Dragon Age Forum News

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Derek French, Technical Producer

alot of players?

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As I understand it, it is definately not just a matter of removing the server cap. The entire architecture of the game has to be different if you are going for 10 online people as opposed to 50. Please someone correct me if Im wrong.

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Not wrong at all. You got it completely right.

What's the 1 Thing That Always Creates Awe And Fear In A Game?
Blair Witch & The Ring

I managed to see Blair Witch well before any hype or any knowledge of what the film was supposed to be. All I know was the whole "this is the film footage from a group of 3 students that went missing" angle. I also went to the web site where they played up the whole thing with police interviews, interviews with the student's parents. There was not a single shown image of violence or other scaryness, but only the Ring creeped me out more.

more competition for DA
We are more interested in putting out a good game rather than simply having our game come out before others.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

more competition for DA
And Morrowind came out around the same time as NWN... so what? ToEE released around HotU and people were predicting doom all over the place for us. The market is large enough (and still growing) to sustain several games at once and especially the elder scrolls games are quite different from the traditional BioWare game (freeform vs. story based), so a lot of people buy both or just the one type of game they like. Competition is good for everyone, especially the customers, but just because something is a CRPG it doesn't mean it's really competing for the same people in that market segment. Games get announced all the times and we all know releasedates can float and change... we'll see what the market ends up seeing in 2006. Plus who said we DA would be released 2006? Certainly we didn't as we haven't even announced a target period. Personally I'm looking forward to both NWN2, ES IV and Fallout 3, I'm sure these will all be great successors in their series and I'm also looking forward to Dragon Age as it's something new not based on an already established series.

More:

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more problematically, let's suppose that - for a certain segment of the market - the kind of CRPGs you like to buy depends largely on which one you buy first, e.g. Baldur's Gate or Daggerfall. if Georg is right, and there's not much cross-over between the two CRPG 'traditions' (Bio vs Bethesda), then it might be bad for Bio that a lot of fresh CRPG purchasers are gonna be playing Elder Scrolls first instead of DA. just speculatin', of course.

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You could always say that, for any game. But C&C didn't tank warcraft and Doom3 isn't going to tank Halflife2 and as Derek said, it's far more important to release a game that's meeting your and your fans quality standards than to rush out in order to meet some kind of illusionary deadline. You could also say that new people who pick up an RPG for the first time and like it might feel inclined to try more of that good stuff immediately - at least I tend to buy things of the same genre if I find one enjoyable (i.e. I bought warcraft because I liked C&C) There are exceptions where the market is limited and you don't want to avoid to compete directly (i.e. releasing a shooter on the Xbox the same time Halo2 comes out is would affect your sales negatively), but I don't think they apply to this situation. A publisher will probably avoid releasing an AAA game in the same week as another AAA game that competes for the same audience hits the shelves, but I think in most cases just two or three weeks in between are enough for the immediate impact of a similar title release to go away. I think you are seeing problems where no problems are - people have consistently been trying to see trouble with every game we released, it's never been a big deal so far and I don't see it happen for DA either.

Is Neverwinte Nights 2 a threat to Dragon Age?
Just to remind you that the PR strategies of other companies are not really a topic that has anything to do with Dragon Age. The guys at Obsidian have their own forums and read them, so if you have feedback about something they are doing, it would be a better idea to tell them there, I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

Target Audience

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One reason we seek violence in games is to make up for the lack of violence we actually experience. I would guess that nobody on this board experiences everyday violence. Seeing it on the news is not the same as being there. If people want to escape violence, then why does nearly every game and so many movies include violence?

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If you want to "make up for the lack of violence" you actually experience, go to a seedy bar and call everyone there a weakling that you could mop up the floor with. After you wake up in hospital, ask yourself the question, was that fun? Most likely, you'd mumble "no" because your jaw has been wired shut to let it heal.

Now, play an MMORPG and do the same thing. Is that fun? Probably. Regardless of the outcome (a rousing cheer from your buddies, a bar brawl, a sound trouncing, even character death), you are safely ensconced in your favourite computer chair at home, maybe chatting with your friends, snacking, perhaps curled up in a quilt on a cold winter's day.

The difference between real violence and game violence is very great, and games are one way to expose oneself to danger and peril without actually experiencing danger and peril. That's what an escape is: the ability to do or be something exciting that you ordinarily wouldn't or couldn't or shouldn't do.

To suggest that people want more real violence in their lives is ludicrous! It's a game, for crying out loud! It's fiction, it's an escape, it's fun, it's exciting! But you will never be maimed when that zombie slices at you with a scythe, you will never require hospitalization when your 11th-level mage implodes in a miscast fireball, and you will never be hired as a pilot just because your Battlemech triumphed in the arenas of Solaris VII.

No one plays paintball and laser tag because they want to shoot people in real life with real guns. No one takes martial arts in order to beat the crap out of people. No one becomes a doctor to emulate the personal and political dramas they see on ER.

Personally, there's more than enough real world violence in the world today. While I enjoy taking out my frustrations on an enemy 'Mech lance or a line of zombies or even Diablo himself, I would never and could never translate that into harming a real person.

BioWare games are about fun, first and foremost. They are designed to give as many people as possible the ability to play a part in an epic story, the classic struggle between good and evil.

But I grow too passionate about this. I love games and gaming, which is part of the reason I love working here at BioWare, but sometimes I get a little attached.

To the person who asked if we are actually looking for suggestions on what to put into the game, I can't really give you a definite answer. I can say that we're not actively soliciting game suggestions that we're going to implement for sure. The ideas from the community serve as inspiration for things that might be good for the game, or might make for good discussions on things we might already have in the game.

We appreciate all the support and all the discussion so far, and anticipate some great discussions as the development process goes on and more information is released. Keep up the good work, ladies and gentlemen!

More: You're comparing well-conditioned professional athletes to real life? Well, sure there's violence there, just like in paintball and sparring in martial arts and a huge bar brawl. But can you not see the difference? In a bar brawl, there are no controls on when it stops, who gets hurt, or even how hurt you can get. No rules. In all of your other examples, there are controls: the referees, the rule systems, protective equipment, paramedics standing by. But if we wish to discuss this further, I think we should take it to private and not hijack this thread, since I'm really only arguing against your points specifically.

More: I'm going to have to disagree with you once again, Lacan. Just because people enjoy surrounding themselves with violent video games and violent movies and books and comics and sports and martial arts and things of that nature, does not necessarily mean that that person enjoys or even wants to engage in uncontrolled violence (eg. bar brawl, street fight, gang war, etc.).

I think Lady Shayna has some really good arguments, and she's been making the same ones since she started posting in this thread. Y'all should listen to her.

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In the same vein, people who clamor for options to play a thoroughly evil bastard rarely if ever seem to want to deal with the consequences of their actions -- and that tends to bug the hell out of me because I want my actions, both good and evil, to have more tangible and complex consequences. It's what helps a world and story come alive. KotOR is an example of how this should not be handled, IMNSHO, and I hope Dragon Age will be more consistent.

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I'd like to hear more about what you thought of the "evil" in KotOR and its consequences. Can you elaborate?

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Quote: I don't like them much because they often make next to no sense in the context of the game, and because they often rely too much on player knowledge instead of character skills, which rather defeats the purpose of roleplaying, IMO. A high-Int character should at least get a strong clue of how to solve a logic puzzle even if the player is not a Math geek, and a low-Int character should possibly not even be able to solve the same puzzle even if he's played by a Math geek.

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That's a great way to approach puzzle-solving in games, but not one that we've really explored in that way.

I think you would enjoy the way Rob Bartel dealt with character intelligence in the "Witch's Wake" NWN module. It's very similar to what you propose.

What's the 1 Thing That Always Creates Awe And Fear In A Game?

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So, doing what seems predictable, then turning it on it's ear is an effective shock method.

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Agreed. That's what made "The Ring" so frightening for me. Taking a mysterious videotape and adding a ghost story to it is creepy. Actually seeing the tape, its unusual combination of images, and adding "wrong" sounds to it, is creepier. Flashing those images to the audience one right after the other makes the entire thing ugly, obscene (not in the sexual way) and utterly wrong. I think we have a consensus here that things are much creepier if they're implied rather than blatantly presented. A large shadow moving along the wall is a more effective way of showing the size of the creature than viewing it standing next to a car. Sounds and scenes of dripping ichor are better than a character saying "it's growling and dripping ichor." And yes, "Alien" was way creepier than its sequel, but that sequel was a much better action film.

"Making of" DVD

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hm... I dunno... I might find an entire meeting about eye color interesting, if only because i would be amazed that eye color could take up an entire meeting.

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I was exaggerating, Cal, but you get the idea. You don't know just how tedious some steps of the process are unless you've been there. It's like making movies: sure it seems glamourous and exciting to us on the outside, but I've done some film projects. Sometimes, it's take after take of just standing up and taking off your glasses, and it's 1 in the morning and you've been at it for 6 hours already. And rehearsing and learning lines isn't that exciting, either.

more competition for DA
If people were forced to choose one game over another for all time, then maybe we'd be concerned. But who says you have to choose sides? I've played Morrowind, Diablo, Dungeon Siege, Temple of Elemental Evil, Fallout, Arcanum, etc., and I'm doing just fine. Why do you have to choose?

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ah, in an ideal world, perhaps you don't have to. but competition is a fact of life, even in the rarified climate of the computer game industry.

more simply, i guess you could say that people have to choose because most people have limited funds to spend on games. after all, not everyone is as well paid as Bio's QA staff...

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Sure, but someone who reads Feist isn't going to eschew Salvatore out of hand. Someone who sees Bourne Supremacy isn't going to kick himself for not seeing Harry Potter. So, too, someone who buys NWN2 isn't forbidden to buy Dragon Age, and vice versa.

But what if they're forced to choose one, as they are in your strange and joyless world? Well, then they'll choose one and not the other, now, won't they? Why get so excited about it so early in the process?