Codex Interview Brent Knowles Interview: An Insider's Look at BioWare, 2000-2009

[Infinitron]

I should rely on these scripts, they're gonna work all the time (false conclusion); I don't have to learn the rules, the game implies this with its preset scripts (false conclusion); The Idea of conditional framework, which is preset imply that I don't have to/shouldn't change its scripts??

It's not as simple as "true" or "false".

Let's say you're playing a new RPG, with new mechanics you're not familiar with. You've managed to play 20 hours of it without doing much of anything yourself other than clicking a knockdown ability with a cooldown occasionally. After all, why do more? It works, right?

OK, now you've finally hit a battle that requires more than that. Your guys are dying, you're not winning. Maybe you try to take control now...or maybe you just cast a bunch of buffs and try again and this time it works. Or maybe you bring in a different party member and this time it works. Or maybe you just gulp down a bunch of potions during the battle and otherwise let the game continue playing itself, and it works. Because you don't WANT to fucking control everything yourself now. The game played itself fine up until now, why change? You're going to do the minimum necessary to keep that dynamic going on.

 

[eremita]

It's not as simple as "true" or "false".

Let's say you're playing a new RPG, with new mechanics you're not familiar with. You've managed to play 20 hours of it without doing much of anything yourself other than clicking a knockdown ability with a cooldown occasionally. After all, why do more? It works, right?

OK, now you've finally hit a battle that requires more than that. Your guys are dying, you're not winning. Maybe you try to take control now...or maybe you just cast a bunch of buffs and try again and this time it works. Or maybe you bring in a different party member and this time it works. Or maybe you just gulp down a bunch of potions during the battle and otherwise let the game continue playing itself, and it works. Because you don't WANT to fucking control everything yourself now. The game played itself fine up until now, why change? You're going to do the minimum necessary to keep that dynamic going on.

It is as simple as "true" or "false", the only reason why you're not satisfied with it is because you mixed up extending the problem of conditional framework with adding different and unrelated problems to the matter. In other words, the conditional framework/automatization is hardly the reason why the situation you described occurred. Let's say I'm not 20 hours in, but only 1 hour in and suddenly what you described happens (time itself is relative, the point is not enough time sinked in to create a habit in regards of approaching the game). How am I gonna react? The same? I don't think so. There's your proof then. The same situation would happen in any game, which throws trash shit on me for 20 hours and then completely changes that formula. The design is flawed then, not the concept of conditional framework.

And again, this "issue" is solved completely if default otpion only consist of just a basic attack for example, thus making clear to everyone that automatization is not only an optional feature, but also one which requires some kind of learning process.

 

[GarfunkeL]

DA:O had default scripts automatically set. You didn't have to do anything and the companions would act, albeit in a sub-optimal way, of course.