This is an example how player choice the mantra of almost all gamers use to justify their position of a desired game feature can hurt a game. Player choice isn't the be all or end all, it comes at a major cost to the game and we have examples of how player choice hurts a game.
People wanted more companions because Bioware's reputation for companions is mainly positive and player want more of it so what could be wrong with giving player more choice in companions? DA:I has 12 companions/advisors all with their own stories but the depth of their stories doesn't compare with any of previous games' companions. Many players found the companion stories lacking, the reason is pretty simple when you have 5 or 6 companions the amount of story content devoted to companions is only split between 6, double that number of companions and you still have the same amount of content but any single companion has less content. Take 100 pennies split them into 5 groups and you get any one companion having 20% of the total story dedicated to companions this allows for a more scenes and a deeper story. Take the same number of pennies and split them into 10 piles and you have the same number of pennies aka the same amount of content, but the individual companions stories are half the size.
The practical result is that DA:I has the same amount companion content of previous games but the stories are weak because there is no time/resources to develop them. Cassandra has a crisis of faith that is resolved with one dialogue? pfft how is that a crisis? Bull has a Crisis of philosophy about the Qun and loyalty to the chargers and this gets resolved in one dialogue. How can this feel impactful and a major even in either of these two characters when it is resolved in a single scene? It has no weight, no depth because the resources to give these stories the time to develop is given over to other companions. And these two examples are not alone, Cullen's lyrium withdrawal is again a "hey inquisitor i'm going through an issue," next scene "hey inquisitor it is all good now." What? That is it?
So now I am sure people are saying we are not asking for 12 companions but playable races, which means these people have failed to make the connection to more player choice giving us less meaningful and enjoyable game experience. The resources needed to give us playable races means we will lose out in other areas of the game. Game budgets are not infinite and this means that any money spend on X means there is less money for A, B & C. Adding playable races means they need to create more assets. And don't think because there is an NPC model of a given race that is enough. It isn't. Most player character models have to have a far greater range of animations, superior skeletons and superior textures than the assets use for a NPC. This requires additional resources used in creating this player choice. The story has to become more generic to accommodate all the races and it requires the story acknowledge differences in the game which increase the cost. So you have more races you are going to need more assets to modify the appearance and the greater the variance in teh races the more costly that becomes. Humans and Elves for example can share hair styles but Asari, Turians, Humans, and every other possible race all have distinctly different appearances so that NO asset usable by one race is usable by a different race. With perhaps one exception the eyes. This adds up in cost. Players were not happy with the range of customization in DA:I and part of the problem is that they had to create separate assets for these races to various customization features. This will be exacerbated with the mass effect. All this cost money this cost Forces the development team to take money from other features.
Player choice comes at a cost it is not FREE, it is not always better that more choice is best. Would it be cool to play as X? yes but that isn't the only factor to consider. What do we lose for being able to play as X and is that worth it? After seeing DA:I and the breadth of player choice that game gives you i can't help but think it shows very clearly that we got lots of choice but we didn't get a superior game. I enjoy DA:I and have played over 400 hours according to origin but i can't help but feel that the game would have been better with 3-5 less companions, no choice for protagonist voice, and no choice of race. As all these choices are expensive to include and that is money that could have been spent giving us a better experience with in the world. i'd much rather have my choices restricted in what i can play vs how I can play. Let me make choice in the story, let me make choice in dialogue choice, that is the kind of choice that engages me. not if I have 12 hairstyles vs 20 hairstyles or 1 playable race vs 3 or 4 playable races. i feel almost no emotional attachment to the companions in DA:I compared to those in BG1-2, KOTOR, DA:O even DA2 (bioware's worse RPG to date IMHO) or ME1-3. I can't help feel that his was a result of there just being zero time to develop any connection with them because there is hardly any content with them compared to other games.
Don't believe me that more companions impact the amount of content you experience with companion?
http://www.makinggam...mbers,6845.html
This article shows you how bioware develops Dialogue and story content with voice acting and the companions. It is pretty simple to see how more companions means less for any given companion. And it shows how budgets are interconnected which means giving more to A requires that everything else has less. Which is common sense, as adults we only have limited funds a larger mortgage or car payment means less money for other things. It isn't rocket science. But i doubt anyone who wants to play an asari or turian or whatever will ever concede that this desire will hurt other areas of the game, well not many of them anyway. Gamers think unreasonable expectations and desires are their "right."
That is the problem I think, there might be a lot of people in threads like this now saying they are willing to accept the cost of multiple races, but when the game launches you will have people that didn't realize the total cost complaining or another group of people upset that they added to the game and cost them what they felt BioWare must do to please them while listening to the "complainers" that got their race selection.
Basically no matter what BioWare does there is going to be probably an equal about of people not buying the game because they did 'x' or complaining for months that "they had a golden opportunity to pander to that player, but didn't"
Given the complaints DA:I got over the character customization, the shallow companions stories and so forth I don't believe that the community as a whole is split 50/50. i think there is a clear disappointment in the costs for DA:I breadth of choice. Now many players have no clue that these things are connected true but DA:I has shown that Choice doesn't equal player contentment. So they shouldn't try to give us this choice for its own sake. Give us choice only when the cost isn't too high and it actually provides a benefit to the story and game play.
Retour en haut
Not too big a skin off of my nose.
