992 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

Zachriel wrote...

I don't see how I can do that with the paraphrase system because I can't tell what it is I'm selecting.

Nevermind the icons that indicate what kind of dialogue option you're about to select, or the brief line of text that sums it up. Yes, no clue whatsoever what your'e about to say or do.

THe brief line of text doesn't sum it up, though.  it's often a gross misrepresentation of the associated line.

And the icons force me into a specific intent for each line.

And voice ties me to a specific delivery of each line.

DAO did none of these things.  We knew what we were selecting, and we had total freedom to deliver the line however we wanted and have whatever intent behind the line we wanted..

[Lastyrsman]

My biggest issue with the wheel is that Moralities aren't black and white - Mass Effect seemed to recognize this in your ability to concurrently accumulate Paragon and Renegade Points, but at the same point, what I would LOVE to see is your character colored by your previous decisions. 



Let me paint an example.  Pesky Hawk, my rogue, is a complete megalomaniac and he strikes up a conversation with a leper on the street.  His options shouldn't be A. Wash His Feet (good guy) B. Ask Him if he needs a hand (Sarcasm) C. Attach strings to his decaying limbs and use him to put on a puppet show for child slavers (EEEEEVIL!!).  Your choices should be A. Recruit him as a biological weapon in your hoards and make sure he is fed and survives (Good for you) B. Tell him his Gary Busey impression is spot on (Sarcasm) C. Attach strings to his decaying limbs and use him in a puppet show (EEEEEVIL!!).  Option A Slowly moves you towards being a pragmatic megalomaniac, and can open up an opportunity for your character to grow an attachment (unlike the leper) and begin to steer more towards a sustainable dictatorship rather than a rolling hoard.  Essentially creating different levels of morality beyond goody goody mama's boy and violate your siblings corpse evil as landing points in the morality foodchain.  I'm mostly worried about this in a game where your character really becomes the leader of a metropolis.  There are phenomenal leaders that are personal screw-ups - that would be an interesting choice etc....  Anyway, just a linger feeling I had from my time playing ME2 and Dragon Age Uno.


The wheel as a mechanism doesn't annoy me, what it represents just lets me down a bit.

Modifié par Lastyrsman, 24 février 2011 - 09:08 .

[StormbringerGT]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

StormbringerGT wrote...

 The Point of an RPG to me is to play and role and participate in the story.

That works, too.

My concern with the dialogue system in DA2 (and ME and ME2) is that I'm not given the ability to do that.

Which as I pointed out above, that you are correct. The paraphasing does make it hard for you to dictate how that story if going go. However your arguement (it seems) was that at some point in Dragon Age origins you were giving the ability to direct how the story was going to go. Which is still just not true. You were allowed to choose between choices. A lot like choose your own adventure books. They all funneled you to a pre-determined end. Not an end of your own making.

I understand where you are coming from. It seems like you've had the rare oppourtunity to enjoy some good old fashioned PNP at some point in your life. I have never seen a video come anywhere close to what a great PNP session can do especially with a very creative DM who can think on their feet.

[Jonp382]

Zachriel wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

StormbringerGT wrote...

 The Point of an RPG to me is to play and role and participate in the story.

That works, too.

My concern with the dialogue system in DA2 (and ME and ME2) is that I'm not given the ability to do that.

How are you not?  In DA:O you selected numeric responses from the list.  In DA2 you select responses from a wheel.  Either way, you're just selecting an option to input in the game. Characters still react to what you say.  The story will (presumably) still be influenced to the same extent.

The problem is that you don't know what your character is going to do with the current dialog system in DA2. Selecting a question on the dialog wheel may not result in your character asking a question. So you aren't really choosing a response until you've played that 'option' before.

[elearon1]

Marionetten wrote...
True enough about Lawful Good. I still stand by Chaotic Neutral ( my favorite alignment, I might add! ) and I do find Lawful Evil highly debatable. Judgement certainly supports the notion but there's plenty of chaotic rage to go around. Perhaps Neutral Evil as you also suggested? That way we've got the whole range covered.

I was uncertain on the Evil, so totally willing to go with Neutral evil there, but he's too thinking for it to be Chaotic evil at this point, but I won't budge on Neutral Good - Chaotic Neutral is bordering on Manic Depression, it's too unpredictable.  Nor did he seem be a particularly angry kind of Neutral, which, again, you tend to expect from chaotic personalities.  So I'm going to have to put my money on NG.

Now, I imagine you could enforce a CN personality in game through your actions and perhaps moving back and forth between the middle and bottom two choice lines.  (which means if you wanted a Chaotic Good sort would you play both the top and bottom lines, with no middle choices?  Will have to fiddle with that to see how it works out)

[StormbringerGT]

Galad22 wrote...

StormbringerGT wrote...


Theres nothing wrong with a company who caters to a larger audience. It just sucks if you are not part of that larger audience.

Not to be ass, but only reason Bioware had a change to start catering to larger audience was because rpg players liked their games like Baldur's Gate and Kotor.

So really they shouldn't have such rush to throw their most loyal fans to trash bin just to cater for more and more people.

Even starting at Baldirs gate and going to Kotor. Those were still different games and changed a lot. A lot of people who like BG didnt enjoy KOTOR because combat was vastly different between the 2 games. They were already changing the instant they did something different from Baldurs Gate.

[Sylvius the Mad]

SomeBug wrote...

You were given the illusion of choice in Dragon Age 1.

It wasn't an illusion.  It was actual choice.  The outcome, determined entirely by me, was my character's state of mind.

I don't seem to be able to control that in DA2.

It's funny how you think you actually decided anything. Look at the conversation trees in the game and see how they split then reform to the same conclusions.

That the NPCs didn't react to that state of mind is immaterial.  I still got to choose it.

2) That paraphrasing is any more or less contraining than pre-determined set replies.

It's not more constraining.  it;s just obfuscatory.  WE DON'T KNOW WHAT HAWKE IS GOING TO SAY.  How then can we be said to have chosen it?

3) That the icons are hard to understand to easily infer tone and content

We haven't been told what the icons mean yet.  We have no information about them.  it's impossible to judge them yet.

However, we do know that the icons represent intent, and that intent was something that was left to us in DAO.

Conversation is about expression and interpretation.  That's all it is.  DA2 appears not to let us control either of those things individually.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 24 février 2011 - 09:12 .

[AngelicMachinery]

From the demo I got



Green dealie: Nice, soft, sweet kitten loving answer

Purple mask: Joke, sarcasm, not serious

Red doohicky: Stern, serious, and maybe a little bit mean.



None of these scream evil or good to me.

[Sylvius the Mad]

StormbringerGT wrote...

Even starting at Baldirs gate and going to Kotor. Those were still different games and changed a lot. A lot of people who like BG didnt enjoy KOTOR because combat was vastly different between the 2 games. They were already changing the instant they did something different from Baldurs Gate.

BG2 basically eliminated global exploration.  BG had it.  BG2 didn't.

We didn't see it return until Mass Effect, but then ME2 took it away again.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AngelicMachinery wrote...

From the demo I got

Green dealie: Nice, soft, sweet kitten loving answer
Purple mask: Joke, sarcasm, not serious
Red doohicky: Stern, serious, and maybe a little bit mean.

None of these scream evil or good to me.

Wait, the colour matters, too?

They need to document this stuff.

[Lastyrsman]

Sir Jools wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Personally I hate it. In DA I would read through my choices and pick the one that suited my character best. Now much like ME we get the good/evil and middle path. Not only that, but we get little icons to make it even easier...

Now you don't even have to read just look at the icons.

Anyway what does everyone else think ? Better or just lazy?

DA2 is clearly (and declaredly) action oriented, so the new dialogue system actually allows to just fast-forward through the dialogues. Even the lines on the wheel are not really accurate and just a "stylised", summarised version of what the character will actually say (they were like that in ME/ME2 too, but they felt more "accurate"). Only, sometimes one feels a wee bit "too encouraged" to savagely click through the dialogues, because of a few factors... The icon/colour code also feels like this.

What I personally really don't like, is the "sarcasm" option, which most of the times is just some cheap line I'd expect from a 12yo trying hard to be funny. I expected, instead, something a-la Indiana Jones or even Clint Eastwood or John McClane. But hey, that's just me having funky expectations I guess.

I also did not like the "bad" option. Again, I would have liked it to be deliberately evil/mean or at least badass, again, in the Die Hard meaning of the word.

In the end, I think the new FF-dialogues system fits the arcade spirit of the game, tho.

Just my 2 cents.

Personally I like the icons - not because I need the "cheat" but because the difference in what is written and what is said outloud is often very different depending on context.  I know in ME2 before I realized the entire up = paragon down = renegade I picked the down option because in my head what was written indicated a much softer response than what was actually said and the reaction that came from it.  Keep in mind the items aren't good and bad technically, they are aggresive or diplomatic.  I know it may sound like splitting hairs, but I'm not sure it is - at least without playing the finished product... so... ah Bioware, how about the finished product?

[Galad22]

StormbringerGT wrote...

Even starting at Baldirs gate and going to Kotor. Those were still different games and changed a lot. A lot of people who like BG didnt enjoy KOTOR because combat was vastly different between the 2 games. They were already changing the instant they did something different from Baldurs Gate.

Yeah but those two were both still roleplaying games.

Mass effect 2 is not it's action roleplaying game with very little roleplaying.

And now Dragon age seems to be molded into same sort of action roleplaying game. Which I don't personally like.
Why oh why couldn't Dragon age stay roleplaying game and Mass effect stay action roleplaying game.

It would have pleased more people than this.

[JohnstonMR]

BobSmith101 wrote...

marshalleck wrote...
 Wrong. In Bioware games you almost always play a pretty clearly pre-defined character. They don't do sandboxes. That's more Bethesda style. 

Besides. If I wanted to be pedantic, I would point out that nowhere in "role-playing game" is it implied that it's YOUR character you're playing the role of. 

They normally give you either a key background element , like being a child of Baal. Or a "title" like Grey Warden. That's a very different thing from giving you a pre-generated character.

Roleplaying at it's core requires background. It's what everything else is based on. It's very easy to "write" around being a child of Baal. And being a Grey Warden is what you are, not what you were. But you can't do that when the entire character is defined for you as is the case in ME and DA2.

People who never played any RPGs except the most recent won't find this at all bothersome. Unless they also have a PnP background.

Here's the rub in your post:  I have a PnP background going back 30 years now; I started playing when I was 10.  And I've played everything Bioware has put out and many RPGs they didn't.  And I have no problem with the current DA2 paradigm, or Mass Effect.  I also have no problem with DAO.  All can exist, all can be fun. 

[The-Sapient]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

[/quote]
An RPG gives me a framework in which to do that.  I get a bunch of other characters to which my characters can react.

I get to create a character (or characters), and set him (or them) loose in the world to see what happens.

If I get to control everyone in the game, then what happens is effectively pre-determined by me.  That's less fun.[/quote]

To me, the most glaring thing about this discussion is that you are complaing about a very minor loss of freedom in a framework that constantly limits your freedom in far more serious ways.  You seem to be saying that you can't really roleplay if you have to accept your characters statements have a specific tone assigned to them.  I'm sorry, but the very nature of dialog trees is so limiting that the difference between DAO and DA2 is trivial.  You seem to desire a game so tailored to your specific and detailed wants that it is amazing you actualy found one you liked in the past.

Look, I get that no system is perfect for anyone.  The chance that I would find the exact right dilog, spoken exactly the way I would want it to be spoken even once is nill.  But I'm not about spend hour after hour that the developers didn't consult with me, and only me, when making every decision ragarding their product.  You don't like the dialog system?  Fine.  Buy the game or not.  Let the devs know your preferences in a post or two.  But holy Hawke, you must have more to do than identify the exact point where you have the perfect amount of freedom in a video game.

[StormbringerGT]

Galad22 wrote...

StormbringerGT wrote...

Even starting at Baldirs gate and going to Kotor. Those were still different games and changed a lot. A lot of people who like BG didnt enjoy KOTOR because combat was vastly different between the 2 games. They were already changing the instant they did something different from Baldurs Gate.

Yeah but those two were both still roleplaying games.

Mass effect 2 is not it's action roleplaying game with very little roleplaying.

And now Dragon age seems to be molded into same sort of action roleplaying game. Which I don't personally like.
Why oh why couldn't Dragon age stay roleplaying game and Mass effect stay action roleplaying game.

It would have pleased more people than this.

but its still a Roleplaying game by some peoples standards. It also sounds like you were unhappy how it (ME 2) turned out. Unfortunately, according to sales, again this is where you stand in the minority.

You want the company to see from your point of view but do you see from theirs?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sir Jools wrote...

DA2 is clearly (and declaredly) action oriented, so the new dialogue system actually allows to just fast-forward through the dialogues.

I think the paraphase+icon makes the dialogue go much more slowly, because I have to spend a bunch of time trying to figuer out what they mean.  In DAO I could just read the options - and that hardly took any time at all - but in DA2 I have to break character and decipher the available options.  I probably spend 30-60 seconds on every single wheel event.

So far, I've only had consistent success determining the meaning of the icon+paraphrase with the gavel icon.

[JohnstonMR]

FieryDove wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The designers can't know what the PC's motives and objectives are unless they for specific motives and objectives on the player, and if they're doing that why is the player being asked for input at all?

I agree.

I think the best thing to do is have one button at the start of the game, push it and watch the entire game unfold. You can sit back and relax till the credits roll. Like a movie...

Because choices are the only thing that matters?  What?  Playing the combat is also part of the experience.  Even in PnP games.  Your comment is an oversimplification.

[Demx]

AngelicMachinery wrote...

From the demo I got

Green dealie: Nice, soft, sweet kitten loving answer
Purple mask: Joke, sarcasm, not serious
Red doohicky: Stern, serious, and maybe a little bit mean.

None of these scream evil or good to me.

Yeah, I was kind of looking for one of those "Be a dick" lines, but didn't see any. I wonder if that's gone for good.

[Maria Caliban]

StormbringerGT wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

Do you like the 3 path "RPG" system?

Yes.

I always find myself smiling at the stuff you say! (no not sarcastic)

Interesting. Not sure how a monosyllabic affirmation would make you smile, but it's good to know you like it.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I deny that the 3 paths were there prior to ME.

Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Republic also used a three-path system. They were simply sloppy with it because they acted as though good = diplomatic and evil = aggressive. Even in ME 1, there are missions where the paragon option is to talk and work things out while the renegade option is to kill everyone.

I dislike that. A soft-spoken and polite character can slit your throat. A belligerent and blunt character can save your family from a burning building.

This system gives me that. In addition, the middle option doesn't suck unlike those other games.

[Lastyrsman]

Galad22 wrote...

StormbringerGT wrote...

Even starting at Baldirs gate and going to Kotor. Those were still different games and changed a lot. A lot of people who like BG didnt enjoy KOTOR because combat was vastly different between the 2 games. They were already changing the instant they did something different from Baldurs Gate.

Yeah but those two were both still roleplaying games.

Mass effect 2 is not it's action roleplaying game with very little roleplaying.

And now Dragon age seems to be molded into same sort of action roleplaying game. Which I don't personally like.
Why oh why couldn't Dragon age stay roleplaying game and Mass effect stay action roleplaying game.

It would have pleased more people than this.

Here's the thing - and sales and commercial success will tell, I think DA2 will please more people than DAO did.  I personally love the hybrid nature of it.  I like that battles are more engaging from an action sense.  I'm sorry you're not really as into it, but I don't think you can speak for the gaming community at large with your opinions here.  Give it a shot.  I truly have not been let down with the storytelling experiences bioware has afforded me.  I'm looking forward to this one as well.

Modifié par Lastyrsman, 24 février 2011 - 09:21 .

[megaz635]

We deal.

We refuse.

We kill it.


I'll GIVE IT MY ANSWER!!11ONE111!  *Punch*

Modifié par megaz635, 24 février 2011 - 09:22 .

[StormbringerGT]

[quote]Maria Caliban wrote...

[quote]StormbringerGT wrote...

[quote]Maria Caliban wrote...

[quote]BobSmith101 wrote...

Do you like the 3 path "RPG" system?[/quote]
Yes. [/quote]
I always find myself smiling at the stuff you say! (no not sarcastic)[/quote]
Interesting. Not sure how a monosyllabic affirmation would make you smile, but it's good to know you like it.

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
[/quote]

Mainly because I did the same exact thing (look at my first post here) and Its not what you said but why and how you said it.

[StormbringerGT]

Lastyrsman wrote...

Galad22 wrote...

StormbringerGT wrote...

Even starting at Baldirs gate and going to Kotor. Those were still different games and changed a lot. A lot of people who like BG didnt enjoy KOTOR because combat was vastly different between the 2 games. They were already changing the instant they did something different from Baldurs Gate.

Yeah but those two were both still roleplaying games.

Mass effect 2 is not it's action roleplaying game with very little roleplaying.

And now Dragon age seems to be molded into same sort of action roleplaying game. Which I don't personally like.
Why oh why couldn't Dragon age stay roleplaying game and Mass effect stay action roleplaying game.

It would have pleased more people than this.

Here's the thing - and sales and commercial success will tell, I think DA2 will please more people than DAO did.  I personally love the hybrid nature of it.  I like that battles are more engaging from an action sense.  I'm sorry you're not really as into it, but I don't think you can speak for the gaming community at large with your opinions here.  Give it a shot.  I truly have not been let down with the storytelling experiences bioware has afforded me.  I'm looking forward to this one as well.

At the end of the day thats what Bioware is going for. Attempting to appeal to a larger audience. As a business thats is absolutley the way to make money and be successful.

[StormbringerGT]

Gentlemen (and ladies) it has been very entertaining trying to provide counter arguments here. Please note that for some of these issues I am on your side I don't think Dragon Age 2 is 100% perfect (especially from a demo) but then again I have yet to play a perfect game. Just remember if you want someone to see things your way you have to be willing to see things their way as well.



I'm off to enjoy the rest of my day! Mmmmm brownies!