Displaying changes in relationship status

[Pidesco]

From a preview:

a blip popped onscreen showing that we had gained a

[Oner]

Too late.

[Slowtrain]

From a preview:

a blip popped onscreen showing that we had gained a

[Rostere]

I agree. Please make it optional to remove this, at least for the "hard" mode .

[Amentep]

Personally I like prompts like this to be enabled/disabled. Sometimes its fun to see damage/xp/all that but most of the time, I'm not all that interested.

[Humodour]

From a preview:

a blip popped onscreen showing that we had gained a “-2” relationship status with her.

 

 

I mentioned this before, and I'm mentioning it again, because it's that important. Please, oh please make these onscreen prompts optional. I don't want to know that this or that character likes/hates me by so-and-so number of points, because I want to experience them as fully developed characters, not a mini-metagame within the game.

 

I ****ing hate this sort of **** and it really turned me off playing KOTOR2. I think it was Josh Sawyer who was one of the big proponents of this idea and I just absolutely disagree with him on the need for it.

 

This stuff shouldn't be transparent. It destroys immersion, it destroys replayability, it encourages horrible metagaming.

 

Edit: Fine, prompts. Disable it by default.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Krezack

[Pop]

I scoff at the idea that these things "break immersion", given that elsewhere in the game, you can press a button and see the sum total of your character's skillset represented by a bar graph. It's a dumb argument.

 

The advantages of this system are apparent - they make the complex relationship metrics accessible to a wider audience. Without prompts you run into the likely possibility that the average gamer will invariably experience a consequence that he couldn't anticipate and does not welcome, because the designers assumed an obviousness that really wasn't there. That would be a failure of game design, even if it would delight us fickle old-timers.

 

If relationships in a game are based on a numbers game, I couldn't really care less if that game is made visible to the player. It's all the same. Flying blind isn't really what you're supposed to be doing anyway - you're supposed to be able to know how acting in a certain way affects how people perceive you, and if you didn't do missions to compile a dossier, a mechanism should be in place to allow players to intuit that hidden information. Anything less would be punishing the player for not metagaming in another sense. Hence the counter. The counter could also be used to document dynamics and elements of conversation, since dialogue is not repeated.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Pop

[WorstUsernameEver]

As long as you buy the PC version I think it should be pretty easy to mod it out, but since I don't really now how UE-powered games are modded I could very well be wrong.

It doesn't bother me anyway.

[Beast]

As long as it doesn't pop up in the middle of the screen. If it's faded at the bottom corner or something, I won't mind much.

[WorstUsernameEver]

As long as it doesn't pop up in the middle of the screen. If it's faded at the bottom corner or something, I won't mind much.

 

It is.

[Oner]

Again, Mike is a spy. You're supposed to meta the conversations and relationships.

 

As for immersion breaking, you break it for yourself, not the system. I look at the pop-up, blink, then stop caring, not stop playing to rage about it for 3 minutes.

[Pidesco]

How hard would it be to make it optional?

[Hell Kitty]

I doubt it's very hard to add in an option to toggle character relationship updates on or off, but if you're going to offer such an option you'd need to do it for each individual HUD element, something like in Assassin's Creed.

 

Ultimately though I don't think Obs needs to be catering to each individual players pet peeves, even the ones that are easily "fixed".