179 réponses à ce sujet

[straykat]

Nothing wrong with having a different opinion. The only thing these stats hint at to me in this context is that it appears to counter the vociferous and repetitious claims of some as to the extent of appeal related to the broad enjoyment and the compelling elements of games from particular companies. An important consideration when if BioWare is thinking of taking suggestions related to other games.

Reading the rationalizations has been wonderful too.

 

It's still pretty "broad" when you count something like Skyrim or Fallout. They sell 2 to 3 to 4 times as much as Bioware stuff. If Skyrim sold 20 million copies and 27% completed it, that's still more than all of DAO or ME2's sales.

 

I don't mean this as any kind of rationalization btw. I mean, I think ME2 is as good as any of them, personally.

[Blooddrunk1004]

Well, would you look at that? The Witcher has lower completion rates than Bioware games!

 

I now have objective proof to support my belief that Bioware kicks CDPR's ass! 

 

That's right. I said it. 

 

If we would rate which game is better by your logic then that means that DA2 is better than Origins and Dark Souls 3 is the best RPG ever made even though Bloodborne shits all over it

 

I'm pretty sure ME is a lot more known franchise compared to Witcher that barely received any attention before 3rd game was announced.

[Fiery Phoenix]

ME2 was also the most straightforward entry of the trilogy, story and gameplay wise.

[N7M]

It's still pretty "broad" when you count something like Skyrim or Fallout. They sell 2 to 3 to 4 times as much as Bioware stuff. If Skyrim sold 20 million copies and 27% completed it, that's still more than all of DAO or ME2's sales.

 

I don't mean this as any kind of rationalization btw. I mean, I think ME2 is as good as any of them, personally.

 

Those sales numbers seem questionable as "2 to 3 to 4 times" more is quite a margin and with the rest reads as a rationalization. Is there a reliable source on those figures?

 

For the most part I think I prefer ME1 and consider it my favorite but it appears I finished more playthroughs of ME2. Even one's own opinion can be countered by one's own facts.

[Amirit]

I think it's as Straykat says: they're hardcore, combat-focused games that people finish to get gamer points for having beaten it.

 

You might have something here: if the story only supports combat, like in Diablo, for example, and the main goal is to level up your character by fighting more and more difficult bosses with one final super-boss, AND (it's important!) developers did not overdone it, then chances are more people will finish the story.

 

It also explains why ME2 was completed more times then any other game in the series - you are truly building up your character and your team (and ship as well) for one mega-battle. Everything is counted, everything you worked for is used at the end and needed. You see the result of your work there and that final battle truly is the culmination of the game.

While in ME1 you are more wandering around, your team is there just to talk and comment, but you have the story . And in ME3 part of the frustration with the endings is coming from pointless journey and complete ignoring of all your work on the way (those points you accumulate is the only outcome).
 

 

I was raising it as a counter to your claim that if more people finish the game, that must mean the story is better.

 

 

You talk about movies and I see it more like books. In the movie theater it is unlikely you will leave or fall a sleep, but if the book is not interesting you might throw it away without regrets. Same with the game - again, STORY driven game - it you are not engaged with the story, you leave that story. And same with the book-writers it indicates the fail of the story.

There were games that I finished despite deeply hated combat system only in order to see the story. And there were games which I did not play through only because stories were too lousy to pick my interest.

 

Sure, some people are looking only for an interesting combat and do not care about the story, but I do think another type - the one seeking story first and everything else later does exist as well (I am one of them). Can not say if one group is bigger then another, but for "story-type" gamers completion does equal success.

[LostScout61]

Who buys Steam games and stays indefinitely offline? Sounds like an outlier to me. Eventually, most would get online and the achievements would upload.

Not correct.  Some Steam games don't unlock achievements unless you are online (ie, Crusader Kings 2 which requires you to be in Ironman mode which forces you to have internet connection enabled).  Other steam games don't accurately update offline achievements when you go online.  Skyrim used to be like that but they seem to have fixed it in one of thier late patches. Then there are games like Mount & Blade Warband which gave me something like 6 early achievements and then never worked again even though I met the requirements many times over, no idea why.  It is up to the individual developers how they handle Steam achievements not Steam, and that makes drawing conclusions from Steam Achievements like comparing apples with oranges and then deciding you are paying too much to grow cherries.

[capn233]

Interesting.

 

The most recent game that I bought that I did not "complete" was Gran Turismo 4.  Damn Mission 34.  That really pissed me off because I had 100% complete in GT2 and GT3.

[slimgrin]

ME2 was also the most straightforward entry of the trilogy, story and gameplay wise.

 

The most streamlined, the lowest point of entry etc. 

 

All those 'fiddly bits' removed by Hudson. 

[Cyberstrike nTo]

I actually liked the approach to followers in DAO and ME1 better. I prefer to have interesting conversations with them rather than going out on quests. Not to say some squadmates in ME1 didn't suffer from excessive exposition (Tali was particularly egregious; her character was almost entirely exposition) but others not so much.

 

 

 

The camp in DA:O biggest problem is that you can pretty much go through most of the dialogue the first time you speak to anybody, you can bang Morrigan at the first camp, the other LIs at least you work for it. 

 

Tali is the worst in ME1 pretty much everything she talks about is the quarians and the geth.

Liara she is number 2, unless you romance her.

Wrex is #3 he only opens up after he gets his grandfather's armor.

Ash and Kaiden are tied for #4

Garrus is the only squadmate in ME1 that isn't a massive exposition dump or at the very least when he does have exposition it relates back to him as a character.

[DarkKnightHolmes]

Best companions.

Best final mission in any Bioware game.

Best side quests (which is 80% of the game, lol).

Only takes around 20 hours to finish.

 

Pretty easy reason why. I played that game a million times. Not every game needs to be "OMG!! 100 hours of (boring) content!".

[In Exile]

 

 

The camp in DA:O biggest problem is that you can pretty much go through most of the dialogue the first time you speak to anybody, you can bang Morrigan at the first camp, the other LIs at least you work for it. 

 

Tali is the worst in ME1 pretty much everything she talks about is the quarians and the geth.

Liara she is number 2, unless you romance her.

Wrex is #3 he only opens up after he gets his grandfather's armor.

Ash and Kaiden are tied for #4

Garrus is the only squadmate in ME1 that isn't a massive exposition dump or at the very least when he does have exposition it relates back to him as a character.

 

I'm not really sure her romance opens up any extra dialogue. And lots of her exposition is just on the wrong side of creepy - basically amounting to "it's totally cool and definitely not bestiality to bang asari." 

[aoibhealfae]

Garrus ME1 is the start of "fix my problems, I have daddy issues". 

 

ME2 have a simplistic linear storytelling. You got killed, you wake up fighting, you recruit people, Horizon, recruit people and fix their issues, Collector ship, optional fix issues and recruitment, Reaper IFF and Suicide Mission. There's not much going on and everything in between are just fillers. Some people like that, some people don't. But its laughable that its the best game yet since Shepard barely is a person in it. "I died, its okay, let's save the galaxy" is weird.

[straykat]

I thought Ash, Garrus, and Kaidan were the best dialogue wise (in ME1). They're directly more personal at least, which I prefer. And at the same time, provide a lot of background on the world in an indirect way.

[straykat]

Garrus ME1 is the start of "fix my problems, I have daddy issues". 

 

ME2 have a simplistic linear storytelling. You got killed, you wake up fighting, you recruit people, Horizon, recruit people and fix their issues, Collector ship, optional fix issues and recruitment, Reaper IFF and Suicide Mission. There's not much going on and everything in between are just fillers. Some people like that, some people don't. But its laughable that its the best game yet since Shepard barely is a person in it. "I died, its okay, let's save the galaxy" is weird.

 

I'll be the first to say the setup and intro were stupid. I couldn't believe it when I first played.

 

And yet I ended up loving it.

[rossler]

I didn't complete DA:O. I think I got stuck in a castle for 2 hours early in the campaign, and then uninstalled the game. Probably could have used a walkthrough.

 

Mass Effect didn't really require a walkthrough. It was pretty straight forward. Hard to get lost anywhere.

[UpUpAway]

I didn't complete DA:O. I think I got stuck in a castle for 2 hours early in the campaign, and then uninstalled the game. Probably could have used a walkthrough.

 

Mass Effect didn't really require a walkthrough. It was pretty straight forward. Hard to get lost anywhere.

 

Bioware's statement in their trailer that "we've created a world you can lose yourself in" might generate some worries then.  We might expect a lower completion rate out of this ME installment than the other 3 games.

[Sylvius the Mad]

https://www.engadget...ragon-age-seri/





Well, no surprises here, I guess. What is more interesting, "in-completion" is a very common thing among RPGs:




Pity, DAI data is not there, but I think the tendency about "wast world" - "less completion" is obvious. Same, as the conclusion of this article : "if, at best, just over half of your players will finish and more than half quit before they’re halfway through, wouldn’t development time on the second half be better spent on content most players will actually see?"

Makes you think about necessity of exploring in a story-driven games, is not it?

It makes me think of the importance (or lack thereof) of story in an exploration-heavy game.

It's not exploration that's the problem. It's the story.

[straykat]

Bioware's statement in their trailer that "we've created a world you can lose yourself in" might generate some worries then.  We might expect a lower completion rate out of this ME installment than the other 3 games.

 

I wonder what led them to even think that was a selling point. Characters are what people lost themselves in before.

 

I'll say that ME2 opened the world of ME a lot though, but even then, it was about NPCs and tight set pieces. Like seeing Zaeed kick the crap out of some batarian and walking into Afterlife the first time.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mass Effect didn't really require a walkthrough. It was pretty straight forward. Hard to get lost anywhere.

Where's the fun in that?

If all we can do is go where we're told and do as we're asked, why are we bothering? What does the player bring to the table then?

Roleplaying is collaborative. What you describe is not.

[UpUpAway]

I wonder what led them to even think that was a selling point. Characters are what people lost themselves in before.

 

I'll say that ME2 opened the world of ME a lot though, but even then, it was about NPCs and tight set pieces. Like seeing Zaeed kick the crap out of some batarian and walking into Afterlife the first time.

 

I think they were expressing some pride in their graphics and set pieces.  Rather than having all the rather dead looking "different colored rock" planets of ME1, we're going to get planets that show more signs of life - foliage, weather, and all sorts of non-sentient species wandering about, as well as urban set pieces that just seem more alive than before (using newer ways to generate crowds and such).  It may not have much to do with the physical ability to get lost, but rather an expression of a tendency to get immersed in the terrain.   

 

However, I also don't think the quest battles will be as organized in a linear way as they were before... which could give some people problems in navigating their way through the missions.  Some people like that sort of aspect... the ability to actually get "lost" in an RPG.  To a point, I don't mind it.   It's really just a matter of personal taste. The trick for the developer, of course, is finding a "perfect" balance to allowing the player some freedom to get a little lost... without allowing them to get so lost that they give up and quit the game.

[CronoDragoon]

I wonder what led them to even think that was a selling point. Characters are what people lost themselves in before.

 

Characters are what 4-5m people lost themselves in before. Open worlds are what 20m+ do.

 

Or at least, that's the logic of chasing Skyrim.

[straykat]

Characters are what 4-5m people lost themselves in before. Open worlds are what 20m+ do.

 

Or at least, that's the logic of chasing Skyrim.

 

Except Bethesda has worked on this for 20 years.

 

So far, Bioware just made the ubisoft version of an open world at best. It's like McDonald's trying to make gourmet meals. I don't know about ME, but how different could it be this quickly?

 

What I do know is Montreal did a pretty interesting take on standard ME gameplay, in the Omega DLC. And now they're not playing to any of the strengths they had there. So it's a mystery if this will be good now.

[UpUpAway]

Where's the fun in that?

If all we can do is go where we're told and do as we're asked, why are we bothering? What does the player bring to the table then?

Roleplaying is collaborative. What you describe is not.

 

Are you advocating then that people should have to watch a youtube walkthrough before they can effectively navigate their way through the game?  I think that being able to  play through ME effectively and efficiently without the benefit of watching some sort of walkthrough was a big plus for it... one that helped the completion rate.  A lot of people tend to quit games when they start to feel that they aren't making any real progress in them or if they have to continually consult with a Wiki, guide book or Youtube walkthrough just to get them back onto a progressive tract within the game.

[straykat]

I should add... I sound overly harsh to bioware specifically, but I'm sick of all of those type of games. They're everywhere. The action-adventure-in-open-world thing.

 

I think the last one I really liked was this Spidey game that came out when Toby McGuire was still playing the part. It had a cool mechanic, so that was it's saving grace. Others don't have enough of that as a selling point. could be Far Cry Primal or DAI or Watchdogs, and it's just not enough of actually interesting gameplay to keep me interested. Metal Gear did something slightly different, so I'm not sure it counts. 

[CronoDragoon]

Except Bethesda has worked on this for 20 years.

 

This isn't like Naughty Dog trying to make an open world game. BioWare made the Baldur's Gate games, so there's a history there. Darrah commented that they noticed each of their games had become smaller than the last, and they wanted to try and change that. It's clear that there was more content planned for DAI, a lot more, and it just didn't work out. Some of the issues that prevented that content are gone, like last-gen systems. But it still remains to be seen how BW plans on making exploration in MEA interesting to the player. Contrary to what newbies to RPGs claim, it doesn't have to be meeting a bunch of NPCs who have small problems or vignettes to tell. There's going to be some of that, but it's also going to be a space exploration game. Expecting to meet a bunch of people out in deserted planets is dumb. So the question is, to what extent can BW make those types of planets interesting. The response is going to come down to whether the player is actually interested in feeling what space exploration would be like. If they don't care and just want to meet space ****** witches everywhere, I predict they'll have issues. If they care about role-playing the Pathfinder, though, I think they'll find deserted planets more interesting.

 

What they can do is, regardless of dialogue content, make each planet feel unique. You can't do that with fetch quests, but you can do that with interesting environments and inviting the player to interact with those environments meaningfully. An example I've used in the past is the wave planet in Interstellar. There's not a single person on that planet besides the main cast but they created a situation that was interesting to the viewer and made the planet feel meaningful. The environment was the conflict and story, if you will.