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Sawyer's [Post-NV]approach to narrative design made PoE games fail in that regard.

Quillon

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I became interested in Sawyer after I watched his GDC talks way back when, particularly the one about choice conflict. Some of the relevant/key things he said in that talk were:

Choice conflict: Doing(Saying) the "right thing" conflicts with being the the "right character".

f.i; You are role-playing an agressive character who intimidates people to achieve a goal and face a challenge that can only be achieved via being a diplomatic character. So you'll either behave diplomatically or shoot yourself in the foot by not doing so and get a worse/the worst outcome of that situation.

The right character: Any character that falls within our supported range of expressions.

Define an expression range(x number of dispositions in PoE's case) and support it throughout the game. If you don't define it, you'll let the players down by allowing them to be, let's say Cruel & Deceptive but inconsistently. He says the latter way of doing it makes it mostly cosmetic; sometimes players would get something out of it but most of the time players are gonna get screwed.

The Assertion: Planning avoids choice conflict: When all ways are validated ways and a clear response/reactivity spectrum consistently reinforced in the narrative, player benefits and character roles align.

Yeah, everything he'd said sounded right. So why did the 2 games he has directed since then failed narratively?

My short answer is: Defining the said "range of expressions(10 different dispositions in PoE)" and not being able to fully support them.

So the range of expressions/dispositions is everywhere in the PoE games, we keep getting points towards one of the dispositions in nearly all conversations but reactivity for them are spread far too thin. To me there is no difference between aligning towards dispositions in PoE games and choosing "how you say the same things in different manners" in Mass Effect Andromeda. Player expression is far too overrated by Sawyer and whoever's responsible for MEA. At least in MEA we know that we won't make a difference by using different manners to accomplish the same goal, but in PoE we're led to believe we'll get consequences for behaving in certain ways, and the consequences are, again, spread too thin, ultimately aren't compelling, makes the expressions/dispositions COSMETİC which is the very thing he didn't want them to be.

So how FNV was much more successful narratively with the Speech/Win button? Because the player expression is what's in our heads; it isn't what is written on our character sheets. Because Choice & Consequence is far more important than HOW we make that CHOICE. If we make a choice in FNV we're getting the consequence more often than not; little or big, sooner or later but in PoE, it feels like/we're led to believe that we're making choices in every conversation and when we see the - spread too thin consequence - of our many, many "choices", guess what, its just how an NPC responds to us; won't lock us out of anything, won't give us anything special, ultimately flavor, cosmetic, whatever... If an NPC won't favor me initially cos I wasn't "honest" enough, I almost always have another stat check to accomplish the same thing anyway. Players are not allowed to fail narratively (too) I guess :D

I could probably go on, but will have to think for it but I'm lazy.

tl;dr defining the range of expressions is cool and all but you(Obs) didn't have the resources to make it compelling. Focusing on C&C and not bothering this much with how players make the first C would have been much better for RPG games of this caliber.

There is also that Deadfire having far too many under-explored themes thing that I've been thinking and that current writers are shit thing that you'll say.
 
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Sacred82

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I became interested in Sawyer after I watched his GDC talks way back when, particularly the one about choice conflict. Some of the relevant/key things he said in that talk were:

Choice conflict: Doing(Saying) the "right thing" conflicts with being the the "right character".

f.i; You are role-playing an agressive character who intimidates people to achieve a goal and face a challenge that can only be achieved via being a diplomatic character. So you'll either behave diplomatically or shoot yourself in the foot by not doing so and get a worse/the worst outcome of that situation.

The right character: Any character that falls within our supported range of expressions.

Define an expression range(x number of disposions in PoE's case) and support it throughout the game. If you don't define it, you'll let the players down by allowing them to be, let's say Cruel & Deceptive but inconsistently. He says the latter way of doing it makes it mostly cosmetic; sometimes players would get something out of it but most of the time players are gonna get screwed.

The Assertion: Planning avoids choice conflict: When all ways are validated ways and a clear response/reactivity spectrum consistently reinforced in the narrative, player benefits and character roles align.

Yeah, everything he'd said sounded right. So why did the 2 games he has directed since then failed narratively?

My short answer is: Defining the said "range of expressions(10 different dispositions in PoE)" and not being able to fully support them.

So the range of expressions/dispositions is everywhere in the PoE games, we're keep getting points towards one of the dispositions in nearly all conversations but reactivity for them are spread far too thin.

pretty much agree up to that point.

Having ranks in dispositions is a good idea, but used to inconsistently/ infrequently.

Let's not forget that Sawyer is a gamist, but his teams aren't. The Biowarization cancels out grognardism. Dialogue, especially self-insert dialogue, is a huge thing nowadays. The sheer amount of text overrides most attempts at reactivity.

Cookie cutter good/ evil in D&D had a point. 10 dispositions that are arbitrarily interpreted by a bunch of writers don't. There's no way I'm playing PoE in Expert mode because I'm not an expert at reading the minds of snowflakes who think being stoic and being honest are mutually exclusive in a statement (btw, please define stoic for me :smug:).



Sawyer envisioned a game with 4 flexible classes, partywide stealth, no kill XP, relevant non-combat skills and maybe even Fallout level dialogue. We'll never really know.
 

Quillon

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Having ranks in dispositions is a good idea, but used to inconsistently/ infrequently.

Its not just that, they are trying to take account of many more things in response to Chargen; an NPC notices player's race/gender/where from, another if he's a godlike or not, another if player has animal companion, a situation to use player's "job" in dialogue etc. they went too deep trying to react to everything. After everything adds up, with that many things to react to, they decide to streamline the reactions so which faction I'm aligned with becomes equally less important as where my character is from; both gets the same caliber response, a dialogue line here and there, maybe in same frequency. How much can the narrative designers be creative(assuming they have talent) while also trying to fill all the blanks in this template that Sawyer's laid out?
 
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Sacred82

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Having ranks in dispositions is a good idea, but used to inconsistently/ infrequently.

Its not just that, they are trying to take account of many more things in response to Chargen; an NPC notices player's race/gender/where from, another if he's a godlike or not, another if player has animal companion, a situation to use player's "job" in dialogue etc. they went too deep trying to react to everything.

uhm well, it's kind of hard to draw a definite line. Only reacting to race? Only to class? It's really the 10 dispositions that kill the entire concept as that one is checked the most frequently and allows for the greatest variations as it's not binary; you can be a dwarf or elf but you can have any number of points in the 10 dispositions. Binary dispositions would have helped; you can have so and so many points leaning towards being honest, but you're only either known as honest or as deceptive. That + race would have sufficed and solved quite a few problems. Races could have fallen into 3 categories; humans being the most prevalent in the Dyrwood would encounter no discrimination and very few favorable treatments. Dwarves and Elves, being old civilizationally advanced cultures could meet a lot of good-natured ridicule but little outright hostility or helpfulness, except from their own kind every now and then due to their clannishness. Everyone else would sometimes be treated with suspicion/ fear or as a freak who isn't to be taken seriously (even as a threat, letting you get away with things). IE games weren't terribly reactive in this regard either.

After everything adds up, with that many things to react to, they decide to streamline the reactions so which faction I'm aligned with becomes equally less important as where my character is from; both gets the same caliber response, a dialogue line here and there, maybe in same frequency. How much can the narrative designers be creative(assuming they have talent) while also trying to fill all the blanks in this template that Sawyer's laid out?

Faction reputation is a simple thing to get right IMO; your affiliations only concern members of the same faction and those of the other, with little need for ranks. We can assume that you'll naturally rise through the ranks as the story progresses. Less freedom maybe, but factions serve best as powerbases and not anything else. Again snowflakes have captured factions as a vehicle for self-insert powerLARPing; gameplay wise, it needn't concern the rest of the world what clandestine organization I'm a member of.
 

Quillon

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uhm well, it's kind of hard to draw a definite line.

Well that's the job of Sawyer to draw that line and I guess he misplaced his chalk. I'd like even my character's eye color to get reacted to in a perfect game but clearly this many things to react to is more than they can chew on while failing to make a compelling narrative experience. One end of the spectrum is PoEs, with this many races, classes & whatnot and on the other end Geralt of Rivia, Adam jensen etc. I'd like something in the middle, towards PoEs, since they can't & shouldn't :P remove races, classes etc. something's gotta give, otherwise an unlikely PoE3 will have no better narrative experience, post-NV Obs will stay on without its former "writing magic".
 

Quillon

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you have spent way more time analyzing this mess

Its just straightforward assessment:

FNV = Inconsistent expressions but fun narrative, why? Maybe they gave player "expressions" as they made the content, as they thought the kind of choices they are giving would be consistent with what they are doing. (Also its Fallout)
PoE = Homogeneous most everything but ain't fun narrative, why? Maybe they had to give player select number and kind of expressions in most situations no matter what.

otherwise my brain couldn't bother with it :P

Who was it said that nowadays' developers are using assembly lines rather than organic development etc. Lurker King was it? Maybe he was right :D
 
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I'd posit that focusing too much on "character expression" can also be detrimental to the sorts of scenarios that you can offer the player. Sure, you might want to support them being character type A and that doesn't work with a scenario for character type B, but isn't that the point of specialization in the first place? Generalizing scenarios probably feels like the best method of "GM-ing a video game", where you lack on-the-fly adjustments from a human running the scenario actively, but the most interesting story situations can come from a character being stuck up shit creek with no paddle. Feeling like you can fail at some things because you're not good at them might not be comfortable, but overcoming a bad situation is a much cooler game moment than just simply beating something you were always expected to steamroll.

To use Fallout New Vegas as a positive example, it was relatively easy to specialize in persuasion on top of other skills, and doing so made sense. Being able to talk to people is always a good skill, right? But even with a maximum Charisma pacifist build, you'd run into situations where characters wouldn't give a shit - like Ol' Pete in the starting town. If memory serves, he'll only help out with the dynamite if you actually know what the hell you're talking about when it comes to explosives. And vice versa, an explosion-focused character might not be able to do much in the way of getting the town to help out - creating a much less even fight - but they'll be able to blow the Powder Gang to kingdom come. I don't remember any quests that specifically screwed you over for not being able to meet a certain skill check, but you could definitely get yourself in bad situations that would require some creative thinking to get around. Like playing a non-stealth build and getting into a fight in a casino with no weapons.

Conversely, Pillars (the first one at least, haven't played Deadfire) would occasionally let you do "cool shit" or cut out a combat scenario or get special dialogue, but it never felt like it mattered or changed gameplay significantly. Every quest was meant to be played largely the same way by all characters, with some dialogue differences or shortcuts available to certain builds. Everyone is fine, but some people are more fine than others. It really takes the teeth out of potentially interesting situations.
 

Tweed

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Conversely, Pillars (the first one at least, haven't played Deadfire) would occasionally let you do "cool shit" or cut out a combat scenario or get special dialogue, but it never felt like it mattered or changed gameplay significantly. Every quest was meant to be played largely the same way by all characters, with some dialogue differences or shortcuts available to certain builds. Everyone is fine, but some people are more fine than others. It really takes the teeth out of potentially interesting situations.

That's how I felt about it and eventually I just stopped caring altogether. My character's disposition looked like some kind of a schizophrenic wrap sheet before the game was over and I'd become totally nihilist about everything that was going on. Was that the whole point?
 

Parabalus

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Having ranks in dispositions is a good idea, but used to inconsistently/ infrequently.

Its not just that, they are trying to take account of many more things in response to Chargen; an NPC notices player's race/gender/where from, another if he's a godlike or not, another if player has animal companion, a situation to use player's "job" in dialogue etc. they went too deep trying to react to everything.

uhm well, it's kind of hard to draw a definite line. Only reacting to race? Only to class? It's really the 10 dispositions that kill the entire concept as that one is checked the most frequently and allows for the greatest variations as it's not binary; you can be a dwarf or elf but you can have any number of points in the 10 dispositions. Binary dispositions would have helped; you can have so and so many points leaning towards being honest, but you're only either known as honest or as deceptive. That + race would have sufficed and solved quite a few problems. Races could have fallen into 3 categories; humans being the most prevalent in the Dyrwood would encounter no discrimination and very few favorable treatments. Dwarves and Elves, being old civilizationally advanced cultures could meet a lot of good-natured ridicule but little outright hostility or helpfulness, except from their own kind every now and then due to their clannishness. Everyone else would sometimes be treated with suspicion/ fear or as a freak who isn't to be taken seriously (even as a threat, letting you get away with things). IE games weren't terribly reactive in this regard either.

After everything adds up, with that many things to react to, they decide to streamline the reactions so which faction I'm aligned with becomes equally less important as where my character is from; both gets the same caliber response, a dialogue line here and there, maybe in same frequency. How much can the narrative designers be creative(assuming they have talent) while also trying to fill all the blanks in this template that Sawyer's laid out?

Faction reputation is a simple thing to get right IMO; your affiliations only concern members of the same faction and those of the other, with little need for ranks. We can assume that you'll naturally rise through the ranks as the story progresses. Less freedom maybe, but factions serve best as powerbases and not anything else. Again snowflakes have captured factions as a vehicle for self-insert powerLARPing; gameplay wise, it needn't concern the rest of the world what clandestine organization I'm a member of.

PoE dispositions not being binary is flat out retarded, you end PoE1 and Dumpsterfire having pmuch every disposition close to maxed out. D:OS did at least that right.
 

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