My first Assassin's Creed game was Odyssey. All of the things that happened in the "present" was confusing. I had no idea why I was no longer in ancient Greece and no idea how to get back. I tried to play some of the DLC and ended up rage-quitting when I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do in the "present-day" sequences to get back to ancient Greece.
@@MarkDarrah IIRC, the original plan was for the series to eventually transition to Desmond after several games and actually fighting Abstergo in modern day thanks to all the skills obtained through the bleeding effect. But then Ubisoft has a fight with the original writer about his vision, and fired him... After AC3, the whole modern day arc went off the rails, mainly as Ubisoft resolved the major plots in a comic book...
@@MarkDarrah no, it always had story purpose. The fight between the assassins and templar extended all the way to modern day. But it is cool way to do a hud.
I am tolerant of a lot of confusing things in games but if a game "requires" me to go to gamefaqs or a wiki before it hooks me it is the moment I put it down. I ran into a couple of demos recently where this happens. Either confusing mechanics on the gameplay side of it or a bunch of mumbo-jumbo related to how you play the game without a hint of what anything represents.
I've (more than a few times) pondered how difficult it must be to write up the options, skills, etc. in a game --- the need to make it plain language without dummying it down; making it clear and concise but also informative. It's one helluva skill set. I've only played a few racing games in my lifetime (mostly because my kids wanted me to play with them)--and I have absolutely come across the types of confusing options you're talking about. (Keeping in mind that I'm admittedly remedial when it comes to cars.) One game was so bad (don't recall the title, apologies), that my kids and I decided to do play another game. So, yes, the frustration factor is a real thing.
I think another thing to this point - especially in character creation - is when stats come into play, those optimized players you mentioned will look to find the "best" starting option that provides the greatest advantages or fewest disadvantages. This can lead to a sense of pressure or maybe indecision when starting out, perhaps a player restarts multiple times to test different beginnings, but quits due to burnout. Really interesting to think about.
The restarting constantly and quitting due to burnout is my exact problem with Dragon Age Ogins and Baldurs Gate 3. With BG 3, it's mostly due to me wanting to try out a new character and not wanting to wait a few more hours to do so.
I actually miss having detailed instruction booklets with physical games. You sometimes got great art and useful information all at once. Now, games impose an often boring first thirty-sixty minutes tutorial section to play through as a replacement for an instruction manual.
And the tutorial section often does not cover even half of what the manuals used to. Like yeah, game, I know to pres WASD/arrows to move and move mouse to look around, every game in last 20+ years worked like that. I miss paper manuals (and physical boxes in general)
@@AriesczI can think of a surprising number of times where I only figured out how to do something in a game by opening up the settings and looking at the keybindings.
Car-acter Creation 🤣 your mind!! I remember Baldur's Gate character creation being confusing but I didn't even know what D&D is at the time, so that's probably on me
I bought BG when I was around 11 and I didn't understand anything, I mostly figured out how to use cheats and had fun like than, years later around 16 I played it again and learned THAC0 and all that stuff by playing it a lot, it was certainly an experience but BG2 is still to this day one of my fav games of all time.
BG1 essentially taught me the basics of D&D. I still don't know how to calculate THAC0 exactly, but I realised that lower is better, which translates into the attack bonus being higher is better in later editions. Still playing D&D all these years later, and still replaying BG1&2... but I wonder if I would have had that patience as an adult with thousands of games around me, compared to kid me with just a few and that one, slow, very strange but intruiging "Diablo clone" with the skull on the cover stood out so much.
Chrysler once called their employment opportunities page "CAR-eers"!! Considering what happened to that company since then, I guess those that groaned at that page really "Dodged" one!!
I love these videos recently, the differential analogy is perfect because I think i've experienced that exact thing before. I've been watching your videos lately and have been applying the game design idea while developing my latest release!
I like the way you present different possible solutions, and then ask "which people would this solve the issue for, and which people would it not?" Feels like learning to think that way is a good general way to approach solving problems. Knights of the Old Republic (❤!) was the first RPG I'd ever played, some years after it came out. I'd never played DnD before either and didn't know what ANYTHING meant 😅 I don't remember getting toooo frustrated in character creation (I think the explanations there worked) but I definitely was lost on how picking weapons and armor worked during the actual game, particularly with all the ranges of numbers. It did make me feel kinda foolish not already knowing it. I ended up going with "bigger number better?" and that mostly served me well. I've now played DnD and it makes going back and playing KotOR (and things like BG3) feel a lot less like I'm just stumbling my way to success, heh.
I, an experienced D&D player, remember being incredibly confused by the character creator in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, more specifically, by the way the class progression was displayed. I spend at least half an hour if not more trying to make heads or tails of it, but I couldn't really do it. It became much clearer later on after leveling up several times & seeing how my progress was reflected on the same type of display, especially when adding it multi-classing. Now it's completely clear to me, and I haven't been confused since with it, neither in its successor, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. At the same time I was extremely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information present in the character creator due to the insane number of available classes, sub-classes, abilities etc. I spend a lot of time in most character creators, but the Kingmaker one was easily the first one where I couldn't finish my character the first two tries I started the game due to being overwhelmed. I don't know if I would have preferred a more streamlined approach, though. I certainly wouldn't have wanted a dumbed down editor once I figured out what was what. Maybe like you said, Mark, a kind of streamlined "easy" mode for the CC in for your first character & the full mode only for the following ones - or at least a question right at the start? Not sure, and not an easy problem to tackle with games with that amount of content. Being overwhelmed is certainly not the same as being confused. But I think they share some of the same issues & frustrations for the player, and likely some of the same kinds of solutions.
4:22 An advanced unlock would be my preference. But there are many games where I use a Wiki to help me understand confusing things. I didn't know what the word 'renitence' meant, so I looked it up. So thank you for that!
Oblivion was my worst experience of that kind. Amongst character classes there is the bard. I choose that. The xp system now makes you and the whole world level up when you progress in things like barter and persuasion. The problem is that this game is very combat centered, and now enemy get buffed for combat at every levelup when you don't. The game does nothing to make you feel like a bard and punishes you for this choice. Confusion when it happened. Anger when I understood why, after spending many hours into the game. Yep.
@@MarkDarrah iirc Oblivion had worldwide level scaling scaling tied to the levels of the five(?) skills of your character class. Depending on your class this could be really bad. Also, you could break the game by making a custom class with skills you barely used.
Me trying to play Destiny 2... Primary because the original campaigns are not even in the game anymore and the mission you can do at the beginning assumes that I know things that I don't.
yeah I found this with Destiny 2. Funnily enough I actually bought it at launch and played through the original campaign. fast forward about 18 months and me and my partner wanted to try it again. It was so confusing how the original campaign and DLC weren't even there. I was furiously googling to see whether it had just been some fever dream. The whole thing was very off-putting
I kinda find this happens to me with games like Civilization and RTS games? I've never purchased any but I have a few in my Steam library from giveaways. I think they always expect people to be familiar with the genre and I find the layouts of their menus to always feel so busy and claustrophobic. Even after completing the tutorials I only understand like 20% of everything I have on my screen? So I play something different. The only game like that I've fully understood is Star Wars: Empire at War because it's so simplified :) I expected Baldur's Gate 3 to confuse me. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons before, I didn't know any of the rules or even why people rolled dice except for attack damage. I think BG3 explained everything I needed to know about all the different stats and proficiencies, like I knew immediately that my warlock character needed high Charisma. I felt like I understood all of the choices I made. I'm still not sure exactly why charisma is used for casting spells, but I've kinda headcanoned/assumed that she's (persuasively) asking her patron to make her eldritch blasts as accurate and deadly as possible :)
I was confused about some of the mechanics in Inquisition, like sunder on hit, stagger on hit, walking bomb numbers. Testing the mechanics is fun, but the description was confusing, since the numbers didn’t match. I hope the mechanics are clearer in Veilguard.
Out of curiosity, did you get stats on people who chose the automatic skills/power upgrade option each time they leveled up vs chose their own skill/power upgrade in games like Dragon Age? How often did people really take the suggested level options vs choosing their own?
@@MarkDarrah in context to the topic, was there any tangible feedback that implementing an auto-level up system was worth the effort? I assume that it was done specifically for the same idea you spoke to here: to keep from confusing people who didn't want to bother with the combat systems and just experience the narrative.
That's actually the reason why I was confused a bit by the character creation and progression in DA:O at first. I wasn't exposed to DnD or any other fantasy TTRPG as much back in the day and it just wasn't readily obvious to me what these attributes actually do. In Fallout 1 and 2 it's more obvious because you have this massive spreadsheet screen where all relations between attributes and everything else are really visible. Like you increase your Endurance and you immediately see that your HP increases too, or you increase your Perception and your weapon-related skills increase as well. In hindsight, I think DA:O did really poor job at communicating the actual numbers to the player. Like, how much HP do you have, how much every ability costs, how much damage does it deal, what resistances does enemy have and so on. Makes it really hard to make educated decisions on your build, especially since you can't respec later. It really does contribute to the confusion new players may have with DA:O's combat system.
yeah, it's why i think Inqusition is a better game tactics wise, even when lacking a tactics menu you can actually see enemy weaknesses and stop time to get characters to target them, and that wasn't an option in the console port of dragon age orgins
This is one of the reasons a lot of RPGs have moved to direct stats as opposed to derived one. The extra abstraction adds complexity without much extra content
Your example with the car is exactly how I felt that time I wanted to look at the advanced customization option of my car in Forza Horizon... So many options and I had no idea what would be the consequence in the game. I closed it immediately and never went there again. Also, a little out of topic, but has anyone told you, you and John Epler had a very similar voice ? When I listened to the Q&A session of DA:TV I first thought you were the one talking.
If you've ever ordered at McDonald's, you know the menu is super simple with a limited number of choices. That's how my brother likes games. As a casual gamer, he gets lost when I tell him he can “build” a character in an RPG however he wants. It's like the difference between ordering at McDonald's and ordering from a sandwich place like Subway, where you can choose from hundreds of combinations of toppings and breads. I'm starting to think that it’s not that he’s bad at RPG games, but he just prefers the simplicity of a fast-food joint over the complexity of a deli.
I suspect that's why you see more "pre designed" options at some of the traditionally "pick everything" restaurants. And that is an option in game as well. Recommend a path but let me do what I want
As a special education teacher, our job is to help people "decode" language in reading. One decoding strategy is contextual clues, which is what the car-acter example is missing. The reader might not know what a differential is, but there are too few contextual clues (such as an explanation). I think gamers can tolerate an amount of confusion as long as they are assured that whatever they are choosing is change-able within the game. The screen that says: "are you certain...?" or "this feature can be changed any time using the game menu" tells the player the consequence of choosing when confused. I would say the most deliberately confusing game I played was the Myst games in the late 90s.
Sometimes when devs are trying not to be confusing it feels like they treat players like they’re idiots. Is the trade-off between confusing newcomers and rewarding the more experienced once an answer to that?
I think FromSoft games use confusion as an element really well. You can play the entire game and miss massive parts of it, but that's part of the player experience. On the flip side, the first time I played The Witcher 2, I was confused and frustrated by a lot of the systems, so I quit pretty quickly. It was only when I went back to it knowing that I would be confused by it that I was able to get through it and ended up loving it.
Can't remember any bigger budget game that's risked to much confuse anyone for .... generations of GeForce and PlayStation. In fact, it's the other way around. Games safe for a very select few exceptions are so hand-holdish, you couldn't get lost in the player character's own toilet even if you tried. And the less said about "puzzles" in modern blockbuster games, the better. I've been watching the "The redesign that saved Deathloop" feature on Gamespot's channel, and I my heart sunk with every minute. Granted, in typical Arkane fashion, the entire premise of Deathloop wasn't exactly super mainstream (I'd REALLY love the Austin branch to have tackled that Indiana Jones game developed under Betehesda instead of Redfall). But the entire playtesting process as laid out by Gamespot reminded me of Hollywood testscreening Christopher Nolan's Momento, then (surprisingly) finding that portions of the audience were initially confused, and so execs would order cutting the movie into chronological order. Thus turning a movie still talked about today into something that may have been easier to approach, but forgotten by now. Luckily, that didn't happen. Gaming though.... I think it still has a way to go, despite (or perhaps because) it had grown so quickly in such a short amount of time. Audiences have grown too though. See also the more recent mainstream success of From Software or Larian. Just because games can be super accessible, doesn't mean they ALL have to be the equivalent of a Big Mac at Mc D. In fact, everybody selling Big Mac may open opportunity for somebody to step in and sneak a little bit of Filet Mignon in there...
I haven't been confused at it myself but the different methods of gearing up your character in SWTOR definitely have confused the playerbase, and I know a lot of people who even left over the latest gearing system iteration and only returner when changes were made to make the gearing process slightly less confusing or at least less grindy.
A good example of the negative kind of confusion/frustration, from my personal experience, would be pretty every time I’ve shown up late to the party for a live-service game/mmo and am immediately presented with information as though the developer is updating a returning player on the current lay of the land instead of welcoming a new player such as myself. An example on the positive side of things would be the effective use of an “in media res” opening in a certain game you may be familiar with: Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s arguably a bit too much for a true newcomer, but I was unfazed by what was my introduction to the series. It ultimately became, and remains, my favorite game of all time and lead me to a complete list playthrough of the entire series. I was captivated by being thrown into the story, and feeling like a fish out of water only added to the experience.
This is one of the reasons that it is hard for live services to recover once they start to decline. They start catering more and more to the existing audience and thus become ever more impenetrable to newcomers
I enjoyed dungeons in all the old 3D Zelda games, and I really enjoyed the total game structure of allowing there to be things you come across in the overworld, early on, which are inaccessible with any current mechanic you have, but through the completion of things in the game you unlock items that pays off your memorization of the world and its secret areas. In any game where true secrets exists I enjoy not being able to understand something at first, because otherwise there wouldn't be a secret. I disliked Breath of the Wild because it has so much teasing with "what's over there?" only for everything to always be accessible by the player's own inventiveness, so you're never denied a chance of discovery, and once you've seen everything in the game you realize there wasn't really anywhere that allowed me to come back to it and then figure out some mindblowing moment. Instead it's all immediate, and the lack of confusion throughout that journey actually leads to diminishing returns.
It's crazy how much stuff some games shove on to you at the very start. One of the problems is these games that just keep updating and adding more content. Minecraft is an example, when I first started playing in beta the game was still quite complex for the time, but now the game expect you to know the basic Minecraft formula plus all these other things they added on. Generally the more updates a game has had the more bloated and confusing with all this patched together content becomes. The devs dump all this content and ideas onto the games when really you just need to focus and refine key things and slowly becomes a patchwork mess. Or they are a long standing franchise that is like number 7 in it's series and expects you to know a lot from the other games or the game expects you to be an expert from the start (which is mainly what you describe in the video). Then finally there are games that have all of these things and there is a lot of them too.
I get all this logic, but it really sucks that complex games like old school RPGs are less and less common for the sake of mass appeal. Maybe it's necessary, but it sucks to see art get watered down so as not to scare away the lowest common denominator. I'm certainly not jealous of the position game devs are in
There is room for complexity. But even THERE you want to target your audience's comfort zone. The audience for your crunchy, mathy, strategy game may not be up for the intricacies of noble inheritance law in 16th century Europe. Or maybe they are.
thx for the timestamps. some very interesting insights. and i think (and hope) regarding the new DragonAge that new ideas and changes will be good for the game and fun for the gameplay. but i the marketing (showcase/first news) were REALLY bad handled. if you make partly so drastic and then also so many changes you have to be more careful, sensitive and more in depth in my personal honest opinion.
But in some cases, overcomplicated mechanics work because the sum of the game's other components outweighs the player's initial frustration. Escape from Tarkov with all its types of armor/ammo/attachments. Path of Exile with builds that require several PhDs. I have literally seen people who have struggled for years with the high barrier to entry into this game. I completely forgot, Elite Dangerous is my case. Flight with Newtonian physics was very painful to learn. Oh and yes, how to catch the moment when simplification leads to the fact that the project turns into something completely different?
Not sure if I'm making sense here, or if it's just incoherent ramblings, but here we go: There is a fine line here. If you leave no space for confusion, you leave no space for exploration and mastery. You end up effectively with Ubisoft homogenisation problem, where even though there is a lot of choice on paper, there is always one very obvious solution. And then, you end up circling around and instead of creating a wider appeal, you create a niche of players that enjoy whatever unique thing is left in your game.
I think I have another video... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kmQ6cpch5Gw.html Which talks about over streamlining. These aren't directly in conflict but the tension does exist.
While confusion is an issue, overexplaining might be more annoying. Especially in the case of Metal Gear Solid games (excepting the 5th one and maybe Peace Walker), they seem to overexposit too much. And the games relied in manuals to understand some things like dragging bodies and such. And I don't think you should need a manual at all, if I wanted to read something, I would go on Ao3.
Stanley Parable was the only game where I felt confused initially and continued to be confused, but the game is made that way for exactly that purpose. Somehow it's still fun despite running around and doing the same things over and over.
So, there is a lot of risk vs. reward when designing games. Will the player like it how many will experience what we are spending resources and time doing. Is it open to new players yet challenging to experienced ones. Though have you ever returned to a game for dlc after a long break. Destiny 2 is a nightmare they just assume you no all the features from the last 3 dlc you didnt play. Completely put me off buying anymore of them. Or Starfields design i love rpgs yet it falls somewhere between wanting to be action like doom and have the exploration of their old games, multiple new elements, base building ship building, etc. My point is that they spread the game to thin if you want a repayable game it has to be intuitive easy to pick up after a long break. I could dig out my Nintendo 64 put on mario 64 and instantly be playing after a 23 year break. Yet inreplayed Starfield and i spend about 20 minites trying to remember how do use allnthese features the added.
Mark, I appreciate your views and thoughts, it makes me realize how much work you put into making the game. What was confusing to me was the change in tone, atmosphere, and gameplay from the successful Origins formula to the later games. Origins is what made us fall in love with this world and game. Why would a game developer suddenly decide to abandon what the fanbase wants and go in new directions that the majority of the fanbase isn't too happy about. Of course, I understand that there needs to be some innovation to keep the sequels looking fresh and new, but these drastic changes are confusing to me. So that when I entered 2 from Origins, it was as if I had entered a completely different world and game that had nothing to do with Origins. It was the same with the Inquisition. And It took me several hours to get used to the game and understand what's going on. To produce a sequel, do game developers completely throw away everything and start processing ideas from scratch? Do they usually ask the fanbase what they like, what they don't want to see in the sequel, and what improvements they expect? Or do they intend to attract new audiences for the game, even if it means displeasing the fanbase that would pay for its sequels under any circumstances? I like and enjoyed all three games and you have no idea how much I appreciate the hard work you and the team at Bioware have put in them. But my preference and all those I know, was that the games continue the same style as Origins. I also wanted to know your opinion about the change of focus in the Veilguard. Personally, I have no problem with political views and even their representation in games. But why do the trailers seem like the focus of the game has completely moved away from what made this games into Dragon Age. Don't you think it would be better if an approach like Origins or even Inquisition was taken so as not to stir up so many controversies? Many players don't care about political messages in games. What is important to them is the world itself, the characters and stoty, etc. But when the focus of the game is fixed on these things, it causes such controversies.
There is a broader conversation to be had at a later date about Dragon Age as a franchise. But If you follow the series, you will notice a constant evolution going on
@@MarkDarrah But has this evolution benefited the franchise? I mean, look at the Fromsoftware. They've been making games for their dedicated fanbase for two decades, and it's safe to say that all of their games, with some differences, have FromSoftware's DNA and signature and same spirit. Not everyone can play these games. FromSoftware also knows this. But their target is a certain group of players, not attracting new audiences. This policy worked well with Elden Ring. Couldn't the Dragon Age franchise have a single spirit while evolving? I enjoyed all three games, but to be honest, I don't think they share the same feel and spirit.
@@MarkDarrah But has this evolution benefited the franchise? I mean, look at the Fromsoftware. They've been making games for their dedicated fanbase for two decades, and it's safe to say that all of their games, with some differences, have FromSoftware's DNA and signature and same spirit. Not everyone can play these games. FromSoftware also knows this. But their target is a certain group of players, not to please everyone. This policy worked well with Elden Ring. The evolution FromSoftware has gone from Demon Souls to Elden Ring, is by keeping all the elements and features that its fans want. Couldn't the Dragon Age franchise have a single spirit while evolving? I enjoyed all three games, but to be honest, I don't think they share the same feel and spirit. We have a cultish group that has literally chewed up this franchise. We have even found glitches in the game that we're sure the developers themselves are not aware of. We have people who have completed these three games nearly 100 times. We're madly in love with this world. We just want to make our voices heard. And the gameplay trailer largely cleared our worries about the dark and gritty atmosphere. But changing the design of the enemies to a cartoonish style... I don't know what to say. I know I'm ranting too much. And I hope my words will not upset you. You have a special place among the fans, sir.
Then why is Bioware creating so much confusion with Dragon Age? Changing art style&combat with every release. No identity of it's own. Changing title from Dreadwolf to Veilguard all of the sudden. Changing the game over and over again we hear about a project in works we hear it's a live service now then we hear it's actually single player game. Releasing weird quirky trailers and bad marketing i am sure i could continue with other points
At least mass effect stayed consistent with how the vibes and aliens looked and felt like. Not changing the turians like they did with the qunari in such a drastic disney way
I was confused by BG3 character creation but just rolled with it. Differential? I guess I'll find how it exactly plays out during the gameplay! I think you should not lock players in confusing choices.
BG3 have a bad UI design. Too much hidden. And when we choose a class or a subclass, the game not telling us what feats we'll get on later levels is criminal. We shouldn't need to reach for wikis to plan our build. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous did this incredibly well, and the amount of variance and build complexity is just huge compared to BG3.
I remember feeling that frustration 25 years ago playing my very first BioWare game: Baldur's Gate 2. THAC0, saving throws, hidden turns, magical immunities... None of the mechanics made any sense to me cause I knew nothing about D&D and games like Diablo and Chrono Trigger were my closest point of reference. Still, BG2 blew my mind and I still think it is the best game I ever played. DA: Origins and DA2 both gave me a different kind of frustration, the one that comes from finishing a game not really knowing what was all about. Yeah I saved a nation from a big dragon and its army of monsters in the first game and prevented the complete destruction of a state-city in the second, but why did it all happen? Old Gods, magisters, the Black City, blood magic, red lyrium... all seemingly related but no way to tell how or why. DAI luckly changed that and felt like a more complete experience overall.
I think that's a you specific problem. The games tell you what they are about and how characters think in great detail. Inqusition is sort of the same way.
Destiny 2 is just so bad at presenting what new or returning players need to do, from the first time you boot it up after a while it immediately throw you onto a new story mission from the latest chapter without asking and it assumes you should know everything before hand even thought more than 50% of storied content is no longer available in the game and you have to look at youtube to figure out the story, then it give you list of planet with no context what each planet is, and dump you banner after banner of game mechanics and mission and season events, and raids, nightfall, PVPVE, energy weapons, and crafting and trasmog and maybe some introduction to quantum mechanic along with advanced dance theory and little fun info about the favorite food of national birds of spain and bunch other irrelevant stuff to a new player. I don't think i have been this confused in a video game even thought i played it near launched and liked the game, however year after year they kept on adding new stuff and removing old stuff till the game is no longer recognizable. Everytime i try to boot back into destiny 2 i just feel so confused what am i supposed to do and irritated that most content I payed for no longer in the game and yet they keep at selling it. which is sad since destiny 2 has some of the best shooting mechanic and fluidity of any game, and with a very attractive art style
Baldurs Gate 3 confused the hell out of me with their all their D&D terms. I loathed the gameplay but stuck it out for the characters and the story. I beat the game (on normal) and still had next to no idea what a cantrip even is.
Non-D&D BG3 player here. I learned a lot from both external sources (content creators and the wiki) and from the cascade of in-game tooltips, beat the game on Tactician and then on Honor Mode (the highest difficulty). Absolutely loved it. I am also a Destiny player so kind of used to not relying on the game itself to explain things fully.
Gotta be honest. Based on the title I thought this video was about the danger of showing a game trailer that's bubbly and Pixar-esque for a game that's supposed to be dark and gritty.
@@MarkDarrah I did, it’s not a bad video. Not to dump on you hard but I had faith when you re-joined BioWare as a consultant that the game was going to be good. Pixar enemy models, party reduction, can’t control companions, 3 abilities…like it’s not Dragon Age at all. After a 10 year wait, such a disappointment.
@@marcogiordanella7795 i waited 10 years for a new dragon age too. 15 years for a dragon age with the amazing melancholic vibe of origins and its very balanced companions (which ppl forgot where partly also "woke" already but at least also partly "sexy" and not edgy like some later ones) when i first saw gameplay i think they nailed many things. the new style does not look as realsitic as maybe dragons dogma 2 (which i hoped for personally - silly character designs excluded of course), nor does it look cartoony (as some ppl are saying for whatever reason) it looks more like a realsitic painting. very artsy and a bit too smooth maybe but i personally like it. i also think its great they try to reimagine some things like enemies and armors cause lets be honest dragon age armor and weapon design always was a bit bland/uninspired looking. i personally like the idea of the new demons (the only old demons i liked where the desire demon (which i assume won't come back again...>.>) and the pride demon. but i am okay with the new design and it can make sense if you think about it. the new dragon design in inquisition was AMAZING and really appreciated cause even the dragon design (especially from the minor dragons) in the old games (and i otherwise love origins) felt uninspired/uncreative. but when the gameplay was shown i was also shocked. no tactical cam, no selections of party members was a huge disappointment for me the first days after the reveal. the limited skills i hoped were just cause if the low level character. but we all know now that it really seems to be restricted to 3 major active skills (i assume similar to dragons dogam where you also don't have many skills but you can empower them and all can be upgraded to be stronger which can be really fun and also cool) some thinking of dragons dogma combat wise makes me still optimistic and way more positive now. the new skill tree looks really great ngl. the only thing which really concerns me now is: 1. how the gear system works (hopefully not like DragonAge2? @MarkDarrah ) i still would like to let companions wear what i found or at least use the new transmog system on them. 2. if the game will be better to mod than Inquisisition which was aweful to mod (and if the gear system is going to be really restrictive like DragonAge2 i need some modding support to at least "fix" that point for me. i think many of us are too harsh to the overall new changes but its understandable that some of us are harsh or even a bit rude cause we waited long for solid news and you can built certain hopes and imaginations over 10 years of waiting. also i think new inspirations, ideas and changes can be cool and are often needed but there should be still handled with care and respect for the old and core-fans of the game-franchise. and even still new ideas and changes are good, you shouldn't try too many new things. and that caused the big backlash of criticism and angry ppl. cause the new game changes many things, maybe more than most older fans could handle. like changes in the artstyle ok, change in many designs ok, changes in combat uff but ok, changes in partysize too? uff and gear stystem too? big uff - that makes you wonder: what else? / its like having a patient who needs a new sort of pill, you can't give the patient a big dose of this new medicine cause it might cause the body of the patient to react negative to it, thats why you start with small doses. (i am not fluid in english but i think the metaphor fits very well)
Don't confuse your players or they'll leave...I love it...This is definitely how I felt with the reveal of DAVe...The story is gone - a lot of things unanswered, a lot of expectations were shattered - hopefully the new story still links and applies to the original story Dragon had been telling...The game is now more political than national TV news - select your pronouns during the character creation since this is relevant not only in the US but globally, and this is very important gameplay wise and storywise since this is the agenda we want you to take part in forcefully...yeah right...Combat targets new players and ditches loyal fans and treats them like trash - DAO has full on tactics, DA2 has less, DAI virtually gone but at least you can go top-down and control your companions, DAVe removed everything and basically is just an interactive story book instead of something you can actually play and think while playing...I had high hopes for the game since we waited for a long time for Bioware to rise back up from the ashes...I guess there is a reason why the OGs such as yourself left, and that is Bioware is nothing but a zombie or a husk of what it was originally...don't get me wrong, the game looks good on frostbyte considering what they have to go through using that engine, dialogue seems interesting most of the time based on the gameplay trailer, but it feels different now - really? neon lights? so may light flashing you basically get aneurysm just by watching the screen...but i guess I am ranting here in the comments section...I just love the world you created and it hurts me that its no longer the game that helped me through the lowest and darkest part of my life...
Selecting your pronouns isn't political, it's actually an extremely normal part of gameplay going back as long as there has been customisable protagonists. Also, please define "loyal fan" because the rest of your sentence makes it clear that the combat has changed with every game so surely this would make it clear that no particular combat model is a franchise core feature. "The story is gone" lol, sure
You people are insufferable. Stop flooding anyone related to Bioware with your toxic nonsense, put on you your big boy pants and go touch grass. How do you even have the audacity of suggesting that DA:O didn't include politics? Did you even play the game?
I was thinking about your car analogy if someone gave you a Ferrari a car you didn’t want it doesn’t want you would feel uncomfortable but if you allowed said person to drive the new car and test it out like a demo like previous titles this would be better
