391 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

I'm not asking for less roleplaying, I'm just saying it shouldn't be an excuse for laziness. BioWare are trying to tell a story, so it's their burden to keep me interested throughout. Roleplaying should only enhance my experience. It shouldn't be a requirement, especially if it's to ignore poor design.

Why does it matter what BioWare is trying to do?

How do you determine whether a design is poor? How many assumptions underlie that definition?

I don't understand how that was inconsistent. BioWare set a standard and then stopped trying to meet it in certain parts of their game.

How do you know they set that standard?

The game is what it is. What it was supposed to be should have no bearing on our evaluation of of it, assuming we can even know what it was supposed to be.

BioWare are storytellers, when they stop telling stories in their games for no good reason, I think that's a valid basis for criticism.

They make roleplaying games. I question them just as much when they eliminate roleplaying content from their games, as they did with much of the ME series.

I don't think telling stories is compatible with roleplaying game design. I also think that they've done a generally better job of making roleplaying games.

A roleplaying game can't tell a decent story, because the writers of a roleplaying game know very little about the protagonist.

You dispute the fact that games are art? Or that they can tell their own stories? That's simply false.

I dispute that "art" is a meaningful label, but that's neither here nor there.

What the games express has no necessary relationship to the designers' intent.

As a guy who designs games as part of his coursework, I can tell you for a fact that content can be categorized and even ranked.

I can make up rankings about a lot of things. That doesn't make my rankings meaningful or relevant.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Don't cut yourself on that edge.

I have no idea what this means.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Maker, this explains a lot

Finally.

[Sylvius the Mad]

My first playthrough of DA:O was about 110 mins and thats doing EVERYTHING. Now I can get it down to 60 mins while still doing everything. Not sure how I'm saving time. I guess I'm not reading the codex entries anymore and some dialogue skipping but I listen to most of the dialogue on replays anyway so......

Do you mean hours there?

[gottaloveme]

Just let it be relevant

[Wissenschaft 2.0]

Do you mean hours there?

 

HAHAHA, nice catch. Yes, I meant hours. lol

[RoboticWater]

Why does it matter what BioWare is trying to do?

Because they're artists, and I want to enjoy their art. I can't do that if BioWare don't try to do anything at all.

 

How do you determine whether a design is poor? How many assumptions underlie that definition?

Ask my professors, they do it all the time or maybe ask a games critic. There's generally a consensus on these things.

 

How do you know they set that standard?

By making the other parts of the game good.

 

The game is what it is. What it was supposed to be should have no bearing on our evaluation of of it, assuming we can even know what it was supposed to be.

We aren't looking at shadows on a wall, Plato. We're looking at a game made by people with a plan. When the main quest (called "main" for a reason) offers engaging content that portray and evolve certain themes, I get surprised and disappointed when other parts of the game don't even attempt to do a fraction of that. 

 

They make roleplaying games. I question them just as much when they eliminate roleplaying content from their games, as they did with much of the ME series.

We're not talking about roleplaying, we're talking about filler.

BioWare made it quite clear that ME was never intended to be the greatest roleplaying experience of all time, they just wanted to tell a good story and let the players interact with it. That's clear by their mission statement and that's clear by their design decisions.

 

I don't think telling stories is compatible with roleplaying game design. I also think that they've done a generally better job of making roleplaying games.

A roleplaying game can't tell a decent story, because the writers of a roleplaying game know very little about the protagonist.

Yes, telling stories and giving a decent roleplaying experience is often quite difficult. Good thing BioWare make it very clear to everyone that they mostly want to tell stories.

But even if BioWare didn't make a complex story, filler would still be a problem. RPG designers have to make a world to roleplay in and generally that world follows a theme to give it some uniqueness. If parts of a game don't add to that theme, then their presence is essentially pointless. You'd be just as well off wandering around, finding a pile of gold, and pretending that you went on a boring quest to get it.

 

I dispute that "art" is a meaningful label, but that's neither here nor there.

In this context its very relevant. It seems you'd prefer BioWare just give you a piece of blank paper that you can project your stories onto. It's fine if you want to do that, but I don't think BIoWare devs could live with themselves if they just handed out pieces of paper all day. These people are artists with an agenda, and I think it's important that their work be both recognized and criticized as art.

 

What the games express has no necessary relationship to the designers' intent.

Isn't it odd that when BioWare intend to write a story, their game expresses a story?

 

I can make up rankings about a lot of things. That doesn't make my rankings meaningful or relevant.

Obviously any ranking you make isn't going to be meaningful to anyone, but anything can be judged relative to a certain context. I literally couldn't be studying videogames if there wasn't an established heuristic for good design.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Because they're artists, and I want to enjoy their art. I can't do that if BioWare don't try to do anything at all.

 

Ask my professors, they do it all the time or maybe ask a games critic. There's generally a consensus on these things.

That an opinion is widely held doesn't make it correct, or even relevant.

 

Except perhaps to argumentum ad popularum.

By making the other parts of the game good.

 

We aren't looking at shadows on a wall, Plato. We're looking at a game made by people with a plan. When the main quest (called "main" for a reason) offers engaging content that portray and evolve certain themes, I get surprised and disappointed when other parts of the game don't even attempt to do a fraction of that.

1. It doesn't matter what the game was intended to be.  It matters what the game actually is.  Let's judge it based on its actual content, because we're less likely to disagree about that.

 

2. What we call something doesn't change what it is.  A main quest is no more relevant to the game than any other quest is simply based on the label.  If there is a relevant standard of importance, the label does not determine it.

 

3. I'm not even sure what themes are in this context, but I'm confident they don't matter.  The themes aren't perceptible from within the game, and that in-game perspective is the only one that matters for roleplaying.  Being aware that there is a story, or that there are themes, means that I'm not fully immersed in my character.  My character doesn't know he's not real.  My character doesn't know there are writers.  And I will always judge how well the game works based on his perspective.

We're not talking about roleplaying, we're talking about filler.

From a roleplaying perspective, the distinction can't exist.

BioWare made it quite clear that ME was never intended to be the greatest roleplaying experience of all time, they just wanted to tell a good story and let the players interact with it. That's clear by their mission statement and that's clear by their design decisions.

Mission statements are nothing more than marketing boilerplate.  I've seen what goes into crafting mission statements; it's a remarkably cynical enterprise.

 

I will concede that the ME devs in particular didn't seem at all interested in offering a platform for roleplaying.  But among BioWare's franchises, ME is unique in this respect.

Yes, telling stories and giving a decent roleplaying experience is often quite difficult. Good thing BioWare make it very clear to everyone that they mostly want to tell stories.

And yet they've mostly made top-notch roleplaying games.

In this context its very relevant. It seems you'd prefer BioWare just give you a piece of blank paper that you can project your stories onto.

I don't write stories.  I design characters.  The stories emerge from those characters as those characters interact with the world BioWare provides.

 

The only time the authored narrative ever takes precedence over the emergent narrative is when I'm denied the freedom to design my character.  Among BioWare's games, this has only been true in the ME games.  Even DA2, through its use of an unreliable narrator, allowed me to craft my character as I saw fit.

It's fine if you want to do that, but I don't think BIoWare devs could live with themselves if they just handed out pieces of paper all day. These people are artists with an agenda, and I think it's important that their work be both recognized and criticized as art.

I think the distinction between "art" and "not art" is illusory.

Isn't it odd that when BioWare intend to write a story, their game expresses a story?

But not necessarily one they foresaw.

Obviously any ranking you make isn't going to be meaningful to anyone, but anything can be judged relative to a certain context. I literally couldn't be studying videogames if there wasn't an established heuristic for good design.

Is this the part where I explain that roleplaying games aren't games?  I forget.

[Xaijin]

 

Why does it matter what BioWare is trying to do?

How do you determine whether a design is poor? How many assumptions underlie that definition?
How do you know they set that standard?

The game is what it is. What it was supposed to be should have no bearing on our evaluation of of it, assuming we can even know what it was supposed to be.
They make roleplaying games. I question them just as much when they eliminate roleplaying content from their games, as they did with much of the ME series.

I don't think telling stories is compatible with roleplaying game design. I also think that they've done a generally better job of making roleplaying games.

A roleplaying game can't tell a decent story, because the writers of a roleplaying game know very little about the protagonist.
I dispute that "art" is a meaningful label, but that's neither here nor there.

What the games express has no necessary relationship to the designers' intent.
I can make up rankings about a lot of things. That doesn't make my rankings meaningful or relevant.

Your argumentation is entirely semantic.

meaningful

Just because something directly obviates your tact doesn't mean it's made up, which is particularly larf-worthy considering your main tact in most arguments is "my feels > reality".

Your feels don't obviate reality nor anything else, and the metric for this has been firmly established for almost fifty years: sales. It's exceedingly reliable.

[Sylvius the Mad]

 

Your argumentation is entirely semantic.

Not entirely. I'm arguing not that you're misusing words, but that you're applying irrelevant and meaningless concepts as if they have value.

For you to defend your approach on the grounds that the games are art, you would need to establish not just that the games are art, but also that the games being art matters at all to the discussion at hand.

It is the former to which I was trying to lead you.

Then we'd discuss whether authorial intent was an actual component of an artwork (I think not).

Your position relies on a mountain of unfounded assumptions.

Just because something directly obviates your tact doesn't mean it's made up, which is particularly larf-worthy considering your main tact in most arguments is "my feels > reality".

Not one element of our reality is relevant to the in-game reality.

They are entirely separate realities.

Your feels don't obviate reality nor anything else, and the metric for this has been firmly established for almost fifty years: sales. It's exceedingly reliable.

I have little or no interest in video games as a set. I have interest in roleplaying games as a set.

I judge CRPGs using the same criteria I would use to judge a tabletop RPG. What some non-RPG does doesn't matter just because it is played on the same platform.

Why do you think video games are the more important or more relevant group? Do you even know?

I don’t think you've given your position enough thought. I think it lacks philosophical rigour.

[Il Divo]

Personally, I think that's a terrible criteria to use. CRPG's are great in a lot of ways, but they utterly fail to capture the sheer scope of what pen and paper lets a player accomplish. To keep Robotic's fun Plato analogy going, if pen and paper is the "true form", the cRPG is the mere shadow on the wall.

[rashie]

Personally, I think that's a terrible criteria to use. CRPG's are great in a lot of ways, but they utterly fail to capture the sheer scope of what pen and paper lets a player accomplish. To keep Robotic's fun Plato analogy going, if pen and paper is the "true form", the cRPG is the mere shadow on the wall.

Goes without saying really pen and paper is always going to be better than the digital form when played with others, cause a good DM adjusts the game to the group he's playing with, a computer game has no way of doing that other than guiding you down a more or less set path.

[Il Divo]

Goes without saying really pen and paper is always going to be better than the digital form when played with others, cause a good DM adjusts the game to the group he's playing with, a computer game has no way of doing that other than guiding you down a more or less set path.

 

Agreed. Not to say cRPG's don't have advantages of their own (Ex: playing evil characters is sometimes discouraged in certain groups due to party killing), but overall the scale just isn't comparable.

 

The actual possibilities in pen and paper are near infinite, with some minor constraints. The actual possibilities in a cRPG never really approach this level. Hence all the complaints we see about railroading or lack of choices/consequences, etc. Those issues simply don't exist in pen and paper, depending on your DM.
 

[o Ventus]

I judge CRPGs using the same criteria I would use to judge a tabletop RPG. What some non-RPG does doesn't matter just because it is played on the same platform.
 

 

... This is stupid.

 

Tabletop games and video games are completely different media. You may as well be judging a music album by the same standards you would use to judge a film, and then saying the album sucks because there's no cinematography.

[AngryFrozenWater]

I'm not saying abolish side quests, but use the fact that MP exists to justify higher standards.

 

MP provides players with all the empty calories they could possibly want out of Mass Effect, so there's no need for BioWare to waste their time bloating Mass Effect with sidequests. All BioWare have to do is make all their sidequests with all (or at least some of) the intent and creativity they do with the rest of the game and let MP do its thing.

 

They don't have to settle for churning out repetitive content to pad out the game, because MP is already the ultimate padding.

Ghehe. Maybe MP is the ultimate padding for you. To me it's worse than fetch quests and not worth my time.

[Sylvius the Mad]

... This is stupid.

Tabletop games and video games are completely different media. You may as well be judging a music album by the same standards you would use to judge a film, and then saying the album sucks because there's no cinematography.

The medium is not the message. Marshall McLuhan was wrong.

RPGs are RPGs.

This disagreement is why I routinely argue that RPGs aren't games, to distinguish them from video games (which are games).

There is some definition of RPG which describes all RPGs. Whatever that definition is, that's the one I want to apply.

[o Ventus]

The medium is not the message. Marshall McLuhan was wrong.

RPGs are RPGs.

This disagreement is why I routinely argue that RPGs aren't games, to distinguish them from video games (which are games).

There is some definition of RPG which describes all RPGs. Whatever that definition is, that's the one I want to apply.

1. I'm not entirely convinced you understand the meaning of that phrase.

 

2. RPG's are games. It's kind of in the name of the genre. "Roleplaying game."

[Sylvius the Mad]

1. I'm not entirely convinced you understand the meaning of that phrase.

I'm not convinced McLuhan did either.

2. RPG's are games. It's kind of in the name of the genre. "Roleplaying game."

What we call something doesn't change what it is.

[Gothfather]

I'm seeing this trend lately of games taking to long to complete. For example, DAI is a massive game filled with time sink moments and my first playthrough ended at 130hours, then Witcher 3 which took me about 106hours to complete with still plenty of content still not experienced and MGSV took me 81hours to complete. I ended each game being exhausted and unable to fire up a second playthrough immediately after.

Games are getting to long and I know that people have always wanted long games but AAA games like DAI and MGSV have too much filler content, Witcher 3 being a phenomenal game has filler as well but it's better disguised with cutscenes.

I hope MEA isn't a massive timesink but knowing that it will follow in the footsteps of DAI it will probably be, hopefully they look at Witcher 3 and how they disguised filler than DAI and MGSV.

 

Why would a developer seeing these games think, "hmm successful game, very good sales figures, lets not learn from their success?"

 

Granted you don't like it but OBVIOUSLY people do. Open world games are popular they do well in sales and even games that critics hate like mad Max have good sales figures and decent Meta scores.

 

It is going to happen it is already CONFIRMED that exploration is very important to ME:A game play. So if you don't like this type of game play don't fraking buy the game. Problem solved.

[Gothfather]

The medium is not the message. Marshall McLuhan was wrong.

RPGs are RPGs.

This disagreement is why I routinely argue that RPGs aren't games, to distinguish them from video games (which are games).

There is some definition of RPG which describes all RPGs. Whatever that definition is, that's the one I want to apply.

 

Seriously why are you here?

 

You have not liked the direction of Bioware games since when, 2010 or 2008?

 

Bioware OBVIOUSLY doesn't share you view of the RPG and while not every game is a hit they are financially successful as a company.

 

Why do you continue to p!ss into the wind? Are you just hoping to P!ss in people's cornflakes that disagree with you?

 

Seriously why are you here? It is obvious that obsidian is a company with a more comparable take on what an RPG should be. Why not hang out there?

 

How many games does Bioware have to release that don't meet up to your standards before you move on?

 

You complain about every bioware title released from DA2 onwards so you don't like the games bioware makes except those of the past like DA:O and earlier. Do you just like arguing with people? Why? I don't hang around the blizzard forums any more because they no longer make games i like even though i enjoyed the first warcraft and starscraft and diablo games. Since Wow was released i haven't gone to a blizzard forum because i don't like their games. But i have no fraked up need to hang out there trying to convince everyone that loves or likes their games how wrong they are. So honestly why do you hand out here?

[AlanC9]

IIRC , Sylvius likes DAI. 

[Il Divo]

I think I remember him calling it the best Bioware game made in the last decade.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Seriously why are you here?

I bring clarity.

You have not liked the direction of Bioware games since when, 2010 or 2008?

What are you on about?

I thought BioWare was heading in generally the wrong direction for many years, but DAO turned that around in 2009. And now DAI, a game I think is amazing.

DAO is brilliant. DAI is brilliant. And DA2, while very limited, threw me a massive bone with the unreliable narrator. There's never been a better tool for supporting headcanon.

Bioware OBVIOUSLY doesn't share you view of the RPG and while not every game is a hit they are financially successful as a company.

They don't need to share my view. I'm happy as long as they make games that support my playstyle. And they've done that with most of their games.

BG, BG2, NWN, KotOR, DAO, and DAI all do a great job of offering me a roleplaying platform.

JE and DA2 do an adequate job.

Seriously why are you here? It is obvious that obsidian is a company with a more comparable take on what an RPG should be. Why not hang out there?

Obsidian historically offers me less freedom to design and control my character. KotOR2 was a travesty. Alpha Protocol was actively hostile to my playstyle.

I'd also like to point out that my argument style is largely Socratic. I don't so much tell people they're wrong as ask them how they know they're right. It should trouble them if they can't answer that question. I'm helping.

[o Ventus]

 

I'm not convinced McLuhan did either.

 

Considering he coined the phrase...

 

What we call something doesn't change what it is.

 

When everybody is more or less agreeing with each other to the point where a particular label or term becomes common parlance, your refusal to acknowledge it is contrarian for the sake of being special.

 

RPGs and video games are both games.

 

game (n): a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

 

Unless you're going to tell me that one does not "play" an RPG, and that RPGs aren't "played" according to a set of rules and are decided by skill (i.e. knowledge of the mechanics involved), strength (i.e. the gear and allocated stats of the player character), or luck (i.e. d20 or any similar dice rolls or RNG factors). Because role-playing games fit every criteria for being a "game".

 

I bring clarity.

 

Which explains why you and only you are apparently capable of making sense of the s*** you say.

[Fiery Phoenix]

I'm more concerned about meaningless filler content a la DAI.