Dragon Age II General Discussion (Part 2)

[Wirdschowerdn]

If TOR tanks, the worst that could happen is the closure auf Bioware Austin.

I don't really care about Austin, Mythic or Montreal.

 

[Hegel]

If TOR tanks, the worst that could happen is the closure auf Bioware Austin.

I don't really care about Austin, Mythic or Montreal.

The best case scenario if TOR tanks is the loss of about 100mil $.
Someone does even go as far as saying the game has costed around 300millions $ (IMHO the first number is more likely). Companies have been shut down for less.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

100 mil? Where do you get these numbers? The only game that cost that much was GTA 4, but there were up to 1000 people involved.

Doesn't matter. It's Starwars. And Kotorfags. That alone will turn the production into profit.

 

[Hegel]

100 mil? Where do you get these numbers? The only game that cost that much was GTA 4, but there were up to 1000 people involved.

Doesn't matter. It's Starwars. And Kotorfags. That alone will turn the production into profit.

The game features full professional voice acting, every single line.
SW:Tor is EA's most expensive project ever, even LucasArts backed down from it.
The average game costs about 30mln $, a MMORPG costs more, WoW launch costed around 100million dollars, that was almost 7 years ago, Tor is supposed to be WoW main competitor and has full VA.
I'd say it's going to cost around 100-130 million $. It's realistic given WoW produces that much money in a month.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Funny, because nobody of those MMO fags gives a shit about full VO.

Why EA agreed to take on this madness is beyond me. Maybe Ray and Greg drugged ol' Riccitello?

 

[Hegel]

Funny, because nobody of those MMO fags gives a shit about full VO.

Why EA agreed to take on this madness is beyond me. Maybe Ray and Greg drugged ol' Riccitello?

No idea, but Lucas was supposed to fund the VA and other stuff. They backed down and paid only the VA.
EA is covering the project. You have to consider that a MMORPG has higher costs than a single player game, servers, bandwidth, electricity, a full support team, advertisement.
Bioware hired a full team of writers and designers, they are also working with a team way bigger than the one WoW had (and WoW is a 2004 game).
It's a long term project, but the revenues are potentially huge. WoW pulls around 1 billion $ in annual revenues.
Tor would be a positive even with only 2 millions subscribers. But it does have the potential to make more.
But there is a competitor, it's called Guild Wars 2.

 

[markec]

I managed to finish the game and later remembered that my character never smeared anything on its face, is that some kind of bug or do you need to take a shit smearing quest somewhere?

 

[J_C]

Funny, because nobody of those MMO fags gives a shit about full VO.

I think the want to appeal to the single player rpg fans. They care about VO. Bioware also told us, that this game is like Kotor 3, and will have more story than an average MMO.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Yeah, nothing better than paying a monthly fee for playing a fucking singleplayer game.

 

[1451]

If you choose to customize your character's appearance, there is no shit smeared on his/her face.

 

[CappenVarra]

With all the talk about DA2 popamole combat, appealing to CoD & Farmville players etc. I was getting the impression that it was mostly targeted at consoletards. However, it only recently appeared to me that it's actually not (or not as much as everybody talks about) - the primary PC audience for DA2 are actually WoW players. Of course, Mike Ladilaw couldn't say that in an interview (that's why he bullshitted about Cod, Farmville & Co.) But if you go with that hypothesis, it actually all starts to make sense:

- practically auto-leveling character attributes, once you've chosen a class (auto-leveling in WoW)
- armor requiring primary class attributes - i.e. rogue armor like hoods and boots requires dexterity and cunning ("you see, this plain canvas hood can only be worn if you're smart enough") - WoW does the same thing
- level-scaled secondary skills, i.e. you have an item that gives you +10 hit, which translates into hit percentage depending on your level (the higher the character level, the higher hit amount you need to get a 5% increase) - not to mention that this is not "chance to hit" (because there are no misses in the world of DA2!), but scales how much of your base damage potential do auto-attacks do - these level-scaled bonuses are quite characteristic of WoW mechanics
- pretty looking, if somewhat nonsensical talent trees choosing sub-variants of the base class (quite similar to WoW, just split up into 6 + 3 trees instead of just 3; notice how specializations don't require a trainer anymore?)
- visible DPS on all weapons - same as WoW
- tons of generic descriptionless loot that makes no in-game sense whatsoever (i.e. an item named "belt" with a description of "belt" giving "+3% physical damage"; 2 hours later, you replace it with one that gives +4% etc.) - actually very similar to WoW greens, with their mudflation mechanics and lack of detailed item descriptions BioWereEA (equivalent to "were-wolf" ) used in older games
- color-coded higer quality items - yellow and purple - think it's a coincidence that the highest tier WoW items are purples?
- meaningless filler quests - duh
- trash mobs guarding the approach to bosses, which have somewhat unique-ish fight mechanics that have to be learned, with "adds" appearing in predefined fight phases - quite like WoW dungeons and raids


In conclusion, if a WoW player who never bothered with any "serious" RPGs before tried to play DA2, they would feel right at home.

I'm guessing that Swotor team members were actually heavily consulted on DA2 mechanics, and that many elements of the underlying design are shared with Swotor. That way, BioWereEA: a) optimizes the experience for WoW players trying their games b) gets to test the mechanics a bit before they debut in Swotor. And lets not forget cinematics and voiceovers, which are about as prominent in DA2 as they are expected to be in Swotor. And how about the lack of C&C (i.e. pretty much most "choices" in the game leading to the same outcome) - doesn't it fit perfectly with MMO worlds, in which monsters respawn 30 seconds after they're killed and finished quests must not alter the world too much because of the other players?

The reason they are frantically trying to boost DA2 impressions and review scores is then also obvious: if even mainstream non-RPG players consider DA2 crappy, do you think they'll praise the same basic gameplay in Swotor? 4/10 actually feels like the right score for DA2 (4/10 = "Fair" in the holy Fallout scale, and DA2 is right there - not a complete unplayable turd, but definitely below average even "for what it is"). And if Swotor meets the same reception... Sure, they'll get some SW fanboys and WoW burnouts - but with a 100+ million budget and 2 million subscribers thrown around as profitable levels... Buy popcorn now while it's still cheap, cause the demand for it is going to soar when Swotor hits the fan - and you can resell it for a profit even if you won't be ogling the trainwreck

 

[treave]

The reason they are frantically trying to boost DA2 impressions and review scores is then also obvious: if even mainstream non-RPG players consider DA2 crappy, do you think they'll praise the same basic gameplay in Swotor?

I'm not too sure about that. I've given up being optimistic. What they considered bad is actually par for the course in MMORPGs, and I'll bet if anything reusing the same combat will earn them a "good for what it is" at the very least, and "most strategic MMORPG combat ever!" if they wank over it enough.

TOR probably won't fail spectacularly due to the number of people just waiting to LARP their beloved multi-coloured Jedi in trademark Bioware romances, plus the Star Wars license will bring in quite a number of people initially. Whether it can hold interest for more than a year or two is still up in the air. Won't be able to tell till a few months after the game's release.

 

[CappenVarra]

The reason they are frantically trying to boost DA2 impressions and review scores is then also obvious: if even mainstream non-RPG players consider DA2 crappy, do you think they'll praise the same basic gameplay in Swotor?

I'm not too sure about that. I've given up being optimistic. What they considered bad is actually par for the course in MMORPGs, and I'll bet if anything reusing the same combat will earn them a "good for what it is" at the very least, and "most strategic MMORPG combat ever!" if they wank over it enough.

TOR probably won't fail spectacularly due to the number of people just waiting to LARP their beloved multi-coloured Jedi in trademark Bioware romances, plus the Star Wars license will bring in quite a number of people initially. Whether it can hold interest for more than a year or two is still up in the air. Won't be able to tell till a few months after the game's release.

Actually, I agree that it won't be a spectacular failure in MMO terms (initially at least). However, considering the amount of money put into it, trademark EA patience and ROI expectations, voiceovers and cutscenes... it has a good chance to generate a lot of drama, probably more than DA2 did - just not as relevant to the codex, except for those hoping to lick Bioware's sweet tears of agony (which I'm not). Ergo, popcorn stockpiles