261 ответов в этой теме

[KaiserShep]

Eh, doesn't the background selection amount to little more than a boost in either renegade or paragon? There's the temp NPC's you meet that relate to each in ME1, but little beyond that. I do like that I can base my Shep's demeanor and decisions on them though. That's not really different from DAI though.

[straykat]

Eh, doesn't the background selection amount to little more than a boost in either renegade or paragon? There's the temp NPC's you meet that relate to each in ME1, but little beyond that. I do like that I can base my Shep's demeanor and decisions on them though.

 

Yeah, they give a little point boost.

 

But I'm just talking about your last sentence. There's enough to work with there, without being too restrictive.

 

DAO origins were more fleshed out, but you had good choices in those origins.. so it's better than DAI too.

[Miserybot]

I dunno.

 

We're pretty annoying.

[UpUpAway95]

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Actually, the fans' reaction is based on the over the top marketing description hype of a game that utterly fails to deliver.  Mike Laidlaw's "your choice matters", for example, was delivered by the game as a choice between a War Table mission of getting 2 coins or 3 Elfroots (among others). Not something you expected, I'm sure.

 

I'd rather the studio said nothing, to prevent me from firing up my imagined but false expectations. Unfortunately, the art of marketing is to do just that.

 

Actually, I'm referring to how fans here complain almost daily that Bioware is not releasing information about ME:A... and attributing some of Bioware's reluctance to be more open about ME:A's ongoing development to anticipating that the "fans" here will just negatively pounce on every little detail that they do release.  They do want to be able to create the game they want to and not feel so pressured to "kowtow" to the demands of "fans" made here... so they are creating that "creative space" for their employees by not providing enough information to us that would enable "fans" to sink their fangs into trashing the game before those creative details are set... so that their employees aren't so tempted to change everything to pacify those overly vocal fans.  They are probably also being directed to stay off BSN for the same reasons... they need some "freedom" from us to be able create the game they themselves want to create.

 

I'm sure "marketing" will fire up when the game is much closer to release.

 

Honestly, if the all video game forums are very much like this one... I wouldn't be surprised to see an industry trend towards just shutting them down completely.

[Paul E Dangerously]

I agree that "they worked hard on it" on it never should be an excuse not to critique them. At least such an argument would never stop me.

 

Some people think, however, that because the ending was horrible, they have the right to insult these developers as if they were the greatest scum in the MW. For such people nothing goes too far, because treating them like crap is what they deserve. They promote that these developers are absolutely untrustworthy and incapable of creating any of the latest games, except those they like, despite the fact that these "fans" frequent the forums nearly daily.

 

What are your thoughts about that?

 

See, being a fan doesn't always mean "I agree with them". In fact, it especially doesn't mean that. The term "fairweather fan" has been a thing for longer than most of us have been alive. It's like that one guy that's a fan of a sports team that hasn't been good in decades, but they're still fans.

 

As far as civility goes, it's just not going to happen. It doesn't in real life. It doesn't online. Is that a bad thing? Probably. But life doesn't handle like the hugbox that Tumblr and the like try to enforce. If you pay $60 for something, and you've spent God knows how many hours on the previous games, and you have an "ending" that's pretty much "wait for the DLC!" you're probably going to be a tiny bit livid.

 

I wouldn't know, though. I didn't buy ME3 at launch, and only played it after the EC had released. I found those endings lacking, though not horrible. They just weren't good. If you really want to handle an ending in an RPG, take a cue from the first two Fallout games, or even from Bioware's own DAO. 

 

I like a lot of what ME3 did, but I do think the writing was pretty questionable. DA2 may have received a lobotomy compared to Origins, but I like a lot of what that tried to do, as well. Parts of Act 2 and the Legacy DLC are about as good as Dragon Age gets. I even like part of what DAI tried to do, even if that was dumbed-down compared to an already dumbed-down DA2.

 

I did, however, have the misfortune to buy the 360 version of DAI, and Bioware flat out lied about that in everything leading up to launch. Most of us in the long (long, long, long, long) support thread for the last-gen versions were pretty damned civil, especially in the face of the game we received. What did we get? Basically nothing. Bio reps posted a few times, but 90% of them boiled down to "We're looking into it" form letters, and nothing even remotely addressing concerns.

 

Trust is a two-way street, and there's not much of that coming from the other way lately.

[Iakus]

 

If you pay $60 for something, and you've spent God knows how many hours on the previous games, and you have an "ending" that's pretty much "wait for the DLC!" you're probably going to be a tiny bit livid.

 

In fact, if you bought the entire trilogy, plus DLC, plus any extras like the books, comics, etc, you've likely spent several hundred dollars.

 

 

 

Trust is a two-way street, and there's not much of that coming from the other way lately.

This

[Tantum Dic Verbo]

You're misunderstanding me... I don't think they intentionally pander to the most annoying side of their fanbase either. 

I guess we'll disagree here.  It seems to me that a lot of priorities and directions have changed over the course of the series in keeping with the demands of BSN.  I think there were points at which the BSN talk was given too much weight and design decisions were made accordingly.  Mind you, I assume the root motivation was increasing the appeal of the game.  The problem comes about when a specific segment of the fanbase manages to take over the conversation.  There has been a strange sense of propriety exhibited in here for years, what with "True RPG fans", the different in-game romance interests, etc., etc.

 

I don't play a lot of games.  Do other games in the genre (say, The Witcher and the like) seem quite so beholden to demands from the internet fanbase?  If a developer produced an otherwise good game but held to its own vision for story and character and didn't let the fans dictate who or what the protagonist mates with, or whether it does enough to subvert the dominant gender paradigm, or any of the usual suspects here, could it still sell?

[Kabraxal]

There's more roleplaying in Hawke or Shepard imo. DAI's races are pigoenholed into very specific career paths. The only thing unflexible about Hawke is family.. but the character itself doesn't have to worry about many specifics. 

 

Shepard better than Hawke. There's a lot of difference in being an Earthborn/Warhero and an Colonist/Ruthless. Or whatever. And even then, it's so openended that someone's Earthborn/Warhero is much different than another player's.

 

Disagree.  Shepard can have a somewhat varied past and there is personality roleplaying, but unlike in Origins or Inquisition, the character is much more set.  Shepard joined the Alliance regardless of Origin.  Shepard was a good enough soldier to have made Commander.  Shepard was clearly viewed as an exemplary soldier, seeing as he or she is up for Spectre.  The role play from their origin up to the Alliance can only have so much freedom since the characters have to fit into a specific character type up until the player is given control.  The equivalent in DA would be each character always joining the Templar order and always being so good at their job that the Divine is thinking of placing that character as the Right Hand. 

 

DA2 gives a bit more freedom than that, but there is only so much wiggle room in transplants from Kirkwall to Lothering and then back to Kirkwall and Hawke is always human.  Once the game progresses, the ability to personality roleplay opens up nicely, but the one origin/one race set up severely limits roleplaying in comparison to Origins and Inquisition. 

 

In Inquisition, most of the characters have no set job or talent.  They don't get to be Inquisitor because they are so amazing in their past life.. but because they stumbled into the mark and tried to make the best of an awful situation.  Every character isn't a member of the same organization regardless of their past or race.  And each character can have a widely different perspective of society simply from being a different race.  In Mass Effect and DA2, I am playing the good soldier that is up for selection in the best of the best of special forces.  That is true across all characters.  In DA2, I am the transplanted human of a once rich house with a brother, sister, and mother that has scraped by in Lothering... more open than Shepard's origin when you get down to it.   That is true in every single character.  I cannot say that about every character in Origins or Inquisition. There are multiple foundations for a character I can choose and even then, those foundations are vague enough to let me even play around with my origin. 

 

So when Bioware chose to incorporate multiple races into Inquisition, they opened a massive amount of roleplaying options that would not have existed otherwise.  That is value to a player like me. 

 

And I'm not asking for Mass Effect to change into a more D&D style of roleplaying... would it be cool to eventually get a game where I can choose Krogan/Drell/Turian/Asari as a playable race?  Yes, but I'm actually fine with Mass Effect as a more defined protagonist.  As much as I like DA2, a lot of its problems stemmed from tacking away from what Origins was with a set race, much more linear story/world with no real resolution or revelation of how changes affected the world until Inquisition.  Inquisition was actually a course correction to get closer to what Origins was. 

[Scarlett]

Good question....

It's nice to have feedback when you create something. Good and bad feedback, you know, it's how you progress and make better games. Fans are important for that part of the process.

 

Now, when I see the way people say ugly stuff here, are all crazy and negative about absolutely everything.... I mean.... I think sometimes the devs must really feel depressed...

 

So, are they annoyed ? Maybe.... sometimes, the community is certainly a real disappointment for them ...

[UpUpAway95]

I guess we'll disagree here.  It seems to me that a lot of priorities and directions have changed over the course of the series in keeping with the demands of BSN.  I think there were points at which the BSN talk was given too much weight and design decisions were made accordingly.  Mind you, I assume the root motivation was increasing the appeal of the game.  The problem comes about when a specific segment of the fanbase manages to take over the conversation.  There has been a strange sense of propriety exhibited in here for years, what with "True RPG fans", the different in-game romance interests, etc., etc.

 

I don't play a lot of games.  Do other games in the genre (say, The Witcher and the like) seem quite so beholden to demands from the internet fanbase?  If a developer produced an otherwise good game but held to its own vision for story and character and didn't let the fans dictate who or what the protagonist mates with, or whether it does enough to subvert the dominant gender paradigm, or any of the usual suspects here, could it still sell?

 

In the PAST, they have reacted to the fanbase, perhaps over-reacted... and they have just been as heavily criticized for doing that as well as they have been for "not respecting" the decisions players made in the ME Trilogy.  However, we're talking about ME:A here; and from what they've been saying, I don't think they are going to "pander" to BSN this time round.  For example, they have told us outright that we will be a human protagonist (i.e. they are clearly not going to "pander" to the vocal group that wants to be able to play as an alien like they are being accused of having done with DA:I).  Mac Walters in a recent interview clearly stated that part of the reason for moving the game to Andromeda was because they did not want to be CONSTRAINED by what they had done previously with the Milky Way.  Yes, that statement is not denying that the move has something to do with the ME3 ending... but it does indicate a deeper feeling.  They want some freedom from us to create a new Mass Effect... they don't want to be constrained by our expectations.

 

They don't want to alienate fans... but I don't think they are going to be pushed around by them as readily either.  Some fans, of course, will still want to believe that their comments drive Bioware's every concern and haunts the nightly sleep of their management team... but I'm reasonably sure that's not the case.  In the end though, the few vocal types here on BSN aren't even a drop in the bucket of the real fanbase... which are those vast majority of players who buy the game but never spend even a minute on BSN.

[Degs29]

If we go by the statistics, the vast majority of people who play a Bioware game never even finish it.

 

From the stats I've seen, that's true of most games, especially RPGs. 

[Tantum Dic Verbo]

In the PAST, they have reacted to the fanbase, perhaps over-reacted... and they have just been as heavily criticized for doing that as well as they have been for "not respecting" the decisions players made in the ME Trilogy.  However, we're talking about ME:A here; and from what they've been saying, I don't think they are going to "pander" to BSN this time round.  For example, they have told us outright that we will be a human protagonist (i.e. they are clearly not going to "pander" to the vocal group that wants to be able to play as an alien like they are being accused of having done with DA:I).  Mac Walters in a recent interview clearly stated that part of the reason for moving the game to Andromeda was because they did not want to be CONSTRAINED by what they had done previously with the Milky Way.  Yes, that statement is not denying that the move has something to do with the ME3 ending... but it does indicate a deeper feeling.  They want some freedom from us to create a new Mass Effect... they don't want to be constrained by our expectations.

 

They don't want to alienate fans... but I don't think they are going to be pushed around by them as readily either.  Some fans, of course, will still want to believe that their comments drive Bioware's every concern and haunts the nightly sleep of their management team... but I'm reasonably sure that's not the case.  In the end though, the few vocal types here on BSN aren't even a drop in the bucket of the real fanbase... which are those vast majority of players who buy the game but never spend even a minute on BSN.

Well, I hope that's the case.  It's possible that what I've been seeing out of Bioware simply represents what Bioware is, in which case I will continue to buy few of their products, and only after those few have been reduced in price substantially.  I never would have believed that I would have spent more time on the MP part of a Bioware game than the story itself, but that's where the company has taken me.  After ME1, I didn't plan on getting ME2 until I found out about improvements to the gameplay.  As the gameplay improved, though, it seems that other things unraveled.

 

Anyway, I'd like to see Bioware makes games for people who want to play games, rather than people who want games as some sort of personal/social refuge.  I'm cautiously pessimistic at this point, though.  I expect to be nonplussed by ME:A and just sort of drift away from Bioware.  The last thing I bought from them was a clearance copy of ME3, anyway.  

[In Exile]

In fact, a substantial group of people never even play the games they do buy! That's insane to me.

[UpUpAway95]

In fact, a substantial group of people never even play the games they do buy! That's insane to me.

 

A lot of people also collect all sorts of things they never ever remove from the boxes.

[CronoDragoon]

Four, if you want evidence that some were annoyed, shoot the star kid in the Extended Cut and see what happens.  Was that a middle finger to fans?  Or simply poking fun at a disappointing situation?

 

Neither? I suppose their mistake was believing the contingent of fans that said they'd rather have Shepard die with their integrity intact than pick the choices. BioWare gave them that ending, but it seems they were actually just wallowing in despair and wanted a conventional victory ending, but didn't want to appear too illogical and said something else instead.

[straykat]

In fact, a substantial group of people never even play the games they do buy! That's insane to me.

 

I'm afraid to say I've got a few of these...

 

But I do plan on it.

[United Servo Academy Choir]

In fact, a substantial group of people never even play the games they do buy! That's insane to me.

 

Such is life in these days of the humble bundle.

[SKAR]

In fact, a substantial group of people never even play the games they do buy! That's insane to me.

That's how it is.

[Sartoz]

 Snip

 

I'm sure "marketing" will fire up when the game is much closer to release.

 

Honestly, if the all video game forums are very much like this one... I wouldn't be surprised to see an industry trend towards just shutting them down completely.

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Hm...doubt it.

 

It's a great way of keeping a tab on the fans' pulse.

[straykat]

I just have too many options for my own good. Ended up owning all platforms, but I haven't even touched my PS4.

[Geth Supremacy]

Bleeding hearts shouldn't get annoyed with one another.

 

I wouldn't be annoyed if I worked at Bioware, but I would be disturbed.  I don't mean the people that troll either.  A lot of the stuff here makes your skin crawl....although that is also the reason I still read here....its fascinating at the same time.

[Ruadh]

Bioware fans will moan.

 

Bioware will troll.

 

It is inevitable.

 

The cycle must continue.

[Tantum Dic Verbo]

Bleeding hearts shouldn't get annoyed with one another.

 

Ah, but it's inevitable.  Narcissists don't work and play well with other narcissists.

[Quarian Master Race]

Probably. I would be, and I think we've seen not so subtle signs of Biower going "wow, really?"


case in point

[straykat]

When does that line show up?