Dragon Age News Thread

Yes and what does all that boil down to? No rpg, multiplayer, action adventure with rpg character development and story progression? To me rpg is all about story and character. Stats and classes and all that is just a way to describe certain parts of the character and can easily be switched out for another mechanic.

No mention of da4 is a real bummer. Is the longest they have kept writers on site with no project due. Do they even get time to test ideas against the engine? Say they wanted/write in griffon riders that can pickup darkspawn and drop them. Do they get time to see if its feasable

Alexis Kennedy 🕯 ‏@alexiskennedy
took me 48 hours to throw my first ARTISTIC HISSY FIT at @patrickweekes




Patrick Weekes ‏@patrickweekes
I like to think that I was firm but fair.
Also, thanks awfully for screencapping the part where I do that one typo I always do while writing "appreciate".

Alexis Kennedy 🕯 ‏@alexiskennedy
Fortunately I trust you to eschew any revenge

I'll address both then

For tech, whenever an idea is pitched, whether by Art, Writing, Design, Puppies...etc. it usually (ideally?) gets asked or comes with some kind of implementation cost. This will be something like: "...and it can be done with tech used in X", or "...but we'll need to modify Y to get it to work", or, in the worst cases "...but I have no idea how it will work though it seems like it should be easy to make" (it never is). Hopefully after consulting, at least briefly, with a programmer (or whomever needs to build the tech) you get a rough idea of the cost and then the higher up folks make a call whether it's worth it or not.
For example, gryphon flying and dropping enemies might be super cool BUT if the cost is too high it won't get done (or hopefully even started).

For fun, the ideal scenario is we build a prototype of what the experience would feel like with as minimal cost as possible so if it gets cut/abandoned it's not much of a loss. Unfortunately some features require the game to be in a much more complete state for the 'prototype' to be able to prove whether it is enjoyable. For example, if you wanted to pitch a really cool mechanic in MP combat your game needs to have functional combat (ideally in an MP environment but not necessary). In these cases you'd likely have an ideal combat scenario that is already proven to be fun that you would add to and evaluate against.

All that said... those are ideal conditions, sometimes due to time and headcount constraints ideas just get created and thrown in and a developer hopes it works out