Dragon Age Forum News (Aug. 17-19, 05)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from Dragon Age Official Forum. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

David Gaider, Designer

Your expectations of Dragon Age

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you want revolutionary? wait for some unknown game from a nobody developer. revolutions is sparked by the powerless... folks that feel they got nothing left to lose. bio gots lots to lose. they is gonna play safe.

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There is some merit in this statement, to be sure.

Safe, however, does not have to mean stale (not that I'm saying Grom is equating it with such, as he says himself he doesn't need a revolution). We may not be out to reinvent the wheel, but we've also set ourselves up in a situation where we have more freedom than we've had in the past on a design level. While we may not want to color outside the lines to our own detriment, we'd be fools not to grab the opportunity to innovate at least a little within those parameters.

For some, obviously, that simply won't be enough, and there's nothing we can do about that. Like Grom said, we have plenty to lose and we're not about to play it fast and loose even though that sounds plenty exciting. For others, however, I suspect we'll be doing more than you expect.

More: Keep your expectations as low as possible, and complain constantly. That way when the final game hits the shelves, you'll either be proven right or pleasantly surprised. It's a win-win scenario.

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Yes, but the bottom line is most people treasure trash, so thats what Bio has to make. I mean we all know how well Torment did.

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Ah, yes. Elitism strikes again. If only the great unwashed were as intelligent as you, they would learn to appreciate things like Planescape: Torment more.

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It has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with taste. Some people like Britney Spears. Some people like Mozart.

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Oh no? You don't see the Mozart-loving folk as being superior to the great, tasteless Britney-loving masses? Who are you kidding?

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Taste is purely subjective, for it is neither good or bad or is both good or bad depending on the person.

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Uh-huh.

Critical Hit in Magic
Another magic thread from VearnRydrallen? Shocking!

No, there will not be critical hits with magic. Magic-users already deal the most damage and are the most versatile with it (including damaging a large group at once), the melee fighters get critical hits to compensate. If there was a critical hit possible for magic, it would be on a spell-by-spell basis (such as having the possibility of critical hit make up for the spell's lower base damage).

Will Dragon Age be a Multiplayer game?

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NWN has been produced like a solo game! You guys make the game, then you ship it in english and when the translation is done you ship it in other languages. Perfect for a solo game, many games are done like this.

But for a multiplayer game like WoW or EQ or UO or GW, it is not possible to do this because you would separate communities from their servers, exactly what happened in NWN servers when SoU and HotU came out.

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SO if the game is multiplayer, we should... what? Finish the game and then sit on it until it is translated into all languages? I just want to be clear on what your answer is.

And you do know that WoW and EQ and the other games you list are all massively multiplayer online-only games, yes? Which NWN is not?

What would you prioritize if you made a CRPG?

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I'll try to list the elements that help make a CRPG interesting and fun to play:

* Freedom
* Character development
* Scope
* Story and Dialogue
* Powerful and Unique Items/equipment
* Magic
* strategic fights
* Degree of believability (making it (in a way) realistic but still fun to play)
* Physics/interactivity
* Multiplayer
* Graphics
* Sound (Music, atmosphere and VoiceOver)

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No "Gameplay/Ease of Play"?

And why would you seperate "Story and Dialogue" and "Character Development"? How much can you develop a character without dialogue or story? Or do you mean how one develops their own character with leveling up and skills and such? And by "Freedom" do you mean the freedom to explore large areas? Or having lots of options, story-wise? Because those are two different things.

And just "Graphics"? That doesn't make it sound all that important. What about "Beautiful/Realistic Environments"? What about "Appearance Customization Options"? What about "Visual Effects", "Cutscenes/Animation" and "Impressive 3D Models"?

Just "Strategic Fights"? What about "Exciting Combat"? "Large-Scale Battles"? "Varied Fighting Styles and Animations"?

It's not my intention to flame, but I would like to gently point out that the list itself presents a fair amount of bias right off the get-go.

Counters in DA?

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Magic-users already deal the most damage and are the most versatile with it (including damaging a large group at once), the melee fighters get critical hits to compensate.

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If that's the quote that the assumption is based off of, it's pretty thin. That comment was made as much in regards to systems in general like D&D as it was about DA. And even then I'm not sure why it would lead to the idea that mages of any kind would dominate simply because they have the most damage-dealing potential, or that we wouldn't consider balancing class abilities in any way.

But we'll definitely keep your concerns in mind. Don't be afraid to let us know what you'd like to see... just keep in mind that we haven't really discussed any real facets of our system yet.

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For the record (in term of D&D), the wizard is not that strongth. The reason we see they think they are strong is because they CHEAT! The NPC's wizard just active a bunch of protective spell right out of the bag, which nomrally will take them several round to cast one by one.

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If you're referring to NWN specifically, the reason they do that is to simulate the fact that in most cases wizards would be buffed with spells to begin with (your own mage likely would be, before entering battle) and the NPC mages only did this if they already alerted to your presence.

Regardless, just because NWN did this does not mean that any other game needs to. Mages needing to buff before a battle is not a universal thing by any means.

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Actually I was refering to the way wizards are in BG, NWN is acceptable and less cheesy I think.

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Mmmm... as I recall, BG2 mages used contingencies, which were a legitimate part of the AD&D ruleset. Even a player mage could set them up. I think we still had them cheat on occasion as to how many spells NPC mages had in their contingency, but it was definitely a part of the system and allowed any mage with some foresight to prepare an instant defense.

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Your memory is correct. However the problem is just like you said, they have more spells and at a higher level in their contigency then dictated by the spell description, and it's cheating. It's like ... say, while they're all guns, however it's like giving one a Bar and one a Musket. Again, the problem is not the action, it's the way it happens.

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So. Your entire issue is not that BG2 had contingencies but that some of the NPC mages in BG2 (certainly not all) cheated by using more spells in their contingencies than they should have.

I am at a loss. How does this relate to DA? You don't want DA mages to cheat with their contingincies, should such a thing even exist? That's... a very specific request.

dialogue opts - ditch old #3 and add couple more
As was mentioned, ten responses is a bit unrealistic. Not only is that a lot of writing, how much are you really getting insofar as choices just by offering different ways of saying the same thing?

Not that having more meaningful choices isn't a good thing, but they have to be done economically or what you're asking for is a pipe dream.

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Time and budget constraints again?

Dialogue should be the last thing to get the shaft IMO. But then I forgot Bio were going for full VO this time.

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Full VO has nothing to do with it. Were you under the impression that dialogue is effortless and takes no time to write and implement? Dialogue is always going to take a great deal of time to write and is one of the main issues we deal with when creating a development schedule... and that's with us writing the amount of dialogue we do currently, never mind adding in numerous player responses to accomodate this plan for tone.

Think about it. It sounds fine when you think of one character having 10+ player response options on a single node to accomodate different tones... but think about every node in a typical conversation now. Now multiply that by the thousands of conversations we have in a typical project. That's a huge amount of writing, and if these player responses are at all meaningful and call on there being different responses from the NPC (as opposed to them all linking to the same line and the NPC ignoring whatever tone you're taking) then we've just exponentially increased the amount of writing overall.

The "dumb dialogue" responses that we removed after NWN alone represented a herculean amount of work. What do you think this would be?

I'm all for including more meaningful options, but the resulting effect on the volume of dialogue has to be considered carefully. Dialogue doesn't "get the shaft", schedule-wise... it's already a major part of production and if yet more work is going to be added in this area it certainly can't be done lightly.

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Here's something to consider. Bioware might take a lesson from Obsidian with the dialogue options they did in KotOR2. They usually offered about 4 or 5 dialogue options when in conversation with an NPC. Of course, several times these options led to the same response from the NPC; that is to be expected.

But it really helped with the game's immersion aspect, and gave the PC more opportunity to respond in the way he/she wanted his character to.....thus enhancing overall roleplay.

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I'll reserve my comments about hauling out "immersion" as a reason to do anything and instead ask what kinds of responses these 4 or 5 options were in Kotor2, generally? I haven't played it. Did they follow a general pattern or no?

And is this what you really want? Responses that are pure flavour, which lead to the same line from the NPC? Does this enhance the feeling of roleplaying? Because my impression was that we used to do this in the BG days and it was one of the more criticized aspects of dialogue there.

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What do they accomplish?

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Immersion, unless I miss my guess.

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I said "immersion" (and if that term offends you for some reason, I apologize,) because that is exactly what Obsidian achieved with the dialogue responses in KotOR2.

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The word does not offend me, but it's one that gets trotted out so often as a reason to include almost anything that it doesn't mean anything anymore, not to me as a developer trying to interpret what is being asked of us. Why should we include flying? Immersion. Why should we include giant-sized katanas? Immersion. Why should we include meaningless dialogue choices? Immersion. One may as well say "because I like it" at this point and it would have the same meaning insofar as something worthy of achieving.

But that's a seperate argument.

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When you ask me "Did they follow a pattern?" My reply is this: They gave the player more options to choose from instead of the usual three that were outlined above: Goodie-goodie good; (I'll go get it right away! Never fear!) apathetic neutral, (I don't care, go get it yourself) and crude, rude evil. (I'll slaughter all of you, you stupid %#@!)

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I disagree that those three are the only options we use. I know there are some places where that IS the case, but that's being exaggerated more than a little, here, especially with regards to the tone used.

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Instead, they gave the normal three I just decribed.... as well as some "mediums" in between. (More aggressive but not nessassarily cruel, or more firmly resolved without sounding fanatical or goodie-goodie.)

And when you asked me if I want "Pure Flavor", you seem to imply that this would be too much of a pain to include in Dragon Age. And I ask you; Why do you say that?

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I'm very much for offering the players different ways of speaking if the NPC is going to respond in kind. If all I'm doing is letting you pick the tone of your response and that has no effect on the NPC at all, then I consider it a pretty empty option and hardly "immersive" at all.

And even if I were to include more options for the player to choose his tone, and the NPC to respond to it so it's a meaningful option, all I'm suggesting is that it must be done economically and not frivolously as dialogue does not come cheap. I simply asked for clarification on what type of options you'd like to see, category-wise. Simply saying that one wants to see "more", "better" and even "medium" options doesn't say much to me, I'm afraid.

Another update plz!

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All the information Ninja Gaider spouts is typically useless, as is your Brenon. Leading me to the conclusion that you don't actually know anything.

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I'm not here to dispense information. If I give any at all, it's done incidentally.

Trying to taunt Brenon or I by suggesting that we don't actually know anything about our own project because you find any information we give too useless for you is a bit pointless... but nice try.

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But you don't have any proof that you do know anything. At which point your information is useless.

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You say that as if I or any other member of the development team had something we needed to proove. We're not trying to provide you any useful information, period. We're here to get your feedback and listen to your thoughts on what we should be doing... and this is not our job but, rather, something we elect to do because we think it is time well spent. Usually.

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Your opinions on the other hand, that's something I'd like to see more of. Not your opinion in particular Gaidillion, but opinions and comments are nice to read.

I'm particularly interested in Dev viewpoints in some of the topics raised on these forums. It would be nice to see some of the lines of thinking that are going on behind the scenes, even if we don't get to see what is actually going on behind the scenes. Consider it a psychological and theoretical analysis of the Bioware team for DA.

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Yet apparently sometimes when we do offer opinions they either get treated as incontrovertible fact... making us wary of saying anything so as not to confuse things... or they get called "useless" when we weren't out to provide solid information in the first place.

I hope you don't expect more of the dev team to come by here and offer their opinions when some people are this rude to us. If so, your estimation of our masochism is ridiculously high.

And it's "Gaider", if you please. Mr. Gaider to you.

Derek French, Technical Producer

Will Dragon Age be a Multiplayer game?
Its also very important to understand that localization of the game is handled by the publisher, who decides when and if a specific language will be done and released. None of what you describe in NWN had anything to do with BioWare. In terms of the Western Character Set languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) we have almost always released the patches for the game at the same time. Rarely has there been a delay.

Scott Meadows, Programmer

Will Dragon Age be a Multiplayer game?

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Well, I'm pretty sure that there might not be many DA servers, according to how the editor is going to be designed. I don't think you'll have to worry about not being able to join a lot of servers.

Off topic: In regards to the "American English", there are so many types "English" in the U.S., I don't think it's possible to have plain old "American English".

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Why do you say that?

From what I have seen and participated in this community as a player and my own server for a group of friends, anything is possible.

I am curious to hear your reasoning on this, how does the editor being designed affect how many servers there are?

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I don't know that there really is a correlation, but it wouldn't be shocking to see fewer servers running if there are fewer modules to run on them.

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I agree that their is no correlation.
I agree that their may well be less modules in total. But not as a result of an assumed complexity of a toolset. More as a result of more products offering toolsets and people finding their favorite and sticking with it.

But it is possible that DA will have the same amount of servers but more of them are running the same modules?

I just don't like people making assumptions about things that we haven't even discussed yet, like the design of the toolset.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Your expectations of Dragon Age

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I can say one other thing for certain, Bioware is in a state where they aren't designing so much on what they want to play as much as what the casual gamer wants to play.

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Whew, for a second there I thought I might have been working on a game I was interested in playing... thanks for clearing that up for me...

Just curious... why do you think that?

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I worded it badly, just take out play and think of it as a "want". Of course you may want to play it, but it will still contain differences that were made to appeal to the causal gamer. As a game developer grows these differences increase in number. At some point the differences eclipse the developer's wants.

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I don't think I entirely agree. There are definetly changes that are made to make a game more accessible, but does that necessarily preclude some depth to any systems that we create?

An example of a good accessible system, in my mind, would be one that was relatively easy to learn, but had many layers that got more complex the further you drilled down.

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now maybe bh is the mythical average gamer in the flesh...

*shrug*

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Maybe... I've yet to meet one... so I don't really have much to compare to.

Another update plz!
Depends on what you mean by 'update'. I'm not sure if it's apparent or not but there is a fairly slow leak of information around here... (it gets all over the rugs and causes quite a mess over time).

If you're talking about something a bit more 'official', generally those sorts of things are saved for events of some sort or another. Announcements, trade-shows... etc.

Anyways, hopefully that answered the question.

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Brenon Holmes:
"I'm not sure if it's apparent or not but there is a fairly slow leak of information around here...

It's somewhat apparent if board memebers leaping upon certain developer posts like great whites on a bleeding seal cub is any indication.

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Yeah, but it's hard to see anything with all the thrashing about and squealing...

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All the information Ninja Gaider spouts is typically useless, as is yours Brenon. Leading me to the conclusion that you don't actually know anything.

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Or... we might want to pace the rate at which we talk about features... and maybe because people have been clammering for data so much we've mentioned a few incidental things...

Or not... you could be totally right. In which case there isn't much of a point in me posting here... ne?

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*checks something*

Which is odd given that you're one of the Programmers who's more likely doing something at this stage (unless it's all still in the development stage, which would be unlikely if you plan to have something concrete to show next year at E3).

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I believe we mentioned before in another thread that we are currently in production. Pre-production was finished a fair while back.

[ August 21, 2005, 01:34: Message edited by: Eldular ]