Thoughts about dialogue trees

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

Whether the characters notice something or not should depend on the attributes and skills of the characters, not you pressing a [SEARCH] button.

As my characters explore the map, they should make appropriate observations as we go along. If their skills are developed, or if they have the right skills, they will say things or do things on their own. The game can give me a snapshot of them overturning a rock, or whatever. I can imagine that they do that sort of thing all the time. I don't need all the details unless they come up with something special. When I've improved their abilities I can come back around to see if anything has changed.

Likewise, what the characters say to each other shouldn't depend on which dialogue option you choose. It should depend on their skills and attribues. Your job is to build up their skills and attributes. If your party encounters a character with while your party has weak conversation skills, they should get a different dialogue from the character than if you come back later with better conversation skills. The characters talk. You don't talk, you build the character.

Dialogue trees are overrated! Moreover they are usually very cheesy, unconvincing, and boring. Here's how conversation should work in a video game. You press a button. The characters talk. There doesn't need to be all kinds of wrong conversation options. The game can save space and boring us to death by storing only the correct conversations but requiring us to unlock them by building our characters the right way.

[Stray]

What you suggest actually sounds a lot like Jagged Alliance 2.

I liked the way that JA2 handled dialogue. When you spoke to an NPC, the NPC's responses depended on the skill level (I believe it was the leadership score) of the character speaking to the NPC and the tone of the interaction. Instead of choosing specific dialogue options, you would pick direct/friendly/threaten/give/recruit. Actually, having the recruit option in every dialogue reminds me of WL.

When moving around, the PCs also noticed traps and items on their own if their skill levels were high enough. When moving through minefields, it was crucial to have your explosives expert take point.

[undecaf]

snip

Wouldn't that leave the characters lifeless and uninteresting (this being an RPG and all) - having only tresholdbased system to get straight to the point?

Nah, I like to have long, well written converstations with interesting characters. Questoning their motives, hearing about their reasonings as to why X is X. That stuff adds tone and intrigue to the gameworld more than distracts and takes from it (options with and without skillchecks, both should be there).

[mina86]

Nah, I like to have long, well written converstations with interesting characters. Questoning their motives, hearing about their reasonings as to why X is X. That stuff adds tone and intrigue to the gameworld more than distracts and takes from it (options with and without skillchecks, both should be there).

+1. Furthermore, things you can say, and responses you get, may depend on your skills. In fact, in most RPG games I can think of, they do.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

Nah, I like to have long, well written converstations with interesting characters. Questoning their motives, hearing about their reasonings as to why X is X. That stuff adds tone and intrigue to the gameworld more than distracts and takes from it (options with and without skillchecks, both should be there).

+1. Furthermore, things you can say, and responses you get, may depend on your skills. In fact, in most RPG games I can think of, they do.

The characters talking on their own doesn't rule out the option to talk to them directly. You could be able to click on the character and ask them what did they mean by this and maybe they have more to say. I just hate seeing all talking happen with specific dialogue. Let me imagine some of the dialogue and show me bits of it. The characters can say different things every time you talk to them because that's what people usually do so if you need more, talk to them again. The game can keep track of all the text so you can scroll back to see if you missed anything.

[Lucius]

I wouldn't mind a speech skill or bureaucracy but not to dictate conversations and all NPC interactions. Just for certain speech checks when persuading an NPC or such. Or possibly for better buy/sell prices from merchants. Honestly though all of that could just be tied directly to a Charisma stat and it would work the same I think.

[alex]

MDF, I disagree with your ideas for implementing this both outside and inside conversation. The main issue here is that skills shouldn't be, themselves, the point. Instead, they are an interface. They determine some of your character's capacity. They may say if you can or can't open a locked door. But the point of the game isn't to have a good array of skills, that is just the first step. The point is using those skills well.

[alex]

That said, I don't mind if our dialog options are shorter and more generic like, say, Ultima 7. While longer and more charged options can work very well in a game like Planescape: Torment, Wasteland has a very different focus. Still, I definitely don't want skills to be used automatically, in dialog or outside it.

[Azriel]

Oh, I don't like this idea. I like having really long dialog options and many branching dialog choices based on my skills. That is part of the fun! I really hate this modern age where everything has to be cut down to simple sentences and simple two choices. I want to play the character(s), not have the characters do what they want with me only guiding them around the sims style.

[mina86]

Oh, I don't like this idea. I like having really long dialog options and many branching dialog choices based on my skills. That is part of the fun! I really hate this modern age where everything has to be cut down to simple sentences and simple two choices. I want to play the character(s), not have the characters do what they want with me only guiding them around the sims style.

+1

Also, what I hate is when they menu shows only the summary of what your character says, which often leads to character saying something different the I thought was behind the 2-3 word summary.

I especially loved P:T where you had the same dialogue option several times but sometimes with the “[lie]” tag. This allowed me to do what I really wanted, whereas in recent RPG I cannot just lie to an NPC (this actually has been brought in some other thread). W2 might not be good game for such a dialogue mechanics though.

As for skills, I think that it's good if some dialogue options are dependent on them (F2 comes to mind with extremely stupid character), but then again even when lacking skills, the dialogue should be interesting and branching in many different directions.

At the same time, I would like to be informed about what is going on. If some dialogue option had some constraints, I would like to see them, ie.: “Have you tried rewriting the speed-critical parts in assembler? [INT > 10]”. Similarly, if a dialogue path requires a skill check -- then again, I would like even better if there were no skill checks (ie. no randomness) in dialogues but only static constraints.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

MDF, I disagree with your ideas for implementing this both outside and inside conversation. The main issue here is that skills shouldn't be, themselves, the point. Instead, they are an interface. They determine some of your character's capacity. They may say if you can or can't open a locked door. But the point of the game isn't to have a good array of skills, that is just the first step. The point is using those skills well.

That said, I don't mind if our dialog options are shorter and more generic like, say, Ultima 7. While longer and more charged options can work very well in a game like Planescape: Torment, Wasteland has a very different focus. Still, I definitely don't want skills to be used automatically, in dialog or outside it.

To me, the point is developing my skills - and consequently - the story, without me directing the story. I'm not a character in the game, but my choices and selections are what moves everything forward.

The game should depend on who my characters are. I should need to learn how to build the right character to find the right thing in the game. The game doesn't need to give me every option for every character, but different options for every character. Diverse dialogue that depends on the character gives me more reasons to explore and to build my skills

I don't think all dialogue should all be automatic, its not really automatic because you build the skills, and thereby you choose different dialogue options by improving the character's conversation abilities. There ought to be some automatic conversations and banter; and interjections before - during - after battle like "Christ on a bicycle!" when you see an Octotron or "Oh shit! Medic!!" after the Scorpitron assaults your party. I like my characters to be spontaneous.

The world I have in mind is just like Wasteland and it doesn't give you real time imagery or voice acting. It gives you an overhead view plus a nice snapshot of action with some text descriptions and it lets you imagine the stuff in between turns, like Wasteland does. It's that format that works for me, though the graphics and the artwork can be improved, I like the basic design.

Oh, I don't like this idea. I like having really long dialog options and many branching dialog choices based on my skills. That is part of the fun! I really hate this modern age where everything has to be cut down to simple sentences and simple two choices. I want to play the character(s), not have the characters do what they want with me only guiding them around the sims style.

But that is the style of Wasteland. The only things your characters say is entering some text clue and in literal scripts in the paragraphs manual. The game allows you to imagine all the detailed dialogue you want. You guide the characters around the map but you don't possess the characters, that's something that became popularized by the Avatar in Richard Garriott's games. Wasteland predates the sims, the sims are bastard children of early RPGs with violence taken out. Wasteland 2 needs to own that shit and put the violence and sex and dark humor back into it. I wouldn't mind the Sims if it came with a combat simulator and the option to mow down the characters with a machine gun.

[Azriel]

I get that wasteland was different, BUT it was the FIRST game that started a trend. Things have changed some in RPG's and a lot of people do want more control than pushing some characters around with no interaction/control besides being their taxi. I get enough of that in modern games, I want to TALK and INTERACT with characters and have DIALOG CHOICES, AND READ DIALOG and feel I am actually doing something. Otherwise we might as well be playing a modern eaware game where you don't actually make choices and all roads leads to rome. OH, I am totally with putting sex and violence back in to the game.

[MDF_MadDogFargo]

I get that wasteland was different, BUT it was the FIRST game that started a trend. Things have changed some in RPG's and a lot of people do want more control than pushing some characters around with no interaction/control besides being their taxi. I get enough of that in modern games, I want to TALK and INTERACT with characters and have DIALOG CHOICES, AND READ DIALOG and feel I am actually doing something. Otherwise we might as well be playing a modern eaware game where you don't actually make choices and all roads leads to rome. OH, I am totally with putting sex and violence back in to the game.

I like good dialogue and good characters too. I wonder what you would think of a Morale system that focuses on social skills.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=856

Social skills are involved in dialogue and other options, like increased combat peformance from camaraderie. In my ideal Wasteland skill system, the dialogues work like other encounters. You encounter someone and your options are to work, play, or talk. Social skills give you an advantage in dialogue-encounters and specific dialogue options for your characters, while skill-checks and other things around the world also cause unique interjections from skilled social characters.

I want a skill system just like Wasteland, but with more skills and more places to learn them and use them, including more kinds of encounters that aren't just bang bang kill kill. The people aren't one dimensional in that system. You can work with them, play with them, or talk with them and some of them will only talk if you've done one of the other things.

I imagine that the characters will have interjections ('Oh shit!' 'Christ on a bicycle!') for threatening situations and pleasant reactions ('Fantastic!' 'Radical!) from discoveries and things. The characters initiate conversations with each other, which will depend on their skills and give unique combinations, e.g. a popular character meets an antisocial character.

A conversation might go like this - a popular character meets a zombie. A skill check by the popular character determines that the zombie character has no popularity and no morale level. She says 'Gag me with a spoon!' The zombie says, "BRAINS!!" because that's their only dialogue option. If it was a popular zombie, she says 'I've seen you in that movie!' or something. (Zombies can increase popularity by appearing in movies.)

That kind of thing isn't scripted, it's a spontaeous output of the program; you can direct which way that goes, e.g. if the two characters are foes then they fight, but if they join the same team they develop a relationship. The popular girl and the zombie gain some levels. Now the girl is more popular and the zombie is more mindless (and maybe more popular.) She makes funny comments about his progressive decay because they are teammates. Their relationship grows!

It's a system for developing your party's banter. The skills you choose and the ones you develop determine some things they say to each and give you new options too.

[talkingcrows]

How about if different characters could speak about only the things they actually knew about...ex-dumb character comes across a scorpitron...doesn't know enough about it to relate it.Meets and joins your group.Doesn't say shit because he doesn't think about it.Group meets random npc who starts to describe atttack..Smart characters cant say shit,but dumb character might say something along the lines of"Yeah,spider robot killed my family too."Only he could comment on weakness or location,because he has actually seen one.Further branches might lead to actual useful information
Only someone with knowledge of a subject would have increased odds of success,as ,you wouldn't talk about things you like and know about with a person who obviously doesn't share the same interests or knowledge.they would leave the conversation or move it back to something they know.Just a thought...seems like a logical progression of a real conversation,but then I don't know how that might work in a game.Maybe good,maybe bad.

[Game_Exile]

Here's how conversation should work in a video game. You press a button. The characters talk. There doesn't need to be all kinds of wrong conversation options.

Are you saying that you should only ever be able to talk about 1 thing with any NPC? I don't see why there shouldn't be some NPCs that have multiple options, especially ones that have lots of info. Is your problem just that you don't want success/failure of quests to hinge on choosing the correct dialogue options?

what the characters say to each other shouldn't depend on which dialogue option you choose. It should depend on their skills and attribues. Your job is to build up their skills and attributes.

Skills and attributes like these should have a visible and somewhat predictable impact on the game. I like if a skill and attribute does things like increase, by degrees, the amount of money you get as a reward for doing a quest. I do not like an NPC deciding whether or not to give me a quest based on whether my character has either 100 or 102 conversations skill or either 14 or 15 charisma points. In any case, what you are talking about is "quest" dialogue, and the options you get should make sense in the overall context of the "quest(s)", and "plot".

[Aldereth]

Dialog tree are evolved from the more limited conversation system from early CRPG and it is a good thing. It is the vacuous conversation that are essentially filler for conversation nodes (choices) to fill the 3-4 branch the engine support. These empty conversations are boring and out of context. And most CRPG even the good ones to a certain degree are guilty of what I would call "the good, the bad and the ugly" model that compound the problem.

Most CRPG dialog trees now have 3-4 branches. 1.) the morally Good, 2.) the morally Evil, 3.) the "Ugly" being the fan service branch. Depending on the context of the game, it can be the wacky/funny choice or the badass choice. Some game have both which let them have 4 branches. The repetitiveness of the same type of branching is tiresome and does not feel like conversation at all. Conversation should be driven by either the PC objective (he/she has a point to make) or emotion (he/she is expressing his/her emotive state); and not an arbitrary moral system of the world or the wimpsical fancy of the game's fanbase. Most of the better CRPGs that are less guilty of this is because they got good writers that weave the objective of the PC in the good or bad choices and write the PC as a "class clown" or "badass" to cover up their fan service dialog choices. But at the end it is an illusion, after 20-100 hours of gameplay with over hundreds of conversation, the same model of conversation choices could get tiresome.

A game does not have to offer thousands of branch for each conversation node, they can still limit the branching to 3-4 model. The important thing is the context and variety. Don't build each node with the same good/bad/ugly model all the time. It would be more interesting to have some nodes where the choice are happy/sad/angry or lie/truth/evasive. And depending on the situation, the happy choice can be evil or good or better yet just that, the PC is happy something happen. The lie choice may not be entirely "evil". Heck, you don't even have to measure it with moral any way as long as it is adding character depth for the PC and/or drive the plot along.

[Elandryl]

The characters talk. You don't talk, you build the character.

Dialogue trees are overrated! Moreover they are usually very cheesy, unconvincing, and boring. Here's how conversation should work in a video game. You press a button. The characters talk. There doesn't need to be all kinds of wrong conversation options. The game can save space and boring us to death by storing only the correct conversations but requiring us to unlock them by building our characters the right way.

Ok, I don't know if this is supposed to be a big, fat ugly troll, but I've got to tell you that what you said is actually the stupidest thing I've ever heard in the history of the world.

What the hell is this "I don't want to think, I want to push a button and let my character do the talking" nonsense? We're not talking about making a Jagged Alliance 3 in here. It's not just a combat simulation. We're talking about roleplaying for christ sake! It's all about incarnating a character, making decisions, sometimes tough ones, and facing the consequences. Having several ways to handle a situation, be clever, be just, or be a badass and chose the other way. You know. Choice.

If my characters are handling the conversation according to a "discussion" stat, well, why should I even care what they have to say? Obviously, it would mean that there would be a "good" answer to every conversation, and that my character just have to say it. No choice, no dilemna, there's only one thruth and your character knows it as long as he's got the stat.

That is plain stupid. That's not interesting. That would simply make Wasteland 2 a post-apocalyptic XCOM, without the research & development part. Sort of a Jagged Alliance 3: well, that's not what W2 is supposed to be. What we want is a RPG!

What would have Fallout been without its discussion trees, without the ability to convince the master that he's wrong a the end of the game, without always having three or four ways to talk to somebody because that was what defined your character, and not just its stats screen?

I don't want the game teeling me to go and read paragraph 12 because the 3 discs lacks the room to contain dialogs ingame! It had a meaning 20 years ago, but hell, not anymore!

Well, let's imagine a game working as you want it to work: At the beginning, you create a team of characters, carefully choosing all their skills. Then you start, and you watch them do everything. Each time they level up, you choose wich stat to upgrade, and then you continue to watch. If your characters succeeds in finishing the game all by themselves, congratulation: you chose the right stats.
I'm sure that would be an interesting game. But certainly not a RPG.

PS: I you want to understand how rich and fascinating a GOOD dialog tree can be, please go play Planescape Torment, and learn.

[Drool]

Ok, I don't know if this is supposed to be a big, fat ugly troll, but I've got to tell you that what you said is actually the supidest thing I've ever heard in the history of the world.

Lightening up, Francis.

[Elandryl]

Please, don't change W2 into a pre-Ultima IV game. When your only dialogs were those one-liners you saw when pressing the "t" key. You're in an PA world, you have hundreds of things to ask, and all every character in the game has to say are sentences like "Hi, don't you think the weather is beautiful?"

It was 30 years ago. Your character didn't say a single word in the whole game. Every other character just had to live with one bloody sentence.

I never want to live that again. I want a game where you actually got a reason to read the dialogs. I want to make decisions. I want Planescape back, not Ultima III.

[Gizmo]

Whether the characters notice something or not should depend on the attributes and skills of the characters, not you pressing a [SEARCH] button.

Are there games that have an automatic 'search' button?... If you mean like Baldur's Gate (for example)... That is dependent on their skill.

As my characters explore the map, they should make appropriate observations as we go along. If their skills are developed, or if they have the right skills, they will say things or do things on their own. The game can give me a snapshot of them overturning a rock, or whatever. I can imagine that they do that sort of thing all the time. I don't need all the details unless they come up with something special. When I've improved their abilities I can come back around to see if anything has changed.

Likewise, what the characters say to each other shouldn't depend on which dialogue option you choose. It should depend on their skills and attribues. Your job is to build up their skills and attributes. If your party encounters a character with while your party has weak conversation skills, they should get a different dialogue from the character than if you come back later with better conversation skills. The characters talk. You don't talk, you build the character.

Dialogue trees are overrated! Moreover they are usually very cheesy, unconvincing, and boring. Here's how conversation should work in a video game. You press a button. The characters talk. There doesn't need to be all kinds of wrong conversation options. The game can save space and boring us to death by storing only the correct conversations but requiring us to unlock them by building our characters the right way.

I cannot agree with any of the points and statements in your post. The reason is simply that this removes all aspect of role playing... What you would have in its place seems to be like a Domino chain, where you set it up, and then watch it fall down; that's not an RPG IMO.

It's odd that I do agree with some of your examples ~but not with the points that you use them to support.