11 réponses à ce sujet

[KC_Prototype]

Now this idea may have already been pitched but I'll say it again, what if MP was like this:

• Your create a soldier of the Inquisition(male/female, human, elf, dwarf or qunari, mage, rouge or warrior), you tag along with 3 other players and complete quest/missions around Thedas gaining XP and leveling up the Inquisition as well as the soldiers.
• It wouldn't be mandatory for anything but it gives your Inquisitor more unique equipment, XP, upgrades for your Inquisitor's weapons/armor and other goodies. Your MP character could even bring it to your Inquisitor when you load up the main campaign.
• You name your character and your character then becomes an agent of the Inquisition in the main campaign.
• You could even see your MP character, talk to them and send them out on missions like any other agent!
• And you could make multiple MP characters like in ME3. Also, the MP would have a story/story arch as well.    

  What do you guys think?

[Allan Schumacher]

DA is a completely different beast. As I stated earlier - go play DA:O solo on Easy. That's about the right difficulty where you can play with only one character and not die without ever needing to pause the game and manage things on the fly like you would need to do for MP.

 

As I read through this I find this particular statement confusing.

[Allan Schumacher]

How so?

 

Because you're describing a single player experience, with one character, and equating it to the supposed difficulty of having more players play.

 

When I play NWN or BG multiplayer, I don't need to pause the game as much.  I also don't think you need to pause all that much in the Dragon Age games either, aside from particular encounters.  I am curious though, why do you think the pause feature exists in our games?

 

 

Not hard. I am saying soloing the game without ever using the pause function becomes problematic at any level beyond Normal for your average player.

 

And I'm saying that this is irrelevant unless you're arguing that any multiplayer component must be playable alone.

[Allan Schumacher]

EDIT: And the pause feature exists in your games as a vestige of the turn based systems that previously dominated RPG mechanics. Pause and play gives the ability to select commands in a halted environment just as one would do if it was their "turn" and they had the luxury of choosing their action before the action resumed. With Pause and Play, it allows for more fluid and distinct units of time and action to occur and also to allow course correction or implementation of any action at any place in time. 

*snip*

 
I think pause exists so that the player can more easily execute commands of the party simultaneously.
 
 

Does that answer your question?

I think we're saying similar things, but I'm not sure.  Your answer is a bit verbose though so I may be missing something.  I disagree that pause was added as a result of turn based systems, but was rather added to make party management easier in a real-time environment.

[Allan Schumacher]

So yes - pause was added to easily execute commands in real time.

 

If a unique individual is controlling each character in the party, does this mitigate concerns about being able to execute commands at the same time?

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm always curious regarding people whom state this. Why do you think this? Does its very existence harm you in anyway? Just because it is there doesn't mean you have to play it. It would simply be an 'optional' thing that if you didn't want to take part in it you wouldn't have to.

 

Some have the idea that without its existence, it won't be there to influence the single player game design whether through shared systems or through competing for resources.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think I am having problems communicating - I don't have any concerns about MP being too hard without a pause. My concern is that MP would be exceptionally DULL (again, like soloing DA:O on Easy) because the series isn't action oriented (DA2 mashing if the attack button notwithstanding).

 

Well, it's been a while since I played either of the games but I think you overstate the downtime with respect to abilities.  I'm also trying to illustrate that the solo aspect is irrelevant.  You've mandated that it must be soloing on easy, because that's how you can do DAO solo.  I'm saying that the comparison isn't well thought out.  Perhaps it's part of the communication problem, but by creating this comparison you haven't made things clearer for me.

 

There are people (I'm one of them) that exploit the tactics menu to automate the party.  I played most of DAO unpaused, controlling only my Warden.  On Normal difficulty.  How does a multiplayer experience differ from me playing on Normal with well design party tactics for my AI companions?

[Allan Schumacher]

You don't monitor your party's health? The buffs they have active? Their placement in relation to the enemies? What skills they have on cooldown and which ones they still have active?

I'll monitor health somewhat, but I usually have my healer (if it's not me) set up to take care of that. I pay attention to it because if I've not set it up properly I'll die. The fight may go in ways that my AI hasn't properly set up too.

Tougher boss fights I often needed to make alterations or do more manual control, but most fights I was able to set up the tactics system and just playthrough the game.

...don't you get bored? You're not doing anything but pressing a button every five or ten seconds or monitoring anything except a steadily decreasing health bar.

Nope. I've had no issues with it whether it be Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, or even a game like TOR or WOW.


Even single player party based Baldur's Gate was still a lot of "stand there and watch people swing swords" especially if you were light on magic users. It was an issue with KOTOR as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

No.  It still requires making decisions in real time, and I don't enjoy doing that.
 
But I doubt I would play any multiplayer, regardless of its characteristics.

 

That's fine, though it's a different critique of the system.  If we're looking at it from the perspective of pause allowing people to effectively give simultaneous orders to multiple party members easily at the same time, then having independent players control each character mitigates the need for a pause (or stellar AI, to use a different type of example).

[Allan Schumacher]

Yet my concern is always that the underlying of the SP campaign not only enable a "no-pause-needed" type of playthrough, but actually handicap the pause and play method in favor of the action method.

 

It would depend on why we felt pause was needed.  If we feel pause is needed to ensure fast control over multiple characters due to only controlling one at a time, that a multiplayer mode wouldn't enable "no pause is needed" for single player.

 

I think there's also a bit of a disconnect or a lack of understanding towards the idea that people can actually enjoy playing a game like Baldur's Gate, or NWN 1/2, in multiplayer and have fun with it.

[Allan Schumacher]

You're talking a lot about this...reason for the pause system. I'm inclined to agree with the other user, earlier, who stated it's a vestige of the turn-based system, rather than associated with controlling multiple characters. The existence of the Tactics system might imply the same--it's a way of automating all non-player-controlled characters, thus alleviates the "concerns" of controlling a party, thus the pause isn't for that. It's an academic rebuttal, I'm not sure we'll ever know which it was.

 

I always felt the vestige for the turn-based system was the extra opt-in option to literally make the game pause when a character's combat round is up.  It's also an accessibility thing, though I'm not sure how much that factored in in 1998.  I tried it, but I quickly found that irritating though, as I only preferred to pause when I felt I needed to make a decision that needed puasing.  I didn't care for the autoattacks to all be paused, which was a very regular occurrence once the party got up to 6.  Due to the nature of the round system, however, for a single character I often had a 6 second queue to worry about my next attack.  So with a solo character (or even just two), I didn't need to pause as much as when I had 6 and needed context switching for the character's abilities and so forth.

 

 

In a multiplayer environment, though, I don't need to pause to evaluate if there is aggro on other characters because those players are making those evaluations on their own.  And if they aren't making them as good as I will, maybe something bad will happen and we'll all have a laugh and we can try again.  (My tolerance for failure shoots up in co-op.  Heck, my tolerance for a lot of things goes up if I'm playing with friends.  I have literally played mediocre games that I would never play alone simply because they had co-op.  Co-op is a giant force multiplier for fun for me).

 

Co-op got me into Dark Souls.  Co-op got me into TOR and WOW.  It got me into Dawn of War II.  It got me into System Shock 2 (and from there, the Deus Ex games!)  If anyone wants to play some Civ5 or EU4 MP, I'll be all over that.  A game like EU4 or CK2 I actually roleplay the nation I play.  I love those games, but sharing the experience with a friend (or many friends) is priceless.

 

I actually don't co-op game a whole lot, specifically.  But in a world where I find there's a lot of games out there, co-op is a compelling argument for "trying something I'm not sure about." 

[Allan Schumacher]

It's lost on me why Dragon Age needs a multiplayer.

At this point it's mostly just philosophical.