318 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

[quote]MerinTB wrote...
Okay, so keep on believing that I'm hiding something, or am saying things I actually don't believe.  I'll answer you at face value, anyway, and be more debating you for OTHERS to see then.  Since, you know, you believe I am playing dumb, lying, or some other shennanigans that don't involve honest, straightforward discussions.
[/quote]

Not believing you're discussing things in a fair and open manner doesn't mean I think you're dumb, or that you're lying. 

[quote]"Actual gameplay" meaning what?  I do not understand this "I-WIN" button discussion.  Does picking one option really involve more than hitting one button to fire a blast that kills a moving target in Space Invaders?  [/quote]

Are we talking about space invaders, an arcade game from 1978? No? Huh, how strange. 

[quote]Timing is involved, I suppose... so how about a turn-based game where you click the "attack" button and see your fighter swing and kill a monster one blow... isn't that a "I win the fight" button?  [/quote]

No. Because in a turn-based game there is a significant amount of information processing that's involved before you get to any sort of contrived situation where you can 1-hit KO an enemey. Typically, it requires effectively building (meaning that you have to master multiple number-based interfaces to actually build the character), then taking advantage of the terrain (most likely), and then moreover exploting elemental resistances. 

If dialogue actually involved this incredible level of involvement from the player, meaning that you had to have hours of gameplay to build a character who could be this capapable, and then had to take advantage of multiple moving parts on the fly to bring about the situation, there'd be no single button to press. 

But New Vegas doesn't do any of this. It just has a number of discrete skills, each of which lead into a specific dialogue choice that either appears or doesn't in one case and (generally) turns on your raw skill modifier. There isn't anything approaching complexlity.

[quote]Character skill is involved in being about to land that blow for enough damage, you might say, but so is a Charisma/Persuasion skill needed to be able to click the "let's be friends" and thus avoid a fight option. [/quote]

The amount of work required to get to a 1-hit KO, is as I said, quite involved.

[quote]I don't see the difference.  I really don't  "Click attack, win fight," vs. "click diplomatic response, win conversation."  If you overall point is that you shouldn't be able to do it in ONE BUTTON PRESS, combat win or dialog win, I'd say "depends the game and it's focus" but, generally, agree with you--depending on the context. [/quote]

Yes, that was the point. 

[quote]Are you against the interrupts in the Mass Effect series as well?[/quote]

I think the execution of the interrupts is lacking, but I like the idea of them - because it adds more ways to interact with the conversation.

[quote]Are you entirely against TellTales Walking Dead series? [/quote]

Never played it, as I loathe survival horror.

[quote]How about trivia games?[/quote]

Are you honestly pretending as if a trivia game is at all comparable to an RPG? This goes right back to the not arguing in a bona fide and straightforward manner. 

[quote]There are endless game examples where you are presented a challenge, and have to pick the right option.  Is the problem that you don't want a trivia game inside of a role-playing game, where if your character has a high enough Intelligence attribute or Trivia Knowledge skill rank that the correct answer on the trivia board lights up for you? [/quote]

Is combat a trivia game in an RPG? No. It has never been. It's recognized as a style of gameplay all on its own. When a writer dares to suggest that combat should be skippable - the internet explodes in a furror of rage and abuse that boggles the mind.

So my position is that dialogue should be treated like combat. 

[quote]If that is your problem, I disagree.  I love using character skill and character knowledge over mine.  Like in D&D (or Pathfinder, if you prefer... or Serenity, a Cortex system game) where you ask the GM about a certain creature or organization, and the GM has you make a knowledge check... and if you succeed he tells you what your character knows.  Because if you character is a resident of said fantasy world, especially if he is an expert on said topic in question, your characer knowing something shouldn't revolve around you, the player, personally having memorized minutia and errata of a fantasy world. [/quote]

And yet somehow in combat none of this is acceptable. 

[quote]Same with persuading someone.  In a role-playing game I want to play a character I create, not play me.  If my character is super-smart or super-charismatic, I want the game to represent that and if there is a chance to pick the right choice in a logic puzzle or say the right thing to an interlocutor, I actually prefer the game to use my character's ability and SHOW ME what MY CHARACTER believes to be the right thing to pick / say. [/quote]

And yet, again, if your character is supposed to be a warrior god, you don't have the same option. You have to play the wargame simulator no matter what. 

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
You must have missed the context. I was arguing against RNG in my response, saying that it leads to metagaming. Having set, static values where your skills will work or won't, not determined by the roll of a digital dice, is what I had suggested earlier and was countering.

...

Again, I think you aren't reading the context I am talking about. In my suggestion, I said that there should be an entire Persuasion tree that could not even be accessed/offered to players without any Persuasion skills. In this, it would almost be impossible to not have some way of flagging the Persuasion options in some fashion.

My response was to say to those who said the options should be hidden that it is pretty much impossible to accomplish with the paraphrase/dialogue wheel setup currently seen in the DA series (and confirmed to return for DA3).

Whoops! My apologies. I let my personal loathing of the RNG get the better of me. 

[Ieldra]

@OP:
The best persuasion system I've seen recently was the one in Fallout:New Vegas. Various persuasion options became available depending on certain attributes or skills, according to what was plausible to use in the conversation. So a conversation about a technological matter could use Intelligence or Science skill or Repair skill depending on context, or if it was simply persuading someone of your good intentions the Speech skill would be used. Transferred to the DA universe, that would mean options would become available depending on attribute levels (Cunning most often), character class or certain skills. I would also welcome a return of a persuasion skill like in DAO.

[-TC1989-]

Ieldra2 wrote...
Transferred to the DA universe, that would mean options would become available depending on attribute levels (Cunning most often), character class or certain skills. I would also welcome a return of a persuasion skill like in DAO.

I agree, I liked how raising my Cunning would give me little perks like that. I wish that could somehow be implemented into DA3.

[MerinTB]

EntropicAngel wrote...
I would argue that they do actually have a "right" way to win. Fopr instance, in that conversation with the russian informant, there are three ways the conversation can end: with him afraid of you and notifying the authorities about you, making later missions harder, with him neutral to you, and with him positive towards you and giving you access to black market materials. That's very much "right and wrong." There's not a single benefit to making him afraid of you and causing difficulty on later missions.

That isn't right.  You have to decide what your goals are, what you are trying to acheive, and there are pro's and con's to each path.  In Alpha Protocol it is just as viable a modus operandi to be gruff with someone as it is to be pleasant.

If you are professional with Grigori he's not "Neutral" to you, he tells Surkov and SIE about you and he took money.  Is your money allocated for more and more weapons, or is it for this exact thing - paying for information?  The loss of money can seem like a lose, but maybe that's why you HAVE the money.

If you are rough with Grigori, you do get negative with him (and with Mina, depending on how far you take it) but is your goal to have him LIKE you?  You get the information from him if you are rough, and it is what he is used to.  If you are TOO rough on him he'll contact the authorities about you... but what if that was your goal?  Yes, you can want Surkov to know you are coming.  Sometimes you aren't playing the sneaky, stealthy agent to impress the likes of Surkov (or Marburg, for that matter.)  Sometimes you are the pro-USA, we don't befriend criminals type.

And, you know, if you manipulate Grigori enough with your forceful approach, then he tips off the US Embassy... upping their security significantly.  If you are playing a "USA!  USA!" Mike then having that extra well-trained, heavy firepower to help repel the attackers (G22 or VCI) can be both a boon AND an increase in the likelihood that no undertrained guards are killed.

It's deeper than "be jokey, he gives you cheaper goods, that's a WIN!"  Your main goal is to get the information - that mission is accomplished several ways.  Your side goals (whether you want a good relationship with Grigori, a bad one with Mina, Marines at the Embassy) are up to you.

The problem is, in the conversations in AP, I'm trying to acheive something. They aren't conversations just to have conversations (later in the game anyway, at the greybox they kind of are)--mike usually needs information from someone, and that goal shapes the way you have conversation. I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but the conversations are battles, as opposed to simple conversations. In a battle, my focus is on winning. Now, the way I go about it can tell you a little about me, but it's only a little.

But, even sticking with the "battle" metaphor, you can absolutely "win" in several ways, especially if you dig deeper and look at the fact that you don't have a preset list of goals you are trying to acheive.  You can "win" the game skipping whole sections of the game, especially if your Mike is trying to do things quick and dirty as opposed to slow and methodical.  What is a "win" in most conversations?  Getting the person on your side, killing them, or imprisoning them?  Your first "target" in AP, Nasri... what's the "win" in the conversation, the "best" outcome?  Is it killing him?  He's responsible for so many deaths, taking him out might send a message of zero tolerance.  Arresting him?  That's the "lawfully right" thing to do (as far as that goes), though he lives and arms dealers aren't really frightened.  Do you let him go, as a source of information (and cheap arms)?  Do you extort money from him?  I don't think there's a "optimal for winning the game if the game counted points or something" end result there.

I don't see "winning" most conversations unless you have in your mind that one set of outcomes "must be" preferrable.

Modifié par MerinTB, 11 mai 2013 - 09:16 .

[MerinTB]

EntropicAngel wrote...
It's been a couple months, but I think you're incorrect about the jokey one. Being straight up with him gets you the black market connections. Being jokey gets you neutrality.

From Alpha Protocol Wikia -

If the player shows an interest in Grigori (chooses Suave answers), Grigori will appreciate the humane gesture and give a 10%  discount on armor purchases. He will also give up the information for free and shall not inform other parties about Michael.
It the player stays Professional then Grigori will take 5000$ for the information. Grigori will then notify both Surkov and SIE about your presence in Moscow. Grigori may suggest that when you do find the weapons, that you reroute the shipment to him. (This happens for both Suave and Professional approach).
It the player uses an Aggressive approach then Grigori give up the information for free. "Grigori may frightened enough to alert the local authorities about Michael."

Perhaps "jokey" was the wrong term.  Chummy?  Like just another guy at the bar having a drink?  If you treat him like a friend, an average joe in a tavern, he reacts "friendliest" to you.  But I have played this dumb game like ten times all the way through, four times in the last year.

EntropicAngel wrote...
I would argue that regardless of what you choose as the way to win, what you view as winning--the point is that you're trying to "win," as opposed to simply have conversation. And simply that change in direction from a simple conversation with people you know about various things (like Bioware does it) to encounters that are built around your character manipulating someone to get what he wants, hinders the roleplaying.

I see your point, but I feel mine is valid as well.

I think I understand what you are getting at... but I am being too "direct" with my explanations as well.  I don't play the game thinking "I want to achieve this concrete goal" as opposed to "this in my Mike, his personality, the lines he'll not cross, etc." and choose the reactions I have Mike make as thus - though, depending on the Mike, he may well be calculating in certain conversations (he is a secret agent, after all) and not showing all his cards nor his true self.

Right at this point we're probably dancing around the same point, more or less - with you leaning more towards wanting the conversations to only be places where you can "act in character" with little to no consequences, and me leaning towards "role-playing" is still part of playing the game and the game has a goal and my character is going to try and achieve that goal... just in his unique way.

Modifié par MerinTB, 11 mai 2013 - 09:46 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

It's about control. People (like me) dislike RNGs because it's just an absolute decree by developers that part of the game is beyond your control. While most things as a matter of fact are actually out of your control, that doesn't stop people from trying to assert as much control as possible.

It's not about your control, it's about your character's control.  And the reactions of NPCs absolutely are out of your character's control.

That's why I want to randomise them.

[Fast Jimmy]

SirJK wrote...

I'm not so much desiring to disincentivize social approaches as much as I wish to see the system encourage making an effort to think about what the other side expects of you, desires and/or how they want to deal with someone. Like not joking with a "no-nonsense" type of person. It won't help you. Or not guilttripping templars and nobles that you need the help of.

Just about every advice in the world encourages making an effort at getting a good first impression, and this would be a part of that.

Differentiating persuasion and non-persuasion means that there are dialogue that's "safe" and dialogue that isn't. But also that even if you do make the effort, you couldn't pull it off if your skill isn't high enough. And that's fine... to a degree. Some people will be extremely difficult to talk to. That your suggestion means that I have to think about what kind of persuasion I should apply goes a way to meet my desires and I like it.
But like Sylvius says, if I do everything right, have the right motivation and have previously done things that impresses my target. Should I not be able to convince him regardless of my level of rethorical training?

I do see your point though. Marking words is a bit too extreme. But general broad strokes such as making the effort at a good first impression, acting in their interests, not insulting them and making use of moral authority should be doable with the wheel and paraphrases, should they not?

To be clear, I like the nuance of your suggestion. It requires you to think and allows you to utilise your strength and weakness to succeed. It requires an investment. All good things. The only thing I really object to is that choosing persuasion-options would be required, rather than strongly suggested. Much like using abilities and spells is not required in combat... just strongly suggested.
Of course, in particularily difficult cases... they should absolutely be required. But only because the situation is weighted against you. Not because they magically enable it to happen... unless it's blood magic of course, then it's totally acceptable that it magically enables it

I understand now. This is an excellent suggestion - where the rapport, previous deeds or overall approach you have with an NPC would affect their baseline responses.

If you had a no-nonsense NPC and, before the option to use the Persuade options appeared, you used a Snarky response, this would possibly tick the NPC off and make them harder to Persuade... while sticking with a "just facts" response might decrease the base value for a Persuasion later on. As always, a little more work and tracking, but I think such a suggestion would help create an even more organic system.

Is that what you were thinking?

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 12 mai 2013 - 02:31 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I just don't understand how it could be possible to talk to someone and not focus on their face. What else would you look at?

I read the subtitles.  I typically skip ahead in the cinematics once I've done that.

Putting my neuroscientist cap on, in terms of the ease of learning, it actually depends. Combat is easier to learn if you've learned to learn it, so to speak (e.g. if you have the kind of background in playing with numbers or formal logic generally that makes it intuitive to think in terms of rigid categories and structured, static actions).

That makes sense.  I innately think about everything from a formal logical basis, so structured systems like game mechanics (particuarly well document game mechanics) make automatic sense.

But social interaction is something that's so innate in what we do, most people just build the kind of knowledge base necessary to have a very strong intuition for it.

I find real-world social interaction responds much more positively to a rigid logical approach than these games do.

So, in that sense, learning social interaction from scratch is incredibly complex - but generally it's rare for people to have to do that.

You have to do it every time you meet a new person.  but we can't do that in gmes, because we don't get enough opportunities to interact with these characters in order to get to know them.  As such, using a more rigidly structured dialogue system grants us the greater certainty we need to approximate real-world interactions without needing real-world levels of response feedback.

Basically, combat RNG is all about playing with numbers. But if you're talking about using dialogue as a way to avoid meta-gaming, then having me create spreadsheet tables to min-max my dialogue ability based on bounded variables, scour gamefaqs to find the actual game mechanics which you would probably insist on hiding in the name of unpredictabiity is just creating an annoying barrrier to the kind of gameplay that RNG features rely on.

I want to use RNG in dialogue because I think that would cause the in-game conversations to more closely mimic real-world conversations.  Your character's perception of in-game conversations should closely resemble your perception of real-world conversations, and I don't see how to do that without randomising NPC responses to at least some degree.

There's nothing actually random about the random number generator, in the sense that even though the actual outcomes are stochastic I know ahead of time how they are stochastic and can always plan in such a way to control for them.

Just like the real world.  Every decision you make requires risk-assessment.  You discount for risk when evaluating the appeal of possible outcomes.  Using a RNG makes your character's approach to in-game events more closely resemble your approach to real-world events.

But an RNG doesn't change that. In Fire Emblem, for example, there are still ideal builds. There's always a best way of doing things.

But uncertainty makes it far easier to imagine different characters disagreeing about what that best way is.

Dialogue is none of these things. I'm making an in-character decision, my character is giving a particular speech (the same speech) to the same character, who has the same background and life experience, and yet somehow I'm expected to believe because of "magic" behind the scenes - maybe because 40 years ago his undear rode into his bottom, suddenly the same argument isn't persuasive?

Only because you're presupposing a persistent game universe across reloads.

I still don't understand why you insist on doing that.

The RNG in conmbat doesn't rely on this insane chaos theory kind of logic to justify itself.

Yes it does.  You swung the same sword with the same skill under exactly the same circumstances, and this time you missed (or did less damage, or whatever).  What's the difference?  In both cases, you have a universe that behaved differently, even given exactly the same inputs.  Clearly, then, some unseen variable was different - some variable over which you had no control and of which you had no knowledge.

Using a RNG in dialogue is exactly like using it in combat.

If you approach dialogue in a purely logical way, the RNG makes perfect sense.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

What would happen if you turned off subtitles?

I'd probably be less able to understand what's being said.  I tend to convert spoken words into text in my mind, and will sometimes ask people to repeat specific words if I miss one.

Sometimes they don't remember their exact phrasing.  I hate those people.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sir JK wrote...

SerTabris wrote...

Come to think of it, this could be an accessibility issue for some groups of people (such as people on the autism spectrum).  Perhaps I don't understand how a neurotypical person acts, or what facial expressions they might have, but should that be inevitable reflected in all of my characters?

This would actually imply that the game mechanics would (almost) perfectly mimic actual social  interaction.

I insist that DAO's dialogue system does almost perfectly mimic real-world conversations.  You say what you want to say; you don't know how people will respond; sometimes the conversation moves on without you expecting it and you don't know how to stop it.

Just like the real world.

As long as the game teaches you which signs to look for, what takes you further along and what sets you back I imagine most people who pay attention would learn it relatively quickly.

But a tutorial and a few test runs would be abolutely crucial. Definantely.

This is vital.  If they introduce any new mechanic ever, they need to make some effort to teach us how to use it.  Didn't Windows 8 demonstrate quite thoroughly that users don't like being thrown into the deep end and left to fend for themselves?

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

In Exile wrote...
I just don't understand how it could be possible to talk to someone and not focus on their face. What else would you look at?

I read the subtitles.  I typically skip ahead in the cinematics once I've done that.

This to a million.  I get antsy at how slow the game gets for voiced dialog, but then feel like I "must be missing something" if I skip their voice acting and tend to sit through it, chomping at the bit, having read the entire response before the actor has drawn his breath to speak the first syllable.

I really need to start just skipping it all the time.

Definitely on replays I'm skip-a-palooza.  If we could get rid of the cinematic acting of the CGI characters, I'd play the same game (as far as I'm concerned) and do it in like half the time.

[Sir JK]

Fast Jimmy wrote...


I understand now. This is an excellent suggestion - where the rapport, previous deeds or overall approach you have with an NPC would affect their baseline responses.

If you had a no-nonsense NPC and, before the option to use the Persuade options appeared, you used a Snarky response, this would possibly tick the NPC off and make them harder to Persuade... while sticking with a "just facts" response might decrease the base value for a Persuasion later on. As always, a little more work and tracking, but I think such a suggestion would help create an even more organic system.

Is that what you were thinking?

Precisely.

[Allan Schumacher]

ianvillan wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

When I was younger I was a power gamer so my BG2 Paladin had 3 intellect. I was still able to figure out logic puzzles without issue.

.

I have to disagree with you here I don't believe a power gamer would of picked Paladin in BG2.

It was imported from BG1 and I typically liked the idea of the righteous holy warrior.  My character may not have been outright optimal, but I still created my character specifically for making my character powerful in the game, while minimizing stats that were not important to me.

Hence, I power gamed.

[Allan Schumacher]

I would argue that they do actually have a "right" way to win. Fopr instance, in that conversation with the russian informant, there are three ways the conversation can end: with him afraid of you and notifying the authorities about you, making later missions harder, with him neutral to you, and with him positive towards you and giving you access to black market materials. That's very much "right and wrong." There's not a single benefit to making him afraid of you and causing difficulty on later missions.

There are times and places to ensure that the "reward" for branches of gameplay are equivalent (whether it be conversations or otherwise), and other times for there to be a degrees of success/failure.

The situation you describe with Grigori could be declared to be a "win," but if you're the type of gamer that feels conversations should be about defining your character, I don't think Alpha Protocol is a good example of a game that doesn't let you do it.

I pick my choices in Alpha Protocol to define my character, and I live with the consequences of whatever those choices may be. Sometimes they work out well for me, and other times they do not. Those differences, as subtle as they may be, are what makes the game so fantastic for me. I see no reason why the interaction with Grigori having an "ideal" outcome prevents you from still defining your character.

[Mercedes-Benz]

I would like everything to go back to how it was in Dragon Age: Origins (which I consider to be the best game of all time), but that will of course never happen.

[Vaeliorin]

[quote]In Exile wrote...
[quote]Vaeliorin wrote...
They're not for me, but that's because the character's faces just aren't something that I spend a lot of time looking at.  It's like with comics, where I almost never notice the things in the art unless someone points them out to me.  I pay attention to words, but not to images.  Heck, until someone mentioned it on the forums, I never knew the faces in Jade Empire changed depending on what dialogue option you had highlighted. [/quote]
I'm generally an incredibly inattentive person (when it comes to everything around me), but faces are one of the few things I consistently notice. I just don't understand how it could be possible to talk to someone and not focus on their face. What else would you look at?[/quote]
The ground, or something in the background that's caught my attention.  I honestly avoid making eye contact with anyone that isn't close family.  I don't really deal well with social situations, and dealing with people in real life makes me incredibly nervous.
[quote]
[quote]I know (though it makes no sense to me) that there are people who just can't handle the combat in these games.  But I think it's something that's much easier to learn with a little effort than social interaction.  I've mentioned in the past that I'd be okay with a system that limited what sort of tactics you could give your allies depending on some sort of tactical stat that the player character had (or maybe an option to use the highest in the party, since you could play a character who realizes their tactical shortcomings and listens to others instead) and I think that would be a start towards more separation of character and player.[/quote]Putting my neuroscientist cap on, in terms of the ease of learning, it actually depends. Combat is easier to learn if you've learned to learn it, so to speak (e.g. if you have the kind of background in playing with numbers or formal logic generally that makes it intuitive to think in terms of rigid categories and structured, static actions). But social interaction is something that's so innate in what we do, most people just build the kind of knowledge base necessary to have a very strong intuition for it. [/quote]This is the kind of thing that I'm aware of, but I have a hard time internalizing.  I tend to think of myself as normal, and thus expect everyone to be like me, so it makes little sense to me that there are people who have a hard time learning these things.

[quote]So, in that sense, learning social interaction from scratch is incredibly complex - but generally it's rare for people to have to do that.[/quote]But it does happen.  Besides, it's possible for people to understand something, but be unable to put that understanding to use because the situations where they would use it make them so uncomfortable that they can't.

[quote[That said, I see where you're coming from with making it more unitary stat-based. But I was using combat to show the opposite issue - that there would be nothing fun about reducing combat to an interactive movie and a single "Combat Win" stat that had to cross a threshold.[/quote]
Sure, and I get that dialogue should be more than that.  I'd like dialogue to be more than that.  But I don't want to have to rely solely on my social skills instead of those of my character.  I want my character to be able to succeed in situations where I'd normally fail, or fail in situations where I'd normally succeed without me having to fail on purpose.
[quote]
[quote]I thought I remembered you saying nice things about XCOM:EU.  That game lives on RNG.  [/quote]The combat is RNG - but the RNG is very limited and circumscribed, e.g. (i) it is totally upfront (e.g. 50% hit chance); (ii) hidden in the code, meaning I can find out how the mechanic works;  (iii) the consequences flow logically from the probability (i.e., I can predict the outcome); and (iv) the RNG is not entirely random because the hit % and dmg % are influenced by fundamental underlyings thats which I know and can attempt to min/max ahead of time.[/quote]
There's no reason you couldn't build dialogue "combat" along similar lines.

[quote]Basically, combat RNG is all about playing with numbers. But if you're talking about using dialogue as a way to avoid meta-gaming, then having me create spreadsheet tables to min-max my dialogue ability based on bounded variables, scour gamefaqs to find the actual game mechanics which you would probably insist on hiding in the name of unpredictabiity is just creating an annoying barrrier to the kind of gameplay that RNG features rely on.[/quote]
Honestly, I don't really care about meta-gaming, I just want to be able to have dialogue dependent on my characters skills, not mine.  If people want to meta-game, let them.

Also, I'd never hide mechanics.  I think that's one of the crappier things that someone can do.  I'm not just going to flat out tell someone what the thresholds for success on each attempt are, but I'd never hide how the system works.

[quote]There's nothing actually random about the random number generator, in the sense that even though the actual outcomes are stochastic I know ahead of time how they are stochastic and can always plan in such a way to control for them.

I can, for example, position my assault trooper in such a way that even if my sniper somehow misses that last Thin Man, I can bat clean-up using run & gun from full cover.[/quote]
Sure.  I just think dialogue would be more interesting if you could have that 99% shot and still occasionally miss.
[quote]
[quote]Regardless, the dislike of RNG in an RPG is particularly bizarre to me because I can't recall playing any RPG (PnP or otherwise) that didn't involve some sort of RNG.  Personally, I find systems without RNG boring (there are some tactics games that are like that) because there's always a best/right way to do things, and once you figure it out, the game becomes trivial.[/quote]But an RNG doesn't change that. In Fire Emblem, for example, there are still ideal builds. There's always a best way of doing things.[/quote]
That's not true, though (well, it may be in Fire Emblem, I've never played any of them...not much of a handheld gamer.)  When there's randomness involved, you can, for example, build a sure and steady plodder (for example, someone who maximizes hit chance at the expense of damage), or a spike damage unit (maximizing crit severity and perhaps crit chance) and neither of them is necessarily better than the other.  It depends on how the RNG plays out to determine which is more successful, and ideally over the long run they'd average out about the same.  Or maybe you attack one more dangerous unit hoping to get a crit, while ignoring a less dangerous unit that you could have easily taken out. 

With a deterministic system, there's no risk, you always know exactly how things are going to play out, so unless you do something stupid, you're always going to win.  It takes all the thrill out of it.  You never get that 20% shot that hits to finishes off that last muton who would have otherwise taken out your support and heavy with a grenade next turn.
[quote]
[quote]It's like DA, where you had the always win persuade options.  I don't want to always win, even if I make the same choices every time, because it removes any sense of excitement (within reason, of course.  Having damage roulette on in XCOM and doing 1 point of damage point-blank with a shotgun after you run and gunned up to a muton elite sucks.)  It's the same reason I hate hand-placed loot. [/quote]But the "fun" in XCOM doesn't come from 1-shotting the muton elite - it comes from rolling with the punches as the game dynamically evolves around you. It's about reacting, planning. Tactics, essentially.[/quote]
I was speaking of extreme examples of randomness, where you can't really know what the outcome is going to be, and therefore tactics are essentially useless.  I want my tactics to matter, but I don't want to play something where if I always use the same tactics, I always win.  It turns what should be fun and exciting into routine humdrum.

Essentially, if I have a 1 in 20 chance of losing, and I lose a couple times, I can live with that.  If I have a 1 in 1000 chance of losing and I lose a couple times, I'm going to start getting annoyed.

[quote]Dialogue is none of these things. I'm making an in-character decision, my character is giving a particular speech (the same speech) to the same character, who has the same background and life experience, and yet somehow I'm expected to believe because of "magic" behind the scenes - maybe because 40 years ago his undear rode into his bottom, suddenly the same argument isn't persuasive? 

The RNG in conmbat doesn't rely on this insane chaos theory kind of logic to justify itself.[/quote]
The RNG in combat is meant to represent unforeseen circumstances, or luck.  In dialogue, the RNG does the same thing.  Maybe there was something about your intonation the guard didn't like.  Maybe the guard catches a whiff of your shampoo, and it smell like raspberries, and his girlfriend who just broke up with used shampoo that smelled like raspberries.  Maybe you smelled like lilacs and his mother smelled like lilacs, which predisposes him to like you.  Maybe a stray gust of wind brings the stink of the nearby outhouse to the guards nose just as you approach and he blames you for it.

I don't see how that any different, really, than a guy stumbling and leaving himself open to your blade, or a gust of wind coming up that blows your arrow of course, or any of the other things that the RNG is combat is meant to represent. 

[quote][quote]Granted, I don't think you should win or lose a game solely based on RNG (there are some old school games where you get 1 chance to spot a secret door or something, and if you fail, you can never finish the game) but I like the opportunity for things to not always turn out for me the same way every time.[/quote]
There are certain things that do not make sense as being randomized. For example, XCOM doesn't randomly transform your units into other clases of units, or randomly switch genders at unpredictable intervals, or has your weapon transform into a chicken. 

I think RNG dialogue is much more like having a gun turn into a chicken than it is missing a shot because your footing was poor. [/quote]
I obviously disagree.  I think the smallest of things can effect how a dialogue plays out, even more so than making or missing a shot.

[quote]Allan Schumacher wrote...

[quote]They're
not for me, but that's because the character's faces just aren't
something that I spend a lot of time looking at. It's like with comics,
where I almost never notice the things in the art unless someone points
them out to me. I pay attention to words, but not to images. Heck,
until someone mentioned it on the forums, I never knew the faces in Jade
Empire changed depending on what dialogue option you had highlighted.[/quote]What would happen if you turned off subtitles?[/quote]
I'd probably miss half the conversation.  My hearing is kind of messed up, and voices sometimes end up kind of garbled to me if people don't enunciate very clearly.  This is particularly bad with speech coming from speakers.

[quote]While
interacting with a person in real life, there are no visual words to
take my focus away from the speaker, so I am focusing more on the body
language of the speaker as they speak (on top of things like intonation
and so forth).[/quote]
As previously mentioned, I'm very uncomfortable in social situations, so I'm usually doing anything but focusing on the speaker.  I focus on the words, but usually my eyes are elsewhere.

[quote]In games like Mass Effect, I actively do not play
with subtitles on to allow me greater freedom to see what is going on.
If I have subtitles, I tend to focus on the subtitles.[/quote]
See, and I tend to miss even more of what the person is saying in things like Mass Effect because I'm trying to make sure I understood exactly what the person just said, and I miss what they're saying next.  I don't usually have that problem with subtitles (though sometimes when I'm watching something on TV I'll have to rewind a couple seconds because I've missed something that was said because something that was previously said distracted me.)

[nisallik]

ianvillan wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

When I was younger I was a power gamer so my BG2 Paladin had 3 intellect. I was still able to figure out logic puzzles without issue.

.

I have to disagree with you here I don't believe a power gamer would of picked Paladin in BG2.

The Inquisitor for a Paladin kit is a beast. ;p

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I read the subtitles.  I typically skip ahead in the cinematics once I've done that.

I should clarify that I mean IRL.

I find real-world social interaction responds much more positively to a rigid logical approach than these games do.

That's because we're not judging things on the same standard. 

You have to do it every time you meet a new person.

Not at all. In the same way that you don't have to re-learn all of math when you're solving a new problem - even if you've switched from calculus to topology, you don't have to re-create an entire system of social interaction from scratch. Culture and context are the keys.

As such, using a more rigidly structured dialogue system grants us the greater certainty we need to approximate real-world interactions without needing real-world levels of response feedback.

As I mentioned (later, I think), I agree that the game should provide the player a great deal of information that approximates the kind of information people of different social compencies would gleam from an interaction.

But ever since you've convinced me that dialogue is gameplay, I think that we should develop dialogue to be more like (in principle) combat.

I want to use RNG in dialogue because I think that would cause the in-game conversations to more closely mimic real-world conversations.  Your character's perception of in-game conversations should closely resemble your perception of real-world conversations, and I don't see how to do that without randomising NPC responses to at least some degree

As I said: there's been no proposal to an RNG that would sensibly capture the dynamic nature of a conversation. In turn-based combat, we can say that an RNG is necessary to approximate the dynamic interaction of combat because everything actually happens simulatenously, and without movement restrictions, etc. So the RNG allows the "chaos" of combat to come out, because we actually play the game at a certain level of abstraction.

But dialogue isn't abstracted in that way. We actually see the full content of the interaction - the body language and speech. The game can't handle the kind of dynamic outcomes required - because that would require an infinite number of unique reactions, so it instead demands that you nonsensically assume that "magic background factors" can somehow fundamentally alter the nature of a character, even thought their dialogue responses would be identical. It's nonsense.

Just like the real world.  Every decision you make requires risk-assessment.  You discount for risk when evaluating the appeal of possible outcomes.  Using a RNG makes your character's approach to in-game events more closely resemble your approach to real-world events.

This is talking about things to generally. Yes, in principle, this is what an RNG does. But it can't actually succeed as proposed for dialogue.

But uncertainty makes it far easier to imagine different characters disagreeing about what that best way is.

No, it makes it worse. Becuase, as I always have maintained, when you have fixed start and end, you only actually have a very narrow range of middles that you can imagine to link the two points and still have all interactions make sense. An RNG introduces a degree of stochastic outcomes that are just logically incongruent with what is required from this sort of fixed interaction. 

Only because you're presupposing a persistent game universe across reloads.

I still don't understand why you insist on doing that.

Because the alternative is nonsensical. The amount of game that is fixed by design across reloads is such that it makes it logically absurd to suppose that the other parts could freely vary. 

I also suppose that the world continues to exist in a persistent state when I'm not looking at it, but that belief isn't insane because of the basic physical rules I observe the world behaving according to. 

Yes it does.  You swung the same sword with the same skill under exactly the same circumstances, and this time you missed (or did less damage, or whatever).  

But it's not the same sort, and it's not the same circumstances. I've already addressed why above - because turn-based combat doesn't pretend to exhaust the the full scope of the interaction.

What's the difference?  In both cases, you have a universe that behaved differently, even given exactly the same inputs.  Clearly, then, some unseen variable was different - some variable over which you had no control and of which you had no knowledge.

That only works if there is actually an unseen variable. But the very nature of dialogue is such that there are no unseen variables. 

If we were talking about BG - for example  - where there is no VO, and no indication of body language, I would concede the point. You can imagine that across characters things like your different body language and tone - even with the same words spoken - lead to a different result.

But a modern cinematic RPG, this is not unseen.

[In Exile]

[quote]Vaeliorin wrote...
The ground, or something in the background that's caught my attention.  I honestly avoid making eye contact with anyone that isn't close family.  I don't really deal well with social situations, and dealing with people in real life makes me incredibly nervous.[/quote]

That's understandable. I was curious. I hope I didn't give offence!
[quote]This is the kind of thing that I'm aware of, but I have a hard time internalizing.  I tend to think of myself as normal, and thus expect everyone to be like me, so it makes little sense to me that there are people who have a hard time learning these things.[/quote]Think about it like a foreign language. You're obviously quite adept when it comes to English. But if I were to show you Japanese text (assuming for the moment you don't speak it and are only familiar with the Latin Alphabet), it would be incomprehensible. 

Now, let's suppose you were a native French speaker. If I show you Italian, you'll actually pick up a fair amount of it. The alphabet is similar. the gramatical rules are similar, and the actual structure and meaning of many words is also similar. So you can start parsing out a general meaning despite not 'knowing' the language. 

This is essentially how all learning works (but I'm simplifying a lot regarding the mechanism).

[quote]But it does happen. [/quote]

Yes, but from childhood. As babies, we learn basic things about social interaction. Not all of us learn math to any meaningful degree of proficiency.

[quote]Besides, it's possible for people to understand something, but be unable to put that understanding to use because the situations where they would use it make them so uncomfortable that they can't. [/quote]

That actually depends a great deal on how well you know something. The research is pretty clear that attention influences performance in different ways based on the level of mastery that you have, i.e., based on how automatic something is. 

[quote]Sure, and I get that dialogue should be more than that.  I'd like dialogue to be more than that.  But I don't want to have to rely solely on my social skills instead of those of my character.  I want my character to be able to succeed in situations where I'd normally fail, or fail in situations where I'd normally succeed without me having to fail on purpose.
[quote]

Oh, I completely agree. I don't think that RPGs should be reduced to social simulators. But I do think that dialogue should be more like gameplay.
[quote]There's no reason you couldn't build dialogue "combat" along similar lines.[/quote]Like Sylvius said, for this to work, I think the issue is that you have to assume that there unseen variables at work. I don't think (as I said in my post to him) that this is possible in the case of cinematic, voiced-over RPGs.

[quote]Honestly, I don't really care about meta-gaming, I just want to be able to have dialogue dependent on my characters skills, not mine.  If people want to meta-game, let them. [/quote]

Agreed, as mentioned! 

[quote]Also, I'd never hide mechanics.  I think that's one of the crappier things that someone can do.  I'm not just going to flat out tell someone what the thresholds for success on each attempt are, but I'd never hide how the system works. [/quote]

You mean, a confidence interval instead of a fixed number? I'm not sure what you mean by threshold.

[quote]
Sure.  I just think dialogue would be more interesting if you could have that 99% shot and still occasionally miss. [/quote]

I don't disagree in principle, but I don't think that there's any system that comes close to being able to handle this kind of dynamic outcome. Because persuade is basically "ideal outcome fire and forget". If the game suddenly let you have multiple approaches and let you set the stage socially, so that basically you can have multiple plans in motion, then it can become really fun - because it turns into social manipulation.

But otherwise it's just "Press X to advance, you have a 46% chance of a good outcome". 

[quote]That's not true, though (well, it may be in Fire Emblem, I've never played any of them...not much of a handheld gamer.)  When there's randomness involved, you can, for example, build a sure and steady plodder (for example, someone who maximizes hit chance at the expense of damage), or a spike damage unit (maximizing crit severity and perhaps crit chance) and neither of them is necessarily better than the other. [/quote]

But both are good builds. DA:O, for example, gives you a few viable mage builds. But that doesn't mean that most mage builds aren't pretty much garbage. 

I thought your obejction was that it was clear from the start which builds are good and bad, not that literally there is only one build that's actually good.

[quote]It depends on how the RNG plays out to determine which is more successful, and ideally over the long run they'd average out about the same.  Or maybe you attack one more dangerous unit hoping to get a crit, while ignoring a less dangerous unit that you could have easily taken out.  [/quote]

But that doesn't mean that there aren't bad which are just not viable. 

[quote]With a deterministic system, there's no risk, you always know exactly how things are going to play out, so unless you do something stupid, you're always going to win.  It takes all the thrill out of it.  You never get that 20% shot that hits to finishes off that last muton who would have otherwise taken out your support and heavy with a grenade next turn. [/quote]

But, again, the risk has to be logical. It's one thing for us to be talking about a % hit chance in combat, and another thing to talk about a % chance that the UI turns into pictures of cats. 

So far, all the suggests applications I've heard of an RNG applied to dialogue is like proposing an RNG that alters your UI, or randomly varying your keybinds every turn.

[quote]I was speaking of extreme examples of randomness, where you can't really know what the outcome is going to be, and therefore tactics are essentially useless.  I want my tactics to matter, but I don't want to play something where if I always use the same tactics, I always win.  It turns what should be fun and exciting into routine humdrum. [/quote]

Again - I agree with you here.

[quote]Essentially, if I have a 1 in 20 chance of losing, and I lose a couple times, I can live with that.  If I have a 1 in 1000 chance of losing and I lose a couple times, I'm going to start getting annoyed. [/quote]

That's just the AI cheating. 

[quote]The RNG in combat is meant to represent unforeseen circumstances, or luck.  In dialogue, the RNG does the same thing.  [/quote]

Except, as I mentioned, that this doesn't work when you've exhausted all possible avenues, and they're all identical.

[quote]Maybe there was something about your intonation the guard didn't like.[/quote]

It's the same guard, with the same intonation. We hear it. It can't vary.

[quote]Maybe the guard catches a whiff of your shampoo, and it smell like raspberries, and his girlfriend who just broke up with used shampoo that smelled like raspberries.[/quote]

But we know that none of this is true. 

[quote]Maybe you smelled like lilacs and his mother smelled like lilacs, which predisposes him to like you.[/quote]

We also know that this isn't true. We see it happen.

[quote]Maybe a stray gust of wind brings the stink of the nearby outhouse to the guards nose just as you approach and he blames you for it. [/quote]

Except that we see it happening, or it doesn't happen.

[quote]I don't see how that any different, really, than a guy stumbling and leaving himself open to your blade, or a gust of wind coming up that blows your arrow of course, or any of the other things that the RNG is combat is meant to represent.   [/quote]

Because in the game, none of that is shown, and we accept on the face of it that "turn-based" is not literally how it actually plays out - the Mutton doesn't stand there smiling at me while I shoot at it. 

[quote]I obviously disagree.  I think the smallest of things can effect how a dialogue plays out, even more so than making or missing a shot. [/quote]

But we see all of it - there's no small thing that goes unobserved. This is the problem.