430 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

it's an ugly cycle though. Me2 was probably developed in relation to negative feedback to ME1 as well. I mean, we lost the Mako in that one. Some jerkass fans gave them the impression that exploration sucks.

Yep. That one was my fault.

[dreamgazer]

StreetMagic wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

it's an ugly cycle though. Me2 was probably developed in relation to negative feedback to ME1 as well. I mean, we lost the Mako in that one. Some jerkass fans gave them the impression that exploration sucks.

Yep. That one was my fault.

Mako definitely needed to be tweaked.. I just don't think you need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Same goes for the inventory system.  Thankfully ME3 brings a bit of that back, along with weight constraints. 

Lots of unfortunate decisions around ME2.

[chemiclord]

StreetMagic wrote...

it's an ugly cycle though. Me2 was probably developed in relation to negative feedback to ME1 as well. I mean, we lost the Mako in that one. Some jerkass fans gave them the impression that exploration sucks.

It's tenuous balance, really.  A very narrow wire that a creator balances on when it comes to fan feedback.

On one hand, you want to keep your audience happy.  It does you nor them ANY good to constantly do things that upset them.  At the very least, you want to hear their objections (as well as the praise), and decide "Which group do I really want supporting me?"  Because no matter WHAT you do, it's going to ****** off SOMEONE.  There's simply no way around it.

But at the same time, it's YOUR story (even if you do something stupid like tell your audience its as much theirs).  It's YOUR creation.  At the end of the day, if you aren't telling the story you want, or making the game you want to make... your audience CAN feel that pandering, and they often won't appreciate it even if it IS normally what they'd like.  Then you're just "selling out" or "catering to [x]."

[Han Shot First]

StreetMagic wrote...

Just to add, I wish Casey Hudson would go with his gut more. Every time I hear about the things he likes about Mass Effect, I'm in agreement. But he adjusts things according to fan feedback. It was fan feedback that got exploration changed, it was fan feedback that streamlined the hub experience a bit (Casey liked how the first two hours or so of ME1 was just small quests and dialogue on the Citadel. He wants people to get lost and immersed in it, like it's a real place. But people complained about it. Not enough action apparently). Last but not least, one of his favorite characters is Jack.

Dat ending tho...

If he's involved with the next Mass Effect game in any capacity, I hope he isn't allowed to put pen to paper without it being peer reviewed. Unedited Casey is a frightening thought.

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
Yep. That one was my fault.

Mako definitely needed to be tweaked.. I just don't think you need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Depends on what you think the baby is. I'm not a fan of exploration or inventory loot unless they fit the plot. ME2 made more sense than ME1 because at least Shepard had a sensible reason to be running around in those systems, and he lands next to the thing he's landing on the planet to investigate.

As for inventory, I would have abolished shops and credits. Scanning unknown tech for upgrades fits the lore and could stay.

Modifié par AlanC9, 27 janvier 2014 - 05:03 .

[Han Shot First]

Out of all 3 games I thought ME3 had the best inventory system.

Not quite as tedious as ME1, but more customization of equipment than ME2.

[RiouHotaru]

I approve of the document's author's intent, but I agree with the dev: There's a very fine line between what looks and sounds good on paper and in theory, and what actually works in practice.

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

Shops and credits aren't in the lore? What do you mean? Credits are everywhere in the lore. Be it the books or in-game storylines. As for stores, you're losing some urban atmosphere without them. Or an excuse to flesh them out a bit at least. I like the idea of scanning unknown tech, but you don't need to get rid of things to include it. Besides, where the hell else can I get my weekly fix of Fornax?

Better yet, where else can I harass a Batarian who sells Fornax, and get my "uppity human discount"?

What I meant is that Shepard spending his own money doesn't fit the lore. I'd say that  the lore is written to fit this typical CRPG mechanic, but AFAIK only Spectres have to raise their own funds; the Alliance isn't said to work like the 18th-century Royal Navy.

I don't know about your job, but I've never worked for a big organization where I had to buy my own equipment with my own cash. You really think the Alliance wouldn't just issue Shepard a credit card and be done with it? That Cerberus wouldn't have picked up those weapon upgrades while spending vast sums on the Normandy? Hell, Traynor lampshades this in an early convo -- the one about her toothbrush, IIRC. And Mordin lampshades the issue in ME2.

Modifié par AlanC9, 27 janvier 2014 - 07:46 .

[ImaginaryMatter]

The only real problem I had with ME3's item system is that some weapons, mainly shotguns, had weird weight balancing issues and some of the weapons and mods were a little odd lore wise (I know this is a nit-picky complaint but somehow Barrel Extensions really bother me... they're suppose to be Rail Extensions, grr!!!).

[Lord Watson]

I'm curious why the time was wasted doing animations for things like bolt action/pump action weapons. Especially on any weapons that get more than one shot per thermal clip. There's no brass to eject or rounds to chamber.

I could see the bolt or pump action being something that's tied to purging heat. Were that the case though, why bother with thermal clips too? It's not like you get the option of using the "bolt" to purge heat slowly to delay or negate "reloading".

Very minor thing, of course.

Modifié par Lord Watson, 27 janvier 2014 - 08:21 .

[Mangalores]

Obadiah wrote...

I was actually comforted by the air of finality. I'm tired of creators of fiction getting me hooked on some plot and then endlessly stringing me along with stories that just go on and on and on... They said it would be 3 games. They made 3 games. Shepard dead, legacy guides civilization, done.

Problem is doing that and then trying to add a fourth installment to a finished trilogy.


Otherwise I'm in agreement with the OP's article said. The issue of the writing however happens outside the context of the available resources. And I would say that the ME3 final act shows clear sign of wrongly alotted resources (aka it seems pretty obvious that they did this last and they ran out of time and money there).

Particularly for storydriven games like Mass Effect the first and last act are probably the most important bit of the entire game as that is about establishing and resolving the plot. Adding or removing a side quest in the middle is less problematic. But both in ME2 and ME3 you get an impression of a scenario driven script writing aka they have the individual ideas and create scenes for them but actually do them in order so stuff gets disjointed concerning the far more important main plot whose final act gets whatever resources and time is still there at the end of the project.

Imho BW should stick to the main plot and expand character interaction etc. within the main plot and not run after every reference or cool idea they find that however needs a new sub plot. The main plot of ME1 was decent, simple but with reasonable pacing. In ME2 and ME3 the main plot is an incoherent mess. Some of the sub plots are great but it doesn't build at all and those sub plots rarely have anything to do with anything.

[Brovikk Rasputin]

Very very well written, that piece.

It's one thing to sit on an internet forum and decide what's good and bad in a game, and how everything's "easily fixed" and so on. From a dev side though, very few things are "easily fixed" especially when you're operating on a tight as **** budget.

*Edited to avoid controversy.*

Modifié par Brovikk Rasputin, 27 janvier 2014 - 12:57 .

[Mcfly616]

They really just need to bring back the freedom and revamp the exploration seen in ME1. We need a land vehicle (mako>hammerhead imo). Add actual settlements and ecosystems to these "uncharted worlds". Differentiate between desolate wastelands, rainforests, pirate hide-outs, and backwater colonies complete with shops and cantina's.

Back in 2007-2009 when I heard the words 'Mass Effect', I thought of the awe and wonder that comes with the exploration of and the journey through any classic sci-fi universe. The sequels lost that. Now I just think of "shooting through corridors with some talking in between"


When an aspect of the game is criticised, instead of throwing it out completely, they should really just try to improve it. The amount of things from ME1 that were completely absent throughout ME2, contributed to it being my least favorite of the trilogy more than any other reason. It was noticeably and undeniably jarring even within the first half hour.

ME3 did an admirable job of finding a middle-ground between it's predecessors (inventory, mods, power attributes). It wasn't enough for me though. I'm really hoping to see the next game take much more inspiration from ME1 rather than the sequels. I want freedom and exploration and customization and just more of an RPG. No more linear corridor shooting from point A to point B. I want to snipe mercs from a mile away on the edge of a mountain.....those were the days...

[DaringMoosejaw]

Mcfly616 wrote...

ME3 did an admirable job of finding a middle-ground between it's predecessors (inventory, mods, power attributes). It wasn't enough for me though. I'm really hoping to see the next game take much more inspiration from ME1 rather than the sequels. I want freedom and exploration and customization and just more of an RPG. No more linear corridor shooting from point A to point B. I want to snipe mercs from a mile away on the edge of a mountain.....those were the days...

My chief problem with ME1 was the level design of that exploration, it needed a lot of refining. All of the uncharted worlds were essentially just featureless mountain areas with jagged spikes and color swaps. I did enjoy the skyboxes, but I am probably never going to be able to play through ME1 again because of the hundred or so hours I've spent on my five seperate playthroughs sloooowly inching my way up 80 degree cliffs. There were also the reused interiors, but I generally agree I'd rather have had them refine all that than remove it.

When it comes to inventory and the corridor shooting thing, though, I have to disagree as I do whenever anyone claims the sequels took away RPG elements and made it more FPS. ME1's inventory system was absolute garbage. You always ended up with a Spectre X version of a generic weapon and the rest was abundant trash that you had to ignore and clean out once you got the best gear, of which there was always one item depending on your class. The weapon mods I did miss, but those were added back in ME3 and I like what they did. You also could very easily get the maximum amount of credits which I did pretty quickly, which broke the economy.

ME2 and ME3 didn't really remove the inventory, it just put your inventory on the ship and didn't let you mess with it all the time and made it so that once you got an item, you always had it for you and your squad and couldn't buy or sell. I don't miss that all from ME1, because the economy in that game broke pretty quickly. The big plus was that it added variety. There are a ton of guns from ME2 and 3 that have wildly different looks and functions and different armor pieces that actually did different things instead of just being the Infinity+1 assault rifle or armor that was simply just better than everything else in the game.

As far as corridors, while everything was open on the uncharted worlds you have to really think about it and realize that regular missions pretty much did exactly what the sequels did, even the vehicle portions. You pretty much went along a set path toward your objective. There were little hubs, but all that meant is that instead of moving in a jagged line you just moved in a lot of smaller jagged lines from a central location. On Feros, you corridor shot your way from the landing pad to the hub, messed around there, corridor shot your way to the geth attack, came back, corridor shot your way to the lower levels, came back, then corridor shot your way to ExoGeni and...came back. ME2 and ME3's way of doing it simply did away with the hub so the corridor was at least more diverse.

[Mcfly616]

As I said, just because things could've been better doesn't mean you completely disregard them. You refine them. So you take the cookie-cutter pirate bases and actually add variety (research facilities, Colonist settlements, ruins), you refine the clunky floatiness of the mako, you add deserts and rainforests instead of just mountains. You take the overflowing inventory system and streamline whilst adding a bit more aesthetic variety.....you don't just completely butcher these things a la ME2. Don't even get me started on that games powers.

My point is, exploration was a big part of what made ME1 so immersive and wonderful for me. It made me feel awe, like I was just a grain of sand in an ocean. It made me feel like I was out there exploring the final frontier. Finding downed satellites, skeletal remains of those that came before me, leaving me to speculate as to what had brought their demise. Idk it was the icing for me, and I had no icing in the sequels.

The shooter genre is overpopulated. Bioware should stop trying to join the ranks of full-fledged shooters, and try getting back to their rpg roots.

Modifié par Mcfly616, 27 janvier 2014 - 06:00 .

[ImaginaryMatter]

The problem I see with bringing back ME1's planet exploration is the amount of time it would take to design a level for each and every explorable world that wasn't just a texture/color swap of the same terrain as some other planet. I feel like the novelty of exploration in ME1 wears off pretty quickly once you realize that everything looks the same.

Although, I am absolutely in love with the idea of exploring worlds with more detailing put into them. I imagine it looking like the Hammerhead exploration part of the Overlord DLC, only bigger and without the awkwardness of the Hammerhead.

[Mcfly616]

I think they can do it. This game seems like it's going to have a longer dev cycle than the previous twotitles. Hell, by the time the next Mass Effect is on the way, we might be coming up on the release of Cyberpunk2077. And while I can only speculate based on CDPR's previous work, you can bet it'll be a beautiful next gen open world action rpg with a branching narrative based on decisions. And it'll have had the same dev time as Bioware has had with ME4. (all while working on another game simultaneously just as BW is).

If an indie dev like CDPR can do it, Bioware should be able to do it.

[AlanC9]

Mcfly616 wrote...

Back in 2007-2009 when I heard the words 'Mass Effect', I thought of the awe and wonder that comes with the exploration of and the journey through any classic sci-fi universe. The sequels lost that. Now I just think of "shooting through corridors with some talking in between"

This was a problem with the incoherence of ME's original vision. Bio wrote a game where the PC wasn't an explorer, and the plot wasn't about exploration, and then they bolted cheap exploration on top of that because ...... SF CRPGs are supposed to have exploration, I guess.

How'd you like KotOR? That game wasn't about exploration, although it did have some empty maps.

Modifié par AlanC9, 27 janvier 2014 - 06:30 .

[dreamgazer]

I think open ME1-style exploration with a tweaked Hammerhead sounds like fun.

[Mcfly616]

AlanC9 wrote...

Mcfly616 wrote...

Back in 2007-2009 when I heard the words 'Mass Effect', I thought of the awe and wonder that comes with the exploration of and the journey through any classic sci-fi universe. The sequels lost that. Now I just think of "shooting through corridors with some talking in between"

This was a problem with the incoherence of ME's original vision. Bio wrote a game where the PC wasn't an explorer, and the plot wasn't about exploration
, and then they bolted cheap exploration on top of that because ...... SF CRPGs are supposed to have exploration, I guess.

How'd you like KotOR? That game wasn't about exploration, although it did have some empty maps.

KotOR is in my top 5 best games ever. And while it did have good amount of empty areas, there was still exploration and enough variety in the planets, that I felt like I was on an actual journey (doing all the things a journey entails: exploring the unknown, find loot, meeting friends and foes, and sometimes killing stuff).

The Mass Effect sequels didn't even make it seem like I was role-playing a character on a mission traversing the galaxy. They just made it seem like I was along for the ride in a cinematic experience blasting my way from point A to point B. Complete with cutscenes as I teleported from mission to mission. Substitute planet scanning for actual planets exploration and that's the cherry on top. And it's not like we have to look for the loot. It'll be conveniently right in our path along the way.


I guess I'm a little old school. I like to work to get through a game. I like to explore in order to find upgrades. Like to do specific things in order to level up. I don't care if I die over and over, as long as I persevere it's all worth it. Hard earned things give the best satisfaction. Games are too easy nowadays. Too linear. Too much alike.

Story and gameplay are very important to me. But freedom/exploration/non-linear level design (call it whatever you like) are just as important imo.