Bloomberg: Dragon Age 4 Will Now Be A SP (Non-LS) Game

SOme of that sounds suspiciously like "DLC"

Oh I would definitely play something else if Dragon Age 4 failed to reach my expectations of what a DA game can be. Thankfully it seems to be going in the right direction now. The gameplay of MEA and DAI were heavily compromised by multiplayer. To continue this in DA4 would be a cause of great sadness. Speaking from a purely selfish point of view it is absolutely for the best that Bioware has put multiplayer in the flaming trash heap where it belongs.  

I really feel for the people who liked DAI's multiplayer - it is a great tragedy, but expanding ones horizons is always good. The chances are as well, if you liked DAI's multiplayer then your standards are so low that something genuinely good might actually blow your mind. 

So?

You want them to hand deliver discs with the updates on them? Of course it's dlc.

I hope they never do the seasonal stuff, where if you don’t do x in these days you’ll never get the content again. Both with items as well as story content.

Since someone mentioned Assassin’s Creed, be like Odyssey instead of Valhalla.

You are talking to someone who still owns the Throne of Bhaal disk 

At any rate, I have nothing against dlcs and such. They've been around forever. I'm just wondering what makes "live service" so special if that's all it really is, as far as SP content goes.

Because everything is live it is better able to emulate an adaptive world, because changes can be made on the fly. In multiplayer take for example a community event, if the community comes together and the event succeeds the world can be patched on the fly to reflect that success. In single player the opportunities are more limited but live changing the world is more emulative of a world but also it can be the same as DLC. I think of it as being more flexible than DLC, you can do more things with it.

But you're right that in single player it's not really a big deal. 

and Vahalla. And i think the last two Ghost Recons.

Well this will obviously be by far the best BioWare game in many many years since it will not have that big anchor called multi player on it.

The story, quests, combat and companions and voice acting will all be far superior, especially since they can use all that huge amount of money that was going to go to MP now on single player.

YAY!

I tend to agree that no mp doesn't necessarily mean no live service.

Adding a limited time event with a quest and rewards such as cosmetics every couple of months is a way to keep people playing the game in between paid dlc/expansions. (Along with even smaller stuff in between like: participate in repeatable randomised in game activities to get points towards these weekly rewards) One they may or may not be looking into separately from whether they're doing mp.

Holidays do usually seem to be used with these things. And they already have them in the lore so it would be easy enough for them to do holiday events based on them.
dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Calendar

First Day (1st month, Wintermarch): for the Christmas/new years period, about the whole town getting together to eat drink and be merry in the depth of winter on the first day of the year ( also about checking your isolated neighbours to see they haven't died of cold)
Wintersend (2nd month, Guardian): for Valentine's Day period, celebrates end of winter, beginning of spring, is when couples get engaged to be married. Lots of Tourneys, theatre, and trade.
Summerday (5th month, Bloomingtide): probably put this event sometime during northern hemisphere summer holidays, celebrates beginning of summer, has coming of age ceremonies for young adults and weddings (probably of people who got engaged at Wintersend)
All Souls Day (8th month, August): while this is on the 8th month not the 10th it would probably have an event on Halloween. Remembrance Day for the dead. People dress as spirits in a parade after midnight. Burn fires for Andraste and depict her death in plays.
Satinalia (11th month, Firstfall): wild party holiday with masks and naming the town fool ruler for a day, on the first day of winter. In Antiva it's a week of partying then a week of fasting. In pious areas it's large feasts and gift giving. Could push forward to be done at Christmas time/December (with first day in January) but since Thanksgiving also takes place during the 11th month and its a North American based company it would probably have an event then.

Hopefully if they did do such things they'd make them not kick in until the post-game, after you've finished the story. Because saving and exiting your game in the street just before you infiltrate the enemies base, only to load the game the next day and discover the street is now bedecked in party decorations and filled with tootling minstrels because we entered the holiday period would be rather off-putting. On the otherhand loading my already finished game to put on a satinalia mask and party hard sounds fun enough.

They are one in the same unless I am missing something.  Both have annoying log in daily to earn currency to unlock store purchases.  The stores contain plenty of gear and upgrades along with the boosters for experience and coin.  The paid DLC for Odyssey was far from good and I wasn't a big fan of the episodic approach towards it.  Now Valhalla's biggest issue right now is the monthly premium armor, but I find the premium armor in Odyssey to be more on par with what is in the game (aside from the health regen on the Gothic armor) then Odyssey.

Some more thoughts just occured to me:

I don't think it can be overstated too much that the Anthem Next cancellation and the reshuffling around of resources and personnel could only again help speed along this process and help streamline it. Obviously we do not know the exact date it will drop but now it will have more resources available to them which can only help them.

As much as I am chagrinned about the potential loss of live service too it did just occur to me that live service is always a double edged sword. I am 120 hours right now into Vahalla...and while if I do a second PT I don't think it will be anywhere near that long...this is also before any of the season's pass stuff has dropped either so I think my time with Vahalla could easily reach 150 maybe 160 hours...which will shatter Odyssey as the most time I have spent on a single playthrough of a game. So yeah...that is the double edged sword and hopefully this will mean that DA 4, even with DLC, will still be a more manageable length because not as much of an emphasis will be on keeping players around for their post launch road map.