Is the party size of 4 optimal? Do you like it? Do you want More? or Maybe even less?
4 lets you have 1 of every class plus 1 extra. It gives you some freedom in your choice of who to bring with you and it worked fairly well in previous Bioware titles, but I am reminded of NWN2 (not a Bioware title I know) where after Act 2 you had a 5th slot open up!!!. In DA that would mean 1 of every class plus 2 extra! Adding even more variety. Whether or not this is a good idea is up for debate, so what do you think?
Would a larger party size be better?
Pros: More party banter! Now 4 Companions can interact with eachother!
More diverse party builds! Want THREE mages? You can have em and still have room for a warrior and a rogue.
More options for Companions to interact with NPCs during Convo's. Often I would bring specific companions in DAO to specific events so I could hear their additions to the dialogue.
Cons: Less replayability? If you can bring more companions out with you then you have less need to replay the game to see what happens with different party members.
More micromanaging? Let's face it, sometimes the Tactics interface isnt enough, sometimes you need to take control! With 5 characters on screen this can be a bit more daunting.
Your input?
Party Size 4? or more!
Débuté par
The Night Haunter
, oct. 30 2012 10:50
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#2
Posté 31 octobre 2012 - 06:55
David Gaider
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- BioWare Employees
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- 4 514 messages
There are several cons involved with having party members:
* Pathfinding. You ever wonder why most games that involve movement don't have party members, or greatly simplify how those characters (usually just one) follow you? This is why. The physical act of co-ordinating four or more characters through a level is challenging unless the entire level (and likely the game) is built specifically to allow for it.
* Memory budget: Party members are expensive, in terms of the active memory they must consume. Why? There are technical reasons which are, to be frank, completely beyond me as a writer. Something about their AI, their animations and/or their more detailed models. We need to balance the amount of memory they take up with the amount of memory the other models in an area (such as ambients or enemies) take up or which the level itself takes up. Having more of one means having less of the others.
Do you guys care about these things? No, I doubt it. But they are the primary hurdles we must face, above and beyond any kind of story implications party size might have.
* Pathfinding. You ever wonder why most games that involve movement don't have party members, or greatly simplify how those characters (usually just one) follow you? This is why. The physical act of co-ordinating four or more characters through a level is challenging unless the entire level (and likely the game) is built specifically to allow for it.
* Memory budget: Party members are expensive, in terms of the active memory they must consume. Why? There are technical reasons which are, to be frank, completely beyond me as a writer. Something about their AI, their animations and/or their more detailed models. We need to balance the amount of memory they take up with the amount of memory the other models in an area (such as ambients or enemies) take up or which the level itself takes up. Having more of one means having less of the others.
Do you guys care about these things? No, I doubt it. But they are the primary hurdles we must face, above and beyond any kind of story implications party size might have.
#3
Posté 31 octobre 2012 - 08:52
David Gaider
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- BioWare Employees
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- 4 514 messages
Bfler wrote...
What? In Skyrim I can run around with a little army of followers in a town, without a significant loss of performance or raise of memory usage and you aren't able to do the same in your game?
I'm not saying no game can do this, just that it's an issue that we have because of our choices-- choices which every game must make in terms of what it focuses on. A game like Skyrim does some things (like "moving through an environment") better because it does other things worse... there is no way to take its strengths without also taking its weaknesses.
Why? I don't know. Like I said before, I don't get it myself and thus I'm not the person to argue the point. I'm a writer, so when someone tells me about technical limitations or resources allocations that make it more challenging for story, I stare at them quizzically until they eventually just tell me I'll have to take their word for it. Some of these things are being made easier by the new engine, but naturally there are also some things which just won't go away.
Insofar as a larger party goes, it is possible to arrange a level so that you could conceivably fit an entire party in it. The visible area would have to be small (so line of sight blocked), it would need to be free of placeables and probably couldn't have a great deal of enemies... not unless they were very simple models ("jimmies", we call them, meaning they have low poly count and incredibly simple AI). So, for very specific purposes, it can be done... but across a whole game? That's much more problematic.
#4
Posté 01 novembre 2012 - 10:09
Allan Schumacher
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- BioWare Employees
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- 7 640 messages
I was actually pretty amazed how quickly I got through that game now that I wasn't a 10 year old with no clue what the heck I was even supposed to do.
