chevalier
Sat, 9th Dec '06, 11:31pm
Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum (http://forums.bioware.com/viewforum.html?forum=84). 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.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">David Gaider, Lead Writer</font>
Death (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=494278&forum=84&sp=105)
If you can't even imagine how it might work, then there's not much for us to discuss until the actual details of the system are revealed.
And, while I understand the thinking behind it, I'm afraid the solution to every issue is not to put in a toggle.
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If you say so. Although I don't see how you can equate your party members not dying with not being able to lose and not having consequences -- because neither is the case -- I suppose you're free to assume whatever you'd like until we go into detail on the subject.
Wagging your finger at me and suggesting that we're designing the system for simple-minded idiots, however, when you neither know much about the system nor its context, isn't about to win much sympathy I'm afraid.
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Agreed. Having party members (the non-critical ones, anyhow) able to die as one of the possible consequences for going down on a higher difficulty setting is not very difficult to add in -- provided that nobody notices the loss of their comrade and they all agree to never speak of him again.
Which isn't really what we're going for (and would stand out rather sharply against the reactivity of your party members in all other situations).
Still, adding it isn't outside the realm of possibility, if we feel it's worthwhile. All I'm objecting to is the notion that facing death in combat -- even though those games that do have such a thing do not have death as anything more than a temporary obstacle -- is the only way to create challenge and tension, and that somehow merely having the option to leave your party member behind and not fix them is in itself worthy of praise.
Obviously those people saying it have something very specific in mind, but I don't buy it. Sorry. Take away my hardcore badge if you like, but I won't be bullied into believing something that isn't true just because someone can't imagine it being different than D&D or KotOR.
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If you say so. It's quite a leap of logic to say that because NWN and KotOR weren't challenging and they didn't have permadeath that permadeath is the only way that a game can be challenging... but as near as I can tell from your other posts, DA loses out for you just by not being BG2 to begin with anyhow, so I'm not sure what difference it would make.
Community interaction in DA design (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=504855&forum=84)
The opportunity for the community has been the same as any other member of the team: in being persuasive and making a solid argument regarding the kind of game they want DA to be. While we haven't gone to the community to ask for specific feedback (as in "What do you think of X feature?") there's certainly been no shortage of suggestions... and, yes, some of it has found its way into the game, stuff that was either convincing or fun, and why wouldn't it?
Such interaction wasn't the only reason for the early announcement, however. And whether we would ever announce this early again for another title is really hard to say. It's interesting to hear all the ideas, but some people also get frustrated because they want it yesterday already, and have this idea that we are desperate to keep attention on DA so we must just be doing a really bad job of it... and some people are busy building up everything that the game could be in their heads, in the absence of info to the contrary, that they are setting themselves up for disappointment once details finally are released.
So there's bad with the good. I remember working on projects that were completely secret, however, and it wasn't fun not being able to say anything or see excitement about what you're doing... so overall I, personally, don't mind the early announcement.
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Yeah... any release estimate suddenly boxes us in, whereas without it we can decide to change the scope of the game or make other larger alterations to our plans without having to worry about what it might appear like.
Because what would such a release estimate get us? Less people assuming that the game is vapourware? You think that the people who have come onto this forum shouting that knew we didn't release an estimate? No, they only knew that it's been two years since we showed anything about the game, and there's nothing to be seen about it now, so obviously the game simply doesn't exist.
The thing about pessimism is that either you're eventually proven right (and smart!) or you're pleasantly surprised. It's a win/win situation, and thus as far as the internet is concerned, the equivalent of an unstoppable force of nature.
Custom PC parties (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=505242&forum=84)
The main story of DA is single-player only... so the method of BG2 of using multiplayer to create a whole party of the bat won't work. Multiplayer in DA will be a seperate story altogether. You start off making a single character. There are some plans to allow people like you who want a custom party some more flexibility, but they're pretty tentative at this point.
Dwarven Politics (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=497615&forum=84&sp=45)
Tall dwarves would be an oxymoron, wouldn't it?
No, dwarves and elves should be enough like you'd expect in order to justify using the name. Otherwise we may as well just call them pigwigglies or whatever. With that in mind, all I'm saying is that the elves vary more from that norm than the dwarves do.
A few simple requests (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504939&forum=84&sp=0)
I don't know about the variety, per se, but I think you should be happy with DA's armor style. There was a bunch of us who fought the good fight with the artists (I think they all secretly long to be Frank Frazetta) and they mollified us by giving us heavy armor that actually looks like it would protect a woman. And clothing that, if not demure exactly, is not unintentionally whorish. Know what I mean?
Of course, for all I know, there could be some review down the line and it will be decided that DA simply isn't sexy enough and suddenly it'll be BoobFest 2006. I will then demand that all male characters go around in bare chests and skimpy loincloths, just to be fair, but you know the looks that will get me.
I kid. Mostly.
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I think it's more that they don't have to worry about whether anyone likes it, period. Modders can make some fantastic stuff that services a niche audience... for the players in that niche, though, there's not much that's better.
Modders also don't have deadlines and can work with an engine and feature list that's fully complete rather than in-process (which, for us, is most of the project). Not that they don't have hindrances, too, but those are really big things. I remember how different it was to work on the Ascension mod as opposed to actually working on the Throne of Bhaal itself.
Either way, though, while BG2 proved that fans will mod whether you make it easy or not, letting the fans play the game their way is really the path of least resistance.
Death, continued (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=504804&forum=84&sp=0)
No, it's NOT a special power. "Like your life essences are linked"? Now that's just reaching.
The point is that when everyone goes down, you lose. Instead of a critically-injured party member being helped, now there's no-one to help any of you. You can paint it as the party member standing there and laughing at the sword thrust through his chest, "Ha ha! Nothing can harm me, you fool!" but that's because you are choosing rather deliberately to picture it that way.
What I find more surprising is that you consider resurrection not to be an example of your #3 story-breaker. If there were an ability out there that contradicted plots and made death meaningless, that would be it. But I'm supposed to believe that the immersion (sic) is somehow increased when you are tossing off Raise Dead spells or dragging bodies back to the deposit-a-coin resurrection clinic back in town? That the fact that you could just leave the party member there is an improvement, one that we should sacrifice setting coherence for? Right.
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Short of us forcing you to reload whenever any member of your party dies (which I don't see anyone arguing for), nothing is improved by this. If we give you the option to leave them dead, then we have to make sure the entire game accounts for it even if 99% of the people would never use that option.
You can have a difficult game where you really need to keep your party alive. Someone going down in combat means you are deprived of their abilities for that fight, and means you may very well DIE. As in all of you. Why some people are conjuring a mental image of imperviousness I have no idea. Even if you did win the fight, you would need to deal with your terribly injured comrade -- or not, if you prefer to leave them injured. You do have the option of not tending to your comrades. But whether or not you are facing death in combat has everything to do with how tough the overall system is and NOT whether or not your comrades fall permanently every time they're struck down -- which is why every game that does this has resurrection.
If you must, argue for having more difficult fights and how they should be more difficult. Argue for lack of easy healing or lack of easy resting or armor penetration or whatever -- but arguing that lack of party member permadeath is the same as no death at all is not the tack to take here.
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<hr />Also, temporary death penalties may be a good idea - have characters that fell in combat be weaker for a while.<hr />
That's also the plan, though the consequences of having an injury are a bit more severe (and vary in severity according to your difficulty level). Even if there were a way to revive them during the combat, they would still obtain the injury for having gone down.
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<hr />If the PC goes down, the player failed and should get the "GAME OVER" message.<hr />
That's what the BG series did. Is that what you would prefer? As I hear it, there were generally complaints regarding that feature for the very reason you mention -- the fact that the rules that applied to NPC's didn't apply to the PC. Why didn't my priest raise my player character? And in the case of DA, why isn't the party scraping by without me and then tending to my wounds?
Provided that the battle is challenging enough to take down the PC -- who, in most cases, is the most powerful member of any given group -- one has to really wonder if the rest of the party could make it through without him. And given that DA will have full-party control, I see no reason not to let them try.
Not to mention that the mechanic is suddenly complicated when you have multiplayer. Do we run on an entirely different system? Or is every player considered a PC and it's "GAME OVER" whenever any of them die?
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Oh, wait... I'm confused. So it's okay to judge the difficulty of any RPG's we make only by NWN and KotOR, and thus we could never possibly make anything more difficult than those games... but it is possible for us to use a harder resurrection system that we've never used?
I don't get it. Which is it? Either we're completely unable to do something different than our past efforts or we're willing to do something new. I don't mind you making an argument, I'd just prefer that you not use both in the same post, please.
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Except that the Baldur's Gate games had resurrection. Cheap, easy, world-breaking resurrection. How is that "well"? And it's not that we're trying to skimp on the effort -- it's not a good system.
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So now the story is supposed to change when a party member dies permanently. Meaning, I suppose, that one must have access to unlimited party members (since all of them will be dying with such frequency -- hopefully the brief time you have with them is packed with story, right?) all of whom are such full characters that their tragic death at the hands of goblin #24 affects the story in such a dynamic fashion that someone chooses not to reload and to lose that party member anyhow, because look at how cool and immersive his death made the story?
Yes, that... sounds just like BG.
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So by encouraging the player not to reload, he is now left with potentially an unplayable game without enough party members to fill out a complete party, and our response is supposed to be "Hey, adventuring's dangerous! Hope you like all those dramatic consequences, though." Or, wait, is drama not what it's supposed to be about? Maybe it's dramatic consequences arising from non-dramatic deaths? Because death doesn't have to be dramatic, right? It's the consequences. Because the mere fact that there would be consequences would lead automatically to the drama, yes? Oh, and immersion. Let's not forget that.
I know I'm being silly and sarcastic, but as I sit here I wonder just how I'm supposed to provide challenging combat for which I create 12 very full party members with lots of dialogue who are all part of the plot who will then be killed off by said challenging combat, but the player will not want to reload because there is even more content to be had once those party members are dead (since you now can't interact with them any longer) and it's all ultra-realistic and engaging and the plot evolves and changes as these characters die -- now a core game feature, it seems, and no longer just a mechanic -- and somehow on top of all that, if I just try hard enough I can fit the rest of the game in, all now do-able by a solo PC since he has run out of dramatic side-plots to engage him and I am supposed to be encouraging players not to reload.
But I can't do that. We are talking about seriously contradictory goals, here. I would appreciate it if you could explain to me how this could be done and actually be still fun. Seriously. I'm all ears.
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But if they are penalties that can be managed, through time and the use of resources, it adds the benefit of consequence without all the baggage that needs to come along with killing characters (such as resurrection or, in another bright idea proposed recently, the "that's just too damn bad" school of hardcore gaming where the character's simply gone).
As has been mentioned elsewhere, we can't control whether or not people are going to choose to reload. What we can do, however, is make the consequences of combat not so permanent and unmanageable that a reload is guaranteed.
And once again I find it incredibly strange that constant death and resurrection is considered by anyone to be so much more "internally consistent".
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Except that what he proposed is that we should be encouraging the player not to reload when the party member falls by providing content meant to make the story accomodate that character's death. Which means the character dying is a game mechanic that is meant to happen and not something to recover from... and if the game is built to accomodate it that means that we do indeed have to look at the worst-case scenario.
If the game encourages you to not reload when your party member dies, you can not turn around and say to them "what? you let ALL of them die? Well you are an idiot then, and you deserved to fail."
THAT kind of attitude is the difference between "punishing" and "challenging" that I believe you mentioned earlier. Punishing a player for something that you are telling them is good to do is bad design.
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Read what the poster suggested again. He wanted an involved dynamic story revolving around each one, whether they died or not.
And even if it wasn't that, and instead was the BG1 method of "oh, look, he's dead!" with maybe an added funeral -- what has been added? If there's no chance of resurrection, suddenly we would need to ramp the challenge level of the game down a lot in order to make sure death didn't happen that often. Unless the idea is to make sure the player's characters are killed off often and permanently, with a wag at the finger for them being an idiot and not good enough at combat. At which point I'd say great -- that can be done, too, but the party members are going to be both numerous and very shallow on the dialogue. It's either that or it's back to the resurrection model where the chance of death is there but it's an illusion -- and one that some folk seem to find easier to accept apparently out of habit, and yet are telling me flat out that it either makes the game more difficult or more immersive, both of which are simply not true.
So which is it going to be? I know Grain of Sand is going to brilliantly tell me how it can all be done after he takes his chug, but until he does I'm having a difficult time picturing who exactly some of you people imagine us making this game for.
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I disagree with you completely. The player being able to fail is completely different from us telling the player that he failed because he was an idiot, even though he was doing something the game encouraged.
And I think my participation in this topic must come to an end. As Stan pointed out, nobody is convincing anybody, and the circular logic is making me dizzy. My only real objection is to those people who think that the threat of party member death, real or illusionary, is the only way that challenge or immersion or whatever can be achieved and anything short of that -- anything! -- is the equivalent of making the game simplistic, combat easy, the story meaningless, etc. etc. with nothing in-between being acceptable.
But those all-or-nothing folks won't be convinced anyhow, and so be it. They can comment on the final system when it comes out. Until then, while they've given me a few things to think about (and I thank them for that) I remain unconvinced.
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504926&forum=84&sp=0" target="_blank">bioware and profesional consultations.
</a>
I think the idea of consultants is an interesting one. The problem, however, is that as much as I might not understand economics (as an example), an economist might not understand games. Bring him in and we're not going to be able to communicate. I'll be interested in how the economy affects the game and how it should be fun, and he'll be quoting marxist economic theory to me.
Finding a consultant who also knows games is what you want. And I imagine finding such a beast would require more than a casual effort.
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Oh, believe me, I wasn't trying to be unfair... I was talking from experience. But maybe there are consultants out there who are good at communicating with people outside their field, and you wouldn't need someone who knows about games. My impression from past dealings, however, is that unless someone understands the context in which you need to use their knowledge, they're going to have trouble telling you anything very useful through no fault of their own.
But, then, maybe I just haven't been talking to the right people. Even if so, I doubt there's as many of them out there as you might think.
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I don't actually think the bar is very high for someone to know something about games... they just need to play them.
Heck, I remember the vast difference when we had a VO producer on KotOR who not only knew games but understood RPG's specifically. He already knew the context we needed so communication was super-easy.
Take a simpler example: I had an artist come to me today and tell me he needed to know more about a particular ruin so he could get a better idea of how to concept it. So I proceeded to tell him the basics of the culture of the people who had lived there, what had destroyed that particular place, what brought the players there, etc. He listened but seemed puzzled, and when I asked him why he said, "I really just wanted to know how old it was."
Your economist might suggest a model that's economically brilliant -- but may not work in a game. So you ask for something slightly less realistic but that would still seem authentic and be fun, and now the economist might become perplexed. What do you mean by that? He's not a master of fun economics, after all, but of serious economics.
The communication issue, come to think of it, may be ours and not his. I often have a very difficult time describing even what it is I do, exactly, to people who have never played a video game.
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Actually, yeah, fact-checking is something you can get a consultant to do, for sure. And that applies to any period. You'd just have to be careful when you ask "So, do these medieval weapons look at all convincing?" to stop listening when they get to the point about the weight distribution of smelted ore in weaponry and its impact on Scottish history -- or whatever. At some point you'd have to interrupt them and go, "So that's a yes?"
Gotta keep 'em focused.
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Who said the issues didn't apply to him?
Because Wolf (the linguistics guy) was both a linguist and an RPG geek (or maybe it was a fantasy geek... I forget), which is really the kind of consultant you'd need, like I said.
Throwable Spears (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=507665&forum=84)
*Casts Dispel Hope.*
No throwable spears.
Disecting Dragon Age's first Screenshot (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508339&forum=84&sp=30)
True enough, as Chris said earlier. This is a really early screenshot... for comparison, think back to the first screenshots of NWN that were released. Placeholder GUI elements, non-final character models and textures, etc.
Not that we didn't know you guys wouldn't dissect it thoroughly, but it's a bit amusing to see some folks already judging the overall style of DA from this and drawing broad comparisons to Oblivion and other games.
Speaking personally from having seen it in action, I can say that I both recognized some of the rough edges as well as was impressed by how nice it looks. It's developing a really unique look and style of its own, which I'm sure some will kvetch about as it doesn't match their mental images of what they were hoping for, but I've grown quite fond of it. But you'll see more as the game develops -- right now, I think this is to give you a rough idea of what it's going to look like, updated from the very old tech-demo screenshots of our original vision.
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Oh, I get it. The final place where DA ends up, graphically, won't please everyone... some will have wanted a little more of this, a little less of that and so forth. If there's one thing this kitchen doesn't lack, it's cooks.
So even though we developers will always say, "don't judge this as if it were the final version" we know y'all will do it anyway.
And it's a good way to get feedback, too. All I'm saying is don't jump to conclusions about the style -- we developers would kvetch and worry about the first shots being completely representative of the final game, it's true, but then we would never show you anything at all.
How long can game developement take before.... (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=506050&forum=84&sp=15)
Carry what? We're not trying to keep any attention on Dragon Age. One would think that would be obvious. We announced that this is the game we're working on, and since then we've been working on it.
You don't need to see or hear anything until we're ready to start showing it. Why do you think that we would keep pumping out information and screenshots and so forth for the years that we know we are going to be working on the game? For whose benefit? Certainly not ours.
Once you start hearing about the game, you'll hear plenty and you'll forget there was ever a point when we were quiet. And until then you won't hear squat.
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You don't think we might release Jade Empire on PC to make money, do you?
If not, then by all means: be impatient. I've never known consumers to really be patient, myself. It's a good thing we don't rely on them to be, otherwise they might start coming to our forums and accusing us of not getting our games out fast enough to suit them.
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Well, for starters, NWN was in development for over 5 years. DA has been in development, so far, for about 3.
NWN had very different goals, and was a very different project from DA -- the fact that they both have long development cycles is more indicative of them having brand-new engines as opposed to any commonalities in their design or their circumstances.
These concerns you express aren't very different from the ones we express ourselves, to be honest. Every project has its problems, from NWN to BG2 to JE, and I'm sure DA will be no different. We can only try to learn from those problems and move forward.
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If we are, you'll know about it eventually. Bad business decisions have predictable results. But thanks for your concern, seriously.
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=15)
I think realism is important only insofar as it reinforces the suspension of disbelief. I think that's what most players mean when they say they want some feature because it is "more realistic" or "immersive". Naturally, the bar sits at a different level for some people -- there are people out there who think that gritty realism is great and should include weapon durability, constant death, disease and suffering of a true Medieval era. And some people don't want any realism that gets in the way of their hacking and slashing. And while both of these views are valid enough, we're the ones who are going to decide where the bar sits at the end of the day.
Personally, I think there are a great number of things that are more important than including realism for its own sake (or immersion, or whatever you want to call it). Sometimes players hold immersion up as a goal in and of itself, and I think of it more as a means to achieve other goals. We're not creating a simulation, after all (which I suppose some games do strive to be), but more writing a novel.
That may not answer the original question of just how realistic we aim to be very well, but I'm afraid it's a very broad question and a bit difficult to answer.
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<hr />no reaction from NPCs to an armed (and dangerous) party waving swords in front of their faces<hr />Like Stan said, this is a common conceit in most RPG's and I don't have a big problem with it. The big issue is context. Does the player look dangerous? Or does he look like a valiant knight? And if we modeled reactions to that behavior is it worthwhile or would it be annoying to simply force the player to manually disarm all the time?
We may be side-stepping the issue with DA, regardless. The current plan is that weapons are not drawn unless you are actually in combat (or maybe in a potential "combat area", I don't know). That could change, I suppose.
<hr />suicidal attacks by mobs<hr />It would depend on the mob, I suppose. Not having creatures flee all the time or surrender constantly is a nod to simplicity for the most part. For either of those you'd need a mechanic that was not annoying or content (like dialogue) that was situation-specific.
We have a fair number of combats in Dragon Age that can end in surrender, but only where it makes sense and there was something to gain by that occurring. Otherwise the simpler option trumps realism in that case.
<hr />graphics not reflecting companion equipment<hr />That depends on what you mean. I like seeing the appearance of my avatar change -- I want to see the cool armor I just picked up after I put it on, or that glowy sword or whatever. World of Warcraft actually made great use of that desire, as part of the progression for your character in that game is visual -- as you get higher level your gear becomes better-looking and more impressive. So having that kind of appearance specialization is a plus.
If you mean seeing every last item shown on the character, like a ring or a pair of boots or the necklace -- when you get down to that level of detail I personally say it's less about realism and more of a fluff feature. Fluff can be cool, but if it has no other purpose and it comes to deciding whether to put in a fluff feature or something more important, the decision is obvious. In a MMORPG, where character individuality is more of an issue, I'd say the feature becomes a bit less fluffy and more of a gameplay-enhancer... but still not about realism. One would not put in those sorts of appearance options just because it would be realistic to do so, after all.
Does DA need a publisher? (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=506166&forum=84)
I think Ray and Greg have answered this one before. I think they're interested in investigating the potential in online distribution (obviously) but beyond that they simply aren't interested in getting into publishing.
The only problem with publishers, as I see it, is when they hold all the cards, financially speaking. If they're simply a means to distribute and advertise your product, what's the harm? At that point we're paying for a service that we don't have the experience/intention to handle on our own.
Romances (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508309&forum=84&sp=45)
I think romances should be player-initiated, regardless of whether or not the character is of the same gender as the player.
The way romances work right now in Dragon Age, if you never express any interest in the player there will be no romance period.
Party members who are compatible might make the occasional flirty or suggestive comment in the course of their regular dialogue... and you are free to respond neutrally or shoot them down (at which point no more flirtiness will occur). Even if you did respond in a way that started them down the romance path (you were flirty, but maybe you didn't mean it "that way"), as soon as the party member did something to make their intentions more known you have the option of letting them down easy or blowing them off or whatever. The party member will jump back to the regular friendship track, with their attitude towards you adjusted by how you ended it.
Or you could just flirt with them outright, if you lack the patience to wait for them to do it for you.
I think, overall, this should handle any issues with people worried about becoming involved with gay party members... or becoming involved with anyone, for those who would prefer to avoid romantic stories altogether (and, yes, those people do exist).
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So having one romance is less of a choice than having no romances? That seems like odd logic to me. If there's one romance storyline, it may not be to your specific liking, but at least it's there and it's your choice whether to engage in it or not -- if there are no romances, then it was never an option.
With your logic, unless we put in a plethora of options we may as well not even bother? One, fully-developed romance option per gender is "going half-way" and not roleplaying because you don't have your pick of dates?
I know players always think more=better and having choices is a good thing, and ideally we'd provide them, but to poo-poo a choice that's provided just because it's not provided to excess seems a bit... strange to me.
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I would have written Anomen's personality a bit different from the start had I known he would become the romance, and I think some of his clicked-on comments would have been taken out (especially that exasperated "YES?!"), but no -- I don't think it was that bad. Some people don't like it (and Melirinda certainly seems to be one of them), but a lot of others who commented about it had more of a bug up about the lack of choice or never actually played through the romance beyond the beginning. I got a lot of positive feedback from it, too, thankfully, and it proved to be a good learning experience.
Ultimately, though, had it been up to me to pick one romance NPC it would have been Valygar.
<hr />All romances in BG where priests (i.e. cleric or druid)<hr />Done on purpose. For those people who didn't visit the forums and had no idea who it was possible to romance, it was pretty likely that they would always have at least one healer in the party, so chances were good that a romance NPC would be there for them.
<hr />Originally Haer'Dalis and Cernd where considered to be romanceable, too (Haer'Dalis then being the only non-priest in the series of romanceable characters), but skipped because female players are a minority even for roleplaying games.<hr />Not quite. First, it was Valygar and not Cernd. The priest-thing only came about after it turned out that the other two male romances wouldn't be written. Secondly, those romances were dropped due to lack of time. The existing romances (especially Jaheira's) ended up taking way more time to write then we had conceived (never having done something like this before), and since the male romances were being done second (they could very easily have been done first) they were simply dropped. It was considered by some to be not as big of a deal due to the player gender ratio, sure, but that's not why we did it. Big difference.
And for those who say (said) that was unfair, I simply roll my eyes at that. Fairness never entered into the equation. We were not making romances to be fair. If we had actually been using the player gender ratio as the reasoning behind our plans for BG2, there would have been no male romances, period. Think about it.
<hr />It does seem to be the case even in subsequent bioware games that the romance interests get on your nerves if you don't persue the romance. I'm not sure if it's because a person designed to appeal to a man isn't appealing to a woman and vice versa. It could just be that Bioware romances seem to follow a pattern where the NPC matures or gets over some issue with the help of the romance interest.<hr />
Carth and Bastila are good examples of that, actually. They appealed a great deal to most of the folks who went through their romance... but many of those who didn't seem to loathe them. It's kind of funny to watch in Carth's case especially because the split is dramatic.
I don't think it's something that can quite be chalked up to how appealing a character is to a particular gender (though I manufacture Carth's female appeal quite deliberately through research at the Ladies of Neverwinter website) -- personally I think the main problem was that those people who weren't eligible for the romance never got to see the better side of those characters' personalities. A male PC in KotOR never got to see Carth's funny lines or his charm, and never got to see him move beyond his distrust and hostility. A female PC never got to poke fun at Bastila or see her vulnerable side, and for them she never moved beyond her crisp Jedi facade (until she fell). Dark Side players especially spent time with both characters (especially Carth when he is forced into the party in Taris) constantly tut-tutting them for doing evil things and whining in general and never moving beyond that.
It's a good reason to include the friendship track that we are in Dragon Age. I really would have liked it if male PC's could have formed a comraderie with Carth, and if female PC's could have become close friends with Bastila. But that means approaching the writing from two different sides at once.
Diversity of the DA world (and the PC's party) (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=503276&forum=84)
<hr />Will there be any unique, non-traditional races in the game?<hr />
Yes, though some of them may not be playable at first.
<hr />Is the DA world generally human-dominated or is it relatively diverse?<hr />
Primarily human-dominated, though that domination is and has been occasionally contested.
<hr />Are most of the recruitable NPCs humans, or are they varied?<hr />
(Counting...) Half of them are human, I think.
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<hr />Are the races kinda like d&d, or are they completely Bio-original?<hr />
Err... well, the "unique, non-traditional" races are completely Bio-original. As one would expect. The other ones are traditional (not just to D&D, but to the genre), though they are our take on them.
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It would be pointless for us to call them elves and dwarves if they were completely unrecognizeable. The one good part of using some of the fantasy staples is that they communicate things to the player without us having to tell them anything explicit. That way we can spend time on explaining other facets of the world which do deviate more from the standard and not overwhelm the player with all the strangeness. We want our world to be recognizeable enough that the player feels quickly at home, but fresh enough that it doesn't feel generic.
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There's no half-anything. The races either breed true, or not at all.
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You get bonus skills based on your background origin. Which something like "Elf Raised by Dwarves" would have to be, seeing as backgrounds are things you play through and not just traits you pick.
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I think you're quite wrong. Both Mali and Zimbabwe were large and powerful African Kingdoms, and some places like Ethiopia and the Nubian Empire have incredibly fascinating histories. As far as "contributed little to humanity", you might want to consider that you are referring to the cradle of civilization... and you may also want to consider that history has traditionally been written by the victors. Just because colonial powers eventually subjugated civilizations in Africa and South America and most people today are woefully ignorant of them does not mean that caucasians are responsible for all significant advancements and culture throughout history.
And while I agree that most fantasy is largely based on the Western European and even Middle Eastern molds, I could quite easily see cultures in Dragon Age being based on some of those African Kingdoms... and the only sad thing is that even if I copied them outright most people would believe I just made them up.
Difficulty Options - Please Don't Just Multiply Damage. (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504327&forum=84&sp=15)
Well, from past experience I will say that when it comes to AI there's a huge difference between enemies appearing to act intelligently and enemies actually acting intelligently.
With the former, there are some things that enemies can do which players can actually see happening and which gives them the impression (correct or no) that the enemies are actually thinking. Taking cover is one. Running to get help is another.
The problem is that when an enemy is actually acting intelligently, it's mostly stuff that goes on "under the hood", so to speak, and isn't readily apparent to the player except on analysis. The main problem is that an enemy that actually is intelligent will kick your butt all over the place, and without necessarily using any of the more showy tactics -- which can lead to player frustration. It's a good reason to put that kind of AI as part of a higher difficulty, but the sad thing is we rarely get the time allotted to put that kind of scalability in. The damage thing was there in NWN (BG2, as well? I forget) because it's quick.
The intention is for the difficulty levels in DA to actually alter the AI under the hood without altering the apparent AI... as well as to make the consequences of combat more severe, amongst other things... but in the end we'll have to see how it plays out. Difficulty levels are one of the things that usually gets implemented last.
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It is, but I'll tell you what I think "punishing" means in terms of game design.
"Punishing" is when you tell a player that they are doing what is expected of them and then put them in a "gotcha" situation. For most players, trying to figure out what they are expected to do is the only way they can play... they explore a bit and try things out, and when they receive what appear to be good results they figure that this is something that the game allows for. If it's bad, then they should know that right away. That's not punishing, that's simply negative reinforcement.
But if the player is just trying to do what they think the game wants them to do, and suddenly the game whirls on them and goes, "Ha! You are SUCH an idiot! You TOTALLY screwed that up!" -- then we have a problem. That's where "punishing" comes in, and I'm sure lots of examples could be brought up from many games (including ours). Why? Because it's really easy to mistake "punishing" for "challenging". And the thing that your average grognard (or experienced gamer, if you will) tends to forget is that just because he figured out how to get around the punishment and pats himself on the back for it (and perhaps rightly so) does not mean it was very good design to begin with.
One would hope that scaling the difficulty would ramp up the challenge rather than the punishment, but it's not always clear which of the two the truly hardcore actually want sometimes (there are a lot of masochists out there).
And... I've just wandered off into theoretical territory. I'll stop there.
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Right. And you need the design to tell the player "this is correct" and "no, that's wrong". What you don't want to do is tell the player "this is correct" and then, when they do it, suddenly turn about on them with an air of "wow, you were an idiot for doing that. Whatever possessed you?" And that happens more often then you think.
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=503044&forum=84" target="_blank">Things I like to see in DA (and other CRPGs as well)
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<hr />I feel that it is kind of lame that someone who was droped to 0 hit points bounces back up like nothing happened.<hr />
That's not the plan for DA, actually.
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I hope you mean "no permanent death", right? Because party members who are disabled during combat aren't killed, but neither do they spring back up completely unharmed afterwards.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Stanley Woo, QA Ninja</font>
Community interaction in DA design (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=504855&forum=84)
cytoc's pretty much hit the nail on the head. Not announcing a date so early in the process means that we can still mold and shape the game the way we want to without worrying that we're eating into valuable (ie. expensive) development time. We can prototype more game systems, refine our story, ramp up this feature or that, and generally do what we do best: create the best story- and character-driven RPGs in the world.
We know some people get really impatient and frustrated about what they perceive to be a delay, but I'm afraid it's tough cookies for those people. They'll either have to learn to be a little more patient, or they'll get increasingly frustrated and their heads will explode. We don't want that; that's really messy.
Death, continued (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504804&forum=84&sp=45)
Why put forth the effort in making things more complicated when you don't have to? Any death system we include will have its supporters and detractors, and I have yet to see any argument in this thread that convinces me that any one system is inherently and objectively better than any other.
I've played many RPGs in my gaming career and encountered many different death systems. Perma-death, injury, no consequences on death, plot death, party death ending the game, PC death ending the game, teleport on death, easy resurrection, expensive res, no-res, and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. The thing is, most of these systems were seamless and "internally consistent," which meant that once I ran into the system once or twice, I ceased to have a problem with it since it worked the same way every time and seemed logical and balanced in-game.
See, it's one thing to talk about "immersion" and "internal consistency" on a finished product, but it's something else entirely to talk about that sort of thing hypothetically. Sure, I can come up with a jillion situations in which perma-death can "break immersion" or is "internally inconsistent," but I can also come up wtih a jillion situations in which non-permanent death can do the same.
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No, actually, the simplest one of all would be to not give players choices. If we allow choice, we have to develop consequences, responses for each choice. Remember that everything in the game has to be developed by someone or a number of someones.
The concept of having innumerable combinations of living and dead party members, plus robust dialogues for all, plus NPC and game reactions for all possible combinations would result in a lot of extra work for something that is arguably fun or "immersive."
I, too, am all for choice, but those choices have to mean something for both the player and the developer. They have to be worth all the time designing, programming, animating, scripting, and otherwise producing that content.
Some of the death systems argued in this thread simply aren't worth the effort because it's a lot of work for something only one or two people will see or want to see. Others have us spending resources on a system that will be seen by all but may not be the best system for the systems we already have in place or intend to have in place. And still others would be great if only we'd thought of it first and designed other systems around it, instead of the other way around.
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I think people are generally very passionate about their games. Especially with RPG's, where gamers can invest a lot of time and energy and emotion into the story and be rewarded for doing so.
But one must still remember that everyone's got their opinion of what makes a great game or what systems are necessary for enjoyment, or even whether point buy or random rolls are the best way to generate character stats. But no one person or opinion or faction is "right" to the exclusion of every other opinion or person. There is room for all stripes of systems, gamers, and games.
On the road to perfection!!! (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=505927&forum=84&sp=0)
If anyone is expecting this game to be "perfect," "optimal," "ultimate," or in any other way the "epitome" of BioWare games, they are going to be disappointed.
If, on the other hand, you're wondering if DA is going to be "fun," "exciting," "challenging," or "intriguing," then the answer will likely be yes!
Ever!
Quality Control (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=505706&forum=84&sp=0)
Kevin Lynch is my new best friend.
Don't worry, BioWare will continue to release games that we're proud of. And that means doing everything we can to either get rid of as many bugs as possible, or make sure only a handful of people will be absolutely stopped by a bug that we couldn't get rid of.
Kevin's right; it's not always that QA missed a bug. there just isn't enough time to get rid of every single issue in complex, modern games. Heck, you should see the list of known issues we had in our games; they'd surprise you. But the vast majority of players will never see anything amiss or run into anything game-stopping, and that's what most developers aim for.
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And now you see the balance that must be struck in game development by both developer and publisher alike--how many bugs to leave in in order to make a certain release date vs. how many bugs absolutely must be fixed before chosing to release.
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<hr />I was wandering, is it possible to develop the game right up until the beta without a publisher, and then get one?<hr />Yes, that is entirely within the realm of possibility.
bioware and profesional consultations. (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504926&forum=84&sp=0)
<hr />I'd imagine some historians and mythology/folk-lore experts could be valuable to make sure their stuff is coherant and realistic-sounding. A well developed world history and mythos is very important, which is one reason why LoTR is a classic and D&D has flourished so. Tolkein was both a linguist and a folk-lore/mythology expert and his fictional world is one of the best made ever, in my opinion. Of course, he build his over decades, and I'm hoping Bioware won't take that long.<hr />
Or our design department can do that, since that's what they're there for.
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That's as may be, but in MMO's, the economy is limitless, with an unending supply of cash being generated by each quest-giver. At no time in EVE will any region or agent or contact "run out" of money or be unable to reward a player for completing a quest. In WoW, resources like mineral veins, herbs, and animal skins are unlimited, so it is possible to farm hundreds of gold without affecting the economy one iota. And even with all this gold floating about, prices in stores aren't affected and remain pretty constant throughout the game world based solely on your reputation within that faction.
Having an economist on hand to consult with on monetary issues wouldn't help all that much, just as having a physicist on hand doesn't necessarily help a comic book writer or artist write or draw better/more realistic action scenes.
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They are likely bad design decisions. Hiring outside professional consultants for specific game content is the exception rather than the rule, due mostly because the content we need specialists for is very specialized. An in-game economy doesn't have to be so complex that you need an ECON 400 student to understand it. In fact, if your in-game economy is that complex, you've likely spent your resources unwisely and will be sacrificing other game systems for it.
That's my take on it, anyway.
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Yes, but then, why have the consultants in the first place if all you need is some fun abstraction of that complex concept? Like why would Blizzard, for example, hire a consultant to figure out the economics of their auction house when their designers could just design an auction house? Sure, it may not be the most "realistic" of auction houses, but I think what they've got in the game is a decent abstraction of an auction house.
(This is all assuming, of course, that Blizzard did not, in fact, hire a consultant to develop their auction house system.)
But how would you reconcile the very fluid style in the video with the game rules? What animations would correspond to a hit, what animations to a miss or a block? And what about style consistency between the commonly fluid eastern martial arts with a very western art and game style of RPG?
Are you merely encouraging our use of more eastern martial art styles, or are you merely looking for more fluidity in the combat animations? If we're going for a more fast-paced combat system, having multiple, linked, or elaborate animations for a single "move" or "attack" is going to get frustrating after the first couple of combats.
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=15)
I think Kevin Lynch sums it up rather well.
It's not a matter of whether a gmae is "realistic" or not; it's more to do with consistency of presentation. Game abstractions should seem realistic without actually being realistic. As in the above case of eating and excreting functions, it simply isn't fun to keep a character or party continually fed and/or evacuated. But if a "rest" function is included, that might suffice for an abstraction of daily bathroom and meal breaks, weapons and armour cleaning and maintenance, personal hygiene, and study time or downtime.
Likewise, a combat system isn't necessarily designed to be "realistic." It should, however, be easy to use, relatively balanced for all different levels of difficulty, and above all, fun to play. Whether every single animation corresponds to an attack (as in Jade Empire), or the combat animation is merely a device to keep combat moving while the combat rules work in the background (as in NWN), it is still an abstraction of "real" combat that balances functionality and fun.
In many cases, however, the more "realistic" the system, the less "fun" it becomes. Unlike PnP games, which have a DM to oversee unusual interpretations of rules, bend the rules for story purposes, gloss over huge stretches of time, and make even downtime interesting and fun, CRPGs don't have that luxury. All possible paths and decisions are taken into account and developers devise ways of handling unusual situations if and when they come up. At the very least, developers design a game to minimize the number of unusual situations that might require extensive explanation, unique game resources, or take up too much "game time."
For example, yes it's a lot more fun to be able to get past the guard using stealth, pickpocketing, a trap, an arrow, convincing a beggar to cause a commotion, imitating a lady's cries for help, Three Stooges slapstick, levitating over him, climbing a wall, navigating a dark sewer, or teleporting, but a developer then has to actually make all of those things work. This is why when we sometimes talk about game options, we talk in terms of story length and breadth. The more options you have (ie. the wider a game is), the less time and resources you have to make a long story.
It's the difference between Morrowind (whose critical path wasn't very long but there were near unlimited options for getting there) and Final Fantasy (whose story is very complex and long, but have very few side quests or story paths [minigames are time-consuming but don't deviate too much fromt he story]).
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It's a conceit in many adventure games that openly wielding a weapon when traveling raises no eyebrows. Why? Because individual reactions would take a long time to write up and implement, unless you have everyone reacting the same way. but how do people react? Gasp in surprise, flee, scream? That would get annoying really quickly for me. Do they react differently to different weapon types? What about shields, daggers, squirrels? Do henchmen wielding weapons count? what about summoned creatures or familiars? Many questions.
<hr />suicidal attacks by mobs,<hr />One could say that this is default behaviour in any adventure game. When you encounter monsters, they attack you until they die. Will it be this way in DA? Possibly.
<hr />graphics not reflecting companion equipment<hr />Hmmm, I'm ambivalent towards this one. It's neat to see in games like Titan Quest, but there's also something to be said about your avatar staying static regardless of what you're wearing. It's a conceit I can live with.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Ferret A. Baudoin, Senior Designer</font>
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504926&forum=84&sp=15" target="_blank">bioware and profesional consultations.
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I think with many consultants would focus on making things proper and real-world ship-shape. Because that's what they do. Whereas us designers generally just want things to be fun. That applies to economics as well as other things. And I'd argue that many game designers are some of the foremost experts on game economics.
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=30)
I prefer verisimilitude myself. To make a game feel real is a great goal and one I like to strive for, but I think it's best if you strip away all of the annoyances and inconveniences of the real world unless they present some manner of fun or interest.
There are some people that have higher tolerances for hard-core realistic similuations in games that relish mundane repetitive details, but I think the vast majority of folks don't want to sweat the small stuff.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator</font>
Disecting Dragon Age's first Screenshot (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508339&forum=84&sp=0)
Lets see here... comments on what you've all said so far.
Keep in mind the screenshot is still not the final game. Although it is taken from the latest build's in game footage, by the time the game is actually released things could change. GUI elements can be altered, graphics will improve, etc. It looks good now, but it'll look even better later
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We had a company meeting today where Scott and Trent showed off some of the cool newness for DA and one of the little things shown was the shadows. Sure, in the grand scheme of story, art and such, shadows are a tiny detail. But I personally love it when any game gets the little details right. It makes for a more realistic game imo and I was glad to see the work (which may be explained firther in the future) was done on this.
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=506050&forum=84&sp=30" target="_blank">How long can game developement take before....
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We aren't ready to be announcing a set date yet. Mass Effect will be out before DA, and we haven't realeased a date for that either.
The team is still working hard and things are progressing nicely (gorgeously imo), but as far as release dates, you'll have to Stay Tuned.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Mary Kirby, Writer</font>
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=15)
Hey, as long we're talking philosophy, can we bring in artistic movements, too?
Have you ever read a Realist novel? They're massive. Realist authors thought that if they just described every minute detail of life, they could re-create life in a believable fictional form. This is a fascinating but impossible task. First because an author can't possibly remember all the details, and second because that many details are completely and utterly boring.
Now, I'm more inclined to follow the Modernists, myself. It was the architect Le Corbusier who pretty much coined the phrase, "God is in the details," and he's right. Details make or break a design, but it's a matter of including the right ones and not simply trying to detail everything humanly possible. (Corbusier built an awful lot of white cubes on stilts, so I'm pretty sure this is what he meant, too.)
Sure, you could make a mini-game out of eating and sleeping, but are those details that should be included? Or can you get the essence of life without the routine of sleeping and turning off your alarm clock and showering and eating breakfast and watching the news before you go to the toilet? I. . . kinda think you can, myself. I don't want to play a game made up of innumerable details and minigames. I tend to want the details to be either: A) meaningful or b)interesting and in either case, well-implemented. I know what the requirements are for real life; it's like playing the tutorial again on my 87th playthrough of a game. I know how the combat system works, already, just get me to the game!
Romances (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508309&forum=84&sp=60)
I actually enjoyed those exchanges between Atton and the others on the Hawk quite a lot. (Not so much the one with Disciple, but the "Meditation envy?" had me laughing for a while.) But I think what I really liked about it was that the NPC was expressing actual interest in my character, instead of making the whole romance rely on me arduously prying some guy's life story out of him in order to achieve that "Do you like me? Circle yes or no." dialogue down the line.
But I admit to being terribly unromantic.
And I totally think all romances should end with someone passing a note via a friend of a friend during study hall with that "Circle yes or no" question on it.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Sheryl Chee, Writer</font>
Romances (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508309&forum=84&sp=30)
I wasn't talking about different life experiences depending on the PC's gender, just a slightly different set of interactions. I expect two women to be able to bond over things that a woman could never bond with a man about. I imagine some men think that women are beautiful, and somewhat alien creatures, and they never quite 'get' them. A woman, on the other hand, will look at another woman and have an instinctual understanding of her. I have very little real life experience with this sort of thing, but one of my friends told me that the way she connects with a girl is different from the way she connects with a guy. I think this has coloured my view of such romances.
But then what do I know. I'm as romantic as a clump of dirt.
EDIT: But I think you're right. It does depend on the person, or in the case of DA, the character.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">David Gaider, Lead Writer</font>
Death (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=494278&forum=84&sp=105)
If you can't even imagine how it might work, then there's not much for us to discuss until the actual details of the system are revealed.
And, while I understand the thinking behind it, I'm afraid the solution to every issue is not to put in a toggle.
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If you say so. Although I don't see how you can equate your party members not dying with not being able to lose and not having consequences -- because neither is the case -- I suppose you're free to assume whatever you'd like until we go into detail on the subject.
Wagging your finger at me and suggesting that we're designing the system for simple-minded idiots, however, when you neither know much about the system nor its context, isn't about to win much sympathy I'm afraid.
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Agreed. Having party members (the non-critical ones, anyhow) able to die as one of the possible consequences for going down on a higher difficulty setting is not very difficult to add in -- provided that nobody notices the loss of their comrade and they all agree to never speak of him again.
Which isn't really what we're going for (and would stand out rather sharply against the reactivity of your party members in all other situations).
Still, adding it isn't outside the realm of possibility, if we feel it's worthwhile. All I'm objecting to is the notion that facing death in combat -- even though those games that do have such a thing do not have death as anything more than a temporary obstacle -- is the only way to create challenge and tension, and that somehow merely having the option to leave your party member behind and not fix them is in itself worthy of praise.
Obviously those people saying it have something very specific in mind, but I don't buy it. Sorry. Take away my hardcore badge if you like, but I won't be bullied into believing something that isn't true just because someone can't imagine it being different than D&D or KotOR.
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If you say so. It's quite a leap of logic to say that because NWN and KotOR weren't challenging and they didn't have permadeath that permadeath is the only way that a game can be challenging... but as near as I can tell from your other posts, DA loses out for you just by not being BG2 to begin with anyhow, so I'm not sure what difference it would make.
Community interaction in DA design (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=504855&forum=84)
The opportunity for the community has been the same as any other member of the team: in being persuasive and making a solid argument regarding the kind of game they want DA to be. While we haven't gone to the community to ask for specific feedback (as in "What do you think of X feature?") there's certainly been no shortage of suggestions... and, yes, some of it has found its way into the game, stuff that was either convincing or fun, and why wouldn't it?
Such interaction wasn't the only reason for the early announcement, however. And whether we would ever announce this early again for another title is really hard to say. It's interesting to hear all the ideas, but some people also get frustrated because they want it yesterday already, and have this idea that we are desperate to keep attention on DA so we must just be doing a really bad job of it... and some people are busy building up everything that the game could be in their heads, in the absence of info to the contrary, that they are setting themselves up for disappointment once details finally are released.
So there's bad with the good. I remember working on projects that were completely secret, however, and it wasn't fun not being able to say anything or see excitement about what you're doing... so overall I, personally, don't mind the early announcement.
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Yeah... any release estimate suddenly boxes us in, whereas without it we can decide to change the scope of the game or make other larger alterations to our plans without having to worry about what it might appear like.
Because what would such a release estimate get us? Less people assuming that the game is vapourware? You think that the people who have come onto this forum shouting that knew we didn't release an estimate? No, they only knew that it's been two years since we showed anything about the game, and there's nothing to be seen about it now, so obviously the game simply doesn't exist.
The thing about pessimism is that either you're eventually proven right (and smart!) or you're pleasantly surprised. It's a win/win situation, and thus as far as the internet is concerned, the equivalent of an unstoppable force of nature.
Custom PC parties (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=505242&forum=84)
The main story of DA is single-player only... so the method of BG2 of using multiplayer to create a whole party of the bat won't work. Multiplayer in DA will be a seperate story altogether. You start off making a single character. There are some plans to allow people like you who want a custom party some more flexibility, but they're pretty tentative at this point.
Dwarven Politics (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=497615&forum=84&sp=45)
Tall dwarves would be an oxymoron, wouldn't it?
No, dwarves and elves should be enough like you'd expect in order to justify using the name. Otherwise we may as well just call them pigwigglies or whatever. With that in mind, all I'm saying is that the elves vary more from that norm than the dwarves do.
A few simple requests (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504939&forum=84&sp=0)
I don't know about the variety, per se, but I think you should be happy with DA's armor style. There was a bunch of us who fought the good fight with the artists (I think they all secretly long to be Frank Frazetta) and they mollified us by giving us heavy armor that actually looks like it would protect a woman. And clothing that, if not demure exactly, is not unintentionally whorish. Know what I mean?
Of course, for all I know, there could be some review down the line and it will be decided that DA simply isn't sexy enough and suddenly it'll be BoobFest 2006. I will then demand that all male characters go around in bare chests and skimpy loincloths, just to be fair, but you know the looks that will get me.
I kid. Mostly.
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I think it's more that they don't have to worry about whether anyone likes it, period. Modders can make some fantastic stuff that services a niche audience... for the players in that niche, though, there's not much that's better.
Modders also don't have deadlines and can work with an engine and feature list that's fully complete rather than in-process (which, for us, is most of the project). Not that they don't have hindrances, too, but those are really big things. I remember how different it was to work on the Ascension mod as opposed to actually working on the Throne of Bhaal itself.
Either way, though, while BG2 proved that fans will mod whether you make it easy or not, letting the fans play the game their way is really the path of least resistance.
Death, continued (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=504804&forum=84&sp=0)
No, it's NOT a special power. "Like your life essences are linked"? Now that's just reaching.
The point is that when everyone goes down, you lose. Instead of a critically-injured party member being helped, now there's no-one to help any of you. You can paint it as the party member standing there and laughing at the sword thrust through his chest, "Ha ha! Nothing can harm me, you fool!" but that's because you are choosing rather deliberately to picture it that way.
What I find more surprising is that you consider resurrection not to be an example of your #3 story-breaker. If there were an ability out there that contradicted plots and made death meaningless, that would be it. But I'm supposed to believe that the immersion (sic) is somehow increased when you are tossing off Raise Dead spells or dragging bodies back to the deposit-a-coin resurrection clinic back in town? That the fact that you could just leave the party member there is an improvement, one that we should sacrifice setting coherence for? Right.
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Short of us forcing you to reload whenever any member of your party dies (which I don't see anyone arguing for), nothing is improved by this. If we give you the option to leave them dead, then we have to make sure the entire game accounts for it even if 99% of the people would never use that option.
You can have a difficult game where you really need to keep your party alive. Someone going down in combat means you are deprived of their abilities for that fight, and means you may very well DIE. As in all of you. Why some people are conjuring a mental image of imperviousness I have no idea. Even if you did win the fight, you would need to deal with your terribly injured comrade -- or not, if you prefer to leave them injured. You do have the option of not tending to your comrades. But whether or not you are facing death in combat has everything to do with how tough the overall system is and NOT whether or not your comrades fall permanently every time they're struck down -- which is why every game that does this has resurrection.
If you must, argue for having more difficult fights and how they should be more difficult. Argue for lack of easy healing or lack of easy resting or armor penetration or whatever -- but arguing that lack of party member permadeath is the same as no death at all is not the tack to take here.
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<hr />Also, temporary death penalties may be a good idea - have characters that fell in combat be weaker for a while.<hr />
That's also the plan, though the consequences of having an injury are a bit more severe (and vary in severity according to your difficulty level). Even if there were a way to revive them during the combat, they would still obtain the injury for having gone down.
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<hr />If the PC goes down, the player failed and should get the "GAME OVER" message.<hr />
That's what the BG series did. Is that what you would prefer? As I hear it, there were generally complaints regarding that feature for the very reason you mention -- the fact that the rules that applied to NPC's didn't apply to the PC. Why didn't my priest raise my player character? And in the case of DA, why isn't the party scraping by without me and then tending to my wounds?
Provided that the battle is challenging enough to take down the PC -- who, in most cases, is the most powerful member of any given group -- one has to really wonder if the rest of the party could make it through without him. And given that DA will have full-party control, I see no reason not to let them try.
Not to mention that the mechanic is suddenly complicated when you have multiplayer. Do we run on an entirely different system? Or is every player considered a PC and it's "GAME OVER" whenever any of them die?
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Oh, wait... I'm confused. So it's okay to judge the difficulty of any RPG's we make only by NWN and KotOR, and thus we could never possibly make anything more difficult than those games... but it is possible for us to use a harder resurrection system that we've never used?
I don't get it. Which is it? Either we're completely unable to do something different than our past efforts or we're willing to do something new. I don't mind you making an argument, I'd just prefer that you not use both in the same post, please.
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Except that the Baldur's Gate games had resurrection. Cheap, easy, world-breaking resurrection. How is that "well"? And it's not that we're trying to skimp on the effort -- it's not a good system.
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So now the story is supposed to change when a party member dies permanently. Meaning, I suppose, that one must have access to unlimited party members (since all of them will be dying with such frequency -- hopefully the brief time you have with them is packed with story, right?) all of whom are such full characters that their tragic death at the hands of goblin #24 affects the story in such a dynamic fashion that someone chooses not to reload and to lose that party member anyhow, because look at how cool and immersive his death made the story?
Yes, that... sounds just like BG.
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So by encouraging the player not to reload, he is now left with potentially an unplayable game without enough party members to fill out a complete party, and our response is supposed to be "Hey, adventuring's dangerous! Hope you like all those dramatic consequences, though." Or, wait, is drama not what it's supposed to be about? Maybe it's dramatic consequences arising from non-dramatic deaths? Because death doesn't have to be dramatic, right? It's the consequences. Because the mere fact that there would be consequences would lead automatically to the drama, yes? Oh, and immersion. Let's not forget that.
I know I'm being silly and sarcastic, but as I sit here I wonder just how I'm supposed to provide challenging combat for which I create 12 very full party members with lots of dialogue who are all part of the plot who will then be killed off by said challenging combat, but the player will not want to reload because there is even more content to be had once those party members are dead (since you now can't interact with them any longer) and it's all ultra-realistic and engaging and the plot evolves and changes as these characters die -- now a core game feature, it seems, and no longer just a mechanic -- and somehow on top of all that, if I just try hard enough I can fit the rest of the game in, all now do-able by a solo PC since he has run out of dramatic side-plots to engage him and I am supposed to be encouraging players not to reload.
But I can't do that. We are talking about seriously contradictory goals, here. I would appreciate it if you could explain to me how this could be done and actually be still fun. Seriously. I'm all ears.
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But if they are penalties that can be managed, through time and the use of resources, it adds the benefit of consequence without all the baggage that needs to come along with killing characters (such as resurrection or, in another bright idea proposed recently, the "that's just too damn bad" school of hardcore gaming where the character's simply gone).
As has been mentioned elsewhere, we can't control whether or not people are going to choose to reload. What we can do, however, is make the consequences of combat not so permanent and unmanageable that a reload is guaranteed.
And once again I find it incredibly strange that constant death and resurrection is considered by anyone to be so much more "internally consistent".
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Except that what he proposed is that we should be encouraging the player not to reload when the party member falls by providing content meant to make the story accomodate that character's death. Which means the character dying is a game mechanic that is meant to happen and not something to recover from... and if the game is built to accomodate it that means that we do indeed have to look at the worst-case scenario.
If the game encourages you to not reload when your party member dies, you can not turn around and say to them "what? you let ALL of them die? Well you are an idiot then, and you deserved to fail."
THAT kind of attitude is the difference between "punishing" and "challenging" that I believe you mentioned earlier. Punishing a player for something that you are telling them is good to do is bad design.
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Read what the poster suggested again. He wanted an involved dynamic story revolving around each one, whether they died or not.
And even if it wasn't that, and instead was the BG1 method of "oh, look, he's dead!" with maybe an added funeral -- what has been added? If there's no chance of resurrection, suddenly we would need to ramp the challenge level of the game down a lot in order to make sure death didn't happen that often. Unless the idea is to make sure the player's characters are killed off often and permanently, with a wag at the finger for them being an idiot and not good enough at combat. At which point I'd say great -- that can be done, too, but the party members are going to be both numerous and very shallow on the dialogue. It's either that or it's back to the resurrection model where the chance of death is there but it's an illusion -- and one that some folk seem to find easier to accept apparently out of habit, and yet are telling me flat out that it either makes the game more difficult or more immersive, both of which are simply not true.
So which is it going to be? I know Grain of Sand is going to brilliantly tell me how it can all be done after he takes his chug, but until he does I'm having a difficult time picturing who exactly some of you people imagine us making this game for.
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I disagree with you completely. The player being able to fail is completely different from us telling the player that he failed because he was an idiot, even though he was doing something the game encouraged.
And I think my participation in this topic must come to an end. As Stan pointed out, nobody is convincing anybody, and the circular logic is making me dizzy. My only real objection is to those people who think that the threat of party member death, real or illusionary, is the only way that challenge or immersion or whatever can be achieved and anything short of that -- anything! -- is the equivalent of making the game simplistic, combat easy, the story meaningless, etc. etc. with nothing in-between being acceptable.
But those all-or-nothing folks won't be convinced anyhow, and so be it. They can comment on the final system when it comes out. Until then, while they've given me a few things to think about (and I thank them for that) I remain unconvinced.
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504926&forum=84&sp=0" target="_blank">bioware and profesional consultations.
</a>
I think the idea of consultants is an interesting one. The problem, however, is that as much as I might not understand economics (as an example), an economist might not understand games. Bring him in and we're not going to be able to communicate. I'll be interested in how the economy affects the game and how it should be fun, and he'll be quoting marxist economic theory to me.
Finding a consultant who also knows games is what you want. And I imagine finding such a beast would require more than a casual effort.
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Oh, believe me, I wasn't trying to be unfair... I was talking from experience. But maybe there are consultants out there who are good at communicating with people outside their field, and you wouldn't need someone who knows about games. My impression from past dealings, however, is that unless someone understands the context in which you need to use their knowledge, they're going to have trouble telling you anything very useful through no fault of their own.
But, then, maybe I just haven't been talking to the right people. Even if so, I doubt there's as many of them out there as you might think.
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I don't actually think the bar is very high for someone to know something about games... they just need to play them.
Heck, I remember the vast difference when we had a VO producer on KotOR who not only knew games but understood RPG's specifically. He already knew the context we needed so communication was super-easy.
Take a simpler example: I had an artist come to me today and tell me he needed to know more about a particular ruin so he could get a better idea of how to concept it. So I proceeded to tell him the basics of the culture of the people who had lived there, what had destroyed that particular place, what brought the players there, etc. He listened but seemed puzzled, and when I asked him why he said, "I really just wanted to know how old it was."
Your economist might suggest a model that's economically brilliant -- but may not work in a game. So you ask for something slightly less realistic but that would still seem authentic and be fun, and now the economist might become perplexed. What do you mean by that? He's not a master of fun economics, after all, but of serious economics.
The communication issue, come to think of it, may be ours and not his. I often have a very difficult time describing even what it is I do, exactly, to people who have never played a video game.
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Actually, yeah, fact-checking is something you can get a consultant to do, for sure. And that applies to any period. You'd just have to be careful when you ask "So, do these medieval weapons look at all convincing?" to stop listening when they get to the point about the weight distribution of smelted ore in weaponry and its impact on Scottish history -- or whatever. At some point you'd have to interrupt them and go, "So that's a yes?"
Gotta keep 'em focused.
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Who said the issues didn't apply to him?
Because Wolf (the linguistics guy) was both a linguist and an RPG geek (or maybe it was a fantasy geek... I forget), which is really the kind of consultant you'd need, like I said.
Throwable Spears (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=507665&forum=84)
*Casts Dispel Hope.*
No throwable spears.
Disecting Dragon Age's first Screenshot (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508339&forum=84&sp=30)
True enough, as Chris said earlier. This is a really early screenshot... for comparison, think back to the first screenshots of NWN that were released. Placeholder GUI elements, non-final character models and textures, etc.
Not that we didn't know you guys wouldn't dissect it thoroughly, but it's a bit amusing to see some folks already judging the overall style of DA from this and drawing broad comparisons to Oblivion and other games.
Speaking personally from having seen it in action, I can say that I both recognized some of the rough edges as well as was impressed by how nice it looks. It's developing a really unique look and style of its own, which I'm sure some will kvetch about as it doesn't match their mental images of what they were hoping for, but I've grown quite fond of it. But you'll see more as the game develops -- right now, I think this is to give you a rough idea of what it's going to look like, updated from the very old tech-demo screenshots of our original vision.
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Oh, I get it. The final place where DA ends up, graphically, won't please everyone... some will have wanted a little more of this, a little less of that and so forth. If there's one thing this kitchen doesn't lack, it's cooks.
So even though we developers will always say, "don't judge this as if it were the final version" we know y'all will do it anyway.
And it's a good way to get feedback, too. All I'm saying is don't jump to conclusions about the style -- we developers would kvetch and worry about the first shots being completely representative of the final game, it's true, but then we would never show you anything at all.
How long can game developement take before.... (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=506050&forum=84&sp=15)
Carry what? We're not trying to keep any attention on Dragon Age. One would think that would be obvious. We announced that this is the game we're working on, and since then we've been working on it.
You don't need to see or hear anything until we're ready to start showing it. Why do you think that we would keep pumping out information and screenshots and so forth for the years that we know we are going to be working on the game? For whose benefit? Certainly not ours.
Once you start hearing about the game, you'll hear plenty and you'll forget there was ever a point when we were quiet. And until then you won't hear squat.
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You don't think we might release Jade Empire on PC to make money, do you?
If not, then by all means: be impatient. I've never known consumers to really be patient, myself. It's a good thing we don't rely on them to be, otherwise they might start coming to our forums and accusing us of not getting our games out fast enough to suit them.
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Well, for starters, NWN was in development for over 5 years. DA has been in development, so far, for about 3.
NWN had very different goals, and was a very different project from DA -- the fact that they both have long development cycles is more indicative of them having brand-new engines as opposed to any commonalities in their design or their circumstances.
These concerns you express aren't very different from the ones we express ourselves, to be honest. Every project has its problems, from NWN to BG2 to JE, and I'm sure DA will be no different. We can only try to learn from those problems and move forward.
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If we are, you'll know about it eventually. Bad business decisions have predictable results. But thanks for your concern, seriously.
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=15)
I think realism is important only insofar as it reinforces the suspension of disbelief. I think that's what most players mean when they say they want some feature because it is "more realistic" or "immersive". Naturally, the bar sits at a different level for some people -- there are people out there who think that gritty realism is great and should include weapon durability, constant death, disease and suffering of a true Medieval era. And some people don't want any realism that gets in the way of their hacking and slashing. And while both of these views are valid enough, we're the ones who are going to decide where the bar sits at the end of the day.
Personally, I think there are a great number of things that are more important than including realism for its own sake (or immersion, or whatever you want to call it). Sometimes players hold immersion up as a goal in and of itself, and I think of it more as a means to achieve other goals. We're not creating a simulation, after all (which I suppose some games do strive to be), but more writing a novel.
That may not answer the original question of just how realistic we aim to be very well, but I'm afraid it's a very broad question and a bit difficult to answer.
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<hr />no reaction from NPCs to an armed (and dangerous) party waving swords in front of their faces<hr />Like Stan said, this is a common conceit in most RPG's and I don't have a big problem with it. The big issue is context. Does the player look dangerous? Or does he look like a valiant knight? And if we modeled reactions to that behavior is it worthwhile or would it be annoying to simply force the player to manually disarm all the time?
We may be side-stepping the issue with DA, regardless. The current plan is that weapons are not drawn unless you are actually in combat (or maybe in a potential "combat area", I don't know). That could change, I suppose.
<hr />suicidal attacks by mobs<hr />It would depend on the mob, I suppose. Not having creatures flee all the time or surrender constantly is a nod to simplicity for the most part. For either of those you'd need a mechanic that was not annoying or content (like dialogue) that was situation-specific.
We have a fair number of combats in Dragon Age that can end in surrender, but only where it makes sense and there was something to gain by that occurring. Otherwise the simpler option trumps realism in that case.
<hr />graphics not reflecting companion equipment<hr />That depends on what you mean. I like seeing the appearance of my avatar change -- I want to see the cool armor I just picked up after I put it on, or that glowy sword or whatever. World of Warcraft actually made great use of that desire, as part of the progression for your character in that game is visual -- as you get higher level your gear becomes better-looking and more impressive. So having that kind of appearance specialization is a plus.
If you mean seeing every last item shown on the character, like a ring or a pair of boots or the necklace -- when you get down to that level of detail I personally say it's less about realism and more of a fluff feature. Fluff can be cool, but if it has no other purpose and it comes to deciding whether to put in a fluff feature or something more important, the decision is obvious. In a MMORPG, where character individuality is more of an issue, I'd say the feature becomes a bit less fluffy and more of a gameplay-enhancer... but still not about realism. One would not put in those sorts of appearance options just because it would be realistic to do so, after all.
Does DA need a publisher? (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=506166&forum=84)
I think Ray and Greg have answered this one before. I think they're interested in investigating the potential in online distribution (obviously) but beyond that they simply aren't interested in getting into publishing.
The only problem with publishers, as I see it, is when they hold all the cards, financially speaking. If they're simply a means to distribute and advertise your product, what's the harm? At that point we're paying for a service that we don't have the experience/intention to handle on our own.
Romances (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508309&forum=84&sp=45)
I think romances should be player-initiated, regardless of whether or not the character is of the same gender as the player.
The way romances work right now in Dragon Age, if you never express any interest in the player there will be no romance period.
Party members who are compatible might make the occasional flirty or suggestive comment in the course of their regular dialogue... and you are free to respond neutrally or shoot them down (at which point no more flirtiness will occur). Even if you did respond in a way that started them down the romance path (you were flirty, but maybe you didn't mean it "that way"), as soon as the party member did something to make their intentions more known you have the option of letting them down easy or blowing them off or whatever. The party member will jump back to the regular friendship track, with their attitude towards you adjusted by how you ended it.
Or you could just flirt with them outright, if you lack the patience to wait for them to do it for you.
I think, overall, this should handle any issues with people worried about becoming involved with gay party members... or becoming involved with anyone, for those who would prefer to avoid romantic stories altogether (and, yes, those people do exist).
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So having one romance is less of a choice than having no romances? That seems like odd logic to me. If there's one romance storyline, it may not be to your specific liking, but at least it's there and it's your choice whether to engage in it or not -- if there are no romances, then it was never an option.
With your logic, unless we put in a plethora of options we may as well not even bother? One, fully-developed romance option per gender is "going half-way" and not roleplaying because you don't have your pick of dates?
I know players always think more=better and having choices is a good thing, and ideally we'd provide them, but to poo-poo a choice that's provided just because it's not provided to excess seems a bit... strange to me.
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I would have written Anomen's personality a bit different from the start had I known he would become the romance, and I think some of his clicked-on comments would have been taken out (especially that exasperated "YES?!"), but no -- I don't think it was that bad. Some people don't like it (and Melirinda certainly seems to be one of them), but a lot of others who commented about it had more of a bug up about the lack of choice or never actually played through the romance beyond the beginning. I got a lot of positive feedback from it, too, thankfully, and it proved to be a good learning experience.
Ultimately, though, had it been up to me to pick one romance NPC it would have been Valygar.
<hr />All romances in BG where priests (i.e. cleric or druid)<hr />Done on purpose. For those people who didn't visit the forums and had no idea who it was possible to romance, it was pretty likely that they would always have at least one healer in the party, so chances were good that a romance NPC would be there for them.
<hr />Originally Haer'Dalis and Cernd where considered to be romanceable, too (Haer'Dalis then being the only non-priest in the series of romanceable characters), but skipped because female players are a minority even for roleplaying games.<hr />Not quite. First, it was Valygar and not Cernd. The priest-thing only came about after it turned out that the other two male romances wouldn't be written. Secondly, those romances were dropped due to lack of time. The existing romances (especially Jaheira's) ended up taking way more time to write then we had conceived (never having done something like this before), and since the male romances were being done second (they could very easily have been done first) they were simply dropped. It was considered by some to be not as big of a deal due to the player gender ratio, sure, but that's not why we did it. Big difference.
And for those who say (said) that was unfair, I simply roll my eyes at that. Fairness never entered into the equation. We were not making romances to be fair. If we had actually been using the player gender ratio as the reasoning behind our plans for BG2, there would have been no male romances, period. Think about it.
<hr />It does seem to be the case even in subsequent bioware games that the romance interests get on your nerves if you don't persue the romance. I'm not sure if it's because a person designed to appeal to a man isn't appealing to a woman and vice versa. It could just be that Bioware romances seem to follow a pattern where the NPC matures or gets over some issue with the help of the romance interest.<hr />
Carth and Bastila are good examples of that, actually. They appealed a great deal to most of the folks who went through their romance... but many of those who didn't seem to loathe them. It's kind of funny to watch in Carth's case especially because the split is dramatic.
I don't think it's something that can quite be chalked up to how appealing a character is to a particular gender (though I manufacture Carth's female appeal quite deliberately through research at the Ladies of Neverwinter website) -- personally I think the main problem was that those people who weren't eligible for the romance never got to see the better side of those characters' personalities. A male PC in KotOR never got to see Carth's funny lines or his charm, and never got to see him move beyond his distrust and hostility. A female PC never got to poke fun at Bastila or see her vulnerable side, and for them she never moved beyond her crisp Jedi facade (until she fell). Dark Side players especially spent time with both characters (especially Carth when he is forced into the party in Taris) constantly tut-tutting them for doing evil things and whining in general and never moving beyond that.
It's a good reason to include the friendship track that we are in Dragon Age. I really would have liked it if male PC's could have formed a comraderie with Carth, and if female PC's could have become close friends with Bastila. But that means approaching the writing from two different sides at once.
Diversity of the DA world (and the PC's party) (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=503276&forum=84)
<hr />Will there be any unique, non-traditional races in the game?<hr />
Yes, though some of them may not be playable at first.
<hr />Is the DA world generally human-dominated or is it relatively diverse?<hr />
Primarily human-dominated, though that domination is and has been occasionally contested.
<hr />Are most of the recruitable NPCs humans, or are they varied?<hr />
(Counting...) Half of them are human, I think.
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<hr />Are the races kinda like d&d, or are they completely Bio-original?<hr />
Err... well, the "unique, non-traditional" races are completely Bio-original. As one would expect. The other ones are traditional (not just to D&D, but to the genre), though they are our take on them.
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It would be pointless for us to call them elves and dwarves if they were completely unrecognizeable. The one good part of using some of the fantasy staples is that they communicate things to the player without us having to tell them anything explicit. That way we can spend time on explaining other facets of the world which do deviate more from the standard and not overwhelm the player with all the strangeness. We want our world to be recognizeable enough that the player feels quickly at home, but fresh enough that it doesn't feel generic.
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There's no half-anything. The races either breed true, or not at all.
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You get bonus skills based on your background origin. Which something like "Elf Raised by Dwarves" would have to be, seeing as backgrounds are things you play through and not just traits you pick.
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I think you're quite wrong. Both Mali and Zimbabwe were large and powerful African Kingdoms, and some places like Ethiopia and the Nubian Empire have incredibly fascinating histories. As far as "contributed little to humanity", you might want to consider that you are referring to the cradle of civilization... and you may also want to consider that history has traditionally been written by the victors. Just because colonial powers eventually subjugated civilizations in Africa and South America and most people today are woefully ignorant of them does not mean that caucasians are responsible for all significant advancements and culture throughout history.
And while I agree that most fantasy is largely based on the Western European and even Middle Eastern molds, I could quite easily see cultures in Dragon Age being based on some of those African Kingdoms... and the only sad thing is that even if I copied them outright most people would believe I just made them up.
Difficulty Options - Please Don't Just Multiply Damage. (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504327&forum=84&sp=15)
Well, from past experience I will say that when it comes to AI there's a huge difference between enemies appearing to act intelligently and enemies actually acting intelligently.
With the former, there are some things that enemies can do which players can actually see happening and which gives them the impression (correct or no) that the enemies are actually thinking. Taking cover is one. Running to get help is another.
The problem is that when an enemy is actually acting intelligently, it's mostly stuff that goes on "under the hood", so to speak, and isn't readily apparent to the player except on analysis. The main problem is that an enemy that actually is intelligent will kick your butt all over the place, and without necessarily using any of the more showy tactics -- which can lead to player frustration. It's a good reason to put that kind of AI as part of a higher difficulty, but the sad thing is we rarely get the time allotted to put that kind of scalability in. The damage thing was there in NWN (BG2, as well? I forget) because it's quick.
The intention is for the difficulty levels in DA to actually alter the AI under the hood without altering the apparent AI... as well as to make the consequences of combat more severe, amongst other things... but in the end we'll have to see how it plays out. Difficulty levels are one of the things that usually gets implemented last.
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It is, but I'll tell you what I think "punishing" means in terms of game design.
"Punishing" is when you tell a player that they are doing what is expected of them and then put them in a "gotcha" situation. For most players, trying to figure out what they are expected to do is the only way they can play... they explore a bit and try things out, and when they receive what appear to be good results they figure that this is something that the game allows for. If it's bad, then they should know that right away. That's not punishing, that's simply negative reinforcement.
But if the player is just trying to do what they think the game wants them to do, and suddenly the game whirls on them and goes, "Ha! You are SUCH an idiot! You TOTALLY screwed that up!" -- then we have a problem. That's where "punishing" comes in, and I'm sure lots of examples could be brought up from many games (including ours). Why? Because it's really easy to mistake "punishing" for "challenging". And the thing that your average grognard (or experienced gamer, if you will) tends to forget is that just because he figured out how to get around the punishment and pats himself on the back for it (and perhaps rightly so) does not mean it was very good design to begin with.
One would hope that scaling the difficulty would ramp up the challenge rather than the punishment, but it's not always clear which of the two the truly hardcore actually want sometimes (there are a lot of masochists out there).
And... I've just wandered off into theoretical territory. I'll stop there.
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Right. And you need the design to tell the player "this is correct" and "no, that's wrong". What you don't want to do is tell the player "this is correct" and then, when they do it, suddenly turn about on them with an air of "wow, you were an idiot for doing that. Whatever possessed you?" And that happens more often then you think.
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=503044&forum=84" target="_blank">Things I like to see in DA (and other CRPGs as well)
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<hr />I feel that it is kind of lame that someone who was droped to 0 hit points bounces back up like nothing happened.<hr />
That's not the plan for DA, actually.
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I hope you mean "no permanent death", right? Because party members who are disabled during combat aren't killed, but neither do they spring back up completely unharmed afterwards.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Stanley Woo, QA Ninja</font>
Community interaction in DA design (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=504855&forum=84)
cytoc's pretty much hit the nail on the head. Not announcing a date so early in the process means that we can still mold and shape the game the way we want to without worrying that we're eating into valuable (ie. expensive) development time. We can prototype more game systems, refine our story, ramp up this feature or that, and generally do what we do best: create the best story- and character-driven RPGs in the world.
We know some people get really impatient and frustrated about what they perceive to be a delay, but I'm afraid it's tough cookies for those people. They'll either have to learn to be a little more patient, or they'll get increasingly frustrated and their heads will explode. We don't want that; that's really messy.
Death, continued (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504804&forum=84&sp=45)
Why put forth the effort in making things more complicated when you don't have to? Any death system we include will have its supporters and detractors, and I have yet to see any argument in this thread that convinces me that any one system is inherently and objectively better than any other.
I've played many RPGs in my gaming career and encountered many different death systems. Perma-death, injury, no consequences on death, plot death, party death ending the game, PC death ending the game, teleport on death, easy resurrection, expensive res, no-res, and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting. The thing is, most of these systems were seamless and "internally consistent," which meant that once I ran into the system once or twice, I ceased to have a problem with it since it worked the same way every time and seemed logical and balanced in-game.
See, it's one thing to talk about "immersion" and "internal consistency" on a finished product, but it's something else entirely to talk about that sort of thing hypothetically. Sure, I can come up with a jillion situations in which perma-death can "break immersion" or is "internally inconsistent," but I can also come up wtih a jillion situations in which non-permanent death can do the same.
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No, actually, the simplest one of all would be to not give players choices. If we allow choice, we have to develop consequences, responses for each choice. Remember that everything in the game has to be developed by someone or a number of someones.
The concept of having innumerable combinations of living and dead party members, plus robust dialogues for all, plus NPC and game reactions for all possible combinations would result in a lot of extra work for something that is arguably fun or "immersive."
I, too, am all for choice, but those choices have to mean something for both the player and the developer. They have to be worth all the time designing, programming, animating, scripting, and otherwise producing that content.
Some of the death systems argued in this thread simply aren't worth the effort because it's a lot of work for something only one or two people will see or want to see. Others have us spending resources on a system that will be seen by all but may not be the best system for the systems we already have in place or intend to have in place. And still others would be great if only we'd thought of it first and designed other systems around it, instead of the other way around.
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I think people are generally very passionate about their games. Especially with RPG's, where gamers can invest a lot of time and energy and emotion into the story and be rewarded for doing so.
But one must still remember that everyone's got their opinion of what makes a great game or what systems are necessary for enjoyment, or even whether point buy or random rolls are the best way to generate character stats. But no one person or opinion or faction is "right" to the exclusion of every other opinion or person. There is room for all stripes of systems, gamers, and games.
On the road to perfection!!! (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=505927&forum=84&sp=0)
If anyone is expecting this game to be "perfect," "optimal," "ultimate," or in any other way the "epitome" of BioWare games, they are going to be disappointed.
If, on the other hand, you're wondering if DA is going to be "fun," "exciting," "challenging," or "intriguing," then the answer will likely be yes!
Ever!
Quality Control (http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=505706&forum=84&sp=0)
Kevin Lynch is my new best friend.
Don't worry, BioWare will continue to release games that we're proud of. And that means doing everything we can to either get rid of as many bugs as possible, or make sure only a handful of people will be absolutely stopped by a bug that we couldn't get rid of.
Kevin's right; it's not always that QA missed a bug. there just isn't enough time to get rid of every single issue in complex, modern games. Heck, you should see the list of known issues we had in our games; they'd surprise you. But the vast majority of players will never see anything amiss or run into anything game-stopping, and that's what most developers aim for.
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And now you see the balance that must be struck in game development by both developer and publisher alike--how many bugs to leave in in order to make a certain release date vs. how many bugs absolutely must be fixed before chosing to release.
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<hr />I was wandering, is it possible to develop the game right up until the beta without a publisher, and then get one?<hr />Yes, that is entirely within the realm of possibility.
bioware and profesional consultations. (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504926&forum=84&sp=0)
<hr />I'd imagine some historians and mythology/folk-lore experts could be valuable to make sure their stuff is coherant and realistic-sounding. A well developed world history and mythos is very important, which is one reason why LoTR is a classic and D&D has flourished so. Tolkein was both a linguist and a folk-lore/mythology expert and his fictional world is one of the best made ever, in my opinion. Of course, he build his over decades, and I'm hoping Bioware won't take that long.<hr />
Or our design department can do that, since that's what they're there for.
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That's as may be, but in MMO's, the economy is limitless, with an unending supply of cash being generated by each quest-giver. At no time in EVE will any region or agent or contact "run out" of money or be unable to reward a player for completing a quest. In WoW, resources like mineral veins, herbs, and animal skins are unlimited, so it is possible to farm hundreds of gold without affecting the economy one iota. And even with all this gold floating about, prices in stores aren't affected and remain pretty constant throughout the game world based solely on your reputation within that faction.
Having an economist on hand to consult with on monetary issues wouldn't help all that much, just as having a physicist on hand doesn't necessarily help a comic book writer or artist write or draw better/more realistic action scenes.
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They are likely bad design decisions. Hiring outside professional consultants for specific game content is the exception rather than the rule, due mostly because the content we need specialists for is very specialized. An in-game economy doesn't have to be so complex that you need an ECON 400 student to understand it. In fact, if your in-game economy is that complex, you've likely spent your resources unwisely and will be sacrificing other game systems for it.
That's my take on it, anyway.
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Yes, but then, why have the consultants in the first place if all you need is some fun abstraction of that complex concept? Like why would Blizzard, for example, hire a consultant to figure out the economics of their auction house when their designers could just design an auction house? Sure, it may not be the most "realistic" of auction houses, but I think what they've got in the game is a decent abstraction of an auction house.
(This is all assuming, of course, that Blizzard did not, in fact, hire a consultant to develop their auction house system.)
But how would you reconcile the very fluid style in the video with the game rules? What animations would correspond to a hit, what animations to a miss or a block? And what about style consistency between the commonly fluid eastern martial arts with a very western art and game style of RPG?
Are you merely encouraging our use of more eastern martial art styles, or are you merely looking for more fluidity in the combat animations? If we're going for a more fast-paced combat system, having multiple, linked, or elaborate animations for a single "move" or "attack" is going to get frustrating after the first couple of combats.
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=15)
I think Kevin Lynch sums it up rather well.
It's not a matter of whether a gmae is "realistic" or not; it's more to do with consistency of presentation. Game abstractions should seem realistic without actually being realistic. As in the above case of eating and excreting functions, it simply isn't fun to keep a character or party continually fed and/or evacuated. But if a "rest" function is included, that might suffice for an abstraction of daily bathroom and meal breaks, weapons and armour cleaning and maintenance, personal hygiene, and study time or downtime.
Likewise, a combat system isn't necessarily designed to be "realistic." It should, however, be easy to use, relatively balanced for all different levels of difficulty, and above all, fun to play. Whether every single animation corresponds to an attack (as in Jade Empire), or the combat animation is merely a device to keep combat moving while the combat rules work in the background (as in NWN), it is still an abstraction of "real" combat that balances functionality and fun.
In many cases, however, the more "realistic" the system, the less "fun" it becomes. Unlike PnP games, which have a DM to oversee unusual interpretations of rules, bend the rules for story purposes, gloss over huge stretches of time, and make even downtime interesting and fun, CRPGs don't have that luxury. All possible paths and decisions are taken into account and developers devise ways of handling unusual situations if and when they come up. At the very least, developers design a game to minimize the number of unusual situations that might require extensive explanation, unique game resources, or take up too much "game time."
For example, yes it's a lot more fun to be able to get past the guard using stealth, pickpocketing, a trap, an arrow, convincing a beggar to cause a commotion, imitating a lady's cries for help, Three Stooges slapstick, levitating over him, climbing a wall, navigating a dark sewer, or teleporting, but a developer then has to actually make all of those things work. This is why when we sometimes talk about game options, we talk in terms of story length and breadth. The more options you have (ie. the wider a game is), the less time and resources you have to make a long story.
It's the difference between Morrowind (whose critical path wasn't very long but there were near unlimited options for getting there) and Final Fantasy (whose story is very complex and long, but have very few side quests or story paths [minigames are time-consuming but don't deviate too much fromt he story]).
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It's a conceit in many adventure games that openly wielding a weapon when traveling raises no eyebrows. Why? Because individual reactions would take a long time to write up and implement, unless you have everyone reacting the same way. but how do people react? Gasp in surprise, flee, scream? That would get annoying really quickly for me. Do they react differently to different weapon types? What about shields, daggers, squirrels? Do henchmen wielding weapons count? what about summoned creatures or familiars? Many questions.
<hr />suicidal attacks by mobs,<hr />One could say that this is default behaviour in any adventure game. When you encounter monsters, they attack you until they die. Will it be this way in DA? Possibly.
<hr />graphics not reflecting companion equipment<hr />Hmmm, I'm ambivalent towards this one. It's neat to see in games like Titan Quest, but there's also something to be said about your avatar staying static regardless of what you're wearing. It's a conceit I can live with.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Ferret A. Baudoin, Senior Designer</font>
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=504926&forum=84&sp=15" target="_blank">bioware and profesional consultations.
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I think with many consultants would focus on making things proper and real-world ship-shape. Because that's what they do. Whereas us designers generally just want things to be fun. That applies to economics as well as other things. And I'd argue that many game designers are some of the foremost experts on game economics.
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=30)
I prefer verisimilitude myself. To make a game feel real is a great goal and one I like to strive for, but I think it's best if you strip away all of the annoyances and inconveniences of the real world unless they present some manner of fun or interest.
There are some people that have higher tolerances for hard-core realistic similuations in games that relish mundane repetitive details, but I think the vast majority of folks don't want to sweat the small stuff.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator</font>
Disecting Dragon Age's first Screenshot (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508339&forum=84&sp=0)
Lets see here... comments on what you've all said so far.
Keep in mind the screenshot is still not the final game. Although it is taken from the latest build's in game footage, by the time the game is actually released things could change. GUI elements can be altered, graphics will improve, etc. It looks good now, but it'll look even better later
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We had a company meeting today where Scott and Trent showed off some of the cool newness for DA and one of the little things shown was the shadows. Sure, in the grand scheme of story, art and such, shadows are a tiny detail. But I personally love it when any game gets the little details right. It makes for a more realistic game imo and I was glad to see the work (which may be explained firther in the future) was done on this.
<a href="http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=506050&forum=84&sp=30" target="_blank">How long can game developement take before....
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We aren't ready to be announcing a set date yet. Mass Effect will be out before DA, and we haven't realeased a date for that either.
The team is still working hard and things are progressing nicely (gorgeously imo), but as far as release dates, you'll have to Stay Tuned.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Mary Kirby, Writer</font>
realism? (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=510378&forum=84&sp=15)
Hey, as long we're talking philosophy, can we bring in artistic movements, too?
Have you ever read a Realist novel? They're massive. Realist authors thought that if they just described every minute detail of life, they could re-create life in a believable fictional form. This is a fascinating but impossible task. First because an author can't possibly remember all the details, and second because that many details are completely and utterly boring.
Now, I'm more inclined to follow the Modernists, myself. It was the architect Le Corbusier who pretty much coined the phrase, "God is in the details," and he's right. Details make or break a design, but it's a matter of including the right ones and not simply trying to detail everything humanly possible. (Corbusier built an awful lot of white cubes on stilts, so I'm pretty sure this is what he meant, too.)
Sure, you could make a mini-game out of eating and sleeping, but are those details that should be included? Or can you get the essence of life without the routine of sleeping and turning off your alarm clock and showering and eating breakfast and watching the news before you go to the toilet? I. . . kinda think you can, myself. I don't want to play a game made up of innumerable details and minigames. I tend to want the details to be either: A) meaningful or b)interesting and in either case, well-implemented. I know what the requirements are for real life; it's like playing the tutorial again on my 87th playthrough of a game. I know how the combat system works, already, just get me to the game!
Romances (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508309&forum=84&sp=60)
I actually enjoyed those exchanges between Atton and the others on the Hawk quite a lot. (Not so much the one with Disciple, but the "Meditation envy?" had me laughing for a while.) But I think what I really liked about it was that the NPC was expressing actual interest in my character, instead of making the whole romance rely on me arduously prying some guy's life story out of him in order to achieve that "Do you like me? Circle yes or no." dialogue down the line.
But I admit to being terribly unromantic.
And I totally think all romances should end with someone passing a note via a friend of a friend during study hall with that "Circle yes or no" question on it.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Sheryl Chee, Writer</font>
Romances (http://forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=508309&forum=84&sp=30)
I wasn't talking about different life experiences depending on the PC's gender, just a slightly different set of interactions. I expect two women to be able to bond over things that a woman could never bond with a man about. I imagine some men think that women are beautiful, and somewhat alien creatures, and they never quite 'get' them. A woman, on the other hand, will look at another woman and have an instinctual understanding of her. I have very little real life experience with this sort of thing, but one of my friends told me that the way she connects with a girl is different from the way she connects with a guy. I think this has coloured my view of such romances.
But then what do I know. I'm as romantic as a clump of dirt.
EDIT: But I think you're right. It does depend on the person, or in the case of DA, the character.