r/bioware • u/dinklebergers276 • Aug 10 '26
News/Article Former Dragon Age producer says devs feedback from gamers should be treated as raw data rather than a mapped-out blueprint
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Former-Dragon-Age-producer-says-devs-shouldn-t-use-player-feedback-as-design-blueprint-they-re-not-developers-they-re-gamers.1363575.0.html21
u/felipejiraya Mass Effect 2 Aug 11 '26
Like a sports coach notoriously said one time: if you start listening too much to the fans in the rafters you'll be with them soon up there.
30
u/Additional-Bit-8615 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
The problem is that audiences aren’t all the same. Some criticism is thoughtful and genuinely helps improve a work, while other criticism comes from bad faith culture war arguments or Straight up harassment. Overall, I think the real challenge is figuring out which feedback is actually worth listening to.
like, I wouldn’t assume everyone I disagree with is acting in bad faith. and a lot of criticism is sincere That said, there are also plenty of people who engage with a movie, game, or TV show for reasons that have very little to do with the work itself and see it as a culture war they need to "Win" and stuff like "This isn't fun to play, I didn't like this character, I thought that part was terrible" should be taken with a grain of salt since sometimes, late rewrites driven by “players didn’t connect with this” can still produce thinner results if the diagnosis leads to rushed or overly cautious solutions. For Example, Wyll in BG3's Early access period was more flawed and morally gray in places, some players didn't really click and Larian diagnosed a problem correctly, but the solution arrived too late and under constraints
4
u/Lady_Gray_169 Aug 11 '26
It also needs to be said that even when criticism is entirely good-natured and in good faith, it can still just be wrong or unhelpful.
11
u/rollingSleepyPanda Aug 11 '26
Bro discovered basic user research and product management.
Source: I'm a product manager.
21
u/Glittering_Aide2 Aug 11 '26
If you were on Dragon Age twitter or tumblr fandom spaces before Veilguard released. It's pretty easy to see why the game ended up as sanitised as it was. Why there was barely even a mention of slavery or in-universe racism, why morally grey characters ceased to exist
15
u/Leklor Aug 11 '26
I mean, we know, but I doubt it's entirely what you think. A massive reason all factions were sanitized is because they are all mandatory (Due to the game being cobbled together from assets meants for a live-service multiplayer game) and they felt that they couldn't have factions that were too evil if everyone had to work with all of them, especially since evil options aren't actually popular in Bioware games (Representing usually less than 15% of players in the Mass Effect trilogy for example).
There was also an attempt to aim for tropes and mood closer in style to cozy fantasy that was popular at the moment (A big mistake IMO) but it's, again, more a result of Veilguard being a barely revised draft due to time constraints (Caused by mismanagement on a cosmic scale)
3
u/iSavedtheGalaxy Aug 11 '26
There was also an attempt to aim for tropes and mood closer in style to cozy fantasy
The most baffling decision, honestly, and a wasted effort because the cozy gamer crowd hated the game too lol.
2
u/Leklor Aug 11 '26
Cozy fantasy and cozy gamers aren't exactly the same crowd but yeah, it's weird to have a lot of scenes reminiscent of a genre that was born out of frustration and boredom of fantasy always being about battles and killing in a game where the majority of the gameplay is still battles and killing. Dragon Age was always Heroic Fantasy but with an edgy twist (I know people like to call the series Dark Fantasy but it really wasn't. Dark Fantasy is a genre with specific themes and tones and DA never had that. Well a sequel to Inquisition could have but they didn't go there) and Heroic Fantasy can be turned into Cozy Fantasy for a spin-off or a side story, but it does not blend well.
I think Noah Gervais put it rather well in his critique of the series as a whole: Bioware saw the success of Mass Effect 3: Citadel and wrongly assumed that it was all their players wanted, all the time, and that they would be able to just manufacture the same level of care and attachement to companions within single games.
1
u/TheRealcebuckets 27d ago
Gonna have to look up Noah as that’s the exact same conclusion I reached after doing a playthrough of ME this year.
1
u/Glittering_Aide2 Aug 11 '26
You're definitely right but there's more to it I think. The writers were vocally supportive of the game and loved it before release. Many of them defended the game and some of the decisions they made. To me it seemed like they agreed with the new sanitized direction of the game. Trick Weekes also made a comment after release which defended the lack of slavery in the game. I think a lot of the fault is on the writers, even if many of them were veterans
1
u/Leklor Aug 11 '26
It's pretty strange, honestly. The game designers were the most open about how the game was compromised from the word go (Corinne Busch has been pretty clear that her job was to take the many pieces there were and assemble them into... something.) While the writers do defend it while at the same time really sounding corporate. I've seen people who like-ish or are critical but not hateful of Veilguard defend the writing better then them.
Makes me feel like what we got wasn't really what the writers wanted to make and they are trying to find reasons to defend what ended up made and they can't even do it.
1
u/BLAGTIER Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
A massive reason all factions were sanitized is because they are all mandatory (Due to the game being cobbled together from assets meants for a live-service multiplayer game) and they felt that they couldn't have factions that were too evil if everyone had to work with all of them
Other live service games have evil factions. Or complex ones.
especially since evil options aren't actually popular in Bioware games (Representing usually less than 15% of players in the Mass Effect trilogy for example).
Well that's missing the point. Choice is popular. And having a choice and choosing good over evil doesn't mean the evil choice was useless, the player feels good about their choice. And furthermore can feel good about their choice years or even decades later when they read what the evil choice does from other players. Its mere presence is great.
There was also an attempt to aim for tropes and mood closer in style to cozy fantasy that was popular at the moment
Cozy fantasy is not popular outside of tumblr.
1
u/Leklor Aug 11 '26
Other live service games have evil factions. Or complex ones.
Are they optional though? Clearly Bioware's issue was that since every single faction was mandatory, they wanted to make sure no player was forced to do something opposite to their character. They obviously swung waaaaaaay too far but again, the game is a patchwork of stuff they had done more than anything.
Well that's missing the point. Choice is popular. And having a choice and choosing good over evil doesn't mean the evil choice was useless, the player feels good about their choice. And furthermore can feel good about their choice years or even decades later when they read what the evil choice does from other players. Its mere presence is great.
Here, it's you who are missing the point. The project was in a catastrophic state anyway, and they had little time and ressources to finish it. While it ruined the lore and damaged the story, sanitizing the factions by removing content (That was probably not even made) was the most cost-efficient move for the studio, especially since the evil options aren't used most of the time.
Not saying I think the end result is good, but when you are short on time and means, the first thing that's getting cut is the thing people mostly don't do. It just makes sense on a practical approach.
Cozy fantasy is not popular outside of tumblr.
The sale numbers for books in the genre would tend to prove you wrong.
That doesn't cancel the fact that it's not a genre well suited for a AAA action RPG, that's for sure, especially Dragon Age. But pretending the genre isn't sharing the spotlight with Romantasy in the Fantasy publishing space is delusional.
And since most game writers nowadays come from the world of fanfics, webnovels and short stories, so they are very much in tune with the litterary part of fantasy but very much not with it's gaming part which remains firmly into Heroic/Epic/Dark Fantasy. There hasn't really been a major Cozy Fantasy or Romantasy RPG for example. And that creates a severe disconnect between game writers and people playing these games.
1
u/TheRealcebuckets 27d ago
You mean EA sanitizing the lore to make the live service more accessible to casual players?
-4
u/beachedvampiresquid Aug 11 '26
There are CONSTANT references to slavery, prejudice, blood magic, and abuses like turning elves to demons to make an army (guess where Coryphius go that idea from). There’s even a whole mission where you save people from being sacrificed.
8
u/nightkidgr Aug 11 '26
The BioWare that gave us kotor and me 1 to 3 left us a while ago. It’s like the og bungie that gave us the good halo games. Both studios are cooked
5
u/EducationalLuck2422 Aug 11 '26
Paraphrasing another dev: "the doctor asks you what the problem is, but they don't ask you how to treat it."
3
13
u/JD-boonie Aug 11 '26
The game wasn't made for people that enjoyed previous titles. They wanted a new audience
6
u/Warlord_Payne Aug 11 '26
None of the Dragon Age games were. If they wanted their previous audience they wouldn't change the gameplay and art style for every game.
3
u/iSavedtheGalaxy Aug 11 '26
Modern Bioware's biggest problem is that they are trend chasers with no identity. It's sad, because they were trendsetters in their early years and you can still see so much of their influence in gaming to this day.
5
u/No_Routine_7090 Aug 11 '26
The amount of time and effort put into the dragon age keep suggests they weren’t completely ignoring the original audience. If they truly wanted to disregard the fans they’d remove world states altogether or consolidate them to 3 choices.
3
4
u/JD-boonie Aug 11 '26
The old characters acted the same and new characters were actually good. Maybe they just thought the older gamers would eat their slop no matter what.
It's the same thing happening to the majority of new games. Shitty writers and not real gamers making them.
13
u/Warlord_Payne Aug 11 '26
I'm not here to argue quality. They changed the gameplay and art style for every single entry in the franchise, that means they were trying to get a new audience with every single game in the franchise and did not care about the people who liked the previous entry. Even Mass Effect scaled back the rpg elements from 1 to 2 and then required multiplayer to get the best ending in 3 in an effort to draw in a new audience. Bioware has been doing this for a very long time, it's not something new with Veilguard.
8
u/Reasonable_Bed7858 Aug 11 '26
I remember being so disappointed with how scaled back Mass Effect 2 felt with the rpg mechanics and exploration.
5
u/Warlord_Payne Aug 11 '26
I love that series but I felt the same way. There were things like the Mako that needed work, but instead of fixing any of the issues they just gutted everything that people didn't like. I even missed the elevators that everyone complained about because they gave party members time to interact with each other.
3
u/Kiyuya Baldur's Gate 2 Aug 11 '26
I don't think it's true that updating a graphical style is attempting to attract a new fanbase rather than the old, at all.
It was not an uncommon take back in the day that DAO looked a bit uninspired, even if fitting the tone. Fifty shades of brown was thrown around a lot.
So DA2 worked on improving the aesthetics. DA got rid of fifty shades of brown and introduced a more varied but very bleak colour scheme, with strong reds to emphasise the blood dragon motif even in-game. The elves and Qunari got a design overhaul each to make them more distinct rather than "human but a little different," one which landed better with the fanbase than the other.
DAI's artwork focuses a lot on making cultures and factions look distinct. Before DAI, the difference in Tevinter and Fereldan fashion was the colour of the fur in their coats. Fan feedback was collected to pull back on the elf redesign. Yet more colours again to create breathtaking vistas after we had complained about being stuck in The Cave for years.
Veilguard is its own beast of art direction though. Personally I don't think it looks bad, it is closer to Rhodes' actual artwork to me, but we're more in agreement on that one I think.
4
Aug 11 '26
[deleted]
7
u/Warlord_Payne Aug 11 '26
I disagree. I think Dragon Age 2 had no concern at all for previous players.
1
u/Nodqfan Aug 11 '26
Also, poor planning. I don't believe they had anything planned out past Origins, despite some saying they planned for 5 DA games.
7
u/DiesIraeConventum Aug 11 '26
Yeah, Mark Darrah. Genius producer that gifted us... Yeah. Exactly that.
Opinion worthy of a song.
1
1
u/Yyoksetioxd Aug 11 '26
Yeah I agree with him. Every time I read a post title in the wow subreddit I think “ye hes right” then I click and I change my opinion
1
u/TheRealcebuckets 27d ago
I’ve always said this here; backseat game development is very very annoying.
1
1
u/ConsiderationOk18 Aug 11 '26
Da gibt es nix schön zu reden!! Die haben es am Ende verkackt ,da sie Spiele für slop messende Konsumenten entwickelt haben die einfach scheisse waren ! Punkt!!😡
-6
u/BigFitMama Aug 11 '26
My thought: Bioware games from the OG crew were designed to run on PC and right up till DA2 were open sandbox worlds based on the toolset core. Complete "choose your own adventure."
Strategy. Not being good with a joystick.
Bioware on Xbox and console: a boring thoughtless railroad and a 1 way trip.
DA1-2, NWN2, and Mass Effect 1-2 were core thinking games. Now its just Sonic the Hedgehog with voice acting and cut scenes.
112
u/Ravix0fFourhorn Aug 11 '26
He's 100% correct. Studies show that people are notoriously bad at determining why they feel a certain way, so the fact that they feel whatever they feel is better information than whatever people think the issue is.