833 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

Auto dialogue works to make a movie-like experience.

However, it Bioware wants me to care anything at all about my character,, they have to either A) make the protagonist more set, even more so than in DA2 and ME or B)let go of the reins on the story you envision and remove this as much as possible.

I know that Laidlaw views voiced PC as the way to go, and that he likes paraphrasing because he doesn't like reading words that are then said by the character, I like a super defined protagonist in an RPG even LESS.

[Eudaemonium]

Corto81 wrote...
I think the issue many people seem to have ( and me personally) is that Hawke ends up a mish-mash, a character that's suppose to feel mine, but always ended up feeling Bioware's.

Witcher, PS:T, Vampire, and a Hawke-molded Shepard (or vice-versa) always felt mine, despite being (half)set characters.

This is actually interesting, because I had the exact *opposite* experience. For me, Hawke always felt mine to a degree that, say, Shepard never has. Shepard has always been an independent character whose decisions I make, but whose personality I have no control over. Hawke was a character whose personality I felt was genuinely molded by me, the player, and I liked that a lot. PS:T might be the same, but I've never felt that Geralt or Shepard were ever really 'mine' in any definite way.

I guess for me the issue boils down to 'personality' versus 'decisions' (and this obviously isn't a strict dichotomy, and you can have both). Geralt and Shepard are both character who, for me, have fairly fixed personalities (or at least highly fixed within certain confines, Shepard is always a soldier, etc.). What I am able to control with both of them is the decisions they make at certain key junctures. With Hawke I actually felt like her personality, her character was made to an extent by me, the player. The decisions were part of that, but we all know the horrendous railroading DA2's plot partakes in, so it isn't really a brilliant exmaple of the potentialities. I think it comes to an issue of priorities. Is it more important to me that I was able to build Hawke as a charming rogue, an angry mage who was kind to her family and nobody else, a disgruntled warrior who felt her family's magic was holding her back (ala Carver) or that she decided the new king of Orzammar. For me, the former is far more important. I would like the latter as well, of course, but if I had to choose the first one is the priority.

[Wulfram]

David Gaider wrote...

Right-- the only time in DA2 where you didn't have the option to select your tone was in the "choice" wheels. You'd be presented with your choice of action, but the tone Hawke actually used was your dominant one. In regular conversation, you'd still get to choose your tone of response regardless of your dominant tone.

Um, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but there were also occasions when you used your dominant tone right at the start of the conversation.  Like IIRC when Isabela asks you to buy her a drink.  Or the speech right at the end, that happens without any player input at all.

And there are those Hawke banters which are in the DLC, I believe.

The only way to get around that would be to present tone/action
combinations-- so if you chose to, say, attack then your tone would
automatically be aggressive. Occasionally we might present actions that
were the same but had more than one tone... but we could not offer every
action in all three tones (three choices x three tones = too many...
and that's ignoring the fact that we often offer more than three...
particularly when you take into account follower options and
investigates), nor would we ever break a choice into a new hub where you
pick your tone. That's simply not going to happen.

The other option would be to have action choices always result in a "neutral" tone, the same as we do with investigates (and what we did in Origins). I suspect that would please some folks while pleasing others less, however... and the folks it pleases probably aren't fans of their PC speaking for them to begin with so it's debateable how much this would actually appease their basic concern. But that's speculation on my part.

Well, you could at least try to keep the tone on those sort of things not too extreme, even if not neutral.  I often ended up struggling to stay on Diplomatic despite picking a lot of Sarcy or Aggressive choices, simply because Diplomatic Hawke was the least likely to make me want to punch them after they said something out of my control.

[Dave of Canada]

Really quick idea from the middle of my class: A way to track dominant personality would be appreciated, be it a bar or an icon on your character sheet. It's kind of hard to keep track if you're mixing options a lot. Only kept track of it by having companions talk with Hawke.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 21 mars 2012 - 08:08 .

[AkiKishi]

Eudaemonium wrote...

Corto81 wrote...
I think the issue many people seem to have ( and me personally) is that Hawke ends up a mish-mash, a character that's suppose to feel mine, but always ended up feeling Bioware's.

Witcher, PS:T, Vampire, and a Hawke-molded Shepard (or vice-versa) always felt mine, despite being (half)set characters.

This is actually interesting, because I had the exact *opposite* experience. For me, Hawke always felt mine to a degree that, say, Shepard never has. Shepard has always been an independent character whose decisions I make, but whose personality I have no control over. Hawke was a character whose personality I felt was genuinely molded by me, the player, and I liked that a lot. PS:T might be the same, but I've never felt that Geralt or Shepard were ever really 'mine' in any definite way.

I guess for me the issue boils down to 'personality' versus 'decisions' (and this obviously isn't a strict dichotomy, and you can have both). Geralt and Shepard are both character who, for me, have fairly fixed personalities (or at least highly fixed within certain confines, Shepard is always a soldier, etc.). What I am able to control with both of them is the decisions they make at certain key junctures. With Hawke I actually felt like her personality, her character was made to an extent by me, the player. The decisions were part of that, but we all know the horrendous railroading DA2's plot partakes in, so it isn't really a brilliant exmaple of the potentialities. I think it comes to an issue of priorities. Is it more important to me that I was able to build Hawke as a charming rogue, an angry mage who was kind to her family and nobody else, a disgruntled warrior who felt her family's magic was holding her back (ala Carver) or that she decided the new king of Orzammar. For me, the former is far more important. I would like the latter as well, of course, but if I had to choose the first one is the priority.

With any pre-gen how close your vision of the character is to that of the creator can have a huge impact. Even something basic such as liking the character will alter the perception of just how restrictive you feel it is to your roleplaying.

In ME1/2 Shepard and I were very much in sync, in ME3 he's a bit of a stranger. On the other hand I never took to Hawke at all and I felt railroaded the whole way.

[hoorayforicecream]

Couldn't you use the space above and below the wheel? It's essentially hexagonal, and there are no cardinal up/down choices as far as I know, so you could use it to help direct the player for more context-specific clues, no?

[TEWR]

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.

When you say you won't display the full line, do you mean in list format or do you mean at all? If the former, then I can accept no list ever coming again if there's still some way for those players that want to see the full line to be able to do so.

And indeed, there are ways to make it happen.

If the latter, then that alienates a chunk of the fanbase because they'll never know what their PC is saying. At best, they'll have slightly more informed assumptions on what he will say. But that's unacceptable for those that want to know what they're character says, rather then guessing.

All I can really say is that on the issue of knowing what dialogue is said, a mechanic that shows the full line at the top of the screen if you hover over the paraphrase for a few seconds would be welcome for me.

[PsychoBlonde]

David Gaider wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...
Hell, least DA2 had little back-and-forths based on the selection you did earlier. That's about as much "auto-dialogue" that I'm fine with, as the player was still able to guide the conversation. In a good mood with your friend? Be humoristic! You're pissed off at them? Rawr, tell them to go screw themselves!

Right-- the only time in DA2 where you didn't have the option to select your tone was in the "choice" wheels. You'd be presented with your choice of action, but the tone Hawke actually used was your dominant one. In regular conversation, you'd still get to choose your tone of response regardless of your dominant tone.

The only way to get around that would be to present tone/action combinations-- so if you chose to, say, attack then your tone would automatically be aggressive. Occasionally we might present actions that were the same but had more than one tone... but we could not offer every action in all three tones (three choices x three tones = too many... and that's ignoring the fact that we often offer more than three... particularly when you take into account follower options and investigates), nor would we ever break a choice into a new hub where you pick your tone. That's simply not going to happen.

The other option would be to have action choices always result in a "neutral" tone, the same as we do with investigates (and what we did in Origins). I suspect that would please some folks while pleasing others less, however... and the folks it pleases probably aren't fans of their PC speaking for them to begin with so it's debateable how much this would actually appease their basic concern. But that's speculation on my part.

A third option would be my preference: set macro-tone at game outset (either as a simple character-creation option, or through a prologue scenario), and have all options use that tone.  On the one hand, it'd probably be easier to write stuff consistently.  Maybe much easier, because you could set how many options there ought to be for each situation, then write the three (or however many you decide to have) tones to use those options while sounding a bit different.  On the other hand, this might make it feel like you're writing the game three times.  And it might COST as much as writing the game three times.

There's lots of things I'd love to see done, but a lot of them depend on how much you have in the way of resources to throw at the problem--if it is a "problem", exactly.

[Xewaka]

hoorayforicecream wrote...
Couldn't you use the space above and below the wheel? It's essentially hexagonal, and there are no cardinal up/down choices as far as I know, so you could use it to help direct the player for more context-specific clues, no?

If you wait for a bit, that's where the last spoken line subtitles appear (above the wheel). Having the following subtitle appear in said position when holding over a paraphrase would be sufficient. It'd give us a much higher amount of information on the dialogue than what we have now.

[Wulfram]

I felt I had fairly similar amount of control over Hawke and Shepard's personality. Well, in ME1 and 2 anyway. Shepard's choices were perhaps closer together - Paragon, Neutral and Renegade aren't as different from each other as Diplo, Sarcastic and Aggressive - but then Hawke had a distinct lack of neutral which limited their characterisation just as much.

And I'd also say Hawke's voice acting was more inherently characterful. Which isn't a inherently a bad thing, but does give you a bit less freedom to place your own characterisation.

Modifié par Wulfram, 21 mars 2012 - 08:48 .

[Maria Caliban]

BobSmith101 wrote...

With any pre-gen how close your vision of the character is to that of the creator can have a huge impact. Even something basic such as liking the character will alter the perception of just how restrictive you feel it is to your roleplaying.

I think it's up to the players to put themselves in the mind of another.

If the main character is a qunari, it's my obligation as a player to understand what it means to be a qunari.

I had no problem playing Planescape despite the fact that being a hideously scarred, immortal amnesiac in a world where reality bends to belief is not what I planned or anticipated, and is well outside my lived experience.

In a PnP game, I can legitimately expect to have a huge range of options in regards to my vision of the character and how to fulfill it. In a cRPG, I expect that that range will be greatly lessened.

[AkiKishi]

Wulfram wrote...

I felt I had fairly similar amount of control over Hawke and Shepard's personality. Well, in ME1 and 2 anyway. Shepard's choices were perhaps closer together - Paragon, Neutral and Renegade aren't as different from each other as Diplo, Sarcastic and Aggressive - but then Hawke had a distinct lack of neutral which limited their characterisation just as much.

And I'd also say Hawke's voice acting was more inherently characterful. Which isn't wholly a bad thing, but does give you a bit less freedom to place your own characterisation.

There is a sort of unhappy balance between being generic and roleplaying. The more generic something is , the easier it is to put your own stamp on it.Meers less expressive VA is easier to "roleplay" than Hales "better" VA (my opinion).But at the same time ,well the more generic it is.

I think we all love DA:O ? but if you look at DA:O from a non roleplayers point of view it's a rather empty experience compared to ME. Of course, the emptiness is why we love it because where people see empty roleplayers see something that they can fill with imagination.

[xnode]

After reading everything I am with David on this one, you can make the choices a bit more obvious

1. Respond Angry
2. Respond Neutral
3. Respond Happy

For in the end, you can't understand different type of dialog when you say enter Sarcasm unless you put in (he says sarcastically) ... as reading in third person, just won't work well. Eh for me the whole auto dialog argument is so off, I never talked to anyone that complained about the dialog, what I have heard in complaints and plenty is your choice is really never a choice. Look at any bioware game in the last few years, each choices is a waver of a choice, it might effect your stance or personality, does it truly effect the stories outcome? Not really.

So I agree with David on the whole way the conversation system works and why it has to be a certain way, I just don't agree with the choices in said dialog, I think that comes down to another discussion thou.

[Fast Jimmy]

Maria Caliban wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

With any pre-gen how close your vision of the character is to that of the creator can have a huge impact. Even something basic such as liking the character will alter the perception of just how restrictive you feel it is to your roleplaying.

I think it's up to the players to put themselves in the mind of another.

If the main character is a qunari, it's my obligation as a player to understand what it means to be a qunari.

Gee, that's weird. I thought *I* was the one shelling out $60 to play a game, not the other way around. Saying anything is a player's "responsibility" in order for them to enjoy a game is a fundamentally flawed concept.

[byzantine horse]

David Gaider wrote...

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.

Instead of having it just pop onto the screen (the entire response) what about having a small button you can press to see the entire response, beside the dialogue choice? For consoles it could be right trigger of or something.

[hoorayforicecream]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

BobSmith101 wrote...

With any pre-gen how close your vision of the character is to that of the creator can have a huge impact. Even something basic such as liking the character will alter the perception of just how restrictive you feel it is to your roleplaying.

I think it's up to the players to put themselves in the mind of another.

If the main character is a qunari, it's my obligation as a player to understand what it means to be a qunari.

Gee, that's weird. I thought *I* was the one shelling out $60 to play a game, not the other way around. Saying anything is a player's "responsibility" in order for them to enjoy a game is a fundamentally flawed concept.

Think of it less as a responsibility and more of a suggestion. I mean... it isn't your responsibility to put the game in the console and turn it on either, but you probably won't get much enjoyment out of it if you don't at least put in some effort.

[Wulfram]

Maria Caliban wrote...

I think it's up to the players to put themselves in the mind of another.

If the main character is a qunari, it's my obligation as a player to understand what it means to be a qunari.

I had no problem playing Planescape despite the fact that being a hideously scarred, immortal amnesiac in a world where reality bends to belief is not what I planned or anticipated, and is well outside my lived experience.

In a PnP game, I can legitimately expect to have a huge range of options in regards to my vision of the character and how to fulfill it. In a cRPG, I expect that that range will be greatly lessened.

I think if you have a too restrictive character concept forced on the PC, there's a high risk that they'll be someone that the player isn't interested in getting into the mind of.  If the next DA game had a Qunari protagonist, I simply wouldn't buy it - though an ex-Qunari might not be too bad, I guess.  And I doubt I'd have enjoyed DA:O half as much if I had to play a Dwarf Commoner, because I found that origin restrictive in ways that I disliked.

It's also important that the writer defines the limitations of characterisation early on, and doesn't make them more constricting later.  [insert ME3 auto-dialogue rant here].  Because while a character is likely to be inchoate and flexible towards the start of the game, after a while the player should feel like they have a good idea of what their character is like, and suddenly having that trampled on is painful.  One of the things DA:O did right was that it put it's major restrictions on characterisation fairly early - OK, you're a Warden, and you're going to stick around fight the blight - whereas DA2 seemed to corral you into doing each of it's main quests seperately.

[Pasquale1234]

Kavatica wrote...

Is there any way to have a voiced protagonist where you don't actually watch them speak? Or are those two things part of the same package? I'm just wondering if this is part of why some feel that the silent Warden in DAO was more "personal" than a voiced Hawke. For example, in the dialogues in DAO where I am looking over the Warden's shoulder and watching the other character's reaction to what I "say" as opposed to watching Hawke say the lines and then seeing the other character's reactions. This also might take away some of the surprises when it comes to the protagonist doing something unexpected...like Hawke making certain facial expressions that I might not have wanted her to make. Then again, that might take away from some of the fun things about having a voiced protagonist. But it might be a way to compromise and address the whole outsider-looking-in issue that some experience with a voiced protagonist.

That is certainly part of it - but there is a lot more to it than that.  There are many different ways to deliver any given line of dialogue, and when the protag is voiced, the player is stuck with whatever the game provides.  It also makes it impossible to tailor the verbiage, or way of expressing that thought, to something that seems more in character for the playthrough.  You end up being much more bound to the motives and morality the writer envisioned for the character, which greatly restricts the type of character that can be role-played in that game.

schalafi wrote...

I really liked the voiced protagonist in DA2. It always frustrated me that the written dialogue kept my pc's back turned to me all the time, while all my npc's were facing me; it was nice to see her face for a change when talking.

But it is perfect for a first-person roleplaying experience.  Watching the protag is a shift to 3rd person.

Modifié par Pasquale1234, 21 mars 2012 - 11:15 .

[Kavatica]

Pasquale1234 wrote...

That is certainly part of it - but there is a lot more to it than that.  There are many different ways to deliver any given line of dialogue, and when the protag is voiced, the player is stuck with whatever the game provides.  It also makes it impossible to tailor the verbiage, or way of expressing that thought, to something that seems more in character for the playthrough. 

I understand - I am one of the masses that prefer a silent protagonist. But since we are getting a voiced protagonist (this has been confirmed), I am hoping for some kind of a compromise/way of making a voiced protagonist feel more first-person. I'm not sure it's possible to do. But if it is, that would be nice.

[In Exile]

Wulfram wrote...
One of the things DA:O did right was that it put it's major restrictions on characterisation fairly early - OK, you're a Warden, and you're going to stick around fight the blight - whereas DA2 seemed to corral you into doing each of it's main quests seperately.

No, DA:O failed miserably at this. It was incoherent, because the box you are put into (the Origin) doesn't connect to the box you are actually in the entire game (the Warden).

There is no motivation that flows naturally from most Origins to be a Warden. At best, you get some that give you a reason to go with Duncan - but many don't even have that.

[Pasquale1234]

Kavatica wrote...

Pasquale1234 wrote...

That is certainly part of it - but there is a lot more to it than that.  There are many different ways to deliver any given line of dialogue, and when the protag is voiced, the player is stuck with whatever the game provides.  It also makes it impossible to tailor the verbiage, or way of expressing that thought, to something that seems more in character for the playthrough. 

I understand - I am one of the masses that prefer a silent protagonist. But since we are getting a voiced protagonist (this has been confirmed), I am hoping for some kind of a compromise/way of making a voiced protagonist feel more first-person. I'm not sure it's possible to do. But if it is, that would be nice.

Got'cha.  I continue to hope for a toggle to turn off the PC voice plus accompanying cinematics.  May be too much to hope for, but I dearly love this amazing world these brilliant folks have created, and want to try to find a way that will work for me to continue to adventure there.

ETA:  Plus - A first-person RPG is a form of therapy, and a way to at least try to see the world through someone else's eyes, feel a set of experiences from another point of view - and it's more effective or more intense or more... something because you are actively co-creating it, instead of sitting in the audience.   All good stuff, methinks.

Modifié par Pasquale1234, 21 mars 2012 - 11:46 .

[Shadow of Light Dragon]

David Gaider wrote...

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).

Is it feasible to have two dialogue GUIs for players to choose from? Modern and classic, as it were, to cover the radial/icon/paraphrase crowd and the full sentences crowd respectively. I know it's essentially another 'dreaded toggle', but most modern games give the player a measure of power over customising their own GUI to account for different play styles.

Restoring the list (as an option) would enable more room for Xewaka's suggestion of descriptor tags for gesture and tone, if such things are deemed important.

'classic Mode' might still have to deal with the VO if there's no mute option, but:

1) Speaking for myself, I don't find sentences spoken as written to be awkward. Monkey Island 3, among other games, had full sentences that repeated as VO (usually as written).
2) It'd be easier for people to skip VO and still be on the same page as the Modernites if the information is given to them via text.

Considering the two dialogue systems already exist, most of the programming is there already...except I don't know how much the DA2 toolkit, from the dialogue side, has changed from DA:O in terms of input. I wouldn't expect the dialogue, code, animation etc to be duplicated in two different systems(!). That'd be too much to reasonably ask.

Finally...

Subtitles. I always have these enabled. These can, and have been, used to circumvent the VO emotions and gestures, if the gamer is a quick reader. The chief downside, of course, is that the subtitles come after the paraphrase selection. Why not a way to show them before? I'm coming up short on remembering PC lines that were too long to show in a small space. The speech in DA2 is the only one I can remember.

And on the subject of autotext...

In terms of RPing a character that's meant to be mine, I will never like autotext. I've played enough games, including tabletop, to know that putting words into another person's character's mouth is, in most cases, an enormous faux pas, no matter how clever the words are. In a way, it's like you, David, not liking fanfiction about your characters. Even if the fanfiction is in character, it's still someone else putting their fingerprints on your babies. In terms of a game and the Player Character, I can well understand how the writers might have a sense of ownership of the PC as well since, hey, you guys write the lines we choose from. No getting around that. But...at least you let us choose what's most in character for our PCs to say. You can choose not to read that fanfiction that has Alistair declaring his secret love for Morrigan. We can't choose not to be subjected to autodialogue where Hawke says he eg. believes in freedom for all mages.

You guys have a lot of control over the PC already. Too much more and you might as well make it a set character RPG. :/

[Fast Jimmy]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

Think of it less as a responsibility and more of a suggestion. I mean... it isn't your responsibility to put the game in the console and turn it on either, but you probably won't get much enjoyment out of it if you don't at least put in some effort.

Its not my responsibility to put the game in the console... or buy it all, for that matter. Its the people at Bioware's responsibility to put food on their family's tables. So if they want to keep fulfilling that responsibility, they need to completely revamp their throught process about why fans get ticked off about things.


Sorry, STILL can't post in the ME3 forums. Have to vent off my steam in the only place available.

[Wrathra]

I agree with this. There was way too much of it in ME3 and it ruins immersion in an RPG.

[Nerdage]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

All I can really say is that on the issue of knowing what dialogue is said, a mechanic that shows the full line at the top of the screen if you hover over the paraphrase for a few seconds would be welcome for me.

I do wonder if a system like that has ever ever been prototyped. Even with my most objective hat on (it's a feature I'd very much like to see) I don't see the major drawback with it.

I can accept that it wouldn't give me any follow up lines (if there's some back-and-forth with the NPC), or that the full-text line alone wouldn't give me all the meaning of the line...

But instead of looking at what it doesn't do, I think about what it would make better and what it would make worse. Assuming it were an option and not compulsory I can't imagine it making anyone's experience worse. Then since it would probably be presented in a tooltip or elsewhere on the screen it's not detracting from what I know about the line already (i.e. the tone from the icon and the paraphrased 'gist' from the wheel), it just means I'm that much more informed about what I'm choosing. And as much as... 

David Gaider wrote...

What if the actual meaning of that line is conveyed via emotion or gesture?

may be valid, what if the meaning is conveyed in the words? For instance when my Hawke professed "love" for Isabela after an otherwise casual booty call; that wasn't implied in the paraphrase or any icon, and while you could put that down to a misleading paraphrase, let's be honest stuff like that's always going to slip the net from time to time. 

It just seems like a quality of life thing that would improve the experience for a not-inconsiderable number of players. I mean we have a "hide helmet" toggle...

Modifié par nerdage, 22 mars 2012 - 12:43 .