Dragon Age Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare 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.

David Gaider, Designer

Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?

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actually, we suggested that you might be trying to repackage baldur's gate, not d&d... though it weren't really a serious suggestion so much as raising a nightmarish spectre that we hope ain't true and was hopeful that biowarians might dispel.
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Oh. Well, besides the fact that I think there are far worse things we could do than repackage Baldur's Gate, we're far from doing anything like that. You'll see.

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Quote: come now dave. on this issue, you know we is right. kotor adopted characters, themes, and plot points from the original star wars trilogy... not simply "signature elements" from the star wars universe.
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Whatever you say. The issue seems to me to be just one of semantics. I happen to think that those characters, themes and plot points we used from the movies *are* signature elements, but the difference is negligible in the end. I know you aren't accusing us of ripping off the movies or not being original (which wasn't the point anyhow), and I think it's that implication that Georg is reacting to, is all.

Gnome!

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but they need good gnomes not the nwn crap i mean what the hell +2 to con what retard thought that up
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Those would be the fellows who wrote the D&D ruleset (ie. 'the D&D crap' as opposed to specificially 'the nwn crap')

Now take off your pants for me.

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is not whether we would want in a perfect world, is it? question to ask is: what would you be willing to give up to get customizable shoes or hair or tiaras?
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Now that is a gosh darn good question.

So, to those people who want this level of customization (and I mean the high level being asked for... obviously there will be some customization regardless, and no doubt more than NWN anyhow), what's something roughly equivalent that you'd be willing to give up for it?

And insofar as things being "neat"... obviously we get to put "neat" things in all the time, and they are fun and good to have. Everyone wants a little bling, after all. You just don't normally put in scads of time and resources into something that is only "neat".

Derek French, Technical Producer

Max people in one server?
We really wouldn't have an answer to this until much later in the dev cycle.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Riddle me this my friend

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Why not have riddles?
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Sure

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Why not have some(of all) of them require the answer to be typed in?
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The industry moved away from type in answers a couple of years ago for a variety of reasons, including localization and spelling issues and accessibility

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Why ot have Party members help you with them?
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This could work as in game hint system where you, similar to KotOR, can ask NPCs about what they think of a certain situation, yes.

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b) The Char's intteligence doesn't come in play. - people got so hung up on that stupid intellignce stat, only becoause it's name is intelligence. If it was nemed something else, they probably wouldn't have said anything.
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Agreed. Who said we even have a intelligence stat? Even if we have, using it to determine the result to riddles doesn't make a lot sense, as the riddle is supposed to be a hurdle for the *player* so she can feel rewarded if she successfully figured it out. Putting it on the character would make it just a question of stat distribution on your character (and given that you are a party, even that doesn't count) and the original purpose of the riddle would be defeated.

More :
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Let's for instance asume there will be no NIT stat, but rather something else (let's call it X). So, since there IS so intellignce now, would any of you mind the ridels NOW?

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c) A reason you don't mention for "typed-in" answers, is that due to the vastness of words in most languages, it would require a lot of effort to make all the correct answers work or you will force players to look up the solution in the forums, because they didn't state it in the same way as the developers, which would be bad.

Tunderscape handled it nicely. Riddles in english, answers in english, alwways one word.
the riddels were quite good and I loved them. Never had any truble with it(except for one). As I recall the answers to the ones I remember were "War", "Honour", "Life", etc... simple word, so no need for a dictinary.

It soo bugs me whn riddles are so easily solved (since you have the right answer in fron of you nose with several REALLY wrong ones).
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Don't forget that a riddle that works in english and has a one word answer may not work in other languages, in many cases it will make no sense or have a sentence as an answer.

This would force us to create different riddles for different countries and generally throw us in localization hell.

More :
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No intelligence stat? It's about time.
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I didn't say there is none either, I just wanted to put in a reminder that everything is up for discussion.

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Tell us more about this, Georg, eh?
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Not now

Bioware: Can we get a name?
Let's wait for a really slow newsweek at a certain website and then release a totally unrelated codename

Visible Cloaks/Capes?

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IMO cloaks are more than just a minor thing, I mean what's the point of wearing a cloak if you can't see it. And besides I don't think it would be that hard to implement.
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Easy fix, just get rid of the cloak slot.

More:
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No cloaks?
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I didn't say that I said that if the argumentation is "it looks bad if you can't see the cloaks you equip on the inventory screen reflected on your character", then the easiest solution to fix this problem is to cut the cloak slot

A quote from the Great One concerning Henchmen

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I know DA is not based on D&D, but this topic is nonetheless relevant. To quote from E. Gary Gygax's 1st Ed. AD&D PHB, page 39:

"Experience awarded to henchmen is usually much less than that which would be given a player character. This is because the henchmen are acting under the direction of their master or mistress. So you should expect that your character's henchmen will get about 50% of the experience points ... possibly even less if your character bore the brunt of the action and closely directed the henchmen."

And in a rare moment of redundancy (rare for Gygax, anyway), it is once again stated on page 107, shortly after the discussion of 0-level NPC's:

"Remember, character henchmen will gain only one-half of the total experience."

Hmmm, why would Gygax write this, and write it twice? And I recall long ago how BioWare was whining about trying to keep the focus of the game on the PC, as opposed to being overshadowed by the party NPC's. Hmmmm. Any comments, BioWare?
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Who is this Gygax guy and what relevance has he for DA's game design?

I can't recall us "whining" on this topic either.

More: Personally I think it's a bad idea trying to make the PC the hero by making everyone else around him suck (aka giving them half XP).

In Pen and Paper this is a valid concern as the DM doesn't want to be hassled with a whole army at the disposal of a single player, but in a CRPG the story should drive the hero forward, not arbitrary rules that limit everyone else around him.

As for NWN, it was designed to be close to PnP, so the same concerns are certain valid and I agree that given the capabilties of todays AI systems (and that's nothing thats specific to NWN), not much else is needed to reinforce hero. DA is not based on a PnP system and doesn't need to care about the PC having multiple henchmen at his disposal as balancing will take the party into account (like in the BG Series), so I find it highly unlikely that we would see something like "a henchman only gets 50%".

Keeping your henchmen at 50% will open a can of problems you don't want to deal with in most game systems, especially when you are trying to make challenging battles that don't end with half of your party being killed every single time.

If your experience system is set up in a way that the following rule is valid

[henchman level] = [PC level -1]

I wouldn't be oposed (as we used this already in SoU and HotU) but that would be up to close balancing and dependent on how your XP system develops into higher levels.

I remember some discussions we had on the old BIS boards about this topic, but I don't remember them to be particulary "whiny" (unlike threads by certain half orcs trolls about dual wielding thieves...)

One thing I would like to know:
In HotU your Henchman Valen could develop into a kick *** fighting machine that could indeed take some of the glory away from the PC based on your class -
i.e. Player prepares mighty spell, aims at target, Valen hits critical and splatters body parts over the floor, player curses at Valen.

Was anyone bothered by this?
Did you get rid of him because he was too strong?
Did you keep him because he was valuable?

(*One* reason behind Valen's potential was to fix balancing problems created by the wide range of abilities certain classes get in epic levels. An epic weapon master could easily cut through most enemies, an epic rogue could , depending on how he was created, run into serious trouble in the campaign up to a point where it was nearly impossible to beat certain encounters and Valen was used to balance missing melee abilites off, so it would be interesting to know how you reacted to this when playing through HotU).

The Great List of (suggested) DA weapons!
Question. If you had to select 15 (arbitrary number) different weapons (ranged and melee) for inclusion into an RPG, which ones would you take (order by inclusion priority), and why.

More:
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Well, ok if we assume that all weapons from NWN are included i would have some additions.
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Such an assumption would be risky. While I have no information regarding what weapons are planned for DA, I would suggest not taking "everything that was in NWN will be in DA" for granted.

Which is the reason why I chose the number 15 in my previous post - to force you to make the decision which weapons you would like to drop.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Something I Thought Of While Playing NWN

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I think that would definetely cool. I'd like to see all magic animations be more relevant to what is actually happening. Of course, that means more work and more memory n stuff and we all know how stingy bioware is when it comes to such things
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Booo, no cookie for you!

Regarding the main topic, it's an interesting idea - but SR sums it up pretty well. It's extra work for our animators/vfx artists, meaning it would be a low priority feature if we decided to do it.

It's something to consider though.

Riddle me this my friend

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Role-Player wrote: Yet, concepts like strenght or dexterity are not removed from a character in favor of a completely player-driven input.
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Would you want them to be?

Sorry, I'm just having flashbacks to my younger days playing fighting games where in contests of 'strength' or the like, you'd hammer on the gamepad as fast as you could... then lose and punch your little brother in the shoulder for beating you...

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

Riddle me this my friend
I played many RPGs growing up, and my brother and I would tag-team the game, with one controlling the action and the other drawing maps or making notes on people, places, things, and clues.

One aspect of the "type-your-riddle-answer" that we hated was the need to type the answer exactly. If the answer was a synonym that the designers didn't account for, or a British spelling, or misspelled in the game code, the game would register an incorrect response. This got very frustrating, and for one seemingly easy riddle in particular (I think it was early in the Might & Magic series), we spent days trying to figure out how to precisely phrase or type the answer to get a positive result.

I've got no problems with riddles (indeed, riddles were one of the reasons my brother and I enjoyed RPGs), but I feel they should be relatively easy to figure out. This could involve hints found nearby or in conversation, simple mathematics (including rudimentary algebra, since it's taught as early as grade , or insight as a result of a character's stats or skills. Any way is fine as long as it doesn't rip the character out of the game, as I accept riddles as part of the same RPG experience that includes lots of dialogue, lots of walking from place to place, and character stat and ability advancement.