105 réponses à ce sujet

[LBXZero]

To point out how the system works, I am working on a full paragon run. In Samara's loyalty mission, it is incredibly hard to break the mental link with Morinth. I am expecting that of the presently attainable paragon points that I would have needed 150% of that total or higher, thus requiring level 3 in the passive skill at least. But with mostly paragon, I did have the option.



My expectation of how the present system would work, using programming and design experience, is the following



1) there are 4 stats (Paragon Earned, Paragon Possible, Renegade Earned, Renegade Possible)

2) each conversation adds a statically set Paragon Possible and Renegade Possible, set by the conversation designer for how much Paragon points and Renegade points that could have been earned.

3) Effective Paragon is Paragon Earned divided by Paragon Possible multiplied by (1 plus passive bonus), and same for Renegade



The bonus you get for importing an ME1 character is not added to possible points to grant a Effective rating that is far above 100% and can really shift the balance.



Ultimately, do not expect this system to change because the developers will have to rewrite more code than what patching would allow on the X360. All you can do is provide suggestions for ME3, which everyone appreciates suggestions.

[FredegarKadere]

Basing the tougher conversations off of percentages is subpar with the way the current system is designed with Paragon == Good and Renegade == Douchebag OR Get 'er Done.

If Renegade == Get 'er Done then great, but as it stands choosing the Renegade option is a flop between being a total jerk or being firm in your ideas and methods.

There are situations that I like to play Get 'er Done, but I am unable to because going that route means I trip an old salarian in the street, kick them a few times in the head, take their omni-tool, spit in their broken and bloody face, and then tell a nearby krogan that 'That Guy' was a co-creator of the genophage.

[Big I]

To the Devs, thanks for taking the time to help people here.

However, this system is just weird. Why should convincing someone on Omega be dependent on already having convinced someone on the Citadel? Why would the fact that Shepard's never been to Korlus or Purgatory make him more charismatic relative to those around him? And why would you want to replay as a ME2 character if you might be locked out of resolving some of the most crucial scenes in the game?

As has already been noted, this system severly restricts choice. Either you can approach each situation separately, choosing whichever option, Paragon, Renegade or neutral that you think is most correct, and risk losing crew loyalty, or you play totally Paragon or Renegade in order to assure that loyalty, even if some of the options seem to you to be clearly stupid (for instance, sparing Elnora, or Maelon).

[Urazz]

LBXZero wrote...

Ultimately, do not expect this system to change because the developers will have to rewrite more code than what patching would allow on the X360. All you can do is provide suggestions for ME3, which everyone appreciates suggestions.

I do think they could at least patch in the ME2 newgame+ characters to get bonus paragon/renegade based on the paragon/renegade you had on the previous game.  Much like the ME1 import characters.  But then again that may be too hard to do like you said.

Modifié par Urazz, 04 mars 2010 - 01:48 .

[LBXZero]

Urazz wrote...

LBXZero wrote...

Ultimately, do not expect this system to change because the developers will have to rewrite more code than what patching would allow on the X360. All you can do is provide suggestions for ME3, which everyone appreciates suggestions.

I do think they could at least patch in the ME2 newgame+ characters to get bonus paragon/renegade based on the paragon/renegade you had on the previous game.  Much like the ME1 import characters.  But then again that may be too hard to do like you said.

I prefered how ME1 did the charm/intimidate options.  You had to work for a sufficient Paragon/Renegade level in order to buy the skill points to perform such actions.  Thus in NewGame+, you can perform earlier charm and renegade options that could have been impossible on the first time through, making the new game have a different experience.

But if the developers add a patch to grant a paragon/renegade bonus for NewGame+ play, then they would be killing the system, or honorable suicide.

When I first saw the system in ME2, I thought it was like ME1's except you automatically earned the charm/intimidate levels as your Paragon/Renegade increased, as all the text refered.  For a suggestion on ME3, it is a better system to have a fixed level system with fixed sets of difficulty that levels as you perform more charm and renegade options.  Then you are actually earning points to work towards a goal than trying to retain points so you don't lose the goal.  For the hard options at the beginning of the game, you keep earned Paragon and Renegade from your previous play.

There is a more complicated suggestion available, but I don't feel like explaining it here.

Modifié par LBXZero, 04 mars 2010 - 04:38 .

[b0bartig]

Im Too Legendary wrote...
As such, if everything you said is true, there is still something "wrong" when you choose to play a 2nd playthrough, and import your ME2 character (Since your only able to either import your ME1 or ME2 character). This needs to be fixed, or some sort of median should be created. For obviously it is virtually impossible to resolve these conflicts if you import your ME2 Character since it's on a "Clean" slate.

This should be looked into, for now I am certain that I understand the problem here.

I think you're still missing a key piece:

You "import" a ME1 character, but you more or less "remort" a ME2 character into newgame+.

Import = bonus + decisions from previous game + convenience
Remort = Clean slate character + challenge + replayability

These features, and their respective goals are quite different, but you want to lump them into the same thing. THAT's the problem, not the behavior of the ME2 save > newgame+ which is working as intended. If you just want to replay ME2 differently, then it might make the most sense to import ME1 Shep and have the bonuses you want.

Based on the current difficulty of resolving these conflicts sans import bonus, I would wager that you're NOT SUPPOSED to be able to do them easily, and are thus forced to make decisions consistently throughout the game just to get ONE set of conflicts to resolve favorably. It's called role playing for a reason. The difficulty is a design choice, not a shortcoming in the newgame system. Assuming that the charm tuning is based around a "clean slate" character, and it would really make no sense otherwise, the "virtually impossible" resolution you seek is exactly what the designers intended.

FYI for non-old people: "Remort" is an old, old, skool MUD term for when you took your "godlike" max level toon, and busted them back down to newbie levels, buliding back up with additional challenge. Once you climbed back up, you had exclusive "remort" powers, but it was a mighty long trod.

[The Red Winger]

b0bartig wrote...

Im Too Legendary wrote...
As such, if everything you said is true, there is still something "wrong" when you choose to play a 2nd playthrough, and import your ME2 character (Since your only able to either import your ME1 or ME2 character). This needs to be fixed, or some sort of median should be created. For obviously it is virtually impossible to resolve these conflicts if you import your ME2 Character since it's on a "Clean" slate.

This should be looked into, for now I am certain that I understand the problem here.

I think you're still missing a key piece:

You "import" a ME1 character, but you more or less "remort" a ME2 character into newgame+.

Import = bonus + decisions from previous game + convenience
Remort = Clean slate character + challenge + replayability

These features, and their respective goals are quite different, but you want to lump them into the same thing. THAT's the problem, not the behavior of the ME2 save > newgame+ which is working as intended. If you just want to replay ME2 differently, then it might make the most sense to import ME1 Shep and have the bonuses you want.

Based on the current difficulty of resolving these conflicts sans import bonus, I would wager that you're NOT SUPPOSED to be able to do them easily, and are thus forced to make decisions consistently throughout the game just to get ONE set of conflicts to resolve favorably. It's called role playing for a reason. The difficulty is a design choice, not a shortcoming in the newgame system. Assuming that the charm tuning is based around a "clean slate" character, and it would really make no sense otherwise, the "virtually impossible" resolution you seek is exactly what the designers intended.

FYI for non-old people: "Remort" is an old, old, skool MUD term for when you took your "godlike" max level toon, and busted them back down to newbie levels, buliding back up with additional challenge. Once you climbed back up, you had exclusive "remort" powers, but it was a mighty long trod.

I think the point you are missing is that while many of us acknowledge it is "roleplaying" game the developers have taken out the ability to role play a second playthrough. The system is designed to make you take a hardline stance in one direction or another. In addition you are almost forced a to choose a skill you may not want or doesn't fit in your role playing concept. The most frustrating thing though is that the paragon/renegade choices are not necesarrily black and white and to play a character 100% in either direction to achieve the ideal ending defeats the entire point of having a choice in the first place. It's frustrating to invest so much time and enjoyment in a character playing them the way you want then when you are ready to start with your jacked up guy you get less choice than the first time.

[b0bartig]

@The Red Winger: No, I totally get it, but roleplaying includes living with the consequences of decisions made. The perception of the deprivation of choice in playthrough 2 is the result of having been granted a very substantial bonus in playthrough 1. As a result, we've all been a bit spoiled if we imported ME1 toons.



You want to be able to roleplay however you want AND you want to be able to get whatever result you want. The sentiment has been around for decades, and I feel that that is, and has always been an unreasonable expectation in RPGs. What you are in effect asking for is a sandbox, or a toy in the strictest design sense.



Take a moment to examine the language you just used: "to achieve the IDEAL ending"... It makes sense that to garner an ideal result, you would need to be an exemplar of Paragon-hood, a character who has taken a hardline stance to be virtuous - they would not have much choice in their actions. Defeats the point? It would seem to BE the point - with the ideal result being the reward for having otherwise confined onesself so strictly.



I mean, I would totally get it if Bioware made a change simply because gamers think its too damned hard to get the results they want (after all, sequels are supposed to be full of fan service, which we deserve for our continued patronage), it's little more than tuning values in a hash, but I have no problem seeing the logic and intent of the system as implemented, and that it was the result of careful consideration and thoughtful design, which can still result in frustration.



If it is not clear what dialog options will result in Paragon/Renegade choices, that would indeed invalidate your choice as much as it would to have the dialog strings missing entirely, but that is a separate issue, and a straight up bug unless they changed the paragon/renegade conventions from ME1. I'm only like 11 hours in, but I haven't encountered a dialog option where I was surprised by the paragon/renegade result yet.

[Meistr_Chef]

Kim Stolz wrote...

ArmeniusLOD wrote...

I think the system shouldn't be linear like this. I think that certain persuasion options should be more difficult based on the personality of the person you are trying to persuade and not on how many points out of the total you have collected up to that point. It seems kind of disingenuous that you have to be completely renegade or paragon to be able to pass the all of the speech checks late in the game. On my first playthrough I received about 80% renegade and 50% paragon (because I like being neutral, leaning toward renegade) and I could not persuade anyone from the Reaper IFF mission onward.
Don't misread this and think I'm asking that you be able to pass all persuasions with less than a full bar. I'm just suggesting that not everything progress in a linear fashion as it is now. Just something to think about for ME3.

That is an excellent suggestion. That's kind of what we did with the confrontation persuades. That's why we made the persuade for tali and legion paragon which was more reasoning with them because they're so logical and why the renegade persuade for jack and miranda was Shepard putting his foot down and sending them to their rooms like children, because they're both so hot headed and stubborn. But we also couldn't make the later decisions in the game really easy because then everyone can get the persuades and everyone would succeed and everyone would have the same experiance playing the game. A decision with no consequences is hardly a decision at all.

I totally agree, but the system should also give you an indication why you aren't able to make a certain decision. This is especially true for those of us who play the game a few times through. In my case, I had the option to recruit Morinth in my first playthrough with my ME1 savegame import (ME1 shepard was 'full paragon'). I chose not to because I was playing a mostly paragon Shepard. In my second playthrough, I started with the same ME1 savegame, but decided to play mostly renegade, though I also chose a few 'neutral' options as I saw fit...I didn't want my Shepard to be a raging lunatic. But this time I couldn't choose to recruit Morinth; I reasoned that perhaps my renegade isn't high enough. Then I read that paragon players could recruit Morinth easier, so I did an about face and turned my Shepard totally paragon from that point onwards. This role-breaking change did not please me but I really wanted to recruit Morinth out of curiosity. Turns out even by the end I had about 4.5 out of 5 bars of paragon and I still couldn't recruit Morinth (I tried recruiting her after every subsequent mission, thinking I could 'pass a threshold').

Only after you revealed this system I *think* I get why my 2nd playthrough Shepard couldn't recruit Morinth. I guess due to a few neutral decisions I started to fall behind in the cumulative system...and could never catch up even doing my darndest. Oddly enough, I could still pass the Miranda/Jack and Tali/Legion fights.

So really...I think this system needs a little tweak to provide more feedback to the player. I didn't know what I did or did not do to result in this limbo of a situation with Morinth and that was maddening as hell. The paragon and renegade bars are too vague to provide any valuable inference.

Please take this into consideration when developing Mass Effect 3.

Modifié par Meistr_Chef, 13 mars 2010 - 12:34 .

[oldmanbeard]

Im on my 2nd run on insanity and I am doing all renegade.  My renegade level is currently 2.5 bars.  I did the morinth/samara loyalty quest as soon as i could get it.  But still the option was not given to me.  If the percentage argument holds true, I should have had better chances of getting the option right?  I have been acting only renegade so far and have been visiting planets/cities as least as possible to avoid lowering my percentage.  Is there any explanation to this?

[danielassault]

This is a very interesting thread.



I never had a problem with either choices in the game and my first play-through is always making the choices I believe are correct. So it's a mix between both Paragon and Renegade.



A suggestion to Bioware, which I believe would make this "pattern" tougher to spot and all around upgrade this persuade\\intimidate element of the game; Instead of giving us BLUE or RED choices, keep the regular POSITIVE, NEUTRAL, NEGATIVE choices. However, if you qualify to use the certain Paragon\\Renegade options (Ie: Blue option is lit, Red option is lit) then Shepard uses this option when you select either POSITIVE or NEGATIVE choice.



To make things simple: The speech wheel give you the option to say: Yes, Maybe, No. (You select YES)



*If you have no paragon points - Shepard would say "Yes", but the outcome wouldn't impress whoever you are speaking to.



*If you have 50% paragon points (Enough to use persuade) - Shepard would activate paragon option.

[KingZeal]

Would it be possible, for ME3, to create an option for players to have a "jumble" of Paragon/Renegade choices throughout the entire game?

What I mean is, in Dragon Age, the choices aren't necessarily lined top-to-bottom, indicating which are Paragon, Neutral and Renegade.  This kind of made it easy to make heroic and selfish decisions, because the game told me which ones were which.  That kind of made the late-game persuasions (which require high points in either) simple as all get-out, even though I didn't really WANT to stack Paragon/Renegade points that way.  So, providing players with the options of jumbling dialogue choices so that they become ambiguous would be awesome.

[Keldon Northwind]

The problem is that I ALWAYS fall short on the Jack - Miranda encounter after doing both of their loyalty missions. Only once I've managed to use the Paragon / Renegade option to break up the dispute and I've pretty much done all side-missions you can possibly imagine. Subsequently, any other confrontation (Legion/Tali) (Morinth/Samara) I've managed to use the Paragon or Renegade option to clear the encounter without any issues.



Something is definitely fishy with Jack/Miranda encounter.

[Zontral]

What does the upgradeable +100% (or +70%) paragon/renegade points class bonus do in this case? If the real checks have nothing to do with your meters, then is this bonus negligible? Or does this bonus affect something else? (I haven't had problems resolving any conflicts, both on an ME1 character and a NG+, and I've always used the +100% bonus upgrade)

[inversevideo]

Kim Stolz wrote...

crapmonster13 wrote...

Maybe I was just lucky, but its hard to imagine that people actually actively going the paragon route and have over 90% still have trouble resolving these disputes.

Actually that's very believable.Since so many people want the explanation of how this works I'll tell you. Don't read any further if you don't want it spoiled. There are potential paragon and renegade points throughout the game. When the user arrives in an area (ie: Omega) the game registers every single paragon or renegade decision that can be made and increases the difficulty of the persuade system based on these potential points. If the user collects all of these points (either paragon OR renegade) they break even they can almost never get ahead of the system, you can only keep apace. If the user misses these oppotunities to collect all of the points the game still keeps these points you missed so the player will actually fall behind. If the player falls behind it is very difficult and almost impossible to catch back up because everywhere you go more potential points are being mounted against you and making the persuasions more difficult. So when you arrive at the most difficult persuasions in the game where you are already at a disadvantage due to the difficulty of the persuade and these potential points that you missed stack up to make it even more difficult and then you try to paragon persuade jack and miranda which makes it even more difficult(it's easier to renegade persuade those two and paragon persuade legion and tali) you are going to fail it; not because it's a bug but because the system was made that way.

What I think a lot of people aren't realizing is that when you import an ME1 save you get a pretty major bonus to the paragon or renegade scale which makes the persuades incredibly easy. then you start an ME2 newgame + and you are working from a clean slate.

Hopefully that explains it well enough for  you. I've talked to the people who made this system and decided on the bonus for starting a newgame+ and the odds of this being changed or made easier are very, very low.
If you're confused by the explanation I gave or need some clarification please feel free to PM me. Thanks .

Kim:

Thanks for taking the time to post on this.

If I can ask a small favor, please be aware that this system has resulted in changes to how I would normally play the game. 

Knowing nothing, previous to your post, of how the charm system works, I've discovered, on my own, that I can guarantee 100% loyalty by doing the missions in a certain order, and by being 'renegon'.

Once I've reached secondary eye glow stage (1st stage 3 red dots in each eye, 2nd stage the iris glows red as well) I no longer worry about checks.

But it does change the way I would normally play the game (paragon or paragade)..

It seems that the developers did not take into account that not every renegade choice makes sense, nor does every paragon choice. I can provide very specific examples of what I mean, but I don't think spoilers are allowed in this forum.

Suffice it to say that if I am going to role play Shepard, I would expect Shepard to take whichever route most efficiently gets the job done. Sometimes that path may be require a hard choice/renegade option, and other times it may require Shepard to take the 'high road'/paragon option.  

I feel this current system is trying to artificially force you into one path or another, and it just does not feel right.

I'm only guessing that making it likely that you go down a certain path, by making it harder to choose an alternate path or force a failure to reconcile a situation because Shepard lost conversation skills during the last two years, she spent in a coma, will have ramifications in ME3.   But it really does feel forced, articial. I suppose one way to look at it is that a 'Hobson's choice' is a likely scenario in any complex social interaction, requiring give and take.
And so far, it is possible to obtain positive results, for most choices by going Renegon (others might get there doing full paragon), but I am aware of some artificial constraint to my gaming, that sometimes takes me out of the game.

Just my 2cents, thanks for listening, and thank you for taking the time to provide an explanation.

[binaryemperor]

to OP

If this was already addressed and I happened to TL;DR it, sorry

I noticed that if you take Miranda's side, Jack is far more likely to be paragon persuaded than Miranda. In fact, I had miranda die in one game because she was a stubborn **** that would not listen to the most powerful, charismatic 100% Paragon the Galaxy has ever seen,

Just pick miranda's side. Yes, it is annoying, but I was able to paragon persuade Jack a lot easier than that chunky-assed Cerby Slave.

Modifié par binaryemperor, 16 avril 2010 - 12:52 .

[inversevideo]

binaryemperor wrote...

to OP

If this was already addressed and I happened to TL;DR it, sorry

I noticed that if you take Miranda's side, Jack is far more likely to be paragon persuaded than Miranda. In fact, I had miranda die in one game because she was a stubborn **** that would not listen to the most powerful, charismatic 100% Paragon the Galaxy has ever seen,

Just pick miranda's side. Yes, it is annoying, but I was able to paragon persuade Jack a lot easier than that chunky-assed Cerby Slave.

I'm embarrsed to say this never occurred to me, to paragon Jack.

When this issue happened to me, I was virtually, except for a tiny sliver, 100% paragon, and could not choose the paragon option, nor go back later and convince Miranda to squash the beef, so I  figured that  the Jack/Miranda fight was 'bugged' and decided to try Renagade instead, which works.  It never occured to me that what I thought of as a 'bug' is actually a feature.

In fact, it very much feels like the logic here is broken; in that being genetically superior and smarter than the average 'merc' and your second in command, Miranda should know that Jack is damaged goods, and needs to be handled with care. Miranda should be all about the mission, whaever happened to 'I'm here to make sure you succeed Shepard'?  As such, I would expect it to be easier to paragon Miranda, and harder to paragon Jack, who basically does not trust anyone and will kill anyone she thinks is frakking with her.  But whatever.

I have to say, ater doing it for a few playthroughs and almost reducing it to a formula,  I find being Renegon addictive now.  There is something satisfying in telling both Jack & Miranda to STFU and stick to the mission

Modifié par inversevideo, 16 avril 2010 - 04:00 .

[Rabbit4400]

just saying a thought..



Its not that hard on insanity with imported ME1 character



import a lvl 60 rich ME1 and you get the best import bonus and complete ME2 twice/ones import to get the Long Service bonus



hell you get all this:

4000 exp

350000 credits

60000 in each resourse

25% more exp



you will level in no time and get the upgrades reletivety fast

and take the 100% more renegade/paragon upgrade and you should be fine.



just my opinion though I don't have done that many run throughs. I usually just do pure paragon or renegade, not neutrual paths. correct me if I'm wrong on something.

[Stinkface27]

Man, some of you sillies are really rude to the devs =X Not usually the way to get what you want, nor the way to get your point across.

[Yidenia]

This is kind of off-putting. I was also past 3/4 for Miranda/Jack and it was greyed out as well, and I heard people were able to persuade them at 60%. I don't care if the two persuade disputes are this cracked up because it was intentional. If you put something in a game that is more frustrating than fun, that's bad design, in my opinion. Games are supposed to be fun. You can have challenges, but the point of a challenge is to make the game more fun, not less. It sounds like the disputes are irritating even for hardcore players, and overcoming the challenge depends less on skill and more on knowledge of how to hack the game, which completely defeats the purpose of playing a game in a straight forward fashion as most, if not all games, are meant to. And why would anyone design a game that's infuriating to play more than once? Isn't the point of these games to have high replay value?

[Pacifien]

The point of the Miranda/Jack and Tali/Legion arguments was to make you make a choice, similar to how you had to do so on Virmire. People weren't happy they had to pick one or the other between Kaidan and Ashley either. Only this time the developers decided to give players a way out with the persuade option. But since you can see the persuade option, if it's greyed out, all that does is taunt you that there's a better way but that option is going to be denied you because of how many paragon/renegade points you've managed to collect.

The developers need to find a better way.

[mrmike_1949]

Sunyavadin wrote...

Very interesting system.

"interesting" in the chinese proverb sense of the word<_<

[PurpleChair]

I imported a ME1 character with 100% renegade points. I'm now pretty much at the end of the game with a renegade bar over 80%, and yet I still can't turn the tables on a certain team-mate and replace them with a different character (I can't remember if this forum allows spoilers...)



Am I to understand that it's too late for me to claw back enough renegade points to activate this dialogue option? What on Earth are the renegade and paragon bars even supposed to represent, if they don't indicate your paragon/renegade ratings?! I expected that crossing the 80% threshold would unlock pretty much all of the relevant dialogue options, and now it turns out that it's calculated by a secret percentage system that the game doesn't warn you about, and it's too late for me to fix things???



I'm playing on Insanity, so I'm pretty happy to have made it this far (I've completed every other mission up to the IFF recovery) but it's VERY FRUSTRATING to have this one last thing kicked out of my grasp.

[PurpleChair]

Is it going to turn out that the dialogue choices also scale up 15 levels (or whatever it is) on Insanity mode? Because if so I think I may fly over to your offices and punch somebody.

[Pacifien]

Whether or not certain paragon/renegade options show up has nothing to do with the paragon/renegade bar, which I agree is quite annoying Click here for an explanation on how the system works.