833 réponses à ce sujet

[esper]

Sylvianus wrote...

esper wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

More non-personality icons would be nice, I felt certain scenes (Leandra scene comes to mind) could've benefitted greatly from angry / happy / sad tones rather than putting it on Diplomatic / Sarcastic and Aggressive. More things to populate the wheel would be nice, if only to avoid picking the Aggressive answer expecting anger but be surprised as Hawke talks about loving violence.

And removing personality from being involved in the "persuade" system, dislike having to metagame my character into Aggressive Hawke a lot quicker than I normally would so I can make my "in-character" decision of siding with Petrice.

I don't mind the persuade being personality oriented, that is better than 5-tier autowin from da:o. However, do not make joining an faction dependning on persuade. I don't see why you need to be agressive to kill someone (which was what that persuation was) after all by act 2 Hawke have killed a lot no matter what.

This system is bad. You can't create a grey character, like I said. It is either black or white, parangon or renegade, diplomat or agressive.

In DAO, I, played a parangon guy, It didn't prevent me to choose to kill Connor, because I thought It was the best solution against the odds.

Tone and mood and personality have nothing to do withn your morale. Nothing. It does however have something to do with how you interact with people and thus how you can convince people. I loathe the paragon/renegade system because the game is basically telling me what is good and whart is not.

It is realistic enough that a Hawke who have never say a cross word in her life (exgegerration, but hey) can't convince a slaver a knife point with a 'I'll kill you if you don't give me the information' speech. Because she/he is not scary enough.

However to join Petrice it was an action and this action was something Hawke do for a living (all have have killed at least 50 by this time). So no persuation should be needed.

Basically joining factions shouldn't be left to persuation it should be left solely to player choice.

[RosaAquafire]

David Gaider wrote...

If, however, one's suggestion is "present the dialogue exactly as you did in DAO", then I'm afraid that's not really in the cards. I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system. There are, however, alternatives to the way we did it in DA2.

Well, I know this may not be financially wise, but I really like how TOR handles personality. There's a character for each broad personality achetype (smuggler is snarky and clever, consular is wise and regal, etc) and then each individual personality has the positive/neutrel/negative vague sub archetypes. Something like that? Without being limited by class. Maybe by origin? I don't know.

Basically, it would be nice if tone and emotion were both chooseable, but on different axis. Again, not cheap, but it would be absolutely amazing.

[Xewaka]

David Gaider wrote...
If, however, one's suggestion is "present the dialogue exactly as you did in DAO", then I'm afraid that's not really in the cards. I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system. There are, however, alternatives to the way we did it in DA2.

Is there any reason other than subvocalization issues to force players to endure an inferior system of dialogue  information? Why don't you want people to know what the character will say before the character says it? What benefit is in forcing players to break the character they so carefully constructed because of lack of information?

Modifié par Xewaka, 20 mars 2012 - 08:25 .

[RosaAquafire]

Also, David, I agree that the dialogue wall isn't a great option with voice protagonist. And I do still want voiced protagonist over the full line -- BARELY. But I've seen a lot of great suggestions, like making the full line appear after a five second (or longer) mouseover, or the [Say that you think he's handsome.] or [Say that you appreciate the thought but would rather do it on your own.] dialogue compass idea that's been brought up in the other thread.

You know I'm a huge, huge, huge DA2 supporter to the death, but even I hated the paraphrases It felt like you would try not to "spoil" the actual line because it was so good, so you'd try to be cute about the paraphrase so it was a surprise, but we WANT it spoiled, and we DON'T want surprises

[GardenSnake]

Forget auto-dialogue altogether, I'm still in the silent-PC camp. There's not much more I can say. I honestly don't see a reason why having the game be less 'cinematic' is a problem in this day and age. I'm only one person and my opinion can't count for much, but I really do feel more attached to the character I'm playing when I myself can make up how they voice their response. A friend of mine on the forums Brockolloly once mentioned that he found it interesting how Bioware was planning on taking their two franchises (ME and DA) in two different directions. One being more cinematic, and the other being more player driven. I don't see why it all has to be the same but in different settings with different stories and characters.

But that's just me.

[esper]

RosaAquafire wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

If, however, one's suggestion is "present the dialogue exactly as you did in DAO", then I'm afraid that's not really in the cards. I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system. There are, however, alternatives to the way we did it in DA2.

Well, I know this may not be financially wise, but I really like how TOR handles personality. There's a character for each broad personality achetype (smuggler is snarky and clever, consular is wise and regal, etc) and then each individual personality has the positive/neutrel/negative vague sub archetypes. Something like that? Without being limited by class. Maybe by origin? I don't know.

Basically, it would be nice if tone and emotion were both chooseable, but on different axis. Again, not cheap, but it would be absolutely amazing.

The problem is that you would be stuck in an archetype the whole game.
I liked that my canon Hawke grew from diplomatic to more and more agressive. Likewise I liked that my agressive rival, opened op and began making more jokes in arc 2 where she felt on top, but when straight back into anger in act 3 where she was pressed.

I just want the game to somehow track who I am mostly agressive/joking/angry with and the system would be really good for me.

(It would also be nice if the game also could track that there have been a personality shift, but that is perhaps streching possible)

Perhaps they should also add a 'flirty' personality just to remove the obvious press the heart = romance (I would not like that personlity myself, but... person who have a habit of flirting with anyone they talk to do exist).

[Korusus]

RosaAquafire wrote...

You know I'm a huge, huge, huge DA2 supporter to the death, but even I hated the paraphrases It felt like you would try not to "spoil" the actual line because it was so good, so you'd try to be cute about the paraphrase so it was a surprise, but we WANT it spoiled, and we DON'T want surprises

This is why  SW:TOR is my favorite implementation of the dialogue wheel so far .. being able to interrupt dialogue to start over when I felt I accidently or unintentionally selected a response I didn't like, or just wanted to see what a different response would be like.  I don't like being surprised by the response coming out of the characters mouth, I want to choose what the character says.

By comparison DA2 and ME oversimplify this part of the game.  It becomes a mindless task of "well I'm playing the diplomatic/paragon archetype so I'll just select that response everytime and it doesn't really matter what the character says as long as it corresponds to that archetype"

[GardenSnake]

RosaAquafire wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

If, however, one's suggestion is "present the dialogue exactly as you did in DAO", then I'm afraid that's not really in the cards. I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system. There are, however, alternatives to the way we did it in DA2.

Well, I know this may not be financially wise, but I really like how TOR handles personality. There's a character for each broad personality achetype (smuggler is snarky and clever, consular is wise and regal, etc) and then each individual personality has the positive/neutrel/negative vague sub archetypes. Something like that? Without being limited by class. Maybe by origin? I don't know.

Basically, it would be nice if tone and emotion were both chooseable, but on different axis. Again, not cheap, but it would be absolutely amazing.

That's the biggest problem I had with TOR. Who said I wanted my smuggler to be snarky? What if my Sith was a bumbling idiot? With silent protagonists, all that is possible within the players mind. You really are roleplaying the character. Like take the decision where the Warden decides to take Anora's side over Alistair's in the Landsmeet. Saying you're sorry can be interpreted any way by the player. It can be said ironically, genuinely, really any way the player imagines it. It's a great system IMO. 

Modifié par GardenSnake, 20 mars 2012 - 08:36 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

David Gaider wrote...

I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system.

Why do you insist on hiding this from us?

Mike asked in the Mark Darrah thread whether we were concerned about the PC doing things that were unexpected, or if we were concerned about not knowing what was going to happen.  Those are the same things.  You can't fix one without fixing the other.

[The dead fish]

Xewaka wrote...

David Gaider wrote...
If, however, one's suggestion is "present the dialogue exactly as you did in DAO", then I'm afraid that's not really in the cards. I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system. There are, however, alternatives to the way we did it in DA2.

Is there any reason other than subvocalization issues to force players to endure an inferior system of dialogue  information? Why don't you want people to know what the character will say before the character says it? What benefit is in forcing players to break the character they so carefully constructed because of lack of information?

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

I'll admit that I'm biased; I don't like reading a choice and then hearing the exact same thing read aloud to me. However, I can absolutely agree with concerns about being blindsided as per your example above.

And I agree with Mike. That's awkward. I didn't like it in Deus.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 20 mars 2012 - 08:38 .

[Wulfram]

David Gaider wrote...

We're still playing with exactly what we're going to do on this front, and with the use of the wheel in general, but no-- I wouldn't make that assumption. If you have suggestions on the use of tone, or the use of the dominant tone in particular, I'd like to hear them.

Would a two stage selection of choice then tone be possible?  Like you do with Investigate, but used to allow the player to choose the tone rather than going with the dominant one?

Please avoid big speeches without any player input like the one at the end of DA2.  The ME1 and 2 system of breaking the speech up into parts was pretty good, I thought.

If you're going to be using dominant tone rather than something the player selected, please try to keep it fairly neutral.  And definitely try to err on the side of not being rude to people who aren't actual enemies, even if the dominant tone is aggressive or sarcastic.  Or maybe differentiate between characters who are overwhelmingly of one tone, and those who are mixing them.

edit: To be honest, I'd rather not have a dominant tone at all.  Any occasion when it's worth having a tone, I'd prefer to choose it.  But I'm guessing suggestions to improve it are more useful than just asking you to scrap it.

Modifié par Wulfram, 20 mars 2012 - 08:42 .

[AkiKishi]

Xewaka wrote...

David Gaider wrote...
If, however, one's suggestion is "present the dialogue exactly as you did in DAO", then I'm afraid that's not really in the cards. I'm not going to display the full line of dialogue in a voiced-PC system. There are, however, alternatives to the way we did it in DA2.

Is there any reason other than subvocalization issues to force players to endure an inferior system of dialogue  information? Why don't you want people to know what the character will say before the character says it? What benefit is in forcing players to break the character they so carefully constructed because of lack of information?

A. It's redundant.
B. With a pre-generated character it's never really yours anyway and making it appear that way can prove to be a bad thing. The backlash about auto dialogue in ME3 for example.

Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to be upfront about the player being more of a director than an actor. Third person roleplaying if you will.Because there is no way to turn back the clock to the days of BG when you have things like body language and facial expressions to take into account.

[Xewaka]

Sylvianus wrote...

Mike Laidlaw wrote...
I'll admit that I'm biased; I don't like reading a choice and then hearing the exact same thing read aloud to me. However, I can absolutely agree with concerns about being blindsided as per your example above.

And I agree with Mike. That's awkward. I didn't like it in Deus.

I addressed that. That's what subvocalization means. And it is not a good enough reason to destroy player agency in conversations. Not when there's several workable alternatives presented.

Modifié par Xewaka, 20 mars 2012 - 08:42 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mike Laidlaw wrote...

I'll admit that I'm biased; I don't like reading a choice and then hearing the exact same thing read aloud to me. However, I can absolutely agree with concerns about being blindsided as per your example above.

Of course, letting us turn off the voice does solve that problem.

Similarly, making the full text optional also solves that problem.  But making the full text impossible to see will irreparably break the game.  It did in DA2.  It did in the ME games.  It will if you use it again.

[RosaAquafire]

I'm definitely not going to argue with you, GardenSnake, I 100% see the benefits of the voiceless protagonist. My canon Warden was a shy, sweet, skittish little city else with no self confidence and terrible leadership skills. She would never, ever work in a voiced game because no company thinks that we want a character who isn't strong, competent, and heroic. And I will miss that, and I will cherish DA:O as being one of the only modern games that really provides that depth of roleplay.

But there are a LOT of advantages to a voiced PC. As much as I loved my canon Warden, I never felt like she was as much as a presence and force in the story who actually existed as my canon Hawke. I really, really, really wish that there was a way for the voiced character to have that level of customization as the one in your head can, but we can't have both.

Honestly, I like both options. If I had to pick one on pain of death, I'd pick voiced, but it's 49 one way, 51 the other. But we're never going to get voiceless back, so I'd like to focus on how to improve the depth and breadth of the options we DO have, instead of basically choosing between three pre-set characters.

[David Gaider]

RosaAquafire wrote...
Also, David, I agree that the dialogue wall isn't a great option with voice protagonist. And I do still want voiced protagonist over the full line -- BARELY. But I've seen a lot of great suggestions, like making the full line appear after a five second (or longer) mouseover, or the [Say that you think he's handsome.] or [Say that you appreciate the thought but would rather do it on your own.] dialogue compass idea that's been brought up in the other thread.

So, here's a good place to bring up a couple of issues-- because you touch on two options which we have discussed and are discussing. It's difficult to convey the meat of those discussions, however, because there's one big misconception I often see on these forums:

Namely that the dialogue options in DA2 were simply the dialogue options in DAO with paraphrases attached. This is not true. Good writing for a silent protaganist is not the same as good writing for a voiced protaganist. Why? Because with a voiced protaganist there is actual acting involved.

Let's say I have the option where the text pops up after a delay, providing you the full line of what follows. What if the actual meaning of that line is conveyed via emotion or gesture? That's often the case, and indeed we'd like to do that more and not less. You could also be seeing the first line of an exchange, as opposed to getting the gist of the entire exchange from it. So you'd be seeing something that could still not be the improvement you think it is, as the PC's dialogue is not written the same as DAO's was.

This is not to say that there are less options, as that is also a misconception, but the style is certainly different-- and must be.

Insofar as the "thought process" thing goes, I've seen that... and there are several versions of that which are possible-- ranging from the explicit text on pop-up (so explaining exactly what you do or exactly what you intend to say). This, however, also has some weaknesses. One that you still have the length limit on the GUI. A long, rambly line explaining a thought process is not an improvement... it would still need to be short, or you've turned the GUI into a big ol' mess (well-intended or not). You also run into an issue in tone options (present in both DAO and DA2) where the intent of each option is the same even if the tone is not... so do you really want to see three versions of [Explain the plot]? You could say "well don't write it like that", but I'm telling you "that's how we write it and always have"... so it's a potential issue.

There's more to it, though I'm afraid some of it would be hard to explain as it risks sounding kind of arrogant-- we have to make certain assumptions about how "the average player" plays their game, which is not true for everyone even though we have to make something as one-size-fits-all as we can. So I don't want to get into that. Ideally when we reach the point where we have something to show, I'd like to engage the community and get feedback on those options.

Even though, at the end of the day, we'll still need to pick only one. And that may indeed not be one that you personally like. But we exist to enrage, and I do so like to fulfill my raison d'etre.

Modifié par David Gaider, 20 mars 2012 - 08:51 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

RosaAquafire wrote...

I'm definitely not going to argue with you, GardenSnake, I 100% see the benefits of the voiceless protagonist. My canon Warden was a shy, sweet, skittish little city else with no self confidence and terrible leadership skills. She would never, ever work in a voiced game because no company thinks that we want a character who isn't strong, competent, and heroic. And I will miss that, and I will cherish DA:O as being one of the only modern games that really provides that depth of roleplay.

This is exactly right.  Why do we always have to play a strong, confident hero?  I routinely want to play a character who is a coward, or is absent-minded, or is oblivious to the feelings of those around him.  But I can't do that with a voiced protagonist unless BioWare wants me to do that.

Half of the problems with DA2's dialogue system could be eliminated by giving us full-text dialogue options, but the other half are caused by the voice.

[David Gaider]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Half of the problems with DA2's dialogue system could be eliminated by giving us full-text dialogue options, but the other half are caused by the voice.

I've explained above why full-text dialogue is not the answer, though the problem still relates in that case to player VO as well. If player VO is your issue, however, then that is simply a non-starter. There are benefits that come with player VO as well as weaknesses, but on the whole we feel that the benefits outweigh the weaknesses. That is going nowhere, and there's no point dilly-dallying around it if that's where your enjoyment breaks down.

[AkiKishi]

KOA has a silent protagonist. Take that for spin.

[Xewaka]

David Gaider wrote...
Let's say I have the option where the text pops up after a delay, providing you the full line of what follows. What if the actual meaning of that line is conveyed via emotion or gesture? That's often the case, and indeed we'd like to do that more and not less.

Add a "[dismissive hand gesture]" tag at the end of the subtitle. Add a "[Smirking] at the beginning. If that information is so important, give it to us.

[David Gaider]

Xewaka wrote...
Add a "[dismissive hand gesture]" tag at the end of the subtitle. Add a "[Smirking] at the beginning. If that information is so important, give it to us.

Possibly, though the room on the GUI is not infinite. Like I said, it's a potential issue, and not necessarily a deal-breaker. It is the kind of issue, however, that needs to come out as a result of using it and not one that can be solved theoretically.

[Koire]

esper wrote...
I don't mind the persuade being personality oriented, that is better than 5-tier autowin from da:o. However, do not make joining an faction dependning on persuade. I don't see why you need to be agressive to kill someone (which was what that persuation was) after all by act 2 Hawke have killed a lot no matter what.

This. I actually liked how the persuade reflected the personality in most cases, imho it was better than the system in DAO, but "siding with Petrice" case was annoying.

[DeathScepter]

That is a good post, David.

[Sylvius the Mad]

David Gaider wrote...

Namely that the dialogue options in DA2 were simply the dialogue options in DAO with paraphrases attached. This is not true. Good writing for a silent protaganist is not the same as good writing for a voiced protaganist. Why? Because with a voiced protaganist there is actual acting involved.

That you have different options doesn't mean you need to use those options.  Using those acting options removes an entire gameplay style.

Let's say I have the option where the text pops up after a delay, providing you the full line of what follows. What if the actual meaning of that line is conveyed via emotion or gesture?

I deny that this is even possible.  The literal content of the line is always the most important detail.

And even if I grant your point, it would still improve the game to give us the full text.  More information is better than less information.

You could also be seeing the first line of an exchange, as opposed to getting the gist of the entire exchange from it. So you'd be seeing something that could still not be the improvement you think it is, as the PC's dialogue is not written the same as DAO's was.

Don't do that.  Don't have those back-and-forth exchanges.  Those back-and-forth exchanges are part of the problem.  They need to go away, because they aren't player-driven.

This is not to say that there are less options, as that is also a misconception, but the style is certainly different-- and must be.

I don't agree.  I see no reason why the style needs to be different.

And, again, even if the style does need to be different, then let's discuss whether the benefits of the voiced PC are worth the costs associated with the writing style.

I will not allow BioWare's presumptions to frame the debate.

Insofar as the "thought process" thing goes, I've seen that... and there are several versions of that which are possible-- ranging from the explicit text on pop-up (so explaining exactly what you do or exactly what you intend to say). This, however, also has some weaknesses. One that you still have the length limit on the GUI. A long, rambly line explaining a thought process is not an improvement... it would still need to be short, or you've turned the GUI into a big ol' mess (well-intended or not).

I suggested some weeks ago that the player could select the actual line and the PC's intended goal separately, thus allowing the PC to express himself as the player saw fit without being railroaded by the writers' expectations about why any particular line was chosen.

You also run into an issue in tone options (present in both DAO and DA2) where the intent of each option is the same even if the tone is not... so do you really want to see three versions of [Explain the plot]?

Yes, absolutely I do.  How my PC asks a question matters just as much as that he asks it.

This is, incidentally, the most important question asked by a BioDev today.

There's more to it, though I'm afraid some of it would be hard to explain as it risks sounding kind of arrogant-- we have to make certain assumption about how "the average player" plays their game, which is not true for everyone even though we have to make something as one-size-fits-all as we can.

Do you at least recognise that the games you're making now allow a much narrower range of playstyles than your older games did?  Yes, you assume a typical playstyle, and you always have, but your older games allowed more different types of play to exist.