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[LinksOcarina]

 I am probably already making something that exists on these forums elsewhere, in both positive and negative terms, but I do have a question.

In the wake of the (often unjustified) outcry against the company and all of that, I am curious if we will see some extra transparency from the dev team regarding Inquisition. Nothing like the storyline being leaked or characters being shown before an embargo lifts, but I mean maybe developer blogs on what is being planned, changed, the development cycle, and so forth. 

I remember the BioWare TV-video spots that were done to gear up for Mass Effect 3. They were good, but I always think you can go a step further with them. Not so much give out info, but define what is being done outside of broad terms. To take inspiration from what Obsidian is doing with Project Eternity, they are literally detailing how things are going to work, and how everything is treated, from the state of the world in-game, to how companions will be treated, to how classes/design is working.

You guys have done some of this too. The blog on how the armor customization will work is a prime example of this, as are the Mark Darrah blogs so far. I would love to see more of that as the development for Dragon Age III goes deeper. I would also think it would alleviate tensions around here somewhat as well; basically putting your foot down and saying "this is what you will expect because this is what we have changed" is perhaps the best way to stem a lot of the negativity here, because then people know what they are getting into if they choose to pick up the title for launch.

Of course I leave the decision to you,  but I personally think that sort of transparency would be a good course of action to keep the community on its toes, as it were. 

And if you think this thread is just a re-hash of things said, by all means delete or lock it. I am not trying to incite a flame war, I am just offering a suggestion of discourse.

Modifié par LinksOcarina, 25 septembre 2012 - 05:15 .

[John Epler]

Transparency is great, and good, and it is definitely something that's on our radar for Dragon Age 3. As has been mentioned previously by Mark and others, we're adopting a 'show, don't tell' approach for DA3, part of which will be providing context and showing off parts of the game/development that we think you'll want to see.

Are we ever going to be completely transparent? No. Game development involves a lot of things changing behind the scenes, and dangling a piece of candy in front of you and then saying 'oh, sorry, you can't have that candy because we realized we don't have the resources to give you that piece of candy as well as all the other candy we want to make' isn't particularly useful. Things get cut, things get added back and things get scaled up or down depending on what resources are available and whether they make continued sense in the grand scheme of things.

This is not going to please everyone. That being said, there are people out there who not only want but feel that they deserve to know every detail about the development process, down to the exact dollar figures we spend on catering or outsourcing. That's never going to happen. But more transparency? I think so. That will come once we have more to discuss, though.

[John Epler]

LinksOcarina wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Transparency is great, and good, and it is definitely something that's on our radar for Dragon Age 3. As has been mentioned previously by Mark and others, we're adopting a 'show, don't tell' approach for DA3, part of which will be providing context and showing off parts of the game/development that we think you'll want to see.

Are we ever going to be completely transparent? No. Game development involves a lot of things changing behind the scenes, and dangling a piece of candy in front of you and then saying 'oh, sorry, you can't have that candy because we realized we don't have the resources to give you that piece of candy as well as all the other candy we want to make' isn't particularly useful. Things get cut, things get added back and things get scaled up or down depending on what resources are available and whether they make continued sense in the grand scheme of things.

This is not going to please everyone. That being said, there are people out there who not only want but feel that they deserve to know every detail about the development process, down to the exact dollar figures we spend on catering or outsourcing. That's never going to happen. But more transparency? I think so. That will come once we have more to discuss, though.

Of course. I would not expect every detail to be given out either. That would be foolish on my part and presumptuous of the consumer/developer relationship. Nor do I expect every detail to be known either.

I am refering to the general details of what to expect. Like I said with the armor customization, right now I expect to see the unique style of armor for each companion, while getting to customize them to make them unique. That was an issue that was raised a while ago, one that seems to be tackled at this point. I mean more transparancy on things like that; on what to expect and what has changed.  And if this idea changes or is never implemented, we should know if possible. 

I know you won't divulge into details fully for a long time, but as an example, the combat has been described to be more about preperation and postioning over the action oriented combat of II, and the dice rolling combat of Origins. A blog to show what that truely means, going into detail, showing examples, and so forth would be the transparency I am referring to in this case, if that makes sense. 

Of course, not everyone will be satisfied, but then people will know what they are getting into without this misplaced  sense of betrayal thats going around. It's basically the intermedium that will strengthen the consumer/developer relatonship instead of shattering it, because then the main features are on the table for everyone to see if this is what they want or not, and then can't if that makes any sense. Keeping it too general leaves it open for interpretation, while too specific is impossible because of what you have to keep under wraps. 

Again if i'm overstepping or anything I apologize. Thanks for the reply though. 

This is actually a great example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Showing you what we mean when we discuss a particular feature (in this example, combat) with an actual working encounter is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to see going forward. Like you said - saying 'preparation is important!' and then inundating you with a hundred pretty screenshots isn't really all that helpful, as we're not telling you anything even remotely concrete. Running through the various systems and parts of the game over the months to come, including talking with the people responsible for their implementation and high-level talk from Mike, Mark & co is a lot more useful.

And we -will- be talking in greater detail, but just not quite yet. When we do talk, though, we'll be doing more than blitzing you with PICTURES PICTURES PICTURES and sound bytes.

@Sylvius - There are, for sure, certain people who would love to have a detail-by-detail breakdown of our decisions - motivations, reasons, costs, etc. That's never going to happen, for a variety of reasons. More detail on what sort of game we're making, though, including how we're building the game and why we're making certain overarching decisions? You'll likely hear more of that than you have previously. But rather than showing the decision from inception to completion, we'll be more likely to show you a feature and then say 'okay, this is why we're doing it/what it accomplishes/what we hope it also does'. This only gets you so far back up the chain, of course, but unfortunately I doubt this will ever go quite far enough for your tastes.

[John Epler]

marshalleck wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

marshalleck wrote...
Don't forget the things that get made and then chopped out and repackaged as day one DLC!

There is nothing wrong with that, given the nature of development cycles.  Here's another dev talking about how development - yes, involving DLC - actually happens.

I swear the over-under on the number of times I'm going to post this link before DA3's release is 250.  I'm gonna take the over.

Definitely over, because I don't care, won't follow the link, and will almost assuredly mention the game being chopped up and parceled out for additional payments in the future. At least for as long as this is EA's MO.

If you're not planning on engaging in honest debate (part of which involves actually listening to other viewpoints) then I strongly, strongly suggest you recuse yourself from this tangent. This isn't your private soapbox - it is a discussion forum.

[John Epler]

scyphozoa wrote...

 Transparency is a great idea, but I've seen numerous explanations and answers provided by devs on these forums and the people asking the questions refuse to accept the answers provided. This has happened with the topic of Day 1 DLC repeatedly. 

A few months ago, I spent about an hour searching through old ME2 posts to find a quote from Christina Norman explaining that the reload cancelling mechanic is an intended feature and people responded by saying "No, she's wrong. She's lying."

Transparency is a great idea, but I think a lot of people asking for it really are just hoping to uncover some dirt that proves all their conspiracy theories right. 

Of course, there are also plenty of reasonable people who just want any info on the progress of DA3, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don't really mind the "show, don't tell" approach with DA3, even though it means we will be waiting for a while between updates. 

There's also a problem in that you really only get one first impression. If we show you a feature that's not really done, and part of it doesn't look great - even if we show you that feature two months later and it looks significantly better, there's a chance that whatever your perception was of the feature initially is going to colour how you see it. Or, to put it in more concrete terms - if we show you a combat encounter but a bunch of features aren't quite working and it kind of looks like a mess, even if we show you a highly tactical encounter two months later, that's two months where you assume that DA3's combat is a gong show. That's not even getting into the idea that 'oh, well, we saw a crappy one and a good one, but I bet the crappy one is the more prevalent'.

That's not saying we're going to wait until sometihng is 100% polished and ready to go before we demonstrate it, but we do want to be closer to 'done' than 'prototype' when it comes to a lot of this stuff. 

[Allan Schumacher]

marshalleck wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

marshalleck wrote...
Don't forget the things that get made and then chopped out and repackaged as day one DLC!

There is nothing wrong with that, given the nature of development cycles.  Here's another dev talking about how development - yes, involving DLC - actually happens.

I swear the over-under on the number of times I'm going to post this link before DA3's release is 250.  I'm gonna take the over.

Definitely over, because I don't care, won't follow the link, and will almost assuredly mention the game being chopped up and parceled out for additional payments in the future. At least for as long as this is EA's MO.

You should follow the link.  I think Paradox has a good model for the level of openness and transparency with their customers.

[Allan Schumacher]

There's also a problem in that you really only get one first impression. If we show you a feature that's not really done, and part of it doesn't look great - even if we show you that feature two months later and it looks significantly better, there's a chance that whatever your perception was of the feature initially is going to colour how you see it.

Just to echo John's perspective...

There are people (foolishly) raging over the XCOM demo because it was just the tutorial. Therefore, the ENTIRE game MUST be hand holding and railroaded linear missions.

[Allan Schumacher]

Indeed. They recently posted a dev blog about what features from Europa Universalis III they're cutting/changing dramatically in Europa Universalis IV. They also do short, limited preview dev diaries showing what they're doing with some new feature in the next game, expansion, DLC, or patch on fairly regular basis.

I love their dev diaries. I actually hope that we do stuff like this!

I've tried to be a bit more open with discourse as well. Sometimes it doesn't make people happy because it's not what they want to hear, but hopefully they still appreciate it haha.

[Allan Schumacher]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

People are dumb.

I just wish there was a way to let them be dumb and ignore them without that impacting your bottom line.

The irony I find is that these people are the ones that consider themselves so much smarter than the "typical gamer."

[Allan Schumacher]

Yeah, but the point of any demo/tutorial is to reflect something close to the actual experience which the player will be receiving. Otherwise, what is the point?

The point of the XCOM demo is to give you an idea on how the game plays. The XCOM demo does this just fine. It had me going "CRAP IT'S STILL TWO WEEKS AWAY!"

They don't give you access to everything, because then they might as well just give you the game. Especially since it's clear to see that all they did for the demo was have the game exit once you get to the "open play" part.

Another game that I absolute love is Jagged Alliance 2, which had a demo which was just one tactical mission. It completely ignores the ultimately REALLY KICKASS campaign mode which turned out to just be an amazingly awesome surprise once I actually played the full game.


I think the angst over the XCOM demo is more "Players wanted more" in that of course they want more. More is always better. I'd love for the demo to be the full game too. That it had players wanting more is probably a good thing.