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Game News Age of Decadence March Update

Gord

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Will we still get [failure] for failed skill checks? Cause if so, some people will still metagame.

I guess anyone with an IQ above room temperature can guess most of the time that a skill check failed if the option he picked didn't work, anyway.
I'm all for doing something against excessive metagaming, but I think they need to put in some kind of indication what a given option is about to do, especially when you consider that many skills often produce very similar looking options (take streetwise and persuasion checks, their dialogue reads pretty much the same).

After all, when I'm about to persuade someone, I know that I try to persuade him, and when I try to swing him with my knowledge of organized crime and gangsta culture, I know it, too.
 

skuphundaku

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Will we still get [failure] for failed skill checks? Cause if so, some people will still metagame.

I guess anyone with an IQ above room temperature can guess most of the time that a skill check failed if the option he picked didn't work, anyway.
I'm all for doing something against excessive metagaming, but I think they need to put in some kind of indication what a given option is about to do, especially when you consider that many skills often produce very similar looking options (take streetwise and persuasion checks, their dialogue reads pretty much the same).

After all, when I'm about to persuade someone, I know that I try to persuade him, and when I try to swing him with my knowledge of organized crime and gangsta culture, I know it, too.
You're basing your reasoning on the fact that the text descriptions of the available options and the text of the replies are 100% unambiguous, which is simply not true. If you remove the skill check tags and the success/failure tags, then the metagaming gets replaced with blindly stumbling in the dark. You can't compare AoD which has 12 general skills + critical strike which are all used in dialogues with Fallout which used only one skill in dialogues. Removing the tags would be the kind of improvement that Bethesda does: altogether removing things that didn't work perfectly before.
 

Gord

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Sure, which is why I think that most of the descriptions/dialogue would need to be reworked to make it as unambigous as possible.
Or you need another indication which skill is going to be used, like a rule of thumb that persuasion is used with average people, etiquette with nobles, streetwise with thugs...

This is highly unlikely, therefore I'm not all sure if I like the simple removal of skill tags.
 

empi

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You can't compare AoD which has 12 general skills + critical strike which are all used in dialogues with Fallout which used only one skill in dialogues. Removing the tags would be the kind of improvement that Bethesda does: altogether removing things that didn't work perfectly before.


:hmmm:
 

Infinitron

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If you remove the skill check tags and the success/failure tags, then the metagaming gets replaced with blindly stumbling in the dark.

Aspie detected?

Yes, maybe the dialogues need to be disambiguated slightly, but overall I think it's cool if you actually need to read them and understand what your character is trying to do.
Once again, it reminds me of the set-piece dialogue sequences in DX:HR.
 

Gord

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Not only slighty, Infinitron.
Streetwise, persuasion and sometimes disguise dialogue options are almost indistinguishable without already knowing which option relates to each talent.
 

Roguey

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You can't compare AoD which has 12 general skills + critical strike which are all used in dialogues with Fallout which used only one skill in dialogues. Removing the tags would be the kind of improvement that Bethesda does: altogether removing things that didn't work perfectly before.


:hmmm:
In the first one science was used... maybe two or three times? And aside from intelligence checks, I think that's it. Fallout 2 added a few for a few of the others, but not consistently.
 

empi

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There were also countless checks for Barter in both, and in Fallout 2 there were several for many skills.
Anyway, what made it easy to understand what skill did what was that you had real environment interaction. The flaw of having a purely dialogue driven system is that there soon becomes very little to distinguish between the skills, when you remove the skill tag it helps remove the meta-gamey reloading crap, but it also, with too many similar skills and vague dialogue can provide frustration for the players. I'd hate to say it's doomed to fail, but it's pretty damn hard to get right.
If only applying lockpick on a lock itself wasn't boring banal shit fluff...
 

skuphundaku

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If you remove the skill check tags and the success/failure tags, then the metagaming gets replaced with blindly stumbling in the dark.

Aspie detected?

Yes, maybe the dialogues need to be disambiguated slightly, but overall I think it's cool if you actually need to read them and understand what your character is trying to do.
Once again, it reminds me of the set-piece dialogue sequences in DX:HR.
Yeah, right! They need to be disambiguate just slightly. Hindsight 20/20 much, after you already know what skill is going to be checked in each case? You know what? Make VD add the option to enable/disable tags without changing anything else and let's see what people chose and how many of those who chose to disable the tags stick to that options throughout the whole game. My guess would be that less than 10% would be masochistic enough to disable tagging and stick with it.
 

Infinitron

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If you remove the skill check tags and the success/failure tags, then the metagaming gets replaced with blindly stumbling in the dark.

Aspie detected?

Yes, maybe the dialogues need to be disambiguated slightly, but overall I think it's cool if you actually need to read them and understand what your character is trying to do.
Once again, it reminds me of the set-piece dialogue sequences in DX:HR.
Yeah, right! They need to be disambiguate just slightly. Hindsight 20/20 much, after you already know what skill is going to be checked in each case? You know what? Make VD add the option to enable/disable tags without changing anything else and let's see what people chose and how many of those who chose to disable the tags stick to that options throughout the whole game. My guess would be that less than 10% would be masochistic enough to disable tagging and stick with it.

Why would it be any more frustrating then knowingly running up against a skill check and finding out you don't have enough points invested? At least this way you're more encouraged to try something else instead of reloading and reallocating skill points. Of course, if you get desperate, you can still do that too.

The goal is to incentivize player creativity and de-incentivize metagaming. Of course, if the game doesn't provide enough options for creativity, that's a problem...
 

skuphundaku

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There were also countless checks for Barter in both, and in Fallout 2 there were several for many skills.
Anyway, what made it easy to understand what skill did what was that you had real environment interaction. The flaw of having a purely dialogue driven system is that there soon becomes very little to distinguish between the skills, when you remove the skill tag it helps remove the meta-gamey reloading crap, but it also, with too many similar skills and vague dialogue can provide frustration for the players. I'd hate to say it's doomed to fail, but it's pretty damn hard to get right.
If only applying lockpick on a lock itself wasn't boring banal shit fluff...
Dude, I wasn't talking about proper environment interaction based checks, like in Fallout, I'm talking exclusively about the dialogue interface. In Fallout, the dialogues are governed by INT and Speech in the vast majority of situations. Most non-speech related skill checks happen interactively, not in the dialog interface, so you have enough environmental cues to know what's happening. In AoD, every non-combat interaction is a dialogue (with the minor exception of the climbable vines on Feng's house), so apart from the tags, and the text (which can be ambiguous), there are no other cues about what skill/skills is/are going to be checked. And, despite what some may claim, the text isn't, and may never be, unambiguous enough to differentiate between persuasion and etiquette, or persuasion and streetwise, or lore and crafting etc. Of course it would be relativerly easy to differentiate between a critical strike check and a lockpick check, but that's not always the case with all skills. That means that the tags are essential, otherwise it all devolves into randomy investing in persuasion/etiquette/streetwise without much information to go on.
 

Gord

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Why would it be any more frustrating then knowingly running up against a skill check and finding out you don't have enough points invested?

I do find it more frustrating if I fail without knowing why than failing and understanding the reason.
Remove the tags without adding other hints for the player means reloading and blindly trying something else.
Esp. if many failed checks will put you into unwinnable combat situations, there aren't exactly many possibilities to "try something else" save for directly using combat, simply ignoring the quest or maybe blindly raising skills you might suspect are checked (while you are probably wrong because of ambiguous dialogue).
 

skuphundaku

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Why would it be any more frustrating then knowingly running up against a skill check and finding out you don't have enough points invested? At least this way you're more encouraged to try something else instead of reloading and reallocating skill points. Of course, if you get desperate, you can still do that too.

The goal is to incentivize player creativity and de-incentivize metagaming. Of course, if the game doesn't provide enough options for creativity, that's a problem...
Knowingly running up against a skill check has a solution that has already been mentioned by a lot of people: skill point hoarding. It's metagamey as fuck but it's a valid solution. If you remove the tags, that solution becomes quite ineffective because, if you fail a check, you may not know what skill check you failed so, instead of having to try investing your hoarded SP into one particular skill, you would need to start trying investing in all skills that may make sense, and there may be a lot of them if dealing with relatively ambiguously differentiated skills like persuasion/etiquette/streetwise or lore/crafting, thus rendering this solution very time consuming, thus almost unusable.

Creativity doesn't mean that you have no clue about what's happening around you and you just take your chances and hope for the best. Creativity is based of existing knowledge. The only way removing tags would work is if the text descriptions of the options would be 100% unambiguous, which I think is impossible to pull off, and the text of the replies are also 100% unambiguous about whether you succeded or failed, and from what could be seen in the demo, that's not always the case. Look at the Miltiades encounter: VD considers that it was clear that there was something off about him while some of the players who chose the streetwise response and succeded thought that the answer didn't raise any significant red flags so they went with him and got killed. Imagine this situation expanded to each and every dialogue that can get you killed. The game would become utterly unplayable.
 

empi

Augur
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There were also countless checks for Barter in both, and in Fallout 2 there were several for many skills.
Anyway, what made it easy to understand what skill did what was that you had real environment interaction. The flaw of having a purely dialogue driven system is that there soon becomes very little to distinguish between the skills, when you remove the skill tag it helps remove the meta-gamey reloading crap, but it also, with too many similar skills and vague dialogue can provide frustration for the players. I'd hate to say it's doomed to fail, but it's pretty damn hard to get right.
If only applying lockpick on a lock itself wasn't boring banal shit fluff...
Dude, I wasn't talking about proper environment interaction based checks, like in Fallout, I'm talking exclusively about the dialogue interface. In Fallout, the dialogues are governed by INT and Speech in the vast majority of situations. Most non-speech related skill checks happen interactively, not in the dialog interface, so you have enough environmental cues to know what's happening. In AoD, every non-combat interaction is a dialogue (with the minor exception of the climbable vines on Feng's house), so apart from the tags, and the text (which can be ambiguous), there are no other cues about what skill/skills is/are going to be checked. And, despite what some may claim, the text isn't, and may never be, unambiguous enough to differentiate between persuasion and etiquette, or persuasion and streetwise, or lore and crafting etc. Of course it would be relativerly easy to differentiate between a critical strike check and a lockpick check, but that's not always the case with all skills. That means that the tags are essential, otherwise it all devolves into randomy investing in persuasion/etiquette/streetwise without much information to go on.

I agree, was just being a pedant about speech not being the only checked skill in dialogue in FO.
I think the problem doesn't lie with having a no tag dialogue system, i'm favorable to that. It's instead the flaw of having a system with many similair skills of the same function (You get to the end of the dialogue maze through a different path depending on which skills you've invested on), as well as having a system where all/most checks occur in dialogue. If there were fewer dialogue skills, no skill tags and instead choices that you the player made based on what you thought was the correct thing to say, that would be ideal. And saying the "wrong" thing wouldn't result in an ambush, normally just perhaps pissing the person off a bit, or getting a slightly worse deal. Without skill tags in the current system, progressing will require even more reloading, you'll have to try each option, apply skill points, do it again etc. Boring as fuck.

Maybe i'm just opposed to the base system that is clearly cemented into the game, but I can't really see anything working very well. Only some partial solutions while still leaving lots of flaws. Ofc it was also help with a slightly higher level or writing, more characterization/fluff etc., but I can't see anything very enjoyable about AoD's dialogue system. At least it's tried to be different, I guess...
 

Infinitron

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I think you guys are too pessimistic about the ambiguity of dialogues. Written language is the richest form of expression.

I do agree that there may be a problem of running into too many dead-ends if you don't pass skill checks, due to lack of alternative routes in the game. Although there's nothing wrong with running into a dead-ended questline now and then. C&C bitches, etc :rpgcodex:
 

empi

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For a good example of how you can have lots of different skills checked in dialogue, I would look at the Darklands system, which is in many ways close to the AoD one, with some notable differences:

  • A lot of the time, if you fail a check, you are barely punished, or you have further checks to try. This is almost always the case. (Guards are chasing you at night, you try to sneak away into a back alleyway, you fail a sneak check. The guards catch up with you but then your priest character succesfully prays to the right saint and the danger is avoided, for instance)
  • The game is far more of a sandbox, if your skills aren't good enough for one area you can go explore, develop your chars, do other things instead. Being locked out of a "quest" is far from a disaster.
  • The checks rely on dice rolls, not just a harsh boundary. There's a real satisfaction when you pass a vital check for a skill you're poor at mainly through luck, although this obviously doesn't occur often. Your sneaky theif dies but you need to get out of the castle, so your big fighter with a shitty sneak skill just happens to pass the check and you go YEAH.
AoD could learn a bit more from Darklands, which was no doubt an inspiration (AoD should have had a text interface too imo :p )
 

GlutenBurger

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Perhaps a better solution would be to not provide the option at all for dialogue checks where your skill is nowhere near high enough to be successful, say within ten points. So, if you've eschewed streetwise but given your character moderate persuasion ability, most of the streetwise options wouldn't even occur to him, and you're saved the frustration of futilely clicking streetwise options that you're expecting be covered by persuasion. You also have the impetus to try pumping the other skills in later games because you know there will be new dialogue options.

I think the best option would be to provide dialogue which sounds increasingly more veracious the more skilled the character is in the relevant field, leaving it up to the player to judge how probable the suggested routine is. It makes sense because most people have a general understanding of their own capabilities and are able to judge in advance how well they're likely to do. That would require going through and adding a lot more dialogue to the game, however, so it's not something that would be a good idea to implement at this point.
 

Infinitron

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Perhaps a better solution would be to not provide the option at all for dialogue checks where your skill is nowhere near high enough to be successful, say within ten points. So, if you've eschewed streetwise but given your character moderate persuasion ability, most of the streetwise options wouldn't even occur to him, and you're saved the frustration of futilely clicking streetwise options that you're expecting be covered by persuasion. You also have the impetus to try pumping the other skills in later games because you know there will be new dialogue options.

I think it's already implemented this way in many cases.

I think the best option would be to provide dialogue which sounds increasingly more veracious the more skilled the character is in the relevant field, leaving it up to the player to judge how probable the suggested routine is. It makes sense because most people have a general understanding of their own capabilities and are able to judge in advance how well they're likely to do. That would require going through and adding a lot more dialogue to the game, however, so it's not something that would be a good idea to implement at this point.

Read the OP and click the links! This is precisely what they're going to do
 

skuphundaku

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Perhaps a better solution would be to not provide the option at all for dialogue checks where your skill is nowhere near high enough to be successful, say within ten points. So, if you've eschewed streetwise but given your character moderate persuasion ability, most of the streetwise options wouldn't even occur to him, and you're saved the frustration of futilely clicking streetwise options that you're expecting be covered by persuasion. You also have the impetus to try pumping the other skills in later games because you know there will be new dialogue options.
That's already happening. There are visible skill checks (the tagged ones) and invisible skill checks (which decide whether or not various options are shown at all). I think that invisible checks based on background, stats and reputation make sense, but invisible checks based on skills are a bad idea for the same reason I think that untagged skill checks are a bad idea.
 

J_C

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I like what I am reading. This updates could really improve the game, I'm looking forward to the updated demo.
 

Kaol

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I can't believe people want the tags to remain. Its not hard to distinguish between the skills from the dialogue.

The best thing is if the successful dialogues are different than the failing ones, that way the player simply has to pick the dialogue option they think most beneficial for the situation without worrying what skillcheck is behind it.
 

hiver

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Will we still get [failure] for failed skill checks? Cause if so, some people will still metagame.
hmm.. yeah... I didnt want to push this too much and i kind of left it, being pleased with what was announced but certainly hoping this will also be removed - at least in the way where it clearly shows what skill is lacking, which only has a negative effect on the gameplay as a whole.

Especially when it synergizes (totally unintentionally) with those very stiff skill requirements that were removed with this latest update.

Guys, perhaps this is a poor suggestion, but given that the combat in the game seems a good fit for party-based combat, could there perhaps be an option to control party members if you have higher CHA? I was thinking something like this:

4-5 CHA: No control over party members
6 CHA: Control over 1 party member picked at random during battle
7 CHA: Control over 1 party member of your choosing.
8 CHA: 1 random, 1 chosen
9 CHA: 2 chosen
10 CHA: Everybody
Looks like its totally out of the whole style and idea of AoD... at least to me.

That's already happening. There are visible skill checks (the tagged ones) and invisible skill checks (which decide whether or not various options are shown at all). I think that invisible checks based on background, stats and reputation make sense, but invisible checks based on skills are a bad idea for the same reason I think that untagged skill checks are a bad idea.
You think wrong. The negative effects that taging of dialogue options produces far outweigh any "good" ones.

Not only does it provide the player with unbelievable meta gaming knowledge the character should not have unless he is telepathic, but it makes all work on good dialogue irrelevant. You end up playing a "click on tag" game instead of reading, understanding and making decisions based on that.
 

Mrowak

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That's already happening. There are visible skill checks (the tagged ones) and invisible skill checks (which decide whether or not various options are shown at all). I think that invisible checks based on background, stats and reputation make sense, but invisible checks based on skills are a bad idea for the same reason I think that untagged skill checks are a bad idea.
You think wrong. The negative effects that taging of dialogue options produces far outweigh any "good" ones.

Not only does it provide the player with unbelievable meta gaming knowledge the character should not have unless he is telepathic, but it makes all work on good dialogue irrelevant. You end up playing a "click on tag" game instead of reading, understanding and making decisions based on that.

I... don't quite agree with that. While I concede it makes reading some dialogues irrelevant it also reveals particular game mechanics for the player which he is supposed to take advantage of.

In a PnP game it is the player who would have the power to determine which skills to use in the given situation and GM's role is to determine which would prove the most effective. So if the player selects say [Intimidation], the GM, depending on the context, may go in his head: "Dude, are serious? You are surrounded by 15 guards and you try to intimidate them? Roll for initiative. Let the slaughter begin, boys!" or "A clever choice of skill! You've collected enough evidence to blackmail that guy. It's a good thing that he is alone, too".

AoD reverses that basic concept by:

1). Railoading you into dialogue options you have no control over. Sometimes it just denies reason how easily one can go e.g. from [Persuasion] to [Trade]. That could be solved by giving the player more options after the choice is made, with the continuation of the most common-sense skill and perhaps a skill diverging from the previous path, which would give you more rewards. For example:

[Persuasion] ---- [Persuasion] - convinces the person to support your faction
|___________ [Trade] - convinces the person to support your faction and secures extra financial gains
|___________ [Streetwise/Threaten] - amtagonizes you interlocutor barring any option in dialogue (basically, an option that doesn't make sense given the context).


What we have now is:

[Persuasion] ---- [Trade] - convinces the person to support your faction (you fail if you weren't clairvoyant enough and put too many points in say [Streetwise] instead of [Trade]).

2). Taking away the control over the mechanics. The only two facets the player has the control over his skills is a) levelling them up; b) using them in dialogues. The b) part will be significantly weakened without those tags, to the point the player won't know if by picking the option he is making any check, or what skill is checked - which in return is weakening aspect a). The only way this can be pulled off is when the writing conveys which skill is used when. However this is increasingly problematic with some of the speech skills (Streetwise-Persuasion-Trade-Disguise) as well as their combination e.g. [Streetwise/Persuasion].

If VD is going to remove the tags, regardless, I'd advise he at least kept some indicator that some skill is being used (e.g. asterisk sign), so that the player at least knows which choices simply will give hin more info, and which are decisive to the gameplay.
 

zeitgeist

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You end up playing a "click on tag" game instead of reading, understanding and making decisions based on that.
This is true. However, with the dialogue in its current state, it would also be pretty obvious which options are the "winning" options and which are the "losing" options even without the tags, for the sole reason that there's very rarely more than two (non-fluff) options to choose from, and the writing is, well, programmer writing. The dialogue would have to be greatly expanded, with multiple solutions and paths that depend on both character and player skill and knowledge. And if that was done, [skill] options would likely be perceived as a far smaller problem than they are now.
 

Vault Dweller

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Sometimes it just denies reason how easily one can go e.g. from [Persuasion] to [Trade].
It's realistic. Maybe too realistic.

The skillcheck design is based on my professional experience. As you probably know, I talk for a living.

When you're trying to convince your 'opponent' (convince him to use your services, convinces him to sign a longer contract, convince him to keep trying after his initial campaign failed, convince him to pay what he owes you, convince him to do anything he doesn't want to do, basically), a single argument (as single check) is never enough.

Usually, your 'opponent' has 3-5 objections, reason why he doesn't want to do what you want him to do. You have to deal with all of them and use different skills: some you dismiss with strong arguments if the flaws are obvious or you have a good opening, some you bullshit through, either making him believe or doubt his own position; you can appeal to his logic, greed, doubts, fear, confidence, even beliefs that it has to work (but not all at the same time; it's not Oblivion and different people have different buttons).

Here is a simple scenario.

<Presentation>
objection #1 - I want to think about it (a weak attempt to disengage)
response: [streetwise] Think about what? It's natural to have doubts, but we've been in business for 30 years and I can assure you...
objection #2 - I'm not sure it's going to work for us (translation: I'm afraid to make a bad decision, so I'd rather make no decision at all)
response: [persuasion] *explain how the product is a perfect fit for him.
objection #3 - it sounds great but our budget is spent (fucking weasel, I can smell the money on you)
response: [trading][streetwise] We both know that money isn't an issue here. I'm afraid you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not an expense, but a short-term investment... *appeal to greed, focus his attention on the returns
etc.

I'm not saying that we designed it the best way evar, so if you have more suggestions...
 

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