Isnt OE's influence companion system a bit counterproductive to roleplaying?

[Bos_hybrid]

I think the best way to handle this, is to give content on both ends of the influence system. Reward the player with something for making characters hate them.

[Enoch]

Odd necropost.

 

Anyhow, I think Obsidz has been improving the system since the KotOR 2 days. Back then, they hid the ball way too much, leaving backstory that was pretty important in understanding the plot in conversations that you only get when influence is high. That was a mistake-- everyone should be able to understand the story, even if they don't bother to talk to the NPCs all that much.

 

What they've done since then is shift the benefits of high (or low) influence away from unlocking backstory and more towards gameplay benefits (e.g., assistance in the Trial in NWN2, companion feats in MotB, handler perks in AP) or other satisfying scenes (e.g., romances, pissing off certain AP characters enough to make them lose their cool). Let everybody access the backstory, but give other benefits for making friends or enemies.

[Thorton_AP]

I am pretty sure that KOTOR2 did do that.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I was actually planning to take this up again, since I hated the influence system in AP even more than Kotor2.

 

No, Im not saying I dont like branching in games. I think its lots of fun when games allow you to take multiple paths, as long as this doesnt mean that one path contains significantly less game content than the other. If you do that, then you're really just punishing the player for making choices.

 

 

The question that I was asking in this thread is wether the Influence system works, or if the end result is just encouraging metagaming.

 

Encouraging metagaming isn't necessarily a failure. A roleplayer will simply play through it twice. Once metagaming to see all the content (the first time for me), once roleplaying to really get into character (the second time around so I know I'm not missing anything critical or truly amazing).

 

 

Replaying the game is not a real solution. But wether or not encouraging metagaming is bad or not is kind of subjective issue. For me, it means not playing the game how I want to play and enjoying myself, but rather being forced to play "guess how the designer think you should do this".

 

Its kind of the same thing to have the option to use either a pistol, shotgun or rifle in an FPS but if you use anything else than the shotgun you miss out on some content. All options should be equal and no choice should be punished.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Kaftan Barlast

[Irrelevant]

That is the price of choice, that what is available to you depends on what you do, making everything fair makes choice worthless.(Although I guess a way around this is to let a player access almost the same content through other means, this would work for everything except for character/faction specific quests, maybe seeing a quest from a different perspective based on how you found out about it)

Edited June 18, 2010 by Irrelevant

[Calax]

they did a bit better with Alpha Protocol in that there were benefits to having the people hate you and love you.

[Thorton_AP]

Replaying the game is not a real solution. But wether or not encouraging metagaming is bad or not is kind of subjective issue. For me, it means not playing the game how I want to play and enjoying myself, but rather being forced to play "guess how the designer think you should do this".

 

 

Sorry, this is user error as far as I'm concerned. If you'd be okay with it without the popups, but the core game content is not any different, then it's a failure on your part to look past them. Pretend it's the internet, and ignore popups.

[Purkake]

No, Im not saying I dont like branching in games. I think its lots of fun when games allow you to take multiple paths, as long as this doesnt mean that one path contains significantly less game content than the other. If you do that, then you're really just punishing the player for making choices.

 

 

The question that I was asking in this thread is wether the Influence system works, or if the end result is just encouraging metagaming.

 

Encouraging metagaming isn't necessarily a failure. A roleplayer will simply play through it twice. Once metagaming to see all the content (the first time for me), once roleplaying to really get into character (the second time around so I know I'm not missing anything critical or truly amazing).

I almost never play games more than once. The influence system should be more natural and based on stuff you actually do instead of just talking to them and not being a douche.

[Oner]

Or being a douche, in HK's case.

[Purkake]

Well yeah, you get my point.

 

Also all Obsidian's protagonists seem to have the magical/force/inborn talent to manipulate/inspire people, getting a little predictable there, old chaps...

Edited June 18, 2010 by Purkake

[Oner]

Give them a break, AP relied on good old manipulation.

 

 

 

Bioware on the other hand gives you (/almost) preternatural loyalty with simple charisma.

 

 

 

[Purkake]

Neither crutch is particularly good, especially after multiple uses.

 

The NPC's motivations have been boiled down to a single loyality mission.

 

Oh and why aren't any games doing the rival pseudo-protagonist thing where multiple people are doing the same thing as you in parallel and for their own reasons?

[Oner]

Neither crutch is particularly good, especially after multiple uses.

 

The NPC's motivations have been boiled down to a single loyality mission.

 

Oh and why aren't any games doing the rival pseudo-protagonist thing where multiple people are doing the same thing as you in parallel and for their own reasons?

Yeah, though the supernatural explanation is at least used exclusively by Obs. Imagine how jarring it would be if it were as common as Real Wurld FPSes.

 

To be fair, in ME 2 it was about them having regrets/being distracted by personal issues.

 

Dunno, it was the best thing about Tribes: Vengeance's story.

[Enoch]

Replaying the game is not a real solution. But wether or not encouraging metagaming is bad or not is kind of subjective issue. For me, it means not playing the game how I want to play and enjoying myself, but rather being forced to play "guess how the designer think you should do this".

 

Sorry, this is user error as far as I'm concerned. If you'd be okay with it without the popups, but the core game content is not any different, then it's a failure on your part to look past them. Pretend it's the internet, and ignore popups.

It's only user error if the user can be reasonably expected to be able to figure out what the likely consequences of picking option A instead of options B, C, or D are before they make the choice. In Alpha Protocol, for example, the game is pretty good about informing the player about the expectations of the 4 characters you meet in the Greybox, and other characters like Heck and SIE are introduced in such a way that you can tell a lot about their personalities before you have to decide how to respond to them in dialogue. But you're still sometimes thrown into a guessing game without many clues on how to proceed (Scarlet; Omen; Sung; Grigori).

 

Problems are also caused when the opportunities to gain/lose influence are too limited and/or the thresholds to make a meaningful change in the outcome are too high. The headline example here is Marburg. There's really no margin for error-- you have to figure out the 'right' way to respond to either impress or infuriate him immediately, and then you've got to do that every time the opportunity presents itself in order to

kill him at the museum or turn him at the endgame

. (It is also possible that the player would be blindsided by how he responds to

whether the player killed and CIA/NSA folks on the first two Rome missions

, gaining/losing influence without any warning that those choices could make it nearly impossible to play Marburg the way (s)he wants to.) That leads to frustrated players.

 

But, when the writing is strong, the VO is good, and when the player is as informed as (s)he should reasonably be, I think it works. You have to do what you'd do in a normal conversation-- read the other person's actions, mannerisms, tone of voice, etc., and pick the way you want to respond to that. (E.g., when first meeting Albatross in Taipei, he speaks in a very blunt, matter-of-fact, low-affect manner, which is a hint that he would probably appreciate a similar attitude from Thorton.)

 

 

Sidenote: I do think this works better in an AP-type game, where being a manipulative bastard is an important element of the protagonist archetype they're going for (i.e., Hollywood-style spy). Throw it, say, into a fantasy RPG where players tend to want to play one of a relatively small number of personality archetypes and tend to view staying true to a particular worldview as a virtue, and it becomes trickier-- the idea that you can extract more benefits and unlock more content from the game by telling the NPCs what they want to hear often makes the player feel like they have to betray their character concept in order to get the most out of the game. A Dragon Age player who wants to play the Righeous Champion of Good probably feels like a dirty stinkin' metagamer trying get Sten's influence high enough to unlock his sidequest. (Or, well, they would if the influence didn't come primarily from guessing the correct tchotchkes to give him.)

Edited June 18, 2010 by Enoch

[Purkake]

Sure, the ME2 thing was just a little too formulaic for me, they should have integrated it into the missions or something like that.

 

I would like Obsidian to try some crazier story-telling mechanics, they can't just stick with the influence thing forever.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Hiding content is the cheap way to do C&C. If they really want to do C&C, they should provide branching paths.

[Calax]

well, at least OE's npcs say "OH GODS YOU TALKED TO ME! LETS MAKE BABIES!"

 

That said, I can't really think of anything that would act more human than simply giving out points like they did in Kotor etc.

[Purkake]

Hiding content is the cheap way to do C&C. If they really want to do C&C, they should provide branching paths.

Wouldn't the path you don't take be hidden content as well?

[Walsingham]

But Gorth, metagaming simply doesn't work all the time. I can't speak for several of the games you mention, but in ones like Kotor II and Dragon Age you are best off simply following a roleplaying approach. Since you can head off down approaches where you are scoring small influence points, but walling yourself into a shallow and facile relationship. Taking hits can allwo you to reshape the companion's perspective on certain issues.

 

Thus to my way of thinking the obvious points system royally shafts metagamers and should be applauded for doing so.

[Thorton_AP]

@Enoch:

 

Are your concerns remedied by hiding the popups that indicate influence? Because the impression I am getting is Kaftan would have no issues if he isn't explicitly notified of a change in some value, which results in him metagaming.

 

If the entire system is obstructed from the game player, then the game player doesn't know any better.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Hiding content is the cheap way to do C&C. If they really want to do C&C, they should provide branching paths.

Wouldn't the path you don't take be hidden content as well?

Yes, but you get alternative content instead. Plus if you miss content, it should be for a logical reason. Like if you're a goody-two-shoes, you don't get to do an assassination mission. It shouldn't be that you miss content because you didn't guess an arbitrary phrase somewhere.

[Enoch]

@Enoch:

 

Are your concerns remedied by hiding the popups that indicate influence? Because the impression I am getting is Kaftan would have no issues if he isn't explicitly notified of a change in some value, which results in him metagaming.

 

If the entire system is obstructed from the game player, then the game player doesn't know any better.

No, I think that the downside of hiding the mechanics from the player is greater than the downside of planting the seeds of metagaming. (I remember trying to figure out what influenced the Law-Chaos axis in Planscape: Torment all too well.) My concerns are mitigated by good implementation:

 

-- give the player enough information to make choices rather than blind guesses;

-- don't hide important information in interactions that are only unlocked by meeting influence thresholds;

-- write the NPCs well, introduce them well, and have them act in accordance with their personalities as introduced;

-- provide interesting reactions/rewards both for positive and negative influence;

-- provide sufficient influence gain/loss opportunities to let the player achieve the applicable thresholds without hitting on 100% of them;

-- provide interesting and apt reactions to players who stick to character concepts rather than alter their approach based on wanting to please/anger each character.

 

AP was pretty good at most of these points. There were some problems, but they got a lot more right than they did wrong.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Enoch

[Thorton_AP]

What do you mean by "important information" with respect to: "don't hide important information in interactions that are only unlocked by meeting influence thresholds;"

 

I prefer Obsidian's influence system over BioWare's "you gained a level, we can now talk about more" type approach. I do like when Characters don't just share their life story when they first meet you.

[Enoch]

What do you mean by "important information" with respect to: "don't hide important information in interactions that are only unlocked by meeting influence thresholds;"

 

I prefer Obsidian's influence system over BioWare's "you gained a level, we can now talk about more" type approach. I do like when Characters don't just share their life story when they first meet you.

Mostly, I'm referring to how the player would miss a large swath of the backstory in KotOR 2 if they didn't get reasonably high influence with Kreia, G0T0, and HK47. Character-specific information, sidequests, etc., are fine. But don't put information that the player needs to make sense of the core storyline in influence-locked conversations.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Enoch

[Humodour]

For the people without OCD or an autism spectrum disorder, showing +1 or -1 for influence in dialogues just shatters the immersion and atmosphere and encourages metagaming in a bad (non-fun) way.