An open letter to Bioware
- Thread starter sumanoskae
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Well for me the problem with the Mako wasn't the Vehicle, but the terrain you had to cross with it. I'm sure in ME3 any vehicles they do put in the game will be fun to use. I loved hopping the Firewalker around, it was great.Vicarious Vangaurd said:
But only once? I got to use it for 5 seperate missions, and wasn't it in the Shadow Broker DLC somewhere too? Or Overlord maybe?
It was used heavily in Overlord. They actually had areas where you could explore on at least one planet that I know of. It wasn't so much a set path. And there were space cows. I think. It might have been space lions. I can't remember (obviously, as cows and lions are two very different animals).MiracleOfSound said:
I liked the Hammerhead. It had tight handling, wasn't too overpowered, wasn't painfully slow. I would just like to take down a Thresher Maw in it.
OP: Gonna have to read all that tomorrow. I'm sleepy.
I agree with some of these, but, in no particular order:
It is a singleplayer game where you have companions who also use the available classes (or uniques of their own in most cases) alongside who you will be fighting and who you will be comparing yourself to because none of the enemies have a power level of over 9000.
They obviously didn't worry about balancing much for Dragon Age, and that game was so hilariously unbalanced between classes it just wasn't fun (or playable in late game) if you were not a mage or two-handed weapon user. Don't turn ME into a badly designed RPG like DA.
On weapon variety, here's my idea:
During your journey you get weapons a little more often as in ME2, which was a bit overly light on them. Then, you can buy licenses at vendors ME1-style so you can choose a variant customized with parts from those companies and a unique look, giving large selection with an easy menu (Weapons > Pistol, Assault Rifle, Shotgun, etc.> Assault Rifle A, +20% reload speed, -8% accuracy, AR B, +5% damage, +12% recoil, etc., at most 6-8 variants per weapon in addition to vanilla guns).
Of course, making the entire game environment climbable just so one of the six classes can use that feature doesn't seem like a feasible investment.
I do like the idea of biotic powers as a main weapon instead of their current supporting role. It might actually make me impressed with the next sexy-female-biotic-with-romance-subplot's powers.
30x yes on the visceral feedback.
Charm / Intimidate does need reworking.
Overall, agree with some things, disagree with others. Happy New Year, by the way.
So very, very wrong.sumanoskae said:
It is a singleplayer game where you have companions who also use the available classes (or uniques of their own in most cases) alongside who you will be fighting and who you will be comparing yourself to because none of the enemies have a power level of over 9000.
They obviously didn't worry about balancing much for Dragon Age, and that game was so hilariously unbalanced between classes it just wasn't fun (or playable in late game) if you were not a mage or two-handed weapon user. Don't turn ME into a badly designed RPG like DA.
On weapon variety, here's my idea:
During your journey you get weapons a little more often as in ME2, which was a bit overly light on them. Then, you can buy licenses at vendors ME1-style so you can choose a variant customized with parts from those companies and a unique look, giving large selection with an easy menu (Weapons > Pistol, Assault Rifle, Shotgun, etc.> Assault Rifle A, +20% reload speed, -8% accuracy, AR B, +5% damage, +12% recoil, etc., at most 6-8 variants per weapon in addition to vanilla guns).
Of course, making the entire game environment climbable just so one of the six classes can use that feature doesn't seem like a feasible investment.
I do like the idea of biotic powers as a main weapon instead of their current supporting role. It might actually make me impressed with the next sexy-female-biotic-with-romance-subplot's powers.
30x yes on the visceral feedback.
Charm / Intimidate does need reworking.
Overall, agree with some things, disagree with others. Happy New Year, by the way.
On the first point, maybe you can't please everyone, but if everyone has a handful of cash does it not make sense to please as many as you can? I think within the op's wall of text there were some sound ideas, and judging by the responses, i'm not the only one.gl1koz3 said:
On the second point, huh?
All just one point, actually.Proton Packmule said:
Those who gave their cash can be considered already pleased. Why would you give cash to something that won't please you, anyway?
Now, fans of the original go and buy a sequel, but it turns out to be entirely different. This is your suggestion at work here. Cash flow guaranteed, but the conflicting inputs of your experiences in the first game and 180 degree marketing campaigns for the sequel are reasons why people still go buy the next game and get disappointed. Yes, new people buy it, too. So they double their money.
What I've seen as a pattern, is that they "listen to fans" and change (streamline) all the possible things. A washing machine is very streamlined. You don't play it. You load it, push START and go watch the TV. This level of no-skill-requirement is what I was referring to. And people will always complain that they need this or the other stuff to be as easy as a washing machine. This fine, as I just don't play these things. But what Bioware does here is lure the original fanbase into sequels that they won't quite like. Why can't they just keep the established stuff. It's the lazy washing machine users who are complaining. And you weren't selling one.
well since im in school to make games and the only company that makes games within a 200 mile radius to me is Bioware, ill try to mention that to them if they hire me witch is my sole mission since they are the only company near me.
I do agree with the OP - having a stealth option or at least something as a third option to "Let's sit down and talk about this" or "Rawr Shepard smash". Melee kills would be nice, but in some ways I suspect that they wouldn't work for a lot of enemies i.e. a thresher maw.
I want them to actually have my choices in previous games matter, and actually influence something.
In ME2, my choiced didn't have any impact at all. Not even killing the council. Either way, you still get told that your insane and get bitched out that your working for Cerberus, and you can't even fucking tell them why your cruising around in a Cerberus-branded ship. You'd think that they want to know how you were just brought back to life.
Every thing else just got summed up a line of easily missable dialog or some email. Thats not having my choices influence jack shit, thats just my choices giving me more mail.
The only one that seemed actually change how things work is killing/not killing Wrex. The only one you seem to set up for 3 was the Rachni choice. And what the fuck was with Conrad always talking about how you were an ass to him on the Citadel, even when you were nice? Your choices with him didn't matter at all, because he always seems to think that you pulled a gun on him. And that was your freaking main example of how choices were going to come back and bite you. I know you planned the paragon one, its in the game's files:
I know things get cut due to time/money/ect, but when your primary example for choice/consequence ends up not being in the damn game, its just embarrassing.
It seems there's a bug in the game code that makes it play the Renegade one all the time. Frankly I'm surprised nobody caught it in testing.
So far I don't feel like I'm shaping my own universe. I don't feel like my choices matter. Its just the illusion of choice. I fell like I'm just being pushed wherever the writer wants me. Normally I would be fine with this, but when one of the main selling points is choice, hell yeah its going to bother me.
Also, I'd like a return to Mass Effect's original tone. I'll now paste this comment I found on another site I go to. It adequately explains what I want to, and does a better job of it:
Well, that was a lot longer then I expected. And quite a bit more angry then what I was intending, but whatever.
Oh, two more thing: I'd like to be able to be friends with my companions without having to have sexy time with them. This actually goes for lots of Bioware games. Too many times I try to just be friends with someone, but after 4 conversations they want to have sex with me. Then they get pissy when I say I don't want to have sex with them.
Second, if your going to use the dialog wheel, indicate what we're going to say better. Example, when plaing as a female Shepard, almost every time I talked to Jacob she would be insanely flirty, even when her dialog choices didn't indicate that was the intention. Another example is on Purgatory, where you recruit Jack. At the end you have the option of saying "I don't work for Cerberus". When you pick that Shepard says "I'm working for Cerberus just because they have what I need right now." Thats the opposite of what the wheel said. The exact god damn opposite. An indication of how I'm going to say something would be fantastic. As would better descriptions of what I'm going to say.
Anyway, done now. I wonder how many people will read it all right to the end. If you do, go get a cookie, or some other baked treat of your choice. You've earned it.
In ME2, my choiced didn't have any impact at all. Not even killing the council. Either way, you still get told that your insane and get bitched out that your working for Cerberus, and you can't even fucking tell them why your cruising around in a Cerberus-branded ship. You'd think that they want to know how you were just brought back to life.
Every thing else just got summed up a line of easily missable dialog or some email. Thats not having my choices influence jack shit, thats just my choices giving me more mail.
The only one that seemed actually change how things work is killing/not killing Wrex. The only one you seem to set up for 3 was the Rachni choice. And what the fuck was with Conrad always talking about how you were an ass to him on the Citadel, even when you were nice? Your choices with him didn't matter at all, because he always seems to think that you pulled a gun on him. And that was your freaking main example of how choices were going to come back and bite you. I know you planned the paragon one, its in the game's files:
It seems there's a bug in the game code that makes it play the Renegade one all the time. Frankly I'm surprised nobody caught it in testing.
So far I don't feel like I'm shaping my own universe. I don't feel like my choices matter. Its just the illusion of choice. I fell like I'm just being pushed wherever the writer wants me. Normally I would be fine with this, but when one of the main selling points is choice, hell yeah its going to bother me.
Also, I'd like a return to Mass Effect's original tone. I'll now paste this comment I found on another site I go to. It adequately explains what I want to, and does a better job of it:
The setup and story of Mass Effect, more than the optimistic tone that was referenced before, was mainly a very classic science-fiction setting. Space here was protrayed as the infinite frontier, with our knowledge of discrete parts of it clashed with a large mass of unknown in between the main branches of the mass effect grid. In general it is an almost perfect copy of the themes at the core of a space opera, the eddification of it as a new time for discovery similar to the naval discoveries of the 15th century for Europe, the main conflict not visible but as a quest for truth or discovery instead; for that same reason, the full story of the Reapers was kept under wraps until the climax as well, for that is the main drawn of the science fiction epic, the mistery itself.
The Reapers part in this was thus rightfully fit. The fact that their motives were an unknow was the classical Lovecraftian edification of what horror should be and that fits greatly into the exploration theme. At their core, the Reapers were edifications of the danger of the unknown; they were the concept of pure evil as seen built from motives and logic beyond our human concepts, they were the ?hole in things? and the dragon of Saint Jorge all along. When faced with an enemy such as this, born out of the unknown, the proper way to battle it, can be nothing other than the search for knowledge, and the edification of Mass Effect was just that; you(as the player and as a human) contained no special skills of your own, and your quest in the end was nothing more than a long search for answers with those answers edificated in the presence of your various companions. It?s an hard task for game designers to impair the sense of intelectual accomplishment to the player when you?re supposed to achieve it as a character, but here by shifting that task upon your own work as the game progresses, the discoveries and companionships you form as direct opposition to the Reaper menace fulfill that role.
Of course even after all of that, as this was a videogame we needed a boss battle. The de facto ending of the game?s climax was the meeting with Virgil and the subconsequent jump through the mass relay into the citadel. Here, for all we care Sovereign had lost; its plans were know and we had managed to put ourselves into the pivotal point of it, so intellectually we had already won the fight. Thus the existence of Saren as an opponent. Saren?s edification as an anti-you, and the end game revelation of his cybernetic enhancements brings once more the theme of a confrotnation of intellectual merit to the table; except here the intellectual component has turned into the concept of a battle between transhumans. While Saren represents the transhumanist who seeks his betterment without any regard towards his old humanity, with his body changed by edifications by the part of the Reapers(again edifications of the unknow, of what lies beyond the horizon, of the dark fringes beyond which lovecraftian horrors lurk), we as Shepard represent the transhuman with his roots still firmly set upon our past; our strength and power comes not from drastic enhancements to ourselves, but through the work of a lifetime and through alliances with teammates that complement ourselves; this was also a big aspect as to why the suicide we force on Saren was so important from a storytelling point of view, it served as the most direct and just battleground where two transhuman might met, dialogue versus teh brawn. In the end, even after this the physical boss battle served was best confrontation so as to end the game, the old tale of intelect vs brawn when faced with unsourmauntable odds; in here we had already achieved victory and this was nothing more than a formality, we here David versus Goliath, Batman versus Joker, the Man with No Name versus the Bad, Luke and Vader versus the Emperor and the measly insignificant human against the vast and unknow universe and we came out triumphant.
This seems to be where Mass Effect 2 most diverged from the first. Despite the darkening of the mood, which all by itself could not justify a change of theme(after all so did Empire Strikes Back and it still mantained many of the same aspects of episode IV), the 2nd game showed us a shift towards the use of force for an estabilished goal. The fatc that pretty much from the beggining we have as an objective the Omega Relay somwhat lessens here our task, because the torch then has passed from triumphant discoverers who find the path by themselves, to measly taskmasters who do what they are told so as to achieve a preset goal. Even our ultimate inspection past the Omega Relay and into the climax, even though it is supposed to be a journey of discovery, turns into a simple reaction to teh thing we are confronted with. Here, the mistery that is discovered is done such with little or no effort by our part and we lose the sense of uniqueness that makes us believe that only us Shepard(the player) could have done this and assembled this team. Even beyond that, the only confrontation we have with this monster(because if before it was only the concept of a monster, now it fully takes the form of a monster and surprise! there is a giant coakroach behind the door and now despite opening it again and again it is not scary anymore) is purely physical. We lose all aspects of the intellectual growth towards the role of Homo Galactus and we just unload ammo upon ammo towards the problem. We have regressed towards the Homo Sapiens of ago, whose accomplishment could be defined by ?USE rock ON bug?.
Unfortunately, the teaser for Mass Effect 3, only seems to create a greater feeling of this. Here the cat is out of teh bag pleanly, and the immense presence of the Reapers on Earth seems to tie us ever closer to the roots that we were trying to shake. While before the confrotnation was towards the unknow and our exploration of it was the pathway towards a solution and steps which made us abandon our lesser feats to elevate us an example of the species, here we have to come back to our home, not to solve the problem as a transhuman but to use the above appointed rock on the bug. In the end, it seems that our role here has been relegated towards the application of brute force, which has always been the anti-thesis of the space opera. While there might be a physical confrontation, when dealing with the concepts of science-fiction, we are directly tied to the fact that we reached beyond our planetary orbit by using our intellect, and as such that would be the tool that we would refine towards the world of tomorrow and upon which our betterment relied. The obsession upon a strictly physical confrotnation might fit with purely macho-militaristic concepts such as Halo, but here we are trying to portray the post-Sapiens human, and clear-cutting the way towards only a physical confrontation as the teaser seems to indicate is quite wrongly built upon the initial story.
Once again, sorry for any errors or ortographical mistakes. Just my two cents any way.
The Reapers part in this was thus rightfully fit. The fact that their motives were an unknow was the classical Lovecraftian edification of what horror should be and that fits greatly into the exploration theme. At their core, the Reapers were edifications of the danger of the unknown; they were the concept of pure evil as seen built from motives and logic beyond our human concepts, they were the ?hole in things? and the dragon of Saint Jorge all along. When faced with an enemy such as this, born out of the unknown, the proper way to battle it, can be nothing other than the search for knowledge, and the edification of Mass Effect was just that; you(as the player and as a human) contained no special skills of your own, and your quest in the end was nothing more than a long search for answers with those answers edificated in the presence of your various companions. It?s an hard task for game designers to impair the sense of intelectual accomplishment to the player when you?re supposed to achieve it as a character, but here by shifting that task upon your own work as the game progresses, the discoveries and companionships you form as direct opposition to the Reaper menace fulfill that role.
Of course even after all of that, as this was a videogame we needed a boss battle. The de facto ending of the game?s climax was the meeting with Virgil and the subconsequent jump through the mass relay into the citadel. Here, for all we care Sovereign had lost; its plans were know and we had managed to put ourselves into the pivotal point of it, so intellectually we had already won the fight. Thus the existence of Saren as an opponent. Saren?s edification as an anti-you, and the end game revelation of his cybernetic enhancements brings once more the theme of a confrotnation of intellectual merit to the table; except here the intellectual component has turned into the concept of a battle between transhumans. While Saren represents the transhumanist who seeks his betterment without any regard towards his old humanity, with his body changed by edifications by the part of the Reapers(again edifications of the unknow, of what lies beyond the horizon, of the dark fringes beyond which lovecraftian horrors lurk), we as Shepard represent the transhuman with his roots still firmly set upon our past; our strength and power comes not from drastic enhancements to ourselves, but through the work of a lifetime and through alliances with teammates that complement ourselves; this was also a big aspect as to why the suicide we force on Saren was so important from a storytelling point of view, it served as the most direct and just battleground where two transhuman might met, dialogue versus teh brawn. In the end, even after this the physical boss battle served was best confrontation so as to end the game, the old tale of intelect vs brawn when faced with unsourmauntable odds; in here we had already achieved victory and this was nothing more than a formality, we here David versus Goliath, Batman versus Joker, the Man with No Name versus the Bad, Luke and Vader versus the Emperor and the measly insignificant human against the vast and unknow universe and we came out triumphant.
This seems to be where Mass Effect 2 most diverged from the first. Despite the darkening of the mood, which all by itself could not justify a change of theme(after all so did Empire Strikes Back and it still mantained many of the same aspects of episode IV), the 2nd game showed us a shift towards the use of force for an estabilished goal. The fatc that pretty much from the beggining we have as an objective the Omega Relay somwhat lessens here our task, because the torch then has passed from triumphant discoverers who find the path by themselves, to measly taskmasters who do what they are told so as to achieve a preset goal. Even our ultimate inspection past the Omega Relay and into the climax, even though it is supposed to be a journey of discovery, turns into a simple reaction to teh thing we are confronted with. Here, the mistery that is discovered is done such with little or no effort by our part and we lose the sense of uniqueness that makes us believe that only us Shepard(the player) could have done this and assembled this team. Even beyond that, the only confrontation we have with this monster(because if before it was only the concept of a monster, now it fully takes the form of a monster and surprise! there is a giant coakroach behind the door and now despite opening it again and again it is not scary anymore) is purely physical. We lose all aspects of the intellectual growth towards the role of Homo Galactus and we just unload ammo upon ammo towards the problem. We have regressed towards the Homo Sapiens of ago, whose accomplishment could be defined by ?USE rock ON bug?.
Unfortunately, the teaser for Mass Effect 3, only seems to create a greater feeling of this. Here the cat is out of teh bag pleanly, and the immense presence of the Reapers on Earth seems to tie us ever closer to the roots that we were trying to shake. While before the confrotnation was towards the unknow and our exploration of it was the pathway towards a solution and steps which made us abandon our lesser feats to elevate us an example of the species, here we have to come back to our home, not to solve the problem as a transhuman but to use the above appointed rock on the bug. In the end, it seems that our role here has been relegated towards the application of brute force, which has always been the anti-thesis of the space opera. While there might be a physical confrontation, when dealing with the concepts of science-fiction, we are directly tied to the fact that we reached beyond our planetary orbit by using our intellect, and as such that would be the tool that we would refine towards the world of tomorrow and upon which our betterment relied. The obsession upon a strictly physical confrotnation might fit with purely macho-militaristic concepts such as Halo, but here we are trying to portray the post-Sapiens human, and clear-cutting the way towards only a physical confrontation as the teaser seems to indicate is quite wrongly built upon the initial story.
Once again, sorry for any errors or ortographical mistakes. Just my two cents any way.
Well, that was a lot longer then I expected. And quite a bit more angry then what I was intending, but whatever.
Oh, two more thing: I'd like to be able to be friends with my companions without having to have sexy time with them. This actually goes for lots of Bioware games. Too many times I try to just be friends with someone, but after 4 conversations they want to have sex with me. Then they get pissy when I say I don't want to have sex with them.
Second, if your going to use the dialog wheel, indicate what we're going to say better. Example, when plaing as a female Shepard, almost every time I talked to Jacob she would be insanely flirty, even when her dialog choices didn't indicate that was the intention. Another example is on Purgatory, where you recruit Jack. At the end you have the option of saying "I don't work for Cerberus". When you pick that Shepard says "I'm working for Cerberus just because they have what I need right now." Thats the opposite of what the wheel said. The exact god damn opposite. An indication of how I'm going to say something would be fantastic. As would better descriptions of what I'm going to say.
Anyway, done now. I wonder how many people will read it all right to the end. If you do, go get a cookie, or some other baked treat of your choice. You've earned it.
Let me rephrase that: I don't give a crap about the composition of some planet or what the weather is like down there...when it is in text only (i.e. when there is no visual representation that actually affects me as the player in a substantial way).Timmibal said:
Yeah well... MOST people will not go about reading all those planet descriptions. Immersion IMHO is best achieved by letting players experience things first-hand.
Sure, there are people out there with vast imagination that allows them to be instantly transported to a visual representation of the description in their mind...but it is not the same thing as actual playable content. Wouldn't you rather traverse that ice/ sand/ lava/ jungle world yourself and see the blizzard/ sandstorm/ eruptions/ monsoon and be affected by it (losing vision/ balance) than to read about it? To me this is just cheap filler when compared to actual gameplay.
Gameplay/ interactivity is what separates games from movies and books: "Don't tell me the planet is stormy, show it to me and let me experience it for myself".
Couple things:
Make Auto-aim manual. I really, really fucking wait auto-aim. It pisses me the fuck off, disorients me, and it almost ruined RDR.
Bullet time needs to be manual. They tried your idea in Vanquish, or Vanguard, or whatever the hell it was, and it was awful. Horrible. Thing is, if I get a headshot or whatever, I don't need bullet time right then, because I just shot somebody. I'd waste half the bullet time realizing it had activated and finding a bad guy to shoot, and then I'd half to aim for him...
And then he might be the last guy in the area. Gee, now I'm in useless slow motion for five seconds. Wonderful, I could have used that thirty seconds ago when there was shit to kill.
I can't stress this enough: Bullet time needs to be manual. Maybe you have to do something cool to earn the ability to do it, or something, but you need to be able to trigger it when you need it. Otherwise it's horrible.
Make Auto-aim manual. I really, really fucking wait auto-aim. It pisses me the fuck off, disorients me, and it almost ruined RDR.
Bullet time needs to be manual. They tried your idea in Vanquish, or Vanguard, or whatever the hell it was, and it was awful. Horrible. Thing is, if I get a headshot or whatever, I don't need bullet time right then, because I just shot somebody. I'd waste half the bullet time realizing it had activated and finding a bad guy to shoot, and then I'd half to aim for him...
And then he might be the last guy in the area. Gee, now I'm in useless slow motion for five seconds. Wonderful, I could have used that thirty seconds ago when there was shit to kill.
I can't stress this enough: Bullet time needs to be manual. Maybe you have to do something cool to earn the ability to do it, or something, but you need to be able to trigger it when you need it. Otherwise it's horrible.
