What kind of dialog mechanic you want?

[Osvir]

Bump;

 

Voice Auditions, I am sure that many of your fans would do this for free and you could hand-pick who/why/how. Cost effective too.

 

There was at least one other thread suggesting this, which I can't find, and I think most of the arguments against could be boiled down to "logistical nightmare for auditions and scheduling and flying in to use proper audio equipment" etc. etc. It sounds neat on its face, but I think it'd be very impractical.

 

True! Didn't think of that, I've got a studio in my living room xD

 

But modern recording equipment today could suffice. You hardly need an isolated studio to make great sound. All you need is a good enough microphone and Garageband <3

 

Anyways Ieo, I just wanted to throw that out there (about the auditions) just in case Obs want voice overs. Best place for resources on the voice acting (and much cheaper/for free) is probably by asking the fans. There are many talented people out there, with the proper gear and proper skills.

 

Most of all, personally, I would love to have the dialogue and sound editing to be as much of a breeze as possible so I can do my own voice over post-release.

Edited October 10, 2012 by Osvir

[Acre]

Actually, I think the way dialogue worked in the Discworld Noir game would work great for RPGs. First of all, you had your basic dialogue-tree, with no repeatable options, kinda like Alpha Protocol in that regard. But in top of that you also had your notebook of clues that you could use as topics for conversation, and even all the items in your inventory could elicit some response from the NPC.

I mean, all RPGs really have you cataloguing a whole bunch of stuff - you got maps of every major location, you got quest journals, inventories, sometimes beastiaries, so why not have them be usable as your repeatable dialogue? In this way, all the repeatable kind of dialogue (want to trade? where's the inn? what do you know about X [character/place/artefact]) would be something you dipped into your codex (or pockets) to ask about, and would, of course, be of lesser consequence than the actual written lines.

[PsychoBlonde]

If I could have ANY mechanic I wanted, I would actually have a peculiar hybrid mechanic where you assemble responses by either typing words or by picking several options from a lengthy list of keywords, emotional tones, etc, and then you get a "line of dialog" (and actions) for your character from an invisible list based on a complex parsing system, followed by an NPC response.

 

But, failing that (which would be pretty much an entire game in its own right), I'll take the list of numbered options. I'm not OPPOSED to the Dragon Age/Mass Effect dialog wheel thing, I think it's a fine mechanical option in a cinematic style game, but for an IE game where your character is one inch tall and you're not trying to pretend dialog is a movie scene, something like a dialog wheel or tone indication would be hilariously out-of-place.

[jivex5k]

If the dialogue UI can't support something like this, it is automatically crap:

 

While you take this statement a bit too far, I'd love to see something like you have in that screenshot implemented.

I want rich, silent dialogue options. Let me voice my character internally please.

I always hated the voice options in BG, none of them sound anything like me.

I'm just glad the actual dialog wasn't voiced.

Edited October 10, 2012 by jivex5k

[Aldereth]

Full VO is pretty much not going to happen for PE unless we raise a couple of million more. Personally, I think VO work great for Action cRPG that basically have one (may be 2-3) plot path and shooting for the "cinematic" thing rather than traditional cRPG which is what is being funded here.

 

I too would like to see the keyword idea get back in cRPG and be further developed beyond the guess the keyword (old ultimas) or keyword hunt from a list. But not much idea how that can be done.

[Hormalakh]

The one thing that I want most more than anything else in a dialog mechanic is that I am not told that a certain choice is because of my really high skill. I do not want to know that because my mechanical skill or my speech skill or my science skill has given me an option I wouldn't otherwise get.

 

I really think that in older games and actually in F:NV this really ruins the whole point of trying to read through the different choices and make it your own choice as a player. If you know that of the 4 or 5 choices, one of them requires a speech of 100, you're going to try that. There's no more challenge.

 

I would really hate this as an example:

Enemy: So are we going to brawl or what?

 

Option 1: No, please don't hurt me.

Option 2: [speech 100] Why should we fight? This fantasy-setting has permadeath. Are you sure you want to risk your own life?

Option 3: [Threaten 65] Prepare to die scum.

Option 4: [science 45] The extremely brittle metal used in your sword will hae no effect on my magically enhanced plate-armor. I calculate a 55% chance of maiming yourself indefinitely with a standard deviationof 5% plus or minus 1 to 2%.

Option 5: *unsheathes sword*

Option 6. I am the terror that flaps in the night. Let's gt dangerous.

 

If this might make the game more "difficult" for some players, I would absolutely LOVE to have this in the expert mode. Obviously, dialog choices that require speech "rolls" would still have the "roll" happening. I just don't want to know that it requires a speech roll. I might not have picked the better option if I didn't know that. It also forces players to really read George and Chris's excellent writing to make sure they are really picking the choice that they want.

 

 

Let me know what you guys think about this.

[Larkaloke]

If it should ever become possible, I would like to be able to simply write in the response my character would have. As at this point that is clearly not an option, the Planescape: Torment (and other Infinity Engine games) dialog mechanic remains my favourite, and I expect it will continue to do so for a good long time.

 

The one thing that I want most more than anything else in a dialog mechanic is that I am not told that a certain choice is because of my really high skill. I do not want to know that because my mechanical skill or my speech skill or my science skill has given me an option I wouldn't otherwise get.

 

This would be great. I don't have a problem just ignoring any [persuade] or [lore] tag on a dialogue option, but I like it best when it is not said where the extra dialogue options come from, or that you wouldn't be getting them if you didn't meet some requirement.

[Tick]

Very briefly explaining, but, I'm hoping for multiple lines of dialogue with an impact on the conversation and reactions of others, something that considers my characters' personality and ability (and my companions, maybe?), not just one to three all the time that are specifically labeled for a certain purpose, and no voice-acting (or bare minimum). Basically, anything to maximize the writers' freedom to write and change their story, and allow the players to roleplay ( with significant relevance in what they say and do).

 

I've enjoyed voice-acting, but from what I know it takes a lot of time, fixes the characters more to the actor's interpretation or personality (versus the writers' ideas), and makes it much more difficult for quality writing because of due dates and lines being unchangeable once voiced (because it would take that much more money and time to change).

 

The one thing that I want most more than anything else in a dialog mechanic is that I am not told that a certain choice is because of my really high skill. I do not want to know that because my mechanical skill or my speech skill or my science skill has given me an option I wouldn't otherwise get.

 

I completely agree. I really enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas' way of giving you a failed-check speech option, instead of just the same exact words and thought magically working or not, but it does lose the feeling of RPing, or wondering how the conversation might go if I pick choice A. versus choice E. I believe there should still be an impact in diplomacy, character interaction, and dialogue (being more likely to have persuasive options if the character is persuasive), but where the options themselves aren't so obvious (if that's possible).

 

Playing Baldur's Gate - I started very recently - the most satisfying moment in the game (thus far) was persuading a violently angry man, grieving over the son he lost and trying to blame the average adventurer for it (thus, me/my party), to calm down and diplomatically diffusing the situation. There was no "[Persuade]," "[speech]," etc., and it wasn't absolutely obvious which one would make the man back down (if any), and so I actually felt like I accomplished something.