Dragon Age Forum News

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by chevalier)

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.

Scott Greig, DA Project Director/Producer

Riddle me this my friend
Here let me toss a little gas on the fire.

Why are riddles and puzzles good? Answer: They make the player feel good when they figure them out. In other words they provide a challenge for the player. No challenge, no fun.

Why are we seeing less and less riddles and puzzles in games? Answer: Because of the Internet No seriously, puzzles tend to be binary progress gates. That is, player either solve them and advance or they fail and are blocked.

In the olden days (you know, before the Internet), puzzle games were one of the most popular genres. When you were stuck, and I can't think of a single game that didn't I didn't get stuck in, you either kept banging your head on it, went to the store and paid good money for the hint book, or got a friend to help you. Some of my favorite memories of playing puzzle games were actual memories of a group of my friends sitting around the computer shouting out suggestions on how to proceed.

Now, if the average player is stumped by a puzzle, the solution is only a couple clicks away. I don't know of very many people who are willing to hammer away at a puzzle when they can simply pop over to a faq site and get the answer. I certainly do it, and I used to love puzzle games.

The net effect of this is to practically kill the effective challenge of any puzzle. If you make the puzzle too easy, everyone gets it and they think "what a dumb puzzle, that was too easy". Any harder and most people just look up the solution.

So, if you are wondering if there will be any puzzles in Dragon Age, then the answer is there will be some, but they will make sense in context of the story, rather than being added just as a challenge.

David Gaider, Designer

Gnome!

---------------
But when I discovered that all DnD gnomes were basically like Jan, it seemed a bit, well, lame.
---------------

Err... all DnD gnomes aren't like Jan. That's a trait that's peculiar to the Jansen family, more or less, I think. (Did we do any non-Jansens like this, too? I can't remember now.) I just don't think we had very many gnome characters, period.

At any rate, the DA races are pretty broad in their character. Not a lot of steretyping going on, though I guess they do have their common archetypes... but playing against archetype sometimes is the fun part.

Hey, we don't even have a female elf as a romance this time.

Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?

---------------
Is it in fact more time consuming and resource draining to create a new rule system from scratch than it is to try and implement an existing pnp rule into a playable computer game?
---------------

Mmmm... you end up focusing your efforts on different things. You end up doing a lot more tweaking and testing, but are also free to change what doesn't work, and you end up spending a LOT less time figuring out how to implement something that needs a human mind to adjudicate but perhaps MORE time coming up with something that works acceptably in the first place but that still fits into our world and does what we want it to with gameplay.

I don't know how much time we save vs. how much time we expected to save, but it's certainly less frustrating work and a lot more fun.

And with regards to how much the rules system fettered the world creation and so forth... not as much as you might think. Occasionally someone would come to me with some rules issue that didn't fit into the world story and I would go "bleerrgggh" and James would waggle his finger at me for not reading the rules doc closely enough, but then we would haggle it out and come up with a compromise that was sometimes more exciting than I had anticipated. One of the classes was like that. It wasn't in the world and I was told to fit it in... and after hashing it back and forth for a while, suddenly this class became very exciting. It was a rather cool process. The biggest argument we had was how to retain the fun of playing a magic-using class vs. the restrictions placed on magic vis a vis the setting, and when we finally settled on it in the end it actually was a better story mechanism than I had hoped for.

The ability to just go in and make far-reaching changes when they are called for is a power that is not to be underestimated. I am not used to working like that (go figure) and whenever the possibility of doing so comes up it is a bit of a surprise (oh, yeah... I guess we CAN do that...) and has so far worked out positively.

More details to come, I guess.

More: I think what Georg is objecting to (though I may be wrong) is your choice of wording, Gromnir. You tend to come across as being more negative than you really intend to, and I only know that from long association with you.

"Repackaged" might be interpreted as it being a thinly-veiled copy of the original, which I don't think KotOR is either. But if you mean "repackaged" as in we very deliberately used many key elements from the original movies that made it "Star Wars" (including plot elements), then I would say you are correct. And I know you agree that was one of KotOR's strengths.

What that has to do with DA, however, I'm not sure. I guess one could think that we might try to repackage D&D into another form (with either definition), and I would say that's much less necessary than when one is trying to recall the essence of a movie setting & story. Naturally there are elements of fantasy which we intend to specifically use... some of which will, no doubt, draw the groans of some folks who are tired of/who dislike fantasy but who would be missing the point as much as those who criticised what they considered KotOR's derisiveness. What fantasy is, however, is much less specific that what Star Wars is. We have a lot more freedom.

How much of that freedom we intend to use is, however, a topic that we can't get into yet. Not for a while, yet, I would suspect. So while you can guess at what you think is likely you're going to have to be satisfied with saying your yeas and nays until we're ready.

Now take off your pants for me.
And, just to play devil's advocate:

If this sort of thing isn't put in, what exactly have we lost, game-wise?

Now, granted, some folks might have a different type of game in mind when they're picturing this, but I'm curious as to whether this level of visual customization has any actual merit beyond being "neat"?

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Random maps/terrain

---------------
Ugh, the D-word !!!

DA will not be organized in maps. It will be a 'one level world' like Morrowind.
---------------

Unfounded rumour

Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?

---------------
why re-invent the wheel world wise... the answer is simple, freedom.
---------------

You forgot another answer: fun. What's more fun than spending your time in a meeting, trying to convince Dave that there is absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be 2 meter, fur covered, ball shaped creatures called Gnarves in your world...

More:
---------------
not having to ask for wotc permission is a nice advantage, but bio already imposed lots o' limits on their own freedom. is gonna be a traditional fantasy game with starting stories based on traditional fantasy archetypes. you got classic fantasy races, and we has seen what appears to be traditional crpg fighters and mages in screenies.
---------------

I have to disagree. The problem of freedom is *not* that you can't ask the license holder if you can introduce non-high-fantasy-elements - because if you want to create a high fantasy game, this question doesn't come up. The problems are on the level of being able to make permanent changes to the world use/kill/etc important characters, come up with your own locations/religions/gods/political factions, etc, etc without having to go through a longwinded approval process or even just canning the idea completely. (Don't try to read anything from this for DA, you will most likely be wrong).

Also, if we *wanted to*, there could be a major high tech alien invasion in the world of DA at any point, the freedom is there, but the question if it makes sense to use that freedom still remains. A good example for a game where introducing elements from another setting wasn't a really good idea is Silent Storm. Excellent game if you love turnbased combat, nicely done WWII setting and then suddenly ... . A lot of players, including myself were turned off by the impact their change in setting had (not only on the atmosphere but also on the gameplay).

Same with classes and races - sure we could do a classless system, and sure this was talked about in the early design meetings, but if there is a consensus that a class based system is the way we want to go for a variety of reasons, then not making the game a classless one is not a limitation to our freedom, it's just a design decision about the game we want to pursue.

So, the limits you are talking about might just be common sense (for a company publishing a game targeting a certain audience).

As for the issue being money - The initial investment for creating your own IP and setting is quite hefty, not only for establishing the new IP's name out there, but also for putting a lot of manpower into researching new systems, creating a background, new language(s), etc, etc. Sure, if it flies the reward is better and you get the freedom of creating action figures of your favourite character (i.e. a life-sized Gnarf for your living room!), etc, etc, but creating a game based on a license is probably cheaper and less risky than creating your own IP (at the expense of artistic freedom...).

More:
---------------
"Also, if we *wanted to*, there could be a major high tech alien invasion in the world of DA at any point, the freedom is there,"

sure you can... but you ain't, so your example is pointless.
---------------

Every decision you make limits the things you can do later, that's the nature of decisions. Without decisions your work will never be finished and end up as a huge pile of features without direction.

Not making use of your freedom to do stuff (because you don't like the idea, think it's stupid, whatever) doesn't mean you don't have the freedom to do it. Otherwise it wouldn't be freedom. So rather than seeing the "limitations" in the decisions we make (high fantasy, classbased system), we see the new options we have available for making the best classbased fantasy game. Since we decided for a classbased system, it obviously means we like this kind of system and don't want to do a classless one at this time.

Even if you make the decision for a class based system at one point and then get regrets about it, you could still later on soften the implications of a class based system by allowing multi classing, but then again you could have decided for a classless system in the first place

More:
---------------
explain how you will, but if you want freedom simply to do same old stuff then we ain't really moved by the pleas for liberty. claiming that you can do so much more with own world, and then doing stuff that is pretty much the traditional fantasy setting and characters makes us look at such statements with suspicion... changing the incidental details is hardly noteworthy.
---------------

I think you are just expecting us to do something different and are somewhat disappointed

We got the freedom to do the game we want to do, with the rules we want to do and the setting we want it to be - free of licensing issues and thirdparty approval processes. Is it so hard to understand that we could want to do this game the way it is?

By saying we are limiting us / restricting ourselves by selecting the setting/system we want for DA, you imply that another another setting/system would have been a better choise and express your disappointment that we chose the setting/system we did (which you, granted, don't know a lot about) - which makes the whole freedom/limit debate quite subjective and pointless - because we are talking about the absense of restrictions that come from licensing while you are talking about all the opportunities we are possibly missing because we are not throwing everything our games stand for overboard and start tabula rasa. You can assume a lot of that was discussed at early design meetings at BioWare.

More: Again...some people actually LIKE some aspects of the 'old stuff'. If you like them, than what is the point of changing them, unless you believe in change for the sake of change. They have the freedom to change what they want to change , and the freedom to retain what they want to retain . Whether you or I agree or disagree with those choices isn't really the issue.

(Just FYI, it is comments like the above which make me perceive you as pushing for 'change for the sake of change', a charge you felt unwarranted when I made it.)

When Carl said "SOME" people, he probably meant "most of our target audience", which is something I won't contest.

That still doesn't mean DA isn't going to be radically different from other fantasy settings in certain aspects of the gameplay/setting, but it does mean that any design decision that touches core elements of BioWare gameplay will be evaluated carefully because in the end we are catering our target audience, which the "why not change everything completely" kind of player might or might not be part of (as you can't please everyone).

A common example might be Morrowind - I had several people telling me that they couldn't get into the game because the world was just a bit too exotic for their opinion, lots of strange bug like creatures and strange names they couldn't remember later. While I personally didn't found that (except for the name problem, ugh), I can certainly understand that point of view.

---------------
btw, how many times has we heard developers say that it is sooooooooo much easier and less time consuming to create a new computer rule system as 'posed to trying to force d&d rules into a computer? raise hands if you has heard such?
---------------

Cheap evasive maneuver Gromnir

Just because a new system is classbased doesn't mean it is D&D or has to share elements or rules from D&D and you know that. i.e. Ultima IX, Silent Storm or City of Heroes is classbased and they don't suffer from any baggage attached to the D&D rules.

I guess this discussion has become so thin, it's time to end my involvement in this serious exchange of thoughts.

More: And just to make this clear, this does not mean that we are never going to make a radically different game at some point in the future - it just means that if you are looking for something radically different (i.e. turn based, classless RPG about spacefaring baby squirrels in a postnuclear world combating each other with insane superpowers while saving the universe from the wrath of an evil mutant squirrel) you will not find it in DA.

More:
---------------
a diplomatic response from gaider. you trying to get james ohlen's job? no doubt once da is finished we will get a much more definitive response.

am just recalling how da has been presented as, and this is a quote, "revolutionary." we not mind if it ain't, but so far there seems to be very little we might identify as revolutionary... and various developers seems to be noting that if people is expecting revolutionary then they is waiting for the wrong game.

is "revolutionary" just advertising puffery?

no big deal. kotor gave star wars fans what they wanted by repackaging the original star wars films/story. perhaps bio will try same thing with its fans... repackage bg1. then again, maybe bio does something completely different. time will tell.
---------------

Hrhr, if KotOR was a repackaged SW story for you, I'm sure you will find something that you can claim the DA story has been repackaged from.

More:
---------------
this is surreal. hey dave, wanna explain to geo all the parallels you had 'tween kotor and the original star wars trilogy? bah.
---------------

Let me see. Ah yea, Darth Malak was your father and, oh well, right, I forgot about that, Bastila was your sister. Oh wait, that would be kind of arkward, not to say violating certain laws in certain countries.

I think you are mistaking making a story set and fit in the StarWars universe (and critically acclaimed and awarded with tons of awards, including the IDGA Excellence in Writing award for Dave & Co) with an old story repackaged. If you buy SW, you expect a certain kind of setting, atmosphere and story elements, and that's what you should get when buying a game. Signature Elements != Story Repackaged. But hey, if that's your definition of repackaged, as said, I'm sure you will find some elements of DA in Monty Python's Quest for the Grail or Attack of the killer Tomatoes.

But as already noticed before, the whole thread is running thin now.

Bah

More: Please take your time to actually read my posts. I'm not assuming anything, I'm merily pointing out that Signature Elements are != repackaging. Calling that a knee-jerk reaction is hardly approriate.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Combat that looks like Combat

---------------
There shouldn't be "misses" there should be blocking dodging. How do you show a guy dodging/blocking multiple strikes simultanously or blocking one while getting hit by another? hmmm, maybe make it so it determines before the animations take place based off stats which order the attacks will come in and have everybody perform one at a time.
---------------

But then it's arbitrary, not rules based. That also means that if I get one attack per round (using DnD as a convention for this discussion) then my action can be delayed for an incredibly long time if I'm attacked by say... 50 goblins (ranged & melee).

Since I have to react to every single one of them before I can take my action, and that's even ignoring the fact that most of them will probably get another attack before we finish with the first 50, in the end it either looks odd (flintstones boxing, where everyone takes turns) or you have to make some concessions...

---------------
Or maybe just have one animation override the other, like the getting hit animation would override a blocking animation even though he did successfully block one of the attacks. As long as there is something and the guy isn't just standing there.
---------------

Even so though, you'll have problems parrying four near simulatenous attacks from various angles.

On a related note about interrupts in general... There was an iteration of the NWN combat system that used interrupts. Creatures could be stopped mid-swing if they were hit or needed to react to an attack from another creature.

There were a few problems with that... Whenever you were outnumbered it was extremely likely that you would get fewer and fewer attacks, as you were spending most of your time playing dodge/parry/damage animations.

While that may sound good at first... think about it for a moment. You're attacked by two creatures, you now get 1/2 of your regular attacks. You're attacked by three creatures, you now get 1/3 of your regular attacks... etc.

Additionally, after a certain point - you no longer got actions... because the order wraps and the creatures that attacked you first are attacking again. Essentially what I mentioned in the first part of the post.

More:
---------------
Ellderon Starsunder wrote:

That's excatly what I want. One CANNOT fight against 5 skilled opponents at the same time and expect to win easily,m or to be able to parry/dodge them all. This is just plain realistic. Now, you said there is a problem if swarmed - well then, don't allow swarming. Make a individual monster more challanging this way, rather than aving 50 pitifull monsters attacking you....
---------------

That may be something to consider, however getting mobbed is better represented by a bonus to hit or possibly damage for the enemy as opposed to penalizing the player by taking away their attacks.

No matter what, you should be able to take regular actions to affect the outcome of a situation. Taking away player control is a sure way to piss people off.

Also, just because I'm mobbed by five frenzied four-year olds doesn't mean I should die...

Well, I think we'd want to try to keep creatures taking actions concurrently... as it is supposed to be a representation of Real Life(tm).

If we did structure combat so that every creature took turns (no two actions took place at the same time) then you'd have to have some kind of filler for when the creature was not attacking. The longer the delay between actions, the more obvious it's going to be that that creature is doing nothing at all.

For example, in the case where you have a 3 vs 1 (fairly reasonable engagement) while O1 and F are fighting... what are the other two orcs doing? We can't fake attacks, since that brings us right back to our initial problem...

Players are somewhat forgiving if monsters are pumping (doing nothing), but switch it around... make it 3 party members against 1 orc. Now it's frustrating (my party isn't doing anything, what the hell!!).

We can, however, do something similar to what you're talking about with multiple animations from various states... only instead of creating custom animations for all of these situations we can look at fancy interpolation routines or blending systems, both of which are much less expensive in terms of resources.

---------------

In KotOR the fight was a cinematic 1 vs 1 duel when fighting humanoids. All other attacks were ignored (there was no reaction to them). But because the main fights were so flashy and exciting, you usually didn't notice that your character was ignoring the other combatants.

In DA, our viewpoint is a bit different - additionally doing custom synched animations for every attack for every creature would be a pain. There weren't many different rigs in KotOR (most of the humanoids were exactly the same size/shape), so animating the sequences between the various types was only moderately painful - in DA it would be much much more so.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

Release Date: I'm opening the betting...
Let's get this out of the way, so y'all won't be surprised when I lay the smackdown on other, similar threads.

(b)Release date speculation is discouraged here because there is no actual discussion about the game in such threads, just posting of random dates.(/i)

Besides, the release date for any unreleased product of ours is always Febturday, Octember 37, 7 BCE.

End of line.