Gonshu Posted August 22, 2014 Share Posted August 22, 2014 So after playing the beta over and over I want to give my impression on the dialogues/story thus far. Thinking on how to distribute the things I want to comment I was not so sure of how to put it structured so I divided it on things I liked and things I disliked, so here I go: LIKE - Dialogue UI is familiar and intuitive. - Liked some of the moral choices you had to do, decide to help a thief to get rid of her followers, decide what to do with an ogre who is terrorizing a village, etc. - Loved interconections between quests, like the daughter quest with the ogre quest and the potion girl quest, that was nice! I like the idea than when in a bigger picture some quests outcomes might have changed if you did a quest earlier and viceversa (so the way you get to know things affect the result of others). - Bards explain history, nice! DISLIKE - Story was obvious. I knew the ogre was not a bad guy. I knew the chasers were mobsters. Everything was too obvious. Make things a bit harder to get and fool your players. For instance, in the cat and mouse quest you could have make some villagers say: "Did ya hear about dat murderer?" and stuff like that, in a bigger picture it could exist a quest to find the murderer, the trap is set, and some people will fall to it and some people don't. One of the moments I enjoyed more when playing Dragon Age 2 (and I did not like that game overall) was when the mother of the main character was murdered by a guy who I let live trusting he was not the city serial killer. Bad outcomes are a good experience (imo) and affect your gameplay after it (I did not trust anyone during the game after that) - Attributes as far as I've seen they make no difference. Make attributes to be valuable for dialogs. Not only for add up choices but also to remove and add information to dialogs. For instance, if someone tries to intimidate you and he succeeds because your might is low, remove ona dialog option (like trying to respond to the intimidation or starting a fight, you just ****ted on your pants!!), same for intelligence when there is a wit contest, etc. Also add information to what npc says on attribute checks: If you fail you just get: "It has always been like that" he says On a perception success: "It has always been like that" he says nerviously. On an intelligence or lore success: "I has always been like that" he lies I think you can get the idea, don't know how much effort it would take though (probably too much). - Dialogue outcome being too much black or white. Maybe it is because it is a beta and quests are really limited, but I expect that dialogues are more than get into a fight or avoid it. I also expect that quest decissions affect world around you and to have multiple effects. For instance, on the ogre quest, if you decide to let it live and you tell the truth (or fail lying) to the farmer I would appreciate that the armor seller stopped selling me because he is a really good friend of the farmer, and my reputation within the city drops. Also I would like that the outcome of not killing the ogre could vary between: the farmer attacks and I kill him, the farmer attacks me and I just reduce him, farmer decides to go kill the ogre himself, farmer lets it go. Probably I don't need that much interactions in every petty quest, but I would like that even some small quests can change things on the game. A comment apart of like and dislike, I don't know how are you going to build reputation system, but I would appreciate that it is build per npc, so within a city the blacksmith npc can love you and the major/ruler may hate you. Obviously some quests may affect the reputation on different group of npc differently. Example: you get rid of a thief who was stealing on the market surroundings: All market npcs +reputation, all rogue community -reputation. I think that is it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ahvz Posted August 22, 2014 Share Posted August 22, 2014 (edited) I agree with your thoughts on the cat and mouse quest. While I really enjoyed the writing, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and the sudden twist to be presented. But I got the feeling that the quest might have been a smaller part of a larger questline, and maybe that was just the setup for something to happen down the road... in which case it's fine in its simplicity. As for the Ogre, having your reasons for doing something doesn't make you a good guy. The cool thing about that quest was that it was really up to your own sensibilities to decide whether the Ogre had good reasons or not. Edited August 22, 2014 by Ahvz 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gonshu Posted August 22, 2014 Author Share Posted August 22, 2014 As for the Ogre, having your reasons for doing something doesn't make you a good guy. The cool thing about that quest was that it was really up to your own sensibilities to decide whether the Ogre had good reasons or not. Yes, I agree with you, that's why I said he is not a bad guy, instead of he is a good guy. I meant that it was obvious he did not mean any harm and that he wanted to just get along. I loved these kind of moral decissions you had to take on the quests, and expect to see more of that! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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