#to the low level devs......im so sorry 😔 to the uppity ass losers in charge who idk maybe have never played a game ever? fuck off

[mytumblogforgames]

disrespectfully, you genuinely have to not be a gamer to misunderstand so deeply what "shared world states" being in demand looks like, within context. if you want to make dragon age online, you need to do that OUTSIDE of the single player games (final fantasy, elder scrolls are both good examples, fallout maybe? didn't play that MMO 😂). you cannot just turn a thing into the exact opposite of what it is. and if you want to make destiny? then make it. and look, they tried! no one liked anthem. at ALL. bc that storytelling is just NOT a bw strongsuit! weekly storytelling is another beast. if you are going for only expansion drops, then you either need to have a remarkable enough story to bring people back in after they break or you need to have a good enough gameplay loop that people want to log back in (ideally, both). I have not once ever in my life heard a person say they loved a bw game for the gameplay, not ever. It's always "I love the characters" and "the world was very interesting" and "choices matter, which makes me feel satisfied and interested in replaying", and if anything, it is often the case at least for dragon age I would hear a lot of like, it's enduring the gameplay *because* the story is so good you'll just deal with a game you don't think is very fun or at the very least just not your general style.

now, people love playing together. this is just true, always gonna be. but "multiplayer" need not mean "live service" and this is a Certified Original Gamer Fact. I have never played elden ring or bloodborne or dark souls or whatever (in my mind those are all the same game, idk) but I know you can have people in your world that interact with you, either generously or nefariously. They could go that route, and maybe it could be interesting to, if allowed, have other players interact with your world and possibly alter NPC states or location states, or maybe instead bc maybe there's just assholes who murder Teagan over and over again before I get to flirt with him, you could just allow visitors. It could be relatively cosmetic like an animal crossing, or you could allow story interactions as well, like what baldur's gate 3 recently did. In the latter case, the online hosted/local mult players get to pursue dialogue interactions with companions (and thus, romances) so long as 1P the host isn't interacting with them. They advance in story with you, but they are like, ghosts ya know, like, they can't just pick up that character and then roll with it. They're there with you when you're both available but otherwise 1P is playing as usual while 2-4P are just stored in camp, waiting to be controlled by a person again. But unless I'm misremembering 2-4P cannot take these characters into a separate game....idk it's been like a year I can't remember but you get the point!!!!

THIS model, an online multiplayer model with co-op play is what I think they could have success pursuing and NOT the narrative live service model!! That is just NOT their bag! And if they wanna lock in and make it so then fine but they gotta appreciate that getting that formula right is *significantly* more difficult and it could easily be a decade plus before they really see any real progress. And when they're apparently hostile to writing, like, I'm sorry, but that DOES matter, both in long term live service models and one-time single (possibly with fun co-op multiplayer option) player titles. If you're not investing in your writers and allowing them freedom to tell the story they need to tell and instead ONLY banking on "good/fun/engaging" gameplay and then forcing writers to write around that, at a more rapid pace no less with live service, you're going to end up with a product that frankly, will fall off. Especially for this studio because wtf gameplay loops are we looking at??!?! What fun gameplay mechanics too??? The most interesting thing they ever did was a rivalry/friendship system but that requires investment in binary (at minimum) pathed companion writing, so we only ever saw it the once, with DA2, the ever humble goat, because this game was developed in like 18 months or some shit and they NEEDED to rely on GOOD writing to make a robust and still replayable game! And it fucking SLAPS.

Meanwhile compare it to DA4 which had, in its final incarnation a slightly longer by like a year dev cycle though ultimately it was *ten years*, but this time, the focus is on "gameplay". Bc that's what we play dragon age for 🙄 And how did this one fair? The worst they've ever done. And it's basically bugless! But there is NO replayability, and your choices *do not matter* so there needed to be strength in the companion or at the very least narrative/plot writing... And it just doesn't get there. It feels like it's 10% of what it should be. We only see people in two modes: kinda sad maybe but mostly tired, and determined. We get through all the formers with therapyspeak to get to the latter, every time. There isn't disapproval paths, and romance is not much additional content, nor with faction or lineage stuff (and the lineage stuff gets all over the place writing wise for elves over something as vital and core to the setting as dalishness...in THIS GAME IN PARTICULAR with an elven heavy plotline about dalish gods!). In short: all that extra time yet nothing of substance to show for it. Are you gonna replay it more than once to see the other binary choices (and play a new class since, yippee, we can't character swap anymore wow cool!!) just for "good" gameplay? Clearly not lol

It's just so annoying. World states mean something in dragon age, and it is almost universally seen as *the* thing that makes dragon age, dragon age. It makes every playthrough new, and all of them uniquely yours. People love this. Player agency and player choice is diametrically opposed to a live service model. You CANNOT have branching choice when you are releasing a story to every single player at the same time, you MUST tell One version of the story and Only One. That is *the opposite* of dragon age's DNA. If you want us to use this setting for "shared" world states, the only option you have is to give us incidental co-op, which is ultimately less a "shared world state" and more of a viewing party. You can make an NPC and join my band of companions alongside me, and even date one of em if you want but of course not my autistic wizard he is always for me first and you never if I am there, but you will bear witness to my incredible/terrible/stupid/extremely smart and correct choices. And maybe like in BG3 we can allow a proximity choice enabler, and it's a mad dash to the next quest marker to see who gets to choose what happens next... But no. These stupid clowns are like "let's try to do something we have no skills doing and also let's make sure writing is the last priority on the list even though we're like The Writing Studio lol". K. Fail. See if I care. But I ain't being bamboozled again you can't get me to buy ME5 not even if you use my autistic wizard wife as bait you can't get me lol her story neatly concluded along with everyone else's thank god goodbye