We've had some revisions of the wheel along the way, but I still often see people say they think it's a flawed interface for dialogue. What would you do to make the dialogue wheel work?
My solution: Don't allign morality to predetermined spaces in the wheel. Make it unpredictable when the bottom-right option is the bad-guy one and then of course, make hovering over the option show a preview of the actual response so we don't misinterpret the paraphrasing.
The morality system is outdated, instead of having paragon and renegade, improve upon the DA:I dialogue wheel. Make choices context based rather than good or bad. For example, have choices be: stoic, mad, confused, attack, relaxed, humorous etc.
A dialogue cube.
Or a magic eight ball.
Only if they bring in DA:I-style tone icons. Which would work fine for me. I don't want to use hovering.We've had some revisions of the wheel along the way, but I still often see people say they think it's a flawed interface for dialogue. What would you do to make the dialogue wheel work?
My solution: Don't allign morality to predetermined spaces in the wheel. Make it unpredictable when the bottom-right option is the bad-guy one and then of course, make hovering over the option show a preview of the actual response so we don't misinterpret the paraphrasing.
No more morality. No more basing all conversations on diplomatic, neutral/sarcastic, and aggressive, They need to stop structuring the dialogues around the "Top Three". Its become such a restriction to complex nuanced dialogue.
Stop being fraking lazy and misleading with the paraphrases. Christ, I've seen paraphrases that amounted to two words or even ONE word. That is fraking unacceptable. UNACCEPTABLE. Make full sentences for christs sake. Hell, I want to know exactly everything my character is gonna say. Exactly everything.
A dialogue cube.
Or a magic eight ball.
Or maybe a 3D dialogue hectagon, or a dialogue discoball. Ïmagine the convenience of having to rotate a 3D object with more than 30 different choices in it.That's the true next step.
No more morality. No more basing all conversations on diplomatic, neutral/sarcastic, and aggressive, They need to stop structuring the dialogues around the "Top Three". Its become such a restriction to nuanced dialogue.
Become? Bio's been writing dialogue that way since BG1.
They didn't formalize the structure until ME. Not all options were always there, and prior to the voiced protagonist there was no way to tell them apart.Become? Bio's been writing dialogue that way since BG1.
I don't think it matters how they're taken.Ah I get your point. Honestly I'm not sure how to get around that. Everything a person says is going to have an intent behind it and it would be kind of silly to use all your words up with 8 different variants of angry so covering all the major intents is all you can hope for.
BG1 and all the non voiced ones frequently just had the words without the intent behind it allowing you to roleplay variations on the same line too some degree. But since they were taken straight it wasn't too believable.
They didn't formalize the structure until ME. Not all options were always there, and prior to the voiced protagonist there was no way to tell them apart.
They started designing mechanical benefits/penalties around the morality system since Kotor? Before that yeah you could make a evil or chaotic statement but it didn't get you evil points. The paraphrase system while apparently popular in testing i think is the real issue as it reduces your choices to the mechanics not what is the most fitting comment for your character.
You got reputation points. And the dialogue was arranged the same way usually (good on top and bad on the bottom).
I never knew there was a predictable order until it was mentioned in defense of ME's dialogue wheel. I read the text, assigning a wide variety of tones and intents to each until I found a combination I liked.Well, except that they generally followed the same order. Remember the fuss over the big choice in KotOR where the DS choice came at the top for once, and all the players who had clicked the top option for the entire game suddenly fell to the Dark Side?
I think that having basic responses like kind/neutral(sarcastic)/aggressive have predetermined spaces on the wheel is actually a good idea. A better solution, in my mind, is simply having better ways of conveying to the player what these lines entail. Since the character is not going to talk in single sentences every. single. time. like the Warden, paraphrasing is kind of necessary here, but upping the unpredictability, essentially making it a roulette game, will probably just make it worse. Just dump the morality meter and it's all good.
The morality system is outdated, instead of having paragon and renegade, improve upon the DA:I dialogue wheel. Make choices context based rather than good or bad. For example, have choices be: stoic, mad, confused, attack, relaxed, humorous etc.
I haven't played that game, but definitely more choices would be good. And definitely NOT choices that automatically lock you into a romance with someone you DON'T want like damn Liara or Ashley.
I think that having basic responses like kind/neutral(sarcastic)/aggressive have predetermined spaces on the wheel is actually a good idea. A better solution, in my mind, is simply having better ways of conveying to the player what these lines entail. Since the character is not going to talk in single sentences every. single. time. like the Warden, paraphrasing is kind of necessary here, but upping the unpredictability, essentially making it a roulette game, will probably just make it worse. Just dump the morality meter and it's all good.
I mostly agree with this, except the morality thing in a way. The weird thing is that Bioware doesn't really assign morality, they simply assign an approach. The players themselves assign that morality to it by deciding that Paragon is the moral choice despite Renegade actions still being moral, just from a different perspective. It's kind of like when I read people complaining about DA2 using the same moral structure while it was simply the chosen tone. The actual actions were independent of the tone.
Also, I have genuinely never understood the argument that the placing of the dialogue should be randomized as that to me just sounds like horrible game design. When a player chooses the upper right choice in ME, they know they are choosing the paragon choice. They aren't doing it by accident, they are choosing the approach they wish to take. What exactly is the gameplay value brought by randomizing the location of different choices? What does it add?
Also, I have genuinely never understood the argument that the placing of the dialogue should be randomized as that to me just sounds like horrible game design. When a player chooses the upper right choice in ME, they know they are choosing the paragon choice. They aren't doing it by accident, they are choosing the approach they wish to take. What exactly is the gameplay value brought by randomizing the location of different choices? What does it add?
The idea is, that having fixed placement for Paragon/Renegade choices ingrains the idea of having to have a P./R. choice in every case, since any option falling into that placement would automatically become P./R. anyway. But since this categorization of choices happens anyway, it would really only amount to screwing with players who just want to skim through the dialogue and still maintain the benefits of consistent behavior.
"make hovering over the option show a preview of the actual response so we don't misinterpret the paraphrasing."
This, this, THIS.
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