Dragon Age Inquisition Will Have Co-Op Multiplayer *UPDATE*

[Bergthor86]

I just don't see how people can make such a huge issue out of this piece of news. Now, I'm not a very big fan of MP, and thus not particularly interested in this part of the game. But it has no effect on the quality of the SP experience.

And from what I've seen so far, the SP part of the game seems to be really solid. Going off the most common complains about, say, DA2, they've removed almost everything. Let's see:

DA2 had small, linear maps that were repeated again and again. DA:I has huge open areas which by every indication seem to offer some of the best exploration and variety seen in a Bioware game in ages.

DA2 had repetitive combat encounters that were just wave after wave of enemies dropping in. DA:I has removed this in favour of more well-constructed encounters that one can approach more tactically.

DA2 had no racial selection. DA:I has four races, more than even DA:O.

As for the story, we won't know how it turns out until it is released, but they at least claim that there is a fairly decent amount of variance based on choice and consequence, the lack of which was really my main complaint with DA2. (Yes, they might be playing loose with the truth as in the case of ME3, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.)

So yeah, all in all this seems to try and rectify all the problems people had with DA2, at least, so what does it matter if there's an optional MP component with no effect on the SP component?

After this announcement, I'd bet thousands of dollars that DA:I is going to have multiplayer achievements, which bites ass because I'll be forced into yet another game where I have to rely on others to get to 100%.

Well, looks like you're thousands of dollars poorer now, since it's already been confirmed that there will be no achievements for multiplayer (rather, they will have a separate challenge system similar to ME3's that you only see in the MP portion of the game).

 

[ilayoeli]

I'm ambivalent. Bioware has not been the same company that made Kotor and ME1 for a long time now. I've basically written them off until people I trust tell me I should reconsider. DA2 was straight up garbage and ME3 was a crippling disappointment.

I am a huge DAO fan, but I haven't really been paying attention to Inquisition at all. Looks really... underwhelming from what I have seen.

Boy am I happy to know there still the bunch who think DA2 and ME3 weren't the still-very-good-games that everybody are making out of them.

Anyway, I rolled my eyes when they showcased DA:I's dialogue wheel, action-centered combat and demons-pouring-out-of-the-sky savior-of-the-kingdom story.
But multiplayer? Now that's a killer, I think I'll pass thank you very much

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Well, looks like you're thousands of dollars poorer now, since it's already been confirmed that there will be no achievements for multiplayer (rather, they will have a separate challenge system similar to ME3's that you only see in the MP portion of the game).

Ah, good to know, thanks! This was the only article I'd read on the subject and it didn't address that issue. I also have no clue about the ME3 system because I never played anything in that series. It's FAR too sci-fi for my taste.

 

[Bergthor86]

Well, looks like you're thousands of dollars poorer now, since it's already been confirmed that there will be no achievements for multiplayer (rather, they will have a separate challenge system similar to ME3's that you only see in the MP portion of the game).

Ah, good to know, thanks! This was the only article I'd read on the subject and it didn't address that issue. I also have no clue about the ME3 system because I never played anything in that series. It's FAR too sci-fi for my taste.

No problem. Also, I want to apologize if I seemed a bit aggressive or rude with the whole "thousands of dollars poorer now", just getting a bit frustrated reading all the knee-jerk reactions.

 

[happyninja42]

God damnit, Bioware...you really gotta stop doing this crap.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/26/dragon-age-inquisitions-co-op-multiplayer-is-all-about-loot

Sound familiar? "You'll play as agents supporting the Inquisitor behind the scenes", "You'll earn points to unlock "treasure chests" with loot and such", "You can microtransaction for platinum and use that to buy "treasure chests" out-right".

And there's a good chance that, like with ME3's multiplayer, it's going to be semi-mandatory with tie-ins to the singleplayer.

Thoughts? Surely I can't be the only one who was having a good day that was ruined by this news...

I'm fine with this, as I really enjoyed the ME 3 multiplayer, way more than I thought I would. So if it's similar to how that one worked, I won't have a problem. The multiplayer wasn't really mandatory to win the single player game and get the good ending, as I did it without touching multiplayer at all.

So yeah, I'm fine with this.

 

[Raikas]

And there's a good chance that, like with ME3's multiplayer, it's going to be semi-mandatory with tie-ins to the singleplayer.

According the the FAQ (and statements by developers on the BSN and twitter), it doesn't tie-in to the SP part at all, so I'd say that chance is probably slim to none.

I think they learned from the reaction the the ME3 tie-in, but beyond that the ME3 MP was popular and (at least to my mind) better than I expected it to be. So if the market for the content is there, why wouldn't they want to build on it?

Honestly, I don't particularly care about MP one way or the other, but almost everything (with the exception of the radial menu limitation) that they've released about DAI so far has looked good to me, so I'm looking forward to the game.

 

[LetalisK]

Good. I fucking love ME3's multiplayer, so I'm glad they are bringing it to DAI. Now just don't try to get fancy with it.

 

[Alpha Maeko]

Your Inquisition's readiness score will be determined by how many Atlas- er, I mean, how many Ogre's you've killed in MP.

The ending will also probably come in three ice cream flavors.

 

[Tayh]

I actually liked the tie-in the ME3 MP had in the singleplayer campaign. The mp was fun, a match could be played in 15 minutes and the requirement for MP to up your Galactic Readiness was soon diminished via dlc's and then completely removed by patch.

I think if the MP in DA:I is going to be completely seperate, it's just going to end up feeling pointless and, for a primarily single-player game, excessive.
I'd actually like to see the MP in DA:I have more influence on the single-player campaign, as long as they don't tie it into something as important as whether you'll win the game or not.
As I don't know how the game works, yet, I can't say what kind of bonuses the MP could provide. Perhaps your character from MP could be recruited as special Hero characters for your fortresses. Or it could simply provide gold and resources.

 

[Therumancer]

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I take issue with this because the flipside is 'Never change anything ever, keep doing the same thing' because then you know what you're getting for your money.

Or you could be an educated consumer (shock horror, also sort of hard to do if you actually buy into the EA hate as much as you seem to) and not be a sucker. Even if you want to make the argument someone has to buy it for you see footage for yourself, I call bullshit. There are plenty of gaming outlets who put up footage of their staff playing games, many of which are totally based on that concept.

Also as much as its popular to hate on EA and Bioware at the Escapist, I dont buy it. Most of their games are solid. The ones I can think of which I dont enjoy, its because they dont appeal to me, not because they're some horrible game. In fact 99% of my problems with EA can be boiled down to 'I dont live in America, and their server structure assumes everyone does, and doesnt care if you dont.' Most of the things people hate on EA total crap. Either games that just dont appeal to the person complaining, or trumped up claims of microtransactions killing the game/destroying immersion (I've played several of the games purported to do this, and am yet to find it true.)

In fact you specifically mentioned Dead Space 3, and how it was 'impossible to play the game without abusing it or grinding' due to microtransactions (extra points for being one of the 'immersion breaking games previously mentioned), thats odd to me. Since you know, I purchased and played through it quite a few times on the varying modes and difficulties, and didnt once encounter this issue. In every playthrough, I found organically to be encountering the loot I needed to make the things I wanted, by progressing forward through the game. And its not a 'cumulative effect', I found this on my first playthrough, and if you did play it you'd know the modes are separated, so I didnt have my resource pools on my later playthroughs. And lets touch on the 'immerssion breaking' bit. It took going through 2-3 dedicated menus to get to the ability to buy things with real money, which not only did I never do, but the game never once prompted me to do so.

Gambling system in ME3MP and DA MP is fine too. It was totally incidental, didnt need to be used, and facilitated free DLC for the life of the game in the former's case. But then I've never understood the current hate on convenience taxing people with the income to do so, but the time lacking. They want to short cut their progress in BF, or ME3MP or whatever other game? Fine by me. I wouldnt use it, but I know people who between 60 hour a week jobs and having kids, want to sit down and play, and to them a 5-10 dollar microtransaction to leap right in, is waaaaaaaaaaay more reasonable to them than their limited time. (And dont even get me started on any 'If you dont have time, you shouldnt be playing' arguments. That attitude can go right to hell. How dare people think they have the right to comment on how others spend their leisure time, as frequent or short as it may be. Especially when half the people who make those comments turn around later and get offended at others telling them they spend too much time gaming, hah! Imagine that, being judged on how you use your free time!)

Actually I got half way through this rant and gave up, because no doubt given where Im posting it, I will be labelled an apologist or a chump, and people will make striking examples of how games they personally didnt like were bad and made by EA, or concepts like companies being purchased and eventually going out of business under EA being brandished as evidence of their total evil, rather than say I dont know, business. I mean, MOST of the gaming companies from my childhood went out of business too, and they werent owned by EA. In fact only big publishers like EA have held on. Its almost like historically there is a trend of develeopers creating games we love, making them for a while, and then falling into the trap of either not innovating and falling out of relevance, or innovating in the wrong directions, and self destructing. But lets ignore all this and say EA is the devil? Right? Right.

Anyway that got super ranty. Oh well.

Well to be honest within the same game series I very much do believe in not changing the games much at all. Adding new options and a bit more depth is fine, but when you radically re-design a game's concept or gameplay type then there is no point to working within the same franchise anymore. The entire purpose becomes deceptive, using the name recognition from a previous game to dupe people in with promises of "more of the same" so to speak and hope it compensates for any disappointment. For example when you consider the entire point of say "Dragon Age: Origins" was to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate which is why it used the type of combat it did, not to mention what it was promoted as, turning the series into a glorified brawler was something that deserved criticisms because it was no longer "Dragon Age". Of course in the context of this discussion there is no way that adding micro transactions to mechanics in a single player game is in any way positive innovation, that's a cash grab. I think when it comes to this everyone prefers "same old stuff" which means not being sold resources and such for real money compared to games designed specifically to encourage it.

With Dead Space 3, read carefully what I said. I didn't say you couldn't finish the game without paying them more money. What I said was that you couldn't build sets of the best stuff without the grinding or paying money. The one thing Dead Space really did to advance the concept was add in weapon customization, allowing you to splice together any two weapons and add in various nozzles and chips to influence the stats and how they behave. if you just play through normally your likely to build one or two decent weapons you like and stick with those. However if you want to experiment and not spend tons of time disassembling your arsenal every time you want to try something new you either need to grind quite a bit (playing wait for the scavenger bot, or find something that you can make respawn) OR play their real money gambling game for materials and/or blueprints to reduce costs.

EA didn't make the game entirely "pay to win" but they did rather cleverly lock off parts of the full experience behind a pay wall. Sort of like how in the ME3 multiplayer to get the "class" of character you want you have to gamble, spending a very long time, or playing real money, until you get lucky, unless of course you happen to be content with the one you begin with. The same basically applies to weapons and getting the ones your comfortable with and want to use.

 

[Elijin]

Well to be honest within the same game series I very much do believe in not changing the games much at all. Adding new options and a bit more depth is fine, but when you radically re-design a game's concept or gameplay type then there is no point to working within the same franchise anymore. The entire purpose becomes deceptive, using the name recognition from a previous game to dupe people in with promises of "more of the same" so to speak and hope it compensates for any disappointment. For example when you consider the entire point of say "Dragon Age: Origins" was to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate which is why it used the type of combat it did, not to mention what it was promoted as, turning the series into a glorified brawler was something that deserved criticisms because it was no longer "Dragon Age". Of course in the context of this discussion there is no way that adding micro transactions to mechanics in a single player game is in any way positive innovation, that's a cash grab. I think when it comes to this everyone prefers "same old stuff" which means not being sold resources and such for real money compared to games designed specifically to encourage it.

With Dead Space 3, read carefully what I said. I didn't say you couldn't finish the game without paying them more money. What I said was that you couldn't build sets of the best stuff without the grinding or paying money. The one thing Dead Space really did to advance the concept was add in weapon customization, allowing you to splice together any two weapons and add in various nozzles and chips to influence the stats and how they behave. if you just play through normally your likely to build one or two decent weapons you like and stick with those. However if you want to experiment and not spend tons of time disassembling your arsenal every time you want to try something new you either need to grind quite a bit (playing wait for the scavenger bot, or find something that you can make respawn) OR play their real money gambling game for materials and/or blueprints to reduce costs.

EA didn't make the game entirely "pay to win" but they did rather cleverly lock off parts of the full experience behind a pay wall. Sort of like how in the ME3 multiplayer to get the "class" of character you want you have to gamble, spending a very long time, or playing real money, until you get lucky, unless of course you happen to be content with the one you begin with. The same basically applies to weapons and getting the ones your comfortable with and want to use.

Refusing to have a game advance or change on principle is a complex topic for another day.

Dead Space 3 you could easily build the best items on your first playthrough, without grinding or paying money. The idea you cant is totally false information that has been floating around since it came out so people can be critical of the microtransactions.

ME3MP had a 'play the game to unlock new content' model. Just like MMOs RPGs, and any other games with a loot system. The only reason people are being critical is because there is microstransaction gambling, which gives people reason to re-assess the standard looting model. The STANDARD looting model being negatively reviewed the moment you add an optional monetary gambling system shows the problem with the loot model, not the microtransaction. Though even that is subjective, some people like the loot models, some dont.