949 réponses à ce sujet

[Heimdall]

I actually like that each game can change so much between the installments, that Bioware is willing to experiment with its formula.  Do they really need a more distinct brand identity than "Play a customizable fantasy hero with a band of companions (Some LI) through a story set in medieval fantasy world of Thedas"?

 

I definitely prefer it to something like Assassin's Creed, churning out virtually the same gameplay and most of the same mechanics year after year with few exceptions.

[Fast Jimmy]

I actually like that each game can change so much between the installments, that Bioware is willing to experiment with its formula. Do they really need a more distinct brand identity than "Play a customizable fantasy hero with a band of companions (Some LI) through a story set in medieval fantasy world of Thedas"?

Because Bioware was the last AAA developer offering RTwP tactical RPG gameplay. The LAST ONE.

Now, there's some indie competition (although most is turn based), but back when Bioware unceremoniously chucked it out the door of the DA franchise back in 2011, they didn't even realize that's what they had done.

They are bafflingly unaware of their own design choices and history, which really reflects the brain drain of talent that occured in the past five years, especially in the design and gameplay departments.

I definitely prefer it to something like Assassin's Creed, churning out virtually the same gameplay and most of the same mechanics year after year with few exceptions.

For one, the gameplay for Assassin's Creed is much more simple than what an RPG series like DA tries to attain (even if the technical hurdles to create the AC series are significant). For two, your description of "a medieval fantasy game" mentions nothing about gameplay - this could be a collectible card game, a street fighting game or a Devil May Cry clone and could meet your criteria.

Street Fighter would never come out with a turn based game that wasn't a spinoff. Devil May Cry wouldn't come out with a 4X Strategy Sim unless it was some kind of bizarre promotional material. Yet Bioware changes a party-focused tactical, RTwP combat RPG into a single-character focused Action RPG as a sequel and people are supposed to swallow that, as if they are equivalent. Just like the other examples I gave would be a total joke, so is that.

[CronoDragoon]

Because Bioware was the last AAA developer offering RTwP tactical RPG gameplay. The LAST ONE .

How many AAA devs offer party-based action gameplay? Both styles are pretty damn sparse at the moment.

[Fast Jimmy]

How many AAA devs offer party-based action gameplay? Both styles are pretty damn sparse at the moment.

Action gameplay is anti-thetical to party gameplay. You aren't managing the party if you are focused on controlling one character. The better move for action gameplay is to give you one character to control and then give high level commands to your companions, like what we saw in Mass Effect.

And if that's the case, I can try and collect a list of squad-based shooters. But it will probably take me until tomorrow BECAUSE THE LIST WOULD BE SO LONG.

[fizzypop]

Successful enough that we will have another one. I hope it is so much better.

[Hiemoth]

well all of the villains can be threatening in their own way. Loghain for example did things to secure his own power, as well as try to position his leverage to fight off a threat that didn't exist.

 

I think the reason feel more connected to Loghain is due to cut-scenes though, the moments when he is alone in the throne room, making decisions that pretty much affect everything he does, even a guy like Arl Howe was starting to doubt he backed the right horse, that showed weakness and complexity in his decisions.

 

But it was completely removed from the player. Imagine if we didn't have those scenes...would Loghain feel like another vain, power-hungry villain that we tend to see in fantasy games?

 

I do agree a few of the bad guys are a bit too big in Inquisition, and by a few I mean mainly the Tevinter dude who thwarted the Wardens. Although it is kind of like Grima in the end, the little devil on your shoulder whispering in your ear was more or less his purpose. 

 

I see the point though, the portrayal for several of them were very cut and dry without nuance, which is an issue. I don't know, for me it didn't effect much. 

 

Yes, but I didn't really find Loghain to be an effective villain either.

 

And yeah, after responding to you I kind of thought and realized the issue was that the villains in DAI are pretty much caricatures, which prevented me from ever feeling them as threats. Yet those things always objective and I can't really fault someone not being bother by it. And trust, I tried to find a way to blame people for that.

[CronoDragoon]

Action gameplay is anti-thetical to party gameplay. You aren't managing the party if you are focused on controlling one character.

What would you call switching between characters?

[Fast Jimmy]

What would you call switching between characters?

 

Something you can do in Dynasty Warriors? Or NBA2K?

[AlanC9]

So Dynasty Warriors is tactical, huh?

If we're going to make a big deal out of these dichotomies, we need to do a bit more work on definitions first. But this strikes me as turning into one of those semantic fights that obscures the substance of the issues

[AlanC9]

Because Bioware was the last AAA developer offering RTwP tactical RPG gameplay. The LAST ONE.
Now, there's some indie competition (although most is turn based), but back when Bioware unceremoniously chucked it out the door of the DA franchise back in 2011, they didn't even realize that's what they had done.
They are bafflingly unaware of their own design choices and history, which really reflects the brain drain of talent that occured in the past five years, especially in the design and gameplay departments.

Hold it. First, If you're going to go on about Bio's design choices and history, you really need to bring NWN and JE into the conversation. Second, how did DA2 abandon "RTwP tactical RPG gameplay"? I suppose it cut down terrain-based AI exploits a bit, but I wouldn't equate these things.

[Morty Smith]

Hold it.

 

[Hiemoth]

Hold it. First, If you're going to go on about Bio's design choices and history, you really need to bring NWN and JE into the conversation. Second, how did DA2 abandon "RTwP tactical RPG gameplay"? I suppose it cut down terrain-based AI exploits a bit, but I wouldn't equate these things.

 

I wouldn't stop at those titles. If we are really having such a strict definition for those games, KotOR wouldn't meet that standard. Besides, when they published DAO, Bioware had published Mass Effect over a year earlier.

 

As for DA2, I've never understood the argument how DA2 abandoned that tactical combat, as I would argue that due to the developments in the skill and tactics systems, the tactical combat was actually truly superior to DAO. The only difference really was the lack of the tactical map, which was due to several focus decisions during the design phase and their lack of desire to build the maps twice for each level, once for tactical combat and once the over the shoulder.

 

Even beyond all of this, the argument that drives me nuts is the utter conviction that Bioware owes the players some type of a game. The argument that Bioware should only do certain types of games, which is utterly ridiculous. Bioware has made no such agreements and is usually quite open about their systems before publication. Even with DAI, where while I disliked a lot of the changes, I knew about almost all of them before the game even came out.

[Fast Jimmy]

DA2 had no tactical camera. You can't convince me that a game that barely let's you zoom out from one character with your view was designed to be focused on managing your entire party.


Because let's focus on that - managing your party. I'm not talking about checking your party's health and pausing to use healing or buff magic periodically. I'm not talking about making sure all the cooldown Attacks have been ticked off for all members at all times to make sure the highest DPS is active. These are things you do in Mass Effect and it doesn't make it a party-based game.

Let's review the word "tactics" to explain what I think you are missing.

Tactics
noun

1. (usually used with a singular verb) the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle.

2. (used with a plural verb) the maneuvers themselves.

Tactics is specifically dealing with unit placement and utilization of those units to achieve your goals. A game that does not let you see the battlefield does not allow tactical gameplay. Not to mention the unit speed and Attack of DA2 made unit placement TOTALLY irrelevant. Enemies will cross the entire screen in three seconds, so trying to divert Attacks or protect units or flank enemy forces all were next to useless endeavors. Not to mention the spawning waves of combat made any use of unit placement effective only for the first round, while completely disrupted and ineffective each subsequent wave.

The game had some STRATEGY, in terms of ability choice, level building and the application of both against different enemies, but the game is not an exercise in tactics. Hence, it is not a tactical game. Nor is it a party-based one in terms of combat, because the game is focused in nearly every way possible on controlling one party member at a time instead of issuing orders out to each unit in order to work as a cohesive group.

[Fast Jimmy]

Hold it. First, If you're going to go on about Bio's design choices and history, you really need to bring NWN and JE into the conversation. Second, how did DA2 abandon "RTwP tactical RPG gameplay"? I suppose it cut down terrain-based AI exploits a bit, but I wouldn't equate these things.

I enjoyed NWN and JE for what they were, but DA:I represented a return to a form of gameplay and design we hadn't seen in years. And when it outsold and out-awarded Mass Effect, that was, to many, proof that there was demand for these types of games.

Apparently Bioware thought different and stripped out many of the design decisions chosen for DA:O and instead focused on action gameplay for DA2. Which then undersold DA:O by about 2:1 (for a number of reasons, not just the combat).

I've been trying to focus on brand identity for the DA series with these posts. The lack of consistency in their sequels is, to me, a serious problem that Bioware is going to need to address.

[Cheviot]

DA2 had no tactical camera. You can't convince me that a game that barely let's you zoom out from one character with your view was designed to be focused on managing your entire party.

I take it you didn't get to play the Ancient Rock Wraith battle then? Surviving that battle absolutely depends on controling the placement of your party.

[Fast Jimmy]

I take it you didn't get to play the Ancient Rock Wraith battle then? Surviving that battle absolutely depends on controling the placement of your party.

If that's the shining example of tactical gameplay you want to champion for DA2, please, by all means, win my argument for me.

[Heimdall]

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond Fast Jimmy (And I don't even have much time to respond now, so I'll try to be quick)

 

What you're talking about seems more like a desire for a particular system than an issue of brand consistency.  And I don't really think DA:O was quite the return to form you make it out to be (Or Bioware for that matter made it out to be).  Then again my experience with that game is colored by my platform, I played mostly on consoles at the time.  Really the systems you seems to be asking for haven't been Bioware's focus for quite some time.  Kotor, JE, ME...  really, DA:O was an outlier of most of Bioware's releases in that area and it met with no shortage of criticism for clunky and slow combat (You might disagree, but there was no shortage of complaints on that front).  That is to say, Bioware's history has been moving towards more action ever since they disengaged from DnD settings and the requirement to follow their mechanics.  Left to their own devices, Bioware has often leaned toward action.  So this is really quite consistent with their history.

 

You seem to feel DAO promised you a return to the days of early Bioware focus on party-based combat (A promise they failed to fulfill even in DAO despite touting the BG name around in marketing) but I think you're overstating the shift between DAO and DA2.  Maybe it just seemed more drastic to you, playing on PC, but on console the continuity in gameplay felt quite self evident.  Dragon Age could always be played that way.  Did it lose the tactical placement options you prefer?  Yes.  Is it analogous to a devil may cry strategy game?  Hardly.

[AlanC9]

I enjoyed NWN and JE for what they were, but DA:I represented a return to a form of gameplay and design we hadn't seen in years. And when it outsold and out-awarded Mass Effect, that was, to many, proof that there was demand for these types of games.

See? Not too hard to acknowledge that Bio has a long history of doing games that don't have party control or are even outright action games. It doesn't even completely torpedo your argument.

Though I'm still not clear how DA2 gets filed under "action game." Except for a couple of boss fights it's no more an action game than DA:O is.

I've been trying to focus on brand identity for the DA series with these posts. The lack of consistency in their sequels is, to me, a serious problem that Bioware is going to need to address.

It'd cause less confusion if you didn't talk about Bioware's history when you only mean the DA series.

And I still can't shake the feeling that brand identity is a pretext. If DA2 and DAi had dumped elements of DA:O that you didn't like on the merits, would we be having this conversation?

[Elhanan]

Not certain if this fits, but Action game = no Pause features; no Tac-Cam either.

[CronoDragoon]

Something you can do in Dynasty Warriors? Or NBA2K?

I like the NBA2k example, because I think it perfectly illustrates how action gameplay and group-based character gameplay aren't antithetical at all. Unless you think a 1v1 basketball game is more fun, of course.

NBA games also tend to be quite tactical. You have various sets you can run that the other characters automate to help you score, such as Pick and Rolls, Isos, Motion Offenses, Zone and Man to Man defenses, backdoor cuts, etc. It's clear how different the setting is from your typical party-based RPG, but in terms of group mechanics it can actually be pretty complex (cheese tactics aside, which of course also exist in tactical iso RPGs). The players also all have stats (moreso than some CRPGs) and reward specializing your lineup with different strengths to accomodate the diverse demands of playing the game.

I am definitely taking this comparison too seriously, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

[Realmzmaster]

The discussion has been interesting, but it does not answer the question the OP posed. How successful is DAI for Bioware/EA? As i posted before if more dlc comes out (which appears to be the case) and DA4 is greenlighted (which it appears to be) then DAI was successful. That means it returned a good enough ROI and/or met expectations.

 

If that is the case I doubt there will be a return to the DAO style. Since i do believe that it was Gaider who stated that even though it sold many units DAO barely met expectations in terms of ROI.

 

I plan on expending my opinions to Bioware on refining and making better what is and not what was. For example improving the tac cam..

[Ariella]

The discussion has been interesting, but it does not answer the question the OP posed. How successful is DAI for Bioware/EA? As i posted before if more dlc comes out (which appears to be the case) and DA4 is greenlighted (which it appears to be) then DAI was successful. That means it returned a good enough ROI and/or met expectations.

 

If that is the case I doubt there will be a return to the DAO style. Since i do believe that it was Gaider who stated that even though it sold many units DAO barely met expectations in terms of ROI.

 

I plan on expending my opinions to Bioware on refining and making better what is and not what was. For example improving the tac cam..

 

I think as someone else pointed out on this thread, EA was trumpeting the fact DAI's release contributed a great deal to their fourth quarter earnings. I think that's really the indicator of success in EA's collective mind. And that being the case, I have no doubt there will be a fourth installment unless something goes horribly wrong between now and then.

[Realmzmaster]

Something you can do in Dynasty Warriors? Or NBA2K?

Which proves that party based and action gameplay can work together

[In Exile]

What I can't grasp is how the camera angle impacts whether or not something is "tactical". 

[Ariella]

What I can't grasp is how the camera angle impacts whether or not something is "tactical". 

 

It's "But Balder's Gate did it this way."