638 réponses à ce sujet

[Cyonan]

Consumers need to learn not to trust marketing materials.  At all.  Ever.

 

Consumers shouldn't entirely trust marketing material, but that doesn't make it your consumer's fault if you're the one lying about your product.

[Catastrophy]

DAI isn't even open world. And I'm not talking about the map instances, I'm talking about the map design - they are levels increased to map size with quite fixed paths and access points between points of interest. And lots of walls.

 

Just increasing the level in size doesn't make an open world. Open is when you are free to go anywhere and can pick your own approach. Exploration is when you pick your own path to climb that point of interest. The ME1 maps were more open than DAI levels.

[lucky5hot]

I would have liked it less. For me, the great thing about DAI is that the world is bigger and the narrative less obtrusive.

 

Fair enough, cant argue with an opinion/preference. Since I played Kotor I've loved Bioware's writing, but I've got many friends who religiously play these kinds of games and skip almost all the dialog, simply because action gameplay/customisation/progression in a AAA RPG can be good enough to stand on its own.

 

For me, what I mean especially is that game narrative is often lacking, and I've found Bioware's writing often exceptional. I appreciate that, and I found that DA:I had so much narrative that it was hard to hit the high notes all the time. This is where a game might be better served capping at 50-60 or so hours rather than 100+.

 

I'm not sure whether I am the exception or the norm, I think perhaps my interest in narrative is on the extreme end, and you are either in the middle or on the other side of the scales. I guess most people are probably in the middle somewhere.

 

Oh, and the 4 ability limit can't have been about parity across platforms, because neither DAO nor DA2 had such a limit on consoles. No, the 4 ability limit is caused by the devs' desire to have parity between SP and MP.

 

> No, the 4 ability limit is caused by the devs' desire to have parity between SP and MP

 

I'll immediately address this then the larger claim. So, this doesnt make sense, because the MP could just as easily have had as many skills as you want. Ultimately, the entire issue of active skills, whether its SP or MP, can be surmised from what the dev's directly said themselves.

 

I'll elaborate further below, but they responded to the controversy, and called it an overarching 'design decision', to have 'fewer active choices that were more meaningful'. This is what we need to consider and decide if we believe. You cant say that this directly relates to SP or MP as the same decision applies for both game modes. Elaborating more below.

 

> Oh, and the 4 ability limit can't have been about parity across platforms, because neither DAO nor DA2 had such a limit on consoles.

 

This I have to disagree on in a big way.

 

Technically its a logical fallacy, because you are implying that correlation implies the absolute causation of active skill decision. We will never KNOW the motives, but we can analyse the context and make a value assessment.

 

The reality is, when you factor in the requirement to have use/active, sprint, jump, etc. There are around the 4 buttons remaining on console. So although it wasnt a requirement to have 4 buttons, but I'm proposing it certainly was an optimisation for these platforms.

 

So, without going back and reading every single reference to how i described the active abilities, I'll just re-clarify it here instead. In my opinion all the evidence shows the combat in DA:I was optimized for console. 

 

Now, if you read my post history. I'm not a hater, nowhere near it. I actually liked DA:I. I'm not sure whether i was starving for an RPG or whether it was a good game, I'll have to play it a second time someday before I know. I think it perhaps it was good, but not great.

 

I wouldnt blame somebody for holding the opinion you have either. In fact, if you read what the developer said and you believe them, its absolutely the conclusion you will make. However, I personally think the reality of marketing is that sometimes a company will tell a 'white lie' to not cause a controversy and this is one of those cases. If you read when developers literally outright replied to people accusing them of 'duming it down', for consoles, (what I would call, 'optimizing' it for consoles). When they replied, I remember quotes like:

 

"We actually feel like less abilities makes the individual choices more rewarding", "This was an overall/conscious decision we made to reduce the number of actives, not a downgrade".

 

So, from the mouths of the developers themselves, pretty sure I remember Laidlaw and many others saying it during Q&A and various responses. In general, as I remember, the developers are crying till their faces blue it wasnt designed like this to optimize for consoles, it was their 'artistic/design choice'. And ultimately I cant speak to know their motives, none of us can, we can only look at the circumstances. To me, this just flies in the face of the facts at hand.

 

To me, the circumstances are, DAO/DA2 was originally a PC game, with a massive ability bar with dozens and dozens of active skills. All the feedback from managing this on console was it was a ****** nightmare and PC was the superior platform/experience. Further, combine this with the irrefutable fact that optimisation wise, there are only a few free/active buttons on console of which to use - designing the whole game around just a few actives is a literal optimisation.

 

The situation created where there are more than a few actives is that now the console complicates/obfuscates the process of changing skill. So, when you need to change skill, rather than pressing a single bound key on your keyboard, you need to complete 2-3 actions to change skill. Perhaps click toggle, select from a menu. Press Toggle, select on a radial control, etc.

 

So, PC = 1 step per active skill. Console = 2-3 steps per active skill. One is clearly inferior here. From establishing this, all that remains is deciding whether you believe the developer decision was solely aesthetics and design choice (so the whole thing was a big coincidence), or whether this optimisation played in.

 

Personally, I dont think you need a tin foil hat to think was more than a coincidence. Ergo, in my opinion, despite [from my memory], Bioware never outright admitting it for what I assume are PR reasons, DA:I combat was optimized for console.

 

I made plenty of concessions in your favor about the original games. I've played DAO, 3 times and DA2 twice, including the hardest settings. When people say "DA:I was really easy compared to DA1-2", I kind of disagree. Despite a few spikes and curveballs, those original games both went into autopilot by halfway through and were incredibly easy, namely due to combat imbalance/glitches. In DA:I the combat largely held my interest (I played on the hardest setting with FF on), it was just too repetitive due being to a long game.

 

Opinion summary - If there was anything large wrong with the DA:I, it wasnt really combat. Despite combat being slightly inferior in my opinion to the previous games, it wasnt much of an issue - there were some other niggling issues.

 

However, there is a huge circumstantial trove of evidence saying that the claims made by Bioware dev's were false and it was downgraded as an optimisation process, not purely for game design reasons. I feel compelled to dispel what you said about 4 actives being 'proven' as nothing to do with console due to the original games.

[UpUpAway]

Im not commenting on the legality at all. I never said I was. You keep arguing against positions im not taking.

 

Im just providing information about the events. That's what I mean when i said "the situation". Not the legal case, but the actions of the developer and the response of the people.

 

Im not arguing one way or the other about the legal case, I honestly don't care.

 

Please don't get upset with me, OK.  I was just using my "disappointment" in the video link you posted as a metaphor to what I see happening here.  There are a lot of people here disappointed with the delay of a game we're all looking forward too.   Anything being built up beyond that (accusations of false advertising and fraud), though, really haven't happened yet simply because we are still so far away from even the original release date... so, IMO, even talking about the possibility of suing Bioware over ME:A is just as absurd as it would be if I threatened to sue you over posting that video and just calling it a summary with a "passionate delivery."  Feeling misled, being misled, and being damaged by having been misled are different things. 

 

That said, I do believe that people in the US (and in Canada for that matter) may start such an action when they feel misled; but I also believe their aerere costs and risks involved in doing so and that it wouldn't necessarily be the best thing a plaintiff to start such a civil action before they have some pretty substantial proofs that they have indeed been intentionally misled and had been in some way damaged by that.  I also don't think it benefits anyone but Bioware's competitors to potentially sink the company over a couple of "largely symbolic" trailers (IMO) and a few people leaving their staff during a time of economic recession in the nation in which that company happens to be principally located. There is a big difference between holding a corporation responsible for its actions and just maliciously attacking it on every imaginable front.

 

So, let's all just step back and breathe... and stop attacking each other over this... For now, it's nothing worth fighting over.

[Kabooooom]

With this most recent delay to sometime 2017 I have serious doubts about Bioware and whether we'll ever see an actual release of Mass Effect Andromeda. Guess Bioware will have just saved me the 60 bucks I was going to toss their way for Mass Effect Andromeda..thanks Bioware.

Lolol. Seriously?

[Bruno Hslaw]

I think they have spent far to much time and money on this game not to release it. A more pertinent question would be, if they bother finishing it properly pre release. I am looking at you ME 3 and your junk ending.

[Sartoz]

I personally think the development process has been ridiculously simplified in this thread. This is the usual lifecycle when one is developing software.

Requirements --> implementation---> Testing ---> Build

 

Which is to say that there is nothing that states that functionality in a demo is not subjected to change. This implies that once functionality is placed in a release, it cannot be removed. This also implies that software is a static which it is not. A demo release for me states that at this moment, this is the stable functionality that they have in their build. This functionality can be subjected to change according to what comes down the pipeline in the future. 

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"...A demo release for me states that at this moment, this is the stable functionality that they have in their build...."

 

There is something called a game demo and then there are video game trailers. While I agree with you about the game demo, the video game trailers are purposely designed to project something else. For example: a video trailer can be rendered in higher quality setting than what you actually get from the game. Now, does the word "representative" suddenly give the publisher a free jail card?

 

Another example: the video game trailer shows our intrepid hero smashing through a door or brings down a bridge via magic but this feature is unavailable in the game. Does the word "representative" give them a free jail card?  The publisher is conveying something that is not on the game and for this reason I cannot see it as "our" fault for "expecting" this ability.

 

My point, here, is that the onus is on the publisher to ensure that whatever they put out in trailers are actually found in the game. Put another way, "don't release a video trailer about the game content, when the game is still in flux".

[Sartoz]

With this most recent delay to sometime 2017 I have serious doubts about Bioware and whether we'll ever see an actual release of Mass Effect Andromeda. Guess Bioware will have just saved me the 60 bucks I was going to toss their way for Mass Effect Andromeda..thanks Bioware.

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Lol

Since The Division is currently priced at $79, by the time ME:A is out March 2017, expect the game to be $89. For that price,  I expect Denuvo to be installed in the game because, Hey!... you don't want MP cheating. Those micro$transctions must be protected.

 

My confidence in Bio delivering the game is still solid. A three month delay is a piffle. Most interesting to me is whether the game allows for key/mouse button binding.

[Sartoz]

I think they have spent far to much time and money on this game not to release it. A more pertinent question would be, if they bother finishing it properly pre release. I am looking at you ME 3 and your junk ending.

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If they have taken the ending's backlash to heart, Bio has something to prove with ME:A. If so, I expect a worthy game.

 

If the Voice Actors have already done their jobs, then both the main story arc and major quests are "locked in".  If not,... well an extra three months helps. In the meantime, from twitter tweets, game combat design levels are constantly being developed.

[Sanunes]

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"...A demo release for me states that at this moment, this is the stable functionality that they have in their build...."

 

There is something called a game demo and then there are video game trailers. While I agree with you about the game demo, the video game trailers are purposely designed to project something else. For example: a video trailer can be rendered in higher quality setting than what you actually get from the game. Now, does the word "representative" suddenly give the publisher a free jail card?

 

Another example: the video game trailer shows our intrepid hero smashing through a door or brings down a bridge via magic but this feature is unavailable in the game. Does the word "representative" give them a free jail card?  The publisher is conveying something that is not on the game and for this reason I cannot see it as "our" fault for "expecting" this ability.

 

My point, here, is that the onus is on the publisher to ensure that whatever they put out in trailers are actually found in the game. Put another way, "don't release a video trailer about the game content, when the game is still in flux".

 

I can only speak for myself, but the issues around that video from Inquisition aren't nearly as bad for me because it wasn't officially released to the public by EA or BioWare since they only showed it during a closed door conference and we could have missed important information that the people who uploaded the videos didn't capture.  The other thing about that video is that I wasn't expecting what was being shown because they had the "pre-alpha content" label watermarked on the video so I understood things were still changing.

 

I am curious to know how you felt about the Choices trailer for Mass Effect 1, for it always felt very misleading about the Noveria mission for me and it was officially released by BioWare.

[UpUpAway]

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"...A demo release for me states that at this moment, this is the stable functionality that they have in their build...."

 

There is something called a game demo and then there are video game trailers. While I agree with you about the game demo, the video game trailers are purposely designed to project something else. For example: a video trailer can be rendered in higher quality setting than what you actually get from the game. Now, does the word "representative" suddenly give the publisher a free jail card?

 

Another example: the video game trailer shows our intrepid hero smashing through a door or brings down a bridge via magic but this feature is unavailable in the game. Does the word "representative" give them a free jail card?  The publisher is conveying something that is not on the game and for this reason I cannot see it as "our" fault for "expecting" this ability.

 

My point, here, is that the onus is on the publisher to ensure that whatever they put out in trailers are actually found in the game. Put another way, "don't release a video trailer about the game content, when the game is still in flux".

 

So, I guess you're seriously expecting ME:A to take place during the 20th Century on Earth since that trailer contains many images of the Apollo and Shuttle space programs.  Accusations of wrong doing are just that accusations... there is no "get of jail free card" for the defendant... but there is an onus on the plaintiff to prove their accusations.

 

Naturally, companies wish to avoid having wild accusations being made against them... so they try to be responsible about what they release in a video... but there is no law against being symbolic in a creative piece of work... which a video trailer is in addition to being a form of advertisement. 

[Andrew Waples]

I know that EA is a pretty trustworthy source and what not (as it's coming from the horses-mouth as it were), but does anyone find it odd that BioWare hasn't publicly announced the delay? (to my knowledge) Nor have confirmed or denied the original "leak".

[Sylvius the Mad]

Consumers shouldn't entirely trust marketing material, but that doesn't make it your consumer's fault if you're the one lying about your product.

Inferences are always the inferer's fault.

This isn't about fair business practices; this is just sound reasoning.

[Pasquale1234]

This is an excellent progression on what I was saying. What you call a different issue (the quality of the open world game), I meant to actually talk about but I entirely forgot. I essentially think our points are the same. I call the 'open world quality', a symptom of the game being open world to begin with.

Essentially game development has finite resources, so when you introduce open world, it sabotages the budget to being spent on arbitrary 'customisations' to your experience, that add little real value to your gaming experience.

Instead, of having 100 forking pieces of narrative at B+ writing quality, it would be better to just have 5-10 and it be A+ quality. This is obviously subjective I know.

When you speak of narrative, are you talking about the various questlines built into the game or the narrative that emerges as the game is played?

One of the reasons why I enjoy open world / exploration is because it gives me more time and opportunity to role-play the character and supports the creation of emergent narrative.
 

Take for instance there have been some discussion threads on having the ability to choose non-human races in ME:A. In my opinion this is a waste of resources and should not be done. If they did it, say similar to Skyrim, you would have this seemingly cool feature which amounts to almost nothing within the game. A few times they will mention it but it doesnt really alter your experience that much. If you actually analysed the entire impact of this initial decision, I imagine it will seem entirely superfluous [EG. how there were only a few interesting points on ELF vs HUMAN was in DA:I]. In my opinion, just allocate some of these excessive customisation resources back into having a really strong main narrative experience.

I'd agree with your conclusion, but for different reasons. ME thus far has been about humans in space, working with / for human-centric organizations, and would take on an entirely different tone if that were not the case. Also, the N7 designation is an iconic thing in ME, and it is very much a human thing.

Actual in-game reactivity to things like race / background have very little to do with how I experience a playthrough, however. But it does inform my character's approach, decision-making, and how the character feels to play. A Spacer Shepard, for example, received contact from Mom, but even without those minor moments, knowing that the character had family out there gave her a sense of foundation and connection I did not experience with non-Spacer Shepards. I started an adept in ME1 who was very angry and bitter about the treatment of human biotics, and never finished that playthrough because I did not like the way I felt while playing her.

 

Further, regardless of the outcome of whether or not it WAS less tactical (which I think it was), there was the implication of corruption of the tactical complexity due to wanting to make more money by marketing the original PC friendly game for consoles. The basic argument was the reduction in active skills was directly related to being optimised for the console controller. Obviously it would be really expensive to have two versions of the game, one for PC one for Console with different balancing for active skills, thus the ultimate "dumbed down" argument and cementing a perception that they were reducing the tactical complexity in order to generate more money.

Now, I dont necessarily blame them for wanting uniformity between console and PC in terms of gameplay as its more than just adding an extra active skill bar, they would need to balance the combat which would be quite expensive, but in my opinion the combat was less fun as a result.

Okay, you do realize that all of the Dragon Age games have been available on console, right? I played both DAO and DA2 on the PS3. The controls worked just fine - bringing up the skill wheel would pause the game and allow you to select any skill (or potion, poison, etc.) for any character in your party. ME also provides a skill wheel on console, and both franchises also hotkeyed skills to controller buttons. If vgchartz is to be believed, a lot more copies of all of the DA games have been sold on consoles than on PC.

It looks to me like the primary reason for limiting active skills in DAI was MP, because you can't pause to bring up a skill wheel in MP. And possibly just to simplify things a bit.
 

Fair enough, cant argue with an opinion/preference. Since I played Kotor I've loved Bioware's writing, but I've got many friends who religiously play these kinds of games and skip almost all the dialog, simply because action gameplay/customisation/progression in a AAA RPG can be good enough to stand on its own.

For me, what I mean especially is that game narrative is often lacking, and I've found Bioware's writing often exceptional. I appreciate that, and I found that DA:I had so much narrative that it was hard to hit the high notes all the time. This is where a game might be better served capping at 50-60 or so hours rather than 100+.

I'm not sure whether I am the exception or the norm, I think perhaps my interest in narrative is on the extreme end, and you are either in the middle or on the other side of the scales. I guess most people are probably in the middle somewhere.

A game's narrative is created as you play it. A lot of people have written some very entertaining stories playing The Sims.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fair enough, cant argue with an opinion/preference. Since I played Kotor I've loved Bioware's writing, but I've got many friends who religiously play these kinds of games and skip almost all the dialog, simply because action gameplay/customisation/progression in a AAA RPG can be good enough to stand on its own.

For me, what I mean especially is that game narrative is often lacking, and I've found Bioware's writing often exceptional. I appreciate that, and I found that DA:I had so much narrative that it was hard to hit the high notes all the time. This is where a game might be better served capping at 50-60 or so hours rather than 100+.

It's interesting you mention KotOR. KotOR was BioWare's first heavily narrative heavily linear game. And it was also much shorter than anything that came before it.

I saw both things as problems when KotOR came out. I still do.

I don't want them to keep making KotOR. I want them to keep making BG and NWN. And DAI finally moves back in that direction.

They've been sticking with the KotOR model for years. Jade Empire, all three ME games, DAO, and DA2 all follow basically that model.

I liked the older model better.

This I have to disagree on in a big way.

Technically its a logical fallacy, because you are implying that correlation implies the absolute causation of active skill decision. We will never KNOW the motives, but we can analyse the context and make a value assessment.

I was trying to show that there's no necessary connection. The earlier games clearly demonstrate that the consoles could accommodate more abilities.

The reality is, when you factor in the requirement to have use/active, sprint, jump, etc. There are around the 4 buttons remaining on console. So although it wasnt a requirement to have 4 buttons, but I'm proposing it certainly was an optimisation for these platforms.

So, without going back and reading every single reference to how i described the active abilities, I'll just re-clarify it here instead. In my opinion all the evidence shows the combat in DA:I was optimized for console.

Not well. Using the controller buttons in combination would offer more control options than using them one at a time.

NWN's UI offered 48 hotkeys using only 15 keys on the keyboard.

So, PC = 1 step per active skill. Console = 2-3 steps per active skill. One is clearly inferior here. From establishing this, all that remains is deciding whether you believe the developer decision was solely aesthetics and design choice (so the whole thing was a big coincidence), or whether this optimisation played in.

Personally, I dont think you need a tin foil hat to think was more than a coincidence. Ergo, in my opinion, despite [from my memory], Bioware never outright admitting it for what I assume are PR reasons, DA:I combat was optimized for console.

I'll admit I never even considered how the console version would play in real time, because I see no value in playing in real time. I would be happy if the PC version had to navigate layers of menus, as long as we got more abilities.

But the only part of the game that needs to played in real time is the MP.

I made plenty of concessions in your favor about the original games. I've played DAO, 3 times and DA2 twice, including the hardest settings. When people say "DA:I was really easy compared to DA1-2", I kind of disagree. Despite a few spikes and curveballs, those original games both went into autopilot by halfway through and were incredibly easy, namely due to combat imbalance/glitches. In DA:I the combat largely held my interest (I played on the hardest setting with FF on), it was just too repetitive due being to a long game.

In DAO, there were fights that gave me trouble the first time I encountered them. The Corrupted Spider Queen. Jarvia. Some of the random encounters. One particular fight with darkspawn in Aeducan Thaig. Caridin.

Actually, that list is almost all deep roads stuff. Weird.

But in DAI, nothing was even vaguely threatening. I could walk happily along through unexplored areas without paying attention, and I didn't suffer my first TPK until I got caught between 2 Arcane Horrors in the Exalted Plains.

I play both games on Hard.

[Spectr61]

Fair enough, cant argue with an opinion/preference. Since I played Kotor I've loved Bioware's writing, but I've got many friends who religiously play these kinds of games and skip almost all the dialog, simply because action gameplay/customisation/progression in a AAA RPG can be good enough to stand on its own.
 
For me, what I mean especially is that game narrative is often lacking, and I've found Bioware's writing often exceptional. I appreciate that, and I found that DA:I had so much narrative that it was hard to hit the high notes all the time. This is where a game might be better served capping at 50-60 or so hours rather than 100+.
 
I'm not sure whether I am the exception or the norm, I think perhaps my interest in narrative is on the extreme end, and you are either in the middle or on the other side of the scales. I guess most people are probably in the middle somewhere.
 



 
> No, the 4 ability limit is caused by the devs' desire to have parity between SP and MP
 
I'll immediately address this then the larger claim. So, this doesnt make sense, because the MP could just as easily have had as many skills as you want. Ultimately, the entire issue of active skills, whether its SP or MP, can be surmised from what the dev's directly said themselves.
 
I'll elaborate further below, but they responded to the controversy, and called it an overarching 'design decision', to have 'fewer active choices that were more meaningful'. This is what we need to consider and decide if we believe. You cant say that this directly relates to SP or MP as the same decision applies for both game modes. Elaborating more below.
 
> Oh, and the 4 ability limit can't have been about parity across platforms, because neither DAO nor DA2 had such a limit on consoles.
 
This I have to disagree on in a big way.
 
Technically its a logical fallacy, because you are implying that correlation implies the absolute causation of active skill decision. We will never KNOW the motives, but we can analyse the context and make a value assessment.
 
The reality is, when you factor in the requirement to have use/active, sprint, jump, etc. There are around the 4 buttons remaining on console. So although it wasnt a requirement to have 4 buttons, but I'm proposing it certainly was an optimisation for these platforms.
 
So, without going back and reading every single reference to how i described the active abilities, I'll just re-clarify it here instead. In my opinion all the evidence shows the combat in DA:I was optimized for console. 
 
Now, if you read my post history. I'm not a hater, nowhere near it. I actually liked DA:I. I'm not sure whether i was starving for an RPG or whether it was a good game, I'll have to play it a second time someday before I know. I think it perhaps it was good, but not great.
 
I wouldnt blame somebody for holding the opinion you have either. In fact, if you read what the developer said and you believe them, its absolutely the conclusion you will make. However, I personally think the reality of marketing is that sometimes a company will tell a 'white lie' to not cause a controversy and this is one of those cases. If you read when developers literally outright replied to people accusing them of 'duming it down', for consoles, (what I would call, 'optimizing' it for consoles). When they replied, I remember quotes like:
 
"We actually feel like less abilities makes the individual choices more rewarding", "This was an overall/conscious decision we made to reduce the number of actives, not a downgrade".
 
So, from the mouths of the developers themselves, pretty sure I remember Laidlaw and many others saying it during Q&A and various responses. In general, as I remember, the developers are crying till their faces blue it wasnt designed like this to optimize for consoles, it was their 'artistic/design choice'. And ultimately I cant speak to know their motives, none of us can, we can only look at the circumstances. To me, this just flies in the face of the facts at hand.
 
To me, the circumstances are, DAO/DA2 was originally a PC game, with a massive ability bar with dozens and dozens of active skills. All the feedback from managing this on console was it was a ****** nightmare and PC was the superior platform/experience. Further, combine this with the irrefutable fact that optimisation wise, there are only a few free/active buttons on console of which to use - designing the whole game around just a few actives is a literal optimisation.
 
The situation created where there are more than a few actives is that now the console complicates/obfuscates the process of changing skill. So, when you need to change skill, rather than pressing a single bound key on your keyboard, you need to complete 2-3 actions to change skill. Perhaps click toggle, select from a menu. Press Toggle, select on a radial control, etc.
 
So, PC = 1 step per active skill. Console = 2-3 steps per active skill. One is clearly inferior here. From establishing this, all that remains is deciding whether you believe the developer decision was solely aesthetics and design choice (so the whole thing was a big coincidence), or whether this optimisation played in.
 
Personally, I dont think you need a tin foil hat to think was more than a coincidence. Ergo, in my opinion, despite [from my memory], Bioware never outright admitting it for what I assume are PR reasons, DA:I combat was optimized for console.
 
I made plenty of concessions in your favor about the original games. I've played DAO, 3 times and DA2 twice, including the hardest settings. When people say "DA:I was really easy compared to DA1-2", I kind of disagree. Despite a few spikes and curveballs, those original games both went into autopilot by halfway through and were incredibly easy, namely due to combat imbalance/glitches. In DA:I the combat largely held my interest (I played on the hardest setting with FF on), it was just too repetitive due being to a long game.
 
Opinion summary - If there was anything large wrong with the DA:I, it wasnt really combat. Despite combat being slightly inferior in my opinion to the previous games, it wasnt much of an issue - there were some other niggling issues.
 
However, there is a huge circumstantial trove of evidence saying that the claims made by Bioware dev's were false and it was downgraded as an optimisation process, not purely for game design reasons. I feel compelled to dispel what you said about 4 actives being 'proven' as nothing to do with console due to the original games.

This.

EA/Bioware spin does not matter, it doesn't take Einsteinian logic to see that the games were optimised for consoles.

However, the pendulum swingeth...

http://www.forbes.co...g/#65b173976f69

Win10 to rule them all?

[LinksOcarina]

Inferences are always the inferer's fault.

This isn't about fair business practices; this is just sound reasoning.

 

True, but you also can't expect everyone to be logical like that.

 

Thankfully BioWare never lied to the point of being fair or unfair, as far as we know. 

[In Exile]

Yes, because you ignored how terribly the "open world" of DAI was implemented. A bunch of big, empty maps with little to no intrigue or interesting activities was a bigger problem than open world games supposedly falling out of favor with the gaming media.

I think you're entirely right about DAI. Here is what I struggle with - the well regarded open world games are not really different. TW3, which had interesting content, didn't have the interesting content as part of the open world. Same with New Vegas. The quality of content came precisely from the old linear quest design, just thrown into a sandbox for good measure. I'd describe say Skyrim or Fallout 4 the same way as you did DAI.

[Sylvius the Mad]

True, but you also can't expect everyone to be logical like that.

I can. I do.

I'm constantly disappointed.

[Drakoriz]

I think you're entirely right about DAI. Here is what I struggle with - the well regarded open world games are not really different. TW3, which had interesting content, didn't have the interesting content as part of the open world. Same with New Vegas. The quality of content came precisely from the old linear quest design, just thrown into a sandbox for good measure. I'd describe say Skyrim or Fallout 4 the same way as you did DAI.

 

man but i will change Witcher 3 linear quest for Skyrim or Fallout 4 open world any day, bc that open world keep me playing over the main quest line.

 

I mean really DA I yeah it have a horrible empty open world, close to the empty open world games like TW3 have.

[lucky5hot]

It's interesting you mention KotOR. KotOR was BioWare's first heavily narrative heavily linear game. And it was also much shorter than anything that came before it.

I saw both things as problems when KotOR came out. I still do.

I don't want them to keep making KotOR. I want them to keep making BG and NWN. And DAI finally moves back in that direction.

They've been sticking with the KotOR model for years. Jade Empire, all three ME games, DAO, and DA2 all follow basically that model.

I liked the older model better.

 

> It's interesting you mention KotOR. KotOR was BioWare's first heavily narrative heavily linear game... I saw both things as problems when KotOR came out. I still do.

 

To be honest I've never replayed either Kotor, nor have I replayed Jade Empire, so speaking to the problems or potential problems in these games would be difficult for me. All I can remember is the innovation I felt they provided over previous gaming experiences (having gamed since my Commodore 64 and 286, and playing my first PC game around '87 as Dig Dug, at the age of 5). I dont think its particularly fair to consider them only on the basis of 2016. In reality, they largely have to be considered for their given time period as thats what they were competing with at the time, and the industry has since developed and matured. IMHO my high opinions of Kotor are not purely nostalgia, at the time these were significant narrative experiences that were VERY different and innovative. Especially the companion systems and relationships created through narrative in gaming. To me this was quite significant.

 

In summary, saying that I "Started at Kotor", wasnt really meant to imply any significance about playing Kotor in 2016, I'm talking about the game bioware released at any given time and how important it was from a narrative perspective at that given time. I conclude that being almost every time Bioware releases a game its praised as innovative in terms of narrative, this is why its fair to call Bioware a leader in terms of game narrative.

 

There is certainly no right or wrong answer I can think of on whether Bioware games should focus more, or have more time allocated to narrative. This is something that fans should vote on and I'm simply saying for me, I come to bioware games for narrative, I have throughout each game in their history (actually I've since remembered that although I skipped Neverwinter I actually played BG1-2 so I technically started there).

 

> I liked the older model better.

 

I tried to be diplomatic when I stated my preference that ultimately the main body of fans should vote/decide. However, I disagree somewhat with what you call the 'old model'. I would call the older model exactly what I was talking about in my previous reply, 30-40 hours of narrative heavy focus like DA:O, DA2, ME1-3. Certainly I think this has been the main body of Bioware's work. When i was talking about a shorter game with heavier narrative, I was largely talking about these 5 games. Where I think due to having less narrative, the narrative that existed was overall a higher quality. I hesitantly put DA2 in that mix because I think this was the most rushed game Bioware have made in its history, and I rate it much lower than all the others, but if that game had dragged on for 80 hours my god it would have been worse.

 

 

I was trying to show that there's no necessary connection. The earlier games clearly demonstrate that the consoles could accommodate more abilities.
Not well. Using the controller buttons in combination would offer more control options than using them one at a time.

NWN's UI offered 48 hotkeys using only 15 keys on the keyboard.
I'll admit I never even considered how the console version would play in real time, because I see no value in playing in real time. I would be happy if the PC version had to navigate layers of menus, as long as we got more abilities.

But the only part of the game that needs to played in real time is the MP.

 

> I was trying to show that there's no necessary connection. The earlier games clearly demonstrate that the consoles could accommodate more abilities.

 

I was never arguing that they COULDNT accommodate them, I simply stated that DA:I was demonstrably optimized for consoles, and that this optimisation is either incidental (as the developer claims), or was purposeful and by design.

 

You continually perpetuate this narrative about why DA:I has 4 active skills on false grounds, which keeps forcing me to reply. Id prefer for us to just butt heads on opinions and leave it at that, but I'm compelled to redress false facts you claim. I was never categorically claiming why the 4 skills happened. I was just claiming that your statements about it being for SP/MP or because of DAO/DA2 was entirely erroneous. Also, I was proposing that you should think critically about it... because all the evidence is to the contrary.

 

I think its intellectually dishonest to dismiss all the evidence that I've provided: PC ability = press 1 key, Console ability = press 2-3 combinations of keys. This happens whether its real time or tactical. This is demonstrably less optimized. Certainly you have to concede its less optimised, you can only speculate that perhaps this optimisation was as the developers claimed "a happy coincidence of meaningful ability design by having less choice". 

 

Again, I'm not saying it wasnt possible, I'm just saying its less optimised. I think unfortunately the debate on Bioware's motives will ultimately be fruitless because we can never ascertain their real motives, only infer them, but we should at least clarify for the public record that there was no actual logical decision outside of what the developer claimed was "aesthetic game design". Your claims about SP/MP, about previous Console versions.... all meritless.

 

Also, on the SP/MP.... consider the MP in ME3. They just modified the combat so it was differnet to the core game, with certain classes having certain combinations.  (IE, ME3 game has 6 classes each with up to 10 active abilities slots, ME3 MP has just 4 ability slots but 60 subclasses, due to wanting real-time optimisation). So is literally evidence in the opposite direction of what you are claiming. So being this is the case, why all of a sudden does DA:I need parity when ME3 did not have parity? Your argument doesnt make sense, in fact, on contrast, it flies in the face to the facts about ME3.

 

For me, ultimately the most damning thing in your retort on the active skill controversy in DA:I is you did not address a single paraphrase I addressed from people like Mike Laidlaw on why they claimed they actually DID have 4 active abilities. Surely if you were going to enter the arena of public debate on this issue, the actual claims from the actual developer would be the first thing you would redress. I tried to bring these things to the table, but you just ignored them. The fact you were content to speculate about SP/MP etc rather than address the facts does not make a strong case for your contention.

 

In DAO, there were fights that gave me trouble the first time I encountered them. The Corrupted Spider Queen. Jarvia. Some of the random encounters. One particular fight with darkspawn in Aeducan Thaig. Caridin.

Actually, that list is almost all deep roads stuff. Weird.

But in DAI, nothing was even vaguely threatening. I could walk happily along through unexplored areas without paying attention, and I didn't suffer my first TPK until I got caught between 2 Arcane Horrors in the Exalted Plains.

I play both games on Hard.

 

 

> Actually, that list is almost all deep roads stuff. Weird.

 

Absolutely agree here. When i said spike, i was literally thinking of the deep roads on my first playthrough, with one fight taking me an hour+ to get through. DA2 was actually quite hard right out of the gate for the first several hours on the hardest setting, but got easier quite quickly and only spiked during a couple of bosses.

 

When I'm talking about difficulty, I dont remember hard, I'm only talking about Nightmare, which I know is abnormal. But then again, if you find hard easy, why not just up the difficulty?

 

> But in DAI, nothing was even vaguely threatening. I could walk happily along through unexplored areas without paying attention, and I didn't suffer my first TPK until I got caught between 2 Arcane Horrors in the Exalted Plains.

 

So again, if you are complaining about difficulty, unless you up to the highest setting then you have no real reason to complain, so I assume you are talking about Nightmare here.

 

So, in order to recreate the real version of Nightmare, you need to actually turn FF on. Did you do this? I found this made the game much harder and required a lot of tactical positioning to not just instagib your own team like the original games. I remember posting some threads during the first few weeks of DA:I and a surprising amount of veterans seemed to be playing the game on Nightmare, but with FF off, because it 'killed the fun'. But then these same people complained about the game being too easy over the originals.

 

To me, this isnt fair, because FF was pretty much the only thing that made the originals hard.

 

In particular, one of the things that made Nightmare easier in DAO and DA2 once you were around 50% through the game (something I already mentioned), was that the AI was slightly improved so it wouldnt just endless aggro people who were invincible. In the originals, you could just AOE over the top of invincible allies who were endlessly aggroed, whereas in the DA:I an invincible enemy is entirely ignored by enemy aggro. This essentially made FF much more difficult to work around in DA:I than in the originals.

 

All in all, the original combat wasnt a great deal harder,  (IMHO), it was just more satisfying due to having more choices. Then again, perhaps I just lucked into optimal builds in my original playthrough? Dunno...

[lucky5hot]

When you speak of narrative, are you talking about the various questlines built into the game or the narrative that emerges as the game is played?

One of the reasons why I enjoy open world / exploration is because it gives me more time and opportunity to role-play the character and supports the creation of emergent narrative.

 

Lets talk about DA:I and FO4 specifically, two games that I think are good but I'm critical of being too long as open world games. Totally respect your decision to love the exploration part of these games, and advocate games to be like this. Also, you are not alone... perhaps even a majority. But in a previous post I did mention I think the consumer trend/preference is shifting, as reflected by consumer/critic scores on places like metacritic.

 

So, in these two games I did not find all the content interesting. Some parts I absolutely loved, or made me laugh, other parts I tasked my way to the end in order to continue and move forward the story. Exploring this... I have this constant dichotomy of thought where on the one hand I want to explore everything to find the interesting nuggets of pure intrigue that I know and love from Bioware/Bethesda games.... and on the other hand, I feel like ignoring it because the best quality narrative/content is actually in the main quest arc.

 

So for me, this is something that has [increasingly] become more of a problem over time with modern open world games. Not sure if we are tiring of the genre, the novelty is wearing off, I just preferred the old DA style to the new one. But thats my current position. In ME1-3, I would be interested in playing the game almost from a completionist point of view, because in 30-40 hours, there appears to be much less wear on patience of uninteresting content. This was not so much the case in DA:I

 

Now, I've written this argument on a different forum once and the basic reply is along the lines "well just dont play the whole game if you are bored, just focus on the main story". I get this argument, but I WANT to experience the side content. However, of all the side content I endured in DA:I, I only really want the most interesting 25% of it. Its like I'm pouring/sifting through a bunch of uninteresting stuff to find the gems. So this gameplay loop leaves me in some conflict and the byproduct is some mild frustration. Ultimately in my case I played through most of the games content and just endured some uninteresting fetch quests, and so the game for me was good instead of great.

 

Interestingly, I feel like this trend was originally started by the Assassins creed series, an action series not an RPG series. Its like all this additional content that pads 20+ hours lead to them being able to claim the games were really long, and because these sandbox games were really long, consumers resonated that they were getting 'a lot of value for money'.  However, I do see the pendulum shifting a bit and consumers either bucking the trend or seemingly edging towards doing so, in that game length =/= game quality.

 

This is my basic claim. Now, on the flip side. I have NFI how they did it, but for me, TW3 had a tonne of exploration (what you seem to enjoy MOST about a game), but also captivated my interest almost entirely with very little downtime. How they did this for 80+ hours of gameplay I cant exactly pin within thinking a lot more on the topic. So, its not impossible to have 80 hours of writing and exploration that is captivating, but I certainly think its extremely hard, and my contention was I would rather than just play it safe with 50 hours and focus on quality rather than shoot for 'exploration', but potentially miss the mark too much.

 

I'd agree with your conclusion, but for different reasons. ME thus far has been about humans in space, working with / for human-centric organizations, and would take on an entirely different tone if that were not the case. Also, the N7 designation is an iconic thing in ME, and it is very much a human thing.

Actual in-game reactivity to things like race / background have very little to do with how I experience a playthrough, however. But it does inform my character's approach, decision-making, and how the character feels to play. A Spacer Shepard, for example, received contact from Mom, but even without those minor moments, knowing that the character had family out there gave her a sense of foundation and connection I did not experience with non-Spacer Shepards. I started an adept in ME1 who was very angry and bitter about the treatment of human biotics, and never finished that playthrough because I did not like the way I felt while playing her.

 

So, when I'm giving a reason to not have too much complicated and arbitrary 'decisions', that are shallow decisions and dont have real meaning... I'm actually talking largely from the position of 'return on investment'. Or, "the financial cost of a developing a game feature versus how interesting/enjoyable that game feature becomes".

 

Lets talk specifically about the Backstory for Shepard, a great example. Personally, just didnt do it for me. I know its a popular concept I just never really liked it that much. I get it, its KIND of novel that lets say 20 times per game you get this reference to the decision you made, but for me, thats entirely shallow and I was WAY more interested in WTF the reapers were doing than any of this.

 

I'm actually not sure what consumer/critic consensus is on this. Perhaps I'm way out of line and people love these shallow pieces of gameplay feedback, But personally, if they could take these 20 instances where your spacer background as shepard made them say something different...

 

And instead hire a comedian to write 20 ZINGER lines that made me laugh really hard, I would get more value out of the latter. When I talk about more comedy, I'm just giving an example of money better spent, there could be lots of things. For instance in DA:I your castle and could have been better and the mini-game better developed, perhaps crafting could have been improved. Add 5 end game dragons, etc. So, I think when the choice is really superficial, perhaps time could be better spent.

 

Let me play devils advocate and take it right to the extreme. Imagine a game where you have one choice, human or elf, male or female... etc. And the entire game is centered around this decision with some deep feedback on this choice.... real MEANING to that choice, then I'm all for that customisation. Just not shallow ****. 

 

I personally think this shallow stuff just sells games at E3 expo etc. You have all this "Customisation", marketed at how interest it is, then in reality it turns out to be superfluous.

 

Okay, you do realize that all of the Dragon Age games have been available on console, right? I played both DAO and DA2 on the PS3. The controls worked just fine - bringing up the skill wheel would pause the game and allow you to select any skill (or potion, poison, etc.) for any character in your party. ME also provides a skill wheel on console, and both franchises also hotkeyed skills to controller buttons. If vgchartz is to be believed, a lot more copies of all of the DA games have been sold on consoles than on PC.

It looks to me like the primary reason for limiting active skills in DAI was MP, because you can't pause to bring up a skill wheel in MP. And possibly just to simplify things a bit.
 

 

> It looks to me like the primary reason for limiting active skills in DAI was MP, because you can't pause to bring up a skill wheel in MP. And possibly just to simplify things a bit.

 

I already responded to this in detail to the other guy, I'm not even sure now who asked the original question because its now 2 of you that have claimed that DA:I was somehow limited to 4 actives due to MP.

 

So, read the other reply, its incredibly detailed. One summary I can say as to why this is not correct is that since they did not do this for ME3, why would they NEED to do it for DA:I.

 

In ME3, on PC, you have a 10 skill hotbar. But in MP, they develop all these interesting 'subclasses' out of combinations of the 10 active skills, so you have variety both in choice of weapon and a rich amount of subclasses. (IE, instead of having 6 classes you have 60 subclasses).

 

So, why couldnt they just do the same in DAI. They DID have the subclasses in DAI multiplayer, they just decided to have 'parity' for SP too? It makes absolutely no sense. At the very least, this is surely not any evidence to support your theory on why the decision was made.

 

Ultimately, if you want to look why the decision was made, read what the developers said. More info on my previous post.

 

[lucky5hot]

This. EA/Bioware spin does not matter, it doesn't take Einsteinian logic to see that the games were optimised for consoles. However, the pendulum swingeth...

http://www.forbes.co...g/#65b173976f69

Win10 to rule them all?

 

I didnt click on the link as I have a rule to not visit Forbes since they block you from reading articles using ad blocker, but I hovered over the title and I can surmise from the article title it was about "Global PC revenue surpasses console".

 

Agree. A great recent example of this I read was Rise of the Tomb Raider, check this baby out:

 

http://www.destructo...-s-344589.phtml

 

"Rise of the Tomb Raider PC sales tripled that of Xbox". This is massive news for the industry. Because if individual titles keep trending to sell more on PC than console, PC will start gaining REAL traction.

 

Now, this probably has something to do with the latest iteration of Denuvo being presently uncrackable and the scene dying... but if thats the case, its great for the industry really. I think if Denuvo plays its cards right, (which I think they already have), the revenue they can net from the (%) of gross sales will facilitate them to stay permanently ahead of games piracy.

 

In case you dont know, essentially the landscape of the fight around DRM has changed from individually complex problems to solve, to just flooding the game with massive amounts of complexity that are financially tiresome/burdensome to solve.

 

This means, every time Denuvo release a new version, and assuming software developers capable of solving Denuvo's problems are generally worth say $100-150 an hour. It costs millions of dollars of billable man hours to crack the game. This is compared to the old system where a crack might be a joint effort of $10,000 to $20,000 or really smart people. I mean, the scene is just trending to be unviable, I think if you talk to people who understand tech they agree.

 

This complexity they add on every new Denuvo release (with v5 probably coming soon, then 6 shortly thereafter), will mean PC sales will stay on top of console inevitably and for the long term. Therefore, we will finally see PC take its rightful place as the leader of the industry and games will be built for it first, not the other way around. Its the end of an old era (pirates), and the dawn of a new one.

 

Now, the only pushback here is people like Durante, who claim that Denuvo will kill the modding scene. And hes right as the market stands, but if PC got the priority it deserved, games wouldnt need to be fixed by people like him. Ideally they would start to get released at lauch with no problems to begin with, because PC changed to be the lead platform for every game. Further, modding API kits can ultimately replace manual injection of modding. I hope Durante doesnt lead a revolution against Denuvo, but it might happen.

 

Honestly, I hold an incredibly unpopular opinion here, but ME:A should definitely use Denuvo. This will prove to Bioware that PC is most of their market and force them to treat it as such in the future.

[LinksOcarina]

I can. I do.

I'm constantly disappointed.

 

Perhaps the problem is your own in the end?

 

I tend to think people are wiser and more perspective than they should be, even my own students. I don't lower expectations, but I shape them based on who I am contending with in the end.

 

It's just the way life is, sometimes. 

[AtreiyaN7]

I think you're making a non-existent mountain over an equally non-existent molehill, OP. We are not talking about a lengthy delay on the level of Duke Nukem Forever. Despite a lack of news on ME:A and despite the departure of some devs, I'm fairly certain that ME:A will not be spending almost ten billion years in development hell a la DNF and that it probably won't suck like DNF either.

 

Ah, random speculation from bored people who have way too much time on their hands - it's so much fun! I do wish that BW would release a few tidbits so that people don't post an endless series of threads like the OP's, so here's hoping that they do spill some details eventually.