alanschu

Meh. Trent's perspective kind of echoes my own (and I don't know Trent haha). Seriously, some of the fan reaction to ME3 is just frankly unhealthy and I've seen a lot of the crap that goes on on their twitters and whatnot. Add in the Jen Hepler stuff just prior and it's easy to say "Our fanbase is a much of twits." I actually started posting on the forums simply to connect with the less insane fans because I didn't think it was good for me at my job to think that our fanbase was a bunch of crackpots. And unfortunately the crackpots are overrepresented in stories and in the media. No one cares about the poster that has well reasoned and polite arguments for why ME3 was a let down, but that guy that goes around stating it has ruined all video games for him or taking complaints to the FTC is a bit

I have a game that I come back to periodically. I think it's towards the end of 1942. In Admiral's Edition there's a "December 7 start" with Japan getting a TON of extra resources to play with so they can make stronger pushes. Port Moresby was at a heck of a risk, and I believe I"m only just invading Guadalcanal now. Though I think the Indian front is more stable. So many Japanese subs off the coast of Australia too...

Bouncing back and forth between Their Finest Hour and World of Tanks. At this rate I'll be dusting off War in the Pacific soon!

Eh. I think rates of piracy are directly related to the demand of said game. I have no numbers to back me up, but would be surprised if crap games are pirated more relatively to sales compared to higher quality games.

New expansion for HOI3.

Elaborate! I looked around and stuff but once i realized I didn't have full access I didn't play around too much except in the character editor haha.

If there's issues with the dialogue system and how it works, I'll accept responsibility. If you think the content sucks, well that's not on me

I find it funny that since working at BioWare, my disgust with piracy has gone up, yet my acceptance of DRM has gone down! LOL. I do think it's a problem when pirates get a better user experience, though I think the idea that it's free is still the biggest motivator. Although I would challenge that the real cause of piracy is really related to half-assed sequels (though DRM likely does contribute).

My technical title is "Quality Assurance Analyst II" which has me as an embed on the digital acting team (which works on developing the conversation and cinematic systems for the Frostbite engine). I'm the principal Quality Assurance guy for the team and essentially run tests on work as it's completed (verifying user stories), as well as designing and running regression tests (both manual and automated) to ensure the team doesn't destroy the build for the whole company (it's kind of bad if conversations just stop working... most teams get blocked), as well as notifying them if the build has been kyboshed by other people (sometimes other changes get made which either block everyone - so don't update! - or there are smaller scale changes that only affect the Digital Acting guys - Hey the GUI changes prevent the conversation GUI from working.... don't update! And fix it!). I'm getting to do a bit more programming which is good, though I'm starting to feel a greater itch to pursue that a bit more thoroughly as time goes on. Need to work on the programming skillz! Although the QA dept has continued to provide interesting challenges and growth opportunities in different ways. QA in many ways acts as a liaison between other teams so I've learned to be more direct and concise when getting updates to ensure communication doesn't get TL;DR'd and stuff like that. As for only talking about BioWare, well this IS a thread about them... I'm more active in the PE forum which is mostly just general yammering. As I reintegrate to the forum I'll likely talk more and more about other stuff. Like XCOM.

There is accountability though. There's no need to continue purchasing the games. The thing that gets me is that these same people still pirate them, and then justify it as "sticking it to the man" when all their piracy shows them is that they really DO still want to play the games. A lot of people have said BioWare is no longer a preorder for them as a result. That's exactly what they should do. If you want to boycott someone, boycott them. Don't circumvent your boycott by acquiring said product and then thinking you're being all sneaky and crafty about it by not purchasing it. (Note: Royal you is used. Not you as in Grimlorn)

I'd bet that it's entirely to do with that. Gamers are well "mobilized" on the internet (for lack of a better term) and those scorned by the big banks probably have better things to do (like survive) than go vote on online polls. Yet get some angry internet video game fans a place to direct their outrage, and look out! Acquisitions represent more than just "did you make that back in profit." I certainly am not qualified to state the intrinsic value of BioWare or the studio(s) which encompass it. As long as EA could still sell us for $800 million, any profit they've made is literally profit. I agree. I have no visibility into the ME3 plans, unfortunately. Though there may be difficulties due to how it was implemented. I do know that MP has blown away expectations for how popular it would be, so there may be infrastructure issues (either internally, or say through Microsoft or Sony) that complicate things. I spitball this because I'm a bit surprised there hasn't already been some new game modes.

The only videogames I've played where the XP is earned from quests have all been games with a more linear design. How do you define a linear design? Do you consider Bloodlines to be linear? How do they decide how much XP to reward for quests normally? What I don't understand is, why is it any different? I still am not understanding why a dev would need to haev a good idea what level they expect a player to be with quest only experience, but apparently don't need to know this information in other situations?

I'm not sure why people think that rewarding for completing objectives (whatever those may be) is somehow more appropriate or feasible with a more linear game.

I actually think WoW has done a decent enough job of providing a narrative for the players as well. Many of the things I saw in Cataclysm made me go "uh oh" because they were things I thought were pretty awesome and novel in TOR that suddenly weren't going to be awesome and novel because Cataclysm is already doing it!

This argument would hold weight if they were doing a "use to improve" system like Skyrim. As it stands now, with combat XP you can kill 10,000,000 goblins and... become better at talking to people.

This is naturally a power vacuum that will see me shoot up the ranks. I suspect JR will be looking over his shoulder soon enough! Although more seriously I am curious if there will be (or how much) repercussions this will have through the company. Meh. You stated that my colleagues (and in many cases friends) are not ethical people. As for assumption that you're a random person... well, you're simply meomao on Obsidian's forums. I can't see how it could get any more random than that. Or are you saying that you are/were a BioWare employee? I notice you tossed "my" in quotation marks.

My name is Allan Schumacher. Sylvius was able to ID me! (the hint is in the username!) Though I do know that some of the skeptics do think I work in marketing. I remember reading a post that stated that my posts on the BSN "clearly" have had editing passes done on them before going live. I took it as a compliment

I actually found the opposite, in that I was still getting hit "through" things. Though I found in general there weren't many misses in the demo. Of course, the original XCOM didn't even factor distance into your accuracy at all, which is obviously superior. You could be right beside the guy, or the entire level away with someone else spotting for you. That shot is 74%! After reading that Rock Paper Shotgun article, it seems the dumb simpletons that like simple gameplay aren't the only stupid ones. How anyone defintiively concludes "OMG THIS IS HOW THE ENTIRE GAME IS" rather than simply "This is literally the opening part of our game" is people just looking to actually hate and be disappointed. They give out the basic tutorial which teaches the basics of how to play the game, and then let the players solve the final mission how they see fit. It gives players an idea on how controlling the characters works, what the interface for the base control will be like, and so forth. Having said that, these people are certainly not doing themselves any favours if they're the types that actually want devs to release demos for their games.

I have a funny feeling that not even XCOM is XCOM to you.

Psssh. Magic. There can be no magic in XCOM!

Well you better not be playing any XCOM game!

Need an "indifferent and trust Obsidian" option

What I find about #3 is that it had probably two of the most interesting and fascinating moments in my gaming history. Tuchanka, and to a slightly lesser extent Rannoch, is right up there as one of my most emotionally powerful scenes I have ever had to experience. Compares to other parts though.... Was never a fan of the Crucible (a MacGuffin from the beginning), although the Crucible's existence (and the murmurings of an angry fanbase) made it possible for me to go into the ending with about as open of a mind as humanly possible, which undoubtedly help me accept it when it happened.

Experiences is just an abstraction. No game dev is about to just start dolling out experience on a timer since you may be sitting there thinking about doing something and are just "experiencing" life.

I'm a lot more active on the BSN too! Definitely missed your posts Note that for all of DA2's shortcomings (and there are plenty), stating things like "unethical" is pretty much as up there with "lazy" in terms of the things that make me grate my teeth (which is doubly more painful as I have braces now!). It's easy to toss out the mud from behind the the internet though, I suppose.