68 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

I don't mind the operations that were 10-30 minutes or even an hour or two (sometimes I would set one up and use it to take a break from the game), but those ones that were 6-24 hours were just plain stupid.

What's the actual problem with that? You don't get the results in this session, but you'll get them in tomorrow's.

I can see a problem with Natashina's specific case because that's possibly forcing the player to do stuff she doesn't want to while waiting for the critical path to open up, but outside of that?

[LinksOcarina]

What's the actual problem with that? You don't get the results in this session, but you'll get them in tomorrow's.

I can see a problem with Natashina's specific case because that's possibly forcing the player to do stuff she doesn't want to while waiting for the critical path to open up, but outside of that?

 

People want immediacy basically. Anything in the way of that is a problem.

 

I think it's a fair implementation of things but others would disagree. 

[wrdnshprd]

not a huge fan of the war table from DA:I.

 

this is a video game.  i should be doing the rescuing.. i should be out fighting enemies for resources.. i should be investigating and doing the influencing.. not the NPCs.

 

that said, having a war table be a mission hub of some type, or  a way to mark special areas of the world, etc.. i think is great.

 

a great example of this kind of thing is xcom 2.  the map makes me feel like i am doing the investigating, im doing the resource collecting, im contacting the resistance, etc.. i'd love to see something similar in Andromeda.

 

also, having the war table be accessible via an omni tool or equivalent is a great idea.  totally down for that.

[MrFob]

What's the actual problem with that? You don't get the results in this session, but you'll get them in tomorrow's.

I can see a problem with Natashina's specific case because that's possibly forcing the player to do stuff she doesn't want to while waiting for the critical path to open up, but outside of that?

 

The actual problem with it (at least in DA:I) was that real missions that progressed the story would quite often change what missions were available on the war table. New ones might come up but sometimes also missions might no longer be available (which made sense for story reasons).

Now, if you are a completionist like me, you want to do all the war table missions. Since you can never be sure if those will still be there after progressing to the next story quest you are basically forced to stop playing the game and wait (or change your system clock which is hardly a great solution).

However, I want to play the game on my own schedule. If I have nothing else to do on a rainy weekend, I might want to play 8 hours straight. During other weeks I may have no time to play at all. I think it's a bad idea to force a schedule (or at least breaks) on a player like this. That is the actual problem.

 

Nit to mention that this entire thing makes no sense in universe where travel times are cut. Real time never translates into in-game time properly at least not in BW games. So it's not even something that increases my immersion into the world or anything like that. Quite the contrary actually.

 

EDIT: Haha, I just realized I made basically exactly the same post on page one about half a year ago.

[Bad King]

The war table was a great concept that was poorly executed. If a similar concept is used in ME:A, it needs to be more interactive and better integrated into the world (e.g have short cutscenes play to actually show you certain events and have more in-game character dialogue relating to these events). In DA:I it was too static and for the most part felt divorced from the rest of the game.

[wright1978]

The actual problem with it (at least in DA:I) was that real missions that progressed the story would quite often change what missions were available on the war table. New ones might come up but sometimes also missions might no longer be available (which made sense for story reasons).

Now, if you are a completionist like me, you want to all the war table missions. Since can never be sure if those will still be there after progressing to the next story quest, you are basically forced to stop playing the game and wait (or change your system clock which is hardly a great solution).

However, I want to play the games on my own schedule. If I have nothing else to do on a rainy weekend, I might want to play 8 hours straight. During other weeks I may have no time to play at all. I think it's a bad idea to force a schedule (or at least breaks) on a player like this. That is the actual problem.

 

Nit to mention that this entire thing makes no sense in universe where travel times are cut. Real time never translates into in-game time properly at least not in BW games. So it's not even something that increases my immersion into the world or anything like that. Quite the contrary actually.

 

EDIT: Haha, I just realized I made basically exactly the same post on page one about half a year ago.

 

Reminds me of leaving Baldur's gate 2 on pause to activate real time delayed romance trigger

[AlanC9]

The actual problem with it (at least in DA:I) was that real missions that progressed the story would quite often change what missions were available on the war table. New ones might come up but sometimes also missions might no longer be available (which made sense for story reasons).

Which ones actually expire? I can think of a handful that expire when you reach Skyhold... and obviously if you, say, get the Chargers killed then their missions go away. Which others?
 

Now, if you are a completionist like me, you want to do all the war table missions. Since you can never be sure if those will still be there after progressing to the next story quest you are basically forced to stop playing the game and wait (or change your system clock which is hardly a great solution).
However, I want to play the game on my own schedule. If I have nothing else to do on a rainy weekend, I might want to play 8 hours straight. During other weeks I may have no time to play at all. I think it's a bad idea to force a schedule (or at least breaks) on a player like this. That is the actual problem.

Using "forced" there in a fairly limited sense, of course.

Sounds to me like completionism itself is the problem. Or rather, since the whole design approach seems to be either indifferent to or deliberately frustrating to completionists, this is just another example.
 

Not to mention that this entire thing makes no sense in universe where travel times are cut. Real time never translates into in-game time properly at least not in BW games. So it's not even something that increases my immersion into the world or anything like that. Quite the contrary actually.

Hmm... instant completion would just remind me about the traditionally bad Bio clock, so I guess you and I might be in a zero-sum game here.

My preferred approach would be to base war table mission completion on quest completion rather than the clock. (In ME3 I would have had travel times between systems -- take too long and the Reapers win. The end.) Would this be better for you, or worse?

[AlanC9]

The war table was a great concept that was poorly executed. If a similar concept is used in ME:A, it needs to be more interactive and better integrated into the world (e.g have short cutscenes play to actually show you certain events and have more in-game character dialogue relating to these events). In DA:I it was too static and for the most part felt divorced from the rest of the game.

Adding cutscenes makes the war table a resource sink. If that becomes a requirement the whole thing's going to fail the ROI check.

[MrFob]

Which ones actually expire? I can think of a handful that expire when you reach Skyhold... and obviously if you, say, get the Chargers killed then their missions go away. Which others?

I actually don't know but it doesn't matter. If just a few do it's enough. If the player notices one instance than there will always be a doubt whether or not this will happen again. So one instance is enough.

 

Using "forced" there in a fairly limited sense, of course.

Sounds to me like completionism itself is the problem. Or rather, since the whole design approach seems to be either indifferent to or deliberately frustrating to completionists, this is just another example.

Ah, so it's my fault for wanting to experience the game? I see and maybe it was. I know, if I ever replay DA:I, I'll just play the main story and ignore all the BS filler content, that's for sure. But does that make the design choices better? IMO it's not exactly great if you design your game around the player ignoring part of the content. I agree that "force" is a bit harsh but even if you just use "encourage" it still doesn't make it great game design all of a sudden.

 

 

Hmm... instant completion would just remind me about the traditionally bad Bio clock, so I guess you and I might be in a zero-sum game here.

My preferred approach would be to base war table mission completion on quest completion rather than the clock. (In ME3 I would have had travel times between systems -- take too long and the Reapers win. The end.) Would this be better for you, or worse?

 
I never said I wanted instant completion. In fact I think this would also be bad because it would also make no sense. I think the entire mechanic needs to be re-designed from scratch (or cut, I wouldn't mind not seeing a war table equivalent in ME:A, that would be just fine with me). If they do want a war table, they have to integrate it better into the game. They way it worked in DA:I, it felt more like a companion app (in fact, when I first saw the war table, I went on google to look if I could download it for my phone ).
 
There are ways to insert a time element into a game that is based around missions and traveling. I even already made a post with an example in this very thread. Now, I am not saying that the example from that post is necessarily the best way to go for an ME game, what I am saying is that if the devs want to include two independent mission systems, they need to reconcile possible conflicts between them or it will hurt the overall design for both. And IMO real time waiting periods are definitely not it.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

The 'Contact the Hero of Ferelden' one was the worst for me. I always end up getting it late, because Leliana's other dialogue seems to take precedence over giving that quest. So I'm about to do the final battle, and notice I have a 12? 24? 48? hour long war table quest to complete first. On my first playthrough, I delayed finishing the game until a couple of days later so I could see what the outcome was. How silly. 

 

No kidding and all I got was a letter and a belt. 

I currently have Cullen doing the Bright-Axe operation which will takes him 18 hours to complete, and he's the fastest with both Leliana and Josephine were at 22 hours to finish the same operation.  

[9TailsFox]

In DA we can use Dorians iStone. Well in ME it's easy we have computers.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

What's the actual problem with that? You don't get the results in this session, but you'll get them in tomorrow's.

I can see a problem with Natashina's specific case because that's possibly forcing the player to do stuff she doesn't want to while waiting for the critical path to open up, but outside of that?

 

1) Timing-When you get say four or five such operations you can't always have set the ops to happen overnight. 

 

2) Not being able to have more operations with the advisors that I want to, I'm currently waiting for Cullen to get the Bright-Axe operation so I can him for another operation because I feel he is the best choice for that operation. Not having a general, spymaster, and an ambassador multi-task feels immersion breaking to me. 

 

3) In some cases I'm not picking who is the best advisor to get me the best reward or even represents my or my Inquisitor's way of thinking it's that I'm simply picking the one who can get the operation done the fastest.

 

4) Rewards. IMHO not many of the 6-24 hour operations have much value, in terms of story, lore, coin, exp, influence, and items. They are on the whole IMHO massive let downs.

 

5) Downtime. The longer the op is the more I don't feel like playing the game, but that is more of a personal issue with me, but I get the feeling that I'm not alone on that. 

[9TailsFox]

1) Timing-When you get say four or five such operations you can't always have set the ops to happen overnight. 

 

2) Not being able to have more operations with the advisors that I want to, I'm currently waiting for Cullen to get the Bright-Axe operation so I can him for another operation because I feel he is the best choice for that operation. Not having a general, spymaster, and an ambassador multi-task feels immersion breaking to me. 

 

3) In some cases I'm not picking who is the best advisor to get me the best reward or even represents my or my Inquisitor's way of thinking it's that I'm simply picking the one who can get the operation done the fastest.

 

4) Rewards. IMHO not many of the 6-24 hour operations have much value, in terms of story, lore, coin, exp, influence, and items. They are on the whole IMHO massive let downs.

 

5) Downtime. The longer the op is the more I don't feel like playing the game, but that is more of a personal issue with me, but I get the feeling that I'm not alone on that. 

I think this is best point. I can' comprehend how someone could even try to justify this war table mess. idea is good but execution is horrible. It would be much better if we need power to do missions instantly. A least it will be useful. Not like now at the end of the game we have 200 points we don't need.

[Revan Reborn]

There better not be a war table equivalent! Otherwise, BioWare Montreal will be seeing me soon!

[sjsharp2011]

People want immediacy basically. Anything in the way of that is a problem.

 

I think it's a fair implementation of things but others would disagree. 

indeed  that's kind of why I suggested having a missoin counter rather than a clock one next time because I don't think there was anything wrong with the idea of a war table just the way it was implemented. For example you set the tasks go away to do a couple of missions and then once those 2 missions are complete come back for the result. I never had a problem as i'm quite a slow  thorough player anyway so the longer countdowns never really caused me any issues but for those that do like to do things at a faster pace I can see why it could be a problem especially the longer countdowns

[malloc]

On Cerberus, what did the war table accomplish?

[In Exile]

What's the actual problem with that? You don't get the results in this session, but you'll get them in tomorrow's.

I can see a problem with Natashina's specific case because that's possibly forcing the player to do stuff she doesn't want to while waiting for the critical path to open up, but outside of that?

 

It also makes assumptions about how and when players can play the game. I might be able to play 15 hours in one go, or 3 hours spread out over 5 days. The way I can experience the war table varies radically based on my available schedule. I think that's bad design. 

[Bad King]

Adding cutscenes makes the war table a resource sink. If that becomes a requirement the whole thing's going to fail the ROI check.

 

If the cutscenes are simplistic and only deployed for a small number of operations then it shouldn't be much of a drain on resources and in return it would add much more flavour and scope to the game world.

[Addictress]

I hate war tables so hard, like you wouldn't believe.

 

Could you

 

please 

 

STOP

 

encouraging