874 réponses à ce sujet

[Empiro]

It's new from the ME franchise's point of view. It's also too much of a risk to change too much all at once. Many people are quite happy with something familiar, but just done _well_. Gears of War had fun shooting, but the plot and dialogue were cringe inducing. ME2 has fun shooting, great dialogue, and plenty of interesting choices, and the combination of all those things really hasn't been done in a game before.

Also, if you read the posts, many people here seem to want a game that's almost identical to ME1. That's hardly original either.

Modifié par Empiro, 14 mars 2010 - 01:42 .

[Christina Norman]

Hey guys



Just a quick post from my hotel room which has realllly crappy Internet



The slides were accompanied by a verbal presentation, so you are only seeing half the presentation. Some of the context is obviously lost, like the naked Alistaire thing - it's a joke. It's a real screenshot from one of my DA games and it highlights how inventory management can create absurd situations, but it was primarily included for humor.



Many of my slides can be taken out of context if you focus on the one slide, and if you don't have the accompanying vocal presentation.



So...why did I post the slides at all? I still think they are useful. I figured fans would want to read them, and would get some good information out of them. I am always trying to lean on the side of giving you guys more information, and trusting that you will assume better rather then worse when some of that information is missing!



I am not going to be doing a voice over for the slides for a couple reasons

- GDC recorded my presentation, but I don't own that recording, so I can't post it (I can post the slides because I own those)

- Presentations are live and dynamic, so if I "re-did" the presentation it wouldn't be the same presentation



Nap time!

[LPPrince]

Christina went nappy time.

[DarknessBear]

No matter how much the speak about this. The sad fact is that they don't really care (that much) about the hardcore Mass Effect fan. They generally care about sales numbers and we are not the ones they want to appeal to. They want the average Joe after playing Madden to come to Gamestop and see a game that is just like Gears of War but in space and with sex. They try to streamline it as much as possible while losing some of it's charm and deepness.

[Brockololly]

I appreciate seeing the slides- its cool to see how devs go about implementing the changes in the sequel and the rationale behind the choices.

I think for me at least, obviously the RPG elements could be beefed up in ME3, but mainly by tweaking what exists in ME2 and not just making such wholesale changes as we saw from ME1 to ME2.
Personally, I have no problem with the inventory being gone (thank god for no omni-gel!) but if its going to be gone, then I would like a better way to know what the upgrades for weapons and armor are actually doing, in a quantitative way.
I mean you get these upgrades or new weapons and you just get a paragraph describing what the weapon is, but you never really understand the nitty gritty of what makes weapon A any different from weapon B. Just having a little chart that shows how weapon A does B amount of damage or has this rate of fire and when upgraded with X upgrade, weapon A now does 2B damage but one half rate of fire. Its something that you wouldn't need to look at, but for those that want the nitty gritty technical details, it would be there.
As for having limited ammo- meh, I didn't really care for it and it didn't really stop me from spraying bullets when I felt like it. If anything it would just be annoying, especially as vanguard, to charge ahead only to feel compelled to have to backtrack to pick up ammo, err, heatsinks.

Modifié par Brockololly, 14 mars 2010 - 03:02 .

[Destructo-Bot]

While you are looking at this thread please consider revamping:

Heat Sinks
Don't like playing garbage collector and scrounging sinks after a fight. Don't like being forced out of a favored weapon due to ammo. Don't like not having an infinite ammo weapon (staple in shooters) to fall back on. Pistols should be cooling instead of heatsinked.

Ammo per class
Why do infiltrators and vanguards have the same ammo capacity for snipers and shotguns as everyone else when the class is supposed to focus on that particular weapon? This ends with the class primarily using their SECONDARY weapon that actually has reserve ammo to save their "PRIMARY" for when they may need it.

Cover
Cover STILL isn't "safe". Harbinger or whatever knocks you out of cover, then you adrenaline hammer the action key to get back into cover. Instead of taking cover your character vaults over the cover and into the direct line of fire of two heavy mechs. The key that saves your life is also the key that gets you killed.

Ammo Powers
CONSTANTLY REACTIVATING THE ****ING POWERS EVERY ****ING TIME I ****ING QUICK LOAD. The ammo "power" should be permanent, NOT PER MISSION, NOT PER LOAD, NOT PER GAME... PERMANENT. They are there until I choose to change them. So very, very, very irritating to cycle through all my weapons and reapply ammo powers EVERY ****ING TIME to EVERY ****ING GUN. P.S. This in particular annoys me, you may not have caught that.

Inventory
We LIKE inventories. We don't like BAD inventories. ME1 had a BAD inventory and a glut of useless items with no sorting and grouping options. Improve and not remove was what many were expecting.

Armor Designer/Character Designer
This is good but it needs more options and more colors. I miss the look of Colossus and Rage armors. Good start. Everyone wants more personalization options (hair styles, clothes, etc) so...

Game Options
If you are shooter, where are the reticule options? FOV options? You know what I want to do as a sniper? When I blast someone with a headshot and they have 1 point of health left I want to a key to quick draw my sidearm and put them down and then the sidearm is put away and the rifle re-raised.

Fatigue
Why can a trained super-soldier like Shepard only run 10 feet at a time. Let us RUN dammit! If we aren't in a fight we should be able to run for quite a long time. Get rid of the silly fatigue outside of combat. And if you are going to HAVE fatigue, DON'T REMOVE THE FREAKING FATIGUE METER. The only difference between ME1 and ME2 is that I now just end up HAMMERING the STORM key OVER AND OVER until it works.

Modifié par Destructo-Bot, 14 mars 2010 - 03:34 .

[Nick Fox]

Kudos to Christina for posting this info. However if I were on the team and seen that presentation I would laid in my veto asap! Or walked out that door and not come back. What a mad house, you excel at one thing but decide to try and go for a totally different thing in a franchise that you havent ever done before? In a sequal too ? Yay great thinking indeed. I am almost baffeld on how stupid one can get really.
If this was the nr 1 game of a new trilogy then by all means go ahead and knock yourself out and try "new and different" gengers rather than doing what you do best. For a sequal however....
I just dont get how that idea ever got the notion, I cant belive it. Rehab for every soul on that team is on the hrorizon or all is lost. I mean how on earth do you think the concept of making another shooter is going to bring you anything but a so so product in the end ? How much hybris can you get ?

In 5-10 years from now people are still going to hail the first game (and lets hope the 3 rd) in this trilogy but look at this one as....well the black sheep (just a parantes in the gaming world).
 
When it comes to reviwes and the score nowdays it means so little to the older playing crowds and its more like a internal club for wannabes (my opinion on many of them), these scores means nothing absolutley nothing anymore. Ign and the likes just isnt doing what they are supposed to do anymore. they act more like hyping machines for ceartain developers, diferent rules for diferent devlopers. Use reviwes/reasearch and knowledge to actually tell what a game is today. The ability is clearly not there at lest not for this game. Anybody that plays Me 2 for more than 3 hours sees that this is nothing but shooter, but no its such a deep rpg bla bla.....credibility.....noway in...

[MassEffect762]

Destructo-Bot wrote...

While you are looking at this thread please consider revamping:

Heat Sinks
Don't like playing garbage collector and scrounging sinks after a fight. Don't like being forced out of a favored weapon due to ammo.

+1



Ammo per class
Why do infiltrators and vanguards have the same ammo capacity for snipers and shotguns as everyone else when the class is supposed to focus on that particular weapon? This ends with the class primarily using their SECONDARY weapon that actually has reserve ammo to save their "PRIMARY" for when they may need it.


+1


Ammo Powers
CONSTANTLY REACTIVATING THE ****ING POWERS EVERY ****ING TIME I ****ING QUICK LOAD. The ammo "power" should be permanent, NOT PER MISSION, NOT PER LOAD, NOT PER GAME... PERMANENT. They are there until I choose to change them. So very, very, very irritating to cycle through all my weapons and reapply ammo powers EVERY ****ING TIME to EVERY ****ING GUN. P.S. This in particular annoys me, you may not have caught that.


The concept of ammo types as "powers" is still beyond me.


Inventory
We LIKE inventories. We don't like BAD inventories. ME1 had a BAD inventory and a glut of useless items with no sorting and grouping options. Improve and not remove was what many were expecting.


Never understood the problem with the inventory myself, it was ABCs to me. Should've just added a quick convert all omni gel feature.

Modifié par MassEffect762, 14 mars 2010 - 03:47 .

[pacer90]

Nick Fox I couldn't disagree more. I simply believe that you're trying to stir up responses in a thread that has a developers attention.

[Nick Fox]

pacer90 wrote...

Nick Fox I couldn't disagree more. I simply believe that you're trying to stir up responses in a thread that has a developers attention.

Not really, i call it as I see it. To me its madness to go for another gengre in a sequal. You could say its a cardinal sin to from my point of view. Think Halo going all out old school rpg for ex, is that too a great idea for that games fans ?

[Andorfiend]

Christina Norman wrote...
So...why did I post the slides at all? I still think they are useful. I figured fans would want to read them, and would get some good information out of them. I am always trying to lean on the side of giving you guys more information, and trusting that you will assume better rather then worse when some of that information is missing!

Thanks Christina! We (mostly) appreciate the look into the internal processes.

For my own 2¢ I'll just note that 'simpler' is not the same as 'as simple as possible'. Also that designing for the 360 is fine.... but don't forget us PC players? I fail to see why  the consoles limited control inputs should limit my hotkey options.

[kregano]

Personally, I didn't mind losing the inventory since scanning things and having them get fabricated on the Normandy is way more scifi than having Shepard just pick up every single item on the ground and dragging them to the Normandy. Automatically applying upgrades to all the guns also increases the realism because that's the sort of thing people get computers to automate.



That said, I wouldn't mind having this type of GUI set up to show stat improvements from upgrades in a different color from the default stats:

[-Skorpious-]

One of the reoccurring complaints ME:1 was it's unwieldy combat system. Here are a issues I had with ME:1 -

Infinite ammo (especially after acquiring a frictionless materials upgrade) led to a boring "hold the trigger until it dies" style of gameplay, especially if you had access to the incredibly cheap immunity/barrier talents. Another issue I had was the level up system - having to put 8 points into a single talent to see a significant damage increase was not fun at all. Also being a soldier kinda sucked, as the pistol was the best weapon for every class; even for a soldier.

The ME:2 team simply listened to the fans/reviewers and improved an aspect of the game that received heavy criticism. They shouldn't be scolded for ultimately listening to our suggestions. Besides, compare ME:1 reviews and ME:2 reviews - I guarantee every reviewer will prefer ME:2 gameplay over ME:1 gameplay.

Modifié par -Skorpious-, 14 mars 2010 - 04:35 .

[Pocketgb]

Destructo-Bot wrote...

Heat Sinks
Don't like playing garbage collector and scrounging sinks after a fight. Don't like being forced out of a favored weapon due to ammo. Don't like not having an infinite ammo weapon (staple in shooters) to fall back on. Pistols should be cooling instead of heatsinked.

An ammo-count encourages using more abilities from your Shep and your teammates. In my earlier Insanity playthroughs I would always use the Widowmaker to take out high-profile enemies, then switch to another weapon to take out the rest. If I could've been using the Widowmaker through the entire game, without ever losing ammo, I don't think the game would've been even near as challenging as it is now.

Same thing could be applied to, say, an adept: if the Carnifex had an unlimited ammo supply, as an Adept I wouldn't need to use a single power.

In regards to sink-scrounging? I'm not against looking for other routes to refill ammo after a fight, but doesn't this actually make sense in a role-playing fashion? In Morrowind I always scavanged the bodies of slain enemies for unbroken arrows I shot at them, or for any other resource I could pick up. People are ticked at the lack of loot and an inventory when ammo clips are the only loot in the game and they hate them.

That, or they're used to the auto-loot that occured in ME1. /shrug.

Destructo-Bot wrote...

Ammo per class
Why do infiltrators and vanguards have the same ammo capacity for snipers and shotguns as everyone else when the class is supposed to focus on that particular weapon? This ends with the class primarily using their SECONDARY weapon that actually has reserve ammo to save their "PRIMARY" for when they may need it.

Well yeah, weaker weapons should be used more often than powerful ones. In Doom you didn't want to use a rocket launcher on a group of imps, you wanted to save the ammo of that gun for the big'uns.

Destructo-Bot wrote...

Cover
Cover STILL isn't "safe". Harbinger or whatever knocks you out of cover, then you adrenaline hammer the action key to get back into cover. Instead of taking cover your character vaults over the cover and into the direct line of fire of two heavy mechs. The key that saves your life is also the key that gets you killed.

Honestly, cover needs to either be A. less safe or B. have more enemies charging you. Harbinger is somewhat of an exception because his attacks actually make sense: if a part of your body is visable to the line of sight of his fireball, it *will* hit you.

In regards to everyone else? If you're in cover and the enemy is not past your line of cover you will not get hurt at all. Cover needs to make more sense.

In regards to how he knocks you out of cover, you only have to "sync out" his singularity blast. It travels slow, so just move back and forth in cover and it'll miss you.

The only reason your character is vaulting over cover is because you're not just hitting the cover button but also moving forward. I used to do the same thing way back when I first started playing the game, but it's just one of many things the game preps you into not doing.

Modifié par Pocketgb, 14 mars 2010 - 04:36 .

[BlightWalker]

Am I the only PC gamer who is disturbed by there only being the 360 versions shown and snippets like 'designed for 360' ?

[Jon Phoenix]

Thanks Christina, firstly for taking the time to post this. Most of us appreciate the insight into the design process, even if some abuse hindsight a little too much in our criticisms. And Secondly for using Prezi. I had never heard of it before. But as an academic I really appreciate the paradigm shift from powerpoint etc. I think I might try it out for one or two of my lectures this year.



I think if I were to suggest anything it would be a happy medium between the limited gun selection of ME2 and the deeper upgrade system (minus ammo of course) of ME1 (or dare I say it Kotor 2).

[Vaeliorin]

Well...if we're going to list things that need changed...



Global Cooldown

Now, I have no problem having a global cooldown. My objection is the fact that global cooldown = power cooldown. This makes certain abilities largely useless because the benefit they give isn't worth the cooldown time in combat. Powers like barrier, with its 12 second cooldown, is something that's absolutely useless in actual combat, because it locks out all your other abilities for so long.



Having global cooldown = power cooldown also means that you can't reasonably make powerful abilities that would need a long cooldown (such as Arrow of Slaying in DA) because you don't want to lock out every other power for an incredibly long period of time.



Simply having a general 2-3 second global cooldown with individual powers on separate cooldowns would not only encourage using a wider array of powers (instead of warp spam or the like) but would also allow powers that have a longer cooldown to reasonably be used in combat.

[CmdrFenix83]

Nick Fox wrote...

pacer90 wrote...

Nick Fox I couldn't disagree more. I simply believe that you're trying to stir up responses in a thread that has a developers attention.

Not really, i call it as I see it. To me its madness to go for another gengre in a sequal. You could say its a cardinal sin to from my point of view. Think Halo going all out old school rpg for ex, is that too a great idea for that games fans ?

I'm with pacer here.  ME2 was a superior game to ME1.  That's not to say ME2 was perfect, things like the planet scanning, lack of weapon details(can we see how much damage/capacity/rate of fire/accuracy weapons have, please?), etc could use some improvements(like having EDI do the scanning at the push of a button like in ME1). 

The shooter mechanics in ME1 were ridiculous early in the game.  Yeah, they exaggerated the assault rifle accuracy issue, but not by much.  I'm in the middle of an ME1 playthrough right now, I had about 7 points in the AR skill on Feros fighting the Thorian Creeper swarms.  Killing 1 creeper from close range I still missed about 1/4 of my shots.  Recoil was obscene on that thing.  Regardless, on Eden Prime, there is zero excuse for a graduate of the Alliance's N7 program, the elite of the elite, a seasoned soldier being recommended for Spectre status, to be incapable of hitting a target with less then 50% accuracy.  Especially a stationary target.  No excuse whatsoever.

Having to micromanage the entire squads armor will end up like it was in ME1 for me, 2 people are geared, and those two are the only ones I use.  Why spend all this time customizing gear for 12 characters when you only ever use 3?  Don't get me wrong, I would love for them to have full suits for dangerous environments/vacuum, but I don't want to have to hold their hands to pick their entire weapon/armor loadouts.  They're big boy and girls, they know what they're comfortable fighting in.  Personally, I preferred the upgrade system in ME2.

[CmdrFenix83]

BlightWalker wrote...

Am I the only PC gamer who is disturbed by there only being the 360 versions shown and snippets like 'designed for 360' ?

Any game on a console needs to be designed for said console first.  There's more limitations there.  Less buttons available to map, strict graphic and processing power limitations, etc.  PC games transferred to the consoles are just aweful there, however, console games brought to the PC don't lose nearly as much in the conversion.

Ex:  KotOR was perfectly fine on both X-Box and PC(xbox to PC port)  but Half-life was terrible on PS2(PC to console port)

[CmdrFenix83]

Vaeliorin wrote...

Well...if we're going to list things that need changed...

Global Cooldown
Now, I have no problem having a global cooldown. My objection is the fact that global cooldown = power cooldown. This makes certain abilities largely useless because the benefit they give isn't worth the cooldown time in combat. Powers like barrier, with its 12 second cooldown, is something that's absolutely useless in actual combat, because it locks out all your other abilities for so long.

Having global cooldown = power cooldown also means that you can't reasonably make powerful abilities that would need a long cooldown (such as Arrow of Slaying in DA) because you don't want to lock out every other power for an incredibly long period of time.

Simply having a general 2-3 second global cooldown with individual powers on separate cooldowns would not only encourage using a wider array of powers (instead of warp spam or the like) but would also allow powers that have a longer cooldown to reasonably be used in combat.

Barrier/Tech Armor/Fortification/Geth Shield Boost all instantly refill your shields too.  That's the point of that cooldown.  It's a tradeoff.  Those abilities are super-powerful, so you have to pay the price for using them mid-combat.

[Cross1280]

Mass Effect 1 and 2 were both designed primarily for the 360 first and then ported to the PC, unlike Dragon Age which was created for the PC then ported to the 360 and PS3.

[CmdrFenix83]

Cross1280 wrote...

Mass Effect 1 and 2 were both designed primarily for the 360 first and then ported to the PC, unlike Dragon Age which was created for the PC then ported to the 360 and PS3.

Yes!  A better example than the Half-life one I used a bit ago.  I played DA:O on my 360, and the combat was just completely unmanagable. 

[WillieStyle]

Destructo-Bot wrote...

While you are looking at this thread please consider revamping:

Heat Sinks
Don't like playing garbage collector and scrounging sinks after a fight. Don't like being forced out of a favored weapon due to ammo. Don't like not having an infinite ammo weapon (staple in shooters) to fall back on. Pistols should be cooling instead of heatsinked.

I disagree.  Finite ammo makes the game more fun for me.  Needing to conserve ammo rewards smart/effective play and punishes poor play.  This is a VERY good thing in my opinion.

Ammo per class
Why do infiltrators and vanguards have the same ammo capacity for snipers and shotguns as everyone else when the class is supposed to focus on that particular weapon? This ends with the class primarily using their SECONDARY weapon that actually has reserve ammo to save their "PRIMARY" for when they may need it.

I use the Sniper Rifle almost exclusively on my Infiltrator.  The only times I switch away from the Widow are:
-To take down the shields of a "boss."
-To mix things up (go go close quarters Infiltrator).
The first time I played an infiltrator, there were a total of 5 fights in the entire game where I ran out of Sniper Rifle ammo.  Now that I'm more experienced, I never run out of Sniper Rifle ammo.

Cover
Cover STILL isn't "safe". Harbinger or whatever knocks you out of cover,
 

This is a feature not a bug.  Cover shouldn't render you invincible.  Plus, you can dodge Harbinger's glowing balls of pull-you-out-of-cover while still staying safely behind cover.

then you adrenaline hammer the action key to get back into cover. Instead of taking cover your character vaults over the cover and into the direct line of fire of two heavy mechs. The key that saves your life is also the key that gets you killed.

As a PC player, I'm annoyed by the fact that cover/sprint/vault all share the same button.  But I got used to it pretty quickly and rarely die by accidentally vaulting cover.  It just takes some practice.

Ammo Powers
CONSTANTLY REACTIVATING THE ****ING POWERS EVERY ****ING TIME I ****ING QUICK LOAD. The ammo "power" should be permanent, NOT PER MISSION, NOT PER LOAD, NOT PER GAME... PERMANENT. They are there until I choose to change them. So very, very, very irritating to cycle through all my weapons and reapply ammo powers EVERY ****ING TIME to EVERY ****ING GUN. P.S. This in particular annoys me, you may not have caught that.

I only have to reactivate ammo powers when:
-I swap out weapons at an arms locker.
-I overwrite that ammo type.
I don't have to reactivate my powers each time I load. I agree, however, that reactivating squadmates' powers each time is annoying. 

Inventory
We LIKE inventories. We don't like BAD inventories. ME1 had a BAD inventory and a glut of useless items with no sorting and grouping options. Improve and not remove was what many were expecting.

Ugh! I cannot disagree more strongly.  I hate standard CRPG inventories.  I hate sifting through seas of random junk just to get useful items.  I hate having to vendor tons of crap just to be able to buy the stuff I really want. I hate taking 10 mins to swap out my companions' armor each time we face a different enemy or I get some upgrades. 
I HATE inventories and I HATE loot.

[WillieStyle]

CmdrFenix83 wrote...

Barrier/Tech Armor/Fortification/Geth Shield Boost all instantly refill your shields too.  That's the point of that cooldown.  It's a tradeoff.  Those abilities are super-powerful, so you have to pay the price for using them mid-combat.

Those powers aren't super-powerful. They are very poor precisely because of their long cooldowns.
Unity boosts your shields AND restores health AND resurrects dead squadmates AND it has a much shorter cooldown than Barrier/Fortification/Geth Sheild Boost.
Charge/Adrenaline Rush/Tactical Cloak all provide more survivability than Barrier while also increasing offense/utility AND they're fun active abilities.  The "Barrier" class of powers in ME2 suck badly and their long cooldowns are  big reason why.

There should be 2 classes of cooldowns: offensive and defensive.  Also, I'd rather not have "super powerful" abilities with very long cooldowns, but that's just a personal preference.