110 réponses à ce sujet

[rhetthom]

dragonageman wrote...

8) Why doesn't the main character have a voice?

Bioware did this magnificently in Mass Effect.  Why couldn't they do this in DA?  The conversations in Mass Effect were probably some of the best ever in an RPG.  Come on Bioware... don't take a step forward with one game, and a step back with the next.  That's what Blizzard does and they suck.

I have to disagree with you on this one.  I liked that the main character didn't have a voice it reminded me of KotOR (my first RPG game and first Bioware game).  One thing I didn't like in Mass Effect was the fact that you chose one dialogue option and Shepard says something you didn't expect.  At least with no Main voiceover you know exactly what your telling the person your talking to.

[AngryFrozenWater]

rhetthom wrote...

dragonageman wrote...

8) Why doesn't the main character have a voice?

Bioware did this magnificently in Mass Effect.  Why couldn't they do this in DA?  The conversations in Mass Effect were probably some of the best ever in an RPG.  Come on Bioware... don't take a step forward with one game, and a step back with the next.  That's what Blizzard does and they suck.

I have to disagree with you on this one.  I liked that the main character didn't have a voice it reminded me of KotOR (my first RPG game and first Bioware game).  One thing I didn't like in Mass Effect was the fact that you chose one dialogue option and Shepard says something you didn't expect.  At least with no Main voiceover you know exactly what your telling the person your talking to.

I agree with you. And... I think I read that they also did it this way in DA:O to save disc space. That sounds like a valid reason to me.

[KadivyaSky]

Feraele wrote...

Personally think that when you go to the trouble of finally having enough skill to open that danged chest, there should be more than ONE elfroot in there. lol Loot needs a little improving, ...hard fight, kill the hard to kill bad guy and he drops a feldspar or something. I read somewhere that if you do the sidequests you get nice rewards, so when I get ambushed while travelling, aren't those kind of considered side quests,too? Yeah been grumbling a bit about that lately while playing.

Exactly, Feraele. This was one of my main beefs and why sometimes it's frustrating to work on one's lockpicking skill just to get a single elf root. Who locks a single elfroot up in a chest that requires you to have 4 ranks in lockpicking just to open? Of course by that token one could say 'who leaves a chest in the middle of nowhere requiring 4 ranks of lockpicking to open', but still...one of the big things that bugged me was the loot and quantity or lacktherof.

Maybe every single mob should not drop a magical item, but maybe 2-3 interesting items that can be sold. Not just one elfroot or one mushroom or one piece of malachite. The bug that makes you wait till the body 'bleeds' before it sparkles for you to loot has been an everpresent annoyance only to acquire ...an elfroot...after waiting for the body to 'pop' as I call it (using a PC platform). I wanted more cool stuff to be found in chests, making that skill even more worthwhile to either bring with you in a party member or encourage the learning of the skill for onesself.

When looting major bosses, there was a disappointment factor when they dropped the same loot everything else did. Sure, realistically maybe every boss won't have something awesome, but I'd like some of them to be ooohs and ahhs of discovery. That was something I was missing mostly in the game; the sense of excitement in looting was just not there. In future releases I'd encourage more interesting loot and a fix for that.

There were a few other minor things that were a bit annoying:

1) After the nth time of hearing my PC say "Would you like me to get you a ladder so you can get off my back" when I was getting her to do something, I wanted to kill someone. That character in fact. Having an option to change voices or remove a saying would be spiffy. Or just reduce the number of times they say something like that. The first time I heard it, I laughed. The tenth time I heard it, I chuckled. By the hundredth time...I wanted to delete the character or mute sound. While there are probably player made mods out there, I prefer to stick with the material made by the creators of the game. This wasn't the only voice that got on my nerves but was the predominant one.

2) Hairstyles for men and women were a bit unattractive for the most part. The faces and whatnot were fine.

3) Slight disappointment that after a certain point in the game (no spoilers) my character's eyes didn't glow silver?  That would have been an interesting touch. I was drawn into the game having watched the trailers, after all. That was a particularly exotic touch I really liked.

I'm sure there were other exceedingly minor things that bothered me, but for the most part ? Apart from the abovementioned, the game was exceptional. Brilliant. I loved it and still do and am /still/ playing it on multiple characters, and eager for the DLC content when it is available. I literally squealed when I heard that a full expansion was coming out so soon (March 16, 2010), when I'd expected to just get a little DLC now and then till they released Dragon Age 2 in 2 years from the first's release date.

Anyway, that's all. More loot from a mob (multiple items, multiples of the same item), more interesting loot, and some game toggles that would allow some interesting effects, as well as change voices if you decide you don't like them later on. Otherwise  to those on all levels who were involved in making Dragon Age: Origins and its DLC what it is. Thank you.

[grieferbastard]

I will say that especially later in the game looting chests and other locations wasn't worth the 10 seconds of my time. Admittedly I kept Liliana in my party because watching her walk around in tight leather pants... like two cats fighting in a sack that taught behind is. Her having rogue skills was just frosting.

You could play the whole game without picking a single lock and not miss much in the way of loot.

[rhetthom]

grieferbastard wrote...

I will say that especially later in the game looting chests and other locations wasn't worth the 10 seconds of my time. Admittedly I kept Liliana in my party because watching her walk around in tight leather pants... like two cats fighting in a sack that taught behind is. Her having rogue skills was just frosting.

Ah good times

[Lovecraft22]

rhetthom wrote...

dragonageman wrote...

8) Why doesn't the main character have a voice?

Bioware did this magnificently in Mass Effect.  Why couldn't they do this in DA?  The conversations in Mass Effect were probably some of the best ever in an RPG.  Come on Bioware... don't take a step forward with one game, and a step back with the next.  That's what Blizzard does and they suck.

I have to disagree with you on this one.  I liked that the main character didn't have a voice it reminded me of KotOR (my first RPG game and first Bioware game).  One thing I didn't like in Mass Effect was the fact that you chose one dialogue option and Shepard says something you didn't expect.  At least with no Main voiceover you know exactly what your telling the person your talking to.

The amount of additional content to suit all the avaliable voices and possible responses would have been a massive project.

[MutantSpleen]

I missed my character's voice greatly. Look at what they are doing with Mass Effect 2, it is not beyond Bioware's scope. Plus they already recorded a MASSIVE amount of dialog for all the NPCs in the game. Recording lines for at least a male and female protagonist even if it isn't they exact voice you imagined for your race would not have been that much more. It would certainly be better than going through every dialog with that vacuous stare on your character's face. I heard plenty of elves and dwarf NPCs in the game that did not sound any different than humans. I always felt I was some kind of robotic mannequin traveling with a group of normal people, like I had no emotions. I mean Loghain is screaming in my face at the Landsmeet and I stand there and stare like an unresponsive vegetable. It really bothered me.

[soladel3030]

Not enough dragons. =)



I freaked out when seeing the high dragon...but that was about it until the end. =(

[Scimal]

I am a software engineer. Don't give me the x lines of codes argument. Bugs just need to be fixed. And yes, some are hard to fix. Some are very hard. So what?

 
Time = money. That's what.

BioWare does not have infinite resources, so they cannot hire an enormous team of programmers like yourself to track down bugs. Even Blizzard has this problem. Do you know how long it took Blizzard to fix Mage's Blinking through world geometry in WoW? Two years.

They didn't even talk about the Blink bug that much. They acknowledged it, let it become a running joke, and then just fixed it one month.

Just inform the users if it takes a long time to do so. They will understand. All you do is defend BW. For what? For creating bugs and not fixing them? For being silent about it?

I'm defending BioWare for prioritizing. They have stuff to do. Lots of stuff. They have TOR, MW2, and DA:O expansions to work on. Three separate games, limited resources, limited people. I understand that it may take them a while to acknowledge or address a bug that less than 1% of their customers experience (in all my 100+ hours of playtime, I only experienced 3 "big" bugs, none of which hampered my ability to do anything - I am not alone). 

If BW is a company which believes that they rely on user feedback then they should treat their customers better. Mr Wachter is a step in the right direction. We will see what he can do for us.

Better? Their interactions on the DA:O boards prior to its release were spectacular. Head writers, programmers, artists, and not just marketing-gurus are on here all the time answering questions and clarifying points. They have a team of volunteer moderators who are quick to react to miscategorized threads, fair enough about locking meandering topics, and they've provided several very specific forums for people who enjoy what they enjoy.

I have never been anything but pleased with BioWare's treatment of customers, even if their bug-fixes are slow to come.

Another game I am playing has special forums to report bugs and test betas of patches and new content. Reporting bugs has strict rules and no discussion is allowed, unless someone cannot replicate the bug or doesn't understand how to replicate the bug. Devs visit that forum and when they can replicate the bug it will be entered in their bug tracking system and they will often post a remark in which patch it will end up. They sometimes have private builds to test for someone. They also ask gamers to test specific issues. There is also another forum in which the beta testers can discuss the stuff they are testing and come up with feature request. Very cool. Of course that one has also very strict rules.

In such an invironment critique is viewed as healthy, but here critique is viewed as something negative. I don't understand that stupidity at all.

MMO's and SPRPG's operate under different staff configurations. MMO's have more programmers and techies because that's what brings all the subs to the yard. That extra allocation of resources allow them to tackle problems faster than BioWare. That's why MMO immersion and storylines generally suck, with few exceptions.

To date, BioWare has released 2 patches - just over a patch a month since release (which, after all, was just in November). That's about the standard rate for MMO's as well.

Also, the environment has a lot to do with how critique is viewed. On Beta-patch forums, you are there for a specific purpose: To find bugs and offer suggestions. That's what it's specifically there for.

Here, this forum's purpose is for people who just started or haven't played the game to ask questions. There aren't any spoilers allowed, and it's enforced well.

Go to another forum, present your arguments well, and you'll find plenty of people who think critique is positive.

Of course, the caveat to that is that you must present your arguments well. On Beta forums, arguments are dead-blind-dumb easy. "I got stuck on world geometry at X,Y" is about as close to fact as you're going to get.

Saying, "BioWare should've implemented Voice Overs for the PC" after knowing that it would've cut the campaign in half and doubled the hard-drive requirement is simply illogical. You can want PC VO all you want, but it's not going to feasibly happen. At that point, insisting or getting upset that DA:O doesn't have VO is not critique - it is whining.

A critique I found particularly profound was the lack of a chatbox/combat log. There's very little conceivable reason why BioWare couldn't have put one in to satisfy those of us who would prefer it, since it wouldn't have been a lot of extra cost. That's a critique, because it's a feature that is missing that's also feasible to implement.

Another "Whine" instead of critique is "The graphics suck." The engine is 8 years old. It doesn't support dynamic lighting. What were you expecting? Not only that, "suck" is not qualitative or quantitative in any way. How does it suck? Why does it suck? Are there any places it sucks more than others?

To sum up a bit: What you find on these forums is not "critique," usually. The majority of the time, on these forums, you find whiners. Whiners who say the graphics sucks. Whiners who complain about the PC not being Voiced after being told that it was either Voice Overs and more HDD space with half the game length, or double the game length and half the HDD space without.

BW could never do such. It believes in hype cycles and thus needs to be silent in everything it does, unless it can create a hype. Their policy of silence is a result of their marketing strategy.

Actually, BioWare has very low-key hype-cycles. Granted, after their merger with EA (the original hype machine), it became a bit more pronounced - but they don't really hype so much as tease. BioWare promised the largest project they've worked on since the BG series, and they promised a game with similarities to the BG series. They delivered, massively. They didn't promise complete innovation, they didn't promise an incredibly new fantasy realm that's never been seen before, and they never ever hyped their graphics engine.

People hear what they want to hear, though. They come to a conclusion and then look for evidence to support it instead of looking at evidence and making up their minds.

Look at FunCom's hype-cycle, and you'll see a machine almost completely built on hype. Another good example would be Tabula Rasa. Those are hype-cycles meant specifically to draw people in and then plump them down in a game which was, at best, mediocre, creating massive disappointment.

BioWare may be a little slow on patches, and they may be very busy to the point that communicating what's going in the next patch is difficult (not that it's nearly as critical for them as in your MMO example), but I will defend them when I believe people are being unreasonable.

I do not think all "critiques" are unreasonable, but a lot of people have "I want to now" and "this is a blow to my gaming style" mentality which has only been fostered over the last decade. I think people should have a much more laid-back posture unless the bug/critique is critical.

Can't advance beyond Lothering? That's a critical issue.
Lilianna not targeting Mages 100% of the time? Far less critical.

That's all.

[Lyphen]

The worst? No decent mage companions. Morrigan is a harpy, and I find Wynne to be dreadfully boring.

Also - no Dwarven healers. As a dwarf-backer, the lack of interesting dwarf-led parties really kills me. No matter what, I'll have to have one of those naggy, ****y or goody-goody mages. Also, as a dwarf noble, polyamorous relationships should be allowed! ;P 

Modifié par Lyphen, 15 janvier 2010 - 07:22 .

[dan_12345]

I definitely agree about point one, repetitive tactics. It feels like I basically do the same routine over and over when a battle starts: neutralize the enemy archers and mages with AOE and CC spells, and send the melee fighters in to attack.  It does get repetitious.  Not so much when I play for an hour at a time, but if I sit down and play for hours, it gets pretty robotic.

I could also do with a much greater number of finishing moves. The existing ones are cool, but they feel less special when you see the same one over and over.

I really agree about point three, the constant stunning/knockdowns of your characters. Incredibly tiresome and not fun. At least with Haste activated it seems the stuns wear off faster, and yeah, like you said, of course you can play a shield user or a two-handed sword user and deal with it a lot less; but still it happens way too often.  And it seems like no matter how high my physical resistance score is, I am just as susceptible to stuns. At least on the Xbox.

Related to that, fighting the high dragon and archdemon are incredibly annoying experiences if you play a melee character, for that reason.  At least on the Xbox, I don't know if it's the same on other platforms.  Constantly getting swatted away, knocked back, stunned; it's incredibly obnoxious and not fun, and it doesn't matter how strong your character is, it still happens incessantly. It seems I can get a hit in once every ten seconds with my character--amazingly boring. And that's true even with a two-hander or shield user, because even though they don't get knocked down, they still get swatted away and pushed out of range, so then I run back to the dragon, only to get pushed back immediately before I can land a blow. Rinse and repeat--incredibly lame. I also suspect that the archdemon might be bugged on the Xbox, having read some descriptions of people using cone of cold and other things on him; it doesn't work on the Xbox, not on Normal difficulty, anyway. It lasts for about a millisecond.

In general, I have to say that this combat system is pretty tiresome and not that fun. All these fussy tactics you have to set up and deal with all the time; it's pretty tedious. I'm not trying to play chess here, there's a damn story I'm trying to play through. I much prefer KOTOR and turn-based RPGs to this.

It's also really lame to designate your character as a tank or a DPS; how does that serve the story, exactly? This is supposed to be an RPG. Whoever heard of a story that starred some idiot whose great ability was that he could attract and endure big groups of enemies beating up on him? Or a story about a guy who ran around and tried to just fight people one-on-one, while his companions kept the rest away from him? Really artificial and lame, not heroic in any sense. And yet, if you don't play this way, you'll get creamed. So this is what WoW has contributed to RPGs? It sucks.

The voice issue is pretty minor for me. Your complaint about loot doesn't really bother me, either; finding cool things is part of the fun for me. My only problem is that there could be more variety. Right now, unusual items are always gift items for your party; it would be nice if there were more interesting items to find than just generic things like "Iron Ring." "Malachite." It would make it more fun.

I don't know about the story being derivative, I can't remember the Martin books I read, but I will say this: it sucks, massively. And so do the characters. It's like a child's concept of what a "dark" story is. There is no character growth, resulting in no likable characters, and the plot requires you to be a tool. You want to see dark done right, go watch Blade Runner. You have plenty of character growth, resulting in likeable characters you care about. Even the bad guy grows! There is an incredibly dark and moody atmosphere that is not in any way sacrificed by this. It's a dark and terrible world, and you root for the main character as he rises above it, finding his humanity. In Dragon Age, the idea of growth is to change a neurotic character into a different kind of neurotic character. Wow. Deep, man. You're blowing my mind with all that darkness there. 

It especially made the romances nauseating. Throwing my character at love interests with massive personality defects and in arrested development... yech.

Anyway, at least the artwork is very good; it's a very visually appealing game. Kudos to the character designers and environment designers.  I will just hold my nose and enjoy your work, doing my best to ignore the horrid story, gameplay issues, and my unlikable main character and his unlikable companions.