Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Cael]

Where did this "Bioware magic" exist? Considering none of the Dragon Age games are good, with first one being the "most RPG" but also most dysfunctional and some of the worst combat in cRPGs in general? At least it was a party-based RPG. Mass effect games are just shooters, the first one is somewhat of a RPG but just barely.

"Bioware magic" if it exists is Bioware having accidentally made BG1, which is a very good game, and BG2, which is up there though worse than BG1.

Could you elaborate on what was broken about it? Its been ages since I played it and the only thing I really remember is that I ended up cheesing everything with mage spam.

BG2? Basically, just about any significant battle is a wave of Spell Breaches and Dispel Magics and the like before real combat can even begin. It just becomes tedious after a while.

 

[FreeKaner]

Could you elaborate on what was broken about it? Its been ages since I played it and the only thing I really remember is that I ended up cheesing everything with mage spam.

A quarter of abilities don't work as described, some of the supposed buffs actually make the character perform worse. Most of the numbers are incorrect, scaling is incorrect, bunch of bugs really. Stacking rules are all fucked up.

Magic is completely fucked up. You have abilities like "mana clash" that oneshot anything with mana in a game where most encounters have a mage, immediately oneshotting what are supposed to be some of the hardest encounters, including an optional mage encounter. Blood magic spells that are supposed to only apply their dots when paralysis is supposed to be resisted applies their dots all the time. Arcane fighters get straight up able to solo everything with 0 effort. You can cone of cold kite the whole game if you are particularly bored.

It's arcanum levels broken game when it comes to combat, more or less. Requires unofficial patches to fix most of the bugs and even if you don't use completely broken stuff like mana clash, blood magic and arcane fighter it's mostly just tank and spank where AI just targets your invulnerable members with no combar variety whatsoever. Admittedly the spell combos are a good idea but they are never needed. Though sleep into nightmare would oneshot most enemies early on.

 

[Dycedarg]

FYI, here's where the term "BioWare magic" was revealed to the public: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...lone-from-bioware.113374/page-56#post-6078428

Interesting that they consider Inquisition to be a success. Regardless, having a team of experienced developers was certainly a saving grace for the company. The games they produced weren't always good. In fact, I'd say quite a few were either mediocre or downright awful. But I'm curious if the new devs will be able to churn out anything at all. I was really surprised they had nothing to show on the last Game Awards.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

BG2? Basically, just about any significant battle is a wave of Spell Breaches and Dispel Magics and the like before real combat can even begin. It just becomes tedious after a while.

You guys should try playing those games without SCS enabled sometime, it has really colored your memories.

Interesting that they consider Inquisition to be a success.

It was. There's a line of thought I've seen on codex quite frequently that it wasn't a success, there's no evidence for this. You don't make multiple major expansion pack-tier DLCs for a game that isn't a major success.

 

[Atlantico]

It was. There's a line of thought I've seen on codex quite frequently that it wasn't a success, there's no evidence for this. You don't make multiple major expansion pack-tier DLCs for a game that isn't a major success.

DAI sold well enough, but so did MEA. Look how that was treated.

Neither EA nor Bioware ever bragged about DAI total sales or published hard numbers, which means it definitely didn't meet corporate expectations.

Hell, even Anthem sold well. In the millions. Also didn't meet expectations and was dropped.

DAI was the first major product to fail to meet sales expectations for Bioware, and I suspect it was a matter of prestige to follow it up with a complete DLC treatment. Bioware was going to eat that loss.

The first DAI DLC was cut content, an entire new area, and the only one that could be described as an expansion pack. The best DLC of the three.

The second and third DLC were story-DLCs completely separate from the rest of the game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

DAI sold well enough, but so did MEA. Look how that was treated.

MEA didn't get a single DLC tho and it ended on a cliffhanger.

Neither EA nor Bioware ever bragged about DAI total sales or published hard numbers, which means it definitely didn't meet corporate expectations.

They implied it sold above expectation in their 2015 earnings call.

Outperformance versus our outlook was driven by the record-breaking Dragon Age: Inquisition performance. In addition, sell-through was extremely healthy across the market, enabling us to maintain margins above our expectations while keeping channel inventory clean.

 

[Larianshill]

Gee, can't understand why it doesn't exist anymore.

Why, though?

 

[Nano]

Why, though?

Because people today are pussies.

 

[Atlantico]

MEA didn't get a single DLC tho and it ended on a cliffhanger.

A crime. It's should have had the full DLC treatment, and it sold well, in the millions.

They implied it sold above expectation in their 2015 earnings call.

The record breaking performance they're referring to, would be the high initial sales afaik — not total sales (?)

Regardless, they never released the total sales figures for DAI so it is hard to say for sure. I don't speak corporate very well.

 

[Frozen]

Its simple, you had bad management and competent programmers now you have bad management and incompetent programmers.

You cant tell me that shit like Cyberpunk was shit because of crunch lol If you cant make it in a fucking decade you should learn to code first.

 

[Semiurge]

bioware magic is when they hired competent people instead of people that look like this

That troll is making the Turian three-fingered "quote quote" gesture.

 

[Aarwolf]

Interesting that they consider Inquisition to be a success.

Compare it to the critical response to ME:A and Anthem - that was their last game that wasn't trashed to hell and back by both the gamers and game jurnos. It was even 2014 GOTY (what a sad year).

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

BioWare was still running on good will fumes with Inquistion, that's the only reason (and maybe riding the bull memes) it didn't get as much shit as it should have, and it got some shit, but Inquistion and Mass Effect 3 were still in a stupidity grace period. Also game journos weren't going to turn around and shit all of Inquistion after Mass Effect 3 became their poster boy for "shut the fuck up you stupid fans" with that ending. Journos mostly didn't even seem like they wanted to shit on Andromeda, and that game was getting dragged by pre ResetEra NeoGAF because of all the terrible pre release footage.

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

Because they were making games frostbite was designed for, bioware was not.
Bioware being forced to use frostbite was a terrible decision. They had an in-house engine they were continuously working on for years that was tailored to their exact needs.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

Because they were making games frostbite was designed for, bioware was not.
Bioware being forced to use frostbite was a terrible decision. They had an in-house engine they were continuously working on for years that was tailored to their exact needs.

I don't fucking buy it, especially since they said that same shit with their Mass Effect game too, and Mass Effect is just a third person shooter. Oh, we can't use this shooting engine on our shooting game... that's just like get the fuck out of here BioWare. Racing games came out on Frostbite, Mirror's Edge Catalyst came out on Frostbite, all the EA Sports games for the last few years have been on Frostbite, some Plants vs Zombies game came out on Frostbite; BioWare seems to be the only one to have problems with Frostbite. Think BioWare also said one of the problems with Frostbite was it couldn't do large environments, even though it seems like it was made for large environments.

BioWare also wasn't forced into using Frostbite. At least going by what some former BioWare employee said.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

Because they were making games frostbite was designed for, bioware was not.
Bioware being forced to use frostbite was a terrible decision. They had an in-house engine they were continuously working on for years that was tailored to their exact needs.

I don't fucking buy it, especially since they said that same shit with their Mass Effect game too, and Mass Effect is just a third person shooter. Oh, we can't use this shooting engine on our shooting game... that just like get the fuck out of here BioWare. Racing games came out on Frostbite, Mirror's Edge Catalyst came out on Frostbite, all the EA Sports games for the last few years have been on Frostbite, some Plants vs Zombies game came out on Frostbite; BioWare seems to be the only one to have problems with Frostbite. Think BioWare also said one of the problems with Frostbite was it couldn't do large environments, even though it seems like it was made for large environments.

BioWare also wasn't forced into using Frostbite. At least going by what some former BioWare employee said.

Well, as far as I know the shooting and driving in Andromeda were fine, the problem was everything else. But you are right EA and Frostbite are not the only reason for this game to be a mess, Bioware obviously had no concrete idea on what to do with the series after Mass Effect 3's ending during development and that lead to a lot of wasted time and resources that ensured this game's complete technical failure.

 

[Nano]

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

What other developers do you know who've used Frostbite for RPG development?

I don't fucking buy it,

Do you know a lot about video game programming?

 

[AwesomeButton]

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

Because they were making games frostbite was designed for, bioware was not.
Bioware being forced to use frostbite was a terrible decision. They had an in-house engine they were continuously working on for years that was tailored to their exact needs.

Given that Bioware had already produced Inquisition with Frostbite, before Andromeda, I'd chalk it up to technical incompetence of the specific Bioware studio that worked on Andromeda. I think that was the bigger factor. But I get that in the commotion of fighting the fire, it's always easiest to blame the tech. Because the least amount of people can give you counter arguments about it, and it's as distanced as possible. You are not seen as blaming people, worst-case scenario, you're blaming some faceless programmer, so the engine is the least offensive scapegoat.

Obsidian also spent quite some time explaining how hard it was to adapt Unity to their needs with PoE. In reality, if "it's the tech's fault" the fault is actually with whoever didn't provide the developers enough time to learn the tech well. But that's an unpleasant topic and finger-pointing which wouldn't be done publicly.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

BioWare was also able to scapegoat the game's problems off on EA and Frostbite, even though nobody else seemed to have these Frostbite problems BioWare had.

What other developers do you know who've used Frostbite for RPG development?

I don't fucking buy it,

Do you know a lot about video game programming?

Including BioWare? Zero.

 

[Nano]

Including BioWare? Zero.

Okay, let's get real here.

Inquisition was the first Frostbite game to include shit like spellcasting, sword and staff fighting, branching dialogues, etc. Of fucking course it was hard for Bioware to incorporate all that with this engine. It was never built for it.

 

[Atlantico]

Inquisition was the first Frostbite game to include shit like spellcasting, sword and staff fighting, branching dialogues, etc. Of fucking course it was hard for Bioware to incorporate all that with this engine. It was never built for it.

I don't buy it. Frostbite is EA's Unreal engine.

Same thing, same purpose, same utility. It wasn't Frostibite's fault that the animations were poorly rendered in MEA to begin with, but you know what, that's it. There are no technical issues with MEA. It works fine on Frostbite.

Same with DAI, it works fine. There's nothing technically wrong with either of those games. They look fantastic. They play fantastically. They run well on moderate hardware and have all the features you'd expect from a ME or DA game. So how is Frostbite the problem?

Frostbite didn't write the terrible plot. Frostibite didn't make awkward sex scenes, or bland characters. Everything wrong with those games is non-technical.

 

[Nano]

They play fantastically.

Are you fucking kidding me? Did you play Inquisition with keyboard & mouse? Everything about the gameplay is jank as fuck compared to the previous games.

 

[Atlantico]

Are you fucking kidding me? Did you play Inquisition with keyboard & mouse? Everything about the gameplay is jank as fuck compared to the previous games.

Oh yes, I played it all the way through with keyboard and mouse. It was made for controllers, but it wasn't a problem playing with keyboard and mouse — but that's not dictated by Frostbite. That's a Bioware design decision, because consoles.

The "strategic" combat view was terribly designed and quite pointless, because the combat was oriented around "push button, something awesome happens". It wasn't needed and was clearly an afterthought. I didn't use that and honestly the game didn't make sense using that.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

The Frostbite Engine is fine. It was missing tools required for RPGs, so Frostbite engineers at Bioware created them.



That said, the Unreal Engine is allegedly superior and easier/faster to create games with, but the lack of quality of Bioware's Frostbite engine games is still all on them. I will make the claim that the difference in quality would have been ubiquitous even if Bioware had used the Unreal Engine instead.

Further, there is a reason why EA shut down Bioware Montreal. The developers and management were just completely incompetent.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You can't even move when attacking in inquisition lol