llandwynwyn
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Post by llandwynwyn on Apr 22, 2017 21:04:22 GMT
The problem is open world. EA should just let them be or give them resources to create a non static OW.
BioWare is struggling due to that. and I liked DAI's exploration (due to world details and lore hunting), but while MEA attempted with better (compared to DAI) quest content, they failed still.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2017 21:04:37 GMT
Since we're talking about modern BioWare one of my bigger issues is that for a developer that makes RPGs... where's the RP? Both Inquisition and Andromeda followed the path of not being able to effectively roleplay a character very well in terms of the dialogue. In Andromeda I'm basically just choosing which tone I want to say the exact same thing in, and at no point did I ever feel like Ryder was my character. Inquisition suffers the same issue, albeit to a lesser degree at times. You got some choice in minor details, but still had to play their overall idea of the Inquisitor. This is why the dialogue wheel is a joke. 2-3 choices is not a "wheel" Even four only makes a square. Inquisition had 5 - 6 options a few times! It was their best attempt at the wheel, but unfornately the Inquisitor was kind of dull the first half of the game. I don't understand why we can't get the whole dialogue line though. I mean Deus Ex did this with both HR and MD. Just hover over the option and get the entire line, simple. |
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Post by Doctor Fumbles on Apr 22, 2017 21:05:43 GMT
You do realize the MP is a giant money maker for them right? I am pretty sure all MEs and DAIs will be having a MP component for people like me who enjoy it when it is balanced right. Whether it makes them money or not wasn't the point. It was about Bioware losing its heart, or the identity of their games. MP is definitely the oddball in the BW soup of late. The characters, the story, the world, the dialogue, all of these are core foundational aspects of the type of games BW makes, always have been. To what extent these critical aspects are or are not hurting and why those aspects may not be as good or not are all obviously debatable. If however someone wants to write an article about "Bioware losing its heart" MP is the obvious part to point the finger at. Whatever time and effort BW spends on that is taking away from other aspects that time and money could have been spent on. I don't know if any of those extra resources would have made MEA a better game or not, we'll never know, but it certainly couldn't have hurt. For me personally I've never played any of ME's or DA's MP so I have no idea how good or bad it is. When I want to MP I go play games designed specifically for that. I am willing for BW to"loose its heart" if I get to keep the MP. I would rather they improve the MP and took some resources away from SP in order to do this. |
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Iakus
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Post by Iakus on Apr 22, 2017 21:11:59 GMT
The thing is, Bioware hasn't let players "tell their own stories" since the days of Neverwinter Nights. So there goes the single biggest benefit of a Skyrim-style open world. I'd agree with that. I did, however, feel that I was able to construct (or co-create) the narrative in DAO and ME1 from the toolset (questlines, etc.) at hand. Relative to them, DA2, ME2, and especially ME3 were really just branching cinematic narratives. There does seem to be a correlation between games getting more cinematic and RPG mechanics becoming more diluted |
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oniangel
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Post by oniangel on Apr 22, 2017 21:12:41 GMT
MP is not the reason why there is no squad customization and power use as ME3 has shown. Lame dialogue options does not share resources with multiplayer along with much of art and animation as it is largely reused assets. It is possible devs did cut some corners in some aspects to focus on multiplayer but you are being too narrow minded if you think mutiplayer was the reason behind the shallowness of singleplayer. The article itself had a small section discussing multiplayer.
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Iakus
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Post by Iakus on Apr 22, 2017 21:14:15 GMT
Whether it makes them money or not wasn't the point. It was about Bioware losing its heart, or the identity of their games. MP is definitely the oddball in the BW soup of late. The characters, the story, the world, the dialogue, all of these are core foundational aspects of the type of games BW makes, always have been. To what extent these critical aspects are or are not hurting and why those aspects may not be as good or not are all obviously debatable. If however someone wants to write an article about "Bioware losing its heart" MP is the obvious part to point the finger at. Whatever time and effort BW spends on that is taking away from other aspects that time and money could have been spent on. I don't know if any of those extra resources would have made MEA a better game or not, we'll never know, but it certainly couldn't have hurt. For me personally I've never played any of ME's or DA's MP so I have no idea how good or bad it is. When I want to MP I go play games designed specifically for that. I am willing for BW to"loose its heart" if I get to keep the MP. I would rather they improve the MP and took some resources away from SP in order to do this. There's a thousand and one MP shooter games out there. Youcan't throw a rock without hitting oone. AAA RPGs are darned rare now. |
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VanSinn
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by VanSinn on Apr 22, 2017 21:16:29 GMT
It is how they evolve though. Those games are in a bigger audience now. A lot of people playing morrowind, for example, are us because were the role players. That's the niche, and the truth of the rp commubity, we are a diverse, niche audience. Skyrim, mass effect, witcher, along with final fantasy and tales and persona. The general public...not so much. That doesn't make the games bad, but it does lead to a change in mechanics. It doesn't make the games bad. It makes them BLAND. To be completely honest, while I don't agree it makes them bland, per se, I do agree with the thought behind that. I'd love a game with as free a character agency as we can get, with a good story to backdrop a great team adventure. The last game that even approached this, in my opinion at least from Bioware, was KotOR. I miss the old days of pen and paper roleplaying games, where we'd gather around and try to break the DM's plan all to pieces, just to see how he'd handle it. And we had some good DM's who'd be able to go with the flow and facilitate OUR story, not his. It was great fun. But without that personal interaction with the "story teller," cRPG's just simply can't match that level of character agency. And, to me, trying to only exacerbates the issue. We can have all this freedom to do stuff, except for that one thing that the game doesn't account for. So, on some level, I wish we could have games with that freedom. Within any kind of structured narrative, however, there's ALWAYS going to be at most an illusion of character agency. So I've learned to adjust my expectations for cRPG's towards what Bioware is currently doing with the MET (although ME2 and ME3 went TOO far this direction, I think) and the Dragon Age series. ME:A is the same, in that our agency is limited, but within those limitations we have some decent authority to ascribe different motivations to the character, without the game being TOO bad about forcing you away from that internal narrative. Obviously, a game can't account for every possibility, and there's always going to be that one thing we wish the developers had added. Eh, I've rambled enough I'm not sure I remember exactly where this post was meant to go.  I'll end it here before I ramble on for another eternity!  |
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linksocarina
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Post by linksocarina on Apr 22, 2017 21:17:27 GMT
I am willing for BW to"loose its heart" if I get to keep the MP. I would rather they improve the MP and took some resources away from SP in order to do this. There's a thousand and one MP shooter games out there. Youcan't throw a rock without hitting oone. AAA RPGs are darned rare now. They were rare to begin with. Only Final Fantasy really fit that for years. |
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Post by vonuber on Apr 22, 2017 21:18:17 GMT
Can suikoden just have their own little stickied thread rather than creating a new one everytime they read a bit of confirmation bias?
Admittedly it will cut the new topics down by half but at least it will all be in one place.
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Post by kingmandu on Apr 22, 2017 21:18:25 GMT
VG247: How We're Running Out of Article Ideas
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dm04
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Post by dm04 on Apr 22, 2017 21:19:13 GMT
fun story. I did like some of the random encounters in FO 4. But as far as it goes? Yeah The world was...empty. The world itself was nice, but as you say, mostly empty. Skyrim the world WAS the main draw. The characters/story/quests? Not really more than motivation to go out and see what's on the other side of that hill. Both good games if you self motivate and create your own story, but better side content than ME:A? And lumping those two games in with TW3? Yeah, I see no reason to trust his judgement over my own. Well thats what open world is about, a world where you can go wherever you please from the very beginning without restriction and make your own story, with self motivation. No matter how much "side content" you create and how high the quality of that said side content is, the second you have done it all, you got an empty world and need self motivation to keep going. And thats why the TES/Fallout games are so open with modding. For a good open world game, you need the game to be dynamical, and either you patch it in on a regular basis, or come with some pretty good prodecural mechanism. BioWare should focus on story telling and good gameplay, if they want to make a HUGE world with a ton of side content, so be it. But a great story and open world do not mix. Maybe if they would add a new story each time to already existing content, instead of giving us a new game every few years. |
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Post by Doctor Fumbles on Apr 22, 2017 21:19:25 GMT
I am willing for BW to"loose its heart" if I get to keep the MP. I would rather they improve the MP and took some resources away from SP in order to do this. There's a thousand and one MP shooter games out there. Youcan't throw a rock without hitting oone. AAA RPGs are darned rare now. None of them have MEs third person shooter aesthetics though. I am very picky on which shooters I play because they need to be sci-fi. I have always been more interested in the ME universe as a whole rather then it's stories(Gameplay and combat included in this). Let me explain, the weapons, how they function, alien species, skills, powers, and the technology itself is of more interest to me then how well the story plays out which is why I like the MP. I get to play different alien species with all of the cool guns at my disposal. Plus, it is with other people. The only parts of the story I do care about is who I get to bang. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2017 21:19:52 GMT
VG247: How We're Running Out of Article Ideas Oh they are not the only one. PC Gamer just reposted an article from 2015, and they've done so maybe 6 - 10 times the last few years. They have nothing to say anymore, nothing worthwhile atleast. |
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Iakus
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Post by Iakus on Apr 22, 2017 21:21:47 GMT
It doesn't make the games bad. It makes them BLAND. To be completely honest, while I don't agree it makes them bland, per se, I do agree with the thought behind that. I'd love a game with as free a character agency as we can get, with a good story to backdrop a great team adventure. The last game that even approached this, in my opinion at least from Bioware, was KotOR. I miss the old days of pen and paper roleplaying games, where we'd gather around and try to break the DM's plan all to pieces, just to see how he'd handle it. And we had some good DM's who'd be able to go with the flow and facilitate OUR story, not his. It was great fun. But without that personal interaction with the "story teller," cRPG's just simply can't match that level of character agency. And, to me, trying to only exacerbates the issue. We can have all this freedom to do stuff, except for that one thing that the game doesn't account for. So, on some level, I wish we could have games with that freedom. Within any kind of structured narrative, however, there's ALWAYS going to be at most an illusion of character agency. So I've learned to adjust my expectations for cRPG's towards what Bioware is currently doing with the MET (although ME2 and ME3 went TOO far this direction, I think) and the Dragon Age series. ME:A is the same, in that our agency is limited, but within those limitations we have some decent authority to ascribe different motivations to the character, without the game being TOO bad about forcing you away from that internal narrative. Obviously, a game can't account for every possibility, and there's always going to be that one thing we wish the developers had added. Eh, I've rambled enough I'm not sure I remember exactly where this post was meant to go. I'll end it here before I ramble on for another eternity! Of course a cRPG can't compare to an actual tabletop experience. But that doesn't mean they should stop trying to push that envelope. If choice is to be an illusion, make it the best, most convincing illusion you can! Instead, Bioware seems to have given up, focusing primarily on creating an action-shooter atmosphere. Pushing "streamlining", focusing on action, and constraining the player. choice. And of course, multiplayer. |
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Post by setokaiba on Apr 22, 2017 21:22:15 GMT
The Fallout series is my favorite gaming series but Fallout 4 has a lot of the same problems that MEA has. People say there is no renegade option in MEA well you can't be evil Fallout 4 unless you buy the Nuka World dlc. MEA has 4 shade of paragon and Fallout 4 has Yes, Question, Sarcastic and Maybe(yes). Just like MEA Fallout 4 improved on combat but it suffered everywhere else.
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Post by Iakus on Apr 22, 2017 21:23:54 GMT
There's a thousand and one MP shooter games out there. Youcan't throw a rock without hitting oone. AAA RPGs are darned rare now. None of them have MEs third person shooter aesthetics though. I am very picky on which shooters I play because they need to be sci-fi. I have always been more interested in the ME universe as a whole rather then it's stories(Gameplay and combat included in this). Let me explain, the weapons, how they function, alien species, skills, powers, and the technology itself is of more interest to me then how well the story plays out which is why I like the MP. I get to play different alien species with all of the cool guns at my disposal. Plus, it is with other people. The only parts of the story I do care about is who I get to bang. There are still probably more of those than there are AAA RPGs right now. |
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thebobzilla84
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Post by thebobzilla84 on Apr 22, 2017 21:24:13 GMT
I agree. It's always following a module basically. Wit some freedom in the mix to make it feel like your own. BW games have always been more in line with a visual novel with a combat and skill system attached. There isn't a ton of actual 'role playing' involved in BW games. And that's fine, I like BW games for what they are since they do it very well. You can't compare a Bethesda game to a BW game, they are entirely different beasts. Bethesda's sand box games are more akin to old school table top games. The GM (Bethesda) sets the scene and the backdrop and you make your character and determine their actions within that. It is basically the complete opposite of what BW tries to do. Each of them are good at what they do. In all honesty I don't find BW's main or side stories to be written any better or worse than Bethesda's. BW isn't exactly Shakespeare here either. They do nice stories, great characters and frame it all very dramatically in a tightly controlled cinematic package. So long as they stick to that foundation they'll be fine. Yeah both Bethesda & BioWare suck ass compared to CD Project Red when it comes to Sidequest/Sidecontent Quality period. :ulikeit: |
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Post by Doctor Fumbles on Apr 22, 2017 21:25:32 GMT
None of them have MEs third person shooter aesthetics though. I am very picky on which shooters I play because they need to be sci-fi. I have always been more interested in the ME universe as a whole rather then it's stories(Gameplay and combat included in this). Let me explain, the weapons, how they function, alien species, skills, powers, and the technology itself is of more interest to me then how well the story plays out which is why I like the MP. I get to play different alien species with all of the cool guns at my disposal. Plus, it is with other people. The only parts of the story I do care about is who I get to bang. There are still probably more of those than there are AAA RPGs right now. Not really. I can think of three. Destiny, Warframe, and Planet Side 2. |
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Post by setokaiba on Apr 22, 2017 21:25:53 GMT
You do realize the MP is a giant money maker for them right? I am pretty sure all MEs and DAIs will be having a MP component for people like me who enjoy it when it is balanced right. Whether it makes them money or not wasn't the point. It was about Bioware losing its heart, or the identity of their games. MP is definitely the oddball in the BW soup of late. The characters, the story, the world, the dialogue, all of these are core foundational aspects of the type of games BW makes, always have been. To what extent these critical aspects are or are not hurting and why those aspects may not be as good or not are all obviously debatable. If however someone wants to write an article about "Bioware losing its heart" MP is the obvious part to point the finger at. Whatever time and effort BW spends on that is taking away from other aspects that time and money could have been spent on. I don't know if any of those extra resources would have made MEA a better game or not, we'll never know, but it certainly couldn't have hurt. For me personally I've never played any of ME's or DA's MP so I have no idea how good or bad it is. When I want to MP I go play games designed specifically for that. My money is on the MP being an EA idea so they can milk more money of people with microtransactions so I doubt it will ever go away so long as EA has a say in the matter. I agree with you I wish it would go away and they focus only on single player content(NOT EVERY GAME NEEDS F*CKING MP) but I won't get my hopes up. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2017 21:26:19 GMT
The Fallout series is my favorite gaming series but Fallout 4 has a lot of the same problems that MEA has. People say there is no renegade option in MEA well you can't be evil Fallout 4 unless you buy the Nuka World dlc. MEA has 4 shade of paragon and Fallout 4 has Yes, Question, Sarcastic and Maybe(yes). Just like MEA Fallout 4 improved on combat but it suffered everywhere else. I think Fallout 4 did one thing right, or well the main story is actually ok, but the companions are great. They feel like that actually belong to the world, and their stories are varied and well written. They feel like actual characters. Something that surprised me because companions in Skyrim were packmules, well except Serana. Oh Serana, you stole my heart. I can't wait for them to expand upon companions when it comes to the next TES. |
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fchopin
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Post by fchopin on Apr 22, 2017 21:26:32 GMT
The problem is open world. EA should just let them be or give them resources to create a non static OW. I don’t think Bioware knows how to make a non-static world or game. They need to change completely the way they think and make games. |
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Post by decafhigh on Apr 22, 2017 21:29:36 GMT
BW games have always been more in line with a visual novel with a combat and skill system attached. There isn't a ton of actual 'role playing' involved in BW games. And that's fine, I like BW games for what they are since they do it very well. You can't compare a Bethesda game to a BW game, they are entirely different beasts. Bethesda's sand box games are more akin to old school table top games. The GM (Bethesda) sets the scene and the backdrop and you make your character and determine their actions within that. It is basically the complete opposite of what BW tries to do. Each of them are good at what they do. In all honesty I don't find BW's main or side stories to be written any better or worse than Bethesda's. BW isn't exactly Shakespeare here either. They do nice stories, great characters and frame it all very dramatically in a tightly controlled cinematic package. So long as they stick to that foundation they'll be fine. Yeah both Bethesda & BioWare suck ass compared to CD Project Red when it comes to Sidequest/Sidecontent Quality period. :ulikeit: And CDPR sucks ass at giving me a protagonist I actually want to play. 6 of one, half dozen of the other.  |
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VanSinn
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Post by VanSinn on Apr 22, 2017 21:31:13 GMT
To be completely honest, while I don't agree it makes them bland, per se, I do agree with the thought behind that. I'd love a game with as free a character agency as we can get, with a good story to backdrop a great team adventure. The last game that even approached this, in my opinion at least from Bioware, was KotOR. I miss the old days of pen and paper roleplaying games, where we'd gather around and try to break the DM's plan all to pieces, just to see how he'd handle it. And we had some good DM's who'd be able to go with the flow and facilitate OUR story, not his. It was great fun. But without that personal interaction with the "story teller," cRPG's just simply can't match that level of character agency. And, to me, trying to only exacerbates the issue. We can have all this freedom to do stuff, except for that one thing that the game doesn't account for. So, on some level, I wish we could have games with that freedom. Within any kind of structured narrative, however, there's ALWAYS going to be at most an illusion of character agency. So I've learned to adjust my expectations for cRPG's towards what Bioware is currently doing with the MET (although ME2 and ME3 went TOO far this direction, I think) and the Dragon Age series. ME:A is the same, in that our agency is limited, but within those limitations we have some decent authority to ascribe different motivations to the character, without the game being TOO bad about forcing you away from that internal narrative. Obviously, a game can't account for every possibility, and there's always going to be that one thing we wish the developers had added. Eh, I've rambled enough I'm not sure I remember exactly where this post was meant to go. I'll end it here before I ramble on for another eternity! Of course a cRPG can't compare to an actual tabletop experience. But that doesn't mean they should stop trying to push that envelope. If choice is to be an illusion, make it the best, most convincing illusion you can! Instead, Bioware seems to have given up, focusing primarily on creating an action-shooter atmosphere. Pushing "streamlining", focusing on action, and constraining the player. choice. And of course, multiplayer. I THINK the point I was trying to make is that an illusion, however great it is, dissipates when you step outside of what the game will allow, or try to at least. To me, and this is just personal opinion, it's MUCH more jarring to be shaken out of an illusion when a game doesn't account for a choice I wish I could make, ESPECIALLY when that illusion was damn near perfect up to that point. I'm certainly with you on that desire to have those experiences with cRPG's, but on some level I'd rather a game just not bother with so elaborate an illusion, since it ALWAYS breaks at some point in a game. The better the illusion, the worse it is when it's broken. To me, at least. ME:A's level of illusion isn't as deep as I'd like, but it's much better than ME2 and ME3, and comes closer to ME1 than any Bioware game since. It's still rather shallow, tbh, but it's about as deep as I really want that illusion to be. It's not quite so bad of an issue for me when this level of illusion breaks, rather than anything as deep as I WISH we could achieve. |
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Post by setokaiba on Apr 22, 2017 21:31:50 GMT
The Fallout series is my favorite gaming series but Fallout 4 has a lot of the same problems that MEA has. People say there is no renegade option in MEA well you can't be evil Fallout 4 unless you buy the Nuka World dlc. MEA has 4 shade of paragon and Fallout 4 has Yes, Question, Sarcastic and Maybe(yes). Just like MEA Fallout 4 improved on combat but it suffered everywhere else. I think Fallout 4 did one thing right, or well the main story is actually ok, but the companions are great. They feel like that actually belong to the world, and their stories are varied and well written. They feel like actual characters. Something that surprised me because companions in Skyrim were packmules, well except Serana. Oh Serana, you stole my heart. I can't wait for them to expand upon companions when it comes to the next TES. I really like Fallout 4 companions as well even Preston(insert settlement joke here) and they are well written but I do feel like Fallout New Vegas companions were a little better. I love Piper and Cosworth but I'll trade them in a heartbeat for Cassie and Veronica. |
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Post by setokaiba on Apr 22, 2017 21:34:54 GMT
Yeah both Bethesda & BioWare suck ass compared to CD Project Red when it comes to Sidequest/Sidecontent Quality period. :ulikeit: And CDPR sucks ass at giving me a protagonist I actually want to play. 6 of one, half dozen of the other.  |
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I'll end it here before I ramble on for another eternity! 
