70 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

the problem with DA:I.. though bioware DID show off combat, they made no real mention of how the combat would REALLY work on PC - i.e. demonstrating the clunky tactical combat (sorry but this is objectively true.. the tactical camera is terrible), mentioning that you have to hold a button down for auto-attack, etc. if you believe they did, post the livestream showing it.

I knew before release that the Action Cam didn't have a proper auto-attack. That's why I kept insisting that it needed to be possible to play the whole game in the Tac Cam (it isn't).

But, I do think the Tac Cam works really well. It's free-roaming, we can look forward (and around corners) with it, and the controls are what I wanted (WASD, like Total War's camera). There are some minor tweaks I would like, but overall I think it's BioWare's best camera.

[Teophne]

I don't know what's all this fuss about "main plot relevance". I don't know what's my main plot in life. Maybe work? Maybe not? 

I'm not sure my Inquisitor knows either.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't know what's all this fuss about "main plot relevance". I don't know what's my main plot in life. Maybe work? Maybe not?
I'm not sure my Inquisitor knows either.

Exactly!

The main plot only exists from a metagame perspective. From a roleplaying perspective (in-character), there's no such thing.

[mickey111]

There was nothing wrong with the BG1 world design. The philosophy that every scene needs to have direct bearing on the plot gives poor results in games as well as in movies. It makes a game feel streamlined and may provide a sense of constant urgency, but severely limits player agency and imagination. In BG2, though it brought many improvements to the table and is arguably a better game overall, the world feels smaller and more constricted - almost every location is just a branch off the main hub. In my opinion, a well-crafted critical path storyline combined with large optional areas to explore makes for the best combination.

 

Edit: As for BioWare making BG1 during their "amateur days", what does it tell you that BG1 and BG2 are widely considered their best work? On-rails transportation from plot point to plot point should never be the way of an RPG.

 

 

BGII? What about it? It's got much more stuff on average per square meter than BGI. And that is at the heart of what my complaint is about. stuff per square meter. content density. Linearity and exploration don't have **** to do with my problem. Exploration was fine in dininity original sin for me, mainly because I was finding cool and interesting stuff (as in stuff that were hand crafted and made for story and quest of the non-repetitive variety) at a rate of one every 10-15 minutes which is less than half the time it took to find anything remarkable in BG. Of course, BG and DOS had no quest markers, so I can actually find things more often in inquistion... but my point still stands: one small room full of stuff is better than two massive plains where that same amount of stuff is much more spread out. 

[Hurbster]

Hmmmm, Skyrim got open world exploration and the need to explore right. Many, many secrets to be found. DA:I...not so much.

[Lowenklee]

Because Skyrim sold a bazillion copies and apparently someone determined, wrongly, that the open world with junk quests and trash respawning trash mobs was part of that success.

 

It was for me, likewise in Oblivion and its superior predecessor Morrowind. May that sensibility never perish in RPG development.

 

...quite frankly it is the largest source of my amusement in DA:I thus far as well (though the structured story is also quite enjoyable).

[Lebanese Dude]

Hmmmm, Skyrim got open world exploration and the need to explore right. Many, many secrets to be found. DA:I...not so much.

 

Um... I don't think DAI is trying to be Skyrim. 

[CronoDragoon]

The easy answer to this is that it gels with the story they were trying to tell. Big, wide-open exploration doesn't make sense for something like Mass Effect 2's story, but it does for a story about building the Inquisition and restoring order.

 

The more-complicated answer is that this is likely something they've wanted to do for awhile, and Skyrim proved that the audience is there. Combined with Frostbite's strength of building large zones, and you can see the beginnings of a game's design form.

[Sidney]

Exactly!
The main plot only exists from a metagame perspective. From a roleplaying perspective (in-character), there's no such thing.

Something called the main plot might not exist but your character clearly knows what job 1 is. To pretend otherwise means your character is a moron.

It is clear in every Bioware game, it is why all the side quest/ exploration stuff is irredeemably stupid in ist games. You know you need to stop Sovereign but you are motoring around looking for a rock. You are trying to stop the blight...oh look you just got fired sir, bad day! What you appear to want is a sandbox and not a story because other than BG2's scramble for cash to recover Imoen and ME2's waiting for the next collector attack moments the sides make zero sense in a world where you are told you are on the clock.

[Sidney]

It was for me, likewise in Oblivion and its superior predecessor Morrowind. May that sensibility never perish in RPG development.
 
...quite frankly it is the largest source of my amusement in DA:I thus far as well (though the structured story is also quite enjoyable).

..and I hope TES keeps cranking out their games for people like you as long as it stop messing up games I might actually like.

[AlanC9]

BGII? What about it? It's got much more stuff on average per square meter than BGI. And that is at the heart of what my complaint is about. stuff per square meter. content density.

The problem with that standard is that the BG2 maps deliberately cut out most of the world; you just have the target areas for the missions. If you go with high density and more inclusive maps, things get pretty bizarre. In Skyrim you can stand on the roof at Winterhold and see something like eight different ancient ruins and whatnot. Which is probably why there's so much fog.

[AlanC9]

It is clear in every Bioware game, it is why all the side quest/ exploration stuff is irredeemably stupid in ist games. You know you need to stop Sovereign but you are motoring around looking for a rock. You are trying to stop the blight...oh look you just got fired sir, bad day! What you appear to want is a sandbox and not a story because other than BG2's scramble for cash to recover Imoen and ME2's waiting for the next collector attack moments the sides make zero sense in a world where you are told you are on the clock.

I'd call ME3 a partial exception too, since Shepard has to wait for the Crucible to be completed. Partial because most of the time the next Priority mission does seem to be of a higher, um, priority than the other stuff Shepard can be doing, and doing the Priority missions advances the clock.

[Teophne]

Exactly!

The main plot only exists from a metagame perspective. From a roleplaying perspective (in-character), there's no such thing.

 

Just yesterday I had a talk with Varric who introduced me to Bianca. There was a quest on red lyrium. 

Hadn't there been a quest journal showing it being an Inner Circle quest instead of Way of the Inquisition I wouldn't have had the slightest idea whether it's main story quest or not. 

Heck, I still don't know whether it would affect the main story, maybe blocking red templars from some of their powers.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Something called the main plot might not exist but your character clearly knows what job 1 is. To pretend otherwise means your character is a moron.

It is clear in every Bioware game, it is why all the side quest/ exploration stuff is irredeemably stupid in ist games. You know you need to stop Sovereign but you are motoring around looking for a rock. You are trying to stop the blight...oh look you just got fired sir, bad day! What you appear to want is a sandbox and not a story because other than BG2's scramble for cash to recover Imoen and ME2's waiting for the next collector attack moments the sides make zero sense in a world where you are told you are on the clock.

BG didn't.  BG offered a bunch of plot threads that didn't all tie together, and the ones that did didn't do so until Chapter 3.

 

The NWN OC revealed the plot only in fits and starts.  At the beginning there's a plague, and only once that is dealt with is there a follow-up objective (and even the plague need not be the PC's primary goal during Chapter 1).

 

ME had you trying to find Saren, but he really could have been anywhere, so there were myriad ways to go about pursuing him (including following leads about geth sightings on the uncharted worlds).

 

KotOR pulls the rug out from under the PC and radically changes the plot halfway through the game (and with the undefined PC background at the start, the first half of the game really could be about anything).

 

BG2 fails when it presumes you care at all about Imoen.

 

DAO fails by handing you the plot right up front.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Just yesterday I had a talk with Varric who introduced me to Bianca. There was a quest on red lyrium. 

Hadn't there been a quest journal showing it being an Inner Circle quest instead of Way of the Inquisition I wouldn't have had the slightest idea whether it's main story quest or not. 

Heck, I still don't know whether it would affect the main story, maybe blocking red templars from some of their powers.

I really wish we could disable the categorisation of quests in the journal.  I don't want to know which quests are mandatory.

 

As DA2 demonstrated, that alone isn't sufficient for me to want to do them.  When I run out of quests I want to do, I stop playing, regardless how they're categorised.

[AlanC9]

ME had you trying to find Saren, but he really could have been anywhere, so there were myriad ways to go about pursuing him (including following leads about geth sightings on the uncharted worlds).

That works for the Armstrong Cluster quest series. I don't see how it works for any of the others.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That works for the Armstrong Cluster quest series. I don't see how it works for any of the others.

You could just be doing a methodical sweep.

The intelligence that points to Feros, Noveria, and Virmire is awfully neat. Shepard could be skeptical.

[Sidney]

BG didn't.  BG offered a bunch of plot threads that didn't all tie together, and the ones that did didn't do so until Chapter 3.
 
The NWN OC revealed the plot only in fits and starts.  At the beginning there's a plague, and only once that is dealt with is there a follow-up objective (and even the plague need not be the PC's primary goal during Chapter 1).
 
ME had you trying to find Saren, but he really could have been anywhere, so there were myriad ways to go about pursuing him (including following leads about geth sightings on the uncharted worlds).
 
KotOR pulls the rug out from under the PC and radically changes the plot halfway through the game (and with the undefined PC background at the start, the first half of the game really could be about anything).
 
BG2 fails when it presumes you care at all about Imoen.
 
DAO fails by handing you the plot right up front.

ME you were chasing Saren but there was no possible way you thought searching for the Matriarch's writing were helping you in that effort. Nor chasing down random pirate. Same in KOTOR, the plot may change but that is because the plot was find the star forge and then became something else. You seem to confuse knowing the whole story arc with knowing what is important. There is always a "right now" thing screaming at you most of the time.

The problem is that it requires massive levels of meta-gaming to do any of the side quests because your character should know what the deal is and should feel some sort of pressure to finish and save the world or universe not lolly gagging around risking health and well being doing what are in comparison trivial things.

[mickey111]

In Mass Effeccts citadel you were scanning the keepers for money, and if the citadel security were doing their job right they would probably have Shepard arrested for loitering, and then arrested again when you went back in ME3 to eavesdrop on everybodies personal quests. 

 

The thing I don't understand is why the player doesn't get to delegate unimportant nothing jobs to the unimportant nobodies several ranks beneath you. You're supposed to be a boss in these bioware games, yet the gameplay doesn't support that at all. The Ezio trilogy of Assassins Creed managed to find ways for ezio to build up a crew of contract workers to do things unfit for a man of ezios ability so I don't know what excuse Bioware had for Mass Effects trilogy, or certain parts of DA series. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

ME you were chasing Saren but there was no possible way you thought searching for the Matriarch's writing were helping you in that effort. Nor chasing down random pirate. Same in KOTOR, the plot may change but that is because the plot was find the star forge and then became something else. You seem to confuse knowing the whole story arc with knowing what is important. There is always a "right now" thing screaming at you most of the time.

The problem is that it requires massive levels of meta-gaming to do any of the side quests because your character should know what the deal is and should feel some sort of pressure to finish and save the world or universe not lolly gagging around risking health and well being doing what are in comparison trivial things.

I think not knowing the whole plot helps in allowing sidequests. Because I don't metagame at all, but I also don't trust everything the game tells me about what's going on.

But fine, then let's stick with the BG example. There's no urgency at all until Chapter 5.

[Lebanese Dude]

 

The thing I don't understand is why the player doesn't get to delegate unimportant nothing jobs to the unimportant nobodies several ranks beneath you. 

This is exactly what the war table is for...

[CronoDragoon]

The thing I don't understand is why the player doesn't get to delegate unimportant nothing jobs to the unimportant nobodies several ranks beneath you. You're supposed to be a boss in these bioware games, yet the gameplay doesn't support that at all. The Ezio trilogy of Assassins Creed managed to find ways for ezio to build up a crew of contract workers to do things unfit for a man of ezios ability so I don't know what excuse Bioware had for Mass Effects trilogy, or certain parts of DA series. 

 

The unimportant things you do are largely on the way to important things. I'm not going to go out of my way to get someone's ring back, but I'll pick it up if it's otw to that Rift yonder.

[Ashagar]

BG2 fails when it presumes you care at all about Imoen.

 

What now? BG2 also players allowed to flat out state early on during the escape and repeatedly afterwards that you were driven for revenge on Irenicus.

[Sylvius the Mad]

What now? BG2 also players allowed to flat out state early on during the escape and repeatedly afterwards that you were driven for revenge on Irenicus.

I don't think BG2 did nearly enough in terms of providing reasons to follow the plot.

Which made the limited travel even more jarring. If you didn't accept what the game told you, there was little left for you to do.

[wepeel_]

BGII? What about it? It's got much more stuff on average per square meter than BGI. And that is at the heart of what my complaint is about. stuff per square meter. content density. Linearity and exploration don't have **** to do with my problem. Exploration was fine in dininity original sin for me, mainly because I was finding cool and interesting stuff (as in stuff that were hand crafted and made for story and quest of the non-repetitive variety) at a rate of one every 10-15 minutes which is less than half the time it took to find anything remarkable in BG. Of course, BG and DOS had no quest markers, so I can actually find things more often in inquistion... but my point still stands: one small room full of stuff is better than two massive plains where that same amount of stuff is much more spread out. 

 

I disagree again. The "stuff per square meter" idea seems similar to something BioWare's David Silverman (marketing director for Dragon Age II back in the day) famously said in a DAII trailer: "when you push a button, something awesome has to happen!" These notions seem to subscribe to a philosophy that games have to provide instant gratification all the time, and that the player gets bored as soon as something new, shiny and interesting doesn't explode across the screen.

 

Don't get me wrong, of course games should hold interesting content and plenty of it, but I question the idea that RPGs should evolve into Diablo-type games where every new room you visit needs to provide better loot and cooler stuff than the one you just left. In DAI, I personally find all the areas interesting. Sure, there's not a lich hidden in every building you enter or a world-spanning quest to be had from each NPC; but that's what any real world is like - not every being or every place you encounter is extraordinary. There's still a point to put that kind of content in a game, because it serves as contrast to everything that is extraordinary.

 

So the "regular" world with less stuff per square meter also has its place in good design. If you omit it and make sure that everything the player encounters is special in some kind of way, it ultimately only serves to reduce immersion, giving you the feeling that the only reason anything in the world exists is so you can find it, kill it and loot it.