430 réponses à ce sujet

[AlexMBrennan]

I disagree - it sounds very much like he's telling us to keep forking over our cash for games even if they "feel incomplete" because not one publisher is able to budget correctly to make complete games.

I mean, why stop at having unique bodied for people in romance scenes (Cortez & Shepard's birthmark)? Surely, by the same logic it follows that you should be happy with completely bug riddled unplayable games because fixing any one of the remaining bugs would mean another bug would have gone unfixed.

Sure, the 9k page "improvements" might have been silly/fanservice/whatever, but his counter argument is similarly laughable.

Basically, I don't think it's acceptable to ship games that "feel incomplete"; if that's the only games the current system can deliver then we need a better system - and whilst that is probably not going to happen any time soon it doesn't mean I have to be happy with the current state of affairs.

Modifié par AlexMBrennan, 26 janvier 2014 - 04:33 .

[spirosz]

StreetMagic wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

I'm not talking about developers btw. I'm talking about the people who own their companies.

So you mean us middle-class folks with a little money in our IRAs that want good returns on our investments?

I encourage people like that to get all they can -- because they don't own much anyways. And they aren't driving how the industry is run. Especially EA games. I get the sense that EA is/was/attempted to experiment with their "seasonal" formula on Bioware titles, and it just doesn't work. You can't crank out and commoditize games like these in the same way they do Madden or some of their shooter franchises. Bioware needs to craft their games. Not crank them out.

That's a fair perspective, but there are some mistakes that happen in their games that isn't because of EA's doing, regardless of the timeline and budget - Bioware is no small company and I doubt they get a small budget to begin with either - so a lot of the screw ups cannot be all accountable just because of LOLEA.  

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...
So you mean us middle-class folks with a little money in our IRAs that want good returns on our investments?

I encourage people like that to get all they can -- because they don't own much anyways. And they aren't driving how the industry is run. Especially EA games.

Wait.... I thought EA games were about shareholder profits.

[AlanC9]

AlexMBrennan wrote...

Basically, I don't think it's acceptable to ship games that "feel incomplete"; if that's the only games the current system can deliver then we need a better system - and whilst that is probably not going to happen any time soon it doesn't mean I have to be happy with the current state of affairs.

How do you operationalize this principle? What's the metric for feeling incomplete?

[SlottsMachine]

EntropicAngel wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

I'm not talking about developers btw. I'm talking about the people who own their companies.

So you mean us middle-class folks with a little money in our IRAs that want good returns on our investments?

"Shareholders" is a lot, lot, LOT broader than "Rich rich people."

Well I'd assume that if you have a bunch of stock in Electronic Arts you're probably pretty well off. 

[spirosz]

AlanC9 wrote...

AlexMBrennan wrote...

Basically, I don't think it's acceptable to ship games that "feel incomplete"; if that's the only games the current system can deliver then we need a better system - and whilst that is probably not going to happen any time soon it doesn't mean I have to be happy with the current state of affairs.

How do you operationalize this principle? What's the metric for feeling incomplete?

That is what I'd like to know as well.  Because you don't like something, does that = a game being incomplete or should we look at copy and paste aspects of reuseable maps or enemy waves?  

[DeinonSlayer]

Gotta admit that fan requests come from all directions and frequently contradict each other. It's entertaining enough to talk about what could have been, but let's face it - the Retake movement was never really "unified" in terms of what it was looking for.



(Yeah, I mostly just wanted an excuse to share this picture)

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 26 janvier 2014 - 04:40 .

[spirosz]

They wanted a happy ending, pretty much.

[dreamgazer]

spirosz wrote...

They wanted a happy ending, pretty much.

They probably wanted the 85%+ paragon ending in this rewrite. 

Pity for those who ended up with 84%.

[DeinonSlayer]

spirosz wrote...

They wanted a happy ending, pretty much.

There were those who wanted to challenge the Catalyst's logic, there were those who simply wanted a more coherent sequence of events instead of something from a mushroom hallucination (teleporting squadmates, Joker chickening out, Planet Nowheria), there were those who wanted to fight conventionally, there were those who wanted IT confirmed, there were those who wanted confirmation that Team Dextro wouldn't starve to death, and there were those who just didn't want Blueberry to be the last person they saw.

Though much of it remains clumsy and I still believe improvements could have been made, I think the devs addressed everything they could short of a complete rewrite.

[spirosz]

StreetMagic wrote...

Really, the ending isn't that bad. It's the realization that the game wasn't all that meant for me, period.

That is basically me.  It sucks, I know - but I've came to realize that it happens.  

[dreamgazer]

spirosz wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

Really, the ending isn't that bad. It's the realization that the game wasn't all that meant for me, period.

That is basically me.  It sucks, I know - but I've came to realize that it happens.  

Why, exactly, wasn't the game meant for you guys?

[spirosz]

In relation to the characters I envisioned my Shepard carrying his last journey with, the way certain gameplay aspects turned out; auto dialogue for example, it worked for many, but not for me and I can even bring up the character creator and what it did to my "Shepard" - just in terms of the overall direction and what the experience was, it's not going to be for every player who picks it up - which was my case.

Modifié par spirosz, 26 janvier 2014 - 05:10 .

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Wait.... I thought EA games were about shareholder profits.

That depends how organized these "middle class folks with a little money" are, when pitted against the major shareholders.

How are the interests of major shareholders different from the interests of minor shareholders? Don't they both want the share price to go up?

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 janvier 2014 - 05:11 .

[o Ventus]

AlanC9 wrote...

TipsLeFedora wrote...

Mass effect was not going to executed properly in a year. The scope was just too big.

A year?

Maybe not *a* year, but definitely less than two. ME3 had a dev time similar to that of Call of Duty, minus the billion dollar budget and 500-man team.

[SlottsMachine]

While we are on the topic of auto-dialogue. I had a problem with that, especially during interactions with squadmates. People always think that peeps like me just wanted to be able to tell Liara to go die in a nearby sun (which is true), but more importantly I thought when the dialogue was at its best in ME2 each option showed you a different aspect of that character.

[RZIBARA]

o Ventus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

TipsLeFedora wrote...

Mass effect was not going to executed properly in a year. The scope was just too big.

A year?

Maybe not *a* year, but definitely less than two. ME3 had a dev time similar to that of Call of Duty, minus the billion dollar budget and 500-man team.

what? I never knew that (i bought the games after they were all released).

If thats the case, they did a pretty good job with the time they had, imagine what it could have been with an extra year

[dreamgazer]

o Ventus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

TipsLeFedora wrote...

Mass effect was not going to executed properly in a year. The scope was just too big.

A year?

Maybe not *a* year, but definitely less than two. ME3 had a dev time similar to that of Call of Duty, minus the billion dollar budget and 500-man team.

Two years and two months, actually (December 2009).

[AlanC9]

I'm just replaying ME2 now, and there's an awful lot of dialogues that might as well have been autodialogue. I have to use the wheel, sure, but all I'm deciding is what order to hear the Investigate options in. Better than the outright fake wheel interactions in ME1, though.

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 janvier 2014 - 05:28 .

[Han Shot First]

jtav wrote...

Which doesn't excuse some very odd prioritization. Let's take my favorite character. Miranda did not need five conversations to carry out her actual plot role. Cut the second conversation and you lose pretty much nothing. Frees up the word budget for Ash (same writer even) or Jack or for Miranda to talk about a broader range of topics. TIM's Citadel conversation is too long. And so on. And that's just character stuff.

Also Diana Allers. Did we need Diana Allers?

Wouldn't it have been wiser to spend her word budget instead on giving Ashley another conversation aboard the Normandy? And instead of rendering this entirely pointless character, wouldn't it have been better to spend those resources on giving Tali an in-game reveal?

I agree with most of what was said on that blog, but there were certainly a few areas where Bioware made some poor decisions on where to spend resources.

Modifié par Han Shot First, 26 janvier 2014 - 05:33 .

[spirosz]

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm just replaying ME2 now, and there's an awful lot of dialogues that might as well have been autodialogue. I have to use the wheel, sure, but all I'm deciding is what order to hear the Investigate options in. Better than the outright fake wheel interactions in ME1, though.

No one has every denied that there is a great amount in ME2, but the thing is - it worked so well for me and I never noticed it to the point, like I did in ME3.  The balance was perfect for me in ME2, from the little opening conversation sequences with Thane for example, when we first meet him - where it felt necessary.  That's what upset me in ME3, but on the other side of that argument, I can easily reverse the roles and say ME2 did it worse than ME3, if ME3 worked better for me.