211 réponses à ce sujet

[kinderschlager]

SamilTane wrote...

Please don't include a mechanic similar to ME3's "effective military strength" (EMS) system.

For those unfamiliar with ME3, EMS was a single score that substantially affected the ending of the game. Among other things, higher EMS made more choices available in the ending, and resulted in more people being saved. Many choices during the course of the game affected the EMS. I'm a little worried that there will be a similar system in DAI.

The problem with EMS is that it reduced many choices in the game to a single metric. Depending on your perspective, it measured how "ready" you were for the finale, or how completionist you were.

This is perfectly fine for players who only play games to be as completionist as possible (nothing wrong with that), but in my humble opinion one of the strengths of the DA series is in how choices are ambiguous, sometimes morally ambiguous, and how these choices could directly affect the world in a variety of ways, rather than being reduced to a single metric which then affects a limited set of outcomes.

At best, EMS was an unnecessary distraction that encouraged players to make certain choices in the game, and at worst it encouraged players to make decisions only on a single metric: whether to increase EMS.

Bottom line: let us decide how we make our decisions - there's no need to impose an artificial metric for our decisions to add up towards.

i support this
i don't want to have to go back and do a bunch of little side quests if i want to get the ending i desire

(don't even get me started on the fact that multiplayer was a must if you got ME3 brand new and wanted a good ending, that is something that should NOT come to the DA franchise)

Modifié par kinderschlager, 10 août 2013 - 04:20 .

[fchopin]

Mr.House wrote...

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. <_<

The main thing for me was the multiplayer problem.
 
I am not even sure there is enough EMS in the game to get the best ending if you play a new ME3 game without an import. I don't really care any more but most games are based on numbers even if we can not see them.

[ElitePinecone]

Even with an import, it's impossible to "unlock" all ending variations in the pre-Extended Cut version of the game without playing multiplayer. There literally aren't enough War Assets to meet the required amount for the highest-EMS ending, even assuming the player had the maximum available in one imported playthrough. Granted this isn't something you'd discover outside metagaming, but the developers did insist, multiple times, that it wasn't the case. Months before release, even.

That being said, it seems like there are multiple (perhaps mutually exclusive) issues people have with an EMS system, it's more a matter of opinion whether one feels the concept is valid despite its execution in ME3.

[SamilTane]

Something like EMS also gave people the idea that they were working towards a "perfect" ending, or at least a "better" ending, since all possible endings are scaled against how militarily prepared you are.

This is not what the DA series is about (heck, it wasn't what ME1 was originally about). In DAO our choices affected many things about the ending, and nothing in the game told us that particular endings were better than others - it was up to the player to weigh choices on his or her own terms.

[Get Magna Carter]

Ultimately the argument against ems seems to be down to 2 key areas

1) multiplayer significantly affecting single-player is opening up a can of worms.

2) the affects of decisions ONLY affecting through contributing to a numerical meter is unsatisfying

[leaguer of one]

Mr.House wrote...

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. <_<

No matter what is done in an rpg, major choice are going to be turned into a numeric value. Hech that what not even the problem with the system, it just that what you earned and gain was never shown by the end of the game.

Complaining that the ems system had no impact to the end of the game is like saying the armies you got in the DAO had no impact to the end of the game.

There is an easy way to solve this problem, make the last mission like ME2 mission where we can see and manipulate the use of these values.

[Dubozz]

I think if properly implemented, "EMS system" can be great addition to the game.
You have a treaty with the templars? You'll get antimagic melee forces.
Your smith wants mithril ore? Take the mine and you'll get mithril swords and armor.
Your mages want some old magic grimoire? It's time to go to the Ancient Tomb of Eternal Evil! Now mages may cast Meteor shower and Storm of the century! Hurray!
Show these changes in your keep, show these changes when your army will seige other castles, let your party members talk about this, let them be your advisers. You are the boss and this is your organization.

As i said before, execution is the key.

Modifié par Dubozz, 10 août 2013 - 05:50 .

[leaguer of one]

Dubozz wrote...

I think if properly implemented, "EMS system" can be great addition to the game.
You have a treaty with the templars? You'll get antimagic melee forces.
Your smith wants mithril ore? Take the mine and you'll get mithril swords and armor.
Your mages want some old magic grimoire? It's time to go to the Ancient Tomb of Eternal Evil! Now mages may cast Meteor shower and Storm of the century! Hurray!
Show these changes in your keep, show these changes when your army will seige other castles, let your party members talk about this, let them be your advisers. You are the boss and this is your organization.

As i said before, execution is the key.

Exactly, This is what was done with DA:A ending. The products you gained, supplies you got and money you put in your fort effect the ending you got.
The same thing was done with the normady sr2 upgrades.
These are all thing that effected the ending results based on value. Just like the ems system.

The problem with ME3 was not ems, it was just the the ending was done really badly.
If bw made a proper ending were we got to see and use the ems valuse in battle, there would be no issues with it.

[JamieCOTC]

fchopin wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

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. <_<

The main thing for me was the multiplayer problem.
 
I am not even sure there is enough EMS in the game to get the best ending if you play a new ME3 game without an import. I don't really care any more but most games are based on numbers even if we can not see them.

When originally shipped it was impossible to get a high EMS destroy ending w/out MP in ME3 which lead to a crucial scene being shown. Import or not, it was just impossible. This was fixed w/ the EC. I would agree that MP itself is not at fault, but the EMS's dependency on MP was indeed a significant problem. There is an old saying, "show don't tell." In fact I think it's DA:I's marketing mantra. In lieu of  MP, the game did nothing but tell. I recall Shepard telling one guy, "I rescued a group of soldiers form X planet." But all you did was scan said planet. While that doesn't force one to play MP, it does come off as pushing MP quite a bit. Would you rather play MP or scan planets? Would you rather play MP of explore a cave to literally pick up meaningless junk/loot/power points/whatever?

Getting back on topic, as others have said EMS itself could be an interesting system, but currently, it's tainted and it's going to be a huge hurdle to overcome. Had BW released a GaW DLC for ME3 w/ 5 minutes of cutscenes of Rachni, Justicars, Geth, etc, etc fighting the Reapers it would have been good enough.  I don't think that's going to cut it w/ DA:I. You're going to have to go above and beyond to prove this system can work. If you're going to use it, you're going to have to make us want it in every game and that's going to be a very hard sell. I hope you can do it.

Modifié par JamieCOTC, 10 août 2013 - 06:18 .

[fchopin]

JamieCOTC wrote...

When originally shipped it was impossible to get a high EMS destroy ending w/out MP in ME3 which lead to a crucial scene being shown. Import or not, it was just impossible. This was fixed w/ the EC.

This was not fixed with EC as i played the game without an import and without MP and could not get the best ending.
 
It may be fixed now but i don't know or care anymore.

[JamieCOTC]

fchopin wrote...

JamieCOTC wrote...

When originally shipped it was impossible to get a high EMS destroy ending w/out MP in ME3 which lead to a crucial scene being shown. Import or not, it was just impossible. This was fixed w/ the EC.

This was not fixed with EC as i played the game without an import and without MP and could not get the best ending.
 
It may be fixed now but i don't know or care anymore.

I stand corrected. Without an import it may be that the player was never intended to get a high EMS destroy. I don't know. With an import, it was fixed. However, it is still unclear if this issue was a mistake or was intentional to force MP.

[cjones91]

JamieCOTC wrote...

fchopin wrote...

JamieCOTC wrote...

When originally shipped it was impossible to get a high EMS destroy ending w/out MP in ME3 which lead to a crucial scene being shown. Import or not, it was just impossible. This was fixed w/ the EC.

This was not fixed with EC as i played the game without an import and without MP and could not get the best ending.
 
It may be fixed now but i don't know or care anymore.

I stand corrected. Without an import it may be that the player was never intended to get a high EMS destroy. I don't know. With an import, it was fixed. However, it is still unclear if this issue was a mistake or was intentional to force MP.

I believe Bioware wanted people to play the MP so they raised the ammount of war assets needed to get high EMS Destroy to a number that's not possible to get in single player.

[BangBoom]

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 a rather elegant fix if used correctly.  Just so long as we don't have any abstract numbers. If it's something like I have 25 mages and 175 soldiers, with them converting to different "value" points depending on the check (i.e recruiting another circle vs stormin' da castle vs recruiting templars), then it would appeal to me (provided tallies are hidden from me; leave that to the metagamer). But of course if you force me out of my story for ANY reason then it's rendered hollow.

Oh, and naturally I want to actually see these guys.

Modifié par BangBoom, 10 août 2013 - 06:42 .

[Luckywallace]

The EMS totally and utterly sucked and I hated it - basically because it created a 'grind your way to the best ending' mechanic. If you did a bunch of extra side-quests then you could get a better ending is the theory - luckily (???) it didn't matter since ME3 had pretty much the worst ending in all known fiction anyway. However, it could have massively screwed with things, meaning on a play through of a game I would have to devote an extra 10 hours (for instance) to grinding through dull, repetitive side quests or (shudder) play online horde mode to get a good ending.

You could vaguely argue that there is a similar principal at play in ME2 with the need to do loyalty missions but the thing is each loyalty mission is actually a hand-crafted well designed level - so much of ME3 was generic fetch quests or "sit in a small map for 15 minutes and defend against hordes of enemies".

DA:O did the idea perfectly - the goal was to gather an army but getting the army was part of the main quest and had good, well designed levels/encounters. What is more you always succeeded in getting your army, your choices just influenced the "make up" of the army and the consequences of what happened through your actions.

Grinding through side-quests to get to a better ending just sucks and would have really hurt ME3 for me if not for the fact there were far worse problems with the game already.

[mopotter]

fchopin wrote...

JamieCOTC wrote...

When originally shipped it was impossible to get a high EMS destroy ending w/out MP in ME3 which lead to a crucial scene being shown. Import or not, it was just impossible. This was fixed w/ the EC.

This was not fixed with EC as i played the game without an import and without MP and could not get the best ending.
 
It may be fixed now but i don't know or care anymore.

I got the best ending, but a charred body taking a gasping breath wasn't my idea of a good ending.  edit.  Wait- I haven't finished the non carry over game so haven't got to the end of the non carry over game.  Either way, the end was not "good".

Modifié par mopotter, 10 août 2013 - 09:16 .

[devSin]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Even with an import, it's impossible to "unlock" all ending variations in the pre-Extended Cut version of the game without playing multiplayer. There literally aren't enough War Assets to meet the required amount for the highest-EMS ending, even assuming the player had the maximum available in one imported playthrough. Granted this isn't something you'd discover outside metagaming, but the developers did insist, multiple times, that it wasn't the case. Months before release, even.

Months after release, as well. Despite being shown repeatedly that it was impossible. Despite Bjorn confirming barely two weeks in that it was impossible (does nobody inside BioWare talk to each other, you have to wonder). And yet they obfuscated and obstructed, continuing to insist it was possible and labeling us misinformed, and then they finally changed it without once acknowledging that there was ever anything wrong (and what a shock, with all the DLC, it's now possible to reach the original limit—my opinion remains that this was always their intent, and their cowardice now is too great to simply take responsibility for it).

But I still think the main issue with the system is that it encourages discarding narrative consequence. If you need to do something to get 200 "power" points, then the system needs to be explained as to why it doesn't actually matter what you specifically do, or everything you do still needs to be represented approrpriately in the narrative. ME3 did neither of these things, instead tossing everything into the EMS grab bag and then simply proclaiming This Stuff Matters™ and refusing to ever elaborate further.

Modifié par devSin, 10 août 2013 - 09:47 .

[Zekka]

Ae you talking about Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan?

[ForceXev]

I do not want EMS either. I probably will try out multiplayer if Inquisition has it, but I still don't want it affecting single-player. Quite simply, it is annoying. If I am playing the single-player story, I am invested in that experience. I don't want to get close to the end of the single-player game and then realize that I have to stop what I'm doing to spend a few hours in multiplayer. Don't do it, Bioware.

[ptrst]

I could not agree more with the OP. Having some of the "most important" choices in the entire ME series get turned into a few lines of dialogue and 10 points of difference was seriously absurd.

Everyone complains about the ending(and rightfully so) But the EMS system was AT LEAST as much of a deal breaker for me.

[RepHope]

I agree completely. I hated having to play ME3s stupid Horde Mode to get a "better" ending. I hope we won't see a repeat.

[Urazz]

I hated the EMS system of ME3 at the games launch and hope we don't see anything like it in DA:I.

[Versus Omnibus]

The biggest complaint I had with the EMS of ME3 was that we never got to see them in action. I'm hoping the DA team improves on this problem if that is indeed the direction they plain on going,

[PSUHammer]

I rather like the EMS idea. It was a cool system that had you gathering war resources. My main gripe is that they did not spend enough time showing those assets in action during the climax on earth.

It would have been awesome to have the Geth PRIME unit drop in and save your ass in a scene, or have Jack's biotics blow something up for you, etc. Because they didn't show even brief clips of some of these in action, the ending really did not seem like it had much variance, relegating EMS to a simple numbers game.

If Dragon Age adopted a similar system but actually SHOWS the assets in action, in game, then that would be the dream scenario.

Modifié par PSUHammer, 11 août 2013 - 02:19 .

[LinksOcarina]

Versus Omnibus wrote...

The biggest complaint I had with the EMS of ME3 was that we never got to see them in action. I'm hoping the DA team improves on this problem if that is indeed the direction they plain on going,

EMS is a mechanical stat at best. There is no reason to see them in action that way. Logistically it would be difficult to convey it with so many instances involved.

So long as everyone understands that this is a mechanic and not a cinematic barometer that needs to be measured, there should be no problem with EMS as a feature. That is simply number crunching on the outside. 

[bondari reloads.]

I didn't read the whole thread? But I get the feeling threads like this are what keeps mods from shutting down the whole toxic atmosphere thing, so kudos to the OP
I disliked the EMS for being so clinical, as you had that red bar illustrating how quests translated into numbers that one could tweak at his leisure (on PC).
I don't think this being a proper analogy, but I really liked how the outcome of the Landsmeet hinged on individuals that showed up in the event itself; granted it was on a much smaller scale than ME3.
I really like the constructivist approach suggested by the article (Power resides where people believe it resides and all that), so I guess we'll get a reputation bar which grows the more kittens are rescued from trees, but I hope it won't be as blatantly obvious as in ME3.