Quote Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth View Post
You know, the most expensive parts of game development.
Knowing from even basic mapping, a single map can easily take a months to make. There are several aspects to consider:
- Flow: it must be played smoothly - these days even more when those areas become walkable later on. No strange edges in which you can get stuck, no strange clipping.
- Visuals: artwork costs money, and each model for an enemy takes extra time
- Bossfights: these take extra attention to mechanics
- Optimizing: you realy dont want fps dips to happen

It can easily take 6 months of hours to make a single dungeon (and sure, with 6 people thats a month and we only consider 8h/day). But there are at least 6 in the MSQ. So again, 6 people for 6 months, and note, these arent the cheapest devs. Map making and game artwork are relatively expensive things since its not just 'making it look nice'. Optimizing is a skill too much modelers realy dont know. And that while for a voice actor, they can most likely do all the lines in a day already, with maybe a few more short sessions afterward to redo out of tune lines.
And note, this excludes basic enemy design and generic models that are made in the open world maps. And fate, sidequests and other world activities also take time as again they need an area in the map.

If they say its the most expensive, it usualy just means 1 or 2 voice actors that are pushing the price up quite hard. But knowing how easily they replaced some voice actors... nah... unlikely they are this expensive. Its however the most notible expense they have, making that the reason to push it in marketing.

The most expensive part in game design is making the engine itself. And netcode is part of that, thats why it never was fixed. Any change to the engine has effects on the entire game, and require complete playtests to ensure things dont break. A single and simple change can easily cost weeks to test. Thats why most games try to delay engine upgrades as late as possible, they are expensive.