208 réponses à ce sujet

[Ieldra]

Let me clarify: I don't have a problem with the wheel itself, only with paraphrasing, and that will hopefully cease to be a problem in DAI. I'm fine with what I've seen. This is not a complaint post.

Edit:
Since it was recently clarified that the hover-over text only clarifies actions but doesn't give us the full content of what we're going to say, as of now this IS a complaint thread. As long as I don't know what my character is going to say in a more specific sense, I will not leave this issue alone.


But in a more general sense I'm curious. From this player's point of view, the wheel has inferior utility compared to a simple list to select from. Sure, the number of choices isn't necessarily limited since the options can be spread over several hubs, but we already had "investigation hubs" in all but name in the list interface, and having the wheel at the center of the screen necessitates the paraphrasing, which means a huge loss in player agency. So why was this dialogue tool introduced to replace the more intuitive list interface in the first place? 

Modifié par Ieldra2, 06 septembre 2013 - 11:07 .

[Wulfram]

Paraphrasing isn't a consequence of the wheel, it's a consequence of the voiced protagonist.

Though I don't really get the advantage of the wheel either. I tend to assume it works better with a controller or something.

[thats1evildude]

Your mileage may vary on how "intuitive" the list was. I found it to be about the same between both games, but by isolating the 'investigate' options, there was less chance of accidentally advancing the conversation.

But the biggest reason for going to the wheel was so that icons reflecting the tone of dialogue options could be better displayed.

Modifié par thats1evildude, 05 septembre 2013 - 10:15 .

[Flamingdropbear]

The wheel is a concession for people playing on a game pad, you can quickly pick options without scrolling through a list Of options, and theoretically reducing the chance of picking the wrong dialogue choice.

[Maiden Crowe]

Good question, I would assume the dialogue wheel was introduced because it allows for quicker selection of dialogue options for a joystick control scheme in order to keep dialogue flowing and play out more like a scene from a movie. The paraphrasing also allows the player to read dialogue options quicker so the NPCs and your character don't stand around for long periods of time with a blank look on their face waiting for the player to read through every dialogue option and finally select one to keep the conversation moving.

That is at least what I think the theory was.

[Kidd]

This is from what I remember hearing.

Paraphrasing:
To make sure that you don't read a line and then have a voice actor read you what your inner voice already read the moment before. (that's a lot of "read" in one sentence!) It gets very monotonous, leads to skipped lines and also removes the ability of the player to laugh at "their own" jokes. After all, if you've read the joke already, you won't find it very funny when the actor says it. But if you know what the joke entails from the paraphrase and then get to hear it in its entirety, you'll laugh.

Wheel:
It's simply a better design for mouse and controller input devices. With mouse and controllers alike you can highlight options much quicker and with more precision than going through a long, vertical list. Read more on pie menus here.

Modifié par KiddDaBeauty, 05 septembre 2013 - 10:14 .

[Ieldra]

Wulfram wrote...
Paraphrasing isn't a consequence of the wheel, it's a consequence of the voiced protagonist.

I don't see any necessary connection..

Edit:
Kidd has answered that. I''ll reply there.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 05 septembre 2013 - 10:28 .

[Ieldra]

thats1evildude wrote...
But the biggest reason for going to the wheel was so that icons reflecting the tone of dialogue options could be better displayed.

The ME games don't have that, and they had the wheel first.

[Ieldra]

KiddDaBeauty wrote...
Paraphrasing:
To make sure that you don't read a line and then have a voice actor read you what your inner voice already read the moment before. (that's a lot of "read" in one sentence!) It gets very monotonous, leads to skipped lines and also removes the ability of the player to laugh at "their own" jokes. After all, if you've read the joke already, you won't find it very funny when the actor says it. But if you know what the joke entails from the paraphrase and then get to hear it in its entirety, you'll laugh.

I find this a very theoretical rationale since paraphrasing comes at the price of not knowing what you're going to say. That's a huge loss in player agency since there's always information loss when creating a paraphrase from the actual line, and as all games which use the wheel have proven, sometimes this information loss is critical for your roleplaying and the characterization of your protagonist. I also suspect that with the way game development works, inconsistencies between the paraphrases and the actual lines are an endemic problem. Also, why would I want to laugh at my own jokes? It's my character, I want to know which jokes I can make before I choose to make them.

Wheel:
It's simply a better design for mouse and controller input devices. With mouse and controllers alike you can highlight options much quicker and with more precision than going through a long, vertical list. Read more on pie menus here.

Since I never use a controller, I guess I'll have to take that at face value, but having recently played FO:NV, personally I can't see that much improvement when using a mouse.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 05 septembre 2013 - 10:44 .

[Lucazzy]

The wheel was designed in the original Mass Effect to make dialogue flow better and make the game feel more cinematic. Selecting from a list takes time to read everything and breaks the flow of a dramatic discussion with an NPC. There's nothing wrong with that type of system, but BioWare was going for cinematic storytelling with the ME trilogy.

The wheel is simple and easy. Read through everything quickly, select your choice, all before the NPC has finished his current line. Keeps things flowing like an interactive movie.

[Ieldra]

Lucazzy wrote...
The wheel was designed in the original Mass Effect to make dialogue flow better and make the game feel more cinematic. Selecting from a list takes time to read everything and breaks the flow of a dramatic discussion with an NPC. There's nothing wrong with that type of system, but BioWare was going for cinematic storytelling with the ME trilogy.

The wheel is simple and easy. Read through everything quickly, select your choice, all before the NPC has finished his current line. Keeps things flowing like an interactive movie.

Well, that "time-saving" aspect didn't work so well for me. Overall, the time I spent agonizing about which options would be least likely to result in character derailment was significantly longer than it would've taken to read everything spoken (granted, I do read fast). Also, I often avoided perfectly reasonable Renegade options because the paraphrase looked as if I would be a jerk. The system conditions you to risk avoidance, which tends to result in choosing the most bland option available.

While selection on the wheel is indeed fast (well, no improvement for me but neither is it slower and I can see why it would work better with a controller), the paraphrasing system is good for impulsive players who neither think or care much about what they're going to say except in the broadest possible sense, but not so good for everyone else.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 05 septembre 2013 - 11:30 .

[Sidney]

Ieldra2 wrote...

The system is good for impulsive players who neither think or care much about what they're going to say except in the broadest possible sense, but not so good for everyone else.

People say this, and I assume they  think they mean it.

You ONLY select what you are going to say in the broadest sense no matter what the dialog selection is because the system doesn't give you - in DAO, BG or Deus Ex - more than one way to say any given dialog option. In other words most dialogs boil down to : Yes, No, Maybe, Investigate. There is one yes, one no, one maybe and one investigate. It doesn't matter how much prose they toss on the screen you can't chnage the fundamental results of the dialog so if you do want to help the dirty peasant the text doesn't matter because you are going to select option 1) in the menu.  

Now, if someone had a rich and deep system that allowed me to pick from several ways to say yes that might reflect my character more than the written out dialog options I'd be all for that but given that they don't...well there is no difference between the wheel and the wall of text.

[Plaintiff]

From this player's point of view, the wheel has inferior utility compared to a simple list to select from.

The list has far less utility than the wheel, and this has been objectively demonstrated, many times, by the developers.

Sure, the number of choices isn't necessarily limited since the options can be spread over several hubs, but we already had "investigation hubs" in all but name in the list interface,

If you call the occasional question a "hub", then sure.

and having the wheel at the center of the screen necessitates the paraphrasing, which means a huge loss in player agency.

And not knowing the intended tone of a line of dialogue isn't a huge loss in agency? Frankly, I think knowing whether or not my character is being sarcastic or sincere is way more important than merely knowing the specific combination of words that he uses to communicate that feeling.

So why was this dialogue tool introduced to replace the more intuitive list interface in the first place?

I don't find the list "more intuitive" at all. It had less space. There was no way to read intent (and don't tell me you could infer your own intent, Bioware has explicitly stated that they don't write the dialogue that way). And as for the "investigate hub" in DA:O, mixing questions in with progression options (which were often phrased as questions) made it difficult to tell which was which. I would often progress a quest when I wasn't ready to, or get stuck in more interminable dialogue when I was trying to move on.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 05 septembre 2013 - 11:39 .

[Ieldra]

Sidney wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

The system is good for impulsive players who neither think or care much about what they're going to say except in the broadest possible sense, but not so good for everyone else.

People say this, and I assume they  think they mean it.

You ONLY select what you are going to say in the broadest sense no matter what the dialog selection is because the system doesn't give you - in DAO, BG or Deus Ex - more than one way to say any given dialog option. In other words most dialogs boil down to : Yes, No, Maybe, Investigate. There is one yes, one no, one maybe and one investigate. It doesn't matter how much prose they toss on the screen you can't chnage the fundamental results of the dialog so if you do want to help the dirty peasant the text doesn't matter because you are going to select option 1) in the menu.  

Now, if someone had a rich and deep system that allowed me to pick from several ways to say yes that might reflect my character more than the written out dialog options I'd be all for that but given that they don't...well there is no difference between the wheel and the wall of text.

That (bolded part) is simply wrong.

How you say things matter, maybe not for the story, but for you. Let me repeat my favorite example: at the end of DA2's Act 2, if you played your cards right, Isabela comes back carrying the Tome of Koslun. There is a conversation where you have the opportunity to voice your opinion about what she did. The top right paraphrase is "I'm glad you came back". When you select this option, Hawke says something like "Good you did the right thing." 

Poof. I am catapulted out of the world and out of my character because the spoken line, while being compatible with the paraphrase, expresses significantly more than that: a moral stance, and one which I most emphatically do not share. I want to say something appreciative and shared the sentiment expressed by the paraphrase, but had I known what the spoken line was, I'd have avoided it like the plague and selected the middle option instead. 

This is an extreme example, but there is always information loss when you paraphrase something. In order to avoid such effects, either the spoken lines need to be as information-poor as the paraphrase, which reduces the possible richness of dialogue, or the label on the wheel needs to contain as much information as the spoken line.

So, yes, I repeat: the system works well only if you don't care much about effects as the one I have described, i.e. don't care about significant implications of what you're going to say, those things that have no effect on the story but significant effect on the characterization of your protagonist.  

Modifié par Ieldra2, 05 septembre 2013 - 11:48 .

[d4eaming]

^what Plaintiff said.

No, I don't feel like I lost any "agency" at all with the wheel, and the options made more sense, and I knew the intended tone of my options. Also, people that like the wheel do, in fact, actually care what and how their character responds, and aren't necessarily "impulsive". DAO's lines of texts obfuscated the tone and intention of the lines I could choose from. I am picking a line rather blindly, much like people who complain about the wheel think they are, but with a wheel, I can pick the tone and intention too, while with a line of text, I have no obvious way to know how the choice is supposed to come across, and often the NPCs react to the dialogue in ways that made no sense based on what I *thought* the line of text was supposed to mean.

I much, much prefer the wheel, full stop.

[Sidney]

Ieldra2 wrote...
How you say things matter, maybe not for the story, but for you. Let me repeat my favorite example: at the end of DA2's Act 2, if you played your cards right, Isabela comes back carrying the Tome of Koslun. There is a conversation where you have the opportunity to voice your opinion about what she did. The top right paraphrase is "I'm glad you came back". When you select this option, Hawke says something like "Good you did the right thing." 

Poof. I am catapulted out of the world and out of my character because the spoken line, while being compatible with the paraphrase, expresses significantly more than that: a moral stance, and one which I most emphatically do not share. I want to say something appreciative and shared the sentiment expressed by the paraphrase, but had I known what the spoken line was, I'd have avoided it like the plague and selected the middle option instead.

Ok here is my counter to that. In the wall of text world in Redcliffe you are given the option to help or not help the villagers. Morrigan confronts you about it, your options are: 1. We must help them they are in trouble or 2. Screw 'em.

Poof. I am catapulted out of the world and out of my character because the written line assumes I want to help dirty peasants and I can't pick the actual dialog I want which is "We must help them because we need a powerful ally to help us in our quest"....but am I really dumb enough to pass up the aid or the Arl because of crummy dialog options? No and before you bust ouot your role playing card a means to an end character wouldn't walk away from a better end like that. I reluctantly pick option 1 and lose points with my favorite NPC. There's an outcome that hurts both my sense of my character AND my gameplay.

The point being the problems with dialog not being germaine to your character isn't an issue of the wheel OR the wall o text. It is a function of someone else writing your dialog at all - spoken or not - and the limited number of choices for your to make. The problem is the dialog is never likely what you, the player, want your player character to say because you are not the one saying it.

[d4eaming]

Please stop telling us how we feel about the wheel, i.e. that we don't care. That is really ****ing obnoxious.

[Sidney]

d4eaming wrote...

DAO's lines of texts obfuscated the tone and intention of the lines I could choose from..

Good example here was that I read the "I like shoes" option in DAO during the converation with Leliana as a sarcastic option (it had to be right?) and when she responds in a positive way (short the imagine she's an idiot that doesn't get tone idea) that is a whiff by the wall of text.

[d4eaming]

Sidney wrote...

d4eaming wrote...

DAO's lines of texts obfuscated the tone and intention of the lines I could choose from..

Good example here was that I read the "I like shoes" option in DAO during the converation with Leliana as a sarcastic option (it had to be right?) and when she responds in a positive way (short the imagine she's an idiot that doesn't get tone idea) that is a whiff by the wall of text.

When my character finds out about Alistair being a half-blooded prince, I picked the option "so you're a royal bastard?" expecting it to be insulting- Alistair sort of giggled and smiled "haha yeah, yeah, I guess you could say that!" and says something about using that line later.

So, dialogue wheel haters- poof, there, my character just did something out of his nature because there was absolutely no way, whatsoever, to infer it was a joke and not an insult. At least if the line had been purple, I'd have known in advance what to expect.

Also, I despise it when people say "well they just misunderstood you, people do that in real life all the time!" Everyone does? Every time I open my mouth, all of my acquaintances and friends misunderstand every last thing I say? ...no. That's stupid.

Modifié par d4eaming, 05 septembre 2013 - 12:05 .

[wright1978]

I assume the wheel replaced list because of its advantages in terms of dialogue flow. The same reason auto-dialogue replaced the wheel in ME3 sadly. I agree that wheel is imperfect and results in roleplayers like myself having to save regularly and reload when i come across voiced contents that don't match in major regards. In the recent Gameinformer discussions i listened to they seemed to talk about the wheel not being the final evolution of dialogue and that new innovations being cosnidered for future.

[Neon Rising Winter]

I find the wheel makes it easier for me to navigate the conversational options, so it's fair to say that there's at least one person here who has pretty much the same complaint about the list of text that you have about the wheel!

I think it's primarily because of the use of position on the wheel to convey further information about the nature of a dialogue choice. i.e. will this end the dialogue or move me onto the next phase of it or will it at some stage return me to make further
choices from the current options. With the list I get lost, start to feel like I'm roleplaying an inefficient search algorithm, and wind up exiting conversations convinced I missed something.

Add to that paraphrasing doesn't give me half the problems some people run into, and I'm not a fan of the great big wall of text visual effect of a list (and avoiding that necessitates paraphrasing), and the wheel ticks a lot of buttons for me.

I suspect part of it is simply differences in how people visualise things. Ask a group of people to plan a task and some will create a to do list, some will create a timeline, some will go all mind mapping on you and sketch it out. Some will add lots of notes, some just put in a few keywords. Different things are comfortable for different people.

Modifié par Narrow Margin, 05 septembre 2013 - 12:21 .

[Ieldra]

@Plaintiff:
Arranging the options on a wheel can be said to have added utility, since placement on the wheel could be used to indicate things which wasn't possible to indicate in the list. When I speak of the loss of utility, there is the minor aspect that it's easier to select from one list than to use several hubs for the same number of options, but mostly that loss lies in the paraphrasing. I've given an example in the post above about how the loss of information about what you're going to say can catapult you out of the world and necessitates a reload unless you want to continue with a character you can't identify with anymore. I'd call that a severe loss of utility.

[Neon Rising Winter]

Ignore the double post!

Modifié par Narrow Margin, 05 septembre 2013 - 12:23 .

[Maiden Crowe]

Plaintiff wrote...

From this player's point of view, the wheel has inferior utility compared to a simple list to select from.

The list has far less utility than the wheel, and this has been objectively demonstrated, many times, by the developers.

How so?

[Monochrome Wench]

I think the reason for the dialog wheel was so it would be slightly easier for console players to use.