5087 réponses à ce sujet

[frypan]

@Seijon8

"crickets chirping"



EDIT: Oh c'mon! Two major posts last page and this is what I get? Ah, umm, lets try Howards Shore's Drums of Moria music, in the hope that leads to something mighty.

Modifié par frypan, 08 juin 2012 - 02:36 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

The story is coming along. Just finished the first edit not ten minutes ago.

Ha! I'm delightful? That's certainly not a word I've used to describe myself. Thank you, drayfish.

That said, I think the Paragon/ Renegade aspect of the games isn't really a gauge for morality, but more a shade added on to the colorful portrait that is our Commander Shepard. Do you want a Shepard who preserves life? Who completes their mission without the loss of innocents? Go right ahead. Want to play a Shepard who does what they have to do at all costs, while still saving the galaxy? Just hit that red button whenever it comes up. Want to play a Shepard who says what you would say in any of the circumstances presented in the stories? Then press whatever you like. You'll still get a Shepard you care about, and you'll still enjoy accompanying him/ her throughout this universe. Until the ITM, that is.

And of course the methodology and implementation are imperfect. It's at least one of BioWare's primary attempts at sculpturing a game like this. I suspect things can only get better from here.

@frypan

"AD&D games like KOTOR" sounds hilarious! Anyone else would be dumbstruck, wondering what one had to do with the other.

@Seijin8

Uh... sure, why not! That's exactly what this is!

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 08 juin 2012 - 02:36 .

[drayfish]

@ Seijin8:

I don't know if I'm the lead writer so much as the guy who gets you all coffee, and maybe uses tedious buzz-words in the planning meetings. 'Cut-through'! That's one. 'Emergent play'! There's another. 'Radial texture mapping responsive... ah, simulation... with immersive... uh, reactive button pressing?'

Also, I'll gladly be the guy who leans over people's shoulders and says, 'Needs more graphics'.

Modifié par drayfish, 08 juin 2012 - 02:36 .

[edisnooM]

I had a thought about the morality system and I have no idea if it is any good or makes any sense at all, so feel absolutely free to point and laugh.

What if in addition to the Paragon/Renegade bars they added a third "Neutral" bar, the name would probably need tweaking, I'll leave that to the better minds. My thinking was that this bar could either be filled by making more "gray" choices, or perhaps better yet by somehow combining the accumulated Paragon/Renegade points to allow for certain "gray" conversation options or interrupts. Though in that case maybe it should be purple. :-)

This could perhaps let people play as "Paragades" without worrying about encountering situations where you are unable to get an ideal solution because of too few points.

The Reputation bar sort of touched on this, but it still had situations like in the final TIM talk where players with full bars and mostly Paragon playthroughs were unable to proceed without using the Renegade interrupt.

Anyway I don't know if the Neutral bar is practical or not but it's just something I thought of.

Also it made me think of the Neutrals from Futurama:

"All I know is my gut says maybe."

"Tell my wife I said hello."

[frypan]

@Kita

Yup, I thought about changing the AD&D reference during an edit but couldnt be bothered. It wasnt troll baiting, honest!

....and I'm more the guy who gets enthusaistic about an idea, then forgets it as soon as someone mentions lunch, or the pub, or 'splosions.

On other news, I have a rather erudite friend starting his holidays next week and first up is ME3. He is under strict instruction to record his feelings and report back for the thread. Should be interesting, as he used to review movies and has some technical background as a result.

He also liked DA2, so may come in as in favour of the ending, and he has kept himself under a media blackout for the last three months - except for my spoiler free rants of course. Hopefully he will porvide some interesting insights, we'll see.

[delta_vee]

@drayfish

Hands off the coffee-fetcher job! That's mine! Er...oh, fine, take it. Just don't make me do PR. I hate doing PR. One of the benefits of my current job is that people come to me with what they need and I only have to tell them whether or not they can have it.

[drayfish]

@ frypan:

'Media blackout'? Wow. I'm impressed. I didn't think that was even possible. I have colleagues who have never played a videogame in their lives who have heard of the controversy. And to put that in context, the last big 'videogame' thing they heard about was the 'Hot Coffee' controversy for GTA: San Andreas...

Modifié par drayfish, 08 juin 2012 - 02:50 .

[edisnooM]

@drayfish

You left out "Synergy", the buzz-word to end all buzz-words.

[drayfish]

And sure delta_vee, I can do PR.

Quotes from the upcoming Game Informer cover story: 'It's, like, a game that you can buy. And you play it. With the control scheme stuff. You press the buttons and it does things on the screen there. See that? I'm doing that. Me pressing this is doing that. And this other thing over there. That's me too. And hear the sounds? They're from me doing stuff as well. Well that one's not. I don't think. That might be ambient, which is a whole other thing. Ooo look: graphics. I told them to do that when they were making it.

'...Hey, why aren't you writing this down?'



EDIT: Also, 'Synergy'.  Thanks edisnooM.  You just saved my job.

EDIT EDIT: ...or not.

Modifié par drayfish, 08 juin 2012 - 03:01 .

[delta_vee]

@edisnooM

IIRC the neutral points you racked up in ME3 (which were few, given how few neutral responses there were) showed up on the rep bar as green. In light of the Ten Minutes, take that for what you will.

Also, I hereby propose capital punishment for use of the pseudo-word "synergy".

[frypan]

@edisnooM.

That is an interesting idea. For it to work, the points accrued would have to work towards a median rather than a high score, so that characters balancing paragon and renegade scores still have a measure of their karmic balance.

How would this reflect in conversations though, where you get a "neutral" interrupt?

"Chill dude, gotta let these things go"

Still think it is an interesting third option. On a side note, managing neutral characters was always hard for me in AD&D, as sometimes they would try to exploit the whole do good vs bad balancing act.

[Fapmaster5000]

frypan wrote...

It might even be possible to go down the Rachni rampage path – in that if you release them, you later get a mission that involves resettling or destroying them as they came into conflict with some colonists. This realises the potential risk involved, but allows a character to ultimately reaffirm their paragon choice by pushing on with the peaceful resolution, or to decide that they were wrong and engage in a final extermination that at least is now based on immediate evidence.

The only issue here is that initial renegades who killed the queen miss out. There is no way to create a Rachni problem for the renegades to solve if they already resolved it. Maybe someone else has an idea here. All I can think is that another dilemma, maybe on Feros or Therum, gives them a longer consequence based mission, just as renegade types tend to get more crime based missions in games. I can only add here that care must be taken, as managing such things could spiral out of control and be hard for a game developer to manage within budget.

This reason is why we got the duplicated nonsense content in ME3.  "Oh look, same mission for every choice."  The cost was deemed too high for such a large, mainstream game.  

The only way to resolve this would be to include some comparable, logical, expansion of the game.  Here's how it could be played:

Killing the Rachni Queen on Noveria, followed by the neutron purge, exterminated an entire species.  This, combined with Shepard's proclivity for dropping asteroids onto relays, as well as his involvement with Cerberus, provokes a politically charged movement on the Citadel to remove him from Spectre status, and hand his one-man-quest over to another Spectre operative.

This would be mainly a conversation issue at first, with Shepard getting a heads up from a friendly council, or a summons from a hostile one.  The replacement-Spectre being discussed might show up to talk things out with Shepard, get the lay of the land "just in case".  Shepard could be subtly insulted throughout, as the council is debating throwing him under the bus even now, and he's being pulled away from the Reaper war to deal with this nonsense.  Throw in Kalisa al-Jilani, some trolling Batarians, and a few confrontations with renegade interrupts.  

If Shepard makes it through without snapping... great.  Things are patched over, the council backs him, the other Spectre respectfully offers her support "standing behind" the Commander, and the crowds are either won over or cowed.

However, if Shepard snaps (like a renegade might be wont to do), and interrupt punches someone in the crowd, it starts a fight, and Shepard will have to use lethal force (or run to the exit).  If Shepard uses force, he is suspended after the video threatens to go public of the "Butcher of Aratoht/Noveria/SO-MANY-PLACES" gunning down civilians in the Presidium, and gets chewed out by Hackett for blowing his damn cool (options to either say, "eff those guys" or "sorry, sir, stress, sir") during a war.  At this point, it turns out that it was a Cerberus plant job in the first place to disgrace and remove Shepard from the war, and Shepard works with his Spectre backup (who informs him what happened) to go into a Ward, shoot some people in the face, and bring back proof to redeem him make this sh*t go under the table until the war's over.

There.  Now there's a renegade route that plays to "at all costs" and its consequences.

[edisnooM]

@delta_vee

Gaaawhaa.....?

You mean they actually had neutral points in ME3? Wow, I had no idea. Did they display differently when you got them from conversations? Like +4 Neutral or something?

Also I can't really remember any neutral conversation choices off the top of my head, I know they had some but none stick out.

Edit:

@frypan

Yeah I'm not really sure how the implementation would work, maybe the interupts would be different depending on if you had more Paragon or Renegade. Though that would be an awful lot of work to implement. Maybe interupts wouldn't really work with Neutral, maybe more just conversation options.

One idea I had with Rannoch is maybe get both sides to back off, Legion holds off the code upgrade, and the fleet stands down. But it would probably take someone far smarter than I to figure it all out.

Modifié par edisnooM, 08 juin 2012 - 03:13 .

[Fapmaster5000]

delta_vee wrote...

@edisnooM

IIRC the neutral points you racked up in ME3 (which were few, given how few neutral responses there were) showed up on the rep bar as green. In light of the Ten Minutes, take that for what you will.

Also, I hereby propose capital punishment for use of the pseudo-word "synergy".

Crazy!

I propose that we streamline our workflow and synergize our tangibles in order to deliver superior performance on our action items and leverage our key processes into the new paradigm that the market demands.

[frypan]

@Fapmaster

Fantastic! Thta sounds like a mission even us paragons would enjoy. Shepherd "The Butcher" would probably appeal to many renegades too. Wins all round for paragons and bad guys!

I particularly like the way it mirrors the paragon options, in that it offers a reassertion of the player's philosophical stance through issues keyed to their personality. Can renegades keep their temper under control in such a charged environment?

[delta_vee]

@edisnooM

Yeah, they were few and far between. They just popped up as "+2 reputation" or somesuch.

@Fapmaster5000

That is an awesome idea - but of course, that's basically a whole side mission on its own, and ME3 didn't seem to want to do much in the way of separate branches (or even diversions, meeting up with the main plot later).

EDIT: With a heavy heart, I call for the head of Fapmaster5000 on the charge of aggravated corporatespeak.

Modifié par delta_vee, 08 juin 2012 - 03:16 .

[Fapmaster5000]

edisnooM wrote...

@delta_vee

Gaaawhaa.....?

You mean they actually had neutral points in ME3? Wow, I had no idea. Did they display differently when you got them from conversations? Like +4 Neutral or something?

Also I can't really remember any neutral conversation choices off the top of my head, I know they had some but none stick out.

Edit:

@frypan

Yeah I'm not really sure how the implementation would work, maybe the interupts would be different depending on if you had more Paragon or Renegade. Though that would be an awful lot of work to implement. Maybe interupts wouldn't really work with Neutral, maybe more just conversation options.

One idea I had with Rannoch is maybe get both sides to back off, Legion holds off the code upgrade, and the fleet stands down. But it would probably take someone far smarter than I to figure it all out.

I actually really liked the "Reputation" system in ME3 over the race-to-the-edge-of-the-curve morality system in ME2.  Of course, the red and blue were still "win buttons".  Perhaps if they were simply more stylish, "powerful" versions of the upper-right/lower-right options, then the theoretical center-left option could be an attempt to use raw reputation to make an argument, without either intimidation or smarm charm.

[edisnooM]

@Fapmaster5000

Great, sounds like you've got a good handle on this PR mumbo jumbo. :-)

Maybe you can work some crowdsourcing in there.

[drayfish]

Random thought bomb:


I'm kind of surprised, thinking back on it all, that there wasn't more of an introduction to ease new players into the narrative, and to remind the older one of pertinent story beats (not that we would have really forgotten, but you know what I mean...) Something like the PS3 owners got with their copies of Mass Effect 2 and the interactive comic.
 
I've been hearing lately that there was a whole trial sliced out of the front of the game, which I suspect was meant to function like the Miranda interview at the beginning of ME2, getting you up to speed on events and making some final aftermath decisions. Perhaps it was removed for development timetabling issues, or simply to leap into the action sooner, but given the predominance of (invasive) dreams throughout the game, they could have used the opportunity to start out the game on a flashbacky dream. Shepard is recalling past events, re-living them, replaying the choices that were made: did you fry that Racchni? did Ashley not make it? you punched that reporter how many times? seriously?! how are you not in jail? Bam. Wake up. Oh, you are in jail. Nice.
 
It might have even been a good chance to get us up to speed on meeting James and turning over the Normandy too, both of which were momentarily jarring to me at least on my play through...

Randomness abandoned...



EDIT: Back to me saying: holy freaking wow, Fapmaster5000.  That level sounds incredible.  My renegade Shepard is squirming on the bench squealing 'Let me in, coach.  I wanna play!'

Modifié par drayfish, 08 juin 2012 - 03:23 .

[Fapmaster5000]

@frypan

Glad you liked it, that's what I was going for, with the dipstick test of Shepard, and how well he/she can keep herself locked down while being belittled, insulted, ignored, and treated like toxic by these people he/she's tried to save, even as the galaxy is burning. And for politics, too!

@delta_vee

Also glad you liked it! And, yeah, it would be. That's the only way to do this choice justice (I mean, Bioware made it a "critical choice" in ME2, especially with the flashback-DLC for new players) and the one thing Bioware seemed unwilling to do. The sheer cold business of this is what really turns my stomach when "artistic integrity" is bandied about. I actually get a little ill. So many choices like this made directly against the soul of storytelling, and then you use the tattered corpse for cover? Stay classy, Edmonton.

[Fapmaster5000]

edisnooM wrote...

@Fapmaster5000

Great, sounds like you've got a good handle on this PR mumbo jumbo. :-)

Maybe you can work some crowdsourcing in there.

Yeah, I have to use that crap at work.  Worst one I've ever said (my soul hurt after this) was definately referring to letting an employee go as "promoting to customer".

[drayfish]

Fapmaster5000 wrote...

Yeah, I have to use that crap at work.  Worst one I've ever said (my soul hurt after this) was definately referring to letting an employee go as "promoting to customer".

That is a nightmare, Fapmaster5000.  That's like 'non-operative personel' in wartime.  God.  Aren't sematics beautiful?

[Fapmaster5000]

@drayfish

Woot.

I think it would be quite cool to see Shepard be tempted to lose his/her **** in a way that a Renegade totally would, and then possibly have someone like Hackett call Shepard a little bit on his/her "cowboy bull****" and that war has no room for ego, letting Renegade Shepard go from burning hot to burning cold. (Or simply keep butchering his/her psychotic way through the galaxy, I guess.)

EDIT: @drayfish Part Deux

Oh, yes.  I consider myself a writer at heart, and the things I must do to my beloved language make me sick.  Alas, I require money, and if straight-talk ever decided to have a war crimes trial, I'd be up there claiming "just following orders".  (Well, that and, "right-size the lateral assets".)

Modifié par Fapmaster5000, 08 juin 2012 - 03:29 .

[delta_vee]

@drayfish

That's not random. That's exactly the kind of thing the game should've done. Hell, that was what I was expecting.

@Fapmaster5000

"Promoted to customer"? Gods. Ew. I've never heard that one. You have my deepest sympathies.

Now for some catching up (apologies for things I've missed)...

@Hawk227

While I really liked the idea of the conversations in DX:HR, I wasn't a huge fan of the execution. I found them either too easy, or too unpredictable. The conversations with Taggart and Darrow towards the end both had antagonist responses that felt out of place. Conversely, the conversations at the beginning were rather easy, with most throughlines leading to victory (if I remember correctly). In this sense, the ME mechanic works a little better for me. Build a reputation for being a paragon, unlock the ability to charm. Conversation wasn't the game mechanic the way DX:HR's was, but the pay off for previous choices. The biggest failure was in how strongly it was weighted in ME2, basically negating the Mal Reynolds of the world.

Yeah, I might be inclined to agree that DXHR's convos weren't necessarily the best executed. Still, I remember the one with Haas as a nice surprise, difficulty-wise, and I actually liked the final one with Darrow (reloaded a couple times to get that one right). Plus, there was the CASIE mod, which gamified the dialogue choices a bit too much at times.

In ME, though, I kept running into the Mal Reynolds Problem, and each first run through I was locked out of (eventually necessary) dialogue options by mid-game. Less of a problem on subsequent playthroughs, but only because your reputation gets bonuses even if you start a new character.

@Sable Phoenix

I have less of a problem with morality “systems” per se and more of a problem with their mechanical implementation. Morality is one of the few aspects of games where I believe that the less information given to the player, the better. Planescape:Torment, as mentioned earlier, did this perfectly. [...] Even more importantly, I think, the game never told you ahead of time whether what you were doing or saying was going to give you an alignment hit or not; you only found out after the fact. This avoided the granulairty inherent in a system like Paragon and Renegade bars, and meant that if you were consciously shooting for a certain alignment, you had to consciously moderate your behavior to, well, align with it, and you had to do that all the time. [...]

The other important aspect is that your alignment did not restrict actions. Any morality-changing response in any conversation was open to you (invisibly) whenever you had the conversation, regardless of your moral stance in previous conversations. Persuasion was based on your CHA score, not your morality. Instead, morality impacted items you could use (and thus, your power level) and the way other characters felt about you.

I have a shameful, horrible secret: I...I never played P:T. I have it on my hard drive, bought from GOG, ready to go. It's just, well...er...the interface. And the screen res. It's clunky. I'm having a hard, hard time making myself actually play it.

I know, I know.

That said, everything I've read about the handling of morality by P:T sounds like exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.

@frypan

I guess what I’m saying is that risk and predictability play a fine balancing act in the game, and the problem is that a direct negative consequence such as a Rachni rampage could be self defeating. The best way to address such consequences is to have the decision lead to the opportunity for a player to affirm or deny their decision, at least in the case of real important decisions. At the end, the player has to be satisfied rather than given a bum “you lose” result, something that does have its uses, but went out of fashion with the old adventure games probably due to its unpopularity.

I think, instead of a chance to affirm or deny (which, I'll point out, is pretty much exactly what we got with the rachni mission in ME3), it's better to have an extra scenario (the one Fapmaster5000 laid out sounds excellent) or, if resources are too strained to create such a separate narrative branch (or at least diversion), then have it change the shape of another mission (say, opening another path on Thessia instead of convincing the asari to distract the Reapers for you (I suggest this only for lack of a better place to put them)).

@Seijin8

Develop (X minus Y) number of radiant/modular missions that are inserted randomly or during specific narrative arcs. These should also reflect choices the character has made, but with minimal cutscene development and dialogue, can simply be ambush scenarios at critical mission hubs, probably recycling mission assets (maps, mostly) from those missions the character did not encounter.

My only problem with that approach is that there's a clear difference in quality between the fully-voiced "main" side-missions (which are technically optional, but why would anyone cut themselves off from content that way?) and "extra" side-missions, which are characterized by text-only objectives and mission epilogues. Depriving players of one branch set of those beefier quests seems almost as punitive.

I'm more partial to the concept, if not the execution, of variant primary missions (and variant mission order, as well) dependent on past choices. I think they could have done much more in that regard in ME3 with the same gross total of voiced dialogue (or maybe only a little more). If you're constrained in assets, keeping the same number of nodes on the playthrough graph and differing the entry/exit points (and possibly objectives, if you can stretch the resources that far) seems to me to be a more efficient approach.

Also, no job description for me on the AWTR game? Aw.

[edisnooM]

@fapmaster5000

Going back a few posts.

Yeah the Reputation system was a bit more freeing, and I did feel I could pull the Renegade trigger the few times I did without having to worry about blowing up the universe.

Also yikes that is pretty bad. It reminds me of watching retail store training videos and all the phrases they used. Upsell, etc.

I am glad to say I can remember very few of them.

Modifié par edisnooM, 08 juin 2012 - 03:40 .