153 réponses à ce sujet

[wright1978]

Ieldra2 wrote...

OP, the thread title suggests a rather broader scope of problem than what you've explained in your OP. I'm with you in that questions a character of a given background should know the answer to shouldn't come up in dialogue just for the sake of the player. I want my character to be a believable denizen of the fictional world.

When asked, however, how much definition I prefer in general, then my answer would be: "as much as necessary, as little as possible." Too strongly-defined characters have a habit of ceasing to be my characters. In a game with any kind of roleplaying, there's little that kicks you out of a world and a story faster than character-derailing autodialogue. Above everything else, I hate being forced to act stupid or say stupid things, I hate to be forced to express specific emotions, and I hate to be forced to subscribe to certain values.

Yep completely agree with all the bolded.

[Shadow Fox]

EntropicAngel wrote...

ninsegtari wrote...

I prefer a character. An avatar is a representation of me... I am an uninteresting couch potato. Thus, I prefer a developed character.

No you are not.

You are an elf, born in the Alienage to horrible conditions, and a terrible incident with a lecherous human noble and several female aquaintences/yourself leaves you:

A) Hostile towards all humans
Hostile towards some humans
C) Hostile towards no humans

with your personality

A) Unaffected by the event
somewhat affected by the event (in whatever way you desire)
C) Completely affected by the event (in whatever way you desire)

Do you see what I'm doing? You aren't forced to self-insert. Create a character yourself and express that in-game.

I see myself as writing a story with my characters.

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

ninsegtari wrote...

I prefer a character. An avatar is a representation of me... I am an uninteresting couch potato. Thus, I prefer a developed character.

No you are not.

You are an elf, born in the Alienage to horrible conditions, and a terrible incident with a lecherous human noble and several female aquaintences/yourself leaves you:

A) Hostile towards all humans
Hostile towards some humans
C) Hostile towards no humans

with your personality

A) Unaffected by the event
somewhat affected by the event (in whatever way you desire)
C) Completely affected by the event (in whatever way you desire)

Do you see what I'm doing? You aren't forced to self-insert. Create a character yourself and express that in-game.

That's why I objected to the use of the word avatar in the threads initial description of the dichotomy.  Using the word correctly leads to exactly the conclusion ninsegtari reached.

I agree with you about how to play a character of our own making, but that wasn't strictly included among the OP's alternatives.

[TuringPoint]

I don't find it as entertaining to play a character that is some variation of me, rather than a character that I find relatable and dynamic in interesting ways.

It wears on me to play a character that is a neutral narrator, an actor for my choices.

I guess I've never thought about this, this way before.

Basically, I do prefer that a character I am acting through have some soul of its own.  If it tries to be me, it's either too passive for me to feel truly invested or it just feels "off," in an uncanny valley kinda way.

Modifié par Alocormin, 24 août 2013 - 06:19 .

[TuringPoint]

Well, I like Fallout games. I like Bethesda's stuff. Just not as much as the Bioware stuff where the protagonist has a bit of substance, where I can make choices through that character. I like Ubisoft? If you mean Assassin's Creed?

I liked DA:O, a lot, but the dialogue wheel does have an appeal to it, in spite of having less choice - and I liked Shepard's "auto-dialogue" for a similar reason. BG1 didn't have quite enough personality in the main character for my taste, BG2 hooked me because it had a bit more of that.

I like adventure games with a little bit of RPG.  I've come to appreciate what old-school RPG's have to offer but it's not what I prefer.

I like the idea of creating a character I can "insert" into the narrative, but that's hard to do without a DM.

Modifié par Alocormin, 24 août 2013 - 06:44 .

[Ghost43]

I think he's saying that non-voiced PC's feel like gusied up interfaces, and not people that actually exist in the world at the same level as party members, villains, npcs, etc.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Ghost43 wrote...

I think he's saying that non-voiced PC's feel like gusied up interfaces, and not people that actually exist in the world at the same level as party members, villains, npcs, etc.

The trick is to perceive them not as you perceive other characters, but as you perceive yourself.

You don't listen to what you say to find out what you've said.  You know what you're saying, because you're the one saying it.  You don't need to see your own emotional reactions to know how you feel, because you live inside your own head.

That's how it works with a player-designed PC.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The trick is to perceive them not as you perceive other characters, but as you perceive yourself. 

You don't listen to what you say to find out what you've said.

Actualy, I hear myself talk, and listen to what it sounds like as I say it. I hear my own voice. How is it possible that you dont? 

You don't need to see your own emotional reactions to know how you feel, because you live inside your own head.

I express my emotions via, inter alia, things like making faces. 

That's how it works with a player-designed PC. 

With the difference that I don't have the same perception and inputs, and most of all, I don't have the same control. The game takes that away. In return for taking away my control in an entirely unpredictable fashion that could break my character at any time, the game has to give me feedback in return about what options I have to be able to know what (and how) I want to act within reason. 

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
If you design a character whose identity is defined by his actions, sure.  

All my characters are defined by their actions, because *I* define myself by my actions.

But in DA2, it didn't matter how the character was designed - any design at all was likely to be contradicted. 

I disagree. DA2 was the first RPG I played that had the game never contradict my character on the first. The only time when my go-to option wasn't avaiable was right at the end, where my Hawke would have left Meredith and Orsino to rot in Kirkwall. 

But otherwise? No real problems. 

EntropicAngel wrote...
They don't necessarily contradict about "why." The "why" is important.

I don't make-up characters after I choose things. And sometimes the game doesn't give you in-character choices that you can't know of for hours after you've designed your character. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The trick is to perceive them not as you perceive other characters, but as you perceive yourself. 

You don't listen to what you say to find out what you've said.

Actualy, I hear myself talk, and listen to what it sounds like as I say it. I hear my own voice. How is it possible that you dont?

I don't really listen to my voice.  I know what I want to say - what would be the point in listening?  Though maybe I should - I mumble a lot.

I express my emotions via, inter alia, things like making faces.

But is that how you determine what your emotions are?

That's the difference.  With other people, you need to observe their behaviour in order to determine how they feel.  But with your own feelings, you already know those.  Your expression of those emotions comes after your awareness of them - not before.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
If you design a character whose identity is defined by his actions, sure.  

All my characters are defined by their actions, because *I* define myself by my actions.

That is, frankly, just weird.

If you were strapped down to a table, would your identity be defined by your inaction?

I define myself by my thoughts.

I disagree. DA2 was the first RPG I played that had the game never contradict my character on the first. The only time when my go-to option wasn't avaiable was right at the end, where my Hawke would have left Meredith and Orsino to rot in Kirkwall. 

But otherwise? No real problems.

DA2 paralysed me with indecision, as I had no way to know what my character's thoughts were.  That was made clear from the very first dialogue wheel event, where, based on my selection, Hawke said something character-breaking.

[Shadow Fox]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ghost43 wrote...

I think he's saying that non-voiced PC's feel like gusied up interfaces, and not people that actually exist in the world at the same level as party members, villains, npcs, etc.

The trick is to perceive them not as you perceive other characters, but as you perceive yourself.

You don't listen to what you say to find out what you've said.  You know what you're saying, because you're the one saying it.  You don't need to see your own emotional reactions to know how you feel, because you live inside your own head.

That's how it works with a player-designed PC.

And if you don't self-insert?

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
That's the difference.  With other people, you need to observe their behaviour in order to determine how they feel.  

Well, try to determine, at any rate. 

But with your own feelings, you already know those.  Your expression of those emotions comes after your awareness of them - not before.

That's not true. There are feedback mechanisms between your expression and your emotions, and there's a fair amount of research to suggest that our subjective experience of emotion is actually post hoc. 

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
If you were strapped down to a table, would your identity be defined by your inaction?

No, because there would be action - the action of trying to escape. The fighting, screaming and struggling instead of the passively waiting. 

I define myself by my thoughts.

My thoughts also define me. It's not exclusive. 

DA2 paralysed me with indecision, as I had no way to know what my character's thoughts were.  That was made clear from the very first dialogue wheel event, where, based on my selection, Hawke said something character-breaking. 

Oh, we were talking at a cross purpose. I was thinking in terms of whether DA2 better supported choices that my character would make. 

I think the dialogue wheel had a trade-off with the list, but the tone indicators gave me as good a guess as the list did in DA:O as to what effects my actions would have. And since what my character does is what matters to me, there wasn't a real difference. 

[In Exile]

EntropicAngel wrote...
I'm having a really hard time trying to understand these two sentences.  What do you mean by the first sentence? I don't think anyone does that. The funny thing is though, if the game DOES contradict the character you've made, that is exactly what you're forced to do. But I still don't understand what you're really saying.

And that second sentence...the double negative...are you saying that the game DOES give you in-character choices that you DO know of soon after you've designed your character? Is that what you're saying? I'm really unsure there.

I apologize for that garbled mess. 

For the second sentence, I meant to say that there are often situations that can come up in an RPG where the kind of character you have would take a different course than the ones the games make available to you, and then you're placed into a situation of having to come up with a "why" when there isn't any avaialble that would be consistent with your character. 

For the first sentence, I realize I didn't explain in enough detail what I was referencing. A big part of communicating is the message you're trying to get across. A lot of what you're trying to do is carried in body language and tone. Even with tone indicators and the paraphrase, you get incongruities between the option you thought you were picking and the one you got. 

[Remmirath]

I would say neither between that choice. An avatar in the world, to me, implies a situation such as you get in most first-person shooters where that's just how you've chosen to be represented, but you're not roleplaying a character. A character in their own right, on the other hand, seems to imply that it's somebody else's character and not your character, although perhaps that isn't what you meant and I could see it also meaning that they are your character.

The PC in a roleplaying game should always be just that: the player's character. A blank slate in the sense that you can write what you want upon it and shape the character completely, but not a slate that stays blank, once the player is playing the game. Their personality and actions should all be determined by the player.

I do prefer to be simply thrown into the action, as it were, and be able to figure things out about the world from what you observe going on around your character rather than have to ask a bunch of strange questions. Sometimes the questions can make some sense, and that's okay -- when you're just arriving in a new city or that kind of thing.

Sasie wrote...

The
result is more or less what I expected though, a large group of people
do seem to not mind the DA:O approch at all while I personally prefer to
roleplay a character like Hawke. A background for me does not turn a
RPG into a action adventure but just allows more chances to roleplay and
imagine different personalities from said background.

Even BG2
that is generally praised among the better RPG games of all time, in
some circles, had a set background and Planescape torment that is
praised even more has even greater restriction on what character the
player can be.

It's not the background, for me. I'm completely fine with having a background. Baldur's Gate is fine for me, Neverwinter Nights is fine, Origins is fine, even Knights of the Old Republic was fine. It's being able to create and play the character in just about whatever way you want, and in all of those games that was very possible to do.

Planescape: Torment falls into a grey area for me, because the character himself is completely predetermined, but his personality and how you play him is completely open. It's a great game, but not one I want to replay very often.

The difference to me in Dragon Age II and Mass Effect is that through a combination of the unpredictable dialogue wheel, occasional episodes of taking control of things from the player, and the voice, it's very hard to play different characters. The voice because vocal inflection is a very large part of character, and there's no way to change that and it's difficult to imagine that it's different, and the dialogue wheel because surprise dialogue is rather annoying when you're trying to pick something that your character would play.

nihiliste wrote...

The character should
absolutely be moulded by us. A little background is necessary sure, but
Hawke was not my character in any way, shape, or form and that goes
against the core of what I'm looking for in an RPG. When I played
through DA2 I rarely found myself thinking "what would I do?" but rather
"what would Hawke do?" and that is a problem.

I don't
think this is a problem at all myself. A person with Hawke's background
could turn out in many different ways and doesn't just have to be one
way or another. Personally I think we should ask ourselves what our
character would do or rather what this version of our character would
have done rather then play ourselves in a game but then different tastes
and all that. [smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/sideways.png[/smilie]

Yeah, I agree with this -- specifically, the 'what your character would do' part -- but I find that DA II makes it difficult to play the character and get them to do the things that they would want to do. Not because of the backstory, though.

Arcane Warrior Mage Hawke wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ghost43 wrote...

I think he's saying that non-voiced PC's feel like gusied up interfaces, and not people that actually exist in the world at the same level as party members, villains, npcs, etc.

The trick is to perceive them not as you perceive other characters, but as you perceive yourself.

You don't listen to what you say to find out what you've said.  You know what you're saying, because you're the one saying it.  You don't need to see your own emotional reactions to know how you feel, because you live inside your own head.

That's how it works with a player-designed PC.

And if you don't self-insert?

It can still be like that. Depends on how you roleplay. You can just react as the character instead of reacting as yourself, putting yourself in your character's shoes and all that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
If you were strapped down to a table, would your identity be defined by your inaction?

No, because there would be action - the action of trying to escape. The fighting, screaming and struggling instead of the passively waiting.

But do you have identity beyond that?  Or are you just the struggle?

My thoughts also define me. It's not exclusive.

What if the two conflict?

Oh, we were talking at a cross purpose. I was thinking in terms of whether DA2 better supported choices that my character would make.

I tend to focus on aspects of the game that are relevant across all possible characters.

I think the dialogue wheel had a trade-off with the list, but the tone indicators gave me as good a guess as the list did in DA:O as to what effects my actions would have. And since what my character does is what matters to me, there wasn't a real difference.

When you say "my actions", do you mean your actions as player in selecting the dialogue option, or do you mean your character's actions in speaking a given line?

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

For the second sentence, I meant to say that there are often situations that can come up in an RPG where the kind of character you have would take a different course than the ones the games make available to you, and then you're placed into a situation of having to come up with a "why" when there isn't any avaialble that would be consistent with your character.

I think the reason I don't have this problem is because I don't choose actions for my character until I know what the options are.

Since I also think that it is rarely if ever the case that there is only one pssible action for a given character in a given circumstance, I'm far less likely to know exactly what I want my character to do before I've seen the game's options.  If I did, I can see how that would create situations where the game doesn't offer you the choice you want.  But I also think that this is the obvious consequence of creating characters with such strong outwardly directed personalities that they need to act in specific ways given specific states of mind, so I don't really see why you would design characters like this in the first place.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 25 août 2013 - 04:43 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Arcane Warrior Mage Hawke wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Ghost43 wrote...

I think he's saying that non-voiced PC's feel like gusied up interfaces, and not people that actually exist in the world at the same level as party members, villains, npcs, etc.

The trick is to perceive them not as you perceive other characters, but as you perceive yourself.

You don't listen to what you say to find out what you've said.  You know what you're saying, because you're the one saying it.  You don't need to see your own emotional reactions to know how you feel, because you live inside your own head.

That's how it works with a player-designed PC.

And if you don't self-insert?

I don't understand the question.

I'm not saying your PC should be like you.  I'm saying that your perception of your PC should be from a perspective, relative to your PC, that is similar to the way you pervceive yourself.

So, as I mentioned, you don't need to see your own behaviour to know how you feel - you already know that.  The same should be true for your PC.  You should know how he feels without having to see any of his behaviour, because you live in your character's mnd (just as you live in yours).  The level of awareness you have of your PC's mind should mimic the level of awareness you have of your own.

This is vastly different from the level of awareness you have of the minds of other people in the real world.  You are never directly aware of the thoughts of others, but you are directly aware of your own thoughts.  Similarly, you should be directly aware of your PC's thoughts, but not the thoughts of NPCs.

it doesn't matter whether your PC's thoughts resemble your thoughts.  What matters is the separation between your character's thoughts and your perception of those thoughts.  There should be no separation at all; you should be innately aware of them, just as your are or your own.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 25 août 2013 - 04:48 .