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[EmperorSahlertz]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

Acting IS roleplaying. Roleplaying is not necesarily acting. But why is the way YOU like to roleplay any superior to how others prefer to? If you do not like the way DA is going, that is your problem, lots of people are perfectly fine with acting a given role.

But we're not given a role, nor are we free to act within it.

I'll grant that improv is roleplaying.  But even there, the actors are given guildelines to follow.  They know the constraints of the characters they are playing, and they act within those constraints.

DA2 does not tell us what our constraints are.  Nor does it let us choose what our characters say or do.  Even if we weren't free to choose what to do, as actors in a scripted play are not, they at least know what they're going to say, and can put themselves in an appropriate frame of mind.

DA2 gives you the specific constraints to the hawke character every single time you have to choose a dialogue option.

[Sylvius the Mad]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

DA2 gives you the specific constraints to the hawke character every single time you have to choose a dialogue option.

Remarkably vague constraints are the antithesis of specificity.

And those constraints aren't available early enough.  If I'm accepting a quest, I need to know now if there are any restrictions on my motives for accepting that quest.  Because later, when I'm completing the quest, I'm going to have some dialogue options which might contradict any motivation I invent now.

But if I don't invent motivation, why am I accepting the quest?  And if I'm not supposed to understand that, why am I given the option not to accept it?

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 30 janvier 2014 - 05:35 .

[CybAnt1]

Have you ever played dungeon world or apocalypse world? In both of those games, it is fully within the game masters control to tell the players what their characters does, because it is a NARRATIVE driven campaign, instead of the usual DnD CHARACTER driven campaign.

No, and thank you for warning me about them, because it sounds like they suck. I'll take a Dungeon Master over a Puppet Master any day. 

Oddly, I've played other PnP RPGs too - like Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer - and never run into GM roles encompassing such crap. 

Of course the game master can allow for the players themselves to specify what they want to say, and to a degree DA2 did that perfectly since you would have to be an absolute moron not to understand the icons, or where the conversation would go after clicking one of them.

Yes, this moron DOES know the difference between a Big Red Fist, a Blue Olive Branch, and a Purple Smiling Mask. 

What other morons appear not to get is that, like Fast Jimmy was suggesting earlier, there are lots of ways to express anger, let alone lots of things one can say while angry that will have different impacts. So in a sense, just picking "Anger" is not a sufficient clue to know what is about to come out of Hawke's mouth. 

So here's the tone and the paraphrase.

[Anger] Get out of here. 

Which could result in: 

1. [Hawke picks up a chair, smashes it over Lord Dumblebore's head, and beats his chest] "You rubbed the wrong man's rhubarb! Screaming: IF YOU WON'T GET OUT, YOU'RE LEAVING IN A BOX!" [Combat begins]

2. [Hawke looks with seething eyes and mouth at Lord Dumblebore] "I think it's time for you to leave, you sorry excuse for a noble" [Points to the door] [Dumbledore, sullen, walks out]

BTW, just picking angry and that paraphrase is equally likely to result in either scene. Both express anger. Both could result from that paraphrase. 

Modifié par CybAnt1, 30 janvier 2014 - 05:37 .

[EmperorSahlertz]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

DA2 gives you the specific constraints to the hawke character every single time you have to choose a dialogue option.

Remarkably vague constraints are the antithesis of specificity.

And those constraints aren't available early enough.  If I'm accepting a quest, I need to know now if there are any restrictions on my motives for accepting that quest.  Because later, when I'm completing the quest, I'm going to have some dialogue options which might contradict any motivation I invent now.

But if I don't invent motivation, why am I accepting the quest?  And if I'm not supposed to understand that, why am I given the option not to accept it?

Because YOU are not Hawke. Hawke barely ever specifies why he does any of the quests that he does, which leave it all up for yout vaunted head-canon, and in the few cases where he does specify it is entirely up to the player for Hawke to do so.
That the dialogue options might be contadicting your head-canon is nor something unique to DA2 and are present across ALL rpgs, so faulting DA2 for it, is just being petty.

[Sylvius the Mad]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

Because YOU are not Hawke. Hawke barely ever specifies why he does any of the quests that he does, which leave it all up for yout vaunted head-canon, and in the few cases where he does specify it is entirely up to the player for Hawke to do so.
That the dialogue options might be contadicting your head-canon is nor something unique to DA2 and are present across ALL rpgs, so faulting DA2 for it, is just being petty.

In other games, though, I can avoid the dialogue options that contradict my head-canon.  I can't do that in DA2, because the paraphrases are completely unable to tell me all of the things that a dialogue option doesn't say.

[EmperorSahlertz]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Have you ever played dungeon world or apocalypse world? In both of those games, it is fully within the game masters control to tell the players what their characters does, because it is a NARRATIVE driven campaign, instead of the usual DnD CHARACTER driven campaign.

No, and thank you for warning me about them, because it sounds like they suck. I'll take a Dungeon Master over a Puppet Master any day. 

Oddly, I've played other PnP RPGs too - like Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer - and never run into GM roles encompassing such crap. 

I did not expect you to like them. I expect you to comprehend that YOUR idea of rpg is NOT an absolute, and there are others who enjoy differnet aspects of rpgs than you.

CybAnt1 wrote...

Of course the game master can allow for the players themselves to specify what they want to say, and to a degree DA2 did that perfectly since you would have to be an absolute moron not to understand the icons, or where the conversation would go after clicking one of them.

Yes, this moron DOES know the difference between a Big Red Fist, a Blue Olive Branch, and a Purple Smiling Mask. 

What other morons appear not to get is that, like Fast Jimmy was suggesting earlier, there are lots of ways to express anger, let alone lots of things one can say while angry that will have different impacts. So in a sense, just picking "Anger" is not a sufficient clue to know what is about to come out of Hawke's mouth. 

So here's the tone and the paraphrase.

[Anger] Get out of here. 

Which could result in: 

1. [Hawke picks up a chair, smashes it over Lord Dumblebore's head, and beats his chest] "You rubbed the wrong man's rhubarb! Screaming: IF YOU WON'T GET OUT, YOU'RE LEAVING IN A BOX!" [Combat begins]

2. [Hawke looks with seething eyes and mouth at Lord Dumblebore] "I think it's time for you to leave, you sorry excuse for a noble" [Points to the door] [Dumbledore, sullen, walks out]

BTW, just picking angry and that paraphrase is equally likely to result in either scene. Both express anger. Both could result from that paraphrase. 

And yet again you exagerate to a ridiculous amount.

[Sylvius the Mad]

TipsLeFedora wrote...

Would you categorize death as a penalization in a game system syvluis?

In a game, perhaps.  But in an RPG?  No.  Especially if it's the result of my choices.

I want my choices to have consequences.  Death is a consequence.

I had a Warden who died in Haven when Sten killed him, and I deemed that a perfectly acceptable end to that Warden's story.  It made sense that he would die there.

I had another Warden who died when Shale killed him.  He never understood why she wouldn't let him save the Anvil of the Void.

In each case, my response was to start a different character, as those playthroughs were complete.

An RPG is not a game.  It is a toy.  It is not something you play, it is something you play with.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 30 janvier 2014 - 05:50 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

TipsLeFedora wrote...

I guess we have two different opinions. I see roleplaying games as game systems first rather than worlds that we live in. I will stop here

We don't live in them.  Our characters do.

Roleplaying, to me, involves perceiving a game world through our character's eyes.  And from my character's point of view, the world in which he lives is exactly that - a world.

[KaiserShep]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Yes, this moron DOES know the difference between a Big Red Fist, a Blue Olive Branch, and a Purple Smiling Mask. 

What other morons appear not to get is that, like Fast Jimmy was suggesting earlier, there are lots of ways to express anger, let alone lots of things one can say while angry that will have different impacts. So in a sense, just picking "Anger" is not a sufficient clue to know what is about to come out of Hawke's mouth. 

So here's the tone and the paraphrase.

[Anger] Get out of here. 

Which could result in: 

1. [Hawke picks up a chair, smashes it over Lord Dumblebore's head, and beats his chest] "You rubbed the wrong man's rhubarb! Screaming: IF YOU WON'T GET OUT, YOU'RE LEAVING IN A BOX!" [Combat begins]

2. [Hawke looks with seething eyes and mouth at Lord Dumblebore] "I think it's time for you to leave, you sorry excuse for a noble" [Points to the door] [Dumbledore, sullen, walks out]

BTW, just picking angry and that paraphrase is equally likely to result in either scene. Both express anger. Both could result from that paraphrase.

It's interesting how a gripe against this design is based on an example that doesn't actually exist. This is only a potential issue with the paraphrase system, but not one that may necessarily happen if the devs are careful. Please find me an example in the dialogue wheel where such a thing happens, because I cannot recall any wheel option that results in Hawke making the first move without a clear indication that this action will take place. For example, when you meet that Dwarf Javaris Tintop, it's clear which option actually results in his death. This is not something that comes out of nowhere. If you can actually find a real example of an angry option that doesn't result in anything more than the opponent making the first move, I'd like to see it, because I'm coming up blank.

[CybAnt1]

Tell you what, as it is very hard to get dialogue out of the game and into an example I can type here, especially as it would require transcription; I'll do something different.

Let me repost something from a Dragon Age Wiki Discussion, because I think it's a very interesting idea.

http://dragonage.wik..._dialogue_wheel

While I must admit that I'm among the minority who actually prefer the silent protagonist of Origins, my problem with the wheel is not that it exists, or even that it exists in Dragon Age - it's an elegant mechanic for choosing from a list of dialogue options. My problem is that the presentation of those options is often constrictive and unhelpful for character development. DA2's frustrating paraphrases and "press here for a root" romancing have both been discussed at length and are both relatively minor fixes so I'll leave them aside and instead focus on the underlying structure of the wheel. For me, the single biggest issue I found was that by tying responses to a personality type, Bioware conflated the tone with the content. This results in the frustrating situation where Hawke often has to switch personalities in order to say what he wants - an obvious example of this is that the only way for Hawke to express his disapproval of Anders being an abomination is with the angry "Raaaa templars are right mages are evil" option, even if he's an otherwise ardent mage supporter (or even a mage himself). Similarly, Hawke can't politely disagree with Merril over blood magic: if he's friendly, he's completely on board and if he disapproves he has to be a total arse about it. There is a simple solution to this, and it's irritating to think that it hasn't occurred to Bioware before - just separate the personality type and the message. All that need change about the wheel is that in the first stage of a response there's simply a "tone" button (tied to personality, colour-coded if need be) followed by the options of what to actually say. If that's too cumbersome, they could always just have more than three options on the wheel....but I do realise that may be considered sacrilege at Bioware.

[end]

This to me is a brilliant idea, a head-slapping "why not do it this way?"

Let us pick the tone icon, then give us three different content possibilities from that tone.

Tone and content aren't the same thing; why does every tone have to be linked to one possible content expressed in it?

Anyway, read through the Wiki, and they give some examples of concrete frustrations.

Modifié par CybAnt1, 30 janvier 2014 - 06:13 .

[EmperorSahlertz]

Because then every single line, from the character with the most lines, would have to be recorded three different times. The cost would be extreme, with little gain.

Modifié par EmperorSahlertz, 30 janvier 2014 - 06:19 .

[CybAnt1]

Emperor, you're wearing no clothes.

I just want you to answer two questions for me.

1. Are tone and content the same thing? In any plane of existence, is what you want to say and how you want to say it the same thing?

2. Given that, why does DA2 treat tone and content as the same thing? Why not let us choose tone, then content?

This is the logical, please-everybody solution.

[KaiserShep]

I'm curious as to how such a design would work in-game. How would the player select these two things as the dialogue progresses? Would it be something like "[angrily] close the door" as opposed to "[politely] close the door."? It seems logical to assume that determining different tones for the same sentences would still result in more lines of recording.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 30 janvier 2014 - 06:41 .

[Lord Watson]

I'm not too against having paraphrased lines, assuming the paraphrasing is appropriate. A calmy spoken "that wasn't very nice" should not read "YOU'RE A MONSTER!!!!".

I'd like to have some kind of icon or descriptor for the tone of a given dialogue. I'd prefer a descriptor like rude/excited/cheeky in parentheses to an icon, myself. Either is better than no kind of notation. While I don't think tone and content are the same, the way you say something is important. For some people the tone is more important.

I'd be fine if they'd just make the paraphrase close to the intended dialogue. Some of them are head scratchers at best.

[Lotion Soronarr]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

CybAnt1 wrote...

Have you ever played dungeon world or apocalypse world? In both of those games, it is fully within the game masters control to tell the players what their characters does, because it is a NARRATIVE driven campaign, instead of the usual DnD CHARACTER driven campaign.

No, and thank you for warning me about them, because it sounds like they suck. I'll take a Dungeon Master over a Puppet Master any day. 

Oddly, I've played other PnP RPGs too - like Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer - and never run into GM roles encompassing such crap. 

I did not expect you to like them. I expect you to comprehend that YOUR idea of rpg is NOT an absolute, and there are others who enjoy differnet aspects of rpgs than you.

Empeoror, I'm usually on your side in any debate, but I cannot call that an RPG by any definition known to me.

Actually I guess I could, but the term RPG then cases to have any meanining whatsoever. Pretty much anything these days is labeled as RPG anyway, so I guess the word has already lost all meaning.

[ianvillan]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Well, of COURSE the problem isn't paraphrasing. ME had it, so it must work fine for every other IP that wants to call itself an RPG, right?

It has to be the dialogue icons. We don't just need diamond, we need ruby, emerald and sapphire. THAT will solve the problem of players not having any idea what their character will say.

As you can tell, it's a subject that irks me. The assumption to say players don't understand why they don't like something when they can go into great detail and specifics on why they don't like it is, to me, a form of arrogance that I don't find appealing in the least. And was quite abundant in the post-DA2 and ME3 days.

Fans have constantly complained about the paraphrasing since ME and Bioware have constantly said they have heard the complaints and will make the paraphrasing better for the next game.

Before DA2 was released and we were told that their would be a wheel and paraphrasing there was a lot of worried fans talking about the problems the wheel causes and not understanding what you would get with the paraphrasing, Bioware said they had looked at ME and saw the problems with that so they would introduce the icons so we would not have the problems.

Yet fans are still having problems with the paraphrasing and are worried about not being able to understand what we say, Bioware still comes out and says the same thing they have said for years about the paraphrasing that they know their is problems and that they will fix it.

I have to wonder if their is a problem with the wheel itself because Bioware says they will make it better yet it stays the same game after game, If after 4 games you still have the same problems that your fans complained about and your solutions have made some of it worse then I would say that their is a fundamental problem with the feature you have.

[Mirrman70]

I'm just going to go out and say it. I have never been shocked, angry or disappointed with the results of my choices with the wheel. I feel like the biggest problem is for the people that nitpick over the exact phrasing of the dialogue versus the option given. by the time I got to the end of Act 1 in my first playthrough I felt as though I had figured out what Hawke was going to say based on what the wheel said was the feel. I didn't like however that the overall personality of my Hawk was based on which option I picked the most of in each Act, I wanted a more blended personality.

[CybAnt1]

Actually I guess I could, but the term RPG then cases to have any meanining whatsoever. Pretty much anything these days is labeled as RPG anyway, so I guess the word has already lost all meaning.

... This ^^^^

Look, somewhere in Off Topic, there's a thread running "What's a game?" That might be a more fundamental issue than "what's an RPG?"

Let me humbly bring that topic here. There are movies and books, and then there are games. What's the difference? A game is an interactive experience. You participate, somehow, in the control of entities within the game. 

A game that reduces your interactivity in the name of "narrative" has IMHO become closer to a book or a movie, and less of a game. I won't say it's lost its "gameyness" but it is reduced. There's no two ways around it. 

When we go from knowing what we are going to say to just having an approximate guess, so that we can just be used in a scene, well, fine, that IMHO is a movement from participant to puppet. I don't want to watch Hawke do what he does - I want to be him, and determine his actions. Not be, like everything else, a prop piece in a narrative. 

The funny thing is, I guarantee if this was done with combat, people would howl; some of the same who think this works with dialogue. Let's say instead of you being able to exactly determine Hawke's actions in battle, it's left to the AI. In fact, all you do is pick an AI stance, right? Offensive, Defensive, Ranged. Why do you really need to exactly determine what he's going to do. Control freak. Just pick a stance, and let the stance and the AI determine the results. 

(P.S. I know you have the option to do this already. Some may do it that way. Not criticizing them, maybe they just hate combat and want it over. I would criticize it being forced on you.)

In fact, all we would have to do is just keep hitting the space bar, to keep the flow going, like in certain non-interactive digital comic books. 

Glorious. 

If I want to just watch a story unfold, there are lots of other media for that. In a game, I want interactivity with the narrative, and control over my character within it. 

[abnocte]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...
*snip*
 You should imagine the three dialogue wheel options as three lines the director would present you, allowing you to choose in which direction Hawke would go, but the director as always have the final say in what the character says.

I felt more like a director that is told to direct a movie without reading the script first and when s/he is about to start discovers that the script consists only of " [tone] <Up to de actor>" lines...

[Ieldra]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

CybAnt1 wrote...

Have you ever played dungeon world or apocalypse world? In both of those games, it is fully within the game masters control to tell the players what their characters does, because it is a NARRATIVE driven campaign, instead of the usual DnD CHARACTER driven campaign.

No, and thank you for warning me about them, because it sounds like they suck. I'll take a Dungeon Master over a Puppet Master any day. 

Oddly, I've played other PnP RPGs too - like Call of Cthulhu, and Stormbringer - and never run into GM roles encompassing such crap. 

I did not expect you to like them. I expect you to comprehend that YOUR idea of rpg is NOT an absolute, and there are others who enjoy differnet aspects of rpgs than you.

Empeoror, I'm usually on your side in any debate, but I cannot call that an RPG by any definition known to me.

Actually I guess I could, but the term RPG then cases to have any meanining whatsoever. Pretty much anything these days is labeled as RPG anyway, so I guess the word has already lost all meaning.

Meanwhile, I rarely agree with you in anything, but this is exactly what I wanted to say.

[Mirrman70]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Actually I guess I could, but the term RPG then cases to have any meanining whatsoever. Pretty much anything these days is labeled as RPG anyway, so I guess the word has already lost all meaning.

... This ^^^^

Look, somewhere in Off Topic, there's a thread running "What's a game?" That might be a more fundamental issue than "what's an RPG?"

Let me humbly bring that topic here. There are movies and books, and then there are games. What's the difference? A game is an interactive experience. You participate, somehow, in the control of entities within the game. 

A game that reduces your interactivity in the name of "narrative" has IMHO become closer to a book or a movie, and less of a game. I won't say it's lost its "gameyness" but it is reduced. There's no two ways around it. 

When we go from knowing what we are going to say to just having an approximate guess, so that we can just be used in a scene, well, fine, that IMHO is a movement from participant to puppet. I don't want to watch Hawke do what he does - I want to be him, and determine his actions. Not be, like everything else, a prop piece in a narrative. 

The funny thing is, I guarantee if this was done with combat, people would howl; some of the same who think this works with dialogue. Let's say instead of you being able to exactly determine Hawke's actions in battle, it's left to the AI. In fact, all you do is pick an AI stance, right? Offensive, Defensive, Ranged. Why do you really need to exactly determine what he's going to do. Control freak. Just pick a stance, and let the stance and the AI determine the results. 

(P.S. I know you have the option to do this already. Some may do it that way. Not criticizing them, maybe they just hate combat and want it over. I would criticize it being forced on you.)

In fact, all we would have to do is just keep hitting the space bar, to keep the flow going, like in certain non-interactive digital comic books. 

Glorious. 

If I want to just watch a story unfold, there are lots of other media for that. In a game, I want interactivity with the narrative, and control over my character within it. 

You sure as hell couldn't control the story of Super Mario Bros. but that is one of the most iconic game series of all time. a video game is simply defined as a type of game where you control images on a screen. a simple unspecified game is defined as an amusement or pastime.

as long as it falls within those parameters it can be safely called a videogame. an RPG stands for Role-playing Game which I think is a bit of a misnomer in all cases with almost all video games and I believe they should be instead be called Role-Playing Videogame which isn't all that different but implies a lot more, Videogames are limited to what can be progammed into them which is limited further by budgets and skill of progammers. the amount of time, money and skill it would take to create a true roleplaying experience (think any variation of DnD as well as the inclusion of Sci-fi) would make the production of such a game a monumentally difficult and expensive task. now before you start throwing game titles at me remember this, there has never been a game where you possess complete control of you characters actions, goals, morals. virtually all games have a background story at the least that limits your options and thus you are unable to have true freedom with your ingame decisions.

Modifié par Mirrman70, 30 janvier 2014 - 01:57 .

[CybAnt1]

You sure as hell couldn't control the story of Super Mario Bros. but that is one of the most iconic game series of all time. 

Well, of course, the problem comes from when we move from discussion 1, "what is a game," to discussion 2, "what is an RPG," and of course discussion 3 is "what is a CRPG". RPGs had a definition before Ultima, Wizardry, and Temple of Apshai were written. From day one, the problem with discussion 3 is how to replicate those features in play on a computer. There were always tradeoffs. 

Some might argue - and I might mostly agree - there were nothing much but dungeon crawlers until Fallout came along. Fallout was the first attempt to bring "true" roleplaying into the CRPG genre. There were games before that gave you dialogue choices, but not really ones that were ... consequential, in the way we think of that today. 

Let me put it this way, Mario didn't on his own jump over barrels, climb vines, or ladders. You guided him where he jumped and got coins, or kicked over turtles and stomped mushroom men. You controlled him. That's what made it a game. 

Modifié par CybAnt1, 30 janvier 2014 - 02:04 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Wow... the subject of this thread has wandered from the Dialogue Wheel, to "what is an RPG?" to "what is a video game?"

This thread is going no place but closed.