279 réponses à ce sujet

[Joy Divison]

I fully support the decision to drop dominant tones. Some of us act differently in different situations.

[Ghost43]

I'm not sure I understand-- is there a tone wheel seperate from the dialogue choices?

[Kidd]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

What's the dominant tone for life, man? What's the auto dialogue for your soul?

Please marry me.

[Fast Jimmy]

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

What's the dominant tone for life, man? What's the auto dialogue for your soul?

Please marry me.

LOL I'm afraid my wife and current regulations in the states against the practice of polygamy might prove to be hurdles to that. 

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 06 mars 2013 - 07:07 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Ghost43 wrote...

I'm not sure I understand-- is there a tone wheel seperate from the dialogue choices?

Answer Hazy. Please Ask Again Later. 

[David Gaider]

Ghost43 wrote...
I'm not sure I understand-- is there a tone wheel seperate from the dialogue choices?

No, it's not separate. We term the dialogue wheel which has tone choices to be the "tone wheel" and the dialogue wheel which has action choices to be the "action wheel". In the former your choices are mainly roleplaying... you're deciding how to say something, or what topic to address, but you're not doing anything. In the latter your choices are what to do about something (or expressing an opinion which doesn't involve tone).

In DA2, options on the choice wheel had a single paraphrase but three different spoken lines which varied based on the player character's dominant tone. As I mentioned previously, this made it difficult to come up with a paraphrase for all three (aside from being fairly expensive, wordcount-wise). While the answer could have been to paraphrase each line separately, in the end we decided the content was better used elsewhere.

In DA3, we are adding the "reaction wheel" to the previous two categories. This covers any situation where an emotional response is called for, where the three tones don't cover the needed territory (sadness, shock, rage... or just being stoic if one prefers), but we haven't shown it yet nor will I discuss it much.

But those are the three basic dialogue wheels with which we work, and the terms are specific to us writers. They're not ones you need to use. From the perspective of the player, one dialogue wheel is the same as any other.

Modifié par David Gaider, 06 mars 2013 - 08:26 .

[Fast Jimmy]

^

I agree. I'm curious how they will switch between the tone, action and reaction wheels in a way that won't seem crazy. But this is all very exciting. This is beyond my biggest expectations for how they would try and improve the wheel and the voiced PC. This level of control, if it lives up to the concepts outlined above, is truly a large, but hugely rewarding type of task.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 06 mars 2013 - 09:20 .

[Sir George Parr]

Interesting to see how this will work out.

[Wulfram]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

^

I agree. I'm curious how they will switch between the tone, action and reaction wheels in a way that won't seem crazy. But this is all very exciting. This is beyond my biggest expectations for how they would try and improve the wheel and the voiced PC. This level of control, if it lives up to the concepts outlined above, is truly a large, but hugely rewarding type of task.

As far as I understand, from the players point of view all it means is that some wheels will have different icons than others.  And some'll have something along the lines of a frowny face, a smily face and a stoic face.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it just seems like a good, sensible refinement - one which has been discussed a bit by Mr Gaider before - not anything super exciting?

Modifié par Wulfram, 06 mars 2013 - 09:55 .

[cindercatz]

I remember the thread where the reaction wheel first came up, and I think it's a brilliant way to engage us as players more into those moments. And the rest sounds great! I liked the personality system in some ways, but I disliked the lack of ability to express exactly the response I wanted to in a few important points in the game, and the lack of available options at times, because they were locked into different personalities.

My only concern would be not coming off a little bit disjointed when you shift tones in a conversation, like Fast Jimmy. I imagine that if the default tone is now more of a neutral (with the action wheel), that the delivery will be more of a variation on that central tone, like the VA for Shepard in ME3, instead of getting a little bit split personality like in ME1. I loved in ME3 how when I chose a 'renegade' dialogue option, my predominantly paragon Shep still sounded like the same guy (and girl for the reverse). And they didn't feel locked into the same side of the wheel like they did in ME2.

DA2 I didn't feel locked in, and I loved the icons instead of a light/dark analogue, but I felt like a I didn't have nearly enough actual plot, or action choices. And aside from the dovetail in Act 3, I was surprised to learn that those choices were a lot more prevalent than I thought; they were just locked out by my personality. "Card tricks in the dark", perfect phrase for it.

So I'm excited for this. I'm expecting a very natural, emotionally evocative performance for the main character as he/she shifts tones, and a greater level of player agency. Very cool. Another notch in the Yay column.

I did like hearing Hawke get involved in party banters a lot with the different tones, like Cutlass Jack. In that thread way back, I suggested either tying them to walk & talk type cinematics that let you respond via the dialogue wheel or assigning different interjects to the face buttons while they're talking, so our character could be active with different toned banter that way. I'm still hoping for that, too. :-)

[Fallstar]

This will always be a problem to me, which is a shame. We've been over this multiple times in the past, but in essence I really dislike the effect it has on how the player treats dialogue.

Not only is what my character is actually going to say unknown, it also removes the role playing aspect of choosing dialogue. In DAO, or FO or TES or any other of the multitude of successful RPGs with full text dialogue, I can look at the dialogue options, examine my character, and think to myself, "OK, due to facet X of my character's personality, the wording in that option is near perfect."

With paraphrasing, all I have is what is admittedly usually a reasonably good idea of what my character is going to say. But that's all it is. There are moments when one of the full text dialogue options just fits. At Redcliffe in DAO on the night before marching to Denerim, when talking to the leaders of the factions, there is an opportunity to make a joke to Zathrian about something he said and was deadly serious about, and the wording of the line was perfect, and at the same time let me express parts of my character. I know that the game wasn't intending to allow me to do that, but by virtue of me knowing what my character was going to say, it meant that every now and again I'd get those moments and be able to choose them, and it was great.

Full text dialogue allowed for a more immersive role playing experience; it makes the player care about which option they select. And the best bit was that when we got it wrong, when the person we were talking to took it the wrong way, that made the interaction seem more real - people don't always react how you think they will, after all. When you get it wrong with the paraphrase system, my reaction is normally "Well that's not at all the wording I chose - if I'd known that was what I was going to say, I wouldn't have picked that option."

With paraphrases, I'm no where near as involved. For sure, I can still pick the approximate thing my character will say, but the details of it are often different. When I don't know what my character is going to say anyway, other than a a tone and a few words as a hint, why should I care what my character says, or what the results of that choice are? After all, I didn't make that choice - I picked something, it was distorted a bit (or a lot, in some cases) and I get to see the result of that distorted dialogue - not the result of what I picked.

My choice regarding dialogue has been reduced to the ability to point my character in a vague direction and hope for the best. Dialogue was an integral part of how we express our characters to the game world, and our ability to do that has been severely compromised by the paraphrase system. I hope it doesn't invade other series as it has this.

[Fast Jimmy]

Wulfram wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

^

I agree. I'm curious how they will switch between the tone, action and reaction wheels in a way that won't seem crazy. But this is all very exciting. This is beyond my biggest expectations for how they would try and improve the wheel and the voiced PC. This level of control, if it lives up to the concepts outlined above, is truly a large, but hugely rewarding type of task.

As far as I understand, from the players point of view all it means is that some wheels will have different icons than others.  And some'll have something along the lines of a frowny face, a smily face and a stoic face.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it just seems like a good, sensible refinement - one which has been discussed a bit by Mr Gaider before - not anything super exciting?

More icons may have been discussed before, but being able to control the dialogue chosen at different times (such as when your character is reacting, when your character wants to make a decision, when your character just wants to convey emotion) is news to me, at least. I don't claim to be in the know, but I feel like this level of detail about the next dialogue system would have caught my attention before now. 

But I'm 100% open to challenge on that.

[cindercatz]

DuskWarden wrote...

With paraphrases, I'm no where near as involved. For sure, I can still pick the approximate thing my character will say, but the details of it are often different. When I don't know what my character is going to say anyway, other than a a tone and a few words as a hint, why should I care what my character says, or what the results of that choice are? After all, I didn't make that choice - I picked something, it was distorted a bit (or a lot, in some cases) and I get to see the result of that distorted dialogue - not the result of what I picked.

My choice regarding dialogue has been reduced to the ability to point my character in a vague direction and hope for the best. Dialogue was an integral part of how we express our characters to the game world, and our ability to do that has been severely compromised by the paraphrase system. I hope it doesn't invade other series as it has this.

That's something I got very immersed with in the older BioWare games, too, DA:O included, but the tradeoff is that the dialogue can involve more lines per exchange and flow more naturally. And jokes I find are more funny when you don't know they're coming, so there's that. I don't play for comedy, but I enjoy it in the right moments. My Hawke surprised me with how often the comedic line was just the natural option. (first Hawke, still working on the second at some point)

I'm hoping, now that there's no dominant tone, so three choices really is usually just three dialogue options, not nine, that we'll get more interactions where we have four and five options, rather than three, with more clear paraphrasing, so we don't accidentally have our characters expressing rationales and motives we wouldn't have chosen nearly as much. So it's closer to the level of agency we had in developing our characters' personalities and character arcs we had in Origins, but fully voiced. I hope.

[TheRealJayDee]

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

Did I just see Sylvius squee? I just saw Sylvius squee.

Dragon Age 3 is going to be freaking brilliant =)

Very interesting things going on in this thread...!

[Leoroc]

Will there still be the same three specific tones on every "tone wheel" or is more flexible than DA2's?

addendum: I would love a rational (Spock) tone and a psychotic tone (Muder knife!) tone added in with diplomatic/snarky/aggressive even if only 3 are ever used at the same time

Modifié par Leoroc, 07 mars 2013 - 12:36 .

[TEWR]

I have to admit DA3 does sound like it'll be better mechanically speaking for dialogue. All the things DG has said were things I personally envisioned for a better voiced protagonist system in a game.

Modifié par The Ethereal Writer Redux, 07 mars 2013 - 04:10 .

[dragonflight288]

Sounds great.

[Fredward]

This thread has turned into a delicious free candy station. Never have I been so willing to wantonly increase my chances for diabetes. This third wheel sounds like some srs win.

[eroeru]

EntropicAngel wrote...

eroeru wrote...


Ok, that makes sense - though I don't see them bailing on snarkiness altogether (sadly) in this sense a snark Hawke *could* have had a possibly unique function. Yet the flaws of this system overshadow any will to go see and do dialogue-testing for another playthrough.

I don't think I mind them NOT getting rid of it too much--there were plenty of really sarcastic or straight up insane or "trolling" responses in DA:O.

The one most present in my mind is the scene at Lothering with the madman who can sense your taint. You can threaten to kill him, then threaten or extort or merely make fun of the people standing around. It's quite funny.

Yeah, I was (again) not so very clear - by snarkiness I meant the exact in-my-opinion a'$$hole personality trait of DA2's middle-option Hawke, and by "possibly unique function" I meant the possibility for it to play out differently (?), interestingly (?) in co-functioning with diplomatic and hateful personality options.

I love the more intellectual snark and insanely or eccentrically ironic or sarcastic character traits.

eroeru wrote...

Pauravi wrote...

eroeru wrote...


@jayne
I think they'd learn "niche" "hardcore" and not-dumbed-down nor streamlined games are doable and profitable.

edit: Though sorry for the abundance of "vitriolic" words. (I don't see what's so vitriolic about them though)

They're
vitriolic because they are inflammatory and impossible to respond to. 
Nobody has any reasonable or consistent or precise definition of what
"hardcore" or "dumbed-down" mean, therefore nobody can possibly
formulate a measured response to them.  Aside from that, calling a game
that someone else likes "dumbed down" is an insult-by-proxy towards any
person who likes that game.  After all, who likes a game that has been
dumbed down?  All that phrase really means is "I don't like this game
and anyone who does is dumb".

Frankly, I think those words are
just as insulting to the person who uses them.  They're just indicators
of lazy, sloppy, imprecise thinking.  By using them, people are
specifically avoiding the brainwork of identifying exactly what it is
about a game that they don't like and how it might be improved, and
instead are just making a generalized whine summed up basically as:
"you're not making the kind of game I like!".  I usually assume that
anyone who uses those words doesn't have anything useful to say and is
really only here to complain and insult people.

They're shorthands.

And
though I can't think of anything good that's been dumbed-down in my
opinion, I do know outright idiotic games I've enjoyed. A person isn't
really comparable to the games they play.

That's that. And
somewhat I'd agree with "dumbed down"... But what's wrong with the other
terms? I think they're pretty common and well-understood. Not insulting
at the very least.

Actually, coming back to this, I did enjoy a whole lot out of Torchlight, though all in all I'd call it a vastly dumbed-down Diablo 2.

But when a game is a continuation of previous works then some qualitative similarity is most expected. In this regard DA2 failed horribly in my opinion and led to angry emotions. Naturally. Noone can do anything about that.

Paraphrasing was an integral part of ME, the list fit the much-differing DA in that it didn't try to copy another franchise with the purpose of "smoothing out" the differences between one company's games (which seemed to be *only* in merit of pulling fans of ME into DA... all decisions that are not motivated by making the game better, furthermore ones that make it lose personality are really horrible in my so very humbly said opinion).

Modifié par eroeru, 07 mars 2013 - 03:58 .

[EpicBoot2daFace]

David Gaider wrote...

Ghost43 wrote...
I'm not sure I understand-- is there a tone wheel seperate from the dialogue choices?

No, it's not separate. We term the dialogue wheel which has tone choices to be the "tone wheel" and the dialogue wheel which has action choices to be the "action wheel". In the former your choices are mainly roleplaying... you're deciding how to say something, or what topic to address, but you're not doing anything. In the latter your choices are what to do about something (or expressing an opinion which doesn't involve tone).

In DA2, options on the choice wheel had a single paraphrase but three different spoken lines which varied based on the player character's dominant tone. As I mentioned previously, this made it difficult to come up with a paraphrase for all three (aside from being fairly expensive, wordcount-wise). While the answer could have been to paraphrase each line separately, in the end we decided the content was better used elsewhere.

In DA3, we are adding the "reaction wheel" to the previous two categories. This covers any situation where an emotional response is called for, where the three tones don't cover the needed territory (sadness, shock, rage... or just being stoic if one prefers), but we haven't shown it yet nor will I discuss it much.

But those are the three basic dialogue wheels with which we work, and the terms are specific to us writers. They're not ones you need to use. From the perspective of the player, one dialogue wheel is the same as any other.

Some better voice acting for the PC would be great. Hawke (both male and female) were really weak in this area. The way they delivered the lines sounded like they were reading the lines and lacked any kind of emotion. I couldn't take either of them seriously.

The character of Hawke seemed to be designed as the "sarcastic village idiot" who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. When I trired to play a serious Hawke, it always failed, and I never once was able to connect with the character.

The improvements to the dialogue wheel sound great. But if the voice acting is weak and the main character is pre-determined to be a sarcastic idiot in every situation, I don't think it's going to matter very much.

[HiroVoid]

David Gaider wrote...
In DA3, we are adding the "reaction wheel" to the previous two categories. This covers any situation where an emotional response is called for, where the three tones don't cover the needed territory (sadness, shock, rage... or just being stoic if one prefers), but we haven't shown it yet nor will I discuss it much.

So kinda like Steambot Chronoicles to use a game example that I'm certain everyone knows about and has played.