710 réponses à ce sujet

[badboy64]

someguy1231 wrote...

badboy64 wrote...
99% of the people are gonna play SP and say the heck your anticipated MP game reguardless if it is the even put in game at all. Many people have been giving feed back on what they want since the game was announced or did you miss that one by the sticky posted of what they wanted in the game and they listened when people including adding mutilple races when everybody was complained about having only a human as the main character. Go play your MP in ME3 if you like it so much.

*sigh*

You're really doing yourself no favors with such a nonsensical reply. Are you really so confident that "99%" of the people who buy this game will completely ignore the MP, despite ME3 standing in complete contradiction to your claims? Even if we restrict your definition of "people" to refer solely to people on the BSN, it isn't remotely true. As of now, the Multiplayer section of the ME3 forums actually has slightly more topics/replies than the Story and Campaign section. How do you explain that? People made the exact same claims about ME3's MP that you're making right here about the possibility of DAI's MP, yet look how that turned out.

And I won't even dignify your pathetic "Go play ME3 MP" retort with a response.

So you think by putting MP in DA:I will work like it did ME3 MP when it was first implimented. It was a mess and probably still is. It still has bugs in it that will never get fixed at all. Look how the ME3 main campaign assets got it when you where required to play MP until they fixed it. I could actually care less on how much the Multiplayer fourm was visited since I hardly ever visited it because I never played the MP.:innocent: If they decide to add it then it should be optional to install it when asked if you want it at all.

Modifié par badboy64, 09 novembre 2013 - 10:36 .

[Schneidend]

AmstradHero wrote...

People aren't actually seriously arguing that making a game co-op as opposed to purely single player will cost nothing in development resources are they? Let me simply, unequivocally, and permanently disabuse you of this notion. It will take extra effort to implement co-op.

Right off the bat, there is the networking and synchronisation code. Generally not a massive imposition, but the designers/devs need to work out what data needs to be sent, whether it's peered or a server/client situation. There's also the UI and code to enable the multiplayer to occur - finding friends or lobbies or so forth. They may even need to provide servers for people to connect to if they're going for an online lobby approach.

Secondly, there are the considerations of how co-op works in terms of the actually gameplay and design. Who has control of the game? What powers do players have of their own accord? i.e. Can any player initiate dialogue/open up a shop interface/pause/initiate an area transition? Can any player spend gold? Is the gold pooled or individual? How is loot shared then? What happens to the other player when one is talking or shopping? All of these things need to be decided, and the game needs to be built to accommodate them - and this won't be particularly straightforward to just tack on to the end.

Finally, before arguing at all that SP has no effect on MP, go do me a favour. Fire up a copy of NWN or NWN2 - or buy one if you don't own it, it's pretty cheap nowadays. Try to create a story driven module that will work for multiplayer. I guarantee you that it is much less straightforward than you would imagine, and as soon as players start doing something out of exactly what you expect, things will break. That's why the original campaign and expansions for NWN suffered some issues in dealing with MP, because it's not a straightforward problem.

Implementing MP has a cost, regardless of the form it takes. Anyone who argues otherwise is uninformed.

The argument is not that it would cost nothing, only that when these games are planned out, resources are alloted to different things. The argument is that DLC and multiplayer teams are set aside from the beginning with their own pool of resources. There's no "This is how much money all of DA:I gets." They anticipate how much a project will cost, and that project is funded accordingly. This is how ALL businesses work. There might be a total budget, but how that budget is divided is established long before the development cycle begins, and one project doesn't leech off of another simply by existing.

[rupok93]

AmstradHero wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...

Balanced combat means that everyone / every skill can bring something to the table. It means you don't end up with useless specialisations like DAO's shapeshifting. DA2's combat balance and variance between classes was a vast improvement over DAO's in this regard.

I can understand "everyone/every skill can bring something to the table." I do not understand (or rather, agree) however "everyone's sum must equal generally the same thing" which is what MP turns into.

An Arcane Warrior, for example, would not have survived MP balancing. And would definitely be a bad thing.

Why? Why is having one thing unequivocally more powerful than the other good? From a gaming perspective, there is no reason NOT to pick an option that is hands down superior when compared to any other. Well, yes, there's roleplaying, but I think you'll find that a majority of players would not care enough about roleplaying to deliberately make a mechanical choice that will leave them worse off.

From a developer's perspective, why would you put in content that no one is ever going to use or experience? There isn't any.  For a developer, any content that they put in should be FUN and USEFUL for the player. If there are multiple options available, then each of them should be roughly equal in terms of the overall power they provide the player, otherwise, for the majority of players, there is no choice. Given the choice of a +5 axe and a +10 axe for exactly the same cost - players are going to pick the +10 axe, meaning all the effort you put into creating the +5 axe was useless.

I'm not saying "Arcane warrior needsd to be gimped" - but imagine if shapeshifting had actually been good. Imagine you had been able to shapeshift into a dragon or something like that? Imagine that specialisation had actually offered something roughly equivalent to arcane warrior. How would that have been a bad thing?

Game balancing doesn't work that way. Each skill or option can have different uses. What you are saying is that a warrior should have the same damage output as a mage or rogue because they would then be equal in power. A healer in the party should have same combat potential as the elemental mage. Balancing is a very gray area. Its extremely hard. Too much balancing is bad because it makes things boring. You may think some class is useless but then others find it to be very useful if used in a certain way.

Also mp and sp balancing is VASTLY different. In mp you may be versing enemy teams with real players who act and react diffferent than enemy AI. In sp you want to differential what each character can do, some characters may be weaker in the combat dept but stronger in some other skill area. In mp you don't want that to happen because people will gravitate towards some other character that is better for the purpose of mp. In mp you don't have as many purposes for things as you do in sp, you may be fighting some horde or do something similar, in sp you are negotiating, trying to get certain outcomes, and doing things that are not possible in mp.

Modifié par rupok93, 09 novembre 2013 - 10:33 .

[rupok93]

Schneidend wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...

People aren't actually seriously arguing that making a game co-op as opposed to purely single player will cost nothing in development resources are they? Let me simply, unequivocally, and permanently disabuse you of this notion. It will take extra effort to implement co-op.

Right off the bat, there is the networking and synchronisation code. Generally not a massive imposition, but the designers/devs need to work out what data needs to be sent, whether it's peered or a server/client situation. There's also the UI and code to enable the multiplayer to occur - finding friends or lobbies or so forth. They may even need to provide servers for people to connect to if they're going for an online lobby approach.

Secondly, there are the considerations of how co-op works in terms of the actually gameplay and design. Who has control of the game? What powers do players have of their own accord? i.e. Can any player initiate dialogue/open up a shop interface/pause/initiate an area transition? Can any player spend gold? Is the gold pooled or individual? How is loot shared then? What happens to the other player when one is talking or shopping? All of these things need to be decided, and the game needs to be built to accommodate them - and this won't be particularly straightforward to just tack on to the end.

Finally, before arguing at all that SP has no effect on MP, go do me a favour. Fire up a copy of NWN or NWN2 - or buy one if you don't own it, it's pretty cheap nowadays. Try to create a story driven module that will work for multiplayer. I guarantee you that it is much less straightforward than you would imagine, and as soon as players start doing something out of exactly what you expect, things will break. That's why the original campaign and expansions for NWN suffered some issues in dealing with MP, because it's not a straightforward problem.

Implementing MP has a cost, regardless of the form it takes. Anyone who argues otherwise is uninformed.

The argument is not that it would cost nothing, only that when these games are planned out, resources are alloted to different things. The argument is that DLC and multiplayer teams are set aside from the beginning with their own pool of resources. There's no "This is how much money all of DA:I gets." They anticipate how much a project will cost, and that project is funded accordingly. This is how ALL businesses work. There might be a total budget, but how that budget is divided is established long before the development cycle begins, and one project doesn't leech off of another simply by existing.

This is a human workplace not a workplace with machinery. Regardless of whether things are allocated, they are still interactions between groups and they heavily will infliuence each other to make decisions to possibly dumb down things so the mp can be done or alter story elements. Also it is already certain that Bioware didn't start to plan mp yet so this is not something that was done from the initial budget. Furthermore all humans are not equal, if you start creating mp they might take people from the main team to work on it/direct it and the quality of the sp of the mp may suffer because of their lack of input. 

My point is you cannot think of something as creative as video games in terms of math and business, many devs/publishers do that and fail misrebly. Just because it looks good when everything is calculated, time allocation, budget allocation, etc doesn't mean it will produce adequate results in the real world.

[AmstradHero]

EntropicAngel wrote...
An Arcane Warrior, for example, would not have survived MP balancing. And would definitely be a bad thing.
...

I bet if you took a poll, you'd find that the overwhelming majority of players don't use an Arcane Warrior (myself included) for every single playthrough simply because it's overpowered. They use whatever they want to use.

I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile these two statements. Firstly you seem to support Arcane Warrior, the next you say you don't like it because it's overpowered.

EntropicAngel wrote...
And as for few people using content--Gaider made a statement recently commenting on how th DA games lend themselves to plenty of content that is not used by many. I don't think it's any different.

Don't disagree. Any roleplaying game that offers choices is going to have to have content that's not used by many. I completely understand that. Heck, in my own DAO mod The Shattered War (that I'm still working on), I've got content that people are probably unlikely to see. That's the nature of making a choice-based RPG.

However, when it comes to mechanics, I am an advocate of balance because is means you don't end up with useless or overpowered classes. You've mentioned that you don't use Arcane Warrior because it's overpowered. You also seem to imply that you don't use shapeshifting because it's useless. Leaving only blood mage and spirit healer - thus effectively nullifying any choice that was provided by specialisations.

Balance does not, and should never, mean making everything the same. Balance is not homogeny. Look at say, DOTA2. While there are heroes that are typically picked more at high level play because of their skills, there are multiple ways to counter those heroes. The game is balanced, even though the abilities that each hero brings to the table are vastly different. Same applies to PvP for MMOs. Some classes provide natural counters to others because of skills that work to nullify the skills of another.

Again, I'd draw you to the difference between DAO and DA2. Despite DA2's failings, I would say that its combat mechanics are unequivocally superior to DAO's because of the ability of every class to bring something roughly equivalent in terms of power balance to the table as another, while still allowing for a great deal of flexibility in terms of how they deal with enemies.

The classes and specialisations do not play the same way, but still allow players to benefit from a varied team composition (and in fact effectively DEMAND a varied party composition) rather than just allowing a trio of mages to ingloriously decimate any and all foes.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 09 novembre 2013 - 10:44 .

[Annihilator27]

I would get into the mindset that there will be MP.

[AmstradHero]

rupok93 wrote...
Game balancing doesn't work that way. Each skill or option can have different uses. What you are saying is that a warrior should have the same damage output as a mage or rogue because they would then be equal in power. A healer in the party should have same combat potential as the elemental mage. Balancing is a very gray area. Its extremely hard. Too much balancing is bad because it makes things boring. You may think some class is useless but then others find it to be very useful if used in a certain way.

Nope. Not saying that at all. See my post above. Balance is not about making everyone the same. I'm not for a second suggesting that everyone should have exactly the same damage output. I am saying that all classes should be roughly equivalent in terms of their overall power and effectiveness. An implementation of "all classes have the same DPS" is indeed a way to do this, but it's a very mediocre one.

It's a matter of working out different roles and requirements in battles and enabling those to work together to make each character useful and effective in combat. In an ideal RPG world, we might even have some characters that were weaker in combat, but offered some excellent and valuable non-combat skills, possibly enabling the player to avoid some combat (yet again, maintaining an equal experience footing with those who do fight) through those non-combat skills.

[rupok93]

AmstradHero wrote...

rupok93 wrote...
Game balancing doesn't work that way. Each skill or option can have different uses. What you are saying is that a warrior should have the same damage output as a mage or rogue because they would then be equal in power. A healer in the party should have same combat potential as the elemental mage. Balancing is a very gray area. Its extremely hard. Too much balancing is bad because it makes things boring. You may think some class is useless but then others find it to be very useful if used in a certain way.

Nope. Not saying that at all. See my post above. Balance is not about making everyone the same. I'm not for a second suggesting that everyone should have exactly the same damage output. I am saying that all classes should be roughly equivalent in terms of their overall power and effectiveness. An implementation of "all classes have the same DPS" is indeed a way to do this, but it's a very mediocre one.

It's a matter of working out different roles and requirements in battles and enabling those to work together to make each character useful and effective in combat. In an ideal RPG world, we might even have some characters that were weaker in combat, but offered some excellent and valuable non-combat skills, possibly enabling the player to avoid some combat (yet again, maintaining an equal experience footing with those who do fight) through those non-combat skills.

Ok I understand making everything useful but I still do not agree with the notion than mp and sp balancing is the same. In sp you have loot and different level enemies, with different skills, hitpoints, and AI and you have different types of loot (armor weapons). Balancing in Sp is different because you don't try to make your and your opponent on the same playing field because you aren't supposed to be on the same playing field. Some creatures are meant to be weak and others strong. In multiplayer thats not how balancing works, if you are versing others or working together then you have to be in the same playing field and useful to the team or useful to beat enemies. its a different type of balancing than sp balancing. Making skills useful will not balance everything out, there is way more variables that go into account and that seperates sp and mp balancing.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 I'll never be opposed to more enjoyable features in a game.


That said, it's very far down the list of things I'd want from this game -- not priority in the least.

[nightscrawl]

All I really care about regarding MP in the DA franchise is that is not be required to see content in the SP portion of the game. That's all.

If it's like the co-op MP in Neverwinter Nights or other such games I am perfectly fine with that. I won't use it, but don't begrudge other people having fun with such a mode.

Again, the ONLY thing I care about is that it not affect my SP game one iota. Not a single friendship point, resource node, alternate ending, nothing.

Pretty much the only thing I would be OK with is something along the lines of earning various armor/weapons based on MP achievements. I won't ever have those, but it ultimately does not affect the story of the SP game, which is my main concern.

And no, I don't need to be talked into "giving it a try." I never tried the Neverwinter Nights MP. I have no interest in it whatsoever. If I want to play a MP game I have World of Warcraft for that where I can interact with other people and do extensive MP content like raiding (which I do) or PvP (which I don't do).

[Wulfram]

AmstradHero wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...
An Arcane Warrior, for example, would not have survived MP balancing. And would definitely be a bad thing.
...

I bet if you took a poll, you'd find that the overwhelming majority of players don't use an Arcane Warrior (myself included) for every single playthrough simply because it's overpowered. They use whatever they want to use.

I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile these two statements. Firstly you seem to support Arcane Warrior, the next you say you don't like it because it's overpowered.

She's not saying that she chooses not to use it because it's overpowered.  She's saying that that it being overpowered doesn't mean that she always chooses to use it.

[Fast Jimmy]

Ha! "She."

[Wulfram]

Bah, next you'll be telling me that Schneidend isn't really a Geth and leaguer of one isn't really a salarian.

(sorry)

Modifié par Wulfram, 10 novembre 2013 - 12:08 .

[leaguer of one]

rupok93 wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...

rupok93 wrote...
Game balancing doesn't work that way. Each skill or option can have different uses. What you are saying is that a warrior should have the same damage output as a mage or rogue because they would then be equal in power. A healer in the party should have same combat potential as the elemental mage. Balancing is a very gray area. Its extremely hard. Too much balancing is bad because it makes things boring. You may think some class is useless but then others find it to be very useful if used in a certain way.

Nope. Not saying that at all. See my post above. Balance is not about making everyone the same. I'm not for a second suggesting that everyone should have exactly the same damage output. I am saying that all classes should be roughly equivalent in terms of their overall power and effectiveness. An implementation of "all classes have the same DPS" is indeed a way to do this, but it's a very mediocre one.

It's a matter of working out different roles and requirements in battles and enabling those to work together to make each character useful and effective in combat. In an ideal RPG world, we might even have some characters that were weaker in combat, but offered some excellent and valuable non-combat skills, possibly enabling the player to avoid some combat (yet again, maintaining an equal experience footing with those who do fight) through those non-combat skills.

Ok I understand making everything useful but I still do not agree with the notion than mp and sp balancing is the same. In sp you have loot and different level enemies, with different skills, hitpoints, and AI and you have different types of loot (armor weapons). Balancing in Sp is different because you don't try to make your and your opponent on the same playing field because you aren't supposed to be on the same playing field. Some creatures are meant to be weak and others strong. In multiplayer thats not how balancing works, if you are versing others or working together then you have to be in the same playing field and useful to the team or useful to beat enemies. its a different type of balancing than sp balancing. Making skills useful will not balance everything out, there is way more variables that go into account and that seperates sp and mp balancing.

Then you clearly have not played ME3 mp or any co-op mp.  The issue is if classes and powers are not over power so to not make things too easy not if it;s  not balance or not for usefulness. All classes of a co-op rpg are inheritly made to be useful to one another. ME3 has many classes that are useful with support abitilities as well as many mmo's. It already show it can work. It not an issue if one character is better at killing enemies then another in a co-op rpg. That way we have terms like tanks, dps, aoe, support and heal in mmo's. Your misssing the fact here that much of da combat system is based on mmo's. And who says co-op won't have loot? Look at ME3 mp, it has plenty of loot.

[AmstradHero]

EntropicAngel wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...
Again, I'd draw you to the difference between DAO and DA2. Despite DA2's failings, I would say that its combat mechanics are unequivocally superior to DAO's because of the ability of every class to bring something roughly equivalent in terms of power balance to the table as another, while still allowing for a great deal of flexibility in terms of how they deal with enemies. 

I disagree--I don't think "everything equivalent" is better at all. I think "everything fun and useful" is definitely better--which is mostly true for DA ][--but not "everything equivalent."

And I'll point out, once more, so as to be very clear, that classes do not have to be equivalent in power balance to others to be fun and useful in and of themselves.

And herein, as the bard would say, lies the rub.  Why are those classes fun and useful?  I ask you to dig a little deeper and analyse what's going on under the hood - and do some self analysis of why you find those things fun. This is actually a really interesting thing to do in terms of game and game mechanic analysis.

Why weren't longer combat encounters as fun in DAO, especially for warriors and rogues? It's because they had a limited pool of stamina that they had limited options to refresh, and without that stamina, they were effectively stuck in a non-interactive state for the player. They couldn't use any of their abilities and combat became "watching" more than "playing."  DA2 attempted to redress the imbalance between mages (who had the means to replenish their mana and continue to be useful during combat) and non-mages that existed in DAO.

I'm not saying that DA2 was perfect, but it was a damn sight better in that regard than DAO - and that stemmed from making the classes more balanced in terms of their utility - but without making them fulfill exactly the same role in combat.

That said, I think there is a bit of false dichotomy going on here. I agree that things do not have to be balanced to be fun, and a perfectly balanced set-up that would be ideal for multiplayer is not necessarily required for single player.  However, a significant and notable imbalance in power between classes and specialisations can easily detract from a player's overall enjoyment.  Conversely, and as I stated before, a perfectly homogenous set up where all classes are effectively exactly the same but just have different animations/names for the skills they use would be boring in terms of variety.

The idea is to provide a wide selection of mechanics that are viable choices, that can be blended together for increased potency. I do not for a second promote the idea that every possible combination should be equally viable, because that indeed does defeat the point of variety. I am merely saying that it is undesirable that one particular subset of mechanics (again, taking shapeshfter as the DAO example) should be objectively worse in terms of overall power regardless of what it is combined with.

My point is that obvious and clear imbalance does not serve to increase the player's enjoyment - your own statements even imply as much.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 10 novembre 2013 - 12:36 .

[someguy1231]

badboy64 wrote...

someguy1231 wrote...

badboy64 wrote...
99% of the people are gonna play SP and say the heck your anticipated MP game reguardless if it is the even put in game at all. Many people have been giving feed back on what they want since the game was announced or did you miss that one by the sticky posted of what they wanted in the game and they listened when people including adding mutilple races when everybody was complained about having only a human as the main character. Go play your MP in ME3 if you like it so much.

*sigh*

You're really doing yourself no favors with such a nonsensical reply. Are you really so confident that "99%" of the people who buy this game will completely ignore the MP, despite ME3 standing in complete contradiction to your claims? Even if we restrict your definition of "people" to refer solely to people on the BSN, it isn't remotely true. As of now, the Multiplayer section of the ME3 forums actually has slightly more topics/replies than the Story and Campaign section. How do you explain that? People made the exact same claims about ME3's MP that you're making right here about the possibility of DAI's MP, yet look how that turned out.

And I won't even dignify your pathetic "Go play ME3 MP" retort with a response.

So you think by putting MP in DA:I will work like it did ME3 MP when it was first implimented. It was a mess and probably still is. It still has bugs in it that will never get fixed at all. Look how the ME3 main campaign assets got it when you where required to play MP until they fixed it. I could actually care less on how much the Multiplayer fourm was visited since I hardly ever visited it because I never played the MP.:innocent: If they decide to add it then it should be optional to install it when asked if you want it at all.

Oh please, don't treat the mere existence of MP as if it's some sort of infectious disease. Your whole post is nothing but ego-stroking and blind bashing. I pointed out that the assumptions you were making about MP were wrong, and you respond by saying that you don't care and that your opinion is the only one that matters. By the way, how can you claim that MP was a "mess" if you admit to never playing it?

For the record, I actually didn't like tying EMS percentage in ME3 to the MP, but only because that was the only way to increase it. If DAI does have MP, I hope they don't do something like that, and I think Bioware has learned their lesson from ME3.

[AmstradHero]

EntropicAngel wrote...
I didn't say I don't use Arcane Warrior. I simply only use it when I feel like it. I don't feel a need to use it or not use it based on whether it's overpowered or not...which is what you suggested. That's not how it works. How it works is, if it's FUN and USEFUL, it gets used. Regardless of whether it's the most powerful or even as powerful as others, or not.

Right, I misinterpreted your meaning/emphasis.

That said, let's talk about the gaming majority. Not the majority of people on the BSN, but the majority of people who play games. If a player sees something that clearly offers them a better advantage than another (assuming no perceived negative moral choice or effect or the like), they will take it. If it's a purely mechanical choice that clearly offers a greater benefit than another purely mechanical choice, the majority of gamers will pick that option.  Why do you think there are so many threads on ALL sorts of games asking "which is the best option for X?"? Or "how do I max my dps?" Or "highest damage weapon?", etc, etc.

People naturally seek the most beneficial option for their gaming - particularly on their first playthrough, which again if we're talking about the vast majority of gamers - is their ONLY playthrough. People like winning. Being better = higher chance of winning. Therefore people pick the "best' option.

EntropicAngel wrote...
I never said it means everything is the same. I said the SUM is the same--there's a difference. which means that High-damage attackers tend to be pretty defenseless or, the tank is a tank but can't attack. THAT's what MP balancing does. And I don't see a NEED, a NEED, for it in SP.

The problem is that in MP, you're dealing with intelligent players rather than AI. You can't (usually) force enemies to attack a tank rather than going for the glass cannon that will obliterate them. I agree with the statement someone else made that balancing for MP is DIFFERENT to balancing for SP, but balance (or rather, the lack of gross imbalance) is still beneficial

Modifié par AmstradHero, 10 novembre 2013 - 12:50 .

[leaguer of one]

AmstradHero wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...
Again, I'd draw you to the difference between DAO and DA2. Despite DA2's failings, I would say that its combat mechanics are unequivocally superior to DAO's because of the ability of every class to bring something roughly equivalent in terms of power balance to the table as another, while still allowing for a great deal of flexibility in terms of how they deal with enemies. 

I disagree--I don't think "everything equivalent" is better at all. I think "everything fun and useful" is definitely better--which is mostly true for DA ][--but not "everything equivalent."

And I'll point out, once more, so as to be very clear, that classes do not have to be equivalent in power balance to others to be fun and useful in and of themselves.

And herein, as the bard would say, lies the rub.  Why are those classes fun and useful?  I ask you to dig a little deeper and analyse what's going on under the hood - and do some self analysis of why you find those things fun. This is actually a really interesting thing to do in terms of game and game mechanic analysis.

Why weren't longer combat encounters as fun in DAO, especially for warriors and rogues? It's because they had a limited pool of stamina that they had limited options to refresh, and without that stamina, they were effectively stuck in a non-interactive state for the player. They couldn't use any of their abilities and combat became "watching" more than "playing."  DA2 attempted to redress the imbalance between mages (who had the means to replenish their mana and continue to be useful during combat) and non-mages that existed in DAO.

I'm not saying that DA2 was perfect, but it was a damn sight better in that regard than DAO - and that stemmed from making the classes more balanced in terms of their utility - but without making them fulfill exactly the same role in combat.

That said, I think there is a bit of false dichotomy going on here. I agree that things do not have to be balanced to be fun, and a perfectly balanced set-up that would be ideal for multiplayer is not necessarily required for single player.  However, a significant and notable imbalance in power between classes and specialisations can easily detract from a player's overall enjoyment.  Conversely, and as I stated before, a perfectly homogenous set up where all classes are effectively exactly the same but just have different animations/names for the skills they use would be boring in terms of variety.

The idea is to provide a wide selection of mechanics that are viable choices, that can be blended together for increased potency. I do not for a second promote the idea that every possible combination should be equally viable, because that indeed does defeat the point of variety. I am merely saying that it is undesirable that one particular subset of mechanics (again, taking shapeshfter as the DAO example) should be objectively worse in terms of overall power regardless of what it is combined with.

My point is that obvious and clear imbalance does not serve to increase the player's enjoyment - your own statements even imply as much.

Rogue were fine in DAO. We sneek in, lay traps, and make ambuses. It the worriars that were boring....But the thing is the worriors in dao play like any worrior in an mmo... Auto attack, auto attack, ability attack, repeat.
And  going on about over powered characters ignores the fact that plenty of mmo's that have that issue. Look ath te paladins in WOW and the Jedi in swtor. But those characters job is killing thing... Which is a point you are missing, people via characters have jobs on the team. We have tanks , dps,aoe, and support/healing. The only balance issue ito cover is  if the characters do n't kill enemies too easily and enemies are not too hard. The fact one character kills as enemy easier then another is not an issue. Rpg's are like that from the start. Even in the single player we have character that are better at killing things then another and other character are better at other things than that character. 

[Aaleel]

someguy1231 wrote...

For the record, I actually didn't like tying EMS percentage in ME3 to the MP, but only because that was the only way to increase it. If DAI does have MP, I hope they don't do something like that, and I think Bioware has learned their lesson from ME3.

I have less confidence in this than you.  What they did in ME3 was deliberate.  They wanted MP to be successful and needed to get people in it early.  What better way to do that then tie the ending of players 5 year three game journey to it.  Once they saw it was off to a good start, they patched it and lowered the requirements.

I wouldn't put it past Bioware to do the same thing with DA:I or something like it that gets people playing it in the beginning. 

[Schneidend]

rupok93 wrote...

This is a human workplace not a workplace with machinery. Regardless of whether things are allocated, they are still interactions between groups and they heavily will infliuence each other to make decisions to possibly dumb down things so the mp can be done or alter story elements. Also it is already certain that Bioware didn't start to plan mp yet so this is not something that was done from the initial budget. Furthermore all humans are not equal, if you start creating mp they might take people from the main team to work on it/direct it and the quality of the sp of the mp may suffer because of their lack of input. 

My point is you cannot think of something as creative as video games in terms of math and business, many devs/publishers do that and fail misrebly. Just because it looks good when everything is calculated, time allocation, budget allocation, etc doesn't mean it will produce adequate results in the real world.

Well, now you're basing this on something entirely speculative to which we, the consumers, will never be privy. Even still, however Baldur's Gate was not negatively affected in this way, nor was Neverwinter Nights or ME3. ME3 supposedly wasn't going to have MP, either, but that turned out just fine.

[The Flying Grey Warden]

badboy64 wrote...

someguy1231 wrote...

badboy64 wrote...
99% of the people are gonna play SP and say the heck your anticipated MP game reguardless if it is the even put in game at all. Many people have been giving feed back on what they want since the game was announced or did you miss that one by the sticky posted of what they wanted in the game and they listened when people including adding mutilple races when everybody was complained about having only a human as the main character. Go play your MP in ME3 if you like it so much.

*sigh*

You're really doing yourself no favors with such a nonsensical reply. Are you really so confident that "99%" of the people who buy this game will completely ignore the MP, despite ME3 standing in complete contradiction to your claims? Even if we restrict your definition of "people" to refer solely to people on the BSN, it isn't remotely true. As of now, the Multiplayer section of the ME3 forums actually has slightly more topics/replies than the Story and Campaign section. How do you explain that? People made the exact same claims about ME3's MP that you're making right here about the possibility of DAI's MP, yet look how that turned out.

And I won't even dignify your pathetic "Go play ME3 MP" retort with a response.

So you think by putting MP in DA:I will work like it did ME3 MP when it was first implimented. It was a mess and probably still is. It still has bugs in it that will never get fixed at all. Look how the ME3 main campaign assets got it when you where required to play MP until they fixed it. I could actually care less on how much the Multiplayer fourm was visited since I hardly ever visited it because I never played the MP.:innocent: If they decide to add it then it should be optional to install it when asked if you want it at all.

Hyperbole and Boastful Ill-informed opinion making, quite a dangerous party drug you got going here. Heavy risk, but the prize.

[Fast Jimmy]

That said, let's talk about the gaming majority. Not the majority of people on the BSN, but the majority of people who play games. If a player sees something that clearly offers them a better advantage than another (assuming no perceived negative moral choice or effect or the like), they will take it. If it's a purely mechanical choice that clearly offers a greater benefit than another purely mechanical choice, the majority of gamers will pick that option. Why do you think there are so many threads on ALL sorts of games asking "which is the best option for X?"? Or "how do I max my dps?" Or "highest damage weapon?", etc, etc.

People naturally seek the most beneficial option for their gaming - particularly on their first playthrough, which again if we're talking about the vast majority of gamers - is their ONLY playthrough. People like winning. Being better = higher chance of winning. Therefore people pick the "best' option.

I'll agree with the vast majority of your logic and assumptions. However... there is a giant flaw.

It assumes player awareness of the imbalance that you are talking about.

It assumes that the player knows about all of the Specializations (or, even, all to the classes) before they start playing. This assumes the player does a large degree of research before their first playthrough (including combat mechanics, build/attribute concepts, the concept of whether the various classes would have Specializations, etc.) or that they are completing multiple playthroughs. Both of which we can say for certain are not "the average player's" behavior, in terms of sheer numbers and volume based on what Bioware has stated.

So is it really that important to balance classes in a SP? It isn't competition between players, as a MP would be, where players with sub-optimal builds are pitted against each other. The difficulty of encounters are both designed for a variety of difficulties as well as a difficulty level that can be modified. So, in that light, where a stronger class/build is better than another, but there is no strong penalty to have sub-optimal classes as well as a rather rare opportunity that players would have the knowledge to choose this class/build right from the get go, what is the problem?