69 réponses à ce sujet

[atum]

Skyrim was actually awful and entirely pointless. I like how you took "Make less areas so you can fill your area's you make with interesting stuff" as "Linear gameplay"
Aside from that DA is a focused narrative. This is the open world you wanted so badly, filled to the brim with irrelevance and pointlessness. Unless were remembering skyrims 500+ drauger caves differently.

 

 

With 20 million copies sold and being one of the best selling games of all time, Skyrim was not "entirely pointless".  It had a lot more than just draugr caves.  The Dark Brotherhood quest line in particular was fantastic. 

 

It's fine that you don't like Skyrim, but you shouldn't dismiss it.   Skyrim certainly isn't perfect, but it's hardly evidence of a bad open world game.  That's just laughable.  It would be like calling Half-Life 2 an example of a bad FPS. 

 

It's a false dichotomy that an open world can't have a good story.  People in this thread have already discussed the myriad of challenges that BioWare dealt with that left them scrambling at the end with little time to fill the world with more interesting quests.  And it's not the first time BW has done this kinda thing either.  ME3 and DA2 had really dumb side quests.  BW clearly plans from the onset on putting these types of things in.  They just need to refocus that effort on quality side quests.

 

The reason I painted you as possibly wanting more linear gameplay is because in other posts in this thread you imply as much.  But if you want to call it "focused", that's fine too.  Not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to show that we need not sacrifice open world.

[atum]

awesome!  How do you find her? I've run all around Hissing Wastes and never run into her. But I have completed the main story so maybe you have to find her pre story end?  

 

 

I think it's random but I did manage to Google and find a few threads on BSN that had some attempts to map possible spawn points.  It took me quite a lot of running around to find her tbh

[Al Foley]

With 20 million copies sold and being one of the best selling games of all time, Skyrim was not "entirely pointless".  It had a lot more than just draugr caves.  The Dark Brotherhood quest line in particular was fantastic. 

 

It's fine that you don't like Skyrim, but you shouldn't dismiss it.   Skyrim certainly isn't perfect, but it's hardly evidence of a bad open world game.  That's just laughable.  It would be like calling Half-Life 2 an example of a bad FPS. 

 

It's a false dichotomy that an open world can't have a good story.  People in this thread have already discussed the myriad of challenges that BioWare dealt with that left them scrambling at the end with little time to fill the world with more interesting quests.  And it's not the first time BW has done this kinda thing either.  ME3 and DA2 had really dumb side quests.  BW clearly plans from the onset on putting these types of things in.  They just need to refocus that effort on quality side quests.

 

The reason I painted you as possibly wanting more linear gameplay is because in other posts in this thread you imply as much.  But if you want to call it "focused", that's fine too.  Not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to show that we need not sacrifice open world.

Exactly.  In all the 7 RPGs I have played and the dozens of other games I have played only 2 games have had what I would call 'good' side quest content.  And that is not just one good side quest here or there but the side quests were actually consitantly good.  Actually maybe 3 with Skyrim but the problem with Skyrim the 'main plot' was so poor that many of the side quests out shined it which should not really happen. 

[AnUnculturedLittlePotato]

awesome!  How do you find her? I've run all around Hissing Wastes and never run into her. But I have completed the main story so maybe you have to find her pre story end?  

Pretty sure it's random.

 

With 20 million copies sold and being one of the best selling games of all time, Skyrim was not "entirely pointless".  It had a lot more than just draugr caves.  The Dark Brotherhood quest line in particular was fantastic. 

 

It's fine that you don't like Skyrim, but you shouldn't dismiss it.   Skyrim certainly isn't perfect, but it's hardly evidence of a bad open world game.  That's just laughable.  It would be like calling Half-Life 2 an example of a bad FPS. 

 

It's a false dichotomy that an open world can't have a good story.  People in this thread have already discussed the myriad of challenges that BioWare dealt with that left them scrambling at the end with little time to fill the world with more interesting quests.  And it's not the first time BW has done this kinda thing either.  ME3 and DA2 had really dumb side quests.  BW clearly plans from the onset on putting these types of things in.  They just need to refocus that effort on quality side quests.

 

The reason I painted you as possibly wanting more linear gameplay is because in other posts in this thread you imply as much.  But if you want to call it "focused", that's fine too.  Not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to show that we need not sacrifice open world.

Linear is ff13.
Focused is DA:O
One is a line, the other has each point/zone clearly laid out and have the focus upon it. Also how many people bought skyrim and hated it, I wonder? Sales =/= enjoyment.

 

Exactly.  In all the 7 RPGs I have played and the dozens of other games I have played only 2 games have had what I would call 'good' side quest content.  And that is not just one good side quest here or there but the side quests were actually consitantly good.  Actually maybe 3 with Skyrim but the problem with Skyrim the 'main plot' was so poor that many of the side quests out shined it which should not really happen. 

There was a main plot? I thought it was just some narrativeless sandbox.
I remember the endlessly generated side quests so I'm not sure what your talking about >.>'''
there was like 2/3 good ones. If there were more the game was too boring for me to bother.

[TheExtreamH]

I quite liked the large maps, I think they would have been alot better if they wasn't filled with so many fetched quests. If they do bring back large maps in DA4 (which i hope they do) they fill out them maps with more content to keep players invested.

[AnUnculturedLittlePotato]

I quite liked the large maps, I think they would have been alot better if they wasn't filled with so many fetched quests. If they do bring back large maps in DA4 (which i hope they do) they fill out them maps with more content to keep players invested.

I'm sure that making more content won't cost any money at all, surely.
Fetch quests are easy and cheap.

[vbibbi]

Reposting what I said in another thread:

 

If the number of rifts were reduced by 75% I think that would go a long way for me in terms of replayability. They become such a chore after the first playthrough, I don't find them fun and they become obstacles to avoid when crossing the maps. They are the #1 element that feels like an MMO. And it highlights how segregated actual gameplay is from the narrative concept. The environment is unaffected by the rifts and demons pouring from them. And apparently they only occur in remote wilderness areas, not in urban areas where we would have heard about mass evacuations or quarantines. The cult surrounding one of the rifts is apparently able to survive without fear of the demons coming out at any point.

 

I have no clue why the devs thought all of the collections were a good idea. Did ANYONE enjoy the shards? And for such lame payoff in the temple. Or the bottles. I enjoyed the landmarks in the Hinterlands that led to a war table mission, but otherwise they didn't serve much purpose. The notes in the Hissing Wastes would have been impossible if I didn't have a guide with all of the locations. I don't see what's fun about walking around a huge desert waiting for the radar to go off. We can't even be on mounts to speed it up.

[atum]

 

Also how many people bought skyrim and hated it, I wonder? Sales =/= enjoyment.

 

There was a main plot? I thought it was just some narrativeless sandbox.
I remember the endlessly generated side quests so I'm not sure what your talking about >.>'''
there was like 2/3 good ones. If there were more the game was too boring for me to bother.

 

You yourself said earlier in the thread you had hardly ever met anyone who disliked Skyrim.  Its sales were some of the best ever, and it's ratings were also some of the best for an RPG ever.  It has received nearly universal critical acclaim and is almost always on "best RPG of all time" lists, often as #1.

 

What metric will convince you that maybe you hold the minority opinion and/or that maybe you aren't giving it a fair shake?

 

To be fair, the main plot was kinda cheesy writing at times.  But The DB and Thieves Guild were outstanding.  Companions was a good quest too.  I also liked the two big DLC quests.  But there are also dozens of more small side quests that are very interesting.   This is what Bethesda is really good at.   Not the radiant/generated quests but the dozens and dozens of small content quests.

 

If you kept repeating the "kill the giant" or "clear the bandits from the cave" quests, then yes, sure, those were boring.  But all you had to do in Skyrim was talk to a few NPCs and you would start uncovering quest after quest.

 

Obviously Bethesda's character development and writing skills are not as good as BW, but imagining there is some unspoken large group of people out there that disliked the game is just rationalization.  So I really don't know how to get this point across to you any more clearly.  It is not an example of a bad open world game.  It's not helping your argument at all.

 

I'm sure that making more content won't cost any money at all, surely.

 

No one outside of BW/EA knows what DAI's budget was. And, no one said that content was free.  But they spent a lot of resources moving to a new engine and on the keep-capturing mechanic. And they certainly wasted some resources on dumb fetch quests. 

 

Obviously it is not a 1/1 swap from fetch quest to some giant new story quest.  But BW can do better now that they arent dealing with a new engine and shoehorning a strategy game in.

 

Fetch quests are easy and cheap.

 

And nowadays they add negative value to a game.  Instead of being something fun, they are a source of complaint.

 

Anyways this is getting a little tiresome.  This argument has played out many times since BW first announced they were looking to Skyrim for inspiration and the DAI was going to be open world.  Now they proved they can create a game with a great story and big, beautiful open world.  They made some mistakes for sure, but they proved they can accomplish several awesome things at once.

 

I had my faith in BW restored by DA:I (after the ME3 starchild killed it).  I don't like everything they did, but for the most part they delivered on a monumentally ambitious sequel.

[Lazengan]

People here actually liked Skyrim combat?

 

what a complete joke

[TevinterSupremacist]

1)An open world should be a filled open world, not an empty or relatively empty or semi-empty open world. A filled one.

2)An open world shouldn't feel like/be a set of different, independent parts. It should be an organic unit where affecting one part, affects the other. (different quest choices depending on previous quests, different enemies, different available factions/merchants and so on)

3)All quests should be  unique/distinct and somewhat related to the main quest. And have writing in them, meaning compelling (narrative-wise)reasons to engage them as well as impact on the world. Meaning no fetch/kill 10x grindfests again and again.

[atum]

People here actually liked Skyrim combat?

 

what a complete joke

 

Who is talking about combat?

[squirrely1]

Wow why all the Skyrim hate here? I think it's easy to forget, since Skyrim released in 2011 just how much games have raised the bar since then and I honestly want to attribute that to games like Skyrim for helping to do that.  Skyrim was no shabby game by any means.  But yes if now you want to compare it to way more sophisticated combat systems that have been put in place since 2011 then yeah I can see where you may be a tad disappointed.  

 

Skyrim had a main story plot yes. *Leaves an Elder Scroll here for those who so wish to read more*

 

Again it's easy to forget just how immense and beautiful this world was and let's not forget the game was deliberately developed so the player could put aside the main story line in order to explore the world as he/she so pleased.  

 

I think the combat system which incorporated the whole Dragonborn aka Elder speech that required learning the various shouts which became part of your combat system, I thought was very ingenious.  I think that possibly games like The Witcher series may have been inspired by that,  with the use of Signs as part of their combat system as well.  I loved how in Skyrim you could combine elements of magic and melee damage.  

 

Finally, I say to each their own really. No game is going to be perfect for everyone.  It comes down to what you like and care most about in your games.   I personally do not play a game strictly for it's combat.  While I enjoy the combat elements of a game that is not the biggest draw for me to a game.  I much prefer great visually stunning landscapes to explore, discover,engage and effect.  Characters that you can meet and interact with who can go along with you in the journey or who you can effect by your decisions, etc.

 

I would say the over all story then almost becomes secondary to me because ultimately my main concern is to the characters that have been my buddies and pals through my journey with me.  That is the first thing I want to see as the epilogue rolls by what has happened to all the characters that I have come to love. Plus any decisions we make and how it impacts the world ultimately comes down to how it impacted (negatively or positively) the characters in the game.  So decisions by nature are driven by how it impacts people or creatures in the worlds we're playing in.

 

I think when story supersedes character treatment that is when we (or at least I) sometimes get bent out of shape... for example the Mass Effect 3 ending, you don't get a good sense of what happened to your characters because the ending pulled out to such a large global scale and with a time jump you then are sort of whirled into a tidy story ending but you are left feeling like WTF?  What just happened here? I was just fighting along side my buddy when suddenly I'm hurled light years into the future and I just don't care about that right now.  So story in my mind has to try to keep in mind the characters and how you have come to impact them and your choices and how that has impacted the world, etc.  Some games do this way better than others obviously.  But again to what extent you want story treatment vs character treatment vs combat etc. even romance treatment has huge impact with some players (me included) this all comes down to personal preference and what is important to you as the player. 

 

So quite possibly this is why fetch quests seem so mundane and grind-y because we are not really impacting anything.  Some of the more meaningful side quests I have experienced in games came about by you having to make a decision and that decision could determine the fate of another character or even a group of characters.  In the Witcher a whole town could be wiped out due to one of your decisions.  The problem with too many of these side quests that can change the overall state of your world or could change the characters in your world so much by these decisions that it becomes a logistical nightmare to program such a beast.  You have to then account for every nuance in your world state and then dialogues need to change and your characters reaction needs to change and even the NPC's and how they interact with you going forward needs to change as well.  That is not so easy to do. So while I think it's nice to dream that fetch quests will be a thing of the past I certainly don't think developers will throw them out all together as they do add some gameplay value in acquiring loot and maybe some XP but as far as impacting world state or character development not so much.  It's just one of those necessary evils.  IMO.

[Ieldra]

Some points about DAI's opener-world design and how to improve it:

 

Fetch quests:

 

The TES games tend to have tons of quests of the type "get me X" or "kill y". The differences to DAI's are twofold: (1) There aren't many quests of the type "collect 10 of X", it's usually just one, so that those quests are short tasks that don't stick in your mind, and (2) that many are related to factions, so that you have a believable motivation for doing them if you associate with that faction. In the TES games, it's all more about building your character's life in an open-world environment, and the main plots, such as they are, are sideshows. In Skyrim the main plot had a little more weight than in the other TES games, but you could still put it aside and explore the world at your leisure, and make your own life in it.

 

So in order to make that kind of quest meaningful for DAI, well, make them meaningful. Finding cool item #275 isn't going to cut it after a while. You need to feel that your character's life is somehow affected by that quest, maybe only in a minor way, but that's enough. Of course, in order for that to work, your character must have a life outside of the main plot in the first place, and DAI does not provide that apart from romances.

 

Another point is that DAI doesn't have enough quests to make you feel any of them are optional. TES worlds are big enough that I've never managed to explore any of them completely, in spite of my repeated intention to do so at some time. The same with quests. You can't be a completionist in TES games so you might as well stop trying and only play those quests that interest you.

 

So in order to improve the open-world aspect, should the next DA game have it, give the protagonist more of a life outside the main plot, and then link those small sidequests to something the character might want to do in that life. What is your Inquisitor when she's not inquisitor-ing? In Bioware's games, that was never important, but small-scale quests work best in a small-scale environment where they can be meaningful.

 

Random finds

 

Things like "collect 100000 useless crafting items in order to find one that's fade-touched", that sucks. It's a meaningless chore and a time sink without any enjoyment. The same with schematics. We now have the golden nug and I have four Inquisitors who completed the game, one of them three times. I have spent hours save-scumming at Elfblood tower with several of them, and I still don't have the armor schematic I want for my rogue. This kind of randomness has to go. That's not open-world stuff, that's MMO stuff and it has no place at all in a story-based single-player game, open-world or not. 

 

Better world simulation

 

With DAI, Bioware added some dynamic to the maps, but the most important parts of the world - towns - remain disappointingly static. Much as the protagonist, NPCS don't have their own lives beyond where they're touched by a quest here or there. Most of them don't even move around. A believable world simulation is the basis for any good open-world design, and if you transplant any other open-world elements to a world as static as DAI's they simply won't work as well.

[electrifried]

Bioware's niche are games with good stories. I think they're some of the most accessible rpgs because of how flexible the game is - you can be a casual rper or a completionist and it doesn't even matter because story is the most important part of their games. However, DAI's story  and overall gameplay felt so lacklustre to me (Trespasser redeemed it somewhat but yeah) because they focused so much on trying to make their game open world and having those generic fetch quests and other dumb side quests that had no impact on the plot. I think the game they aimed for tried to appeal to the masses who were spoilt with skyrim, but failed because at the end of the day it just didn't really work with the overall story (imo). There was no sense of urgency which was the main downside, it was like the main story was pushed out the way so they could get people to wander these vast but underutilised areas.

 

At least with Skyrim most of the side quests felt like you were working towards something. Skyrim always gives you something fun and meaningful to do, and people will have their opinions but Skyrim undoubtely pushed the envelope when it was released. People are still investing hundreds of hours into mods even now, because it's just SUCH A GOOD GAME. DAI's quests were grindy and boring, compounded more if you make a new character and start all over again. They also hardly had any impact on the plot, if at all. So long story short, I think Bioware should focus on quality rather than quantity - make the side quests meaningful and impactful, make them part of the story and make them matter. The advantage Bioware have is that the story is the main feature of the game, so why not use that as a vehicle to craft specific quests that help develop your character. 

[Obsidian Gryphon]

I hope they retained the varied environments because they're beautifully created. I'm doing another PT currently because I've only recently completed the DLCs and then decided I should do a complete PT; beginning to end. That means I do everything, I skipped nothing. But then, I always do everything in every PT.

 

Only this time, I'm not bothering to 'rush'. I'm taking the time to appreciate what has been created. The horse mount is not realistic in speed but at Hissing Wastes, I just trot on it at leisure as I examined / appreciate the gameworld surroundings and listened to it.  

[Toasted Llama]

Here's my 2 cents (and I have not read all the posts in this thread so I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned):

 

I feel that the open world CAN work for Dragon Age.

 

But I think that Bioware made the critical mistake when designing the open world that they focussed on giving the player something to do instead of building on their biggest strength: fleshing out the lore, world and companions.

 

Scratch maybe 50-70% of all the maps that were created, saving budget on world building and instead invest these resources into narrative design and quest design. The enjoyment quests themselves should be more important than the size of the maps/amount of maps.

Some things that they could keep in mind:

- Have quests relate back to companions, for example, quests with heavy Grey Warden content could provide information about your Grey Warden companion and that companion could, in return, provide vital information for the quest, possibly even leading to a different (better?) outcome.

- Have quests relate back to the main questlines, for example, sidequests in the Orlesian maps could've given background information on Celene, Gaspard and Brienne, possibly even meeting them or people close to them.

- If you have fetch quests like gather x amount of y for companion z, give them a small cutscene/dialogue section that progresses with each additional piece of x.

 

Not entirely sure if it's possible, because obviously statements like "WE HAVE 20 MAPS THAT ARE REALLY REALLY BIG!" are a lot easier to market than "Our quests are kinda cool...", considering quantity is easier to market than quality.

 

If they can't get the budget right, they should stick with the Origin formula. Small(er) areas that are directly related and required for the main storyline, with sidequests that could be completed alongside the main quest. That worked, is safe, marketable and will keep most gamers happy, save for the few people that scream and whine for "INNUHVASHION!"

[Nefla]

How to make the next open world game better: Identify your strengths and stick with them. Focus on your characters and your storytelling. Don't try to copy what made other games successful and neglect what you're good at. If you want to experiment, then fine but that should be secondary to keeping the stuff you've always excelled at top notch.

[AnUnculturedLittlePotato]

1)An open world should be a filled open world, not an empty or relatively empty or semi-empty open world. A filled one.

2)An open world shouldn't feel like/be a set of different, independent parts. It should be an organic unit where affecting one part, affects the other. (different quest choices depending on previous quests, different enemies, different available factions/merchants and so on)

3)All quests should be  unique/distinct and somewhat related to the main quest. And have writing in them, meaning compelling (narrative-wise)reasons to engage them as well as impact on the world. Meaning no fetch/kill 10x grindfests again and again.

Because that doesn't cost money at all.

And I gave skyrim 600+ hours. I think I tried hard enough to like it before the disk broke because I put it in the case too many times.
Funny that, I suppose.

[Darkly Tranquil]

My suggestion would be - don't. Bioware should focus on what they are good at, which is story and characters. While it's theoretically possible to combine narrative and an open world, it's extremely difficult and not really worth taking the risk on. Let Bethesda do their sandboxes and Bioware should focus on cinematic story driven RPGs.

And you can add me to the Skyrim haters club. I lasted about two hours; hated the combat, couldn't stand the awful voice acting, and the story was so paper thin, it gave no reason to give a damn about any of it. Complete waste of $60

[Dai Grepher]

The open world should be what connects you to the various quests, and it did this for the most part, but I would like to see something that is more like a large area that has specific locations where you enter in and then you're in a new area that is like a dungeon. Like how the Hinterlands leads to Valammar. I guess the open world part of it did work this way. I think the problem is that the dungeons themselves were too small and thus short. The Hissing Wastes were incredible, but the tombs were comprised of one or two rooms.

 

Another instance is Crestwood. It had one area where you went into a cave and were in a new level. And that level was a good size. I wish there had been one or two more dungeons like that in Crestwood. For example, Caer Bronach could have been larger, and may have actually connected to the dam itself, and getting there may have involved going up through the caves, instead of through the front door. Another example, the Venatori/Red Templar camp could have spanned an entire cave network, finally ending in an ancient Tevinter tomb or something.