15890 réponses à ce sujet

[Milan92]

 

[Ellana of clan Lavellan]

DAI and TW3 both have shown me clear differences in how the two studios allocated their time developing their games.

 

Bioware, being introduced to the Frostbite 3 engine, probably had to spend a lot of time altering and tweaking the engine to fit their RPG, and furthermore decided to make the open-world environments one of their higher priorities (Skyrim's success had no doubt influenced EA). Thus they probably spent more time on getting the basic mechanics working, while also"wasting" (depends on whether or not you think the open-world areas were a pro or con of DAI) a sizable amount of time on the environments.

 

CDPR on the other hand, has been working with an in-house engine, specifically crafted for their RPG game and probably had a lot more time optimizing an already well-working engine and focused on deliverance, polish and overall cohesion of the entire game. It's also notable that their engine was capable of rendering entire maps with populated cities and a vast wilderness with numerous amounts of NPCs and monsters without much performance issues. I do think CDPR has somewhat hit a holy grail there as a game like that has been unprecedented (well the best preceding example is GTA V, but I don't think rockstar's engine is any good for a fantasy rpg).

[Innsmouth Dweller]

well, in-house created engine can have genre or even franchise specific features. it's designed to facilitate them, it's written so modifications to those features is easy and still highly optimized. it's not script tweaking with low performance and AMD on site to redeem out-of-box engine inadequacy.

it's cheaper in the long run

[Das Tentakel]

DAI and TW3 both have shown me clear differences in how the two studios allocated their time developing their games.

Bioware, being introduced to the Frostbite 3 engine, probably had to spend a lot of time altering and tweaking the engine to fit their RPG, and furthermore decided to make the open-world environments one of their higher priorities (Skyrim's success had no doubt influenced EA). Thus they probably spent more time on getting the basic mechanics working, while also"wasting" (depends on whether or not you think the open-world areas were a pro or con of DAI) a sizable amount of time on the environments.

CDPR on the other hand, has been working with an in-house engine, specifically crafted for their RPG game and probably had a lot more time optimizing an already well-working engine and focus on deliverance, polish and overall cohesion of the entire game.

I think that’s more interpretation than fact. We really don’t know whether EA BioWare spent (either absolutely or relatively) more resources on getting a third-party engine, Frostbite, up and running than CDPR did on making and improving their own engine.

Regarding the environments, DA:I did have two types of environment that are completely absent from TW3, meaning deserts and the Fade. However, deserts are relatively ‘easy’ to make (less vegetation and relatively empty) while TW3’s landscapes are (relatively) more realistic and believable and have a tremendous amount of variety and detail on the local level.
Again, hard to tell who spent more resources on their landscapes.

In both games, the total amount of voiced dialog, written text and the number of art assets is pretty large and the overall amount of effort feels similar. You’d need a very careful analysis before you can make any conclusions about differences in resource allocation here.

If there’s things that distinguishes DA:I from TW3, I think it lies squarely in the domain of gameplay features, meaning character creator, party-based combat system, class-and-level system, relatively elaborate Companion characters etc.

Edit:

 

Having said that, there may be several things that handicapped BioWare:

 

The fact that the game was multiplatform including the last-gen consoles imposed technical limitations. By most accounts the last-gen versions are pretty disappointing graphically, but the game still runs on them in the same basic form as on the new consoles and PC.

 

Being party-based probably creates problems when it comes to pathfinding, both when the Inquisitior is mounted (likely this is why the rest of the party literally disappears in smoke) and when it comes to building and populating large, believable settlements. The villages and cities of TW3 probably would be a nightmare when it comes to pathfinding for a DA-type party. If DA:I had been single-player, this wouldn't have been an issue.

 

BioWare are also constantly modifying or reinventing the DA world, creating new visual styles and cultures by the seat of their pants. DA:I Ferelden is in many ways stylistically a very different country from DA:O / Awakening Ferelden. The Tevinter architectural style has radically altered across all three games. Orlais had its style largely created ‘ex nihilo’ in DA:I out of diverse elements that feel very much at odds with each other and with its neighbour Ferelden. This is in stark contrast with The Witcher, which clearly puts a premium on continuity and overall cohesion. They have a clear idea about what kind of world they want to depict and the rest follows from that fairly naturally. Even if they have to implement things that aren’t clearly established in Sapkowski’s books they know where he took inspiration from and that’s where they look and find material to base their own stuff on. That probably means that CDPR has a much better idea what to strive for AND how to implement it.

[Han Shot First]

One aspect of the open world that The Witcher 3 was greatly superior to DA:I in my opinion, was in it's urban enviroments. Val Royeux, one of the two greatest cities in all of Thedas (the other being Minrathrous) was reduced to a tiny marketplace. In contrast both Novigrad and Oxenfurt in TW3 are large, living and breathing cities, particularly the former, complete with neighborhoods that differ from each other based on economic activity or the affluence (or lack of it) of that neighborhood's inhabitants.

 

To be fair that DA:I does not include much in the way of urban enviroments is intentional. The devs seemed to have focused more on the exploration of wilderness or rural maps. I think this was a blunder however, and the game could have benefited from less maps to visit but Val Royeux expanded to something on the scale of TW3's Novigrad or Oxenfurt.

 

Urban enviroments, when done right, are always the most interesting places in any RPG. A forest, desert, or an expanse of farmland in a fantasy or Sci Fi RPG is really no different than their real world equivalents. That automatically makes them less interesting than the hubs, which is where you find all the life that populates that fantasy world. That's where the player gets transported or immersed into the fantasy world you've created.

[Eelectrica]

If there's one thing I think visually that looks better in DAI than Witcher, at least so far for me is caves/dungeons.

Water dripping down the walls and all that looks amazing.

Witcher seems to have a little more variety in caves though and the destructible walls being brought back from Witcher 1 was a nice touch as well.

[Ellana of clan Lavellan]

I think that’s more interpretation than fact. We really don’t know whether EA BioWare spent (either absolutely or relatively) more resources on getting a third-party engine, Frostbite, up and running than CDPR did on making and improving their own engine.

Regarding the environments, DA:I did have two types of environment that are completely absent from TW3, meaning deserts and the Fade. However, deserts are relatively ‘easy’ to make (less vegetation and relatively empty) while TW3’s landscapes are (relatively) more realistic and believable and have a tremendous amount of variety and detail on the local level.
Again, hard to tell who spent more resources on their landscapes.

In both games, the total amount of voiced dialog, written text and the number of art assets is pretty large and the overall amount of effort feels similar. You’d need a very careful analysis before you can make any conclusions about differences in resource allocation here.

If there’s things that distinguishes DA:I from TW3, I think it lies squarely in the domain of gameplay features, meaning character creator, party-based combat system, class-and-level system, relatively elaborate Companion characters etc.

 

Oh of course, I didn't mean to present my speculation as fact. I was just stating how I could subjectively gauge how BW and CDPR allocated time based on my experience in both games, which seems to be a reasonable theory as to how TW3 is (by majority) a superior end product than DAI is.

 

We cannot know for certain just how much time each studio had spent working on their engine, but I do think its a reasonable assumption to say that improving an existing engine that is specifically designed for your game would take less time and effort than trying to convert an engine that's been designed for a fps game. 

 

I don't doubt that both games have immense amounts of effort and man hours put into their environments, in fact I actually said BW did put a lot of time into their areas, however, I didn't say they'd put more time than CDPR did.

 

What I believe is that each dev team has a limited amount of time and resources to develop a game, and when you allocate more time to one aspect of the game, it also means that same amount of time will not be used for another aspect of the game. In BW's case, they seemed to have spent the bulk of their time on the conversion of Frostbite 3 and crafting the areas, but seemed to come out short when they got to the stage of implementing the story plot and side quests (a common complaint of DAI). Whereas CDPR probably didn't need to bother as much with their engine and could allocate more time on story and execution than BW could. 

[Torgette]

You serious? DA:I literally forces you to do X number of irrelevant fetch quests and meaningless chores to acquire power points to progress the main story. I think the power requirement was one of the absolute worst things about DA:I. I also don't remember having to do any fetch quests in TW3 I mean unless you consider stuff like "deal with this demon trapped in a tree by either killing it or letting it possess a horse and suffer the consequences" to be fetchier and worse than "find mama's lost ring" "find widows lost ring" "find farmer's lost druffalo" "plant 20 flags" "close 40 rifts" etc...

 

Personally I though TW3's main quest and side quests were both done much better than DA:I's. I even thought the characters in TW3 were more believable, fleshed out, and sympathetic than in DA:I and characters have always been BioWare's specialty.

 

To be fair - a really well dressed fetch quest is still a fetch quest, your brain is just thinking "well to get to the reward I had 2 extra layers of stuff in the way" - whether you can appreciate those layers for what they are or are annoyed by the quest itself depends on each person.

[Innsmouth Dweller]

depends on what you consider a fetch quest. 

if a quest has branches, multiple outcomes and levels of completion it's not a fetch quest. bonus for affecting the world.

 

can majority of TW3 side quests can be resolved in more than one way? can i complete those quests without fighting as well as hacking my way through it?

[SofaJockey]

... In BW's case, they seemed to have spent the bulk of their time on the conversion of Frostbite 3 and crafting the areas, but seemed to come out short when they got to the stage of implementing the story plot and side quests (a common complaint of DAI). Whereas CDPR probably didn't need to bother as much with their engine and could allocate more time on story and execution than BW could. 

 

I like both games, but I think this is pretty close to the mark.

[Gileadan]

I'd love to see a "making of" of both games just to see what the two teams did differently. I'd actually pay money for that.

[ashwind]

I'd love to see a "making of" of both games just to see what the two teams did differently. I'd actually pay money for that.

 

Making of Dragon Age Inquisition https://youtu.be/NqDIKwgmOms?t=1m36s

 

meanwhile in Poland ... https://youtu.be/H6QoEUqadW4?t=3m25s

 

[Das Tentakel]

What I believe is that each dev team has a limited amount of time and resources to develop a game, and when you allocate more time to one aspect of the game, it also means that same amount of time will not be used for another aspect of the game. In BW's case, they seemed to have spent the bulk of their time on the conversion of Frostbite 3 and crafting the areas, but seemed to come out short when they got to the stage of implementing the story plot and side quests (a common complaint of DAI). Whereas CDPR probably didn't need to bother as much with their engine and could allocate more time on story and execution than BW could.

Again, there’s not a shred of solid evidence that this is the case. What seems ‘reasonable conjecture’without any inside information is often very, very wrong. Modifying a third-party engine saves on making that engine, but changing it to fit your needs may or may not require a lot of work. Making your own engine and developing it further on your own also takes resources.
We simply have no information that allows for a comparison of any kind here. We DO have some key differences in how the narrative ‘context’ is delivered in the game; DA:I has Companions, Companion quests and party banter, TW3 has none of that. DA:I has class-based party gameplay, tactical camera (sort of), a character creator etc. This is stuff we can confidently agree on that EA BioWare spent resources on which TW3 did not.

I think I agree with Midnigh tea in this respect – while there are similarities (both are narrative semi-open world fantasy cRPG’s) there are quite a lot of differences between DA:I and TW3, both on the surface and under the hood.

Some differences are obvious (character creator, companion npc’s, party-based combat etc.), but a lot of it is actually invisible to us:

Are the CDPR devs more experienced and better at their work?
Are their writers better at their work?
Are their content creation tools much better than BioWare’s?
Are they more driven than BioWare’s devs?
Did CDPR actually put in more manhours in TW3 than EA BioWare did in DA:I?
What role does the fact that Poland and its neighbouring countries have lots of historical architecture and a vibrant medieval ‘living history’ scene play when it comes to worldbuilding, visual and otherwise?

All that makes a direct comparison much harder to do. Perhaps EA BioWare had to spend, say, 40,000 out of 70,000 man-hours to get Frostbite to work while the latest version of the Red Engine only took 20,000 out of 80,000 or thereabouts, but without any solid inside info it’s all empty speculation. I get it why people do this; it makes EA BioWare’s ‘relative failure’, such as some (not all) people see it, easily understandable and it also allows one to believe that, at heart, the EA BioWare devs are just as capable as the rising star that is CDPR.

It also implicates that their future games still have the potential to be just as good as CDPR’s. They very well could be, but we just don’t know.

 

Only the future will tell.

[Dubya75]

Just had news that The Witcher 3 had sold 4 million copies in the first two weeks since launch!

 

Why do I mention it here? Because even now the devs at CD Projekt RED maintains an attitude of humbleness, expressing their intention to use this success to make the game even better! 

 

A 250-strong Indie company, a budget of only 40 million (including advertising) and a passion behind their work is making absolute fools of Bioware! 

 

What now, Mike Laidlaw? What was it you said? DAI is going to be the most dynamic RPG game we've ever played? LOL, you must have meant The Witcher: Wild Hunt in which decisions ACTUALLY matter?

 

You want to learn how to treat your fans and how to make good games, go sit at the feet of CD Projekt RED!

 

http://forums.cdproj...234#post1766234

[ashwind]

All that makes a direct comparison much harder to do. Perhaps EA BioWare had to spend, say, 40,000 out of 70,000 man-hours to get Frostbite to work while the latest version of the Red Engine only took 20,000 out of 80,000 or thereabouts, but without any solid inside info it’s all empty speculation. I get it why people do this; it makes EA BioWare’s ‘relative failure’, such as some (not all) people see it, easily understandable and it also allows one to believe that, at heart, the EA BioWare devs are just as capable as the rising star that is CDPR.

It also implicates that their future games still have the potential to be just as good as CDPR’s. They very well could be, but we just don’t know.

 

Only the future will tell.

 

40,000 man hours to get an engine to work? 20,000 man hours to create a new engine? Really? Really!???

 

Why dont every game studio make their own engine if what you say can be true in the slightest??

 

So most game studios are stupid? They rather modify a ready engine instead of creating a new one although modifying takes 2x the effort and time (or simply more effort)?

[The Big Red One]

Just had news that The Witcher 3 had sold 4 million copies in the first two weeks since launch!

Why do I mention it here? Because even now the devs at CD Projekt RED maintains an attitude of humbleness, expressing their intention to use this success to make the game even better!

A 250-strong Indie company, a budget of only 40 million (including advertising) and a passion behind their work is making absolute fools of Bioware!

What now, Mike Laidlaw? What was it you said? DAI is going to be the most dynamic RPG game we've ever played? LOL, you must have meant The Witcher: Wild Hunt in which decisions ACTUALLY matter?

You want to learn how to treat your fans and how to make good games, go sit at the feet of CD Projekt RED!

http://forums.cdproj...234#post1766234

It's not THAT high compared to some of the mainstream titles like Assassin's Creed, Skyrim or even Far Cry but it's still significant and out-performs games such as Arkham Asylum/City (Asylum is 4.3 million in its entire release, City is 1.5 million in its first week), Dark Souls 2 (2.5 million), and completely destroys, both sales and review wise, the other end-of-a-trilogy, Mass Effect 3 (1.5 million in the first month).

Also, in comparison: Dragon Age Inquisition supposedly sold 1.14 million in the first week. Mass Effect 3 1.85 in the first week as well. I wasn't able to quickly find any reliable 2 week data.

For an RPG with a comparably low development/marketing cost, and aimed at a less mainstream market, Witcher 3's 4 million sales within two weeks is great success.

For me, The Witcher 3 is a game that really makes me want to shed a tear. A combination of wonderful reviews, fantastic in game details, and excellent sales figures. This is an example of how every ****** game developer should strive for in their career.

[Torgette]

Making of Dragon Age Inquisition https://youtu.be/NqDIKwgmOms?t=1m36s

 

meanwhile in Poland ... https://youtu.be/H6QoEUqadW4?t=3m25s

 

 

I'd be curious to see what the real numbers are for TW3's budget, broken down by employee pay, hours & benefits. Seems odd that TW3 has a budget of $15 million yet literally nobody else in the world can produce the same amount of content without outsourcing or increasing the budget ten fold. Of course you know what would be funny is if the lesson other publishers take from TW3 is to start outsourcing all video game development to countries where they can pay employees peanuts and still work them to death, think of the profits! 

[ashwind]

I'd be curious to see what the real numbers are for TW3's budget, broken down by employee pay, hours & benefits. Seems odd that TW3 has a budget of $15 million yet literally nobody else in the world can produce the same amount of content without outsourcing or increasing the budget ten fold. Of course you know what would be funny is if the lesson other publishers take from TW3 is to start outsourcing all video game development to countries where they can pay employees peanuts and still work them to death, think of the profits! 

 

If I am not wrong, 15m is just the actualy budget for developing the game. the entire project is like ~40m? (Correct me if I am wrong).

 

That and salary in Poland is like 1/3 of US. So 40m would be something like 120m? 

[Torgette]

If I am not wrong, 15m is just the actualy budget for developing the game. the entire project is like ~40m? (Correct me if I am wrong).

 

That and salary in Poland is like 1/3 of US. So 40m would be something like 120m? 

 

EA should just outsource stuff like animation and cinematics to an Indian studio while the western studios focus on the important stuff.

[rashie]

A desert environment is something witcher 3 did have but its not really anything worth mentioning considering how little time is spent there but its not completely absent.

 

I'm actually kinda surprised they bothered to create the assets for it with that little use.

[Das Tentakel]

40,000 man hours to get an engine to work? 20,000 man hours to create a new engine? Really? Really!???

 

Why dont every game studio make their own engine if what you say can be true in the slightest??

 

So most game studios are stupid? They rather modify a ready engine instead of creating a new one although modifying takes 2x the effort and time (or simply more effort)?

 

I think you didn't quite get the 'without inside info' and 'empty speculation' part.

Ah well, reading is hard...

[ashwind]

EA should just outsource stuff like animation and cinematics to an Indian studio while the western studios focus on the important stuff.

Why not just go to Poland and setup a studio