438 réponses à ce sujet

[xkg]

ismoketoomuch wrote...

xkg wrote...

xxx2emo4Uxxx wrote...

this thread is stupid, turn off speakers if you want to mute PC lol.

By PC he meant the Player Character not the Personal Computer but ...

If you think that turning off the speakers will mute ONLY the Player Character, well... I am not going to point who is stupid here.

In case you can't figure it out

1) It is kind of stupid to think that Bioware will pay significant ammounts of money to a voice actor to be the lead character (the most used) and then allow players an in-game option to turn off thatvoice.

2) You are also incorrect in that these games allow subtitles so by turning down the volume (or by being hearing impaired) you can still follow the conversation and choose your responses.

1) They pay to the composers for music too, yet I can see an in-game option to mute it. Any brilliant explanation for that ?

2) No I am 100% correct. You can't turn off the spakers to mute only the PC. Subtitles has nothing to do with what I said.

Modifié par xkg, 10 juillet 2013 - 05:23 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm not sure Bio believes the italed to be true.

That might explain their decision to try the voiced protagonist in the first place, but surely by now they know that they were wrong about the different ways people could and did play their games.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm not at all sure it makes sense anymore to speak of CRPGs as trying to emulate tabletop. The two genres diverged back in the 80s and went in different directions.

What constitutes roleplaying hasn't changed.

As for the specific topic, I have't found myself any more or less surprised by my PC's actions with voiced protagonist than with unvoiced.

Whereas, I find myself surprised at what my PC says several times per conversation in BioWare's voiced protagonist games, qith as many as 1-in-3 of those surprised so dramatic as to be character-breaking.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Ziggeh wrote...

I find it involves considerably less.

Incorporating the disperate and occasionally suprising results of the character wheel into a single character often involves a considerable amount of work, and by the end I'm left with a character with with far greater complexity than I would ever concucted on my own.

It involves a crippling amount of work.  Every time you're forced to adjust who your character is to accommodate some surprising action, that requires you then go back and re-examine literally everything that has happened previously to determine if your character would now view it differently, or even have made a different choice.

In order to maintain character coherence, it could be necessary, at any time, to reload to some point earlier in the game and resume playing from there, given what you now know.

Furthermore, you may find yourself now playing a character you don't particularly want to play.  What then?

Also, every time your character surprises you, that deprives you of the opportunity to havae  genuine reaction to what happens next.  Now you've seen the outcome, and cannot experience it for the first time from your character's point of view.  You weren't able to do it then, because you didn't know your character's point of view, and now that you do it's too late.  The game is constantly being spoiled for you.

[Sylvius the Mad]

ismoketoomuch wrote...

It is kind of stupid to think that Bioware will pay significant ammounts of money to a voice actor to be the lead character (the most used) and then allow players an in-game option to turn off thatvoice.

They give us the option to turn off all of the voices.  So clearly that argument doesn't fly.

You are also incorrect in that these games allow subtitles so by turning down the volume (or by being hearing impaired) you can still follow the conversation and choose your responses.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to mute the PC (only) and turn off the subtitles.  That would prevent me from ever knowing what the full line said, so then I would basically be playing just like I did in DAO, albeit with shorter dialogue options.  But that's more a problem with the paraphrases than the voice itself.

Not knowing the literal content of what will be said is, I think, a far more serious issue than the voice itself.  As you say, we can just turn the voices off (in fact, I find this improves DA2 considerably).

[AlanC9]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm not sure Bio believes the italed to be true.

That might explain their decision to try the voiced protagonist in the first place, but surely by now they know that they were wrong about the different ways people could and did play their games.

Were they wrong? Or simply indifferent to gameplay and interpretation methods they don't care to support?

Modifié par AlanC9, 10 juillet 2013 - 06:37 .

[AlanC9]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm not at all sure it makes sense anymore to speak of CRPGs as trying to emulate tabletop. The two genres diverged back in the 80s and went in different directions.

What constitutes roleplaying hasn't changed

Sure. What I was getting at is that CRPGs as a genre haven't been about role-playing. Some of the genre conventions are positively hostile to role-playing, and others are orthogonal.

[MerinTB]

AlanC9 wrote...
Sure. What I was getting at is that CRPGs as a genre haven't been about role-playing. Some of the genre conventions are positively hostile to role-playing, and others are orthogonal.

The bolded part boggles my mind.  It's like saying skeet shooting isn't about shooting just because you aren't using live targets anymore.

I do believe the underlined part is absolutely true, however.

Overall, I'd say that the situation ISN'T that cRPGs aren't about role-playing -- it's that cRPG designers have differing understandings of what role-playing means.  The more the genre has blended aspects of other genres, the more that different cRPGs focused on one feature and cut another, the more blurred the concept of what a cRPG is has become.

cRPGs used to be about creating a party and running with it, almost exclusively.  Then they started experimenting with preset NPCs becoming party-members, with smaller parties, with making the protagonist more and more preset as well.  You got single-character cRPGs.  Then, with more preset characters, you started to move away from player created into player shaped, and from that into simply player controlled.

On top of all that, the elements that RPGs use to give the player a sense of creation/development/control over their character(s) -- namely statistics, experience points, appearance, equipment, story choices and dialog choices -- suddenly had people looking at them as defining traits of an RPG as opposed to tools to let players control their characters and role-play.

It can be seen as a kind of evolution.  But evolution isn't always towards something better - it's about changing into something that can survive a given environment.  Those environments can change, and evolutionary traits or even whole branches can become dead-ends.  Evolution isn't a ladder climbing higher and higher to a better end result.  What is the current form of cRPGs now doesn't mean that older forms won't re-emerge or weren't better -- nor does it mean something entirely new isn't just down the road.

In short, every cRPG is made to be role-playing, but the makers of the cRPGs are not working from complimentary definitions.  And the changes to what ARE CURRENTLY cRPGs are not simply "improvements" or "becoming better" as opposed to what is in demand by some controlling interest (what the environment propagates as most successful.)  But to say cRPGs aren't about role-playing is absurd -- they may no longer be about what some people consider role-playing, but they most certainly are about the developer's belief of what is role-playing.

[Ziggeh]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

It involves a crippling amount of work.  Every time you're forced to adjust who your character is to accommodate some surprising action, that requires you then go back and re-examine literally everything that has happened previously to determine if your character would now view it differently, or even have made a different choice.
In order to maintain character coherence, it could be necessary, at any time, to reload to some point earlier in the game and resume playing from there, given what you now know.

I don't start with a definition, just some vague impressions, so if I'm surprised it's treated as having learnt something new about them, or if it conflicts with something learnt earlier, as the character having evolved - I try to account for why - but the things that informed the earlier decisions still exist or existed at that time, there is just something else informing this one.

I might consider how this new information could have coloured previous decisions, and it will likely inform future ones, but it wouldn't change who they had been during past events or the way they would have acted.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Furthermore, you may find yourself now playing a character you don't particularly want to play.  What then?

I can't see how that could happen. They can definitely contain traits I'm not keen on, but I can either explain these as "acting" or have the character self examine and evolve away from it. 

Modifié par Ziggeh, 10 juillet 2013 - 03:01 .

[Inspectre]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Furthermore, you may find yourself now playing a character you don't particularly want to play.  What then?

The reason I haven't bought the Witcher games is because I can't stand Geralt.
I luv CD Projekt Red and most of what they have in their games, I just hate the protagonist for who he is.

Just thought I'd add my 0.02 dollars.

[MerinTB]

Dragon XIX wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Furthermore, you may find yourself now playing a character you don't particularly want to play.  What then?

The reason I haven't bought the Witcher games is because I can't stand Geralt.
I luv CD Projekt Red and most of what they have in their games, I just hate the protagonist for who he is.

Just thought I'd add my 0.02 dollars.

I don't particularily like Geralt, and I cannot stand Dandelion and Triss.  So the game was harder to enjoy by not liking such main characters.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

Were they wrong? Or simply indifferent to gameplay and interpretation methods they don't care to support?

I think they were wrong.  The writers, in particular, seemed genuinely surprised that players were inventing tone and delivery, rather than trying to discern the tone and delivery the writers had intended.

There was a forum conversation with David Gaider following his claim, during DA2's development, that he thought the tone icons were so valuable that he would like to use them even if he returned to writing a silent protagonist.

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
Were they wrong? Or simply indifferent to gameplay and interpretation methods they don't care to support?

I think they were wrong.  The writers, in particular, seemed genuinely surprised that players were inventing tone and delivery, rather than trying to discern the tone and delivery the writers had intended.

There was a forum conversation with David Gaider following his claim, during DA2's development, that he thought the tone icons were so valuable that he would like to use them even if he returned to writing a silent protagonist.

Mr. Gaider is probably right, though.  They are so valuable.  To the writers.

Whether they are valuable or not to the players depends on the players.  But for writers?  It saves having to cram nuance into a very short paraphrase!  Do you know how many headaches it must solve to know that "okay, the player knows this is meant to be the diplomatic, funny or forceful response even if I don't word it perfectly."

Absolutely invaluable to the writers.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sure. What I was getting at is that CRPGs as a genre haven't been about role-playing.

That's nonsense.  Roleplaying defines the genre.  They are roleplaying games.  They are, definitionally, about roleplaying.

Some of the genre conventions are positively hostile to role-playing, and others are orthogonal.

What constitutes a genre convention?  Those that are hostile to roleplaying are, I suggest, merely design flaws rather than established conventions.  It should be impossible to establish conventions that are antithetical to roleplaying.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Ziggeh wrote...

I don't start with a definition, just some vague impressions, so if I'm surprised it's treated as having learnt something new about them, or if it conflicts with something learnt earlier, as the character having evolved - I try to account for why - but the things that informed the earlier decisions still exist or existed at that time, there is just something else informing this one.

Okay, that's just not gameplay I would enjoy.

First, with merely vague impression, I don't know how I would make the very first decision in the game.  Or any, frankly.  Without knowing exactly how my character feels about what's going on, how can I decide what he wants to do about it?

Second, the evolution is something I want to do.  I should be in control of how my character reacts to new situations, and how those change him over time.

Learning about my character basically shouldn't happen.  As soon as he's something I don't know intimately, then I can't inhabit his mind sufficiently to make decisions on his behalf.

I can't see how that could happen. They can definitely contain traits I'm not keen on, but I can either explain these as "acting" or have the character self examine and evolve away from it. 

How do you handle direct contradictions?

[Ziggeh]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

First, with merely vague impression, I don't know how I would make the very first decision in the game.  Or any, frankly.  Without knowing exactly how my character feels about what's going on, how can I decide what he wants to do about it?

I will generally "create" as much as I need to make that individual decision. The question itself adds as much as the result. I'll usually start with a single adjective and a bundle of context. I'm a dwarf commoner, so I'm reluctant because none of this is any of my business. I'm a mage and my homes just been destroyed by monsters, I'm pretty angry.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Second, the evolution is something I want to do.  I should be in control of how my character reacts to new situations, and how those change him over time.

Evolution is very much something that I "do", but it's definitely more reactive than I imagine you'd be happy with. It's all interpretation, I'll know they've suddenly been angry or flippant, but until I interpret I don't know why.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...


Learning about my character basically shouldn't happen.  As soon as he's
something I don't know intimately, then I can't inhabit his mind
sufficiently to make decisions on his behalf.

I'm more interested in the character being a collorative construct. If I were building a character that was purely my own I'd find the confinement of any dialogue on the frustrating side. So instead I treat it as a constant, well, dialogue, where my interpretation informs the input and the output informs the interpretation.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...


How do you handle direct contradictions?

It would depend on the situation, but generally I'll assume they're lying for some reason or other, but it's possible they've changed their mind. Did you have an example in mind?

[MarchoftheVolus]

BrotherWarth wrote...

I know I'm not alone in preferring a silent PC. I just prefer it from a role-playing perspective. And maybe it's just because I'm not a game designer, but it seems like it wouldn't take much work to implement this feature. They could keep the facial movement of the PC speaking to avoid the problem Origins had with the Warden blankly staring at people.

What say you, Bioware?

A mod could probably be easily made to silece the PC and show full dialogue text instead of paraphrases i the wheel, you would obviously have to wait until after launch though.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Ziggeh wrote...

I will generally "create" as much as I need to make that individual decision. The question itself adds as much as the result. I'll usually start with a single adjective and a bundle of context. I'm a dwarf commoner, so I'm reluctant because none of this is any of my business. I'm a mage and my homes just been destroyed by monsters, I'm pretty angry.

As new situations arise, I don't think I could do this, as I would need a justification for each new evolution.  If I create something to solve this problem, I need to know why this wasn't always true (and it clearly wasn't, because I didn't take it into account when making those earlier decisions).

Evolution is very much something that I "do", but it's definitely more reactive than I imagine you'd be happy with. It's all interpretation, I'll know they've suddenly been angry or flippant, but until I interpret I don't know why.

That's completely backward to me.  They shouldn't be angry or flippant unless they know why, and if they know why then I know why because they had to consciously choose (through me) to be angry or flippant.

Plus, the immediate reaction to that angry or flippant behaviour needs to be interpreted by me from the appropriate perspective.  This might work if I could pause conversations after the PC's spoken line, but before the NPC reaction.  Then, at least, I'd be able to avoid backtracking.

I'm more interested in the character being a collorative construct.

I think the story should be a collaborative construct, but the thing I bring to the story is the character.  I build a character, drop him into the world, and see what he does.

That's what I find fun.  That's what I want to do.  If I can't do that, I don't want to play these games anymore.

How do you handle direct contradictions?

It would depend on the situation, but generally I'll assume they're lying for some reason or other, but it's possible they've changed their mind. Did you have an example in mind?

Not really, no.  I'm imaging a situation where your justification for selecting some line was directly contradicted by what that line was.  I had this happen in Mass Effect, where I didn't want Shepard to tell Udina something in particular, and then Shepard told him that exact thing (despite my having chosen the only dialogue option that looked like it didn't do that).  Now, having seen what Shepard actually said, I know that the only reason I selected that option has been invalidated, and I would like now to go back and try something else.  If I cannot say what I would like to say, then I need to use different criteria to choose among the available options, but now it's too late.

[Sylvius the Mad]

MarchoftheVolus wrote...

A mod could probably be easily made to silece the PC and show full dialogue text instead of paraphrases i the wheel, you would obviously have to wait until after launch though.

If that could be "easily made", we would have seen one for DA2.

[Ziggeh]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

As new situations arise, I don't think I could do this, as I would need a justification for each new evolution.  If I create something to solve this problem, I need to know why this wasn't always true (and it clearly wasn't, because I didn't take it into account when making those earlier decisions).

I'm really starting from the opposite end. I assume I don't know everything about them, just the things that are relevant so far, so it can have always been true without me knowing.

There's a reasonably amount of dissonance in that. I'm accepting the possibility that past decisions could have been both made for the reasons I thought at the time, and the reasons that are suddenly apparent, but generally I'll try and use something that wouldn't impact past events, such as seeing it in light of more recent ones.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I'm imaging a situation where your justification for selecting some line was directly contradicted by what that line was.  I had this happen in Mass Effect, where I didn't want Shepard to tell Udina something in particular, and then Shepard told him that exact thing (despite my having chosen the only dialogue option that looked like it didn't do that). 

My reasons for selecting lines are usually more general than that. I'm actually more interested in tone than words or even meaning. Because I'm aware they will never be my words, I'm happier to be selecting the general thrust of things.

That said, I can't say it hasn't happened that the reasons for selection and delivery conflict, and in those cases I've wandered back into dissonance country - In accepting that I don't fully know the character, I accept that the reasons for selection may be flawed to some extent.

I should say, much of this happens unconciously, or rather, instinctively. I think about it more and more as games arise that actively support the approach*, but it's essentially just what I've always done, so it's a lot more fluid that I make it sound through analysis.

*It works very well in ME and DA2, the paraphrase and voiced systems, where I can describe Shepard and several Hawkes in detail, but it's much less successful in text, where all I recall about my Dragonborn was just a violent woodelf and my Warden remained an angry dwarf.

[Wozearly]

AlanC9 wrote...

Wozearly wrote...
The main reason its controversial in Bioware RPGs is because historically a lot of influence over the character, their choices and their personality has been passed directly to players. The introduction of a fixed voice and tone of responses has reduced that, and not all players see the resultant interference / erosion of player influence as a positive development.

I'm not sure Bio believes the italed to be true. What they've said about the DA2 voiced dialogue is that it's got the same choices the players have ever had; the tone is now explicit, but the NPCs always reacted to an implicit tone that the writers intended, so in a sense it's the silent PC that isn't behaving the way the player expects.

Reducing influence over personality may not have been the intention, but it has been the unintended consequence. On paper, it makes sense. The number of conversation options are (broadly) the same, but now that they're being spoken aloud its crucial for the writers to also convey tone of voice and/or intent behind delivery.

This is where influence has reduced, because its started to transform into "pick your tone" rather than "select what you'd say", as tone has become the dominant factor. I respect that you believe this was always the case, but I disagree. In DA:O it was possible for a wide variety of tones to apply in most cases (except, generally, openly sarcastic) because characters responded to the content of what was said in a tone neutral fashion.

ismoketoomuch wrote...

This
would make more sense if you actually were able to type in a response
of your own chosing. The player influence you are talking about still
just involves a choice of pre-set reponses whehter the PC is voiced or
not. What I think you mean is a voiced protagonist takes away your
ability to imagine a tone or atitude in the PC response. But again you
can just turn down the volume, turn on subtitles.

Typing in a response of your own choosing and expecting the game to be capable of responding is an extreme definition of player influence. Much like saying that a voiced protagonist can only be influenced if you have at least 200 options for tone and content. Lets avoid arguing towards the absurd.

Turning down the volume and whacking on subtitles, tactically, every time the voiced PC appears...technically possible. Frustrating, but possible. And pointless. Because as stated, its no longer the content that drives the conversation but the tone selected, because other characters respond as much (sometimes far more) to your tone than the content of what you say.

In this scenario, its irrelevant if I try to apply my own view of tone on top - the results are likely to jar. You can try it in reverse, if you like. Block your ears, don't read the dialogue, select a tone, imagine what your character would say based on that tone, then unblock your ears to listen to the response. Odds are it'll make no sense based on the content you'd dreamed up in your head, forcing you to reinterpret what you must have said (as opposed to how you said it).


Tone-driven content with paraphrasing rather than tone neutral responses with full content text is fundamentally different from a roleplaying perspective.

Neither is necessarily 'better' or 'worse', but tone-driven fixes more elements in place than tone neutral, which is why I referred to it as reducing player influence over their character. This is not the same as reducing player agency (ie, to what extent your choices affect the world) - that's driven by design decisions that have absolutely zip to do with whether the PC is voiced or silent.

Apologies if using the term "influence" caused confusion in what I was trying to describe.

[Wozearly]

On a separate note, the Sylvius vs Ziggeh approaches on this page are great examples of why content-driven and tone-driven responses (respectively) work well or badly for different people.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Ziggeh wrote...

That said, I can't say it hasn't happened that the reasons for selection and delivery conflict, and in those cases I've wandered back into dissonance country - In accepting that I don't fully know the character, I accept that the reasons for selection may be flawed to some extent.

If I don't know the character, I'm unlikely to be terribly interested in the character.  Like NPCs.  I don't care about NPCs, because I don't know them.  I only care about them to the extent that I can get to know them.  So, with companions, I care about them more if I can control them in conversations (like BG) or choose their equipment, or assign them skills, and decide what their combat role is.  The more pre-written and protected from my interferece the companions are, the less I like them.

I should say, much of this happens unconciously, or rather, instinctively. I think about it more and more as games arise that actively support the approach*, but it's essentially just what I've always done, so it's a lot more fluid that I make it sound through analysis.

Much as mine is.  My approach to these games is largely how I approach the world.  With the recent implentation of the voiced protagonist, I find that the game no longer resembles real-world interaction, and I don't seem to know how to play it.

*It works very well in ME and DA2, the paraphrase and voiced systems, where I can describe Shepard and several Hawkes in detail, but it's much less successful in text, where all I recall about my Dragonborn was just a violent woodelf and my Warden remained an angry dwarf.

Whereas, I can tell you very little about my Hawke or Shepard, but I can describe multiple Wardens in great detail.  I have a very detailed backstory for my Dragonborn.

Our approaches are diametrically opposed.

[Gotholhorakh]

AlanC9 wrote...

I'm not at all sure it makes sense anymore to speak of CRPGs as trying to emulate tabletop. The two genres diverged back in the 80s and went in different directions.

I don't think this is entirely accurate, actually - notwithstanding the differences that come from working in a completely different medium, commonality with "real" role-playing games was certainly mentioned lots during the 90s as a positive point - indeed into the noughties there were games that quite intentionally did this, including best of breed IP - a full 20 years on (and more) from 1980

[victorbarry]

My problem with a voiced PC was that i didnt know what my PC was gonna say. But it seems they fixed that for Inquisition, so problem solved