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[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
With regard to cognition, that's probably true.  I'm willing to ask people to do things that are possible, as opposed to simply typical.

Ah, but I disagree that the things you are asking are possible. Actually, I wanted to recommend a book: it's called Action Systems, by David D. Clarke. Unrelated point, I know. The book really takes about what should be a new way to talk about behaviour. It is quite interesting, mostly because I think it captures a good deal of the essence of the debates we typically have.

In short, the book talks about a dynamical top-down way of looking at thinking, and why it is framework and intention that matters more than element in human cognition.

For example, it discusses why it's inappropriate to look at a sentence and say: were I to have a dictionary, I could know what every single word means. And were I to know what every single word means, I would know what the sentence means. I feel this is something you would agree with, but something I adamantly disagree with, and I think that book does a great interdisciplinary job of talking about the issue.

Some things disgust me, but I see no reason why I would take the further step to assert that those disgusting things are immoral.  Partly because I don't see why one would be relevant to the other, and partly because I have no reason to believe that others share my preferences (so who am I to tell them what is right and what is wrong, and conversely who are they?).

I should clarify. Supposing for a second we take empirical psychology for granted (or at the very least accept that we have very good reasons to believe that their work is justified and plausible) then the experience of morality is not a matter of choice, or a matter of propositional knowing.

It is not that a distingusting thing is immoral. It is that when something is a moral decision, the brain mechincally processes morality using the same system as disgust and this is how it produces the experience of morality. It is a combination of framework plus biology.

If you have a moral framework (and you do - it's culturally taught; it's inescapable) then you have moral knee-jerk reactions. It's like hunger.

It is not that disgusting things are immoral. It is simply that some things are, from the point of view of your experience, immoral. And you cannot consciously decide when to experience this any more than you can consciously decide to be hungry or nauseaus.

I'm well aware that's how people apply their moral framework.  What I don't get is how they get one on the first place.  Almost every person does, and to happen again and again millions of times there must be some sort of common mechanism, but I've no idea what it is, and don't think I can claim any first-hand experience of it.

It is just absorbed from the enviroment. To make a long story short - the mind is a sponge. You can learn exclusively through observation. Children can learn language this way. Skills too. Even new behaviours. All that you need is to see people make decisions that can be meaningfully be categorized as moral (and the system to do this is inborn, as is the system for attempting to classify them) and that's it.

None of this is to say that morality is exclusively hard-wired, or non-conscious. That's silly. It's clearly at least partly conscious and influenced by intellectual deliberation. But can be exclusively knee-jerk and intuitive. So in virtue of being a functioning adult, any adult has a moral system by which they automatically classify decisions.

...But I'm not even sure what we're debating anymore.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I'm not even sure what we're debating anymore.

When we ge to topics like this we rarely are.  I am often trying to learn something, however.

None of this is to say that morality is exclusively hard-wired, or non-conscious. That's silly. It's clearly at least partly conscious and influenced by intellectual deliberation. But can be exclusively knee-jerk and intuitive.

My concern is that it can be something other than exclusively knee-jerk and intuitive, and I think people who let it be exclusively knee-jerk and intuitive are being intellectually lazy.

I suppose that's where the 'ought' arises.

Thanks for the book recommendation.  I'll move it ahead of "Human Action" (Mises) in the queue.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 16 juillet 2010 - 07:37 .

[Vaeliorin]

In Exile wrote...

Vaeliorin wrote...
*feels stupid not realizing In Exile was Virgil...waves*

Hey! Good seeing an old face. *wave*

I switched to the old Neverwinter eye I had on the old forum for the sake of familiarity.

Yeah, I recognize the NW Eye. 

Anyway, as to the initial question...I feel that the major difference between 1st and 3rd person narrative (as defined by the Bioware people) is mostly a matter of degrees of control. In Mass Effect/2, you basically have a broad brush to paint Shepard's personality, but you don't have any control over the finer details. Shepard is always going to basically be Shepard. In DA, you have a much finer brush to paint with, and as such you can truly make your character much closer to who you want them to be.

Ah. I think I see. So you would say that to you, the details of your character's past are more important than the personality tendecies in the present? I have a very gestalt-like view of creating a character - the essence of the character is the series of traits, feelings, attitudes and intuitions that make the character up. So long as these are respect and actively reflected in the world, I am that character.

The problem lies in knowing why my character is the way he is.  The past is what creates those personal tendencies.  What it boils down to, if I'm reading you right, is that you're essentially okay with the game telling you who your character is (as occurs in ME, since the voice actor and voice direction define how your character interacts with others) and I'd rather tell the game who my character is.

For example, there's a particular scenario in DA when a non-human character talks to the sisters outside the Chantry in Denerim.  The exchange always ends something like:

PC: I'm not ignorant and godless!
Chantry Sister: Of course not, dear.  You just don't know anything about the Chant and you don't have any gods.
PC: Never mind.

Now, with a 3rd person narrative, the PC voice is going to determine how your character says that last line, and it might be angry, or sullen, or any of a myriad of possibilities, but it's the developers who determine how your character responds.

In a 1st person narrative without the voice, I have complete control of my character.  I know that, for example, my dwarven noble, realizes that he's rightfully lost a verbal sparring match, and is somewhat sheepish in his reply, with a slight delay before he actually answers.  My Dalish elf, on the other hand, takes this as yet another insult to his people and culture, and replies in a very angry way.

With the 3rd person, you have to let little details about your character like this go, as you can't control them.  Which would be fine, I suppose, if you were given enough detail about the character so that you could understand why the character acted like that, and have a coherent personality that incorporated this.  But I've never seen a game that even attempted to give me enough background about my character to understand why they were who they were, so in general, I dislike 3rd person narrative.  It also, in my opinion, hurts replayability, because your character is going to be essentially the same person every time (since the voice director has already determined who he is.)

If you're only looking to identify with the broad strokes of a character (essentially, if you're happy playing an archetype) I can certainly see how a 3rd person narrative would be more appealing. However, if you really want to get down to nuts and bolts, to have control over every nuance of your character's personality, you need to have a first person narrative.

But I feel as if what I am looking for, control over attitude, intiution, feeling - these are fundamental bolts of the character. Yet I happen to feel the game which is in 3rd person narration is easier to connect too.

The problem here, as I see it, is that in a 3rd person narrative, while you may have control over your character's attitude and emotions, you can't know for a certain why the person acts the way they do.  There's always the chance that the game will break your reasoning for why your character is the way he is.  For example, in ME, the first time I played it, I played with a Spacer/War Hero character.  Now, the blurbs describing the background doesn't give much information, so I decide to play a Shepard who's parents have died, not through any unusual means, just from natural causes.  That was something that was important to his character, and influenced how he interacted with others.  Now, all of a sudden the game goes and tells me that not only are Shepard's parents alive, but he can just wander into the Normandy's communication center and call them.  There goes all my connection to the character, because some of my fundamental understandings of who he is, and why he is that way, have just been shattered.

Hmm. Let us try some more background on my taste (I want to get to the bottom of this!).

I could not connect to characters when we had 2D portraits. I felt those characters had a particular... personality given to them by their artist. They were in a sense never mine, and I could never relate to them. There was something uniquely alien about that.

This is not something per se restricted to portraits. The fact we had essentially a fixed apperance in JE (3 character models per gender) made it very hard for me to relate to the character as it felt I was playing someone alien. Yet being able to switch heads on an identical body in KoTOR did not make me feel this way.

I know for a fact that to many, the addition of 3D and the removal of 2D portraits actually constrains the ability to RP. Yet I feel it does the opposite. So I think there is something here in particular that captures why I feel the 3rd person narrative game is more appropriate for RP. But I'm not sure what as of yet.

I've got to be honest and tell you that, while I understand your point here, it's not an issue I share.  Nor do I understand those who object to 3D models.  For one thing, I (generally) never took the 2D portrait appearances as literally what my character looked like.  I simply went looking until I found a picture that I felt best conveyed my characters appearance, and simply used that.  The exception to this was when I built a character from the ground up, working with the portrait as a means of generating ideas about who the character was.

3-D models I'm more willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but if I can't get an image that I feel perfectly refects my character, it's again something I don't stress about.  Whether 2D or 3D, the image that exists in the game is only a best representation of what my character actually looks like, the real image being in my head.

Admittedly, having a very active imagination also helps with the enjoyment of a first person narrative, and probably hurts enjoyment of third person narrative (as there's nothing quite so annoying as knowing how you character would say something, and then the voice actor saying it in a completely different manner.)

It is more than that. I have an incredibly active imagination. Probably moreso than most. Yet I cannot use it in a game because I feel restricted by the game as a whole. I will try to copy and paste what I wrote in another thread since it is really tiring trying to say the same thing in several threads:

"The problem is my imagination does poor work when giving garbage material. My imagination works when I'm free to control the environment and shape it as I please, not when I have A and B and have to create a logically consistent, non-contradictory (relative to known facts in the game), character consistent linkage between the two. Then it's just a rationalization. I get that for some people this is really fun. But not for me, and for others who argue for a voiced PC. To us, there is no possible way to involve your imagination in the game.

It's like saying - no, imagine that instead of Duncan dying, he lived, and Alistair is just confused (this is to the well, if you read the non-VO dialogue wrong and it leads to an outcome not consistent with your character's tone pretend it is a mistunderstanding). In both cases we have the same evidence after the fact: Alistar's voiced dialogue. The difference is that in one case you have explicit evidence of coming up with a counterfactual that contradicts an in-game event (because you saw it) while in the other you have to recognize it abstractly.

I get that not everyone plays the game this way - but to those of us who do, VO is a good thing. I say this constantly as I want your side to appreciate we care about RP and connections to our characters as much asyou do; you're just not getting why we're connected in the first place.


Alistair brings up his parentage. One of your options is "Ah, you'regoing to tell me you're an idiot." I took this to be sarcastic. It was offensive beause Alistair played it straight. There is an associated approval loss (-5). Now, you have two events: at the start, you decided,based on your character, that sarcasm was appopriate. The line was not delivered sarcsitically. But you now have the "opportunity" to use your imagination to have a made-up interaction with Alistair where this is rectified. But if you rectify it in any way that ends with him increasing his approval, you have broken from the reality of the game. So the game must resolve itself with no change in approval. So you are  effectively inventing a scenario for the sake of not feeling like the dialogue system constrained you. Which to me is just a rationalization.

Thisis what I mean by the example - that if there is physical evidence something took place, I cannot simply ignore it or wish it away. This is why I look to roleplaying very differently than other individuals. "

I find that interesting.  I can't help but wonder how much speculative fiction you read when you were young, and how early you started role-playing, simply because I wonder if that had something to do with how your imagination works.  I'm completely at ease with working within reasonable constraints when imagining things, because it's something that I've done since I was quite young.  I've been reading fantasy (and Choose Your Own Adventure books) basically since I could read, and I would always imagine myself doing things in those settings, or even tagging along with the heroes in whatever I was reading.  I'm certain from past discussions you know much more about how the brain and the imagination works than I do, so I'm not going to speculate much more in that direction.

Anyway, as to your Duncan not dying example...I honestly can't imagine someone doing that.  It's one thing to explain away misunderstandings, or potentially inconsistent reactions in conversation, but to rationalize away factual occurrences within the game world goes a bit beyond the pale.

As to your Alistair's parentage example, I would reply that there's any number of times when I've tried to say something sarcastic and someone has taken it the wrong way and ended up mad at me.  As such, Alistair's -5 approval (which isn't a tangible thing within the game world) makes complete sense.  Attempting to rationalize it in such a way that Alistair didn't disapprove, however, is somewhat nonsensical.  You control your character, and only your character, and have to interact with the in game world on it's terms, not yours.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
When we ge to topics like this we rarely are.  I am often trying to learn something, however.

Yes, you're right. It's been a while since I've had a chane for a conversation like this. It's why I missed the old boards. You would think a university is a great place to discuss and exchange ideas, but...

My concern is that it can be something other than exclusively knee-jerk and intuitive, and I think people who let it be exclusively knee-jerk and intuitive are being intellectually lazy.

I suppose that's where the 'ought' arises.

At least from the standpoint of psychology, it is not so easy to seperate the automatic response from the cognitively penetrable (this is field jargon - for something to be cognitively penetrable it means that it is easy for you to intervene at each step in the process; so say when you are thiniking about a problem, you can separate your thoughts and look at them in isolation; when you are performing an action, it is almost impossible to do the same) intellectual response.

There are really cool theories from machine learning and information processing that look exactly toward this sort of thing. And it's interesting to see how unlike formal sequential operations you have to design an AI to have it behave in midly plausible biological ways.

Thanks for the book recommendation.  I'll move it ahead of "Human Action" (Mises) in the queue.

I think you'd like it because it talks about looking at behaviour first in absence of intention and attempts to scientifically categorize that, and how instead intention has to be the filter of scientific classification. Since it indirectly talks about how to infer intention, I figured it would be a read you would find interesting, even if you'd disagree with it.

Modifié par In Exile, 16 juillet 2010 - 04:15 .

[Addai]

I came across this interview with Greg Zeschuk in February 2010 where he admits that the player experience is very different in a first-person versus third person game, and that for some of us, the latter ruins the player experience.  Now that Dragon Age is going the way of Mass Effect, I guess the bottom line is that it sucks to be us.  Hopefully this demonstrates, however, that the difference is not just "in our heads" or irrelevant.  The developers recognize it as a real issue, an issue they purposefully dealt with in Origins, but for whatever reason that type of player is no longer the market they want to attract.

AVC: On the other hand, coming after Mass Effect, it’s strange to go to Dragon Age, where you have more control over the character you create, but because of that, you’re left out of the voice acting. As you’re watching the cinematic dialogues, the protagonist can’t talk, and the other characters can’t identify you by name. 
GZ: Actually, that was very, very purposeful. It was the concept of first-person vs. third-person narrative. First-person is, we don’t actually present the voice. In your head, you would actually speak the voice and give it substance. So consequently, Dragon Age isn’t as impressive to watch, I think, because it doesn’t flow like a movie flows. But it’s still very compelling to play. And for some people, it’s more compelling to play it that way than with the third-person narrative of watching Shepard. 

[In Exile]

[quote]Vaeliorin wrote...
Yeah, I recognize the NW Eye.  [/quote]

Awesome. Now it's like old times. You and Sylvius just need to debate scaling.

[quote]The problem lies in knowing why my character is the way he is.  The past is what creates those personal tendencies.  What it boils down to, if I'm reading you right, is that you're essentially okay with the game telling you who your character is (as occurs in ME, since the voice actor and voice direction define how your character interacts with others) and I'd rather tell the game who my character is.[/quote]

I think I'm starting to see our difference.

To a degree, you're right - I'm fine with the game telling me facts about my character. I don't want to say I am okay with the game telling me who my character is, because to me, past details are not equivalent to who someone is.

To put it anotherr way: I believe it is who you are that influences your reaction to events versus the other way around.

Let's take an example: we have a young child in high school who has been teasted. As an adult, the person does not view themselves as part of the group; the adult is very competitive, and wants to always be set apart from others on the basis of some quality or trait.

To you, as I understand it, the teasing would be a definitive event in the life of the person. The presence versus the absence of teasing could influence them to be a wholly other sort of person. This is why details, to you, are important, right?

I believe that the personality exists independent on such formative events. At birth, I see the majority of personality as already determined. All that life experience does is work as a tether. Birth provides you with your almost fixed position, and different events can move you in slightly different directions.

But in short, the issue for me is that I believe the facts about the character are not as important as who the character is. So it is perfectly reasonable for me (in say DA) to role-play an identical character from two different backgrounds, as it is plausible for me that they could be independently born with the same personality and their formative experiences are not very impotant (aside from minor things, like prejudice). 

[quote]For example, there's a particular scenario in DA when a non-human character talks to the sisters outside the Chantry in Denerim.  The exchange always ends something like:

PC: I'm not ignorant and godless!
Chantry Sister: Of course not, dear.  You just don't know anything about the Chant and you don't have any gods.
PC: Never mind.

Now, with a 3rd person narrative, the PC voice is going to determine how your character says that last line, and it might be angry, or sullen, or any of a myriad of possibilities, but it's the developers who determine how your character responds.[/quote]

Ah, see, this is another point where we differ. To me, the deliver of the line is determined by the reaction of the NPC. The only points that I grant misunderstand to be possible are the points where the game acknowledges it. As to why I believe the NPC determines the response of the PC, I'll elaborate as I respond to the following segment.

[quote]In a 1st person narrative without the voice, I have complete control of my character.  I know that, for example, my dwarven noble, realizes that he's rightfully lost a verbal sparring match, and is somewhat sheepish in his reply, with a slight delay before he actually answers.  My Dalish elf, on the other hand, takes this as yet another insult to his people and culture, and replies in a very angry way.

With the 3rd person, you have to let little details about your character like this go, as you can't control them.  Which would be fine, I suppose, if you were given enough detail about the character so that you could understand why the character acted like that, and have a coherent personality that incorporated this.  But I've never seen a game that even attempted to give me enough background about my character to understand why they were who they were, so in general, I dislike 3rd person narrative.  It also, in my opinion, hurts replayability, because your character is going to be essentially the same person every time (since the voice director has already determined who he is.)[/quote]

It's difficult for me to properly respond to that particular excerpt because I do not have more context into the conversation. I am assuming that when you speak about different tones in the reply, you are refering to the "never mind." Well, to begin with, the option is "Never mind." versus "Never mind!". The absence of the exclamation point makes it neccesarily a subdued response. I suppose your answer to this is that perhaps you see the dialogue choices as more variable than this (Sylvius is adamant these are not the literal things a character says). I simply do not ascribe to that. What is written is the literal statement that  is uttered. If the punctuation is such that the statement is subdued, then the actual statement is subdued.

So I would say there is no possible reason, with a first person narrative, that I could believe "Never mind" is an angry outburst. In fact, "Never mind" per the personality of my character could not possibly be an expression used as an outburst of any sort. The mere wording of it makes it impossible. I am very particular with the phrasing of words - somewhat like you are with character details. To me, certain phrasing in virtue of how they are phrased make certain attitudes impossible. So a "never mind" could never be sheepish on that alone.

So I would say that in this case, I simply do not experience the freedom you are speaking of in the 1st person case. The written dialogue is too defined for that.


[quote]The problem here, as I see it, is that in a 3rd person narrative, while you may have control over your character's attitude and emotions, you can't know for a certain why the person acts the way they do.  [/quote]

Ah, but I do. It is because they are that way. This goes back to the point I mentioned above. It is not the facts about a character that make them who they are, but who they are that determines their reaction to events in their lives.

[quote]There's always the chance that the game will break your reasoning for why your character is the way he is.  For example, in ME, the first time I played it, I played with a Spacer/War Hero character.  Now, the blurbs describing the background doesn't give much information, so I decide to play a Shepard who's parents have died, not through any unusual means, just from natural causes.  That was something that was important to his character, and influenced how he interacted with others.  Now, all of a sudden the game goes and tells me that not only are Shepard's parents alive, but he can just wander into the Normandy's communication center and call them.  There goes all my connection to the character, because some of my fundamental understandings of who he is, and why he is that way, have just been shattered.[/quote]

I appreciate this disconnect. Like I said above - it is simply a matter of the detail not being relevant. I am quite firmly in the people do not change camp, and see personality as something unbending. Now, to qualify this, what I see as unbending is not a uniform series of traits independent of situation. So if I were to say, Shepard is an extrovert, I do not mean he is always outgoing. What I instead mean is that there is a set of situations where he is always outgoing independent of experience. He could be quite withdrawn at a club party, but the most talkative in the room at a house party (where there is no loud music). This is Walter Mischel's model of personality, and there is a fair amount of empirical evidence behind this kind of situational responding.

[quote]I've got to be honest and tell you that, while I understand your point here, it's not an issue I share.  Nor do I understand those who object to 3D models.  For one thing, I (generally) never took the 2D portrait appearances as literally what my character looked like.  I simply went looking until I found a picture that I felt best conveyed my characters appearance, and simply used that.The exception to this was when I built a character from the ground up, working with the portrait as a means of generating ideas about who the character was.[/quote]

I never do the latter - I have a very clear personality and a very clear apperance in mind whenI I play games. It's easily generalizable, but perhaps why I don't appreciate certain features of customization as much as others.

[quote]3-D models I'm more willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but if I can't get an image that I feel perfectly refects my character, it's again something I don't stress about.  Whether 2D or 3D, the image that exists in the game is only a best representation of what my character actually looks like, the real image being in my head.
[/quote]

For me, that is not possible. It would be like saying, what I see in the mirror is not my face, but the best representation of my face, the real apperance being in my head. It is simply not possible for me to have what I see as this sort of break with the defined.

[quote]I find that interesting.  I can't help but wonder how much
speculative fiction you read when you were young, and how early you
started role-playing, simply because I wonder if that had something to
do with how your imagination works. [/quote]

I've never played a pen & paper RPG, if that counts. I'm young (only barely past 20; don't want to give out my real age ) and I came to North America from Eastern Europe more than a decade ago. These things were just not available there. The first RPG I owned was NWN but the first I played legitimately was KoTOR. I'm not a patient person and I didn't care for learning D&D from scratch. I just saw my level 1 character miss 90% of the time, die almost always, and have no useful spells, thought the game sucked and that was that. Came back to it much later.

I was an avid reader when I was young - to be honest, speculative fiction is all that I read.

What I do think may be at work is that things were not as common in Eastern Europe as they are here. I came from a weathy family, but things were simply not available. My first computer, 1996, only ran MS-DOS and the first video-games I played were Lemmings and Prince of Persia. When I came to North America and say games like Warcraft II and Age of Empires, I was effectively beside myself as to how advance technology was.

Most of the time, toys were difficult to get. I would watch shows on TV, say the power rangers, but they would often be re-runs or out of order, so I would "continue' adventures on my own using lego blocks and such. This is why I personally think I do not like imagination in video-games - once I start imagining something, it becomes my story and I want to direct it in ways that widely diverge from the game. The game is simply incapable of supporting my imagination, so I have to restrict it.

For example, where it up to me, my human noble would convice the Landsmeet that Alistair, being a bastard, is not an appropriate King. But Anora is a commoner on both sides of the family and a traitor who supported Loghain despite her suspect her husband was killed; in fact, there is no evidence that she did not conspire to kill Cailin and take the throne for herself. Far better to have a Cousland than either a bastard of uncertain parentage or a commoner traitor. Of course, this is not a possible option. But I could run with this, imagine a civil war and a land dividied against the blight.... etc.

But once I do it I can't 'return' to the game, so to speak.

[quote] I've been reading fantasy (and Choose Your Own Adventure books)
basically since I could read, and I would always imagine myself doing
things in those settings, or even tagging along with the heroes in
whatever I was reading.[/quote]

To me, I took the basic plot setting and created my own world. So I would have my own adventure. Either with the heroes or with me as the main character. But not anchored to their story; my imagination would be the writer and direction. It doesn't play well with others, so to speak.

[quote]Anyway, as to your Duncan not dying example...I honestly can't imagine
someone doing that.  It's one thing to explain away misunderstandings,
or potentially inconsistent reactions in conversation, but to
rationalize away factual occurrences within the game world goes a bit
beyond the pale.[/quote]

Oh, I don't think anyone would. That was just meant to illustrate how inconsistent reactions in the coversation feel to me . They are incredibly real. And overwriting them using my imagination feels like pretending parts of te game didn't happen. That's why I can't do it and can't really understand it.

[quote]As to your Alistair's parentage example, I would reply that there's any
number of times when I've tried to say something sarcastic and someone
has taken it the wrong way and ended up mad at me.  As such, Alistair's
-5 approval (which isn't a tangible thing within the game world) makes
complete sense.  Attempting to rationalize it in such a way that
Alistair didn't disapprove, however, is somewhat nonsensical.  You
control your character, and only your character, and have to interact
with the in game world on it's terms, not yours.[/quote]

Sylvius would disagree with you on that last sentence. His opinion is that you can control other characters, so long as you are faithful to their personality. I thought that was the typical RPG position? Guess not.

That being said, it is plausible that the line would anger Alistair, but the fact that the game never recognizes it as sarcastic or gives me an indication of it makes me think Alistair plaid it straight. Like I said: I can only know the tone of things that are said based on reactions to it. This is how I read non-VO. I understand that this is not how others do it, but this is the disconnect I have with silent VO games, and why those PCs are less real to me than in a game like ME.

[In Exile]

Addai67 wrote...

I came across this interview with Greg Zeschuk in February 2010 where he admits that the player experience is very different in a first-person versus third person game, and that for some of us, the latter ruins the player experience.  Now that Dragon Age is going the way of Mass Effect, I guess the bottom line is that it sucks to be us.  Hopefully this demonstrates, however, that the difference is not just "in our heads" or irrelevant.  The developers recognize it as a real issue, an issue they purposefully dealt with in Origins, but for whatever reason that type of player is no longer the market they want to attract.

This is exactly what I was referencing. I cannot comphrehend this, but even Bioware believes it. So this thread is an attempt to understand why my experience is so dramatically different from everyones'.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Ah, see, this is another point where we differ. To me, the deliver of the line is determined by the reaction of the NPC.

This is something I've never really understood.  I get why one could  play the game like that, but so many people seem to think that's the only way to determine the meaning of the line, and that seems crazy to me.  Partly because the reaction comes afterward, so you'd need to retcon in the line's delivery after the fact every single time.

That said, for a player who was already used to doing that with every line, the voiced PC wouldn't be a problem at all (and nor would the dialogue wheel).  My complaints about those features are that they force the player to retcon the intent and delivery of each line.

That's not how I play.  My continuity goes sequentially, so each action has a consequence (so my delivery of the line produces the NPC's reaction), and the reverse can't be true because that breaks the setting's timeline.  But you do the reverse with every line.  There's simpy no middle ground here, which is why I ask for game features that allow both playstyles.

(Sylvius is adamant these are not the literal things a character says)

I'm adamant they are not necessarily the literal things a character says.

Sylvius would disagree with you on that last sentence. His opinion is that you can control other characters, so long as you are faithful to their personality.

In a party-based game, yes.  After all, you do get to control them in all ways except in conversations (in Baldur's Gate you could even control them in conversations), so you are playing those other characters.  The idea that we don't get to play them would only make sense if conversations were the only time any roleplaying was done, and I just don't see that.

I've explained before (you may not have seen it) the extent to which I think roleplaying drives combat style, at least when I'm playing the game.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I've never played a pen & paper RPG, if that counts. I'm young (only barely past 20; don't want to give out my real age ) and I came to North America from Eastern Europe more than a decade ago. These things were just not available there. The first RPG I owned was NWN but the first I played legitimately was KoTOR.

This explains a lot, actually.  You missed the early generation of CRPGs where your character's line was never written out for you.  All you did was type in a keyword, and the NPC would respond (presumably to some sort of sensical question asked by the PC based on that keyword).

You can still get something similar in the Elder Scrolls games (Morrowing, Oblivion), as they still use keyword-based dialogue.

Have you played those?  That's how I think all CRPG dialogue works, regardless of whether the line is written out.

[Addai]

In Exile wrote...

This is exactly what I was referencing. I cannot comphrehend this, but even Bioware believes it. So this thread is an attempt to understand why my experience is so dramatically different from everyones'.

It's probably subjective to a great degree, so analysis is difficult.  I agree with a lot of what Vaeliorin says up above.  The voice actor is making choices for me that I'd rather make myself.  The writer already limits self-expression in the game, but if you multiply those moments of feeling distant and out of control of your character, it's that much harder to think that it is your character.

The only gaming experience I have to compare it to is Tolkien MUSH and text RPG.  In these contexts I have written for both my own original characters and for canon characters.  I much, much, much prefer the former.  Even though I'm still limited by Tolkien theme in the former (and gladly so, since I want it to feel Tolkienish even though I'm giving my own spin on it), and even though the particular canon characters I wrote for were not fleshed out much (they came from the Silmarillion and hence were just archetypes really), writing for those canon PCs feels like wearing someone else's underwear.  No matter how much it fits me, it's still.... awkward.  There are also times where RP comrades would have me take over a character of theirs for a while.  Even though I knew the character really well, it was again quite awkward to assume that other person's character.

It's true that in DAO, we were borrowing the Warden from the game writers and giving our own flesh to him or her.  And that does create dissonance at times because it's not completely free-form roleplay.  It's just a matter of the spectrum of dissonance.  Where on the spectrum does it become a game you don't care to invest time in, or even play at all?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Addai67 wrote...

The writer already limits self-expression in the game

Only if you let him.  See my position about non-literal interpretation of pre-written lines.

Of course, that makes voiced lines even farther from how I play unvoiced characters than it is for the rest of you.

If I recall correctly, another reason In Exile prefers a voiced PC is because it allows the PC to be a more active participant (at least as far as is portrayed on-screen) in conversations, something that fits better with a more socially forceful personality that typically appears in leaders.

I, on the other hand, don't see why the PC even needs to be the leader of the party.  I certainly don't understand why he needs to be the party's spokesperson.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 16 juillet 2010 - 05:52 .

[AndreaDraco]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I, on the other hand, don't see why the PC even needs to be the leader of the party.  I certainly don't understand why he needs to be the party's spokesperson.

While I wholeheartedly agree with everything else you said, I can see why the PC is always the spokeperson. Of course it's a budget matter, but it's also because today games don't allow us to create an entire party, and, as such, it would be too much of a work for the writers to write meaningful dialogue initiated by every single character. I enjoyed Origins very much also because there were two or three moments (Fort Drakon comes to mind) where the companions were the ones talking.

[Addai]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Addai67 wrote...

The writer already limits self-expression in the game

Only if you let him.  See my position about non-literal interpretation of pre-written lines.

I understand and I agree.  That is also how I play the game.  I'm just trying to acknowledge the fact that others see the written dialogue choices as being very limiting.

I, on the other hand, don't see why the PC even needs to be the leader of the party.  I certainly don't understand why he needs to be the party's spokesperson.

Agreed, though having the player move the story along naturally coincides with having the player character the prime mover.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AndreaDraco wrote...

While I wholeheartedly agree with everything else you said, I can see why the PC is always the spokeperson. Of course it's a budget matter, but it's also because today games don't allow us to create an entire party, and, as such, it would be too much of a work for the writers to write meaningful dialogue initiated by every single character.

Baldur's Gate allowed us to use any party member, player-created or not, to engage in conversations.  The manual even recommended using the character with the highest Charisma score (so clearly this option was intended by the designers).

If we can view the dialogue options are abstractions rather than literal lines, the problem of having the lines written for each character specifically also goes away.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
This is something I've never really understood.  I get why one could  play the game like that, but so many people seem to think that's the only way to determine the meaning of the line, and that seems crazy to me.  Partly because the reaction comes afterward, so you'd need to retcon in the line's delivery after the fact every single time.

It is not a matter of thinking it is the only way to determine the meaning of a line. It is rather a claim that jointly with all other features of a game, it is the only way to interpret a line that is not exclusive with some other aspect of the game.

In game, the reaction to the line comes afterward. But we are debating from a meta-game perspective here, because we are talking about the dialogue system as a whole. There is no time axis that could be meaningfully included.

That said, for a player who was already used to doing that with every line, the voiced PC wouldn't be a problem at all (and nor would the dialogue wheel).  My complaints about those features are that they force the player to retcon the intent and delivery of each line.

It is not a matter of retconning the intent. But we disagree, remember, on what it means to intend to say a line. You believe it is possible to have far more control over what you say, on a conscious level, than I would ever grant.

For example, if I recall correctly you believe we can consciously control how we word a sentence prior to uttering it, or accurately control tone and inflection. None of these things are things we can actually do. So it is not a matter of ever having had this control. What matters is the purpose of an action and what it ought to achieve in the world.

The dialogue wheel should reflect the intention of the action the world. 

That's not how I play.  My continuity goes sequentially, so each action has a consequence (so my delivery of the line produces the NPC's reaction), and the reverse can't be true because that breaks the setting's timeline.  But you do the reverse with every line.  There's simpy no middle ground here, which is why I ask for game features that allow both playstyles.

You misunderstand. It is not as if I reverse causation in game. Saying a thing causes a response, quite clearly. All that I am denying is that the specific dialogue choice which you have is at all open to interpretation. It is definite in virtue of how it was written. You cannot do the reverse with each line; must be forward causation. But the line simply is not ever ambiguous.

So I contend that both playstyles are mutually exclusive because they suppose contradictory things about what the dialogue system, and each line of dialogue, represents.

I'm adamant they are not necessarily the literal things a character says.

Right, and I disagree. And the positions are irreconceilable (they are logical opposites). In a party-based game, yes.  After all, you do get to control them in all ways except in conversations (in Baldur's Gate you could even control them in conversations), so you are playing those other characters.  The idea that we don't get to play them would only make sense if conversations were the only time any roleplaying was done, and I just don't see that.

You and I also fundamentally disagree about story/gameplay segregation. It returns to multiple mental states. Insofar as you are one character in the game, you cannot be the party, even if the gameplay allows for control. Inversely, if you can represent multiple mental states, you cannot be any one character in the game.

To put it another way: I would argue that only in IWD could you claim justifiably that you are the party. In BG, the way the narrative is structured actually denies this to you, despite the ability to control them in conversation. This creates an internal contradiction. And in any other game where you do not, you simply are not the party irrespective of gameplay.

I've explained before (you may not have seen it) the extent to which I think roleplaying drives combat style, at least when I'm playing the game.

Yes, but we disagree on that as well.

Modifié par In Exile, 16 juillet 2010 - 07:31 .

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
This explains a lot, actually.  You missed the early generation of CRPGs where your character's line was never written out for you.  All you did was type in a keyword, and the NPC would respond (presumably to some sort of sensical question asked by the PC based on that keyword).

You can still get something similar in the Elder Scrolls games (Morrowing, Oblivion), as they still use keyword-based dialogue.

Have you played those?  That's how I think all CRPG dialogue works, regardless of whether the line is written out.

I've never played a cRPG like that, but I have played games like that. My answer, though, is that I never saw any game with an interface like that as an RPG; or rather it is better to say that in virtue of the interface it was impossible for me to consider it a game that allowed for role-playing.

It was abstracted to the degree that I was clearly aware that it was a game and did not consider the issue of a character at all. The best way to put it would be like this: say I am playing pong and am player 1. I do not consider myself role-playing player 1, or that there is a person controlling the bar which I am. It was like an MS-DOS interface.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
If I recall correctly, another reason In Exile prefers a voiced PC is because it allows the PC to be a more active participant (at least as far as is portrayed on-screen) in conversations, something that fits better with a more socially forceful personality that typically appears in leaders.

It is a more specific than that. I prefer a voiced PC to a non-voiced PC for this reason only when the NPCs are voiced and their actions are scripted. I believe a silent PC works fine as a forceful leader when there is no voiced dialogue. But once there is voiced dialogue for the NPCs, the PC becomes a side puppet.

I, on the other hand, don't see why the PC even needs to be the leader of the party.  I certainly don't understand why he needs to be the party's spokesperson.

The narrative demands the PC is the leader. This is one of those things that I say the writers force on players all the time that players can get away with rationalizing because of the absence of voice (the Duncan actually lives example, again).

For a group that forms voluntarily, it is outright impossible not to have the most socially dominant person as the leader or the core of the group. This is how human social behaviour works. The only time you have non-charismatic 'leaders' are when they are assigned; but those people are not so much leaders but bosses, who are obeyed because there are further constraints and demands that cause the obedience.

A party in a video-game is like a group of friends. The 'leader' of the group of friends is the person that manages all of the social relations and makes decisions for the group.

The issue for me is that it is impossible for me (the real world person) to ever not be a leader. To give a quick story: in high school I was neither popular nor particularly inclined to be popular. I was the valedictorian, I had few friends, never went out, etc. I was a nerd archetype. In university, I joined a fraternity. My goal going in was just to hang out and see another side of social interaction. I absolutely did not go in with the intention of being in any kind of leadership capacity. Yet despite who I was in high school, and despite not wanting to lead, 3 years later I'm President of the fraternity. This happens with my group of friends, as well. It is just not possible for me not to lead or take charge. It is probably one of the most fundamental aspects of my personality. I cannot role-play something so alien to me as someone who takes a back seat. So when the game forces me to do this, I absolutely cannot for the life of me do it. It just breaks very strongly with my experience.

[In Exile]

Addai67 wrote..
It's true that in DAO, we were borrowing the Warden from the game writers and giving our own flesh to him or her.  And that does create dissonance at times because it's not completely free-form roleplay.  It's just a matter of the spectrum of dissonance.  Where on the spectrum does it become a game you don't care to invest time in, or even play at all?

I suppose I simply disagree that the bolded part is possible in absence of PC VO, in a game tha has VO.

Sylvius often makes the following point: it is incredibly dissonant for him to have the PC (or the party) subject to different rules than the NPCs or enemies. It is as if there are two laws of physics at work, special to the individual, and that's fundamentally counter-intuitive to the idea that laws apply universally.

In the same way, I cannot relate to a character in a medium where the PC is bound by different rules than the NPCs. I think non-VO is inferior to VO, but it would bother me much less if there was no VO in the game. That would allow for the player to play the active role that I like, and maintain consistency. Otherwise there is a system created that is just self-contradictory.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

It is not a matter of retconning the intent. But we disagree, remember, on what it means to intend to say a line. You believe it is possible to have far more control over what you say, on a conscious level, than I would ever grant.

For example, if I recall correctly you believe we can consciously control how we word a sentence prior to uttering it, or accurately control tone and inflection. None of these things are things we can actually do. So it is not a matter of ever having had this control. What matters is the purpose of an action and what it ought to achieve in the world.[/quote]
And yet, actors manage to say their lines correctly quite a bit.  Is that just random chance?

I think you're saying that if you construct the sentence as you go, then you'll sometimes say something you didn't mean to say, or not word it quite how you would have liked.  I'm perfectly willing to concede this, but then I'd assert that it's just sloppy to speak that way.

I write the sentence in my head first, and then I recite it.  In anything other than the most casual of settings, this is how I speak (because otherwise I might say something differently from how I would have consciously chosen).  In fact, if ever I do say something that differs meanginfully from what I wanted to say, I feel terrible, because if I'd stopped and thought about it for two seconds I wouldn't have made the mistake.

I don't particulary want to play a character who suffers from the same failings as I do, and certainly not more often than I do.
[quote]You misunderstand. It is not as if I reverse causation in game. Saying a thing causes a response, quite clearly. All that I am denying is that the specific dialogue choice which you have is at all open to interpretation. It is definite in virtue of how it was written. You cannot do the reverse with each line; must be forward causation. But the line simply is not ever ambiguous.[/quote]
Okay, but I want that causation to start earlier.  I want my intent to drive the line, and you're discerning intent from the line, when clearly they occur in the reverse order.
[quote]So I contend that both playstyles are mutually exclusive because they suppose contradictory things about what the dialogue system, and each line of dialogue, represents. [/quote]
You certainly couldn't play both ways simultaneously, but there's no reason you couldn't play the game one way, and then go back and replay the game using the other method.

[quote]I'm adamant they are not necessarily the literal things a character says.
[/quote]You and I also fundamentally disagree about story/gameplay segregation. It returns to multiple mental states. Insofar as you are one character in the game, you cannot be the party, even if the gameplay allows for control. Inversely, if you can represent multiple mental states, you cannot be any one character in the game.[/quote]
Why can't I switch back and forth and simply compartmentalise them?  Would it not be akin to playing multiple lead characters concurrently, where each day I load up a different character's save game and play from there?
[quote]In Exile wrote...

It is a more specific than that. I prefer a voiced PC to a non-voiced PC for this reason only when the NPCs are voiced and their actions are scripted. I believe a silent PC works fine as a forceful leader when there is no voiced dialogue. But once there is voiced dialogue for the NPCs, the PC becomes a side puppet.[/quote]
Wait.  So if some of the characters are voiced, you think the ones who are not are not speaking, or not taking an active role in the conversation?

Why not believe those lines are simply not modelled for you, much like the characters eating or sleeping (we never see those things either, but they must occur within the game world)?  Why are you choosing one interpretation over the other?  I know you don't like arbitrariness, so there has to be some sort of reason.
[quote]It is probably one of the most fundamental aspects of my personality. I cannot role-play something so alien to me as someone who takes a back seat. So when the game forces me to do this, I absolutely cannot for the life of me do it. It just breaks very strongly with my experience.[/quote]
And I have the opposite problem.

I actually a had a very interesting roleplaying experience in DAO stemming from an argument I had with someone on the ME forum.  He was arguing that no one roleplays anymore, and that people just play characters as themselves.  I pointed out that the vast majority of players wouldn't, in the game's circumstances, fight monsters or be a hero.  I think he then told me I was being stupid.

In response to this, I created a character in DAO whom I tried to play as much like me as possible.  He was a city elf rogue (rogue seemed like the class that required the least effort to learn to become), and he didn't take the initiative.  He had plans, but he didn't do anything with them.  He fled danger.  In groups he always deferred to those around him.  He was shy.  He avoided gaining combat skills so people wouldn't make him fight.  He thought a lot of his own intellect, so all his stat points went into cunning.  By level 12 he still could only wear the lowest-level armour, because his strength was still the minimum value.  Whenever there were quest-related decisions to make, he'd choose the option favoured by his companions (and if they disagreed, he'd choose the option presented last).  He managed to start fights by accident (he had no idea the dialogue path he'd chosen would lead to violence - he was always trying to be non-commital).  He'd always choose the dialogue option that was a question, since questions don't contain information and they would allow him to delay making a decision for longer.

And he was a joy to roleplay.  I haven't had a roleplaying experience that rewarding in quite some time.

But I'm confident the writers never foresaw that character, or made any effort to accommodate a character like him.

Now try to play a character like that in ME, where you can't even choose to ask questions because the paraphrase options on the wheel were often the wrong kind of sentence (declarative v. interrogative, for example).

[Vaeliorin]

[quote]In Exile wrote...
[quote]Vaeliorin wrote...
Yeah, I recognize the NW Eye.  [/quote]
Awesome. Now it's like old times. You and Sylvius just need to debate scaling.[/quote]
Scaling is good because it means the game is always challenging!

Actually, it doesn't, sadly, as DA was far too easy.
[quote]
[quote]The problem lies in knowing why my character is the way he is.  The past is what creates those personal tendencies.  What it boils down to, if I'm reading you right, is that you're essentially okay with the game telling you who your character is (as occurs in ME, since the voice actor and voice direction define how your character interacts with others) and I'd rather tell the game who my character is.[/quote]I think I'm starting to see our difference.

To a degree, you're right - I'm fine with the game telling me facts about my character. I don't want to say I am okay with the game telling me who my character is, because to me, past details are not equivalent to who someone is.

To put it anotherr way: I believe it is who you are that influences your reaction to events versus the other way around.

Let's take an example: we have a young child in high school who has been teasted. As an adult, the person does not view themselves as part of the group; the adult is very competitive, and wants to always be set apart from others on the basis of some quality or trait.

To you, as I understand it, the teasing would be a definitive event in the life of the person. The presence versus the absence of teasing could influence them to be a wholly other sort of person. This is why details, to you, are important, right?

I believe that the personality exists independent on such formative events. At birth, I see the majority of personality as already determined. All that life experience does is work as a tether. Birth provides you with your almost fixed position, and different events can move you in slightly different directions.

But in short, the issue for me is that I believe the facts about the character are not as important as who the character is. So it is perfectly reasonable for me (in say DA) to role-play an identical character from two different backgrounds, as it is plausible for me that they could be independently born with the same personality and their formative experiences are not very impotant (aside from minor things, like prejudice).[/quote]
That's an interesting view point.  It's one I don't share, obviously, but it's one I hadn't considered.  I also find it somewhat depressing (it makes me somewhat sad to think that I'd always be who I am, regardless of how I was raised), but that's neither here nor there.  Regardless, that does explain the difference between our viewpoints.

I do think, however, that beyond a certain age (probably early teens at the latest) only fairly major events can make significant changes to someone's personality.

[quote][quote]For example, there's a particular scenario in DA when a non-human character talks to the sisters outside the Chantry in Denerim.  The exchange always ends something like:

PC: I'm not ignorant and godless!
Chantry Sister: Of course not, dear.  You just don't know anything about the Chant and you don't have any gods.
PC: Never mind.

Now, with a 3rd person narrative, the PC voice is going to determine how your character says that last line, and it might be angry, or sullen, or any of a myriad of possibilities, but it's the developers who determine how your character responds.[/quote]

Ah, see, this is another point where we differ. To me, the deliver of the line is determined by the reaction of the NPC. The only points that I grant misunderstand to be possible are the points where the game acknowledges it. As to why I believe the NPC determines the response of the PC, I'll elaborate as I respond to the following segment.[/quote]
I'll admit, I don't really get this point.  I could understand it if you managed to never have a conversation in real life wherein someone misinterpreted what you said, but I find that happens to me fairly frequently.

[quote][quote]In a 1st person narrative without the voice, I have complete control of my character.  I know that, for example, my dwarven noble, realizes that he's rightfully lost a verbal sparring match, and is somewhat sheepish in his reply, with a slight delay before he actually answers.  My Dalish elf, on the other hand, takes this as yet another insult to his people and culture, and replies in a very angry way.

With the 3rd person, you have to let little details about your character like this go, as you can't control them.  Which would be fine, I suppose, if you were given enough detail about the character so that you could understand why the character acted like that, and have a coherent personality that incorporated this.  But I've never seen a game that even attempted to give me enough background about my character to understand why they were who they were, so in general, I dislike 3rd person narrative.  It also, in my opinion, hurts replayability, because your character is going to be essentially the same person every time (since the voice director has already determined who he is.)[/quote]
It's difficult for me to properly respond to that particular excerpt because I do not have more context into the conversation. I am assuming that when you speak about different tones in the reply, you are refering to the "never mind." Well, to begin with, the option is "Never mind." versus "Never mind!". The absence of the exclamation point makes it neccesarily a subdued response. I suppose your answer to this is that perhaps you see the dialogue choices as more variable than this (Sylvius is adamant these are not the literal things a character says). I simply do not ascribe to that. What is written is the literal statement that  is uttered. If the punctuation is such that the statement is subdued, then the actual statement is subdued.

So I would say there is no possible reason, with a first person narrative, that I could believe "Never mind" is an angry outburst. In fact, "Never mind" per the personality of my character could not possibly be an expression used as an outburst of any sort. The mere wording of it makes it impossible. I am very particular with the phrasing of words - somewhat like you are with character details. To me, certain phrasing in virtue of how they are phrased make certain attitudes impossible. So a "never mind" could never be sheepish on that alone.

So I would say that in this case, I simply do not experience the freedom you are speaking of in the 1st person case. The written dialogue is too defined for that.[/quote]
First of all, yes, I did mean the "Never mind." line.  I'd have given more context, but that part of the conversation is the only part I had readily available (I used it as a signature at one point, so I had it written down.)

Huh.  It would seem you take punctuation much more seriously than I do.  While I generally accept that the content of any given line is determined within the game, as well as the phrasing as long as it isn't too far out of character, I generally ignore punctuation beyond determining whether something is a question or not.  I'll add pauses, hesitations, etc., whatever is appropriate for the character.

Phrasing isn't something I think matters as much as you do.  I think pretty much any phrase can be used in pretty much any way, provided it's given the right tone.  I can easily see "Never mind" being used as kind of a snarled, angry response when someone doesn't actually have an adequate response to someone who has just one-upped them in an argument.

Anyway, I certainly understand your point, though obviously I don't agree.
[quote]
[quote]The problem here, as I see it, is that in a 3rd person narrative, while you may have control over your character's attitude and emotions, you can't know for a certain why the person acts the way they do.  [/quote]Ah, but I do. It is because they are that way. This goes back to the point I mentioned above. It is not the facts about a character that make them who they are, but who they are that determines their reaction to events in their lives.[/quote]
Essentially, nature vs. nurture, with you leaning towards nature and me leaning towards nurture.  I get what you're saying, even if I don't agree.
[quote]
[quote]There's always the chance that the game will break your reasoning for why your character is the way he is.  For example, in ME, the first time I played it, I played with a Spacer/War Hero character.  Now, the blurbs describing the background doesn't give much information, so I decide to play a Shepard who's parents have died, not through any unusual means, just from natural causes.  That was something that was important to his character, and influenced how he interacted with others.  Now, all of a sudden the game goes and tells me that not only are Shepard's parents alive, but he can just wander into the Normandy's communication center and call them.  There goes all my connection to the character, because some of my fundamental understandings of who he is, and why he is that way, have just been shattered.[/quote]I appreciate this disconnect. Like I said above - it is simply a matter of the detail not being relevant. I am quite firmly in the people do not change camp, and see personality as something unbending. Now, to qualify this, what I see as unbending is not a uniform series of traits independent of situation. So if I were to say, Shepard is an extrovert, I do not mean he is always outgoing. What I instead mean is that there is a set of situations where he is always outgoing independent of experience. He could be quite withdrawn at a club party, but the most talkative in the room at a house party (where there is no loud music). This is Walter Mischel's model of personality, and there is a fair amount of empirical evidence behind this kind of situational responding.[/quote]
While I'm not quite in the people do not change camp, I do certainly understand what you're saying.  Personal experience demonstrates that everyone isn't going to be the same in every situation (for example, I tend to be very gregarious with groups of people who are close friends, but in any group with strangers I fade entirely into the background.)

Anyway, like I said earlier, I do believe that people can change, but it requires a major event for a significant change to occur beyond a certain (fairly young) age.  A betrayal by a trusted friend, tragic death of a loved one, etc.
[quote][quote]I've got to be honest and tell you that, while I understand your point here, it's not an issue I share.  Nor do I understand those who object to 3D models.  For one thing, I (generally) never took the 2D portrait appearances as literally what my character looked like.  I simply went looking until I found a picture that I felt best conveyed my characters appearance, and simply used that.The exception to this was when I built a character from the ground up, working with the portrait as a means of generating ideas about who the character was.[/quote]
I never do the latter - I have a very clear personality and a very clear apperance in mind whenI I play games. It's easily generalizable, but perhaps why I don't appreciate certain features of customization as much as others. [/quote]
I'm not sure I understand you here.  Are you saying that you always play the same personality/appearance?  If so, I think that's probably part of our disconnect.  I play a wide range of characters, and as such, I definitely appreciate a lot of customization.  This isn't to say that I have a problem with a fixed protagonist (after all, I think Planescape:Torment is probably the best game ever made) but I have a problem with a fixed protagonist who also has a fixed personality that isn't adequately explained.

Anyway, I don't just build a character from a picture on a whim.  I generally only do it when a particular image catches my eye, and I want to use it, and to explore who the person I see in the picture is.
[quote][quote]3-D models I'm more willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but if I can't get an image that I feel perfectly refects my character, it's again something I don't stress about.  Whether 2D or 3D, the image that exists in the game is only a best representation of what my character actually looks like, the real image being in my head.
[/quote]
For me, that is not possible. It would be like saying, what I see in the mirror is not my face, but the best representation of my face, the real apperance being in my head. It is simply not possible for me to have what I see as this sort of break with the defined.[/quote]
Well, I'd argue that we all see ourselves differently than we actually appear in the mirror, but that's neither here nor there.  I suppose I just don't take games as literally as you seem to.

[quote][quote]I find that interesting.  I can't help but wonder how much speculative fiction you read when you were young, and how early you started role-playing, simply because I wonder if that had something to do with how your imagination works. [/quote]
I've never played a pen & paper RPG, if that counts. I'm young (only barely past 20; don't want to give out my real age ) and I came to North America from Eastern Europe more than a decade ago. These things were just not available there. The first RPG I owned was NWN but the first I played legitimately was KoTOR. I'm not a patient person and I didn't care for learning D&D from scratch. I just saw my level 1 character miss 90% of the time, die almost always, and have no useful spells, thought the game sucked and that was that. Came back to it much later.

I was an avid reader when I was young - to be honest, speculative fiction is all that I read.

What I do think may be at work is that things were not as common in Eastern Europe as they are here. I came from a weathy family, but things were simply not available. My first computer, 1996, only ran MS-DOS and the first video-games I played were Lemmings and Prince of Persia. When I came to North America and say games like Warcraft II and Age of Empires, I was effectively beside myself as to how advance technology was.

Most of the time, toys were difficult to get. I would watch shows on TV, say the power rangers, but they would often be re-runs or out of order, so I would "continue' adventures on my own using lego blocks and such. This is why I personally think I do not like imagination in video-games - once I start imagining something, it becomes my story and I want to direct it in ways that widely diverge from the game. The game is simply incapable of supporting my imagination, so I have to restrict it.[/quote]
That certainly explains a lot.  As Sylvius said, it seems that you missed (for the most part) the era when RPGs left most of the details to your imagination.  You're used to taking things in game literally, while I'm used to taking things as a best possible representation, so I expect to fill in any of the gaps I think exist with my own imagination.  PnP games push me even farther into filling in details with my own imagination, so I just naturally do that with any sort of interactive story medium.

[quote]For example, where it up to me, my human noble would convice the Landsmeet that Alistair, being a bastard, is not an appropriate King. But Anora is a commoner on both sides of the family and a traitor who supported Loghain despite her suspect her husband was killed; in fact, there is no evidence that she did not conspire to kill Cailin and take the throne for herself. Far better to have a Cousland than either a bastard of uncertain parentage or a commoner traitor. Of course, this is not a possible option. But I could run with this, imagine a civil war and a land dividied against the blight.... etc.

But once I do it I can't 'return' to the game, so to speak.[/quote]
I can certainly understand being frustrated with the limited choices.  Again, from having played RPGs from such a young age, it just comes naturally to me to want things to go a certain way, even to play it out in my head, but within the game itself work within the confines the game has given to me.

Honestly...I'm beginning to think the entirety of our differences are due to a generational gap.

[quote][quote] I've been reading fantasy (and Choose Your Own Adventure books) basically since I could read, and I would always imagine myself doing things in those settings, or even tagging along with the heroes in whatever I was reading.[/quote]
To me, I took the basic plot setting and created my own world. So I would have my own adventure. Either with the heroes or with me as the main character. But not anchored to their story; my imagination would be the writer and direction. It doesn't play well with others, so to speak.[/quote]
I find this interesting.  I can see what you're saying, even if it doesn't reflect my own experiences.  I imagine there's some psychological explanation for the way that people's imaginations differ, but I can't even begin to guess at it, so I'm not going to out myself as a moron by trying.

[quote][quote]Anyway, as to your Duncan not dying example...I honestly can't imagine someone doing that.  It's one thing to explain away misunderstandings, or potentially inconsistent reactions in conversation, but to rationalize away factual occurrences within the game world goes a bit beyond the pale.[/quote]
Oh, I don't think anyone would. That was just meant to illustrate how inconsistent reactions in the coversation feel to me . They are incredibly real. And overwriting them using my imagination feels like pretending parts of te game didn't happen. That's why I can't do it and can't really understand it.[/quote]
Ah, I see.  To me, these inconsistencies don't ever occur.  I always know what my character is saying and how he's saying it, and when the NPC's response isn't what I expect, I just chalk that up to communication being imperfect.  But I can certainly see where you're having a problem, since you use an NPC's reaction to determine the tone of what your character said.

[quote][quote]As to your Alistair's parentage example, I would reply that there's any number of times when I've tried to say something sarcastic and someone has taken it the wrong way and ended up mad at me.  As such, Alistair's -5 approval (which isn't a tangible thing within the game world) makes complete sense.  Attempting to rationalize it in such a way that Alistair didn't disapprove, however, is somewhat nonsensical.  You control your character, and only your character, and have to interact with the in game world on it's terms, not yours.[/quote]
Sylvius would disagree with you on that last sentence. His opinion is that you can control other characters, so long as you are faithful to their personality. I thought that was the typical RPG position? Guess not.[/quote]
Yeah, this is one point where Sylvius and I disagree.  I don't think I ever control anything about what the other characters in my party do, beyond their actions in combat (and the only reason I do that is because AI is dumb and there's yet to be a good system to issue orders that doesn't involve directly taking control.)

Even in games where I create the entire party, there's almost always one character that I think of as "my character" with the rest of the characters being that character's companions.  The only exception to this is games wherein the characters literally can't act without my input (so, turn-based games) at which point I generally consider myself as playing the entire party.
[quote]That being said, it is plausible that the line would anger Alistair, but the fact that the game never recognizes it as sarcastic or gives me an indication of it makes me think Alistair plaid it straight. Like I said: I can only know the tone of things that are said based on reactions to it. This is how I read non-VO. I understand that this is not how others do it, but this is the disconnect I have with silent VO games, and why those PCs are less real to me than in a game like ME.
[/quote]
This is, to me, a weird way to play, but I see what you're saying.  You've basically turned over your character's moment to moment details to the writers.  I can't do that, because it almost always results in my character not making much sense to me.  I just rely on the fallibility of human communication to understand the occasional seeming disconnect.

Anyway, like I mentioned earlier, I'm beginning to think the problem is a generational one.  The games of my youth (which completely lacked voicing...the first game I remember having voice was Realms of Arkania:Star Trails.  It was also the first game I ever owned on CD. ) raised me to play one particular way, and the games you've played (which for the most part have all had at least some degree of voiceover) have conditioned you to expect something else.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
[quote]It is probably one of the most
fundamental aspects of my personality. I cannot role-play something so
alien to me as someone who takes a back seat. So when the game forces me
to do this, I absolutely cannot for the life of me do it. It just
breaks very strongly with my experience.[/quote]
And I have the
opposite problem.[/quote]
I have to admit, I'm with Sylvius on this.  Though I'm capable of taking charge and leading, I hate doing it, so I avoid it whenever possible.  As such, it's very natural for me to play a character who's more passive.  Perhaps that's why it doesn't bother me at all for my character to not be very active physically in conversation (that, and it prevents my character from doing horribly out of character things like Shepard tended to do, such as violently threatening C-Sec officers.)

Modifié par Vaeliorin, 17 juillet 2010 - 12:34 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Vaeliorin wrote...

This is, to me, a weird way to play, but I see what you're saying.  You've basically turned over your character's moment to moment details to the writers.  I can't do that, because it almost always results in my character not making much sense to me.

This is a really good way to put it.

The vast majority of people I meet in the real world don't make much esense to me.  I don't really understand why they do the things they do, and I see them routinely making what I think are rudimentary errors in reasoning (they think I often fail to grasp the meaning of simple phrases - I concede I sometimes don't undersatnd things, but I dispute that the phrases in question are as simple as they claim).

On the other hand, I understand how I think and how I choose to do things really well.  In order to make decisions, I need to know what's going on in my head.  The same is true of a player character; in order to make decisions for him, I need to know what's going on in his head.  And if he's presented to be as if he's someone else (meaning I'm not inside his mind) then I'm never going to know what's going on iside his head anymore than I do with people I meet in the world.  As I've said before to Virgil, I am not a mind-reader.

This is why I (like you) can't turn over the moment-to-moment details to the writers, because if I do that I'm entirely unable to make decisions on his behalf.

[In Exile]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
And yet, actors manage to say their lines correctly quite a bit.  Is that just random chance? [/quote]

But actors are not people, and actors do not say their lines correctly in the first instance (they often do not remember them, since they have yet to memorize the script) and have a director to occasionally tell them which tone they should take. Other actors are given a lot of leeway with their script, to use whatever tone or inflection they feel is appropriate.

In other words, not only is the analogy not appropriate, but it is not actually the case the actors can immediately and perfectly reproduce writing.

[quote]I think you're saying that if you construct the sentence as you go, then you'll sometimes say something you didn't mean to say, or not word it quite how you would have liked.  I'm perfectly willing to concede this, but then I'd assert that it's just sloppy to speak that way.[/quote]

No, that's not quite what I am saying. I am saying that you construct sentences as you go; not a conditiional at all. It is very difficult to not construct sentences as you go. It is possible, because language is cognitively penetrable (I believe I defined this above, yes?) but it requires excessive time and is not how a natural conversation flows.

I believe that people almost always convey their appropriate intent in a conversation. The only time this does not happen is when the other person is lacking in the skill neccesary to interpret it. But language is quite intuitive and automatic.

Thinking about how you're speaking, is, well, like thinking about how you're walking. It's just going to create an inferior product relative to the goal. Yes, in principle you could argue that were you to consciously force your leg into a specific spot, at a specific time, etc. you would have far greater control over what you are doing (in the same way that if you were to invest a lot of time to structure your sentences, you would have greater control); but it is unlikely this will actually improve your accuracy in communication at all and if anything make it much harder to communicate based on the degree to which you are getting away from conventions in communication.

[quote]I write the sentence in my head first, and then I recite it.  In anything other than the most casual of settings, this is how I speak (because otherwise I might say something differently from how I would have consciously chosen).  In fact, if ever I do say something that differs meanginfully from what I wanted to say, I feel terrible, because if I'd stopped and thought about it for two seconds I wouldn't have made the mistake.[/quote]

Whereas when I'm doing anything (say including typing on this forum), I'm simultaenously reading your post and replying with what I intend to say. Short of writing an essay (and even then, it is largely intuitive versus planned) I don't dwell on how it is I'm expressing an idea.

That being said, what you consider differing meaningfully is not what we could say, as a rule, differs meaningfully. Since the actual choice of words and the sentence itself only conveys a small portion of the total information and meaning you are providing in any one conversation, your conscious control over language actually has very little do to with the extent to of what you're saying.

This forum artifically restricts us to writing; but the majority of communication is non-verbal. There are lots of reasons for this (including the fact that communication preceeds language as an evolutionary module).

[quote]I don't particulary want to play a character who suffers from the same failings as I do, and certainly not more often than I do.[/quote]

With the exception being that this isn't a failing.

[quote]Okay, but I want that causation to start earlier.  I want my intent to drive the line, and you're discerning intent from the line, when clearly they occur in the reverse order.[/quote]

No, we're still not on the same page. The writer has written one line. Then, the writer writes the other line as a complementary line. Regardless of whether the writer has created the PC response or the NPC response first, he writes them as a coherent unit. This act of writing removes your ability to add your own meaning to the line.

Are you familiar with Dworkin's theory of natural law? It's a theory of how law should be interpreted. My position is similar to that on the video-game dialogue side, if it helps as an analogy. Insofar as linguistic interpretation is concerned, by claim is that insofar as something is said or witten by someone, that something already has an implicit meaning and intent.

[quote]You certainly couldn't play both ways simultaneously, but there's no reason you couldn't play the game one way, and then go back and replay the game using the other method.[/quote]

Yes, there is. If you assume what I've said above about linguistic interpretation. You are asking me to believe an entirely different thing about language is true. It is like my asking you to abandon your beliefs regarding meaning. Certainly if you do, you can play games as I do. But you are effectively changing a lot of your beliefs about the world to do so.

[quote]Why can't I switch back and forth and simply compartmentalise them?  Would it not be akin to playing multiple lead characters concurrently, where each day I load up a different character's save game and play from there?[/quote]

The lead characters are each independent units in the world. The party is a hive-mind. This is the best analogy I can provide.

But we are back to what I think is our core disagreement (I need to really send you that PM) regarding part/whole. I would wager that you think parts explain a whole. So for you, to say you are each individual character in the party explains that you are the party. Whereas for me, even if it were possible to be each individual character in the party, being each individual character would not explain being the party. You could only be the party if you were a gestalt entity at a higher order, and if this were true, you would no longer be each individual in the party.

A good example is a duck. A duck is more than just the entities that comprise it. A duck is the entities comprising it meaningfully arranged in the structure of a duck. If I simply throw a bag filled with all the parts of a duck - guts, blood, lungs, etc. - on a table, I haven't given you a duck. This is similar.

[quote]Wait.  So if some of the characters are voiced, you think the ones who are not are not speaking, or not taking an active role in the conversation?[/quote]

Yes. But I think that this is because we foreground and background different aspects of our experience when playing a game. I simply do not foreground (or believe) that there is an independent living world which I am playing in that has "blanks" that are to be filled. I'm foregrounding my experience as a player. To put it another way, as I play the game and RP, I am very much aware that it is a game, and the focus for my perceptual and intellectual experience is not a character in the game, but me watching the game. So insofar as the game does not show it, I do not see it.

[quote]Why not believe those lines are simply not modelled for you, much like the characters eating or sleeping (we never see those things either, but they must occur within the game world)?  Why are you choosing one interpretation over the other?  I know you don't like arbitrariness, so there has to be some sort of reason. [/quote]

See above. There is no game world that things occur under.

Now, I would suspect your reply would be that this is incoherent. How could I meaningfully role-play (among other things) if I do not believe there is a game-world in any meaningfully sense? The answer to that it is that I do believe there is a game-world; I simply do not believe it is an independent world.

Remember when we were debating gameplay, and you argued that for the sake of coherence the PC and NPCs in the party ought to be subject to the same rules as all other characters? And I said this is not neccesarily true; this is just supposing that the universality of rules we believe applies to our world has to apply to their world, but there is no reason why we could not believe each person is subject to a special and independent set of physical rules that are close enough to be indistinguishable?

It is the same thing here. I do not need to believe the game-world is subject to the same rules as the real world. It is why I segregate gameplay and story to begin with.

[quote]And I have the opposite problem.

I actually a had a very interesting roleplaying experience in DAO stemming from an argument I had with someone on the ME forum.  He was arguing that no one roleplays anymore, and that people just play characters as themselves.  I pointed out that the vast majority of players wouldn't, in the game's circumstances, fight monsters or be a hero.  I think he then told me I was being stupid. [/quote]

I think his argument would be a sort of Cartesian "essence" transfer. That is, players become an idealized heroic versions of themselves in the game. Now, your reply might be (I'm extrapolating, but sometimes we think similarly, and this would be my reply) that once you start removing and adding features to an "essence" (supposing we grant these exist) how could we possibly have the same thing at all?

I think the answer is effectively that most people believe that they are greater than they currently are, and in fact are capable of doing all of these great things. It's why polls asking people to predict their success have something like 60% of their population think they will be top 5% in income when in college.

[quote]In response to this, I created a character in DAO whom I tried to play as much like me as possible.  He was a city elf rogue (rogue seemed like the class that required the least effort to learn to become), and he didn't take the initiative.  He had plans, but he didn't do anything with them.  He fled danger.  In groups he always deferred to those around him.  He was shy.  He avoided gaining combat skills so people wouldn't make him fight.  He thought a lot of his own intellect, so all his stat points went into cunning.  By level 12 he still could only wear the lowest-level armour, because his strength was still the minimum value.  Whenever there were quest-related decisions to make, he'd choose the option favoured by his companions (and if they disagreed, he'd choose the option presented last).  He managed to start fights by accident (he had no idea the dialogue path he'd chosen would lead to violence - he was always trying to be non-commital).  He'd always choose the dialogue option that was a question, since questions don't contain information and they would allow him to delay making a decision for longer.

And he was a joy to roleplay.  I haven't had a roleplaying experience that rewarding in quite some time.

But I'm confident the writers never foresaw that character, or made any effort to accommodate a character like him.[/quote]

I would argue that they failed to accomodate him, and you were only able to play him in parts because of how the game was constrained. But then you and I have different theories regarding leadership, so we would disagree for example, whether or not this character could ever have ranks in persuade and could ever succesfully convince and hold toghether the party long enough to complete the game.

This is the issue with arguing that the silent-VO allows for a breath of options. The game forces a significant number of outcomes on you if you do not die during the course of the game (you cannot fail to convice the dwarves or have your party walk out on you for lack of respect). To an extent, I think this allows personalities that would not otherwise be able to suceeed to suceed and creates the apparent illusion that games support those characters.

[quote]Now try to play a character like that in ME, where you can't even choose to ask questions because the paraphrase options on the wheel were often the wrong kind of sentence (declarative v. interrogative, for example).[/quote]

That goes back to the wheel being poor implementation, which I agree with, but is different from the debate regarding VO.

Modifié par In Exile, 17 juillet 2010 - 04:15 .

[In Exile]

[quote]Vaeliorin wrote...
Scaling is good because it means the game is always challenging!

Actually, it doesn't, sadly, as DA was far too easy. [/quote]

On nightmare, no less. I think the fact that the encounters weren't sufficiently tactical was the problem.


[quote]
That's an interesting view point.  It's one I don't share, obviously, but it's one I hadn't considered.  I also find it somewhat depressing (it makes me somewhat sad to think that I'd always be who I am, regardless of how I was raised), but that's neither here nor there.  Regardless, that does explain the difference between our viewpoints.

I do think, however, that beyond a certain age (probably early teens at the latest) only fairly major events can make significant changes to someone's personality. [/quote]

To say that you are who you are regardless of how you are raised is too strong of a claim. I wouldn't go so far as to say that. But I would say that who you are is determined to a very large extent by birth.

So for example - you could be more competitive than othes, but depending on how you were raised, this might mean different things.

And never discount the effects of poor child-rearing as things can affect aspects of personality (for example, how well your caregivers treat you as a child affects how you form romantic relationships as an adult).

The issue with looking at how dramatically kinds change and supposing nurture as largely the explanation for that change is that there is a dramatic cognitive and neurological maturation that takes place. In a very real sense children do not have the same brain at 3 that they do at 8.

Beyond that, things like temperment we can predict with a high degree of accuracy from the behaviour of infants.

This is all empirical. But the main point is that in no way I am (or modern psychology) making the claim you are a defined person at birth, and that events in your life do not influence who you are. They most certainly do. It is just arguable the extent to which they influence you, and it is clear nature gives you a starting point.

Is that a little clearer?

[quote]I'll admit, I don't really get this point.  I could understand it if you managed to never have a conversation in real life wherein someone misinterpreted what you said, but I find that happens to me fairly frequently.[/quote]

It happens occasionally; I`m not denying that. What I am saying, however, is that in a game we do not have the luxury of clarifying misunderstands as we do in real life. To me, something that does not happen as illustrated on screen does not happen in the game, period.

So when I say a line, and am provided with no option to clarify it (or if I can clarify it but not as I intended) I can only assume that the line was meant to be played straight.

To put it another way: a game is characteristically unlike real life because the number of unique ways you can express yourself are not infinite but rather 2 (although there may be 4-5 options, if they lead to the same outcome, I do not neccesarily see them as unique expression).

[quote]First of all, yes, I did mean the "Never mind." line.  I'd have given more context, but that part of the conversation is the only part I had readily available (I used it as a signature at one point, so I had it written down.)

Huh.  It would seem you take punctuation much more seriously than I do.  While I generally accept that the content of any given line is determined within the game, as well as the phrasing as long as it isn't too far out of character, I generally ignore punctuation beyond determining whether something is a question or not.  I'll add pauses, hesitations, etc., whatever is appropriate for the character.[/quote]

But punctuation matters very much to the meaning of the line. Even if the game had no VO, would we not assume that punctuation for the NPCs accurately indicates how they phrase things? Or would you say that I am justified in a game like BG or NWN to think that every NPC is constantly screaming irrespective of punctuation? And if we play punctuation straight for NPCs, why ought I not do the same for the PC?

To me, the line is said as written. For there to be a pause, there must be a pause there. For there to be hesitation, the line should have at least a `...` before the dialogue. Otherwise I play it straight.

[quote]Phrasing isn't something I think matters as much as you do.  I think pretty much any phrase can be used in pretty much any way, provided it's given the right tone.  I can easily see "Never mind" being used as kind of a snarled, angry response when someone doesn't actually have an adequate response to someone who has just one-upped them in an argument.

Anyway, I certainly understand your point, though obviously I don't agree.[/quote]

I think I was a little too strong with the language I used in the previous post because what very particular means for a person like me is not the same for everyone; I am probably the least methodical and particualr person in the world, so generally when I say I am particular I probably mean, relative to everyone else, I am now at the average expected level of attention to detail.

I just think certain expressions cannot be used in certain ways. Now, I`m sure in the absolute case you agree with me, insofar as `never mind`could never be a tender declaration of love. The issue is to what extent each range of meaning is possible with a phrase, and I can`t escape my own preconceptions about this when role-playing.

[quote]Essentially, nature vs. nurture, with you leaning towards nature and me leaning towards nurture.  I get what you're saying, even if I don't agree. [/quote]

Yes, with a very strong emphasis on lean. I think both nature and nurture have a role in determining personality. I simply think the role of nurture is subordinate and defines details, whereas nature is dominant and determines archetype, or the major dominant personality aspects of the individual.

[quote]While I'm not quite in the people do not change camp, I do certainly understand what you're saying.  Personal experience demonstrates that everyone isn't going to be the same in every situation (for example, I tend to be very gregarious with groups of people who are close friends, but in any group with strangers I fade entirely into the background.)

Anyway, like I said earlier, I do believe that people can change, but it requires a major event for a significant change to occur beyond a certain (fairly young) age.  A betrayal by a trusted friend, tragic death of a loved one, etc. [/quote]

I would agree, but I think the range of change is much more narrow. So to go back to our example, betrayal by a male friend might make one less likely to trust male friends, but not neccesarily less likely to trust romantic partners. I also think that trust is relative - so a person that naturally does not trust others might, after a betrayal, not really trust anyone any less because this person always failed to trust people (now the person just consciously thinks they do not trust others) whereras a trusting person may trust other people less but still trust them more than the average person. So I tend to have a highly complicated and compartmentalized view of how nature changes a personality.

All of this is why I prefer not to ever worry about the details because they just make things far too complicated.

[quote]I'm not sure I understand you here.  Are you saying that you always play the same personality/appearance?  If so, I think that's probably part of our disconnect.  I play a wide range of characters, and as such, I definitely appreciate a lot of customization.  This isn't to say that I have a problem with a fixed protagonist (after all, I think Planescape:Torment is probably the best game ever made) but I have a problem with a fixed protagonist who also has a fixed personality that isn't adequately explained.

Anyway, I don't just build a character from a picture on a whim.  I generally only do it when a particular image catches my eye, and I want to use it, and to explore who the person I see in the picture is.[/quote]

Insofar as apperance is concerned, I always strive to make sure the character is attractive by my standards. I have character types I like with associated apperances, but I do have more than one stock character I use. I tend to have a much more narrow range of apperances than personalities however, as there is just a very narrow range of features I find attractive.

But this leads to problems like never being able to RP dwarves because of vanity. 

As for the exploring part, this I never do. But I think this is just a personal trait, wherein I generally do not actually care about the background of others. Which is kind of weird when you think about it, because I study psychology and enjoy it. So for whatever reason I don`t ever care to learn about people (in the specific sense)... but I want to learn about people (in the general sense).

[quote]
Well, I'd argue that we all see ourselves differently than we actually appear in the mirror, but that's neither here nor there.  I suppose I just don't take games as literally as you seem to.[/quote]

Well, I actually agree there. (also, interesting fact: if you show a person a picture of how they look in the mirror but reversed, i.e. how the rest of the world sees them, people will rate it as dramatically less attractive than the mirror-flipped picture because it is less familiar). I was just trying to illustrate a point.

[quote]That certainly explains a lot.  As Sylvius said, it seems that you missed (for the most part) the era when RPGs left most of the details to your imagination.  You're used to taking things in game literally, while I'm used to taking things as a best possible representation, so I expect to fill in any of the gaps I think exist with my own imagination.  PnP games push me even farther into filling in details with my own imagination, so I just naturally do that with any sort of interactive story medium.[/quote]

I think that`s a fair point. It is impossible for me to consider a video-game as a medium where you use your imagination. But I`m not sure this has to do with the generation gap so strongly, because I`m not sure I would have ever felt connected or been capable of RPing in either a PnP setting or with the text-based games.

I played adventure games that are text-based when I was in Eastern Europe, but to me it just felt like a huge abstraction and it was very clear I was playing a game (leisure suit larry for the win). But that might also be because I was like 7 at the time. So who knows. 

[quote]I can certainly understand being frustrated with the limited choices.  Again, from having played RPGs from such a young age, it just comes naturally to me to want things to go a certain way, even to play it out in my head, but within the game itself work within the confines the game has given to me.

Honestly...I'm beginning to think the entirety of our differences are due to a generational gap.[/quote]

Now I`m getting curious. I wonder if we could poll VO and non-VO and other sources of disagreement in our RPGs and see if it is a generational gap at work or not.

[quote]I find this interesting.  I can see what you're saying, even if it doesn't reflect my own experiences.  I imagine there's some psychological explanation for the way that people's imaginations differ, but I can't even begin to guess at it, so I'm not going to out myself as a moron by trying. [/quote]

It could be a personality issue. You and I, compared to you and Sylvius, have different personalities. It may be that because I am more of a person that likes to be visible and in front of others, and instead of dissapearing within a group, leading it and being in the centre of it, it may be that my imagination simply needs to make itself front-row-centre too.

[quote]Ah, I see.  To me, these inconsistencies don't ever occur.  I always know what my character is saying and how he's saying it, and when the NPC's response isn't what I expect, I just chalk that up to communication being imperfect.  But I can certainly see where you're having a problem, since you use an NPC's reaction to determine the tone of what your character said.[/quote]

It is not quite like that. Like I said to Sylvius: I think the line is defined from the moment I pick it. In practice I have to reason backwards since I don`t know what the NPC would say to the line until picking it, but to me the entire affair was determined long ago.

It`s actually why I feel I can`t roleplay on the first playthrough.


[quote]Yeah, this is one point where Sylvius and I disagree.  I don't think I ever control anything about what the other characters in my party do, beyond their actions in combat (and the only reason I do that is because AI is dumb and there's yet to be a good system to issue orders that doesn't involve directly taking control.)

Even in games where I create the entire party, there's almost always one character that I think of as "my character" with the rest of the characters being that character's companions.  The only exception to this is games wherein the characters literally can't act without my input (so, turn-based games) at which point I generally consider myself as playing the entire party.[/quote]

I really prefer party-based control to AI. Not just because the AI is dumb, but because it`s more fun.

I couldn`t even get through IWD so I think I`m not a pure party game person.

[quote]This is, to me, a weird way to play, but I see what you're saying.  You've basically turned over your character's moment to moment details to the writers.  I can't do that, because it almost always results in my character not making much sense to me.  I just rely on the fallibility of human communication to understand the occasional seeming disconnect.[/quote]

The problem is that I cannot clarify these misunderstandings. It is not that I turn control over to the writers. The writers simply have control in virtue of how they have written the lines and what options they provide me. When there is a misunderstanding my only options are supposing I do not care to clarify it which means I have to invent a motivation to rationalize the game or that there was a breakdown in the writers conveying the meaning of the line to me.

[quote]Anyway, like I mentioned earlier, I'm beginning to think the problem is a generational one.  The games of my youth (which completely lacked voicing...the first game I remember having voice was Realms of Arkania:Star Trails.  It was also the first game I ever owned on CD. ) raised me to play one particular way, and the games you've played (which for the most part have all had at least some degree of voiceover) have conditioned you to expect something else.[/quote]

Technically, I played MS-DOS games first. And then strategy games. But I never played RPGs without voice-over save NWN early. And I didn`t know what role-playing was when I played NWN.

[quote]I have to admit, I'm with Sylvius on this.  Though I'm capable of taking charge and leading, I hate doing it, so I avoid it whenever possible.  As such, it's very natural for me to play a character who's more passive.  Perhaps that's why it doesn't bother me at all for my character to not be very active physically in conversation (that, and it prevents my character from doing horribly out of character things like Shepard tended to do, such as violently threatening C-Sec officers.)
[/quote]

Possibly. Though I`m not ever physically active in conversations. I`m a short guy; I`m not throttling anyone by the neck any time soon. But I do stand out. I can`t help but want to stand out. It`s just impossible for me to be passive. Like I a class seminar. I have two modes: 1) half paying attention to the lecture half playing minesweeper because I am not speaking; 2) speaking.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

No, that's not quite what I am saying. I am saying that you construct sentences as you go; not a conditiional at all. It is very difficult to not construct sentences as you go. It is possible, because language is cognitively penetrable (I
believe I defined this above, yes?) but it requires excessive time and is not how a natural conversation flows.[/quote]
The time isn't excessive if that's the time necessary to achieve the objective.

And you're using "natural" like a value judgment.  Who cares how a natural conversation flows if speaking in the manner that produces that natural flow leads to lesser outcomes with regard to expressing oneself?
[quote]I believe that people almost always convey their appropriate intent in a conversation.[/quote]I find they routinely don't.  People will say things (or even write things) that are demonstrably nonsensical.  unless they're insane, that can't have been their intent.  And whether others understand them is, I think, only tangential to whether they expressed themselves well.

What we call communication is two different events.  One person speaks, and the other interprets.  Neither has any control over the other.
[quote]The only time this does not happen is when the other person is lacking in the skill neccesary to interpret it. But language is quite intuitive and automatic.[/quote]
I dispute the existence of intuitive knowledge.
[quote]Thinking about how you're speaking, is, well, like thinking about how you're walking. It's just going to create an inferior product relative to the goal. Yes, in principle you could argue that were you to consciously force your leg into a specific spot, at a specific time, etc. you would have far greater control over what you are doing (in the same way that if you were to invest a lot of time to structure your sentences, you would have greater control); but it is unlikely this will actually improve your accuracy in communication at all and if anything make it much harder to communicate based on the degree to which you are getting away from conventions in communication.[/quote]
What do you think communication is that me actually saying the thing I want to say more often is somehow making the quality of my speech outcomes worse?

I don't understand that at all.  If I construct sentences on the fly, I make mistakes at a certain rate.  If I don't construct sentences on the fly, I make mistakes at a lesser rate.  Is there some other standard I should be
using to measure the two systems, because my way looks unequivocally better.
[quote]Whereas when I'm doing anything (say including typing on this forum), I'm simultaenously reading your post and replying with what I intend to say. Short of writing an essay (and even then, it is largely intuitive versus planned) I don't dwell on how it is I'm expressing an idea.[/quote]
I often go through two or three draughts of a sentence before I speak it.  I need to take into account the particular interpretation tendencies of my audience, and since those differ from mine I won't usally get it right on my first try.

In my experience, people interpret sentences differently enough from each otehr that it's worth the effort to
construct sentences differently for each of them.  For those people who interpret sentences the way I do, it's much easier to construct sentences, and I rarely need to edit them.  In those circumstances, I can speak without pre-writing.  Off the top of my head, I can think of fewer than 5 such people.  I do hope my daughter grows to be one of them (she's 2 years old), but her mother is not.  None of my colleagues are (to my knowledge, and it
would be reckless of me to assume so).
[quote]Since the actual choice of words and the sentence itself only conveys a small portion of the total information and meaning you are providing in any one conversation, your conscious control over language actually has very little do to with the extent to of what you're saying.[/quote]
And this I also dispute.  People do try to glean information from non-verbal cues, but I think they're guessing.  Their error rate is too great for them to claim they're actually interpreting something real, and if they were they
should be able to tell me how it works so I can do it too.
[quote]This forum artifically restricts us to writing; but the majority of communication is non-verbal. There are lots of reasons for this (including the fact that communication preceeds language as an evolutionary module).[/quote]
Ignoring my general denial that communication is a thing, whether language comes later is immaterial.  Language can supplant other means of expression.  And since language is the only place we find any formal definitions, it's a far more useful means of expression than its predecessors.
[quote]With the exception being that this isn't a failing.[/quote]If it produces inferior outcomes (the outcome being: did I say what I wanted to say), yes it is.

The only reasonable way for me to measure my success when speaking is to measure how often I say what I want to say.
[quote]No, we're still not on the same page. The writer has written one line. Then, the writer writes the other line as a complementary line. Regardless of whether the writer has created the PC response or the NPC
response first, he writes them as a coherent unit. This act of writing removes your ability to add your own meaning to the line.[/quote]
You're making a leap I don't understand.  Yes, the writer writes the lines as a coherent unit.  I don't see why that then forces me to view them as a coherent unit.
[quote]Are you familiar with Dworkin's theory of natural law?[/quote]Very.  I very much enjoyed the Philosophy of Law when I was in school, and in fact all of my graduate-level classes were in this field.

I did not like Dworkin.  He assertions were routinely unfounded.  The same was true of his theory of natural law.  And I think he landed on the wrong side of the is-ought problem.
[quote]It's a theory of how law should be interpreted. My position is similar to that on the video-game dialogue side, if it helps as an analogy.  Insofar as linguistic interpretation is concerned, by claim is that insofar as something is said or witten by someone, that something already has an implicit meaning and intent.[/quote]
And as you know, my view of game content is that all implicit content is mutable.  The player is free to modify it as he sees fit (recall our discussions about talking to Trask at the start of KotOR).
[quote]The lead characters are each independent units in the world. The party is a hive-mind. This is the best analogy I can provide.

But we are back to what I think is our core disagreement (I need to really send you that PM) regarding part/whole. I would wager that you think parts explain a whole. So for you, to say you are each individual character in the party explains that you are the party.[/quote]
Of course.  You know this is true.  You were the first one to work out that I'm a nominalist (I didn't even know it at the time).

After doing some reading, it turns out I'm quite a strict nominalist.  And since I'm a strong advocate of Karl Popper's theories regarding the nature of science, I've concluded that belief in the existence of groups, like communication (a grouping of discrete expression and interpretation), or society (a grouping of individuals), is unscientific.  Since belief in society, for example, constitutes positing the existence of an unecessary layer of complexity (as all things in a society can be described in relation only to the individuals within it), that belief thus fails to satisfy Ockham's Razor, and is therefore unscientific.
[quote]A good example is a duck. A duck is more than just the entities that comprise it. A duck is the entities comprising it meaningfully arranged in the structure of a duck.[/quote]The organisation is one of the components of the duck. 
[quote]Yes. But I think that this is because we foreground and background different aspects of our experience when playing a game. I simply do not foreground (or believe) that there is an independent living world which I am playing in that has "blanks" that are to be filled. I'm foregrounding my experience as a player. To put it another way, as I play the game and RP, I am very much aware that it is a game, and the focus for my perceptual and intellectual experience is not a character in the game, but me watching the game. So insofar as the game does not show it, I do not see it. [/quote]Does your character see it?  If you're roleplaying, you're making decisions I presume are constitent with his experiences.  You don't think the world in which he lives exist, but does he?
[quote]See above. There is no game world that things occur under.

Now, I would suspect your reply would be that this is incoherent. How could I meaningfully role-play (among other things) if I do not believe there is a game-world in any meaningfully sense? The answer to that it is that I do believe there is a game-world; I simply do not believe it is an independent world.[/quote]
How does your character view his world?  If you're roleplaying him, you should have an answer to that.  Or am I misunderstanding what you mean my "roleplay"?
[quote]Remember when we were debating gameplay, and you argued that for the sake of coherence the PC and NPCs in the party ought to be subject to the same rules as all other characters? And I said this is not neccesarily true; this is just supposing that the universality of rules we believe applies to our world has to apply to their world, but there is no reason why we could not believe each person is subject to a special and independent set of physical rules that are close enough to be indistinguishable?[/quote]
My preference there was, again, a question of coherence.  If the rules within the gameworld are not applied consistently, I would expect the characters in the world to notice this and behave accordingly.

But they don't.  Characters will all behave the same way, even though the rules that govern them are different.  BioWare seems to recognise that the rules of the game world should affect the behaviour of its resident characters; this is why they didn't include resurrection magic in DAO.  And yet inconsistently applied rules don't produce inconsistent behaviourial results.

One of these two things should change, and I think the consistency of the ruleset would be easier.
[quote]I think his argument would be a sort of Cartesian "essence" transfer. That is, players become an idealized heroic versions of themselves in the game. Now, your reply might be (I'm extrapolating, but sometimes we think similarly, and this would be my reply) that once you start removing and adding features to an "essence" (supposing we grant these exist) how could we possibly have the same thing at all?[/quote]Yes.
[quote]I think the answer is effectively that most people believe that they are greater than they currently are, and in fact are capable of doing all of these great things. It's why polls asking people to predict their success have something like 60% of their population think they will be top 5% in income when in college.[/quote]Yes, people are stupid.  This isn't news.
[quote]I would argue that they failed to accomodate him, and you were only able to play him in parts because of how the game was constrained. But then you and I have different theories regarding leadership, so we would disagree for example, whether or not this character could ever have ranks in persuade and could ever succesfully convince and hold toghether the party long enough to complete the game.

This is the issue with arguing that the silent-VO allows for a breath of options. The game forces a significant number of outcomes on you if you do not die during the course of the game (you cannot fail to convice the dwarves or have your party walk out on you for lack of respect). To an extent, I think this allows personalities that would not otherwise be able to suceeed to suceed and creates the apparent illusion that games support those characters.[/quote]
But they didn't walk out on me.  Regardless of whether that's realistic behaviour (and since people are all different, I see no reason why it wouldn't be), that's what happened.

And I didn't need to convince anyone.  Morrigan was told to follow.  Leliana suggested it herself.  I gave Shale and Sten the option to follow me, but never did I tell them to do it.  Alistair volunteered to follow me.  The dog just seemed to like me.  Oghren accompanied me out of self-interest.  Neither Zevran nor Wynne joined the party.  Am I missing anyone?

The armies had contracts that bound them to follow me.  I didn't convince anyone of anything; they chose on their own to honour their agreements.  I don't claim to have any idea how persuasion works (I had a professor once write of me "he lacks the necessary persuasive skills to support his idiosyncratic opinions"), so I was quite pleased the the game never claimed my character was persuasive.  Because that would have been implausible.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 17 juillet 2010 - 09:06 .

[Wishpig]

My Warden felt more like MY character. He was kinda my avatar, and I voiced myself through him. Kinda similar to an mmo character to me.

Shepard felt more like A character. He felt more real, more alive, it was easier for me to cheer for him and feel bad for him.

In other words my Warden was kinda like a window into the world. I cared far more about my companions then my Warden, although I really liked being the custimzation of my warden. Gave it much more replayibility. I felt towards shepard the same way I felt towards my companions in DA:O.

Both ways of doing it have major advatages and disadvatages, I'm happy as long as long as bioware makes Hawke cool.