128 réponses à ce sujet

[Fernando Melo]

Today's beta invites are on their way out the door - good luck everyone.

[Fernando Melo]

All done with invites for today - more will go out tomorrow and friday

[Justin Edmond]

The most freeing thing about the keep?  Knowing that I don't have to do every tiny side quest in Origins or DA2  during my playthroughs out of paranoia that it might come up in a future game. 

 

Lucky you... Back in my day I had to get a job here to make sure I didn't miss out on something.

[Fernando Melo]

Speaking of, today's invites are heading out.

[Fernando Melo]

All the beta invites for today have now gone out - more tomorrow.

[Justin Edmond]

Is the selection random or are they going by the best written applications?

 

I know we use the multiple choice questions a lot, but I've seen Leah references peoples written sections; so I can confirm that Leah (Producer on Keep) does infact read atleast some of them

[Fernando Melo]

Today's invites are heading out - good luck everyone!

[Fernando Melo]

More Keep invites are being sent out - be sure to check those Inbox & spam folders.  Good luck.

 

Edit:  ...or, what Roxy Ferret said. 

[Fernando Melo]

All done with this wave of invites - hopefully that got to some of you.  Better luck on next one to the rest.

 

Also, just to help with some common questions/conversations, in no particular order:

 

- DA Keep will launch before DAI.  Sometimes we will figuratively say 'month' or 'months' but at the end of the day, there is no exact date yet.  We have our target obviously which is in that timeframe, but the real date will be determined as we get closer to that target.  It will depend on many things including how our beta testing is going, and how/when in the DAI communications plan is the right time to talk about it, and ultimately how soon before DAI to open the doors to all.  Believe me, once we have a date locked we will definitely make that known.

 

- DA Keep is alive and well.  We've been letting in beta users since late Dec.  Purposefully, the numbers were very small to begin with.  That helped us ensure even bare basics like beta login and feedback mechanisms (critical for a successful beta) were all in place and working as intended.  The lower numbers also meant it was easier to collect more qualitative/verbose feedback on features, and react early enough to that.  As we get closer to launch, we can now let in more and more users with each wave.  Ultimately, as we get ready to open doors to all, we'll shift more into load testing where we will be letting in the largest waves of users.  

 

- Why do I still not have an invite?  I wish it was possible to just let everyone in, as it is awesome to see so many of you genuinely interested in participating.  But a few logistical reasons: 1) We don't select by date applied - so applying on day 1 does not guarantee you're first in.  2) Depending on what they are looking to test on any given wave, the team will select applicants that match that criteria (that could everything from level of experience with previous games, to what you wrote in your app).  3) From that group, the team then randomly picks out a rough target number of users for the wave.  Again, depends on what they want to test, and accounts for enough % of folks that may not respond in time. 4) Odds.  Even as we're adding more beta users and increasing the size of each wave, we continue to get more beta applications - so I would guesstimate that we are probably around 3-5% ratio of beta users to applicants.  This will continue to get better over time as we add more and more users, but that is a big factor in why so many have not yet received an invite - reality is that the majority have not, sadly.  Not yet anyway. 

 

- DA Keep does not use any files whatsoever.  There's no import (although we are still continuing to look at this, the priority remains with getting the rest in place and solid), and there is no file based export.  That means you don't copy any files around, or use a USB or anything like that.  You login to DAI, opt to sync from Keep and DAI grabs the data it needs, and you're done (you can actually logoff/disconnect at that point if you want, and can play rest of DAI with no further Keep logins needed until you want to start another game and import a new world in).

 

- "Lots"™ of choices.  Mark mentioned in an interview that there are over 300 so far, which is accurate, and we continue to add more at the request of the beta users so far.  Obviously (I think), not everything will be reflected in DAI.  The purpose of Keep is to capture your world as faithfully as we can for future use.  Before we launch we'll reveal more info on Keep, and as part of that I'd like to get you a better idea of what you can expect.  

 

 

(semi-legaleeze) Make a note of the time and date of this post - this info is correct as of 'right now'.  Plans do change though, and we may need to revise those statements over time, but for now that is where we are at. (/semi-legaleeze) 

[Fernando Melo]

ack, I neglected to send the announce here.  Hopefully some of you are now in the beta.  If not, we're only just starting to ramp up numbers so there will be many more invites still to go out in the coming weeks.

[Allan Schumacher]

I added the info from the other thread and changed the title here to hopefully help with some repeat questions.

[Fernando Melo]

That wraps up the invites for today, but we'll have more very soon.

[Allan Schumacher]

Servers aren't cheap and then you have to justify why they aren't being used anymore. Most companies will know there is going to be a huge "first day rush" and will allocate resources to minimize it, but they can't make major additions to a network for a single day of rush that even having more servers might not help if the problem is bandwidth or other possible unforeseen consequences.

 

Actually we do have infrastructure in place that lets us hook up additional hardware quickly if demand necessitates it, and then pop it out when it's no longer necessary.

 

(Google is amazing for it.  They have mounting arrays where you can just plug in a new hard drive and it's like "okay now a part of the system thank you")

 

It's true that it's a risk and it might not go smoothly.  But by the same token, it's a risk that our import system would have issues if it was built into the game directly as well.  It's possible to "what if" all sorts of situations.

[Fernando Melo]

More beta invites going out - good luck

[Fernando Melo]

All done for today.  We'll have more beta invites again soon.

[Justin Edmond]

Thats unlikely.

 

It doesnt matter how many choices they code into the keep. It matters how many they code into the game itself. The keep likely had every choice nailed down before the development even started.

 

Nope.

 

I imagine it will never stop changing; that's a feature we've supported from the beginning.

 

It's an incredibly powerful tool, one I am so excited to release outside of beta... but for the time being you just get to read me get excited and vague non-answers

I actually just wrote up a bunch about why its so useful, but I'm going to error on the side of caution and save my excited ramblings for once were live and I don't have to leave out so much cool stuff.

 

Full disclosure: I'm a massive web nerd and a huge video gamer; so this all might just be moderately nifty to a normal human being, but I guess we will all find out eventually

[Joe Hegarty]

One thing that has never been clear to me, can I create a single world state for multiple playthroughs, or will I need to go through the process of selecting the exact same choices each playthrough that I plan on using a pqrticular world state?

 

You can create one world state and import it to multiple playthroughs.

[Allan Schumacher]

Yeah, only five is a bit sad. I mean there's 6 origins in DA:O, right? So it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that several fans have at least 6 world states going forward.

Also means that for a future DA4, we won't be able to keep a world-state for every unique DAI romance.

 

 

You're always able to tweak existing world states, however.  I can't speak for why this particular restriction exists (I don't know), but in terms of being able to experience the different content you'll never be blocked off.

 

Might be good to ask the Keep if that number could grow over time?

[Fernando Melo]

5 is the arbitrary number for now - we have to start with something.  From that we can estimate storage size vs how many people we expect to use Keep etc. So final number could still change.  Also, bear in mind that once you've imported the world state into DAI you could technically free up that slot again on Keep.  

 

Lastly, to customize a world state you always need to go into the Keep and do that there (after which you set it to be ready for import into DAI) - however, if you just want to import a world state that you previously set to be ready for import, then you just stay in-game and import on new game start, without having to go back to Keep.

 

Hope that helps,

F.

[Justin Edmond]

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to Keep or I never would've joined the sad panda club ;D At least in Origins there is quite alot of combinations you can do with choices so my Wardens (not all mind you) are pretty different. Oh well, I just hold on to my spread sheet:)

 

What if I told you 6 months ago there was approx 2 billion valid solutions for the DAO section involving the landsmeet, romance, and ending?
that was a long time ago...

[Allan Schumacher]

Ok, but can all five be set for import so you can choose the one you want in game, or do you have to set one of the five for import then go back to the keep to set a different one if you want to choose a different one?

 

The game asks the Keep for it's "current" state, so to speak, so no.

 

My understanding is that much of the logic as possible is being intentionally handled by the Keep because it mitigates the chances that import issues are a result of the game (as opposed to the Keep).

[Allan Schumacher]

This is a litle worrying since it implies that despite being a single players story-based game, it's nonetheless "online only" with all the possible snags that that entails...

 

The data is coming from the Keep regardless, so the "online only" concerns aren't really affected by this.  If this is a concern, it's already here.

[Allan Schumacher]

Re-reading that I might have misinterpreted, so if you're feeling generous, allow me to clarify:
Is DAI more or less constantly rechecking the current world state against data stored (presmably online) within the Keep, or does it download the data when you start a game and then stick to it?

Your previous statement made it sound like the former, but like I said, maybe I misunderstood. If it's the latter case, then my concern is retracted.

When you create a new game you can choose to import which looks at the Keep and retrieves the game state. Once you do this you never need to be online again.

To pick a different state simply go onto the Keep and set a different one and when you pick New Game it will use that one if you import. Only time you need to be online is at new game.

[Allan Schumacher]

As far as the logic is concerned what does that have to do with the import process? The game will still have two choices available when you start a new game anyway. The default and the Keep choice. Why would having more choices from the Keep make a difference?

What if we allow more choices on the Keep and that change creates a bug in the GUI for all games?

[Allan Schumacher]

Then why have a default one? It can still cause the same thing.

No. It means that the game will always ask the same thing. The game just says to the Keep "give me the thing." It doesnt really care what it is. The Keep site is what determines what "the thing" is. So we could suddenly allow a billion states and we won't have to make sure "does the game properly support this." It only ever asks for the thing.