29 réponses à ce sujet

[JonnyGR04]

While I realized the toolset isn't out yet, I'm curious of BioWare has plans to release a multiplayer client like they did for NWN1 + 2. One of the BEST features was having tiny MORPGS's, with good player bases and custom content. I really hope There are plans to add something like this in.

[Fester Pot]

There will be no multiplayer functionality for Dragon Age. They'll be plenty of great single player adventures you can download once the community gets going.

[Zooches]

This is pretty rediculous.   I can understand the designers not having time to push out multiplayer-supported campaigns but at least give the community the power to do it for them.  Bioware states they completely understand the community's want to include a robust toolset, but they decide to leave out one of the most important features the toolset could possibly have.

Everything else that the DA toolset is "featuring" can be found in nearly every other half-decent editor aside from the conversation trees.  Even then, developing dialogue isn't that hard to do if you understand how the editors work.  It's the same situation for all the other mainstream editors as well - everything in the DA toolset is simply old news.  One of the key features that set this toolset apart was to be able to quickly and easily generate content for people to play together in epic-style 3rd-person battles that involved magic, dwarves and elves instead of guns, marines and terrorists.

I guess I'll go back to finishing my old checklist:

1.  Program a fixed 3rd-person camera view into an FPS toolset.
2.  Create thousands of fantasy assets from textures and models to animations and sounds.
3.  Create rulesets that balance gameplay across the typical fantasy playstyles.
4.  Finish the story.

Oh...forgot to add one thing to my list...

5.  Return DA:O.

Modifié par Zooches, 05 novembre 2009 - 08:59 .

[Packetdancer]

Ridiculous? As a former game developer, trying to get a game well-balanced for both single-player /and/ multiplayer is very difficult. With a few exceptions, one generally suffers.



I'd rather they keep Dragon Age itself a really tightly-focused single player experience, and then release a separate multiplayer toolset built on the engine. You could make the multiplayer toolset available more cheaply than Dragon Age, even, so that people who didn't want to play Dragon Age but wanted to play in tiny little online RPGs run by their friends would be able to do so less expensively.

[Zooches]

As a current game developer of several AAA titles, I have...well...refined my post.

I understand the amount of work that goes into setting up multiplayer support for games like DA:O and it's not simply a switch that they flip to 'MP'.  I'm past that.  I'm trying to say that even though it would take a significant amount of man-hours to get the toolset to become MP-capable and still user-friendly, it would have been more than worth it. 

I'm not sure how it will affect sales of the product other than greatly shortening it's lifespan, but I'm betting the loss in sales will be minimal since EA has chosen to advertise cleverly and play into the "let them assume it has all the same features as Aurora except better" tactic.

With the delay in toolset rants all over the place, I just want to be clear that I (and most other reasonable people) understand that these things happen.  If there's a bug then we'd rather have it fixed before we get an unstable release and have to patch or uninstall/reinstall a week after downloading version 1.0.  It just boggles my mind that Bioware chose to disinclude MP support within the toolset.

Modifié par Zooches, 05 novembre 2009 - 09:21 .

[FalloutBoy]

Zooches wrote...

Bioware states they completely understand the community's want to include a robust toolset, but they decide to leave out one of the most important features the toolset could possibly have.

Scaling?

[indio]

FalloutBoy wrote...

Zooches wrote...

Bioware states they completely understand the community's want to include a robust toolset, but they decide to leave out one of the most important features the toolset could possibly have.

Scaling?

lol

It's hard to get over the lack of mp, but if I did it, anyone can. I've been getting over it for all of this year. If there's sufficient sales of DA in its current form then maybe BW will decide to allocate assets and resources to developing MP. The one thing no one will ever convince me of is that BW, in its planning for DA (all 5 years of it), didn't leave a door open to developing MP. So it's possible, and possibly a money spinner if they can sell MP with an expansion for another $50.

I'd buy it.

[CJohnJones]

Also, I would like a car that is also a boat. It could be done and Toyata should either make cars with floatable hulls or sell kits that easily convert them.



Or, you know, if you want a boat, buy a boat.

[Beerfish]

You never know about these things. Not knowing the inner workings of the game one doesn't know if some enterprising community member might pull a rabbit out of hat and find a way to make it so. There were certainly enough of those 'They did what?!' moments in the history of the NWN game and toolset.

[Adinos]

I find it more likely that BioWare will make a second product in the franchise, with more emphasis on combat, less on storytelling but support for co-op play - aimed at the market segment that enjoys that kind of stuff. I would probably not bother with it - never even tried the MP in NWN, but the market *might* be big enough for a product like this.

[Wannabeuk]

Hell, they made oblivion MP (its not great, but its workable) so im sure it "could" be done with this.

[Sheylan]

Wannabeuk wrote...

Hell, they made oblivion MP (its not great, but its workable) so im sure it "could" be done with this.

I was just thinking about that yesterday...

[Zooches]

I guess we'll see if this 'source code' is actually source code indeed. If it is, we might have some competent programmers out there that can set it up to handle MP.

[allothernamesweretaken]

Zooches wrote...

5.  Return DA:O.

Bye.

[M-zero]

I, for one, am glad they didn't waste development time on a multiplayer aspect. It's pretty idiotic that making a single player game is now considered "dropping the ball".

[M-zero]

This would be a terrible multiplayer game.

[JonnyGR04]

I know a lot of us can reminisce back to the NWN days, where server player bases were small (at most, 70-80), the content was beautifully custom, and the DM run missions beyond epic. When I hear 'toolset' I immediately called one of my good friends and builders from the NWN days and signaled him to this game. When he found out there was no MP client, he was unsure how much he wanted to dive in.



Don't get me wrong. This game in itself is fantastic, and was a totally worthy purchase (hats off to bioware), but a toolset without a client is like playing LEGO's by yourself.

[dukhaine]

No one said that an outside community developer could not make a MP client for DA. THey only said that Bioware would not make it. Stop being negative and look for a positive. NwN community developers were making all kinds of things that were not in the original game, I am sure it is quite possible.

[LordSaul]

So far I'm massively ienjoying the single player - I love that Bioware still understand that some people love their single players, but I *also* love the multiplayer stuff. NWN brought something very unique - I still go on thain occasionally. I also love putting custom modules together to play with a group of friends. I had really hoped that DA would take that experience to the next level, while fixing a few essentials, such as server controlled rules, server controlled chargen, and more accessible spell modelling. Moving around in DA is a dream compared to NWN, I just wish that the MP support had been built in. The community would have balanced the classes as they saw fit on their servers....



Maybe I'll start a signature list and try and drum up a patch

[AmstradHero]

Zooches wrote...

As a current game developer of several AAA titles, I have...well...refined my post.

So as a current game developer of several AAA titles you see no market for Single Player games?

You say you know how much effort is required to make a game multiplayer, yet still say it should be included for a game that was designed purely for single player.  I must confess I find that a little strange.  Maybe I've missed it, but there doesn't seem to have been any where near as many calls for "Give me Mass Effect multiplayer!" as for Dragon Age.

If Dragon Age was made with MP support, there would be a dilution of the modding community between single player and multiplayer. Given the complexity of making good modules within Dragon Age, splitting the community is not something that BioWare wanted - from the beginning, they've said they want to make people collaborate in order to produce content.

Say Dragon Age did support multiplayer. Then players would demand that the single player campaign support co-operative play. Can you imagine how much work would be involved in modifying the game content to allow that? Granted, it would be possible to shoe-horn an extra warden or two into the plot with semi-relative ease, albeit at the expense of diluting dramatic tension somewhat.  But ultimately, you could play co-operatively with a maximum of 3 friends, and the cost in terms of hours of development, extra VO (look, suddenly there's MORE than two Grey Wardens in Ferelden) and additional QA would be huge. From simple cost/benefit analysis - it's not worth it.

From a game standpoint, I don't see what Dragon Age would get out of becoming multiplayer. Sure, people could emulate NWN1/2 Persistent Worlds, or play in arena mods, but there's already plenty of competition in that market, and I don't need Dragon Age to become another not-quite-MMORPG. Sure, there might be a few more sales, but balancing developer effort versus revenue, I don't see it paying off. Not to mention the numerous patches that would be required because of people complaining: "class is underpower/overpowered! Nerf/Buff it now!"

You also said that everything in Dragon Age's toolset can be found in other toolsets around. Maybe I'm missing something, but the only other significant toolsets I can think of are RPG's are Aurora, TES, or GECK (Which is basically modified TES).  Having used all of those, I can safely say I'd much prefer to use the Dragon Age toolset, even though I'm still coming to grips with it.

Why? Because it's the most powerful and most capable for producing strong, story-driven, dramatic adventures.  Dragon Age is BioWare saying "We wanted to produce en epic single player experience."

That is what Dragon Age is about, which is why it doesn't need multiplayer capability.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 29 décembre 2009 - 09:59 .

[LordSaul]

AmstradHero wrote...


From a game standpoint, I don't see what Dragon Age would get out of becoming multiplayer. Sure, people could emulate NWN1/2 Persistent Worlds, or play in arena mods, but there's already plenty of competition in that market...

Um...where? I no no other game like NWN (1/2) for allowing in game DMing of a module or PW that you created yourself. Really, I doubt that the cry is for "make the main campaign multiplayer". The cry is "*allow* us to create multiplayer modules. What is required is network and client/server code, possibly the ability to have 6 characters in a group. That is it - everything else can be created by the incredibly genius minds out there making content. I remember in NWN scripting that the only difference between a single player quest and multi player quest is how you decided to dish out XP. 

Personally - I'd be just as happy if they popped back to NWN, amended the movement interface (stuck on a pixel, no auto run, ugh), added easy persistence code , made editing spells/feats easier and server side character creation. Or dish out the NWN source code )

[ladydesire]

LordSaul wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...


From a game standpoint, I don't see what Dragon Age would get out of becoming multiplayer. Sure, people could emulate NWN1/2 Persistent Worlds, or play in arena mods, but there's already plenty of competition in that market...

Um...where? I no no other game like NWN (1/2) for allowing in game DMing of a module or PW that you created yourself. Really, I doubt that the cry is for "make the main campaign multiplayer". The cry is "*allow* us to create multiplayer modules. What is required is network and client/server code, possibly the ability to have 6 characters in a group. That is it - everything else can be created by the incredibly genius minds out there making content. I remember in NWN scripting that the only difference between a single player quest and multi player quest is how you decided to dish out XP.

It needs a whole lot more than just client/server code; it needs the in game GUI redesigned for MP, starting with the inventory system, and moving on from there to the stores, conversations (no more NWN style dialogs if I remeber correctly) and numerous other features that are designed specifically for a single player game experience. The designed it this way since they feel that there isn't enough of a market for MP, especially since they would likely want to support this on the consoles, but can't because of licensing restrictions (I know that Microsoft does not allow unsupported content on the XBox 360, period, end of conversation).

[AmstradHero]

LordSaul wrote...

I no no other game like NWN (1/2) for allowing in game DMing of a module or PW that you created yourself. Really, I doubt that the cry is for "make the main campaign multiplayer". The cry is "*allow* us to create multiplayer modules.

Sorry, you're right there. The point I was making is that there are already plenty of games in the multiplayer online fantasy market. No, you can't mod WoW et al, but online multiplayer fantasy RPGs are a crowded market, and I seriously doubt Dragon Age would be able to make a dent in that market via user made content.

LordSaul wrote...
What is required is network and client/server code, possibly the
ability to have 6 characters in a group. That is it - everything else
can be created by the incredibly genius minds out there making content.

I remember in NWN scripting that the only difference between a single player quest and multi player quest is how you decided to dish out XP.

"That is it"? That would require MONTHS of work.

And dealing with differences in single player and multiplayer is a heck of a lot more complicated than you make out.  If you ever tried playing through the NWN1/2 OC or expansions with a friend or two, you would have found numerous issues with multiplayer that didn't appear in single player.  And this is from professional developers...

I understand some people want the ability to play DA MP. But BioWare said it's not going to happen. And I'm perfectly happy with that.

Not every game has to be multiplayer. I *like* that DA isn't. If I want MP, I'll play something else. If I want a fantastic, dramatic and cinematic story role playing, I'll play DA.

[LordSaul]

AmstradHero wrote...

LordSaul wrote...
What is required is network and client/server code, possibly the
ability to have 6 characters in a group. That is it - everything else
can be created by the incredibly genius minds out there making content.

I remember in NWN scripting that the only difference between a single player quest and multi player quest is how you decided to dish out XP.

"That is it"? That would require MONTHS of work.

And dealing with differences in single player and multiplayer is a heck of a lot more complicated than you make out.  If you ever tried playing through the NWN1/2 OC or expansions with a friend or two, you would have found numerous issues with multiplayer that didn't appear in single player.  And this is from professional developers...

I am a professional developer, just not in gaming. When I say simple, it's a relative term to the effort already expended in developing the architecture of the product. And again, I'm not so concerned whether individual pieces of content were put together correctly for mulitple audiences (main campaigns included - they were single player campaigns after all). It would be insane to try and tackle the WoW/EQ2/Aion market with this kind of product - those games are fully of power levelling l33t speaking 12yr olds (I should know - I play a lot of EQ2). The market that NWN captured was unique - Pen and Paper roleplaying groups and smaller communities who had a story to tell and share. What bioware have provided in DA for people to tell stories on the single player level looks *awesome*, but the market for DM+6friends or persistent world with active creative DMs is completely lacking (other than NWN, which is aging).

I could write the majority of the toolset /engine myself, but lack the experience in the "beautiful" bits, like sound, modelling and graphics. Maybe I should.....since the market is gaping