66 réponses à ce sujet

[RussianSpy27]

 Can't ever seem to have gotten a clear response from developers on this: 

Parley (Negotiating) AKA persuasion issue.

Integral part of DA:O. You could persuade and vary conversation in multiple ways leading to different results. I am not only talking about major quests like "Nature of the Beast" where through conversation and persuasion, you could ally with different sides and accordingly change the World, but likewise in side-quests such as Warden's Keep where you have various options of conversing with Sofia or Stone Prisoner with Desire Demon and so on. 

In DA2, I can count on the fingers of my one hand (probably that would be too many times) when conversation mattered in encounters with NPCs/enermies (I'm not talking companion influence and romance). You fight  no matter what 99.9 percent of the time. I can vaguely recall a minor encounter where people bow down to you and leave. The only impactful one is a way to get not to fight the Dalish clan in Merill's quest. 

Of course, I did ironically feel good and realistic sometimes when no matter what enemies still attacked (like in real life when a bunch of street thugs are unlikely to leave no matter what you tell them), but when this had gone overboard and parley essensially became almost impossible, I became very discouraged. In DAO, not only was my Warden able to avoid fights in most instances, he could persuade characters to even pay him or issue quests sometimes.

Now, DA2 introduced an awesome mechanic of your companions being able to influence conversations with enemies/NPCs and in a few instances help avoid a fight this way. This is a great feature that imo should be kept, but it doesn't negate the fact that you as the player could extremely rarely influence conversations. 

Question: How are developers addressing this in the future title? 
=========================================
Edited question about class-specific quests as Mr. Laidlaw seems to have addressed that those are planned. 

Modifié par RussianSpy27, 16 avril 2012 - 11:59 .

[RussianSpy27]

bump...oh come on how come no one wants to reply to this crucial topic?????

[Allan Schumacher]

I know DA2 did it differently where it depended on the stance that your Hawke took, rather than an explicit skill.

For example: a Hawke known for being diplomatic/sarcastic would fail the attempt to bully someone into giving information (aggressive stance), but if your Hawke's persona was aggressive, it would work. Unfortunately I don't know how prevalent this is throughout the game, but it does seem like it's not all that well known. Actually in my experience many of my friends didn't even realize that Hawke would take on different personas depending on which conversation lines you tended to pick.

I do agree that non-violent means of circumventing foes helps provide a varied and interesting game experience though.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 16 avril 2012 - 04:29 .

[RussianSpy27]

deleted for accidental repetition

Modifié par RussianSpy27, 16 avril 2012 - 04:42 .

[RussianSpy27]

Modifié par RussianSpy27, 16 avril 2012 - 04:42 .

[RussianSpy27]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I know DA2 did it differently where it depended on the stance that your Hawke took, rather than an explicit skill.

For example: a Hawke known for being diplomatic/sarcastic would fail the attempt to bully someone into giving information (aggressive stance), but if your Hawke's persona was aggressive, it would work. Unfortunately I don't know how prevalent this is throughout the game, but it does seem like it's not all that well known. Actually in my experience many of my friends didn't even realize that Hawke would take on different personas depending on which conversation lines you tended to pick.

I do agree that non-violent means of circumventing foes helps provide a varied and interesting game experience though.

Thanks Allan! Again, I love the theory behind the mechanic of role playing different ways as a dominant personality. In fact, this is exactly something that I found problematic with the ME persuasion system, where you always had things your way as long as either Paragon or Renegade was high and as much as I enjoyed ME, I oftentimes wondered "wait a second, wouldn't different characters react well to me as a bully but not a diplomat and vice versa what the hell?" I was very excited to find out about this mechanic in DA2. It was brilliant. 

My issue is not that I like the skill vs attitude but in that the PRACTICAL mechanic of it working was rarely, if at all present (maybe I need more playthroughs with my Hawkes, but my diplomatic one barely had any effect on NPC/enemy behavior).  So it's an  implementation issue not with the existence of the mechanic itself.  I guess it should have been more apparent and prevalent in the game with more instances showing how different people would be persuaded by either diplomatic, aggressive or funny Hawke. 

I keep on remembering the Sofia Dryden example from DAO's Warden's Keep where even if you had maximum Persuasion, you couldn't Lie to the demon. I totally see how it would work in DA2 where a "funny" persuasion style would not work with the Demon but an aggressive one would - use in practice what you made in theory and the execution could indeed prove incredible and much deeper than one in Mass Effect and even DA:O. 

[the_one_54321]

Negotiation should be stat based, as in DA:O, even if there is no (persuade) indicator going up at each instance.

[nightscrawl]

RussianSpy27 wrote...

Integral part of DA:O. You could persuade and vary conversation in multiple ways leading to different results. I am not only talking about major quests like "Nature of the Beast" where through conversation and persuasion, you could ally with different sides and accordingly change the World, but likewise in side-quests such as Warden's Keep where you have various options of conversing with Sofia or Stone Prisoner with Desire Demon and so on.

I really like the persuade option in DAO. In fact, I like it so much that it is the first skill I max out on every character. I really enjoy having the additional conversation options in addition to being able to solve problems in a non-violent manner.

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I know DA2 did it differently where it depended on the stance that your Hawke took, rather than an explicit skill.

For example: a Hawke known for being diplomatic/sarcastic would fail the attempt to bully someone into giving information (aggressive stance), but if your Hawke's persona was aggressive, it would work.

There were also unique options available to you, dependent on personality type, in a handful of quests via the special Star Icon. The least spoilery example I can think of is if you imported a DAO save where you cured the werewolves, opening up a Wounded Coast encounter. There is an option available to a diplomatic (blue) Hawke, and ONLY a diplomatic Hawke, that let's you talk down the elf, and everyone lives.

Generally though, you are correct. No matter how you threaten Aden, you cannot bully him into giving the information unless you are aggressive (red) personality. The roll check fails, as it were...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Unfortunately I don't know how prevalent this is throughout the game, but it does seem like it's not all that well known. Actually in my experience many of my friends didn't even realize that Hawke would take on different personas depending on which conversation lines you tended to pick.

Did they play the game more than once? Other than reading about it before hand, I think this is they key. All it takes is to pick a single different line during the tutorial to set the initial personality. After that point you would presumably notice Hawke saying things that you didn't hear before because they are in a different tone.

The icons do take some getting used to, and since there are two options for each color, knowing exactly what you want to pick can be tricky (based solely on the icons). For example, I try to not pick the blue halo or aggressive fist too often, unless I have no other choice (because I know the other dialogue options are horrible / don't fit well). Those two especially are the very extreme options for those personalities and I tend to want to be more neutral.

[Pasquale1234]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I know DA2 did it differently where it depended on the stance that your Hawke took, rather than an explicit skill.

For example: a Hawke known for being diplomatic/sarcastic would fail the attempt to bully someone into giving information (aggressive stance), but if your Hawke's persona was aggressive, it would work. Unfortunately I don't know how prevalent this is throughout the game, but it does seem like it's not all that well known. Actually in my experience many of my friends didn't even realize that Hawke would take on different personas depending on which conversation lines you tended to pick.

I do agree that non-violent means of circumventing foes helps provide a varied and interesting game experience though.

Ugh.  I'd greatly prefer persuasion options to be transparent and stat-based.

The method you describe would not allow a character to walk softly but carry a big stick - and that is an approach that I think ought to be supported.

[Maria Caliban]

If persuade is stat based, it ought to be transparent. Something should tell me that I'm getting this option because of my skill level otherwise I don't know

The star option based on dominant tone wasn't something that felt satisfactory. In the Witcher 2, they had a similar system where you could Intimidate, Persuade, or use the Aard sign. The more times you used Intimidate, the more 'powerful' your Intimidation became and some conversations required a specific level of Intimidation to succeed. The same for the other two.

There was a screen that showed how high your Intimidation was. BioWare might think of making this information available to the player because it's not obvious when you play that you're failing or not due to personality. I didn't 'get' that my diplomatic Hawke couldn't lie and so was confused when she tried and failed. I assumed it must have had something to do with previous choices I'd made.

As I said in a different thread, my prefered type of persuasion isn't what they did in Dues Ex: Human Revolution. It's a mini-game where you try various approaches and the body language/tone of the NPC indicates how effective your approach is.

I find that more interesting than putting points into a skill but the obvious problem is that it's more about player skill than character skill.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 16 avril 2012 - 05:45 .

[Foolsfolly]

Maria Caliban wrote...

If persuade is stat based, it ought to be transparent. Something should tell me that I'm getting this option because of my skill level otherwise I don't know

The star option based on dominant tone wasn't something that felt satisfactory. In the Witcher 2, they had a similar system where you could Intimidate, Persuade, or use the Aard sign. The more times you used Intimidate, the more 'powerful' your Intimidation became and some conversations required a specific level of Intimidation to succeed. The same for the other two.

There was a screen that showed how high your Intimidation was. BioWare might think of making this information available to the player because it's not obvious when you play that you're failing or not due to personality. I didn't 'get' that my diplomatic Hawke couldn't lie and so was confused when she tried and failed. I assumed it must have had something to do with previous choices I'd made.

As I said in a different thread, my prefered type of persuasion isn't what they did in Dues Ex: Human Revolution. It's a mini-game where you try various approaches and the body language/tone of the NPC indicates how effective your approach is.

I find that more interesting than putting points into a skill but the obvious problem is that it's more about player skill than character skill.

My only problem with how TW2 did it was how shallow it was to get a maxed out Intimidate or Persuasion skill. It was like use the option 6 times and you could talk anyone out of or into anything. Sure the times in which coersion skills came into play weren't as numerous as they are in BioWare games but it was numerous enough that before I had to decide who I sided with in the first act I had a maxed out Persuade and was working on my Intimidation for ****s and giggles.

[AkiKishi]

Fallout New Vegas did it best. Your speech skill followed with the skill needed. 50/75 for example.

Nice and to the point, not random so no point reloading till you make the roll.

[Maria Caliban]

It seemed to me that CDProjekt never wanted the player to fail a persuade check and so made it easy to max all three (that's what I did) so it was less whether Geralt could persuade someone and more about how you imagined Geralt doing so.

I assume BioWare would make a similar system require more play investments or trade-off.

I've always wondered how often the various BioWare devs want the player to fail.

[RussianSpy27]

Begemotka wrote...

In ME3 you basically had an upper right and a lower right "cinematic autodialogue trigger".I think the PC needs to have as much control over their dialogue as possible,otherwise roleplaying that character is just....not happening.It breaks immersion. Whether it is a well implemented dialgue wheel,or full lines-that is up to debate.But the PC needs as much input as possible.

Right and that's why I actually liked the idea behind what they did in DE2 with how some NPCs based on their persolanities were persuaded by one character type over another. The problem, like I said, is that they didn't really use the system in practice and such options to actually persuade were very rare. 

I am fine with not being able to persuade a character no matter what (part of reality) but to only be given an upper hand (that special personality star) in about 5% of conversations is too shallow imo.

[Tirigon]

99% of all battles in DA2 make no sense.

Streetthugs attack a party of the world's greatest warrior and 2 mages EVEN AFTER THEY SLAYED 100s OTHERS ALREADY?! Yea, sure.......

[BubbleDncr]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I know DA2 did it differently where it depended on the stance that your Hawke took, rather than an explicit skill.

For example: a Hawke known for being diplomatic/sarcastic would fail the attempt to bully someone into giving information (aggressive stance), but if your Hawke's persona was aggressive, it would work. Unfortunately I don't know how prevalent this is throughout the game, but it does seem like it's not all that well known. Actually in my experience many of my friends didn't even realize that Hawke would take on different personas depending on which conversation lines you tended to pick.

I do agree that non-violent means of circumventing foes helps provide a varied and interesting game experience though.

Yea, I've played through DA2 three times and had no idea that happened.

But I really really really want to be able to talk my way out of combat. That was my only major gripe with DA2.

[Dave of Canada]

I think the worst part is having to meta-game to side with Petrice.

[Nomen Mendax]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I know DA2 did it differently where it depended on the stance that your Hawke took, rather than an explicit skill.

For example: a Hawke known for being diplomatic/sarcastic would fail the attempt to bully someone into giving information (aggressive stance), but if your Hawke's persona was aggressive, it would work. Unfortunately I don't know how prevalent this is throughout the game, but it does seem like it's not all that well known. Actually in my experience many of my friends didn't even realize that Hawke would take on different personas depending on which conversation lines you tended to pick.

I do agree that non-violent means of circumventing foes helps provide a varied and interesting game experience though.

Which is one of the things that I really didn't like about ME2 - where the developers make decisions for you based on your previous choices - I want to make my own decisions.

[byzantine horse]

I find it a bit funny that a forum which usually is all about action and consequence is against it when they run the risk of being out of favour due to past actions... Just an obeservation, 'tis all

Personally I don't really care, I get why a Hawke who is known to be sarcastic could have a hard time being taken seriously, or an aggressive Hawke have a hard time persuading someone he has no strings attached to to help him, or a diplomatic Hawke having no means of bullying people into doing what he wants them to. I support that system as it really does give action and consequence a meaning other than "The consequence of not spending points here now is that I have to spend points there later".

I don't think a RPG should be about min-maxing (no singleplayer game without an online scoreboard should) and instead be about enjoying the ride wherever it may take you based on what you do or do not do. Just my 50 cents.

[Maria Caliban]

How is a horse byzantine?

[Nomen Mendax]

byzantine horse wrote...

I find it a bit funny that a forum which usually is all about action and consequence is against it when they run the risk of being out of favour due to past actions... Just an obeservation, 'tis all

Personally I don't really care, I get why a Hawke who is known to be sarcastic could have a hard time being taken seriously, or an aggressive Hawke have a hard time persuading someone he has no strings attached to to help him, or a diplomatic Hawke having no means of bullying people into doing what he wants them to. I support that system as it really does give action and consequence a meaning other than "The consequence of not spending points here now is that I have to spend points there later".

I don't think a RPG should be about min-maxing (no singleplayer game without an online scoreboard should) and instead be about enjoying the ride wherever it may take you based on what you do or do not do. Just my 50 cents.

I get what you are saying, but the system doesn't work well for me.  Honestly, I'd rather be able to spend points on conversation skills myself than have the developers to do it for me based on what they think I want (which is basically what DA2 does).   Another issue is that the different character traits are not mutually exclusive.  For example, Hawke may normally be diplomatic but given her competence if she decides to be threatening then people will probably listen to her.

It also ignores any internal narrative you might have about your own character (since the game obviously can't read my mind).

Maria Caliban wrote...

How is a horse byzantine?

 
It's very old and used to live in Constantinople ...

Modifié par Nomen Mendax, 16 avril 2012 - 09:54 .

[Tokion]

I actually didn't find out Hawke has 3 personalities until my 2nd play through and how dialogues could change based on your Hawke's persona. I wish Hawke can have more 'personality traits' though, like the Sims or in Crusader Kings.

[Tigerman123]

^^^It's probably a reference to either: the horses of st Mark, their love of chariot racing or their famous armoured horsemen, cataphracts.