372 réponses à ce sujet

[Piecake]

AlanC9 wrote...

What was wrong with the ME2 plot, anyway? The structure is BG2 all over again. Of course, they're not using a companion or your soul as a MacGuffin this time, but that's not a bad thing, is it?

probably a lack of an interesting antagonist and less political intrigue. 

[Addai]

AlanC9 wrote...

So the only meaning here is that you personally are disturbed by the tone icon and you are not disturbed by the list of canned phrases. Well, subjective tastes are not debatable. But that's all you've got. Try not to dress your personal tastes up with nonsense.

The withering disdain thing gets kind of old.

I find it hard to believe y'uns had such a terrible time with DAO's dialogue.  It sounds to me that the beef is not that you didn't know what the lines meant or that they were "canned", it's that you didn't like what they said or that you didn't have other dialogue choices like "I h8 Wardens rawwwr."  Whether those lines could actually be made to fit the DAO story or not.  And, my guess is that you still might not have every line you want to say, whether with little pictures by them or not.

[Collider]

Some people don't have the greatest grasp on the implications of some statements, or can't intuitively discern the hidden meaning behind them. Or read the writer's minds.



In addition, there will be players whose first language is not english. In that respect, having icons next to the statements will help ward away some of the ambiguity and confusion.

[AlanC9]

Yeah, I know it gets old. I kind of wish he'd start making sense so I wouldn't keep feeling it.



Can't speak for In Exile, but I never meant to imply that I had a "terrible time" with DAO dialogue. I just found that there were several instances where I could not tell the tone of what my character was saying. Twice I guessed wrong, but mostly I guessed right or picked another line. These problems would go away with a tone indicator.



As for paraphrases, I have not had a problem with them.



I don't want to imply that I favor a voiced PC. I'm slightly against this on the merits, since I don't find a voiced PC very valuable and so I'd prefer the zots go elsewhere.

[Maria Caliban]

Collider wrote...

In addition, there will be players whose first language is not english. In that respect, having icons next to the statements will help ward away some of the ambiguity and confusion.

Indeed. Though the paraphrase system becomes even more problematic when it passes through translators.

[Shiro_the_Gambler]

My only worry at this point about the intent icons is whether or not the VA has the range to successfully convey the intended emotion.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Collider wrote...

Some people don't have the greatest grasp on the implications of some statements, or can't intuitively discern the hidden meaning behind them. Or read the writer's minds.

Of course, these are good things, and they are undone by the intent icons.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 06 décembre 2010 - 09:08 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

What do your characters think when an NPC completely misinterprets what the PC said?

Depends on the character.  Some would conclude the NPC is an idiot.  Another might fear he expressed himself poorly, and thus be embarrassed by the misunderstanding and just stop talking.  A third could fail to identify the reacion as a misunderstanding, and try to work out what the NPC's starting position was that this was his reaction.  Yet another might fail to notice the NPC's misunderstanding, as he doesn't pay much attention to the people around him.

Different characters are different.

[In Exile]

Addai67 wrote...
And in all those cases, Alistair answers "Maker's breath" and we go on as before.  You could fill in how you thought the line should have been delivered.  There's no cognitive dissonance at all.  I understand completely what you're saying, but this isn't a very good example.

Alistair doesn't say that. What he does say is basically, "Yes, sorry." and obeys. Which makes it pretty clear he takes it as an order.

There's lots of dissonance, because no one, especially people who can banter, reply to banter by standing straight and saluting.

You still won't be able to.  That's what Mary Kirby is confirming earlier in the thread, that the little icons will not predict how an NPC will react.

No, you don't understand. If I deal with Morrigain and I have two options "We should kick every puppy under the sun!" and "I want to hug all innocent children and give them flowers!" then what we know about Morrigain will pretty clearly let us know that if both are delivered straight, the first will mean lost approval and the second will be gained.

But if the second is sarcastic and I happen to think it is sarcastic and Morrigain gets upset because the game thinks it's done straight, and I lose approval by doing something I didn't intend, that's a problem.

This is what I am talking about.

Addai67 wrote...
I find it hard to believe y'uns had such a
terrible time with DAO's dialogue.  It sounds to me that the beef is not
that you didn't know what the lines meant or that they were "canned",
it's that you didn't like what they said or that you didn't have other
dialogue choices like "I h8 Wardens rawwwr." 

I've given you very clear examples, in-game, where this was a problem.

If you want another one, there was an instance where Morrigain talked about her experiences with others when she was younger, and she complained about all the touching. You can reply "Did all the bad touching upset you?" and she takes that to be sexual innuendo in a pretty huge WTF moment for my character, since I took that to be "Oh noes! Poor Morrigan suffering from the horror of a handshake. How can the universe be so injust<_<" instead of "Rawr, bad touching, eh? ;)"

Whether those
lines could actually be made to fit the DAO story or not.  And, my guess
is that you still might not have every line you want to say, whether
with little pictures by them or not.

It's not about having the line you want to say. It's about being able to know how you say something so you can reasonable predict how it will impact the world around you.

Alistair might get upset if I'm sarcastically mocking his intelligence. That's resonable. If Alistair gets upset because the game acts like I did outright call him an idiot, then that's a problem.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Depends on the character.  Some would conclude the NPC is an idiot.  Another might fear he expressed himself poorly, and thus be embarrassed by the misunderstanding and just stop talking.  A third could fail to identify the reacion as a misunderstanding, and try to work out what the NPC's starting position was that this was his reaction.  Yet another might fail to notice the NPC's misunderstanding, as he doesn't pay much attention to the people around him.

Different characters are different.

And yet none of them would say "Yo, buddy, you misunderstood," but if they wanted to, they couldn't. And this is why a misunderstanding is impossible in any video-game.

[David Gaider]

Maria Caliban wrote...
Indeed. Though the paraphrase system becomes even more problematic when it passes through translators.

Actually, that's not true. Praphrases are generally easier to translate because they're short and simple sentences. The part where it becomes tricky is the line length limit-- but that limit also presented a problem in DAO, requiring much re-wording of a lengthy sentence to get its point across.

[David Gaider]

fchopin wrote...
I have no problem with people who wish to use the icons but what is wrong with having an option for people that do not need any guidance?

But you do need the guidance. It has nothing to do with hand-holding-- like Mary pointed out there, the paraphrases were written using the icons for context. This means that we didn't have to try and convey both tone and intent at the same time... which can be difficult to do in 30 characters, as it forces you to be incredibly blantant and sometimes unintentionally misleading. Suddenly taking away the icon without re-writing all the paraphrases would leave someone in quite the difficult position.

In fact, I'll point out that the tone/intent issue isn't restricted to paraphrases. One can encounter this issue even in the DAO-style responses, and were we to go back to such responses I would still want to include the tone icons. It just makes good sense and has nothing to do with people wanting/lacking options. We don't give people options to make their game worse.

Modifié par David Gaider, 06 décembre 2010 - 04:05 .

[David Gaider]

AlanC9 wrote...
There's at least an "aggressive" icon too according to screenshots -- I don't think it necessarily means immediate violence, though I imagine it'll be attached if Bio decides to give you something like  " (Kill him)" as an option.

There's a separate icon for committing violence versus the aggressive dialogue tone. The icon gets rid of the necessity for the bracketed comments-- we done need things like [Attack] or [Lie] and so forth within the paraphrase, as the icon provides that instead.

And possibly a flirt icon, depending on whether Mary Kirby was being serious or just giving a hypothetical.

Quite serious. It's one of the most useful icons, in fact, right beside the Lie icon.

[Snoteye]

I think everyone is curious to hear an example of the difference between a flirty fart joke and an angry fart joke. Can you help us out with that?

[Risax]

Do we get a turtorial of what all icons mean?
I mean some are pretty obvious, but if there are icons for lieing killing and attacking, it could be usefull.

And now where on the subject. Can you still Persuade people, and does it have an icon if you can?

Modifié par Risax, 06 décembre 2010 - 04:16 .

[tmp7704]

AlanC9 wrote...

What was wrong with the ME2 plot, anyway? The structure is BG2 all over again. Of course, they're not using a companion or your soul as a MacGuffin this time, but that's not a bad thing, is it?

Structure, maybe. But balance of the parts is rather different -- ME2 is what BG2 would be if the game ended with simple 10 minutes worth of combat sequences as soon as you gained entrance to the asylum.

As such, it can easily wind up with ME2 feeling like there's just half of a game there, and if it fails to make you interested in your companions it's like there's almost no plot at all -- since most of the experience revolves around straightening out family issues of few expandables with very weak link to the main issue.

[andar91]

I have a question about the icons. Just in case we don't recognize a symbol or something, how do we know what the icon means? Is there a hovering tooltip, or an index of them in the manual or codex? What if I can't figure out the difference between aggression and violence and kill someone by accident at the beginning of the game? Could this be an issue?

[upsettingshorts]

Mass Effect 2's A-plot is your crew and companions. The Collectors are a MacGuffin. So yeah, if you don't like your squad or their missions, you're probably not going to get too involved in the game's story. That's my theory anyway.

[tmp7704]

David Gaider wrote...

There's a separate icon for committing violence versus the aggressive dialogue tone. The icon gets rid of the necessity for the bracketed comments-- we done need things like [Attack] or [Lie] and so forth within the paraphrase, as the icon provides that instead.

What about the attribute-based lines like the ones which would involve cunning test and such? Do they still have bracketed comment, or do they get the icon...or are they not used in the game anymore?

[David Gaider]

Risax wrote...
Do we get a turtorial of what all icons mean?
I mean some are pretty obvious, but if there are icons for lieing killing and attacking, it could be usefull.

I'm not sure what the tutorial consists of, or if the icons will be listed in the manual (though that seems most likely). For the most part they're pretty self-explanatory, as well as colour-coded.

And now where on the subject. Can you still Persuade people, and does it have an icon if you can?

There's no single "persuade" option. What you have is the occasional special Diplomacy, Charm or Intimidate option in dialogue that's dependent on your dominant tone. And these will have an icon to single them out, yes.

[tmp7704]

David Gaider wrote...

There's no single "persuade" option. What you have is the occasional special Diplomacy, Charm or Intimidate option in dialogue that's dependent on your dominant tone. And these will have an icon to single them out, yes.

Hmm so it's like ME2 where you have to be consistenly nice or rude in order to increase your "nice/rude" score and be able to unlock the relevant persuade options where they're included? If that's the case, what determines whether the persuasion attempt was actually succesful?

[tmp7704]

Illborne wrote...

If my character is without a dominant tone, will he/she be privy to these special dialogue options?

You can't really have no dominant tone -- it's calculated based on what dialogue options you've picked throughout the game, and supposedly first such selection of tone happens very early, quite earlier than any persuasion option, i'd guess.

[Leonia]

Out of three tones, is diplomacy the more neutral/middle-ground tone whereas charm is more like using cunning and intimidate is..well, similar to intimidating in Origins? Or am I trying too hard to compare them to what we've already see before?