Why did BioWare not do a good job with DA: Inquisition?

[LetalisK]

Saying this as someone that doesn't really enjoy DA:I, or really the DA series as a whole...Bioware did do a good job with DA:I. It's just their luck of the draw that the inevitable counter-hype to the game is crossing paths with the release of a better game(supposedly, I haven't played it) and that's what is creating the "DA:I failed" talk that will die out probably around the same time we start shitting on Witcher 3.

 

[Joccaren]

Where did Inquisition go wrong?
Lots of places.

For one, the use of Frostbyte as the engine. EAs push from memory, and whilst it did great things for the graphical look of the game, it supposedly caused problems with things like the tactical camera - hence why its basically useless other than as a 'pause' function.

The second issue comes in from their goals with the game. It is still very much intended as an action RPG rather than a tactical RPG. There isn't a lot of coherency to most battles, and most of the time they consist of just spamming all your abilities whenever you're able to, and occasionally micromanaging your mage away from the enemy. The enemy don't really use tactics [Not that they really did in Origins either], and you don't have to use tactics. This was more of their goal than their failing, I believe. The aim was to very much keep DA2s "Push a button something awesome happens" alive, and pander to a broader audience, however they also then tried to fit in some tactical RPG elements so they could at least try and impress their original fanbase. Since those elements were minimal and had the least effort of anything put into them, however, and thus it kind of fell flat.

Then there's the requisition quests, which is a case of good intentions but flawed execution. The idea behind them would have been to allow players to gain Power quickly if they were short on it. However, it takes longer to perform a requisition quest than it does to perform any other side quest to get Power most of the time, especially in cases like the Obsidian requirements for the Dwarven Puzzle box - where you couldn't get the second requisition quest until halfway through the game. It just introduced pointless grind. There were far better ways to execute this, some performed within the same game [Selling power for money]. Other examples include the shards, which were likely to encourage exploration - but were placed in such a way that rather than exploring you had platforming adventure's and the "Long, intended road vs quick glitch road" problem instead. Its just a poor execution of ok ideas.

Probably the biggest problem with DA:I however, was that Bioware cut away from what they are specialised at and do well at. Bioware always make focused, story driven games. Or at least used to. With Inquisition, they moved to a Sandbox, and in doing so they tried to figure out how to fill up that sandbox with content. How? The same way MMOs do of course - lots of meaningless quests, as you have to fill the whole area with stuff, and you don't have enough time to make it all good content, so better just throw lots of really basic content with an even amount of effort put into each of it. Even worse, they made it largely compulsory in order to gain power needed to move on with the main quests. Bioware generally write characters that are trope driven, but they write them well. In Inquisition, they tried to move away from the generic trope driven characters they're used to, and write new characters... which are still trope driven but different tropes. I.E: Dorian, who is very classic 'homosexual family problems' trope. Handled Ok, but still somewhat clumsily, and going for inclusivity... whilst using a stereotyped trope... isn't exactly the best method. Then you've got Sera, who tried to mimic, as others have put it, the 'Random is funny' Youtube personality trope. They then tried to give her some depth, however it ended up making it feel schizophrenic instead. Sometimes she could be considerate and caring, other times she would actively try to insult people just for the fun of it. Bioware left their area of expertise a bit too much in Inquisition, and put minimal effort into the areas they were good at, and that left the overall product a bit... worse for wear.

There's also issues with choices and such inherent to Bioware, that are the outcome of the design decision to only make stuff that will be seen by everyone. A number of devs feel that making content that half your playerbase won't see is a waste of time [I.E: The ending of any videogame ever]. This is the reasoning behind why you don't get vastly different outcomes for choices in Bioware games. Siding with the Templars, siding with the Mages. A couple of missions, and you're done. 1 main mission, and a few war map missions more specifically. Outside of that, everything is the exact same. Why? Because if you made two vastly different routes, like TW2 did for siding with Roche or Iorveth, then most of your players will only end up seeing one route, and its therefore a waste of your development time to make both. I can respect the reasoning, but in practice I don't feel it holds up.

Dragon Age Inquisition was a fairly good game, but it did have a lot of faults. Really we can only speculate as to why that happened, but I think I've given some reasonable reasons as to why. By and large, most of it can be summed up by Bioware trying to appeal to too many audiences at once, resulting in a mis-match of different parts that don't form a fully cohesive whole, and that feels unfocused, as opposed to their more focused games made to appeal to a specific audience - like DA:O and ME1.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Look, I know that people love to rag on EA and Ubi and other publishers, but there's a substantial portion of the blame(at least half) that needs to be laid at Bioware's feet. There's a few of their staff that have said that they're completely proud of everything in Inquisition, and that's fine, but it's a poorly made game that feels generic and dull, and I so wanted this to be good after the clusterfuck that was DA2(and that I'll back up anyone saying that that was nearly all EA's fault, because it was, the game was rushed for a quick buck and it showed).

But it went on the pile of like four games I've ever rented after five hours that I have no intention to go back to, the other three having discs scratched so bad I'm still not sure if I want to risk the bargain bin for them.

And Bioware lost their talent years ago for the record, before ME3 came out they basically kicked them out because a certain few had to have their way and constantly shut them out of discussions while being relatively new to the team.

They kinda aren't allowed to bad mouth a company they are working for. Well they can, but they probably won't find work if all they do is ***** about their employers.

That last point is often called Executive Meddling, something EA isn't afraid to do. Bioware intentionally sabotaging their own creative process and teams doesn't make much sense.

 

[Smooth Operator]

DAO had probably the single worst combat system of any game I have ever played. DA2's system was a huge step up (with some absolutely glaring flaws such as the "waves of enemies" thing) but a lot of people disliked it because, god knows why, they liked the system in DAO. But whatever, that's all opinions and isn't really the thrust of the point here. The thing to take away there is that they play very differently.

Well there were two vastly different player bases and that is why likes/dislikes vary so much.
One player base came into DA from party CRPGs, and CRPGs always came with complex RTS combat so DA:O on PC fit that very well. And everybody else expected this was some button mashy action game, which made them hate the PC version and also hate the console version because it was just RTS combat adopted to button mashing... it was absolute ass.
Then things flipped around for DA2 as Bioware noticed the vast majority of players want to mash some buttons and forget the rest, so now flashy action combat was their base design that got badly tied back into RTS control. So now the RTS players hated it's guts and the button mashers loved the "improvement".

This is where Bioware got itself stuck trying to catch all the markets at once, I half expect them to make some FPS versions next.

 

[kingthrall]

Easily why dragon age failed for me. Origin, I refuse to have that kind of platform malware on my computer, steam is enough and has that market under control without question. Also the paid dlc, the fake and tacky albeit politicly correct undertones in Dragon Age because of EA trying to appease all its customers. The 2nd game also made matters worse in Dragon Age because of the J.RPG style of attacks and huge overdone swords ect ect.

Witcher 3 had everything I expected however its not without its flaws.

Nobody has even mentioned on this thread Iorveth, Sigfried or Anais who would of played pivitol roles in either the Eternal Fire, Temeria. There was a heap left out

I know people keep saying how Witcher 3 was full of life and DA wasn't which I think is true in comparison but the last two games of the witcher built up to something big, expecting for a lot of the actions you took to converge into the 3rd title (just like mass effect) however there is minimal evidence of that. A lackluster appearence from a few minor characters or explanation of saskia and henselt as an example when there is just chunks of major followups missing.

Witcher 3 has its own great story but it seems they have cleaned the slate to make it more generic for gamers who didn't play the last two games.

 

[Lightspeaker]

I'm going to say that probably the single biggest problem for DAI is that they tried to make the combat more like DAO whilst also preserving DA2's system and merging the whole lot into an open world MMO-type system. Which was never, ever going to work.

DAO had probably the single worst combat system of any game I have ever played. DA2's system was a huge step up (with some absolutely glaring flaws such as the "waves of enemies" thing) but a lot of people disliked it because, god knows why, they liked the system in DAO. But whatever, that's all opinions and isn't really the thrust of the point here. The thing to take away there is that they play very differently.

And the point is that rather than then trying to pick something and stick with it they tried to cherry pick bits and put it all together in a manner rather like the experiments of a certain Dr Frankenstein. Which resulted in this weird cobbled-together thing with a dodgy DAO-type tactical setup and a more poorly-done DA2-type action system. Making it the worst of both worlds and, frankly, rather incoherent to play.

I think I can answer why people love Origins combat. Each ability you used FELT impactful. You have flurry up and you run behind someone as a Rogue, and you're taking noticable chunks off their lifebar. You Shield Bash someone as S&B and you feel the crunch as you hit them and they're thrown on the ground. You're a mage and use Frost, and you watch the area you frosted turn into ice. Each ability did noticable amounts of damage, were on reasonably high cooldowns, and had the feeling that you were doing something important with all of them. Also, the kill animations that happened every once in a while appeared brutal as all hell in part because of the artstyle being quite dark in comparison to DA2.

DA2, the animations were stepped up big time, they're fucking beautiful in comparison, anyone that says otherwise is either blind or lying to you, you looked like you were doing something amazing, and then you shave off a miniscule amount of hp, so you're constantly spamming through these amazingly detailed animations, but you aren't appearing to do much. Also the Benny Hill fight with the Arishok, I don't think I need to elaborate. You do the gravity mage specialization, and you sometimes push down a couple mooks that die instantly, and then a random guy that looks exactly like the others resists that area slow/pushdown thing, and takes barely any damage. You blow all of your abilities on this one guy,and then you have to do it again because it only took a quarter of his hp.

It's a question of what you like honestly, a limited amount of abilities(relatively) or a lot of them. The former appeals to me more because it feels more like a P&P RPG, you don't have alot of tools to get shit dead, so it's crucial that you save that once per day ability that steals half HP for a boss and not a mini-boss, so you have to weigh if it's worth using it here when you don't know what's ahead. The latter is more WoW-like, you get a smorgasbord of abilities, but you have to combo and constantly spam to get anything done, and even then, you don't progress through the game as fast you progress through levels at that point.

I can somewhat see what you mean. Although I'd more compare DA2 to KOTOR; those two games felt so alike in combat system and the actual flow of fights it was unreal. Hell I played the two almost identically.

Either way trying to combine the two systems was never going to work properly. They just don't mate into a coherent whole. And trying to do so I think was DAI's biggest mistake.

DAO had probably the single worst combat system of any game I have ever played. DA2's system was a huge step up (with some absolutely glaring flaws such as the "waves of enemies" thing) but a lot of people disliked it because, god knows why, they liked the system in DAO. But whatever, that's all opinions and isn't really the thrust of the point here. The thing to take away there is that they play very differently.

Well there were two vastly different player bases and that is why likes/dislikes vary so much.
One player base came into DA from party CRPGs, and CRPGs always came with complex RTS combat so DA:O on PC fit that very well. And everybody else expected this was some button mashy action game, which made them hate the PC version and also hate the console version because it was just RTS combat adopted to button mashing... it was absolute ass.
Then things flipped around for DA2 as Bioware noticed the vast majority of players want to mash some buttons and forget the rest, so now flashy action combat was their base design that got badly tied back into RTS control. So now the RTS players hated it's guts and the button mashers loved the "improvement".

This is where Bioware got itself stuck trying to catch all the markets at once, I half expect them to make some FPS versions next.

See that's funny because I was almost always first and foremost an RTS player growing up, C&C, Starcraft, Cossacks, Warcraft, etc etc. Yet I found DAO to be like pulling my own fingernails out.

I don't think comparing it to RTS really works because I think that somewhat does a disservice to it. Its a combat system all of its own.

 

[Smooth Operator]

See that's funny because I was almost always first and foremost an RTS player growing up, C&C, Starcraft, Cossacks, Warcraft, etc etc. Yet I found DAO to be like pulling my own fingernails out.

I don't think comparing it to RTS really works because I think that somewhat does a disservice to it. Its a combat system all of its own.

Well you control your units one by one from a top down view, you give move/attack/special commands and they execute as their abilities permit, you set basic unit behavior, without commands the units do nothing,...
Does it sound familiar at all?

Near all the combat complaints came from the fact people wanted a simple hack&slash and not a strategy game.

 

[Kingjackl]

I don't think Bioware did a bad job with Dragon Age: Inquisition, but more to the point, I don't think you can argue they did simply because The Witcher 3 is looking to be the superior of the two.

That's not to say there aren't problems with Inquistion, far from it. Most of it can be summed up as quantity over quality, with too much content and not enough of it was particularly substantial. However, there's a lot of good as well, and the two companies both have very different styles. Both are trying to ape 'Song of Ice and Fire'-style dark fantasy mixed with political intrigue, but CD Projekt are much better at it and Bioware seemed to realise by the time Inquisition rolled around that their strength lies more in Joss Whedon-style happy-smiley group dynamics with smart-arse banter and the occasional gut punch.

 

[murrow]

Sorry if I'm repeating things. I haven't read all of the replies so far. Anyway, here's my opinion:

- As other said, lack of focus (this much at least I read). The developers put too many disparate things without fleshing them out. The result was a lot of repetition, more quantity than quality, so to speak. This led to a visible discrepancy between some elements that worked (the oculara, for one), and some that didn't so well (the collectibles' quests, imo).

- Its areas seem to suffer from what Daniel Vávra once called "potato landscapes": there are too many accidents, objects and stuff in a way that's almost impossible to get an idea of the whole at any one point in the map. Unlike Vávra I don't think this is bad by definition, but it clashed with some other aspects of the game. For one, made mounts all but useless except in one map. Most importantly, however, is that it made the not-so-awesome areas horridly lackluster. Compared to the Hinterlands, Val Royeaux is an awfully boring place. Compare it to Oxenfurt in the Witcher 3 (not to mention Novigrad, which is even bigger) and its boringness becomes even more glaring. Had they taken things in media res, this would have been less noticeable. Denerim was nothing special either, but the overall atmosphere of DA:O hid its faults well.

- Tied with the lack of focus outlined above, there seems to have been problems with balancing. To put it bluntly, doing everything there is to do in the game will break it, difficulty-wise. Obsessing over crafting will grant you impossibly powerful equipment. Obsessing over side-quests gets you enough experience to hit the soft cap early on. Bioware is not used to open-world games and it shows: while there's volume in Inquisition, the games seems to beg you not to experience everything it has on offer at once.

- I spot a bit of the "awesome button" mentality from DA:2. Most classes have severely overpowered abilities that require no finesse to be used. Maybe this has to do with making the game suitable for the action-y multiplayer, but as far as party-based single player RPGs go, this is a huge letdown. In this case it's less about focus than about targeting the right people.

- Finally, I think they played safe it with the story, no doubt a reaction from DA:2's and ME:3's backlashes. Saving the world from the evil evils of the big bad king of evils while making sweet love with your SO is as predictable a plot as one gets, yet it's the only one that'll save you if you stop playing the "artistic integrity" card.

 

[Synigma]

There is definitely a disconnect in the game somewhere... I have been a huge bioware fan since the original Baldur's Gate and this was the first game I actually stopped playing before finishing it. I went back and finished it a month later, and i enjoyed most of it, but the pacing was off in the middle somewhere...

It could have used some more dark, grey-area decision making as the Inquisition really started rolling; More not knowing who is sided with the red templars, actual Inquisition'ing to find out, and risks involved with being too trusting / too harsh. This would have filled out the middle of the game much better than the filler quests and given a much better setup for the ending.

As for WHY... I really think it's the writing. There are some great points in the story that make it feel epic and draw you in... but there are slogs in between those moments that pull you back out. It feels like they wrote the over-arching story (which could have used a little pacing in it's own right, but overall was really good) and then cut it up saying "and here they spend 20+ hours in the hinterlands, and here they can meander around doing stuff for the war council, etc".

Which isn't a horrible way to approach an open world... but it didn't feel like they used the same writers for those parts. It felt like filler seasons from an anime where nothing new is really gained, characters there don't feel important to the world (at all), and it just felt disconnected. They needed more writing put into the quests, more tying it all together, and just more immersion into what you were suppose to be.

You know what quest I remembered? Deciding what to do with the chieftain who through a goat at our wall! That drew me in, got me excited to see how else the world was going to interact with the Inquisition and how I would have to deal with them... But that was it. The only other calls you had to make were in regards to people you captured, which was a nice touch, but it felt so ingenuous because you knew the details. The hard decisions are when you aren't personally involved and you still have to make life altering decisions. I didn't feel like I was running a sprawling army trying to enforce the laws of the land and keep everyone safe; there were no hard decisions (or very few at least) just choosing between different perks.

There are other issues that can be chalked up to EA's focus-testing madness trying to appeal to the mass-audience and the loss of original talent... and that might even be why the writing was so lacking... but at the end of the day it's the lack of coherent writing that led to it feeling so disjointed and filler'y.

EDIT: I just realized what it was I couldn't put my finger on; There is little to no reaction in the castle based on what you do in the world and vice versa. Sure you open up areas by unlocking them in the war council but no one talks about any of it. In other Bioware games you'd get npc's whispering about your decisions, you'd be treated differently based on them, and it would effect who joined you or not. I honestly can't remember if I even had to make any decisions in quests that effected anything... and maybe that's just it. Everyone paid lipservice to 'The Inquisitor' but what did I really bring to the inquisition? Beyond closing portals it just felt hollow.

 

[mad825]

Does anyone know why they chose the title "Inquisition?"

Seems like a weird choice to me because in the game you don't really do much "Inquisiting," you just raise your own army to fight the big bad. Why did they use such a loaded word for such a generic faction? I thought I'd be torturing people like the Spanish Inquisition

I think they were to dramatise the whole "Mage vs templar" thing which was pretty much the whole point of DA2.

 

[Xixikal]

Bit unfair to compare The Witcher, which is based on a series of novels (fully-fleshed out world and defined characters), to a game where they are making everything from scratch (DAI). What both games share is the abundance of side quests and collectibles, a trait Skyrim also shares. Though people seem to rate Skyrim much higher (at least in my social circles).

 

[Amaror]

Bit unfair to compare The Witcher, which is based on a series of novels (fully-fleshed out world and defined characters), to a game where they are making everything from scratch (DAI). What both games share is the abundance of side quests and collectibles, a trait Skyrim also shares. Though people seem to rate Skyrim much higher (at least in my social circles).

Well they HAD a world and defined characters from the previous games and the books. Inquisition didn't really invent anything new. In fact one of my gripes with the game is that they made the world a whole lot less interesting than it had previously been.
The templar vs. mages conflict gets resolved and thrown out pretty early in the game. The worst part is that afterwards the faction that you did not choose basically joins the Dragon Age Equivalent of Sauron, so there's the moral ambiguity out of the window. No matter which choice you make, you make the "right" one because the other faction is clearly really really evil.
The game seems a lot tamer overall and it just makes it less interesting.
In Origins a big part of the game was that the warden had to save the world from itself before he could actually save it from the big evil, which was the more interesting part. The mages were destroying themselves in their desire to be free, the dwarves decimated themselves fighting a succession war, the elves were getting destroyed by their desire for revenge and Ferelden as a whole was getting ravaged by civil war against Loghain. All of this was very interesting and ambiguous and kept me playing the game. The Big bad was an end goal, but not what you spend your whole time fighting against.
In Inquisition on the other hand you don't have that. All your time is spent foiling the big bads plans, while he himself seems to do nothing but twiddle his thumbs. Your clearly the hero saving the day by defeating the big bad. It's rather boring.
It's also all rather tame. No possessed children unleashing hordes of demons or such.

 

[Gorrila_thinktank]

---> This combination of both the big and small makes everything come together in a fleshed out setting.

Inquistion's focus was just on how everything was big; The big hero, the big war, the big villain, the big thing in the sky. It went for epic fantasy only and by comparison just comes across as less encompassing.<-----

While I disagree with your conclusion I think you might be on to something here with the idea of the difference of scope. I?m just spitballing, but I think that the tried and true BioWare RPG model works really well I certain scope of gameplay and I think when they created Inquisition they didn?t tailor the model they were using to accommodate the change. I think we?ve all heard enough people remark that mechanics inform narrative. I wonder if by moving the scope away from that small knit band of companions BioWare has always used, to a focus on a large organization they limited themselves.

Traditionally BioWare RPGs feature a small cast of tightly interacting personalities who rally around the PC. The companion characters always offered a portal into the wider setting. They acted as both a way for the player to understand the game?s world and also as a way to align with principles and concepts inside the world.

It leaves me wondering what the game would have been like if the PC had been just ?an? Inquisitor, and ordered into Fereldon with two or three companions, and had to solve the plot with a small group of various companions they meet along the way. I think that navigating the game world from the ground up with a focus on conflicting personalities rather than from a top down organisational perspective would have fit BioWare?s strengths better.

 

[Saetha]

It leaves me wondering what the game would have been like if the PC had been just ?an? Inquisitor, and ordered into Fereldon with two or three companions, and had to solve the plot with a small group of various companions they meet along the way. I think that navigating the game world from the ground up with a focus on conflicting personalities rather than from a top down organisational perspective would have fit BioWare?s strengths better.

But that's exactly what Inquisition should've done. I mean, look at Origins. The only companions the game forces you to have are Alistair and Morrigan (And dog, if you're human noble) and you can send Morrigan packing at any time. And yet, even though you don't have to recruit them, all of the potential companions felt connected and invested in your quest. Wynne's an inextricable part of the Circle quest, and everything we see of her, from her dialogue to the nightmare she has in the Fade, shows us that she considers the Cirlce her home and thus has a stake in our intervention. Same with Oghren in Orzammar, he gives us a general view into Dwarven culture, and he has a personal narrative of chasing his crazy wife and finding out about all the shit she's done. Even Leliana and Sten and Zevran, who aren't necessarily tied to any particular questline, still have extremely personal reasons for joining you. Leliana wants to serve her god, Sten wants to seek redemption (And get out of thaat cage) Zevran wants to not die. With the exception of maybe Leliana, I never stopped to ask "Wait, why the hell are these guys here?" The larger plot of the Blight and the Archdemon and the mess in Fereldan was made personal by seeing how it effected everyone.

But then in Inquisition, it's like half your companions don't really care to be there. Vivienne, Blackwall, Sera, Bull - you just... get a quest saying "Go here, recruit this companion, hooray!" Maybe there's a short cutscene displaying their personality, but it rarely has anything to do with Corypheus or the Breach or any effects thereof. The only companions that truly get good introduction quests are Dorian/Cole, depending on if you go Mages or Templars (And whichever companion you don't choose ends up just appearing on your doorstep because of that) Cassandra, Leliana, and Solas all had personal reasons for sticking around - the first two were close to the Divine and the third's got some weirdo machinations that he's been using you for - but everyone else is just... there. Their personal reasons are gone, and with no smaller narrative to ground the larger one, it feels like the companions just exist.

I think that's what Shinji meant by "small" things. I really liked Cassandra because I felt like she had a reason to be there, a reason to see Corypheus taken down beyond "Well, the world will end if we don't." None of the other companions really had that personal investment. It made their presence seem... almost random.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Both genres ought not be niche though.
They sell well, because as I said, there isnt much else like them.

I am 100% certain Bloodborne had a much higher budget than Skylines. I dont know you can even argue against that.
Call of Duty has shitty graphics. It also had a gigantic budget.

Metro had great graphics. So does Witcher 3 (good Voice Actors too). And they have small budgets. Not exactly a good point here mate... just seems From cant code as well.
No. The FPS market is over-saturated on PC. You have everything from good old Enemy Territory to ARMA to compete with. On consoles? If you want something like Battlefield?
Well there is only Battlefield...

Let me know when both consoles *combined* beat League of Legends and Steam. Do send me a PM if you want. If I am not dead of old age that is...
And dont be so sure about W3 on consoles. It is a game with a soon to launch editor. And is made in Eastern/Central Europe... by now people probably have learned that it is even more of a waste of money getting these games on consoles.

Why do you even care so much about budget? The only thing budget really affects sales is the marketing budget. I'm pretty sure both games made a profit and were financially successful, that's really all that matters. Skylines won't sell as much at the start but it'll have legs due to it being a "proper" SimCity and since it doesn't have a big marketing budget, people will gradually discover it. From does suck at coding, kinda old news really. COD is cheap to make, they reuse the same engine over and over again. The bloat comes from voice actors and marketing. Does COD even need to market anymore? Everyone knows it comes out every holiday. It's like everyone knows about Pepsi, why even advertise it much?

There's not much games like Battlefield even on PC. Arcade-y FPS with large battlefields and vehicles, how many of those games are there? Battlefield is not in competition with ARMA. Hell, Warhawk/Starhawk on PS3 was probably the next closest game to Battlefield, and they were much more fun as well.

Again, let me know when PC has a bigger user-base for the majority of multiplatform games. LoL is PC only. I wasn't saying Witcher 3 will sell more on PS4, but I think it might. Either way the PC sales aren't going to blow past PS4 sales.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Why do people (interestingly, usually from North America) care so much about shit like metascores, box offices, revenue and so forth. Especially in an art form?
Similar reasons to why I care about budgets. It is impressive to see what some can do on small budgets. Kinda feels you with hope.

CoD is not cheap to make. Guess again. I know where the bloat comes from. And optimizing for bad hardware was part of it for a long time. As were mo-caped animations.
Does not change the fact that it costs much.
BTW MW2 cost 50 million to make... more than the Witcher 3... a lot more... and 5 times Metro Last Light... lol...

Actually there is a lot to rival Battlefield. From better vehicle games, to better team games, to better mass shooter games to OTHER battlefield games... and even those other Battlefield game's mods...

LoL is PC only. And is bigger than an entire console...
I cant tell you. As I dont even know how to check. But my friend, not user base, overall sales is what you are looking for here.
Nope. It wont sell more than on PC. And it wont do it long term

COD doesn't even need to be that optimized. The PS3/360 could run COD's graphics so easily that it didn't need to be super optimized or even optimized that well. I doubt the current gen CODs are graphical powerhouses either. A game like Vanquish looks better than COD and Vanquish wasn't very costly to make. Also, there's a big difference between salaries (labor costs) depending where a game is developed. Look at how much the top Infinity Ward guys were making. Comparing budgets can very much be the equivalent of apples to oranges.

What other shooters have same arcade-y feel that Battlefield does where you can do ridiculous stuff like jump out your plane, RPG a plane, and jump back in? I'm sure there's other shooters with vehicles and big battlefields but they attract different players. There are better vehicle games than Battlefield on consoles, there's better team games than BF on consoles, and there's better mass shooter games than BF on consoles. There's none that really combine all that together like BF though.

You'll never be able to get the numbers proving Witcher 3 sold more on PC

Again, I bet all these games will have bigger communities on PS4 vs PC: The Division, MGO, next COD, next BF, next Rainbow Six, next Souls, etc. So what if there's a few massively popular games on PC, there's a few massively popular mobile games as well (that put PC to shame). The chances are the next online MP game I care about will have a bigger PS4 community than PC. You haven't even listed a single multiplatform game that has a bigger PC player base.