198 réponses à ce sujet

[Gothfather]

And why should Bioware be required interact with people on the forums? What makes gamers think they are ohh so special that developers should drop whatever they are doing and respond to customers? In what other media do the consumers of said media have such a self entitled attitude that they think an author, or director or actor should respond to their every whim?

 

Bioware is ONLY responsible to make the game, and support the game post launch. Bioware has given support to inquisition in the last five months we have gotten 6 patches. That is great support. When you buy a game that doesn't give you a reasonable expectation to be in contact with the creators. When I buy a car I don't expect that the engineer is going to sit around reading forum posts and responding. When I buy music i don't expect that the artist explain their choices for song lists or that they respond to my posts. Why do you expect that bioware should do so?

 

You are NOT so important that your expectations should be met. You have a condition called Typical gamer unreasonable expectation syndrome, you should seek treatment or life will be filled with further disappointment.

[SACanuckin Oz]

Actually, most vehicles come with a 3-year or 60000km warranty, where the manufacturer will fix faulty systems within the vehicle.

 

So, for say, a broken keyboard and mouse system, the same should apply.

 

Nobody (well maybe some) are asking for a rewrite of the story here, but gamers have valid complaints about a faulty product. That it gets addressed is a reasonable expectation

[BansheeOwnage]

And why should Bioware be required interact with people on the forums? What makes gamers think they are ohh so special that developers should drop whatever they are doing and respond to customers? In what other media do the consumers of said media have such a self entitled attitude that they think an author, or director or actor should respond to their every whim?

 

Bioware is ONLY responsible to make the game, and support the game post launch. Bioware has given support to inquisition in the last five months we have gotten 6 patches. That is great support. When you buy a game that doesn't give you a reasonable expectation to be in contact with the creators. When I buy a car I don't expect that the engineer is going to sit around reading forum posts and responding. When I buy music i don't expect that the artist explain their choices for song lists or that they respond to my posts. Why do you expect that bioware should do so?

 

You are NOT so important that your expectations should be met. You have a condition called Typical gamer unreasonable expectation syndrome, you should seek treatment or life will be filled with further disappointment.

You're painting a flawed and skewed view of people who just want to interact with developers because they think it would be fun. Geez.

[Grieving Natashina]

You're painting a flawed and skewed view of people who just want to interact with developers because they think it would be fun. Geez.

Agreed.  Some of the most fun I've had on the BSN was during nights chatting with Allan and the rest of the forums.  Folks were on topic, in a good mood and were respectful towards each other.  I miss the devs being around for those kinds of conversations.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sort of.  You had to map it to a key, so you ended up clicking on the enemy, then clicking on another key to initiate auto-attack.  (I always had to pause the game first to make sure I actually pressed all the keys I needed to press.) This doubled the amount of things you needed to press in order to auto-attack from previous iterations in the series, and is clunky.

 

Unless you're talking about something else, in which case, it was never obvious to me that there was such a feature, and it wasn't mentioned in either the tutorial or manual.

With the Tac Cam active, auto-attacking works just like in DAO.  It has since release.  It worked right out of the box, and there's never been an issue with it.

 

You choose to attack an enemy, and your character will continue attacking (and moving around to do so) until you give another order.  If you use a targeted ability, once it has fired the character will then begin attacking that same target automatically until given another order.

 

It works just like DAO (and DA2, though the DA2 auto-attack was missing from the console versions at release).

 

I love the DAI Tac Cam.  It's almost exactly the camera mode I requested, and the combat mechanics from it work just like in DAO.

[duckley]

Which other comparable game companies facilitate boards such as this and regularly contribute? I am not talking about fan sites, but actual company sites.

[otis0310]

I think one of the main reasons they do not show up anymore is because of questionable game design in the past few years.  If a bioware dev were to show up in a chat forum he might be expected to answer some question.  But unlike in an official nterview where they can have the marketing department edit out or remove some questions that would be hard to answer, they would have to actually answer them or come with a "no comment" remark.

 

I mean in  an offical interview you can ask things like "What is up with ME 3s bad ending?" or "Why all the autodialogue in ME3?"  or "Why does DAI have no auto-attack?".  The marketing guys would just strike the question and edit the tape before publishing it so they can dodge the question.  They cannot do that on a forum in a chat room.

 

And we all know these questions would be asked.

 

So if you were a developer and someone asked you "Why does DAI feel so much like an MMO with empty wide open worlds and endless fetch and collection quests?"

 

You might be tempted with something like.  "Because we were making a Dragon Age MMO and decided to repurpose it at the last minute when it was decided it would not sell well."

 

It might be the truth, but that would make the dimwit who actually thought it would be a good idea to make that MMO look bad.  It would also make the dimwit who decided to repurpose the game rather than start over look pretty bad.  They of course would not want the public to know about the stupid decisions the higher ups made that ruined their beloved game and for some reason blame you.  So you just say no comment.

 

Well as I said that won't work in a chat room, so instead they just don't show up at all.

 

In short a lot questions we would ask, if answered truthfully, would make a lot of excutives look very very stupid.  Which could cost them their job, so they pass the buck to the developers, blame them for everything and threaten to blackball them if they tell the truth about whose fault it really is.

 

Of course they would not have these problems if they made the games with the passion they used to rather than making it with a commity and focus groups.

[X Equestris]

Which other comparable game companies facilitate boards such as this and regularly contribute? I am not talking about fan sites, but actual company sites.

Not many that I've been to. Most interact with their fanbase far less that Bioware does.

[otis0310]

You are right X Equestris.  I do not think that Blizzard or Bethesda do.  Some Indie companies probably do that a lot though.  Of course those people probably are not worried about PR close to as much EA is (which is ironic given its reputation).

 

Still Bioware has retreated from the fanbase.  They do not do interviews by real fans or show up in chat rooms or even respond on these forums.  They used to be more involved than they currently are.

 

I recall one Bioware employee locking my topic, he thought it was unfair to me because my topic was pretty good but all the responses were turning into hate, which is not what I expected.  He even asked me to email him if I thought it was unfair, but after a couple of messages back in forth we deicded it was for the best because of it inadevertantly devolved into a flame war.

 

You do not see that level of interaction.  The fact that we had a chat about it made me feel better.  Now they would just lock it up and tell you not to question it.

 

So while I admit that maybe not many companies are that involved, Bioware used to be more involved than it currently is.

[AresKeith]

Which other comparable game companies facilitate boards such as this and regularly contribute? I am not talking about fan sites, but actual company sites.

 

Only one I can think of is Netherrelm studios, a fighting game company

[BansheeOwnage]

Which other comparable game companies facilitate boards such as this and regularly contribute? I am not talking about fan sites, but actual company sites.

This is almost the only forum I frequent, but I know DICE LA (Battlefield) interacts on their forum a lot and even has group video chats with my brother and other forum-goers to discuss balance and bug-fixing, etc. Practical as well as friendly.

[otis0310]

This is almost the only forum I frequent, but I know DICE LA (Battlefield) interacts on their forum a lot and even has group video chats with my brother and other forum-goers to discuss balance and bug-fixing, etc. Practical as well as friendly.

 

 

As I said in my post though, Bioware made a lot of questionable desiign decisons in their last few games.  This would beg questions they probably do not want to answer.  DICE does not have that problem so they would not have to qorry about answering such questions.

 

Not mention Bioware's retreat from the forum conincided with the reaction ME3 and the continuing reaction to DAI.  I doubt this is a coincidence.

[BansheeOwnage]

As I said in my post though, Bioware made a lot of questionable desiign decisons in their last few games.  This would beg questions they probably do not want to answer.  DICE does not have that problem so they would not have to qorry about answering such questions.

 

Not mention Bioware's retreat forum conincided with the reaction ME3 and the continuing reaction to DAI.  I doubt this is a coincidence.

That's not true though. Every game company is going to have people spewing vitriol at them for design choices players think are bad, whether they are or not. Battlefield isn't immune to this. The DICE devs always have very detailed patch notes which even explain why they made certain controversial decisions, or highlight that a fix may be temporary to see how it plays out. This is good communication compared to DA patch notes which often don't even list every change.

 

If DICE can engage in discussion with its playerbase and accept criticism (they do) or defend their choices, so can Bioware. I also think Bioware would have more to discuss with us, comparatively, because of the huge amount of lore in Dragon Age. It's their prerogative not to engage with us, but I maintain my position that if they tried their best to ignore the toxic minority we could have awesome and largely civil discussions. If I were a developer, I'd want to see what my fans thought of my work, and defend it if I needed to, as well as hopefully accept criticism.

[Boogielicious]

Well. sure, we all want free things, but that doesn't like something a company would do. 

 

 

 

Priority 2 – Features and content

As massive as Dragon Age: Inquisition already is, there were some things the team wanted to get in at launch, but we just ran out of time. We’ll be creating these new features and content and adding them into your game over time because we love our DAI players. Multiplayer will also be receiving regular content updates.

http://blog.bioware....for-dragon-age/

[JeffZero]

Agreed.  Some of the most fun I've had on the BSN was during nights chatting with Allan and the rest of the forums.  Folks were on topic, in a good mood and were respectful towards each other.  I miss the devs being around for those kinds of conversations.

 

As do I. Alan's good people.

[GithCheater]

<shrug> I don't know.  I've personally witnessed threads telling devs to quit their jobs; telling devs that they should be fired.  Wishing physical harm on the devs, and constantly telling them how much their game sucks.  I've watched people say some of the most awful things to the devs, like one person telling a dev that their mother should have aborted them before they were born.  

 

The writers don't get it any better.  I remember folks saying that if Mary Kirby didn't make Vivienne a romance, then BioWare was racist.  Or that if they had made Vivienne a romance, then they were racist for having the first black female companion a love interest.  Or that Mary Kirby hates those that are height challenged because Varric isn't a romance.  I'm not making any of this up and those are just examples I can think of off the top of my head.  

 

The devs and writers don't have to be on the forums at all.  You guys think this is bad, you should go hang out on the battle net (Blizzard.)  Please, count how many posts that come from actual Blizzard employees (not moderators,) that have happened in the last 4 years.  Now, note how many of them are right around Blizzcon.  That's a company that ceased giving a crap about their players years ago.  

 

Maybe if folks stopped telling the devs that they suck; maybe if folks stop demanding things of the writers; maybe if folks stop with the insults, we'd see them more often.  If I worked for BioWare on the DA or ME team, I'd stick to twitter too.  I'm not going to ask anyone to change, because that would be laughable to even try.  Still, look around the forums at the way people treat the devs and each other.  No wonder they don't want to come around here.

 

The "PC Commmunity Concerns topic in the Announce Section has some good constructive criticism, but the last 3 weeks of that topic also has a lot of venom:

 

...

 

Bioware is dead.  This franchise is dead.  There is no saving it.  They have no interest in saving it.  PC users like the power and flexibility their rigs can afford them.  Unfortunately, most gaming companies are run by bacterial money-grubbers and the product only has to run on cruddy locked-in consoles.  You heard 'em.  They don't need us.  PC players force them to work for a living and they just don't need that.

 

Congratulations, Mark Darrah, you single-handedly sunk the Titanic.

 

Bioware workers are clearly drones. 

 

The people who cared about  Dragon Age have left for POE and Witcher, and probably will never return.

You have done a marvellous job Darrah, Laidlaw, Gaider and co, congratulations.

 

EA and those devs that sold their souls to EA really accomplished what they wanted to. I hope  they enjoy their casuals and multiplayer whores for as long as they stick around

 

Bioware can crap down my throat and I will call it tasty

 

I would love to read Laidlaw's CV when Bioware disappears.

 

Bioware doesn't care.  They never did. ..The Dragon Age Franchise has been officially obliterated...The IP was dark, grim, and bloody. Now its politically correct. Its Social-Justice-Warrior-friendly. That alone destroyed DA. This is Politically Correct Age: Inquisition against Injustice

 

Not only did they (EA) thoroughly BUTCHER the Dragon Age franchise, they are even doing it with Star Wars now!  EA needs to DIE!!!

 

Mark Darrah and his posse apparently imagine in their woeful arrogance that they have somehow been "innovative".

 

LOL and don't forget EA's executive Mr Whats-his-face who are under the impression their games are too complicated and we are all dribbling isiots. 

 

DAI (Made by console gamers for console gamers!) Rest in pieces DA. 

 

Bioware is not the same company it was three or four years ago. Real fans are going to write back and tell them what they see are bad, very bad decisions.

 

 Turd?  Isn't that a bit over the top for the 2014 game of the year?   ....  It's not a turd in my humble opinion. A turd is a finished product. This is a half-baked console port.

 

An abomination is a game created when a talentless designer possesses an excellent RPG, with limited abilities.  Abominations are usually created when weak intellects enter key positions of power within the design team and are exposed to a demon's influence, such as EA games. Designers who experiment with political correctness are more susceptible to demons and also risk their RPGs becoming abominations.

 

Booware has failed us.  They don't care, or EA won't pay them to care ... Some button-mashing, console-lovers might beg to differ ... Put a stake in Boooware's heart - it's dead.

 

Oh dear, bye bye BioWere! And you were so hoping it was going to be buy buy ... PC gamer reclining in coffin: "Is it playable on PC yet" ... BioWere drone: "No"...PC gamer reclining in coffin:"Then fork off"

 

No "outside industry" reviews exist that gave this a GOTY....all those reviews are bought and paid for one way or another.

 

Too bad Casey Hudson destroyed ME3's ending so badly that ME4 can come with my favourite model as a slave girl irl and I still wouldn't give money to EAWare. 

 

"Dear Toxic Cretins, Here's the latest load of double-talk.  Fortunately, since you all have the memories of brain-damaged goldfish and won't remember the posts from a few months back that completely contradict everything I say here, I'll just spew this again.Making games is hard and y'all too dense to understand this, even though we keep whining on and on about it.  Why won't you just listen to the cadre of 'flawless play' sycophants and unquestioningly fondle our sacs like they do?  It'd be easier, honestly.  War is Peace.  Ignorance is Strength, etc.  C'mon, already!  We pretend to play nice and sorta listen when we have no choice!  What more do you ungrateful cashwads want?'

 

I was quite alarmed at them announcing MP and I predicted that it was going to ruin the game and the franchise. Of course, fanboys everywhere scoffed at me.

[otis0310]

That's not true though. Every game company is going to have people spewing vitriol at them for design choices players think are bad, whether they are or not. Battlefield isn't immune to this. The DICE devs always have very detailed patch notes which even explain why they made certain controversial decisions, or highlight that a fix may be temporary to see how it plays out. This is good communication compared to DA patch notes which often don't even list every change.

 

If DICE can engage in discussion with its playerbase and accept criticism (they do) or defend their choices, so can Bioware. I also think Bioware would have more to discuss with us, comparatively, because of the huge amount of lore in Dragon Age. It's their prerogative not to engage with us, but I maintain my position that if they tried their best to ignore the toxic minority we could have awesome and largely civil discussions. If I were a developer, I'd want to see what my fans thought of my work, and defend it if I needed to, as well as hopefully accept criticism.

 

 

You have a good point Banshee.

 

However Bioware used to make RPGs, now they make action games with light RPG elements.  They used to go for the older, more mature audience in their 30s who like depth and story.  Now they are going for people in their teens who love multiplayer, in essence the same audience as Battlefield.

 

DICE did not experience such a massive shift in their core demographic.  Nor did they experience the massive shift in the types of games they are making and the quality of them which came as a result.

 

Since they never experience these massive changes, and the reactions they got from us consumers, they would not have to answer any questions based on them like Bioware does.  This is why DICE can be more open to its community than Bioware can, because they WOULD have to answer such questions if they were more open to the community, and they know it.  Which is why they are not more open to the community because they know they would have to answer those questions if they were.

[Lethaya]

Hummm. Personally, I think, while I understand the distance from the devs, especially then they're currently busy with projects and probably can't really answer most of our questions, the forums themselves could probably do with some more in terms of management? Not trying to criticize the mods who are working here for their efforts at all, but on boards this active I've been on in the past the staff was usually a bit more hands on, or maintained a more obvious presence. From my experience, this can do a lot to help bind together a community and, well. Moderate more negative discussion back to a place that might make the devs feel more welcome, should that be an issue? It's a cycle.

 

And even if there was just a community managing moderation team that made themselves known on a regular basis, that could do something to make fans feel that at least this place gets some recognition from Bioware, even if it isn't necessarily coming from the people working on game mechanics or writing.

 

I dunno, perhaps this doesn't apply. I haven't been here all that long, after all. And I do enjoy this place quite a bit! XD

 

Heck, I don't even know if any of that actually made any sense, looking back over it. Welp!

[otis0310]

GithCheater, the PCs have good reason to be upset, we were lied to.  No one can deny that, not with a straight face.

 

There is also very good reason to believe that Dragon Age is dead, the focuse on multiplayer and action, the politcal correctness, the poor quality side quests...etc.  These are good reasons to question the direction it is taking.

 

There is also a good reason to think Bioware is dead.  ME3 was rushed out half finished, and so was DA2. This game feels like an aborted MMO in a lot of regards, almost like they rupurposed an MMO to regain some of the losses in development and slapped a Dragon Age name on it.  The general poor quality of the last three games in a lo tof peoples minds, mine included is in fact a very good reason to question whether or not we care about the Bioware brand anymore.

 

Still, I think the examples you gave are a bit extreme to say the least.  Meaning the people who said them went too far.

 

I still can't help but think that Bioware brought this on themselves though.  So I do not feel any sympathy.....

[Gileadan]

Which other comparable game companies facilitate boards such as this and regularly contribute? I am not talking about fan sites, but actual company sites.

Hmm, only from games I recently played most recently:

Obsidian Entertainment
CD Projekt RED
Relic Entertainment

And, playing in a completely different league than everyone else: Roberts Space Industries / Cloud Imperium Games

Many dev studios have community managers and/or devs posting on the Steam forums.

I'm currently not playing any games from any studio other than BioWare that does have their own forums and mostly ignores them.

[BansheeOwnage]

You have a good point Banshee.

 

However Bioware used to make RPGs, now they make action games with light RPG elements.  They used to go for the older, more mature audience in their 30s who like depth and story.  Now they are going for people in their teens who love multiplayer, in essence the same audience as Battlefield.

 

DICE did not experience such a massive shift in their core demographic.  Nor did they experience the massive shift in the types of games they are making and the quality of them which came as a result.

 

Since they never experience these massive changes, and the reactions they got from us consumers, they would not have to answer any questions based on them like Bioware does.  This is why DICE can be more open to its community than Bioware can, because they WOULD have to answer such questions if they were more open to the community, and they know it.  Which is why they are not more open to the community because they know they would have to answer those questions if they were.

Thanks. I agree that I don't think Bioware (or EA really) should have tried the mass-appeal route. RPGs have always been more of a niche genre, and it should stay that way. Otherwise, everything becomes too similar. That's why we have genres to begin with! People like different things. And it's true that DICE's target demographic didn't change. I still commend them for being involved though.

 

So yeah, I think there are definitely some questions Bioware doesn't want to answer. I just wish they'd try. Take some criticism and defend it if they truly believe it's good, admit you made a mistake if it's bad, but at least give us explanations for things. And by explanations, I mean truthful one. Not like Mike Laidlaw's explanation for the 8-skill limit: "Because of console controllers." That's simply not true.

[SofaJockey]

And even this thread appears to demonstrate why the forum is unwelcoming to BioWare representatives...

As a fairly logically minded guy I particularly rail against opinions stated as facts because that simply fails to invite discussion.

• That a group of players are underwhelmed by particular mechanics does not mean 'BioWare lied', they may have made mediocre design decisions in some areas or have been been frustrated by a new engine to make better ones, but saying people are a bunch of liars is not inviting them to a conversation.
• There are plenty of games with thinner or collectibles based side content, screaming that the game is a fetch-quest dominated MMO hardly helps have a conversation. I would welcome a stronger cinematic pay off to quests in the future, but there are ways to express that.
• Then the angry threads about hairstyles, Inquisitor pyjamas and upset folk who want their exploits back, may contain some measured discussion, but also a ton of entitlement.

Just as well DAI was BioWare's most successful game in years, imagine the venom if it had just been average.

[BansheeOwnage]

• Then the angry threads about hairstyles, Inquisitor pyjamas and upset folk who want their exploits back, may contain some measured discussion, but also a ton of entitlement.

I disagree on this based on one of the points I've made on said threads: It's not ridiculous to expect at least as many options and previous games delivered.

[bEVEsthda]

GithCheater, the PCs have good reason to be upset, we were lied to.  No one can deny that, not with a straight face.

 

Yes, I can deny that, with a straight face.

 

Lie is a strong word. Too strong word, since they did make an effort to do PC-interface gameplay, Tac Cam etc. 

They just didn't finish up doing it well enough, and the end result differed in - for many crucial - details from how previous games had done it.

 

Why they didn't do that well enough is easy to speculate about. They had lack of support for features in the new engine. They were running out of time. Maybe they took the directive, that it would have to be the same game on all platforms, too far. So they shipped something that would have to do, because they had to.

(Meanwhile, I think the game is playable and I enjoy it very much, and I play it on a PC. But yes, the PC-UI is a scandal, I agree)

 

Console controller was likely the focus throughout, because before and during, EA believed that was the essential market. Only late in the game, did EA-marketing realize that the PC-segment was, and would be, much more important, than what they had bet on. What did they do about it? In typical EA fashion, the lower echelons figured it meant they were required to do a marketing video, the infamous "For PC-gamers by PC-gamers". Now that is the marketing department for you. If you study the video carefully, you'll discover it's all in the title, not in the content. Take away the title - now what is really the video about? The only one of the developers who are in any kind of trouble at all is Elizabeth, and she is excited at appearing in a video and hasn't got a clue what she's talking about.

 

No, nobody lied. ...exactly, just marketing.

[SofaJockey]

I disagree on this based on one of the points I've made on said threads: It's not ridiculous to expect at least as many options and previous games delivered.

 

I support your sentiment, I'd like more hair too, it was more the anger I had an issue with than the request itself.

I forget which member of the production team it was that pointed out that it was easier drawing some hair on a 2D image

('look how easy it is to make long hair') than actually designing and animating it.

I suspect Frostbite 3 was at the heart of it, but that debate is for elsewhere...