769 réponses à ce sujet

[ui876will]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...NOPE!

[Sylvius the Mad]

You're absolutely right, but the topic of making a voice protagonist optional is even more complicated. Player character dialogue takes up half of every conversation -- I'm aware I'm oversimplifying it, but I'm doing it in the interest of time. If Andromeda follows in Inquisition's footsteps, that's four voices, but let's be generous and just stick with the tradition two voices (one for each gender). If a silent protagonist option is available, that means that we don't hear 2/3 of the total amount of dialogue that's in the game. That's a huge waste of a games budget to even risk it, excluding the resources it would take to even make a toggle.

Do you not understand what sunk costs are?

[Sylvius the Mad]

As for cost, the game already offers different volume controls for different kinds of sounds. Music versus aound effects versus voices.

The protagonist voice is necessarily in separate audio files from the NPC voices, because there's more than one PC voice (so the game needs to mox and match).

All the silent PC option would require is that the protagonist's voice have a volume control that is distinct from that of the NPC voices.

This is exactly how the most popular silent PC mod for FO4 works.

[Cyonan]

Regardless of the evils of cutscenes, I would rather experience them with the PC voice muted.

Would that be as good as having the game built around not having them? No. Would I prefer a full silent protagonist game with the dialogue written for that? Yes. But that's beside the point. The question here is, given that the game is written for the voices protagonist and riddled with non-interactive cutscenes, would I like that game more if I could mute the PC?

And the answer is yes.

If I do play MEA, and it doesn't have a mute PC option, I'm just going to turn off all of the voices.

 

The answer being yes to you has no value to anybody but you, or possibly as an opener to a discussion we already had 5 pages worth of in this thread before going completely off the rails for the next 5 pages.

 

If you ever want the features you like implemented you have to think of it from a developer's standpoint, which means that the question is:

 

Is implementing a silent protagonist feature a better use of our time and money over implementing other optional features?

 

You have to convince BioWare there is enough people wanting that in order to make it worth it but as I said earlier in the thread, all evidence points to your current approach not working.

 

You're absolutely right, but the topic of making a voice protagonist optional is even more complicated. Player character dialogue takes up half of every conversation -- I'm aware I'm oversimplifying it, but I'm doing it in the interest of time. If Andromeda follows in Inquisition's footsteps, that's four voices, but let's be generous and just stick with the tradition two voices (one for each gender). If a silent protagonist option is available, that means that we don't hear 2/3 of the total amount of dialogue that's in the game. That's a huge waste of a games budget to even risk it, excluding the resources it would take to even make a toggle.

 

Typically a developer wont be terribly bothered by a player choosing to not experience a feature if they've given them the option to do so. If enough people are opting not to see/hear that content they might remove it in a future game, but for now it's already a cost that's been spent that's expected to be enjoyed by many people so it's not really considered a waste.

 

The same goes for side quests. BioWare created entire zones in Inquisition that might not be seen by a player, but they aren't really a waste of budget because it's still content a lot of people enjoyed.

 

The only thing I've seen a developer not like is spending a lot of time on content that the majority of the playerbase is unable to see, which was the argument Blizzard originally used for making raids in World of Warcraft more accessible. They didn't like spending all this time making these big epic raids that only 1% of the playerbase would ever be able to even see.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Typically a developer wont be terribly bothered by a player choosing to not experience a feature if they've given them the option to do so. If enough people are opting not to see/hear that content they might remove it in a future game, but for now it's already a cost that's been spent that's expected to be enjoyed by many people so it's not really considered a waste.

The same goes for side quests. BioWare created entire zones in Inquisition that might not be seen by a player, but they aren't really a waste of budget because it's still content a lot of people enjoyed.

To take this argument farther, the majority of players don't finish the game. Does that make the ending a waste of resources?

[Sylvius the Mad]

The answer being yes to you has no value to anybody but you, or possibly as an opener to a discussion we already had 5 pages worth of in this thread before going completely off the rails for the next 5 pages.

If you ever want the features you like implemented you have to think of it from a developer's standpoint, which means that the question is:

Is implementing a silent protagonist feature a better use of our time and money over implementing other optional features?

You have to convince BioWare there is enough people wanting that in order to make it worth it but as I said earlier in the thread, all evidence points to your current approach not working.

Simpy having separate volume controls would be very low cost, and would argublably have other benefits. Players might prefer to have the PC or NPC voices louder or quieter than each other. And having that feature in the game might alleviate some of the QA load if ensuring adequate volumes everywhere.

We've seen in previous games where companion banter wasn't audible if the the PC or the camera was too far from the speaker. Volume controls would help.

And then, as an ancillary benefit, we could turn them to zero.

But, since I have no idea what other players want (no one does), I cannot make the argument you say I should make.

[RoboticWater]

To take this argument farther, the majority of players don't finish the game. Does that make the ending a waste of resources?

Is the completion rate in the 1% range? I don't think these features are comparable. Even among fans, where the completion rate is probably quite near 100% (possibly more if we count multiple playthroughs), the silent protagonist is an unpopular option. 

 

There's also level of artistic integrity involved in finishing the story you started. I don't think a silent option carries that same obligation.

 

However, I'd actually like to see how blatantly neglecting an ending would affect sales. People might not actually get to the ending, but I don't think they would be too thrilled to hear that there wasn't one.

[Sylvius the Mad]

However, I'd actually like to see how blatantly neglecting an ending would affect sales. People might not actually get to the ending, but I don't think they would be too thrilled to hear that there wasn't one.

Didn't Half-Life 2 do that?

[In Exile]

I wouldn't mind rolling with a non-voiced protagonist in MEU. I don't expect it'll ever happen, but I think it could be a great experience.

Only if other characters are unvoiced and Bioware doesn't make the incomprehensible choice Obsidian made in POE. Otherwise there's a fundamental disconnect between the information the player has and the game takes as default.

[RoboticWater]

Didn't Half-Life 2 do that?

The game ended on a cliff hangar, but the game did end. Each episode resolved its own self-contained conflicts. There's just an overarching conflict that still needs a resolution. Many of us are still waiting for that resolution.
 
Valve certainly didn't say "we didn't end Half Life 2 because we knew no one would get there."

[In Exile]

Agreed. Whether voice content is heard by the player or not is irrelevant; the transaction has already happened. Bio doesn't care if you listen since they get paid anyway.

In a universe where games were modular, you could sell the voice pack separately. But there's no way to get there from here. Imagine the whining if Bio moved to that model.

That doesn't solve the UI issue. Selling VO separately on ME1 can't work because the game clearly is designed just for VO. And selling VO on DAO runs into the reading the line twice issue.

You need to design parallel UIs. That's needlessly costly.

[Lady Artifice]

What is it that you consider narrative to be? I would say that you could put a dozen people through the same experience (sequence of events), then ask each of them to provide a narrative of that experience, and they would not be identical.
 

If it was a unique recipe, you could hold the IP (intellectual property) for that recipe. In fact, businesses often contract various manufacturers to actually produce products that they have designed for brands that they own. Doing so does not convey ownership of the IP to the manufacturer.
 

No, but your choices in your approach to consuming it would impact how you experience it (and the narrative of that experience), would it not?
 

I have nearly 300 hours in a Skyrim Bosmer Huntress playthrough, and she's done precious little of the main (or any other developer authored) storyline. She has built a home, married, adopted a child, and perfected some of her skills. She's explored every corner of the map, but not every cave, dungeon, lake, and stream. She's helped some people, and ignored requests from others. The story of this character has precious little to do with any authored narrative the developers created.

A lot of people have created some wonderfully entertaining stories playing The Sims.

 

A narrative is any account of connected events. I agree that it's not hard to make one, I just disagree that it's preferable to leave doing so up to the player--at least in ME. 

 

 

That's not true at all. My character's motives are entirely mine. His decision-making process is mine.

I don't get direct control over anything that appears on screen, but that content's metadata (for lack of a better term) is created by me.
Yes I am. I'm responsible for my own enjoyment. No one else could be, because no one else knows what I like.
But you were a co-creator of the experience of drinking it. You helped create the story of the drink.
That would only be true if the source of the conflict was created aolely by the designers, but that's not necessarily true.

A player could create his or her own objective for the character, and the conflict would be that character's struggle to achieve that objective within the rules of the setting. The authored narrative created by the developers then, would serve as flavour-text for the setting of the actual story, whichbis the emergent narrative created through the player's choices.

In Mass Effect, does Shepard trust Udina? Did Shepard want to become a Spectre? What is Shepard's opinion regarding any one thing in the story? Do those opinions ever influence her decisions?

If you have any control over the answers to any of those questions, then you're creating story-relevant content.

 

 

1. They actually aren't, and have never been, entirely yours. If they were your Shepard would be able to actually refuse being a spectre if he wanted to, or agree with Saren.

 

 

Freedom and control are not the same thing. Stop equating them.

 

 

Now you've confused me. This is like playing checkers against someone who makes up their own rules. 

[AresKeith]

Now you've confused me. This is like playing checkers against someone who makes up their own rules. 

 

Which is ironically what he wants to do in these games

[Cyonan]

Simpy having separate volume controls would be very low cost, and would argublably have other benefits. Players might prefer to have the PC or NPC voices louder or quieter than each other. And having that feature in the game might alleviate some of the QA load if ensuring adequate volumes everywhere.

We've seen in previous games where companion banter wasn't audible if the the PC or the camera was too far from the speaker. Volume controls would help.

And then, as an ancillary benefit, we could turn them to zero.

But, since I have no idea what other players want (no one does), I cannot make the argument you say I should make.

 

but the question wasn't how low cost you think it is, it was "is it worth the cost?".

 

As a programmer I don't put much faith in somebody telling me "It wont be costly to do that", unless they can demonstrate they know what they're talking about. Too often something that seemed easy turned out to be a lot more complicated than originally thought.

 

It's an exceedingly difficult argument to prove because it requires actually showing there is a considerable number of people going "Yes, this is a feature that I want" either by showing such a group already exists or by convincing people to join your side. You alone simply trying to make it look like there is a more dissent than actually exists isn't going to have an effect on anything.

[Pasquale1234]

It's an exceedingly difficult argument to prove because it requires actually showing there is a considerable number of people going "Yes, this is a feature that I want" either by showing such a group already exists or by convincing people to join your side.

I've never quite understood why people who request some features (like muting the protag or providing a violence / sex toggle) are expected to "prove" the size of the market while a plethora of other requests are made with no such expectations.

I guess I always thought that product and feature requests were simply requests, and whether and how those requests are acted upon is at the discretion of the producer.

[AresKeith]

I've never quite understood why people who request some features (like muting the protag or providing a violence / sex toggle) are expected to "prove" the size of the market while a plethora of other requests are made with no such expectations.

I guess I always thought that product and feature requests were simply requests, and whether and how those requests are acted upon is at the discretion of the producer.

 

There acted upon based on whether the demand for it is worth the cost

 

Especially is cases where a request is technically going against what they wanted to do

[Cyonan]

I've never quite understood why people who request some features (like muting the protag or providing a violence / sex toggle) are expected to "prove" the size of the market while a plethora of other requests are made with no such expectations.

I guess I always thought that product and feature requests were simply requests, and whether and how those requests are acted upon is at the discretion of the producer.

 

It's because 99% of arguments against any optional feature can pretty much be defeated by saying "It's optional, if you don't like it don't use it".

 

The only counter argument that actually works against it is "So why implement this over the 23487923 other optional features they could be implementing?", because BioWare obviously can't implement all of them. They have to choose which are the best ones to pick, and one of the best things we can to do convince them is showing them that it's a feature a lot of people really want in the game.

 

In some cases you could try to take the route of "it would make for a better game" but with something with a silent protagonist or the sex toggle it's so incredibly subjective that it's going to be even harder of an argument to try to make. In the case of something like say, fleshing out the melee system I can, and have, gone this route before.

 

I think that most of us will agree that, in an ideal world, more options as to how the player can play a game is a good thing but in reality resources are limited and only so many options can make it into the game. If you want to improve the odds of the features you want ending up in the game, you have to make it look like that feature is more valuable an addition than the other ones people are asking for.

[RoboticWater]

I've never quite understood why people who request some features (like muting the protag or providing a violence / sex toggle) are expected to "prove" the size of the market while a plethora of other requests are made with no such expectations.

I guess I always thought that product and feature requests were simply requests, and whether and how those requests are acted upon is at the discretion of the producer.

What? This happens all the time. Race selection, melee combat, free running, stealth mechanics, open worlds, etc..

 

The only instance where this doesn't happen is when there's a suggestion to replace a mechanic with an equally complex or simpler mechanic or to remove a mechanic entirely (this rarely happens, especially now when we know very little about what mechanics actually are in the game). At that point, it'd be a discussion about whether not the replacement or removal would be appropriate for Mass Effect. For example: we can't get rid of Mass Effect's VO protagonist because that action would run counter to the essence of Mass Effect.

 

The question of resources, audience approval, and opportunity cost will always come into play whenever we're debating the addition of mechanics (in this case, an option to mute the protagonist). We could debate if the option to have a mute protagonist would be a detriment to the game (much like how a lower difficulty in Dark Souls might diminish the thematic message that the series presents), but I don't think that a mute option would actually do that. If we didn't discuss cost, then you'd be stuck saying "we want a silent VO," and we'd merely say "OK, good for you." The question of cost makes the discussion practical.

 

We could address the comments that make general statements like "silent protagonist sucks," but that doesn't have much to do with Mass Effect. The series is founded upon its VO protagonist, and is going to keep it; debating the merits and shortcomings of both systems doesn't change that. By all means do so if it pleases you, but it would have no bearing on Mass Effect.

[AlanC9]

That doesn't solve the UI issue. Selling VO separately on ME1 can't work because the game clearly is designed just for VO. And selling VO on DAO runs into the reading the line twice issue.

You need to design parallel UIs. That's needlessly costly.

Oh, sure; I was being sloppy there. I didn't mean to suggest that the feature would pass an ROI check, just that we need to do the check in a sensible fashion.

[Pasquale1234]

<snip>

It's good of you to reply, but I still think it's an entirely different conversation than simply discussing advantages, disadvantages, preferences, etc. of different features from individual players' points of view.

If someone just wants to "prove" that unvoiced protagonists are marketable, all you need to do is point to Bethesda's sales. And then the discussion turns to other features (like mod availability) which ultimately leads nowhere, since we really have no way to measure the incremental value of each individual feature to the synergistic whole.

There are also some pretty big variances between marketability / appeal of a feature versus the consumer's ultimate satisfaction with it. I think most of us have bought into things that looked pretty slick in the marketing but weren't in actual usage, and vice-versa.

I'm not quite sure how you would assess the desirability of a feature that, to the best of my knowledge, has never before existed - but I suspect it might involve developing some sort of prototype and collecting feedback from a group of users of that prototype. I don't know of any games that offer a protagonist both voiced and unvoiced. (Maybe modded FO4, but I'm guessing you could have only one or the other per run. Being able to switch scene-by-scene could be a wholly different play experience.) It's also been my experience that the success and popularity of any given feature depends largely, if not entirely, on its implementation and how and what it contributes to the whole.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That doesn't solve the UI issue. Selling VO separately on ME1 can't work because the game clearly is designed just for VO. And selling VO on DAO runs into the reading the line twice issue.

You need to design parallel UIs. That's needlessly costly.

No you don't. For them both to be full-featured modes of play, sure, but that's not what is being requested.

Giving us separate volume controls and leaving it at that would produce a silent PC option without explicitly endorsing it. That wouldn't need a separate UI.

[RoboticWater]

It's good of you to reply, but I still think it's an entirely different conversation than simply discussing advantages, disadvantages, preferences, etc. of different features from individual players' points of view.

If someone just wants to "prove" that unvoiced protagonists are marketable, all you need to do is point to Bethesda's sales. And then the discussion turns to other features (like mod availability) which ultimately leads nowhere, since we really have no way to measure the incremental value of each individual feature to the synergistic whole.

There are also some pretty big variances between marketability / appeal of a feature versus the consumer's ultimate satisfaction with it. I think most of us have bought into things that looked pretty slick in the marketing but weren't in actual usage, and vice-versa.

I'm not quite sure how you would assess the desirability of a feature that, to the best of my knowledge, has never before existed. I don't know of any games that offer a protagonist both voiced and unvoiced. (Maybe modded FO4, but I'm guessing you could have only one or the other per run. Being able to switch scene-by-scene could be a wholly different play experience.) It's also been my experience that the success and popularity of any given feature depends largely, if not entirely, on its implementation and how and what it contributes to the whole.

You would need to prove that there was a significant population of Mass Effect fans that would not buy another Mass Effect game without a silent protagonist or that there was a significant portion of non-Mass Effect fans that would buy Mass Effect because of a silent protagonist.

 

No one could dispute that RPG with mute protagonists can sell, but I don't think you can prove that silent protagonists are the reason for their success.

 

It's also been my experience that the success and popularity of any given feature depends largely, if not entirely, on its implementation and how and what it contributes to the whole.

Which is why I don't really believe that there's a practical non-invasive method of implementing an option to mute the protagonist. The simplest solution would be to just mute the volume on the protagonist's VO, but that still leaves the protagonist's animations. I just can't imagine very many people would be content with the silent option if it left long sequences of the PC flapping their lips. Unless you're overzealous about the silence, just muting the PC might take away form the whole rather than add to it.

 

Mass Effect is built from the ground up to have VO. Giving us the option to change that would either be a pittance or large waste of time.

[Cyonan]

It's good of you to reply, but I still think it's an entirely different conversation than simply discussing advantages, disadvantages, preferences, etc. of different features from individual players' points of view.

If someone just wants to "prove" that unvoiced protagonists are marketable, all you need to do is point to Bethesda's sales. And then the discussion turns to other features (like mod availability) which ultimately leads nowhere, since we really have no way to measure the incremental value of each individual feature to the synergistic whole.

There are also some pretty big variances between marketability / appeal of a feature versus the consumer's ultimate satisfaction with it. I think most of us have bought into things that looked pretty slick in the marketing but weren't in actual usage, and vice-versa.

I'm not quite sure how you would assess the desirability of a feature that, to the best of my knowledge, has never before existed - but I suspect it might involve developing some sort of prototype and collecting feedback from a group of users of that prototype. I don't know of any games that offer a protagonist both voiced and unvoiced. (Maybe modded FO4, but I'm guessing you could have only one or the other per run. Being able to switch scene-by-scene could be a wholly different play experience.) It's also been my experience that the success and popularity of any given feature depends largely, if not entirely, on its implementation and how and what it contributes to the whole.

 

Well it's not about convincing them a game can be successful with a silent protagonist but rather that adding the option for one will at the very least see a return on the money they spent implementing it.

 

BioWare has lots of optional features they would like to see added to the game but can only implement so many. Showing that a considerable number of people want the feature you do is just the easiest way of convincing them that they should pick yours over any number of other optional features they're looking to add.

[KaiserShep]

To take this argument farther, the majority of players don't finish the game. Does that make the ending a waste of resources?

 

 

Sweet sand-sifting Jebus. We're just getting into troll logic now. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

1. They actually aren't, and have never been, entirely yours. If they were your Shepard would be able to actually refuse being a spectre if he wanted to, or agree with Saren.

Those choices aren't modeled, but that doesn't mean they can't happen. If I reach a point where the character I'm playing needs to make a choice the game won't allow, I simply end that playthrough (and headcanon the consequences).

The character I play who makes it all the way through the game (assuming there is one) will be one whose design was compatible with a set of options permitted within the game.

Now you've confused me. This is like playing checkers against someone who makes up their own rules.

That's actually a great analogy.

When playing checkers, you have control over your pieces. You choose where they move. Every move they make is one that you chose.

But you don't have freedom. You can't just have the pieces move wherever you like; you're constrained by the rules of the game.

In these games, I'm not asking for freedom. I don't need to be able to do anything I can imagine. But of the things I do get to do, I want to be the one to choose them. That's control.

Freedom will always be an illusion on these games, but control can be very real.