211 réponses à ce sujet

[philippe willaume]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

In the hypothetical I created, there's nothing stopping the rachni from attacking. In fact, I worded it in a way that the assessment of EMS wasn't even determined by the player, but by his vassals.

In theory, you could have a situation where your vassals only go to war if they believe you have enough power (by which they effectively communicate how much they *think* you have with a number). It actually wouldn't prevent a low number value from actually being the most significant contributor once the battle actually happens.

that would be good. 

I would be great if we were able to affect the percpetion of the vasal either through quest or dialogue

IE  we would have a number  in inquisiation readiness and each vasall would be see a % of that number and teh player could affect what that % is.

phil

[nightcobra]

 for DA:I you could add exclusive units to your army depending on what you did and who you sided with  (similar concept to reinforcements units at Denerim's invasion)

but also show npcs of said factions walking around your strongholds, patrolling or training.

maybe even show banners of said factions on cities that are currently occupied by them along with patrolling npcs and more aesthetic changes to said cities to make them feel different after your choice.

[Diefenbaker]

The problem I had with EMS was that I didn't know about the levels affecting the game outcomes or the need for multiplayer because I was so worried about getting spoiled I refused to google anything about it. I didn't expect to need to play MP considering I spent so much time and effort doing everything I needed to do in SP, I thought this was enough

[bleetman]

devSin wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

If I am understanding you correctly, then, your issue isn't actually with the EMS itself, it's that the other types of reactivity you wanted to see weren't there?

I think there is also an issue with expressing it that way, but that's my main problem with it. Narrative choice should have narrative consequence; ME3 simply gave choice and then distilled it to a completely interchangeable value and then expressed that value in place of any sort of further consequence.

If you give the player a narrative choice, it should matter within the narrative. Showing us the variable that got set when you made the choice is not consequence; it's just an illusion of progression, and it was unconvincing and unfulfilling, given how generic and undifferentiated the variations of the so-called ending to that game were.

I don't think it was ever necessary to expose point values (though as I noted, all Sylvia's descriptions were pretty boss), and it certainly was not a substitution for relevant narrative impact.

Yeah, exactly.

I also had a problem with the lack of actual justification for your EMS score impacting what few things it did impact. The game never bothered to explain how your EMS score - increased by everything from ending a three centuries long war between two races to interrupting some random conversation on the citadel - actively caused, I don't know, Harbinger to kill your squad in the extended cut if your score isn't high enough. How does me not punching Khalisah al-jilani contribute to whether or not the crucible fries Earth and destroys the mass relays? For that matter, how does anything contribute to anything? The story itself certainly never bothers to elaborate. The whole implementation of it was just a massive disjointed mess.

Modifié par bleetman, 10 août 2013 - 10:38 .

[Wulfram]

I don't think it's fair to dismiss such systems based on the rubbish implementation of it in ME3.  I mean, the whole fiasco with the "best ending" shows the lack of understanding and control of the system that Bioware had - that something went wrong is perhaps understandable, but when questions were raised by the players it should have been checkable in moments.

Really, the way they massively skewed the system to promote multiplayer would be enough to screw up any system.  But you add to that the way in which it was implemented in the most basic and boring manner possible, with everything just being squidged into a single pool.  And the way the numbers were all pretty much arbitrary and nonsensical.  And the emphasis on planet scanning over the big choices.

EMS wasn't a bad idea, it just required the developers to treat is an actually important - very important, it's effectively how you "win" - part of the game rather than just some trashbag you can shove everything in and forget about.

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

ME3 actually proves that EMS can work with choice and consequence, only it doesn't do so with the EMS mechanic itself.

In Priority: Rannoch, the best outcome (consequence) can only be received if you've done enough things right during the trilogy (choice, multiples of it). Many choices add up to a hidden "Rannoch-EMS" value which is never shown to the player. It is only if that number is high enough that you can pick the optimal outcome. One of these factors is whether or not you have Legion survive ME2 or not. And no matter if your "Rannoch-EMS" is high enough or not, your state of Legion's presence will indeed be shown in the game.

I didn't think that worked very well.  In the game in which I couldn't make peace, the game didn't give me any real feedback as to why that might be so.

Modifié par Wulfram, 10 août 2013 - 10:39 .

[Neon Rising Winter]

Having thought about it a bit more, I found EMS an issue in implementation rather than concept.

The concept has potential, good points that occur to me:
- It could allow you to have main missions where the more popular choices would lead to poor outcomes in terms of resources, but you could compensate for this by gathering support and resources from side missions to compensate.

- It was a resource gathering RPG to some extent, having something to show how well you've progressed in gathering those resources isn't a bad idea.

- It could be more subtle. Collect enough of certain types of resources and options open. Collect this much of resource A and this much of resource B and they start fighting with each other. Basically events trigger at certain levels and combinations of resources. (I think something that sounds a bit like this has been mentioned for DA:I?)

But there were some serious negatives in the way ME3 did it, namely:
- It just showed you a number (and a bit of text, I forgot that earlier), but this didn't have any effect on the gameplay apart from which of a handful of options were available at the end. There was nothing to make you really feel like you'd gathered all these useful resources and they had come together to make a difference. It didn't open gameplay options, cause events to happen, or even say let you see the crucible and watch it become more complex and populated by workers.

- Without DLC, for a long time you had to use multiplayer to get the best outcome. This is the final game in a trilogy of what had until then been purely single player RPGs. That's not an audience that's going to be especially multiplayer friendly, and now you've made them feel shoehorned into playing it. This one is the big one for me for making people actively hate it, rather than just not like it.

- The sidemissions and scanning that brought in a lot of the resources was pretty dull. Fly around, scan, find things. Fly around, scan, flee reapers. Wait a mission, Rinse, repeat. All in very basic gameplay and graphics. If there'd been a few interesting surprises or actual missions you ran across doing that, it would have given a sense of anticipation rather than made it a job to get out of the way.

So it's not I would hate to see EMS. I would hate to see ME3 EMS. A more nuanced version of EMS that took a more aggressive role in governing the events of the game, that I'd enjoy. I'm rather hoping they might have one planned to be honest!

Modifié par Narrow Margin, 10 août 2013 - 10:48 .

[JCAP]

A system like EMS, if well done, can be very cool.

Another game that uses a similar system is Fable 3, the more money you gathered, more people you would save. But your choices still have effects and you feel them.

What you guys don't want is an ending that is only affected by the points and not by your decisions.


(before you rage me, which normally happens to me when I say I liked fable 3, know that I didn't play the previous titles, so I didn't have expectations when I played it, and therefore, I liked it)

[SamilTane]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

It's just that to me the EMS system and lack of reactivity are synonymous.

I do not agree with this.

There's nothing saying that an power rating can be achieved, but the effects of such power rating lead to a degree of divergence based on what choices you made to affect that power rating.

Need "200" power rating for your vassals to be convinced you have prepared enough for battle, but you could have the consequences of the 200 points still be affected by which actual preparations you made.

Edit: Re-writing this since I believe I misunderstood what you were trying to say the first time round, sorry!

I agree with one of the posts below that what you're describing would have been better, except that it's not how it worked in ME3. In ME3 this rating wasn't just a gate, but it affected the ending significantly, and the way it was executed encouraged us to think about how "well" we've done overall and how "good" our ending is, and therefore encouraged the player to make certain choices.

And this isn't what DAO, DA2, or even ME1 was like. One of the beautiful thing about the range of outcomes available in those games is that it was left entirely up to the player to decide how he felt about each outcome, rather than the game encouraging the player to think of some outcomes as better than others.

Modifié par SamilTane, 10 août 2013 - 05:31 .

[Druk-Qs]

I read that as PMS for some reason

but yah good poing TC

[ElitePinecone]

Some great discussion in this thread.

Reading the last few posts I agree that ME3's EMS had a problem in execution rather than necessarily concept, but I'd be hugely wary of something similar in DAI unless it was well thought out. There's a lot of potential for such a system to really undermine reactivity, especially if points values are used to decide outcomes *in place* of the actual choices made.

It's a matter of perception though, so like I said earlier: I don't think an invisible system that notified us when we reached a certain power level would be as badly-received.

But if the idea is to give us a power bar with a goal of 200 points to unlock the next critpath quest, I'd find that pretty aggravating.

[NRieh]

But if the idea is to give us a power bar with a goal of 200 points to unlock the next critpath quest, I'd find that pretty aggravating.

Pretty much this, especially if (as we were told) "everything that we do works for the reputation". That's an obvious game-mechanical solution, it has nothing to do with immersion and story, it only distracts player, forces into extra metagaming.

I mean - player knows that he needs 50 more points to progress, his objective is to get the abstract number, which has little sense within the world of Thedas. Warden had to work for treaties, then - for Landsmeet, one of the most complex plot-knot I can recall across many games. Landsmeet did not work with abstract numbers, Eamon did not tell you 'go get 5 points to win', without extra sources player had no idea how this thing works and counts. Player could only rely upon lore, codex and in-game logic. It was logical, that if you save the noble you get extra vote. But it's not really logical, that saving a girl from the bear gives you 10 points of Inquisitor Reputation Score, probably, same as finding a lyrium vein or a rare herb. Find 10 herbs or explore the region - here, you are famous now and worthy to proceed.

[jontepwn]

I don't particularly hate the idea of EMS itself, it's just that ME3 did a rather poor job of showing your progress in the actual game. It came down to a number check to determine which endings were open for you with some minor variations based on the numbers.

I think the Crucible building site could've been an interesting hub area where you can see all the help you have gathered. Rachni, Geth, Quarian, Salarians, Ex-Cerberus etc actually walking around and working on something. It would've at least been more interesting than "fill up a progress bar".

And then of course to show that the forces you have amassed to actually be there in the ending of the game and make a difference. If the Geth were destroyed and you only had Quarians, make the Quarians take heavy losses or something, whereas if you made peace with them and got both forces, make them much more capable.

Give us something to show for our hard work building these alliances and the time and effort spent and choices made, otherwise why did they let us make those choices in the first place? (actually a quote from the gameinformer video, so fingers crossed)

Modifié par jontepwn, 10 août 2013 - 04:26 .

[Sir JK]

I do not think there's anything wrong with the EMS as such... it is merely a progress bar. All it does is to show how far we've gotten. A checklist of sorts.
However, checklists aren't very exciting on their own. It's a tool to organise and summarize. It's very abstract. It's great being able to fill it up or cross things off it, but on it's own it cannot replace actually seeing results yourself. This is something that others have mentioned earlier in the thread. If the only visible result of your actions is that the progress bar fills up a bit then that is a very underwhelming consequence. Visible confirmation is important. I am not terrible interested in knowing that I've advanced from having completed 10% of my wooden ship to 30%. I am interested in seeing how much of it is finished however. It's useful to see how much is left. But it's very abstract. Difficult to imagine.

A second problem with progress bars, particular in relation things is that it easily boils down to a number game. It abstracts everything into values that are added into it. It becomes very "gamey". Taking away much of the drama.
It's neat for things like taking hits, durability or progress in creating things and such, since it abstracts tedium and allows you to pay attention to the interesting bits (which is what happens at the beginning, the end and sometimes it increases/decreases). These are usually very mechanical actions anyways.
But people, allies and war assets... it becomes more what they're worth than who they are or what you had to do to bring them in/lose them. They become less "real" in a sense. In such situations I feel it is better to simply not show anything except a list of who is on your side with no scale or value shown. To give you a sense that they're all equally important (or make you decide that they aren't for yourself).

Thirdly... while a progress bar can be very motivating or uplifting... sometimes they're also the complete opposite. Such as when you learn just how much is left of the stairs you're climbing or that you've completed 90% of the game you love much quicker than you hoped.

[bleetman]

ElitePinecone wrote...

But if the idea is to give us a power bar with a goal of 200 points to unlock the next critpath quest, I'd find that pretty aggravating.

Fully agreed. I can't really put into words just how damaging it was to my ability to be immersed in what was going on to see that damn EMS bar complete with a minimum requirement score marked on all the time. It just ruined any real sense of tension to be able to look at a bar and know that, actually, yes, I'm as prepared as I could possibly be and everything's going to work out for the best because I have all these points in a game where the points are all that matters.

And, honestly? It reminds me a bit of light side/dark side in swtor, or the whole paragon/renegade thing, in that it gave a very clear basis on which to make a decision, albeit one you're probably not going to know about in advance without accurate guesswork or looking it up. Don't know what choice to make? Pick the one that gives you more points. Dilema solved. Moral ambiguity mitigated. This is not how I should be thinking about choices in an rpg.

Modifié par bleetman, 10 août 2013 - 11:51 .

[N7recruit]

EMS in ME3 was a MESS. What is one unit of EMS? What does EMS actually do? What am I gathering here? How does it affect the game? Where is it seen? Why can't I interact/ command it?How is one person worth more than a squadron of Fighters? So 4 reconcilable NPC's are worth more than a fleet of dreadnoughts, WHAT?

Needless to say it needed to be divided up into different sections and organised alot better.
Artillery, Medical, Scientific, Manufacturing, Engineering, Intel, Tactical(Leaders where they act as a multiplier for each battle times 2,3 or 5 for bronze silver & gold)
+ lets say 1000 EMS = 10 Dead capital ships in the final battle or equals 5 artillery strikes that the player can call in during the final battle & so on.

Stuff like this where it's shown on screen & even better where the Player can interact with it via tactics or in combat.

EMS was mainly used, I feel as a crutch for both the Devs & the Players. Imagine ME3 without it. A whole lot of WTF, how do I do this? Why didn't this unlock ETC.

I'm not against the idea of it in a War game, but in ME3 it was garbage, numbers just filling a screen with no meaning whatsoever apart from when God Kid reads them to see if you unlock the Green ending, I mean come on! I KNOW You guys can do MILES better than this!

What Mark & Mike have said so far is really promising & I'm super excited to see the final product.
So if something like EMS is used, organize it so the player understands what it represents in game , allow the player to interact with it & best of all have it affect game play(Like in DAO but bigger)

[TheInquisitor]

I just want an ending based on our choices, not how high our 'reputation' or 'military strength' is.

[ElitePinecone]

N7recruit wrote...

EMS in ME3 was a MESS. What is one unit of EMS? What does EMS actually do? What am I gathering here? How does it affect the game? Where is it seen? Why can't I interact/ command it?How is one person worth more than a squadron of Fighters? So 4 reconcilable NPC's are worth more than a fleet of dreadnoughts, WHAT?

Needless to say it needed to be divided up into different sections and organised alot better.
Artillery, Medical, Scientific, Manufacturing, Engineering, Intel, Tactical(Leaders where they act as a multiplier for each battle times 2,3 or 5 for bronze silver & gold)
+ lets say 1000 EMS = 10 Dead capital ships in the final battle or equals 5 artillery strikes that the player can call in during the final battle & so on.

Stuff like this where it's shown on screen & even better where the Player can interact with it via tactics or in combat.

Generally agree with all of this. As a tally of total military strength the system had potential, but the annoying thing was in its execution and the way it was used - as an arbitrary gating/threshold system for the ending choices, and not in any reactive respect that actually had consequences within the game. My inner pedant also asks all the questions you raise above - what is a unit of "effective military strength", how is it measured, and why are some individual soldiers worth more than battleships? 

Though, I think we need to separate a system like War Assets/EMS that decided the ending choices in ME3 from something that's hypothetically (?) in DAI that divides plot-critical missions from each other.

Like, if the "building the Inquisition" EMS-like system only amounted to gathering X number of 'Inquisition power points' between major quests in order to advance the plot, but had no effect on any quest outcomes or the ending, would this still be bad? If there was no overtly numerical aspect to ending outcomes (or major plot arc outcomes), would people still be annoyed? 

I feel like from reading this thread a lot of complaints are about a points system replacing choice reactivity or consequences, and if an EMS for Inquisition was *only* used as a threshold mechanic between major parts of the plot, people wouldn't be as negative about it. Though, I'd rather have a blind system where we're only notified once the quest actually becomes available, instead of having to look at a progress bar to unlock the next questline. There's still something off-putting about having to gather resources measured in an arbitrary points value to advance my reputation and prestiege. 

[Psykohamster]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

It's just that to me the EMS system and lack of reactivity are synonymous.

I do not agree with this.

There's nothing saying that an power rating can be achieved, but the effects of such power rating lead to a degree of divergence based on what choices you made to affect that power rating.

Need "200" power rating for your vassals to be convinced you have prepared enough for battle, but you could have the consequences of the 200 points still be affected by which actual preparations you made.

That would have been nice, but that was not how the EMS system worked in ME3.  When I, and apparently many others, say "EMS", we mean the system used in ME3.  The system you described used numbers like the EMS system, but that does not make it the same thing.  I think the important thing to take away from this thread is that many people will be very upset if a system they feel is similar to EMS shows up in DAI (whether or not Bioware feels it is similar).

[CARL_DF90]

If I had to point out any flaw with the EMS and war assets system, is that it didn't effectively show us how any of those things made a difference for us in the war. Example, I successfully recruit the Geth for the war effort, so now I have an army that has these large walking tanks called "colossus" that in large groups could provide a nice distraction against a Reaper destroyer on the ground. Granted it would kind of like sending a pack of wolves taking on a bear, but every time I went up against that thing on Earth I was wishing I could call on some colossus fire support to take some of the load off.

In any case, the point is make it worthwhile for the player not just story-wise but gameplay-wise. If you're going through the trouble of adding a pseudo-RTS system, let the player see and feel the payoff in the long run. Also, as a suggestion for added player agency, have the potential to lose present based on the collective decisions made and resources gathered, because if the prospect of failure and/or loss does not hang over your head in the final battle, then there is little point.

[LinksOcarina]

Wulfram wrote...

I don't think it's fair to dismiss such systems based on the rubbish implementation of it in ME3.  I mean, the whole fiasco with the "best ending" shows the lack of understanding and control of the system that Bioware had - that something went wrong is perhaps understandable, but when questions were raised by the players it should have been checkable in moments.

Really, the way they massively skewed the system to promote multiplayer would be enough to screw up any system.  But you add to that the way in which it was implemented in the most basic and boring manner possible, with everything just being squidged into a single pool.  And the way the numbers were all pretty much arbitrary and nonsensical.  And the emphasis on planet scanning over the big choices.

EMS wasn't a bad idea, it just required the developers to treat is an actually important - very important, it's effectively how you "win" - part of the game rather than just some trashbag you can shove everything in and forget about.

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

ME3 actually proves that EMS can work with choice and consequence, only it doesn't do so with the EMS mechanic itself.

In Priority: Rannoch, the best outcome (consequence) can only be received if you've done enough things right during the trilogy (choice, multiples of it). Many choices add up to a hidden "Rannoch-EMS" value which is never shown to the player. It is only if that number is high enough that you can pick the optimal outcome. One of these factors is whether or not you have Legion survive ME2 or not. And no matter if your "Rannoch-EMS" is high enough or not, your state of Legion's presence will indeed be shown in the game.

I didn't think that worked very well.  In the game in which I couldn't make peace, the game didn't give me any real feedback as to why that might be so.

Is it supposed to? I mean, none of the missions involved in Mass Effect 3 indicate anything to you, and this is done by design.

Its implementation is honestly at the point of non-important by the time you hit level 60 and replay the game. If it is brought back it does need a re-work, but I think were focusing on the wrong issue of the EMS system.

Modifié par LinksOcarina, 10 août 2013 - 02:29 .

[Mr.House]

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

ME3 actually proves that EMS can work with choice and consequence, only it doesn't do so with the EMS mechanic itself.

In Priority: Rannoch, the best outcome (consequence) can only be received if you've done enough things right during the trilogy (choice, multiples of it). Many choices add up to a hidden "Rannoch-EMS" value which is never shown to the player. It is only if that number is high enough that you can pick the optimal outcome. One of these factors is whether or not you have Legion survive ME2 or not. And no matter if your "Rannoch-EMS" is high enough or not, your state of Legion's presence will indeed be shown in the game.

Ok this is nice, but what does this change during the final fight with the Reapers? Does anything change? Are the Reapers easier to beat? Do the geth betray us? I can go on, the fact while true Rannoch and Tunchanka wherem isisons that used past choices, aftert he arc is resoslved, it no lnoger matters at all, andt his right here is a massive issue. It would be like geytting the mages help in DAO and the mages never play a role in the battle of Denerim.

[Bleachrude]

Eh...technically, that's a bad example since if you have the templars instead of the mages, you can still easily power through the final battle.

Hell, I'm 100% sure you don't actually NEED your allies to win the final battle if you're going by what they actually do in battle...

[Mr.House]

Bleachrude wrote...

Eh...technically, that's a bad example since if you have the templars instead of the mages, you can still easily power through the final battle.

Hell, I'm 100% sure you don't actually NEED your allies to win the final battle if you're going by what they actually do in battle...

You're goal is to recruit the mages or templars. If they do not show up in the final battle and help, you have just made a whole questline useless. DAO does not do this, ME3 did.

[fchopin]

There is nothing wrong with EMS if done right.
In ME3 it was done so you could not get enough EMS to get the best ending so they tried to force people to play multiplayer.

Keep multiplayer separate from single player.

[Mr.House]

fchopin wrote...

There is nothing wrong with EMS if done right.
In ME3 it was done so you could not get enough EMS to get the best ending so they tried to force people to play multiplayer.

Keep multiplayer separate from single player.

ME3 ems caused major choices to be turned into a number instead of the cohices being properly showen. There was far more issues the multiplayer to the ems. <_<

Modifié par Mr.House, 10 août 2013 - 04:10 .