33 réponses à ce sujet

[Tocumi]

I paid $60, I would think a printed manual would be in order.  I use to remember back in the days of BG the manual was thick and included back stories, lores and such.  The downloaded manual is only a wimpy 16 pages?!?   It appears to be the trend to save money by not including a printed manual or just include the bare essentials in a couple of pages.  I guess charging everyone $25 for the strategy guide is more profitable.  It's been awhile since I bought a bioware game since I feel they have departed from days in which they made really great games and knew how to package their games well.  I use to buy every game on day one regardless if i had time to play with it or not.  It may not be a lot, but paying $60 and just getting disks appears to be cheep.

 

I'm not gonna even go in other areas such as poor control, bugs, glitches, and DLC content that should have been included in the game.  There are plenty of post for that.

 

 

[Weltall]

That's gaming in general. They've moved away from printed manuals. Now it's all manuals on the disk and in-game tutorials.

[Hobbes]

Yeah, it has pretty much been phased out for almost all games, it isn't something you really see a lot of anymore.  

 

The ones that do still have manuals are shrinking, usually only a couple pages with controls and a very basic explanation.  The only games that still have to have extensive manuals anymore, at least somewhat consistently, are JRPGS and even those seem to be getting less and less as time go on.  Everything else is disk, maybe an online code and some warranty information...that's it.

[metatheurgist]

That's gaming in general. They've moved away from printed manuals. Now it's all manuals on the disk and in-game tutorials.

I don't mind not getting printed manuals. We have excellent electronic documents now. What's worrying is that this is the manual. Pretty strong evidence for the game being over-simplified.
 

[Kantr]

no-one does manuals now days. Does skyrim have one?

[Dakota Strider]

Just received my birthday present yesterday...Divinity:OS...with manual.  I paid more for the deluxe version of DLI, and the hard copy. No manual.   I think we can guess which company values its customers more.

[Kantr]

Indie developer. Probably had it in one the milestones too

[Dakota Strider]

Was not a contributor to their kickstarter.  The manual is available to all customers.

[Foolsfolly]

I don't mind not getting printed manuals. We have excellent electronic documents now. What's worrying is that this is the manual. Pretty strong evidence for the game being over-simplified.

Also he damn thing isn't even in the game. You can head to the Manual in your title screen and it just takes you to the website.

And like the OP sais, I really miss my manuals.

[MapleJar]

DAO's manual was good, and the collector's edition came with a cloth map. I had David Gaider sign my collector's edition of DAO a few years ago when I met him at Dragon Con. But I digress.....

 

I miss the days of RPGs coming with a detailed manual and a cloth map. Now we're stuck with these shite console inspired pamphlets that they call manuals. ******, please, that's not a manual. Have you looked at the PC version of DAI's pamphlet "manual"? One page with PC centric instructions (KBM), and the rest is just a copy/paste of the XBOX One instructions. Bah - worthless garbage!

[Lee T]

no-one does manuals now days. Does skyrim have one?

About 20 pages and a separated map (I remember reading an interview of Todd Howard where he said that he asked for the map because he likes the idea of looking at the map and wondering what's there). That was about half as the number of pages in Oblivion which had a 50+ manual with a separated map.

I don't mind the lack of manual if the ingame explanation and tutorial are enough (and I must confess that the ingame maps are anough for me, though I do like the physicial map).

[AlanC9]

I don't mind not getting printed manuals. We have excellent electronic documents now. What's worrying is that this is the manual. Pretty strong evidence for the game being over-simplified.

I'm not sure about that. I could reduce DA:O's manual to that length and complexity pretty easily, since most of the material in the manual is taught to you in-game. Unmodded DA:O doesn't include enough information about mechanics, but that isn't rectified by the manual.

[AlanC9]

About 20 pages and a separated map (I remember reading an interview of Todd Howard where he said that he asked for the map because he likes the idea of looking at the map and wondering what's there). That was about half as the number of pages in Oblivion which had a 50+ manual with a separated map.

Wow. I bought on Steam and forgot to even look for a manual.

[movieguyabw]

Yeah, haven't been a fan at all of the gaming industry moving away from printed manuals.  I suppose it saves on paper, so that's good... but I wish the alternative was something better than just "oh we have in-game tutorials" or "click here to go to our website".  Wish there was a "manual" option that we could reach by clicking "start" and would take us to some sort of in-game representation of what would've been in the game manual.

[Weltall]

This is good for the trees

And if I bought the game online, I'm not totally screwed.

[strangerism]

Lack of documentation is annoying. Doesn't take much to write a pdf that explains what things do (for instance abilities). They have all these docs in house, just make a summary. The prima guides argument is invalid. Those are spoiler full guides, I need the game manual.

[Kantr]

I do miss the days of manuals. But I buy all my games on steam

[10K]

It's a going green thing. For some games now they even use cases that are made from recycled materials.

[b10d1v]

I agree that any game should have some documentation easily accessible within the game and how Bioware does this maybe in less obvious in some cases. However, a practical consideration is that in this case issues like accessories not affecting attributes, etc. would have caused more confusion.  The volunteer groups that have been finding bugs and documenting them often ran hot enough!  Although some issues have been addressed; many have been sidelined as TBD -still want a book?

[panda_express12]

Where have you been? Manuals have been pretty much phased out in the past few years. It's all mostly digital now. I miss manuals but there is no point wasting paper for something most people look at once and never use again.

[Lord Raijin]

Dragon Age Orgins (The ultimate addition) came with a printed manual that is 32 pages long (I'm impressed that Bioware stuffed the crap outta the box).

Dragon Age 2 came with a manual that is 29 pages long. (The box seems to have gone on a diet, according to Bioware)

Dragon Age: Inquistion Deluxe Edition (Did the box became anorexic? open the box up to find nothing but the installation instructions!)

[Sartoz]

I ordered PC media and expected a manual.... you know, I go sit in my throne and browse it to get familiar with the game.

 

On top a buggy, unpolished, resource intensive, freezing crashing, poor menu navigation, no inventory management, no auto-attack... hold on.. gotta catch my breath.. and NO MANUAL on top of that!

 

PC media with no game manual indicates where EA's priorities are.... maximize profits at fans' expense..

[Lennard Testarossa]

I don't really care if there is a printed manual, so long as the mechanics of the game are documented somewhere I can access. There is little information on mechanics in-game and the online 'manual' is a ****** joke.

 

Bioware surely knows how the mechanics of their game work. They must have written it down at some point. What's so hard about compiling this information into a single document and making it available to us?

[Tocumi]

no-one does manuals now days. Does skyrim have one?

Actually there are some such as the witcher series, wasteland 2, Divinity Orginal Sin.