57 réponses à ce sujet

[Xploeris]

This part, please. I was so disappointed that through the entire trilogy, there was ONE time where picking Renegade was the best solution (killing Rana Thanatopis). The rest was pick Paragon to win. I want to suffer and get burned for my choices a lot more often, make me actually think about what I am choosing instead of being someone who's ''try to help and be kind to everyone attitude'' never gets him/her in trouble.

Really, Mass Effect needs to get rid of Paragon/Renegade entirely.

Hear me out.

Morality systems that give you more special bonuses or abilities as you act more good or evil mainly serve to do one thing: force you to be either all good, or all evil. If you split the difference, either you get stuck in the middle (where there are no bonuses) or you earn some of the low-level bonuses for both paths, but none of the good stuff. And even if the game is long enough that you'll eventually get the good stuff, you have to spend most of the game without it. This was particularly a problem in 1 where, if you hadn't been Paragon or Renegade enough up to that point, you simply didn't get the best options and some quests couldn't be completed.

This means that your roleplaying is hampered somewhat, because whichever way you go, you'll frequently be presented with a "get better bonuses" choice and a "go against type" choice. If you want to play a sarcastic rogue/tough guy who takes no crap but has a soft side and heart of gold, or at least silver - and who doesn't? - you'll find yourself screwing yourself out of bonuses a lot.

Also, being married to Paragon/Renegade forces them to constantly give you both options, even when one of them doesn't make sense - or when a third alternative might be just as valid. A lot of those choices end up being meaningless because both of them give you the same result in the end.

What they should do focus on presenting the player with a variety of tactical or emotional responses that have no metagame value - meaning that you have no abilities or bonuses that appear depending on what kind of responses you pick. These responses should both be valid (meaning that there are no obviously dumb or bad choices, there's a good reason to pick each one) and have distinct consequences. In some cases, this means that you will have MANY options, not just two - lying to someone, bribing them, pleading with them, intimidating them, infuriating them.

Evil choices, when they appear at all, should be rewarding enough that players will actually be tempted to take them. In the ME games so far, doing the wrong thing usually just means getting money instead of an item or a new companion... and money's handy, but there's lots of it around. Sometimes you get the same result no matter what you pick, just for different reasons. Offer me a powerful unique weapon, or a special bonus power, or a big stat boost, or a whole new plot thread related to my choice, or a shortcut past a hard fight (with some kind of loot and XP drop, so I don't regret skipping the fight) or a better companion than I would have gotten otherwise (they tried this in ME2, but Morinth isn't much of a trade for Samara, IMO). Offer me something so good that even if I suffer negative consequences it might still be worth it. Make me weigh my options. Make it INTERESTING.

Likewise, good choices shouldn't always be the right or best answer. But you covered that pretty well.

Instead of morality, have a reputation system.

The responses a player chooses could affect some hidden stats that determine their reputation. If a player keeps choosing violent solutions and intimidation, he might have a hidden stat called "Meanness", and the higher it went, the more likely that NPCs will hate and fear him... or respect his strength. This might result in dialogue changes, or it could affect shop prices, quest availability, etc. Mercenaries might prefer to deal or run away from a really mean PC rather than fighting. Specific actions or quests could also affect NPCs; rejecting someone's romantic advances might result in them being cold or embarrassed afterward (something the ME games already do, but only a little), or saving a Batarian colony might result in friendlier dialogue from Batarians thereafter. And if you had to choose between the Batarian colony and a Human one, maybe the Humans will be less friendly to you afterward...

[TMA LIVE]

I just hope Bioware ditches the Renegade and Paragon system, and just gives choices. No more "I'm a good guy who saves everyone" or "I'm an jerk who picks choices that kill people", with charmed options that are clear "Pick this option to win, roleplaying be damned".

[Element Zero]

I just hope Bioware ditches the Renegade and Paragon system, and just gives choices. No more "I'm a good guy who saves everyone" or "I'm an jerk who picks choices that kill people", with charmed options that are clear "Pick this option to win, roleplaying be damned".

Agreed. The only major "Renegade" options I ever really feel could be justified are not saving the Council and leaving the Collector Base to Cerberus. On my initial playthroughs, those each required some consideration. I chose "Paragon" each time, in the end, but they felt like truly meaningful decisions.

I'd like to see the interrupts return, and I don't mind if they are "red and blue", just to give me an idea of the tone or type of interrupt I'm choosing. The "auto win" dialogue choices need to go, though.

[pdusen]

Agreed. The only major "Renegade" options I ever really feel could be justified are not saving the Council and leaving the Collector Base to Cerberus. On my initial playthroughs, those each required some consideration. I chose "Paragon" each time, in the end, but they felt like truly meaningful decisions.

I'd like to see the interrupts return, and I don't mind if they are "red and blue", just to give me an idea of the tone or type of interrupt I'm choosing. The "auto win" dialogue choices need to go, though.

 

If you count interrupts, I thought, in ME3, that punching out the Quarian admiral who fired on the Geth ship while I was still on it was quite justified, even for my fairly consistently paragon Shepard.

[Element Zero]

If you count interrupts, I thought, in ME3, that punching out the Quarian admiral who fired on the Geth ship while I was still on it was quite justified, even for my fairly consistently paragon Shepard.

Yeah, the interrupts definitely are a another thing. I always make sure that Blue Suns gunship doesn't get repaired. Doing otherwise would be a stupid risk. I've punched Han'Gerrel a time or two. I always snap that eclipse merc's neck and drop the container on his soldiers. That's why I'd love to have interrupts return, and for them to include some indication for the type of action you're choosing (color-coding works).

[Larry-3]

I do not want multiplayer to return. Forget securing a high value target; give me more dialogue, cut-scenes, and places to go in singleplayer. If someone is such a piority then add them into singleplayer. Diverting resources to multiplayer always takes away from singleplayer. I remember at some gaming convention BioWare stated something about how they want to use up as much space on the disk as possible -- you would have more breathing room for dialogue, cut-scenes, and places if you took multiplayer out of the equation. And while you are at it, bring back the RPG elements. Please.

[I Am Robot]

I just hope Bioware ditches the Renegade and Paragon system, and just gives choices. No more "I'm a good guy who saves everyone" or "I'm an jerk who picks choices that kill people", with charmed options that are clear "Pick this option to win, roleplaying be damned".

 

Paragon and renegade are really fundamental to ME IMO. I've never gone renegade but what I'm reading it sounds like it's a lot less "viable" than paragon? If so yeah that needs to be patched up but I definitely want paragon and renegade back.  

[DraGGon2k]

To be honest I don't see why people seem to like DA:I's dialogue wheel so much. Or maybe the wheel itself was ok but the dialogue system itself was a HUGE step back imo. In Mass Effect it felt like you almost always had choice and could be at least good or bad and do surprising stuff(where you quickly had to press the button). In DA:I it felt like you had almost zero choice and couldn't even be evil/bad; all the answers just went from "annoyed/arrogant - neutral - niceguy" with the same eventual outcome.

 

So if anything I want even more paragon/renegade differentiation and persusian/intimidation etc options instead of just clicking through lines that are all the same and have all the same outcome.

[dreamgazer]

Less auto-dialogue, the return of neutral options, and the continued abandonment of ME2's partisan thinking in favor of reputation, 

 

All three games have their strengths and weaknesses in this department. 

 

 

Let's do this instead. 

[goishen]

The only problem that I can see with a reputation system is that a player might have gotten his rep up with a certain faction and then in the next game, the faction might not exist or play a small part.  For example, take Cerberus.   If a player decided to up his faction with Cerberus in the original ME (and based upon where they saw the game was heading upon completing ME), there would be no Cerberus in ME2 and ME3. 

 

Plus, where do they draw the line with warring factions/etc.  Say you have two races at war...  Just for names let's use the salarians and krogans.  Do you allow for each of them to level up independently or do you raise one at the cost of the other?  And then, how do you program later games for 20 different factions that you could have each one leveled up?  

 

I'm liking your original idea, but it does have some problems , as you can (hopefully) see.

[Nitrocuban]

I want something like this

https://www.youtube....h?v=AdtGrddKqKI

[pdusen]

I do not want multiplayer to return. Forget securing a high value target; give me more dialogue, cut-scenes, and places to go in singleplayer. If someone is such a piority then add them into singleplayer. Diverting resources to multiplayer always takes away from singleplayer. I remember at some gaming convention BioWare stated something about how they want to use up as much space on the disk as possible -- you would have more breathing room for dialogue, cut-scenes, and places if you took multiplayer out of the equation. And while you are at it, bring back the RPG elements. Please.

 

That isn't how game budgets work.

[RIPRemusTheTurian]

I hope that they don't go with the 'blue = win' belief.

 

Maybe it's because I'm no Renegade at heart, but I still can't do a full Renegade playthrough because it feels like I'm just screwing up the universe I've come to enjoy.

 

But no matter how the Paragon/Renegade system is implemented, they MUST keep the interrupts.

[Pasquale1234]

Some upgrades that I think would benefit the dialogue wheel system.
1) Disappearing Investigate options. Meaning, when you choose one option and get the answer it disappears from the menu. (done in Inquisition)

I would prefer it if they just didn't re-arrange them. Sometimes they will appear in different positions each time you select one, which can lead to confusion RE which ones you've already explored. Removing them entirely removes player choice, and there are times when I might want to hear the answer again.
 

2) Class/background-specific options (done in Inquisition)

There were a few of those RE background in ME1 - some special dialogues and background-specific quests.

A lot of missed opportunities for class-specific options, though. I had hoped that an adept, vanguard, or sentinel Shepard might have different conversation options with Kaidan in ME1 since so much of his dialogue was about being a human biotic - but no dice.

It can be really difficult, to have the PC's class recognized in-game, because classes sometimes have some associated baggage - and players don't always want to deal with it. There were a crapton of world-lore / gameplay separation issues in DA2 because the content had a heavy mage vs. non-mage focus, and while a lot of the NPCs were spouting off about mages in general and blood mages in particular, none of them seemed to notice if Hawke (the PC) was a mage / blood mage.

Also - some class / background combinations seem... unlikely, if not impossible, particularly where biotics are concerned.

I personally tend to avoid adding biotic bonus powers to an otherwise non-biotic Shepard. It seems to me that biotics are an either / or - the character either has biotics or does not - and the character feels more cohesive to me if I don't mix them.
 

6) No more "pick top right (or blue) to win". Mix options and their outcomes.

That would be a lot easier if the text provided on the wheel gave more information about how your PC will behave if you take that option. Unless they make the options a lot clearer, their position on the wheel is often your best indicator of what the character will do.
 

7) If character wants to investigate something, don't make him say "I thought the asari needed other species to reproduce". Say instead "How did the asari come to cross-species reproduction?"

I suspect they write the dialogue to ask the sort of questions they want to answer.
 

8) Class-specific interrupts (with a unique icon, not the same mouse button prompt as Renegade/Paragon, at least give it a different color).

I'm not quite sure why, for example, a soldier would attack when an adept would not. Their methods might be a little different, but since all classes use firearms, that seems to be the simplest route.
 

9) Squadmate approval. The protagonist should not be idolized regarless of his/her choices. Governs availability of certain dialogue options.

Shepard seemed to have a few detractors along the way. There were crew members who would occasionally express disagreement with some of Shepard's methods, but essentially - when you're the Captain of a ship, crew members need to follow orders or gtfo. Shepard had plenty of detractors in non-squadmate NPCs.

As for dialogue option availability, I have some issues with the paragon-renegade system as implemented in ME2 & 3.

In my first playthrough of ME2, I chose the options that seemed the most natural, and was able to maintain the loyalty of all squadmates. Second playthrough, I chose more of the neutral options only to discover, very late in the game, that I would not be able to keep both Miranda and Jack loyal. That seems to me to be an awfully heavy consequence for what were, in my mind, a long series of false and completely unrelated choices.

I say false choices because the outcomes were identical. Example: Tali's Treason trial in ME2. Using the paragon option, Shepard gives a passionate speech about Tali's actions and accomplishments, and the player is rewarded with 32 paragon points. In the neutral "incite the crowd" option, Shepard gives a shorter passionate speech and then gets the crowd to stand up and support her. It awards no paragon-renegade points, but achieves the same outcome - Tali is exonerated without revealing her father's activities. I'm sorry, but I don't see a huge moral distinction between those 2 different methods - but the game certainly does. And it has exactly nothing to do with supporting Miranda or Jack.

That system really punishes players for choices marked as neutral, and encourages metagaming.

I prefer ME1's system of allowing the player to invest skill points in Charm and Intimidate skills.

[pdusen]

I prefer ME1's system of allowing the player to invest skill points in Charm and Intimidate skills.

 

Of course, the problem with that is you had your first Charm/Intimidate check in the very first five minutes of the first mission, meaning that maxing out one of those two skills was basically the highest priority if you didn't want to fail at everything.

 

If they spaced it out more, I wouldn't mind that so much.

[NM_Che56]

More dialogue options is good provided that something meaningful comes out of using them (e.g. unlock new area to explore on galaxy map because you learned about something worth exploring).  Otherwise it just because tedium for the sake of tedium.

[TMA LIVE]

I only want Audio Dialogue if I'm playing just a very specific character, who I'm just giving direction. Characters like Geralt from Witcher and Adam from Deus Ex worked because they were specific characters we were simply customizing and directing. Characters like Shepard and the Warden were different. They were suppose to be our own character, with are own face, sex, backstory. We're meant to roleplayer or self insert. So when they suddenly made the auto route in ME3, it was bad timing to make the change.

[Karlone123]

I only want Audio Dialogue if I'm playing just a very specific character, who I'm just giving direction. Characters like Geralt from Witcher and Adam from Deus Ex worked because they were specific characters we were simply customizing and directing. Characters like Shepard and the Warden were different. They were suppose to be our own character, with are own face, sex, backstory. We're meant to roleplayer or self insert. So when they suddenly made the auto route in ME3, it was bad timing to make the change.

 

Exactly! Shepard wad not pre-defined like Adam of Geralt. But in ME3 Shepard became more pre-defined with the dialogue assuming it's own identity on Shepard with forced emotion and views most of preferred remain an option to choose, but that is not the case.

[Farangbaa]

I do not want multiplayer to return. Forget securing a high value target; give me more dialogue, cut-scenes, and places to go in singleplayer. If someone is such a piority then add them into singleplayer. Diverting resources to multiplayer always takes away from singleplayer. I remember at some gaming convention BioWare stated something about how they want to use up as much space on the disk as possible -- you would have more breathing room for dialogue, cut-scenes, and places if you took multiplayer out of the equation. And while you are at it, bring back the RPG elements. Please.

This is not how it works.

The game gets a budget and time for SP. If someone decides to add MP, it gets its own budget, it's own time and possibly even it's own people. Adding MP does not take away from SP. If it does anything at all, it will be that the good things from MP also find their way into SP.

Of course, the problem with that is you had your first Charm/Intimidate check in the very first five minutes of the first mission, meaning that maxing out one of those two skills was basically the highest priority if you didn't want to fail at everything.
 
If they spaced it out more, I wouldn't mind that so much.

nonsense, there's plenty of morality to go around in ME1 to full both bars. I'm sure you can miss out on the first options tand still get 12 intimidate and charm (though only 10 is necessary for every check in the game except 1, on Feros)



Intimidate was filled eventally, after sacrificing the council.

[Guanxii]

MrBTongue of understated nerdrage youtube fame made a short video recently that briefly covered his thoughts on the Bioware dialogue wheel as a concept after his experiences with DAI. He reasoned that it clearly hasn't evolved to fix pretty glaring problems since ME that other developers have fixed when they appropriated the concept such as Eidos Montreal with Deus Ex giving you the full text description of the dialogue when you hover over the brief prompt so you never have the issue of misinterpreting the text prompt. Having good, bland, bad responses in the same positions all the time conditions the player to no longer effectively make choices which is why morality should be separated from the dialogue wheel because simplifying the dialogue system to this extent sacrifices so much agency and player involvement that you might as well be watching a cutscene as interactivity has declined markedly over the years in proportion to railroading and scripted animation.

Bioware seriously need to cutdown on scripted animation during dialogue to restore some semblance of player agency even if the results are less cinematic in practice.

[pdusen]

nonsense, there's plenty of morality to go around in ME1 to full both bars. I'm sure you can miss out on the first options tand still get 12 intimidate and charm (though only 10 is necessary for every check in the game except 1, on Feros)

 

...which isn't what I said. I said that if you didn't make the intimidate/charm skills your highest priority you missed dialog in the very first mission and beyond. They didn't space it out enough.

[Farangbaa]

...which isn't what I said. I said that if you didn't make the intimidate/charm skills your highest priority you missed dialog in the very first mission and beyond. They didn't space it out enough.

BUt that makes no sense. You can easily miss the first checks and still pass all the others. ME1 isn't ME2

[Vazgen]

...which isn't what I said. I said that if you didn't make the intimidate/charm skills your highest priority you missed dialog in the very first mission and beyond. They didn't space it out enough.

Having to put points into charm and intimidate "skills" makes no sense. You sacrifice your combat effectiveness to get the dialogue options in an RPG game. Glad they got rid of it.

Reputation system in ME3 was quite good, it served as a threshold for the options to appear and when you passed a certain number you got both options regardless of whether you were a Paragon or Renegade player before. 

[pdusen]

BUt that makes no sense. You can easily miss the first checks and still pass all the others. ME1 isn't ME2

 

Yes, but again, that's dependant on you staying on top of those skills. I learned after my first playthrough to always keep those skills at their currently allowed max, or else I'd miss something.

 

As Vazgen said, the removal of those skills was better. It meant that just playing a consistently paragon character was enough to keep Paragon options open.