rereading the question, I realize I misread it.  I was more focused on "shorter game."


The idea of having a game with more breadth/width in its content (rather than length) is something I find very interesting.

/EpicFacepalm I shouldn't post quickly while at work.... XD


I should go an edit my original post since I didn't actually mean less characterization.

/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk
/headdesk


Sorry...

Awww, that's okay Allan. I survived the trauma. And thanks for clarifying!

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet as some guy used to say so I really don't see the point in having given DA2 another name. Unless the import system was also scrapped, ie a completely different game in a completely different place and probably at a completely different time. Otherwise, really only the name would say it wasn't a sequel to Origins.

[SirGladiator]

Anytime an RPG is really good, you don't want it to be short. If its short, it probably isnt all that good. However that doesn't mean it has to be super long right from the beginning. If the base game was, say, 40 hours, but then there was a lot of DLC, 5 or 10 hours each, with maybe a 25 hour expansion thrown in there, and eventually you got up to about 100 hours, that would be more than satisfactory. It would make more money, and it would really be more satisfying for the players, because you'd constantly be getting cool new quests, items, characters, areas, etc. it would be like the game never truly ended! And thats the best thing that could ever happen with a good RPG. Obviously DAO is a great example of that type of thing, sadly DA2 was not, just the two awesome DLCs and it was over, and unlike the Shale DLC in DAO, we couldnt even take Tallis with us the rest of the game in DA2. Hopefully DA3 will follow the DAO model of lots of cool DLC to make an already awesome and long game SUPER awesome and extra-long.

[iheartbob]

Considering that many game reviewers admit to not even putting in the time for a full playthrough and finishing the games they review, I would take that statement with a grain of salt.

Personally, the longer the RP game for me, the better. But that's assuming the content is worth the time. If I'm just fetching and returning things, I never bother with those quests on second and third playthroughs.

[Uccio]

1000+ hours, that would be cool, AND I would pay mucho dinero for it.

[DarthChicken]

I prefer longer RPGs (and any game for that matter) well just because I enjoy a long, complex story and I only have the money to get a few games a year so it's important that I get my money's worth.