The impact of Dragon Age...?

[Cosian]

After a number of months of being absent dealing with RL projects, checking out some new MMO's, and engaging in a few other pursuits, I picked up DA to see what all the fuss was about.

I must say that though I probably lean towards action rather than story, I am quite drawn in having logged about 60 hours.....The story plays like a pretty good fantasy book and I am enjoying it. I am still trying to figure out who my female elf mage is going to bed first......but on to business.

I have been checking out the DA toolset forums and see alot of the old names there...jammer, lady D etc....

So what do folks see for the next 12+ months. Do you see developers moving over to spend time with DA. What will happen to the NWN2 PW's and projects?

The lack of a multiplayer environment would seem to limit appeal, but it appears you could do some pretty cool single player modules. I have not fussed with the tool kit, but assume it's on par with the tools we have to work with in NWN2.

So what say you? Are you moving over to play with DA, or still sticking it out with NWN2 .....perhaps waiting for an NWN3? Any secret insider info on an NWN3 Owl?

[pain]

No idea of leaving anytime soon.

The developer community for dragon age will be all those folks who were in nwn2 for the first year when the toolset was a lot scarier, but it's just another game among many. There still will be lots of those who see NWN2 as a better way to scratch their RPG itch, DA:O is not meant to be NWN3, but more of a single player RPG - you won't see random npc's scripted to do real tasks, day and night are static, and there are much fewer options as far as classes and races - ie well balanced classes which don't have builders studying for years all the class combos and feats looking for every advantage.

To my mind it's just another example of a game system that has decided to improve on D&D, removing all the things that don't make sense, and adding a lot more realistic details, and ended up missing the entire point.

Toolset is very powerful and i think bioware/EA are going to improve it over time to make it pretty much a draw for most modders. But like anything they can't please everyone and i am not in their target market. For what it does it seems like a big upgrade from NWN2. But then if NWN2 decided to be single player only it would be a lot better as well. But the entire PW ecosystem where you recruit players to become builders for your PW, well you'd be surprised how many folks modding NWN2 you hear making comments about how they were just going to help on some little thing and never could stop.

As for the game itself, the module and story, they sound like a great addition to anyones computer. I am basically hoping to save up enough to have a nice new computer on which it will fit. Might even learn it's toolset.

But compared to WoW and it's effect on PW's, i don't really see Dragon Age really affecting things. Folks have more than one game, they move from game to game, and fortunes rise and fall. I've seen servers go from no players to being maxed out and back down to no players, and they tend to repetitively do so over and over.

My personal point of view is looking next door at dragon age the grass does seem greener in many ways, but i am content to just focus on tending my own yard and seeing how nice i can make it, and how far i can push things.

[dunniteowl]

Well, I think the DA:O experience is going to be great for a lot of folks who play games. It should be a home run in many cases. There's a solid story, good options for spells, battle, melee and ranged, as well as an interesting selection of characters to interact with.

The scenery is well lighted, relatively unique and, of course, the milieu (the universe in which the characters play) is not tied to any other IP and so has a freer hand in telling a new story.

However, I was in on the Closed Beta of DA:O's toolset and I have to say that I am hard pressed to like it. Certainly there are aspects of the tools that are superlative. The character creator is just about what I was hoping for when NWN2 came out. It's a lot closer to what I had/have in mind for the proper RPG toolset in a game where you can make your own mods.

The Voice and sound effects tools are awesome, make no mistake.

And the scripting is as, if not more, powerful as NWN2's, from which it is originally based. I saw folks like Adam Miller, beerfish, Sunjammer and a few others do some freaking awesome things with the toolset, so there's definitely going to be some serious modding going on with it. Someday, I may be able to like the toolset enough to do more than play around with it and sort of wonder, "What can I do with what I can do?"

There are some distinct hurdles for DA:O that I think will turn many folks who wish to mod, off. Environments are not dynamically created as are NWN2's. Lighting and shadows require prerendered setup and that's going to be included in the toolset (I haven't got an official released game, so I don't know) though it's still going to require some time and talent to get right for each environment.

My understanding at this time is that, to create a new exterior area is going to require 3DS Max. Then you'll have to import it and light/shade it. This will not be an easy task. And it really limits you as a modder to depending heavily on the folks with the skills and tools to create and import the new areas. That means, no matter how many folks are doing it, a serious bottleneck to unique and new environments.

Now on the other hand, creating new weapons, items and spells and the like should be a bit easier than it is for NWN2 and possibly will open up a veritable tidal wave of equipment and player options -- as long as you adventure in the same old environments until something new is developed.

So from my perspective, it's definitely worth a look. There are going to be some folks out there I am sure will do some pretty amazing things, just like in NWN2's Community and I plan to keep a weather eye on what transpires. I also think the game itself is going to really be talked about for some time as a player's experience, that is.

I hope that DA:O is quite successful as an cRPG, just for the sake that it may provoke other developers other publishers into making more of the same -- cRPGs with toolsets. It doesn't matter if they are D&D if they come with powerful toolsets and moddable rules sets. That's the key, from where I stand. Does the game's tools have what it takes to let you make your story and tell it, show it, your way?

Right now, neither NWN2 nor DA:O will let you do that unless you are interested in tying your story to the specific milieu that was originally created. Now of course, there is latitude in the creation of the "world" in NWN2 and now lately, in it's scripting and other tools that are Community created, plus some enhancements and addition of features from the Devs. Time will tell with DA:O if other milieux become possible.

Currently though, I am placing my time and efforts in NWN2 to get better at it. Maybe later when there are some other major breakthroughs to DA:O I'll get more interested.

Lastly, I found the toolset in DA:O to be very arcane, even though it is very powerful and some of it is immediately useful, there are a plethora of commands and options that, though they have the same or close to the same name convention as things in NWN2, mean, or are used, exactly backwards from it, so terminology and use-wise, some of it is counter intuitive to NWN2 toolset experience. This makes for a sharper learning curve as you literally have to unlearn some of your NWN2 experience to really get proficient.

I think, though, as a modder, I am odd man out on the whole and that's important to recognize. I got the distinct impression that the folks I named above and several others think the DA:O toolset is the shizzle and the bomb. And I know they're superior talent compared to many and my skills are as nothing compared to theirs. That's not self deprecation, that's simple truth. And that should weigh in anyone's consideration of my opinions on DA:O.

However, if you're new to modding in any toolset and are not technically proficient, then you're in for a fairly long and arduous climb in getting up to speed with DA:O's toolset. And don't forget, you're also going to have a SQL database to use (which has many plusses btw) that you'll have to have all your resources in from which you'll have to check them out to use them and check them back in to do something else in another mod with them. That is going to be a bit of a trick to get used to as well. Although, my personal point of view on this is that's not a reason to shy away from it. That's just another step to learn in the process and, in the long run, makes for a tidier tracking and use of assets.

So there's my point of view from a Beta Tester. Again, bear in mind that my experience is probably somewhat unique in that I felt really lost most of the time and the more experienced users seemed to fit right into it and were, from what I could tell, really happy on the whole with the toolset.

I cannot honestly reflect what impact DA:O will have on the Community. I think we have to really wait and see. I do expect that mods in DA:O will take even longer to produce than in NWN2, though only for some of the reasons stated. Making areas *(instead of re-using them) will take more time, creating building placeables and new interiors is going to take more time (though those who make these for NWN2 should be able to slip right into making them for DA:O, I would suspect.) Those things are going to create a bottleneck to production from the amateur hobbyists.

So, again, I would say the impact won't be seen right away and so we will have to sort of wait a while and see where things are headed in about 6 months to a year before any real impact potential can be adequately weighed.

best regards,
dunniteowl

[Cosian]

Good stuff and a fair assessment! I peeked at some of those discussions on the situation with the light mapping and environment in the DA forums but didn't really understand the imapct. From your comments it appears it will be fairly significant and have quite an impact on the development of new environment content.

Clearly DA'O is already successful and I agree that it's success may be the driver for other offerings that might come closer to being the multiplayer fantasy sandbox we all dream of.