518 réponses à ce sujet

[-flashblade-]

Xewaka you are in a very special type of boat. You don't understand spoken english to well as by your own words and your country won't get a localisation beyond subtitles. I understand that my suggested approach won't be helpful to you. It can only help people who understand spoken english well enough or who get a voiced localisation.

I'd rather have them use full lines as well, because as I said, roleplaying can not happen if you are not in control of your character. That is just not possible and in a roleplaying game I want, who would have thought, roleplaying. Thats kind of crazy I know.

Modifié par -flashblade-, 12 janvier 2011 - 11:16 .

[Xewaka]

-flashblade- wrote...
Xewaka you are in a very special type of boat. You don't understand spoken english to well as by your own words and your country won't get a localisation beyond subtitles. I understand that my suggested approach won't be helpful to you. It can only help people who understand spoken english well enough or who get a voiced localisation.
I'd rather have them use full lines as well, because as I said, roleplaying can not happen if you are not in control of your character. That is just not possible and in a roleplaying game I want, who would have thought, roleplaying. Thats kind of crazy I know.

My problem is not spoken english per se, but rather some of the accents it shows; I can follow reccesive english (I believe that is the term for "neutral" accent) well, and certain british accents give me no trouble. However, american accents are indecipherable to me, and scottish takes me a while to get used to. And I'd rather be focusing on the story than being focused on deciphering the dialogue (so subtitles are less intrusive to me, as I can read them quickly and get to the scene without being concentrated on "What is he/she saying? why does he/she talk like he/she has a rubber ball in his/her mouth?"). Still, it doesn't address my point: I want to know what my character says. Full phrase does that. Paraphrase doesn't.

Modifié par Xewaka, 12 janvier 2011 - 04:20 .

[maxernst]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

maxernst wrote...

They did, but I wonder if it might be more accurate to call it 2nd person vs 3rd person narrative--because even when you drive the action, you're not really the author of the game.

Yes you are.  An RPG is a collaborative effort between the writer and the player.

Well, yes (I guess I misphrased that).  The distinction I was trying to make is that when I'm reading a novel written in the first person, I feel like I'm listening to a narrator tell their story, whereas in a game, I feel like I'm interacting with the narrator, which makes me the second person.  Maybe I'm overly influenced by Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, where he addresses the reader in the second person as a way to include him in the action and explore the idea of reading as a collaboration between writer and reader, rather than a passive endeavor.

[Ziggeh]

-flashblade- wrote...

It is not the players role to be the director, it is the role of the game/dungeon master. Then again an actual director or dungeon master would KNOW what follows next and you don't. So you are actually some weird general guidance type of person who is along for the ride.

Indeed, "director", at least as it pertains to film, is another poor description of the actual relationship. I wouldn't say it's necessary for the director to know what follows though. I can name a number of directors who rarely do. I'm not sure we have language for it yet, because it's unlike the mediums that preceded it.

I would say there is more of the director in my relationship with rpgs characters than actor, however.

[maxernst]

Ziggeh wrote...

-flashblade- wrote...

It is not the players role to be the director, it is the role of the game/dungeon master. Then again an actual director or dungeon master would KNOW what follows next and you don't. So you are actually some weird general guidance type of person who is along for the ride.

Indeed, "director", at least as it pertains to film, is another poor description of the actual relationship. I wouldn't say it's necessary for the director to know what follows though. I can name a number of directors who rarely do. I'm not sure we have language for it yet, because it's unlike the mediums that preceded it.

I would say there is more of the director in my relationship with rpgs characters than actor, however.

The nearest film analogy I can come up with is the roles of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in "After Sunset".  They collaborated on the writing of the film as well as acting in it.  I don't think there's a specific word for an actor who writes a lot of his own dialogue and influences the direction of the story, but that strikes me as closer than direction.

[Ziggeh]

maxernst wrote...
I don't think there's a specific word for an actor who writes a lot of his own dialogue and influences the direction of the story, but that strikes me as closer than direction.

Actors who do that are generally refered to as "difficult".

My original point was more that the relationship changes due to the various elements of the game, when you take control of a party member, or are setting their tactical scripts, one is engaged in a different relationship to the character than that of the one used duing dialogue, yet we happily weave all these elements together.

I can't remember why I made that point. Something to d owith trying to pin down the relationship I imagine. I don't think it's feasible, as people have different approaches to each element.

[vallore]

The pharaphrase is, for me, a downright frustratingly annoying system.

While many may feel satisfied with it, (as what they were trying to accomplish with the character is still achieved in the end of the conversation), I find it totally insufficient to define with it a consistent personality for my character:

The How and the Why the character says something, as well as all the little tidbits of secondary information that often comes out in the more elaborate conversations, tell us much about the character we were supposed to be creating. All of this is often times lost with the pharaphrase system, as we say implemented thus far. Resulting in a loss of control in defining the character.

With Sheppard,it was not unusual to get lines that were not predictable by reading the paraphrase. Now, as far as I’m concerned, that was an undesirable trait. When it happened, I had three options; ignore it, if it was very minor, or reload and revise the entire dialogue, again, (a rather annoying thing), or ignore the inconsistency and move forward, (also annoying). Neither seems to me as good options that make the game more enjoyable, (quite the opposite).

A system that would allow toggle full line, for those that want it, and that would keep the pharaphrase, for those that enjoy it, would seem far better.

Ah, well, with luck, perhaps for DA3…

[Nighteye2]

Morroian wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
The Witcher 2 comes closest, from what I've seen. It gives a few phrases full-text, from which the conversation bounces to and fro between Geralt and the other characters a few times. You fully get to choose the first response, but not the few that follow naturally after it.

But isn't that even more restrictive because you only make a choice at the beginning of a conversation? The intent of the paraphrase system is to allow the player to choose every response within a conversation while trying to keep the conversation flowing as naturally as possible. 

It's a compromise, but it works reasonably well, as shown in this video (nsfw). The video quality is pretty bad, but it shows the dialogue system well enough.

[Nighteye2]

Xewaka wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I'm with Xewaka on this.  The intent and emotion behind the dialogue was yours to control.  When the Warden said something, why he said it, how he said it, and what he hoped to achieve by saying it was up to you.

Unfortunately it can't work that way with a voiced protagonist. You have to accept some loss of control over the character or else treat the game as thought it's broken. And if you're going to treat the game as though it's broken then there's hardly any point in playing it.

The moment there is a limited list to choose from, we have already accepted there will be some loss of control. The voiced character does increase this loss, but the loss in itself is a gradient. If I am given a limited amount of options in a situation, I can try and adapt, granted that I know what those options are. With the paraphrase, I don't know the options.

And despite not knowing the options, you still have to choose... <_<

[Sylvius the Mad]

Nighteye2 wrote...

And despite not knowing the options, you still have to choose... <_<

If you're choosing blind, can that really be called choice?

You're guessing.  That's all the ME paraphrase ever allowed - blind guessing.

[maxernst]

Maybe some of it relates to how important the specifics of exactly what is said are to you. Suppose you want to compliment a woman. You could call her a "beautiful woman", a "cute girl" or a "hot babe". All of these would probably be conveyed with an identical paraphrase and emoticon. Maybe to some players, the distinction's not important if all it is in game terms is a romance trigger. But from my perspective, the different word choices express the personality of my PC and his intentions in significantly different ways.

Modifié par maxernst, 12 janvier 2011 - 06:38 .

[the_one_54321]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
And despite not knowing the options, you still have to choose... <_<

If you're choosing blind, can that really be called choice?

You're guessing.  That's all the ME paraphrase ever allowed - blind guessing.

But the new system isn't blind. It's just a new type of sight. May work better or worse than in DA:O, but certainly better than in ME1&2.

[Nighteye2]

Sigil_Beguiler123 wrote...
It is funny for myself I found MEs dialogue to be my favourite of any RPG I played. A large part thanks to the paraphrase and layout as well as the cinematic style of course.

For myself NPC reactions and also one should remember actual physical reactions the player character takes are very important to me. Much more so then the specific dialogue my character says. It is the reactions and actions of both player character and NPC that draws me into the world and makes me care about the characters. Being able to properly project my intent and emotion into the game which I find paraphrases/layout works well for is extremely important to me.

You can have layout and icons with full-text instead of paraphrases. Works even better.

[Nighteye2]

-flashblade- wrote...
Only Sylvius actually commented on my idea for an improved paraphrase system. I had hoped for a litte more input. Having a paraphrase with the general intent of the line instead of the words to be said, together with an emotional intent icon, seems a huge improvement to me. For example you want to get information from somebody so instead of a paraphrase that says "Tell me what you know!" you have a paraphrase that says "Interrogate him". Together with the emotional intent icon you could tell that he is not going for the "good cop" approach and the advantage to this is that you do not have the baggage attached of expecting specific words to be said.

It would be better, though not by much. A paraphrased intention still gives far too little detail about what your character intends. All the subtle nuances of intent are lost in the paraphrase.

[Nighteye2]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
And despite not knowing the options, you still have to choose... <_<

If you're choosing blind, can that really be called choice?

You're guessing.  That's all the ME paraphrase ever allowed - blind guessing.

But the new system isn't blind. It's just a new type of sight. May work better or worse than in DA:O, but certainly better than in ME1&2.

Very poor sight, though. Also, the dialogue system was one of the reasons I didn't buy ME or ME2.

[AlanC9]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
And despite not knowing the options, you still have to choose... <_<

If you're choosing blind, can that really be called choice?

You're guessing.  That's all the ME paraphrase ever allowed - blind guessing.

But the new system isn't blind. It's just a new type of sight. May work better or worse than in DA:O, but certainly better than in ME1&2.

But Sylvius doesn't have that type of sight, or at least has poor vision with it. He's worse at predicting what an ME spoken line will be than I am, and I suppose worse than you are. (We should probably run a controlled test on this sometime.) There are probably reasons for this, but they are not relevant. 

I'm also somewhat less sensitive to inaccuracies -- as long as I know which line best fits my intent, I don't care about knowing more details, since I'd pick the same line anyway -- but I don't think this is significant as being able to generally know what's coming up.

[AlanC9]

Nighteye2 wrote...

It would be better, though not by much. A paraphrased intention still gives far too little detail about what your character intends. All the subtle nuances of intent are lost in the paraphrase.

So what? I don't mean to be flip there, but since we can only pick one of the three or so lines that have already been written by the devs, how much difference would the subtleties make?

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

But Sylvius doesn't have that type of sight, or at least has poor vision with it.

Until someone can explain to me what means he uses to determine what result a fgiven paraphrase will have, I won't believe that anyone has this type of sight.

Reduce it to an algortihm.  For any given parphrase, how do you know what it will have your character say and do?

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

So what? I don't mean to be flip there, but since we can only pick one of the three or so lines that have already been written by the devs, how much difference would the subtleties make?

The subtleties might affect whether you choose one option over another.

The specific details that matter to the player aren't known to the writer, so there's no way for the paraphrase to encapsulate all possible relevant details.

[Xerxes52]

That's not too bad.



But will the X button now make dialog choices?



In DA:O, the X button just skipped through dialog, but didn't make a selection (which was good). While in ME, the X button skipped through dialog AND made a selection (which necessitated tons of saving and reloading). Since we have the dialog wheel, the latter seems more likely, but I certainly hope not.

[the_one_54321]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
But Sylvius doesn't have that type of sight, or at least has poor vision with it.

Until someone can explain to me what means he uses to determine what result a fgiven paraphrase will have, I won't believe that anyone has this type of sight.

Reduce it to an algortihm.  For any given parphrase, how do you know what it will have your character say and do?

Consider a type of integrational statistical analysis. You become familiar enough with the tredns between inputs and outputs of diffeferent kinds and after a while you are able to predict the output without much concious thought.

In short: practice.

[Xewaka]

AlanC9 wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
It would be better, though not by much. A paraphrased intention still gives far too little detail about what your character intends. All the subtle nuances of intent are lost in the paraphrase.

So what? I don't mean to be flip there, but since we can only pick one of the three or so lines that have already been written by the devs, how much difference would the subtleties make?

The content of the phrase is defined by the subtleties.

[AlanC9]

Xewaka wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
It would be better, though not by much. A paraphrased intention still gives far too little detail about what your character intends. All the subtle nuances of intent are lost in the paraphrase.

So what? I don't mean to be flip there, but since we can only pick one of the three or so lines that have already been written by the devs, how much difference would the subtleties make?

The content of the phrase is defined by the subtleties.

Different enough so I'd wish I'd chosen one of the other lines? Example, please.

Edit: rather, so you'd wish you'd chosen another line. I may have different standards than you have.

Modifié par AlanC9, 12 janvier 2011 - 08:14 .

[maxernst]

AlanC9 wrote...

Xewaka wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
It would be better, though not by much. A paraphrased intention still gives far too little detail about what your character intends. All the subtle nuances of intent are lost in the paraphrase.

So what? I don't mean to be flip there, but since we can only pick one of the three or so lines that have already been written by the devs, how much difference would the subtleties make?

The content of the phrase is defined by the subtleties.

Different enough so I'd wish I'd chosen one of the other lines? Example, please.

Edit: rather, so you'd wish you'd chosen another line. I may have different standards than you have.

I gave one above.  Whether a line intended as a compliment to a woman referred to her as a "hot babe" vs "attractive woman" or "cute girl" would definitely influence whether I wanted to choose the line, but I doubt they'd be distinguishable by paraphrase or emoticon.  If I didn't think that particular phrase was appropriate to that character/situation, I'd simply choose another response that would not be a romantic trigger.

[vallore]

AlanC9 wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...

It would be better, though not by much. A paraphrased intention still gives far too little detail about what your character intends. All the subtle nuances of intent are lost in the paraphrase.

So what? I don't mean to be flip there, but since we can only pick one of the three or so lines that have already been written by the devs, how much difference would the subtleties make?

Because character coherence matters. With full text you can choose what option suits better the kind of character you want to portrait, based in the limited options available.


With the paraphrase you just guess, with greater or lesser accuracy, what choice is more suitable for the type of character you want to create.

Now, unless you are a very, very patient person, checking every option that may give some doubts about their meaning by playing the dialogue, repeatedly, will grow annoying quickly, meaning that a player in that situation will likely, in a short while, settle with less satisfactory answers than others potentially available, (but hidden, thanks to the paraphrase) . As a result, the game becomes a less enjoyable experience that it could be.