I think a small amount of panic is ok, or at least a chilling sense of dread. Holy fuck I do not want forced multiplayer in any story content, even if it's sidequests, of a DA.
Well hopefully by the time the new one sees the light of day they A) have enough experience with anthem to not do the same errors again Communicate with other branches of the company better. Having a live service component could be a good thing but it really depends if they learn how not to shoot themselves in the feet like the anthem launch.
Man, that's heartbreaking to learn that the game was going good and then they cancelled it and started over. "Anthem with Dragons." JFC.
Yeah that initial pitch sounded 100% like my dream direction for the franchise. If it turns into the Hinterlands with random loot and drop in co-op I'm out.
No, EA, I'm not doing Dragon Age: Microtransactions. I'll never understand their obsession with taking something that works and people love and then completely fucking it over. It never works out for them.
Again, the game is evidently way on out there and subject to a ton of change and I'm keeping my "unreasonable gamer outrage" in check.
but I hope this " but shortly after the reboot, creative director Mike Laidlaw left, as did some other veteran Dragon Age staff." is not an indication that the old team hated the new direction and left.
No, EA, I'm not doing Dragon Age: Microtransactions. I'll never understand their obsession with taking something that works and people love and then completely fucking it over. It never works out for them.
They are chasing the money stream. They see fifa and go if I can get this many billions of dollars from a soccer game there has to be a way to milk other genera as well. The funny thing in anthem their monetization is so minimal its barely there. They have a store you can buy stuff in but release stuff so slowly you can easily just buy what you want with in game currency. So I am curious what they wind up doing in dragon age.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
The thing is, I 100% get why they need microtransactions. I just don't understand why they don't do new outfit and new hairstyle microtransactions. To this day I still play DA:O (I'm doing a Let's play on it currently), and if I could just have bought a badass armor glamour or better hair, I would have (well, at least I would have if the mod community didn't already have real good hair). So instead of whatever multiplayer bullshit they wanted to do, they should have just had an outfit, hair, and face mod shop that released new skins every week. And if they are so in goddamn need of it having gambling, they could have made gambling packs, too. Hell, I played SWTOR for a year longer than I was actually enjoying the storyline and raids on account of playing pretty pretty dressup with all my characters. You think I wouldn't do that for a single player game? Where does EA think the modding community comes from?? Sure, you wouldn't be able to sell emotes, but you could sell every thing else.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited April 2019
Oy vey.
How many employees’ mental and physical health will be sacrificed upon this fiasco?
I’ve a feeling Jason Schreier will be able to ctrl-f replace his past article in to, “How BioWare’s Dragon Age 4 Went Wrong” a few years from now.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
No, EA, I'm not doing Dragon Age: Microtransactions. I'll never understand their obsession with taking something that works and people love and then completely fucking it over. It never works out for them.
It does in the short term, and that's all that matters to shareholders.
If Blood Dragon armor or whatever it was called had been a cosmetic dlc or something like that, I would have bought it. Repeatedly.
When DLC is sold to us along the lines of the Watchers Keep guy faffing about in our camp, telling us to buy an adventure or his children will go hungry, I have a problem.
When the entire game has to be built with "going through my pockets for loose change" as a defining building block, that's unacceptable to me.
There is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life, that cannot be improved with pizza.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited April 2019
Ugh, micro transactions.
EA has literally stated they do not need them to make a profit. To their investors that is.
To everyone else they keep spewing the same bullshit excuses.
At least Rockstar has the balls and common decency to be upfront to people about their reasons for having micro transactions (it’s so they can get all the money).
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Yes but think of the gameplay footage we have to look forward to featuring Authentic Gamer Dialogue in place of NPC squad talk. "Whoah, this dragon looks pretty fierce, let's call Lewis in—he's got a berserker specced for dragonslaying" followed by a lot of "alright alright let's split up and team attack hell yeah" and "look at this loot, niiiiiiiice. Dibs on the Draconid set! That'll definitely help when soloing the qunari outpost."
From "hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth," "play as a group of spies in Tevinter Imperium," "center on heists" to "Anthem with dragons." Man. I'm glad this harsh take is getting out there now, because it's basically the low bar for expectations and anywhere the project goes from here (and, I think, will go from there) can only sound better.
Yeah, I'm in wait and see mode. It's far to early to make much of a judgement. A live service component could be all sorts of things. It could be a multiplayer piece like ME3MP (which was great) or it could be something like Assassins Creed with DLC, perks, cosmetics, etc.
As for using the Anthem codebase and tools. I think it could end up being a good thing. For 1, I have to imagine they are more refined than the Frostbite tools used with Jophin, given the investment in Anthem. We know the NPC's look a lot better than ME:A, so that could help. Unfortunately hair will probably always be an issue lol.
They mention Inquisitions MP was something of an add-on. I imagine if they devote a larger amount of time to it, they could end up with something really fun. Just spitballing in my head, I'm imagining ME3MP but with fantasy classes, tanks that could taunt and be immune to sync kills, other tanks that could protect a unit from range damage, biotics were already very mage like, rogues for the "kill this target" missions, etc.
EDIT: Also while online only might suck, if it gives me the ability to pull in a friend to play a really good single player campaign, I'm all for it.
There's the slight possibility Bioware and/or EA will actually learn from the Anthem debacle and fix things enough to make the next Dragon Age well worth playing single-player.
Or not. Or EA will decide Bioware has lost enough money already and kill the studio.
what's weird, is Assassin's Creed of all things, eating bioware's lunch on single player content AND games as service AND fun and impactful dialogue choices. There's plenty of ongoing support, microtransactions yes, and regular content drops, all WITHOUT some rando dropping into the middle of your fort and setting everything on fire. Hey rando, that's MY job to set everything on fire.
My point being it's not like the industry has entirely moved to online co-op as much as EA would like to pretend that's a case. There's clearly a market for that with some game of the year contenders in extremely solid single player games with optional DLC. Why they're trying to push this nonsense on us, I don't know. Mark me in as someone who will be VERY disappointed with anything other than an extremely solid and lengthy single player campaign.
Having played Anthem a good deal, I'm not sold on the Anthem model. The combat is very good, the scenery is very pretty, and a month or two later it's STILL so unstable one or two missions will randomly glitch out, wasting an hour or more of my time each time. Not to mention the story, while occsasionally fun, is noticeably shorter and shallower than anything they've put out before. At least half as short if not more, with few if any meaningful choices. Please no anthem dragon age.
soylenth on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
A weird trend I’ve noticed is one of traditional RPG games going the more action game route while simultaneously traditional action games have been becoming more like open world RPGs.
Like ships passing in the night.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
The thing is, I 100% get why they need microtransactions. I just don't understand why they don't do new outfit and new hairstyle microtransactions. To this day I still play DA:O (I'm doing a Let's play on it currently), and if I could just have bought a badass armor glamour or better hair, I would have (well, at least I would have if the mod community didn't already have real good hair). So instead of whatever multiplayer bullshit they wanted to do, they should have just had an outfit, hair, and face mod shop that released new skins every week. And if they are so in goddamn need of it having gambling, they could have made gambling packs, too. Hell, I played SWTOR for a year longer than I was actually enjoying the storyline and raids on account of playing pretty pretty dressup with all my characters. You think I wouldn't do that for a single player game? Where does EA think the modding community comes from?? Sure, you wouldn't be able to sell emotes, but you could sell every thing else.
Actually, I just realized you would TOTALLY be able to sell emotes in a single player environment, as long as they were things like "give your bf/gf a big smooch" and other things related to the romance. You could sell a "cuddle in bed" emote. I WOULD BUY THESE EMOTES.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
There's the slight possibility Bioware and/or EA will actually learn from the Anthem debacle and fix things enough to make the next Dragon Age well worth playing single-player.
The irritating thing is that they've achieved great half-solutions in their previous games, but seem incapable of re-combining things they've always done well. Want a great BW game with a profitable live-services aspect to it? Here, let htm tell you how to do it:
1. Implement a great BW story using single-player missions (JUST LIKE YOU DID BEFORE WITH SWTOR CLASS MISSIONS!).
2. Implement co-op missions that are related to the main story but don't advance it (JUST LIKE YOU DID BEFORE WITH SWTOR NON-CLASS MISSIONS!).
3. Implement an endgame based on co-op missions and loot progression (JUST LIKE YOU DID WITH ME3 MP!).
4. Build a good online store and sell a fuckton of cool cosmetics.
Hopefully, with DA4, BW manages to get its chocolate into its peanut butter. This isn't the Anthem thread, but one of the big problems with Anthem is that it ignored everything that SWTOR does well WRT to integrating a single-player BioWare story into an otherwise pervasively multiplayer game.
DA4 needs to combine SWTOR's single-player mission structure with ME3/Anthem style co-op play the way SWTOR combined 8 classic BW games with a traditional MMO.
what's weird, is Assassin's Creed of all things, eating bioware's lunch on single player content AND games as service AND fun and impactful dialogue choices. There's plenty of ongoing support, microtransactions yes, and regular content drops, all WITHOUT some rando dropping into the middle of your fort and setting everything on fire. Hey rando, that's MY job to set everything on fire.
My point being it's not like the industry has entirely moved to online co-op as much as EA would like to pretend that's a case. There's clearly a market for that with some game of the year contenders in extremely solid single player games with optional DLC. Why they're trying to push this nonsense on us, I don't know. Mark me in as someone who will be VERY disappointed with anything other than an extremely solid and lengthy single player campaign.
Having played Anthem a good deal, I'm not sold on the Anthem model. The combat is very good, the scenery is very pretty, and a month or two later it's STILL so unstable one or two missions will randomly glitch out, wasting an hour or more of my time each time. Not to mention the story, while occasionally fun, is noticeably shorter and shallower than anything they've put out before. At least half as short if not more, with few if any meaningful choices. Please no anthem dragon age.
I think it goes to show how bad the dysfunction within Bioware is/was. This shouldn't be that hard, other games have done it well. But for some reason, Bioware has been having a hell of a time merging their character driven stories with live service style features.
Anthem really feels like they ran out of time and had to move forward before they could really nail down the style they wanted. Quotes in the article mention, it's likely everything they are scoping out for DA4, will change as they move forward, so I'm taking it all with a grain of salt.
I'm not 100% sold on the original story thought either; being a spy. There's some cool things you could do with that, but it seems more Thief, Dishonored, or any other stealth game; instead of a DA game. I'm still hoping they lean into the Tevinter politics more. I'd rather gather political support, rather than spying on them for information.
The thing is, I 100% get why they need microtransactions. I just don't understand why they don't do new outfit and new hairstyle microtransactions. To this day I still play DA:O (I'm doing a Let's play on it currently), and if I could just have bought a badass armor glamour or better hair, I would have (well, at least I would have if the mod community didn't already have real good hair). So instead of whatever multiplayer bullshit they wanted to do, they should have just had an outfit, hair, and face mod shop that released new skins every week. And if they are so in goddamn need of it having gambling, they could have made gambling packs, too. Hell, I played SWTOR for a year longer than I was actually enjoying the storyline and raids on account of playing pretty pretty dressup with all my characters. You think I wouldn't do that for a single player game? Where does EA think the modding community comes from?? Sure, you wouldn't be able to sell emotes, but you could sell every thing else.
Actually, I just realized you would TOTALLY be able to sell remotes in a single player environment, as long as they were things like "give your bf/gf a big smooch" and other things related to the romance. You could sell a "cuddle in bed" emote. I WOULD BUY THESE EMOTES.
I would very much be interested in just being able to pose my character better when taking a screenshot of them.
Which reminded me, the oldest screenshots I have on steam came from a cool little game that let me pause the action during combat to get a cool pose.
As for using the Anthem codebase and tools. I think it could end up being a good thing. For 1, I have to imagine they are more refined than the Frostbite tools used with Jophin, given the investment in Anthem.
I dunno, they were already using Frostbite tools developed during Inquisition, and since all three of their last games have had separate starts on Frostbite without building on any prior adaptations, I suspect the tools they took from Dragon Age would be more useful than the tools that came out of Anthem's half-baked development.
But maybe they're using both, because there's no reason all the work they did on Joplin should be wasted regardless of what direction they end up in.
As long as I can stab any Tevinter I see doing shitty things that I want, instead of keeping me from doing so via greater good shenanigans. Fuck Tevinter.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Man, Bioware has gone from "Buy everything EVERYWHERE" to "wait and see" for me.
And that makes me sad.
Even for this franchise!
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yeah. Joplin or what it originally was sounds exactly like what I had been asking of Bioware for years. So all that other shit sounds like bullshit.
All I can do is hope that all the bad press they've been getting lately leads them to you know produce a game people actually want and not one that will make EA lots of dollars.
We keep thinking "maybe next game will be the one that recaptures that ME3MP feel" and after 3 strong misses I am feeling like they'll never get that lightning in the bottle again.
I don't preorder games as a general practice and I am going to wait and see what the reviews say. I have tons of games to play and don't need to be cramming it on the first night.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Honestly MEAMP showed me ME3MP was a happy accident cause the way it was designed showed they had absolutely no idea why people liked it.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
what's weird, is Assassin's Creed of all things, eating bioware's lunch on single player content AND games as service AND fun and impactful dialogue choices. There's plenty of ongoing support, microtransactions yes, and regular content drops, all WITHOUT some rando dropping into the middle of your fort and setting everything on fire. Hey rando, that's MY job to set everything on fire.
My point being it's not like the industry has entirely moved to online co-op as much as EA would like to pretend that's a case. There's clearly a market for that with some game of the year contenders in extremely solid single player games with optional DLC. Why they're trying to push this nonsense on us, I don't know. Mark me in as someone who will be VERY disappointed with anything other than an extremely solid and lengthy single player campaign.
Having played Anthem a good deal, I'm not sold on the Anthem model. The combat is very good, the scenery is very pretty, and a month or two later it's STILL so unstable one or two missions will randomly glitch out, wasting an hour or more of my time each time. Not to mention the story, while occsasionally fun, is noticeably shorter and shallower than anything they've put out before. At least half as short if not more, with few if any meaningful choices. Please no anthem dragon age.
AC kinda does the thing that makes me not like cosmetic microtransactions in practice though.
Gear appearence is a big part of the actual game for me. Not just some little side thing that doesn't matter. So the fear is always that a company skimp on what is available in the game and save all the cool stuff for buying outside the game.
And Ubisoft does just that when they make every single in game legendary set just a copy of the regularly available armors and the only unique legendaries the ones you buy. That actively lowers the quality of the base game for the sake of the microtransactions. That sucks and even if DA did something like that it would be negatively impactful.
I'm not going to swear of a game just because it has microtransactions but the issues is that the general fears of them being used in bad ways comes to fruition so often that it makes it hard not to be wary every single time.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Honestly most games have some kind of always online component so it could mean anything.
That said with Andromeda and Anthem both being woefully under the standards people have come to expect of Bioware they really do need to knock it out of the park.
I mean it isn't impossible and they won't be the first big name studio to have ever had a slump but we'll see.
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
Bioware had a good long run, but at this point I'm forced to conclude the Bioware of old is dead and buried.
I enjoyed ME:Andromeda but I wanted a single player experience. I never did any multiplayer stuff. I just hope they don't tack on a story ending tied to playing X amount of multiplayer. I don't like microtransactions in a mostly single player game but I understand they are here to stay and I lack a time machine. I just don't want an rpg story to suffer because of them or feel that I have to buy them to get the "best" ending.
I enjoyed ME:Andromeda but I wanted a single player experience. I never did any multiplayer stuff. I just hope they don't tack on a story ending tied to playing X amount of multiplayer. I don't like microtransactions in a mostly single player game but I understand they are here to stay and I lack a time machine. I just don't want an rpg story to suffer because of them or feel that I have to buy them to get the "best" ending.
I mean...MEA was SP.
I didn't like the MP as much as 3 but it actually less connected than 3 was.
As for using the Anthem codebase and tools. I think it could end up being a good thing. For 1, I have to imagine they are more refined than the Frostbite tools used with Jophin, given the investment in Anthem.
I dunno, they were already using Frostbite tools developed during Inquisition, and since all three of their last games have had separate starts on Frostbite without building on any prior adaptations, I suspect the tools they took from Dragon Age would be more useful than the tools that came out of Anthem's half-baked development.
But maybe they're using both, because there's no reason all the work they did on Joplin should be wasted regardless of what direction they end up in.
Just to play devil's advocate, those tools were designed for a game to run on the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as current gen. They could have a lot of things that are not needed anymore.
Honestly, I have to wonder if it's not better for Bioware to wait a bit here. Seems like they are setting themselves up for the same situation, a game coming out on older gen hardware. Everyone expects the next gen consoles to be announced sometime this year. When planning for a game that won't be out for 3-5 years, shouldn't the target be those consoles? Maybe they are using the Anthem tools to do prototyping? One would hope that the next generation of Frostbite might be easier to work with.
EDIT: May also be part of the reason for the scrapping of Joplin. If it was targeting the PS4/XBox1, and they'd rather target next gen.
I think MEA suffered from a lot of the same things DAI did re: Hinterlands. To me it felt like a lot of the old traditional Ubisoft open world games filled with just absolute trash to do to fill up your time. Bioware was handed a mandate to recreate the amount of open-world content that made Skyrim a hit, which led to DAI being full of trash objectives, which lead to similar type things in MEA. They've just watered everything down in an attempt to keep players playing and upping those played hours.
The funny thing is that Ubisoft, while it still has a lot of filler content, has gotten so much better about creating real character driven quests in their open world. I just started playing Odyssey and am surprised how far it has come since Origins even. It's still not anywhere close to the level of Witcher 3, but I think it's getting closer to old-school Bioware (though not quite yet).
I'm so sad about this news though. DA2, despite its flaws from a rushed production, is still one of my favorite character-centric RPGs. Joplin sounded like a return to that character-driven narrative. That they are abandoning it for Anthem with DragonsⓇ is just an absolute kick in the nuts.
I'm still baffled that all the work done on the next DA got thrown out when it was all hands on deck for Anthem. Going by the information given in the article, there's really one of two reasons:
1. The game envisioned was incompatible with EA's games-as-a-service mandate.
2. After Laidlaw left, some combination of optimism/egotism/vengeance made the remaining staff feel they should do things differently. (This kind of petty crap happens all the time in Hollywood.)
There's some hope scenario 2 will manage to result in a good game, provided Bioware can get their shit together. But if it's scenario 1, forget it.
Switch: 3947-4890-9293
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I suspect after the embarrassing failure of Anthem they may walk back the live service elements of DA to distance the game from the controversy.
Or I suppose they may think, “It’s all up to DA now!” And double down on the nonsense.
That said I do not think in all good conscience I can give money to BioWare until I hear from employees that things have changed greatly. Otherwise this is blood money and I want no part of it.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Posts
People are asking Patrick Weekes to write up the same for the characters that he wrote.
https://kotaku.com/the-past-and-present-of-dragon-age-4-1833913351
And here is the alarmist part that is waaaaay too early for me to panic about.
"Unlike Joplin, this new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue."
Yeah that initial pitch sounded 100% like my dream direction for the franchise. If it turns into the Hinterlands with random loot and drop in co-op I'm out.
but I hope this " but shortly after the reboot, creative director Mike Laidlaw left, as did some other veteran Dragon Age staff." is not an indication that the old team hated the new direction and left.
They are chasing the money stream. They see fifa and go if I can get this many billions of dollars from a soccer game there has to be a way to milk other genera as well. The funny thing in anthem their monetization is so minimal its barely there. They have a store you can buy stuff in but release stuff so slowly you can easily just buy what you want with in game currency. So I am curious what they wind up doing in dragon age.
How many employees’ mental and physical health will be sacrificed upon this fiasco?
I’ve a feeling Jason Schreier will be able to ctrl-f replace his past article in to, “How BioWare’s Dragon Age 4 Went Wrong” a few years from now.
It does in the short term, and that's all that matters to shareholders.
When DLC is sold to us along the lines of the Watchers Keep guy faffing about in our camp, telling us to buy an adventure or his children will go hungry, I have a problem.
When the entire game has to be built with "going through my pockets for loose change" as a defining building block, that's unacceptable to me.
EA has literally stated they do not need them to make a profit. To their investors that is.
To everyone else they keep spewing the same bullshit excuses.
At least Rockstar has the balls and common decency to be upfront to people about their reasons for having micro transactions (it’s so they can get all the money).
From "hugely reactive game, smaller in scope than Dragon Age: Inquisition but much larger in player choice, followers, reactivity, and depth," "play as a group of spies in Tevinter Imperium," "center on heists" to "Anthem with dragons." Man. I'm glad this harsh take is getting out there now, because it's basically the low bar for expectations and anywhere the project goes from here (and, I think, will go from there) can only sound better.
As for using the Anthem codebase and tools. I think it could end up being a good thing. For 1, I have to imagine they are more refined than the Frostbite tools used with Jophin, given the investment in Anthem. We know the NPC's look a lot better than ME:A, so that could help. Unfortunately hair will probably always be an issue lol.
They mention Inquisitions MP was something of an add-on. I imagine if they devote a larger amount of time to it, they could end up with something really fun. Just spitballing in my head, I'm imagining ME3MP but with fantasy classes, tanks that could taunt and be immune to sync kills, other tanks that could protect a unit from range damage, biotics were already very mage like, rogues for the "kill this target" missions, etc.
EDIT: Also while online only might suck, if it gives me the ability to pull in a friend to play a really good single player campaign, I'm all for it.
Or not. Or EA will decide Bioware has lost enough money already and kill the studio.
Man, it's hard to be optimistic here.
My point being it's not like the industry has entirely moved to online co-op as much as EA would like to pretend that's a case. There's clearly a market for that with some game of the year contenders in extremely solid single player games with optional DLC. Why they're trying to push this nonsense on us, I don't know. Mark me in as someone who will be VERY disappointed with anything other than an extremely solid and lengthy single player campaign.
Having played Anthem a good deal, I'm not sold on the Anthem model. The combat is very good, the scenery is very pretty, and a month or two later it's STILL so unstable one or two missions will randomly glitch out, wasting an hour or more of my time each time. Not to mention the story, while occsasionally fun, is noticeably shorter and shallower than anything they've put out before. At least half as short if not more, with few if any meaningful choices. Please no anthem dragon age.
Like ships passing in the night.
Actually, I just realized you would TOTALLY be able to sell emotes in a single player environment, as long as they were things like "give your bf/gf a big smooch" and other things related to the romance. You could sell a "cuddle in bed" emote. I WOULD BUY THESE EMOTES.
The irritating thing is that they've achieved great half-solutions in their previous games, but seem incapable of re-combining things they've always done well. Want a great BW game with a profitable live-services aspect to it? Here, let htm tell you how to do it:
1. Implement a great BW story using single-player missions (JUST LIKE YOU DID BEFORE WITH SWTOR CLASS MISSIONS!).
2. Implement co-op missions that are related to the main story but don't advance it (JUST LIKE YOU DID BEFORE WITH SWTOR NON-CLASS MISSIONS!).
3. Implement an endgame based on co-op missions and loot progression (JUST LIKE YOU DID WITH ME3 MP!).
4. Build a good online store and sell a fuckton of cool cosmetics.
Hopefully, with DA4, BW manages to get its chocolate into its peanut butter. This isn't the Anthem thread, but one of the big problems with Anthem is that it ignored everything that SWTOR does well WRT to integrating a single-player BioWare story into an otherwise pervasively multiplayer game.
DA4 needs to combine SWTOR's single-player mission structure with ME3/Anthem style co-op play the way SWTOR combined 8 classic BW games with a traditional MMO.
I think it goes to show how bad the dysfunction within Bioware is/was. This shouldn't be that hard, other games have done it well. But for some reason, Bioware has been having a hell of a time merging their character driven stories with live service style features.
Anthem really feels like they ran out of time and had to move forward before they could really nail down the style they wanted. Quotes in the article mention, it's likely everything they are scoping out for DA4, will change as they move forward, so I'm taking it all with a grain of salt.
I'm not 100% sold on the original story thought either; being a spy. There's some cool things you could do with that, but it seems more Thief, Dishonored, or any other stealth game; instead of a DA game. I'm still hoping they lean into the Tevinter politics more. I'd rather gather political support, rather than spying on them for information.
I would very much be interested in just being able to pose my character better when taking a screenshot of them.
Which reminded me, the oldest screenshots I have on steam came from a cool little game that let me pause the action during combat to get a cool pose.
I dunno, they were already using Frostbite tools developed during Inquisition, and since all three of their last games have had separate starts on Frostbite without building on any prior adaptations, I suspect the tools they took from Dragon Age would be more useful than the tools that came out of Anthem's half-baked development.
But maybe they're using both, because there's no reason all the work they did on Joplin should be wasted regardless of what direction they end up in.
And that makes me sad.
Even for this franchise!
All I can do is hope that all the bad press they've been getting lately leads them to you know produce a game people actually want and not one that will make EA lots of dollars.
I don't preorder games as a general practice and I am going to wait and see what the reviews say. I have tons of games to play and don't need to be cramming it on the first night.
AC kinda does the thing that makes me not like cosmetic microtransactions in practice though.
Gear appearence is a big part of the actual game for me. Not just some little side thing that doesn't matter. So the fear is always that a company skimp on what is available in the game and save all the cool stuff for buying outside the game.
And Ubisoft does just that when they make every single in game legendary set just a copy of the regularly available armors and the only unique legendaries the ones you buy. That actively lowers the quality of the base game for the sake of the microtransactions. That sucks and even if DA did something like that it would be negatively impactful.
I'm not going to swear of a game just because it has microtransactions but the issues is that the general fears of them being used in bad ways comes to fruition so often that it makes it hard not to be wary every single time.
That said with Andromeda and Anthem both being woefully under the standards people have come to expect of Bioware they really do need to knock it out of the park.
I mean it isn't impossible and they won't be the first big name studio to have ever had a slump but we'll see.
Which makes me sad.
To be fair, they were designed by different teams with different engines.
I mean...MEA was SP.
I didn't like the MP as much as 3 but it actually less connected than 3 was.
Just to play devil's advocate, those tools were designed for a game to run on the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as current gen. They could have a lot of things that are not needed anymore.
Honestly, I have to wonder if it's not better for Bioware to wait a bit here. Seems like they are setting themselves up for the same situation, a game coming out on older gen hardware. Everyone expects the next gen consoles to be announced sometime this year. When planning for a game that won't be out for 3-5 years, shouldn't the target be those consoles? Maybe they are using the Anthem tools to do prototyping? One would hope that the next generation of Frostbite might be easier to work with.
EDIT: May also be part of the reason for the scrapping of Joplin. If it was targeting the PS4/XBox1, and they'd rather target next gen.
The funny thing is that Ubisoft, while it still has a lot of filler content, has gotten so much better about creating real character driven quests in their open world. I just started playing Odyssey and am surprised how far it has come since Origins even. It's still not anywhere close to the level of Witcher 3, but I think it's getting closer to old-school Bioware (though not quite yet).
I'm so sad about this news though. DA2, despite its flaws from a rushed production, is still one of my favorite character-centric RPGs. Joplin sounded like a return to that character-driven narrative. That they are abandoning it for Anthem with DragonsⓇ is just an absolute kick in the nuts.
1. The game envisioned was incompatible with EA's games-as-a-service mandate.
2. After Laidlaw left, some combination of optimism/egotism/vengeance made the remaining staff feel they should do things differently. (This kind of petty crap happens all the time in Hollywood.)
There's some hope scenario 2 will manage to result in a good game, provided Bioware can get their shit together. But if it's scenario 1, forget it.
Or I suppose they may think, “It’s all up to DA now!” And double down on the nonsense.
That said I do not think in all good conscience I can give money to BioWare until I hear from employees that things have changed greatly. Otherwise this is blood money and I want no part of it.