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.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Dragon Age audience... Mature vs Teen rating
I'm pretty positive that the plan is something like "we create the game we want to create and see what we end up with" right now. Same as in Jade.

DA Combat System

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I know that JE isn't on a '6 second timer' (at least I don't think it is); but it's less "actiony" than other action games sicne you can pause and still slect what your character will do when the game continues much like the other BIO games.
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No, that's not entirely correct. You can pause and "plan" your next moves, switch targets, activate focus mode, but you can not pause, press attack and then unpause and have the attack execute. If an enemies foot is 5 cm from your face and you pause, whatever you do won't save you from that kick in the head. So no, you can not pause and select what your character will do when you unpause . And you are correct, Jade is not an a 6 second timer, it's real time without combat rounds. But that's Jade and should be discussed on the Jade Boards - I'm happy to answer your questions there.

DA Combat System

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Huh? The combat is they way BIO makes all their crpgs. Even Jade Empire a supposedly action RPG uses it to a degree.
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Jade Empires combat is different from Kotor/NWN/BG.

Combat in NWN, BG, KotOR was based on actions in a queue that are resolved in a x-second time frame (the concept of personal combat rounds).

Combat in Jade Empire is true real time combat- you press the "punch" button and your character punches, you press the "kick button" and your character kicks and so on.

Both systems feature pause and play, with the exception that in Jade you can not queue up multiple actions while paused, but you can still switch styles, targets, etc.

Combat in DA will not be like Jade Empire.

Food/drink

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What's the difference between diablo and Ultima 7 ?
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A lot. Ultima 7 was a CRPG that blended open gameplay and exploration (similar to the elder scroll series) with storybased gameing and rich/memorable NPCs. Apart from a few issues (combat, food) many (including me) still consider it one of the best RPGs ever made. There are some good screenshots on http://exult.sourceforge.net

First off:
DA is not D&D, it's something different. A different world, a different rules system,

I've not seen any convincing arguments in this thread so far why you would need a global system for food and water, most things brought up here can easily be handled using existing systems.

As for GP weight I think this could only play a role if you give a player an option of taking care of situations like "I have killed this dragon and I can't take most of his hoard because I am overloaded. Forcing useless travel or leaving stuff might be realistic, but again it is not fun for most people, so I doubt we would do that.

Removing tedious elements from a gamesystem does not, in my opinion, "dumb down" a game, it improves gameplay and frees up resources to add other, more meaningful things to the game.

Adding food and water and making it optionial is not a task that's done in a few days, as it requires:
- (programming, art, localization) adding a GUI for it, translating it
- (design, art) adding food and water items, writing descriptions, etc
- (design) adding means to get those items through the campaign (i.e. inns, merchants, hunting, fishing, etc)
- (design) balancing food and water gain/loss throughout the campaign to make sure the average player will not end up dead in a part of the campaign where food was not vital.
- (design, programming) making all the stuff optional, switchable
- (QA) playtesting that rather large system, decentralized system.

That's an awefull lot of work, so you need to ask the question: "is that worth it?", especially for an optional system that might be used once or twice for an effect (i.e. the desert)? Would you still want this system, even if it would mean another system will be cut instead?

Example: Would you still take the food/water system if that would mean that the "day/night cycle and changing weather conditions and their impacton the combat and other actions in the game" system would be scrapped instead?

(Note: I'm, not saying there is such a system in DA, this is just an example for something that could be sacrificed for a food and water system).

But as Carl noted some day, there are many different kinds of roleplayers, some like more simulation elements, some prefer more story based interaction, some blend. It's the same situation here at BioWare, many different people work on our games, so you will often find heated discussions in meetings, that ultimately lead to certain features being in and others not being in the game. By posting your opinion here on the boards you can give input into that process. Someone who might want to have a certain feature in the game could find his killer argument for inclusion here, or get convinced that a certain feature is a bad idea. Example: The PW community convinced us to disallow the "Modify Character" option in HotU Server Vault games.

So keeping the discussion up and defending your opinion - as long as it doesn't get too aggressive or tedious (right Visc? ) - is a good thing to do, even if a lot of people, including BioWare Employees (with the notable exception of Scott ) oppose you.

Food/drink

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I understand you are afraid of having to "babysit". That's what people always are afraid of when you suggest more realism. But I think we can do entirely without that (babysitting). The only thing we need is the concept of food and water having an impact when it's not available. But that need to be explicit enough to make the player realize that desert journey is not going to be any picnic.

I'm not suggesting death after 4 days in the desert should come as an surprise. The player should be able to calculate needs in advance.
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In my opinion a global system you put into the game just for one occasion (i.e. the dangerous desert) is not worth to be put into the game. Resources are spent better elsewhere - especially since the "dangerous desert" (or whatever) can be simulated with existing systems (i.e. the journal system) if you really want it.

Also, if you first teach the player that food and drink is meaningless, and then present him with death because he forgot to stock up enough food/water for his journey - you are doing a bad thing. It sends the message "you are dead because you did not pay attention to a system that is completely meaningless over the rest of the game", which I would consider a bad idea. As said, there are better ways to make journey through the desert more eventful, and even if it is to make it part of the quest to collect enough water before starting the journey. Killing the player because he didn't pay attention to a subsystem that was of no use throughout the rest of the game is nothing you do anymore these days.

Plus it's seriously anticlimatic ("and the most powerful son of the god of murder died dehydrated in desert after forgetting to restock on enough water 4 days earlier") - That's something you would see in an old Sierra adventure (thinking of Conquest of Camelot), but it doesn't really sound like something you would expect in a BioWare game.

Food/drink
I disagree.

- Yes, food/water need could be interesting for limited scenarios like the journey through the desert, but that can be simulated through existing systems (i.e. quest entry "I need to find water..."). Putting an system of food and water as seperate inventory item is not different from what was done in Ultima 7, and that sucked big time. Having the player fetch food and water all over the game just because you want to have this one "hot dangerous desert" situation is a waste of resources and will ultimately lead to frustration (see below).

- Also, keep in mind that it is not fun to reload your game after 4 hours in the desert when you finally come to the point where you run out of water and you can't get any because you "should have thought of it earlier". It might be fun for a hardcore simulationist, but not for most gamers. I doubt most gamers would find it funny when their main character would frequently explode because they forgot to visit the bathroom (at least not the second time it happened).

Simulating overheating, coolout, etc can be done with existing systems (i.e. like in the last level in HotU) in a very limited scale - as soon as it becomes a tedious task, it does no longer add to gameplay and should be scrapped. Keep in mind that our games are not "simulate living in a fantasy world" but largely "experience and shape the story of an epic hero". Most players want to do heroic stuff, not babysit their hero through their daily routine.

Food could have a use as part of a rest system to carefully control the frequency of resting, but making people hungry on a timer does not add to gameplay.

Food/drink

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How about: Since a dragon's hoard is usually huge, you will have to find the nearest town and organize a caravan. There's of course the risk of robbers/thieves/monsters that will rob/steal from/destroy the caravan, which is why it's advisable to hire guards.
All of these people will require payment (Just kill them, I say).

Note that the player doesn't necessarily have to go with the caravan.
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That sounds like an interesting idea, but that would be handled as a subquest that could easily be integrated using existing systems instead of adding a global system (gold piece weight) on top of the whole game.

Also, while it is unrealistic that you can carry around a 2handed sword and a halberd at once, the resulting gameplay consequences if you would prevent that would be devastating - no more trying different weapons for a while, you need to drop them on the ground (or carry them to your house) go back, pick up the new weapon only to find out it sucks later. No that's another case of realism ruining fun by introducing tedious tasks. People would just opt for the usual "bag of holding" or packmule kind of thing there.

Food/drink
Let me try to put it this way:

We have two very different views on this topic:

In my opinion, when playing the hero in a role playing game, I don't want to be bothered with all days tasks like eating or drinking. I want to experience the story, do great deeds, bash monsters and save princessess (you get the picture). I want to worry about evil wizards, sinister plots, betrayals and glorious fights, not about how I manage my inventory so I can carry more stuff or finding enough wood to cook that deer I killed to get enough food.

You want to live in a simulated world, as believable as possible, you want to worry about the mundane tasks, you want it realistic, because thats where you get your "immersion" from.

Both points of view are valid and exist throughout the gaming community.

What it boils down to is:

Putting in things like eating, drinking, etc as a global system that costs (as explained earlier) significant resources, can only happen if these things are justified.

If the reason why we are putting those things in is "so I can have this really dangerous travel through the desert" or "so I need to organize how to get the loot out of that dragon lair" - it is a weak justification. A expensive global system is not justified by one or two single applications in the game. Combat happens all the time, it's easy to justify it as a global system.

To take the desert example again: Where is the problem with informing the character in the third desert "area" that things are getting dire. Have a henchman interject, mention that he doesn't feel so well and can't go on. Pop a new quest with "I should find water if we want to survive this hell". You can even have the Last-Tavern-Before-the-desert (tm) sell supplies and if the player bought them don't trigger the quest.

Point is: Doing this as a scripted event makes a lot more sense than introducing a global system for this one application, especially in our traditionally story driven games.

It's cheaper (in terms of manpower), presents a gripping story event ("the dangerous desert" and it doesn't interfere with other things - That's something global systems tend to do - anyone remember the romances triggering at inappropriate points during BG2 or the "slayer transformations" happening at so bad times that you couldn't go on with the game". Last thing you want is having your party starve to death before the final fight in the highest tower of the largest castle because they forgot to bring food. Some people might like that, the majority, I can assure you, would burn us for something like this - and "they should have bought food" won't fix the lameness of that moment.

I have yet to see a really compelling and convincing argument for this kind of stuff that goes beyond "it's realistic" and that justifies the pain of introducing a global system instead of just scripting it.

In some games, like Morrowind (let's call it Massivly Single Player Simulated World) you need a lot of global systems to keep the player occupied and inside your simulated world - but for a story driven game the stakes for introducing a global system are higher. If it's just for one cause (i.e. have the travel through the journey be dangerous), it's not justified. If it's just to keep the player busy, it's not justfied because there is something wrong with your story if you need to make the player do tedious tasks.

So as you can see, we are on pretty different sides of the spectrum on this

Food/drink

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I was told they were using DnD. What is DnD without food, water, rest, armor weight, and all the cool things that make a good DnD game? Otherwise its just Diablo, or Eversquest.
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DA has nothing to do with D&D.