313 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

AmstradHero wrote...

You've focussed on the first half of my post, which is setting the problem and the possible solution, and subsequently missed the discussion of the failings. The point is that flavour choices are about flavour and giving Hawke a personality, whereas action choices are about the decision that is being made. If you're demanding that we give the tone of our decision, then focus is taken away from the decision itself and onto the meta-gaming issue of how that specific line making that choice is delivered.

How could the player choosing how his character says something possible be meta-gaming?  The only meta-gamable aspect would be the action choice itself (as it has an in-game consequence); the tone, being only flavour, makes no difference to the game, and thus isn't meta-gamable.

Either that or I have no idea what you're talking about.

PS I seriously don't want nine choices every time I have to make a big decision. Choice is good, but that many dialogue options makes things a little silly.

The bigger the decision, the more options I want.  The problem with games like Mass Effect is taht the player is often saddled with an alternative he would have rather not chosen had he been given the option.  In ME the player can't choose because the options are obfuscatory.  In DA2 it would appear that the player cannot choose because the UI simply won't let him.

It's inconceivable that someone is willing to let the UI get in the way of roleplaying to that extent.

[AmstradHero]

Okay, no, it's not classic meta-gaming, that was a poor choice of words on my part. The point is that your tonal decision is not affecting the decision itself - you're delivering effectively the same line but perhaps with a few different words and a slightly different tone of voice. Let me repeat the main point of the hypothetical three-option/three-tone situation succinctly:

If you present three separate tonal options for each of the three possible courses of action, the primary focus is no longer on deciding which action to take.

The argument isn't about the number of decisions you get, because you get exactly the same choices, it's just the manner of the delivery of that choice. We set Hawke's dominant personality based on our previous choices of flavour dialogue. Thus when we come to a decision that actually matters, the focus is on that choice, not on the how we want to deliver that line.

We've never really been given a full gamut of emotional options to respond to a choice, so I don't understand why not having it now is a drawback. The focus of action choices should be about the action, not the emotion, and that's exactly what this system appears to do.

Now, I'm happy if you say that for you, it's an undesirable system. But I imagine for most people, it's not.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 24 août 2010 - 06:20 .

[The Interloper]

This is a little off tangent, but in review, let me see if I have this down.



There are three main options-good, bad, and sarcastic, plus two others

Investigate has it's own wheel

Each (usually) action has an attached intent.

Character tracking causes everything you say to match your most often used tone; Ie, if your sarcastic but say something nice, you'll say it in a sarcastic way.



Anything I missed or misheard?

[Saibh]

The Interloper wrote...

This is a little off tangent, but in review, let me see if I have this down.

There are three main options-good, bad, and sarcastic, plus two others
Investigate has it's own wheel
Each (usually) action has an attached intent.
Character tracking causes everything you say to match your most often used tone; Ie, if your sarcastic but say something nice, you'll say it in a sarcastic way.

Anything I missed or misheard?

EDIT: For the tl;dr, yeah, that's the gist of it.

Okay, now, I'm not sure if I got this entirely right, but...

When you presented with the three main options, those are "action choices". They do nothing but move the plot along--you're not responding about your opinion, you're saying "We need to get a move on" and you have three different ways of saying this (the ones you mentioned). Assumably there are a multitude of different actions that require these lines, but that's the example. At first that bothered me, but then I thought about DAO, and you generally don't have many more ways of saying something to carry on. There are also investigate options. 

When you have actual conversations, that's when you're presented with more options along the intent-o-meter lines. Unless I'm wrong, the main personality you've been picking for "action" affects the tone of these choices, leading you to say different things. I don't think we've gotten word on how many different intent icons are present.

The lines aren't always affected, and not everything you say adds to your personality. They are also appropriate for situations--David Gaider mentioned the brilliant "beating Alistair with a bouquet" for what doesn't happen if you choose a flirty line with an aggressive personality.

I think that's right. Does anyone want to correct me? I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept.

Modifié par Saibh, 24 août 2010 - 04:28 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

AmstradHero wrote...

Okay, no, it's not classic meta-gaming, that was a poor choice of words on my part. The point is that your tonal decision is not affecting the decision itself - you're delivering effectively the same line but perhaps with a few different words and a slightly different tone of voice.

I think the  tone is the more important part of the decision.  What matters to me isn't so much what my character does, but how and why he does it.

Let me repeat the main point of the hypothetical three-option/three-tone situation succinctly:

If you present three separate tonal options for each of the three possible courses of action, the primary focus is no longer on deciding which action to take.

The argument isn't about the number of decisions you get, because you get exactly the same choices, it's just the manner of the delivery of that choice. We set Hawke's dominant personality based on our previous choices of flavour dialogue. Thus when we come to a decision that actually matters, the focus is on that choice, not on the how we want to deliver that line.

Right, and I think that's the wrong way to do it.

We've never really been given a full gamut of emotional options to respond to a choice, so I don't understand why not having it now is a drawback.

When we didn't have a voiced protagonist, we had an almost unfettered ability to determine tone and delivery ourselves.  The voice limits us significantly, but BioWare seems to be taking great steps to minimise the damage done by the voice.

Except for this UI decision, where they're undoing some of their otherwise good work.

This is a lot like the interrupts in ME2.  They made great strides in reducing the obfuscatory nature of the dialogue wheel compared to ME1, but then introduced those interrupts that just made the problem worse again.  And once again, it is primarily a UI decision that's the problem.

[The Interloper]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I think the  tone is the more important part of the decision.  What matters to me isn't so much what my character does, but how and why he does it.

I think it's half and half. The action and the tone/intention should both have importance. You should be able to choose your tone/intention for almost every important decision or remark or weight.

I'm still waiting for this. Usually it's all about the action. Either there is no tone(and you make it up), or you have games like ME. I do like it, but is has the habit of tacking on intents or tones that I didn't intent. All dialogue games to that to an extent, but ME hightlights it. One example is the morality choice at the end of the Overlord DLC. I made the Renegade decision because my character was Satan incarnate, but the game tacked on a "only because it saves lives" justification. My character wasn't thinking that!

Granted in the old games you could just imagine your intent, and if you prefer that, that's perfectly fine. But that strikes me, personally, as an improvisional solution at best. Hopefully someday you will be able to inject your intent into the actual game, especially one with voice acting. And the things DA2 is doing, while not that, seems to be a step closer.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The Interloper wrote...

Hopefully someday you will be able to inject your intent into the actual game, especially one with voice acting.

I agree.  But until we can do that, the unvoiced protagonist is better.

So as long as we're getting a voiced protagnost (as we are in DA2) I'd like to see the game's design make every effort to maximise our control over that voice.  This predictive tone system that's been described fails to do that.

[Saibh]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The Interloper wrote...

Hopefully someday you will be able to inject your intent into the actual game, especially one with voice acting.

I agree.  But until we can do that, the unvoiced protagonist is better.

*according to you, is what you mean to say. I think that for this game, with this character, a voiced protagonist is appropriate. You are very instrinsically against a voiced protagonist, so there is no convincing you, but both systems have their merits.

[jazzy B 3]

I am so in love with this idea and Gaider's posts show how in-depth they're taking the idea.  Commenting on your personality, etc, will allow for Varric to tell his story better as well. I'm so excited at the moment.  Curse you for getting me all excited, Bioware, especially you, Dave

[The Interloper]

jazzy B 3 wrote...

I am so in love with this idea and Gaider's posts show how in-depth they're taking the idea.  Commenting on your personality, etc, will allow for Varric to tell his story better as well. I'm so excited at the moment.  Curse you for getting me all excited, Bioware, especially you, Dave

When I first read his posts, I thought that we could choose our intention seperatly from the action, which got me all excited. On second glance though, I realized that they were just upgrading the paraphrases(right?).

Still, it's a step forward, and the dominant personality thing sounds cool.

[AlanC9]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...

Okay, no, it's not classic meta-gaming, that was a poor choice of words on my part. The point is that your tonal decision is not affecting the decision itself - you're delivering effectively the same line but perhaps with a few different words and a slightly different tone of voice.

I think the  tone is the more important part of the decision.  What matters to me isn't so much what my character does, but how and why he does it.

After this, is there any real point in you two continuing the debate? 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Saibh wrote...

You are very instrinsically against a voiced protagonist

Not at all.

I'm saying that a voiced protagonist has real gameplay costs, and that steps should be taken to reduce those costs.

In this case, it's the user interface that appears to limit the designers' abilitiy to mitigate those costs.  That's just sloppy UI design.

[The Interloper]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...


I'm saying that a voiced protagonist has real gameplay costs, and that steps should be taken to reduce those costs.

And steps are being taken. The dominant personality thing ensures that at least some lines can be said in different ways, and if tones/intentions are fixed to a response, at least they are now there. It's not a complete solution, not by a long shot, but it's certainatly two steps in the right direction and an encouraging sign. Hopefully ME3 has even further upgrades.

[AmstradHero]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...

Okay, no, it's not classic meta-gaming, that was a poor choice of words on my part. The point is that your tonal decision is not affecting the decision itself - you're delivering effectively the same line but perhaps with a few different words and a slightly different tone of voice.

I think the  tone is the more important part of the decision.  What matters to me isn't so much what my character does, but how and why he does it.

After this, is there any real point in you two continuing the debate? 

No.  Despite Sylvius' assertions to the contrary, I don't believe there's anything we can do to make him happy about a voiced protagonist, simply because he doesn't get to imagine exactly how his character is delivering the line.

That's not a failing of the system, nor a failure of roleplaying. It's a stylistic concern facilitating a different type of interaction within an RPG.I see the advantages of having a non-voiced system, but also see the benefits of a voiced system.

We didn't explicitly get to choose the tone of our voice for the big decisions in DAO (or almost any CRPG in existence), we had to imagine it. To argue this is "better" is personal opinion, nothing more. I even like having a non-voiced protagonist, but that doesn't mean I'll staunchly support it and declare that anything else "removes roleplaying", because that's simply not true. It's very much a case of "can't see the forest for the trees", in that you're focusing so intently on one aspect of the game that you're not looking at the whole picture.

Lastly, I also think that the complaints that ME's system is "unpredictable" are pretty much outright ridiculous. Once I had made my first "wrong" decision because I didn't know top=paragon and bottom=renegade, Shepard never reacted in a way that I didn't really expect. And none of the interrupts in ME2 did something that I wasn't expecting.

Sorry Sylvius, but I'm out, simply because you're not actually debating what you claim you're debating.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The Interloper wrote...

And steps are being taken.

But at the same time, contrary steps are being taken.  I want to draw attention to those, because they're not obvious.

The dominant personality thing ensures that at least some lines can be said in different ways, and if tones/intentions are fixed to a response, at least they are now there. It's not a complete solution, not by a long shot, but it's certainatly two steps in the right direction and an encouraging sign.

See?  Even you don't see it.  The dominant tone mechanic wouldn't be necessary if we were always allowed to choose the tone ourselves, even on action choices.

We're allowed to see the tone in advance on flavour choices.  This is a huge step forward, and it's necessary if we're going to have a voice (I still think not having the voice would be better, but being able to select for tone of a voiced line is exactly the sort of mitigation I was talking about).

But then, aribitrarily, on some choices we don't get to select tone.  Why?  Why do we even need the dominant tone system to select tone for us?  Why not just let us select the tone ourselves?  The different tones already exist in the game, so there's no development cost associated with letting us choose.  But instead they've decided to hide the contents of the line from us again, effectlvely recreating ME's problem with the dialogue wheel (the player not knowing what the result of his selection would be).

[Nemotenetur]

Saibh wrote...
Okay, now, I'm not sure if I got this entirely right, but...

When you presented with the three main options, those are "action choices". They do nothing but move the plot along--you're not responding about your opinion, you're saying "We need to get a move on" and you have three different ways of saying this (the ones you mentioned). Assumably there are a multitude of different actions that require these lines, but that's the example. At first that bothered me, but then I thought about DAO, and you generally don't have many more ways of saying something to carry on. There are also investigate options. 

When you have actual conversations, that's when you're presented with more options along the intent-o-meter lines. Unless I'm wrong, the main personality you've been picking for "action" affects the tone of these choices, leading you to say different things. I don't think we've gotten word on how many different intent icons are present.

The lines aren't always affected, and not everything you say adds to your personality. They are also appropriate for situations--David Gaider mentioned the brilliant "beating Alistair with a bouquet" for what doesn't happen if you choose a flirty line with an aggressive personality.

I think that's right. Does anyone want to correct me? I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept.

Oh dear, I thought I got it but now I'm confused again, what you say makes a lot of sense too xD I thought it was the other way around you see, that the choices you make during conversations (the 'flavour' choices') affect the dominant personality and the tone of the action choices.

[jazzy B 3]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The different tones already exist in the game, so there's no development cost associated with letting us choose.  But instead they've decided to hide the contents of the line from us again, effectlvely recreating ME's problem with the dialogue wheel (the player not knowing what the result of his selection would be).

I believe that it is the infrastructure that is set in stone.  What you are asking for will not fit within the archetecture of the conversation system.  Maybe future DAs and MEs will allow for this in the conversation infrastructure but this isn't the case for this generation.  It's not as simple as you make out.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AmstradHero wrote...

We didn't explicitly get to choose the tone of our voice for the big decisions in DAO (or almost any CRPG in existence), we had to imagine it.

This is completely unrelated to this topic, but you're drawing a false disctinction here.

Imagine the tone IS choosing the tone.  There's no difference.

Lastly, I also think that the complaints that ME's system is "unpredictable" are pretty much outright ridiculous. Once I had made my first "wrong" decision because I didn't know top=paragon and bottom=renegade, Shepard never reacted in a way that I didn't really expect.

I simply do not believe you.  I insist that, when faced with a dialogue choice in ME, you absolutely could not have told me what was going to be said.  You couldn't write it down.  You couldn't describe it in advance.

If you could, I'd love an example.

And if you don't think the ability to write down the line in advance was important, then your character concept simply wasn't very detailed.  You never know when the specific wording of a line is going to be relevant to your character concept until after you've seen the potential line.  You couldn't see the line in advance, so you couldn't know.

As for paragon and renegade, even knowing those doesn't help because they're not well defined by the game or the documentation.  Again, if you think they were defined well enugh, then your character concept was horribly vague.

And none of the interrupts in ME2 did something that I wasn't expecting.

Really?  You expected every action?  Every time?  Could you have told me what they were before you selected them?

It seeming out of place and you not expecting it are very different things.

[Sylvius the Mad]

jazzy B 3 wrote...

I believe that it is the infrastructure that is set in stone.  What you are asking for will not fit within the archetecture of the conversation system.  Maybe future DAs and MEs will allow for this in the conversation infrastructure but this isn't the case for this generation.  It's not as simple as you make out.

If it's the code of the dialogue engine that limits choices to six options (which would explain why David said that you'd need to chooce your response twice if you wanted to do it my way), then that's just short-sighted.  Especially since they've have games in the past with more options than 6.

If there's a need for a hard limit, I'd suggest that limit should be the total number of non-system buttons on the console controller.  That would allow single-button selection on every platform, much like how BioWare's PC games typically allow you to choose dialogue options with the number keys.

Incidentally, I'm really hoping we'll be able to select dialogue options in DA2 with keys rather than with the mouse.  I really don't want to use the mouse in dialogue.  I'm going to make a thread about that.

[jackkel dragon]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
But then, aribitrarily, on some choices we don't get to select tone.  Why?  Why do we even need the dominant tone system to select tone for us?  Why not just let us select the tone ourselves?  The different tones already exist in the game, so there's no development cost associated with letting us choose.  But instead they've decided to hide the contents of the line from us again, effectlvely recreating ME's problem with the dialogue wheel (the player not knowing what the result of his selection would be).

We can't always select tones because the wheel doesn't have enough slots. There are five slots and three tones. This means that allowing a tone for each action choice is impossible, because even having as few as two choices requires six slots. The dominant tone allows the player to indirectly control how the protagonist will say the line, but allow for more than 2 action choices per action node.

(And before people say it, no, the DAO system is not much better. DAO had only 6 options, while DA2 has 5. I deliberately left out the 5 for questions in DA2, because they are likely going to be toneless and actionless.)

[Sylvius the Mad]

jackkel dragon wrote...

We can't always select tones because the wheel doesn't have enough slots.

Then they shouldn't have used the wheel.

I know why we can't have more than 6.  I'm saying that reason is stupid.

[jackkel dragon]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

jackkel dragon wrote...

We can't always select tones because the wheel doesn't have enough slots.

Then they shouldn't have used the wheel.

I know why we can't have more than 6.  I'm saying that reason is stupid.

Technical reasons are stupid? DA2 has more options than DAO, just voiced. The DA2 design also organizes responses for the player. Perhaps later games can use a better system than the wheel, but it's an imporvement over DAO. Technically, DAO's unvoiced protagonist could be used while still using the wheel, eliminating most of the need for tones on action hubs.

(Breakdown: DAO - 6 options, DA2 5+5 options)

[Miobako]

AmstradHero wrote...


That's not a failing of the system, nor a failure of roleplaying. It's a stylistic concern facilitating a different type of interaction within an RPG.I see the advantages of having a non-voiced system, but also see the benefits of a voiced system.

We didn't explicitly get to choose the tone of our voice for the big decisions in DAO (or almost any CRPG in existence), we had to imagine it. To argue this is "better" is personal opinion, nothing more. I even like having a non-voiced protagonist, but that doesn't mean I'll staunchly support it and declare that anything else "removes roleplaying", because that's simply not true. It's very much a case of "can't see the forest for the trees", in that you're focusing so intently on one aspect of the game that you're not looking at the whole picture.

Lastly, I also think that the complaints that ME's system is "unpredictable" are pretty much outright ridiculous. Once I had made my first "wrong" decision because I didn't know top=paragon and bottom=renegade, Shepard never reacted in a way that I didn't really expect. And none of the interrupts in ME2 did something that I wasn't expecting.

Having a voiced over PC is a critical failure of the system, you are not anymore role-playing yourself-projected-in-that-world, you are identifying yourself with someone else, you play someone who is supposed to be you, but can sentimentally express himself independently to some degree, and voice is a very basic way to identify something as someone-else, something outside of ourself.

When Neverwinters Nights 2 came out, many people were asking for a way to use 2d portraits for their characters, the problems being that they couldn't even identify with their 3d portraits, and Obsidian did patch it and made it possible.

It's all about how someone perceive role-playing, but I think it's about time that Bioware stops using the RPG label and invent something else for their games, something about the cinematic experience they are so proud of.

[The Masked Rog]

Miobako wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...


That's not a failing of the system, nor a failure of roleplaying. It's a stylistic concern facilitating a different type of interaction within an RPG.I see the advantages of having a non-voiced system, but also see the benefits of a voiced system.

We didn't explicitly get to choose the tone of our voice for the big decisions in DAO (or almost any CRPG in existence), we had to imagine it. To argue this is "better" is personal opinion, nothing more. I even like having a non-voiced protagonist, but that doesn't mean I'll staunchly support it and declare that anything else "removes roleplaying", because that's simply not true. It's very much a case of "can't see the forest for the trees", in that you're focusing so intently on one aspect of the game that you're not looking at the whole picture.

Lastly, I also think that the complaints that ME's system is "unpredictable" are pretty much outright ridiculous. Once I had made my first "wrong" decision because I didn't know top=paragon and bottom=renegade, Shepard never reacted in a way that I didn't really expect. And none of the interrupts in ME2 did something that I wasn't expecting.

Having a voiced over PC is a critical failure of the system, you are not anymore role-playing yourself-projected-in-that-world, you are identifying yourself with someone else, you play someone who is supposed to be you, but can sentimentally express himself independently to some degree, and voice is a very basic way to identify something as someone-else, something outside of ourself.

When Neverwinters Nights 2 came out, many people were asking for a way to use 2d portraits for their characters, the problems being that they couldn't even identify with their 3d portraits, and Obsidian did patch it and made it possible.

It's all about how someone perceive role-playing, but I think it's about time that Bioware stops using the RPG label and invent something else for their games, something about the cinematic experience they are so proud of.

I fail to see how having a voiced protagonist makes it hard to roleplay. For me what stops roleplaying is having my character stare blankly at someone speaking to it. Same thing for 2D portraits. How can I roleplay properly if I can only select from a dozen or so appearances? That worked well for BG because the alternative was going by a sprite that was only dependent on race. Everytime I play BG I get the feeling that I've already played the character before. Not so with dragon age or mass effect, each character feels unique because of the appearance. While I wouldn't mind having more than one voice type, I think the voice allows me to roleplay the character more easily.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The Masked Rog wrote...

Same thing for 2D portraits. How can I roleplay properly if I can only select from a dozen or so appearances?

There was never so low a limit.  BG expressly permitted the importing of any appropriately sized image.  I have thousands of BG portraits handy right now.  I'm using one as an avatar on this very forum.