Dragon Age Forum News (Sep. 20, 04)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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

Question about the setting/influences.

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In what degree will historical/fictional stereotypes/settings influence the Dragon Age setting?

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Quite a bit. That's a bit inescapable, however. There are things we've put in the setting which has prompted someone from QA to point out has a direct correlation in some popular fantasy setting... completely unintentional, but there it is.

Using historical inspiration is a bit more fun, with the added benefit that it's hard to claim that history is derivative.

Developer's Favorite Voice Actors and effects on a game

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Are the writers & visual artists working on any DA characters with a certain voice in mind? I mean, do you "hear" in your mind a certain actor/voice actor speaking while you work on a character's aesthetics or dialogue?

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Quite often, yes, but this is geared more towards celebrities. I might imagine the character I'm writing to talk like a famous actor from a certain movie... thought doubtless he's not available for VO work.

We don't tend to write them with particular voice actors in mind, however, but only because there are few that are famous... and voice actors tend to accomodate the role rather than vice-versa. We generally audition voice actors and try to find someone with a style of voice that matches closest to what we imagined and proceed from there.

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Quote: For example, was the character of Joneleth Irenicus in BG2 created with someone like David Warner's voice in mind? Or did everyone just happen to luck out with that wonderful character-voice match? The same goes for Minsc and Jim Cummings from the BG games.

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In both cases, the choice of voice actor came after the character was created. When I was told Irenicus would be voiced by David Warner, I was vaguely aware of who he was but didn't realize the good job he would do for Irenicus until we got the first run back from the studio.

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Quote: Do you developers have any voice actors that you especially like and make an effort to get for your games, where possible?

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A few. It depends on who's doing the voice over work, really. Only recently have we started doing it ourselves here in Edmonton.

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Quote: Lastly, if you don't mind sharing, who are your favorite voice actors from games/movies/etc?

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Personally I think Mark Hamill is an awesome voice actor, though we've never had him on one of our games. I would kill for the chance to have Jeremy Irons VO a villain role. There are a few local voice actors that rank as my favorites, probably because I've worked with them, but you wouldn't recognize them I'm certain.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Z Axis Really Necessary?
Hello again all, Yes, I did lock that last thread because it was too long, not because I disagreed or became annoyed.

Yes we do listen to the community. Not just by reading these forums, but also through polls, and unsolicited feedback from the consumers.

We take this information and compile a general direction and broad feature set (along with our own ideas of what we want to play as well.)

Regarding the Z-axis thing:

I still have not seen a good reason to include it. My job is to reduce risk on the project and that means balancing cost-benefit. a z-axis is not a required component to make our game. As I have mentioned earlier we're not making a platform jumping game, or a GTA type game. It is a story based CRPG. Meaning that there is a main plot the player needs to complete to finish the campaign. There will be side quests and other distractions if the player would like to explore. Now we can do that without a z-axis and simulate those situations within the existing engine.

And as far as just including it just so people making modules can make their worlds is not cost effective either.

I would like to mention that if DA does not sell well then it does not matter what sort of features we include in the toolset. If DA doesn't reach a large market, then it means that there are very few people available to be playing custom made modules, if any.

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... Shortsighted because having the game last and have a thriving community is a huge factor in the game's success. Especially with multiplayer gamers now outnumbering singleplayer only gamers. ...

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This is incorrect. The singleplayer experance is what drives sales.

I do believe (and there is no data on this btw) However, it's the multiplayer experience that keeps the game in the public eye, and promotes "buzz" about it which can lead to more sales.

We are considering this, and developing a good multiplayer feature. Again, unrestricted vertical movement is not needed for this. The more I read what people want to do with it the more It seems they want to create a "Realistic persistent world, like WOW, or AC." Is this true, or am I wrong?

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Especially with multiplayer gamers now outnumbering singleplayer only gamers.

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Wrong. Bioware has repeatedly stated that 70-80% of the sales of NWN and its expansion packs went to single-player campaign folks, not the multi-player crowd.

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Wrong, new studies show that gamers that play multiplayer in addition to single player outnumber their single playing-only counterparts.

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Studies like these showed that if a game had both single and multiplayer features, people would use them. They don't prove that they wouldn't buy the game if it didn't have one or the other.

More: I'm afraid I'm not convinced that making vertical movement is needed. so I'm going to lock this thread.

However, that does not mean we're closeing our minds on this issue. Nothing is written in stone in our development cycle and new information in the future could change our minds.

It becomes a standard CRPG feature when a competitor makes a game that uses it really effectively.
Design comes up with such a cool level design we need to add that feature to support it.
etc.

I don't want to give the impression this debate is over. I just think that we need to give it a rest right now, but can open it again down the road.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Concerning the TAB key

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As a DM, nothing irks me more than seeing players abuse the TAB key. In Neverwinter Nights, the TAB key grants players the ability to see in complete darkness and through walls. Not only that, as a "special ability," it may be used an unlimited number of times per day.

I was wondering if this "feature" would also be present in Dragon Age. Say it aint so.

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I'm fairly certain that a feature like this will be in DA - we don't want the old days of pixelhunting things on the screen back and it's not within our the definition of "fun to play" to have to hover your mouse over the whole screen to find the items that just splattered out of that monster.

There might be implementation differences (i.e. check line of sight) for this feature, maybe, playtesting will tell.

If Jesus came down to Bioware, things still wouldn't change!

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One question GZ if you're still reading this thread.

If you're on JE... why are you reading this forum and answering questions on it all the time?

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The question would be - why not?

It's not that there are virtual walls between our projects, you have lunch, exchange ideas and discuss all kind of things with people that work on all the other games we are developing here on a daily basis, so why not participate on the boards.

Or maybe I'm just here to get the latest info on a PC game I'm looking forward to play? Who knows

Plus, like Shayna said, Chris is ruling the Jade Empire boards with absolute power, so this board is a nice place to hang out and celebrate freedom of sp^H^H^H^H^H^H the existance of the benelovent Sr. Priestly.

"Harmonized" by Chris Priestly

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- By default I am more likely to click on posts made by certain people in the community that have been around for a while and from who I know their post are interesting and worth reading and I value their opinion. If you are new to the boards, your best bet to grab my attention is by making a topic title that is interesting and reflects the contents of the thread.
Example:
Bad: "Why flying doesn't suxxx"
Good: "What flying can offer for DA"

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Well suprise suprise, I just started a thread like that and it got locked!

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Which has nothing to do with me prefering speaking topic titles...

If there area already 5 active topics about flying,zaxis,etc on this board, adding a 6th isn't really helpful, regardless how nice the topic title is.

Graphic Engine
DA is not using the U3 engine. http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=26165

Z Axis Really Necessary?

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Especially with multiplayer gamers now outnumbering singleplayer only gamers.

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That's just plain wrong and pretty much invalidates the rest of your post.

We sell around 75-85% of our units to people who don't even touch multiplayer at all or play it a handful of times and then stop.

KotOR sold/sells exceptionally well and it wasn't multiplayer. As for acclaim, the game the #2 best ranked game ever released for the Xbox and #6 ranked PC game on gamerankings.com.

We are developing Jade Empire, which has no multiplayer component, so apparently we see a significant market there.

Even at the time DA is released, the vast majority of game copies will be sold to people playing singleplayer.

The multiplayer community is continually deceiving itself about it's size and importance because they form a pocket community among themselves, play with people inside that community that share the same interests and views and, more important, are more likely to post on internet boards than the non online part of our community/customerbase, which is the vast majority.

How often do you see people post on our boards that do not understand how other people could not like [PW|PVP|Multiplayer] and say "all my friends play [PWs|PVP|Multiplayer], why does BioWare neglegt us, we are the majority".

Newsflash - multiplayer is important to us (that's why our games have a multiplayer component), but it is not even close to the importance the single player campaign and associated features hold for our commerical and critical success.

Of course you are allowed to disbelieve us, claim that we are ignorant fools who have no idea what they are doing and how wrong numbers on this matter are.

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This didn't happen until recently, let me find the sources.

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You must mean these:
http://www.warhammeronline.com/
http://www.mythica.com/Default.htm?c00=1
Click Here
http://www.codemasters.com/dragonempires/

I could probably find a few more just from this year alone...

Excuse my sarcasm, but do you really think that we are making our decisions out of thin air and wouldn't have noticed a such a radical change in our market and adjusted accordingly?

Since you brought up that NPD study - keep in mind that our genre is RPGs, which are probably 13% of the market and have a radically different audience (in age, expectations, gaming behavior and hours spent) than, let's say FPS games. Let's put it this way - I prefer the data we get from sales, gathered by our master server and our market research teams over any generic questionaire sent by "email" to random gamers any time.

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No, I don't think that. However, I do think you guys are unecessarily ruling things out because of your previous bias towards blatantly ignoring anything anyone says that has merit in regards to multiplayer (excuse my sarcasm).

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If we would completely ignoring the benefits of multiplayer, there would be neither a multiplayer component or seperate multiplayer campaign for DA and we wouldn't continue to support the NWN community with server releases. I'd say we are giving the multiplayer community the treatment it deserves, if not more.

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True, but that's not what I said. I said merit in regards to multiplayer, not "benefits of multiplayer". Ideas which have merit in regards to multiplayer (and single player logevity) seem to be ignored because they are not specifically intended for official single player campaigns.

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Well, we are not at the point where anyone execept us could rule on the "ignored part" (after all, we haven't released a lot of information on DA yet) but they get lower priority than features than benefit singleplayer(~80%) and multiplayer (~20%) players - obviously.

More: Who said that? Especially DA with it's multiple background stories, etc should have a really good share of replayability.

For the record, I too prefer games that I can extend with new features and enjoy multiple times, and BioWare has a history of providing these kind of things (if possible - we are obviously enjoying our community and will support it with our upcoming games. I don't think we are going to drop our current level of community support with DA.

The BG series (no significant multiplayer component) sold about 5M units to date, from my point of view that's quite long lived (BG2 is still standing next to current top releases in our local Futureshop here).

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I would like to see a great game made so much better by the potential, but that is unlikely to happen.

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As said numerous, no countless, times before, that judgement call can not be made until we release more information on DA. Before that point, all is speculation about smoke and rumours.

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The BG series (no significant multiplayer component) sold about 5M units to date, from my point of view that's quite long lived (BG2 is still standing next to current top releases in our local Futureshop here).

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I swear, you say "multiplayer" around here and you are treated like a lunatic. Forget I even said anything about multiplayer, as this applies equally to single player. Inclusion of z-axis support would allow more creative extensibility for single play also.

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No contest here, I agree. The question we are discussing here for weeks now is whether or not the amount of creative extensibility gained by this move can offset the cuts that would have to be made on other ends to accommodate the new feature.

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The question we are discussing here for weeks now is whether or not the amount of creative extensibility gained by this move can offset the cuts that would have to be made on other ends to accommodate the new feature.

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Drum roll, please. And your personal conclusion regarding the above issue is...

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As darcy said, at this point there are no plans to include a pathable z-axis at thispoint, which does not inheritly make things like climbing, flying or jumping impossible. There have been multiple examples posted here on how all of these features could be done without the need for a pathable z-axis.

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How about swimming/diving? Is that possible without a z-axis? Nope. No tricks around that one. with?

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Really? I disagree, I can think of some slick solutions to this one.

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With that creative freedom, given months or years and thousands of people with lots of free time, how much extra content and depth will come of it?

Cuts would have to be made, but the near-endless amount of extra time that could be invested by modders would definitely IMHO offset this.

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And this relates to this topic how?

NWN had all this and it didn't have a pathable z-axis. In fact, a huge number of games get all this and the don't have swimming, flying and diving. The recipe to attract a post release community doesn't start or end with "z".

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From my perspective, so far, all I have heard are excuses.

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Nope, we actually gave you our point of view in this discussion. There is nothing to excuse here as we have to justify our decisions alone and are not required to explain or discuss them at all. Just the fact that you don't like the decision and the reasons we are basing it on doesn't make it an excuse (which would mean we have a different agenda).

Now what we can do is when people say "fly must be in the game because X", we can just say "sure" and ignore it, or we can have a honest discussion about that stuff around here, it's your choise.

As for the good old pathable z-axis question, if the question is "is it necessary", everyone has to make this decision on their own when they buy a game. We apparently think the answer is "no, not necessary" and have outlined our reasons why we think so.

It is your right to tell us that you think this decision is wrong and that we are ignorant in that regard, but remember: to make a decision like this you need access to material such as feature cost, scheduling, fields of expertise of your programmers, market data, etc.

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In answer to this question...for me, inclusion of a full functional z-axis would in my opinion make a more believable, immersive world in which to adventure. Whether thats multi-player or single player. I don't play in persistent worlds, so for me it would mainly be singleplayer.

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As said before, I completely agree with that. Many features can make the world more immersive and believeable, some of them will be in DA, others not (time will tell which). Ultimately it's all coming down to the question "how much does this feature add" taking things like "how much does it take away", "how much work does it generate" and "do we need it" and "what do our fans expect" into account.

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Also, you have to take into account that not only will it make the game more immersive, but it will allow modders to make the game more immersive, and give them more freedom to work with the game.

So, here is what a z-axis would add:

Much more immersion in the game.
Much more ability to add to the game (swimming, flying, etc. whatever).
More choices for level design, content design etc.

The list goes on, someone please add to it.

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Sure, that's all things we have taken into account - the decision for now was still "there are no plans to include a pathable z-axis". Their importance is weighted and a decision is made based on all the pros and cons of this issue.

It's not that such decisions are made without a lot of discussion here - as soon as you see something like a decision published on these boards, you should assume that the matter has been discussed quite a lot (including arguments fetched from the boards - that's what they are for) and that it will not be easy to change this decision from this point on.

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I think saying "Do we need it?" is rather ridiculous, as you definitely do not need 1 million polygon character models (or whatever it was that was claimed by previews etc.), you don't need a great many things.

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Why is that question ridiculous?

It would be ridiculous if we didn't ask this question, it needs to be asked for most features in a game, and frankly, if it takes a very high polycount (or other means) to be competitive on the market in the timeframe DA is being released, it can even be answered with yes.

Among very few other things, competitive graphics is a must for any game you want to release and sell reasonably well - but we all have seen with NWN that "competitive" can be a very vague term.

As for the whole polygons thing - how many polygons a character model has before normal map generation isn't really interesting a lot, you would have to ask the press why they even report this. Probably they think a million is a cool number to throw around.

Possibility of a Customizable Overland Map
I think we all like overland maps quite a bit - Jade is going to have one, for DA, I don't know, but I think it's up for discussion.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

If Jesus came down to Bioware, things still wouldn't change!

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Okay, here is another example. Freedom Force.

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Which did not have a true 3d system, either.

It had 2 X-Y planes, with the ability to switch between them.

Try again, Visc.

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Curious... what did people think about that as a system for flight?

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So, you mean a minimalistic way of flying? Like you can ccontrol speed and direction, but you can't interact with other flying creatures/players or things on the ground?

Hmm, would be a nice effect, but I'm afraid that's all it would be.

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No... I mean like they did it in Freedom Force. You could "fly", change direction, attack other flying enemies, shoot ranged attacks at ground creatures... etc...

Your height was a static distance above the ground plane... so if you flew over a hill your flight elevation would rise as well...

 

What kind of engine are we looking at here? If I read some threads correctly it's a bit like BG and ToEE right?

Why are they messing with that z-axis then. Flying is nice and all but I didn't miss it in either above mentioned games. The only game with flying I like is Might and Magic.

 

Well, the reason they are talking about it is because of flying creatures, not necessarily flying players . Besides, my guess is, since this will be a 3D engine, that the camera angle and zoom won't be as static as in the ie games. You will probably get a fully autonomous positional camera, which would be really cool. What they are discussing is if they need to add absolute height instead of working around the problem with relative heights. One thing that would be easier to implement would be flying in a straigth line, instead of your airborne path still following the relief of the terrain, like it currently is in nwn.