How far do our choices go in terms of conversation with NPCs, do we have a large verity of choices to fully express ourselves or do we just have 3 or 4 different options? Although they said they would I’m curious just how many options.
Yes…=D
what do you think? wouldn’t it be fun to fully express our opinions to other NPCs?
Sure. I’m certain of any studio is trying their best to make it happen, it’s @warhorse. However, we won’t know the full scope of NPC interaction for little while. However, as I said, these guys are the type to try at least=) We already know it will be far more broad than some games… Cough cough skyrim cough cough.
Or maybe you could be a master negotiator, an amazing merchant, or even a philosopher, etc. Perhaps you could even develop strong friendships or agreements with NPCs over conversation at the bar, inn, etc.
Well one of the main classes is the bard. The role of the bard is to complete tasks, and make it through the game using his social skills, and charisma, this of course means things like that will happen. You should have a look around the main website and forum for more information.
I would like to see to have the choice about what to ask an NPC. I already have an idea how this could look like. This would be connected with the possibility of a game without questmarkers. I have a written letter to Daniel and the Warhorse team, but not send I yet because I don´t know the best way to sent it so he really would read it. But maybe you like this Idea:
My idea about a dynamic-question-system:
Warhorse could link the dialog options with your quest-journal. So if you have a quest, you maybe could select important persons and places of the quest as a „searched object“, so you can have one searched object at the time which will pop up as an dialog option if you talk to someone.
The player should be have the freedom of choose the object by himself. It should not be important who you are talking to, you should have the possibility to ask everyone about every important object selectable in your journal. But you will decrease your work to a makeble set by let only a few of them answer in a positive way. The majority of responses should be negative, so you have a standart in development. The idea of linking it with your quest-journal is also highly intuitive, because the searched object is linked into a context and this a huge advantage in comparison to a list with maybe all known NPC-characters. You also don´t need a new category in your interface, so you can keep it simple.
An example:
Maybe you have a quest with the Blacksmith of Sampose involved. So he is one of the characters mentioned in the journal. Now you should be possible to select him as „searched“. If you now talk to someone, something like this should be a dialog option:
„I am looking for the blacksmith of Sampose“
You maybe could ask this even to your liege lord. And he could answer in a negative-curious way on all your questions of this kind in account of his higher social status:
„Sorry no. Why do you ask me about it?“
As you see it was not import what you were asking about and as we don´t really know why the player want Henry to ask this, we can keep his
answer in a trivial way:
„I am searching for him/her/it“
The lord would not like
something like this and may answer:
„Than do this. But don´t bother me with your questions.“
As you allready see, if the NPCs answer is negative, the question may is not important. So NPCs should be have the ability to answer in three different ways:
1) negative answer:
This should be the standart answer about the searched-object, and every other answer should be an exception. It is okay to get a „no“ in a game, because it is imporatant for an believable world to interact with other people. So the standart answers could be:
„No sorry, I can´t help you.“ or „Sorry, I don´t know.“
Every NPC should have the ability to say „no“.
2) uncertain answer:
People who may know the blacksmith of Sampose or the current searched-object but who are not so important to the quest can answer in an uncertain and trivial way:
„Yeah, may look around in Sampose.“ or „Yeah, may look around in the Village.“
So as you see, this is not a specific answer. This could also be a good answer to every other question about someone or something in Sampose. It does not really help the player, but he get a yes and maybe the idea where he can find more Informations, if he is in the wrong place at all (maybe the wrong village, if the blacksmith is also known over there). Every NPC should have the ability to answer in a way like this, and should know the names of every town on the map and even
some uncertain places. This would be a finite amount of sentences for the voiceactors. Maybe some answers leading to this:
Named:
Rataje, Sazava, Ledecko, Talmberk, Mrchojedy, Samopse, Vranik, Uzice, Stribrna Skalice.
Unnamed:
in the forests, near the river, near the bridge, on the streets, at the village square, at the crossroads, by the single farm, in the valley, on the hill, near the fields, at the white house, at the wooden house, at the castle, at the church, in the village, in the town, at the mill, at the tavern, at the store, at the towncenter, near the big tree.
Maybe in a village every villager should know about the other villagers and so the answers of this category should be common in a local community.
3) accurate answer:
A few characters should know more and answer specific things. This is the majority of work on the smallest amount of answers, because it is highly specific only build to the one searched-object, and as you have different voice actors also on specific dialog-partners. Answers of this category have to be detailed and full of useful information:
“Oh yes, i know the Blacksmith. He is may a grumpy guy. If you look for him, he often wears his red gugel. During the day you probably can find him at his forge at the center of Sampose. He lives in one of the bigger white houses.”
Only a few NPCs have to answer in a way like this. Maybe the neighbor or the barkeeper in the tavern. Barkeepers could may know many people, so they could be very helpful to find the right persons and places in a town. You can save a lot of work here with characters like barkeepers where you can get a lot of information from one person, because you can centralise your information to one point and don`t have to create a difficult network about it. Find important characters and make them a solution to find the right way to your quest. So quests will be playable without questmarkers easier and you will get a huge amount of deep immersion!
This system will get even useful if you as a player choose to turn your questmarkers on.
So If you want to find a NPC in the game with questmarkers on, you can select this NPC in the Questjournal als „searched“ and will get a questmarker on your compass to find him.
If a new quest is created during a dialog, and new possible NPCs are selectable as „searched“ in the journal, they should be temporary shown as „searched“ in this ongoing dialog. As the dialog-partner mentions the new object (otherwise you could not know about it), he must know something about the searched-object and should respond with an answer of category 2 (uncertain) or 3(accurate).
Also if someone is dead, and the NPC knows about it, he should tell about it:
„He/she is dead“
You also should be able to search for objects from old quests, maybe you search for them about what reason ever, but it is not a single amout of work for you as an developer to let people also search for old objects. Don`t force the player to look only for new ones.
The system of a quest-journal linked with the dialog options also give you another advantage. The player not only could search for NPCs and places, there could also be a steady quest of „get a job“ So you can choose „a job“ as a searched-object and ask everyone about it. As it is like the other searched-objects, also here the majority amount of answer would be the one of category 1: „no, sorry. I don`t have a job for you.“
Some could answer in category 2: „Мay ask at the Tavern“
And a few opens a new questline in category 3: „hey yes, you can help me with… XY“
You even could create a system where you can begging. You could ask people for Money, something to eat or a place to sleep, and of course, already the question should lower your social status in the game.
2 Likes
I don’t know exactly. If your conversations with people can dramatically influence the story line unlike skyrim where you have to kill people for every inconvinience
Hey, that guy stole my damn bread loaf. What was I supposed to do? Talk like a a rational human being? F that:P
Then it seems pretty fun because you are truly free to make you own choices
Itss just a peice of brad and you dont even need to eat it in skyrim, besides in this game you can reason with people, so yes you should.
yeah i’m thinking you can save your postage, that kind of idea is a bit late to the game. they’ve already written up the design documents.
everyone’s a game designer these days…you just have to trust the studio, i think.
I’m just thinking out loud here, besides if they’ve already done it then id like an answer thats alll.
Yes you do:O Role-play! Also, I use a basic needs mod.
Anyway, it was a joke, of course I would prefer as many options as a possible, but that doesn’t mean resorting to violence isn’t an acceptable method (in some cases), this is the medieval age after all.
I don´t think so, in the last streamvideo, dan was not sure about how to design quests without questmarkers, so this design is not finished yet.
I get that, I m not saying I’m gonna get in a fight every five seconds, which is kinda screwed up, but I would at least like to fight in a large scale battle that would be awesome
I’m just saying I’m not going to to kill a man for some bread, and/ or bacon.
Plus it would be fun to be like tryion lanister or something and just talk, and be clevermoeer than everyone else
#bardclass
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Yeah but Id also like to have some rogue and warrior in it. So overall just a bad ass.