Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

That sounds far-fetched. You kids should pay more attention to reality. 

What is a LUT?

That sera with a staff? Also don’t recognize the outfit

My pessimistic ass has been thinking that, after all this, DA4 may never see the light of day.

I like yours better.

If I remember correctly, since last year Bioware had been hiring for management positions such as 'Development Director', 'Product Director' or something like that. I think they actually realized the issues and were trying to improve. Jason Schreier just made the issues public and maybe accelerates the improvement.

It seems as though the Kotaku article is prompting some action on the part of the higher-ups.

kotaku.com/bioware-boss-addresses-studio-issues-vows-to-continue-1833802608

One interesting thing is at the end of the piece: a number of devs have told Schreier that the working conditions at BioWare have occurred at their own studio.

Can we please stop distinguishing between SP and live service? FFXV, two last Asassin’s Creed games, Hitman - all of these games are SP and ALL of them are also live service titles. And again, to remind folks - ALL Dragon Age chapters to date had some form of live services.

You can keep pretending that Online Solo games have anything comparable in story writing to a proper SP but it's not.
Also Hitman isn't really a good comparison, alot of game content was locked behind internet connection, they even had different save files for online and offline, resulting in lost progress and items.
An online-only DA4 is enticing for me as much as any other online game (or mobile game), which is exactly at 0%.
Not to mention there's plenty to monetize in a live service DA4:
- Casual outfits.
- Crafting materials.
- Customization mid-game.
- Gear.
- Mounts.
- Pets.
- Potions.
- Schematics.
- Tattoos/Vallaslin/Vitaar.
- XP Boost.
I'm sure they can come up with more on their own.

You can pretend that live service games are basically multiplayer games with story components or whatever you think they are, but they’re not. Being a live service is not a type of game and it’s not mutually exclusive with SP games or story. Assassin’s Creed Origins main campaign alone has roughly 35-40 hours, similar with FFXV. All proper stories. Both AC Origins and Odyssey don’t even have a multiplayer (also - I know that ‘proper writing only belongs to SP’ is bunk, because ESO has some of the best stories there are, and it’s a MMO)

Also - shifting goalposts much? Why is Internet connection and some buggy cloud saves (something that also exists on Origin and available for titles like DAI) somehow disqualifying for Hitman? (also, you say that this game has an offline mode, so why are you harping about always online???)
The game is still SP and it still has a proper story, while remaining or logging in online from within the game has been a thing in different titles for years. Heck - DAO requires an Internet connection to access DLCs for the first time.

If we're defining "live service" as "has dlc at some point after launch" or "a multiplayer mode" or "allows cloud/world state saves" then, yes, all previous DA titles count under that live service model. But that's if that definition is correct. I don't think it is.

DA4, being the sequel to the other three games in the series, would undoubtedly have already had that stuff in the works when it was being developed. I highly doubt they dropped the idea of DLC/multiplayer mode/world states from the original DA4's structure, since it was all present at some point in the series previously.

i think it will be different then *just* DLC.

Basically the difference between the past model and the current one is one of planning. Previously i get the feeling that DLC was more or less just extra content that the game developers threw together if their games did well. They were easy to cancel and could shift based on issues. Now the live service elements and stuff is planned from the beginning. So game developers have realized that if you make a game that people want to play at launch they are liable to throw money at you which means live service isn't a nice bonus anymore but is actually incorporated into the games launch plans.

Yeah, if that's all it is, then I'd be fine with it. I mean that describes both ME3 and DAI, really. I doubt its all there is, though.