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Post by rpgalltheway on Mar 19, 2017 2:51:21 GMT
I am not complaining or ranting here. I am just trying to think if it is even feasible to do it. People keep comparing it with Witcher 3 but is it even justified?
When People think about CD Projekt red they confuse them with being a samll indie team. This is absolutely wrong. Witcher 3 had a budget of 81 million US dollars which I think is more than DA:I and ME:A .
Overall 240 in house and a total of 1500 people worked on witcher 3 to make a game. Bioware has a team of 800 total employees which is split between 3 studios and 4 games. The standard of living in Canada is higher than in Poland. So the salaries in Bioware have to be higher than in CD Projekt. And even then you go on glass door and all the complaints for CD Projekt are that they pay very less salaries compared to even Polish standards.
So in essence for same budget CDPR can employ a lot more people than Bioware can in Canada.
Some of the scenarios I see possible are
1] Reduce the scope of the game. But then people will still crib about it and say look at horizon and witcher 3 why can't bioware do it.
2] Open a studio somewhere where you can find talent easily and the cost of production is low. I don't know how feasible this is though.
3] Wait until there is some revolution in technology that makes animation cheap.
But I don't know whats feasible here and whats not coz I don't work in games industry. Doing animations right now is hard and time consuming and its not the problem of talent (I'm pretty sure all these people who work in companies here are talented) but the sheer no. of people needed to do them for so many characters.
So I don't know. What do you guys think? It would also be nice to have an opinion from someone who works in game dev here
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Post by Doctor Fumbles on Mar 19, 2017 2:54:15 GMT
It might be possible. I look at Warframe as an example. They have a small dev team, yet they constantly put out better graphics and fixes to armor and such on a regular basis. All it takes is a decent size patch to fix.
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Post by derrame on Mar 19, 2017 2:59:26 GMT
unlikely, they don't need to do it, people will still buy their games
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Mar 19, 2017 3:00:27 GMT
Honestly I'm kind of impressed we're getting such a big-name release that actually is super expansive but also incredibly crude and janky in 2017. Not only that, but even on consoles its UI is so busy and honestly kind of complex that it reaches ME1 levels of obtuseness. In many ways Andromeda is a step in the right direction. What initially feels "unintuitive" is just convoluted but it's such a fresh change of pace from "A does everything" and on PC I'm literally cramped, jumping with Space, pressing middle mouse while holding D to dash and then hold F to melee as I switch weapons by scrolling and vault over cover when I press CTRL, and then I need to press ALT to swap shoulder -- fucking yes!
The last time I played a game with controls with such a steep learning curve; such a specific button layout was Transformers Revenge of the Fallen on PS3 (a mediocre/bad game with AWESOME mechanics)
So as much as I hate the technical jank and bad animations, I just wanna say, keep being you BW Montreal. I love getting a AAA BioWare release that feels so strangely un-AAA and ballsy in how overly ambitious it is at the expense of the available budget.
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Post by NUM13ER on Mar 19, 2017 3:17:48 GMT
How do they fix it?
The only way for the current animation team to improve is to look at these complaints and use it as inspiration to improve their craft. That said if the lead animator didn't see the issues early on, then quite frankly it might be that new leadership is required to deliver a better standard. Perhaps more experienced artists need to be brought in regardless.
The truth is I don't think it's a budget issue or at least solely that much. It's as much a matter of technique and proper direction. Someone sat down and took the time to animate that derpy grin, but that might have been time someone else could have produced a better end product.
But it's easy to sit on the outside and shout "Do better you hacks!" when for all we know the team is very capable of better but was mismanaged by the higher-ups. Though that line of thinking just raises further issues about the development as a whole, given the lengthy development time.
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Post by auu on Mar 19, 2017 3:25:50 GMT
Higher better talent, hold people accountable, and don't shoot for the stars when the launch pad is on fire.
I honestly would not have minded a smaller game if it meant a better quality product. I'm really not looking forward to running around an open world.
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Post by kino on Mar 19, 2017 3:28:10 GMT
Better usage of the game engine. Whether that means better engineers or artists is something they need to determine.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2017 3:29:44 GMT
Well first of all Bioware has 3 teams, working on 4 different games. The only game so far that has had major problems with animations is Andromeda. To answer your question, ofc this can be fixed in future titles from the Montreal studio. They just need to go over the scenes again and again, polish polish. Also make sure the animation team is qualified to do the work.
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Post by missywho on Mar 19, 2017 3:32:03 GMT
Increase the number of developers and budget to handcraft better animations. Oh and license CDPR's animation tech if possible.
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Post by hathur on Mar 19, 2017 3:58:40 GMT
Software engineers. Bioware has a budget, they tend to direct that budget towards other aspects of a game... software engineering is not one of them (or rather, it is low on their totem pole of priorities.. as is evidenced in the lack of technical aptitude in most of their games).
CD Projekt Red (in a documentary), invested heavily in software engineering for Witcher 3, relatively speaking to their budget I mean. They devised a complex highly efficient system that could create smooth, natural looking animations that were also easy to create on the fly for the dev team.. so when they needed new animations, the toolset was able to let them do so with ease. How they were able to do this and yet also maintain a stellar writing team, level / world designers, artists etc is beyond me.. though they did it a fraction of the cost of what Bioware spends on their games (to be fair, most of CD Projekt is in eastern europe where salaries are lower than north america).
What they really needed to do was poach some software engineers from DICE that know the engine well and could help them devise better tools for the dev / animations team to work with... they are clearly working with a weak toolset in house or simply hired inferior animators (contractors possibly).
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Post by Cyonan on Mar 19, 2017 4:17:44 GMT
Tempted as I am to simply post a "git gud" gif and be done with it:
There is a way, but as I just hinted at above it would require them putting more time and effort into the animations and possibly bring in more talent to get them more polished. I can admire that they tried to make characters more expressive this time around, but it really just ended up putting a good number of facial expressions into the uncanny valley.
If EA/DICE had been willing they really should have brought in some technical experts on the Frostbite engine, because Battlefield 1 is a very well optimized game and is solid in most all its technical aspects. Facial animations look fine, although from what I remember they weren't anything super impressive either. They just got the job done and that was as far as it went.
When it comes to CDPR I always laugh when people say "CDPR did it with less resources, why can't X?" because CDPR hasn't been a small developer since The Witcher 1. Even TW2 was a multi-million dollar budget as I recall.
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Post by isaidlunch on Mar 19, 2017 4:30:36 GMT
Perhaps Bioware Montreal just hires bad animators. I'd rather not open the can of worms being discussed in the other thread since I don't think it's specific to one person, even back in Omega there were issues that are unacceptable in an AAA game and were never fixed.  Even DAI and Fallout 4 weren't this bad. Something is very wrong with this studio. |
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Post by Addictress on Mar 19, 2017 4:30:42 GMT
Wasn't there an article about how an animator from Naughty Dog was on the Andromeda team???
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Post by slimgrin on Mar 19, 2017 4:34:08 GMT
Quit hiring unqualified people.
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Post by Hier0phant on Mar 19, 2017 4:37:03 GMT
BioWare Montreal needed proper management, and whoever decided that an inexperienced studio, one with no prior developed games, should be tasked with developing a title for a flagship franchise needs to be fired.
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Post by Frhozen on Mar 19, 2017 4:48:09 GMT
Tempted as I am to simply post a "git gud" gif and be done with it: There is a way, but as I just hinted at above it would require them putting more time and effort into the animations and possibly bring in more talent to get them more polished. I can admire that they tried to make characters more expressive this time around, but it really just ended up putting a good number of facial expressions into the uncanny valley. If EA/DICE had been willing they really should have brought in some technical experts on the Frostbite engine, because Battlefield 1 is a very well optimized game and is solid in most all its technical aspects. Facial animations look fine, although from what I remember they weren't anything super impressive either. They just got the job done and that was as far as it went. When it comes to CDPR I always laugh when people say "CDPR did it with less resources, why can't X?" because CDPR hasn't been a small developer since The Witcher 1. Even TW2 was a multi-million dollar budget as I recall. You also have to keep in mind that developing a game in Poland is quite a bit cheaper than developing a game in Canada so even if TW3's development budget was lower than MEA's, that wouldn't necessarily mean much of anything. |
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Post by jymm on Mar 19, 2017 4:49:06 GMT
These things are hard to do. Every developer is building their own tools for animations and rigging, and some certainly do it better than ohters. I don't think its a talent set that Bioware has in abundance. My guess is they have lousy tools and lack the talent or the budget (aka time) to fix the tools so that the animators can do what they need to do. I don't think that all the aliens being bipedal humanoids of roughly the same size is purely an aesthetic design choice. They can't seem to do much to provide movement with Hanar, Elcor, or Rachni, So they keep sticking with designs that can rig roughly human skeletons.
It _could_ be an art problem, but I seriously doubt it. They don't seem to have other issues on their art team, and I would guess they could find good animators. So I suspect (though its just educated speculation) that they lack programming talent, vision, or resources to build good animation tools. They could fix this if EA granted them the time / budget to rewrite their animation tools and pipelines. Expensive endeavor, and you'd need the talent to do it.
Or maybe its something you'd never suspect. Like you know, maybe the guy who manages the technical art team is a major asshat and nobody worth their salt wants to work in that division. Organizations are complicated.
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Post by adrynbliss on Mar 19, 2017 4:53:26 GMT
'bioware' isn't the problem, the problem is, as it always is on these kinds of projects, money, time and resources. Bioware were not given enough, bioware, the devs, any devs, 'on the factory floor' are given what they are given to work with and do the best they can and it comes back to bite the publishers in the ass every. single. time. it's frustrating because you'd think they'd learn the lesson by now, don't give your devs all they need to fine tune a product and it hurts your reputation, unfortunately, and why I think they just keep doing it is because, people ignore the publisher and just rail at the devs, the publisher's rep remains largely untarnished when they should be taking the heat, not the devs, it's also what's so frustrating about those groups like KiA, if they would just direct the blame where it belongs it would benefit all of us.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2017 4:58:24 GMT
Software engineers. Bioware has a budget, they tend to direct that budget towards other aspects of a game... software engineering is not one of them (or rather, it is low on their totem pole of priorities.. as is evidenced in the lack of technical aptitude in most of their games). CD Projekt Red (in a documentary), invested heavily in software engineering for Witcher 3, relatively speaking to their budget I mean. They devised a complex highly efficient system that could create smooth, natural looking animations that were also easy to create on the fly for the dev team.. so when they needed new animations, the toolset was able to let them do so with ease. How they were able to do this and yet also maintain a stellar writing team, level / world designers, artists etc is beyond me.. though they did it a fraction of the cost of what Bioware spends on their games (to be fair, most of CD Projekt is in eastern europe where salaries are lower than north america). What they really needed to do was poach some software engineers from DICE that know the engine well and could help them devise better tools for the dev / animations team to work with... they are clearly working with a weak toolset in house or simply hired inferior animators (contractors possibly). I wonder what their profit margin is. No doubt they've made a BIG profit off that title. I've had that game for about 10 months and haven't started playing it yet. I should be ashamed of myself...  |
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Post by Andrew Lucas on Mar 19, 2017 5:07:07 GMT
Perhaps Bioware Montreal just hires bad animators. I'd rather not open the can of worms being discussed in the other thread since I don't think it's specific to one person, even back in Omega there were issues that are unacceptable in an AAA game and were never fixed. Even DAI and Fallout 4 weren't this bad. Something is very wrong with this studio. You couldn't be anymore wrong. Seriously, play that again. |
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Post by ticktak77 on Mar 19, 2017 5:13:59 GMT
Perhaps Bioware Montreal just hires bad animators. I'd rather not open the can of worms being discussed in the other thread since I don't think it's specific to one person, even back in Omega there were issues that are unacceptable in an AAA game and were never fixed. Even DAI and Fallout 4 weren't this bad. Something is very wrong with this studio. You couldn't be anymore wrong. Seriously, play that again. Fallout 4 was actually the first game that came to mind when I started playing Andromeda and noticed the facial anims - animations, as opposed to Motion Capture, really stick out in both of those games. |
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Post by rpgalltheway on Mar 19, 2017 9:37:59 GMT
Tempted as I am to simply post a "git gud" gif and be done with it: There is a way, but as I just hinted at above it would require them putting more time and effort into the animations and possibly bring in more talent to get them more polished. I can admire that they tried to make characters more expressive this time around, but it really just ended up putting a good number of facial expressions into the uncanny valley. If EA/DICE had been willing they really should have brought in some technical experts on the Frostbite engine, because Battlefield 1 is a very well optimized game and is solid in most all its technical aspects. Facial animations look fine, although from what I remember they weren't anything super impressive either. They just got the job done and that was as far as it went. When it comes to CDPR I always laugh when people say "CDPR did it with less resources, why can't X?" because CDPR hasn't been a small developer since The Witcher 1. Even TW2 was a multi-million dollar budget as I recall. Exactly. But bringing in more people is a problem here. Because (I failed to mention this but) even the most popular bioware games like ME 2 and Dragon age origins have only sold around 5 million copies each. And so they would really need to take a risk by investing more than they should. For some reason, Bioware never achieved blizzard or bethesda level of popularity so that they can invest that much money in their game |
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Post by SofaJockey on Mar 19, 2017 9:44:21 GMT
Compared to the Ubisofts of this world, BioWare are small.
I suspect Frostbite is at the heart of this, it's an engine based on Battlefield and troops with buzz cuts...
I think folk underestimate how hard this is to get right, and once you are alerted to it, you keep looking at it, it all becomes very subjective.
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Post by rpgalltheway on Mar 19, 2017 9:47:25 GMT
Software engineers. Bioware has a budget, they tend to direct that budget towards other aspects of a game... software engineering is not one of them (or rather, it is low on their totem pole of priorities.. as is evidenced in the lack of technical aptitude in most of their games). CD Projekt Red (in a documentary), invested heavily in software engineering for Witcher 3, relatively speaking to their budget I mean. They devised a complex highly efficient system that could create smooth, natural looking animations that were also easy to create on the fly for the dev team.. so when they needed new animations, the toolset was able to let them do so with ease. How they were able to do this and yet also maintain a stellar writing team, level / world designers, artists etc is beyond me.. though they did it a fraction of the cost of what Bioware spends on their games (to be fair, most of CD Projekt is in eastern europe where salaries are lower than north america). What they really needed to do was poach some software engineers from DICE that know the engine well and could help them devise better tools for the dev / animations team to work with... they are clearly working with a weak toolset in house or simply hired inferior animators (contractors possibly). I don't think its the problem with inferior animators. I think they just have less of them. I say this because some of the animations in the early access are really fine, which makes the bad ones stand out more. And it brings us back to the same problem i.e. Bioware games don't sell much. So who is going to invest more money in it to hire more people? |
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Post by Blackheart on Mar 19, 2017 9:49:04 GMT
They had money and they had time, I think it's safe to say that team was just not right for the job. Next time don't put one of your best IP in hands of rookies. Mama Murphy from F4 has better animations and more interesting personality than all of the minor npcs I saw in Andromeda so far.
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