387 réponses à ce sujet

[upsettingshorts]

TMZuk wrote...

Then we'll simply have to agree on disagreeing. I seriously disliked the paraphrasing in the ME-games, and having "intent" icons isn't going to make it any better. It's going to create a third-person experience, an interactive movie, rather than an RPG.

As to me being patronizing, why yes, you got that right. Perhaps if you go back and read your own posts, it will be clear to you why I chose the "sarcastic" icon in my replies to you.

And if your post had said that to begin with, I could have skipped the whole "baiting" phase of the discussion entirely.  

To address your actual point, I don't think the third person experience is "dumber" than a first person one, just different.  Reasonable people can disagree over which is better, and elaborate on the pros and cons of each.  To me, cRPGs have always been implicitly third person experiences, and what Mass Effect and Dragon Age 2 do is make them more explicitly third person.  As someone who likes that, these features are improvements.  Does that mean I can't understand why people who preferred the first person experience enabled by the ambiguity and doubt of "non-cinematic" games?  Nope.  I just get annoyed when one side or the other is referred to as dumb.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 05 décembre 2010 - 03:45 .

[Cutlasskiwi]

TMZuk wrote...

Yellow Words wrote...

TMZuk wrote...



No, they aren't dumbing the game down, not at all, no. They are just making it...uhhh.... cleaner...more obvious.... spoon-feeding it, bending it in neon, and hammering it in with seven inch nails in case you still didn't get it.

But not dumbing it down, nooo!

How dare you, Bioware? In DA:O you actually demanded that people sometimes would have to think for themselves? Good thing you have changed that in DA2 with big easily read letters in flashy colours, indicating clearly that you are now being whatever it is you are being.

How could anyone with half a brain accidently romance Zevran, unless it was because they were terrified of taking an approval hit? Doh!

Wow. I'm just wondering where you got your advanced copy of DA2 since you seem to know everything about the game.. 

What excactly in my post is something that has not been confirmed by Bioware?

I could write a long reply but I think shorts have covered most of what I think on the subject. 

But I will add this though: Where have BioWare confirmed that players no longer has to think for themselves? Your post is just a lot of personal opinions on the things we have seen so far and what the devs have said. 

[TMZuk]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

TMZuk wrote...

Then we'll simply have to agree on disagreeing. I seriously disliked the paraphrasing in the ME-games, and having "intent" icons isn't going to make it any better. It's going to create a third-person experience, an interactive movie, rather than an RPG.

As to me being patronizing, why yes, you got that right. Perhaps if you go back and read your own posts, it will be clear to you why I chose the "sarcastic" icon in my replies to you.

And if your post had said that to begin with, I could have skipped the whole "baiting" phase of the discussion entirely.  

To address your actual point, I don't think the third person experience is "dumber" than a first person one, just different.  Reasonable people can disagree over which is better, and elaborate on the pros and cons of each.  To me, cRPGs have always been implicitly third person experiences, and what Mass Effect and Dragon Age 2 do is make them more explicitly third person.  As someone who likes that, these features are improvements.  Does that mean I can't understand why people who preferred the first person experience enabled by the ambiguity and doubt of "non-cinematic" games?  Nope.  I just get annoyed when one side or the other is referred to as dumb.

I see your point, but I'd like to point out that what I mean by dumbing down and spoon-feeding is not the shift from a first to a third-person approach, but the fact that is is considered nescessary to mark your intented tone with icons. Wether you prefer one perspective over the other is a matter of taste, but when you use paraphrasing and have to mark out the intended tone with small icons, it is becoming a matter of clicking the right place, rather than having to consider the remark.

[upsettingshorts]

TMZuk wrote...

I see your point, but I'd like to point out that what I mean by dumbing down and spoon-feeding is not the shift from a first to a third-person approach, but the fact that is is considered nescessary to mark your intented tone with icons.

I disagree, I see the tone icons as being a graphical translation of the idea conveyed by, well, something like "he demanded angrily" or "she deadpanned sarcastically" or some other descriptive phrase commonly used to describe the tone of dialogue in text.  Without it, it's just "he said" and "she said."  That's all it is.

[Piecake]

TMZuk wrote...

I see your point, but I'd like to point out that what I mean by dumbing down and spoon-feeding is not the shift from a first to a third-person approach, but the fact that is is considered nescessary to mark your intented tone with icons. Wether you prefer one perspective over the other is a matter of taste, but when you use paraphrasing and have to mark out the intended tone with small icons, it is becoming a matter of clicking the right place, rather than having to consider the remark.

I simply dont get that argument.  You are not going to think about the situation and how you want your character to respond?  You are not going think about how choice will affect the situation?  The icons indicate your tone, not how other characters will respond.  Personally, I think it makes sense that youd know the tone of the remark before speaking it since you are controlling the pc's speach

[Annihilator27]

Absafraginlootly wrote...

Did she remind anyone else of Felicia Day? Just in her sorta manor? Also reminded me abit of codex.

No? Just me then.

I thought as well.

[In Exile]

TMZuk wrote...
I see your point, but I'd like to point out that what I mean by dumbing down and spoon-feeding is not the shift from a first to a third-person approach, but the fact that is is considered nescessary to mark your intented tone with icons. Wether you prefer one perspective over the other is a matter of taste, but when you use paraphrasing and have to mark out the intended tone with small icons, it is becoming a matter of clicking the right place, rather than having to consider the remark.

Is this really how you think it works? Do you go up to people and say "I am being funny now!" and stare expectantly? Or write down what you want to say on a placard and expect others to infer the tone?

Tone is an important part of conversation. It affects how you can say any identical line, in terms of the literal content. I certainly think about an ME/ME2 response as much as a DA:O one. I could easily click 1 for any non-question DA:O choice and now I'm picking the "good" answer, and I could have done this in JE and for most of KoTOR.

Unless you want to be consistently paragon or renegade 100% of the time, ME1/ME2 involves a lot of very deep consideration of when and to what extent violence is appropriate.

[AlanC9]

I used to think that TMZuk's position was crazy, but I'm beginning to understand it a little better, I think. By all means, TMZuk, correct me if I'm spouting gibberish.



I think there's an unstated assumption there that each PC choice in a convo is there to produce an effect in gameplay terms --- gain +5 reputation points,unlock quest X, etc. and so forth -- and what the player is doing when working through the convo is trying to get to the gameplay effect. So the actual lines are a sort of illusion. The problem with the intent icon is that it strips away the illusion, and leaves the player with just the gameplay effect.



To some extent this seems to be confusing tone with result, like fchopin did in that other thread today. But it holds a certain degree of truth if the player really doesn't care about the specifics of what his character is saying, and is trusting to Bioware to just lead him through the story.



I can't imagine playing an RPG that way, but we already know that some people do, since we saw the complaints in KotOR when Bio pulled that infamous dialog order reversal.

[Alet]

AlanC9 wrote...

I used to think that TMZuk's position was crazy, but I'm beginning to understand it a little better, I think. By all means, TMZuk, correct me if I'm spouting gibberish.

I think there's an unstated assumption there that each PC choice in a convo is there to produce an effect in gameplay terms --- gain +5 reputation points,unlock quest X, etc. and so forth -- and what the player is doing when working through the convo is trying to get to the gameplay effect. So the actual lines are a sort of illusion. The problem with the intent icon is that it strips away the illusion, and leaves the player with just the gameplay effect.

To some extent this seems to be confusing tone with result, like fchopin did in that other thread today. But it holds a certain degree of truth if the player really doesn't care about the specifics of what his character is saying, and is trusting to Bioware to just lead him through the story.

I can't imagine playing an RPG that way, but we already know that some people do, since we saw the complaints in KotOR when Bio pulled that infamous dialog order reversal.

Hmmm . . . I see your point, somewhat,  I do believe the effect that the words have is more important than the actual words that your character will speak.  But not because I hate reading and thinking.  To me it's important that every line of dialogue produces a different outcome (maybe even only slightly) because it kills the replay value when I find out, oh, all that careful deliberation I did regarding whether or not the tone of that response was appropriately in character and what direction it might take the conversation was a complete waste of time because 3 of the 4 available options lead to the exact same conclusion.  Considering that the DA:O dialogue trees were almost always set up with a distinct tone per response (sarcastic, violent, good, indifferent, etc), and it took maybe 0.05 seconds to determine the tone from the words, I don't buy the argument (said upstream a few times, not necessarily by you) that this is a crippling blow to the individual gamer's ability to think and act for herself.

[In Exile]

Alet wrote...
Considering that the DA:O dialogue trees were almost always set up with a distinct tone per response (sarcastic, violent, good, indifferent, etc), and it took maybe 0.05 seconds to determine the tone from the words, I don't buy the argument (said upstream a few times, not necessarily by you) that this is a crippling blow to the individual gamer's ability to think and act for herself.

Violent/good/indifferent weren't hard to catch, but I really contest that being sarcastic in DA:O was easy or transparent. Particularly with Alistair, though there is at least one ocassion I can think of with Morrigain and one at the Circle tower.

[Tollak_Grippsson]

shepard_lives wrote...

Eveangaline wrote...

Tho I never get the 'I accidently hit on Zevran' thing. Zevrans flirt options were all so obvious. And he was very easy to dissuade. Am I the only one who thought he was the one they clearly went out of their way to not be able to accidently romance?

Like I've written in other threads, insecure teenage males (and grown men too, I suspect) strike back.

"A gay man in my game? INCONCEIVABLE! *obligatory Vizzini pic here* His very existence threatens me! I demand he be removed at once!"

Okay, it was probably more like "wtf a ****got thats gross man", but you get my point.

I slit his throat at the wagon ambush before he had the chance to corrupt me.  I'm not getting recruited to the "dark side". 

[TMZuk]

AlanC9 wrote...

I used to think that TMZuk's position was crazy, but I'm beginning to understand it a little better, I think. By all means, TMZuk, correct me if I'm spouting gibberish.

I think there's an unstated assumption there that each PC choice in a convo is there to produce an effect in gameplay terms --- gain +5 reputation points,unlock quest X, etc. and so forth -- and what the player is doing when working through the convo is trying to get to the gameplay effect. So the actual lines are a sort of illusion. The problem with the intent icon is that it strips away the illusion, and leaves the player with just the gameplay effect.

To some extent this seems to be confusing tone with result, like fchopin did in that other thread today. But it holds a certain degree of truth if the player really doesn't care about the specifics of what his character is saying, and is trusting to Bioware to just lead him through the story.

I can't imagine playing an RPG that way, but we already know that some people do, since we saw the complaints in KotOR when Bio pulled that infamous dialog order reversal.

You are somewhat correct, or maybe absolutely correct, with me perhaps not being certain if what you say is what I mean.

You are absolutely correct, when you state that the icons will take away the illusion covering the game-mechanics. But I am not specificly trying to gain x amount of reputation-points or experience when playing DA:O or BG. Rather I am trying as hard as I can to simply choose the line I feel is the most in character.

Having the icons will make this much harder, since I will quickly, through playing the game, learn what sort of replies the different NPC's prefer.

Sten is a good example. In DA:O you learn through playing the game that he like his dialogues short and to the point. If this was in DA2, after a little while you don't even have to read the different options presented, - not that you can anyway, since they are paraphrased - you can simply just keep clicking on the icon you know Sten prefers. In other words, roleplay goes out the window, and you are instead spoon-fed an interactive movie.

This is, IMO, made worse by the paraphrasing - it certainly was bad in ME/ME2 - which prevents you from even choosing a reply, rather you just have to settle for an intent. This makes for a dull third person experience, rather than an immersive first-person experience.

[Joah]

TMZuk wrote...


You are somewhat correct, or maybe absolutely correct, with me perhaps not being certain if what you say is what I mean.

You are absolutely correct, when you state that the icons will take away the illusion covering the game-mechanics. But I am not specificly trying to gain x amount of reputation-points or experience when playing DA:O or BG. Rather I am trying as hard as I can to simply choose the line I feel is the most in character.

Having the icons will make this much harder, since I will quickly, through playing the game, learn what sort of replies the different NPC's prefer.

Sten is a good example. In DA:O you learn through playing the game that he like his dialogues short and to the point. If this was in DA2, after a little while you don't even have to read the different options presented, - not that you can anyway, since they are paraphrased - you can simply just keep clicking on the icon you know Sten prefers. In other words, roleplay goes out the window, and you are instead spoon-fed an interactive movie.

This is, IMO, made worse by the paraphrasing - it certainly was bad in ME/ME2 - which prevents you from even choosing a reply, rather you just have to settle for an intent. This makes for a dull third person experience, rather than an immersive first-person experience.

 
I doubt you could ALWAYS use the same icon on the same character and they will always have the same response.

To use Sten as an example When he tells you he can never go home to get the most approval points (I think) you say "I'm sorry" but when he asks you how you stop the blight and he says he is unimpressed by your warden to earn approval you can say "I'm not here to impress you"
 
Both of those would obviously have very different intent icon's, not a STEN APPROVES PICK THIS ONE icon.

As for the paraphrasing I don't think it will take away immersion but thats just my opinion

[Wynne]

Very smart, having her do an interview. She was earnest, enthusiastic in a delightfully non-perky way, no-nonsense, and fun. I think this is a fantastic PR move. If she was coached, I didn't notice it at all. Honestly, she embodied the kind of conversational tone I've grown accustomed to with Bioware. People can tell when you're selling them a line, so putting dedicated employees out there to talk freely and openly about what they love is the best possible option. Kudos to Heather and everyone involved with that interview.

March 11th! That's one day before my birthday. I know what my present is going to be...

[Alet]

In Exile wrote...

Violent/good/indifferent weren't hard to catch, but I really contest that being sarcastic in DA:O was easy or transparent. Particularly with Alistair, though there is at least one ocassion I can think of with Morrigain and one at the Circle tower.

Yeah, I wondered if I hadn't made myself clear . . . so rather, I could usually pick out easily which line I personally would deliver with a sarcastic tone.  But my companions didn't always (or even usually) respond to my tone.  Wait, Alistar wants me to stop joking around and coddle his widdle feelings when his beloved mentor literally dragged me away from my parents leaving them to die?  I'm supposed to act like Zevran was the only little kid with an awful life when I'm a casteless?  I'm supposed to respect Morrigan's absolute inability to take the slightest bit of criticism?  Etc etc.  I always interpreted strange results as "I was being sarcastic but for some reason NPC flew off the handle when confronted with sarcasm in this situation." which is pretty true to real life.

And really, I don't think this paraphrase thing will have much effect on the NPC-confusion aspect at all.

[darrylzero]

TMZuk wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

I used to think that TMZuk's position was crazy, but I'm beginning to understand it a little better, I think. By all means, TMZuk, correct me if I'm spouting gibberish.

I think there's an unstated assumption there that each PC choice in a convo is there to produce an effect in gameplay terms --- gain +5 reputation points,unlock quest X, etc. and so forth -- and what the player is doing when working through the convo is trying to get to the gameplay effect. So the actual lines are a sort of illusion. The problem with the intent icon is that it strips away the illusion, and leaves the player with just the gameplay effect.

To some extent this seems to be confusing tone with result, like fchopin did in that other thread today. But it holds a certain degree of truth if the player really doesn't care about the specifics of what his character is saying, and is trusting to Bioware to just lead him through the story.

I can't imagine playing an RPG that way, but we already know that some people do, since we saw the complaints in KotOR when Bio pulled that infamous dialog order reversal.

You are somewhat correct, or maybe absolutely correct, with me perhaps not being certain if what you say is what I mean.

You are absolutely correct, when you state that the icons will take away the illusion covering the game-mechanics. But I am not specificly trying to gain x amount of reputation-points or experience when playing DA:O or BG. Rather I am trying as hard as I can to simply choose the line I feel is the most in character.

Having the icons will make this much harder, since I will quickly, through playing the game, learn what sort of replies the different NPC's prefer.

Sten is a good example. In DA:O you learn through playing the game that he like his dialogues short and to the point. If this was in DA2, after a little while you don't even have to read the different options presented, - not that you can anyway, since they are paraphrased - you can simply just keep clicking on the icon you know Sten prefers. In other words, roleplay goes out the window, and you are instead spoon-fed an interactive movie.

This is, IMO, made worse by the paraphrasing - it certainly was bad in ME/ME2 - which prevents you from even choosing a reply, rather you just have to settle for an intent. This makes for a dull third person experience, rather than an immersive first-person experience.

I'm not sure how I come down on these icons yet, or voiced characters in general.  DA2 will help me decide, I think.  But your Sten example is pretty baffling to me.  Clearly, you learned which responses Sten preferred in DAO, but I'm guessing you didn't always choose them based on what he wanted to hear.  So, how is this different?

Moreover, shouldn't we learn what our companions like and don't like over time?  Maybe even quickly, if we're astute observers of others.  Now, whether we let that dictate how we speak to them is a different question entirely.  It sounds like you won't.  I am guessing that people who want to just max out their Varric approval will do so, much in the way you figured out how to do with Sten (though I imagine you chose not to play that way), whether or not there is an icon.

Difficult to read companions could be a good thing, but it definitely depends.

[Beaner28]

At this point they have to stop telling us it's amazing and show us.

[In Exile]

Alet wrote...
Yeah, I wondered if I hadn't made myself clear . . . so rather, I could usually pick out easily which line I personally would deliver with a sarcastic tone.  But my companions didn't always (or even usually) respond to my tone.  

I don't understand people who have this experience. Are you actually misunderstood this often?

Wait, Alistar wants me to stop joking around and coddle his widdle feelings when his beloved mentor literally dragged me away from my parents leaving them to die?  I'm supposed to act like Zevran was the only little kid with an awful life when I'm a casteless?  I'm supposed to respect Morrigan's absolute inability to take the slightest bit of criticism?  Etc etc.  I always interpreted strange results as "I was being sarcastic but for some reason NPC flew off the handle when confronted with sarcasm in this situation." which is pretty true to real life.

Might be that my friendships are different, but 90% of the friendly banter we have is taken to be entirely tongue in-cheek and no one walks away offended. You sound like you're using sarcasm to offend, or at least in highly combatative situations which aren't the ones I'm talking about.

[upsettingshorts]

In Exile wrote...
Might be that my friendships are different, but 90% of the friendly banter we have is taken to be entirely tongue in-cheek and no one walks away offended. You sound like you're using sarcasm to offend, or at least in highly combatative situations which aren't the ones I'm talking about.

The way my friends and I talk to each other in private would shock and offend pretty much any reasonable stranger.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 07 décembre 2010 - 03:07 .

[In Exile]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

The way my friends and I talk to each other in private would shock and offend pretty much any reasonable stranger.

That about describes me and my friends. With the only difference that one time we actually shocked a reasonable stranger. It was actually a bit funny.

[Alet]

In Exile wrote...

Alet wrote...
Yeah, I wondered if I hadn't made myself clear . . . so rather, I could usually pick out easily which line I personally would deliver with a sarcastic tone.  But my companions didn't always (or even usually) respond to my tone.  

I don't understand people who have this experience. Are you actually misunderstood this often?

Wait, Alistar wants me to stop joking around and coddle his widdle feelings when his beloved mentor literally dragged me away from my parents leaving them to die?  I'm supposed to act like Zevran was the only little kid with an awful life when I'm a casteless?  I'm supposed to respect Morrigan's absolute inability to take the slightest bit of criticism?  Etc etc.  I always interpreted strange results as "I was being sarcastic but for some reason NPC flew off the handle when confronted with sarcasm in this situation." which is pretty true to real life.

Might be that my friendships are different, but 90% of the friendly banter we have is taken to be entirely tongue in-cheek and no one walks away offended. You sound like you're using sarcasm to offend, or at least in highly combatative situations which aren't the ones I'm talking about.

Ok, cool.  I should have further clarified that "in real life" means "people on the internet think I'm a jack*** and feel free to tell me so."  Like you, I fail to offend my friends, family members, and coworkers on a regular basis with minimal amounts of self-censoring.  Also "flew off the handle" was hyperbole, and I erred on the side of understanding the misunderstanding camp because it never happened to me in a way that seriously impacted my enjoyment of the game, but I can see how it would and I brought up some examples that seemed relevant.  The entire paragraph you quoted was shaded with sarcasm in an attempt to make light of the entire situation, including my own take on it.  Clearly that failed.

I said that my companions didn't usually respond to my tone the way I imagined because, for the first few playthroughs I didn't have a good enough handle on their personalities to predict how they'd respond to aggression, sarcasm, or pity.  Actually while I bring that up, I had to force myself to use the "nice" lines provided because I read them as extremely condescending and pitying.  Yet that's not how they were taken by the NPCs.  Go figure -- I guess my interpretation of the lines is not going to be 100% correct in 100% of the instances.  See where I'm going here?

I'm imagining that the intent-icons are going to spectacularly fail . . . to affect my gameplay significatly.  It would never have occured to me to ask for one.  When I found out it's going to happen, I didn't suddenly see the light and go "omg, that would have made DAO so much better I'm so glad they're doing it!"  But I'm in favor of it because to me it's an issue of very slight improvement vs. no detriment -- slight improvement wins.

[philbo1965uk]

I cannot forgive her for her embelishing the truth and demonstrating text choices as a negative.There was never 12 lines of choice, but thankfully she quickly moved on
You may know the intent of the paraphrase...but you still cannot avoid the fact that you don't know what the player is going to say or how the VO is going to say it....

The fact she lost her zest at that moment, paused grasping for something positive to say about it then finally just regurgitating PR "we're not giving anything away " clearly expressed her own frustration about the system.
You may disagree or find no objection to a Voiced PC...but there is no escaping the fact that it is an hindrance to game immersion.

You are not mean't to be watching a movie..you are mean't to be in the movie and influencing it's direction and narrative.That was a major attribute of DAO, they had it spot on and to deviate from that is just plain dumb.
I have never read on any game forum (and i participate in many) of DAO fans wanting to employ the ME paraphrase wheel system.I think it's lazy,cheap,annoying and non immersive.
I recommend lots of save points for your game because you are going to spend alot of time going back and replaying the interactive dialogue because you didn't want to say what was said.

Modifié par philbo1965uk, 07 décembre 2010 - 11:22 .

[ErichHartmann]

philbo1965uk wrote...
I recommend lots of save points for your game because you are going to spend alot of time going back and replaying the interactive dialogue because you didn't want to say what was said.

Because you say so?  Sorry but I never had this issue with Mass Effect's wheel dialogue.  Don't project your comprehension issues on everyone.   

[upsettingshorts]

philbo1965uk wrote...

You may disagree or find no objection to a Voiced PC...but there is no escaping the fact that it is an hindrance to game immersion.

This is a contradiction.  If I disagree and find no objection to a voiced PC, maybe it's because I view it as more immersive than a silent protagonist who doesn't communicate on the same level as everyone else.  I hate, hate hate the silent protagonist.  I'd rather it be full text, NPCs included, than have the DA:O setup.

But a fully voiced game is, so far, the most immersive experience I've had in a cRPG.  Just lose the "there is no escaping the fact" or "this is lazy" or "rest assured you'll have to reload" rhetoric and the discussion can actually go somewhere.  Eitherwise it's just kind of irritating.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 07 décembre 2010 - 04:02 .

[Unknown Username]

philbo1965uk wrote...
The fact she lost her zest at that moment, paused grasping for something positive to say about it then finally just regurgitating PR "we're not giving anything away " clearly expressed her own frustration about the system.

I could tear into any part of the rest of your post, but I'm going to refrain.  It's a lost cause.

But I do want to say this:  you've got some major confirmation bias going on, buddy.  Cool your jets.