Beating the game the day previous (I skipped many of sidequests after finding them rather dull), I kept wondering throughout the game what it would have been like if the game was online co-op enabled, like borderlands.
But... an mmo?
It would be fun, if possible. But as a previous poster said... Single player games have the unique ability of revolving everything around YOU, thus changing the world and making it the way you want it (although I found this troublesome to achieve when there were so many dialogue options - MIND boggling)
It would essentialy become a single player with a co-op option, only the people who co-op with you are... in your world... like diablo's battlenet gameplay.
I personally don't think a story of DA's scale can be translated into an MMO, rather everything would turn out like Guild wars; where the story is unbendable and you get to cooperate with others to 'beat' the game.
I still loved and enjoyed the game though, and will definently try another class and try to tolerate all the side-quests in the next run through and I am curious as to how SWTOR will turn out
Yet another BioWare RPG! I think they should slow down and really work on these things, this one seemed a little less enchanting than their previous ones.
It's mostly the dialogue that bugs me. Nearly all of the voice actors (with the possible exception of Alistair) sound like they're reading scripts - it seems like they're being told to memorize some boring literature and simply reciting in a chant, rather than actually thinking about what they're saying.
Especially the pauses. OH MY GAWD the annoying pauses. "Oh no, we were too late, if only we had . . . been here sooner." WHO WRITES THIS SHITE?!
Beyond that, there are so many little things that ruin this game for me, I just can't like it as a whole. Why did I buy this thing? I swear I'm going to start pirating and only buy the game if I finish and enjoy it.
RPG combat systems that heavily rely on the ability to "pause" your gameplay tend not to translate well into MMO dynamics. The game also relies on the player's ability to save / reload, since he can screw himself over in a lot of ways. Single player games tend to have horribly balanced systems, this is no exception. Single player games by nature have linear story-lines that don't work in MMO. Again, this is no exception. MMO writing has to account for multiple people doing the same quest at various times. This means there cannot be any real "finality" to quest resolutions. How would the party members work? Everybody has an Alistar? Before someone says "randomly generate some names" remember that the names are used in voice over and the NPCs themselves have pretty elaborate backstories that tie into the history of the world. Does Flemeth have as many daughters as there are players? 300,000 players who are the last of the Grey Wardens. That's a lot of Grey Wardens. Story-wise, it doesn't work if everybody is the chosen one just like it doesn't work if Flemeth has 300,000 daughters. Who would play in normal or hard mode? The maps are quite small & linear by MMO standards Currently in Dragon Age, you can't see the level of mobs (I think they are dynamically scaled, but I'm not sure). Again, this sort of thing doesn't work in an MMO. The party combat AI is far too complex to be run on a server. In Dragon Age I've spent 10 minutes or more in a dialog window, and about as much time in some cut-scenes. This is typically not what MMO players want.
Looking at this list, these are generic problems one faces when translating a single player RPG to an MMO. Just some thoughts.
The DAO single player game doesn't literally have to translate into an MMO. In other words: certain things can be changed to suit the MMO market better.
For example, if the player is controlling himself only, the pause feature can be done away with. Kind of like in Guild Wars, where companions are being controlled by an AI and you can give orders to them.
As far as being linear, so are most recent MMOs. Take AoC and Aion for example. Their story lines are just as linear. Every single player is the chosen one. It works for them, yet we can't have 300,000 Grey Wardens?
Obviously Dragon Age Origins as a single player game will not work as an MMO as it's designed to be played by one player. I think that what people are talking about is taking the story and lore and various other game mechanics and the game world and applying them to an MMO. The game has to be designed as an MMO, just like Warcraft, an RTS, was redesigned as an MMO.
Well, I think it goes way beyond changing "certain things."
Once you chuck out the RPG system, the controls and combat behavior, the storyline, the quests, the dialog system, the voice-over, the cut-scenes, the party mechanic, the world map, the local maps, the party AI (way too complex to be handled server-side), the mob behavior... and then add in instancing and a network layer, and a robust database + data model, and client-server data-stream encryption, etc; and all the tech limitations these things entail... you have basically completely designed and re-implemented an MMO from scratch. This MMO may be loosely "Dragon Age Themed" but by no means does this fit in the original proposition if Dragon Age was an MMO.
I suppose the answer is: if Dragon Age were an MMO, it would be an entirely different game.
If instead, the question were: "What if a linear single player RPG were made into an MMO?" the answer is "Age of Conan."
Yet another BioWare RPG! I think they should slow down and really work on these things, this one seemed a little less enchanting than their previous ones.
It's mostly the dialogue that bugs me. Nearly all of the voice actors (with the possible exception of Alistair) sound like they're reading scripts - it seems like they're being told to memorize some boring literature and simply reciting in a chant, rather than actually thinking about what they're saying.
Especially the pauses. OH MY GAWD the annoying pauses. "Oh no, we were too late, if only we had . . . been here sooner." WHO WRITES THIS SHITE?!
Beyond that, there are so many little things that ruin this game for me, I just can't like it as a whole. Why did I buy this thing? I swear I'm going to start pirating and only buy the game if I finish and enjoy it.
I disagree, I really like the acting. There are a few players who are less than great but I think it's some of the best game acting that I've seen.
As far as the pauses and the like, remember, that it's hard to just act without context. Even more, there is a difference between acting for the screen and acting for the stage. So acting each line in its own little bubble is going to affect the acting.
I also think the actors probably did it the way it was written. I'm not sure who is directing them but that also could have some bearing on interpretation.
But in the end, the characters felt right to me and I think the actors did a great job. You want bad game acting? go to Aion, especially the start of the dream sequence. That is an instance where the actors were just not the right actors for the part.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Yet another BioWare RPG! I think they should slow down and really work on these things, this one seemed a little less enchanting than their previous ones.
It's mostly the dialogue that bugs me. Nearly all of the voice actors (with the possible exception of Alistair) sound like they're reading scripts - it seems like they're being told to memorize some boring literature and simply reciting in a chant, rather than actually thinking about what they're saying.
Especially the pauses. OH MY GAWD the annoying pauses. "Oh no, we were too late, if only we had . . . been here sooner." WHO WRITES THIS SHITE?!
Beyond that, there are so many little things that ruin this game for me, I just can't like it as a whole. Why did I buy this thing? I swear I'm going to start pirating and only buy the game if I finish and enjoy it.
I disagree, I really like the acting. There are a few players who are less than great but I think it's some of the best game acting that I've seen.
As far as the pauses and the like, remember, that it's hard to just act without context. Even more, there is a difference between acting for the screen and acting for the stage. So acting each line in its own little bubble is going to affect the acting.
I also think the actors probably did it the way it was written. I'm not sure who is directing them but that also could have some bearing on interpretation.
But in the end, the characters felt right to me and I think the actors did a great job. You want bad game acting? go to Aion, especially the start of the dream sequence. That is an instance where the actors were just not the right actors for the part.
I agree that some of the voice actors in DA:O were pretty good, but after playing Half-Life 2 for the third time through and some Borderlands before that, the voice acting just seemed awkward in comparison. Had I played Oblivion before it, however, I may have thought that the voice acting was like water in the desert.
The audio director is probably to blame, and I have no doubt he / she / they put the VAs alone in an isolated chamber to reduce recording noise and have them recite a script. Recording out of context is yes, extremely difficult for the actors because they can't bounce ideas off one another or get the vibe of what they were responding to.
Animated movies don't often have this problem because the VAs are put in the same room together and watch the footage with minimal character expressions (no lip-sync) to get an idea of what's supposed to be going on - lip-sync added later. Needless to say, the dialogue animations seemed stiff and uncomfortable, nestled deep within the uncanny valley. So I'm pretty sure that even if the VAs were shown the in-game footage, they wouldn't know how to voice the part (and 7/10, they obviously didn't).
The voices just didn't comfortably match their behavior, so that's probably what put me off.
I liked NWN more because there wasn't too much awkward voice acting and I could read the text how I imagined they would say it. Having this forced dialogue everywhere just wasn't that engaging, like Oblivion.
Well, I think it goes way beyond changing "certain things." Once you chuck out the RPG system, the controls and combat behavior, the storyline, the quests, the dialog system, the voice-over, the cut-scenes, the party mechanic, the world map, the local maps, the party AI (way too complex to be handled server-side), the mob behavior... and then add in instancing and a network layer, and a robust database + data model, and client-server data-stream encryption, etc; and all the tech limitations these things entail... you have basically completely designed and re-implemented an MMO from scratch. This MMO may be loosely "Dragon Age Themed" but by no means does this fit in the original proposition if Dragon Age was an MMO. I suppose the answer is: if Dragon Age were an MMO, it would be an entirely different game. If instead, the question were: "What if a linear single player RPG were made into an MMO?" the answer is "Age of Conan."
I don't see why we have to chuck out the RPG system (what's wrong with it?), the controls and combat behavior (which work very similar to an MMO if you play without using the pause feature, which I do), the overall storyline, the quests (a lot of which are very similar to your standard MMO fare), the dialog system (SWTOR will have it), the cut scenes (AoC, SWTOR, Aion).
The other things like maps and zones would obviously have to be changed to accommodate more players. Or you could use the Guild Wars approach and have an instanced zone for your party.
As far as party AI goes. I wonder how Guild Wars handled their party AI, if it's way too complex to be handled server side? Or we can do away with NPC party members, as other players can fill those roles, like they should in an MMO. If you think about it, DAO party system is your standard tank, heal, DPS approach, which is very similar to most MMOs out there.
Most MMOs with the exception of EVE and UO are pretty linear anyway. You follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. Most MMOs give you a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different. Now in DAO, you follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. You also have a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different.
I don't see why we have to chuck out the RPG system (what's wrong with it?),
It's neither designed nor balanced for an MMO. For example, there is no concept of CC immunity (that I can tell) or CC breaks (that I can see) yet you have classes like the mage which can chain CC. This would mean incredible imbalance in PvP. It's also pretty obvious that some classes are far more useful than others.
There is a cooldown timer on pots, but it's not universal and in reality the game is designed where the limiting factor on pot usage is gold. Which, in an MMO, would be farmed.
Also, your abilities are basically all clickables. This means a very high degree of micro-management. Indeed, the combat is built around micromanagement. Micromanagement works very well in a single player game with tactical combat where you can pause. Too much micromanagement does not work out so well in an MMO.
As I said earlier, the combat systems for single player games rarely, if ever, translate well into MMOs. Because they were designed with single player in mind and there is a whole lot of issues that just don't come up until you add more players.
the controls and combat behavior (which work very similar to an MMO if you play without using the pause feature, which I do),
I disagree. You have camera controls that involve panning and scrolling across maps which are absolutely essential to the combat. And this is part of the appeal - you can move seamlessly between a top-down view and a over-the-shoulder view. And the way the game is setup some modes are entirely optimal for some encounters. In fact, the encounters are really well done in that they are very "aware" of all the different camera and control modes you can use.
the overall storyline, the quests (a lot of which are very similar to your standard MMO fare),
No, they aren't. There are far fewer quests in Dragon age and no repeatable quests. When's the last time you played an MMO without repeatable quests? The storyline is entirely linear, and is centered around YOU. This does not work in MMO stories, where you see other people doing exactly the same quests. To make it worse, you have permanent world events which are triggered by YOUR actions. The storyline has a beginning and an end, whereas MMO stories tend to be open and centered around on-going conflicts. There is no ongoing conflict in Dragon Age. It's a novel.
the dialog system (SWTOR will have it), the cut scenes (AoC, SWTOR, Aion).
The other things like maps and zones would obviously have to be changed to accommodate more players. Or you could use the Guild Wars approach and have an instanced zone for your party.
I haven't played SWTOR, so I can't say if it has the same dialog system. :x Obviously nobody knows whether it will or it won't in actuality, unless you work for BioWare. And it's possible they don't even know yet. Yes, yes I know what marketing and the PR dept says, but that's marketing and the PR dept. We also don't know if it will work - and I can't imagine that it will. The market has demonstrated MMO gamers don't read quests. This is why WoW's quest system is what it is.
As far as party AI goes. I wonder how Guild Wars handled their party AI, if it's way too complex to be handled server side?
I don't know much about their party AI system, but I don't believe it was anywhere near has complex. Have you seen all the flags you can set, and the custom tactics you can do in Dragon Age? It's insane, you pretty much have game designer tools for determining your party behavior. This will all get lost in any MMO translation.
Or we can do away with NPC party members, as other players can fill those roles, like they should in an MMO. If you think about it, DAO party system is your standard tank, heal, DPS approach, which is very similar to most MMOs out there.
Again, there is no class balance in Dragon Age. The combat system is simply not designed around it. I mean, your only healer class is also your best DPSer class (who also gets the best CC). This works in a single player game where it doesn't matter if you are a power-gamer or not because there is no competition with others. In Dragon Age, I pick my party members because I like them or think they are cool characters as much as how useful I find them. This is not the MMO mindset.
Also, obviously, you have the choice of switching between characters any time you want. So it's fine if a single class is boring or not particularly fun to play.
Most MMOs with the exception of EVE and UO are pretty linear anyway. You follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. Most MMOs give you a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different. Now in DAO, you follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. You also have a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different.
The difference is in Dragon Age the story actually impacts the world in tangible and quantifiable ways. The world revolves around you, and the story is the vehicle for these changes. This just can't work in an MMO.
I also wanted to point out that removing easy mode/ hard mode is not so easy. The content is designed around the players ability to do this. I play on normal mode, but there are some solo encounters I simply cannot complete unless I drop down to easy. Again, there is also the whole issue of mob level which seems to have some auto-scaling.
On an additional note, the game just came out... so we have no idea about the replayability. Replayability is essential for an MMO, and quite frankly I'm not sure how many people will even replay Dragon Age.
RPG combat systems that heavily rely on the ability to "pause" your gameplay tend not to translate well into MMO dynamics. The game also relies on the player's ability to save / reload, since he can screw himself over in a lot of ways. Single player games tend to have horribly balanced systems, this is no exception. Single player games by nature have linear story-lines that don't work in MMO. Again, this is no exception. MMO writing has to account for multiple people doing the same quest at various times. This means there cannot be any real "finality" to quest resolutions. How would the party members work? Everybody has an Alistar? Before someone says "randomly generate some names" remember that the names are used in voice over and the NPCs themselves have pretty elaborate backstories that tie into the history of the world. Does Flemeth have as many daughters as there are players? 300,000 players who are the last of the Grey Wardens. That's a lot of Grey Wardens. Story-wise, it doesn't work if everybody is the chosen one just like it doesn't work if Flemeth has 300,000 daughters. Who would play in normal or hard mode? The maps are quite small & linear by MMO standards Currently in Dragon Age, you can't see the level of mobs (I think they are dynamically scaled, but I'm not sure). Again, this sort of thing doesn't work in an MMO. The party combat AI is far too complex to be run on a server. In Dragon Age I've spent 10 minutes or more in a dialog window, and about as much time in some cut-scenes. This is typically not what MMO players want.
Looking at this list, these are generic problems one faces when translating a single player RPG to an MMO. Just some thoughts.
The DAO single player game doesn't literally have to translate into an MMO. In other words: certain things can be changed to suit the MMO market better.
For example, if the player is controlling himself only, the pause feature can be done away with. Kind of like in Guild Wars, where companions are being controlled by an AI and you can give orders to them.
As far as being linear, so are most recent MMOs. Take AoC and Aion for example. Their story lines are just as linear. Every single player is the chosen one. It works for them, yet we can't have 300,000 Grey Wardens?
Obviously Dragon Age Origins as a single player game will not work as an MMO as it's designed to be played by one player. I think that what people are talking about is taking the story and lore and various other game mechanics and the game world and applying them to an MMO. The game has to be designed as an MMO, just like Warcraft, an RTS, was redesigned as an MMO.
Well, I think it goes way beyond changing "certain things."
Once you chuck out the RPG system, the controls and combat behavior, the storyline, the quests, the dialog system, the voice-over, the cut-scenes, the party mechanic, the world map, the local maps, the party AI (way too complex to be handled server-side), the mob behavior... and then add in instancing and a network layer, and a robust database + data model, and client-server data-stream encryption, etc; and all the tech limitations these things entail... you have basically completely designed and re-implemented an MMO from scratch. This MMO may be loosely "Dragon Age Themed" but by no means does this fit in the original proposition if Dragon Age was an MMO.
I suppose the answer is: if Dragon Age were an MMO, it would be an entirely different game.
If instead, the question were: "What if a linear single player RPG were made into an MMO?" the answer is "Age of Conan."
AoC at launch for the first twenty levels had a really interesting approach of solo play in Tortage night and mmorpg in Tortage day, which could be played solo or multi-player game with no real grind (i.e. the need to kill mobs with no quests available to level). After that, however, AoC went back to being largely conventional, albeit very buggy, mmorpg levelling game. In fact in places it was a real level grinder with little or no quest content. I am hoping that Bioware's upcoming mmorpg SW:TOR will perhaps resemble Tortage day and night with plot-driven immersive solo play and the option to group if wanted. Dragon Age would be a different game if made into an mmo, I'd much rather see a large expansion game from Bioware as they did for Baldur's Gate 2.
It wouldn't be as good. It would have to be dumbed down for the average gamer.
BINGO!
Just because it makes a good single player RPG...certainly doesn't mean it will make an amazing MMO. Nothing would be as epic, everybody doing the same thing at the same time.
I don't see why we have to chuck out the RPG system (what's wrong with it?),
It's neither designed nor balanced for an MMO. For example, there is no concept of CC immunity (that I can tell) or CC breaks (that I can see) yet you have classes like the mage which can chain CC. This would mean incredible imbalance in PvP. It's also pretty obvious that some classes are far more useful than others.
There is a cooldown timer on pots, but it's not universal and in reality the game is designed where the limiting factor on pot usage is gold. Which, in an MMO, would be farmed.
Also, your abilities are basically all clickables. This means a very high degree of micro-management. Indeed, the combat is built around micromanagement. Micromanagement works very well in a single player game with tactical combat where you can pause. Too much micromanagement does not work out so well in an MMO.
As I said earlier, the combat systems for single player games rarely, if ever, translate well into MMOs. Because they were designed with single player in mind and there is a whole lot of issues that just don't come up until you add more players.
the controls and combat behavior (which work very similar to an MMO if you play without using the pause feature, which I do),
I disagree. You have camera controls that involve panning and scrolling across maps which are absolutely essential to the combat. And this is part of the appeal - you can move seamlessly between a top-down view and a over-the-shoulder view. And the way the game is setup some modes are entirely optimal for some encounters. In fact, the encounters are really well done in that they are very "aware" of all the different camera and control modes you can use.
the overall storyline, the quests (a lot of which are very similar to your standard MMO fare),
No, they aren't. There are far fewer quests in Dragon age and no repeatable quests. When's the last time you played an MMO without repeatable quests? The storyline is entirely linear, and is centered around YOU. This does not work in MMO stories, where you see other people doing exactly the same quests. To make it worse, you have permanent world events which are triggered by YOUR actions. The storyline has a beginning and an end, whereas MMO stories tend to be open and centered around on-going conflicts. There is no ongoing conflict in Dragon Age. It's a novel.
the dialog system (SWTOR will have it), the cut scenes (AoC, SWTOR, Aion).
The other things like maps and zones would obviously have to be changed to accommodate more players. Or you could use the Guild Wars approach and have an instanced zone for your party.
I haven't played SWTOR, so I can't say if it has the same dialog system. :x Obviously nobody knows whether it will or it won't in actuality, unless you work for BioWare. And it's possible they don't even know yet. Yes, yes I know what marketing and the PR dept says, but that's marketing and the PR dept. We also don't know if it will work - and I can't imagine that it will. The market has demonstrated MMO gamers don't read quests. This is why WoW's quest system is what it is.
As far as party AI goes. I wonder how Guild Wars handled their party AI, if it's way too complex to be handled server side?
I don't know much about their party AI system, but I don't believe it was anywhere near has complex. Have you seen all the flags you can set, and the custom tactics you can do in Dragon Age? It's insane, you pretty much have game designer tools for determining your party behavior. This will all get lost in any MMO translation.
Or we can do away with NPC party members, as other players can fill those roles, like they should in an MMO. If you think about it, DAO party system is your standard tank, heal, DPS approach, which is very similar to most MMOs out there.
Again, there is no class balance in Dragon Age. The combat system is simply not designed around it. I mean, your only healer class is also your best DPSer class (who also gets the best CC). This works in a single player game where it doesn't matter if you are a power-gamer or not because there is no competition with others. In Dragon Age, I pick my party members because I like them or think they are cool characters as much as how useful I find them. This is not the MMO mindset.
Also, obviously, you have the choice of switching between characters any time you want. So it's fine if a single class is boring or not particularly fun to play.
Most MMOs with the exception of EVE and UO are pretty linear anyway. You follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. Most MMOs give you a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different. Now in DAO, you follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. You also have a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different.
The difference is in Dragon Age the story actually impacts the world in tangible and quantifiable ways. The world revolves around you, and the story is the vehicle for these changes. This just can't work in an MMO.
I also wanted to point out that removing easy mode/ hard mode is not so easy. The content is designed around the players ability to do this. I play on normal mode, but there are some solo encounters I simply cannot complete unless I drop down to easy. Again, there is also the whole issue of mob level which seems to have some auto-scaling.
On an additional note, the game just came out... so we have no idea about the replayability. Replayability is essential for an MMO, and quite frankly I'm not sure how many people will even replay Dragon Age.
Before this gets out of hand, you do realize that I'm not talking about taking the game, as it is now, and just adding a multiplayer component, right? That would be silly. I'm talking about taking the game world and the lore, the combat and the skill/spell system and turning that into an MMO.
As far as balance and all that, it is never achieved in an MMO with classes. It's just as simple as that.
They are already adapting the Bioware RPG playstyle for Star Wars: The Old Republic... so they could easily expand it for Dragon Age in the future. SWTOR is already fully voiced and will include groups of NPC party members, just like Dragon Age.
Depending on how popular the game ends up being, that might just happen a few years down the road...
They are already adapting the Bioware RPG playstyle for Star Wars: The Old Republic... so they could easily expand it for Dragon Age in the future. SWTOR is already fully voiced and will include groups of NPC party members, just like Dragon Age. Depending on how popular the game ends up being, that might just happen a few years down the road...
Ya right.... This is the problem these days. People expect MMOs to be as good as single player games. Its not going to happen...sorry to brake it to ya. TOR will have a great story I'm sure but comparing it to Dragon Age in any way is a huge mistake, your already expecting too much sadly.
Folks have way to high expectations of MMOs...Until they lower these expectations people will be biatching and whining about new online games for years to come. The sad fact is that you should go play single player games if the current MMOs out arnt good enough for you because MMOs arnt going to drastically change anytime soon.
IMO Dragon Age is the best rpg to come out since Baldors Gate and to compare this game or even consider that TOR will be as good is crazy lol
RPG combat systems that heavily rely on the ability to "pause" your gameplay tend not to translate well into MMO dynamics. The game also relies on the player's ability to save / reload, since he can screw himself over in a lot of ways. Single player games tend to have horribly balanced systems, this is no exception. Single player games by nature have linear story-lines that don't work in MMO. Again, this is no exception. MMO writing has to account for multiple people doing the same quest at various times. This means there cannot be any real "finality" to quest resolutions. How would the party members work? Everybody has an Alistar? Before someone says "randomly generate some names" remember that the names are used in voice over and the NPCs themselves have pretty elaborate backstories that tie into the history of the world. Does Flemeth have as many daughters as there are players? 300,000 players who are the last of the Grey Wardens. That's a lot of Grey Wardens. Story-wise, it doesn't work if everybody is the chosen one just like it doesn't work if Flemeth has 300,000 daughters. Who would play in normal or hard mode? The maps are quite small & linear by MMO standards Currently in Dragon Age, you can't see the level of mobs (I think they are dynamically scaled, but I'm not sure). Again, this sort of thing doesn't work in an MMO. The party combat AI is far too complex to be run on a server. In Dragon Age I've spent 10 minutes or more in a dialog window, and about as much time in some cut-scenes. This is typically not what MMO players want.
Looking at this list, these are generic problems one faces when translating a single player RPG to an MMO. Just some thoughts.
You talk as if current MMO's actually have stories that make sense in a multiplayer setting to begin with. Every single MMO I've played that has a "story" for the player to play through acts as if it's a singleplayer game and you're the first one to take on the quest.
FFXI's story from what I recall played like a single player game.
Why are they still building that bridge in Redridge?
How many heroes slew Onyxia again?
How can there be more than one Ashkandi?
Why are there so many Death Knights?
Etc. etc.
Your argument here is rather weak. When MMO's start having quests that disappear after being completed, then maybe your argument here would hold weight. Dragon Age in particular wouldn't translate directly into an MMO very well, but the mechanics and especially the setting, with a little tweaking would have the makings of great MMO.
Comments
Beating the game the day previous (I skipped many of sidequests after finding them rather dull), I kept wondering throughout the game what it would have been like if the game was online co-op enabled, like borderlands.
But... an mmo?
It would be fun, if possible. But as a previous poster said... Single player games have the unique ability of revolving everything around YOU, thus changing the world and making it the way you want it (although I found this troublesome to achieve when there were so many dialogue options - MIND boggling)
It would essentialy become a single player with a co-op option, only the people who co-op with you are... in your world... like diablo's battlenet gameplay.
I personally don't think a story of DA's scale can be translated into an MMO, rather everything would turn out like Guild wars; where the story is unbendable and you get to cooperate with others to 'beat' the game.
I still loved and enjoyed the game though, and will definently try another class and try to tolerate all the side-quests in the next run through and I am curious as to how SWTOR will turn out
I don't like the combat system.
Everything else is awesome.
The Official God FAQ
Yet another BioWare RPG! I think they should slow down and really work on these things, this one seemed a little less enchanting than their previous ones.
It's mostly the dialogue that bugs me. Nearly all of the voice actors (with the possible exception of Alistair) sound like they're reading scripts - it seems like they're being told to memorize some boring literature and simply reciting in a chant, rather than actually thinking about what they're saying.
Especially the pauses. OH MY GAWD the annoying pauses. "Oh no, we were too late, if only we had . . . been here sooner." WHO WRITES THIS SHITE?!
Beyond that, there are so many little things that ruin this game for me, I just can't like it as a whole. Why did I buy this thing? I swear I'm going to start pirating and only buy the game if I finish and enjoy it.
The DAO single player game doesn't literally have to translate into an MMO. In other words: certain things can be changed to suit the MMO market better.
For example, if the player is controlling himself only, the pause feature can be done away with. Kind of like in Guild Wars, where companions are being controlled by an AI and you can give orders to them.
As far as being linear, so are most recent MMOs. Take AoC and Aion for example. Their story lines are just as linear. Every single player is the chosen one. It works for them, yet we can't have 300,000 Grey Wardens?
Obviously Dragon Age Origins as a single player game will not work as an MMO as it's designed to be played by one player. I think that what people are talking about is taking the story and lore and various other game mechanics and the game world and applying them to an MMO. The game has to be designed as an MMO, just like Warcraft, an RTS, was redesigned as an MMO.
Well, I think it goes way beyond changing "certain things."
Once you chuck out the RPG system, the controls and combat behavior, the storyline, the quests, the dialog system, the voice-over, the cut-scenes, the party mechanic, the world map, the local maps, the party AI (way too complex to be handled server-side), the mob behavior... and then add in instancing and a network layer, and a robust database + data model, and client-server data-stream encryption, etc; and all the tech limitations these things entail... you have basically completely designed and re-implemented an MMO from scratch. This MMO may be loosely "Dragon Age Themed" but by no means does this fit in the original proposition if Dragon Age was an MMO.
I suppose the answer is: if Dragon Age were an MMO, it would be an entirely different game.
If instead, the question were: "What if a linear single player RPG were made into an MMO?" the answer is "Age of Conan."
I lol'd.
I disagree, I really like the acting. There are a few players who are less than great but I think it's some of the best game acting that I've seen.
As far as the pauses and the like, remember, that it's hard to just act without context. Even more, there is a difference between acting for the screen and acting for the stage. So acting each line in its own little bubble is going to affect the acting.
I also think the actors probably did it the way it was written. I'm not sure who is directing them but that also could have some bearing on interpretation.
But in the end, the characters felt right to me and I think the actors did a great job. You want bad game acting? go to Aion, especially the start of the dream sequence. That is an instance where the actors were just not the right actors for the part.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I disagree, I really like the acting. There are a few players who are less than great but I think it's some of the best game acting that I've seen.
As far as the pauses and the like, remember, that it's hard to just act without context. Even more, there is a difference between acting for the screen and acting for the stage. So acting each line in its own little bubble is going to affect the acting.
I also think the actors probably did it the way it was written. I'm not sure who is directing them but that also could have some bearing on interpretation.
But in the end, the characters felt right to me and I think the actors did a great job. You want bad game acting? go to Aion, especially the start of the dream sequence. That is an instance where the actors were just not the right actors for the part.
I agree that some of the voice actors in DA:O were pretty good, but after playing Half-Life 2 for the third time through and some Borderlands before that, the voice acting just seemed awkward in comparison. Had I played Oblivion before it, however, I may have thought that the voice acting was like water in the desert.
The audio director is probably to blame, and I have no doubt he / she / they put the VAs alone in an isolated chamber to reduce recording noise and have them recite a script. Recording out of context is yes, extremely difficult for the actors because they can't bounce ideas off one another or get the vibe of what they were responding to.
Animated movies don't often have this problem because the VAs are put in the same room together and watch the footage with minimal character expressions (no lip-sync) to get an idea of what's supposed to be going on - lip-sync added later. Needless to say, the dialogue animations seemed stiff and uncomfortable, nestled deep within the uncanny valley. So I'm pretty sure that even if the VAs were shown the in-game footage, they wouldn't know how to voice the part (and 7/10, they obviously didn't).
The voices just didn't comfortably match their behavior, so that's probably what put me off.
I liked NWN more because there wasn't too much awkward voice acting and I could read the text how I imagined they would say it. Having this forced dialogue everywhere just wasn't that engaging, like Oblivion.
I don't see why we have to chuck out the RPG system (what's wrong with it?), the controls and combat behavior (which work very similar to an MMO if you play without using the pause feature, which I do), the overall storyline, the quests (a lot of which are very similar to your standard MMO fare), the dialog system (SWTOR will have it), the cut scenes (AoC, SWTOR, Aion).
The other things like maps and zones would obviously have to be changed to accommodate more players. Or you could use the Guild Wars approach and have an instanced zone for your party.
As far as party AI goes. I wonder how Guild Wars handled their party AI, if it's way too complex to be handled server side? Or we can do away with NPC party members, as other players can fill those roles, like they should in an MMO. If you think about it, DAO party system is your standard tank, heal, DPS approach, which is very similar to most MMOs out there.
Most MMOs with the exception of EVE and UO are pretty linear anyway. You follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. Most MMOs give you a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different. Now in DAO, you follow a story from zone to zone, which advances as you complete certain quests. You also have a whole bunch of side quests if you want to do something different.
It's neither designed nor balanced for an MMO. For example, there is no concept of CC immunity (that I can tell) or CC breaks (that I can see) yet you have classes like the mage which can chain CC. This would mean incredible imbalance in PvP. It's also pretty obvious that some classes are far more useful than others.
There is a cooldown timer on pots, but it's not universal and in reality the game is designed where the limiting factor on pot usage is gold. Which, in an MMO, would be farmed.
Also, your abilities are basically all clickables. This means a very high degree of micro-management. Indeed, the combat is built around micromanagement. Micromanagement works very well in a single player game with tactical combat where you can pause. Too much micromanagement does not work out so well in an MMO.
As I said earlier, the combat systems for single player games rarely, if ever, translate well into MMOs. Because they were designed with single player in mind and there is a whole lot of issues that just don't come up until you add more players.
I disagree. You have camera controls that involve panning and scrolling across maps which are absolutely essential to the combat. And this is part of the appeal - you can move seamlessly between a top-down view and a over-the-shoulder view. And the way the game is setup some modes are entirely optimal for some encounters. In fact, the encounters are really well done in that they are very "aware" of all the different camera and control modes you can use.
No, they aren't. There are far fewer quests in Dragon age and no repeatable quests. When's the last time you played an MMO without repeatable quests? The storyline is entirely linear, and is centered around YOU. This does not work in MMO stories, where you see other people doing exactly the same quests. To make it worse, you have permanent world events which are triggered by YOUR actions. The storyline has a beginning and an end, whereas MMO stories tend to be open and centered around on-going conflicts. There is no ongoing conflict in Dragon Age. It's a novel.
I haven't played SWTOR, so I can't say if it has the same dialog system. :x Obviously nobody knows whether it will or it won't in actuality, unless you work for BioWare. And it's possible they don't even know yet. Yes, yes I know what marketing and the PR dept says, but that's marketing and the PR dept. We also don't know if it will work - and I can't imagine that it will. The market has demonstrated MMO gamers don't read quests. This is why WoW's quest system is what it is.
I don't know much about their party AI system, but I don't believe it was anywhere near has complex. Have you seen all the flags you can set, and the custom tactics you can do in Dragon Age? It's insane, you pretty much have game designer tools for determining your party behavior. This will all get lost in any MMO translation.
Again, there is no class balance in Dragon Age. The combat system is simply not designed around it. I mean, your only healer class is also your best DPSer class (who also gets the best CC). This works in a single player game where it doesn't matter if you are a power-gamer or not because there is no competition with others. In Dragon Age, I pick my party members because I like them or think they are cool characters as much as how useful I find them. This is not the MMO mindset.
Also, obviously, you have the choice of switching between characters any time you want. So it's fine if a single class is boring or not particularly fun to play.
The difference is in Dragon Age the story actually impacts the world in tangible and quantifiable ways. The world revolves around you, and the story is the vehicle for these changes. This just can't work in an MMO.
I also wanted to point out that removing easy mode/ hard mode is not so easy. The content is designed around the players ability to do this. I play on normal mode, but there are some solo encounters I simply cannot complete unless I drop down to easy. Again, there is also the whole issue of mob level which seems to have some auto-scaling.
On an additional note, the game just came out... so we have no idea about the replayability. Replayability is essential for an MMO, and quite frankly I'm not sure how many people will even replay Dragon Age.
The DAO single player game doesn't literally have to translate into an MMO. In other words: certain things can be changed to suit the MMO market better.
For example, if the player is controlling himself only, the pause feature can be done away with. Kind of like in Guild Wars, where companions are being controlled by an AI and you can give orders to them.
As far as being linear, so are most recent MMOs. Take AoC and Aion for example. Their story lines are just as linear. Every single player is the chosen one. It works for them, yet we can't have 300,000 Grey Wardens?
Obviously Dragon Age Origins as a single player game will not work as an MMO as it's designed to be played by one player. I think that what people are talking about is taking the story and lore and various other game mechanics and the game world and applying them to an MMO. The game has to be designed as an MMO, just like Warcraft, an RTS, was redesigned as an MMO.
Well, I think it goes way beyond changing "certain things."
Once you chuck out the RPG system, the controls and combat behavior, the storyline, the quests, the dialog system, the voice-over, the cut-scenes, the party mechanic, the world map, the local maps, the party AI (way too complex to be handled server-side), the mob behavior... and then add in instancing and a network layer, and a robust database + data model, and client-server data-stream encryption, etc; and all the tech limitations these things entail... you have basically completely designed and re-implemented an MMO from scratch. This MMO may be loosely "Dragon Age Themed" but by no means does this fit in the original proposition if Dragon Age was an MMO.
I suppose the answer is: if Dragon Age were an MMO, it would be an entirely different game.
If instead, the question were: "What if a linear single player RPG were made into an MMO?" the answer is "Age of Conan."
AoC at launch for the first twenty levels had a really interesting approach of solo play in Tortage night and mmorpg in Tortage day, which could be played solo or multi-player game with no real grind (i.e. the need to kill mobs with no quests available to level). After that, however, AoC went back to being largely conventional, albeit very buggy, mmorpg levelling game. In fact in places it was a real level grinder with little or no quest content. I am hoping that Bioware's upcoming mmorpg SW:TOR will perhaps resemble Tortage day and night with plot-driven immersive solo play and the option to group if wanted. Dragon Age would be a different game if made into an mmo, I'd much rather see a large expansion game from Bioware as they did for Baldur's Gate 2.
BINGO!
Just because it makes a good single player RPG...certainly doesn't mean it will make an amazing MMO. Nothing would be as epic, everybody doing the same thing at the same time.
It's neither designed nor balanced for an MMO. For example, there is no concept of CC immunity (that I can tell) or CC breaks (that I can see) yet you have classes like the mage which can chain CC. This would mean incredible imbalance in PvP. It's also pretty obvious that some classes are far more useful than others.
There is a cooldown timer on pots, but it's not universal and in reality the game is designed where the limiting factor on pot usage is gold. Which, in an MMO, would be farmed.
Also, your abilities are basically all clickables. This means a very high degree of micro-management. Indeed, the combat is built around micromanagement. Micromanagement works very well in a single player game with tactical combat where you can pause. Too much micromanagement does not work out so well in an MMO.
As I said earlier, the combat systems for single player games rarely, if ever, translate well into MMOs. Because they were designed with single player in mind and there is a whole lot of issues that just don't come up until you add more players.
I disagree. You have camera controls that involve panning and scrolling across maps which are absolutely essential to the combat. And this is part of the appeal - you can move seamlessly between a top-down view and a over-the-shoulder view. And the way the game is setup some modes are entirely optimal for some encounters. In fact, the encounters are really well done in that they are very "aware" of all the different camera and control modes you can use.
No, they aren't. There are far fewer quests in Dragon age and no repeatable quests. When's the last time you played an MMO without repeatable quests? The storyline is entirely linear, and is centered around YOU. This does not work in MMO stories, where you see other people doing exactly the same quests. To make it worse, you have permanent world events which are triggered by YOUR actions. The storyline has a beginning and an end, whereas MMO stories tend to be open and centered around on-going conflicts. There is no ongoing conflict in Dragon Age. It's a novel.
I haven't played SWTOR, so I can't say if it has the same dialog system. :x Obviously nobody knows whether it will or it won't in actuality, unless you work for BioWare. And it's possible they don't even know yet. Yes, yes I know what marketing and the PR dept says, but that's marketing and the PR dept. We also don't know if it will work - and I can't imagine that it will. The market has demonstrated MMO gamers don't read quests. This is why WoW's quest system is what it is.
I don't know much about their party AI system, but I don't believe it was anywhere near has complex. Have you seen all the flags you can set, and the custom tactics you can do in Dragon Age? It's insane, you pretty much have game designer tools for determining your party behavior. This will all get lost in any MMO translation.
Again, there is no class balance in Dragon Age. The combat system is simply not designed around it. I mean, your only healer class is also your best DPSer class (who also gets the best CC). This works in a single player game where it doesn't matter if you are a power-gamer or not because there is no competition with others. In Dragon Age, I pick my party members because I like them or think they are cool characters as much as how useful I find them. This is not the MMO mindset.
Also, obviously, you have the choice of switching between characters any time you want. So it's fine if a single class is boring or not particularly fun to play.
The difference is in Dragon Age the story actually impacts the world in tangible and quantifiable ways. The world revolves around you, and the story is the vehicle for these changes. This just can't work in an MMO.
I also wanted to point out that removing easy mode/ hard mode is not so easy. The content is designed around the players ability to do this. I play on normal mode, but there are some solo encounters I simply cannot complete unless I drop down to easy. Again, there is also the whole issue of mob level which seems to have some auto-scaling.
On an additional note, the game just came out... so we have no idea about the replayability. Replayability is essential for an MMO, and quite frankly I'm not sure how many people will even replay Dragon Age.
Before this gets out of hand, you do realize that I'm not talking about taking the game, as it is now, and just adding a multiplayer component, right? That would be silly. I'm talking about taking the game world and the lore, the combat and the skill/spell system and turning that into an MMO.
As far as balance and all that, it is never achieved in an MMO with classes. It's just as simple as that.
They are already adapting the Bioware RPG playstyle for Star Wars: The Old Republic... so they could easily expand it for Dragon Age in the future. SWTOR is already fully voiced and will include groups of NPC party members, just like Dragon Age.
Depending on how popular the game ends up being, that might just happen a few years down the road...
Ya right.... This is the problem these days. People expect MMOs to be as good as single player games. Its not going to happen...sorry to brake it to ya. TOR will have a great story I'm sure but comparing it to Dragon Age in any way is a huge mistake, your already expecting too much sadly.
Folks have way to high expectations of MMOs...Until they lower these expectations people will be biatching and whining about new online games for years to come. The sad fact is that you should go play single player games if the current MMOs out arnt good enough for you because MMOs arnt going to drastically change anytime soon.
IMO Dragon Age is the best rpg to come out since Baldors Gate and to compare this game or even consider that TOR will be as good is crazy lol
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
You talk as if current MMO's actually have stories that make sense in a multiplayer setting to begin with. Every single MMO I've played that has a "story" for the player to play through acts as if it's a singleplayer game and you're the first one to take on the quest.
FFXI's story from what I recall played like a single player game.
Why are they still building that bridge in Redridge?
How many heroes slew Onyxia again?
How can there be more than one Ashkandi?
Why are there so many Death Knights?
Etc. etc.
Your argument here is rather weak. When MMO's start having quests that disappear after being completed, then maybe your argument here would hold weight. Dragon Age in particular wouldn't translate directly into an MMO very well, but the mechanics and especially the setting, with a little tweaking would have the makings of great MMO.