131 réponses à ce sujet

[Snypy]

Thalamask wrote...

I'm not sure how much of the changes to ME2/3 were as a result of Bioware people, and how much was as a result of EA strategy (bland products to appeal to lowest common denominator).

And EA is wondering why people call them the "Evil Empire," and the "Worst Company in America." If Mass Effect had started as a franchise aimed at the lowest common denominator, I wouldn't have objected. But to radically change the intended audience at the end of the trilogy is just sad.

I think that selling its soul to EA was a bad decision. BioWare wouldn't have been able to develop SWTOR, but they would've had little trouble funding Mass Effect and Dragon Age games. And fans would (probably) love them. I'm mostly guessing right now, of course. I hadn't seen BioWare books before EA took over.

Modifié par Snypy, 27 août 2012 - 04:02 .

[crypticcat 2o2p]

Creating complicated games is very hard to get funding for, Snypy. There's a reason Bethesda became a publisher, they can foot their own bills that way. I think that merging with EA was a good option for Bioware, as they now have a cutthroat multinational footing their bills and they can concentrate on creating games.

Both situations have their pros and cons. Bethesda published some 3rd party stuff that is really not all that hot, but they can take their sweet time with their own titles. Bioware is sitting pretty, but it comes at the cost of conforming to their parent-company's wishes.

Both studios however, secured their continuity and from that we all benefit.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

Snypy wrote...

Thalamask wrote...

Terror_K wrote...

Thanks.

I can tell you that if I had been in charge of ME3, there would have been about 10 times as many dialogue choices, and that's if the game was otherwise the same content, so there would be even more again because I would have had completely different content if the Rachni Queen was killed vs. whether she was alive, had very different Sur'Kesh and Tuchanka sections depending on things like Mordin and Wrex's status, and bigger roles for most of the ME3 companions. Ashley and Kaidan wouldn't have been out of more than half the damn game in hospital either (not to mention Ashley wouldn't be Miranda 2). Each location and quest would have more to it, with multiple ways to perform said quest. There'd be vehicle sections (e.g. I would have had a vehicle section on Menae), more hubs like Illium and Thessia would be about twice as big and have more missions to it. Shiala and Gianna Parasini would have definitely been present too. The Journal would have worked. The face import working would have been priority one. There'd be no Kinect or MP (the latter may have been added as a DLC though) and sidequests would consist of a mix of ME1 UNC quests, ME2 N7 quests and Overlord main hub style locations and missions. Every conversation with a squaddie or quest-giver would have dialogue and cinematics. There's be a lot more Charm/Intimidate opportunities. Ammo mods would be mods again and not powers, and there'd be more armour customisation, for Shepard and companions, as well as the return of Medi-Gel and Omni-Tools.

And most importantly, Every. Choice. Would. Matter.

There'd be no Starchild, and there'd be far more endings, none of which would be like the ones we got, and all of which would be completely dependent on your choices prior to the climax of the ending, so to get them you would not only get one or two final choices, but the choices put before you would also be completely dependent on the choices you'd made before, and not merely the same options no matter what you did.

I hate to say this, but.... while some of your ideas are great, you've fallen into the classic "not actually a game designer" trap of essentially creating an utterly impractical wish-list. Tons more content and dialog options would be awesome, but unless you've got a budget somewhere in the region of the United States annual deficit, there's simply no way you could ever implement all that stuff.

As good as some of your ideas are, I'm glad that you were not in charge of ME3. If you'd actually tried for the above, chances are that ME3 would never have been released.

I didn't actually say that Terror_K should be in charge of the entire project. I don't agree with all of his ideas, either. (ME3 is a good game in my opinion.) But most of them would've made the game better. It just seems that there were too many people in the ME3 development team who wanted to go against everything that ME1-2 stood for.

As for the wish-list, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it's quite unrealistic now (from the business point of view), but there would have had to be compromises along the way. Ultimately, only a handful of his ideas would've been implemented into the final game. Even so, fans would've benefited a lot from the improvements.

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Hopefully the future includes better graphics and animations. Both are pretty poor in the ME games.

I hope it's closer to this.

Photorealism is extremely difficult to make right -- devs have to spend countless hours working on their characters so that they show genuine emotions. Otherwise, it looks very, very odd. To put it in a nutshell, when the character should express sadness, it's no longer enough to just make her cry and/or sigh, but virtually every muscle has an important role to play. (Well, it's pretty difficult to make characters show emotions even now -- without photorealism -- but I needed to exaggerate it so that you would understand.)

Overall, I'm happy with graphics and animations in ME3. They are very good. The only thing I would change is the environment shadows which look terribly sometimes (especially on the Normandy).

EDIT: Check out this tweak guide if you want to have the best experience from playing ME3.

That's why I said I hope they get closer to that example. I don't expect their characters to look and animate that good. But I think they could do a lot better than what was offered in the ME games. The same could also be said of the Dragon Age games.

[Terror_K]

crypticcat 2o2p wrote...

Creating complicated games is very hard to get funding for, Snypy. There's a reason Bethesda became a publisher, they can foot their own bills that way. I think that merging with EA was a good option for Bioware, as they now have a cutthroat multinational footing their bills and they can concentrate on creating games.

Both situations have their pros and cons. Bethesda published some 3rd party stuff that is really not all that hot, but they can take their sweet time with their own titles. Bioware is sitting pretty, but it comes at the cost of conforming to their parent-company's wishes.

Both studios however, secured their continuity and from that we all benefit.

How are we all benefitting when half of us feel that BioWare has sold their soul and that they're ruining their existing IPs by retooling them and dumbing them down the the masses lately? That's not a benefit at all in my eyes. I'd personally rather have BioWare taking twice as long to make their games and perhaps only doing one major IP at a time than have what's happened to both Mass Effect and Dragon Age keep happening (or have happened in the first place). Personally at this stage, I'd rather see BioWare crash and burn and suffer the fate of other studios EA has absorbed over the years than see them thrive for what they've been doing. They don't deserve to exist any more. They're essentially raped their own IPs for the sake of some extra dosh and making EA happy, and yet for some reason that's okay because they own them.

On another note, something recently occurred to me: over the past few years during many an arguement a quite common sentiment has been raised by people on the other side... the basic notion that to survive in the industry these days you have to apparently follow the pack and can't just go on making "niche games."

Now, when exactly was it that RPGs became "a niche game" I have to now ask? Seriously, when and how did the RPG become a "niche game" instead of just "one of many game genres" like it used to be. Baldur's Gate was never called a "niche game" as I recall. Nor was NWN, or even KotOR and Jade Empire.

It seems somewhere around 2008, between ME1 and DAO, the RPG suddenly became "a niche genre" instead of just one of several genres. How did this happen if it's true? Was this because there were less RPG players suddenly? Or is this a comparative thing, where because the likes of Gears of War and Call of Duty became monstrously huge and popular, by comparison the RPG fans seemed small?

I think the idea that the RPG genre is a niche one is completely false. And if it's true, it's only come about because too many people believe it's true. Treat something like a niche genre, and it will probably become it. Even BioWare seem guilty of this: they keep acting like there aren't enough RPG fans out there wanting proper RPGs, so they don't make them. But how can they know that if they don't make them for us to buy? This seems especially silly considering DAO was such a bug success story for them, but they just decided to change it up and mainstreamline it with DA2... why exactly?

It's a little bit like some games shops, game magazines and game publishers and the PC platform IMO: PC players will often ask, "how come you never push the PC version, or even mention that it's coming in the advertising, despite the fact that it is," and those involved will retort with something along the lines of, "because the console versions sell much better." Then PC players often end up saying, "Yes, well... of course they do when you're never even trying to push the platform at all!" If PC games aren't as popular, it's likely because you're putting no effort in to make them so. The likes of Game Informer are particularly bad for this: pretty much every issue will have at least two to three previews and/or reviews that only list the platforms as 360 and PS3 when there's a PC version coming too.

Treat something like a niche genre or audience for long enough and it'll become that way, simply because you neglected it far too much.

[Thalamask]

Terror_K wrote...
stuff

I'd like to take issue with a couple of comments in your post, Terror_K:
1) You seem to be assuming that broadening the appeal of a game automatically equals dumbing it down and ruining it. This is not necessarily true. In my opinion, apart from utterly dismal writing, ME3 was actually a better game than ME1, and even allowing for the worse writing and appalling ending, the Mass Effect series has, as a whole, improved from ME1.

2) You talk about how you would rather BW worked on only one franchise, and took longer to make a game etc. but you're utterly ignoring the ultimate fact that these companies are not charities. They're not out there trying to improve the world, they're trying to make money. Games are risky business. Two very similar games could have wildly different success levels so, once a company reaches a certain size (or is no longer prepared to gamble it's existance on a single product) it becomes critical to diversify. In addition, the longer a company takes to push out a product, the more units they have to move just to break even. The gaming market has a limited size, so the potential sales for any given product are capped at some arbitrary level. The size of the market doesn't magically increase because they spent more time and money making a game, so doubling the production costs will never result in doubling your sales. Companies have to consider how much time/money they're prepared to risk and compare that to their predicted sales numbers. They have to think about when spending more money will actually result in less profit because the cost-benefit is negative. And ultimately, they have to call "good enough" and ship.

3) You question whether RPG's are a niche game. 15 years ago, I would have agreed with you that they are a mainstay of the market. But today? I can easily see how "pure" RPG's are a niche game now. When you consider:

• the college frat-boy crowd, who just want to shoot stuff and stroke their epeen to bolster their inadequate self-confidence;
• the expanding pool of 30+ gamers (most of whom have jobs, families, children etc.) who cannot spend the time required by a "pure" RPG;
• the fundamentalist loonie "my imaginary sky fairy says D&D is evil" crowd attacking anything that looks like it might be related to role-playing, D&D etc.
• the massively increased costs of game development (particularly in the AAA industry);
• the overall increase in the "game market" as a whole from families, grannies etc. resulting in the old-school "core" gamer representing an increasingly smaller percentage of that market

it really comes as no surprise to me that RPG's get far less attention. I don't really think there was any 'suddenly' about it. Companies realised that pure RPG's simply didn't sell well enough and they started experimenting. It'll take a while, but hopefully they'll find a balance everyone can live with.

4) You ask why they would "mainstream" something. Money, simple. DA:O and ME1 game them a core audience for each of those franchises that they knew would buy the sequels. To make more money, they took steps to expand the appeal to more people. <imaginary numbers incoming> They knew that they might lose the ultra-radical hardcore followers (100 people), but that the remainder of their core audience would buy it anyway, even if they complained (900 people) and that by expanding the appeal of the game, they could bring in many more new customers (1000 people). It's just basic business, unfortunately. People rant and rave and swear that they'll never buy any more of this or that product and, while there are some few who actually stick to that, most boycotts (personal or organised) turn out like this:

[Terror_K]

Thalamask wrote...

I'd like to take issue with a couple of comments in your post, Terror_K:

That's cool. But before I respond to these issues in a more direct manner, after reading them I have to wonder what issues you're taking. Aside from a couple of small points, you seem to be basically confirming the very thing I've been saying for a whole now... pretty much since EA took over BioWare in fact. The main difference I guess is that while you seem to have a belief that "this is the way things are and it's logical and natural" have the belief that "this is the way things are, but it's not how they should be."

Anyway... onto more specific points.

1) You seem to be assuming that broadening the appeal of a game automatically equals dumbing it down and ruining it. This is not necessarily true. In my opinion, apart from utterly dismal writing, ME3 was actually a better game than ME1, and even allowing for the worse writing and appalling ending, the Mass Effect series has, as a whole, improved from ME1.

This is one of the few points I just outright disagree with. Well... aside from the very first part, which is true. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case, and it certainly isn't the case with Mass Effect, IMO. So many developers use terms like "streamlining" and "broadening appeal" and the like, but these just seem to be buzzwords for "dumbing down" in the end. The same was true for Mass Effect. I'll admit some of the changes to Mass Effect since ME1 have been good ones, but these are rare instances, and by and large they've come at the expense of a lot of the things that made Mass Effect unique and special, and the factors that drew me to it in the first place. I'd also add that most of these few positive changes occured in ME2, and I'd personally say that with some even more minor exceptions, ME3 was a worse game in almost every aspect outside of combat than both its predecessors.

In a certain sense and from a certain POV I could agree (and did agree) that Mass Effect 2 was "a better game" than ME1, but I couldn't say the same for ME3. And while I admitted to that with ME2, I found that that was its weakness and to its detriment, that it was more of a game and less an experience: less unique and different, more generic and "gamey" than the original. It also depends on your POV... ME2 was by far a better TPS than ME1, but the series was never meant to be a pure TPS. As I've also said before, neither of the sequels felt like a natural evolution of the original, with most changes made clearly themed around broadening appeal and appealing to the popular shooter market rather than improving on what was there and trying to keep the game in its roots. Instead of fixing broken or wonky RPG elements from ME1, they were either kicked to the curb and eliminated or watered down so much they were too simple to be satisfying, while also being replaced by simple TPS elements that were wedged in without being properly adapted to the RPG mechanics that remained. This is where the term "streamlining" fails BioWare's case, because ME2 didn't retain the functionality of ME1 at all, and just outright removed certain elements. Some people have used the term "BioWare cut the fat" but from what I can see, they took a fair portion of the meat too. The game went from a fairly broad action RPG to a game solely focused on the combat and combat alone, and there's almost little point to a game being an RPG at all when you have such a narrow and limited focus. Dragon Age, NWN or Baldur's Gate would be pretty drab eliminating traps, potions, locked doors, magical wards, etc. and with only abilities related to killing things. The same applies to Mass Effect.

Granted, ME3 brought some of this back, but it also removed a lot of the roleplaying and player agency, particularly with the complete lack of dialogue choices, be it via only two choices 90% of the time, the massive amounts of autodialogue and so few Charm/Indimidate opportunities. Then there's the overall fact that your choices just simply didn't matter and you were completely railroaded the entire time, as you controlled a Shepard that was now barely any more yours than Nathan Drake or Ezio Auditore are yours when playing Uncharted or Assassin's Creed. As much as I used to preach that the statistical RPG factors were the heart of the RPG, the roleplaying and narrative factors are very important too, and this is where ME3 fell completely flat on its face. ME2 might have had more shallow combat and horribly weak statistical RPG elements, but there was at least plenty of dialogue, plenty of choices, plenty of freedom and plenty of roleplaying as a whole. ME3 killed that, and that's largely why it's the worst of the three. Roleplaying in Mass Effect should be the most important feature, not combat, but the final game ended up having next to no roleplaying and almost an entire focus on the TPS elements. It was completely mis-focused and lost sight of the things that really mattered with Mass Effect.

They not only changed the gameplay style, but the feel and style of the Mass Effect universe as a whole. It went from being a fantastic homage to late 70's to early 90's sci-fi that realised story and character was key to a far more modern, bombastic and sexified styling. The original seemed aimed at children of the 80's who grew up with Blade Runner, Dune, Tron, the early Star Trek movies, Aliens, Babylon 5, etc. while the latter entries seemed far more aimed at teenagers who whoop it up at a Michael Bay film. It seemed to put style over substance, over-the-top action over story, etc. It wasn't a complete conversion from one style to the other, but ME2 and ME3 seemed to make a definite change of tone and style to the original game.

2) You talk about how you would rather BW worked on only one franchise, and took longer to make a game etc. but you're utterly ignoring the ultimate fact that these companies are not charities. They're not out there trying to improve the world, they're trying to make money. Games are risky business. Two very similar games could have wildly different success levels so, once a company reaches a certain size (or is no longer prepared to gamble it's existance on a single product) it becomes critical to diversify. In addition, the longer a company takes to push out a product, the more units they have to move just to break even. The gaming market has a limited size, so the potential sales for any given product are capped at some arbitrary level. The size of the market doesn't magically increase because they spent more time and money making a game, so doubling the production costs will never result in doubling your sales. Companies have to consider how much time/money they're prepared to risk and compare that to their predicted sales numbers. They have to think about when spending more money will actually result in less profit because the cost-benefit is negative. And ultimately, they have to call "good enough" and ship.

And this is largely why the games industry is in such a rut today. Barely anybody is taking risks or producing truly original stuff, and most games today are clearly rushed out and not given the amount of time they should be. Compared DAO's development time and quality to DA2's and it paints a pretty good picture. "Good enough" these days isn't good enough. Look at ME3: the damn face import wasn't even working... and still isn't. It's the big publishers like Activision, EA and UbiSoft that are at fault here: constantly straining the smaller devs to deliver on a certain time, no matter what the scope and scale of the game. Only a select few companies like Blizzard and Valve can take the extra time needed to fully develop a game thanks to constant revenues like WoW and Steam filling their pockets when they're not even doing anything (and even then I'd say Blizzard's quality has taken a dive since Activision took control of them and that their long development times aren't showing much, especially with Diablo III).

I also believe devs have been getting lazier ever since consoles could patch and update as well. Sure games were smaller way back in the 80's and 90's, but if you released a game as bug-riddled as most of today's are back then, you'd be crucified and the game would be an automatic failure. Now developers can rush things out and release shoddy, broken games because, hey... they can always patch later, right?

Well, unless they're like BioWare with ME3's face import and they don't even bother to fix it, then make up pathetic, provenly-false excuses as to why before ignoring the issue entirely.

3) You question whether RPG's are a niche game. 15 years ago, I would have agreed with you that they are a mainstay of the market. But today? I can easily see how "pure" RPG's are a niche game now. When you consider:

• the college frat-boy crowd, who just want to shoot stuff and stroke their epeen to bolster their inadequate self-confidence;
• the expanding pool of 30+ gamers (most of whom have jobs, families, children etc.) who cannot spend the time required by a "pure" RPG;
• the fundamentalist loonie "my imaginary sky fairy says D&D is evil" crowd attacking anything that looks like it might be related to role-playing, D&D etc.
• the massively increased costs of game development (particularly in the AAA industry);
• the overall increase in the "game market" as a whole from families, grannies etc. resulting in the old-school "core" gamer representing an increasingly smaller percentage of that market

it really comes as no surprise to me that RPG's get far less attention. I don't really think there was any 'suddenly' about it. Companies realised that pure RPG's simply didn't sell well enough and they started experimenting. It'll take a while, but hopefully they'll find a balance everyone can live with.

This is false. Well... not entirely. It's actually largely true, but there's one error in here that needs to be fixed to make it true. All your bullet points are accurate. The main difference and factor that stops the whole thing from being accurate is the fact that it's a perception thing. It's not that pure RPG's aren't selling well enough per se, it's that they're not selling as well as more generic, action-oriented titles.

Simply put, game publishers are getting greedy.

It's not that the audience is there, it's as big as it ever was. Likely bigger, in fact. DAO was, according to BioWare themselves, their biggest success. But the mainstream audience who wants their CoDs, Gears, Halos, etc. is far bigger. Far more profitable. Which kind of ties into your 4th point I realise. The basic point is, every developer wants to get CoD sales figures with every game, and CoD is, quite frankly, as bottom-of-the-barrel, simple and lowest-common denominator as a game series can get. Ever since the original Modern Warfare, it's been the epitiome of copy'n'pase unoriginality and simplicity selling time after time after time and resulting in massive profit and success.

Why make something original, fresh and deep that's only slightly profitable when you can just put out simple, mindless entertainment to the mainstream masses and rake it in?

4) You ask why they would "mainstream" something. Money, simple. DA:O and ME1 game them a core audience for each of those franchises that they knew would buy the sequels. To make more money, they took steps to expand the appeal to more people. <imaginary numbers incoming> They knew that they might lose the ultra-radical hardcore followers (100 people), but that the remainder of their core audience would buy it anyway, even if they complained (900 people) and that by expanding the appeal of the game, they could bring in many more new customers (1000 people). It's just basic business, unfortunately. People rant and rave and swear that they'll never buy any more of this or that product and, while there are some few who actually stick to that, most boycotts (personal or organised) turn out like this:

You do realise that doesn't exactly endear me to BioWare, right?

It's basically the sad truth. I though BioWare were better than that. Or, at least I did about 4 years ago now. Now it seems they're perfectly willing to bastardise their own IPs and warp them into generic mainstream drivel slowly just to milk them for their superiors. There's no dignity and honour in that. It also proves that all they see us as is little moneybags now. BioWare used to appreciate its fans, but lately it's pretty damn clear they only listen to and appreciate their drones and servants, and anybody who speaks out against them is suddenly dirt to them, no matter how reasonable or logical their points.

Funnily enough, I just watched the original Tron again before seeing this post. I can't help but feel that BioWare has become Sark to EA's Master Control Program.

It's a sad truth that far too many don't have the integrity to actually boycott and stop buying products like you say. I know given this truth and your belief that what I'm about to say will probably be taken with more than a grain of salt, but I honestly plan to not buy another BioWare game. Not after ME3. I felt I gave them more than a fair chance after DA2, and to be honest ME3 was only really a purchase because I was such a big Mass Effect fan beyond the games themselves, and I did feel the need to finish the trilogy I was already two-thirds into. I also didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was, believing it would actually have been better than ME2. ME3 was third strike for me. With DA2 I haven't purchased any DLC, despite purchasing all of it for the original, so I've at least kept my word there. I won't buy DA3, it's as simple as that, because as far as I'm concerned, Dragon Age is dead... murdered savagely in a back-alley by its own father. Nor future Mass Effect games. As for Leviathan or future ME3 DLC, I'm not going to lie... I may do. It depends what people say about it. It's not going to be immediately upon release like it was for ME2's DLC though. If it's just more of the same crap that vanilla ME3 was, then I don't see the point in getting it. YouTube videos will suffice to fill in the gaps.

Modifié par Terror_K, 28 août 2012 - 02:07 .

[Snypy]

I also think that appealing to a broader audience doesn't necessarily mean that the game has to be bad. It might even be better in the end, because the devs can spend more money on certain aspects of the game. It's a pity that those aspects often include stuff like multiplayer (which isn't always necessary) and Kinetic support (totally useless for most players).

By the way, the point 2 on Thalamask's list makes absolute sense. However much we may dislike it, publishers (EA in particular) are here to make money. The truth is that they will be focusing even more on a larger audience in the future as development costs will be higher. I can't argue with the fact that games are rushed nowadays, usually in order to meet the company's annual performance goals. That was the case with ME3.

I tried to sum up my main issues with ME3: bad writing, lack of proper consequences or maybe lack of proper decisions in the first place, and a lot of autodialogue in certain situations. Apart from that, I'd say it's equal or perhaps better than ME1. That's just my opinion, though.

Modifié par Snypy, 28 août 2012 - 01:46 .