On "Speech" skill

[Marat]

I don't think RPGs should have such a skill. I like the idea of your character's practical skills coming up in conversations, but a speech check is an automatic indicator of an optimal choice in conversation.

PC's knowledge of medicine, electronics or ancient Greek pottery should be able to give him additional insights or steer a conversation towards a desired outcome when said skills are relevant, but not present an automatic "win button". At the very least a speech check should be hidden, for even the best argument might fail when presented extremely poorly, but it should be left to the player to navigate the conversation choosing their words carefully in making their case. Much like it is up to the player to choose where to move in combat and which enemy to attack, so it should be in conversations to leave it to the player to choose a line of argumentation and how to properly support it. The first two Fallouts had something of this sort, I think, and it should be iterated upon, enhanced and developed in the same way as combat mechanics have grown in RPGs over the decades.

In it's current state navigating dialogue in RPGs is the equivalent of having a "Combat" skill. Instead of fighting you just pass a check and your enemies fall dead. To test my theory I have resolved not to put any points in Speech in New Vegas and the game seems so much better for it. Quests require me to have skills relevant to the subject matter or go for the guns blazing approach, which doesn't always lead to the optimal outcome. I am also very curious how the conversations will play out in Colony Ship with it's new dialogue system.

I realize it would require developers to sink much more time into most conversations, but when combat systems and encounters get so much attention, perhaps the other side of the coin deserves it too. What are your thoughts?

 

[Nephilim]

Like people, some characters are unable to speak eloquently and convey their thoughts correctly.
I think the Speech skill is a necessary evil and it's differs from a Charisma skill, where you can bullshit your way through.

 

[Yosharian]

Doesn't matter; unless modern RPGs abandon their retarded obsession with fully-voiced dialogue, there will never be room for expansive branching dialogue that can truly do justice to a Speech skill. And they never will, because full VO sells games to normies.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Doesn't matter; unless modern RPGs abandon their retarded obsession with fully-voiced dialogue, there will never be room for expansive branching dialogue that can truly do justice to a Speech skill. And they never will, because full VO sells games to normies.

AI VO will fix this in a couple years.
I, for one, can't wait for the fan patches that add full voice acting to all the old crpgs.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I, for one, can't wait for the fan patches that add full voice acting to all the old crpgs.

I see that "Americans don't like to read" is not really a stereotype

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I, for one, can't wait for the fan patches that add full voice acting to all the old crpgs.

I see that "Americans don't like to read" is not really a stereotype

there's a grand total of 0 video games with text worth reading, go buy a book

 

[SoupNazi]

I think skillchecks for speech should be abolished completely, and only actually smart people should be able to pass. Likewise, there should be no spell quickbars (or even keyboeard shortcuts, UGH). Unless you can draw the rune perfectly with your mouse, or recite the incantations, you don't get to cast. A new periphery needs to be developed for people who want to play physical classes, which measures their strength to determine the damage of their swords/axes/whatnot. For archers, an even more stringent set of requirements should be made - first you do the same test as strength fighters to determine your draw on the bow, and then a laser pistol should be used to measure aim accuracy (a separate screen for that of course, no point measuring accuracy on the isometric screen). Bards will get a DDR-like setup to sing into to determine their spell success/failure, etc.

 

[Ol' Willy]

there's a grand total of 0 video games with text worth reading, go buy a book

Why play storyfag games then?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

there's a grand total of 0 video games with text worth reading, go buy a book

Why play storyfag games then?

I don't.

 

[Marat]

I don't.

Then fuck off from my thread.

I think skillchecks for speech should be abolished completely, and only actually smart people should be able to pass. Likewise, there should be no spell quickbars (or even keyboeard shortcuts, UGH). Unless you can draw the rune perfectly with your mouse, or recite the incantations, you don't get to cast. A new periphery needs to be developed for people who want to play physical classes, which measures their strength to determine the damage of their swords/axes/whatnot. For archers, an even more stringent set of requirements should be made - first you do the same test as strength fighters to determine your draw on the bow, and then a laser pistol should be used to measure aim accuracy (a separate screen for that of course, no point measuring accuracy on the isometric screen). Bards will get a DDR-like setup to sing into to determine their spell success/failure, etc.

I don't know if you're mocking my position on this subject or just shitposting. RPGs engage player intelectually. Combat requires brains, not combat skills and all I'm asking is that conversations do require some brains too, instead of just looking for a skill check to get the best outcome and move on.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Then fuck off from my thread.

well now I definitely won't

 

[Marat]

well now I definitely won't

OK, then stay and make yourself comfortable.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

well now I definitely won't

OK, then stay and make yourself comfortable.

no, I'm going to go make my own thread

 

[SoupNazi]

I don't know if you're mocking my position on this subject or just shitposting. RPGs engage player intelectually. Combat requires brains, not combat skills and all I'm asking is that conversations do require some brains too, instead of just looking for a skill check to get the best outcome and move on.

Then I guess you failed your (INTELLIGENCE) check, and should not be allowed to continue because your (real-life) SKILL was not up to par. Do you wish to (RELOAD) or (EXIT TO MAIN MENU)?

 

[mondblut]

Using skills to gate any significant portions of content is criminal. Why the fuck should I have to choose between gitting gud and getting a complete game?

 

[Marat]

Like people, some characters are unable to speak eloquently and convey their thoughts correctly.
I think the Speech skill is a necessary evil and it's differs from a Charisma skill, where you can bullshit your way through.

That's just my point. Your ability to present your thoughts can depend on on some hypothetical skill or attribute, but even the greatest oratory skills won't save a stupid argument. Dialogue options should not be tagged with skill checks, but demand a player to involve himself and actually think them through if he wants to achieve some feat of rethoric.

Doesn't matter; unless modern RPGs abandon their retarded obsession with fully-voiced dialogue, there will never be room for expansive branching dialogue that can truly do justice to a Speech skill. And they never will, because full VO sells games to normies.

To hell with normies and commertial viability, we're discussing what is artistically valuable.

 

[Marat]

Using skills to gate any significant portions of content is criminal. Why the fuck should I have to choose between gitting gud and getting a complete game?

That's just retarded. If your combat skills are too low you won't win a fight and will not progress further into the game. Muh gating of content.

 

[Ol' Willy]

In it's current state navigating dialogue in RPGs is the equivalent of having a "Combat" skill. Instead of fighting you just pass a check and your enemies fall dead. To test my theory I have resolved not to put any points in Speech in New Vegas and the game seems so much better for it. Quests require me to have skills relevant to the subject matter or go for the guns blazing approach, which doesn't always lead to the optimal outcome.

 

[Bad Sector]

Personally i prefer keyword/topic based systems like the one Morrowind uses (though it could be improved - and i do not mean the text that sometimes read like some call 'wikipedia entries', that is an issue with the writing, not the conversation system). Your skills should affect both what options you have (be it keyword/topic based or the more common "sentence" based) and the results you get by selecting them (but no chances please, a skill should either apply or not) though i think explicitly marking the options that were unlocked via your skills is distracting. Unlocked options shouldn't look any different than regular options.

As for my preference towards keyword/topic based systems, it is simply that having options like...

• Would you kindly drive me to the airport?
• I need you to drive me to the airport
• Drive me to the airport or you will regret it!

...(ie. basically "saying" the same thing with different words) isn't any different to just a "drive to airport" topic aside from the flowery text, but even in terms of roleplaying "my character" may not fit or say the available phrases (not to mention that often you do not get much of a variation anyway). Instead a separate 'tone' setting could be available that the game can actually react to if needed (e.g. most NPCs might not care but some may react differently to a forceful tone vs a neutral tone, especially by different characters - like a wimpy PC talking to a strong rogueish NPC or vice versa). And it would leave little room for misinterpretation (e.g. sometimes with the phrase based options you have a different interpretation than what the designer intended).

Of course this requires a bit of additional imagination for how the conversation would really happen as people may not see past the abstraction and believe your high intelligence mage grunts 'name', 'job' and 'bye' to every NPC he encounters :-P

 

[Butter]

It obviously depends on how integral speech is to your game. Disco Elysium was able to justify 88 different dialogue skills because talking to people is the entire game. A hypothetical game that's 90% tactical combat and 10% dialogue wouldn't make sense to have so many. Conversely, a "combat" skill might actually make sense for a game that isn't trying to focus on that as one of its core gameplay pillars.

 

[mondblut]

Using skills to gate any significant portions of content is criminal. Why the fuck should I have to choose between gitting gud and getting a complete game?

That's just retarded. If your combat skills are too low you won't win a fight and will not progress further into the game. Muh gating of content.

If your combat skills are too low to progress, you are doing it wrong.

If your speech skill is too low to progress, the developer is doing it wrong.

 

[SoupNazi]

Using skills to gate any significant portions of content is criminal. Why the fuck should I have to choose between gitting gud and getting a complete game?

That's just retarded. If your combat skills are too low you won't win a fight and will not progress further into the game. Muh gating of content.

You must be fucking trolling. Why is combat skills too high / too low OK to determine game progress but speech skill requires player intelligence? Is that because you're a scrawny dude that can't lift a flatscreen TV, or a fat dude that can't run a hundred meters, but you deem yourself smart so you demand to be challenged more? Why can't a jock enjoy feeling smart in an RPG by investing into a skill that lets him see the smarter options even if he could never think of them? And there are a plenty of RPGs that don't require tactical or even smart decisions in combat btw, most of them it's in fact a simple stat check, so don't bother repeating your argument of combat needing intellect lol. There's maybe 4-5 games in the history of RPGs that actually require any intellect, and an absolute zero that requires combat experience, so why would the conversational part of RPGs need to require conversation experience/skill?

 

[Marat]

Despite being a brilliant game, AoD has the very problem I talked about. You just select options marked with the particular skill in which you have most points and hope it carries you to victory. If you really wanted you could successfully "win" conversations by reading only the skill tags before each dialogue option.

 

[SoupNazi]

Using skills to gate any significant portions of content is criminal. Why the fuck should I have to choose between gitting gud and getting a complete game?

That's just retarded. If your combat skills are too low you won't win a fight and will not progress further into the game. Muh gating of content.

You must be fucking trolling. Why is combat skills too high / too low OK to determine game progress but speech skill requires player intelligence? Is that because you're a scrawny dude that can't lift a flatscreen TV, or a fat dude that can't run a hundred meters, but you deem yourself smart so you demand to be challenged more? Why can't a jock enjoy feeling smart in an RPG by investing into a skill that lets him see the smarter options even if he could never think of them? And there are a plenty of RPGs that don't require tactical or even smart decisions in combat btw, most of them it's in fact a simple stat check, so don't bother repeating your argument of combat needing intellect lol. There's maybe 4-5 games in the history of RPGs that actually require any intellect, and an absolute zero that requires combat experience, so why would the conversational part of RPGs need to require conversation experience/skill?

If anything, I would argue that there need to be an option for players who DON'T invest into speech/charisma/whatever to make the right conversational decisions anyway, be it through keywords or 20 options out of which you can only choose the 1 correct one. Just like you can just have great stats for combat and succeed, or succeed in combat anyway with shit skills just by being smart. Definitely never ever the other way around, and your topic is retarded for proposing that.

 

[Marat]

...(ie. basically "saying" the same thing with different words) isn't any different to just a "drive to airport" topic aside from the flowery text, but even in terms of roleplaying "my character" may not fit or say the available phrases (not to mention that often you do not get much of a variation anyway). Instead a separate 'tone' setting could be available that the game can actually react to if needed (e.g. most NPCs might not care but some may react differently to a forceful tone vs a neutral tone, especially by different characters - like a wimpy PC talking to a strong rogueish NPC or vice versa). And it would leave little room for misinterpretation (e.g. sometimes with the phrase based options you have a different interpretation than what the designer intended).

Of course this requires a bit of additional imagination for how the conversation would really happen as people may not see past the abstraction and believe your high intelligence mage grunts 'name', 'job' and 'bye' to every NPC he encounters :-P

I can't remember what game it was, but there was one where you could select "moods" such as agressive or joking, and they would affect whether certain dialogue options would get you what you want. I would be really interesting in a large scale implementation of that idea.

It obviously depends on how integral speech is to your game. Disco Elysium was able to justify 88 different dialogue skills because talking to people is the entire game. A hypothetical game that's 90% tactical combat and 10% dialogue wouldn't make sense to have so many. Conversely, a "combat" skill might actually make sense for a game that isn't trying to focus on that as one of its core gameplay pillars.

For the purpose of our considerations I am assuming a hypothetical RPG where most quests could be approached in a variety of fashions, including combat and speech. In such a game conversations constitute a vital part of it, yet are resolved in a very simplistic manner. I gave the "Combat" skill example in the context of a game equally heavy in combat (virtually only gameplay mechanic in RPGs) as in dialogue. This combat mechanic is completely cut at the stump by just implementing a single skill that completely eviscerates it from any depth. A singular "Speech" skill is equally jarring in many games where it serves as the be all, end all of convincing people in conversations.