In most non voice acted mmos, when you speak to NPCs they present information in the form of big ugly walls of text. WOW, CO, and STO and many others are examples of this. I personally find this very unpleasing to the eye and it makes it feel like you are just being presented with information rather than having a conversation with a character within the game world, breaking immersion entirely. For this reason, most of the time I just look at the mission summary and the rewards and skip the story entirely, which is annoying because the writers have spent their time and energy attempting to create an interesting story that draws people in.
Going the final fantasy rout and using small blocks of text that are a sentence or 2 at a time and allowing characters to interact with each other would make conversing with NPCs more visually interesting and make the the conversations feel more natural. Players would want to read the stories you write and care more about your characters than if they were just some vessel for you to receive quests from. With the awesome story driven approach that you seem to be going for with this game, it would be a shame if players weren't interested in it because of the way it is presented.
Just a thought to help with immersion. Keep up the amazing work guys! Can't wait to buy this game.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMcQdRLgVpMwXi_3yTCN5iA/videos
Wildstar did this as well, and then players came up with an addon that dumped the whole text in more of the WoW quest log style.
Ideally - and realize I am not on the story team - I would like to see us crib the comic-book style of word balloons, and use it universally.
Particularly, having our NPC conversations with PCs include many interjection points where the player is presented with 2+ options to respond with, which may or may not have any actual effect on the mission being assigned, would be cool. Particularly neat if the converation choices [i]did[/i] have some impact, perhaps on what information the person gave you, whether it makes the mission easier or harder (due to clues you have access to to do things), or whether it leads to a version of the mission where you're honestly helping them, or are manipulated into being a patsy (with appropriate clues in the mission itself to let you discover the duplicity and possibly change your personal objectives).
I'm just thinking out loud here, mind. But I'd like it to be interactive if only to hold interest. Let the story unfold as you play rather than hitting you with a wall of text at the start or finish.
If we MUST hit you with a wall of text, I'd much rather a "comic book page" or "booklet" type of thing the player can virtually flip through. It would discourage text walls and encourage pithy visuals. I think. Maybe. That would be something to discuss with composition and art.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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If Lore is crucial to the mission, a more context based approach might work.
The newer sewer trials started to show chat Bubbles as you entered. Some read it, others didnt. ;)
But what Irked me about those chat bubbles was that it didnt show an image of the NPC talking. (static would have been fine)
It be nice if a different NPC image w/ emotions were shown for each paragraph... when needed.
ex:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/SDMdOd5.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/XfPMABB.png[/img]
+10000 YES to all of this. This idea is awesome
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMcQdRLgVpMwXi_3yTCN5iA/videos
Some sort of static thumbnail image for NPCs who are speaking off-screen (or maybe even on-) would probably not be remiss.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Just be aware that a lot of people get annoyed when forced to have long conversations with NPCs.
It doesn't really bother me so long as it doesn't happen too often
but the chatterbox Owl in Ocarina of Time was infamous
and even I wanted to kill Midna in Twilight Princess because she just wouldn't ever shut up.
Also if we have a choice to make, make sure it matters. If I make a choice but the game does the same thing either way I feel like the game just wasted my time.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
What caught my attention was the CrazyTalk Animator 2 software.
http://youtu.be/Ef69KITHUSs?t=2m57s
Really? Midna was the best of the Zelda NPCs I had to interact with over long periods of time, to me. She had some of the best character development in any Zelda game, ever, too.
What if its meaning was just to change how the NPC's dialog went, but didn't change anything mechanically? He might get more gruff and unfriendly if you mock him rather than commiserate, for example. Even if he needs your help desperately enough not to just stalk off.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Seriously? She was a total @#$% and treated Link like crap. She was constantly reminding him of how incompetent he was. When she got sick I was just glad to be rid of her. I felt nothing but annoyed by her ever.
Mind you I didn't get all the way through the game because I figured out that I just couldn't stand the Wii.
Wireless controllers meant batteries (I hated that) and the way the controller worked was just insane.
Gamecube was much better.
No, that's not enough of a difference for me to want to sit through a long dialog.
I think a lot of people will just stop reading and start clicking the first option every time so they can get to the adventure.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I want to read the story. I think I'll be more prone to read it in chat bubbles rather than "mission windows". When i need to make a choice the mission window can come up but other than that I'd love to see/read what the characters are saying. It'll also help people who don't read lore get more exposure to it, making for a more robust RP experience.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm not saying it's a bad idea
I'm saying that players who aren't really into the Role Playing and lore will find it annoying
It will also get very tiresome for players who repeat the mission,
even if it's with another character.
In Dungeons & Dragons Online there are a few missions where you have an option, early in the conversation:
you can say something like"skip the details, just tell me what you need me to do"
That allows players who want the story to keep listening
while allowing those who've heard it before (or just don't care) to skip it.
I think this is the way you should go.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Speaking of skippable, cut scenes should be skippable. One of the things that I loathe about CO is the unskippable cut scene, particularly in the alerts. I've seen this a thousand times, let me skip it!
Here here!
or is it Hear Hear!
Iduno
+1
there
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I would like to see more exposure to immersive roleplaying.
Players who do not care for immersion will do what they'll do regardless. The mistake is to make lack of immersion this the default mindset of a MMORPG. Default to the genre (Roleplaying Game) and allow people who are just there for the punching to do what they've always done and skip it.
Imagine the reverse.. a game where there was no mission text and objectives just popped up with no reasoning or story. Do not want.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Didn't you read the rest of what I wrote?
your response seems to suggest you didn't
it said:
"In Dungeons & Dragons Online there are a few missions where you have an option, early in the conversation:
you can say something like"skip the details, just tell me what you need me to do"
That allows players who want the story to keep listening
while allowing those who've heard it before (or just don't care) to skip it.
I think this is the way you should go."
That wouldn't take anything away from what you want.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I'm in between here. Sometimes I want a wall sometimes I just want to rush to the actions. What I REALLY want is the ability to read my adventures after. Think of it like a Journal that is auto filled as you go through the adventure. That way if you rush it you can read what the story was about afterwards when you just want to chill.
With a Journal system you can have the majority of text be there to clarify what happened.
-------------------------------------------
Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
The game will be tracking your choices and decisions already as part of the alignment system. No reason it wouldn't be available as a journal. But in most games the journal is just a synopsis of what happened and not the full spoken text. Also a journal would not factor in my responses in real time to what was going on which as a roleplayer is the most important part for me to reflect on.
Also, TheMightyPaladin, I don't respect the tone presented here. I read your post and took the time to try and respond to it. It's rude that after doing so, you attempt to diminish that. My response to your post is in regard to the spirit of what we're talking about. I understand the desire to skip context. I used to do it myself. This does not change anything about what I've said. In a utopian/dystopian world I'd much rather have the immersive context than not. This includes having a "Skip the context" button as default, although I appreciate it as a toggle-able feature. As I said, I hope the game exposes as many people to the context of Titan City as possible. I definitely don't want the "skip the context button" to be the default or so prevalent that it takes away from SO many writers' hard work.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Your previous comment invited the tone.
You quoted part of what I said and responded negatively
without seeming to notice that the concern you were expressing had been addressed in the part of my comment that you left out.
I have no idea what you mean when you say " I definitely don't want the "skip the context button" to be the default or so prevalent that it takes away from SO many writers' hard work"
I did not suggest it be the default or that it be more prevalent than other options, only that it be available.
The fact is that if it's not available a lot of players are likely to get very tired of having to skip over text that they're not reading, especially if that text is presented in many small chunks that have to be skipped one at a time, as the OP is suggesting.
Personally whether or not I will read the text depends entirely on my mood.
Sometimes I'll read every word of it but sometimes I'll want to cut to the chase
and I'm much more likely to want to skip, if I've played this mission before.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Man. Paladin and Jay , you guys are honestly arguing the same point. Basically make the default the text bubbles, but give an option to skip the conversation and get to the mission details. It's an awesome solution and gives choice weather or not to immerse yourself in the story. When replaying content, of course you'll want to skip dialogue most of the time because you already know how it goes. But you are both restating that point over and over and saying that one isn't getting what the other is saying. YOU ARE. YOU'RE BOTH SAYING IT. Not to be offensive, it's an excellent idea. I'm just tired of reading the same point repeated. (Notice how many times I repeated my point in this post? I think you get the point.) ^_^ http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/117/f/d/Beating_a_dead_horse_by_pjperez.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMcQdRLgVpMwXi_3yTCN5iA/videos
love the picture
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
My "vision," though I feel pretentious using that word, would be that your "journal" would, itself, take the form of a virtual comic book of your character's actions and pertinent conversations. You can go to your virtual shelf and look over your "issues" of your own super's adventures, reading them in comic book format.
I don't know how practical this is, but it's what I'd LIKE to see.
Also, the proper phrasing is actually, "Hear here!" It's short for "I/We hear you here."
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Thanks Segev
Oh and if you can get that comic boo thing to work that would be really cool
Do you think we'd be able to download the comic as a PDF?
Of course it ruins my plans to make a web comic using screenshots but that's OK this is cooler.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I don't really mind wall of text. In many ways I would rather just scroll through a hunk of story/lore than have to keep clicking to continue. What I do have a problem with is poorly formatted text, ie. no line breaks, paragraphs not indented, font too big or too small, etc. Note, if there is actual conversation involved, I don't mind clicking through.
-----------------------------------------
I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
I can see both sides of this. In CoX I actually read through every line of text for every mission in 7 years no matter how often I had run that mission, and I expect to be the same in CoT. (I'm really looking fwd to seeing how the choices will affect things -- and I'd prefer to see choices with consequences deeper than mere dialogue.) However, I can see where being forced to click through multiple balloons of dialogue could get frustrating, especially for folks who are more interested in the action than in the story. Having just replayed FF7, I got pretty annoyed that there was no skip-dialogue option in several spots where I had to repeat events multiple times.
I do very much like your comic book idea, Segev. That would be especially useful for anything TF-like, where the team rarely is pleased with someone who wants to stop and read the story.
I do take pedantic umbrage at your "hear here" though. :-) http://grammarist.com/spelling/hear-hear/
Spurn all ye kindle.
The "spam A to continue" thing is something that most (if not all) Final Fantasy games are pretty much guilty of. Especially the earlier titles.
However, if you know the game well enough, you could skip some cut scenes with a few glitches (depends on version of the game.)
Well, if hear hear is good enough for the Oxford English Dictionary, I guess it'll be good enough for me.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
I stand corrected.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
FFXIV does a pretty awesome job with their conversations. It's the best I've seen in any mmo for sure. Plus there's a skip convo option. That's the sort of thing I was hoping for.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMcQdRLgVpMwXi_3yTCN5iA/videos
What about something in between? What if the game automatically took a "screen shot" of a singular moment in a mission, say the moment you enter the room containing the AV. It would frame you in the shot with the AV and include the story summary in a "comic-booky" frame to one side. At the end of the mission this could go in a separate library you could access from your lair, an image file that ends up in a sub-folder of your game/pic file, or whatever. Maybe you could opt to see it immediately after mission completion and opt to save or delete.
That idea has merit. Any of the techies care to comment on workload to implement such a feature?
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Sounds interesting. I'm guessing this might be doable when there's a cut-scene already playing?!? :}
edit: (Unrelated)
I was just browsing the web and came across a rant asking devs to use SQLite for sharing files formats.
link: http://shapeof.com/archives/2013/4/we_need_a_standard_layered_image_format.html
Come to think of it, 3rd party tools would be easier to create/maintain if there was a file format update/revision that MWM made.
I guess what I'm thinking is the export/import of the costumes from the Avatar Builder, Base Builder, any kind of share with others Builder. or Macros, Key-Binds, or what ever. ;)
Supposedly, there are times when a SQLite file is smaller than a ZIP might be?
src: http://sqlite.org/whentouse.html
What do you think?
I'd gotten the impression that cut-scenes weren't going to be a thing. Generally because the decision had been made to forget about voice acting. At least for the foreseeable future. A "splash page" formatted like a comic book would be cool while an instance loads, though. So far, I've found the voice-acting in Champions Online to be atrocious and DCUO barely passable. I'd rather have good music and well-written dialogue bubbles, thanks very much.
It's worth noting that cut-scenes don't REQUIRE voice-acting. They can be done with word balloons.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]