812 réponses à ce sujet

[KaiserShep]

I don't think I have any pre-EA memories of BioWare. My first Bio game was ME1.

[Sanunes]

It seems like BioWare couldn't really win on this front. If the story of the DLC ties into the main plot, people accuse the game of being incomplete. If it's a standalone tale, people will say that it adds nothing to the narrative and is a meaningless diversion. The only way to truly have a DLC expand the game in the manner you speak of is to have it be strictly a post-campaign story, like Awakening, but this isn't always possible, depending on how the story goes.

 

They can't even win on that front, for the problem with content designed to be post completion is BioWare has been noted to being one of the few companies with the highest completion rate and that is still around 50% so then you make the pool of people for the DLC that much smaller right off the bat.

[Hiemoth]

When AlanC9 is talking about DLC being invented by Bioware he is referencing (I'd guess) the NWN1 premium modules. And that's a PC innovation.

 

It was, at least as far I can remember. And the most frustrating part of it was that they never finished the series they started.

 

Even the Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, which I felt was clearly their best effort, was left with a damn cliffhanger.

[Hiemoth]

On some level it's always going to be cut content. That's what's insane about the position. Even into the days of expansion packs you'd have plots and gameplay elements that were abandoned or not implemented at different stages of the proceeding.

Creating a product wholly from scratch and entirely divorced from anything else is called "making a new game".

 

I agree with that statement, and as Kaisershep pointed out, it basically puts Bioware in a position where they can't win.

 

From Ashes, as an example, while providing interesting background and introducing an intriguing character, wasn't ultimately a central for the storyline, especially after they allegedly changed the script regarding him. So instead of cutting him out, they worked to bring him as a DLC character by investing resources in him. Yet, in an effort to integrate the end product in to the game better and thus provide a better experience, part of it had to be introduced already in the actual game.

 

What results from this investement? That they were selling pieces of the complete product, which wasn't true, as based on every claim from people who actually seem to understand the matter, we would never have gotten this if it wasn't as a DLC. So the argument is for Bioware not to give players stuff, just keep it from the game. Which is why I was partially sad for DA's decision to not have Day 1 DLC because of perceptions, which they literally stated as the reason, since it basically validates those accusations while saying they aren't true.

 

By the way, it is important to note that there are companies that do really questionable stuff with DLC, Azura's Wrath being an example, but those are usually really, really blatant.

[AlanC9]

It was, at least as far I can remember. And the most frustrating part of it was that they never finished the series they started.
 
Even the Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, which I felt was clearly their best effort, was left with a damn cliffhanger.

I always felt worse about Witch's Wake, which had a really nice low-level feel and some innovative design ideas. It's a shame that Rob Bartel's left video games for card games.

I never did play WCoC, and I guess I never will now.

[Hiemoth]

I always felt worse about Witch's Wake, which had a really nice low-level feel and some innovative design ideas. It's a shame that Rob Bartel's left video games for card games.

I never did play WCoC, and I guess I never will now.

 

I actually recommend WCoC, because it was really good and the cliffhanger was fortunately not as big as with some other products, with the story there brought to a conclusion.

 

What always amused me about WW, though, was the fact that they realized it was popular enough to relaunch and promise that this time they would do better, and fail again.

[LinksOcarina]

I agree with that statement, and as Kaisershep pointed out, it basically puts Bioware in a position where they can't win.

 

From Ashes, as an example, while providing interesting background and introducing an intriguing character, wasn't ultimately a central for the storyline, especially after they allegedly changed the script regarding him. So instead of cutting him out, they worked to bring him as a DLC character by investing resources in him. Yet, in an effort to integrate the end product in to the game better and thus provide a better experience, part of it had to be introduced already in the actual game.

 

What results from this investement? That they were selling pieces of the complete product, which wasn't true, as based on every claim from people who actually seem to understand the matter, we would never have gotten this if it wasn't as a DLC. So the argument is for Bioware not to give players stuff, just keep it from the game. Which is why I was partially sad for DA's decision to not have Day 1 DLC because of perceptions, which they literally stated as the reason, since it basically validates those accusations while saying they aren't true.

 

By the way, it is important to note that there are companies that do really questionable stuff with DLC, Azura's Wrath being an example, but those are usually really, really blatant.

 

Capcom is moreso dangerous regarding their DLC plans because of how they handled things like Asura's Wrath or Street Fighter X Tekken. We have also seen the backlash to that, which has begun to kill Capcom's business.  

[Revan Reborn]

I don't think I have any pre-EA memories of BioWare. My first Bio game was ME1.

Mass Effect 1 was pre-EA. The game released on the original Xbox in 2007. BioWare merged with EA in 2007. At the time, BioWare and Pandemic had merged in order to afford the costs of financing Mass Effect 1.

[In Exile]

Mass Effect 1 was pre-EA. The game released on the original Xbox in 2007. BioWare merged with EA in 2007. At the time, BioWare and Pandemic had merged in order to afford the costs of financing Mass Effect 1.

That's not exactly accurate. Bioware and Pandemic were not in good financial health. They were bought bought out (in part) by a hedge fun from somewhere in the US. It that fund which sold Bioware to EA.

[Revan Reborn]

That's not exactly accurate. Bioware and Pandemic were not in good financial health. They were bought bought out (in part) by a hedge fun from somewhere in the US. It that fund which sold Bioware to EA.

You are playing semantics. BioWare needed more resources and funding in order to finance Mass Effect 1. The absolute specifics is immaterial as BioWare and Pandemic were under the same house for a time before being merged with EA. Regardless, this all merely goes back to the point that being controlled by EA and being console-centric has greatly impacted the way BioWare handles DLC. BioWare loses autonomy and independence in trade for plenty of funds and resources to make their games. One of the best benefits of BioWare becoming a division of EA so far is the fact they are now using the Frostbite 3 engine.

[LinksOcarina]

That's not exactly accurate. Bioware and Pandemic were not in good financial health. They were bought bought out (in part) by a hedge fun from somewhere in the US. It that fund which sold Bioware to EA.

 

That also arguably saved BioWare from shutting down, but I don't know their financial books so it's impossible to say for sure. 

 

[Sanunes]

It's worth pointing out that the reason DAI likely even has as many graphical settings as it does has less to do with BioWare and more to do with DICE. Remember, DAI is running on Frostbite 3, DICE's engine. BioWare is merely reaping the benefits, whereas they used Unreal Engine 3 with the Mass Effect trilogy. There really is no good reason they had little to no PC settings at all. The fact they now are offering more as of 2014 isn't much to be celebrating. It merely reinforces the truth that BioWare is a console developer, much like Rockstar, and PC takes a back seat to the console ports.

 

Now that I think about it, being so console-centric is likely why BioWare (besides influence from EA) has gravitated to this small, over-priced DLC route. Expansion packs were largely a PC gaming feature and rarely did they ever go to consoles. DLC, in many ways, was the console version of an expansion (albeit a lot less content) really at the end of the original Xbox cycle and the beginning of the Xbox 360. Last gen consoles and the ones before couldn't really support expansions as they didn't have enough space on their hard drives. Space really isn't a concern now, but if publishers wanted, they could consider expansions for PC, then breaking them up into DLC parts on console. It won't happen, but that is a far more appealing post-development scheme.

 

The way I read what you are saying is that we can't count all those extra graphical options because it was done by DICE, but there wasn't any excuse not to have those options in Mass Effect.  If you acknowledge they removed them in one game, shouldn't they just be equally responsible for them being in another?

 

It has very little to do with PC versus console and more to do with development time and return on investment.  For multiple different developers I have read articles from state that getting the first piece of content out near the launch of the first game will have a much higher sales number then something released a year after.

[AlanC9]

I actually recommend WCoC, because it was really good and the cliffhanger was fortunately not as big as with some other products, with the story there brought to a conclusion.

I'd give it a shot, but AFAIK nobody's selling WCoC anymore.

[AlanC9]

You are playing semantics. BioWare needed more resources and funding in order to finance Mass Effect 1. The absolute specifics is immaterial as BioWare and Pandemic were under the same house for a time before being merged with EA. Regardless, this all merely goes back to the point that being controlled by EA and being console-centric has greatly impacted the way BioWare handles DLC. BioWare loses autonomy and independence in trade for plenty of funds and resources to make their games. One of the best benefits of BioWare becoming a division of EA so far is the fact they are now using the Frostbite 3 engine.

I still don't see how you get to the conclusion that an independent Bio wouldn't make DLC, when an independent Bio did make DLC.

[Revan Reborn]

The way I read what you are saying is that we can't count all those extra graphical options because it was done by DICE, but there wasn't any excuse not to have those options in Mass Effect.  If you acknowledge they removed them in one game, shouldn't they just be equally responsible for them being in another?

 

It has very little to do with PC versus console and more to do with development time and return on investment.  For multiple different developers I have read articles from state that getting the first piece of content out near the launch of the first game will have a much higher sales number then something released a year after.

Who said anything about removing? Unreal Engine 3 is one of the most popular and user-friendly engines out there. The fact that BioWare didn't take the time to incorporate any actual settings for PC merely proves my point that PC was secondary behind consoles. It's not surprising when you look at the sales, where the Xbox 360 version of the game crushed the PS3 and PC combined.

 

What do other developers have to do with BioWare? Everybody has their own methods and policies based on a variety of variables. Just look at the release date of every BioWare game before DAO on console and PC. KotOR, JE, and ME all came out on the Xbox and Xbox 360 well before the PC counterparts. On two of those games (JE and ME), BioWare didn't even develop the PC port. Again, the fact that BioWare is so console-centric is definitely a factor.

 

The major benefit to going to the Frostbite 3 engine is that it's actually a PC engine. It was built by DICE for Battlefield, which is a PC franchise. Look at the release of Battlefield 4 on the X1 and PS4. When DICE tried to give console gamers the same exact experience to PC, the game was broke. Current generation cannot handle what Frostbite 3 was built to do. This is why the maximum cap of players in Star Wars Battlefront is 40 instead of 64. It's largely because consoles cannot compete on the same level as PC.

 

Regardless, hopefully PC support will continue to thrive and expand. At some point, it might even encourage BioWare to give expansions another try.

 

I still don't see how you get to the conclusion that an independent Bio wouldn't make DLC, when an independent Bio did make DLC.

Where did I say this? On the contrary, I even stated independent BioWare did make DLC. KotOR and ME1 are examples of that on consoles.

[Morroian]

Then BioWare should just make the games more like the awful KB/M controls for ME3 where they never even bothered to separate the buttons and have zero video options? It might not have been an ideal situation, but looking at any real BioWare PC release over the last few years Inquisition has a lot more PC centered options. Could it have been better? Definately, but its also far better to me then past games.

 

Their last 2 games are ME3 and DA2, DA2 PC version was better than DAI PC version. 

 

And I dsiagree with it being just a semantic issue, it is actually a really important distinction. The PC system does rely a lot more on the tactical menu, the problem is the map which doesn't really work ideally for that system and the skill system, which is essentially built to be interactive instead of tactical. The map is because according to Laidlaw, they would have had to built two maps for each level in order to have the tactical map ignore the terrain, something they did in DAO which was apparently a huge resource drain. The skill system was a part of their approach, which I cannot stress enough I didn't like, but I understood where it originated from.

 

You'll have to unpack that, I don't see why the simplified skill system was necessary. And I don't see how the simplified rpg and tactical mechanics can be regarded in any way as an improvement, let alone the fact that their testing on KB&M was clearly deficient or they ignored feedback from the testers. 

[CroGamer002]

I don't think I have any pre-EA memories of BioWare. My first Bio game was ME1.

Never played KotOR?

 

Then again, game had really aged by today standards.

[Hiemoth]

Their last 2 games are ME3 and DA2, DA2 PC version was better than DAI PC version. 

 

 

You'll have to unpack that, I don't see why the simplified skill system was necessary. And I don't see how the simplified rpg and tactical mechanics can be regarded in any way as an improvement, let alone the fact that their testing on KB&M was clearly deficient or they ignored feedback from the testers. 

 

First, I also preferred DA2 control scheme, that needs to be said out front, and I also appreciated that they created a whole new control scheme for ME3, although after playing it on PC after X360, I would have liked to have an option to also play it on that control scheme.

 

Our first, and probably central, disagreement here seems to be the argument that KB/M was deficient. I didn't think so personally, most of my issues were with the general system, but I had no problems regalling the control scheme.

 

The tactical mechanics I would assume were a direct casualty of the changing system itself. They no longer as many enemy ranks, the skills were built from an interactive perspective and the enemy numbers were smaller. Thus a lot of the previous tactical flags no longer worked and I assume they simply couldn't find a tactics system. All that ultimately was a result from the changing the approach to the skill system, which I really didn't like, but I could see what they were trying to achieve with that.

 

See, to me your argment seems to boil down that they degraded system just because they could, which seems to be really negative towards the devs themselves and indicate that they wanted the players to suffer or something. Each change had a motivation, it is a separate discussion was the end result satisfactory.

[AlanC9]

Where did I say this? On the contrary, I even stated independent BioWare did make DLC. KotOR and ME1 are examples of that on consoles.

So what were you trying to say when you brought up EA?

[Revan Reborn]

So what were you trying to say when you brought up EA?

What I'm suggesting is that BioWare's post-release content has been streamlined to the EA model. More DLC at heightened prices. F2P MP with microtransactions. None of this was the case with BioWare pre-EA. It's a consequence of being owned by a AAA publisher.

[Morroian]

The tactical mechanics I would assume were a direct casualty of the changing system itself. They no longer as many enemy ranks, the skills were built from an interactive perspective and the enemy numbers were smaller. Thus a lot of the previous tactical flags no longer worked and I assume they simply couldn't find a tactics system. All that ultimately was a result from the changing the approach to the skill system, which I really didn't like, but I could see what they were trying to achieve with that.

 

See, to me your argment seems to boil down that they degraded system just because they could, which seems to be really negative towards the devs themselves and indicate that they wanted the players to suffer or something. Each change had a motivation, it is a separate discussion was the end result satisfactory.

 

I don't think they did it just because they could, I just don't think it was a priority for them over stuff like the more open world feel and the pretty world, when it should have been. When you say skills are more interactive do you mean because they perform more than 1 function? ie. cc as well as damage? I don't see why that means they couldn't have built a tactics system which after all is really an ai scripting system, mob numbers may be sihglty smaller than DA2 but there are still quite a few of them in a lot of fights. 

[Rizilliant]

You are playing semantics. BioWare needed more resources and funding in order to finance Mass Effect 1. The absolute specifics is immaterial as BioWare and Pandemic were under the same house for a time before being merged with EA. Regardless, this all merely goes back to the point that being controlled by EA and being console-centric has greatly impacted the way BioWare handles DLC. BioWare loses autonomy and independence in trade for plenty of funds and resources to make their games. One of the best benefits of BioWare becoming a division of EA so far is the fact they are now using the Frostbite 3 engine.

You had me till that last sentence... FB3 is the worst thing to happen to the DA frnachise.. It should have been left to the CoD genr..... I mean FPS...

[Rizilliant]

Yeah, you do seem to have given up a bit. Most of what I've seen you do lately is vague hyperbole. I mean, "useless" above is simply not true. Tac mode can be used and is used. I know that you were only trying to say "boo Tac Mode!," but this sort of thing usually doesn't get us anyplace. I'm also not certain that people really have to micromanage the AI; plenty of people say they aren't doing that.

Sometimes you have to accept that people just don't share your opinion of things.
 

Theres that word they cant wait to fling.. Hyperbole.. Coolguy nerd phrase of the week! 

 

The passive aggressive, fake ignorance to the points is wavering however.. 

 

I find it unusable, therefor, "useless".. The view is too close.. AI doesnt follow directions, or stand where told. Thecamera panning is terrible, and again, unable to get preferable viewpoints. Theres no Tactics to be had, so you cannot rely on teammates without micro-micro management.. Theres no action ques, hence micro "micro management"..The list goes on.. But youre playing ignorant here, and ill halt at that..

[TreeHuggerHannah]

I understand it's probably because of EA and restricted funds that BioWare is going the short and more frequent DLC route. However, in my opinion, it's a waste of the customer's money and a waste of BioWare's efforts and time. Awakening was absolutely amazing. Yes, expansions take more time and they are more costly for development, but it is worth it. You cannot tell me BioWare did not make a vast amount of money off of Awakening. It was universally loved by everyone.

 

Hm, I like Awakening, but I wouldn't say I loved it, only because it was incredibly buggy. I had several companion storylines that didn't trigger or couldn't be completed even though I'd met the preconditions, because they were so hopelessly glitched. A number of my ending slides were wrong, again because of glitches, so I had to read on the internet what was actually supposed to have happened in the game I just played. What overall would have been a good game experience was really marred for me because it obviously just did not receive the same amount of testing time and attention as the base game had. It felt unfinished and rushed to market.

 

That's why I'm cautious about getting behind this suggestion. If we could get a solid, stable expansion that had been thoroughly tested, I'd be all for it. If there isn't time or money to produce that, though, I'd rather have something shorter than another experience like I did with Awakening, which was fun for me on some level but also unfortunately came with a huge amount of frustration.

[AlanC9]

What I'm suggesting is that BioWare's post-release content has been streamlined to the EA model. More DLC at heightened prices. F2P MP with microtransactions. None of this was the case with BioWare pre-EA. It's a consequence of being owned by a AAA publisher.

Calling DLC the "EA model" is either kinda sloppy or a bit tendentious. It's more accurate to call it the AAA model.

And I still don't see how EA matters. A hypothetical independent Bio, assuming it was still trying to play in the AAA space, would be in the 2015 gaming market, and my bet is that it would make the same decisions. But I don't think we have the data to resolve this.