430 réponses à ce sujet

[Phoenix_Also_Rises]

My two cents RE: exploration.

Loved it in ME1. Missed it. See the reasons for removal. Personally think - and you are welcome to slam me for it - that something of a ME1/ME3/MMO hybrid could make this work. You are given a story quest, which has you go to a planet. While on said planet, you wander around, talk to people, gather quests - both on that planet, but also a few in that system - the survivable ones, anyways. Like in ME3, quest - important hotspots appear on the surface of the planet, where you can go and launch these side missions. Once entering the mission area, you are in a vehicle, can ride around for a bit, collect minerals etc. Basically tailor an MMO questing/leveling area for the purposes of a SP campaign.

Allows for:

- seeing more different areas of the world (one area forested, another has you go into cave etc.), helps eschew creating a single - habitat, single - geography worlds
- learning more about the world and people inhabiting it
- side quests help support/flesh out main mission quest, perhaps if you do a certain side quest, new options of resolution unlock for main mission, new dialogue options

Modifié par Phoenix_Also_Rises, 29 janvier 2014 - 09:33 .

[Mcfly616]

EntropicAngel wrote...

I'd love more exploration. It's almost necessary for a game that purports to be galaxy-spanning.

I echo this sentiment. It's a shame really. It's a RPG/Shooter hybrid....but the industry is over-populated by full-blown linear shooters. I wish Mass Effect would start leaning back towards the RPG side of the equation. If you're gonna give me a space ship and a galaxy map to chart my course, I should actually have the freedom to explore with it. 


I loved the exploration in ME1, it was a perfect change of pace. And for those that didn't like it, it was almost completely avoidable other than the short segments during the main story missions. Exploration was completely optional. Planet scanning wasn't. I'll take the former any day of the week.

[Grizzly46]

That developer is quite right pointing out the weak points of that manifest pubished, and I don't think that anyone with even the slightest insight in game development would or could agree with the author; the dev is mentioning shirtless Garrus, and he is right - it wouldn't be worth the time and effort.

BUT:

Fact is that ME3 lacks a lot of things (including an ending, but that dead horse has been beaten too much), and I don't think it was really Bioware's fault that it came down to what we have seen. It was IIRC EA who wanted the game published as soon as possible to milk the franchise as much as possible when the interest was still hot.

One thing I really, really found lacking in ME3 was the absence of meaningful side-missions (AKA FedEx missions). In most games you get the mission, do it and return for some kind of reward. Very straight-forward. But in ME3 you don't even need to talk to anyone to get the FedEx missions - you need to overhear someone talking about somthing, go to a planet, fire a probe and then return to talk to the person in return for a small increase in GR.

FedEx missions are almost per definition bad, but ME3 managed to make them even worse. Partly because you don't get the mission, but take it, and also because it reduces a lot of races and people to mere hats - as long as the batarians get their Pillars of Strength they are ALL happy; as long as the volus get that book, they are ALL happy. It sucks and is degrading for those races, for Shepard and not the least the player.

Frankly, I thought the eaves-dropping missions were just placeholders for the developers to add DLCs later, and some would have been great, as long as they had been treated as the N7 missions doled out by Hackett - a real mission briefing, an actual mission where you do stuff and a real mission debrief. That was fantastic. But the eaves-dropping missions could just as well have been dropped without any loss as they were now.

As I said, I'm fully aware that the dev was right, and I realize that adding all those eaves-dropping missions would have taken time and resources. But, since they looked and felt like placeholders, nothing would have stopped Bioware from releasing the game as it was and then added the "real" missions later. it would have added game value and also more money if they had been made pay-DLC when the game was done and only needed some touch-ups.

A clearly wasted opportunity.

[CronoDragoon]

EntropicAngel wrote...

That doesn't mean you can't love a game. ME2 is my favorite (and I'm a staunch ME3 defender). But in a game that spans the galaxy, it feels uncomfortably linear to not be able to explore at least SOME of that.

But you do explore some of that. To me, those missions where you land on a planet with a specific objective in mind, or a short task with a limited setting, count as exploration, and are equally as effective as ME1's vast landscapes. In ME1, I'd land and stare at the skyline, the planets in the sky, observe the climate and landscape. These are all things that I feel are also accomplished in a more linear atmosphere, instead of football fields of empty space colored by the occasional geth turret or mineral deposit. The sense of wonder - to me - died once I started actually roaming around. I became acutely aware that I was playing in a videogame.

In ME1, the ratio of story-driven content to collect-them-all, borderline-randomly-generated quest settings is kind of sad. In ME2 such things were replaced by content like loyalty missions.

Your assertion that the answer is "a bigger game" doesn't really tell me anything. Yes, you can have exploration AND a ton of story-driven content given the time and resources. But if the first 3 games are any indication, then this type of game needs to focus on one or the other in order to do it well, given a finite amount of both. Come to think of it, that applies to most games. I can't think of many that have a strong story and excellent implementation of exploration.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 29 janvier 2014 - 03:38 .

[AlanC9]

Grizzly46 wrote...
One thing I really, really found lacking in ME3 was the absence of meaningful side-missions (AKA FedEx missions). In most games you get the mission, do it and return for some kind of reward. Very straight-forward. But in ME3 you don't even need to talk to anyone to get the FedEx missions - you need to overhear someone talking about somthing, go to a planet, fire a probe and then return to talk to the person in return for a small increase in GR.

Actually, you don't need to hear the Citadel dialogue to get the mission. You can get the mission by finding the object too. (They pay off in WA points, not GR, btw. Plus Rep points, which are useful too, and cash, which is less so.)

Frankly, I thought the eaves-dropping missions were just placeholders for the developers to add DLCs later, and some would have been great, as long as they had been treated as the N7 missions doled out by Hackett - a real mission briefing, an actual mission where you do stuff and a real mission debrief. That was fantastic. But the eaves-dropping missions could just as well have been dropped without any loss as they were now.

Sure. Rep points and cash could have been rebalanced, and the scanning game could have just given out the WAs directly, as a lot of scan targets already do. The downside is that this removes a lot of interactivity from the Citadel. What's the upside? You don't save a lot of word budget since there are so few lines involved anyway.

As I said, I'm fully aware that the dev was right, and I realize that adding all those eaves-dropping missions would have taken time and resources. But, since they looked and felt like placeholders, nothing would have stopped Bioware from releasing the game as it was and then added the "real" missions later. it would have added game value and also more money if they had been made pay-DLC when the game was done and only needed some touch-ups.

No objection to more DLC -- though I doubt I would have bought any -- but I don't see as being a good way to make DLCs. It's better to add completely new stuff.