Dragon Age Forum News

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(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.

David Gaider, Designer

What we "DO" know so far....

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The Helliconia trilogy. The books were Spring, Summer and Winter. I only got to read Helliconia: Winter, but I did rather enjoy it at the time (about 12 years ago now - man am I old..).

Do I get a cookie?
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THAT'S the one!

You get a cookie.

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Quote: Or I, Robot?
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*shudder*

Oh, don't even get me started on that one. My projectile vomiting reflex is just about ready to kick in.

Different Weapons = Different Fighting Animations

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BUT Jade is an action RPG so you can put a lot more manpower going into this than for a traditional RPG.
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Yeah, but that's what he's saying, Georg. Because there will likely be a lot of combat that therefore it's the same as an action RPG, like there's no distinction because we obviously don't make "true" RPG's anyway, I suppose? I don't know, I felt the burn. Didn't you? I think I yelped.

properties and protecting them
Those kinds of plot can definitely work in a story... if the story allows for that sort of thing as we did in BG2. Not all plots are such that you can veer off in the middle of them and invest in some real estate. In fact, that sort of thing works better if it IS the plot, I think.

My latest unrealistic expectation: Emotes
I suspect there are going to be a lot more social animations (motion capture is god). I don't know how many will be tied in as "emotes" that the PC can use (as opposed to making them accessible to the dialogue editor, which is what they'd probably be meant for), but if we don't allow them all to be you'll all probably cry until we do so anyhow so it's likely not a bad idea.

There is very likely going to be trouble with having "interactive" animations, though, same as always. Part of the issue is getting the models to "sync up" (especially if the target is doing something else at the time and also consider the possibility of having different-sized models). It's not impossible by any means, but such interactive animations are always going to be more trouble. I suppose we'll see in the end, but the big bonus here is that they're all very useful.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

More words from the Great One - 1st Level Assumptions

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More like BG II than NWN, I guess, because how can anyone write a meaningful subplot for a gnome paladin/sorceror/archer?
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To get this off the "MMORPGs are slavery/torture" track (you can make a new thread in the offtopic forum to discuss that topic)....

That would mean that this kind of strange combination is something that exists in Dragon Age. We have not yet commented on the availability of multi classing or free/not free availability of all classes for all races.

More:
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To put in a concrete example, in BIO's past D&D games you could choose the Ranger class... but there was next to no rangery stuff to do in any of those games. I'm hoping DA wouldn't go the same way (Yes, I know you personally aren't working on DA).
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That's actually not true in regards of SoU and partially HotU. Especially SoU, and to some parts HotU had specific options and even quests for Rangers - as a result of the feedback that people would like see more of those class specific quests. Same for other classes.

More:
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This is sounding too much like a cop-out that I had to respond.

What's the point of implementing "roleplaying" skills if they're not useful? This is supposed to be a roleplaying game afterall, so using "roleplaying" skills is what the whole game is supposed to be about, right?

To put in a concrete example, in BIO's past D&D games you could choose the Ranger class... but there was next to no rangery stuff to do in any of those games. I'm hoping DA wouldn't go the same way (Yes, I know you personally aren't working on DA).

By your post, it sounds like you're already assuming the "roleplaying" skills are marginal things only used now and then, and have to be balanced to the combat skills used 99% of the game. One would think trying to take the issue the other way, making the "roleplaying" skills more useful, would be alot better for a roleplaying game, right?

- All class vs. classless issues aside.
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My definition of "rpg skill" here is "non combat skill".

CRPGs feature a high level of combat, usually more than PnP (because combat resolution in PnP takes hours, not seconds). Combat is a overall very important factor in CRPGs and the overwhelming majority of people who buy CRPGs thinks that way.

Any skill/ability/etc you add that has impact on combat immediately becomes very useful because it can applied in many, unscripted situations and affects your character in almost every single combat.

Social skills or utility skills however usually need to be scripted - i.e. different dialog options. So if you have a "persuade" or "talk to animal" ability in the game, you need to create dialog for every animal (such as we did in SoU/HotU) and you would need to script many many of those social skillchecks into conversations so they make a difference. Compared to adding a combat related ability/skill, that is *a lot* more work and thus the number of things you can do this way has a natural limit.

We do it because it is a very popular thing that adds a lot to the game, but as said, naturally the number of points where those skills work in the game is limited, and every skill of that type you add cuts it down further.

In addition, taking user created modules into account - a combat skill is useful in any module, immediately - a social skill will only be useful if the module creator scripted for it.

So, unless you scripted ungodly number of applications for those skills in order to get around combats, etc, it will be very hard to create a balanced campaign that a character who selected a focus on those social/utility abilities and completely neglected the combat ones will still have a good time to get through the game.

We had firsthand experience with this in Hordes of the Underdark, which is VERY hard for a pure rogue or bard to play through and very easy for many of the other classes. Partially this was because balancing in this case was not in our hands, we could not just add new things to the rogue class that are not in the rules (to compensate for abilities like "climb" that you would be able to use in PnP to bypass an encounter). Yes, there were a lot of specially scripted bypasses and options for rogues in HotU so they sneak around most encounters, etc, but at some point it still got down to combat, and rogues had a really bad time there.

In DA we will have much greater control (complete control) over the ruleset, so this kind of problem can be solved - but if the game would be "skill based" instead of "classbased", chances are that people would still end up in a situation where they build a character that is not able to complete the game and notice it only 15 hours into the campaign or so... With classes, we can group skills/abilities/whatever they are called in a way that this can not happen.

Note: This is not neccessarily the (only) reason why the team chose to use classes instead of a skillbased approach.

More:
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Gromnir, I don't think he was calling skill systems shallow, but rather the tying in of specific abilities to skills.

For example, take a paladin's lay on hands: a classical class-ability if there ever was one. With classes, you can create abilities like that, yet, with skills you either have to create a skill for the specific ability (not broad enough), or tie the ability in as part of another skill.

He was calling that implementation 'shallow', not the skill system itself.
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Much closer to the point than our pluralis-majestatis friend here. Grom is just reading things into my posts that I didn't say (again), but that might be caused by the language barrier we already discovered.

I didn't really say anything about a class based system being less "shallow" than a skill based one, I was more focused on balancing issues and why classes provide better options for creating a balanced campaign (which is a major concern for us) than a skillbased system, which in return will make it easier to write specially themed abilities and classes. I use "shallow" in this regard because:

If I have 6 classes and 60 days of writer times available, I can make 10 different subquests for each class, if I would need 1 day per quest (completely arbitrary numbers)

If I have 60 skills, and 60 days of writer time available, I can make 1 subquest per skill, and assuming a player would pick 10 skills, he would end up with 10 subquests - on the first glance that's the same.

However, those 10 class subquests can be chained to build on each other (partially) and can share a certain theme, reinforcing that one character, while some of those 10 skill subquests will most likely have some very shallow explaination for their existance and can not build on each other or reinforce/further the story or character development. That's why I use shallow.

In my opinion, and you are free to disagree, it's more interesting to play the evil fighter, start with my own background story and have a number of options that allow me to reinforce that image that build up and maybe ultimately lead to a class specific ending of the game than to play the fishing and blacksmithing bow specialist that has a couple of options to use his skills during the game ... because you can't see any skill specific start or end sequence (impossible with 60 skills).

Plus, I imagine writing would probably have a damn bad time coming up with equal interesting subquests for all skills in the game, more something for Dave to comment on.

More:
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"Classes are an excellent tool organize abilities into sets that can be used for balancing of the campaign as well as the addition of "class specific options" and themes (instead of skill specific options which would hard to get right and somewhat shallow by nature)."

does geo even read his own posts? we has lifted this portion three times now.

maybe you not mean what you said... and that would be ok with us. just don't try and tell us that you never pointed out the shallowness of skill based system compared to class based in regards to increased opportunities for character focused themes and options.

HA! Good Fun!
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My post above should provide you enough information to catch what I meant with "shallow", so stop trying to twist my words.

I have no trouble with you disagreeing with my opinion - thats the point of having a discussion, but a fruitful discussion can't work as long as the two sides speak different languages. So please stop that "I know much better what you meant when you wrote this" crap and get back to the table. Thank you.

I suggest you send me a PM next time you try a personal explaination so it doesn't move the thread out of topic.

More:
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Let's back up a second. What's the evidence that skill- based systems cause balance problems? I think we can expect a certain level of rationality from players -- if the game system is clear enough that they can understand it.

For instance, I'm pretty sure most folks tagged Small Guns their first time through Fallout, even if they weren't really planning on playing a combat character.
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First:
With games moving more mainstream in order to keep up with production costs and selling more copies, you can no longer expect insider knowledge from hardcore fans.

This calls for better explainations during character creation (I think the whole industry needs to work on this), but it also calls for preventing people from screwing themselves over within the rules system. If the rules system allows it, it should be a valid choise. I'm not talking about things like "it's easier to play with a fighter', I'm talking about things like "If I don't chose this skill, and this, and this", I'm not able to complete the game because I can't beat boss X- not a problem per se, as you can just make combat easier ... but then the "better" characters suddenly find everything too easy.

It's just easier to balance the difficulty of your campaign if you balance characters against each other first to a point, and that's easier to do with classes, at least in my opinion.

From my experience:

Morrowind - high balance differences between strong melee oriented character and the rest, up to a point where certain setups are unable to complete the game while other characters sliced through enemies without actually fighting at all.

Arcanum - highly skill dependend game, huge balance issues comparing a spellcaster to a fighter, up to a point where it was close to impossible to continue.

Fallout - some skills were useless so I chose to start over later in the game. Today, working and no longer spending nights playing games like in school, I probably would drop it.

Finally, as mentioned above, it's a math question. The number of permutations/unknown variables for possible characters and path for QA to run through is significantly higher for skills than with classes (through multiclassing can ruin that advantage).

Of course, for any of those the point can be made that it's the players fault that he did create the character this way, but with the number of casual, non hardcore players highly outweighting the hardcore fan, this is not really acceptable. Word is that people who get stuck several hours into a game because of such issues will put down your game and never play it again.

I'm sure that with enough time and dedication a skill based system can be made that resolves most of the issues tied to the approach, but right now it looks easier, more time efficient and safer to me to create a class based game based where we can apply our previous experience.

It's a matter of risk taking I suppose, you can chose to make a game that uses several traditional elements you know a lot about and extend and improve based on your previous experience, or you can make this radically different game with a potentional revolutionary new skill system, that would cost some more time to develop and has a risk of containing game mechanic problems you didn't know about.

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in as much as building a character that is later discovered to be unable to complete the game... i think having classes results in this failure more than skills. classes cant be adjusted. professions (skills) can.
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First - classes can't be adjusted is not true for DA. We create the rule system for DA, we can change and adjust our classes in every way we want.

Classes are easier to balance in this regard so the situation does not happen in the first place. If you have 6 classes, you can have QA run through the game with all those 6 classes in a variety of setups to make sure difficulty is right. If you have 60 skills, the number of possible 10 skill character combinations people can come up with is insane, especially if there are synergy effects between skills.

More:
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as for balance, using arcanum and fallout as examples of why a skill based system has to be unbalanced is a bit like pointing to nwn and noting that class based systems must also be screwed.
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I totally agree with you, class balance in NWN was bad, through (imo) not as bad as Arcanum or Morrowind. I just have trouble right now thinking of any reasonably well balanced skill based game that offers more than lets say 8 skills, through I'm sure they are some out there.

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... but we suspect that 'cause he is a biowarian, he must know better.
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Oh indeed, being infallable like the pope is required for every job here at BioWare, that's why I close every single of my posts with "and if you don't agree with me, you are wrong, because I work for BioWare", right?.
Also you are required to refer to every BioWare employee as "your infallible holyness", did you miss that part of the forum rules? Great, now that we have established some common ground, could we now just get back to the discussion?

More: One thing: I wouldn't necessarily compare 3E skills to the type of "skills" you need when creating a classless system. Most of skills in NWN didn't have major impact on the game, the real impact came from feats/class specific abilities.

About most people min/maxing, I don't think so. A large part of the people playing in skill based MMORPGs with competitive elements tend to max and strive for "the ultimate build", but the same is true for every competitive game, just check the Diablo2 boards. It's in the nature of the game.

Our major balance issue is balance for the official campaign (all classes can finish the campaign, no class finds it excessivly hard or extremely easy to do so), PvP issues are secondary.

Different Weapons = Different Fighting Animations
For Jade we actually have custom, motion captured animations for every weapontype and style (= lots of them)

BUT Jade is an action RPG so you can put a lot more manpower going into this than for a traditional RPG.

More:
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BUT Jade is an action RPG so you can put a lot more manpower going into this than for a traditional RPG.
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Yeah, but that's what he's saying, Georg. Because there will likely be a lot of combat that therefore it's the same as an action RPG, like there's no distinction because we obviously don't make "true" RPG's anyway, I suppose?
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Which is something I don't agree with - combat in jade has a more central place than in most other RPGs - after all you are playing a martial arts master . Playing a martial arts master is playing a role, but that role is a bit more restrictive than booting up NWN and saying "I want to play a ranger, or I want to play a fighter/sorceror". You can still play your martial arts master is a variety of different ways, good or evil or insane, coward or hero, trusted friend or vicious betrayer, physical powerhouse or spiritual leader - that's up to you, but your role is still more defined than in NWN or DA, just by the fact that you are a martial arts master. Just not having to program/design/visualize X different classes/races adds a lot of time that can be used for other stuff...

Games like DA or NWN offer things that are outside Jades' scope and you need some resources on those - which you can't spend on combat.

Example:
- Playing a thief, avoiding most combats with stealth is not an option in Jade, because it doesn't fit into the Martial Arts master theme. You might be able to steal at a couple of occassions, but engaging in combat is expected from a martial arts master, so there's no way to avoid that on the long run

- Being a wizard and having access to a huge number of spells - while you can cast spells in jade, they are tied into the martial arts system, and the focus is definitly more on hand to hand combat, which you won't be able to avoid completely.

Combat in Jade is action (some call it twitch) based (through there is pause and play) and there is an incredible level of detail attached to it as a result, more than in any previous BioWare game - but this is possible because the team did not need to spend so much time on certain things you have seen in NWN or BG.

However, you can also expect DA to have a more diverse animations, detail than any previous PC RPG we did, just because of technical progress and because we get better with each game ... and our motion capture library grows... .

As for the definition of "true RPG", I believe that the word RPG is permanently getting redefined. Some people call Diablo a RPG, others call Silent Storm a RPG so at the end of the day anything that has some elements from traditional RPGs (i.e. "stats") is called a RPG. So in the end the definiton is with us, and I say "play Jade then play NWN" and you can see why we call Jade an action RPG and NWN not.

POLL- The manual containing a complete spell list

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Does the game assume that the players know the rule system? In previous BioWare games the game always seemed to.
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That's right, and to a certain degree definitly intentional - after all it were licensed games and a good part of licensed property (D&D) actually was the rules system

One thing I remember about Ultima VI or VII was nearly complete absense of technical rulestalk in the manual - it had nearly complete spell lists, weapons lists, etc, but it didn't touch character stats on a technical level ... which I liked. Thought?

More: I think the nontechnical nature of the Ultima manuals has a big plus - it won't get out of date in the time between the manual going to production and the game shipping which usually contains the final period of crunch and a lot of detail changes.

Resting
As you can see from the SoU and HotU campaign we had a couple of problems with resting in the original NWN campaign as well and were investigating other solutions. I'm sure the DA team will put some thoughts into this issue.