175 réponses à ce sujet

[Gandalf-the-Fabulous]

Mary Kirby wrote...

We considered adding an alternate ending because of our QA feedback. But we decided against it because the purpose the quest serves in the story is to give Hawke (regardless of their own class) a personal reason to fear the misuse of magic.

Thats what we were supposed to get out of that scene? I totally did not get that vibe at all.

[TheJediSaint]

Mary Kirby wrote...


And actually, we never seriously considered any ending where Leandra survived. The ending we might have chosen to add would have been a blood magic sacrifice to keep Leandra around as an undead.

That's...really creepy.   Like Hespeth poem level creepy.

Modifié par TheJediSaint, 11 novembre 2012 - 02:25 .

[Mary Kirby]

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...


Thats what we were supposed to get out of that scene? I totally did not get that vibe at all.

No. Nothing in the scene is supposed to convey, "BE AFRAID OF BAD MAGES!" But the purpose of the plot in the overall story is to have the player experience a personal loss due to the abuse of power by a mage. Not everyone is going to play that plot and say, "Maleficarum are jerks!" And that's fine. But the game in general is heavily weighted toward "Templars are jerks!" and we wanted at least one chance for a reasonable player to feel they had been personally wronged by mages.

[highcastle]

xAmilli0n wrote...

highcastle wrote...

Meta-gaming is frowned upon because it's the exact opposite of role-playing.

I disagree.  One can easily role play a character, while still having specific goals for minor things (such as one's romance sub plot).  Because of the nature of the Friendship/Rivalry system, some meta gaming may be required.  I'm speaking from a strickly mechanics point of view.

Or maybe I'm a bit too lenient with my RPs lol.

Yeah, pure RPing would disregard the mechanics completely. So if you end up with Fenris' rivalry bar only partially full at the end, for instance, then having to fight and kill him would be the natural outcome. Same with romances. You shouldn't go in knowing/thinking you're going to romance anyone, but go with who feels most appropriate for the character based on interactions as they happened.

But that's pure RPing. Like I said, it's hard to avoid even a little bit of meta gaming from time to time. I try not to do it when it comes to rivalries/friendships, but sometimes it can be difficult when you know, for instance, that you'd get a big hit to friendship/rivalry by bringing a character on a certain quest, but it's also in the character's personality to take that person with them. What do you do? RPing would say you take the character if your PC would do so. Meta-gaming would say you don't so that your friendship/rivalry score wouldn't suffer.

[redneck nosferatu]

I always metagame. I savescum, reload, and keep multiple saves to backtrack if I get a result I don't want. That's just how I play. Who are you to say the way I play a game is "wrong"?

And saying it is wrong is stuck up pedatry, which is really getting too common nowadays with people so concerned about "the narrative" of a game. Seriously, get over yourself.

[highcastle]

redneck nosferatu wrote...

I always metagame. I savescum, reload, and keep multiple saves to backtrack if I get a result I don't want. That's just how I play. Who are you to say the way I play a game is "wrong"?

And saying it is wrong is stuck up pedatry, which is really getting too common nowadays with people so concerned about "the narrative" of a game. Seriously, get over yourself.

I don't think anyone's dictating how people should play their games, just that metagaming sort of defeats the purpose of a role playing game, and that devs are probably going to think about designing levels/plots in terms of what best fits the story from an RP perspective rather than a metagaming perspective.

[naughty99]

redneck nosferatu wrote...

I always metagame. I savescum, reload, and keep multiple saves to backtrack if I get a result I don't want. That's just how I play. Who are you to say the way I play a game is "wrong"?

And saying it is wrong is stuck up pedatry, which is really getting too common nowadays with people so concerned about "the narrative" of a game. Seriously, get over yourself.

I see no problem with people playing a game however they like, whatever type of playing style they personally enjoy more.

As for game design choices that might lead to more or less opportunities to reload saves or backtrack to get better quest results, I think this should not even be any sort of issue. Let people play how they want and if they want to replay a quest or a particular level, who cares?

Ultimately, you can arbitrarily make it so the player cannot save during a particular level, or punish players who reload by forcing them to watch a really long cut scene, etc., but I don't see any benefit at all. Some players don't like to reload levels, some do.

If you make it harder to reload a save in a particular area, there is always going to be an earlier point where you can reload, and the end result is simply to unnecessarily punish players who want to reload for whatever reason.

[Ianamus]

I personally prefer to just play a game through the first time without reading up on potential outcomes, because It's much more satisfying to find things for yourself than to read about them. I will occasionally reload if a conversation goes completely opposite to what I wanted, but since it's sometimes hard to tell what the protagonist will say when you select a particular dialogue option i don't see that so much as meta gaming, just a dialogue option not turning out to be what you thought it would.

I think Biowares argument is likely more along the lines of they don't want to design the game with meta-gaming in mind. For example, people have complained about how a particular series of choices can result in a far better outcome than others and how it then "forces" players to pick that option. But that is only really a problem if you know all of the potential outcomes in advance. 

Modifié par EJ107, 11 novembre 2012 - 02:47 .

[Bullets McDeath]

naughty99 wrote...

outlaworacle wrote...

That's headcanon, not meta-gaming.

I see. If you're referring to reloading old saves to avoid some problem, if that's the type of gameplay someone enjoys, who cares?

In my case, I die and reload all the time. However, if I'm playing a thief for example, who gets caught pickpocketing and thrown in jail, or I make a certain choice in a quest and a particular NPC dies as a result, this is part of the fun of role playing a character that makes those kinds of choices. 

Reloading for those reasons would be boring in my view, and reduce the replay value. I'd rather replay the entire game and play a different sort of character the next time, who makes different choices.

I don't care, man, I was just clarifying terms. Personally, I think it's much ado about nothing because after your first playthrough, you are always meta-gaming, in my opinion. It's impossible not to be influenced by what you already know about future events in the game. Even if you don't use that knowledge to deliberately get yourself the best reults out of a sense of "my character wouldn't know that", you're still doing that as a response to that knowledge, and therefore, making your character's decisions in light of that knowledge, and therefore meta-gaming.

But maybe that's just me?

[naughty99]

EJ107 wrote...

I personally prefer to just play a game through the first time without reading up on potential outcomes, because It's much more satisfying to find things for yourself than to read about them. I will occasionally reload if a conversation goes completely opposite to what I wanted, but since it's sometimes hard to tell what the protagonist will say when you select a particular dialogue option i don't see that so much as meta gaming, just a dialogue option not turning out to be what you thought it would.

I think Biowares argument is likely more along the lines of they don't want to design the game with meta-gaming in mind. For example, people have complained about how a particular series of choices can result in a far better outcome than others and how it then "forces" players to pick that option. But that is only really a problem if you know all of the potential outcomes in advance. 

I suppose there are some interesting design features that can thwart some of these activities.

For example, in Skyrim, if you save before attempting to pick a lock, run out of lockpicks and reload, the lock mechanism is reset to a different position.  Or in Dishonored, there is a mission where your assassination target is wearing a mask and if you reload the mission the target is randomly assigned to a different mask wearing character.

[Gandalf-the-Fabulous]

Mary Kirby wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...


Thats what we were supposed to get out of that scene? I totally did not get that vibe at all.

No. Nothing in the scene is supposed to convey, "BE AFRAID OF BAD MAGES!" But the purpose of the plot in the overall story is to have the player experience a personal loss due to the abuse of power by a mage. Not everyone is going to play that plot and say, "Maleficarum are jerks!" And that's fine. But the game in general is heavily weighted toward "Templars are jerks!" and we wanted at least one chance for a reasonable player to feel they had been personally wronged by mages.

I guess the thing is I diddnt so much identify the man as a mage but more of a psycopath, magic was just the tool he chose to use and I am pretty sure the loss would be very much the same had he used a knife only with less shambling from Frankenmom.

Templars are probably easier to vilify as they are a group that represent a certain set of ideals however one mage or even a group of mages does not represent all mages as a whole.

[silentassassin264]

Mary Kirby wrote...


We considered adding an alternate ending because of our QA feedback. But we decided against it because the purpose the quest serves in the story is to give Hawke (regardless of their own class) a personal reason to fear the misuse of magic.

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?  Why did we need, in addition to basically every mage in the game being insane, a personal reason to fear the misuse of magic?

[Ianamus]

naughty99 wrote...

EJ107 wrote...

I personally prefer to just play a game through the first time without reading up on potential outcomes, because It's much more satisfying to find things for yourself than to read about them. I will occasionally reload if a conversation goes completely opposite to what I wanted, but since it's sometimes hard to tell what the protagonist will say when you select a particular dialogue option i don't see that so much as meta gaming, just a dialogue option not turning out to be what you thought it would.

I think Biowares argument is likely more along the lines of they don't want to design the game with meta-gaming in mind. For example, people have complained about how a particular series of choices can result in a far better outcome than others and how it then "forces" players to pick that option. But that is only really a problem if you know all of the potential outcomes in advance. 

I suppose there are some interesting design features that can thwart some of these activities.

For example, in Skyrim, if you save before attempting to pick a lock, run out of lockpicks and reload, the lock mechanism is reset to a different position.  Or in Dishonored, there is a mission where your assassination target is wearing a mask and if you reload the mission the target is randomly assigned to a different mask wearing character.

I always loved fallout: New Vegas's answer to saving/reloading to abuse the gambling system. If you try to reload then all blackjack tables/ slot machines cannot be used for a few minutes as they are "Busy shuffling the deck/ running internal mechanisms as part of a standard anti-cheating preocedure". 

silentassassin264 wrote...

Mary Kirby wrote...


We considered adding an alternate ending because of our QA feedback. But we decided against it because the purpose the quest serves in the story is to give Hawke (regardless of their own class) a personal reason to fear the misuse of magic.

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?  Why did we need, in addition to basically every mage in the game being insane, a personal reason to fear the misuse of magic?

If the templars aren't chasing you down because you're a mage then they captured your sister and took her to the circle where she couldn't so much as speak to you again for years. That sounds fairly personal to me. 

Modifié par EJ107, 11 novembre 2012 - 03:14 .

[Mary Kirby]

silentassassin264 wrote...

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?

Because they already had one. Hawke's father was an apostate, their family lived in hiding from the Templars all Hawke's life. Either Hawke was an apostate, or had an apostate sister. The Templars were a constant, looming personal threat.

[silentassassin264]

Mary Kirby wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?

Because they already had one. Hawke's father was an apostate, their family lived in hiding from the Templars all Hawke's life. Either Hawke was an apostate, or had an apostate sister. The Templars were a constant, looming personal threat.

No they didn't.  The background of the game is skipped.  There is no flashback to see the Hawkes running from the Templars and having to relocate, hiding in fear, etc. etc.  And once we are in Kirkwall, we can run around in mage robes, with a mage staff, and rain fireballs like no tomorrow in the middle of the Gallows with no repercussions.  The game never made me think the templars were a threat.  It would be something if we were ambushed (frequently) while going to places like say the Wounded Coast by templars trying to arrest/kill us if we were an apostate or brought Bethany along or something.  Or even straight up being captured/tortured by templars like Fort Drakon in DAO.  But no, there was no threat of templars in this game and even the worst templar in the game, Ser Alrik, is not explicitly shown doing anything wrong and definitely nothing remotely close to what All that remains does to your mother.

EJ107 wrote...

If the templars aren't chasing you down because you're a mage then they captured your sister and took her to the circle where she couldn't so much as speak to you again for years. That sounds fairly personal to me. 

1) Hawke is never chased down by Templars.  Not a single time,
2)  They took her to the circle where she is all happy sunshine and rainbows.  She seriously ends up more upset about joining the Grey Wardens than the Circle.  It would be something is Bethany was tortured or otherwise treated poorly but she isn't.  There is no way that compares to the unavoidable murder, mutilation, and necromancy of your mother which turns out was being aided by the First Enchanter.  Nothing in this game has the Templars match the explicit cruelty and sociopathy of mages displayed by All That Remains.
3) Bethany doesn't even count because if you play is a mage she is dead in Lothering and that whole point is lost because it goes back to my first point.  Hawke is never chased down by templars so there is still no unavoidable anti-templar sentiment to counter All That Remains.

Modifié par silentassassin264, 11 novembre 2012 - 03:38 .

[Masha Potato]

Mary Kirby wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?

Because they already had one. Hawke's father was an apostate, their family lived in hiding from the Templars all Hawke's life. Either Hawke was an apostate, or had an apostate sister. The Templars were a constant, looming personal threat.

I get that as a background reason, but it was just that - background. It's only my opinion of course, but the in-game situations which you take part in (i. e. killing bonkers mages) bear a lot bigger emotional weight than something that any assumed situation can.

As far as i can remember we had only one direct interaction with the templars regarding family being taken to the Circle - the time Cullen takes Bethany away. Again, i do understand that family background should be taken into consideration when playing, but it's not the same as dealing with the actual situation.

[StarcloudSWG]

Tali's fate in the vents ALSO depends on who you chose as fire team leader. If it's anyone other than Garrus or Miranda.. oops.

As for reasons to hate the templars; Jeez. There aren't *enough* of them? Abuse of power, abuse of authority, there was at least one Templar who extorted sex from attractive female mages, and turned them Tranquil if they didn't comply. Constant references to draconian methods used by the Templars in Kirkwall, Meredith is perfectly happy if you kill all the apostates and runaways you're sent after, even the harmless boy... and at the end, if you do side with the Templars, Meredith is *furious* if you spare a couple of mages who don't fight, surrender, and beg for their lives.

Modifié par StarcloudSWG, 11 novembre 2012 - 04:20 .

[FaWa]

Mary Kirby wrote...

JasonPogo wrote...

Like In DA2 supposedly you were supposed to be able to save your mom but because all the play testers just reset to an early save if she died they took the option out.  

We considered adding an alternate ending because of our QA feedback. But we decided against it because the purpose the quest serves in the story is to give Hawke (regardless of their own class) a personal reason to fear the misuse of magic.

lol wat 

[FaWa]

Mary Kirby wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?

Because they already had one. Hawke's father was an apostate, their family lived in hiding from the Templars all Hawke's life. Either Hawke was an apostate, or had an apostate sister. The Templars were a constant, looming personal threat.

lol wat

[Direwolf0294]

[quote]Mary Kirby wrote...

[quote]JasonPogo wrote...

And actually, we never seriously considered any ending where Leandra survived. The ending we might have chosen to add would have been a blood magic sacrifice to keep Leandra around as an undead.

[/quote]

I can't stop laughing at the idea of the player running around with an undead mum. Can this somehow be implemented into DA3, please?

[Mike_Neel]

StarcloudSWG wrote...

Tali's fate in the vents ALSO depends on who you chose as fire team leader. If it's anyone other than Garrus or Miranda.. oops.

I remember the first time I played through that mission. I put Zaeed in charge thinking the hardened merc with years of experience would be a good team leader. When Kasumi died (I sent her instead) I didn't get it at first. I thought he'd make a good leader. Then one of my friends pointed out that it probably wasn't a good idea to put a man whos stories of leading all boil down to "I was the only one that survived that mission." or "I was the only one that walked away from that one." 

Good ol' Zaeed. He was my favorite character. 

[TsaiMeLemoni]

I don't really consider what I do to be meta-gaming. I typically do my first playthrough with the knowledge that I'll be a renegade/aggressive character, and just play the game and make decisions as they come up. For my second and subsequent playthroughs, I just decide to try and make other choices to see how the game will turn out. If there are certain results that I prefer, then in my third or more playthrough then I will certainly consistently pick those.

I don't think it detracts from the experience, but enriches it.

[Sylvianus]

never mind.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 11 novembre 2012 - 04:41 .

[Dabrikishaw]

Masha Potato wrote...

Mary Kirby wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

So why was there never a quest to give Hawke a "personal reason" to fear the misuse of power by the templars?

Because they already had one. Hawke's father was an apostate, their family lived in hiding from the Templars all Hawke's life. Either Hawke was an apostate, or had an apostate sister. The Templars were a constant, looming personal threat.

I get that as a background reason, but it was just that - background. It's only my opinion of course, but the in-game situations which you take part in (i. e. killing bonkers mages) bear a lot bigger emotional weight than something that any assumed situation can.

As far as i can remember we had only one direct interaction with the templars regarding family being taken to the Circle - the time Cullen takes Bethany away. Again, i do understand that family background should be taken into consideration when playing, but it's not the same as dealing with the actual situation.

These are all great points. Not a single thing in the game was done that I felt was supposed to make me fear mages.

[mickey111]

highcastle wrote...

Meta-gaming is frowned upon because it's the exact opposite of role-playing. Which is kind of the point of a role playing gaming.

Meta-gaming uses outside knowledge to get you through the end of the game. It takes you out of the character you're playing and the world you're experiencing. Role-playing immerses you in a created character. You don't make decisions based on your own knowledge or emotions, but what the character would know and feel. It's a more naturalistic experience.

Obviously, it's hard to completely tune out meta knowledge. Some things will always niggle at certain people, especially when the opportunity to save everyone comes up. Instead of going with your gut, a lot of players tend to think up reasons why their character would take a certain action. I'm thinking of the Redcliffe quest in DAO, for instance. Once a player knows they can save everyone, it's harder for a lot of players to take an action that would end in someone's death, even if that action would be more in keeping with their character's personality and such.

I just can't bring myself to take Bioware games seriously as a role play experience... it's just that people seem to be magnetically attracted to the average Bioware protagonist and that as soon as I enter a new town or something that half the population are tripping over each other to ask the random stranger/new guy they hardly know anything about for help with some job. It's like you somehow attract more attention than most celebrities even though nobody knows you, your credentials, your background, likes/dislikes, favourite food or color or anything about you but nobody lets that stop them from trusting you, some unproven stranger, to help them with stuff. So that's why I don't take the role play seriously in general, and I think that DAII might be Biowares first RPG where people react to the protagonist like normal people in real life.

Modifié par mickey111, 11 novembre 2012 - 04:32 .