Allan Schumacher wrote...
You don't do any QA on player-made mods, and yet you don't stop those (sometimes you even release toolsets). Is the problem there that it's BioWare releasing the feature?
When player-made mods don't work, people don't hold the company accountable. This is an entirely fair and valid viewpoint.
Exactly. So let us mod it.
That's just it, I don't really consider myself socially dominant. If anything I'd consider myself an introvert. I just don't get surprised when I talk with people. I dare say I find their responses utterly predictable.
I'm routinely misunderstood. I choose my words to try to control what sorts of misunderstandings might occur, but misunderstandings are inevitable.
And this is where you and I fundamentally disagree. CRPGs are restrictive and decidedly unadapatable compared to real life.
What you've done here is conjured up some mental gymnastics in order to prevent cognitive dissonance so you can continue to enjoy the setting in a way that you like. What you value is this notion that you can state and imagine whatever you want with the line of dialogue, and rationalize the NPC response in order to reinforce your conviction towards what you like about choosing lines in a CRPG.
First of all, there's no need to rationalise the NPC responses because I don't pretend that I can explain them. But the rest of your response here simply suggests that you an I approach games fundamentally differently. Allow me to explain.
But anyone that suggests that a dialogue system where the players is fundamentally restricted to a rigid set of dialogue options with specified words is an accurate reflection of real life is just seeing what they want to see.
That's not the part that's like the real world. But I will say that there's no requirement that the game be viewed as you describe it. While there are only those few options available, those don't describe all the different things the PC could say. Those simply describe the things the PC does say. That's a different thing.
The PC could say different things - those just aren't modelled within the game. Just like Shepard could pull out his gun and shoot Captain Anderson - he could, but he doesn't. That action isn't modelled within the game. I don't accept that the game shows us every possible action. But there's more to our disagreement than that.
Manufacturing stuff like this is essential to suspension of disbelief since the rigidity of being in a deterministic computer application prevents the free flowing adaptability and reactivity of reality. Unless you're a fatalist that feels reality is deterministic as well (I am not). But computers by their very design at this time are deterministic, and hence any application that runs them are also deterministic.
So for any given dialogue, the NPC response will always be predictable (from a deterministic point of view... it will always be the same). The only way a response can be modified in a CRPG is if there are specific rules that allow it (even in the event of a bug, the logical processes by which the computer is working is still predictable), which is still predictable.
This is the crux of our disagreement. You continue to look at the game from the point of view of the player of a game (possibly with the knowledge of a game designer). You know that the responses are scripted. You know that each dialogue option triggers one specific response.
But when I'm playing, I don't know that, because I'm not viewing th game from the perspective of a player. I'm seeing a world through the eyes of a character who lives there. So I don't know that each line triggers a specific response. I
know the contents of my character's mind, and I
know whatever he perceives to be true about the world in which he lives. So when he says something to an NPC, he doesn't know what the reaction will be, which means I don't know what the reaction will be. But I
know why he's saying that line, and I
know what he hopes to acheive my delivering it.
This is why DA2 simply wasn't fun to play. I knew how my character felt and what he wanted to achieve, but having fixed tones on the dialogue lines dramatically limited the range of options available to me. It was far less likely that there was an option that was compatible with his current state of mind. Furthermore, because the content of the lines themselves were hidden from me, I routinely found that Hawke would say things that ran entirely contrary to the state of mind I'd established for him.
To me, roleplaying consists of seeing the world from my character's perspective, and DA2 denied me that by having my character constantly demonstrate that I didn't know what his perspective was.
But DAO almost never did that. In each situation, I knew how the Warden felt, and I knew what he wanted to achieve, and I would choose the dialogue option that was consistent with those feelings and objectives. Sometimes it would take me a minute to figure out how any of those lines could be delivered or intended such that they would be consistent, but it was almost always possible (it was more difficult with Elf Wardens, I found).
If I see a line that says "Hello there" and the NPC response is a cheerful "Hi there! How are you?" there are fundamental implications for how I said "Hello there" in order to receive that response. It means I probably didn't perform any tonal or non-verbal communication which would have typically elicited a less cheerful response.
That's the logical jump I don't follow. I don't see how you can think you know enough about the NPC's mind to have confidence that you can tell why he behaved the way he did.
There's a non-trivial amount of information out there that indicates how important tonal and non-verbal communication is in conveying a message. In my experiences it's true.
In my experience, it isn't. If it were, there would be some sort of reference guide and I could learn it all from a book.
In order for me to make the rationalizations that I do, I typically start to come to the conclusion that ALL characters in a CRPG setting are socially inept.
I don't think rationalisations are ever okay. Rationalisation is evidence of a failure of reasoning. The reasoning should come before the result, not after.
And second, I don't see any evidence that social skills are even real. What you describe as socially inept is how I would describe all people. It's the classic philosophical Problem of Other Minds - we can't even be sure other people exist, let alone the contents of their thoughts.
Video games rarely allow me to follow up on a miscommunication (which is a predictable response to a miscommunication between two people that are interacting). These restrictions are absolute... they're hardcoded into the way the game is constructed.
The inability to correct misunderstandings is often raised as a criticism of the silent protagonist, but DA2 offers a similar failing in that Hawke can say things you didn't mean to say, and we're not allowed to correct those, either. While DAO doesn't allow us ot correct misunderstandings, DA2 doesn't allow us to correct misspeaking.
Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 05 octobre 2012 - 05:10 .
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