128 réponses à ce sujet

[Brian Mills]

Yes, everyone in the Keep is under NDA about what they are seeing.

[Allan Schumacher]

All the plot flags ARE DLC actual content, you know. They belong to DLC. One can't have Warden king\queen without playing DAO. One can't side with Architect without playing DAA. One can't help Liara T'Soni to become a Shadow Broker without LOtSB or meet Kasumi with no SM. Each flag is a part of it's respective DLC.  
 
Lets put it simple. It's not about my time. It's about my money. People get for free part of content that costed me my BW points. The content, that currently can ONLY be accessed by paying and playing ( this, or hacking).  Why should I be so happy about it?  
 
As I said - I understand that in time many DLCs become cheaper or even free. Games become cheaper too. That's not the case.

If you feel this way, then I suggest you try an experiment with DAI and not buy the DLC, and simply set the DLC plot flags for future games.

I admit that I'd be curious if you would find an equivalent level of satisfaction (or perhaps even increased satisfaction, as you'd also save some money).

[Allan Schumacher]

I wonder how big the "choice checklist" is. I haven't seen the Keep or know exactly how it works, but I can't shake the feeling that a lot of choices from previous games will not make it in the Keep.

Some stuff was surprising when I gave it a peek a few weeks ago. Some stuff I wasn't expecting, though some stuff I was expecting was missing. Not sure what it's like now.

One advantage of the keep is that we can actually add missed stuff. While it won't be useable in a current game (since it wouldn't know to check for a particular plot flag), it does mean that said plot point could be used in a future game.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm really conflicted about this...
I have over 20 complete playthroughs of DA:O and 15 of DA2....On the one hand I played those through specifically to transfer into Inquisition so the keep makes me feel like I wasted time.
 
On the other hand, I love the games so no time playing them is wasted I suppose...
 
On the third hand (yes I have three.....>.>) One of the things I love so much about bioware franchises is that you can see TINY teeny ITSY BITSY choices that you made that you might even have forgotten, and how they turn out in the end. Little tiny things, cameos, random bystander conversations, codex entries, quests...whatever...they come to fruition in ways that really feel like a reward for playing the entire series.
 
How can the keep manage to save those little seemingly unimportant choices so as to preserve the wonderful charm that bioware always has in their games for longtime fans?

It's important to note that we can only make references to past games for plot flags that we consider while making the game. Whether or not the information is present in an existing save game file, or something stored on the Keep, isn't actually that big of a deal.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm not saying that it *will* happen (as I am unable to predict the future), but it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more possible than if we were still relying on save game files to do the import.

 

It's a bit like the telephone game, where information has a greater likelihood of getting lost/changed every time it gets imported.  So from DAO to DA2 is one caller, then DA2 calls up DAI to tell it.  There were already awkward challenges with DA2's import because some things were just confusing... a character flag may be "is_alive" in DA2, but in DAO the flag was actually "is_killed."  Which can be a pretty innocuous mistake to make when writing dozens of plots and conversation lines.

 

Now, we *could* have changed the DA2 flag to "is_killed" but now we're spending a lot of time making sure that all instances of that flag are properly updated, and that all the times we were checking if that flag is true, we are now checking if that flag is false, and this is where bugs become more likely.

[Allan Schumacher]

That was part of my job on DA2!

[Allan Schumacher]

I remember creating dwarven elf mages that did the dark ritual and the ultimate sacrifice.

[Fernando Melo]

We've just sent another round of invites to DA Keep beta applicants.  Be sure to check spam filters etc and hope to see you there.

 

If you didn't get in this time, no worries - lots more invites still to come before we launch.

[Fernando Melo]

ninja'd on my own news 

[Fernando Melo]

 

Gimme a sec, I'll un-ninja my post.

 

Ha, no worries - just goes to show how keen everyone is, which is awesome and I can definitely say the team is truly appreciative of the response so far.  

 

I know that with more than 32,000 people signed up, the chances of any individual getting in a this stage are small, and yet my empty inbox still makes me sad . Ah, well, eventually they'll need us all to pound on the servers and test the load ...

 

This, basically.  It's still fairly early days on our road to launch DA Keep.  To get the most out of these initial waves of user feedback (incl testing out even basics like our feedback system works as intended  ) we need to purposefully keep the number of users relatively low so we can resolve issues swiftly.  So yes, statistically the odds are fairly steep at the moment.

 

However, as we move forward, we will add more and more people on the DA Keep on a more frequent basis.  And ultimately completely opening the doors for all ahead of DAI so everyone will have more than enough time to play with DA Keep, setup their world history(ies) to their specification, and have everything ready for when DAI launches.  

 

So statistically, the odds will definitely improve over time and that will also accelerate. But the best part (I think), is even if someone didn't make it into the beta, they will still be 'getting in' before DAI anyway. 

 

Hope that helps.

F.

[Fernando Melo]

I have a question/problem/suggestion with the Keep: I have two Origin accounts, and the Keep always defaults to the one I'm logged into. But if I log out on the Origin site, sign in with my other account, and then go back to the Keep, it will still default to the first account. The only way I can solve this is by restarting my PC and hope to God that Origin remembered that I signed in with my second account. 

 

I'm not in the Beta, but I do have to ask whether there will be an option to manually log in to the Keep, instead of it automatically logging me in with the Origin account that I'm logged in with? 

 

You can log in with any Origin account.  If the current beta sign-up is auto logging you in that may actually be on your browser - try clearing the cache (or remove any Keep specific cookies) and it should allow you to login with another account. 

 

 

 

 

<snip>

The reason they went with this idea is because ALL they would have to maintain is a single website. They don't have to worry about any client-side or console issues inherent with creating an in-game version of the Keep. This is what allows them to have the Keep be available for five platforms for DAI, and also all future games.

<snip>

 

Yep, basically this.

 

A big reason this feature of the Keep was created, was to help remove the import logic from the client (game sku), as it traditionally is.  

 

As soon as you have logic on the client (either a file import mechanism, and/or allowing the selection of past choices in the game client) you are back to square one when it comes to your ability to update, fix errors, or provide for any future compatibility/proofing to deal with things you can't anticipate (like engine changes or new platforms).

 

It's not only a tech challenge to manage scope of the logic system (for our games), but you also need to factor many versions of the 'source of truth' in the wild, the logistical challenge of all the builds needed (you need to fix, build and test against every version of every client and account for how this may affect both games in progress vs new game starts), and you are also at the whim of any number of platform holders who can each have their own rules around what you can and cannot do on your updates, for what cost (and which can change their rules over time), and how frequently you can roll out fixes. 

 

While it is not impossible, the end result is always the same.  You will inevitably hit a wall of either complexity, cost, and/or effort very very quickly - preventing you from fixing issues for all clients at some point (and certainly impossible for an on-going basis).  Not to mention that at some point the game team itself will end their official support for a game and be fully moved on to the next title.

 

Moving this system to an 'open and common platform' like the web/internet which all other platforms already talk to, is the ideal choice.  We're aware that this is less than ideal for anyone wanting to be completely offline, but for a franchise like DA where your impact to the world through your actions is a part of the experience, we think the benefits outweigh the negatives.

 

Having said that, I will reiterate that we would still like look at other options - but the main focus has to be in getting the current system working as intended.  Hence it is hard to comment on some of the other asks atm, I genuinely couldn't tell you if we can do some of those or not at this time.

 

Hope that helps.

F.

[Fernando Melo]

Do we know yet what they are building the Keep with yet? B/c if it is flash then using it on your console and a number of mobile devices is going to be a problem since flash stopped being supported by everything but desktop browsers.  If they built it with html 5 or something else then no problem but flash will limit where people can use it even more.

 

HTML5.  The goal is that you can use it with any relatively modern browser, regardless of what device or platform you are on.  

[Allan Schumacher]

To me, it seems like, the Keep wasn't done as a service for the customer

 

Well, it's just my word so you're free to not believe it... but even as an employee I *love* the keep since we're only testing from one source.  I spent a lot of time testing DA2's import process from a systemic point of view.  I give people full permission to tell me how perfectly that went.

 

Given that we also had to come up with a solution that dealt with the console transition, because we didn't want people to feel forced to stick with a platform they didn't want to play on, I hope at least some consideration that we felt this would be a solution that would be preferred among a lot of people, as opposed to something ostensibly done to protect ourselves via some form of DRM.  Note that it's only really an effective form of DRM depending on how many people feel that the import process is mandatory.  I don't even know how many people imported their game for DA2 (though telemetry may say)... nor do I know how many people would have been just fine if they couldn't (this is hard to say.  If there was no import feature at all but the game was pretty uniformly well received and highly regarded, would this be your deal breaker?  How widespread would this feeling be?).  If most people are actually okay playing the game under some default state, then this is a pretty poor form of DRM.

 

 

As someone that provided feedback on the Keep when it was still in the conceptual stages, what I liked about it was:

• Instant save game transferability. Solves import process to next gen while also allowing people to move to a different, existing platform (I consider this a pretty awesome feature for gamers, personally)
• Data collected in a single place allows for easier maintenance
• Easier to push forward decisions going back several titles
• Reduced demands on QA time for creating and validating import data (as we can see, custom creating data ad-hoc for DA2 wasn't without its issues)
• Consistent data export (for some reason variable names were modified at the end of Witch Hunt, so we have to check multiple areas - something we didn't even realize we needed to do at first - for decisions the player made in the base game of DAO.  Small things like "Did you do the Dark Ritual.")

 

The biggest negative, of course, was connectivity.  Could people connect?  How many people would be overlooked?  Some undoubtedly will.  Is that acceptable?

 

 

Ideally, the Keep should be a separate application that comes with the game, but it's opened within the game itself.

 

Sure, ideally.  But I think you understate the amount of time and effort it'd take to do this.  Plus it would come with the added negatives of losing some of the benefits of the online process (unless you were suggesting keeping the online part as well... in which case I think you're really underestimating the dev time).  Your proposed solution may also not even be allowed by First Party, depending on whether or not they allow us to install and execute separate applications from an already running application.  There's also patch restrictions and other things that can complicate things that most customers don't really know about because it doesn't really affect them (so they don't need to know about it).

 

Your assumption that it wouldn't take extra development time, however, is incorrect.  If it didn't cost us anything, we'd do it because we love solving problems for free.

[Allan Schumacher]

Go to your profile, hover over your avatar, and you should see "change" to let you change your picture.  Mine is a custom one (most are)

[Allan Schumacher]

I think it would most likely have to be something like what Ubisoft does with Uplay which is I believe a browser based application call from within the program (the game opens up a game specific Uplay with the console's web browser). That way you could change the code for the Uplay application server side and not even need to worry about the horrors of console patching.  Never tried Uplay offline though, always assumed it was an online only thing so that still wouldn't help the people who want / need that.

 

Although what you said made me think, what happens if for example I create my World State, import it into the game, start playing and then Bioware discovers a bug in the logic of one of the choices (which i just happened to choose) and needs to patch it.  How would that play out for my game? I would assume I still had the bugged world state.  Still run into the problem with the faulty logic on the import. I'm guessing you want to make sure that doesn't happen but nothing is ever 100%.

 

If we have issues with the logic of the game, it will cause issues.  This will happen regardless, and would need a patch to fix.

The issues we have is the haphazard way that the logic was stored with DAO (where some events, for some reason, led to some people feeling we should blank out some flags in DAO and create new "final" flags for people that completed witch hunt).  We also learned that creating custom saved games through creative editing didn't accurately simulate what you were given from the games themselves.  So while we could create our own, test with them, and we could confirm "yup it's working fine!"  Except... we made an assumption that they'd be equivalent when they weren't.  Whoops....

 

So now the alternative becomes "lets create valid playthroughs for DAO, *and* DA2, for world state import testing."  That's a lot of time and effort....  Did patches change anything?  Can we just use old save games we created?  Does it test every permutation appropriately?  Do the flags import properly into DA2, since we'll have to import them again into DAI.  Did we even think to import a flag from DAO into DA2 that we now care about for DAI?

 

 

Fair enough regarding Uplay.

[Allan Schumacher]

@ Allan - Thanks for this; hope this pic looks better than the last one. However, will the Keep have custom pics of out avatars to be made into forum pics? Thanks!

 

I do not know the answer to that, unfortunately.

[Fernando Melo]

Right, It's not exactly what I meant. Sites like this one have me automatically logged in when I visit them, that's obvious. I just meant that there is a button that says: "log in with your Origin account" and when I click on it, there's no option to manually log in with whatever account I wish. It goes straight to logging me in with the account that I'm logged in at the Origin site. I'm using Chrome, which is a fairly popular browser.

 

But thanks for the reply, cookie-cleaning should solve the issue. And since the site isn't open yet, it doesn't really matter, I just thought that when it releases, you could add the option to manually sign in.

 

Let me know if that worked.  The full site will have a logout function which clear this and allow you to login with another account.  Currently you just can't get to that as it accessible within the site itself, and it is not 'live' publicly yet

 

I think it's the latter one.

 

You make choices on the Keep, the choices are "saved" to EA's servers, and then you can download them to your console when you're starting a new game.

 

(I don't think it's an automatic thing, either - you'd probably need to select between Keep world-states every time you made a new game, I don't think they've talked about storing multiple world-states offline on the console,)

 

Yep, exactly

 

I feel like there is only so much QA that can be done with the Keep from the web end only... there's still the chance things might not synch up correctly in the game, right?
But I guess the nice thing about the Keep is it will be easier to apply fixes/changes to a website than to patch the game files

 

Yes exactly.  Patching the game clients was by far the biggest hurdle to fixing plot flag issues in previous games  It could take months between addressing a single issue and having that live for download. With Keep being on a server, we can fix a plot flag rule/issue and it is immediately available for everyone on any platform.

 

Uplay on consoles is a completely different beast actually. It isn't an intrusive application like on PCs, it is essentially just a webpage (just like keep is going to be). I was suggesting that the only way that the keep could be easily transferred to consoles was to have it in similar form to what Ubisoft does which, if you read my post, is opening a webpage from within the game using the console's browser. I never suggested creating a uplay like application, you would be doing the exact same thing as you would on your PC as it stands now except on a console.

This is a screen I took off child of light's uplay on my ps4. http://t.co/lWdS7TZuzW All it is is a webpage, even uses the same control scheme as my ps4s browser.

 

I'd have to look closer at how Uplay works so I can't comment on whether it is similar or not - but Keep being a web page you can absolutely log into it from the native console browser (or any other browser, like your phone, tablet or pc), setup a world state, jump back to DAI, start a new game & choose to import from Keep, and the result is there.

 

Hope that helps.

[Justin Edmond]

Nope.  There's usually an anouncement on Twitter and people post it to this thread when a wave goes out.  I don't expect another one until after E3, personally.

 

Bingo on this; Fernando will announce any invite waves on Twitter generally.

[Fernando Melo]

Another round of beta invites has been sent off - good luck to everyone

[Fernando Melo]

All done for today, but we'll send more invites out every day this week till friday.  Good luck.

[Fernando Melo]

Is there an email address to add to the spam filter white list?

 

These will normally go out from onlinecommunity -at- bioware -dot- com and call out something related to Dragon Age Keep in the subject.

[Fernando Melo]

Is there a way to know or find out if you have been invited but accidentally deleted your invite? Im not saying I did, but just in case something happens to me or to somebody else.

 

The easiest way is to just try to login again to the Keep site.  If you get an email from us it means your account is flagged so the site will allow you past the beta sign-up or beta confirmation (you've already signed up) pages.

 

does more and more beta invite will be sent out ? about how much invite are you sending everyday this week? if you can answer

 

We'll keep adding more people over time.  I don't believe it is an exact number but we should see a few hundred people more in the beta after this week.

[Fernando Melo]

Today's invites have now gone out - good luck to everyone.  More invites tomorrow, Thu and Fri (and then soon after again at some point)

[Fernando Melo]

Did the beta app process reset?  I've been signed up since it was first announced but going to the site it's acting as though I were signing up for the first time. o.O  After waiting all this time, this is more than a little aggravating if it's no mistake.

 

Will double check, but it is possible - had something like this happen before.  In that case it simply updates your submission that was in our database - the original was always there though.  And since we don't pick by date entered this shouldn't affect anyone's chances of getting into the Keep.  Sorry for the alarm

[Justin Edmond]

With all the varibles in the world stages from DA:O through DA2 and DLCs, you'd think they'd need alot of people testing the different combinations.  I have to imagine some truely obscure combinations would give it problems. Like the variables required to make Alistair replace Stroud in DA2.  

 

Well you are bang on that there are a lot of variable
We're getting a LOT of feedback, and even with the smaller pool of testers we're already flooded with ideas, requests, and bugs. 

 

Also I wouldn't worry too much about Alistair's story, testers for some reason seem to give him and his choices a LOT of emphasis and attention