108 réponses à ce sujet

[Heidenreich]

Oh look, a nice discussion on getting to learn a bit more of the process of making a game from our favorite franchise turned into a day 1 dlc witch hunt. Oh BSN, never change ;p

[Wulfram]

berelinde wrote...

@Wulfram: Same thing.

Your reply has nothing to do with my comment.  I did not specify how they should use that time, only that it should work to improve the game.  If they wish to improve the game by adding new content, that's fine.

[hoorayforicecream]

berelinde wrote...

They use different resources. I wouldn't expect the writers to grind quests to find out that talking to Hewey before talking to Dewey makes Louie have nothing to say, nor would I expect the art department to spend the weeks between the production deadline and the release date spell-checking the Codex.

This is actually what they used to do with their time. It wasn't a very efficient use of it, though, which is why they have them work on DLC content instead. In the stretch of time from submission to approval, most people are kept "on call" where they come in to the office but don't necessarily need to actually do anything. They're just available in case something blows up and they need to fix something.

It's much more efficient to put them to work on DLC content during that time, since they can fix stuff that they need to if the emergency arises, and still make cool stuff happen in the meantime.

[Brockololly]

eyesofastorm wrote...
Erm... I always thought that a blackout is the opposite of transparency.  Cause, you know, if you black out a window for instance it is no longer transparent but is now opaque.  And yeah, I know, "Show don't tell" and that's fine, but you can't have your cake and eat it too and such.  You just can't.  That's what I'm told anyway.  And if you are going to get all transparent on us after everything is done... well, I don't see the value in transparency at that point cause the whole point of transparency is to open oneself or one's organization up to scrutiny and criticism.  And you know... what you guys are doing is the opposite of that.  Just sayin.

Yeah....that's kind of why I like Kickstarter projects more and more, is that they seem relatively transparent with updates and progress. Even if its things like releasing a vision document, thats a good thing to know what the game is going for in broad strokes. I love how open the Obsidian people like Josh Sawyer are being with their ideas with Project Eternity now. It just lets you know what the people in charge are at least thinking with where they want to take the game in terms of various elements and game mechanics.

I'll give BIoWare credit with something like that PAX panel they did a while back where they kind of went over broad aims they had like with tactical combat and the armor stuff. That was good. Even if they can't confirm specific features, it would be nice to know what some of the designers are at least thinking with regards to the direction of certain aspects, especially considering the differences between DA:O and DA2.

I understand what BioWare and John are saying with the whole"Show,don't tell" mentality as that was a big problem with DA2's marketing not showing any gameplay for months on end after they announced. But at the same time, if they're not going to show anything off until its mostly finished and polished up, then won't it be pretty much done at that point? It just seems like a bit of a one way avenue with all this talk of taking feedback to heart and in response you get varying degrees of "No comment" from BioWare/EA at this stage.

They're obviously deep into production at this point, so I wish they'd be more open with people right now, not 6 months from now or whenever they show gameplay for the first time. Even if its just big picture type stuff like what you'd find in a vision document. Get some of that out in the open now so that people can look forward to seeing those ideas put into action when they show something concrete.

Modifié par Brockololly, 25 septembre 2012 - 08:07 .

[berelinde]

Wulfram wrote...

berelinde wrote...

@Wulfram: Same thing.

Your reply has nothing to do with my comment.  I did not specify how they should use that time, only that it should work to improve the game.  If they wish to improve the game by adding new content, that's fine.

Sorry! I misunderstood your post.

[marshalleck]

Atakuma wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

berelinde wrote...

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

Why is there hate for Day 1 DLC? Are the devs supposed to sit on their hands between the time the main story is done and the time the game finally gets released?

Not at all! That seems like a great time for QA and prep for post-release bug stomping. 

They do that regardless.

Really? It doesn't show. Clearly they need to spend even more resources on it instead of repackaging cut content for day one DLC releases. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

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.

I continue to insist that knowing why you guys choose one feature over another would help us understand the overall direction you're taking and what your design priorities are.  If you have two planned features, and can't do them both, you choose one or the other based on which one better advances your design goals, but if we never see which option was rejected, then we don't learn anything.

If you discard a feature that favours one particular type of gameplay, that suggest that that particular type of gameplay isn't a priority for you, and perhaps even that you've consciously decided not to support it.  But if we only see the features you are implementing, we don't get as much information about how you expect players to player (or not play).

The 'show, don't tell' approach, I think, is badly limited in this way.  The process by which you make decisions is more important that the outcomes of the decisions themselves, particularly since we'll get to see those outcomes eventually anyway once the game is released.

[Pseudo the Mustachioed]

I agree that kind of information would be interesting/beneficial, Sylvius, but only for a few people. The rest of BSN would rant and rave because no reason is good enough to choose a different approach than any individual fan's personal favorite. And I think this method of transparency is in part meant to avoid the kind of reactionary forum "violence" that tends to come from misinterpretation and assumptions.

And I know that's not important to you, I just figured I'd say it.

Hopefully this approach will result in a BSN full of discussion of actual game features and not wild mass guessing, but... hahahahahahhahahaha. One can dream.

Modifié par Pseudocognition, 25 septembre 2012 - 08:40 .

[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.

[marshalleck]

I'd strongly suggest you guys stop chopping up games for day one DLC if you don't like hearing from players who don't like it.

[Apollo Starflare]

I still wish more games came with 'making of' bonus features (and similar), ala film DVDs. I find we typically only get a very shallow look into the development process of the majority of games, certainly those from the bigger developers and publishers. 

That said I can understand why showing anything behind the scenes before release can be tricky, and have liked what I have seen from the DA dev team so far in this regard (the blog on companion armour, the activity in threads on here etc.)

John Epler wrote...

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.

Sounds great. 


Edit: The Day 1 DLC thing is worth being concerned about in the larger scheme of things, but for BioWare games? Sure DLCs like From Ashes and The Stone Prisoner are designed to make people buy the game new, rather than pre-owned, but that doesn't bother me. Actually cutting out portions of the main game (in some cases the 'dlc' merely being an unlock code) would be much more concerning, but they haven't done that so I don't see why anyone would rail against them for it on their forums.

Modifié par Apollo Starflare, 25 septembre 2012 - 08:53 .

[marshalleck]

Apollo Starflare wrote...

I still wish more games came with 'making of' bonus features (and similar), ala film DVDs. I find we typically only get a very shallow look into the development process of the majority of games, certainly those from the bigger developers and publishers. 

That said I can understand why showing anything behind the scenes before release can be tricky, and have liked what I have seen from the DA dev team so far in this regard (the blog on companion armour, the activity in threads on here etc.)

I think a better example would be the developer "not-a-blogs" for the last couple weeks of Torchlight 2's development, since you can directly correlate the content of the not-a-blog blog posts to what you see in the finished product. It's good stuff. I think they're still posted on the Torchlight 2 website.

[Sylvius the Mad]

John Epler wrote...

@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.

Recognising that it's not possible to truly understand your reasoning process unless I can see the entire chain, I'll concede that more information is better than less information, so for now I'm content with the likelihood of greater disclosure.

[Wulfram]

One thing I would appreciate at an appropriate (no doubt far off) point is a full runthrough of a conversation. That's the key part of the game for me, but it usually gets neglected in preview stuff in favour of combat or pretty but non-interactive cinematics

[upsettingshorts]

marshalleck wrote...

I'd strongly suggest you guys stop chopping up games for day one DLC if you don't like hearing from players who don't like it.

"I'm going to continue to demonstrate how much of a lost cause I am, all but guaranteeing the developers I hope to influence ignore me, guilt free, because I don't listen anyway."

[Sylvius the Mad]

Wulfram wrote...

One thing I would appreciate at an appropriate (no doubt far off) point is a full runthrough of a conversation. That's the key part of the game for me, but it usually gets neglected in preview stuff in favour of combat or pretty but non-interactive cinematics

This would be terrific.  I would love some sort of tutorial on how the dialogue system works.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 25 septembre 2012 - 09:08 .

[marshalleck]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

I'd strongly suggest you guys stop chopping up games for day one DLC if you don't like hearing from players who don't like it.

"I'm going to continue to demonstrate how much of a lost cause I am, all but guaranteeing the developers I hope to influence ignore me, guilt free, because I don't listen anyway."

I never presumed for the EA crowd to consult with me for game design tips, so no big loss. And repeatedly dredging up that link from some other developer for some other game that has nothing to do with EA and their current directives (day one DLC, multiplayer in every title) isn't nearly as relevant to the conversation as you seem to think. 

Modifié par marshalleck, 25 septembre 2012 - 09:10 .

[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. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

John Epler wrote...

There's also a problem in that you really only get one first impression.

I know it's not your fault, but it really irritates me that all of us have to pay the price for the logical failings of a subset.

[AngryFrozenWater]

There is also the balance of talking about features that will be there and features that perhaps may be there. But I also have the impression that sometimes features are announced just for marketing purposes and won't make it. Some of those for DA2 have been discussed. For ME3 there is even a thread which mentions those promises. Don't get me wrong. I am OK with features that don't make it for some reason or another. It's better to hear from that in advance then to find out after buying the game. If greater transparency means that this lack of info is prevented as well then I am all for it.

Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 25 septembre 2012 - 09:21 .

[upsettingshorts]

marshalleck wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

I'd strongly suggest you guys stop chopping up games for day one DLC if you don't like hearing from players who don't like it.

"I'm going to continue to demonstrate how much of a lost cause I am, all but guaranteeing the developers I hope to influence ignore me, guilt free, because I don't listen anyway."

I never presumed for the EA crowd to consult with me for game design tips, so no big loss. And repeatedly dredging up that link from some other developer for some other game that has nothing to do with EA and their current directives (day one DLC, multiplayer in every title) isn't nearly as relevant to the conversation as you seem to think. 

So I should read this post as a promise to change your mind completely should Mike Laidlaw or Mark Darrah or anyone of consequence at BioWare comes on to these boards and makes a similar post for Dragon Age?

Yeah, fat chance of that.    They've said as much whenever the subject has come up already.  In any case, that dev broadly dismisses all positions such as yours as nonsense, that the game developer in question isn't EA doesn't seem to be as relevant as you seem to think it does.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 25 septembre 2012 - 09:19 .

[marshalleck]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

I'd strongly suggest you guys stop chopping up games for day one DLC if you don't like hearing from players who don't like it.

"I'm going to continue to demonstrate how much of a lost cause I am, all but guaranteeing the developers I hope to influence ignore me, guilt free, because I don't listen anyway."

I never presumed for the EA crowd to consult with me for game design tips, so no big loss. And repeatedly dredging up that link from some other developer for some other game that has nothing to do with EA and their current directives (day one DLC, multiplayer in every title) isn't nearly as relevant to the conversation as you seem to think. 

So I should read this post as a promise to change your mind completely should Mike Laidlaw or Mark Darrah or anyone of consequence at BioWare comes on to these boards and makes a similar post for Dragon Age?

Yeah, fat chance of that.  

Of course not. Neither of those two esteemed gentlemen have any credibility. 

And I find it amusing that you seem to think Bioware and EA are separate entities.

Modifié par marshalleck, 25 septembre 2012 - 09:20 .