Diplomacy: A Different Approach to Conversation?

[Azarkon]

http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=556

 

Essentially, instead of dialogue options (which, after all, are passe " to some), what if conversations and NPC interactions were structured as games in and of themselves? What if they were like combat, only words instead of swords, verbal taunts instead of metal jabs? What if we adopt a structuralist's approach to conversation wherein you can mimick the flow of a general dialogue through permutations of abstract conversational tricks instead of actual dialogue?

 

If you're a good Bioware/Obsidian fan, by now you're probably thinking: why, this is kind of like what Morrowind tried to do and they sucked! And I give you that. Certainly, the idea had been tried before, but usually it was underdeveloped (in MW's case, it certainly was more of a trinket than a feature). With the backings of Microsoft and all the multi-million dollars that go into a MMORPG, could it be implemented effectively? Can you think of any incarnations of the system that could appeal to you, given that I locked you in a room and told you to come up with one or starve?

 

After all, despite its previous failings, the system does have positives. For one, you're not locked into preconceived dialogue options, which we know exhibit linearity of construct, which is a hard-coded limitation insofar as technology is concerned (in that you'd never be able to simulate real conversations if all you did was record hand-crafted ones: there is no real avenue for improvement via advancements in AI, so it'll likely never expand past what's possible for a couple of human writers can do in the space of a year or two). For another, dialogue trees have, in some ways, achieved their maximum potential with games like KOTOR 2. Perhaps something new is in order.

 

The details of the system is as of yet unknown, but I thought a post over at fohguild.org/forums (the elitest "RPG Codex" of MMORPGs) thought up a interesting incarnation.

 

Posted by Taggle at fohguild.org/forums:

 

I think you are all thinking too narrow:

 

Simple encounter example:

 

Taggle says "hail"

 

Guard says "Alas, leave me be, I need to be alone."

 

::Taggle swaps to Diplomacy mode::

 

/con

 

Even con, Peasant has 100 Perception Points, Taggle has 100 perception points (PP).

 

:Engages in parlay:

 

You toss in an an "amusing joke" opener, costing him 5 PP...resisted. Now the Guard is aggro, and first buffs himself with a "callous demeoner" which costs him 10 PP, but increases his resistance to charming attacks.

 

Recognizing his demeoner change, you follow up with a verbal assault, which affects his unbuffed "pride" resistance. The attack costs you 15 PP, but drains a whopping 35 PP form the guard, but it leaves you open to a "Pity me" attack. The guard exploits your weakness and throws at Pity me at you (for 5 PP), draining 10 PP from you. Failing your sensitivity check, you lose the 10pp over time for the next 10 ticks.

 

So you are sitting at 70 PP. The Guard is at 50 PP, but he is buffed to resist charm attacks.

 

Your PP draining, you decide to go all out. You lead off with your huge "I can help you" attack that drains 30 PP from you and hits him for 50PP, so you now have 4 ticks to win before the Pity Me attack defeats you.

 

Panicking, you begin to spam "policitical jokes, forgetting about his charm buff." Eventually the Pity Me DoT eats away at your PP and you lose the encounter.

 

You take a "Diplomacy Death" losing 10% exp, and all further Diplomacy attacks are at 50% effectiveness for the next two hours.

 

Three hours later, you come back and decide that the guard probably has low "Pride" resistance, and you spam him with quick attacks that interrupt his DoT. You win the encounter and he says:

 

"Wow, you really understand how I feel. Let me give you this [quest]."

 

 

 

The diplomacy system is not picking different things to say. The above could have been accomplished with no text going back and forth. Its "verbal combat," that, if successful, wins an encounter.

 

To defeat a king's chancellor, you may need a group of diplomats, one spamming "compliments" to heal the guy tanking all of the slack (the tank), while a debuffer tosses in amusing puns to stun the chancellor's attacks. Finally, another diplomat has to keep the king out of range by keeping "small talk" on him (mez).

 

Get the idea?

[Volourn]

I'll pass.

[Azarkon]

Indifferent rejection, eh? Why, I better retaliate with a rhetorical bump (w00t)

[Aaron Contreras]

The Diplomacy system is very exciting. We got some great designers working on it.

[Arkan]

I'll pass.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Diogo Ribeiro]

For another, dialogue trees have, in some ways, achieved their maximum potential with games like KOTOR 2.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hell no.

 

I'll pass.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hell yes.

[Darque]

I'm not sure what to make of it.

[Archmonarch]

I am. (We really need a thumbs down smilie too.)

[Nick_i_am]

Actually, if implimented properly, I could really take to this idea.

 

However, it would not be able to replace 'actual' conversations, unless you combined the two.

[metadigital]

I understand the idea, and it has merit. I am curious to confirm the "loot" reward, would it be a complete list of what the target character knows, or believes to be true (like a list of facts, e.g. a password)?

 

It would be a little cumbersome for blanket conversation replacement; I would only see it as useful for major encounters (even with hotkeys it would be exceedingly annoying after a while, to the point of banality).

 

I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, however.

[Archmonarch]

While I see your point about merit, I too think that having every conversation executed in this manner would be redundant and obnoxious.

 

Not a bad idea at its basics, yet almost impossible to implement well, I would assume.

[metadigital]

While I see your point about merit, I too think that having every conversation executed in this manner would be redundant and obnoxious.

 

Not a bad idea at its basics, yet almost impossible to implement well, I would assume.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, I can just see the "conversation keypad template":

7 : 8 : 9

Short annecdote : witicism : sarcastic remark

4 : 5 : 6

defensive sulk : criticism : baseless flattery & fawning

1 : 2 : 3

teenage girlie scream of salutation : admiration : curt admonismemt

0 : .

distracting request : blatant lie

 

with Alt-possibilities mapped on top!

 

Nightmare.

[Llyranor]

An innovative idea, but ultimately pointless if the actual writing in the dialogue isn't implemented.

[mkreku]

The Diplomacy system is very exciting.  We got some great designers working on it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Are you saying you're implementing this system into Vanguard?

 

I would love to see a system where you're not restricted by pre-written dialogue responses, but making dialogue into a Magic: The Gathering-type game doesn't seem to be the right way to go. Of course, I haven't seen it in action so I'm probably talking out of my ass here.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Sorry, I'm a little slow today, but I'm not sure I understood...

 

When it says "toss in an 'amusing joke'" at the beginning of the conversation, are you suggesting that there be a joke in your dialogue option, or that you actually select "amusing joke" from a list of options? Is this an overt dialogue battle, or just a description of the mechanics that would lie behind a more sophisticated way of implementing dialogue?

 

Some familiar problems come up:

 

1. If your dialogue takes a turn you don't like, can you just end it and try again? That's how it works in the real world, and there is a drive to make games more realistic, but...

 

2. If you can't just try the dialogue again, you can't affort to put any important information in the dialogue, as too many people will miss it first time, and...

 

3. It's boring to have to keep reloading the game and trying to get the best possible outcome of a conversation, but people will do this unless you convince them that what they're getting are alternate pathways through the dialogue tree, none better or worse than the others.

 

4. Developers like their games to be perceived to be non-linear, but also to make them so that on any one run through, the player experiences the majority of content. If you put in a dozen different paths through any dialogue, most players won't experience them all, which means they won't fully appreciate the product they've paid for - and that's bad for business. Especially if all the dialogue is voiced as well.

 

Nevertheless, I would like to see some alternative to the Kotor 2 dialogue tree system, where you just exhaust every possible line.

[Yst]

One of the toughest things a designer has to do in any RPG which doesn't use the Amnesia Trope ("you wake up on a slab/in a dark room...") or a conventional D&D framework ("You've lived an uneventful life in the village of Whatsit in the land of Thingumy since your birth, but you long for adventure. One day you set off...") is acquaint the player with his own character and his history. When this is done effectively, it's these days often done mostly through dialogue. Story boards like Icewind Dale and Jade Empire use are an option, but they're not ideal as a primary basis for storytelling, in an RPG. If you can tell the story while the player remains immersed in the gameworld, you should. These are, after all, games and not books, and if story telling can take advantage of the medium's strengths instead of ignoring them, we're the better for it.

 

One of the best tactics for revealing character history without having to resort to the protagonist asking stupid questions he should already know the answer to, I find, is embedding bits of the protagonist's history in his own dialogue options. That is to say, the character need not even actually use a dialogue option for it to be part of the story. If the player reads the dialogue option which tells part of his story or explains something about his circumstance, the fact that he then makes another choice need not detract from its role in revealing the player's character to the player.

 

My objection to most systematised dialogue engine concepts is that they would severely detract from the use of dialogue and dialogue options as a story-telling device.

 

And all dialogue options, as I argue, are part of the story-telling dynamic. To systematise it is to remove some of the art from that story-telling in favour of dry automation, which I don't see as a benefit.

 

I'm very much a fan of the use of player dialogue as a story-telling device, so I don't want to see it ruined.

 

And I'm even moreso a fan of this recently more prominent use of protagonist dialogue prominently in story-telling. It's much better than depending on NPC dialogue for information, and often much more believable.

 

That is to say,

 

Protagonist: "I hate to have to ask this, but who am I?"

NPC: "You're George Orckiller, the renowned slayer of evil from the eastern lands, come to the region of Hampstead to destroy an ominous presence that lurks here. Why the hell are you asking me this?"

 

Makes a lot less sense than

 

NPC: "Who are you?"

Protagonist Option #1: "I am no one of your concern"

Protagonist Option #2: (Draw blade and assume a fighting stance)

Protagonist Option #3: "I am a traveller from far away. My name is George."

Protagonist Option #4: "I am he who has come to rid this village of its affliction."

Protagonist Option #5: "George Orckiller, renowned slayer of evil from the east, come to rid this region of Hampstead of the ominous presence that lurks here. At your service."

[Plano Skywalker]

I agree with alot of what Yst said here. Dialogue is already one of the stronger points of the KOTOR games. That is why you have people who don't even like Star Wars playing them.

 

However, there is room for improvement. But the proposed changes would take away from the "organic" feel that dialogue must have in order to create the immersion that only dialogue can create.

 

I personally like the idea of knowing that everything I say will affect something (even if it is something unrelated).

 

For instance, let us say that you have a LS answer, a DS answer, a "take a pass" answer and 3 totally fluff non-answer responses. I like the idea of knowing that the only response I can give that will not affect anything is the "take a pass" answer...everything else WILL affect the story in some way (even if the exact way is not clear).

 

They should probably also include a [bribe] selection more and more deception options (not just outright lies) for non-bully DSers. Also, verbal feats like Group Inspire would be nice.

 

But the kind of gymnastics that you have mentioned is probably a bit much.

[Llyranor]

Then again...

 

"To defeat a king's chancellor, you may need a group of diplomats, one spamming "compliments" to heal the guy tanking all of the slack (the tank), while a debuffer tosses in amusing puns to stun the chancellor's attacks. Finally, another diplomat has to keep the king out of range by keeping "small talk" on him (mez)."

sounds pretty amusing.

 

No sustitute for real dialogue, though. Not even close.

[Plano Skywalker]

Then again...

 

"To defeat a king's chancellor, you may need a group of diplomats, one spamming "compliments" to heal the guy tanking all of the slack (the tank), while a debuffer tosses in amusing puns to stun the chancellor's attacks. Finally, another diplomat has to keep the king out of range by keeping "small talk" on him (mez)."

sounds pretty amusing.

 

No sustitute for real dialogue, though. Not even close.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

actually, they could make an entire game about this sort of thing.

a variation of King's Quest.

 

but not in a combat-heavy RPG.

[metadigital]

Then again...

 

"To defeat a king's chancellor, you may need a group of diplomats, one spamming "compliments" to heal the guy tanking all of the slack (the tank), while a debuffer tosses in amusing puns to stun the chancellor's attacks. Finally, another diplomat has to keep the king out of range by keeping "small talk" on him (mez)."

sounds pretty amusing.

 

No sustitute for real dialogue, though. Not even close.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, it's just another form of combat -- using verbal weapons. It doesn't fulfill the role currently taken by dialogue, though, as you point out.

 

I like Plano's addtions to Yst's comments, too.

 

I know there are more improvements to the dialogue methodology, but I haven't come up with any revolutionary solutions as yet.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Then again...

 

"To defeat a king's chancellor, you may need a group of diplomats, one spamming "compliments" to heal the guy tanking all of the slack (the tank), while a debuffer tosses in amusing puns to stun the chancellor's attacks. Finally, another diplomat has to keep the king out of range by keeping "small talk" on him (mez)."

sounds pretty amusing.

 

No sustitute for real dialogue, though. Not even close.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh, OK, I think I might understand this now.

 

I can see how it would work. I don't think I see how it could be fun. Beyond the novelty of the first time, at least.

[Llyranor]

I like the idea of knowing that the only response I can give that will not affect anything is the "take a pass" answer...everything else WILL affect the story in some way

Wrong.

 

Apathy is death.

[Azarkon]

I think the greatest potential I see here is the ability to make conversation more than a matter of choice making, which is basically all that dialogue trees are in today's RPG's. Sure, there's room for improvement even there, but while the level of writing can certainly rise, the underlying limitations of the dialogue tree system are rather obvious. I don't see us getting much further than KOTOR 2's level of interaction via dialogue trees alone because let's face it, KOTOR 2 was one of the most text heavy games in recent times and I just don't see publishers (or game writers, for that matter) going much past that. How many tens of thousands of lines of dialogue can you put into a game before it becomes less a game and more of a book?

 

Besides, there are some weaknesses of the dialogue tree system that you can clearly address with this sort of abstract conversation making. For instance, there are many times when what's written as a sentence in the dialogue tree isn't exactly what you want your character to say. Clearly, the devs can't program every possible response in the world into the dialogue tree, and for that matter, they can't even really program more than half a dozen before it seriously clogs up the interface (and the players' patience reading through them all), so you make do and compromise with 3-4 choices. And you'd have to, as long as we maintain the dialogue tree paradigm. But imagine now that you could combine different textual signals to form meanings (which is what language is, though thousands of times more complex) - now we're talking about improvements that could really lead to full natural language processing. True natural language is an impossible task for the AI of today, but pseudo-natural language processing is not, and what better way to push forward the envelope in gaming conversation than to integrate these sorts of technology?

 

Of course, there's the more important issue of being fun, and as far as I can tell, conversation could be fun if underlying it is a sense of being able to effect change through being a master of language. Rather than simply "making the right choice" via a dialogue tree and being rewarded for that, why not up the ante and make a game out of "saying the right things"? Of course, it can't simply be a matter of a template that you use for each NPC that'll always get you the best results, but it doesn't have to be. That's a design problem, and until someone seriously sits down with a team and tackles it, I don't think any of us can simply dismiss the idea outright by saying that it can't be done, that conversation can never be made fun.

 

That's really why I wanted to tell everyone about what's being attempted in one particular frontier of NPC interaction. Success or failure, it's a departure from what we're used to, and in my book, it's always good to keep an open mind about new things because before you know it, it might just become the Next Big Thing. And who's to say that you can't combine the best of dialogue trees (good writing & personality) with the best of interactive conversation? Now that would be a wonder to behold.

[Nick_i_am]

Apathy is death.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Apathy is death.

[Llyranor]

Apathy is death.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Apathy is death.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Apathy is death.