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[bzombo]

David Gaider wrote...

dan107 wrote...
There's a key difference. Combat (and all the stats related to it) necessarily have to be abstracted. Everyone understands and accepts that. No one expects a Bioware game to be a realstic combat simulator, nor could it be, since in that case you would inevetibly end up dead after a few fights at most.

However, companion interactions are a completely different animal. Bioware games have always had a major focus on realistic, believable NPCs ("digitial actors" and all that). Adding a superflous "approval" system that does absolutely nothing but encourage meta-gaming, since it's essentially a mini-game that you can win or lose, runs completely counter to that idea. Nor does it make any sense for the most part. If you're fighting side by side and risking your life next to someone, that creates a bond unlike any other. Kicking (or worse yet, NOT kicking) a few kittens is not enough to undo that.

Then how else would you suggest we do it? In my experience you have a limited set of options if you intend for a relationship with a companion to develop inside of a non-linear storyline (and non-linear in this context means only we don't always know what order you're doing things and when they're happening, which is usually the case in our games):

1. You develop a relationship only by talking to them, and the relationship builds in a pre-set sequence of interactions.

2. You have companions react to specific events, as in 'you do X, companion reacts with Y no matter what'.

3. You track a variable whereby the companion reacts to your decisions which determines their overall disposition, without necessarily being aware of all the specific causes of the variable change (you might track a few, but you need to be wary of how many you're tracking lest they start to cross paths).

Typically we do one or two of the above. The difference with the approval system as we've implemented it in Dragon Age is that we show the feedback to you-- but feedback of some kind is required, since in a game you're not going to have access to the subtle nuances of human interaction that exist in real life. At some point you do have to recognize that this is a video game and than a mechanic of some kind is required just as with combat-- all you require is enough buy-in from the player that they are willing to suspend their disbelief. So far, I feel confident that we've been pretty successful in doing just that.

approval system seems fine, and it looks like it has been improved upon. that's good.

[coomber]

Thanks to the Bioware team for their responses. Sounds great, and an improvement on the previous system.

[mr_luga]

Yeah it feels cheap. Primarily becouse they act like you've always been nice to them all along if you just toss stuff at them