468 réponses à ce sujet

[17thknight]

Before you make a comment about how "the words are just in a circle" wait and hear me out.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the aesthetics of how the words are oriented on the screen. While it is mildly annoying to see a mechanic that looks exactly like part of Mass Effect in  a Dragon Age game, that isn't what is fundamentally flawed about the wheel

The problems with the wheel are this:
1. It limits how many words can be displayed
2. This causes the responses to be shortened, significantly, when they are placed next to the wheel
3. The shortened responses result in extreme paraphrasing that often does not reflect what the character says or how they will react.

This is the ultimate problem with the conversation wheel. It has nothing to do with how it looks and everything to do with how it functions. To solve this, the ME team simply shoved "Paragon" responses in the upper right, "neutral in the middle, and "Renegade" in the lower left. This is because, without this orientation it would have been completely impossible for us to determine whether many responses were "good bad or neutral".

There are instances in the game where the Paragon and Renegade responses were the exact same wording on screen, but one resulted in you comforting someone and the other had you beating them mercilessly.

This is detracts from character interaction and immersion because:
- You don't really know what your character is going to say or do. This rip the characterization away from the player and further distances them from the Role-PLaying aspect of an RPG
- You don't know how your character will react and this can result in you needing to restart saves in order to "fix" an action that you didn't actually intend to do.


Yes, I realize they want to put a "mood" indicator next to the words, but that doesn't fix what is flawed with the conversation wheel. The Mass Effect team's solution made it just as easy for you to know what response was "good" or "bad" and it does not help. One of the more startling parts of ME2 was when you flat-out murder someone when you thought you were simply going to incapacitate him. It's very jarring when your righteous and good character suddenly just butchers a character because you didn't know what their REAL response would be in comparison with the 2-word paraphrase.

Worst of all, it severely limits the number of responses that can even be displayed on-screen at a time, thus limiting the possible ways that you even can respond. How many Dragon Age conversations had half a dozen to a dozen responses? Quite a few, especially the more important conversations. You never felt like you were just flipping a coin between 1-3 responses that were "good bad and neutral" you were actually steering your character's personality via many responses that, while similar, were subtlely (or blatantly) different.

To summarize, the conversation wheel
-limits the number of possible responses
-detracts from character immersion
-limits on-screen words and results in paraphrasing that never fully reflects what your character will say or do, resulting in you throwing the dice whenever you pick a response.
-limits the emotional range of the main character

When you can only be good bad or in-between you will never have anything more than a character who behaves in extremes.

Modifié par 17thknight, 14 juillet 2010 - 08:11 .

[Bryy_Miller]

Hawke is a man/woman of few words.

[17thknight]

Bryy_Miller wrote...

Hawke is a man/woman of few words.

Lol, well that would be interesting. If you picked "I am mad" and all they said was "I am mad". It'd be a nice change from picking "HI" and your character saying "Hello, scum, time for you to die at my hands!" 

[Zerthus]

It doesn't limit the possible responses. I specifically remember reading in one of the threads, a dev mentioning that despite the wheel they're still working with 6 options.

If I had a link to this statement I would post it, but I don't remember in which thread it was stated.

[17thknight]

Zerthus wrote...

It doesn't limit the possible responses. I specifically remember reading in one of the threads, a dev mentioning that despite the wheel they're still working with 6 options.
If I had a link to this statement I would post it, but I don't remember in which thread it was stated.

And yet that's still less than we had in Dragon Age. The possible nuance of the responses is limited by the wheel, as are the on-screen words. It inevitably results in severe paraphrasing and numerous "extreme" responses of pure good or pure evil . The Game Informer screenshots show the paraphrasing is already present.

[Daewan]

And your suggestion to improve this, keeping in mind that they have already chosen to go with full voice for the main character, would be....?

Don't get me wrong - I hate the wheel for Dragon Age, and preferred the silent protagonist. I am just sick of people restating the obvious over and over again without making any valid suggestions on how to fix it.

[errant_knight]

 It also changes the game from first to third person, not a plus for many of us. There's no pretending that you're Hawke if you don't know what you're going to say or do until it happens.

[Loc'n'lol]

David said that, don't have the link here but yeah, basically the whell has 6 parts, and they were already limited to 6 lines in DAO, so no change here.

There will be paraphrasing because of VO, I don't know how the paraphrasing was done in ME but it doesn't have to be done the same exact way in DA2, maybe it will be better suited to your tastes ?

[GreenSoda]

Shorter displayed responses are not a negative point of the dialogue wheel. The dialogue wheel is specifically designed to easily access those shortened responses.

The "short responses syndrome" stems from the fully voiced PC and the notion that reading everything what your PC says beforehand makes listening to it afterwards tedious -thus destroying the "cinematic" feel of the scene.

Modifié par GreenSoda, 14 juillet 2010 - 08:20 .

[Pygmali0n]

What was wrong with the original DA:O system? It helped make that game and KOTOR a success. Can anyone enlighten me with a good reason, other than adding more employees to the endless credits, why we need change here?

[Grommash94]

No, there were only six possible responses in Dragon Age too.

[17thknight]

Daewan wrote...

And your suggestion to improve this, keeping in mind that they have already chosen to go with full voice for the main character, would be....?
Don't get me wrong - I hate the wheel for Dragon Age, and preferred the silent protagonist. I am just sick of people restating the obvious over and over again without making any valid suggestions on how to fix it.

Firstly, your basic question is a logical fallacy. Whether I have a solution or not is irrelevant to the inherent flaws of the conversation wheel.

However, to answer you, the simple solution is to either fully display all possible responses, as they did in Dragon Age: Origins. You will never be caught off guard by what your character does, you will always have more control over the overal tone of the game and the character,  and it allows them to simply make more responses, which is good.

When there are too few responses you have your character behaving in very very extreme ways, as was seen repeatedly throughout Mass Effect 1 and 2.

Or, as others have suggested, when you highlight a choice, you should be shown (maybe after a 1 second delay, or upon a button press) everything that will be said / how your character will respond when you pick it. This has already been suggested numerous times.

[17thknight]

GreenSoda wrote...
The "short responses syndrome" stems from the fully voiced PC and the notion that reading everything what your PC says beforehand makes listening to it afterwards tedious -thus destroying the "cinematic" feel of the scene.

Well, you're right, that's the problem with the entire direction the game is taking in general: the parts don't all work together as well as they should, as Mass Effect has shown.

The problem is that in sacrificing the player's knowledge for the sake of a "cinematic" feel you are left with picking "Hi" on the coversation wheel and your character saying "Hello you motherless son of a ****, I'm here to kill you!" and then they shoot the guy you were talking to and you think "Well...that was unexpected."

The Mass Effect solution was to put the "good" responses uppe rright (and highlighted in blue) and the bad in lower right and highlighted in red. But this just led to your character responding in extremes.

Even with multiple responses, you still need some way to denote how your character will react. Yes, they say they're putting "mood indicators" next to the words, but how much good will that do? You already had a system like that in Mass Effect and you still had people's characters reacting radically differently than what was indicated on-screen.

If I pick "Hello" and the mood next to it is "angry" what does that tell me about the character's response? Not much.

[AlanC9]

17thknight wrote...
Worst of all, it severely limits the number of responses that can even be displayed on-screen at a time, thus limiting the possible ways that you even can respond. How many Dragon Age conversations had half a dozen to a dozen responses? 

I don't actually remember any DA conversations with a dozen responses. The ME wheel could handle eight, and I don't see any reason why it couldn't be expanded to ten.

[AlanC9]

17thknight wrote...

If I pick "Hello" and the mood next to it is "angry" what does that tell me about the character's response? Not much.

Straw man. ME responses were never that devoid of information. If you want to make a case, use real examples.

[AbounI]

Why they choose a wheel of dialogue with paraphrases: click here

Modifié par AbounI, 14 juillet 2010 - 08:35 .

[17thknight]

AlanC9 wrote...

I don't actually remember any DA conversations with a dozen responses. The ME wheel could handle eight, and I don't see any reason why it couldn't be expanded to ten.

Actually it couldn't. Most Mass Effect conversations (well over 90%) had 3 possible responses. Everything on the left almost always was just "investigation" that didn't actually do anything. It further detracted from the experience because you knew what was investigation, what was advancement, etc.

You never thought "How would my character respond?" or "What kind of person is my character?" Firstly, that wasn't even possible as you never even knew what your character would say, but more importantly, you were just saying "Well, I'm playing a paragon this time, so I'll just click upper-right the whole way through." or "Well, I'm a renegade this time, so I'll just lick the lower right the whole way through." 

And were you to ever pick the "opposite" response it would be SO extreme that it would be wildly out of character. Imagine your full Paragon has three choices, paraphrased, and each says "This ends now." you click upper right and he'll say "I'm going to arrest you." but click the lower left and he just starts murdering everyone in the room. It's very extreme, very jarring, and flows terribly.

[GreenSoda]

AlanC9 wrote...

17thknight wrote...
Worst of all, it severely limits the number of responses that can even be displayed on-screen at a time, thus limiting the possible ways that you even can respond. How many Dragon Age conversations had half a dozen to a dozen responses? 

I don't actually remember any DA conversations with a dozen responses. The ME wheel could handle eight, and I don't see any reason why it couldn't be expanded to ten.

The wheel can handle six responses -that's also the maximum number of responses you were able to chose from in DA:O.

[17thknight]

AlanC9 wrote...

Straw man. ME responses were never that devoid of information. If you want to make a case, use real examples.

Er...that's not actually a strawman, I'm not sure you fully understand what that means, no offense, I'm being serious.

Real examples? There's PLENTY of Mass Effect convos where all three responses had the SAME paraphrasing. The only thing differentiating them was where they were situated on the wheel, so you knew "oh this is paragon, and this is renegade" which is all you ever went off of.

And no, I'm not going to go replay the entire game to find every single instance of what I"m talking about, but we all know it's there.

The paraphrasing never did a good job of differentiating. Most people didn't even read it. You just click "Upper-right" or "Lower-right" depending on if you were a "paragon" or "renegade".

[17thknight]

double-post

Modifié par 17thknight, 14 juillet 2010 - 08:38 .

[17thknight]

AbounI wrote...

Why they choose a wheel of dialogue with paraphrases: click here

Right, we know that, but just because they have a reason for why they chose it does not mean it isn't severely flawed. In fact, they reason they use it IS the reason it is flawed. They use it specifically to limit the words on-screen, but this results in you never knowing what your character will do or say.

That isn't really new information, the Mass Effect team said in an interview pre-release of the first game that that was why they had implemented the wheel in the first Mass Effect. Yes, when you voice your main character, it makes it more "cinematic" but it still severely detracts from the role-playing and gameplay, as both Mass Effect games have shown.

Modifié par 17thknight, 14 juillet 2010 - 08:41 .

[Malanek]

Completely agree 17thknight. It's not going to stop me buying the game, but IMO the "success" of the dialogue wheel is not a good thing. The idea of having an optional tool tip isn't bad though, could make it work. The Witcher handled it better than ME even with all the English translation problems.

[AlanC9]

17thknight wrote...
Actually it couldn't. Most Mass Effect conversations (well over 90%) had 3 possible responses. Everything on the left almost always was just "investigation" that didn't actually do anything. It further detracted from the experience because you knew what was investigation, what was advancement, etc.

You said that the wheel couldn't handle lots of responses. It could and often did. Many DA conversations have three options too. Some have fewer.

Most of that paragraph is a non sequitur, but I guess it's worth discussing. DA also has plenty of conversation options that are investigation, not advancement; they're just not presented in an organized fashion. If I want my character to ask a question next, knowing where to look for the questions is helpful to me.

Firstly, that wasn't even possible as you never even knew what your character would say, but more importantly, you were just saying "Well, I'm playing a paragon this time, so I'll just click upper-right the whole way through." or "Well, I'm a renegade this time, so I'll just lick the lower right the whole way through."

Is that how you played ME? That's not how I played it. The problem is you.

Imagine your full Paragon has three choices, paraphrased, and each says "This ends now." you click upper right and he'll say "I'm going to arrest you." but click the lower left and he just starts murdering everyone in the room. It's very extreme, very jarring, and flows terribly. 

So I have to imagine someone at Bio doing some really bad design? You can't actually make an argument based on what they've actually done?

[Vulee94]

Can anyone PLEASE post some examples of someone "accidentally" clicking on a response which results in someone being punched.

As you said, the choices are obvious blue-good, red-evil, so anyone who "accidentally" punches someone is a moron.

[AlanC9]

17thknight wrote...

Er...that's not actually a strawman, I'm not sure you fully understand what that means, no offense, I'm being serious.

Real examples? There's PLENTY of Mass Effect convos where all three responses had the SAME paraphrasing. The only thing differentiating them was where they were situated on the wheel, so you knew "oh this is paragon, and this is renegade" which is all you ever went off of.

I don't remember seeing any with the exact same paraphrasing. Screeenshot?