184 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

Navasha wrote...

I would guess, as a completionist myself, that the game will proceed at the speed of plot like most every game out there. Things happen when you show up.

From a developer standpoint, its pretty bad game design to do it any other way. If you spend your development time creating 40 hours of content for a game, but your average player is only going to see 20 hours of it because you rushed them along, then people are going to complain about the SHORT 20 hour game.

A few timed missions are sometimes nice and thrown in there, but very rarely are you going to have an entire game where events just proceed without you because you took too long to get there. I never had a problem ever being "cut off" in Mass Effect either, since I always do all the tasks that are not following the main plot first.

Skyrim had more content than any one player could realistically hope to comb through under 40 hours. The first Mass effect had tons of planets to explore that were, in no way, required or found by many players who weren't completionist and visiting every system. So the inherent argument of "not every player will see everything" doesn't neccessarily always work.

Again, basing off some loose comments that Laidlaw made, the plot sounds like it will move forward based on choosing to do certain activities or quests so that the Inquisition gains some type of Reputation points. If these events don't just sit and wait until the player arrives, then it is quite possible that the game could move you forward and gate off past content. It would solve a great number of things in terms of gating, level requirements and encounter design. And the completionists will likely want to start a new game up as soon as they finish to find out what would have aged out differently if you had gone in that one cave instead of saving the village, for instance. I'd think that would be a blast. 

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 19 août 2013 - 07:32 .

[Navasha]

I am not sure how those 2 examples disprove my point. Neither Skyrim nor Mass Effect locked off any content if I decided to explore the entire world/galaxy before pursuing the main quest line. I could explore either game at will and only advance the plot lines when I was ready to do so.

The point I was making is that if you avoid following the main plot lines and complete the entire game seeing all available content. The argument is that the game would force you to abandon content or lock it out. That would only happen if you actually go ahead and jump from major plot mission to major plot mission and willingly skip the side quests.

Players will always be capable of willingly skipping content to make a game shorter. That is the players choice though and not the design of the game.

[legbamel]

Precisely. I would hate it if the game restricted what content I could see on a given playthrough. If I don't see it on my first run how would I know it was there? Given the large percentage of people that BioWare has said their statistics show don't play more than once I can't see the benefit of gating some of that content so that a significant portion of their customers not only don't but can't see it.

[Fast Jimmy]

legbamel wrote...

Precisely. I would hate it if the game restricted what content I could see on a given playthrough. If I don't see it on my first run how would I know it was there? Given the large percentage of people that BioWare has said their statistics show don't play more than once I can't see the benefit of gating some of that content so that a significant portion of their customers not only don't but can't see it.

That runs counter to many things Bioware was praised for in DA:O, though. You clouding see the content of choosing abhelen if you picked Harrowmont. You couldn't see the content of having the werewolves attack the Dalish if you chose to cure them. 

And a player would know they had missed content by the same method that they find quests in the first place - they explore, talk to people, hear information, etc. They would just know they couldn't follow up on it before the plot moved things forward.

I think this would be a really cool idea to handle, especially in terms of plot and choice. It suddenly doesn't just become "do I have the attention span/real-life time to find the blacksmith's daughter or just move the plot forward" but rather "My Reputation is about to the hit the next milestone. I can only do one, maybe two more quests. Which ones do I pass up? Which ones do I do?"

What if the game gave you different outcomes or endings not only based on choices you made in the quests you performed, but ALSO on the quests you DIDN'T have time to complete? That could be an entirely different level of choice and consequence, rather than just throwing side quests out for every obsessive-compulsive, completionist gamer (of which I proudly identify myself as).

[Plaintiff]

I'm totally ambivalent about the issue of level scaling, but if I'm liable to blunder into the path of powerful monsters early on, then I want low-tier enemies that re-spawn, so I can grind for EXP.

Also, **** no to being pushed into main plot missions before I'm ready.

"Oh, you did the Reaper IFF quest early because you wanted to spend more time with Legion? Tough ****. Your crew is about to be liquified."

**** that.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 19 août 2013 - 11:23 .

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

That runs counter to many things Bioware was praised for in DA:O, though. You clouding see the content of choosing abhelen if you picked Harrowmont. You couldn't see the content of having the werewolves attack the Dalish if you chose to cure them.

That's small potatoes stuff, though. Bioware hasn't come close to pulling a TW2 in any game they've ever done.

What if the game gave you different outcomes or endings not only based on choices you made in the quests you performed, but ALSO on the quests you DIDN'T have time to complete? That could be an entirely different level of choice and consequence, rather than just throwing side quests out for every obsessive-compulsive, completionist gamer (of which I proudly identify myself as). 

It could, but that's pretty difficult to do in-game. Especially if you're going to ambush by epilogue. 

[legbamel]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
That runs counter to many things Bioware was praised for in DA:O, though. You clouding see the content of choosing abhelen if you picked Harrowmont. You couldn't see the content of having the werewolves attack the Dalish if you chose to cure them.

But I wasn't talking about the consequences of choices in the quests you completed, I was talking about being forced to abandon entire quests for nothing more than forced, false urgency.  That's very much not what they did in DA:O.

Fast Jimmy wrote...
And a player would know they had missed content by the same method that they find quests in the first place - they explore, talk to people, hear information, etc. They would just know they couldn't follow up on it before the plot moved things forward.

And I would hate that.  That may seem like a cool idea to you but I would hate being forced to shorten my game becuase I want to see the whole thing.  I was miserable that ME3 did this as I played unspoiled and the first time through I had a number of side quests that went poof because I didn't realize the wouldn't carry through a particular plot point.

Fast Jimmy wrote...
What if the game gave you different outcomes or endings not only based on choices you made in the quests you performed, but ALSO on the quests you DIDN'T have time to complete? That could be an entirely different level of choice and consequence, rather than just throwing side quests out for every obsessive-compulsive, completionist gamer (of which I proudly identify myself as).

I presume the variety of sidequests are meant to appeal to a variety of games and we completionists just get to revel in the bounty created thereby.  I don't see the wide range of outcomes you'd have to have to make using that many variables worth missing contect as a particularly likely path for the devs.  I also hate the idea of missing a favorite quest at such a choice point just to see what the otehr has to offer.

Cake?  Yes, I'd like to eat it and keep it right here, as well. 

[Wompoo]

The absence of level scaling is good (well at least in a fair chunk of the game). I love exploring and finding myself in a fight for survival rather then conquest, where the battle is more of me trying to escape, and live to kick backside another day. The absence of level scaling has never stopped me sticking my nose where it didn't belong in the past and it wont this time around either. It just makes encounters more interesting for the adventurous... and more rewarding (if I defeat a more powerful creature) and less of the ho hum grind of my gear and level trumps all.

[Fast Jimmy]

Plaintiff wrote...

I'm totally ambivalent about the issue of level scaling, but if I'm liable to blunder into the path of powerful monsters early on, then I want low-tier enemies that re-spawn, so I can grind for EXP.

Also, **** no to being pushed into main plot missions before I'm ready.

"Oh, you did the Reaper IFF quest early because you wanted to spend more time with Legion? Tough ****. Your crew is about to be liquified."

**** that.

LOL Not a lot of subtlety there.

The Legion portion of ME2 was poorly planned, I agree. What if the time constraint, as well as some of the (bigger) options, were clearly laid out, so the player wasn't blindly stumbling into choosing one mission over another? Think how the trailer for Mass Effect depicted it, where Shephard was making the decision to not help the Feros colony's cry for help and instead went somewhere else. Such a mechanic could make for some very interesting choices.

Also, having the plot move forward outside the player's control is NOT "forced, false urgency." If anything, having the world's problems wait around while you strol around to every dungeon and cave is false, forced plot halting. 

[AlanC9]

In Exile wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

That runs counter to many things Bioware was praised for in DA:O, though. You clouding see the content of choosing abhelen if you picked Harrowmont. You couldn't see the content of having the werewolves attack the Dalish if you chose to cure them.

That's small potatoes stuff, though. Bioware hasn't come close to pulling a TW2 in any game they've ever done.
 

Sure -- but  has anyone else?