Good example of a great dialoge system

I am still waiting for the IRC robot chat to be substituted with a real and atmospheric dialogue system for the conversations with the NPCs.

I was playing the pre-alpha of Stellar Tactics - what a gem of a game even in this early state. The dialogue system is very interesting. There is a portrait of the person we are talking to, a description of what the person is doing, it is prominently placed in the middle of the screen and looks like a real dialogue between characters. Also there are no robot-like repeated answers to questions.



I think that such a system would work great fo SotA, too. But instead of the multiple-choice below the window, we could have a small input space where we type in our questions - and alternatively we could click on highlighted keywords in the text.

More like this:

 

I agree, this is the kind of dialogue system I like. Thx for sharing

 

I'm not in favor of a linear "choose A or choose B" dialog system. That is as simple a dialog system as there can be.

SOTA's query-based dialog system already is more advanced than that, even in its early story stages.

Querying NPCs enables one to discover a story. Choosing A or B, well that's just handing out the answers.

 

It looks like a conversation!
With the current system, it seems more like data, because it's small text displayed far away from the NPC's face. I'm not really wild about our "SOTA chat display box", because it looks like a modern data message relay. I've always felt that the SOTA chat box is one of SOTA's highest failings because it 's far away from the character's faces. It works nicely with messages from far away, because it takes the communication away from the characters faces.

Associating the script with the characters in any other way, other than the current system would be a big plus for our game.
~Time Lord~

 

But that is why I wrote that in the example above the multiple choices should be substituted with a window in which we type in our own sentences. I don't want multiple choices either. The parser should stay. But the rest of the chat should change to a fixed position prominently in the middle of the screen (lower half), maybe a portrait of the NPC, no robot-like repeats of the same sentences etc.

 

Great post Lord Darkmoon. REALL REALLY hoping that they update the chat to something like you have outlined.

 

Not changing to the conversation-mode transition would be great as well, because that takes way too long to go into and out of, and the camera zoom bug from since NPCs have been able to talk has never been fixed (the one that doesn't reset back to your zoom level, instead keeping the fixed zoom level).

 

I agree the zooming in and out of NPC faces for every interaction is somewhat time consuming and not at all what I think the devs envisioned as a rewarding, immersive experience, yet. I hope to hear more about how they plan on improving NPC interactions with PC's. Giving them all a little different faces, for instance, would go a long way in making it at least more enjoyable. I don't know about the text box issue though, because I like the freedom to relocate my chat box wherever I want. But in the instances of dialogue with NPCs it might make more sense to move it somewhere central and more prominent since movement and camera angle are already locked.

 

I'd argue that none of the things you point out in your original post would actually fix the dialogue system. I'm not so concerned about how things look, but how they function:

• Keywords need to be highlighted based on CONTEXT.
• Words that players type should be interpreted based on CONTEXT.
• NPCs should have dialogue written for every quests even if the quests aren't related to them. It doesn't matter if it's dialogue specifically tailored for that character or not, NPCs need to do more than say that they "don't understand" and their replies need to be in CONTEXT... idealy, it should help the players with some direction.
• Dialogue needs to be clear and avoid the use of vague words like "over there" and don't tell me to go someplace if the NPC can't tell me WHERE that place is.

Until then, it is utterly broken.

 

This of course is also a big part of the problem.

 

The Technical

The Immersive

Clear directions means following orders...
Vague causes to think...

Which is better than the other?
~Time Lord~

 

Vagueness causes misunderstanding and, ultimately, frustration.

Clear directions means you can actually think about the morals of those potential actions.

If the NPC tells me "see that tall tree over there?" and I see 50 trees within a first glance that fit that description, you have yourself a problem.

 

I was once one of Ultima Onlines first "Troubadours" which had privileges to set up quests in UO, yet that was after having busted the professional's quests when UO first began provided them for their players.

One of the things I noticed most about quests, is there's usually some very fast quest buster players who can run through a quest in 24 hours which took 6 months of setting up to create. A Russian friend and I busted the first quest ever company made on Siege Perilous shard of UO. They announced it on a Friday night and we had it busted by very early Sunday morning. We called up Thunderlips our Fellowship guild master and we were all 3 then trapped underground for another 5 hours waiting on a company GM to show up to get us and the treasure out of there. Afterward, we came to find out through some of the company people we had in the Fellowship, that it had taken it's creator 3 months of work to put it all together and hadn't expected anyone to have busted it's codes and clues so quickly. They never put on another one after that

So, coming to our current quests, I know as soon as those are busted, the answers will then be plastered all over 1000 web sites and nullify any surprise or wonder for those who can't resist the spoilers and other players telling them all the answers. It's doomed to that fate as soon as it begins and ends for those first players having busted it. Vagueness is it's only source in hope for any longevity of wondrous effects along with some clever made puzzles and possibly some scribbled blood trails on the walls or hidden brick to be moved.

Vagueness is where web sites have a problem with providing exact details. They will overcome that Vagueness by maps and such, but I do feel that if the quest is more fun and easy through it's mechanics and dialog, that many people will forgo the web page instructions or spoilers and truly just follow the quest on their own because the data was more appealing through it immersive qualities... "if it has them and has them done well with artistic quality design".
~Time Lord~

 

wow, this game looks like exactly what I'm looking for in an RPG. Good find.

 

You're definitely correct about context. I'm going to guess at their implementation but I think each NPC can have multiple contexts and each context has multiple keywords.

In the chat window maybe it should display the current context? And the player could shift context by saying "Let's talk about <topic>". Then if you said "Let's talk about Brittany" and then "blacksmith" the NPC could give some directions to the blacksmith but if you were talking about a quest and said "blacksmith" that could mean something entirely different.

 

The way I understand it, each NPC have a list of words to which they can reply to... regardless of where the conversation is.

Being able to see the context in the interface is one thing, what matters is that the NPCs can make the distinction themselves.

I don't buy that. Not only does that contradicts with your original statement that vagueness "makes you think" (not that was agreeing with it in the first place) but, if that's the reasoning for making stuff convoluted, then you're willingly ignoring every player who wants to solve the damn thing by themselves.

RG's mission statement was to redesign the RPGs so that people didn't have to follow quest markers and people with exclamation points... so, what? We're supposed to go online on a wiki, instead? No thanks.

Make it so that players don't want the answers handed to them.

The longevity of a game is dependent on how entertaining it is for the players. Quest design is an important aspect and developers should consider the possibilities that not everyone troubleshoots things same way. Developers (and I've met my share of them) tend take player knowledge for granted and they think they don't have to bother exploring other possibilities for the solutions of their quests... so they think what they come up with covers it.

Remember King Quest? Throwing a pie at a Yeti to make it fall off the mountain? Yeah... that's dumb.

I love quests that take time to solve; I don't like spending 10 hours trying to account for every possibility in the hopes that I might stumble upon what the quest designer was thinking... and STILL, after that time spent, not being able find a clue of what that designer wanted me to do.

If, as a designer, you can't account for every possibility that a player might think of, you need build a backup plan (one that typically puts them on the "correct" line of thinking)... because you won't be there to see how badly you can fail when the player gets his/her hands on it.

Longevity? I think not; that's when I usually log off!

EDIT: I forgot to thumbs up/agree to this part.

 

I think quests on the developer level are an art form where if it fits one style, I don't like it, yet if it hits all styles within all of it, then I'm happy for it not to be repetitive. I've been disregarding the quests for the past 4 months so I can do then at launch or after I wait for the trail to become worn out by others. I think it's the only way I'll be able to avoid all the spoilers. I enjoy speculating from quests, what still will be the hidden undertone or hidden forever things. I hope we can have relationships with the NPCs where if the relationship is grows deep enough, the NPC would then provide something deeper to the main quests, or something that carries that relationship on to another relationship in an expanding kind of way. If it takes a detective, I like it, if it's just another way of reading a story, I don't like it.
~Time Lord~

 

@Time Lord One can only hope. Lets just say that the current state of quests is beyond subpar...

As for your detective comment, a good detective asks questions. If none of the locals know where one of the largest cities in Novia is... or, say, who the captain of the guard of their own town is (or where he/she might be found), then there's a problem with the detective process.

 

These are excellent points and I couldn't agree more. Also, Stellar Tactics looks kind of fun.

 

~Detection Through Situational Evaluation rather Than Assuptions~

I don't see them traveling that much and navigation is a skill even with roads and those roads aren't safe for civilian traffic.

That one, if it's a small town, yes they should know because he'd probably be the local hero who at least got a cat out of a tree, but if it's a large town or city size, they may not know just the same as most people don't know and have to look up (!! in the phone book, which there aren't any.

Many real life people don't know where their local law office is, even if they have an office.

One of the largest problems I see here, is the lack of any school systems, meaning that most of Novians are as dumb as dirt. I don't see all of them talking that much to each other, meaning that they are so un-educated that they may not even know what a turnip is or why the sky is blue.

There's no patrols between cities, meaning that communication lines don't exist and all information is either hear say or gossip or total fantasy just so they don't appear as dumb as they are and loose face.

Friendliness is nowhere, so how can we expect them to speak so openly and so much to us. To them we may talk too much.

It would be a miracle if any of them could even read, yet we do see notes in letters and such. Then there's class systems here, because they don't seem to be sharing too much with each other in regard to basic needs. We see some in rags while others seem well dressed. This means that there could be class barriers where the high don't mix in ay conversation with the low.

Be sifting through them all, which should be trusted as providing an educated answer and of the educated, why would they wish to share so much which could be only lies to get us to leave town or just leave them alone or to hope we die while searching for what lie they told us that we could go find.

If we want clear precise instructions on where to go ad what to do, a story becomes a field manual instead of a story and a story becomes something that's far too trusted. No schools? How does anyone think that all these people can even deliver precise information or instructions.

Currently our presumptions rule us because we ourselves are all like trained lab rats from other games brainwashed through those other game's repetitive tasks so much that we can't see even our own reality in anything more than the way our games speak to us and train us into the trained rats we are.

Currently in real life we watch our TV sets and assume that some news is real and others are all liars while they all instruct us what to hate and how to hate and who to hate and that hate is somehow normal.

We are brainwashed from our conditioning and unless we have seen a village full of dead bodies and another band of people that hide in the hills in need of weapons and protection, we truly don't know anything of what a foreign environment or culture has to offer or contend with in finding the truth of what's really going on.

We truly are on another entirely different planet yet we keep insisting that we know how it should operate. Funny facts, but all true as they apply to our game...

If we give them guns will they shoot us instead of the kobold or zombies?
and before you presume that there's no guns here and possibly only cannons, there's Star Citizen Blimps around here with machine guns mounted on them ...
~Time Lord~