38 réponses à ce sujet

[Arcian]

chemiclord wrote...

The developer-player pact is a load of entitled bull****. There is no pact. The developer gives you a game to play. You either like it or you don't. If you do, you buy more of the developer's crap. If you don't like it, you don't buy more of their crap.

I take it you're not a fan of consumer rights?

Modifié par Arcian, 10 juin 2013 - 10:57 .

[chemiclord]

Arcian wrote...

I take it you're not a fan of consumer rights?

I'm a big fan of consumer's rights.

You have the right to not buy stuff you don't like.  No one forced you to drop down money on ME3.  

Bioware will learn whatever lessons it wants, and if it's the right ones, their products will flourish and people will buy them.  If they learn the wrong lessons, the products will flounder and they'll go out of business.

This idea that a developer has some sort of unwritten agreement with potential consumers is absurd.  They make games; you choose to buy them or not.

Modifié par chemiclord, 10 juin 2013 - 11:32 .

[Fixers0]

chemiclord wrote...

So... you hated all three games then?  Because I can think of a lot of things I would have liked to say from ME1 on that I never had the option to say.

Oh, I surely won't deny that each game had their dialogue weaknesses, but for the most part the dialogue options provied in ME1/ME2 actually encompased the full spectrum of most logical reactions, but let me explain here why Mass effect 3 in particular is so damning when it comes to breaking the agreement.

If you actually watch the presenatation, you would have known that the developers can and will only give the player a limited amount of options, but they will give the right ones, the ones that cover the spectrum of possibly reactions as broadly as possible, they do this through the dialogue wheel, which has six possible responses, with each location having a prefixed moral meaning behind it. And speaking for myself here, it worked. With exception of outliers that are sometimes encounterd, for the most part I as a gamer was satatsified with the dialgue options provivided, as they gave me multiple distict ways to handle with a situation, especially since there is a (mostly) consistant reasoning behind each choices.

Now take Mass Effect 3, let's get staight to the point here, why does it fail exactly, well, here is exactly why:

1. excessive amounts of autodialogue:

Each time a line of autodialogue is said, and option for narrative interactions is lost, but in some moments depending on the narrative situation, as line from the protaganist is required, Usally this involves stating basing facts or giving a simple order to someone, in such case autodialogue isn't as immersion breaking, because it involes the most, basic, logical reaction.

Now there are times when lines or even entire scenes are done in autodialogue when instead they could have easily been split up in multiple in order to provide a better narrative interaction, this is especially noticeably when the line delivered provides a specific anwser, idealogical stance or an just a plain opinion on something. These types of autodialogue are much more immersion breaking as the player is forced to watch a specific respones they have no agency in and could even outright contradict their own beliefs on how their character would react. Examples of this type are ecounted all through ME3, in fact some of the most obvious examples happen the first ten minutes:

"This isn't about strategy or tactics..." "we fight or we die..."

Both of these statements express a very specific view on(a lack of understanding) on miltiary tactics, ith the player having no input on them. Not only are these staments entirely out of the player's agency, they're also incredibly dumb when it comes to military reasoning.

2. Dialogue option that are only superficially different:

A lot of people are aware that sometimens multiple dialogue options in ME1 would lead to the same result and although it was only a fraction of the total dialogue options that sufferened from this weakness it's a fair argument to support that there were more dialogue options that there actually were respones. What most people aren't aware of however, is that this probablem was never fundamentally adressed in any of the games. Instead it probably got worse, because even with the drastically reduced amount of options, often enough dialogue options would lead to responses that were different, but only the most superficial level, useally tone.

In contrast, dialogue options in ME1, despite the previously mentioned weakness, often had very different fundamental respones caused by the fact that dialogue options, instead of being tone based, were idealogical driven, with paragon, being centered around cooperation between species, more lenient in personal converstions and generally being more idealistic, where as renegade is very cleary centerd around being pro-human, proffesional in personal conversation and much more pragmatic when in general, the differences aren't that complex, but they do make for two different ideological paths.

Let's just look at examples of both systems.

The first dialogue options presented in ME1 gives the player three respones.

"They don't send Spectres on shakedown runs." (Paragon)
"you always expect the worst." (Neutral)
"That's enough, you're soldiers, act like it!" (Renegade)

The first dialogue option in ME3 an it's two respones.

"You know we're not Ready if it is them, not by a long shot" (Paragon)
"It's the Reapers and we're not ready for them, not by a long shot" (Renegade)

For the ME1 example, the neutral option is pretty self explanatory, just simple remark by the player and not much more, but it's at paragon/renegade where the differences get interesting, Paragon, is an open continuation of the informal discussion held by Kaiden and Joker, where the Shepard actively partcipats, whereas the Renegade options is a call to military profesionalism by the strict commander, it's not complex at all but it surely shows the difference of each morality pretty well.

The ME3 example is rather problametic, in both dialogue options, Shepard ends up saying pretty much the exact same thing, only with slightly different words and with a different tone, this is more of an example of style over substance, the actual differences in dialogue are so marginal it's almost not worth keeping, it's only the difference in tone that's noticeabla


3. Contradictions with pre-established facts.

One of the natarual advantages ME1 got going is that Shepard is mid-level officer in a military hierarchy, meaning that's only natural for him to accept orders, this way the player can be send on missions and objectives with the feel of narative contrivance. But after two games, the player has build a reputation made decisions and generally got a pretty good perception as to their how Shepard would react to certain situations, and that's were the problems start to come in. This case is best done by example from the start so let's do that allready.

If one asked me the question if there was one choice O would take that wasn't present, but should be, it would be to side with the Salarian dalatrass from the start, because no matter how much we Turian fleet support, even considering curing the Genophage is an outlandish idea, but what Makes it worse, other then the lack of option to escort Victus and Wrex/Wreav to the airlock, is the fact that it outright contradicts previous statements and actions made by my Shepard, because somewhere offscreen Shepard by default has adopted some kind of Pro-Krogan stance that the player isn't able to change until contacted by the Dalatrass halfway throughout the arc. Yet before all that my Shepard was vocal genophage supporter throughout the trilogy, this sudden change of personality without giving the player any kind of input, is yet another blow the immersion, Shepard's doing things, on a major level, that I would never expect and wanted him to do, they're goes my suspension of disbelief, well done Bioware.


In conclusion, the problem is much more complex then you orginally made it out to be, Surely we can't expect to see every choices possible on the dialogue wheel, but what options there are should be a very accurate represenation of all the possible respones catagorized three different idealogical zones, Paragon, Neutral and Renegade. No superficial tone based differences but actual fundamental changes in the responses, and no contradictions or railroading without any player agency.

Modifié par Fixers0, 15 juin 2013 - 07:11 .

[Erez Kristal]

Well put fixers.
You cant give us control of shepard and be suprised we get mad when you take that control away from us.
In games such as crysis when you never had control of the hero you have no problems because the pact isnt broken. here we had a contract and bioware failed to meet their end of the bargain.

[Erez Kristal]

chemiclord wrote...


I'm a big fan of consumer's rights.

You have the right to not buy stuff you don't like.  No one forced you to drop down money on ME3.  

Bioware will learn whatever lessons it wants, and if it's the right ones, their products will flourish and people will buy them.  If they learn the wrong lessons, the products will flounder and they'll go out of business.

This idea that a developer has some sort of unwritten agreement with potential consumers is absurd.  They make games; you choose to buy them or not.

The fans backslash is part of exchanged when a company sells a product and doesnt deliver what it promised. worse when it delivers a product and it doesnt stand behind it or admit its folly. when it insults the customers by claiming to artistic intergrity.

Customers have every right no voice their mistreament vocally. and if bioware is smart it will listen to the criticizing players.

[WoolyJoe]

erezike wrote...

The fans backslash is part of exchanged when a company sells a product and doesnt deliver what it promised. worse when it delivers a product and it doesnt stand behind it or admit its folly. when it insults the customers by claiming to artistic intergrity.

Customers have every right no voice their mistreament vocally. and if bioware is smart it will listen to the criticizing players.

I think you're arguement's lost when you use the word "mistreatment" in regards to simply not liking a video game...

It's diswerving to everyone - yes, including yourself - to outright ignore those "fans" who bought Mass Effect 3 and believe that the promises made (whatever they are, since I don't recall ever beng personally promised anything) were upheld. As well as those that - heaven forefend - simply enjoyed the product that they purchased.

The danger most ME/BioWare detractors seem to fall into is in making the distinction that Mass Effect 3 is fundementtally flawed and everyone that played it hated it. When they simply didn't. Yes, a lot did (and they love repeating that fact...), but then a lot didn't (and if you ever ask them why, they'd love to go on-an'-on telling you...)
The reason BioWare are not acknowledging their "folly" or 'listening to the criticizing players" (which they are doing, but not within the vein that you're thinking) is because they're just a subsection of those who bought the game. The thing was a commercial and critical success, afterall, so there exists a fair amount of people who enjoyed it. (And don't forget the players that simple didn't care either way). Does that mean it has no flaws? Hell no - if anything it'll have a few more. But it does mean that when people claim the 'customers' - ie, everyone that bought it - demand BioWare beg for absolution, that's simply not true. I say let'em get on with it. If the next Mass Effect game is a complete hack job, then they deserve whatever they've got coming to them. If it's good, then bully for everyone.

[tanisha__unknown]

Arcian wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

The developer-player pact is a load of entitled bull****. There is no pact. The developer gives you a game to play. You either like it or you don't. If you do, you buy more of the developer's crap. If you don't like it, you don't buy more of their crap.

I take it you're not a fan of consumer rights?

You do have consumer rights and you would be entitled to a refund if either your distributor agreed to such terms or you got a broken product.

Technically speaking, ME3 worked. Even though it had many bugs, none of them prevented you from playing the game from the beginning up to the end, so basically even though the majority thought the ending was crap, nobody was entitled to anything. One thing probably would have been false advertising, some people filed an FTC complaint, but still that probably only entitles you to a refund + damage compensation and you were not really done any damage that could be represented in Dollars, Euros, Yen or whatever currency you used.

That does not mean, that it is not a smart idea to listen to your customers, because if you don't, chances are good that their number will shrink.

[Nikkonito]

chemiclord wrote...

ME3's biggest problem is that there is very little logical flow to its ending sequence. The Catalyst (before DLC corrected it) gets about two lines of throwaway foreshadowing before it dumps a moral conundrum on you, the final scenes (even with the extended cut) are a disjointed mess. In the effort to not step on anyone's headcanon, it leaves the player with the most barebones frame of reference and says, "End the story however you want!"

The developer-player pact is a load of entitled bull****. There is no pact. The developer gives you a game to play. You either like it or you don't. If you do, you buy more of the developer's crap. If you don't like it, you don't buy more of their crap.

It's a pretty simple exchange. Players who try to claim there's more than that are fooling themselves.

So what separates it from KOTOR's reveal, the time frame in the story in which it happens?

[Erez Kristal]

Woolyjoe, few of the people who think mass effect 3 is a bad game believe that the entire fanbase of mass effect 3 think its a bad game.
-This doesnt change the facts that there are many features which were promised to be in mass effect 3 and arent there.
-there are bad business ethics involved such as day 1 dlc.
- a large percent of the players who played mass effect 3 think its a bad game as you can seen in player reviews.
- a lot of players who really liked mass effect 1 and 2 did not like mass effect 3 or were highly disappointed.
-mass effect 3 is received worst in the franchise
-there was slander on the expense of the fans who desliked the game on some occasaions.
known as artistic integrity

It is one thing to like the game which is fine to do. but to claim that all those fans who did not and were disappointed have no right to show their contempt is highly patronizing


While we are on the subject I think neverwinter 1 campaign was a joke but likes its me3 friend it was saved by the multiplayer.

Modifié par erezike, 11 juin 2013 - 03:50 .

[Kel Riever]

Wanting a game to not totally suck doesn't make you 'entitled.' It means you have a standard that you would prefer your games not to totally suck.

[Mr. MannlyMan]

chemiclord wrote...

ME3's biggest problem is that there is very little logical flow to its ending sequence. The Catalyst (before DLC corrected it) gets about two lines of throwaway foreshadowing before it dumps a moral conundrum on you, the final scenes (even with the extended cut) are a disjointed mess. In the effort to not step on anyone's headcanon, it leaves the player with the most barebones frame of reference and says, "End the story however you want!"

The developer-player pact is a load of entitled bull****. There is no pact. The developer gives you a game to play. You either like it or you don't. If you do, you buy more of the developer's crap. If you don't like it, you don't buy more of their crap.

It's a pretty simple exchange. Players who try to claim there's more than that are fooling themselves.

It's not entitled bull****, it's a design philosophy. Maybe we'd have less entitled bull**** if the devs actually put their money where their mouth is.

[Danadenassis]

Sanunes wrote...

Yeah, but wasn't there a lot of complaints about the Halo 4 story which he worked on?

And I think the Halo 4 story was so much better because of it making me nearly want to play the full game (it is still a rather ridicolous setting and character I think).



@ Fixer0: Good post. I felt some of the same points when playing, but not only me3 really. I honestly find the dialogues distracting since what "I" say isn't the line I pick and I go "That wasn't what I wanted to, or tried to say!", it is like a huge *POP* from the gaming bubble and suddenly I find myself sitting in front of the computer/game and knowing I have to eat this episode and go on. It still has cost something, something that happens in a movie, but also in roleplay when things feels unbelievable and distant from yourself/your empathy.

ME isn't bad though (I fear it will be the best rpg for me in a long long time), I never really wanted to be mean and kill the sheperder, unlike in some movies and games.

Modifié par Danadenassis, 16 juin 2013 - 12:20 .

[In Exile]

Mr.House wrote...

You really expect the ME team to learn after ME2 and ME3? ME series is all about shooting, explosions, characters and waifu sex now. Narrative, coherent plot and good story telling left when robo Saren was shown.

Well, Montreal is doing the game now, so I think Omega is a sign of what's to come.

[In Exile]

chemiclord wrote...
So... you hated all three games then?  Because I can think of a lot of things I would have liked to say from ME1 on that I never had the option to say.

Hey! I loved looking like an ignorant ****** in front of Wrex when it came to the genophage and comparing it to the First Contact war, or acting like a frothing at the mouth lunatic when it came to meeting with the Council in ME1. 

I find the whole auto-dialogue thing hilarious when it comes to ME3, because ME1 had so many moments where all dialogue options led to the same scripted and railroaded answer.