37 réponses à ce sujet

[David Gaider]

Just wondering. 

 

The implication being what, precisely? Do please inform me.

[John Epler]

Our focus tests tend to have a fairly wide variety of viewpoints and perspectives represented in them. We can't get every single viewpoint, obviously, but we do try to bring in as many different people as we can.

 

Beyond that, not much I can really comment on. As for the groupthink post - you're welcome to believe whatever you want, but I've been in enough lively debates and arguments that I'm pretty comfortable saying that isn't an issue.

[John Epler]

It's not adversarial.

 

 

There are some stark realities in game development. Sharing them is not adversarial.

 

What -does- raise my hackles a bit is the suggestion that the only reason we aren't doing something is because we're not listening/we haven't done our research.

 

That's not to say it never happens, but the default assumption that if we'd bother to do our job we'd realize that option X is the -right- option suggests that others have wrong opinions and we should disregard them.

 

We do take all feedback, and we read and consider it. We may not always do what people want with it, but there are a variety of reasons for that. Sharing one's opinion is fine. Sharing one's opinion and then pushing it with 'well if you guys just LISTENED' is where things get confrontational. 

 

For what it's worth, I didn't take fchopin's post as adversarial or confrontational, though as I mentioned, I do find the 'lots of people' argument to be a little odd. Unless you have actual numbers, it's usually best to avoid it.

[Allan Schumacher]

Stating that the heart icon always leads to advancing the romance in a positive way IS useful feedback too.  I mean, we did use it in a "fail case" with people like Varric and Aveline, but we could utilize it in different ways.  Maybe it's an inappropriate time to flirt, or other things.  I do think that the idea that it isn't always ideal is a useful one.

 

It says to me that we need to make it clearer that the icons depict your intentions with the line, rather than a predictor of the results.  This can be done by ensuring that the results the player may expect don't always happen.  So we could have icons to suggest that this is a line that attempts to woo the character, but sometimes it doesn't work out in a good way.

 

Or we could try other stuff for romances altogether?  At this point the discussion has gone more philosophical (which is interesting).

[Allan Schumacher]

I do think it would be interesting to do--in a dialogue mechanic sense...to choose an initial selection indicating the next lines of the conversation would be in that tone:

 

That's very similar to the way I was thinking too, actually.  I haven't given it a whole lot of thought, though, and there could be potential confusion.  The type of stuff that would need some eyes from devs with a stake in this to ensure it didn't possibly make things worse, but on the surface it seems interesting.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think that's the real problems with the tone icons.  I'm quite disappointed that BioWare decided to keep them, or at least didn't adjust them to mean intent rather than outcome.

 

Where did you get this impression?

 

Note, that some of the icons, like the crossing swords, make sense for predicting a fight, since it'd be Hawke starting the fight.

 

I'm not sure I'm convinced that the tone indicators were accurate predictors of outcomes, however.  The situation becomes muddied, however, with the dominant tone system too.  For instance, being aggressive to the timid guardsman isn't a predictor of intimidating him, since it's only successful if the dominant tone is aggressive.  Otherwise it just leads to a fight.

 

I'd concede a point with the heart icons, but only with the caveat of not acknowledging the situations where it doesn't work (Aveline and Varric).

[Allan Schumacher]

Allan, now i see your post above mine. I assure you some people dont want to know, that if they say something it will lead to a fight.

 

If the player wants to start a fight, then I disagree.

 

It's equivalent to the old [Attack] lines (and in fact I think sometimes that's what the paraphrase would sometimes say).  Sometimes the player wants to instigate a fight.  It makes sense for that to lead to combat, and the icon serves as a useful tool for informing players that want to fight that this dialogue response leads to a fight.

 

 

 

If i dont want to start fight, because i am on low hp and have wrong companions, i will definetely pick the other line, when i see crossed swords. But this is not fun imo. Fun for my opinion is being reckless and saying bold things, trying to scare people and end up fighting, when i am in no shape to fight.

 

There's nothing saying that the standard tones can't still lead to a fight (are people suggesting that this didn't happen in DA2?).

 

 

 

 

I refuse to believe two days is much time,

 

It's not much time.  It's just that there's A WHOLE LOT OF THINGS to do.  There's thousands of days of stuff we'd love to have in the game, that simply won't make it into the game because it's already cut.

 

Especially at this point in the development, spending two days on this means not spending two days on something else.  But you have no perspective on what any of that "something else" is.  If we were to magically conjure up two days of spare time, would it be better to spend that time on this, or would it maybe be better to spend it on something like the ability to pause during conversation/cutscenes?  (my vote would be for the latter)

 

That's of course hoping that nothing that we deem essential to the game doesn't have difficulties.  I mean, we had to completely engineer solutions that the Frostbite engine a and tools didn't support, in order to establish workflows for our designers to work at an acceptable speed to deliver a large amount of content in shorter periods of time.  That stuff is all in the "must have" bin, while something like icon toggles is firmly in the "nice to have" bin, as far as I'm concerned.  And we're going to focus our time on getting the "Must have" stuff out of the way beforehand, and that's going to take up a lot of the first parts of the 900 days of development.

[Allan Schumacher]

In Exile thinks there is some necessary connection between the tone of a spoken line and the reactions that line triggers in others.

 

This runs directly contrary to my experience.  As such, I do not think there is such a connection.

 

Could just be differences in how we experience the world.  Brains just perceiving things differently maybe?

[Allan Schumacher]

And despite out experiences being different, I agree with Sylvius that we not go around suggesting that any one is disabled (a pejorative sounding term) when it is just a difference.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm sure that's part of it, a large part even. However, I would say that there is a very direct connection between the perceived tone of a spoken line and the reactions it triggers in others, but sometimes no connection between the intended or actual tone and the perceived tone.

That may be. But the ability to course correct in the event of a misunderstanding is borderline impossible to do. In a video game I can only say what the designers allow me to say.

When I see full lines of text I see zero lines that are what I want to say. So if I say something that I think is sassy to a companion and that companion gets crazy offended and leaves my party I get confused as a gane player.

There is rarely an opportunity for me to express an apology and rectify a misunderstanding. And in video games that can often lead to results I wouldn't expect such as an actual fight to the death.

[David Gaider]

Saying "the paraphrase doesn't show the full line" is true and we can all agree with that, but going from that to "showing the full line would make choosing dialogue less ambiguous" is where you have all of the debates crop up. Because the former being true doesn't mean that the latter follows. 

 

I'll just pipe in and say that this essentially sums it up, insofar as the team is concerned.

 

With any dialogue interface, there's going to be a certain percentage of lines which are going to be misinterpreted. This is only not true if the line chosen is the entirety of the interaction—meaning it's text only, and no VO. Now, I know some people will respond with "then don't do player VO", but we are doing it. There are benefits for doing it, just as there are drawbacks, and we like the benefits better, so it's not even a question at this point. Having VO, however, means that we write the lines differently—more of the meaning is conveyed by the acting, both vocally and by action, so the words alone are not always going to convey the intent. Thus you would still have a certain % of lines which would be misinterpreted, even if you saw the full line...they would simply occur in different places.

 

It's not the magic bullet some people seem to think it is, despite them being able to imagine scenarios where this would solve their perceived issue. If they think that's presumptuous of me to say on their behalf, I will amend that to say that we don't feel it's a magic bullet. We looked into the possibility of showing the full line, even as an option, and found it didn't solve what people seem to think it solves...or, rather, it does in some cases and causes brand new issues in others, including inherent issues with the physical interface and the less quantifiable issue of hearing entire lines parroted back which you've already read.

 

Like I said earlier, we're fine with putting DAI out there and letting people provide feedback on that rather than solely what we did in DA2. We do know, however, that there are some people for whom this will never quite work. It's unfortunate, but we are not and never will make a dialogue system for which the #1 priority is "works for every type of roleplayer". It won't happen, and likely can't happen, so instead we must pick the path that works for us and proceed...and that's what we've done for DAI. The debate, insofar as that game goes, is long over.

 

EDIT: Although I should have just linked to the last time I addressed the topic, like I said I would. Ah, well.

[David Gaider]

And I guess I also hope there is a possibility that

a) there can be some further thinking about the issue in DA4, if there is to be a DA4, because having reached an agreed-upon position for one game can change with its sequel 

 

If we were to consider feedback for DA4, however, I'd want it to be based on DA3...not based on DA2, with people repeating the same arguments they've been using for, what? Two years now? Nothing new is being proposed which has not been proposed before.

 

Not that discussions exist on a forum solely for the purpose of convincing the developers to do something—they could simply be academic or entertaining, after all. When it does seem like the expectation from a discussion is "you developers should listen to this", however, that's the context in which we'll respond. I've absorbed a great deal from previous threads on the topic, even if I must also acknowledge that this is a very small slice of the player base and also that it's only people who are dissatisfied who will even contribute to it...that doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about. But there is a point where we must make a decision and move on.

 

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think  people are missing Sylvius' point here: of couse there is a connection between the (perceived) tone of an utterance and the response. However, that fact can't be used to predict the response with any reliability unless you know the person well, and even then it doesn't always work. A specific tone only cuts down on the plausibility of specific ways to respond, it never gives a positive indication of what the actual response may be. I don't know why that's considered important in this debate - I may have missed the explanation - but those are the facts. 

 

I think we're arguing in circles though, where the reality is simply that "people see and want different things and make different assumptions."

 

I'm saying I can see the line "I never said she stole my money" with a different tone conveying a different meaning.  I believe that I can anticipate, with good reliability, that even people that I don't know will be able to pick up on those differences.  It may not always work, but I also believe that in the times that it doesn't always work, I'm afforded an opportunity to elaborate on my point to make sure it's clear.

 

 

Tone is important because I already do it with full lines of dialogue.  If you look at a lot of BioWare's games, you could already break down the lines in a similar way to the dialogue wheel paraphrase with tone.

 

Here's a scene from KOTOR:

 

One of those is the "one that ends the conversation."  The other is the "complimenting and friendly line" and the last one is the "Challenging/confrontation line."  It would be equivalent to simply seeing:

 

"Goodbye"

"Flatter"

"Challenge"

 

(and it'd have some benefits that the full line doesn't necessarily provide, in that I would listen to my own VO - assuming KOTOR had player VO).

 

 

So I can see your point, and see Sylvius' point.  It comes down to "which group is going to get catered to."  The preferences and perceptions seem mutually exclusive to me.  Am I mistaken?