Game News We Stripped Stuff Because Origins "Was Busted"

[mondblut]

Anders was one of the few characters in DA2 I actually tolerated, mostly because he is considered a closet inspiration for his norwegian namesake.

Fixed

 

[Roguey]

Hard was harder because it didn't have pause movement. The Xbox version was worse but it was certainly harder. Imagine playing Baldur's Gate without pause movement and thats all you need to know.

Knights of the Old Republic doesn't have pause movement either and it also has friendly fire on grenades, mines, and such. It's also extraordinarily easy, so I'm not quite believing it. And even if it is, see that blog post I linked to about how that particular aspect is an example of bad, unintended difficulty.

 

[Volourn]

"why he is keeping it after DA2 soldmuch worse than DA1."

Nah. Not really. 2+ mil sales very quicklly and it was a lot cheaper to make. R00fles!

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Hard was harder because it didn't have pause movement. The Xbox version was worse but it was certainly harder. Imagine playing Baldur's Gate without pause movement and thats all you need to know.

Knights of the Old Republic doesn't have pause movement either and it also has friendly fire on grenades, mines, and such. It's also extraordinarily easy, so I'm not quite believing it. And even if it is, see that blog post I linked to about how that particular aspect is an example of bad, unintended difficulty.

Obviously it was unintended difficulty because it was a bad port. They could have easily used a cursor and the joysticks for paused movement. Compared to the PC version hard was harder yet certainly not in a way that added anything rewarding or fun to the challenge.

I didnt find KOTOR to be extraordianrly easy

My scale



extraordinarily easy Impossible without Min/Max
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Fable 2 Fable 1 KOTOR DA:O/PC DA:OXB PoD

PoD is Pools of Darkness.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

"why he is keeping it after DA2 soldmuch worse than DA1."

Nah. Not really. 2+ mil sales very quicklly and it was a lot cheaper to make. R00fles!

It sold 2 mill to stores. Those stores have to sell 2 million before it can sell more. I dont see it. It hasnt been in the top ten since the first month. The low price is to get it out of the bargain bin.

 

[Roguey]

I didnt find KOTOR to be extraordianrly easy

I've never played the Fable games so I'll take your word about how they're easier. But I'm playing KOTOR right now (discovering that with much lowered expectations it's decent enough as a linear adventure game with light narrative c&c) and I don't know how anyone could consider it not-easy. Trash mobs take zero effort to kill, the beginning throws medpaks at you by the dozens, and once you get Jedi abilities you don't have to worry about health again since you can just heal yourself to full after each fight and get all your force points back just in time for the next encounter. I've collected three star maps and I'm at level 16 and so far only two fights have given me complete party wipes; beating them was just a matter of using buffs and rudimentary tactics (crowd control and clean up, just like every trash mob fight in DA:O)

 

[racofer]

I always played KotOR on the hard difficulty and even so it was a piece of cake. I did never die and at around level 12 you're pretty much unstoppable with any class you pick.

DA:O was/is much harder than KotOR1/2. It actually does require micromanaging your party on the higher difficulty settings to survive, and there's no way you can "casually solo" the game like in K1/2.

 

[J_C]

DA:O was/is much harder than KotOR1/2. It actually does require micromanaging your party on the higher difficulty settings to survive, and there's no way you can "casually solo" the game like in K1/2.

Of course you can solo on nightmare difficulty. I couldn't do it, but you can find lot's of videos on Youtube about players soloing.

 

[racofer]

DA:O was/is much harder than KotOR1/2. It actually does require micromanaging your party on the higher difficulty settings to survive, and there's no way you can "casually solo" the game like in K1/2.

Of course you can solo on nightmare difficulty. I couldn't do it, but you can find lot's of videos on Youtube about players soloing.

 

[Volourn]

"It hasnt been in the top ten since the first month."

That's true for pretty much every BIO game. Hell, that's true for pretty much any RPG. Your point?

Also, KOTOR is BY FAR, BIO's easiest game. It's not even close.

 

[racofer]

"Hell, that's true for pretty much any RPG."

Bullshit. FFS!

 

[circ]

Well. The turrets in KoTOR would instagib you if you got close. There was no such mob in DAOOO. Of course Obsidian must have thought that was mean, so the turrets became pussified in KoTOR II.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

"It hasnt been in the top ten since the first month."

That's true for pretty much every BIO game. Hell, that's true for pretty much any RPG. Your point?

Also, KOTOR is BY FAR, BIO's easiest game. It's not even close.

Point being its not going to surpass 2 million in the stores so its pretty much capped at 2 million to the stores. The only reason its that high is EA and Bioware had the clout to sell that many to outlets.

I've never played the Fable games so I'll take your word about how they're easier. But I'm playing KOTOR right now (discovering that with much lowered expectations it's decent enough as a linear adventure game with light narrative c&c) and I don't know how anyone could consider it not-easy. Trash mobs take zero effort to kill, the beginning throws medpaks at you by the dozens, and once you get Jedi abilities you don't have to worry about health again since you can just heal yourself to full after each fight and get all your force points back just in time for the next encounter. I've collected three star maps and I'm at level 16 and so far only two fights have given me complete party wipes; beating them was just a matter of using buffs and rudimentary tactics (crowd control and clean up, just like every trash mob fight in DA:O)

Yes KOTOR was relatively easy. Fable 2 redefined easy. Fable had auto potion so you would drink or eat something to keep you alive when you hit 0 or negative health. There was a spamable spell that did major damage to anything near your character. The real challenge in Fable was to win without dying. So there was some challenge. Fable 2 removed that challenge. In Fable 2 you could make money in realtime. Not realtime in the game, I’m talking real life time. So you could buy a cheap fake jewelry stand and stop playing the game for a week then come back and its like a month in the game so you get paid nice. Then you buy a few more shops do the same thing and you are wealthy enough to buy 75 potions that auto drink so essentially you had infinite hp.

With KOTOR that is all true. Its been a while since I played it and I only remember the Sand people encounter as one with multiple reloads.

 

[Volourn]

"Point being its not going to surpass 2 million in the stores so its pretty much capped at 2 million to the stores."

Bullshit. It's already passed 2mil.

 

[Disconnected]

Twitch skill is actually really important for multiplayer games to stay competitive since the strategy in most multiplayer games is closer to Rock-Paper-Scissors than Chess.

Actually twitch skill makes every game harder, or would you say this looks easier than turn-based chess?

In both cases you're talking about game design in a much broader sense than RT/TB. Chess isn't a half bad example of why you're wrong on both counts, though.

Chess is pretty straight-forward. The playing field is small, the number of pieces is small, their differences are very limited, and the sides are symmetrical. Sure it's more complex than rock/paper/scissors, but hardly terribly much so. Yet it is universally regarded as one of the deepest, most challenging competitive games around.

It's also a game that gets significantly easier the more time pressure you place players under, at least if they're any good at the game. Regardless of whether it's human or computer players. Because the less thinking time the players have, the more mistakes they make. The difficulty of a chess opponent, is inversely proportional to the number of mistakes he/she/it makes.

Role playing games, at least in their purest form, aren't readily comparable. Partly because they're collaborative, not competitive, games. Partly because they're generally too complex to have perceptibly perfect moves (unlike chess). But primarily because they're designed to minimise the impact of player skill. Where you in most types of games either don't have an avatar and play the game directly, or play the game through an avatar, in role playing games you only actually play the avatar. Thus any skill involved in playing the game, is based on your avatar, not you the player. Player skill is meta, or beyond the game if you prefer.

Of course, CRPGs generally have nothing or very, very little to do with RPGs. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly true of every last game BioWare has ever made.

 

[thesisko]

"Point being its not going to surpass 2 million in the stores so its pretty much capped at 2 million to the stores."

Bullshit. It's already passed 2mil.

Give me a quote from EA with numbers over 2 million that doesn't contain "sold in".

 

[BlackCanopus]

If DA:O was busted, then why did you make it? The answer is: you didn't make it, Brent Knowles did. It was his concept and his design that made DA:O successful. You were just in the right place at the right time to steal the project and take credits for it. Your fucked up ideas started to show themselves in DA:O DLCs and it's expansion. DA2 was YOUR project, though. You fucked up big time, and now you put the blames on DA:O and call it 'busted'. Perhaps busted is the new equivalent for 'not-fucked-up-by-Laidlaw' in your vocab, Mr. Laidlaw?


I vote they fire this guy.

By the way, this is a good read if you haven't read before:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... /6865263/1

 

[Xor]

But DAO wasn't even a very good RPG. Doesn't make much sense to be mad over a bad sequel to a bad game.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

"Point being its not going to surpass 2 million in the stores so its pretty much capped at 2 million to the stores."

Bullshit. It's already passed 2mil.

EA was reporting two million sold when NPD and chartz had it at 1.3. That tells me they are talking about what they sold to stores which is fine with me. Based on top ten numbers that .7 will be more than a notion to come by.

 

[Shannow]

But DAO wasn't even a very good RPG. Doesn't make much sense to be mad over a bad sequel to a bad game.

Why?
1. I consider DAO to be mediocre, not shit. There were some improvements over "the genre" in details (eg. using the speech skill to convince a follower of your position instead of always sucking up to them).
2. I expect sequels to be better than originals. If they had reduced DAO's weaknesses and expanded upon its strengths and improvements DA2 could have been a decent to good game.

So if the potentially good sequel goes the exact opposite route of what it should that is a pitty.

 

[Darkforge]

Re: Mike Laidlaw: We Stripped Stuff Because Origins

There are insanely complex games on the console

I'm partly a console player, but I yet have to find that insanely complex game. Could you give mi a hint, Mike?

Deeply in my heart, I was hoping that Bioware will learn from their mistake, and make DA3 a good RPG. It is clear to me know, that they are happy about how DA2 turned out, and they will fuck up the third game. Please Bioware, just remove every RPG element, and make a pure action game. I know that is what you want to do, and at least we don't have to argue about the game being an RPG or not.

That insanely complex game is called Tekken 6 and/or Sf4............

 

[MetalCraze]

There are insanely complex games on the console

I wonder what dumb shit like Civ5 is compared to "insanely complex games on the console"? Ubermensch-grade superhardcore torture gaming?

 

[thesisko]

There are insanely complex games on the console

I wonder what dumb shit like Civ5 is compared to "insanely complex games on the console"? Ubermensch-grade superhardcore torture gaming?

"UFO: Enemy Unknown" and CIV I & II were on consoles. But Laidlaw obviously has a very low opinion of his customers intelligence since he said "insanely complex", as in would explode the head of the average biotard.

 

[MetalCraze]

You forgot to mention that f.e. Civ2 was toned down from supertorture gaming to insanely complex gaming, even below Civ5's torture gaming, in order for it to get released on consoles. I'm sure those other two were made with "normal games" in mind as well

 

[deus101]

But DAO wasn't even a very good RPG. Doesn't make much sense to be mad over a bad sequel to a bad game.

Because their fans and their marketing dilutes the market.