253 réponses à ce sujet

[Medhia_Nox]

@seraphymon:  You didn't like those things - totally valid, but what I will say is that when you start doing something with your life that involves the critique of people beyond your immediate cohorts you'll find that no matter what you do, you're going to get something wrong. That doesn't meant that it "is" wrong - though an intelligent development team considers all critiques from the helpful to whining - it just means that 1 or 1 million people didn't like what you did with something.

[kipac]

And let's not forget that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is just one long Fed Ex Quest: Deliver this ring to this mountain.
 
Even intricate and expansive stories can be trivialized if you try hard enough.

They should've ordered with premium shipping (giant eagles) right from the get go and be done with all the shenanigans day 1.

[LordParbr]

They should've ordered with premium shipping (giant eagles) right from the get go and be done with all the shenanigans day 1.

Wouldn't have worked. Sauron would have known what was happening long before they got to Mordor, and sent the Nazgul astride fell beasts to tear the eagles apart. Then, when they got to Mordor, they would have to dodge arrows, trebuchet/catapult amunition, and balista bolts.

EDIT: The main reason they took a less direct approach was that their best hope of even getting the ring to Mount Doom was that Sauron didn't know who had it, or where it was.

[Aurok]

@Aurok:  What IS the difference between 10 Meat and Urn of Ashes? 

Go play through the Urn of Ashes questline again and you'll see the difference. The several layers of depth and quality seperating them are pretty unmissable.

Nobody should be under any illusion here: if DAI is chock full of MMO fetch quests (and everyone knows exactly what is meant by that) then the game will get absolutely slammed for it in reviews. If it's the odd one or two it won't be an issue, but if every area becomes a shopping list of 'Kill ten deer, kill ten wolves, kill ten bears, kill ten darkspawn, collect 10 red flowers, collect 10 blue flowers, plant your flag in 10 places...' etc etc, like an offline MMO, then we're going to be looking at a DA2 reception all over again.

[Medhia_Nox]

@Aurok: Yes, I played DA:O three times... I'm aware of the quest for the Urn.

 

And - to be honest... time number two and three I found it rather tediously long. 

 

Fetch 1 Pinch of Ashes takes about 1 hour to complete from Haven to Urn - and I'd argue that's skipping a lot of extraneous stuff.  Fetch 10 meat can done through the course of my gaming very likely and I very likely won't have to focus on it if I don't want to.

 

And there are plenty of fetch quests in the Urn portion alone..  The Scrolls of Banastor, the Revenants in the phylacteries, Etc.  

 

You don't have to like them - but the alarmist attitude isn't reasonable.

[Jester]

Nobody should be under any illusion here: if DAI is chock full of MMO fetch quests (and everyone knows exactly what is meant by that) then the game will get absolutely slammed for it in reviews. If it's the odd one or two it won't be an issue, but if every area becomes a shopping list of 'Kill ten deer, kill ten wolves, kill ten bears, kill ten darkspawn, collect 10 red flowers, collect 10 blue flowers, plant your flag in 10 places...' etc etc, like an offline MMO, then we're going to be looking at a DA2 reception all over again.

DA:O had far more "MMO fetch quests" than DA2 actually. In DA2 you just had an occasional "I found an item, give it to a random guy you magically know the location of" for a few coins. The rest of the quests had a backstory (I'm not saying they were all well designed, but they weren't fetch quests). In DA:O there was a ton of quests like "give 10 lyrium potions to Knight-Captain", kill 3 bears, kill a horde of wolves, mark 4 houses, find 5 courriers...". There actually WAS a shopping list in every area, in form of Mages Collective, Blackstone Irregulars, Chantry Board...

I don't remember it being bashed for this kind of design though. 

[Medhia_Nox]

@Jester: In DA:O it's "nostalgic" - in everything else it's like an MMO.

 

Between this - healing - and attributes... the BSN is making me hate DA:O. 

[efd731]

Go play through the Urn of Ashes questline again and you'll see the difference. The several layers of depth and quality seperating them are pretty unmissable.

Nobody should be under any illusion here: if DAI is chock full of MMO fetch quests (and everyone knows exactly what is meant by that) then the game will get absolutely slammed for it in reviews. If it's the odd one or two it won't be an issue, but if every area becomes a shopping list of 'Kill ten deer, kill ten wolves, kill ten bears, kill ten darkspawn, collect 10 red flowers, collect 10 blue flowers, plant your flag in 10 places...' etc etc, like an offline MMO, then we're going to be looking at a DA2 reception all over again.

are you being deliberately dense? You are equating one of the main storyline quests of DAO with the DAI equivalent of the 'farmer dude in lothering wants 2 poison because reasons'. There's a goddamn dark spawn army coming, and he wants two poison is a fuckton less convincing personally than "we are a fledgling orgimizatoon that needs grassroots support so let's save the lives if these refugees". And even then, the urn of ashes is the "beefed up" version of "wounded X, do you have a healing potion". The point is that you're comparing the main story content to side quests, of course there will be a quality difference. Compare the urn of sacred ashes to defeating a certain someone who's controlling the grey wardens, or whatever is gonna happen at the Orlesian masked ball between celene and gaspard. Not a minor fetch quest purely designed to push you out of the village and into the world.
Edit: your rose-colored glasses and nostalgia are showing

[Eudaemonium]

@Jester: In DA:O it's "nostalgic" - in everything else it's like an MMO.

 

Between this - healing - and attributes... the BSN is making me hate DA:O. 

 

I went through a phase of hating DAO because of BSN rose-tinted specs. Especially when I tried to replay it. i calmed down, though, and am a more mellow person these days.

 

People remember the fetch quests in DA2 because they were *really* bad. DA:O (and it looks like DA:I) has typical MMO-style fetch quests where you talk to a person or find a note that asks for 10 of X item, kill 3 of Y enemies, etc. DA2 has those weird things where you find a random item and Hawke psychically knows who it belongs to. Even Stalker Shepard made more sense.

[Aurok]

are you being deliberately dense? You are equating one of the main storyline quests of DAO with the DAI equivalent of the 'farmer dude in lothering wants 2 poison because reasons'. There's a goddamn dark spawn army coming, and he wants two poison is a fuckton less convincing personally than "we are a fledgling orgimizatoon that needs grassroots support so let's save the lives if these refugees". And even then, the urn of ashes is the "beefed up" version of "wounded X, do you have a healing potion". The point is that you're comparing the main story content to side quests, of course there will be a quality difference. Compare the urn of sacred ashes to defeating a certain someone who's controlling the grey wardens, or whatever is gonna happen at the Orlesian masked ball between celene and gaspard. Not a minor fetch quest purely designed to push you out of the village and into the world.
Edit: your rose-colored glasses and nostalgia are showing

I was the one saying they weren't comparable. Keep up, dear.

[Medhia_Nox]

@Aurok:  But you ARE suggesting that's all there is to DA:I and people better be prepared.

 

There's going to be "Get 10 meat" quests... just like there were a million of them in DA:O

 

And then there will be story quests - just like there were in DA:O.  

 

And I wasn't comparing them... I stated in a very early post that the different is depth and story... but they are BOTH fetch quests.  It is simply "how" you treat the quest that makes it appear different.

 

Ultimately - DA:I will be... "Fetch 1 Closed Portal" wrapped in a very in depth tapestry.

[DarkKnightHolmes]

My worst fear is back. The stalking quests!

Also didn't PCGamer give DA2 a rating of 94 and called it "RPG of the decade"?   

[Medhia_Nox]

@DarkKnightHolmes:  You embarrass The Bat by having ANY fear!!   

[DarkKnightHolmes]

@DarkKnightHolmes:  You embarrass The Bat by having ANY fear!!   

 

Stalking quests killed my parents!

[Aurok]

Like I said, the 'everything is ultimately a fetch quest' defence is disingenuous (not to mention laughably weak) when everyone knows exactly the specific type and calibre of mission people mean when they refer to 'fetch quests'. They clearly aren't complaining about any quest which happens to involve getting something are they? It's now widely accepted -apart from here apparently- that the term has a more specific meaning than that.

The impression that the PC Gamer guys came away with after a few hours seems to be that the game relied on fetch quests too much. That seems like a legitimate concern, and one I'm not going to blindly dismiss just because I don't want it to be true. Hopefully those concerns do turn out to be unfounded and the full game manages to find a reasonable balance, but they're right to highlight the issue if that's how it seemed from what they played.

[LordParbr]

Sherlock Holmes is so dumb. I enjoy the books, but I can't take such elastic stretching of logic seriously.

"stretching of logic?" What books were you reading?

[efd731]

Like I said, the 'everything is ultimately a fetch quest' defence is disingenuous (not to mention laughably weak) when everyone knows exactly the specific type and calibre of mission people mean when they refer to 'fetch quests'. They clearly aren't complaining about any quest which happens to involve getting something are they? It's now widely accepted -apart from here apparently- that the term has a more specific meaning than that.

The impression that the PC Gamer guys came away with after a few hours seems to be that the game relied on fetch quests too much. That seems like a legitimate concern, and one I'm not going to blindly dismiss just because I don't want it to be true. Hopefully those concerns do turn out to be unfounded and the full game manages to find a reasonable balance, but they're right to highlight the issue if that's how it seemed from what they played.

Of course they assumed it was primarily fetch quests, because they primarily did fetch quests. You can complete 2 minor quests and seal 2 portals and boom, on your way to Val Royeaux.

[FaWa]

This is implemented in every RPG ever. I dont understand how being implemented in this way is any better or worse?

 

But yea them hating the combat means I'll probably love it.

[LordParbr]

I've read every one. The most textbook example is the story with Mycroft. I don't recall too many of the particular details, but one has always stuck out to me: a woman is leaving the market, carrying various things, including small toys for children. Both Mycroft and Sherlock assume the children are hers and that they are not gifts, or simply running an errand for a friend. It's a leap of logic.

in a case like that, they're taking in everything else about her and playing the odds

[berrieh]

@Entropic Angel - The interesting thing about Sherlock is that while he uses sound logic - including sound logical leaps - he does not actually use deductive reasoning but rather abductive reasoning which requires some assumptions. He uses the best probabilities given to him, but that's likely to be imperfect at some point. It's just frustrating that it never is.

 

Though, to my view, Hawke is no Sherlock Holmes. I don't see how she/he has enough to even go on. My headcanon was always that CLEARLY every item found has an engraving with the owners name, home address, and most common locations. 

[DuckTheSecond]

There's some thoughts from Chris Thursten of PC Gamer on the Crate and Crowbar podcast:

 

 

Starts at (1:19:45), discusses dropping the character into the world/infodumping at (1:37:00) 

His impression was far more positive than Tom and Tim's comments, and he contrasts his opinions with theirs. Worth a listen if you have the time.

 

-Points out the busywork is totally optional and you can gain power (to advance the main story) in other ways.

-Does acknowledge the abrupt "just go with it" introduction and then all the minor objectives that instantly pop up afterward might annoy.

-Minor spoiler about how the world reacts to you as a elf.

 

That part where he talks about the elf quizzy going to the quartermaster and being handed a broom reminds me of the quartermaster in DA:O. I loved being able to say I was someone important and then see his reaction

 

I want to address 2 issues: 1) "the first 6 hours" and 2) completionists

 

FIRST SIX HOURS 

I believe that these demos/previews are story-locked. So, naturally, after you finish the small bit of main story you're allowed to access, the quests that pop up in the Hinterlands (the only area they can go to, so far as I know) is several hours of fussing about in the woods, in the very beginning of an RPG story. I imagine that many story-important side-quests won't all be available at the get-go, that you will need to build power and influence for them or that they will unlock timed with events, because that is what makes logical sense to me (I could be wrong). I also imagine that if the Hinterlands is a starting area, a lot of the things to do - at least in the first part of that area - will be easy tasks to serve as tutorial for you to get used to the game. I think looking at their 6 hour preview as YOUR first 6 hours is incorrect. However, it's worth noting, plenty of reviewers did feel there was story and purpose to their 6 hours. 

 

COMPLETIONISTS

I am often a completionist too. However, RPG completionists need to understand how rare they are and that a game is rarely built to their specifications. Most people don't finish games. Most people certainly don't fully complete an open-world RPG. 

 

Adding in a large array of "fetch quests" related to the events of the world (the wars, the breaches, etc) with thematic ties but not thorough writing allows the average player to see a large and teeming world. The average player doesn't feel the need to complete EVERY SINGLE ONE. The average player appreciates a pool of these to build power, feel immersed, drive exploration, etc, and ignores the ones they don't want to do without worrying about it. 

 

First of all, DA:O had a fair amount of fetch quests and story-lite quests; people seem to idealize it, but I skipped all that stuff in a recent playthrough, and it doesn't stop at Lothering. It's almost everywhere - find this vial, fetch me ironbark, collect love letters, do this ritual, etc. They were tinged in lore, so fun for a first playthrough but not fun again and again. An open-world game doesn't work without a wider-array of quests. So there will be more of those - they still look tinged in lore and purpose, which is important. But the good news about more is that it gives you an array to do or not do in different playthroughs, drives exploration, and allows options for how to build power/influence in each region. 

 

Bioware didn't previously fill ANY game with all high-quality story content, not even in a NOT open world. No one currently making games is capable of generating enough story to fill an open world with ALL high-quality, story-heavy content. No one has ever done that. Tying the small quests, like fetch 10 bear meat, into the context of the world is to be expected - THAT I expect of Bioware, and it seems they delivered. This game has MORE dialogue than DA:O and DA2 put together; this game has a long, involved main story if the 30-40 hour estimate is to be believed; this game has a lot of optional content to varying degrees of story intenseness. But it is going to have some stuff that is mainly to drive exploration and make the world feel not empty. 

 

I agree with this post. 

 

I feel like those two subjects are being made too much of  a big deal about.

[Eudaemonium]

Though, to my view, Hawke is no Sherlock Holmes. I don't see how she/he has enough to even go on. My headcanon was always that CLEARLY every item found has an engraving with the owners name, home address, and most common locations. 

 

Especially the desiccated remains of that man's sister.

 

Implications… unpleasant.