133 réponses à ce sujet

[gosimmons]

I've quoted Yahtzee on this before and I'll do it again.

"Late in the game, persuasion options pretty much need all Paragon or all Renegade, which messes up the roleplaying a bit. When you're choosing whether to free a race of slaves or force them to strip off and dance about while you take photographs, you're not thinking, "What would I do in this situation?" You're thinking, "Which option gives me the best d*ck points, because I need them to persuade Crewman A to take her top off."

[Mann42]

implodinggoat wrote...
All of these systems interfere with the players ability to make the choices they feel are right and encourages us to think on an artificial meta level where in we judge our decisions based upon how they'll effect our stats.

implodinggoat wrote...
I think it might be too late to impliment as well; but I don't think it would be too difficult.
Here's How I'd Do It...

1: Every conversation has successful and unsuccessful dialogue choices.

2: At the end of a conversation the successful choices are tallied up and if you score well enough then you will be successful in convincing the character(s) to go along with Shepard's suggestion.

3:  For any conversation there will always be a successful way for a player to navigate the conversation without choosing any renegade options or without choosing any paragon options.

For example you might have a dialogue choice where....

You have 3 choices 1 paragon, 1 renegade and 1 neutral and 2 out of the 3 are successful; but you don't know which two.  So a Paragon can get it right (or wrong) by choosing just between paragon and neutral and a Renegade can get it right (or wrong) by choosing just between renegade and neutral.

or where...

You have 4 choices.  2 more or less paragon and 2 more or less renegade and out of those 4 there's 1 successful paragon answer and 1 successful renegade answer.  Thus regadless of whether you go  paragon or renegade you'll still be able to make a right or wrong choice.

As long as there is a right answer with specific consequences, players will meta-game. Your suggestion does hide the meta-gaming slightly by removing the influence of your Paragon / Renegade score, but ultimately it just shuffles how the meta game is played and makes the Paragon / Renegade score completely meaningless. 

Which may in itself be cool. I think I'd prefer a more organic system. I just know it isn't going to stop meta-gamers from meta-gaming. In fact, you've made the meta-gaming even easier, since it's just a series of seperate multiple choice questions. 

Modifié par nexworks, 25 juin 2011 - 01:23 .

[Repearized Miranda]

 I wonder if it's because people don't know how to have those points by the time you get to those situations. This has got to be it.

All players have to do is evolve powers that adjust the meter accordingly as both sides see the same effect. The pragmatic side of me is topped out. I've been able to diffuse every situation presented with plenty of game left.

No, most of the options for me are pragmatic, but I've had some diplomatic ones as well and have taken them.

[OdanUrr]

I think that taking away the obvious paragon/renegade choices would, at the very least, add replay value to the game. Since you don't know a priori which course of action is "good" or "bad," you may find yourself playing several times over to explore every possible scenario.

Another thing is that good/bad decisions are sometimes, if not always, dependant on the circumstances, perhaps even more so in the case of ME3 where the galaxy is literally fighting for survival. Who is to say that saving group A over group B is good, but saving group C over D is bad? Why should delaying to get to place X give you renegade points while you were out on a recon mission that could potentially hand you a weapon to defeat the Reapers? I'm not saying the mechanics of ME3 will be thus but, given what devs have said about the game, it's likely paragon/renegade choices are going to (or at least should) be more of a grey area.

Modifié par OdanUrr, 25 juin 2011 - 02:11 .

[DaveExclamationMarkYognaut]

+1

The paragon/renegade mechanic is the perfect example of how you turn a theoretically intriguing set of moral choices into Fable 4: In Space, and tying them to negotiation further weakens the choice mechanic. You might as well just check a paragon/renegade box at the beginning of your playthrough at this point.

[Slayer299]

If they (Bioware) were to implement this or something close to it I'd be estatic, so count me in behind your idea here OP.

[Repearized Miranda]

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

+1

The paragon/renegade mechanic is the perfect example of how you turn a theoretically intriguing set of moral choices into Fable 4: In Space, and tying them to negotiation further weakens the choice mechanic. You might as well just check a paragon/renegade box at the beginning of your playthrough at this point.

But that's already done on the initial playthrough or afterwards. "I was blue last game, so I'll be red this time around." (ie: Metagaming) Even if you import a character; however, I think most would carry their approach all the way through. I was diplomatic/pragmatic, so I'll stay that way (mind you that mixing up choices may occur)

[Repearized Miranda]

OdanUrr wrote...

I think that taking away the obvious paragon/renegade choices would, at the very least, add replay value to the game. Since you don't know a priori which course of action is "good" or "bad," you may find yourself playing several times over to explore every possible scenario.

Another thing is that good/bad decisions are sometimes, if not always, dependant on the circumstances, perhaps even more so in the case of ME3 where the galaxy is literally fighting for survival. Who is to say that saving group A over group B is good, but saving group C over D is bad? Why should delaying to get to place X give you renegade points while you were out on a recon mission that could potentially hand you a weapon to defeat the Reapers? I'm not saying the mechanics of ME3 will be thus but, given what devs have said about the game, it's likely paragon/renegade choices are going to (or at least should) be more of a grey area.

I think that's that case now, as it has been, but most don't look at the pro & cons before making a decision. It's as if there must be a "Destroy/Keep Collector Base" discussion every time and there needn't be. Players should be aware that the good choices have CONS while the bad choices have pros. IOW, we need to have The Collector Base discussion in our heads before making s choice; however, I don't expect a diplomat to become a pragmatist or vice-versa. Adversely, I'm not naive to know that it doesn't happen either.

Again, it's not a "good or bad" thing because sometimes you have to go "against the grain," regardless of your philosphy.

[DaveExclamationMarkYognaut]

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

+1

The paragon/renegade mechanic is the perfect example of how you turn a theoretically intriguing set of moral choices into Fable 4: In Space, and tying them to negotiation further weakens the choice mechanic. You might as well just check a paragon/renegade box at the beginning of your playthrough at this point.

But that's already done on the initial playthrough or afterwards. "I was blue last game, so I'll be red this time around." (ie: Metagaming) Even if you import a character; however, I think most would carry their approach all the way through. I was diplomatic/pragmatic, so I'll stay that way (mind you that mixing up choices may occur)

It's more that assigning a pargon/renegade value to, say, a choice in Legion's loyalty mission trivializes what should be a difficult decision and attaching an incentive mechanic to maximizing paragon/renegads scores dis-incentivizies playing a more nuanced Shep.

[Repearized Miranda]

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

+1

The paragon/renegade mechanic is the perfect example of how you turn a theoretically intriguing set of moral choices into Fable 4: In Space, and tying them to negotiation further weakens the choice mechanic. You might as well just check a paragon/renegade box at the beginning of your playthrough at this point.

But that's already done on the initial playthrough or afterwards. "I was blue last game, so I'll be red this time around." (ie: Metagaming) Even if you import a character; however, I think most would carry their approach all the way through. I was diplomatic/pragmatic, so I'll stay that way (mind you that mixing up choices may occur)

It's more that assigning a pargon/renegade value to, say, a choice in Legion's loyalty mission trivializes what should be a difficult decision and attaching an incentive mechanic to maximizing paragon/renegads scores dis-incentivizies playing a more nuanced Shep.

But at the end of the day, you still have to choose, no matter how well you think through that choice.

Takke the meter away and the question remains: "Rewrite or Destroy"? Which choice do you think has more weight in terms of consequence? Destroying them could get more geth pissed off while rewriting them could get those rewritten to turn on you which means they're still coming after you anyway. I'd hate to imagine BOTH groups coming after you, but even THAT might happen! IOW, Legion's LM is highly likely a "no-win" situation and you do have those - especially when it comes to war.

I don't think they wanted Shepard to think in this game, otherwise, the player wouldn't need to play.

[DaveExclamationMarkYognaut]

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

+1

The paragon/renegade mechanic is the perfect example of how you turn a theoretically intriguing set of moral choices into Fable 4: In Space, and tying them to negotiation further weakens the choice mechanic. You might as well just check a paragon/renegade box at the beginning of your playthrough at this point.

But that's already done on the initial playthrough or afterwards. "I was blue last game, so I'll be red this time around." (ie: Metagaming) Even if you import a character; however, I think most would carry their approach all the way through. I was diplomatic/pragmatic, so I'll stay that way (mind you that mixing up choices may occur)

It's more that assigning a pargon/renegade value to, say, a choice in Legion's loyalty mission trivializes what should be a difficult decision and attaching an incentive mechanic to maximizing paragon/renegads scores dis-incentivizies playing a more nuanced Shep.

But at the end of the day, you still have to choose, no matter how well you think through that choice.

Takke the meter away and the question remains: "Rewrite or Destroy"? Which choice do you think has more weight in terms of consequence? Destroying them could get more geth pissed off while rewriting them could get those rewritten to turn on you which means they're still coming after you anyway. I'd hate to imagine BOTH groups coming after you, but even THAT might happen! IOW, Legion's LM is highly likely a "no-win" situation and you do have those - especially when it comes to war.

I don't think they wanted Shepard to think in this game, otherwise, the player wouldn't need to play.

Yeah, but it would be cool if they expected the player to think. Compare Witcher games, which have a much better system for provoking thought in that there is no clear-cut good/evil option, and often force you to choose what you think is the lesser evil. Or even something like Planescape: Torment, which has an alignment system that A) has more than one axis, and (as far as I remember) doesn't give you instant feedback along the lines of "+3 Good" for picking a particular option. The decisions in those games feel more real since you're not just making decisions to maximize an abstract number.

[slimgrin]

I do like having charm and intimidate options. I also liked that in ME1 they were part of our abilities to upgrade.

What I don't like is the damn meter, which tells us where our character's personality is heading. This encourages the player to reconcile the game mechanic with c&c. To be honest, I'm not sure what the best approach here is.

[Youknow]

Yeah, Charm and Intimidate options do need help. 

1) is that neutral options need to net you charm and intimidate as well so there's no more situations with + 2 Paragon, Nothing, +2 Renegade. So if you choose neutral, you get +1 Paragon and + 1 Renegade in that situation. Why? Because this kills RPing. You'll never choose neutral unless you just want to see it on subsequent playthroughs because it's nothing more than a waste of space as of right now. You get no rewards, and usually it doesn't do much. 

2) Make a Paragade/Renegon option, that requires a score of BOTH to get by. Thus, your Sheperd can make an aggressive appeal to the person. IE, you want a Krogan to help you catch a thief, and you inform the Krogan that the thief is a turian, and by siding with you, he'll not only get to beat up a Turian, but get paid to do so. Versus Paragon simply states that he'll be arrested if he doesn't help. Renegade just straight up bullies him into helping. 

3) Make all situations more like the Virmire decision. All of them can be handled without Charm and Intimidate, the player just won't have the Paragon/Renegade "I win" button.

4) Make it to where it's literally impossible to have Renegade/Paragon win all situations. Like say certain people just cannot have a Paragon solution, or another one cannot have a Renegade solution. That way, people that spam one side are not rewarded in all instances. 

5) Give Squadmates Renegade/Paragon bars as well that act as additonal modifiers for your character. So if you were a Paragon character, bringing someone like Grunt along would buff your Renegade score. You could even have the Paragon/Renegade points add to all 3 characters, Sheperd, and friends, and have a Psuedo influence system where the character could be prompted to talk to you by reaching certain levels of Paragon or Renegade. Say you keep doing nice things, and Grunt asks you why you keep doing them. And you can give an answer to bump you and Grunt's score. Which could also have them change reactions based on their scores as well. 

I do like the idea of a Persuade system in the game, but this one is really lacking...

[marshalleck]

slimgrin wrote...

I do like having charm and intimidate options. I also liked that in ME1 they were part of our abilities to upgrade.

What I don't like is the damn meter, which tells us where our character's personality is heading. This encourages the player to reconcile the game mechanic with c&c. To be honest, I'm not sure what the best approach here is.

Remove the meter from the character page and when the player doesn't have sufficient persuasion skills, don't show unavailable dialogue options at all, so people can just roleplay as they see fit without feeling like they have to game the system. Every time a greyed out option appears, it's basically telling the player "too bad about your character's personality, you're playing the game wrong."

So just make those little taunts disappear, let people play as they will and dialogue choices and their outcomes will resolve naturally.

Modifié par marshalleck, 25 juin 2011 - 05:18 .

[Repearized Miranda]

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

+1

The paragon/renegade mechanic is the perfect example of how you turn a theoretically intriguing set of moral choices into Fable 4: In Space, and tying them to negotiation further weakens the choice mechanic. You might as well just check a paragon/renegade box at the beginning of your playthrough at this point.

But that's already done on the initial playthrough or afterwards. "I was blue last game, so I'll be red this time around." (ie: Metagaming) Even if you import a character; however, I think most would carry their approach all the way through. I was diplomatic/pragmatic, so I'll stay that way (mind you that mixing up choices may occur)

It's more that assigning a pargon/renegade value to, say, a choice in Legion's loyalty mission trivializes what should be a difficult decision and attaching an incentive mechanic to maximizing paragon/renegads scores dis-incentivizies playing a more nuanced Shep.

But at the end of the day, you still have to choose, no matter how well you think through that choice.

Takke the meter away and the question remains: "Rewrite or Destroy"? Which choice do you think has more weight in terms of consequence? Destroying them could get more geth pissed off while rewriting them could get those rewritten to turn on you which means they're still coming after you anyway. I'd hate to imagine BOTH groups coming after you, but even THAT might happen! IOW, Legion's LM is highly likely a "no-win" situation and you do have those - especially when it comes to war.

I don't think they wanted Shepard to think in this game, otherwise, the player wouldn't need to play.

Yeah, but it would be cool if they expected the player to think. Compare Witcher games, which have a much better system for provoking thought in that there is no clear-cut good/evil option, and often force you to choose what you think is the lesser evil. Or even something like Planescape: Torment, which has an alignment system that A) has more than one axis, and (as far as I remember) doesn't give you instant feedback along the lines of "+3 Good" for picking a particular option. The decisions in those games feel more real since you're not just making decisions to maximize an abstract number.

This is true; however, it is possible to IGNORE the numbers.

When it comes to Shepard having to diffuse arguments. The first couple of playthroughs, naturally, it's not ignored because you wanna seee what happens. After that, you really don't care and seeing how most have played multiple times, why should a thread like this even be here? (I'm just saying?) I mean, by the time you do your 200th playthrough, you shouldn't even notice the meter.

Now, just imagine if they took it away. Sure, you won't get caaught up in the red/blue thing, but as I said: Most have twisted BW's meaning of the meter. It's one thing if a child is watching you play and you explain it as "Good and Bad," but it's another to misinterpret that meaning to someone else who knows better.

I get that meta-gaming happens because it exists, but doing away with it would have its frequency increase dramatically if you think about it. While blue is not always diplomatic and red is not always pragmatic (in terms of consequence - not choice - there's a difference), you still don't know the resulting consequence. If all answers on either side of the wheel were yellow, players would drive themselves crazy before coming to a decision if they ever come to one.  Then, what would BW say: "I'm sorry we made it uncomfortable. That's wasn't our intention." Sometimes, what one thinks is a good idea may not turn out to be even if intentions were good.

Sure, I'll check the Red box before playing ME3 and I'll know that I'll need X amount of points to diffuse situations accordngly, but will I let some silly meter keep me from playing? No!

[wizardryforever]

marshalleck wrote...

slimgrin wrote...

I do like having charm and intimidate options. I also liked that in ME1 they were part of our abilities to upgrade.

What I don't like is the damn meter, which tells us where our character's personality is heading. This encourages the player to reconcile the game mechanic with c&c. To be honest, I'm not sure what the best approach here is.

Remove the meter from the character page and when the player doesn't have sufficient persuasion skills, don't show unavailable dialogue options at all, so people can just roleplay as they see fit without feeling like they have to game the system. Every time a greyed out option appears, it's basically telling the player "too bad about your character's personality, you're playing the game wrong."

So just make those little taunts disappear, let people play as they will and dialogue choices and their outcomes will resolve naturally.

Exactly.  There would be far fewer complaints if they just removed the dialogue from the available options completely if you couldn't use them.  There would still be complaints though.  Always.  *sigh*

I really don't see the big hindrance to roleplaying, or the "encourages meta-gaming" argument.  It was no more of a hindrance than ME1's, and really all it did was prevent you from being a Mary Sue character who can do everything, just cuz.  Your character (and you yourself) is defined through his/her actions.  If you want to be a hero, make heroic choices and it will mold your personality to make more heroic options available.  If you want to be a badass, make suitably badass choices.  It's like D&D, when you declare your alignment, and the DM says to you, "prove it."  This is what the game does.  It makes you prove how heroic or how badass you are, and if you aren't really either to any significant degree, the really appropriate heroic or badass things aren't options because they don't fit how you yourself defined the character.  And it is not like you really need to be particularly devoted to one side either, since every conflict is solvable without charm/intimidate.  Bonuses are just that, bonuses.

As for meta-gaming, that will always be there regardless of the system.  I don't really see how any specific system could possibly "encourage" meta-gaming.

[marshalleck]

My point about the greyed out options is seeing them forces the player's mentality into a meta-gaming state. Once the greyed out option pops up you're no longer thinking about how your character would react in the conversation, you're now wondering where you missed points, and who's going to die or otherwise screw over your Shepard as a result of your having insufficient persuasion skills. That's why I'd like to see them go away if you can't use them in the first place.

[xentar]

Oh, my favorite thread again (well, apart from the Tali's face one). Still, I'd say maybe we should calm down a bit or have some kind of easily available archive of threads like this for people to familiarize themselves with before adding anything new here.

[DaveExclamationMarkYognaut]

Repearized Miranda wrote...

DaveExclamationMarkYognaut wrote...

Yeah, but it would be cool if they expected the player to think. Compare Witcher games, which have a much better system for provoking thought in that there is no clear-cut good/evil option, and often force you to choose what you think is the lesser evil. Or even something like Planescape: Torment, which has an alignment system that A) has more than one axis, and (as far as I remember) doesn't give you instant feedback along the lines of "+3 Good" for picking a particular option. The decisions in those games feel more real since you're not just making decisions to maximize an abstract number.

This is true; however, it is possible to IGNORE the numbers.

When it comes to Shepard having to diffuse arguments. The first couple of playthroughs, naturally, it's not ignored because you wanna seee what happens. After that, you really don't care and seeing how most have played multiple times, why should a thread like this even be here? (I'm just saying?) I mean, by the time you do your 200th playthrough, you shouldn't even notice the meter.

Now, just imagine if they took it away. Sure, you won't get caaught up in the red/blue thing, but as I said: Most have twisted BW's meaning of the meter. It's one thing if a child is watching you play and you explain it as "Good and Bad," but it's another to misinterpret that meaning to someone else who knows better.

I get that meta-gaming happens because it exists, but doing away with it would have its frequency increase dramatically if you think about it. While blue is not always diplomatic and red is not always pragmatic (in terms of consequence - not choice - there's a difference), you still don't know the resulting consequence. If all answers on either side of the wheel were yellow, players would drive themselves crazy before coming to a decision if they ever come to one.  Then, what would BW say: "I'm sorry we made it uncomfortable. That's wasn't our intention." Sometimes, what one thinks is a good idea may not turn out to be even if intentions were good.

Sure, I'll check the Red box before playing ME3 and I'll know that I'll need X amount of points to diffuse situations accordngly, but will I let some silly meter keep me from playing? No!

If a mechanic is best ignored, that doesn't make it a very good mechanic, does it?

And I think Bioware tries to move beyond good and evil, but generally fails to do so. Jade Empire was supposed to be quasi-Confucianism vs. quasi-Nietzsche (more the theme park version of Nietzsche, but I digress) but it ended up being implemented as good vs. evil. Paragon/Renegade is supposed to be diplomacy vs. pragmatism, but it ended up as being nice vs. being a d*ck. And so on. Dragon Age: Origins was all right, but really the companions that weren't implemented as some shade of good vs. evil were in the minority.

And re: "players would drive themselves crazy before coming to a decision if they ever come to one" - that's good. That means the choice mechanic was a genuine choice within the game world that actually affected the player, vs. some kind of metagamey number maximizing thing. We want games to move to a more complex and mature style of storytelling, and Witcher-style choices are better at achieving that than Fable-style choices.

If for whatever reason the game decides to implement a morality mechanic, it's best implemented as it is in Planescape: Torment. The morality system corresponds to something that actually exists in the game world, and it doesn't insult your intelligence with a "Enslaving that ghost was evil. 10 points to Slytherin!" pop-up every time you do something that affects your alignment. Also, the evil choices genuinely make sense as something a pragmatic person unconstrained by morality would do (like some of the choices in Jade Empire), as opposed to Mass Effect where the vast majority of Renegade options boil down to Shepard being a d*ck for no apparent reason.

Modifié par DaveExclamationMarkYognaut, 25 juin 2011 - 06:29 .

[Youknow]

^
Especially when you compare the Renegade choice to the Paragon one. It's really frustrating to choose the "not so nice choice" only to see someone else choose the Paragon option and watch the universe bend itself over just to accommodate them.

[Raiil]

Youknow wrote...


2) Make a Paragade/Renegon option, that requires a score of BOTH to get by. Thus, your Sheperd can make an aggressive appeal to the person. IE, you want a Krogan to help you catch a thief, and you inform the Krogan that the thief is a turian, and by siding with you, he'll not only get to beat up a Turian, but get paid to do so. Versus Paragon simply states that he'll be arrested if he doesn't help. Renegade just straight up bullies him into helping. 

I would be overjoyed if this were somehow an option. Or if having a too high paragon/renegade score came to bite you in the ass; sometimes people want nothing to do with the paladin with their head in the clouds, and others don't want someone so.. 'pragmatic' at times.

[massive_effect]

KOTOR did the whole good/evil thing best.
ME1 and especially ME2 became too gray. It's so gray, that you often don't know what type of points you will get.

As to the OPs comment, KOTOR 2 implemented more complex options in dialogue based on skill. For example, if you were highly intelligent, or a great computer hacker, or a great mechanic, the dialogue would open, if it applied to your skill. That system was too complex.

[Luckywallace]

I agree that it is not perfect and the likes of Dragon Age Origins with it's single 'coercion' slot was more sophisticated but Paragon/Renegade is very Mass Effect-y and it would feel too strange to change the system now for the finale.

I would prefer to have more circumstances where picking the Paragon or Renegade option DOESN'T help you out at all, just like in Thane's loyalty mission - you can get a Paragon/Charm option in the interogation but it doesn't get the guy to speak.

Modifié par Luckywallace, 25 juin 2011 - 07:36 .

[DaveExclamationMarkYognaut]

massive_effect wrote...

KOTOR did the whole good/evil thing best.
ME1 and especially ME2 became too gray. It's so gray, that you often don't know what type of points you will get.

As to the OPs comment, KOTOR 2 implemented more complex options in dialogue based on skill. For example, if you were highly intelligent, or a great computer hacker, or a great mechanic, the dialogue would open, if it applied to your skill. That system was too complex.

Gray is good, but I don't think ME2 is anywhere remotely near grey, except in a very small number of cases. And where were you unsure what sort of points you would get? It was always pretty clear to me. (Esp. since you can tell what kind of option it is by its location on the dialogue wheel.)

And I was with you on your description of KOTOR 2 dialogue right until you said it was too complex. IMO, if there is such a thing as a "too complex" in terms of RPG dialogue, we aren't there by a long shot.

Modifié par DaveExclamationMarkYognaut, 25 juin 2011 - 07:42 .

[HogarthHughes 3]

What are the morally black options in ME2? The only one off the top of my head is picking Morinth over Samara. Leaving people to die like the sick batarian and that injured salarian is certainly heartless, but not evil.

*edit - ME1 was definitely worse about it, many of the major decisions that gained renegade points are difficult to rationalize.  Purposely leaving the Council to die, wiping out the Zhu's Hope, and killing Wrex all seem like terrible and unnecessary ideas.  I suppose even those are defensible in some way (I've read a few reasons that make some sense), but still come across as malicious rather than pragmatic.

Modifié par HogarthHughes 3, 25 juin 2011 - 07:49 .