20 réponses à ce sujet

[Spankoman]

I don't know if a running clock is a resource issue, but it does significantly alter the way game plays, obviously. You run into problems with not finishing a major quest in time, not discovering things until too late, or having to reload a save from hours and hours previous just to be able to move on with your game. It's one of those ideas that sounds better than it plays, IMO.

Although it occurs to me that you might have meant simply a running clock, as in just a day-night cycle. I think that'd be fine as a bit of realism.

[Spankoman]

I hope so. The response they got from breaking away and trying new things in DA2 can't be too encouraging in that regard. Lots of undeserved vitriol about alienating fanbases and dumbing things down. To me, that kind of willingness to experiment is what leads to the development of standard-setting games, which I consider DAO to be. If BioWare can find the right balance between innovation and incorporation of elements that worked well from prior games, they can continue this series for a long time. But not every game is going to balance it just right.

On topic - one thing that can be kind of annoying about a day/night cycle is having to wait for inns to open up in the morning. But if that's ignored, it could break the immersion a bit.

[Spankoman]

But that doesn't speed things up, it combines to slow things down. Either you're waiting for the time to pass or you have to just plunk down outside the place and make time pass, deliberately defeating the game mechanic. Does the day/night cycle add enough in realism to make up for what it lacks in seamless gameplay?

[cindercatz]

I would like to see time reflected in the series in general, in terms of changing roles, aging, family, retirement and maturation, etc., but not necessarily a dynamic day/night cycle, mainly because it brings with it a number of storytelling problems. DA is a story centric game franchise, not environment/"living world" centric like TES. Some scenes are better in daylight, some better at night. Sometimes a number of things really should happen on the same day when an active day/night cycle would prevent that.

[abaris]

Trista Faux Hawke wrote...

Oh - no I just meant a day/night cycle. ha.

Makes sense in an open world game. Makes less sense in an adventure, which Bioware games basically are. You're not exploring on your own after all, but embark on a set of quests and side quests.

In my book, wasted ressources.

Modifié par abaris, 04 novembre 2012 - 03:41 .

[LolaLei]

Ideally I'd like there to be continuous time with seasonal and day/night cycles, mainly so that we can actively see how the environment changes and experience all the pretties that the Frostbite 2 engine is capable of. But if it's not a viable option due to resources etc, then maybe having set areas that are always snowy/stormy/rainy/etc would be the way to go and maybe show various weather effects during scene appropriate cutscenes.

Modifié par LolaLei, 04 novembre 2012 - 05:49 .

[nightscrawl]

Spankoman wrote...

I don't know if a running clock is a resource issue, but it does significantly alter the way game plays, obviously. You run into problems with not finishing a major quest in time, not discovering things until too late, or having to reload a save from hours and hours previous just to be able to move on with your game. It's one of those ideas that sounds better than it plays, IMO.

Just because you have a clock doesn't necessarily mean that things have to be dependent on it, it could just be there as an informational tool for the player.

I don't think it would have worked well with DA2 because of the day/night shift that we had with the maps. If you force a shift to night, then into day again, have 12 hours passed? Those are the kind of problems I foresee.

That said, while playing DA2 I really wanted to know about the passage of time. There is a gap of one year, and two gaps of three years. You can say that 1 + 3 + 3 = 7 years, but there is also the amount of play time during each Act. How long is each Act supposed to take? The only real, defined time is the Deep Roads Expedition, because it is stated that the journey is two weeks to get there. Then it follows that it took two weeks to go back, so the whole thing lasted a month, perhaps a bit longer because of the dire situation (do note that the intervention of the Wardens cannot be counted on because they are shown leaving after obtaining your sibling, AND that is only circumstantial and would not have occurred across all plays.)

So, does each Act happen over the course of a few days, a few weeks, or a few months? I would say that the feeling is different across each Act, with the passage of time speeding up as you go forward. Act 1 seems like it might take place over a couple of months, Act 2 a few weeks, and Act 3 possibly just a single week or a few days.

Ultimately, I would say that the entire course of Hawke's career takes place over seven and a half years, give or take a few weeks.

My final point is that I would like an internal clock to tell me how long it has been in the game world. A reload would be simple: if you reload to a point that is an hour in the past, the game just continues counting from that previous hour onward, as if the hour you just played never happened. It would still be there in your listed played time, but that is not the same, and meaningless to Thedas time.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 04 novembre 2012 - 05:27 .

[Spankoman]

Fair enough. It would be a neat thing, and as long as it isn't done annoyingly and doesn't create a danger of painting yourself into a corner, I'd be for it. If the devs have the time and resources after the story is all fleshed out, then by all means.

[abaris]

Spankoman wrote...

Fair enough. It would be a neat thing, and as long as it isn't done annoyingly and doesn't create a danger of painting yourself into a corner, I'd be for it. If the devs have the time and resources after the story is all fleshed out, then by all means.

But I don't see how it could be implemented if it's not an open world game. With a set of quests you simply don't spend enough time in one place to even notice.

[Spankoman]

abaris wrote...

Spankoman wrote...

Fair enough. It would be a neat thing, and as long as it isn't done annoyingly and doesn't create a danger of painting yourself into a corner, I'd be for it. If the devs have the time and resources after the story is all fleshed out, then by all means.

But I don't see how it could be implemented if it's not an open world game. With a set of quests you simply don't spend enough time in one place to even notice.

I dunno. I spent some long sequences in Redcliffe and Denerim. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. I think you're right, though; it probably wouldn't come up so that you'd see it as it was happening very often. It'd stil be neat to have that dynamic running under the hood, but might not be worth the effort.

[nightscrawl]

Spankoman wrote...

I dunno. I spent some long sequences in Redcliffe and Denerim. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. I think you're right, though; it probably wouldn't come up so that you'd see it as it was happening very often. It'd stil be neat to have that dynamic running under the hood, but might not be worth the effort.

I'd like to know how long we were in the Circle tower. Not only was it a considerable amount of time (I assume several hours, perhaps a full day), we were unconscious for an undetermined amount of time during it, and once you start that slog you are trapped and must finish.

Here is another dilemma though. Let's say we have a dungeon that takes us (the player) 2-3 hours to complete. How does that translate to what would be real Thedas time? I highly doubt it only took our Warden three hours to go through the deep roads, that's absurd, especially when you account for travel time between thaigs (David Gaider explores DR travel more in his first two novels.) They would have to have some sort of conversion or something.

As a far out example: Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town for the Gameboy Advance has a time conversion of 10 real minutes (or thereabouts, I don't remember exactly) is one hour of game time. With the various tasks you have on the farm in those games, the hours pass very quickly (as minutes for us) while you are doing your daily chores of tending to crops and animals, so you have to manage your time if you have to go into town or whatever.

So let's say the first floor of the mage tower took you 10 minutes to blast through as a player. Well with a conversion, it might have been an hour or two for your PC.

[abaris]

nightscrawl wrote...

Here is another dilemma though. Let's say we have a dungeon that takes us (the player) 2-3 hours to complete. How does that translate to what would be real Thedas time?

Open world games usually take a factor of 5 to 10.

But that's the problem with non open world games. You get out of that circle tower and it's some time of day, then you hit the M key and set your destination on the map to arrive there at another time.

That's why a dynamic day/night cycle isn't really what these kinds of games need. As opposed to open world games where travelling is part of the gameplay.

Modifié par abaris, 04 novembre 2012 - 06:41 .

[Spankoman]

Yeah, a day/night running time cycle still sounds like it falls in the "it'd be nice" category. Because the passage of time for the Circle Tower quest can be solved with a lot fewer complications by having Cullen say "holy crap, you were in there for a day and a half! You must be hungry!"

Though it really would be neat, especially if it's something that the game could show off, graphically.

[Josielyn]

Speaking of time, does anyone know where to find a Timeline of Thedas history? Is it on the DA Wiki, or is there someplace on the forums to find it? I am trying to keep the events and important historical figures in DA Lore straight. Thanks so much!

[nightscrawl]

abaris wrote...

Open world games usually take a factor of 5 to 10.

But that's the problem with non open world games. You get out of that circle tower and it's some time of day, then you hit the M key and set your destination on the map to arrive there at another time.

That's why a dynamic day/night cycle isn't really what these kinds of games need. As opposed to open world games where travelling is part of the gameplay.

Couldn't they just determine how long it takes to travel from one location to another?

In DAO there is actually a concrete time referenced, and that is for the quest An Unlikely Scholar. If you take the quest and then talk to her before you leave Orzammar, she says that you cannot possibly have had time to go there and come back with an answer for her because it takes a minimum of 18 days to travel to the Circle Tower from Orzammar. -- As far as I know, that is the only definate time over distance mentioned across all Dragon Age material, which, in factoring average walking speed of your party, MIGHT be able to be used to calculate the actual dimensions of Thedas.

So, using that, if you traveled to the Circle from Orzammar, 18 days would just be added to your in-game time. Similarly, with forced day/night changes like DA2 had, you can add as many as 12 hours (dependent on the time of day you travel from) to your game time that your character has just skipped.

Of course, I can see how that would be jarring for some players, as there would seemingly be these large chunks of time where they didn't experience what their character was doing.

My point with all of these posts is that I don't think it would be impossible for them to implement this sort of time tracking, but I also don't think it's likely to happen either... sadly.

[nightscrawl]

Josielyn wrote...

Speaking of time, does anyone know where to find a Timeline of Thedas history? Is it on the DA Wiki, or is there someplace on the forums to find it? I am trying to keep the events and important historical figures in DA Lore straight. Thanks so much!

Here you go. Note that this goes from the creation of the Tevinter Imperium to some spoilers from Asunder and the interrogation of Varric by Cassandra, assumed to be in 9:40 Dragon.

It does not contain anything from the two comics that have been released since Asunder. I'm not even sure if those are supposed to take place during the three year period after we kill Meredith and Varric is interrogated, OR after all of that.

[Imp of the Perverse]

abaris wrote...

nightscrawl wrote...

Here is another dilemma though. Let's say we have a dungeon that takes us (the player) 2-3 hours to complete. How does that translate to what would be real Thedas time?

Open world games usually take a factor of 5 to 10.

But that's the problem with non open world games. You get out of that circle tower and it's some time of day, then you hit the M key and set your destination on the map to arrive there at another time.

That's why a dynamic day/night cycle isn't really what these kinds of games need. As opposed to open world games where travelling is part of the gameplay.

I'd like it mostly because varying weather and lighting can really alter the feel of a place, and make it stay interesting longer. Seeing something like the dalish camp in DAO in the rain occasionally, or at night, would have been great.