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Dragon Age Forum News

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Jul 29, 2004.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Here are today's BioWare 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

    In the interest of style

    created and implemented largely by a person who had a vision and a passion and the will to succeed
    Now I've never heard Mark Darrah described quite that way before. I don't really know what to say about that. I certainly hope you're not suggesting that we should all spend our free time putting secret code in the game because we think it's cool. That... would not go over well, I think.

    Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

    These things Id like to see that werent in NWN
    We are trying to take the experience we have from our past games to create Dragon Age. We have tried out a few things along the way and seen what the reaction was to them. For example people seemed to like a party system (even with three people max) over a solo or solo with henchman type system. While we have not made calls on specifics yet we are certainly keeping all this experience in the back of head during the design and concept stage.

    Please, let's not screw the rogues this time
    I love Rogues as well so I'm hoping they are cool in Dragon Age. It has been said however that this is not D&D and not based on any d20 system. I have not seen what they are creating for rules but rest assured they will be doing the game balancing with all the occupations/classes before final calls are made.

    Remember your roots | Why NWN failed us
    I would not rely too heavily on the E3 demo material as a game that is barely out of concept art (and it is not) would not have any sort of actual gameplay in a demo. It was more of a tech demo to show off some of the tech ideas and effects we are developing for what will become Dragon Age. This many years out I'm surprised they even wanted to put some kind of demo together. I guess that will always have more impact then still pictures for the press.

    Georg Zoeller, Designer

    Seemless Area Transitions and Multiple Servers

    If you've never gotten a good-sized group of people together and played through BG2 or something than you're really missing out on some fun... when you play singleplayer or even internet multiplayer, theres just not that social dynamic... theres something missing
    whohoo, 6 people crazy on the pause button

    Remember your roots | Why NWN failed us

    5. Content editing software was, how shall I put this? Let's just say it didn't establish a high water mark for user friendliness, and leave it at that.
    That's an interesting thing ... can you give an example of a userfriendly toolset out there. I found NWN had by far the most intuitive and easiest to use tools for the level of power it offered of all games I tried editing on (Unlimited Adventures, Doom, Build Engine, Vampire:Vtm, Morrowind, Halflife ) ?

    Brenon Holmes, Programmer

    Ranged "misses"

    Interesting thread The idea came while typing the response in the other thread. It was based on ideas from the now old archery topic and the idea for showing the area of effect for spells like fireball. I really like showing area of effects for the magic spells and for granade type weapons, but I think the more generalized uses you have for a system, the more likely it is to be implemented.
    Neat idea . We'll make a note of it. If we did something like this though, it'd probably have to be an option as I'm sure some folks probably wouldn't appreciate the visual 'clutter'... but, neat idea.

    Gameplay Mechanics: Comp vs PC

    What if...When opening a lock (or disarming a trap) a simple mini-game appeared for example Rock-Paper-Scissors. The difficulty of the lock would be the number of hands required to win where the skill of the character would be the amount of Rock's, Paper's and Scissors' the player had to use within the game.

    Case 1 - Character has low skill vs. a normal lock.
    The player would have 1r, 1p, 1s and the computer would have 1r, 1p, 1s. Best of 3 would win the game. In this case the player would have an even chance in defeating the mini-game and getting success.

    Case 2 - Character has moderate skill vs. a normal lock.
    The player would have 2r, 2p, 2s and the computer would have 1r, 1p, 1s again best of 3 wins the game. Here the player would win the game most of the time.

    Case 3 - Character has low skill vs. a difficult lock.
    The player would have 1r, 1p, 1s and the computer would have 2r, 2p, 2s again best of 3 wins the game. Here the player would have a hard time beating the game, but it would be possible.

    A system like this could be developed where the difficulty of the game is weighted by the skill of the character against the difficulty of the task. I'm also sure that if such a system were devloped by BioWare then it would be alot more interesting than R-S-P
    It depends... originally in NWN, we had the timer on lockpicking fairly high... I think it was around two or three rounds or something like that.

    The second people started testing it, we had to modify the number down as it was too boring just watching a bar moving.

    I understand where the original poster is coming from... interactivity is always a good thing (tm). However as was mentioned, any systems that rely on rules shouldn't depend more on player skill (manual reflexes, coordination) than they do on character skill... this is a rules based game after all. Anything that relates to the rules should be deterministic. Given the same parameters, you should get exactly the same results every time.

    Additionally, if you were looking to have a different system (perhaps a bit more interactive) you again have to be very careful you don't fall into the same trap of monotony.

    Sure it might be fun the first few times you need to crack open a safe to twiddle your lockpicks and gadgets about, nudging tumblers in the lock... what about after the 50th time? 100th time? etc... (NOTE: I'm not saying that a progress bar is any better, mind you... )

    Whatever we end up having, I can guarantee that it will not be a barrier to play... the actual act of picking a lock should be relatively quick, regardless of 'player skill'. As to whether it's a progress bar, or something else... well, that remains to be seen. Given the above parameters, what would you want?

    (For the record, I do enjoy the Thief series... but they're quite a different style of game).

    More:
    Brenon, Not sure if you were typing while I was posting but I think i answered your question just above.

    I'm just trying to come up with something innovative. I do understand why you Bioware constructed NWN the way it did, but that doesn't mean you just should just rehash the system you had. I am starting to think that DA will feel alot like a prettier NWN...is that good or bad I don't know.
    I think so... either that or I'm a lot more tired than I thought...

    No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with new thoughts on the ways systems should work. We do actually get a fair number of really good sugestions from discussions here on the forums... additionally, we are interested in doing things differently - if there's a benefit to it. After all, if it isn't broken...

    Just a guess here, but I'm pretty sure we won't be going with a NWN system for lockpicking. Most likely it'll end up being something else... as you say, the progress bar is kind of boring...

    Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

    First person available or dont make it

    Modding DA into a survival horror mod, maybe mostly non-combat, through the use of user-created content. Think "mod" as in "modification" rather than "module." Its kinda hard to scare the bejeezes outa somebody if they have the perspective of an omnipresent floating camera =)
    Really? No one was scared by the Resident Evil or Silent Hill games? What about Eternal Darkness? I, for one, was totally creeped out by those games, even though all three were third-person games. Granted, i may be just a scaredy-cat.

    suggestions for new races in game- devs comment??

    I want some Truely Unique Races, unique ones. at least one.

    You know I was watching Star Trek yesterday, and I saw all these species that were supposed to have evolved on different planets millions of lightyears away from us and yet they end up, not only looking like us but also acting like us, their cultures are so cliche, it's like they spun the globe and smacked a finger down, then they chose a random period in time and said "Thats a Vulcan" or some such, For once I'd like to see a race that's truely unique, something very Alien, not just non-western, I want alien. Real Alien.
    This has to do with guys in make-up or guys in suits are much cheaper and faster to create and film for a weekly television series than animatronics or CG.

    Also, audiences are more sympathetic toward aliens they can identify with, whether it be culturally, physically or what have you. A humanoid alien will automatically connect better with an audience than a non-humanoid one.

    A truly unique, completely alien race would work well as the antagonist, or as a one-off, but not as a regular cast. Look at video games: how many xorn-like creatures have you seen as playable races? How many amorphous blobs are henchmen or associates? Heck, how many tentacled masses run stores?

    I can think of one regular playable race that was very unlike a human: the thri-kreen from Dark Sun. Multi-limbed insectoids on a desert world--that's neat, but not something one can do with any frequency. And it doesn't work as well as you'd think. Once the "hey neat!" factor wears off (and it will do so quickly), people will find it harder and harder to be sympathetic to it.

    More :
    As for wierd monstrous races, my vote goes to snake people. Upper body humanoid, lower body long snake, like the Tha'roon from the old war wind games. They could have a slow forward running (slithering?) speed, but great side to side dodges and attacks. Also would be good swimmers and virtually impossible to knockdown. Length of about 20' with the front 6' usually held off the ground so that they look about human height.
    I am also a big fan of snake people. The yuan-ti from D&D, the Sluissi from the Star Wars, the naga from Legend of the 5 Rings, that snake demon from Season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...

    More:
    Snake people are indeed cool. But not as cool as the previously mentioned Biowarian Bat People with excessive body-hair and webbed hands and feet. Oh and they smell like wet carpet.
    Oh, you're talking about Jay Watamaniuk. Yeah, he gets kinda warm in the summer, but as long as he doesn't go out in the rain, the smell isn't overpowering.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
    chevalier, Jul 29, 2004
    #1
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