330 réponses à ce sujet

[Nighteye2]

In Exile wrote...

Your approach is about hierarchy.  You think the game is in charge.

The game is in charge, in the same way reality is in charge here.

Not the same way.
Reality is in charge of the world we live in, the body you have and what that body is capable of doing. You are in charge of what you do with that body.
The game is in charge of the world your PC lives in, the body your PC has and what the PC is capable of doing, as well as what all the NPCs do and how they react to the PC. You, as player, should be fully in charge of what you do with the PCs body - but you're not, because complete freedom like we have in reality is impossible to program within a game. So the game is, by necessity, also in charge of the choices you have available for your PC on how to act. So far it's all fine and reasonable.
The problem comes when the game starts taking away your choices by making your PC act in a way that conflicts with what you as player want, with how you want your PC to act.

And this is what the dialogue wheel is doing: you, as player, control only a fraction of what your player 'says' to the NPCs and how your player acts towards them. Compare it to the Alien Hand Syndrome in reality.

[upsettingshorts]

DAO doesnt include the tone.

DA2 doesn't include all the content.

You are guessing on one or the other either way. Some players value tone/intent more and as such value DA2's approach. Some players value content more and as such value DAO's approach. Some players don't care and just like that the protagonist is voiced. Some players don't care and would prefer the protagonist not be voiced.

It's a goldilocks problem.  Because some players don't want to be contradicted (silent protag means you can pretend any tone was used) and some players want their choices to be explicitly shown (angry must be shown angry).

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 12 janvier 2013 - 09:51 .

[In Exile]

Nighteye2 wrote...
Not the same way.

Reality is in charge of the world we live in, the body you have and what that body is capable of doing. You are in charge of what you do with that body.

Think of it as a matter of perception: what we see is thought-independent. The game is the same: it's right there, on the screen. It behaves according to its own rules, elements, etc.

The game is in charge of the world your PC lives in, the body your PC has and what the PC is capable of doing, as well as what all the NPCs do and how they react to the PC.

The game is also in charge of what options are available, how the NPCs interpret those options, how the story develops, what possibilities are open to the player throughout the game, how the player's actions are interpreted within the game world...

You, as player, should be fully in charge of what you do with the PCs body - but you're not, because complete freedom like we have in reality is impossible to program within a game. 

There you go.

So the game is, by necessity, also in charge of the choices you have available for your PC on how to act. So far it's all fine and reasonable.

So far we agree. Should have looked over your post before responding - would have avoided the paragraph above.

The problem comes when the game starts taking away your choices by making your PC act in a way that conflicts with what you as player want, with how you want your PC to act.

I agree - that's the very point of my argument on misunderstandings. The game determines how my PC is to be understood - it then determines how my PC can react to that misunderstanding. What other players are telling me is that I'm free to define what I say. Except that the game can do whatever it wants it with it - and the game is also free to limit my reaction to its reaction to my choice.

How exactly, then, does headcannoning help?

And this is what the dialogue wheel is doing: you, as player, control only a fraction of what your player 'says' to the NPCs and how your player acts towards them. Compare it to the Alien Hand Syndrome in reality.

That's not the dialogue wheel. That has to do with the information the player has. There's no substantive difference in control that you actually have over the game.

[ticklefist]

Someone in the media called the dialogue wheel "innovative." Bioware rolls around naked on a bed of media praise like you or I would roll around naked on a bed of money.

[upsettingshorts]

ticklefist wrote...

Someone in the media called the dialogue wheel "innovative." Bioware rolls around naked on a bed of media praise like you or I would roll around naked on a bed of money.

That's what innovative means.

It's a different way of doing something.

Whether you liked it or not is irrelevant.  

[Sasie]

I find it much more immersive to roleplay my character in, the first, Mass Effect game and Da2 then I do when replaying origin. Thanks to the rivalry system in the second game we even got rid of the whold problem where picking the 'wrong' choice instantly end the conversation and in doing so actually alloqws the player to argue when they disagree without missing half the conversation. That alone is worth more to me then 17 choices from Bg2.

[Kidd]

It's pretty nice to be able to have more than 6 options.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

I'm aware. We disagree, and we've had the debate before. The basic answer is the same as why we ought to assume casaulity at all.[/quote]
And my response would be that we oughtn't do even that.  Certainly not universally.

But you're going quite beyond assuming causality.  You're assuming not just that causation occurs, but that it consistently occurs in a way you understand, even when the events are possibly being influenced to an unknown degree by unknown factors.  You're effectively demanding omniscience.
[quote][quote]But you happily accept being forced to misspeak and being forced to let the misspoken line stand.[/quote]
I don't.[/quote]
But you do.  The paraphrases force you to misspeak (though apprently far less often than they force me to misspeak).
[quote][quote]You're being forced to be equally passive in both games, and to exactly the same degree.  How is DA2's approach better?[/quote]
You're not, in DA2. What makes you think so? [/quote]
You're not allowed to correct misspoken lines.  This seems to me to be logically equivalent to being unallowed to correct or investigate potential misunderstandings.

I do like, though, that in this thread you've finally accepted that misunderstandings are merely things that might have happened, while misspeaking is unequivocally something that has happened.
[quote]Not at all. It would be like saying that you're playing of ME is equivalent to you agreeing that the paraphrase is not misleading.[/quote]
And I abandoned ME when it was clear they weren't going to fix it.  As long as I have reason to expect them to improve the DA paraphrases, I keep trying DA games.

But you kept playing silent protagonist games for years without any hint that the systemic silent protagonist problems were going anywhere.  And with your lower standard of evidence, you should be willing to make decisions faster than I do, not slower.
[quote]In terms of VO, I think the only difference between us is how I like the experience to be continous, and what I don't like is the cinematic NPCs and silent PC (in terms of the VO itself).

I prefer cinematics to non-cinematics, though.[/quote]
I have no preference vis-a-vis cinematics beyond the consequences of cinematics I've seen so far.  The higher development costs, the tendencies of cinematic designers to try to tell me what to watch in a scene (I loathe depth of field effects), and the loss of player control over his character's behaviour are all major problems, but I don't see any of those as being necessary components of cinematic presentation.

I see no value at all in cinematic presentation, but the only value I see in its lack is the limitations that lack places on the designers in terms of interfereing with my roleplaying.  If the designers would stop doing that, cinematics would cease even to be noteworthy (aside from their development costs).
[quote][quote]No, there they only prevented us from keeping some secrets, not all secrets.[/quote]
What do you mean? I'll agree that if you mean you can invent backstory details which you never share, but I'll also argue those were never part of the game to start.[/quote]
In BioWare's silent protagonist games, there were details the player could intentionally withhold.  It was possible to have some piece of information (true or false) you didn't want to divulge, and then, on purpose, not divulge it.

Sometimes, yes, you were forced to divulge specific details (like in your Jedi example).  In each case, you could decide for yourself whether your character believed the statement to be true (regardless of whether the game thought it was), or why the character might have said it, but you couldn't avoid saying it.

But some statements you could simple avoid making.  Forever.

With the paraphrase, this went away.  There is no detail the player can choose not to divulge.  He can try not to divulge it, and he might succeed, but the uncertainty created by the paraphrase ensures that he'll never know whether his character will actually keep that specific thing a secret.

The paraphrase prevents us from choosing to keep any secrets.  The full text only prevented us from choosing to keep some secrets.  That's the difference.
[quote]The game is in charge, in the same way reality is in charge here.[/quote]
See, here you're making bold statements as if their truth is intuitively obvious.  But it's not.  You need to support these claims.  Even if I didn't have personal experience that lead me to the opposite conclusion, you have offered nothing in the way of evidence that would sway me from the rational default position of uncertainty.  Either claim, that the game is in charge, or that reality is in charge, is entirely baseless without some kind of support.

Every aspect of your interpretation of your perception is based upon a great mass of assumptions I don't accept as true.
[quote]The idea is custom. It's the same problem as with definitions. Uncertainty is fundamental to our existence, but we need to communicate.[/quote]
We can't communicate.  There's no such thing.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 13 janvier 2013 - 06:31 .

[KiwiQuiche]

I want a dialogue spider rather than a wheel. :I

[In Exile]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
And my response would be that we oughtn't do even that.  Certainly not universally. [/quote]

Welcome to the inability to function. How do you explain why your car doesn't turn into a spider and shoot sheep at you?

[quote]But you're going quite beyond assuming causality.  You're assuming not just that causation occurs, but that it consistently occurs in a way you understand,  [/quote]

Assuming that causality occurs without assuming that it's predictable and understandable doesn't solve any of the uncertainty problems that we have.

[quote]even when the events are possibly being influenced to an unknown degree by unknown factors.  You're effectively demanding omniscience. [/quote]

No; because you're continuing to use a binary standard of knowledge. An drawing the best possible inference in the circumstances is different than claiming omniscience. But it's equivalent to the greatest possible certainty we can have.

[quote]But you do.  The paraphrases force you to misspeak (though apprently far less often than they force me to misspeak). [/quote]

It doesn't; at least, not with the tone icons. And in ME, with the paragon-renegade switch, it's generally quite consistent (except for ME3, where Bioware rewrote what paragon/renegade meant).

[quote]You're not allowed to correct misspoken lines.  This seems to me to be logically equivalent to being unallowed to correct or investigate potential misunderstandings. [/quote]

The substantive differnece is that with the DA2 icons, I can have a rather good idea of what the game allows me to do.

[quote]I do like, though, that in this thread you've finally accepted that misunderstandings are merely things that might have happened, while misspeaking is unequivocally something that has happened. [/quote]

Okay, you're using misspeaking and misunderstanding to refer to different things, but I'm not sure how.

[quote]And I abandoned ME when it was clear they weren't going to fix it.  As long as I have reason to expect them to improve the DA paraphrases, I keep trying DA games. [/quote]

[quote]But you kept playing silent protagonist games for years without any hint that the systemic silent protagonist problems were going anywhere.  [/quote]

With the hope that the errors would be fixed. Much like how you played DA.

[quoteAnd with your lower standard of evidence, you should be willing to make decisions faster than I do, not slower. [/quote]

I am. But when the choice is no video-games I enjoy and very flawed ones, I'm in betwen a rock and a hard place, so to speak.

[quote]I have no preference vis-a-vis cinematics beyond the consequences of cinematics I've seen so far.  The higher development costs, the tendencies of cinematic designers to try to tell me what to watch in a scene (I loathe depth of field effects), and the loss of player control over his character's behaviour are all major problems, but I don't see any of those as being necessary components of cinematic presentation. [/quote]

I agree. The problem is when a single choice is used to trigger multiple cinematics - actions and speech. Bioware needs to understand that these are not the same, and disagregate them (IMO).

[quote]In BioWare's silent protagonist games, there were details the player could intentionally withhold. [/quote]

Which information? That's what I'm asking. I just don't recall the game well.

[quote]It was possible to have some piece of information (true or false) you didn't want to divulge, and then, on purpose, not divulge it. [/quote]

Right, I understand that aspect of it, I'm more curious about examples.

[quote]Sometimes, yes, you were forced to divulge specific details (like in your Jedi example).[/quote]

Actually, what I was thinking of was how you were told it wouldn't be a secret that you were a Jedi: based on your dress and lightsaber, both things you can hide (though obviously not the Force to the Sith).

[quote]In each case, you could decide for yourself whether your character believed the statement to be true (regardless of whether the game thought it was), or why the character might have said it, but you couldn't avoid saying it. [/quote]

Wouldn't this be something you can do in any game, so long as you invent a post-hoc explanation for the line? Or is the problem for you the fact that it's post hoc?

[quote]With the paraphrase, this went away.  There is no detail the player can choose not to divulge.  He can try not to divulge it, and he might succeed, but the uncertainty created by the paraphrase ensures that he'll never know whether his character will actually keep that specific thing a secret. [/quote]

I get it - the issue for you is that you need to know before the line is said to have a problem with it; but you can, presumably, come up with a satisfactory explanation no mattter how unsatisfactory (to you as the player) the options are? 

[quote]The paraphrase prevents us from choosing to keep any secrets.  The full text only prevented us from choosing to keep some secrets.  That's the difference. [/quote]

That goes back to our debate on meaning.

[quote]See, here you're making bold statements as if their truth is intuitively obvious.   [/quote]

I meant it as an analogy. I don't treat the information the game gives me - as the player - any differnet than I treat sensory information.

[quote]Even if I didn't have personal experience that lead me to the opposite conclusion, you have offered nothing in the way of evidence that would sway me from the rational default position of uncertainty.  [/quote]

Uncertainty is by no mean the rational default.

[quote]Either claim, that the game is in charge, or that reality is in charge, is entirely baseless without some kind of support. [/quote]

I'm not going to demonstrate that reality isn't subjective.

[quote]Every aspect of your interpretation of your perception is based upon a great mass of assumptions I don't accept as true. [/quote]

I'm aware. I've just never understood how you function without them.

[quote]We can't communicate.  There's no such thing.[/quote]

We're doing it right now.

[Wintermist]

Viidicus wrote...

 if so, why?

The dialogue wheel is so vague and annoying, the only time dialogue wheel is good is if you can mouse over the selected options to see what the PC is going to say word for word

I do prefer the Dragon Age 1 style, but at the same time I really really really want to see exactly what my character is abotu to say, I don't want anymore of them crazy surprises.

[Nighteye2]

In Exile wrote...

The problem comes when the game starts taking away your choices by making your PC act in a way that conflicts with what you as player want, with how you want your PC to act.

I agree - that's the very point of my argument on misunderstandings. The game determines how my PC is to be understood - it then determines how my PC can react to that misunderstanding. What other players are telling me is that I'm free to define what I say. Except that the game can do whatever it wants it with it - and the game is also free to limit my reaction to its reaction to my choice.

How exactly, then, does headcannoning help?

And this is what the dialogue wheel is doing: you, as player, control only a fraction of what your player 'says' to the NPCs and how your player acts towards them. Compare it to the Alien Hand Syndrome in reality.

That's not the dialogue wheel. That has to do with the information the player has. There's no substantive difference in control that you actually have over the game.

Oh, but it is. The dialogue wheel presents you with short paraphrases - when you choose one, your PC does not literally say what you chose, but instead says several sentences that only partially match the paraphrase you as player chose. Worse, the PC may even perform actions, like punching the NPC after you've selected an agressive paraphrase, without you as player knowing that, when you select that paraphrase, it will result in your player punching the NPC.
With full-text, you at least know every word of the responses you select for your PC, as well as the actions to go with it. A full-text line has room to indicate, between brackets or somesuch, that picking that dialogue option includes punching the NPC.
Same for PC actions other than punching.

At that moment, I am not in control of my PC and my PC is not doing what I, as player, want within the limitations of the game world/setting.

[Terraforming2154]

Wintermist wrote...

Viidicus wrote...

 if so, why?

The dialogue wheel is so vague and annoying, the only time dialogue wheel is good is if you can mouse over the selected options to see what the PC is going to say word for word

I do prefer the Dragon Age 1 style, but at the same time I really really really want to see exactly what my character is abotu to say, I don't want anymore of them crazy surprises.

Yeah that is my only problem.

Either they need to paraphrase better (which is difficult because of intent), or they need to make it more explicitly clear what the character is going to say. I don't know if I would want a word for word response, but something a bit more clear than what we got in DA2.

I felt relegated to the nice options DA2 because even if the harsh paraphrase read like something my character would say given the circumstances, I was worried it would make her sound more like a brutish thug instead of someone who is curt.

I do think they tried to fix that problem by having the multiple icons (I think the hammer and angry mask icons had different intents in response), but if they do that again they need to be more clear and consistent with it.

Modifié par Terraforming2154, 13 janvier 2013 - 05:34 .

[In Exile]

Nighteye2 wrote...
Oh, but it is. The dialogue wheel presents you with short paraphrases - when you choose one, your PC does not literally say what you chose, but instead says several sentences that only partially match the paraphrase you as player chose.

That's the whole debate - does the entire content actually matter, with well-drafted paraphrases? I can use examples, if you'd like.

Worse, the PC may even perform actions, like punching the NPC after you've selected an agressive paraphrase,

That's a serious problem, but that has nothing to do with the paraphrase. You could have the full line and still not show that the PC will have an action, e.g.

Shut Up! [PC says shut up and punches the NPC]

With full-text, you at least know every word of the responses you select for your PC, as well as the actions to go with it. 

That's just false. There's no reason to conclude that the action would be included just because the full line is. They are independent.

A full-text line has room to indicate, between brackets or somesuch, that picking that dialogue option includes punching the NPC.

It doesn't. In DA:O, there was a character limit. Adding the [Punch] option actually shorts the dialogue avaiable.

[Linksys17]

Yes, because Bioware knows that gamers do not have the attention span
To read more than three words

[battleship potemkin village]

I'm a little late to the party, but here's my 2 cents:

If it's a choice between the ME style of interaction and the DAO one, I'll choose ME. Having your character be a mute who communicates telepathically just ruins the narrative for me.

Thanks for reading.

[Nighteye2]

In Exile wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
Oh, but it is. The dialogue wheel presents you with short paraphrases - when you choose one, your PC does not literally say what you chose, but instead says several sentences that only partially match the paraphrase you as player chose.

That's the whole debate - does the entire content actually matter, with well-drafted paraphrases? I can use examples, if you'd like.

Ideally, if the paraphrase is perfectly drafted, it shouldn't matter. In reality, though, that is seldom the case.

Worse, the PC may even perform actions, like punching the NPC after you've selected an agressive paraphrase,

That's a serious problem, but that has nothing to do with the paraphrase. You could have the full line and still not show that the PC will have an action, e.g.

Shut Up! [PC says shut up and punches the NPC]

It does, because with the paraphrase you already need all the available character space for the paraphrase itself, with no room left to include actions.

With full-text, you at least know every word of the responses you select for your PC, as well as the actions to go with it. 

That's just false. There's no reason to conclude that the action would be included just because the full line is. They are independent.

A full-text line has room to indicate, between brackets or somesuch, that picking that dialogue option includes punching the NPC.

It doesn't. In DA:O, there was a character limit. Adding the [Punch] option actually shorts the dialogue avaiable.

The character limit is programmed, and as such can be changed. And while they are independant, at least with full text you have enough characters available to include a description of the action (provided you programmed the character limit high enough)

[In Exile]

Nighteye2 wrote...
Ideally, if the paraphrase is perfectly drafted, it shouldn't matter. In reality, though, that is seldom the case.

We can debate that, like I said. I don't believe the discrepancy is as big as you make it.

It does, because with the paraphrase you already need all the available character space for the paraphrase itself, with no room left to include actions.

That's not true - paraphrases vary a lot in length. And DA:O could just use more icons - the attack icon is quite clearly there when you have the option.They could do the same with a punch icon. Problem? Solved.

And you offer a solution that applies here equally: alter the wheel so that there is more space.

The character limit is programmed, and as such can be changed.

DA:O's was hardwired so that it ran a single line, on a variety of resolutions. If you make this argument, then the same applies to the wheel: the programmers could just increase the number of characters.

And while they are independant, at least with full text you have enough characters available to include a description of the action (provided you programmed the character limit high enough)

That's, again, false. The same can be done with the wheel, in two ways: more characters to show the action or icons.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
And my response would be that we oughtn't do even that.  Certainly not universally. [/quote]

Welcome to the inability to function. How do you explain why your car doesn't turn into a spider and shoot sheep at you?[/quote]
I don't.  I can't.  Neither can you.  Just because I can't explain why something happens does not mean I don't expect it to.  Similarly, just because I don't expect it to happen doesn't prevent me from acting as if I expect it.
[quote]Assuming that causality occurs without assuming that it's predictable and understandable doesn't solve any of the uncertainty problems that we have.[/quote]
That's exactly my point.  It's not as simple as just assuming causality; you're actually imposing a much steeper barrier, and you're doing so without any justification at all.

The uncertainty problems don't go away because you decide they do.
[quote]No; because you're continuing to use a binary standard of knowledge. An drawing the best possible inference in the circumstances is different than claiming omniscience. But it's equivalent to the greatest possible certainty we can have.[/quote]
By drawing an unsupported conclusion, you invite confirmation bias.  You invite compounding error.

These things can be avoided by not drawing unsupported conclusions.  Your standard of "the best possible inference in the circumstances" boggles the mind.  This is how so many poor decisions are made in the world.

Stop fearing uncertainty.
[quote]It doesn't; at least, not with the tone icons.[/quote]
How?  How can you read those paraphrases, with or without the largely undefined tone icons, and determine with any confidence what's going to be said?

You've previously agreed that the paraphrases were poorly written.  As such, they forced your character to say things you didn't want him to say (this is different from claiming that he said things that you wanted him not to say).
[quote]And in ME, with the paragon-renegade switch, it's generally quite consistent (except for ME3, where Bioware rewrote what paragon/renegade meant).[/quote]
Really?  Which of Paragon and Renegade allows Shepard to be polite to The Illusive Man at the start of ME2?
[quote]The substantive differnece is that with the DA2 icons, I can have a rather good idea of what the game allows me to do.[/quote]
So you knew you had to hate slavers?  You knew you couldn't oppose Fenris's genocidal rage against Mages without also dismissing his hatred of the specific people who enslaved him?

And what about in advance?  How do you know in Act I what the game will allow in Act II?

If there's some mechanism by which you did this, I want to know what it is.
[quote]Okay, you're using misspeaking and misunderstanding to refer to different things, but I'm not sure how.[/quote]
Misspeaking is when the thing you say isn't the thing you wanted to say.  A misunderstanding is when you sauy exactly what you wanted to say, but the listener things the meaning imparted by your statement is different from the actual meaning in your statement (either because they misunderstood, or they misheard).
[quote]With the hope that the errors would be fixed. Much like how you played DA.[/quote]
Did that hope have any reasoned basis?
[quote]Which information? That's what I'm asking. I just don't recall the game well.[/quote]
The best example would obviously be facts unrecognised by the game.  I often find examples difficult, because I work first in the abstract.
[quote]Right, I understand that aspect of it, I'm more curious about examples.[/quote]
KotOR never requires that you tell anyone why you were on the Endar Spire.   DAO never requires that you explain your feelings regarding the Grey Wardens.  I know you have a problem with how DAO refuses
to let you express some opinions regarding the Grey Wardens and how
they forced the Joining upon you, but the game does never force you to
reveal your opinions on that.
[quote]Actually, what I was thinking of was how you were told it wouldn't be a secret that you were a Jedi: based on your dress and lightsaber, both things you can hide (though obviously not the Force to the Sith).[/quote]
So you're saying that you were told you couldn't hide it, but then you could hide it.  I don't understand.
[quote]Wouldn't this be something you can do in any game, so long as you invent a post-hoc explanation for the line? Or is the problem for you the fact that it's post hoc?[/quote]
That it's post-hoc is the entire problem.  If I can choose the line to suit my character, I know the line works.  If I need to revise my character after I've heard the line, though, the computational complexity of verifying that my post hoc explanation is consistent with every other thing I've ever done in the game (and every justification I've had for every one of those actions) is staggering.
[quote]I get it - the issue for you is that you need to know before the line is said to have a problem with it; but you can, presumably, come up with a satisfactory explanation no mattter how unsatisfactory (to you as the player) the options are?[/quote]
Not necessarily, no.  It's entirely possible that the full line directly contradicts a previous action.  The only way to make the game work would be to go through every conversation enough times to know the full line and action associated with every single option, and then go back and try again (thus entirely eliminating the obfuscation that arises from the paraphrase and tone icon) with full knowledge.
[quote]That goes back to our debate on meaning.[/quote]
Well, yes, if you think meaning is conveyed by something other than the words alone (which I maintain is nonsense), then both games fail.

I'm still waiting for someone to teach me how to interpret the paraphrases.
[quote]I meant it as an analogy. I don't treat the information the game gives me - as the player - any differnet than I treat sensory information.[/quote]
You shouldn't trust your sensory information to that degree, either.  Moreover, you also appear to take the absence of evidence for something as evidence for the absence of that same thing.  Surely you don't believe that things you don't perceive don't exist in the real world.  I could understand refusing to believe that they do exist, but believing that they do not is lunacy.
[quote]Uncertainty is by no mean the rational default.[/quote]
Of course it is.  The starting point is always total ignorance.  On any issue, at some point in your life, you knew nothing at all.  With a complete lack of information, uncertainty is clearly the only rational position.

To move from that position, you should have required conclusive evidence.
[quote]I'm not going to demonstrate that reality isn't subjective.[/quote]
I'm confident that you could not do so.

I would certainly prefer reality not to be subjective, but I cannot prove it so.
[quote]I'm aware. I've just never understood how you function without them.[/quote]
Very carefully.
[quote]
[quote]We can't communicate.  There's no such thing.[/quote]We're doing it right now.[/quote]
No we're not.  We aren't doing anything at all.  I am expressing myself, and you are interpreting what I've written.  And then you express yourself, and I interpret what you've written.  To suggest that those two things combine to form some extra level of complexity is an unnecessary (and thus unscientific) supposition.

[battleship potemkin village]

I'm a little late to the party, but here's my 2 cents:

If it's a choice between the ME style of interaction and the DAO one, I'll choose ME. Having your character be a mute who communicates telepathically just ruins the narrative for me.

Thanks for reading.

[battleship potemkin village]

Modifié par battleship potemkin village, 13 janvier 2013 - 11:06 .

[In Exile]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I don't.  I can't.  Neither can you. [/quote]

I can. 

[quote]Just because I can't explain why something happens does not mean I don't expect it to.[/quote]

But there's no justification for you to expect for it to happen that way. An expectation is a prediction about the future. But you can't predict a future state of affairs without

[quote]Similarly, just because I don't expect it to happen doesn't prevent me from acting as if I expect it. [/quote]

Rationally, there's no basis for you to expect it.

[quote]That's exactly my point.  It's not as simple as just assuming causality; you're actually imposing a much steeper barrier, and you're doing so without any justification at all.[/quote]

This is what assuming causality means. And the justification is functioning: there needs to be a way to manage informational uncertainty in the world.

[quote]The uncertainty problems don't go away because you decide they do.[/quote]

I didn't say it goes away. I said that to manage it, we have to assume certain things about the world - on faith.

[quote]By drawing an unsupported conclusion, you invite confirmation bias.  You invite compounding error.[/quote]

You need to act. You need a basis for acting. You haven't offered any framework to justify my choosing to go to work tomorrow.

[quote]These things can be avoided by not drawing unsupported conclusions.  Your standard of "the best possible inference in the circumstances" boggles the mind.  This is how so many poor decisions are made in the world. [/quote]

This is how decisions are made at all in the world.

[quote]Stop fearing uncertainty.[/quote]

I don't. You do.

[quote]How?  How can you read those paraphrases, with or without the largely undefined tone icons, and determine with any confidence what's going to be said? [/quote]

Because I can predict with a relatively good rate what is going to happen, and what will be said.

[quote]You've previously agreed that the paraphrases were poorly written.  [/quote]

Yes. But that's no different than my saying that dialogue options in DA:O were poorly cued. I didn't find DA2 more difficult to navigate, in terms of getting my meaning across. I found it differently to navigate.

But in terms of problems, DA:O wasn't less problematic than DA2.

[quote]As such, they forced your character to say things you didn't want him to say (this is different from claiming that he said things that you wanted him not to say).[/quote]

Right. DA:O just isn't different here. The list isn't different. Full-text isn't different.

[quote]Really?  Which of Paragon and Renegade allows Shepard to be polite to The Illusive Man at the start of ME2?[/quote]

The renegade options, generally. Paragon was constructed to be pro-Alliance in ME2. But I can't say more without cues.

[quote]So you knew you had to hate slavers?[/quote]

What do you mean?

[quote]You knew you couldn't oppose Fenris's genocidal rage against Mages without also dismissing his hatred of the specific people who enslaved him?[/quote]

That isn't a paraphrase related issue. That's Bioware not disagregating beliefs well for the F/R system.

And what about in advance?  How do you know in Act I what the game will allow in Act II?

[quote]If there's some mechanism by which you did this, I want to know what it is.[/quote]

I'd need examples of conversation cues. I can't offer explanations in a vacuum.

[quote]Misspeaking is when the thing you say isn't the thing you wanted to say.  A misunderstanding is when you sauy exactly what you wanted to say, but the listener things the meaning imparted by your statement is different from the actual meaning in your statement (either because they misunderstood, or they misheard).[/quote]

Thank you. I appreciate the definition, and I'll make sure to use the terms correctly to avoid confusion.

[quote]Did that hope have any reasoned basis?[/quote]

I thought Bioware's addition of a more straightfoward alignment mechanic in KoTOR made a difference.

[quote]The best example would obviously be facts unrecognised by the game.  I often find examples difficult, because I work first in the abstract.[/quote]

But that's not a meaningful standard - you're really saying that the game doesn't force you to speak about things that are impossible to speak in it. Even if you wanted to disclose that information, it would be impossible.

[quoteDAO never requires that you explain your feelings regarding the Grey Wardens.  I know you have a problem with how DAO refuses to let you express some opinions regarding the Grey Wardens and how  they forced the Joining upon you, but the game does never force you to  reveal your opinions on that. [/quote]

I partly disagree - because "why does it have to mean something?" is in itself expressing an opinion.

[quote]So you're saying that you were told you couldn't hide it, but then you could hide it.  I don't understand. [/quote]

No, I mean, you were told you couldn't hide it beacuse of things you could hide. That's the part that didn't make sense.

[quote]That it's post-hoc is the entire problem.  If I can choose the line to suit my character, I know the line works. [/quote]

Okay, I understand.

[quote]If I need to revise my character after I've heard the line, though, the computational complexity of verifying that my post hoc explanation is consistent with every other thing I've ever done in the game (and every justification I've had for every one of those actions) is staggering.[/quote]

I run into that problem when an option that is in character isn't available in-game. And sometimes that isn't possible to predict in advance. I can relate very much here. I had to make a quite strong evaluation of whether my first Cousland character was broken when I realized that he could only be King by marrying Anora.

It's why I have a female Cousland as my 'cannon' Cousland.

[quote]Not necessarily, no.  It's entirely possible that the full line directly contradicts a previous action.  The only way to make the game work would be to go through every conversation enough times to know the full line and action associated with every single option, and then go back and try again (thus entirely eliminating the obfuscation that arises from the paraphrase and tone icon) with full knowledge.[/quote]

Is that something you do? Because it seems that this approach would also avoid issues relating to the paraphrase.

[quote]Well, yes, if you think meaning is conveyed by something other than the words alone (which I maintain is nonsense), then both games fail. [/quote]

Even if you think meaning is conveyed by words alone, though (this is switching topics slightly) that means that you're still granting that communication ocurs. 

[quote]I'm still waiting for someone to teach me how to interpret the paraphrases.[/quote]

It's like interpreting body language. Which is like training a neural network. You're learning a what cues are associated with what response. Via repeated exposure, you learn which parts of the background are just noise. Body language is (partly) socialized (which is to say that we learn it from those around us), so after spending enough time observing you become able to read signs from multiple people. 

[quote]You shouldn't trust your sensory information to that degree, either. [/quote]

Not doing so gets you into the problem of acting.

[quote]Moreover, you also appear to take the absence of evidence for something as evidence for the absence of that same thing. [/quote]

That's the most parsimonous approach. There's no reason to suppose that something exits absent any evidence that it interacts with anything.

[quote]Surely you don't believe that things you don't perceive don't exist in the real world. [/quote]

I believe that there's no difference except intellectual between something not existing, and something existing but there being no evidence for.

[quote]Of course it is.  The starting point is always total ignorance.  On any issue, at some point in your life, you knew nothing at all.  With a complete lack of information, uncertainty is clearly the only rational position. [/quote]

The starting point is ignorance, but again, absent a mechanism for resolving uncertainty, there's no reason for you to act.

[quote]To move from that position, you should have required conclusive evidence.[/quote]

No. We reach a circular impasse here - the very presumption that reason and is relevant presupposes something as a metaphysical primitive that puts you beyond a position of pure ignorance. 

[quote]I would certainly prefer reality not to be subjective, but I cannot prove it so.[/quote]

Actions that you would take if reality is subjective and if it were objective are incongruous. You have to pick which one you're operating under.

[quote]No we're not.  We aren't doing anything at all.  I am expressing myself, and you are interpreting what I've written.  And then you express yourself, and I interpret what you've written.[/quote]

Providing a mechanical description of it doesn't change the process: you are putting forward information, that you hope I acquire. And I'm doing the same. That's communication.

[quote]To suggest that those two things combine to form some extra level of complexity is an unnecessary (and thus unscientific) supposition.[/quote]

Communication isn't an extra-level of complexity. It's just a term for the attempted transfer of meaning between two people.

[AlexJK]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

In Exile wrote...

How do you explain why your car doesn't turn into a spider and shoot sheep at you?

I don't.  I can't.  Neither can you.

Quoted for... well, just sheer madness I suppose.

In Exile- you are wasting your time.

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

But there's no justification for you to expect for it to happen that way. An expectation is a prediction about the future. But you can't predict a future state of affairs without[/quote]
I don't need to expect a future state of affairs in order to act as if I expect a future state of affairs.
[quote]Rationally, there's no basis for you to expect it.[/quote]
Now you're getting it.
[quote]This is what assuming causality means. And the justification is functioning: there needs to be a way to manage informational uncertainty in the world.[/quote]
But you need some sort of basis for your assumptions in order to trust them.  you don't have that, so you shouldn't trust them.

Look at roleplaying.  Roleplaying consists of acting as if thing are true, even though you know they are not.  You're not a wizard.  You can't cast spells.  But when you're roleplaying, you can act as if you do.  You do this not because you believe it to be true, but simply because you want to.  You are driven by nothing more substantive than personal preference.

This is exactly how I approach the world.
[quote]I didn't say it goes away. I said that to manage it, we have to assume certain things about the world - on faith.[/quote]
And I'm saying you don't.  If you wanted, you could change your assumptions daily.  But you don't do that, because you actually believe them to be true.
[quote]You need to act. You need a basis for acting. You haven't offered any framework to justify my choosing to go to work tomorrow.[/quote]
And I can't do that.  That justification needs to come from you.
[quote]This is how decisions are made at all in the world.[/quote]
I would suggest that you should have some standard by which to judge whether the information currently available is sufficient to dislodge you from the rational default position of uncertainty.

I have a standard test I adminster to job applicants.  It's a single question, and it's multiple choice.  And the only correct solution is to return the question to me unanswered, as there is no way to answer the question.  It's not just that none of the available options is correct, but there is actually no possible answer.

The test is designed to weed out exactly the sort of reasoning you're advancing as necessary for functioning.
[quote]I don't. You do.[/quote]
No, I fear error, which seem to embrace cavalierly.
[quote]Because I can predict with a relatively good rate what is going to happen, and what will be said.[/quote]
I didn't ask why you think it works.  I asked how it works.
[quote]Yes. But that's no different than my saying that dialogue options in DA:O were poorly cued. I didn't find DA2 more difficult to navigate, in terms of getting my meaning across. I found it differently to navigate.

But in terms of problems, DA:O wasn't less problematic than DA2.[/quote]
I still think the silent protagonist dialogue system mimics real-world conversation just about perfectly.  The only difference is that I formulate the list of possible responses myself (and there is usually a list - I routinely write and discard one or two responses in my head before speaking).
[quote]Right. DA:O just isn't different here. The list isn't different. Full-text isn't different.[/quote]
Except that full-text allows you to know what you're choosing.
[quote]The renegade options, generally. Paragon was constructed to be pro-Alliance in ME2.[/quote]
And how did you know this at the start of ME2?  Based on ME, I expected the Paragon options to be polite and the renegade options to be aggressive, but suddenly dealing with TIM that was reversed.
[quote]What do you mean?[/quote]
There's a quest in DA2 where you have to meet with some slavers to make a deal (I honestly don't remember the details of the quest), but after completing the deal, the slaver asks "Can I go now?"

The two available options are:

Yes (Action icon)
No (Attack icon)

When I chose, my character had no quarrel with the slavers.  They were businessmen, and they'd dealt with him fairly.  So I wanted to let them go.  Politely.  I chose Yes.

Hawke sneered, "Get out of my sight!"

What?  So, if Hawke hated the slavers, why didn't he kill them?  Or was he just performing for Fenris?  Why would he do that?  He hated Fenris.  There was simply no way that behaviour made sense.  And worse, the other dialogue option actually would have been better.  If I had known that Hawke had to hate the slavers, I would have had Hawke kill the slavers.  Letting them go and sneering at them just makes him look ineffectual.

But I failed at that dialogue option because I didn't know I had to hate slavers.  Did you?
[quote]That isn't a paraphrase related issue. That's Bioware not disagregating beliefs well for the F/R system.[/quote]
It's a foreknowledge issue.  You said you had a good idea of what was allowed and what wasn't.  Did you know this?

And what about in advance?  How do you know in Act I what the game will allow in Act II? (I asked this before, and you quoted it, but you didn't respond, so I'm giving you another chance).  Because, unless you plan for some character growth between acts, you need to choose options in Act I that are consistent with the available options in Act II.
[quote]I'd need examples of conversation cues. I can't offer explanations in a vacuum.[/quote]
Then I can't apply your explanation universally.  I would need to watch you play a whole game and ask you questions every step of the way in order to gain a large enough empirical dataset.
[quote]I thought Bioware's addition of a more straightfoward alignment mechanic in KoTOR made a difference.[/quote]
I'm interested to know how you thought it was an improvement over BG's reputation system (I didn't particularly like either, though I found both tended to leave honest roleplaying somewhere around neutral).
[quote]But that's not a meaningful standard - you're really saying that the game doesn't force you to speak about things that are impossible to speak in it. Even if you wanted to disclose that information, it would be impossible.[/quote]
I don't have other examples handy.  Surely there is some information in the silent protagonist games which you could divulge (the option exists), but divulging it isn't necessary.  This is most often represented by interrogative dialogue options.  Since questions make no assertions, any dialogue option that is a question doesn't divulge any information.

But the difference with the paraphrased options is that the player doesn't know which information will be revealed and which will not.
[quote]I partly disagree - because "why does it have to mean something?" is in itself expressing an opinion. [/quote]
No it isn't.  It's a question.  Questions can't make assertions.  Questions make no claims.  Questions express no opinions.  Questions contain no information.
[quote]No, I mean, you were told you couldn't hide it beacuse of things you could hide.[/quote]
I have literally no idea what you mean.
[quote]I run into that problem when an option that is in character isn't available in-game.[/quote]
More accurately, you run into that problem when none of the available options suit your character.  Simply having an in-character option be unavailable wouldn't be sufficient, as long as another in-character option is available.

I find it hard to believe that it's often the case that your character can and would do exactly one thing, and no other action would suffice.

Certainly, if none of the options suit your character, that's a problem (and this is something that did occur to me in DAO when playing any City Elf whose personality was based at all on elven oppression), but I find it a far rarer occurence than a similar event in DA2 where Hawke says something character-breaking and I need to re-evaluate the entire game.

Once, in my first DAO playthrough, I realised that my character could not persist unless I backed up and redid a decision from earlier in the game to eliminate an inconsistency.  Doing this resulted in me replaying 25 hours (including all of the Deep Roads).
[quote]Is that something you do? Because it seems that this approach would also avoid issues relating to the paraphrase.[/quote]
It would.  And it would also be extremely tedious.  plus, it would prevent me from experiencing an honest in-character reaction to plot developments, as I would have spoiled them for myself during my fact-finding.
[quote]Even if you think meaning is conveyed by words alone, though (this is switching topics slightly) that means that you're still granting that communication ocurs.[/quote]
Communication exists in name only.

As do all groups.
[quote]It's like interpreting body language. Which is like training a neural network. You're learning a what cues are associated with what response. Via repeated exposure, you learn which parts of the background are just noise. Body language is (partly) socialized (which is to say that we learn it from those around us), so after spending enough time observing you become able to read signs from multiple people. [/quote]
If this information exists, someone could write it down in a book.

No one has.

And even if they did, it wouldn't be universally applicable.  Personal experience tells me that people are really bad at reading (my) body language (in that they think it contains information, even when I've explicitly told them it does not).

You're describing a learning process that relies heavily on simplifying assumptions.
[quote]Not doing so gets you into the problem of acting.[/quote]
Only if you presuppose that acting requires believing.

it does not.
[quote]That's the most parsimonous approach. There's no reason to suppose that something exits absent any evidence that it interacts with anything.[/quote]
You're assuming an excluded middle again.  I'm not suggesting that you should suppose that something exists - I'm suggesting that you shouldn't suppose that it does not.  Just remain uncertain.
[quote]I believe that there's no difference except intellectual between something not existing, and something existing but there being no evidence for. [/quote]
If there's no material difference, why do you need so badly to assume one rather than the other (or neither)?

Furthermore, if we have no evidence for the truth of something, is it just the case that we don't know the truth, or is the truth of that thing undetermined?  It could be Schrödinger's Cat on a macro level.  You'll recall this is how I deal with incongruities between playthroughs.
[quote]The starting point is ignorance, but again, absent a mechanism for resolving uncertainty, there's no reason for you to act.[/quote]
No objective reason, no.
[quote]No. We reach a circular impasse here - the very presumption that reason and is relevant presupposes something as a metaphysical primitive that puts you beyond a position of pure ignorance.[/quote]
I might be presuming the existence of truth, but I don't think I am presuming anything beyond that.
[quote]Actions that you would take if reality is subjective and if it were objective are incongruous. You have to pick which one you're operating under.[/quote]
Yes, you do, but you don't need to believe that one just because you're operating under it.  Belief makes it very difficult to change your mind, or even to perceive the evidence that might cause you to.

As long as confirmation bias is a threat, belief is the enemy.

[Conduit0]

AlexJK wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

In Exile wrote...

How do you explain why your car doesn't turn into a spider and shoot sheep at you?

I don't.  I can't.  Neither can you.

Quoted for... well, just sheer madness I suppose.

In Exile- you are wasting your time.

Well "The Mad" does not refer to an anger management issue.