293 réponses à ce sujet

[MissMayhem96]

I personally wouldn't want to know what my character was going to say. I wouldn't object to the clarification system that DAI had though. 

[Danadenassis]

Again, the answer is better paraphrasing/context clues. You have yet to provide a reason for ignoring this and going to full line.
 

There you go. Eventually they'll perfect their method (or at least get close enough) and this will cease to be an issue.
 

Better paraphrasing will help, but it will never be enough; it would still be paraphrasing. It will never be your perfect. You also use the word "clues", something I find fitting in this situation as you are subscribing to needing clues about what you will end up saying and isn't that ironic? Personally I think it takes the R out of the RPG to some extent. Sure, saving and loading helps, but if we are talking about immersion breaking, what would saving and loading be?

 

I find your conclusion backward, shouldn't you argue for a reason why adding a toggle would be bad since you're so strongly against it?

[Danadenassis]

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It's almost cosmetic.
 

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Exactly. Almost.

 

To me does it seem like mostly you are the person that is constantly making excuses and not really understanding what Sylvius is writing.

 

I do want take you seriously and to do that can't I keep overlooking your lack of understanding of what Sylvius is writing. An alternative is of course to not take you seriously, but I don't think that is very polite.

 

Also, I don't think what you write have a very solid internal logic either and it makes me wonder that no matter what arguments you're met with, will you perhaps keep ignoring them and stay steadfast on your arguments that doesn't make sense.

 

About going away do I think that it is fair enough. Why would someone be welcomed if they do not want to make the game the best it can be? Of course, I won't and can't force you. The funny thing is that if you felt that I said you should go away must you first admit that you do not want the game to be more positive for the players. That begs the question: So, why are you here then?

 

Simply chasing the status quo with no change at all? That is the most positive alternative, isn't it? When you know that change is an absolute part of the world, simply because nothing will ever be the same?

[CrutchCricket]

I find your conclusion backward, shouldn't you argue for a reason why adding a toggle would be bad since you're so strongly against it?

Please indicate where I said I was against a toggle. Direct quotes only.

 

I really have no idea what you're on about with the rest of your posts, so I won't even bother.

[Gothfather]

That feedback was stupid.

 

 

I meant the feedback from the community that asked for it.

They complained about the wrong thing, and got the wrong solution in response.

 

For frak sake. Gotta love the self righteousness in these statements.

 

'I Sylvius the Mad have decided because I disagree with the feedback given that is was the feedback was stupid. It was wrong feedback because I disagree with it. I am Sylvius the Mad everything I think is perfection and how RPG should be just look at my past post I prove my infallibility by being against everything Bioware does with RPGs post Buldar's gate 2 with the one exception in Dragon age origins, that proves i'm not set in my ways of the infinity engine. It is my civic duty to tell Bioware and all you people who disagree with me how stupid you are.'

 

 

 

An example of just how self entitled gamers are. Don't like the Bioware does don't buy them. You are 100% aware of how Bioware makes their games why are you still around if your vision is in direct conflict with their vision? Is it just so you can b!tch at them and call people stupid who enjoy their games? If so you are a sad sad human being.

[AlanC9]

This is a fallacy known as "argument from ignorance". We have not proven/cannot prove not x, therefore x".

 

I'm not convinced, to say the least. You cannot prove that Shepard hates the asari, whereas you can prove that he likes or is at least ambivalent about them. You can prove he cares about stopping the Reapers but you can't prove a different main motivation. It's a simple matter of proof on one side and no proof on the other. The reasonable conclusion is therefore obvious.

 

I don't see how you can actually prove anything there. Sylvius can construct a rationale to get Shepard to believe X while saying Y, if he works hard enough at it. Will that rationale convince you? Perhaps not, but Sylvius is not doing this for your approval.

 

Remember, there is no "real" Shepard. Some of us privilege the authors' conception of the character when interpreting this text. Sylvius most assuredly does not.

[Gothfather]

Thing is I don't want alignments in the game either.

You are not going to get what you want. It has been tested and reading out the lines and then hearing them speak has been tested to be a very unfun experience. That is the empirical data. Bioware is not going to keep testing this over and over again until they get an outlier result and then ignore all the other data to implement your preferred system. It is not rational to expect this.

 

Also the aforementioned system still works for clarification with or with out a morality system and is not therefore rendered moot just because you said I don't want alignments in the game either.

 

The system is what it is, it is always going to be a paraphrase because data shows reading the full lines then watching the actors act out the lines is not fun. That is the data accept it and work on ideas to help eliminate the WTF moments in the game with dialogue choices and provide better clarity.

 

The data is in it isn't what you had hope so be mature and accept your theory was wrong.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The system is what it is, it is always going to be a paraphrase because data shows reading the full lines then watching the actors act out the lines is not fun.

It's not fun for the people they tested. It might even not be fun for most people.

But it would be better for some.

Options are good.

[CrutchCricket]

I don't see how you can actually prove anything there. Sylvius can construct a rationale to get Shepard to believe X while saying Y, if he works hard enough at it. Will that rationale convince you? Perhaps not, but Sylvius is not doing this for your approval.
 
Remember, there is no "real" Shepard. Some of us privilege the authors' conception of the character when interpreting this text. Sylvius most assuredly does not.

He literally said:
 

What evidence could you possibly have that Shepard doesn't think something?

And while it's true I used the word "proof" first, it doesn't change the fact that this is an argument from ignorance.

 

Otherwise I don't know why you're putting this on me. It's not about convincing me it's about the rationale being convincing at all.  And it obviously cannot. The forced asari love or at the very least tolerance is a well known and complained about issue. There simply is no plausible way of playing against it. Same with Shepard's main goal of stopping the Reapers.

[Mgamerz]

So literally Kotor.

[AlanC9]

And while it's true I used the word "proof" first, it doesn't change the fact that this is an argument from ignorance.

There's nothing to be ignorant of. There is no real Shepard.

[CrutchCricket]

There's nothing to be ignorant of. There is no real Shepard.

Look up what "argument from ignorance" means. The term is not to be taken literally.

[Vilegrim]

I'm all for testing it again, but I can see how it might be less enjoyable when you know beforehand exactly what your character will say, rather than choosing a general overview.

 

 

I can't.  Not knowing and doing exactly the opposite of what the choice seemed to imply is a major issue for all bioware games.

[filetemo]

I want to be surprised by what the other NPC's will say, not by my own words. Full line hover please. At least in the critical decissions. Flavor text can remain vague, who cares.

[MrStoob]

It's difficult I think because without a measurable benchmark of 'alignment', the NPCs would react to you the same way no matter how you've previously conducted yourself - AIs need something tangible to 'react' to -  which would be boring in the context of the game Mass Effect.  It could be totally background, that you just don't see what your measurable statistic is for Rene/Para, Good/Evil, whatever, but I'm not sure that's preferable, again in the context of the/a game.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Again, the answer is better paraphrasing/context clues. You have yet to provide a reason for ignoring this and going to full line.

Whatever the method is, it needs to be unambiguous. There can be no room left for errors.

The content that is there needs to be conveyed, before the choice is made, and anything that isn't conveyed unambiguously before the choice needs not to exist (like intent).

Inconsistencies in expression and reaction happen. People say weird things and react weirdly in random situations. It's almost more fun to examine that than to rigidly stick to one "control" scheme. Even if (you think) this don't happen to you, it does happen to other people.

Those things look weird to other people, but not to the speaker.

This is why I don't think NPC reactions need to be predictable, and why I don't think those reactions tell us anything about the intent or tone of the preceding line. We don't know why other people do what they do.

But we know why we do what we do. So our behaviour shouldn't ever surprise us.

Full text and a silent protagonist gives us a level of control that matches, almost perfectly, real world conversations.

It can therefore happen to your characters. Again unless the line is a complete 180 (I'll help->Time to kill puppies!) or a case of railroading like the example you gave me, it shouldn't be this much of a problem.

You say this line you expect the player to observe his character from the outside, and not inhabit his mind.

It actually works every day, everywhere. Look closely.

I have. It fails constantly.

No, they don't expect to be misunderstood. There's an expectation that they're dealing with the same context as the other party and therefore intent matches meaning.

That assumption is routinely incorrect.

Knowing is a false standard here. Communication isn't about knowing whether ideas cross the gap or not, it's about the expectation that they do. That's why we look for confirmation. We only know it's been successful after the fact because the transmission has been acknowledged.

I think it's more hope than expectation, and I think that acknowledgement is often unclear. Misunderstandings are often not immediately evident.

At the cost of a much larger break of immersion? No thanks.

I find the silent protagonist offers much better immersion. I don't listen to myself speak, and I certainly don't learn what I said (or what my intent was) from doing so.

As I mentioned above, I think BioWare's silent protagonist games modeled real world conversations just about perfectly.

Because of the direct effects they have (lol) or I would expect they have on the world. I rewrite the geth because it gets me more allies. I need not take a moral stance on it or tie it to a principle, though nothing stops me from doing so. But whether I do or not has no effect on the outcome or indeed the decision process. The headcanon is just the flavoring. It's almost cosmetic.

And there's the difference.

You're playing a game.

I'm playing a character.

I don't care whether rewriting the Geth gets me more allies. Shepard might, but I don't.

This is a fallacy known as "argument from ignorance". We have not proven/cannot prove not x, therefore x".

You've correctly decsribed the fallacy, but that's not what I'm doing.

We haven't proven x, therefore possibly x. You're denying x is a possibility in the absence of conclusive evidence to that effect.

More likely than not is a lousy standard of evidence, and it's entirely unnecessary if you don't need to decide.

I'm not convinced, to say the least. You cannot prove that Shepard hates the asari, whereas you can prove that he likes or is at least ambivalent about them. You can prove he cares about stopping the Reapers but you can't prove a different main motivation. It's a simple matter of proof on one side and no proof on the other. The reasonable conclusion is therefore obvious.

I don't think we can prove those things either. Your standard of proof is much lower than mine.

Unless by proof you mean evidence, but those words aren't close to synonymous.

[Nomen Mendax]

Otherwise I don't know why you're putting this on me. It's not about convincing me it's about the rationale being convincing at all.  And it obviously cannot. The forced asari love or at the very least tolerance is a well known and complained about issue. There simply is no plausible way of playing against it. Same with Shepard's main goal of stopping the Reapers.

Shepard's mental state, beliefs, desires and so on are up to me, not the writers. Once the writers start to describe the PCs mental state explicitly then they are doing their job poorly if the game is meant to be an RPG. 

 

Incidentally I found the silent protagonist in DAO a lot more immersive than the spoken protagonist of DA2 and DAI. Immersion, like how we experience paraphrases is entirely subjective.

[Sylvius the Mad]

He literally said:

And while it's true I used the word "proof" first, it doesn't change the fact that this is an argument from ignorance.

Because you said:

No action, no proof.

And I don't see how that was at all relevant. I wasn't claiming that something was true, just that it was possibly true. You need to brush up on your modal logic.

The negation of possibly true is necessarily false. The negation of possibly false is necessarily true.

By arguing against possible truth, you're asserting necessary falsehood. Your posution requires that Shepard cannot have thoughts for which we do not have unambiguous evidence. And that's absurd, because sometimes Shepard will think about food, or a joke he heard last week, or an old girlfriend, or his parents. That we don't have proof of it can't possibly be sufficient cause for us to be confident it doesn't happen.

Think about how your life would work if you actually used that standard of evidence. Your initial reaction to hearing about some new thing would be to believe firmly that it doesn't exist. Is that really the position you're trying to advance?

I don't think you are. I suspect you've just incorrectly assumed an excluded middle when it comes to belief.

Truth has an excluded middle, but awareness of truth does not.

[LinksOcarina]

It's not fun for the people they tested. It might even not be fun for most people.

But it would be better for some.

Options are good.

 

I agree on principle.

 

The problem though is what do you go for when you have limited time and money?

[CrutchCricket]

Those things look weird to other people, but not to the speaker.

Wrong. They look weird to any who know a "weirdness" has occured.

An example: I called a buddy to come meet up with us. I got his voicemail. I meant to say "Hey [his name], it's [my name], wanted to see what you were up to..." and so on. It came out "Hey [my name], it's [his name]..." and the rest was garbled because my friends were dying with laughter. It took me a split second to realize what I said, but when I did I was more puzzled than anyone.

That's colloquially called a brain fart. Other variations occur when you're saying something and all of a sudden you just blank, losing your train of thought. Don't bother telling me it doesn't happen to you, because I won't believe it. It's common, it happens to everyone, and everyone just chuckles and goes on with their day.
 

This is why I don't think NPC reactions need to be predictable, and why I don't think those reactions tell us anything about the intent or tone of the preceding line. We don't know why other people do what they do.

But we know why we do what we do. So our behaviour shouldn't ever surprise us.

Being predictable is about knowing what someone does, not why they do it (though the why could help). And no, like I just said there are cases where we don't know what we do.
 

Full text and a silent protagonist gives us a level of control that matches, almost perfectly, real world conversations.

So in real world conversations one person never talks and the other carries on like they did? Where do you live, where you see this?
 

You say this line you expect the player to observe his character from the outside, and not inhabit his mind.

You do obvserve him from the outside, literally, as you're watching a screen. That does not preclude inhabiting (or maybe sharing is a better word) his mind.
 

That assumption is routinely incorrect.

No, it's correct. See: all successful communication.
 

I think it's more hope than expectation, and I think that acknowledgement is often unclear. Misunderstandings are often not immediately evident.

Hope implies a level of doubt regarding success. I never doubt I will be understood. Indeed someone misunderstanding me is more of a surprise than successful communication. That's because success, not failure is the routine.
 

And there's the difference.

You're playing a game.

I'm playing a character.

I don't care whether rewriting the Geth gets me more allies. Shepard might, but I don't.

No I just don't bother differentiating when I'm discussing the game. Saying "I" is shorter than saying "my Shepard". Helps, that I only really have one variation on the character.
 

You've correctly decsribed the fallacy, but that's not what I'm doing.

We haven't proven x, therefore possibly x. You're denying x is a possibility in the absence of conclusive evidence to that effect.

More likely than not is a lousy standard of evidence, and it's entirely unnecessary if you don't need to decide.
I don't think we can prove those things either. Your standard of proof is much lower than mine.

Unless by proof you mean evidence, but those words aren't close to synonymous.

You asked for evidence that Shepard doesn't think something. In other words you asked me to prove a negative. That's shifting the burder of proof.
 
I'm saying there is no proof of x there is proof of y. x and y are mutually exclusive, therefore y. You want to claim x in this case, you have to prove x, or prove that the middle premise (x and y are mutually exclusive) is false. You can't do the former, because the game won't let you. And the latter is self evident.
 
And for those following at home:
x is Shepard hates the asari
y is Shepard likes or is ambivalent or tolerates the asari.
x1 is Shepard apathetic towards the galaxy

y1 is Shepard cares about saving the galaxy

Proof of y (or evidence, if you're pedantic): Shepard's reactions post-Thessia, his mostly deferential treatment of the Councilor (he can be angry at the Council but never singles out the asari- compare that with "depends on the species, turian", and calling out the salarians on genophage related conversations).
Proof of x: ???

Proof of y1: Anything Shepard says about the Reapers.

Proof of x1: ???

 

Shepard's mental state, beliefs, desires and so on are up to me, not the writers. Once the writers start to describe the PCs mental state explicitly then they are doing their job poorly if the game is meant to be an RPG.

Only to the extent allowed by the narrative. I can agree the limits should be minimal and should only be what's required to plausibly keep you in the narrative. They automated quite a bit past that in ME3 and it's not like they haven't been called out on it.
 

Because you said:
And I don't see how that was at all relevant. I wasn't claiming that something was true, just that it was possibly true. You need to brush up on your modal logic.

The negation of possibly true is necessarily false. The negation of possibly false is necessarily true.

By arguing against possible truth, you're asserting necessary falsehood. Your posution requires that Shepard cannot have thoughts for which we do not have unambiguous evidence. And that's absurd, because sometimes Shepard will think about food, or a joke he heard last week, or an old girlfriend, or his parents. That we don't have proof of it can't possibly be sufficient cause for us to be confident it doesn't happen.

Think about how your life would work if you actually used that standard of evidence. Your initial reaction to hearing about some new thing would be to believe firmly that it doesn't exist. Is that really the position you're trying to advance?

I don't think you are. I suspect you've just incorrectly assumed an excluded middle when it comes to belief.

Truth has an excluded middle, but awareness of truth does not.

It's not possibly true in this case because its opposite has been shown to be true. I cannot make this any clearer.

 

And please don't go putting words in my mouth. We are talking about two very specific examples here, examples that are defined in the game, whether you like it or not. Overgeneralizing my point will get you nowhere.

[Nomen Mendax]

...

And for those following at home:
x is Shepard hates the asari
y is Shepard likes or is ambivalent or tolerates the asari.
x1 is Shepard apathetic towards the galaxy

y1 is Shepard cares about saving the galaxy

Proof of y (or evidence, if you're pedantic): Shepard's reactions post-Thessia, his mostly deferential treatment of the Councilor (he can be angry at the Council but never singles out the asari- compare that with "depends on the species, turian", and calling out the salarians on genophage related conversations).

...

The difference between proof and evidence is absolutely not pedantry. In your example, if Shepard is deferential to the Asari councilor it could indeed be cited as evidence that he/she is at worst ambivalent to her. But Shepard could have a bitter hatred of Asari that he/she wishes to remain hidden; in fact, Shepard's outburst to the Turian could even be part of this attempt to hide his/her true feelings. There isn't (and nor should there be) anything in the game that contradicts this*.

 

*That's not entirely true since if Shepard sleeps with Liara you'd think she might notice in the joining and say something - but even that is just more evidence (though stronger evidence) and not proof.

[JamieCOTC]

The Witcher did it in some cases. Bugged the hell out of me.

[Gothfather]

It's not fun for the people they tested. It might even not be fun for most people.

But it would be better for some.

Options are good.

No, sorry options are not inherently good.

 

Options cost money and any option created means you are REQUIRED to take from money from other areas of game development because budgets are FINITE. They are not open ended. So an option that most people would never use and an option that TESTING, aka empirical data, shows isn't fun is a waste of resources and a waste of time.

 

By your rational they should stop testing and anytime they have questions about development they should just make all options available because options are good. That is a recipe for a game being in endless development and becoming vapourware. The mantra 'options are good,' is used as an excuse by players to say 'give me what I want because I am ever so important.' Testing and using DATA is the rational way to make a game because it allows you to eliminate design flaws or keeps you from wasting money developing a feature most people wont use or will find 'unfun.' Anything in a game that MOST people dislike is not worth keeping, this is doubly true about designing something new that most people will dislike, especially if it requires rebuilding an existing interface.

 

There is nothing inherent about choice or options that make them 'good.' All choice and all options come at a price and it is the responsibility of the developers to eliminate choices and options to create the best game they can within the limits of their budget. But players are so self entitled that they don't give a **** about anything else so long as their demands are met. They demanded more companions and we got 12 companions/advisors in DA:I but they then complained the companions where shallow. Well what do you expect? There is a finite budget, spreading the companion content over 12 is going to make the content less for any given companion but the same content overall. Take 100 pennies put them in 5 piles and you get piles 20 pennies deep, put the pennies in 10 piles and you get piles only 10 pennies deep. Same amount of content but not as meaningful content because there is no time to develop. A visual representation how choice isn't inherently good it comes at a price.

[LinksOcarina]

No, sorry options are not inherently good.

 

Options cost money and any option created means you are REQUIRED to take from money from other areas of game development because budgets are FINITE. They are not open ended. So an option that most people would never use and an option that TESTING, aka empirical data, shows isn't fun is a waste of resources and a waste of time.

 

By your rational they should stop testing and anytime they have questions about development they should just make all options available because options are good. That is a recipe for a game being in endless development and becoming vapourware. The mantra 'options are good,' is used as an excuse by players to say 'give me what I want because I am ever so important.' Testing and using DATA is the rational way to make a game because it allows you to eliminate design flaws or keeps you from wasting money developing a feature most people wont use or will find 'unfun.' Anything in a game that MOST people dislike is not worth keeping, this is doubly true about designing something new that most people will dislike, especially if it requires rebuilding an existing interface.

 

There is nothing inherent about choice or options that make them 'good.' All choice and all options come at a price and it is the responsibility of the developers to eliminate choices and options to create the best game they can within the limits of their budget. But players are so self entitled that they don't give a **** about anything else so long as their demands are met. They demanded more companions and we got 12 companions/advisors in DA:I but they then complained the companions where shallow. Well what do you expect? There is a finite budget, spreading the companion content over 12 is going to make the content less for any given companion but the same content overall. Take 100 pennies put them in 5 piles and you get piles 20 pennies deep, put the pennies in 10 piles and you get piles only 10 pennies deep. Same amount of content but not as meaningful content because there is no time to develop. A visual representation how choice isn't inherently good it comes at a price.

 

I disagree, options are always good.

 

The problem is, as you allude to, is that it costs a lot of money to put those options in, and it influences the games design. That is the bigger issue at hand; not the whole fabrication of "we lose resources for this or that" regarding game options, but rather the implementation and practicality of such options.

 

For example, the tactical camera in Inquisition influences character abilities and class builds in a lot of ways, eliminating sustained abilities in favor of passives or direct actions that are designed for tactical play and third person play. Stuff like the fire and ice walls and mines, the grappling chain, and the buffs/debuffs are all made to cater to both.

 

So the better question is how will these options be implemented? I feel like how Inquisition did conversations, only the major story decisions in-game literally spelled out for you what is going to happen; as a fair middle ground. That is a toggle in Inquisition, it can be a toggle in Andromeda. 

[Gothfather]

Shepard's mental state, beliefs, desires and so on are up to me, not the writers. Once the writers start to describe the PCs mental state explicitly then they are doing their job poorly if the game is meant to be an RPG. 

 

Incidentally I found the silent protagonist in DAO a lot more immersive than the spoken protagonist of DA2 and DAI. Immersion, like how we experience paraphrases is entirely subjective.

Immersion is entirely subjective and thus isn't a great bar upon which to judge content. Immersion =/= fun. lack of immersion can ruin fun it is true but they are not the same things. I can played games that were immersive but I was like this isn't fun. PoE is an example of such a game. I simply found the game boring because the game play was dated. Yet I never thought this game ruins my immersion.

 

A game should be entertaining and this is also an entirely subjective state it is the end state a developer wishes their game to achieve so it is really the only subjective bar by which to measure things. And because it is subjective you go for majority vs minority thresholds. You want more people enjoying something vs a minority. By any rational standard you have have few choices to respond to the information about this original topic.

 

1) Do you believe it? Yes or no?

 

If not then

 

2) Continue on your merry way.

 

If yes then

 

3a) Accept it and move on. It wasn't data you wanted but it is the data non the less and you not liking said data doesn't negate it. Fact is greater than belief.

 

3b) Ignore the data and completely throw away reasoning because you wants are more important than any data. Belief is greater than fact.

 

I hated the wheel in Me1 I have since learned to tolerate it. I don't like it but I can admit that the number of WTF moments in Bioware games have been on the decline over the last 8 years. And as of DA:I I can't recall any WTF moments which isn't to say there were none, as i haven't explored all content in the game. I also can't remember everything in the game. I only claim not to recall/remember any WTF moments in DA:I but remembers lots in ME1 and DA2.  Yet I can accept that they did tests and they got results that show reading the entire line then waiting for it to acted by the voice actor was tested as not fun at all.

 

So are you belief based or fact based in your thinking those are your only options if you believe bioware is truthful about their results.