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Question: What do you prefer?
AoD-style checks - 2 (6.7%)
The proposed system - 28 (93.3%)
Total Voters: 28

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Author Topic: Design Topic #3: Dialogue Checks  (Read 13025 times)
Vince
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« on: June 21, 2018, 11:52:36 am »

When designing AoD dialogue system, our goal was simple: your character’s skills must determine conversations' outcomes (i.e. success or failure). The dialogue checks were equally simple: if your skill is high enough, you pass the check, otherwise you fail. It created 3 problems:

1. You never had to consider what the NPC would respond best to. Any tagged line would result in instant success if you have the skill, meaning that your dialogue option was not an attempt (as it should be) but guaranteed success, which made considering the options redundant.

2. Since all dialogues had multiple checks to simulate realistic conversations, it didn’t matter how many checks you passed and how well you were doing until that last check that resulted in failure (i.e. early success didn’t contribute to anything and thus didn’t matter).

3. The rigid nature of the system forced us to lower the checks to make the hybrids (i.e. jacks of all trades with lower skills) viable, which in turn made playing talkers an easy mode.

We did have a couple of interesting dialogues. When you talk to Lorenza, she asks you some questions to understand your motivations better (before she makes her decision), and your answers modify the checks later on, making them easier or harder.

In The New World we’d like to engage the player, make him/her consider the options instead of clicking on the line with the tag matching your highest skill, yet still keep the system skill-driven. It’s not an easy task as this problem doesn’t have a perfect solution, so I’m asking you to consider both systems (see below) and vote for the one where the pros outweigh the cons.

Option 1 (AoD):

NPC text

1.   [skill 1] Dialogue option A
2.   [skill 2] Dialogue option B
        a.[success] NPC favorable response
        b.[failure] NPC negative response

Option 2 (the proposed system):

The biggest conceptual change is that the tagged lines would now represent an attempt without any guarantees of success. It’s up to the player to read people based on the available info and consider what would work best. You can have two different streetwise lines, for example, one would result in a positive reaction, the other in a negative.

That brings us to the second biggest change. Most lines would no longer lead to success or failures but result in positive and negative reactions, represented numerically. Your skill level would act as modifiers, magnifying positive reactions and reducing the effect of blunders. The final check would tally up the reactions, which will determine whether you’ve succeeded or failed.

Let’s say your Persuasion is 3. You’re offered 3 arguments. The NPC will respond very favorably (+2) to argument #1, favorably to argument #2 (+1) and very negatively to argument #3 (-2). Your skill will modify these reactions to 4, 2, and 0. Let’s say the final check’s value would be 10, so assuming the conversation has 3 nodes with tagged lines, you’ll need to score at least 2 very favorable reactions and 1 favorable (or 3 very favorable ones) to pass the check. In longer dialogues you’d be able to fail a few times and still recover.

This system will maintain the importance of skills and encourage further investment but it will shift the focus to figuring out which lines would work best. Obviously, it might increase meta-gaming but that’s your choice and thus not our concern. Every time the player is offered to make a choice with different outcomes, 8 out of 10 people would want to know the outcomes in advance and the exact way to get to the outcome they want. 

NPC text:

1.   [skill 1] Dialogue option A
        a. NPC very favorable reaction: +2
2.   [skill 1] Dialogue option B
        a. NPC negative reaction: -1
3.   [skill 2] Dialogue option C
        a. NPC favorable reaction: +1

Anyway, let us know what you think and if you have any concerns.

PS. In unrelated news Steam introduced developer pages, which are handy for developers and publishers with 200 games and not so handy for developers with 2 games. Still, we'd appreciate if you 'follow' us in case there's more to this whole thing.

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/irontowerstudio/
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Stellavore
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« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2018, 01:38:04 pm »

It might add complexity but it might be worth considering the final "check" to be more dynamic than a pass or fail situation, a simple example is fallout 4 where you can repeatedly ask for more money for a quest which is increasingly difficult each time, where the net gain or net loss is based on you speech skill, or in this case, how well you did throughout the conversation.
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Judge Mental One
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« Reply #2 on: June 21, 2018, 11:45:33 pm »

The proposed system sounds better. Especially because it opens the door for random and less important chars around the world possibly having useful information to give you. You could walk past and hear some un-named chars talking about how trader such and such hates flattery and prefers straight shooting. So exploring and talking to everyone would help give you the clues to find out how best to approach someone.

As per previous poster it would also be cool if some people had levels of success rather than just pass or fail. Say you need military type back up for some very hard raid. Great success he sends you some veterans and droids, succeed barely and he will agree to send some recruits, fail and you get nothing, or have to pay through the nose for the recruits.   
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menyalin
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« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2018, 01:41:15 am »

Well, similar system worked quite fine in DX:HR.

In addition, you can make the dialog system more dynamic due to the variable check complexity. For example:

base check threshold (BT) = 4

NPC attitude (NA) from -3 (totally hates you) to 3 (totally loves you)

NPC faction reputation (FR) from -3 to 3

difficulty modifier (DM) from 0 (give me a pen for a couple of minutes) to 6 (let's go to that suicidal mission together)

And total check difficulty is
(BT + DM - NA - FR) * CHARISMA_MODIFIER
that must be surpassed by character skill. (plus additional negative modifiers for trigger-happy or manipulative characters)

You can also make this values visible like in combat by something like optional pop-up hint after check was failed, so that the player could understand the complexity of the check and what he lacked to success, rather than whining about the values taken from the ceiling. It also should be quite simple to manage and modify if programmed properly.
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Sunfire
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« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2018, 03:52:07 am »

proposed
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Fed
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« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2018, 05:38:38 am »

I like the "partial success" part of the proposed system.
But I don't like the randomness of it.

I generally think that randomness is good on two conditions - a) where there's a lot of it and b) where player more or less understands it.
Like in combat. Or maybe in loot.

When you have like... three important rolls in a row with a possibility to reload a savegame and try it again - that opens the door to savescumming.
People often argue that savescumming (or a possibility of it) is not a bad thing because it's totally a player's choice. I don't buy it.
Savescumming is basically a choice of "more power through grinding activity".
You do the same not fun stuff over and over again the get a result as if your stats were higher.

Yeah that's a player choice in the end. But I don't think it's ever a good thing when a game presents that kind of a choce.

You can still have partial successes without randomness.
Like if you have a decent charisma, but not enough for a total success - you get a bonus on a next check.
Or you ask for an item as a reward for a job well done - low charisma = anger and lower reward; normal charisma = denial; high charisma = extra gold but denial; very high charisma = you get the item.
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Vince
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« Reply #6 on: June 22, 2018, 07:35:10 am »

But I don't like the randomness of it.
Where is the randomness?

Quote
People often argue that savescumming (or a possibility of it) is not a bad thing because it's totally a player's choice. I don't buy it.
Savescumming is basically a choice of "more power through grinding activity".
You do the same not fun stuff over and over again the get a result as if your stats were higher.

Yeah that's a player choice in the end. But I don't think it's ever a good thing when a game presents that kind of a choce.
The only way to remove this player's choice is by removing every other choice from the game or by making all outcomes and rewards exactly the same, no matter what you do or how you do it.
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Lurker King
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« Reply #7 on: June 22, 2018, 07:56:34 am »

I hope there are tons of text-driven interactions with the environment in a PS:T fashion.

Some possibly retarded suggestions:

You should add a key word system on top of the dialogue trees.

You could also add a suggestion system on the key word system tied to the player’s abilities, for example, if you have more points in persuasion, some attempts to ask questions will generate other questions—you could add an autocomplete function on top of it if the player wants to ask similar questions in different occasions.       
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Vince
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« Reply #8 on: June 22, 2018, 08:06:44 am »

You should add a key word system on top of the dialogue trees.
We can't even consider an extra system or sub-system at this point as we're already stretched pretty thin. Anything on top of what we already have will delay the game.
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Lurker King
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« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2018, 08:21:47 am »

Savescumming is basically a choice of "more power through grinding activity".... Yeah that's a player choice in the end. But I don't think it's ever a good thing when a game presents that kind of a choce.
That's an inversion of values. It's not the developer's fault that some players act irrationally because they are spoiled by other games.
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Fed
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« Reply #10 on: June 22, 2018, 09:39:15 am »

Where is the randomness?
Um... I guess I misunderstood this part "The biggest conceptual change is that the tagged lines would now represent an attempt without any guarantees of success."
Does it apply to partial success and not a roll of a dice, then?


The only way to remove this player's choice is by removing every other choice from the game or by making all outcomes and rewards exactly the same, no matter what you do or how you do it.
No. )
I'm talking about dull meaningless work for the sake of getting a better reward or power - is a bad option and a bad choice to provide (in my opinion).
Killing an innocent child for money is not meaningless dull work - it's a moral choice.
Getting and artifact of power and antagonizing a powerful faction in the process is (at least potentially) an interesting choice that is not a trade "you get a geeward for a dull pointless work".
Learning the world's lore to find out a critical weakness of a powerful enemy is at least supposed to be interesting in a game where lore is supposed to be important and interestion (otherwise it does seem like a bad idea). Some players would do it even without a reward.
Grinding 1000 respawning mobs that don't even represent a danger to get 1000 pieces of a magical sword or some level ups - is a horrible option to give.
Quicksaving before a talk with an npc and quickloading 15 times to get a success on 10% chance of succes dialogue option - is not an interestion option either. And savescumming was what I was against.

Maybe I should have said that I think it's a bad idea to give players an option to earn reward through doing something that none of them would do just for fun.
I can imagine your players gong into an impossible fight just for the sake of winning it and knowing that they can.
I can imagine your players spending hours to gather bits of lore. Well, maybe "hours" is a stretch...
But I can't imagine them sitting and reloading the game because they like reloading the game.

And I'll point out again that I thought the second system included a roll in a dialogue check and thus invited savescumming.
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Vince
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« Reply #11 on: June 22, 2018, 10:29:21 am »

Um... I guess I misunderstood this part "The biggest conceptual change is that the tagged lines would now represent an attempt without any guarantees of success."
Does it apply to partial success and not a roll of a dice, then?
There are no rolls. Each person would respond in a predetermined way (matching his or her personality) to your lines. Whereas in AoD a tagged line would guarantee success if you have the skill, in TNW a line represents an attempt. To give you a simple analogy, if you think that some guy is a greedy bastard playing on his greed would result in a positive reaction (and your skill will increase this reaction). If, however, he doesn't really care about money, that same line would result in a negative reaction but your skill would reduce the impact.

So the player would have to figure out which approach would work best based on the available info. Needless to say, some people can simply try all lines to find the best outcomes, but it's their choice.
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Wrath of Dagon
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« Reply #12 on: June 22, 2018, 01:10:26 pm »

May be have the CHA or diplomacy skill give you some extra hints about the person, since a bio may be ambiguous or seem too contrived if it attempts to present all the necessary information. Also may be be able to get some extra info by lock picking a safe with a note or a letter or hacking his email. Responses could be modified by a whole list of weighted variables, including skills and attributes, but also things like reputation and certain past actions of the PC. So for example if the NPC already has reason to fear the PC, a certain response may change from being wrong to being correct. May be leave some simpler conversations (where it would be easy to guess the right response) as still requiring just a skill check, to keep the complexity from getting out of hand.
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Don't graze me bro!

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Fed
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« Reply #13 on: June 23, 2018, 12:36:25 am »

There are no rolls. Each person would respond in a predetermined way (matching his or her personality) to your lines. Whereas in AoD a tagged line would guarantee success if you have the skill, in TNW a line represents an attempt. To give you a simple analogy, if you think that some guy is a greedy bastard playing on his greed would result in a positive reaction (and your skill will increase this reaction). If, however, he doesn't really care about money, that same line would result in a negative reaction but your skill would reduce the impact.

So the player would have to figure out which approach would work best based on the available info. Needless to say, some people can simply try all lines to find the best outcomes, but it's their choice.
Oh.
Sounds great to me then.
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Fed
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« Reply #14 on: June 23, 2018, 12:54:26 am »

Savescumming is basically a choice of "more power through grinding activity".... Yeah that's a player choice in the end. But I don't think it's ever a good thing when a game presents that kind of a choce.
That's an inversion of values. It's not the developer's fault that some players act irrationally because they are spoiled by other games.

It is not a matter of players being spoiled.
It's a matter of games being played for fun.

A good game must do it's best to give it's rewards (be it gold, power or a pat on the back) for the activities that players enjoy.
Rewards in a game are supposed to show to and motivate the player to do the stuff that he will enjoy (if we are not talking about free-to-play or something like that).

Now, it's game designer's job to understand for what kind of people the game is being made and what would they enjoy. And to design the rewards and mechanics that would work simultaneously for the player's enjoyment.

And the game could be targeted at a niche audience that, say, like their fin to be hard, punishing and challenging.
And there can be a game that forces or rewards behaviour that most people would greet with a burning seat... As long as it stays true to the people it targets.

But... Come on... Show me people who would enjoy the process of saving and loading the game per se!
By any stretch of imagination - I cannot believe such people exist. )

Therefore I am absolutely sure that this is a bad thing when a game rewards - even unintentionally - such thing as save-scumming.

There has to be a reasonable compromise, of course. I'm not advocating removing save-load from the game to protect people from save-scumming.
But closing you eyes with your hands and telling yourself that "if some people choose to spoil their own fun through save-scumming - who are we to interfere?"

Well, there is an answer for the "who" part. It's game designer that this game has. It should be a part of his headache.

P.S. And how on Earth can you use the word "irrational" when describing a human being doing something that is rewarded?
It's rational - in it's core at least. The problem is - in this hypothetical case of a game that makes some important stuff random and easy to reroll throught save-scumming - the game creates a conflict of interests "do something that builds your enjoyment or do something that builds your reward at a cost of enjoyment".
And it shouldn't. The game should use it's rewards to gently push players towards something that is supposed to be enjoyable for the kind of people for whom the game was created.
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