Also,Anti Nudist Cupcake said:
Now can we all just stop talking about this until the gorram thing comes out please?
EA Tweaking Mass Effect 3 to Appeal to Wider Market
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
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I'm not sure your analogy works. Fast food is a name that has come to apply specifically to the business model of places like McDonald's, Burger King, etc. You can get fast and relatively cheap meals at Panera, but it's not considered fast food. RPGs on the other hand are extremely varied. Diablo, GURPS, and Final Fantasy are all RPGs. I picked them, because they've been accepted as RPGs for a long time, now, despite having wide variation in their conventions and rule applications. But there is something they all have in common. Their campaigns are story-driven, offer character customization, and encourage the player to immerse himself in the role of a character. Granted, story decisions are not universal to RPGs, but I'm personally of the opinion that they should be. IMO, Mass Effect 2 is more of an RPG than Diablo despite Diablo's dungeon crawling and loot hoarding, because story choice is a more critical component of what I consider a roleplaying game.chainguns said:
So no, I don't think they can all be lumped together. The genre is ill-defined enough without arbitrarily tossing all of the various conflicting conventions together into a convoluted hodgepodge of gameplay mechanics
Unilaterally? Well, that's the beauty of getting to make games, isn't it? You can make whatever game you like, and if you don't care for a particular RPG convention, you can put in your vote to retire it by not including it in your game.
Maybe that'd be a good point. Sometimes, the idea that removing an RPG convention is akin to "dumbing down" a game seems analogous to a misplaced notion that removing a calculator from the hands of a calculus student "dumbs down" calculus. Some RPG conventions are just busywork. Maybe they have a place in some games for people who really like them, but it's hardly dumbing something down to reduce time but not challenge, and that should be Bioware's goal (and I'll admit, they haven't found the right balance, yet)
In any case, DA2 doesn't seem very twitch oriented to me. Faster paced and more exciting maybe. Certainly more responsive... but you can pause at any time. And ME2 is a cover-based shooter. Those are, by nature, slower paced and more strategic. Not twitch games. Also, I think tedious micromanagement vs twitch gameplay is a false dichotomy. You can streamline the micromanagement without sacrificing strategy and tactics. I think this is what Bioware has tried to do... though a strong argument can be made that they've gone astray on that a few times.
I did not. If you have any corrections to make, feel free to make them, but to the best of my knowledge, my description of dex and cunning in DA:O was accurate.
You only need to get to about low 30s in your two primary stats in order to equip the best gear in the game. Those stats are useful enough to your class that you'll probably want to have them at least that high anyway, and it still leaves quite a few points to put in other stats. Informally, I'd estimate that you're left with around 30-40 points to spend however you like.
DA:O had those irritating stat requirements for abilities. Like how if you wanted to be a sword and shield warrior, you had to boost dex, which was otherwise not very useful. I guess you could call that a cost...
Heh, I never noticed that it made much difference whether the rogue was in front or behind if you were AoEing. But DA2 presents the same problem. If your rogue backstabs and then you decide to AoE, you need to move him. In theory, I can see how position could matter. Position is critical in turn based games, but in real time games, there's always a degree of uncertainty when you engage an AoE, since the battlefield can change between the time you give the command and the time it is carried out.
Not sure what you mean by outliers.
Well, it teleports you behind the guy certainly. DA2 still has flanking bonuses, as I recall, so it's still worth continuing to attack from behind once you're there, but your rogues aren't totally gimped if they can't be arsed to stand in the right spot without you babysitting them.
Huh? Maybe because they like you? Generally, companions in Bioware games can and will leave of their own volition if you piss them off enough.
Yeah. I mean, I could rationalize all that. Maybe when you control them, you're actually roleplaying that character rather than having Hawke give orders. But eh. Kind of a weak argument, I admit.
I see what you mean. I think those are mostly meant to replace the obvious junk. If you're 90% of the way through the game and you get a set of iron chain boots from a Darkspawn, is there any question that it's vendor trash? I think their heart was in the right place, but an argument can be made that they didn't find the right balance.
Ah. Well that's not exactly the same as fewer dialogue options. That suggests more to me that the game is just shorter.
You think that's what DA2 represents? An attempt at making a game more like Call of Duty? Out of curiosity, have you played Call of Duty? I have, and I don't feel like they have any of the same appeal at all....
I don't think it's necessarily fair to attribute that to "dumbing down". As I mentioned earlier, it is very buggy, and has an extreme amount of asset reuse. Even a person like me who is mostly willing to defend their other decisions still finds the game a bit disappointing.
I really don't think they'll try to make it like CoD. I think that's just your fears and prejudices at work. It seems that CoD represents all that is wrong with gaming to you. It's actually a good game, and the market has an interest in games of its type. But the market won't bear *every* game being like it, which is why it would make no sense for EA to try to emulate it with the Mass Effect franchise. As I mentioned, they already have Medal of Honor.
This is indeed troubling news...
God's mercy, why do people always have to break their games like that? Dragon age 2 - they were attempting to make it more appealing to the call of duty community which is mostly full of tasteless 10 year old kids which obviously won't eat their veggies even if their parents cover it with ice cream, and look what we have; a barely-RPG game stripped of many RPG elements and if that wasn't enough, it also has a retarded story which takes place in just one got damn city! that's like if dragon age: origins would only happen around denerim. The soulless-10-year-old-kids community game developers strive so deeply to appeal to are just a bunch of husks (yes, those needle-impaled husks.), they don't care if you adapt your game to their BS liking, they will just continue to sink deeper into their pathetic-excuse-of-a-game.
I don't believe all that "so what if they make it more of a brodude-shooter, it doesn't mean anything!" nonsense. This is EXACTLY what they call "dumbing down" - it's when they make a good game (aka good storyline, good setting, good ending, etc) and give up on large parts of those qualities which people appear to deem as unnecessary and turn it into a more meathead-appealing game. There is evidence of that in bioware's games - a format, if you will. Dragon age origins was an epic RPG, dragon age 2 was turned into an Action-BarelyRPG-hack-n'-slash-sort-of game. Mass effect 1 was pretty expansive on the RPG element - there was an ability point distribution, an inventory, plenty of items (even though they were mostly the same, only different stats, i think RPG games were ALWAYS about the stats back then AKA chrono trigger, final fantasy), extensive dialogue, and pretty large environments (The persidium and the wards were entire maps, if not just one big map), then mass effect 2 is stripped of the inventory, of the large maps, stats aren't as important as customizing your armor, much less weapons and more focus on the shooting experience which is so looked up upon. Two epic games, two dumbed down sequels (though mass effect 2 wasn't THAT dumbed down), which i consider a set format for bioware. I didn't entirely lose hope, but i am not expecting a solid mass effect game. Good thing deus ex: human revolution will be good, that's sort of compensating.
If bioware can pull off both a good shooter and a mass effect game, i owe them a thousand beers.
God's mercy, why do people always have to break their games like that? Dragon age 2 - they were attempting to make it more appealing to the call of duty community which is mostly full of tasteless 10 year old kids which obviously won't eat their veggies even if their parents cover it with ice cream, and look what we have; a barely-RPG game stripped of many RPG elements and if that wasn't enough, it also has a retarded story which takes place in just one got damn city! that's like if dragon age: origins would only happen around denerim. The soulless-10-year-old-kids community game developers strive so deeply to appeal to are just a bunch of husks (yes, those needle-impaled husks.), they don't care if you adapt your game to their BS liking, they will just continue to sink deeper into their pathetic-excuse-of-a-game.
I don't believe all that "so what if they make it more of a brodude-shooter, it doesn't mean anything!" nonsense. This is EXACTLY what they call "dumbing down" - it's when they make a good game (aka good storyline, good setting, good ending, etc) and give up on large parts of those qualities which people appear to deem as unnecessary and turn it into a more meathead-appealing game. There is evidence of that in bioware's games - a format, if you will. Dragon age origins was an epic RPG, dragon age 2 was turned into an Action-BarelyRPG-hack-n'-slash-sort-of game. Mass effect 1 was pretty expansive on the RPG element - there was an ability point distribution, an inventory, plenty of items (even though they were mostly the same, only different stats, i think RPG games were ALWAYS about the stats back then AKA chrono trigger, final fantasy), extensive dialogue, and pretty large environments (The persidium and the wards were entire maps, if not just one big map), then mass effect 2 is stripped of the inventory, of the large maps, stats aren't as important as customizing your armor, much less weapons and more focus on the shooting experience which is so looked up upon. Two epic games, two dumbed down sequels (though mass effect 2 wasn't THAT dumbed down), which i consider a set format for bioware. I didn't entirely lose hope, but i am not expecting a solid mass effect game. Good thing deus ex: human revolution will be good, that's sort of compensating.
If bioware can pull off both a good shooter and a mass effect game, i owe them a thousand beers.