128 réponses à ce sujet

[Wozearly]

Maria Caliban wrote...

EA is doing better financially than it has in years.

Only if you ignore everything that happened before 2008.

Yes, EA's perceived value got slammed unreasonably and unfairly hard when the recession hit...but unlike a chunk of other major companies, it stayed locked in the doldrums for four years and has only really started recovering stock price during 2013...and bear in mind that former EA CEO Riccitiello was cast into the wilderness on the back of poor financial performance barely 6 months ago (whether that was a fair decision or not is for the consciences of the EA board).

However, I'm very much with you that laying the blame entirely on (insert hated feature or features here) is ludicrous.

[devSin]

AlanC9 wrote...

But then the question is why MP is assumed to be a problem. I don't see a link between MP and worse gameplay, or even any coherent way MP-influenced gameplay would be different except that you want better class balance or people won't play some classes.

This is veering toward discussion I don't want to be involved in, but I would assume because it is being designed (at least partially) for something other than what it's being used for.

Is it bad that ME3 had cookie-cutter faction composition? Not necessarily (especially since the unit design was far stronger than ME2), but if we assume that decision was made partly to facilitate multiplayer horde mode, the possibility of ever getting something that could have potentially worked better in the single-player campaign was likely diminished.

So my guess without following the arguments too closely is that people want the sense that what is being included in the game is there because it best achieves its intended purpose—and if you're playing single-player, you don't necessarily want that purpose to include "balanced horde-mode opponent faction".

AlanC9 wrote...

This is even less knowable than the resource question. Maybe the same, maybe different, maybe worse, maybe better. From what I can see DA:O could have used some MP thought, since the class balance was outright lousy.

It would have been interesting to see how multiplayer turned out, although I don't think it would have affected balance all that much unless there was PvP (which was never announced or hinted at that I can recall).

Modifié par devSin, 06 septembre 2013 - 11:51 .

[Dean_the_Young]

devSin wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I have also stated it in the past on these forums.

But is it really true? Would we have ended up with no N7 missions, or would the people doing multiplayer have spent their time making something other than horde-mode arenas that could be populated with the barest of story for reuse in the single-player campaign?

Being a different studio, they likely would have been doing what other studios do when a Bioware game is in production by a studio: work on a different product.

So, yes, the people doing multiplayer would have spent their time making something than horde-mode arenas that could be populated with the barest of story for reuse in the single-player campaign.  What they would have been making is likely to have been even less related to the Single Player.

Not to mention the probable technical mandates that came from incorporating multiplayer into the engine.

Since the MP engine is the SP engine, and most of the changes between ME2 and ME3 would have happened regardless of MP, where's the MP liability?

Or that unfortunate war assets system.

How is this a result of MP? MP only shows for one war asset- the rest of it is a form of lore expansion quasi-codex, a way to incorporate past choices, and serves the SP campaign's themes of gathering resources and allies for the finale. Most of the functions it serve support the SP, not the MP.

Or the multitude of horribly balanced weapons. Or the cookie-cutter enemy faction composition. Etc.

As opposed to... which other ME game?

As far as faction diversity goes, ME3 has more role variety and and factional differences than ME1, in which outside of Geth armored units and the rare, non-faction specific Krogan, everyone and just about everything was reskinned. Including the weapons. ME2 was arguably even worse, with even fewer enemy role-types and even more imbalanced weapons in the expansion DLCs.

So, how is this the fault of MP? Do you think they wouldn't have tried to create new weapons for the SP?

Sure, it's not a 1:1 correlation, but focusing on multiplayer can take away from everything else, even if it's not precisely in mere dollars.

But where did ME3 focus on the multiplayer? The engine evolution is closer to ME2 than ME2 was to ME1. The War Assets were overwhelmingly focused on the SP by reflecting choices, consequences, and a implementing a reoccuring narrative point that more preparation would be better. Unbalanced weapons and cookie cutter enemies have been the vast majority of the SP experience in the previous games, and ME3 arguably went further in distinguishing the factions.

That said, DA was always supposed to have multiplayer, so it only matters if you try to infect single-player with it (as you did in ME3) or if single-player clearly suffers from its inclusion. (I actually think a co-op campaign the way it was originally planned for Origins would be neat, though it's not something I would ever engage in.)

And ME was always supposed to have multiplayer, in that the devs were considering it since ME1. Besides a telling bias in choice of words... so what?

[Dean_the_Young]

devSin wrote...

It means just that. The factions were all equivalently balanced (balance as in composition, not gameplay attributes). You had your mooks, your specialists/casters, and your elite (and no more).

ME2, in contrast, had weaker enemy design but had more variance (you got things like the rachni-ripoffs or varren or mechs or doofus krogan). ME3 has factions that seem tailor made for horde mode, first and foremost.

If you ignore that those ME2 mooks you mention still fall into your pattern of mooks (general grunts with a gun, but no special powers), specialists/casters (flamers/melee units and warp/missile spammers), and your elites (big, shielded/armored, generally with Revenant or heavier weapons).

Flame-throwing rachni knockoffs are a remodel of the already established flamer specialist Vorcha.
Mech dogs and Veran are just re-skinned version of the same concept of a melee rush specialist.
Missile Launching Geth and the enemy biotics are caster-types.
Mechs filled the same tier of roles. Even Geth had common grunts, specialists/casters (cloaked, shield-casters, and missiles), and elites.
And if you feel the Krogan are somehow significantly different from the other mooks or class they shadow, past trading speed of advance for health...


If you're going to categorically dismiss one game, at least try not to have a category that dismisses your favored game as well.