147 réponses à ce sujet

[Renmiri1]

Ferelden refugees are looked down by all in Kirkwall

Alas no pointy ears.

[Fredward]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Because one has a negative impact on the other and they're trying to satisfy two seperate audiences. The shooter audience will always take priority because it isn't a niche market. That means the RPG side of the game can't be too involved or you lose the people who just want to shoot bad guys. In turn, the people who play the game for the RPG stuff get upset that those features are being dumbed down. In the end, both groups aren't too happy. 

I think it's best to focus on just one thing and do that one thing better than anyone else. Bethesda does open world RPG's better than anyone else and their games are always successful. People know what to expect from them.

But that's... boring. I know that shooters rarely, if ever, have a decent story (which is why I don't play them) but that doesn't mean as soon as you introduce shooter elements your game has to fall apart. Also, slightly off topic, but the only thing Betehesda does right is the open world part. Their VA is awful and Skyrim's plotline was so bad and unengaging that I could never finish it. But anyway. I can sorta kinda understand where you're coming from with the whole "focus on your niche" thing but I stall at why the game automatically has to exclude other genres to be succesful/good.

And this is teetering awfully close to one of those "what is an RPG" arguments. Which would be annoying. People need to get over their labelling fetish.

[otis0310]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...
I can sorta kinda understand where you're coming from with the whole "focus on your niche" thing but I stall at why the game automatically has to exclude other genres to be succesful/good.

To justify this position I will give you the most extreme situation I can think of.  Let us take a game like Civilization V, and try to implement things from other genres.  So here we go, two units, say a tank and infantryman are fighting each other.

All of a sudden you get into a small FPS mini game where you play your infantryman against his tank, with all the stats and armor bonuses being applied to each unit.  If you win the FPS their tank is destroyed, if not, you lose the infantryman.

Do you think that people who have loved the Civilization games for the last 20 years will love that idea?  Do you think the game would be the good strategy game it is if they did that?  Surely it must be a great idea.  People love FPS games and therefore will appeal to a larger audience as a result, and therefore be a better game.

This is why the idea of "stick to your niche" is a good one.    It is also a great example of why incorporating ideas from other genres can be a very bad thing.   Basically by incorporating this idea they did not stick with their niche.

Sticking to your niche is a synonym for know your audience and give them what they want.  Do not, ever, change your product to attempt to draw in a new audience, almost every time you do that you will alienate your old audience and still fail to bring a new one, leaving you no audience at all.

Dragon Age was dubbed as Bioware returning to its roots to make a classic RPG.  It sold very well and is loved because it delivered on that promise.  Therefore it has an identity as classic RPG, people know what it is, and what to expect from it.  By adding arcade elements it no longer gives people what they expect, and therefore the core audience is upset because they did not get what they expected.

Another example, Coca Cola is very popular.  Well, everybody likes hamburgers, so we'll make a Coca Cola hamburger as a result.  Coca Cola is a soft drink, when they buy Coca Cola they are buying a soft drink, and they want a soft drink.  When they buy a Coca Cola they do not want a hamburger.  If they want a hamburger they will go buy one, if you want make one to sell it to them go ahead. But do not call it Coca Cola because that is a soft drink and everyone knows it.

By adding arcade elements to Dragon Age you make it into an action/rpg.  Dragon Age is not an action/rpg, it is a classical rpg.  It was advertised as that, it delivered as advertised and everyone knows it.  If people wanted to buy and action/rpg, they would buy and action/rpg.  People who buy Dragon Age want a classical rpg, that is what Dragon Age is, they know that is what Dragon Age is and they buy it for that reason.

So adding action elements to Dragon Age is like making Coca Cola a hamburger or adding an FPS minigame to Civilization V.   You have altered your product to the point that your core audience no longer recognizes it.  Usually when you do this you create a huge financial flop, and risk losing the franchise as well.

Know who your audience is, and give them what they want.  They will keep coming back for more and you will have steady stream of loyal, repeat customers.

[otis0310]

Anyways we are getting off topic. To be honest I do not believe that DA3 has to be innovative, it has to be great.

Take a look at Lord Of The Rings, nothing there is innovative. The whole concept of a person's soul being attached to an object and to kill the person you must destroy the object is extremely old. So is the idea of Dwarves, Elves, magic, giant birds, etc. Not to mention the rings corrupting people and turning them into undead monster (ring wraiths). Those basic story elements are all as old as time itself. I see very little that is new or innovative about any of them.

That does not at all devalue the stories. They are great classics and many literature experts consider them some of the best books ever written. So I see this as prime candidate of innovate does not mean great. Nor does great mean innovative.

I prefer for DA3 to be great.

[HolyAvenger]

otis0310 wrote...
 

Sticking to your niche is a synonym for know your audience and give them what they want.  Do not, ever, change your product to attempt to draw in a new audience, almost every time you do that you will alienate your old audience and still fail to bring a new one, leaving you no audience at all.

 

I disagree. Innovation is no bad thing. Sometimes it goes wrong, of course, but pushing the boundaries of your offering in order to draw in new customers and offer existing ones a new experience is the right direction for most companies, I think. 

[HolyAvenger]

otis0310 wrote...

Anyways we are getting off topic. To be honest I do not believe that DA3 has to be innovative, it has to be great.

Take a look at Lord Of The Rings, nothing there is innovative. The whole concept of a person's soul being attached to an object and to kill the person you must destroy the object is extremely old. So is the idea of Dwarves, Elves, magic, giant birds, etc. Not to mention the rings corrupting people and turning them into undead monster (ring wraiths). Those basic story elements are all as old as time itself. I see very little that is new or innovative about any of them.

That does not at all devalue the stories. They are great classics and many literature experts consider them some of the best books ever written. So I see this as prime candidate of innovate does not mean great. Nor does great mean innovative.

I prefer for DA3 to be great.

 

You realise that LotR was incredibly innovative/new for its time and ESTABLISHED a lot of these fantasy tropes, right?

[schebobo]

Rawgrim wrote...

I don`t think any rpg can be truly innovative these days. If Bioware goes by the BG, Kotor, and DA:O formula, DA:I will be a great game.

As long as they severely upgrade the combat. The combat of those games on consoles left A LOT to be desired.

[otis0310]

HolyAvenger wrote...

You realise that LotR was incredibly innovative/new for its time and ESTABLISHED a lot of these fantasy tropes, right?

I do not, and it may be.  But it builds on ideas and concepts established centuries ago.  I am not certain if it was innovative in creating them, or merely resurrecting the traditional fantasy elements that were used way before, but were long forgotten and never used.

A good example of the latter is Atlantis.  A not well known story written by Plato thousands of years ago, lay forgotten and not many people heard of it.   Then Jules Verne puts in his Journey To The Center Of The Earth, all of a sudden it is back in the public' eye again.  I will grant that I do not know enough of 19th century culture or literature to state this as absoloute fact.  I could be wrong about Atlantis, I just know I heard that from what I thought to be reliable source.

They could both very bad, and wrong, examples.  In fact if someone knows for certain I am wrong please go ahead and tell me since my memory is foggy as to what the source was.

However my previous point does stand about innovative vs greatness.

[Jaulen]

Just a quick aside:

LotR may have firmly implanted many of the fantasy tropes into our cultural awareness, but there are a number things in his story that come from Finnish, Nordic, and Celtic story telling traditions.

I was watching the first part of Das Rheingold, and was thinking it was a backstory to the creation of the Rings from LotR until a got my head on straight.



I want innovation that is great......not innovation for the sake of innovation.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Jaulen wrote...

Just a quick aside:

LotR may have firmly implanted many of the fantasy tropes into our cultural awareness, but there are a number things in his story that come from Finnish, Nordic, and Celtic story telling traditions.

And many of them had never before been published in English.  What English speaker ever reads the Kalevala, or Icelandic Sagas?

[Jaulen]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Jaulen wrote...

Just a quick aside:

LotR may have firmly implanted many of the fantasy tropes into our cultural awareness, but there are a number things in his story that come from Finnish, Nordic, and Celtic story telling traditions.

And many of them had never before been published in English.  What English speaker ever reads the Kalevala, or Icelandic Sagas?

And your point being?

[Sylvius the Mad]

If something is new to the audience, it look innovative.

[Jaulen]

Well let's see....like I said, there was also a lot of threads from Nordic and Celtic traditions in LotR....and if i recall my English history correctly, Celts lived on the English isles and the Nordic people also were part of the population there.

What LotR did was innovate in the weaving of the traditions together, and the storytelling/scope.


'Looking' innovative and 'being' innovative are two different things.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Jaulen wrote...

'Looking' innovative and 'being' innovative are two different things.

I don't think that distinction is meaningful in a field like literature.

[HolyAvenger]

 

Jaulen wrote...


I want innovation that is great......not innovation for the sake of innovation.

 

I don't even know what this means. All innovation is done in hopes of improving some aspect of whatever it is you're working on. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but developers should keep trying, not stagnate. 

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Jaulen wrote...

'Looking' innovative and 'being' innovative are two different things.

I don't think that distinction is meaningful in a field like literature.

It is retelling of old tales. 

Every time a new generation heard the ancient myths from a new storyteller, it was being retold. Depending on the person telling, many myths had very different characters,  outcomes, backgrounds, etc. Saying Tolkien was not innovative in the fact that his books were a retelling of other stories implies that it wasn't be exact same thing as what had been done for centuries past. Every person who passed on those old stories wasn't being innovative... they were just retelling the story. But by telling it in new, unique ways, they remade the story. And that is why story-telling is an ancient activity that is constantly reinventing itself.

To say the ancient myths were being innovative conveniently ignores the fact that the entire history is predicated on people falling under this banner of "not innovative." Yet if they had not retold the stories, the stories would have died. So what is wrong with retelling stories?

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 21 mars 2013 - 06:47 .

[Renmiri1]

Ya Bram Stokes totally copied vampires from Twilight's author.

[Wozearly]

Jaulen wrote...

Well let's see....like I said, there was also a lot of threads from Nordic and Celtic traditions in LotR....and if i recall my English history correctly, Celts lived on the English isles and the Nordic people also were part of the population there.

What LotR did was innovate in the weaving of the traditions together, and the storytelling/scope.

Your English history is correct, although you missed out the large population of Italians, French, Normano-French and Germanic people who were also present...and stories were being borrowed and blended from those cultures long before Tolkein.

Beowulf was an old Germanic-English poem written between 700-1000AD, set in Scandinavia, rediscovered in the 1800s. Elements of the stories of King Arthur existed in both France and England, were combined in 1470 by an Englishman, went utterly out of fashion in the 1600s only to resurface with a vengeance in the 1800s. Some of the most well-known childrens' stories are by the German Brothers Grimm (although this is likely also true across a fair chunk of Europe).

None of those achieved lasting recognition because of their innovation. They all received lasting recognition because they were good stories, well told, and resonated with the readers.

The only innovation required where storytelling is a key part of the medium is to avoid stagnation by repeating the same story as before when the audience desires a new story, rather than a retelling of the old story. Clearly, that has implications for Bioware on the story front...the game design / mechanics side is arguably a whole different ball game.

So I'll just paraphrase the recently-departed EA CEO, Riccitiello: "People admire game companies that take risks, but in retrospect they only seem to admire game companies that take risks when the risks work."

Innovate at your peril, peeps.

Modifié par Wozearly, 21 mars 2013 - 09:15 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Wozearly wrote...

the German Brothers Grimm

Also the authors of the first German dictionary.

[Fredward]

otis0310 wrote...

Foopydoopydoo wrote...
I can sorta kinda understand where you're coming from with the whole "focus on your niche" thing but I stall at why the game automatically has to exclude other genres to be succesful/good.

To justify this position I will give you the most extreme situation I can think of.  Let us take a game like Civilization V, and try to implement things from other genres.  So here we go, two units, say a tank and infantryman are fighting each other.

All of a sudden you get into a small FPS mini game where you play your infantryman against his tank, with all the stats and armor bonuses being applied to each unit.  If you win the FPS their tank is destroyed, if not, you lose the infantryman.

Do you think that people who have loved the Civilization games for the last 20 years will love that idea?  Do you think the game would be the good strategy game it is if they did that?  Surely it must be a great idea.  People love FPS games and therefore will appeal to a larger audience as a result, and therefore be a better game.

This is why the idea of "stick to your niche" is a good one.    It is also a great example of why incorporating ideas from other genres can be a very bad thing.   Basically by incorporating this idea they did not stick with their niche.

Sticking to your niche is a synonym for know your audience and give them what they want.  Do not, ever, change your product to attempt to draw in a new audience, almost every time you do that you will alienate your old audience and still fail to bring a new one, leaving you no audience at all.

Dragon Age was dubbed as Bioware returning to its roots to make a classic RPG.  It sold very well and is loved because it delivered on that promise.  Therefore it has an identity as classic RPG, people know what it is, and what to expect from it.  By adding arcade elements it no longer gives people what they expect, and therefore the core audience is upset because they did not get what they expected.

Another example, Coca Cola is very popular.  Well, everybody likes hamburgers, so we'll make a Coca Cola hamburger as a result.  Coca Cola is a soft drink, when they buy Coca Cola they are buying a soft drink, and they want a soft drink.  When they buy a Coca Cola they do not want a hamburger.  If they want a hamburger they will go buy one, if you want make one to sell it to them go ahead. But do not call it Coca Cola because that is a soft drink and everyone knows it.

By adding arcade elements to Dragon Age you make it into an action/rpg.  Dragon Age is not an action/rpg, it is a classical rpg.  It was advertised as that, it delivered as advertised and everyone knows it.  If people wanted to buy and action/rpg, they would buy and action/rpg.  People who buy Dragon Age want a classical rpg, that is what Dragon Age is, they know that is what Dragon Age is and they buy it for that reason.

So adding action elements to Dragon Age is like making Coca Cola a hamburger or adding an FPS minigame to Civilization V.   You have altered your product to the point that your core audience no longer recognizes it.  Usually when you do this you create a huge financial flop, and risk losing the franchise as well.

Know who your audience is, and give them what they want.  They will keep coming back for more and you will have steady stream of loyal, repeat customers.

Look at ME3 though. It has shooter elements, it has RPG elements and its massively succesful. Good games and mixed-genre aren't antonyms. Origins was succesful because it was a good game, not because it was an RPG (though I don't doubt that that helped) DA2 did (presumably) less well because it was rushed. It was a less good game. It didn't sell less because it had action rpg elements. Which is stretching it already I think since what is an action rpg then? Action with rpg elements? An rpg with action elements? Seems a sub-genre of rpg in any case. And oh my god this has devolved into a genre discussion.

But since we're here anyway... Concepts evolve. Constantly. What constitutes as an RPG 20 years ago might not be one anymore. RPG's can still be rpg's while including other elements. The emphasis is role playing. Trying to shove RPG's in a box with what a rpg is "supposed" to be (like party based combat, level up, stats, tactical-esque combat etc) is a very black and white way of seeing things and therefore restrictive.

As for there not being a market for these "mixed-genre" games that's BS. Not every person that plays an rpg is a grizzled Planescape Torment veteran. The consumer base is changing and games change along with them. As do definitions.

[Kidd]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Jaulen wrote...

Just a quick aside:

LotR may have firmly implanted many of the fantasy tropes into our cultural awareness, but there are a number things in his story that come from Finnish, Nordic, and Celtic story telling traditions.

And many of them had never before been published in English.  What English speaker ever reads the Kalevala, or Icelandic Sagas?

As a Swedish person who was lucky enough to get to read lots of our old mythological tales as a child, I never thought about this before. Of course there was a time, especially outside of Scandinavia, where people had never heard of rings that corrupt people and turn them into dragons ring wraiths before. I feel like such a fool for never thinking of this before 

[Nightdragon8]

the only true innovation i would want is something like Facade only well better...

other than that th best way for innovation is to, not to. just make games that are fun to play, try not to do too many things out "just because you can" I mean look at the whole Realtime event spam that is going on.. don't get me wrong love the interrupts in ME3 just keep it simple.

[grumpymooselion]

otis0310 wrote...

@Janan

While I disagree with most of what you say I do agree on a few things.
The character tree being better in DA2 is partially right, in DAO you had things like the persuade skill you could choose as well. I miss the ability to have any noncombat skills at all, otherwise I agree.

I tend to agree, actually.

Chapter two being the strongest is obvious. Isabella is well done, and you are right about the home not feeling "homey" enough since you cannot decorate it.

Seeing it in the Citadel DLC for ME3 blogged me when DA2 hadn't, when one of DA2's concepts was getting a better home. It never sat right with me that ME3, not even concentrating on that aspect, had it when a game that had a home as a central aspect you went back to repeatedly didn't.

One big problem for me is that the inventory is all messed up. I prefer the armor that requires x strength or x constitution to wear rather than being class specific all the time. Mages have light armor, rogue's medium etc. I hate that, anyone can wear any armor if they meet the requirements. That is far better to me, it allows far greater customization of the characters and their gear.

I actually don't agree. Rogues in medium, Warriors in heavy and Mages in light made sure that all stats on a given type were more applicable. After DA:O and games like D3 and others, I'm very sure that I'd rather see characters wearing gear 'for them' rather than just anything. I think Guild Wars actually did this best, to the extent gear (armor) you pick up is all useless to you outside of being salvage to make gear fitted 'specifically' to your character and their needs. That, in my mind, is the ultimate system for an RPG.

Speaking of customization, I sorely miss being an elf, I like them so much. I love how they are looked down on since I love rooting for the underdog. I can see why they would think it was too expensive to have it in, but I still cannot get past it.

I actually prefer the protagonist's race being run down to a singular race. I also think very little of the typical non-Human races of fantasy, and their typical tropes, even when they have slight twists, besides.

Finally, although chapter 2 is by far the strongest, the overall story plays like an episodic game made by Telltale. The first chapter is about going into the dungeon to get an object, the second chapter, as we agreed is very good. Finally in third chapter we get into the mages vs. templars story line, although there is some build up to this event. However for the most part each chapter is like its own little story which is independent of the others, this ruins the overall flow of the story to me.

I did find they were cut off into their own parts, but each part was properly foreshadowed and built up in my mind as an overall - even the need to gain lots of money is built up simply by being in the situation you're in when fleeing to Kirkwall. I think the only thing that really bugged me in the third chapter was Meredith's Sword, made from the idol (and her commenting on it of all things, as if we should recognize it when it used to be a little idol). That bugged me. That . . . that needed build up, foreshadowing . . . a crack surgical team, ninety-five lawyers, two dozen saints and a revivalist southern preacher man.

Yes I recall DAO running so slowly, the longer you ran the game the slower it got. Sometimes you have to quit to desktop and restart the program just to clear the problem. And yes, I would say this does qualify as one of the worst bugs I have ever seen.

True, that was a thing, but I just meant the game's main plotline dragged for me

To be honest the worst part of DA2 is the combat. I do not mind it being faster paced. I do mind wave after wave of enemies being air dropped on top of me. I also mind that the tactics you choose for your companions is basically pointless as the enemy AI is too dumb for them to matter. In fact you can win most fights without worrying about tactics at all.

ME3 did the waves of enemies thing too, and it was out of place as well. A tactical approach to combat of any sort is made impossible when enemies can jut appear out of thin air as they spawn in - no matter that the animations imply.

If you ran into a battle in DAO like that you would get killed. In the battle at Redcliffe, for example, where the undead come down into the village there is a bottleneck there which is a great spot for an inferno spell. You never get to take advantage of the terrain to that degree in DA2. I think they really dropped the ball there.

You're right, you also lacked spells like the inferno spell in the first, let alone the spell combos . . . my storm of the century. ;_;  That said, points like that in DA:O weren't 'everywhere' and also very specific when they were, to the point that many of them felt like, "this is what you're supposed to do here" rather than anything tactical. Like the encounter was made with the assumption you'd use a mage, and use a spell there. Blah.