310 réponses à ce sujet

[mad825]

Meatbaggins wrote...

mad825 wrote...
So you're placing new fans in front of old, loyal fans?

What makes you think a game can't appeal to both?

You want a case study? Mass Effect 3. Hell, Mass Effect 2. You know what? **** it, Dragon age 2.


I have made my ponit clear, you cannot progress the story nor can you make choices matter without having to assume that are already known/done.

Modifié par mad825, 22 juin 2013 - 07:19 .

[Jerrybnsn]

Plaintiff wrote...

[DA2 does not make any signfiicant changes to the gameplay of DA:O either. It "tweaked" it the same way that Skyrim did, but the major features and core experience were unchanged.

DA2 wasn't just a tweaking.  1) they decided to make it only 1/3 in length gameplay wise.  2) they gave you a predefined character. 3)  The did away with multiple origins. 4) Your character goes through a disconnection in story telling over a number of years of meeting people that you have no idea who they are until your character starts talking to them, and your family dialogue further disconnects you as your character reminices about the past with them about things you didn't take part in during the game. 5) You're restricted to one town the whole game and its immediate surronding areas that you go to over and over and over again. 6) They completely changed Ander's funny, sarcastic character with a whole new voice actor and made him into a depressing, annoying drag. 7) Being a mage in Kirkwall made no difference as you ran around town throwing blood magic everywhere right in front of Templars, or even being approach by Templars to do things for them, not noticing your mage outfit and a huge mage staff on your back. 8) They gave you a choice of ending to pick from, yet choice A or choice B opened up into the same ending--no matter which group you sided with, you fight them both--in the same exact order. 9) Dwarves and their culture are purely absent. 10) The elves got retooled to look more "barnyard like" and less attractive. 11)  Every mage, including your two companions are Blood Mages. 12) You get a voiced character instead of the more immersive silent protagonist that are still being used very effectively in rpgs today. 13) ambiguous dialogue wheels that reflected unnecessarily rude or sarcastic responses when you didn't want one. 14) A special heart symbol to help you go straight to the romance instead of letting you figure out the options. 15) companions will stay with you no matter what you say to them or what you do. 16) Instead of a fix number of enemy to fight, you get waves popping up, litterally through the ground or out of thin air. 17) Boss fights became just hit the guy for  ten to twenty minutes. 18) Your character becomes irrelevant at the most important part of the whole story that will change the shape of Thedas 19) Instead of a conclusion, you end the game in a cliff hanger. 20) the whole menu screen went from a medieval tapestry to a Las Vegas neon sign. 21) Your inventory became usless as you could only outfit yourself.  22) skill systems got redefined for good or worse. 23) about the only positive was the Qunari redesign.

Above all, Dragon Age II was so far removed from Origins that it should have been a completely seperate rpg universe by Bioware.  Origins was just one of those epic RPGs that anything straying away from that formula will fall short.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Savber100 wrote...
I think you're missing the point of why people said it (DA2) was disjointed. 

It wasn't because the lack of being a Warden or darkspawns. It was disjointed because they literally had different stories for each act that ultimately felt unconnected and pointless. 

I'm not arguing about that, yet I don't see any continuity from Origins to DA2.   And DA2 by itself is pointless.  IMO, there was no significance in making that game, or importance in telling that story.  You have Flemeth's brief appearance and that's it.  An Alistair connection to Origins while he's just passing through saying "Riiiiiggght."?   I and others didn't even get the Nathaniel Howe cameo for the Awakening connection because of a glitch.  So far, we've had only two games in a series and together as a series they are disjointed.  That's why I was hoping, expecting that DA3 would go back into the context of what Origins was all about in storyline. Don't go away from it, as the article I posted suggestes that is what they want to do.  Have some meaning in our decision that we are supposedly to be importing over.

Once again, DA2 was NEVER meant to be a continuation of the Origins story.  It was meant to be a DIFFERENT story in the same world.  Also again, Bioware said all along this is what they planned for the series.  If you thought that DA2 was going to be, or was supposed to be, or should have been, a sequel to Origins in the same way that Awakening was, that was your own misconception; it certainly isn't Bioware's fault that you missed all their mentions of what DA2 was going to be.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Nightdragon8 wrote...

Savber100 wrote...
I think you're missing the point of why people said it (DA2) was disjointed. 

It was disjointed because they literally had different stories for each act that ultimately felt unconnected and pointless. 

.... i think we need to cool down here....

DA2 was a story... don't like stories, then fine. Think of it this way. its the prologe to DA:I and what they really where doing was waiting till they had th technology to present the story they want to present.

Its like the Orgin story behind the war, and the goings on in DA:I

It's not that i don't like stories,  I don't like disjointed stories with ambigous plotlines. It was already stated that DA2 was a disjointed game " because it had different stories for eeach act that felt unconnected and pointless".  And that "something happened" that is important (i.e., carries forward into the series) is the start of the Mage/Templar war.  That is the only thing that carries forward. Everything else isn't important as far as choice goes.  

DA2 was disjointed yes, and could have been written far better, also yes.  But the disjointedness was NOT due to it not being a continuation of the story from Origins.

Fixing DA2's problems wouldn't have made it more like Origins, it would have made the existing game the game it was meant to be, and first and foremost you need to accept that DA2 was always meant to be a standalone, separate story from Origins.  But if you're now going to gripe about the lack of choice and argue that the entire game was actually pointless, you are changing the subject and now talking about something else entirely.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Liskat wrote...

The more important choices the player gets to make that carries into the next game, the more complicated it becomes to create the different paths of the storyline in future games. The end result of this can easily become difficult to manage for the developer and cause more problems.

The technology is right there before us.  Tony Stark was able to make Dragon Age: Origins in a cave with a box of scrap!  Don't tell me it can't be done.

It's not that it can't be done.  It's that doing this would require a massive amount of resources that Bioware probably doesn't have, it would make the game take FAR longer, be MUCH larger, and cost US a LOT more.

Bioware CAN'T create a game where each and every choice matters and creates a separate branching storyline, which creates numerous widely branching endings, AND make the follow-up game address each and every decision and accomodate each ending save import.

Do you think money grows on trees?  Do you want to wait 10 years between games? Do you want to pay $200 per game?  Do you think the rest of us want to?

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Brockololly wrote...

Silfren wrote...

It's Dragon Age: Inquisition.  No need to latch on to what is clearly nothing more than a slip of the tongue.

But its still amusing that Frank Gibeau can't even keep the name straight after just telling the interviewer why they were specifically not using the number "3" in the title.

To be fair, we have been calling it and writing DA3 for a couple of years now.  It'll take some practice.  I didn't find out that it is referred to as DAI until yesterday.   I really thought that DAI was Origins new monkier, ya know, you have DA2 and then DA3, so everyone just started calling it DAI.

What you're missing is that if we were calling Origins DA one now, we would write it as DA1, not DAI.  See the difference there? I is not the same as 1.  If we were following this convention, we would be calling the games DAI, DAII, and DAIII, or DA1, DA2, and DA3.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

bigbad1013 wrote...


Are you still on about the Warden? Didn't you say earlier in the thread that this wasn't about the Warden? I'm starting to think that you don't even know yourself what it is you actually want.

 
I didn't get a chance to answer the above question yesterday.  So I took the time today.

I still say this post is concerning the "direction" of DAI and not about the name or the return of the Warden, but if pressed I'll gladly point out that more fans would prefer DA3 to be the return of their Warden, because it is the truth, and anything less is disappointing.

But it is NOT going to be about the Warden, and Bioware made this clear from the beginning.  What is the point of continuing to complain about it?

Also, you are really kidding yourself if you think that a poll of 350 people means anything.  A good many more than 352 people played DA2.  That poll doesn't represent all the fans of Dragon Age any more than this forum does.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Cigne wrote...

Yeah, 300 people out of the 4+ million that bought the game? That's not a reality I could accept.

4 million people??  As of one year after being released DA2 was lucky if they sold 2.5 million.   They even stopped making dlc on it so they could work on "more pressing issues" within Bioware like SWtoR and an ending to ME3.

Actually they stopped working on it in order to focus on Inquisition.  They said as much here in the forums. 

[Airdeen]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Liskat wrote...


A little question to you: Do you reckon it's possible a lot of those people wanted the Warden back because the game was titled DA2, which implies it would continue where the first game ended (in which case it's natural they'd expect to play the Warden again)?

If so, maybe they'd be happier with a new protagonist if the game was called Dragon Age: Kirkwall or something?

This is just pure speculation, mind!

I thought that they would continued with importing the Warden because it was a Bioware game proclaiming to be following in the succesion of Baldur's Gate, which allowed you to import your character all the way through or make new ones along the way.

In your opinion, is the defining aspect of Baldur's Gate the fact that you can import your character from one game to the next?

[mad825]

Silfren wrote...

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Cigne wrote...

Yeah, 300 people out of the 4+ million that bought the game? That's not a reality I could accept.

4 million people??  As of one year after being released DA2 was lucky if they sold 2.5 million.   They even stopped making dlc on it so they could work on "more pressing issues" within Bioware like SWtoR and an ending to ME3.

Actually they stopped working on it in order to focus on Inquisition.  They said as much here in the forums. 

That's half the truth

Next, the latest and greatest patch for DAII is out, addressing a number of the issues you have helped us track on our tech support forums. Thank you again to those of you who took the time to submit feedback in order to help us make the game better. 

And finally, while we will still be keeping an eye out for any issues that might crop up in DAII and supporting the community should any emergencies should arise, we’re moving the entire team’s focus to the next phase of Dragon Age’s future.

In English, this means that the DLC sales were lacking. Therefore was a worthwile investment in working on the sequel and possably intergating it there where they might get more sales for "less" work.

Modifié par mad825, 22 juin 2013 - 08:20 .

[Silfren]

mad825 wrote...

Silfren wrote...

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Cigne wrote...

Yeah, 300 people out of the 4+ million that bought the game? That's not a reality I could accept.

4 million people??  As of one year after being released DA2 was lucky if they sold 2.5 million.   They even stopped making dlc on it so they could work on "more pressing issues" within Bioware like SWtoR and an ending to ME3.

Actually they stopped working on it in order to focus on Inquisition.  They said as much here in the forums. 

That's half the truth

No, it's the whole truth.  The claim was that they stopped working on DA2 DLC in order to work on SW:ToR and ME3.  In actuality they quit the DLC in order to work on Inquisition.  Their REASONS for making this decision are separate.

[bEVEsthda]

As for the old fight about whether DA2 was a success or not, it has ceased to be relevant. What is relevant is that DA:I gets as fair reception as possible. So for that reason the name change is good, because it won't be a successor in DA2's spirit (because that game obviously failed ). Likewise, it won't be in the spirit of DA:O, because "we won't do another 180" (at least he admits they did a 180 ).

But fear not, regardless what actually hides behind that name change, dropping the '3' is a good and wise choice. I congratulate Bioware on this. The bad decision was always the '2' in DA2 (the design changes were even worse decisions, ofc, but that's a tired issue).

Heaven or Hell, dropping the '3' is a good move either way.

[Silfren]

bEVEsthda wrote...

As for the old fight about whether DA2 was a success or not, it has ceased to be relevant. What is relevant is that DA:I gets as fair reception as possible. So for that reason the name change is good, because it won't be a successor in DA2's spirit (because that game obviously failed ). Likewise, it won't be in the spirit of DA:O, because "we won't do another 180" (at least he admits they did a 180 ).

But fear not, regardless what actually hides behind that name change, dropping the '3' is a good and wise choice. I congratulate Bioware on this. The bad decision was always the '2' in DA2 (the design changes were even worse decisions, ofc, but that's a tired issue).

Heaven or Hell, dropping the '3' is a good move either way.

I never did understand why anyone would take DA2 to mean "continuation of Warden's story" and likewise I don't see why DA3 would somehow mean a continuation of either Origins or DA2.  I mean, I understood all along that DA2 was going to be about a different person from the Warden.  Seeing it labeled as DA2 didn't confuse me in the least.  I suspect that most people who actually bothered to keep up with Bioware news also were able to figure out that DA2 was about a refuge from Ferelden, NOT the continuing adventures of the Hero of Ferelden.  Hell, even looking at DA2 in stores, I don't see how anyone reading the box could somehow purchase it under the belief that when they loaded up the game they would be re-playing their Warden again. 

I can see how someone, NEVER having heard of the series before, might see the titles DA1, DA2, and DA3, and think that they MIGHT all be different adventures from one person's story.  But it's not like the information available about each game actively deceives players about this not being the case.  You'd have to pretty much be deliberately ignoring all the available info in order to reach this inaccurate conclusion.

[garrusfan1]

well I hope are descisions still matter

[Jerrybnsn]

Silfren wrote...

But it is NOT going to be about the Warden, and Bioware made this clear from the beginning.  What is the point of continuing to complain about it?

Also, you are really kidding yourself if you think that a poll of 350 people means anything.  A good many more than 352 people played DA2.  That poll doesn't represent all the fans of Dragon Age any more than this forum does.

Silfren, thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions and statements.  Am I kidding myself think that 75% of over three hundred people polled show that most fans want a return of their Warden and to go back to the Darkspawn story?  I guess I am.

[Jerrybnsn]

Liskat wrote...

Jerrybnsn wrote...

I thought that they would continued with importing the Warden because it was a Bioware game proclaiming to be following in the succesion of Baldur's Gate, which allowed you to import your character all the way through or make new ones along the way.

In your opinion, is the defining aspect of Baldur's Gate the fact that you can import your character from one game to the next?

Importing your character and decisions is awesome.  I wish more series did it.  If your character is still alive, it feels like I'm leaving behind the one character that I feel the most strongest about.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Silfren wrote...

But it is NOT going to be about the Warden, and Bioware made this clear from the beginning.  What is the point of continuing to complain about it?

Also, you are really kidding yourself if you think that a poll of 350 people means anything.  A good many more than 352 people played DA2.  That poll doesn't represent all the fans of Dragon Age any more than this forum does.

Silfren, thanks for taking the time to respond to my questions and statements.  Am I kidding myself think that 75% of over three hundred people polled show that most fans want a return of their Warden and to go back to the Darkspawn story?  I guess I am.

You are.  There is nothing about that poll that indicates it was a fair sampling.  Most of the polls I've seen conducted here tend to be made by people who disliked or hated DA2, and written FOR people who hated or disliked DA2.  That's not exactly going to get a fair representation.  Besides that, you're not taking into consideration the numbers of people who played DA2 without ever going online to say anything, con OR pro, about it.

The unfortunate fact of the situation is that polls are extremely easy to slant, and statistics are easy to deliberately skew or accidentally misinterpret. It's actually the reason why certain organizations LOVE polls; they can be very easily manipulated to "prove" something that falls apart under very little scrutiny, but most people tend not to look that closely, they just see a poll that declares "75% of people hate X" and take for granted as scientific something that wasn't scientific at all.

In a game with 2.5 million or 4 million players, nobody who even pretends to be objective is going to take seriously a poll of fewer than 500. Come back to me with a poll that made a point of reaching AS MANY players of DA:O AND DA2 as possible, not just on forums with a given slant in either direction, and also make sure that poll is written with objective, non-leading questions, with more than just a yay/nay response, and also which allows for actual statements to be made, and, if at all possible, provide some stats about where the polled people come from: DA2 sucks forums, DA2 rocks forums, etc.

[Jerrybnsn]

Silfren wrote...

...............  Do you want to wait 10 years between games?...............................  Do you think the rest of us want to?

considering that were are nearing the four year anniversary that DA:Origins was released, and the third game coming out next year, is also not going to be a sequel to the first, I'll have to hope for DA:IV to be that sequel, which won't be able to come out until 2017 at the earliest.....  So it looks like I'm waiting nearly ten years anyway.

[bEVEsthda]

Plaintiff wrote...

mad825 wrote...
You cannot, I repeat, cannot keep on appealing to newer audiences

That's utter nonsense. Appealing to newer audiences is something every company should strive for with every single product. Especially games.

The "current audience" will shrink, no matter what Bioware does. Members of the "current audience" get older, they get busier, they die.

Ignoring newer audiences means one thing and one thing only for a company: bankruptcy.

It may just be a case of bad semantics, but:

It's a very wellknown no-no in marketing. You don't change a product to appeal to a different group. And doing it to a product that does well, is an even bigger taboo - if that was possible.

Growing your audience is a different thing. Quake, CoD and TES have very successfully done that. And so have many others, for awhile, before them. Sim City, Dune/C&C, Warcraft/Starcraft...

If you want a new audience as in a different group, you make a new product and make sure it's not confused with another.

Finally, 14y old males is not a "newer audience" that can expand your business. On the contrary, most of AAA videogaming's biggest problems comes from having inadvertily shrunken the potential videogame market size (as well as its buying strength), by consistently target only this group. There's very little to be done about that now. Climbing out of this hole the industry have dug for themselves is going to take time. Only way is small steps. (Believing that there is a huge untapped reservoir out there, who are dreaming about flailing their arms and jump up and down in front of their TV, is certainly NOT going to be the engine of revival. Just saying, because of Ex Box Done)

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 22 juin 2013 - 09:49 .

[bEVEsthda]

Silfren wrote...

bEVEsthda wrote...
...
Heaven or Hell, dropping the '3' is a good move either way.

I never did understand why anyone would take DA2 to mean "continuation of Warden's story" and likewise I don't see why DA3 would somehow mean a continuation of either Origins or DA2.  I mean, I understood all along that DA2 was going to be about a different person from the Warden.  Seeing it labeled as DA2 didn't confuse me in the least.  I suspect that most people who actually bothered to keep up with Bioware news also were able to figure out that DA2 was about a refuge from Ferelden, NOT the continuing adventures of the Hero of Ferelden.  Hell, even looking at DA2 in stores, I don't see how anyone reading the box could somehow purchase it under the belief that when they loaded up the game they would be re-playing their Warden again. 

I can see how someone, NEVER having heard of the series before, might see the titles DA1, DA2, and DA3, and think that they MIGHT all be different adventures from one person's story.  But it's not like the information available about each game actively deceives players about this not being the case.  You'd have to pretty much be deliberately ignoring all the available info in order to reach this inaccurate conclusion.

That angle wasn't on my mind. I was more considering gameplay, role play content/characteristics, mood and spirit of the games.
But yes, Bioware have never been ambiguos about this. I think it was even stated originally when DA was first revealed, so many, many years ago, like almost a decade before DA:O was even released. And they never kept it a secret inbetween. It's always been clear that DA games were to be different stories. You have to have been deaf or absent not to get that message.

However, that the game would become a different game, is a new, recent idea. It all came about with EA and DA2. Previously, the understanding was always that DA would be the spiritual successor of the Baldur's Gate games.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 22 juin 2013 - 10:02 .

[In Exile]

Jerrybnsn wrote...
 Am I kidding myself think that 75% of over three hundred people polled show that most fans want a return of their Warden and to go back to the Darkspawn story?  I guess I am.

Yes, you are. Because while a sample of 300 could be statistically representative, that's only true if it's a reliable indicator of the sampling methdology. And "people on the internet willing to talk about DA:O" is very likely not a representation of "people who played DA:O and enjoyed it". 

More importantly, the poll you linked doesn't say anything about the darkspawn. One could want the Warden back, but not a darkspawn story (e.g. 30% might want a DR story, 30% might want an unrelated Weisthaup story, 30% might want a F!Warden/Alistair story, etc). 

One could also think that DA:O was a brilliant game, DA2 was a terrible one, and not want the Warden back. Basically, all of these things are independent. 

[In Exile]

Jerrybnsn wrote...
TES series has only continued to grow with their fan base as new ones are added each game.  And all they do is tweek their games, not go off searching for different gamers.  They sold about $10 million in their first ten weeks of Skyrim's launch?  And that's an RPG, not a FPS.  

The amount of rage that exists at Skyrim for pissing over Morriwind is intense. Most TES fans (by your absurd standards of fandom) will rank it below Morrowind forever, as a pale shadow. 

More comically, TES is is an FPS. The entire series was designed for first-person. Oblivion shocked them that people wanted to play in 3rd person, so they made it suck less for Skyrim.

[Silfren]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Silfren wrote...

...............  Do you want to wait 10 years between games?...............................  Do you think the rest of us want to?

considering that were are nearing the four year anniversary that DA:Origins was released, and the third game coming out next year, is also not going to be a sequel to the first, I'll have to hope for DA:IV to be that sequel, which won't be able to come out until 2017 at the earliest.....  So it looks like I'm waiting nearly ten years anyway.

....Do you bother reading at all?  DA4 is going to be ANOTHER story with ANOTHER protagonist.  Bioware has been exceedingly clear on this point.  There is NOT going to be the kind of sequel to Origins that you are hoping for. 

[Silfren]

bEVEsthda wrote...

Silfren wrote...

bEVEsthda wrote...
...
Heaven or Hell, dropping the '3' is a good move either way.

I never did understand why anyone would take DA2 to mean "continuation of Warden's story" and likewise I don't see why DA3 would somehow mean a continuation of either Origins or DA2.  I mean, I understood all along that DA2 was going to be about a different person from the Warden.  Seeing it labeled as DA2 didn't confuse me in the least.  I suspect that most people who actually bothered to keep up with Bioware news also were able to figure out that DA2 was about a refuge from Ferelden, NOT the continuing adventures of the Hero of Ferelden.  Hell, even looking at DA2 in stores, I don't see how anyone reading the box could somehow purchase it under the belief that when they loaded up the game they would be re-playing their Warden again. 

I can see how someone, NEVER having heard of the series before, might see the titles DA1, DA2, and DA3, and think that they MIGHT all be different adventures from one person's story.  But it's not like the information available about each game actively deceives players about this not being the case.  You'd have to pretty much be deliberately ignoring all the available info in order to reach this inaccurate conclusion.

That angle wasn't on my mind. I was more considering gameplay, role play content/characteristics, mood and spirit of the games.
But yes, Bioware have never been ambiguos about this. I think it was even stated originally when DA was first revealed, so many, many years ago, like almost a decade before DA:O was even released. And they never kept it a secret inbetween. It's always been clear that DA games were to be different stories. You have to have been deaf or absent not to get that message.

However, that the game would become a different game, is a new, recent idea. It all came about with EA and DA2. Previously, the understanding was always that DA would be the spiritual successor of the Baldur's Gate games.

Aware as I am that DA2 had it's problems, and that they were big ones, I don't see how the numbering system is at all relevant to whether Dragon Age is or isn't the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.  That said, I recall that Origins, not DA in general, was supposed to be the successor.  But even so, I think that thus far all the DA games have fit that role well enough.  Spiritual successor doesn't mean literal and identical in every way, shape, or form.

Going forward, it's time to STOP beating the same dead horse about DA2.  People really need to let it go and move on already.

[Jerrybnsn]

Silfren wrote...

Jerrybnsn wrote...

I'll have to hope for DA:IV to be that sequel, which won't be able to come out until 2017 at the earliest.....  So it looks like I'm waiting nearly ten years anyway.

....Do you bother reading at all?  DA4 is going to be ANOTHER story with ANOTHER protagonist.  Bioware has been exceedingly clear on this point.  There is NOT going to be the kind of sequel to Origins that you are hoping for. 

We'll see.