88 réponses à ce sujet

[PsychoBlonde]

This isn't really a criticism, it barely qualifies as a critique, but some things I was reading today made me realize some stuff, namely that Inquisition is in a really weird place as a game.  Or perhaps I should phrase it, as a "game".

 

People on the forums have actually been complaining that the combat has been redesigned to actually require, you know, THINKING.  Because they play these games "for the story"--the game *play* is an annoyance to them.  They don't want to "have to" craft.  They don't want to "have to" mess with their gear.

 

And then you have the other group, who complains that the combat doesn't require enough, you know, THINKING.  ONLY 8 ABILITIES?!?!?  They "get to" craft (finally).  They (finally) might "get" some decent gear tradeoffs.  But on the other hand anything that isn't "medieval combat sim" seems to ****** them off.  X, Y, or Z doesn't "make sense" or is an "arbitrary restriction" or a "dumbing down" of the game (which is hilarious in this context, seeing as how utterly degenerate the gameplay in both previous games was).

 

And then you have people like me.  I play the game "for" the story.  But I also really want it to be a *good game* with *engaging gameplay* that I will WANT to experience again.  I'm TIRED of Bioware games becoming a boring slog of seemingly-endless repetitive combat halfway through.  My experience with this series thus far has done a lot to convince me that I, more than anyone else, am EXACTLY this game's target audience.  Lucky for me, but what about groups 1 and 2 up there?  Are they going to become increasingly dissatisfied (and from what I've seen, angry and hostile)?  Can you have BOTH people who want an interactive movie AND hardcore gamers as core audience for the SAME game?  Is that going to work?

It worked okay with older games--but expectations were lower then, too.  Big-budget RPG's for a year might be . . . TWO games.  Heck DAGGERFALL won RPG of the year when it came out, and it was, in many ways, a steaming pile of poo.

 

Maybe the reason why big-budget games like Dragon Age are vanishing is *because*, qua game, they're a strange leftover of a type of game that, for a brief period of time managed to get an audience by uniting several groups of gamers with completely opposing interests.  I'm some kind of weirdo because I have both interests--but I don't want to be left here with the 3 other similar weirdos to face down a huge foaming mob screaming that we're "fanbois" because we're not upset that their favorite feature got canned.  Heck, actually liking DA2 was bad enough.

[Althix]

not movie, but a novell. interactive novell.

 

As for 1st or 2nd group. i believe the first one - which includes all sorts of... regular consumers is bigger, than a second group of hardcore gamers.

 

and as you can understand, number and numbers again. at least this makes sense.

 

just remove yourself from the hype train and you'll be fine.

[Lennard Testarossa]

Can you have BOTH people who want an interactive movie AND hardcore gamers as core audience for the SAME game?  Is that going to work?

 

Yes. The only way to do that, as far as I can tell, anyway, would be to design the combat with only the 'hardcore gamers' in mind. The combat mechanics, the encounters, the gear, everything. To reach the people who want an interactive movie, you then introduce lower difficulty levels, which have the same mechanics, but with health and damage of enemies reduced to a point where they're basically harmless. (Perhaps you also introduce a couple of toggles for things like ff.)

 

The crucial point here is that it is possible to design a challenging game and then make it easier by reducing numerical values, but it is not possible to design an easy game and then make it offer a good kind of challenge by increasing numerical values. To offer an interesting challenge, a game has to be designed from the very beginning to offer such a challenge.

 

A good example of why trying to make an easy game hard fails is the DA2 nightmare mode.

 

For DA:I, it really depends on how they approached this problem. There are a couple of things that offer hope (no health regen, ff), but also a couple of things that make me worry (only 8 abilities, "return of immunities").

[Elhanan]

Hopefully, I have not complained, but have voiced concerns over some gameplay issues. I consider myself a story driven Player; have only played a single Sandbox RPG. That said, it has become one of my favorite games, so occasionally change is a good thing.

Personally, I do not enjoy crafting as a general rule, esp Alchemy, and really enjoyed that in SWTOR, this could be assigned to Companions instead. I like that Crafting is an option presented to Players, as others love to delve into it; simply concerned that it might become mandatory.

And I have played games with limited Quickslots, and have enjoyed them (eg; ME series). My concern is that if I have numerous abilities and skills, that I may be unable to use them all, and will be limited to only a few. For myself, that breaks immersion; one usually does not forget abilities, or only selectively recalls which to use during missions and quests. This becomes about mechanics, and a bit less about RP.

Voicing concerns now has taught me to not expect being able to play DA-MP, and to avoid certain in game choices; this kind of foreknowledge is helpful to me. But I do agree that complaining and whining over gameplay that is untested seems rather childish.

[coldflame]

This is BSN/internet. People will always have different opinions. 

[Wulfram]

I think you'll find as much disagreement among people who want challenging combat as between people who want that and people with more of a story focus.

 

Maybe even more - story focused people can just switch to easy, so there's not a lot of conflict, while catering to one set of preferences for combat is often a detriment to those who like other kinds.

 

(and that probably goes for story types too)

[Joseph Warrick]

Maybe the first group that plays for the story and doesn't care about combat reached that conclusion after playing DA:O and DA2. Since the combat in Inquisition is different, maybe they'll like it better this time. Same for the other group. Maybe the differences will make them like the game more. Isn't that why things get changed in the first place?

 

I don't like Insanity but I do like the combat in ME. However I use killallhostiles in DA:O. I think ME proved you can make a game that has something for everybody.

[PsychoBlonde]

Yes. The only way to do that, as far as I can tell, anyway, would be to design the combat with only the 'hardcore gamers' in mind. The combat mechanics, the encounters, the gear, everything. To reach the people who want an interactive movie, you then introduce lower difficulty levels, which have the same mechanics, but with health and damage of enemies reduced to a point where they're basically harmless. (Perhaps you also introduce a couple of toggles for things like ff.)

A very good point, and I think something a lot of people in group 1 are kind of afraid of, because to them any optional feature (that may be fairly mandatory on higher difficulties) seems to come across as a default mandatory feature.

A lot of what I've seen for Inquisition thus far indicates that there's every reason to believe that they've included tons of optional stuff that is NOT MANDATORY.  That's always a tough call with RPG's because optional stuff means things players may never see, and it's SUPER-hard to get the kind of budget you need to make a deep, story-driven game that doesn't tie you to the railroad tracks.  There are some big tradeoffs there in terms of development time and zots.

[PsychoBlonde]

This is BSN/internet. People will always have different opinions. 

I know, and I'm not complaining that people have different opinions.  I'm wondering if there's an inherent deep divide in this *type* of game that is going to result in pissing off half the "core" audience in such a way as to sink the genre or radically change it to the point that it's just not appealing to the same groups of people any more.

[Lady Nuggins]

I'd hazard to say that most people are like you and are interested in both.  But a crowd of people on the internet all giving their opinions tends to give the impression that everyone is a lot more polarized than that.  

[PsychoBlonde]

And I have played games with limited Quickslots, and have enjoyed them (eg; ME series). My concern is that if I have numerous abilities and skills, that I may be unable to use them all, and will be limited to only a few. For myself, that breaks immersion; one usually does not forget abilities, or only selectively recalls which to use during missions and quests. This becomes about mechanics, and a bit less about RP.

The problem I have with this is that it's fundamentally always been about mechanics, combat-wise.  Every game has some goofy conceits that if you think about them too much can break immersion.  Immersion is really a highly subjective matter.  I, personally, think that if they can actually design GOOD combat--combat that stays interesting long-term, that keeps you playing without turning the difficulty down to Easy just to get the slog over with--THEN it's time to gripe about "these conceits are dopey and need to be fixed for game 4".  But since they didn't even get as far as "good combat" for the first 2 games, I think what they've shown thus far is extremely positive--even with a few dopey conceits.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'd hazard to say that most people are like you and are interested in both.  But a crowd of people on the internet all giving their opinions tends to give the impression that everyone is a lot more polarized than that.  

It'd also help if people would make more of an effort to prioritize how big of a deal any given gripe is.  I (think) I try to do this most of the time.  Starting in with the strongest invective imaginable (PREORDER CANCELED!!!) isn't exactly productive.

Granted I don't think anyone has much respect for the people that DO that . . .

[aTigerslunch]

Bioware had me at Black Isle, and wont loose me till either I die or they fall apart...  whichever comes first, and I assume (hoping) it be me first.    Then after I pass I will go and haunt Bioware and play their future games they create.  Entertainment for afterlife too 

[frylock23]

Oh, I love a good story and I like a good challenge in terms of gameplay. I will admit to being a bit dismayed by the 8 quick slot thing, but until I see how it all plays out, I'm not going to complain too much about it aside from this level of mild reservation. I'm the type of person who would play with as many as three or four quick-slot trays in the only MMO I ever got into. It kept all my options available.

 

Most people in those games get into chain they hit, but I liked having all my options open because you never knew for sure when you needed to inject a different tool into the fight. Even sometimes with a known mob, you wound up finding out that a certain power you almost never needed would work best in a certain situation, and it was nice to have it available.

 

With a tray limit of 8, it may limit me. The last thing I want is to feel like I plow into a fight only to find out the best tool for the job isn't in my tray. I guess I might be making alternate tray listings so I can minimize the time it will take to switch load-outs and tactics.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Maybe the reason why big-budget games like Dragon Age are vanishing is *because*, qua game, they're a strange leftover of a type of game that, for a brief period of time managed to get an audience by uniting several groups of gamers with completely opposing interests.

You're probably right about that.  I've been arguing for years that targeting the large audience is a fool's errand (I worked for 13+ years at an organization whose entire mission was, I thought, a fool's errand, so I'm clearly willing to enable those from time to time), and instead BioWare should have, after NWN, moved toward smaller-budget games aimed at a smaller audience.  With NWN, they already built their own direct digital distribution pipeline, and could have potentially just self-published everything.  So I thought they should do that.

 

But instead, they decided to make a console Star Wars game, so clearly they had something else in mind (I don't use console as an insult there, but traditionally console games were mass consumption products, and certainly Star Wars is, and KotOR was also only annouced for XBox initially).

 

I am excited to see other developers picking up the mantle of smaller-budget RPGs aimed at a smaller audience.  I expect I'll spend a lot of time with Wasteland 2 when it arrives at my door in the coming days.  But the reason I keep following BioWare is because BioWare was always the best at giving me what I wanted.  They've been getting less and less good at it, but upto and including DAO they were still the best.  And even with my general disappointment and annoyance at the design choices behind DA2 and ME2 (ME2 especially - that one just makes me angry), they had a lot of things going for them.  I'd still choose those games above any of The Witcher games, for example.

 

I see tons of potential in BioWare, but it's been unrealised potential for a few years now.

[Lennard Testarossa]

I'd still choose those games above any of The Witcher games, for example.

 

Why?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Why?

I loathe The Witcher's combat system.  I made it 10 minutes into the first game before I gave up in frustration.

 

Action combat is the devil.

[coldflame]

 

Action combat is the devil.

 

Lol, you gonna love DA:I then...

[PsychoBlonde]

You're probably right about that.  I've been arguing for years that targeting the large audience is a fool's errand (I worked for 13+ years at an organization whose entire mission was, I thought, a fool's errand, so I'm clearly willing to enable those from time to time), and instead BioWare should have, after NWN, moved toward smaller-budget games aimed at a smaller audience.  With NWN, they already built their own direct digital distribution pipeline, and could have potentially just self-published everything.  So I thought they should do that.

 

But instead, they decided to make a console Star Wars game, so clearly they had something else in mind (I don't use console as an insult there, but traditionally console games were mass consumption products, and certainly Star Wars is, and KotOR was also only annouced for XBox initially).

 

I am excited to see other developers picking up the mantle of smaller-budget RPGs aimed at a smaller audience.  I expect I'll spend a lot of time with Wasteland 2 when it arrives at my door in the coming days.  But the reason I keep following BioWare is because BioWare was always the best at giving me what I wanted.  They've been getting less and less good at it, but upto and including DAO they were still the best.  And even with my general disappointment and annoyance at the design choices behind DA2 and ME2 (ME2 especially - that one just makes me angry), they had a lot of things going for them.  I'd still choose those games above any of The Witcher games, for example.

 

I see tons of potential in BioWare, but it's been unrealised potential for a few years now.

I don't know if targeting a large audience per se is a fool's errand--keep in mind Bioware went over to EA during the era of Big Graphics, and to make a Big Graphics game you need a Big Budget and thus a Big Audience.  I don't think "RPG audience" is *inherently* a "small" audience, either.  I just wonder if the overall improvements that have hit gaming in the past decade or so have effectively splintered the "core" of the audience here.  We all used to be quite happy with simple games that had janky combat and goofy, wildly unbalanced mechanics, with the story delivered through text.  Now we have enormous technical improvements--voice acting, character models that can interact and have facial expressions, awesome graphics . . . and nobody's happy.

I've been playing the Wasteland 2 beta and from what I know of your preferences, you're going to love it.  I quite enjoy it myself. 

[Ms .45]

I loathe The Witcher's combat system.  I made it 10 minutes into the first game before I gave up in frustration.

 

Action combat is the devil.

Was that because it was far too easy? It was basically button-mashing. I enjoyed TW2, but only completed it by going the mage route and stunning all my enemies then swording them to death (and, OK, playing on Easy).

[Lennard Testarossa]

I loathe The Witcher's combat system.  I made it 10 minutes into the first game before I gave up in frustration.

 

Action combat is the devil.

 

I do feel compelled to point out that the combat systems of TW and TW 2 are very different. (It's still action combat, though.)

 

Was that because it was far too easy? It was basically button-mashing. I enjoyed TW2, but only completed it by going the mage route and stunning all my enemies then swording them to death (and, OK, playing on Easy).

 

TW 2 wasn't particularly easy, certainly not on higher difficulties. And button mashing doesn't really get you all that far. I mean, sure, on 'easy' it's well...easy. But then again, so are all the Dragon Age games. And since 'normal' is the new 'easy', playing a game on 'normal' doesn't really count either. Anything below 'hard' doesn't tell you anything about a game anymore.

[PsychoBlonde]

Please don't threadjack by covering the place in Witcher.

[Lennard Testarossa]

Please don't threadjack by covering the place in Witcher.

 

Apologies.

[Elhanan]

I do feel compelled to point out that the combat systems of TW and TW 2 are very different. (It's still action combat, though.) 
 
TW 2 wasn't particularly easy, certainly not on higher difficulties. And button mashing doesn't really get you all that far. I mean, sure, on 'easy' it's well...easy. But then again, so are all the Dragon Age games. And since 'normal' is the new 'easy', playing a game on 'normal' doesn't really count either. Anything below 'hard' doesn't tell you anything about a game anymore.

Not to be too direct, but Horse Sprinkles!

Difficulty often has little to do with the settings, and more to do with AI, terrain, Companions, etc. I have 2800+ hrs in Skyrim, and all has been on Normal. The majority of that was modded for increased difficulty, as buffing opponents and nerfing the PC ain't difficult; it's tedious, and has little to do with an actual challenge. The arbitrary Immunities seen in DA2 are rather like this too; more irritating than tactical or strategic puzzles to be solved.

Now, I have not played a second of the TW series for other reasons, so have no clue as to how challenging their game can be. However, I have read of many criticisms of the combat and game mechanics, as well as praise for the overall story. I hope that true difficulty can be achieved at any setting; not emplaced by some slider in the menu.