167 réponses à ce sujet

[LinksOcarina]

artificially yes, because the illusion of immersion is adequate enough.

In reality there is no difference though, but hey, an option is good too.

[Sir JK]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

But some of us (*raises hand*) don't think social cues contain information at all, so all the relationship meter is doing is providing us with information that wouldn't otherwise be available.  That makes it purely metagame content, and as such we'd like to turn it off.

What about smiles, laughter, crying, frowning, snorting and yawning? All basic social cues. They might be as subtle as other cues (like blinking of eyes or positionings of feet), but they do provide you with some sense of their reaction. Do they not? Not accurate information perhaps (just like words can be lies)., but parts of the picture.

Regardless, even if we ignore all that we'd still need the companions to vocally express the same information. Not having a meter is all fine, but having the companions turn on you because the information was not provided that they have disagreed with your actions previously would amazingly frustrated.

The meter itself might be an abstract meta-concept ,yes. But the information it does provide is important and need to be conveyed somehow. Even verbally means a lot of work and a lot more lines. If that is resolved somehow, then the meter is indeed not needed. But it's definantely non-trivial amount of work.
In a sense, as long as the game does not provide us with the ability to ask a companion how they feel, why they feel that way and to clarify the information needs to be provided through alternate means.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

And I see you didn't answer my question...

Any attempt on my part to stop her would be a selfish act.  To pretend otherwise would be delusion.

So it has nothing to do with your concern about her well-being?

Of course it would, but it would be my concern driving my actions, not her well-being. 
If I save her, it would be because I want her saved, not because she wants to be saved.  She clearly doesn't.

How would you know that? Mind-reading?
Seriously.....

An unexamined life is not worth living.

I have no idea what you are alluding to.

Modifié par Lotion Soronnar, 12 septembre 2012 - 06:45 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

Sir JK wrote...

The problem I feel with removing the relationshipmeter would be that the information it does provide needs to be presented otherwise. Having social cues (verbal, tonal physical, facial expression and so on) sounds allright, but there's quite a few of them and for the most part every person got their own set. I for one frequently cross my arms when idle or attentive, but I know plenty of people that only crosses their arms when upset.
What makes it worse is that science isn't entirely certain just how many social cues we do have nor what all of them mean. Some recent studies suggest that even something so subtle as how many times you blink when listening is a social cue, but of what they're not sure. We read most of these subconciously, so the risk with trying to create such extensive body language is that you might in fact hit the uncanny valley. 

Wouldn't part of the experience be to learn to know a companion? And thus his "cues"?
But seriously, for a game, you can use the standard cues...combined with what you know about the companion, it realyl shouldn't be that hard to tell.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out helping the templars will pi** off Anders, and helping mages will pi** off Fenris.

What makes it worse is that the meter in it's simplified way not only tells us what they think of the actions we do, but also how they feel about you as a person. Replacing that with social cues means that not only do we need to be shown sufficient reaction to every action, these also needs to account for how they currently feel about you. Is this an action they have come to expect from you? Is this an action that they thought you would be better than to do? Even if we just account for positive or negative approval (let alone rivalry&friendship) that's quadrouple the amount of lines needed to be recorded for each npc.
There's -a lot- of information that the meter implicitely conveys.

Changing all that to social cues is, as far as current technology goes, non-trivial. I doubt we're quite there yet.

The meter also completely abolished one important aspect of social interaction - uncertanty.  If you know with 100% accuracy how they feel about you at all times - that is about as real as breast implants.

How would you - in the current system - implement a companion who lies to you and betrays you? You know, the kind that smiles all the time and is amicable enough on the surface, but just dreams of plunging a knife in your back.
If the system is meant to show how he feels about you, then his meter would always be negative and you'd always know from day 1 that he's untrustworthy. The whole gist of social interaction IS that they are complex and uncertain.


Of course, some would argue that they don't want to loose a companion becasue they didn't know he was mad. Easily fixed. As soon as the relations reach a certain treshold, the NPC in question would let you know - quite clearly - what he thinks.

that way you basicly have a safety net of 1-3 heated arguments before s*** really hits the fan. The party NPC should really warn you "if you do this, I'm out".

Modifié par Lotion Soronnar, 12 septembre 2012 - 06:56 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sir JK wrote...

What about smiles, laughter, crying, frowning, snorting and yawning? All basic social cues. They might be as subtle as other cues (like blinking of eyes or positionings of feet), but they do provide you with some sense of their reaction. Do they not? Not accurate information perhaps (just like words can be lies)., but parts of the picture.

If the meaning of those behaviours is clear, we could document it somewhere.

But it's not clear.  These non-verbal cues are best ignored.

Regardless, even if we ignore all that we'd still need the companions to vocally express the same information. Not having a meter is all fine, but having the companions turn on you because the information was not provided that they have disagreed with your actions previously would amazingly frustrated.

I completely disagree.  People don't always tell you how they feel about everything.  I don't generally care if people know that I think they're making mistakes - I'm often happy to let them keeping making mistakes up to the point where I need to stop them for my own reasons.

The meter itself might be an abstract meta-concept ,yes. But the information it does provide is important and need to be conveyed somehow.

No it doesn't.  That's the point.  If the PC shouldn't know how his companions feel about something (and there's often no reason why the PC would know that), then there's no roleplaying benefit in providing the player with that information.

That's why I would like to turn the relationship meter off.  It's not possible to know how pther people feel.  As such, I would rather the game not tell me.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 12 septembre 2012 - 07:18 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

And I see you didn't answer my question...

Any attempt on my part to stop her would be a selfish act.  To pretend otherwise would be delusion.

So it has nothing to do with your concern about her well-being?

Of course it would, but it would be my concern driving my actions, not her well-being. 
If I save her, it would be because I want her saved, not because she wants to be saved.  She clearly doesn't.

How would you know that? Mind-reading?

That's a good question.

I'll admit I'm assuming that people behave rationally.  I mostly assume that because I want people to assume that I'm behaving rationally, and have good reasons to justify my own behaviour, so the Golden Rule holds that I should do the same for others.

If someone is harming herself, I must presume that she wishes herself harm.  To do otherwise would be arrogant.

An unexamined life is not worth living.

I have no idea what you are alluding to.

I'm quoting Socrates.  He tended to confront people in the street and ask them difficult questions.  He insisted he was doing them a favour.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 12 septembre 2012 - 07:19 .

[nightscrawl]

--- SPOILER for Anders in Act 3 ---

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

How would you - in the current system - implement a companion who lies to you and betrays you? You know, the kind that smiles all the time and is amicable enough on the surface, but just dreams of plunging a knife in your back.
If the system is meant to show how he feels about you, then his meter would always be negative and you'd always know from day 1 that he's untrustworthy. The whole gist of social interaction IS that they are complex and uncertain.

While this is an interesting point -- I especially like the idea of a deceptive companion -- in DA2 there is the instance of Anders lying to you to get your help in collecting the materials, and later on when he wants you to go into the Chantry. Sure, if you are the type of player who takes cues from dialogue options (in this case you would wonder why there is an option to question Anders about this and perhaps become suspicious, leading you to choose dialogue options you might not have otherwise; this has happened to me in a number of games) you can press him for more information, which leads to a confrontation. On the other hand, if you are in a friendmance with him, or are just willing to go along with whatever he asks of you, you might never find out about the deception until the end.

So I think that an NPC that lies or is manipulative can still be done with the current system. To me, whether or not that works is about the actual dialogue you have with them, rather than a meter's presentation. In that case, I think the game writers need to be intentionally deceptive, and NOT allow us to have some sort of magical insight, suspicion, or cunning-based awareness. Yes, those kinds of things can and do happen in real conversations with people, but I think the mere presentation of the option can arouse suspicion, having nothing at all to do with the actual NPC's actions/words, which destroys the deception.

To have the writers say "We want the player to be completely taken in by this person, no matter how they are RPing their PC, so we are going to rig it so that happens" would be an interesting alternative.

An example of an interesting deception is the character Atlas in Bioshock. The PC spends about half the game being manipulated by this man. Being a shooter, there are no conversations or dialogue options, so the player is forced to take everything at face value. I think something similar could be done, even including dialogue options, within the DA franchise.

Continuing on with deceptive characters, I think the large amount of potential companions can be a detriment to this. I was reading a thread where someone threw out how they weren't surprised when Isebela absconds with the relic, given her actions every time you attempted to enter the Qunari compound with her, etc. However, I never expereinced that for several plays, as I'm not too fond of her so I don't bring her along often. And too, we have other rogues at our disposal (including the option of being a rogue ourselves) so there is quite a high chance that many players never even witnessed those actions. In that case, there is nothing for you to build suspicion from.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 12 septembre 2012 - 08:45 .

[EpicBoot2daFace]

LinksOcarina wrote...

artificially yes, because the illusion of immersion is adequate enough.

In reality there is no difference though, but hey, an option is good too.

I think it's absolute nonsense. What's next? Remove the leveling system because it reminds us too much that we're playing a video game?

Folks, they're video games, not real life. Removing the relationship bar to help the player feel more immersed is ridiculous. You know what helps immersion? Really great characters and story-telling. You know what doesn't help immersion? Removing ways the player receives information.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

And I see you didn't answer my question...

Any attempt on my part to stop her would be a selfish act.  To pretend otherwise would be delusion.

So it has nothing to do with your concern about her well-being?

Of course it would, but it would be my concern driving my actions, not her well-being. 
If I save her, it would be because I want her saved, not because she wants to be saved.  She clearly doesn't.

How would you know that? Mind-reading?

That's a good question.

I'll admit I'm assuming that people behave rationally.  I mostly assume that because I want people to assume that I'm behaving rationally, and have good reasons to justify my own behaviour, so the Golden Rule holds that I should do the same for others.

If someone is harming herself, I must presume that she wishes herself harm.  To do otherwise would be arrogant.

And assumign that your assumption is correct isn't arrogant?

You keep hiding behind behind teh percieved avoidance of arrogance, but it's pointless.
Either you belive your analysis/view is correct or not. Period.
That isn't arrogance. That is normal.

Arrogance is when you refuse to belive you COULD be wrong, even when faced with contrary evidence.

Hence, since there is a possiblity that you (and the othe person) are wrong, it comes to weighing consequences.
- If I'm right and stop him, I saved his life and he'll be thankfull...probably
- If I'm right and didn't stop him, he's dead - something he didnt' want.
- If I'm wrong and stopped him, he will be angry - but nothing is stopping him from attempting suicide again, so no harm really done. And who cares if he's angry at you if he's gonna kill himself? He's about to remove himself from your life anyway. Or he may change his mind...
- If I'm wrong and didn't stop him, he's dead and not a factor in my life anymore.

Given the 4 possible outcomes, the 1st option is the best option to take.


Also, assuming that humans behave ratioanlly all the time is provably false. Humans can be exceptioanlly irrational at times.
So given that your basic premise is incorrect, how can any deduction you draw from it be correct?

[Lotion Soronarr]

nightscrawl wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

How would you - in the current system - implement a companion who lies to you and betrays you? You know, the kind that smiles all the time and is amicable enough on the surface, but just dreams of plunging a knife in your back.
If the system is meant to show how he feels about you, then his meter would always be negative and you'd always know from day 1 that he's untrustworthy. The whole gist of social interaction IS that they are complex and uncertain.

While this is an interesting point -- I especially like the idea of a deceptive companion -- in DA2 there is the instance of Anders lying to you to get your help in collecting the materials, and later on when he wants you to go into the Chantry.

I wouldn't call Anders a good example, as he doesn't really hate the player.
He's not actively trying to decieve him - he just keeps some thing to himself.

Remember that Rivalry isn't hate.

An example of an interesting deception is the character Atlas in Bioshock. The PC spends about half the game being manipulated by this man. Being a shooter, there are no conversations or dialogue options, so the player is forced to take everything at face value. I think something similar could be done, even including dialogue options, within the DA franchise.

As you say - you don't even know Atlas. You never really talk to him. You haev no choice in anything in Bioshock really. It's linear. Wouldn't cal lthat a good example for a RPG implementation.

Continuing on with deceptive characters, I think the large amount of potential companions can be a detriment to this. I was reading a thread where someone threw out how they weren't surprised when Isebela absconds with the relic, given her actions every time you attempted to enter the Qunari compound with her, etc. However, I never expereinced that for several plays, as I'm not too fond of her so I don't bring her along often. And too, we have other rogues at our disposal (including the option of being a rogue ourselves) so there is quite a high chance that many players never even witnessed those actions. In that case, there is nothing for you to build suspicion from.

Which is where the camp comes in.
After every chapter/large quest..plot arc..whatever... you heve the party talking about it.

Can be used ot add mroe depth, give more dialogue and provide more insight into characters, even for those you didn't bring along.

[Lotion Soronarr]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

LinksOcarina wrote...

artificially yes, because the illusion of immersion is adequate enough.

In reality there is no difference though, but hey, an option is good too.

I think it's absolute nonsense. What's next? Remove the leveling system because it reminds us too much that we're playing a video game?

Why not? Nothing stopping a devloper from doing that.
There's plenty of games without any character leveling.

Folks, they're video games, not real life. Removing the relationship bar to help the player feel more immersed is ridiculous. You know what helps immersion? Really great characters and story-telling. You know what doesn't help immersion? Removing ways the player receives information.

Think of it more as chaning the way the player recieves the information. Filtering it.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

LinksOcarina wrote...

artificially yes, because the illusion of immersion is adequate enough.

In reality there is no difference though, but hey, an option is good too.

I think it's absolute nonsense. What's next? Remove the leveling system because it reminds us too much that we're playing a video game?

Why not? Nothing stopping a devloper from doing that.
There's plenty of games without any character leveling.

Folks, they're video games, not real life. Removing the relationship bar to help the player feel more immersed is ridiculous. You know what helps immersion? Really great characters and story-telling. You know what doesn't help immersion? Removing ways the player receives information.

Think of it more as chaning the way the player recieves the information. Filtering it.

You missed the point entirely on the first part. But thanks for stating the obvious.

Second part, they've already tried that. Do you not remember when game devs thought it would be cool and 'more immersive' to take away the health bar and instead have your screen turn red or have these incredibly annoying red veins crawling all over your screen like in ME2? It was counter-intuitive and defeated it's own purpose, which was to let the player know their health was low.

Regenerating health is no excuse. Halo has regenerating health and still has a health bar. Anyway, the point is, they got it right the first time. It's the easiest way to relay information directly to the player. It's not something that needs to be changed for the sake of immersion. Having a health bar doesn't break my immersion in Skyrim, backward flying dragons do.

Modifié par EpicBoot2daFace, 12 septembre 2012 - 11:12 .

[MichaelStuart]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Second part, they've already tried that. Do you not remember when game devs thought it would be cool and 'more immersive' to take away the health bar and instead have your screen turn red or have these incredibly annoying red veins crawling all over your screen like in ME2? It was counter-intuitive and defeated it's own purpose, which was to let the player know their health was low.

Just had to say, I liked the red veins.
Never had any trouble understanding them, but thats just me.

Modifié par MichaelStuart, 12 septembre 2012 - 11:35 .

[LinksOcarina]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

And I see you didn't answer my question...

Any attempt on my part to stop her would be a selfish act.  To pretend otherwise would be delusion.

So it has nothing to do with your concern about her well-being?

Of course it would, but it would be my concern driving my actions, not her well-being. 
If I save her, it would be because I want her saved, not because she wants to be saved.  She clearly doesn't.

How would you know that? Mind-reading?

That's a good question.

I'll admit I'm assuming that people behave rationally.  I mostly assume that because I want people to assume that I'm behaving rationally, and have good reasons to justify my own behaviour, so the Golden Rule holds that I should do the same for others.

If someone is harming herself, I must presume that she wishes herself harm.  To do otherwise would be arrogant.

An unexamined life is not worth living.

I have no idea what you are alluding to.

I'm quoting Socrates.  He tended to confront people in the street and ask them difficult questions.  He insisted he was doing them a favour.

Except we have no proof of that, and if he did such things during ancinet Greece, he would likely have been arrested earlier than his supposed trial date.

but I digress, your black and white philosophical logic is created under false assumptions, because anyone can be decietful to another for monetary or personal gain.

For example. "I think Hitler was right." Under that rationale the logical step was to think i'm a white supremecist, which is far from the case. So why would I say that? Well, other than to prove a point, I would say it to maybe make a joke, to upset someone, to fool them or troll them, or, as rational logic would dictate, because they believe it.

Emotions and actions are not logical, they are manipulative and superficial and, 90% of the time, are judged based on the schema of the person at hand, leading to a divergent of opinons vs a univeral truth. 

[LinksOcarina]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

LinksOcarina wrote...

artificially yes, because the illusion of immersion is adequate enough.

In reality there is no difference though, but hey, an option is good too.

I think it's absolute nonsense. What's next? Remove the leveling system because it reminds us too much that we're playing a video game?

Folks, they're video games, not real life. Removing the relationship bar to help the player feel more immersed is ridiculous. You know what helps immersion? Really great characters and story-telling. You know what doesn't help immersion? Removing ways the player receives information.

I bet if they removed the tone icons from Dragon Age II, no one would be complaining about immersion in the end.

As satarical as my post was, all of this is artificial in the end, talking about the meter is talking about the game mechanics. mechanics being blamed for a lack of immersion. And since Dragon Age II had great characters and adequate story-telling, the only issue is removing the way players recieve information, which in of itself is funny because in Dragon Age II it added ways the player can recieve information with the tone images.

But if this is circling back to dialouge vs a silent protagonist...oh well, you might have to deal with it then.

[Lotion Soronarr]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...
Second part, they've already tried that. Do you not remember when game devs thought it would be cool and 'more immersive' to take away the health bar and instead have your screen turn red or have these incredibly annoying red veins crawling all over your screen like in ME2? It was counter-intuitive and defeated it's own purpose, which was to let the player know their health was low.

Speak for yourself.
I had no problem with different ways helth was communicated to players.

But thing si   - halth is something the palyer SHOULD know...because the character he's playing would know if he's wounded or not.

But knowing exactly how others feel about you? Can you say for certain you know that about real people around you?

Modifié par Lotion Soronnar, 12 septembre 2012 - 12:32 .

[jillabender]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

And I see you didn't answer my question...

Any attempt on my part to stop her would be a selfish act.  To pretend otherwise would be delusion.

So it has nothing to do with your concern about her well-being?

Of course it would, but it would be my concern driving my actions, not her well-being. 
If I save her, it would be because I want her saved, not because she wants to be saved.  She clearly doesn't.

How would you know that? Mind-reading?

That's a good question.

I'll admit I'm assuming that people behave rationally.  I mostly assume that because I want people to assume that I'm behaving rationally, and have good reasons to justify my own behaviour, so the Golden Rule holds that I should do the same for others.

If someone is harming herself, I must presume that she wishes herself harm.  To do otherwise would be arrogant.

I apologize for taking this thread a bit off-topic, but I'm finding this conversation interesting, so I'd like to respond.

Sylvius, I would argue that assuming that people behave rationally is a mistake. I'd like to believe that most people behave rationally most of the time, but I simply don't see much evidence for it. I'd agree that people usually act for reasons that make sense to them at the time, but in my experience, people often act on impulse, without thinking at all about what they're doing, and what they're trying to accomplish by doing it.

I'd agree, though, that intervening to stop people from harming themselves is always, at least partly, a selfish act. However, I don't necessarily see selflessness as the pinnacle of morality (and I also recognize that you weren't suggesting it was).

When it comes to stopping people from harming themselves, I'd like to point out that I don't necessarily need to make arrogant assumptions about what's best for someone in order to try to stop them. Sometimes, people have impulses that are in conflict with other wants or needs they may have, and I might simply want to remind them of the likely consequences of their behaviour: "Do you want X? Then you don't want to do Y." That's just an example, though – I'm rarely that blunt in real life.

Modifié par jillabender, 12 septembre 2012 - 12:43 .

[Nomen Mendax]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...
...
How would you - in the current system - implement a companion who lies to you and betrays you? You know, the kind that smiles all the time and is amicable enough on the surface, but just dreams of plunging a knife in your back.

If the system is meant to show how he feels about you, then his meter would always be negative and you'd always know from day 1 that he's untrustworthy. The whole gist of social interaction IS that they are complex and uncertain.
...

Maybe change the meaning of the relationship bar, so instead of representing what the NPC feels about you, it represents the PCs perception of the relationship.  That would also allow the game to give subtle clues that there might be something suspicious about companion Bob because whatever you say to him he just seems to like you more.

Modifié par Nomen Mendax, 12 septembre 2012 - 02:11 .

[Nomen Mendax]

scyphozoa wrote...

Can anyone tell me why they would need a bar to indicate what an NPC thinks if they do verbally express their opinion? I understand the need to have the bars and points if there is no other metric or expression of NPC opinions, but if they are expressed verbally, is that not sufficient?

The bar is a useful summary of your interaction with an NPC over time.  Even if the NPC expresses an opinon on each of your choices (that affect their relationship with you) you would still might want to know how the NPC feel about you overall which is what the bar does. 

I don't think that replacing the bar with verbal (and / or somatic) cues is as easy as people are suggesting.  The game would have to have a response from each NPC that is affected by one of your decisions (which definitely does not happen in DA2), and would also have need to indicate the strength of their reaction.  In addition an NPC's tone and dialogue lines in conversation would have to indicate how friendly he / she is with the PC.  To me, this seems like a lot of work.

It also doesn't address the issue that if you stop playing the game for three months you might forget how some of the NPC feel about your character.

[Sir JK]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Wouldn't part of the experience be to learn to know a companion? And thus his "cues"?
But seriously, for a game, you can use the standard cues...combined with what you know about the companion, it realyl shouldn't be that hard to tell.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out helping the templars will pi** off Anders, and helping mages will pi** off Fenris.

The problem does not lie establishing a unique set of cues for every person as such, but the work involved in creating them. Creating realistic dynamic facial expressions, extensive bodylanguage, a comment/frame for everytime their relationship status adjusts and doing this to account for how they currently feel about you is an amazing amount of work.

The meter also completely abolished one important aspect of social interaction - uncertanty.  If you know with 100% accuracy how they feel about you at all times - that is about as real as breast implants.

How would you - in the current system - implement a companion who lies to you and betrays you? You know, the kind that smiles all the time and is amicable enough on the surface, but just dreams of plunging a knife in your back.
If the system is meant to show how he feels about you, then his meter would always be negative and you'd always know from day 1 that he's untrustworthy. The whole gist of social interaction IS that they are complex and uncertain

Of course, some would argue that they don't want to loose a companion becasue they didn't know he was mad. Easily fixed. As soon as the relations reach a certain treshold, the NPC in question would let you know - quite clearly - what he thinks.

that way you basicly have a safety net of 1-3 heated arguments before s*** really hits the fan. The party NPC should really warn you "if you do this, I'm out".

You know... both DAO and DA2 featured lies and betrayals on the side of the companions and this was not foreshadowed by the relationship meters, are you certain you're not making a mountain out of a molehill here?

But agreed, a safety net lessens the problem of a character all of a sudden deciding to jump ship due to your actions. But it still means that I will only recieve a warning once I am well down a previously established path... as opposed to being warned when I begin/continue along it. If I sought to gain their trust/friendship I will have to work a lot harder than expected.

My problem with a lack of information lies in the setting up of false assumtions. That a character is difficult to read is not so much a problem as genuinely believing I was doing rather well and then being surprised that I was not.

As long as information is presented that allow me to -attempt- to gauge how they feel about me and my actions (or deliberately hiding that) I am fine, regardless whether this is done by an abstract meter or through ingame  social interactions matter not to me. I do not think the latter is a trivial undertaking however. It goes well down into writing and design level.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If the meaning of those behaviours is clear, we could document it somewhere.

But it's not clear.  These non-verbal cues are best ignored.

You do realise there are entire subdiciplines of science dedicated to documenting the meaning of said social cues and behaviours? It just so happens that it is a very complex field and we've still got lots to learn. But I digress... that tangent is best discussed elsewhere.

No
it doesn't.  That's the point.  If the PC shouldn't know how his
companions feel about something (and there's often no reason why the PC
would know that), then there's no roleplaying benefit in providing the
player with that information.

That's why I would like to turn the
relationship meter off.  It's not possible to know how pther people
feel.  As such, I would rather the game not tell me.

But if my character does seek that information? Ignoring information provided to you is all well and fine. But if it is information I need for my character should it not be available to me? What if I have a character that does try to read the non-verbal communication of other character to try to get a sense of how they think (regardless of whether this is a fool's errand or not)? What if I have the type that would constantly ask for opinions and thoughts out of a desire to appease his/her friends but is not provided the option to do so ?
You know, characters that actively or indirectly actually seeks to know how others think.

If the information is not available at all... am I not effectively prohibited from playing such characters?