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[GithCheater]

I realize that in DA2, dialog tone affects friendship and rivalry with companions, and also establishes your dominant tone for autodialog, but otherwise seemsto usually not have any real consequences regarding the plot.

My recollection is that the PC usually picks the "investigate" option, then picks a diplomatic / snarky / aggressive response that ends the conversation (with perhaps the addressee providing a cursury remark in response to the PC's tone).

Thus, it seems to me that having 3 different dialog tone responses usually does not affect the progression of the story, and that dialog tone responses are more fluff than substance.  In comparison, I seem to recall that DAO conversations were often more intricate than DA2 conversations.

For example, I believe  the Felsi / Oghren / Warden conversational dynamics were much more intricate than any conversation in DA2.  It was challenging to smoothtalk Felsi into giving Oghren another chance.  In contrast DA2 conversations seem to be short investigations followed by a diplomatic / snarky / aggressive response.

In my opinion, these 3 dialog tones should have consequences regarding the storyline.  For example, on the BSN a new snarky topic might get the topic closed, while an aggressive response might result in user bans.  In contrast, diplomatic responses are looked at more kindly Bioware employees or moderators.

In summary, I hope "Dialog Tone = Consequences" is implemented in DA3. 

[David Gaider]

GithCheater wrote...
In comparison, I seem to recall that DAO conversations were often more intricate than DA2 conversations.

Sorry, but you recall incorrectly.

Perhaps there is vaseline on the lens, or perhaps you are confusing your overall impression of the dialogue with it working differently on a mechanical level, I don't know. But if you play DAO again you will realize that we have the same "tone hub" as we had in DA2... as in there are three flavors of responses (along with Investigates, which in DAO were not put into a separate hub) which are used primarily for roleplaying purposes to move the dialogue along. If they had any effect in DAO it was on follower approval, nothing more.

Actual choice hubs-- as in the player is selecting a choice which actually affects the plot-- were separate entities both in DAO and in DA2. In both games, such choice options were toneless. DA2's choice options had a toned response that varied on your current dominant tone, but you didn't pick that one the wheel.

Modifié par David Gaider, 17 octobre 2012 - 08:47 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I was reading that thread really carefully and I still don't get what Allan was saying about how DA2's dialogue is structured.

I think he was saying that dialogue for DA2 would look pretty much the same as in the Origins toolset, at one point, just with each line then having some kind of additional tab for paraphrase and tone. (Like the cinematics tab.)

So, that suggests to me (but I might be wrong) that the dialogue is written as it is written, then attributed paraphrase and tone later. I assume the writers would have the tones in mind as they are writing, but I think it's a subtle difference.

This is guesswork, but I don't think the tones should affect the plot very much at all, if the process is like this.

My explanation was mostly in response to the idea that some had that the wheel imposed a mechanical restriction to how conversations are created, when the behind the scenes logic of how a conversation line is created and integrated into the conversation is exactly the same. DA2 had some extra toppings (Paraphrases and icons) since the game utilized those, but the idea that conversations had to be written in a different way to accommodate the dialogue wheel is not the case.

From a purely functional level, the only differences are:

- DA2 includes a paraphrase
- DA2 includes an icon
- DA2 can display up to twice as many responses for any given line, because the "Investigate" doesn't move to a different part of the conversation.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think that the dialogue wheel is sufficiently different in appearance so as to give the impression that design is restricted/changed. As soon as the tones are made explicit, the rules for interpreting player dialogue have been changed, in my mind. I do think the tone icons are necessary, though, to give the paraphrases context in a way that they didn't really need in Origins. (Voiced protagonist, etc.)

I can understand why people may think that, which is why I gave my (admittedly quite techy...) response.

I can also understand how people suddenly see it as difference as the tone prevents any different interpretations of how the line will be delivered.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 18 octobre 2012 - 06:52 .

[Allan Schumacher]

If you really get down to it, In casual conversation we say things and it's unpredictable how our peers would react to them.

This is a perspective I have never agreed with. It may be unpredictable how someone whom I do not know (particularly of a different culture) may react to something, but I rarely if ever find myself surprised by how my peers respond to something that I say.

I have 31 years of learning how people interact in conversations, and given the level of sass that I pour on in my every day conversation, my peers would outright hate me based on the things that I say. Except that they all know it's sass because they know me, and I know them. I know how to talk with them and can read visual cues as to whether or not it's an appropriate time to sass and joke around and when it's not.

In casual conversation with my peers, it tends to play out exactly the way I would expect it to, and I don't consider myself to be someone with a 100+ rank in Speech skill either! (Although maybe I underestimate myself? I remember reading up a skeptical comment when I was first posting on ME3's boards that my posts "clearly" had several editor passes go over them before being posted... which I took as a compliment!)

[David Gaider]

rolson00 wrote...
whilst i like the idea of da:o's convo lists(a shed load of things to choose) they are very outdated for todays games
is it possible to incorparate origins amount oif options into the dialogoue wheel?

Considering we had a hard limit of 6 options total on the DAO list (which included investigates) and 10 options total on the DA2 wheel (including the investigate sub-hub), I suspect that would be a bad idea.

I get that some people like to imagine their character's tone, and that having that tone made explicit for them prevents them from imagining that for themselves and thus they feel restricted by it. That is, however, not something we can change with the move to a voiced protagonist-- and while the same people can make the argument on these forums time and time again, it's not something we're willing to change. Improving paraphrases, sure... coming up with some elaborate and expensive system to give them what they think they want, when that doesn't really give them what they want at all (a silent protagonist), no.

I know that's not what you're suggesting, rolson00, but I've read it here and on previous threads-- many times (though normally by the same people, and sometimes corraling in new people who read these arguments and think that sounds great). It is simply not going to happen.

[David Gaider]

Fortlowe wrote...
Why not both? I understand that outwardly, this would seem a task that would be expensive and time intensive, but frequently the devs remind us we (the consumers) should not make it our business to reckon the economics of development and instead to focus on constructive suggestions to improve the game.

We don't say you shouldn't take economics into consideration, we say that you don't... and that you should recognize that you don't. We have to, regardless of whether you do or not.

Your suggestion, while it has its merits, would increase the size of what is already the most expensive character in the game (x2, as it's recorded twice to cover both genders). Far worse, however, it would add micro-management to something that most players really don't want to micro-manage. Picking a dialogue option and then having to pick it again might sound like a thrilling amount of control to some... to most it would be us asking them to answer the same question twice. So, no, that would not work for us.

[David Gaider]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Did you know, when you switched to the voiced protagonist, that this was going to be a problem, or was it a surprise to you when people started complaining about it?

Did we know that people who preferred the silent protagonist wouldn't like it, and that people who get more out of a voiced protagonist would? Yes.

Also, do you think that the explicit tone provided by the voice changes how you write the dialogue?

Yes, the player's side of it. They can actually take part in scenes.

but now that it's explicit with the voice do you rely more heavily on the tone to impart meaning than you did before, and thus have that tone play a larger part in driving NPC responses to lines?

Absolutely. There is no longer a need for a character to say "I am sad", for instance, when they can say the line sadly.

I really want to see what you're doing with those.  I would have described the paraphrases as a separate problem from the fixed tone, but you putting them together here makes me very curious about how you're improving them.

It's primarily a matter of spending more time on reviewing them and doing them better. The actual physical changes to the presentation and other tweaks are things we will discuss later. Whatever those changes are, however, they will not assuage concerns by people who have a fundamental problem with paraphrases and don't accept them as a solution to their issue with a voiced protagonist.

Modifié par David Gaider, 18 octobre 2012 - 05:33 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Xewaka wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

If you really get down to it, In casual conversation we say things and it's unpredictable how our peers would react to them.

This is a perspective I have never agreed with. It may be unpredictable how someone whom I do not know (particularly of a different culture) may react to something, but I rarely if ever find myself surprised by how my peers respond to something that I say.

I have 31 years of learning how people interact in conversations, and given the level of sass that I pour on in my every day conversation, my peers would outright hate me based on the things that I say. Except that they all know it's sass because they know me, and I know them. I know how to talk with them and can read visual cues as to whether or not it's an appropriate time to sass and joke around and when it's not.

In casual conversation with my peers, it tends to play out exactly the way I would expect it to, and I don't consider myself to be someone with a 100+ rank in Speech skill either! (Although maybe I underestimate myself? I remember reading up a skeptical comment when I was first posting on ME3's boards that my posts "clearly" had several editor passes go over them before being posted... which I took as a compliment!)

So you're stating that you have to already know a person and have learned its body language cues in order to avoid misunderstandings. How does that avoid misunderstandings with people we've yet to know -- which comprises the majority of them?

No, I'm not stating that I have to know someone.  I underlined the word you missed (which was already italicized in my original post), which just to be clear is "may."

I can interact with complete strangers and and the overwhelming majority of the time, they behave the way I expected.

An example:  I stopped by a convenience store to pick up a chocolate milk after volleyball.  I saw that there was a damaged one leaking in the cooler.  As I went up to pay for it, I figured the person (whom I've never met before in my entire life) would appreciate it if I let her know that it was leaking and making a mess, so as the interac transaction was going, I said "Oh by the way, I noticed that one of the other jugs was damaged and leaking."  I predicted that she would appreciate this.  I also predicted that she would probably go investigate when the transaction was done.  Sure enough, that's exactly what she did.

Why did I think she would behave like this?  Well, I mentioned it in a polite tone of voice, and waited until she wasn't talking to me any more so I didn't interrupt her.  All this despite even being a different ethnicity to boot!  I'll even go out and say that I could replicate this situation 100 different times, and it would probably result in a similar response every single time.

Now, if I was snide and rude and said "You know, there's a big giant mess in the back" and demonstrated callous body language and overall came across like a ponce, I'd expect a different result.


Another example:
As I was crossing the street to work, a guy started wailing on his horn.  My initial reaction was "what the heck?" and was thinking someone was being stupid and irrational, but then I looked over and saw it was a friend from work giving me a hard time.  It immediately shifted from a sneer to a sassy "point at my wrist" indicating he's late for work (counter sass).  If I wail on a horn to a stranger, I'd expect a more hostile response (much like the one I was prepared to give).  If I wail on a horn to a friend, I expect him to respond more cordially (much like how I did to my friend).

[Allan Schumacher]

To play Devil's Advocate here, these ARE people from a different culture. I am not a resident of Thedas, that I know of. In addition, my character is often speaking to characters with whom the Common tongue is not their native language (Qunari, Antivans, Rivani, Orlesians, etc.,etc.).

To counter devil's advocate, you shouldn't be taking "Fast Jimmy's" perspective on things since even in DAO, you're playing a character that IS the resident of Thedas.

[David Gaider]

JediMB wrote...
So they go through great efforts to make it harder to misunderstand what options you're presented with, but absolutely don't want you to know exactly what the options are? Because it somehow makes sense to be surprised by the words coming out of your own character's mouth?

Okay, last time I will go through this particular argument-- in the future, I'll simply link to this if I must.

Displaying the full text of the line for a voiced PC does not work for us. We investigated it. We tried it out, and discussed it, and ultimately discarded the idea.

I get that some people feel they need all the information in order to make their dialogue choice-- and they feel that seeing the entire line displayed for them will give them that information. It won't. Or, I should say, it will... but it will break down just as often as paraphrases do. Which is to say not very often, but often enough that you remember the situations where that happens. The only way that wouldn't be the case is if we started writing player lines as if the PC weren't voiced, as in Origins.

Also, there are a significant number of people who would be greatly annoyed by reading the entire line and then having it repeated to them verbatim. Your response might be "well, they shouldn't select that option then." But many people will. They'll see it in the list of options and think "oh, that's an option that will give me more information? More information is better!" and they'll select it... and then be annoyed by the result. So we would be trading one group of people who believe this is what they want for another group who would take the option and make it a poorer experience for themselves.

And, yes, that is something we must concern ourselves with. We do not offer, support and test options unless we believe they work as a viable option for the game as we intend it to be played. And you might say to that "well, I think it would make the game better for me", but I'd suggest you're largely wrong in that. It doesn't actually address your base problem, which is with the voiced PC. At best we'd be going out of our way to not really solve your issue while actively making the game worse for others.

This is not to say there aren't things we can do to make the system better other than simply being more rigorous with our use of paraphrases. Not being as anal about not repeating words and phrases between the paraphrase and the actual line(s) is one, but there are others... which we will discuss at a later time. Displaying the full line is not, however, going to be one of those things.

Modifié par David Gaider, 19 octobre 2012 - 01:27 .

[David Gaider]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Yet we see this same thread, asking, arguing and appealing for no paraphrases by different people here at least once every two weeks.

No. We see the same people jumping onto the same thread at least once every two weeks.

[David Gaider]

Maria Caliban wrote...
And you know what? Dues Ex was a very cinematic game with a voice protagonist. It had exactly the sort of stylistic but unobtrusive UI that DA II seemed to be attempting.

Sorry, but Deus Ex also had a set character with a set personality. It's a very different style. It was also inconsistent with its dialogue interface. That's not a model I would want to follow, though I found the game definitely did some interesting things.

[David Gaider]

Maria Caliban wrote...
Did you like the challenge conversations in that game?

I did! That was a very interesting mechanic. Nice way of making dialogue an active, gameplay-driven experience.

[Allan Schumacher]

David Gaider wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...
Did you like the challenge conversations in that game?

I did! That was a very interesting mechanic. Nice way of making dialogue an active, gameplay-driven experience.

Since echoing David's thoughts makes me feel more legitimate, I also was a big fan of them.  I also like how there's a degree of randomness to it as well (in that you can't just memorize what to choose).


I also found LA Noire's take a interesting, although not quite as fleshed out (and ultimately deterministic).  The idea of having the player make reads on the character, as well as combining facts to challenge what the NPC is playing, was pretty interesting!

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 19 octobre 2012 - 04:21 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Surely all future games/RPGs wont be voiced protagonist. That's a scary thought. I think it's scary because I can't really imagine ways to improve things like paraphrasing and tone icons very much.

If the demand for silent protagonists is significant, combining this with the barriers of entry getting softer with digital distribution and even crowd sourcing, I'd be exceptionally surprised if ALL games had voiced protagonists.

But, there's still no trying to guess the correct commands, "pick up broom", "sweep the floor." Something is always lost.

I do not miss this at all though. I also disliked how text entry typically let you cheat through games with metaknowledge (I know I can just type "rune" to this guy, even though my character wouldn't have any inclination to actually do so).

[Allan Schumacher]

Eh, I struggle to play Ultima IV (I'm a fan of the Ultima series, but typically focus on ones like 6, 7, and Serpent Isle) now because I frankly feel the game is just dated. Though I didn't exactly find it easy when I first played it either (or even Ultima 6 which was my introduction to the franchise). I ran around not knowing what to do, but eh the world was interesting enough that I didn't really care a whole lot. Ultima VII came at a time when I was maturing as a person, but even then I think the game is a lot better in presenting how the narrative is laid out. Ultima VI is a lot clearer than I remember (especially since replaying it recently), though my growth as a gamer has also illustrated just how much shorter and easier the game is than I remember when I played it in 1990.

You can surmise that perhaps I am "forgetting" how to play the older games (although with U6 I disagree), but much like how I love the new XCOM more than the original, it's because in many ways I prefer the way the new one plays. The new one doesn't do EVERYTHING better than the old one, but it does enough that trying to go back and play the original makes its faults stand out that much more (and as awesome as the original is, it still has a lot of faults).


AAAs are typically risk averse. But if there are people that want more niche mechanics, it's getting easier to deliver them now than 10-15 years ago.


I disagree, however, that the "creative thought process" is really challenged by having me try to figure out specifically what words the game designer required me to use because the text interpreter is archaic by today's standards. It's doubly frustrating when the game ostensibly recognizes what I'm trying to say, but encourages me to try saying it differently (the distinction between the "letter" and "note" in Police Quest 2 for example).

And I loathe the inventory mangement of U6 compared to that of U7, for example. So many wasteful clicks/keystrokes but that's just the way it was done back then.

[Allan Schumacher]

Grrr... reading through that link has actually angered me. It wasn't until an insightful comment made me say "thank you."

Do we call anyone that's grown up in a city but never been to a farm weak or useless compared to the farmers or farming ancestors, just because they have a completely different skillset to survive the city?

The fact that the teacher would "take an arrow to the heart" demonstrates how his nostalgia clouds his perspective. He likely grew up with Ultima IV, and it was a game he really enjoyed. He has that attachment to the game, in spite of its limitations, and when other people cannot see it due to its age, it literally wounds him.


Here's the thing: Games in general are a lot more accessible (and in general just more accepted) now. The skillset required to simply use a computer in the times when Ultima IV came out immediately filter out the types of people that would even be able to play it.

I think what's much more likely the case, is that this teacher is talking with people that frankly wouldn't have enjoyed Ultima IV very much if the first time they picked it up was back when it was released. It's less about "people are forgetting about how to play the older games" and more about "there's a greater variety of people out there now that are able to play games" coupled with "There are enough games out today that appeal to a diverse enough set of skillsets."


I see in these comments the usual pejoratives about the "console generation" and things like that, and I don't think they even realize they're doing it. They're speaking down to people who simply don't have the same interest in games that they do, but fallaciously assume that these people would still be gamers in the late 80s and better equipped to deal with an Ultima IV. To them, it's not "these people just wouldn't like this game that I love at any time" but rather "these people don't like a game I loved back in the day, and therefore it must be some systemic problem with how things are being lost in gaming today" rather than "things have been added to gaming today which allows these people that otherwise would NOT play games to now play games."

On that note I need to head to bed, but after reading most of the comments I started to worry that I'd damage my orthodontics.

(PS. For me, much of the joy of old school adventuring did come from
trying to figure out words. Often times, imperfect qualities in games
are endearing. But, yeah, especially if nostalgia is attached.)

As an analogue:  For you, how much of the joy of simply using a computer at that time came from trying to figure out how it worked?  Do you think that that interest and the skills learned from it carried over into what you were looking for from a game?

While I was playing RPGs, my Mom was playing Hard Hat Mack.  Very different games.  I was the one putzing around with getting BASIC working on the Apple II though, not her.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 19 octobre 2012 - 08:06 .

[David Gaider]

TheRealJayDee wrote...
The option to turn a feature on and off, even if the whole process and the consequences are well explained, is obviously confusing for players. They will inevitably turn on something they don't like or turn off something they like and that will annoy and frustrate them. Therefore, as a considerate game designer, you can't include too many options on things. You have to build your games around the interests and abilities of ignorant and dumb people. Or so I've heard...

Ah, yes. Because people who might turn on a feature and find themselves annoyed without being aware of the exact cause are ignorant and dumb, yet everyone who comes onto a forum thread with a specific complaint always knows exactly what the source of their problem is as well as how to fix it-- with perfect clarity and self-awareness. Yes, I've noticed that as well.

I completely understand that many people have a problem with conversation options, to varying degrees-- even if I don't generally agree when they also provide a suggestion as to how that might be fixed... or, that if their suggestion would fix their problem, that it's something we'd be willing to implement. That these people post regularly in threads complaining on this specific subject should not be surprising, and while I'm not sure that constitutes many people that doesn't make their concerns less valid. So we will continue to work on it.

And I will leave it at that.