Dragon Age Writer Calls BioWare Forums "Toxic"

[Starke]

Honestly, the whole "happy ending" bullshit is strawmanning. I've seen people actually make that argument. They wanted a "good" ending, or a "happy" one, but most people, myself included, just wanted an ending that wasn't nonsensical deus ex machina bullshit.

Careful now, it is only a matter of time before Moviebob comes in here to call you an entitled baby.

Good post though.

It wouldn't be the first time. But, thank you.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Well it dose not help you are writing and designing games for the COD crowd these days.... Quality WHO NEEDZ IT! We can sell more cheap crap!

 

[Starke]

Well it dose not help you are writing and designing games for the COD crowd these days.... Quality WHO NEEDZ IT! We can sell more cheap crap!

You know the funny thing though? Aside from the lack of dedicated servers, my impression was always that Activision took quality control on the CoD games very seriously. Granted, I've never spent a lot of time in multiplayer, but, at least with MW, MW2 and Blops, and I've never picked up a CoD game in the same year it was released, but that perception stands.

They're stupid games, and maybe I'm wrong, but near as I can tell, they're not shoddy. In contrast to, you know, Warfighter, or Battlefield 3...

 

[Emiscary]

"Perhaps there is also something to be said about whether the games BioWare makes still satisfy our core fans."

Yes, there is something to be said. And that something is: no. No they do not satisfy your core fans. I would've described myself as a core fan of Bioware in the not too distant past. Then I finished slogging through Mass Effect 3's various layers of bullshit and retcons to be told to my face that every hour I spent playing the previous 2 installments in the series was wasted. Completely. Fucking. Wasted.

And the justification I was given?

"Well, we needed to desperately grope at expanding our audience during the final installment of a fucking triology by pandering to the lowest common denominator (Diana Allers? "No Dialogue Mode"?), and shoehorning a pathetically transparent money grabbing scheme into the mix in the form of a pay-2-win grind centric multiplayer component that no one asked for or enjoyed playing."

So really, Bioware can fuck off. The question is: how far?

 

[thanatos388]

How have they been childish? They have listened and made changes to the ending over the controversy...why do people still care?

Well for the ME3 thing, they decided to hold the shield of "artistic integrity" up against any criticism. Deciding that your patrons criticisms don't matter just because it's being aimed at a piece of art seems childish. As for Gaider himself, he doesn't seem very good at handling the fans [http://social.bioware.com/%20http:/social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6589945/10] and their concerns [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.274827-David-Gaider-says-Bioware-decides-what-dead-means-in-Dragon-Age-2?page=1].

What was this big middle finger?

The alternate ending to the extended cut could probably be taken as a middle finger to a lot of people. Many didn't like the three choices and wanted an option to say no, which was happily provided for them in the free DLC. Unfortunately, refusing the star child leads to the Reapers winning and everyone dying, because people choosing it weren't being good little fans and accepting what the writers gave them originally.

Yeah Bioware, making the refusal ending end logically as you are clearly loosing throughout the entire boring Earth battle. Why can't we just have happy endings? I think the main problem is that both sides are being childish. But mostly the fans this is just one writer. And he never said he wanted someone to get raped over a shitty game.

Honestly, the whole "happy ending" bullshit is strawmanning. I've seen people actually make that argument. They wanted a "good" ending, or a "happy" one, but most people, myself included, just wanted an ending that wasn't nonsensical deus ex machina bullshit.

If the game ended after the TIM and Anderson conversation, that would be a better ending, with Shepard keeling over inches from the control.

The problem is, the entirety of the starchild sequence. It flat out contradicts information the player collects, and never bothers to actually write that off. It presents you with a lot of grand claims, without bothering to evidence any of it. And at the end, Shepard accepts this.

Now, regardless how you played, paragon, renegade, unstable psychopath, Shepard (yours, mine, everyone's) is very argumentative. When presented with Saren at the end of the first game, your choices are "mouth off" or "mouth off and be insulting", when presented with the sheer idiocy of TIM in ME2, Shepard either became a cackling supervillian, or mouthed off and became a cackling supervillian. Every single interaction with another antagonist in the series requires Shepard to oppose them verbally first, with varying levels of persuasiveness.

And here, we have a character espousing the very same ideology that Shepard mouthed off at Sovereign, Saren, Harbinger, Timmy, and a shitload of one off characters, and instead of saying "no, we're going to do this our way this time," or "fuck you, we're better than that," or "can I have pizza?", Shepard brainlessly nods and takes it at face value, and wanders off to commit suicide. Even when, as a player, we've actually engineered events to disprove that argument fundamentally.

It's not that (most) players wanted a happy ending, they just wanted one that made any goddamn sense.

I think you misunderstood. It was that people wanted a refusal ending that somehow ends with you winning against the reapers with your magical EMS. Yes the whole ending is bullshit, the whole game has a horrible plot. Why could't Shepard tell the kid to just leave? Hey your wrong the solution doesn't work so just turn off the reapers and go away. But no Bioware wanted a dark ending and people want to somehow just have a way of winning without starchild.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Gaider might be spot on about the forums, but with Bioware's recent history of unprofessional behaviour and atrocious PR it's not a good thing to be saying. For comparison, the WoW forums are much, much worse but Blizzard community staff are way more diplomatic.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Well it dose not help you are writing and designing games for the COD crowd these days.... Quality WHO NEEDZ IT! We can sell more cheap crap!

You know the funny thing though? Aside from the lack of dedicated servers, my impression was always that Activision took quality control on the CoD games very seriously. Granted, I've never spent a lot of time in multiplayer, but, at least with MW, MW2 and Blops, and I've never picked up a CoD game in the same year it was released, but that perception stands.

They're stupid games, and maybe I'm wrong, but near as I can tell, they're not shoddy. In contrast to, you know, Warfighter, or Battlefield 3...

Ture but I am looking at COD as a very over simplified shooter, it might have quality bits here and there (I love the zombie stuff its far more fun/interesting than the game itself) but the over all game is made for morons....( I can call people names since I am a snobish idiot )

As simple as Quake 1-2 and DOOM 1-2 were they were works of art compared to the reality TV of COD.

 

[Undeadpool]

"those who remain start to see only those who agree with them- and, because that's all they see, they think that's all there is"
Might not agree with everything he posted but this, along with the HEATED debate on the homosexual DA2 characters (or at least the homosexual MALE ones, male homophobes are RARELY so frothingly offended by lesbians...) proves that Gaider, at least to some extent, knows exactly what he's talking about.

Man is that war still going? I was angry at Bioware for like a month, then I got over it. It's 2013 for pete's sake, move on.

Even better: the most active "participants" in it are the ones fastest to shut down any reasonable discussion about it with "UUUUUUUUGH STOP TALKING ABOUT IT ALREADY!!!" Then they go into every forum about it to post about what bullshit it is and even bring it up when anyone's talking tangentially about it.

 

[Pandabearparade]

To be fair he also did this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.274827-David-Gaider-says-Bioware-decides-what-dead-means-in-Dragon-Age-2?page=1 , that ended this way: http://social.bioware.com/%20http:/social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6589945/10 .
I think it's fair to say that both parties have a fair share of blame.

Hah, I'd forgotten about that. I was in the thread, too. I still stand by my point that Gaider was unnecessarily rude to a customer bringing up a valid concern (and then justifiably rude to me, after I compared him to Darth Vader).

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

someone put this in picture form please:

"You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain."

But don't worry, you can rise again Bioware!

Though I was never really that upset. Mass Effect was tons of fun besides the unfinished ending at release. Dragon Age II was pretty lack luster, but I imagine Dragon Age III is gonna knock my socks off.

Or it had better

Meanwhile I'll just play DA:O for the millionth time again.

SIde Note: Stop it with the online passes or don't make multiplayer critical to some of the single player. I'm pretty sure you can't do anything about the online passes, but my Shepard Prime's universe suffered because of you. And I am still not happy about that.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Bioware fans are kind of like Star Wars fans, which is ironic because Bioware also makes Star Wars games. They love(d) Bioware games so much that they absolutely hate anything less than stellar. I'll admit, I was sorely disappointed by Dragon Age 2, but that doesn't suddenly invalidate all of their work in the past. I liked Mass Effect 3 and didn't care about the ending. I still pay for Star Wars: The Old Republic and play it on a consistent basis.

Getting acquired by EA was probably the worst thing that happened to them, given the way EA does business, but if it wasn't for EA footing the bill, we wouldn't have gotten Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect 2, so it's not like it was all bad. But EA tends to put a rush on their developers, which creates a less-than-great product. SW:TOR needed more time than it was given, but was pushed out ahead of schedule due to their prodding. They also have unreasonable expectations - I feel terrible for Visceral Games, because EA is going to let the Dead Space franchise go if Dead Space 3 doesn't sell 5 million, and that's with none of the marketing it's predecessor had.

That's not to say that Bioware hasn't made it's share of mistakes, but if people think that the writers need to listen to fans, I'll tell you that those fans are absolutely wrong. If fans knew what would be a great contribution to an existing product, then 96% of fan fiction wouldn't suck as hard as it does.

 

[Bocaj2000]

-SWTOR sucks? That's news to me... I always considered it part of the top tier MMOs. In fact, for every MMO you give me that are better, I'll give you two dozen that are worse.

I know you're being rhetorical here, but let's try off the top of my head:

Age of Conan: Better Combat, more content, releases content more frequently, more classes, better character customization, open world PvP.

Champions Online: Better Combat, more content, releases content more frequently (and yes, this is not a strength of CO).

DC Universe Online: Better Combat, more Classes, better voice acting, allows dual specing, open world PvP.

Guild Wars: Better Combat, better party dynamics, better pvp, companions, multispecing, more class choices.

The Secret World: Better Writing, More varied combat, quests that require actual thought and logical deduction, does not charge you for hot bars, allows dual specing (to about 12 different builds simultaneously), does not actively punish non-subscribing players, releases content more frequently.

Star Trek Online: Better Combat, Space combat that isn't on rails, Full Companion Customization, Better Character Customization, Does not call torture rape of companions "romance", does not charge you for hotbars, more racial choices, releases content more frequently (that is to say, almost never, but still faster than TOR).

Oh, and let's be clear on something, STO is a bad MMO, but it's still better than ToR by leaps and bounds.

By your math you owe me 72 MMOs now that are actually worse than TOR... I'm guessing you meant to include a bunch of burn in a year Korean f2ps, but, you know what? Have fun.

-ME3 ending sucks? Where were you during Deus Ex: Human Revolution's complaints? Or Uncharted 3? LA Noir? KotOR 2? All of the others according to our subjective opinions? Where were their cupcakes? Should we revolt every time an ending isn't good enough? Does a denouement you don't want spoil the entire experience? What if I didn't like the ending to Legend of Grimrock? Does that discredit my entire experience? Should I spend countless hours bitching about it to strangers and hold a grudge against the people that made it?

Yeah, the problem is, Deus Ex: Human Revolution never said, "it won't be you press one of three buttons and get the same ending", I mean, it's a Deus Ex game, that's almost to be expected, you kill this guy or that guy, you get a different ending? You push these buttons and run and get a different ending? Yeah, that's EVERY DX game. But Bioware went out and said, "no, we're going to tailor your ending to your game, it won't be this thing where everybody gets the same couple endings, they'll all be unique."

-Dragon Age II sucks? Why? Because it isn't as good as DA: Origins? Not being "as good" does not equal "bad". I don't like Mass Effect II as much as its predecessor, but that doesn't make it a bad game. It just means I have a preference. One's enjoyment is not binary; there are numerous ratings in between 'amazing' and 'shitty'.

No, what made ME2 a shitty game was the giant space terminator baby, and Timmy's magical "you will do what I want you to because PLOT powers." ME1 didn't magically make it a stupid game. It did, however, disrupt expectations. If you're writing the second act of a trilogy, it better be the second act of a trilogy, ME2 was Mass Effect: When Collectors Attack, from a plot standpoint. If you're writing the second part of a series, it better fit within the framework of the original, even if it bends it a bit.

It's like if you were doing a movie series, and those films were send-ups of the old sci fi serial adventures, and then decided to make the fourth and fifth outing about a complex political struggle... oh, wait...

Why am I typing this? They don't care. Never mind.

Because you were waiting for someone to wander in and show you the error of your ways, enjoy.

I owe you 72 bad MMOs? I'll just give you this: http://mmohuts.com/ Browse at your own pace. Trust me when I say that SWTOR is a top tier MMO, I have tried a LOT of them, including the ones you listed. And even though I agree with some of your choices, your reasons are inane and subjective. I hate to say, but I'm pretty much going to dismiss this section of your argument until you can give more legitimate reasons than "better combat" and frequent content.

Second, the ending. I don't care what Bioware said. Answer my questions and don't change the subject this time.

Third, sequels. What's your point? You just ranted on how you didn't like the Reaper larva. What does that have to do with what I said? You once again ignored what I said and ranted about something for no reason.

Lastly, your clever comment at the end... all you did was prove my point. You don't care what I have to say; you just want to complain. I wasn't expecting to agree with you; I wasn't even expecting you to be polite. But I expected that you would at least answer my questions.

 

[Darken12]

He's right. He's not a perfect human being, but he's earned a smidgen of sympathy from me that time he shut down that homophobic douchebag, so I'm willing to take his side on this one.

 

[Innegativeion]

I must say, his verbatim quotes are very reasonable, and level-headed.

I foresee people reading only the title of this article, and spraying vitriol at the poor guy.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Sounds like a smart guy.

Those forums are garbage. The people there represent the worst that gaming has to offer.

Though I never like the word "Entitled" in ANY context...

 

[LordLundar]

Now this is interesting....

Will the mods give a low content post warning to a staff member?

I did flag it.

Didn't take apparently. The bastard's immune.

 

[Lictor Face]

I hope DA3 will be good though. DA2 removed all the tactics and thought processing involved in adding the skills for each character and changed it into VANILLA SINGLE SKILL UPGRADES ALA MASS EFFECT. While i did play ME3 and 2 and enjoyed both immensely, ME3 is a shooter. The meat of the game eventually boils down to shooting skill and your usage of abilities. DA 1 was an immensely challenging squad-based-esque tactical dungeon runner. DA2 turned it into fable two with companions.

 

[Kargathia]

Oh dear, a large, somewhat controversial dev's forum being an utter cesspool wallowing in its own negativity when it comes to -anything-?

Who'd have thought? =O

For comparison, the WoW forums are much, much worse but Blizzard community staff are way more diplomatic.

They've been dealing with that for a good five years now. I doubt anyone can get under their skin.

 

[Sylveria]

Always nice to see people calling the people who paid money for their products whiners. Don't worry Mr. Gaider, if you keep it up you wont have to worry about whiners not liking the games you've contributed anymore, cause your company will be out of business when they stop buying them.

 

[Starke]

I think you misunderstood. It was that people wanted a refusal ending that somehow ends with you winning against the reapers with your magical EMS. Yes the whole ending is bullshit, the whole game has a horrible plot. Why could't Shepard tell the kid to just leave? Hey your wrong the solution doesn't work so just turn off the reapers and go away. But no Bioware wanted a dark ending and people want to somehow just have a way of winning without starchild.

From what I saw it wasn't so much that people wanted to tell the Starchild to fuck off so much as just cutting the bastard, and giving some actual closure to the game, instead we got the extended cut which actually added more nauseating exposition... and the option to snuff the little bastard... so, I guess partial credit.

So far as a "dark ending." Bioware has gotten it in their heads that they're now mature adults writing for mature adults, and instead they've gone from writing "teen fantasy" to writing "angsty teen fantasy". In other words, Mass Effect was screwed.

EDIT: And yes, you're right, I did read what you said as, "all them whiners just wanted a happy ending", which, I've honestly seen off enough of Bioware's fans for it to start to blur together.