90 réponses à ce sujet

[TreDawn]

David Gaider wrote...

... why can't I be a human commoner or an apostate? ...

I agree completely. Better a fully developed companion and/or option rather than a bunch of undeveloped companions/options. The edited version of your quote is a perfect example. The community is developing new origins, companions and other such things. DLAN_immortality is working on Alistair and Ser Gilmore. Other such projects are going on. Sten is probably the most undeveloped companion and I wouldn't be surprised to see him romancable with extended dialogue within a year. From what I can tell it seems many simply doesn't have patience. The aforementioned Human commoner has a group with 11 members here social.bioware.com/group/941/ 
Who knows what will actually come to fruition but the interest is certainly there.
Well, my two cents worth.

[_Aine_]

David Gaider wrote...

I sometimes think it would be more worthwhile to simply craft enough companions to fill out the party and leave it at that -- you could create *much* more content to fill out those characters with quests and integrate them more closely into the plot. Trying to offer more options just for the sake of options becomes tricky -- sometimes it really seems that the more options you provide the more some players see what's not there rather than what is. Give them one opening to the game and they accept it's the only one. Give them six and they wonder "why not seven? why not ten? why can't I be a human commoner or an apostate? If you give me choices I want all of them!"

Not to mention that resources become spread more thinly until the option you're providing is more a choice of faces and stats rather than fleshed-out characters... but maybe that's what some people want, I don't know. Depending on the game, it might be fine.

But I only sometimes think this.

I think its rather that some people always want moar.  I am the first to pine for character flirtations that weren't, because to me in my strange little way, I find it fun.   BUT, and its a big but, if I had the choice I would choose quality over quantity ANY DAY, easily, hands down, no question asked!  That is already the very quality that makes us all yell "More!"  Its because we got a taste of the full-bodied characters, and are left wanting more. But sometimes its best to leave well enough alone and work more indepth with what you have.  Frankly, I think MANY people would have been happy with one or two more *new* people, and more quests/cutscenes/insight for and into the people they already have come to know.  

Sure, new is good, but new/expanded experiences with people you already know is good too.   In fact, at times, it could be better because it makes the experience a deeper one - rather than an army of people you use only because of what skills they have.  

[TheeRhino2010]

i like the personal side of the game where you grow a relation but part of the game is to pick who you want to grow close to. Having a bare 3 companions doesnt allow you too customise your party to your style because of lack of variation.

[Gorwath-F]

I think that too many companions won't let you get a real connection to them. I don't have to choose between 10 NPCs aslong as 5 have a really awsome background

[RoudyRogue]

David Gaider wrote...

I sometimes think it would be more worthwhile to simply craft enough companions to fill out the party and leave it at that -- you could create *much* more content to fill out those characters with quests and integrate them more closely into the plot. Trying to offer more options just for the sake of options becomes tricky -- sometimes it really seems that the more options you provide the more some players see what's not there rather than what is. Give them one opening to the game and they accept it's the only one. Give them six and they wonder "why not seven? why not ten? why can't I be a human commoner or an apostate? If you give me choices I want all of them!"

Not to mention that resources become spread more thinly until the option you're providing is more a choice of faces and stats rather than fleshed-out characters... but maybe that's what some people want, I don't know. Depending on the game, it might be fine.

But I only sometimes think this.

<--- guilty of wanting the human commoner. I feel like to be a human I have to be an ass or a mage and I already did an elven mage.

[Sandtigress]

I'm actually looking forward to the smaller group of companions. While I love each and every companion in DA:O (yes, even Sten and Morrigan) in every playthrough several get ignored because its just not possible to take everyone with you everywhere, especially if you usually bring Alistair along for RP reasons, and you use Wynne for healing.



A smaller group ought to lead to more interaction with the entire group, and that sounds really good to me.

[tmelange]

General Balls wrote...

I felt that Mass Effect 2 had far too many companions for it's length. And you could see the results of that (less character interaction, very limited interaction between team members, romances not as fleshed out as I believe they could have been). It was a very disappointing aspect to an otherwise great game.

If Bioware can concentrate their focus on a few, and make them awesome, I'm more than happy to sacrifice the extra four or so that might have hamstringed those efforts.

I think the benefit of having a larger group of companions is that it does allow the players to find the group that best suits hir personality, even though depth is sacrificed, in most cases. For instance, in ME2, if my choices were limited to Jacob, Miranda, Tali, Jack and Grunt, I would probably end the game with an undefined feeling of dissatisfaction, because my ideal group wouldn't include Jacob, Miranda or Grunt, and my engagement with the game would be much more transitory because there wasn't that core of characters that I loved. Hence, from  a marketing/business perspective, more characters equals the potential for an increased number of highly engaged fans. However, I do think ME2 suffers from a lack of depth in party interaction that is likely a result of having so many party members in play and not enough time to work on both game mechanics and squad interaction equally.

DAO, on the other hand, had a larger group of support characters and managed to do them all justice. Hence, it's somewhat more difficult to argue that they couldn't continue in this vein, except to the extent that Awakenings is an expansion, and the scope of the game would have to be in some ways limited just for practicality's sake. I think DAO's replayability was off the charts great specifically because there was so much to experience with different party configurations that could not be achieved in one playthrough. From a business perspective in keeping the game active on a customer's playlist for as long as possible, that's a great thing.

Basically, I prefer more characters since a bigger group is more likely to ensure that I can find a squad that suits my tastes -- but only if quantity doesn't cause quality to suffer to too great an extent. I think DAO proves that BW has the capability to do large party depth extrememly well if it's a priority, so I'll likely continue to expect this level of excellence from them as a core feature of the DAO franchise, within the limitations of the add-on project, of course.

Modifié par tmelange, 06 février 2010 - 12:18 .

[Ferret A Baudoin]

We definitely wanted to focus on fewer companions with more interjection, banter, and involvement in the plots (and more of that elusive ingredient - TLC) than adding more to add more.

[TheMadCat]

Good. Less is always more.

[tmelange]

Sandtigress wrote...

I'm actually looking forward to the smaller group of companions. While I love each and every companion in DA:O (yes, even Sten and Morrigan) in every playthrough several get ignored because its just not possible to take everyone with you everywhere, especially if you usually bring Alistair along for RP reasons, and you use Wynne for healing.

A smaller group ought to lead to more interaction with the entire group, and that sounds really good to me.

Remember that a smaller overall group will likely equal a smaller number of potential LIs. With a group of 10 we had 3. With a group of 5, we'd likely have one. Personally, I prefer more options, and don't want to give the developers a pass in creating more quality in line with the cost of the game. I think BW was able to do a group of 10 with wonderful depth. I don't think there is any additional depth to be achieved by decreasing that number. There is simply cost savings to be achieved on their end. lol I think it's a different argument to say that the reason to want a smaller party is because it was too hard to manage all of them effectively on one playthrough. From, BW's perspective, I'd think that was the goal.

[Nobody Important]

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

We definitely wanted to focus on fewer companions with more interjection, banter, and involvement in the plots (and more of that elusive ingredient - TLC) than adding more to add more.

Excellent because Mass Effect 2's party sucked since there was very little character interaction.

[Wishpig]

TheMadCat wrote...

Good. Less is always more.

Really I always thought less is less. Silly me.

[izmirtheastarach]

Nobody Important wrote...

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

We definitely wanted to focus on fewer companions with more interjection, banter, and involvement in the plots (and more of that elusive ingredient - TLC) than adding more to add more.

Excellent because Mass Effect 2's party sucked since there was very little character interaction.

Two diffent games, two different approaches. Nothing about ME2 sucked, but I understand some people might prefer one philosophy over the other.

[Omar Little]

Fewer companions with more depth is preferable imho. As gamers we've got to accept that there are a finite amount of resources for game developers despite an infinite amount of desires from game players.

[syren1987]

They only have so much time and resources to spend. For each they add less gets used on the others. Id rather have six deep characters than twelve shallow characters.

Nobody Important wrote...

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

We definitely wanted to focus on fewer companions with more interjection, banter, and involvement in the plots (and more of that elusive ingredient - TLC) than adding more to add more.

Excellent because Mass Effect 2's party sucked since there was very little character interaction.

I never thought i'd miss the elevators
The loyalty mission added depth but their was little party member banter and each character seemed to have less overall dialogue than the ones from the first game, as they all seemed a bit more chatty on the normandy in the first game.

Modifié par syren1987, 06 février 2010 - 03:25 .

[Merci357]

David Gaider wrote...

I sometimes think it would be more worthwhile to simply craft enough companions to fill out the party and leave it at that -- you could create *much* more content to fill out those characters with quests and integrate them more closely into the plot. Trying to offer more options just for the sake of options becomes tricky -- sometimes it really seems that the more options you provide the more some players see what's not there rather than what is. Give them one opening to the game and they accept it's the only one. Give them six and they wonder "why not seven? why not ten? why can't I be a human commoner or an apostate? If you give me choices I want all of them!"

Not to mention that resources become spread more thinly until the option you're providing is more a choice of faces and stats rather than fleshed-out characters... but maybe that's what some people want, I don't know. Depending on the game, it might be fine.

But I only sometimes think this.

So basicaly, less is often more?  I'd agree, just because I didn't like some companions in Origins, never bothered to bring them along much. For me, more time devoted to my favorites would be amazing. But that's the catch, as always with options, my favorites are likely not yours... So were do we cut the line..

Out of curiosity, if you enable "upload gameplay feedback" ingame, don't you get solid data from us, what options went well, what companions were used more often, so you can evolve from there? Or is this gameplay feedback used for more basic information?

And, just to add something on topic, I'm fine with few, but fleshed out companions, as long as there are choices for the different archetypes (2 rogue, 2 mage, 2 warriors?), that's what I consider a nice treshhold. No one is forced to play a mage, if she happens to dislike the only mage npc companion option. Is that, maybe, why there are six in Awakening?

[David Gaider]

Merci357 wrote...
Out of curiosity, if you enable "upload gameplay feedback" ingame, don't you get solid data from us, what options went well, what companions were used more often, so you can evolve from there? Or is this gameplay feedback used for more basic information?

Yes, we have some pretty hard data regarding the companions used most often, where people spent their time, which classes and origins are played and so forth. It's pretty compelling stuff.

[General Balls]

tmelange wrote...

I think the benefit of having a larger group of companions is that it does allow the players to find the group that best suits hir personality, even though depth is sacrificed, in most cases. For instance, in ME2, if my choices were limited to Jacob, Miranda, Tali, Jack and Grunt, I would probably end the game with an undefined feeling of dissatisfaction, because my ideal group wouldn't include Jacob, Miranda or Grunt, and my engagement with the game would be much more transitory because there wasn't that core of characters that I loved.

This line of argument isn't very strong in the sense that, if they limited their cast of characters to five, those aren't necessarily the five they would have chosen (Archangel almost certainly would make it over one of them, as well as possibly Thane). Plus, with more time devoted to making those five characters deeper and more engaging, the personalities of them may have changed in a vey significant way. So a character who might not appeal to you now because of limited development might become a lot more interesting now that they've had the time to develop them properly.

That's not to say I don't get your point, and agree with it somewhat. Making a mainstream game means they have to have mainstream options, but I'd much prefer deeper characters to lots of characters, and while I'll take both when I can get them, the former is much preferable to the latter.

[highcastle]

General Balls wrote...

I felt that Mass Effect 2 had far too many companions for it's length. And you could see the results of that (less character interaction, very limited interaction between team members, romances not as fleshed out as I believe they could have been). It was a very disappointing aspect to an otherwise great game.

If Bioware can concentrate their focus on a few, and make them awesome, I'm more than happy to sacrifice the extra four or so that might have hamstringed those efforts.

QFT. In ME2, I never really got to know any of the NPCs the way I did in Dragon Age (or even the first Mass Effect). Dragon Age did well with 10 because, let's face it, you could spend 80 hours in that game and still not see everything. That leaves plenty of time for getting to know everyone (or mostly everyone, anyway). 5 companions (or 6 depending on how the returning one figures into things) should be plenty, and I'm super psyched to meet them.

[Dick Delaware]

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

We definitely wanted to focus on fewer companions with more interjection, banter, and involvement in the plots (and more of that elusive ingredient - TLC) than adding more to add more.

TLC is always good.

I'm glad that there's five characters instead of ten. It'll allow for better focus. I can't stand that Oblivion mentality of throwing everything in there but the kitchen sink in terms of content and NPC's, only to find out that there is no depth or life to the world around you. Cyrodiil has something like 1,000 NPC's wandering about, and I don't feel for a single one of them. Well, except maybe Lucien Lachance - that guy was scary as hell.

One of my favourite parts of DA:O was NPC's approving and disapproving of your actions, and the snarky comments that would ensue. It made you get a real sense that they were people with their own personal motivations, agendas, (and occasionaly prejudices) that were beyond your control. I don't like having a bunch of automatons following me around and just going along with anything that I do without question.

Modifié par Dick Delaware, 06 février 2010 - 03:59 .

[TheMadCat]

Wishpig wrote...

TheMadCat wrote...

Good. Less is always more.

Really I always thought less is less. Silly me.

Agreed, silly you.

[Deviija]

David Gaider wrote...
Yes, we have some pretty hard data regarding the companions used most often, where people spent their time, which classes and origins are played and so forth. It's pretty compelling stuff.

This is very interesting.   Will it ever be published, if only in a cliff note 'x was used most times' 'x was romanced most' etc?  I'd love to see the data. 

[Sandtigress]

tmelange wrote...

Sandtigress wrote...

I'm actually looking forward to the smaller group of companions. While I love each and every companion in DA:O (yes, even Sten and Morrigan) in every playthrough several get ignored because its just not possible to take everyone with you everywhere, especially if you usually bring Alistair along for RP reasons, and you use Wynne for healing.

A smaller group ought to lead to more interaction with the entire group, and that sounds really good to me.

Remember that a smaller overall group will likely equal a smaller number of potential LIs. With a group of 10 we had 3. With a group of 5, we'd likely have one. Personally, I prefer more options, and don't want to give the developers a pass in creating more quality in line with the cost of the game. I think BW was able to do a group of 10 with wonderful depth. I don't think there is any additional depth to be achieved by decreasing that number. There is simply cost savings to be achieved on their end. lol I think it's a different argument to say that the reason to want a smaller party is because it was too hard to manage all of them effectively on one playthrough. From, BW's perspective, I'd think that was the goal.

Who else was in the group of 10 though?  Wynne - too old.  Dog - um, no.  Shale - kind of anatomically impossible  Sten - He tells you what the quinari act is like.  That doesn't sound like a pleasurable romance.  Oghren - an arguable romance, except for the quest that you get him through.

There's no reason why you wouldn't be able to romance the majority of a party of 5, and that's even saying that that is vitally important to an expansion.  Most of my characters are going to be faithful to the romance they've already established - of the ones I have or have planned, I see two, maybe three at this point who would be open to a new romance.

So for me, a romanceable character is not as vital as a well-fleshed out party, and I think that's just as likely with a party of six as it is with ten.

[hexaligned]

The amount of story companions seemed fine to me. Having a tool that lets you create a full party would really help replay value though. Hell have it unlock only after beating the game, if you don't want people missing out on the story the first time through...I just want the option.

That way you don't have to worry about writing in "an apostate mage, or human commoner"  The players imagination is the limit of what kind of game expierince they get.   No offence to the writers but I don't find the campions compelling enough to limit game play variety all that much.  They are often entertaining, but once you have exhausted the scripted dialogue then it's just sort of "shrugs".  I'd much rather have the option to keep the actual gameplay fresh and new ... in replays at least.

Modifié par relhart, 06 février 2010 - 04:54 .

[tmelange]

General Balls wrote...

tmelange wrote...

I think the benefit of having a larger group of companions is that it does allow the players to find the group that best suits hir personality, even though depth is sacrificed, in most cases. For instance, in ME2, if my choices were limited to Jacob, Miranda, Tali, Jack and Grunt, I would probably end the game with an undefined feeling of dissatisfaction, because my ideal group wouldn't include Jacob, Miranda or Grunt, and my engagement with the game would be much more transitory because there wasn't that core of characters that I loved.

This line of argument isn't very strong in the sense that, if they limited their cast of characters to five, those aren't necessarily the five they would have chosen (Archangel almost certainly would make it over one of them, as well as possibly Thane). Plus, with more time devoted to making those five characters deeper and more engaging, the personalities of them may have changed in a vey significant way. So a character who might not appeal to you now because of limited development might become a lot more interesting now that they've had the time to develop them properly.

That's not to say I don't get your point, and agree with it somewhat. Making a mainstream game means they have to have mainstream options, but I'd much prefer deeper characters to lots of characters, and while I'll take both when I can get them, the former is much preferable to the latter.

I picked those five as an example; you could pick any five and make the same point. If the party includes only 5, rather than 10, there is a lesser probablity that players will find the type of favorite configuration that encourages their continued engagement. This was already demonstrated in ME1. Smaller group, but there was the same limited interaction -- 5 or 6 convos, some elevator banter. Out of the six ME1 charcaters, I only really liked 1. In ME2, at least I can find 3 charcaters that I really like, precisely because there is a bigger pool.

Of course, I would prefer greater selection *and* deeper interaction, and if I could *only* have one of the two, I'd prefer deeper interaction with a smaller group. However, I see no reason to limit a party to 5 on the reasoning that it's the only way to get deep interaction when BW has already proven that they can do deep interaction with a party of 10. Why go back to 5 instead of encouraging BW to continue expanding our choices?