74 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

Reidbynature wrote...

Again, not following you. It should be pretty clear if you've upset someone by their reaction. They don't need an extra ten pages just so you understand. There won't be any fumbling if it's done clearly (again, doesn't need extra pages. Just clear, concise dialogue and maybe some appropriate mannerisms). I really don't see how you can think taking away the score system means they must add ten pages of dialogue.

A very large proportion of the time, the approval and disapproval you get is not accompanied by any reaction at all.  So either you replace that with a lot of dialogue, or you're going to be leaving the player stumbling around blind most of the time.

You also need much more regular feedback about the state of your relationship overall.  You couldn't get away with just having 2 Questioning Beliefs and leaving it at that, which is what DA2 does.

I'm not sure if I entirely agree with you about consistency. Fenris, I agree will be quite temperamental (not why I find him annoying, but it doesn't help). I was fairly consistent with the rest of the companions and that seemed to work out fine enough.

Anders has big issues if you're pro-mage but anti-being possessed by crazy spirits.  Sebastian's very problematic if I support his reclaiming his Principality, because you can get a whole bunch of friendship for stuff unrelated to that.  Isabela, being morally upstanding but with a sense of humour can easily get you into trouble.

Though that feels like half my point, if you take away the score/meter thing then it becomes less about good/bad options and more about what choice you think is the right reaction to the conversation/situation.

If you stop tracking Friendship/Rivalry entirely, then yes that can have a freeing effect.  It also leaves you with nothing that tracks the general opinion, but that might be considered worth it.

But having an approval meter and hiding it from the player just leaves the player getting more frustrated because they have little idea where it all went wrong.

[Reidbynature]

You should read my last post (you may have been busy typing your reply). I think I pretty much cover those points. Also, I will add that I don't want a hidden approval meter since many astute gamers could probably figure it out anyway and just end up playing towards whatever goal they perceived it brought.

I'm saying that I'd like it completely removed which could make it easier to a) free players from feeling obligated to pick the 'right' choice and shy away from a more natural interaction and free developers to build companion relationships and interactions that don't conform to like/hate and do something more innovative with them

Modifié par Reidbynature, 19 mai 2012 - 05:44 .

[BioFan (Official)]

 This title made me  

[SUMpTHY]

I think a lot of your problem is that friendship is tied up too much with a character's world view. You should be able to be friends with Sebastian and advocate him taking back Starkhaven, you should be able to be friends with Anders and object to Justice. To do that I think the friendship system needs to not be so rigid. Also perhaps make minor things have less of an effect once you're clearly on a friendship/rivalry path. (e.g. Anders won't be impressed if you show mercy to one mage after spending the rest of the game sending innocent mages to the tower and by the same token won't be upset enough to cause disapproval if you send a clearly dangerous mage to the tower if you've been championing the mages' cause for the rest of the game).

As for keeping track, they can easily do that with the way characters greet you when you talk to them. (They already have this in DA2 btw. You get different comments from characters based on your relationship status).

[ReallyRue]

The thing I find about Mass Effect's relationship system is that... there isn't really much of a relationship system. So long as you go through all the conversations/do their loyalty mission in 2, they will treat you the same whether you are a dick to them or very friendly to them. There are only a few exceptions - like Jack's two different romance paths, or the ME2 conflicts if they end in 'I don't want to talk to you anymore', which isn't very good in itself because it locks you out of further conversations for pissing them off, and if you use paragon/renegade to resolve it, things progress as if you were BFFs. There were also 'forced friendships', which I haven't noticed in DA.

As for them approving or disapproving of something, with the exception of some major situations (like in ME3, Tuchanka and Rannoch), I haven't noticed all that much in the way of approval or disapproval from squadmates in ME. They might voice their opinion on major choices, but random side missions, you never know what they think.

[RedArmyShogun]

So that you can count them as they turn on you and smite them in loyality to your God Emperor.

[AkiKishi]

SUMpTHY wrote...

I think a lot of your problem is that friendship is tied up too much with a character's world view. You should be able to be friends with Sebastian and advocate him taking back Starkhaven, you should be able to be friends with Anders and object to Justice. To do that I think the friendship system needs to not be so rigid. Also perhaps make minor things have less of an effect once you're clearly on a friendship/rivalry path. (e.g. Anders won't be impressed if you show mercy to one mage after spending the rest of the game sending innocent mages to the tower and by the same token won't be upset enough to cause disapproval if you send a clearly dangerous mage to the tower if you've been championing the mages' cause for the rest of the game).

As for keeping track, they can easily do that with the way characters greet you when you talk to them. (They already have this in DA2 btw. You get different comments from characters based on your relationship status).

The system itself is somewhat skewed to start with. In real life your options are not that limited. If you want friends in a game, then they come from a very small pre-selected pool.

[Chiramu]

Yeah don't you know irl you and your friends are always at so and so a number of friendship or rivalry status XD lol.

I think the friendship in Dragon Age should be more of a two way street, cause relationships are a two way street and your companions should ask about you. Not just you ask about your companions >.>. No more of Anders temper tantrum where he basically goes, "if you won't help me I won't be your friend anymore!" (although Merrill does that constantly through her companion quests...).

Why must we have children posing as adults throwing massive temper tantrums just cause we say "no" to them? We're not raising children as we play this game :<.

I would like it if our companions were adults like myself .

[Realmzmaster]

Because it is easier for a computer program to deal with numbers. It makes it easier to construct IF statements to reach a point of action. In DAO it is used to determine whether the party member gets the boost to an attribute.At different levels the approval or disapproval rating is checked to see if a boost in an attribute is warranted or a decline in that attribute is warranted for disapproval. In DAO the number is also checked to see if the party member is upset enough to leave or attack the PC.

Friendship/Rivalry works roughly the same way. The same reason why numbers are used for attributes because computers are good at them and it removes ambiguity. Ambiguity is fine if you have a live DM. It does not work well with computers.

[Maria Caliban]

SUMpTHY wrote...
Why does friendship need to be represented by a number?

Because it's a computer game and everything needs to be represented by a number.

[MILK FOR THE KHORNE FLAKES]

WELL, IT HAS TO BE REPRESENTED BY ONE KIND OF NUMBER OR ANOTHER IF IT'S GOING TO BE A GAMEPLAY MECHANIC. A BUNCH OF BOOLEAN STATES MAKES MORE SENSE THAN THE CURRENT SYSTEM, BUT IT'S ALSO HARDER TO WRITE.

IN WHICH CASE YOU MIGHT ASK: WHY REPRESENT SOMETHING AS COMPLICATED AS A HUMAN RELATIONSHIP WITH A GAMEPLAY MECHANIC THAT'S GOING TO INEVITABLY FAIL TO CAPTURE HOW THOSE RELATIONSHIPS WORK IRL? TO WHICH I RESPOND: GOOD QUESTION.

[Gibb_Shepard]

The rivalry system didn't even make any sense. You are a complete ass to your followers/ Constantly insult them, question their competency and risk their lives, yet they are loyal to you?

DAO's system made far more sense. Sure it could be explloited, but that can be remedied in future installments.

[Gibb_Shepard]

Maria Caliban wrote...

SUMpTHY wrote...
Why does friendship need to be represented by a number?

Because it's a computer game and everything needs to be represented by a number.

TW's morality system would like a word with you. 

Modifié par Gibb_Shepard, 20 mai 2012 - 11:25 .

[Sutekh]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

The rivalry system didn't even make any sense. You are a complete ass to your followers/ Constantly insult them, question their competency and risk their lives, yet they are loyal to you?

That's not how rivalry works, though. You can reach full rivalry without ever abusing a companion. All it takes is divergence of opinion, demonstrated in actions and dialogue.

--

As for numbers, they're needed. A computer needs some kind of variable to keep track of things and react accordingly. They could use a great number of boolean flags and combine them with AND and OR operators, but that would be extremely complex, bug-vulnerable and would ultimately be still numbers.

What they could do is keep things under the hood to avoid meta-gaming, but it could lead to a great deal of confusion.

[Wulfram]

Sutekh wrote...

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

The rivalry system didn't even make any sense. You are a complete ass to your followers/ Constantly insult them, question their competency and risk their lives, yet they are loyal to you?

That's not how rivalry works, though. You can reach full rivalry without ever abusing a companion. All it takes is divergence of opinion, demonstrated in actions and dialogue.

While it's true that you can be rivals without being a jerk, being a jerk will end up with you as rivals too.  Probably quicker and more easily than if you disagree politely.

The removal of a simple "doesn't like you" was a bit of a problem, I think.

Modifié par Wulfram, 20 mai 2012 - 01:12 .

[Sutekh]

Wulfram wrote...

While it's true that you can be rivals without being a jerk, being a jerk will end up with you as rivals too.  Probably quicker and more easily than if you disagree politely.

The removal of a simple "doesn't like you" was a bit of a problem, I think.

True. Divergence of opinion and dislike are separate things leading to different interactions (ideally). 

Re: being a jerk, I'm not even sure you get enough dialogue opportunities to be a jerk and reach full rivalry. But I might be wrong. I'm gonna have a playthrough where I behave like the Absolute Douchebag and see where it leads me (for science, of course).

[Reznore57]

They could use a positive path /negative path.Like on the positive ,you can be friend or rival .
Keeping a bit of Da2 ...and negative path they just don't like you .
On the negative path they might leave or try to kill you , because you treat them badly and do the opposite of what they think is right.
Making rival a little bit more positive , and you gain rival by not acting like they would want about think that ain't dealbreaker and by pointing out their flaws without being an absolute jerk.

Take fenris , you would gain rival by aiding mages that ain't totaly evil and telling him he's a bit obsessed with his past and pain and should let it go.
Friend would be anti mage anti slavery , and always being nice.
And negative would be help all the crazy mages , being pro slavery and telling him "man you're so annoying , i'm sending you back to Tevinter "

I guess it would be a little more complicated but i never understood how you could talk with Denarius about making a deal , and still Fenris being you're best friend after that.Or keeping Orana as a slave and still gaining his respect.

[Nomen Mendax]

Reidbynature wrote...

I just don't agree on that one.  The game doesn't suddenly 'forget' what choices you've made or what you said just because it isn't adding up a friendship score anymore.  It will still track conversation and actions like it does with anything said or done outside of companion conversations and it will still be able to provide conversations or situations context sensitive to what you did previously.

All they have to do is take out the random plus/minus friendship points (preferably), have you influence your companion through conversations and other interactions and not make about whether they like me or not.

You're assuming that the game is keeping track of what choices have been made in previous conversations rather than just keeping track of the the friendship score (not that I'm claiming to know one way or another).

But let's assume that we keep track of conversation choices for all conversations.  That's only worth doing if there are going to be different effects based on these choices - which sounds like the dialogue trees are going to get pretty dense and complex.  Maybe part of the problem is that one friendship score is just too general.  If I was designing a system I might keep track of 3 or 4 different variables that capture opinons on important issues in the game.  Of course the downside with making the system more complex (from Bioware's point of view) is that it means more zots, so less something else.

I do agree with the OP, having a friendship meter encourages people to meta-game to get the meter higher, this was exacerbated by having rewards for high friendship (or rivalry).  

[Maria Caliban]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

SUMpTHY wrote...
Why does friendship need to be represented by a number?

Because it's a computer game and everything needs to be represented by a number.

TW's morality system would like a word with you.

The Witcher didn't have a morality system.

So yes, I suppose if something doesn't exist in a game, the game doesn't need numbers for it.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 20 mai 2012 - 09:53 .

[Gibb_Shepard]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

SUMpTHY wrote...
Why does friendship need to be represented by a number?

Because it's a computer game and everything needs to be represented by a number.

TW's morality system would like a word with you.

The Witcher didn't have a morality system.

So yes, I suppose if something doesn't exist in a game, the game doesn't need numbers for it.

wam bam thankyou mam

[mopotter]

Reidbynature wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

A hidden stat would just make it more frustrating. I'd rather learn I've screwed up my relationship with them now, than hours in the future.

So you can reload and do it 'right'?  Couldn't you just look online for a walkthrough for the way you want to play the game?  Besides I don't think they mean a hidden stat so much as that the relationships flow naturally from conversation and aren't tied to a good/bad friend/rival system.

Yes.  reload and do it right, or just redo it to see what the reaction and different choices are.  

 I don't want to have to look things up for something like this.  I have to look up things that irritate me like puzzles.  I work, fixe dinner, do things I have to, I don't want to take the time out of my playing to look up a how to be friends or lovers guide.    I don't care if it's changed to something better, smile if you like it frown if you dont or something else.  I got used to the hearts, but could do without them.  Really could do without them, they were just a little distracting. 

[Realmzmaster]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

SUMpTHY wrote...
Why does friendship need to be represented by a number?

Because it's a computer game and everything needs to be represented by a number.

TW's morality system would like a word with you. 

The system in TW (which does not exist) would still boil down to numbers. The computer program will assign a number or range of numbers to the morality. The system is based on numbers. Whether those numbers are transparent or not is a different matter.

Modifié par Realmzmaster, 21 mai 2012 - 02:49 .

[Realmzmaster]

If the number bothers some gamers all that is necessary is a little switch (check box etc) that allows you to turn off the number or progression bar much like what is done to remove the quest arrow above the recipient. It would be set to on by default and you can switch it off if so desired.

[Nomen Mendax]

Realmzmaster wrote...

The system in TW (which does not exist) would still boil down to numbers. The computer program will assign a number or range of numbers to the morality. The system is based on numbers. Whether those numbers are transparent or not is a different matter.

A friendship system doesn't have to use numbers, as was suggested by Reidbynature you could track all of the PC's responses to conversations and derive information from them.  It would be more complicated than a numeric system, and likely be a source of bugs and probably wouldn't be worth the effort but it is certainly possible.  I once played with a system like that for a course project (in knowledge representation).