300 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

LittleDiegito wrote...

Players understand that theres no real consequence of losing. You reload and try again. Ive watched play throughs where players behave that way. Then they wipe, reload, and play the encounter with more reasonable tactics catered to what they already know is there.

Or they turn down the difficulty, behave exactly the same way, and succeed.

Some people appear not to want to learn.

But villians that behave that way arent credible. How would they become credible threats if they ran to their deaths any time someone poked their head in a room then ran away?

They're not credible threats.  There are perhaps a handful of encounters in either DA game that can be described as credible threats.  Those encounters might warrant explicably locked doors.  But the vast majority do not.

[Fisto The Sexbot]

David Gaider wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I await the Ken Burns documentary of the David Gaider vs. Sylvius the Mad Wars.

There will be slow pans over screenshots of threads ("The Battle of Locked Doors") set to Inon Zur music.

It will win a Peabody.

If there's a war, it's purely in the head of Sylvius or yourself. Considering that Sylvius' suggestions are ones he simply repeats ad nauseum (until they become borderline spam) because he thinks getting others to potentially agree with him will somehow convince us to make a game catered more to his specific tastes, and are mostly just ignored, there's room for neither battle nor drama.

I'm surprised you managed to make a post in your own forum without locking the topic again. Personally, I'd take a roleplaying game made by someone with Sylvius' mindset over your games any day.

You also said in a topic that writing on this forum is a privilege, not a right. I actually agree with that. But it should be a privilege for you guys, not us. The idea of buying your products or discussing them getting treated as some kind of honor being handed out to the public by the same guys who make them is ridiculous, and also shameful.

But I shouldn't presume that someone who posts here to insult his customers could understand that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Because I'm winning.

That depends upon who is keeping score.

And the definition of "winning." xp

That's the important one.

I'm demonstrating to people that they cannot understand something without measuring it.  I'm exposing them to concepts like opportunity costs.  This way, when they see a new feature, they'll evaluate it not just based on what it offers them, but on what it cost them.  What options were lost to provide this new feature?  Is the trade-off worth it?

My enemy is not David Gaider, nor is it gamers who disagree with me.  My enemy is shallow analysis.

[Fredward]

Fisto The Sexbot wrote...
I'm surprised you managed to make a post in your own forum without locking the topic again. Personally, I'd take a roleplaying game made by someone with Sylvius' mindset over your games any day.

You also said in a topic that writing on this forum is a privilege, not a right. I actually agree with that. But it should be a privilege for you guys, not us. The idea of buying your products or discussing them getting treated as some kind of honor being handed out to the public by the same guys who make them is ridiculous, and also shameful.

But I shouldn't presume that someone who posts here to insult his customers could understand that.

Oh look! It's a massively self entitled fan! You almost NEVER see one of those around here! XD

[DarkSpiral]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Fisto The Sexbot wrote...
I'm surprised you managed to make a post in your own forum without locking the topic again. Personally, I'd take a roleplaying game made by someone with Sylvius' mindset over your games any day.

You also said in a topic that writing on this forum is a privilege, not a right. I actually agree with that. But it should be a privilege for you guys, not us. The idea of buying your products or discussing them getting treated as some kind of honor being handed out to the public by the same guys who make them is ridiculous, and also shameful.

But I shouldn't presume that someone who posts here to insult his customers could understand that.

Oh look! It's a massively self entitled fan! You almost NEVER see one of those around here! XD

Seriously.  I'm not the humblest dude on the planet, but wow.  At least I understand that this forum is Bioware's house, and you play by house rules or gtfo.

[Fisto The Sexbot]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...

Fisto The Sexbot wrote...
I'm surprised you managed to make a post in your own forum without locking the topic again. Personally, I'd take a roleplaying game made by someone with Sylvius' mindset over your games any day.

You also said in a topic that writing on this forum is a privilege, not a right. I actually agree with that. But it should be a privilege for you guys, not us. The idea of buying your products or discussing them getting treated as some kind of honor being handed out to the public by the same guys who make them is ridiculous, and also shameful.

But I shouldn't presume that someone who posts here to insult his customers could understand that.

Oh look! It's a massively self entitled fan! You almost NEVER see one of those around here! XD

How can one that has no expectations be entitled?

[Quething]

DarkSpiral wrote...

Seriously. I'm not the humblest dude on the planet, but wow. At least I understand that this forum is Bioware's house, and you play by house rules or gtfo.

Gaider is kind of a troll, though. I enjoy a lot of what he has to say in a broadcast format (his tumblr is great) but discussion-wise like 90% of his posts strike me as unnecessarily rude. And that's including the times when I agree with him (of course I don't mind it then ).

Anyway as for Sylvius' complaint, I actually agree, but not for the same reasons. I just like environmentally-aware tactical gameplay. I want the game to reward me for putting my archers on a raised area with only one point of access and sticking my melee characters at that point, rather than preventing me from doing so. Locking the PC in a coverless square box with a crowd of enemies is the least elegant and interesting encounter design possible, and anything that discourages that is good. It also allows for extra challenge; if you design a fight assuming the player will do the smart thing, the player for whom Nightmare isn't enough can then do the dumb thing (it's common for DA2 players to challenge themselves by staying in the room for the Xebenkeck fight, for example).

The DA team is pretty good about that, though. I can only think of a handful of encounters in either game that actually prevented using chokepoints or line-of-sight advantage. The only door-closing in DA3 that I would actually worry we'll see more of is the annoying, arbitrary closing off of areas. If there's some huge memory issue involved with retaining the locations of looted corpses or whatever, just wipe the place when I leave, but the fact that a piece of cliffside or a cave or a house can utterly cease to exist once I walk out the door makes the game feel that much more limited and linear in a really needless way.

Modifié par Quething, 12 décembre 2012 - 11:26 .

[Dhiro]

Quething wrote...

DarkSpiral wrote...

Seriously. I'm not the humblest dude on the planet, but wow. At least I understand that this forum is Bioware's house, and you play by house rules or gtfo.

Gaider is kind of a troll, though. I enjoy a lot of what he has to say in a broadcast format (his tumblr is great) but discussion-wise like 90% of his posts strike me as unnecessarily rude. And that's including the times when I agree with him (of course I don't mind it then ).

Anyway as for Sylvius' complaint, I actually agree, but not for the same reasons. I just like environmentally-aware tactical gameplay. I want the game to reward me for putting my archers on a raised area with only one point of access and sticking my melee characters at that point, rather than preventing me from doing so. Locking the PC in a coverless square box with a crowd of enemies is the least elegant and interesting encounter design possible, and anything that discourages that is good. It also allows for extra challenge; if you design a fight assuming the player will do the smart thing, the player for whom Nightmare isn't enough can then do the dumb thing (it's common for DA2 players to challenge themselves by staying in the room for the Xebenkeck fight, for example).

The DA team is pretty good about that, though. I can only think of a handful of encounters in either game that actually prevented using chokepoints or line-of-sight advantage. The only door-closing in DA3 that I would actually worry we'll see more of is the annoying, arbitrary closing off of areas. If there's some huge memory issue involved with retaining the locations of looted corpses or whatever, just wipe the place when I leave, but the fact that a piece of cliffside or a cave or a house can utterly cease to exist once I walk out the door makes the game feel that much more limited and linear in a really needless way.

This right here. Believable doors are great, but I just want to be able to position my characters in interesting ways. Being stuck in a square room with attacks flying around and characters on top of eachother drives me insane.

[AlexJK]

Fisto The Sexbot wrote...

How can one that has no expectations be entitled?

Because... those two things aren't connected?

[Wulfram]

Quething wrote...

I just like environmentally-aware tactical gameplay.

I agree.  But does running back out of the door qualify?  I feel it's rather cheesy in outcome, if not in concept, and ultimately takes away from the strategy of the game rather than adds to it.

Ideally, I guess we'd get more interesting rooms set up, so that a smart player can find more profitable strategies than hiding in the door way.

Modifié par Wulfram, 12 décembre 2012 - 12:38 .

[Gazardiel]

Using a doorway as a logical choke point makes sense and is realistic. But taking advantage of AI weaknesses in obstacle avoidance (thus getting mobs stuck trying to get through a door) isn't. I suspect that locked doors are a way to avoid "infinite kiting" tactics that are also exploits of the game.

[Fallstar]

If pathfinding is actually the issue here, or if there is some other reason the encounter would only work in that enclosed area, then there could be some sort of reason for the doors being locked.

In the carta quest, having a couple of stealthed assassins pop up and bolt the doors for instance.

In general, if I'm entering an area, I should be able to explore that area without arbitrary restrictions, which includes during combat. This was one of the problems with that cave in DA2. There were random blocks of stone in the doorways, it made exploration feel like a very linear experience.

If I'm entering an area, most of the time I want to be able to explore the entire area whenever I want to, unless there is an actual reason why I can't. The same should apply to combat; if I want to engage in a hit and run style of combat with a rogue, luring enemies back into the previous corridors where I laid traps, I should be able to. You should be encouraging alternative styles of combat, instead of the standard see enemies, apply DoTs and AoEs with mage, stun/gib officers with rogue, mop up the filler and move on.

[Akugagi]

Wow, this never bothered me. I can't believe someone actually pays attention to the doors. You suffer from some OCD or what?

[Matroska]

Quething wrote...
The only door-closing in DA3 that I would actually worry we'll see more of is the annoying, arbitrary closing off of areas. If there's some huge memory issue involved with retaining the locations of looted corpses or whatever, just wipe the place when I leave, but the fact that a piece of cliffside or a cave or a house can utterly cease to exist once I walk out the door makes the game feel that much more limited and linear in a really needless way.

Totally agree with this. This occurs in quite a few Bioware games, though, as well as an area being bizarrely small and limited with no given reason. For an example of the latter, think of some of the areas in KotOR. You have a town where almost every single door is locked and there isn't enough NPCs to run a shop, let alone populate a town, and the only out-of-town area you can go to is a small dustbowl. There's no apparent reason why this ghost town just sprang up next to a desert cul de sac, with no other apparent points of access or nearby locales. It just feels odd.

Or how the whole of Denerim was 1 marketplace and 5 identical back alleys that were copy-pasted, then an area you only get to visit during the finale. It feels incredibly fake. Compare that to, say, Midgar in Final Fantasy VII. The areas you get to visit would be an incredibly tiny percentage of the total amount of areas in the city, but you still feel like you're exploring at your leisure, like you're not hemmed inside a little tiny box that's just pretending to be a sprawling metropolis. Both aforementioned games plus many other Bioware games have the problem the person I'm quoting is referring to, whereby an area only exists for the purpose of a single quest, then is apparently erased from existence, making the whole thing seem like an odd dream rather than an event that happened in a real location.

[Fast Jimmy]

LittleDiegito wrote...

I play a whole lot of table top RP and there are a whole lot of things I would love to see in CRPGs. But I accepted a long time ago that the tech doesnt allow for them yet, and possibly wont for a long time. There are also some things that wouldnt make sense in any world that are put in because of the tech limits. Locking doors are one of those things.

I'm going to hop in here and point this out, because it needs pointing out...


This is EXACTLY why Sylvius does what he does. You play PnP's and are resigned to the fact that games don't have the technology (not really the case, maybe AAA game design does not allot the neccessary resources required for such a, to most people, minor feature, such as seamless combat and other gameplay design functions, but regardless...) to do that today.

Yet less and less people who have played PnP's are now playing video games. It is getting to the point where video game limitations aren't even being viewed as limitations anymore. They are just accepted as par for the course. What happens when no more PnP players are giving input into game design? What happens when no more game designers have any working knowledge of the wide-open possibilities of a PnP campaign with a live DM can do? 

Will the bar be forever lowered, so that, in 10, 20, 30 years we will still be making WoW clones and interactive movies and calling them RPGs, just with shinier graphics? Where things like non-combat skills, or persistent world mechanics, or open ended gameplay or all the other aspects we've seen some games do and which PnP does really well just fall by the wayside? Where these things aren't cut off a requirements document because of not enough resources, but aren't even brought up in the game design conversation?

In this, the fans have to be the vanguards. The players who say "why not this?" have to be gongs, constantly ringing out "things could be better; we've SEEN them done better." Its not glorifying old-school games - most of these games offered the choices and didn't really execute them all that well. But while graphics and cinematics and flashy combat have been bulked up over the years with new technology, next to no developers are trying to perfect more nuanced gameplay and game world creation. 

If someone like Sylvius doesn't request things from a by-gone era... who else will? And if no one requests them... then how can we expect anything but the same type of game, over and over and over again? 

Technology is not the problem. Game Design limitations and lack of initiative to do so is the problem.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 12 décembre 2012 - 02:12 .

[hoorayforicecream]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

But since they are not rigidly defined, as you have admitted, they are used arbitrarily by you. Ergo, you are not actually arguing for true consistency or logic, but rather your own personal preference masquerading as such.

It is clear that you allow (and, indeed, ask for) the world to behave in contrived (Mysterious Stranger origin please!) and incredible (Abstraction of the eating of food or the passage of time) ways, but only when you deem it acceptable. It seems disingenuous to claim logic and consistency when it does not consistently apply to your own argument.

In what way does the food abstraction damage credibility?  I really want this answer.

I'll tell you what. You address the other points I made, and I'll address this one that you cherrypicked. Fair?

[nightscrawl]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I'm demonstrating to people that they cannot understand something without measuring it.  I'm exposing them to concepts like opportunity costs.  This way, when they see a new feature, they'll evaluate it not just based on what it offers them, but on what it cost them.  What options were lost to provide this new feature?  Is the trade-off worth it?

Except you cannot know with 100% certainty what was "lost to provide this new feature" because you don't work there, none of us do. Then when the people who DO work there come and tell us that not much was really lost, or that it didn't have that big an impact because of different departments etc, as has been discussed with certain features, people then respond by calling them liars (this is a general statement, not directed at you).

If it is an abstract loss like "the ability to roleplay," that is something that can't be measured because it is subjective. Many people have stated that they can roleplay in both DA games just fine and had a fun time doing so. That their roleplay expectations do not meet up with your own makes no difference. It is a fact that those people exist. Your way is not the only way, and not everyone completely becomes a character when they play an RPG.

[AlexJK]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

... less and less people who have played PnP's are now playing video games. It is getting to the point where video game limitations aren't even being viewed as limitations anymore. They are just accepted as par for the course. What happens when no more PnP players are giving input into game design? What happens when no more game designers have any working knowledge of the wide-open possibilities of a PnP campaign with a live DM can do?

Why is it desirable for computer games be designed around the strengths and weaknesses of pen and paper? Personally, I'm extremely interested to see what happens when game designers feel completely free to break out of that mold, and move on to really see what modern technology can do for gameplay in RPG and other genres.

Will the bar be forever lowered, so that, in 10, 20, 30 years we will still be making WoW clones and interactive movies and calling them RPGs, just with shinier graphics? Where things like non-combat skills, or persistent world mechanics, or open ended gameplay or all the other aspects we've seen some games do and which PnP does really well just fall by the wayside? Where these things aren't cut off a requirements document because of not enough resources, but aren't even brought up in the game design conversation?

Why would that be the case? Are non-combat skills some magical feature of pen and paper gaming that couldn't possibly exist otherwise? Would the demand for open-world games such as the Elder Scrolls series never have existed without pen and paper players, or are these things perfectly viable features of computer game design in their own right?

[sea-]

The reason for this is pretty much that modern RPGs like Dragon Age are not designed with player failure in mind, in the sense that there are areas of the game world that are too difficult to normally be conquered until later. Almost everything auto-scales and the idea of running away is basically meaningless because all outcomes are completely binary - win or lose. Plus, by not allowing you to run there is no way to bypass combat altogether, which would obviously shave a significant chunk of gameplay off.

It's a hard thing to get right, but you kind of have to accept that Dragon Age is a game designed with specific combat encounters and linear gameplay in mind. It's not an open-ended RPG and there aren't meant to be many solutions to problems outside of fighting. That's just how the game is built. Does it suck? In my opinion, yes, that is a major problem in the design direction with the series and most modern RPGs, but that direction is not going to change and as such weird stuff like doors magically locking to force you to experience combat the way the designers wanted is kind of a necessary compromise in a lot of cases.

I will say that from a pure production standpoint, locking doors is done mostly to avoid the player breaking the narrative flow and/or messing up scripting.  I have used it myself in the past (very sparingly) because the alternative would be really awkward to handle and would require a lot more work.  I try to avoid it as much as I can but I can definitely see why a developer would resort to such means from time to time.  The goal is to do one's absolute best to make these sorts of decisions invisible.

Modifié par sea-, 12 décembre 2012 - 04:15 .

[Provi-dance]

Fisto The Sexbot wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

If there's a war, it's purely in the head of Sylvius or yourself. Considering that Sylvius' suggestions are ones he simply repeats ad nauseum (until they become borderline spam) because he thinks getting others to potentially agree with him will somehow convince us to make a game catered more to his specific tastes, and are mostly just ignored, there's room for neither battle nor drama.

I'm surprised you managed to make a post in your own forum without locking the topic again. Personally, I'd take a roleplaying game made by someone with Sylvius' mindset over your games any day.

You also said in a topic that writing on this forum is a privilege, not a right. I actually agree with that. But it should be a privilege for you guys, not us. The idea of buying your products or discussing them getting treated as some kind of honor being handed out to the public by the same guys who make them is ridiculous, and also shameful.

But I shouldn't presume that someone who posts here to insult his customers could understand that.

They'll point out how it's THEIR forum and they can do with it whatever they want to. Now, lacking common sense is not against the law. But, even a 6 year old child with responsible parents is taught to respect his visitors and be polite (it benefits him/her, foremost) even if it's his/her playground and despite the visiors having their own ideas and repeating them "ad nauseam".
MY PLAYGROUND! type of attitude signals a deep insecurity.

[JimmyBazooka]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Sure there is. It's why someone can take 50 shots in combat, and survive gigantic explosions and being turned into solid ice, but during a cinematic a single crossbow bolt that hits is deadly.

That's simply a lazy design that is pretty popular among game devs. Instead of trying to maintain integrity and focusing on bringing the level of gameplay fidelity up, they choose shortcuts like these (different mechanics in actual player controlled gameplay and cinematics/cutscenes etc.)

[lil yonce]

Quething wrote...

Gaider is kind of a troll, though. I enjoy a lot of what he has to say in a broadcast format (his tumblr is great) but discussion-wise like 90% of his posts strike me as unnecessarily rude. And that's including the times when I agree with him (of course I don't mind it then ).

Gaider has been rather grumpy lately on the forums. His profile comment has even said, "I'm tired of your stupid thread," for 12 days and running. If you've started a new topic in the last 12 days, Gaider is tired of your stuipd thread! Like Mckayla Maroney, he is not impressed. Since I've started a thread a just few days ago, I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry.

[nightscrawl]

JimmyBazooka wrote...

That's simply a lazy design that is pretty popular among game devs.

Oh dear...

Is it really SO hard to imagine that there might be reasons other than "laziness"?

Youth4Ever wrote...

Gaider has been rather grumpy lately on the forums. His profile comment has even said, "I'm tired of your stupid thread," for 12 days and running. If you've started a new topic in the last 12 days, Gaider is tired of your stuipd thread! Like Mckayla Maroney, he is not impressed. Since I've started a thread a just few days ago, I'm going to go sit in the corner and cry.

Some people feel the need to continually rehash topics that have been done to death, including those with developer comments, because they seem to feel that their shiny new thread is going to contribute something fresh to the discussion. In reality, most of the same posters (sometimes myself included) will post the same things they have been posting for over a year on said topic, no minds are changed, the thread dies, and is reborn again by someone else. Can you really blame him?

[areuexperienced]

Also, don't forget, that devs answering your questions is purely an initiative of their own and they are not obliged to do so in any way. Then, if you insist on asking the exact same thing a hundred times even though your question has been discussed several times already, then you really shouldn't expect anything other than being quickly dismissed in annoyance because, really, you ARE annoying.

[JimmyBazooka]

nightscrawl wrote...

JimmyBazooka wrote...

That's simply a lazy design that is pretty popular among game devs.

Oh dear...

Is it really SO hard to imagine that there might be reasons other than "laziness"?

Oh dear...

Is it really SO hard to understand that there are no real reasons except for genuine laziness?