243 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

deuce985 wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

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.

Fair enough.

If not that then do you think it's possible to add more tone types for each personality alignment? Only when the situation presents itself, as I mentioned earlier? Sometimes Helpful would come up instead of Diplomatic in DA2. Is it possible DA3 will add even more tones for the situation in DA3 or is that something too costly?

Sister dies:

Compassion
Jovial
Unsympathetic


Instead of seeing the traditonal "diplomatic", "sarcastic", and "aggressive" tones? Do you think the tones in DA2 fit every situation? I'm just curious.

If the three tones were constantly changing in every conversation, to reflect more than just Dip/Sar/Aggro but rather a wide range of emotions (but only three emotions/tones per choice option), I'd be fine with this. I'd rather have the option of being Unsympathetic rather than aggressive in the above example. Just like I'd rather be Aggressive to someone like Meredith, rather than Sullen.

Having three options isn't the problem. Having the same three options, and a system that almost seems to promote the player to only chose one of those options the entire game, is. 

[JediMB]

David Gaider wrote...

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.

While reviewing the paraphrases themselves is a good thing to do, I think adding a feature to the dialogue wheel that lets you preview the full line before choosing it would be a good idea. It could be triggered by hovering over the paraphrase with the cursor and holding down the [Shift] key or something. (And whatever works best on the console controllers.)

Modifié par JediMB, 18 octobre 2012 - 10:36 .

[Fast Jimmy]

JediMB wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

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.

While reviewing the paraphrases themselves is a good thing to do, I think adding a feature to the dialogue wheel that lets you preview the full line before choosing it would be a good idea. It could be triggered by hovering over the paraphrase with the cursor and holding down the [Shift] key or something. (And whatever works best on the console controllers.)

Not to be the cloud that rains on the parade, but David and others have said this will, flat out, not be happening.

[deuce985]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

deuce985 wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

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.

Fair enough.

If not that then do you think it's possible to add more tone types for each personality alignment? Only when the situation presents itself, as I mentioned earlier? Sometimes Helpful would come up instead of Diplomatic in DA2. Is it possible DA3 will add even more tones for the situation in DA3 or is that something too costly?

Sister dies:

Compassion
Jovial
Unsympathetic


Instead of seeing the traditonal "diplomatic", "sarcastic", and "aggressive" tones? Do you think the tones in DA2 fit every situation? I'm just curious.

If the three tones were constantly changing in every conversation, to reflect more than just Dip/Sar/Aggro but rather a wide range of emotions (but only three emotions/tones per choice option), I'd be fine with this. I'd rather have the option of being Unsympathetic rather than aggressive in the above example. Just like I'd rather be Aggressive to someone like Meredith, rather than Sullen.

Having three options isn't the problem. Having the same three options, and a system that almost seems to promote the player to only chose one of those options the entire game, is. 

This is where I had problems with DA2's tone/personality. You only had two different tones for every alignment. Mostly, it worked ok. However, some situations came off rather awkward. To me, it seemed to be in situations where your PC needed to express more emotion. Mostly in the death sequences with siblings or his mother. Or in sitautions like first meeting Bethany outside the Circle in years. That conversation was weird because no matter what choice I picked, my PC never expressed much emotion. You'd think he'd be elated to see his sister after years?

That's why I propose more tone types for personality alignment. It would still be the same dialogue wheel they use with three different tones for each personality but the writers would decide when they need different tones. I think David made it fairly clear they'd like the dialogue wheel to stay fairly simple and easy to understand. He said the proposed idea earlier would cause too much micro-management on the dialogue wheel, which is understandable.

I could see a problem with Bioware adding say, five new tones for each personality type(instead of two) and end up confusing the player with so many different icons.

Modifié par deuce985, 18 octobre 2012 - 10:55 .

[SilentK]

Veex wrote...

How you imagine your character saying a line has no bearing on how the NPC you're speaking with reacts. The tone is just as fixed in DA:O as it is in DA2, one is just transparent. Just because you imagine your Warden saying a line to Oghren aggressively or sarcastically doesn't change the response Oghren will give you. The tone of the Warden is fixed and NPCs react accordingly, as that is how the writers... er... wrote it.

Well yes, this is what happens to me quite often in DA:O. I say something and depending on the reaction from the person I'm talking to I'm trying to figure out how my silent PC said it. I've thought that I've said something kind, but judning from the reaction, perhaps it wasn't. For me that was not like living through my character, I felt blind, it just takes me out of the game. I still had fun playing, but after I discovered Mass Effect  and the joy of having a voice, it has been very difficult for me to go back to DA:O. I finally feel that I'm living in the game while playing, I just completely lose track of time when I'm doing it. Started a new Shepard and a new Warden this week, and even if I have seen five different Shepards promoted to specter I still got misty-eyed and had goosebumps at that part of the game. It takes some time for me to play through DA:O, but once I get to DAII the pace picks up since I'm back to my preferred voiced PC.

I understand where you come from, those who prefer a silent PC. It would be great for me if the game clicked for me as well when I'm playing a silent PC. Then I would enjoy DA:O so much more, but a voiced PC just makes me happier while playing.

[philippe willaume]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

snip

Having three options isn't the problem. Having the same three options, and a system that almost seems to promote the player to only chose one of those options the entire game, is. 

+1

[JediMB]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

JediMB wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

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.

While reviewing the paraphrases themselves is a good thing to do, I think adding a feature to the dialogue wheel that lets you preview the full line before choosing it would be a good idea. It could be triggered by hovering over the paraphrase with the cursor and holding down the [Shift] key or something. (And whatever works best on the console controllers.)

Not to be the cloud that rains on the parade, but David and others have said this will, flat out, not be happening.

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?

[Firky]

philippe willaume wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

snip

Having three options isn't the problem. Having the same three options, and a system that almost seems to promote the player to only chose one of those options the entire game, is. 

+1

Technically there were 6 tones.

I dunno. I played the first time as the top option, the second time as the bottom and the third as a combination of all three, based on the context of the conversation; middle with family, top with most people, bottom when someone was being aggressive. I thought it worked really well mixing them up. I wish I'd played like that the first time.

[Maria Caliban]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

There were no alienages in Lothering, yet Hawke communicated with City Elves as soon as he got in the city.

There were city elves in Lothering.

There were no Thaigs nearby or surface dwarves that we saw in Lothering in DA:O, yet Hawke talks with the Dwarven companion right off the bat.

By 'right off the bat' you mean after a year of living in Kirkwall? And surface dwarf culture in Kirkwall doesn't seem terribly different from human culture in Kirkwall.

The foreign culture that Hawke interacts with in the game is the Qunari, and communication with them isn't as easy as regular communication.

[rapscallioness]

David Gaider wrote...

<snip>

 It is simply not going to happen.

Thank the Maker.

..............................

*runs*

[Fortlowe]

David Gaider wrote...

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.

Thanks for the reply! Glad to know the dilemma we are having with Tone vs. Personality isn't going unnoticed. I really like having input into my PC's personality. But like others have pointed out, it does seem to be at the cost of sometimes making conversation selections with which that we do not truly agree. In a nutshell, I don't want to bite my best pals head off for saying or doing something I don't agree with and I don't want to coddle my worst enemy just because this one time what they said or did isn't completely mad. All the same I'd like to get my point across without betraying my core personality or the emotional perspective of the moment.

I have faith that you guys can nail this. Seems like my suggestion isn't the first time a tone toggle solution has come up. If that's the case and it was shot down, I'm sure someone better at game development than me (like my six year old neice) has come up with a more subtle and effective stop gap.

Also I apologize for what I said about expense. Of course it should be taken into account. It just seemed a bit hypocritical to me when we argue with you guys about cost when we've no clue, no authority, and no accountability. Seeing as we are so ignorant, I figure it's more fruitful to assume that our suggestions are well within budget. If it turns out that it's unrealistic, well just like the tone toggle idea, we get to understand how expense isn't always the only barrier to implementing gameplay suggestions. Discussion, even for exercise rather than for planning, nourishes the project, I think.

[Fast Jimmy]

[quote]Maria Caliban wrote...

[quote]Fast Jimmy wrote...

There were no alienages in Lothering, yet Hawke communicated with City Elves as soon as he got in the city.[/quote]
There were city elves in Lothering. [/quote]

There were no elves in Lothering that we saw in DA:O, then.

[quote]
[quote]There were no Thaigs nearby or surface dwarves that we saw in Lothering in DA:O, yet Hawke talks with the Dwarven companion right off the bat.[/quote]
By 'right off the bat' you mean after a year of living in Kirkwall? And surface dwarf culture in Kirkwall doesn't seem terribly different from human culture in Kirkwall.[/quote]

I find that comment very racist.[/quote]

[quote]The foreign culture that Hawke interacts with in the game is the Qunari, and communication with them isn't as easy as regular communication. [/quote]

It isn't easy, no. Room for, perhaps, miscommunication? Saying words you chose with a tone you thought might illicit one response, but another was received? Even if it was a tone where everthing has a question mark at the end of it? With an upward inflection? At the end of every sentence? 

[Fast Jimmy]

JediMB wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

JediMB wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

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.

While reviewing the paraphrases themselves is a good thing to do, I think adding a feature to the dialogue wheel that lets you preview the full line before choosing it would be a good idea. It could be triggered by hovering over the paraphrase with the cursor and holding down the [Shift] key or something. (And whatever works best on the console controllers.)

Not to be the cloud that rains on the parade, but David and others have said this will, flat out, not be happening.

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?

Heh. Welcome to the party.

[Maria Caliban]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...
There were no Thaigs nearby or surface dwarves that we saw in Lothering in DA:O, yet Hawke talks with the Dwarven companion right off the bat.

By 'right off the bat' you mean after a year of living in Kirkwall? And surface dwarf culture in Kirkwall doesn't seem terribly different from human culture in Kirkwall.

I find that comment very racist.

Now you're just baiting me.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 19 octobre 2012 - 01:14 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

There were no Thaigs nearby or surface dwarves that we saw in Lothering in DA:O, yet Hawke talks with the Dwarven companion right off the bat.

By 'right off the bat' you mean after a year of living in Kirkwall? And surface dwarf culture in Kirkwall doesn't seem terribly different from human culture in Kirkwall.

I find that comment very racist.

Now you're just baiting me.

Baiting? Is that a fish slur?! Now you're being speciest!

[Vicious]

Foolsfolly wrote...

abnocte wrote...

As I see it, the only way to improve paraphrases is to allow us to see the full text. 

The only way this could be a good burger is if it were a steak.

lulz were had.

[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 .

[SpEcIaLRyAn]

David Gaider wrote...

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.

I myself never had a problem with the paraphrases in DA2 or in Mass Effect. Of course they could always be improved upon. Overall I thought DA2 did well with the dailogue wheel. Glad to see you guys are always looking to improve upon it.

Was it a decision right from the begining for DA3 to have a voiced protagonist or was there a point when you guys considered a silent protagonist?

Modifié par SpEcIaLRyAn, 19 octobre 2012 - 01:51 .

[jillabender]

Fortlowe wrote…

Thanks for the reply! Glad to know the dilemma we are having with Tone vs. Personality isn't going unnoticed. I really like having input into my PC's personality. But like others have pointed out, it does seem to be at the cost of sometimes making conversation selections with which that we do not truly agree. In a nutshell, I don't want to bite my best pals head off for saying or doing something I don't agree with and I don't want to coddle my worst enemy just because this one time what they said or did isn't completely mad. All the same I'd like to get my point across without betraying my core personality or the emotional perspective of the moment.

[…]

Seeing as we are so ignorant, I figure it's more fruitful to assume that our suggestions are well within budget. If it turns out that it's unrealistic, well just like the tone toggle idea, we get to understand how expense isn't always the only barrier to implementing gameplay suggestions. Discussion, even for exercise rather than for planning, nourishes the project, I think.

Well said! I find that it's an interesting thought experiment to speculate about what might make a particular game feature more enjoyable for me – it helps me to better understand my reaction to the game. Of course, because I'm very ignorant about game design, I'm bound to sometimes be off-base when I imagine what a particular mechanic might involve and how it might work – but in that case, I get to learn something new about game development.

[Sylvius the Mad]

David Gaider wrote...

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.

Okay, this leads me to two conclusions.  First, that you think tone conveys meaning.  This means that you guys need to document your tone icons really really well.  If the tone conveys meaning, that meaning needs to be conveyed unambiguously.

If it isn't conveyed unambiguously, then it isn't conveyed at all, and thus tone has no meaning.

And if tone has no meaning, there's there's no reason at all to write differently from a voiced or silent protagonist (and the only difference is the explicit tone).

Second, that you do write differently for the voiced PC tells me that you didn't actually think the tone was fixed and perceptible in DAO (or any of the silent PC games), else you would have written for that tone just as you do with the voiced PC.

On this second point, it is clear now that I was right all along: the writers' intent doesn't matter.

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.

That you want to protect people from themselves infuriates me.

...but there are others... which we will discuss at a later time.

This is the new dialogue system to which I referred a couple of weeks ago.

[Sylvius the Mad]

SpEcIaLRyAn wrote...

Was it a decision right from the begining for DA3 to have a voiced protagonist or was there a point when you guys considered a silent protagonist?

I doubt EA would greenlight a silent protagonist game.

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

That you want to protect people from themselves infuriates me.

I have to agree. On the Witcher forums, you don't see a thread every ten days complaining about how Geralt says exactly what his text options says he's going to say. Yet we see this same thread, asking, arguing and appealing for no paraphrases by different people here at least once every two weeks. I'm just confused about how much negative feedback Bioware would expect if a voice character simply repeated the exact dialogue choice. I realize there are cases where the option we select may result in our character saying something in response to what another NPC may say after the first intiial spoken part by our character... but if that level of auto-dialogue is going to be present and Bioware wants to only show the first initial set of dialogue, I'd prefer that. 

While having no auto-dialogue would be ideal, I'd rather have a full text option that shows the first thing my character is going to say, rather than essentially not knowing ANYTHING my character is going to say. That's not to say I don't usually have a clear EXPECTATION of what my character will say, but never KNOWING beforehand introduces a level of hesitancy when picking options.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 19 octobre 2012 - 02:49 .

[Maria Caliban]

What's this? Someone wants me to post an image of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's conversations?

Because they're an excellent example of doing what BioWare wants to do while providing the player with lots of information!



Look at that wheel for easy navigation.

Look at those one word tones that can take up very little space and require no icon. Heck, I bet one word is easier to localize than the paraphrases.

Look at that box with a longer bit of text in it.

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.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 19 octobre 2012 - 03:00 .

[Rinji the Bearded]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

On the Witcher forums, you don't see a thread every ten days complaining about how Geralt says exactly what his text options says he's going to say.

"Witcher has exemplary dialogue," said no one ever.

[Maria Caliban]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

On the Witcher forums, you don't see a thread every ten days complaining about how Geralt says exactly what his text options says he's going to say.

Because he doesn't. The Witcher 2 uses paraphrases.

Gameplay video

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 19 octobre 2012 - 03:06 .