97 réponses à ce sujet

[fsfsfsfsfsfsf]

I really like your game. Origins and Awakening are fun and I was pretty impressed. It's so well presented, and the graphics are a big leap forward from the NWN games, as is the engine in general.

One thing I would say however, is that this game is a classic example of the new ultimate challenge facing gamers and game developers. You big game developers are now stuck in this catch-22 position, where your quest for money is at odds with making good games. It's a tough business, so the goal of most companies seems to be to appeal squarely at the mass market. If all 90 zillion console gamers, all rush out and buy your game, then you are in the money. The problem of course, is that to appeal to the mass market, you have to dumb down the game for the dumb mass market gamer. This sometimes isn't an issue, for example, the GTA games are a bit boneheaded by nature, so it doesn't really affect them as severely. But particularly with games like this, it's a big issue. If you simplify a game like this for the average Joe, cheezey puff munching console gamer, you are going to alienate the old school, more hardcore RPG fans who are perfectly suited to this kind of game.

You should remember, that we don't really have anywhere else to go. The Diablo, The Witcher, Two Worlds, Elder Scrolls and Gothic series are all very simple, 'Action-RPG' style games. So if we want a bit more of a complex RPG game, with proper stats and challenging puzzles and combat, these Bioware games are one of the only places to go.

So what do you do? If you go for the mass market, you WILL alienate us. You may make more money that way though, but you will then be competing directly with all those games I mentioned above. I have to wonder if it would be better to keep your focus on the other kind of gamer. There may be less of us, but we will be far more passionate, enthusiastic, and complementary of a more complex game, and that may serve you better in the long run.

I'm currently on the fence a bit. I quite enjoyed the game, but I really miss the challenge of the Baldur's Gate games. It's been a long time, but I remember in Baldur's Gate 2 when I would mis-place a fireball, and it would completely fry my own poor group. Game over. Every battle was serious business, and although it verged on tedium at times, it got incredibly addictive... I must micro manage every encounter to perfection, being very efficient with mana, being very careful what spells I use and where I aim them, and making sure my tanks actually take the brunt of the damage to minimise the amount of healing I need to do, etc..etc.. In Dragon Age though, none of this is an issue. There's no limit to the number of times we can cast each spell, mana is almost endless now, with full regeneration a few seconds after each battle. And I can purposely land a fireball on my own group and it doesn't really matter. Half of them resist it completely most of the time, and even the ones who do get hit aren't too injured. And with an endless stream of automatic heals from the Cleansing Aura, and the easy peasy 1 click full group heals, taking damage doesn't really matter anyway.

So the result is that I just run around click click clicking my way through each 'battle' without any real thought or effort. Awakenings in particular has become quite simple, and hack 'n slashy. It's just about good enough overall that I still enjoy myself, but it's no Baldur's Gate... I now just think of it as yet another action-RPG, and that will harm my enthusiasm in the future, in real terms. For example, if a new expansion comes out in the next few months, I may not even pay it any attention, especially if I'm playing Two Worlds 2 or Mafia 2 or any of the other big fun games on the horizon. I would go out of my way for a new Baldur's Gate though, but games like that just don't exist anymore.

Modifié par fsfsfsfsfsfsf, 24 mars 2010 - 09:56 .

[hexaligned]

Good post. I appreciate that Bioware put out the effort to appeal to us oldschoolers. (I don't know that being 25 makes me oldschool, but apparently it does.) You are right though, the over all ease of the game makes the things I enjoy most about these types of games (stat system, varied classes with a lot of skill/ spell options, basically character building) essentially meaningless. If you can run through the game naked randomly putting points and picking up skills without having to actually put any thought into it, it defeats the purpose.



Not to be melodramatic, but at this point they might as well just remove the leveling up and the stats and the skills, and just give each character one button to push that kills everything on the screen. It would effectively be the same thing.

[Kavva]

fsfsfsfsfsfsf wrote...

in Baldur's Gate 2 when I would mis-place a fireball, and it would completely fry my own poor group. Game over. Every battle was serious business, and although it verged on tedium at times, it got incredibly addictive... I must micro manage every encounter to perfection, being very efficient with mana, being very careful what spells I use and where I aim them, and making sure my tanks actually take the brunt of the damage to minimise the amount of healing I need to do, etc..etc..

Errr in all the BG series there was no mana

[YohkoOhno]

Keep in mind some of that was based on how the D&D rules handled things, it wasn't just bioware.



Like it or not, RPGs are changing. You can't even go back to that old way if they did Baldur's Gate 3 because the 4th Edition D&D rules have changed. (D&D is a little more like Dragon Age now).

[Layn]

while i totally agree with you, be careful about generalizing, stereotyping and calling people stupid. they don't like it and people tend to dismiss a post containing that more easily. also it incites flaming

Modifié par Crrash, 24 mars 2010 - 12:35 .

[Nukenin]

Oh, Bioware started down this treacherous path of deviltry back when they made the boneheaded decision to implement a real-time* combat system in Baldur's Gate.  They haven't turned back yet.



*gods bless the plethora of autopause options they gave us turn-based Luddites, especially in further installments of the Infinity Engine

[sten_super]

I'm afraid I'm going to be the first on this thread to disagree. You state that gamers like you 'have nowhere else to go'; that is an indication that (sadly) there probably isn't a sufficiently big market for good quality games (i.e. high development cost) games that would fit into the niche that you want.



It ultimately all comes down to individual preferences, and of course the games developer is going to appeal to as many people's individual preferences as they can. This means that games are probably going to become more aimed at the 'casual' gamer, because that broadens their appeal (and therefore the market they can sell to).



I should state, for the record, that while I played Baldurs Gate, and NWN, and KOTOR, I am what you would probably describe as a 'casual' gamer. I play RPGs not for the challenging combat (I play most of them on easy) but for the storyline. I personally prefer the current generations of games to old games like Baldurs Gate, which I found a bit of a slog that was made worthwhile by the great storyline. I've tried not to let that personal perspective affect my argument above too much though.

[Gaddmeister]

At the time, BG1&2 was good. But really, sleeping to learn new spells for the day after? I really like the mana/cooldown much better. There were more fun spells in the BG series though and I sometimes feel that the mages perhaps are somewhat simplified in DA:O. But the only Bioware game I think has failed in the gameplay area is Jade Empire. That was a pretty boring game combat wise.

[CybAnt1]

I must micro manage every encounter to perfection, being very efficient with mana,

BG2 had no mana system. The way it limited your spell use was by making you memorize them beforehand, and then resting to reacquire the spells you memorized. 

BTW, that system is now gone in D & D's 4E rules. It's all cooldowns now - just like you're using. 

There's no limit to the number of times we can cast each spell,

Correct. Other than their mana cost (which can be overcome by the practically endless spamming of plentifully available mana potions), the only thing limiting you is their cooldowns, and some have a pretty long cast time. 

mana is almost endless now, with full regeneration a few seconds after each battle.

Yeah, it is a bit weird. There's no actual need to rest, although you do go to your party camp to "rest" anyway. AFAICT, going to party camp does only one thing, remove all your injuries, which again is pointless as there is a practically endless supply of injury kits available. 

And I can purposely land a fireball on my own group and it doesn't really matter. 

Your choice of difficulty makes it matter. On Easy, friendly fire is nonexistent. On Normal, friendly fire is half damage to party members. On Hard and Nightmare, it's full. 

BTW, one little factoid I have noticed: even if you're playing on easy, there are occasional situations where you still have to be careful. Creatures with "blue rings" (uncontrolled allies) are still vulnerable to friendly fire. I killed quite a few friendly soldiers in Redcliffe, and once even accidentally nuked Ser Otto, that way. And even on easy, cone of cold will freeze party members in place (they'll just take no damage). 

I now just think of it as yet another action-RPG, 

No, I wouldn't agree. It's still strategic, and your only decision is whether to run your NPCs on tactics or execute all their strategy through continuous pause-and-act (since there is no action queue). And BTW, the default scripts for tactics, which is all I usually use other than a bit of tweaking, got a bit better in Awakening. I still would like some more, better default scripts for chars in the next game, though. It still puzzles me why the Defender script has no behavioral commands for actual defense. 

You can even run your main char on tactics, although I never did. 

Interesting fact: now it seems just about every class has "AoE" abilities, even rogues, however, unlike mage AoEs, there's almost never friendly fire risk. Your 2 hander can be swinging around his sword like a helicopter but don't fret, even though there are both friendlies and hostiles nearby, only the hostiles will be hit. 

On the other hand, if you're not on Easy, make sure to get your chars. out of the way of the Rain of Arrows. 

[Gadarr]

I personally tend to agree that rpgs in general get easier as they cater to a broader market. Without having thought much about it, I would pin it down to the general class archetype system, featuring tanks, healers and those who deal damage which wasn't the case in those older games - at least not to such an extent, although my memory might fail me, it's just a general impression.

A clever opponent won't attack the guy looking immensely tough, wielding a needle and spewing insults (whoever thought of this, it's ridiculous...) but instead the guy who looks like a serious and immanent threat. Be it the guy who cures all those nasty wounds dealt by the opponent or the one who crashes down on him with magic an whirlwind weapons. I don't recall exactly how it was done in the BG series or similiar games, however I'm pretty sure that there were no such archetypes, thus resulting in more complex tactics as you potentially had to actively protect everyone (and well armored, medium damage types less, that's what armor is for, after all), not just in case of an emergency.

[Sloane66]

Hate to say it but fourth edition dungeons and dragons dumbed things down as well. They went after the mass market card gamers and simplilfied the game. The problem was they lost a ton of gamers to Pathfinder. Pathfinder is ex d+d employees that broke off and liked the complex rules and management system that appealed to gamers and made those better in a new world.

In fact Bio-ware and Path-finder would make good bed fellows to some degree if they co-oped ona  project. Wouldnt carry the weighht of Forgotten Realms Sadly but then again d+d has ruined it anyway.

[Elanareon]

Hear, hear! Or is it here here? Anyway, maybe you should lessen thw insulting words a bit... I agree on almost all of your points. DA really needs a better game mechanics. Cd's are too fast, mana limitless, imbalance skills, dId you know that every 3rd attack of dual striking misses? And its intentional i heard. Too much melee aoe and instant kills. Too slow attack speed yet daggers are so fast with soooo much damage.... Im tellin you game mechanics needs to be revised. Good background lore though, now if only the game follows it...

[mutantspicy]

Excellent post OP.



I couldn't agree more. While dragonage is the Best RPG in the last few years, its got nothing on NWN or BG in terms character development. I think they did a hell of job with the companions here. Your ability to develop companions and control AI for them is second to none. But I think where they dropped the is lack of RTS elements in the overall game play. What I mean is, whats the point click pause, if during pause all you do is click off 1 event per companion. You can't switch quickbars, you can't cue up a series of events. (i.ePause, cast 2 buffs, and move over there, unpause)



The second place they dropped the ball is the way you expand you talents (4 talents per line seems kinda weak). Why not have it so You get such and such talent, and then in turns opens up a whole new line. That seems new and exciting. Right now You see whole list and it feels like filling in checkerboard.

They are cool talents, but they just don't feel like you are building yourself or finding yourself through game. It just feels a bit too much like meta gaming.





That said, the game rocks. I just wish there was a bit more mystery or open endedness in developing skills and talents, and I wish the gamestyle had a touch more RTS to it.

[E-Nigma_1972]

relhart wrote...

Good post. I appreciate that Bioware put out the effort to appeal to us oldschoolers. (I don't know that being 25 makes me oldschool, but apparently it does.)

lol this one made me laugh, oldschool, guess I'm a dinosaur then:O

[TheMufflon]

mutantspicy wrote...

 While dragonage is the Best RPG in the last few years, its got nothing on NWN or BG in terms character development.

Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate had character development?

[Bartlebyfinch]

Gadarr wrote...



I personally tend to agree that rpgs in general get easier as they cater to a broader market. Without having thought much about it, I would pin it down to the general class archetype system, featuring tanks, healers and those who deal damage which wasn't the case in those older games - at least not to such an extent, although my memory might fail me, it's just a general impression.



A clever opponent won't attack the guy looking immensely tough, wielding a needle and spewing insults (whoever thought of this, it's ridiculous...) but instead the guy who looks like a serious and immanent threat. Be it the guy who cures all those nasty wounds dealt by the opponent or the one who crashes down on him with magic an whirlwind weapons. I don't recall exactly how it was done in the BG series or similiar games, however I'm pretty sure that there were no such archetypes, thus resulting in more complex tactics as you potentially had to actively protect everyone (and well armored, medium damage types less, that's what armor is for, after all), not just in case of an emergency.

You make a very interesting point here. I've been a pen and paper RPG player since D&D 1st edition, and I've played video RPG's just about as long as they've lasted. Somehow, I never actually noticed what you bring up here. In old D&D (2nd editon as well), there was no "aggro." Everyone played their character and the DM controlled the monsters as realistically as possible. In the case of intelligent monsters, that meant that they went after healers & mages first.



The whole concept of your "tank" being able to hold all of the aggro from monsters while your DPS killed it is, as far as I can tell, a development in RPGs that came from MMO's. I honestly can't remember if Ultima Online had a "taunt" ability of any kind or not, but I know that Everquest did. EQ was the first game I remember playing where the Holy Trinity of Tank, DPS, & Healer was firmly established. I have never played another game (MMO or otherwise) where the high-end raiding was as challenging as it was in EQ (the Planes of Power stuff was just ungodly), and, since EQ was the most popular MMO in the pre-WoW world, I think it pretty much set the bar for other RPG's.



In past 10 years or so, we have seen MMO's far eclipse traditional table top RPG's in popularity. So, it's only logical that current pen and paper RPG's would try to imitate their more successful electronic cousins. If one remembers that non-online computer RPG's have always, to some extent, been based on pen and paper table-top games, it's hardly surprising that we're seeing these changes. In short, blame MMO's.

Sloane66 wrote...



Hate to say it but fourth edition dungeons and dragons dumbed things down as well. They went after the mass market card gamers and simplilfied the game. The problem was they lost a ton of gamers to Pathfinder. Pathfinder is ex d+d employees that broke off and liked the complex rules and management system that appealed to gamers and made those better in a new world.

I agree with you about 4th edition D&D. Hell, I didn't like 3rd Edition at all, but at least it was still recognizable as D&D. 4th edition isn't a bad game, it just IS NOT D&D... at all. It's more like a tabletop version of Diablo. The game is so heavily focused on feats and other special abilities that, in a typical combat, no one will ever make a "regular" attack. In the old days, it was up to player imagination to fill in the specifics of "what they were going to do" with each attack, and it was up to the GM to interpret those actions. Chance (dice rolls) played a factor, of course, but the difference between a so-so encounter and an unforgettable one always came down to imagination & creative interpretation of the dice results.



As near as I can tell, that's pretty much gone. In 4th edition, the most minute details of every action are spelled out in advance, combat rules rely strongly on grid movement, and the entire game is much more heavily focused on the usage of point and click powers than on true roleplay.



Yeah, I know... I might as well be standing in front of my house screaming "get off my lawn!" Times change, and young gamers define the future while old dice-slingers like myself cling to the past. I just can't help mourning the passing of something that has brought so much joy into my life.

[TheMufflon]

Bartlebyfinch wrote...

I just can't help mourning the passing of something that has brought so much joy into my life.

You do realize that 1st and 2nd edition D&D still exist, and that you still can play them, right? Just because WOTC released a new edition doesn't mean the old ones become obsolete and self-destruct.

[mutantspicy]

TheMufflon wrote...

mutantspicy wrote...

 While dragonage is the Best RPG in the last few years, its got nothing on NWN or BG in terms character development.

Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate had character development?

Yes.  I'm not refering to the lore of the game.  I don't think anyone is questioning the fantastic lore and richly developed character stories in DA is far and above most games.  No I'm refering to how you the player is able to develop your character in terms, spells, skills, feats, etc.  I think DA is lacking in that area.  As per the OP, its dumbed down to WOW style metagaming. 

Modifié par mutantspicy, 24 mars 2010 - 04:48 .

[Bartlebyfinch]

TheMufflon wrote...

Bartlebyfinch wrote...

I just can't help mourning the passing of something that has brought so much joy into my life.

You do realize that 1st and 2nd edition D&D still exist, and that you still can play them, right? Just because WOTC released a new edition doesn't mean the old ones become obsolete and self-destruct.

I DO.  Actually, Hackmaster (with a few rules tweaks) is my preferred P&P game.  That still doesn't change the fact that traditional roleplaying is slowly but surely fading from existence.  I wasn't talking about my personal experiences as much as the state of the hobby as a whole.

[SuperBaggles1]

The OP does realize that just because he doesn't like a game doesn't mean it's not a good game...right?



Also, I'm not really understanding how the need to make money is at odds with making good games. There are plenty of excellent games that make a sh*t ton of money. Again, games that the OP (and you guys) may not like but they are still fantastic games.



And one other by the way while I'm at it: Dragon Age is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a game for casual gamers. I know several casual gamers and none of them would even attempt to understand or take part in the massive time sink that this game is.

[SuperBaggles1]

Maybe the OP could also explain to me how marketing to a smaller crowd would ever benefit anybody who's in business in the long run. Because of your passion you'll have for the game? Are you serious? Last time I checked game developers get paid in money...not passion, enthusiasm, and compliments.



"Well, Greg, we made a game that 300 people out of the whole millions and millions of gamers in the world liked. Now let's go file for bankruptcy since we just lost all the money we had cause we invested it in the smaller crowd."



"That's right, Ray, we may be going out of business and we need to find new jobs but at least we have those 300 people's compassion, enthusiasm, and compliments for this game!"

[Haexpane]

The sad fact is games are becoming like hollywood movies, catering to kiddiez that like big 'splosions and teen vampire wussies.



Thankfully DAO is still pretty bad ass. But I can imagine if it was anyone else but Bioware it would have been



Twilight Age Origins: Staring Justin Beiber, Justin Timberlake, Myley Cyrus and the Jonos Brahs with an all new soundtrack from fake punk rock lamers Green Day

[AlmondBrown]

It is not the smaller crowd, well perhaps to an extent, but more the Platform. In order for a game to be suitable for multiple Platforms, some very grievous compromises have to be made. UI and control functions being the main 2. A keyboard and Mouse play very different than a Controller vs a Joystick.

Some games when designed for one system, do not port over very well. That fact has seen much print. Sadly, do to time, cost and need to produce a lot of games to appease the "casual gamer" consoles seem to have more appeal to Developers as of late.



Hell, current console production times (average) is down to 6 months. In that time they can produce a game that lasts perhaps 15 hours of playtime and get MAX dollars for it at retail.



What does that say about today's "casual gamers"? other than they seem to, apparently, have less time for their hobby, but have more money to spend doing so?



And for the record PlaneScape:Torment had story! Sadly it was not commercially popular. The main reason many stated. "I don't want to read a good story, I just want to kill stuff while being told a good story."



If 25 is Old School, and that makes others Dinosaurs, then I must be pretty close to Pre-Big Bang. LOL

[tmp7704]

fsfsfsfsfsfsf wrote...

I really like your game. Origins and Awakening are fun and I was pretty impressed. It's so well presented, and the graphics are a big leap forward from the NWN games, as is the engine in general.

And yet apparently you didn't like them enough to actually buy either of them.

Not to be too mean, but it kind of shoots your (no doubt well-meant if self-serving) advice in the foot -- when you say "if you go for the (bigger) money this will alienate us" i can't help but imagine a dev roll his eyes in response and think "right, and what did you do to make me want to pander to your group instead?"