What is a meaningful experience to one player can be meaningless to another. What matters to one player may or may not matter to another. What immerses one player in the game may take another one out of it. What one player remembers for years to come may be forgotten by another player in the next minute.
The best any developer can do is make the game the developer wishes to make and hope that the majority of the gaming audience agrees with that development.
See i wouldnt mind these quests if we got a cool reward for it, herding that blighted drufallo for effort alone shouldve been 5000 gold
You mean the witcher contracts? Yes, they usually go down that route, because they are just that, contracts for killing monsters, they aren't labelled as sidequests. So you're clearly ignoring the actual sidequests that involve much more than witcher senses and killing things. You keep saying that the people who enjoyed TW3 turn a blind eye to all the "huge flaws" the game has, but that's just your opinion. For one, I liked the witcher contracts a lot more than I did DAI's sidequests. Because at least the contracts had a story behind it, and it's your job to discover what happened. They are engaging. Sometimes they even present you with a twist and you can choose how you want to deal with it. I played TW3 quite a few times already and in all my playthroughs I did all of those contracts because I find them enjoyable not because "I like the game and forgive its flaws". If I would find those quests boring, I wouldn't do them for the 5th or 6th time. I mean, I get it, you hate TW3, but you really need to stop saying things like they are a fact, when it's just your opinion. And a not very popular one, might I add. Because we all know TW3 did incredibly well both in reviews (critics and fans) as well as sales and its sidequests are probably the number one thing that gets the most praise from people. You don't agree? That's fine, but don't go around stating things like they are an undeniable truth.
I don't see how exceptions somehow disprove the point.
There were so many reviews pointing out the flaws of DA:I, so many gameplay videos that were the proof and you definitely did not need to play the game yourself to know of their existence and despite all the warning signs, you bought the game anyway. Yeah, that's your own fault.
Congratulations, that's exactly what purchasing a game blindly is like. There's thousands of games to buy, yet you decide buy the game from a developer who, with the recent installment (dare I say installments because DA2/ME3s ending was poorly received as well), has proven to be lacking the content you want. Why? Because... "hope".
You're welcome.
Pretty salty aren't you? I don't agree with everything you said but i'll leave it at that. Have a good day 
What is a meaningful experience to one player can be meaningless to another. What matters to one player may or may not matter to another. What immerses one player in the game may take another one out of it. What one player remembers for years to come may be forgotten by another player in the next minute.
The best any developer can do is make the game the developer wishes to make and hope that the majority of the gaming audience agrees with that development.
I can agree with that. However, you know there's a problem when even people who loved the game complain about the quality of the side content. I think feedback is important and shouldn't be ignored. And I think the developers know that. At least they acknowledged it in a blog post.
Completionism is a terrible thing.
I know ,is the worst disease of this century
Most quests were basically tal walk use senses ten had a huge fight before getting info or reward.... You aren't actually helping your cause when you can't show how the quests aren't reoetitive. You simply said "i like them!".
Which makes your last sentence not only hypocritical, but wrong... I did mot say DA:I did sidequests better, like you and the witcher fanatics scream and spit, but that I liked them because they did more to add to the workd IMO. See those words I and me and IMO in the posts? Yeah... Totally undeniable truth and not opinion... When I said in my opinion. Someone needs to learn to read carefully before responding and outing themselves as a fanboy...
Oh, I can definitely give you tons of examples but I don't think anyone wants to read a wall of text. Besides, it doesn't matter because you have your heart set on hating everything about TW games and I'm not here to change your mind anyway. Like I said, it's your opinion, so let's just leave it at that. 
And did I say that you said DAI's sidequests were better? Lmao I only said that I enjoyed the witcher contracts more than DAI's sidequests. I'm sorry but when you say things like "Maybe some forgive it, but let's not act like it doesn't commit the same "crime" Inquisition does. It's just that you like that game and forgive the same obvious "flaws"." You are not giving your opinion. You are saying that people forgive the "flaws" because they enjoy the game. Maybe they don't think the game has flaws like you do? Maybe they actually enjoy the sidequests/contracts because they find them engaging? Just a thought... And yes, that can be applied to DAI's sidequests as well. Some people enjoyed them, and that's fine. Opinions, you know.
Completionism is a terrible thing.
I know ,is the worst disease of this century
Most quests were basically tal walk use senses ten had a huge fight before getting info or reward.... You aren't actually helping your cause when you can't show how the quests aren't reoetitive. You simply said "i like them!".
Which makes your last sentence not only hypocritical, but wrong... I did mot say DA:I did sidequests better, like you and the witcher fanatics scream and spit, but that I liked them because they did more to add to the workd IMO. See those words I and me and IMO in the posts? Yeah... Totally undeniable truth and not opinion... When I said in my opinion. Someone needs to learn to read carefully before responding and outing themselves as a fanboy...
See, I found most of the DA:I sidequests added little to nothing to the world and lore. You can boil almost any quest in any game down to the basic "go here, get this/kill this/rescue this" but it needs to be dressed up well to be entertaining for me to want to do it. The quest needs to be packaged with conversations (beyond just "where do I go for this thing you want?"), an interesting concept or sympathetic/interesting characters, and ideally more than one way to resolve. The Witcher 3 gives you this kind of packaging, DA:I in most cases does not. It doesn't even try to convince you that you're doing something worthwhile in most cases and may as well be one of SWtOR's dailies/weeklies where you click something or someone, a text box pops up that says "monsters are destroying our supplies, go kill 10 monsters," you click ok, and then when you're done you click the person or dropbox for a reward. There's no back and forth dialogue or choices to make which help build and roleplay your character, nothing memorable happens, you don't get to talk to the mooks you're sent to kill even if they're supposedly important and it's all done with a distant and impersonal camera that makes me feel even more detached from what's going on.
Pretty salty aren't you? I don't agree with everything you said but i'll leave it at that. Have a good day
Salty? Salty about what? I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy in the gaming consumer base.
Oh, I can definitely give you tons of examples but I don't think anyone wants to read a wall of text. Besides, it doesn't matter because you have your heart set on hating everything about TW games and I'm not here to change your mind anyway. Like I said, it's your opinion, so let's just leave it at that.
And did I say that you said DAI's sidequests were better? Lmao I only said that I enjoyed the witcher contracts more than DAI's sidequests. I'm sorry but when you say things like "Maybe some forgive it, but let's not act like it doesn't commit the same "crime" Inquisition does. It's just that you like that game and forgive the same obvious "flaws"." You are not giving your opinion. You are saying that people forgive the "flaws" because they enjoy the game. Maybe they don't think the game has flaws like you do? Maybe they actually enjoy the sidequests/contracts because they find them engaging? Just a thought... And yes, that can be applied to DAI's sidequests as well. Some people enjoyed them, and that's fine. Opinions, you know.
See, I found most of the DA:I sidequests added little to nothing to the world and lore. You can boil almost any quest in any game down to the basic "go here, get this/kill this/rescue this" but it needs to be dressed up well to be entertaining for me to want to do it. The quest needs to be packaged with conversations (beyond just "where do I go for this thing you want?"), an interesting concept or sympathetic/interesting characters, and ideally more than one way to resolve. The Witcher 3 gives you this kind of packaging, DA:I in most cases does not. It doesn't even try to convince you that you're doing something worthwhile in most cases and may as well be one of SWtOR's dailies/weeklies where you click something or someone, a text box pops up that says "monsters are destroying our supplies, go kill 10 monsters," you click ok, and then when you're done you click the person or dropbox for a reward. There's no back and forth dialogue or choices to make which help build and roleplay your character, nothing memorable happens, you don't get to talk to the mooks you're sent to kill even if they're supposedly important and it's all done with a distant and impersonal camera that makes me feel even more detached from what's going on.
What is a meaningful experience to one player can be meaningless to another. What matters to one player may or may not matter to another. What immerses one player in the game may take another one out of it. What one player remembers for years to come may be forgotten by another player in the next minute.
The best any developer can do is make the game the developer wishes to make and hope that the majority of the gaming audience agrees with that development.
This is why I never could join the relativists in the philosophy department in college. It's like they couldn't even (or willfully refused to) perceive the gravity of a position, hence they were content to pretend there was no such gravity. At best dismissively intoning, "It's all relative," is intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, different people like different things. But this doesn't make objective standards, criteria, or assessments impossible. Nor does it account for statistics that show a larger proportion of people experienced immersion-breaking than immersion-enhancing. It's not quite the crap-shoot you're portraying. Immersion isn't so arbitrary a gaming experience. If DAI failed on some ground, it's an insubstantial fact to introduce that there was a small minority that were willing to tolerate the failure contentedly.
And, as others have mentioned, this isn't to say DAI is a failure. I loved DAI. It has some truly innovative ideas in it, particularly the main narrative. The devs really need to be supported in that because a DA4 could be seriously groundbreaking along that line. I just have a hard time replaying DA3 due to the preponderance of fluff outside the main mission. I'm not a "skip everything other than the main mission" sort of player, and really, why should a game be assessed entirely based on its main mission when the majority of experiences to be had are far more plentiful? (Mind you, many criticize the main mission of DAI as weakly written, but I'm one who thinks they're doing a superb job of creative exploration on that ground...)
And this isn't a matter of "that's just how you feel." My "feels" aren't so subjective. Some "feels" are inevitable due to a distinguishable, objectively identifiable set of criteria and the sensibility to recognize it. That a dolt may not recognize that a rendition of "Hamlet" was outright lousy and instead really like the way the sexy girls showed their boobs at that one point isn't to say that, well, then, the quality of that rendition of "Hamlet" is indeterminate. It's to say only dolts liked it... Not to call fans of DAI's side-quests "dolts," mind you. Just to dramaticize the point in order to clarify it: DAI's lack of attention to substance in its off-main "content" is quantifiable.
It's as if the devs divided their focus, one team brimming with narrative talent who tackled the main mission and storyline and more or less the companion quests, the other brimming with mostly graphics talent and some codex-composing writing talent that peppered the explorable terrain with their own creative efforts, such as they were. The one team never seriously associated with the other, and the results of the two teams were simply grafted together at the end. Thus we have two separate games in one: the main one with companions and objectives that speaks to the player directly and engagingly and another one that takes much, much longer and essentially just involves the player in a meandering navigation of colorful humdrum and codex consultation. It's a schizophrenia that a game needn't suffer. DAO didn't have it. Neither did DA2. Of course, many hated the Deep Roads and Fade in DAO- even preferring mods to skip them- on the grounds that they "took too long," but those were my favorite part of DAO... because they were the exception and were nevertheless meaningful as they were: the Deep Roads are supposed to be grueling; the Fade is supposed to be disturbing. The many, countable hours necessary to fully blunder about the Hissing Wastes (and every other area, all of which are extensive) to clear the Fog of War aren't... supposed to be, that is. If they are... well, we can see why it's heavily disliked, no? In DAI's "other" game experience of long plodding through extensive terrain devoid of intensive creative investment is virtually all you get. This can be charted in hours spent and content experienced (and content depth measured). And such a chart would be embarrassing.
So is the main content worth enduring the huge throng of meh-content in DAI? I managed it once. I'm trying again. It's just difficult. And I'm a fan.
This is why I never could join the relativists in the philosophy department in college. It's like they couldn't even (or willfully refused to) perceive the gravity of a position, hence they were content to pretend there was no such gravity. At best dismissively intoning, "It's all relative," is intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, different people like different things. But this doesn't make objective standards, criteria, or assessments impossible. Nor does it account for statistics that show a larger proportion of people experienced immersion-breaking than immersion-enhancing. It's not quite the crap-shoot you're portraying. Immersion isn't so arbitrary a gaming experience. If DAI failed on some ground, it's an insubstantial fact to introduce that there was a small minority that were willing to tolerate the failure contentedly.
And, as others have mentioned, this isn't to say DAI is a failure. I loved DAI. It has some truly innovative ideas in it, particularly the main narrative. The devs really need to be supported in that because a DA4 could be seriously groundbreaking along that line. I just have a hard time replaying DA3 due to the preponderance of fluff outside the main mission. I'm not a "skip everything other than the main mission" sort of player, and really, why should a game be assessed entirely based on its main mission when the majority of experiences to be had are far more plentiful? (Mind you, many criticize the main mission of DAI as weakly written, but I'm one who thinks they're doing a superb job of creative exploration on that ground...)
And this isn't a matter of "that's just how you feel." My "feels" aren't so subjective. Some "feels" are inevitable due to a distinguishable, objectively identifiable set of criteria and the sensibility to recognize it. That a dolt may not recognize that a rendition of "Hamlet" was outright lousy and instead really like the way the sexy girls showed their boobs at that one point isn't to say that, well, then, the quality of that rendition of "Hamlet" is indeterminate. It's to say only dolts liked it... Not to call fans of DAI's side-quests "dolts," mind you. Just to dramaticize the point in order to clarify it: DAI's lack of attention to substance in its off-main "content" is quantifiable.
It's as if the devs divided their focus, one team brimming with narrative talent who tackled the main mission and storyline and more or less the companion quests, the other brimming with mostly graphics talent and some codex-composing writing talent that peppered the explorable terrain with their own creative efforts, such as they were. The one team never seriously associated with the other, and the results of the two teams were simply grafted together at the end. Thus we have two separate games in one: the main one with companions and objectives that speaks to the player directly and engagingly and another one that takes much, much longer and essentially just involves the player in a meandering navigation of colorful humdrum and codex consultation. It's a schizophrenia that a game needn't suffer. DAO didn't have it. Neither did DA2. Of course, many hated the Deep Roads and Fade in DAO- even preferring mods to skip them- on the grounds that they "took too long," but those were my favorite part of DAO... because they were the exception and were nevertheless meaningful as they were: the Deep Roads are supposed to be grueling; the Fade is supposed to be disturbing. The many, countable hours necessary to fully blunder about the Hissing Wastes (and every other area, all of which are extensive) to clear the Fog of War aren't... supposed to be, that is. If they are... well, we can see why it's heavily disliked, no? In DAI's "other" game experience of long plodding through extensive terrain devoid of intensive creative investment is virtually all you get. This can be charted in hours spent and content experienced (and content depth measured). And such a chart would be embarrassing.
So is the main content worth enduring the huge throng of meh-content in DAI? I managed it once. I'm trying again. It's just difficult. And I'm a fan.
You keep pounding the table screaming TW3 does it better and scream it is fact and turn around saying I an touting opinion as fact.....
You're kidding, right? lol First of all, I'm not screaming or pounding the table. I'm calmly typing this while laughing actually. Second, where do you see me insinuating my opinion is a fact? You're the one who keeps saying TW3's sidequests are bad and everyone who thinks otherwise are just blind to the flaws because they love the game.
Also:
Except the quests aren't factually better or more diverse or deeper...
And then I am the one touting opinion as fact. Lol Funny.
.... And yet to describe all that "objective" measuring are sure a lot of subjective terms. Why can't people accept that their opinion is simply that?
People can accept that opinion = opinion. But why would they? Why is that the end of the story?
In the case of "Is black licorice nummy?" the stakes for consumers are nil. Well, except for the licorice manufacturers perhaps who would like to get the telemetry on that for marketing and manufacturing purposes. But for you and I? What do I care if you go to the Licorice Yum-Yums Forum and say just how much you love black licorice? And so what for you if I detest it? I'll still get my red licorice, and you'll still get your black licorice. (Actually I detest most candy, but that's beside the point...)
But DA is a game franchise... with a possible DA4, you see... which could go one way, another way, or another... and a precedent of DAO and DA2 that won us to the franchise in the first place. So there's more of a stake in it, isn't there? We're seeing a past and a future and are plugging for one outcome rather than another. And it's not so arbitrary a difference as liking black or red licorice, both of which are benign entities and guaranteed. No. It's whether it's OK to make DA into a meh-factory or whether it needs to be honed creatively into something special. This gets dander up. So sides get taken, you see. But they're qualitative sides that, yes, can be assessed using measurable standards.
Didn't make a difference to me really.
And I understand if you like the world/characters and that is the bias that eases this issue... For me, I didn't mind the "filler" in DA:I because it usually added to the lore and increased the scope of the experience to me. TW3's stock dark fantasy wore thin before the game and, outside of one quest and one scene/event (witcher party ), the quests added no new flavour to the cliched dark fantasy world and lore. It never became more than the common cliches it started with. So I wasn't as forgiving on the filler personally. But I wouldn't claim DA:I had less "filler". I just enjoyed the filling.
Or... DA:I gave me more cream in my donut. TW3 gave me salt for stale toast. IMO
This being your initial assessment makes your position clear. You're OK with filler. "Cream in the donut" type of filler is OK with you. For most of us unused to filler from a game like DA, well, it's more of an affront... and not something we'd like to get used to... So the disagreement is, as you put it, "simply that."
^But DA has always been full of filler so what's your problem? How is Bloodmages in the Warehouse any less filler than the Mire? Crimson oars? Corpse gall? Etc ad nauseum?
You're kidding, right? lol First of all, I'm not screaming or pounding the table. I'm calmly typing this while laughing actually. Second, where do you see me insinuating my opinion is a fact? You're the one who keeps saying TW3's sidequests are bad and everyone who thinks otherwise are just blind to the flaws because they love the game.
Also:
And then I am the one touting opinion as fact. Lol Funny.
People can accept that opinion = opinion. But why would they? Why is that the end of the story?
In the case of "Is black licorice nummy?" the stakes for consumers are nil. Well, except for the licorice manufacturers perhaps who would like to get the telemetry on that for marketing and manufacturing purposes. But for you and I? What do I care if you go to the Licorice Yum-Yums Forum and say just how much you love black licorice? And so what for you if I detest it? I'll still get my red licorice, and you'll still get your black licorice. (Actually I detest most candy, but that's beside the point...)
But DA is a game franchise... with a possible DA4, you see... which could go one way, another way, or another... and a precedent of DAO and DA2 that won us to the franchise in the first place. So there's more of a stake in it, isn't there? We're seeing a past and a future and are plugging for one outcome rather than another. And it's not so arbitrary a difference as liking black or red licorice, both of which are benign entities and guaranteed. No. It's whether it's OK to make DA into a meh-factory or whether it needs to be honed creatively into something special. This gets dander up. So sides get taken, you see. But they're qualitative sides that, yes, can be assessed using measurable standards.
This being your initial assessment makes your position clear. You're OK with filler. "Cream in the donut" type of filler is OK with you. For most of us unused to filler from a game like DA, well, it's more of an affront... and not something we'd like to get used to... So the disagreement is, as you put it, "simply that."
Yes, different people like different things. But this doesn't make objective standards, criteria, or assessments impossible. Nor does it account for statistics that show a larger proportion of people experienced immersion-breaking than immersion-enhancing. It's not quite the crap-shoot you're portraying. Immersion isn't so arbitrary a gaming experience. If DAI failed on some ground, it's an insubstantial fact to introduce that there was a small minority that were willing to tolerate the failure contentedly.
Well, except that it is arbitrary. What's the formal, agreed upon definition of immersion? Where is the survey that has a statistically relevant random sample of DA:I players responding to a survey regarding it?
We can investigate attitudes and tastes. But to do it objectively requires riquer. Posting a lengthy opinion is not rigeur. Seeming consensus might be - but there's no real evidence of any such consensus, because any audience we can point to is very self-selected.
Except the quests aren't factually better or more diverse or deeper... You keep pounding the table screaming TW3 does it better and scream it is fact and turn around saying I an touting opinion as fact..... No. I admitted both games have repetitive quests that can be viewed as filler. Whether you like one story or game more generally skews perception of that filter. You are the one screaming your opinion as fact, constantly playing the routine "just a hater" card, and proving yourself to be yet another Witcher fanatic that can't stand that someone doesn't worship the game with you.
That is the attitude I am sick of from that fanbase...
See. I don't agree. The characters in TW3 were never 3 dimensional or engaging to me. There were few branching sidequests that had any real choice. So all that packaging that enticed you, did nothing to enrich the experience for me, while even the murals added to a history and lore I care about in DA and integrates more into the world and its design than the Witcher's world. And really, the murals are more akin to the witcher contracts and points of interest (filler anyone...) than a full side quest. DA had plenty of meatier content that interacted with the world and characters than people want to give it credit for. From each companion quest, to Crestwood, to the mire, to the glyphs that open up a new area... There is a lot of side content that is rich and intricate.
Maybe you don't like it and that's fine. But I take issue with others continually spouting an opinion on distaste That the quests are simple filler fetch quests.... And then praising a game with the same kind of padding for being better at it as if it is fact. It isn't.
First time posting here, so sorry if I manage to screw something up, but I think that, while comparing DAI's Apples to TW3's Oranges is a useful debate insofar as comparing which franchise got what "right" in terms of narrative and side-quests, it does kind of become a "he said, she said" argument about personal preference that nobody really ends up gaining much from.
So I just wanted to ask this - as you obviously prefer DAI's side content, would you say that you'd be completely satisfied with it going forward, just as it is? It's one thing to prefer the content of one game over another, but just inside the realms of the DA franchise, do you think there's room for improvement?
I think a lot of the argument I've been reading here is really more about DAI being an okay/good game with some areas that would benefit from an optional quest system that went deeper and told more compelling stories.
Like, okay. If you were going to imagine your perfect DA4, would you honestly not picture a greater abundance of quests which were optional, but didn't feel optional? Quests in which you could choose exactly how to approach them, from (for example) straight up giving the farmer back his lost cow, to asking for compensation for your trouble, to persuading him to part with it and gift it to a local family that has fallen on hard times, to giving it to a rival (who if you had spoken to before accepting the quest, would tell you that the cow actually belonged to him to begin with), to ignoring the quest altogether in favor of more important stuff? And then all of these examples could have different outcomes (xp reward/gold and xp/coming back to the area later and finding a healthy family or an empty hut/finding out both farmers had dueled and one had killed the other/coming back to the area and finding the lost cow, now dead in the woods)? And then all of it in cinematic camera?
I'm not even saying that level of divergent content could be available for every quest, but surely something closer to that is possible?
If we really start just accepting what's common practice now, clapping our hands and saying "good job, devs! That was the best you could do!", then iterative progress will never be made. Shrug.
I love the DA series very, very much, and I liked DAI a lot, but, like a lot of other people here, I felt it was lacking in narrative depth that matched the size of the world it was filling. For what it's worth, I played about 15 hours of TW3 and couldn't get into Geralt's character, but I totally remember several of the side quests I played more fondly than like 95% of DAI's, and that was just the first 4th of the game or so.
I have a few problems with the DA:I sidequests, but the biggest one is simply - The lack of music. And yes that sounds silly, but when i am running around in Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3 and it ranges from relaxing exploration music to epic combat theme i get more invested in what i am doing. DA:I has a great soundtrack, but it is not well utilized.
Except I haven't said they are objectively bad... I even put "flaw" like that because the content in DA:I is called a flaw by people like you who then turn around and call similar content in TW3 godly. That is the bloody issue. You give a pass to all the filler in TW3 and slam DA:I for its filler. I don't slam TW3 for its filler. I just don't like the game. And I've said its opinion from the get go.
Stop taking everything out of proportion, I never said the word "godly". TW3 has filler, of course, no one said it doesn't. Those little question marks that can be abandoned places, monster nests, guarded treasures, treasure hunts, etc. are definitely filler, because they are there just to pad the game and give the player more chances to gain XP and find items.
Thing is, that's extra content, those aren't sidequests, which is what we're talking about. But the majority of DAI's sidequests feel like filler to me. They seem to be there just to fill the empty worlds because the maps barely have any purpose besides exploration, so there has to be something there. They are simple fetch/kill quests that involve little to no effort and have no impact on anything. Not on the world, not on the NPCs, not on your character (barely no moral choices to be made). TW3's maps have a purpose, it's where the main quests unfold, so just by doing the main quest, you explore the majority of the maps and come across the side content naturally, kind of like how DAO did it. These sidequests are there to complement the maps and the story, they aren't there to force you to explore the world. Most of the sidequests don't even appear on the map until you are close to the quest giver, same applies to random NPC encounters you get on the road. I can't understand how you think TW3's sidequests have "no real choice". I don't think we played the same game. Or maybe we have different definitions of "choice".
Salty? Salty about what? I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy in the gaming consumer base.
This is why I never could join the relativists in the philosophy department in college. It's like they couldn't even (or willfully refused to) perceive the gravity of a position, hence they were content to pretend there was no such gravity. At best dismissively intoning, "It's all relative," is intellectual dishonesty.
Yes, different people like different things. But this doesn't make objective standards, criteria, or assessments impossible.
Nor does it account for statistics that show a larger proportion of people experienced immersion-breaking than immersion-enhancing. It's not quite the crap-shoot you're portraying. Immersion isn't so arbitrary a gaming experience. If DAI failed on some ground, it's an insubstantial fact to introduce that there was a small minority that were willing to tolerate the failure contentedly.
Some "feels" are inevitable due to a distinguishable, objectively identifiable set of criteria and the sensibility to recognize it.
And that long post accomplished what? It still isn't fact that DA: is meh or its side content. The analogy with cream is that I found the "filler" in DA:I to be more of what I wanted and the "filler" in TW3 only giving me more of what I already found to be an average game. Fairly similar amounts of filler in both. The issue is the bias that decides if it you like one game over the other. The side content in DA:I is not factually worse. So stop acting like it is.
"Accomplished." Attempting to reason with the sort that considers filler to be golden does indeed make such a term suspect in that limited respect. Fortunately I tend to speak to the matter, not the sort...
Much attention gets paid to the length of my reply. I tend instead to think in terms of "thoroughness" and "preciseness." How's that for relative? I have no time for filibusters, but I'll take the time to explain something more fully if it takes a while to do so...
The dichotomy is not "is DA meh or 'side content.'" False dichotomy. At least for most of us on this side of the dichotomy. It's "is the bulk of DA's side content meh?" As to facts(!!!) of the matter, I'll address this in my reply further ahead.
Your derision for TW3 is irrelevant to me. Perhaps you're 100% correct. Even more correct than you know. There is "right opinion" after all, wouldn't ya know. And you may be absurdly wrong. I wouldn't know, however. I haven't played TW3, haven't mustered the wherewithal to bother trying except a couple brief moments (despite buying the bloody thing). So the bias for or against doesn't apply to me. Actually, if either, the bias against TW3 is stronger with me. But I'm not "acting" as if that bias has any relevance at all. I'm a DA fan judging DAI on DA's merits as a franchise. You... aren't.
Well, except that it is arbitrary. What's the formal, agreed upon definition of immersion? Where is the survey that has a statistically relevant random sample of DA:I players responding to a survey regarding it?
We can investigate attitudes and tastes. But to do it objectively requires riquer. Posting a lengthy opinion is not rigeur. Seeming consensus might be - but there's no real evidence of any such consensus, because any audience we can point to is very self-selected.
Agreed upon definition by whom? And who is to agree that these agreers are sufficient? See how easy it is to make it sound insufferably arbitrary? Relativism is utter intellectual dishonesty. As to this "riquer..." uh huh. Is that French for "intellectual rigor?" (In which case I'd say I'm applying far more than you...) Referring to Alexandre De Riquer? (Likely not...) As it's a nonsensical term otherwise, I won't presume, but if only short replies show "riqeur," perhaps I'm right to mock it... As to the validity of "consensus," examine the "argument from popularity." Consensus is not sufficient either if you're sincerely looking for evidence.
And the reality it isn't so arbitrary, is it? A game that constantly jars the player out of a sense of identification with their own protagonist or their sense of the character being a part of the game's narrative, a living part of the fiction... yeah, that would be a game that breaks its players' immersion. Disagree? The most stark example of this is a buggy game. No way to maintain immersion in a game that crashes every 30 min. What is more objectively quantifiable than the rate at which a game crashes? Does one need to be "self-selected" as a judge in that case? You set the timer, you play the game, you record how often it crashes. Human tolerance for such a thing may vary, but a game that never crashes will be less immersion-breaking than a game that does every 30 min, no? I'll presume agreement (cuz it's the only intellectually honest response). And by extension I'll presume you agree that there are other objective criteria by which a game may be judged to be immersion-breaking.
In DAI's case it has only crashed for me an average of every 5-6 hrs (usually bursts of 3-4 times in a 1-2 hr period in a particular area), so that's not it. No, it's the mechanical nature of the side-quests in the... what? 60%? 80%? I said 95% earlier... of DAI I've done anything other than main or companion quests. That is, for the vast majority of the time of my life I've spent in DAI (which according to Origin/EA is apparently *gulp* 708hrs... (holy friggin...)), it's been spent in side-venturing. If side-venturing were 10% of my time, it'd be a different assessment, wouldn't it? (Which in my case would be about 71hrs...) This is where relativity as an assessment tool is more honest: the quality of my time spent in side-venturing is only an issue relative to the amount of total game time that side-venturing entails. Not to say that if side-venturing were shyte I'd be happy with it because it's only 2% of my time, but it certainly holds that while it at least feels like 95% of my time, it really... really... oughtn't to be shyte. And if I were to pretend that a completionist like myself finds only 50% (rather than 95%) of my total game hours are spent in hill-crawling and respawn grinding and craft material farming and side-quest fulfilling and exploring... that would still be roughly HALF of 708 hrs... And it's well over half...This is also why I suggested to the devs to simply limit the side-venturing content if they don't have the resources/staff/time to devote to fully developing that content. How unreasonable is that when side-venturing takes up in reality the vast majority of the total game time (unless you rush the main story)?
And this is where the "completionism is a disease to be avoided" type tries to say it's all my fault for trying to complete all the side areas. But really? They made side content to be ignored? One is a fool to go after it? Side-content is a trap? Well, that's a blight on the dev's record as well then for trying to trap people into wasting their time in side-questing... except that I'm presuming that's untrue. No, I prefer to think that the devs created the side-content with the belief (how subjective of them) that it would be... sufficient? meaningful? filling? I'll just say, "They meant well." I want to say that. Not sure what they were thinking, but it seems the height of cynicism to think they intended it all just to screw with us. There is content there after all so I'll argue against that. In any case, the game is what it is. It doesn't matter if I'm a completionist or not when judging a game for all it is. If the game makes side-venturing immersion-breaking, that's a factor to be considered in assessing the game overall... no? Of course, it is. "It's got a great central narrative, but woe be to those attempting side-questing because that's pretty broken as such." See, I had to address the general failures of your argument first... Forgive me for also addressing the "anti-completionist" line I've also heard articulated on this thread...
As to how the devs dropped the ball on side-quests in DAI, I've already mentioned a number of ways. You ignored them to argue generalities, so I'll list them specifically for easier one-off replies on your part:
1. Striking lack of cutscenes
2. Striking lack of dialog beyond text of "I'm in a pickle, do this one thing to get me pickle-extraction?" and "Thanks for the pickle-extraction" upon return. This is bare-bones quest construction mechanics. It's where the derogatory (it is derogatory, mind you) term "fetch quests" comes from.
3. Irrelevance of quests to game's main themes. (This one can partially slide in the sense that it is possible to make an irrelevant quest... say, the Lord Woolsley quest... that's genuinely amusing without having any bearing on anything other than the humor of it. Even 4th-wall breaking can remain game-immersive...)
4. Lack of intellectual, philosophical, or imaginative challenge employed within side-content. You do or do not. That's usually it.
5. Preponderance of non-speaking bosses at the end of side-quests that have bosses. Bosses are all impersonal. (Most side-content doesn't even have bosses, but... Or bosses that may speak a line or two (usually inaudible in the heat of battle noises) but never actually interact with the party.)
6. Preponderance of side-content that is purely visual.
7. Preponderance of side-content that relies upon codex entry reading rather than "real-time" experience. (This one is only partially (mostly) egregious. There are a few instances in which this is sorta cool as a mechanic. The pictures of areas that you use to find hidden treasure used codex entries and worked OK as such (but in that case searching those bloody codex entries should've been easier). Like this one that was pretty cool, matching a picture to actual scenery:)
8. The quality of being a 2nd (or 3rd) tier of relevant quests below the main quests. Investment was clearly diverted heavily into main/companion quests, lightly into most side quests/venturing. There should be no distinction. Experience involving the player should always be valuable/meaningful/top quality.
9. Preponderance of exploration that involves nothing other than traversing terrain and removing Fog of War from the map.
10. Incentivized resource farming
11. Incentivized respawn grinding
12. Lack of consequences for decisions made. (Few decisions were afforded the player during side-quests, of course, so this hardly applies for that reason, but, say, in "The Loss of a Friend" you can either send the demon to go rampaging through the land after Hakkon or kill the demon... same either way other than a free rune for killing the demon and possible minor rep boosts/loss with various companions.)
13. Preponderance of quests that end in nothing other than a simple battle or item... i.e., no different from a typical respawn encounter rather than a character building experience, for instance.
(Always good to end on lucky number 13.) These are all measurable, no? I'm right or I'm not. Make the assessment and see that I'm right. No opinion to be had in any of it. That's what goes on during most of your time in DAI. Obviously no one's made a full-out measurement. No one will. So you could say it's a matter of opinion how much all of that applies. But THAT it applies is incontrovertible. That it applies extensively is as clear as it was the lackluster modus operendi by which they created the side-content. But you'd have to be... surprise, surprise... very intellectually dishonest to pretend that all that is an insignificant portion of the side-content in DAI. It's all that the side-content entails... with some nice, ineffectual offshoots here and there like, as I also mentioned, in JoH or Descent. But, OK, I'll let you as an "audience" assess your "attitudes and tastes" in estimating accurately the same reality I've been slogging through in DAI for 700+hrs...
Retour en haut