Dragon Age Forum News (Sep. 22, 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

Origin Stories we’d like to see
Just a note: none of the origin stories force you to be evil or act a certain way. If you're a dwarven prince, it's up to you to define what kind of dwarven prince you are. Whether you're an evil, heartless bastard or a good-hearted pious type is up to you and the people in your origin will respond to you as if you've always been that way.

Derek French, Technical Producer

Lets talk about rules

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Yes I know there is a new one my question is the new one already designed past the point of where discussion would be useless.

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There is no point such as this. All portions will be subjected to playtesting and a certain amount of balancing and such. It may even carry on beyond ship as their is a multiplay component. Now, as to whether anyone is ready to discuss the rules at this time, that is another issue...

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Lets talk about rules
the fact that there is a new ruleset is set into stone yes - we wanted to have a ruleset created specifically for a BioWare CRPG this time - not a licensed ruleset that was originally written for PnP.

More:

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How can do more than discuss topics like magic, rest etc? If you don't know basic features of the ruleset, you can't lay out a detailed suggestion within context.

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True. I think at this point suggestions/discussions like "critical hits should be in the combat ruleset" or "would it be possible to have location based damage in the combat systems" or "I hate mana based magic because..." are good topics as they might bring up things that would be nice to add, ideas, etc.

Later, when more about the ruleset is known, more precise discussion about how certain rules will work should be possible.

An easier toolset
I wouldn't count on the Toolset to have a significantly lower entry level of the NWN Toolset, for it's power the NWN toolset was already quite easy to use and I think the trend for DA is more toward "powerful" than easy. Should be easier to use than UnrealEdit however

More:

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Then there are the thousands of calls to "sleep (100)" in the new toolset that I will remove after pretending to slave over the code for a month straight just to get a nice fat bonus for improving designer productivity and saving the project. WHOOPS, did I say that out loud?

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Someone already tried that. He's burried in the basement next to those pesky gnomes Trent put out of their misery.

Critical hits

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Just a quick question... what are people's thoughts on rules that don't work both ways (when looking at players and NPC's). ie: Just an example... critical hits that only worked *for* the player...

NOTE: As usual, none of the above is indicative of anything that may or may not be in Dragon Age... just discussion.

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Disgusting. I hate it when computer games use rules that don't work the same for NPCs and players. It makes it less realistic, and makes me more aware of the developer trying to "mould" the world, thus lowering the chance of drawing me into the game.

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To be blunt: If a monster splatters into 100 pieces with one single critical hit, that's fun. If the player splatters in 100 pieces because of a single critical hit by a lowly monster and the game is over (not talking about bosses here - I'm fine with a boss being really bad), it's not fun.

If you paralyze a monster and it stands 60 seconds as a statue before it can reengage, that's fun. If you take control from the player for 60 secs, it's not so fun (but may not be so bad in DA as you will have multiple party members to control). I'm sure some people will remember the annoying dragon fear on the Dracolich in HotU for this case.

A player character is just a different entity in the game (compared to the lowly minion monsters), and treating him completely the same as the monster can lead to serious frustration for the person behind the keyboard. I agree that the rules used for both cases should feel consistent and not too different however.

In my opinion, the formula should be Gamplay/Fun > Realism for RPGS, through for 'medival fantasy life sim 1.0' I could see different priorities. Maybe a "Hardcore/Masochist" difficulty setting could help

More: My definition of monster in this case includes non player characters. The "special" rule would apply for AnyOne vs. PC - it doesn't really matter what non player controlled creatures do to each other, so they can splatter each other using the same rules all the time.

The problematic aspect of "realism" I was talking about is applying certain status effects / instant death on to the PC, as the player experiences a chunky instant death by the minion next door or 60 seconds inability to do anything as anything but fun while the computer doesn't really care about fun at all.

More: Another example for asymetrical effects would be Critical hits that sever limbs. Doing them for monsters is fine, but most people would reload the game if it happens to the player (unless there's a cheap way of reattaching them, which would make the whole thing kind of lame and still would leave you with a lot of problems, such as cutscenes where the player is supposed to pick up something with his arm, cutscenes where the player would be limping on one leg and throw the timing off, etc).

The question would be - do you think it would be worthwile to have such effects in the game if they only affect the "opposing" faction and not the player/party (for the reasons listed above)?

Tim Smith, Tools Programmer

An easier toolset
It is very hard to measure how easy a toolset is to use just based on "ease of use". You have to consider the content that it is trying to generate. Most of the time you even have to break the toolsets down into independent functions in order to just make a fair comparison between different toolsets.

For example, back in the old days of Quake you could compare id's Quake editor with the other toolsets such as Worldcraft, QERadient or Quark. Since all those toolsets where designed to generate the same basic content it is very easy to compare them and say which one of better as far as ease of use.

But how do you compare QERadient with NWN Toolset? You really can't. They are two totally different pieces of software trying to generate game content on two totally different levels. Both scripting and level design in Quake is hard and involved. The scripting wasn't really scripting but the programming of the C/C++ DLL. The level building was all about placing cubes and complex 3d objects in your level while making sure faces were all correct to get the layout you wanted. This is all hard stuff to do but very powerful.

Now take a look at NWN. You have a level builder based on tiles that make it very easy to create a level quickly. However, you can quickly run into the limits of the system. It takes really talented people doing crazy things (stares at the HotU designers) to really blow your socks off in NWN's tile system. With scripting, it isn't near as hard to program in as C or C++ and the compiler and editor are included in the toolset. Thus it is much easier to start scripting. The DungeonSiege editor is probably the best editor to compare to the NWN Toolset. They where both trying to solve some of the same problems in the same ways.

So what are we doing in DA? Well, usability is very high on my list along with performance. Just today Don was giving me a hard time about trying to shave a few seconds off an operation that is only taking eight seconds. We are also concerned about such things as data quality to help make sure we aren't breaking the game with bad designer data during development. As others have mentioned, what we are doing differently from NWN is not sacrificing our artists and designers to the gods of "ease of content creation". We want to give them a toolset that provides them with more power to tell a story the way they see fit. However, this doesn't mean the toolset has to be hard to use. "Ease of content creation" is different than "ease of use". You can often hear me in the halls of BioWare whining about things such as "oh yeah, to do that you have to right click on the object while holding the shift key, but only on the second Tuesday of the month." That is an usability issue which when corrected doesn't mean the content is easier to produce, it means that by the end of the day the designers aren't trying to think of new ways to end their lives so they don't have to spend another day with a toolset they feel is adding more than it is saving.

Then there are the thousands of calls to "sleep (100)" in the new toolset that I will remove after pretending to slave over the code for a month straight just to get a nice fat bonus for improving designer productivity and saving the project.

WHOOPS, did I say that out loud?

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Critical hits
Just a quick question... what are people's thoughts on rules that don't work both ways (when looking at players and NPC's). ie: Just an example... critical hits that only worked *for* the player...

NOTE: As usual, none of the above is indicative of anything that may or may not be in Dragon Age... just discussion.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

Bioware: Why console games?

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I know its all about money, but why not for PC also? I see a link in Bioware Games for a New Project: Console. I would love to buy all your PC games, so why not develop them for the PC also?

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Um... Dragon Age is for PC.

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Quote: First, I though it was just about Jade, and that Microsoft XBOX deal. Why didn't you work a deal with microsoft, to develop Jade for PC also, and whats up with the New Project?

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Any kind of "conspiracy" you perceive is strictly in your own mind. Jade Empire is being released for XBox, Dragon Age is PC, and we haven't announced Super Secret Project D-Coma Manfred Herakles Azure 7 Omicron yet.

I fail to see the problem here.

Bioware using Unreal Engine 3

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Trust it to Bioware to do 'mystery projects' and leave us pitiful fans drooling in anticipation...

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Everyone does mystery projects. It's the nature of the beast called marketing.

But I don't think anyone has cooler unofficial names for their secret projects than we do. Secret Project Halibut Perestroika Dodecahedron Grey B-12 Lambda Umbrella is going to be very cool.

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The Unreal 3 engine game is for consoles only?!

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Nothing's been announced yet.

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Quote: curse you, BioWare...

(not really, I would never want to curse one of my very favorite developing studios)

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Why not? I want to curse us all the time, for making games that people get so very engrossed in that they lose a lot of time.

James Henley, Technical Designer

If Jesus came down to Bioware, things still wouldn't change!
For as many people as there are that play multiplayer games, it's actually still a much smaller grouping than the people that play single player ones. It's a hard thing to picture, isn't it? I know it was for me, until I actually considered things like Final Fantasy; never any multiplayer capacity (unless you count handing the controller over to your friend to take turns at a mini-game) but millions upon millions of copies sold.

Are we abandoning multiplayer RPGs? Not even remotely, but it is a truth that there are more people playing alone than with others, and we have to keep them in mind as well. You can't cater to both groups simultaneously, unfortunately, so not everyone will be happy with every decision made.

The bottom line, though, is that we still intend to make a great game. Will it have all sorts of special, persistent world oriented features? That remains to be seen.

Origin Stories we’d like to see
It all comes down to balancing two of the most important factors (in my own, humble opinion) in a roleplaying game:

1) The capacity to customize and tailor your character to suit your tastes.

2) Having the character still tied deeply into the story, rather than feeling like you dress up a dummy and slot it into a generic "hero" slot in the game.

It's not a particularly easy thing to balance, overall.